Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Non-Linear Narrative, Anthology, One Shot Collection, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Anal Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Degradation Kink, Spit Kink, Top Ilya Rozanov, Bottom Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-03 Completed: 2026-10-11 Words: 11,534 Chapters: 7/7

Small Hours

Summary

Morsel • môrs(ə)l • [mor-sel]
noun
1.) A piece; a bite
2.) A small quantity
3.) Something delectable and pleasing

Thoughts on a marriage; or, things that might have happened.

Notes

This is a very pretentious dumping ground for my Tumblr ficlets, wherein I have dressed them up all nice with a summary so that you can bookmark them at your leisure.

Chapter 1: Sveta

Chapter Summary

A campfire story.

Sveta comes out to visit the cottage for a weekend sometime in August post-wedding. She is NOT enamored with the Canadian wilderness, but Ilya has been campaigning to get her out of the United States for awhile and this is likely step two or three of an exhaustive plan so she's letting it happen. She doesn't know if she's going to let him convince her to move to fucking Ottawa of all the fucked places but she's curious to see him try.

And they are sitting around Shane Hollander's fucking fire pit, and Ilyusha has his head on his husband's shoulder, which is nice to witness and cute enough that Sveta snaps a picture of them. She wasn't allowed to have these sorts of pictures on her phone for a very long time and she likes seeing her friend this way. She likes it just as much as the blurry images she recieves from Sasha living his best life in Paris, pinned between beautiful people of every gender. She likes it just as much as the pictures her mother sends her whenever she's in Detroit and sends Sveta pictures of her aunts and cousins and dogs all made up in hats.

She hasn't hardly swallowed the last of the wine in her glass when Shane leans over and tips the bottle towards her. She's been waited on hand and foot since arriving here—a natural consequence of one of the homeowners being her childhood best friend and the other being that friend's husband, who is still mildly afraid of her.

Shane discovers that the bottle is empty when only a trickle exits into Svetlana's glass. He tilts it up and says, "Oh, we have another."

Ilya rises from the couch with the energy of a resurrected corpse. "I'll get it," he says, waving at both of them to stay sitting. "No, don't get up, I'll—sit down, Hollander."

Sveta elected, long ago, to ignore the way that Shane lets Ilya boss him around. She can read between the lines and that's none of her business—at least not until she can put Ilyusha between herself and Sasha and interrogate him about it, preferably somewhere within earshot of Shane Hollander and his easy blushes.

Shane still looks a little dazed when he says, "It must be weird for you. To see him like this."

"I have seen Ilyusha drunk many times."

"No, I mean, like...here?"

"In Canada? I can't really say I saw it coming, no."

"No, like..." Shane sighs, shifts in his seat. "I dunno. Settled, I guess? Married. It must be weird to you that he, like, got married."

Sveta opens her mouth and barks out a single, harsh laugh that scares a bird on the lake into flight.

Shane jumps in his seat and says, "Okay, I get that it's funny, but—"

"Shane Hollander," Sveta says, leaning over the arm of the admittedly very comfortable patio chair she's sprawled over. "You think I'm surprised that Ilya got married? Ilya Rozanov?"

Let it never be said that Shane Hollander doesn't rise to a challenge (Nobody has ever said this; he is the most competitive person on the continent) because he levels his eyes at her and says, "Yes."

Sveta barks another laugh at the sky. So many fucking stars out here.

"Let me tell you a story." She turns herself to face Shane, empty wine glass cradled to her chest, bundled into her (very nice, purposefully and fashionably frumpy) sweater. "There was this roving band of girls in our neighborhood. Fucking feral. And we would meet up on this playground. Ilyusha would be there with his mother and I would be there with my nanny and the girls—I don't know. Anyway, he was the only boy. The things they made him do, Shane. Their favorite game was to make him lay on his back like a baby while they pretended to feed and rock him. They fed him grass."

"...Okay."

"And one day he gets tired of being the baby and says, if we're going to play house, I should be the husband. And the girls say, okay Ilyusha. You can be all of our husband."

Shane huffs out a laugh, and visibly considers the repercussions of being jealous of a band of young Russian children from the previous century, and then laughs again.

"I think I was worried, maybe, you know. Because even at that age, I had some idea how some Russian men thought of being a husband." Svetlana lets the thought percolate for a moment, souring the story just slightly. "But Ilya just starts saying, Hello my beautiful wives. I'm back from work at the factory. How nice to come home to my beautiful wives. On and on. Oh how I love my beautiful wives! I will use my factory money to buy you all beautiful coats!"

"He did not," Shane says, but he's got most of his fist in his mouth at this point, just fucking gnawing as he pretends not to be charmed. Or maybe is just very, very charmed.

"And for years after, he would call those girls his wives. He remembered their birthdays every year. He cosigned on an apartment for one of them while she was unemployed. Another, I think he still pays for her mother's medical treatments."

Shane smiles a melancholy, sweet smile at the fire. "He's...a good guy. A great guy."

"The best," Sveta says.

"Yeah. But that's...that's just how he is." Shane shrugs. "You know, none of that really has anything to do with—"

"Let me tell you another story," Sveta says, interrupting the spiral. "I love my father, yes? He always treated me well. My mother never had anything bad to say about him, he never said anything bad about her. I'm a very lucky girl, to have a good papa like him."

"Sure," Shane says, easily, because he was also a child whose father kissed and hugged him.

"But his best friend was Grigory Rozanov. Who was...not so."

"I've heard."

"I wasn't around Grigory all the time. Or even a lot. But whenever I was, and I heard the way he spoke to his women—Irina, later Polina—Ilya would get this look on his face. Mad, yes, but also embarrassed. He would look at me like he wished I wasn't there to see it. And every time he would say, I'm sorry about that."

Shane glances over his shoulder, probably anticipating Ilya's return. Sveta somehow gets the feeling that he'll return exactly once she's said what needs saying.

"The first time he came back to Moscow after moving to the US, he said to me..." Sveta purses her lips, because this makes her emotional, and she doesn't very much like being emotional. "He said that the world was far too cruel to walk through it alone. And that he didn't know why people were so cruel to the person they had chosen to walk through it with." She tilts her head, meets Shane Hollander's eyes. "He said...I have always told myself I will have the strength not to be cruel."

Shane's eyes are catching the firelight in a new, specific way.

"And as you know," Sveta says, tone lighter. "Ilya Rozanov is one of the strongest people on this fucking planet."

"Would you excuse me?" Shane mumbles, scrambling out of his seat.

Sveta nods, and winks in the direction of the pale-eyed shadow that's been looming over the kitchen counter this whole time, and never does get her refill of wine.

Chapter 2: Bed

Chapter Summary

Perhaps the cottage is more a state of mind.

So maybe Cliff Marleau calls in sick that game against Montreal. Or maybe Shane looks where he's going and doesn't get hit. Or maybe the hit just isn't even that bad. And Shane goes home that night and waits for Ilya in his apartment and when Ilya shows up, he's been psyching himself up for the last two hours to end this thing but then he just...can't. Shane is so softly pleased that Ilya is back, open in a way that he's never been before their phone conversations while Ilya was in Moscow, and the hit of having him again after all of that is like nothing Ilya has ever experienced. So they let it ride. And Shane does ask WillYouComeToMyCottage but crucially he is two orgasms deep and Ilya is still inside him and it has about the same effect as the morphine would have. So Ilya hits that "Maybe. Maybe." and Shane hmm's and reaches back to palm Ilya's hip, press him in closer, and they let it ride.

