Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Troy Barrett, Luca Haas, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Jealous Ilya Rozanov, Jealous Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander is Obsessed With Ilya Rozanov, Fluff and Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, 5+1 Things, Shane Hollander in Subspace, (a little bit), Shane Hollander is a jock and canonically The Hottest Man, Troy Barrett asks for the phone number, Ilya Rozanov Does Not Like That, Yearning, long distance relationships are hard, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Jealousy, Not Canon Compliant

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Shane and Ilya, Anchored

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-12 Words: 15,296 Chapters: 1/1

An Uncomfortable State of Being (Jealousy, Jealousy)

Summary

Ilya has never been the jealous type. Not with Svetlana, or Sasha, or the women he's met on his pilgrimage around the MLH circuit in Canada, or the States. Not the ones in clubs under the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, anywhere else Sveta could drag his aching soul.

No, Ilya has never been the jealous type.

Well. Other than with Shane.

 

Or: five times Ilya gets jealous (and one time Shane does, too).

Notes

Hi! This work is a mixture of book and tv show canon, with plenty of liberties taken. It's not quite canon compliant, but not quite canon divergent. Just a couple of mismatched facts, like who is coaching on the Irina camp, or where their respective teams placed in certain seasons. Timeline is during the very beginning of The Long Game (ish). I'm also gonna say it is compliant enough with my fic Anchor to count as the same universe as that - so I'm calling this a collection of related standalone works.

This fic does include text message threads but Author Does Not Know How To Code That I'm very sorry. I might edit this in a week or two to code them in if I figure it out 😅

And because it appears to be a necessary thing these days to add this disclaimer:

1. I love structuring sentences in sets of three separated by ‘and,’ it has always been in the rhythm of my work. I love using colons and oxford commas and m dashes.
2. I also love a run on sentence, sue me
3. This work took me genuinely way too long to write, and I worked hard on it. I have a job, I am also doing a masters degree, writing this was something I did in what little spare time I have purely out of love for these characters and the process of writing, and the excitement I have to engage with this fandom.

For these two previous reasons I would like to say that I would rather set myself on fire than use AI in any facet of my life. I have never used AI: not professionally, not academically, not personally, recreationally or creatively. If you accuse me of using AI I will kill you and then myself.

Ilya has never been the jealous type, not really. Not with Svetlana, whose visits to his bed started when they weren’t much more than children, with nervous hands and sexual understanding gathered from censored movies and radio top tens. She’d been his first kiss, his first time, but they’d never reached so far as to play games of commitment.

‘Boyfriend doesn’t suit you.’ She’d said to him once, and he didn’t feel offended, because he didn’t think girlfriend suited her, either. He trusted her as much as he loved her: more than most, for a time more than anyone, and maybe that was the real reason why it would never work. She had a way of seeing the underside of his skin, even though he never quite felt like he could see the underside of hers.

He hadn’t been jealous with Sasha, either, even though Sasha had been jealous with him. He’d resented Sveta, who he always knew Ilya had liked more, and he used to text Ilya late at night, asking where he was and who he was with. It was why Ilya had broken it all off, when his eyes started drifting to the hope of America, a life away from home.

Sasha had been so angry, spiteful to boot, he thought he was just another thing easy to leave behind. But to Ilya, he was just something else that didn’t fit neatly into a zipped-up case, checked into the hold of a promising future.

The women he met on his pilgrimage around the MLH circuit dreamt of pinning him down, even as his reputation grew around him. By nineteen he’d made it into the tabloids: Ilya Rozanov, heartbreaker, a warm bed left behind in every city, from Vancouver to Tampa Bay and every flyover in between. He didn’t deal in dates and relationships, just respectful mutual pleasure that didn’t go beyond first names and routes home and ‘I should get going’s handed out before heartbeats slowed. He didn’t think of them, really, not the ones in Canada, or the States, nor the ones in clubs under the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, anywhere else Sveta could drag his aching soul, his chest like a birdcage, trapping the beating wings of his migratory heart.

No, Ilya has never been the jealous type.

Well.

Other than with Shane.

1.

And it isn’t as though Ilya ever thinks Shane does it on purpose. No, it’s the exact opposite, really. Shane appears to be deeply, delightfully oblivious every time Ilya feels as though his bones are trying to rip their way out of his skin. Never in his life has he known anyone so incapable of understanding just how heavily he is being flirted with: it had taken Ilya five tries to tell him after all.

So, they sit around the Pike family dinner table, one lazy Sunday afternoon with the kids in the backyard and the Football on, and Jackie says something that makes Ilya balk.

‘Well, that was before Hayden said his hall pass is Shane.’ She says and her laughter punctuates each word. Shane’s eyebrows raise so high they almost disappear into his hair. It’s fluffy and unstyled, late-summer long.

‘Hall pass?’ Ilya asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows what it means.

At the same time, Hayden chokes on his beer and says: ‘I don’t think that’s what I said!’ It’s a little too loud, his face is a little too red, and Ilya’s chest is a little too tight.

His arm is stretched out across the back of Shane’s chair, and the tips of his fingers brush feather light across the back of his neck, swirl in a circle around the topmost notch of his spine. He likes it when they come to the Pike’s, because it’s the only time they can be like this: affectionate and touching, the way any other couple can be, and away from the gaze of Shane’s parents. It’s not as though David and Yuna make them want to hide, but Ilya knows Shane lets him get away with a little bit more here than he would at home. Shane is still their little boy, after all.

Jackie ignores Hayden to laugh, ‘His hall pass- like the one person with who it wouldn’t count as cheating. Shane was totally his man crush before they were properly friends, and Hayden said that he was the only other person who could fully understand his lifestyle.’ Her voice is dripping with affection – and Ilya realises that this is something she finds adorable about him. Hayden is so besotted with her that he doesn’t name blonde models or busty actresses: the only other connection he holds close to theirs is that with his best friend, his brother on ice.

‘I did not say man-crush, I would not say man crush.’ Hayden says and Ilya suspects it’s more for his benefit than anyone else’s. He shrugs one shoulder, his lips turn down into a nonchalant frown, right as Shane’s hand lifts to cover his face. He’s flushed, too, Ilya notices, and the fingers at his neck lift to sink into the dark strands of his hair, the way Ilya knows grounds him.

‘No, is okay.’ Ilya says, ‘Shane is my man crush, too, I understand.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t mean it in like a-‘ Hayden tries, and winces at his own attempt to soften the blow.

‘A gay way?’ Ilya supplies, ‘ah, yes, I do mean it in a gay way. It is very gay when I touch his-‘

‘Ilya I swear to god.’ Shane says, and Ilya turns and looks towards him. He can see the pink flushing along Shane’s neck now, arching over the tip of his ear, and Ilya wants to take it into his mouth, to feel the heat of Shane’s blood rushing over his cartilage.

Across the table, Jackie is still laughing, and Hayden’s eyes are flicking between them, cautiously. There’s a look in his eyes like he’s just stepped on a landmine, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s going to blow. It’s Ilya’s fault, he’s trained Hayden to expect the worst from him after years of chirps and checks on the ice – maybe it was his fault too that Hayden had been so unimpressed with Shane, when he found out it was Ilya he’d chosen to love.

Or, well, not really chosen. He figures if Shane had any choice in the matter he’d have chosen to fall for anyone else, he’s practical that way. He’d have chosen some pretty girl, who spoke French and loved hockey just the right amount. Maybe if he’d been older, he’d have chosen a man, after he’d let himself finally learn who it felt right for him to love. Or maybe he’d have chosen nobody at all: maybe the loneliness would have felt simpler than all that fear.

Not Ilya, though, he thinks he’d have chosen Shane every time, like a bull in a china shop, with thrashing limbs and crashing horns and not caring about the mess he made on his way. He’d burn his whole life down to love Shane again and again, in every lifetime.

That’s not to say he believes his love for Shane outweighs that which Shane has for him. Shane has shown Ilya a thousand times just how deeply he is in love, in all the little ways he does. But he’s rational, and reasonable, and capable of walling himself in with battlements of self-control, convinced that he’s doing the right thing, if the only person he’s hurting is himself.

Which is why it shoots through Ilya like the shock of a burn: the idea that Hayden thinks about Shane, because so many of the things that make him the difficult choice are the things that with Hayden could be so simple. Years of shared training, showers, hotel rooms: privacy that has come so freely to them that no questions would ever be asked. Hayden had seen Shane naked, too, Ilya knows, and he wonders how long he let himself stare before looking away.

Ilya can’t blame him: he’s done his fair share of staring.

Hayden had known Shane’s parents for a long time. He’d had their numbers, had been in their kitchen, their car. When Shane had been wiped out on the ice by Cliff Marleau, the crunching sound of breaking bone had hit Ilya like a high-speed train. It was as though it happened in slow motion: one moment Shane is turning to look back at him, and the next he was crumpled on the ice. Ilya had been winded, shaking, losing his mind, but Hayden was the one who got to hug Shane’s mum in the hospital waiting room, and check in with the nurse who came to assess his vitals.

With Hayden, things would be quiet. Coming out would be safer in small circles, so many fewer people would be asking Shane ‘him? Was there nobody nice in Montreal?’ 

Beside Ilya, Shane turns his head, Hayden had asked him a question. His mind is slow, his own jealousy makes every thought sticky, as though caught in a mellifluous honey flow.

‘Who is your hall pass?’ And it’s a stupid question, really. As though to Ilya there’d be a single other person that could make him turn his head.

But Ilya is petty, you see, so instead of saying this, he says: ‘I do not have a hall pass. But Hayden, if yours is Shane then maybe I can say mine is Jackie, yes?’

