Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

POV Shane Hollander, Autistic Shane Hollander, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Hockey Player Ilya Rozanov, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, Situationships, Kissing, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Breathplay, Knifeplay, Talking About Feelings

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of kill me (romantically)

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-25 Words: 3,658 Chapters: 1/1

the light flashes in your eyes when you're with me

Summary

“I am not scared,” he lies. Each word is soft but crisply enunciated so Shane can't miss them. “Do you want me scared?”

“Obviously not,” Shane snaps at him. He gestures toward Ilya's waist, toward the slim outline of what he had clocked as a folding knife the second Ilya started carrying it, and adds, “but I know you're not just ‘happy to see me.’ I want the truth, I need to hear that-” he chokes over his words, his lips moving too quickly for his brain to keep up. “Please, be honest with me, for once.”

For a long, silent moment, Ilya just stares at him, grinding his teeth behind a placid expression as if Shane can't tell. 

-

Shane and Ilya talk about their feelings, kind of.

Notes

I just wanna say thank you all so much for the reception my first two fics have gotten 😭😭 it means the world !!! I have lots more to write in this universe incl answering a lot of the questions people have had so stay tuned. Also feel free to send me requests on Tumblr!

Shoutout users seasick_sparrowhawk and crockettmarcel for helping me edit despite not going here

Title from "Fly" by sleeping with sirens

As Shane skates off the ice, hand after hand slams down on his shoulder in what should be a series of congratulatory pats. Each of his teammates has a remark for him: praise for his aim, envy of his speed, excitement over his defense, or plain celebration of their progress through the bracket. He ought to be listening. 

Instead, he's thinking about Ilya. 

They'll have the rest of the night to themselves at Ilya's place, and into the early morning as well before the team flies out, but for all of Shane's social shortcomings, even he can feel that something has shifted for them. For Ilya. He still texts Shane between matches, shows up at his home and invites Shane to his, but there's a drawn tension to Ilya's body now like a marionette with its strings pulled taut, and Shane is too selfish to cut it off. His muscles may feel like lead and the guilt might gnaw at the back of his throat as he takes off his gear, but he still wants Ilya. He's forgotten how it feels to not want him. 

Shane doesn't bother going back to his hotel. After a long shower in the locker room to cool down, he gets into an Uber outside the stadium and, like always, has it drop him a couple blocks away to walk the rest of the distance to Ilya's. The familiar trek feels like a dirge to the gallows now. He wants to believe this is the last time and he'll finally break things off, but by now he knows he won't. He can't. Least of all because Ilya knows. 

When Shane knocks, he barely has time to lower his arm before the door swings open. Ilya's always radiantly beautiful, but especially so after a game: his hair is damp and frizzy, his pupils dilated and skin flushed with leftover adrenaline, and each of his muscles casts high-relief shadows from their recent workout. Shane wants him so desperately as to get lightheaded. His stumbling step forward sends him straight into Ilya's arms for a frantic kiss that tastes of cigarettes- always enough to make him wrinkle his nose, never enough to make him pull away. 

“Easy,” Ilya says against his lips as he shuts the door behind Shane. “Are you running from cops or something?”

Shane leans as far back as Ilya's embrace will allow: a few inches, barely far enough to study his face. “‘S this funny to you?”

“Litle bit.” Ilya's expression is hard, neutral and immobile, but his tone is artificially light. “What would you want instead, Hollander? I kill with you? I let you-” he looks away without finishing his sentence. 

Shane opens his mouth to respond, but the words catch on his tongue. Ilya doesn't seem to notice regardless.

“I try,” Ilya says calmly. “Will have to be good enough.” A beat, then: “Yes?”

Agreeing is the easiest route, and Shane longs to take it, but he can't get past the off-angle jut of Ilya's shoulders as he stares Shane down, like he's half-prepared for a fight. It reminds Shane too much of their first meeting. He doesn't remember when so much of the anxiety shed off Ilya, only that it leaves him almost unrecognizable now, and all Shane wants to do is kiss the uncertainty off his face despite having no more right to do so now than he did back then. 

