Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais/Shane Hollander, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais & Shane Hollander

Characters:

Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Dildos, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Friends to Lovers, Bisexual Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J.J. Dagenais, J.J. POV, Bottom Shane Hollander, Fluff and Smut, Humor, Friendship, Wrestling, Attempt at Humor

Language:

English

Series:

Part 6 of j.j.'s bisexual adventures

Collections:

anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-27 Words: 5,638 Chapters: 1/1

what you carry (and what you unpack)

Summary

Ahead of the Sochi Olympics, Shane, chronic over-packer, has invited J.J. over to help him sort the unnecessaries from the importants, hang out, and absolutely nothing else.

When J.J. comes over and finds something unexpected in Shane's closet, things take a turn.

(Or, J.J. discovers Shane's dildo: the fic.)

Notes

welcome to shayj this is my house and also this fic is theoretically attached to the previous one!! takes place early january 2014, just before the sochi olympics.

Shane had been packed for three days. This was the problem.

He'd packed on Thursday, decided Thursday's pack was two kilos overweight, repacked Friday, decided Friday's pack was still overweight in a more distributed way that was somehow worse, and was now standing in his bedroom on Saturday evening looking at a third iteration of the same pile while J.J. sat on his bed with a beer and watched.

"The scale said four-point-two over," Shane muttered, holding the rain jacket.

"Leave the jacket," J.J. said.

"It rains in Sochi."

"You'll be inside on ice for three weeks."

"It rains to the ice."

J.J. held out his hand. Shane looked at the jacket. He put it in J.J.'s hand and J.J. dropped it onto the floor behind him with the finality of someone who had made a decision. Shane watched it land with the expression of a man attending a small funeral.

They'd been doing this since second season. J.J. had opinions about packing; Shane had anxiety organized to look like opinions. The combination worked. J.J. went through the pile item by item, fast, making calls, and Shane received the calls with the tight jaw of someone accepting decisions he disagreed with but couldn't disprove. A redundant compression sleeve. A tenth pair of socks that was objectively unnecessary. A small leather toiletry bag that was beautiful and weighed four hundred grams and was, J.J. ruled, not worth it.

"I use that bag," Shane said.

"The airline doesn't care about the bag."

"I'll care about the bag."

"Baby," J.J. said, "the bag stays home." He set it on the floor and stood up and went to the closet because it was bothering him and he couldn't leave it alone. Shane's closet was organized in a system J.J. had never been able to crack, things sorted by a logic that existed only in Shane's head. J.J. moved the top rail stuff to the side, found the heavyweight fleece he'd been looking for, and reached to the back of the top shelf.

His hand hit something that was not a sweater.

He pulled it out.

He looked at it.

It was a dildo.

Silicone, navy blue, realistically shaped, not small, honestly pretty decently sized. In good condition, which, okay, filed. J.J.'s brain made several rapid small movements, like a compass finding north: this is Shane's. Shane has a dildo. Shane has had this for— the silicone had that particular quality of something that had been owned for a while, not new, not cheap. Shane has had this for some time. Shane uses this. Shane—

J.J. looked at the closet wall for a moment. He looked back at the dildo.

He leaned out of the closet.

"Hey," he said, casually. He held it up. "What's this."

Shane looked up from the suitcase.

The thing about Shane Hollander was that if you knew him—actually knew him—then you’d know he had no real pokerface. He was good at the controlled version in press conferences and interviews, but in J.J.'s living room or his own apartment with no warning and no warm-up, caught completely off guard, so instead of a response, his face went: recognition, a split-second of pure oh no, and then a red that climbed from his throat to his forehead like someone had turned a dial.

He crossed the room in about four steps and grabbed for it.

J.J. moved it to his left hand. "I'm just asking."

"Give it to me."

