hollanov

but you're brave

It’s surprisingly easy, natural even, to crawl into Rozanov’s lap. To cradle his blonde head between his palms and weave his fingers through Rozanov’s thick curls; to rub his thumb over Rozanov’s earlobe and gently rock them back and forth at the edge of the mattress. 

The shape of Rozanov--Ilya, he reminds himself, Ilya--is solid beneath. He’s warm and sniffly, his face pressed into Shane’s pec right by his armpit, his tears soaking through the fabric of Shane’s nice, new shirt but Shane finds he doesn’t mind. Doesn’t mind even a little bit when Ilya breathes shakily and rubs his nose over the sleeve of Shane’s shirt, probably leaving behind a trail of snot. In fact, something in him warms and unfurls and spreads all throughout his body at the action. At the vulnerability in it. He wants to tuck Ilya into his chest and keep him there. Maybe forever. 

That particular thought makes Shane’s stomach twist itself into an uncomfortable knot. 

I would never be able to go back home again. Do you get that?

Shane pulls back, just a fraction, his palm still cupping the back of Ilya’s head as he slides his thumb along Ilya’s temple, catching stray tears on the pad then smudging them into Ilya’s hairline. Not burying the evidence of Ilya’s vulnerability but carefully, tenderly, tucking it somewhere safe. Between the press of their bodies. 

You don’t like me.

Rozanov--Ilya--shudders through a snotty inhale then blinks up at Shane, his eyes wet and dark in the low lamplight. Involuntarily, like he just can’t help himself--he can’t, he really can’t--Shane’s forehead drops and then their noses are bumping together. Their breaths mingle in the space between them. The tip of his nose catches on the bump of Ilya’s bridge--the bone broken and healed and broken again--before sliding down further, dragging over the curve of Ilya’s cupid’s bow.

He closes his eyes. Ilya shifts and presses his lips to the corner of Shane’s mouth and then just lingers there. Lingers, and lingers, and lingers. His nose tucks against Shane’s cheek, his fingers grasp at Shane’s shirt. Somehow it’s the closest they’ve ever been.

“Do you feel better?” Shane asks, and it’s muffled where his mouth is smeared against Ilya’s damp cheek, but he knows Ilya hears it because he tenses and sucks in a ragged breath. His shoulders roll back like he’s preparing to push away and Shane holds him tighter, clamps his thighs around Ilya’s hips. He doesn’t want him to pull away. “Don’t,” Shane says and Ilya pauses, fingers flexing against Shane’s hip. A nervous twitch perhaps.

“I’m not--” he starts and Shane shakes his head, dipping down and brushing their mouths together. He tastes tears on Rozanov’s lips and he licks away the salt.

“You are,” Shane insists and finally settles when he feels Ilya relent, spine slumping as Shane slides his fingers through his hair. “Stay,” he murmurs and Ilya shivers, tilting his head, mouth smudging against Shane’s chin. Shane soothes his thumb in circles over Ilya’s earlobe, something he’s seen Rozanov do to himself a dozen times before. The effect is immediate. Ilya’s head tilts into the touch and his lashes flutter. “Stay,” Shane repeats.

“Is my room,” Ilya retorts, tone bordering on bitchy. Shane huffs a laugh and pulls back to look down at Ilya again. Ilya stares back at him warily, eyes darting around Shane’s face like he doesn’t quite trust anything he’s seeing. Like he’s the one that’s asking stay and Shane is the one pulling away.

Shane thinks of Ilya asking him to stay in Boston. Lips pressed to the pinched corner of his mouth as Ilya whispered stay into the quiet afternoon. In the months since then he has wondered what would have happened if he had stayed. 

Is simple for me.

Nothing about any of this has ever been simple. They both knew that. Any attempt at pretending otherwise was, as Shane had said, bullshit.

“You are staring at me,” Ilya mumbles then. It sounds self-conscious in a way that Shane is unfamiliar with coming from Rozanov’s mouth. And he wants to say something witty or flirty or teasing in retort but he comes up short. He's too busy fixating on the shifting colours in Ilya’s eyes. Blue and green and hazel flickering behind the curtain of Ilya’s thick lashes and Shane presses his thumbs to the apples of his cheeks, leaning closer. Shane is most certainly staring. Trying to figure Ilya out. “Hollander.”

