1.

"Again, Rose Landry?"

"Again, Ilya," she slurred, setting her wineglass down onto the coffee table just a bit too close to the edge as she bobbed slightly from her position on the couch. "I'm at like… eighty-seven percent of the men I've dated being gay now? Ninety-four? Ugh—I'm too drunk to do math in my head."

Although part of him still felt that it was a bit awkward whenever he was alone with Rose, he had been thrilled to learn that she loved to yap and gab with him in the fun, over the top way that Sveta rarely had the patience for. He still didn't love to remember she was Shane's ex, but he could honestly say he loved to count her among his friends.

"How many is this?" he asked, reaching out to scoot her glass over just a tad so that Shane wouldn't have an absolute aneurysm over the state of the rug when he returned from picking Anya up from Yuna and David's house. Shane had been playing babysitter for the two of them all night as they'd knocked back glass after glass of wine and turned giggly, but once they'd started moving toward the sort of subjects that he rarely liked to discuss with anyone besides Ilya, he'd taken his leave to fetch their dog.

"Eleven out of thirteen, Ilya. Eleven of them," she said, snagging the wineglass between her fingers again. Shit, he wouldn't be too worried about the rug either, if eleven of the last thirteen women he'd slept with had turned out to be lesbians.

"That is… eighty-five percent," he said. "More or less. I know you work in Hollywood, but surely there is at least one actor who is not gay, yes?"

"That's what I would've thought," she cried, slapping her free hand against the couch. "That's why I tried dating a fucking hockey player, if you remember. It's raining men—but they're all gay."

"I think most men who get that reference are also probably gay, Rose," he said, snorting at the thought of her using references to the Weather Girls to find a straight man.

"Okay, true," Rose allowed. "Probably. And it wouldn't be so bad if this last one had at least been good in bed. Like any hole in a storm, or whatever. But how do I keep finding not only gay men, but none of this last set has even been good in bed. I mean—not that I want to sleep with your husband again, but like… damn, Ilya."

He blinked hard, trying to get those words to fit into the proper spaces in his head and make sense.

"Hold all of your horses, Rose Landry. What are you talking about?"

"You know," she said, waving her hand vaguely in front of the crotch of her pajamas and dropping her voice into a whisper. "He's fucking huge. And even if I don't exactly have the parts he likes, he was far from the worst of the gay men I've fucked. At least he knows what he's doing—"

Turns out Ilya was wrong to be worried about Rose being the one to ruin Shane's expensive rug, because a fine mist of red wine escaped his mouth at that. He'd mostly given up asking Shane for any details about his attempts to sleep with Rose, given that he had offered little information than to call it a disaster, but apparently Rose had no such qualms about discussing it.

"Tell me more, Rose Landry," he said, leaning forward slightly to watch her.

"When are you going to stop calling me by my full name, Ilya? Jesus. I mean, obviously he didn't want me, but it's not like he suddenly forgot how to have sex just because he didn't want to be having it with a woman. I mean it took him absolute ages to come, but it's not like I was complaining about that at the time. And you know as well as I do how good he is with his mouth."

"What the hell have I walked into?"

Shane's voice from the doorway startled them both, and Ilya narrowly avoided sloshing more of his wine out of the glass when he jumped, realizing that Shane had reentered the room.

"Solnyshko! We were—"

"I was just telling Ilya how much I would have hated finding out that my latest boyfriend was gay if he'd been as good in bed as you were!"

Shane's face immediately flushed a bright red and he sighed loudly, flopping himself down between Ilya's splayed legs. It took him a moment to get comfortable, sliding down until he could pillow his head onto Ilya's lap.

"Rose…"

"You said it was disaster, Shane. Does not sound like it was disaster."

"It was a disaster for me, Ilya. Jesus. It's not like I lied to you," he said, dropping his arm down over his eyes so he didn't have to look at either of them. Ilya stroked the hand not clenched around his wineglass into Shane's hair, smiling down at him fondly when Shane lowered his arm just enough to peek out at him with those big brown eyes.

"I did not think you lied, Shane. But I have sex with you many times a week and I would not say it has ever been a disaster. Even Rose Landry does not think it was so bad."

And sure—he understood Shane was gay and probably didn't feel all too confident about what he'd done with Rose. The Shane he had known had always been such a pool of want and need and passion wrapped up and shoved into the skin of a man that it was almost impossible for him to fathom the thought of Shane not being good in bed.

Shane at eighteen had done more for him than any of the people who had come before or after—and it seems like Rose Landry wasn't that far off from agreeing with him, even if she also admitted that they weren't compatible. Even if Shane didn't enjoy sleeping with women, he'd always dedicated himself to everything that he did with such a single-minded focus that it wouldn't have surprised Ilya to learn that he had studied how to be good at sleeping with women.

"What was it you said you had to do, Shane?"

"Rose, don't—" Shane interrupted, sitting up slightly in Ilya's lap and reaching forward like he could somehow snatch the words out of the air between them.

"Lie back and think of Ilya, isn't that what you said? Jesus, Ilya—if thinking of fucking you is what had him performing like that, then you're a lucky, lucky boy," she said, slugging back the rest of her wine with a cackle.

"It's not like that, Rose," Shane said, dropping back down against Ilya and tucking his face against Ilya's side to hide his face. "I already told you—I prefer to be the hole over the peg. That wasn't… we don't… why are we even talking about this?"

"Wait," Rose said, sitting up and swaying slightly from side to side as she tried to force her eyes to focus. "I didn't think—you mean you aren't ever the peg? Oh my god, Ilya. You are missing out. Holy shit. You have Shane Hollander in your bed and he's actually attracted to you. He could be putting your ass through the mattress six ways from Sunday—and you're telling me that you never—"

"Okay!" Shane cried, jumping off the couch and reaching for Rose's arms, his face a deeper red than Ilya could have ever imagined. "I think you've both had a lot to drink, and it's probably time for us all to go to bed now! Rose, c'mon—I'll help you get to your room. Ilya, can you take the dishes into the kitchen?"

As Shane gathered Rose into his arms and led her from the room, Ilya watched silently from the couch, feeling almost shell-shocked.

They were disasters… she's not looking for a repeat performance…

And maybe that was true. Rose had explicitly said that she didn't want to sleep with Shane again, but absolutely none of the words she said implied that she even remotely agreed with Shane in thinking that their time together could be categorized as anything approaching a disaster.

From that very first time they'd found themselves alone in a hotel room, Ilya had been the top. Even before there was even the possibility of penetrative sex on the table, Shane had allowed Ilya to take the reins and call the shots. Shane had easily and willingly laid back and spread his legs, allowing Ilya to slot himself between them. At no point had Shane expressed an interest in topping him—and at no point had Ilya seriously considered taking Shane's place on the bottom.

He'd fumbled around briefly with Sasha, but Sasha had been so high that he could barely focus on where his own body was, let alone where Ilya's was. It went without saying that he hadn't felt comfortable enough to let him put so much as a finger inside of him, nevermind anything else. He knew he trusted Shane more than he'd ever trusted Sasha… but he'd never given any serious thought before to trusting him with this.

As he stood from the couch, collecting the empty glasses and bottles to drop in the dishwasher and the recycling bin, he flipped it all over in his head. He'd never once fathomed Shane being good in bed with women based on how he'd described the disaster with Rose… but he had apparently been one of the best of her gay boyfriends.

His eyes fluttered shut and he leaned against the island, taking a deep breath. Instead of Shane uncomfortable and trying to force his way through sex with Rose, his brain offered the mental image of Shane with the same energy he had always brought to sex with Ilya—his cheeks and chest flushed red, breath heavy as he moaned, pinned beneath Rose's weight.

Ilya liked men, he liked women… he liked the thought of men with women, even if he knew that Shane certainly didn't. But as he pictured it, the image in his head flipped—because the Shane that was still lying to himself about what he wanted wouldn't have been on his back, pinned to a mattress by Rose Landry. He would've been up on his arms, actually using hips, the entire wide expanse of his shoulders looming over her and those thick muscled thighs holding her own legs wide.

And then the thought changed entirely, the image of Rose underneath him morphing until he pictured Shane over him, his hips driving him deep into the mattress as he panted and moaned into his ear—the version of the Shane he got to see every night blending with the version that Rose had known until all he could picture—all he could hear—was Shane pouring every ounce of that famous focus into taking him apart.

He shook himself lightly, willing those thoughts away.

He was too drunk—it was time for him to finish cleaning up and join them in going to bed.

Shane was still in Rose's room and he could hear the two of them giggling over something as he got to the top of the stairs, entering their bedroom and starting to get ready for bed. As he brushed his teeth, staring at himself in the mirror, a flash crossed his mind of his mouth wide open for a different reason altogether, panting for air as his eyes rolled back into his skull. As he pulled his t-shirt over his head, a little too drunk to get the shirt off easily, his arms tangled in the sleeves and he could suddenly picture Shane's big hands wrapped around his wrists for once, pinning him down firmly to the mattress.

He ripped the shirt over his head, yanking until his hands were free. What the fuck?

Ilya fell heavily onto their bed, staring at the ceiling and willing those thoughts from his head. Ten years. He'd had ten years to have these thoughts about Shane, and not once had he entertained them. Now, here he was, and all it had taken was a few words thrown out by Rose Landry and he couldn't think of anything else.

The door to their bedroom slowly creaked open as Shane slid in, a soft smile on his face when he saw Ilya was still awake.

"Hi baby," Shane cooed, walking up to the bed to drop a soft kiss on the corner of Ilya's mouth. Ilya just hummed, allowing the touch, but not willing to open his mouth in case something stupid fell out of it—like do you ever think of fucking me the way you fucked Rose Landry—for some reason.

"I'm going to go brush and wash—I'll be back in just a minute. You don't have to stay up if you want to go to sleep, okay?"

Ilya nodded at him, his eyes wide as he tried to grapple with the unusual feeling of overwhelm as he stared at his husband. Maybe it was all of the red wine he'd split and spilt with Rose, but he was feeling a bit floaty and as if he was having a hard time holding onto any of the thoughts that skated through his head.

It didn't take long for Shane to return, sliding between the sheets next to him. Before Ilya could move to bundle Shane against his chest or to curl up against his back as he usually did, Shane was moving to curl up against his back, banding his thick arm around Ilya's waist and tucking his face into the nape of Ilya's neck. Ilya could feel the tickle of Shane's breath through his curls, and shivered lightly at the feeling.

"Solnyshko?" he rasped out when he realized that he could feel the hard length of Shane pressing against the small of his back.

"Shhh," Shane whispered. "I'll be fine. You're drunk and I'm tired—let's just go to sleep. We can do something about it in the morning."

It didn't take long for Shane's breathing to even out, and he eventually softened against Ilya after he fell asleep. Ilya lay there for a while longer, wide awake—and trying to ignore the swooping in his stomach from the feeling of Shane's hot body pressed fully against him from behind.

2.

Ilya liked cock. Of course he did. It's not as if he was bisexual only in theory. He liked men and he liked everything about them. He'd met a few tops who didn't seem to have any interest in anything but a tight hole. He couldn't say that he understood that impulse at all, because he liked women and he liked men for all of the reasons that they weren't women. If he had a partner, he wanted his hands, his mouth, his eyes on them in every way that he could get.

Maybe he didn't have Shane's degree of oral fixation—he'd certainly never fallen asleep with a cock in his mouth—but it wasn't like he was going to shy away from the thought of getting his mouth on any part of Shane's body when given the chance.