"I found it in your closet, I'm just—"

"Donne-moi ça," Shane snapped, and J.J. held it further left and Shane grabbed his wrist with both hands and J.J. started laughing despite himself, because Shane's face was doing something genuinely extraordinary, every muscle working simultaneously to manage an expression that was past managing. The red had reached his ears. He looked like he wanted to step outside his own body and wait there.

"This is yours," J.J. said, angling it away.

"Obviously it's mine—"

"You bought this."

"Jean-Jacques, I swear to God—"

"You went online," J.J. said, the laugh still in his voice, "and you read the reviews, and you identified what you wanted—" Shane made a noise that was not a word. "And then you paid money for this, and it's been in your closet—"

"Stop," Shane gritted out.

"How long."

"That's not—"

"How long has this been in your closet, Shane."

Shane's jaw worked. He looked at the ceiling. He did the thing he did when all his available responses were equally bad and he was choosing the least bad one. "A few years," he finally admitted, quiet, through his teeth. "Fine. A few years."

"A few years," J.J. repeated.

"Yes."

"This has been in your closet for a few years."

"I'm not discussing this with you."

"I'm not asking you to discuss it," J.J. said, and held the dildo out handle-first. Shane snatched it from his hand. He turned and went back to the suitcase and set the dildo down on the bed beside it with the energy of a man putting a weapon on a table during a negotiation, and J.J. kept his face carefully neutral and thought about several things he was not going to say.

"The fleece," J.J. said.

"I see the fleece."

"It goes in."

"I know it goes in." Shane picked up the fleece with more focus than it required and put it in the suitcase, and J.J. pressed his lips together and went back to the closet.

They worked for a while after that in a quiet that was loaded but not unfriendly. J.J. handed things over. Shane made calls. Somehow the dildo found its way onto the bed between them like a third participant in the conversation neither of them was having about it. At some point J.J. sat on the edge of the bed and it was right next to him and he picked it up without thinking, the same way he'd pick up a TV remote or a water bottle, just because it was there.

"Good boots or okay boots," Shane called, from inside the closet.

"Good boots." J.J. turned the dildo over in one hand, not looking at it, watching Shane's back. "What do the good boots weigh."

"About eight hundred."

"Still worth it."

Shane came out holding both pairs. He looked at J.J.'s hand. He looked at J.J.'s face. Something flickered across his expression that J.J. caught and filed.

"Can you not," Shane said.

J.J. flipped the dildo, end over end, the way you'd flip a pen. Caught it. Shane watched.

"Can you," Shane tried again, "please, just—"

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're—" Shane made an aggrieved gesture at J.J.'s hand. "You're holding it."

"It was on the bed."

"Put it back on the bed."

J.J. set it down on the bed, directly beside him. Shane looked at where he'd put it. He looked at J.J. with an expression that communicated several things, chief among them: you are the worst person I have ever met, and also I chose you as my friend, and I'm aware of how that reflects on me.

"Good boots," J.J. said.

"Good boots," Shane agreed, and threw them at him.

They finished the weight audit in fifteen minutes. J.J. had Shane's suitcase under the limit with half a kilo to spare, which Shane seemed to find both satisfying and faintly insulting, the way he found most of J.J.'s competence faintly insulting. They were on the bed now, both of them, Shane cross-legged with the packing list on his phone and J.J. stretched out beside him going through the carry-on. The dildo was still between them, on the mattress, where it had been for the last half hour, and neither of them was looking at it and both of them kept almost looking at it.

"Okay, can I ask you something," J.J. said.

Shane looked up from his phone. "No."

"I'm going to ask it anyway."

"I know you are."

J.J. picked the dildo up again. He turned it over. He looked at Shane's face while he did it, watching the specific thing that crossed Shane's expression when J.J. held it, the way it wasn't purely embarrassed anymore, something else layered underneath. "Does it work," J.J. asked. "I mean. Does it do the job."

Shane stared at him.

"I'm asking sincerely," J.J. said. "It's been a few years. Same product."