“Do you want me here?” Shane asks before he can help himself.

Ilya flexes his hands on Shane's waist. Tighter, then looser. As though he's not sure whether he wants to cling to Shane or push him away. “I invited you,” he says slowly, like Shane is stupid. “Text thread is on your phone. Did you hit head during game?”

He ducks in for another kiss and Shane lets him.

When it breaks, he forces out, “No, Ilya, you know what I mean.” With Ilya's face this close to his, Shane can track the jittering search of his eyes with painful clarity. “Do you actually want me here, or are you just…” Shane's tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. He can hardly make himself say the words aloud. “I don't wanna do this if you're only doing it ‘cause you're scared.”

Finally, Ilya takes a step back. He only puts a couple feet of space between them, but it leaves the air cold where he once stood. Shane stuffs his hands in his pockets to consciously stop himself from reaching out. He catches Ilya watching the action, parsing the outlines of his fists through denim, and his stomach rolls with the implications of the attention and the silence both. 

“So, are you?” Shane presses, barely loud enough to be sure he spoke. 

Ilya scoffs and looks away for a split second before seeming to remember himself and reaffixing his gaze on Shane. “Like I said: I invited you. I told no one. If you are trying to make threat, it is not very good one.”

“I'm not.” Shane falls back against the door, offering a few extra inches of distance despite how his chest tightens. “I have to make sure that you know you're not- I'm not gonna-” he takes a shuddering breath between his words, “You know I'm not gonna kill you, right? Even if you don't want me?”

He watches Ilya's adam's apple bob with a tense swallow. 

“I can't,” Shane insists. 

Ilya settles into a painfully stiff position: feet set apart, hands clasped in front of him, shoulders and jaw squared. “I am not scared,” he lies. Each word is soft but crisply enunciated so Shane can't miss them. “Do you want me scared?”

“Obviously not,” Shane snaps at him. He gestures toward Ilya's waist, toward the slim outline of what he had clocked as a folding knife the second Ilya started carrying it, and adds, “but I know you're not just ‘happy to see me.’ I want the truth, I need to hear that-” he chokes over his words, his lips moving too quickly for his brain to keep up. “Please, be honest with me, for once.”

For a long, silent moment, Ilya just stares at him, grinding his teeth behind a placid expression as if Shane can't tell. 

“Ilya-”

“I am thinking,” Ilya interrupts in the same gentle tone. It feels like ice. “...what words, how to explain.”

When Shane crosses his arms over his chest, Ilya watches him move with too much attention for his feigned nonchalance, and it makes Shane want to crawl home to never return. In all his planning, he never thought Ilya keeping his secret would look like this. 

“I think you,” Ilya finally says slowly, “decided I am afraid of you. And that this is bad. Da?”

Shane can only shrug. 

Ilya sighs. “Okay.”

At last, he closes the space between them to take Shane's face in his palms. He can't make Shane look him in the eyes, but it's near impossible to look anywhere else in such proximity, and Shane sags against the door with a sharp exhale of breath. 

“Listen. Yes?” He prompts. 

Shane nods as much as Ilya's hands allow. 

“You are not scariest thing I have ever met,” Ilya tells him, which isn't as reassuring as he must intend it to be. He's at least still here, with Shane, but his presence alone isn't the comfort it once was, and Shane hates himself for craving it anyway. “I am at least ten times more frightened of my friend, Svetlana. I think you would like her.”

Immediately Shane tries to place the name, only to come up with nothing. Ilya doesn't talk much about his personal life with the press or with Shane, really, and so he tucks the information into his mental inventory of Ilya.

“Point is,” Ilya continues, “scary does not mean scare me away. You will have to try harder than that.”

