Turn and Face the Tiger

“Was on clearance at the store last time I was there. I thought it would come in useful, maybe.” 

The answer doesn’t make sense, but Shane doesn’t know how to call him on it. Did he…buy a water bowl just for Shane’s dog? 

“I brought her collapsible one,” Shane offers, even though it’s a moot point now. He’d been planning on using it for the baggie of kibble he’d forgotten to take out of her vest to feed her dinner and then just rinse it out to be for water again. Not having to do that is convenient, certainly, but he also doesn’t know why it’s happening in the first place, another new element today stacking on top of the ones already making him feel on edge. 

Rozanov just shrugs, moving to wash his hands and starting to open the container of tuna salad. 

“No need,” he says. “Already done.” 

Shane doesn’t know how to verbalize that Rozanov going out of his way to get a water bowl for his dog and putting it down for her just makes this entire day feel more like a trap. Rozanov’s always been good with Winnie—Shane knows by now that he’s a dog person—and Winnie adores him because she has terrible taste in men and a weakness for a specific brand of liver treats only made in the US that Rozanov is her regular dealer for whenever they see each other, but it feels beyond the scope of what a hookup would do, making sure his dog is taken care of while he’s visiting. It feels…boyfriend-y, just like Rozanov throwing his clothes at him earlier did. Still, he’s not sure that there’s a way to say, “You’re acting like we’re a couple and it’s freaking me the fuck out” without sounding like a crazy person. 

He takes another sip of his ginger ale instead. 

*

“Win, no!” Shane hisses, rising to grab Winnie when she starts to follow after Rozanov as he walks away to answer his phone, abandoning her chew toy and the blanket Shane had put down for her when they got here as a makeshift bed to tell her where to stay. 

She sees him coming, though, and speeds up, jogging after Rozanov before she can be stopped. Any further, and he’d look like he was following Rozanov, too, and he pauses at the edge of the living room, torn between the manners of allowing Rozanov the privacy he clearly wanted and retrieving his punk ass dog who is not respecting the unspoken request. 

Still, he knows firsthand that Winnie at least keeps any secrets entrusted to her. 

He sits back down. 

*

“Ilya.” 

Shane has one moment of peace after the word leaves his mouth. 

And then the situation fully registers to him. 

Rozanov is smiling in a way that makes his stomach feel warm and cold at the same time, twisting into a knot of pleasure and confusion. He looks so soft and happy, like Shane has given him a gift in saying his name back to him. It makes Shane want to kiss him again, to wrap him in a blanket and run his fingers through his curls, to ride him until they both cum again and snuggle up with him on the sofa and do nothing beyond that. He wants the fulfillment of the pretend this day has increasingly turned into. 

And then he wonders what the opposite swing from something this temptingly good is going to be, how Rozanov is going to slide the casual back in, ripping right through the delicate cobwebs of the goodness of today. 

In an instant, the softness of it is too much, the entire day constricting around him like the mousetrap it’s felt like from the beginning. 

“I-”

He starts to pull back, avoiding Rozanov’s mouth even as it chases his own. He looks away, overwhelmed by the liquid joy in Rozanov’s eyes, knowing it’s something he shouldn’t be seeing, something Rozanov isn’t going to like him having seen later, when this day is over and he’s had time to think about it. He has to go, he knows in an instant. He has to go right now. He has to leave and-

“Shane?” Rozanov asks, holding onto his hips. “What-” 

They both jump as the noise of something like gravel hitting cement echoes through into the room, the movement making them bang their heads together. Shane leans forward for just a moment, hand pressed to the spot, until the surprise-pain of it fades just enough to return to knowing exactly what his dog has just done. 

“Winnie!” He yells, climbing off of Rozanov clumsily for very different reason than his attempt literally one second ago. “Bad girl! Leave it!” 

By the time he gets to the kitchen, though, it’s too late. 