"Jean-Jacques," Shane said, and that was the full name again but it had shifted registers entirely, less chastising and more something J.J. couldn't immediately categorize, and before J.J. could place it Shane lunged for the dildo.

He got both hands on it and J.J. held it and they were immediately in a physical argument about it, Shane trying to pull it away and J.J. pulling back, and J.J. started laughing again because Shane's face was furious and red and there was something in his eyes that wasn't just annoyance. Shane got a leg over J.J.'s to get better leverage, which was a choice, and J.J. twisted and Shane went with him and they were wrestling over a dildo on Shane Hollander's bed like two idiots, elbows and effort, both of them completely undignified.

Shane was stronger than he looked. Center strength, core and hips and leverage, and he got on top in the rearranging, both knees on either side of J.J.'s hips, and reached for J.J.'s arm with both hands to pry the dildo loose, and J.J. laughed and said "come get it, baby—" and Shane said "I am trying—" and made a real effort for it, leaning forward, all his weight coming down.

And then J.J., without thinking, without meaning to, just because Shane's weight was there and his hips were there and the wrestling had stirred something warm in him that he hadn't been accounting for, shifted up against Shane.

Just once. Instinctive.

Shane made a… sound.

It was breathless and low, a moan that escaped before he could stop it, shaped by the sudden friction and contact in exactly the wrong(right) place, and it was gone in a second but J.J. felt it go through him like an electric current, like a bolt of something sharp down his spine, and he went absolutely still.

The room went very quiet.

Shane was frozen above him, both hands still on J.J.'s wrist, jaw tight, not moving. His face was turned slightly to the side. The red that had been embarrassment all evening was different now, deeper, spreading down his throat.

J.J. lay there and let the moan reverberate in his chest.

He thought: oh. Hm. 

He thought about Shane's weight on his hips and the sound and what the sound meant, and something cracked open behind his sternum, releasing four years of information he'd been filing without reading. He thought: Shane Hollander, who had been sitting next to J.J. in buses and planes and on floors for four years, who J.J. had always known, on some level, was good-looking in the way you knew facts you didn't examine closely. Compact and athletic and precise-featured and quietly, devastatingly, very easy to look at. J.J. looked at him now. The strong lines of his shoulders, the flushed throat, the dark eyes still turned away, the tight set of his jaw. He thought: oh. I have been very stupid for a very long time.

Shane grabbed the dildo out of his hand.

J.J. reached up, took Shane's wrist, and pulled him down into a kiss. 

It wasn't graceful. Shane's weight came forward too fast and their noses bumped, briefly, and Shane made an indignant sound and J.J. got a hand in his hair and angled properly and kissed him again, and this time Shane kissed back, immediate and deliberate, like a decision he'd already made.

J.J. held the back of Shane's head and felt the specific desperate quality of it, a kiss that had been waiting for someone to be the one to move, and thought: there it is. There's what's been in this room all night.

Shane pulled back and looked at him. Dark eyes, flushed, still holding the dildo at a slight angle like he'd forgotten it was there. J.J. looked back. The thing about Shane, the thing J.J. was processing in real time now that he was allowed to look directly at it, was that he was genuinely beautiful. Not in a way J.J. hadn't known, just in a way J.J. hadn't let himself… think about. The broad cut of his jaw. The line of his throat. Brown eyes that right now were very dark and a little hungry and aimed entirely at J.J., which was doing things to J.J.'s chest and also to the rest of him.

Shane reached for the hem of J.J.'s shirt. 

J.J. lifted his arms.

Shirts off, Shane's hands came to J.J.'s chest and just rested there, warm and slightly unsteady, taking stock. J.J. got his hands on Shane's waist and felt the muscle of him, the solid athletic density of him, and pulled him back down. When Shane's mouth found his again it felt familiar in a way that made no sense and perfect sense simultaneously, like a word J.J. had been pronouncing wrong his whole life and had just heard correctly for the first time. Shane kissed like he meant it, like he'd been meaning it, and the thrumming warmth of it climbed J.J.'s throat and pooled at the base of his spine. He felt Shane's stomach against his, the friction of skin, and thought distantly that he had been in this man's orbit for four years and had apparently been insane the entire time. 

