red clay, blue ice - ilya rozanov x reader
٠࣪⭑ᝰ.ᐟ you're a professional tennis player who has the lucky opportunity to participate in a new nike advertisement campaign, alongside the complete contrast one of ice hockey's most known faces ilya rozanov.
٠࣪⭑ᝰ.ᐟ A/N: no mention of reader's pronouns or the term 'y/n'. i did picture reader as male, but whatever floats your boat.
You watch with rapt fascination as the Ilya Rozanov picks up a tennis racket, his face scrunching up in confusion as he twists it in his grip, both hands gripping the handle awkwardly as he mimics a slow forehand; although he’s using both hands, and a grip that you imagine must be from ice hockey.
He glances to you with an expression of ‘am I doing this right?’ as he swings again, and you have to bite your lip not to laugh as the director asks you to repeat the serve, and someone hands you another tennis ball - clean, fresh.
As directed, you repeat the serve, knowing the camera isn’t following the serve so it doesn’t need to go in - what matters is how you look as you do the movements, how your body appears. The cameraman whistles, and the director moves around to look at the footage as Ilya walks over, tossing the tennis racket between his hands.
He’s wearing a similar outfit to your own; his bare shoulders gleaming in the sun where they’re exposed by the white tank top, iconic black Nike tick on the top left corner, accompanied by a pair of black shorts with the same white tick on the lower left corner. The shoes match too, of course, and your pretty sure the socks are the same - as yours are also the brand you’re advertising - but you don’t get to look closer when Ilya nudges your own foot with his.
“I do not think I am holding this right,” he grins, a little sheepish and a little mischievous, dangling the tennis racket between two fingers. You grin, shaking your head, because he’s right. You’ve never seen someone pick up a tennis racket and hold it so wrong.
“Like this,” you say, swivelling to stand by his side so he can see your hands. “This is your continental grip,” you show him the positioning of your fingers against the grip. Ilya blinks, tilting his head a little, and adjusts his hands to copy. “Hand lower.”
He nods slowly, testing it out by swinging the racket back and forth a little, the skin between his eyebrows creasing as he focuses. It’s hilarious, and if you have to admit, a little attractive; because of course it is. Freaking Ilya Rozanov, attractive even when he’s horrible at tennis.
“Con-tea…?” Ilya begins, repeating what you’d told him before, but the word is clearly one he isn’t familiar with.
“Continental,” you repeat, a little slower - not patronisingly so, just slow enough to sound out the consonants properly. “Y’know, like… the continents, it means on a large scale.”
Ilya makes an ‘o’ shape with his mouth and nods, lips curving upwards on the side into a small, almost sly smile. “Yes, I see,” he grins. “So what is grip you do with two hands? Country?”
You laugh - short and surprised - and shake your head. “No, just backhand, like you do in hockey,” you respond, switching to the other grip, demonstrating where to place your hands. “We have forehands and backhands, like hockey. That’s the basics, just there are different grips.” You wait for a nod. “Like, in Russia you might have learnt different ways to hold your hockey stick compared to here?”
Ilya shakes his head, but with a little tilt. “Ehh- no, but, Americans, they shoot differently,” he explains, nose scrunching up just a little by the left of his nose bridge and eyebrow. “More shoot right handed, but in Russia… more left. Canada as well.”
“Huh,” you respond, a smile curving on your lips. “That’s so funny, I wonder why.”
Ilya shrugs, but his lips are twisting into a grin, teeth glinting in the bright white sun. “I shoot right,” he says, but it comes out as more of a purr - slightly sultry, especially for an advertisement shoot setup, and especially for the words he’s just said, which really aren’t easy to shift into an innuendo compared to half the stuff you’ve said in this conversation already. It’s ridiculous, because there is absolutely no reason for those three words to sound like that. “Show me tennis backhand.”
You laugh, the tips of your ears burning a little from his previous tone, before showing him the grip again and miming a swing as slow as you can for him to copy. He does, and it’s a little clumsy - his arms seem to protest against the movement, probably used to dragging the stick along the ice so the movement of a racket angling up presumably feels unnatural - but it’s cute the way he squints when he thinks about it.
“Here,” you murmur, fishing a tennis ball out of your pocket and tossing it to him, grabbing another from the basket they have set up. “Drop and hit it.” You demonstrate - a polite soft hit so Ilya doesn’t get too competitive and do something silly - and watch the ball glide over the net before bouncing on the service line on the other end.
Ilya lets out a small, almost nervous laugh, and grins. “I will be very bad,” he claims, not giving you time to respond before he attempts the same thing. You open your mouth to reassure him that there isn't really a way to mess this up. Then you remember who you're talking to. Professional athletes have a unique talent for finding new and inventive ways to do things wrong.
