Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Irina Rozanova, Grigori Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Introspection, or fucking lack there of??, Childhood Trauma, Homophobia, Small amounts of violence, Mentions of Underage Sex, none on screen, Bad Parent Grigori Rozanov, Implied/Referenced Suicide, The Irina of it all, coping methods, character deep dive, Selling your body to hockey is still selling your body and Ilya is in the trenches about it, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, and he gets plenty but probably not in the completely correct way for what he needs, Slight Shane/Ilya off screenish, Sexual References, I['ve chosen not to use archive warnings because there is mention of underage sex, etc - Freeform, but it is very much off screen and didn't feel like it fit in the category, but I didn't want to flat out say no archive warnings just in case., Miscarriage, of justice, also of a fetus, Abortion, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Pining, Pining While Fucking, PSA this is not anti Shane at all just Ilya feeling bad about everything, shane vs shame

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-24 Completed: 2026-07-03 Words: 5,847 Chapters: 2/2

Bargain

Summary

His body did this chore for him - taking a beating, painfully building muscles - and in reward he got his father’s approval. In much lesser reward he also got his mama’s worry, which, while he loved her care, he wished she would worry less. Wished she could see that he knew the way the world worked and he could fit into it. Wished she would not remind him that she loved her gentle Ilyushenka and that he did not need to hide, not from her.

Ilya Rozanov vs his body :)

Notes

Hi as always I do not edit, i am sure there are a few typos, i apologise xxx

I've been thinking a lot about Ilya and about sports and about coping mechanisms, and this happened. Thank you, enjoy

Chapter 1

When Ilya Rozanov was still smaller than his mama - when he was still mostly only called Ilyusha or Ilyushenka - he learned that he and his body were different things. 

His older brother, who Ilya still called Liosha, was the one to point it out in words, though their father had been doing so with his looks for longer than Ilya had realised. 

Ilya was tall for his age, six and seven and gangly with joints that stuck out like the creaking ones in Mama’s childhood doll. 

He loved to skate. On days he did not have school, his mama took him with her in the mornings to the rink closest to their house and they skated together like dancing. When they were tired they would tie their skates together and hang them over their shoulders and walk home by the bakery to get a warm snack before they went back indoors. Skating was something just for him and his mama, and it made her smile and laugh, and she would talk to him so much, telling him stories on the ice, and singing him songs on their walk. 

Liosha did not come to the rink with them. He was too old to hang on their mama’s apron strings is what their father said. While Ilya was at the rink with their mama, Liosha was often out with their father on his patrols or just at the station. In the evenings Liosha would complain to Ilya that he didn’t know how lucky he was, that some of them had to be grown up and didn’t get to go play fairies on the ice with mama. 

Liosha didn’t say this to him meanly, he was only teasing and he would still race around outside in the growing dark with Ilya with sticks they pretended were swords or guns or light sabres. 

When the big kids at school call Ilya a fairy it is not in the big brother way. Some of the big kids skate at the rink in the mornings too, Ilya hadn’t noticed them because he went to the rink to be with his mama and that was all. They told him - six of them in a loose circle around him, his back to the brick wall behind his classroom - that they skated for hockey practice, for speed trials, for endurance training. They told him that they saw him with his mama and his hand in hers, and the way he twirled on the ice like a little ballerina. Sometimes his mama called him a ballet dancer, she said he was elegant and beautiful. They did not say it like his mama said it. They said he looked like a fairy, like a girl. They called him words that Ilya had not yet understood other than the fact that when his father said it about someone it meant he was angry and the someone was bad and useless. 

Over the shoulders of the circle of big kids he saw Liosha approaching. He was the same age as these big kids. He was in their classes. He heard what they said to Ilya. Ilya had seen his Liosha fight before. Scraps in the dirt outside the school walls. Knuckles against skin in the alley between the bookshop and the supermarket. He had stood up for Ilya before, standing up from his group of friends when he’d seen another kid trip Ilya. He had strode after the kid and shoved him hard enough from behind that he went down to his knees and scraped the skin off his palms. 

Liosha did not start shoving here. Instead he looked at Ilya, hard, his eyes holding tight to Ilya’s. He said; “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “This is where you fight back, Ilyusha.” 

One of the other big kids laughed, and while some of the others jeered, the biggest one spoke again, clapping Liosha on the back. “Dumb and a girl,” he said, eyes alight. “Aleka, I don’t think you have a brother, this is obviously a baby sister. What is she going to do? Cry at us? Put on her frilly pink tutu and dance at us?” 

