Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Explicit Sexual Content, Anal Sex, Character Study, Unsafe Sex, Oral Sex, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Psychosexual Terrorist Ilya Rozanov, The cuck chair

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-10 Completed: 2026-05-20 Words: 7,613 Chapters: 3/3

meteorite

Summary

Hollander knew how to arch his back just so. He had dimples above his ass. Cliff began to wonder if Shane Hollander was a bit of a slut. Wasn’t that a fucking thought? 

 

A clown car pileup of events leads Cliff Marlow to Shane Hollander's doorstep at 10pm on a Thursday in Montreal.

Notes

to me, shane hollander is like one of those 3d models of a sub sandwich and I'm just rotating him in my mind. looking at different angles and shit.

Chapter 1: meteorite

A clown car pileup of events led Cliff to Shane Hollander’s doorstep in Montreal at 10pm on a Thursday. He visited his brother and his new baby and that was great, probably a top ten moment of his life, but then on his way back out of the suburbs an overturned 18-wheeler stalled traffic, and then when he finally got out of there his rental car to the airport sputtered and broke down on the street corner, and then the storm rolled in and all the flights were canceled, and then it was late and all the hotel bookings were closed for the night, and the wind was howling, and Cliff was standing there on the sidewalk like an idiot and he didn’t know anyone in central Montreal. So he texted the Raiders chat to see if anyone had somewhere for him to go, and it turned out this guy had a buddy who’d played juniors with Shane Hollander. So here he was.

Hollander’s eyes traced a line from Cliff’s dripping jacket down to his muddy boots and back up to his face.

“Hey,” Cliff said. “Sorry about all this. I really appreciate it.”

“No worries, it’s fine.” 

Seeing Hollander out of hockey pads or a suit was like seeing a school teacher out of the classroom and roaming the wild. Hollander had his shoes lined up in a row by the door, so Cliff took his boots off and did the same.

“The guest room is this way,” Hollander said, and Cliff followed after him.

Hollander had left a stack of towels on the bed for him, neatly folded, like a hotel.

As Cliff showered off in Hollander’s guest bathroom he was too aware of his own body, conscious of how large he was and how naked, with just an apartment wall between him and Hollander. 

Cliff didn’t know much about Hollander, just that he was apparently a bit of a weird guy. Not a very chill hang. But then again, Rozanov was a bit weird too, just in the other direction. You probably had to be weird, to be that level of good at something. 

A lot of guys in the league were dead jealous of those two and all that attention they got, but not Cliff. You couldn’t pay Cliff to be Rozy and have to star in his operatic tragedy of a family life. You couldn’t pay him to be Hollander, either. He’d have to be Asian, for starters. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but Cliff wasn’t deaf. He heard the things people said both to and about Hollander.

After the shower, Cliff poked his head back into the living room. Hollander had changed into a button down shirt, thrown on with his sweatpants.

“Sorry, I have to get on a call for a thing,” Hollander said. “Do you need anything?”

“All good, man.”

“Okay. Well, uh, there’s stuff in the fridge if you want. Or you can watch something.”

The windows shivered under the force of the wind.

“Okay, bye.”

Hollander retreated to his room and closed the door.

Cliff went to the kitchen. He surveyed the gallery of random shit stuck to the fridge. A child’s crayon drawing, spackled with glitter. A Polaroid of Boiziau posing with a snowman wearing the #24 jersey. A magnet in the shape of a teddy bear wearing a Russian hat and saying “hello from Moscow!”, for some reason.

At eye level, there was an old photo of Hollander’s dad and his absolute smokeshow of a mother. They could put her picture in the dictionary next to the word MILF. And between them, what had to be a little baby Hollander, with fat apple-red cheeks and clumsy mittens on his hands. Child Hollander felt almost unnatural.

LeClaire had once said that Shane “sprang fully formed from Yuna Hollander’s forehead”, although Cliff didn’t totally know what that meant.

Cliff poured himself some water and went back to Hollander’s living room. Cliff’s sister had schooled him in the art of being nosy, so he took his opportunity. He clicked over to Hollander’s Netflix watch history and scrolled. Not a lot of television shows, mostly movies.  A nature documentary. A couple of action flicks: Speed Racer, the Matrix, Point Break. And then one that gave him a pause, Wall-E. He was amused, at first, by the idea of Shane Hollander watching this kid’s movie by himself. Then an image came to his mind of Hollander entranced by that lonely bug-eyed little robot.  A wave of deep inexplicable sadness slammed into him. He closed out of the app.

Voices seeped from the door of Hollander's room, too low and indistinct to eavesdrop productively.

Cliff threw on some random trashy reality show and began to stretch out his bad knee.

“Was that from the thing with Kent?” Hollander asked, nodding at Cliff’s leg. He’d ventured back out in the living room, done with his call.

Cliff massaged the side of his knee. “Yeah, the last Toronto game.”

“He’s an asshole,” Hollander said.

“It’s Toronto,” Cliff said, and Hollander nodded like that was just an incontrovertible fact of life.

Hollander looked at the TV.

“Oh, I met her once,” he said, of one of those middle aged women with the overfilled and overlined lips. “I think she went to prison after.”