So it becomes real but not at the same time. So they call each other in the evenings, a few times a week, not too much. Ilya sends texts that say You looked good in Buffalo tonight, great game and Does your hole feel empty without me and, worst of all, he texts things like Did your sink ever get fixed I know the dripping was driving you crazy. And he forces himself not to think about what any of it means. And he doesn't stop. Doesn't even really think about stopping, anymore.

He lets his teammates think that things are getting serious with Montreal Girl, because it's a good excuse for why he's not pulling and the guys have formed a narrative that makes sense. Of course Rozanov is settling down now. He just buried his father. Those kinds of things put life into perspective. Time to get serious, time to be a man. He's gonna get a wife and have a couple of kids and slap the Rozanov name on all of them and make dearly departed Papa so very very proud.

Some of it is not untrue, if one considers that Shane IS Montreal Girl, and things are getting serious. Serious in a hot, messy way that neither of them completely knows what to do with. As a younger man, as the kid he really no longer is, Ilya always assumed that this kind of thing would feel like a fucking prison—and it does, but in almost the exact opposite way of what he'd supposed. The bars aren't to keep him in, but to keep Shane out, and it's feeling more and more like Shane is bending the bars, pushing them out of the way and sneaking into the cell with him, and fuck if it's the only thing Ilya wants, to live in this prison with Shane. And maybe they can leave it together someday. But he never says any of it.

The Metros make the playoffs, number three seed against the Admirals' number two. And the first major upset of the playoff season occurs when the Metros knock the Admirals out in game seven of the series after some particularly nasty hockey is played on both sides. Scott Hunter was playing like he had something to prove and Shane Hollander was playing like a man who had nothing to lose—because a two-time Stanley Cup winning captain going for his third actually, really does have nothing to lose.

The Metros go home in the Conference finals. Boston sends them home. They do not even make it to the fucking couch that night. Ilya fucks Shane on the goddamn floor in the entryway of his house, in front of the windows, presses bruises on top of bruises. Shane is feral, biting and snarling and only submitting when Ilya puts a hand against the back of his neck and says, “Who do you fucking belong to?” and Shane says, “You, fuck, it’s always been you,” like it’s being drawn from him with a knife.

Ilya Rozanov wins his second Stanley Cup on a June night in Nashville. He still hasn't slept when his back hits the sheets of a hotel suite he doesn't remember walking into, six o'clock in the morning with dawn behind the curtains. Shane is up for his morning jog. He says he's taking it along the lake. He says he watched the game with his parents the night before. He goes quiet on the other end of the line and Ilya drunkenly hums a tune he heard at some point during the night.

Shane says, "I'm so fucking proud of you, baby," and that, too, sounds like it's being ripped from his unwilling body. There is so much love and jealousy and affection and spite wrapped up in it that Ilya can only laugh. It has never felt more strange, that they are the only two people in the entire world who know about this. This beautiful, awful, insane thing they do. The fact that they cannot talk about it, even to each other.

Ilya goes to Russia.

Ostensibly, he is tying up loose ends. He is visiting his mother's grave. He is giving his niece presents while she stares at him like she doesn't remember him putting her on his shoulders when she was little. Because she probably doesn't. And God knows what her father has said about him, now that she is old enough to understand. It's supposed to be a one-month trip. When the summer spits them out onto training camps, Ilya has only been back in the States for 72 hours.

He has spent the entire summer calling Shane as the moon rises in Moscow, to the point where Shane had eventually confessed to him that his dick had started having a Pavlovian reaction to the clock in his living room announcing that it's gone two o'clock.

Ilya has gone so long without having any thought about fucking someone who isn't Shane, in fact, that he doesn't even think to vocalize any of it. It's just a part of his being now. This brain that sometimes thinks awful things, and these hands that were built to play hockey and throw punches and touch freckles. This dick that only gets hard for Shane Hollander. Ruined for everyone else.

(One time, over the summer in Russia, a girl approached with that familiar look on her face and he'd leaned over and shook his head and said, "I'm married," just to feel the words in his mouth. It hadn't felt like a lie.)

So too much has been said. Or not enough. Or the right things, but to the wrong people. Sveta knows about Jane. She probably has her suspicions on who he is. Ilya is sure that Shane has not said fucking word to anyone, save perhaps Rose Landry. There have been a few implications. But nothing has been said.

So he opens the door to Shane after the first Boston-Montreal matchup of the season and it's perhaps only the third or fourth time they've been together since Tampa. And so much is left unsaid. And so much has been said. And Ilya's body craves Shane's like a fucking addict. It's not his fault that they, again, don't make it to the bed. The couch is close enough.

Shane thinks it's funny—he’s in fine form, body moving atop Ilya's with only the absolutely necessary clothes removed. Joggers, underwear. The socks and the crewneck sweatshirt (Metros logo, tiny 24 over the breast almost like a kid with his name sewn into the collar) and the fucking baseball cap he'd worn for anonymity in the cab all stay on. He's panting by the end, overheated in his layers, laughing and running his fingers over Ilya's jaw and telling him that the beard burn on his thighs from playoffs took an entire week to heal. Ilya tells him You loved it and Shane blushes and arches and says, "Yeah, I did," and he's glorious.

Then Ilya lifts him off and slaps his ass and sends him marching into the bathroom with a command to make himself decent again, which Shane scoffs at even as he walks away, awkward swing to his step, wet trail down the back of his thigh.

He is not so glorious when he returns.

He wears a pair of Ilya's sweatpants and he smells like Ilya's soap but he's frowning and he puts himself a whole cushion away from Ilya. When Ilya scooches to him, showing off his shoulders just a bit, Shane watches him come but pulls his face away when Ilya tries to kiss him.

"Baby," Ilya pouts against his shoulder. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Shane mutters. And the thing is, Ilya knows that Shane is lying. He also knows that if something spooked him this bad a year ago, he would have been ten minutes gone already. Ilya knows that he is trying.

"What scared you?" Ilya murmurs. "Hm? I bet if you tell me, I can explain."

Shane twists his head to the side again, but this time it's more like he doesn't want to be seen. Ilya sees his jaw tense, untense.

"I just don't think it's very fair," Shane says after moment.

"What is not fair, lyubimyy?"

"You..." Shane scoffs, draws a hand through his hair. "You'll fuck her in your bed, but when I show up you—fuck me on the couch or the floor—"

"Shane," Ilya says. "What did you see?"

"Her fucking—" Shane sighs, and says the word bra under his breath like some people say fucking, but Shane Hollander does everything backwards, it sometimes seems, "is on top of your laundry bag, and your bed's a mess. How recently was she here?"

"Shane," Ilya says.

"I get it, you know. I—maybe I don't love it, honestly, but I do get it. We don't see each other much, and even if we did, it's—" Shane sighs, squeezes his eyes shut. "It's not like I can expect anything. I get that. But could you just...I don't know, is it too much to ask that you change your sheets after you've been with her? Before I get here?"

"Hollander."

"Is that too much to ask?" Shane sounds like he's genuinely asking. Like he actually thinks he's toeing over some invisible line between them.

"The bed is a mess because I am bad sleeper," Ilya tells him, not ungently. He doesn't say, You would know this if you had ever once stayed. Doesn't say it because they've beat that particular horse dead. They've both made their apologies. Several months of cross-continental Skype calls leaves a lot of time to talk things out, once the jerking off is over.