When Hayden chokes on his drink, Jackie tips her head back and laughs in that full bellied way she does when she’s three reds in and Ilya has said just the right thing.

‘Oh my God.’ Shane groans, and when his face falls into his hands, Ilya smiles.

Later, in the car on the way home, Shane shakes his head, ‘I can’t believe you said Jackie was your hall pass.’

Ilya raises his eyebrows without turning his eyes from the road. On rare occasions, Shane lets Ilya drive. He’s learned to recognise the signs: days when Shane is tired, after they’ve had a big night of Ilya drawing him out until he’s threadbare and aching and his eyes glaze over. He wakes up in a daze, and all he wants is to curl up against the heat of Ilya’s side, to eat out of his palm, to be told he’s Ilya’s sweetest, softest, most wonderful boy.

‘Hayden said you were his first.’ He reminds Shane, as one hand draws from the wheel to brush across the curve of his knee, up the length of his thigh. They’d been up too late the night before, one of their few left together before the pre-season starts, and Ilya had taken his time making Shane come. He always did, when Shane was in the mood to beg.

‘He didn’t mean it like that.’

Ilya hums his disbelief because how could anyone, really, not be besotted with Shane? Hayden made no secret of it, in his harebrained fawning over Shane on socials and in play, blissfully unaware of how obvious it was that he had a crush. Ilya is sure there were others, both on and off the ice. Since their rookie season Shane had been the top of polls and competitions on who was the best looking, the nicest, who was the most eligible bachelor of all. Ilya had seen fans with signs in the stands of games they’d played against one another, he’d seen the tweets and read the articles, hell he’d been in more than enough locker rooms in Boston, Ottawa, Sochi, too, where the players agreed Shane’s was the face that deserved to be on billboards. The whole world was in love with Shane Hollander’s smile, and his eyes, the dusting of freckles like constellations across his nose.

‘Really, I’m so sure he didn’t mean it!’ Shane insists. Ilya’s fingers have dipped between his thighs now, they trace along the inseam of his jeans from his knee right up to his crotch. Of course, Ilya knows every inch of Shane, he can read every cue, and he notices the way he sucks his breath in slow and deep through his nose. In a moment, Shane will be hard, and he’s already on his way to sinking back into that place where Ilya has taken him before.

‘Hayden thinks he knows what to do with you.’ Ilya says as he curves his palm over the front of his pants, ‘very bold, I think, arrogant really. That he would even imagine he would know how to take care of you.’

‘Ilya…’ Shane sighs, and Ilya knows it’s supposed to be a warning.

‘Hm?’ He prompts, ‘you disagree with me? You think Hayden Pike knows how to give my good boy what he wants?’ The pressure alleviates for just a moment, and Shane whines velvet soft in protest.

‘No.’ He says quickly, needily, ready for Ilya to take him home, ‘you know you’re the only one. It’s only you.’

Something twists in Ilya, it’s the urgency with which he says it: only you, only you only you only you onlyyouonlyyouonlyyouonlyyou.

‘Yes.’ He says, ‘only me.’   

2.

But it hadn’t always been only Ilya, had it. There had been Rose Landry, who was beautiful and famous, and perfect in ways not even Hayden Pike could amount to. She’s prim and proper, kind to a fault with a smile that had every mother from Kentucky to LA sighing to their sons about finding a nice girl, ‘just like her.’  

She had been a thorn in Ilya’s side since Shane first met her in the weeks after he’d run from Ilya’s home at the first sign of vulnerability: when he’d said Ilya’s name like a prayer and found himself trapped in the raw, visceral agony of having meant it. He’d fallen right into her arms, and her bed, and left Ilya to drive himself mad scrolling through tabloid articles, repeating obsessively that it was impossible over and over again until he was on the precipice of convincing himself that he’d imagined all the times Shane had keened for his firm guidance and dominant hands.

Of course, in the end, Rose had been a gift to them both, too. Her kindness had opened a door for Shane, one she’d guided him through so gently that he’d stumbled the whole way to Ilya’s hotel room in Tampa, with impossible suggestions of not being able to pretend anymore. Ilya had realised somewhere between Boston and Moscow that she was probably the first person to ever tell him it was okay, and his heart had ached for Svetlana then, because that gift was the greatest she’d ever given him, when he’d been fifteen and she’d caught him with his pants down, and another boy’s mouth on him.

The truth is that Ilya is glad they’re friends, even though as far as he knows, Rose doesn’t have the whole truth. She knows Shane is gay, probably even guessed he’s in love, but what Shane shared with Ilya is so easily hidden under its own perceived absurdity that Ilya is sure nobody will ever really figure them out. Whatever it is she knows, though, she is good at keeping a secret, so still when they step out together on nights like this one, when the Voyageurs play in Vancouver, close to whatever set she is working on, tabloids chase their tails with stories about rekindling and romance and maybe things are never really over.

Ilya is slumped over his phone, in the stomach of a rundown nightclub under a strip mall in Vegas, after a 3-2 loss to the Los Vegas Cavaliers. His thumb drags through twitter – which would be to Shane’s dismay if he wasn’t too busy walking arm in arm with Rose down South Main.

Two hands smack his shoulders, and he’s jostled enough that he almost drops his phone, ‘it’s one loss, why are you sulking?’ Bood shouts over the music.

‘This is our ninth consecutive loss.’ Ilya replies, even with his eyes glued to the photo of Shane with Rose. He’s smiling easily at something she’s said, dressed in blue jeans and a tailored jacket, and a t-shirt that looks just a little bit too big. Ilya is squinting at it, trying to figure out if it’s new. Rose has a propensity for taking Shane shopping, and by now Ilya is convinced that all of Shane’s favourite clothes were chosen by her for him. He’d never admit out loud, the way it burrows under his skin, but then if Ilya had his way, he’d be dressing Shane up in his clothes: too big and too casual, with a red 81 emblazoned across his chest.

‘And one closer to our next win.’ Bood winks.

‘She’s hot, huh?’ Wyatt asks, he’s peaking over Ilya’s shoulder from the next seat.

‘Oh shit, is that Rose Landry? Do you think she and Hollander are getting back together?’ Bood asks, conspiratorially.

‘Wait, they broke up?’ Wyatt gasps, his eyebrows raising in a look of such comical shock that Ilya isn’t even sure if he’s joking.

‘No, I don’t think they are getting back together.’ Ilya replies instead, and swipes out of the photo, then the app and locks his phone screen so he can pretend he never saw it at all. It’s stupid to be jealous still, after all these years, knowing that her hands had been on his skin in a way only Ilya’s had been since Shane’d been a fumbling teenager with a girlfriend he mostly ignored.

(3.

Well, not the only other person. There had been the man in Mexico the summer of 2014, the one in Los Angelese sometime later, the hookups that Shane never liked to talk about because he insisted they meant nothing, ‘less than nothing. It was such a stupid thing to do, I’m mostly just so embarrassed about it.’ He’d said, when he’d told Ilya about them that first summer at the cottage. ‘They weren’t you.’ He’d sighed, after. Ilya had stared at him because he knew he couldn’t be the one to hold two empty hookups against Shane, when they both knew what his reputation had done to them both. But when Ilya imagined another man’s mouth on him, fingers tracing the lithe shape of his well-trained muscles, or wrapping around his erection, he went blind with jealousy. The thought of someone else filling Shane made him burn with such intensity that he was grateful Shane remembered neither of their names: Ilya knew if Shane did, he’d walk the streets until he found them and made them beg him for forgiveness for touching their unworthy hands to the sanctity of Shane’s skin.)

But Rose could do what Ilya could not: she could hook her arm into Shane’s and beam up at him down Main Street, with cameras flashing and smart phones snapping and social media appropriately titillated. Rumours about them were gossip, rumours about him and Ilya would be a scandal. They would never have the luxury of being an open secret.

‘Caitlin says he’s the best looking guy on the circuit, it’s not a surprise he bagged Rose Landry.’ Dykstra says from across the table, earning him a medley of chirps about his own wife not ranking him highest in the league. To his credit, he just shrugs and says ‘I know when I’m beat.’

On the table, Ilya’s phone vibrates with a new message.

Jane 23:42

That last check looked hard. You okay?

Lily 23:43

Yes, just a bump

You looked very pretty tonight

Jane 23:43

Ah, you saw those huh?

I keep forgetting she gets paparazzi following her

Lily 23:44

Did she choose your outfit?

You are very stylish

Jane 23:45

This one was all me

She was very proud

The message is accompanied with a photo, and Ilya turns his brightness all the way down, brings the phone in close to his chest so he can see. It’s Shane, shot from the neck down, wearing navy boxers and an oversized black shirt that Ilya recognises as-

Lily 23:47

Is that my shirt?

Jane 23:49

I hope you don’t mind.

You left it at mine.

Lily 23:49

Oh котенок

I wish you knew just how little I mind

Jane 23:50

Still smells like you

Lily 23:51

You like that it smells like me, huh?

Do you put it over your face when you touch yourself?

Jane 23:52

🙄

Lily 23:52

😇

Jane 23:54

If you can get back to your hotel in the next ten minutes I might let you watch

Lily 23:54

🏃‍♂️

4.