“You talked to her? When?”

“She was at the after party for the MHL awards in Vegas. I have no idea why she was there.” Hollander’s brow furrowed. “She came up to me at the bar and tried to buy me a Sex on the Beach. She did that to at least three other guys.”

Cliff laughed. “What did she end up in prison for?”

Hollander sat down next to him on the couch. “Tax fraud I think.”

This close, Hollander smelled warm. It was hard to look away from his face.

“Carmichael’s wife would be so fucking jealous,” Cliff said. “She’s obsessed with these shows. Wanted to do one with the other WAGs, real hockey WAGs of Boston or something.”

“Did anyone bite?”

“No. Connor’s girlfriend said that some of them had real jobs to go to and that turned into a whole thing.”

Cliff’s phone buzzed. When he pulled it out, he noticed that Hollander wasn’t looking at his eyes, or at the TV. He was looking at Cliff’s hands. Cliff was being checked out by a man and it didn’t bother him.

He looked at the group chat and snorted. Some of the guys back in Boston were out together. There were blurry pictures of Roz licking tequila out of a hot girl’s bellybutton and then flipping off the camera.

Hollander looked at him in askance. Cliff tilted his phone to show him, like they were friends who hung out all the time and that was a thing they did. Hollander’s face tightened, and Cliff remembered belatedly that he and Rozy didn’t like each other.

“Just Rozy being Rozy,” Cliff said.

“Yeah.” A beat. Hollander stood up. “You want tea?”

“I’m all good.”

“Cool. I’m gonna get some.”

Cliff sat alone on the couch for a moment. He’d lied. He did want something more to drink. And he also didn’t want Hollander to just get his tea and go back to his room.

He followed after Hollander. Just as he rounded the corner to the kitchen, Hollander was on his way out, and they crashed together. Hollander spilled his tea all over himself.

“Aw, shit.” Cliff said, grabbing Hollander by the elbows to steady him. There he went, fucking it all up.

“It’s fine,” Hollander said. “It wasn’t that hot.”

The unbroken mug rolled on the floor.

Hollander made no move to shrug off Cliff’s hands. His shirt was soaked through. He was probably taller than any woman he’d ever slept with.

“I should change,” Hollander said. He smelled green now, a little jasmine-y.

“Yeah, probably,” Cliff said. He didn’t move either.

Hollander undid the first button on his shirt. Then the second. Then the third, until Hollander’s shirt slid a little down his upper arms and exposed his bare shoulders. It was unbearably hot, in the way it was hot when a woman was a little shy and still held her bra to her breasts, but let the straps slip off her collarbone and down her shoulders.

“You missed one,” Cliff said.

“Did I?” Hollander just looked back at Cliff in that unreadable way of his. 

Cliff knew that this kind of moment was where real life happened: during the split second before his stick met the puck, when nobody knew if the play was going to work, or maybe in the moment when his hand was resting on a girl’s thigh and he was about to slide it up her skirt and see if the night went somewhere interesting. Everything could happen, or nothing at all.

Cliff reached out and undid the last button. The wet shirt slipped to the floor. He took a step even closer. Hollander let him. Then another, until they were chest to chest. Tipped his jaw down so that he was practically breathing into Hollander’s mouth.

He felt Hollander’s body against his own, and not that Cliff had planned on it, but it was impossible to pretend he was some girl. He was strong. It was weirdly easy for people to forget. Cliff remembered that one time Hollander had delivered a nasty check to St. Simon, and it left St. Simon staggered and embarrassed. Did you borrow Boiziau’s dick for the game? St. Simon had shouted after Hollander. That doesn’t even make sense, Hollander had muttered, and Boiziau had shouted back: Why, you in the market for a real one? And Rozy had rammed his stick into the ice and said how about less time thinking about Metro dicks and more time thinking about goals in their fucking net?

Hollander kissed him. Cliff wondered if he should be doing anything different with his hands, anything man-specific, but his hands naturally found their own way — one hand full of Hollander’s fat ass, the other in the slippery dark hair at the back of his head. He pulled at the hair, tugging Hollander’s head back so he could get his tongue deeper. And Hollander went, so fucking easy. Bared his throat and moaned, just like that.

Cliff was hard. He was so fucking hard in his pants for kissing and grinding on a guy, and he was hopefully not gonna think too closely about this later. At least Hollander was hard too. He crowded Hollander against the counter, and Hollander elbowed something behind him that fell with a clatter.

“Not in the kitchen,” Hollander said.

“Okay,” Cliff said, and he felt his way up Hollander’s sturdy, thick legs, just to check. Satisfied by what he found, Cliff hoisted Hollander up by the thighs and ignored the little yelp he made as Cliff carried him off to the living room like Cliff really was the Cro-Magnon people always said he was.

He let Hollander down against the back of the sofa. Hollander helped Cliff pull his own shirt up off his head, scratching his fingers through Cliff’s happy trail. 

“Can I-“ Cliff said, and then stopped with his fingers dipped just below the waistband of Hollander’s pants.