"Fuck, Ilya—fuck—" Shane cried, wrenching Ilya's head back using the hand that was tangled in his curls.

"What? What is the problem?"

"What's the—I'm about to come, you fucking dick!"

"Yes, Shane," Ilya said, filling his voice with fake concern. "That was my goal. Do you not want?"

"Of course I want, asshole," Shane said, bringing his arm down to smack Ilya in the chest. "But I'm going to be too sensitive if you try to fuck me right afterward, so if you could just… get on with it please?"

"No, Shane, you do not want asshole. That is what I want. You want dick."

Shane rolled his eyes and Ilya couldn't help but laugh—patting him on the stomach and dropping a kiss near his hip bone.

"Maybe I am not ready to fuck you, Hollander. Did you ever think about that? You are so greedy. You do not know how much work you are when you are being so bossy and demanding of me. I cannot take my time? I cannot wait until I am ready for you?"

Shane let out a sigh that verged on the edge of being a whine, trembling slightly under Ilya's palm as it skated across his stomach.

"Ilya…"

"Ilya, Ilya, Ilya—please, please, please," Ilya said, his voice inching towards mockery. "You are always asking for more, Hollander. Always begging."

Shane twitched underneath him, and Ilya couldn't help the smirk on his face. He knew that Shane sometimes liked it when he was a bit mean—liked the way the humiliation burned hot in his veins and landed somewhere deep in his stomach.

"So lazy, Hollander," he cooed, wrapping his fingers around Shane's length and ignoring the way he trembled from the sensation. "You just lie back and take… and somehow you have the greed to ask me for more? Do you not feel grateful for what I give you?"

"'m so grateful, Ilya, so grateful," Shane groaned out, his hand dropping to clasp tightly around Ilya's wrist where it worked over his length.

"You do not sound grateful," Ilya tsked meanly with another twist of his wrist. "I work so hard to make this so good for you and you are so needy and greedy. I know it is easy for you to lay there with big, useless cock and do nothing, but I put in so much effort for you, Hollander. I do not know what else to give you."

"It's not—"

"It's not what, Hollander?" he asked, dropping his voice and leaning up to whisper into Shane's ear. "Is not big?"

Ilya squeezed his fingers together just a little bit meanly to show how much of an effort it was to get his fingers to touch.

"Is not useless?" Ilya let out a laugh that he knew bordered on the edge of cruelty and flicked his nail against the head of Shane's cock, making him gasp and buck underneath him.

"What is the point, Hollander? Is not like you know how to use it, no?"

"I do," he gasped. "I—I can."

"No," Ilya chuckled. "I do not think you can. You just lie there and take, take, take, don't you? Make me give, give, give. When was last time you let me lie back and take, hmm? What—you think because you are not captain you do not ever need to be in charge anymore? You just get to be lazy now and make me do all the work?"

Ilya was just talking nonsense at this point, saying words for the sole purpose of watching Shane's cheeks flush and to hear him gasp with each syllable out of his mouth. He knew Shane wasn't lazy, knew he wasn't ever the sort of person to expect something for nothing. He also knew that the blissed out look on Shane's face and the way his hips were giving aborted little thrusts up into Ilya's grip meant that whatever bullshit he was saying was working.

"No, no—Ilya. Ilya. I'll show you, I'll… I'll—"

"You'll what, Hollander? What do you think you'll show me?"

Shane let out a low moan, snagging Ilya's wrist and wrenching it away from him.

"I'll do it. I won't make you give, Ilya. I'll let you take. You can lie back and I'll—I'll do everything. I'll do the work, and you won't have to. I promise, Ilya."

"Hmm," Ilya hummed, pulling back lightly and staring down at Shane's face, setting his own features into a look of disbelief. "I do not know, Shane. I do not think you remember how to do the work. I am not one of your silly little fan-girls—I will not be impressed just because you have a big and fat dick. You are my bottom, yes? You are not going to fuck me—will not be so easy for you."

Shane took a ragged, gasping breath before heaving all of his weight, rolling Ilya onto his back and settling to hover over him. He stared up at Shane, wide-eyed, and swallowed hard when he saw the look on Shane's face as something foundational morphed in his expression. Shane's mouth was set firmly, the muscle in his jaw working slightly as he gritted his teeth together in determination. Shane's eyes roved over Ilya's face, down his chest, lower, before returning up.

For a moment, Ilya suddenly had the image of himself exactly like one of the women that a different version of Shane had brought home when he was still lying to himself, all two-hundred pounds of his husband's bulk pinning him to the mattress. Shane ground his hips down, the hard line of his cock sliding against Ilya's with both Shane's precum and the last dregs of the lube from Ilya's hand easing the way.

The thought crossed his mind again—that this was a feeling he would never have been able to feel had he still been sleeping with women. Sure, he could grind against soft skin, but the feeling of his husband's hard length against his, the weight and enormity of Shane's body hovering over his. He wouldn't trade it for every red cent he'd ever made.

Shane shifted his arms, resting on his forearms bracketed beside Ilya's head, grasped Ilya's wrists in those large, powerful hands and pinned them down to the mattress beside his head.

"I don't have to fuck you to be the one doing the work," Shane bit out through his clenched teeth, exhaling hard through his nose as he wound his hips against Ilya's.

"Fuck, Shane—"

"Yeah? Does that feel good?"

Ilya's eyelids fluttered as his eyes rolled back a bit. Did that feel good? What a stupid fucking question. It took little imagination for him to picture Shane's body pressing against his, working his hips in a different way altogether. What would it feel like for Shane to move like this inside of him?

Would he try to duplicate the same way that Ilya took him? Would it be soft, gentle—teasing and laughing and the sort of intimacy that they were only able to find now that they had an entire house and home dedicated wholly to their love and life together?

Or would it be something else entirely—would his sweet, soft husband fuck him how Rozanov had fucked Hollander for all those years—filthy and dirty and just a bit disrespectful. The sort of force behind his hips that felt at home in a stolen moment in a hotel room or an investment property that no one would ever call home?

Would Shane loom over him like he was right now, his broad body blotting out the overhead light and filling his vision? Or would he roll him onto his stomach—one hand pressed firmly to the center of his spine or to the side of his head—forcing him down into the mattress and preventing him from moving away?

He knew all the various ways that his Shane could take and take and take… he did not know anything about any of the ways that Shane Hollander would take him.

Before he'd had any idea that he was even approaching the precipice of anything, he came with a strangled moan, striping hot into the scant space between their bodies just from the friction of Shane's hot skin against his.

Shane laughed a bit cruelly, the sound mocking in the quiet between them. "Oh? Already?"

"Shane," Ilya gasped out. "Fuck, I—fuck."

"Too bad," Shane said, ignoring the way Ilya was starting to twitch and writhe beneath him, the feeling of stimulation shifting to something altogether less pleasant and too pleasant all at once. "I'm not finished with you, yet. You don't get to tease and bully me about not pulling my weight and then get out of it by coming in thirty seconds."

Shane dipped his head, bringing his mouth close enough to Ilya's for their lips to brush with every word that he spoke—and bringing their hips close enough for him to feel the hard jutting length of Shane's cock against his own softening length. "I'm not done with you yet, Rozanov."

Ilya jerked hard under Shane, a tortured gasp falling from his lips. He felt almost small with Shane pinning him down, unable to escape his grasp or shift his weight at all. One of Shane's big, feverish hands slid between them, swiping through the mess that Ilya had made of his stomach. Shane's fingers dragged the slippery mess against the crease of Ilya's hip and—blessedly—shifted his hips to the side to work his cock against the crook of his leg there instead of against Ilya's spent, oversensitive cock.

"I'm. Not. Done. Yet."

Shane punctuated each word with a roll of his hips, making Ilya seize beneath him every time the skin of his leg brushed against Ilya's body.

"Hollan—Shane. Fuck, Shane. I can't—"

In this position, with Shane's hips shifted over to slide against the crook of his leg instead of his pelvis, the thrusts were stopped by the meat of Ilya's thigh. It felt like… felt like Shane was bottoming out. Felt like he was running out of space, like he'd gone as far as Ilya's body would let him push.

He stared up at Shane's face, completely unable to look away. Every time Shane's hips rutted against his, the damp, sweaty hair of his fringe swayed with each movement. Shane's eyes were slightly glassy, but they were constantly moving, roving over Ilya's face as he continued to thrust against him.

Shane dropped Ilya's wrists, his hands shifting inward to grab Ilya's jaw and press their mouths together as he continued to grind them together. Ilya could tell by the slight stutter to Shane's rhythm that he was getting closer and he snaked one arm down and around to clutch at the meat of Shane's ass, feeling the muscles bunch and tighten beneath his hand every time that Shane wound his hips.

"You feel so fucking good, Ilya," Shane mumbled against his lips, releasing the kiss just enough to sink his teeth into Ilya's bottom lip. "You're so—ugh, fuck—you feel incredible."

Ilya brought his other free hand up to his mouth, tipping his head away from Shane's just long enough to spit onto his fingers before dragging his hand down to wrap his fingers tightly around Shane's cock. He watched as Shane's eyes fluttered, his hips pumping into Ilya's grip.

"For such a bottom," Ilya gasped out, his head floaty even though he'd finished coming down, "your cock is so needy. Does your cock not know that your hole is in charge?"

Shane ducked his head down to nip at Ilya's throat. "You keep talking about how useless my cock is, Rozanov," Shane said, trailing his tongue through the sweat that had gathered along the column of Ilya's throat. "But you're the one always trying to get your mouth and hands on me. Probably says more about what you want than it does about me, doesn't it?"

Ilya felt like he was choking, like every deep inhale was a fight to drag the air into his lungs. Normally, if one of them was going to slide their way toward being on the edge of mean, it was him—Shane rarely took control, and he talked down to Ilya even less frequently than that.

"Fuck this," Shane said, pulling himself off Ilya and throwing his legs over the side of the bed, coming to stand just beside their mattress. If not for the fact that Ilya could see the faint tremors in Shane's thighs, he never would've had any idea that Shane felt as wrecked as he did. He'd already come, but the feeling of Shane's weight and warmth above him already had him stirring again with interest. Part of him regretted being such a shithead, but the larger part of him had to acknowledge that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

Shane leaned forward to slide his fingers into Ilya's hair, cupping the back of his skull almost tenderly for just a moment before those same fingers were wrenching, dragging Ilya across the soft sheets using nothing but a firm grasp of his curls.

He went willingly.

He let Shane maneuver his body across the sheets until he was on his back, head dangling just slightly off the edge of the bed. At the risk of sounding dramatic, he suddenly had a very clear idea of why the priests had warned of the difference between worship and veneration, because whatever thoughts flew through his mind at the sight of Shane Hollander standing above him certainly must have toed the line of idolatry.

He could unpack that later. Much later, when he didn't have a naked, hard, and chest-heaving husband standing above him with hands roving over his bare chest. He'd check his diary, but surely he'd have at least fifteen minutes one of these days where that didn't describe his plans for himself.

"I'm tired of hearing you run your mouth, Roz," Shane said, hand sliding up his body to trace his mouth. Ilya couldn't help but suck those thick fingers into his mouth, tracing his tongue over the curve of his knuckles and luxuriating in the heavy press of Shane's hand against his tongue.

Before he could fall too deep into the weight of wherever his brain was trying to take him, Shane slid his wet fingers from his mouth and left a wet trail as he moved them down Ilya's chin before squeezing Ilya's throat lightly.

"It's going to be hard for you to be an asshole if you can't breathe, isn't it?"

