be curious

Ilya Rozanov's face, close up. "There we go."

He pulls back enough to show the edges of a high class hotel bathroom, and to reveal the Montreal Metros jersey he is wearing. There's a little 24 on the sleeves and a C above his heart. Rozanov grins at the camera and calls, "You can come in now."

The door creaks open. "What the fuck Roza—"

Half in frame, dressed in a white button up with a bowtie undone around his throat and a suit jacket slung over his arm, Shane Hollander freezes. His jaw drops and his eyes go wide.

Rozanov's grin grows as he watches this reaction in the camera. He turns and seems to preen for both Hollander and the camera, which now captures the name spread across the back. As if there was every any uncertainty.

"What the fuck is this?"

Rozanov's head tilts. "Your reward, of course."

"My—" Again, Hollander's fails.

"You won the cup." The admission is teasing, though with a sharp edge. "So I am going to get down on my knees, on this filthy bathroom floor, and suck your dick."

An audible, visible gulp. "This is the penthouse of a five star hotel, Rozanov, the floor isn't exactly filthy."

"Oh, so you do not want the first part of your reward?"

Hollander blinks. "First?"

"I owe you four things." Rozanov ticks them off his fingers. "Making up for last year, a bathroom blow job for your cup and a show for your Hart."

Here he tugs at the shoulders of the jersey, turning to flash a quick grin at the recording phone, drawing Hollander's attention to it for the first time.

"Are you fucking recording this? That's why you stole my phone before running in here to…change?" He chokes on the last word.

"Relax, Hollander, is your phone. You can delete right after if you want. Knowing the camera is there makes it more fun. That's part three."

Hollander glares at the phone for a long moment. "And part four?"

"Hm, well, no Hart for either of us this year but I think since you got the Rocket—"

"Because I beat you in the scoring race, asshole, remember?"

"—you should get a hat trick tonight." Rozanov finishes, as if Hollander had never interrupted, even though he'd fully paused for the chirp. "Does this sound fair, Captain?"

Some noise comes from Hollander, not fully picked up by the phone's microphone. His eyes are wide and fixed on Rozanov, sweeping up and down. The front of his suit pants is noticeably tented now. "Yeah—yeah."

"Here," Rozanov steps forward, and the two touch for the first time since the recording began. One of Rozanov's hands goes to Hollander's waist, the other to his cheek. They kiss, Rozanov's tongue slipping out a moment before their lips meet.

While they trade kisses, Rozanov maneuvers Hollander so that he is not halfway in the doorway but sideways and leaning on the frame. He pulls back long enough to check that this is the optimal position for both of their bodies to be captured on the camera. Hollander follows his gaze before shutting his eyes.

"Ah no, open your eyes, you need to see this angle too." Rozanov urges. He cants his hips forward to rub their clothed erections together. His jersey has ridden up enough to see that he's wearing boxers beneath. Hollander moans.

They make out for a full minute, Hollander clutching at the arms of the jersey, Rozanov deftly unbuttoning Hollander's shirt without looking. He gets it open and begins trailing kisses down Hollander's chest, mouthing at his nipples and paying special attention to the handful of bruises left over from playoffs. Hollander's breathing is visibly ragged. His erection has not gone down.

Rozanov reaches low enough that he will need to drop to his knees to do any more and stops. Pulling back, he frowns at Hollander, whose eyes are once again closed and head tipped back. "You do not want?"

"It's fine."

"Hollander."

"It's just…" His eyes open, flicking to the camera again. "The video is so fucking risky."

"Okay. No video then."

Hollander blinks. "No?"

"No." Rozanov kisses him again. "Come up with something else you want. No big deal."

Ilya’s sprawling out on the dock when Shane emerges from the cottage, scrubbing a towel through his lake-wet hair. He hadn’t planned on getting in, but he’d chirped Ilya about not wearing enough sunscreen and Ilya had huffed and rolled his eyes which led to Shane punching his shoulder and then they were tussling and when Ilya went over the edge of the dock he made sure Shane followed. Shane insisted then on going inside to dry off, while Ilya let the sun do the work. 

Ilya loves days like this. They’ve spent most of the morning lazing about outside under a perfect, cloudless sky. The warmth of the sun burrows into Ilya’s body like it can root out any lingering chill of winter. The space it leaves behind Ilya fills with Shane. Shane’s freckles darkening after days in the sun. Shane’s face aglow in firelight, eyes crinkled in a smile. Shane sleep-warm and sated and curling a fist into Ilya’s shirt to keep him close. He stores them all up, deep in his chest.

Ilya feels Shane’s footsteps on the dock just in time to brace himself for the wet towel Shane drops on his face, an affectionate “asshole” quickly following. 

“You love me,” Ilya says, pulling off the towel to grin up at Shane. 

“Mmhm. You hungry?” 

“Starving,” Ilya says, wiggling his eyebrows just to make Shane laugh.

A: Love it. Spend my time combing AO3 for it.

B: Like it. Not one of my bigger cravings, but it can scratch a certain itch if I’m in the right mood.

C: Neutral. A good author might be able to sell it, but a bad one will kill it deader than dead.

D: Not my favorite. I avoid it if I can, but it won’t necessarily put me off reading something.

