Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Hockey Player Ilya Rozanov, Hockey Coach Shane Hollander, Meet-Cute, Hook-Up, Trans Male Character, Trans Shane Hollander, Cunnilingus, Oral Sex, Blow Jobs, POV Ilya Rozanov, Scent Kink, Come Eating, Furthering the Shane Hollander WAP agenda

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-17 Words: 6,310 Chapters: 1/1

Wild Geese

Summary

When Shane pulls away, he swallows audibly and the breath catches in his throat when he says, “There’s something you should know, too. Um, before.”
Ilya traces a thumb over his lips, pouts his own to show he’s listening. “Hm?”
“I’m a man,” Shane says, carefully.
Ilya scoffs. “Obviously. I’m not—”
“No, no, I mean—I’m a man. You need to remember that. Because—”
“Oh,” Ilya murmurs. He brings his other hand up, settles it in the curve of Shane’s neck. “I understand."

A hockey player and the most beautiful man he's ever seen walk into a bar.

Notes

As indicated, Shane is trans (FTM) in this fic. Terms used to refer to his anatomy are: Tits, cock, dick, pussy, hole.

Ilya sees him across the bar, and he is beautiful and he is staring back.

The dim bar lighting doesn’t illuminate much, but Ilya will realize later that he has a full constellation of freckles across the peak of his cheeks. His almond eyes are some of the prettiest things that Ilya has ever seen. He doesn’t even really like the way that his breath catches in his chest, because that means something, probably. Some kind of warning. He doesn’t listen.

He disengages from the group—Marleau, Hayes, and a few of the others—and crosses. The man doesn’t move, just watches. He’s all broad shoulders and gorgeous biceps, an athletic and powerful build that Ilya recognizes as the product of quite a bit of work. He has the look to him of someone who might be naturally slighter—the jaw, the hands.

“Hi,” Ilya says, swinging a leg over the barstool the man is standing next to.

“Hi,” he replies, not looking at Ilya now. He’s pretending to be seeking eye contact from the bartender, tapping his card on the bartop, but whenever the bartender glances in his direction he conspicuously drops his eyes. He says, “You’re Ilya Rozanov.”

Ilya smiles. “I am. And you?”

“Shane Hollander.” He clears his throat, holds out his hand, and it’s a surprisingly firm shake. Ilya sort of gets the vibe that he might practice it. While their hands are still gripping, Shane says, “You’re an awesome player to watch.”

“Thank you, Shane Hollander.” He likes the feel of the name on his mouth. Shane’s shoulders hunch just a little, but the corners of his lips also curve just a little. Ilya says, “You were at the game?”

“Yes. Um, I coach,” Shane says, as though he’s prepared this whole spiel. “U13—they’re competing at a high level already. Me, a couple of the other coaches—former AHL guys—and the moms, we like to bring the boys to these big games, especially when it’s other Canadian teams or any of the original six. There’s history there, and we want them to see the best.”

“And I’m the best?”

Shane smirks, glances at Ilya for a very brief moment of eye contact and then immediately away again. “One of them. Maybe. I’m a Metros fan, third generation, so I might be haunted if I said more.”

Ilya grins, lets the chuckle rise up out of his chest. “You live in Montreal?”

“Yeah,” Shane sighs.

Ilya raises his glass to his mouth and hides it there while he says, “So you have a place.” There’s enough distance between them that the guys still at the bar clearly don’t think he’s doing anything but trying to get the bartender’s attention. Shane has given up on that particular pantomime and is now making intense eye contact with the credit card between his fingers, tapping meditatively on the bar.

“Yes,” he says, lips barely moving. He abruptly straightens away from the bar and walks away, heading towards a door that Ilya assumes leads either to the bathrooms or to the alley behind the place. Ilya gives it a few moments, finishes his drink, and thumps Marley on the back while yelling, “I’m going to smoke!” over the loudest song in the universe, which has just started blasting from the speakers overhead.

“They’ll kill you, man!” Marleau yells back.

“Shut your face,” Ilya says, giving Marley a solid clap on said face for good measure. He crosses the bar, accosting a rookie on the way, shoving his head halfway into his poutine to a squawk of Roz! and a smatter of cackles, including from the rookie with gravy on his nose. He shoulders his way out of the door.