Ilya's eyes rolled back in his head at the sound of that, and Shane chuckled, slapping Ilya's cheek with his other hand even as he gave the column of Ilya's throat another light squeeze.

"You want to run your mouth about being so fucking tired of giving?" Shane asked as he released Ilya's throat to give himself one slow, firm stroke directly above Ilya's face. "Then don't worry. I'll show you I know how to give, too."

Shane's first few strokes into his mouth were shallow—they had to be, given that Ilya's cum was drying on his cock and he might have killed him dead if he'd tried to force himself to the hilt on the first pass. Shane let him get used to it surprisingly slowly, allowing him a moment to get accustomed to the weight of his cock against his tongue.

His Shane was so good to him.

His eyelids fluttered as he tried to draw air in through his nose. His mouth was full of the taste of Shane, of the taste of his own cum, of the heavy weight of Shane's admittedly substantial heft forcing his jaw to open wide.

Eventually, finally, the wetness of his mouth worked its way down Shane's length, and he could feel each additional inch of Shane as he slowly worked himself deeper and deeper until he'd bullied his way into Ilya's throat and Ilya's nose rested in the warm, musky heat of Shane's balls.

Shane held himself still above Ilya when he finally bottomed out, Ilya's throat working to find a breath that wouldn't come. They both knew he'd be okay for a moment—not either of their first rodeo—but that was harder to explain to his mammalian hindbrain that was panicking due to the rush of blood to his head and the lack of air in his lungs.

His chest heaved, and he gave a futile little jerk on the bed that he tried to mask by sliding his hands up to rest against Shane's thick thighs.

"Shh," Shane whispered, his hand coming to stroke the column of Ilya's throat again. Ilya swallowed—or did his best to try to, at any rate—and Shane sucked in a harsh draw of air through gritted teeth, abandoning whatever he was about to say to press his fingertips against the center of his throat.

Ilya realized then what it was that had Shane staring down at him, so transfixed. Shane could see himself in Ilya's throat.

Ilya could only imagine what it looked like—it's not like there was any way for him to actually see what it looked like unless Shane suddenly got really cool about a lot of different things and Apple offered more iron-clad promises about the security of the iCloud—but he had seen the corresponding movements in Shane's throat enough times that he could certainly picture it with enough clarity.

What was worse was that some of those thoughts—the ones that had lingered since Rose Landry—filtered into his head and offered an altogether different image entirely. For as much fun as he had teasing Shane about his cock, it was big—thick and long, and such a heavy, substantial weight. And as he felt Shane work his cock into his mouth—into his throat—picturing what it must look like for Shane look down and see it, he could suddenly see with startling clearness what it would look like to see his stomach moving with each of Shane's thrusts.

He let out a sharp whine at the thought around Shane's length and was rewarded with Shane's hips snapping forward against his face again.

"Fuck," Shane groaned, speeding up and continuing to fuck his mouth as he got closer.

Ilya felt himself go somewhere out of his body, aware of nothing but the feeling of Shane in his mouth, Shane's scent in his lungs, the thoughts of Shane in his head, the almost faint awareness of his own reigniting arousal.

He knew Shane was talking, a rambling, low stream of words that he couldn't make heads or tails of. He was dimly aware of Shane coming at some point, pressing an awkward and clumsy upside down kiss to his lips before he'd fallen onto the bed beside him and sucked Ilya's cock into his own mouth—working him quickly and efficiently although Ilya could do nothing but buck and moan through the sensation, his blood rushing thickly in his ears where his head was still dangling off the edge of the bed.

Shane gently cradled his head in his hands, pulling him softly all the way back onto the bed and tugging him up to lie against his chest. Ilya came back to himself slowly as Shane carded his hand through his hair, murmuring to him softly as he ran the other across Ilya's damp skin.

"You okay, baby?" Shane asked quietly as he drew soft little circles over Ilya's abs.

He tried not to shiver at the sensation and just nodded.

3.

"Hollzy—holy shit, dude. You were so, so right," Hayes said, clapping a hand onto Shane's shoulder as he entered the locker room. Shane laughed, folding the hoodie he'd just tugged off and dropping it into his stall.

"Right? I'd ask you how it went, but I guess there's my answer," Shane said, glancing around the locker room as if he were checking to see if anyone was listening. Hayes seemed to pick up on his nervousness and stepped in closer. Ilya was probably the only person who could overhear them now, and that was only because his stall was directly beside Shane's.

"Dude. Lisa told me to tell you again how appreciative she is. She was definitely nervous, but your advice was so helpful for both of us. Don't know that we would've figured it all out without you, so really—from the bottom of my… heart. Thanks."

"What advice has Hollander given you that is so life-changing, Hayes?"

Shane immediately blushed a very suspicious shade of red and Wyatt laughed, looking between the two of them.

"You didn't tell him?"

"It wasn't my secret to tell!" Shane cried, yanking a compression shirt over his head in a clear attempt to avoid eye contact. "If you wanted him to know, I figured you would've asked him instead of me. Shit, Hayes—I figured that my discretion was part of it, anyway."

"Sure," Wyatt said, laughing. "But you and I both know that your advice was going to be a bit more helpful in this particular situation—and boy howdy am I glad I asked! You're a lucky man, Roz."

"Okay, yes," Ilya said, eyes bouncing between the two of them. "Shane is best man alive and I am luckiest man. This we already know. What is this secret he has been keeping from his husband?"

Shane continued to putter around, spending a little too much time checking each piece of gear as he dressed, clearly avoiding making eye contact with either of them—but luckily for Ilya's curiosity, Wyatt seemed to have absolutely no qualms about sharing the details that Shane wouldn't.

"Lisa has been talking about trying—you know— anal, again, so we went out and grabbed coffee with Hollzy. He talked us through the whole prep thing and what to do, and it was unbelievably helpful. Seriously—the first time we tried didn't go all that great, but his advice was impeccable."

Ilya stared at Shane in stunned silence, and Shane slowly turned to him, gazing up at him as if to plead that he didn't ask him to answer questions about it while they were in the locker room. That's fine. Ilya didn't have to ask Shane questions if Wyatt was there and willing to blab about it.

"Your wife is doctor, and you needed Shane to tell you that her asshole is not self-lubricating, or what?"

Wyatt and Shane both snorted, but Shane continued to busy himself with changing for the ice.

"No, Cap," Wyatt laughed. "She doesn't have any interest in that. But I overheard Hollzy, Barrett, and Harris talking about how good it feels for men, and I got curious. Lisa and I invited him out, and he talked to us about like… prep, and stuff. Lisa wanted some advice for topping, and I wanted advice for getting ready for the whole thing."

Ilya scoffed, wanting to roll his eyes a bit. "Lisa needed advice on how to make things good for you, so she asked the bottom of all time?"

"Ilya!"

"Well, sure," Hayes said with a shrug. "If you've never been on the receiving end, how are you going to give advice about making sure it feels good? Shane was more than equipped to give us the advice we needed, and I'm glad he did."

Hayes wandered off at that point, going to get ready to hit the ice. Ilya could tell Shane didn't want to continue the conversation in the locker room, so he decided it could wait until they were alone for him to ask more questions. But while he stripped off his clothes and got dressed for practice, he certainly didn't stop thinking about it.

—

"Can I ask now?" Ilya asked, shutting the car door and clicking on his seatbelt.

"Sure," Shane sighed, starting the car and easing out of their parking space. "At least you had the restraint to wait this long."

Ilya bounced the list of questions around in his head, trying to decide which one to start with.

"Why did he ask you? Why not Harris or Troy? They do both. You do not."

"Well, I offered," Shane said quietly, surprising him. "And I think it's different, as someone who bottoms and preps. I can probably give better advice as someone who only bottoms because I'm not going to start switching into comparing the sensation of the two. Besides, Lisa's not going to have any sensory feedback as a top, is she? So I need to tell her what to look out for from Wyatt's perspective. It's not like you know what I feel on my end—and she's not going to feel it anyway, so she doesn't need to know what you feel on yours."

"I am not judging you, solnyshko. I am just surprised—that is all."

"Yeah, I figured as much," Shane said. "I didn't know if they were actually going to do it or not, so it's not like I wanted to come home and tell you I spent an hour telling Lisa how to warm him up or telling Wyatt how to shift his hips to make sure that the strap would hit his prostate."

Ilya laughed, trying to imagine if Shane had come home to tell him what he'd been up to. But he had to admit, he probably wouldn't have been able to resist the urge to say something about Wyatt putting his goalie flexibility to good use, so it was probably better for everyone's sake that he hadn't been involved in the conversation.

"Sounds like you gave them good advice, at least?"

"Yeah," Shane said with a little shrug. "I'd hope that after ten years of being on the receiving end of things, I have a good idea of how to make it good for someone who doesn't have any experience with it. Besides, most of the information they wanted was for Wyatt more than for Lisa, so—you know—I could certainly share. It's the same thing, isn't it? She knows what she likes, so she should be able to know how to give it. Doesn't mean Wyatt is going to inherently know how to receive it."

Shane changed the subject then, talking about some work he wanted to do up at the cottage over the summer break. Ilya hummed or nodded, giving answers when appropriate, although his brain felt like it was as far from his body as they currently were from their cottage.

I have a good idea of how to make it good for someone who doesn't have any experience with it.

The image that flashed into his head hit him like a punch then—of Shane, pressed tight against his back while he circled those long thick fingers around his rim, whispering into his ear. Saying something about taking it slowly, about making sure that he was ready to take every inch of him, about wanting it to be good for him.

He shivered lightly and had to bite back a laugh when Shane reached out to turn on the heat, apparently having noticed the slight tremor. He didn't correct him though—the last thing he wanted was to need to explain the thoughts that were on his mind.

Ilya turned to watch Shane, his gaze landing on Shane's thick fingers drumming out a rhythm on the steering wheel to whatever song was quietly playing on the radio. He'd had those fingers in him before—usually only just the first one—but never intending to stretch him or warm him up or prepare him to take Shane's cock. He could only call up the feeling of a single one of those thick fingers, exploratory, and never going over two knuckles deep to search for his prostate.

But he could imagine them, more of them, deeper inside him.

Fuck.

He knew it was none of his business, really—whatever Shane and Wyatt and Dr. Lisa had talked about at whatever coffee shop they had apparently met at so that Shane could give them a primer on bottom prep and good sex.

But he could imagine that, too.

He could imagine the way Shane would have given an almost too clinical description of sex and sensation before he would have blushed a bright red and his voice would have changed when he realized exactly what it was that he was describing—which sensations, who brought them out of him, and how often he got to feel them.

Ilya wanted to have heard it. To have heard Shane describe exactly what it was that Wyatt would feel. He knew how to make sex good for Shane, but he didn't know what it felt like for him. They'd never switched places, and only rarely did they play at switching their dynamics.

But there was something about knowing that Shane had the knowledge, the skill, the wherewithal necessary to educate someone else on the entire process. He'd suspected for quite some time that he had what Sveta had dubbed a 'competence kink', but he'd never expected to have it triggered by Shane's competence at being a bottom.

He blinked once, and it was as if he could see the scene in the coffee shop playing out before his eyes. He could see Shane sitting on one side of a cozy little table by himself, a green tea that had no business costing $9 on the table in front of him. Wyatt and Dr. Lisa would be on the other side of the table watching him, maybe holding hands or something, and staring at him anxiously as if he could bestow the secrets of the world upon them.

It's important that you take your time, Shane would've said, probably. Think of it like a marathon, not a five hundred meter dash. Getting ready doesn't start when you enter the bedroom, it starts before. Long before, actually.

