Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Hayden Pike, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Grand parents

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Extensive World Building, But still hockey though, Actually a fair amount of hockey, Ilya Rozanov has an unhealthy relationship with danger, They're having sex the entire time but it's a still a slow burn, slow burn while fucking?, Hollander Family - Freeform, vampire!Shane, Polevaulting over the whole situationship, I'm sorry did I mention world building? Because..., fantasy racism and also real racism, Ilya experiencing nuclear meltdown levels of down badness, he has 0 chill about any of this, canon typical levels of homophobia, Alexei Rozanov should be his own archive warning, Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov's canon typical sexual exploits, accurate hockey, Other tags and warnings may be added to chapter notes, Hookup era but with 200 percent more feelings!, Magical Realism

Language:

English

Collections:

Hollanov Reverse Bang 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-30 Completed: 2026-08-31 Words: 125,595 Chapters: 23/23

Seaswept

Summary

His quick hookup should have ended with a casual goodbye. But Shane Hollander turns out to be possibly the most dangerous thing Ilya has ever done, and there's something intoxicating about the way Shane melts underneath him.

He can't have anything Shane represents, and he isn't supposed to ask, "Can I stay?" but he does anyway.

~*~

Half of his team has creature-heritage of some kind, but Shane's could end his career. It doesn't matter that he's no more likely than anyone else to lose control and hurt someone. It doesn't matter that the law says he can't be fired for his heritage, or that he's not what anyone would think.

This thing with Ilya is dangerous for him in more ways than one, but Shane can't stop himself from pushing his luck every time Ilya offers him something he's not supposed to have.

Notes

Oh, my god.

Did I write 125k+ words in approximately 3 months for an event?

Yes. Yes, I did! This is for the 2026 Hollanov Reverse Big Bang, with much gratitude for the mods for letting me push back my posting date by a week. 🙏

I absolutely could not have made it here alone. So so *so* many thank yous:

Aaliyahsparrow is my artist for this event and the source of my inspiration! Thank you for your lovely artwork and getting this little story going

My very patient and dedicated betas, without whom we would be far worse off (and I might not still be sane): BoxyP & Northisnotup

AND to all the people I bullied into reading and giving me feedback along the way 😅

Thank you all so much <3<3<3

A crazy amount of work has gone into this, but please do keep in mind that it was written in quite a short time period and forgive me for any mistakes you find along the way.

Individual chapters may have collapsed warnings in the notes at the beginning.

And PLEASE do tell me your thoughts as you go! I am eagerly waiting to hear what you all think!

Chapter 1: Prologue

Prologue

The elevator wall felt cool against the back of Ilya's head. He let his breath out slowly and tried to calm the wild racing of his thoughts.

In the dozen frenzied moments between recognizing Yuna Hollander and realizing that she wasn't going to get into the elevator with him, he'd tried to come up with a reason that he would be going to a floor he didn't have a room key for that didn't involve her son. He'd mostly come up with static while caught under her intensely assessing gaze, and only now that he didn't need the lie anymore, he thought he could have hit fifteen while asking her where she was going, or just made a production of having hit the wrong button, or simply turned the opposite way from her and ducked around a corner after exiting.

He tapped the fingers of one hand on the rail and put the other up to rub at his forehead.

This was such a stupid idea, but, god, if having been almost caught didn't just make him more excited to knock on Hollander's door. He briefly considered mentioning the run-in, but he thought Hollander would probably bodily throw him out of the room if he did.

Hollander opened the door looking…frumpy. Cozy. Ilya bit the inside of his cheek to hold his smile down. It wasn't like he'd expected Hollander to answer the door naked, but there was something almost charming about the t-shirt that was two sizes too big, and the athletic pants, and the air dried hair laying soft over his forehead.

Other than maybe Sveta, Ilya didn't think he'd ever had a hookup put so little work into their appearance to meet him, and that made him think that maybe Hollander had put a lot of work into his appearance. He stepped into the room and cast his eyes over it in a quick sweep as he circled Hollander.

Ilya could feel Hollander's eyes raking over him. He'd felt it that night in the gym, skin tingling wherever Hollander's gaze touched, like it was a physical thing. He'd almost convinced himself that he'd made that sensation up in the aftermath, but he felt it again: the deeply alluring sense of being hunted.

"I think we should talk," Hollander said very seriously.

No. Ilya was not going to sit down and let Hollander talk himself out of whatever this was about to be. "After," he countered, though he wasn't sure how much after talking there would be either.

Hollander hesitated. He drew a breath like he would insist, but his eyes followed faithfully as Ilya stalked him, and the breath released, unused, into the air. When Ilya turned and walked toward him, there was a moment where the fast flicker of his eyes suggested that he would refuse to back away, and Ilya's pulse jumped in anticipation.

The moment passed. Hollander let Ilya herd him backward, and he hit the wall with a gentle thump. His chin tucked down to his chest, and his eyelids lowered even as his lips parted on a heavy breath. Fascinated, Ilya watched Hollander's chest rise and fall.

"This is such a bad idea," Hollander said. His voice trembled softly, but he reached up to put his fingertips on Ilya's hips and pulled subtly to bring him in.

"What is?" Ilya asked, just to make him say it.

Hollander's eyes flicked to the door, and then up to Ilya's face. His lower lip pulled in like he might bite into it, and then relaxed back out. He swallowed hard and said hesitantly, "You'll tell me…? If I. Frighten you?"

A smile stretched wide across Ilya's face, and he huffed out a laugh. "You? Frighten me? …Hollander." He reached up to brush his knuckles down Hollander's serious face, and smiled even wider when Hollander reached up to capture his hand against his cheek.

Meeting Ilya's eyes squarely, Hollander insisted, "Promise."

Ilya cleared his throat and pulled his lips in to get his smile under control. Hollander's eyes narrowed and his hands tightened. Ilya sensed that Hollander was one misplaced word from reaching over to open the door and shoving Ilya into the hallway.

"I promise," he said with as much seriousness as he could muster. He stretched a finger out of Hollander's hold to tap his nose. "You will tell me? If I frighten you?"

Hollander exhaled on an uncomfortable laugh. "Uh…yeah," he said. "I promise."

"Hollander," Ilya said, tilting his head. "I think maybe…" He put his free hand under Hollander's chin and drew his thumb over Hollander's lower lip. He felt it tremble under the pressure, but Hollander's lips remained closed, even when Ilya pressed his thumbnail between them and tapped his front teeth.

"I think," Ilya repeated, "this is your first time? With a man?"

Hollander's lips tightened around the tip of Ilya's thumb. His eyes closed, and he worked his jaw like he had something trapped behind his teeth. He nodded, opened his eyes, and looked up at Ilya through his lashes. Ilya's heart fluttered under his ribs, and he felt the fast beat of it in his cock.

Before he could even process what he was doing, Ilya had tightened his grip on Hollander's chin and pried his teeth open. He stopped just short of pushing his thumb fully into Hollander's mouth and let it rest there on his teeth, eyes caught on the tender slickness of his lower lip.

Hollander made a high, involuntary noise and tilted his head forward, taking Ilya's thumb down to the base and trapping it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He dropped Ilya's other hand and grabbed Ilya's wrist to hold his hand steady while he gave a very hard suck.

Ilya's mouth dropped open on a silent curse. "Pretty," he managed, once he remembered his English. He could think of a few things to do with such an eager mouth, but he didn't have to say another word. At a flicker of his eyes, Hollander abruptly released his hand and dropped to his knees.

Grabbing Ilya's belt in both hands, Hollander yanked so hard that Ilya had to put a hand out to catch the wall. Ilya stripped out of his jacket and threw it blindly away to clear his line of sight as Hollander yanked his pants and carefully selected boxers down his thighs.

"Fuck," Ilya breathed. He hastily pulled the hem of his tank top up to tuck under his chin and watched breathlessly as Hollander wrapped strong fingers around the base of his cock in a firm, rippling hold. Without even a pause for assessment, Hollander let his tongue lead his mouth down Ilya's cock until his lips met his fingers.

His tongue flattened against the underside as he swallowed, pushing Ilya back nearly into his throat. Ilya bit hard into his lower lip to stave off the startling rush of orgasm, and reached down to grip the back of Hollander's head. He wouldn't survive it if Hollander actually pushed him into his throat, and who even tried that the very first time they had a cock in their mouth? Hollander, apparently.

Hollander stopped there for several seconds, perhaps not sure of what to do next, and then he pulled carefully backward and sucked in a breath through his nose. Ilya felt the scrape of teeth and jerked, unintentionally thrusting into Hollander's mouth. Hollander made a startled noise as he automatically pulled backward, but then he reached up to grip Ilya's ass and bobbed his head back down.

Ilya dropped his head back. He felt his tank top slipping back down his chest and hastily yanked it off before it could obscure his view. By the time he got his chin back to his chest, Hollander had found a rhythm, and maybe Ilya shouldn't have been so shocked that he took to it like it was the last thirty seconds of a championship game, but—fuck.

It was tempting to let him keep going, but at this rate, Ilya only had thirty seconds before no amount of biting his lip was going to save him from exploding. He tightened his hand in Hollander's hair and felt a thrill when Hollander immediately froze. When he reached down, grabbed Hollander's chin, and tugged, Hollander let him go without protest and rose back to his feet.

Once he was standing, he put his hands to Ilya's chest, fingers eagerly tracing the lines of his pecs, and then flattening against them and squeezing. His breath came out as a heavy exhale, and Ilya felt the softest brush of a finger against his mother's crucifix, but then it was gone, and Hollander didn't ask about it.

Ilya ran his thumb over Hollander's lip again and took the excuse of smearing the slickness there across his mouth to get a few breaths in and push his arousal back. He had been humming with anticipation for days, working himself into increasingly wild fantasies about this moment, and he'd yet to finish what he started in the showers. One more look and a well-timed breath, and all Ilya's planning would meet an untimely end.

Holding Hollander's face steady, Ilya ducked in to kiss him. Hollander made a weirdly strangled noise and went tense for half a beat, and then haltingly opened his mouth for Ilya's tongue to push inside. His mouth was hot, and so wet, and salty-slick with Ilya's precum still clinging to his tongue. His hands flexed on Ilya's sides, like a kneading kitten, and he chased after Ilya's mouth when Ilya pulled away.

"So eager for me," Ilya murmured. He closed his teeth on Hollander's cheek, earning himself a shudder and short, startled laugh.

"Oh, you think so?" Hollander tried, but he was literally panting. When Ilya quirked an eyebrow at him, he walked Ilya back a step and turned them around. He glanced over his shoulder at the bed, looked at Ilya, and took a step back toward it.

Ilya shifted automatically to follow as though a cord had been hooked behind his navel, and Hollander's lips curled just the slightest bit in the corners. He took another step back, but Ilya clenched his teeth and resisted moving with him. Instead, he stepped out of his shoes and shimmied his jeans the rest of the way down his legs. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted in a delicious shiver, and when he looked up, he found Hollander in the middle of the room, watching him with hawk-like attention.

Stepping on the hem of one pant leg, Ilya pulled his right leg out of the grip of the denim, and then his left. He kicked the jeans away and stood to his full height to let Hollander's eyes bathe his skin. There it was again, that prickling sense of being in danger. Ilya almost moaned along with the spike in his pulse, but he kept the sound locked in his chest and gestured at Hollander.

"Are you going to join me?" Ilya asked, looking down at Hollander's still-clothed body.

Hollander took another step back toward the bed and asked, "I don't know. Are you just going to stand there?"

"Maybe I like to watch," Ilya said. He did like to watch. He imagined Hollander dropping back to the bed, stripping for him, touching himself. He reached down to give himself a slow stroke and smiled when Hollander's eyes snapped down to the motion and his lips parted again.

"I'm not gonna…" Hollander dragged his eyes up Ilya's body to his face. He swallowed visibly. "I'm not gonna do that."

"Not yet, maybe," Ilya mused, letting himself go. He was gratified by the slow flush of color on Hollander's cheeks.

Hollander couldn't seem to help himself and kept looking down at Ilya's cock before jerking his eyes back up. It was oddly adorable.

Ilya kept his hands at his side. He nudged his chin toward Hollander. "Take them off. I want to see you," he ordered, and the heady rush of seeing Hollander immediately move to obey was nearly enough to make Ilya moan aloud.

Ilya stood and just admired Hollander's economy of movement as he pulled his shirt off over his head, folded it neatly, and set it down on the dresser. It had the feeling of ritual to it, a kind of pre-game cadence that made Ilya smile. Hollander's pants and underwear followed with only the briefest pause, and then he turned back to face Ilya, leaving them both standing there in nothing but their socks.

Hollander's hands turned out near his hips, as if to invite comment. Ilya took the invitation to draw his eyes down Hollander's body. Ilya had been around athletes his entire life and bodies like Shane Hollander's were not unfamiliar to him, but he had to admit that even in good company, Hollander's body was spectacular, and his dick was fantastically large.

In the showers, Ilya had considered, for one wild moment, just dropping to his knees at Hollander's feet. He'd nearly done it as he'd turned to face Hollander and caught sight of his already impressive cock filling and lifting. Ilya's knees had unlocked, but then Hollander had turned away from him, and he'd been saved from the moment of madness.

Looking at it now, fully hard and straining upward, Ilya briefly considered offering to bottom. He'd bottomed for Sasha only once, and it had been a horrible experience, and doing it for Hollander—who had never had sex with a man before and had a dick that could cleave Ilya open—would probably be an equally horrible experience.

He looked up at Hollander's face and found it caught somewhere between guarded, challenging, and nervous. Ilya knew what he must have heard in every locker room since he hit puberty and made a snap decision to simply not comment. He gave Hollander a nod of approval and felt a trickle of pleasure when Hollander's shoulders relaxed.

Ilya put his hand back on himself, stroking leisurely, but he kept his eyes on Hollander's face. Hollander met his gaze with the most stubborn expression, and Ilya nearly laughed when he saw the moisture gathering in his eyes the longer he went without blinking and the more obvious it became that he was intentionally not looking at Ilya's cock.

When Ilya felt the tell-tale tightening in his balls, he made himself let go, though not without a hiss at the denial. The sound seemed to unlock Hollander's eyes and he looked back down, finally, his mouth opening in obvious desire. When he swayed, Ilya recognized the motion of his knees unlocking and grinned.

Hollander gave him a bitchy little look and turned the motion into a step back, and then another. Ilya paused only long enough to strip his socks off, and said nothing when Hollander hit the bed with his still on. He didn't mind; there was something unexpectedly sexy about the bright white tube socks on an otherwise naked body.

Hollander leaned back on his hands with so much studied nonchalance that it looked painful and asked, "Are you going to join me?"

Ilya hummed in consideration, but he was already moving, skin prickling and pulse tripping over the sound of Hollander's voice. As he got closer, Hollander pushed himself up the bed, and Ilya pursued helplessly, crawling after him and directly between his legs.

He found Hollander's mouth again, and marveled at the renewed hesitation to let Ilya's tongue between his teeth, when their hard dicks were so close that Ilya felt it when Hollander's jumped. He made a thorough study of Hollander's tongue and the soft place underneath it, and then pulled back just enough to draw his tongue over Hollander's lower lip.

Hollander made a noise that straddled the border between want and protest. He ripped his mouth away from Ilya's and dropped his head back to pant for air, and while Ilya was still figuring that out, he moved abruptly to push Ilya off of him.

Ilya hit the mattress and held his hands out, tense and a touch confused, but then Hollander curled after him and kissed his shoulder. He dragged his fingertips down Ilya's chest and traced the ridges of his muscles, and then let out a very slow, calming breath, and took his hand away.

The loss of contact was disappointing, and Ilya was not about to let it stand. He turned onto his side and ran one hand down Hollander's arm. When he hit Hollander's elbow, he let his hand fall off his arm onto his hip, and kept going. Goosebumps rose in the wake of his touch, and Ilya was disproportionately affected by the sight of them. His cock twitched against his stomach, and Hollander must have been watching, because his followed suit.

Ilya laughed softly, and Hollander surprised him by laughing as well. Some of the nervous tension dispelled, and Ilya leaned forward to kiss him again.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, pulling away.

Hollander took a careful breath and let it out. "I don't know. What…I don't even know what's…"

"On the table?" Ilya offered, putting emphasis on each word. This was a new idiom he had learned last week, and he liked to say idioms with enough emphasis to let English speakers know that he was making an effort for them.

"Normal," Hollander corrected. He flickered a glance up at Ilya's face. "For this kind of thing."

"What is normal? This normal is lie." Ilya had never "hooked up" with a man before. There had only been Sasha, and that hardly counted for what Hollander meant. But he'd hooked up with a lot of women, and those ran the gamut from him just pressing his spit-slicked fingers into a warm cunt and letting her shudder to orgasm on his hand, to the toy box under her bed making an immediate appearance.

Maybe there was etiquette or "normal" to a hookup between men, but Ilya didn't know it, and he didn't care.

He put his mouth to Hollander's neck and felt him go tense. When he bit very lightly, Hollander went tight and quivering like a struck harp string. Ilya filed that away for later exploration and kissed his way down to Hollander's shoulder.

"Is this okay?" he asked, curling a hand around Hollander's cock and squeezing.

Hollander nodded. He may have tried to respond verbally, but all that came out was a thin, breathy sound as he pushed into Ilya's hand. Ilya shifted his grip so he could take his own cock alongside, thrusting slowly into the channel of his fist. He let his breath out appreciatively at the sight of them together. It was a novel and deeply welcome sensation to press against Hollander's broader length.

Hollander made a sharp noise at the slide of their cocks through Ilya's hand, sucked in a breath, and then abruptly pushed Ilya to his back and slid down the bed.

If Ilya hadn't asked, if it hadn't been so obvious in the shower or the brief conversation afterward, he wouldn't have guessed it was Hollander's first time. Maybe he wasn't practiced, and he didn't seem to know exactly what to do with his hands, but he dragged Ilya's leg out of his way without hesitation, and grabbed Ilya's dick like he owned it.

Hollander's cock nestled alongside Ilya's leg, and he thrust almost absently against it while he fit his mouth to the head of Ilya's cock again. He took a moment with just his lips pressed to the slit, eyes closed and breathing slowly, and the image of him treating Ilya's cock like a straw might have been funny, except that it wasn't. Except that Ilya was already tripping on the edge, and Hollander's lashes made dark wings on his cheeks, and his freckles were so fucking sexy, and the sight of him kissing the head of Ilya's cock like a benediction was going to stalk Ilya's dreams.

Ilya had to take a few deep breaths to stop himself from coming just like that, and then a few more when he imagined what it would look like if he did, with Hollander's mouth resting where it was and the way Ilya would be able to see it—

Before he could embarrass himself, Hollander took a stabilizing breath and opened his mouth, and took another shot at putting Ilya down his throat—holy shit—Ilya had to grab his head to stop him, because it was a bad angle for that, and he didn't want this to end with Hollander hurting himself.

Hollander moaned around his cock as Ilya's hands closed on his head, and Ilya took that for permission. He tightened his grip and held Hollander still as he thrust shallowly upward, and maybe this wouldn't normally be enough, but he'd been all but edging himself for days, and—

"Fuck, Hollander—da—your mouth—" Hollander moaned for him and thrust against his leg—had that ever been sexy before?—and Ilya felt his balls pull up and his cock harden, and he just barely managed to remember to pull Hollander away in time to bring himself off in his hand and not into the delirious heat of Hollander's mouth.

He clenched his teeth together to keep himself from saying anything stupid as he came, panting through his nose like a fucking racehorse while his vision went spotty, and then he was watching himself come around his fingers in great, messy pulses.

When he was fully aware of his surroundings again, he found Hollander tucked tightly to his side, trapped under his left arm and panting against his skin. He curled his hand around Hollander's neck to take hold of his jaw and kissed him, chasing his own taste once again on Hollander's tongue.

His muscles released with the rush of blood going back to his brain making him light headed as he relaxed to the pillows. His limbs felt gloriously loose, and his skin was alive with shocks as Hollander ran restless fingertips over his chest.

"Not bad for first time," Ilya said, as if that hadn't been one of the best blowjobs he'd ever had, though it really shouldn't have been. Sasha had gotten quite good at it by the end, and he'd had some very talented ladies on their knees for him. It shouldn't have been enough to make him feel like a collection of overcooked noodles, but it did.

Hollander made a soft noise that was not quite a laugh and not quite a groan, and it came out stifled against Ilya's shoulder. "Thank you," he mumbled sarcastically into Ilya's skin.

Ilya maybe should have returned the thank you, but he didn't say thank you for sex, as if it was a favor his partner was doing for him. As soon as he felt like he could sit up without his muscles trembling badly enough to give him away, he rolled over to grab a handful of tissues and cleaned the mess off his hand.

It was on the tip of his tongue to make a joke about leaving, but then Hollander reached out and ran his fingers down Ilya's spine, and the words fled along with the shivers that followed his touch. His pulse, which had been slowing down as he wound out of the orgasm, spiked up again, and he felt an intense desire to turn around, or to jump out of the bed, anything to get Hollander back in his line of sight.

He twisted in a smooth, showy roll, ending up between Hollander's thighs again, with Hollander looking up at him with half-lidded, dark eyes.

"Want demonstration on how to do this right?" Ilya asked. "Few pointers from vet?"

Hollander rolled his eyes. "I'll take notes."

Ilya gave him a slightly harder than necessary slap on the cheek, and then eased down the bed. Giving head was something he'd always enjoyed, and something that Sasha had praised him for endlessly, but Hollander's dick presented a challenge that Ilya was perhaps too excited to tackle. It wasn't too large to handle, but it was both thick enough and long enough to warrant some care. Despite the recent orgasm, he felt a low thrum of desire as he took it in hand and ran his tongue up the length of it.

At the first touch of his mouth on the soft head, Hollander cursed and closed his thighs around Ilya's head. When Ilya shoved at his inner thigh with one hand, Hollander let them fall open again, but the muscles jumped and trembled with the effort.

Ilya quickly found a comfortable rhythm, working down the length of it and covering what he couldn't quite get with his hand. He worked his fingers in time with his mouth, squeezing and releasing, and felt the bitter salt of precum flood his mouth in seconds. He let it escape his mouth to slick Hollander's length, opened his fingers to draw it down, and went to work in earnest.

It took maybe thirty seconds for Hollander to start tripping over his own tongue and gasping. He put both hands down to grip Ilya's hair, trying to push him off, but Ilya wasn't a quitter, and he'd always loved this moment. He felt Hollander's cock turn to steel in his mouth, his balls draw tightly upward, and then the hot, fast pulses hit the back of Ilya's throat.

It was more than he'd expected, but he swallowed hastily and kept swallowing and pulling well beyond the point that Hollander had anything left to give him.

"Stopstop, fuck—stop," Hollander pleaded in a babbling rush, and Ilya let him go.

He looked up, expecting the blissed out expression of a mind-blowing orgasm.

He distinctly was not expecting the set of fangs clearly visible in Hollander's panting mouth.

Chapter 2: Chapter One

Chapter Notes

In the moment between recognizing what the fangs were and reacting, Ilya's brain gave him a high-speed replay of every time he'd had his dick in that mouth. His dick, thoroughly spent as it was, twitched hopefully, and Ilya pulled himself up Hollander's body and brought their mouths together in a frantic, searching kiss.

Hollander made a noise like a squeak and a moan all tangled up in a fist fight, but he closed his hands on the back of Ilya's head and met Ilya's tongue with his own. Ilya searched along Hollander's teeth, remembering that brief scrape against his cock with a retroactive shock of desire and nerves. His heart pounded, and he was anticipating the pain of finding one of those fangs with his tongue so acutely that he yelped embarrassingly when he touched a perfectly normal canine with the tip of it. He could have cried with the disappointment when a quick pass found the surrounding teeth dull and smooth.

Ilya broke the kiss to gasp in air, and looked up at Hollander's face. If he hadn't been holding all his weight on his hands, he might have grabbed Hollander by the chin, and pried his mouth open, and poked at his gums until the fangs extended again.

Hollander stared at him, wide-eyed and full of wonder, and said, "Holy shit, Rozanov. That was so fucking hot."

"Can I stay?" Ilya asked far too quickly.

The stillness that settled over Hollander's body was something like shock, but his hands tightened automatically on the back of Ilya's head and neck, and his thighs pressed inward like he might physically restrain Ilya if he tried to leave. His eyes flickered rapidly over Ilya's face, and his mouth worked without sound.

"Shane," Ilya pressed. Underneath him, the shudder that passed through Hollander's body could have been a flinch, it was so immediate. It seemed like he'd stopped breathing as he stared up at Ilya's face.

Hollander swallowed hard. "Ilya…" He whispered, like he was tasting the syllables.

There were too many of them, but Ilya wasn't going to complain just now. He could teach him later. He left a trail of kisses over Hollander's lips and across his cheeks.

Hollander pressed into each one, making soft noises and squirming under Ilya's body. He made two attempts at speaking before he managed, "How—? How long do you…?"

Ilya grinned. "I want to fuck you." When Hollander's eyes widened, Ilya darted down to take another deep, wet kiss off his mouth. He pulled back and met Hollander's gaze.

Hollander's next exhale shook. He said nothing for a beat, but his legs closed tighter on Ilya's hips, and then a low whine escaped his mouth.

Ilya pressed his hips down, catching Hollander's softening, tender cock against his pelvis. He got a flinch and whole body shudder for his efforts, Hollander's eyes closing and throat working, hands trembling where they were buried in Ilya's curls. The delicate skin under his eyes went hot and pink, freckles nearly glowing in contrast.

"Shane," Ilya rumbled again, delighted at the immediate reaction Hollander had to hearing his name on Ilya's tongue. "Do you want me to fuck you?"

"YesIwantyoutofuckme," Hollander gasped out in a tumble like the words had been torn forcefully out of his chest. His eyes snapped up to Ilya's face with an expression of dawning understanding verging on terror, but Ilya didn't give him even a moment to reconsider.

Diving in again, Ilya chased those words all around Hollander's mouth. When he pulled back, Hollander was flushed down to his chest and breathing hard.

"Then you have to let me stay," Ilya said with a smile. "I am very good, but even I need a few minutes to recover." He gave Hollander a wink, and Hollander rolled his eyes, but the heat didn't leave his face, and he moved with Ilya when Ilya rolled off of him to drop onto the bed.

They ended up face-to-face on their sides, and Ilya waited impatiently for Hollander to give him an explanation, to say anything, but the longer the charged silence lasted, the more apparent it became that Hollander did not realize his secret was out in the air between them. Could someone really have fangs drop out like that and not notice? It seemed Ilya was a victim of his own success, and he'd short-circuited Hollander's brain so hard that he really hadn't.

Ilya had never met a vampire before. There were not many of them in the world who were not slavering monsters, and they tended to keep to themselves. He was so curious, he could have died for all the questions rattling around under his ribcage. Hollander clearly had no aversion to sunlight, and Ilya had never heard even the least rumor that Hollander had creature heritage—and he would have heard. There wasn't a single thing anyone had published about Hollander that his father or a coach hadn't put in front of Ilya's face.

The space between them was suddenly unacceptable to Ilya, slender as it was. He wiggled across until he could slip a thigh between Hollander's and tangle their legs together. When he wrapped his arms around Hollander's back and tugged, Hollander snorted a laugh, but he coiled his arms around Ilya and adjusted his body so they fit better together.

"I didn't think you would be so…"

"Sexy?" Ilya offered. "So amazing at sucking your cock?"

Hollander laughed again, half incredulous and half pleasure drunk. "Cuddly. God, those English words just come naturally to you."

Smiling broadly enough to make his face hurt, Ilya ran his hand up Hollander's spine to grip the back of his head, and pulled until Hollander relented and tucked his face against Ilya's neck. Ilya's pulse pounded so hard that he was sure Hollander could feel it against his mouth, and a spike of pleasurefearexcitementanticipation briefly froze his breath in his lungs.

Hollander could bite him. One quick motion of his mouth, and he could have Ilya's life in his stomach, and there was absolutely nothing Ilya could do to stop him.

After a heartbeat of frozen hesitation, Hollander kissed his throat, right over his thundering pulse, and sighed into his skin. He nuzzled upward until his nose hit Ilya's jaw, and then left a few more kisses there. He pulled back just enough to bring their mouths back together in a slow, almost tentative slide, and then he set his forehead against Ilya's.

"I have an early flight tomorrow," he said softly.

"So?" Ilya nipped at his bottom lip. "I do, too. We are young. Who cares—sleep on plane." He licked at the seam between Hollander's lips and pressed in as soon as they parted, reaching up to hold his chin steady and pushing until Hollander rolled partially onto his back.

They stayed like that for a while, kissing lazily, while Ilya drew his hand up and down Hollander's arm, and back, and hip, around to his ass, and wherever he could reach. Hollander let him explore wherever he liked, and his fingertips tapped out obscure patterns on Ilya's ribs. Sometimes he pulled away from Ilya's lips and put his head back to draw in a few deep breaths through his nose before tucking himself back down and letting Ilya have his mouth again.

Ilya realized that he was doing this to keep control of himself, and it was flattering, and cute, and frustrating. But he had a very strong feeling that Hollander would shut down like a cold snap if he thought Ilya knew, and Ilya might not get the chance to reassure him that it was the hottest fucking thing Ilya could think of right now before whatever this was came apart at the seams.

And there was a very significant part of him that wanted to drive Hollander back to the edge, see how close he could get him to losing control, and what might happen if he really managed it.

"Come shower with me," Ilya announced.

Hollander's brows furrowed together. "Shower?…I thought…" His fingers tap-tap-tapped on Ilya's arm, and his muscles were tight enough to bounce quarters off of. "I thought we were going to—"

Ilya leaned up to kiss his forehead. "Oh, we are. It will be so fucking good for you. First, come with me."

Hollander nodded slowly, and Ilya gave him a firm slap on the ass before rolling out of the bed and stretching his arms up. The appreciative noise Hollander made, and the way it cut off when he caught himself in it lit a warm glow in Ilya's chest. He turned over his shoulder to give Hollander a long, hot look, and then made his way to the bathroom.

It was all he could do to keep from laughing when he heard the distinct sound of a body dropping flat on the mattress, and Hollander's very slow and controlled breath following immediately after.

The water was warm when Hollander made an appearance in the doorway, and Ilya said nothing as he put one hand on the counter and awkwardly pulled his socks off, glanced around, and then set them neatly on the back of the toilet. He stood there in the crappy hotel lighting, flexing his toes against the tiles and trying to hide how much he hated it. Ilya wondered if he just didn't like to be barefoot, or if it was the hotel room itself, but he didn't ask as he put a hand on Hollander's hip and drew him into the shower.

"This feels familiar already," Ilya mused as the water struck his back and steam drifted up around them.

Hollander gave him a thin laugh, but his eyes were glued to Ilya's chest—his neck?—and he reached out to curl a hand around Ilya's bicep and squeeze.

"Is this how you wanted to touch me earlier?" Ilya asked as he reached up to adjust the angle of the shower head so the spray wasn't hitting Hollander in the face. He had worked hard on getting his hair perfect after the earlier shower, and now it was getting wet again and would be a mess, but Hollander's shoulders had already relaxed in the more comfortable setting.

Taking the opening while Ilya's hand was raised above his head, Hollander skated his palm up Ilya's side, into his armpit, and then up his bicep. Ilya obligingly held his arm there, and was rewarded with Hollander leaning in to kiss his raised arm, and then nuzzle into it.

"'m glad we're not on the same team," Hollander murmured into his skin. He flicked a glance at Ilya, one corner of his lips curling upward just a little bit. "I don't think I can ever share a locker room shower with you again."

Ilya dropped his arm to close over Hollander's shoulders and brought his other hand up to cradle the back of Hollander's head. "No? What would you do if we did?"

Hollander's face went instantly hot, and he ducked his face into Ilya's shoulder, and then shook his head. The stream of water hit the top of his head, but he didn't pull away from it, and his hair was quickly soaked through.

Twisting, Ilya kissed his ear and nosed into his wet hair. "I can tell you what I would do," he said softly, and squeezed Hollander harder when he felt the ripple of a shudder go through him. "I would take shower stall next to you—"

He kissed Hollander's ear again, and then closed his teeth gently on the lobe. "And I would…take the soap in my hand…"

He let Hollander's ear go and drew his hand down Hollander's spine to the top of his ass, and spread his fingers wide so his pinky just pressed into the crease. "And wash myself like you are not there."

Jerking in his arms, Hollander made an annoyed little noise, but he stopped when Ilya pushed his hand down further, finger sliding deeper into the crease.

"I would do such good job," Ilya told him. "Very good…how do you say?…Attention to detail."

Hollander shivered against him and opened his mouth on Ilya's shoulder. If he noticed Ilya's pulse picking up, he hid it well. His arm tightened around Ilya's waist and his hips pressed subtly backward, encouraging Ilya's progress.

"I would let you watch me have such good hygiene for very long time," Ilya promised. "And then…" He adjusted his grip over so his forefinger rested feather-light along the length of Hollander's crack.

"And then…" he repeated in a breathy whisper right against Hollander's ear. "I would go get dressed."

Hollander's breath exploded out in an outraged pop that was not a laugh and not a curse. He squirmed in Ilya's arms like he meant to pull away. "You are an asshole!" He said, but there was an undercurrent of laughter in the words.

Ilya gave him a look of indignation. "What? What do you want me to do? Hm?" He tightened his grip and turned his head to bite gently just under Hollander's ear. "Do you want me to get on my knees?" He turned to press Hollander against the cold shower wall, smiling when Hollander flinched at the touch of it on his skin, and dragged his hands down Hollander's sides.

"Maybe I do—would. Maybe I would want you to get on your knees," Hollander said boldly.

"With our whole team watching? Hollander! You are dirty boy, I see."

Hollander's face warmed again, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably, but before he could say anything else, Ilya pressed a kiss to his mouth.

He pulled back and said, "Okay," and then went down to his knees. The shower was not really big enough for this, and it was awkward to fold himself into it, but it was a good excuse to drag his body down Hollander's as he went. He kept his head tilted back to look up at Hollander's face the entire time, and delighted at the rush of desire clouding his eyes.

"Like this?" Ilya asked once he was settled. He laid a kiss on Hollander's left thigh, and then bit down.

"Fuck—" Hollander breathed, knocking his head back against the wall and breathing roughly in the steamy air.

"I am on my knees for you in front of our whole team, and you will not look at me?" Ilya prodded, and Hollander's chin snapped back down so fast that Ilya wouldn't be surprised if his neck had popped. "What should I do down here?" Ilya asked. He reached up to take the bar of soap and rubbed it between his hands when Hollander just stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips.

"Wash your feet?" Ilya guessed, and dragged his soapy hands down Hollander's calf to his ankle. He pulled, and Hollander splayed both hands out to grab the shower walls as he hesitantly lifted his foot. Ilya dragged his hands over the top of it, and then pressed his thumb hard down the center of the sole. By the way Hollander jerked in his hand, he was ticklish, which Ilya filed for future reference as he cupped water in one palm to rinse the soap away.

Hollander made an almost hysterical noise when Ilya repeated the process on the other foot.

"This is funny?" Ilya asked. "This is not what you want? Clean feet?"

"Ilya," Hollander said in a helpless little voice that set a warm, lazy flush of arousal humming under Ilya's skin.

"Tsk, tsk. In our team locker room you call me this?" He looked up with as serious of an expression as he could muster. "What will our teammates think?"

"While you're—on your fucking knees, washing my feet?" Hollander asked incredulously.

"This is nice thing I do for teammate," Ilya said reasonably, shrugging. "Maybe you are injured and cannot reach your feet. You are the one making it weird."

"Oh, my god," Hollander moaned.

"You are too injured to reach here also?" Ilya guessed, lathering his hands again and closing them firmly around Hollander's right thigh. He pushed up, watching Hollander's fine, dark leg hairs stand up as he dragged his fingers over them. He deftly avoided Hollander's cock, which was quickly thickening in interest, twisted his hands around do the front and back of his thigh, and dragged them back down.

With the noise Hollander made, Ilya might not have avoided his cock. He gave Hollander a mock-concerned look through his eyelashes. "Oh, Hollander, it must hurt very bad, this injury."

"F-fuck you, Rozanov," Hollander said to the ceiling, but he took only two quick gulps of air and looked back down without needing to be reminded. Ilya squeezed his thigh and massaged at the quivering muscles as a reward before he soaped his hands up again.

Ilya diligently continued his very helpful activity, rinsing the soap off as he went. He gave thorough attention to the backs of Hollander's knees, and the insides of his thighs, and the sharp crease of his groin before curling his hand around Hollander's now fully hard cock and stroking quickly over it.

Hollander hissed at the contact, leaning over, and Ilya reached up to push him back.

"You're blocking the water, Hollander. You make my job difficult."

With a shaky laugh, Hollander mumbled, "Sorry, Rozanov."

Ilya let the soap rinse away and took the opportunity to close his thumb and middle finger around the base of Hollander's dick. His fingers met if he kept his hold firm, and he looked up to make sure Hollander still had eyes on him before sinking down to settle his hips between his ankles and pulling Hollander's cock downward.

Hollander's eyes were very wide and dark, and his mouth dropped open as Ilya guided Hollander's dick onto his tongue and let his head drop back far enough to get the angle right. When he pressed his tongue out along the underside and swallowed, the head slipped into his throat. He forced himself to relax through the first instinct to gag, and swallowed again.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Hollander breathed, setting a shaking hand on Ilya's head.

When Ilya pulled off of him, Hollander sucked in a breath like he'd been punched and leaned back against the wall.

"Still taking notes, Rookie?" Ilya asked through his grin. He let Hollander's cock go and patted his stomach in a very friendly manner.

"Very good technique," Hollander managed.

"For cleaning," Ilya clarified, and Hollander laughed unsteadily.

"For cleaning," he agreed.

"So where does it hurt, Hollander?" Ilya asked, running his hands up and down the outsides of Hollander's thighs and positioning himself so Hollander would have to look past his own hard cock to meet Ilya's eyes.

The effect was not lost on Hollander, and the dick in question gave a weak bob.

"Here?" Ilya guessed, curling a hand around Hollander's hip and squeezing. "Did you fall badly? Someone hit you so hard, you went down?" Hollander just let him talk, but his chin raised and lowered in a tentative nod. "Hollander, I am disappointed. Do I need to teach you to fall?"

"I know how to fall," Hollander snapped automatically, but the words dropped off to a moan when Ilya set his teeth over the jut of his hipbone and ran his tongue around between them.

"This could be bad injury, Hollander. Hip is very uyazvimyy…injured easily. Could be chronic."

"Should I go ice it?" Hollander asked after a long swallow and a false start.

Ilya smiled against his skin and had to bite down again to kep himself from laughing. "Hmm. Definitely," he said seriously. "But I will look closer for you. Maybe it is not just this hip. I am good teammate and will be thorough."

Opening his knees wide, Ilya took Hollander by both hips and tugged and pushed until Hollander caught up and turned carefully to face the wall. Ilya lathered his hands again and went back to being a diligent, helpful teammate, running soapy hands up the back of Hollander's thighs and over the curve of his ass.

Hollander's forehead hit the wall with a soft thunk. "Jesus Christ," he complained faintly.

Safely out of sight, Ilya allowed himself a silent laugh as he rinsed the suds away and made a production of examining Hollander's ass for injury.

"If you could not even manage to clean here, I guess you could not get here either," Ilya said as he pushed his soapy hand between Hollander's cheeks and all the way down. Hollander's breath turned into a high-pitched whine and he cursed softly. One knee bent out to open himself up, and Ilya took advantage, following the motion around to rub his knuckles against Hollander's taint, and then gently cupped his balls.

Ilya enjoyed having his own balls fondled, but he knew not everyone did. He paid close attention for any discomfort, but Hollander actually pushed down into his hand, and Ilya obligingly closed his fingers and gave a carefully squeeze.

He was rewarded immediately with a grunt, and when he let them go and tucked himself close so he could draw his hand up Hollander's cock, a hitching breath. Ilya gripped the head for just a moment, twisted his wrist in the awkward space against the wall, and pulled back down.

Hollander let a breath out in a gasp that could have been mistaken for pain.

"Am I being too rough, Hollander? Hurting your poor injured body?"

"God, fuck you," Hollander replied, voice hitting oddly against the tile. As if through gritted teeth, he said, "You're such a helpful teammate. I appreciate it so much, Roz."

Ilya dragged his hand back over Hollander's balls, stopped to squeeze his taint between two knuckles, and then turned his wrist to bring his fingers back up. He paused at Hollander's hole and pushed experimentally against it with the flat of his fingertip. It pulled in automatically, and stayed tight and quivering while all the breath sounds from Hollander ceased. Ilya stayed there for a moment, just running his fingers back and forth over it, until he felt a shudder, and then it slowly relaxed. Ilya stayed there and played with it until Hollander stopped tensing against him, even when he pressed a fingertip against it and pushed just enough to feel it give under the pressure.

Withdrawing his hand and pushing Hollander tighter to the wall, Ilya held his hand up to direct the spray of water over Hollander's ass. With a squeeze for warning, he used both hands to pull Hollander's cheeks apart, watching the water take the soap with it in white rivulets down his inner thighs. It was a pretty picture and Ilya bit hard into his lip and breathed through a heady pulse of want.

He imagined it being easy enough to stand and slot himself against Hollander's body, and just push into the clinging heat of him. But it wouldn't be easy. And Hollander's first experience bottoming would be horrible, and maybe it would be the last time he would do this for Ilya, and Ilya found that he was very, very interested in this being only the first time.

Hollander pushed subtly into his hands and Ilya kneaded at the firm muscles.

"Is that still not clean enough?" he asked. He leaned in to drag his nose over the curve of Hollander's ass, and laid a kiss at the top of his crack for illustration.

"—What?" Hollander asked, voice high.

Ilya ran his tongue just between where his fingers held Hollander open. His skin tasted faintly of soap, but the water pouring down his back took most of it directly off Ilya's tongue again.

Hollander jolted. If Ilya hadn't been supporting him, he might have fallen. "Oh. Is that…?" His forehead pressed to the tile again, and his breath came out in several fast pants. When Ilya licked him again, he whined. "Oh…my god."

With no protest forthcoming, Ilya pressed his face in and lightly flicked his tongue over Hollander's hole. The pitchy moan made him smile, and he repeated the barely-there flutter until he heard a frustrated curse, and then he gave in and flattened his tongue to make a solid pass across the hole. Above him, Hollander scrambled at the wall for purchase, and Ilya had to close his eyes against the water splashing into his face.

Hollander didn't seem to know what to do with his body. His right leg started to tremble violently where it was holding nearly all of his weight, and Ilya was concerned that he would fall, but Hollander was wonderfully sensitive, and Ilya would make use of that information later. He pulled away, but held Hollander open for another moment, just to watch him tremble, before letting him go.

With a firm smack on the ass that made Hollander jump and briefly left a pink mark on his ass cheek, Ilya declared, "All clean."

While Hollander sagged against the wall, Ilya caught a mouthful of water, spit it out, and rose back to his feet with the help of the slippery wall. The shower was full of steam and it was getting difficult to breathe, but he still wrapped his arms around Hollander's waist and set his cheek to the top of Hollander's shoulder.

"…What are our teammates going to think?" Hollander asked faintly.

"That I am such good teammate, keeping clumsy skater who cannot fall right standing," Ilya said lightly, biting the top of his shoulder.

"—Clumsy—!" Hollander tried to protest, but he broke into a shivery moan as Ilya's teeth sank into the muscle, and then a much deeper sound of appreciation as Ilya held on to his mouthful for several seconds.

When Ilya let him go and took the soap again to finish the job he'd started, Hollander twisted in his arms and asked, "I thought it was an injured hip? Don't you think I can manage this part on my own?"

"Can never be too careful," Ilya said, kissing up his neck as he ran the soap over Hollander's chest and into his armpits. "Maybe is bad shoulder injury, too."

"Unlucky for me."

"Hmm, yes, you fall very bad." Ilya wrapped his arms around Hollander's soapy body and wiggled against him to feel the slick glide of their skin together. Hollander laughed breathlessly, and then quieted as the motion brought their cocks back together.

"Not clean enough yet?" Ilya said into his neck. "You are very fussy, Hollander. High maintenance." He put a soapy hand down to wrap around their lengths, and Hollander thrust unsteadily into his palm without a word for a long minute.

"If you want to—to…fuck me…oooh, fu-uck. You should—" Hollander leaned his forehead on Ilya's shoulder to look down the gap between their bodies.

"I should..?" Ilya prompted.

"Stop," Hollander said faintly, but Ilya immediately let go at the word, and Hollander made a choked noise. "I didn't actually mean stop," he said with a frustrated groan.

"Oh, sorry, my English is bad. I thought stop meant stop."

Growling, Hollander put his teeth on the juncture of Ilya's neck and shoulder, and Ilya froze in wild anticipation, but there was no burn of a puncture, no rush of blood, no spike of pain that was any sharper than any other love bite Ilya had ever received. After half a dozen frenzied heartbeats, Hollander stiffened and quickly pulled back. He didn't say anything, just took a breath and set his forehead to Ilya's cheek, rolling it slowly side-to-side.

"Maybe I'm too injured to stand," he said haltingly.

Ilya took a calming breath. "I should help you back to the bed, then, da?"

Once the water was off, Ilya stepped out and grabbed the towels on the rack behind the toilet. He threw one at Hollander's face and smiled at the annoyed huff as he caught it and let it unfurl. Hollander dried off thoroughly before even stepping out of the shower, and then fussily dried his feet, even stretching his toes wide and getting in between them with the edge of the towel.

Ilya watched with his lower lip held between his teeth. He felt weirdly warm at the sight, and waited until Hollander apparently had both feet dry to his liking before grabbing the socks off the back of the toilet and throwing them, one at a time, at his face. Hollander snatched each one with that same huffy noise, and Ilya almost snapped him with his towel, just to get Hollander angry, but that might have defeated the whole exercise of the shower.

Despite his glaring, Hollander put his socks back on and gave Ilya an almost shy look when he was once again armored against the hotel carpet.

Ilya held a hand out and waited for Hollander to take a step toward him and put his palm into Ilya's. Closing his fingers around Hollander's wrist, Ilya drew him in for a slow kiss. Despite a thorough toweling, Hollander's hair dripped water down his back, and he shivered when Ilya caught it with his fingertips and dragged it over his skin.

When Ilya pulled, Hollander followed. When Ilya gave Hollander a nudge that was more of a suggestion than a push, Hollander fell onto the bed and pushed himself up the length of it.

Ilya detoured back toward the door and picked through his clothes. Hollander's eyes immediately fastened to him, going wary as Ilya picked his pants up.

"Don't worry, Hollander," Ilya said with a suppressed laugh. "I'm not finished with you yet."

Hollander glared at him, but his shoulders relaxed as he muttered, "Such an asshole."

Ilya pulled the condom out of his jeans, and the tube of lube out of his jacket. He held the tube up and wiggled it as he walked back to the bed. "Unless you have one you prefer better?" he asked, and was not shocked—but definitely pleased—when Hollander's face warmed again.

Hollander shook his head. "No, that's. Fine."

Ilya dropped the condom onto the bed, but he kept the lube in his hand as he took Hollander's ankle in the other and pulled it out of his way so he could crawl back between Hollander's thighs and settle on his knees. He tucked the lube between his legs to warm against his body and ran appreciative hands over Hollander's big thighs. The ease and relaxation from the shower had fled, but he unwound again quickly as Ilya pushed his knees up and spent a while just petting and kissing his thighs.

By the time Ilya ran his hands down Shane's legs, gripped his hips, and lifted Hollander into a better position, Hollander barely tensed at all. "Have you ever touched yourself here?" Ilya asked, leaning back to watch his own hand sliding behind Hollander's balls.

He pressed the tip of his middle finger against Hollander's hole and looked up to catch Hollander watching his face with that predatory intensity that sent simultaneous bolts of lust and alarm shooting down Ilya's spine. He shivered under the assault, but just raised his eyebrows and pushed with his finger for emphasis.

Hollander swallowed, hesitated, and then slowly nodded.

"Has anyone else ever…?"

Coloring, Hollander said, a little peevishly, "I said this was my first time—"

"With a man," Ilya interrupted, and he didn't point out that Hollander hadn't actually said it. "Women have fingers, too."

"No," Hollander said quickly, expression doing something complicated, but that might have been because Ilya chose that moment to wiggle the tip of his finger into the ring of muscle, just to feel it flutter and close around him.

Ilya didn't press in further, but he didn't pull back either. He leaned his head against Hollander's raised knee and left idle kisses on it. "How do you touch yourself here?" he asked, pressing and releasing without breaching Hollander's body.

A shiver passed up Hollander's stomach and chest, and he shifted his weight restlessly, but he didn't pull away from Ilya's slowly massaging finger. After a breath, he actually pushed down on it, and Ilya had to draw back to keep him from trying to impale himself. Hollander made a soft, frustrated noise in response. He let his eyes drift up to the ceiling and took in a few breaths through his nose while his hands opened and closed on the bedspread.

"Shane," Ilya said. He smiled when Hollander's eyes snapped back to his face. "Tell me."

"I…my fingers," he said in a breathy whisper. His cock moved in a slow pulse, and his hole squeezed Ilya's fingertip in time. "And. I did… Jesus Christ—" An uncomfortable whisper of sound escaped his throat, but he kept his eyes on Ilya's, save for a long blink. One breath, and then his jaw firmed, and he said bluntly, "The hand-held shower head unscrews."

Ilya felt the delighted little noise on his tongue, and he let it roll around there for a moment. "You did this, waiting for me?" he pressed, opening his mouth to set his teeth on Hollander's knee.

Hollander didn't speak again, but his chin jerked down in a nod. His expression was challenging, but Ilya had no criticism to give except that he wished Hollander had waited for him. He was distantly impressed by the initiative, and he hardly needed to be more turned on, but knowing that Hollander had wanted it badly enough to do this unprompted, even not knowing what was on the table was a firebrand around Ilya's spine. He took a long second to just breathe against Hollander's skin in an effort to keep his hands off himself.

Feeling steadier, he retrieved the lube from between his thighs and squeezed it onto his fingers. It was nearly body temperature, and Hollander barely flinched at the touch of it. Ilya pushed Hollander's thigh until he caught on and grabbed under his knee and pulled it up to his chest; he didn't have to be prompted to take the other one, and Ilya massaged the lube against his hole until it relaxed again, and then pushed. There was a brief moment of resistance, and then Hollander bore down on him, and his finger pressed easily inside.

Mouth dropping open, Hollander released a hitching sigh of a breath and tucked his face against his knee, closing his eyes. When Ilya curled his finger to stroke his prostate, Hollander cursed and pushed against him. Ilya pulsed his finger against it again, enraptured by Hollander's every twitch and gasp, and watching his mouth for a glimpse of those fangs making a reappearance, but though his mouth was open and panting, Ilya saw no sign of them.

Ilya sped up his efforts, ignoring the burn in his forearm, and Hollander's face twisted in pleasure while his toes curled. He turned to bite his own knee, breath turning into a long, shuddering chain of oh-my god, fuck, oh-oh-oh. Almost reluctantly, he opened his eyes and met Ilya's gaze. His eyes were wet, and his eyebrows furrowed like he was worried about the state of the whole universe.

They were really very pretty, his eyes. Ilya found himself swaying in time with his own hand, gaze locked with Hollander's as he tapped and stroked his prostate.

"Oh-fuck, I'm—" Hollander released his knee and pushed his foot hard against Ilya's collarbone until Ilya stopped moving his finger. "If you're going to—Can you just…"

"What?" Ilya prompted.

"Fuck," Hollander said, but it was a desperate curse, not an order or even a request. His face, when he met Ilya's eyes again, was dressed in something like heartbreak. "Please," he whispered so softly that Ilya barely heard him.

Breathing hard through his nose, jaw clenched, Ilya slowly pulled his finger out and wiped his hand on the bedspread. Hollander whimpered at the loss of him, and his eyes immediately dropped down, craning his neck in an effort to see past his own dick.

Ilya slid a hand to the bed and patted around until he found the condom. He tore the wrapper open with his teeth, rolled it on with hands that shook only a little, and slicked himself up. "Give me that pillow," he ordered, gesturing to one that was not under Hollander's head.

Hollander passed it over quickly, and Ilya folded and shoved it under Hollander's hips, lifting him into position and watching Hollander's eyes darken as he did.

"Keep your knees up," Ilya said, and Hollander grabbed the back of his thigh again and brought his knee back to his chest. Ilya rubbed more lube across Hollander's hole as he rose up to his knees, and asked, "Ready?"

Hollander nodded quickly, but his eyes were wide and they darted restlessly over Ilya's face.

"Relax," Ilya said as he lined himself up and leaned over Hollander's body. Hollander nodded, but he hadn't taken a breath in a several seconds. Ilya stroked the head of his cock through the mess of lube, and suggested, "Breathe."

Nodding again, Hollander pulled in a deliberate breath. Ilya waited until he'd released it, and pressed against him in time with Hollander's exhale. Eyes wide, Hollander's breath stuck in his throat. Ilya pulled back slightly and rocked in again, slow and steady, and Hollander arched his neck backwards with a stuttering moan as Ilya sank into the achingly tight heat of his body.

Ilya paused as much for his own benefit as Hollander's, and asked, "Okay?" His voice shook on the word, but Hollander didn't seem to notice, lost as he was in his own body.

Hollander at least managed a nod, and then another for emphasis. When Ilya adjusted his position, he twitched and breathed out a frantic, "Oh my god."

Tucking himself forward, Ilya brought their mouths together in a messy kiss. He caught Hollander's lower lip between his teeth and sucked on it, enjoying the high-pitched whine he got in response. After a moment, Hollander's legs curled around Ilya's back, and he released his hold on his thighs to wrap his hands around Ilya's head and neck. He pressed his forehead into Ilya's temple and pulled Ilya into a rocking motion, thighs and abs working to move Ilya's weight.

Ilya laughed softly against Hollander's skin, got his knees underneath him, and rolled his hips. Hollander rose up to meet him with a gasp, hands closing almost convulsively on Ilya's neck. He shook like a leaf in a windstorm under Ilya's weight, but he met each thrust readily. When Ilya curled an arm under his shoulder to pull him in tighter still, he sobbed as he tucked his face into Ilya's neck.

The brush of teeth almost made Ilya come on the spot, but it was barely there and gone, still without the sting, and Ilya's stomach turned over in a twisting war between relief and disappointment. He put his head down, half pressed into the pillow and half cradled against Hollander's neck, and rocked on the curve of Hollander's body.

Neither of them would last long, Ilya realized. He wanted to draw it out—he wanted to stay buried in Hollander's gripping warmth for hours, for the rest of his life if he could manage it, but within a few minutes, he felt himself sidling up to the edge, and Hollander's breath was one continuous moan.

"God," Ilya gasped, partly a complaint, and he pushed upward until Hollander very reluctantly loosened his hold.

Getting up to his knees, Ilya took a second to just breathe and stare down at Hollander's flushed and trembling body, his liquid-dark eyes, his kiss-bruised mouth. Hollander made an impatient, mewling noise, and Ilya worked his hips into a series of short, upward thrusts that had Hollander gasping on rhythm.

"Still okay? Shane?"

Hollander nodded, opened his mouth like he might say something, but Ilya hit him just right, and the words turned into a high, needy whine. Tucking his arms under Hollander's knees, Ilya took a bracing breath and leaned backward. He pulled slowly out, and then slammed back in.

Hollander shouted loudly enough that Ilya had an hysterical thought of someone sending the police to the door for a welfare check. He didn't have enough breath to laugh, but he repeated the motion to a similar result, and then settled back into a rhythm, slowly ramping up the pace until all he got out of Hollander was breathless gasps as he arched into the sensation.

Ilya couldn't reach Hollander's dick from his current position, not without leaning forward and giving up the angle. "Touch yourself, Hollander. Put your hand on your dick."

For a long moment, it seemed like Hollander wouldn't bother. He was open-mouthed and panting, eyes closed, head arched backwards to unintentionally give Ilya a perfect view of his teeth and the roof of his mouth. He made frantic, pleading noises like he was on the cusp of coming untouched, and the veins in his neck stood out sharply as he strained for the edge.

"Shane!" Ilya barked, and Hollander whined, but he put his hand down, finally, to touch himself.

One barely-there stroke of his fingers, and his muscles locked up as he came and—there, fuck. Ilya had a perfect view of his fangs dropping from his gumline to cover his normal teeth, two on each side, wickedly sharp canines and shorter, razor-tipped companions just beside.

Ilya's orgasm hit him so abruptly that he almost missed the half-second warning. He thrust hard into Hollander's trembling body and locked himself there, eyes sealed to the gleam of light hitting Hollander's fangs. Even while the pulse of his orgasm was still ricocheting through him, Ilya dropped Hollander's legs and folded him nearly in half to slam their mouths together.