He drops the ball with his left hand, and his right arm swings the racket. The ball flies, up and up in an endless curve before finally bouncing metres past the baseline of the other end of the court and rolling to an end. Somewhere behind you, one of the cameramen lets out a low whistle. Another mutters something that sounds suspiciously like holy shit, not because it’s good… because it’s the opposite.
When you glance back to Ilya, he’s grinning sheepishly, and you can’t help but beam back. “It’s okay, I was just as bad when I started.”
You don’t tell him you were three when you started.
Instead, you bump your shoulder to his in a friendly movement of support.
The touch, even though it is brief, is electric, which is deeply unhelpful. It sends a spark through your neurons, travelling along your central nervous system and through the vertebra of your spine better than any game has in years. You bite back a shiver, distracting yourself by locating your water bottle - white body with a black lid and Nike branded, of course - and taking a long sip.
Ilya’s eyes are on your movements, so narrowed and so attuned that you feel your ears pinken as you glimpse to nothing beside you, just to break eye contact, before handing him the bottle. The base of the water bottle leaves en-tout-cas on the palm of your hand, the red clay grains practically your own skin or hair with how much they coat every surface of your house, your body and your belongings already.
You glance away when Ilya’s eyes don’t move from yours as he wraps his lips around the rubber mouth of the lid’s spout; the action entirely and ridiculously more attractive than it should be. Eye contact has never been a problem before. You have stared down opponents across courts for years. Somehow this feels entirely different.
“Alright, Rozanov!” The director calls, and you both startle - clearly having forgotten you were actually in the middle of filming. “We want you to try a serve.”
“A serve?” Ilya repeats, brow furrowing, and he glances to you as if to translate. It’s sweet, and so you mimic the basic action you’ve been doing all morning, and his expression relaxes. “I, uh, do not know if I can do that.” He grins, and it’s not the same sheepish you saw before - no, this is more performative, sheepish in that cocky, mischievous way.
One of the cameramen snorts, and then someone calls out; “Dude, you’ve got a professional tennis player right next to you! Ask!”
You turn to him, smirking, and bump your shoulder to his; just to see if you can get the same spark to shoot through your spine, addicted like it’s adrenaline. It’s not as sharp and delightful as before, but the contact still makes you want to shiver. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
It doesn’t take Ilya too long to understand the motion of a basic serve, and as you know the camera is focused on his body and movements and not where the ball goes, you focus on showing him technique.
He’s not very good with a racket - that same almost unsure movement of his arms as though they’re so used to dragging his hockey stick along the ice that they think this motion is wrong - but he is a quick learner, and listens carefully.
There’s the click of the camera at one point, when you show him a serve and both perform the motion in sync, and remind yourself you’ll have to ask to see the photo later. Judging by the grin spreading across the photographer's face, the photo is either excellent or career-ending.
You step back to watch his serve again after a while, admiring the way his shoulders and arms move with perfect athleticism despite this not being his sport; the way his muscles push and pull with every motion. You admire more the way his short rides up to reveal a mouth-watering sliver of his stomach under the tank top when he has to reach high for a serve.
It’s the kind of glimpse people used to call ‘scandalous’, and you can see why, when Ilya is victim to it. The sliver shows the toned muscles of his stomach, and the tan of his skin - gleaming a burnt caramel colour in the sun and shadow of his shirt - glistening with sweat from the exercise.
When you get him to serve again, not even watching his movements or technique but his shirt where it will ride up again, you get to see the faintest hint of dark hair by his stomach, and you have to take a quick sip of your stupid Nike water bottle to try cool the heat rising to your face.
The cameraman and director eventually decide Ilya’s serve looks good enough to film, and so you stand to the side off camera to watch, fascinated with the way his face scrunches with concentration but he forces it to relax when he knows he’s being recorded.
The whole idea of the advertisement campaign is to show two completely different sports; tennis versus ice hockey, summer Olympics versus winter Olympics, red clay en-tout-cas versus blue ice rinks. Nike is really milking the collaboration for the money’s worth; taking photograph advertisements, short videos, longer two minute videos, and whatever else they can manage.
But it’s been so fun so far that you don’t mind the hot weather licking up your spine, or that your days could currently be spent training. Not when you’ve gotten to meet the Ilya Rozanov - who has been referred to as the you of the ice hockey world. And especially not when he’s so…
“You look better,” Ilya tells you, and you blink rapidly for a moment.
“You look better, doing-” he mimics the serve action lazily. “I look like… like little kid who barely walk.” He grins, making a flailing action with his arms, and you laugh, trying not to think about how he had looked really good.
“It’s okay, I’ll look like that tomorrow,” you respond, taking another sip of your water. You’re gonna regret sipping it so often later when you have to stop by the bathroom, but currently your mouth is drying up with every glance at Ilya’s face - curls slicked back with sweat, a little smidge of en-tout-cas on his cheekbone somehow, eyes glinting in the summer sun.