He could imagine Shane walking Wyatt through the foods he should eat that day and the ones he should avoid—revealing to him the real reason behind the diet that so many of their teammates used to make fun of him. Could picture him saying something about deep breathing or stretching or grounding techniques. Could practically hear him offering two sets of instructions for fingering based on whether he assumed Wyatt would want to try it for himself or if he'd rely on Dr. Lisa doing it for him.

He would have known exactly where to find the prostate—not that Dr. Lisa would need to be told where it was—but he would have been able to explain to Wyatt exactly what it felt like to have it hit—even, or especially, when it was hit by an unfeeling piece of silicone instead of something warm and hot and flesh and blood.

Shane would have been able to describe the differences between a prostate orgasm and the regular sort, to explain to him the waves of sensation that would leave Wyatt feeling wrung out and loose and so far out of his body that he floated above it, somewhere untethered.

"Ilya?"

"Hmm?"

"What do you think?"

Ilya turned his head to look at Shane, trying desperately to figure out what he'd missed. Shane glanced away from the road quickly to look at him in question, and he could read just enough of the expression on Shane's face to know what sort of answer he expected.

"I think that sounds great, Solnyshko."

He wasn't answering whatever question Shane had asked, but he was definitely answering one that he had not.

4.

Ilya watched Shane's eyelids flutter as he traced his slippery fingers around his rim, a sigh falling from his lips as he canted his hips down against Ilya's touch.

Normally, his eyes would be glued to Shane's hole, watching as his body slowly relaxed and opened up to make room for Ilya inside him. It was usually fascinating to watch himself prep him, but at this point, he could picture how Shane's furled hole would open up to take his two middle fingers that he hardly needed to watch.

He was pretty sure that when he died, the sight of that would play on the back of his eyelids during his last moments.

Instead, he kept his eyes locked on Shane's face, watching every slow flicker of his expression changing with each swipe of his fingers or crook of his knuckles.

"Fuck," Shane groaned as his eyes fought to stay open instead of closed, his slightly unfocused gaze landing on Ilya's. "Please, please, please."

"Please what, Solnyshko?"

"I swear to god, Ilya, if you don't put something inside of me like yesterday, I'm going to lose it," Shane moaned out, his eyes fighting to focus. "I'm not fucking around, asshole. Please."

Ilya leaned back to let a string of spit land among the lube on his fingers before giving Shane exactly what he was asking for, eyes locked on his face.

The only word he could think of to describe the look on Shane's face was relief. It was hard for him to fathom the satisfaction he clearly felt. Shane writhed slightly on the bed beneath him, his hips tipping up with each thrust of his wrist. There was something about seeing Shane—powerful, strong Shane—trembling like this under his touch that was almost inconceivable. He was a lucky one, that much was for sure.

"Is that what you wanted?" he asked, eyes skating across the freckles on Shane's flushed cheeks. "Better?"

"No, Ilya. Fuck. You know it's not."

"Then I need you to tell me," Ilya said, purposefully dropping the timbre of his voice as he pressed his lips against Shane's throat to let him feel the buzz of them across his skin. "I would give you anything you need, you just need to ask me for it."

"Your cock, Ilya," Shane panted out even as his hips twisted against Ilya's hand. "You fucking asshole, I need your cock."

"I will be fucking asshole, do not worry," Ilya said with a laugh, pulling his hand free to slick himself with more lube before dragging what remained on his fingers over Shane's hole. "I will give you exactly what you are asking for."

As he pressed forward, Shane's body opening around him as he sank in inch by blessed inch, he watched Shane's eyes roll back and his mouth fall open. One of his hands came to grip tightly around Ilya's upper arm, and he squeezed his bicep as a moan fell out of his mouth as Ilya bottomed out.

"Ngh, fuck—"

Indeed.

Sex was always good—sex with his husband was always great—but for the first time, he was feeling something very different every time that his hips met Shane's. Something very different that felt a hell of a lot like curiosity. With every thrust, Shane let out a soft little ugh, ugh, ugh that he was almost positive had never once been punched out of his own lungs. What would it take to get him to make those noises, to rip those same breathy sighs out of his mouth?

Shane always seemed to reach a particular point of weightlessness during sex that he didn't—as if he had fallen out of his head altogether, landing somewhere else in his body entirely. Not that he didn't also focus intently on chasing his pleasure, but it was a different experience for him than it seemed to be for Shane.

He'd never call Shane passive during sex—it would be absolute insanity to try to claim that Shane No-Middle-Name Hollander had ever once been passive in his life. But Shane didn't have to do much at all to guarantee Ilya's pleasure. The tight heat of Shane's body and the sight and sound of him was more than enough on its own to guarantee that he'd enjoy himself. He felt as though there was a certain part of his brain that never fully turned off, even during sex. Always part of him focused on making sure that Shane got everything he wanted, everything he needed.

Again, the image entered his mind without him even deciding to think about it. Shane's hips slamming into his, those broken gasps falling from his mouth. His face lax and open while Shane pressed him into their bed with a hand on his stomach or back or head, as he pistoned his hips into Ilya. He could picture it clearly—oddly, given that he'd never once seen it in his life—Shane staring down at him with that same focused heat that he'd seen so many times on the other side of a face-off circle and a faint sheen of sweat highlighting all of his muscles as he put them to work breaking Ilya into a mess of his component parts.

His hips stuttered at the thought, and Shane let out a breathy little moan at the feeling, his head pressing firmly into the pillow behind him.

"Talk to me, solnyshko. What are you feeling?"

Shane's eyelids fluttered again as he looked at Ilya almost dazedly.

"What—I…. fuck. What?"

Ilya chuckled at Shane's inability to formulate a coherent thought and angled his hips to ease off of his prostate so that he might be able to focus.

"Tell me how I feel, Shane," he groaned. He'd heard from countless people what he felt like, but he knew that what he really wanted to know was what Shane was feeling.

"You're so deep," Shane gasped. "Feels like—ugh, fuck—like I didn't realize really how empty I was until I—until I wasn't anymore. Ilya—it feels like I'm just here to make you feel good. Feels like I'm—ugh—nothing but something for you to—to fuck. I feel like I'm yours, Ilya."

He was Shane's—he knew he was—but he couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to feel like he was a possession of Shane's. They'd joked before that Shane was nothing but a warm cock sleeve for him, that he was nothing but a dildo for Shane to use when he couldn't be bothered to open the drawer of their bedside table.

But Ilya had always felt a yawning emptiness inside himself. Since he was twelve years old he'd felt as if there was a gaping wound somewhere inside of him that needed to be filled with something. For a long time he'd tried to fill that hole with sex, with drinking, with friends—until he'd finally found love with Shane Hollander and had realized that maybe that was the thing he had been missing the entire time.

But even now, the dark days still came, and he still felt like there was an inexplicably hollow part of him, something that wasn't quite filled the way that he needed it to be. What if it were this? What if the thing that he had always needed to fill the hollow space inside of himself was the one part of Shane that he'd never had?

He snaked a hand between them, wrapping his fingers around Shane's length. Shane let out a high keen when Ilya touched him, and Ilya couldn't help but wonder what the dual sensation must feel like. Shane was seemingly without words now, his eyes gone hazy and unfocused again. He felt a bit hazy himself, only a single thought on repeat as he thrust into Shane and worked his fist over Shane's cock—

I want it, I want it, I want it.

5.

Ilya had decided years ago that the NHL awards were thirty percent standing around and pretending to enjoy himself, and five percent pretending to like people he didn't.

They were at least sixty-five percent thinking about all the times he and Shane had stolen away after the awards ceremony to find somewhere quiet.

The ceremony was fine, the charity events were… well-intentioned… and the interviews were downright exhausting. The parties afterward had the potential to be good, but they also blurred together into an endless parade of loud music, expensive liquor that didn't taste like it justified the price, and people saying congratulations about achievements that they secretly believed should have gone to someone else.

But still—there were worse ways to spend a weekend in Vegas.

"…I'm telling you," Hunter said, balancing a glass of whiskey against his palm. "They only put us together at the table because Crowell is afraid that we might infect the rest of the league if he lets us mingle with the other teams."

Troy snorted, rolling his eyes. "Speak for yourself."

"I am," Hunter said with a laugh. "You should've heard what he said to me on the phone when he called me in 2017."

They'd migrated away from the table designated for them and their plus ones, standing near one of the open balconies that overlooked the lights of the Strip. For a while they'd talked hockey—trades, draft picks, rumors. But eventually, the way it usually did when enough gay men were together away from any microphones, they'd started talking about their relationships.

"Kip keeps pretending he's the one making decorating decisions," Hunter said with a laugh. "Then I come home from Tampa and every pillow in the living room has tassels."

"That is because your husband has taste—or at least that is what Shane would probably say," Ilya said with a laugh, knocking back the vodka in his hand.

"Kip has opinions, not taste," Hunter laughed.

"Do you also have like seventeen decorative blankets you aren't allowed to use?" Troy asked, rolling his eyes. "They're soft and warm—why would I not want to use them?"

"So," Hunter asked, cutting his eyes to Ilya. "How are things with Hollander?"

Ilya could feel the smile spread across his face before he could do anything to stop it—but in fairness, that was his default expression whenever someone gave him an excuse to talk about his husband.

"They are all very good."

"Yeah, I'll say," Troy said under his breath, earning himself an elbow to the side for teasing his captain.

"Be grateful season is over, Barrett. I could have told conditioning staff to work you over on ice," he said, faking a glare at his right wing.

"Oh shut up, Roz," he said with a laugh. "Anyone who has shared a wall with you two during roadies is well aware of how much fun you two are having."

"They're that bad?" Hunter asked, looking at Ilya with a look in his eyes as if it were the first time he had ever seen him.

"Worse," Troy said, rolling his eyes before putting on a horribly terrible Russian accent. "Oh, Shane! Oh my god, blyat, so good my Shane!"

Ilya frowned down into his glass, shuffling his feet against the inexplicably carpeted floor. "I do not sound like that, Troy."

"You do, a bit," Troy laughed, gently nudging Hunter with an elbow. "But in fairness, after sharing a locker room with Hollander for two years now, I can't say I'd be any quieter if he was trying to put me through a mattress."

Hunter and Troy both laughed at that, and Ilya could feel his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Shane is not… he doesn't—we don't do that."

"You don't do what?" Hunter said, looking at him with a look that Ilya couldn't even begin to try to decipher.

Ilya shrugged lightly, passing his now-empty glass between his hands.

"Shane has never—I do not—"

"Wait," Troy said, cutting him off. "First of all, you mean to tell me you're hooting and hollering like that when you're the one topping him?"

"Well, yes," Ilya said, shrugging again. "I am married to Shane Hollander. He is very hot, yes?"

"Of course, man," Troy said, giving him a look like Shane's hotness was not even remotely up for debate. "But that's sort of my point, isn't it? You two don't ever switch it up?"

"Sometimes Shane is one on top, if that is what you mean."

"That's not quite what I mean, Roz. Being on top isn't the same thing as topping. Have you ever bottomed?"

Ilya shrugged lightly, not wanting to confess the slew of secret thoughts he'd been harboring or share too much about his apparent relative inexperience with it.

"Well, you're missing out," Hunter said, shaking his head slowly. "Not that you have to try it, of course. Plenty of people prefer one to the other. But it's… it's something else. If you're interested."

"Do you…" he started, but found himself unable to finish the question, even though it was probably more than clear what he was asking.

"Both," Troy said.

"Yeah," Hunter agreed. "Definitely both."