Ilya’s feet pound rhythmically against the wet, slushy pavement and his breaths come out in even puffs with every step. Three strides in, three strides out. It’s April and the Centaurs are playing against the Winnipeg Bombers for the final stop of a drawn out late season road trip. They’d flown in from San Francisco mid evening, after a hard fought afternoon game that had left Ilya tired and aching and so pumped full of adrenaline that he couldn’t sleep. He’d been paired with Troy Barrett for the trip, freshly traded from a toxic Toronto, but he’d fallen asleep as soon as the hotel room door had closed behind them, leaving Ilya alone and restless. It wasn’t like he minded; they didn’t exactly have much to talk about.

He’d tried showering, scrolling on his phone, stretching out his aching muscles, until he finally settled on going for a run, the way he always did when the darkness crept in. Maybe if he went far enough, his body would have no choice but to give out on him. Maybe if he went for long enough, the hammer of his heart would smother the clouds gathering at the edges of his mind.

The first rain falls half-way through his first kilometre, stabbing at him like icy needles. He ignored it and kept going on and on, until it was so heavy that every step threw up brown-grey slush, soaking his shoes and pants all the way up to the knee. Four kilometres in with a steady heartrate and cold-burning fingers, he stops in the sanctuary of a dirt patch under an overpass, hopeful that the rain will ease just enough for him to make his way back. He kicks out his feet to shake off what he can of the melted, filthy snow, shoves his hands into his sweatshirt pockets and sticks his head out to peer up at the cloud covered sky, murkily illuminated by streetlights. Of course what he sees is something entirely, horrifically different.

The call had come in the nothing time between Christmas and a New Year, when they’d been on the couch together at their cottage. The lake was frozen over and blanketed with snow, and Ilya loved the way Shane pressed to him at every opportunity, as though the heat from Ilya’s chest was always the best bet he had at keeping warm.

Ilya had been reading Dostoyevsky’s White Nights when Shane had pulled from him at the incessant buzzing, and dragged himself into the kitchen for what was proving to be a long call.

‘I don’t know.’ Shane was saying from against the countertop, and Ilya tried his best to read in one language, and listen in another, ‘does it fit my brand?’ A switch flicks and the soft roar of the kettle fills the room, drowning out the crackling of the fire and the safe silence that comes from a world muffled by snow. The person on the other end of the line is speaking, driving a hard pitch to get Shane on board, and eventually he says: ‘let me think about it,’ which Ilya knows means he is about to be asked his opinion.

He sits up and sets his book down in his lap. He’d decided over the summer, in a tide of homesickness, that he wanted to re-read all the Russian classics his mother had kept in hardback binds on her highest shelves. When he’d been small, just learning how to read, he used to recite the titles to her one by one. Anna Karenina. The Brothers Karamazov. War and Peace. Doctor Zhivago.

Her favourite had been White Nights, she’d told him, followed closely by About Love, and poems by Pushkin. Reading them reminds him of her and of home, and of all the things he’d never regret leaving behind for Shane who climbs back onto the couch and presses against him.

‘What is it, моя любовь?’ Ilya asks, and presses the tip of his nose into the crown of Shane’s head. When the snow had gotten heavier, he’d run out of his shampoo, and neither one of them wanted to brave the roads for more, so he smelled like the warm spiced musk of Ilya’s instead.

‘Calvin Klein want me to be part of their new campaign. It’s some new material they’re using, and they have this whole plan for a slogan that says “feels like” and then something about the person they’re using.’ Shane says and he settles his cheek against Ilya’s collarbone, warm, ebony eyes gazing up towards him.

‘And you would be, what, “feels like Canada’s golden boy”?’ Ilya asks, ‘”Canada’s second best hockey player”?’

‘Shut up.’ Shane huffs out a laugh, with a light poke into Ilya’s side enough to have his arms tighten around Shane’s body, to hold him extra still, ‘it’s an underwear shoot. I don’t exactly usually do those.’

Something in the wiring of Ilya’s brain sparks then, and he’s left blinking down at Shane with hungry eyes, ‘ah, you are telling me there is an opportunity to get high definition professional photos of you in underwear and you are not sure if you should take it?’

‘It’s not exactly my brand.’ Shane reasons, and Ilya heaves his weight to flip them over. Shane’s legs part easily to fit Ilya’s hips between them, and his lips curve into the softest hint of a smile, the way it always does when he looks up at Ilya.

‘Hollander your brand is boring, you cannot tell me there is opportunity for me to get high definition photos of you practically naked and then take it away from me. This is very cruel, this is torture to me.’

‘They sent me a box of PR a few weeks ago-‘

‘A few weeks ago?!’ Ilya gasps, ‘you have had sexy, soft, new underwear for weeks and you have not worn them?’ He dips his head down, his lips connecting to the soft expanse of Shane’s waiting throat.

‘I hardly packed any underwear-‘ Shane’s voice is breathy, his eyes are closed, ‘We have clothes here, I don’t need to pack extra stuff.’

‘Hollander, you should have facetimed me-‘ Ilya pauses to take a nip at his Adam’s apple, ‘-as soon as the box was open. I should have seen them immediately. Then you should have called them up and said, “hello Mr. Calvin Klein, my very sexy boyfriend who has amazing, huge, perfect dick-“’ He pauses again, this time to press his mouth up against Shane’s ear, ‘”would like many, many very sexy photos of me in these please.”’

‘Okay, okay.’ Shane laughs, ‘I’ll do the campaign.’

‘Good boy.’ Ilya says with a twinkling grin, right as he slides down the length of Shane’s body. In the kitchen, the kettle beeps. Neither of them notice over the sound of Shane’s gasps.

Now, under the overpass in fucking Winnipeg, Ilya is fully confronted by the consequences of his actions, because on a billboard at least two stories high, is a picture of Shane. He’s wearing grey boxers and a ridiculous canary yellow sweater pulled half way up over his stomach as he gazes over his shoulder to the camera with big, glassy eyes that Ilya has never seen trained on anyone but him. As if to mock him, white, simple lettering claims: Feels like Canada’s boyfriend.

His hand is in his pocket and wrapping around his phone before he can even blink, and Shane answers the video call sometime after the fourth agonizing ring.

‘Ilya?’ He asks, and Ilya can see the room is dark, he has the covers pulled up and under his chin, his hair mussed and eyes, heavy with sleep, squinting against the unwelcome light of his phone screen, ‘where are you? It’s late.’

‘I changed my mind.’ Ilya announces.

‘What are you talking about? Are you outside? Are you wet? Is it raining?’ Any other time, Shane’s questions would be adorable, dizzying, and Ilya would be cooing at him until he could watch his hand retreat down under the covers, and coax him into coming in that deliciously dazed way he always does when he’s half asleep.

But there were significantly more pressing matters now. So instead, he flips the camera from his face, until what fills the screen is Shane’s grey-boxer clad bulge and freshly oiled six pack on a billboard for the entirety of fucking Winnipeg to see.

‘This was a terrible idea. I was momentarily mad, you let me agree to terrible things. You have to call them and tell them you changed your mind.’ He says in the most matter of fact way he can. Shane inhales, as though about to speak, and Ilya cuts him off, ‘this caption is terrible, you are not Canada’s boyfriend, you are only my boyfriend, and Canada is not allowed to see your needy horny eyes.’

‘My “needy horny eyes”?’ Shane asks, and Ilya can tell he’s already finding this far too funny.

‘Yes. The eyes that I get when you are needy and horny, only I get these eyes, these eyes are for me.’ Ilya insists, and Shane only laughs harder.

When they fly home to Ottawa, fresh off a blood-pumping, high-octane win, the first thing Ilya sees is Shane, naked but for a pair of white cotton briefs, hair mussed and laughing and up against a kitchen counter for half of Canada to see.

He snaps a photo and sends it to Shane.

Lily 13:01

I am going to sue.

Jane 13:02

😹

Despite himself, Ilya smiles.

5.

Ottawa is knocked out of playoff contention early. It isn’t a surprise: pretty much everyone sees it coming, and Ilya wishes that he could be more disappointed than he is. At Boston he might have been, when they’d been scrapping for points, even on the off years, and scraping through by the skin of their teeth. But Ottawa is different. They drag out long strings of losses that leave them humiliated on the ice by teams Ilya would never have even thought about in years past. Their passing is messy, their defence pathetic, and he feels bad for Wyatt fending for himself alone on the line, game after game, with nobody out there to protect him.

Ilya himself still scores, but his linemates are so undisciplined with the puck that it hardly even gets that far and he’s so tired now, of trying to do it all on his own. So he plays, and he loses, and he goes home alone and he wonders if he’s always going to feel this way: hollowed out at the thaw.

He doesn’t regret the move though, he doesn’t think he’d be capable of that, not when Shane can finally be his in all the ways that matter. And he likes it, too, that from outside playoff contention he has the time to be there for him, in a way he never has before. When the Voyageurs play at home, he can drive up, stay the night, take care of the things around the house to free Shane up for time spent resting.

‘You don’t need to do all this.’ He’d said, when Ilya had been there last week, but Ilya knew that Shane was comforted by the fact that Ilya knows in what order he likes the dishwasher unloaded, he knows how Shane likes his laundry done. Most of all, Ilya knows how much better Shane has trained himself to sleep against bare skin and a steady heartbeat, with fingers stroking through his hair.

When Shane goes on the road again, Ilya comes home, and he watches the games on the couch at Shane’s parents place, feeling like a kid. It had been so long since he’d had anyone to take care of him, other than Shane, and he loves the way they make him feel small with bowls of ice cream and pats to his cheek, and offers to stay the night when it gets too late.

‘We don’t want you to be lonely, in that big house.’ David had said once, and Ilya thought his own chest might cave in under the weight of being so loved.