Shane. He thinks. Call me Shane.

Instead of replying to Ilya, he ducks his head and presses their brows together. Between them their breaths shudder and disperse in damp puffs. Ilya’s breath smells like mint and cigarettes and Shane wants to want to reprimand him but instead he finds he’s missed the smell. 

When he’d been with Rose a few of her Hollywood friends would chain smoke after dinner. One in particular had smoked Ilya’s brand of cigarettes -- Newports -- and Shane had shivered when the smoke had wafted over him outside the restaurant in the freezing, Montreal air. Something within him had churned hot and nauseating at the sense memory. Almost like he could taste Rozanov’s lips on his; taste his tongue licking into his mouth, hear himself complaining about Rozanov’s smoking, see Rozanov rolling his eyes in response. An attack on all his senses. His whole body overcome by Rozanov.

Shane could remember tucking his nose into his jacket sleeve later that night. Inhaling the bitter scent clinging to the fabric before shoving the offending garment into the washing machine when he’d caught himself. When he’d realised what he’d been doing. He’d put it through three cycles just to make sure the smell was gone.

Maybe it wasn’t that he’d missed the smell in general. But that he’d missed it on Ilya. The way the menthol scent mixed with Ilya’s cologne. Bergamot and vetiver. Rich and masculine and warm. Beneath that the smell of Ilya’s skin, his hair, the salt of his sweat. The sharp scent of peppermint on Ilya’s breath, attempting to cover up the cigarettes.

Shane presses his mouth to Ilya’s then and sighs as Ilya’s tongue slips between his teeth. His fingers grasp, on instinct, tugging at Ilya’s hair, trying to bring them closer together. Not that they possibly could be closer. Shane still heavy in Ilya’s lap, pinning him at the edge of the mattress with his thighs. Ilya beneath him and gripping back, his fingers digging into Shane’s flesh through the soft material of his shirt.

They kiss for a while like that. Gripping and grasping at each other. Mouths dragging, lingering. Each kiss getting deeper, hotter, wetter. Until Shane’s jaw is aching and his head is spinning and his chest is shivering, desperate for a full gulp of air.

When they drag apart Shane is breathing heavily. Ilya’s pupils are wide and black, almost entirely encompassing the blue of his irises. His breathing is unsteady too. Puffing over Shane’s cheeks in damp gasps as he licks his bottom lip and nudges their noses together.

“Hollander,” Ilya calls and Shane shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he answers.

“Don’t?” Ilya asks, head tilting, mouth smudging against the corner of Shane’s lips.

“Ilya,” Shane murmurs. And in those two short syllables he feels so hopelessly exposed.

I don’t think I can keep pretending I don’t like you anymore.

Ilya is quiet for a beat. Then two. Shane doesn’t dare look at him. 

Then, he says, “Shane.”

And Shane shivers. The sound of his name on Rozanov’s--Ilya’s tongue rolls right through him. From the hairs on his scalp to the tips of his toes. He feels warmed by it. He feels overwhelmed by it. He wants to hear Ilya say it again. And again. And again.

So, he repeats, “Ilya.”

“Shane,” Ilya responds but the sound gets muffled by Shane’s mouth, already pressing firm to Ilya’s lips again. 

A sound worms its way through Shane’s chest, up his throat, and spills from his lips; a desperate sort of whining sound that starts low then turns breathy and pitchy as Ilya’s mouth grows more demanding against his. He thinks he should feel embarrassed by it, knows in the back of his mind that a few months ago he would have been, but Ilya hums in response and kisses him harder, digs his fingers into his flesh and nips at Shane’s bottom lip. The embarrassment fizzles in the face of Rozanov’s returned enthusiasm.

Ilya shuffles backwards and Shane follows like there’s a magnet pulling them together--a magnet that’s caught in the soft, slick press of their tongues--and kicks his shoes off as Ilya guides them to the middle of the bed. Shane gasps as Ilya pulls him down on top of him, sprawling them across the palm frond patterned comforter all the while still kissing.