It leads to a cold hallway, and then the brick-lined alley. Shane is there, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. His shoulders aren’t so hunched, though he goes back on his guard when Ilya arrives. The fringe of his dark hair ruffles in the winter breeze. He’s fucking handsome.

“Hey,” Shane mumbles. “Um.”

“Two things,” Ilya says, holding up a finger. He doesn’t want to interrupt, not really, but these are important things. He pulls a cigarette out and lights it, plausible deniability, but he stays upwind of Shane, whose slight grimace he doesn’t miss. He really does need to stop smoking. “First one. I know your name, and I will use it to make your life difficult if this gets out.”

“Right,” Shane says, softly. “I wouldn’t.”

Ilya shrugs one shoulder. “I believe you. Would not have spoken to you if I didn’t. I have a good sense of people. Get it from my mama, she could read fucking minds.”

“Really?” Shane sounds half skeptical, half interested.

“No. People can’t read minds, Hollander.”

A pretty scowl. “Okay, that’s—”

“Shh, I am fucking with you.” He offers a smile, gentler this time because he’s getting the feeling that Shane is like some little prey animal, or maybe a bear raised by one. He’s tall and broad and athletic but he curls in on himself like he doesn’t want people to notice it. Ilya pulls on his cigarette. He’s kind of hard, but that’s not interesting right now. “She just—she could tell things about people. She observed, was very quiet. I learned from her what to look for. But people do not overlook me like they did her.”

“I’m sure,” Shane murmurs. “What’s the other thing?”

“Hm?”

“You said two things.”

“Oh, yes. Second one is more…question. Was coincidence that you were here, yes?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Shane adjusts against the wall, subtly, like he’s looking for a way to be more comfortable in his skin. “Some of the other coaches wanted to go out after the game, it’s the moms’ job to get the kids home for the most part, so our job was done. This place was close…”

“Yes, is why we chose it as well,” Ilya chuckles. He ashes his cigarette. “That makes sense, so I choose to believe you. But if you are a reporter or some…insane fan—”

“No,” Shane says, a little more insistent this time. “I promise, I’m just a guy who likes hockey. Really. You have my word.”

“A guy who likes hockey and wants to fuck Ilya Rozanov.”

The blush that rises onto Shane’s cheeks is—something, that’s for sure. “I—yeah. I think there are a lot of those kinds of guys.”

Ilya smirks, because it’s not like he’s unaware of it. He stubs out the cigarette, half-smoked, against the nearest brick and slides it back into the pack. Shane is watching him, eyes half-lidded, and Ilya jerks his head towards the darkest corner of the alley—some distance from the door, mostly shadow, completely underneath an ancient-looking fire escape that has the look of looming threat. Ilya figures the structural integrity will hold up for another few minutes, but maybe only just.

Shane looks up at it as he comes closer, too, and Ilya sort of delights in the idea that they might be having a shared thought.

When he comes close enough, Ilya gets a hand on his jaw. He notices the freckles then. He says, “Why were you looking at me? Back in bar?” mostly because he’s just curious, but also because—he wonders sometimes. If he’s obvious.

“You’re…really handsome?” Shane whispers, brow furrowing. “You—you know that?”

“Of course,” Ilya snorts. “But I’m a hockey player. We aren’t known for being—”

“You use pride tape,” Shane says, abruptly. “On pride nights, you use the tape. You wear the modified uniform. You always seem like you’re—genuinely having a good time. I figured, even if you weren’t—and to be clear, I wasn’t trying to pick you up, I just—realized who I was looking at, and I couldn’t—”

“Okay, okay,” Ilya murmurs, stroking his thumb in a way that he thinks Shane might find soothing, based on limited data. Shane subsides, and shudders a little. Ilya pushes his face a little closer and whispers, “Kiss?”

“Mm.” Shane tilts his head the rest of the way. It feels good to be kissing someone—it always does. Shane has the gentlest, barely-there pinprick of stubble on his chin, maybe because it’s ten o’clock and he shaved this morning or the morning before. He gives off the vibe of a man who likes to be clean-shaven, though the shadow on his chin from his so-so dark hair is enticingly masculine. It’s been awhile since Ilya kissed a man, and it’s always a thrill.