“Go ahead,” Hollander said, so Cliff did. He took Hollander’s dick out and curled his fingers around it, thick and silky skinned and unfamiliar in his hand. He nearly overthought about what to do next, but then figured it wasn’t rocket science. He gave it a slow, gentle stroke and Hollander shuddered.

“Yeah?” he said, and Hollander nodded, so he licked a stripe up his palm and got his hands back on Hollander. The hand he wasn’t using to jerk Hollander off, he groped Hollander smooth ass with, pulling his hips in. He let himself explore a bit, squeezing and pinching. By accident, his fingers brushed up against Hollander’s hole. For a split second Cliff thought he’d gone too far and so he froze, until Hollander’s dick visibly twitched in his hand. 

Hollander stared back at Cliff with wet eyes, embarrassed but defiant.

“Hot,” Cliff said thoughtlessly, and Hollander huffed out a little laugh. Cliff still had his palm on Hollander’s ass. He gave it a squeeze for moral support.

“Do you want to?” Hollander said, and trailed off.

“Yes. Yeah,” Cliff said, probably too fast. 

Hollander felt around behind himself and pulled a bottle of lube from between the sofa cushions, handed it to Cliff. Then he turned himself around and bent over with his hands braced against the back of the sofa, and Cliff realized he’d done this before. With who? Hollander knew how to arch his back just so. He had dimples above his ass. Cliff began to wonder if Shane Hollander was a bit of a slut. Wasn’t that a fucking thought. 

He spit on his hand and rubbed the pad of his index finger to Hollander’s hole. He’d assfucked women before, the principle of it was probably the same, so he pressed in with confidence. Hollander was tight, so fucking tight around Cliff’s finger, like the raw heat of his inside was trying to pull Cliff in and push him out at the same time. He fingered Shane Hollander against the back of the couch, watched him moan and shift around the fingers buried knuckle deep in his ass.

Cliff leaned in, hovering over his back. “Can I fuck you?” Cliff said in his ear. Plain and simple. 

“Do it,” Hollander said, still braced against the couch. Cliff slicked up his dick and bid a fond farewell to his gay virginity. He pushed his dick into Shane Hollander. Slow, inch by inch, because it couldn’t be that comfortable for Hollander. His eyes were screwed shut.

“Jesus,” Cliff said when he was all the way in, and looked down at himself, lodged balls deep in Shane Hollander.

He fucked him tentatively at first, slow and gentle.

“Not a girl, Marlow,” Hollander said, low.

“Okay.”

Cliff tightened his grip on Hollander’s hips and slammed in. Hollander bit down on his own fist. Cliff built a good rhythm of the nasty slap of skin on skin. Hollander’s cock hung hard and red between his legs. 

Then Cliff’s knee faltered. The rhythm broke

“Fuck.”

“What?” Hollander said when Cliff stopped, and he looked behind himself. His eyes darted down to Cliff’s leg. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Cliff said.

“Do you want…” Hollander bit his lip. “A way that’s easier for you?”

“Yeah,” Cliff said, because he was still so hard he could hammer diamonds with his dick.

Hollander took him to bed. They ended up on their sides, sort of spooning. This time, he could see Hollander’s face in the lamplight and noticed the spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose and thought huh before he forced his cock back into Hollander.

“Fuck,” Hollander said, and his eyelids fluttered. 

Cliff couldn’t thrust in very long motions, but he could press in bruisingly hard and make Hollander shake. Like this, it seemed more intense for Hollander. His breath came in gasps. Cliff locked his arms around Hollander’s chest, holding him still, and rocked into him steadily. 

“I got you, baby,” he said, forgetting for a moment who exactly he was with.

Hollander groaned. He turned his face into the pillow. A trickle of wetness slid down the curve of his cheek. Maybe sweat.

The tendons in Hollander's neck strained. “Fuck, I’m close,” he said into the pillow, and took himself in hand.

“Oh fuck,” Cliff said, and he came extremely fucking hard, so hard he almost didn’t notice Hollander coming as well, all over his hand and his belly.

“Fuck,” Cliff said again, dazed and his head heavy and hot with the blood. It was the same rush as figuring how to jerk off for the first time, or finding out you could see tits in real life too.

Sleet still lashed at the roof. Cliff turned to look at Hollander and for the first time that night, foolishly late, anxiety crept in. Hollander looked back at him with the coiled wariness of a wounded predator. Even flushed from his neck to his brown nipples, with Cliff’s cum trickling down his inner thighs, Hollander was still Shane Hollander. Did Cliff get to leave this room unscathed after seeing Hollander like this?

“Sorry,” Cliff said, sincere.

Hollander stiffened. “What?”

“I made a mess on your bed. Probably bad manners for a guest.”

And surprising them both, Hollander laughed, a belly laugh. Cliff had never heard Hollander laugh for real before. He had kind of thought he didn’t know how to do it. But there he was, laughing in bed with Cliff. Like a strange miracle in the big wide sky; a red sun or the streak of a meteorite.

Chapter 2: sex on the beach

Chapter Summary

idk I did really like this story best as one perfect, curated little one shot, but there were more story threads growing in my brain. so here's some more!