There’s heat stirring low in his belly and he can feel his dick beginning to fatten and throb, straining within the confines of his shorts, but he pulls back anyway. Stops himself.

This wasn’t what he’d come here for.

A string of saliva glistens then breaks between their spit slick mouths. Shane’s gaze catches on the lamplight reflecting off of the saliva on Ilya’s top lip and he bites his own lip against a moan. Beneath him Ilya looks as heated as Shane feels. The blue-green-grey of his irises swallowed by the black of his pupils. His dark blonde curls thoroughly wrecked from Shane’s grabbing hands. The dip of his cupid’s bow red and puffy from the force of Shane’s hungry kisses.

Involuntarily, Shane’s hips press down. Grinding just a little into Ilya’s lap. The motion makes Ilya grunt and grab at his waist.

“I didn’t come here to--”

“You didn’t?” Ilya teases then the quirk of his mouth turns mean. He rolls his hips upwards and Shane’s eyes flutter shut.

“I didn’t,” Shane insists. He meets the press of Ilya’s hips without faltering. This too, is as easy, as natural, as breathing.

“Do you want to?” Ilya asks and he stops. Suddenly, meanly. Shane bites off the end of a whine, dropping his head to press his forehead against Ilya’s temple.

He breathes for a moment and listens as Ilya does the same. There is no sound in the room apart from the electrical hum of the minifridge and the ticking of the bedside clock. They could almost be anywhere in the world -- anywhere but a hotel room in Tampa surrounded by their peers.

“I always want to,” Shane admits. And it seems like a bigger confession than his earlier declaration. The enormity of his wanting laid bare between them. “With you.”

I think I like you maybe a little too much.

Ilya is quiet for a beat too long and Shane opens his mouth to say something else. Undo some of the damage. Too late. Ilya grabs his face and crushes their mouths together. Hard. 

And it’s the kind of kiss that makes Shane’s teeth ache. The kind of kiss he feels deep in his bone marrow, at the core of him. The kind of kiss that haunts him late at night alone in his bed in Montreal, thumb pressed into the bruised flesh of his bottom lip, hoping to taste Rozanov’s mouth again if he just presses hard enough.

The kind of kiss that only Ilya Rozanov can give.

“Do you want to?” Shane gasps between one bruising kiss and the next. Ilya huffs a laugh against his mouth. Stupid question.

“Always,” he says. Shane makes a displeased sound in the back of his throat. Ilya seems to understand and adds, “with you.”

A warm thrill pulses through his chest at that. At the proof that he is not alone in his wanting.

(Though, he had already known that he wasn’t. Before Ilya had found him on the beach. Before he’d asked Ilya what room he was in. He’d known. All he had to do to find proof of it was look honestly at the years that stretched out between them; at the memory of Ilya’s crestfallen expression in Boston as Shane had scrambled away like he was outrunning something horrible, enormous, insurmountable. (At that moment it had felt horrible, enormous, insurmountable.) The pulse of his wanting thunderous in his ears and painful beneath his skin. He feels it keenly now, too, that pulse, though somehow it feels more bearable.)

Ilya’s mouth seeks out its well-worn path, dragging down the slope of Shane’s neck, over the thin skin where Shane’s pulse flutters and stutters with each hot press of Ilya’s lips. Shane bends towards the touch like the palm trees outside the hotel bend in the breeze. Helpless but to go where the wind--where Ilya--takes him.

Fingers find the pearl buttons of his shirt and fumble gracelessly with the small fastenings. A frustrated breath blows over his neck, Shane laughs, and Ilya nips his skin, as if in retaliation for Shane daring to wear such a fiddly garment. 

Shane thinks it shouldn’t be so hard for Ilya to undo his shirt, not with all the women he’s slept with over the years. But there’s something about Ilya tonight that’s thin and maybe a little desperate. His energy is squirming and rabid like a dog that’s been caged and released after far too long spent nipping at its enclosure.