Liosha had shoved a little then, but only to push his way into the circle, and then to shove at Ilya’s shoulder while hissing; “Fight them. Hit them.”

“I don’t want to,” Ilya had whispered back. He did not cry like the big kids said he would. No one in their house was allowed to cry. 

“You are not a baby, Ilyusha,” Liosha chided him. “You are big, tall boy, and if you don’t show that you are tough, they will do more than tease you.” 

Ilya was big and tall, in his own class. He was head and shoulders above everyone except for one girl who was very sullen over her height. His mama said it made him even better on the ice, said he was graceful. 

The biggest boy leaned in to put his face closer to Ilya’s. His breath was all garlic and sausage. He opened his mouth to say something else that Ilya could tell would be cruel; based on the sneer on his mouth. 

He had watched Liosha throw a punch, and take a punch. Had seen his father throw punches. Had seen how they put their weight into it, how they leaned in. Liosha had shown him once where you were supposed to put your thumb - only after Liosha had broken his throwing a badly formed one. 

Liosha at his side Ilya knew that he had been given a chore to do. Liosha always pursed his lips the same way when he told Ilya to go get some wood in for the fire, or to do the dishes, or to go stay quiet in his bedroom. The older and bigger he got, the  more chores he was given. If you did not do your chores you got hit, or yelled at, which Ilya didn’t like, but he understood it. 

So he understood this too. It would not be his father hitting him or yelling at him if he didn’t do this, it would be the big kids here, instead. 

His first punch hit the boy in the side of his mouth, and he felt wet spit and then blood on his knuckles. Liosha joined in after Ilya had thrown his third punch, satisfied that Ilya had done enough of the work. 

-

Ilya did not go to the rink with his mama anymore. Someone at school had said something to someone else and someone else had said something to his father, and his father had come home from work two days after Ilya had been in his first fist fight, and had looked at Ilya very seriously, putting his hand heavy on Ilya’s shoulder. 

Ilya had expected to be told off. His mama had told him off the other day, more worried than anything as she cleaned his knuckles and his face and sighed about the bright bruise already blooming on his cheekbone. 

His father did not tell him off. His father was pleased that his boy was so big and strong. His father had heard from someone who had heard from someone that Ilya was good enough on the ice that his parents should think about putting him into hockey. 

-

During his first year of hockey Ilya learned that his body could do much more than he thought it could. He already knew he could skate fast and smooth, but he and his mama had never spent more than an hour on the ice. Now he spent hours every day just skating laps and skating laps and skating laps while his muscles burned and his mouth tasted bloody with every breath. 

He learned that for the first time in his life he could be something his father approved of. When he came home bruised after a skirmish his father would clap him on the shoulder. When he was put into the class above his peer group his father told him good job. When he came home with the title of Captain of his team at ten years old his father gave him his first glass of vodka. 

He learned that if he pushed past the point where it hurt he could land in a place where he didn’t care that it hurt. 

His mama did not like it. The way he came home with bruises all over because the kids in his team didn’t like that their captain was younger than them. Or the broken fingers from dirty sticking in dirty games that no one would call anyone out for because sometimes a dirty game was the best way to learn. 

He learned how to hold his face to hide the hurt, to make his mouth smile like he didn’t care about anything. 

His body did this chore for him - taking a beating, painfully building muscles - and in reward he got his father’s approval. In much lesser reward he also got his mama’s worry, which, while he loved her care, he wished she would worry less. Wished she could see that he knew the way the world worked and he could fit into it. Wished she would not remind him that she loved her gentle Ilyushenka and that he did not need to hide, not from her. 

Worst reward for all of this was Liosha becoming Aleka becoming angry all the time. Angry at Ilya for diverting their father’s attention and praise. Angry at Ilya for changing the shape of their day to day life because Ilya had to go to practices, and games, and away games, and awards. Angry at Ilya because Ilya was still growing so quickly and he was only eleven and nearly the same height as Aleka. Angry at their mama for everything. Angry at their mama for still coddling Ilya even though Ilya got everything and Aleka never got anything. 

Ilya learned from his coaches, from his teammates, from the media that surrounded the games, that if he kept playing good, if he kept pushing his body into the place where he didn’t care about the pain, he could start earning more than approval and medals for it. He could earn money - real money, lots of real money. He could earn status, and fame. 