Shane swallows hard. “But…”

He can't finish the sentence. He doesn't even know what he wants to say. Every cell in his body is screaming that Ilya doesn't understand, because if he did, he wouldn't be so calm now- or worse, it would simply be a performance to appease Shane. And he has to wonder if killing Ilya would hurt less than this, consequences be damned. 

Ilya must have the same thought. In a flash, he drops Shane's face to pin him by the throat with one of his forearms. Reflexive panic has Shane scrabbling to push him away, and he isn't strong enough, so he tries to knee Ilya in the dick, and he's too slow to make contact, then he tries to bite Ilya's hand, and he can't reach it, and only after exhausting these options does Shane realize that despite the constant tactile presence of Ilya's skin against his, Ilya isn't actually applying enough pressure to restrict his breathing. It probably won't even leave a mark. 

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya complains. “Okay, very scary, got it.” 

“Ilya,” Shane means to warn.

He just sounds pathetic, even to himself. 

But Ilya doesn't move an inch, keeping Shane trapped with the barest pressure of his right arm, and murmurs, “I'm not going to hurt you either,” adding a slip of Russian at the end that Shane can't parse. It's hard to tell whether he means to do it. “You understand? I trust you do not murder me, and you trust I will not let you. Simple.”

This time, when Shane gently pushes back against Ilya's arm, he allows it to fall.

“There's got to be something wrong with you, you know,” Shane tells him. 

“Eh.” Ilya shrugs, and says something else Shane can't translate with a tiny, genuine smile blooming on his lips. “I've heard saying for this. It was…. pot and kettle.”

“The pot calling the kettle black?”

“Okay,” he agrees. His voice is sing-song again, light and sweet like everything is resolved. “So,” he hooks his index fingers through Shane's belt loops to lightly tug him forward, “all better now?”

“All better,” Shane parrots with as much sarcasm as he can muster, which just makes Ilya laugh at him under his breath. “You are fucking… something, Rozanov.”

Ilya keeps pulling him along, dragging him toward the kitchen. “Fucking you, in a minute,” he promises.

Then he lifts Shane onto his marble counter like it's nothing. With practiced ease, Ilya thumbs open the button of Shane's jeans and yanks them down his hips. 

“Shirt off too,” Ilya orders. 

Shane grabs the hem of his shirt while Ilya tugs his pants over his feet. He must not move fast enough, because Ilya's helping him before he manages to get it entirely off of him, leaving Shane naked on the counter. He grabs Ilya by the hair and drags him into a kiss. Somehow, he keeps it steady while Ilya shifts with the effort of getting his dick out and into his hand. The familiar sway as he fucks his own closed fist makes Shane's brain go blank and warm with pavlovian anticipation. And Ilya must sense it, because he breaks the kiss with a rumbling sound in his chest. 

“Wait here,” he says. He draws back by two steps to raid one of his kitchen cabinets. For an instant, Shane's heart leaps into his throat, but then Ilya produces a small plastic jar with a triumphant hum. “Coconut oil.”

He returns to his spot between Shane's legs with an open jar and a smile that could put the sun to shame.

“Up.” Ilya taps the outside of Shane's thigh, then doesn't wait for him to move before wrapping a large hand under his knee and pushing as far back as Shane's leg can go.

The position is equal parts hot and humiliating. But Ilya hasn't steered Shane wrong yet. 

“I would take time with you, make you beg, make-” Ilya interrupts himself to kiss Shane's upper calf as he slicks his fingers. “Make you understand.”

Another Russian phrase breaks into his words as he smears the coconut oil over Shane's hole.

“But I think…”

He presses two fingers in at once, ducking his head to bite at Shane's thigh at the same time and sucking the skin between his teeth to ensure it leaves a mark. All Shane can do is whimper Ilya's name. He shivers in place, the pleasant burn of too-much-too-fast meshes with the sharp fire of Ilya's mouth, the world melts down to just the points of contact between them, and Shane's head falls back between his shoulders.