He exhales in annoyed frustration and leans against the wall, watching his disservice animal gleefully chase her stolen hoard of ice cubes around the kitchen, pausing to crunch one with clear pleasure before returning to sliding the others around with her nose and paws. 

He watches her slap shot two under the fridge in quick succession and wonders if he could just complete his previous urge to flee. 

Without Winnie. 

*

“-so fucking sorry, seriously,” he says to Rozanov, both of them on their knees and trying to locate all of the rogue ice cubes, their work watched by a resentful Winnie who has been banished to the doorway and told to stay, her head propped on her paws in a canine performance of pouting. 

“If you had told me, Winka, I could have just given you some,” Rozanov says to her, sounding amused. “You are a guest.” 

“Jesus,” Shane complains, smiling a little despite himself. “Don’t encourage her.” 

“So what if the lady likes ice cubes?” Rozanov teases. “We all have our vices.” 

“Yeah, well,” Shane says dryly, rising onto his knees to toss his latest recovery into the sink and smiling again when Rozanov playfully cheers when he makes it, “none of my vices mean ending up with a wet sock later.” 

“Hmm,” Rozanov says, leaning forward to grab an ice cube from under the edge of the cabinet in a move that makes his muscles flex in a way Shane probably shouldn’t find as attractive as he does when he’s cleaning up his dog’s mess with a guy he absolutely almost just bailed on, “probably not the worst thing your socks have faced based on how horny you are all th-” 

Shane’s next ice cube also hits its target. 

Rozanov’s look says he’s not nearly so impressed. 

*

Rozanov takes pity on Winnie and releases her from her stay so she can show off her trick of balancing a treat on her nose before tossing it up and catching it after being told “Okay.” 

For the sheer joy of watching Rozanov’s joy—and repeating each “okay” in his mouth silently, enjoying the feeling of it—Shane is almost regretful when he has to call it. 

Even if his dog didn’t deserve even one treat after her little stunt. 

“Should we talk about before?” Rozanov asks, standing and brushing his hands off on his sweatpants. 

Shane suddenly becomes fascinated looking through Rozanov’s spice rack. 

“What about before?” 

“When you jerked us both off and then looked like you saw a ghost?” Rozanov asks dryly, and Shane feels a strange mix of emotions in his chest at the way he knows exactly what expression matches that tone. 

“I mean, we don’t usually do…this,” Shane hedges, avoiding eye contact. 

“‘This?’” Rozanov repeats, and from his peripheral vision, he sees him prop his hip against the counter, arms crossed loosely across his chest. 

“Spend the night and…wear each other’s clothes and shit.” He doesn’t bring up them also not using each other’s first names. For some reason, that feels like the greatest boundary broken today, like they’ve removed a necessary layer of formality. 

A layer Shane doesn’t know how to operate without. 

“You do not like this?” Rozanov asks, and his tone is just off enough that Shane looks up. 

Somehow the little show of uncertainty makes him feel a little better, steadier that maybe Rozanov is feeling this out as he goes, that the path feels new for him, too. 

“I,” he hesitates, trying to decide if he likes it or not. “I didn’t say that. It’s just…new.” 

“Then maybe we try something new,” Rozanov says with a half-shrug. “Is okay?” 

“Why?” Shane asks, because that’s really the central thing he needs to know here: why Rozanov is suddenly changing the game without telling him the new rules. 

“Because maybe,” Rozanov says, and when he crowds him back against the counter, Shane doesn’t stop him, “it could be nice.” 

“So is this what we do now?” Shane asks, because he just needs to know. “We stay over at each other’s houses?” 

“Mm,” Rozanov agrees, leaning in to kiss him. “If you want.” 

“And we-”

His follow-up question is interrupted by the clatter of more ice cubes, his fucking criminal of a dog using his painfully awkward “what are we” conversation as a distraction to sneak back to the dispenser without being noticed. 

“Winnie!” 

*

Because Ilya Rozanov is apparently very weak-willed when it comes to the discipline of dogs who should know better, Winnie is allowed out onto the patio with an entire container of ice cubes tossed onto the concrete for her benefit. 