If he could do that, make it worth it like that, he could make his mama see why it had to happen. He could take her back to the rinks to dance together, because he would have enough money and a big enough body that nobody would tell him he was not supposed to. Even his father would let them, if Ilya did well enough. Maybe his mama would laugh again, and tell him stories again, even though Ilya was too old to be told stories. If he had power he could have stories. 

-

When Ilya was twelve he learned  that the only thing he could count on out of giving his body to hockey was the chance to leave. When he was twelve he learned that sometimes, when you tried to push through the part that hurt, you couldn’t get to the part where you didn’t care about it. When Ilya was twelve, and he hadn’t danced on the ice with his mama for nearly half his life, he came home to an empty house that should not have been empty and found his mama as cold as the ice he had only just stepped off, half an hour previous. He had been taller than her by then. A whole head taller, he could put his chin on the top of her head. She had still always gathered him up in her arms, though, like he was still small enough to fit with ease. Had still pressed kisses to his forehead, and called him her gentle Ilyushenka. 

Afterwards, Ilya’s father and Aleka only ever called him Ilya, like he was a stranger to them even as he sat around the table with them. 

No one at his house would hug him now. He would come home from school, from practice, from games. He would come home wearing bruises and breaks and bumps. No one would fuss over him or pull him into their arms or kiss his forehead or gentle him into putting his head in their lap to have his hair stroked. 

Ilya was twelve when he learned that when you couldn’t push through to find the part where you didn’t care about the hurt, you could distract from it instead. The hurt would stay there, but the distraction would be bigger and better until it was almost like not caring. 

He was still tall for his age, and hockey made him bigger, stronger. He had to carry himself like he was older so that his teammates would listen to their younger captain. He had to smile like everything was fine because that was what you did. His coach’s son, Sasha, was only a year or so older than Ilya, but he was already so much more knowledgeable about the world and how to twist it until you could cover up the hurt. 

They snuck into dance clubs together, dressed in clothes stolen from Aleka’s wardrobe and stores without good enough security to catch Sasha’s sticky fingers. 

Ilya learned to kiss in those clubs. Plenty of girls there who were also too young for the club but still older than Ilya, who already knew how to kiss and were happy to teach him. Sasha told him that it was all down to Ilya’s heavy curls and his broad shoulders, how his body seduced people for him and he got to reap the benefits. 

Ilya learned that when you made someone feel good, sometimes they would hold you afterwards. Sometimes they would hold you, and stroke your hair, and kiss your forehead. And it was a good trade. A good distraction. 

------

By the time Ilya is drafted to the Boston Bears, when he is called Rozanov more often than anything else, he has it to an art. The give and take, the trade that life is. He has already gotten so much from his body. He is in America, in an apartment he bought with his own money, in a job that he is so good at and even enjoys. He is away from his father, away from Alexei. He is beginning to have fame, even if it is mostly paired with Shane Goody Two Shoes Hollander. 

He knows how to protect himself, on ice and off it. He has his friend Svetlana as a stand in for Russia. He can pick up women at clubs and parties and get as much affection as he wants. 

He can drink until he’s numb, and then fuck until he can feel something again, and then wake up the next morning and play hockey. His body is good to him. Provides him with pain and relief in near equal measures. 

He is in his rookie year, and the commentators are all saying it’s only up for him from here on out. They see bright things in his future. 

One of the bright things Ilya sees in his future is the rivalry that has been made between him and Hollander by the league and the media. Especially bright because Ilya has already pressed his luck with Hollander, and discovered a new type of distraction. A distraction with freckles Ilya wants to lick, and now has, and a mouth that is eager to be on Ilya’s body. Hollander is like a rivalry all on his own, the way he is so obviously wanting and trying not to want. It makes Ilya determined to keep pressing all the buttons he can find so that Hollander tips further into the want of it all. He can see that Hollander understands it - the push and pull of life. He sees how uncomfortable Shane is under the eyes of cameras - something he is constantly under in his chosen profession - and how he pushes through for the reward of… Ilya is still not entirely sure what Shane’s reward is, given how obviously he seems to restrain himself from most pleasures. Hockey, probably. 

Ilya looks forwards to any and every game that will bring him and Hollander into close proximity, any chance to try a new way under his skin or into his mouth. A new way to feed the rivalry. 

He takes a bad hit in his first official game, takes a stick just under the eye. The team doctors says if he was just a bit less lucky it could have taken his eye out. But it didn’t. It didn’t even shatter his cheekbone. He gets away with a nasty cut and nastier swelling, and his team earns a power play and a goal out of it. 