He felt the barest shiver of motion against his lips, but the fangs were fully retracted by the time Ilya pushed his tongue in to explore them. He shouted into Hollander's mouth in frustration, but the sound mingled with the shocky whimpers of Hollander coming down from his own orgasm, and was lost.

Chapter End Notes

Is this the longest single sex scene I've ever written?

Probably, jfc!

You might now be under the impression that you're about to embark on 100k+ of pure sex.

You are not (Sorry and/or you're welcome??)

But lbr, do we think these two will be keeping their hands to themselves?

Chapter 3: Chapter Two

The aggressive buzz of his phone vibrating on the side table startled Shane to wakefulness. He slapped a hand out before he'd fully brought his brain online and flipped the cover open just to get the noise to stop.

"Shane? Hello?"

Shane's heart tripped and raced up his throat, and he bolted upright as he put the phone to his ear. "Mom. Hi."

Sprawled next to him, Ilya Rozanov moaned softly and pulled a pillow over his face.

"Oh, good. Just making sure you're up. Your dad and I are getting breakfast downstairs. Are you going to make it? We need to leave in about forty-five minutes."

Shane threw himself out of the bed and spun in a circle, looking at the mess of Ilya's clothing strewn over the floor, the soiled comforter folded on the desk chair, his suitcase unzipped on the folding stand, and the open bathroom door where his toiletries were still neatly laid out on the counter.

And Ilya Rozanov.

Naked.

In his bed.

"I'm not really very hungry," Shane said, which wasn't a lie, but it would be in about half an hour.

"You should try to eat something anyways," his mom insisted. "You have that clinic this afternoon, and I know you hate plane food. I'm not sure we'll have time to get something at the airport, so it's this or—"

"—Right, sure. I'll be—I'll be right down."

"Okay—"

"—See you in—"

"—See you down here—"

"—a minute, yeah. Bye." He hung up the phone and cursed softly. "Rozanov! Get up!" Shane said, grabbing his foot through the sheet and tugging hard.

With a low, grumbling noise, Ilya sat up, grabbed Shane by the wrist, and yanked him into the bed in one lightning fast movement that reminded Shane—as if he needed to be reminded—that Ilya was a generational talent.

"No!" Shane hissed. "I need to be out the door in like…seven minutes or less, you need to—" His words were lost as Ilya pulled his head down for a kiss, tongue moving lazily into Shane's mouth and swiping around his teeth.

Just kissing him felt so good; Shane had never realized that kissing could be good. He melted into Ilya's body, and he knew he was clumsy in comparison to Ilya's confident, practiced technique, but he stroked Ilya's tongue with his own and followed where Ilya led.

Shane had insisted on another quick rinse and brushing his teeth the night before, and Ilya had followed to turn his quick rinse into another lengthy soak under the spray. Afterward, he had given Shane a lifted eyebrow when presented with a still-packaged spare toothbrush and a defensive "In case something happens to mine" explanation, but he'd still used it, even while insisting that he was going to get dressed and go back to his own room.

They'd tumbled back into bed without Ilya even getting as far as his underwear, which were still crumpled by the door. Though Ilya had boldly declared that he "had more plans," they must have both fallen asleep almost immediately, because Shane didn't remember anything after that last long, lazy kiss.

Despite the toothbrushing, their mouths tasted awful with morning, and Shane barely even cared.

Ilya pulled away for a breath, and Shane remembered that he needed to be moving, but before he could get back out of the bed, Ilya reached over and snagged Shane's phone out of his hand.

Shane reached for it automatically. "Hey! What are you—?"

Ilya gave him a narrow-eyed, unimpressed look, and continued typing into Shane's phone. From somewhere in the vicinity of Ilya's crumpled clothing, there was a buzz and a muffled ringtone.

He handed Shane's phone back, and Shane looked down at it.

Ilya Rozanov #1 pick ;), read the contact name.

Shane rolled his eyes so hard it hurt, but it was a struggle to hold the smile down. "Fuck you. You are such a dick."

"Hmm, yes, but you know you want this dick again, so…" Ilya shrugged one shoulder, giving Shane an expression that even he could read as what are you going to do about it?

And the thing was that Shane did want it. His eyes fell to Ilya's covered lap, and he had an absolutely insane urge to yank the sheet away and see how fast he could get Ilya to come down his throat. If he could get Ilya all the way down his throat.

"Ilya…"

"Il-YA," Ilya said, overemphasizing the stress on the second syllable. When Shane just blinked at him, he made a circular, inviting gesture with his hand.

"Il-YA," Shane repeated with the same overemphasis, but he was embarrassed that he had been mispronouncing Ilya's name all night, adding in a third syllable in the middle. He was rewarded for his efforts with a beautiful, sleepy smile, and he couldn't help leaning in for another quick, hard kiss before he ripped himself away. "Ilya…" He closed his hands on Ilya's shoulders. "You need to get out of this bed, right now, get dressed, and leave."

Ilya made a dramatic noise and swooned back to the rumpled bedding. "You use me all night and throw me out like trash bag at…" He twisted and lifted his head to peer at the alarm clock. "Four a.m.? Hollander!"

"It's four-twelve a.m., and I thought you had an early flight, too?" Shane asked, yanking the sheet back, and then wishing he hadn't. Ilya's naked body was soft, and lined faintly pink with the ghost of the creases in the sheets, and Shane's mouth actually started watering as he stared down at the length of his torso and his semi hard cock laying on his thigh.

"Jesus," Shane breathed, and then he forced himself to turn away when Ilya just smirked up at him and shifted his hips into a more artistically-arranged posture.

Shane had spent more than his fair share of mornings shoving roommates out of their beds when they'd slept in late and needed to be up for a game, or a bus, or a flight, but this was not in his skill rotation. Rousing a grouchy teenager who knew he wasn't playing hockey after he graduated, or whichever Martins player had drawn the unlucky straw to be his roommate for the night was not the same thing as…whatever this was.

"Ilya, please," he said without turning around, feeling desperate, and horny, and really annoyed that he'd insisted on attending that clinic and had to fly out so early.

"Okay, okaaay…" Ilya said with a long suffering groan as he rolled out of the bed. His hair was an absolute disaster, and that probably shouldn't have been so fucking appealing, but it was, and Shane wasted another precious minute watching him push it out of his face a dozen times while he retrieved his clothes and got dressed.

Finally, Ilya shrugged into his jacket, stood to give Shane a lingering once over that did not help cool down his quickly growing erection, and said, "Bye, Hollander. Was fun."

Shane swallowed hard and nodded. He forced his hands to stay still at his sides and not cover his very interested dick from Ilya's equally interested eyes. "Goodbye, Rozanov. Have a safe flight."

"Mm, you too. See you soon."

"Yup," Shane said awkwardly.

Ilya hovered by the door for another moment, just staring at Shane, and Shane stared captively back. Ilya was fully dressed, and Shane was almost totally naked, and Shane's skin was crawling with a screaming demand for Ilya's hands on him.

Ilya swayed like he would turn around, but his eyes didn't pull away from Shane's. Finally, he cursed under his breath, and then took two fast steps back into the room. Shane met him halfway, and the rough scrape of the denim on his naked skin would have been enough to make him moan if Ilya's mouth hungrily taking his apart hadn't done it first.

When he pulled back, Ilya caught his chin and met his eyes for a very long moment. "I will call you," he said severely.

Shane shivered in his arms. "I might answer," he replied in a voice that he wished shook less.

Ilya smirked, gave his cheek a firm pat, and kissed him on the tip of his nose. "Bye, Shane."

Shane tried to stop himself from smiling very stupidly, and thought he'd probably failed. "Bye, Ilya."

When Ilya stepped away, Shane let him go. Ilya didn't look back before slipping out the door and into the hallway, which was probably for the best.

Shane knew he needed to be moving, but he stood and stared at the door for several seconds, as if Ilya might come back through it, more than half hoping that he would.

"Holy fuck," Shane breathed once his brain registered that Ilya really was gone. He put a hand up to cover his mouth, fingers automatically pressing to make sure his fangs were still sheathed.

Feeling abruptly lightheaded, Shane curled over to put his elbows on his knees, and then ran his hands through his hair several times, scratching at the faint tingle in his scalp. "Oh, my god. Oh, holy shit."

A laugh bubbled weakly out of him. He couldn't believe he'd actually managed that night without giving himself away.

~*~

"Well, the nice thing about early flights is a less-crowded airport," Dad said as they found their seats and settled in. Shane was against the window, and he immediately turned to stare out of it, watching the ground crew on the tarmac as the rest of the passengers filed in.

"I wish it had been a longer stay," Mom said. She sat down and rustled with her seatbelt. "But it was nice to see Kyle and Louise. I'm glad they were able to find a sitter for the kits."

Shane listened with only half an ear. He was somehow groggy while feeling oddly serene, and his body ached in ways at once familiar and novel. The pull in his abdominal muscles was indistinguishable from the aftermath of a challenging core workout; the tremble in his thighs when he was just past his center of gravity while sitting down was just the day after leg day; but the faint ache in his ass was strange and new. And also wonderful. He had to actively stop himself from squirming in his seat just to feel the throbbing ache of it, and each time he did feel it, he had to lock his jaw to keep from making a noise he would not be able to easily explain to his parents.

The hour and a half between leaving Ilya in the locker room and the knock on his door had been agony. Shane had changed his clothes four times, pulled the blankets back to check that the bed was made properly—and fixed it when it wasn't—and run through a cycling list of everything Ilya might have wanted from him, and if he would be okay with those things. And then he'd had a short, annoyed argument with himself when he'd realized that he would be okay with basically anything, which was even more stupid than how stupid the whole situation was, when one slip of his fangs could have been enough to ruin his life. He'd taken a shower, felt stupid again for it when he'd just gotten out of a shower in the locker room, and then gotten back in when it occurred to him that there was a chance that Ilya might want to just…bend him over.

That thought had calmed him almost as soon as it had occurred. If Ilya had bent him over something, taken him from behind, then even if Shane had lost control of his fangs, Ilya wouldn't have seen them. As he'd gotten the shower head off, he'd fallen into that same clarity he reached at the end of his pre-game routine: He'd had a strategy, and he'd known how to achieve it. It was as simple as offering to let Ilya fuck him, and then he would get to tick his virginity off the sheet and scratch whatever itch Ilya Rozanov had planted under his skin in the way most likely to keep him and his secret safe. Then he could move on with his career and his life without further disruptions.

And then Ilya had put his hands on Shane's skin, and Shane's clarity had shattered.

In the aftermath, Shane was desperately glad that Ilya hadn't just bent him over. Ilya's face as he'd pushed into Shane's body was something that would keep him warm at night for a long time. He'd never felt so secure or so powerful off the ice as in that moment. Being fucked had also been something he'd been aching to try, but was more terrified of asking for than he was curious about experiencing, so much so that he'd more than half decided that he would never actually find someone to do it. He wished he'd been able to keep his eyes open for more of it, and that his brain hadn't shut down so thoroughly that a lot of it was just a blur of pressure and heat and driving want.

Absently, he put his hand over his mouth and pressed on his fang sheaths through his upper lip, watching the luggage go by on its way to the hold.

His mom's hand entered his field of vision, and he flinched back slightly as she grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away from his mouth.

"Shane—"

"I know," Shane said hurriedly, putting his hand in his lap.

"Honey, you need to be careful," Mom said in an undertone.

"I know," Shane insisted.

"You're going to be getting a lot of attention, and this can't be a gesture that people start to—"

"Mom," Shane interrupted, trying to keep his voice low and steady. "I know."

Her forehead creased and her lips pulled in and down. She patted his hand sympathetically. "I know it can be hard, and you shouldn't even have to be worried about it. And this is all new, and you've got a lot of changes coming up—"

"You make it sound like I'm going through puberty again, Mom. I'm just… getting on with my career, like a lot of people my age. I've already been living on my own for a year. This is just a new apartment and a different commute." He tried to say it in a way that it sounded like he believed it, but her expression was both exasperated and knowing when he flicked a glance at her face.

"Sweetheart, come on. Like a lot of people your age?" She set her hand on his arm and squeezed. "You look tired. Did you have trouble sleeping last night?"

Shane had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He cleared his throat, shifted on the seat, and then had to close his eyes for a quick second at the lightning-flash ghost of Ilya's cock inside him. When he opened his eyes again, his mom's expression had gone from sympathetic curiosity to concern.

"I'm fine," he hurried to say.

"Are you in pain, Shane?" she asked quickly, leaning over to put a hand on his cheek. When Shane jerked away from her, she took it away, but left it hovering close.

"I uh. Just pulled something during the shoot yesterday," Shane said quickly, gently pushing her hand down. "Not bad at all," he rushed to add when her eyebrows went up. "I think because…you know, normally, you're not in a face-off position like that? For so long, I mean. And we did that so many times. So, you know, I think I just need to stretch. I'll have time before the clinic."

"I'm sure we can call and let them know you can't make the clinic, Shane," Dad said, leaning around Mom to look at him. "It's not like this is really mandatory for you; you volunteered. And you're starting training camp soon. You don't want to be working with injured muscles for that."

Shane let his breath out. "I already agreed to go, and if I don't show, they're going to need to scramble to get someone else. And how does that look to management if I back out at the last minute of something I said I would do? I don't want to start burning bridges before I've played a single MLH game."

"David, you know how this game works. He committed to it," Mom chastised, but she kept looking at Shane like she could peel his skin back and figure out where he was hurt.

"I know, and there's a reason I never went pro. But they offered to take you out of it when they changed the promotion shoot to L.A. at the last minute."

When it was scheduled for Toronto, the clinic wouldn't have been a problem, but the chatty assistant who called to see if he could make it to L.A. instead had shared that the director in Toronto had cancelled, letting slip a you know, full moons and all!

The clinic organizers had been quick to offer him an out, but Shane had done the math on the return flight and told them it wouldn't be a problem. The pleasant ache in his muscles made him wish he'd been more selfish.

"I said it would be fine, and that I could make it anyways. Just because I'm going to training camp, it doesn't mean I'm on the team this year. They could send me back down."

The concern in Mom's eyes fled with an incredulous eye roll. "Be serious," she said.

"They could," Shane insisted.

"They could," she granted in her most dismissive tone, "but they won't. What do you think it means that CCM just had you shoot a promotion, Shane? You think they're going to splash your face all over their site and billboards, and half the televisions on the continent if there's any chance of you being shipped back to the farm?" She shifted in her seat, resettling her weight with a snort. "Honestly, it was an absolute crime that they put you there in the first place."

Shane let the argument go. Even if he privately—and half the journalists in the business very publicly—agreed that he hadn't needed the year to develop any further, the team had been too close to their cap, and they'd had too many vets with no-movement clauses. His mom understood that as well as anyone, but she had still grumbled about it all season. Shane hadn't even been called up for single games; the only injury that had merited calling up a reserve player had been Gillis, and he was a D-man. In fact, none of the draft picks had started last season, not even Ilya. Something else that every sports writer had decried at great length, most often immediately before or after "and Shane Hollander…" appeared on the page.

"He's going to play for them this year," Dad said patiently, breaking into Mom's tired rant before she could really get a head of steam built up. "And it worked out better for us to be able to see more games, plus, he had more time for all that…" Dad waved his hand vaguely. "Brand stuff."

"That brand stuff," Mom said in a dangerous deadpan.

"Sure."

"Please don't fight right now," Shane pleaded, and if something in his tone had both of his parents leaning over to look at him, he hoped they attributed it to a headache.

"We're not fighting," Mom said, but then she put her hands up. "Alright, we'll let it go." She was silent for several seconds, and then made a little oh! noise. "By the way! Guess who I ran into at the hotel. You'll never guess."

"Was it Santa Clause?" Dad asked. "What? That would be something I would never guess."

"Except you did just guess it, Dad," Shane pointed out.

"…Arnold Schwarzenegger?" Dad tried.

"Ilya Rozanov," Mom said with a hint of smugness, and Shane just hoped she missed the way he froze at the name.

"That was gonna be my next guess," Dad said. "But, you know, since he was staying at the same hotel, definitely less un-guessable than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just saying."

"Okay, you're right, not un-guessable, but just. That boy is so…arrogant," Mom said.

"Where—?" Shane cleared his throat, and tried for casual interest. "Um-where did you see him?"

If she had seen him coming out of Shane's room that morning, she would have said something a lot earlier. And she had been down in the hotel's breakfast lounge when she'd called. He didn't think she would have come up to get him, and it hadn't taken that long for him to get Ilya out of the room.

She waved a hand. "In the elevator. Well, not in the elevator. I was waiting for the elevator, and it opened up, and there he was! He was going up, and I was trying to go down, so of course I just waited for the next one. But you know, he looked at me like he would rather spit on me than give me the time of the day?"

"I think, maybe…he's just. Russian?" Shane offered. "He was okay, actually. During the shoot, I mean."

"I'm glad he was professional on set, but…you know, I really can't stand him. And the league just putting you two in each other's faces all the time. It's going to cause problems, hyping up this 'rivalry,'" she said, putting air quotes around rivalry, as if they were not rivals. "You just watch. Like Montreal even needs a reason to hate him. He's playing for Boston for chrissake, that's reason enough."

"Boston did draft him," Dad pointed out reasonably.

"They wouldn't have drafted him unless he was a Boston kind of player," Mom said in an equally reasonable tone of voice.

"So, if Shane had been their pick—" Dad started, but cut off when Mom hit him on the arm.

"That would have just been good sense."

Dad nodded in understanding. "Not because Shane is a Boston kind of player."

"David."

Dad put both hands up defensively, but he was grinning at her. "Just making sure I have my facts straight."

"So," Shane broke in to interrupt their flirting. "When was that? That you saw—Rozanov? In the elevator?"

Mom put on her recall face, and Shane tried not to be annoyed with it. His mom always knew exactly what time she had done anything and how long it had taken. She made a show of putting thought into remembering for other people, but not usually for Shane. "I was on my way down to meet your dad in the lobby before we went to see Kyle and Louis, so that must have been a few minutes before nine."

"Well, I was in the lobby at eight-thirty," Dad said, and withstood Mom's withering look for several seconds before he continued, "And you, of course, were punctual as always and stepped through the door at exactly nine o'clock."

Shane let out a very subtle breath that at least she hadn't seen Ilya a couple hours ago, looking like a localized windstorm had made a nest in his curls while his clothes bore the obvious the wrinkles of a night spent in a heap on Shane's floor.

"And he was not wearing the clothes he left the rink in," Mom added with a triumphant flick of her finger.

"Clearly he was up to something nefarious," Dad agreed with a sage nod.

They continued their good-natured bickering quietly, and so were not paying attention when Shane took his phone out and scrolled to his new contact.

S: You met my mom in the elevator last night?!

He sent the text and stared at his screen, waiting for a reply, but it was just past seven, and Ilya might have been getting on his own plane or standing in the security line at the airport. Shane saw one of the flight attendants on her way down the aisle, with her great, fluffy tails banded together in a bustle behind her. He knew he was going to be told to turn his phone off at any minute, but he kept his eyes on the screen, willing Ilya to respond.

Just as the speakers ping'ed and the flight attendant started the safety speech, his phone buzzed in his hand.

I: Did she say nice things abut me? ))

Shane quickly powered the phone off and snapped the cover shut before he could reply. A retroactive wash of nerves poured through him, and he wasn't sure what he would say if he replied in that moment.

He kept himself painfully still in his seat, suddenly convinced that his mom would put the pieces together the next time she saw him flinch, and she would realize what he'd done the night before to leave him sore and tired in the morning. And who he'd done it with.

~*~

Once the wheels were back on the tarmac, Shane powered his phone back on and watched the notifications come in as if he was getting the messages in real time.

He glanced at his mom, but she was curled over in her seat, repacking her blanket into her oversized purse. She was half in Dad's lap to do it, and had him handing her the various comforts they'd taken out during the flight. Dad teased her about the number of them, but he was the beneficiary of Mom's meticulously organized packing, and she reminded him of it as she put everything back in its designated place.

Despite how thoroughly preoccupied they were, Shane still turned subtly in his seat so his mom wouldn't be able to see his screen if she glanced over. It would be safer, maybe, to wait until they were in the car, where he would have the backseat to himself.

It would be safest to just not read or reply to the messages at all. Or, he could—should—just text Ilya that they weren't having sex ever again, and block his number, and pretend it had never happened.

He'd gotten away with it this time, and that was probably a minor miracle, and he shouldn't press his luck with a repeat performance, or even the possibility of a repeat performance. Ilya was something akin to a colleague, and he was a man, and they both had locker rooms to manage.

But every attempt Shane had ever made at anything even adjacent to sex with a girl had been miserable, and awkward, and had left him feeling cold and uncomfortable in his skin. He sat there staring at his phone, thinking about the time his first girlfriend had tried to open his pants, and he'd panicked so hard that he'd accidentally pushed her off the dock and into the lake. Just a week ago, he'd been dragged out to a club with his teammates for an end-of-season celebration, and a very drunk woman had crawled into his lap to the cheering encouragement of half the team. He'd nearly thrown up when she'd put her hand down his pants and cooed that he had such a big dick, and held his face against her chest while she'd tried to stroke him to hardness and failed.

Andrea had broken up with him a week after her unplanned swim, and half the school had pantomimed the moment for the rest of the year. The drunk woman had passed out against his shoulder before it had become obvious that Shane was the problem, but that hadn't stopped his teammates from teasing him about it.

Every experience with women in between the two had been equally disastrous, and he'd always felt like he needed to lock himself in a room and claw his own skin off afterward.

Even as a teenager, he'd been aware that boys were an option for him, and no one in his family would have been surprised, but the only boys he'd ever gotten to know were teammates. That came with a whole host of complications and headaches he hadn't wanted to deal with, and his concerns hadn't changed much in the last year with his every waking moment devoted to either hockey or "that brand stuff."

With the added stress of his secret on top of all the other stresses, he'd really started to think that just staying away from sex with other people for the rest of his life was preferable. He didn't want to test the waters with telling his teammates about the increasing likelihood that he had no sexual attraction to women at all and a lot of sexual attraction to men, and it was easier to just let them think he was terrified of women than to open himself up to closer scrutiny of his personal life. Even if he sometimes thought it would be easier if his teammates had something definitively different they could point to and harass him over, and they could stop wondering what it was that set him apart from them.

It wasn't like it had been much of a hardship to keep his focus on his game and away from sex. He liked to touch himself, and he was very good at it, and it didn't matter if he slipped and let his fangs drop when he was alone. He was perfectly capable of wringing a satisfactory orgasm out of his own body, and that could have been enough. He'd convinced himself that physical contact was physical contact, and it would be the same thing if he got himself off or another man did it for him. For that matter, that he might feel the same way if a man touched him that he did when a woman touched him, and if that hadn't been enough to stop him from wanting a man to touch him, it had been enough to keep the urge buried under his skin.

But he'd apparently been very very wrong about it being just the same, and now he'd finally managed to shed his virginity, and it was with Ilya fucking Rozanov, and it had been shockingly, mind-alteringly good. Ilya had touched him, and it had set him on fire, and it had been good, and easy, and Ilya really was an asshole, and he'd teased Shane so much, but not in a way that had made him feel small. Being under his hands had been freeing, and chirping back at him had been comfortable in a way that it so rarely was for Shane.

After Ilya's very thorough demonstration, Shane could finally say he understood why the guys in the locker room couldn't go three minutes without talking about fucking. Maybe now he would he able to loosen his shoulders and give some guy a knowing nod when he talked about how good his last hookup had been with her mouth, and his teammates wouldn't need to give him those weirded-out looks when they realized he didn't really know what they were talking about.

He'd had his amazing night, and he'd kept his fangs to himself, even when Ilya had unknowingly held Shane's face against his neck with his blood singing for Shane to release it. Ilya hadn't seen the terrifying truth of him, hadn't jumped out of the bed and held that cross of his out to protect himself, hadn't run from the room. Shane hadn't hurt him, and Ilya hadn't…

Shane shuddered. Nothing bad had happened.

It had been nice, and perfect…but continuing was stupid. His mom had seen Ilya in the elevator, and if she'd been coming up to check on him instead of going down to see her friends, she might have realized where Ilya was going. And if she'd realized where he was going, she would have pulled Shane into another terminally awkward conversation about how sexual arousal could trigger his other instincts, and he needed to be careful, and he couldn't be casual with a partner. She would have reminded him that he'd promised to talk to her when he was ready for sex, and she would have given him that pinch-lipped look of concern and irritation and fear all wrapped up together that gave Shane heartburn.

And then she would have probably told Ojiichan, and Ojiichan would have been so smug, and he would have given Shane a different, but equally mortifying lecture.

If Shane continued whatever this was, every time he put his hands on Ilya, he was risking all of that, and more. His career. Maybe even his life.

Shane swallowed hard and clicked through the menu to the text messages, and then straight to Ilya Rozanov #1 pick ;) anyways.

I: ??

I: Hollander

I: Holllllllllllllander!!

I: did she say mean things about me? (((

I: you are on your flight. me too. mine is short. i will land first.

I: long flight for you

I: having good time sitting today? ;)

I: really tell me that one

I: Hollander what did she say?

I: i was nice!

I: the doors close very fast!

"Someone wants to get a hold of you pretty badly," Dad said, glancing down at the near continuous buzz of Shane's text alerts. He was leaning into the aisle to get their bags down, trying not to back into the man doing the same on the other side of the aisle.

"Just a teammate," Shane said. He had to twist his lips together to keep from adding a very helpful teammate. "Delayed messages from while we were in the air."

His phone continued to buzz. A few of the messages really were from a teammate, Hostler, who was one of the few Martins who reached out to Shane privately about anything that wasn't directly related to the team.

"Sounds pretty important," his dad observed. "Do you need to give him a call?"

I: your flight has landed now

I: i checked

Shane quickly shook his head. "No, I'll just send him a text and call him later tonight. Or maybe tomorrow."

"All this texting," Dad said. "Seems like less effort just to talk, with all those tiny buttons. I miss half the letters and have to start over all the time."

"These phones were not designed for your hands, dear," Mom said consolingly, patting his chest.

Dad grumbled back, "I'm not sure they were designed for anyone's hands."

I: Hollander

I: (((

"Yeah, it's kind of a pain," Shane agreed absently, fingers hovering over the buttons. All he had to do was type out, "Thank you for last night, I had a really great time. I don't think we should see each other again."

I: Shane

S: She did not have nice things to say about you.

I: why???

I: i was surprised!!

I: she is scary. little bit ,((((

I: tell her i am sorry

I: mamas all like me

I: promise. all of them.

I: tell her to meet me again. will be better this time.

I: i will bring chocolate

I: what is her favourite?

S: I'm not going to tell her any of that.

I: why not??

S: How do I explain how I know you're sorry?

S: Or any of the rest of that?

I: tell her you know i am rlly nice

S: How do I know that?

S: And I don't think you ARE 'rlly' nice.

I: I made you cum so hard last night you blacked out

I: twice

I: i am very nice to you

S: Oh my god

S: I did not black out

I: i think you did )))))))))

S: I did not.

S: Also, we need to work on your English.

I: you can work on my English any time ;)

I: call me

I: for practice ;)

S: I can't right now.

I: Later?

Shane hesitated with his thumbs hovering over the keys, ready to type, "No, I'm not going to call you at all." But that seemed like a dick move when Ilya had been so good to him, and had kissed him that morning like he would have preferred to stay in Shane's bed all day. Shane at least owed him a conversation.

S: Maybe tonight. I have a clinic this afternoon.

S: I will be home around 8:30, probably.

S: I might be too tired.

I: We need to work on your stamina.

S: Shut up

I: cant. was not talking. only typing )))

S: Are you in Boston?

I: CO rn. w/trainer 2 wks. then BOS.

I: when can you come?

S: To Boston?

I: that to lol

"You coming, Shane?"

Shane's head snapped up so fast that his vision blurred. "What?"

Dad gestured to the aisle, where the passengers in front of them had all exited. Mom was nearly to the front of the plane. "Unless you want to continue on to the next stop?"

Blushing furiously, Shane hurried out of his seat, ducking his head in apology to the partially-shifted gray wolf waiting for him to clear out of the way. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Take your time," she said. It was hard to tell if her smile was genuine or she was just showing him her teeth.

He took his suitcase from his dad and hurried down the aisle.

Chapter 4: Chapter Three

"You have to make this transition from forehand to backhand smooth and fast," Shane said. He had four U15 boys in a semi circle in front of him, leaning on their sticks as they watched him draw the puck across the ice. He could do this drill half-dead and three-quarters blind; it had been his go-to when he needed to clear his head but had to stay in one place since he was seven or eight years old, and he still did it mindlessly on the ice during downtime.

"Control is key." He made himself slow down, made each movement of the stick deliberate. "Twelve o'clock…nine o'clock, draw it back." He repeated it several times, and then abruptly snapped the puck, backhanded, at a boy who had his head turned to watch one of the other groups doing shooting drills with Hayden Pike at the other end of the ice.

The puck hit the blade of his stick with a crack, bounced off his skate, and skittered away. The boy stumbled and turned swiftly back around while the other three coughed and snickered into their gloves.

"Guess you just missed a shooting opportunity," Shane said. "Hope that didn't cost your team the game."

The kid flushed, but he lowered his head and mumbled an apology. Shane let it go. He knew the boys were disappointed to get stuck with a first year rookie from a minor team when Hayden Pike, winger for the Metros, was at the other end of the rink.

Shane leaned back to pick up another puck and made sure the kid was paying attention before repeating the instruction one more time. He passed the puck over to one of the boys, and then eased back a few paces and collected three more from the mess of pucks scattered all over the ice.

"Soft hands," he admonished when #77 fumbled the pass, but he caught it and brought it back in quickly enough. "Spread out a little, and get to it. We'll do this until the net opens up, and then we'll run backhand shooting drills on Chovanec's goalies."

Over the next hour, he ran his four players through a few backhand drills that he'd liked at their age. He pulled #15 aside in the middle of it for some work on his balance. He had that rangy long-limbed look of a recent growth spurt, and he clearly hadn't grown into all his limbs, but he had decent explosive speed that he just didn't have enough control over to take advantage of, and he kept throwing himself off balance. When Shane suggested he take up ballet, the boy gave him a horrified look, and the other three started laughing.

"I still practice barre stretches five days a week," Shane told them, and watched their mouths drop open. "You don't have to take my advice, but if you want to get your balance, timing, and flexibility under control, look into dance lessons."

"It's good advice, kiddos," Pike called as he skated around their little group. "I took ballet for three years." His mouth turned up in a bright smile while the boys mused over Shane's suggestion with new attention. "Hollander, your boys up for a little scrimmage?"

Shane knew he wasn't supposed to answer that honestly, so he said, "Of course," and sent them off to the bench for a hydration break while the clinic coach started organizing lines for two half-ice scrimmages. Shane was happy enough to play ref for a while. He was also pleased to see a few of the players putting his advice into practice, even if he did have to put #15 in the penalty box for high sticking, which Shane could clearly see was accidental from trying to regain his balance out of a turn.

"Ballet," he said just before he shut the door, and the kid gave him a sheepish nod.

Later, in the home locker room after the boys had collected all the pucks scattered across the ice and cleared out to the visitor's locker room, Shane sat on the bench with his bag open in front of him, staring sightlessly into it. He had gone past exhausted into a floaty, almost numb state that at least promised him a good night's sleep.

Maybe his dad had been right, and he should have taken the organizers up on the offer to back out of the clinic when they told him he was due in L.A. for the ad the day before the clinic.

"Hey, Hollander!"

Shane looked up to see Hayden Pike coming out of the showers with a towel around his waist and another over his shoulders. His damp hair dripped onto it, and his shower sandals left puddles of water on the mats.

"Mr. Pike," Shane greeted, straightening up.

Pike gave him a lopsided smile that pinched down at one corner. "Hayden is fine," he said as he sat down in front of his stall. "I'm only two seasons ahead of you. Don't think I'm old enough for mister treatment."

"Right," Shane said, holding a flinch down. "Sorry."

Pike ignored the apology. He gestured toward the locker room door with his chin. "You did a great job out there. Those kids were lucky to get you."

Shane snorted. "I think they were upset not to get you."

Waving a dismissive hand, Pike said, "Disappointed to get the number two overall draft pick instead of a middle-of-the-pack winger? If they were, they're going to kick themselves for it later." He started digging his clothes out of his bag, and then stood and pulled the towel off.

Shane automatically looked away, making himself busy with getting his shoes on.

"Though…" Pike continued, giving him a sideways look, "Telling the fae kid to take ballet lessons was a little harsh."

Shane frowned. "Fae kid?"

For a beat, Pike didn't reply. He just gave Shane a long, quizzical look with his lips half-tilted into a smile. "You didn't notice Guynn is fae?"

"Number fifteen? No, he's just too tall and too fast for his own feet." Shane tipped his head and frowned harder. "You said you took ballet for three years."

"Yeah, well, I did…In elementary school, when my grandma was still trying to make me into a dancer. Mostly, I just didn't want those other boys to pick his bones clean over it."

Shane felt a tight squeeze of anxiety. "I didn't notice he was fae. But I would have given him the same advice either way." At Pike's amused snort, Shane added, "Next time I'll be less blunt about it."

"You really still do barre stretches five days a week? I thought that was something you just said when you realized you'd given the other kids ammunition."

"It was, kind of," Shane admitted. He knew all too well what it was like to be the center of that kind of attention, and he had wanted to redirect it. "But it wasn't a lie. I took ballet lessons for seven years. I was never very good at it, exactly… like, I was never going to be a dancer? But it's great for balance, stability, flexibility, discipline." He shrugged at Pike's bemused look. His lessons had been private, he'd never danced in public, he hated dancing with a partner, and his teacher had complained endlessly about him wasting his body on hockey and putting on too much muscle mass. But he would also probably still be taking lessons if his schedule allowed.

Shaking his head, Pike said, "You are something else, man." After a moment, he asked, "You have plans after this? Me and a few of the other guys are going to grab a drink."

This was the kind of invitation Shane was supposed to accept. Not just 'supposed to' but basically had no choice except to accept. He wasn't even officially on the roster yet, and there was a good chance that Pike would be his winger next season if the coach had any sense. Chovanec was on his way to retirement, but he'd had nine years in the show, and he'd been with Montreal for six of them. An opportunity to create some rapport with them before training camp even started was priceless…and offending them before training camp even started would be suicide. He just really wanted to go home.

"Yeah, sounds great," he said.

Pike smiled at him, and then snapped his fingers once. "Oh, hey, you had a promotion shoot or something yesterday, right?"

Shane tried to clear some of the fog from his brain. "Uh, yeah. Flew back in from L.A. this afternoon."

"Rough turn around," Pike said with a grimace. He bounced to get his jeans over his hips and buttoned the fly. "You did it with Rozanov, right?"

"What?" Shane asked, maybe too sharply.

Pike raised one eyebrow at him. "The ad? You were there with Rozanov?"

"Oh, yeah." Shane went back to packing his bag. He hoped he wasn't blushing too noticeably and no one in the locker room could hear his heartbeat.

"What's he even like? Seems like kind of a dick." Pike fished around in his bag for his deodorant and swiped it distractedly under his arms.

"He's not that bad, actually." The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of them, and he glanced up to see Pike looking at him with both eyebrows now raised, waiting. "I mean, he is a dick, definitely. But kind of…not in a bad way? I think a lot of it is for show, and for the whole…'rivalry' thing."

Pike snorted a laugh. "Don't let management hear you call it a 'rivalry,'" he said, curling his fingers into air quotes. "I think they're already banking on milking that one for the next decade."

"Yeah, probably," Shane mumbled. He took his necklace out of the jewelry box he kept in his bag, fastened it around his neck, and withstood the momentary zing of discomfort when the cold metal touched his skin. Finally, he zipped his bag up and sat back to wait for Pike to finish getting dressed. He hadn't turned his phone on since getting off the ice, but it was heavy in his pocket. He wondered if Ilya had texted him again.

He wanted to go home and tuck himself in bed. And he had kind of implied that he would call Ilya.

He shouldn't put that conversation off for too long.

"Hey, man, don't feel like you have to come out with us tonight," Pike said in an undertone, sitting down and leaning sideways on the bench. "You're going to be seeing plenty of me and Vanny in a few weeks, and you look beat."

"No, it's fine, I'm good—"

Pike made another amused noise, this one a chuffing, chittering sound. When Shane looked over, he saw Pike's eyes had shifted to a bright orange, and when he smiled, his canines were prominent where they peeked from between his lips.

"Sorry," Pike said, laughing. He blinked a few times, and the orange in his eyes faded back into blue. "I promise I won't tell anyone you turned me down," he whispered with a wink. "But you better make a run for it before Vanny gets out of the shower, or all bets are off."

Despite the out, Shane remained where he was for several more moments. He'd long since stopped noticing the slight pressure of his fangs in their sheaths, but watching Pike casually shake off a shift made them pulse and ache. A flood of saliva released into his mouth, and he hastily swallowed it down and turned his head.

What would it be like, to be able to show his fangs and laugh off the slip?

But Pike's heritage was fae foxling, and foxes were cute and cuddly. They weren't the thing of people's nightmares.

Pike tipped his head toward the door. "Really, go on. But you owe me a night out," he warned, holding up a finger.

"You sure…?" Shane asked hesitantly. "I really am good, I can come along."

Laughing, Pike nudged him on the arm. "Go, Rookie."

Shane shook himself and bobbed his head in a nod. He grabbed his bag, and remembered to wave as he headed for the door. Chovanec came out of the showers just as Shane made it through to the hall, and he heard an aborted call, but it wasn't enough of his name to make it necessary for him to stop.

"Leave the guy alone, Vanny," he heard Pike say.

"Thought we were all getting a beer or seven?"

Shane kept walking, but his hearing was sharp enough that their voices were still clear for a ways down the hall.

"Nah, I didn't want to invite him when he might have felt obligated to accept. Kid looked dead on his feet, and no fucking wonder. Two long flights in twenty-four hours and god knows how long he spent in makeup, on set with Rozanov…"

Shane sped his steps so he didn't have to hear anything else. He'd trained himself into a sort of selective inattention, so he didn't overhear conversations (or other activities) that he had no desire to know or would struggle to explain later, but it was more difficult to filter out unwanted noise when he was tired.

He did not pull his phone out as soon as he got in the car, and he left it in his pocket even after emptying his gym bag into the washing machine and setting his pads over the rack to air out. He watched his dinner spinning in the microwave and did not pull his phone to check his messages or turn on his ringtone as he waited.

He ate through his dinner mechanically, followed it with a glass of water and his night time vitamins, moved his gym clothes into the dryer, and then went through the apartment and made sure the doors were locked and the lights were off. The clothes would be wrinkled in the morning, but he would just have to iron them; if he tried to stay up for the dryer to finish running, he would fall asleep on the couch, and then he would wake up sore in far less pleasant ways than he'd been dealing with that morning.

He turned the light over the stove on, set his phone on his bedside table, and got ready for bed. His routine took as long as it normally did, and he slipped under the summer blankets before picking his phone back up.

I: what is your clinic about?

I: it is 8:33 where you are

I: i checked

I: this trainer makes me do shuttles all day. thinking about you doing shuttles after our workout last night ;)

Shane read the messages several times and looked at the clock at his bedside table. It was 8:41 P.M. and his alarm was going to go off at 5:00 A.M., and he should just put his phone on the charger and pick up his book for a couple minutes, and go to sleep.

Ilya answered on the second ring. "Hollander, you are late."

"I said I would be home around eight-thirty, not that I was going to call you at eight-thirty."

There was a knowing kind of amusement in Ilya's voice when he responded, "Mmm, okay."

This was the point when Shane should say, "Listen, Rozanov, about last night…" but after a moment of tight silence, Shane asked, "Shuttle skates, huh?"

"Yes. They are my favorite except when I am doing them. How was your clinic? Learn a lot?"

"No—I mean, yes, I think you learn something anytime you're on the ice, but I was participating in the clinic. On the instruction side." Shane picked his glasses up from the side table and turned them around by the earpiece, and then put them back down.

"Oh, wow. You are teaching?" Ilya said in an overtly disbelieving tone that made Shane roll his eyes, but also made him smile. "Any good prospects?"

"No," Shane answered simply, and then groaned when Ilya burst into laughter on the other end of the line. Shane's face flushed, and he covered his eyes with one hand. "Shut up! I'm sure they're fine, but nothing that—seriously, Rozanov, stop laughing!"

"Ooh, I need their names!" Ilya cackled.

"What? Why?" Shane honestly didn't remember any of their names. He wasn't great with names in general, this was the first time he'd met any of the kids, and he'd been calling them by their number if he had to get their attention.

Still laughing, Ilya explained, "Because when they are bigshot hockey stars, I want to go tell them Shane Hollander, with his weak backhand—"

"—I do not have a weak backhand—!"

"—and falls so badly—"

"—Oh, my god, I know how to fall—"

"—said you had no talent!"

"I didn't say that," Shane protested, sitting upright in bed without meaning to, as if he could throw something at Ilya like he was a roommate in the next bed. "They're U15, Rozanov, fuck off!"

"Do you think when you were U15 someone asked your clinic instructor 'any good prospects?' and they said 'nyet, and that Hollander kid—"

"—Fuck off, asshole—" Shane found himself fighting down a laugh, but he thought he'd kept it out of his voice.

"—he is the worst one!"

"I'm hanging up now," Shane warned as Ilya continued to howl with laughter, but he didn't take the phone away from his ear, and his lips were stretched into a comfortable smile that he couldn't wipe away.

"No, no!" Ilya protested immediately, sucking in quick breaths to quell his laughter. "Hollander, don't hang up!"

"Why?" Shane demanded.

"Why you think?" Ilya asked, voice dropping to a low rumble that made Shane's heart rate skyrocket. He took a deep breath and let it out, slow and controlled.

With a leer in his voice, Ilya asked, "How is your ass feeling today?"

Shane's blush had started to fade, but the blood rushed back to his cheeks instantly, and he ducked his head. "Jesus Christ, Rozanov."

"Sore?" Ilya guessed.

Just like that, Shane was painfully aware of the low thrum of arousal that had been swirling through him all day getting abruptly more insistent. He squirmed on the bed, ducking down further and darting his eyes at the door and the window, as though someone might be lurking there.

He shouldn't encourage this. He should hang up.

"Yeah," Shane said softly. "I was sore. For most of the day."

"Not anymore?" Ilya prompted.

Shane shook his head, pushed himself back up the pillows, and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Not anymore."

"Hmm, too bad," Ilya said with a shivery hitch in his breath that shot straight down Shane's spine and squeezed his dick. The next sound was very distinctive, and it made the muscles in his thighs bunch up.

"What—" Shane swallowed past the tension in his throat. "What are you doing right now?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Ilya asked again.

Shane thought he was spread out on his bed, unabashedly naked, with the lamps on, and his hand slowly stroking the length of his cock. He thought Ilya was golden in the lamplight, skin still damp from a shower and his hair curling even tighter at the ends.

"Oh, my god…" Shane breathed. His dick had been semi-hard from practically the moment he'd closed his car door and started aggressively ignoring his phone. He was fully hard now, and his free hand kept mindlessly smoothing the comforter over his lap, not exactly stroking, but each pass made his hips arch. "I don't…"

A soft chuckle came through the phone with the slick sound of a lubed hand running over a hard dick audible underneath. "Hollander… You go to your knees and try to deep throat me thirty seconds after you open door—"

"—It wasn't thirty seconds—" Shane protested weakly.

"—And this makes you shy?" He made a decadent noise that had to be affected. There was no way he sounded like that normally, alone and jacking off without an audience.

Shane lifted his knees restlessly, and then pushed them back down, the soles of his feet scraping over the sheets. "I don't think I can…"

"Why? You have roommate? Ask him to join, he will be very happy."

"Ilya," Shane hissed. He got another low, rumbly chuckle in response. "I don't have a roommate. My dad thought I should get a teammate to live with me, just for the bonding or whatever, but—"

Amused, Ilya interrupted, "You are going to talk to me about your dad right now, Hollander?"

Shane flushed so hard and so fast that he went lightheaded for a second. "I don't have a roommate," he amended flatly.

He heard an aborted moan from Ilya, and then: "No, keep telling me about your dad. Is he hot?"

"I will fucking hang up on you," Shane warned.

Laughing, Ilya said, "Then tell me about something else. Tell me about being sore today."

The memory of it made Shane clench up, and for a moment, he thought he could still feel the gentle throb of it. The soreness had been gone by the time he'd made it to the rink, and it was good that he wasn't being distracted by the pleasant throb in his ass while meeting Pike and Chovanec for the first time, with Maccoby and Donahue there, as well as two dozen eager teenagers under the age of fifteen to deal with.

But he'd continued to look for it all afternoon.

"…Fuck," he breathed. "It was. Nice," he admitted.

"Nice…" Ilya echoed, drawing the word out in consideration. "Nice like…you could still feel my dick inside you every time you moved?"

A strange, whimpering moan squeezed through Shane's tight throat, and he put a hand over his mouth. On the other end of the line, Ilya made a filthy noise and cursed softly in Russian.

"Tell me," Ilya pressed.

"Yes," Shane gasped. "God, I kept moving just to feel it."

"Fuck, Hollander. Next time—"

Shane went still. "Next time?"

"Yes, Hollander, next time. I am going to put you on your knees and fuck you so hard and so long that you will feel me inside you for a week."

Desire burned hot in Shane's veins, and he closed his eyes on the image: this bed, stripped to the sheets, Ilya's big hands on his hips, the white-out pleasure of his cock hitting Shane's prostate, that hovering moment on the brink of orgasm when Ilya had made him touch himself, but resisting the command in Ilya's voice so he could stay there longer.

"That seems dangerous," he heard himself say.

Ilya released a groan that was part amusement and part something like exasperation, but also strangely fond. "You are so boring and really bad at this."

Indignation spiked through Shane's arousal, but, somehow, the insult just made the arousal burn hotter. He flung his blanket back and shucked out of his pajama pants and underwear in one fast movement.

There was a listening pause on the line, and then Ilya asked, "What are you doing, Hollander?"

"What do you think?" Shane asked sharply.

"Ohhh, yes," Ilya said through his teeth. "Fuck, touch yourself for me."

"Who says I'm doing anything over here for you?" Shane asked, but he already had his hand on himself, phone pinched against his ear as he tried to arrange the pillows more comfortably behind his neck.

"Okay, we can jack off alone, not for each other," Ilya said in a musing tone. "So, I guess I can hang up, then—"

"Don't you fucking dare, Rozanov."

"Why? You don't need me telling you how much mess I make with the lube and it's still not as wet as your mouth."

Shane's whole body convulsed, and his mouth filled with so much saliva that he had to reach up to make sure his fangs hadn't dropped. They were still tucked into their sheaths, but he couldn't swallow fast enough to keep up with the flow, and he had to grip the phone hard to stop an impulse to shove his fingers into his mouth.

"No," he said, and his voice shivered, but he still got the word out. "I don't need that at all."

"Of course not," Ilya agreed. "And you don't need me to tell you that I think all day about how tight and hot your hole is, wrapped around me… that noise you make when I push inside—yes, this noise," he said in a low voice when Shane moaned involuntarily.

Shane fumbled the lotion off his nightstand and made a mess of getting it into his hand, even as he said, "No—fuck—I don't. I don't need that either."

"What do you need?" Ilya's voice breathed into his ear.

"You," Shane gasped without exactly meaning to, but the sharp inhale he got in response felt like finding a shooting lane between a tangle of bodies and sending the puck rocketing into the net right over the goalie's pad. He pushed up into his hand, looking down to watch his own cock slip through his fingers, slick and glistening from the lotion.

In a low growl, Ilya asked, "What is it you need from me, Hollander?"

A dozen answers crowded onto his tongue, but he couldn't get any of them out from between his teeth. What did come out was a strangled whimper as he ran his slick hand between his thighs and pushed his finger into himself without preamble. There was a residual burn after all, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth and let it out in a tripping gasp.

"What did you just do?" Ilya demanded.

"Do you…do you need to know?" Shane asked, arching so hard into his own hand that he nearly lost the phone.

"Shane," Ilya said in a rasping growl, his accent wrapping around Shane's name like smoke. "Did you just put your finger in your ass?"

Shane's knee fell open and he shivered as he found the angle and—there. "Yes," he whimpered.

A long string of Russian bubbled out of the phone, and Shane thrust upward uselessly and then back down into his seeking finger.

"Do not drop phone," Ilya ordered sharply. "Put your other hand on your dick."

Shane bit his lip, but he put the call on speaker, balanced the phone against his shoulder, and obeyed.

"Does it feel as good as my finger in you?" Ilya asked.

Shane was already shaking his head before Ilya finished the question, but he stopped when the phone slipped precariously. "No."

"Of course not," Ilya said with a mean lilt under the words. "You are so hot with your legs spread for me, so I can watch my finger moving inside you. You almost came on just my finger, didn't you?" His voice was hard and intense, and it would have sounded angry, except Shane could still hear him stroking himself, fast for several beats, and then a long, wet slide.

"Yes," Shane admitted. "I almost came so many times."

"On my tongue?"

Shane closed his eyes and could almost feel the tiles, comparatively cool against his face, his nipples hard where they brushed against the wall. "Fuck. Yes."

"Good. Next time I will keep you this way for a very long time, my tongue, and my fingers, and you will tell me if you are going to come—"

"—Yes," Shane agreed mindlessly, and, "I promise—"

"—and I will tell you no," Ilya said sharply. "Each time, until you are crying for it—"

"I won't cry for it," Shane insisted with a faint sense of indignation, but he felt shockingly close to tears even as he said it.

Ilya chuckled. "You don't think so? How close are you right now?"

"Close," Shane admitted. It was embarrassing, how close he was.

"What was the closest I got you, before I put my cock in your hole?"

"Jesus Christ," Shane whimpered. His forearm burned faintly from the angle, and it was so good, but just not good enough. He pulled his finger out in frustration, dragged a pillow over to shove under his lower back, and let his knees curl toward his chest. "Your finger," he moaned as he pushed his own back in. "I really didn't think I could stop."

"But you will stop for me when I tell you no?"

Shane shuddered, and then gasped when he found that better angle. "Yes."

"How many times?" Ilya asked in a low purr. "How many times can I take my hand and my mouth away from you and say no, Hollander, don't come, before you will beg me?"

"I won't," Shane said, though he thought he was lying, "I won't beg." He was so close to begging already.

"Not even when I finally have you on my cock, and I tell you no, no, Hollander, you cannot come yet, not yet, still not yet—"

"—Oh, fuck you!" Shane snapped, gulping in air as he pulled his hand away from his dick and pushed his finger hard against his prostate, but just held it there. Pressure tingled hot and fast down his thighs, up his stomach, wound tight around his dick. His balls drew up and his ass clenched so tight that he lost circulation in his finger.

He took several steadying breaths before he put his hand back on himself and started to move with nothing but Ilya's dark laughter chasing the shivers down his spine.

After a small eternity of just the melody of their ragged breaths and the wet, slick glide of their hands stroking their dicks, Ilya moaned and said, "Oh, but then it will be so nice, when you have waited so long, and I say, okay, Shane, now you can—"

Shane's breath turned into a long sob, and he almost missed Ilya saying, "Come for me," as he shot on his own chest and stomach.

His vision went red spotted. By the time he came back to himself, his legs had sprawled out over the pillow, his finger had been dislodged, and the phone had slipped off his shoulder to the bed.

Feeling half-way to unconsciousness, he fumbled for the phone and set it back on his shoulder.

"Ilya?"

"Hmm…I told you not to drop that," Ilya chastised. His voice had gone syrupy, and he breathed out a soft sigh. "Tell me again you won't cry, and you won't beg."

Shane laughed breathlessly. It made his ribs hurt a little. "Fuck you."

"We'll see. But if you are very good, I might fuck you again next time."

Shane took a few shaky breaths, staring up at his ceiling through the darkness. "Did you..?"

"Mmm, yes," Ilya all but purred.

"I didn't get to hear it," Shane said. It sounded like a whine in his own ears, but his thoughts were moving too slowly to care.

A low, happy chuckle came through the phone and it drew a wide, stupid smile on Shane's mouth. "This is because you make so much noise."

Shane tried to protest, but he felt so warm, and sleepy, and spent that all that came out was a sigh and a mumble.

"Hollander, are you falling asleep?"

Shane nodded. He just barely remembered to hum in answer.

Ilya's voice firmed. "No, don't do that. Get up right now and go clean yourself."

"No, I don't want to." There was nothing Shane wanted to do less in that moment than to move at all. He could feel his pulse in his thighs, and his shoulders were all loose, and the room swayed just slightly as he drifted in the aftermath of his orgasm.

"Obviously," Ilya said with a snort. "But if you wake up tomorrow like that, you will be mad at me, I think."

Shane laughed, and that felt nice, too. "Why do you care if I'm mad at you?"

"Because if you are mad at me, how will I get you to send me picture of your dick tomorrow?"

Peeling his eyes open made him realize he'd closed them. Shane glared in the direction of the phone. "I'm not sending you a picture of my dick, Rozanov."

"We'll see. Get up now."

"'m gonna hang up on you," Shane decided, letting his eyes close again.

"Okay, you do that, but first get up and go clean yourself."

With an unhappy grunt, Shane opened his eyes again and turned his head to peer in the direction of the bathroom door, but his skin was starting to feel sticky and tight. He groaned and levered himself out of bed, left his phone on the pillow, and shuffled into the bathroom to clean up.

"Happy?" he asked when he'd pulled his pajamas back on and run a quick hand over the bed to make sure there were no wet spots.

There was a brief pause, and Shane had just enough time to wonder if Ilya had hung up on him, when Ilya murmured, "Happy you will be in good mood tomorrow and send me picture of your dick."

"Still not going to do that," Shane told him. A smile pulled insistently across his lips when Ilya chuckled softly in response.

"Goodnight, Shane."

Shane turned on his side and pulled a pillow into his chest. "Night, Ilya."

But they both stayed on the line for several quiet seconds more before Shane finally reached up and closed his phone.

Chapter 5: Chapter Four

Shane's Ojiichan had performed all his checkups and physicals when he was young, and even after he'd left his practice and started traveling, he'd come through Ottawa at least often enough to do a yearly checkup. For any other medical needs in middle and high school, Shane had gone to his mom's doctor.

His first experience with a doctor who was an unknown had been the Martins' team doctor, and Shane had been sick with nerves for a week before stepping into the office for his first appointment. Every subsequent visit had inspired a similar flash fire of anxiety in his gut, and he'd done his best to avoid the man if he had any option.

Standing in front of the nondescript white door down the hall from the trainer's office and around the corner from the gym, Shane felt the same sickening flash of fear. At least he'd only been given fifteen minutes notice that he had an appointment with the doctor. Normally, he would have been very annoyed to be pulled aside while the rest of the team was dressing and told he had an appointment on the schedule with virtually no notice, but at least it meant he hadn't had time to worry himself out of a full night's rest about it.

He stretched his neck out, and then knocked before someone could come around the corner and see him standing there like he was terrified of going inside. Like he had a reason to be terrified of seeing the doctor. Like he had something to hide.

"Come in!"

He opened the door, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind him. The office was neat and clean, and there were big, leafy plants crowded so thickly around the window that the semi-transparent curtains were almost superfluous.

"Mr. Hollander," Doctor Yoshikawa greeted, closing a file as she pushed back from her desk. She picked another file up from a stack and gestured to the examination table. "Thanks for being on time. Take a seat."

"Of course," Shane said. He felt like his spine had been replaced with a length of corded steel, but he stepped up on the footstool, and sat on the paper-covered table, and watched her warily.

Yoshikawa was a small woman. Even with the slight heel on her shoes, she would be eye level with his nipples if he stood back up. Her hair was short, very black, and artfully spiked, and her earrings were little green dinosaurs with their mouths against her earlobes like they were clamped on by their jaws.

Giving him a bright smile, she pulled a curtain partly around the table with a practiced flick, and Shane winced.

"Don't worry, nothing invasive," she said with a kind smile. "No needles in sight! I just can't close the heavier curtains on the window even if I wanted to."

"You do have a lot of plants," Shane said, and she beamed across the room at them with an expression Shane was more accustomed to seeing directed at children.

"I wanted to be a botanist growing up," she confided. "But Mom wouldn't hear of it, so here we are! And she was right, I do love my job, and I still get my plants so—win, win! Though I don't think she had sports medicine in mind."

Despite himself, Shane smiled. "Same thing happened to my Ojii—my grandpa. He wanted to be a sociologist. His mom pushed him to be a surgeon, so we went to medical school, but he ended up in gynecology…though, he switched to primary care after I was born. My mom went for business law."

"I guess we're lucky you escaped the doctor-lawyer family legacy machine, then!" she said, still smiling.

