​🪐Feris's Blog🪐

when it's so serious you have to break out vivaldi... again

"He hadn't even been here for two days yet and already he had no idea how he was going to be able to go back to the real world."

But when he asks Ilya what's wrong, and all Ilya can do is shake his head as tears start running down his cheeks despite his best efforts to stop them, he doesn't run. He doesn't roll his eyes. He doesn't demand that he get over himself and get on with it.

He holds him close and presses a gentle kiss to his chest, his chin, his temple, and then his lips. He cages Ilya's face in his enormous safe hands and wipes away the tears with a gentle swipe of his thumb. He presses a kiss to his forehead, where it hurts most, and looks him right in the eye without a hint of regret, or disgust, or hatred. He looks at him like he's always looked at him – eyes full of unbridled affection.

"What do you need? What can I do?"

And when Ilya tells him he doesn't know, that that's part of the problem, Shane doesn't get frustrated or annoyed. He just wraps his arms tightly around him until the trembling stops.

how hollander curled all around him and pulled his hair just a little while they were kissing and it made his entire body tingle like nobody else had ever done or would ever do.

how he got hollander to make those insane breathless whimpery noises when he ate him out, all shocked and trying not to and then giving into it.

that hollander really, really liked getting fucked. in the back of his mind ilya had worried that maybe hollander was like him and the idea of being fucked was better than the reality, or maybe it would only feel okay. but no, hollander absolutely melted even when ilya was just fingering him and it was a revelation for both of them. it was so easy to make him feel good.

that hollander REALLY liked getting fucked. the way he pushed back for more and pressed his face into the pillows and moaned loud and shaky and clenched his fingers in the sheets and actually – actually! – came without either of them even touching him, that was the cherry on top of the most perfect cake. ilya did that to him. ilya did that for him.

and it wasn't just that ilya made him feel good, although obviously ilya was a guy who got off on making his partners feel amazing. it was that it was hollander: uptight, always annoyed at him, his perfectly perfect rival who was so strong and dominating and fun to play against on the ice and so desperate to submit to him in the bedroom. absolutely fucking perfect for ilya. he would look at hollander's stern, serious face on television or across from him during a faceoff and think nobody else knows what you like. nobody else knows how you get shy and overwhelmed and want to be told what to do so badly. i'm the only one who knows what you look like when you're being fucked so well and you can't get enough of it, it feels so good. and you can only get that from me.

for a while afterward he only felt – he thought he only felt – triumph. the desire to submit to someone he didn't even like, the fact that ilya fucked him until he was begging and whining and he loved it, had to be more than a little humiliating for hollander. but the more he thought about it, which was all the time, the more he remembered how unbearably sweet and soft hollander had been, how good it felt, how much he wanted to take care of hollander afterward. how he had wanted to stay and kiss him to sleep and listen to him make those happy little buzzing hums ilya only heard him make right after he came.

nothing else ever really touched that feeling, not even winning the Cup that year. when he thought about the 2013-2014 season he thought about that night with hollander first and then the Cup. terrifying. he could never, ever tell anyone.

the learning doesn't go far until before sochi, when shane properly starts learning at least the basics because what if i get lost in the middle of the night with no phone and just road signs to help me?? very practical decision absolutely nothing to do with anyone at all. it's still only only only a practical decision when he keeps learning after sochi is over even though it's not a possibility for him to be lost on the russian streets anymore.

he doesn't tell ilya that he's doing any of this because learning his fuck buddie's first language certainly feels like a long term commitment born from a place of care and affection which it is not. and they are not a long term commitment they are not any kind of commitment they can never be— and oh there he goes slipping ilya's name out in a haze of happiness. bye bye.

that season they were in the middle of, montreal had gotten a new rookie. a very young, russian rookie who barely spoke a lick of english. and even though he looked nothing like him, shane's heart melted because the shadow of the ilya he first met is there in this kid's attitude, his fear covered up by bravado, his determination to make his situation work. so shane starts mentoring him in russian. just to make things easier on the kid, he says to himself. just to see if my pronunciation isn't shit.

shane is basically fluent by now so they can hold conversations really easily. the other montreal players were very confused by their captain suddenly breaking out a language they had never heard him speak before one day at a random practice, but they've gotten used to it by now. one day, before a boston game (still during the rose era) ilya is skating around the rink to warm up and desperately trying to look anywhere but where shane is close to the boards talking to his rookie. he skates past them and his brain processes the words being spoken, but it takes him another five seconds to process the language they were spoken in. and the person speaking that language. he turns back barely able to breath only to see shane speaking fucking russian.

he skates up behind the rookie, who has his back to the ice. safe to say the kid feels the looming shadow at his back and decides to get the fuck out of the way with a hello mr rozanov goodbye.

there's a second of silence between them before ilya asks shane how long he's been learning. shane goes a little red because no way in hell did he mean for ilya to hear him. started before sochi and kind of never stopped, is the answer shane comes up with, his hands clasped around his stick to stop them shaking. ilya doesn't say anything, just stares at shane for a second more and skates away.

And not that he'd change anything for a guy he sleeps with a few times a year ....

But he cares, in some roaming way his brain won't let his mind settle right on top of, about what Hollander thinks.

Why?

Because no thank you to that question, that's why.

And Hollander keeps everything above the waist smooth, and does he want Ilya to be smooth too?

And the sex is SO GOOD, so he's genuinely not thinking about this with the front of his head.

But it lingers at the base of his skull, pricking at the back of his jaw, lodging itself like a sesame seed fixed between his back teeth.

And the sex is still GOOD and more and more often they're letting themselves stick around after.

And then,

in the after glow,

Ilya taking big breaths just to watch Shane's head on his abdomen rise and fall:

"It tickles," Shane giggles coyly.

"Doyoulikeit?" tumbles out of Ilya before he can scoop up the words and stuff them back into his traitorous mouth.

And Shane answers with a pointed lick up his happy trail, keeping eye contact. He plants a small kiss on Ilya's belly button.

Ilya smirks down at Shane, face giving away nothing, running his fingers greedily through Shane's hair.