By late May, with the Voyageurs deep into the conference finals, half of the Centaurs had left Ottawa for their homes. Some rookies had gone back to Vancouver, Michigan, Dykstra to whatever backwater he’s from in Saskatchewan or Manitoba or wherever the hell people come from that makes them sound like that. The team had wrapped up their season weeks ago, and Ilya likes the peace when he comes to the training facilities and finds them empty and silent, other than the squeaking wheels lapping on ice to smooth out the surface for him.

But that isn’t to say it doesn’t bring a twitch to his lips, when he opens the gym door and the first thing he hears is laughter.

‘Captain!’ Wyatt shouts from astride an exercise bike, the cartoonish Centaurs logo splashed behind him like a comic book threat.

The room echoes with cheers of Captain, and Ilya looks around at Barrett, Chouinard and Bood, crowding around their Goalie, with a flushed Luca Haas in the middle.

‘Hello.’ Ilya says, ‘what are you doing to my rookie?’ He pretends he doesn’t notice the way Haas flushes at the word, or the way Hayes’ hand slaps against his back.

‘He’s showing us some of his drawings.’ Barrett says, with eyes tracking Ilya’s movements across the room as he dumps his towel, water bottle and phone on a bench. There’s something in Troy’s eye that tells Ilya he has something to say, but Ilya is a patient man, he’ll wait it out.

‘There is a very good one here of you.’ Hayes adds, excitedly, ‘and a great one of Hollander, too.’

‘Hollander?’ Ilya asks, before he can help himself, and sidles up as casually as he can to peer over Luca’s shoulder at the phone screen. When he does, he slips his arm around the rookie’s shoulder and feels him still completely under the weight of it. He hopes one day the kid will stop trembling like a frightened bird, or rabbit, or whatever animal he’d find least patronising to be compared to.

On the screen there’s a photo of a pencil drawing, taken in the early morning sun, and Ilya wonders if Luca stayed up all night working on it. It’s exceptional, and Ilya knows the photo he’d used as a reference, because it was one he himself had put enough hours into staring at, years before in his empty Boston apartment, feeling unambiguously bare, unapologetically devoted.

‘It is very good, Luca.’ He praises, as casually as he can.

‘I said he should have used one of those Calvin Klein pictures.’ Hayes jokes, and it’s good natured, in that unconsciously homoerotic way straight men loved to praise one another, ‘god even I find myself staring at those when I’m driving down the highway.’

‘God, no, I wouldn’t even know where to start-‘ Luca says, flushed and flustered, and Bood laughs with an affectionate ruffle of his hair.

‘I didn’t think Hollander was your type, Haasy, I thought you were more into-‘

‘Now now, I thought we agreed to stop mentioning Hass’ crush on the captain.’ Barrett cuts him off, and Ilya can’t help the smug grin that spreads across his own lips, as Luca’s face turns from rosy red to an angry crimson.

‘It’s okay, Luca, you can crush on Hollander, too.’ He says with one final jostle before letting Luca go, ‘I am not the jealous type.’

Luca splutters, and everyone laughs in the way people do when they trust one another.

‘Maybe you should ask him out. You’re doing the Irina training camp, right?’ Hayes says with a playful wink to their rookie, as Ilya finally makes it across the room to gather his weights.

It’s an open secret by now, that Shane Hollander is gay. He’d come out close to a year ago in the training rooms at the Voyageurs, heart hammering and fingers shaking, and terrified that he was about to lose it all. But they were walking down a path paved for them for those who’d come before, and as much as Ilya loved ribbing him on the ice, Scott Hunter had changed more lives than only theirs. It had made things awkward for Shane, but the team for the most part had been okay, and Ilya thanked a God he’d never quite believed in every night that Shane had friends who would love him either way.

‘Leave him alone, Hayes.’ Ilya finally says, and Wyatt raises his hands in the air to show he would stop.

The workout is easy, and Ilya falls into the rhythm of reps and steps to the comfortable soundtrack of his teammates and friends breathing. They joke amongst themselves from time to time, until eventually Ilya is the only one remaining. Wyatt and Bood challenge each other to a race across the ice, and Luca trails behind them, leaving Ilya and Barrett alone in the locker room. They can hear more laughing from down the tunnel, the crash of a playful check against the boards every now and again, and Ilya loves how much they enjoy playing together. He guesses like most things, chemistry does half the work.

‘Hey, man. I wanted to thank you.’

Ilya looks up and over to Barrett, standing at his locker with the door half open and all his things neatly stacked inside. It reminds Ilya of Shane. Which isn’t such a surprise, really. Most things do.

‘Thank me?’ Ilya prompts.

‘Yeah, for the call up to coach in the training camp.’

‘Ah.’

It had been Shane’s idea to split the camp in two this year – one week each bookending the summer break. They were due to start in Ottawa two weeks after the projected Stanley Cup final, just in case Shane would hit the jackpot this year again. Haas and Barrett had been added to their lineup of coaches, alongside Hayes and Bood, who will return after the kids had loved them so much the year before. (Shane hadn’t been impressed with Wyatt’s coaching style, which mostly consisted of getting the smallest kids to lay on their backs on the ice, while he hooked the curve of his stick around their ankles and spun them like little star fish, so rugged up in padding and armour that they could hardly bend their limbs. He’d been so popular that parents had been calling the foundation asking for him to come back.)

‘Look, I know I haven’t been around for long. You’ve been good to me, and I just wanted you to know I really appreciate it.’

Ilya shrugs, ‘you are a good player, Barrett. You are obvious choice, both Hollander and me think so.’

Troy nods once, then again and turns back to his locker with an expression on his face that tells Ilya he hasn’t said everything he wants to yet.

Ilya prompts with a quirk of his eyebrows when Troy looks back over, and he laughs once, then rubs the back of his neck with an open palm and says: ‘It’s just, uh. Shane Hollander, huh?’

‘I am aware he exists, yes.’ Ilya replies, but he’s gone still, seated facing Troy with his eyes tracking his movements back and forth.

‘Yeah but you, like, know him, right? You and him are friends?’ Finally, Troy turns and faces him properly, with a roll of his shoulders like he’s psyching himself up for something Ilya is pretty confident he’s going to hate.

‘We are friends.’ He confirms.

‘I was just thinking- or like, wondering, if maybe you have his number?’ Troy asks.

‘His number.’ Ilya replies, voice flat and expression guarded. It’s funny, how this feeling plummets its way through his chest. I was wondering Troy had said, as though Shane’s number hadn’t been something Ilya had coveted for well over ten years by now. He knows it as well as he knows his own, really, he can recite it off the top of his head, one digit at a time, like a child scared of getting lost. If found please return to is tattooed on the inside of his skull, practically.

When Ilya fills out forms, he fantasises about writing it down under Emergency Contact, because it feels more intimate than half the things they do. Though of course, he needs Shane’s number to do those things, too, like the night before, when he dialled it and waited, and listened down the line to every one of Shane’s staccato breaths as he was guided by Ilya’s loving voice, into touching himself in ways he never had for anyone else.

‘Good boy. Good boy.’ Ilya had purred to him, as Shane keened into the microphone, muffled by the starched sheets of his hotel bed, somewhere in the depts of Carolina.

Yeah. Ilya’s got his number, alright.

‘It’s just, I was thinking of giving him a call.’ Troy is saying.

‘A call.’ Ilya repeats again, and he wonders if it was all he’d been reduced to: an echo.

‘Yeah, I’d really like to take him out, when he comes down here for the Irina camp in a couple weeks.’

‘Take him out, like in a fight?’ Ilya asks, and it’s wishful thinking because Troy huffs a laugh and says:

‘No, Rozy. Like on a date.’

‘You think he would want to date you, Barrett? Very presumptuous.’ Ilya says, and he’s stalling, because unfortunately he quite likes Troy, and he’d rather not have to land a punch square to his jaw. He takes a deep breath, in for three, out for four, and he hopes Troy doesn’t notice.

‘Well- look I don’t know. But if the rumours we’ve all heard are true, and he’s gay, I’d like to shoot my shot. He’s fucking hot man, I’d kick myself if I lost the chance to, y’know-‘ He cuts himself off and Ilya raises his eyebrows.

To Troy’s credit, he lifts his hands in front of himself, ‘I mean everything with the upmost respect, and I’m serious about dating him, y’know? I don’t just mean hooking up or whatever. But fuck, Roz, you’ve seen those billboards.’

‘So, what, he’s Canada’s boyfriend, so now he must be yours, too?’

‘Well, I’m Canadian, so I guess technically he already is.’ Troy tries to joke.

‘Poor Hollander, he must be exhausted.’ Ilya replies, dryly.

Just the image made Ilya want to laugh, or gag, if he were to be truly honest. He knows just how Troy would imagine it going: how he’d fantasise about making Shane laugh across the dinner table, reach out and brush his fingers over Troy’s arm, tell him he’s ‘so funny.’ Ilya guesses that in Troy’s imagination he’d picture walking Shane up to his door, playing with his keys in the hopes he could make the moment last a little longer. Shane would invite Troy inside, and they’d kiss against his door, once it’s closed, until Shane is pleading to be taken to his bedroom where they’d probably have the most boring, vanilla sex known to man, and Troy would wind up believing he’d changed a life, and Shane would be skirting on the edge of dissatisfaction, not knowing what was making it all feel like a puzzle that doesn’t fit.