"Dodged that one, but my dad played hockey in college," Shane shared. This was a common interaction, and he knew the script by heart.

"Ah, fifty percent save rate! Good thing you're not a goalie." She gave him a sly smile, so Shane summoned up something like a smile in response. "Okay, so this is just a quick getting-to-know-you, establishing care, taking vitals, that kind of thing. Should only take a few minutes."

"Okay."

She pulled a rolling stool over with her foot and more straddled it than sat on it. "Any complaints, persistent injuries, other conditions I should know about?" she asked, but she was already flipping through the file that Shane guessed she'd gotten from Dr. Chambers, the Martins' doctor.

"Healthy as a horse," Shane said with forced casualness. His scalp tingled with nerves, and he had to force his hands to stay down so he didn't bury his fingers in his hair.

She flicked a quick glance at him, assessing, but still friendly. "I like to hear that! Makes it easier to keep you that way."

She stood to listen to his heart and his lungs, and asked him the routine questions about depression, alcohol, and substance use.

"No, no, and never," Shane answered.

"Just so you know, anything you tell me is between us, as long as it's not something I'm legally mandated to report," she said, but not with any particular emphasis.

Shane felt his cheeks warm slightly, as if he'd been caught at something. He could argue that if he did confess to a drug addiction, she would probably also be obligated to tell Coach that he wasn't fit to play, but he didn't think that was a line of discussion to open when he had nothing to confess. He didn't need her paying undue attention to him for any reason.

"I don't really like beer, or most alcohol. Sometimes, I have a glass of wine with my parents, but never during the season. And I've never done any drugs that weren't prescribed, and only as directed."

"If that ever changes in a way that you feel you need some help with, you let me or Doctor Breyer know, okay?" Sitting back on her stool, she picked up a little mallet and tested his reflexes. With a laugh, she said, "Off the charts—not unexpected in our line of work," and gave him a wink.

Shane managed a weak, tense smile.

"Your recent blood work all looks normal, and I see you're up to date on your vaccinations. Any heritage…?" She had one page in the file between her fingers, but she looked up at Shane questioningly.

Stomach wringing out like a wet towel, Shane made a gesture at the file. "It's all in there," he said unhappily.

She turned another couple pages, curling them around the top of the folder and holding them down with two fingers. He saw the moment she found "sanguinivorous" in the subtle widening of her eyes and the parting of her lips.

He tucked himself down into a smaller package and kept his hands visible. "I'm not dangerous," he hurried to reassure her. "I promise, it's not—"

"Mr. Hollander," she interrupted gently, letting the pages go and meeting his eyes. "I don't think you're dangerous, and I don't feel threatened. You don't need to tell me anything else unless you want to." Her voice was soothingly firm as she folded the file closed and set it on a rolling table.

"Are you going to tell Coach?" Shane asked. He'd meant to make the question as firm and direct as her statement had been, but it came out small, and his voice sounded very young in his own ears. He flinched away from the sound of it even as she shook her head.

"There are some details I share with the coaching staff, with your consent, and only where it might impact your fitness to be dressed for a game. If I ever have other concerns about your health as it relates to putting you on the ice, I will express those concerns to the best of my ability without providing sensitive details. Doctor-patient confidentiality still applies, and I would never divulge any part of your confidential medical record without your express consent. I also want you to know that it is illegal to discriminate against you for your heritage, and this club has a zero-tolerance policy for it."

Shane swallowed hard and bobbed his head in a nod, fighting to keep his eyes from rolling. Of course they said that, because they were legally required to say that. But Shane had no illusions about the result if his background got out. No one wanted a 'dangerous and violent' creature on the team who might lose control and rip someone's throat out if they started bleeding. It didn't matter that Shane was no more likely to do that than Hayden Pike, the fox shifter, or any full blooded human for that matter. It also didn't matter that it was illegal to fire him for his heritage.

There were a lot of ways to usher a player out of the league without it being clear why. At this stage in his career, all they would have to do is send him back to the farm, bench him until his contract ran out, and then decline to renew it.

The best security he could buy for himself was to be the best, so if it ever did get out, he would be too valuable and too visible to cut.

"All the same…" she said softly, "I do understand your concern, and I won't ever push you to share this if you don't want to. I will support you the best I can, and endeavor to be a voice of reason if it's ever needed, okay?"

"Okay," Shane said, nodding again.

"So! Tell me about any unique needs," she said after giving him a moment for a few breaths, businesslike, but still friendly.

"I don't need blood to survive," he answered automatically. "I actually haven't had any since I was baby."

Her eyebrows went back up at that. "None at all?"

He shook his head. "I mean, I guess I've swallowed my own from bloody noses, that kind of thing? My parents nursed me on it for the first couple weeks, and I guess I got really sick when I was about a year old? My dad and grandpa…donated. If I ever have a life-threatening emergency, it might save my life, but that's no different than anyone else." He met her eyes finally, daring her to say it wasn't the same thing as a transfusion, but she didn't even blink.

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Do you have to supplement for anything?"

"Nothing in particular. I do take supplements, just for general health, but I'm not deficient in anything." Keeping his voice neutral, he added, "Or anemic."

She nodded. "Any allergies or sensitivities?"

Shane shook his head and stifled a sigh as he dutifully reported, "I have no aversion to sunlight, at least half my diet is garlic, and no reaction to silver at all." He pulled down the neck of his t-shirt to show her the thin silver disc on the delicate silver chain. He didn't like wearing jewelry, and it was the first thing he took off when he made it home, but he'd worn the necklace since he was a child. His mom had one that matched.

"Great," Dr. Yoshikawa said cheerfully. "Makes my job easier. I live in fear of a severe peanut allergy."

She stood and put her delicate fingertips under his jaw, feeling at his throat. "Can you extend and retract your fangs at will?"

Shane nodded as much as he could with his head tilted backward. "I don't do it very often. Not much need. But I can."

"Mind if I take a peek?"

If there had been any note of morbid curiosity in her voice, he would have clamped his lips together and refused, but her tone was the same as it had been since he'd opened the door. He lowered his chin so she wouldn't have to peer up at him, and closed his eyes. He'd worked so hard his entire life at keeping his fangs sheathed that sometimes it was difficult to drop them on command.

He took a deep breath through his nose, tried to relax his neck, and then opened his mouth and let his fangs slide out. He didn't normally feel them drop, but because he was concentrating on them, the pressure and then release of them dropping out made him shiver.

Yoshikawa ducked down slightly to look upward at them, and then grabbed a pair of gloves and slid them on. "Venom?" she asked, pausing with her hands hovering over his jaw.

"Just very active salivary glands," he said ruefully, and tried very, very hard not to think of Ilya telling him how wet his mouth was.

"Just a few years ago, we discovered that human saliva contains a natural painkiller, did you know that?" she asked as she put her thumbs on his chin and carefully pushed his upper lip out of the way to expose the pair of fangs on the left side. "It's called opiorphin," she added.

Shane shook his head between her hands, and didn't point out that he wasn't entirely human. He wondered vaguely if his saliva had a painkiller in it.

"Fun fact for today!" she declared cheerily, pushing his lip the other direction. "Do you have any issues with your mouthguard? Any discomfort?"

Shane shook his head and made a noise in the negative. The mouthguard had been very uncomfortable when he'd first started playing, but he was used to it, and he felt unsettled if he tried to play without it. It provided tactile feedback to reassure him that his fangs were still sheathed. The very few times he'd almost let them drop during a heated game, the pressure from the mouthguard had immediately snapped him out of it. He found it comforting, and, unlike a lot of players, he didn't flip his mouthguard out and chew on it during play.

She very gently pushed on top of his lip over the sheaths, and then moved her fingers down and pushed at the fangs themselves. It felt strange, and his mouth filled with saliva at the pressure, but it didn't hurt. After a moment, she took her hands away and moved back, tugging her gloves off as she stepped on the lever to open the trash can. "I'm no dentist, but everything looks healthy as far as I can tell. Looks like you take pretty good care of your teeth—make sure you keep that up, and don't skip the dental visits."

"Every six months, schedule willing," Shane agreed dutifully. It was a relief to sheathe his fangs and close his mouth.

"Make sure it's willing," she said, hiking an eyebrow at him over her shoulder as she washed and dried her hands. "Trust me, avoidable dental problems when you're five games into a series is not the way you want to be scratched."

He promised again, and she gave him a look that suggested she knew too many hockey players to find his reassurances comforting, but she didn't say anything else about it. Finally, she checked his ears, eyes, and throat, took his blood pressure, and then had him step on the scale sans shoes and lifted the lever on the ruler to get his height.

"Fit as a fiddle, Mr. Hollander!" she declared. "Let's help you stay that way, and stop in at any time if you have any concerns, alright?"

"Sure, I will," Shane lied, and she held the door open for him to escape back into the hall.

~*~

Ilya's new townhouse was nearly a twenty minute drive from the practice rink, but it had a garage, lots of windows, and an office that he meant to make into his home gym.

The rent was nearly as much in a month as three months back home, but he had paid five months up front, and his shiny new candy red Mustang would be very comfortable as soon as he got an official contract with a signing bonus so he could go get her. Before his brother or Polina could get their hands on the check, he was going to take it down to the dealership where Sveta worked and let her to take so, so, so much advantage of him.

"Remind me why you needed help moving?" Sveta asked, setting his carry-on down in the entryway and looking around at all the empty space.

Ilya's entire life was in two suitcases, a carry-on, and the duffel with his gear. Her voice echoed off the bare walls and the polished hardwood floors, and the naked windows. There had been some furnished options available, and even some that were closer to the practice rink and less expensive, but Ilya had been more concerned with not having to park on the street and minimizing the number of neighbors he had to keep track of.

This townhouse had a small yard front and back, and it was on the end of the row, so it also had only one common wall with the neighbors, and that was against the garage and the stairwell.

"Because I am weak and pathetic and cannot carry it up the stairs by myself," he said, pouting at her. It was such a relief to drop the clumsiness of English that it felt almost like setting aside a physical weight.

"You are kind of pathetic," she agreed, giving him a judgemental once-over, but she broke into happy peels of laughter when he swept her up into his arms and into a kiss. She automatically wrapped her legs around his hips and made herself comfortable while he explored her mouth.

She weighed next to nothing, and he could have stood with her in the entryway all day, but he walked her into the empty living room, turning circles just because he could. She cupped his face and kissed him as he stumbled drunkenly around the wide open space and narrowly avoided running into the half-wall that separated the living room from the dining room and kitchen.

Sveta laughed again when Ilya stopped in the dining room, and they simultaneously realized there was nothing for him to set her down on, but Ilya stubbornly kept his grip on her ass and the back of her neck as he continued walking.

"This is the beautiful, large kitchen with spacious dining area," he told her, and she nodded along very seriously to the tour.

"That you are seeing for the very first time in person?"

Ilya bit at her chest in retaliation, and she hit him lightly across the head and shoulders. "Because someone would not go see it for me," he reminded her.

"Someone has a job, and you had thirty-two places on that list!" She leaned back to look at him, and ended up far enough out that Ilya almost lost his balance.

He had to take a few quick steps to put her back against the dining room wall, and they stayed there for a while, kissing while she tightened her thighs around his hips and rubbed against him. Even through his jeans, it felt incredible; Ilya had been too busy with his trainer to pick anyone up in Colorado, so it had been only him and his hand since the unexpected bonus of phone sex with Hollander. And he had missed her.

Pulling her away from the wall, he turned in a slow circle to show her the dining room, bringing her over to the sliding glass door to point out, "Cozy, private backyard with potential."

"Cozy," she repeated with a snort. Ilya had turned to put his back to the door for her to see out into the fading sunlight, so he couldn't say if it was cozy or not, but he remembered there was a large tree in the pictures that blocked the neighbors behind him and a tall cinder block wall running all around.

"Yes, with potential," he stressed.

"Potential for you to hire a landscaper?" she guessed.

"What else would it be potential for? Dirt under my nails?" He gave her a look of mock horror and an exaggerated shudder, and she kissed it off his mouth, not fooled. They had played in the dirt a lot as children. Ilya's mother had kept a garden, and Sveta's grandma had never let a summer day go idle.

Ilya spun again, leaving the glass door and the cozy view of what he remembered mostly as weeds.

"Now what are you going to do?" she asked when he hiked her up further to set her on the tall breakfast bar. She draped her arms over his shoulders; her knees were just under his armpits, and she had to curl down to kiss him. "This is too tall, isn't it?"

He gave her a disappointed look, and then pushed her to lean back on her elbows, worked her out of her tiny shorts, and pulled her lacy yellow thong out of the way to get his mouth on her clit.

"Ilyusha," she said in a lazy drawl after he'd brought her to a shuddering climax. "You have no curtains."

Ilya kissed a path from her inner thigh up to her knee. "Lucky neighbors," he said into her skin, and smiled at her breathless laughter.

Her fingers moved through his hair with careless familiarity, scratching in between his curls like she was petting a cat. "Where are you sleeping tonight?" she asked after a moment of only her slowly calming breath breaking the silence between his kisses. She lifted her head to look at him with an eyebrow quirked.

"Floor?" he guessed. "What does it matter?"

With a sigh, she sat up and nudged him until he straightened. "Take me to your bedroom," she ordered, "Where I am going to suck you off, and then I am going to take you shopping for an air mattress."

Ilya was very much onboard with the first step of this plan, but he groaned at the second. "No, no shopping," he begged.

"Shopping, or no blow job," she countered, lifting one eyebrow. Her expression went thoughtful, and she mused, "Maybe I should make you go shopping first…"

Growling theatrically, he wrapped his arms around her waist, dragged her off the bar, and swung her aggressively in a circle just to hear her laughter echoing off the empty space again.

As promised, once he set her down on the bedroom carpet, she opened his belt and pulled his erection out of his boxers. She did not yank his clothing down, or put her mouth on him like he was an obstacle she was going to overcome, but when she sat back and took him onto her tongue, his cock slid into her throat, and he had to grab onto the wall for balance.

He dropped into madness for just a moment when he thought that maybe he should introduce Hollander to her for some tips, and then almost came right then when he immediately built himself an image of the two of them between his knees, exchanging tips while they treated his body like an instructional aid. But then she did that thing with her fingers on the base of his cock, and he promptly forgot everything in the whole world that was not her name.

Afterward, Sveta took him to a Wal-Mart, where she negligently tossed things into his cart and dared him to say a word about it. He was often very stupid, but he was not that stupid, so he didn't protest the small mountain of things he needed and wouldn't have thought of until he was slipping across the bathroom tile on his wet feet. But they did have a twenty minute argument over the color scheme of his master bathroom. Even if it was just temporary, he was not accepting teal and gold.

It was nearly midnight by the time they were back in his bedroom with bags and bags and bags of stuff cluttering up the living room. Ilya had been awake since four in the morning, and had gone almost directly from training to the airport, and then from the next airport to his new home, and all of that before the unique horror of a Wal-Mart. He was tired enough that he would have just curled up on the floor with one of the soft blankets and the pillow still in the plastic cover, but Sveta poked and cajoled him into inflating the mattress and spreading a sheet across it, and tearing the pillows out of their packages.

When he finally collapsed onto it with her curled against his side, he was glad that he hadn't just settled on the floor. The mattress was loud, and it smelled like rubber and solvent, but it was unexpectedly comfortable on his fatigued muscles.

As had become habit, he took his phone out and scrolled through his messages. There were a dozen notifications that he didn't have the energy to bother with, and only one from Shane Hollander thinks his students are talentless hacks.

S: Night, Ilya

He hadn't managed to catch Hollander on the phone again, but this had become a nightly ritual in the last two weeks, and it made something feel settled in his chest to see the messages stacked on top of each other, even when it was sometimes the only messages they exchanged all day.

I: goodnight Shane

Against his side, Sveta yawned and cuddled closer. "Who are you texting?"

He had never hidden a hookup from her. There was no reason to when she set him up with at least half of his sexual partners, and then joined him for at least half of those. She was intimately familiar with his relationship with Sasha, and she had seen him in every imaginable sexual position. Ilya even often explained—or demonstrated—the ones she wasn't present to witness. He had confided in her how unpleasant his one experience with bottoming had been, and she had cut her nails and fingered him lovingly afterwards just to reassure him that it wasn't universally unpleasant and no, Sasha didn't just enjoy it hurting. She had also hit Sasha over the head the next time for his clumsiness and then she really had exchanged blow job tips with him afterward.

She would be delighted to know he had a male lover in the States, and she would want to know all the details. And he wanted to share all the details with her, because, fuck—what a night that had been. He had definitely had a lot fewer hookups than his reputation suggested, but there had still been a lot, and that night with Hollander was certainly the best of them.

He wanted to tell her how responsive Hollander had been to his every touch, how eager he was to follow instructions and how good he was at it, the shockingly unrestrained noises he'd made, and even how sweet it had been to fall asleep with Hollander tucked against him.

How Ilya had almost begged to meet Hollander's parents in the morning, just for a few more minutes with him and to increase the likelihood of seeing him again.

How his heart had dropped when Hollander had texted him, "You met my mom in the elevator last night?!" and then had gone silent for more than six hours afterwards.

He even wanted to tell her how absurdly anxious he'd been that entire time, and how relieved he'd been when Hollander had finally replied to a text.

But if he started telling her anything, she would guess immediately who it was just based off the timing, and he wouldn't be able to stop himself from telling her that his hookup-turned-whatever-the-fuck-that-was-turned-whatever-the-fuck-this-was was a vampire, and how distractingly hot Ilya found that. She wouldn't care, except for all the ways that she would care, but it felt wrong to give that secret away when Hollander—probably—didn't even realize Ilya was holding onto it.

"A friend," he answered.

Sveta tilted her head to look up at the underside of his jaw, but he pretended he didn't notice as he powered the phone down and leaned over to plug it in.

"Is your friend hot?" she asked.

The smirk that pulled across Ilya's lips would have given him away if she could have seen it. "Yes." And then he added, "All my friends are hot."

"I see," she said with a wicked laugh, but she didn't press him, and she fell asleep quickly against his side.

Ilya thought he would go just as quickly, but the bare window cast a bright rectangle of moonlight on the floor, and he was awake for a while, just listening to the unfamiliar sounds of a new home in a new city. It was her familiar almost-snore that finally lulled him off to sleep sometime later.

When he woke up half swallowed by the air mattress and Sveta more than half on top of him, Ilya resigned himself to another shopping trip for a proper bed, but he silently vowed that as soon as he had a credit card to match his MLH salary, he was going to hand it over to Sveta and beg on both knees for her to just furnish the place for him.

It was not lost on him that their shopping trip the night before had more than quadrupled his worldly possessions without making a dent in the things he would need, but at least it meant that he had sheets to fuck her on when she woke a few minutes later, and towels to dry her off with after a morning shower, and a pan for her to cook omelettes in, and dishes for them to eat on.

So they ate their breakfast on the new rug in the kitchen, drinking orange juice out of ridiculously oversized pink wine glasses, and then Ilya cleaned the dishes, kissed her at the door, and walked her to her car.

After her car disappeared around the corner, he sat on his front step in the late morning sunlight and lit a cigarette. Finally, he took his phone out, read over the last couple days of exchanges with Hollander, and typed out:

I: good morning Shane

Five minutes later, the phone buzzed in his hand.

S: Good morning, Ilya

Chapter 6: Chapter Five

They were a week into pre-season training camp, and Shane's wingers had changed almost hourly during practice, but he wasn't stupid, and neither was anyone else on the team. The coaches weren't moving Shane around to see where he fit with the lines; they were moving the lines around to see where they fit with Shane.

It was a lot of pressure, but in a weird way, it was pressure that his season in the minors had prepared him to handle. He'd gone through the same process the previous fall, chewing through wingers and D-men until he'd had a line that could support him. Then, it had been a mix of veteran defensemen who could save him from the consequences of his own relative inexperience, and younger forwards who could keep up with him on the ice.

They would be playing the Centaurs on Sunday in Quebec City, and Shane was not surprised to learn that Pike would be on his left wing. They had complimentary playing styles, and Pike was both observant and a quick decision-maker. He was also the fastest of the wingers, and the only one who managed to consistently stay with Shane during scrimmages. For Pike, it meant being moved from his regular season position on first to second line, but he didn't seem concerned.

On his right wing, he would have Hostler. Hostler had been his right winger on the Martins' lineup, and they knew each other well enough to be fine on the ice, if not amazing. Hostler wasn't connecting as well with Pike, but it was the best forward grouping they'd tried in practice, and Sunday would put it to the test. Shane was waiting for Jaskari to be rotated in for a trial, but he wasn't concerned about Hostler.

Jaskari was a lanky Finn who had been acquired in the off season from Tampa, and while he didn't put up very impressive numbers, he was a solid presence on the ice. He had a lot of potential that wasn't being tapped, and not as many bad habits as Hostler.

"Good practice, Hollzy," Hostler said, pausing in front of Shane. He was dressed and had a backpack slung over one shoulder.

When Shane looked up, Hostler put out a fist, and then made an exaggerated exploding motion when Shane obligingly knocked his knuckles against it. Hostler was the closest thing he'd had to a friend on the Martins, but it also wasn't lost on him that Hostler had been going out of his way to be friendlier since training camp started.

"See ya!" Hostler called, waving.

"Bye," Shane replied.

He leaned over to tie to his shoes, but paused when he felt his phone vibrate against his hip. Straightening again, he slipped it out of his pocket and opened it.

I: i need your address

Shane frowned at his phone and looked up to check that it really was Ilya's contact. Ilya had suggested two hookups in the month since he'd landed in Boston, and Shane had been unsettlingly eager to agree to both, but he'd been saved from immediately getting into the car by preexisting scheduling conflicts. Those conflicts had kept him out of Ilya's physical space, but they hadn't stopped him from accepting a call on both occasions. In the aftermath of every phone call, he'd spent far too long trying to figure out how he could get himself to Boston while Ilya was still available.

Now they were barreling down on the regular season, and they would both be so tied up that Shane would have no choice but to put this white hot coal aside.

He hesitated, typed out and deleted several responses before he manged to hit send on a single word.

S: Why?

I: surprise. give

S: I'm not giving you my address.

I: (((( why not?

S: Why would I?

I: Hollander. i just said: surprise

S: Surprises can be a lot of things.

I: oh my god you are SO boring. this is present. you will like ;)

Shane considered the various presents Ilya might send him, including a sudden, visceral image of Ilya himself on Shane's doorstep in a delivery uniform, but most of his predictions ranged from weird to deeply embarrassing to rage inducing. The ones that weren't any of those things made him bite his lip.

As he hesitated, his phone buzzed again.

I: ok i will send here?

A moment later, the address for the CN Sports Complex appeared on his screen.

S: Don't you dare!

I: i will make to coach desjardins. he can deliver.

S: Ilya!

I: hurry. i am at ups very nice lady wants to know address…

Before Shane could stop himself, he'd typed in and sent his address, and then he just sat and stared at his phone in horror.

"You okay, Hollander?"

Shane looked up sharply to see Pike watching him from two stalls away. He had his lips pulled subtly inward and eyes crinkled half-way to a wince, like he was anticipating a spray of cold water to the face.

"Uh, yeah. Definitely," Shane said, hurriedly snapping his phone closed and leaning down to finish tying his shoes.

"You sure?" Pike pressed. "You look like you just spotted a vampire in the dark."

Shane hoped that his position curled over his knees and his fingers tangled in his shoelaces hid both his flinch and the way he went still.

"Dude, that's kind of speciesist, isn't it?" Taylor called brightly from the other side of the locker room. "Weren't you in the HR training? Vampires can be people just like anyone else! I don't think you're allowed to say shit like that, you fuckin' hen snatcher!"

"Oh, my bad," Pike said easily, but with an audible eye roll in his voice as he turned back toward Shane. "But you know what I mean. What spooked you?"

"Nothing, just… unexpected news." Shane managed, sitting back up and twisting to grab his bag. After a lifetime in locker rooms, it was easy enough to keep his breathing even and his face blank. Comments like that had stopped hurting, really, but he felt suddenly tired and aware of his fangs in their sheaths.

"Oh, shit! Is she pregnant?" Taylor blurted out.

Shane reared back. "What?"

"Real subtle, Tater Tot," Pike said, but then he turned back to Shane and continued in an undertone, "But seriously. Is she?"

"No!" Shane nearly yelled. At the twin sets of lifted eyebrows, he got his voice under control. He cleared his throat. "Why would you think that?"

Taylor laughed. "Because that was the 'oh shit my hookup just said she was late' face, man," he said. Throwing a balled up sock at Pike, he added, "Pike should know!"

Pike smacked the sock out of the air, using one shower shoe like a tennis racket. "Thank you, Tater! And for the record, Jacki and I were already married when she found out she was pregnant."

Snorting, Taylor made a big production of rolling his eyes. "Yeah, for like two months! You were nineteen and that's exactly the look you gave your phone." He turned his eyes back to Shane and shared, "She texted him right after an away game. We whooped Boston's ass, four-to-one, and we're all celebrating in the locker room, and then suddenly Pike looks like someone just yanked his soul out by his tail—"

"—I was very excited!" Pike tried to interrupt, but Taylor just raised his voice to continue over him.

"And a second later, he's all oh my god, I'm going to be a father, oh my god, what am I going to do, oh my GOD!" Taylor put one hand up to his cheek and set the other on his chest with exaggerated delicacy, voice going high and breathy. He dodged Pike's thrown shoe, breaking into laughter. "I thought he was going to pass out!"

"Don't listen to him," Pike said loudly over Taylor's cackling. He threw the other shoe hard enough that it made a loud, wet smack! as it hit the wall far to Taylor's left. Taylor didn't even bother to duck. "But seriously…if you need to talk or anything—?"

Shane had continued packing his bag up during the exchange. He hastily secured his necklace, pushed the jewelry box back into its pocket, and stood. "No, really, all good, nothing to worry about. Thank you though. That's very kind of you to offer. Good practice, guys!" He waved and beat a hasty retreat to the soundtrack of a few scattered laughs.

"He's so Canadian," Taylor laughed as Shane made his way down the hall. "Prince of Hockey. You guys should crown him."

Shane heard Pike's voice as he replied, but he tuned the words out and dug his phone out as he walked.

I: hope this is your real address

I: you will be responsible for upsetting old lady if it is fake

I: or i don't know. maybe old lady will be very happy ;)

Shane groaned faintly. He had no idea how to respond that didn't come off as bitchy, or desperate, or pleading. He was also very aware of the way his heart pounded in anticipation, something crossing wildly between that childhood Christmas-morning rush and the near-agony of waiting for Ilya in his hotel room. He climbed into his car, shut the door, secured his seat belt, and then just sat for several minutes and read over their messages.

Taking a deep breath, he finally put his thumbs back to the buttons.

S: I gave you mine. Give me yours.

I: hmm maybe no

"No?" Shane asked his empty car. He heard the offense in his own voice, took a breath, and let it out.

S: Why not?

I: maybe you will not like my present

I: then you will come hunt me down

S: What the hell are you sending me?

I: if i tell you it is not surprise. be patient

I: you will like. promise

S: If you're so sure I'm going to like it, give me your address.

I: No :P

S: You are such a fucking asshole, Rozanov.

There was a long pause before a response came through, and Shane could practically see the accompanying eye-roll and hear Ilya's exasperated groan.

I: it will be on pkg, hollander

"Oh," Shane muttered. The back of his neck went warm.

S: When should I expect it?

I: sometime before i win cup probably ;)

"Asshole," Shane said, but he couldn't help the smile as he closed his phone and set it in the cup holder. He turned the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and pulled out of his parking spot.

~*~

The game had been charged and physical from the drop. It was the first pre-season exhibition for both Montreal and Ottawa, and there were guys on both sides who were looking to make an impression before the rosters were solidified. No one wanted to get injured before the regular season even started, but some of the guys saw it as their only way in, and at least taking an injury early on meant plenty of time to heal and get back on the ice before the season progressed too far.

Shane hadn't been fielded the previous year. His mom had been livid, but his dad had insisted that the management team had already decided to swaddle him in bubble wrap and secure him with the Martins, so there was no point in putting him out there just to get boarded by someone with more to prove.

He wasn't startled by the intensity on the ice—he'd even expected it—but that didn't make it any less frustrating when the whistle was going off every minute and a half to stop play or send someone to the box. Twelve minutes into the period, and they were already on their second power play with Conlin steaming in the Centaur's box, and Renaud smacking his stick on the pipes as he yelled at the defensemen.

"Second line!" Coach called, knocking Shane between the shoulders with his clipboard, and Shane hopped the boards.

He lost the face-off, but stripped Henley off the puck thirty seconds later and dropped it back for Pike. The Centaurs PK team was split evenly between vets and rookies, and they played tight around their net, closing shooting lanes as quickly as they opened. Shane played keep away, circling around the defensive knot and passing the puck as soon as he got it just to fatigue their attention.

Finally, Hostler took the puck and bulled into their midst. As soon as the Centaurs closed around him, he made a hasty pass to his left. Pike picked it up; he had a tight lane open, but Shane saw the moment he shifted gears in the subtle tilt to his shoulders and the flicker of his eyes. Without conscious thought, Shane moved into position to accept the pass, watched the puck skitter directly through the crease, and flicked it back in. It jumped over the goalie's pad and into the net maybe a second or three after the power play expired.

The lights behind the net flashed. Elation sparked in his chest, and he turned automatically to look up at the board, and then all the world went chaotic and tumbling.

He hit the boards hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs, and then landed the ice in the next moment, down with one shoulder trapped under his body and his stick tangled between his skates. He heard a fuzzy crash behind him, just barely audible over the loud scrape of his helmet against the ice, but for one disorienting second, he couldn't move. He could barely breathe around the muffling softness clinging to his lungs.

The moment passed, no more than a dozen heartbeats, and he sucked in an icy breath. A moment later, he got his knees under his hips and pushed himself off the ice. When he turned around, he found Pike yanking Conlin off the boards with one bare hand fisted in the neck of his sweater. He used the momentum to drive his opposite fist into Conlin's face three times in quick succession. Shane jolted forward, but another body collided with his side, arms coiling tight around him as he immediately tried to shake them off.

"Don't do it, Hollander!" It was the Centaur's AC, Rossi. The man had some kind of water sprite heritage, and the blue whorls on his skin shimmered subtly from so close up.

"Get off me!" Shane snapped, shoving away from him. He felt the faint pressure of his fangs against his mouthguard and had to clamp his teeth together to keep from hissing at Rossi, though the fans and the other players were making so much noise, he probably wouldn't have been heard at all.

"Don't make this a brawl!" Rossi tightened his grip and pulled him further away, but Shane was hardly necessary to make it a brawl. Hostler had come careening after Pike to jump into the fray, and he and one of the Centaurs were on the ice with two refs trying to pull them apart. The remaining players of both lines clustered around Pike and Conlin, preventing the refs from getting through, and Shane was maybe two or three heartbeats from taking Rossi's arm off to get loose.

A second later, the Centaur's goalie, a dour Czech approximately the size of a freight engine, dropped his stick and reached into the melee. He grabbed Conlin by the back of the neck and towed him out while Taylor got both arms around Pike and held on to keep him from following. Mueller, a bulky defensemen Shane had played with on the Martins, squared off opposite Gaumond, and Juniors joined him to push the Centaur left winger further away from Pike.

Whistles went off like mad, the crowd was collectively losing its mind, and Shane was finally able to fling Rossi's arm away. A ref gave him a warning look when he tried to get in close to his teammates, but Shane shouldered past the milling Centaurs and got a hand on Pike's shoulder.

"You good?" Shane asked over the insults flying wildly between the two teams.

Pike wiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing blood across his chin and jaw, and nodded tightly. His pupils had picked up a golden ring, but he hadn't lost control of his fox. At a rough jerk of his shoulders, Taylor let him go, and he wiped at the blood again.

Even over the clamor of competing scents—body odor, rink ice, the familiar twinning reeks of aggression and arousal that always came with a fight—Pike's blood was sharp and tangy. Shane didn't want it at all, except that he did have a sudden desire to lean forward and lick it off his face.

"Motherfucker," Pike snarled, completely unaware of Shane's eyes on the blood trickling out his nose as he stared over the surrounding helmets to where Conlin was being manhandled to the Centaur's tunnel.

After so many years and so many fights, it wasn't difficult for Shane to redirect his attention to their surroundings, but he kept his hand on Pike's shoulder.

At center ice, Hostler and his man had nearly been separated. Hostler was on his feet, but crouched over. One ref had an arm around his ribs, trying to pull him back. Auclair was laid out on the ice with one arm between Hostler's legs and a tight grip on the front of his sweater. He held on doggedly despite the other ref trying to drag him away by his free arm. Shane had seen Hostler fight, and if Auclair didn't let him go, Hostler was going to lose patience and just drop on him.

With the melee around Pike cooling down, one of the refs left to help separate Hostler and Auclair, and the last managed to get a hand on Pike and tug. Shane held on for a second, but after one hard look from the ref and a nudge from Pike, he let go.

Anyone who could reach him gave Pike an approving pat as he was sent down the tunnel, and Shane let Taylor hook an arm around his waist and tow him back toward their bench.

Hostler went down the tunnel a few seconds later. He resisted only long enough to offer a Shane a fist to bump against, and then he went good-naturedly along with both hands up, grinning and collecting his own pats as his due.

"Fucking monster," someone growled.

Shane looked over sharply, but all the angry glares were aimed at the Ottawa tunnel.

"Is the moon full tonight, or what?" Taylor joked, and Berkes tipped his head back and howled to the general laughter of their teammates. Across the ice, one of the Centaurs howled back, and then half the stadium was in on the joke, yipping and howling into the rafters. Full Moon on the Rise blared over the loudspeakers, the heavy beat and low drone of the pipes bringing everyone into rhythm. Berkes, Juniors, and Macuga all stood and set up a single, long note. Two guys on the Centaur's bench stood as well to add to the cacophony.

Shane shivered faintly and kept his eyes focused in the middle distance. The whole stadium seemed to vibrate with the sound of all the wolves packed under the dome, and people were afraid of him?

If Conlin could hear the howling from the locker room, he was probably enjoying it. Conlin had spent nearly as much time in the box as he'd spent on the ice; he had just been drafted, and he was clearly trying to impress someone with his willingness to drop his gloves and square up. He didn't need his wolf shifter heritage for that, but he was clearly happy to play up the savage beast angle.

The officials were all clustered at a monitor, leaning with their heads together and ignoring the din rising and falling with the music while they reviewed the tape. Shane knew what he would do in their place, but he kept his teeth clamped together and didn't add to his teammates' conversations shooting back and forth under the continuing wolf calls.

"Hollander!" Desjardins leaned over the players on the bench and snapped his fingers to get Shane's attention once the calls wound down and Brittney Spears took over on the speakers.

Shane's brought his eyes up and into focus. "Coach?"

Desjardins' eyes narrowed in a calculating way as he looked Shane up and down.

"No retaliation," he said severely.

Shane probably wouldn't have protested, but Desjardins raised a finger and pointed sharply at Shane's face in a way that he'd always hated from anyone. It made his hackles rise whenever someone did it, and he thought that Desjardins knew it. How could he not when he had a team that was half creature-heritage of one kind or another, mostly shifters? Do that to a wolf close enough to a full moon, and it might start a fight. Even if he didn't suspect Shane had heritage of his own, it was just rude.

"No retaliation, Hollander," Desjardins repeated. "Someone starts shit out there, you step aside and let one of your teammates finish it. Got it?"

Shane seethed. There was some quiet, intellectual part of his head that understood: the Metros were hanging a lot of expectations on him, and they couldn't have him injured. Definitely not in a pre-season exhibition that didn't even count. They would save letting him off whatever leash they thought they had him on until the playoffs, if they made it that far, but it rankled to stand back and let someone else fight for him.

"Hollander!" Desjardins snapped again. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes, Coach," Shane said tightly. His teammates pointedly did not look at him, and he returned his gaze to the middle distance, teeth clenched, and started reciting stats from the 1982 Cup run to keep his brain too occupied for his mouth to open.

Was that why Pike had gone sailing into a fight? He wasn't known for being a fighter. He could throw a punch as well as any guy on the ice, and he did if he had to, but he didn't usually start a fight. The Metros didn't have an enforcer at the moment, and Hayden Pike was not the man to fill the role. Had he been ordered to do it? Had they all?

He suddenly wanted to laugh at the idea of a secret memo going out to the team that started with DO NOT ADD SHANE HOLLANDER TO THIS MESSAGE. The thought knocked the irritation down to a low simmer. Even if they had been told to protect him on the ice, it wouldn't be unexpected or unusual for a valuable forward, but they probably hadn't needed to be told.

He couldn't even protest when he had worked so hard all his life to keep his own aggression in check, and the end result was usually swallowing down insults and challenges that made his blood boil while he let others do the fighting. So if it made something in his chest snarl to back down from a fight, to stand behind someone else, it was the same snarling thing he'd been dealing with since he hit puberty.

After a lengthy discussion between the officials, Conlin was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct. Pike got two minutes in the box for fighting, but Hostler was let off the hook, as Auclair had crosschecked him across the chin to start it. For the pleasure of receiving a black eye, Auclair had earned himself two minutes as well. Coach put Shane back on the bench and sent the first line out to handle the four-on-three, leaving Shane to steam as he watched the clock tick down on the first period.

In the locker room during the intermission, Pike nudged him with an elbow. He already had a bruise forming around one eye that made the blue of his iris practically glow, and his nose was starting to swell, but he grinned. "Nice goal, by the way."

"Nice shiner," Shane replied, and Pike's grin broadened to show his teeth. Even without shifting, his canines were prominent, and, combined with the bruising, it gave him a feral aspect.

"Can't always be so much prettier than everyone else in this room," Pike said, raising his voice. "It's not fair to these ugly assholes."

"Thank you for your service, you foxy motherfucker!" Taylor called back, while a dozen crumpled wrappers and balled-up napkins flew at Pike simultaneously. Sitting next to him, Shane was the beneficiary of at least half of the projectiles, and he swatted them out of the air automatically, which only resulted in being pelted with more.

~*~

The tension in the second period could have been wrung out like a wet bath towel, it was so thick.

"Didn't know they made dog collars in fox sizes," Gaumond spat at Pike at the face off, and then he stuck his tongue out and made exaggerating panting noises at Shane. "Hope you at least suck him off for that one, Holly."

Shane won the face off and, when Gaumond came up behind him, he caught the bigger man on his back and twisted to slam him into the boards. Gaumond's breath wuff'ed out on a curse, but he stayed upright. Shane fired off a pass that Hostler missed by about ten miles, but Mueller picked up at the point. The defenseman was tall and all legs; he was a year older than Shane but he hadn't filled in his height yet, and he overextended trying to pass. A Centaur forward snatched it up and carried it into the neutral zone, and Gaumond left Shane's side to follow.

Desjardins whistled as Shane went by the bench. He came to a hasty halt, practically throwing himself over the boards to get off the ice as Taylor hopped over and shot off. Pike and Hostler came sailing in together a moment later for the rest of the shift change, and Shane plopped down, and then shuffled sideways for Pike to sit.

"Don't let that asshole get under your skin," Pike suggested. He shot a stream of blue Powerade into his mouth and then offered it to Shane. When Shane shook his head, he wiggled the bottle, and the sloshing of the liquid inside made Shane's stomach clench up. For one lightning fast moment, all he could think about was Ilya winking at him, head tipped back and sweat running down his face on the floor of a hotel gym.

Pike took his moment of slack-jawed silence for agreement and turned the bottle around. Shane barely had his head tilted back and mouth open in time for the Powerade to hit the back of his throat instead of his face, and he still inhaled half of it.

"Christ, man," Pike said, laughing, as he hit Shane hard between the shoulder blades. Shane's armor rattled, and he had to smack Pike on the thigh to get him to stop.

The trainer came over to check on him. Shane waved Sanders away and glared as Pike continued laughing. "I didn't pick up all this beautiful color just for you to die on the bench," Pike joked, jostling him again.

The hard clatter of bodies hitting the boards cut off anything awkward Shane might have said in response, and Shane was on his feet a second later with the rest of the team. Taylor was caught between Auclair and Lewis, awkwardly trying to free himself while the two defensemen alternately pulled and pushed him between them. Hejda skated out of the net and away from the melee as Berkes and Juniors jumped into the fray, and another brawl developed on the ice.

"Fucking insane tonight," Pike said, but Shane barely heard him under the general shouting of the team and the whistles shrieking above it all. The fans, at least, were loving it. For a certain subset of Ottawa fans, pre-season games with the unpredictability of new blood in the lines were the real show for the season, and the stands were packed with them.

Some kind of theme music started playing overhead, but it was indistinct over the pounding of Shane's pulse. The fight broke up without any penalties, though the Centaurs' head coach clearly had a few things to say on the matter, and play resumed.

The rest of the period followed a similar pattern. Gaumond had apparently jumped in to take over where Conlin had left off, and every time he ended up on the ice with Shane, he made it his particular mission to be glued to Shane's hip.

"Getting pissed off yet, Princess?" he spat after slamming Shane into the boards. "Ready to show me some teeth?"

Shane clenched his jaw and did his best to ignore him; that kind of comment used to make him panic, but he'd been—mostly—desensitized to it. It was just a turn of phrase. Gaumond didn't know anything. He wedged the puck tight between his skate and the board and turned his body to keep Gaumond off it while he waited for one of his teammates to relieve him of it.

"Here comes your furry, shining knight," Gaumond observed. "Can't fight any of your own battles? Worried you might break a nail?"

Pike snowed Gaumond's skates and slipped the point of his stick between Shane's legs to hook around the puck. Gaumond quickly wedged his in behind, locking Pike's stick in against Shane's inner thigh and further tangling them up.

"Get the fuck off, Mondy!" Pike growled. He shoved at Gaumond's shoulder and Gaumond shoved him back.

Shane was jostled in between the two of them, and he felt his blood starting to simmer under his breastbone. He gave Gaumond a hard shove with one shoulder. He had no leverage with his feet turned out to make a cage for the puck, but Gaumond had leaned forward at that moment, and the motion dislodged him just enough for Pike to free his stick. Shane bent his left knee to give him some space, and the puck clattered out from between his feet.

Pike passed blindly backward, and Gaumond finally let Shane go to chase after the puck. "Next time, Princess!" he called over his shoulder as he went.

They went into the third period 1-0, but Renaud was getting peppered as the Centaurs grew more agitated. As Shane had observed time and time again, the more frustrated the Centaurs got, the sloppier they played. They missed passes, took wild shots, and their wingers even collided at one point in their own defensive zone. It would be have been funny, except that they managed to take Hostler down with them, and he lost the puck. Before Shane could get to it, Rossi scooped it up and cleared it out of the zone.

All of the Centaurs had started calling Shane some variation on "Princess" or "Your Royal Highness," and each time one of Shane's teammates interceded between him and one of the Centaurs, someone asked Shane if he'd ever taken a hit in his life, if his nail polish was still drying, if his tiara was uncomfortable under his helmet. They made chicken noises at him and called Pike a hen-snatcher in the next breath.

Shane kept his mouth tightly closed for the most part, and he took yet more shit for even letting his teammates do the chirping for him, but he didn't trust himself to open his mouth.

"They let you bend them over in the locker room, Holly, or are you more of a pillow princess?" Gaumond asked after Renaud covered the puck and play stopped with three minutes left on the clock, score still frozen at 1-0. Gaumond had hooked Shane's leg to open a shooting lane for Rossi, not that it had made a difference for them in the end, but it had apparently gone unnoticed by the linesmen.

Gaumond got into Shane's personal space as soon as the whistle sounded. He was already taller than Shane, but he stretched his neck to further the difference.

"How many shifters in your locker room tonight? Six?" Gaumond pressed in the seconds before their teammates would arrive to separate them. "You the bitch under the shifter pile?"

Shane didn't make the conscious decision to drop his gloves. He saw the brief widening of Gaumond's eyes as his stick hit the ice, barely noticed his gloves leave his hands as he flicked his arms hard to either side, and then he felt the satisfying crack of his knuckles on Gaumond's chin half a second before Gaumond got two fists in his sweater.

The next thing Shane knew, he had been flipped over Gaumond's shoulder and was starring up at the other man from his back. Even still reeling from the dizzying spin and the rough meeting with the ice, he got his legs open and then closed them tightly around Gaumond's upper thighs and locked his ankles together. Gaumond shoved him into the ice, reared back, and punched down. Luckily, Gaumond's knuckles grazed his helmet rather than his face. The helmet went flying, and Shane hastily caught Gaumond's arms and curled in, trying to lock him up.

Gaumond had three inches and thirty pounds on Shane, and he snorted out hot air like a cartoon bull, eyes going red as he jerked in Shane's grip. He got his left hand free and caught Shane across the face before more bodies arrived to pull them apart. Shane should have just let go, but his blood was up, so he held on, trying to free his arm enough to get in another hit, furious at the hot pain searing through his right cheekbone. He spit out a mouthful of blood, and the fact that the only blood on the ice then was his own was a wildfire in his chest.

Someone gave him a hard yank, and Shane's upper body came free, but he held onto Gaumond's hips with his legs. He was aware of people yelling at him— Pike and Rossi, and probably a ref or three—but he held on until someone broke the lock he'd made of his ankles. The two groups jolted abruptly apart, Shane's skates skipping across the ice while two pairs of hands dragged him upright. He could see Gaumond shouting at him, but his pulse was too loud in his own ears to hear the words. It was probably a good thing his arms were being held away from his body, because the temptation to rip his mouthguard out and drop his fangs was stronger than it had been in a very long time.

His stick and gloves were collected and brought back to him, and Sanders came out to peer at his face and offer him a towel for the blood. Shane scrubbed it across his face to wipe the little bit of it away where it clung to the corners of his mouth. He obligingly held still while Sanders peered into his mouth for any further active bleeding, but Shane healed quickly enough that he knew there wouldn't be anything. The teams milled uneasily on the ice as the refs conferred.

"So much for a friendly exhibition," Pike muttered. He still had a hand wrapped around Shane's elbow, like Shane might have dived back into the fight given the chance, and Shane should probably feel worse that Pike wouldn't be wrong. "Too bad Ottawa never puts this much energy into winning games."

"Yeah, if they'd ever managed to draft anyone who wasn't slow as shit or a caveman on skates, maybe they would have made it to the playoffs in my lifetime," Shane said in a low growl, but some of the heat was startled out of him when Pike snorted out a laugh.

"Isn't this your home team?" Pike asked.

"Unfortunately," Shane muttered to the unaccustomed sound of another friendly laugh.

"Number 24, two minutes, roughing," one of the refs called over the mic. The stands erupted in noise, competing cheers and boos that rivaled the earlier howling for volume.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Shane fumed, but one of the other linesmen was already pushing him toward the box. "Is hooking not a fucking penalty anymore?"

"Get in the box, Hollander!" the ref, Rivers, said, giving him a solid push when Shane balked at the door.

Shane stepped in and sat down roughly. He didn't throw his stick or his gloves, but he was surprised at how tempted he was to do both. He looked up to watch the replay of the fight, and a sizzle of embarrassment went through him at how quickly and easily Gaumond had laid him out. He felt shockingly close to losing control in a way that he hadn't since he was thirteen years old and a delay in growth had briefly left him one of the smallest kids on his team.

"You'll get 'em next time," the attendant said jovially.

Shane made no reply. He watched angrily as the last minutes ticked down on the clock, aggressively refusing to notice Desjardins's anger practically fogging the plexiglass separating them. He would have fifty-seven seconds left on the ice before the final buzzer.

With forty-eight seconds left on the penalty, Rossi finally slipped past Renaud and got the puck over the line, putting the Centaurs on the board for the first time all night. Shane stood and stepped up to the door, ignoring the faintly amused look on the babysitter's face as he crouched down.

Taylor got possession of the puck and Juniors roughly shouldered Rossi away when he might have taken it back. Shane counted down the last seconds on his penalty, watching Taylor and Hostler pass back and forth, frantically keeping ahead of the defenders. The moment the penalty ran out, Shane was out of the box like a gunshot.

Fifty-seven seconds remaining.

Hostler passed blind, and Shane pushed himself hard to catch it, swinging in front of a Centaur who had lined up to intercept. He heard a startled oath behind him as the puck hit his tape. He didn't have anything open, but Taylor was being ignored at the top of the circle. Shane fired the puck off half a breath before a Centaur plowed him into the boards.

He didn't see the goal, but he heard the thunder of the horn as he shoved Auclair off.

Shane was back on the bench for the last twenty-three seconds of the game, with Desjardins steaming silently behind him, and they walked away with a meaningless 2-1 victory for their first pre-season game.

Shane wasn't surprised to get back to the locker room to a slew of texts from his mom, including, "Isn't hooking a gd penalty anymore??" and from his dad, "See you outside. Aux Anciens still good? Maybe your linemates would like to join us?"

From Ilya, there was a single message: "hot ;)"

When he took his mouthguard out, his fangs had carved such deep gouges into it that he would have to throw it away when he got home.

Chapter 7: Chapter Six

Shane had been told to expect the package, but when it appeared the day after he got back from the road trip, he still set it down on his breakfast bar and stared at it suspiciously for a very long time.

It wasn't very large, and it was pretty light. He'd picked it up and carried it into the house in the crook of one arm. He wouldn't be surprised to open it and find it full to bursting with socks. Or one of Ilya's sweaters. Or any number of other things he was aggressively not considering.

He scowled at the box in retaliation for the way his cheeks warmed and his cock immediately stirred in his pants. He was still in his joggers, and the sweat between his shoulder blades had cooled unpleasantly, but the box had been on his doorstep when he'd returned from his jog, and he hadn't been able to pry himself away from it.

He also hadn't been able to make himself open it. Instead, he was sitting at the breakfast bar, looking at paparazzi pictures of Ilya with his arms around some beautiful brunette with Marleau on his other side, both of them leaning toward each other after a night out in New York. There was a petite blond on Marleau's arm, so small that he and Ilya both looked like giants in comparison.

Annoyed, Shane pushed away from the bar and forcefully went through his post-run routine. Clothes off and directly into the washing machine, shower, fresh athletic gear and thick, warm socks. Green smoothie, blender cleaned out and drying on the rack before he sat down with his glass.

He studiously ignored the package on the counter as he finished his smoothie and answered his emails. His mom had sent him a few proposals to look over, and his realtor had a list of places for him to look at on his next day off. He turned three of them down unseen, marked the other two as maybe, and then reviewed the latest email from the Metros PR manager.

He was half-way through sorting his inbox before the suspense finally overwhelmed him. He closed his laptop, got his letter opener out of the drawer, and sliced through the tape. Inside, he found another box tightly wedged into the first. On top of that was a note in surprisingly neat, slanting handwriting that read, "Call me. Do not open. Call first. ~I"

Shane glared at the note, and then at the box. It was a plain brown box with no clues as to what it contained. He leaned over to check the clock over the oven. He had fifteen minutes before he needed to leave for an afternoon practice, and he knew Ilya was on the road for a pre-season game against Brooklyn. He wouldn't be available to talk until the team was settled in the hotel, and even then, he would probably have a roommate.

Who sent someone a package and then gave them orders on when they could open it?

Shane paused with the sharp tip of the letter opener embedded in the tape. He looked back down at the note.

"Fuck," he hissed, and then he put the letter opener down, replaced the note, closed the lid on the outer box, and shoved the whole thing in his front closet.

~*~

Shane was honestly surprised when Ilya answered that evening. He hesitated, and then asked, "Do you have a roommate?" in lieu of saying hello.

Ilya chuckled. "Why? I am not enough for you? You want witness? Third party?"

"Shut up," Shane hissed, cheeks warm.

After another moment of soft laughter, Shane heard the distinctive fwoosh of a body hitting a bed. "Ah, I do have roommate, but it is Marly and he is gone all night. Some girl he knows here, he already asked me to cover for him. Is safe, Hollander."

Clearing his throat, Shane said, "Oh. Okay." It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why Ilya was not out meeting some girl or at a club. It wasn't even seven in the evening. Why was he shut up in his hotel room so early? But the idea of seeing more of Ilya's picture in the sports tabloids in the morning, wrapped around some model-thin blonde with her leggy friend tucked under his opposite arm made him simmer with preemptive irritation.

"Saw your game," Ilya said after a moment. He sounded amused, but there was a note of deep appreciation under it, warm and liquid. "Shane Hollander already with two minutes of penalty time," he tsked.

"It doesn't count," Shane said, but he shifted uncomfortably on his stool. Last season, he'd had four minutes of penalty time the entire season, and he hadn't been tossed in the box for fighting since he was sixteen. "The Cens were in some kind of mood."

"Yes, they always are. Maybe one day they will get new coach who does not think solution to all problems is fist."

Shane snorted. Hillock had been the head coach in Ottawa for two seasons already, but his past three predecessors had been like-minded, and the team was packed full of hotheads and brutes. Ottawa was a notoriously low performing team, but their usual tactic for dealing with their low performance was fielding muscle and starting fights to get assess in seats.

"You're criticizing a team for being too violent?" Shane asked.

"Violence to make up for no skill is just waste of talent," Ilya said without a hint of sarcasm. "Bad for players, bad for team, bad even for fans who have team that always loses. Rossi is not even bad player. He is probably begging other teams to take him before the season starts."

Shane remembered Rossi holding him back in an effort to stop an all-out brawl. "Yeah, probably."

Silence fell while Shane prodded at the box, once again up on his breakfast bar. "So…"

"So?" Ilya prompted. "Why did you call, Hollander? Need to cry about your injuries to your helpful teammate?"

The automatic flash of irritation Shane felt in response to Ilya's teasing tone didn't dampen the instant shot of lust that followed. If anything, it made it hotter. He cleared his throat. "I got a box today."

"Oh, how nice for you. Is this like with cat? You sit in it now?"

Ignoring him, Shane turned the box and read off the return address. "Sound familiar?"

"Yes, that is the porn video shop on the corner of fourteenth! Hollander, what did you order?"

"Are you being serious?" Shane demanded, opening his laptop while Ilya laughed on the other end of the line. Shane typed the address in anyway, and got a residential street. "Asshole."

"What is in the box, Hollander?" Ilya prompted with a weird emphasis on the words.

Teeth gritting together, Shane took in a breath through his nose. "I don't know, there's a note in it that I have to call you first."

"Oh? How obedient of you." Ilya's voice sounded warmly amused, and Shane flushed. Arousal, which had been simmering below the surface ever since he'd seen the package on his front door, started to boil over. "Well, you have called. Do you want to open it?"

"Maybe I don't feel like it now," Shane said, forcing his voice to stay flat and even.

"Okay," Ilya said easily. "Call back when you want to open it—"

"—Ilya!"

There was a moment of silence, but Shane could still hear Ilya's breath over the line. "You want to open it?" he asked after a moment.

"Why are you such an asshole? If you didn't want me to open it, you shouldn't have sent it." Shane said, but he had a fingernail dug into the seam.

"So? You didn't have to call." When Shane didn't respond, he softly repeated, "You want to open it?"

Shane swallowed, but he said, "Yes."

"What? You need me to tell you how? Open it, Hollander."

Shane almost told him to fuck off, but he thought Ilya would really hang up the phone just to be a dick about it, so he didn't. He sliced through the tape, pulled the flaps open, and found…another, slightly smaller box, still plain brown with another note tapped to the top.

Naughty! Call me first.

"Really, Ilya?"

Ilya's pleased laughter drifted down the line. "Just in case you got impatient."

Shane rolled his eyes again, but his lips tugged up into a smile. He shifted the phone to his other shoulder, cut through the third box, and was almost surprised that he didn't find a fourth box inside. Nestled into a bed of packing peanuts, he instead unearthed a dark blue satin pillow.

It was oddly heavy for a pillow, and about the right size for taking on a car or plane. He blinked down at it for several seconds before saying, "Did you get me a neck pillow, Rozanov?"

Another burst of laughter. "Oh, I should just let you think that," Ilya said through it. "And let you find out next time you are on team plane."

Shane immediately flipped the pillow over and found a zipper tucked under a seam. He let Ilya continue to laugh as he wrestled the zipper open. It caught on the slippery fabric, and he had to grab it in one fist and yank. There was clearly something solid in the middle of the pillow, and as he twisted his hand to get the zipper unstuck, there was a loud buzzing sound and the whole thing started vibrating in his hands.

"What the fuck!" Shane shouted, automatically fumbling the pillow out of his hands. It hit the box, which flew off the breakfast bar and into his empty dish drying rack, while the pillow bounced to the counter and shivered against it. On the other end of the phone, Ilya roared with laughter. "Oh my god—Rozanov! Did you send me a sex toy?" he hissed as he snatched the pillow up and started frantically squeezing and pulling, trying to turn it off through the pillow.

Ilya laughed so hard that he ran out of air, went silent for a second, and then sucked in another breath and continued giggling.