“These buttons are stupid. Your stylist is an idiot,” Ilya grumbles, voice muffled where his lips are latched to Shane’s skin.

Shane huffs a laugh and pulls back, sitting on his haunches and sliding his fingers over the sleek buttons, carefully undoing his shirt. He doesn’t want Ilya to tear it. It was expensive after all.

“I would think you’d be good at this,” Shane murmurs and then Ilya is grabbing at his wrists, tugging his hands away before determinedly yanking buttons loose, a frown creasing the skin between his brows as he works.

The shirt gets undone to his navel before Ilya is growling, “that’s enough. Take it off.”

Shane pulls the silky garment over his head and carefully folds it before setting it at the edge of the mattress. When he looks back towards Ilya the man is watching him with a look Shane can only describe as fond. His eyes are creased at the corners and his mouth is tilted upwards in a soft smirk. That look… It’s not teasing, not mean, but utterly, and completely, fond.

Shane’s heart skips several beats and he makes a soft sound, something between a hum and a grunt, as he sinks back down over Ilya, elbows digging into the comforter at either side of Ilya’s head. Ilya tilts his chin, lips pouted just slightly, and Shane obliges easily, slipping his tongue between Ilya’s teeth. He tastes like mint and smoke and Shane never wants to stop kissing him, tasting him, being this close to him. 

Fuck, he missed him.

When he’d been alone in Montreal he’d missed him. When he’d been on the road and sharing a room with Hayden he’d missed him. When he’d been at the table across from his parents talking about Wimbledon he’d missed him. When he’d been staring at the puck with Ilya right there in front of him he’d missed him. When he’d been inside Rose he’d missed him. 

And there was white hot shame in his gut about that last one. It wasn’t fair to Rose. 

Suddenly he feels compelled to apologise, for what he doesn’t know, but he needs to say something to alleviate the heavy feeling in his stomach. But then Ilya’s fingers are threading through the short strands of hair at the nape of his neck and then his palm is cupping the back of his head and Shane just… melts. Shame burning away in an instant after flaring bright and hot for an awful, ugly moment.

Ilya grasps at Shane’s hair and tugs, harsh, making Shane wince and hiss. But the sting of it feels good, grounds him, so Shane presses his head into Ilya’s palm. Silently asking for more. Ilya tugs again and this time Shane moans shakily against his mouth.

There’s a collection of decorative pillows just above where Ilya’s head rests on the mattress and Ilya reaches for them blindly with his free hand, chucking them off the bed. Shane can’t help but laugh at that; Ilya’s disdain for embellished cushions is an enduring quirk that’s followed them through years of hookups from hotels to secret sex condos to Ilya’s Boston home. 

Shane reaches out for the last cushion and shoves it off the side of the bed and Ilya grins a little manically against his mouth, nipping at his bottom lip, and then he’s pushing himself further up the mattress so his legs no longer dangle off the end. Ilya’s foot catches on the comforter as he wriggles upwards and it gets shoved down to the bottom of the bed before it slips smoothly off the end.

“My shirt is on the floor now,” Shane complains, mouthing along Ilya’s strong jaw, smearing kisses and saliva over stubbled skin.

“Shut up, Hollander,” Ilya growls and then he is rolling them over and trapping Shane beneath him. 

And in a competition of strength they are pretty evenly matched but Shane, at that moment, feels like prey caught in the claws of a predator. Helpless but to submit to the tight, gripping fingers wrapped around his biceps and the fierce kisses being smeared over his jaw and throat. Though, he finds that the feeling isn’t uncomfortable. Instead of shying away he presses his hips up, arching into the cage of Ilya’s body, and moans at being held in place. 

Shane’s hands push under Ilya’s tank, palms gliding over thick abdominal muscles protecting delicate organs, nails scratching through the hairs curling over Ilya’s broad chest. His palms cup the swell of Ilya’s pecs, thumbs dragging back and forth over the man’s pebbled nipples, and Ilya responds to the touch with a low rumble, his fingernails biting deeper into skin. There will probably be little crescents indented into his inner bicep when Ilya eventually lets him go. 