When Shane pulls away, he swallows audibly—there’s something gently erotic about it, and the way his breath catches in his throat when he says, “There’s something you should know, too. Um, before.”

Ilya traces a thumb over his lips, pouts his own to show he’s listening. “Hm?”

“I’m a man,” Shane says, carefully.

Ilya scoffs. “Obviously. I’m not—”

“No, no, I mean—I’m a man. You need to remember that. Because—”

“Oh,” Ilya murmurs. He very carefully doesn’t move for a moment, because he’s suddenly terrified that any movement on his part could be misconstrued as rejection. He brings his other hand up, settles it in the curve of Shane’s neck. “I understand. I cannot say that I have experience.”

“Yeah,” Shane breathes.

“I would like to.” Ilya raises an eyebrow. “That hasn’t changed. Would not change for that reason. I think you are very sexy. I saw you across the bar and I said—that sexy man wants you, Rozanov. Look at his sexy fucking eyes.”

Shane’s pink tongue pokes out to wet his lips. Ilya kisses him again, chasing that tongue back into Shane’s mouth with his own. He tastes like—fucking soda, of all the things. No real alcohol taste at all. Just sweetness. Ilya is certainly paying attention to his cock, now.

“I’m gonna—” Shane pulls away, swallows, squeezes his eyes closed. “I’m gonna tell the guys—the other coaches—that I’m heading out. I, um, I’m parked a few blocks over, and—”

“What car?” asks Ilya, who had of course come to Montreal on the team bus and planned to simply walk anywhere he needed to be. The hotel and this bar are both an easy half-hour walk from Centre Bell, and from each other for that matter. Some of the guys rent cars when they’re on the road—Ilya prefers his own and doesn’t trust the selection at the rental places. Too many fucking American brands. “Meet you there? Which way? Are you in the parking garage around—?”

They settle the logistics. Ilya offers his number, opens a note and has Shane type in the make and model of his car, the license plate. Text his pinned parking spot, courtesy of Google Maps. Ilya isn’t really surprised that he knows such a feature exists, and utilizes it. He’s more entranced by it than he should be, honestly. The neuroses of this man are utterly fascinating.

“You could steal my car now,” Shane says, utterly without affect, as he’s sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Please don’t.”

“You’ve seen through my ruse. I play hockey, not because I like being millionaire, but to trick witless men out of their—” He squints. “Fucking Land Rover Discoveries. Are you serious?”

“It’s a nice car,” Shane says, shrugging. He has one shoulder back inside the door of the bar. “Are you going to tell your…teammates that you’re leaving?”

“No,” Ilya snorts. “I disappear sometimes, they know this. They’ll worry I am dead if I don’t get on the bus tomorrow afternoon, but not ‘til then.”

“Okay,” Shane says slowly.

“Meet you in—what, ten minutes?”

“Sure.” Shane’s dark eyes watch him as he begins his exit of the alley. On the way past, Ilya puts a hand on his stomach, his mouth on his ear. Shane’s breath is still stuttering when Ilya leaves the alley.

He stands by Shane’s car, smokes the last of his cigarette, examines the fucking Land Rover. There is a bumper sticker for a Game Changers Hockey Camp, and another that is just a clipart-style outline of a hockey stick and puck. The back seat is immaculate, with only a duffel bag sitting neatly in the center of the back row. There is an air freshener hanging from the rearview—a yellow tree.

Shane appears as Ilya is grinding his cigarette under his shoe. He unlocks the car, opens the passenger’s side door for Ilya. Ilya allows himself to be slightly tickled by that, even as he’s folding all six feet of himself into the car. He says, “What a prince,” and Shane closes the door in his face.

When Shane gets in the other side, he puts his hands on the steering wheel, insanely stiff. He remembers to start the car after a moment, but then he retakes the same pose and seems to quietly panic.

“Shane,” Ilya says, softly. “We don’t—”

“Holy shit,” Shane whispers, forehead against the steering wheel. “Sorry, one second. It’s just that Ilya Rozanov is in my car.”