Shane finally got the zipper open and yanked the toy out. The vibrations hummed up his wrist, and it took several seconds of twisting and fumbling before he finally found a button. When he pressed it, the vibration went up in intensity, and then started to pulse.

"How do I turn it off?" Shane demanded over Ilya's continuing laughter.

"You—oh, oh-bozhe moy—push it two more times, Hollander."

Shane quickly pressed the button twice more, and it went still. He could feel the ghost of the vibrations through his fingers and up his right arm, and he just stared at it suspiciously for several seconds before he even took in what it was.

It was squat, black, and curved into a blunt head with a larger bulge in the center and another further down. The base of it was curved like the blade of a rocking chair, and it had a golden plate at the bottom with the button and a round charging port.

"You like?" Ilya asked softly, and Shane realized that he'd been quiet for a long time while he turned it over in his hands.

"It's Boston colors," he said, and Ilya laughed again.

"Want me to tell you how to use?"

Shane felt the blood flushing back up to his face, and maybe he meant to say, I think I can figure it out on my own, but what he actually said was, "Okay. Sure."

~*~

"You okay, man?" Marly asked, flopping down next to Ilya and knocking their knees together. "You seem tense."

There was some kind of maintenance issue with the team jet, and they were in the lounge, waiting for the all clear to board. Ilya was expecting any moment to hear there was a catastrophic issue with the plane and they couldn't take off, the game was cancelled.

"I am not tense," Ilya said, but he had his phone clutched in his hand, and it was a struggle to keep himself from opening his text messages again, despite the one thread he'd been re-reading all morning almost guaranteed not to have changed.

I: good morning

S: Good morning

I: ready to lose tonight?

S: Ready to grind you into dust tonight

I: you are already planning my reward for destroying your team? so sweet ;)

S: Fuck you

There was a twelve minute gap between that and the message that still had Ilya's heart hammering:

S: You know my address

"You got somethin' lined up?" Marly asked after a minute of silence. When Ilya looked over to him, he had a broad smile on his face. Marly had a certain kind of magnetism that made Ilya want to return his smile, and, despite the anticipation roiling hectically in his gut, he felt his lips tugging upward.

"Hell, yeah, brother!" Marly said, reading the twitch of his smile. He elbowed Ilya enthusiastically in the ribs. "Rookie! Who is she? C'mon, you got a picture? She pretty?"

Ilya thought about Hollander laid out on the bed in L.A., his knees up to his chest, the way his mouth had dropped open and his eyes had shivered closed when Ilya pushed into his body. "Yes," he said. "Very pretty."

Dropping his voice, Marly leaned close and asked, "Hot?"

Ilya let his chin roll on his chest to meet Marly's eyes. From Marly's laugh, Ilya didn't need to say, "Hotter than anyone you will ever get your big, ugly paws on," but he said it anyways.

Marly didn't take offense. He poked Ilya playfully several times, and pressed again, "Show me a picture!"

"Not if your life is at risk," Ilya said firmly.

Frowning, Marly asked, "Why not? Here, I'll show you mine." Without waiting for an answer, he dug his phone out of his pocket. Ilya couldn't help leaning over to watch as Marly flipped through a few pictures of very attractive women, and then turned his phone so Ilya could see the screen. She was cute: curly strawberry blond hair and pale skin covered in a star map of freckles. She had a pretty smile, very straight teeth, glossy pink lipstick and peachy-pink blush on her cheekbones, and a faint dusting of pale golden eyeshadow. She was in a green sundress, and she wore dangly butterfly earrings that caught the light as she squinted against the sun and smiled at the camera.

The camera was also angled to catch the ample swell of her cleavage, which she had further drawn attention do with a necklace that disappeared between her breasts. They looked very grabable, and big enough that even Marly's giant hands would be full of them.

"Very cute," Ilya offered. "Pretty girl."

Marly beamed at her picture. "Her name's Jasmine—Minie. I met her in a coffee shop at a hotel in Tampa, but she lives in Montreal. She works at a doggy daycare, and she makes these cute little…knitted things? I don't know, like birds and squirrels and shit? But she made me this tiny canon last season, cutest fuckin' thing, goes everywhere with me. We're going to catch up after the game tonight." He gave Ilya the benefit of his grin and added, "Hey, you should bring your girl."

"Uh, no," Ilya said, though he enjoyed a brief thought of showing up to Marly's date with Shane Hollander in tow. "But you have fun with Minie."

"Aaaah, not that kind of date, huh?" Marly guessed, wiggling his eyebrows. "I get it. Me and Minie are going to some artsy French movie, I think? I never get those, you know, but damn if I don't cry half the time, anyways." He gave Ilya a sly look and a wink, and tapped Ilya's arm with the back of his fingers as he added, "And she loves that shit, you know what I mean?"

Ilya tilted his head curiously. "She… knows about Aria in New York? And Surya in Buffalo?"

Marly blinked at him with his brows ruffling up. "Of course. You're never gonna believe it, but they've got a damn group chat, and I'm not allowed in. I think they talk to each other more than they talk to me. Surya even gave me a pair of earrings to hand off to Minie while I'm there. Girls are wild, man." He shook his head, but gave his phone a fond smile.

Ilya's first meeting with Marly had been the first day of training camp. Marly had exploded into the locker room, big personality and giant smile, spotted Ilya, and greeted him like they'd known each other for three-quarters of their lives. He'd flopped down at Ilya's side and, in the course of an introduction, had explained, unasked, that he had some incubus heritage—like so many years ago, back in France, my great-great-great…great-something I don't know—my grandma, and well, there was this incubus and…yanno how it goes—and reassured him in that low, rumbling voice of his—don't worry, I don't have any pull. So if you feel any kind of way about me, it's all you, brother—and then he'd winked and jostled Ilya's shoulder, and declared, "So you're my rookie, Rookie! Let's do this!"

Ilya had sincerely wanted to dislike him on principle, but maybe it was the great-great-great-great-something grandfather's influence still clinging to his blood, or maybe it was just Marly's own bright personality, but it was impossible not to like him.

"So…" Marly prompted. He lifted both eyebrows and rolled his fingers in an encouraging gesture.

After a long, waiting pause, Ilya lifted his eyebrows and said, "None of my hookups have a group chat."

Marly rolled his eyes. He gestured to Ilya's phone in a lazy flick of his fingers. "I showed you mine."

"What is this saying?" Ilya mused. "Gentlemen do not fuck and tattle?"

Nodding sagely, Marly said, "World class, man. I respect that." He held his fist out for Ilya to bump against and stopped asking about Ilya's girl, but happily went into detail on his own girls until the plane was ready and they were ushered onto the tarmac.

~*~

Montreal had spent more than a decade squandering what little talent they managed to grab in any given year, making stupid trades, and cultivating a deeply defensive style of play that left them cautious and timid. Ilya could have said a lot about the shortsightedness of Montreal's management, but, then again, Boston had not been much better for a long time.

There was a sparking sense of change over both teams that went electric when they took the ice together. Ilya had been on a campaign of terrorizing his own teammates since the moment his skates had hit home ice, bullying them into moving faster, hitting harder, taking chances. Marly, maniac that he was, was clearly having the time of his life. The rest of the team…it was a mixed bag.

There had been fights already, and there would be more. Four players had been traded out in the flurry of pre-season deals, and Coach Reilly had stood back with his clipboard in his hands and just watched Ilya drive one of his fellow rookies to tears, as well as half a dozen minor-league hopefuls to vomiting. It was a small miracle none of them had shifted and taken Ilya's face off.

Captain Johansson had tried exactly once to give him a gentle talking to, something about not needing to prove himself quite so hard out the gate, but Ilya had just starred him down and asked if he wanted to win a Cup sometime in his career. Since then, Johansson had given him free reign with his own line, and ran interference with the vets who got hot around the eyes when Ilya found a tender spot to press on.

Ilya spent every moment in skates earning his Russian Menace nickname, and then he went out with them after practices and exhibition games, and he charmed them into saying things like, "Man, you're such a fuckin' asshole, but goddamn if you're not our asshole."

Not all of them loved him yet, but they would. As soon as they started winning, as soon as they started putting up more shots on goal than the local five year-old's birthday party could manage. Then, his behavior would be endearing instead of enraging, and they would finally fall in fucking line.

But Hollander had obviously chosen a different tactic with his floundering team. Ilya chewed ferociously on his mouthguard to keep himself from grinning like a madman every time he was on the bench while Hollander was on the ice. Ilya had bullied his team into stepping up. Hollander was simply dragging them all behind him and letting the shame of it motivate them into moving their asses in the right direction.

There was a palpable difference in the atmosphere whenever Hollander was on the ice. The line tightened up, Chovanec got a break from his own defensemen's asses, and every player in a Montreal sweater went on alert. The strategy shifted away from the tight cluster around the net, to scrambling frantically to keep up with the force of nature that was Shane Hollander with the puck. For his part, Hollander played like he was immortal, dodging the Raiders bearing relentlessly down on him and leaving his teammates to block for him.

If Ilya didn't know him, he would call it inexperience, call it recklessness, call it a total lack of situational awareness. But Ilya did know him, and seeing it in person made it hard to keep himself from laughing in delight. It was like watching a teaching game in chess.

"Rozanov," Reilly said, patting Ilya on the shoulder and leaning down close to his ear. "Get that kid off the ice!"

Ilya did grin then. He stood and put his hip up on the boards, waiting for Kohn to get his blades off the ice. Hollander had the puck again, Hammersmith was out of position, and the only reason Hollander hadn't shot it already was Marly dogging his heels.

The second Ilya had solid ice underneath him, he put his legs to work. He flew between Hammersmith and Karkov, put his shoulder down, and plowed into Hollander's side. Hollander saw him coming, and with the split second warning, he snapped the puck to Pike and turned to absorb Ilya's momentum. They hit the boards in a jarring crash, and he heard the sharp bark of air leaving Hollander's lungs.

"Miss me?" Ilya asked over the pounding of his own pulse. He might have licked Hollander's face in the shuddering moment of closeness between them, but Hollander shoved him off without a word and chased the puck.

In the moments between Ilya hitting Shane the boards and their separation, Pike had managed to lose the puck.

"God fucking damnit!" Hollander snarled in frustration as Karkov took the puck into the neutral zone and Pike lagged behind trying to get it back.

Ilya stayed close to Hollander's side as they both moved after it. "What a mouth on you," Ilya called, and when Hollander's eyes shot to him, he winked.

It wasn't Ilya's imagination that the twist of Hollander's mouth was a suppressed smile. On camera, he probably looked pissed. Ilya grinned harder as he abandoned Hollander to accept a pass and snapped it immediately at the net. He didn't really have a lane, but Chovanec still had to dive for it, and his own d-man helpfully pushed the puck into the net on Ilya's behalf.

Chovanec lost his shit on the rookie, Ilya laughed, and then laughed harder when he heard Hollander's "Are you fucking kidding me?" from half-way across the rink. Marly slammed into Ilya hard enough to propel him into the boards and half-way up the glass. Ilya smacked their helmets together, rode through the excited jostling of his teammates joining the dog pile, and then took the lap to high-five the rest of the team on the bench.

After a frustrating, scoreless first period, it might have been a game winning goal at the Olympics. Hollander got pulled off for a line change, Ilya finished his shift without another scoring opportunity, and made a beeline for his phone as soon as he got back to the locker room.

I: tell kock ty for me ;)

S: Fuck you

S: Don't text me during the game we are playing AGAINST EACH OTHER

S: Asshole!

S: And you fucking know it's Koch

The initial responses came in at a furious pace, but though Ilya prodded him a few more times afterward, Hollander didn't respond, not even when Ilya asked if he'd changed his sheets before the game and wondered where he was keeping his special pillow.

"Wasn't the penalty I was after, but I'll take the goal, even a stupid one!" Reilly called over the yammering of the team. He pointed in Ilya's direction to a general round of cheering and howling. Marly, without a drop of shifter blood in his veins, tilted his head back to join the pack.

The second he could get a word in through the cacophony, Reilly ordered, "Stay on him, get under his skin, keep him angry, and tie him up!"

"Yes, Coach!" Ilya replied dutifully, but he kept his opinions on Hollander's skin and the potential of tying him up to himself.

~*~

The Metros came back from intermission fired up, but not in a very useful way. Desjardins watched Ilya like a hawk, and if he could do it, he pulled Hollander out whenever Ilya was on the ice. It was frustrating, and it was stupid. After the third time Hollander was summoned off the ice in the middle of a shift, Ilya thought he might spontaneously combust from irritation. He went anyways, jumping back up on the boards and watching Juniors skate out practically into Ilya's arms.

Ilya couldn't figure out if this was to protect Hollander from a perceived physical danger, or just to piss Ilya off, but it failed at the first and succeeded brilliantly at the second. Rather than protecting him, the chaotic line changes exposed Hollander when he was on the ice, and he took two bad hits from Raiders capitalizing on their uncoordinated opponents leaving him without support. The mad scramble of short shifts got tempers up, and, at one point, almost every shifter on both teams was on the ice at the same time, snapping and snarling as they fought for the puck in the corners and chased after each other.

Neither side managed to keep possession long enough to do anything useful, and it felt like running bag skate drills with as often as the puck skittered across the blue line. Ilya managed a good hit on Pike, nearly got in a fight with Taylor, and earned a penalty for cross-checking Hostler. Game play was halted half a dozen times for shitty entries spread between the teams, and Czamik wasn't going to have a voice left by the end of the game.

"Get it out!" Czamik bellowed after deflecting three rebounds in a row, and Hammersmith iced the puck just to get some breathing room.

The second media break of the period was called, and Ilya followed his team over to the bench. Reilly started tapping shoulders and gesturing guys back over the boards, including Ilya.

"I don't know what they're doing right now, but we're going to keep taking advantage of these short shifts," Reilly said. "Keep Hollander off that puck! And for fuck's sake, Borden, the other team isn't made of glass. Stop being so goddamned timid! You're built like tank. Start acting like it."

"Yes, coach," Borden said, flushing. He was a big kid with a lot of reach, but fresh out of college, and he still hesitated to get physical on the ice.

Play resumed, Hollander poked the puck right off Krissy's stick and carried it all the way to the net. He was alone in the zone with Borden and Andrews both between him and the net, but he made a fast, backhanded shot, and then picked it up again and fired an immediate rebound when Czamik deflected it straight back at him. The second shot went right under Czamik's pads, but Borden scrambled to get his stick behind Czamik's knees, saving it at the last moment.

Hollander's frustration was palpable as the rest of his line slid in around him too late, and he let his momentum carry him around the back of the net. He caught Ilya's eyes on his way past the bench and Ilya grinned broadly and winked at him. Hollander looked sharply away, nostrils flaring, and Ilya grinned harder. He was looking forward to his victory celebration under Hollander's roof.

Seventeen minutes into the period, Hostler tied the score up with a fluke wrist shot, and the Metros followed his success with a flurry of garbage shots that had Czamik shouting at the d-men and banging his stick on the ice.

With a minute-twenty left on the clock, Ilya found himself on the bench, staring hard across the ice at the 24 on Hollander's back during an ill-timed media break. He did not want to take the game into overtime, and he heard the sentiment echoed up and down the bench. Behind him, Reilly and Clerk discussed the lines. On the other side of the rink, Desjardins and McCann were huddled close together, poking at the board held between them.

As the break ended, Desjardins made a gesture at Hollander, who nodded and turned back to the ice. He had just finished a shift, but he looked steady and confident as he glided toward the circle to the right of Boston's net.

Ilya leaned forward to put weight on his leg so it wouldn't bounce, but his pulse had kicked into wild overdrive. He was already shifting his weight forward when the flat of Reilly's clipboard nudged Ilya's back. The crowd went crazy, and Ilya made himself take his time getting over the boards and back onto the ice. He'd taken two face-offs during the game already, but not against Hollander.

It was the first time since the promotion they'd faced-off on the ice, and the first time since the last Prospect Cup that they'd done it for real.

"You ready for me?" Ilya asked, lowering himself into position. He was aware of the continued clamor of the crowd and the clattering of sticks as their teammates took up their posts, but there might as well have been a thick wool blanket wrapped around him and Hollander for all the impact the noise made on Ilya. Everything went soft and distant except the steady cadence of Hollander's breath in the air between them.

"You sure you can handle me, Rozanov?" Hollander asked. His eyes flicked up to Ilya's face, and a smile won the fight to stretch across his mouth for just a moment before he drew his lower lip in against his mouthguard.

Ilya stared and wondered suddenly if the mouthguard was uncomfortable. He'd never noticed before that Hollander didn't take it out and chew on it like most players did, but knowing what was underneath it, he realized he'd never seen it out of Hollander's mouth. He drew in a breath to ask if he had to get them custom made, but the momentary madness passed before he could get the words out.

He did wonder if he could get Hollander's fangs to punch through it.

The ref slid over next to them. Ilya put his stick down, and Hollander did the same a moment later. As Ilya watched, Hollander's eyes flickered right-up-left-right, his chin tilted marginally, and then the black blur of the puck cut across Ilya's line of sight.

Ilya felt the resistance of the puck against his stick for a fleeting moment, and then he heard a sharp crack! followed, insanely, by a blaring VRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHN!

Ilya turned to see Czamik on one knee, twisted around and staring at the net behind him in utter bewilderment. On the boards behind the net, the lamp glowed a bright, mocking red. There was a moment of stillness like the entire stadium had drawn in a breath, and then the sound of the crowd roared down like an ocean tide sweeping through the stadium.

It still didn't quite make sense to Ilya, even when Pike shot forward and scooped Hollander up in an enthusiastic bear hug, shouting and shaking him in the moment before the rest of the Metros caught up and mobbed them.

"Gotta admit…that was fuckin' beautiful," Marly said, skating up to Ilya's side, and it finally sunk in.

Hollander had just scored a goal. From the fucking dot.

Ilya turned to watch Hollander grinning in the tight knot of his teammates, and his vision went a little spotty with all the blood rushing abruptly downward.

Chapter 8: Chapter Seven

Shane was going to have a big socializing bill with Hayden when he finally collected, but he was not going to let the team drag him off to a bar for a celebration after the game. He'd gotten a dozen mostly good-natured boos when he'd waved his hands in the negative to the invitation, and Hayden had given him a long look and reminded him, "You still owe me a night out."

He had gone out with the team several times. In New York, he'd even let himself be towed off to a nightclub, and he'd managed to stay for over an hour before he'd found himself out of line of sight of any of his teammates. With the rest of the team happily occupied, he'd taken the opportunity to slip out. He'd been teased for the early departure, and prodded for details on who he'd gone home with, and enthusiastically slapped on the back when he insisted he'd gone back to his hotel alone. If they thought he was just jealous of keeping the details of his sexual exploits to himself, that wasn't a bad thing.

"Sure," Shane said to Hayden anyways, just to avoid a drawn out debate.

"Ah, you guys, the Machine over here just needs his battery charging time," Hostler said to a round of laughter, and Shane let that pass, too, even if he'd always hated that nickname and sincerely hoped it would not catch on with the Metros the way it had with the Martins. "Don't take it too hard."

Shane did his bit with the press, took as thorough of a shower as he thought he could get away with, and bolted as soon as his tie was on straight.

I: be there soon

S: Gate is still unlocked.

I: seems not safe

I: anyone could just come in

S: I said the gate was unlocked. Not the door.

S: Next time I'll make you climb the fence.

I: could be fun ;)))

Shane only talked himself out of speeding all the way home by imagining the disaster of getting pulled over after a game with Ilya waiting on his front doorstep. Even if he avoided the speeding ticket, the best case scenario would be time spent chatting with the officer, taking selfies, and autographing things. Either way, Ilya would beat him home, and the longer he waited, the more likely he would be seen.

Or would just decide to give up and go back to his hotel.

Shane made it home without incident, and left his gym bag and shoes on the laundry room floor as he rushed through the house. Ilya wasn't on the front step, but Shane stepped out and made sure the gate really was unlocked before going back inside.

He paced a circle around the living room, fluffing throw pillows and rearranging the weird wooden balls on the coffee table before striping out of his jacket and hanging it in the front closet. His cleaning service had come earlier in the day, and the house was spotless, but he found himself still casting around for anything out of place.

On the way back to the bedroom, he caught his own reflection in the hall mirror and stopped to stare at himself. His eyes were very wide and dark, his lips were parted, and his fang sheaths tingled in throbbing pulses. Even as he stared at his own eyes, he had to swallow several times to clear the saliva out of his mouth. He was half hard in his slacks, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth together.

"What are you doing?" he asked his reflection through gritted teeth. "This is so fucking stupid. Call it off. Tell him not to come."

He took his phone out of his pocket and clicked over to the text messages.

One time had been enough of a risk. The phone calls, the text messages, those were fine. Those were safe. Shane couldn't expose himself that way. Here? In his own territory, where he was comfortable and accustomed to being able to slip? Stupid!

…But he'd made it through that whole night in the hotel, and it had been a long and wild night. He could manage one tamer night in his own home, right?

It would have to be tamer, right? It couldn't be that intense the second time around.

"Fuck!" He opened the texts and had, I changed my min— typed out when there was a firm knock at the front door. Shane looked down at himself, realized he was still in his post-game suit and his sweaty clothes were still zipped up in his gym bag. "Fuck!" he said again, but he dropped his phone on the hall table and hurried for the door.

Shane yanked the door open, not sure what he was going to say if it really was just his neighbor or someone who'd found his gate open and—

Ilya's hand wrapped around his jaw before he'd even made it inside the door. Shane yanked him in and spun, using his own back to slam the door shut. He heard the solid shi'thunkt of the deadbolt sliding home, but Ilya's mouth was on his, and he wouldn't have actually cared in that moment if they left the door fully open. His cock filled so fast that he went lightheaded between Ilya's frantic kisses.

"That fucking goal," Ilya growled into his mouth, grabbing Shane by his tie and using the grip to hold him close.

Shane's mouth stretched open in a grin before he'd fully registered the words, and Ilya's tongue dived into the opening. He fumbled blindly at Ilya's belt and tore fruitlessly at the double-fastened slacks until he finally had to yank his mouth away so he could look down at what he was doing. The slacks closed with two hooks and a button, and Ilya was lucky he didn't lose any of those things as Shane pulled them roughly open.

"You liked that?" Shane asked. His voice sounded foreign in his own ears, rough and breathy. "Me taking that goal right off you?" He got his hand into Ilya's pants and squeezed his hard cock.

"Fuuuuck," Ilya moaned. He paused briefly in his uncoordinated effort to get Shane's tie off and breathed, "So good."

"My goal?" Shane clarified.

Ilya's eyes flicked up to him. "Your hand on my dick."

Shane laughed. "Asshole," he said, but he was suffused with warmth, and he couldn't remember why he'd started typing I changed my mind. He pulled his hand out of Ilya's boxers and went to work on the tiny buttons of his pressed black shirt.

Ilya dragged his mouth over Shane's jaw and sucked on his right earlobe as he twisted out of his jacket, pulled his own tie off, and got his collar undone. It was a mad scramble after that to get Ilya out of his clothing, and he nearly tripped trying to get his slacks and boxers off at the same time.

Shane closed his hands on either side of Ilya's head and pushed to get his back away from the door. He spun them over, driving Ilya hard into the door to help him keep his balance. He kept his grip tight, kissed down Ilya's neck, and dragged his teeth lightly over the tendon there. Ilya's next inhale was a shocky gasp, but Shane let him go quickly. He could hear Ilya's pulse, a relentless pounding that echoed in his head, and he felt the wild thrum of it against his tongue.

"Knees," Ilya gasped out, "Get on your knees."

Shane was on the floor before it even occurred to him to respond that he'd won, and maybe Ilya should be on his knees.

Except, it didn't feel like giving up a prize at all, and he pressed his face to the underside of Ilya's erection without prompting or hesitation, mouth open and panting against Ilya's skin. He smelled of musk, and some kind of pine-scented soap, and laundry detergent. Shane breathed it in for a moment, and then let his tongue run out to trace the ropey vein running up the length of his dick. Above him, Ilya cursed and sucked in a thick breath.

Shane looked up, waited for Ilya to look down at him, and then settled his weight between his hips. While Ilya watched, Shane wrapped thumb and forefinger around the base of his dick, pulled it down, and guided it into his mouth.

That hotel shower might have been overwhelming, but Shane had been paying attention, and he'd done his research. Ilya's eyebrows both went up as Shane carefully swallowed him down, breathed past the unsteady jerk of his gag reflex, and swallowed again.

A long, hitching stream of Russian poured out of Ilya on a single breath, and he didn't blink once while Shane carefully backed off the length of him to take a deliberate breath that he didn't really need, and then pushed forward again. Saliva flooded messily around Ilya's cock, leaked out the corners of Shane's lips, and dripped down his chin.

He managed twice more to get Ilya into his throat before Ilya's fingers threaded into his hair and tightened into a firm hold. Tingles exploded across his scalp and down his spine, and he shot a hand up to grab Ilya's wrist.

"Don't like that?" Ilya asked. When Shane just looked up at him, tongue swirling around the head of his cock, he moaned. "Or like it too much?" he guessed.

Shane rewarded him by pushing back up his length and keeping him there well past the point when he should have pulled away to breathe.

"Fuck, Hollander," Ilya hissed, and then tugged at his hair again until Shane pulled off his length.

Panting, Shane rocked forward to nuzzle Ilya's thigh, running both hands up his flanks. Ilya hadn't quite managed to get out of his pants, and both the slacks and his boxers clung to his left ankle. He was also still in one shoe, and his opposite sock was only half way off. Shane laughed breathlessly against his skin, delighted by the picture they made.

At some point, Ilya had started to pet his hair. Shane pushed up into the stroking fingers, but made himself focus enough to pull at Ilya's right thigh until he lifted his foot for Shane to get his sock off, and then other side. Shane rose to his feet and took a moment to catch the slacks by the creases and shake them out. They were dusty from hitting the floor, but he could at least keep them from being crumpled.

Ilya said nothing as Shane folded the slacks over once and backed away to drape them over the back of a kitchen chair. He even leaned down to scoop up his discarded jacket and offer it out on one hooked finger, grinning. Shane took it, but he backed away again before their hands could touch. Ilya followed him, stripping his shirt off the rest of the way, eyes intent where he watched Shane move. As soon as he got close enough, he caught Shane by the back of the neck and dragged him back in.

Shane tilted his head for a kiss, but Ilya licked the side of his face instead, and then kept doing it while Shane laughed, spreading the messy dampness from his chin across most of his face.

"Quick study," Ilya said when Shane finally batted him away. He darted back in for a quick, hard kiss, hands petting restlessly at Shane's arms through the sleeves of his dress shirt.

A flush of pleasure warmed Shane's chest, and he leaned in for a kiss as he pulled Ilya's shirt out of his hands and dropped it over the chair. "Good teacher," he murmured against Ilya's mouth, and then nipped very quickly at his lower lip.

The sound Ilya made in response was something closer to a whimper than a moan, and Shane smirked as he pulled away.

"You want a tour?" Shane asked as he stepped around the island into the kitchen with Ilya following him like he was on a string. He was naked while Shane was nearly still fully clothed, and barefoot in Shane's kitchen, and he wasn't the least bit self conscious. Shane swallowed hard and offered, "Water? Snacks?"

"No, no, and no," Ilya said. He held a hand out. "Come here, Hollander."

"No," Shane said, but he lifted his arm and unbuttoned his left cuff. Ilya continued following him in a slow path around the island, out of the kitchen, and into the hallway.

"No?"

"No," Shane reaffirmed. He got his second cuff open and dodged when Ilya made a grab for his tie again. The blue silk came off and Shane tossed it at Ilya's face. It distracted him just enough for Shane to get his shirt off and the top button of his slacks undone.

"How did it feel?" Shane asked curiously as he led Ilya into his bedroom and flipped the switch for the corner lamp. When Ilya tilted his head questioningly, Shane tossed his shirt at the chair in the corner and continued, "Being so fucking close to that shot? Did you feel it whistle past you or—?"

Ilya tackled him to the bed with an exaggerated roar, and Shane opened his legs automatically to wrap them around Ilya's hips. Ilya shuffled him up the bed, and, when Shane didn't move fast enough for him, wrapped his arms around Shane's back and lifted him up several inches to toss him into position.

"This mouth," Ilya grumbled, but he kissed Shane deeply as he pressed him into the bed and ground his cock into Shane's still-clothed groin.

Shane unwound from him long enough to get his pants and boxers down his hips, and Ilya helpfully pulled them the rest of the way off and twisted to drape them over the footboard. When Shane hooked his fingertips into his socks and slid them off, Ilya's eyes tracked them as they flew off the side of the bed, and then he turned back without another word and draped himself between Shane's thighs.

The weight of him was enough to make Shane moan. He curled his arms over Ilya's shoulders even as he arched back to give Ilya free access to his throat. Every bite and nip and kiss made him jerk and shudder, and Ilya took full advantage of each reaction, testing every inch of Shane's neck and shoulders like he was building a map. Here, a moan; there a sharp gasp; over the pulse point, a low helpless whimper and Shane's hips thrusting mindlessly upwards.

"You like my teeth in your skin?" Ilya asked in a low rumble, completely unaware of the way the question made Shane freeze and clench his teeth together hard. Ilya licked up the column of Shane's throat and kissed across his tightly sealed lips.

"I like your teeth in my skin," Ilya told him, and went so far as to drag his cheek across Shane's mouth as he nuzzled their faces together. Backing away just enough to meet his eyes, he offered, "You could bite me harder."

Shane made an involuntary noise that ran perilously close to breaking into hysterical laughter. Ilya had no idea—no idea—what he was asking for. It was almost enough to make Shane kick him out of the room, push him out the front door, and throw his clothing out after him.

Almost.

"I don't want to leave any marks," Shane managed to say past the strangling pressure in his throat.

Ilya tilted his head side-to-side. "Not like you have to sign it, Hollander," he said with a mocking eye roll, but then added, "I am good at holding secrets."

Not this! Shane almost shouted. Not this kind of secret!

"Can you just fuck me, please?" Shane asked in a voice that shook despite all his best efforts to keep it still and calm. "Maybe I'll give you a souvenir, if you really want one."

Ilya's eyebrows drew together and his lips twisted in some unnamed disappointment, but he sat up long enough for Shane to roll over and draw the condoms and lube out of his bedside table. When Ilya pushed into his body a few minutes later, Shane dug his fingernails into Ilya's back and dragged them down so hard that Ilya arched back and shouted against the backs of his teeth.

He retaliated by nuzzling his face into Shane's neck and biting down on the juncture of neck and shoulder hard enough to break the skin. Shane twisted his head away and threw an arm up over his face as his fangs popped out so fast that he heard them lock into place. The bite burned and ached in equal measure, and Shane struggled against Ilya's hold, but Ilya had tucked in so close to him that he could barely move at all, and what motion he managed just rubbed his prostate against Ilya's cockhead until Shane was sobbing for breath. The confusion of pain and pleasure locked him into a spiral where he stopped caring that his fangs were out, he just wanted—

Still holding onto Shane's shoulder with his teeth, Ilya rocked forward three shallow thrusts that made Shane moan into his forearm, and then Ilya abruptly unlocked his jaw and rose up on his knees.

Shane gasped at the loss. All he could do was stare up at Ilya, strangely bewildered by the shift in their position and the lack of pressure on the bright, scalding mark of Ilya's teeth. He drew in fast, sharp breaths, and counted his own pulse in the throb of the bite mark, mouth on his own forearm and skin going slick with his breath.

"No, no," Ilya said quickly, taking hold of his wrist, "It's okay, let me see—"

Shane resisted Ilya's pull until he felt his fangs finally slide back into their sheaths, and then he gave in. Ilya twisted his forearm, huffed out a breath, and pinned his wrist to the bed. Shane didn't know what his face looked like, but Ilya's eyes flew over his features and fastened onto his mouth.

"Shane," Ilya said in a low, rasping complaint. He tilted his head back, rolled his shoulders, and then looked back down with a deep sigh and said, "Okay."

Before Shane could say anything else, he put his hands on Shane's hips and squeezed hard, leaned back far enough that his abs had to be screaming from the strain within seconds, and set a steady, building pace of shallow, upward thrusts. Each roll of his hips sent a wave of pleasure crashing into the shore of Shane's body, and he curled up to meet them without ever looking away from Ilya's eyes.

~*~

Still tingling with aftershocks, Shane stood at his bathroom counter and examined the bite mark. He had expected it to be bloody, but it was just a deep bruise with a few shallow scrapes where Ilya's teeth had slid across the skin. He prodded it carefully and shivered at the resulting ache. Despite Ilya wringing two orgasms out of him and the post-game exhaustion, Shane's dick twitched hopefully each time he pushed on the mark.

For a lightning fast moment, he wondered what Ilya's skin would look like with Shane's mark on him.

As if he'd asked the question out loud, Shane snatched his hand away from the mark and quickly leaned over to get the peroxide out of the cabinet. He soaked a cotton ball and blotted at the bite, twitching at the tiny pinpricks of discomfort as the scrapes foamed up.

"I promise, I brush my teeth," Ilya said, coming to lean against the doorway. He smirked at Shane's reflection in a very self-satisfied way.

"I'm sure you do," Shane said, but he continued to dab at the mark.

Ilya laughed softly and pushed away from the door jamb to slide in behind Shane. He wrapped his arms around Shane's waist and leaned his chin on the unmarred shoulder. After a moment of Shane continuing his cleanup, Ilya opened his mouth and set it on the swell of Shane's deltoid.

"Don't," Shane warned, pausing with the cotton ball hovering over his skin.

Ilya rolled his eyes up to look at Shane's reflection. He pulled his mouth away just enough to ask, "What? You do not want matching set?"

Shane tossed the cotton ball into the trash can and twisted in Ilya's arms. "I'm already probably going to need a rabies shot," he said, draping his forearms over Ilya's shoulders.

Ilya ran one hand idly over Shane's raised arm, fingertips dancing over the swell of his forearm.

"So why not get two?" Ilya asked, turning his head to look down at where his fingers were making nonsense patterns on Shane's skin. He curled his neck to plant a kiss on Shane's arm, and then glanced up and gave him a wicked smile. "Two for one discount, special offer."

Snorting, Shane said, "I don't think it works that way."

Ilya hummed. "I took your blanket off the bed," he said, and then gave Shane a slow, sly smile. "Silk sheets?"

Despite himself, Shane flushed. "They're good for your skin. And warm. It's real silk, not satin polyester."

"Mmm, very impressive." He leaned forward and folded his lips lazily around Shane's lower lip, and then pressed in for a deeper kiss. He pulled back and smacked Shane on the hip. "Come on. Shower."

Shane was happy enough to be under the water, but when he dragged the soapy luffa across the back of Ilya's shoulders, Ilya twitched involuntarily. Shane froze at the flinch, and then turned him around and sucked in a breath at the thick scratches arcing over his shoulders and down his spine.

"Jesus, Ilya," Shane said, face heating.

Ilya chuckled. "You are the one who did this. Why do you make this voice at me, like it is my fault?"

"You're the one who asked for a mark," Shane said weakly. He trailed two fingers very gently down Ilya's back, tracing over a pair of lines that curved from Ilya's shoulders to his ribs. He should probably feel worse about them, but he couldn't deny that there was something enticing about lining his fingers up with the spread of them.

"That is not what I said," Ilya pointed out, twisting back around and nudging Shane into the wall. He gave Shane a languid kiss, and then slapped the water off and said, "Come. You play doctor, okay?"

He let Shane pat his back dry and sat on the closed toilet seat with a towel wrapped loosely around his hips. None of the scratches appeared to have bled at all, but they were welted up, and Ilya hissed and squirmed away from him when he touched them.

"Sorry," Shane said, feeling a stab of guilt. He picked up another cotton ball and the peroxide. Ilya jumped at the first touch and Shane automatically apologized again. He blew gently across them, trying to soothe the sting, and he was very gentle as he patted the cotton ball down the thickest of the scratches.

"Do you think they will scar?" Ilya asked plaintively, tipping his head back to give Shane a deeply worried look, eyebrows rucked up and lower lip trembling.

Shane halted in the process of blowing on another of the marks. "You asshole."

A suppressed laugh shook Ilya's chest. "But I will be so disfigured!" He argued, grabbing at Shane's wrist as Shane threw the cotton ball away and stepped around him to get to the door. "No, Hollander! Come back! Who will love me if these horrible injuries scar?"

Shane put a hand up to feel around the edges of his smile as it stretched wide enough to make his cheeks hurt, and went through the house to make sure the doors were locked and the lights were off. He turned the light over the stove on, emptied his neglected gym bag into the washer, and set the delay for the next morning. On the way back to the bedroom, he swiped his phone off the hall table, and looked down at his unsent text.

I changed my min

In the hall mirror, he was nothing but a darker shadow against the backdrop of a nearly-dark hallway. Ilya Rozanov was probably still very amused with himself in Shane's bathroom.

I changed my min

After a moment, he took the phone back into the bedroom with him, typing a new message. He ignored Ilya looking smug and inviting, artfully arranged under Shane's very expensive silk top sheet and making no attempt to mask the way his eyes followed Shane's naked body around the room as he got out a fresh pair of boxers to sleep in.

On the bedside table, Ilya's phone buzzed. He sighed, rolled over, and thumbed on the display. After a moment, he flopped onto the bed with a loud, dramatic groan, but a few seconds later, Shane's phone lit up in his hand.

I: good night Shane

Shane turned off the light and slipped into the bed. "What time is your flight?" he asked, voice lowering to a whisper in the darkness.

Ilya's voice took on the same cadence and volume as he shuffled closer. "Full moon tomorrow, so not until next morning. Late."

After the incident in 1942, there were never games or practices scheduled on full moons, and typically there was no morning practice the next day. Shane had the same time off, and no prior commitments.

Shane's stomach turned over in nervous anticipation, but he barely thought about it before he asked, "Do you…want to stay?"

After a moment, Ilya replied, "Okay. Sure."

Chapter 9: Chapter Eight

After Ilya left, Shane put his headphones in and busied himself with getting ready for the week, so he didn't just stare at his phone and calculate how soon would be too soon to send Ilya a text when he'd only just walked out the door. He had a lot to catch up on. They hadn't left the house at all the day before, and they'd spent most of the day in bed or on the couch, wrapped up in each other, and it had been so nice that Shane was already feeling the quiet in ways he had never noticed or been bothered by before.

Stopping at the kitchen counter, Shane put his hands on his hips, fitted his fingers over the marks he could still feel beneath his clothes, and squeezed. With a slow breath, he pulled his hands away, put his phone in his pocket, and made himself focus.

He had two days at home to prepare for, and then a quick trip out to Buffalo with a same day return flight and a home game against Ottawa two days afterward. He spent a few minutes with a notebook of graph paper, figuring out how many meals to prep and then jotting down what he could make with what he had on hand.

He was still dressed in his softest sweats and thickest socks, and he was not going to try to brave the grocery store. He also didn't have it in him to deal with even a delivery driver to bring an order to his door, so it would be a week of mostly pantry staples, and whatever he had frozen.

His family ringtone interrupted his music just as he was setting the last of the glass containers out on the counter to cool, and he pulled the phone out of his pocket. He was expecting a call from his mom and already considering how likely she was to be calling on business, and if he could ignore it and call her back when he felt a little steadier, but it wasn't his mom.

Shane grabbed a clean cloth from the drawer and ran it under the faucet as he answered the phone. "Hey, Ojiichan."

"Ah, my very busy and important grandson has some time for this old man?" Ojiichan teased, but he was laughing as he said it, and he didn't wait for Shane to attempt an apology before he jumped back in. "Your Jiichan is going to be in Montreal for a few days next weekend. Are you free?"

Shane's shoulders dropped. "I'm leaving for Florida on Friday and I won't be back until Monday night. We've got back-to-backs."

"Maybe I will stay until Wednesday, then. It's nice to be a retired old man and carry my home on my back!" He laughed again and Shane smiled.

"You're not that old, Jijii," Shane said, and smiled when Ojiichan's infectious laugh answered him. Shane managed a laugh of his own as he wiped down the counter and continued, "And you'll probably outlive me." Shane didn't think he'd ever met anyone as healthy as his grandfather.

"I better not!" Ojiichan said seriously. "I'll make you regret it if I do."

"Okay, okay," Shane replied. Standing at his kitchen island, who knew how many miles away from his grandfather, he put one hand up in surrender. "I'll live forever, alright?"

"I'll take it for a promise. How are you doing, Shane-kun? You're very busy these days, are you eating enough?"

Shane looked down at the counter full of food and suppressed a snort. "Yeah, Ojiichan, I'm eating plenty."

"You better with the way you play. I saw your Boston game! Very exciting goal, the whole bar almost exploded, people were so loud. I told them all that's my grandson! and your Jiichan was given a lot of free drinks!"

"Glad I could help. Did you actually drink any of them?" He rinsed the cloth out, wrung the water out, and draped it over the faucet to dry.

"Well, I couldn't be too rude," he said, but Shane guessed that drinks had been passed off to whoever was sitting still long enough to get the details on the latest paper or project. "Tell me how it is, being a big star."

Shane pinched the phone with his shoulder and started putting lids on his containers and stacking them up. His face warmed slightly at the question. "It's a little weird, I guess? I'm not really a big star, but people recognize me in places I wouldn't expect. Last week, these guys in the grocery store just walked up to me and started talking to me like we knew each other, asking about the lines, my teammates, what I think about other teams…" One of their wives had also given Shane her number, and when Shane had automatically looked at her husband, the man had just winked at Shane and put his arm around her waist.

Ojiichan hummed along, and then shared a few more of his own recent encounters with hockey fans, one of which involved an actual shouting match in a grocery store parking lot, and another of which ended with an amorous encounter with a naiad.

"Thanks for the details, Jijii," Shane said, but without any heat. His grandfather's academic focus after retiring from medical practice was sex and sexuality, and while it was probably weird that Shane could talk about sex with his grandpa easier than he could with his teammates, there was a reason for it.

Ojiichan's laughter turned mischievous. "Maybe I'll write a paper about it," he teased, and laughed again when Shane groaned. Shane probably knew more about the mating habits of non-humans than most third year creature biology students did, thanks to Ojiichan's niche interests.

"How about you? Making friends?" Ojiichan prompted.

Shane opened the refrigerator and started loading containers onto the shelves, stacking banchan on the bottom, prepared meals on the top. He used the excuse of juggling the containers to procrastinate answering.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Hayden—Hayden Pike, my left winger. He's nice. Cool. He's a fox."

"Oh?" Ojiichan asked with definite interest.

"Yeah. His wife, too. They've already got twins, and he's barely older than me."

"Ah, twins are very common among foxlings. Do you know the origin of his heritage?"

Shane paused in loading his refrigerator and gave his phone an incredulous look. "I haven't asked for his family tree, Jiichan. You want me to see if he'll give a DNA sample?"

On the other end of the line, he practically heard Ojiichan's ears perk up. "Would he?"

Shane groaned. "No! I'm not going to ask him that!"

"Why not?" Ojiichan demanded as if he didn't know.

"It's rude!"

"Okay, bring him to dinner next time, I'll ask him. Old men can be rude, it's allowed."

"Ojiichan. Please."

"He'll be happy to talk about it! Most people are, especially when you ask about their kits," Ojiichan reassured him.

Shane sighed, but he'd planted the idea, so he couldn't complain if Ojiichan ran with it. It was difficult to turn him away from an idea once he'd gotten his teeth into it. If he ever did introduce Hayden to his grandfather, he would just have to warn him beforehand.

The refrigerator started to beep. Shane hurriedly put the rest of the containers away, shut the door, and stood there for several seconds. There were fingerprints on the stainless steel surface. He should polish them away.

"Shane?" Ojiichan prompted gently.

"I have—" Shane said, and then stopped. He took in a deep breath and reached up to press on Ilya's bite mark. "I've met someone. I'm…We've had sex. More than once."

In the silence that followed, Shane quietly begged, "Please don't tell Mom."

"Ah, Shane-kun. Tell me about him."

Shane's forehead thumped against the refrigerator door, and now there would be a spot there from his forehead as well as his fingers. He tapped his head a couple times, gently, on the cool surface, while he counted his way through half a dozen breaths.

"Yes," Shane said reluctantly. "You were right."

"I know," Ojiichan said smugly.

Shane didn't think he was right for the correct reasons, but he didn't want to start a debate. As far as anyone knew, Shane was unique; there were not normally males of his kind. Following this logic, Ojiichan had been insisting since Shane was eight that of course he would be gay, he couldn't help it. He'd only not brought up it before then because he'd thought it was a foregone conclusion. When Mom had teasingly asked him if he had a crush on the girl he'd been fighting on the playground, Ojiichan had scoffed and said, "Obviously not."

At the time, Shane hadn't exactly understood the fight that followed, but he could still remember how flustered Mom and Ojiichan had both been while debating it. With this conclusion firmly in mind, Ojiichan had made it his particular mission to be as knowledgeable and supportive of queer culture as possible. He had written several academic papers and a book on the topic, he had attended Pride events in a dozen different countries, and he always sent Shane back some kind of souvenir, and, more recently, pictures and phone numbers of the "nice boys" he'd met there.

This had started more than one fight in their household as Shane got older and Ojiichan continued his campaign, asking if Shane had met any nice boys in each school year. It had also resulted in the world's most awkward conversation when his mom and dad had sat him down at fourteen to gently and supportively reassure him that it was okay if he was attracted to girls.

When Shane did start noticing other boys, he'd kept it to himself, mostly to avoid any more fights or Ojiichan's crowing. He'd even tried to tell himself that he wasn't actually attracted to them, that it was just some kind of predatory instinct.

But not even he could maintain that self-delusion with Ilya's fingerprints still visible on his skin, and a clear enough impression in his shoulder that someone could identify Ilya from his dental records.

"He's…" Shane trailed off, unsure of how to describe Ilya.

"Nice?" Ojiichan offered, and they were both startled by Shane's sputter of laughter.

"No," Shane said, clearing his throat. "Nice isn't really the word I would use. Not that he's…" mean, Shane was going to say, but Ilya could be mean. Often he was mean. Shane just liked that about him. "I like him," he finished lamely.

He did like Ilya. Too much, really.

Ojiichan waited, and Shane finally pushed away from the refrigerator. He didn't mean to sit on the floor, but his hips hit the edge of the counter, and it was easiest to just slide down and stretch his legs across the kitchen tiles.

There were dust bunnies in the space between the refrigerator and the counter. He should probably pull it out and vacuum back there.

"It wasn't supposed to be…It was only supposed to be once," Shane confessed. He pulled one knee up and braced his elbow on it. "I just thought. If I…I don't know, if I got it out of my system? Tried it, and maybe I wouldn't even like it, and it wouldn't be all that great, and I wouldn't need—" Shane cut himself off abruptly and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He tugged at his eyelashes with thumb and forefinger. "But I did like it."

"There's nothing wrong with that, Shane," Ojiichan said softly. All the smug playfulness had gone out of his voice. "You're supposed to like it. And it's okay that you like it with him."

"I know that," Shane said, frustrated. He did know that, mostly. "Not sure the league or the general population of hockey fans would agree."

"What do they matter?" Ojiichan said with a dismissive snort.

Shane didn't point out that they mattered a lot if he wanted to keep playing professional hockey, he just closed his eyes and breathed through his nose.

"So, who is this man? Another player?"

Shane made an uncomfortable, thin noise that Ojiichan rightfully interpreted as an affirmative.

"Hayden?" Ojiichan prodded.

The cupboard door behind him rattled as Shane's spine straightened. "What? No!"

"That's good," Ojiichan said with a relieved breath. "Vixens can be…territorial."

Shane had never met Jacki, but that seemed right.

"It's just…it's so stupid," Shane said. The words came out somewhere in the nebulous crossroads between pain, and bitter amusement, and anger. "What I'm doing with him, it's so stupid. He could destroy me. If he ever found out—and I know you think it shouldn't matter, and it shouldn't, but that's not the world we live in, and it does. It does matter. One slip up from me, one single word in an interview from him, and my whole life falls apart."

"He doesn't know," Ojiichan observed.

"No, of course not! And that's…exactly what Mom is always on me about. That I can't be casual with a partner, that I can't just have someone. It has to be the forever-someone, it has to be Dad or you. Someone who knows and won't run screaming or murder me in my sleep about it. I can't just have fun with someone or enjoy touching them, the instincts get all tangled, I know. I know, and I—!"

Shane stopped. He was out of breath, and he realized that he'd started speaking louder and faster, and he had to take a few deep breaths to calm the wild thunder of his heart.

Ojiichan made a soft humming noise, and didn't speak for a while. This was another topic where he and Mom disagreed, but she was the one with the personal experience, so Ojiichan didn't argue with her as much about it.

"So why are you doing this, then? Why him?" Ojiichan asked finally. There was no judgment in his voice, only curiosity.

Shane's breath blew out in a gust. "Because…he was convenient, and I knew he was…interested, and he probably wouldn't tell anyone about it, because then he'd be in the same hot water with me. And." Shane knocked his head back against the cabinet. "And if I do lose control, if I do drop my fangs or…whatever, lunge for him…he can defend himself. Stop me from hurting him."

At least, assuming Ilya saw the fangs first. With the way Ilya liked to hold Shane's head in the crook of his neck and shoulder, he might not have the opportunity to defend himself if Shane really lost control.

His free hand fisted in the fabric of his t-shirt, and he clenched his teeth together.

"That's all?" When Shane didn't reply, Ojiichan said, "It seems like if that was all, it could have only been once."

Shane swallowed hard and thought about how to answer. How many times had he decided that he was going to put a stop to it? How many times had he picked his phone up with every intention of telling Ilya that they were done, that they couldn't see each other again, thank you, it's been really fun. Every time he opened his mouth to say no or we should stop or we can't keep doing this or I might really hurt you one day, instead what came out was yes, or more, or please.

"Did—" He took the phone away from his ear for a second and let out a slow breath before switching hands and adjusting his position. The kitchen tiles were really cold on his legs. "Did Obaa-san ever…scare you? I mean, during—" He stopped himself because his grandpa was very open about discussing sex with Shane and always had been, but not like this, not this kind of detail.

"No," Ojiichan said gently, and then with a ghost of his usual playfulness, added, "At least not in anyway I didn't ask her to."

Shane made an unhappy noise, and Ojiichan cackled for a moment, but then he quieted and drew in a preparatory breath. "In Japan, growing up, it was sometimes hard. My dad was Korean, my mom Japanese, and kids are not always very kind. When we moved to Canada, I thought maybe it will be different. There were so many different kinds of people here, maybe it wouldn't matter. And…"

He made a lilting humming noise. Shane could imagine him tilting his hand back and forth. "In some ways it didn't. Most of my classmates couldn't tell me apart from any other Japanese or Chinese or Korean or anything. They couldn't even be bothered to use the right kind of slurs!" he finished with a musical laugh.

Shane knew a few things about that. He didn't say anything.

"So I was still different, just in a different way. But hey, both of my parents were human! That meant something, right? Mostly just that I was boring and got bullied for boring reasons, but, eh. You can't ask for much sophistication from twelve year-olds."

"No, I guess not."

"And then… your Baa-chan. She was beautiful, of course, preternaturally beautiful, an otherworldly sort of beautiful. But her being beautiful was really the least interesting thing about her. She was intense, and quick-witted, and sometimes she looked at me in this way that made me feel hunted."

Shane pulled his other leg up and squeezed his thighs close to his belly. He shut his teeth so the tremble in his jaw wouldn't make them chatter.

"I loved it, that little bit of danger in her. Ah, maybe it was more than a little bit, but it was an integral part of her. She was such a quick thinker, she analyzed everything around her and made decisions very fast, always seeing things I never noticed. Of course, once she made a decision, she was hard to move, but that kind of stubbornness isn't always a bad thing. Your mom has it, you have it. It makes you successful, driven."

He paused a moment to see if Shane would say something, and then said, "I was never safer in my life than when I was with her. She made me feel that way. Special, protected. You don't have to have heritage to be dangerous, Shane, and you are one of the most conscientious people I have ever known. You are not a danger to your lover."

"Ew," Shane said automatically. "Don't call him that."

"Aah, then what should I call him? Boyfriend?"

A shudder went down Shane's spine and spread across his body. "I don't know. I don't think so. Probably not."

For a long moment, there was just the sound of their separate breathing, and then Ojiichan carefully asked, "What do you think he would do, if he found out? Do you think you would be in danger?"

"No," came the immediate answer, but the word echoed around in his head, and he tried to think around it. They had never talked about heritage at all. Shane had no idea what opinions Ilya had on the matter. Even if he wouldn't try to put a stake through Shane's heart, there were still people who didn't think cross-species mating was acceptable.

Ilya wore a cross. Shane had never asked him about his faith.

He thought about Ilya's reputation. About the girls he was photographed with regularly, even now. A vixen model, three weeks ago; a whole pack of lady wolf shifters draped around him at a club in Manhattan; coffee dates with a different woman each week at home, many of whom had obvious heritage.

"I don't think he would hurt me. And I don't think he wouldn't care if I was—anything else. But I'm not anything else." A helpless, frustrated laugh knifed through Shane's throat and he realized he was jealous of those girls. Not just because they could be seen in public with Ilya, but because they were dangerous in beautiful, sexy, acceptable ways. That they could show themselves to Ilya.

"And I'm not even really a vampire! But it doesn't matter! I've got the fangs, and blood has nutritional value for me, so that must be it, right? Half my team gets together on full moons and runs around on four legs with mouths full of sharp teeth, but I'm everyone's worst fucking nightmare! What do I even get in the exchange?"

A brief second of tense silence followed his outburst and then Ojiichan offered, "Very nice hair?"

Shane dissolved into laughter that edged up close to the boundary of sobbing. "Very nice hair," he agreed finally, burying his fingers in it. He couldn't even risk growing his hair past its current length. "It's all worth it now."

"You're still not taking any, are you?" Ojiichan asked after a moment.

The sigh heaved out of his chest without his permission. He didn't have to ask for clarification, when it was one of the few things he and Ojiichan fought about. "Of course not. If anyone found out, the best I could hope for is being accused of an unfair supernatural advantage."

"It's not any more advantageous to you than any other athlete eating the correct amount of protein, or taking a vitamin D supplement. You take plenty of other supplements!" Ojiichan argued.

"I know, Jiichan. Just not that one." Shane measured out several slow breaths, thought about the faint shadows of Ilya's fingertips on his hips and asked, "What am I supposed to do?"

"You're in a place I wished you would never have to be," Ojiichan said sympathetically. "How much do you like him? How safe do you feel with him?"

Shane winced. A lot. Completely.

"Okay," Shane whispered finally, not answering the question, but still answering the question. "Okay."

"I love you, Shane-kun. Whatever happens, it won't be the end of the world. There's still this Jiichan of yours who can kick any guy's ass for you." He made a comically over-exaggerated sound straight out of the worst of the bad Kung Fu movies they used to watch when Shane was a kid.

"Love you, too, Jiichan."

~*~

Ilya hiked his duffle up his shoulder and took the stairs up to his porch two at a time. He had about three hours before he had to leave for an afternoon practice, and he probably needed to do laundry and order some groceries.

He hadn't gone back to the hotel at all in Montreal, and Marly had met him at the airport with his luggage and a sly smile on his face. He'd ribbed Ilya for his 'mini-sexcation' and shared with any of the team who looked at him for more than two seconds that Ilya had spent his free day with a "real hot piece."

If only you knew, Ilya had thought, but he'd only smirked and let them imagine what kind of women could tie him down, even if only for two nights and a day.

At his front door, he paused with his keys out, just taking a moment to breathe.

He'd woken up that morning with Shane sleeping on his chest, and the room still smelling of their middle of the night fix. They'd barely even woken up, just rolled toward each other, hands and bodies moving in the darkness. Ilya thought he might have actually drifted back to sleep once in the middle of it, though he'd been awake enough at the end to at least fumble for a handful of tissues.

It wasn't like he'd never slept with a hookup before. Waking up in an unfamiliar bed and getting bonus morning sex and pancakes was often part of the plan, at least with the girls he thought wouldn't see too much into it. Everyone knew what they were getting when the night started, and Ilya was upfront about the sleeping and waking and breakfast: "I will stay here tonight, and I will make your morning very nice, but this is all it is. Deal?"

He hadn't discussed that with Shane. He hadn't put boundaries on it.

Shane had done his laundry for him. Ilya had dropped his gym bag on the front porch in his rush to get inside the house, and Shane had found it in the morning and had the clothes washed and in the dryer by the time Ilya stumbled out of bed. He had even taken clothing out of his dresser and set them out for Ilya to wear while his things were drying, and had blushed as he apologized that the underwear weren't new, but they were absolutely clean, promise.