Troy wouldn’t know how Shane likes it, not the way Ilya does, after all the years of taking him just right. Troy’d have no idea that Shane wants it hard, with fingers in his mouth and a hand in his hair and his body so desperate to come he’d have tears in his eyes and drool on his chin. He wouldn’t know how Shane loves to be denied, either, how he could come more than once without a hand ever touching his cock, red raw and angry from need. He wouldn’t know how Shane likes being told how good he is, how tight he is, how he’d been made just right for Ilya’s cock to fill up to the brim. He wouldn’t know, either, how brutal the orgasms can be, when Ilya finally lets Shane go, and how important it is to care for him after, while he floats in that place where Ilya keeps him safe. Troy doesn’t know that last summer, at their cottage, Ilya had drawn Shane out for so long that he’d cried when he’d finally been set free to come. Nor did Troy know that Ilya held him close for hours after, kept him upright in the shower, fed him by hand, and stroked his hair soothingly, when he’d begged for Ilya to be in his mouth again, like it was the only thing that would make him less cold.

No, Troy Barrett wouldn’t even know where to start.

‘I just think he and I could fit.’ Troy tries again.

‘You know this about him, yes?’ Ilya replies and finally stands to pull his sweatshirt over his head, pull a pair of sweatpants on over his shorts, so he wouldn’t be cold on his way out to the car.

‘Well, no, but that’s why I want to text him.’

‘You need it now so you can, what, organise a date a month away?’

‘It just feels like the respectful thing to do, y’know? Get to know him a little before we go on a date.’

‘Get to know him,’ Ilya parrots, ‘Very scheduled. Shane would like that.’

‘You think?’ Troy asks, smiling.

‘I said he likes schedule, Barrett, not that he would like you.’

‘Oh.’ Troy frowns, and Ilya can see he doesn’t quite understand how he’s done this so wrong.

He closes his locker and turns towards Troy, as calls echo down the tunnel again. The others are coming back, and before they step into the room, Ilya says: ‘Shane is in playoffs. He is very particular, very serious about no distractions. Maybe it’s best if you wait, ask for his number in person, yes? He’s here for a whole week.’

‘Where’s he staying when he’s here?’ Troy asks, nodding as though what Ilya says makes sense, ‘with his parents, out Rockcliffe way?’

‘Or maybe with me.’ Ilya smiles and as he passes Troy for the door, he lands a firm and friendly smack to the square of his back, ‘I will put in a good word for you, yes?’

Maybe it’s petty, to psych Troy up for the inevitability of the rejection. Though, Ilya guesses, it had taken him five tries for Shane to realise he was being flirted with all those years before, maybe he wouldn’t even notice.

‘Thanks Cap.’ Troy says, and Ilya shrugs.

‘You are right. Any man who bags Shane Hollander is one lucky bastard.’

+1.

When Shane hits the ice, he likes to hit it sprinting. There’s something about the sensation: the transition from the soft, squidgy rubber floor to the smooth slip of the rink under his skates. When he’d been a teenager, gearing up to the looming draft, his mum used to joke that he’d been ‘born with a pair of skates strapped to his tiny little feet,’ becausefor a long time, skating had been easier than walking.

That’s why, on the first day of the Game Changers Camp, everything feels all wrong.

He’d been meant to arrive in Ottawa the day before, he’d been meant to have dinner with his parents with Ilya at his side, around the childhood dining table that fit all four of them so naturally that he can hardly remember what it had been like when there’d been only three. He’d been meant to climb into one of Ilya’s ridiculous sports cars after, hold his hand the whole drive home, follow him up the stairs and insisting they should be talking about the camp, unpacking his things, all while Ilya kissed down his throat until he couldn’t remember why he’d come to Ottawa at all, if not to have Ilya’s hands on him again.

But as always goes best laid plans, Shane instead had found himself sitting in traffic down the Trans-Canada Highway at seven in the morning on the first day of Ottawa’s camp, late and ill-prepared and tapping his hands repeatedly against the steering wheel, as though his impatience would will the cars ahead of him to move faster.

The Voyageurs had ended their season deep in the fight for the Cup. They’d chased Edmonton the whole way through to game seven, where they’d finished disappointed on a 3-1 scoreline, with Shane’s sole goal the only thing saving them from a lockout. He’d dragged his heavy bones back to Montreal for a drawn out season wrap, filled with meetings about where ‘everything had gone wrong.’ He’d wanted to say that it hadn’t, that they’d gone as far as only two teams could go, that Edmonton’s best was just better than theirs, but the ice he skated on had been thin since he’d come out, and he isn’t so sure he holds enough good will to be a voice of authority anymore.

Ilya had told him it was okay, when Shane called him on Friday to say he wouldn’t be there in time, and Shane had never been so grateful that he understood. More than he would just from loving him, because these were his shoes, too: captain, centre, the one zeroed in on when everything went right, or wrong, or something in between.

But Shane likes it when things go to plan, so when he finally hits the ice, it’s with an anxious knot sitting steady under his diaphragm, and pins and needles dizzy in his head. He feels like his skates are on the wrong feet, like he got out of bed on the wrong side (the right side would have been Ilya’s side, where he should have woken up safe and warm, buzzing from the pleasure they’d have shared the night before. It would have been right, too, for Ilya to make him breakfast while he showered, bring his hot tea to the table and kiss the top of his head while they talked about things that matter, and things that don’t, and things they were saying, just to hear each other’s voice.)

‘Hollander, it’s good to see you.’ A voice pulls Shane out, and he blinks, looks up into the warm, soft eyes of Ryan Price, who’d made the trip to Ottawa again from Toronto.

‘Price.’ Shane says with an exhale of breath, finally finding a smile, ‘hi.’

‘You okay?’ Ryan reaches out and bumps his fist against Shane’s, which he offers out in warm greeting.

‘Fine.’ Shane nods, ‘season wrap went late, I couldn’t get here last night so I’ve just had a bit of a morning.’ It’s still an hour at least until the kids will start arriving, but Shane is the last of the coaches on the ice, and he takes time now to look around between them. Max Riley and Leah Campbell are standing against the barrier, deep in conversation with Troy Barrett, who says something that makes them both tip their heads back and laugh. He’s yet to meet Barrett properly, outside of a Toronto uniform, but Ilya likes him well enough, and Shane trusts his judgement more than he trusts his own some of the time.

His eyes slide over the ice, to the crease at the opposite end of the rink, where Ilya stands with his arm wrapped around Luca Haas’ shoulders. They’re talking to Wyatt Hayes, who looks half his normal size out of his goalie padding, and without a helmet on his head. Normally, Shane would take time to linger on the oddity of the sight, but his eyes find something else instead: Ilya’s fingers, slim and tender, carding through the back of Luca’s hair in the gentle way they do when he loves someone. It doesn’t help either, that Luca gazes up at him with a look that Shane can only really describe as unwavering infatuation.

And he doesn’t mean to spiral, he really doesn’t, but fuck, he isn’t having a good day.

When Haas had joined Ottawa last September, he’d billeted at Ilya’s home. It hadn’t been for long – just a few months while he settled into the rhythm of the MLH, and Canada, and a life away from home comforts. Ilya had told Shane stories about it, on the nights they’d managed to get alone, when Ilya had sent Haas to Bood or Hayes, like a child in need of a babysitter.

‘He’s an artist.’ Ilya said, with his hands in Shane’s hair, the way they are in Luca’s right now, ‘he’s so good on the ice, but he’s scared, I think.’

‘What about?’

‘The pressure and the eyes. And me, I think, too.’ Shane found it a funny thought, being scared of Ilya, ‘when he was small, he had a poster of me in his bedroom.’

‘Careful. You’ll break his heart.’ Shane had joked, and Ilya grinned the way he does, when he knows what Shane is thinking.

‘He’s a little boy with a crush, but he is tough. Should guess someone like me would already be snatched up by a sexy, jealous jock.’

And it had been obvious, all the times on the ice when Ilya had praised him, bumped their gloves, tapped their helmets together, how Luca gazed at him with the same infatuation he does now. (And Shane isn’t proud of it, but for a moment he wonders if Ilya likes it, too. Luca is gorgeous, objectively. All blonde hair and blue eyes and pink, pouted lips that look desperate to please. He’s young, too, and Shane knows how Ilya loves to protect, to teach, to guide limbs and hands and mouths that are inexperienced and keen for learning. And it isn’t as though he really believes that Ilya would want Luca, it’s been years since he’s given Shane reason to doubt, and even back in those days when other bodies had warmed Ilya’s bed, it was Shane he came back to time and time again. But Luca wanted Ilya, the way only Shane could have him, and there was a part of him that believed maybe Luca was who Ilya should be after. It would be easier, after all, on road trips and late nights in Ottawa, the weeks while Shane is away, when Luca gets Ilya every day and half the nights, across town at worst, the next bed over at best. Attention available that Luca would have only thought possible in teenage fantasies and late nights, when he’d close his eyes and imagine it’s Ilya’s hands on him, rather than his own.)

‘Hollander!’ Another voice booms, and Shane blinks up as Bood calls to him from where he’s sidled up by Wyatt, and finally all eyes turn towards him. Ilya’s fingers still, and a smile curves across his lips, so soft that Shane wants to press his hand over it, cover it from sight, because something that loving should be saved just for him.

‘Hi.’ Shane says, launching off the barricade and away from Price to slide over to the crease, where Hayes has turned towards him, greeting him with a bump of their fists, which Shane follows with another to Bood, then Haas too after only a fraction of a second spent hesitating.

‘How was the drive, Hollander?’ Ilya asks, and Shane knows that he knows how the change in schedule would bury under his skin, leave him twitching and anxious. He also knows that Ilya checks his location more than his own emails, and that he’d have known every bump Shane hit on the road.