Shane scoffs. "Whatever."

"No, is true." Ilya smacks a kiss onto his shoulder, and then onto his neck. "I kick like donkey. And I took a nap before you came, because I wanted to stay up all night and fuck you very nicely right until you have to leave in the morning."

Shane shudders, mouth falling open, and says, "We'd have to sleep at some point."

"You could. I wouldn't mind."

Ilya sees the shudder that runs through him, and the dilation of his pupils, and the very deliberate way that he visibly shelves that train of thought to take back down later.

"The bra?" Shane mumbles.

"Has probably been here for years. When I find it, I send it to laundry with everything else. I do not know where it always hides."

"That's..." Shane screws up his face. "Sort of too stupid not to be true."

"Is truth. Would you like to hear another truth?" Ilya waits patiently for Shane to give his little furrow-browed nod. "You are only person I have ever fucked on the floor. Only person who ever wanted it that bad. Only person slutty enough to let me."

Shane's inhale is deep, shuddery. His whole chest expands with it and he swings his face away from Ilya like his breath on his face is too overwhelming. Ilya grins.

"Ask me," Ilya whispers. "Ask me how many people I've fucked this year."

Shane clears his throat. "How many?"

"One."

Another gasp.

"Now ask me the other thing," Ilya whispers. "Ask me for what you want, Hollander."

Shane's lips part to admit his tongue between them, pink and wet. Ilya watches his lips curl over his teeth, his eyes dilate, and he knows that he is absolutely fucked.

"Fuck me," Shane whispers. "Just me. Please. Make me yours. Be mine."

Ilya stands up, pulls Shane along with him. In a move that's becoming quite practiced, he gets his hands under Shane's thighs and lifts him, and all 200 pounds, six feet of hockey player are in his arms easily.

"Where are we going?" Shane asks, though he clearly knows the answer.

"Bed," Ilya says. "I'm taking you to bed."

Chapter 3: Love

Chapter Summary

The lovemaking happens on accident sometimes.

Chapter Notes

It’s after some brutal fucking game. Montreal at Boston, end of a roadie, Shane cracked his fucking head on the ice hard enough that Ilya swore he felt it through the ice. The visor on his fucking helmet snapped off. His ears rang and his head swam but he didn't lose consciousness, his eyes were dilating fine. The trainers kept him back for half a period but eventually had to let him back out on the ice because someone complaining that much and talking that lucidly was probably alright. And he is, he is actually alright, but by the time the adrenalin of the game is gone and by the time he's done self-flagellating for the fact that, after all of that shit, Boston won by one point—by the time that's done, he's tired. His head aches. And this is the last time he gets to see Ilya, maybe, before playoffs ramp up and they don't speak for awhile. So of course he still goes to Ilya's place and of course he lets Ilya kiss him hard in the doorway, though he can't help the slight Ah, ah that comes out of his mouth when Ilya does his normal thing and fists a hand in his hair.

"Oh, oh, your head." Ilya says this far too gently and far too sweetly, like one might to an animal or child. Because Ilya is a little like the Big Bad Wolf and at times speaks with a voice not his own. Sometimes he opens his mouth but what comes out isn't his normal voice, deep and sexy and sometimes crude. At times he speaks with a different voice entirely—soft, higher. Call it loving, if it wasn't Ilya fucking Rozanov.

(This is because Ilya Rozanov is a lover at heart, always has been. Shane doesn't know this yet.)

"It's fine," Shane mutters, already searching for Ilya's mouth again. "Come on. Come on."

And Ilya obliges him, slots their mouths back together and slots his hands behind Shane's thighs to lift, and Shane loves that. He always does. He would never ever tell Rozanov, but he fucking loves submitting to him in that way—giving over his entire body as something to be picked up, moved around. This instrument of his that he keeps so finely tuned, and when he's with Ilya it doesn't belong to him anymore. It feels so fucking good, every time.

It feels especially good tonight, when all he's heard for hours is Fuck Hollander that one was bad. Careful with that head man, we're gonna need it. That one was nasty, you sure you're good? Gotta be careful man.

Ilya says precisely none of this. Ilya hauls him to the bedroom and tilts onto the bed, landing on it widthwise with Shane under him. He kisses Shane's stomach and hips as he takes off his pants for him and then he rests his chin in Shane's bush. Smiles up at him all crooked bottom teeth and beauty marks and says, "You have headache, hm? I see you squint."

"A little. It's fine."

"You know what's good for headache?" Ilya kisses him twice, once in the hip, once on the stomach, low enough that Shane feels the suction of the kiss at the base of his dick.

"What?" Shane whispers, arms over his head and knees dropped onto the bedspread. Splayed out, basking like a lizard on a hot rock. Ilya has a particular blanket that he puts down over the bed when he knows Shane is coming. It’s nothing they’ve ever talked about. Shane enjoys the feeling of it now, against his arms and back and the tender backs of his thighs and his balls. Sometimes, Shane doesn’t even feel this free in his body when he’s alone.

"Orgasm," Ilya says simply. "Releases chemicals, makes you feel good. I'll make you feel good, okay? See if that headache goes away."

Ilya always makes him feel good, Shane doesn’t say. Tonight is no different, though he tests Shane’s patience with an odd bit of foreplay where he manhandles Shane’s body around the way he likes but only to put a pillow behind Shane's head and a pillow under his hips. He asks him if he's comfortable. And Shane would roll his eyes and accuse him of patronizing him, making fun of him for taking the hit, if there wasn't something different in Rozanov's eyes tonight. He kneels between Shane's legs and looks down at him, hands massaging Shane's thighs, and he looks unbearably handsome. Shane tells him so.

Ilya looks at him for a moment. Intense, beautiful. He opens his mouth and only says, “Thank you,” in that way that he does when he cannot respond any other way. When Shane says congratulations or I’m impressed. Genuine, simple praise seems to make the comebacks and the snark dry up, for reasons Shane can’t parse.

"Are you gonna fuck me?" Shane murmurs, when the staring and the touching has gone on for a very long time.

"Mm-hm. Yes." Ilya kisses his belly again, presses his forehead there. Says something that might be So beautiful or Pretty boy or even My baby. Shane decides it's not for his ears and doesn't listen, and then makes himself forget he ever heard it.

Ilya fucks him for absolute ages and says things like, Feel good? Nice for you? Nice full feeling in your tummy? How is your head, baby, feel better? And Shane doesn't know why it doesn't feel condescending, why it feels so fucking good to let Ilya handle him this way when they normally snarl and bite at each other after games like the one tonight and like it that way. He doesn't know why this version of Ilya's control over him feels so right and fucking special.

Shane comes twice. Once with Ilya's hand around his cock, hand fisted in Ilya's perfect hair, Ilya grunting into his neck, the beautiful sensation of Ilya's thick cock twitching inside him, ideal in almost every way. Once a little later, in Ilya's mouth after he'd come and tied off the condom and got back in bed and kissed his way slowly down Shane's body from his shoulder to his hip. A gentle, soundless orgasm that Ilya swallowed down without comment before he rested his cheek on Shane's hip and dozed for a little while.

Shane taps his chin because it's getting late and he's going to miss curfew.

"I will pay your fine," Ilya mutters next to Shane's balls.