They were a little tight on Ilya, and a brand that he didn't wear, and a color he wouldn't have bought for himself, but he'd worn them anyways. And then he'd put them in his bag and taken them home with him.

Now, Ilya smelled like Shane's fabric softener, and Shane's soap, and Shane's shampoo.

He took in a deep, slow breath, let it out, and opened the door.

A pair of heels by the door caught his attention just a few seconds before Sveta called from the kitchen, "I'm in here!"

He set his bag down in the entryway and lined his shoes up with hers. She appeared a moment later with a glass teacup and set it down on the breakfast bar for him.

"I thought I would surprise you," she said, tilting her face up for a kiss.

He pressed his lips to hers and put an arm around her her ribs to give her a quick hug. "Thank you."

"How was your flight?"

Ilya slid up on to the stool and curled his hand around the glass. It was still too hot to drink, but the warmth felt nice on his fingertips. She pulled a jar of cherries out of the fridge and set them on the counter for him before digging out a small spoon. Ilya watched her move around his kitchen with a strange twisting pain under his ribcage.

"It was fine," he said when she paused to give him a questioning look.

He busied himself with digging a pair of cherries out of the jar and dropping them into his tea. She stood at the counter on the other side of the bar, her hands braced on the edge, waiting for something. It was too hot, but he took a sip anyways and nodded.

"Good," he said.

The waiting expression on her face didn't fade. After a moment of just staring at him, she lifted her hands and said, "So? Ask me how my day was."

"Ah, sorry." Ilya crossed his arms and braced them on the counter to give her his full attention. "How was your day, Sveta?"

"So happy you asked!" she said with an exaggerated smile and several fast blinks that made her eyelashes flutter. "I got a new job."

Ilya blinked back at her. "I thought you liked the one you had," he asked, frowning. "Taking money from panting dogs who think they get you as gift with purchase?"

He picked his cup up and blew on the surface of the steaming tea while she rolled her eyes at him.

"Yes, it's very fun," she admitted.

"And you are good at it," he reminded her. He'd had a lot of fun letting her seduce him into a car he was already going to buy. And unlike all her other clients, he had also gotten her in the bargain.

"I am very good at it," she corrected severely. "But you know what I am even better at? Analyzing hockey."

Ilya stopped blowing on the tea and looked up at her. "You got an analyst position?"

A broad smile broke out across her face, and she lifted her arms to point at her own smiling face, "You are looking at the newest analyst for the Boston Raiders!"

Ilya hurriedly put the tea down and darted into the kitchen to sweep her up. "Maybe now we will stop sucking!" he said, spinning her around. She laughed and folded her arms around his neck, letting him lay big kisses on her throat and collarbone. "Why didn't you tell me you applied? I would have made them hire you."

She rolled her eyes and smacked him lightly on both cheeks. "They hired me anyways, idiot. I wanted to get it for myself, not because you loomed at them."

"I do not loom," Ilya protested, pouting at her.

"You are very good at looming when you want to be," she said, and then she tried to give him a dark look in imitation of what his face looked like when he was looming, probably, but she was smiling too hard and couldn't hold the expression for more than a second before she exploded into laughter.

"We will celebrate!" Ilya told her, setting her feet on the floor and tilting her backwards to lay another loud kiss on her cheek. "Wherever you want to go, we will go. Not right now, though, sorry. I have practice soon."

She tapped her fingertips on his collarbone, hiked an eyebrow at him, and asked, "We could celebrate a little, couldn't we?"

If the question made something hot and suffocating wriggle in his chest, she didn't need to know that. He adjusted his grip on her and lifted her into his arms, and carried her up the stairs and into his bedroom, to the bed that she'd picked out for him, and the sheets she'd bought with his credit card. She was small and delicate in his arms, and when he lifted her onto his lap, she weighed almost nothing.

She tucked her head against his shoulder, and he had to reach up to hold her curly hair down so it wasn't in his face. She smelled like vanilla, and sweet musk, and cocoa butter, and citrus shampoo. He muffled his gasps and moans into her neck when she straddled his lap and lowered herself onto his dick. Her teeth found his shoulder, exactly where Ilya had put his mark on Shane, and she bit down hard enough to make him shudder.

He wrapped his hands around her ribs and bounced her on his cock, and her delighted laughter slid into a long series of stuttering moans, high-pitched and catching on her breath. She held her own breasts, rolled her nipples between her fingers, and snapped her hips against him every time Ilya brought her down.

He could get her off just like this—he'd done it before—but he wrapped an arm around her back to hold her steady and went up to his knees to lay her down. The angle let him get his hand between their bodies, and he moved his fingers over her clit in the fast flickers she liked best as he thrust into the slick, gripping heat of her.

Sveta's shoulders abruptly relaxed and she announced, "Oh, there, that's…I'm—Ilyusha, I'm—" Her thighs closed tight around his hips in the moments before she went taut and still in his arms, convulsing around him. He worked her through it, kissed the hitching moans off her mouth, and held still until the tension went out of her and she went boneless and soft on the bed.

"Oh, oh, Ilyusha," she murmured, pulling him down for a lazy kiss, fingertips easing into his curls. "Your turn," she said with a soft hum. "Come for me?"

Ilya kissed her jaw and sealed his lips against a sudden insane urge to tell her that he didn't want to.

He mouthed at her earlobe, breathed in the citrus scent of her shampoo, and thrust into her. She was very wet, and she rolled her hips up to meet him, and clenched around him in rippling pulses that he knew were intentional. His breath came fast and hard into her neck, and he set the pace that he knew was the most efficient to get himself off.

She made shocky, whimpering gasps with each thrust, and babbled encouragement at him until he finally hit the building wave of an orgasm. He hips snapped forward three more times in the rush of it, and then he pushed hard into her body and emptied himself in weak pulses.

Petting his neck, she turned her head and kissed along his cheek as his breath slowly calmed and the racing of his pulse wound down to something closer to normal.

Groaning, he held onto the base of the condom and pulled out of her. She sucked in a sharp breath at the separation, but turned to follow him, curling up on her side. "Welcome home," she said, breaking into giggles.

"Ah, yes, welcome home to me," Ilya agreed. He drew a thumb over her cheek, and said, "You're going to be really good at this."

"I've always been good at this," she said with mock offense, and then broke into more laughter. "Oh, we're coworkers now, Ilyusha. This is now a spicy office romance."

"I won't tell anyone if you won't," he said seriously.

Her body shook with her laughter. "I've already told them that you and I have been together." She rearranged her face into a serious scowl and said, "Thank you for the disclosure. Just so you know, we discourage these kinds of relationships in the workplace, but there's nothing in the company policy prohibiting it. We'll need you to fill out some forms."

The smile spread unwillingly across his face. "They have forms?"

She gave him an unimpressed look. "You really think they aren't used to the hot analyst winding up in bed with one of the players?"

"Yes, yes, okay." He kissed the tip of her nose, and said, "Congratulations."

He rolled himself out of the bed to dispose of the condom and brought a warm wash cloth back to her. She cleaned herself up while he dropped back into the bed with his phone in hand, and then tossed it onto the floor so she could turn and cuddle into his chest.

She'd retrieved the remote from the bedside table while he was in the bathroom, and the TV came on with a soft click as Ilya made himself comfortable underneath her. She muted the volume flicked idly through a few channels.

"So what did you do, stuck all day in Montreal?"

Ilya tilted his head to look at her, and said, "Museums, galleries, fancy brunch with little—What? Why are you laughing?" he asked, but he couldn't help laughing along with her.

"Maybe I should have asked who did you do, stuck all day in Montreal?" she amended, distracted enough to stop on a news channel.

The smile dropped off Ilya's face, and he shrugged. "Just a hookup."

She pushed herself up on one elbow. "And? Tell me, how hot was she? What was your favorite thing? Was she better at sucking dick than me?"

"Very very hot, too many things to pick, and…no," he answered, because Shane was technically not better at sicking dick than she was, but he would be. His learning curve was unreal.

She sighed and said, "No means yes, I think. Ah, would she like to exchange tips?"

"No, probably not."

Sveta made a noise of mock disappointment, but she dropped her head back to his chest. On the screen, there was a video of police officers pulling stacks of what looked like rugs out of the back of an anonymous white van. Sveta made a wounded little noise, so Ilya peered at the subtitles.

—earlier today, police seized approximately two hundred selkie pelts in what is believed to be connected to a large selkie trafficking ring—

"So sad," Sveta said, her voice went harder as the video continued to show the pelts being pulled out of the van. "I can't believe they're showing the pelts on camera! Can you imagine being one of those poor selkie and seeing your pelt on national news? How awful."

Ilya clenched his teeth and watched mutely as the anchor continued to discuss the trafficking ring. Selkie were especially vulnerable to trafficking, and it was a constant problem, but even as well-known as it was, it was impossible to know how many selkie were really being trafficked. A selkie would never say a word to endanger their pelt, and if they managed to get the pelt back, they rarely reported it for fear of drawing attention to themselves.

What he did know was that many selkies lived in secret, in constant fear of discovery. Ilya did understand a little of what that was like.

Shane probably understood better.

"Too depressing," Sveta announced and changed the channel to some reality TV show. She yawned and tucked herself closer to him. "Set an alarm, so we don't oversleep your practice," she said, voice going syrupy as she drifted off.

Ilya did, and then without meaning to, he opened his text messages and automatically scrolled to Shane's.

S: Good morning, Ilya

I: good morning shane

I: you are sitting next to me right now yes?

I: you could say good morning in nice way ;)

Shane hadn't replied to the text. He'd leaned over and kissed Ilya instead, and then he'd gone to his knees between Ilya's feet and swallowed Ilya down while he was still soft. The noise he'd made when Ilya went hard in his mouth had almost made Ilya come on the spot.

"Ilya…"

Ilya set his phone against his chest and looked at Sveta with his eyebrow raised. He'd thought she'd already fallen asleep.

"Please tell me that 'number two four-ever Shane Hollander' is a joke and not actually Shane Hollander."

Ilya's stomach dropped. "You are reading my text messages now?"

Sveta sat up. "You had it open practically in my face, and you've never minded me reading your messages before." She stared at him for several seconds, eyes going slowly wide, and then she snatched his phone out of his hand and turned it over.

"Sveta—!" Ilya reached for it, but the look she gave him was cold enough to freeze his breath in his throat, and he stopped with his arm held out in empty space.

After a long moment of eye contact, she turned back to the phone in her hand. She clicked through a few of the messages, expression growing more and more incredulous, and then her eyes slid back to Ilya's face. "You fucking idiot," she breathed. She didn't sound angry, almost more horrified. "You are smarter than this, Ilyusha!"

Ilya shoved himself upright and grabbed his phone. She let it go without a fight, but continued to stare at him like he'd grown a second head.

"It's just a hookup, Sveta."

Sveta pointed at the phone. "That is not a hookup, Ilya! That is What The Fuck Are You Doing? You are fucking Shane Hollander and you have him saved in your phone as Shane Hollander, you fucking idiot! What if someone gets your phone? Did you think about that? What if someone back home gets it?"

"I'm not taking it back to Russia," Ilya said defensively. "And I have a password."

She threw her hands up. "Oh, well, I guess it's safe. No one can ever guess your password! Ilya, you are getting a new phone, tonight. That one is too old anyways, and you are saving him in your phone as a name that is not Shane Hollander, and you're going to stop using each other's names in text! How did you let this happen?" Her eyes widened again and she demanded, "Were you with him for the whole full moon break?"

"He lives in Montreal, we were overnight in Montreal! Of course," Ilya said. He was cognizant that he felt like he was seven years old with his mom asking him where the tea cookies had gone. It made him angry. "Why do you care?"

"I don't care!" she shot back, and then took a breath and amended, "I do care, because first of all—fucking hot, I'm jealous. But second of all, you know better. You know how to be safe!"

Ilya winced. In his hand, he felt the phone creak as his grip tightened. "I know," he said finally.

There had only been Sasha before Shane, and there had been no reason to hide that they had each other's phone number. Sasha was his coach's son, and they were friends. They never sent any text messages that they wouldn't want a police officer to read, they just met up whenever they met up, fucked when they had the privacy to do it, and led otherwise very separate lives. They had never even had to discuss the things they could or couldn't say in a text message.

Shane should have been the same. Shane was another hockey player, and he was part of Ilya's draft class. There was no reason they shouldn't have had each other's phone numbers. They shouldn't have needed to discuss being careful.

Ilya shouldn't have even needed to think about the steps to keep himself and Shane safe. And it wasn't like he hadn't thought he should tell Shane to change his name in his phone, or stop calling him by name in text. Every time he'd been bored and changed Shane's contact name, all the times he'd typed out Shane's name in a text and known it was stupid and sent it anyway, he'd thought about it. But all the times he'd seen his own name in a message, even knowing it was stupid, he had just felt…warm and protective of this small thing, this little risk.

Every time, he told himself that he could justify it as a joke, and who wouldn't believe him? He was Ilya Rozanov, known asshole and playboy with a different woman on his arm every night. He could say, "I just like fucking with Hollander" and anyone would believe him. The locker room was always full of this kind of teasing. Maybe "Hollander tries really hard to fuck with me back" would be harder sell, but he could do it.

I am teaching him how to be asshole—

He hires me to give chirp lessons—

He is like baby puppy learning to growl—

Yes, is cute, right? He tries very hard—

I take pity and let him try—

Sveta put a hand on his cheek and gently turned his face. Her voice was low and sympathetic when she said, "I'm sorry you have to be careful like this."

Ilya shrugged one shoulder hard. "I should be more careful," he admitted.

"Do you know how he has you saved in his phone?"

Ilya winced. "He might have changed it," he muttered, but somehow, he didn't think the contact name had changed. If it had, it was probably something boring like "Ilya Rozanov" or "Ilya Rozanov Boston Center Number Eighty-One 2010 Draft Class."

Sveta groaned and dropped her forehead to his shoulder.

"Call him. Tell him to delete all these messages, and to fix this shit. For that matter, just get an anonymous texting app and stop using text messages, you idiot boys." She sighed and pulled his face over to give him a kiss. "Now, tell me: how hot, and what was your favorite thing, and is he better at sucking dick than me?"

Ilya managed an anemic smile and repeated, "Very, very, very hot. Too many to pick. And no." When she gave him a genuinely disappointed look, he added, "But he is very good at it."

"You're not going to tell me anything else, are you?"

Ilya shook his head, and then he stretched his lips into a tight, uncomfortable smile. She pretended that she didn't notice how wooden and forced it was, and tucked herself against his side as he leaned back against the pillows.

Her hand petted his stomach in slow strokes meant to be soothing.

She fell asleep after a few minutes, but Ilya couldn't follow her. He lay beneath her slight weight, and listened to her familiar almost-snore, and stared sightlessly at the ceiling as the afternoon shadows crept slowly across it.

Chapter 10: Chapter Nine

In the middle of a morning workout, Shane's phone started ringing over his music. When he turned it over and found Ilya's name on the caller ID, he took several deep, slow breaths before yanking the headphone jack out and answering.

Heart hammering and stomach twisted up tight under his ribs, he had to clear his throat twice before he got out a passable, "Hello?"

"Were you sleeping or something?" Ilya asked. There was none of the teasing Shane had come to expect in a question like that. His voice sounded…off. Hard. The instability under Shane's skin grew and expanded. "Hollander. It's like…three in the afternoon."

"I wasn't sleeping, asshole. What do you want?" Shane asked, but it was distinctly not the testy demand he'd tried to make it. The soles of his feet tingled uncomfortably, and the thing in his chest that had taken up residence ever since his conversation with his grandfather turned over and yawned its giant mouth.

It had been over a week since Ilya had left his house after the full moon break, and they hadn't exchanged more than "good morning" and "good night" since then. Shane had been unable to start a conversation about anything that wasn't what he needed to talk about, and Ilya had been busy on a road trip. Somehow, they just kept missing each other.

"You need to change my name in your phone," Ilya said without preamble, as abrupt as plunging into a freezing ocean and getting salt spray directly to the face.

Shane blinked half a dozen times, breath catching on three attempts to speak before he managed, "What?"

"We've been stupid, Hollander. If you still have my contact with my name, you need to change it."

The beast in Shane's chest transformed at once, and his pulse spiked. He shifted his weight immediately to stand, as if there was anything he could do at the moment on his feet that he couldn't do on his ass. "Why? What happened? Did someone get your phone? Oh, my god, Il—"

"—Calm down, Jesus, Hollander. We're fine, it's fine. Just…we've been stupid, and we need to stop it. I got a new phone, your contact name is Jane now. Change mine, too. And stop using my name in text."

The whiplash of confusion warred with the fear and anxiety under Shane's skin, rearranging all his insides into a squeezing, twisting mass. Weight settling uncertainly once more, he picked idly at the top of his trainers as he sat on the floor of his makeshift gym that was really just a spare bedroom with tiled floors instead of carpet. He wasn't sure how to answer or how to name the thing with the stranglehold on his throat.

"Hollander? Are you listening?" Ilya bit out after a long, loud pause.

"Yeah, no, I—You're right. We should have been more careful from the start. Definitely." Shane's head nodded along like that hula dancer that had been stuck to Dad's dash for years and years, slowly bleaching in the sun, until he'd finally sold the car. Mom wouldn't let him transfer it to the new car. Shane had no idea where it had gone after Mom had plucked it out of Dad's hands and firmly declared, "Time for retirement!"

"Definitely," Ilya mocked. "So, are you going to do it?"

Shane tucked his head down, tugged at his right eyelashes. There was something in his eye, an eyelash or a piece of dust or something. "Yeah, absolutely. I was actually planning on getting a new phone soon anyways, so—"

"—How soon?" Ilya interrupted.

Wrong-footed, Shane's mouth worked soundlessly for half a beat before he cleared his throat and said, "I didn't have a concrete date, but…It's no problem for me to get something soon. Tomorrow, maybe? But I can update your contact before then. What—" His voice caught in his throat, and he cleared it again. "What should I change your contact to?"

Jane. His name was now Jane in Ilya's phone, probably sandwiched between Isabel and Jessica. He felt an immediate and intense hatred for Jane, this faceless woman he had become in Ilya's contact list. Sick with it, he thought about the contact lists of some of his teammates.

Tampa Annie or New York Hot Ass. Should Ilya just be "Boston Nice Cock" in his contact list? Maybe, "Those three moles on the lower back."

"Lily," Ilya offered after a minute. "Or whatever, I don't care."

A spark of annoyance lit in Shane's gut, and he almost snarled out, "How about Andrew? Carl? Jacques?"

Instead, what he said was, "Yeah, okay. Lily, sure. I'll take care of it."

"Delete our old texts," Ilya ordered.

The spark turned from annoyance to grief. Shane gripped his phone hard. He couldn't make himself really respond, just hummed a noise vaguely like assent. He'd known for a long time that he needed a new phone, that the old flip phone just couldn't keep up with his needs anymore, but transferring contacts over was a pain in the ass he'd been putting off for over a year, and there were text messages and voicemails on it that he didn't want to lose. Ilya's messages had joined the list of things he wanted to preserve very quickly, and the idea of deleting them made him feel nauseous.

"Good. See you in December?" Ilya asked brusquely. "You play here in Boston."

"Yeah, December. Sure."

"I have to go, Hollander. Just arrived at the practice rink."

Ilya hung up in the middle of Shane's startled, "Goodby—" leaving Shane listening dumbly to the void of the disconnected call. Slowly, he pulled his phone away from his ear and looked at the display. Something like that creeping tension of watching a horror movie with the music building slowly in the background caught hold of him.

"What the fuck?" he asked his phone, but it didn't answer.

As long as they'd known each other, Ilya had always been an asshole, but he'd never been cold to Shane, not since that half-minute when Shane had walked up to him behind the rink in Saskatchewan, hand held out nervously. In that moment, Ilya had been something akin to a brass statue; beautiful, but remote, hard, and unyielding. He'd thawed so quickly that the brass might have gone molten and puddled at his feet, and he'd burned sunshine-hot ever since.

Had Shane somehow fucked this up? What had he done in the moments between Ilya lingering over kissing him—so sweet and soft that Shane had almost begged him to just cancel his taxi, cancel his flight, move in and never leave—and walking out the door? Was it the time since, when Shane had done nothing more than send his good morning texts and respond to Ilya's good nights? Shane had been nervous to talk to him, afraid of that realization he'd come to on the line with Ojiichan, but maybe Ilya thought he'd gone cold?

"Fuck," Shane breathed, and tucked his head against his forearm.

~*~

Ilya grabbed Marly by the bicep and hauled him through the parking garage after practice.

"What the hell, man?" Marly complained, but he didn't yank his arm out of Ilya's grip, and he followed dutifully along as Ilya towed him toward his car.

"We're going out," Ilya told him. He only released Marly's arm when they came to the back of his Mustang.

Marly snorted out a laugh. "Well, fuck, Rozy. You don't have to drag me into a good time!" he tapped out an excited rhythm on the trunk of Ilya's car, and Ilya was too tense and angry to even snap at him for putting fingerprints all over it.

He clicked the remote to unlock the doors and swung himself into the driver's seat.

"Where are we going?" Marly asked as he folded his big body into the passenger seat. Marly had a couple inches on Ilya, and the Mustang was really too small for him, but he just dropped the seat back a few degrees and sprawled to give himself as much room as possible.

"I don't know, tell me where to drive," Ilya ordered. He put his seat belt on, and then turned and stared at Marly with his eyebrows raised until Marly felt his gaze and put his seat belt on as well.

He gave Ilya a bemused look, but handed out directions easily. He'd had two more years in Boston than Ilya, and he knew the city and its clubs much better than Ilya did. He tapped away at his phone during the drive, just glancing up occasionally to give a, "Turn left up there, after that Taco Bell" or "You're gonna wanna be in the right lane, my brother."

Ilya liked this about Marly. He was affable and talkative, and when he was drunk in a quiet location, he would lean forward and earnestly ask his friends the kinds of questions that belonged in therapy offices. He would analyze himself without artifice and cheerfully ask shit like, "Why do you think you're afraid of being vulnerable, bro?" and neither pass judgment nor argue with the answer. But he also knew when to just be quiet and let Ilya be in his own head. He didn't pepper Ilya with questions or eye him sideways, or make the air heavy with his discomfort.

When Ilya sped through lights, made sharp merges into traffic, and generally taunted any corner that might contain a cop, Marly just laughed and whooped, and grabbed the handle over his door to keep from spilling into Ilya's lap on the sharp turns.

"Seems like you got somethin' to work out tonight, Rookie," Marly said when Ilya came to a screeching halt at the valet station. "Just remember…we got a game tomorrow."

"Obviously," Ilya said, rolling his eyes. He reached over and unclipped Marly's seatbelt. "Get out."

"Okay, okay!" Marly said, hurrying out of his seat.

A young man in a valet vest was waiting and held Ilya's door for him. Ilya tossed him the keys and then pulled out a random bill and handed it over to him. Judging from the man's startled, "Thank you, sir!" it must have been a big bill, but Ilya didn't care.

He followed Marly into the club. The man at the door recognized Marly, and they exchanged fist-bumps and probably a bill or two in the clasp of their hands, because the man didn't even glance at Ilya. If he knew Marly, he knew that Ilya was underage in this stupid Puritan country, but he didn't hesitate to pull the door open and hold it for them to walk inside.

It was not the first time he wished he had been drafted by a Canadian team, but he felt it viscerally as he followed Marly's broad shoulders into the flickering dimness of the club's interior.

Marly grabbed his shoulder once they were out of the way of the people coming in behind them and leaned close. "Look, whatever you've got goin' on, you don't want to talk about it, that's cool. But don't make me have to bail you out of a cell tonight, alright? Coach will have my balls and yours on a fuckin' string."

Ilya shrugged Marly's hand off his shoulder, but he nodded. As much as he thought it might be fun to light something on fire, he mostly just wanted the beat he could already feel pulsing in his chest, bodies pressed against him, enough alcohol to drown out the shocky numbness in Shane's voice when he'd said, "Yeah, okay. Lily, sure. I'll take care of it."

This was Ilya's fault for letting it go so far and continue for so long. He'd been irresponsible, and stupid, and he'd been too covetous of Shane's fangs and the blinding fire of his attention to set boundaries or establish rules. He'd been selfish, and stupid, and if they'd been caught by anyone other than Sveta, it wouldn't have been just his own life and livelihood at risk.

A woman with short dark hair and a sparkly silver dress caught his eye as soon as they stepped onto the dance floor. The dress clung to her curves, the hem just barely extended past the curve of her ass, and she was tall enough in her strappy heels that she didn't have to lean her head back to look him in the face. She turned at his approach and smiled invitingly, and in the flickering lights, Ilya saw that her pupils were square and the irises around them were gold.

Whatever she was, he didn't care. He quirked an eyebrow at her; she flashed him a set of very white teeth and put her hands on his chest. She gave his pecs a discerning squeeze through his shirt on the way to running her hands up and over his shoulders as she stepped close.

Her mouth formed words that the music ripped away. Ilya's hand on the small of her back nearly covered her from hip to hip. He curled his arm around her, and she slid a foot between his so she was straddling his thigh. She immediately ground herself down into it and rolled her hips to rub her pelvis into his. He leaned down to kiss her neck, ignored the bitter, acrid taste of her perfume, and pulled her closer. Her nails—acrylic or claws, he didn't know or care—worked into his curls and scratched lightly at his scalp.

Marly gave him a congratulatory slap on the back and stepped away to hold a hand out to another beautiful stranger. Ilya quickly lost track of him in the crowd.

~*~

Shane sat behind the wheel of his car in the parking garage and frowned at his new phone. He needed to get out of the car and get started on his pre-game routine or he wasn't going to have time for it. He needed to get in front of a trainer for stretching and tape, limber up, get into his gear, and put his head back on straight. He had a strict schedule for his pre-game hydration and warm-up, and he was already running behind. If he wasn't out of the car in the next three minutes, he would be cutting corners.

S: Good night

He hadn't been able to make himself type "Good night, Lily," and his lip had curled up slowly as he'd sent the truncated message, expecting to receive a "good night jane" in response and already hating it. Except, it hadn't come.

Not only had "good night jane" not come through, nothing had come through. He'd stayed up way past his pre-game bedtime and fallen asleep on the couch without washing his face or brushing his teeth. When his alarm clock had gone off from the bedroom, he'd startled himself off the couch and fallen to the floor, banged his shoulder against the coffee table in the process of scrambling upright, and then come back out to find his phone dead.

After charging it, he'd expected to see a belated "good night" sent after he'd fallen asleep, but still nothing. Worry had mixed the annoyance and—stupid—hurt in his gut into a toxic soup, but he hadn't called, or sent, "Hey, are you okay?" Instead, he'd carefully typed out, "Good morning" and then settled in to his morning stretches while he waited for a response.

Mom had texted him to read his email for a proposed ad shoot with Powerade and wished him good luck on the game.

Dad had called him to wish him luck when he was selecting his suit for the night, and let him know that he'd picked out three charities for Shane to review for a contribution if he was interested.

Shane had told him again that he trusted his judgment and to just to tell him how much to send and where. He'd resisted—again—the impulse to explain to his dad that he understood the charities were smart business sense, and he did care about making a difference with his money beyond the tax credit, but he didn't have the time, or the attention, or the interest in vetting them. He just wanted it done.

After sitting on the bed and staring too long at the unmoving text thread, he'd opened the email app. His realtor had confirmed their appointment for the following Tuesday to see the properties he had on his short list. The contract Mom had sent for the ad shoot looked fine, and he'd hated that it was scheduled during a rare four day weekend over a full moon break, but it was fine, and he'd replied to his mom to book it with what was becoming the standard rider.

They'd also been talking about Shane getting a separate agent as things were already getting more complicated than his mom could navigate on her own, and his dad had sent over three names with good references. Shane had a three year contract that his mom, dad, and a very expensive lawyer had poured over, but he needed someone else in place before it came up again. One on the list represented Scott Hunter, among her other handful of lower-profile clients, another had been an institution since his dad's hockey days and seemed eager to add a Hollander to his collection since Dad had declined to go pro.

The last was younger than the other two, and she didn't have a very long client list, but she seemed to have a lot of energy and could theoretically be with Shane for the whole of his career. Theo Goodman, institution that he was, would probably retire in five to seven.

He'd replied with a request to set up meetings with Farah Jalali and Lucy Yuan, and then closed his email and tried to get his morning routine on track.

No "good morning jane" arrived while he'd done his morning chores, and there was no explanation for the missing good night.

It had bothered him like a splinter between his toes. He was as superstitious as the next hockey player, and he knew Ilya was as well. Even with how strange, and chilly, and awkward their last call had been, the break in their routine was concerning. Shane had even broken down and pulled his old phone out of the safe to check for the dozenth time that he'd transferred Ilya's number over correctly, and to see if maybe the texts had somehow gone to his old phone. The service was off and the SIM card had been removed, but…just in case.

There had been nothing, and no emails or missed calls either. Shane had ignored the slow and clunky web browser app on his shiny new smartphone and opened his laptop to check the news sites, dreading any headline at all. Boston Rookie Hockey Player Ilya Rozanov in Fatal Collision played in his head like a waking nightmare.

What he'd found was a few paparazzi shots of Ilya holding the door of his mustang open, one hand on the waist of a svelte black-haired woman whose almond eyes cast a silvery reflection back at the camera as she smiled up at him. Ilya wasn't even looking at her, expression set in those forbidding brass-statue lines, gaze somewhere out of frame, probably checking for traffic.

Shane had shut the laptop down and picked up his phone, flicked the keyboard out, and painstakingly typed, "You're so busy with your hookup you can't even say good morning to me, you asshole?" before slowly deleting every letter.

Teeth aching and heat bubbling under his collarbone, he'd snapped the keyboard back in, gotten dressed, and driven to the rink.

He'd been far past his normal arrival time, and now five minutes past the drop-dead point he should have gotten out of the car. He should have already been in the gym, flagging down a trainer. He had a game, and he didn't have time for whatever bullshit Ilya was on.

Shane was suddenly and viscerally glad that he hadn't said anything, that he hadn't acted on the realization that he needed to tell Ilya about his heritage and make him aware of the dangers of continuing their…whatever it was, that he owed it to Ilya to be honest. That he trusted Ilya with the truth.

"Fuck you, Rozanov," he told his phone.

Angry tingles flushed over his scalp and down the back of his neck. He smoothed his hair down and clenched his teeth against the warning pressure of his fangs starting to push out of their sheaths. It was tempting to let them out, just in the car, to sink them into his own arm just to feel the friction against them.

Instead, he threw himself out of the car, shut the door harder than he'd meant to, and hurried to the player's entrance. He turned his brain to figuring out how he was going to shave those minutes off his routine, and fixed a determination in the front of his mind: he was going to score a fucking hat trick, and the Metros were going to trounce Colorado, and he was not going to send a single text message to Ilya fucking Rozanov until and unless Rozanov texted him first.

~*~

"Well, boys… the good news is that Boston shit the bed just as bad as we did," Taylor said into a quiet and subdued locker room after the game.

Shane kept his teeth firmly sealed together and did not even glance up like he was interested. He'd just hauled himself through possibly the worst game he'd played since U15, and he didn't care to hear it. He'd put up an assist on their single goal, but the entire night had felt like they were playing in a puddle of glue instead of on ice: only seven in ten of his passes had connected, he'd missed two passes coming his way by embarrassing margins, completely bungled what should have been an easy goal with the tender sealed to the wrong pipe, and had been out-skated by Martin fucking Aspen, a thirty-four year-old defenseman who weighed two hundred and forty-three pounds.

He had actually put the puck in the net—twice—and both goals had been stripped, one by a bad entry from Juniors, and the other from a bullshit goalie interference call that he was still steaming over. The whole team had been snappish, and sullen, and tense by the third period, which they went into down 6-1 and came out of bleeding from their fingernails at 7-1.

What a fucking nightmare.

"Just as bad?" Hayden asked after a very long delay. "Really?"

Taylor lifted one shoulder in a lopsided shrug, held his phone up, and said, "Lost to Buffalo three to eight?"

Not just as bad, but Buffalo, Christ. There were a couple weak and forced chuckles around the room, but no one replied. Coach had reamed them during second intermission, but in the aftermath of the loss, he'd only said, "Everyone has a bad night. Sleep it off, see you back for afternoon skate. Do better."

He hadn't looked at Shane as he'd left the locker room, but Shane had felt his words like each one was a personal accusation. He couldn't meet any of his teammates' eyes, and there was no banter or teasing as they sluggishly pulled off skates and stuffed ice bags under their gear. Shane put a towel over his sweat soaked hair and pulled it so it was covering most of his face as he leaned back into his stall and let the cold of the ice packs seep into his bones.

He was going to kill Rozanov next time he saw him.

Shane's phone buzzed. He didn't immediately turn it over, knowing it was most likely Dad with a "You played your heart out. You'll get them next time! Love you!" Shane didn't want to read it or Mom's complaints about the bad goalie interference call.

It buzzed again, and again, and four more times in quick succession.

Shane slowly picked it up, put in his pin, and opened the text messages.

D: Don't beat yourself up, son. You played a good game. Everyone has a bad night. Proud of you!

M: That ref clearly had it out for you! Bullshit call! Your C should have raised hell about it!

M: What is Desjardins even DOING behind the bench??

L: sorry

L: out late

L: phone died and missed good night

L: sleeped late. missed good morning

L: my fault

L: slept*

L: fucking english

L: goodnight jane

L: good morning jane

Shane's lips pulled together in a tight knot of anger. Yes, it was his fucking fault.

S: You fucked our routine for a fucking hookup!

The second the text went through, Shane wished he could claw it back. They did not ever talk about Ilya's hookups, and they did not ever talk about the fact that Shane didn't hookup.

Shane had been letting himself exist for so long in a fantasy world where the Ilya Rozanov who was a regular in the paps was a different person than the one who teased Shane about his boring interests but still sent him memes about them; who took Shane apart and reduced him to incoherent moans, and then put him back together as a more relaxed and happier version of himself; who played footsie with him on the couch, and then insisted that he had never done that and never would, because he was Russian, and no Russian would do this.

Clearly, this was a wake-up call that he'd needed for a long time if it was now coming as such a shock that Rozanov was a playboy and Shane was just barely convenient enough to scratch the one itch he couldn't reach with anyone else.

L: i know

L: fuck

L: im sorry

Breathing hard, Shane shut the phone down and tossed it into his cubby.

"You good?" Hayden asked softly.

Shane nodded. "Yeah. Just…" he let his voice trail off, and Hayden nodded with a long exhale. They were all just after a 7-1 loss in their own fucking barn.

~*~

"Bro…" Marly said, leaning over subtly on the bench between their stalls.

"I know. Shut up," Ilya snapped.

Marly hiked an eyebrow at him, waiting patiently but insistently, and Ilya finally broke enough to give him a mute nod of apology.

"Will not happen again," he promised quietly.

Marly nodded, butted his knuckles against Ilya's bicep, and said nothing else about it.

Despite Marly's easy acceptance of the bullshit apology, shame still had a tight grip on the back of Ilya's neck. He wasn't ashamed of his hookup, but that he'd let his hookup interfere with his game. And not even just his game.

Marly was—nominally—responsible for him, so Ilya's fuck up reflected on him just as much as it reflected on Ilya himself. That Marly wasn't slamming him into walls, and slapping his cheeks, and yelling at him somehow made it even worse.

The only notice Ilya had given Marly of his departure the night before had been a nod across the dance floor, and that only because Marly had happened to catch his eye on the way out the door. The girl—Kacie—had given him directions to her apartment, a neat but cramped walk-up she shared with another college student. Her roommate had been home and eating ice cream on the couch in a pair of comfy sweats, and her mouth had nearly hit her chest when they'd walked in.

Ilya had glanced between them, made a questioning gesture, and then pulled the roommate off the couch and into a chilly, chocolate-flavored kiss. They'd all three fallen into Kacie's bed after Annabel's hasty three shots of courage, and Ilya had lost track of his phone in the tumble of limbs.

He'd lain under them at the end of it, breathing through the come down, and had been struck by how badly he'd wanted to be anywhere else. They'd kept giggling at each other over his chest, and squirming against him, and repeating mindless praise—that was so hot, you're so hot, I can't believe it's you, wow. Kacie had a small pair of horns under her hair that had kept digging into his shoulder—had, in fact, left a deep, twinging bruise on his strong side that he'd felt all night like mockery every time he'd moved the puck.

He'd been suffocated under their weight, and he'd wanted a shower, and a set of clean silk sheets, and a fucking cigarette, but he'd forced himself to stay as long as he would have for any hookup, until the sweat cooled and the pulses returned to normal, and the conversation turned awkward.

Except he'd somehow managed to fall asleep while they were still tentatively kissing each other with their ears pillowed on his pecs, and when he'd woken way too late in the morning, his thoughts had been only a mad scramble for the door. While he'd raced through putting his clothes back on and making sure he had everything he'd walked in with, Annabel had flitted around him apologizing that they'd only wanted to let him sleep, and Kacie was out picking up some brunch, and she was so so so so so sorry.

He'd finally caught her by the arms, kissed her cheek and told her, "You and her are good together. Stop fucking around."

She'd shut up after that and meekly let him out of the apartment without asking for his phone number or trying to give him hers.

He'd arrived late to the rink with a random suit hastily grabbed out of his closet, and wearing fresh clothing, but still smelling distinctly of the previous night's activities. Coach Reilly had run into him in the hall, and had given him the coldest once-over, and then dismissed him without a word.

He'd barely had time to get into his gear before they were on the ice for warmups with no time at all for his normal pre-game routine. While he'd still managed a goal and an assist, the night was a shitshow from top to bottom.

It wasn't until the second intermission that he'd picked his phone up from the floor in the corner where he'd left it charging and let himself look at his texts.

J: Good night

J: Good morning

Those two lines, almost twelve hours apart had been haunting him ever since. He scrolled back up to stare at them, and then down, going through his embarrassing string of recent text. He was uncomfortably aware of the fact that it sounded like he was begging. He was even more uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was absolutely begging.

The thought that this was the thing that put a knife in his arrangement with Shane made his pulse skip.

God, he was so fucking stupid.

"What even happened to you last night, brother?" Marly asked in an undertone, nudging him with an elbow.

Ilya turned his display off hastily. He'd gotten lazy with reading his messages where anyone could look over his shoulder and see them, and he obviously hadn't learned his lesson well enough with Sveta if he was still doing it in the fucking locker room.

Not that there was anything to be seen anymore.

"She took me home," Ilya said, shrugging and trying not to make it look as uncomfortable as it felt.

"And kept you up all damn night? I thought maybe you'd been kidnapped and tied to a chair or something."

Ilya gave him a slow, disgusted look, and Marly put both hands up in good-natured surrender as he leaned away.

"She…and her roommate," Ilya said without letting it show that he hated how Marly's face lit up, "were very distracting. My phone died."

"Damn," Marly breathed, and pounded him on the back in enthusiastic approval. "But seriously, bro, don't do that again the night before a game."

Ilya bit back a bitchy retort and nodded. He'd fucked up so badly, and he didn't deserve a single word in his own defense—there were no words for his defense. He'd fucked up a lot of things, and Shane hadn't responded to either his explanation or his apologies, even though both of their miserable games had been over for an hour or more.

Ilya should probably send another dozen apologies. Shane didn't get to be pissed off about his hookup, and Ilya wasn't going to apologize for that, but Ilya had fucked up their games.

After their miserable defeat, Hammersmith had come out from the shower, sat down in his towel, and then whooped loudly enough to get everyone's attention before crowing that at least Montreal had taken it harder up the ass than they had: 7-1 and two disallowed goals for Shane.

"Not even lube, damn! Almost feel sorry for Hollander," he'd laughed and had gotten several half-hearted laughs in response.

Ilya hadn't said anything, but he'd starting firing off texts immediately afterward. Shane probably wouldn't respond to a dozen more apologies anymore than he had to the first one. He probably wouldn't respond to anything ever again.

Ilya should probably just stop. He should let this be the end of whatever insanely dangerous thing they'd been doing, just let it die an abrupt, quick death. Let Shane hate him for more than just the media circus, let their lives drift apart, let Shane find someone he trusted enough to show his goddamn fangs to on purpose.

I: It will not happen again.

He cringed at the text, and then he failed to stop himself from sending another.

I: I promise.

Of course, Shane didn't respond. Ilya made himself put the phone down and finished packing up to go home.

Two hours later, in bed and feeling shamefully desperate and heavy, he tried:

I: good night jane

Fifteen minutes after that, his phone buzzed on his nightstand.

J: GN

Ilya swung upright to sit on the edge of his bed and braced his forearms on his knees, staring down at the text like something else would come through when he knew it wouldn't.

So he was still staring at his screen when it lit up with Alexei seven minutes after midnight, and he was just disgusted enough with himself to take the call.

Chapter 11: Chapter Ten

L: good morning jane

Shane tapped his fingers on the sides of his phone, squinting at the screen for several minutes in the semi-darkness of his bedroom with dawn just barely starting to lighten the sky beyond his curtains. Like they did most mornings, his fingers started moving over the keys before he was fully aware of what he was doing.

S: Good morning

S: Mornin

S: Fuck y

S: Good morning you fucking asshol

S: Lose my number

S: Call me Jane one more fucking time

S: GM

S: You have zero self-control

S: Good

S: I shouldn't have trusted you

S: G

S: I fucking trusted y

S: GM

He clicked the display off, and set it back on the bedside table, and rolled out of bed.

He was probably being petty. Anyone would tell him that he either needed to tell Rozanov off and be done with it, or he needed to get over it and move on. Ojiichan would probably tell him to key Rozanov's favorite sports car first and see if that made him feel better, but then there would be a lecture about expectations and boundaries.

This had been going on for three weeks, and Shane was tired of it, but he also didn't know how to make the stinging sparks in his stomach every time he saw "Lily" on his screen go away. He didn't know what to say to Rozanov to make it better, or what he wanted Rozanov to say either. What hadn't he said? Would one more I'm sorry (((( really make the difference?

The worst of it was that Shane didn't have a right to be upset anymore, not really. Rozanov had been diligent in their ritual morning and evening texts. He had initiated every single one with clockwork precision, and he continued to text Shane throughout the day, even though Shane couldn't make himself respond. He'd tried. Every time he got a message about what Rozanov was eating for lunch or a suggestion on how they could spend a mutually free afternoon, he tried to respond, but each time, he ended up just typing and deleting a dozen texts before setting his phone aside.

Maybe Shane had been the aggrieved party, but they were even. They'd both had a bad game out of the slip. Rozanov had apologized multiple times for fucking up their routine. Their games had been fine ever since. Shane was even currently ahead of Rozanov in their scoring race by two, and they were both on track for record-setting rookie seasons.

He didn't have a claim on Rozanov outside of the times they spent behind the same closed door, and Rozanov had never been anything other than fully committed during those times.

He'd never promised Shane anything.

Without managing to talk himself into feeling any better about it, Shane showered and brushed his teeth. He heard the phone buzz from the bathroom as he was smoothing his shirt down and tried to ignore it, but he was already finished with his morning routine, and he would have picked it up to take it into the kitchen anyway.

L: can i be forgiven now? (((

S: N

S: No

S: Do you even know what I'm forgiving you for?

S: Fine

S: No

S: Fuck off

S: Let's just stop doing thi

S: I'm so tired of

S: Never

S: What do I get if I do?

L: how bad do you miss my dick by now?

S: FUCK. YOU. "LILY"

A frustrated howl of noise lodged into his throat when he realized he'd actually sent the text. His fangs dropped out of their sheaths on a strangled hiss, and he hastily buried his face into his pillow and bit down hard. The fabric parted around his fangs, and he heard the distinctive rip of it tearing as he jerked his head back.

On the bedspread, his phone lit up with several notifications, but Shane just stared at the pillow for a long time, stuck somewhere between sickness and horror at the damage. The case had turned navy where his saliva had quickly soaked in, and there were two perfect rents in the middle. A puff of stuffing peeked out of one tear, and Shane could taste the musty wool of it when he ran his tongue over his fangs.

L: oh i am forgiven now yes?

L: dont worry i will still make it up to you

L: ;)

L: you are still home yes? call and i will make all better

S: No

L: (((((((((((

Shane put the phone on silent and went back into the bathroom to brush his teeth again.

Still shuddering from the remembered sensation of cloth scraping against his fangs, he returned to the bedroom long enough to shove his phone into his pocket and grab the mangled pillow. The pillow and its case went into the trash can.

He sat down to order another set of sheets and another wool-stuffed pillow.

He checked his email and responded to the messages that were urgent. He was polite and professional. He proof read every email three times before he sent it.

His phone was silent, and it weighed down the waistband of his athletic pants. He decided to change into a pair of jeans.

He had an appointment with his realtor to take possession of his new condo, and he was not going to spend the day thinking about Rozanov, who was probably jacking off in his bed, or laying next to some woman in hers, texting Shane while she sucked him off with her lips covering her normal, safe teeth.

He clenched his jaw all through his breakfast prep, and breathed through his nose. He did not break a single dish when he washed them afterward, and he was meticulous in cleaning the counters.

He wiped the fingerprints off the refrigerator door.

He sat on the entryway bench and took out his Reeboks, and the white shoe polish, and cleaned away the scuff marks on the left inside toe.

When he couldn't find another thing to put his hands on, he went back into the kitchen to check the time on the microwave and decided to leave early and get his realtor a coffee. She was meeting him very early on a Saturday to accommodate his unreasonable schedule, and coffee was the least he could do.

The slam of his front door was not as satisfying as he'd wanted it to be.

~*~

Ilya hit the boards hard enough to force the air out of his lungs and nearly lost his footing. Shane didn't move away, so when Ilya came down, it was only to be pinned between Shane's hips and the boards. Shane passed the puck to Pike before Ilya could swing his stick around Shane's leg to interfere. For one precious second, Ilya let himself be trapped and just took in the particular angle of Shane's shoulders, his ass pressed to Ilya's leg, and his massive thigh where it was turned out and visible.

This was a favorite trick of Shane's, and Ilya had known it when he'd arrowed straight for him right off the bench, but he'd done it anyways. Shane was astonishingly fast, and he could turn on a punctuation mark. When he was close to the boards and had an opponent bearing down on him, there was a good chance that the guy was going to be caught on Shane's back and slammed into the boards while he shot or passed with barely a broken stride.

Ilya would never tell him, on pain of death, but he'd had wet dreams about this maneuver.

"Better luck next time, Rozanov," Shane said, breathless, as he sprinted after his line mates.

Ilya followed at full speed, muscled into Shane's weak side, and managed to knock the next pass off his tape when Hostler sent it careening for him. Ilya blew him a kiss; Shane spat on the ice, and then they were off again.

Some thirty seconds later, Ilya fired the puck from the top of the circle and watched it slip between Chovanec's shoulder and the pipe. The lamp lit, and Ilya detoured on his victory lap to swing a tight circle around Shane, mouth split in a grin and basking in the searing heat of Shane's glare.

"Want that one back?" he asked.

"I'll get it back," Shane bit out so hard that the last word fell out of his mouth with a broken spine. His eyes blazed, and his cheeks were flushed, and his teeth clenched together so hard that it had to hurt, even with the mouthguard. Easily mistakable as exertion, his chest rose and fell hard and fast, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

Ilya grinned and made him an elaborate bow as he skated backwards. Taylor and Hostler both arrived to put themselves between Ilya and their golden ticket, and Ilya laughed hard enough to make his lungs sting.

"Aww, he cannot come out to play?" Ilya asked Hostler, but he kept his eyes on Shane and stuck his lip out in an exaggerated pout. Hostler made a sputtering, hissy noise, took him by the chest guard and shoved him back.

Marly arrived just in time for Ilya's back to hit his chest, and then his big body slotted into place at Ilya's side, but he just wrapped one arm around Ilya's shoulders and pushed Hostler's hand out of the way with the other.

"You know they're all like feral wolves on a full moon about him," Marly said as he swung Ilya around to skate past their bench, where Ilya held his hand up for high-fives. "You don't have to provoke them every time."

Ilya grinned at him. "This is only reason I show up for Montreal game. Otherwise is too boring," he told Marly, and grinned when Marly laughed.

"Sexy goal, brother," Marly said, tapping their helmets together, and Ilya wiggled his hips to the continued cheering of the home crowd. He gave the Montreal section a jaunty wave. A fan in blue smashed a fist against the glass and flipped him off; Ilya blew the man a kiss.

 ~*~

Shane did get it back; in the next period, he put a beautiful one-timer into the back of the net that Carmichael couldn't have stopped even when he was ten years younger.

In response to Shane's unfairly sexy little smirk, Ilya got his first MLH hat trick, and he would have licked Shane's face about it, but Hostler plowed him into the boards, so Ilya got a hat trick and a fight out of the night.

With Boston's win to cap it all off, the night would have been perfect, except when he texted Shane, "Come over tonight?"

The response he got back was, "I can't."

I: why? (((((

J: We're going straight back to the airport.

I: Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane

Ilya tilted his chin down and stuck his tongue out to curl around his necklace chain. He drew it into his mouth and played with the cross while he waited. And waited.

Ilya's teammates were almost all in the shower, loud and boisterous in their victory, and Ilya had been pushing excited teammates off since the moment he'd sat down post-cooldown. He'd shoved ice bags into his socks and stretched his legs out to keep any of the boys from physically lifting him away from the bench.

I: feel too sore?

I: i was too hard on you?

I: come over. i kiss all better.

J: Fuck you, asshole

I: could have already if you are not too lazy to come before game

J: I told you I couldn't get out of it

J: Next time

Ilya clicked his cross against his teeth and dropped it with a stifled huff.

I: so mean

I: next time is AS

J: Did you even get invited to AS?

Despite himself, Ilya smiled at his phone.

I: and you call me asshole?

I: call me

J: I'm not going to call you from the locker room!

I: no? not even for your helpful teammate?

I: when you get to hotel jane

The next delay was so long that Ilya had started pulling the ice packs out by the time his phone buzzed again.

J: I'll think about it.

I: think about it a lot pls ;))))

~*~

After a win against Montreal and his first hat trick of the season, Ilya had no excuse not to go out with the team after the game. If Shane had been waiting for him at home, he would have just flipped them all off and wished them a portion of his good luck, but with a dark house and a cold bed waiting for him and Shane on a three hour flight, he went along for the distraction.

Spread out on a couch in the VIP area, Ilya watched his teammates on the dance floor. Connors, Marly, and Carmichael had all stayed past the obligatory toast and half an hour spent alternately ribbing Ilya and ushering women into his lap, but the rest of the vets had already tapped out. They'd had a long week, and after two days off, they were on the road for the last stretch before the Christmas holiday.

The club was loud enough to drown out his father's voice, where it normally took up residence in the back of his head to chew over every flaw in even a winning game. The women were beautiful, the vodka was Russian and excellent, and the energy in the club was frenetic. The rookies were still gyrating on the dance floor with a jostling gaggle of women moving in between them, and Ilya would have been right in the center of it, except… he didn't want to.

He was tired. It had been a long stretch and a hard game. Montreal had not let him take that hat trick easily. Shane had fought him like a wild cat. Even someone like him could get tired after that.

His leg jittered impatiently, and he kept his phone in his hand, tucked under his arm so he could feel it buzz against his ribs when he got a notification or a call. He'd looked up Shane's flight, knew when it would land, guessed at how long it would take to get to the hotel and into the room. He still had two hours before even the most optimistic estimate, and no idea if Shane would have a room to himself or be stuck with a roommate.

A server in a skirt so skimpy it could have been better described as a belt slid past the bouncers keeping the curious out of the lounge, and then sidled between Ilya and the low table so he had a good view down her top when she bent over if he wanted it.

He did want it, and he looked: modest and perky in a padded underwire bra, small enough that he could have folded his hands completely across them and held them down. He smiled at her for the gift and tipped her generously, and did not take the opportunity to ask her when she got off work. She was a professional, and maybe she hadn't wanted anything from him but the tip, because she didn't look at all disappointed.

She tucked the cash into her bra and straightened with her tray held in front of her hips. She was impressively steady on a pair of very high heels, and she had that kind of build that suggested she was an athlete. Volleyball, if he had to guess, just based on the strength of her thighs and the golden glow of her tan. Could also be tennis.

"Congratulations on the win," she said with a charming smile. She had very straight, white teeth. "My dad's a big fan. I got a live blow-by-blow and caught up on my break. Hat trick, I hear?"

Ilya tried to make his smile loose and easy. "You want picture? For your dad?"

"Do you mind?" she asked so quickly that Ilya realized it was what she'd been after from the beginning.

Ilya held his arm out in mute invitation, and then closed it lightly around her shoulders when she slid into the bench and tucked herself immediately into his side. Her phone came out of her bra, and Ilya leaned in close to her face. She gave the camera a sweet smile and held her free hand up in a peace sign. Ilya held still and gave her phone his "can I have a picture for my dad/mom/brother/girlfriend/etc." smile.

She snapped half a dozen pictures, tilting her face differently for each one, and then lowered her phone and scooted a foot over so she could turn to give him a grateful smile. "Thanks, he'll be so happy."

Ilya had lifted his arm away from her as soon as she'd started to move, and she made no effort to stay within his personal space, but stood as soon as the phone disappeared back into her bra. He signed a napkin for her, making it out to Bob, and waved as she turned to go.

"How did you strike out on that?" Connors asked, dropping into the seat the server had just vacated. He had no compunctions about being immediately in Ilya's personal space.

"Who said I strike out?" Ilya replied indignantly. "I never strike out in all my life!"

"Come on! My dad is such a big fan? Rookie! C'mere." He put an arm around Ilya's shoulders and scooted closer still, ignoring Ilya's immediate attempt to lean away from him. He smelled like cigarette smoke, and Ilya wanted a cigarette so badly in that moment that he caught himself inhaling deeply, and was disgusted with himself for it.

Oblivious, Connors continued, "Face like yours, you probably never had to practice like…asking, right? So, look, advice from my ugly mug." He waved a hand toward his face and twice-broken nose. "The hot waitress says, 'My dad is such a big fan,' you say, 'Oh really? I'm a big fan of his work, too!' You see?"

Ilya's lips curled up in automatic disgust. "This works for you?"

"Every time, kid."

Ilya took Connors' wrist in two fingers and pried it off his shoulders. "Do not ever give anyone advice ever again. Please. For sake of all human race. We will all die off."

Connors took his hand back with a good natured, "Fine, try to help a guy out…"

"Brother, Rozy does not need help from you," Marly said as he sat down. He had a busty redhead under his arm, and a brunette next to him, who slid on to the couch at Ilya's side.

"Hi," she greeted with a very broad smile, perfect smile. She had freckles, and hazel eyes, and a cute, upturned nose.

"This is Natalie," Marly introduced as if he hadn't just met her himself. "Natalie, this is my good friend, Rozy."

She offered a hand out to him, palm down, and Ilya obligingly took it and made a show of lifting it toward his face. He gave her a subtle tug, which she followed readily. Ilya slid over as soon as she was past his feet. Before she could sit in his lap, and deposited her next to Connors.

"This is our friend, Cony. Be nice to him, he's had a hard night." He patted her hand, and she gave him a disappointed little twitch of her lips, but she turned readily to Connors and let Ilya release her. Ilya stretched and announced, "I am going to call this a night."

"Rozy, no!" Connors immediately complained, but he already had his arm around Natalie, and Marly only held his fist up for a bump as Ilya climbed over his knees.

~*~

"I can't talk long," Shane said stiffly when Ilya answered the phone. "I'm in a stairwell. Rooming with Hayden."

"Metros cannot afford their top rookie to have his own room? How sad," Ilya teased, but he was not as disappointed by the lack of privacy as he would have expected. He and his dick were both still disappointed, but it didn't make Ilya want to hang up the phone. Hearing Shane's voice had become a rarity lately. He was disgustingly happy to have it again, even this version of his voice that was stiff and cold as Pluto.

"Shut up," Shane said, but his voice was less hostile and more…distracted. After a long pause, he said, "Sounds quiet on your end. Where are you?"

A smile pulled wide across Ilya's face, but he stifled his immediate reply. His first impulse was to say he was at some hot woman's house; she was in the bathroom, but she could come back at any minute. He would offer to put Shane on speaker, ask for requests for positions, make a bet on how quickly he could get her to scream his name.

"I am home," Ilya said instead. "Alone," he added. The TV was already muted, but he grabbed the remote and turned it off, and then turned and stretched out on the couch. He was in nothing but his boxers, and he played idly with his half-hard dick as he listened to Shane breathe.

"Oh," Shane said, and maybe Ilya was imagining the slow gust of air that could have been a carefully released breath. Shane cleared his throat. "So… good game. I guess."

Ilya snorted. "You guess."

"Shut up," he said again, lighter still and with a hint of a reluctant laugh. He huffed out a noise that was part exasperation and part amusement. Finally, in his best Canada's Most Earnest Boy voice, he said, "Congratulations on your first hat trick."