They ground against each other and the friction built, Shane's weight settled warm and insistent in J.J.'s lap, and Shane made sounds into his mouth that were small and helpless and a little desperate, the kind that came out when someone had stopped trying to stop them. J.J. pulled him closer by the small of his back and felt Shane whine against his lips, felt the vibration of it, and thought: more of that. He wanted every sound Shane Hollander had ever swallowed and decided nobody got to hear. He kissed him deeper and Shane gave him another one, breathless and involuntary, hips pressing down, and J.J. thought he could do this for a very long time.

Shane sat back and shoved his sweatpants down. J.J. did the same. They came back together and J.J. inhaled sharply because Shane's cock was hot and hard against his own, nothing between them now, and the contact was electric and almost too much and J.J. wanted more of it immediately.

Shane's hand wrapped around both of them and J.J.'s hips bucked up before he'd decided to do that.

"Câlice," J.J. ground out.

Shane, from somewhere above him, sounded briefly smug. J.J. got his hand on Shane in return and felt him thick and hot in his grip and felt Shane's exhale go shaky. They found a rhythm like that, slow and grinding, and J.J. had a hand in Shane's hair and one on his lower back pulling him closer and Shane's forehead was dropped to J.J.'s shoulder and they were both making so much noise that neither of them was managing. The heat of it was almost unbearable, the drag and press and the specific torment of not having enough while having a lot, and J.J. thought: this. How has this been ten feet away from me for four years. How was I walking around knowing this person and not knowing this.

Something hard bumped J.J.'s thigh.

He registered it without looking. Registered it again, more deliberately. Found it with his hand. The dildo, migrated toward them at some point in the rearranging, and J.J. felt it in his hand and went briefly, profoundly mischievous.

He brought his palm to the curve of Shane's ass instead, slow, unhurried, just cupping it. Felt Shane's breath change. He let his fingers drift inward, just grazing, tracing the cleft without pressing, and felt Shane's whole body go still and then melt forward slightly, hips dropping down against J.J.'s hand before he'd caught himself doing it. Grinding down. Chasing the contact.

J.J. picked up the dildo and waved it where Shane could see it.

Shane turned his head.

"You," Shane accused. His voice had dropped an octave and gone rough. He looked at J.J. with dark eyes and an expression that was downright sinful. "You're evil."

"I'm not doing anything," J.J. said.

Shane's jaw clenched. He pushed back against J.J.'s hand, just a fraction. J.J. held still and watched his face and felt something greedy and warm climb his chest.

"If you want—" Shane started.

"I do," J.J. said.

Shane leaned over to the nightstand and came back with lube, and J.J. took it and looked at Shane adjusting on the bed, and took a moment to actually look. The line of Shane's back, the curve of his spine, the swell of his ass, the flushed skin across his shoulders. He was built like something considered, compact and athletic and exactly proportioned, the kind of body that J.J. had been peripherally aware of in locker rooms and showers for four years without letting himself look at it like this, directly, with full attention. He was looking at it now. He thought: if he'd ever let himself imagine this, and he was not going to confirm whether he had, he would not have gotten close to the reality. The reality was significantly better than anything J.J.'s imagination was apparently capable of producing. 

Shane glanced back at him over his shoulder. "You’re going to stare, or..."

"Both," J.J. said.

Shane's mouth did the thing and he looked away.

"Fingers first," he muttered, to the middle distance, slightly pink. "You have to work up to it."

"Tell me how," J.J. said.

Shane looked at him. Something moved through his expression, quick and warm, and then he took J.J.'s hand and positioned it and said, in the voice of a man being very practical about something deeply embarrassing: "Slow. One finger. Don't rush it."

J.J. went slow.