He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and blissfully the conversation eventually moved on to something else.

Ilya had been thinking about it. Honestly, it felt like these days he thought of little else. He'd been aware of Shane's body lately in a way that he hadn't in the past. Instead of focusing on Shane's plush lips and the fat curve of his ass, he'd caught himself staring more at Shane's thick arms and thighs, the curve of his half-hard cock in the front of his sweatpants or jeans when they lay stretched out on the couch in the living room while watching TV. He'd thought about the fact that Shane could easily rep two hundred and forty-five pounds on the bench press, meaning he would be more than capable of tossing him around if he wanted to.

He cast his eyes over the crowd, searching for his husband—his eyes finally landing on him tucked into a corner laughing with Carter Vaughn and Matti Jalo. Ilya couldn't help but drag his eyes down the line of Shane's body, taking in the width of his shoulders, the nip of his waist, the length of his legs. Shane's eyes flicked up to his, leveling him with a look that was just heated enough that Ilya was grateful he'd chosen to wear a wool suit instead of something lighter despite the awards being held in Vegas.

Troy and Hunter seemed to think he was missing out—a concern that he'd been having himself over the last several weeks. That there was something he could get from Shane—share with Shane—that he was doing himself a disservice by not having.

He imagined what Troy had been so sure of. Thought about Shane pressing him to a mattress in some nondescript and unidentifiable hotel room that could be Toronto just as easily as it could be Tampa, one of Shane's big, hot hands pressed tightly over his mouth to tamp down on his noises as he drove him into what would inevitably be one of two king-sized beds. He imagined the mess he would surely make, the way they'd need to curl up to sleep in the second bed after a shower.

He imagined every inch of himself belonging to Shane Hollander, the same way that every inch of him belonged to Ilya Rozanov.

The Cottage.

After they returned to Ottawa when the Awards were over, maybe he'd tell Shane what had been on his mind since Rose's visit—the thoughts that plagued him every time he closed his eyes or touched himself or touched Shane.

But maybe not—because no matter how many times he'd thought about Shane taking him, Shane had never once voiced an interest in ever doing it.

+1

It turned out that there were two things Ilya hadn't accounted for.

First, the fact that he didn't have any idea how he wanted to broach the topic, and second, that Shane had an uncanny ability to tell when there was something on his mind that he wasn't talking about. Shane at least did him the service of not bringing it up for the first week that they were in the cottage, but he could tell that Shane was intensely curious about whatever it was that was running through his mind.

Ilya knew he was being weird. He and Shane had been wrestling on the couch, and he'd had a full-body shiver when Shane had captured his wrists in his hands, pinning his arms above his head, and pressed his weight against the cushions to hold him in place.

He knew he was watching Shane with an odd, almost feral fascination—his eyes locked on every movement of his hands when he was cooking or how he grunted and sweated in their gym. It was almost embarrassing when he took the time to think about it—which was exactly why he hadn't worked up the courage to say anything.

It wasn't until Shane came up behind him one morning while he was standing at the stove to work on their breakfast and he'd let out a noise that he would only call a whimper if someone held a gun to his head at the feeling of Shane's body pressed against his and the heavy weight of his arms banded around Ilya's waist.

He'd jerked in Shane's hold, let out that noise that he really didn't want to name, and Shane was stepping back and away from him before he could even register his touch fully.

"Are you ready to tell me what's going on with you?" Shane asked, coming to lean against the kitchen counter just outside of arm's reach with his own arms crossed in front of him. Ilya tried not to focus on the line of Shane's morning wood in the front of his sweats.

"What do you mean?" Ilya asked, keeping his eyes locked on the pan of eggs, as if refusing to make eye contact might somehow save him from needing to explain himself.

"Ilya, I'm not stupid," Shane sighed. "Something is going on. You're twitchy, you don't seem to want me to touch you… even when you let me in, it's like you're off in your head somewhere else instead of here with me. Did I—have I done something wrong?"

Ilya startled hard at the emotion in Shane's voice, something he could only fairly describe as agony. He yanked the eggs off the heat, tossing the pan onto a cold burner and bundling Shane into his arms.

"No, no—absolutely not, solnyshko. I am sorry, Shane. No. I have been… too in my head, maybe. But is not you. Never you," he said, squeezing Shane tightly. Shane relaxed a bit into his arms, but he could still feel the tension threading through Shane's frame.

"Then what is it? It's hard for me to stop myself from assuming the worst when you won't just talk to me. Do you need to set up an appointment with Galina or something?"

Ilya couldn't help but shudder at the thought of trying to explain any of the thoughts that he'd been thinking to Galina, and released Shane, stepping back just far enough that he could see his face.

"No, is nothing like that. Promise. I can tell you, but I—do you want to eat, first?"

Shane shook his head furiously, his clenched hand tapping against his thigh in a way that Ilya immediately recognized as an attempt at self-soothing.

"No, I… I don't have an appetite right now. Can we talk first? Is that okay?"

"Of course it is," he said, reaching for Shane's hand and tugging him toward the couch.

They sat there is silence for a moment, just staring at each other in silence while he tried to get his thoughts in order. He could practically see how much effort Shane was spending to hold himself back from asking questions, but he truly didn't know how or where to broach the subject.

"I really need you to just start talking, Ilya," Shane said finally, breaking the silence between them. "Please don't worry about saying whatever it is 'perfectly'. I just… I need to know what's going on."

Ilya sighed, nodding in surrender. He hadn't meant to freak Shane out with the thoughts that he believed he was doing a better job hiding, but he should have known that Shane would pick up on any change in his behavior or demeanor.

"Do you remember when Rose Landry came to visit?"

"Of course I—" Shane started before cutting himself off. "Did something happen? Like when I was gone?"

"Yes," Ilya said. "Sort of."

He watched as Shane's face did something agonized and complicated and he immediately reached out to grab him, surprised when Shane twitched away from him.

"Did you—Christ, Ilya. I was only gone for like, half an hour. How?"

"She brought it up, started talking about sex, and I—"

"Seriously, Ilya! You're going to blame Rose? You couldn't have just told me you were bored?" Shane cried, his voice cracking on the last word.

"Bored? I—Solnyshko, what are you thinking right now? I have not even told you what is going on. Where is your head?"

"Ilya," Shane snapped. "Don't you solnyshko me right now. What am I supposed to be thinking? You've been a little cagey and weird for weeks, especially when we're having sex, and now you're telling me that 'something happened' with Rose while I was gone?"

"No! Jesus, no," Ilya said, reaching again for Shane's hands. "Sorry, sorry. No. Not that. Never that. That is not what I mean. This is why I wanted to try to get my thoughts in place, and I have scared you anyway. No—I could never do something like that to you, Shane. Promise."

Shane blinked up at him with those big brown eyes, and Ilya was horrified to see a tear had collected against his lower lashes.

"Oh, Shane, no," he said, abandoning Shane's hands to grab him and pull him into his arms.

"You really scared me," Shane mumbled into the fabric of Ilya's t-shirt, his face half buried in Ilya's chest.

"I did not mean to scare you, solnyshko. I am sorry that I did not say things more carefully—that I let you think something so terrible, even for a single moment. Not that. I promise, never that."

"Okay," Shane mumbled, sitting back in his arms but not pulling away fully. "I'm sorry, I guess. You just… I've been worried. You sort of freaked me out a little."

Ilya stroked his hand down Shane's side, relieved to see that Shane was no longer shying away from his touch. "I am sorry that you even had that thought for a single second. I have been weird, yes—but the day that I choose someone else over you is the day that I want you to drown me in the lake. Understand?"

"Yeah," Shane laughed out quietly. "Promise."

Ilya took a deep breath, knowing now that he needed to bite the bullet and just say the words that were dancing around his head before he stressed Shane into an early grave.

"So—when Rose was here. We were talking, and she brought up sex. With you. And I started thinking about it."

"You thought about Rose having sex with me?"

"No," Ilya said, shaking his head. "Yes. Well, not like that. I thought about what you would have been like having sex with her before you realized you were super gay—"

"—normal gay, Ilya—"

"—and she said that you were… good."

Shane barked out a laugh, rolling his eyes as he leaned back against the arm of the couch, the stress finally gone from his posture. "I promise it was not good, Ilya—I've told you I don't know how many times. It was a disaster."

"Yes, yes," Ilya said, waving his hand. "So you say. Probably can be only so good for you when you are not attracted to your partner. But she was attracted to you, and she says that you were probably best of all the gay men she has slept with."

"High bar," Shane scoffed. "Okay, so you were talking with Rose about her experience having sex with gay men?"

"With you, Shane," Ilya breathed out, watching Shane's face carefully so that he could see any minute changes that might cross his face to betray his thoughts. "She was talking about how big you are, and how good your stamina is. And then she said that you told her you would think about me, and I just…"

"You just what, Ilya?"

Ilya's eyes had slid away from Shane's during his little monologue, but the heat in Shane's voice had his eyes sliding back to Shane's face. The look Ilya saw there gave him the courage to keep going.

"I just started to have… thoughts. And then you were talking about how you taught Wyatt and Dr. Lisa how to have a good time. Then Scott Hunter and Troy said I was missing out. And I was looking at your enormous arms, and your stupid fat dick, and I just… I have been feeling curious, maybe."

Ilya could practically see the moment Shane figured out exactly what the thoughts were that had been plaguing him for weeks now, running through the series of slightly odd encounters to paint himself a picture.

"Are you saying that you want me to fuck you, Rozanov?" Shane asked, the sound of his voice almost unbearably smug. Ilya knew Shane knew him well enough to vehemently argue the point if he tried to claim that Russians didn't blush, but the heat he could feel rising in his cheeks betrayed his thoughts.

Shane chuckled quietly, nudged Ilya's side with his socked foot.

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about, trust me," he said. "I'm just a little bit surprised, I guess. You've never really expressed an interest in it in the past, so I didn't know that it was something you were curious about."

"You did not say it was something you were interested in either," he mumbled, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt onto his head and resisting the urge to cinch the hood tight around his face to hide from Shane's assessing gaze.

"Is this something you actually want?" Shane asked, poking him again with his foot. "Or is it something you just like the fantasy of? There's no right answer here."

Ilya bounced that thought around in his head for a moment, knowing that Shane wouldn't begrudge him considering it. It was a deeply arousing thought—he'd thought about it countless times alone in the shower, in bed with Shane, during a good number of the nineteen times a day that he thought about sex. But thinking about being fucked by Shane wasn't quite the same thing as actually being willing to lay himself bare and open before his husband, was it?

"You still have not said what you want, Shane."

Shane leaned back just a bit further, dragging his eyes up and down the line of Ilya's body. Ilya tried not to blush harder under the weight of Shane's gaze, sultry and heavy and assessing in a way that he had never once seen on his husband's face in his life. He knew what Shane looked like when he wanted—those big brown eyes turning soft around the edges as his lids grew heavy and pleading.

He had never had Shane look at him like… like he was something that Shane wanted to conquer.

"I want you satisfied, Ilya," Shane said, his voice obnoxiously even for how life-changing his words felt. "And if this is what you think you need to feel satisfied… then I'll give it to you."

Ilya blinked at him in shock and knew that his face was probably doing something ridiculous because Shane laughed at him—not another dark and seductive thing, but a free and wild laugh that he always felt lucky to hear.

"Let's go finish making breakfast, Ilya," he said, tugging Ilya up by his hand. "You can let me know when you decide, alright?"

Ilya nodded, snagging Shane's outstretched hand and allowing himself to be pulled from the couch and back into the kitchen.