Ilya laughs, a genuine one from deep in his belly, and Shane wheezes out a slightly more panicked laugh against the steering wheel. Ilya puts a hand on his thigh, feeling the heat radiating from between Shane’s legs hit his fingers like a tease. If he moved his hand just a few inches down, he’d have it where he wants it, but even he is cognizant of the greater care he should take here. At least until he’s asked not to.

“Okay,” Shane whispers. He leans across the center console and puts his tongue in Ilya’s mouth, and Ilya makes some very approving sounds. Shane’s hands are all over his hair, his neck, twisting a curl around his finger and tugging. Ilya mouths away from his lips, across his cheek, onto his neck. Shane whimpers and tilts his head to the side and then pushes him away. Says, “Okay. Oh my God. Ten minutes. It’s a—a ten minute drive, I have my own entrance. Nobody—nobody will see you.”

Ilya, who’s forgotten that he’s mildly famous for a person, extravagantly famous for a hockey player, and to be fair almost anything else about himself including his own mildly-very famous name, forces himself back into the seat with monumental effort and says, “Fucking make it eight minutes and I don’t care if they broadcast it on Hockey Night.”

“Fuck,” Shane says, loudly, as he slams both his hands back onto the steering wheel. “Okay. Fuck.”

They make it there in seven.

Shane Hollander lives in a duplex set towards the rear of a complex of identical duplexes. They look to be recent constructions, probably within the past five years. When they pull up the driveway, Shane uses his phone to activate the door opener and they drive straight into the attached garage. Ilya, who’s always lived in apartments—fancy ones, of course; multimillion dollar penthouses, to be more specific—is a little fascinated by the process.

“I don’t normally do this,” Shane says, after he’s turned the car off. He’s sitting there with his back straight like Ilya remembers doing in school, staring out the windshield at the blank back wall of the garage. “But I figure, if you steal something from me, I know where to find you.”

“You are very worried about theft,” Ilya muses, and puts his hand in the back of Shane’s hair. “Have you been…burgled recently?”

“Wow, burgled,” Shane chuckles, and aims an achingly soft smile in Ilya’s direction. “Those English words just roll of your tongue.”

“Well.” Ilya shifts his shoulders, pouts his chin. “I have spoken English for a long time now, so I—”

“Oh, shit. Sorry. I meant—”

“Shh, no, is okay.” Ilya chuckles, kisses him. “I tease, I tease. People find the accent sexy, I know this.”

They kiss again. When it’s over, Shane is clutching onto Ilya’s thigh hard enough to pull out a few leg hairs, and he murmurs, “Um, anyway—yeah, no, I haven’t been burgled. I just wanted you to know this isn’t, like, normal for me.”

“Ah,” Ilya murmurs. “I see.” He thinks he does, anyway—and it makes sense that Shane would be guarded with how and when he shares his body. Makes it all the more perplexing to give Ilya the honor, in a way, but there’s a saying about gifts and horses that Ilya suspects would be apt, if he could remember it in that moment.

They exit the car and enter through a door, which leads to a mostly bare area containing a stationary bike, a washer/dryer combo and what is clearly camping equipment, though Ilya cannot identify any particular object in the pile. From there is a flight of stairs, and it deposits them into a very nice, well-appointed and modern kitchen/living room area. Shane turns on the lights, toes off his shoes, hangs up his coat.

“Take off shoes?” Ilya asks, already doing so before Shane’s yeah, please, reaches his ears, and then he’s pulling off his coat and handing it to Shane, watching him hang it next to his own and following the tugging of Shane’s hand up another flight of stairs.

Shane’s bed is plush and king-sized, with a veritable hoard of pillows that Shane throws in the direction of a chair against the far wall. They mostly land on it. When he turns around, he’s flushed, and he attaches himself to Ilya with the insistence of an octopus, and what feels like almost as many limbs. His hands are everywhere—in Ilya’s hair, along his back, on his ass, and Ilya can do nothing but stand there and joyously accept the manhandling.

When Shane plummets to his knees, presses his mouth to the front of Ilya’s pants, he can’t think of anything to do but brace his hands against Shane’s shoulders, pet his hair, whisper, “Fuck, you are—fucking incredible—”

They unzip his pants together, pull them down until his underwear catch under his balls and Shane is on him. He works at Ilya with his mouth and hand, head bobbing, looking up through dark lashes and Ilya thanks God that those eyes were in that bar tonight, as if God might have anything to do with it. Right now, it sort of feels like it, what with how fucking divine it feels to have Shane Hollander’s mouth on him.