He watched Shane's face while he did it, which was the right place to look. Shane was sitting up slightly, weight on one hand behind him, and J.J. could see all of him: the flush that had spread down from his throat to his chest, his chest drawn tight, stomach tensed. His expression was focused in the way it got when he was managing something, jaw working, but the focus kept slipping, dissolving at the edges into something softer and less deliberate, and J.J. found he wanted to be the reason it dissolved entirely.

"Deeper," Shane breathed. His voice had gone quieter. "Angle it, no—like—" He adjusted J.J.'s wrist with a small correction, and then his breath caught. "Yeah. There."

J.J. held the angle. He watched Shane's chest rise and fall, the working of his throat, the way his lip caught between his teeth. "Another," Shane said, after a while, and J.J. listened, went careful and unhurried, and felt Shane's thighs shift apart slightly to give him room. Shane's hand came to J.J.'s forearm, not directing now, just holding on. His head tipped back.

"Là," J.J. murmured.

"Oui," Shane managed, "don't stop, right there, don't—"

J.J. did not stop. He watched Shane come apart incrementally, the control leaving his face in stages, replaced by something open and wanting and completely unguarded. His sounds had gone from managed to not managed at all, small and needy and continuous, and J.J. was so hard it was nearly painful and had been for a while and could not bring himself to care even slightly because Shane Hollander was falling apart in his hands and it was the best thing J.J. had ever seen in his life.

"Okay," Shane exhaled, eventually, slightly wrecked. "Okay. Turn me over."

They rearranged. Shane went onto his stomach, J.J. found a pillow and tucked it under his hips without being asked, and Shane settled with his forearms flat on the mattress and his face turned to the side and J.J. looked at him and thought: there is no version of this that is not completely, devastatingly, unfair. The long line of Shane's back. The curve of his spine down to his ass. J.J. uncapped the lube again and worked Shane open a little more, slow, watching the tension ease out of his shoulders, listening to the sounds coming steady and unguarded into the pillow.

Then he picked up the dildo.

He went slow. Watched Shane's rim stretch pink and tight around the head of it, felt his own cock throb at the sight, and thought distantly that he finally understood how a person could get off just from watching. He understood that now. He understood it with complete physical clarity. Shane's lower back curved in as he took it, breath going ragged, and J.J. moved it slow and steady and thought: I am going to lose my mind. He was so hard it ached. He wanted approximately six things simultaneously and was capable of none of them because Shane needed this and Shane was gorgeous and his sounds were going straight down J.J.'s spine and settling, and so J.J. held himself together and moved the dildo and watched Shane's body and suffered.

"J.J.," Shane groaned into the pillow.

"Oui."

"Move it. Please."

J.J. moved it. Found the angle, felt Shane's hips cant back to meet it, watched his hands fist in the sheets. Shane was pushing back with small helpless rolls of his hips, chasing it, and he was saying "right there, don't stop, right—" and J.J. watched his rim flutter tight around the silicone with every stroke and thought he was going to actually die.

Shane turned his head and looked at J.J. over his shoulder. Pupils blown enormous, lip bitten red, a complete and total wreck, and still somehow the most attractive thing J.J. had ever seen in his life.

"Do you—" Shane started, and then stopped, and started again, slightly awkward, slightly flushed over the flush that was already there. "Do you just. Want me. For real."

J.J. looked at him. His cock was so hard he could feel his own heartbeat in it. "Yes," he returned. "Shane. Baby. Obviously yes."

Something lit up in Shane's face. He straightened and turned around and reached past J.J. to the nightstand again, and then he was holding a condom and looking at J.J. with the warm-hungry-decisive expression and J.J. thought: I have been standing two feet from this for four years. We are both idiots.