He'd follow Shane wherever he tried to lead him.

—

And he thought about it. Ilya thought about little else, if he was being honest with himself. He was pretty sure that Shane knew, too. He would sometimes catch Shane watching him carefully out of the corner of his eye as Ilya moved around the cottage.

He'd noticed Shane's eyes lingering on the curve of his ass—not necessarily something shocking or life changing given that one, he knew exactly what his ass looked like, and two, it wasn't like Shane's eyes or hands hadn't found themselves attracted to it at some point. But he'd never noticed Shane looking at him with hunger like this before. Not desire, but sheer, abject hunger. Shane was watching him as if he were something to be devoured or consumed.

He'd be lying if he said that he didn't really, really like it.

He also noticed Shane was being physical with him very differently as they moved through the house. Shane's hands seemed to linger longer around his hips—especially when he would reach out and grab him from behind. When he'd kiss Ilya, he started grabbing Ilya's jaw, holding his face in place and guiding his mouth to exactly wherever he wanted it. He and Shane weren't too different in terms of their physical size, but there was something about this new way that Shane chose to handle him that seemed so possessive that it made Ilya feel… small. Not small in terms of the abject humiliation he'd grown up thinking was normal, but made him feel like Shane could just pick him up and do anything with him he wanted to.

He liked it.

He really liked it.

There had always been a sort of hunger in Shane—a yawning emptiness that seemed to crave satiety. This was not that. The new change in Shane's gaze seemed to beg for permission to take and seize and devour. It made him shiver to conceive, to imagine giving himself over to Shane to be consumed.

But Shane wouldn't give it to him. Shane was never the sort to just reach out and take, no matter how much he wanted. Shane would wait until he was sure, he was certain—until Ilya was no longer thinking and imagining and wanting, but until he was begging and pleading and demanding.

Fucking Shane.

But finally, eventually, he couldn't take it any longer. He couldn't bear to just think, imagine, and wonder about what it would be like to be possessed by Shane.

He needed to know.

Which is how he came to find himself awkwardly hovering in the doorway of their gym, watching Shane thrust and grunt his way through a set of leg presses.

"Good morning, baby," Shane said as he slowly lowered the weight, taking a moment to catch his breath as he lay sweating on the mat. Ilya tried not to think too much about what it would sound like to hear Shane cooing endearments into his ear before he embarrassed himself.

"Good morning, solnyshko," he whispered.

"What's up?" Shane asked, pushing his sweaty bangs back from his forehead and watching him closely as he dragged himself up to sit, resting his elbow on one bent knee. "You look… intense."

"I have been thinking," he started, lightly scuffing his bare foot against the rubber floor.

"Don't hurt yourself," Shane snarked before he could finish. He knew Shane knew that he was far from stupid, but he also knew that his face was doing something a little twisted that probably made it look like he was going to pull a muscle.

When he didn't answer, Shane turned away from him to reach for his water bottle, shooting a spray of water into his mouth and holding eye contact that was loaded enough to remind him of a moment shared in a gym in LA many years ago.

As he stared at Shane, his eyes dark and sweat glistening on his skin, he knew exactly what he wanted to say, and he knew he would take great satisfaction in watching the expression on Shane's face change.

"I have been thinking that I want you to fuck me."

—

Turns out—that much like many things—it wasn't quite that easy.

Shane had immediately gone all Shane about it, insisting on giving him what he said was the "abridged" version of bottom prep—explaining the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber, whatever that meant, and telling him he should probably avoid coffee, alcohol, red meat, and dairy for at least twenty-four hours.

He drank every glass of water that Shane slid into his hands and drank the smoothie Shane made for him without complaint. He wouldn't give Shane the satisfaction of telling him it didn't taste half bad, after all.

Shane told him that—while his surety and decisiveness were very attractive—he knew from experience that Ilya would likely have a better experience if they eased into things more—hence the full twenty-four hours of modified diet and Shane's offer to try to give him an orgasm using only his fingers.

Who would Ilya be to refuse such an offer?

It wouldn't be the first time Shane had gone exploring, as it were, but Shane had never tried to dismantle Ilya the same way that Ilya always did to him. Sure, he'd rimmed him a time or two, and it wasn't like Shane had never gotten one slick, lubed finger inside of him, but it had always been the cherry on top of the proverbial sundae or whatever.

But as Ilya lay stretched out on their bed, his knees hooked over Shane's broad shoulders as he tried to ignore the almost alarming trembling in his thighs, he briefly considered sending an edible arrangement to Rose and Jessica and whoever else Shane had ever slept with as gratitude for teaching him want to do with his mouth.

Every other time that Shane had had him like this, he'd been pressed to his front and able to rut against their mattress, or he'd been free to wrap one of his hands around his aching length to ease the pressure. Not so tonight.

Shane had snaked their fingers together in a crushing grip and refused to let go, and had all but ignored his cock from the moment that he'd gotten him onto his back. Shane had dived into him like he was a five course meal—the hot rasp of his tongue practically burning as it dragged over his skin.

Maybe he was trying to emulate how Ilya himself acted in bed, but he could not remember Shane ever having been this loud over the thought of giving. He could feel the vibrations of every moan and grunt out of Shane's mouth as it skated across his skin and it made him feel absolutely insane.

Shane had been face down against his ass for what felt like hours, his tongue a constantly moving point of heat as he licked and sucked and probed and tested. He'd always thought that some degree of Shane's reaction to this had always just been a sign of Shane's chronic oversensitivity—he was both shocked and thrilled to learn that he was wrong and it did actually feel this good.

Maybe it was his newfound desire to feel every part of Shane in all the ways he had never felt him before, or maybe it was that he'd been depriving himself of something amazing for a decade. And if the noises that Shane was making were anything to go by, he seemed to enjoy giving just about as much as he enjoyed receiving.

"You taste so good, baby," Shane slurred, his voice thick as he stared up at him with almost hazy eyes.

"You have been paying attention, maybe," Ilya groaned, squeezing Shane's fingers with his. Shane just smiled at him, turning his head to press a quick kiss to the inside of Ilya's thigh without breaking eye contact.

"Learned from the best, or whatever. How are you feeling?"

"Yes, yes—all good, keep going, green light, whatever it is that you need to hear to keep going—Jesus Christ, Shane."

Shane chuckled, taking a moment to nuzzle against Ilya's balls before he pulled one into his mouth with a firm suck, making Ilya seize and buck underneath him.

"Christ, Shane—enough!"

"Enough?" Shane said, looking up at him with those fucking big wet eyes full of something suspicious. "What do you mean enough? I'm just getting started."

—

By the time that Ilya came back to his body, he realized Shane had settled him against his chest at some point and was carding his hands through Ilya's curls.

"Holy shit, Solnyshko," he rasped out, his voice hoarse from the noises that Shane had wrung from his throat. Shane hummed questioningly and dragged his fingers across Ilya's cheekbones, stroking his flushed face before dropping a kiss to Ilya's forehead.

"How are you feeling?"

"Feeling? How am I—Shane. I feel like you have turned me into a puppet and ripped my soul out with your fist since your hand was already so deep. How do you think I feel?"

Shane barked out a laugh that was equal parts amused and horrified, and he could feel Shane twitch underneath him like he wanted to pull away. "Oh my god, Ilya—that's fucking disgusting."

"No, Shane—fucking is not disgusting. Is magical beautiful thing, and I feel you have personally introduced me to God."

Shane snorted, bringing his hand up so that Ilya could actually see it, and wiggled his fingers in front of his face.

"Three, Ilya. You did not take my fist. You took three fingers. In what universe am I going to decide that you're taking my entire fist the night before you want to take my dick?"

Ilya reached up to snag Shane's hand, running his fingers over the back of Shane's knuckles before pressing a soft kiss to his palm.

"I know that, Solnyshko. But your dick is very big, is it not? Might have been necessary. And your hand is very big too—easy mistake to make, I suppose."

Despite his protests, Shane couldn't hide the fact that he was smiling, and Ilya grinned as Shane pulled him in close again to kiss him. As much as he always loved sex with Shane, he really loved this too—breathing in the air that had just been in Shane's lungs, feeling the press of skin on skin without it needing to have any sort of goal or destination.

Every time he thought he had fallen as in love with Shane Hollander as he could, it seemed like there was always something else there waiting for him to show him that there was truly no end to his devotion to his husband.

—

Ilya watched Shane putter around next to their bed, scooting his little pile of treasure around on the bedside table—although he'd never seen a depiction of a dragon that looked even half as anxious as Shane did. His still shower-damp skin felt slightly chilled in the air of the room, and he felt even more exposed than usual at the sight of a fully dressed Shane standing only a few feet away from him—knowing exactly what was on the table for the night.

"Do you want me to wear a condom?" Shane asked, wringing his hands together lightly as he spun on his heel to look at Ilya. "Clean up will be a lot easier, and it doesn't actually feel all that different."

"Wait?" Ilya cried, sitting up on the bed and resisting the urge to clutch the blankets to himself. "What do you mean does not feel that different? It does not feel different to you when it is bare?"

Shane shrugged a bit before digging in the bottom drawer of the nightstand—the one far less frequently opened than his top drawer—and pulled out a condom, squinting at the back of the packet for a date. "Sure it does—a little, I guess. Warmer, certainly. Maybe less friction—or a different type of friction? I think it's more mental than anything else. Like 'oh fuck, I can feel his cock and his cum and everything is so hot' or whatever. You know," Shane finished, voice falling soft as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say out loud and not a nuclear bomb of a thought to drop on his husband.

"No condom," Ilya said, smacking it out of Shane's hand and ignoring the eye roll Shane shot his way.

"Are you sure? I mean, cleaning up can be such a headache sometimes, and you won't be able to trust a—"

"Shane," he interrupted. "I am sure. You do this for me, I want to do this for you—and maybe it does not physically feel very different for you when you are bottoming, but it feels very different for me when I am fucking you. Maybe I want to give you the full experience, too."

"Well, I've never fucked anyone without a condom," Shane said, his voice trailing off slowly.

"I get to be your first?"

"Ilya, you're my first in every single way that matters," he said, before picking up the condom from the floor and putting it back in the drawer.

Shane took a deep breath, and Ilya could practically see as he changed, shifting into someone more willing to lead than to follow. It hit him like a brick that he was not looking at his husband, he wasn't looking at Shane or his solnyshko—he was looking at Captain Shane Hollander.

Fuck.

Shane stood next to the bed, just staring down at him for a long moment. As a rule, Shane tended to avoid eye contact in most scenarios—even when it was just the two of them, Ilya always felt like it was a special little treat when Shane's eyes would lock onto his and he would stare back at him without him needing to snag Shane's chin between his fingers and tilt his jaw back to encourage their eyes to meet.

But here, in their bedroom, with Shane apparently willing to concede his role and try to adopt Ilya's, there was a weight to his gaze that made Ilya shiver.

"You still want me?"

Ilya could tell from the tone in Shane's voice that he wasn't really asking, but he appreciated another check-in, nonetheless. The fingering the night before had helped with much of his anxiousness—he'd been worried about pain or discomfort that hadn't really ever come, and he knew that he still wanted this as much as he'd thought that he did. Didn't mean that he couldn't appreciate sweet Shane making sure that he was still all in.

"Always, sweetheart. Always."

He watched as a small, slow smile spread across Shane's face. Shane bent over him, his feet still planted on the floor next to the bed, and cupped Ilya's face in his hands to press their mouths together. Even the way he was kissing felt different—his tongue pushing its way into Ilya's mouth to swirl against his own, instead of lying in wait within his own mouth for Ilya's to enter.

