Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Original Male Character(s)

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Original Male Character(s)

Additional Tags:

Eventual Happy Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV Shane Hollander, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Blow Jobs, Boys Kissing, Explicit Sexual Content, Royalty, Shane Hollander Deserves Better, Good Friend Rose Landry, Praise Kink, Shane Hollander Has a Praise Kink, Anxious Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Gets Outed, Coming Out, Good Boy Shane Hollander, Shameless Smut, The Author Regrets Nothing, Jealous Ilya Rozanov, Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander Gets a Happy Ending, Shane Hollander-centric, Inspired by Heated Rivalry (TV), Ilya Rozanov Has Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Complete

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Advantage, Hollander

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-16 Completed: 2026-09-06 Words: 67,334 Chapters: 7/7

Break Point

Summary

After the tuna meltdown, Shane's plan to win Ilya back in Tampa is a spectacular failure. The cottage never happens.
So what's left? Rolex still want him at Wimbledon, so why not spend summer in Europe?
And he'll be sitting next to a Swedish princess.

Except...The princess turns out to be a Swedish prince. Very charming, very hot, and very gay. And very much into Shane.

When the photos hit the internet, Ilya is going to have some feelings about that. And way more than Rose Landry to worry about.

Or: Ilya Rozanov is about to find out what happens when you tell Shane Hollander you're nothing to each other and then have to watch him move on.

Notes

I have not been able to get this out of my head and then watching wimbledon last week COMPELLED me.
There's going to be some smut with someone other than Ilya be warned. Shane is single, he can do what he wants
All characters that appear in the story are fictional. Needless to say it diverges from canon after the tuna meltdown.
There will definitely be more tags added as I go along.

I sat down planning to write a smutty fun little one-shot, and ended up with a chapter of angst followed by... well, not what I planned. But whatever happens, Shane and Ilya are MADE for each other and in the long run nothing-and no one-will get in the way of their HEA. Promise!

Update 17/8/26 - So I promised a Shane/Ilya HEA, but when I said no one will get in the way... is lie, liar told you that. Someone is most definitely in the way.

Update 6/9/26 - Now complete, but made part of a series to leave it open for other character POVs and a potential AU to this AU or a sequel. But essentially complete for Hollanov.

Chapter 1: Tampa

Chapter Summary

Tampa does not go the way Shane planned.

Shane stepped off the plane into the Tampa warmth, seventy-four degrees in January, making Montreal feel a very long way away. That morning he had been scraping his windshield at 6am with the engine running, two feet of snow forecast. Now he was in Tampa, shrugging his jacket off, looking at palm trees. He adjusted his carry-on strap and checked his phone. No messages. Nothing from Ilya, not that he’d expected there to be.

Shane’s hotel room had a view of the Bay. He stood at the window and looked out over the sand, wondering why he thought the weekend would fix everything. He’d got there early afternoon, the team hotel still half empty, most of the All-Star guys not due in until evening or the morning after. He’d planned it so he could check in quietly and go up to his room without running into anybody.

He’d rehearsed the whole thing. In the shower, on the treadmill, lying awake at three in the morning staring at the ceiling; what he would say, how he would say it, the phrasing of the apology that would undo what he had done in Boston.

The last time. Ilya’s apartment in Boston. They’d fucked—as usual—but it hadn’t ended there. Ilya had asked him to stay. He’d stayed. They’d slept in the same bed for the first time. He’d thought: No one makes me feel like Ilya Rozanov does. And then Ilya had done the thing they couldn’t return from; he’d called him Shane. And he’d called him Ilya.

Shane had known, half way through, that there had been a shift. And afterwards, Shane’s hands had been on Ilya’s face, and Ilya’s forehead had been pressed to his, and their breaths had mingled together in that moment, and Shane had thought: This is real. This has always been real. And I am going to ruin it.

Shane had gotten up from the couch. Pulled on his clothes while Ilya watched him, one elbow propped on the cushion, saying nothing. His face had said it all. Shane had mumbled something about a team meeting, having things to do. Ilya had nodded. Just once. Had said, “Okay.” Not what the fuck, Hollander or don’t go, stay or even see you in Montreal. Just okay.

Shane had walked out the door and got a cab back to his hotel and had gone straight to the shower, not even able to manage two words to Hayden.

After that, there had been the Rose thing. Rose Landry, who he’d met at that party at J.J.’s friend’s restaurant, and then she had slid into his DMs. Gorgeous, obviously. But also funny, and smart, and interested in Shane in a way that felt genuine and safe. They’d gone on a few dates. She’d come to one of his games. The paparazzi had gone wild over them and they were all over celebrity gossip columns and social media. They’d slept together, twice, and he’d performed, but felt nothing. On their last date, over dinner, she had asked him outright if he was gay. And he had no longer felt like lying.

She’d laughed, warm and genuine, unoffended, and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “Jesus, Shane. You could’ve just said no when I asked you out.”

They were friends now. Sent memes back and forth on IG. They texted. She’d sent him three crying-laughing emojis when he’d told her he was going to Tampa to win back the man he was secretly in love with. He didn't tell her who it was.

Good luck, you spectacular disaster, she’d written. Don’t fuck it up this time. Followed by a fist-bump emoji and a rocket ship emoji.

Shane had messaged back: No promises.

Now, standing in his hotel room in Tampa with the sun setting over the water, Shane breathed in deeply and out. He was gay. He was in love with Ilya Rozanov. He didn’t know how long he’d been in love with him for, maybe even from the first moment they met outside the rink in Saskatchewan, and through every fight, fuck and frozen silence between them, and he was going to say it out loud to Ilya’s face and fuck whatever happened next. He was tired of pretending it didn’t matter, whatever this thing was between them.

The next day, he skipped breakfast and went to the gym instead. Early. Early enough he knew most of the other guys would either still be arriving in Tampa, or making the most of the lack of scheduled events in the morning. He showered. Dressed in the slate blue pants and the white linen button-down his stylist had chosen. Someone to impress? She’d winked. Just a team event, he’d replied. But you never know who you’re gonna meet in Florida. He put his sunglasses on. He knew he looked different. That was the idea.

The welcome mixer was the league’s idea of an easy first day—no hockey, no formality, just a block booking at the hotel beach bar, the Eastern Conference All-Star roster and their families, wives and girlfriends in the middle of a Friday afternoon.

Palm trees and rum drinks and Coronas, white sand and the Gulf flat and turquoise-green behind them. Latin music playing in the background. The kind of thing it was impossible not to have a good time at. Unless you were Shane Hollander.

Ilya was standing at the bar, one elbow on the counter, talking to Carter Vaughan and one of the Toronto guys. He was laughing, head tipped back, his golden-brown curls catching the sun. He looked good. Better than good. He had a beer in his hand and was wearing a stupid shirt with palm trees on it, which would look ridiculous on anyone else, but fuck he even made that look hot. Shane suddenly felt ridiculously overdressed in his slacks and button-down, and he envied Ilya’s ability to do—and wear—whatever the fuck he wanted without caring what anyone thought. And there was something else about Ilya that Shane couldn’t put his finger on. An ease that Shane hadn’t seen in him maybe ever before, something in the way his shoulders had relaxed, or the broad smile on his face.

Shane’s whole body felt like something electric had coursed through him and was drawing him to Ilya like a magnet. The way it always did around him. It had been the same since he was nineteen years old and too stupid to know what it meant.

Then Ilya saw him.

Shane watched the laugh fade, and then Ilya’s eyes drifted to Shane at the other side of the bar. Nothing. There was no flicker of recognition, none of the usual heat in his eyes. He was twenty feet away, and Ilya's hazel eyes found him, held on him for a beat, and his mask slid into place. Ilya lifted his beer a couple of inches in a casual salute, and then turned back to Carter and carried on talking.

Shane stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do—should he go over, would it seem weird? Would it seem weird if he didn’t go over? And then someone was at his elbow, and he turned, and a beer was being pressed into his own hand and he was shaking hands with a cluster of teammates, and he didn't look back at the bar. He had spent six years learning how to not-look at Ilya Rozanov in public, and it was a skill he had perfected. Shane smiled and was charming enough in his All-Stars-Captain way, and gave everyone the version of himself they expected.

The afternoon was winding down by the time Shane found the courage to approach Ilya, who was finally alone at the bar, Carter Vaughan and the others who had surrounded him had drifted away. Shane’s heart was hammering in his chest and his mouth had gone dry. He took a quick swig of the beer in his hand and walked over.

“Hey,” he said.

Ilya turned. Those eyes again, meeting his, no warmth in them. He didn't look angry. Just—professional. Like someone greeting a colleague they respected but did not particularly want to speak to.

“Captain,” Ilya said, his voice even.

“This should be fun, huh? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team.”

“Have you?” Flat. Not inviting a response.

“Yeah. I’m looking forward to the game.” The most boring sentence Shane could have managed. He might as well be speaking to a reporter.

“Me too.” Ilya smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Shane cleared his throat to say something else—he had no idea what would have come out of his mouth next—Can we talk? What room are you in? I’m sorry?—but then someone was calling “ROZY!” from across the bar, and Ilya turned, raising his hand in a wave, and looked back at Shane.

“Goodbye, Hollander,” he said, and it was so perfectly, polite, so unlike Ilya, that Shane felt it like he’d been punched in the gut.

“Sure,” Shane replied. “See you around—” But Ilya was already walking away, laughing at something Marlow had said, already the centre of another conversation. Shane stood by the bar with his half-finished drink and watched him go.

He understood, with a sinking feeling, exactly how this was going to go.

Shane finished his drink in one long swallow. He set the bottle down on the bar and walked back to his room alone, the music and the laughter fading behind him. He did not say goodnight to Ilya and Ilya did not appear to notice him go.

It was, he thought, riding up in the empty elevator, going to be a very long weekend.

Shane had been prepared for just about anything. He’d been prepared to be ignored, to be given the cold shoulder, for Ilya to be obnoxious and taunting. He’d even prepared for the other thing, that look that would have undone all of Shane’s plans to talk. Just like it had in Boston. What he hadn’t been prepared for was watching how Ilya was around everyone else.

Saturday was free until the skills competition, and a lot of the guys ended up at the hotel pool. Shane went because what else was he going to do—go to the gym? Sit in his room falling apart over Ilya Rozanov? He found a lounger a little further away from the others, near the deep end, put his sunglasses on and pretended to read something. Told himself he was relaxing.

Ilya was in the water within about four minutes of arriving, because of course he was, loud and completely at home, making himself the center of attention, they way he did in every room he’d ever walked into. He joked around with the other players, challenged their kids to swimming races, splashed everyone and made them laugh.

Shane sat behind his sunglasses, pretending to read, and watched Ilya the whole time, watched the water pouring down his chest in rivulets, the sun catching every drop. Because there was no one who would see Shane looking and because he was, apparently, exactly as weak as he’d always been afraid he was. Because Ilya was beautiful, stupidly, unfairly beautiful, and not once did he look over. Not once did he swim to the deep end. Here he was being fully, radiantly himself in every direction but Shane’s. And that was the worst thing.

Shane stayed an hour which was long enough. Then he gathered up his towel and his unread book and went back inside, into the cool and the quiet, and the light in his room seemed very dim after all that sun.

He participated half-heartedly in the skills competition, mainly there for the other guys, clapping at the right times, and giving everyone the public version of himself. Ilya was seated down at the other end of the bench, grinning and posturing for the crowd, luminous under the arena lights, and never once looked over. Then it was over, and Shane got to go up to his room, lay in the dark and did not sleep well. He told himself it was the hotel bed.

Of course, they played the best hockey of their lives on Sunday. Shane had always known they would. Shane had been voted captain by the fans, so by default he remained center, while Ilya moved to right wing. He didn’t say a word to Shane, so Shane had no idea how he felt about it. But whatever was going on in Ilya’s head, it didn’t matter; their bodies had not got the memo. They clicked in a way Shane had never clicked with any teammate. Shane played a no-look pass into the space where he knew Ilya was going to be, Ilya already there like he’d read Shane’s mind. They passed the puck between each other, nobody else able to keep up, scoring goal after goal.

It was a meaningless All-Star game but Shane could have wept, because it was one thing they still had that Ilya couldn’t deny. They were fucking brilliant together on the ice. 

Shane tried talking to him. After setting Ilya up for a goal that he buried in the back of the net with casual, devastating accuracy: “Nice goal.”

“Yes,” Ilya said blandly, not meeting Shane’s eyes. “Thank you. Nice assist.” Skated away.

Every time, the return to the bench, Ilya drifting, inevitably, away. Two or three seats, then to the far end. In the changing room after, Shane sat in front of his stall and untied his skates. Ilya across the room, telling some story that had four guys howling with laughter. His eyes swept the room, passed over Shane without stopping. The way Ilya’s body turned, always, away from Shane’s.

Shane skipped everything after that. There were parties, some of the guys gathered at the hotel bar, a dinner. Shane couldn’t do another night of it, being in a room, having to be charming and polite, and Ilya being warm and friendly to every other person for another minute. Shane went up to his room, and sat there, scrolling on his phone, and the silence got very loud.

Something started to happen in Shane’s chest. A tight breathlessness. In his head, a quiet, insistent voice that he recognised instantly: Maybe you got it wrong. Maybe it was something Shane had constructed in his head. All those years, the nights in hotel rooms, the way he thought Ilya had looked at him two months ago in his Boston apartment—maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe Shane had taken a professional rivalry and a handful of hookups and turned them into something more, because he needed something more in his life that wasn’t just hockey and the brand deals and the perfect public image he had painstakingly constructed over the last seven years.

The thought stuck, and Shane couldn’t remember why he was here, what he was doing in Tampa, what the point of any of it was.

At midnight, he still couldn’t sleep, and did what he always did. He pulled on his shorts and trainers and headed for the hotel gym. He could at least run himself stupid enough not to feel anything any more. He came out of his room, and there—twenty feet down the corridor at the vending machine—was Ilya.

Fresh out of the shower by the look of him, hair still damp and pushed back, in a t-shirt and trackpants that rode low on his hips, one hand braced on the machine while he waited for whatever he’d punched in to drop. He turned. And every promise Shane had made to himself after the game had ended—I am not going to reach any more—was just gone.

“Ilya.”

Ilya’s whole body went tense. Shane had caught him too quickly, half a second too soon—and in that half-second there was something raw and shaky underneath.

“Hollander.” Flat. “Is late.”

“I know. I know it’s late.” Shane's pulse was going like he’d just come off the treadmill.

Neither of them moved. Shane was aware of every detail: the way Ilya’s hair curled at the ends even when it was wet, the set of his shoulders, the fact his eyes had gone to Shane’s mouth and stayed there. Something sparked in Ilya’s eyes. Heat. Shane knew the way Ilya had looked at him in hotel rooms and in his bedroom and on his couch and now when they were alone in a hotel corridor at midnight. Shane closed the distance between them.

Ilya met him halfway.

The kiss was not gentle or careful. It was hungry, and Shane’s hands were coming up to grab Ilya’s face, and Ilya was fisting the front of Shane’s shirt, and then Shane’s back was hitting the wall with a soft thud. Shane made a sound that he would be mortified by under other circumstances, but he was past the point of caring. He grabbed frantically for Ilya’s waist, pulling him in closer. Ilya kissed him like he was furious about it, or he’d been holding himself back from this, or maybe they were the same thing.

God he’d missed this, he’d missed the heat of Ilya’s mouth and the familiarity, and the scrape of Ilya’s stubble, and the noise Ilya made when Shane bit at his lip—the noise that meant Shane was winning, and Shane would have crawled over broken glass to hear that noise again.

“Ilya—” he managed to get out against his mouth, but Ilya just kissed him harder, pushing him back into the wall, one thigh pushing between Shane’s, and Shane’s head went back against the wall, every rational thought in his head going with it. Ilya’s mouth dragged hot down the side of Shane’s throat, his hands shoving up under his shirt, spreading wide and greedy over his pecs, and Shane heard himself say yes, please, say Ilya’s name like a prayer, and then—“My room, now—” and his hands were fumbling for his keycard at his door, with Ilya’s hard cock pressing up against his ass and his mouth on his neck, and Shane’s only thought was of getting on the other side and all the ways things could go if they could just get inside—

The lock blinked green. The door swung open and they went through it still tangled together, kissing again, Ilya walking him backward into the dark of the room, Shane’s hands under the hem of Ilya’s t-shirt and feeling the warmth of his skin, and his last coherent thought was that he had been so stupid for so long and had wasted so much time.

His legs hit the bed and he pulled Ilya down with him, and then all the thoughts were gone. Ilya’s hands were all over him, sure and deliberate, his mouth on Shane’s jaw, his throat, the hard line of his cock pressed against Shane’s hip, and Shane arched up into it and for a moment Shane just let himself have it, no thoughts, just existing in it.

Then, of course, because Shane was never just existing, the thought surfaced, this is what you always do.

Because that was it, wasn’t it. The same pattern, every time, the two of them falling into bed in the dark, letting their bodies do the talking and never saying a single word that meant anything. And Shane had come to Tampa to break that. He’d rehearsed it, he was going to talk to Ilya, be honest, get him to be honest, saying the thing out loud for once instead of burying it under another hookup, which they would repeat again and again until it either blew up in their faces or fizzled out. And after seven years, there was no sign of it fizzling out. And here he was. Again. Doing the one thing he’d sworn he wouldn’t, letting it happen the way it always did—wordless, deniable, and gone by daylight.

Not this time.

Shane got a hand between them, flattened it on Ilya’s chest, and pushed—gently, but enough. Enough to slow it. Enough to make Ilya lift his head and look at him in the dark. And Shane made himself say the thing he’d come here to say, breathless, his heart going, before he could lose his nerve:

“We need to talk.”

Ilya stopped and pulled back. Said nothing.

“I broke up with Rose. I told her—”

Ilya interrupted him. “Okay. So what.”

“I’m sorry about Boston. It was just— It felt different and I panicked— But I think this could be something real, we could—”

Ilya went still. Something changed in him all at once, between one breath and the next, like the word real had turned him to stone in front of Shane in the dark. The heat, the want in his face—gone.

Ilya pushed himself all the way back and stood, his breath slowing, and Shane scrambled up onto his elbows, half-undressed, the blood in his veins going ice cold.

“What,” Shane said, but he knew what. Because Ilya was looking at him with an expression that he had seen before, and he knew what it meant, and prayed he would never see it again. For a second neither of them said anything. Ilya’s mouth was wet and swollen. His shirt pulled up on one side where Shane’s hands had been. His chest was still heaving and his eyes were dark and there was no possible universe where what had just happened could be called nothing—but Ilya had gone rigid against it and his decision was already written all over his face.

“Ilya,” Shane said, quietly. “We—”

“No,” Ilya said, interrupting him. “No. This—” He waved his hand in between them. “Whatever you think this is. It’s not. I don’t give a fuck about you and Rose Landry. This is nothing.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it.” Ilya’s voice didn’t shake. He’d gotten himself under control now. “We are not— anything, Hollander. We get together, we fuck, that’s it. Means nothing. And now we stop.”

“That’s not—” Shane’s throat was tight. “I thought—”

Ilya’s face was unreadable. “Go home, Hollander. Go back to Rose Landry. Find another girl or another guy, whatever you want. I don’t care. Is not my business. But is not me, and you have to stop looking at me like—” something flickered across Ilya’s face and Shane watched him kill it. “You want this to be something, is your problem. Not mine. There is nothing here. We are nothing. Move on, Hollander.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He crossed to the door and let himself out and it clicked shut behind him with a soft, final sound, leaving Shane alone in the dark in his gym shorts, sitting on the end of the bed, the taste of Ilya still in his mouth and the heat of his skin still on Shane’s hands.

Means nothing.

Shane sat there with it for a long time, turning it over in his head like he was rewatching plays in a bad game, trying to figure out where it had gone so wrong. And the thing he kept coming back to—the thing that would follow him onto the plane the next day, and in every quiet minute for the rest of the season—was that Ilya had still wanted him. Right up to the moment that Shane opened his mouth and tried to make it more than a hookup.

He knew what he’d felt in the hallway. Ilya had wanted him. That had been real, and Shane had felt every unmistakable inch of it pressed up against him. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, Shane thought, and hated himself for thinking it. If I’d just let it be, I’d still have him in my bed.

Which told him everything, didn’t it. That was the thing he’d wanted an answer to, and he’d got it. Ilya had not been running from sex. It was only ever the idea that it might mean more than that. And now it was clear it meant something to one of them, he had gone, and decided that Shane Hollander was no longer worth it.

He flew home the next morning. He didn’t text Ilya. Didn’t say goodbye. There was no version of goodbye that wasn’t going to sound like a please, and he was done with that. Shane had decided he was finally, actually done with it.

He put on his headphones and looked out of the plane window, and considered the facts. Ilya liked women. Shane knew he’d been with other men, and he certainly liked Shane. But even if it was more, even if Ilya wanted the same thing, it didn’t matter. Because there was Russia, and Ilya’s family, and everything Ilya had there, and there was no version of this story where Ilya and Shane could ever be together. So Shane could sit here and cry over it, or he could accept Ilya’s decision, and stop throwing himself at a door that was only ever going to stay shut. He had to accept it would never be more than just sex, and Shane had done the pathetic thing of falling in love, and now the kindest thing he could do for himself was to stop. He couldn’t afford to keep setting himself on fire for a man who would always remain closed-off, unreachable, waiting for a thing that would never come.

He knew who he was now. There was a part of him that had walked away from Rose, from Ilya, and there was no more hiding it from himself in the dark. Maybe, for a while, he’d let himself believe he was in love. Maybe he even had been. But it was time to let it go.

As the plane started its descent back into Montreal, Shane’s life returned with it, the one he was going to go back to living. He had lost something in Tampa, and wasn’t going to pretend that he hadn’t. But he’d walked in there carrying a lie about himself for the last time. He knew who he was. He was the best in the world at what he did, he had people who loved him, and he had a whole life in front of him that he would live as himself.

It wasn’t the life he’d flown into Tampa hoping for. But it was a good life, and it was his, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, that felt like enough.

The wheels touched down. Shane smiled at the flight attendant, gathered up his bag, and went home to start living.

Chapter 2: Wimbledon

Chapter Notes

Five months. The hockey season had ended. Montreal had narrowly missed getting to the playoffs. Shane had kept his promise, and Ilya had kept his, and neither of them had reached for the other, not a single text, not even a fucking emoji, barely a glance or a word when they played each other. The feeling Shane used to have when he thought about Ilya Rozanov had not gone, but it had faded. Shane watched Boston go out of the playoffs and barely felt anything. Or that’s what he told himself. He wasn’t healed, but it was better, and he was getting used to it.

By the time summer came around, he was, and would have told anyone who’d asked, fine. And the thing was, it wasn’t even a lie. He’d been focused. He’d finished number one in league scoring. He’d played the best hockey of his life for the rest of the season. Since Tampa, there had been no distraction. No staring at his phone between games, waiting for texts that did not come, because he knew no texts were coming. He’d stopped lying awake at three in the morning thinking about how he could have played things differently, and what he had lost.

He still spoke to Rose all the time. She was the only person who asked how he was doing.

What happened? She had texted him the day he got back from Tampa.

Told him. He didn’t care. Shane had been in bed, lying in the dark, unable to sleep.

Then he’s an idiot, she wrote back. But you already knew that.

And perhaps most significantly, he had started seeing a therapist, who was the second person he had told the truth about himself to, and every time he talked to them, he felt a little lighter. Shane Hollander was twenty-five years old and he know, now, exactly who he was, and nobody was ever going to be able to take that back off him.

Shane felt lighter, in a lot of ways. He’d stopped lying to himself about what he wanted, and slowly he was stopping lying to everyone else. He’d told his parents in February. His mom had smiled and hugged him, and his dad had said “We love you and we’re so proud of you.” He’d told his team in April. There had been silence, and then some scattered applause, and Hayden had come up to him and hugged him. A few others came up to him privately afterward, mostly supportive. There had been some muttered comments, and a couple of the guys had been weird in the changing room, but nothing he hadn’t expected, and nothing he couldn’t handle, so it had mostly been okay. Nobody had leaked it and so far no one else knew outside hockey, apart from Rose, his parents and his therapist.

He’d carried on being captain, and focused on playing the best hockey he could, but one change had been that he had made space for other things. He’d gone out for dinner with a few guys from the team. He’d read a book that had nothing to do with hockey. He got a cat, a long-haired black one he called Henry, who slept on his chest and didn’t give a shit about the Montreal Metros.

Ilya, for his part, seemed to be thriving. Shane could not ignore him entirely, of course. It was impossible to ignore Ilya Rozanov.

In February, he had suddenly gone back to Russia. Shane had heard it in the locker room first, that Rozanov was out for a week or more. Then a few days later, that it had been for his father’s funeral. It got a mention from the commentators when he came back, commiserations given. Shane had typed and deleted a number of messages, before he sent, finally, Sorry about your father. The reply came the next morning. Thank you. Nothing else.

Then Ilya had hit a career high in points, just slightly short of Shane’s own league scoring, and a playoff run that only just fell short of the Cup. Shane had seen a magazine profile in the spring, Ilya in a charcoal suit wearing that crooked grin, looking like he’d been put together by his own team of stylists. And if you looked on socials—and Shane had only ever caved in to that once, at one in the morning—there was a whole glittering grid of Ilya at events, with an array of beautiful women. Ilya, always radiant, looking utterly fine.

Look at him, Shane had thought in the dark afterward, his phone turned face down on the nightstand. He’s happy. He was always going to be happy, and you were the only one who lost anything. It was never real to him. Move on, Hollander.

And he was getting better at it. Moving on. Give it a year, he thought, and I’ll be able to have a whole conversation about Ilya Rozanov without flinching. Give it two years and maybe he’d even believe it himself.

Which was maybe why, two weeks after Tampa, when his mother had pitched him the Wimbledon thing again, he’d said yes.

“Have you decided about Wimbledon?” she’d asked. “Rolex need to know. It’s a Centre Court box. They really want you there.”

“Mom, I don’t know anything about tennis.”

“You don’t have to know anything about tennis to sit in a box at Wimbledon, Shane. You just have to look like you belong there.”

Which he would. That was Shane Hollander, wasn’t it? He belonged everywhere. The golden boy of hockey, who could walk into any room, any event in the world, and look like he’d been born to be there.

“Think about it,” she’d said. “It’ll be good for you to get out of Canada in the summer. See somewhere different. And it’ll make Rolex happy,” she added.

It wasn’t just the brand deal of course. Part of it was the momager talking, but then there was the other thing, her love for her son and seeing him across the table looking like something had changed in him and thinking: he needs to get out of Montreal. He needs something to look forward to that isn’t a hockey game.

So he’d said yes. And then he’d forgotten about it, noted it as after the season. Until something that was five months away was suddenly there, the hockey season over and he was standing in the Rolex hospitality suite at the All England Club with a glass of champagne and his perfect polished smile that he had been working on since he was eighteen.

In the end he’d decided to make it a real trip. It had been his therapist’s idea, gently planted. You know, Shane, you never take time that’s actually yours. It’s always the season, and then the training, or the photo shoots, and then in the summer you isolate yourself at the cottage.

That is the time that’s actually mine, though, he replied. I love going to the cottage. And I see my parents.

He’d thought about it, thought about joining some of the guys from Montreal on their trip to Mexico, but knew the conversation would be mostly centered around two things: women and hockey. And for once, Shane wanted to spend his summer doing something completely different. So his cat had gone to his parent’s cottage for the summer, and he’d built a couple of weeks around the handful of afternoons that Rolex wanted him for, flown over early, and had given himself two weeks in London. Perhaps after Wimbledon, he’d go to Spain or Greece for a week before returning to Canada. He felt free for the first time in a long time.

The hotel was immaculate, all marble and soft wood and mood lighting, his room overlooking Hyde Park. Shane had stood at the window his first night and watched the light change over the trees and thought, distantly, that it was beautiful.

The first thing he’d learned about London was that nobody there had the faintest idea who he was.

When he’d checked in to the hotel, the front desk clerk slid the keycard across the desk to him with a friendly smile and wished him a pleasant stay, without a flicker of recognition at his name. Nobody cared about ice hockey in England; he could have walked into a pub and announced he was the captain of the Montreal Metros and was the top scoring player in the MLH and would have got nothing but baffled looks back.

In Canada, he was recognised almost on a daily basis. Even if people didn’t immediately know his face, they knew his name, and they knew the Metros were one of the biggest sports teams in North America.

Here, if anyone looked twice, it was more likely because he’d featured in a Reebok ad on a bus shelter, or because of the times he’d been papped having dinner or holding hands with Rose Landry, who was globally famous in a way that Shane certainly was not. In London, he was almost a nobody. It was glorious.

He had two days before Wimbledon started. The first day, he walked for hours. He went to an art museum and stood in front of the paintings for as long as he wanted without speaking to anyone, and found a cafe he liked near the hotel where the girl had taken his name and handed his flat white to him with ‘Sean’ on the cup. That evening, he went for a run in Hyde Park, and then sat and watched people’s dogs and thought about nothing in particular. He felt like an ordinary person living a nice but ordinary life, in a way that he could not remember ever having felt before.

His one obligation was Rolex, and even that turned out to be more of an open invitation, with the mildest of expectation. His mom had promised them he would attend at least three matches, including the men’s final. Otherwise, it had been made clear that they were delighted he was there, he was such a wonderful ambassador for their brand, the hospitality suite was open whenever he wanted to use it, just to let them know when he was planning to come so they could reserve his seat.

So here he was, on day one of Wimbledon, more out of curiosity than duty, and found that there was less of an expectation to perform than an expectation to let someone else take care of him and make sure he had a good time. It started at the gate and did not let up. There was a handler with a lanyard, who walked him through the schedule, and his seat assignments, the name of people he may be sitting with.

There were the Rolex people in the hospitality suite, friendly, so thrilled, shaking his hand and telling him what a pleasure, what an honour. The manicured green of the Club, the ivy covering the building, the clipped lawns, the dark green and purple everywhere, the well-dressed crowds, the traditions of the place going back over a hundred years. There was the Pimms he didn’t drink and a glass of champagne he held in his hand and strawberries and cream, and little sandwiches. It was so far removed from any hockey game he had ever attended that he barely recognised he was at a sporting event at all.

That morning, Shane put on the outfit his stylist had laid out: navy blazer, stone chinos, a pale blue shirt open at the collar. No tie—unless you are invited to the Royal Box, the stylist had added. “Approachable but expensive,” she’d texted him. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw exactly what everyone was supposed to see: Canada’s Golden Boy. That was why he was there.

The walk from the hospitality suite to Centre Court was all green grass and white tents, and the gloss of British society. Shane moved through it on autopilot, nodding at people who nodded at him, smiling at the right times, all of it concealing the fact he was way out of his depth, but he had trained for moments like these. To look like he belonged anywhere he found himself.

It turned out that Rolex did not have a box as such. Just the hospitality suite and secured sponsor seating with a perfect view of the court.

“You’ll be just here, Mr Hollander,” the Rolex rep murmured, indicating a seat. “You’ll be beside—” she glanced at her clipboard. “—Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid. Of Sweden. A tremendous tennis fan, I’m told, so you’ll be in excellent company. Do enjoy the match.” She paused. “There will be drinks after in the suite. And publicity photos. If you’re amenable.”

“Yes.” Shane smiled, his press smile. “I’m amenable.”

“Wonderful,” she replied, returning his smile, telling Shane she appreciated a celebrity who didn’t make her job harder than it needed to be. Shane had built his career on being exactly that. Amenable.

A Swedish princess. Right. Of course. His mom had told him about that.

The seat had a perfect view. The court was immaculate, ready for the first match of the tournament, the lines sharp white against the green, and the players hadn’t come out yet. Shane put on his sunglasses, adjusted his cuffs and settled into his seat like a man who had been to a hundred Wimbledon matches. He braced himself for the Swedish princess and ninety minutes of the most polite small talk of his life.

He could do this. The warm, bland politeness, not overly but sufficiently charming. He’d be boring and polite, and then he’d have a glass of champagne in the Rolex suite, have his photograph taken looking suitably wholesome with some other equally bland celebrities. And then he’d go back into this beautiful anonymous city and the peaceful solitary days, and everyone would be happy.

The match started, and the seat beside him was still empty. Shane checked his phone once, took a quick photo that he would send to his mom and Rose later, then turned it off and slid it inside his pocket. Turning his attention to the green.

He had, he would think later, absolutely no fucking idea what was about to hit him.

The seat beside him stayed empty through the knock up and the coin toss, and the umpire’s quiet instructions, and Shane had just about decided his princess was a no-show, when someone dropped into it, and looked at him. Looked at him and smiled like he’d been handed the whole damn Wimbledon cup.

Shane removed his sunglasses to be polite, had turned to offer the pleasant, camera-ready hello he had loaded and ready.

He did not get to use it.

Because the person settling into the seat next to him with the dazzling smile was not a princess. It was not a woman at all. It was a man, a couple of years older than Shane probably. And handsome. Dark blond hair pushed back, stubble on his cut jaw, grey-blue eyes that had already found his and lingered there. Shane’s stomach flipped. He looked like an athlete—not a hockey player, he had broad shoulders but was leaner. He was wearing a perfectly cut linen jacket that looked like it had been made for him. He looked right at home at Wimbledon.

“You were expecting a princess,” he said. It wasn’t a question. His English was fluent, only very lightly accented, and he was clearly enjoying himself. And not trying to hide it. “You were expecting my sister. Sorry— I found out she was seated next to THE Shane Hollander, and I’m afraid I had to bribe her to let me come today instead. She knows next to nothing about hockey, so she would have spent two hours asking you about Canada.

“Anyway, I’m sorry to disappoint,” the man continued. “But don’t worry, if you still want to meet her she’ll be around in the hospitality suite another day I’m sure. She’s much prettier than me.” He said it as a joke, already half-turning to the court—and then, when Shane didn’t say anything, he glanced back. “That was—sorry, again, but I was dying to meet you. And talk hockey. You’d probably rather have had the princess.”

“No,” Shane said. It came out faster than he’d intended. The man’s eyebrows went up; he gave a surprised laugh and put out his hand.

“Alexander. Alex. Prince Alexander, technically, but before before you do the polite thing and pretend you know who I am—don’t worry, you’re not supposed to. Prince, very minor, Sweden. You could not possibly be expected to know. Or care.” Shane took his hand. The grip was warm and confident and he held Shane’s hand slightly longer than necessary. “You, on the other hand. I know exactly who you are.”

“You do?”