"Bad idea," Shane mumbles. There's a beat of silence, and then he says, "We probably shouldn't...do it like that again."

Ilya, after a moment, only nods.

It's the closest they come to talking about it. The way that it gets just a bit too real sometimes. The way that they let it keep happening, each of them making eye contact with it and then plucking their own eyes out just to forget its shape.

At the door, Ilya says, "Your head feels better, yes?"

And Shane says, "Yeah, you took good care of me."

And Ilya puffs up, proud of himself, then kisses the side of Shane's head while Shane resists the urge to say Fuck, Rozanov, what did I just say, because he wants it. Goddamn it, he fucking wants it and he's tired of denying himself.

So he lets himself be held for just another minute, because someday he won't have this choice anymore.

Chapter End Notes

They LOVE each other your honor.

Chapter 4: Competition

Chapter Summary

Ilya knows that his husband is the best hockey player on the planet.

Shane Hollander is the best hockey player on the goddamn planet.

Nobody knows this better than his husband, who plays on the same team as him and is privy to all of his overlapping intricate rituals and basically fucking grew up with him. Ilya is so fucking proud and smug of the fact that he's married to the best hockey player on the planet that sometimes he zones out in public with his eyes in the middle distance and the most self-satisfied smirk on his face, his hand shoved deep in the back pocket of Shane Hollander Hometown Hero Hockey Jesus' jeans.

"You can't make that face in public," Shane hisses, and Ilya squeezes the part of Shane's body he's got lovingly cupped in his hand and that, for some reason, is worthy of a photo on some clickbait article on TMZ. Someone snaps a picture from behind a potted fucking plant of Shane looking bored out of his mind because he's going to that place in the back of his brain where he used to hide from all of his desires and now mostly just uses as a way to avoid crying or getting hard in public. Next to him, Ilya just looks fucking smug. Because he's got his hand on the ass of the best player in the NHL.

(Second-best ass, though. Ilya knows where his assets lie.)

FIRST HUSBANDS OF HOCKEY SPOTTED ON A ROMANTIC AFTERNOON OUT, screams the article. Ilya cannot fathom why this is news.

“They’re calling it couple goals,” Yuna says over the rim of her reading glasses. She is, of course, the one who finds and draws their attention to the article. Her Google alerts are comprehensive and probably count as a form of state surveillance at this point.

“They should be talking about the couple goals I scored last night,” Shane grumbles, because he’s also the funniest person in the entire goddamn world, and Ilya initiates a slightly crazed game of footsie under the table.

Ilya also knows with no hint of uncertainty that he can never tell Shane that he knows that he is the best hockey player in the entire fucking world. Shane once told him that when Ilya brought it up, whispering it into his ear that night at the 2021 All-Star Weekend, he'd gotten the ick so hard that he'd almost asked Ilya to pull out.

"The Ick?" Ilya said. "What is this, the Ick? Like you were grossed out—"

"I dunno, kind of? Like when something turns you off, takes you out of the sex—Rose said it's called the Ick—"

"Is called a turn-off, Hollander, fuck! What is this fucking...the Ick..."

("You are a curse on my fucking marriage," Ilya tells Rose, some time later, and she smiles serenely and tops off his already impressively full wine glass while Shane yells nonsensically about the Detroit team captain's machinations to be traded to one of the Florida teams in exchange for what Shane is only referring to as 'PISS AND SHIT' but is apparently, Ilya gleans through context clues, a rookie center and two retirement-age defensemen)

So Ilya knows that he's married to the best hockey player in the league. He also knows that if he tells him this, stops competing in any way for the label, that it will read to Shane as some kind of pity, some kind of gentle acquiescence, and that Shane will get so mad about it and so sexually disappointed that Ilya may have to crawl into Anya's dog house with her and earn his spot back in his marital bed via a series of labors that would make Hercules himself lie down and die.

He can't even brag about this shit to other people because those people inevitably cannot keep their mouths shut. His marriage almost fucking ends one night in November because Ilya is engaging in some lighthearted negging with his own fucking husband and the idiot in the seat across from them on the bus (Formerly known as Troy Barrett, but Ilya is taking those privileges away until Fucking Idiot learns from his mistakes) says, "That's not what you said the other day, Roz," and then physically flinches because Shane turns a look onto him that could peel paint and Ilya immediately begins manifesting Troy's imminent and perpetual stubbed toe.

"Oh my God," Troy says, out loud at the looks. "All I meant is that Rozy told me he knows you're the best player in the league, Hollander. He's proud of you."

"Shut up," Ilya says. "Barrett, I will literally kill you."

"What is happening."

"Don't touch me," Shane says, when Ilya puts a hand on his knee.

"Baby," Ilya croons, "Baby, no. Your edges were shit tonight. That fall you took in the third period? Fucking embarrassing. You looked like a fucking turtle. Cute and helpless. Maybe you needed a big Russian man to help you—"

"Not in the mood," Shane says firmly. Ilya begins plotting Fucking Idiot's goddamn demise.

Will be murdering your boyfriend Ilya texts Harris after an hour spent staring at the back of Shane's neck while he lays on the edge of the bed with his phone in front of his face and his arms crossed. Sorry not sorry.

Harris doesn't reply. Doesn't even read the stupid text.

Ilya throws his phone to the end of the bed and rolls over, shoves a hand down the back of Shane's pants, massages his asscheek.

"Ilya," Shane says, warningly

"I tell you what you are the best at," Ilya murmurs into the back of his neck. He sinks his teeth in, sucks a kiss over the mark.

"Don't wanna hear it," Shane snaps. "I don't need you to pay me fucking lip service. I need you to keep showing people that we're not going soft on each other. We need to keep playing our best, we can't get complacent, we can't—"

"You," Ilya growls, "are the best fucking hole in the NHL." He yanks Shane's sweatpants down over the curve of his ass.

"Oh," Shane says, all of the wind out of his sails. "Fuck."

"So good at taking cock," Ilya continues. Hand between Shane's thighs, smoothing warm and firm on the soft skin inside, broad side of his thumb nudging the silky skin of Shane's sac, a warm and plush place on Shane's body that should have Ilya's fucking name written on it because only he ever gets to see or touch it.

"Yeah," Shane says. "Yours. Your cock."

"Prettiest fucking cockslut," Ilya says. "Nobody loves getting fucked like you. Can't even call you a whore because whores expect something in return. You take cock and say thank you. You take cock and ask for more cock."

"Yeah," Shane whines, back arching, phone dark and clattering to the floor. "Fuck. Fuck. Please."

"Say it."

"I want your cock. Please give me your cock. Fuck, can I—"

Ilya flips him completely onto his stomach and looms over him, shoves his own pants down his thighs and slides the throbbing ridge of his cock along the fluttering pucker of Shane's hole.

"Tell me what a good slut you are, Hollander."

"I'm—I'm a good slut—"

Ilya slaps his ass, hard, slides a finger into his crease and rubs dry at his hole and watches the muscles in Shane's back go crazy.

"Fucking tell me what you are, Hollander."

"I'm the best slut," Shane says, almost incoherent in the pillow. "Fuck, fuck, I'm the—the best cockslut in the world—"

Ilya shuffles down, spreads Shane's cheeks apart with his thumbs dug ungently in until flesh wells up on either side, white-red mottled with blood that will burst and bruise. He spits on his hole, watches it clench.

"They should call that thing the Hall of Fame," Ilya growls.