"Mmm, thank you. This means a lot, coming from someone who has—how many hat tricks have you had this season, again?"

"You're a fucking asshole," Shane said, now sounding resigned. "I already said congratulations, what more do you want?"

"I want you to put your hand in your pants in that stairwell and get yourself off," Ilya answered on reflex, but it was honest as soon as the words left his tongue.

The response came just as quickly, strangled and a little angry: "Oh, my god, Ilya!"

"It is my celebration, Hollander! You asked what I wanted!" Ilya protested. He slid his hand into his boxers and squeezed experimentally. His dick responded with ready enthusiasm, and he grinned into the darkness as he shuffled out of his boxers. "Too bad you are not here right now. We could celebrate together. Instead, I am here…you are in a cold stairwell…"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and some shuffling and clicking. Ilya let himself imagine for one moment that Shane Hollander had just put his hands down his pants in a stairwell, and how he would look, excited and flushed and embarrassed, watching the nearest door with wide eyes as he leaned back against the railing. He was not foolish enough to believe this was true, but he was foolish enough to want it.

The pause stretched from seconds to a minute, longer. Ilya couldn't make himself say anything else. He just wanted them to be back to where they were before Ilya had blown up their games. He wanted the last weeks of awkward silences and bitten-off responses erased. He wanted to pretend nothing had changed.

"What are you doing to celebrate?" Shane asked finally, almost reluctantly. "What did you already do to celebrate?"

Who did you do, was unspoken, but Ilya heard it, and it made his heart beat out a strange rhythm. He couldn't decide if he was annoyed or thrilled by the unasked question, and he didn't want to think about why he might feel either of those things.

"Went to club with teammates," Ilya said casually. Through the phone, he imagined he could hear the creaking of Shane squeezing his phone. "But…it was boring."

"Boring, huh?" Shane gritted out.

"Mmm, even more boring than talking to you in stairwell."

Another pause. "How unfortunate for you."

"Very," Ilya agreed. "So I come home, now I am here on my couch. Couch is very nice, very soft, feels good when naked."

Shane cleared his throat. He took a breath, and then another. They came out harsh and short through his nose. More shuffling and clicking. The breath sounds got quieter and louder, quieter, and louder. Ilya guessed he was taking the phone away from his ear and putting it back.

After a long time, Shane finally asked, "Are you?"

"What?" Ilya asked innocently.

"…Naked?"

He said the word so softly that Ilya had to stifle a laugh, as if Shane expected that someone was listening but he couldn't help asking anyways. A boy saying a naughty word in a church.

"Mmm, do you like that?" Ilya asked. "If I am naked on my couch, with my dick in my hand?" At Shane's shuddering breath, Ilya continued, "I already fuck myself twice tonight. You think I can do it again? Fucking hat trick?"

Shane groaned softly, but then sighed and said, "I know you can."

"Maybe," Ilya said with forced casualness, but he spread his legs and threw one over the back of the couch, feeling warm and steady in a way that had become foreign in the last several weeks. He stopped to play with his foreskin. "I am very lazy, this is a lot of work."

Snorting, Shane said, "You're probably the least lazy person I know."

Ilya froze with his fingers still curled loosely around his dick, stomach doing a weird clenching tumble and face going hot.

When Ilya had been quiet too long, Shane asked, "Did you fall asleep?"

"Maybe," Ilya said hurriedly, giving himself two fast strokes. "You are too boring, and I—what is this word? Knotted off?"

"I can't tell if you said nodded or knotted," Shane said, sounding a little off-footed and perplexed.

Ilya's brow furrowed. "This is same word you said twice. Stupid language."

Shane's laugh was soft and stifled. "Knotted like…tied a knot? Or nodded like…nod your head?"

Ilya dropped his dick and sat up. "Oh my God, Hollander, you are so bad at this. Still. You are still so bad at this," he bitched, but Shane was laughing quietly at him, and it made him smile very stupidly. "Now I do not even want to." A blatant lie. His dick twitched in sad protest, and Ilya gave it a conciliatory stroke.

"So, I blocked your fucking hat trick?" Shane asked, whispering again.

"All world thinks you are such nice Canadian boy," Ilya said, weirdly proud of Shane despite himself. "I must tell everyone is lie. Shane Hollander is actually asshole."

"No one will believe you," Shane said. His delivery was stilted, but amused. Ilya could practically hear the blush in his voice when he awkwardly continued, "I'm Canada's Hockey Prince. Haven't you heard?"

The groan burst out of Ilya's chest fully formed, and he flopped back into the generous cushions. "Evil," Ilya decided. "You are actually evil. How does no one know this except me?"

The air on the other end of the line went strained again, though Ilya couldn't immediately figure out why. As he listened the tight sound of Shane's breath for a long minute, it occurred to him that evil vampire was a story Shane had probably heard all of his life. The villain in every story, the monster lurking in the alleyway, the mastermind at the middle of any plot.

"Don't worry, Shane," Ilya said after the pause had stretched too long. "I will keep your secret for you."

He cleared his throat at the sharp inhale on the other end of the line and quickly continued, "You are too boring to be evil for real, anyway. Probably you would only be evil for like…accounting. Real estate. Shelters for puppies left out in rain."

Shane's breath came out in a sardonic huff. Another long pause followed. "Thanks."

"Anything for second best player in league," Ilya said blithely.

"Very generous of you," Shane said in a flat voice that made Ilya laugh. "And don't worry. I'll keep your secret, too."

Ilya tilted his head. "Which?"

"That you couldn't make that last shot of the night. You got really close, it was a good effort. Could happen to anyone."

Ilya honestly couldn't believe anyone thought Shane Hollander wasn't mean. "Night is not over, Hollander," he said and pushed himself off the couch. He clearly needed to start keeping lube in his end table.

"It's okay," Shane insisted. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, really."

"Do you think your stairwell is soundproof?" Ilya asked as he dropped onto his bed and hooked a finger around the handle of his nightstand.

"Uh…no? Probably not? I mean, I guess it's all concrete, so maybe?" he said in honest contemplation.

Ilya's chest shook with silent laughter. "You think Hayden will hear it when I make you come in your pants?" Ilya asked once he'd banished the laughter from his throat. The words came out admirably idle. "You are very loud. All of Tennessee might hear."

"I'm not going to do that, Rozanov," Shane said, voice losing its teasing lilt as it dropped into a harsh whisper.

"We'll see," Ilya said. He pulled the lube out and held it close to the phone so Shane would hear the cap click off, and was gratified by a sharp inhale in response. The loud sound of it squeezing out of the bottle got him another inhale and a shaky exhale, and Ilya let it warm up in his palm.

"I should really go back to my room," Shane said weakly.

"You want to do this in front of Hayden?" Ilya asked, infusing surprise into his voice, and grinned at Shane's interrupted vocal clicks as he made several false starts at speaking. "Very nice of you to give him some entertainment. Probably he is lonely."

"Rozanov…" Shane said warningly, but there were no sounds on the other end to suggest he'd gotten up to leave the stairwell, just the slightly labored sound of Shane's breath.

"Rozanov, what?" Ilya challenged. "Rozanov, I am jacking myself off in this public stairwell anyone could come into?"

Shane made a startled, huffing noise, barely audible.

"In San Francisco, maybe I will meet you in public stairwell after game," Ilya mused. He put his slick hand on himself and stroked slowly, arched into it. He thought about the plug in his nightstand, but didn't reach for it. He had one hand on the phone and one hand on his dick, and he was too occupied to make proper use of it.

"I will…push you to rail, so you can see below…pull down your pants…make you hold still for me so I can put my dick inside you. Can you stay still, Shane?" Ilya asked to the sound of a strangled whine.

"What makes you think I would meet you there in the first place?" he asked breathlessly.

"Shane," Ilya admonished. He didn't have to say anything else. Shane's groan was muffled, maybe by his sleeve, but Ilya still heard the soft, annoyed, "Fuck."

"How long will you last?" Ilya asked, stroking himself faster. His breath came out on a harsh shudder, and he pushed his heels into the bed to shove his hips up, watching his own hand on his dick and briefly remembering looking down on Shane's dark head of hair, his fingers buried in it, Shane's muscles going loose enough that Ilya could move his head at will, that trust—

He moaned unwillingly, and heard an answering harsh breath, quickly stifled.

"When I make you come like this, you will watch it shoot all over stairs, make such big mess—"

"Jesus, Rozanov—" Shane hissed. The mingled arousal and indignation made his voice tight and high, but Ilya was locked into his own fantasy, and he could imagine the same tone of voice, the same "Jesus, Rozanov—" as Shane shuddered and clenched around him, hands white-knuckled on the rail, voice echoing in the empty stairwell—

Ilya's thighs and calves, already fatigued from the game and the late hour, trembled violently. His left calf locked up in a cramp, but he stayed where he was, hand flying, and the slick sound of the lube filling the room over the cadence of his own breath—

"Ilya," Shane said very softly in his ear. That shouldn't have been enough, but his cock thickened further, pressure built fast, and then he was painting his own stomach and chest, moaning into his clenched teeth, shaking and spasming as the waves crashed through him.

"Shane," he breathed out unintentionally as he relaxed back to the mattress. Their breaths mingled for a moment over the airspace, his slowly calming, Shane's still harsh. Ilya closed his eyes and grinned lazily. "Double hat trick," he said finally, yawning.

Shane made a disbelieving noise, and then laughed shortly. "Congratulations."

Chapter 12: Chapter Eleven

Shane shifted restlessly on his parents' couch. He couldn't find a position that was comfortable for both his ankle and the rest of him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spent so much time seated, and a combination of the injury and the idleness was irritating him.

In the last game before the Christmas break, he'd taken a hit from a bad angle and gone down awkwardly on his left side. The sharp stab of pain and bloom of heat as he'd hit the ice had let him know what the trainer told him half an hour later during intermission: sprained ankle. His knee and hip had both been red and angry from the impact, but that was just bruising.

He'd been wrapped up, iced, and benched for the rest of the game, but at least not carted off to the hospital on the spot. After the game, he'd been sent for x-rays, just to make sure nothing was broken, pumped full of anti-inflammatories, and then given a set of crutches, an ankle brace, and a knee brace just in case. With a four day break for Christmas, the strict orders to rest and keep his leg elevated hadn't been as frustrating as they would have been otherwise, but that didn't make him any happier to be sitting idly on the couch while his mom bustled around him.

She had never dealt well with him being injured, and he had never dealt well with her not dealing well with his injuries. Courtesy of his heritage, he healed faster than a human, he was more resistant to injury and illness in the first place, and he was better able to handle pain. He'd always thought that should have comforted her, but because it meant he was so rarely sick or injured, it was like she stored up all her concerned mothering and needed to get it all out before the window expired.

"Mom, would you please sit down?" he asked for the hundredth time as she passed behind the couch again, moving everything on the table behind him and spraying the surface down with Pledge. The citrus scent made his nose itch.

"Let me just finish this, and I will," she promised, but her weight barely came to rest in the recliner before she popped up again and said, "Shoot, I forgot your tea."

Shane hadn't asked for tea, but when she brought the steaming mug back with the string and tag dangling over the side on a little tray, he took it and rested it on the pillow in his lap with only a thank you.

"Are you warm enough?" she asked, frowning down at him. He was in sweats, a Metros crewneck, wool socks, and a thick knitted blanket.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he reassured her, again. He was honestly too warm, but if he started shifting around and trying to take layers off, she would start messing with the thermostat again. "Thank you for the tea."

"Of course, honey. When is your next dose of—"

"In like three hours," Shane interrupted. He didn't like to take painkillers, but he wanted the brace off as quickly as possible, and he knew the anti-inflammatories were necessary for that.

She hovered for a minute, and then said, "Let me go start lunch," and left the room. "Did your Ojiichan get your email with the x-rays?" she called back from the kitchen.

Shane felt a moment's regret that he hadn't decided to stay home for the holiday, but he knew that she would have just come to him if he had, or else called him every hour. She would have been too anxious to relax, and he would have been too anxious over her anxiety to relax.

"Yeah, he said he agrees with the doctor. Just a sprain. With my healing, it should be fine in a few days."

"Oh, good!"

Shane tried to refocus his attention on the Christmas movie she'd turned on an hour ago. He hadn't caught the title, but it was interchangeable with just about any other Hallmark Christmas romance: a stressed but very successful professional with a high-paying job in a big city, forced by dubious circumstances to make a trip to a small town out in…Montana, maybe? Where she promptly ran into a burly Men's Health cover model masquerading as a humble down-to-earth cattle rancher who did not own a single shirt that wasn't plaid. He was a bear shifter, and they'd actually cast a bear shifter for the role, so when Mattie wandered out of her room at midnight for unclear reasons to see him shifting in the moonlight, he really was shifting for the camera.

It was the most fascinating part of the movie, and Shane watched with the same rapt attention as the beleaguered exec as Jackson stretched into the moonlight—clearly naked, though tastefully shadowed—and then a large brown bear dropped down on all fours.

He had a vague notion that it wasn't so smooth and quick—or quiet—of a process, but he'd never actually seen someone shift outside of a television screen. He didn't think they actually glowed, but the faint blue halo was a common TV trope to give a magical cast to something otherwise mundane.

For a moment, he considered texting Hayden to ask if he glowed when he shifted.

The two leads had a touching moment, her inexplicable and only vaguely referenced fear of bears overcome as she tentatively put a hand out to stroke his giant head and rub his plush ears. He leaned into her palm and looked up at her with his soulful brown eyes, and then nudged her back into the warmth of the house with a series of low grumbling noises and a headbutt to her backside. He went loping off into the trees while she stared after him from the French doors, face framed in the frosted glass.

In Shane's lap, his phone buzzed. He tore his eyes away from the screen and dug it out from under the pillow, giving his neglected tea a sip on the way. It had cooled off enough that he could take a big gulp of it. He'd let it steep too long. It had gone unpleasantly bitter under the honey, but if the mug was still full when his mom came out with lunch, she would tut and take it away and "Let me warm that up for you," her way back into the kitchen to make a fresh mug of a different tea, and then bring it back with a, "See if you like that one better," so he swallowed half of it in one pull.

Setting the mug down, he turned his phone over.

H: Hey, Holls. How's the ankle?

S: Fine. I'll be back at practice on Monday.

H: The world isn't going to end if you sit one out, you know.

S: I know. But I don't need to. It was a really minor sprain.

It hadn't been really minor, but, for him, it might as well have been. The coaches would probably put him in a no-touch practice jersey and stick him with doing solo drills and PT for a week, but he anticipated a clean bill before the next game the day after New Years. Yoshikawa had already discussed his advanced healing and promised him she would sign off on a full return as soon as he could demonstrate full mobility and promise her to her face that he wasn't in pain.

She hadn't suggested he amend his diet to include a blood donation, and his dad had known better than to even offer, though Ojiichan reminded him that he would probably be back in skating shape inside a day if he did. Shane had ignored that part of his email; they'd never tested how much blood impacted his healing, and Shane wasn't about to start, so it was a moot point.

His phone buzzed again.

H: We'll see.

Shane flushed without cause, hearing Ilya's voice as clearly as if he were on the line, speaking into Shane's ear: "We will see."

He was developing a Pavlovian response to the phrase, and a faint pulse of arousal made him glare down at his lap through the pillow. Another text came through, and he banished the errant thought to smile at the picture from Hayden. It was a professional photo of him and Jacki in front of a giant, riotously decorated tree in coordinating white and blue outfits, with the twins held between them. One of the girls was in her fox form, white dress with a giant blue bow tangled around her feet as she strained to escape Hayden's arms, and the other sat in Jacki's lap, red face and bawling.

H: What do you think? This one for the Christmas card?

Shane snorted and typed back, "Definitely."

"What are you smiling at?" Mom asked, coming around the back of the couch and leaning over his shoulder.

Shane jumped, nearly knocking the tray out of her hands, but her reflexes were nearly as good as his were, and she saved his lunch from ending up in his lap.

"Sorry," she said, setting the tray down on the couch next to him, and then took the smaller tray with the nearly empty tea cup out of his lap.

Shane opened the picture again and turned his phone so she could see it. "Pike family Christmas card," he explained.

She laughed, petted his hair, and then returned to the kitchen and came back a moment later with her own tray to settle in the recliner. Shane's tray held a pair of bulging chicken sandwiches on rye, piled high with sprouts and cucumbers, and a second plate full of vegetable sticks with hummus.

"What did I miss?" Mom asked, opening the recliner and making herself comfortable.

On the screen, the rancher was regrettably back in his red and black plaid, but he had the sleeves rolled up past his elbows as he dragged a Christmas tree through the snow and Mattie came stumbling after him in her sleek jacket and impractical boots.

"Not much," Shane said, taking a carrot stick and dipping it in the hummus. "Just… all of it, I think?"

She rolled her eyes at him, but before she could ask if he minded restarting the movie, he picked the remote up and backed out to the main menu, and then hit Play from Beginning.

"You're my favorite son," she told him, crunching into a carrot stick as the DVD player whirrrred back up and the movie restarted.

Shane's phone went off again. He looked down, expecting another picture from the Pike Family Photo Shoot, but it was Rozanov.

L: how is lower body injury?

Shane's brows drew together while he chewed restlessly at his lower lip. In the week and a half since the stairwell incident, Shane had been trying to find his footing with Rozanov again. He hadn't meant to let anything happen that night in the hotel stairwell. He'd had some vague idea that he would call Rozanov and clear the air, maybe even put a stop to…whatever they were doing.

Just like every other time he'd tried to do that, it had failed spectacularly, and now he was even less sure of what to do about him.

He had not put his hand in his pants and jacked off in the stairwell, but he'd been alarmingly close to it as he'd listened to the catch and whine in Rozanov's voice, the unmistakable sound of slick skin moving fast over slick skin, the way his breath had turned to hitching huffs as he neared climax, the sounds he'd made in the moment. Shane had very nearly almost not needed to put his hand down his pants to make a fool of himself.

They hadn't talked since, but they'd started texting again; more than just good morning and good night, if not much.

Shane had scored a hat trick against Nashville, smiled at Rozanov's mock-outraged messages that night after the game, and dodged reporters asking him if he'd done it in response to Ilya's hat trick against Montreal. When someone pointed out that he was three points ahead of Rozanov in the scoring race, he'd only held down a smile and pretended he wasn't perfectly well aware of it.

And then a Carolina defenseman had knocked him off the puck three nights later and put him out of half the game, and Ilya had taken a lead on him by one.

He'd made himself too busy to answer any phone calls from Rozanov after his injury hit the news circuit, and then he'd been able to truthfully say that he was at his parents and couldn't talk.

S: Just a sprained ankle

Telling a player on another team exactly what his lower body injury was would get him a harsh talking-to if his coaches every found out, but setting aside whatever they were or were not to each other, he didn't think Ilya would ever use information on an injury against him, anymore than Shane would use it against Ilya.

He reached a hand up and tugged at the silver chain on his neck. Even when it was only his parents in the house, he still wore it, just to keep the habit. It felt tight. He stuck another carrot stick in his mouth and held it there while he tapped his fingers on the keys without actually typing anything.

L: maybe you call later?

L: i make it feel better ;)

S: Did you already forget that I'm at my parents' house?

L: so be quiet like mouse

S: No

L: (((

They'd fallen into just this since Shane had finally broken and texted him back. There were no more messages about Boston traffic, or the travesty of American deserts that all tasted overwhelmingly of butter. Shane did not offer him unsolicited advice on his diet, or send pictures out of airplane windows. It was a careful resetting of boundaries that Shane hated almost as much as he'd hated the way his throat had clenched when he'd seen Ilya in the tabloids every other week.

They were two people who sometimes had sex, and that was the extent of their interactions, and it was fine. And since that was the extent of their interactions, it didn't bother him when he saw some random pretty waitress in Boston post a picture of herself cuddled up tight to Ilya's side with her breasts nearly spilling out her top and his arm around her, taken only hours before Rozanov had talked himself through an orgasm in Shane's ear.

It didn't bother him at all.

It was probably even better this way. A casual sex partner didn't need to know about his heritage, and he didn't need to know about any of Rozanov's activities outside of whatever hotel room they ended up in. They could be friendly and not interfere in each other's personal lives.

Shane might be possessive by nature, but there were a lot of things that he suppressed about his nature. He would see Ilya in San Francisco for All Stars, and they would… probably hook up, and then Shane would go back to his room, and whatever Rozanov decided to do with his time before or after that was not Shane's business.

S: Having a good break?

Shane stared at his own sent message and breathed out a long and slow exhale, shoulders falling.

On screen, Mattie explained to her hyper, perkily-dressed assistant that there was no way she was going to Clancy, Montana in December.

~*~

Shane drifted off to sleep before the end of the movie, and never learned if love was enough to overcome the busy exec's attachment to her career, and her lattes, and her still murky fear of bears to trade it all in for small town life with a rugged supermodel of a bear shifter.

These movies never ended in the simple farmer following his successful love interest back to her sleek Fifth Avenue apartment, and Shane thought that was a shame, but his mom loved them. They were, she had explained once, her one girl indulgence in a houseful of hopeless boys. Shane dutifully watched at least one with her every Christmas, usually with his dad sitting on the other side of the couch and "Just making an observation"ing his way through it until Mom was laughing along and often throwing pillows at him.

They were good to fall asleep to, at least, with their predictable plots and general lack of sudden, loud noises or flashing lights. And it didn't hurt that the lineup of leading men were all in the same class as the plaid-loving bear shifter rancher.

He hadn't consciously heard the truck pull up, but it must have been what woke him. The next thing he was aware of was his dad opening the front door and stamping water off his boots on the mat. A gust of cold, wet air blew in with him, and Shane yawned as he threw the blanket off his chest. He was boiling in his layers and groggy from the unaccustomed mid-day nap.

"Aw, did I miss Cold Pine Christmas?" Dad called, setting his armful of bags down in the entry way as he got his boots and jacket off. "I was really looking forward to that one!"

Shane looked up to see the movie paused on the end credits.

"I'm sure Shane wouldn't mind watching it a third time, if you're really disappointed that we didn't wait for you!" Mom said, coming out of the kitchen to lean against the door way and smirk.

Shane thought he probably would mind, but he said, "I still haven't made it past the sixty-minute mark."

"Oh, I think we have at least five more in the pile we can pick from," Dad said with a laugh. "Why don't we start the next one at the sixty-minute mark and see how well the two halves mesh?"

"Why don't we start one of your mountaineering documentaries at the sixty-minute mark and see how well that meshes," Mom said, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the kitchen.

The sky had been murky all day, so it wasn't good for judging time, but from the savory scent, Shane guessed he'd slept through the afternoon and she was working on dinner.

"How are you feeling, Son?" Dad asked, stepping up behind the couch and taking him by both shoulders. He squeezed briefly before letting go, almost before Shane had registered that he was being touched.

"Hot," Shane answered, pulling his sweatshirt off.

"Let me adjust the thermostat," Mom called immediately, coming back around the corner from the kitchen.

"It's okay, Mom, I just needed to take the sweatshirt off," Shane tried, but he heard the distinctive click-click-click of her pushing the temperature buttons anyways.

"Just let her do it, Shane," Dad advised. He set a book down in Shane's lap. "Saw that at the store on my home, thought you might like it." With an exaggerated glance over his shoulder, he said, "Promise I won't tattle if you want to read through the next Christmas romcom."

"I heard that!"

"Oops," Dad said unconvincingly. He leaned over to pick up the grocery bags and was gone before Shane had even lifted the book out of his lap.

Life at Zero Degrees, A Memoir. The cover picture was Stanislas Gaudreau in bulky, quilted brown pads. He'd been a goalie for the Admirals in the sixties, and he looked every inch the bear shifter at 6'7" and 280 pounds, further bulked out by the pads. Shane had faced down some big goalies, but he thought getting a puck past Gaudreau must have been a challenge even if he never moved a muscle.

Shane smiled at the book, and wondered if Gaudreau would have been successful in charming a Manhattan power exec into moving away to his quaint ranch in the forest.

"Thanks, Dad!" he called, but he set the book aside without opening it and carefully stretched his ankle where it was propped on the pillows. It was tight, and his toes felt cold even in the heavy woolen socks. Moving his ankle also sent a stab of pain up his leg and made his toes tingle. He bit his lip to avoid making any noise as he continued carefully rolling it around. To top it off, his hips and knees were sore and throbbing from sitting in one position all day, his ass was asleep, and his back was stiff. He needed to get up and stretch, but mostly, he needed to go to the bathroom.

Pulling the mountain of pillows out from under his leg, he levered himself off the couch, but the first hint of weight on his injured ankle and sleeping foot sent stinging pain lancing up his leg. He stumbled, cursed, and grabbed wildly for purchase. In the process, he smashed his knee into the coffee table and almost fell over it, but just managed to get a grip on the back of the couch before he fully lost his balance.

"Shane?" Mom called in alarm, running into the room just as Shane managed to turn and drop onto the couch with a soft oath.

Her eyes were wide in her pale face, and she looked ready to leap on any threat. Shane had his mouth open to reassure her that he was fine, but then Dad came rushing in behind her. He bumped into her, something fell out of his hand and hit the floor with the loud, sharp crash of breaking glass.

The next moments seemed to slow:

Mom's fangs dropped, her eyes went dark, and her hair exploded out of its loose tail. She spun with a spitting hiss, hands coming up in claws.

Dad stood very still, barely even flinching as she rounded on him.

The moment passed, and Shane stared, wide-eyed, as Mom grabbed Dad by his arms and buried her face in his chest, breathing hard. Dad reached up and smoothed her hair down, wrapped his arms around her, and rocked gently side-to-side. He leaned down to put his cheek on the top of her head and gave Shane a reassuring smile as he continued to smooth the errant strands of her hair that were still clinging to him like she'd stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

Shane couldn't move. He'd seen this before; not often, but it wasn't the first time Mom had been startled or annoyed enough in her own territory to lose control of her fangs. It had been years since the last time it had happened, and that had been only a hiss and a flash of teeth over a board game when Ojiichan was being obnoxious.

His mom was the most controlled person he knew. The reminder that even she could lose it when pushed was like cold saltwater to the face.

His eyes went up to his dad. For the first time, he wondered at the control and confidence it took to stand there so calmly with a startled predator bearing down on him, fangs and claws inches from his skin. The trust was overwhelming and it was…insane.

Would Ilya stand like that, calm and unmoving if he startled Shane into dropping his fangs? Or would he do what any sane human would do and run? Would Shane chase him if he did? Could he stop himself even if he wanted to?

"It's okay, sorry I startled you," Dad said softly. He backed away enough to see her face and let her go when she nodded.

They spoke softly for a moment. Not so softly that Shane couldn't hear them, but softly enough that he could choose to focus on getting his limbs all rearranged and getting back up off the couch instead of the private words they passed back and forth. As soon as Shane was back on his feet, Mom turned back around.

"Are you okay, Shane?" she asked. Her voice had gone a little shaky, and her eyes were damp.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just need to go to the bathroom. Sorry that I…" he made a vague gesture around the room. He hadn't knocked anything over except all his pillows, though the coffee table was off center, and he'd pulled one of the couch cushions out as he'd tried to regain his balance.

His assurances did not seem to comfort her. She came around the recliner with her hands already held out for him. "Were you dizzy? Are you really sure you didn't hit your head when you fell?"

He wanted to protest that he hadn't fallen, he'd been hit, but he didn't think that would make her feel better.

"No, not dizzy at all. My foot was just asleep, and I think I got caught in the blanket. I'm fine, really." He edged away from her hands, but when Dad held out his crutches over the back of the couch, he took them and used their support to negotiate his way around the coffee table and the other recliner.

"Go around the other way," Dad said, gesturing to the hall. "I'll get the glass cleaned up."

"Let me get your slippers," Mom said, hurrying around him to where he'd taken the slippers off earlier while he did some light exercise.

Shane let her put one on his injured foot, and then awkwardly hopped into the other, but when she tried to straighten out his pant legs, he insisted, "I really need to go to the bathroom," and she stepped out of his way.

He could hear his parents continuing to talk in muted voices as he used the crutches to ease into the hallway and down to the bathroom. Once there, he emptied his bladder, and then turned and sat on the toilet as it flushed, staring bleakly at the crutches leaning against the wall.

He couldn't get the look on his dad's face out of his head. How calm he'd been after the brief moment of surprise that had to be as much the broken glass as his wife rounding on him with her fangs out. The way he'd let her tuck herself into his body, close to his beating heart.

"You'll find someone, some day," his mom had told him when he was fifteen and he'd guiltily admitted to kissing Lana McDonough after practice one afternoon. "You'll find someone who will be the rock for you that your father is for me, I know you will. But until you find that person, you need to be careful who choose to be…intimate with."

He'd been intimate with Ilya already, and nothing bad had happened. He hadn't dropped his fangs, he hadn't given into any urge to eat him—he hadn't even really felt the urge to eat him. And if sometimes he wanted to fight back when Ilya held him down, or he sometimes wanted to mark Ilya's skin enough to warn off any other potential bedmates…that didn't mean anything.

Maybe he had too much human blood. Maybe it wasn't a problem for him.

"Are you fucking stupid?" he hissed at his own hands.

Lately, he had to replace his mouthguard at least once a month for slicing into it with his fangs, and he'd pierced clean through it the last time they'd played Boston and Ilya had gotten that fucking hattie. It was honestly beyond belief that he hadn't already flashed his fangs at Ilya, and one day, Ilya was going to startle him out of sleep, or really piss him off, and Shane was going to turn on him with his fangs out, and Ilya was going to see a monster and run, and Shane would just have to hope Ilya ran fast enough to be out of range of his first reaction to give chase.

He braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to bury his hands in his hair, digging at the faint electrical tingles licking at his scalp.

Chapter 13: Chapter Twelve

"Why San Francisco?" Ilya complained into his phone as he got into the taxi. He gave the driver the hotel name and settled back in the seat.

"Shifter-fae politics," Sveta said without sympathy. "You wouldn't have been much happier in Nashville. It's not that much warmer, and that was the other option on the table. Or so the rumors say."

"At least Nashville is not foggy," Ilya said and made sure she could hear the pout in his voice. "Foggy in Boston, Foggy in San Francisco. Cold and wet in Boston, cold and wet in San Francisco. Why not just in Boston, then?"

"The goal is to grow the game, not to cater to your comfort," she said with a distinct lack of compassion for his plight. "The Mission is the newest team to the league, they need the spotlight."

"Florida needs spotlight," Ilya argued.

She snorted. "Your assessment has nothing at all to do with the fact that Florida is warm enough in February for you to laze about next to a pool?"

Making an exaggerated sound of indignation, Ilya said. "Me? A pool? Never."

"And I'm sure any concerns over the weather have nothing to do with the missed opportunity to model your newest swimsuit in front of a certain someone," she continued over him with a laugh that no one else would hear buried in her words.

Ilya regretted that she'd found out about Shane for a few reasons, but at the moment, it was mostly that she was better armed to tease him since then, and she took full advantage at every possible opportunity. "This is—what is this called when you say dirty illegal lies?"

"Slander?" she offered. Ilya could hear both her raised eyebrow and her smirk.

"Slander," he agreed. "This is slander. You are doing slander against me."

Sveta snorted out a laugh, but then her end of the line went muffled for a moment, though Ilya could still hear the faint sounds of voices. After a pause, she uncovered the phone, but switched to Russian. "Do I need to tell you to be careful?"

"Of course not," Ilya said, annoyed, but considering the way she'd learned his secret, he was going to allow her a full six months of being insufferable before he started retaliating.

She hummed in something like disbelief, but then said, "Okay, have fun. I need to go. Some of us are still working."

"I am working," Ilya protested. "Literally, I am working. This is my job."

"Right," she said, and then added, "Have fun at work and don't annoy any of your coworkers into murdering you. I am not going to Romania by myself this summer, and if you cancel on me again, there will be consequences."

"I will wait to be murdered until after July," he promised, because he was too much of a gentleman to let her go to her grandmother's old house alone for the third time in a row.

Ilya said goodbye, and she made her customary humming noise of farewell, and then hung up the phone. As soon as Ilya took the phone away from his ear, he became aware of the driver looking at him furtively in the rearview mirror.

Once the driver saw that Ilya had noticed his staring, he cleared his throat, blushed faintly, and said, "My dad's a big Boston fan."

Ilya almost laughed, and he almost said, "I am big fan of his work, too," on reflex, but a lifetime of keeping his face neutral saved him at the last minute. The man wasn't unattractive, exactly, but definitely not Ilya's type, and he didn't need to accidentally inspire any expectations—or a story for whatever rag would pick it up—just for an inside joke Connors wasn't even in the right zip code to appreciate.

"Not you?" he asked instead, hiking his eyebrow.

The man blushed harder. "Uh…more of a Pittsburgh man," he admitted.

"Very unfortunate for you," Ilya said, but he let the man bait him into an argument about the Industrialists' abysmal performance so far in the season.

"The Indies have the heart!" was his chief defense of his favorite team, and this was apparently sufficient to excuse the worst of their bad record, but not enough to excuse Tremaine for his "dumb-ass roster changes" or the organization as a whole for dealing his favorite d-man to "Houston for fuck's sake, am I supposed to root for Texas now, fuck my life. They don't deserve him."

Once they pulled up at the hotel, Ilya let the man take a picture for his dad, and then he signed a hastily emptied coffee cup, and left a big tip.

He had a few hours before the first media event, and then some kind of mixer in the hotel banquet room. He would be wearing the A for the weekend opposite Shane, of course, with a team full of European transplants. With six Russians and a full three quarters of his roster made up of Slavs while Shane's team was made up overwhelmingly of Canadians, it would be almost like old times. He still didn't agree that Team North America should have Andropov just because the man was technically American. He was also Ukrainian, wasn't he?

Most of his luggage had traveled ahead of him and was already in his room when he arrived. He took a moment to make sure it was all there, threw his jacket on the bed, and then dropped into the chair and took his phone out.

I: here yet?

J: I got in an hour ago.

J: I'm in makeup now.

Ilya dropped his head back and laughed. Knowing he wasn't going to get it, he still wrote back:

I: send pic ;)

J: Fuck off.

I: why? (((

I: i want to see how pretty you are

There was a long pause, and then:

J: How does it feel to want things?

"Shane Hollander," Ilya said aloud, clicking hit tongue against the roof of his mouth several times, grinning. "So mean."

I: come to my room

I: i will show how it feels ;)

J: No.

J: You come to my room.

I: ok. what is your #?

Another pause, and Ilya imagined that he was getting that subtle eyeshadow applied, only a shade or two darker than his natural skin tone—something that matched his freckles—and mascara swiped over his lashes with the makeup artist holding his face and telling him to look up. He imagined Shane would have his face set like it was a test he had to pass, or a trial to overcome. The poor makeup artist with such a canvas in front of them being the beneficiary of Shane's most dead-eyed game face gaze.

J: I'm not even checked in yet.

J: And I'm not giving it to you anyways.

Ilya narrowed his eyes at his phone, chewed on his lower lip for a moment in consideration, and then typed out:

I: i beat you in skills and you come to my room

J: What do I get if I win?

I: i come to your room ;)

Waiting until the next day for Shane to have a sufficient excuse to see him was frustrating, but Ilya expected to be locked up until late in the evening anyway. His only media event was some kind of red carpet bullshit thing that he had an outlandishly loud suit for, and then meeting the team, and probably going out with them. Shane would be doing the same thing. He would probably be giving his wingers a speed-dating style interrogation and offering his thoughts on their play styles. No way he hadn't been reviewing tape.

Shane didn't respond, and Ilya finally had to give up in favor of a shower to wash the airport off before he was due in the makeup chair himself.

~*~

Shane wore a very sensible and boring navy blue suit with a sensible and boring red tie, tied together with a sensible and boring pair of polished oxfords.

Ilya had modeled an extensive selection of suits for Sveta, and she had chosen a wine red suit with a silk paisley lining, black shirt, golden tie, and ombre crocodile leather shoes.

He spotted Shane at one corner, shoulders still and thumbs awkwardly hooked into his pockets as he listened intently to a reporter's question. Casually, Ilya reached around him to tweak his perfect tie as he passed behind him. Mid-sentence, Shane's head turned sharply to watch Ilya do a flashy quarter-turn. Ilya walk backwards for a few paces to grin at him.

"Someone invited you, Hollander?"

Shane's mouth opened, and then he stopped and closed it again. "See you on the ice, Rozanov," he said after a pause that was just long enough to be obvious that it wasn't his first response.

Ilya was cornered by a pair of cameras before he could respond, and he only saw Shane in bits and pieces for the rest of the evening, but what was always true was Shane standing awkwardly like he wasn't already one of the best players in the league, like his points for the season didn't outstrip most of the people in the room, like he was a gazelle among lions. And there was one particular lion who spent a lot of time in his shadow.

"You and Hunter have some kind of history?" Miranov asked in Russian, jerking his head at where Hunter stood at Shane's side, effortlessly stylish in a sleek and well-fitted black suit. Shane was trapped between him and a cocktail table with a glass of ginger ale in hand.

"What? No. Why would I have history with Hunter?" Ilya muttered darkly. "Isn't he like a million years old?"

"Oooookay," Miranov said, but he hiked one bushy brow at Ilya and unsubtly moved so he was blocking Ilya's line of sight as another of their teammates joined them.

The event ended at ten, but Ilya was dragged out for "Real vodka, what is this shit anyways?" afterward, and he only barely saw Hunter's friendly hand on the middle of Shane's back, ushering him in the other direction as he went.

In the car, he pulled out his phone and scowled at the lack of notifications.

I: Making friends?

J: Not sure about friends.

J: Good group. We should mesh well enough.

I: You will mesh very well with Hunter, yes?

J: He's my RW.

J: Should be good.

J: Any good prospects on your side?

Ilya clenched his jaw several times, and then put his phone back into his pocket without responding. If he was irritated by the invitations to dance and put away more shots of real vodka than he should have with practice and a skills competition the next day, that was a result of having not a single annoying American or boring Canadian in sight for a whole night.

~*~

Ilya set a record for the accuracy event, and then had to watch as Shane shattered it by nearly a whole second, less than a minute later.

Hunter leaned over to offer Shane some kind of compliment as he sat back down, and Ilya pointedly did not listen to it or look at them. When he did finally look over, he saw Hunter's head turned slightly and chin tilted down to look at Ilya through the plexiglass separating the two team benches. Ilya turned to meet his eyes, and Hunter's lips curled as he turned his head away.

"Remember our deal?" Ilya asked Shane as he skated past the bench for the next event, and was treated to Shane's eyes following him intently onto the ice.

He heard Hunter ask, "What deal?" but he didn't hear Shane's response before he was out of range.

A lane had been outlined on the ice, wide cones extending out to either side of the nets to mark the edges. Ilya was directed to his starting position on the right side of the rink. On the other end of the rink, Merced crouched down, waiting for the buzzer to sound. He was a rookie forward for Mr. Taxi Driver's favorite Pittsburgh Industrialists. This was supposed to be all for fun, but Ilya stretched his neck side-to-side and got himself into position to make Mr. Taxi Driver's next dinner with his dad more interesting.

Ilya put aside his lingering hangover and tore through the lap with a very comfortable margin that earned him a flared-nose huff of breath from Shane as he skated back past Team North America's bench.

Team North America all greeted their returning rookie with back slaps like Ilya hadn't just handed him his ass on a plate with a complimentary side dish, and Ilya made it a point not to look in Shane's direction as he sat back down.

Dryssen gave Ilya a companionable slap on the shoulder, and Eksell leaned around him to hold a fist out for Ilya to bump.

Ilya tied Shane on stick handling down to the millisecond, but Shane's monstrous work ethic put him ahead for points in one timers over Ilya's score in the passing challenge. Ilya was torn between being turned on and furious as Shane sunk each goal without a fumble, but he settled uncomfortably on turned on when Shane smirked at him on the way back to his bench.

During the break, Ilya filled a sink with a cold water and put his entire head into it. Miranov tossed a towel at him with a derisive laugh as soon as Ilya came up for air.

"Young people these days cannot hold their vodka," he commented to more general laughter. Ilya was not the worst off in the room, but he didn't need to poke at anyone else to make himself look better. If he really wanted to, he had half a dozen picks for someone clearly not dealing well with the aftermath of the previous night. Like Lepola, who kept his head firmly down, eyes closed and breathing through his nose as Ilya shook the water out of his hair.

"And I still out skate you by two seconds. Maybe worry less about holding your vodka and more about skating faster than slug in syrup," Ilya replied, which almost got him punched if the curled fist and flashing yellow-gold eyes were any judge. He thought Miranov was a bear shifter, but maybe not. Maybe it was just because the man's blunt features and thick brows looked like a bear even without shifting. Next time he faced Denver, he would have to be mindful of where his countryman was on the ice.

They were given the five-minute warning, and Ilya dried his hair roughly before tromping out for the next event.

~*~

The ocean was red and gold with sunset when Ilya finally stepped onto the third floor balcony seating area and found Shane standing alone at the railing, staring out into the bay. The Golden Gate Bridge was a dark slash across the horizon, backlit by the setting sun, and the boats on the water were dark, bobbing shapes on its fire lit surface. From a distance, they might as well have been ducks in a pond.

San Francisco's moody sky was full of clouds that picked up the light and burned pink and white-gold with deep purple shadows, and the air off the water tasted strongly of salt and that particular note of a harbor inhabited by humans. Ilya still would have preferred a sandy beach in Florida, but the sky was spectacular in the dying throes of the daylight.

The air was chilly enough that Ilya wished he'd grabbed a jacket, though it was very warm compared to what he would have expected in Moscow in February. It was certainly cold enough that it had driven any other hotel guests back inside, but Shane was in a hoodie and jeans, bare hands griping the ornate wrought-iron railing. Ilya could just see his face from where he stood against the brick wall of the building, but he didn't understand the broken way he stared out into the bay.

Heartbreak. Grief.

Shane had beat him in the skills challenge by one goddamned point, and maybe he hadn't taken the whole thing, but what did that matter? Did it bother him that much that Hunter had taken the top spot by one point as well?

Ilya stared at the side of Shane's face, highlighted golden in the fading sunlight, and couldn't find it in himself to be annoyed. Whatever was rolling around inside his head to make him look this devastated was beyond a skills competition, and for a moment, Ilya wondered if he'd gotten some kind of horrible news after they'd left the ice.

He had a terrifying impulse to walk up behind him and put his arms around Shane's waist and kiss the back of his neck. Not for sex, not even to get a response out of him. Just to feel him relax, to soothe the tension in his shoulder, to erase the shattered look in his eyes.

Ilya knew he should turn around and go back inside, but when he pushed off the cold brick wall, his feet carried him forward.

"Trying to escape our deal, Hollander?" Ilya asked as he stepped up to Shane's side.

Shane flinched in surprise, and then shook his head slightly side-to-side like coming out of a trance. He swayed automatically toward Ilya, and then quickly away.

"Fuck off, Rozanov," he said without any heat, voice barely a murmur, but he did glance over at Ilya beside him. His expression was strangely alien, dark-eyed and as cold as the Pacific Ocean lapping at the craggy shore somewhere below them.

Ilya shivered reflexively. It had been a long time since he'd felt that brief flicker of awareness that was he was in the presence of a predator.

After a long pause where Shane's eyes went back out to the bay like they were tied on strings attached to the distant bridge, his brows furrowed, and he looked at Ilya sidelong. "I won. Why would I be trying to escape?"

Ilya's lips pulled into a smirk. "So, what is your room number?"

Shane blinked and cast a surreptitious look around at the cold and empty balcony. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously," Ilya said, exasperated. He made a dramatic showing of looking around at the chairs that were covered in canvas, still holding standing puddles from the afternoon's rain, and the empty tables beaded with water. "Who do you think is out here? For anyone who is not Russian—or crazy Canadian—it is cold like having wooden limbs. There is no one, Hollander."

Shane rolled his eyes. "There are a lot of Russians and crazy Canadians in the hotel right now," he pointed out, but he didn't turn to look at Ilya again. The sea below them was going dark as the sun sank closer to the horizon and shadows stretched out to engulf it.

"Okay, this is true," Ilya granted. "In Russia, this is very nice evening. Maybe I will call them all and tell them to come out."

Shane snorted. "This is warmer than home for me, too."

"Oh, good. You call all the crazy Canadians, and we will have party."

"I think the only people here who aren't from cold areas are Andropov and Jameson," Shane said with a softening to his voice like he'd finally breathed the ice out of his lungs

When Ilya looked over at him, some of the undefined sorrow in his expression had leaked out, and he looked less foreign in the lengthening dark. Ilya made an obnoxious, rude noise just to collect a twitch of Shane's lips. "Andropov is wasted on Team North America," he said with heavily exaggerated annoyance.

Finally, Shane turned his head enough to give Ilya a raised eyebrow. "He was born and grew up in San Diego."

"So? His parents are from Ukraine. Tell him to come to our locker room tomorrow, we will give him better sweater. Make his grandparents happy that their grandson will not lose very important game."

"Remind me who did better in Skills today?" Shane asked, tone ringing with that earnestness that made him such a magnet for every journalist with a camera.

"Hunter, and you, and then five Europeans," Ilya reminded him readily, counting them off on his fingers.

Shane snorted. "Asshole."

"You asked." Ilya shrugged, taking his other hand out of his hoodie pocket long enough to hold them both open before shoving them both back inside the warm pocket. He'd always had poor circulation in his hands, and they were cold even when the air was warm. Shane's bare hands on the railing might be stuck there if he left them too much longer.

"And Andropov came right after you in the rankings."

"Yes, this is what I say. Five Europeans."

So, Andropov should be counted for Team Europe, but he didn't actually care. The other rookie was only a middling talent on a forward line, but he liked the way Shane's eyes flashed at him for a moment. He was standing in one of the few beams of sunlight still escaping the shadow of the hills and his eyes nearly glowed with it before he rolled them and looked away again.

Ilya gave Shane a few moments of quiet while his face turned back out toward the water, watched his eyes shudder closed on a breeze of salty sea air, chest rising as he filled it with the chilly wind, and then slowly emptying.

"So?" Ilya prompted after a minute passed with nothing but the surrounding city noises between them.

Shane opened his eyes. "So what?"

Ilya took his hand out again and made an impatient gesture with two fingers. "You win, I come to your room. This is our deal. Unless you want to forfeit? You come to my room, I will allow it. Scott Hunter is across hall, I think—maybe you like this better? You want him to listen?"

Shane blanched unexpectedly. He was quiet for so long that Ilya thought he wasn't going to speak at all, and then he hung his head between his shoulders. "Five-twelve," he said under his breath.

Ilya turned without another word and walked away. "Nine o'clock," he said over his shoulder, and then stepped gratefully back into the warm interior of the hotel. He looked back once the door was closed to see Shane still standing at the rail, staring out into space as the sun took that last quick dive behind the hills, and the tiny shaft of sunlight on the balcony vanished. Shane's form turned into a darker silhouette against the twilight gray, and then the string of lights hanging above his head flickered on.

Backing away, Ilya left before any of his curious teammates could run into him and wonder what he was staring at. He'd been dodging them since they left the locker room. He had endured Miranov's snide comments—which had slipped from the friendly ribbing of the night before to genuine dislike—and had hustled Lepola out of the room before the others could get their hands on him and drag him back out.

Head Coach Liepins had given them a pass for the night before, but he'd clapped his hands sharply together before leaving them to get re-dressed. He'd reminded them that they had a game the next night, and maybe it was for fun and charity, but he didn't want to deal with anyone puking their guts up before—or during—the game. He'd unfairly given Ilya a long look that Ilya had resented extremely. He hadn't thrown up from exertion in at least five years, and he wasn't stupid enough to play even a meaningless game hungover.

But Lepola was an amiable kid and very willing to trot along with the vets, so Ilya had done his good deed for the night and deposited him at his door with orders to hang the Do Not Disturb sign, order room service, put his phone on silent, and ignore anyone pounding on it later. If he still got dragged out after all that, Ilya had done more than his duty in the matter, and Lepola was two years older than him, anyways.

When Ilya got off the elevator on the fourth floor and turned toward his room, he found Scott Hunter just pulling his door closed. The taller man paused with the door still a sliver open, and then tugged it close and gave Ilya a pleasant smile and a nod.

"Rozanov," he said pleasantly to go along with the pleasant smile.

Ilya didn't glare at him, but Americans took any expression that wasn't a smile as a glare. "Hunter."

"Nice job out there today. You're insanely fast," Hunter said. He pulled out his wallet and tucked his keycard into it, but he kept his eyes on Ilya, smile still in place.

Ilya was very annoyed by how tall he was, and how chiseled his jaw was, and how good his forearms looked with the cuffs of his shirt folded above his elbow.

"Yes," Ilya agreed, fishing his own keycard out of his wallet. He was probably supposed to say something about how Hunter's stick handling was stupidly good, but he didn't want to.

"Staying in tonight?" Hunter asked as Ilya stuffed the card into the reader.

The reader flashed red at him. "Maybe," he said, but then added, "Maybe not."

"Couple of the guys are going out for dinner. Gotta get some seafood on the warf while we're here, right? You're welcome to join us. I was just about to go track Hollander down, and I think Eksell and Dryssen are coming along."

Ilya almost told him that Shane wasn't going anywhere with him, but the reader flashed green after the third attempt with the card. He turned and gave Hunter an assessing look, taking in the casual fit of his slacks, the fashionable but not flashy tan shoes, the dove gray button-up open at the collar and straining to contain his shoulders.

"Thank you for very kind offer," he said, and Hunter nearly choked in his effort not to laugh at the definite scowl that had settled on Ilya's face.

Hunter cleared his throat. "Sure. If you change your mind, we'll be at Scoma's. I'll have Hollander text you the address."

Ilya narrowed his eyes. "Why do you think Hollander can text me anything?"

Hunter's lips pinched in on his smile, and he shrugged one shoulder. "Just figured—same draft class, and it's always…Rozanov and Hollander, right?"

"Right," Ilya said finally. He gave Hunter a tight, unfriendly smile and resisted any temptation to say anything more on the matter. Instead, he said, "Enjoy your oysters. I am sure you need them very much."

As he let the door swing closed, he heard a short bark of laughter and just picked up an almost appreciative, "What an assh—" before the door clicked shut.

Chapter 14: Chapter Thirteen

Shane sat at the edge of his bed as the clock ticked closer to nine, and considered, again, going to dinner with Hunter. He'd just been coming in from the patio, ears and nose and knuckles stinging from the chilly wind when Hunter had nearly passed him before backtracking.

He'd given Shane a cheerful, "There you are!" and an invite out to dinner that Shane, rookie that he was, should have accepted. Hunter, Eksell, Dryssen, "and a few of the other guys," all vets; two of them Stanley Cup champions, and Eksell was a silver Olympian. These were players that he should have been building connections with, that he wanted to build connections with.

"Caught Rozanov in the hall and invited him along, but I'm not sure he took the bait," Hunter had said with a smile that curved down at the edges like he had to hold it back, and eyes that flickered briefly a brilliant green under the subdued hallway lighting. "That guy is something else. I might have offered to take him out back and shoot him with the way he glared at me."

"Uh, yeah… probably has something against socializing with the enemy," Shane had finally offered, which had only made Scott bite his lips together and nod, like that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. "I'm kind of wiped," Shane had said finally, and Scott had let him off the hook with just a friendly tap to the shoulder and a jovial, "Next time!"

He had Hunter's number now. After the previous night's red carpet, Hunter had just taken his phone out and handed it over to Shane with a blank contact already open, and Shane had taken it automatically and then stared at it way too long, stuck on how to enter his name into the contact. He'd finally settled on Shane Hollander #24 Metros. This had made Hunter's smile squirm on his mouth as he'd read it back, and then he'd sent Shane a text that just read, "Scott Hunter #21 Admirals."

Shane's cheeks had blazed at it for no reason at all, and Hunter had laughed and put a friendly arm around his shoulders and taken him out for dinner with about half the team tagging along. It had been an easy, relaxed meal, Shane had gotten his fill of carbs in the form of an excellent carbonara, and they'd talked about hockey and their favorite places to play on road trips so far, and it had been easy.

This dinner would be just as easy, probably. And less crowded than the night before, and more valuable.

A glance at the clock showed it glaring 8:57 PM at him in orange, square digits. He took out his phone and opened Hunter's contact, and thought that he could fire off a text and be out the door and into the stairwell before Ilya knocked.

With a slow exhale, he pushed the keyboard back in and set the phone on the nightstand. The clock ticked over to 9:00, and then 9:01, 9:02, and Shane was growing annoyed by 9:05 when there was a lazy knock at the door.

For one stupid second, Shane thought he should just stay quiet and let Ilya think he'd gone out, but he was already on his feet and peering through the peephole, just to make sure it wasn't one of his other teammates trying to drag him out for an ill-advised trip to a club he couldn't even legally enter in the U.S.

Ilya looked unbothered on the other side of the door, like he would be comfortable waiting all night, but Shane pulled the door open quickly at the sudden thought of someone seeing him standing out there. He remembered the last time he'd opened a hotel door for Ilya and the way he'd slipped in so casually, but then, there hadn't been approximately sixty hockey players or staff on hand to catch him at it.

Ilya did not shove his way inside the second the door opened, but he took a long stride to get out of the hallway, and then grabbed the door frame from Shane to push it closed behind him.

"Anyone see you out there?" Shane asked.

Ilya didn't answer, just gave him a sarcastic look, and then put his hands up to cup Shane's cheeks and pull him in for a kiss. Shane made a noise of protest against Ilya's tongue, but that was as close as he got to saying no. The taste of Ilya's mouth, warm and sweet with honeyed tea and tart cherries, and the feel of his big hands on the back of Shane's head sucked the oxygen out of the room the way they always did.

The next sound he poured into Ilya's mouth was a moan, and when Ilya pulled back, they exchanged air in the humid inch between their lips. Shane let his forehead rest against Ilya's and reached up to hold his wrists where they were still close to Shane's ears. Ilya nipped at his bottom lip, nuzzled their noses together, and kissed him again as he turned them in the narrow entryway and pressed Shane to the wall.

Ilya's hands slid down his neck to grip his shoulders, and then down further to smooth over his pecs. He spread his fingers wide, and then curled them in, squeezing. Under Ilya's palms, Shane's nipples went hard, and he pulled in a shivery breath through his nose, arching into the touch.

When Ilya's hands continued down and around his waist, Shane came away from the wall easily. He dropped his arms onto Ilya's shoulders and buried his fingers in Ilya's curls, and pressed into Ilya's grip when he pulled. Ilya didn't even have the decency to grunt with the effort of picking him up. Shane wrapped his legs around Ilya's hips without breaking the seal between their mouths, doing his best to be as distracting as possible as Ilya made slow progress across the room and laid him down on the bed in a controlled descent.

Shane heard Ilya's shoes hit the carpet, but otherwise, he was still fully clothed as he laid himself down over Shane's body and braced himself on his forearms. Ilya kissed him unhurriedly, even when Shane started rolling his hips slowly upward, bringing their cocks together through the layers of fabric between them. They were both already half-hard.

If his breath sped up in the gaps where they surfaced for air, nothing else did. They stayed in that slow slide of kisses and gentle rocking of hips for so long that Shane's lips felt chaffed and raw by the time he finally had to tear himself away and arch back for control.

Under Ilya's body, he was overheated, and the slow curl of arousal grew more insistent as Ilya ducked his head and mouthed down Shane's neck to the collar of his t-shirt, where he nosed into the fabric and bit down lightly, teasingly, unaware of what that gesture might mean to someone—something—like Shane, as if he had weeks to just explore Shane's body. It wasn't what Shane had expected, and it wasn't what Shane had been counting on, and it wasn't what he needed from a casual sex partner.

Tightening his grip on Ilya's waist, Shane pulled Ilya further up and rolled them over. There was a brief moment of awkward re-arrangement of limbs as Ilya got himself fully onto the bed and then wiggled his way up to the head, laughing breathlessly while Shane shuffled after him.

Settling onto Ilya's hips, Shane pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it in the direction of the chair. It sounded like he missed, but Ilya's hands immediately found a home on his chest, and Shane was distracted by the thumbs rolling over his still-pebbled nipples. He pressed into Ilya's hands and rolled his hips insistently over Ilya's cock for three steady thrusts before reaching down and getting a hand around the back of Ilya's neck.

When he pulled, Ilya came up immediately, mouth searching for Shane's, but settling on the underside of his chin when his lips proved to be out of reach. He sucked hard enough to make Shane hiss, and Shane pulled out of his reach.

"Don't leave marks where they'll be visible," he reminded Ilya sharply.

Ilya didn't say anything, but he nudged Shane back far enough that he could sink his teeth into the swell of his right pec, just above his armpit, and then he sealed his lips to the spot and sucked.