“Shane Hollander.” Alexander said it slowly, like he was enjoying how it felt in his mouth. “Highest scorer in the league last season. Captain of the Metros at, what, twenty-five.” He counted the facts off one by one. “So no—you don’t get to be anonymous with me. Sorry. I’m Swedish. We’re serious about hockey.” He put on his sunglasses and sat back, entirely comfortable, one arm going along the back of Shane’s seat—not touching, just lazily there.

Shane blushed.

“You were expecting a hockey player.”

“I was expecting to be bored, if I’m honest, and I’m relieved not to be.” Alex settled back easily. “I love Wimbledon, I come every year, but I usually end up sitting next to a CEO’s wife or some guy who just wants to talk about crypto. So this is an upgrade.” He gave Shane a grin.

Shane huffed a laugh—surprised, a real one. “You don’t even know me.”

“No, but I know you play hockey at a level I can only dream about, and I’ve seen you on TV, so I’ve got a head start. I grew up on the ice, like every Swedish kid. I was never very good at hockey but I love it. I watch far too much MLH for someone in my time zone.”

Shane turned toward the match on court, giving him something to look at other than the man sitting next to him.

“Do you play?” He asked Alex. “Tennis I mean.”

“I do, but not especially well. I’m not consistent enough at anything to be very good.” He said it with a smile, like it was something he was proud of. Shane was so used to being around other hockey players, people like him, so focused on being the best at one thing, that he almost couldn’t fathom someone who was happy to do a lot of things at a very average level. He had never considered there might be other ways to be happy and successful.

“It’s strange, actually,” Alex said, sounding amused. “Meeting someone whose highlights reel I’ve watched at two in the morning. You look completely different off the ice. On it you’re ruthless—you’ve got this cold, total focus, like the rest of the world’s been switched off and you’re a hockey machine—and here you are in a linen jacket, all polite, like you’d rescue a kitten from a tree in a heartbeat. I don’t know how both of those are the same person.”

“Maybe I’m neither.” Shane said, not taking his eyes from the court.

It came out before he thought about it—far drier and more loaded than his usual line. The kind of thing the very careful public version of Shane Hollander would have never let slip. And the even stranger part was, how easy it had been. Since he’d arrived in London, he’d felt like nobody, no one knew him, no camera to perform for—and he’d forgotten he had anything to protect.

He turned to Alex, a little horrified with himself.

Alex, however, looked delighted. “Oh, now that’s truly ominous. Now I have to know”

“That’s the idea. It keeps your attention.” What the fuck was he saying.

“It’s working. I’m riveted.” Alex was grinning properly now, and Shane felt a small private thrill of having been the cause of it.

“I had you down as the strong, silent type. Your interviews are very—neutral. Nice young man, very professional, says absolutely nothing, thanks the fans, applauds the other players.”

“You watch my interviews too?”

“I told you. Two in the morning. It’s a terrible problem.” He said it without a shred of embarrassment, and Shane laughed, and it was now Alex’s turn to look pleased with himself for causing that. Something in Shane melted, just a little bit.

They fell into easy conversation after that. Alex asked him lots of questions, and none of them were ones that Shane expected. Not the usual, what’s it like winning the Stanley Cup, not what’s Rose Landry like. Alex asked what the live music scene was like in Montreal, what Shane was doing with his time in London alone, and when Shane told him—the park, the cafe, the museum—Alex lit up like Shane had said something delightful.

“That’s it,” he said. “Exactly. I love it here because nobody’s interested in who you are. Even at Wimbledon,” he gestured to the match that they were both largely ignoring now. “Everyone’s watching the tennis, not us. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

And Shane, who spent his whole life answering questions with a practised falseness, found himself answering and being honest, and not minding it at all. It was a little bewildering, and as he groped around for what it was, he landed on a comparison with a small internal jolt—it felt like the first time he’d talked to Rose. The same easy warmth, the same type of questions that didn’t feel like he was being cornered, and the startling realisation that he was having a genuinely good time and had been almost entirely himself for every single second of it.

Except. Except it wasn’t like Rose. Because underneath the easy conversation, was the other thing—the thing that had been missing with Rose that had confused him at the time, but he understood quite clearly now. Every now and again Alex would remove his sunglasses to properly look at Shane. The grey-blue eyes that kept coming back to linger on Shane’s mouth. The warmth of the shoulder a few inches from his. The feeling low in his stomach whenever Alex laughed. There was all the warmth and easy fun of Rose, but under it, the electric feeling humming under his skin that had always been missing. And here in a country where barely nobody had heard of him, it was almost safe to respond.

So he let himself a little bit. And sometime in the second set, brave with anonymity and perhaps also because he’d had a glass of champagne, Shane turned in his seat and asked—as smoothly as he possibly could, which wasn’t very, as he was blushing again—“So how long are you going to be in London for?”

Alex stopped for a fraction of a second. Then he turned to Shane, and smiled slowly, understanding exactly what was being asked.

“The whole fortnight,” Alex said. His voice dropped, just slightly, and he fucking smirked. “Why?”

“Because I don’t understand a single thing about tennis.” Shane hardly believed what he was saying. His heart was pounding. “I need someone to explain it to me.”

“Oh, well, you’re in luck. I could have been a commentator, but I’m far too honest. Not diplomatic in the slightest. That’s why my mother says I’ll never be King.”

Shane looked at him, wide-eyed. “Could you be King?”

Alex laughed deprecatingly. “God no, not really. There are too many uncles and cousins and nephews in between me and the throne. Not that I’d want to be. I prefer it this way, very little responsibility other than not humiliating the family. Which can be exhausting in its own way.” He glanced at Shane. “But I’m sure you know how that goes. When you’re Canada’s pretty golden boy.”

“Anyway,” he continued, breaking his gaze from Shane and turning back to the court. “Tennis.” He leaned in, close, the warmth of him suddenly right there at Shane’s shoulder, and talked about the match, about the players, not showing off, just the comments of someone who genuinely enjoyed the game, and answered Shane’s questions about the rules and tactics without an ounce of condescension.

It turned out Alex had a Swedish friend in the MLH—“Elias Larssen, you’ve definitely met him, plays for Seattle—” and Shane said yes I know him, and Alex looked utterly delighted, and started a whole new conversation about the difference between Swedish and Canadian hockey. “You would do well in Sweden. The hockey is very strategic and smooth.” He sighed. “But you’re also incredibly fast, so you’ve got everything I suppose.”

The afternoon that Shane had braced himself for—boring at worst, fine at best—got away from him. Alex was funny, quick and self-deprecating. He teased Shane, and Shane felt like he was encouraged to tease him back. He was direct in a way that felt new. And natural. That was the thing, Shane realised after a while. Alex didn’t have an agenda. He was just a man enjoying the afternoon, watching a sport he liked, played even but without having a be the best at it or analyse every play. He said what he wanted and there was no angle to it. In fact, the thinking was all on Shane’s side; the way the heat was climbing up his neck, the way he kept losing track of the tennis, and the fact he could not stop glancing at Alex when Alex was looking at the court.

Get it together, Hollander, he thought. He did not get it together, even slightly.

When the last point was played and the crowd stood, Shane stood with them, adjusting his blazer, aware that photographers were already lifting their cameras. In that moment, he realised two things. The first was that he had sat there for over ninety minutes and had not thought about Ilya Rozanov once.

The second was that when Alex stood, and leaned his shoulder toward Shane, still applauding and not taking his eyes off the court, politely saying “It was good to meet you,” Shane realised he did not want to leave it there.

Maybe he’d see him again. Maybe not. And he knew what that felt like—he’d spent years of it with Ilya, months at a time, checking his phone. Always confused, always uncertain. And Shane had already decided he was not going to spend one more day of his life waiting to find out what someone else was going to do.

He knew the next part. He should smile, shake hands, thank Alex for the afternoon, let it go. Shane Hollander did not ask people for things—he waited to be chosen. But for once, he was not going to do that.

Say something.

“Hey—” It came out too fast. Alex turned, eyebrows up, enquiring, still half-clapping.

“There’s drinks. After.” Shane’s mouth had gone dry. He could feel himself, infuriatingly, blushing. “In the suite—there’s photos, and drinks, and—” He stopped, realising Alex was smiling at him, and he was explaining how Wimbledon worked to a man who came here every year. “Are you going to that?” He finished weakly.

“I wasn’t,” Alex said.

Shane’s stomach dropped. “Right. No, of course—”

“But I am now.”

The event in the suite after was actually something that Shane recognised as familiar. He had done similar things before and it was a relief to fall into something he could do on autopilot. He could have been at an MLH event, apart from the fact no one apart from Rolex really knew who he was. He did the loop of the room, spent two minutes talking to people, smiled for photographs with a glass in his hand that he never drank from—thank you, no, it’s my first time here, no, we don’t really have anything like this in Canada, I play hockey, no not field hockey, ice hockey, no I haven’t met Raonic yet—and the whole time he was aware of where Alex was in the room.

Alex was good at it too. He did not come over to Shane. He worked the suite in the same way Shane did, spoke to the Rolex people, laughed at someone’s story before putting his hand on their shoulder and moving away. Shane had to work so hard at it, but Alex made it look incredibly easy. Twice they made eye contact, and both times Alex smiled, making Shane’s pulse go stupid, before he went back to whoever he was talking to.

There were photos, mainly with Rolex executives, and one with a woman from the All England Club, and then the event was over, the room thinning out, and Alex was shrugging his jacket on by the door. Shane realised it was up to him, and he had about eleven seconds to do it. He crossed the room.

“I don’t have your number,” Shane said.

Alex looked up. And for one awful moment, Shane thought he’d made a terrible mistake, as those grey-blue eyes passed over his face, with no smile, not even a flicker. Shane stood there in the fallout of his own misplaced courage and thought shit.

“No,” Alex agreed. “You don’t.” He stared at Shane, as if deciding something.

Silence. Somewhere behind them a glass was set down on a tray.

“Right.” Shane’s face was burning. “Sorry. That was—”

“Give me your phone.”

Shane gave him his phone.

Alex typed into it, unhurried, and handed it back. Shane looked down. Alexander, and a Swedish number. Nothing else.

“There,” Alex said. He half-turned toward the door, and straightened his jacket. Shane could not read a single thing on his face. “Enjoy the rest of your fortnight, Shane.”

And he left.

Chapter End Notes

Milos Raonic is a real Canadian tennis player, but only appears by name.There were a few Canadian tennis players at Wimbledon in 2017 (the year of the Tampa all-stars and the cottage). Milos Raonic would have been roughly Shane’s age and made it to the quarter-finals, where he was beaten by Roger Federer, who later went on to win the men’s singles.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Note: Whoops. I got a bit carried away with this chapter.
I don’t know how I’m going to write myself out of this situationship. I hope no one is mad at me. Remember I love Ilya as much as the next person.

Shane had his phone out before the hotel door clicked shut behind him.

He stood in the entryway, still wearing his blazer, his brain in overdrive, only vaguely aware of the end of the evening, the polite thanks and goodbyes to the Rolex people, the Uber ride, looking blankly out of the window as London rushed past. He’d walked through the hotel lobby to the elevator in a daze. The whole time his phone burning a hole in his pocket and thinking I asked for a guy’s number, why the fuck did I do that, he gave me his number, now what do I do with it.

Now he was alone, and the adrenaline that had carried him through the last few hours was draining out of him, leaving him feeling shaky and far less sure of himself than he had felt sitting at Centre Court.

He was already opening Google as he walked to the bed and slipped off his jacket, lying it on the bed beside him. It was research, he told himself. Exactly the same as when he looked up opponents, watched them on tape before a game, studying form and technique. It was normal. Due diligence.

alexander swedish prince

Wikipedia appeared first. The official stuff. A formal photo. Alex in black tie, a charity event, captioned Prince Alexander of Sweden, Duke of Härjedalen. A short biography listing his education, his military service, his charity patronages. Twenty-eight years old. Educated at Lund University, then a Master’s at the London School of Economics. Not even close to being in line to the throne, exactly as he’d said. He found the connection to Rolex—an ambassador for their environmental charity. He scuba dived and had a particular interest in marine conservation.

Shane kept scrolling.

At the bottom of the Wikipedia page, the thing that made him stop: a single paragraph under Personal Life.

Alexander came out publicly as gay in a 2011 interview with Dagens Nyheter, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Swedish royal family. He stated that he had known since his teens and had been supported by his family throughout. He was in a relationship with Swedish architect Erik Lindström from 2012 to 2015. He has not commented on his personal life since.

Shane read it three times.

Then he went to Google images. There were photographs from state dinners, Alex smiling at something off-camera. Alex at the opening ceremony of a new hospital wing. Alex at some gala, standing next to a beautiful woman—Shane felt something sink in his chest, before noticing the caption saying it was a cousin. He carried on.

A charity football match. Alex in a blue jersey, sweating and mud-stained, hair pushed back, mid-stride. Grinning. All lean muscle. Shane felt his dick twitch at that one. More photos—Alex on a boat, shirtless, candid and quite blurry so probably taken by a paparazzo, the sun catching the line of his collarbone, and the lean planes cut across his stomach. Shane’s thumb paused on the screen. He looked longer at that one than was necessary.

It was the football one that was the most beautiful one though—maybe because it was the most natural, because he looked so real and happy in it. Shane thought about when Alex had said I’m not consistent enough to be very good at anything and took real pride in it. Alex was probably very good at a very many things, he realised, just not world-class one one thing, the way Shane was.

He went back to the Wikipedia page. Alex had come out when he was around twenty-two. Not long after Shane had first started hooking up with Ilya. He wasn’t so much surprised by the fact that Alex was gay—he had suspected from the way he looked at him, from the smirk, from the lingering handshake, Canada’s pretty golden boy for fuck’s sake. There was definite flirting. The thing that got Shane was the way the information sat there so casually at the bottom of Alex’s Wikipedia page, the end of a list that included his education, military career and charity work. The coming-out had been a simple confirmation in a newspaper interview. There had been no press conference, no carefully managed statement from someone official.

Shane had spent years treating his own sexuality as something he could not even admit to himself—he was having sex with Ilya and nobody else, but had not even been sure he was gay until recently. Until he’d dated Rose and she had helped him face it. He'd constructed a whole public life around making sure it remained a secret, terrified that he would be outed, and worse that his relationship with his biggest rival would be part of that. He couldn't imagine getting away with a simple comment in the press. There would be meetings—so many meetings—with the Metros, the League, his agent, the brands he worked with, all to plan a strategy round it. It wouldn't be simple. 

Shane wasn’t sure what he felt about it. There was an element of envy. Alex was in a position that nobody could ever take away from him, although he supposed it could have potentially been made very difficult for him. He also—presumably—lived in a world that was maybe far more accepting. It was not the MLH. It was not the same thing at all. Still, Shane was now out to more than a few people, his parents, Rose, his teammates, and the thing that had felt like a ticking timebomb since he was nineteen had not gone off. Perhaps now the thing with Ilya was over, it could also just be a footnote in Shane’s Wikipedia page. He barked a laugh, imagining he could update his own page right that second, adding a note under Personal Life.

Shane Hollander came out as gay in 2017 following the end of the 2016-17 hockey season. He is currently single, and lives in Montreal with his cat called Henry.

Perhaps there would be a day when he could add that to his page, but today was not that day. He sat his phone down on the bed next to him and stared out of the window for a moment. The hotel room was quiet. Outside, it was 10pm and the summer sun was still only just setting over Hyde Park. Inside, there was only Shane sitting on his bed with his thoughts and his phone screen still awake on Alex’s Wikipedia page.

Then, because he was apparently incapable of being anything other than Shane Hollander, he picked the phone up again and started overthinking.

Give me your phone. That’s what Alex had said. Not I’d love to see you again or text me or anything that actually indicated interest. Just a phone number typed in without ceremony and Enjoy the rest of your fortnight, Shane—a goodbye. Like Shane would do when he’d been polite to a hockey fan and signed an autograph and then wanted to excuse himself.

But then—the way Alex had looked at him during the match. When he’d taken his sunglasses off and those grey-blue eyes had drifted to Shane’s mouth. The heat from his shoulder unnecessarily close to Shane’s for ninety minutes of a tennis match. The smirk when Shane had asked him how long he’d be in London. Depends how good you are at explaining tennis, and Alex had said I’m the best like it was a promise. Maybe Shane was reading too much into that one. But there had definitely been some flirting.

But then there had been the pause in the hospitality suite when Shane had asked for his number. The too-long unreadable pause. Alex’s face had been blank, no smile no warmth. It was like he was taken off-guard. Or maybe deciding something. Maybe he hadn’t realised Shane was interested. Maybe not until that moment.

Or—maybe Alex was just a friendly, charismatic man who was a big hockey fan and had been gracious and charming to someone who was clearly flustered and out of his depth.

It was getting dark, and Shane undressed, hanging his blazer, his chinos in the wardrobe, his shirt draped over the chair to be sent to laundry. He showered, letting the water wash away the heat of the day. Turned the water to cold and let his head hang under it, until all the thoughts had gone. At least temporarily. When he got into bed, the sheets were cool and crisp. He lay back and stared at the ceiling.

The afternoon continued to replay behind his eyes like game footage he was trying to analyze. Every moment, every exchange, every expression that Shane had thought he had read but was now desperately trying to reconstruct. He thought of the times he thought he’d read Ilya and had got things so tragically wrong. Their first time in Montreal, the gentle kiss at the bottom of the stairwell before Ilya left—then Sochi had happened. Then Vegas. Then Ilya had been warm again, they had got closer, Shane thought. He could admit he'd fucked things up in Boston. But Tampa had proved one thing—he and Ilya could never be more.

Maybe he was doing it again. One afternoon of friendly conversation and mild flirting with an attractive man—no, not just attractive, scorching hot, a prince for fuck’s sake—and here he was, building an entire romance out of it. What if Alex was just being European. What if the directness, the warmth, the lingering looks—was that just how people behaved when they weren’t trained in an environment of politeness and repression?

One thing he’d learned from his experience with Ilya—Shane’s instincts were not to be trusted any place but on the ice. And here he was, less than six months later, googling a prince. He had to laugh at himself. Of all the guys he could have picked. Talk about high standards.

Shane sat up, rubbed a hand over his face, and forced himself to look at the facts.

One: Alex had bribed his sister. With what, Shane didn’t know. Regardless, that was effort. That was something.

Two: He’d been warm and attentive all afternoon. Flirty even. He’d asked questions, and not just about hockey or polite small talk that you’d make with a fellow minor celebrity. And he’d listened. He’d teased Shane, let Shane tease him back, and the whole thing had been way more than small talk.

Three: On the other hand, when Shane had asked for his number, in the hospitality suite, at the end of the evening, Alex had paused. He had given him a long, assessing look and then an almost cold response. But then he’d taken the phone anyway. Shane froze. Suddenly aware of fact four.

Four: Alex did not have his number. He’d put his number in Shane’s phone, handed it back. No send me a missed call, no give me your number. Alex was not going to be calling him. The ball was in Shane’s court, so to speak.

What would he text, if he did? Hey, it’s Shane, I had a really nice time today—no, boring. Hey, it’s Shane, so are you actually interested or did I imagine it?—too intense. I looked at your Wikipedia page and it says you’re gay and single—absolutely not, under no circumstances, what was wrong with him. The ridiculousness of the situation made him feel a bit lighter, almost laughing out loud when he thought of sending a dick pic to a member of the Swedish royal family.

His phone buzzed, and Shane’s heart lurched into his throat.

He snatched it off the nightstand; the screen was lit up with a notification and for one stupid, hopeful second he thought—he was not sure what he thought.

It was Rose. A screenshot. Wimbledon highlights. is that YOU. is that you in the blue shirt. i can see 1/8 of ur head 🎾🔥🕶️

Then without waiting, a paparazzi shot of herself at an airport looking tired and miserable. This is what fame looks like btw enjoy ur strawberries

Then she said: I’ll be in london next week

Shane stared at it. Then he lay back down on the bed, and finally typed back: Wimbledon is very weird. I’ll explain when I see you.

The response came immediately. what happened?? did u fall in love with a tennis player

No

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then: SHANE. Shaaaannnne

He didn’t answer. He turned his phone face down on the nightstand.

He realised, all of a sudden, that for the first time in a long time, his phone had buzzed and he'd wished it was someone other than Ilya. And whatever the thing with Alex had been that afternoon, coming to London had been like stepping into sunshine after months of winter. Shane had laughed, forgotten to be careful, had been a version of himself that he usually kept hidden in public, he had asked a man for his fucking phone number. And he was proud of himself. So, no more spiralling. He reminded himself he was done with that. He was Shane motherfucking Hollander, and he was having a great time in London. He slept really well that night.

The next morning, Shane woke shortly after dawn, the light filtering through the curtains where he had not closed them fully. He surfaced from a dream he couldn’t remember, his hand already reaching for the phone. There was no logical reason why he thought Alex would have messaged. Or Ilya. Three notifications—his mother, asking how London was, and a photo from Hayden from a barbecue that Shane had been invited to and would probably have skipped even if he had been in Montreal, and a notification from his banking app that he didn’t bother opening.

He pulled on running shorts and a t-shirt and went downstairs. The lobby was quiet. Too early for the breakfast rush, and only a few people checking out, business travellers and tourists. No one looked at him. No one knew who he was. He pushed through the revolving door and out into the cool morning air, and ran.

Hyde Park was already alive with joggers and people walking their dogs, swimmers breaking the surface of the Serpentine, the water dark blue and flat under the early morning sky. Shane ran the perimeter, his pace steady, his breath evening out into the familiar rhythm that nearly always cleared his head.

He got about halfway round the Serpentine before he let himself think about anything at all—hockey, Ilya, Alex, all of it—and even then only in passing. Whatever happened to him next was going to happen because Shane made it happen, or nothing would happen at all. And for once he felt at peace. There was nothing to wait for, nothing to decipher.

He slowed to a walk by the bridge, got his breath back, hands on his hips, and then took his phone out and snapped a photo—the sun catching gold light on the water, a heron standing in the shallows. He sent it to Rose.

7am in London. I feel like a different person.

The reply came straight away even though it must have been midnight her time.

ok shane but WHO. who is the different person

Then: is he tall lol

Shane put his phone in his pocket, grinning, and started running again, faster.

He was twenty-six years old.

He’d finished number one in league scoring. He was in a city where nobody knew him, it was summer, he’d survived a shit show of a situationship, and he had the phone number of a hot Swedish prince, whether he decided to use it or not. He kept running.

On the way back, he stopped at the same cafe near his hotel.

The same girl was working the counter. She smiled when she saw him. “Flat white, yeah? Sean, right?”

“Shane,” he said. “But close enough.”

“Shane,” she repeated, drawing out the vowel. “Sorry about that. You’re Canadian, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Knew it. You’re too polite to be American.” She handed him his coffee with the name spelled S-H-A-N-E on the cup.

He sat at a table by the window and drank his coffee and opened his messages. He looked at the contact: Alexander, and the Swedish number beneath it. The cursor blinked in the empty text field. He could write something. Hey, thanks again for explaining tennis. I’m back at Wimbledon on Thursday if you’re around. Casual. Low-pressure. The kind of text that left room to be ignored or a polite no without making things weird.

But he’d sent that kind of text before. In Sochi: “Having a good time?” And he got no reply. No I did not answer your boring text. That was what Ilya had said. He’d nearly texted Ilya again after Tampa, but thought better of it. He had his answer in that hotel room. We are nothing. Move on Hollander. And he had moved on. He’d moved on so well that he’d flown to London by himself and had an easy conversation with a prince and asked for his number like it was nothing. Like a person who believed he deserved to be wanted.

And he did. He deserved it, and he believed it. But he was not going to fall into the trap of overthinking a text again, or hanging around waiting for a reply.

He finished his coffee and threw the cup in the bin. The barista waved at him from behind the counter. He waved back and walked out into the sunny morning, and he did not text Alex.

Chapter End Notes

Ilya who?
I love Alex a bit too much to break him and Shane up- when I gave him tattoos I knew I was in trouble...

Milos Raonic is a real Canadian tennis player, but only appears by name. He did actually beat a Russian player on the 4th day of Wimbledon 2017 which is a fun fact.
Härjedalen is a historical province of Sweden, but does not have a Duke.
I’m british, so when I say ‘football’ I’m talking about soccer
I spent a ten minutes or so googling what tech bros would talk about in 2017 which was enough to give me the ick as if I didn’t know it would, but then I also googled swedish men with tattoos so it all balanced out in the end ;-)

Chapter 4: Second Serve

Chapter Notes

Sorrrryyyy there's even more Alex-Shane smut to come, I can't stop 🫠
Might have to add another chapter to the count... Shane is on a journey fo sho

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I'm enjoying writing this one 💖

The next morning, Shane woke up and didn’t know where he was. The room was bright—curtains open a few inches, morning light coming through. He lay still and took stock. The room smelled like sex and sleep and someone else's cologne. He was sprawled across Alex like he belonged there, one arm draped loosely across his chest, one leg in between Alex's. He could hear Alex breathing, the deep slow rhythm of someone who was either still asleep or only just awake.

Shane didn’t move. He didn’t want to. He knew he should feel awkward; this was the morning after, the what-now. He should be calculating his exit, finding a polite way to extract himself, use the script that he and Rozanov had used so many times after a hook up. Early flight, team meeting, morning practice. He had none of those to fall back on now, and was surprised to find that instead of fumbling for a new excuse, he felt comfortable and safe.

He’d never done this before. Never woken up in someone else’s bed in the morning. With Rozanov it had mostly been hotel rooms or his second apartment in Montreal, late-night hookups and quick exits—that was, until that one time in Boston, when Ilya—Rozanov— had asked him to stay and it had been so comfortable that they had fallen asleep. Before Shane had panicked and fucked things up. Not that things had exactly been going smoothly. Rozanov had said it himself—we are nothing. Any gentleness between them had been fleeting and quickly pushed away.

He became aware, gradually, that Alex’s breathing had changed. Shane tilted his head up and found Alex awake, looking at him with half-lidded eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face. Shane’s stomach flipped.

“Good morning,” Alex traced his fingers lazily down Shane’s arm. His voice was rough with sleep, and his Swedish accent was slightly more noticeable than the night before.

Shane’s face heated. He was suddenly aware of everything—his hair a mess, his mouth tasting like last night’s whiskey, the fact that he was naked and draped across a man he’d known for less than a week. “Morning,” he managed.

Alex’s hand came up, fingers brushing the hair back from Shane’s forehead. It was gentle, nothing like the way they had grabbed at each other desperately the night before. Shane’s eyes fluttered shut and he involuntarily leaned into Alex’s touch.

“You look different in the morning,” Alex said.

“Different how?”

“Less guarded. Softer.” Alex’s thumb traced Shane’s cheekbone. “You have freckles. I didn’t notice them last night.”

“They come out in the summer.”

“I like them.” Alex said.

Shane looked back at Alex again. In the morning light, Shane could see him properly—the stubble darker along his jaw, the blue-grey eyes, the tattoos winding around his bicep that Shane had traced with his fingers last night, and the one on his ribcage he hadn’t studied. He wanted to ask about them. He wanted to know everything.

“You’re staring,” Alex said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Alex’s hand slid round to cradle the back of Shane’s head. “Come here.”

Shane moved up, pushing himself on one arm until he was leaning over Alex. Alex met him halfway. The kiss was soft, almost chaste, but lingering. Shane’s lips parted without thinking. Alex’s mouth was warm, and his stubble was rougher than it had been last night, scraping pleasantly against Shane’s skin. Shane’s hand came up to rest on Alex’s chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath his palm. Alex’s fingers at the back of Shane’s head tugged him down gently, and Shane went, shifting so his full weight was pressing on top of Alex, and kissed him deep and slow.

Alex kissed him back just as slowly, his free hand sliding down Shane’s side, over his hip, fingers digging in to his ass, pulling him closer. Shane’s breath hitched as Alex’s fingers reached around the back of his thigh, and he felt Alex’s cock harden against his.

Shane broke the kiss, his forehead resting against Alex’s. “I should—” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Go. Shower. Leave. Get dressed. Nothing felt right.

Alex’s hand cupped his jaw, his thumb brushing Shane’s cheekbone. “You should stay,” he said.

Shane swallowed. “I don’t— I don’t usually—” He trailed off.

“I know.” Alex’s voice was gentle. “You don’t have to explain.”

Shane exhaled, some of the tension leaving his body. Alex wasn’t asking for anything, he reminded himself. He’d said the night before, this doesn’t have to be anything. Which was not the same as we are nothing. He had nothing to hide from Alex, Alex liked him and that was it, and Shane could just let himself be if that’s what he wanted. And he decided he did. Right at this moment, this was what he wanted, and he let himself sink into it. He kissed Alex again, tentatively, and Alex returned the kiss, even slower this time. His tongue slid against Shane’s in a way that made Shane’s toes curl. His cock was getting hard, and he knew Alex could feel it pressing against him, and Shane didn’t pull back to hide it.

Alex shifted, rolling Shane onto his back without breaking the kiss. Shane arched into him, his body responding before his brain caught up. He found Alex’s waist with his hands, pulling him closer, and opened his legs so Alex could settle between them.

Alex’s mouth moved down his throat to his chest. His mouth was hot on Shane’s skin, his tongue swirling around his nipple before he nipped at it, making Shane jolt with pleasure. Shane’s hands slid into Alex’s hair, pulling him in, wordlessly asking for more.

Alex’s hand had drifted lower, fingers tracing the line of Shane’s hipbone. Shane’s breath hitched. Alex started kissing a path down his stomach and Shane’s fingers gripped the sheets.

Alex paused, looking up at him. “Okay?”

Shane nodded.

“I need words, Shane.”

“Yes. It’s okay—it’s more than okay—don’t stop. Please.”

Alex smiled wickedly. His hands roamed everywhere—on Shane’s hips, then his thighs, his cock, stroking him with lazy, deliberate pressure that made Shane’s vision blur. Alex's mouth followed. He kissed Shane’s hipbone, then lower, kissing a trail down to Shane's cock. Shane’s breath came faster. Alex’s mouth was hot, wet, and as he swirled his tongue around the head of his cock, Shane’s hips jerked up. Alex made a sound of approval, his hands gripping Shane’s thighs, holding him in place.

Shane’s fingers tightened in the sheets. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. Alex’s mouth was relentless, his tongue swirling, teasing, until he finally took all of Shane in his mouth. Shane’s vision blurred. Alex had only just started sucking him and he was already close, so close—

Alex pulled back.

Shane made a sound of protest. Alex kissed his inner thigh, then crawled back up his body. His hand wound round the back of Shane’s neck and his mouth found Shane’s, kissing him breathless. He tasted himself on Alex’s tongue.

“Not yet,” Alex murmured against his lips.

“But—” Shane began to complain.

Alex paused. “Is this alright?”

“Yeah—” Shane’s voice was rough. “Yes, I’m—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know what he was. Good. Better than good. Terrified by how good it was.

Alex seemed to understand. He didn’t push. His hand stayed on the back of Shane’s neck, grounding him. “What do you want, Shane?”

The question again. The one Alex had asked last night, the one Shane still wasn’t comfortable answering.

“I want—” He stopped. Swallowed. He felt his face heat again, the words tangling in his throat. “I want you. But slow this time. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “That’s—yes.” He kissed Shane again, quick and hard, and then gentler, his lips brushing Shane’s mouth. “I can do slow.”

Shane’s hands found Alex’s hips, pulling him down. Alex’s erection was hot against Shane's as he ground into him. Shane’s breath hitched and he dug his fingers dug into Alex’s back.

Alex—” Shane’s fingers tightened in Alex’s hair. “Please.”

Alex pulled back just enough to look at him, his grey-blue eyes dark with want. “Please what?”

“I want— I want you to—”

“Say it.” Alex’s hand wrapped around Shane’s cock, stroking him lazily. “Tell me what you want.”

Shane had never been good at this—at asking, at admitting what he needed. With Rozanov, it had always been easier to let things happen, to let him take control. But Alex wasn’t Ilya.

“I want you to fuck me,” Shane said, the words tumbling out before he could second-guess them.

Alex smiled. “Good.” He reached over to the nightstand, pulling out the lube and a condom. He paused, looking down at Shane. “Like this? Or do you want to turn over?”

“I want to turn over.”

“Roll over then.”

Shane did as he was told, his heart pounding.

Alex’s hands were warm on his back, his thighs, spreading him open. Shane pressed his face against the pillow, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps as Alex’s fingers pressed against him, firm  and slick with lube.

“Good boy,” Alex murmured. When Shane heard those words, he ground his cock into the bed, and nearly came right then.

One finger slid inside him, with a patience that made Shane’s chest tighten. He needed it now and didn't want to wait.

“More,” Shane gasped, pushing back against Alex’s hand.

Alex added another finger, stretching him, his breath hot against Shane’s spine. “Like that?”

“Yes—fuck—” Shane’s fingers curled into the sheets, his body arching as Alex pressed on his prostate. “Alex—please—”

“Patience. I thought you wanted it slow.” He added a third finger, working him open slowly. His mouth pressed kisses onto Shane's back while his fingers moved inside him, stretching him carefully. Shane was panting now, his hips rocking in small uncontrolled movements, fucking himself on Alex’s hand.

“Look at you,” Alex murmured. “So eager. You feel incredible.”

Shane moaned. Alex’s thumb pressed against his perineum, and Shane pushed back into him.

“Ready?” Alex asked.

“Yes. Fuck. Yes.”

Alex pulled his fingers out, and Shane whined at the loss. But then he heard the tear of a condom wrapper, and Alex rolling it on, and then Alex’s hand was on his hip, guiding him, and the head of his cock pressed against Shane’s hole. Shane bit his lip, waiting.

Alex pushed in slowly, one long steady press, and Shane could feel every inch of him, the stretch and the fullness, the way his body made room.

Alex paused when he was all the way in, his hands gripping Shane’s hips. “Okay?”

Shane turned his face to look back over his shoulder at Alex, his fingers tightening in the sheets. “Move.”

Alex did, pulling out almost all the way before sliding back in, his pace almost leisurely. Shane was losing his mind. “You’re so—” Alex started to say something, but then it was lost as he started to fuck Shane.

It was nothing like the night before. Last night had been heat and urgency and the desperate need to get closer, faster, more. This was a slow roll of hips, a rhythm that built gradually.

“You feel so good,” Alex said. His voice was strained, barely above a whisper. “So perfect. I could stay here all day.”