"Oh my God," Shane babbles. "Oh my God."

("Who asked this?" Ilya asks, microphones in his face after their game the following night. "Why are we talking in riddles? What was the question again?"

"Do you feel increased scrutiny from hockey fans now that Hollander is on the team with you? By most metrics, Hollander is the best player in the league, and it's hard not to draw direct comparisons between your records and play styles in light of Hollander's transfer to the Centaurs, not to mention your former rivalry and marriage. Are you feeling the pressure?"

"Hah," Ilya says. "First mistake is assuming that rivalry is over. It is very much alive. Hollander and I still keep score."

"Yeah, it's on a white board in their kitchen," Bood jokes, and the press scrum titters, and Ilya reminds himself that Bood is the father of a toddler and that toddlers love to make messes with glittery gifts bought for them by well-meaning hockey uncles.

"Second mistake is calling Hollander best in league," Ilya says, then shrugs, then winks. "Always room for improvement.")

Chapter 5: Good

Chapter Summary

Shane tries to be naughty, maybe. In the end, he's always good for Ilya.

Chapter Notes

The October following the cottage is colder than most. It’s hard to be apart in any sort of weather—warm, cold, whatever. It’s particularly difficult when the rain has been coursing down the windows for three days straight, cold and biting. Ilya usually has an affinity for rain of any temperature, but after the summer it feels different. Homesick, in a way. He can think of nothing but the summer rainfall of Lanaudiére, the beautiful glass box of the bedroom that had become theirs. Spread thighs and freckles against blushing cheeks and the smell of petrichor, wet foliage, sweat, cum.

Toska.

Their first match-up of the season, Montreal at Boston, comes mid-week and at the start of a roadie for the Metros, particularly early in the season. Boston, Philly, Columbus, Chicago. Shane seeks and receives permission from front office to fly down a day early, citing personal business. He boards a first-class flight at six-thirty on a Tuesday morning, texts Ilya that the overpriced tea shop at Trudeau no longer brews his preferred tea, only sells it in sachets, and that he thinks it’s ridiculous the Starbucks is both across the concourse and charges over a full Canadian dollar for a venti cup of hot water. He also sends Ilya a picture of a breakfast sandwich from the Air Canada lounge cafe that is apparently called the Shane Hollandaise.

I had to ask for it with no onions, Shane texts along with the picture, bitchiness absolutely bleeding through despite no indication of tone. Why would they name a sandwich after me and then put onions on it.

Shane is, indeed, somewhat notorious for disliking onions. Ilya thinks it has something to do with a guest judging spot on some cooking competition show a few years back.

Nobody should get to eat you but meeee Ilya would have texted back, if he’d been awake to receive it. Alas, Shane is an insane person who thinks that six-thirty AM is a perfectly acceptable time to board a flight, and Ilya’s body is never going to be one that naturally wakes before ten.

So Shane, with Ilya still dead to the world, lets himself into Ilya’s house. Presumably he toes off his shoes in the entryway and then resets the alarm behind himself, drinks a glass of water in the kitchen. Then he pads through the house, still familiarizing himself with it. He finds Ilya face-down, dead asleep with his back bare and his shoulders scrunched and maybe even his ass out, knowing how active he is even in deepest slumber. And then presumably Shane strips down, because when he crawls onto the bed, he’s in nothing but socks. A fact that Ilya becomes slowly aware of as Shane lays himself down completely on top of Ilya's back, smooths his hands down along Ilya's arms until he finds his hands, twines their fingers together, rests his cheek between Ilya's shoulder blades and waits for Ilya to wake up. It only takes him a minute because there's a 200 pound hockey player using him as a mattress.

"Hey," Shane says in that half-nervous way of his, like he's not certain of his welcome even now, and then when Ilya squeezes his hands and mumbles, Shane says, "Hi, handsome," and presses his forehead against Ilya's temple and kisses his jaw and the world is so fucking quiet and still.

So they lay there like that, because Ilya is still drifting, post-dream, and he's rubbing his thumbs over Shane's palms and breathing deep, Shane clung onto him like a backpack. Then, slowly, he starts to shift his hips. Gentle, slow, almost like he doesn't realize he's doing it. When Ilya looks at him, the side of his face pressed into the back of Ilya's shoulder, he's got his eyes squeezed closed, he's blushing just so prettily. Ilya folds their arms together under his head, kisses Shane's hands, enjoys the cocoon of his biceps and the smell of man.

"Needy boy?" Ilya murmurs, first thing he's said so far, maybe first thing he's said all day because Shane got here so so early so that they could have this time together—came directly from the airport, probably has been thinking about this for at least the last handful of hours, probably got himself all worked up on the way here. Sweatshirt loose around his hips, dick tucked up into his waistband, ballcap low over the eyes so as not to be recognized. Soft and needy and just waiting, waiting.

"I just—" Shane sighs, forehead sliding down to find the dip between Ilya's shoulders again. His hips move a little more, still slow and steady but definitely there now. Not trying to hide it anymore, like he ever thought Ilya wouldn't notice. Trying to be a naughty boy when Ilya knows he's good, so good, so sweet. He would stop if he was told. He murmurs, "Ilya. Missed you. Can I?"

"You want it like that?" Ilya says, because this is unusual for Shane—he loves to be underneath, loves to be pressed down, loves to be rocked by the entire weight of Ilya's body over him. Cries about it, sometimes, how much he fucking loves it.

"Yeah," Shane breathes, trembling. "Won't—won't take much, just—feels good—"

"Mm, easy," Ilya accuses, and kisses his hand again. Big, pretty long fingers. Ilya kisses each one. "So easy, Hollander. Couldn't wait, ah?"

"Ilya," Shane pants. He whines, and the small of Ilya's back is slippery with sweat, with wet. Ilya’s morning wood is drilling an absolute hole into the mattress below him. This is not their usual order of operations, carefully formed in those slow summer mornings and, Ilya hopes, the blueprint of their future mornings. It goes more like: Ilya wakes up hard, Ilya presses his dick into whatever part of Shane’s body takes his fancy in the moment, Shane gets off on the idea of being used and the performative neglect of his own morning neediness. When Ilya finally lets him have his pleasure, if he does, Shane gets nearly as much relief from the thrill of being good, of the reward for being patient, as he does the actual orgasm.

This, though.

"Naughty," Ilya tells him, because maybe it's what he wants to hear. "Sneaking in here. Trying to take without permission. What do you say?"

"Sorry," Shane murmurs—whimpers, really, somewhere in the depths of Ilya's back muscles.

"You'll be a good boy later, won't you?" Ilya says. "So good for me. Lay on your back for me, how I like. Let me look at your pretty face."

"Yes," Shane hisses. "Yes, Ilya, I'll be good." Hips stuttering now, close. It really does not take long.

"Poor slutty bunny," Ilya sighs. "Needs it so bad.” He thinks about it for a minute—genuinely does, because the idea of denying Shane under these circumstances is sweet and heady. Then thinks about Shane in the airport again, after his stupid little tea odyssey, pouting in the Air Canada lounge and reading ESPN recaps with a backpack in his lap because he’s half chubbed at the thought of the dick waiting for him after his dumb before-dawn flight. Poor, cocksick bunny.

Sometimes, when Ilya thinks about how he’s the only person in the world who knows how truly desperate for dick Shane Hollander always is, it makes him feel the weirdest, most incongruous rush of tender protectiveness. It makes him feel utterly soft.