Even as he’s thinking that, he taps Shane’s face and murmurs, “Enough, enough, come here.”

Shane shoots back to his feet, mouth arriving back at Ilya’s like their tongues are fucking magnetized specifically to each other. Ilya tastes himself on Shane’s mouth, of course, and it makes the animal in his chest roar.

“Bed,” Ilya whispers, when he pulls away and tugs off his shirt. Shane’s eyes immediately catch on what Ilya knows to be a fucking incredible set of abs. He gestures with the discarded shirt. “Will you—bed? Is that—?”

“Yes, yeah.” Shane does another one of those—those sexy swallows, the one where it looks like he’s so horny that he has to remind himself how to do it, and then he reaches his hands over his head and pulls his shirt off. He’s got a fucking fantastic body—incredible abs of his own, broad shoulders and a narrow waist, little brown nipples that are visibly hard, and a smattering of freckles all over his chest.

“Fuck,” Ilya whispers. He points. “Bed. Get on bed. Take off your—take off your pants?”

He remembers to make it a question at the last moment, because he’s only a little unsure how this should work, but Shane complies with an alacrity that Ilya has seldom seen even considering all of his multitudinous hookups. This man is something completely different—some totally separate animal, for how quickly he vacillates between shy and wanton and obedient and assertive. Ilya scours his brain for memories of encounters that might compare and comes up short. It’s alarming, in a way.

Shane takes off his pants, his underwear—black briefs that hug his ass and legs; sexy in their own right, but even sexier atop the neat pile of clothing he’s made on the end of the bed. When he lays himself down on the bed, legs spread, Ilya can only gawk.

“Come here,” Shane whispers, knees apart, holding out a hand. “Please.”

So Ilya goes, fits himself between Shane Hollander’s legs like he’s always been meant to be there. Shane’s thighs close around his hips, thick and strong. Ilya puts a hand on his chest.

“What do you—” Ilya swallows, tries again. “What words do you—”

“Tits, you can call them tits,” Shane whispers. “Just not, um, boobs or breasts. Please.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” He lowers his mouth, kisses a nipple.

Shane huffs out a laugh, and it thrusts his stomach up just far enough to graze against Ilya’s cock, still hanging out of his pants.

Ilya traces his fingers down, underneath the muscular swell of Shane’s pec. Clearly understanding what he’s looking for, Shane says, “No scars. I never really—developed much. That and putting on muscle…I feel comfortable with it.”

“These are very nice tits,” Ilya tells him, incredibly serious, and sees a flash of teeth for his trouble. Shane is not terribly emotive, he’s coming to realize, and very small expressions can mean very big things. That one, for instance—the tiny grin, the bitten lip afterwards—means something good.

“I like to talk,” Ilya tells him, now somewhere under his chin. “Dirty talk, and also—I say pretty. I say, ah, beautiful. Also some, ah, meaner things. With men and women, I say the same things, but if you don’t like—"

“I like those words,” Shane whispers. “Those are, um, good. They don’t make me feel—pretty used to, a little, but I wouldn’t mind it if you said it.”

Ilya frowns against his neck. “If you—”

“No, no, I’m serious. Call me pretty.” Shane wraps a leg around his waist, thrusts up against his cock again—this time clearly on purpose. “I like the idea of it. Call me pretty, and call me a slut. I, fuck, I like that a lot. Um—don’t call me a bitch—”

“Fuck no,” Ilya says. “No, I would never, unless you asked.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “Yeah, I’m not asking.”

Ilya nods, tugs on Shane’s ear with his teeth and pulls back just in time to see a small, blissful smile crawl onto Shane’s face, which is almost immediately replaced by a small frown as Ilya pulls away. Ilya flattens a palm against his stomach, slides down. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Shane breathes, pupils blowing huge.

Ilya shifts off of him, laying down instead at his side, securing one of Shane’s thighs over one of his own and propping himself up on his elbow. He teases his fingers softly into the cloud of black hair between Shane’s thighs and whispers, “What do you call this?”

“My cock,” Shane breathes, neck bowing, eyes closed. “My dick. Either one.”