Shane’s response was a shuddering exhale. Every thrust pressed Alex’s cock against his prostate, a steady spark of pleasure that radiated through his whole body. It was a deep, slow-building pressure that was almost unbearable. Shane’s cock ached, trapped between his body and the mattress. He desperately wanted to touch himself. The pleasure built slowly, coiling tight in his stomach.

“More,” Shane managed. “Please.”

Alex’s hand slid from the small of his back to his ass, gripping, changing the angle just slightly. The next thrust hit deeper, and Shane cried out.

“Like that?”

“Yes. Yes. Don’t stop.”

Alex didn’t stop. He kept the pace steady, fucking into Shane with deliberate focus. He leaned forward and wrapped his arm around Shane’s chest, hauling him back into him. Shane wished he could see the expression on Alex’s face.

“Touch yourself,” Alex said.

He reached down, wrapping his hand around himself, stroking in time with Alex’s thrusts. His cock was leaking, slick at the tip, so turned on it was almost painful. Alex’s thrusts got faster as the pressure built.

“Fuck, Shane. You’re so good,” Alex groaned, his thrusts picking up speed. “So fucking tight. I’m—” He broke off, his hips slamming into Shane, hard. “Come for me. I want to feel you.”

That was all it took. The permission, the order. Shane cried out as his orgasm hit him like a wave, rolling through his body, his back arching. Alex followed a moment later, his cock pulsing inside Shane, a low groan escaping him as he pressed his face into the back of Shane’s neck.

They lay there for a long moment, tangled together, breathing hard. Shane’s mind was blissfully quiet, his body glowing with satisfaction. His hand was still wrapped around his softening cock, Alex was still inside him, softening, and made no move to pull out.

Finally, Alex stirred. He withdrew carefully and Shane bit his lip at the loss, the sudden emptiness, but he didn’t move. He lay there loose-limbed and wrung out, and when Alex returned with a damp washcloth, he let him clean him and then allowed himself to be held.

Alex lay next to him, facing him, and Shane rolled into him, pressing his face into the hollow of Alex’s collarbone, and sliding his leg between Alex’s. Alex pulled the sheets back up over them, and they lay together like that for a while. Alex’s hand moved down, sliding over Shane’s hip, his thigh, pulling Shane in even closer. His fingers traced the crease where thigh met hip, teasing, not pressing, just the lightest touch. Shane shivered.

“You’re beautiful like this,” Alex said, tipping Shane's face up. “All flushed and soft. I thought about it last night, after you fell asleep. What you’d look like in the morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Alex’s thumb traced a circle on Shane’s skin, just below his hipbone. “Better than I imagined.”

Shane blushed. He ducked his head, pressing his forehead to Alex’s collarbone, hiding. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” Because no one ever had. Because Shane didn’t know what to do with it, the compliment, the openness. Because it made something inside him melt a little bit.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Alex murmured.

Shane laughed, breathless. “How do you know?”

“You get this line right here.” Alex’s finger traced the furrow between Shane’s brows. “I like it better when it’s not there.”

They lay in silence for a long while, the only sound their breathing easing back into that near-sleep slow rhythm. Shane could feel sleep pulling at him again, tired contentment that came from being thoroughly fucked, but there was also part of his mind stirring with anxiety, that he was still here, in someone else’s bed, and he didn’t know where this was taking him.

It was unsettling, how unlike him this all was. Some of his clothes were on the floor at the end of the bed. His shirt was probably still lying on the living room floor—not folded, not tidied away—and his phone was who knew where, most likely dead, and he’d been lying in a wet patch of his own come that was now drying on him.

“I should take a shower,” he said.

Alex pulled back slightly, and pressed a kiss to Shane’s forehead. “Okay. Breakfast after?”

Shane’s instinct was to say no. He could imagine the words coming out: I should get going, I’ve got a thing, my phone’s probably blowing up. The lies came easy to him, after years of making excuses to other people. Excuses to his team mates, for why he couldn’t go out with them after a game, excuses to Rozanov for why he had to leave instead of spending the night. This time though, he didn’t say any of them.

He didn’t even rush to get up for his shower. He lay there, tucked into Alex’s warm body, for a few moments longer.

“Maybe,” Shane said finally, his voice smaller than he’d intended.

Alex laughed quietly. “Maybe,” he repeated. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He kissed Shane’s forehead again, then turned away and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Shane watched as he stood, stretching, still naked. He had tattoos on his back and shoulders as well; Shane didn't know why but it did something to him. Alex pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and looked back at Shane, still sprawled in the rumpled sheets, and Alex’s expression turned so blatantly filthy that Shane blushed again and had to look away.

“There are clean towels in the bathroom, next to the shower. There's a new toothbrush in the cabinet.” Alex gestured toward the ensuite door. “If breakfast is a maybe, I’ll start by making coffee. Do you think you can commit to staying for coffee, Shane Hollander?” He winked at Shane.

Shane tried a smile. “Yes.”

And then Alex was gone, barefoot, leaving Shane alone in the bedroom.

The panic came immediately. He sat up, sheets pooling around his waist, and his head dropped into his hands. His heart was hammering, and he felt a familiar sick lurch of what have I done and I should leave, right now. The room was too white, too bright, the sheets smelled of sex, and it was all unfamiliar. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t do this. He never stayed. He’d never let himself stay, even when Rozanov had asked him to.

In Boston, the year before. The day they’d hooked up in Rozanov’s apartment. Rozanov had asked him to stay. He’d said okay, and he’d been happy. Until it all got too real, and that thought had popped into his head: no one makes me feel like Ilya Rozanov does. And he’d left, before he’d had the chance to wake up in Ilya’s bed.

What if he’d stayed, that night? Would it have changed anything between him and Ilya? He doubted it. Even then, Ilya had talked about how he liked girls, for fuck's sake, and he’d said this is nothing. Leaving had been the right decision. Trying to talk to Ilya in Tampa, trying to get him to admit they had something real—that had been the mistake.

Alex was not Ilya, he reminded himself for the hundredth time. Alex was most definitely gay, and most definitely liked Shane. Shane liked him. Rozanov was not gay, and to him, Shane had just been one more fuck in a sea of other meaningless fucks. And he wondered, for one terrifying moment, if he had met someone who did, indeed, make him feel like Ilya Rozanov used to.

Shane took a breath. Then another. His heart was still going too fast, but the panic was receding. He was going to stay. He was going to eat breakfast and drink coffee and whatever happened after that, he would deal with it. He wasn’t the same person who’d run from Rozanov’s apartment in Boston. He’d done the scariest thing, and come out to Rose, to his parents, to his team, to himself. He’d survived worse than a morning after in a relative-stranger’s apartment. Nothing bad could happen to him.

He showered, and returned to find his clothes neatly folded on the bed. He hesitated for a long moment, before pulling on his boxer briefs, and padding to the kitchen wearing nothing else. The morning sun was streaming in, catching the steam rising from the moka pot on the stove. Alex had put a t-shirt on, but it was tight and Shane could still see his back muscles flexing and his tattoos peeking out from the sleeve. Shane paused, eyes fixed on Alex’s back, his ass, watching his shoulders move under the t-shirt.

“Hungry?” Alex glanced back at Shane over his shoulder. His eyes flicked down Shane’s body, lingering the same way they had when Shane had stayed in the bed, sheets tangled around his legs, before slowly coming up to meet Shane’s gaze again.

Shane swallowed. “I should go.”

Alex turned back to the coffee pot, and poured it into two mugs. “You should stay.”

“I don’t— I don’t usually do this.”

“There’s milk in the fridge, sugar over there.” Alex handed one mug to Shane, their fingers brushing. The contact sent a jolt through Shane and he nearly spilled the coffee.

“I drink it black.”

“Of course you do.” Alex smiled. “And what is it that you don’t usually do?”

“This.” Shane gestured vaguely between them. “Breakfast. Mornings after.”

Alex took a sip of his coffee, watching Shane over the rim of the mug. “You don’t have breakfast with the people you sleep with?”

Shane’s ears went pink. “No. I mean— I don’t usually sleep over.”

Alex’s eyebrows raised. “Ever?”

Shane looked down at his mug. “Not really.”

Alex nodded, like he understood. “Well,” he said, setting his mug on the kitchen island, “you’re here now. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, but unless you have somewhere to be, you might as well have breakfast.”

“I usually just have a protein shake,” Shane said.

Alex ignored that and carried on cooking. Shane leaned against the kitchen island, watching him move around the kitchen. After a while, Shane drifted over to the small table by the window and sat down. Alex glanced over and smiled, but said nothing. He plated the food and slid a plate in front of Shane. It was nothing fancy; eggs and toast and avocado. “There’s oatmeal if you want it,” Alex said. “But sorry, I’m not making you a protein shake. Aren’t you on holiday anyway?”

They ate in comfortable silence for a while. Shane was aware of how strange this was, and how not-strange it felt at the same time. He’d never done this. Apart from his parents, he didn’t often eat with other people. Occasionally with teammates while on the road, and with Rose a few times, and dinner with the Pikes. But he’d never spent the night with a man and then sat across from him in the morning and eaten breakfast, and he’d certainly never imagined he’d feel so calm about it. The panic from the bedroom felt like it belonged to someone else now, another version of himself that he was leaving behind. Shane realised he was hungry, ravenous actually, his body demanding fuel after the night and morning they’d had.

“So,” Alex said eventually, breaking the silence. “What’s the plan for today?”

Shane blinked. “What?”

“Your schedule.” Alex gestured with his fork. “You’re here for Wimbledon, right? Are you going today? Djokovic and Federer are both on Centre Court.”

Shane exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. This, at least, he could answer. “I’m supposed to be going. Rolex have reserved a seat for me. Are you?”

“I’ve got a thing this afternoon. A charity board meeting that I cannot get out of, no matter how charmingly I ask. But I’ll be going on Monday.” Alex’s eyes met his across the table. “If you want to do something after. Dinner, maybe.”

Shane’s pulse jumped, but it wasn’t panic this time. It was anticipation. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

“Good.” Alex’s smile widened. “I know a place, they don’t take reservations, nothing fancy, but the food is incredible.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“You have low standards.”

“I have excellent standards,” Shane said, and then, surprising himself again: “I’m with you, aren’t I?”

Alex barked a laugh, surprised. “Was that a compliment? I think that was a compliment. Shane Hollander, are you flirting with me?”

“Maybe.” Shane felt his face heat, but he didn’t look away. “Is it working?”

“Extremely well.” Alex reached across the table and brushed Shane’s mouth, his thumb lingering for just a moment. “You’re very cute when you’re awkward, you know.”

“I’m not awkward.”

“You’re extremely awkward. It’s one of my favourite things about you. The way you blush and then try to pretend you aren’t blushing. The way you fidget when you’re nervous.” Alex’s tone was dry, teasing, but his eyes were warm. “I’ve been watching you, Hollander.”

Shane opened his mouth to protest and then closed it, because there was no point. Alex was right. He was awkward, and he was blushing, and he’d been fidgeting with his coffee mug for at least the last thirty seconds.

“I’m not used to this,” he admitted.

“I know,” Alex said. “That’s why I like it. I know I’m getting the real you.” He sat back in his chair, smiling. “Finish your breakfast. I’ll do the dishes, and then you can go back to your hotel and get ready to be incredibly famous for a few hours, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “Monday.”

He finished his breakfast, and his coffee, and when Alex stood to clear the plates, Shane stood too and caught his wrist, pulling him in for a kiss. It was brief—just a press of lips, the faint taste of coffee—but when he pulled back, Alex’s expression had gone soft, the teasing look replaced by something more serious.

“What was that for?” Alex asked.

“Breakfast,” Shane said. “And for making this easy.”

Alex tilted his head, considering. “Not everything needs to be difficult. This can be as easy as you want it to be.”

“I know,” Shane said. And for the first time, he really did.

He went back to the bedroom for his clothes, his shirt wrinkled but wearable, and dressed slowly while Alex clattered dishes in the kitchen. His phone was in his trouser pocket, with eighteen percent battery, and there were three texts from Rose and one from his mom. He ignored all of them. He slipped on his shoes and waited by the door until Alex came out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a tea towel.

“I’ll text you,” Shane said.

“You better. I still don’t have your number, remember. You’re in control of this whole thing.” Alex leaned against the doorframe, his t-shirt riding up to show a strip of stomach. “Don’t make me wait five days again. I’ll be very annoyed.”

“Noted.” Shane hesitated, then kissed him again—quick, already half out the door. “Bye.”

“Bye, Shane.”

The door clicked shut behind him, and Shane stood in the hallway for a moment, his hand still on the doorknob. He was in a stranger’s building in South Kensington, barefoot in his dress shoes because he’d lost his socks, wearing yesterday’s clothes and carrying yesterday’s blazer over his arm. He probably looked like exactly what he was: a man who’d spent the night somewhere he hadn’t planned to and was walking home late in the morning.

He didn’t care.

He walked down the three flights of stairs and out the front door, onto the quiet street. The air was cool, the sun warm, and Shane stood on the pavement for a minute, orientating himself with his phone. Hyde Park was not far. His hotel was somewhere on the other side of it. He could walk.

So he walked. He walked and he did not check his phone and he did not think about hockey or his parents or what people might say if they saw him walking home in yesterday’s clothes. He thought about breakfast. About the way Alex had touched his face, casual and intimate, like they’d been doing this for years. About the way Alex had said this can be as easy as you want it to be and meant it.

He’d stayed. For the first time in his life, he’d stayed.

When he got back to his hotel, he took another shower. He showered for a long time, letting the hot water run over his shoulders, and then he lay on the bed in a towel and finally looked at his phone. The three texts from Rose:

Rose: shaaaanneee how was the party

Rose: hellooooo

Rose: you’re either dead or getting laid. WHICH.

He grinned and typed back: The second one.

The response came immediately, even though it must have been the middle of the night wherever she was. I KNEW IT. WAS IT THE PRINCE. TELL ME EVERYTHING.

Shane: Maybe later.

Rose: SHANE HOLLANDER. u r BAD.

He laughed out loud, then lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, still smiling.

Shane went to Wimbledon alone that afternoon, and he found himself enjoying it more. He was relaxed, slightly disappointed that Alex wouldn’t be there, but found he could focus on the tennis and on the experience a lot better. He requested a seat on Court One instead of Centre Court, so he could watch the Canadian, Raonic, play. He won.

He’d held off texting Alex until Sunday morning, but he'd woken up thinking about the morning before, and hadn’t even hesitated before sending a text.

It’s Shane. Had a great time on Friday. See you tomorrow?

The reply came back within minutes. I haven’t stopped thinking about Friday. Or yesterday morning. And yes absolutely, see you tomorrow.

Later that morning, a text from Rose: Arrive in London tonight. Where u stayin?

He told her the name of the hotel.

Rose: Ok cominnnngggg

Shane: I’m going to Wimbledon again tomorrow

Rose: Dinner???

Shane paused. He’d said he would have dinner with Alex on Monday. Then, feeling brave, he said:

Shane: I've got dinner with Alex after the tennis. Want to join us?

Rose: Whaaaaat!! Dinner with prince charming? Hell yeah

He texted Alex:

My friend Rose arrives tonight. Rose Landry. She wants to have dinner tomorrow.

Alex: Ok, do you want to reschedule us?

Shane: I thought she could join us. Unless you’d rather it was just the two of us.

Alex: Dinner with Rose Landry? How could I say no.

Alex: Can I make it just me and Rose? Haha

Shane: NO 😠

Alex: Just kidding. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to you mostly

There was no tennis on Sunday, so Shane had gone to the gym for a few hours and caught up on some emails. He’d already been sent the pre-season training schedule, which he’d looked at briefly before closing his laptop. For perhaps for the first time he could remember, he was more preoccupied with something other than hockey. He’d definitely spent more time thinking about Alex—and specifically what they'd done on Friday night and Saturday morning—than he had spent thinking about anything else over the last day.

Shane woke up full of nervous energy on Monday. He couldn’t believe he’d suggested Rose join him and Alex for dinner. He’d never told anyone about Rozanov, much less introduced him to anyone who knew they were fucking. He wasn’t ready to think about Rose meeting Alex. He wasn’t ready to think about anything, except the way Alex’s hands had felt on his skin. And how the hell was he going to stop that from showing on his face when they were out in public.

By the time he got to the All England Club though, he had calmed. The Rolex suite was familiar now, and he walked through it without hesitation. The hot weather had continued, and he’d gone for chino shorts, and a pink linen shirt with loafers. The same faces greeted him in the suite—the same executives, the same minor celebrities. The same polite smiles and empty small talk. But his shoulders were looser, his smile less fixed, and when Claire from Rolex greeted him with a glass of champagne and a “Mr. Hollander, so lovely to see you again,” he actually meant it when he replied with “Lovely to be here.”

And no sooner had he walked in than Alex was in front of him, shaking his hand formally, while at the same time leaning in slightly to murmur, “You look good.”

Shane’s stomach flipped. “Thanks. So do you.” And Alex did look good. He was wearing a light-coloured linen pants and a pale blue shirt rolled up to his elbows, his jacket folded over his arm. He looked like he’d been carved out of bronze. Shane took a gulp of his champagne and looked around the room.

“We can go and sit down whenever you’re ready,” said Alex, and Shane nodded, putting his half-empty glass down on a table. Alex’s hand was warm as it touched Shane’s lower back, guided him gently through the crowd. Like he’d done it a hundred times before. Shane’s pulse jumped when Alex’s fingers brushed him just at the top of his shorts waistband, but he didn’t pull away. He found himself leaning into the touch, letting Alex steer him out of the suite to their seats, and tried not to think about how natural it felt.

Their seats were the same as before—Centre Court, third row. Alex settled beside him, their shoulders brushing, and Shane didn’t shift away. He didn’t even think about shifting away. He just sat, his knee pressed as casually as he could manage against Alex’s, and watched as the players warmed up on the court below. At one point, Alex’s hand dropped between them and he brushed his thumb casually against Shane’s bare leg where his shorts had ridden up slightly, before moving back up to rest on his own knee.

Shane thought he was being careful, but his attention kept drifting back towards Alex, stealing quick glances, taking the opportunity of Alex’s commentary on the gameplay to press his shoulder or knee towards him.

“You’re staring,” Alex murmured into his ear.

Shane’s face flushed. “I’m not.”

Alex smirked. “You are. At me, not the tennis.”

Shane exhaled a little and gave a small smile. “Maybe a little.”

“Good.”

After the match, they returned to the Rolex Suite, where they were serving afternoon tea. Shane’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out, mouthing sorry to Alex. Rose’s name on the screen. Where are we eating? You didn’t forget, did you? He hesitated, his thumb hovering over the keyboard.

"Rose wants to know where we're meeting tonight," he said to Alex.

"I'll send you the details so you can text them to her." 

Shane: Alex knows a place. No reservation needed. I'll text you the address in a minute.

Her reply was fast: ROMANTIC.

Shane showed the screen to Alex, who laughed. “She’s dramatic.”

“She’s Rose.” Shane typed back: It is not a date.

It's only not a date because I'll be there 😉

Shane didn't reply to that. He just sent her the name of the restaurant. See you later. Meet at 8? 

Rose’s reply was a string of fire emojis.

“I hope she likes me.” Alex said.

Shane laughed. “She’ll love you. She loves everyone.”

Alex smirked. “That’s good. In that case, I like her already.”

The restaurant was small, tucked away on a side street in Soho. Shane could tell straight away that Alex had chosen it because it was the kind of place where no one cared who any of them were, even a world-famous actor like Rose Landry. The kind of place where they probably had celebrities in all the time—or maybe they didn't. Maybe they just didn't care.

Rose was already there tucked away in a booth near the back when they arrived, her grin wide when she saw Shane. She stood, pulling him into a hug. “You look amazing,” she said, her voice low. “You look hot. And happy. Something suits you in London."

Shane started to say something and she cut him off with a look. "Don't even. I know Happy Shane when I see him." She turned to Alex, looking him up and down appraisingly. "And now I see why. Oh my god, you're even hotter in person."

“Rose, this is Alexander,” Shane said, his face already heating. “Alex, this is Rose.”

Alex held out his hand. “Alexander Bergström. Alex. It’s a pleasure. I've heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” Rose shook his hand, her eyes flicking to Shane with an expression of delighted betrayal.

 “He talks about you constantly,” Alex said. “Rose said this, Rose did that, Rose sent me a screenshot of my own face with seventeen question marks. I feel like I already know you.”

 Rose laughed. “Okay,” she said, sliding into the booth across from Alex. “Okay, I like him. Shane, you can keep this one.”

Shane groaned, covering his face with his hands. “I knew this was a mistake. Kill me now.”

They sat, and Alex’s hand found his under the table, their fingers tangling together. “I like her.”

Rose smirked. “He's perfect. You have good taste, Shane.”

Shane’s face burned hotter. “Can we not—”

“No.” Rose picked up her menu. “We cannot. Now, what’s good here?”

The evening was easy. Rose interrogated Alex with the kind of direct questions that would have made anyone else squirm—how did you know you were gay, what do you actually do as a prince, what are your intentions with my best friend—but Alex answered every one of them with the same dry, unflappable calm. He told her about coming out at twenty-two, the interview that had terrified him and then been utterly fine. He told her about his charity work, the marine conservation projects, the fact that he was so far down the line of succession that his job was essentially “show up, look respectable, don’t embarrass the family.” He told her that his intentions were “whatever Shane wants them to be, for as long as he wants them,” and he said it looking at Shane, not at Rose, and Shane felt his face go hot yet again.

It was strange, seeing them together—they got along like they’d known each other for years, and Shane found himself relaxing, letting the warmth of their laughter wash over him.

“Oh my god,” Rose said, her hand pressed to her chest. “He’s so sincere. Shane, where did you find him?”

“Wimbledon,” Shane muttered.

"Of course you did. Of course you went to Wimbledon and accidentally picked up a smart, hot, emotionally available prince. That's so you." She turned to Alex, grinning. "Has he told you he's one of the best hockey players in the world? No, of course he hasn't. Two cups, team captain, olympic medal and he'll sit there and let you think he's just some guy who's bad at texting."

"I'm aware," Alex said, smiling. "His modesty is very charming."

"I'm just saying, you got lucky," Rose told Alex. "Both of you did, but especially you."

"I'm sitting right here," Shane said, rolling his eyes.

They ignored him.

Rose lifted her glass. "To Shane, who's finally interested in something other than hockey." Shane groaned into his beer. "I mean it. Do you know how long I've waited for him to bring someone to dinner? I was starting to think it'd be me and him and forty cats." Alex laughed, and somehow that was the moment Shane knew Rose was going to approve—because she was already treating Alex like family, which is to say she was already making Shane's life difficult in the most affectionate way possible.

When they left the restaurant, Rose hugged Shane at the kerb, her arms tight around his neck. “You look happy,” she said, quiet, just for him. “Like, really happy. Try to enjoy it without fucking it up.”

“I’ll try not to,” Shane said into her hair.

“Good.” She pulled back, her eyes suspiciously bright. “And he's perfect. Text me tomorrow. I might come to Wimbledon. And bring him to LA sometime."

She got into a cab and was gone. Alex touched Shane's arm and Shane turned to face him.

"Come home with me?" Alex said.

"Yes."

This time, when they got back to Alex's , the door had barely closed before Alex was kissing him, pushing Shane against the wall. Shane's hands found Alex's waist, pulling him close. Alex's mouth was hot, urgent. But then, he pulled back, his hands framing Shane's face, and Shane could already see the question forming. He answered before Alex could ask.

"I want you to tell me what to do."

Alex paused, his hands dropping to Shane's shoulders. His lips parted ever so slightly and Shane could see the moment it dawned in his eyes exactly what he was saying. In a moment, the surprised look was gone, replaced by heat in his eyes.

“Yes?” Alex breathed, his voice low. “You want me to give you orders? You want that?”

Shane nodded. His throat was tight, the old fear rising up in it that he'd revealed too much of himself. But Alex no longer looked surprised, or put off. Rather he looked like Shane had just handed him a gift.

“Okay,” Alex said. “Let's go into the living room." He took Shane by the hand, and led him into the middle of the room. Shane glanced at the large windows looking on to the street below. Alex let go of Shane's hand, leaving him standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. He walked over to the windows and pulled the curtains closed.

"Here's what's going to happen." Alex folded his jacket over the arm of the sofa, and undid the top buttons of his shirt. He turned back to Shane. "You’re going to undress for me. Slowly. I want to watch you.”

Shane’s hands moved to the buttons of his shirt, and he felt the relief of it settle over him—the surrender, the letting-go, the knowledge that someone else was in charge and all he had to do was follow. And there was something else—anticipation and desire. He undressed carefully, deliberately, aware of Alex’s eyes on him and the way Alex had settled back onto the sofa. Shane folded his clothes as he took them off, lying them over the top of Alex's jacket.

When he was completely naked, standing in the middle of the living room, Alex made a low murmur of approval.

"Beautiful," Alex said. "Now, get on your knees."

Shane knelt, the wood floor hard against his knees. 

"Come here." Shane dropped to his hands and knees and crawled across the living room towards Alex, not taking his eyes off him.

He knelt in front of the sofa, and Alex leaned forward, his hand cupping Shane’s jaw, tilting his face up. “You’re going to suck my cock,” Alex said, his voice calm but heavy with intent. “I’m going to tell you exactly what I like, and you’re going to do it. If you need to stop, you can just say stop, or tap my thigh twice. Do you understand?"

“Yes,” Shane breathed.

“Good boy.”

It was the second time Alex had used those words, and the effect was instant—pleasure and heat suddenly surging up in him. Shane wanted to hear it again so badly it made him dizzy. Alex undid his trousers, freed his cock, and guided Shane’s mouth to him. “Slow,” he ordered. “Just the tip first. Use your tongue.”

Shane obeyed. Alex’s hand stayed on the back of his head, not forcing, just resting there, a steady pressure that kept him grounded. Alex talked him through it—praise interspersed with instruction, “That’s it, just like that, take a little more now, you’re doing so well, fuck, your mouth is incredible, good boy,”—and Shane let himself sink into it, found a rhythm, followed Alex's calm voice, feeling the absolute certainty that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. He just had to listen, and follow, and be good.

"Undress me." Shane's eyes locked on Alex's, and pulled back. Alex lifted his hips so Shane could pull off his trousers and his briefs, and grinned when Shane folded them neatly, placing them on the sofa beside Alex. "Very good," he said. Shane lowered himself back onto Alex's cock, not breaking eye contact.

His hands slid up Alex's thighs, one hand moving up to Alex's chest, squeezing his pecs slightly. He remembered how much Rozanov had enjoyed that. His other hand slipped down to cup Alex's balls, rolled them between his fingers and thumb. Alex groaned. "You're so good for me, Shane."

Shane was hard too, and his other hand strayed from Alex to his own dick, already leaking precome without even being touched. Alex removed his hand from Shane's head, and put it on his shoulder, pushing him off carefully.

"No, Shane. Hands off." Shane frowned and made a sound of protest but dropped his hand immediately. His cock was so hard now, desperate to be touched. Alex laughed, breathless. "Stop pouting. You have to wait a bit longer. In fact—get up. Now."

Alex stood and offered his hand to Shane. Shane got to his feet and met Alex's eyes again, waiting. Standing like this, Alex was a few inches taller and Shane had to tilt his head to look at him. "I want to kiss you," said Alex. "And then, I want you in the bedroom, so I can lie you down and look at you properly."

Alex stepped in so their bodies were flush against each other. One hand went around Shane's hip, fingers pressing in to his ass, pulling him in close. The other grasped Shane's face, kissing him deeply. Shane's hands went around Alex's waist. They stood like that, kissing, for a while, stiff cocks pressing against each other. Shane was so hard and desperate, he starting pushing, trying to grind into Alex to get friction. 

Alex pushed him back. "Bedroom. Now."

Shane obediently walked to the bedroom, every fibre of him aware of Alex's gaze following him down the hallway. When he got to the bedroom, he stopped and turned back towards Alex, unsure of what to do next. Alex didn't speak. He closed the distance between him and Shane, holding Shane by the waist and pulling him in for a hard, brief kiss. He walked Shane backwards until he was almost at the bed.

"Turn around," Alex said. Shane turned away from him, facing the bed, shivering with anticipation. Alex's hands roamed Shane's back, trailing down to the crack in his ass. Shane pushed back against him, but Alex withdrew his hand, instead sliding it around to Shane's chest, pulling Shane back into him. Alex's other hand wrapped around Shane's waist to give his cock a few leisurely strokes. He could feel Alex's hard cock pressed against his ass. Shane's head tipped back against Alex's chest and he let out a moan.

Alex bent his head and kissed Shane's neck. "Look at me." Shane turned around and met Alex's eyes. "Get on the bed. Eyes on me." Shane scrambled back onto the bed, not breaking eye contact with Alex. Alex followed, positioning himself above Shane, placing both hands on Shane's thighs and spreading his legs open. He lowered his head and licked Shane's cock slowly, from base to tip, keeping his eyes fixed on Shane's. Then he took Shane's whole cock in his mouth and sank down on him.

"Fuck, Alex, yes." Shane's hands went to the back of Alex's head trying to keep him there. Alex pulled off. "No, I didn't say you could do that. Looks like I need to go slower."

"Please," Shane whined. Alex didn't respond. He reached for the nightstand drawer pulling out condoms and lube, sat back on his heels, and pushed Shane's thighs even wider. He drizzled lube on his fingers, and slipped one into Shane. Shane's hips bucked up but it wasn't close to being enough. Alex added another finger, opening him up as carefully as he had before, but this time there were words—"You're so tight, so perfect, you're taking this so well for me"—and Shane’s whole body was alight with it.

When Alex had him ready, he rolled on a condom and pushed Shane's knees back, lined himself up. "I'm going to fuck you now."

Shane could barely nod and grind out: "Yes—please."

Alex pushed inside him, slow and steady, filling him inch by inch. Shane’s body arched off the bed, his fingers digging into Alex’s shoulders. Alex paused when he was all the way in, his forehead pressed against Shane’s. “Okay?”

"Fuck me, please Alex."

Alex pulled all the way out, and pushed himself back in again slowly. He did it once more, and Shane was so far gone that he barely registered the stretch, just the fullness and the heat and the sound of Alex groaning against his ear. “You’re so good,” Alex murmured, thrusting slow and deep. “So good for me, Shane. Look at you. Look at you taking me.”

Shane nodded, his breath hitching. “Yes. More.”

Alex moved, his thrusts slow and deep. Shane’s body responded, his hips rolling up to meet Alex’s, his breath coming in sharp gasps. Alex’s hands were everywhere—on Shane’s hips, his thighs, his cock, stroking him in time with his thrusts, getting faster and faster. Shane’s vision blurred, his body tightening around Alex’s cock.

"Don't stop—" he panted, "I'm so close—Oh fuck I'm going to—". His orgasm ripped through him, come spraying all over his stomach.

"Oh fuck, Shane—" Alex gave a few more hard thrusts, "You're so fucking sexy— You're going to make me come." He followed Shane's release, his cock pulsing inside Shane as he buried his face in Shane's neck, his breath hot on Shane's skin as he shuddered through it.

They lay tangled together afterward, breathing hard. Alex’s weight was heavy, warm. Shane’s fingers traced lazy patterns on Alex’s back. Alex lifted his head, kissing Shane once. “You good?”

Shane nodded. “Yeah.”

Alex smiled, rolling off him. "That was amazing." He got up and went to the bathroom, and then Shane got up to get himself cleaned off too. Alex was lying under the sheets when Shane came back. Shane hesitated for the briefest of moments before getting back into bed with Alex. Alex opened his arms in invitation, and pulled Shane in close, letting him tuck in against his side. Shane rested his head on Alex's chest, listening to his heart, still pounding, slow back to a steady beat. Alex was stroking his hair, and it just felt so easy.

So easy that Shane heard himself say, "I really like you," before he could stop himself.

Alex’s hand paused, then resumed. “I really like you too,” he said, and it was so simple, so matter-of-fact, that Shane could have laughed.

“Okay,” Shane said.

“Okay,” Alex agreed.

The rest of the week passed in a blur. There were mornings with coffee and croissants in Alex's kitchen, Alex's hand on Shane's thigh. Shane didn't even care about the carbs. Two afternoons at Wimbledon, one with Alex and Rose, one with just Alex. Once Rose had joined them, they had been invited to the Royal Box for the rest of the week. Alex's fingers had brushed Shane's when no one was looking. Evenings spent in Alex's apartment, in bed. Alex's mouth on Shane's skin, Shane's hands in Alex's hair.

The day after Rose had come to Wimbledon, there were photos all over social media and the tabloids of Rose and Shane. Rose Landry and Hockey Star Shane Hollander: Back Together? In the hotel gym, Shane stared at his phone and laughed out loud. There they were in the Royal Box, him and Rose, heads tipped together, smiling and deep in conversation, Rose's hand on his arm. On his other side, Alex. Sunglasses on, staring straight ahead at the court looking like someone who had never met either of them before in his life.

His phone buzzed.

Alex: I'm so discreet I didn't even make it into the headline. devastated.

Shane: You looked totally bored.

Alex: Rose isn't the only one great at acting. You're welcome.

Later, another message, this time from Rose:

Rose: Shaney WE'RE BACK ON. don't tell my publicist. don't tell YOUR PRINCE

Rose: ok tell him. is he jealous. tell me he's a little jealous

On Thursday, Shane and Alex went for dinner again at a quiet restaurant in Mayfair. The tables were spaced far apart, the lighting dim. Alex asked him about Montreal, his family, his cat. What it was like being captain.

Shane talked. About his parents, about the pressure of being the golden boy. About the loneliness of being on the road. About the way he missed the ice when he wasn’t playing.

Alex listened, asked questions. Shane felt seen in a way he hadn’t in a long time.

They walked back to Alex's apartment along the Thames after. The air was warm, and the crowds of tourists and office workers had thinned out, and Alex's hand brushed Shane's as they walked. The third time it happened, Shane caught Alex's fingers and held on, squeezing just for a moment before letting go. Shane's pulse sped up, amazed at his own bravery. He looked at Alex, who just smiled, his eyes warm.

The week was winding down. The men's final was Sunday, Wimbledon would be over, and afterward there was a party and then Shane would be on a flight back to Montreal and the slow return to real life. He'd made no plans beyond the finals and Alex hadn't said anything about what he was doing when Wimbledon was over. But that Thursday night, later, when Shane was lying in Alex's bed, the windows open and the sound of the city filtering in, Shane let himself not think about any of it.

The first of the photos surfaced on Friday morning.