Shane wishes, stupidly, for Ilya to leave something more permanent in his wake. Some kind of proof that the shape of Ilya Rozanov has permanently, irreversibly, altered the shape of Shane Hollander. 

Why are you telling me this?

The taste of cigarettes on Ilya’s tongue makes Shane think about smouldering ashes and burnt flesh. Behind his eyelids he sees an amber glow and long fingers caressing the cylinder of a cigarette; he sees a perfect circle burnt into the delicate skin of his wrist; he sees a heart-shaped mouth dragging and a tongue lapping at the wound. He squirms at the thought and bites at Ilya’s tongue, desperate to keep himself from begging for his depraved imaginings outloud. 

When Ilya pulls back, to remove his shirt, Shane bites his own tongue against a whine that threatens to spill over. He traps the sound in his throat just in time and breathes heavily through his nose. Reorientating. He doesn’t want Ilya to stop kissing him but he also wants to feel Ilya’s skin against his own. Those wants war within him until he’s reaching out, fingers clenching and unclenching around the empty air between them, beckoning Ilya back between his bent knees once his head reemerges from the rumpled heap of his tanktop.

“Needy,” Ilya murmurs, though it doesn’t sound teasing. 

“‘m not,” Shane lies, though it doesn’t sound convincing. 

Something like affection flits over Ilya’s features, his lips quirking softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners, but he smoothly replaces the look with a familiar, safer, heated smoulder. Then Ilya is leaning down to kiss him again and Shane chases the remnants of affection lingering on his lips.

Ilya’s fingers tangle through Shane’s hair, pulling his head back, barring his throat. Teeth scrape over the knob of his Adam’s apple and then across the wing of his clavicle, the sting quickly followed by the soothing, wet drag of Ilya’s tongue. Each touch raises goosebumps across his flesh and Shane shivers as Ilya travels lower, mouth mapping a path over his chest and nipples and ribs and stomach. Down to his navel where Ilya presses his tongue into Shane’s bellybutton and kisses messily above the waistband of his shorts.

Shane’s heels push into the mattress as his hips press upwards. He wants Ilya to hurry the fuck up. He wants Ilya to go slower. He wants; he wants; he wants.

It felt like we were something.

It’s terrible. All this wanting. 

Shane would do almost anything to stop this wanting.

We can’t be something, Hollander.

Except walk away, apparently.

Would you want to be? If we could?

He turns away from where Ilya kneels between his thighs. If he were smart he would stop this before it went any further. If he were smart he wouldn’t have asked Ilya for his room number and ended up here beneath Ilya again in the first place. If he were really, truly smart he would have left it how it ended in Boston; he would have walked away and stayed away.

But Shane doesn’t know how to be fucking smart about this. About Ilya. Maybe he doesn’t want to be.

We can't.

Between one racing thought and the next his pants are discarded. Shane wriggles against the cream bedsheets and writhes when Ilya’s mouth closes around the head of his cock through the cotton of his briefs. Ilya sucks and drools on the fabric until it’s soaking, damp with saliva and Shane’s own arousal, and sticking to Shane’s cock uncomfortably.

“Please,” he begs, barely above a whisper. His voice is suddenly scratchy and feathery, hardly heard above the rushing blood in his ears.

Shane’s hands find Ilya’s curls, fingers burying in the soft tangle of Ilya’s golden hair and pulling at the strands greedily. Ilya removes his mouth from Shane’s cock and the whine Shane had buried earlier resurfaces and rips through his throat, high and needy, as Shane chases Ilya’s mouth with his hips. Ilya hums, low and rumbly, nosing into the crease where his thigh meets his groin.

Shane whimpers and Ilya shushes him, one hand wrapping around the back of Shane’s thigh, thumb stroking gently over warm skin. Shane drops his hips and breathes shakily in through his nose then out his mouth. He feels like he’s played a full period on the ice; his lungs burn with each inhale.

“Please,” he repeats, and it sounds pathetic.

Ilya doesn’t let him dwell on his own desperate pleading for long; already moving to remove Shane’s underwear before he has even finished asking. When Ilya’s tongue flattens against the dribbling, twitching head of his cock Shane bites his lip and swallows a mortifying ‘thank you’ before it can leave his mouth.