Ilya moves his fingers down. Shane gasps, shudders. “And this?”

“You can say pussy,” Shane whispers. “And you can put your fingers in, but not—”

“Ah,” Ilya whispers. “Of course. My mouth?”

“Yes.” Shane is in the process of going utterly boneless now, knees parting until they rest sideways on the bed comforter. He’s fucking bendy, Ilya thinks. He’d love to see more proof of concept, eventually. He thinks about this, about seeing if he can get Shane’s knees behind his ears, as he begins to circle the base of Shane’s cock with two fingers. When Shane grabs his wrist, he almost pulls it away, but Shane whispers, “No, no, don’t stop. I just—you can fuck me. If you want. I like it in my ass.”

“Fuck,” Ilya whispers, and they both feel his cock twitch against Shane’s thigh. He rolls himself over onto Shane’s stomach again, face between his tits, and mouths his way down.

He smells strongly, here—savory and masculine and aroused. His cock is swollen, red and jutting out from the peak of his thighs, like an offering for Ilya to wrap his lips around—which he does, to the tune of a moan and an arch from Shane. He throws his arms over his eyes, revealing thick patches of black hair underneath, and Ilya marvels at the bulge of his biceps.

“Fuck, fuck, Rozanov,” Shane pants, hips thrusting.

“Ah, no.” Ilya pulls off, slaps the side of his ass. “I have my mouth on your dick. You call me Ilya. Yes, Ilya. More, Ilya.”

“Yes, Ilya,” Shane says obediently, arms still across his face. He mimics Ilya’s two-syllable pronunciation, Ill-yah, and it’s not perfect but it actually sort of is. Ilya descends back down onto his cock, sucking extravagantly, and Shane writhes underneath him. “Oh my God. Ilya, oh my god.”

Ilya pushes a hand up, cups his tit, kneads the muscle. Shane finally lowers one of his arms, but only to clamp onto Ilya’s hand like it’s the only thing grounding him on this particular plane of existence. The other one stays over his eyes, hiding them, until Ilya smacks his stomach and holds out an insistent hand.

“No hiding,” he growls, into a kiss below Shane’s navel. “Watch me do this.”

“Fuck, fuck,” Shane whispers, sounding almost scared, but he gives Ilya his other hand and tightens his fist into a punishing grip when Ilya puts it in his hair.

“Yes, baby, fuck. Pull it out.” He puts his mouth back to work.

Shane babbles, mostly various iterations of Ilya and fuck and oh my God. When he gets close, he starts to pepper in don’t stop don’t stop, as if he genuinely thinks that Ilya would, which—something to play with later. (Later? He purposefully doesn’t interrogate that thought.) Ilya presses a finger into his fluttering hole, just his thumb, to feel how wet he is and to enjoy the chaotic, intense contractions as he comes and comes, dripping onto the sheets. He does, indeed, succeed at pulling out at least a few strands of Ilya’s hair.

“Sorry,” Shane says, showing them to him afterward, and Ilya barks out a laugh. Shane settles back onto the blankets with a pleased grin. “Fuck, that was so good. Give me a second and I’ll do you.”

Ilya shifts up on the bed until he’s propped by Shane’s shoulder again. He presses his mouth into his dark armpit hair, kisses him there, smells the masculine scent of him. Different from the smell between his legs, but recognizable as being from the same body. He presses a hand down, plays with Shane’s pubic hair.

“Can you come more than once?” Ilya asks, genuinely curious.

Shane shrugs. “Sometimes. I could do it more reliably before T, but I was young then and I didn’t do a lot of…self-exploration. I really hated my body back then.” He screws up his mouth, clears his throat. “Sorry, that’s. Probably a weird thing to talk about right now.”

“No, no, is okay.” Ilya bows his head, kisses his nipple. “T is testosterone, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you…?”

“Off and on since I was sixteen, pretty much constantly for about ten years now.” He shifts, rolls in such a way that projects his intentions to put himself on top of Ilya, which Ilya indulges instantly. He presses a kiss to the center of Ilya’s chest, which is so sweet that Ilya wonders if Shane can hear his quickening heartrate. “I like my body now, for the record. I worked really hard and made a lot of sacrifices, but—yeah. It’s good. Shane and I are in agreement these days.”