Shane had returned to his hotel, and had just got back from a run, his phone charging on the nightstand when it suddenly lit up with a notification from his mom: In the ROYAL BOX Shane! Rolex will love it xx And then: you met the prince again! A link to an American news site this time.

He'd thought the photos of himself and Rose had deflected attention from him and Alex, but he shouldn't have been surprised, not really. There had been so many times when he had forgotten to be careful so he should have known it was coming. But seeing it splashed across his phone screen was different somehow. Him. Alex. Thursday in the Royal Box, without Rose this time. The caption beneath it: “Shane Hollander and Prince Alexander Bergström together at Wimbledon."

Shane took a breath. It was nothing. In the photo, Shane was looking ahead, Alex was in profile, looking at Shane, both laughing at something. They weren't touching. They were both wearing sunglasses. Shane wasn't even facing Alex. They were just two men who happened to be sitting together in the Royal Box at Wimbledon. Who were quite obviously talking and both laughing at the same thing. Two men who also happened to have been photographed sitting together on Centre Court on four separate occasions, and photographed in the Rolex hospitality suite. None of that was mentioned though. It was just one photo with a harmless caption. It was fine. He would ignore the word together.

An hour later though, there was another notification, this time from Rose. The headline was from a British tabloid: Love All? Swedish Prince and MLH Star Share a Moment at Wimbledon. Shane felt the bottom drop out of his stomach before he’d even clicked the link.

He clicked anyway.

It was another photo from Wimbledon—also from Thursday, the ladies' semifinal. It was a very similar photo to the first one. Him and Alex in the Royal Box, leaning in this time, quite obviously engrossed in each other. Their heads were nearly touching. Alex had his sunglasses pushed back on his head. Shane was caught mid-laugh, and Alex was angled toward him, handsome and unmistakable. The caption: Prince Alexander Bergström and Montreal Metros captain Shane Hollander share a laugh during the women’s semifinal. There was nothing incriminating in the image itself. It was just two men talking. But the frequency of the photos—and the headline—was a problem.

Shane's pulse had rocketed. He should have ignored it. But he didn’t. He just stared at the screen, his breath coming too fast, panic kicking in. He took some deep breaths, controlling himself the way he did when the puck dropped and the world narrowed to just him and the ice. He exhaled, forcing himself to relax, and sent a screenshot to Alex.

Alex's reply came quickly: It's fine. They'll move on. Two days ago they were saying you were back together with Rose.

Shane’s chest tightened. He thought, it’s not fine. It’s never fine. But Alex was more used to being photographed and in the press, and he seemed unconcerned, so Shane let himself believe it.

By the end of the day though, it was certainly not fine. More photos surfaced as the press picked up on the story, and through the afternoon, a barrage of notifications blew up Shane's phone—from his mom and Rose again, his agent, from J.J., Hayden.

A shot of them leaving a restaurant, Alex’s hand on Shane’s lower back, Shane’s head turned toward Alex. The caption: “Hockey star Shane Hollander out with Prince Alexander in London.” Another candid from Wimbledon, Alex leaning in to whisper something in Shane’s ear, Shane’s face tilted up, his lips parted like he was about to laugh. The caption: “Rumours swirl as MLH captain Shane Hollander and Prince Alexander Bergström grow closer.” And the worst: A grainy image from outside Alex’s apartment, Shane’s hair rumpled, his shirt untucked, his face flushed. The headline: New Couple Alert? Inside the whirlwind romance of Canada's golden boy and Sweden’s most eligible prince. And the caption: “Sources say Hollander spent the night at Prince Alexander’s London flat.”

Each one made Shane’s stomach drop. Each one made his pulse spike. But the world didn’t end. The Metros didn’t call. His agent didn’t say it was a crisis. The photos were just… there. Like background noise. Like something he could ignore if he tried hard enough. And he was trying very hard.

By the time the last photos appeared, he was back at Alex's apartment, lying on the sofa with his head on Alex's lap. Alex was unbothered. “They’ll get bored eventually,” he said, scrolling through his own phone with a shrug. “They always do.”

Shane wanted to believe him. But the fear was coiled tight in his chest. This will get back to the League. This will get back to your sponsors. This will ruin your image. This will— It was too late to stay calm. His body had reacted before his brain could catch up. There was a sick lurch that told him you're caught, you've been found out, it's all over. He sat up abruptly, his phone clutched in his hand. Alex put his own phone down, and looked over at Shane. "You okay?"

But Shane's mind was already racing through damage control. The list of people he'd need to call, the statement he'd need to write. Who to call first. His mom. His agent. The Metro's PR team. He mentally went through the sponsors, assessing how they'd react. His mom had suggested they put a plan together, for when Shane decided—if he decided—to come out publicly, or in case something like this happened. But they never made the plan. We'll do it when I get back to Canada, he'd said. I just want to enjoy the summer. He could say no comment. He'd have to—

"Shane." Alex said, sitting forward on the sofa and turning to face Shane. He was frowning, concern in his voice. He put his hand on Shane's knee. "It's going to be okay."

Shane leaned forward, head in his hands.

"Talk to me," said Alex. "What's going through your head?"

Shane made himself breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way his therapist had taught him. The panic was still there, his whole body almost shaking with it, but underneath it was something else. A question: What was he so afraid of?

Being seen as gay? That ship had sailed, or was in the process of sailing, and he'd been the one the hoist the sails and cast off. He'd come out to Rose, to his parents, to his team. He'd done the hard work—looking people who mattered in the eye and saying this is who I am. The only important people who didn't know were the League—the Board, the people in charge—his sponsors, and the fans. The Metros knew, and he thought—hoped—they would support him. The League couldn't do anything about it; not officially anyway. His sponsors—it would be bad press for them to drop him now, and if he did lose any of them in the long run, no doubt there would be other opportunities. And the fans—he'd led the Metros through the playoffs nearly every year since he'd become captain and they'd won the cup twice, so he hoped that would count for something.

Was it being caught in a secret relationship? There was no relationship to speak of. He'd known Alex for a couple of weeks. Maybe it wasn't the best look, being photographed on the walk of shame leaving Alex's apartment, but it was hardly a scandal. Alex was out, and had been for years. It was—theoretically—no different to him being photographed with Rose, on the few dates they'd had the year before. Shane and Alex were just two men who'd met at a tennis match and liked each other and were spending time together. It was almost boring, if he thought about it that way. Boring was good. Boring was safe.

"Shane." Alex was still waiting for him to say something, looking increasingly alarmed. "Are you okay? What can I do to help you?"

"I'm okay." Shane finally felt his heartbeat steadying. "I think so anyway. I was—I panicked. I was already drafting a statement in my head and planning how to spin it…" He trailed off. He could feel tears starting to well, and pressed his fists into his eyes. Alex shifted closer, sliding one hand around Shane's shoulder. Shane instinctively curled into him.

“And now?” Alex said.

“Now I’m not sure. I’m out. Not to the whole world, but to most of the people who matter. All of the people who really matter I guess. We’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just—” He struggled for the words. “I’ve been so scared of this for so long. And now it’s happening."

"Is it such a bad thing though?" Alex asked. His other arm had come around Shane, pulling him in close. "Look." Alex picked up his phone again and opened it on the photos.

Shane looked at the photos again, really looked at them this time. His face in the Wimbledon shot was laughing—actually laughing, not the careful smile he usually wore for the cameras. He looked happy. He looked like himself. And Alex, beside him, was entirely focused on Shane, caught mid-look, and something about the way he was looking made Shane's chest go tight. He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed it at the time. The most damning photo—the one of Shane leaving Alex's apartment—was supposed to be his worst nightmare, but he was smiling, flushed, relaxed. It looked like something from a film.

The fear didn’t vanish. It was still there, a knot in his gut, the voice that said you’re not ready for this, you’ve never been ready for this. But the knot was smaller. Smaller than it had been every time Shane had been knocking on Rozanov's hotel room door, hoping that he wouldn't be seen, wouldn't run into a teammate or seen by someone who would leak it to the press. It was smaller than when people had joked about the rivalry between him and Rozanov, about how much they hated each other, and he had to hide their secret. Smaller than every time he'd avoided Rozanov's eyes and pretended he didn't have feelings for him.

"I understand, Shane," Alex said softly. "I've been dealing with this since I was eighteen. Before I came out, there was always the press, the photos, the speculation. The articles calling me 'eligible' like I'm a piece of property. Speculating about which woman I was going to marry. Then speculating because I was never seen with a woman. I made the decision to come out publicly—which was right for me at the time—and then I did my best to ignore it. It mostly worked. I know you didn't decide to do this, but the important thing is that you're okay with it. You're okay with who you are. That you're not—I don't know, regretting anything."

"No," Shane said, and meant it. “I’m not regretting anything.”

“Good.” Alex said. “Me neither. And for what it’s worth, you look incredible in the one outside my building. Your jawline is really something.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Alex smirked. “I’m serious. I’ve been studying it extensively.”

Shane felt the last of the tension drain out of him, replaced by something lighter. “What do we do now?”

“Nothing,” Alex said. “We do nothing. You come to Wimbledon tomorrow, you sit next to me, you'll meet my sister, we'll watch tennis. The photos are out. They’re not going to disappear. If anyone asks, you can say ‘no comment.’ Or you can say ‘yes, I’m seeing someone, it’s new, I’m happy.’ Or you can say ‘fuck off’—that’s always an option. But we don’t have to decide today.”

“Okay,” Shane said.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

"Good. And Shane?" Alex trailed his hand up Shane's thigh.

"Yeah?"

"You’re fine. This is fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Alex." Shane pulled back, and looked at Alex, his eyes heating. "I can think of one thing we should do now."

Alex grinned.

The next morning Shane stood at Alex's kitchen island, drinking his coffee and scrolling social media. The photos were still there, of course, but no new ones had been posted. He looked at them again—his own laughing face, Alex's profile, him leaving Alex's apartment looking like he'd been thoroughly fucked and loved every second of it—and then he closed the tab.

He texted Rose: Saw the photos. I’m okay. It’s weird, but I’m okay.

She sent back a string of heart emojis and then: ur a badass and i love you and Alex is hot and perfect. everyone on twitter is losing their minds in a good way fyi

He didn’t check Twitter. He didn’t read any comments. While Alex was in the shower, he called his mom, assuring her he was okay. She said she would call Rolex, make sure everything was okay, she would test the water with the other sponsors the following week, and they would make a plan. It would all be okay. After he talked to her he felt a lot calmer and the panic didn’t come back. He put his phone down and drank his coffee.

Alex walked out of the bedroom, hair wet and towel slung low on his hips. He poured himself a coffee and gave Shane a quick kiss on his shoulder as he passed him. Shane’s phone buzzed. A notification from a hockey news app.

Raiders Release Pre-Season Slate

Shane instinctively reached for his phone.

The Boston Raiders revealed their pre-season schedule ahead of the 2017-18 MLH season on Thursday.

Boston's pre-season opens on Sept.20 with two split-squad games against the Montreal Metros, followed by a pair against Buffalo on Sept. 24.

Below it, a link to another article: Raiders Enter Season With Rozanov's Future Unresolved

His stomach clenched. He knew he shouldn't, but he clicked anyway.

An old photo of Rozanov from the season before, post-game, hair damp with sweat, grinning, his eyes bright. Shane’s chest tightened.

Standing beside him, Alex glanced at the screen. “Your great rival," he said dryly.

"Yeah," Shane said. He put the phone face-down on the counter. "Something like that. He'll be a free agent after next season. Anything could happen." He didn't know why he said it.

Alex hummed, unbothered, sipping his coffee. "He's good." A beat. "You're better."

Then he leaned over, kissed the top of Shane's head, and said, "Drink your coffee. We'll be late," and took his own into the bedroom to get dressed.

As soon as Alex had gone, Shane picked up his phone again and looked at the photo of Rozanov. He hadn't seen that grin in months.

Another thought came to him: Had Ilya seen the photos? What the fuck was he going to think? Would he care? 

His fingers hovered over the screen. He opened his messages, found Lily and started typing.

Jane: We're playing first pre-season game. See you then.

He deleted it. Then typed:

How’s Russia?

Deleted that too. He put the phone down. In the bedroom, he could hear Alex moving around, getting dressed.

He thought about the texts he hadn’t sent. About the way Ilya’s smile had looked in the photo. About the way his chest had tightened when he saw it.

He thought about Alex, about the way he had held Shane when he was panicking. About the way he listened to Shane, the way he made Shane feel seen.

He thought about the photos of him and Alex. About the way his face had looked—relaxed and happy.

He didn’t send a text. He didn’t need to.

Shane picked up his coffee and went to join Alex in the bedroom.

Chapter End Notes

I mean seriously though would it be the worst thing if Shane ended up with Alex? Whaddya think?

Next chapter is Ilya POV! He's got some work to do!

Chapter 5: Ilya

Chapter Notes

I can't get over all the amazing comments about Alex, a million thank yous. I'm so glad people are enjoying the dynamic because I'm loving writing Shane and Alex together. However...

OK as much as we love Alex, we've got to remember we love Ilya too, and I think we can all feel for him here. Hurt people hurt people right?

Some more notes at the end about where the story might be going, but in the meantime, enjoy.

The gym at the Raiders' practice facility was empty, which suited Ilya perfectly. He'd been there since six, working through his off-season training programme alone, the only sound the clank of the plates and his own breathing. He lay back on the bench and pushed the bar off the rack toward the ceiling, counting his reps in Russian under his breath, because it gave his brain something to do. Two hundred and eighty pounds. His arms strained, his chest burned, the bar went up and down until his hands shook and he locked it back onto the rack with a clang that echoed through the empty weight room.

He sat up, soaked in sweat, catching his reflection in the mirrors on the far wall. He barely recognised himself. His eyes were hollow and his hair curled untidily against his forehead because he hadn't bothered to cut it since the season ended. He looked like a guy who spent every morning punishing himself for something and then went home to an empty house. Which was about right.

He wiped his face with a towel and moved to the cable station. Tricep pushdowns, then face pulls. He moved automatically, his mind wandering elsewhere. Ilya caught himself staring at the stack of weights without really seeing it, and quickly yanked his focus back, That was always the danger—in those empty minutes between sets, his brain started whispering about things he'd promised himself he wouldn't think about this summer.

The clock said 8:14 a.m. He'd done legs on Thursday, shoulders on Friday, and now chest and arms on Saturday, except he wasn't entirely sure it was Saturday. The days had started to blur sometime in June, after the playoffs. Now it was July in Boston, the city busy and loud outside, but here it was just Ilya. He'd been alone every morning for three weeks and he preferred it that way.

He found not thinking required as much discipline as his training programme, but it was something he'd got very good at over the years. Even so, the skill was slipping. Since Tampa, since the funeral, since the last text he'd got from Hollander, the noise in his head had got steadily louder. It was the same every fucking morning when he woke up. So he trained until his muscles screamed and his lungs burned and there was no room for anything except breathing and counting the reps. Or at least that was the idea.

He finished his circuit at 8:30, and sat on the bench for a long moment staring at the floor. It looked the same every fucking morning, and no matter how hard he pushed himself, it didn't help. The noise in his head kept coming back louder than ever.

He zipped up his bag, slung it over his shoulder and headed for the exit. The automatic doors slid open with a hiss, letting in a blast of humid July air. Boston in summer was a swamp. He liked it better when it was frozen.

His car was the only one in the parking lot. Today he'd driven his flashiest car, the bright yellow Maserati. He'd bought it two years ago and it had never failed to make him grin, especially when he pushed it past 120 on the highway. Now the engine was just noise, the leather seat just a place to sit. He tossed his bag into the backseat and slid behind the wheel. He let the engine turn over with a quiet purr. He didn’t bother with music. Just drove.

He had a new Lamborghini waiting for him at the dealership in Norwood. They'd called him about that car every single day and he'd let them all go to voicemail. He knew what they were going to say, which was that the car had arrived four weeks ago, it was fully prepped, and they would be delighted to arrange delivery or pickup at his convenience. More recently, the voicemails had asked if perhaps there was some problem. There was no problem. He had ordered the car in March—a Verde Aventador, a ridiculous shade of lime green—back when he still cared about things like cars. Back when he still cared about anything. And now the car was in Boston, and it was his, and he still could not make himself go get it. He didn't know why.

Instead of driving straight home, he ended up at a McDonald’s. He ordered a breakfast sandwich, and as an afterthought added pancakes—enough to fill the hollow in his stomach, probably wouldn't do too much good for his training, but who cared. The girl at the counter called him honey and gave him a broad smile. Ilya gave a half-assed weary smile back that didn't reach his eyes. Didn’t flirt. Just ate, paid, left.

The drive back took twenty minutes. He parked in the garage, and let himself into the silence of the vast modern space, overlooking the water. He'd bought it when he signed his extension with the Raiders, after seeing Shane's lakeside cottage on that dumb documentary. Now it felt too clean, too empty. He'd had it for over two years and no matter how much stuff he bought, it still didn't feel lived in. It was just space, all air and light with those floor-to-ceiling windows, and only himself to fill it.

Mail was piled on the entry table. He didn’t open it. He dropped his gym bag, kicked off his shoes and pulled off his shirt and walked into the kitchen in his shorts. The fridge was almost empty. A carton of milk that had expired two days ago. A six pack of beer, pushed to the back. Three takeout containers with lids on, contents unidentifiable. A bag of spinach that had turned to green slime in the crisper drawer. Ilya stood with the door open, and stared at the bare shelves. He’d been living like this for weeks now—ordering food when he remembered to eat, which wasn’t often.

He closed the fridge. Its hum was the only sound in the house. He should turn on the TV. He should put on music. He should call someone. Instead, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, and listened to the silence.

He'd learned to like silence, when he was a kid, after his mother died. Silence meant he was safe, that his father wasn't yelling at him about a lost game, telling him he should have been better, or his brother calling him a little asshole and beating him up, before Ilya got bigger than him. Silence usually meant they weren't home. He'd forgotten about it when he left for North America, for the noise and chaos of hockey, of parties and hotel rooms and locker rooms full of loud teammates. Now the silence was back, but now it wasn't the type that comforted him. It just reminded him of everything that had gone wrong.

His phone buzzed where he'd left it on the kitchen counter. The screen was lit up with multiple notifications. Unread texts, unheard voicemails. Joining them, another one from the dealership. He scrolled through ones he'd been ignoring for days, disinterested.

Anya: Hey stranger, miss you, let’s get drinks tonight?

Katia: Are you alive?

Marina: In Boston for the weekend, want to come over?

Jenna: Ilya pls, it’s been months, what did I do?

One from a girl just saved in his phone as 'Red Dress': wyd?

He didn't reply to any of them. All girls he'd hooked up with either in Boston or other cities. A year ago he couldn't have thought of anything better than going out clubbing and going home with one of those girls, or a new one, it wouldn't matter, as long as they were fun and easygoing and beautiful. A year ago, that was exactly his type. Now the thought of getting dressed and going out and pretending to give a shit made his jaw clench.

There were other notifications, not just the girls. Cliff Marleau had sent a photo of his new boat with a message: you should come out on this thing man, have some beers, clear your head.

Svetlana had called twice and left a voicemail that he hadn't listened to. The dealership had sent another message: Mr. Rozanov, the Aventador you configured has arrived. The team is excited to hand it over whenever you’re ready. Please call us at your earliest convenience. He swiped the notification away and tossed the phone onto the couch and went to shower.

The water was scalding, and he stood under the spray with his eyes closed, letting the heat seep into his muscles. His body ached from training, which was usually a good feeling, the kind that made him feel like he'd earned it, made him feel alive. Today, he just felt tired.

After the shower, he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The summer stretched in front of him, July, August and into September before the season started. Usually he'd be in Russia by now, in Moscow drinking with Svetlana and other old friends who weren't really friends any more. Everyone thought Ilya Rozanov was the life of the party, the guy who showed up with a girl on each arm and a bottle in his hand and a grin that said he was having the time of his life. And it had been true, once.

Moscow had always been there, even when things were bad with his father, even when going home meant sitting across a table from him and being told what he was doing wrong with his life. His father had been dead for five months and Ilya had told Alexei he wanted nothing more to do with him, and had meant every word. After the funeral, he'd gotten on a plane the next day and flew back to Boston, and hadn't spoken to Alexei since.

So now, there was no Moscow. Svetlana had tried to persuade him to go for the summer anyway—you don't even need to tell Alexei you're there, we can just go and have fun and catch up with people—but he wasn't interested. So he'd stayed in Boston, and Svetlana had stayed in Boston too, she had her own apartment now and her job at the car dealership, and he was ignoring even her.

Ilya Rozanov was having a very boring summer, which of course reminded him of Hollander. He wondered, briefly, and breaking one of his self-imposed rules, about where Hollander was this summer. Probably somewhere in Canada, training, being boring. Shane Hollander had the most boring summers in professional hockey, one of the many boring things about him that Ilya had spent years cataloguing. Somewhere in Ontario, Hollander was doing yoga on his dock and eating his macrobiotic diet even in the off-season, in bed by ten, at his perfect fucking cottage with his perfect fucking family ten minutes away. Hollander had the kind of wholesome, controlled existence that Ilya used to mock. 

And now Ilya was in Boston, having a boring summer too. Now he was doing nothing, going nowhere, eating fucking salads alone and staring at the wall. The irony wasn't lost on him. He just didn't have the energy to be amused by it. The thought that Hollander was having an equally boring summer was almost a comfort. Almost. It was the same thing Ilya had been telling himself for weeks now, and it was wearing thin, but it was all he had.

He didn’t miss his brother. He didn’t miss his father. He didn't miss the friends in Moscow and the girls and the parties. What he missed—and he would never say it out loud—was the idea of having a place to go. Now there was no place, and no one, and he was in a beautiful house with a view of the water and he had never felt more alone.

Because he had nothing else to do, he ran on the treadmill in his home gym in the afternoon. He didn't listen to music, didn't watch any videos while he ran. He just ran faster and faster until his lungs were burning and his legs were about to give out. It wasn't even about training any more, the drive to get better and better, to win, to be the best, had gone too. Now he did it to punish his body until it stopped thinking.

After, he checked his phone again. He should text Marleau back. He should call the dealership and pick up the car. He should return one of the girls’ texts and go out and get laid and remind himself what it felt like to want something. He did none of these things. Instead, he sat on his sofa and scrolled through his phone looking for Jane. The last message he'd sent: Sorry about your father. Ilya had replied with a terse Thank you. Before that, the messages arranging their last hookup, back in November. Before it all went wrong. Ilya put his phone face down. He didn't want to think about that right now.

A minute later, he picked his phone up again, and played Svetlana's voicemail.

Her voice, in Russian, filled the quiet: “Ilyusha. Call me. I know you’re ignoring me, that’s fine, but at least send a text so I know you’re not dead. I’m worried about you.”

He didn’t call her. But the sound of her voice, that flat, knowing tone, pulled another memory up whether he wanted it or not.

February. In Moscow. The funeral had been small; the end of his father's life had been a fading-away, not a major event, and in any case, he had not been a man many people would mourn. Svetlana had been there, because she was the closest thing to family he had. She'd proven it to him that day, when she stepped in to defend him against Alexei. Afterward, they'd stood outside in the cold, both of them smoking. He'd said something to her, You know I love you. She'd replied, I know, but not like you love Jane. I hope he knows how lucky he is.

He.

He’d said nothing. Just taken a drag of his cigarette. He hadn’t denied it. He’d just looked straight ahead and let the smoke curl out of his mouth and said nothing.

She hadn’t pushed. But she knew. Then she’d just nodded and looped her arm through his and walked him back to the car.

Now, in the heat of July, her words were as sharp as they had been in February. He hadn’t denied it then, and he wasn’t denying it now. He just wasn’t thinking about it. Every time a memory rose he shoved it down with brute force—a set of push-ups, a cold shower, a run on the treadmill, anything. It worked about half the time. The other half, he sat on his sofa in the dark until the memories went away.

He bent down and did fifty push-ups on the hardwood floor, as fast as he could, until his arms shook. Then another twenty. Then he collapsed on his stomach and lay there, forehead pressed to the wood, breathing hard.

The floor was cool. He stayed like that for a full minute. Then he pushed himself up and walked to the bathroom and took another shower. This time he turned the shower as cold as it would go.

When he came out, he felt clean, blank. He ordered food from an app—forcing himself to eat something healthy, a chicken salad that he didn't really want—and ate standing at the kitchen counter while his phone buzzed with more texts.

Katia again: I’m not going to keep texting if you’re going to be a dick about it.

Jenna: Seriously, are you okay?

Anya: Okay I get the hint lol. You missed a good night though.

He turned off notifications for all of them.

The food was tasteless, but he finished it. The protein would help him recover. Tomorrow he’d be back in the gym by six, and the day after that, and the day after that, because if he didn’t have anything else, he had his body, and his body he could control. He could make it stronger, faster, better. He could treat it like a machine and ignore the part of him that he couldn't control.

The sun went down and the house grew dark, the only light coming off the water. He didn’t turn on any lamps. He just sat on the couch in the dark, then wandered from room to room before getting into bed, even though he wasn't tired. He lay on his back, trying not to think, and waited for sleep to come.

It came, eventually, but it was uneasy. When he woke at five-thirty to his alarm, he got up and went to the gym and did it all over again.

When he got back from an afternoon training session two days later, Svetlana's car was in the driveway. He stared at it for a moment, engine idling, then cut the ignition and sat there with his hands still on the wheel. He knew what was coming, and he also knew he couldn't avoid her any longer. He grabbed his gym bag and went inside. Svetlana was already in the kitchen. She'd let herself in with the spare key he'd given her a year ago.

“You’re living like a college student,” she said in Russian, not looking at him. She opened the fridge. “There’s nothing in here. Nothing. Milk and whatever this is." She pulled out one of the takeout containers and waved it as evidence. "I'm not even going to look. How long has this been here?"

He dropped his keys onto the counter. “I’ve been busy.”

“Busy doing what? Moping?” She turned to face him, hands on her hips. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

She sighed, softened. “Ilyusha. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” He grabbed a beer from the fridge, twisted off the cap.

She studied him, her eyes sharp. “They called me. The dealership. Again.”

“So?”

“So, you’re letting a half-a-million-dollar car sit in a garage. What is wrong with you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want it anymore.”

She scoffed. “Since when do you not want a new car?”

He didn’t answer. Just drank his beer.

"I’m the one who got you the deal, and now they think you're a lunatic.”

“Tell them I changed my mind.”

“You didn’t change your mind. Someone who spends half-a-million dollars on a brand new Aventador doesn't just change their mind and leave it at the dealership for four weeks. You've already paid for it."

He took a swig of beer, didn’t answer.

He’d spent weeks, back in March, discussing the configuration of the Lamborghini, picking out every option. It had felt like something to look forward to. Now the thought of driving it, of being seen in it, of answering anyone’s questions about it—it all felt exhausting.

She put her hands on the kitchen counter, her expression somewhere between exasperation and concern.

 “When’s the last time you ate real food?”

“I got a salad yesterday.”

“A salad. You made it?”

No answer. She sighed. “Order something now. Real food. Enough for both of us. I’m not leaving until you eat.”

He wanted to argue, but the energy wasn’t there. He set his beer on the counter, pulled out his phone, scrolled through the delivery apps, and ordered Thai. Pad thai with chicken, green curry, extra vegetables.

“You’ve been ignoring my messages,” she said when he put the phone down.

“I told you, I’ve been busy.”

She crossed her arms. "Doing what."

“Training.” He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, mirroring her posture. “It’s what I do."

“It’s July. You’re supposed to be relaxing. Going somewhere. Having fun. When’s the last time you left the house for something other than the gym?”

He didn't have an answer for that.

“Come to Russia with me," she said.

“No.”

“Ilya—”

“I said no.” His voice came out harder than he intended. He made himself take a breath. “I’m not going back to Russia.”

“Fine. Not Russia. Then go pick up the car. Drive it somewhere. Anywhere.”

“No.”

She threw her hands up. “Then come out with me tonight. Club, drinks, dancing. The usual.”

“Not in the mood.”

"Ilyusha."

“I’m tired,” he said. “It’s a boring summer. Everyone has one.”

She turned back. Her face said she didn’t believe a word. “Bullshit, Ilyusha. You've never had a boring summer in your life."

“Maybe I’ve changed.”

“You haven’t changed. Something happened.” She put one hand on his arm. “Talk to me.”

The doorbell rang. The food. Ilya pushed off the counter, grateful for the interruption, and retrieved the bag from the delivery driver.

They ate standing up, the cartons open between them. Svetlana watched him with narrowed eyes.

"I'm going out tomorrow night with the guys from the dealership. There's a new club. Come with me. Good music. Drinks. People who don’t know you. We’ll go, we’ll dance, we’ll get stupid for one night, and you’ll remember you used to be fun.”

“No.”

“Ilyusha.”

“I don’t want to go clubbing, Sveta. I don’t want to pick up the car. I don’t want to fly to Russia. I don’t want to do anything.” He set his fork down, the pad thai suddenly tasteless. “Is that enough nos for you?”

She was quiet for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she sighed and put her own fork down.

“You know what I think,” she said.

He didn’t answer. Just picked his beer up again and took a swig.

She was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: "I think you’re scared of something. Something that's made you stop doing everything you used to love."

He froze. His fingers tightened around the beer bottle.

"I'm not," he said.

She regarded him flatly, then picked up the dishes and took them to the sink. She started washing them, her back to him. “Okay,” she said finally. "But if you were, you could talk to me."

He wanted to laugh, to deflect, to say something mean and funny and perfectly Ilya Rozanov that would change the subject. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. Or wanted to tell her she was right. He didn't know. But the words wouldn't come. Instead, he finished his beer, and put the bottle on the counter.

She was right, and he hated that she was right, and he hated even more that he didn’t know how to move forward, that every time he tried to think about the future, about doing something, his mind went to the same dark place where Tampa lived.

Tampa. The word itself was a sharp little shard in his chest, and he shoved it down the way he’d been doing for months. The hotel room, the fight, the look on Shane’s face when Ilya had said the words he couldn’t take back. This is nothing. Means nothing. He’d been scared—so fucking scared—and he’d believed it, believed there was no future in it, believed that walking away was the only move that wouldn’t destroy them both. And now he was still carrying the memory of it in the empty space in his chest and the silence of the house.

Svetlana watched him for a long moment, her expression shifting from frustration to something softer, sadder. She pushed herself off the counter and walked over to his side. For a second, he thought she might reach out, touch his shoulder, hug him. But she didn't.

"I don't know what happened, Ilyusha. But you can't just sit here doing nothing, waiting for… what? This is not sustainable."

He looked away. He couldn't say anything. He just let the words sit in the room between them, as true and awful as they were, and after a minute, Svetlana sighed.

“Okay,” she said gently. “I’m not going to make you talk about it. I know you won’t. But I’m also not going to pretend you’re fine.” She walked back to the living room and picked up her bag from the couch. “I'll come back later in the week. Call me if you need me, you know where I am.”

He heard the sound of the front door opening, and then her footsteps pausing in the hallway. She didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t turn around. The door clicked shut, and the silence that followed was the loudest thing in the world.

Alone again, he sat on the couch, TV on but unwatched. His phone buzzed—a notification from a hockey news app. Raiders Release Pre-Season Slate. He clicked it. The first game was against Montreal.

His stomach twisted. The instinct was still there. To text, to say first game of the season, see you in Montreal. To arrange their next hookup. But it wasn't going to happen. Now we stop. He'd said to Shane and he had to stick by it.

His phone buzzed. A text from Marleau, probably another picture of his boat or an invite to go clubbing. He ignored it. He thought about the car, about the green Aventador sitting in a showroom, waiting. He thought about the way Svetlana looked at him, like she could see straight through him. He thought about Shane, which he was always doing, whether he admitted it or not.

He thought about Tampa again, but this time he didn’t push it away. He let it come, remembering the way Hollander had looked at him with that stupid, hopeful face, the way Ilya had felt the fear rush into him, the way he’d shut it down, and left. For a long time afterward, he'd believed there was no future in it. He’d believed it because the alternative—that there was a future—was too much to carry, so he’d set fire to it.

But he was carrying it anyway. That was the joke. He’d walked away to protect himself from the thing he’d never actually escaped, and now he was standing in the wreckage of it every single day, refusing to pick up a phone, refusing to pick up a car, refusing to go to Russia, refusing to go clubbing, refusing to do anything except sit in the empty, lonely space where Shane had been.

The house was too quiet. He thought about how Hollander's face had looked when he'd told Ilya that he'd split up with Rose, that he thought what they had between them could be something real. And the way his face had looked when Ilya shut him down. Ilya had looked at him—at this man who was always so careful and controlled and terrified of being seen—and Ilya had felt his own terror lock him down. Not because he didn't want it, but because he wanted it too much. Because if Shane chose him, really chose him, then Ilya would have to believe it was possible, and believing it was possible meant risking everything. His career. His reputation. His freedom, if he came out and was then forced to go back to Russia. He knew what it had cost Shane to stand there and say what he wanted them to be, but Ilya could not move past the wall that he'd built since he was twelve years old and found his mother's body and learned that loving someone could destroy you.

And now he spent all his time not thinking about Tampa and Shane's face when Ilya had said: There is nothing here. We are nothing. Move on Hollander.

Ilya didn't sleep much. The next day was the same, and the one after that—gym, house, the phone he wouldn't answer, the car he wouldn't collect. He lost track of the days again. 

Two days later, Svetlana let herself back in, coffees in hand, not taking no for an answer.

Ilya was watching a playoff replay, or at least he had it on and was maybe half-watching it. It was at the end of the second period that the Rolex commercial came on. For thirty seconds, Shane Hollander’s face filled the television—clean and serious and impossible to look away from. Ilya’s hand tightened on the remote, his thumb resting over the channel button, but he didn’t press it. He couldn't.

Shane was in a dark studio somewhere, wearing a black suit, turning his wrist so the light caught the watch face. The voiceover was smooth and professional, the same voice that had been selling watches and sneakers and sports drinks for years, saying something about excellence and precision and timelessness, but all Ilya heard was Shane's quiet voice, saying I think this could be something real, and it made Ilya want to throw the remote at the screen.

Instead, he sat there, sinking deeper into the couch cushions, his jaw tight, and let the commercial play out. When it ended, and the game commentary resumed, Ilya’s pulse gradually slowed, though the afterimage of Shane’s face lingered in the back of his mind like a ghost.