“Don’t let it put you off,” Marlow tells him after the game. He swings his arm over Ilya’s shoulder companionably, squeezing him against his still sweat stinking body. “The checks aren’t usually so bad.” 

“I have worse,” Ilya replies, keeping his face in an easy, loose grin. Lets his head loll back onto Marlow’s shoulder. Marlow is big enough that if Ilya really leaned back, he could hold him up bodily. “Is game, I expect for hits. What we are paid for, yes?” 

Marlow grunts, grins, scrubs his hand with relative care through Ilya’s also sweaty hair, like he’s a dog panting against Marlow’s leg. “We’re paid to play,” he says. 

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Hello thank you all for the lovely comments on this here is some more introspection xxx
CW- for mentions of abortion/miscarriage but nothing very explicit.
- Suicide/suicidal ideation/depression
-general abuse/domestic/child/drug

The first time he and Sasha had had sex, Sasha had called him Ilyushenka, Ilyushka, had carded sweat sticky fingers through Ilya’s hair as he encouraged Ilya’s hand to grip firmer around the both of their over eager dicks - somehow both too dry from lack of lube and too wet with tacky spit and sweat and the precome already dribbling out of them just from kissing. 

He held Ilya after they came, his arms lanky and uncomfortable but still wrapped around Ilya like a comfort. They had kissed more, and then they had cleaned themselves up and gotten dressed and gone out to dance and drink.

That had been the first night since Ilya’s mama’s accident that he had not imagined himself crawling into the bed he had found her in and searching for any pills she might have missed that he could take instead. Mostly because he had been too busy being drunk, but also because when he and Sasha had gotten home again (Sasha’s home. Ilya’s coach’s home. A bad idea for so many reasons.) in the early hours of the next morning, he had been thinking of Sasha coming in his hand and Sasha had been thinking of the same thing and so they had done it again and fallen asleep in each others’ arms. They had rolled away from each other in sleep, which was a relief in the morning. 

Sasha’s father was away from his house quite often - usually he was at the rink, or in meetings with sports officials, or he was meeting with his friends in large gambling rooms, or he was with one of his whores at a hotel room. Ilya saw him far more often at the rink than at his house, which suited him and Sasha best. 

Sasha’s mother was always too busy to care if Sasha had someone around - especially not when it was just another boy, a hockey player - and she would stay downstairs and leave them alone.  

(He knew that Sasha had a better relationship with his father than Ilya had with his own, but he also knew that was not saying much, except that Sasha was less likely to be hit.) 

All of this meant that it was relatively easy to hook up with Sasha. Easier than hooking up with any other man at a club. They would not be bothered in Sasha’s room, so long as they did not get too loud, so long as they paid attention to the house around them. 

He fucked Sasha for the first time with Sasha on top of him, Sasha’s hand over Ilya’s mouth to keep his sounds in. Sasha had done this before, had talked him through it. Would not tell Ilya who he had done it with, just told Ilya to let him take his time, to wait until he said he could move. Ilya had always been good at following instructions, when he wanted to, when it was important. Listened to every word out of Sasha’s mouth like his life was on the line. 

Sasha never called him Ilyushenka when they fucked for real. When he got Ilya to press him down hard into mattresses and against walls. When he told Ilya to go harder, to go faster, to move like this or press like that. 

------

Ilya has a lot of sex in his first few years of being a Bear. He knows for a fact that he’s having more than any of his teammates, because they’re always talking about it, goading him into bragging, complaining about their girlfriends and wives who don’t put out. 

He loves to have sex. It is not a hardship for him to brag about it. Because he is so good at it; both the seducing and then the sex itself. A skill he has taught himself and been coached in and worked out the best tricks to get the best results, the most praise. 

Sometimes he thinks that if he gets a career ending injury - he won’t be able to go home to Russia for his father’s shame, probably - he could make sex work as work. So long as the injury didn’t affect his looks or his cock. He had had people make offers before. Mostly older men when he was younger, before America gave him a better way to escape his father. It wouldn’t be the life he had wanted - being the best at sex was not something he thought you could win trophies in - but it would maybe keep him in money enough to send to his family, and to buy himself vodka, and to keep at least a couple of his nice cars. But this was something he does not think about much, only really when he is feeling morose and drunk and alone and like the only good thing about him is that he can still fuck someone even when he’s too drunk to see clearly. His body is so good at it, can get hard even without Ilya really behind his eyes, can still give pleasure. 