Chapter Notes

Cliff didn’t talk to his sister that much anymore. When they were growing up she was kind of a bitch and also she Dutch ovened him a lot, enough that he avoided throw blankets to that day. But a lot of her friends were nerds with gay haircuts, and she hated the NHL and hockey in general. She never bothered to go to any of his games when he first started playing for Boston and at the time it had hurt his feelings a bit and made his parents yell at her, but right then it was kind of a blessing, because it made her the only person he could talk to.

He dialed Carlie. She picked up immediately.

“Did something happen?”

“Yeah.”

“Did someone die? Oh my god, who died-“

“No, not like that, Jesus.”

“Then what the hell do you want?”

“Carlie-“

“Who just calls randomly without texting first?”

“Can I come over?”

A crackling silence. 

“Okay. Yeah. Sure. Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. 

His sister’s apartment smelled like burned Brussels sprouts. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I tried a Pinterest recipe.”

While his sister was in the kitchen, he hid the throw blanket behind the couch. She came back with a six pack still in the plastic rings just as he poked the tasseled edges out of sight.

“Want one?”

“Don’t think I can drink that right now.”

She shrugged and popped one out for herself.

“So,” she said. Heaved herself onto the couch like she was an old man. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Did you see the news?”

“About the conflict in the Middle East?”

“Carlie, don’t be a bitch. Not right now.”

She opened her mouth, maybe to argue, but instead took a swig of her beer. “Okay. Yeah, no, I know, I saw. You knocked that guy out, right?”

His own mouth tasted sour and fuzzy. “Yeah.”

“I’m not trying to be rude but…so what? I thought that’s hockey, right? Men skating around and hitting each other?” She flicked a hand in the air, as if swatting the whole concept of hockey away from herself.

“It was really bad,” Cliff said. “Bad concussion. His shoulder was hanging weird.”

“Didn’t you break Johnny Wiseman’s ankle your junior year?”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” he said.

“How is it different?”

The words crawled halfway up his throat and then died. He took a can and opened it just to have something to do.

“Cliff. I know you didn’t come here just to sit around and not drink my beer.”

“Have you ever hurt someone you had sex with?”

She dropped her beer can. “What the fuck. What the fuck?”

Carlie glared at him like he was a worm, a piece of filth; and he realized that his words came out very wrong.

“Not like that!”

“Well you better have a good fucking explanation because I don’t care that you’re my brother, I’m not gonna hesitate to-“

“Carlie, please,” he said, loud. He didn’t always like to shout outside of the rink or the club because when you were a guy of his size it gave people the wrong impression, but this conversation was spinning away from him fast. “I said it wrong, give me a second, please. You know I’m bad at talking.”

She was on her feet now, out of arm’s reach. “This better be good.”

He put his head in his hands, so he was talking more to her carpet than to her face. “So like….let’s say you work with somebody. And it’s part of your job to hit each other.” 

Dead silence. She gave him nothing. So he took a deep breath, stepped off the plank and tumbled into the open ocean.

“But also, that person, you fucked them. What are you supposed to do? What are you supposed to like…feel about that?” 

He looked up. Her eyes were round and her hand clutched over her mouth.

“Cliff. Oh my God.”

“I was inside of him,” he said, ignoring his sister’s loud ugh, Jesus! “He made me coffee the next morning. And I put him in the hospital.”

“I know what I said earlier,” she said. “But you were right. It is different. It’s definitely not…. abuse.”

“I know it’s the game or whatever but it feels wrong. I can’t get it out of my head. I keep hearing that crack over and over.” As he said the words, he heard it again, and shook his head furiously like a wet dog, trying to shake the memory loose. “Shit. Shit.”

She blew out a breath. “I gotta be honest,” she said. “I can’t say that I have good advice. I don’t know anyone who’s been in this situation before.”

An ugly laugh, one with a serrated edge, sawed its way out of his chest. “I fucked Canada’s sweetheart. And now I probably turned him into a vegetable. Oh my God. Shit!”

“Hey,” she said, and knelt in front of him and grabbed the sides of his head. “That’s not what’s happening. The news says it wasn’t critical. He’s gonna be fine.” She shook him, not very gently. “Okay?”

It was crazy how much she looked like their dad when she talked to him like this.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Yeah. I know.”

His palms were wet. He’d always been prone to flop sweats.

“So,” she said. “A guy?”

“Yeah. First one,” he said, then added: “only one. And just one time. But still.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“No. Other than him, I guess.”

“God, that must be hard,” she said. 

Cliff shrugged. It hadn’t mattered, until now.

“I want to go say sorry, but I don’t know that he’d want me around. We don’t really talk like that. But I also don’t want him to think I feel okay about hurting him, you know?”

“Write a note,” Carlie said. “Handwritten. Get someone to take it to him. If he wants to ignore it, he can, but he’ll know you tried.”

“Okay,” he said. He felt a million years old.

Carlie crawled back onto the couch next to him and put a tentative head on his shoulder. He let her do it.

“I realize this is super inappropriate,” she said, after a moment. “But the article had his pictures. He’s hot.”

He pushed her off the couch.