Then Ilya releases his bite, kissing over the dark imprint he left. “I need to fuck you right now.”

Shane nods, but Ilya tuts at him and curls his fingers hard into Shane's prostate. 

“Words,” Ilya orders him sweetly. 

“Yes, please, Ilya,” Shane pants.

Ilya rewards him with a third finger, still too fast, and lets go of Shane's leg to wrap an arm around his lower back. Despite his rush to prep Shane, his movements are slow, careful, and deliberate, coaxing the burn into a warm ache that floods Shane's bloodstream with need. 

“Ilya,” he moans, unable to think of anything else. 

His reward is Ilya withdrawing his fingers, but when Shane whines in complaint, Ilya shakes his head fondly and laughs. “One second; I will give you what you want.”

Ilya greases his hand up one more time to slather his cock in the oil. Before Shane can demand for him to hurry up, Ilya pulls him to the very edge of the counter and guides the head of his dick into place so he can bottom out in one long thrust. It punches a guttural sound out of Shane as Ilya lights up every nerve ending in his body. Shane tries to wrap his legs around Ilya but he's pinned too well, forcing him to take it when Ilya pulls back almost entirely, leaving just the tip of his dick in Shane, and then smoothly fucking back into him so deep Shane swears he can taste it. 

He kisses the juncture of Ilya's neck and shoulder, right where he smells like sharp, woodsy cologne and the well-developed muscles of his traps flex under Shane's lips. Better still, the attention makes Ilya's thrusts falter as he curses under his breath. 

“Is okay, can leave marks,” Ilya pants, punctuating his permission with a line of Russian that he has to know Shane can't understand. “Season is over for Boston.”

Examining that sentence is too painful, so Shane sucks hard on Ilya's shoulder like printing the shape of his mouth into Ilya's skin can replace Shane's urge to wake up beside him every day. It's the closest he'll ever get. He luxuriates in the sonder of Ilya's murmured affectations in juxtaposition to the slam of his hips into the backs of Shane's thighs, and melts into the bruising grips of Ilya's hands on his waist to keep him from sliding back across the countertop, and writhes with the unfaltering sensation of Ilya carving a space for himself inside of Shane as if he's molding him to perfection, and completely loses himself to the pure, unadulterated pleasure Ilya always gives him. 

Ilya sighs something indistinct next to Shane's head before turning to whisper against the shell of his ear. “Not for me, is for you. Going to put in your hand. Da?”

Shane can't string together the words to ask what Ilya is talking about, so he nods and chooses a new spot along Ilya's shoulders to worry a hickey on as Ilya slows down to fuss with the pants still trapped around his legs while he fucks Shane. He shudders at Ilya's shift when he leverages something out of his pocket. A moment too late, Shane remembers Ilya's knife, and a beat after that, the cold wooden handle presses against the back of his hand. 

“Take it,” Ilya urges. Shane isn't sure whether Ilya means his dick or his knife, but he lets go long enough to wrap his fingers around the handle of the blade nonetheless. “Good, good boy, Shane,” he praises, adding another affectionate rustle of syllables, “hold away from me when you open. Feel for latch–fuck, Hollander.”

Shane makes to pull away, but Ilya doesn't let him scoot more than a couple inches in practicality. He's able to move his arm more, ensuring at least a foot of clearance from Ilya's face before he thumbs the quick release on the side of the handle and the blade swings free. It's small, but polished bright and sharp: Shane doesn't need to test the edge of the blade to know it would part his flesh like smooth butter. 

“Here,” pants Ilya between his increasingly off-rhythm thrusts, “like this.”

He brings a hand up to Shane's wrist, slowing to a mind-numbing grind that makes Shane's dick drool precum against his stomach. Then he guides Shane's hand up to his neck and holds it in place with a hair's breadth between the knife and his vulnerable throat. Shane has the quick thinking to flip it in his hand so that if Ilya slips forward, he only meets the dull side of the metal. 