Thus softened, Ilya says, “Go ahead."

Permission thus given, Shane bucks against him with new vigor. His cockhead is slick, hot against Ilya’s spine. He utters a few less-than-purposeful moans into Ilya’s traps, a low and quiet uhn-uhn on each shuddery exhale. His thighs quake against Ilya’s hips. When he comes, he does so swearing, but softly—because he's actually not very naughty at all, his very good boy. Comes when he's told, moans when he's allowed.

"Clean it up," Ilya says, immediately afterwards, with an air of benevolence; here you go, here's your reward.

Shane does as he's told, licking and sucking along Ilya's back, making everything that much more wet. When Ilya's tired of it, he turns over, flips Shane back towards the foot of the bed, catches him before he cracks his pretty little head on the footboard. His head ends up hanging half-off the edge of the bed, and Ilya plants a foot on the floor, a knee on Shane's chest, and takes his cock in hand.

"Close your slutty mouth," Ilya says, when Shane sticks his tongue out, and the speed with which he sucks it back in makes an almost comical sound. Ilya had called him froggy once, one of those quiescent cottage days. The face he'd made had prompted Ilya to say Yes, just like that and then laugh himself into a cramp.

"Be good," Ilya reminds him, as Shane watches with saucer eyes, eager as Ilya's stomach muscles visibly shudder. Shane nods mindlessly, but doesn't pick up on the implication, because Ilya has to say, "Fuck, Shane, close your eyes."

Shane remembers himself, remembers how to be good, exactly as Ilya begins to come. His cum lands pretty across the freckles, catches pearly-translucent in Shane's dark eyelashes. He is the prettiest thing on the goddamn planet.

"Oh," Shane says, after a moment, when he realizes he can't open his eyes. "Um."

Ilya chuckles, finds the tissues in the bedside drawer. He's careful, dabbing until Shane's waterlines are safe from debris. His face breaks into a smile when he gets his first look at Ilya's full face, hovering over him at the end of the bed.

"Hi," Shane says again, dreamily. "Can I have a kiss?"

The answer being, yes. Of course.

Chapter End Notes

Let it be known that I have never been to Montreal-Trudeau. I did exactly five minutes of research which, frankly, is still way too much for three lines of a 1600 word ficlet.
This anthology is slowly turning into yet another of my Dom Ilya manifestos. Such is life.

Chapter 6: Digestif

Chapter Summary

Shane and Ilya overindulge on their honeymoon. But then, it's called a honeymoon for a reason.

Chapter Notes

Third night in Ibiza, so close to midnight that it might as well be tomorrow already. They pour themselves in the door of the villa and stumble into the bedroom. Several hours earlier, Ilya had revealed that he'd booked a table at a Michelin starred restaurant with a tasting menu the price of which had sent Shane's eyes boggling. Despite being worth…frankly, more money than he knows what to do with, especially after marrying a man of equal wealth, he's never actually spent four figures on a single meal before. At least not one for just two people.

"First time for everything," Ilya had said—which has sort of become the unofficial moto of this honeymoon. That and Live a little, Hollander and Just try it and also, of course, I can't believe we did that. The latter has been used to refer to everything from the very act of getting married and honeymooning in Spain, to Shane hanging off the back of a moped while Ilya broke land-speed records, to the family restroom blowjob Shane had given Ilya out of pure boredom sometime during hour six of their ten-hour layover in Heathrow Airport.

"I can't believe we did that," Shane says now, flopping backwards onto the enormous bed and wallowing. The windows to the terrace are open, gossamer curtains fluttering in the Mediterranean breeze. It would be like something out of a dream, if Shane's dreams had ever looked like this. Shane dreams of ice and gold and the taste of cold vodka on a hot tongue. The idyllic trappings of a Spanish villa were never the sort of thing that drew him in. He prefers fresh water, the smell of pine and peat underfoot. Shane would have been happy to spend this time at the cottage, probably, but Ilya deserved this—and Shane wanted to give it to him so badly that he'd nearly made himself sick with it. Now, here, it's all he can do not to let himself go blind from staring at the brilliance of his new husband in this place.

Like now, currently—Ilya has the top three buttons of his shirt undone, enough to expose the fine dusting of golden-brown hair that had found its way onto his chest in the leadup to his thirties. It only stands to make him look that much more attractive. His hair is a bit of an awkward length still, regrowing from the buzzcut of last summer, but he has it slicked back. Or did, earlier in the evening; humidity has started knocking it lose, short strands draping over his forehead. His shirt is a little rumpled. His belly is firm with their huge meal. He looks like a fucking dream, like something that should have the words Please don't touch written on it, but he is touchable. So beautifully touchable.

"Ugh," Ilya groans, even as he's still smiling, and he flicks open his belt buckle with a neat turn of his wrist. Shane watches helplessly, hardly willing to move as the belt droops from Ilya's beltloops. It's stupidly fucking sexy. Equally so is the fact that he doesn't bother to pull it out before he falls down beside Shane, groaning again. "Oh my God, I think they were trying to kill us."

"How many courses was that?" Shane says, arm thrown over his eyes.

"I lost count after five," Ilya groans. He holds up a hand, fingers pinched together. "I thought tasting menu meant—little tiny bites, not—"

"Full plates," Shane says. "Oh my God, plates of food—"

"And the wine," Ilya laughs. "Oh, I'm so drunk."

"Baby, if you're drunk, then I'm—" Shane draws a hand down his face, moans out what he thinks might be a laugh but also might just be a moan. "And it wasn't like we could say no thank you. Or not eat it!"

"No, would be waste of money," Ilya sighs. His English is sweetly fragmented, gone to seed just a little as he sinks into the laziness of a full stomach and buzzing brain. He breathes, and Shane listens to it like music, and the sound of beach waves flows through the room. Ilya says, "Two dessert courses, blyat."

"And chocolates," Shane says. "And dessert wine."

Ilya wheezes out another laugh and rolls laboriously onto his side. He sets a hand on Shane's stomach, making him whine, and then untucks it from his trousers for the express purpose of sneaking his hand underneath to massage Shane's belly.

"Ohh, fuck," Shane sighs, stretching his arms over his head and then returning summarily to limpness like that single motion took all of his remaining energy. Honestly, it may have. Ilya's hand continues its circular motion. "Hm. Yeah."

"Yeah?" Ilya murmurs, smile in his voice. He scooches over until he can put his head against Shane's stomach, which feels like too much pressure but not necessarily in a bad way. He says, "Oh, my love. My love."

"Mm. So much for fucking tonight," Shane sighs, as he sinks his fingers into Ilya's hair, breaking the cast on his gel as he runs it between fingertips. It's starting to curl again, when Ilya forgoes any product and is fresh out the shower. It's an evolution that Shane has been watching with interest, though no particular longing for the way it was before the cut. He has loved every version of this man.

"Oh? We are not going to fuck?" Ilya says, still mostly face-down in Shane's stomach and with no particular indication that he is capable of moving.

"Think about how much food I just ate and ask me that question again," Shane snarks. "I'm telling you there is no way we can fuck tonight."

Ilya tilts his head back and cackles. Shane laughs too, a bit of a hysterical edge to it as they wallow in mutual gluttony. Fuck, his abs hurt from how full he is. Like it's a workout just to contain his stomach. It's a sensation that overwhelms him, just a little, and he has so stretch his arms and legs out just to give himself some levity. Ilya shifts to accommodate his starfish impression, and slinks a hand up the inside of his thigh.