Every so often, Hollander drifted back into a position of prominence in Cliff’s life, like a space object on an elliptical orbit.

This time, word on the ground was that Shane Hollander was gay. Not on the record and not in the news, but the Metros always had a leaky locker room. People had been largely chill about the Scott Hunter thing, maybe because he was riding the gentle downward slope of his career and already had himself a smaller, non threatening boyfriend. But for whatever reason, the league temperature around the Hollander thing seemed different.

The Raiders played their first game against Montreal of the season. It should have been easier for the Metros without Rozanov around to menace them like a blood-sniffing shark, but it wasn’t. A 2-1 win in overtime for the Metros, ugly stuff.

After the game, Cliff found Hollander sitting alone on a bench, hair soaked through with sweat, still in compression gear and pants, eyes closed, head against the wall and chin tipped up at the ceiling.

“Hollander?”

Hollander opened his eyes, saw Cliff, and straightened up, arranged himself back into a presentable shape. 

“Marlow. How’s it going?”

“You know, it’s going. Uh… good game?”

“Not really.”

Cliff scratched his head. “Yeah, not really.” He glanced  around the empty hall. “Where are your guys?”

“Showering.”

“You’re not?”

“I’ll go after.” Cliff must have looked at him strangely, because Hollander added: “I’d rather have it to myself.”

Cliff’s stomach sunk right down to his toes. “You’d rather or they’d rather?”

“I don’t know, what do you think?” Hollander said, sharp.

“If anyone’s giving you trouble-“

“Don’t.” Hollander stood up.

“If I said something-“

“I’m serious, don’t. It doesn’t help.”

Cliff stared at Hollander, and Hollander stared right back at him, flinty-eyed and brittle. He checked for the freckles and the long lashes, the traces of the guy who one time let Cliff kiss his neck and call him baby.

“If that’s what you want,” Cliff said. 

“It’s what I want.”

“Why’d you tell them?” Cliff asked, before he could think better of it.

“I don’t know. I didn’t really mean to.” Hollander’s gaze fell away again and he sat back down. He looked down the hall, to where the closed double doors shut the rest of the world out. “I just got so tired.”

Roz was drunk and exuberant at the MHL awards, posted up with Cliff at  the end of the bar, a tower of empty shot glasses in front of them. It was so nearly like old times, except that at the end of it, Roz would be getting back on a plane to bumfuck, Ontario. Nobody really knew why. Some people seemed to think Cliff had insights he wasn’t letting on, but he really, truly didn’t. Rozy was always the type to keep some secrets, and Cliff was never the type to push. This was part of why they worked together.

“Mister Three Rings,” Rozy crowed, and scooped a flushed and embarrassed Hollander out of seemingly thin air. “Come have a drink with us. Winner’s choice.”

He nudged two glasses at Hollander, one flute of champagne and one glass of water. Hollander dithered for a moment before choosing the champagne. 

“Oh, are we getting party boy Shane Hollander tonight?” Roz said, and Hollander glared at him, tipped the flute back, and finished his drink in one long gulp. The empty crystal glasses on the bar rattled with the low thump of the music.

“Marlow,” Hollander said, finally turning to Cliff. “Good to see you.”

“Marlow? I don’t know a Marlow, who is this ‘Marlow’ you’re talking about?” Roz said. “This is Marley,” he said, jostling Cliff’s shoulder.

“Jesus, Rozanov, fine. How’s it going, Marley?”

“It’s been alright.” Cliff said. “Hey, I meant to say earlier, congrats, man. I know it hasn’t been an easy year.”

Hollander looked down at the bottom of his empty glass. “Yeah. The foundation stuff has been really good, at least.” He looked back up. “I’m proud of it.”

Roz’s smile melted a little, from tipsy glee into something smaller and warmer. A heaviness still dragged at the line of Hollander’s brow, though, so Cliff raised a hand and flagged down the bartender.

“One Sex on the Beach, please.”

Roz raised an eyebrow. Hollander blinked for a moment, confused. Then the mask of weariness on his face fractured, then cracked, then finally fell away, and Hollander laughed.

Rozy’s attention sharpened in that supernatural way of his, even with his senses muffled underneath a blanket of alcohol. 

“I am missing something.”

“Oh, it was this thing that happened a couple years back,” Hollander said. “One of those reality TV housewives, the one who went to prison, she came to the awards afterparty and ordered me a Sex on the Beach.”

“And you talked about this with Marlow when?”

“That time I stayed over at his place,” Cliff said, and then something in Roz’s face shifted, and he realized too late he’d stepped on an invisible tripwire.

“You never mentioned having a little slumber party,” Roz said, and Cliff’s not sure which one of them he’s talking to.

“That was years ago,” Hollander said. “When everything got shut down in Montreal because of the storms.”

The bartender arrived with the drink. Roz watched the glass of rosy orange liquor slide across the bar as if it were a bomb. 

“Thanks,” Hollander said, and he took a sip, made a face. “Wow, that is so sweet.”

Roz looked like he was rifling through his mental file, searching for something devastating to say, when JJ Boiziau interrupted them.