Ilya smiles, tugs on his earlobe. “Shane is a very beautiful man.”

The freckles look darker when he blushes.

“You are blushing,” Ilya murmurs, thrilled. “You are blushing and I had your dick in my mouth two minutes ago.”

“Shut up.”

“Incredible. You’re incredible.” Ilya realizes, even as he says it, that he really means it.

Shane, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice the brief crisis that Ilya has entered into—because he’s kissing his way down Ilya’s body, tonguing his abs on the way down, and then he’s taking Ilya into his hot mouth. Ilya watches him bob, watches the ripple of his gorgeous back when he moves his arms, watches his ass tense and relax as he puts his whole body into the endeavor of sucking Ilya’s dick.

To be clear—Shane is very good at sucking dick. This is why Ilya reaches the edge so quickly, and why he bats Shane away when he feels himself getting close.

“Come on my face,” Shane gasps, and there is absolutely no power in the world that could keep Ilya from honoring the request.

It lands on his forehead, his lips, his cheek. Even in his mouth, a little, because his jaw drops open at the first blurt of cum making contact with his eyebrow. He crawls blindly up Ilya’s body afterwards, presses his head into Ilya’s armpit, rubbing mindlessly back and forth in a way that seems to be grounding.

“That was so hot,” he moans, tossing a leg over Ilya’s thigh. “Fuck.”

Ilya chuckles, brushes his fingers through the part of Shane’s hair and watches his fringe flop over his forehead. He leans closer, licks his own cum from Shane’s forehead and sucks a kiss onto it, repeats the process on his cheek and finally his mouth. When he pulls back, Shane has his eyes closed and his mouth open and he looks like—an angel, or like fucking danger.

They lay there, catch their breath, and then Shane rises to walk naked into the bathroom to piss. When he returns, his face and hands have both clearly been washed and now smell very faintly of soap—something floral, Ilya thinks, or maybe vanilla. The scent in Shane’s car had been similar.

On the bed, he sits against the headboard with one leg curled under himself and the other swaying rhythmically over the side of the bed. Ilya enjoys the way his stomach rolls in on itself when he sits like that, back bowed in a relaxed parabola.

“So,” Shane says, musingly. “You’re bisexual.”

Ilya, who’s stretched out with his ankles crossed and his arms behind his head, adjusts so that his head rests a little more comfortably against his bicep, better to face Shane, and raises his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Yes. You?”

“I’m gay,” Shane says, with a small shift of his shoulder, and Ilya smiles. “Kind of an inconvenient thing to realize about yourself when you’re already—you know.”

Ilya shakes his head slightly. “No, don’t say that.”

Shane huffs a brief laugh, presses his thumb to the corner of Ilya’s mouth. “It’s true. When you tell your parents Hey, I’m a guy, it sort of seems like the least you can do is tell them you’re a straight guy.”

“I think…” Ilya pauses, considers if he actually wants to say what’s clawing out of his mouth, and then says it anyway. “I think you are perfect, Shane Hollander.”

Shane’s face doesn’t move, but when he looks away after a moment, his eyelashes glisten.

“Thanks,” he whispers.

He lays down, and Ilya reflexively sets to cuddling him. The Ilya Rozanov of five years ago would have done no such thing, but the Ilya Rozanov of five years ago was also so deep in his own misery that he often didn’t fully realize that there were other people in the world. He hadn’t been a good lover to his partners back then. Respectful, yes. As much as a man in his twenties knew how to be. But not good about the after; about not clawing his way out the door at the first opportunity. A fact that he now looks back on with shame. He lays there, pets Shane’s hair and muses that Shane, at least, has found him as the lover he is today.

Then he thinks about divinity again, about God, about wanting to fuck Shane next time. Next time. There’s going to have to be a next time.

“I can drive you back to the bar,” Shane says as they’re getting dressed. “Your teammates might still be there, it’s only been…” He checks his watch, which is endearing for reasons that Ilya can’t quite place. Maybe because he just doesn’t see people wearing watches too much, these days. People use their phones. “A little over two hours.”

Ilya is surprised to hear it. It’s felt like ten minutes and, at the same time, an entire fucking year has passed since he saw Shane across the bar.