From the kitchen, he heard Svetlana moving around, opening cabinets, looking for sugar. She’d shown up an hour ago with the coffees, claiming she was just checking in. He’d let her in without argument, which was probably a mistake, because now she was here and she was watching him. He could feel it, even from across the room.

She came into the living room and sat down on the armchair by the window, curling her legs beneath her, coffee cup in one hand, phone in the other. She didn’t say anything at first, just looked at her phone, then up at him, then back at her phone. Ilya ignored her the way he’d been ignoring everything else, keeping his eyes fixed on the TV.

“She hasn’t called you back yet?” Svetlana asked, not looking up from her phone.

“Who?”

“The woman from the dealership. The one who’s been leaving you voicemails about the Lamborghini.” Her voice was light, but there was an edge underneath. “Unless you’re avoiding her too.”

Ilya grunted. “I’ll call her when I’m ready.”

“Which will be never, at this rate.” Svetlana scrolled idly, then stopped, her thumb hovering. Her face went still, like she was reading something that needed her full attention. Ilya felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was something he wasn't going to like—maybe the way her eyes flicked up to him for half a second, then back down, too quickly to be natural. Or maybe the way her jaw tightened like she was steeling herself.

“What?” he said, sharper than he intended.

“Nothing.” She shut off her phone screen and set the phone face-down on the armrest. “Just work stuff. Not important.”

He didn't believe her, but he let it go. If he pushed her, it might turn into her pushing back at him about the car, or Russia, or something else, and he didn't want to go there. Instead, he turned his attention back to the TV, where the analysts were breaking down power play percentages. The volume was too low to hear properly, but that was fine. He wasn’t listening anyway.

His own phone buzzed on the coffee table, a single sharp vibration. Ilya glanced at it. The screen lit up with a text from Marleau. Probably asking him to go drinking or play golf or hang out again. Ilya picked up the phone more out of reflex than interest.

The message was a link, followed by a series of laughing emojis and the words: Bro check it out. Your nemesis looks like he’s too busy with his girl to worry about you next season lmao

Ilya’s thumb tapped the link before his brain caught up. The headline appeared first: Rose Landry and Hockey Star Shane Hollander: Back Together? Below it, a photo of Shane and Rose at a tennis match, heads close. The caption beneath: The pair were spotted in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, looking very much like a couple.

His phone buzzed again, another text from Marleau: Wait up they actually back together? He's so boring and she's so hot, dude HOW

Heat rose in his chest, immediate and violent. All he could see was the screen, the photo, the way Shane was smiling at Rose like she’d just said the funniest thing in the world. He knew that smile. He’d been on the receiving end of it, back when they were still fucking, back before Tampa, back before Ilya had looked Shane in the eye and told him it was nothing.

Tampa. The hotel room. Shane’s voice, quiet and steady. I broke up with Rose. I think this could be something real. And Ilya, too afraid to say it back, too afraid to make it real. The terrible words he’d thrown at Shane to make him stop talking. The door clicking shut as he left, leaving Shane alone in the dark.

After that, there had only been silence from Shane and a cold, flat expression when they played together. And now this. Shane in London, laughing with Rose fucking Landry and once again the tabloids going wild over them dating. Shane had moved on, like none of it had mattered. Like Ilya had been nothing more than a hookup, a secret that could be forgotten the second someone easier came along.

Everything Shane said in Tampa was bullshit. That was his first thought. The admissions, the soft looks and desperate words—bullshit. Shane had moved on. No—he'd gone back. Back to Rose, and he looked happy. He looked fine. And, selfishly, Ilya's next thought was that was far worse than if he'd looked miserable, because that meant that Ilya had been left behind. He'd half wanted Shane to try again, to ask to meet up next time they played together, to talk. He might even have wanted Shane to backtrack on his words in Tampa, to go back to just fucking and pretending it wasn't more than that. He'd watched his phone for days, weeks, waiting for something. Anything.

He scrolled through his messages, looking for Jane. Typed: Why the fuck are you back together with her? Deleted it. Typed: Hope she makes you happy. Deleted it.

The rage settled into something colder. Not just jealousy. Betrayal. Because even though he'd pushed Shane away in Tampa, he had been starting to think that the thing between them was real. The last time they hooked up, in Boston, it had felt different between them, like Shane had said. He'd almost thought he might be falling for him. And after Tampa, he'd let himself think that Shane's words meant something, that maybe—fucking maybe—he wasn't as unloveable as he'd always believed. And then the silence. And then this. And the worst thing was, it was all his own fault. He'd told Shane to do it.

The air in the room felt like it had stopped moving. He could feel Svetlana watching him.

His fingers were shaking. He forced them still, typed out a reply to Marleau with the same casual tone he’d use for any locker room bullshit: Haha yeah man, so boring she's probably only got back with him to get a good nights sleep. And then, Makes a change from him spending his summer with just his right hand for company. The kind of thing he'd expect.

Then he set the phone down on the coffee table with more force than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet room. Svetlana was still watching him. She knew. Of course she knew. She’d seen the story five minutes ago, probably before Marleau sent it, and she’d said nothing because she knew he'd lose his shit. The thought made him even angrier.

“You saw it,” she said. Not a question.

He didn’t answer. He stood up abruptly and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her, looking out at the water. He could feel Svetlana’s eyes on his back, and he hated it. Hated that she knew. Hated that she knew it would enrage him and why. Hated that she’d known before he did, probably, and had just stood there silently while his world narrowed to that one photo.

“I didn't know whether to tell you. I thought maybe you wouldn’t find out.” Her voice was quiet.

“Marleau sent it.” He couldn't even be bothered pretending there was nothing between him and Hollander any more.

A beat of silence. Then she said, “Ilyusha, maybe it’s not what it looks like.”

He laughed bitterly. “It’s exactly what it looks like. He’s with her. He was probably with her the whole time.”

“The whole time what?”

He didn’t answer. The words were there, lodged in his throat, but he couldn’t say them. The whole time he was telling me he wanted them to be together. The whole time I was falling apart over him. The whole time I was too much of a coward to be what he needed.

He'd been right though. He'd been right the whole time, that there was no future for them. Now the proof was on his phone, laughing at him from a tennis match in London, and the only thing left to do was move.

“I’m going to pick up the car,” he said.

“What?”

“The Lamborghini. You said to pick it up.” He turned from the window, and his face was blank, forced into something that looked almost calm. “I’m going to call them now.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket again, opened his contacts, and scrolled until he found the number for the dealership. It was saved under the salesperson’s name—he’d bought the car months ago, wired the money, then let it sit there. His thumb hovered over the call button. He didn’t think about why he was doing it. He just pressed.

The salesperson answered on the second ring, her voice bright.

“Mr. Rozanov! It’s great to hear from you. I was starting to think you’d changed your mind about the Aventador."

“No,” Ilya said, his voice coming out steady and calm, like it always did when he was pretending. “I’m coming to pick it up.”

“Great! When works for you? We’re open until seven today, or I can schedule you for tomorrow—“

“Today.” He cut her off. “I can be there in forty minutes. That work?”

“Absolutely. I’ll have it pulled around and the paperwork ready. Just come to the main showroom. I'll be waiting.”

“Okay.” He hung up without saying goodbye, then stood there with the phone still against his ear for a second longer than necessary. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window, and could feel his pulse in his temples, steady and hard.

From behind him, Svetlana’s voice came quietly: “Do you want a ride?”

He didn’t turn around. “No. I'll get an Uber.”

“Okay.” There was a pause, and then she added, “When you get it, drive safe.”

He didn’t answer. He just pushed off from the window, grabbed his keys from the hook by the door, and walked outside without looking back. The door clicked shut behind him, and he stood there for a moment in the dim corridor, his heart hammering against his ribs. He had no idea what he was doing, only that he had to do something, go somewhere, move forward so that the weight pressing down on him didn't crush him completely.

In the Uber, he didn’t think about the Rolex commercial. He didn’t think about the headline. He didn’t think about the photo of Shane and Rose, their heads bent together, like they’d never been apart. He definitely didn’t think about the fact that he’d just arranged to pick up a car he’d been avoiding for weeks, for no reason other than that he needed to prove to himself—or to Svetlana, or to everyone in the whole fucking world—that there was still something left of Ilya Rozanov.

The dealership was on the other side of town, and the salesperson was waiting for him. He could see her from the street, standing just outside the showroom with a clipboard and a professional smile. He got out and walked across the lot, and by the time he reached her, he’d made sure his face appeared normal.

“Mr. Rozanov,” she said, extending her hand. “So glad you could make it.”

Ilya shook it, his grip firm, his smile fake. “Thanks for waiting.”

“Of course. Right this way.”

She led him through the showroom, past a row of gleaming cars he ignored, and out into the delivery bay where the Lamborghini sat under a soft gray cover. One of the lot attendants pulled the cover off with a flourish, and Ilya watched it fall away, revealing the car’s green shimmering paint and sharp, predatory lines. It was beautiful and ridiculous. It was exactly the kind of car he would have loved a year ago, when he still did things like buy cars and drive them fast and pretend the speed could outrun whatever was chasing him.

He signed the paperwork without reading it, accepted the keys, and slid into the driver’s seat. The leather was cool and supple, the controls unfamiliar under his fingers. He adjusted the mirrors, found the ignition, and let the engine turn over with a low, throaty growl that went all the way through him.

The salesperson leaned in the window, beaming. “Enjoy it. Let me know if you have any questions.”

“I will,” Ilya said, and then he was pulling out of the bay and onto the road, the car roaring beneath him.

He didn’t know where he was going. He just drove, aimless and fast, the city blurring around him. The anger was still there, vibrating under his skin, but now it had a direction: forward, away, anywhere but back to the house where Svetlana was waiting with that worried look, pretending she wasn't.

For a while, it worked. The speed. The control. The utter focus required to keep the car on the road at triple-digit speeds. His mind went quiet, the photo of Shane and Rose receding to a deep corner of his brain.

But. He couldn't unsee it for long. Somewhere just outside the city limits, it came rushing back. Shane's face, relaxed. His smile, the one he'd only ever given to Ilya and a handful of other people, now splashed all over the news and directed at Rose Landry at a tennis match in London. And Ilya’s own voice, the one he’d heard in his head ever since Tampa, snapping we are nothing. He’d said it. He’d believed it, or convinced himself he believed it, because the alternative was too terrifying. 

He drove until the roads opened up, until the buildings thinned and the river appeared to his left, dark and silver in the failing light. He drove and drove, and he tried not to think about Shane, and tried not to think about Rose, and tried not to think about the fact that he’d just rearranged an entire evening for the sole purpose of proving he wasn’t a man who waited around for things that weren’t coming back.

Except he was. He was exactly that man, and the car, the drive, the whole stupid performance—it was all just another way of avoiding the truth.

He pulled over at a rest stop, the tires crunching on gravel. He sat there, engine idling, hands still on the wheel. The city was far behind him and all around him the landscape was flat and green, nothing but fields and sky. He was alone. He was always alone.

He cut the engine and sat there in silence, the July sun beating through the windshield, and for the first time in months he let himself really feel it: the grief. Not anger, not rage, but the deep, gut-level sorrow of losing something he’d never really had. He had been falling in love with Shane Hollander, for years, in secret, in silence, in the spaces between insults and hookups and careful walls that he'd built around himself. He'd loved him and he'd never said it, never even admitted it to himself, and now it was too late. Shane had moved on and Ilya was in the same place, unable to move forward or back.

He couldn't cry. He didn't know how. But he sat there with his forehead resting against the steering wheel and breathed, until his breathing had slowed, and when he looked up the sun was setting and his phone was buzzing with another text. Marleau again. Dude? Pick up the car yet? I gotta see it. He didn’t reply.

He drove back to the city, slower this time, the Aventador purring under him like a living thing. When he got home, he pulled into the garage, parked in the spot next to the Maserati, and sat in the car for a long time before shutting it off. The anger had dulled, and all that was left was a weight in his chest that he knew would still be there when he woke up tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.

When he got into the house, it was empty. Svetlana had cleaned up in the kitchen and left him a note on the counter: Call me if you want to talk.

He crumpled the note and threw it in the trash. Then he retrieved it and smoothed it out and set it on the counter, because even now, even feeling empty and raw, he knew she was the only person who gave a shit about him.

He didn’t call her. He went to bed at nine, even though he wasn't tired, and listened to the sound of his own breathing. The photo of Shane and Rose was still there behind his eyes, but it was joined now by something equally painful: the memory of Shane’s voice in Tampa, the weight of the words I think this could be something real, and the knowledge that it had cost Shane a lot to say the words, and he had meant it. And Ilya had let them go. He’d let Shane go. And now it was too late.

His phone buzzed. A text from Svetlana: So? Did you pick it up?

He didn’t reply.

He closed his eyes. Tomorrow he’d be back in the gym at five. The car would be in the garage. The season would start, eventually, and he’d have to get on the ice and look across at Shane and pretend none of it had happened. He’d done it before. He could do it again.

He just wasn’t sure he wanted to anymore.

Friday morning came as all the others did. Gym at six, a punishing leg day he barely felt. He moved through his routine on autopilot, his mind already shying away from the quiet house he'd have to go back to. When he got home, he stood in the shower until the water ran cold, and then made himself a protein shake that he didn't drink. He'd been avoiding his phone for two days now, since the photo of Shane and Rose had surfaced and lodged itself in his brain. But he couldn't hide forever. Time would move forward, the summer would end eventually, and there would be a new season. He had a career, a team, people who expected him to be reachable. So he picked his phone up.

The lock screen was a mess of notifications. Emails, texts from Svetlana and Marleau, a missed call from his agent.

Svetlana: Have you seen the photos?

Cliff: Dude, you seeing this shit?

Attached to Marleau's message, a screenshot from Instagram: Prince Alexander Bergström and MLH Star Shane Hollander Spotted Together in London. Ilya zoomed in on the image. Shane, wearing a light-coloured linen shirt and chinos, standing in a street in what looked like London. Beside him—or rather, slightly behind him, his hand on Shane's lower back—was a tall blond man Ilya didn't recognise. The man’s face was turned slightly toward Shane, smiling, and Shane was looking up at him with an expression that made Ilya’s stomach drop.

His phone buzzed again with another text from Marleau: Bro this is wild. You think it's serious? This time a link to a celebrity news article. The preview stopped his breath. New Couple Alert? Inside the whirlwind romance of Canada’s golden boy and Sweden’s most eligible prince. He clicked without thinking. The article loaded slowly, a gossip site with too many ads. The photo was grainy but unmistakeable. On the street outside an elegant residential building, Shane Hollander: alone, hair a mess, shirt untucked, and face flushed. The caption: Sources say Hollander spent the night at Prince Alexander’s London flat.

He read the article. Read it again. And again, disbelieving. Prince Alexander Bergström. Swedish royal. Twenty-eight. Former footballer. Philanthropist. The article was breathless with speculation: the prince, the first openly gay member of the Swedish royal family, and the hockey star, had been seen together at Wimbledon all week, at restaurants, at events.

Ilya dropped the phone on the counter like it was on fire.

Shane wasn't with Rose. Not with a woman. A man. A prince.

He picked the phone up again. He went back to the article and scrolled. There were more photos. One from inside Wimbledon, on Centre Court: Shane and the prince sitting side by side, shoulders almost touching, both looking ahead but with an ease that suggested they’d been doing it for weeks, not days. Another candid one from the Rolex hospitality suite, the prince standing close to Shane, his head bent, saying something that had made Shane laugh. The laugh. Ilya couldn't look away from it. It wasn't the slight curve to his lips that he'd produced in the Rolex commercial, or even the soft genuine smile that Ilya had seen in private a handful of times. Ilya had rarely seen Shane laugh out loud. It was always like he was trying to keep his amusement hidden. And this was a rare real laugh, and it was directed at this man. This. Fucking. Prince.

He kept scrolling. He couldn't stop. He went to Twitter next, searching Shane's name. Fans were losing their minds, some thrilled, some confused, some predictably homophobic. He found the official Rolex account and scrolled to the week before. There it was: a formal PR photo from their hospitality suite. Shane wearing a navy blazer. Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Metros ice hockey team, attends Wimbledon as a guest of Rolex.

He found another from Wimbledon, Shane and this man—Bergström—sitting together in the stands, watching a tennis match. Shane Hollander and Prince Alexander Bergström in the Rolex seating area. There were more images, more articles. One from a British tabloid: Love All? Swedish Prince and MLH Star Share a Moment at Wimbledon. Shane and Bergström, leaning in toward each other, so close their heads were almost touching.

Two days ago the same sites had been running him with Rose—Back together?, hearts in the comments, everyone delighted. Now they were scrambling to rewrite it in real time, and the coverage came from every angle at once. The gossip pages had swung hard the other way and were loving it: power couple, prince and player, a whole fairy tale put together overnight about how they'd met. The straight tabloids were coyer, deliberately vague, letting the photos do the work with comments like—seemingly, has yet to comment, allegedly. The hockey press had not picked it up yet, but on Twitter fans and pundits were already turning it into a hockey problem: what did it mean for the Metros, for the league, for the captain who'd never let the press near his private life.

And here was the thing Ilya couldn't get past. The Shane he knew would have been terrified of this—he'd built his whole careful life around never being seen. That Shane would have been on the phone to his agent, to the team, scrambling. But the man in these photos looked like a different Shane. He didn't look scared. He looked relaxed. He looked like he didn't care who saw. Like maybe he'd stopped caring a while ago, maybe somewhere over the last two weeks, in a country where no one knew his name, where he'd met a prince who kept looking at him like that. Or maybe after Tampa. He'd said the thing out loud once, to Ilya—I think this could be something real—and Ilya had made sure it ended there. Maybe this was Shane saying it again. Louder. To someone else.

Ilya felt the floor tilt. He had been so stupid. So blind. He’d spent two days burning over a photo of Rose, thinking Shane had gone back to something easy and public and female, and the whole time there had been this. This was not Rose. This was a man—a prince, for fuck's sake—and the photos were not carefully staged PR images. They were real. They were the kind of photos that happened when someone stopped caring about being seen. Ilya had spent years learning to read Shane's body language from across a rink, from across a room. He was the best in the world at reading Shane Hollander, and what he saw in those photos made him feel sick.

Shane was not back together with Rose Landry. He was with a man. A real, live, relationship with a man who was not Ilya. A prince. A man who was everything Ilya was not: publicly out, comfortable in his own skin, no doubt emotionally available and unashamed. The kind of man who could stand beside Shane in broad daylight and not flinch. The kind of man who could give Shane the one thing Ilya never could.

He searched “Alexander Bergström.” A Wikipedia entry, a series of tabloid profiles, an Instagram account with hundreds of thousands of followers. The photos were a parade of charity galas and sailing trips and casual shots with other royals, all of it polished and golden and infuriatingly perfect. In one, Alex was on a football pitch, looking like a fucking athlete, so Ilya didn't even have that over him. Another one, he was at a charity event in a hospital, actually looking like he cared. Like it wasn't an act.

Ilya pulled up the paparazzi photo again, the one of Shane leaving the apartment. It was exactly the way he looked after sex—Ilya knew that look, the messy hair, the flush, that slightly dazed tilt to his mouth. He could picture the night before, the morning after. Shane waking up in that man's bed, sunlight coming through those big windows, probably a coffee on the nightstand, maybe a lazy kiss before getting dressed. The domesticity of it made Ilya's chest hurt. He'd never had that. Not once. He'd had hotel rooms and rushed exits and Shane saying: You're not going to tell anyone about this are you? He'd had Shane's body and Shane's attention, and for moments at a time, Shane's unfiltered self. But he'd never had the morning, the breakfast, his hand on Shane's back in public, laughter in daylight, the chance to stand next to Shane and let everyone see.

He was still on the couch in the same clothes he’d worn to the gym. He’d been scrolling for over an hour. His phone battery was at fifteen percent, and his eyes were dry from not blinking enough. He got up and plugged the phone in, then paced the length of the room, his hands clenched.

This is what Shane had been trying to tell him, when he said he'd broken up with Rose, that he thought it could be something real. He had been ready to choose, to be chosen, to stop hiding. And Ilya had not been ready. He'd been too afraid. He'd shut it down, pushed Shane away, made it so irreversible that Shane would never come back. And now some fucking prince had stepped into the space that Ilya had left empty, and Shane looked happier than Ilya had ever seen him.

He sat back down on the sofa doubled over, head in his hands. The jealousy was a knot burning in his stomach. And underneath it, the cold, isolating realisation that Shane had moved on. This was not just a hookup. The photos showed the kind of easy intimacy that came from real connection. The way Bergström looked at Shane. The way Shane leaned into his space. The way their bodies were orientated toward each other in every shot, even the ones where they weren't touching. Ilya understood that gravitational pull. He'd felt it himself, for years, and he'd spent all that time denying it, mocking Shane, hiding behind jokes, and behind coldness when the feelings became too real. And now he was watching it happen between Shane and someone else, and it was the loneliest feeling in the world. Because Ilya knew—had probably always known—that no one would ever make him feel like Shane Hollander did.

He looked at the photo one more time. The one of Shane outside Bergström's apartment. Hair rumpled, shirt untucked. His face was flushed, his lips swollen. He looked like he’d been thoroughly fucked. Ilya’s grip tightened on the phone. His thumb hovered over the screen, zooming in. Shane’s eyes were half-lidded, his smile lazy. Happy.

His phone buzzed, interrupting his thoughts. Svetlana had sent him another message, asking Ilyusha, are you ok? Another one from Marleau: Yo Roz u see the photos? U think its for real? Ilya didn’t reply. He didn’t have a joke for this. He didn’t have a deflecting one-liner. He closed the app. Locked his phone. Tossed it onto the couch.

The morning wore on like this. He would put down his phone, determined to forget the whole thing, but within minutes it would be in his hand again, searching for something else. Ilya would close one article and then open another, then another. He didn’t move from the sofa. He stayed there as the morning slipped away, scrolling and reading and rereading until the words blurred together. He didn’t eat. He didn’t answer the texts that kept coming in—from Svetlana, from Marleau. He just stared at his phone, the world outside his window fading away.

At some point, he got up and closed the curtains in the living room. The sun was too bright, reflecting off his phone screen. He paced the length of the room, then sat back down. His mind was a loop of images: Shane’s laughing face, the man's hand on the small of Shane’s back, the two of them at Wimbledon, Shane outside the apartment. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. The obsession was a kind of self-immolation, and he let himself burn.

Around midday, he opened the flight booking app. He didn’t think about it; his fingers moved on their own. Boston to London. There was a flight that night, arriving Saturday morning. He stared at it. What the fuck was he doing? Fly to London and do what? Show up at Shane’s hotel and say... what? I’m sorry I was a coward. I love you. Please don’t be with him.

It was insane. He had no reason to go to London. He had no claim on Shane, no right to show up, no idea what he even wanted. It was the kind of grand, stupid gesture he would have mocked mercilessly if anyone else did it. The kind of thing that would make headlines for all the wrong reasons, if anyone found out.

But the alternative was staying in this house, staring at these photos, letting the jealousy eat away at him until the season started and he’d have to see Shane on the ice and pretend none of it had happened. Pretend he wasn’t dying inside. Pretend he could still act like the rival who hated Shane Hollander when the truth was he’d been in love with him for longer than he could admit.

He typed London into the search field, then paused. His reflection stared back at him from the dark screen, a pale, vacant version of the man who was supposedly the most feared forward in the league. He looked like shit. He felt like shit. And he was standing in his own living room, shaking, for no reason other than a photo of a man he’d rejected.

He closed the flight app and put the phone down. He stood up. He walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, stared at what little food there was. Closed the fridge. Walked to the window. Walked back. Sat down. Picked the phone up and opened the app again.

The flight was still there. He didn’t book it. He put the phone face down and pressed his palms into his eyes.

The next few hours were a blur of the same cycle: pacing, scrolling, putting the phone down, picking it up. He ate a protein bar at some point. He turned the TV on and off. He watched the clock move from twelve to three. He thought about the time difference—it was evening in London, after nine. What would Shane be doing? Maybe in another man's bed. The thought made his stomach lurch, and he hated himself for it.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and drank it standing at the counter. He scrolled through everything he could find on Alexander Bergström again, studying every photo, reading every article, looking for some flaw, some crack in the perfect surface. He didn’t find one. The man was handsome, fit, seemingly genuine, with an easy confidence that came from never once in his life wondering whether he deserved happiness. Ilya couldn't find a flaw. All he could find, infuriatingly, was a man who looked like he might actually deserve Shane.

Ilya finished the beer and put the bottle in the trash. He stood there for a long time, hands braced on the counter, head bowed. He thought about the last time they'd met. He thought about all the times he could have said something he actually meant, told Shane how he felt, apologised for the hurtful things he'd said.

Now it was too late. Shane had found someone. Someone who could give him everything Ilya couldn’t. Someone who didn’t flinch at the word love. Someone who didn’t have a wall around his heart built from years of loss and fear. In Tampa, Shane had looked at Ilya in a way he knew meant Shane was choosing him, and Ilya had thrown it back in his face, and now Shane had chosen someone else. Someone who was ready. 

Ilya wasn’t ready. He’d never been ready. But standing there in the kitchen, the afternoon fading, he realized he didn’t want to be standing here, alone, for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be the man who let the only real thing he’d ever felt slip through his fingers because he was too scared to hold on to it.

He went back to the couch and picked up his phone. The flight-booking app was still open. The same flight, that evening. He stared at it. His heart was pounding. This was a terrible idea. This was the kind of idea that could blow up his entire life. He'd fly all the way to London, and Shane would look at him with that flat, shut-down expression he'd got after Tampa—and ask what the hell he was doing there, and Ilya wouldn't have an answer. Or he wouldn't ask anything at all. He'd just look at Ilya like a stranger, like someone he'd finished with, and walk away with the prince. Do to Ilya exactly what Ilya had done to him. That was worse than Shane angry. Shane done.

But the thought of staying in Boston, of going through the rest of the summer like this—the empty gym, the silent house, the photos and the jealousy and the slow, crushing grief—was unbearable. You can't just sit here doing nothing, waiting. Svetlana's voice in his head again. He wasn't going to wait. He was done waiting. He needed to do something, even if it was the wrong thing, even if it was the most humiliating, pathetic, desperate thing he’d ever done. He was going to get on a plane and go see for himself what he’d lost.

He booked the flight. First class, one-way. He didn’t know when he’d come back. He didn’t think about the logistics, the hotel, the season, the press, the team. He just gave the app his credit card number and hit confirm before fear could stop him.

The confirmation email arrived a moment later. He stared at it, the itinerary glowing on his screen. Boston to London Heathrow. Departure: Friday, 22:35. Arrival: Saturday, 09:10.

It was real. He’d done it. He’d bought a ticket to London to chase after a man who had probably already moved on, on the flimsiest, most desperate chance that there was something left to salvage. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. It was also, maybe, the bravest.

He got up and packed a bag. Not much—a few shirts, jeans, his passport. He didn’t know how long he’d stay. He didn’t know anything. But when he zipped the bag, he felt something he hadn’t felt in months: the faintest, thinnest thread of hope. It wasn’t much. It might snap at the first sign of reality. But it was there.

He sat on his bed, staring at the floor. The flight was in less than five hours. He'd have to tell Svetlana. Or not. He’d have to figure out what to say when he landed, how to find Shane, whether Shane would even want to be found. He’d have to face the possibility that Shane would look at him with a blank expression and tell him it was over. Really over.

But that was tomorrow. Right now, he let himself sit there and feel the knowledge of it, that he'd finally done something. He didn’t know if it was the right thing. He didn’t know if it would change anything. But he was going. He was getting on a plane and flying across an ocean because he loved Shane Hollander, and he was done pretending he didn’t. The rest, whatever came next, he’d figure out when he got there.

Chapter End Notes

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the comments and I've got to say I thought I'd get some hate just for getting Shane to hook up with someone that wasn't Ilya, so I'm pretty surprised by all the support for Alex. He's pretty dreamy right. It was never part of the plan but I can't deny I don't want to stop writing those two together. I might need to write an AU for this AU where they end up together for the Shane/Alex shippers (and I'm with you!). Either way I've added (at least) another chapter to the count because I can't see how I can finish this in just one more chapter! Who knows where it's going to end. I really want to do an Alex POV chapter!

I probably don't need to say so but this fic is essentially based on the TV show canon not the book and it's all a bit free and easy after the tuna meltdown

Fun facts, I googled Ilya's Boston house from the TV show which is actually in Ontario. It's listed as having 34 parking spaces lol (4 in the garage, I was imagining some kind of ultra modern underground parking) if you're a nosy bitch like me here is view, check it out:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/66-Weirs-Ln-Dundas-ON-L9H-5E3/442453493_zpid/

Chapter 6: Saturday

Chapter Notes

This chapter picks up immediately after chapter 4, the penultimate day of wimbledon. A lil bit more Alex and Shane before Ilya crashes the party.

Shane had left his hotel the afternoon before with his carry-on bag, a suit bag, and no particular plan beyond the next tennis match. The carry-on was on the floor of Alex's bedroom, its content half unpacked on the bench at the end of the bed. It looked strange sitting there on the dark wood floor, his things in Alex’s space. Not bad strange. Just different. He’d never had a bag in Rozanov’s apartment. He’d never needed one. You didn’t bring a change of clothes to something you were pretending was a hookup.

Alex was in the bathroom, water running into the sink. Shane sat on the edge of the bed, his socks still folded in his lap, listening to the water running and Alex moving around, and thought for the first time that he didn't want to go home. Not to Montreal, not yet.

The bathroom door opened. Alex came out, still not dressed, wearing only navy boxer briefs. He crossed to the closet and pulled out a hanger without looking at Shane.

“You’re still sitting there,” Alex said.

“I’m deciding.”

“Between what, socks and more socks?”

Shane looked down at the two pairs in his lap. One grey. One navy. “Which ones.”

Alex turned, shirt hooked on one finger. “For Wimbledon. Where no one will see your socks unless you cross your legs, and then only the royal box will know.”

“I’ll know.”

“Then the navy ones.” Alex padded back into the bathroom. “Of course, I'll see them later when I take them off you."

Shane’s ears went hot. He had no idea how Alex managed to make something like socks sound sexy, but he did. He put on the navy socks, then stood and pulled on his trousers—stone-coloured, tapered, the ones he'd picked out the day before. He buttoned his shirt, the only other sound Alex’s electric toothbrush coming from the bathroom. Tie done, Shane walked toward the bathroom. He wanted to see Alex and had no idea why.

The bathroom was brighter than the rest of the flat, all white tile and one long mirror over the sink. Alex stood at the sink, still shirtless, running water over his hands. Shane moved behind him, close, and met Alex’s eyes in the mirror.

“Hi,” Alex said.

"I wanted to check my hair," Shane managed.

"Of course you did," Alex smirked.

Shane put his hands on Alex’s waist. His skin was still warm from the shower. Alex leaned back, just an inch, enough that his shoulder blades pressed against Shane’s chest. Shane dropped his forehead to the back of Alex’s neck. They stayed like that, not speaking. Shane could smell the soap on him, something clean and fresh. He could see his own hands, dark against Alex’s stomach, thumbs resting on the waistband of his briefs. He could see the faint marks from the night before on Alex's neck, the ones Shane had left with his mouth, which would later be covered by Alex's shirt.

Alex shifted, and Shane lifted his head. In the mirror, Alex was watching him. His eyes were lighter than usual in the bathroom light, almost grey.

“You look like you’re thinking something very serious,” Alex said.

“I’m just looking.”

“At yourself?”

“At us.” Shane’s voice came out quieter than he meant. “We look good together.”

Alex’s mouth curved. “Obscenely good. I'm sure I read it in one of the tabloids.”

Shane pressed a kiss to the side of Alex’s neck. Alex’s hand came up, wet and cool, and closed over Shane’s where it rested on his stomach. Alex tangled their fingers, lifted Shane’s hand, and kissed the inside of his wrist. Then he let go and turned, and Shane found himself caught in a slow, deliberate kiss, pushed gently back against the bathroom wall, Alex’s hand at his jaw. The kiss was deep, hungry, Alex’s hands in Shane’s hair. Shane’s hands found Alex’s waist, pulling him closer, and for a moment, the suit, the cameras, the day ahead—none of it mattered.

They broke apart, Shane's gaze lingering on Alex, half dressed, as flushed as Shane felt. It made him want to undo every button on the shirt he'd just done, so he could press his bare skin against Alex's. He wanted to keep kissing him, and then get on his knees in front of him.

“Later,” Alex said, reading it on his face. “Or we’ll be late.”

“You’re the one who started it.”

“I didn't start anything. I was in here minding my own business."

Shane laughed, Alex reached past him for a bottle on the shelf and sprayed his own neck, once, and set it down. Shane didn't move out of the way. "Is that the one you always wear?" He asked. Alex looked at him in the mirror. Shane held out his wrists. Alex picked the bottle up again. He would smell it all day, through the whole match, every time he brought his hand up to his face.

They finished dressing in the bedroom, Shane fastening his tie, Alex buttoning his shirt in the mirror. Shane watched Alex tuck the shirt in, do his own tie, fasten his watch, push his hair back with his fingers. He looked confident. Like a man who had stopped checking to see if cameras were on him, because it simply didn't matter any more. That ease had unsettled Shane a week ago. Now it settled him.

Alex shrugged into a blazer. “Ready?”

Shane clipped his Rolex on. The same one he had worn to the first match. “Ready.”

There was a car already waiting outside. It had tinted windows, and when Alex opened the door for Shane, the driver said, “Good afternoon, Your Highness. Mr. Hollander.”

The car ride to Wimbledon was quiet. Shane stared out the window, his knee bouncing. The streets of London blurred past. Yesterday it had been fine. Yesterday the photos had come out and the world hadn’t ended, and Alex had said everything’s fine and they’d gone to bed and it had been fine. But yesterday they’d been inside. Today they were going to walk into the All England Club, together, in front of every camera that had run those photos, and sit next to each other in the most photographed seats in tennis.

Alex put a hand on Shane's knee, stilling it.

“We can arrive separately,” Alex said. “If you want. It’s not too late for that.”

Shane looked at him. Alex’s face was calm, unbothered. He was offering Shane an out and Shane knew it.

“No,” Shane said. “I want to go in with you.”

“Okay.” Alex’s hand stayed on his knee. “Then we go in together.”

The car pulled into a side road and stopped outside a private entrance. Security men moved toward the vehicle. Alex’s ease didn’t waver. He thanked the driver, opened the door, and waited for Shane to get out.