Slowly, gradually, Shane lowered his weight onto the bed, using his weight to press Ilya back slightly onto the mattress as he joined him. The feeling of all of his bare skin pressed against Shane's clothed form made him shiver in his arms.

"I didn't know it was possible to want someone this much," Shane mumbled against his lips. "I have never wanted another person as much as I want every part of you that you want to give me."

Ilya groaned into Shane's mouth, the sound swallowed up as Shane leaned into him further, the weight of his body pressing the air from his lungs.

"Shane, please," he breathed, the arousal that he'd been trying to tamp down all day hitting him like a fist as it finally clicked that he was getting exactly what he wanted.

"Please, what?" Shane asked, dragging his mouth down the line of Ilya's jaw to press a kiss behind his ear.

"I don't know," he moaned. "Just… something. More. Please."

Shane pulled back after dropping a wet, sucking kiss to the hinge of his jaw. "Sorry, baby. But you're not the one in charge tonight, are you? You can ask for what you want… but you're going to take what I give you. Yeah?"

"Yes," Ilya breathed, letting himself fall lax into Shane's arms. "You call the play, solnyshko."

Shane huffed out a quiet laugh before notching himself against Ilya's side, stopping him from rolling over with one hot palm pressed to his chest. His other hand slid to Ilya's cheek, turning his head to bring their lips together again. Ilya sighed into Shane's mouth as he skated his fingers over Ilya's nipples. Maybe it was the fact that his arousal for this had been building for a steady forty-eight hours—longer, if he were being honest with himself—but it felt like there was a live wire between his nipples and his cock and he twitched against Shane's side as he dragged his fingers back and forth between the two.

He already felt like he was losing his mind when Shane pulled back to tug off his shirt before he rolled on top of him, dropping heated kisses from his neck down his torso, taking a moment to suck a bruise into the meat of his pec as he made his way down. Shane paused for a moment, dragging his nose through the hair below his belly button before he rested his chin on Ilya's hip. He was so hard that it was starting to ache, and when Shane's warm brown eyes met his with a look of intent focus he was still unused to seeing on his husband's face, he tried not to gasp when his cock gave a kick hard enough to make it twitch toward the heat of Shane's face.

Shane said nothing to him—didn't check in again, or at least not verbally—and he held the eye contact as he slowly sank down, swallowing Ilya down to the root. Shane stroked one of his hands up his torso, his fingers skating over Ilya's nipples. Ilya tried to grab Shane's hand in his, desperate for a tether to his husband, but Shane smacked his hand away before it could connect. Ilya lifted his head to look at Shane questioningly, but Shane let his eyes slide away to the bedside table meaningfully before he clicked his fingers and held his open palm out.

Ilya followed Shane's gaze, reaching for the half-empty bottle of lube on the nightstand and pressing it into Shane's hand. Without removing his mouth from Ilya's cock—or easing the slow drag of his mouth even a bit—Shane uncapped the bottle and Ilya listened as a spurt of lube landed on Shane's fingers. Shane rubbed the fingers of his right hand together quickly, apparently more conscientious than he usually was, and dragged what felt like the tips of his middle two fingers in slow circles around Ilya's rim.

Everything he was doing was slow—or felt slow, at least. The drag of his fingers, the press of his mouth, the gradual circles of his tongue. Shane seemed intent on dragging this out, and while Ilya was immensely grateful for the degree of care that Shane was showing him, he felt like his brain was about to melt out of his ears.

His blood was at a low simmer, and as Shane slid a single thick, well-lubed finger into him, he had a sudden realization why Shane always acted like his touch was enough to set his blood boiling. He had never thought of any part of his physical body as being particularly empty, but the press of Shane's finger had him feeling like a void he'd never been aware of was being addressed for the first time in his life. He gasped at the sensation, canting his hips to take Shane's finger deeper.

"More, Shane—please. I can't—you feel—Shane, please," he panted out, bucking himself against Shane's hand before the sensation of that made him twist his hips up deeper into Shane's mouth. He felt like a seesaw, pushing and pulling back and forth between those two points of sensation. Shane smiled up at him as well as he could with his mouth full, and slid a second finger in to join the other, curling them both and dragging them against Ilya's walls as he sought out his prostate.

Shane pulled off of his cock with a wet pop, the noise loud in the quiet of their room.

"How are you feeling, baby?"

"I think I understand why you like this so much," he gasped, his back arching off the mattress as Shane's fingers firmly pressed against his prostate and worked in tight, firm circles.

"Still feeling good?"

"What the fuck do you think?"

Shane just laughed quietly and began rubbing his thumb over the skin of his rim where it stretched around the base of his fingers. It was odd—he felt both loose and tight around Shane's fingers and wished that he could see the point where Shane's hand connected to him. He gasped as Shane dropped his face down to lick and suck at his hole as he abandoned his prostate to focus on stretching Ilya to take him, and the feeling of Shane's hot breath and the buzzing of Shane's moans vibrating across his skin had his eyes rolling back in his head.

"You're doing so well, Ilya," Shane breathed. "I can't wait to be inside you. You're going to feel so hot and tight on my cock—it's driving me crazy just thinking about it."

Ilya moaned at the heat in Shane's voice—the content of his words stark in contrast to the softness of his voice. Shane didn't normally bother with much dirty talk, but apparently Top Shane did. Top Shane was going to kill him. He did not know this man, but he wanted him more desperately than he might ever have wanted anything in his life.

"Please, Shane," he gasped, reaching one of his hands down to card through Shane's hair. "Please—get me ready. I want you so badly. Please. I want you to show me."

Shane nodded against the crease of his leg, pulling his mouth away from his hole to suck on the skin of his inner thigh as he focused less on stimulating him and more on getting him loose enough to take him as he worked up to adding a third finger. Ilya wasn't an idiot—Shane was fucking thick—but he felt that if he didn't get on with it, he might actually die.

Finally—finally—Shane deemed him ready and pushed himself up onto his knees, as he slowly unzipped his pants. The sound of the zipper was loud in their room, and Ilya shuddered at the smile on Shane's face as he pulled the pants down his hips. He could only watch in rapt silence as Shane carefully folded them and dropped them to the floor before uncapping the lube again to slick himself up. Ilya's eyes were locked on the slick wet slide of Shane's hand over his cock in a single firm pump, his skin flushed red and the heavy length jutting out from his hips like a divining rod.

"How do you want me?" Shane asked, stroking his hand down Ilya's stomach. "On your hands and knees would probably be easier for you—"

"It is easier, yes, I know," he said, cutting Shane off. "But I want to see your face, Solnyshko."

"Of course," Shane said, bending forward to drop a kiss to his mouth. "I'll give you anything that you need, Ilya."

Again, he uncapped the lube, swiping his fingers over Ilya's hole once more and dipping them in slightly to make sure that he was still ready. Ilya ran through all of the advice he'd given to others—wild in hindsight, considering it's not like he had any prior experience—and Shane's words from the abridged bottom prep lecture. He focused on steady, slow breathing, on making sure that he didn't tense too much when the first brush of Shane's skin met his.

He still wasn't prepared for it, though.

The head of Shane's cock notching against his hole felt absolutely insane. Shane's skin was hot and wet—slick from the lube and something more organic that was proof that he was just as affected by this whole thing as Ilya was—and even just the press of his head against Ilya's hole felt overwhelming. Shane had big hands, and he'd done the work to prep him, but he still felt impossibly large where he was pressing forward for connection.

Slowly, Shane pressed forward, inching just the first few inches of himself inside. Back and forth, he gradually began thrusting, giving Ilya just the slightest bit more with each stroke. Ilya's voice was normally deeper than Shane's during sex—he'd certainly done more than his fair share of teasing Shane for his gasps and whimpers even though they absolutely drove him wild—but every time Shane pressed deeper forward, Ilya gasped for air with a high pitched whine that had Shane grinning down at him.

"Jesus fuck, Shane," he moaned. He could remember teasing Shane on their first night together, some annoying bullshit chirp telling him 'don't worry, it'll fit'. He had a quick moment of panicked thinking that sure, he had fit, but maybe Shane wouldn't—and then Shane's hips were pressed firmly against his ass as Shane came to rest buried fully within him.

Shane paused there, no longer thrusting, and just stared down at him as he lifted one hand to touch the side of Ilya's face.

"Still okay?" he asked, his voice thick and deep.

Ilya nodded back at him, words feeling like more than he could handle, as he took in the idea that Shane was inside of him, all of him was in all of him, he was actually being fucked, he—

"Good," Shane said, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. "You know I love you, right? I respect you? I would do anything for you?"

Ilya nodded again, feeling a bit vacant and floaty as he stared back at Shane.

"Then remember that I'm giving you exactly what you asked for."

And with that, Shane pulled out almost entirely before sliding back in, his hips slamming against Ilya's hard. It wrenched a gasp from his throat and his back bowed off the bed slightly before Shane planted a hand in the center of his chest to push him back down as he started to thrust in earnest.

He had a chaotic jumble of thoughts in his head, that surely Shane had been body-snatched or had a personality transplant or some sort of hidden TBI that had completely rewritten his brain chemistry. Because yes, Shane knew how to ride him within an inch of his life, but he did not know that Shane could move his lips like this.

Fuck an edible arrangement, he needed to get Rose Landry a Nobel Peace Prize for putting this idea in his head, since apparently anyone could get nominated for one of those these days.

"Fuck, Ilya," Shane groaned, reaching a hand down to hike Ilya's leg up over his hip for better leverage. "You feel so fucking good. The fattest ass in the entire league, and it's mine."

"Yours," Ilya gasped. "Only yours—I have never—could never—oh bozhe moy…"

Thoughts escaped him then. It took too much effort and brainpower to fully formulate a thought, and Shane was quickly making it impossible to focus on anything but the drag of his length and the feeling of him between Ilya's thighs. He had expected that Shane would pull out his particular set of tricks, mimicking everything that he had done to him—but that couldn't have been further from the case. Shane wasn't taking him apart in some pale mimicry of his own techniques, but apparently had some secret save file somewhere in his internal database that he could use to turn him into goo.

Incredible.

Dropping his leg, Shane reached down to hook his hands under Ilya's hips, canting them upwards to change the angle of where their bodies connected. Ilya would've made Shane use a pillow if their roles were reversed, but apparently Shane was more than willing to use the strength of his arms and the flexibility of his hips to hike Ilya's pelvis upward and force him to take what he was giving. The change in angle put intense pressure against what he could only imagine must have been his prostate—and God help him if it wasn't and Shane was somehow saving that for later.

Had it felt like this for them? Had Shane fucked those women like this? He couldn't imagine that he had, given that the sweat on Shane's skin and the rumbling of his moaning in his chest left absolutely no doubt in Ilya's mind that Shane was actually enjoying himself quite a bit. But Shane also had a hard-wired desire to be the best at anything he did, to study and learn and decipher everything that was needed to excel. He could easily imagine Shane poring over porn alone in his apartment—incognito mode on, of course—for the purpose of research instead of anything scandalous.

No wonder Rose was comparing her other boyfriends to him still. Shit, Ilya hadn't even had anyone take him like this before, and he was forever going to compare every other person he'd ever slept with to Shane Hollander—a futile comparison, given that every other human being on earth (and probably those on the International Space Station as well) would always lose when put up against him.