“Ilya,” Shane whimpers. He doesn't bother withdrawing the knife. “Ilya, you- I-”

“You're okay,” Ilya assures him. 

When he picks back up the speed and strength of his motions, every forward thrust presses a pink line into his throat and it should make Shane sick, but instead all he can see is the glassy desperation in Ilya's wet eyes as he fucks Shane like a wild animal. 

“Are okay, you are perfect,” Ilya babbles, now yanking Shane back to meet him every time he bottoms out. The folded angle he has Shane at traps him in such a way that the hard muscles of his stomach brush up against the underside of Shane's cock as well, and the combined feedback with the clear fervor behind Ilya's movements is enough to shatter any hope Shane has of rationality. “My-” he says something unintelligible, rushed and thick in his voice, “my Shane, is okay. I trust you, see?”

And Shane should argue with him, drop the knife, say or do something to explain this isn't the way for Ilya to prove himself, but all he can think about is how much harder Ilya is fucking him with a knife to his carotid. 

Then Ilya dips his head and the sharp edge of the blade catches his chin. Shane can't get it out of his hand fast enough, tossing Ilya's knife somewhere behind him to clatter against a wall and scratch up the floor so he can press against the wound under Ilya's face. Behind the jaw are soft, unprotected muscles and blood vessels, too close to the mouth to stand a chance against infection in the event of a severe but survivable infliction, and the seconds between Shane feeling the give of Ilya's skin and covering the thin slash are the longest of his life. 

Almost immediately, Ilya wrenches Shane's hand off him to kiss his blood-smeared fingers, drawing attention to the superficiality of the cut from the knife. All the while, he pistons in and out of Shane like a man possessed, only to speak in such a gut-wrenchingly tender tone that Shane's chest twinges. 

“Yes, look, is okay,” Ilya promises, repeating the same soothing words when he has the breath to manage them. “Not leaving. Not fucking leaving you.”

He gets a hand between them, still tacky with his own blood, to stroke Shane's dick in time with the brutal pace of his thrusts. Ilya is still talking. Whether it's in Russian or English, it all dissolves into a syrupy-warm cascade over Shane that drowns the lingering panic over the moment Ilya's life genuinely sat in his hands. He doesn't need to hear or process the specifics; Ilya is here, taking care of him, and that's more than Shane could hope for.

When he comes, it takes him by surprise, like a jolt of lightning through his whole body that turns him into an instrument of pure sensation. Shane can only cling to Ilya and cry through it. Somewhere in the middle he's fairly certain Ilya comes too. It doesn't matter. He's too busy floating to think of anything except for the gentle pleasure of Ilya still buried deep inside of him, milking every last drop from Shane until he's a puddle trembling in Ilya's embrace. 

“Okay,” Ilya says again, his speech quiet and wet now. “I got you. I got you.”

He pulls out carefully, but arranges Shane in his arms before stepping away from the counter so he can easily carry Shane along with him toward his bed.

“So good, Shane.”

Ilya adds something else that Shane doesn't catch, then kisses his temple. The bedroom door is already open and waiting for them, but Ilya closes it with his foot on the way through.

By some miracle, Ilya doesn't have to separate from Shane to lie down; he sits on the edge of the bed with Shane still in his arms before falling back against the pillows. 

“Not leaving.”

Ilya tucks Shane in close to him, an arm around his shoulders so that Shane's cheek is pressed to his chest and they're completely entangled. They're as close as two people can physically be, and yet, Shane thinks if they were a millimeter further he might fly apart into a thousand pieces. When he cranes his neck to check Ilya's injury, the bleeding has slowed to a near stop, and with clear eyes, Shane can tell it's barely an inch long and only just deep enough to draw blood to begin with.

Ilya tips his chin to hide it as he blows Shane a kiss. “Catch up your sleep, I will be here when you wake.”

With his eyes growing heavier by the moment, Shane believes him, and he nods.