Shane took a deep breath, steeling himself. He braced for the panic, and it came, but it was smaller than he expected. More like a flinch than a flood. Partly, he knew it was because it was already out there. The worst of the photos—Shane rumpled and flushed, leaving Alex's apartment early in the morning—was all over social media and newspapers already. He couldn't make it go away, but equally there was nothing left to expose. He got out of the car.

Photographers were already there, held behind a line. The noise hit Shane, voices calling out, cameras clicking, the buzz of the Wimbledon crowd in the background. Shane smiled out of habit, his reserved smile, and looked toward Alex. Alex was not smiling. He was scanning the crowd with a bored, pleasant face, the expression of someone who was used to this, but did not feel the need to please or entertain the press.

He leant slightly towards Shane. "Let's go. I've got you."

Shane followed Alex through the maze of white tents and onto the lawn. Everywhere, people looked at them. No one said anything. Shane had been famous for most of his adult life, but only in North America, and only among hockey fans. No one had looked at him since he arrived in London. At home, the only people who stared at him in public were kids or guys wearing Metros jerseys. Now it was everyone. Or at least it felt like it was.

But Shane realised it became easier if he thought of it as a game. They were supposed to look like two men who happened to be at a tennis match together, maybe friends, maybe something else, but he wouldn't reveal more than he wanted to. Every step was a line of play. Don’t touch Alex’s back. Don’t stand too close. Don’t let your eyes go to his mouth while the cameras click. Shane found he could do it if he thought of it as hockey—the same split attention, the same awareness of where every body was on the ice.

Alex kept a careful distance. He didn’t touch Shane now they were in public, not even a hand on the back, none of the light contact they’d had before. But every few steps, he’d glance over, or let his arm bump against Shane's, just enough to remind him he was there.

And at the entrance to the Royal Box, Alex paused and put a hand on Shane’s arm, just briefly. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Shane’s voice was thin. They'd already agreed between them not to go to the Rolex suite. Not until Shane's mom had spoken to their publicity team to see their reaction to the photos.

Alex watched him for a long moment, then nodded, and led the way up the stairs.

Astrid was already in the Royal Box when they arrived, standing in the shade at the back, talking to a man in a blazer. She was tall like Alex, with the same colouring, her dark blond hair twisted up, the same grey-blue eyes. She looked effortless and expensive, like Alex, and when she saw Alex and Shane, her face brightened. She smiled at the man in the blazer, said something, and walked over to them.

“You’re late,” she said, kissing Alex’s cheek. Then she turned to Shane, her hand outstretched. “You must be Shane. I’m Astrid.”

Shane shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

She grinned. “Likewise. He's been insufferably cheerful this week. Now I see why. Alex has told me almost nothing about you, which means he likes you enormously and knows I'll tease him mercilessly.”

Alex groaned. “Astrid.”

She laughed, unrepentant. “What? It’s true. The whole family are talking about it. Mama asked me if I’d met him and I said no, and she said, ‘He sounds happy on the phone.’ And Papa said, 'Is he bringing him home? That'll be the first since Erik.'"

"Astrid," Alex hissed. His cheeks had gone pink. Shane had never seen him blush before, and he loved it. It did something to him, that pink. Shane found himself grinning like an idiot.

Astrid linked her arm through Shane’s. “Come on, I'll show you our seats. You can tell me all about how you managed to put up with my brother for this long.”

Shane glanced back at Alex, who just shook his head, smiling. Shane let Astrid lead him to the seats, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. They were seated toward the back of the Royal Box, Shane in the middle of Astrid and Alex. He wondered if she'd arranged it that way, or maybe Alex had asked her to. Either way it worked. The cameras could photograph the three of them and get a picture of the prince, the princess and the hockey player watching tennis. It gave them another story that wasn't a scandal.

The tennis began. Shane forgot the cameras for stretches, caught up in the rallies, in the murmurs of the crowd, the athleticism and control of the two women hammering a ball at each other. He understood the drive it took to compete at any sport at this level. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching the game go back and forth.

The whole time, Shane remained aware of Alex, his knee two inches from his, his arm on the rest between them. The wanting to touch him was a steady pressure in Shane's chest.

Alex leaned over, not that close, not enough for cameras to make anything of it. “You’re doing very well,” he murmured.

“At watching tennis?”

“At being watched.”

Shane turned. Alex was already looking at him. For one second, there was nobody else in the box. Then Astrid said, “If you two are going to stare at each other like that, for God’s sake go somewhere with fewer cameras.” She did not whisper. Alex snorted and sat back.

The second set started. Shane's heart was beating fast, but not from fear. He wanted to be here, with Alex. He wanted to be seen with him, by people who knew, even by cameras who would put it in front of the world. That was new. The wanting—wanting Alex, wanting freedom—outweighed the fear. He didn't know how that had happened, but it had.

He looked back at Alex. His hand was resting on the armrest between them. Then he looked up, at the cameras angled up toward the box. The two weeks had taught him that maybe it didn't matter any more. If they were seen. He thought about all the years of hiding, hiding from everyone, hiding his feelings from Rozanov, even hiding from himself. The quickly averted eyes, the separate exits, the manufactured public hatred. Years of it. All of it aimed at protecting a version of himself he didn’t even want to be anymore.

This was different. Alex made Shane feel reckless and safe at the same time, which two weeks before he would have said was impossible. He looked at Alex, at the way the sunlight caught the gold in his hair, at the easy confidence in his posture.

He put his hand over Alex’s.

Just rested it there. On top of Alex’s hand, on the arm of the chair, in full view, with the women's final going on in front of them. Alex’s head turned. For once he looked genuinely startled—actually caught off guard—and Shane almost laughed, because he'd managed to surprise the man who was never surprised.

“Hi,” Shane whispered.

“Hi.” Alex’s eyes dropped to their hands and came back up. He didn’t move his hand away. He turned it over instead, slow, palm up, inviting. Shane laced his fingers through Alex's and squeezed, and Alex squeezed back, turning to face the court again like nothing had happened, like they'd done it a thousand times before.

Shane faced the court too. His heart was pounding. Somewhere a camera was capturing it, probably, and it didn't matter, because he had decided it either way. He kept waiting for the regret to arrive and it didn't come. Instead, he felt calm. This was the bravest thing he'd ever done, and nobody in that crowd would ever know it but Alex, whose thumb was moving slowly over Shane's knuckles, back and forth.

In the third set, during a changeover, Alex said, "You should come to Sweden."

Shane's stomach flipped. "What?"

"After this." Alex nodded at the court, like they were talking about the match. "The summer's beautiful. We could go sailing."

Shane looked at him. He hadn't let him think about anything with Alex beyond Sunday.

"I've got pre-season."

"Not for weeks."

"You want me to come to Sweden?"

Alex shrugged, not looking at Shane. "If you want. Just a thought."

"Maybe," Shane said, because he didn't want to say no but didn't feel ready to say yes.

The day wore on, the women's final ended, and the men's doubles began. The box had filled up. The heat of the sun, the noise of the crowd, all the people around them—it all started to blur together. Shane's jaw ached, his fingers white-knuckling the armrest. He tried to focus on the match, but the numbers on the scoreboard swam in front of his eyes. His head started to ache. It was too bright, too loud.

Alex noticed. He leaned in, his voice low. “Do you want to leave?”

Shane shook his head, automatic.

“I’m fine,” Shane said, and then, after a moment, “Just a lot of people.”

At the next changeover, Alex looked at Shane again, and stood. "Let's go."

Shane didn't hesitate this time. He nodded and got up.

"Astrid, we're going to head off." Alex said. "I'll call you later."

She looked up, surprised for a moment, but as soon as she saw Shane's face she nodded. "Okay," she said, giving him a small smile. "Shane, it was lovely to meet you. Hope to see you again."

Alex guided Shane out of the row, and down the stairs, a relief to be out of the sun. Near the exit, with everyone looking, Alex put his hand on the small of Shane's back and guided him through. Shane didn't flinch away. They walked through the crowd like that. Shane could feel the stares, hear the click of the camera shutters, but it didn't matter. He wanted it. He wanted everyone to see.

The car was waiting, and Shane let out a long breath as the door closed behind them, muffling the noise of the crowd.

Alex’s hand found his again, their fingers tangling together. “Better?”

Shane nodded. “Better.”

Back at the flat, Alex took Shane's jacket and hung it on the hook by the door, then took Shane's hand and led him to the sofa. He opened the windows and pulled the curtains closed, leaving a small gap for the breeze to come in. Alex put a glass of water in his hand, and Shane sat in the dimmed room and came back to himself slowly.

“Sorry,” Shane said, after a while.

“For what?”

“Leaving early. I just—” He turned his head to look at Alex. “It just got too much. It happens sometimes. Too much going on, too many people. Too long being on. I hit a wall."

"I could see it," Alex reached over and took Shane's hand. "I spent the last hour wondering how much longer you had in you. Today was a lot. You lasted longer than I would have."

"Nothing bothers you."

"It used to. I've just had more practice." Alex ran his thumb over Shane's knuckles. It was grounding.

Shane looked at him. The curtains billowed behind him, the breeze filling the room.

"That was a big thing you did today," Alex added, quieter.

"I know," Shane said. "But it didn't feel like that at the time. I just wanted to, and I want to stop not doing things I want to do."

Alex didn't say anything to that. He just lifted Shane's hand and kissed the back of it, once, and put it back on the seat between them, and didn't let go. Shane closed his eyes, the last of the day's noise fading away, and just let himself sit there.

Shane lay on Alex's bed, the room cool and dark. They'd taken turns showering, and now Alex was somewhere in the flat, moving around. The day was behind him—the cameras and the heat and the noise—but at the back of his mind was Alex's invitation. Sweden. Tomorrow was the final, and he didn't know what would come after.

He turned his head and looked at the empty half of the bed. Maybe it would be their last night. Maybe they'd have one more. He had a flight back to Montreal booked for Monday. He could change it—maybe they could have a week more, if he decided to go to Sweden. He wasn't sure of anything, except one thing—in that moment, Shane was sure he didn't want to waste another minute lying in the dark thinking about maybes. He got up and went to find Alex.

He was in the kitchen, throwing together some salad, cheese, bread torn in half. Shane offered to help and was offered a glass of wine instead, which he took, and was told to sit. They ate at the kitchen island, the flat dim, one lamp on in the living room. As they finished, Alex's phone buzzed. He picked it up, mouthing Astrid, sorry to Shane, and started speaking in rapid Swedish. Shane picked up the plates as Alex talked, and washed them in the sink.

After a minute or two, Alex joined him. "She was asking if you're feeling okay now. She said we didn't miss much. The doubles went on and on, and it only got hotter." He grinned. "She liked you. Said I'm punching above my weight."

Shane laughed. "You're literally royalty."

"Barely." Alex took a plate out of Shane's hand and started drying it. Their shoulders brushed together every time one of them moved, and Shane was aware of it each time, a warm point of contact, and he realised he was seeking it out rather than shying away. Two weeks ago he couldn't have imagined this. Standing in a man's kitchen in his socked feet, doing dishes like it was one night out of years.

They ended up on the sofa with the wine, not watching anything, just talking, Alex sitting at one end, Shane's legs stretched out, feet in Alex's lap. He felt good. Better than good. He put his feet down and moved up the sofa,putting his glass on the side table, and settled against Alex's shoulder.

"Are you tired?" Alex said. "We can just have an early night if you need to sleep."

"I'm fine." Shane's hand was on Alex's thigh, thumb moving slowly over the seam of his shorts. Alex set his own glass on the table and kissed Shane lightly, one hand cupping his cheek. When he started to sit back, Shane grabbed his wrist, holding him where he was. Alex met his eyes, then went back, kissing him deeper, his tongue sliding against Shane's. Shane's fingers tangled in Alex's hair, pulling him in. When Alex said, "Come here, sit on my lap," in his calm voice, that said I've got you, you just need to follow, Shane felt the familiar drop of his stomach, the relief of the decision making being taken out of his hands. Shane crawled into Alex's lap, straddling his thighs, and then they were chest to chest, kissing slow and deep. It was safe, predictable. He knew where this was going to go, Alex taking control and Shane submitting to it. He loved it, the praise, the way Alex made him feel wanted. It was easy. But suddenly, Shane didn't want easy.

He pulled back.

"Can we go to the bedroom?" he said.

"Of course." Alex stood, offering his hand to Shane and pulling him to his feet. Alex kissed him once more, quickly, and then led him down the hall, fingers still tangled together. As soon as they got into the bedroom, Alex kissed him again, starting to guide him back towards the bed. Shane let himself sink into it, let Alex move him, let himself be wanted. But as the back of his knees hit the bed, he stopped, eyes on Alex's mouth.

"Wait."

Alex stopped immediately, his eyes searching Shane's face. "You okay?"

Shane’s heart was already going too fast, and they hadn’t even done anything yet. “Yeah, I’m—can I ask you something?”

"Of course." Alex waited, patient.

Shane looked at him. "Can we try something different tonight? I want to—" He stopped. It was harder than he expected. He'd been thinking about it on and off since they got on the sofa and he'd rehearsed it in his head, but the words felt wrong now.

"Tell me," said Alex.

"Can I— I want to tell you what to do."

The silence lasted only a second, but it was a long second. Alex breathed out.

“You want to be in charge,” Alex said.

“Maybe.”

"Of me."

Shane's face heated. "If that's okay."

“Shane.” Alex lifted Shane’s chin with two fingers. “It's more than okay.” His pupils had gone wide, his mouth curving in a slow smile. “I'd love it. If you really want to”

Shane swallowed. “I want to. I’ve been thinking about it since earlier. I want to try it."

Alex took two steps back. "Then I'm all yours. Tell me what to do."

Shane's mouth went dry. Because now he had to actually do it. He remembered Alex's words—you're going to undress for me, slowly, I want to watch—completely calm. And before that, further back, a hotel room and a low Russian voice saying on your knees, Hollander, like it was nothing. Shane had spent years being told what to do. He knew exactly how it went. He'd just never been the one saying it.

"Okay," Shane said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Take your shirt off."

Alex pulled it over his head in one motion. The tattoo on his bicep flexed with the movement. Shane’s eyes dropped to Alex's chest. He was broad and tanned and perfect, the lines of his abs visible.

"And your pants," Shane said.

Alex undid his pants and let them fall, kicking them to one side. Then hooked his thumbs in his briefs, and tugged them down, watching Shane watch him. His cock sprang free, hard already.

“Like this?” Alex said.

“Like that,” Shane managed. His voice came out weaker than he wanted. He cleared his throat. “Now—come here.”

Alex came and stood in front of him. Naked, calm, looking down at Shane with his eyebrows raised, waiting.

Shane wanted to touch, but he also wanted to make Alex squirm. Shane's hands went to Alex's chest, then down, fingers splaying over Alex's stomach. Alex's breathing changed, turning shallow and quick. Shane let his hand slide down, fingers grazing the crease of Alex's thigh. Alex's cock twitched. He didn't touch it yet. He wanted to see how long he could make Alex wait.

Alex's hand drifted towards his own cock and Shane batted it away. "You're not allowed to touch yourself," he said. It sounded stilted, like something Alex would say.

But Alex's mouth dropped open. "Fuck. Okay."

Shane reached out and put his hands on Alex’s hips and pulled him closer, opening his legs to let Alex between them and said, “Get on your knees. Kiss me." Alex sank to his knees and kissed him deep and slow, while Shane pulled at his own t-shirt until Alex took the hint and stripped it off him without being told, and Shane said, "I didn't say you could do that," and Alex laughed, breathless, delighted.

"Sorry," Alex said, sounding nothing of the kind. "You're very strict."

"I haven't even started."

Shane stood and undid his own pants, pulled them down and off, folding them on the edge of the bed. "Can I help?" Alex asked this time. Shane hesitated for a second, then said "Yes." He stood in front of Alex, and let him tug down his briefs. His cock was hard and leaking with precome already. Shane stepped out of them and Alex smiled wickedly, making a show of folding Shane's briefs carefully and placing them on top of his pants.

Shane sat back down on the bed. "Suck my dick." It sounded rougher than he'd imagined, but he liked how the words sounded, a jolt up his stomach. Alex said nothing, bent his head over Shane's cock. He didn't rush. He licked around the tip, then took Shane in deeper, cheeks hollowing. Shane's hips jerked up without meaning to, and Alex held him down, strong hands pinning his thighs. Shane let him.

He tried to keep quiet but he couldn't help the small desperate noise that came out. Alex looked up at him through his lashes and hummed, an approving sound, the vibration making Shane's whole body clench. Shane wanted to grab his hair, to push him down, to see how far Alex would go, but he made himself hold back. Not because he was afraid Alex wouldn't like it, but because he wanted to make it last.

Alex moved his head faster, and Shane felt himself getting close, too close. He remembered he was in charge, and he needed to do something, to slow it down. "Stop," Shane said, and Alex did, immediately. He pulled back, breathing hard, his lips shiny and red.

“Good?” Alex asked.

Shane nodded, then leaned in and took Alex's chin with his fingers, tilting it up like Alex had done to him earlier, and kissed him again, rougher this time. Alex kissed back, but didn’t try to take over. Shane bit Alex’s lower lip, not hard, and Alex’s whole body shivered.

"Stand up," Shane ordered, trying to keep his voice steady. Alex stood, his hard cock right in front of Shane, and he wanted it in his mouth. Shane stood as well. "Your turn. Sit." He spun Alex around so his knees were pressed to the edge of the bed and pushed him down. Shane knelt on the floor between Alex's legs.

Alex watched him intently, eyes dark. Shane reached up and ran his hands up Alex's calves, then higher, squeezing the muscles of his thighs. He bent forward and licked a line up Alex's cock, then took the head into his mouth, working his tongue around it.

Alex groaned. "Fuck. You don't have to—"

"I want to." Shane set the rhythm, slow and deep. He kept his eyes on Alex the whole time, checking for approval, for signs that he was doing it right. Alex never looked away; he just watched, breathing ragged, until his hands went to Shane’s hair.

Shane put a hand on Alex’s thigh, pressed him back. “No,” he said. “Hands off.” Alex let go, hands going to the sheets, fingers digging in.

“Fuck,” Alex said, voice shaking. “Shane, you look—” but he didn’t finish.

Shane sucked him until Alex was panting, and then pulled off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Alex looked wrecked.

Shane stood, pointed at the bed. "Lie down."

Alex scrambled back onto the bed and lay back, propped on his elbows. Shane had to stop for a second and just look. There was no amusement on Alex's face now. His usual calm and control was gone, and he waited for Shane's next order, expression pure want. It struck Shane that this was what he must look like, from above. This trust and willingness. He’d never seen it from this side before.

“Condoms and lube,” Shane said. “In the drawer?”

“You know where they are. You put them back last time.” A pause. Alex did smile, now. “Very neatly. I’ve been meaning to say. It was adorable.”

“Shut up,” Shane said. Alex's mouth dropped open. Shane moved around the bed, got them, and climbed onto the bed over him.

He made Alex stay still while he kissed his way down—his throat, his chest, the flat line of his stomach—and when Alex’s hands went into his hair again, Shane said, “No. Hands on the bed,” and Alex exhaled a laugh that was more like a groan and put his hands on the bed, gripping the sheet, and Shane felt the power of that go through him like a current. He does what I say. He’s doing what I say.

He took Alex back into his mouth and looked up the length of him while he did it. Alex’s head had fallen back, his chest rising, and when Shane went slow—deliberately, infuriatingly slow, the way Alex had done to him that first morning—Alex’s hips lifted off the bed and he said "Fuck, Shane."

Shane pulled off. “Quiet.”

“You’re joking.”

“You’re supposed to be following orders.”

“I am following orders, I’m following them so well, you’re—God.” Alex lifted his head to look at him. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. “Where has this been hiding?”

“Nowhere,” Shane said. “Roll over. No—actually. Stay there. I want you on your back.”

Shane wondered for a moment, what Alex would have done if Shane had told him to roll over, slide his hand down Alex's ass and pressed his finger against his hole. He wondered what it would be like to fuck Alex. If Alex would want him to. But not this time. He wanted to be fucked, he wanted Alex inside him. He just wanted to be the one in charge. For once.

He bent and kissed Alex, slow, letting his tongue slide in. He could feel Alex’s hand start to come up, then stop.

“You may touch me,” Shane said against his mouth. “Hips only.”

Alex’s hands settled on Shane’s hips, warm and firm. Shane moved his mouth down Alex’s neck, to his collarbone, lower, and took Alex’s cock in his hand at last. Alex’s hips jerked up again.

“Stay still,” Shane said.

Alex made a strained sound. “Yes. Sir.”

The word hit Shane low in his stomach. He was surprised how much he enjoyed it. He squeezed Alex's cock, drawing a quiet moan, and then worked Alex with a loose, steady fist, thumbing the head, spreading the wetness there. He watched Alex’s arms tense, his stomach muscles quiver.

“You're doing so well for me," he said, echoing Alex's words. They felt strange coming out of his mouth, and he hesitated, all the nerves coming back. He wanted to keep going, but more than that, he wanted to see Alex lose control. Not the way he had smirked and agreed to let Shane take charge, but for real. All the way gone. Shane wanted to make Alex beg.

He bent and sucked the head of Alex’s cock into his mouth.

Alex swore. Shane took him deeper, using his tongue the way he’d learned Alex liked, and Alex’s whole body went rigid with the effort of staying still. It was heady, having Alex hard and gasping beneath him because Shane had told him not to move. Shane could feel his own cock heavy and leaking against the sheets. He didn't know how much longer he could last without having Alex inside him.

He pulled off. Alex groaned, frustrated. "Shane, please." There it was. Shane smirked. He'd done it.

"Please what?"

"I want— I need to be inside you. Now." Alex's voice was rougher than Shane had ever heard it.

Shane wondered how far he could push it. "Sit up. Sit at the end of the bed. I want you to watch. You don't get to touch."

He thought Alex might refuse, but he did it, moving to the end of the bed and sitting on his knees. His cock was rock hard and leaking.

Shane grabbed the lube and propped himself against the pillows, knees up, legs spread. His face was hot but he wasn't going to stop now. He felt ridiculous and powerful all at once. He poured lube onto his own fingers, too much, and it dripped down between his legs. Alex's eyes followed it.

Shane slid one finger inside himself, then two, faster than Alex would have done it. He wanted the stretch. He wanted Alex to see him doing it, to hear his long exhale from the other end of the bed. Alex's hands were curled into the sheets.

"You're killing me," Alex said.

"Good." Shane worked a third finger in, and his hips rolled, and a moan came out of him. He knew he was close enough to where he needed to be, but he wanted to push Alex a little bit more.

He pulled his fingers out and told Alex:"Swap places. I want you on your back."

Alex obeyed, and watched Shane expectantly. Shane straddled Alex's hips, and handed him the lube. "Your fingers first. Put some lube on your own fingers. Do it."

Alex did it. Carefully, one slick finger and then two, his free hand steady on Shane’s hip, his eyes fixed on Shane’s face—checking him, Shane realised, the way Shane always checked for approval. “Like that?”

“Slower,” Shane said.

Alex went slower.

“Another.”

Alex added another, and Shane's head tipped forward, his hands braced on Alex's chest, his breath going ragged. He was hovering over Alex, open on his fingers, telling him what to do and he was doing it, and it was so fucking good he didn't know why he'd never done it before. "There," he said, when Alex crooked his fingers, and Alex did it again, and Shane said, "There. Don't stop. Don't you dare," and he barely recognised his own voice.

"Shane," Alex murmured, and there was something in his voice that Shane had never heard before. "You're incredible. You're—fuck. I love this. Keep talking."

"You like this," Shane said, surprised all over again.

"Shane," Alex's hand tightened on his hip. "I've never been this hard in my life. Aren't you getting that?"

Shane laughed, and he said, "Condom. Now," and Alex didn't hesitate. He reached for the condom and rolled it on one-handed while his other hand stayed between Shane's thighs, and the look of concentration on Alex's face while he was doing made Shane want to laugh and tease him, but his own focus was narrowing and he couldn't think any more.

“Okay,” Shane reached back to line Alex's cock up to his hole. “Okay. I’m going to—”

"Yes." Alex's voice was strained.

Shane wanted Alex to grab his hips, flip him over, push in, take over, tell him how good he was. But he held on to it.

"Don't move until I tell you. Don't touch. I want you to just— watch."

"Fuck." Alex said softly.

He sank down, slowly, letting himself open up more and adjust to the stretch. It was different from this angle, deeper, his own body deciding the speed of the stretch. Shane's whole world narrowed to the slow, burning fullness. Alex made a choked sound, but he didn't move, kept his hands where Shane could see them.

Shane braced both hands on Alex’s chest and started to move.

“Slow,” Shane said.

“Slow,” Alex agreed faintly. “You’re the boss.”

It was so fucking good. Shane bounced on Alex’s cock, slow at first, then faster. Alex watched, jaw clenched, not breaking the rules.

Shane leaned back, hands braced on Alex’s thighs, using the leverage to fuck himself hard. The power, the sense of control, was dizzying. Every time Alex made a noise, or grabbed at the sheets, it went straight to Shane’s cock.

At some point, Shane lost the rhythm, his legs shaking with effort. He slowed, breathing hard. “Touch me,” he said, and Alex’s hands came up at once, gripping Shane’s hips, steadying him.

For a while it was everything. Shane set the pace, rolled his hips, found the angle that made him gasp, and every time he wanted something he said it out loud—"your hands, on me," "here, hold my hips," "harder, a little—no, back, slower, there" — and Alex obeyed every word, his eyes glazed, and his mouth saying fuck yes and so good and Shane on a loop. Shane felt drunk on it. He thought I could get used to this.

Alex was flushed to his chest, his hair dark with sweat, his mouth open. He looked undone, and Shane had done that.

“You feel so good,” Shane said, and meant it. “I want— I want you to touch me. My cock. Stroke me while you fuck me. Slow.”

Alex did. His hand closed around Shane, hot and perfect. Shane’s head fell back. For a few long moments, everything cooperated: the commands kept coming, Alex kept obeying, and the pleasure built in a tight coil.

 But.

At some point he lost it. He was coming undone in the best way, pleasure building with every roll of his hips, but his head never got to stop. He was always thinking. Faster here, am I close, what next, keep the pace, say something, don't stop moving, ease off, is he close. The pleasure was there but now his body was competing with his mind, and he wanted to let go, but he couldn't let go and run the thing at the same time. He wanted to stop thinking. To have it taken out of his hands and just feel it.

His rhythm faltered. He opened his mouth to tell Alex to do something—and there was nothing, because he couldn't think what to say, and he didn't want to say anything, he wanted to be quiet and be fucked instead of doing the fucking.

Alex noticed. His hands tightened on Shane’s hips, steadying him, and when Shane looked down at him, Alex was watching his face. "You okay?"

"Yeah— Just— I need you to do it now."

"You want me to take over?" Alex asked softly.

Shane nodded, wordless, suddenly exhausted and needing nothing more than to be held down and fucked.

Alex started to move, thrusting up to meet Shane, and the relief of being guided was so intense Shane almost came on the spot.

“Yes,” Shane gasped. “Yes — please—”

“I know,” Alex said. “I’ve got you.”

The relief was enormous. Alex fucked up into him and Shane sank into it, closed his eyes, let his forehead fall forward.

Alex read the change in Shane's body and then he was flipping him onto his back with an effortless strength that took Shane's breath. He settled over Shane, and leaned in, catching Shane's mouth in a slow, careful kiss. It was gentle, almost chaste, but the way Alex held his jaw made Shane shiver.

"You were so good at that," Alex said, and Shane's body relaxed, the lingering tension draining out of him. Alex pulled out just an inch and pushed back, his hand gripping Shane's thigh, lifting it, opening him deeper. Shane arched up into him, his legs wrapping around Alex's waist, hands tangled in Alex's hair. Alex found a rhythm Shane didn't have to think about. He was so hard, so deep, Shane's whole body was alive with it.

Shane moaned, helpless, grabbing at the sheets.

“You’re incredible,” Alex said, voice wild. “Look at you, fuck.”

Shane did, eyes locked on Alex, and let himself be pounded into the mattress.

“Harder,” Shane said. “Don’t stop.” This time it was a plea not a command. He was close already. He was losing control of his sounds, letting gasps and moans slip out with every movement. "Don't stop—please," he begged. It sounded desperate and he didn't care.

Alex didn't stop and he didn't say anything back. He hooked Shane’s legs over his shoulders and slammed in deep, the pace brutal. He moved harder, burying himself deep and fucking Shane through it. The pleasure built and built, and then Alex's voice was in his ear saying, "good boy, that's it, touch yourself, let go, come for me—"

He thrust in hard and stayed, circling his hips, and Shane came with his hand on his own cock, his whole body going tight, coming apart under Alex's weight. His hands scrabbled for grip, nails dragging lines down Alex’s back as he lost it, shooting between them in sticky, uncontrolled bursts.

He expected Alex to slow down, maybe even stop, but instead he kept going, working Shane through every aftershock. It was almost too much, his body twitching and shaking with each thrust, the pleasure blurring into oversensitivity. Shane wanted to tell him to slow down, but he also didn’t want it to end, didn’t want Alex to pull away or let go.

Alex’s breath was ragged in his ear, the rhythm of his hips turning frantic, then shuddering to a halt. He came with a low groan, burying himself to the hilt and pulsing inside Shane.

For a minute, neither of them moved. They just lay there, tangled, panting. Shane's limbs were useless. Alex's weight on him was heavy and perfect. After a while, Alex eased out and went to the bathroom, coming back with a damp cloth and cleaned Shane with the kind of casual care that made Shane's chest ache. Shane felt wrung out and shaky, his heart thudding so hard it hurt.

Alex settled beside him and pulled the sheet over them. Shane turned into the circle of his arm, his face pressed to Alex’s shoulder.

“So,” Alex said after a moment, his voice lazy and amused. “That was new.”

Shane huffed. “Don't. You’re going to be smug about it.”

"Absolutely not. You were fantastic. Scary but fantastic. I should have asked you for a safe word."

Shane groaned. "Stop."

"'Quiet,'" Alex repeated, in an imitation of Shane's commanding voice that was both accurate and deeply embarrassing. "You told me to be quiet. In my own bed."

Shane was laughing now, helpless, his face hot. He tilted his head to look up at Alex. "It worked, didn't it?"

"It most definitely worked." Alex looked down at Shane's upturned face, the teasing all gone from his face, leaving a softer and more serious expression. "Shane. It was the hottest thing that's happened to me in years. I'd pay money for you to boss me around like that again." He paused while Shane covered his face. "But it was hot because you were asking for what you wanted. Out loud. You have no idea what that looks like from where I was lying. Two weeks ago you couldn't tell me what you wanted for breakfast."

Shane took his hands away from his face. He looked at the ceiling, avoiding Alex's gaze.

"I don't know if I'd want to do it all the time," he admitted. "I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it. But after a while it was— it's a lot. By the end I just wanted you to—" He stopped.

"I know. I felt it."

"Was that— was it bad? That I wanted to stop?"

"No," Alex said firmly. "It was you knowing what you wanted. That was the whole point. You told me what you wanted all the way through. You wanted to be in charge, and you were. Then you just wanted to be taken, so you let me take you. You got what you wanted the whole time."

Shane lay there and thought about it, what Alex had said. It was right. He hadn't failed at taking charge. He'd wanted both things at different times, and he'd had both, and they'd both been his decision.

“Next time,” Alex said, his eyes closing, his voice going drowsy with sleep, “If you want to be in charge again, I'll allow it."

"You'll allow it."

"Mm. As long as you do the voices. I want quiet on repeat."

“There won’t be a next time if you keep talking.”

“There’s going to be a next time,” Alex said, smug and half-asleep.

Shane didn't reply. But he fitted himself closer into Alex’s side, and felt Alex’s arm come around him, and he lay awake a little longer in the warm dark, listening to the city through the open window, and the thought he fell asleep on was not about hockey, or Canada, or anyone in a hotel room anywhere. It was: Will there be a next time?

The morning light filtered through the curtains, soft and golden. Shane lay still, Alex's chest pressed to his back, his breath slow and even. Alex's arm was draped over his waist, his fingers curled loosely against Shane's stomach. He could feel the warmth of Alex's body, the quiet rhythm of his breathing. He didn't want to move. He didn't want to wake up. Because when he did, he'd have to face the fact that this might be their last day, and he still didn't know what to do about how that made him feel.

Behind him Alex stirred. He pressed a kiss to the back of Shane's neck. "Morning," he murmured, his voice rough with sleep. "I know you're awake. You feel all tense."

Shane turned to face him, his fingers tracing the line of Alex’s jaw. “Morning.”

Alex’s eyes were half-lidded, his hair tousled. He leaned in, kissing Shane slow and sweet. Shane’s hand slid into Alex’s hair, pulling him closer.

Alex pulled back first, his thumb brushing Shane’s cheekbone. “We should talk.”

Shane’s chest tightened. “Yeah.”

"I'm flying back to Sweden on Tuesday. The offer still stands."

"I know. I've been thinking about it."

"So have I. Not just about the trip though. About what happens after." Alex propped himself up on one elbow, his eyes serious. “I don’t want this to end.”

Shane exhaled. “Neither do I.”

"There's something I want to say," Alex said. "Don't say anything, just listen, okay?"

Shane's stomach tightened. "Okay."

Alex looked at him for a long moment and then he said, "I'm not going to ask you for more. Not because I don't want you. I've thought about it more than I've thought about anything in a long time. But I know what your life is. A few weeks from now you'll be back in training. Then your season starts, and it's nine months of your year, and you're the captain, and you're one of the best players alive, at the top of your game. I'm not going to ask you to walk away from that, for someone you've known for two weeks. I won't do that. It wouldn't be fair to either of us."

Shane opened his mouth. Alex held up a hand, gently, and Shane closed it again.

"But I can't leave it unsaid either," Alex went on. His voice was steady, but he wasn't looking at Shane any more, his fingers moving back and forth on the sheets between them. "If things were different, if you played for a team in Stockholm, if I'd met you at some other point in your life—I would never let you go." A small smile. "That's it. That's what I wanted to say."

Shane opened his mouth to argue and then closed it. Alex was right. The season started in September, and before that there was training and pre-season games and media days and brand shoots and a hundred other obligations that had been his whole life. He couldn't disappear to Sweden. Not now.

"I'm not going to come to Sweden. Not because I don't want to. But if I come, I'll just have to do this again in two weeks. And it'll be worse." His throat felt tight. "I don't want it to end either. But you're right. Hockey is— it's my whole life, Alex. It's been my whole life since I was four years old. This week is the first time I've ever—" He stopped, unable to get the words out. Tried again. "This is the first time I've ever thought my life could be something other than that. But that's— I only just started thinking that. Two weeks isn't enough to change my whole life."