Shane got the condom on him with complete competence, no fumbling, which was extremely Shane and also extremely appealing. Then he rose up over J.J. and J.J. put his hands on those hips, those sharp-cut hipbones he'd somehow never let himself think about, and just looked at him for a second. Shane above him, chest flushed, hair wrecked, looking down at J.J. with dark eyes and zero hesitation, like this was something he'd already decided the terms of. J.J. felt the heat of him even before they were touching properly, the specific charged proximity of it, and his hands tightened on Shane's hips as Shane reached between them, lined up, and sank down slow.

J.J.'s brain emptied.

Shane was impossibly warm and tight and J.J. felt every incremental inch of it, felt the breath leave his body in a long involuntary exhale. He watched Shane's face as he adjusted, the working of his jaw, the controlled exhale, the moment where everything in him stilled and then, slowly, released. He dropped his chin and just breathed, both palms flat on J.J.'s chest, and J.J. held his hips and did not move, willed every single cell in his body not to move, because he was absolutely certain he was going to come like a rocket if he so much as shifted and he was not going to do that, he was going to be good, he was going to make this good for Shane. He focused on breathing. On Shane's hands on his chest. On anything except how good this was, which was extremely difficult because it was extremely good.

Shane opened his eyes and looked down at him and the expression on his face was something J.J. was going to think about for a very long time.

Then Shane moved.

He started slow, testing the angle, his thighs working in long controlled rolls, and J.J. felt it everywhere, felt the specific drag and heat of him and thought distantly that he was not going to survive this. Shane's body above him was extraordinary in a way that made J.J. feel slightly insane, the strong compactness of him, the flush spreading down from his throat across his chest, his cock hard and flushed against his stomach. He moved with the focused attention he brought to everything, finding what was right, adjusting until it was, and J.J. watched his face work through it and felt completely undone.

J.J. reached up and wrapped a hand around Shane's cock and Shane's whole body shuddered.

"Là," J.J. breathed. "Oui, comme ça—"

Shane dropped forward, hands braced on J.J.'s chest, and found the right angle and the slow testing rolls became something else entirely. The friction and heat of him were catastrophic. J.J. held his hip with one hand and kept the other moving on Shane's cock and the sounds Shane was making had gone completely unrestrained, spilling out of him with every thrust, and the room had shrunk to just the two of them and the dark and the specific electric pressure building at the base of J.J.'s spine that he was absolutely powerless against.

He looked up at Shane above him. The flush across his chest, the way his head was dropped slightly forward, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, the specific beautiful concentration of a person chasing something and getting close. Four years, J.J. thought. This has been four years away from me. The thought lasted about half a second before Shane shifted his angle and J.J.'s thoughts stopped forming entirely.

"Faster," J.J. got out. "Shane, come on—"

Shane made a sound low in his throat and obliged, and J.J.'s hand tightened on his hip hard enough to bruise and he didn't care, couldn't care, could only feel the heat and the friction and Shane above him completely falling apart in the best possible way. Shane's thighs were trembling against him. His sounds had gone ragged and helpless and continuous and J.J. was losing his mind.

"Jean-Jacques," Shane choked out, rough and cracked open and completely unguarded, the sound of a person with nothing left to hold back.

"Oui," J.J. managed, "là, don't stop, don't—"

Shane didn't stop. He dropped his forehead to J.J.'s shoulder and moved and J.J. felt the pressure crest and break, felt himself come with Shane's thighs trembling hot against him, and worked Shane through it with his hand until Shane shuddered and spilled over his fist with a sound that was barely a sound at all, just breath and feeling.

They stayed like that for a long moment. Shane's weight settled fully, his forehead still against J.J.'s shoulder, both palms flat on J.J.'s chest. J.J. had a hand on his back and felt the rise and fall of him, the gradual slowing of it. Outside the window Montreal was doing its quiet January business, entirely unaware.

"Tabarnak," Shane exhaled, into J.J.'s shoulder.

Neither of them moved. The silence was the good kind, the kind that didn't ask for anything.

Eventually Shane shifted off him with a careful exhale and lay down beside him. J.J. looked at the ceiling. He thought: four years. He thought: I am an idiot. He thought: I am so glad. All three things, simultaneously, with complete sincerity.