‘Fine. Just… Traffic.’ Shane says, and he doesn’t let his eyes linger on Ilya long, instead letting them dart around the rink, seeing bags of cones, tubs of pucks and a stack of sticks in different sizes, ‘we should set up, right?’

Ilya looks at him for a long moment, then nods, ‘yes. Set up.’

‘I’ll take Barrett, and Bood and we can set up the forward drills. You take Price and Riley for defence, and Hayes, you get Campbell to set up the crease, yeah?’ Shane says, trying to gather whatever authority his voice has left, after the season’s long, draining end.

‘No.’ Ilya replies, ‘you take Price and Riley, I’ll take the forwards and Haas.’

Shane blinks, ‘okay.’ He says, right when Barrett skates over to join them.

‘Hollander, it’s super great to see you, man.’ He says, ‘did you say we’re setting up the forward line?’

‘No.’ Ilya cuts, before Shane has a chance to answer, ‘you’re with me, Hollander is busy with Price and Riley, and the goalies.’

‘Oh, okay well-‘ Troy tries, but Ilya is already turning away, Haas in tow with Bood and Troy launching after to keep pace, and Shane- Well, Shane just watches them go.

When the children arrive, things start to make more sense. Coaching doesn’t come as easy to him as it does to Ilya, but when he’s talking hockey, his mind doesn’t have time to race. It’s a good group this year, too, with an even mix of girls and boys in all positions across the rink, all of them trying hard with smiles spread across their bright, flushed faces. The hours pass by in a whir of laughter, and Shane finds himself sliding in at every chance he gets, when he sees Ilya and Luca standing side by side.

They finish the first day off with half-rink games five on five, and parents slowly fill the stands to cheer their kids on.

‘Having fun?’ Ilya asks, when he sidles up to lean on the barricade at Shane’s side.

He glances over, then back to the ice, where a nine year old with tight black braids streaming out from beneath her helmet takes the puck up the barricade and shoots from five metres out, straight between the legs of a stocky boy from Alberta, who groans in frustration.

‘You’re all good, dude! It happens! Just remember what we talked about, low gravity.’ Wyatt calls, and Shane sees the boy nod, while the girl hi-fives her doting parents through the clear perspex of the safety wall.

‘I am.’ Shane nods, glancing again to Ilya. He can feel that he’s being watched, and he clears his throat, ‘you were right, it’s a good collection of coaches this year.’

‘Mm, the kids like them. Bood is very popular with the mums, I think. And Luca is having fun.’

Luca Shane thinks, his brows twitching, ‘he probably likes being around people his own age.’ He says, voice too sharp as he watches a string of clumsy play up centre. Luca isn’t too far off, watching the kids race back and forth on unsteady skates.

Ilya laughs, ‘Shane, you are chirping my rookie and he isn’t even here.’

‘I haven’t talked to Barrett yet.’ Shane says, changing the subject before he can think too hard about the possessive. God, he’s even jealous of Ilya’s grammatical structures now, ‘I should say hi, before we all leave for tonight.’

‘Why do you need to talk to Barrett?’ Ilya asks, too quickly.

Shane raises an eyebrow, ‘because he’s a coach? I’ve not really met him before off the ice. I should thank him for coming, get to know him a little.’

Ilya waves a hand dismissively, ‘you don’t need to meet Barrett. Not an interesting person, he’ll talk and you’ll fall asleep, very boring.’

‘Maybe we’ll get along, then, you’re always telling me I’m boring.’

‘Yes but you are different boring. Good boring. He’s just… boring boring. Very bad, you would not like him.’

Shane huffs a laugh, eyebrows raised, but before he can reply, the whistle blows and Ryan Price bends down to collect the puck, once it’s ricocheted off the barricade. Max Riley does the same, and the kids finally mill over to the edge of the rink, where their parents are descending to greet them.

‘Thank you for today, everyone!’ Ilya calls, ‘we see you in the morning, yes?’ The kids wave and chirp, falling into their doting parents arms, while the coaches gather up their sticks and cones, set them aside on the benches for tomorrow.

After only a moment, Luca skates up and stops dutifully at Ilya’s side, ‘thanks for letting me join, Cap, Mr. Hollander.’ He says, face red from embarrassment, or exertion, or from just having Ilya look at him, if Shane had to guess, ‘what can I do to tidy up?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’ Ilya waves a hand and pats Luca on the shoulder, ‘give me a moment and I will drive you home.’

‘Okay. Thanks, Cap.’ Luca says, and Shane can feel the spiral in his stomach again. The one that has him imagining Luca, flush faced and eager, hoping the whole drive home that Ilya will lean over and kiss him, reach to hold his hand, ask to be invited inside. And later, Shane tries to convince himself it’s that hurricane that has him raising his eyebrows and opening his mouth, and looking Ilya in the eye when he says:

‘I’ll head over to yours.’ His voice is firm, confident, like inviting himself over to Ilya’s home is something normal that he does all the time. Which, of course, it is, though Luca doesn’t know it, ‘there are some things I want to go over for the week.’ And Ilya, the asshole, has the audacity to smile. It spreads across his face like a rising sun, and Shane can tell immediately that he sees it all for exactly what it is: a stake of territory, a claim of ownership. Luca can be under his arm, in the passenger seat of his car, someone to pick up and drive home. But this is Shane showing the rookie who it is that can turn up without an invitation, who is entitled to Ilya’s home, as though it were his own.

‘Okay.’ Ilya says, amusement dancing in his eyes, ‘you remember the door code to get in, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Shane says, and it’s a statement that hangs heavy between them, because the code is his birthday, after all.

‘Are you staying at your parents place?’ Luca asks, polite and intimidated, all rolled into one.

‘No.’ Ilya says, before Shane has the chance to lie, ‘he’ll stay with me. Lots to talk about.’ He seals the statement with a grin.

Ilya tells him that it’ll be an hour before he makes it home, so Shane is greeted by silence. He toes off his shoes and leaves them neatly by the door, amongst the sneakers and dress shoes Ilya has sitting there. He hangs up his coat, too, and carries his bag in through the vestibule to the living room and leaves it by the stairs. It isn’t like he needs to bring much when he comes to stay with Ilya, because there are already drawers of his things hidden away at the back of his too-big walk-in closet, between his hung up suits and the coats he only needs when he goes to Edmonton and Calgary in the dead of winter.

Shane has lived alone for a long time, and in the days before, he’d been content. He’d liked the way he had control over his space: everything left where he last touched it, his pillows fluffed, his books neatly set in rows on shelves he dusts at regular intervals. There’d been a quiet satisfaction in not being disturbed. But since that summer and the cottage and promises of a future neither of them knew how to make happen, it reads something more like loneliness.

It’s as though he had blinked, and all of a sudden Ilya is everywhere: a jacket hooked over the back of a chair, his toothbrush and facewash and shampoo by the sink. Shane keeps his fridge stocked with coke, too, because he knows Ilya likes it, and there’s something about having it that sits in him like a promise of next time. Like a bird building a nest, waiting for spring.

There’s a wind picking up outside, and somewhere down the hall the wooden beams creak as the house shifts and Shane follows the sound to the kitchen, where he opens the fridge. It’s full, as always, with an array of food haphazardly stacked on shelves and in the door: pickles, mayonnaise, cheese, an avocado that looks like it’s seen better days. There’s a halfway empty bottle of milk in the door, right beside an unopened one that’s the brand Shane likes, and it twists in him, how Ilya knows. Because of course he is all over Ilya’s home, just the same way Ilya is all over his, and Shane can see it in the milk in the door, the ginger ales stacked beside the cokes, crisp and unopened and chosen for him. He knows that if he looks in the pantry Ilya will have bought his favourite bread, and sugar-free cereal, and on the calendar on the wall the dates he is due to come and stay will be circled with red pen, even though Ilya would already have them memorised. He just likes to see them there, he’d told Shane once, and Shane understood, because he likes to see it, too.

Upstairs, a blue toothbrush will sit on the sink, and in the medicine cabinet Ilya keeps Shane’s facewash and moisturising cream, just in case Shane forgets to pack them, which he’s never done but Ilya likes to be prepared anyway because he loves Shane in a way Shane has never been loved before.

Sometimes, he wonders when it happened, this thing between them. When it had turned from hungry hands on desperate skin to something so all-encompassing that Shane wouldn’t know who he’d be without it.

For a time, he’d assumed it had been the cottage, no, the hospital, no, that night on the phone, when Ilya had spilled his soul to Shane from a world away, desperately hoping he wouldn’t understand, because understanding would make it real and neither one of them knew quite how to handle that. Maybe it had been Tampa, no, the club, no, Boston, when Shane had said Ilya’s name out loud for the very first time and was filled with the desperate need to say it again and again, until he didn’t know any other words. But none of that felt right, and neither did Vegas, or Montreal, or Toronto, either, when they’d faced one another in those showers, and Shane had been made an offer so good he couldn’t deny it, and he’d followed Ilya to bed like a sailor lost at sea, following the North Star, desperate for home.

But then he realised that maybe this love came before it all: their rookie season, the draft, even before an alley in Saskatchewan, the first time Shane’d heard his voice.

Last October, Shane had been invited to a Gala, when he’d been in New York for an early season meet with the Admirals. They’d won, it’d been easy, and he’d dressed up in a suit and tie and crossed the city to the Met, where he spent the evening crushed in the thrum of models and actors, benefactors and athletes and wondered what it was he was doing there, why anyone would choose to invite him. It’s not often he gets overstimulated, but the constant drone of conversation, the tie around his neck had the heat of the room piling onto him until he broke free in a desperate escape and slipped from the ballroom into a long, cold hallway lined with cream coloured statues, cracked with age.