"I know."

"We could see each other in holidays."

"Yes, we could. But I think we both know that wouldn't be enough."

Shane pressed his hands to his eyes. "What if it didn't have to be Sweden? What if you came to Canada?"

Alex was quiet for a moment. Then: "I've thought about that too. I thought I could visit. A week, maybe two, during your winter break. We could see each other next summer. But you're right, it wouldn't be enough. I have commitments in Sweden. The foundation. Other charities. I'm not an important royal, but I am a public one, and I do work that requires me to be in Sweden. It's not impossible. Nothing is impossible. But it's not something I could do any time soon."

"I wouldn't ask you to give that up."

"I know you wouldn't." Alex brought Shane's hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "That's the problem isn't it? We're both far too sensible."

Shane laughed, but it came out choked. "I hate this."

“Me too.” Alex kissed his hand again, then his wrist, then let go.

Shane looked at him—Alex's beautiful face, his eyes gone dark with sadness. He wanted to touch him. His hands went to Alex's jaw, drawing him in until their foreheads met.

"Don't text me," Shane said.

Alex went still.

"That came out wrong." Shane pressed his hand over his eyes. "I mean I don't want to do it like that. Waiting for a text. Waiting for a week here and there. It'd just be this again. Every time."

Alex was quiet for a while.

"You're right," he said.

"So this is it."

"This is it." Alex found Shane's hand and held it.

"What about today?" Shane asked.

"Today, we go to the final. We'll drink some champagne, and watch two men playing tennis. And then we say goodbye." Alex shifted down the bed, and pulled Shane with him, and the sheet slid over them both. And for a while, they just lay there, saying nothing.

They were supposed to be getting ready. Shane stood in the bedroom doorway with his coffee watching Alex get dressed. Alex was shirtless, fastening his trousers, and Shane looked at the line of his shoulders, the tattoos, the strip of stomach above his trousers. His hair was still damp from the shower, and then he saw Shane standing there and smiled.

“What,” Alex said.

“Nothing.” Shane came in and set his coffee on the dresser. “You’re slow.”

“I’m a prince. I don’t rush.” Alex pulled his shirt on, buttoned it, then reached for his watch on the nightstand, and looked at Shane again. His eyes dropped to Shane’s chest, bare, the towel around his waist. “You should put clothes on. Or take that off. Those are the options. Standing there like that is not an option.”

Shane put the towel on the dresser next to his coffee.

Alex barked out a laugh. Then he stopped. He crossed the room and put his hands on Shane's waist. His hands were warm and he looked at Shane's face for a long moment before he kissed him. Shane thought he'd feel awkward, or sad. Instead, he only felt the urge to touch Alex, to have him one more time and memorise every part of him.

The kiss wasn't like the others. It was slow, without purpose. Alex's tongue slid against his, and his hands stayed where they were, resting lightly on Shane's bare skin. Shane slid his arms around Alex's back and felt the cotton of his shirt and the muscle underneath it and they stood there kissing like they had nowhere to be.

Which wasn't true. They were supposed to be at Wimbledon.

Shane undid the buttons that Alex had just fastened, and slid the shirt off his shoulders. Then he reached for Alex's trousers and unbuttoned them. Alex let them fall to the floor and stepped out of them, and stood patiently while Shane pulled his briefs down as well. Neither of them said anything. They just moved toward the bed, pausing to kiss against the closet door, against the foot of the bed, until Alex sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled Shane to stand between his knees. Alex looked up at him, and Shane looked down, and for a moment they were perfectly still.

"Today feels strange," Shane said.

“I know.” Alex ran his hands up the backs of Shane’s thighs. “Do you want to stop?”

“No.” Shane shook his head. “I want to keep going. Just slow.”

Alex kissed Shane’s stomach. “Come here.”

 Shane crawled into Alex's lap, their mouths pressed together, Alex's cock already hard against Shane's stomach.

Shane broke the kiss first, and pushed Alex onto his back. He looked down at him, spread out on the sheets, wanting to see every muscle and the way Alex's body shivered under him. Alex reached up, running his hands down Shane's ribs, and then lower, cupping his ass. Shane wanted to drag it out forever, but he needed it now.

He lay down on top of Alex, and they ended up rolling together, so they were face to face. Alex's hand was on Shane's hip, thumb circling over bone. Shane traced the line of Alex's collarbone with one finger, down his chest, over the flat muscle of his stomach, then back up to his face. He held Alex's face, steady, his thumb running across Alex's mouth. Alex's eyes fluttered closed, his lips parted, and he took Shane's thumb in his mouth, sucking it.

Shane leaned in and kissed Alex, and their legs tangled. Alex's cock pressed against Shane's, both of them hard, and Shane's breath caught. He pushed into the touch, and Alex moaned against his mouth.

Shane reached down and took them both in his hand, loose and slow. Alex's forehead dropped to his shoulder. For a while they moved like that, the heat building without urgency. Shane could feel Alex's pulse against his palm, the slickness gathering at their tips.

Neither of them told the other what to do. No one was in charge, giving the orders. This morning there was just Alex's mouth on his stomach, Shane's hands in his hair, not pushing or pulling, just resting there. And when Alex took Shane's cock into his mouth it was slow and he stayed there until Shane's thighs were shaking, and then Shane pulled him up by the shoulders and said, "My turn," and Alex got on his back without a word.

Shane took his time, enjoying the taste of Alex, the sound Alex made when Shane used his hand and his mouth together. Alex's fingers moved through his hair. Like he was petting him, not guiding. Shane looked up once and Alex was watching him with his head tipped back and his eyes half closed, and his expression wasn't the heated, intense look he usually got. It was something softer. Almost sad.

Shane's chest clenched. But he kept going.

They took turns moving against each other for a long while without anyone saying anything, and Shane thought, this is the last time, and then he stopped thinking about it, because it made his throat tight.

After a while, Alex reached over to the nightstand, taking out a condom and lube. He poured it into his hand and slid his fingers down between Shane's legs, watching Shane's face the whole time. Shane nodded once, and Alex pressed in. He worked him open with a tenderness that made Shane's chest hurt. One finger, then another, then another, slowly, always watching. Shane's hand found Alex's arm and held him, the pleasure spreading through him.

Shane shifted, and Alex pulled out. "Okay?" Alex asked.

"Yeah. Like this." Shane kissed him, and then turned on his side, facing away. Alex understood without asking. He settled behind Shane and drew Shane's leg up over his own, and pressed his fingers back into him, his mouth on the back of Shane's neck. Shane closed his eyes. Alex's other arm was under Shane's head and he could feel Alex's heartbeat against his back.

"Okay?" Alex repeated, against his skin.

"Yes." Shane pushed back against his hand. "Yes, I'm ready. I want—" He didn't know how to finish it.

“I know,” Alex said. “I know.”

He pushed in slowly, and Shane breathed through it, through the stretch, through the fullness, and Alex didn’t move for a while after, just held there, deep inside him, his arm wrapped around Shane’s chest and his palm flat over Shane’s heart. They stayed like that. Shane could feel Alex breathing. His own heartbeat under Alex’s hand.

Alex started to move, and it was barely a thrust at all at first—just a deep, slow rocking, staying inside him. After a while Shane reached back and found Alex's hip, pulled at him, and Alex shifted them both—lifted Shane's leg higher, changed the angle—and the next push went so deep that Shane felt like his whole body tightened around him, and Alex groaned into his neck and said "Shane."

He turned his head, straining, and Alex leaned over his shoulder and kissed him, the angle awkward but neither of them cared. Shane wrapped his hand around himself and Alex's hand reached over and covered his, and both of their hands moved with the rhythm of Alex's hips.

"Don't stop," Shane breathed.

"Not going to," Alex replied, thrusting deeper, and Shane felt the warmth spreading all over his body, Alex's mouth on his shoulder. Alex's hand tightened on his cock.

"Alex—" Shane said, and couldn't get any other words out.

"Yes," Alex said.

Shane came—it rolled out of him long and slow, his body clenching around Alex in waves, come spilling over both their hands, and Alex kept moving through it, keeping the same pace, until he gave one long thrust and he came too, his face pressed into Shane's neck.

Afterward, neither of them moved. Alex stayed inside him for a long time. His hand was still over Shane's heart. Shane lay there with his eyes closed, feeling the rise and fall of Alex's breathing on his back, and then there was a dampness under his lashes, and he realised he was crying without meaning to. He didn't know if Alex felt it, or if he made a noise. He didn't say anything. He just pulled Shane closer and kissed the back of his neck, once, and left his mouth there for a long time.

"We should get up," Alex said eventually, moving his hand through Shane's hair.

"Five more minutes."

Alex huffed. "Five. We're already an hour later than planned."

"The final doesn't start til two. We've got plenty of time."

"That's what you said an hour ago."

"And I was right."

Alex's hand kept moving through his hair. "What time's your flight tomorrow?"

Shane had to think about it. "Afternoon. Two-something."

"Mm." His hand didn't stop. "I can get your bags sent to your hotel later. If that's what you want."

"Okay."

They got up. They showered again, together this time, mostly silent, exchanging small, careful touches—soap on a shoulder, a hand on a hip, a kiss to the nape of a neck. They dressed for the final in silence, Shane in a pale suit and Alex in a dark one, and when Shane turned to check himself in the mirror, Alex stepped behind him and straightened his tie.

"Ready?" Alex said into his ear.

Shane nodded.

They walked out of the apartment together, down the stairs and onto the street. It was bright, warm, the city alive with people. A car was waiting to take them back to Wimbledon for the last time.

Chapter End Notes

*Sigh* I'm so sad about breaking them up.
Hope the reunion with Ilya is worth it. He's got a LOT of work to do.

I'm such a fan of Alex I can't imagine this is going to be the end for him and Shane. Pretty sure there's going to be an Alex POV bonus chapter at least, I really want to get in his head! Every time I get a comment saying Alex and Shane should be together I love it so much!!

Chapter 7: Break Point

Chapter Notes

I'm blown away by all the love this fic has got, so a huge thank you for all the kudos and comments - I can't believe nearly a thousand people have read it and enjoyed it?!? I know that's not even a lot by AO3 standards but it's a huge deal to me 💝 Thank you all! And let me know what you think of the end!

This started as a silly idea for a one-shot with one smutty scene at the end, but once Alex turned up I was as gone as Shane was.

The end: Shane's worlds collide.

Ilya is very bad at this, but he's learning.

Alex fans - stick around for the notes at the end.

They didn't talk much on the drive. Alex sat looking out of the window, watching the London traffic, and Shane watched Alex's hand resting on the seat between them, not touching his. The final started at two and this was the last time they would do this.

They had agreed what was going to happen. Champagne, tennis, goodbye. Shane kept repeating it to himself like he was preparing for a game. Having structure helped. He had a plan and the plan ended with him back in his hotel room and getting on a flight at two-something tomorrow.

 At the All England Club, the car pulled up at the same private entrance as the day before.

"Ready?" Alex said.

Shane nodded once. He got out, taking a breath and making himself stand straight. Alex was beside him, buttoning his jacket. The cameras on the other side of the barriers were already going off. Shane heard his name called, then Alex's. He adjusted his sunglasses and fixed his face into his reserved smile. Not too much. Not too little.

Shane walked beside Alex through the white tents, the smell of cut grass and sunscreen now familiar. Alex didn't reach for him. There was no hand on his back, no brush of the shoulder. He thought of the distance between them three times, and each time it was because he wanted to close it, not because it was afraid of it.

As it turned out, there was no time for champagne, and Shane was secretly glad about it. He didn't think he could stand another hour of smiling and making polite conversation in the Rolex suite. He just wanted to sit next to Alex and watch the tennis and not think about what his face was doing or what his mouth was saying.

At the bottom of the stairs to the Royal Box, security waved them through, but Alex paused and glanced over.

"If it gets too much, just tell me," he said. "We can leave any time."

"I'll be okay. I'll take a break if I need to."

They went up the stairs, and Alex went straight to their seats, near the front this time. Astrid was already seated, fanning herself with a programme. She turned when she saw them, her eyes first going to Shane's face, then to Alex's, and her own smile faltered for just a moment before she recovered. She knew. Of course she knew. Shane didn't know if Alex had told her, or if she could read Alex in the way people who loved someone else could.

Shane followed. The day before, he'd felt people's eye on him, murmurs of conversation. Now, nobody was looking at him, not really. The photographs had run, the story was out there. It was yesterday's news and now he was just part of the scenery again.

Astrid stood up. "You're even later than yesterday," she said to Alex, and kissed Shane on the cheek, surprising him.

"The traffic was diabolical," Alex said. Astrid rolled her eyes, smirking, but said nothing. They took their seats, Shane in the middle again. He kept his head down, focused on the court. The players were warming up, the stands starting to fill. Shane watched, Alex's knee two inches from his.

The first game was halfway through when Shane saw him.

He was scanning the box without meaning to, looking around and behind him, when his eyes went past a face and came back to it. His whole body stopped.

Ilya.

Three rows back, off to the left. Sitting at the end of a row, in a dark suit, black shirt open at the collar, sunglasses on. His hair was a mess. He stood out against all the pale clothes and linen. He looked wrong.

He was not watching the tennis.

He was watching Shane.

Shane's stomach dropped. It was unmistakably him. The curls, the line of his jaw, the way he sat like he was too big for the chair, one arm over the back of the empty seat next to him like he owned the row. The sunglasses didn't hide where he was looking. Shane had spent nearly ten years knowing exactly where Ilya Rozanov's attention was on the ice. And he knew it now.

Shane looked away before he could decide if Ilya had seen him looking. He turned back to the match, and kept his eyes on the player preparing to serve. His hand tightened on the armrest. What was Ilya Rozanov doing at Wimbledon? How had he got in the box? His shoulders had tightened.

"What is it," Alex murmured.

"Nothing." Shane made himself look at the court. The ball went back and forth but he saw none of it. "Hot. I'm just hot."

Alex was quiet for a moment. Then: “Do you want water?”

“No. I’m fine.”

He was not fine. Ilya was still there. The sun was on the back of Shane's neck, and he could feel Ilya's gaze on him in the same place. He told himself not to look again. He lasted one game. Ilya was still there. And then, as Shane looked, Ilya took his sunglasses off—slowly and deliberately—and hooked them into his collar, and looked straight at Shane.

Shane's face flushed. He faced the front. His heart was beating too hard, part fear of what Ilya was going to do, and part—part something else that Shane couldn't name. Ilya was in London. He was right there behind him, sitting there like the Royal Box belonged to him, watching Shane instead of the two best tennis players in the world.

At the changeover he looked again. He couldn't help it. And Ilya was closer. He'd moved to the next row down, two seats along, into a seat someone else had left. No one else would have noticed. But Shane understood immediately what was going on. He'd played against Ilya Rozanov for almost ten years and that's what he did. As soon as the defence left a gap, he forced his way into it. And by the time you noticed, he was exactly where he wanted to be.

“Shane.”

He turned. Alex was watching him carefully, his brows furrowed.

“Nothing,” Shane said. “Just—thinking about the flight tomorrow.”

Alex’s expression didn’t change, but his hand found Shane’s on the armrest, brief, hidden by their bodies. “We don’t have to stay for all of it. If you need to go.”

“I want to stay.”

Alex didn’t push, but his arm stayed where it was, close and available, but not touching.

The first set dragged, Shane barely watching. Every time a point was scored, the crowd would clap, and every time Shane would check Ilya, turning his head as little as possible. At the next break, he was closer again. Directly behind them.

Then Ilya spoke.

"Hollander," he said. "You look different."

Shane didn't turn. His neck went rigid.

"Not going to say hello?" Ilya said. He was leaning forward now, toward the gap between Shane and Alex's seats.

Alex turned his head, slowly, and looked up at Ilya over his shoulder. His face wore an expression of mild, polite interest. "I don't believe we've met." Astrid turned too, raised her eyebrows, and turned back to the court.

 "Rozanov." Shane turned, interrupting. "What are you doing here?"

"Tennis." Ilya smiled, but his tone was cold. "Big fan. Love tennis." He looked away from Shane, at Alex, and his smile took on an edge. "So. You are the prince."

Alex stood. He did it slowly, unfazed, and offered his hand. "Alex. And you're Ilya Rozanov."

Ilya looked at his hand for a second too long before shaking it. "You know my name."

"Of course. I'm a big hockey fan. Everyone knows your name. Buffalo, right?"

Ilya's smile flattened. "Boston."

"Of course," Alex said pleasantly. "Now I remember. It took me a while because Shane has never once mentioned you."

It landed exactly where Alex meant it to. Ilya's eyes narrowed. He wasn't used to this—Shane knew that much. People either backed off from Rozanov or fought him. Nobody deflected him with a smile.

"Is nice," Ilya said, still looking at Alex, "what you have done. Very generous. Famous hockey player comes to London, prince shows him a good time. Tennis, restaurants, two weeks. Like tour guide."

Shane kept his face still. The photographs. Of course it was the photographs. They’d been everywhere for days. Shane leaving Alex’s flat in the morning, rumpled. Shane and Alex outside the restaurant. Shane’s hand over Alex’s hand in this exact box, yesterday, in full view. Ilya would have seen all of it. Everyone had seen all of it.

“It's been my pleasure,” Alex said. Then he added, without looking at Ilya, "If you’re going to lurk, at least watch the tennis. You’re missing a very good match.”

Ilya went still. It was a small shift, a hardening in his shoulders. Shane had seen it on the ice a hundred times, the moment before Ilya hit someone.

“You think this is joke?” Ilya said.

Shane's whole body had locked. He put his hand on Alex's arm. "Leave it," Shane said quietly. "Please, Alex. Leave it."

Alex looked at him. Whatever he saw on Shane’s face, it was enough. He turned away from Ilya, sat down again, and picked up his programme like he'd just had a conversation about the weather.

Ilya looked at Shane's hand where it had stayed on Alex's arm, and something moved across his face and was gone.

“You should go,” Shane said.

Ilya didn’t move.

"Hollander—"

“Now.”

Ilya didn’t leave immediately. He stood there, like he was going to say something else. Then he moved back up the row to the aisle, taking his time returning to his original seat.

Shane let out a breath. He took his hand back from Alex's arm and held it on his own knee.

"Thank you," Shane whispered.

"Don't thank me." Alex's jaw was fixed, but his tone was even again. "You asked me to leave it. So I left it."

Shane wanted to explain. He wanted to tell Alex everything. About Rozanov, all of it, what he'd never said out loud to anyone. Alex would have sat there and listened. But there was no possibility of that fitting into a changeover with Astrid two seats away and the cameras on them and their last afternoon passing them. And then there was the other thing. That Rozanov picking a fight in the Royal Box would have been all over the news by tonight, and it would have followed Alex long after Shane had gone home. And he didn't want that to be the thing that Alex remembered.

During the second set, another changeover, Astrid stood and said she was going to find shade and get a drink. She squeezed Shane's shoulder as she passed him and then she was gone.

Ilya took the gap immediately.

Shane heard it without having to look directly. The shift along the row, murmurs of excuse me, excuse me, in accented English, and then Ilya was suddenly in the empty seat beside him.

"Hollander," Ilya said. Like they were in the face-off circle. Like this was completely normal.

"Back so soon?" Alex said, leaning forward.

"Alex." Shane turned to face him. "Can you give us a few minutes. I'll handle this."

Alex paused. Then said, "I'll get us some water." He walked up the aisle to the back of the box. The moment he was gone, Ilya said: "So you are in London."

Up close, Shane could see he was as handsome as ever, infuriatingly, but there were dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn't been sleeping.

“What are you doing.”

“Watching tennis.” Ilya looked at the court. He didn’t look at Shane, his voice flat and tired.

"You don't like tennis."

"Neither do you."

"I came because of Rolex. You've got no reason to be here."

"No." Ilya turned his head. His eyes moved over Shane’s face, then down to his suit, his tie, his polished shoes. “You look good. Expensive.” He spat the word. “He dress you now? Prince buys his hockey players suits?”

Shane’s jaw tightened. “I've got a stylist. And you don’t get to talk about him.”

“Why not? I read the papers. I saw the photographs.” Ilya’s mouth went crooked. “He picks you up at Wimbledon, takes you to his apartment, brings you to royal box. It’s a nice holiday. He collects you for two weeks like a watch.” He paused. “You think he doesn't do this every summer? Royalty, handsome man. He likes athletes.”

The words landed on Shane exactly where they were meant to. Shane’s hands were suddenly very hot. He kept them on his knees because if he moved them he might do something stupid.

“You know nothing about him,” Shane said.

“I know men like him.” Ilya leaned back in the seat, too relaxed. “They do not fight. They do not bleed. Everything easy. They get bored.” He looked at Shane again. “You are good time for him. That is all.”

Shane said, “Go back to your seat, Rozanov.”

Ilya didn’t move. “Make me. You won’t. Too many cameras.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “But you don't care about cameras any more.”

Shane said nothing. His heart was in his throat.

Abruptly, Ilya's head dipped forward, his forearms resting on his knees. "I just wanted to talk to you." It was almost soft. The aggression had gone out of him. He looked up at Shane like there was no one else in the box.

“Hollander, just tell me. What you’re doing. What this is, with this prince."

"Rozanov—"

"I saw the pictures. You and him. Here. At his apartment. You looked—" He stopped. His hands curled into loose fists on his thighs. "I wanted to know if it's real. If you're happy."

Shane couldn't answer. He didn't know if he was happy. He'd been happy the last two weeks. But he didn't know if two weeks was long enough for that to mean anything. And whatever it meant, they'd ended it that morning.

"I don't know," Shane said at last.

"That is not yes," Ilya said quietly.

Shane turned his head and looked at him. Ilya’s face was unguarded in a way Shane had only seen in hotel rooms after the door was closed. His eyes moved over Shane’s face, searching.

Shane swallowed. "Things are different now. For me. I'm different."

Ilya let out a slow breath. He didn't say anything to that. He looked at Shane for a moment longer, at the court, then back. Then he stood, without a word, and went back up the row, past his seat, and disappeared toward the back of the box.

As soon as Ilya had gone, Alex returned, two bottles of water in hand. He'd clearly been waiting. He gave one of them to Shane and unscrewed the top of the other, taking a slow drink.

“You all right?” Alex said after a while.

Shane nodded. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to explain what that was,” Alex said. His voice was quiet. “I worked it out.”

Shane looked at him. Alex wasn’t looking back. He was watching the court.

“I’m sorry,” Shane said.

“Don’t be.” Alex’s hand found Shane’s, just for a second, and squeezed. "Not for that."

The match went on. Astrid came back, and Alex talked with her about some charity event, occasionally turning to comment to Shane. They watched the tennis, but Shane’s mind wasn’t on the match. Every time the camera panned the crowd, Shane wondered if they'd caught Ilya talking to him. He wondered what the press would do with that. Shane and the prince of Sweden, in a heated exchange with Shane's bitter rival.

Ilya didn’t come back. The match ended, and they stood with everyone else, clapping through the trophy ceremony as Federer lifted the cup. Shane looked over his shoulder once. Ilya was gone but Shane could still feel his presence. They waited while the crowd filtered out. Astrid hugged Shane, a real hug, her arms going around him without hesitation.

“Look after yourself,” she said into his ear. Then, quieter, “You’re allowed to change your mind. Both of you are idiots, but you’re allowed.”

“Astrid,” Alex warned.

“I’m going, I’m going.” She hugged Alex as well, and was gone, swallowed by the crowd on the stairs.

Then it was just the two of them. Alex leaned in, close enough that his mouth was by Shane’s ear. “Let's go.”

Shane nodded.

They turned toward the stairs. Shane kept his hand at his side. He didn’t look back. But as they reached the top step, Shane knew the day wasn’t finished yet. He knew Rozanov wasn't done.

They went down the stairs slowly. Alex didn’t rush. Shane understood that he wasn’t rushing on purpose, that he was letting their last few moments take as long as he could. Shane kept his eyes on the back of Alex’s neck, on the damp curl of hair above his collar. Just before the exit, Alex stopped.

“Wait,” he said. “Before we go out there.”

Shane stopped.

"Stay one more night," Alex said. "I don't expect it to change anything. I just don't want this morning to be the last time."

Alex wasn't looking at him. Shane could see from the expression on Alex's face how hard it was to ask.

For a second Shane let himself think about it. The flat. The kitchen with the warm bread and wine. The bed, and Alex beside him. One more morning waking with Alex's arm over his waist. He wanted to say yes. His whole body leaned toward yes. But then there would be the same goodbye.

"I can't, Alex," Shane said. His eyes were stinging but his voice stayed level. "I want to, but I can't do this twice. This morning was already too hard."

Alex nodded. He looked like he was going to say something else, then didn’t. He looked at the exit, then back at Shane.

“Let me at least drop you at your hotel,” Alex said. “The car’s going that way. I’m not going to put you in a taxi. Don’t argue with me about it, I’ll win. I'll have your bags sent over from my flat later tonight.”

Shane knew he should say no to that too, because of what he might want to do to Alex in the back of the car, but he didn't. “Okay,” Shane said. “Okay.”

They walked toward the exit. Alex’s hand found the small of his back, and Shane let it stay there, because they were leaving anyway and what were the cameras going to tell anyone that they didn’t already know.

They walked out through the private exit and into the late afternoon. The air outside had cooled a little, the light turning golden. The car was waiting at the kerb, the driver standing with the door open. The same car from the morning. It felt like a hundred years ago.

They were halfway across the pavement when Ilya stepped out in front of them.

Alex's hand on Shane's back went still.

“Keep walking,” Shane said quietly.

They kept walking. There was no way to the car except past him. Ilya watched them, his face looking the same way Shane knew from a hundred faceoffs, the flat, insolent look that meant there was something underneath it working very hard.

“Hollander,” Ilya said, when they were close. “I want to talk to you. Alone." He didn’t look at Alex at all.

"We've already talked. There's nothing left to say."

Shane stopped. Alex stopped beside him. He could feel the change in Alex, a slight stiffening, the way his hand dropped from Shane's back. He'd never seen Alex angry before. Not once. Now his body was held so tightly it barely moved.

“Alex,” Shane said. He turned to him. “Go to the car. I’ll be five minutes.”

Alex looked at him. Then at Ilya. Then back. Shane watched him decide, watched the anger get put somewhere and held.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Alex said. He didn’t touch Shane. He walked past Ilya without hurry, and went to the car.

Ilya watched him go. “He does what you say. Like dog.”

“Don’t.”

“What, is true. I just say what is true.”

“You don’t say anything that's the truth,” Shane said. “That’s the whole problem. It always was.”

Something changed in Ilya's face. He stepped closer, and Shane could see he hadn't slept well. Shane didn't step back.

Ilya’s eyes were fixed on Shane’s face. “You tell me what that was in there. You and him.” He pointed toward the car. “Two weeks. You know him two weeks. You sleep in his bed. You let him put his hand on you in front of every camera. Seven years, we hide. Two weeks with him, and you hold his fucking hand at a tennis match." Ilya's voice cracked. "Why? Tell me why."

Shane felt the familiar pull to deflect, to soften, to try to steer them back into hiding, where everything was secret and safe. To protest that Ilya had never wanted them to be public either. It was like a physical impulse. Then he thought of Alex, saying exactly what he meant and asking for exactly what he wanted. Alex, who was unafraid to hold his hand in front of the whole world.

“You know what, Rozanov? He asked for what he wanted. Out loud. And when I asked him for what I wanted, he gave me an answer. Yes or no, an actual answer." Shane heard his own voice and was surprised by how calm it was. He’d imagined this conversation a hundred times and in all of them he’d been shaking. He wasn’t shaking now. “You want me to explain myself. You’ve never explained anything to me in your life. Not once. You’d fuck me and leave and then not text for four months. Then when I finally got the nerve to put it all on the table in Tampa you said it was nothing, it meant nothing. Now you want an explanation. What are you offering?”

Ilya’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.

That was the thing, Shane thought. Ilya wanted him to stand here and account for what he'd been doing the last two weeks, and in exchange he was offering nothing, because that would mean saying it out loud, and he had never once said it out loud. Whatever it was. Whatever they were.

“That’s what I thought,” Shane said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Not any more.”

Ilya blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not doing this.” Shane waved a hand between them. “The showing up, the coldness, the whole routine. I know what comes next. You say something cruel. I give in. Then we end up in a hotel and it’s the best sex of my life and in the morning you say it means nothing. It'll be Vegas all over again." His face was hot. “I’m tired, Ilya. I’m not doing it again. Not with you. Not with anyone. Not now.”

Ilya’s jaw went tight. “I came here. I followed you to London. Doesn’t that—”

“Mean something?” Shane laughed, but it came out humourless. “It means you’re jealous. It means you don’t like seeing me with someone else. It doesn’t mean you want me. If you wanted me, you had years to say so. You don’t get to turn up and be angry that I found something you never offered."

Ilya moved closer. “Tell me you don’t feel anything. Say it. Look at me and say it. Then I walk.”

Shane looked at him. The beautiful, impossible face. The mouth that had been against his neck in a dozen hotel rooms. The hands that had held him down and given him vodka afterwards. He couldn’t say it. But he also couldn’t say the other thing. And one thing he had learned in the last fourteen days was that he could want someone and still say no to them.

“No, Ilya. I’m not doing this on the sidewalk, with him in the car and a flight tomorrow.” Shane pointed at the black car. His throat hurt. He hated that he was saying it out here. He was only grateful there was no press around to hear it. “If you want something, you say it. Right now. Stop trying to get me to say it.”

Ilya opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His throat moved. His eyes were wet, and that was worse than the anger, because Shane had never once seen him cry. He was standing on a London street with his eyes shining, and he still couldn’t say it.

“That’s what I thought,” Shane said. His own voice broke. “Goodbye, Rozanov.”

He turned toward the car. He heard Ilya say his name, once, but he didn’t stop. His legs carried him across the pavement to the car door. He opened it and got in before he could look back. The door closed with a solid sound, cutting off the outside. Alex didn’t move. Shane looked straight ahead.

"Are you all right?" Alex said as the car pulled away from the curb.

Shane nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.

“Okay.” Alex kept his face turned toward the window. His hands were in his lap, fists tight. Shane couldn't read his expression.

The traffic was slow. Shane's tie felt too tight, and he wanted to undo it but he didn't want Alex to see that his hands were shaking. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Eventually, Shane said: "He wasn't going to do anything. He just wanted to talk."

Alex turned. "I know what he wanted."

Shane waited for the question, but it didn't come. No do you still have feelings for him. No how long. No what happened between you. Alex just looked at him for a long moment, and then looked away.

“I’m sorry,” Shane said.

“Don’t be.”

“I didn't know he was in London. He's never acted like this before.”

Alex didn’t answer. Shane looked over. Alex’s profile was very still.

“You don’t have to explain him to me,” Alex said, not unkindly. “It’s not my business any more.”

Shane knew Alex didn't say it to hurt him. But he was right. It wasn’t his business. That was what they’d agreed. But hearing it said out loud did hurt. Shane put his hand on the seat between them, but Alex kept his on his lap.

They didn’t speak again until the car reached Shane’s hotel. The press was still there, a smaller crowd than before. The driver drove past and pulled into a side street.

Alex turned to face him. Neither of them said the word goodbye. Shane leaned in and kissed him, and Alex kissed him back, slow, one hand coming up to cup Shane's jaw.

“Go,” Alex said. “Before I ask you to stay again and embarrass us both.” His mouth curved into a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Take care, Shane."

Shane wanted to say something else. Wanted to ask if Alex was angry, or hurt, if he'd already let go. But he didn't. And part of him didn't want to know. Shane got out, and the last thing he saw was Alex's face, turned away, his hand resting on the seat where Shane's had just been.

Shane walked past the clicking cameras through the hotel entrance, the doorman nodding at him. The lobby was busy with people checking in. Shane walked through it with his head down, key card already in his hand. Upstairs, his room was the same as he'd left it two days before, but it felt different somehow. Smaller. The bed was made, curtains open to the evening light, everything in its place. No smell of clean soap and someone else's skin.

He stood in the middle of the room and listened to the silence, and realised it was the first time he’d been truly alone in over a week.

He showered. Brushed his teeth. Put on a clean t-shirt and shorts and because he couldn't face getting into the big, empty bed yet, he sat on the edge of it with his phone in his hand. There were no messages. Not from Alex, not from Ilya. Shane put the phone face down on the bedside table.

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes and let himself feel all of it.

It hurt. There was the grief for Alex, the loss of something that had barely begun. The things he had wanted but refused: one more night, one more morning, the trip to Sweden he would never take. He let it hurt.

And then, because he was alone and nobody left to hide from, he let himself think about Ilya.

Seven years. That's how long it had been since he and Ilya had first hooked up. Hotel rooms in a dozen cities, the separate arrivals and exits, the manufactured rivalry for the cameras and on the ice. Ilya pushing him against walls, pushing him down on beds, saying nothing that meant anything. Shane had learned not to push back, not to ask, not to want more than was given.

He had thought he was falling in love. Or, he had thought it was the only love available to him, all that he deserved. He had thought secrecy was protection, that silence was safety, that not-asking would let him keep Ilya.

Alex had shown him that he'd been lying to himself. In two weeks, Alex had demonstrated what it looked like when someone wanted you and there were no walls. Direct questions, statements, invitations that were real, not a test. Shane had spent seven years navigating Ilya's silences as damage, his cruelty as defense, his lack of words as a mutual fear of exposure. He had made Ilya into a tragedy to endure because that was all he could have, rather than a man who wouldn't choose him.

The anger came then, cold, and Shane sat with it. Not anger at Ilya exactly. Anger at himself, for the years he'd deceived himself, for the ways he had made himself smaller to fit into a relationship that was not a relationship, and had no room for him anyway. To accept crumbs because crumbs were better than nothing.

The room got dark. Shane thought about the way Alex had asked him to stay another night. He'd said it out loud without hesitation. Ilya had stood in front of him outside Wimbledon and still couldn't. That was the difference. Alex asked for what he wanted. Ilya only ever took what he was already given and then acted like it meant nothing. Shane had accepted it for years.

Ilya had never offered anything. But Shane had never asked for anything either. He’d waited for Ilya to become someone who could say it, so that he wouldn’t have to say it first. Seven years of two people each waiting for the other to go first and call it love. They'd both been cowards.