“Capitaine, mon capitaine,” he sing-songed, and threw an arm around Hollander’s shoulders. “Excusez moi, boys, I am in need of my man,” he said, and Hollander glanced at Rozy for a moment, expression opaque, before Boiziau towed Hollander away. 

Roz was still watching Hollander’s retreating back when he said: “Were you good to him?”

“I-what?” Every hair on Cliff’s body stood on end. 

Roz turned to face Cliff. “I said, were you good to him, Marley?” His expression could almost be mistaken for pleasant, if you didn’t know any better. “There is a correct answer, by the way,” Roz added. 

“I- yes,” Cliff said, his mouth answering for him without his brain’s full permission. A smarter person would have said fuck off, none of your business.

Roz studied Cliff. “Okay,” he said, and got up and left with no ceremony, leaving Cliff alone at the bar.

Chapter End Notes

i’ll give you an unsubtle hint about the contents of chapter 3: it’s chapter three.

Chapter 3: satellite

Chapter Summary

Cliff needed to know. The same inborn human instinct that made Pandora open the box made Cliff need to know: what was it like between Hollander and Rozanov?

Chapter Notes

Cliff waited two weeks for the guillotine blade to drop. The death blow came in the form of a text from Roz that was innocent on its face, asking if he’d like to visit Ottawa and talk about some foundation and summer camp stuff. 

He half expected a giant anvil to drop on his head when the door opened. Instead, Roz greeted him warmly, invited him in, and asked if he wanted a drink. The place was nice. Big windows bathed everything in the soft-focus golden glow of sunset. While Roz was busy in the kitchen, Cliff sat himself on an armchair and tried not to feel like he was on trial. 

Roz came back with a beer for Cliff and a glass tumbler of vodka for himself. He settled onto the couch opposite Cliff. 

“You’re seeing someone?” Cliff asked, because he’d noticed the yoga mat rolled up by the front door and the stack of history books on the coffee table.

“Yes, I am,” Roz said. “Shane Hollander.”

“Oh wow,” Cliff said dumbly.

Roz had just come out and said it. Cliff had wondered what it was, exactly, that had made Roz act like that at the insinuation that Cliff and Hollander had fucked. A crush, a torrid affair, a friend with benefits that had gotten a little too intense? Instead it was a fourth thing, the most obvious but somehow the least plausible: Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were dating.

“Congrats,” he said, when he realized he’d been silent too long and Roz was watching him closely. “So that’s why,” and he gestured vaguely around them, “Ottawa?”

“Yes,” Roz said.

“Jesus, the Centaurs are fucking lucky Hollander is from Ottawa,” Cliff said.

Roz actually laughed at that. Cliff began to hope he might escape alive.

Then he heard the beep of the entry door code and the mechanical whirring of the lock opening.

“Ilya!” Hollander’s voice echoed down the front hall. Had Cliff ever heard him so loud and cheery before? “My mom said to check your messages, she-“

Hollander stepped into the living room and saw Cliff. A little spark of surprise flashed in his eyes, quickly snuffed out by uncertainty. He placed his keys carefully on the side table.

“Hey, Marlow. What’s up?” He cut a sideways glance at Roz.

“Just catching up,” Cliff said. He wished he had a cue card.  Hollander looked as if he could use one too.

“I was telling him about Ottawa,” Roz said. “And us.”

“Oh,” Hollander said. “So he knows?”

“I know,” Cliff said. 

“Okay. Good,” Hollander said. “That brings our count to like…four? Five?”

“Your count?”

“Of people who know,” Roz said.

“That’s sad,” Cliff said, without thinking. As if he hadn’t already learned his lesson about speaking without thinking in front of these two.

But Hollander only smiled at that, a touch wry and bitter. 

Roz tugged on Hollander’s wrist. “Come sit with us. Have a drink.” 

Hollander let Roz pull him down to the sofa and press the half-empty glass of vodka into his hand. How long had they been waiting to touch each other so casually in front of someone else? And how long did they have to wait before they could do it outside of this house? 

They chatted about normal things as the sun slipped below the horizon. League gossip, bitching about physical therapy, shitting on Buffalo - normal stuff. Too normal. Cliff longed for the vodka instead of the beer. He knew Roz was playing some kind of game, but he didn’t know what the game was, and it seemed neither did Hollander. Every time he took a sip out of his vodka, his eyes tracked Roz with the guarded watchfulness Cliff recognized from the faceoff circle.

Cliff excused himself to the bathroom and took an extra long time. They might think he was shitting, but probably better for Roz to think he was shitting instead of hiding. When a little too much time had passed, the amount that implied a stomach bug, Cliff went back out. 

They hadn’t yet noticed he was out of the bathroom. They were pressed close together. Roz kissed along Hollander’s jaw and whispered something in his ear.

Cliff cleared his throat. Hollander jerked away, but Roz held onto him. “It’s okay. No need to panic. Cliff doesn’t mind, does he?” Roz said. 

“Nah. It’s cool.” Cliff sat back down in his chair. Roz was testing him, and he wanted to pass the test. He could be cool about it.

Roz pulled Hollander’s legs over his lap and patted his thigh reassuringly. “See. It is normal for couples to touch.”