Shane closes his eyes and smiles into the dark bedroom and says, "But I'm so horny," with a self-conscious chuckle, though he's not sure why.

"Mm, yes, wine makes you this way," Ilya says, with a kiss to Shane's hip. “Horny little bunny.”

God. This is his husband. They stood in front of everyone they know and said they love each other and then they got on a plane and everyone they know is going to see the pictures and read between the lines that they are having sex constantly. Because they got married. And they are on their honeymoon. God.

Shane laughs again.

"C'mere," he says, plaintive. "Come on, come on, can you move? Mmm, put your dick in my hand."

Ilya barks out a laugh, loud and room-filling. He scoots up the bed, looking a little like the world's most handsome worm, and once his face is level with Shane's he presses slow kisses to his jaw and cheeks as his belt buckle clinks again. The sound of his zipper makes Shane's cock twitch.

"My darling, my beloved," Ilya murmurs, as he takes Shane's hand and helps him find the place where his cock threads through the front of his underwear, and Shane wishes he could see it because he thinks that would be hot, his husband fully-clothed except for his big cock hanging out, but he's busy letting his body become one with this bed. Ilya continues, "My sweet slut, my pretty whore…"

Shane is so familiar with all of these Ilya-isms, these layered coos of sweetness and meanness that he spins like a spider's web. Knows the words in English and Russian, knows them well enough that even in his half-fluency he doesn't care or pay attention to which language they're being said in. He only cares that they're being said, and being said by the man he's still learning to call his husband.

"Mm, I love your dick," Shane says, because he doesn't really have such a way with words, but Ilya makes a punched out, ardent sound that Shane feels in the heat between his own thighs, somewhere in the base of his cock.

"Yeah?" Ilya says.

"Yeah," Shane sighs. "Wish I could suck you. Can't move."

"In the morning," Ilya says, decisively, as he pops the button on Shane's trousers. "Blowjobs and then—ah, yeah—and then a swim, and then we do brunch—"

The way Ilya says brunch makes Shane think it's some kind of joke he's not picking up on, but he laughs anyway.

"I don't think I'll ever be hungry again," Shane whines, thumbing at Ilya's foreskin, luxuriating in the way he fills Shane's hand. "God, I don't think I'll ever—ever move again—"

"I will roll you place to place," Ilya coos. "My little log."

"Pfft, fuck you," Shane giggles. Ilya's hand slips under his waistband and he rolls his hips into his husband's hand, sensitive and already half gone with want. Alcohol gives him a hair trigger, makes him liable to shoot off at the smallest provocation. He's already half gone by the time Ilya's hand wraps around him. "Oh, fuck. Ilya. Baby. Oh my God."

"Good?" Ilya smears a kiss against his neck.

"Good, so good," Shane says, planting his feet on the bed—he's still got his dress shoes on, God, what is wrong with him. What has he fucking become in this country. What has being Ilya Rozanov's husband done to him and how can he make sure the process never reverses itself.

He parts his knees, makes room for Ilya's hand in the cavern between his thighs, shoves at his hand. Ilya grunts, slides his hand that much further down—

"Yes, fuck, thank you," Shane groans, shuddering from somewhere deep inside himself as Ilya's fingers make gentle, massaging circles over his hole, and he wiggles his hips until Ilya's strong forearm is rubbing against his cock, and then he comes.

"That's it," Ilya says, sweet and deep and secret. "Good, sweetheart. Good job."

"Want you to come," Shane slurs. "Want to feel you come."

Ilya grunts, flips onto his back. He puts an arm behind his head, propped so he can look down the length of his own body, and then he shifts Shane's hand to hold the base of his cock, like it's a post he's holding steady. Shane watches, full of awe and adoration and affection and, ultimately, just full, as his husband wraps a hand around his cock and strokes himself while staring at Shane's face to bring himself off.

"God, I love you," Shane says, and Ilya's cum shoots up and comes back down on his hand, and on Shane's. Some on his thumb, some between his fingers, some on the back of his palm.

Shane lifts his hand to his lips, licks between his fingers. Ilya watches sleepily, something intelligent happening behind his eyes that Shane can’t parse.

Then, after a moment, he snaps his fingers and says, "Ah, that's your digestif. Yes?"

Shane releases a laugh that sounds like the mating call of a particularly ugly marine mammal. Ilya rolls himself off the bed, cackling.

Chapter End Notes

Digestif - a small, typically alcoholic, drink served after a large meal to aid in digestion.

First time simultaneously posting a ficlet both here and on Tumblr. Do we like this? Give me your thoughts. They make me stronger.

Chapter 7: Routine

Chapter Summary

The thing is, the sex isn't always mind-melting.

Chapter Notes

The thing is, the sex isn't always mind-melting.

It's always good, even when it's objectively mediocre by any meaningful metric. It's always, somehow, exactly what Shane needs in the moment. It's nothing he would ever take for granted. It's his body and Ilya's body and their bodies together and it's always good.

But there are days. Like when they've just lost a game in Texas and immediately got on a plane home, and everything up to and including Shane's eyeballs are sore and gritty and irritated. The flight got in late and they missed the pick-up window at the dog hotel so now they won't see Anya until tomorrow morning. The housekeeper forgot to crack the windows prior to their arrival and the stale air from the furnace has left the house unbelievably stuffy. Shane drops their bags by the door and stomps into the kitchen for a bottle of water and leans against the sink in the still-dark kitchen, just in a bad fucking mood.

And Ilya winds arms around him and presses his mouth to Shane's neck, no kiss just pressure, and says, "What do you need?"

"I don't know," Shane says, and what he really means is you decide, and Ilya knows that.

"I do," Ilya says, utterly reliable. "You need to be fed, and fucked hard, and put to bed."

"Yeah," Shane sighs, "Okay."

So Ilya warms up two servings of whatever the simplest thing their chef made that week happens to be, because Shane sometimes likes the comfort of simple food. They eat it standing up at the counter, because Shane cannot fathom the idea of sitting again so soon after sitting on a bus and then sitting on a plane and then sitting in the fucking car on the way home—

Another thing, only tangentially relevant: they don't fuck before games. They get each other off with hands and mouths. Ilya will slip Shane a finger if he begs prettily enough and he's just feeling so, so empty, but they don't fuck. Shane's days of being able to take a dick and a face-off in the same 24-hour period had waned with his twenties. Much of Shane's own personal fastidiousness revolves around the pride he takes in being ready to receive Ilya with very little warning, but he likes to be able to enjoy the aftermath just as much. Relish in the feeling of Where Ilya Was and not worry about whether it will make him just that slightly much slower on the ice.

So, having decided all of that, they have established that they do not fuck before games. Or before travel days, for approximately the same reasons—it makes it uncomfortable, not always in a bad way but yes, sometimes in a bad way, and with enough unpredictability that Shane doesn't like to risk it. Times like these, when it's been fully a week since they have had a day that was not a game or travel day, Shane really starts to think that those ideas are some of the stupidest he's ever had.

Sometimes he thinks about explaining these things to his younger self, who probably would have risked a lot more than he already was for the promise of Ilya Rozanov's dick on a more regular basis. That younger version of himself would probably be absolutely apoplectic at the idea of squandering the riches that Shane now so thoroughly enjoys.