His face felt hot. His eyes were wet, but he didn't wipe the tears away. He lay still on the bed and let them run down his face. He thought about Alex's voice, asking him to come to Sweden. And Ilya's, saying Tell me you don't feel anything. The difference between them was the whole point. Alex had offered something real and then let it go. Ilya had flown across an ocean and offered nothing. And Shane had finally, for the first time, walked away from it.

He didn't feel proud. He felt empty. He got under the covers. The bed was too big and the room was too quiet. He thought of Alex's hand over his heart. He thought of Ilya's eyes, shining with tears.

He fell asleep before he’d decided which one he was dreaming about.

The hotel room looked like no one had stayed in it. He'd made the bed. Folded the towels and put them back in the bathroom. Shane stood at the window with his passport in his hand and looked down at the street ten floors below, wondering if the photographers were still camped out. It didn't matter any more. He had a flight to catch.

He hadn't slept much in the end. The goodbye with Alex, that had not been a goodbye, the kiss and Alex's hand on his face saying Take care, Shane. Ilya standing in front of him outside the All England Club asking him for something more than he ever had.

His phone buzzed. The car was downstairs.

Shane checked out at the desk. The concierge leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. “Mr. Hollander. There’s quite a lot of press out front. We can take you out through the service entrance if you’d prefer. The driver can bring the car round.”

Shane thought about it. Then he thought about two weeks of deciding not to take the side door any more.

“It’s fine,” he said. “The front’s fine.”

Shane took a breath. He checked his bag. His checked his phone. His flight was at 14:15. It was 11:02. He could see a dark sedan waiting at the curb, the driver standing by the back door. He would have to walk through the press to get to it. He could do that. He had done it dozens of times. He put his sunglasses on before the revolving door, out of habit, and then the door let him out into the noise.

It was louder than it had been on Sunday. Someone shouted his name. Someone else shouted, “Shane, where’s Alexander,” and there was laughter, and the shutters going. Shane kept his face neutral, his posture relaxed, the way he had learned to do in a hundred interviews and press conferences. He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. He just walked, his steps measured, his eyes fixed on the car.

And stopped.

Ilya was standing on the pavement in front of the hotel, in front of the cameras, in broad daylight, no cap, no sunglasses. His hands were in his pockets and he was standing still. Just standing, looking at Shane, like he had been standing there for a long time and intended to keep standing there.

Shane's steps faltered. His stomach dropped. Something felt wrong. It felt deliberate.

The noise changed. It took the photographers about two seconds to clock who it was, and then it doubled—Ilya’s name now, and Rozanov, over here, and the shutters going so fast the sound ran together. Shane could see the story coming together. Hollander and Rozanov. The two captains facing off on a London street, with the photographs of Shane and a prince only two days old. By tonight there would be a new story.

Ilya didn't move. He didn't look at the cameras. He just watched Shane, his hazel eyes dark, his expression unreadable. Shane crossed the pavement with the bag rolling behind him and stopped in front of Ilya and said, low, under the shouting, “What are you doing.”

“You know what I am doing.”

“Ilya.” Shane kept his voice down. His heart was going too fast. “There are thirty cameras. Move. Come inside, we’ll—”

“No.”

Shane stared at him. Ilya wasn’t looking at the cameras. He was looking at Shane, and he didn’t look away, and Shane suddenly realised what the expression was on Ilya's face. He was scared. Ilya Rozanov was standing on the pavement, in front of the press, scared.

"Yesterday, I came to Wimbledon. I stood in front of you twice and I said nothing. Because I am a coward." And then a brief smirk, a glimpse of the Rozanov he knew. "Never on ice, of course. Only this."

“Ilya—”

The smirk left his face. “Last night I go back to my hotel and I think, okay. You fly tomorrow. It is over. You had your two weeks with your prince, very nice photographs, he looks at you like—” Ilya paused, his jaw tightening. He started again. "I see the photographs, Shane. All week. Everyone sends me. Even my teammates, they think it is funny, they don't know. And I look at them and I know exactly what it is. Because I know how your face looks when—" He stopped again. "I see you make that face sometimes when we are together. And now some other man has it, and he holds your hand in front of whole world, and I think, I could never do that. I would never do that. And then I think— why. Why could I never do that."

The cameras kept going. Shane was dimly aware of how tight he was gripping his bag, of a security guard from the hotel drifting closer, of the car idling at the curb.

“I watched you all week. With him. I do not like it. I do not like seeing you happy with someone else. But I like it when you are happy. Even if not with me. I was jealous. Of prince. Of you, too. Because you are happy and I am not."

Shane blinked. He didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t have to be,” Shane said. “It’s over.”

"Maybe. Maybe it is not over. But I need to say this now. This morning I am standing here," Ilya said. "In front of these cameras. Because I owe you this and I am done being a coward." He took his hands out of his pockets, but he did not reach for Shane. "I love you. We are not nothing. It was never nothing. Every time I said it is nothing, I was lying. I lie to you and to me, and I am sorry it took a prince to make me say it."

The shouting went on around them. Shane's heart was beating too fast.

His first thought—before anything, before the hurt and the silence and the this means nothing, Hollander—was: he has to move. He has to get away from the cameras. Shane knew what this would mean for Ilya. Shane had done a smaller, safer version of it two days ago, his hand over Alex's in the Royal Box, and even that made his stomach knot for an hour after. And Shane was Canadian, with a mother who managed his image, and a team who already knew who he was, and a country who waved rainbow flags once a year, whether they meant it or not. Ilya had a brother in Moscow and a country where men got pulled off the street for a lot less than saying I love you to another man.

Shane stepped closer and said, urgently, "Ilya. Move. Please. Come inside, right now, we'll talk. I'll change my flight—"

"I don't want to talk inside," Ilya didn't move. "I am finished with inside. Inside is all we ever had."

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly.” For the first time Ilya looked at the cameras, slowly, all the way around, and then back at Shane. “They photograph me. Okay. They photograph me standing here loving you. Okay. Is true. I am tired of hiding the truth.”

"What about your family. What about Russia."

"My father is dead. I am done with Russia."

That was the moment Shane understood he was serious. Ilya had spent his whole life moving away from anything real, mouthing off on the ice, pushing Shane away, talking shit for the press. And now he was refusing to move. He could have waited. He'd chosen to do it in the street. In front of the cameras.

Shane's eyes stung. He hated it. He hated that it was happening here, now, with a car waiting and a flight to catch and the memory of someone else still under his skin.

"Ilya." He made his voice as steady as he could. "I hear you. Okay? I hear you, and I—" Shane stopped. He lowered his voice. "I can't do this right now."

Ilya's face didn't change. Only his eyes did.

"Not because I don't—" Shane swallowed. "Listen to me. I know how hard this was for you. But this week—" Shane stopped. He took a deep breath and started again. "I told you yesterday, things are different now, I'm different now. I don't know what I feel yet, about any of it. I don't trust my feelings to be real." He made himself keep going. "I'm not going to say yes to you here. If I say it, I need to know that it's real."

Ilya looked at him for a long time. The cameras kept clicking. Somewhere behind Shane a photographer shouted, "Shane, are you two together, where is the prince, are you leaving him—"

“Okay,” Ilya said.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He nodded, once, slowly. “Is fair. Is more than fair. Is more than I ever give you.” His mouth curved up but it wasn't a smile. "I can see you are different. It's good. It is also why I am standing here like an idiot. The old Shane would give in by now."

Shane wanted to reach out and touch him, but he stopped himself. Not because of the cameras, but because if he touched him he didn't trust what he'd do next. "I need to go home," he said. "I need to find out what's true when none of this is happening. Can you give me that?"

"I give you seven years of nothing," Ilya said. "I can give you this."

"Goodbye, Ilya." Shane turned and walked to the car. The driver took his bag. Shane got in and the door closed and the noise from outside fell away. He didn't let himself look round until they were at the corner. Then he turned in the seat and looked back through the rear window. The photographers had surrounded Ilya, but he just stood there, watching the car go.

The car turned the corner and Shane sat back and pressed his hands to his eyes, but he didn't cry, and kept not crying all the way to the airport.

Henry was under his feet again. He was a large black Siberian cat with no sense of personal space and a habit of being exactly where Shane's next step was going to land. Shane had learned to walk round his own kitchen in a kind of shuffle, sliding his feet rather than lifting them. He thought of it as part of his pre-season agility training. He was in the kitchen now, making a protein shake, Henry trotting beside his ankles, meowing.

He'd been back in Montreal for two weeks. After London, he flew to Ottawa and drove up to the cottage on the Tuesday morning. He stopped at his parents' place first. His mother made him eat something before she'd let him leave, gave him a box of groceries, and asked him if he was okay. She'd talked to the brands by then, and no one had said a word. She didn't ask a single question about London. Shane knew she'd probably discussed it with his father before he got back and then decided not to ask.

Henry had been with them for three weeks and had got fat.

He complained the whole ten minutes drive to Shane's cottage. Shane drove with the carrier on the passenger seat and one hand on top of it, and Henry yowled at every corner, and Shane said, "I know," about four times, and then stopped saying anything.

He got to the cottage in the middle of the afternoon. He opened the doors and let the air in, and let Henry out, who went straight under the couch and stayed there until the evening. Shane didn't unpack. He sat on the end of the dock with his shoes off until it got dark, listening to the water hitting the posts, and then he went to bed and slept ten hours.

The rest of the summer passed slowly. The London story burned itself out after a week. His publicist released a statement that revealed nothing, there was speculation, and then a celebrity's wedding took over the news cycle and it was done. His mother came twice a week on the pretence of dropping off groceries and his father showed up unannounced with coffee and newspapers. Shane trained in the morning, he ran the trails, swam until his lungs burned, then lay on the dock letting the water dry on him, while the pines moved in the wind. He read five books which was more than he'd read in the previous two years combined.

In the evenings he sat on the deck in front of the firepit and listened to the loons on the lake, watched as the stars appeared overhead, and he thought. He didn't think about hockey much. He thought about London, and Alex, and Ilya. Some days it hurt. Some days it made him angry and he had to go and work it off in the gym. Most days he just sat there with it and watched the flames. The thing that surprised him most was how well he slept, Henry curled up on the bed beside him.

Shane messaged Alex once, in the second week. A photograph of the lake from the end of the dock, no caption, sent at nine in the evening.

Alex answered the next morning. That's very beautiful. Is the water cold?

Freezing.

You'd survive a Swedish summer then.

Shane wrote three different things after that and sent none of them, and Alex didn't send anything else either. Sometime in August he understood that there would be no more messages.

Then the emails started to come about the schedule and the camps and endorsements, and it was time to return to hockey. He drove back to Montreal at the end of August, and realised when he was half-way back that he felt at peace. Whatever happened next season, he felt more comfortable with himself than he had in a long time.

Pre-season training had started. His body knew it, in the soreness in his legs from sprint drills and the way his shoulder ached when he raised it above his head. He'd run that morning, done a skills session, eaten lunch and gone to the rink for an optional skate. Now he was in the kitchen, just out of the shower, making a protein shake, deciding if he would have the energy to cook something else later or go to the freezer for something his nutritionist had prepped.

Shane thought about pre-season. He was in the best shape of his career, and the year ahead was mapped out in front of him: training, pre-season games, the home opener, the first road trip through the eastern US. Two games against Boston before Christmas. He'd looked that up in July, when the schedule came out, and had not looked at it since. He knew the dates.

Henry jumped onto the counter. Shane turned off the blender and lifted him off, one hand under the warm weight of him, and set him back on the floor. The cat turned and jumped up again. Shane gave up. The cat sat beside the blender and watched him with half-closed eyes, not caring about the high-pitched whirring noise of the blender when Shane turned it back on.

He drank the shake standing at the counter, scrolling through his emails with one hand. There was an update to the pre-season schedule, his nutritionist had adjusted his meal plan, and there was a reminder from his mom about an upcoming brand shoot. Everything was back to normal.

Except for the messages.

They had started the day after he got back. Not from Alex. He hadn't heard anything else from Alex, although he'd followed him on Instagram and Alex had followed him back. It was Ilya. No declarations. No pressure. Not asking for anything. Just small things. You home safe? The first one had said. Shane had looked at it for a long time before replying, Yes. The next day, another message. Back in Boston today. Shane hadn't answered. The next day, Boston is too hot. This is why I go to Russia every summer. The messages kept coming, a slow trickle, every day or two. A picture of a dog in a park. You are lucky Canada is not so hot. Another picture, from the gym, a bench with weights racked. Did you watch the golf. Before that summer, every message had been a room number or a time or an address. Now it was golf, and the weather, and a documentary about hockey that Rozanov thought he might like. Not one question about London, no mention of Alex.

Shane answered four of the messages all summer. He gave a thumbs up to the bench.

I didn't watch the golf.

Was boring. Thought you would like it.

He laughed out loud at that one, sitting on his deck by the fire, and then sat there for a long time afterwards.

He put the phone down and finished his shake. Henry meowed at him, tail twitching, and Shane picked him up, holding him to his chest. Henry purred, kneading Shane's shirt with his paws, and Shane closed his eyes for a minute, letting the vibration of the purr ground him. He had missed this—quiet, routine, the way Henry didn't care about hockey or London or the mess of the last seven years.

The buzzer rang.

Shane put Henry down and walked to the intercom by the door, still in his damp t-shirt and socks. He wasn't expecting anyone. He pressed the button. "Yes?"

"It's me." Ilya's voice, rough and uncertain, came through the speaker. Shane's stomach lurched.

He hesitated, finger hovering over the button. He could hang up. He could tell Rozanov to go away. He could say he didn't want to talk. He could say he was busy.

Shane buzzed him in.

He stood in the doorway, arms crossed, waiting. The elevator dinged down the hall, and Ilya stepped out. He looked different. His curls were messy, his usual cocky posture replaced by something more hesitant. He wore a dark t-shirt and jeans and was carrying a duffel bag. His eyes met Shane's, and for a moment, neither of them moved.

Ilya walked toward him and stopped a few feet away.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi." Shane didn't move.

Ilya looked at him, his hazel eyes searching Shane's. "Can I come in?"

Shane hesistated. Ilya had never once been to his apartment. Shane had never once asked him. Shane stepped back inside, holding the door open, and let Ilya pass. Ilya looked around, taking it in, his movements cautious, like he thought he might break something.

Henry appeared from the kitchen, took one look at the stranger, and fled. Ilya stared after him.

“You have cat.”

“Yes. His name is Henry.”

“Of course. A very Hollander name for cat." Ilya set the bag down by the wall and stood in Shane's living room like he didn't know what to do with himself.

"You came," Shane said at last. His voice was flat.

"I had to." Ilya said. "You said not now. Not no. I waited. I send messages. You don't answer." He looked down, then back up. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be what you need. But I want to learn. And I can't learn on the phone."

The apartment suddenly felt very small. Shane went to the kitchen because he needed something in his hands. He poured himself a glass of water. Ilya followed him, slowly. He stopped at the kitchen island, his hip leaning against it. Shane could feel him watching.

"Ilya. Why are you here? I told you in London I'm not—"

"I didn't say everything. In London," Ilya said quietly. "I said the one big thing and then I let you get on the plane. There is more."

"Ilya—"

"You think nothing is different. That I just say the words, but only because I am jealous. Of him." He shook his head. "Is true, I am jealous. But not all. It did not start in London, Shane."

"What didn't."

"This." Ilya pointed to himself. "I wanted to say it for a long time. I wanted to say it in Boston. Last year."

Shane's hand tightened on the water glass.

"You remember Boston," Ilya said.

"Yes."

"I ask you to stay." Ilya was looking down at the counter. "We already fucked. I wanted you to stay for the night. I made you food, we watched TV. Is nice. We talk. I wanted to hold you, not fuck you. But then you got on top of me and it felt so good, and you—" He stopped. "You look at me like I did something wrong. And then you get dressed and leave."

Shane opened his mouth and nothing came out.

"I never asked anybody that before," Ilya said. "To stay. Not for sex. But because I felt something else. And you went."

"I didn't know what you meant."

"No." Ilya nodded slowly. "Maybe. I think about that too. But I did not know that then. I only know I said something I never say, and you left."

Shane could feel his pulse going in his throat.

"Then in Tampa you want to talk," Ilya said. "You want to talk about what we are. And I said it is nothing." He looked up. "I said it was nothing because I was frightened, Shane. Of that. Of you doing that again. And of Russia too, but that was not why."

"You said it was nothing for seven years. Even if you didn't say it out loud, you said it every time you didn't text me for months, every time you left the second we finished, every time you pretended you hate me."

"Yes."

"Do you know what that did to me?"

"Yes," Ilya said. "I know."

Shane sat down on one of the stools at the counter.

"One more," Ilya said. "Then I stop."

"Ilya—"

"Rose Landry."

Shane closed his eyes.

"I see the photographs," Ilya said. "Last year. Everyone sees them. You at the restaurant, in the street, her hand on your arm. She went to your game wearing your jersey. Two weeks after Boston." He said it without heat, which made it worse. "And I think, okay. So that is what I am."

"That wasn't—"

"I know what it was." Ilya's mouth twisted. "I know now. I did not know then. Then I only think, he asks me for nothing and I ask him for one night and he goes and gets a girlfriend."

It was wrong and it was also true. Shane had spent six weeks at the cottage, working it all out, and what he'd worked out was that he'd waited seven years for Ilya and had never been asked for anything. Had never offered anything. That's what he'd told himself the whole time. He'd been so proud of himself for seeing it so clearly, but it hadn't been that clear, had it.

He remembered Boston. The way Ilya had looked at him. The way he'd kissed Shane lightly, in bed, afterward. The way his fingers had combed through his hair and traced a line across his freckles. And then he'd asked him to stay, and he'd called him Shane for the first time. And he remembered the way his own body had reacted, which was to get out as fast as possible.

"I ran," Shane said.

"Yes."

"I ran and then I tried to take it back in Tampa, but I just swept it under the rug and I didn't realise—" Shane swallowed. "And then I told myself that you never asked in seven years. But you told me it was nothing, and I believed you."

Ilya didn't answer that. He didn't need to.

"I'm sorry," Shane said. "For Boston. I should have stayed."

Ilya looked at him for a long moment.

"I want to stop pretending, Shane. I want you. I want us. I am asking you now. I even want cat. I want to be your—whatever you will call me. Boyfriend. Partner. I do not care. I want to come home to you."

Shane made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "You can't just move into my apartment."

“I did not say move in.” Ilya’s mouth curved, unsteady. “I said come home. That is different.”

Shane looked at him. The light through the window caught the gold in his curls, the line of his jaw. Shane wanted to hit him and hold onto him in the same breath.

Shane's eyes spilled over. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, hard, and started to turn away, but Ilya caught his wrist.

“Don’t,” Shane said.

Ilya let go immediately. He held both hands up, palms open.

"What about the rest of it." Shane's voice was shaking now. "Boston and Montreal. The public thing. The distance."

"I don't know. We don't solve it tonight. We work on it. Together. Not a reason to stop."

"Together," Shane repeated. And then: "One thing."

"Anything."

"You talk to me. When you want something, when you don't, when something's wrong." His voice wasn't steady. "I'm not spending another seven years working out what you mean."

"Okay," Ilya said.

And then Shane broke. He bent forward and pressed his forehead to Ilya's chest. A jagged sob went through his whole body. Ilya's arms closed around him and he held on. He didn't say anything. He just held him, one hand on the back of Shane's head, the other wrapped across his back, and he let Shane cry.

They stayed like that in the kitchen for a long time. Ilya didn't move except to hold him tighter. When Shane finally lifted his head, he wiped his face and looked at Ilya. His eyes were wet too.

Ilya kissed his cheek, then his forehead. His hand was warm on Shane's neck. “You are beautiful when you cry,” Ilya said.

“Shut up.”

Ilya moved his hands to Shane’s face, thumbs tracing his freckles, and bent his forehead to Shane’s.

“I am sorry,” Ilya said. “I am so sorry. For all of it.”

Shane closed his eyes. He could feel the heat off Ilya’s body, hear his unsteady breathing, feel the roughness of his hands.

“I love you too,” Shane said.

Ilya sucked in a breath. His hands tightened on Shane. “Say it again,” he whispered.

“I love you.” Shane put his hands on Ilya’s chest, feeling his heart beat under his t-shirt.

Ilya's breath hitched, but he didn't move. He waited. Shane reached up and put his hand on the side of Ilya's neck, feeling his pulse going hard, and pulled him in, and kissed him. He found Ilya's mouth, hungry and desperate, and Ilya kissed him back, his hands tangling in Shane's hair.

“I missed you,” Shane said against his mouth.

"Say it again."

“I missed you.”

“Again.”

“Don’t push your luck.” But Shane was smiling, and then they were kissing again.

They stumbled toward the bedroom, their mouths never parting.

Shane walked backward, one hand in Ilya’s hair, the other fisted in the soft fabric. The bed came up against the backs of Shane’s knees.

"On the bed," Ilya said.

Shane stopped. "No." He put a hand on Ilya's shoulders.

Ilya took a step back. "What."

"I want this to be different," Shane said. He was breathing hard. His free hand moved to the hem of his own t-shirt. “I want to tell you what I want." He pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor.

Ilya’s eyes went dark. “I’m listening.”

Shane put his hands on Ilya's hips and pushed his t-shirt up. Ilya helped, lifting his arms. Underneath, Ilya's skin was warm and flushed, and his chest heaved as he breathed. Shane put his mouth there, over the place where Ilya’s heart was going too fast. Ilya’s hands came up and gripped Shane’s waist.

“I want you to touch me,” Shane said against his chest. “Everywhere. Slow. I want to feel you.” He lifted his head. "Take the rest off. I want to see you." He moved his hands down to Ilya's jeans and unbuttoned the top one.

Ilya took two steps back. He unzipped his jeans, pushed them down with his briefs, and stepped out of them. He was already half hard. He stood there naked in Shane's bedroom, and Shane let himself look. Shane had seen Ilya Rozanov's body in locker rooms and hotel rooms and across from him at faceoffs for almost ten years and it still did something to him, the breadth of his chest and shoulders, the muscle, the golden-brown skin. And tonight he let himself look without hurrying, because there was no time limit. Nobody had a flight to catch, another hotel room to return to.

"Fuck," Ilya said quietly. "The way you look at me."

Shane had no answer to that. “Lie down. On your back.”

Ilya lay down. Shane undressed unhurriedly, folding the rest of his clothes over the chair, and Ilya watched him do it with his head propped on the pillow, and when Shane caught him smiling—a genuine smile, not a smirk—Ilya didn't hide it.

“What,” Shane said.

“I love it when you do this. Fold your clothes when you undress for sex. I never told you.”

Shane climbed onto the bed and straddled him, knees either side of Ilya’s hips, his hands on Ilya's chest, and looked down at him. Ilya's hands came up to Shane's thighs and held him there.

Shane leaned down and kissed him, and took his time. He kissed Ilya’s mouth, then the line of his jaw, then his throat, where the pulse was going fast. He worked down his chest, slow, his hands spread on Ilya’s ribs, feeling his breathing. He’d done this dozens of times but always fast, always with the clock running. Now he went slow on purpose, and Ilya, who was used to fast, kept making these small sounds, his hips shifting under Shane, his cock hard against Shane’s stomach.

“Shane,” Ilya said. “You are killing me.”

“Good,” Shane said, and kept going.

He took Ilya’s cock in his hand and stroked it slow, watching Ilya’s face. He knew this cock better than he knew anything. He knew how Ilya liked it—tighter at the base, thumb over the head, the rhythm that made his thighs tense. He did all of it, and Ilya’s head went back into the pillow and his hands fisted in Shane’s sheets.

“Tell me what you want.” Ilya looked up, his voice rough. “You said. You tell me. So tell me.”

Shane’s stomach flipped. “I want you to fuck me,” he said. “On my back. I want to see your face. And I want you to stay inside me after, and sleep here, and be here in the morning.”

Ilya made a sound like he'd been hit. His eyes had gone dark and wet and his hands tightened on Shane’s thighs hard enough to leave marks.

Shane moved down the bed and took him into his mouth. Ilya made a noise and put his hand on the back of Shane's head, holding him there. Shane worked him slowly, using his tongue, keeping one hand on Ilya's hip. He looked up. Ilya's head was tipped back, his stomach tight, his free hand fisted at his side.

“Shane,” Ilya said. It came out strangled. “You do not have to.”

Shane pulled off. “I know. I want to.” He licked the head once, deliberate. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No. God, no.”

“Then be quiet and let me.”

Ilya’s mouth dropped open. Shane took him deep, set a steady rhythm. This wasn't new. But it was different because Ilya had not told him to do it, and Shane had said out loud that he wanted to.

After a while, Ilya pulled him up by the shoulders and kissed him, hard, then pushed Shane back onto the bed. He climbed over him, and settled between Shane’s legs.

They were skin to skin, Ilya over him, holding himself up on his forearms. His cock was hard against Shane's. For a long moment, neither moved. They just looked at each other. Shane put a hand to Ilya's face, tracking the line of his jaw. Ilya turned his head and kissed the inside of Shane's wrist.

“I want you to kiss my neck,” Shane said. Ilya did. His mouth was warm and slow. “Lower,” Shane said. Ilya moved down, over the collarbone, the centre of Shane’s chest. He stopped there for a long time, using his tongue, his teeth, on Shane's nipple. Shane’s hands went into his hair and held on.

“Tell me,” Ilya said against his skin.

“My hips,” Shane said. “Hold them.” Ilya’s hands came down and pinned his hips. Not hard. Just there. Shane arched up. “Lower. The inside of my thighs.”

Ilya kissed his way down. He didn’t rush. He pressed his mouth to the soft skin high on Shane’s thigh, his breath hot. Shane’s whole body shivered. He was leaking precome already, against his own stomach. He reached down and took himself in hand, because he wanted to and because he knew Ilya was watching. Ilya’s eyes were fixed on his hand.

Ilya’s eyes flicked up, meeting Shane’s. When Shane spoke again, his voice shook. "Suck my cock."

Ilya obeyed. He didn't tease. He took Shane in his mouth in one slow movement, and Shane's hips pushed up before he could stop them. He felt like he was vibrating out of his body. Ilya held him down, like he always had. But this time he didn’t set the pace alone. He looked up at Shane, eyes asking. Shane’s hand curled into his hair.

The wet heat of it was almost too much. Ilya cupped Shane’s ass with one hand and Shane’s balls with the other, thumb pressing behind. When Shane said, “Slower,” Ilya slowed. When Shane said, “Stop,” he stopped, holding Shane in his mouth, just the head, tongue moving in small, dizzying circles.

“Deeper,” Shane said, and Ilya went deeper, throat working. Shane was shaking so hard he had to grip the sheets to anchor himself. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever been afraid to ask for this. "Good. You're so good." He could feel Ilya's small groan around him.

Shane wanted to say more, but there was no air in his lungs. Every time he tried, it came out as a moan, a fuck or a please or just Ilya’s name. He dug his fingers in to Ilya's shoulders, hard.

At some point, Ilya slowed, pulling off with a last, sloppy kiss, and looked up at Shane, eyes glassy and soft.

Shane stared down at him, at the mess of them, the sweat and spit and the red marks on Ilya's shoulders. For a second, he saw himself from the outside, saw the two of them like a scene in a movie, and it made him laugh, breathless and a little wild.

Ilya smiled, a crooked, real smile. “You want more?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “I want—” He didn’t finish the thought, just pulled Ilya up and kissed him, deep and determined. He wanted all of it, wanted to crawl inside Ilya and live there, at least until the morning.

Ilya's breath hitched. Shane didn't need to say it.

Shane pulled back. “Tell me what you want.”

Ilya tangled his fingers in Shane's, and lifted Shane's hands above his head, pinning them there. “You.”

“Be specific.”

Ilya’s chest rose and fell. “I want to fuck you,” he growled.

Shane’s cock twitched at the raw hunger in Ilya’s voice. He’d never heard him so insistent. “Say it again,” he whispered.

“I want to fuck you,” Ilya repeated, rasping. “I want to feel you around me. I want you for days.”

Shane looked into Ilya's eyes. “Get the lube. The top drawer.”

Ilya laughed, breathless. “You are bossy.”

“I want you to get the lube,” Shane repeated, slower. “The condoms are in the drawer by the bed. Then I want you to use your fingers. Slowly."

Ilya stared at him. His pupils were wide. “Fuck, Shane. You say it like that and I will come before I touch you.”

"Hurry up."

Ilya moved fast. He grabbed the lube and a condom, and then moved back down the bed, kissing a line from Shane's chest to his stomach. He poured lube into his hand, warmed it between his fingers, and looked up.

“Like this?” Ilya said.

“Yes. Slow.”

Ilya bent Shane's knees and pushed his legs wider. One slick finger circled him, then pressed in. Shane’s breath went out in a long, shaking exhale. Ilya watched his face the whole time, his own mouth open.

“You are so tight,” Ilya said. “So perfect.”

Shane moaned. “Another.”

The second finger pressed in. Shane moved his hips into the stretch, taking it deeper. “There,” Shane said, his voice breaking. “Curl them. Like that. Don’t stop.”

Ilya didn’t stop. He worked Shane open with a tenderness that made Shane’s chest squeeze. He didn’t look away. When Shane said “a third,” he added it, and Shane’s head fell back.

 “Now,” Shane said. “I’m ready. I want you now.”

Ilya pulled his fingers out. He ripped the condom open and rolled it on with trembling hands. Then he crawled over Shane and kissed him, deep and slow.

“Ready?” he said against Shane’s mouth.

“Yes.”

Ilya lined himself up with Shane's entrance and pushed in slowly, making Shane gasp. Ilya paused, letting him stretch, then sank in deeper. Shane wrapped his legs around Ilya’s waist and pulled him closer.

“Fuck,” Shane breathed. “You feel so good.”

Ilya’s voice came as a rumble. “You like that?”

Shane nodded, voice trembling. “Yes. More.”

Ilya thrust slowly at first, letting Shane adjust to every inch, then picked up the pace. Shane’s nails dragged down Ilya’s back, breath ragged. Ilya leaned forward, lips near Shane’s ear. “Tell me how good it feels.”

“So fucking good,” Shane groaned. “Faster. Don’t stop.”

Ilya drove harder, hips slapping against Shane’s. Shane wrapped his arms around Ilya’s shoulders, pulling him into a fierce, messy kiss. Their bodies moved together in a desperate rhythm.

Ilya reached up, hooking Shane’s thighs up higher, and slamming in deeper. Shane cried out as Ilya hit that perfect spot. “Yes—right there,” Shane panted. “Keep going.”

All the time, Shane told him—harder, yes, like that, don’t stop, I love your cock, I’ve missed this, I’ve missed you—and Ilya answered in pieces, half English half Russian, Shane, moy lyubimy, look at you, so good, you’re so good for me—

“Say that again,” Shane gasped. “The good. Say I’m good.”

“You’re so good.” Ilya’s voice cracked. “You are the best thing in my life. You always were. Look at you—so beautiful, my beautiful—” and the rest went to Russian, low and frantic into Shane’s neck, and Shane didn’t understand the words and didn't need to.

Ilya held Shane tight, pounding into him with steady force. Shane’s body began to tense, toes curling. Ilya leaned down, pressing his forehead to Shane’s, voice rough: “Come for me.”

Shane’s body convulsed, his cock twitching as he came, with Ilya’s hand around him and Ilya’s eyes on his face, shouting Ilya, because there was no one to hide from any more. Ilya didn't slow, using Shane's release to drive him over the edge too. He followed a few thrusts later, a long, ragged groan, burying himself deep and holding still.

After, they lay tangled in Shane’s sheets, sticky, breathing together. Ilya stayed inside him, heavy and warm, and Shane held him. He ran his hand up and down Ilya's back, feeling the sweat cooling, feeling his breathing slow. He waited for the moment when Ilya would get up, gather his clothes, and leave. It didn't come. Ilya just lay there, and after a while, he turned his face and kissed Shane's neck, once, and stayed there.

Eventually, Ilya pulled out and went to the bathroom. Shane followed. Ilya ran the shower and they stood under the spray together. Ilya soaped Shane's back with slow, careful hands, rinsing him clean before turning him around to kiss his shoulder, his collarbone, water pouring between them. Shane leaned into him, forehead against Ilya's temple, and let the heat soak into his muscles until his legs stopped shaking. They dried off, trading small touches—a hand on a shoulder, kiss to damp temple.

When they came back, they got back into bed, their limbs tangled together. Shane rested his head on Ilya's chest. Ilya's hand moved through his hair, his touch gentle.

The bedroom door creaked open, and Henry meowed from the doorway, his tail twitching. Shane sighed, pushing himself up. “I should feed him.”

Ilya watched him as he got up, his expression soft. Shane pulled on his briefs, then walked to the kitchen, Henry following at his heels. He filled the cat’s bowl, watching as Henry dug in, his tail flicking happily.

Ilya came out after him, wearing nothing, and stood in the kitchen doorway watching Henry eat.

"He is fat."

"He's been at my parents' all summer."

"Ah." Ilya nodded, like this explained something. "Grandparents."

Shane put the bag of food back in the cupboard. Henry finished and sat down in the middle of the floor to wash, exactly where Shane would need to walk.

"Move," Shane said.

He didn't. Ilya laughed.

It was almost eleven. Ilya's bag was still by the door where he'd put it down, zipped, untouched. Shane looked at it for a second, and then turned the kitchen light off, and went back down the hall, and Ilya followed him.

Chapter End Notes

Wow this chapter alone was a rollercoaster. I think my heart broke a little bit for each of them at some point.

So here we are, the end of Break Point, and the Hollanov HEA that I promised. At one point it was 50-50 whether it would be Alex or Ilya endgame, but I promise so I deliver! And it all made sense in the end, I think. I went round in a huge unplanned circle but it came back to exactly where I imagined it would.

I loved writing it so I hope you enjoyed it. And I am very bad at finishing things so it's an achievement to say this fic is complete.

 

But.

Well.

Sort of.

I can't simply leave Alex like that.

I thought I'd get hate for Shane having a hookup with someone other than Ilya, and I certainly never imagined people would actually root for Alex and want Shane to end up with him! But then I never imagined feeling that way myself. I've teased an Alex POV and I am so desperate to get in his head for everything that happened. And I want more Shane/Alex. Peepol have said they want to read it, even if no one reads it I don't think I can not-write it. So I'm just going to write it for myself. You might notice this is now part of a series - working on the Alex POV chapter which will be a standalone within the series and then a sequel which may or may not involve an AU/Shane and Alex reunion…. in the meantime hope you enjoyed Break Point.