His finger inched under the knot of his tie and he tugged to loosen it as he read the plaques slowly, one by one, in hopes of calming his hammering heart. There was a woman, grasping an amphora over her shoulder, two thousand years old; there was a child, holding the horns of a goat from somewhere in Greece he’d never heard of before. He wound his way around the base of a column and looked up, and it was like his chest caved in because in front of him was a statue that looked so much like Ilya he thought for a moment, that someone had turned his love to stone. He had curls across his forehead, a broad and muscled chest, with strong arms wrapped around a body that he cradled close against him as he gazed up at the sky with a face twisted in pure, agonising grief.

Achilles after the death of Patroclus, the plaque said, and Shane wondered, finally, if he’d been loving Ilya since before he’d even been here at all.

So he’d stumbled the whole way back to his hotel with frantic hands and hungry eyes, desperate to learn about everyone who had come before, and he felt as though he found them, again and again: he had been Patroclus, following Achilles into battle, Orpheus, doomed to turn around, he’d been Alexander, too, life like a riverbed run dry at the loss of Hephaestion who died, the only man who had ever really known him. And Shane wondered then, if he’d loved Ilya at every time, and in every place, if maybe the thread that bound them together was made from older atoms still. Really, Shane couldn’t conceive of a world that didn’t hold this love inside of it, like there was some cosmic force that had brought them together again and again, through millennia until now, at the base of Ilya’s stairs, in a home that wasn’t Shane’s but might as well have been for how it cocooned him in warm, safe sanctuary.

And so he leaves his bag there on the floor and climbs the stairs one by one until he’s on the landing, in the doorway, crossing over the threshold of Ilya’s bedroom. It’s the same as it’s always been, in the years since he left Boston behind for Shane to come to Ottawa, where his team loses, and he’d had no friends, and he’d still sworn that it had been worth it. He glances around again, he sees the book on the bedside table, thick and Russian and worn from being lugged around state to state for weeks; he sees the empty glass of water, the sheets on his bed are rumpled, and a sweatshirt is discarded against the pillows, thrown there, Shane guesses, after he’d changed his mind.

Without thinking, Shane crosses the room and sinks his fingers into the worn black cotton and brings it to his face to drag in a long, slow inhale until he’s dizzy with the warm, familiar smell of Ilya. It’s all spice and sweat and something chemical from his laundry detergent or deodorant and he drinks it up like he’s spent forty days and forty nights in a desert, and it’s his first taste of water.

It’s like Ilya surrounds him, and Shane doesn’t wait as he pulls his shirt over his head and replaces it with the hoodie that slouches from his shoulders in reminder that Ilya is bigger than him, just the smallest bit stronger than him, and it makes his heart rate pick up until he’s desperate for more. So desperate that he turns to his closet, hung full with shirts and sweaters, all just as intoxicating as the last. Shane kicks off his sweats, his underwear and pulls on a pair of Ilya’s boxers, too, because it’s the closest he can get to being inside of him: cracking open his ribs and curling up just beneath his heart, warm from his blood and his bones and the vital organs that keep him alive. Shane doesn’t think it would be enough then, either, not until their bodies were all one single mass of muscle and flesh. Like Achilles and Patroclus, their ashes intertwined, so they could share a soul for eternity.

Shane’s hands tremble as he folds his clothes and leaves them in a pile on the edge of the bed and he doesn’t know why, but he is still hungry, with the smell of Ilya blurring the edges of his mind, like too many shots of tequila and a mouth against his neck. He’s almost frantic, the way he kneels one knee to the bed, then the other and arches his spine as he presses his face down and into the duvet, desperate for his senses to be overwhelmed, and really he shouldn’t even be surprised how it makes him hard. Not after all these years.

His hips roll forward and the sweet pressure against his cock draws out a low groan, and a hissed whisper of ‘fuck,’ into the cotton of the duvet. Maybe he should find it embarrassing, but his mind can’t catch up to the weight of his own need as he grinds down again and again, until he’s building enough of a rhythm that he starts to feel that desperation burning just under his skin.

But Ilya has trained him well, and it’s just not enough.

Shane turns his head so that his cheek is against the comforter, and his eyes flutter open to catch his own reflection in the mirror. His face is red, his hair mussed and eyes dazed and he wonders what Ilya would say, if he could see him just like this. So eager, so desperate, coming apart at the seams from something as little as the scent of him, not even the weight of his rough hands, the pressure of hips against his. Ilya can always dismantle him so efficiently, and Shane likes how he can shake off his own confidence and bravado, all the command he holds on the ice and hand it over into Ilya, because in bed he doesn’t have to be a captain, or a decision maker. He doesn’t even have to be perfect. All he needs is to be pliant and pleasured, and a very good boy.

Without thinking, Shane averts his gaze from his own reflection and reaches one trembling hand to the bedside table. He pulls it open and searches blindly inside, his fingers scraping against pens and tissues, the foil of a strip of condoms they barely use anymore until he takes hold of a bottle of lube. It’s half full, Shane’s favourite brand, and while he slicks two – no three fingers- he jolts up his hips just enough to push Ilya’s boxers down over the curve of his ass until they’re mid-thigh. The air is cool against his skin, but he doesn’t linger on it, he just rolls his eyes closed and parts his lips in a soft whine and presses one finger inside of himself.

It’s the burn he feels first, followed by the discomfort of the angle, but it doesn’t matter, because when he closes his eyes and inhales deep into his chest, he can imagine it’s Ilya there behind him, full of praise and love and fucking that single digit into him slow and steady.

‘Oh-‘ Shane gasps and presses his hips down again, alternating between rocking forward, or back, and he adds another finger before he knows he’s ready, because he’s never been a patient man. He arches his back just enough to press the digits in deeper, as deep as he can, searching for that place inside of him that makes him see stars, and he only allows himself a single groan of frustration when he can’t get it just right. Not the way Ilya does, at least.

So he makes do by rocking forward, the air punctuated by a cacophony of his pants and gasps and needy, desperate whines as he presses himself down against the covers again, right up until he feels so close that his skin might catch on fire from the heat of his need, if he doesn’t give himself the release soon.

‘Ilya- please-‘ he whispers to himself, and presses in a third finger in the desperate hope that feeling full will make up for his lack of patience to search himself just right.

‘Please what?’ The voice, unmistakable, comes from behind him, and Shane’s eyes snap open again.

In the reflection opposite the bed, Shane can see Ilya leaning against the doorframe watching with his arms folded over his chest, and one eyebrow raised in tandem amusement and hunger.

‘Ilya…’ Shane sighs, relieved, and Ilya steps closer towards the bed. Before he speaks again, he pulls his shirt up and over his chest and drops it onto the pile of Shane’s clothes there at the edge.

‘Please what, моя любовь?’

‘Please can I-‘ Shane swallows and his hips have stilled but the burning pressure stays, ‘please fuck me. Please- please.’ He winces at the desperation in his own voice, wishing he could save himself from sounding so pathetic, but then Ilya drops his pants and kicks off his briefs, and Shane knows how the tone has done the trick.

‘Don’t beg, моя любовь, don’t beg. I will look after you, yes? Don’t I always look after you?’ Ilya coos, and he crawls over the bed to lay on his side by Shane. He pauses, before he touches him, and takes a moment to survey the sight: his own hoodie bunched up around Shane’s heaving waist, his boxers down around his thighs and Shane’s own fingers buried inside of himself, slicked with lube as his cock, still pinned beneath him, leaks over the covers.

‘You do- you always do.’ Shane agrees, too quickly, because he thinks he’ll do just about anything by now, to get those hands onto him.

‘I do. You’re right, my good boy.’ Ilya says, and flicks his eyes up to look at their reflections again, ‘look how beautiful you are,’ he instructs gently, but Shane’s eyes have slipped closed again, and he whines with a rock of his hips because why is Ilya fucking stalling.

‘Please-‘ he repeats, and Ilya hushes him. He inches forward, using one hand to pull the cotton briefs down over Shane’s thighs and knees, then off entirely to be discarded somewhere Shane can’t see.

‘My good boy, open your eyes.’ Ilya says again, and finally, Shane does.

The sight is enough to knock his breath out of his chest. He’s there, as he had been, with his hair a mess and his expression dazed, with his hips lifted off the bed so he can rut his achingly hard cock against the soft, familiar mattress. Only now, Ilya is there, too. He’s naked and laying on his side, with his torso propped up on one elbow, so that he can look over Shane to their reflection. Shane sees, too, how Ilya’s cock is resting hard and heavy against his thigh, and his hand reaches over to take the bottle of lube Shane had discarded minutes before, and he watches as Ilya slicks himself up, too.

‘Do you need more time?’ He asks, while stroking himself once, twice to alleviate the pressure building there.

‘No, I’m ready.’ Shane gasps, and only hesitates for a moment before his fingers are withdrawing from himself.

‘Good, because I am not patient. Walking in, seeing you in my bed so needy and desperate, котенок, I wish you knew what you do to me.’ Ilya hums, like he’s chastising, but Shane knows of course that he’d never really be mad.

‘Please-‘ Shane gasps again, and Ilya just smiles, then rolls his hips, until Shane’s are pressed beneath his. One hand slips slick between the cleft of Shane’s cheeks to toy gently at his stretched, desperate hole, while his other palm smooths over the crown of his head.

‘No begging, baby.’ Ilya reminds him, ‘but I want you to watch. I want your pretty eyes to stay open, yes? Watch what I do to you, watch how good you feel.’