Fingers tightening in the meat of Ilya's hips—he hoped they left bruises—Shane switched from his deeper thrusts to a firm grind that Ilya wanted to describe as absolutely filthy, forcing the full length of himself against that spot inside him. He didn't think he could come from this alone, not how Shane sometimes could, but he was realizing exactly why it was that Shane liked this so much.

He probably wouldn't want to do this always or even often, but maybe sometimes, as a treat. Birthdays, anniversaries, cup wins, maybe.

As a treat.

"You're a fucking dream," Shane groaned out, his breath stuttering slightly as he continued that relentless grinding. "I never thought I wanted this—I never would've asked you for—fuck, you feel incredible. You want me to fuck my cum into you? You want it?"

Ilya's eyelids fluttered, and he tried to search for words to describe what he was feeling. He wanted to say something back, wanted to tell Shane how impossible and incredible and how some-other-word-starting-with-an-i he felt, but he realized maybe he had been a bit cruel to ever tease Shane for being 'cock drunk'. He certainly felt like he was three sheets to the wind—staggering and helpless and completely out of control of his limbs.

Shane snaked a hand down to wrap around him, those long, thick fingers curling around his skin feeling almost as if they were electrified when he touched him in time with his thrusting. It was so many points of sensation, and all of them were overwhelming—the press of Shane's left hand still hiking up his hip, his right hand wrapped around him, the stretch and slight burn in his hole where Shane had him stretched out wide, and something deeper as he touched a part of him that no other person had ever felt.

There were so many parts of him that had only been touched by Shane Hollander, so it only made sense to add one more to the list.

He felt like he was vibrating—like he was shaking apart on a molecular level and being rendered into all of his tiny component pieces. It wasn't until Shane gently eased his hips back down toward the bed that he realized he felt that way because he was trembling. His legs had been shaking so forcefully in Shane's grasp that he had been rattling them both.

"Still okay?" Shane asked, his hand slowing its movement down his leaking red cock as he looked down at him worriedly.

"Shane Hollander. If you stop, I am actually going to kill you."

Shane grinned at him, reaching up to swipe his hair out of his face where his sweat had plastered it to his forehead. "Well, I do aim to please."

Shane resumed his thrusting in earnest then, the sound of skin on skin loud in the room but still nearly drowned by the sound of the blood rushing through his ears and the gasping breaths being wrenched from his lungs.

"Fuck," Shane groaned, his head falling forward to land against Ilya's shoulder. "Touch yourself, I can't—fuck, Ilya—"

Ilya's hand moved before he consciously registered it, his hand unable to close as firmly around himself as Shane had. He felt like he was just on the edge of being overstimulated, hands unable to squeeze himself as tightly as they would if he had been alone in the room touching himself to thoughts of Shane instead of the reality of him.

He'd had more sex than he could accurately begin accounting for, but he couldn't remember ever feeling so out of control of his body since the first time he'd taken Shane in this bed, without a condom, all those years ago the first time he'd visited him at the cottage.

He lifted his free hand to fist in Shane's damp hair, wrenching his head to the side and licking a path across the sweaty skin at the column of his throat before tugging Shane's mouth to meet his in a clumsy kiss that was more tongue and teeth than anything else.

Shane's hips canted again, the length and heft of him brushing against that bundle of nerves inside Ilya, and he was lost. Absolutely gone. Vision flaring white and his spine arching up to press his chest against Shane's, he was spilling over his knuckles and striping white up the length of his torso with a gasp before he'd even fully parsed that he was on the edge.

He must have clenched down around Shane—he certainly felt bigger and wider as Ilya writhed in his arms—and with a groan Shane followed him over the edge, stilling where he was pressed fully within him. He could—oh God—he could feel it. The twitching of Shane's length within him as he spilled, a faint and wet sensation that could only have been Shane pumping his cum deep inside of him.

Shane was painting him as if he were a work of art, and he was helpless to do anything but let the very softest, hidden parts of himself become Shane's canvas.

Still panting, Ilya stared up at the ceiling, feeling like something had fundamentally changed. It wasn't anything so trite as he would never be the same again, because he didn't want to be. He felt even more fully Shane's than he already had been, if such a thing were even possible, and there was no universe in which he wanted to revert to the version of himself that he had been the day before.

Shane had dismantled him fully, given him everything that he could have wanted the experience to be. Typical Shane Hollander—always the overachiever.

Shane pulled out slowly, and despite how gentle his movements were the feeling of it was odd enough to make him gasp and twitch regardless. He dropped a kiss onto Ilya's still parted lips before he flopped down onto the mattress beside him, looking exactly as boneless as he felt.

They lay there for a long few moments, panting into the silence of the room as they tried to catch their breath. He just stared at Shane, feeling again as if he almost didn't recognize him. Whoever this man was, Ilya was glad to have fallen into bed with him for what was hands down one of the most intense experiences of his life.

He couldn't help but gasp though when he felt the telltale trickle of something—who was he kidding, he knew exactly what that something was—starting to leak out of him. Shane nodded even though Ilya didn't need to use words, no doubt recognizing the signs anyway. He dropped a kiss on Ilya's temple before he stood, striding off into their en suite. Ilya lay there motionless, waiting for him to return, listening to the sound of the water rushing in the sink and Shane clattering around in the bathroom.

Shane came back with a warm, wet washcloth, carefully swiping through the mess on his stomach and between his thighs before tucking a folded hand towel beneath Ilya's hips.

"How are you feeling?"

"I do not have the words in English or Russian to explain what I am feeling. Holy shit."

"Is that… good?" Shane asked, his voice uncharacteristically shy.

"Good?" Ilya laughed. "Shane, you made me come like fountain, and you are asking me if it was good?"

"Fuck, I don't know!" Shane said as he tugged Ilya to lie on his side, tucking him close. "It can be a lot—I know better than most people. It's something different for you, and it's a big thing. I just want to make sure that you're alright."

"You are right—is very big thing. I will walk weirdly tomorrow, most likely. Like cowboy, probably."

"That's not what I meant, Ilya," Shane sighed. "I know it's different. I know that I'm not leaving, and you're not leaving, and we're here together, and we're going to be together forever. But it's vulnerable, and it can leave you feeling empty in a bad way sometimes. I just want to make sure that you're alright. You don't regret anything. That's all."

Sobering slightly, Ilya felt a twinge of guilt for cracking a joke about it. He did know what Shane meant, and he knew all too well all the times that he had not taken the care with Shane that he should have.

"You were very good to me, Lyubimyy. Very sweet and very good. I will think about this for the rest of always, probably. I have no regrets. I am glad that this was something I was able to give to you. It feels nice to know that no one has ever had me like that before, and no one else will. I am yours in all ways."

Shane smiled down at him, a soft little thing, and Ilya couldn't help but burrow his face into the crook of Shane's neck as he dipped his head to press a kiss against his hair.

"I do have… one question."

"Jesus Christ, Ilya. What?"

Ilya smirked up at his husband, glad that he had said the serious thing and had earned the right to be a little bit annoying.

"Disasters," he said accusingly, poking a finger into Shane's chest. "You call sex with women 'disasters'. Until me, all your life you are top—and I do not think that you could have possibly been as bad as you seem to think you were."

Shane scoffed and nuzzled his nose against Ilya's hair. "It was a disaster because it wasn't you, Ilya. It's not just about technique—although I'll say that's probably gotten better since Rose, too. But I shouldn't have had to close my eyes and imagine that our roles were reversed, or close them even tighter to imagine that she was you. Sex with anyone who wasn't you has always been a disaster. You left your fingerprints on me when I was eighteen and no one has been enough for me since."

Ilya's heart gave a little squeeze at that, and he copied the gesture by wrapping his arms around Shane's waist and gripping him tightly.

"Okay, fine. Disasters. I will let you have that. But now I have another question."

"I thought I was supposed to be the one always asking annoying questions?" Shane laughed.

"What do you mean by your technique has gotten better? How have you been practicing this award-winning technique?"

"Award-winning?"

"Next cup I win, I dedicate to your technique, yes. I will look every reporter in their eyes and say 'this could not be done without the techniques of Shane Hollander. So talented on and off ice, yes'."

"Do we really have to have this conversation?" Shane sighed, rubbing his hands over Ilya's spine.

"I would like to know how you have done this—where you acquired such incredible skill that you have seemingly told no one about. But I suppose no, if you would rather not."

"I don't really want to have a conversation with you about how I masturbate, no."

"You what—" Ilya cried, sitting up and ripping himself free from Shane's arms. "Okay, I am so sorry, you do not get to say that and then think 'oops, oh well, conversation is over.' Not over. Nope nope. Spill, Hollander."

Shane sighed, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling as if avoiding Ilya's eyes would make it possible for him to speak.

"It's just… when you first went to Ottawa and I was in Montreal alone, I bought a… thing."

"Yes, I know all about your things, Shane. We have discussed them at length."

"No, Ilya," he said, rolling his eyes before dropping a forearm up to cover them like he didn't want Ilya to see him either. "Yeah, I have dildos. I know you know that. But sometimes that's a lot of work, with like—prep and cleanup. And I don't always want to use my hand, so I bought a… a fleshlight. I have a fleshlight."

Ilya grinned, tugging gently at Shane's arm—not hard enough to force him to look at him, but enough to encourage him to uncover his face. "Go on. Please. I am listening."

He could picture it vividly—Shane on his back, his eyes closed and sweat slicked across his skin as he worked that stupid piece of plastic over his skin, his hips thrusting up into it each time that the sensation of it became too much for him to handle—

"I would… you know—like put it down on the mattress and get on top of it, and just—"

The image in Ilya's mind shifted so rapidly that it almost made him dizzy, and he felt his spent cock give an interested twitch against his thigh. Not Shane working that stupid plastic over himself, but Shane working himself into it. Shane prone on that slightly too firm Montreal mattress, grinding and forcing himself into that toy—probably slightly too small for him—as he chased a pleasure that he so rarely sought out but would be easier to clean than what he craved.

"It's probably stupid—"

"No, Shane," Ilya interrupted, cutting him off with a quick kiss against his lips, his forehead bonking against the arm that Shane still hadn't dropped from across his face. "Not stupid. Considering you used that skill to fuck me stupid, I am very grateful. Light a prayer candle for it and tell it I appreciate its service."

Shane huffed out a laugh, but the faint pink tinge to his cheeks betrayed his embarrassment.

"Ilya…"

"You think I am kidding? Shane, I have been thinking about this since Rose Landry came to visit. And maybe a little longer if I have to be honest—but I do not. I have had thoughts and ideas and dreams about this, but you were so much better than I thought. And if I owe my gratitude to silly little sex toy, I will give it the flowers that it deserves. You cannot stop me. And maybe, someday, if you have seen how I wined and dined your little toy, you will maybe reward me by letting me see you—"

"I don't have it anymore," he said, interrupting Ilya. "So you can let the mental image of that be enough."

"A tragedy," Ilya said, reaching for his phone. "Then I will buy you another. Cannot let these skills get rusty, no? I might want them again someday."

"You think?"

"I wish," Ilya said, pressing another kiss to Shane's mouth before flopping down onto the mattress beside him. "Now, it is very late, and I think I want to go to sleep. I have done much research into this, you know—good tops are supposed to cuddle afterwards, like spoons. Little kisses, maybe, too."

"Oh, really? Like spoons?" Shane said, rolling Ilya onto his side and curling up against his back. The heat of all their bare skin pressed together was comforting this time, instead of incendiary.

"Exactly so, yes. And kisses," Ilya said, craning his head to the side to expose the side of throat to Shane.

"Well," Shane murmured into his skin, acquiescing to Ilya's request. "If that's what your research says…"