Shane pulled in a sharp breath and let it back out through his teeth. His hands closed on the back of Ilya's head, and he was briefly at war with conflicting impulses to pull him away or hold him there longer. When Ilya broke away on his own, Shane curled down to take a hard kiss off his mouth and tasted the faintest iron tang of his own blood on Ilya's tongue.

"Fuck, Rozanov," he panted when they separated, and then he clawed Ilya's shirt over his head.

Ilya almost didn't cooperate soon enough, and the shirt nearly ended up in shreds as Shane dragged it off and threw it blindly over the side of the bed. Finally, Ilya's hands lost the absurd gentleness, and his fingers dragged down Shane's chest and stomach, blunt nails leaving warm, stinging trails behind. He yanked hard at the cord holding Shane's pants up, seemingly more inclined to snap it than stop long enough to untie it, drawing it so tight through the fabric that it dug into Shane's hips.

With a frustrated noise, Shane finally rolled off of him and shimmied out of pants and underwear in one motion. Ilya took the moment to shuck out of his own, revealing a lack of underwear that made Shane moan embarrassingly loudly. Ilya had come up to his room and risked passing any number of players, coaches, or staff with only a thin layer of performance fabric between prying eyes and the semi Shane had felt against his leg at the first touch of their bodies together.

Shoving Ilya back to the bed with one hand, Shane curled over and closed his mouth around the head of his cock. It jumped against his tongue, head pushing through the foreskin deeper into Shane's mouth to bump the back of his throat in a bitter rush of precum. Shane gagged on it, breathed through the spasm until his throat relaxed, and went down on it again.

Ilya cursed fluently above him, mangled Russian and English, and when Shane hallowed his cheeks out and pulled off his length, made a strangled keening noise that ended in a gasp as Shane let the head pop out of his mouth.

"Fuck, Hollander," Ilya breathed, looking wild around the eyes.

"Sit up," Shane ordered, shoving at him until he pushed himself up the bed to lean back against the upholstered headboard, distractedly rucking up pillows behind his back and watching intently as Shane retrieved lube and a condom from the nightstand. Shane dropped them on the bed and swung his knee over Ilya's hips to settle his weight there once more.

Ilya's hands flitted over Shane's chest, down his ribcage, and then one went back up to squeeze his chest and the other went down to wrap around their cocks where they lined up.

"Your special night, Shane," Ilya said, tilting his head back to look up at Shane, stroking them slowly together. "What do you want?"

Shane dropped his head back and just thrust into Ilya's firm, dry grip for a moment, shuddering at the scrape of callouses over the sensitive head of his dick. When he let his chin drop back down, Ilya was watching him with rapt attention, gaze so intense that it felt like a physical thing burning through Shane's skin to all the secrets he kept buried in his bones.

"You," Shane said on a shaky breath, feeling hot and confusingly close to tears. "Your dick…inside me."

"Like this?" Ilya asked, letting go of Shane's chest to tap his hip.

Shane nodded, and Ilya reached up to pull him down into a kiss as he patted at the bed for the condom and lube. He seemed to get distracted there, running his tongue over Shane's teeth instead of opening the condom package like he was supposed to.

Growling low in his chest, Shane pulled away and snagged the condom out of Ilya's hand. He almost put it in his mouth to tear it open, but shuddered at the thought of the foil between his teeth and the horrifying image of his fangs slipping out to puncture the condom. Pinching it, he tore it open between his fingers, and then rolled it impatiently down Ilya's length while Ilya petted his side and watched.

He held the base of Ilya's dick firmly once he had the condom on and barely waited for Ilya to squeeze lube on the head and smooth it down with his fingers before rising back to his knees.

"Are you—?" Ilya tried to ask, but Shane didn't wait for the rest of the question.

Exhaling and bearing down, Shane closed his eyes and sank down on Ilya's length. He paused only when his hand got in the way, let go of the base of Ilya's dick, and seated himself the rest of the way. Half a whine escaped his chest once he took in the last length, but it disappeared under Ilya's gasp and breathless, "—Fuck—"

Shane gave himself only a moment to adjust to the welcome sense of fullness, rocking his hips in small circles, and then took a firm hold of the headboard and rose up until it felt like Ilya was in danger of slipping out before sinking back down. His breath took on a familiar cadence, like meditation, and he locked his eyes with Ilya's as he rose and fell in a slow, controlled rhythm.

"Fuck," Ilya said after a dozen of these, voice shaking, "Are you doing reps?"

Shane couldn't help the way his lips parted around a smile, and he was gratified by Ilya's eyes widening and breath speeding once he did. He didn't change his pace, even when his legs started to tremble, not until Ilya reached up to grab the side of his face and wrapped an arm around Shane's waist to still him.

"Think I am exercise bike?" Ilya demanded, sliding down the bed until he had better leverage and thrusting sharply upward.

The hard thrust hit Shane's prostate exactly right, and he bit down on a shout, but that was the only warning he got before Ilya's expression settled into stone-faced determination, and he pulled back only to slam in again: same angle, same result.

Ilya lifted his knees, took hold of both of Shane's hips and set up a punishing pace, teeth gritted and eyes locked, nearly unblinking, onto Shane's as he thrust mercilessly into Shane's already trembling body, driving a continuous stream of noise out of his throat until he was nearly sobbing with the rising need to come, but unable to release his grip on the headboard or Ilya would put him through it.

"—Ilya-Ican't-please—" he heard himself gasping, but Ilya's hands just tightened, and he somehow found a more perfect angle while maintaining the same relentless pace, lips pressed hard together and brows furrowed.

"Oh-Oh,my-ohmygod. I'm gonna—" Shane dropped his head down. Something like confusion, almost panic rippled through him as the pressure built and built, and then he was watching himself come, ribbons flicking over Ilya's chest and stomach, and even splattering Shane's as the wild motion of their bodies bounced his cock in the air.

Shane was vaguely aware of Ilya's voice, desperate and shocked, the cadence of his own name, a long, low sound going high-pitched and muffled, and then Ilya arched up into him and dragged him down hard, holding him captive long enough for at least one world ending, and then he abruptly collapsed, gasping and twitching with aftershocks.

Shane went down with him, losing his grip on the headboard and letting out a shocky gasp as the change in angle sent an oversensitive wave of pleasurepain rippling through him. He instinctively tried to pull away, but Ilya's arms wrapped around him like steel bands and held him close, one hand pushing Shane's face against his neck, the other spread on Shane's hip to keep him impaled and motionless.

Ilya's pulse pounded madly against Shane's lips, and Shane went painfully still in horror when he felt his fangs fall out of their sheaths and slide against the thickened skin of his inner cheek. Saliva filled his mouth in a sudden tide that he almost couldn't swallow back, and still the furious poundpoundpoundpound of Ilya's pulse invited him to just open his mouth, let it happen, draw the warmth and saltiron of him into the aching pit of his stomach.

Keeping his lips sealed was almost agony, but it didn't occur to him even once to shove himself away. He stayed, breathing in the clean sweat scent of Ilya's body, swallowing back every wave of saliva, letting himself be held against Ilya's heaving chest, and listening to the ocean-loud rush of Ilya's breathing in concert with his pounding heart.

By the time Ilya's grip loosened, Shane had drawn his fangs back into their sheaths, and he was able to press a trembling kiss to the slowly receding rush of Ilya's pulse without feeling like he was going to be swept out with the current.

"Okay," Ilya said after a long moment. His voice was creaky and rough, as though he'd been screaming into the wind for hours. "Okay, you can kill me now. I will just die here. It is fine."

Shane tucked his forehead against Ilya's throat and made himself say, "Too bad you didn't win tonight, and you don't get to make demands."

Ilya's hands spasmed where they had gone loose on Shane's skin, and he laughed weakly, but even that was enough movement to make them both gasp and twitch. Ilya held his breath as Shane finally pulled off his length, but then dragged Shane back to his chest before he could roll fully away.

Shane should have insisted. He was starting to feel sticky and gross as his sweat cooled. But Ilya turned his face to bury his nose in Shane's hair, and Shane relaxed against his shoulder and closed his eyes to listen to their hearts beating almost in sync.

~*~

Showering together, Shane fully acknowledged, was a thing he should not have allowed, but Ilya had swatted him on the hip and demanded, "Come along, Hollander," and Shane had followed him on shaky legs into the bathroom before he'd even remembered that the goal was to get Ilya dressed and back out the door sooner than late.

Ilya drew him into the shower and they were immediately a mess of trembling limbs and unexpected knees giving way, kissing lazily and holding each other up against the wall under the rainfall showerhead, laughing when they stumbled. They clumsily washed each other, an exercise that was more a matter of rubbing their bodies together with soap forgotten in between them than anything intentional.

Ilya made a for-once-unsuccessful bid to get Shane hard again with a soapy hand, but was surprisingly thrilled when Shane just shook his head and leaned against him. Far from letting Shane go, he continued fondling Shane's soft dick and playing with his balls. His touch was gentle and exploratory in a way that made Shane want to respond, but there was a lack of urgency that turned it to something just…weirdly comforting.

By the time they managed to get all the soap rinsed away, Shane felt no steadier on his feet, and he had all but forgotten why he'd meant to chase Ilya back out the door.

They made unsteady progress back to the bed, which Ilya carelessly stripped of the top cover and fell onto, getting Shane's sheets and pillows damp in the process.

Shane settled on his back, and Ilya curled against his side and mouthed at the swell of his deltoid.

"So…" Shane tried. "Practice tomorrow…"

"Mmm," Ilya agreed, but he didn't roll away. In fact, he threw his leg over Shane's thighs and brought a hand up to trace his fingers over the dark bruise his mouth had left on Shane's chest, and Shane had no idea how he was going to explain that away tomorrow in the locker room.

"Should probably try to get some sleep," he hedged.

"Is not even eleven, Hollander," Ilya told his skin. He bit down on Shane's bicep, twisted to look up at him, and said, apropos of nothing, "I think I will buy house."

The words filtered slowly through Shane's brain, but all he managed to say in response was, "…What?"

Ilya propped his head up on one hand. "House. I think I will buy house. Is my English bad, or is your English bad now?"

Shane floundered. "No, I understood—okay? That's. Nice?"

Nodding, Ilya said, "I do not need to be American to buy American property. Better than renting, I think."

"Yeah, definitely a better investment," Shane agreed slowly, trying to find his footing in the new conversation. "You don't build equity in a rental."

"Yes, this is what I think, also. So?" He hiked his eyebrows at Shane, waiting for something.

Shane blinked up at him and cast around the room for a hint as to what he was expected to say. "So...?"

"So…you have bought house, yes?"

Shane resisted the urge to correct him with, "A condo, actually—" and just said, "Yeah. I gave you my new address."

"Yes, so I do not scare next boring Canadian who moves in, I know." He gave Shane an expectant look. When Shane didn't say anything else, he blew out a noisy breath and said, "Will you help me buy house, Mr. Real Estate?"

"Oh." Shane gaped at him for several long moments, and then found himself saying, "Yeah, of course. That's—Sure. I mean, I've never bought property in the U.S., but it's probably not that different? Do you have a real estate agent you're working with?"

Shaking his head, Ilya said, "Mm, no. I have only just thought I should do this."

"Oh…do you know what you're looking for?" To his surprise, Ilya immediately rolled to his knees at the edge of the bed and leaned down to fish his pants up from the floor. Shane enjoyed the view immensely and couldn't resist reaching out to trail his fingertips over Ilya's ass and down the back of one thigh.

Ilya flopped back to the bed with his phone in hand and got himself comfortable as he opened a page and turned it to show Shane.

"Wow," Shane said, taking the phone and bringing it closer to his face to peer at the small picture. "This is really nice. Do you have the funds liquid for a down payment?"

Ilya was so quiet in response that Shane looked up to see him with one eyebrow raised and the other curled into a confused frown. "Liquid?" he asked with a hint of annoyance accompanying the question.

Shane flushed for no reason and fumbled, "Uh-like…available?"

"Oh, you forget I am also MLH player?" Ilya asked with an exasperated huff. "You think I cannot afford this?"

Shane shook his head, off-footed once again. "No, I didn't mean—Just, if you have your money locked up in investments, it can be hard to pull it out for a big purchase unless you plan in advance. Sorry, I'm sure you've got all that worked out with your wealth manager."

Ilya's brow flattened, and then his eyes narrowed like he suspected Shane of making fun of him.

Shane slowly pushed himself up until he was sitting on one hip, looking down at Ilya. "Please tell me you have a wealth manager." At Ilya's careless, half confused shrug, Shane gaped. "Ilya. You make almost four million dollars a year. What are you doing with it?"

Ilya sat up to put his back to the headboard. He shrugged again.

Shane tried to speak, but he ended up only making a noise more like a landed fish. Shane's orientation courses with the Metros had included a lot of things geared toward guys who suddenly had a lot more money than they could possibly know what to do with. Even if his dad hadn't been in finance and his mom hadn't already lined up a financial manager for him the year before, there was at least one of the interminable videos that mentioned the importance of a financial manager and urged rookies not to immediately spend their paycheck on cars and toys.

Boston must have done the same thing, but Shane was suddenly caught wondering if they bothered to offer that information in anything other than English, or if they'd just stuck all the rookies in a room and let the videos play until they were all staring glassy eyed at the screen and half-asleep.

Finally, eyes darting away and posture closing off, Ilya said, "I send money home."

Shane felt himself soften. "Oh," he said, but Ilya's face had gone blank, the way it did when there was something he wasn't happy about but didn't want to discuss, or maybe didn't have the English words to express. "To…your parents?"

Ilya's jaw clenched. "Father, brother," he said tightly, and then with a distinctly bitter note, "Step-mother."

"That's…very kind of you," Shane tried, not sure what Ilya's bitterness meant, but catching step-mother and lack of mother. He didn't know if he was supposed to ask. He never really knew when it was necessary to the conversation for him to ask personal questions and when it was considered prying.

"It is…" Ilya heaved out a breath, spent a moment looking for the words, and finally just said, "Of course I do this. This is normal for Russia. Children send money home to parents."

"Right," Shane said, but he couldn't stop himself from searching Ilya's face for a clue on how he felt about that. With his hearing still tuned into the sound of Ilya's heart beating in his chest, he couldn't help but notice the way it picked up. "Yeah, I get that. You're close, then? With your family?"

Ilya snorted derisively. "No."

"Oh." The air between them went chilly and tense the way it hadn't been all night, even when Shane had intentionally tried to drive the temperature down. He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, searching for something to fill the silence, but only came up with, "So, you don't get along?"

Ilya didn't talk about his family. Shane's attempts to ask about them before had been rebuffed or missed, maybe even intentionally missed. He'd felt awkward sharing about his own family in response, but Ilya still knew his dad's birthday was in June, and about his mom's love of Christmas romcoms, and Ojiisan's current efforts to interview young men in the gay bar scene and how he lamented his lack of sexual interest in them when it would make his research so much easier.

"No, Hollander, we do not get along," Ilya said with a hint of bite in his voice, but before Shane could withdraw from the topic, he let out a rough breath and said, "My father is police. My brother is police. My step-mother is… she is very pretty and seven whole years older than me."

Shane felt that uncertain footing sensation of knowing he was supposed to be picking up more hints than he was about the conversation, but he tentatively asked, "Your mom?"

"Dead," Ilya said shortly.

"I'm sorry," Shane offered, watching in alarm as Ilya's eyes went glassy. "Was it recent?" he asked helplessly.

Ilya shook his head. "Long time ago." He drew in a tight breath, and then let it back out in a controlled stream. "My father and my brother worked hard for me to be here. I send them money, of course."

Shane realized he shouldn't ask questions like, "How much?" or "Do they appreciate that?" but it was a struggle to keep the words between his teeth. He put a hand on Ilya's arm, and was surprised, and pleased, and startled by how pleased he was when Ilya turned his hand over without looking at Shane and laced their fingers together.

"A financial manager can arrange those kinds of things," Shane offered tentatively. "And invest the rest, or…whatever you want to do with it." He stopped himself from saying protect it, but the words hung in the air.

Ilya said nothing for a long minute, breathing harshly through his nose and not looking at Shane, and then he sighed dramatically and said, "Okay, fine! You have bored me into a financial manager, Jesus, Hollander! I said you could kill me, but not like this."

Despite himself, Shane felt his lips stretch into a smile. "Too bad you didn't win tonight and don't get to make demands."

Ilya snorted on a laugh and turned finally to face Shane again. Shane pretended he didn't notice the wet trail glistening on his cheek, and Ilya pinched him on the ribs until Shane squirmed away and smacked his hand down.

"Email me the addresses, and I'll look at them if that will help," Shane said finally, handing the phone back. "When we don't have a game in twelve hours."

Ilya made a low whining noise and dropped his mouth back to Shane's shoulder. "Can I stay?" he asked plaintively, looking up at Shane through his eyelashes.

Shane's breath stuttered in his chest. "That's probably not a good idea," he said, stopping himself from leaning down to kiss Ilya's pouting mouth, and instead leaning away.

"Why?" Ilya pressed, as if that even deserved an answer. He dropped wet, open-mouthed kisses across Shane's shoulder and toyed with Shane's fingers, effectively holding him captive without restraining him at all. Shane could feel himself melting into the touch, best intentions and all his earlier self-coaching aside.

And then Ilya murmured, "No one will expect me to sleep in my own bed."

The reminder of what people expected of Ilya in relation to a bed was a hot gust of air across the ember he'd forgotten in his belly. Before he could swallow it back down, his mouth bit out, "Yeah, why the fuck would anyone expect that?"

Ilya went still and blinked at him in genuine confusion. "Hollander—?"

"Ilya—" Shane pulled away. He knew he should keep his mouth shut, but instead of, "No, I'm really tired" or "Sure, whatever," what came boiling unexpectedly out of his mouth was, "What the fuck do you even want with me? Why are you here?"

Ilya's eyebrows leapt up his forehead. After an incredulous pause, he asked, "This is serious question?"

"Jesus Christ, yes! It's a serious question!" Shane snapped, shoving Ilya away from him.

Hands going up as if Shane, the literal fucking monster in the room, needed to be reassured of his harmless intentions, Ilya sputtered, "Shane, what the fuck—"

A hot poker couldn't have driven him out of the bed faster than his own name on Ilya's tongue in that moment. "You were in my home, Rozanov!" he spat. "We were—it was—" Shane stopped himself, the wide-eyed shock on Ilya's face dousing the fire in his gut that he'd thought he'd already smothered. "Fuck," he said, but only to himself.

"You make me so fucking stupid," Shane ground out, and Ilya's mouth dropped open even as his eyes went wide and his hands hit the bed. All the things Shane had been trying to push down, all the stupid lies he'd been telling himself were suddenly bare in his chest, claws out and ripping at the prison of his rib cage.

"I can't do this anymore," he heard himself say. "You should—you should go."

Ilya pushed himself off the bed and stood, naked and looking weirdly panicked, putting himself between Shane and the door, like Shane was going to walk naked out of his own hotel room. "Hollander—Shane! Can't do what?" he asked with a tone like he was confused, but an intensity that gave him away. His expression hardened, and he insisted, "This is just fucking, Hollander, no need for panic attack."

Something dark, and cold, and terrifying crawled up Shane's spine and bit into his throat. "Bullshit, Ilya! Don't fucking do that! Like any of this is just fucking!" He gestured to the bed in a swell of helpless anger. "You spent days in my house, and don't fucking tell me it wasn't anything! And then you walked out my door and directly into some woman's bed!"

It took a lifetime's worth of control to keep himself from hissing, and he had to ball his hands into fists to keep them from digging into his hair. Wet as it was, he still felt the tingles of it trying to lift.

"That is what this is?" Ilya demanded, throwing his hands into the air. "Still? I fucking apologized for messing up your precious routine—!"

"Fuck you! You know that's not what I mean!" Shane snapped back. "At least be honest if you—"

"Honest!" Ilya snarled with unexpected venom. "You are honest with me, Shane?"

Shane jolted back, and they both froze in that moment, staring at each other with the rumpled bed in between them, and the absurdity of it—both of them naked, flushed, and snapping like fighting dogs—was almost enough to make Shane laugh. Or vomit.

"I am trying," Shane said very slowly, forcing himself to be deliberate with the way he moved his mouth. He took in a breath through his nose. "I am trying to be honest with you. I've been trying." His fang sheaths tingled, and he almost opened his mouth and let them drop, just to get it out in the air, just to make Ilya turn away from him, to buy himself some room to breathe.

In that moment, anything would have been easier than Ilya still standing between him and the door, even the ruination of his career and his entire life.

He had been so close to telling Ilya everything, and now he got "just fucking" as if in answer to every question he'd failed to satisfy in himself, all those questions he couldn't answer with his grandfather, every bullet point behind his mom making him promise to tell her when he started having sex and her the insistence that he couldn't do this with anyone he hadn't already tied down.

"What else can I do?" Ilya asked into the yawning void between them. His face was stony, but his voice was charged with emotion. "We can't—I can't be anything more than this! Shane," he added, pleading now, one hand moving away from his side like he wanted to hold it out, but maybe he was afraid Shane would bite it off.

It shouldn't have hit him so low in the gut. It wasn't like he didn't already know that. "Would you even want to?" he asked in a pitiful whisper, painfully aware of how sharp the words felt between his teeth. He could slice himself open on any one of them.

Ilya's face was hard and remote, but his voice was an agony of twisted shards. "It doesn't matter what I want! It never matters. There is only Russia, and hockey, and this!"

He repeated Shane's gesture to the bed, and then expanded it to include the rest of the room; the soiled cover on the floor, their clothing scattered across every surface, the damp spots on the pillows from their hair, even Shane himself, naked and drowning where he stood.

Shane clenched his fists and kept his teeth sealed together, but when Ilya took a step forward, he didn't step back.

When Ilya reached for his face, he only closed his eyes and trembled.

When Ilya's lips touched his, he let his jaw relax, and opened slowly under the gentle pressure of Ilya's tongue.

"Yes," Ilya whispered brokenly against his lips, almost too softly for even Shane to hear him. "I would want to."

He'd thought he was dying before, that having this and not actually having it was the knife between his ribs, but somehow this was worse. Shane felt his heart snapping in his chest like ice thrown into warm water.

Ilya pulled back to press their foreheads together and asked, "Can I stay?"

Shane put his hands on Ilya's hips and nodded.

Chapter 15: Chapter Fourteen

Shane woke to his phone vibrating against the end table. He fumbled for it automatically, but it wasn't a call, just a text.

L: good morning :)

Shane peeled his eyes open further and turned in the bed to see Ilya propped up on the pillows, looking rumpled and barely awake himself, but he gave Shane a tentative smile and leaned forward to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. He was sleep warmed and, as Shane's fingers drifted over his skin, he could feel the places where the wrinkles in the sheets had left impressions.

With a sleepy murmur, Shane folded into him and brought their mouths together in a slow slide, morning breath and all. When they separated, he dropped onto his back and looked at his phone with one eye half closed to slowly type out, "Good morning." With a glance at Ilya, he added, ":)"

Ilya snorted out a tired laugh. "Is this your first time ever with smiley face?" he teased. "Do I get your virginity again?"

"Shut up," Shane groaned, shoving lightly at Ilya's shoulder. "It's not," he said, but it was almost a lie.

Ilya did not shut up. He squirmed closer to Shane, murmuring something indistinct under his breath, and tugged at his hip until Shane rolled back onto his side.

They kissed lazily, lips barely moving, and Ilya wrapped his big hand around their morning erections and brought them off together. Shane sighed his way through the orgasm, and smiled when Ilya followed him a moment later, painting their stomachs and leaving wet spots on the sheet.

Kissing him on the forehead, Ilya said, "You can go back to sleep for little while. I will go, before anyone starts being annoying in hallway."

Shane, half-way back to sleep in the post-orgasmic glow, opened his eyes again. He blinked a few times, trying to pick out Ilya's expression in the darkness. Whatever time it was, the sun wasn't making it through the curtains. "Let's stop being rivals," he announced.

Ilya's eyebrows rucked together and then slowly climbed back up his forehead. "What?"

"I mean…we're still rivals, obviously, but let's…" He shrugged uncomfortably. He hadn't had time to really think about this and what it meant. "Other guys have friends on other teams. We can be…friendly rivals."

Humming, Ilya said, "Okay," but in a bleary sort of way that meant he wasn't fully awake or following Shane's logic. After a long second, he huffed out a laugh and said nonsensically and with exaggerated sarcasm, "It is always Rozanov and Hollander." With a long suffering groan, he added, "Fuck that guy."

Frowning, Shane asked, "Which guy?"

Ilya shook his head. "Just this old man I met." He kissed Shane's forehead again, and then his nose, and then his mouth, long and lingering. He pulled back, pushed in again, and then whined petulantly and threw himself away like he had to tear his skin loose to get free from Shane's arms.

The sudden motion made Shane tense to spring, and he almost grabbed Ilya and dragged him back, but he was able to disguise the motion by rolling over. That put him into a wet spot, and he made a disgusted face as he shuffled back out of it.

Shane wanted to go back to sleep, but he wasn't going to be able to in those sheets. He rolled off the other side of the bed and helped Ilya find his clothes, which had ended up all over the room. His t-shirt had somehow hooked perfectly on one of the drawer pulls of the dresser, and one of his socks had ended up in Shane's open carryon.

Ilya used the bathroom, splashed his face with water, and then swished a handful of it through his mouth. His hair was an absolute disaster of wild frizz, and he put his head under the faucet in an effort to tame it with only middling success.

At the door, he let Shane peek into the hallway first, and then kissed him hard and slipped out. The stairwell was only a few yards away, and he was through the heavy door in the blink of an eye. Shane shouldn't have been standing there with the door open to watch him go, but he couldn't make himself close it until Ilya was out of sight.

Gently shutting the door and letting it latch, Shane rested his head on it for a moment, and then turned without losing contact with the wood and put his back to it. His breath expelled in a heavy sigh.

They hadn't talked about anything important after Ilya coaxed him back to bed. They'd just stared at each other in their new reality, kissed like it was the first time they'd touched, and fallen asleep face-to-face.

Shane had no idea what they were supposed to do now, or if there was anything for them to do. So Ilya had admitted that he would want more if more was possible, but that didn't mean it was possible. It didn't mean anything between them had really changed.

But it felt like everything between them had changed.

The last thing he remembered saying to Ilya before falling asleep was, "Don't call me Jane anymore."

Ilya hadn't laughed at him. He'd kissed Shane's cheek and petted his hair, and said, "Okay."

If he'd spoken after that, Shane didn't remember it.

~*~

Tired and feeling weirdly hung over, the short warm up with his temporary team was not Shane's best, but none of the guys were taking it seriously, and the coaches didn't try to push them. Brower was head coach for Tampa, and the assistant coach, Tompkins, was the offensive coach for Utah. Tompkins had only retired from playing two years before after nine years as a forward for Utah and three more for Nashville. Normally, Shane would take the opportunity to get whatever valuable feedback he could squeeze out of them, but he didn't have the energy for it.

"Last chance for some San Francisco seafood tonight," Hunter said, coming to a stop at Shane's side and resting his chin on the top of his stick to watch a gaggle of defensemen from both teams fooling around at center ice. They were all in a circle, chaotically hitting probably two dozen pucks at each other while also trying to catch the wild passes coming their way. They laughed and jeered when anyone missed and the puck went sailing out of the circle.

Ilya was at the other end of the ice, skating lazy figure-eights while he bounced a puck on his tape with his stick held at waist height.

"Unless you leave tonight?" Hunter prompted.

Shane started, tearing his eyes away from Ilya. "Oh…no, my flight is in the afternoon tomorrow."

Hunter gave him a quirked eyebrow. "So, you in?"

Shane bit the inside of his lip. He and Ilya hadn't discussed seeing each other after the game, and Shane wasn't even sure when he flew out. He was jealous of any moments he might be able to steal with Ilya, but…"Yeah, sure," he said.

Hunter's eyes flickered briefly green, a quick flash that was the color of sunlight through spring leaves, and Shane wondered in passing how recent his godling heritage was, and how much it held sway on him, how much he needed to supplement his diet to function. A flash-fire burst of resentment rippled through Shane, but it went out just as quickly in the face of Hunter's open, friendly expression.

Hunter flashed Shane his bright white teeth in a smile, and then tilted his stick so the backs of their gloves met.

"Great," he said. He opened his mouth like he would say something else, but Tompkins called him from across the ice, and Hunter just gave Shane a nod and another smile, and skated off.

Heart pounding wildly in his chest, Shane crossed what was normally no-man's land during warm ups to fall in at Ilya's side. They made a figure-eight together, Shane tight on the inside and Ilya automatically adjusting to make a wider loop around him. As if they did it all the time, Ilya flipped the puck to him, and Shane caught it, bounced it twice, and flipped it back.

"Dinner with some of the guys tonight?" he asked with forced casualness.

"Some of the guys and my friendliest rival?" Ilya clarified, hiking an eyebrow at him.

If Shane didn't know him, his expression would look forbidding. But Shane did know him, and he could see the amusement, but also the nerves under the surface. Neither of them looked to see if anyone was watching them as they continued juggling the puck back and forth.

"Eksell already bullied me to go," Ilya said after another loop and taking the puck back. "You will go?"

"Unless I have other plans," Shane said, trying to make it sound like an offhand statement, but aware of his voice ticking up at the end to make it a question.

"Other plans can wait to after dinner," Ilya said. He lifted his stick straight up, weaving it in the air and keeping the puck up with it as though it had been taped to the stick. "You still need to eat, da?"

A smile twitched at Shane's lips, but he kept his eyes on the puck, timed it carefully, and then slid his stick up to steal it off Ilya's tape. While Ilya gave him a look of mock outrage, Shane repeated his trick, weaving the puck through the air.

"Da," he said, mimicking the way Ilya's lips folded around the word.

"Oh, you speak Russian now?" Ilya asked with an exaggerated scowl. He hooked Shane's stick to knock the puck off, and then caught it when it fell. He bounced it off the blade, twisted his stick and hit it up again with the back, and then performed a flashy little maneuver that gave the illusion of the puck floating above the stick.

"Maybe I do," Shane said. He silently counted Ilya's rhythm, and then knocked his stick against Ilya's just as the puck came down, sending it high enough for Shane slip the blade of his stick in to catch it.

"Maybe you should," Ilya said, and took the puck back.

Shane let him have it for a half a loop, and then took it back. "Maybe I will."

Ilya considered this, and then shook his head. "Ah, wait, no…then how will I say mean things to you in secret?" He snagged the puck out of mid air, let it drop low, and then bounced it up high again.

Catching the puck as it descended, Shane mused, "Guess you'll have to learn Thai or something?"

Groaning, Ilya complained, "This is too much work. Do not learn Russian, it is forbidden."

They kept it up for a few more exchanges until their sticks collided and the puck hit the ice. Ilya looked down at it with a dramatic, mournful sigh, and Shane couldn't suppress a short laugh.

"Good luck tonight," he said, holding a fist up.

Ilya negligently knocked their forearms together, and Shane skated away, very aware of the eyes following him as he exited enemy territory and joined his own team for the rest of the warmups.

~*~

Team Europe took the game by one, but it was practically a comedy from start to finish. Kocian, the Badland's jovial goalie was the crowd favorite. He made over-dramatic saves, diving to the ice to stop pucks he could have let hit his pads, and dancing for the crowd whenever the puck was at the opposite end of the ice.

At the mid-point, he even invited Fortin out to center ice as if for a goalie fight, but the pair of them ended up doing a weird little dance that they had obviously practiced beforehand. It looked like an avian mating dance, if the birds in question were two-hundred-pound penguins.

At one point, Ilya darted around Shane and then turned, lightning fast, to skate backwards with his stick resting softly on the other side of the puck. He might have done a better job fighting for it if he didn't have to keep glancing behind himself to make sure they weren't about to run into anyone, but he still managed to put his tape back on it every time Shane got it away. They traveled that way together around the curve of the boards, and then Shane cut abruptly to a stop as they rounded the goal, snowing Ilya's skates and snapping the puck into the net.

Kocian shook a fist at him and dropped to his knees in a wildly exaggerated expression of denial. In the other net, Fortin mimed putting his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers, and then turn to shake his ass at the other goalie.

After that, Eksell scored for Europe, and then Ilya put another one in less than three minutes later, and they celebrated their victory at center ice like they'd taken Olympic gold.

At dinner, Shane reluctantly bought Ilya a celebratory drink, which, being in the U.S., Ilya ordered as, "A virgin rum and coke," with a wink for the server. She laughed way more than the joke warranted as she took their orders.

Shane didn't even realize he was glaring at Ilya until Hunter knocked their shoulders together a few minutes later and said, "Easy, Hollander. You can wait to kill him until after the season."

"After July," Ilya corrected, taking a loud, slurping sip of his "virgin rum and coke" as soon as it was delivered. He gave Shane a very self-satisfied smirk over the rim of the glass.

"Why July?" Hunter asked, pausing with a mushroom cap stuffed with lobster part way to his mouth.

"My friend and I go to Romania in the summer, when we can both get there. We fix her grandmother's old house, pull out bad plants, this sort of thing. I promised I will not annoy anyone to murder me until after, or she will also murder me." He set his glass down and scooped a crab cake out of the dish in the middle of the table, taking a generous portion of the sauce with it. "No offense, Hollander, but she is scarier."

Shane narrowed his eyes.

Sitting next to Ilya, Eksell choked on his water. "Sure about that?" he asked Ilya in an undertone.

"What, him? Look at him, he is like…tiny, angry kitten. What will he do? Bore me to death with tiny claws? Sveta is big…what is this?" He snapped his fingers several times in an effort to remember, and then nudged Eksell with his elbow. He described a halo around his head and shoulders and said something in Russian, a language Eksell did not speak.

"Lion?" Shane gritted out. On Ilya's right side, Andropov's head bobbed.

"Yes, lion." Ilya shoved half the crab cake into his mouth, satisfied.

"Cat shifter?" Hunter clarified curiously.

Ilya shook his head. He swallowed and took a sip of his drink. "No, she is human. Just more scary than anything with sharp teeth." He gave an exaggerated shudder while Shane went very still, and then just shrugged and said, "I will not come to your funeral if you fuck up," when Andropov joked that he would like to meet a girl like that.

Shane didn't know if he was annoyed or mollified when Ilya took Andropov's number to send to his friend, along with a picture of the suddenly nervous and wide-eyed rookie.

"She will like this trapped deer look," Ilya observed, sending the message and giving Andropov a wolfish grin that made the other man go pale.

~*~

They ended up back in Shane's room. As far as he knew, none of his immediate neighbors were players or staff, while Ilya was not only across the hall from Scott Hunter, he had Miranov on one wall and Eckert on the other.

Laying tangled in the sheets, winded and slicked with sweat, Shane played idly with Ilya's curls where his head rested on Shane's shoulder. He was mouthing at the dark bruise that Shane's teammates had both noticed and teased him for, pleased with his handiwork.

Shane's stomach was only just starting to unwind. The dinner had been fine, just like the game had been fine, and the warmup had been fine. Ilya sniped at him, and Shane sniped back, and the older players around the table had looked at them like they were expecting food—or cutlery—to start flying at any minute.

But it hadn't seemed like any of them thought it was any stranger than having Hunter and Eksell at the same table. They talked about hockey, and Eksell talked about his kids—five of them, his wife sounded like a saint—and they all traded barbs like any team Shane had played with, so even when Ilya got too cutting or Shane was too sharp in response, it was…just fine.

At the end of the night, Scott got up to use the restroom and paid the tab before it could get back to the table. He'd brushed off Shane's discomfort and Ilya's sincere annoyance with a wave of his hand that might have been magnanimous, but felt somehow smug to Shane.

On the way out the door, Ilya had put an arm around Andropov and told him, "Expect a call," as if he was warning the other man of a mob hit, and Andropov had responded in kind. They'd gone their separate ways, and Hunter had walked with Shane to the elevator.

"You handle him well," he'd said. At Shane's look, he'd clarified, "Rozanov. Guy is an asshole, but he's kind of…fun, I guess. If you can take the cuts and nicks along the way. Good on you for not putting a fork through his eye, though."

Shane hadn't really known how to respond, and the elevator ride had been a silent one with Hunter giving him a cheerful farewell when he stepped off onto his floor, leaving Shane alone for the remainder of the ride, turning over the conversations of the night.

"So…" Shane started. He swallowed and shuffled his feet on the sheets, and tried to sound uninterested when he continued, "Romania?"

Ilya looked up at him. "Peru?" he said.

"What?" Shane craned his neck to look down at Ilya.

"I thought we are naming random countries. Your turn, now," Ilya said with an angelic smile.

"Fucking asshole," Shane said, rolling his eyes. "You're going to Romania this summer."

"Yes," Ilya agreed. "This is true statement."

"With your friend," Shane pressed.

"Yes…this is also true statement. Hollander, if you have question, just ask." He pinched Shane's nipple just to get Shane to hiss in a breath.

Shane rubbed at it, scowling. "Who is this friend of yours?"

Stretching like a cat, Ilya rolled onto his back. "Her name is Sveta. We have been friends since we were very young."

Shane pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. "Is she like…your girlfriend?"

Ilya rolled his head to the side to give Shane a long, bored look. "She is girl, and she is friend, so…." At Shane's withering look, he relented and admitted, "And yes, we used to fuck sometimes. Not anymore."

"Oh." Shane didn't know how he felt about that answer, if it was better or worse that Ilya was still friends with his ex that he didn't sleep with anymore.

The simmering sense of possessiveness that he always felt around Ilya had been boiling in his chest all day while he turned over the question of what they were to each other now, what he had the right to expect, if admitting to wanting more made them anything other than what they were the week before All Stars. He still didn't know if had any kind of claim on Ilya or right to feel possessive.

They were quiet for a minute, and the quiet grew limbs and prowled around the bed the longer it was allowed to go unchallenged.

"I was seven," Ilya said with a resigned kind of tone. "I was seven, and she was eight. Her dad—he is very famous Russian goalie. He was my coach when I was little. One day, some bigger boys were not happy to have me at their practice. They all sucked and I was two years younger than them. Sveta pushed them all down, and then she looked at me and said—" He turned to Shane with a very serious expression, lowering his chin so he was practically glowering. "Ilyusha! You are my friend now!"

A small, unexpected laugh popped out of Shane's chest before he could reign it back in.

Ilya's lips twitched, just a little, at one corner. "So we were friends then." He grew somber and his thumb started tapping against his thigh. "She is the only one I ever told…I looked at her one day, and I said, Sveta…I like boys, too." Ilya's eyes flicked to Shane and quickly away. His smile came back, small and private. "She said, So? I like boys, too. You are not special."

"Oh, my god," Shane said, laughing. "Just like that?"

Ilya jerked one shoulder. "Just like that. We tried to date. Our parents thought we would get married, so we played boyfriend and girlfriend—" He jerked his hands in the air in a sarcastic gesture. "Four weeks only, and never again."

"I feel like I'm supposed to say I'm sorry," Shane offered with a frown, but Ilya just laughed at him until Shane shoved him away. "She's Romanian?"

Ilya shook his head. "No, Russian. Her grandma was, and she went back to her hometown after grandpa died. We would go there in summers when she was alive, and she left the house to Sveta and me when she died. So we go, if we can, a couple weeks. The last two years, I could not go."

"That's really…" Shane didn't know what it was. It was sweet, and charming, and it still made him want to gnash his teeth together. "Nice," he settled on.

"You're jealous," Ilya crowed with a triumphant smirk.

Shane glared at him. "I'm not."

"You are! Little—" he kissed Shane's cheek. "Angry—" Another kiss to the side of his nose. "Kitten."

Shane pulled away before Ilya could touch his lips. "Call me that again," he invited, eye narrowed.

Ilya hiked an eyebrow and said, "Kotenok."

"Ilya—"

"Meow," Ilya said insistently, and then kneaded at Shane's thigh until Shane shoved him back to the bed and swung over to pin him down.

Ilya arched against him, but he wasn't making much effort to get out of Shane's hold. Shane captured Ilya's wrists, pushed them down to the mattress, and hovered over him for a long minute. He steeled himself.

"I like men," he said.

Ilya waited a beat, eyebrows creeping slowly upward and lips stretching into a smile. "Oh…do you?"

"Shut up," Shane ordered, squeezing Ilya's wrists until Ilya rearranged the smile on his face into attentive listening again, even if he couldn't hide his amusement. "Not too, Ilya. I only like men. I'm gay."

Ilya's expression slowly sobered. "This is the first time you've said it?"

Shane nodded, hesitated, and then clarified, "My grandpa knows. But I've never said it out loud."

"I am your first again?" Ilya asked, grinning.

"Yes, you are my first again," Shane agreed. He tried to inject some annoyance into his voice, but he was painfully aware of how soft and warm he sounded to match how soft and warm he felt.

"You trust me with your secrets?" Ilya asked softly.

Shane's breath froze in his chest and he was suddenly very aware of his fangs in their sheaths and Ilya's pulse against his palms. He sat back on Ilya's hips, and felt the words right at the tip of tongue, but he didn't even know what they were to each other, and this change in their relationship was too new, and they were in a fucking hotel room surrounded by their coworkers.

"I trust you," he said.

Ilya freed his hands and flipped them over, slotting in between Shane's thighs and leaning over him. "I trust you, too."

His voice was weirdly intense, and he held Shane's gaze unblinking, like he was trying to drill some greater meaning into Shane's head through his eyes.

Shane swallowed hard. He caught Ilya's forearms and tapped his fingers on them. "So, if Sveta's not your girlfriend…what are…" Shane's voice trailed off and he looked up at Ilya, willing him to fill in the word that was stuck in his throat, but Ilya just stared down at him, waiting.

Frustrated, Shane finally pushed out, "We. What are we?"

Ilya was quiet for several beats, and then he leaned down and kissed Shane softly. "I don't know, Shane. Whatever we can be, for now."

Chapter 16

"Hey, you have any plans for the full moon tomorrow?" Hayden asked as they redressed after their last practice before the full moon break.

Shane threw his shirt at his head and picked at the hem out until he could get his arms into it. "No. Why?"

Ilya would be on the road for the break, back in California, sitting on a beach and probably sending Shane a few dozen pictures of the ocean a day, fully unaware of how long Shane would stare at them. They hadn't managed another of the breaks together, the moon either not falling next to another day off or one or both of them being on the road. They hadn't see each other for more than three hours at a stretch since the All Star Game, and the season was just getting more intense as they ran headlong toward the playoffs.

"Jacki and I were wondering…and you don't have to say yes, seriously, no pressure, but we thought you could come over for the moon?"

Shane froze with only one arm in his shirt and gaped at Hayden. Outsiders were not typically invited to shifter parties on the moon, even for non-obligate shifters like foxes. The wolves on the team all found some wilderness and went to roll around together, and Taylor, cat shifter that he was, often went along with them. The non-shifters on the team were not invited and did not expect to be.

Shane knew Hayden also had a standing invite to their runs, but he always declined if they were in town so he could spend the night with his family.

Hayden went pink at the tops of his cheeks and grew tense the longer Shane stared at him.

"Sorry," Shane said, dropping his eyes. Prolonged eye contact with a shifter was rude at best and dangerous at worst, and he knew better. He hurriedly put his other arm in his shirt and tugged the hem down. "Um…you know I'm not…I mean—I can't, like…run with you?"

That was a lie; Shane thought he could have kept up with most shifters in a fair race, but it also wasn't exactly a lie. There was no way he could run with a group of shifters without revealing himself as something other than human.

Hayden laughed weirdly. "We don't really run, especially with the twins. Mostly, we play around in the back yard and den up. But it's actually useful to have someone around with, you know…" He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. "Thumbs."

Shane sat down to put his shoes on, brows knitted together as he thought furiously over the offer. After a moment, Hayden sat down next to him and took his shoes out.

"You want me to watch your kits while you and Jacki go running?" he asked finally, putting the most likely scenario out in front.

Hayden laughed. "Busted," he said. "I was hoping to lull you into agreeing after you got to see how cute they are in their fur."

Shane relaxed. The worse scenarios had stretched from Hayden suspecting that he had heritage of some kind and settling on a shifter, to Hayden having figured out his actual heritage and trying to get him to expose himself. That did seem unlikely with the girls involved.

"I've never babysat kits before, even when they're not in fur."

In fact, Shane had never babysat any children of any description. The closest he'd come was teaching hockey to children from about U10 and up, and never alone. He wasn't sure what he would do being left alone with two kids under the age of three, even if they were in fox form. For that matter, he hadn't spent a lot of time around normal animals either.

What was he supposed to do if they had some kind of issue? How was mouth-to-mouth performed on a fox? What if one of them got stuck mid-shift or ate something poisonous?

"It's easy, and they'll probably be asleep by then anyways. Plus, before then, you can play with us. I hear it's pretty fun for you normie types." He smiled and knocked their shoulders together, effortlessly charming and guileless.

Normie.

Would it be ethical for Shane to agree to watch Hayden's kits when Hayden had no idea what Shane was? If Hayden did know, would he feel comfortable leaving them with Shane unsupervised?

"Look, just come over—we'll spend some time rolling around in the yard, exhausting the girls, and if you're not charmed by two sleeping baby foxes by the end of the night, it's no big deal. Jacki's parents are coming over the night after, and her dad usually sacks out about the same time as the kits do."

Shane regretted not having other plans lined up for an easy excuse, and he was cognizant that this was a very big gesture of trust. More than that, it was something most normies would call "an honor," the kind of experience that the majority of people who couldn't shift never got to have. Shane liked Hayden, and he liked having Hayden as a friend—he liked the idea of having a friend close enough to extend an invitation like this, and he knew his reputation for being cold and arrogant was alive and well.

The locker room was not full to bursting, but they weren't alone, and even if Hayden was speaking at a confidential volume, Shane had no doubt that the few guys lingering over getting dressed could hear him. If Shane said no, would it would just feed into the perception that he thought he was too good for his teammates? If he said no this time, would Hayden ever ask again? Would he stop asking Shane along to anything else?

More than all of that, he was deeply tired of being so isolated all the damn time.

He was opening his mouth to accept when Hayden held up a finger and said, "Besides, you still owe me a night out."

Shane's lips turned up without his permission. He secured the bow on his shoe laces and sat back to look at Hayden's oddly nervous expression. "You've been holding onto that for what, seven months? This is what you're calling it in for?"

Hayden held his hands out and tipped his head side to side. "I've been carefully biding my time, buddy."

"Okay, you know what, fine. I'll come. But I'm letting them tear up your shoes and get into all the forbidden snacks while you're gone."

Hayden pumped a fist in victory. "I won't even be mad at you about it," he promised. "Okay, let me tell Jacki so she can have your weird food ready for dinner. She's going to be so excited."

He had his phone out before Shane could say another word, grinning as he texted his wife.

It was on the tip of Shane's tongue to tell Hayden not to worry about his weird food, and he would bring his own, but he hesitated. It was probably weird and awkward in and of itself to bring his own food with him when he'd been invited to someone else's home for dinner.

"Jacki wants your number so she can ask you wtf does weird food even mean, that cool with you?" Hayden asked, grinning boyishly.

Shane dropped his chin to his chest to hide a smile, shaking his head, but he said, "Yeah…that's cool with me."

~*~

L: 🐟 asked you to go to full moon run?

L: why would he do this?

L: is this sex thing?

L: are you going to have sex with lady 🐟?

L: will there be pics?

Shane stared incredulously at his phone for a long time before he flipped his keyboard out.

S: What the fuck is 🐟?

L: fish

S: I know it's a fish. Why are you using it like that?

L: m told me pike is 🐟 so 🐟 and lady 🐟

A moment later, a picture of a pike came through. It was huge, bright yellow, and held proudly between a fisherman's hands.

Shane swore he would never, on pain of death, tell Hayden about it, but he couldn't help laughing into his empty entryway. He had one shoe on and a bottle of "Not too expensive, but not too cheap either" red wine in a bag at his hip, and he needed to leave in seven minutes if he was going to be on time for dinner.

His parents had asked if he was going to make the drive to Ottawa for the full moon while he was eating dinner the night before. When he'd told them where he was going, Mom had acted like it was his first time being invited to another kid's house for a slumber party. She had immediately called to give him a laundry list of do's and don't's, one of both categories being, "Don't show up empty handed. Bring some wine."

Meanwhile, Ilya's chief concern was whether he was his way to an orgy, apparently.

S: It's not a sex thing and please don't ever say that again.

Not that Hayden wasn't attractive in a very Abercrombie and Fitch kind of way, but Shane saw him naked far too often in a professional capacity to even consider it. Even just having to type "sex" in relation to him felt weirdly incestuous.

L: 🐟 is bad hockey player

L: but little bit hot

L: only little bit

L: dont tell him i said this

Air punched out of Shane's chest in an incredulous huff and he glared at the string of texts, and then took a slow breath and wrote back.

S: I am definitely going to tell him.

L: so it is sex thing ;)

S: No, it's not. I'm babysitting their kits so they can go run around.

L: and then they will come back and ask you for sex

S: Shut up!

S: That's weird and gross.

L: okay

L: you are just going to do his laundry then?

Shane frowned, an uncomfortable feeling squirming around in his guts as the messages came in. The speed of the messages coming through was not unheard of, but it felt strange, like he was missing something in the blank spaces between the letters.

Shoving his other foot into his shoe, he pressed the call button.

"Already that bad?" Ilya asked as soon as the call connected. He sounded like he was smiling, but his tone was tight. "Do you need excuse to leave? I can tell you there is emergency and you need to go right now," he offered generously. "My account book will not balance, Hollander, come save me."

"I haven't even left the house yet." Shane leaned back against the wall and frowned vaguely at the unassuming blue and green watercolor his decorator had chosen for the empty space across from the bench. "You know I don't actually want to have sex with anyone else, right?"

There was a long moment of silence. "No one wants to have sex with Pike, Shane," Ilya said finally.

"Jacki obviously does," Shane countered, and Ilya responded with an exaggerated shuddering noise that ended on a whine. "What do you have against Hayden? Have you ever even met him off the ice?"

"I have nothing against Hayden," Ilya insisted. "He is only bad hockey player, and also his face annoys me. And his edge work is very ugly. And he is slow. Probably he wears socks that do not match."

"…You're jealous," Shane realized. His chest flooded with a sense of wonder, warm and tickling down his ribs.

Ilya made a rude noise. "Me? Jealous? Hollander, he is like… twenty-first worst Metro. In all his life, no one has ever been jealous of him."

Shane laughed, stuck somewhere between awe and incredulity. "Oh, my god, you are so jealous."

Ilya did not respond immediately, but his scowl was practically audible over the phone. The seconds stretched into a minute, and then Ilya said, in a voice both much quieter and totally devoid of the previous teasing edge, "You can."

Confused, Shane asked, "I can what?"

"Have sex with Pike. Or whoever you want."

Shane had five minutes before he was supposed to be out the door, and this was not the time he thought they were going to be having this conversation. His immediate reaction to the statement was a kind of banked-coal anger, and he felt the pin-prick of his fangs on the inside of his cheeks when he swallowed down his first explosive response.

Pushing the words out through the spaces between his teeth, he said, "I already told you that I don't want to. With anyone else." He tried twice to hold the rest of the words back before they came tripping off tongue in an irritated rush. "Is that your way of telling me you're still fucking whoever you want?"

He tried to be calm about the question. They still hadn't put a label on what they were or weren't, there were still no rules, no boundaries around their relationship, and Shane probably still didn't have the right to be upset about it. He probably had even less right to be upset about it now, when he'd gone back into Ilya's bed already knowing this about him.

"No," Ilya said in that same devastatingly quiet voice. "I am already fucking whoever I want."

Shane sat bolt upright on the bench, but before he could get a word out, Ilya took a breath and continued, "And since whoever I want is right now on other side of continent, I am only fucking my right hand. Is very inconvenient, and my forearm is sore."

It took a moment for the words to impact, but once they made it through, they came with a bucket of water to drown the flickering anger in Shane's gut. His shoulders hit the wall again, lungs emptying so quickly that it was almost painful. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath.

"Oh."

"Yes, oh," Ilya mimicked a little nastily.

Glaring, Shane demanded, "Then why are you telling me I can fuck whoever I want?"

"Because you can!" Ilya snapped back.

"Well, whoever I want is also on the wrong fucking side of the continent, Ilya!"

For several seconds, there was only the sound of their breathing, both of them too loud and too fast, and then Shane heard a muffled series of Russian words that were probably curses.

"So, I guess we are people who do not fuck other people now?" Ilya asked, tone indecipherable.

"The English word you're looking for is exclusive, Ilya," Shane said, but then he added, "Yeah, I guess we are. If that's…if you're sure. We don't see each other very often." He stopped short of telling Ilya that he could sleep with other people. Ilya didn't need his permission for that and Shane felt that he would rather pull his own intestines out with a fork than say those words out loud.

Shane got a wordless complaint in response, a long sigh, and then, "I am sure, Shane. You bored me too much, and now I can only think about wealth managers and real estate and…accounting, probably." A long pause followed that Shane filled only with a smile that Ilya couldn't see. "And freckles, and that stupid thing you do with your tongue—"

"Stupid, huh?" Shane interrupted.

"So stupid," Ilya said. "Makes my brain not work right."

"I'm really sorry about that," Shane said on a weirdly floaty breath.

"You should be. This is big problem for me." Ilya sniffed in mock offense, but then he said, "Do not do laundry for Hayden Pike."

"Okay," Shane said, which felt like too small of a word in his mouth, but there were no other words sitting behind it. The moment stretched on, gossamer thin and so fragile that Shane thought it might shatter if he breathed wrong.

"Have fun. Send me pictures, but only if they are cute. Or I can use for blackmail."

~*~

"This is very…grown up," Hayden said, half laughing as he pulled the wine out of the bag and turned it over twice.

"It's a decent year," Shane said, quoting the clerk at the liquor store who had pulled it off a shelf behind the counter and offered it to him like he would get anything useful off the label.

"Yeah, excellent, uh, vintage…1993. Classy," Hayden replied, trying failing to school his features into something serious.

"Shut up," Shane ordered, face warm.

Hayden dropped the serious act with a snorting laugh, punched him lightly on the bicep, and then wrapped a hand around his shoulder and jostled him.

"Come on, we'll pour this down my mother-in-law tomorrow, she'll love it. Jacki! Shane's feeding your mom's bad fuckin' habits!"

"That's so nice of him!" Jacki called back cheerfully. She came around the corner with one of the twins on her hip. The girl was in blue polka dot leggings and a pink dress with her thin hair pulled back in yellow barrets and she looked wide-eyed at Shane as she clung to her mom's neck.

"They're going to start repeating you soon, Hayden. And I'm going to start charging you a fine for cussing. A quarter every time."

"You should really increase the fine. Multi-million dollar salary, and all," Shane said, and Hayden gasped theatrically, giving Shane an open-mouthed look of stunned offense.

"Oh, I knew I would like you," Jacki said, holding one hand out for a handshake.

Hayden shook his head mournfully. "Really, Hollander? Three feet in my fuckin' door and already betraying me?"

"That will be a toonie, Hayd," Jacki said triumphantly, and Hayden sputtered, looking between them with an expression of shock that was severely undercut by his broad grin.

Shane shook Jacki's hand quickly and then slipped his hand back into his jacket pocket, shrugging. "It's not an incentive to change the behavior if it doesn't cause any discomfort. Consider a sliding scale," he added to Jacki, and she laughed again. In her arms, the baby gurgled out a laugh that went into a high-pitched yipping noise.

"Uncle Shane is our new favorite, isn't he, Ruby?" Jacki asked the girl, bouncing her.

Ruby made some sounds that might have been words, but Shane couldn't guess if it was agreement or a dissertation on the plight of the humpback whale.

"I regret this already," Hayden groaned. "Come on, Jacki, let him out of the entryway, what are we here, animals?"

Jacki rolled her eyes, but made a welcoming gesture with her free hand and lead Shane through the entryway to the living room. Emma, dressed in inverted colors to her sister, sat upright in a playpen, happily knocking wooden blocks together.

Passing Ruby over to Shane with a kind of careless trust that nearly dropped Shane's heart right out of his chest, Jacki reached down and picked Emma up. Emma made a piercing noise of complaint to leave her blocks behind and curled over in her mom's arms, reaching for them as Jacki walked away from the pen.

"Hi," Shane said helplessly, looking down at the girl in his arms. He had her sitting on his forearm with the other hand supporting her back, and she looked as uncertain about the arrangement as he was with her knees digging into his ribs. "Nice to meet you—"

She reached up and shoved a hand into his mouth.

Shane froze, not even breathing as she hooked her fingers around the back of his lower teeth and pulled. His eyes went so wide that they stung at the corners.

"Welcome to the family," Hayden said, laughing so hard that Jacki turned around to see what had happened.