Color blossomed at the high point of Hollander’s cheekbones. 

“Normal to kiss, too,” Roz added, and he slowly, deliberately kissed Hollander, licking his tongue into his mouth.

The sight did something to Cliff, like tugging on a fishing line hooked straight into his dick.

“That’s too much for normal,” Hollander said, breaking away from the kiss. His lips were wet.

“Maybe. But I think Marley likes it.” Roz looked at Cliff. “He is watching very attentively.” 

And suddenly, Cliff understood the game. 

Roz slid a hand under Hollander’s thighs and hoisted him fully into his lap. Hollander made a small noise of protest but still let Roz do it. Roz inhaled deep at Hollander’s throat. His eyes glittered over Hollander’s shoulder, and he held steady, deliberate eye contact with Cliff as he slid a hand up under Hollander’s shirt and twisted a nipple, making Hollander gasp and curl forward into him. 

Why was Roz doing this? Was it a punishment for Cliff, a salve for Roz, or a fucked up gift for Hollander? Or was it all three at once for all of them?

“I don’t think you need this, do you?” Rozy said, plucking at the collar of Hollander’s shirt.  

Hollander touched the hem of his shirt then paused, fingers twisting in the fabric. Roz leaned back and studied his face. 

“You don’t think he needs it either, do you, Marley?”

Cliff shook his head. 

“See? We both think so,” Roz said.

Hollander lifted his shirt up over his head, shy, like he wasn’t an athlete in peak physical shape who was always taking his shirt off around other guys. Roz ran a hand up and down Hollander’s bare sides before pinching him.

“Stand up.” Roz said.

Hollander obeyed with not an ounce of the grace he had on ice.

“Pants off,” Roz said. He lounged like a king.

Hollander looked back over his shoulder at Cliff with a question in his eyes. 

Cliff was probably never going to see this version of Hollander again. He wanted to see it one last time, the Hollander who was a little coy and flushed red with want. And also, Cliff needed to know. The same inborn human instinct that made Pandora open the box made Cliff need to know: what was it like between Hollander and Rozanov? 

So he nodded. Hollander slid his pants and his briefs down his thighs in one go and stepped out of them.

“Turn around,” Roz said.

Hollander did, his hands drifting to cover his crotch and his pecs out of deep protective instinct. Roz tugged Hollander’s arms behind his back and crossed at the wrists, holding them captive.

“No,” he said. “You let him see. Are you looking, Marley?”

Cliff was looking — at the pulse in Hollander’s throat, at the way this position forced his heaving chest forward, at the shiny head of his cock, and the single tear that spilled onto his cheek. At how very naked he was, when Roz and Cliff were both fully clothed. Cliff nodded. 

Roz pulled Hollander backward onto his lap. He hooked a foot against the inside of both of Hollander’s ankles and just for a moment rubbed the side of one foot tenderly along the inside of Hollander’s calf. Then he spread his legs out, wrenching Hollander’s legs open and leaving him totally exposed and on display. Roz petted Hollander’s hair. He closed a big hand around the base of Hollander’s dick, but instead of stroking, just left it there like a thick collar. Hollander squirmed in his grasp. Roz squeezed once, firm.

“You take what I give you.”

“Please, Ilya-“

“Shh,” Roz said, and Hollander went quiet. “Good,” Roz said, and he brushed a kiss at Hollander’s temple. He looked up at Cliff. “Was he like this, for you?” he asked, as if Hollander wasn’t even there.

“No,” Cliff said. 

“I know he wasn’t,” Roz said. He thumbed absently at one of Hollander’s nipples, tender and swollen like a rose bud. “Did he suck your dick?” 

Cliff’s throat was painfully dry. His vocal chords rubbed together, chafing. “No.”

Roz clicked his tongue in fake sympathy. “Too bad. You missed out. Look at this mouth.” 

He drew his forefinger and middle finger across the seam of Hollander’s lips before pressing in as if he were fingering a pussy. A guttural, subhuman sound tore out of Hollander’s lungs.

“You see? He loves this, loves keeping his mouth busy. Don’t you?” He looked at Hollander. Hollander was brilliantly red with embarrassment now, but he sucked with intent until Roz pulled his fingers out, dripping with Hollander’s spit. Hollander chased after them, but Rozy caught his jaw in that unforgiving grip and stopped him. “No more.”

“Why-“

“On your knees.”

A terrible, deafening silence. Hollander glanced at Cliff, a nervous flutter in his expression, then back to Roz, whose face was so still it might have been carved from stone. Then he slid from Roz’s lap to the floor in one sinuous movement. There was Shane Hollander, the greatest player of their generation -  naked and kneeling at Roz’s feet, lips parted and eyes bottomless as a wine dark sea. 

Cliff had forgotten about his own body altogether. With some surprise he realized he was painfully hard. Probably had been for a while now.

“Hands behind you,” Roz said, and Hollander obeyed, clasped his hands in a way that rippled the muscles on his back. 