Tomorrow is the ice hockey part of the campaign, in which you’ll be placed in skates and then on the ice, and then given a hockey stick. And they’re intending to get some footage of you skating and moving with the puck, but you doubt if they’ll get any footage of you even moving without falling completely flat on your ass or face in every take.
You have spent years perfecting movement on clay. Tomorrow, Nike intends to place knives on your feet and see what happens.
Ilya chuckles, as though reading your face, and nudges your hip with his. “Is okay, I will hold your hand,” he wiggles his fingers teasingly, and you snort in response. “No, seriously. Will be great for advertisements, ‘tennis and hockey stars hold hands so no one falls’, yes?”
"That's not reassuring," you tell him.
You grin back, realising he’s evidently trying to make you more comfortable with the situation you’re clearly petrified of. Hey, there’s a big difference between giving a hockey player a tennis racket and asking them to hit a ball, and putting a tennis player in skates, on ice, and then asking them to skate and move a puck.
“You’ve got a bit of-” you tell him, changing the subject to distract yourself, pointing to your own cheekbone as a mirror of where Ilya has red clay smudged. He tries to brush it away, brow furrowed adorably. “Did you fall over and rub your face in the ground while I wasn’t looking?”
“No, uh-” he begins, going to say something smart and witty, probably, but he stutters when you reach up to brush the en-tout-cas off his cheekbone quickly with his thumb. He blinks sharply after you’ve pulled away, face stalling, before the smile comes creeping back. “Gets everywhere, da?”
You laugh and nod, bringing your leg up to rest above your knee and angle your shoe to show him the underside, where the red clay en-tout-cas has buried itself into every groove and cranny of the shoe. “I practically live in it.”
He blinks, copying the motion and looking at his own new Nike shoes, before groaning. “Stupid… red dust,” he scowls, hitting his fist against the shoe to see if it will fall out of the grooves, to which you laugh because of course it doesn’t. You suspect he'll still be finding red dust in his luggage three months from now. He looks up at the sound, studying your face, before smiling softly.
“Alright, can we get you guys, one on each side of the net!” The director calls, breaking the quiet serenity between the two of you, and you both turn to him. “You stay here, Ilya go around for me.” You nod, moving to the net as Ilya jogs lightly around to the other side. “Perfect, now-”
You’re directed into a sort of back to back stance, but angle towards the camera, which is on a low diagonal angle from you so that you are the primary object in the photograph and Ilya is like your shadow. You mimic each other’s stance and racket grips, and then expressions as you stare at the camera.
You glance at Ilya at one point, seeing the glare on his face you know as the ‘Slavic stare’ and can’t help but laugh. It's the exact same expression that's launched a thousand sports edits online, but right now, it just looks silly. He glances back in response, grinning when he sees your state, and then the camera clicks several times, before you go back to the colder staring stances.
Eventually, the day’s shoot is over, and you find yourself wiping your face with a wet cloth in the bathroom when Ilya steps in, splashing his face with the cold water.
“See you tomorrow,” he grins, watching in the mirror’s reflection as you smooth your eyebrow hairs back into a normal shape. You mimic the goodbye, reaching for the door handle, when Ilya makes a noise and you turn back.
His face does something - an expression you can’t identify - before he pulls out his phone with a grin. “Give me number,” he begins. “I send you little kid tutorials on how to play hockey. So you do not fall over like baby deer tomorrow.”
You snort as you recite your phone number to him, smiling softly at the way he types it in and then double checks it to make sure he was correct. You don’t miss the little heart he puts next to your name either, before tucking it into his pocket with a smirk and a small nod.
You decide not to mention it. Mostly because you're not entirely sure you'd survive the conversation.
Ilya’s hand meets your shoulder as he pats it on the way out of the bathroom, leaning in to whisper into your ear; his lips brushing the shell in a sultry motion. “Be there an hour early,” he murmurs, blinking slowly as his eyes - so close to your own - scan your expression. “I show you how to gear properly. And I want to see more than just this-” he pats the side of your stomach and lower ribs; the spot that is revealed when your shirt rides up when you serve.
You flush, watching as he pulls back with a sly grin, squeezing your shoulder in one last movement before he slips out of the bathroom and the door closes behind him, leaving you to try and process what the hell just happened.
Your phone buzzes less than ten seconds later.
Wear tank top when you get there.
Looks very nice.
٠࣪⭑ᝰ.ᐟ A/N: it has been a WHILE since i wrote an x reader one shot (i'm talking years) but ofc it was heated rivalry that brought me back. if you liked this and want more, please send a request! i need a deadline (or motivation, in this case) to do things. <3