Most of the sex he has is just sex. It is just him and (almost always) a beautiful woman making each other come. It is a means to an orgasm. 

Some of the sex is still just sex, but the kind where what he is really looking for is a warm body to hold him tight and to kiss him and tell him he was good. And if they told him that he was so good at fucking them, that was close enough. 

Occasionally - mostly on roadies - the sex was a performance. For his team, for the city they were in. Showboating, he heard it called sometimes. A fuck you to the team they had just beaten, or lost to. It didn’t matter where he was, win or lose, there was always someone who still wanted him afterwards. 

Sex with Svetlana is different - because it had always been different. Sex with Svetlana is secondary to being Svetlana’s friend. They fuck because they are both hot, attractive people who are both good at sex, and it was easy to give to each other. Ilya did know that he probably gets more from it than she does. He steals comfort from her all the time, putting his head in her lap, clinging to her.  She has family and other close friends who she hugs and talks to. She is his best friend, but he often doubts that he is hers. He appreciates her more for it. The way she lets him take and doesn’t call him out for it. He always makes sure to give her double the orgasms, to give her what little repayment he can. 

Then there is Shane. And he can’t put Shane in any of the same categories all his other sexual encounters fall into. He is not a hook up - not in the same way Ilya does hook ups. He is not a friend with benefits like Svetlana, because Shane does not want to be his friend. He is not ---

He is a transaction, of sorts. Every time they meet - and they have only met a few times for it - it is an interaction in which they are buying each other’s secrecy over and over again. 

Shane always treats their meeting up like a guilty, dirty, shameful thing. And it is a little hot.

Would be hotter if it wasn’t so obvious how much Shane seemed to truly believe how wrong it was. It would not have been enough to keep Ilya coming back if he hadn’t seen how much Shane actually wanted it. If he didn’t know for sure that the moment Ilya kissed him properly Shane would drop so much of that disgust and become something so close to pure need. 

As it was, Ilya gave Shane the gift of having been persuaded into it. Of passing the burden of want to Ilya. And in return Ilya got to kiss a beautiful man, and be kissed, and suck, and be sucked, and indulge in his body. 

------

When Ilya was taller and stronger than his older brother had ever been, he barely ever heard his given name. He had been to America, and he had played against Shane Hollander who all his coaches told him was his biggest threat to coming first, and he had won his games, and then he had come home to Russia to wait for the NHL to be ready for him. In America his coaches had all called him Rozanov, and his teammates had called him Roz or Rozanov or Captain. Shane Hollander had introduced himself to Ilya using ilya’s full name and stretched it weirdly with his stupid Canadian mouth. 

In Russia his father mostly did not address him, just spoke at him, and Alexei mostly did not speak to him, and Polina barely spoke to anyone. 

He went to clubs and didn’t tell anyone his name, because he was about to become a known entity and he didn’t want his name rattling around in the heads of people who had sold him coke, or let him suck them off in a bathroom for another hit. 

Svetlana was in America, working on a degree that she didn’t tell him much about because she told him it would bore him. Sasha was in Paris, and besides, he always called Ilya by sloppy endearments now, and Ilya couldn’t stand how they felt all powdery sweet and sticky against him. 

He watched American sitcoms, curled up in his bed, small boxy tv pulled close. Kept the subtitles off so he had to work it all out through context clues and the words he already knew. His brain still felt unshaped, even as it took in words and sounds and sorted them somewhere in his mind. He mumbled catchphrases under his breath, folding his lips around consonants that sounded wrong. Excuse me, seriously, please, and thank you!?

He trained. Kept his body in shape. Kept it ready for America, for the draft, for a spot in the NHL that would keep him. His mind felt out of shape. Underused. He could not find anything to spark it against. Everything in his childhood home was a vague shape of grey coated memories, and everything outside of it was loud and slippery. It was easier to be a body only while he waited out the days and months before he could get on another plane and leave. 

In his last week of Russia, when all his belongings had been packed and his paperwork all signed, he found Polina in the back garden. 

He had been going out to smoke. He often just smoked out of his bedroom window, but he had been uneasy and wanted to stretch his legs. Wanted to see every part of his old home before he left, like he might never come back even though his father had already made him book his tickets for the summer. A reminder of his duty. 

She was crouching between some overgrown bushes, a rusty looking trowel in hand as she dug out a small hole in damp ground. There was a small box by her boots, a little cardboard takeaway looking thing. It was not raining, though it had been a few hours previous, but her hair looked damp. 