The tip of Ilya’s cock nudges at his rim, and Shane can’t find the words to answer, so he just nods and spreads his legs that fraction wider. Of course, there are some promises Shane can’t keep, and so when Ilya finally pushes in, his eyes flutter closed with a low, desperate moan, because Ilya really does know how to fill him up just right.

‘Ilya…’ He sighs, like he’s finally found relief.

‘I know, sweet boy.’ Ilya hushes into his ear. The tips of his fingers brush over his forehead, while his palm firmly keeps Shane’s head still, ‘but your eyes are closed, моя любовь. You promised me you would watch.’

Ilya sinks deeper still, until his hips are as flush as they can be, with Ilya atop him like this. Shane spreads his legs again, helped by Ilya’s fingers hooking just beneath his thigh, keeping them parted even as his hips stay treacherously still.

‘Ilya-‘ Shane says, twitching his hips back, trying to urge him to move.

‘Eyes open, sweet boy.’ Ilya reminds him, and finally Shane acquiesces, to let his eyes flutter open again. Ilya is watching him, because of course he is, with his hand still pressed to the side of his head, his lips hovering just below his ear and his other hand keeping his legs spread wide. The whole image is pornographic, and Shane is stunned at how pliant he looks: as though his whole body is there for the taking. It’s something Shane never quite sees, even though he knows just how willing he is to give his body over to Ilya for use in whatever way he seems fit, and he allows a part of himself to feel smug, even through the fog of his needy daze, that it’s his body that Ilya owns so completely.

‘Hey,’ he sighs, all breathy soft and desperate.

‘Hey.’ Ilya greets in return, with the tenderest of smiles.

‘Missed you,’ Shane murmurs, right as Ilya starts to rock his hips in and then out, and he watches the complicated thing that comes across his own face at the sensation. The way his cheeks, ruddy under his dusting of freckles, scrunch up and his mouth falls open, and he can see, too, in Ilya’s eyes, how much he loves it.

‘Missed you.’ Ilya agrees, and dips his head down to kiss the side of his neck, then the hinge of his jaw, then pulls his face away to focus on the steady rhythm of his hips.

The pleasure is immediate, and Shane’s mouth gapes open and his hand fists at the sheets as Ilya’s slow rocks build to a steady, unforgiveable pace. The angle, too, draws him in deep, and it’s only a few thrusts before he’s pressing into that sweet, tender place so deep inside Shane that he feels close to exploding already.

‘Fuck,’ Shane gasps, but he resists closing his eyes, because Ilya asked him not to, and if he does as he’s told then he’ll-

‘Good boy, that’s my good boy.’ Ilya groans and Shane can practically see the way he preens at the words. His nose wrinkles, his eyebrows furrow and beneath him, his cock jumps where it rubs in time to Ilya’s hips against the sheets, ‘you’re so good for me. You take me so well, baby, you’re so tight, so perfect.’ Ilya is murmuring into his ear, and Shane sees himself nod, like he’s accepting the praise.

‘No one- no one else-‘ Shane says, and he doesn’t even know how to say what he means: no one else can take you this well. No one else was made for you like I was. Whatever god there is has made us infinite times over, just so we can fit together like this.

‘No, baby, nobody else knows how to look after you.’ Ilya says, and Shane thinks yeah. Close enough.

The pressure in his stomach builds again, and the thrusts into him punch sounds from his lungs and throat with growing desperation. What started as soft, eager sighs were escalating to gasps and whimpers, wordless pleads so needy and debauched that Shane may find them humiliating, if they’d been for anybody else. But Ilya is Ilya, and so his palm smooths over Shane’s hair and he whispers, ‘you can come, sweet boy. My messy, filthy, needy boy.’

‘Good?’ Shane manages, practically begs, and he can see how close Ilya is, from the way his sharp eyes glaze over, like he’s drunk on Shane’s heat.

‘Yes, baby. So good to take me so well, so good.’ He manages out, his hips only stuttering once as he drives Shane home.

It only takes a moment, then Shane is turning his face to press into the covers and slicking the space beneath him with a loud, agonised cry. His fist tugs the sheets, and for a fraction of a moment he’s overstimulated, before finally, finally feeling Ilya’s hips lose their pace, as he follows him into the crashing wave of his orgasm.

The pounding of Ilya’s hips slows into a rock, until finally he stills and they lay there, a mess of slick heaving limbs, tangled together.

‘Ilya-‘ Shane whines softly because the whole world feels faint and distant, and Ilya hushes him, kisses his shoulder, pulls back just enough to slip his cock free, ‘no-‘ Shane tries, then whimpers weakly when three fingers take its place.

‘Shh, shh.’ Ilya whispers into his ear. The fingers press slowly in, catching the come leaking from his spent body and pushing it back deep inside, until the pads press to his prostate again, sensitive from use. Shane arches again, and he’s grateful, that Ilya won’t ask him to open his eyes, because he doesn’t know if he could take the sight of himself like this: fucked and pliant, and already desperate to be taken again.

‘Pretty.’ Ilya whispers and massages the spot in slow, intentional presses, ‘so pretty, my Shane.’

It’s like there are pins and needles in Shane’s head, and he settles down for the mixture of pleasure and discomfort that comes from being so toyed with. His limbs are so heavy, and he’s pretty sure he’s drooling, and Ilya starts pressing kisses along his shoulder to the back of his neck and he’s hard again, and leaking into the smear of come already filthy on the sheets.

‘Come, my sweet boy.’ Ilya whispers into his ear, ‘I’ll catch you.’ And Shane does, with an arched spine and a roll of his hips and his mouth falling open into a silent scream, and then the world clouds over, and he sinks into his warm, favourite haze.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, when he comes back to, but he’s pretty sure he remembers the strength of arms wrapped around him, under the falling shower spray, and the comforting weight of a duvet atop him. His eyes flutter open, and he squints against the intrusion of light coming from Ilya’s bedside table.

A slow, lazy blink tells him that the sun has set, from the looks of it a long time ago, and he’s tucked under the duvet, with a freshly changed cover. Most importantly, though, Ilya is sitting beside him in bed, with one hand in his hair, and the other bracing the book from his bedside table against his knees.

Shane must have made a sound, because Ilya turns to glance down towards him with the same soft, loving, concerned eyes he always has, when Shane emerges from whatever safe warm place Ilya’s taken him to.

‘Hey.’ He says.

‘Hey.’ Shane replies, and inches closer to the warmth of his side. Ilya readjusts, sinking down that little bit lower, so that Shane can tuck in against the side of his chest: skin on skin, like they’d been born to touch.

‘Feeling okay?’ Ilya asks.

‘Mmm.’ Shane hums in ascent, ‘always do, when I’m with you.’

‘Good.’ Ilya nods.

‘I missed you.’ Shane says, again, and Ilya huffs out a soft, breathy laugh.

‘I could see that. Fingering yourself in my bed, Shane, very naughty.’

The teasing has Shane’s nose wrinkling, and he emits a soft, needy whine as he presses his face in closer to Ilya’s peck, ‘I couldn’t help it.’

‘What if I brought someone back with me, hm?’ Ilya teases, and Shane’s head lifts so he can fix him with a soft, sleepy glare. It’s enough to have Ilya laughing, and his hand presses to Shane’s cheek as he folds himself down to kiss him, ‘possessive today.’

‘Well.’ Shane huffs out, against his lips, even as he leans in to try and chase Ilya for a second, which he’s given, no questions asked.

‘Well what, hm?’ Ilya asks.

‘Mine.’ Shane replies.

‘Yours.’ Ilya agrees, fingers sinking into the black strands of his hair, ‘just like you are mine. I had a whole plan to remind you, too.’

‘A plan?’ Shane asks. A hand lifts to brace up against Ilya’s chest, and his mouth drops from Ilya’s to instead follow the line of his jaw down.

‘Mm, a plan. Was going to have you suck my cock in the hallway, was going to finger you over the kitchen bench, fuck you on the couch.’ Ilya hums, and tips his head back, ‘but my sweet, needy boy was touching himself in my bed. So impatient.’

‘If you told me to be patient, maybe I would have been.’ Shane argues weakly, and he opens his eyes to look at the book, still open in Ilya’s other hand. The Cyrillic print is something he understands, when he tries hard enough, and maybe it’s a testament to just how far gone he is, that it looks now like it did the first time he’d ever found a tome by Ilya’s bed.

‘Mmm, but where’s the fun in that?’ Ilya sighs. The vibrations under Shane’s skin are getting stronger, the eager ambition to please, and Ilya moves his book out of the way when Shane finally brings his lips to his chest, and kisses down between his pecks to his navel, laves his tongue against the trail of hair leading south.

‘Read to me?’ he asks.

‘Now?’ Ilya replies, eyes already heavy lidded, hand carding through his hair still.

‘Yeah, I just want to hear your voice.’ Shane says, and peels back the covers, so the head of Ilya’s erection nudges at his chin.

‘You will kill me one day, Hollander.’ Ilya says, when he picks up the book, eyes already searching for where he’d left off.

‘Shane.’ Shane corrects, because it matters.

‘Shane.’ Ilya agrees, with a smile and so much love in his gaze, that when it lands on Shane again he can’t help but shiver.

‘I love you.’ He says again, dropping just that little bit lower, flicking out a curious tongue.

‘I love you, too, моя любовь. Always. More than I have ever, or will ever love anything else.’

Shane smiles then, satisfied, and when Ilya returns his eyes to the page and hums out soft Russian words, Shane opens his mouth and swallows him down.

They’re both right where they want to be.