Roz unzipped and took his dick out. Cliff had never been interested in Roz’s dick before, but in that moment nothing on earth could have broken its gravitational pull on his attention as Roz curled a hand around the back of Hollander’s head and guided him forward, feeding his cock into Hollander’s open and waiting mouth. And at last, a hairline crack in Roz’s perfect control - a vein pulsing at his forehead. 

“He wants it so bad, he will do anything I tell him,” he said to Cliff. He slowly pushed Hollander back, sliding his wet pink mouth along the length of his shaft, until only the tip of cock rested on his trembling lower lip. “Will let me fuck his face in front of you.” 

He pulled Hollander forward again, all the way down his cock, and Hollander choked, spluttered, tried to yank his head back, but Roz held him down. The whole while Hollander’s hands stayed folded behind him. Then Roz fucked into his throat again, and again, and again. Roz’s satisfied grunts and the wet, whiney noises spilling from Hollander were maybe the filthiest thing Cliff had ever heard in his life. 

A normal person would leave. A normal person would have left a long time ago. Cliff was apparently not a normal person, because he was pinned to his chair, skewered through by shame and awe and a third thing that he didn’t have the name for that left him aching and bereft. 

“No more,” Roz said, and he pulled his dick out of Hollander’s mouth. Hollander gasped, spent and heaving like he’d just skated suicides until he was ready to vomit.

Roz stood and pulled Hollander up with him. Roz and Hollander were about the same height; in any other place in the world an evenly matched pair. But right then and there, Roz loomed over Hollander. Roz slid a hand down the generous swell of Hollander’s ass and trailed a finger over his hole.

Roz smiled at Cliff then, angelic. “He’s still wet. From earlier today. I bent him over the kitchen counter.” 

He pressed two fingers in with no warning. Hollander shuddered and clung to Roz, fisting his hands in the front of Roz’s shirt.

“You fucked him once,” Roz said to Cliff, not a question, still pumping his fingers in and out of Hollander, whose thighs trembled with the effort of staying upright. 

“I did.”

“How?”

“From behind. And on our side.”

“All these years later and you still remember?” Roz said. “Must have been something. But I understand, Marley. I came all the way to Ottawa for this.”

He slipped his fingers out of Hollander and pushed him down on the sofa. Hollander went, no resistance, not  anchoring himself to his own stubborn center of gravity that made him so tough to knock down on ice. Roz laid him out on the couch cushions, arranging Hollander’s body as he pleased. A faint sheen of sweat covered Hollander, practically a glow. Roz got in between his legs and touched his dick to Hollander’s hole. He stopped there and waited.

“What are you doing?” Hollander spoke for the first time in a while, voice gravelly and cracked.

“Beg for it,” Roz said. 

“What?” 

Hollander tried to get up on his elbows. Roz held him down with a palm planted over his breastbone.

“Beg for it. I want him to hear you beg for it.”

“Ilya, please.”

“Please what?” 

“You know what,” Hollander said.

“If you don’t say it, you don’t get it.”

Hollander’s head fell back. His eyes closed. “Fuck. Please fuck me.”

“Is that all? Doesn’t sound like you want it that bad-”

“Please, please, please fuck me,” Hollander said, and now he was pleading like it was for his life. “Please fuck me, Ilya-”

Roz pushed his cock in. Hollander’s lips parted in an o of surprise, perhaps a little pain. His hole was stretched taut around Roz’s dick. 

Cliff hadn’t seen Hollander’s face when they’d fucked, not fully. He had no point of comparison. If he could go back in time now, he’d look.

Roz fucked Hollander hard, no mercy, the air in the room draped hot around them. Roz’s control was gone now. No more performance of indifference. His lips peeled back in a snarl as Hollander took his rough thrusts. 

Hollander’s head tilted to the side to face Cliff. He was looking right at Cliff while Roz fucked him, eyes glistening and lips parted in the expression of ecstasy, like a portrait of a saint. Roz closed a hand around his straining throat. He came, then, untouched. Roz still fucked him after, while Hollander’s cock softened against his hip. Cliff thought it should have been uncomfortable, but Hollander seemed to fall somehow deeper down into himself, and when Roz finally buried himself and came with one final thrust, Hollander gasped and shook as if it had been his own orgasm. 

After, Roz leaned down and kissed Hollander, first on the lips and then on the tip of his nose, gentle for the first time since they’d started. He stroked his fingers through Hollander’s sweaty hair. Roz eased himself out, pulled Hollander up so he could sit up and lean against his shoulder, limbs loose and languid. 

“You can go now, Marley,” Roz said, soft, and the spell was lifted.

Cliff stood. Nobody had touched him, he hadn’t once gotten up from his chair, but his body was sore as if he’d just played a ferocious, bloody game. 

Hollander looked up. He smiled at Cliff, open and at ease. 

“So good, baby,” Roz whispered to Hollander as Cliff left. It was not meant for Cliff to hear.

Outside the house, Cliff stopped on the doorstep and  looked up at the night sky. Through the clouds he saw the smeary trail of a blinking red light. Maybe a satellite.

Chapter End Notes

to me, the exhibitionism stuff is a way for Shane to work through the forced secrecy and the shame he's been carrying around, about sex/intimacy/being known.