After a while he sat up. He looked around, found one of Shane's softer hand towels on the back of the desk chair, and tossed it over to him without comment. Shane caught it without looking. J.J. found his shirt on the floor, his shorts somewhere near the foot of the bed, and got dressed while Shane lay there watching him from across the mattress with an expression J.J. was not going to look at directly right now.

He went to the suitcase.

"I'll finish it," he said.

"You don't have to," Shane said, from the bed.

"The boots are on the wrong side and the thermals are in the wrong section."

Shane was quiet.

J.J. reorganized the interior methodically, refolded the thermals, put the boots where they were supposed to go, tracked down a couple of things that had migrated during the evening and returned them to their correct places. Shane lay on his stomach, chin on his arms, watching, occasionally lifting a thumb up or down when J.J. held something up. He had the look of someone tired and warm and completely uninterested in being anywhere else, and J.J. filed that with everything else he was filing and kept his eyes on the suitcase.

He zipped it. Snapped the lock. Lifted it to check the weight, set it neatly beside the door.

He found his jacket. His keys.

"You're not staying," Shane said.

It wasn't quite a question. It landed quietly, no pressure behind it, but it landed, and J.J. felt it.

He turned around. Shane was still on his stomach, arms loose, watching J.J. with an expression that was open and patient and trying very hard not to be anything else, and J.J. felt a pang go through his chest that was guilt and something warmer and more complicated underneath. Shane's eyes were soft. They were doing the thing J.J. privately referred to as baby seal eyes and had never said aloud because he valued his life, and J.J. thought: I cannot figure out what just happened to me if I am looking at that. I cannot think straight in this room. I need the cold and the walk and approximately forty-five minutes of Montreal winter air before any of this makes sense.

"Early skate," J.J. said. "Six-thirty."

Something moved across Shane's face, quick, and then he nodded. "Okay," he said, easy, giving J.J. the exit without making him feel like he was taking it, which somehow made the pang worse.

"Coffee from Bernard tomorrow," J.J. said. "I'll come back, we can do the carry-on."

"Yeah," Shane said. A beat. "Okay."

J.J. looked at him for one more moment. Shane looked back, patient, not asking. J.J. thought: tomorrow. Tomorrow he would figure out what this was. Tonight was tonight's problem and tomorrow was tomorrow's and right now he needed to leave before Shane's face did anything else to him.

"Bonne nuit," J.J. said.

"Bonne nuit," Shane said quietly. And then, as J.J. reached the door: "J.J. Thanks."

J.J. went down the stairs and out into the cold.

January Montreal: thin air, clear sky, his breath making clouds. He walked fast, hands in pockets, head down, his brain doing something extremely loud and complex that he was going to need the walk to sort out.

He got half a block and stopped.

He stood on the sidewalk and laughed. Once, short, completely involuntary, the laugh of a man who had arrived somewhere he'd apparently been walking toward for four years without registering the direction. Shane Hollander, he thought, with a kind of helpless wondering clarity. Shane Hollander and his extremely quality dildo and his—

He started walking again. Faster this time.

He thought about Shane's eyes blown black and hungry. The warm weight of him. The moan that had started all of this, breathless and involuntary, still reverberating somewhere in J.J.'s chest like a bell still ringing.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow's problem. Figure it out tomorrow.

He walked the rest of the way home and lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling for a long time, and the ceiling was not helpful, and eventually he thought: okay. Okay. Shane Hollander. Okay.

He was fine. He just needed the night.

(On the plane to Sochi, Shane fell asleep with his head on J.J.’s shoulder forty minutes in, the way he always had on long-haul flights. J.J. didn't move. He never moved. He sat looking at the dark outside the window, the wing light blinking slow and red, Shane's weight warm and familiar against him.

He thought: I'll give him as long as he needs.

He thought: he's going to be okay about it.

He was more than fine.)

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