The sound Ilya makes when he wraps his lips around Shane is obscene. A deep, unmistakably masculine moan that vibrates up the column of his throat and shatters the hush of the room. Shane feels the depth of it in the pit of his stomach; the sound twisting in the core of him and driving him to the edge too fast, too soon. 

He has to count his breathing to stave off his orgasm.

Ilya takes Shane deep into his throat, pretty pink lips stretching wide as he sucks Shane down to the root, nose pressing into the soft skin of Shane’s belly. His fingers grope Shane’s balls, squeezing and tugging as he draws his mouth back up, before sinking back down again, setting a relentless rhythm with each bob of his head. Shane’s teeth bite into the soft flesh of his lip as he rolls his hips, chasing Ilya’s mouth, chasing Ilya’s fingers. When Ilya’s hands slip away, Shane grumbles in protest, only to sigh contentedly when Ilya’s fingers return to his body to wrap around the backs of his thighs, gripping firm. 

Strong thumbs press into muscle and calloused palms drag over sensitive skin. And there’s no denying that the hands stroking, rubbing, groping at his body belong to a man. And there’s no denying that Shane likes it. No, fucking loves it.

Unbidden, he recalls the smooth, soft skin of Rose’s manicured, slender hands. The silky texture of her auburn hair. The subtle, floral scent of her perfume. The gentle, feminine curve of her hips, her breasts, her throat. The plush, pink shape of her mouth.

Shane rolls his neck and looks down his body, at the man knelt between his thighs. Ilya is all broad, muscular shoulders and big, thick-knuckled hands and strong, sharp edges. The line of his jaw, the cut of his waist, the swell of his pecs, the bulk of his thighs. All of him big, manly, a fucking adonis.

His head drops back into the mattress and he squeezes his eyes shut tight.

I think I’m gay.

He laughs. Well, laughs is a generous word for it. It’s more like a hysterical, aborted giggle. Shane quickly clamps a hand over his mouth to bury the sound before Ilya notices it. Ilya, of course, notices anyway and he pulls off Shane's cock with a slick popping sound and pinches Shane’s thigh to get his attention. 

Mm. Yeah. What makes you think that?

When Shane tilts his head down Ilya is already looking back, cocking an eyebrow in question. Shane shakes his head and says, “nothing. Sorry.”

until it cuts to a clip he's never seen of the metros' locker room from when they were celebrating. he watches as shaky footage pans over a group of players huddled together, all screaming and whooping as someone pops open champagne and pours it all over a laughing shane, who is situated right in the middle. he watches with intense curiosity as the shane on screen texts someone with a huge smile on his face, even with the celebration happening around him.

"who were you texting, moy lyubimyy? yuna, yes?" he couldn't imagine there being anyone else shane would be talking to during a moment like that.

shane's eyes dart to the screen as ilya rewinds a couple of seconds so that he can see it for himself. he watches as shane's eyes widen, as his cheeks immediately tint into a bright pink. he quickly looks away and back at his book.

"um..." shane starts, trailing off as he glances back at ilya with a face of pure embarrassment. "no. i uh, fuck. i was actually; well. i was texting you."

ilya's brows furrow as he thinks back to that night. he did remember sending shane a number of texts, most of which were filthy promises of how he was planning to reward him at the mlh awards that year. but he knew those came much later in the evening. until he remembered the single word text he had sent almost immediately after shane had held the cup over his head for the second time in a row. a teasing little quip.

'lucky.'

a slow smirk spreads across ilya's face. "you wanted to text me so much that you could not wait until you left the locker room? you wanted my dick this badly, hollander?"

shane shoved him, looking every bit of the angry little kitten ilya likes to teasingly call him. "fuck off! that's not... fuck. i liked you. a lot, okay? i probably already loved you. so yeah, it was really nice to hear from you during the biggest moment of my life at that point."

ilya felt like molten hot lava hearing those words. his heart was beating so fast he thought it might burst out of his chest, while all the blood in his body simultaneously surged downwards.