It’s not really noticeable, not to anyone else, not even Shane. It’s just something that pings in Ilya’s brain when he’s in the gym strength training, that it’s just a teeny little bit easier to lift on his lift. He knows this isn’t exactly unusual, even — most people are slightly uneven, most people are a little bit stronger on their dominant side

… except Ilya is a rightie.

He puzzles over this for a while, wondering if he ought to be doing a few extra reps with his right arm, wondering if he ought to try to even it out, wondering how the fuck this even happened when he’s literally always favors his right arm/hand. He uses it to pull Shane close, to open doors for Shane, to hold himself up while he fucks into Shane……

And meanwhile, he’s using his left hand to jack Shane off.

Ilya puts the pieces together mid-hand job, when Shane is settled between his legs, back to chest. He’s got his right hand on Shane’s leg, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin on his inner thigh, while his left hand strokes Shane hard and fast until he’s whining and begging for release.

Ilya hides his reaction by biting into the sensitive skin on Shane’s neck and lets him come before rolling them both over so he can laugh into a pillow.

“What?” Shane says, scowling as he wriggles underneath Ilya, sensitive and sated. “God, you’re such an asshole. I didn’t come that fast.”

“No,” Ilya eventually manages to say through tears of mirth. He’s still hard, but he’s pretty sure he’s accidentally killed the mood. “No, no, you were perfect.”

“Then what the fuck is wrong with you?” Shane twists around so they’re face to face, and Ilya can bury his face into the crook of his shoulder.

“You know,” he says after he’s calmed himself down with the scent of his boyfriend’s sweat, that musky, salty smell he’s grown accustomed to having in his bed. “You know how my left arm is stronger than my right?”

“Yeah, so?” Shane says. He’s got this adorable, frustrated look on his face, all scrunched up and angry. “What does that have to do with — oh.” His eyes flick down to Ilya’s left hand, coated in his cum. “Oh my god, Ilya, are you serious? Is this why your right backshot is weaker than your left?”

Of course that’s what Shane worries about. God, Ilya loves him.

“It’s ok!” he says, grinning wickedly as he pushes himself up onto his left elbow. “I will even it out. Only rightie handjobs this summer.”

Shane’s smile grows slowly. “I bet your right hand isn’t as good at it,” he says, and his words reek of a challenge. “Bet you’ll need lots of practice.”

Huh. Mood not killed at all, then.

Ilya kisses Shane deeply and runs his hands — including the cum covered one — through his hair, ignoring the squeak of protest in lieu of the twitch of interest in both of their dicks.

“Good thing I have a great personal trainer,” he says and winks.

I’ve reread this scene about a hundred times because I’m currently writing an Anya fic, and somewhere in those hundred times something struck me: the only family that really loved and cared for Ilya abandoned him too. It wasn’t her fault. Irina was sick. But she still left him, and no one acknowledged how terrible that was when it happened because it was more important to save face and pretend it was an accident. Ilya wasn’t allowed to voice his pain or rage when it happened to him. With Anya, he gets to say it. He gets to acknowledge the cruelty of being left behind.

But even though she was abandoned, Anya is not mistrustful. She’s a happy-go-lucky dog, lovable and friendly with everyone. She carries this wound of abandonment, yet every time she meets a new person, all they notice is how friendly she is. How happy. A lot of formerly abandoned dogs are like this: desperate for affection, sweet, friendly to everyone. Doing everything they can to make themselves so lovable that no one will ever leave them again.

That’s the Ilya we see in Role Model. Boisterous, friendly, taking care of everyone else’s pain while hiding his own. It’s not until we get his POV in The Long Game that we see how much he’s suffering.

Shane sees it. When Anya cries at their bedroom door, Shane postpones his very favorite thing to do (fucking his boyfriend) because Anya is scared and alone. He gives Ilya permission to meet her needs, and Ilya can’t move fast enough.

I can’t screenshot the book bc my copy has it spread on two pages, but he says,

“Anya, sweet girl. What is the matter? Are you lonely?”

I think it’s really important we’re in Shane’s POV here. Shane heard her cry first. Shane said, “go get her.” Shane, Mr. “now the bed’s all dirty,” let Anya sleep in their bed because she was alone and she needed it. Shane is not the emotionally illiterate autistic stereotype the fandom makes him out to be. He’s already noticed this loneliness before with Ilya

The difference is, Anya asks for what she needs and lets them give it to her. Shane gets to be there for her in a way Ilya isn’t ready to accept yet. Ilya gets to give her the care he didn’t get as a child who lost his mother. They both can address Anya’s loneliness because she is a dog and she feels safe enough with them to ask.

Meanwhile, Ilya…

He’s not ready. Shane can’t give him what he needs yet because Ilya won’t let him, has spent too long denying his own wound.

Not sexually (their teammates would be more okay with that, actually), just straight-up gross:

they would swap mouthguards if they weren't custom fitted

Same water bottle. They don't even pretend they have separate ones. There's no heterosexual squirting the water into their mouths from a distance, they're fellating those gatorade bottles

All of their base layers are communal. So is their deodorant.

full visual inspections of each other's injuries. shouldering in next to the team medic to look into each other's bloody mouths and applying each other's steri-strips to keep cuts closed.

putting on shin guard tape for each other