Case and point: Ilya sends Shane up to the bedroom with a smack to his ass and a wink. It's a corny, slightly lascivious gesture that shouldn't make Shane feel warm and fuzzy, but does. It's a feeling that lives in him through his shower, and the subsequent prep, and the time he spends opening himself up, still shower-damp, sprawled on top of the blankets with his face in Ilya's pillow.

When Ilya comes in, he drops his sweatpants and boxers in one movement, saunters to the bed all relaxed shoulders and pendulous, swinging dick. Snaps his fingers, gestures to the edge of the mattress. Shane scoots himself in that direction, backing it up until Ilya's hands curl into he crease of his hips and thighs and pull him fully to the edge. He presses in tight, cock hard and smooth against one cheek of Shane's ass, dragging slow and sweet and half-hard.

"You want this big dick?" he asks, grinding their hips together.

"Yeah," Shane says.

"Tell me."

"I want it," Shane says, voice gone high and needy. "I want your big dick, I need it so bad, put it in me—"

Shane has fucked this man hundreds of times. He has had the best sex of his life with this man. They have had sex that actually scared Shane for how good it felt, because he wasn't sure his body would be able to contain it. They have had sex that made Shane feel, genuinely, like he had been brought into existence only to feel pleasure. They have had sex that made Shane cry for thirty minutes afterwards, because he came so hard that it dislodged some previously-hidden well of sorrow in his soul, and the catharsis of that had made him feel lighter for literal days.

Tonight, Ilya rumbles his approval of Shane's words, and then grinds against him a bit more, and then sort of pulls back a little, chuckles and says, "Give me a minute," and Shane knows that they're not going to break any new ground. Which is fine.

"Want me to suck you?" Shane says after a moment, forehead in the duvet, ass in the air with lube cooling on his thighs, listening to the sound of Ilya's hand traveling up and down his cock, perfunctory, trying to get himself fully hard.

"Mm, no, it's coming," Ilya mumbles, and Shane listens for another moment.

He wiggles his hips and mumbles, "Can you...? Just a little, please?"

Ilya smacks his ass, and Shane groans his approval into the duvet. Ilya smacks him again and murmurs, "Slut. Pretty fucking slut."

"Yeah," Shane moans. "Thank you."

Ilya hisses. "Say it how I like, sweetheart."

"Thank you, sir," Shane says, making his voice just a little higher and whinier.

"Good job," Ilya says, and then he's pressing in, and Shane's whole back is bowing like a cat in heat and he's yowling like one too. Ilya finds his rhythm quickly, hands gripped onto Shane's hips, and laughs. "Jesus. You're being so fucking loud."

"Feels good," Shane says. "All I wanted for—fucking days—wanted you inside me."

Ilya switches angle, adjusts his speed. Shane feels good, and full, and sometimes that's all it takes. He's also tired, and a little sore from the plane, and Ilya is doing that restless thing he does sometimes where he shifts his weight over and over again. He feels good inside, big and warm, and he's missing the mark just a little.

"Wanna cum," Shane whines eventually. "Can I?"

Ilya rarely denies him on nights like these, but he still expects Shane to ask permission. He doesn't answer immediately, which makes just the slightest bit of misery burrow into Shane's stomach.

"Baby?" Shane says. "Please?"

"Shh, shh, yeah," Ilya says. "You want it now?"

Shane nods into the mattress and Ilya reaches around, grips him and strokes. Shane fists at the blankets, rolls his head, whines.

"Keep going keep going keep going," he says, whole body strained tight, tensed for release. "I'm so fucking close—Oh my God—please please please--"

He teeters on the edge for an agonizing amount of time. Ilya's arm goes a bit clumsy with fatigue. He changes angle again, which is something that Shane has repeatedly asked him not to do when he's already said he's close, and Shane groans his disappointment.

"Sorry," Ilya says, sounding genuinely contrite. Sometimes he does that shit on purpose—for obvious reasons—but tonight is clearly not one of those times. "Fuck, my foot slipped."

"I need to get off my fucking knees," Shane sighs, defeated. "I need—shit, can I get on my back?"

"Yeah," Ilya says, and because they're not twenty-five anymore, he has to pull out for Shane to execute that particular maneuver. He scoots further up the bed, stares at Ilya from between his spread knees—Ilya, who's looking at him like he's a playbook, brows furrowed and hands on hips, and it's honestly not the least sexy Shane has ever felt.

He crawls onto the bed, lays between Shane's legs, and it's instantly better. Ilya's weight and all of his bare skin are comforting. The other position is comfortable most of the time, and gets Shane into a kind of emotionally-sexy headspace that he likes to be fucked in, but laying supine takes pressure off his muscles that might have been locking him up without him realizing it.

"Okay," Shane whispers, hands crawling up Ilya's broad back. "Come back, come back, I need you."

"Fuck," Ilya says, as he slides in. "Say it again."

"I need you," Shane says. "I always need you, baby, fuck."

"Gonna cum?" Ilya groans. "Cum on this cock?"

"Yes yes yes," says Shane, feeling it in his toes. "Fuck, baby, you're gonna make me cum."

Ilya slides his mouth over Shane's nipple and slips his middle two fingers into Shane's mouth and Shane, a little embarrassingly, comes as soon as he feels Ilya's wedding ring graze his front teeth.

Ilya fucks him through it, and then keeps going, and then keeps going.

"Fuck," he mutters eventually. "Fucking Lexapro."

Shane snorts and smooths a hand up Ilya's sweaty back. Busses his mouth against Ilya's temple and hooks a foot behind his back.

"It's okay," Shane murmurs. "Keep going."

Ilya hums, presses his forehead against Shane's collarbone.

Shane floats. He imagines himself as a tool, as an object that Ilya is now using for his own pleasure, and it's a nice thought to drift on as he fields the low, simmering undercurrent of arousal living in the base of his cock, in the sweet burn of his used hole, buried deep inside him alongside Ilya.

Finally, Ilya's grunts deepen and his movements gain speed and lose rhythm. He opens his mouth against Shane's throat and says, "Gonna fill you up."

"Yeah," Shane says, "Give it to me, let me have it."

"Fuck," Ilya groans, long and drawn out, and Shane wriggles happily to feel the twitches of his dick, the rush of warmth that shoots up into his belly.

Ilya sighs sweetly into Shane's shoulder, slumps some of his weight onto the mattress and some onto Shane, and goes completely limp.

Shane whispers his fingertips over Ilya'a shoulders, kisses the sweat at his hairline. He bends a knee to take some pressure off his lumbar spine, runs a toe up the inside of Ilya's calf.

"Well," Shane sighs. "It was a hard one, but we really pulled through in the third—"

Ilya growls, shoves him over, bites his neck, and then leaves a line of similar bites down the length of Shane's spine on his way to eat him out a bit. It's still not the best sex they've ever had. Shane doesn't really care.

Chapter End Notes

Despite the reputation they receive, Lexapro and other SSRIs do not always cause complete impotence. More often, they cause mild sexual side effects, such as extended latency when attempting to achieve orgasm. Shane is secretly a fan of Ilya's mild erectile dysfunction. ;)

Had a request on Tumblr to share this one on Ao3 for bookmarking purposes, so here we are again! Conversely, if you so desire, this ficlet is rebloggable here. Come visit me on Tumblr if you're nasty.

I promise I'm working on the next chapter of Roman Numeral Seven. <3