“Will you take me to the hotel instead?” Ilya asks, bunching up his shirt to pull it over his head, and when his face pops through the collar he sees Shane smile at his hair.

“Sure,” Shane says, and then steps towards him to touch the top of his head. “There’s a thread,” he murmurs, as he finds it.

Ilya wonders if Shane hears the catch in his breath, the way he doesn’t exhale until the thread is on the carpet and Shane is across the room again, balancing on one foot to put on his socks.

Shane drives to the hotel, pulls around the backside and offers one of those tiny smiles as he puts the car in park and turns the dome lights on. He leans an elbow onto the console, brushes his fingers over Ilya’s thigh and says, “By the way. Um. There wasn’t a good time to bring this up earlier, but…thank you. For what your charity is doing. The Irina Foundation channeled some of their funding through some avenues that made it to the hockey camps I work at over the summer, and it means a lot.”

Ilya covers his hand, squeezes. “You’re welcome.”

They sit there for a moment, and Ilya realizes that he is dreading the part that happens in about ten minutes, where he is alone in a hotel room with only his thoughts and the memories of this night. His thirties have brought with them a certain starvation for connection, a certain increased meaningless to the hookups he’s been gladly engaging in since he was a teenager. Shane started the night as a beautiful man in a bar, yes, but he is also a beautiful man in this car, with his fringe sweeping at awkward angles across his forehead.

“Can I see you again?” Ilya blurts before he can stop himself. He doesn’t think he really wants to.

Shane blinks, obviously surprised.

“I mean…” Ilya’s mouth moves, unsure what to say now that he’s gone so far off-script. “I know that it would be…complicated. To see you again. I am not…out.”

“Right.” Shane tilts his head, and Ilya realizes that their hands are still linked when Shane turns his hand over, laces their fingers together. The dome light, which had come on when Shane put the car in park, flickers out above them and leaves them to talk in almost perfect darkness. Ilya hears him breathe. “That’s…okay. You know? Really. If it wouldn’t be safe for you, or even just if it wouldn’t be…good. Right now. I know that we’re all supposed to pretend that the grass is greener outside the closet, but—”

Ilya is briefly taken aback by the bitter undertone in Shane’s voice—something he has yet to hear from him. Shane, obviously clocking it, subsides slightly.

“I had a really difficult time,” he mumbles, after a contemplative moment. “I’m glad for it now, because it really showed me…what matters in life. And I’m glad for it because if I didn’t do it, I don’t know if I would still…” Shane tilts his head, glances at Ilya’s eyes, shrugs. Be here, Ilya’s mind supplies for him. Be alive. Be in that bar tonight, looking like a promise waiting to be made.

“And,” Shane adds, quietly, “I would. Like to see you again. I really would.”

“Oh,” Ilya breathes, and finally lets himself smile. He isn’t sure, in this moment, that Shane means it in the context of anything aside from sex. Ilya, himself, is not certain he is prepared to entertain the idea of anything aside from more sex, and he’s more than prepared to take what Shane offers. His touch, his sex, his fluttering eyes and his soft laughter. Anything. “Good.”

He gets out of the car, five minutes and several kisses later. His lips feel bruised, like they will remember this in the morning—and Ilya hopes they do. He leans through the window to kiss Shane one more time, thumb tucked up under his jaw.

“You have my number,” Ilya tells him. “We play in Montreal again next month. But if you are in Ottawa before then, maybe, for some reason…”

“My parents live in Ottawa,” Shane says. “I might be able to think of a reason or two to make the drive.”

“Will be worth it,” Ilya murmurs, making his voice low and deep. “Would love to take you up on that offer. Fuck your gorgeous ass.”

“Fuck,” Shane sighs, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “Yeah. Sounds good. I’ll text you.”

“Yes. Whenever. Really.”

One more kiss, and then Ilya makes himself step back and up onto the curb. He watches Shane roll up the window until the tilt obscures his face, and then watches the car drive away until the taillights blur into the menagerie of traffic.

Ten minutes later, standing with his back pressed against the door of his hotel room, a notification pops up on his phone.

Goodnight, Ilya.❤️

Smiling, Ilya of course responds.

Goodnight, Shane.❤️