She startled when he spoke. “A bird?” he asked, gestured at the small box by her feet when she only looked at him in confusion. “Killed by one the stray cats around here?”

She had looked from him, to her box, to the hole. He expected her to say something small and dismissive and send him away to leave her to her peace. 

She was only older than Alexei by a few years, six at most, he thought. She was beautiful. Long dark hair that she kept in elaborate plaits pinned up like some princessa. Sometimes he thought that his father had simply looked for the visual opposite of Ilya’s mama, and then married it. No one ever thought Polina was part of Ilya’s family. 

“Not a bird,” She told him. One of her small hands dropped to the box, rested on it gently. “Not much of anything yet. Only enough to hurt.”

Ilya’s brain had been used to being little more than mush for the last few months, but even he could pick up on Polina’s tone. Still didn’t fully understand. Or wouldn’t let himself believe he understood it. He took a step closer, and when she didn’t flinch away or tell him to leave, he came closer again and crouched down beside her, sitting on his heels. 

“You are hurt?” That was the main thing he needed to know. 

“Less than I could be,” she replied. It was like a riddle, and Ilya was so tired of teasing out threads in words to put the message together. She took pity; on him or her he didn’t know. “I took a pill,” she told him. “A safe pill. It was on purpose. You don’t want me giving you another brother, do you?”

He shook his head. Stared at the box sitting between them. It contained what could have been a body, maybe, in a different world. 

“Papa is too old,” Ilya had replied, words slow in his brain and his mouth. “It would not be fair for anyone. He does not know?”

Polina had laughed a little at that. Shaken her head. Ilya shook his head again as well. He took the trowel from her to dig the hole deeper, his muscles making the work much easier. He stayed to help her pat the dirt back down over the box, and then they shared his cigarette, and went inside. 

They did not speak much more before Ilya left. He was glad she had stopped the clump of cells from becoming something more. He didn’t think this house was good at making more than bodies. He wondered where she took her pill. He wondered if she had thought about taking more, different pills, so that she would just be a body as well. 

He went to America and became a household name.

People in Boston called out his name - Ilya, Ilya, Rozanov! They made up titles for him, they sang songs for him. NHL teams all over America and Canada knew his name, his names, his titles, his nicknames, and he heard them all. The good, the bad. 

His teammates became his friends, and they called him Ilya sometimes, Roz, more often. Nicknames and manly endearments to no end. 

On the ice he was Rozanov, out of Shane Hollander’s mouth he was Rozanov, and he liked it. He loved it. The world knowing his name, and calling it out to him, claiming him over and over again. He thought that it was enough, now, to have his name used freely on so many mouths. It did not matter that most of them said it just wrong enough to note, and that most did not know more than his image, his body on the ice. 

He did not think he could come to miss his name being said by someone who had only ever said it to him once before. 

------

He is a stupid man to risk everything he has worked for just for sex. When he can get sex anywhere and everywhere that he wants. Sometimes he thinks he must be like an addict for it. Like Alexei with his coke. His body needs Shane. He has tried going cold chicken. He can make it for a couple of months without touching, without groping for him, but he always seems to break. 

He is stupid for it, and why? Sex with Shane is so good. Makes his body feel insane to be inside of Shane fucking Hollander. Makes his brain insane to touch him, pours words out of his mouth that he can only be glad come out in Russian. 

But he has other people he fucks who make him come so hard sometimes he thinks he is losing brain cells, and he doesn’t go to sleep thinking about them. He sees other men, sometimes, men with abs and asses and pretty faces and they are so good and he is still not following them back on instagram to meet up again. 

Shane is like a hot stove that Ilya longs to press his entire body against. He wants to be burned and he wants it to hurt and he wants the stove to hold him and kiss him and whisper his name into his mouth. 

He only puts part of himself at a time on the stove. Puts his hand on the burning element that is Shane’s shame, and pulls it closer. Puts his mouth on the open flame of Shane’s mouth. So long as he keeps part of himself back he won’t be burned to dust and ashes. So long as he says it is only sex and can only ever be sex, there is at least a part of him that is not actively aflame. 

His body does the work. He has built it big and strong and he has built it into a barricade to withstand whatever Ilya throws it in to. His body can fuck Shane and hold Shane back from the rest of him, and that is how they can keep it. 

He buries himself in the back garden in his mind, and he lets himself be nothing more than a body. A bundle of cells grown up and formed for hockey and for sex.