Watching her nearly trip herself with glee, Shane gets the feeling that Rozanov has just begun a very bad habit he’s going to get sucked into. 

It wouldn’t be the first time, he thinks in resigned fondness. 

He watches Rozanov watch Winnie, looking almost boyish when he smiles. It’s lighter than Shane is used to seeing him usually. It feels like a gift, almost, getting this glimpse of a part of him that he knows by now other people don’t. 

He considers for the first time that maybe today was the same thing: the offer of something of Rozanov’s that other people don’t get. 

The thought is…oddly pleasing. 

“It’s all fun and games until she starts deciding the rink looks like a big ice cube,” he says, and Rozanov glances at him without turning. 

“She will improve things. Maybe then Montreal will not be so boring to watch.” 

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Shane says, but he’s smiling when he does. The joking along with the acknowledgement that things are different and it’s not just in his head is helping to settle his nerves some. It occurs to him that Rozanov often has that effect on him, has since the start, really. 

Maybe he should just…let him make this feel calmer. 

“Do you usually-” A crash from the patio makes them both turn to look, and Shane winces, Winnie’s enthusiasm having made one of Rozanov’s patio chairs collateral damage in her ice cube insanity. “Told you not to let her play with them,” he observes. 

Rozanov snorts and then tilts his head slightly like he’s weighing something mentally. After a moment, he crosses over to Shane, standing beside him and wrapping his arms around his chest, chin on his shoulder, so they can watch Winnie’s property damage together. Shane is tense reflexively but then testingly leans back, finding Rozanov solid and steady behind him. 

Finding Ilya solid and steady behind him. 

“Okay?” He asks softly. 

Shane reaches up and squeezes his wrist gently. 

“Okay.” 

They keep standing like that while they watch Winnie continue to rearrange Ilya’s patio furniture. 

*

“You are mean and cruel and abusive,” Ilya observes while they’re making dinner, a third attempt at illicit ice cube acquisition from Winnie meaning Shane went out to the garage to use the flap of an old box to make an ice dispenser shield that matches the one on his own fridge back in Montreal. 

Winnie, watching him balefully, appears to be conveying the same judgment she did when he put his up. 

“You want to wake up to an empty ice dispenser and a flooded kitchen?” He asks lightly, taping the cardboard into place. 

Ilya finishes chopping up tomatoes without comment. 

*

After a last round of fucking for the night followed by a shared shower (...and a shower blowjob), Shane lets Winnie out one last time and then gets her settled on the blanket he brought up from the living room, folding it and setting it down in a corner of the room. She circles and circles and then settles, well-used to sleeping wherever he does. 

Climbing back into bed next to Ilya, he wishes he could say he was equally at ease. 

He feels hyperaware of the stretch of sheets between them, unsure if he’s supposed to venture closer or if Ilya is used to sleeping apart. Shane tries to remember the last time he shared a bed with someone and comes up blank, trying to remember from television shows how people usually sleep and then wondering if that’s just for the sake of the shot or if-

“So far away,” Ilya observes. Shane looks over to him. “Come here.” 

“You come here,” Shane says automatically, but he obeys, turning onto his side and shifting closer, letting Ilya guide him back down, counting on him knowing how people usually share beds while sleeping. 

He’s the one who’s had plenty of experience after all. 

“Comfortable?” Ilya asks after they’ve settled, Shane’s head on his shoulder, Ilya’s arm around his back. 

Shane takes stock and then slowly brings his leg up to rest it over Ilya’s hips. 

“Comfortable?” He parrots back, looking up as best he can. 

Ilya’s answer comes in the form of a kiss to his head. 

Shane finds himself relaxing faster than he expected, soothed by warm skin against his and the faint thrum of Ilya’s heartbeat. He dares wiggle a bit, settling more, and he feels the vibration of Ilya humming a laugh. 

“Better?” He asks when Shane is still again, sounding amused. 

Shane yawns. 

“Better.”