"Oh my god, Ruby!" she exclaimed. "Hayden!"

"The look on your face!" Hayden cackled, but after another sharp order from his wife, he stepped forward and pried Ruby's little fist out of Shane's mouth.

Ruby did not appreciate the interference. Her face screwed up in anger, and she yelled something that had syllables involved, trying to yank her hand out of Hayden's grip and kicking Shane in the stomach in retaliation. She screamed again when Hayden dragged her out of Shane's arms.

"Sorry," Jacki apologized while Hayden swung Ruby upside-down until she stopped screaming in anger and started screaming with laughter instead. "They're at that age," she said, rolling her eyes fondly at her husband.

"No problem," Shane said, but his pulse was still wild in his chest. He had a visceral image running through his head of losing control in just that exact moment and biting down on a toddler. It made his stomach turn over so violently that he thought he might be sick.

"Just wait until they have fur and sharp little teeth," Hayden said, grinning. He looked up at Shane's face and laughed again."Don't run, Hollander! I promise, it barely hurts when they bite."

Shane glanced back at the front door, but Hayden caught him by the back of the neck and hauled him toward the dining table. "No escape now, I'm afraid!" he said cheerfully. "Jacki made so much of this weird fish salad stuff, and there's no way I'm letting you out of the house until it's gone."

"Stop being an ass, Hayd, he's going to think you lured him to be a chew toy."

"Who says I didn't?" Hayden asked innocently, pulling a chair out for Shane and wrestling Ruby into a high chair. "And that's a toonie from you, too, Jacki."

Shane sat down slowly and just watched as Hayden and Jacki moved around each other, bickering playfully and touching in small, unconscious ways; Hayden's hand on her waist as he passed behind her to get the salad, her fingertips on his arm to move him away from the silverware drawer so she could get into it.

"Can I help with anything?" Shane asked, feeling awkward with nothing to put his hands on and the twins staring at him with identical expressions of calculated interest.

"Nope, just sit right there!" Hayden ordered.

Shane's eyes caught on a laundry basket full of clothes on top of the dryer, just barely visible through the partially open laundry room door, and he had to stifle a laugh at his own immediate impulse to get up and take care of it, just to have something to occupy himself. He thought about snapping a picture of it and sending it to Ilya, but it felt like it would be cruel with their recent confessions less than hour old.

Dinner with the Pikes was an interesting experience for Shane. There was a kind of choreographed chaos to it that felt more like a game than any of his family dinners ever had. Hayden and Jacki both seemed to have almost precognitive senses related to their daughters; they reached over just in time to catch a sippy cup tumbling off the tray without pausing the story of how they met, or looked up to give one of the girls a rumbly growl and a flash of teeth just as a handful of spaghetti was coming off the plate. The girl in question paused, and then redirected her fist to her mouth.

"Never ending," Hayden said, but he sounded so pleased with all the world that Shane felt the briefest moment of fiery jealousy.

After dinner, Shane was allowed to help clear the table, and Jacki gratefully left him to handle dishes while she took a wet cloth to clean the girls' sauce-covered hands and faces.

"We're all going to be naked for a minute," Hayden warned Shane after dinner had been cleared away and Shane was idly wiping a counter down. Without a pause, he plunked Emma on to the table and pulled her dress over her head. "But I don't mind if you watch me shift. If you're curious."

He said it like it was a totally normal thing to offer to someone, and Shane had no idea how to respond to it. He was deeply grateful that Jacki didn't extend the same invitation, and he had a sudden impulse to call his mom and ask what he should do. Seeming not remotely concerned that her husband had offered to show off a shift, Jacki took Ruby in one arm and then the half-naked Emma in the other and disappeared into the living room with them.

As casually and easily as he did any day in the locker room, Hayden stripped out of his clothes right in the dining room, dropping them negligently on the bay window bench. He didn't quite look at Shane while he did it, but he also wasn't making any effort not to look.

Shane tried to look away. It was different from the locker room, and it felt weird and charged to watch him strip while Shane was still fully clothed and standing at a kitchen counter. But once Hayden was fully naked and stretching his arms up to the ceiling, Shane couldn't help his eyes moving away from where he'd tried to glue them to the countertop.

Hayden had turned his back, and Shane was caught watching the muscles move under his skin as he stretched his shoulders and twisted a few times. He tipped his head back, took in a deep breath, and then let it out in a slow and controlled gust.

The shift didn't have the same soft drama as any movie Shane had seen, and he couldn't quite nail down when it started or even exactly what happened in what order. There was pale skin and flexing muscles, and then fur laying soft and smooth over his shoulders, a tail, a series of alarming cracking noises, a shimmer like a heat mirage, and then Hayden was simply gone.

The entire process couldn't have taken more than a dozen heartbeats, and Shane had to lean over the counter to see a large red fox with a bushy, black-tipped tail, narrow snout and laughing mouth, sitting as patiently and neatly as a dog waiting for a treat.

"Oh…hi?" Shane tried.

Hayden made a trilling sound, mouth dropping open. Shane didn't know what any fox noises meant, but it sounded distinctly like Hayden was laughing at him.

One big ear twitched toward the living room, and then Hayden looked over his shoulder. Shane followed the direction of his gaze. The ongoing babyish ruckus from the living room went quiet, and then abruptly turned into loud shrieks of pain.

Shane jolted and tried to run around the counter, but Hayden blocked his path. When Shane tried to step around him, Hayden made a kek-kek-kek noise high in his throat and nipped at Shane's shin, forcing him back a step.

Holding his hands up, Shane took another step back, but the shrieking rose in pitch until it was interrupted by a series of sharp, wet cracks, and then that abruptly cut off as well. Shane's heart hammered in his chest. He knew that Hayden wouldn't be stopping him from going to help if help was needed, and the fact that Hayden was so calm had to mean that this was normal, but it went on so long and it sounded so horrible that Shane had to clutch his pant legs to keep from covering his ears.

Hayden craned his head in the direction of the living room for a moment, and then padded over to the door. He gave Shane a look over his shoulder that clearly conveyed stay, so Shane stayed where he was, but his ears strained to pick up any further sounds.

Finally, whimpering breaths, and then an excited yip, followed by a pitchy growl. A moment later, a fluffy black fox appeared in the doorway with a kit in her mouth and the other bouncing around her feet, uncoordinated and stumbling over paws that were too big for her tiny body.

Hayden's tail came up, and he licked Jacki's cheek, and then looked back at Shane with a definite smile on his face. Shane stepped cautiously around the counter, approaching slowly in case he had misinterpreted, but Hayden moved casually away, and Jacki set the kit down.

Both of the kits had mostly orange fur, but the fur down their necks and across their shoulders was black. Their tails were also mostly black, and one of them had a much larger patch of white on her chest. The kit Jacki had been carrying tottered over to Shane and pounced on his shoe. She caught his shoe lace, growled, wiggled, and tried to yank it away from his shoe.

"Uh…Ruby?" Shane tried, glancing at Hayden.

Hayden sneezed and tossed his head.

"…Emma?" Shane amended, and Hayden gave him a deliberate, awkward nod. It was a very human gesture that looked unnatural on the fox, but it put Shane's mind to ease. It wasn't like he didn't know that shifters retained their faculties when shifted, but the confirmation soothed his nerves.

Jacki came forward and picked Emma up again, just grabbed her by her neck. Emma went limp in her hold, and though it looked like the angle would snap the girl's delicate spine, Emma was unconcerned in her mom's mouth. After a moment, Hayden scooped Ruby the same way. They both trotted over to a purpose-made opening by the back door, and pushed through the flap to go outside.

Shane followed, stepping out onto the back porch just as the girls were being set in the grass. The back yard was full of playground equipment that had been cleverly designed to be appealing to both a child on two legs and a kit on four, and the two girls were shortly rolling through grass, high-pitched yips and yowls filling the air while they wrestled.

Jacki jumped in to play with them, but Hayden picked up a tennis ball and came trotting back to the deck, where he sat just short of the stairs and looked up at Shane.

"This is weird," Shane told him.

Hayden tossed the ball up in the air and leapt to catch it, and then sat down again and tilted his head.

"If I throw this for you and you file a complaint with HR tomorrow, I'm going to be upset," Shane warned him, but he came down the stairs and held his hand out.

Hayden seemed to consider not handing the ball over, but he finally dropped it into Shane's palm, almost delicately, and bounded away a few paces. Shane looked down at the ball in his hand, over to the fox who was—Shane privately admitted—his best friend, and shook his head. He cocked his arm back and threw the ball to the other end of the large back yard, and Hayden went racing after it.

~*~

In short order, Shane had been mobbed by the entire family. He stayed out until after the sun went down, throwing toys and wrestling with Hayden, who was cautious and gentle with him for all of about three minutes before tackling him hard to the ground and treating his chest like a trampoline. He nipped at Shane's clothes until Shane chased him, and then lead him around so Jacki could foul up his legs and send him tumbling to the ground.

Both Hayden and Jacki were careful with their teeth, but the girls did bite and endured getting nipped by their parents when they did with loud, wailing complaints. When Shane was bold enough to pick one of the girls up, she squirmed and kicked in his hands until he tossed her gently away, and then she came running immediately back nip at the hem of his jeans until he did it again.

The kits wound down just as full dark settled across the yard, and Jacki brought them over one at a time and dropped them unceremoniously in Shane's lap where he was still sitting in the lawn after the most recent wrestling match with Hayden.

Jacki brushed the full length of her body against his arm, around his back, and then against the opposite arm, gave him an ambiguous growl that went into a yammering series of yips, and walked off a few paces.

"I guess that was stay here and don't fuck up?" Shane asked Hayden, who rolled onto his back with a chuffing noise and then flipped onto his feet. He rose up to his hind feet and smashed his front paws against Shane's chest once, leaned down to snuffle at his sleeping children, and then followed his wife through the yard.

The property butted up against a stretch of trees, and the two foxes quickly disappeared into the underbrush, leaving Shane entirely alone with a pair of sleeping kits, the dampness from the grass slowly seeping through his jeans, and the night noises swelling around them.

Shane sighed and looked down at the kits sprawled across his thighs. Their sides heaved with sleeping breaths and they kept making faint, terribly cute noises. He cautiously ran his hand down Emma's back, and she picked her head up for just a moment before cuddling closer to him and getting her cold nose under the hem of his t-shirt.

After ten minutes he carefully scooped them both up, relieved when they only burrowed tighter to his chest without really waking, and carried them inside. He arranged himself on the couch, carefully moving their floppy bodies around so he could build a barrier of pillows at his sides, and then leaned back into the cushions once they seemed comfortable and had stopped squirming.

He didn't mean to fall asleep, but the next thing he was aware of was Hayden, dressed only in a pair of dark boxers and eyes still glowing golden in the faint light from the hallway, kneeling at his side and smiling down at the kits in his lap.

"I told you it would be easy and fun," Hayden said softly.

Jacki came up a moment later in just underwear and a slinky t-shirt, and leaned over the back of the couch to pet one of the girls. In the darkness, Shane couldn't tell which one it was, but she had flopped onto her back on top of her sister and had her paws waving in the air while she dreamed her fox dreams.

"Thanks for watching them Shane, we appreciate it," Jacki said, and surprised Shane by leaning down to give him a hug. She smelled like wind, and green things, and damp soil.

Before Shane could say or do anything, she picked the two girls up and cradled them to her shoulders to carry them down the hall. They made sleepy noises of complaint, and one woke long enough to mouth at her ear.

"Not too bad for your first time playing with foxes," Hayden said. "Though I might still tell HR you played fetch with me like I'm a dog. That's very inappropriate behavior, you know."

"Fuck off," Shane said, but a yawn interrupted him part way so it came out more fuh'kough.

"Ooo, that's two toonies, Rookie!"

"That makes me a cheap babysitter," Shane countered. He stretched and moved to stand up, but Hayden nudged him gently backwards.

"Stay—it's like two in the morning, man. I'll get you a blanket."

Shane probably should have protested, but he was foggy-headed with sleep, and the couch was absurdly comfortable.

Hayden padded off and came back a moment later with a pillow and a thick crocheted blanket.

"Thanks," Shane said, already shifting to stretch out the length of the couch.

Hayden ruffled his hair and said, "Night, Rookie!"

Shane swatted his hand away, lips pulling back automatically in a hiss and scalp tingling where Hayden's fingers had rubbed across it. Hayden chuckled like Shane had performed a cute trick, pushed himself upright, and walked out of sight.

Chapter 17: Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Notes

Warnings

Ilya is dealing with his brother and father in the beginning of this chapter, and they are not kind. You can skip down to the first ~*~ to avoid this section if you need to.

"What do you mean you can't send it?" Alexei spat, so loud and sharp that his voice distorted over the line.

Ilya kept his lips pressed together and pinched the bridge of his nose. He let his brother spit poison at him for several minutes longer before his control finally snapped and he shouted, "The money is in investments now! I don't have access to it, Alexei!"

"Investments," Alexei mocked in a nasty snarl. "You are now big fucking man, huh? How old are you, fifty? You think you know shit about investments, you fucking cunt? I have a family, Ilya!"

"I have sent home already almost one million U.S. dollars, Alexei!" Ilya snapped back. "What the fuck are you doing with it?"

Alexei screamed wordlessly, the sound just barely stifled enough to suggest he'd taken the phone away from his mouth. When he came back on the line, he yelled so loud that Ilya had to pull the phone away from his ear. "That is none of your fucking business, faggot piece of shit! Send the fucking money!"

"I cannot send the money," Ilya stressed. "There is no money to send! Next month, there will be more sent to you—"

"Do you know how much I sacrificed for you?!" Alexei interrupted, so loud and angry that words came out like he was chewing glass. "You can't fucking do anything! Nothing! The only fucking thing you're good for is this fucking game! So you go to America and be a biiiig fucking deal with your little sticks, playing with other men all day, and you forget your family? What about me?! What about my daughter, Ilya?! What about papa? You get to fuck off with this glamorous life and fucking leave your family to starve? Piece of shit! Your niece is here and you haven't even seen her for one day in a year and you can't even put clothes on her back! Fuck you!Good for nothing, lazy, worthless motherfucker!"

Ilya stood and listened to the diatribe and felt himself going colder the longer Alexei screamed. It wasn't anything he wasn't use to hearing—lazy, worthless, useless—and each new word just added another stone to the pile in the pit of his stomach. He reached up and smoothed his mother's cross down under his shirt, breathed through his nose, pushed his shoulders back and down.

Alexei continued for a long time like that, recycling his complaints, getting progressively less creative with insults, screaming so loud that it was like Ilya was in the room with him, watching his face go red and swollen the longer he yelled. Several times, he ran out of air and gagged for breath before sucking in oxygen and starting again, as if he'd lost his place and needed to pick it back up.

The truth of Ilya's house down payment lodged in his throat, fighting to get to his tongue. He hadn't locked it all up in his shiny new investment portfolio; he'd kept out enough to put a good chunk into the new house, and that money was still sitting in his account. It would take only a few minutes, a few clicks, and the money would be in his brother's hands.

Ilya could guess what he was doing with it, and it wasn't going into putting clothes on his niece, or his sister-in-law's nursing school. Those things, Ilya paid directly to Lena. It was going up his brother's nose, down the gullet of some loan shark, flushed into cards. Alexei had never told him directly before, and Ilya hadn't pushed very hard to find out, but his brother sounded like he would have an aneurysm, he was so angry. And panicked, Ilya realized.

"So are you going to send the fucking money?" Alexei finally demanded. He was panting on the other end of the line as hard as if he'd been doing bag skates for a straight hour.

Ilya thought about that money in his account for the house that Shane had helped him pick out, private and tucked behind mature landscaping with a long drive way and entertainer's kitchen and outdoor kitchen and generous walk-in closets and luxurious master bath.

"No," he said, so softly that he wondered if Alexei could even hear him over the sound of his own breathing.

"What did you say?" Alexei demanded. "Did you fucking say no to me, you motherfucker?"

"I am not sending any more money right now," Ilya said, stealing that chill out of his stomach and breathing it into his voice.

On the other end, there was a bellowing roar, and then a horrible crash, and the line went dead.

Ilya stood with his knees locked and the phone still up at his ear, breathing harshly for several minutes before he could make himself move. His stomach clenched and twisted, and he found himself blindly catching at the bathroom sink while his knees shuddered so badly that he could have been running bag skates for an hour.

He clutched the edge of the sink and leaned his hips backward, stretching out the tense muscles down the line of his spine and trying to get his stomach to settle. He'd broken out into a cold sweat, and he felt almost feverish, exhausted and simultaneously jumpy with the need to move, to scream, to hit somethi—

Yanking himself upright, he roughly shook his arms out like he could flick away the sweat and the hungry thing gnawing at his stomach at the same time. He took in a breath, pulled his clothing off and pretended for a second that he was Shane Hollander. He folded each item into a precise stack on the bathroom counter, and then flipped the shower on and climbed into it when the water was still cold enough to match the ice growing between his ribs.

He couldn't say the water soothed the tension, but he felt more in control when he stepped out and dried off, and if he was still trembling, it was just from the cold. On the counter, his phone showed him seven missed called, and even as he looked down at it while wrapping the towel around his waist, it began to ring again.

Ilya took a very slow breath, and picked it up. "Yes, Papa?"

"What is this I hear from your brother that you have said fuck your family?" his father demanded immediately.

Ilya turned and sat down on the closed toilet seat so he could put his forehead in his palm. "I did not say that."

"You are telling me your brother is a liar?"

A liar was the least of what his brother was. Ilya took in another breath, counted to three. "No, Papa."

"He asks you for some little things and you can't just give them to him? What kind of money are you making that you can't give some little things for your niece? Your brother worked very hard his whole life for you to be able to go to camps, and have the best things, and he's asking for what? Some clothes for his daughter? You have not even held her since she was born!"

Ilya let his father go on a long, looping lecture that stopped abruptly when it arrived at, "Your mother even misses you!"

There was a charged pause as they both sat with those words between them. "Polina is not my mother," Ilya said flatly. He wanted to yell the words, scream them like Alexei had screamed at him, but he knew better than to raise his voice to his father.

"Whatever, your step-mother, why are you so prissy about this, huh? She's my wife, isn't she? Doesn't that give me the right to call her your mother? You're so fucking picky." He made a dismissive noise. "Whatever, whatever. Send your brother the money he's asking for, it's not a lot."

"Yes, Papa, I will." The money now went out automatically every month. His next paycheck was in fifteen days. "It will be there next paycheck."

"Okay, see! Is that so fucking hard? Do you two have to do this and make me come in and separate you like fucking wolves fighting over a carcass?"

"No, Papa."

"When are you coming home? There's things here to do," his father asked, dismissing the previous topic as if they'd only been talking about the weather.

"In July, Papa," Ilya reminded him. He had relayed his plans several times already, but his father didn't like to be told no, and one of the ways he recently handled being told no was forgetting that his question had been answered and just asking again until Ilya gave up and gave him a different answer.

"What? Why July? Even if you win the fucking American Cup, this is in June. Come home in June, I need your help with the house, or are you trying to get out of work? Fucking lazy, who raised you to shirk out of work like this?"

"I am going to Romania with Sveta, Papa. We will go for three weeks, and then I will come home after," Ilya said.

"Romania? For what, for fuck's sake! That old woman is dead, and you will go to her house and fix her house, and you will not come home?"

Ilya clenched his teeth around the scream building in his chest. "Sveta and I have planned this already for a year, Papa. I told you last month—" and the month before that, and the month before that, and last summer when they'd decided on when they would go. "It is only three weeks, spending time with Sveta, and then I will come home."

"When are you going to marry that girl?" his father asked abruptly. "You are not so young anymore that you can keep fucking her without consequences. She will be pregnant one of these days, and what will you do then, huh? Stop being a pussy and just marry her."

"We're not getting married, Papa, and she will not be pregnant." It wasn't his father's place to know that Sveta's one religious devotion was to her birth control, and his father didn't deserve to know that Ilya had stopped even fucking her.

"Whatever," his father scoffed. "Young people these days, no sense of responsibility. Fine, go spend your time with Sveta and don't whine to me when you have a baby who needs to be looked after, I won't do it."

"Yes, Papa."

"Don't forget to send the money, my God, you two boys are like wolves fighting over a carcass, why do I have to do this all the time?"

"I won't forget, Papa."

His father disconnected the call without anything further than a snort, and Ilya set his phone aside and leaned his elbows on his thighs to hang his head down. He reached up to put his hands on the back of his neck and pulled until he felt the stretch, and then got up and went to get dressed.

~*~

Less than a month later, Ilya sat in his new house and watched game seven of the Metros-Cobras series.

Boston had clawed their way through to game six of their series and lost in overtime, so he had the rare opportunity to watch a game outside of the tape room.

Ilya was disappointed that his season was over, but he wasn't heartbroken about it. It was the first time the Raiders had even made it to the playoffs in nine years, and the mood in the club had been overall positive, even with the loss.

Despite Shane putting two pucks in the net and logging an assist—bringing him five points over Ilya in the race—the Metros were going to lose in regulation. Nashville had been playing well all year, and the Metros had barely scraped through the last victory that had kept them clinging to life in the series. The Cobras had come into game seven like someone had lit their tails on fire, and they were up three goals with less than two minutes left on the clock.

It wasn't impossible to turn that into a tie and claw out an OT victory, but Ilya didn't think they had it in them. Considering their recent history, it had been a very good season for the Metros, but even Shane couldn't drag the whole team through the playoffs on his own.

Like everyone else, they'd gone through a flurry of trades just before the deadline, losing Hostler in exchange for Andropov, as well as a d-man and a draft pick in exchange for Tadeusz Bajorek, a young center who did well on the power play, but, it turned out, wasn't seasoned enough to pull his full weight yet. Shane had Jaskari on his right wing now, and he was a better winger than Hostler had been, but it wasn't going to be enough when the Metros defensemen couldn't close the damn lanes.

Jaskari did put a goal in with five seconds left on the clock, but the last few seconds ticked down without any miracles. The Cobras walked away with the win, and the Metros' season came to a sliding halting.

"Sorry, Shane," Ilya said to his empty living room. He did feel sorry, but part of him was also glad that Shane wouldn't be going further in the playoffs while Ilya had to watch from the couch in his cavernous living room. The place still echoed, and the furniture from his old townhouse felt like doll furniture in the open spaces. Some time during the off season, he would bribe Sveta again to hire someone and fix it for him.

Ilya watched Shane skate slowly off the ice, the set of his shoulders and the slow drag of his skates shrieking disappointment for anyone who had working eyeballs, though the commentators babbled about his poise and unflappable composure.

To Ilya, he looked very flapped.

"How do you feel about the Metros season now that it's over?" a reporter asked Shane in the tunnel while the rest of his team tromped past him to the locker room.

Shane was soaked in sweat, hair hanging in daggers over his forehead that shivered whenever he moved, face flushed from the exertion, and forehead stamped red from where his helmet had cut into it. But he listened politely to the question and put on a pleasantly neutral expression before he responded.

"Uh, yeah, you know, we really pushed hard in these last weeks, and we did a lot of good work, played a lot of good hockey. It's disappointing to be going home now, of course, and we've got work to do next season, but I think we really showed that we have what it takes. We're going to take all these lessons from these last games, and we'll be back next season, armed with more experience and ready to take it all the way."

Ilya snorted. "Perfect answer," he told Shane. It could have been sarcastic, but it felt more sincere on his tongue than he'd intended it to be. "Mr. Hollander, how does it feel to be most perfect person ever to be perfect in the history of the whole world?" Ilya asked over the reporter's next question, but Shane just gave a rote answer about his own culpability in the loss and how he could have, should have done more.

Ilya had barely gotten a chance to speak to him in the last month as they'd both been sucked into the frenzy of playoff preparation with just enough time and energy to exchange their good nights and good mornings. Shane had become militant about these, and his texts for the last two weeks had arrived precisely at 6:22 AM and 9:16 PM without so much as a minute's deviation.

"Absolutely phenomenal season from young rookie Shane Hollander! The Metros as a whole had an excellent season, just not enough to overcome the Cobras' sterling defense," one of the commentators said as the coverage turned to pan over the Cobras' locker room and talk turned to their efforts over the last two weeks. The locker room was not joyous with victory, but saturated with a kind of grim determination. The Metros had made them fight hard for the series win, and it would just get harder as they moved on.

"The League was spoiled this year between Hollander and Rozanov. Gotta say, I'm disappointed we're not seeing either of them go further in the playoffs, but to no fault of theirs. Record breaking years for both of them, and Hollander really put in the work here in game seven—"

Ilya turned the TV off and tossed the remote onto the ottoman. He took his phone out and opened his messages.

I: sorry ((

I: call later?

There was a long, expected delay, and then Shane wrote back:

S: Yeah, when I get home.

When Shane called a few hours later, he didn't mention anything about the game, and Ilya didn't bring it up. He sounded exhausted, and Ilya could hear him going through his night time ritual in the background. It sounded like he'd called from the doorstep.

"What is your plan now?" Ilya asked. He heard a rhythmic clicking, and then his phone buzzed. He barely needed to look to see it was his good night from Shane, who continued on his routine without mentioning it when Ilya texted him back.

"Um…I think I have something like four days off, and then some kind of sponsorship ad lined up. Rolex, I think?"

Ilya made an exaggerated ooooo'ing noise. "Mr. Professional Model can't even remember his next appointment. So busy. So in demand."

Shane's voice took on a reluctant note of amusement. "Shut up! I know I had one booked between round one and two, I just don't remember which. The others were on hold depending on when the season ended."

He said the last in a carefully neutral voice.

"Yes, I have requests coming now, too. My agent has been negotiating something with Puma, and some sports drink, also."

On the other end of the line, Ilya heard Shane's washing machine door open and close, and then the cheerful beeps of him selecting the delay on the wash cycle.

"That's really good," Shane said warmly. "Maybe we can book something together, if anyone will pick us both up…"

Ilya suspected there were a lot of places that would like to pick them both up while they were still new enough to be cheap to get and sensational enough to make them lots of money.

"I will tell my agent that I am open to it," he said with mock casualness.

Shane yawned through a soft laugh. "Glad to hear you're willing to consider it."

"Important to be…mmm what is this fucking word—discerning. You could damage my reputation!"

"Discerning. That's a good one, where did you pick that up?"

"Marly got me this English vocabulary calendar," Ilya confessed. "And Sveta pretends she does not understand me anymore if I say give me apple instead of give me THE apple. So annoying, this is dumb language. Who is so stupid they need to know I want apple that is right there in front of them and not any apple that is on tree outside?"

"Maybe the apple on the tree outside tastes better," Shane suggested.

"Maybe apple on tree outside is better for throwing at someone's face," Ilya said darkly, but he earned himself another tired, short laugh. He heard Shane's necklace drop onto the dish on his dresser, and then Shane put the phone down for precisely four minutes so he could brush his teeth and wash his face. Shane's breath came back to the line, and then there was the click of the light switch and the rustle of the sheets pulling back.

"What sheets are you in?" Ilya asked.

"The light blue ones with the stripes," Shane reported. He sounded like he was already half way asleep on his striped sheets. "Miss you."

The words caught at Ilya's chest and warmed his belly. "Maybe we can see each other soon? I should see these sheets in person. Make sure they are acceptable."

Shane hummed. "I would really like that…but might not be able to do that right away. Now the season is over, my mom will book all the shoots she's been piling up…most of those will be in California, probably? I'm sure you have a bunch, too. Maybe I'll get a long weekend, if we can get them to match up."

"We will try," Ilya said, but he was disappointed.

"Definitely see each other for MLH Awards, though. Stay a few extra days in Vegas?"

Ilya sighed unhappily. "Mmm…I cannot. I leave next day for Romania."

"Oh, that will be nice though," Shane said in a slow murmur. "I know you're looking forward to it."

Ilya really was, but for one moment, he wanted to cancel on Sveta and take those three weeks with Shane instead. "Maybe I can come back week or two early, before training camp."

"I'll make sure I'm available," Shane promised, but the last word drifted off, and a moment later, there was nothing but the soft susurration of his breath as he fell asleep.

Ilya stretched out on the couch, and propped his phone up close to his ear, and drifted off to the sound of Shane's breath like ocean waves.

~*~

"Okay, let me walk you through what we're doing here," the producer said, spreading out pages of drawings in front of Ilya. "This is the kind of story we're telling, someone who always finds their feet, even in new or uncertain landscapes."

Ilya's eyes followed her hands as she described each frame of the story; it was a lot of close-ups of shoes, of course, but also landscapes and a figure running across the frames.

"This is me?" he asked, pointing to one of the pages of a man's lower body running in the surf.

"Yes," she confirmed. "I understand you're a runner, right?"

Ilya frowned, but nodded. He wouldn't call himself a runner, which seemed to imply someone who ran for fun. Ilya ran because he had to, and because sometimes it was the only way to make his brain be quiet "I run, yes."

"Great! We have a few nearby locations, and then we'll get some shots in the studio. The beach here first, and then a forest trail just about a mile away."

"Snow?" Ilya asked, hiking an eyebrow at her and tapping one of the pages.

"That will be done in post, as will most of these landscapes. Any questions?"

"I just run?" Ilya confirmed. "This is all?"

She smiled at him. "There are a few lines for you that will be voice over, but we'll get those in the studio. Here's the script, let us know if there are any words or phrases you'll have difficulty pronouncing."

He tapped another three frames showing a silhouette suggesting a man shifting. The next frame was paws running through a darkened forest. "I am not a werewolf."

"Oh, we know you're not a wolf shifter, and please don't be concerned, we won't be portraying you as one. That's just part of the story, it will be handled—"

"—In post," Ilya guessed.

"Right! Any other questions?"

She patted his shoulder and leaned sideways to look at his face until he shook his head, and then she left him alone with the script and the story drawings.

Ilya took his phone out.

I: i am werewolf now

S: …What?

S: They prefer wolf shifter.

S: You can't actually contract lycanthropy.

S: That's a myth.

S: Did someone bite you?

Ilya bit his lip to suppress the smile.

I: that is what the werewolves want you to think

I: youll see

S: I'm definitely holding my breath.

Ilya frowned, and read the message back with his head tilted, as if it would make more sense at a 45-degree angle.

I: why?

S: It's a phrase.

S: Like…saying you don't believe something will happen.

I: oh ok

I: we would say dont even hope

I: sometimes instead hold your pocket open

I: so someone can put money in it

S: You'll have to teach me how to say them in Russian :)

Ilya was unsuccessful at fully repressing his smile and had to cover his mouth with one hand. Shane had slowly started using more smiley faces, but it still made Ilya grin every time.

I: no this is not useful phrase for you

I: start with more useful things

S: Like what?

I: more harder please fuck me

S: Okay. I'll ask my Russian tutor to translate them for me.

Ilya's eyes narrowed. Shane was a master of deadpan delivery, and his jokes were sometimes hard to read in text. It would be perfectly in character for Shane to have decided he was going to learn Russian in between his packed schedule of appointments and ad shoots. Ilya wouldn't put it past him to spring the words on him unexpectedly, probably accent-less and perfect.

I: only if your Russian tutor is me

S: No, his name is Sergei.

S: Sorry, have to go. They need me on set.

I: no dont go

I: who is this sergei??

I: H!

I: S!!!!!

S: Talk later.

S: :)

"Bad news?"

Ilya jolted and looked sharply at the young man leaning over him. He had soft features and hair so pale it was nearly white, but maybe that was more in contrast with his olive skin and dark eyes. He jerked back from Ilya and held one hand up in apology.

"Sorry, you were…scowling," he said gesturing at Ilya's phone.

Ilya quickly tucked his phone away. "It is nothing."

"Fair enough," he said easily. "I need to bring you back to makeup, if you can follow me?"

After makeup in the truck, Ilya was laced into a set of a weird looking shoes with soles the color of a highlighter and set to running up the beach with the camera on a track. First he went much too fast, and then it was too slow, and then he needed to go further into the surf, look into the sun, sunglasses on, sunglasses off, stand facing the water with hands on hips, look hopeful, look powerful, look winded, look joyous.

Before they left the beach, they had him jumping around the craggy rocks, and then he was hustled into a cart and driven up a running path that he pointed out he could have run on. They set up in a forested area on top of the cliffs overlooking the same beach, and he started running again.

Every time the director called, "Cut!" there was someone hurrying up to him with water, and a handheld electric fan, and tissues to blot the sweat off his face, and a mister to make his exposed arms look sweatier.

"Do you want to come home with me?" Ilya joked during one break to the three people surrounding him. "I will never carry my own water bottle again. Very convenient."

He got a laugh for his efforts, and then it was back to bouncing around on boulders and over fallen trees.

"When you jump over this one, if you can land kind of in a crouch? Just—yeah, like that, put your fingertips down…perfect!"

They took more long shots of him looking at things, and, as the sun sank toward the horizon, returned to the cliff for him to stand there and look at the ocean some more.

It was boring, and he was hot, and hungry, and tired. But staring out at the ocean with the dying sun glistening off the waves, he couldn't help but think of Shane in San Francisco, watching the sun set from a chilly hotel porch with the scent of salt in the air. The way he'd looked so devastated, so forlorn—like a widow whose husband had been swallowed by a storm—still haunted Ilya at odd moments.

"Cut! Whatever you were just thinking of there, that was perfect. Let's keep that energy back in the studio."

Someone was at least thoughtful enough to put food in his lap on the way back to the studio, but he didn't eat much. There was going to be more running, and running on a recently full stomach would be worse than being hungry. He ate the chocolate for the quick energy and drank the shot of vitamins without any complaint, but the burrito was set aside.

In the studio, they had him record the lines, which took seven takes and made him very frustrated. Then, they set him on a treadmill in front of a giant blue sheet and had him run and run and run some more, and then he had to stand on a box covered in another blue sheet and stare at the blue sheet like there was something interesting there.

The final time when the director called, "Cut!" he said, "Eh, good enough. Great job, kid. You must have run twenty miles today!" he added, like he was joking.

Back in the hotel, Ilya called Shane. As soon as the line connected, he howled into the phone, a long cartoon awoooooooo!

"Having fun?" Shane asked when Ilya ran out of air, but he sounded… maybe fond was the word for how he sounded, soft, and exasperated, and charmed.

"No, today was so boring," Ilya complained, dropping onto the bed. He'd put off the phone call just long enough to eat and shower off the sweat and makeup. He flopped around until he could get the pillow arranged just right under his neck. "But at least I got a workout, no gym needed. You have done three of these already. How do you not die of being bored?"

"Being such a boring person, I guess it's doesn't bother me," Shane sassed.

Ilya snorted. "This makes sense to me."

"I kind of just pretend I'm somewhere else," Shane said as an honest answer. "I don't even remember much of this last one, except the woman who kept spraying water in my face. And my mom making my shirt stick to my chest better. Which…weird."

"Making your shirt stick to your chest?" Ilya asked, abruptly more interested.

"Yeah, I spent most of it in a wet white t-shirt."

"I thought this was soda commercial?" Ilya demanded. He'd been uninterested in it when Shane had told him about it earlier, though very amused by the idea of Shane Hollander having to drink soda on camera. "Why are they having you in wet white t-shirt? What is this company again?"

Shane laughed softly. "Suddenly you're interested in watching it?" he teased. "And it's not soda. It's flavored seltzer water."

Ilya groaned. "Of course it is. Even your ads are for boring things."

"It wasn't too bad," Shane said. "Though after take fifteen, I was pretty tired of drinking it. How did yours go?"

"I ran until their shoes fell apart, and then they made me run more," Ilya reported, making a production of his misery to absolutely no result.

"Yeah, that's what you get for athletic shoes. I think I did about fifty flights of stairs for Reebok. Did they have shifters on set or something?"

Ilya smirked. "Why? You are jealous?"

"No!" Shane said too quickly, but then, "What did you mean earlier?"

"If you are curious, you will have to wait to see it," Ilya told him. "Or come with me next full moon, and I will show you."

"That would be great. You can go run with Hayden. I'll throw a ball for you both," Shane said blithely.

Delighted, Ilya asked, "You threw ball for Pike? Like playing fetch with puppy?"

"Oh my god, you cannot tell anyone that!" Shane said hurriedly, sounding genuinely panicked.

"Don't worry, Shane, I keep all of your secrets," Ilya said with gentle emphasis that was, once again, ignored.

Ilya stifled the urge to sigh. Sometimes he swore that Shane knew he knew and was just refusing to admit it, but he had decided that he was not going to push. He was just going to let Shane tell him in his own time and hope it didn't take too long. He hadn't decided how long he could let that go before he was then the bad guy for not telling Shane he already knew.

"You will not come run with me?" Ilya asked with a pout.

Shane hesitated for a beat too long, and then said, "If you're a wolf shifter, I wouldn't be able to keep up with you."

"No?" Ilya pressed. From what he understood of vampires, Shane would have no trouble keeping pace with a shifter of any variety. "Shane Hollander admits he cannot keep up with me? I will tell everyone. Shane Hollander admits defeat, Ilya Rozanov is best—"

Laughing over him, Shane ordered, "Shut up, asshole! I'm not admitting anything."

"No, you already said it!" Ilya insisted. "It is okay, Shane, it is good to admit when you are beaten. Builds character."

"I'll admit I'm beaten when you actually manage to beat me at anything, Rozanov," Shane said after just a second too long of a pause.

"Oh? Okay, awards in three days. We will see. When I win Rookie of the Year, you will come to my room and get on your knees and tell me congratulations."

Shane's next breath came on a shiver. "What do I get if I win?"

Ilya's smile stretched slowly across his face. "I will come to your room, and you can get on your knees so I can tell you congratulations."

Chapter 18: Chapter Seventeen

"Relax, Rookie, you've got this in the bag," Marly said, wrapping his big hands around Ilya's shoulders and squeezing. He spent a few sections massaging at the big muscles, and then slapped him solidly between the shoulder blades.

He had a girl on his arm, Kanani, who Ilya hadn't met before. She had flown in from Hawaii for the event, and was sun-kissed, dark-eyed, and had silky dark hair that fell nearly to her hips and seemed to blend in to her black satin dress. She had an athletic build, and strong, calloused hands, and she'd given Ilya a frankly assessing look when they'd shaken hands.

As soon as Marly took his hands off Ilya's shoulders, he put one back around her slim waist and tugged her into his side.

"I am not nervous," Ilya told him with his best scowl. He wasn't nervous, but the buzzing anticipation in his limbs almost felt like nerves.

Shane was on the other side of the room with his parents and an older man who looked enough like Yuna to be her father. All night, Shane had been awkwardly trailing after them, somehow managing to look like a boy unwillingly stuffed into his tux for the benefit of a grandparent despite the fine tailoring. He looked tired after the back-to-back ad campaigns of the last month, but also wired with the same buzzing energy flooding through Ilya's veins.

"Scoping out the competition?" Marly asked, following the direction of his gaze. "I thought you two were starting to be more friendly."

Ilya blinked, frowned, and looked back to him. "What are you talking about?"

"…Roz, you're the one who said, 'he's so boring it might make my brain fall out, but he is okay' the last time we played Montreal and you two played catch across the blue line during warmups. Now you look like you want to tear his fingernails out."

"I do not," Ilya said, but even he could hear the low growl in his voice.

Marly laughed and Kanani gave him a weirdly sympathetic look. "I get the competitive vibes, brah, don't listen to this lug."

"Maybe you should come be my new best friend," he told her, and Marly made a noise of wounded complaint while she laughed.

Like all MLH events, the awards were loud and crowded, and busy for the players. There had been a red carpet dotted with the occasional minor celebrity and clusters of photographers and journalists snapping pictures and asking the same tired questions, and then the seemingly endless milling in the foyer while they waited to be ushered to the doors.

"How do you feel about Shane Hollander beating you in points this season?" more than one of the reporters had asked him, and Ilya had been generous and charming in his responses.

"Hollander would not be my rival if he could not do this," he'd said more than once. "But it is the last time I will allow it."

"Your rivalry seems to have gotten friendlier as the season progressed. Want to tell us about that?"

No, he hadn't wanted to tell anyone about it. This thing with Shane was his and he didn't want to share it, but he'd shrugged and said, "What is this phrase? Lonely at the top? It is boring being by myself up here, and nice to have company."

So he was still an asshole and they all got that gleam in their eyes when he gave them the kind of soundbites they wanted, but it still progressed Shane's goal of let's not be rivals anymore. He'd overheard snips of Shane doing much the same thing, only without being an asshole about it. He was gracious and complimentary and earnest about how Ilya was an amazing player who he was happy to share the ice with, and that Ilya's talent and skill just made Shane's victories all the more rewarding.

"Looks like the crowd's moving," Marly said.

Ilya detached his eyes from Shane's profile and followed Marly and his date into the auditorium and to his seat, just about as far away from Shane as they could have possibly placed him. Maybe next year, he would be able to arrange for them to be closer—much less panning for the cameraman when they swung back and forth between them for reactions, anyways.

He clapped for the awards he didn't really care about, glared vaguely at Scott Hunter for his Miriam Thackeray Sportsmanship Trophy, and risked a glance at Shane when the Rookie of the Year award was finally up. His wallet felt heavy in his pocket with the pair of innocuous white keycards sitting beside his credit card. He had wanted to slip it to Shane before they got to their seats, but the milling crowd and their respective teammates had kept them very effectively separated.

Wyatt Hayes and Marcus Anton were introduced to give the award. At the podium, they crowded in close together so they could both be in range of the mic.

"Tight race this year," Anton said woodenly.

"Think we'll see any bloodshed?" Hayes joked back, just as awkward under the spotlight. The crowd laughed obligingly, and Ilya was very aware of his face up on the screen, sandwiched between Shane—who sat stiffly in his seat with his mom's arm around him—and Vincent Lemaire.

"Maybe we shouldn't even read it?"

"I think we really would see bloodshed then!" Another polite laugh.

Marly leaned sideways to mutter out of the side of his mouth, "Try to look less like you're ready to commit murder, brother."

"The Rookie of the Year award goes to…" Anton said as he opened the envelope and pulled the card out for Hayes to see.

"….Shane Hollander!"

There was a weird pulse in his chest at the name: a flash fire of jealousy and the bitter pang of disappointment, annoyance, and then a warm shockwave of pleasure following on it heels.

Marly elbowed him, and Ilya realized that he was so startled by his own reaction that he hadn't started clapping. He brought his hands together quickly, thankful for the lifetime of keeping his expression neutral so he didn't have to monitor it as Shane stood.

On the big display, Shane buttoned his jacket automatically, and then eased past the knees of his seat neighbors and into the aisle to accept his award.

"This is such an honor," he said, sparing a glance down at the trophy and then giving the crowd that beautiful tilted smile. "I have so many people to thank for me being here. My parents and my grandfather most of all, who sacrificed so much to my…very demanding schedule and rigid routines and who have supported me unconditionally all these years. My coaches, my team…none of us make it to the ice or onto this stage alone, and I'm so deeply indebted to every one of you for your guidance, and your patience, and your wisdom."

He took half a step back and the applause started. Above him, the screen showed his mom with her hands cupped over the lower half of her face, his dad with one arm around her shoulders, and his grandfather clapping enthusiastically with his lips pulled up like he was holding back tears of his own.

Shane leaned back to the microphone in the last second and added, "And also a word of thanks to Ilya Rozanov, for scoring fewer points than I did this year. Couldn't have done it without you."

The crowd erupted in far more genuine laughter. Ilya barked out a startled laugh of his own, face splitting in a smile that he had no hope of stifling, even when the camera very hastily panned across the crowd to capture him. He almost gave the stage a middle finger, just for the effect, but he redirected the gesture to blow a kiss instead. The wave of laughter renewed as Shane quit the stage with his freckles positively glowing over the beautiful wash of his blush.

~*~

The mixer afterward was a much smaller affair, mostly just players and their guests, and not many of those. They had one of the hotel bars reserved, and the award recipients came down in a slow trickle as they were released from media duty. Shane got a warm welcome, and his mom had to pull him to a stop on the stairs and nudge him into holding his award up, which he did with an embarrassed smile.

His eyes found Ilya's immediately, and Ilya raised his glass in what he hoped looked like a mocking salute, but he was afraid was much more honest than that. He was alone for the moment at his small high-top table; Marly and Kanani had snuck off somewhere the minute they were released from Marly's mandatory appearance, and the players who had come over to either tease or console him had dispersed around the room quickly.

Lemaire had approached him ten minutes in, looking awkward in his suit and like his shoes were maybe too big, but he'd given Ilya a firm handshake and told him, "Great season," with horrible earnestness.

"You, too," Ilya had said, because Lemaire probably would have been the highlight of the season among the rookie crop if he hadn't had the bad luck to start his career with Ilya and Shane. He was a solid forward, and Ilya wouldn't mind having him on a wing, but he was so awkward in the social situation that Ilya had taken pity on him after a couple minutes of stilted conversation and announced that he needed a drink. He'd been quick to excuse himself after that and let Ilya go to the bar alone.

He thought it very likely that the bartender would have given him whatever he asked for without checking his I.D., but he'd stuck to his "virgin rum and coke" with three maraschino cherries in the bottom. He'd responded with a tight, unimpressed twitch of his lips when Dallas Kent, overhearing his order, joked, "I'll bet that's not the only virgin you're planning to deflower tonight, right, Rozy?" as if they'd ever exchanged one single friendly word.

Ilya watched Shane make slow progress through the crowd. Every hand in the place seemed to want to be on his back, which also made Ilya want to commit those murders his face had apparently been projecting earlier in the evening.

Shane's shoulders were tight and his smile looked like it had been sliced into his face by the time his family found themselves at a table with Montreal's GM.

"Not sure who looks less like he wants to be here…you or him," Hunter said as he passed behind Ilya and came to lean against Ilya's little table, uninvited.

"Me, right now," Ilya muttered. He took a sip of his soda. It was cloyingly sweet. When one of the cherries bumped against his lips, he tipped the glass back further and let it roll into his mouth.

"Great season," Hunter said, pretending he hadn't spoken. "Glad I wasn't up against the two of you this year."

Hunter had won Rookie of the Year, Ilya remembered with annoyance. Something he now had in common with Shane.

"Yes, very lucky for you," Ilya agreed.

Hunter snorted out a laugh. He nodded his chin toward Shane. "As soon as he escapes, me and a few of the guys thought we'd grab you three rookies for some shots. Interested?"

"Shots with bullets?" Ilya asked, and Hunter laughed again.

He patted Ilya on the back in a weirdly friendly sort of way that Ilya not only hadn't earned, he'd been actively trying to discourage; yet, it seemed like the more he tried to incinerate Hunter with his eyes, the bigger Hunter's smile got and the friendlier his hand got as it landed between Ilya's shoulders

"Catch you later," he said, like they'd had a nice chat, and then he nodded his head in acknowledgement of someone catching his eye, and left Ilya alone once more at his table.

Finally, the Metros GM shook hands with Shane's parents, his grandfather, and then Shane, and stepped away to the do the rest of his socializing. Ilya set his half-empty drink down and abandoned his table. He threaded his way across the room before anyone else could breach the gap and slip into the GM's recently abandoned place at the Hollander's table.

Shane saw him coming; his eyes widened subtly and his lips compressed in quickly, eyes darting to the side, as if asking what the fuck Ilya thought he was doing. Ilya braved the silent order to go away and put on his most charming smile as he made it to the table.

"Hollander," he greeted. He didn't miss the tight way Yuna Hollander stared at him, or the curious gazes of the elder Hollander men.

"Rozanov," Shane replied, still trying to yell at him with just his eyes.

Ilya held his hand out to Yuna. "I wanted to come introduce myself properly," he said, putting effort into making the words clear and trying to smooth out his accent.

"We've met," Yuna reminded him, hiking her eyebrow at his hand and very clearly thinking of the time she had offered her hand through a set of elevator doors and quickly jerked it away as they began to close, but she reached across the space and let him fold his hand around hers.

"Ah, yes," Ilya said, giving her a politely firm handshake, which she returned with businesslike grace. "Sorry, I think, last time I was maybe a little rude?" He let her hand go, registering the surprise on her face and the furious incredulity on Shane's. "My English, it is not so good, and it was very much worse then," he said. "Sometimes I am…" He searched for a word for half a second, and settled reluctantly on, "Shy?"

Shane did not successfully stifle the short punch of air that clearly conveyed his opinion on Ilya's professed shyness.

"That was a big night for me," Ilya said, ignoring him, and further ignoring the flame of shock and embarrassment flushing over Shane's cheeks. "But I think maybe I was rude to you, and I felt bad later."

"First time doing a big TV ad?" Yuna offered, defrosting with remarkable speed. In the space of those few words, she shifted from actively hostile to politely sympathetic.

"Ah, yes," Ilya confirmed. "It was a tiring day."

"I'll bet," Shane's dad said. He held a hand out and introduced himself with a simple, "David."

Ilya took his hand in a firm grip, pleased that David didn't try to squeeze him into submission, but released him after half a moment of contact. When Ilya turned toward the older man, Shane cleared his throat.

"This is my grandfather," he introduced with studied politeness. "Daikichi."

"Ilya Rozanov," Ilya said, taking the other man's hand. He had deeply tanned skin and permanent lines etched into the corners of his eyes from frequent smiles, shoulder length hair pulled back in a tail, still mostly black with only a light threading of gray at the temples. There was a kind of timelessness about him, and he could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy-five for all that Ilya could tell.

"Call me Kichi," he said with a broad grin, holding onto Ilya's hand for a moment too long, eyes sliding speculatively between Ilya's face and Shane's. Shane lost a shade on his already paled complexion as his eyes flickered down to where his grandfather still had Ilya's hand in a tight grip.

"Dad," Yuna said, exasperated.

Kichi let Ilya go with a bright grin that managed to acknowledge the moment without apologizing for it, and Ilya took his hand back, struggling to maintain a pleasant expression in the face of Shane's slumped shoulders and sudden air of resignation.

"Congratulations, Sh-Hollander," Ilya said. He thought he caught the slip quickly enough, but Shane winced, and Kichi grinned. Yuna and David at least seemed unfazed, though they could have just been hiding it better.

"Thank you, Rozanov," Shane said neutrally. "Good season."

"Very gracious of you, Mr. Rozanov," David said, offering Ilya another handshake.

Ilya fought down a smile, remembering Shane in all his nerves, offering Ilya two handshakes in a matter of a few seconds. "Ilya, please," Ilya invited, taking it and shaking again. "Have a nice evening."

"Thank you, Rozanov," Shane repeated tightly. "See you next season."

"Not if Hunter catches us first," Ilya joked, and then he gave the table a nod and excused himself. In his pocket, his phone buzzed, and it made a good excuse to take himself to a secluded corner as he dug it out.

The Colonel was backlit on his screen. He cursed softly under his breath, and glanced around the room. If he answered where his father could hear a crowd in the background, there was a chance that it would cool the lecture he was surely about to get for losing to Shane Hollander again, though that wasn't a guarantee. He would at least have a very valid excuse not to respond with anything more than vague humming and single word answers.

He took a subtle breath in through his nose and accepted the call as he tucked himself further back into the shadow of a square wooden pillar. "Yes, Papa?"

His father did not yell; in fact, he very rarely raised his voice to Ilya, but that only meant that he was that much easier to hear and that much harder to ignore when he immediately launched into a long and winding inventory of Ilya's personal failings. These were many, varied, and each more unforgivable than the last, but none a worse sin than losing so many times over to the best hockey player Ilya had ever known.

~*~

Shane watched Ilya go with his eyebrows furrowed so tightly together that Ojiichan reached across the table and poked his forehead.

"You'll have more wrinkles than me by the end of the night if you keep that up," he said cheerfully.

"Dad, don't do that," Mom said, knocking his hand away, but then she put her hand between Shane's shoulders and asked, "Okay, honey?"

"Yeah," Shane said quickly, wiping the frown off his face. "I'm fine."

"For a guy with a reputation for being such an—…jerk, he was really quite nice," Dad observed. "Very polite young man."

"Yeah, polite," Shane said, voice sounding strangled. Ojiichan was giving him the world's least subtle smirk, and Shane felt like he had I know the exact size and shape of Ilya Rozanov's dick stamped on his forehead for the entire room to see.

There were some curious looks being thrown their way, and Shane tried to ignore them. The bite had mostly been taken out of their rivalry after clips of them juggling the puck back and forth at All Stars had gone viral, and they had reinforced it by chatting more or less—mostly less—amiably on the ice during warmups while flicking pucks across the blue line at each other. That Ilya's face often looked like an oncoming tsunami when Shane scored while he was on the ice, and Shane apparently had "permanent resting murder face" whenever Ilya chirped him added some confusion to the question of how well they tolerated each other, but Shane liked it that way.

If Hayden had to keep reminding him, "Breathe, we can't fit a whole hockey team into a prison visiting booth, and they won't let you have ice time in jail," then Shane didn't have to worry about anyone wondering if they were maybe too friendly.

Across the room, he accidentally caught Hunter's eye. He was standing with his back to the bar, drink in hand and three other vets gathered around him. He lifted his glass in Shane's direction with a friendly smile. Shane probably should have taken that as an invitation—almost an order—to excuse himself from his family's claimed table and cross the room to socialize, but a further slide of Shane's gaze caught Ilya leaning against a shadowed stretch of wall with one hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

Ilya was half concealed behind one of the wooden pillars supporting the balcony above, and further obscured by both the relative darkness of his chosen corner and a potted palm at the base of the pillar. He had his legs crossed at the ankle, and was curled slightly over his phone, expression terribly blank where it was visible at all around his own hand.

As Shane watched, Ilya took his hand away from his face and slipped it into his pocket. He leaned his head against the wall to direct his gaze up at the ceiling. His lips didn't move, but his jaw was tight and his shoulders were held at an awkward, defensive angle.

Shane was swamped by a strong and sudden urge to march across the room, take the phone out of his hand, and tell whoever was on the other end of the line to fuck off. He wanted to grab Ilya by the elbow and tow him out of the room, and put him somewhere quiet and safe until the tension eased out of his shoulders and the ice sculpture of his expression melted.

After a long minute, Ilya said something shortly into the phone, and then jerked like he'd taken a static shock. His lips narrowed into a thin, unhappy line, and, even from across the room, Shane could see the flare of his nostrils as he took in a deep, calming breath. He straightened up, slid his phone into his pocket, twitched the hem of his jacket to fall neatly around his hips once more, and ducked out the stairwell door to his left.

"Excuse me," Shane said. From the sudden pause, his family had been in the middle of a conversation that he hadn't even registered, but no one tried to stop him when he slid away from the table.

Unfortunately, several people did stop him as he tried to make his way across the room. It seemed that he'd been protected from encroachment when he had his parents standing on either side of him; Hayden and Taylor hadn't attended, and Shane wasn't close enough with any of his teammates who had attended for them to take a page out of Ilya's book and boldly invade his territory. Stripped of the safety his family had unknowingly provided, Shane was surrounded almost immediately by other players.

He was probably going to be bruised from all the back slaps, punches to the shoulder, and handshakes. He pasted a smile on and exchanged the expected pleasantries, responded with the appropriate degree of gratitude to various congratulations, and forced himself to stand still for a few minutes and entertain a conversation with Lemaire.

"Yeah, no, I get it. It was intense," he agreed when Lemaire admitted in nearly a whisper that he'd been relieved when the Nomads had been knocked out of the playoffs in series three.

"You doing any training for the off season?" Lemaire asked like he was grasping for anything to continue the conversation.

Shane's eyes had wandered back to the stairwell door, but he said, "Obviously." At the beat of uncomfortable silence, he dragged his eyes back and forced himself into a smile that felt uneven and tight. "I mean, don't we all?"

"Yeah, totally. I've got a trainer lined up in Colorado for a couple weeks, but figured I'd at least take a few weeks completely off the ice, decompress a little, you know?"

"Sure," Shane agreed. He had essentially done the same, but mostly because he couldn't reliably get to a rink between the ad shoots.

"Hey, there's the rookies," Hunter said, coming unknowingly to Shane's rescue. He glanced around. "Where did Rozanov get off to?"

Lemaire shrugged. "Probably couldn't get out of here fast enough." At Hunter's raised eyebrow, Lemaire flushed scarlet and mumbled something unintelligible toward his feet.

"No clue," Shane said honestly, forcefully keeping his gaze from the stairwell door.

"Well, two out of three isn't bad. You two young bucks interested in doing some shots with the old fucks?" he asked, gesturing behind him with the twitch of his shoulder. Something about the expletive delivered in his low, calm voice was curiously shocking.

"Absolutely!" Lemaire agreed very readily.

Shane was swept up between them to the back room, where another bar was surrounded by only players, as if the other attendees had clearly read the "Players Only" sign that had not been posted anywhere and collectively decided to cede the territory.

Despite him and Lemaire both being underaged in the U.S., the bartender chose not to even glance their way as he delivered a tray of shots.

~*~

It took three shots of tequila before Shane was able to pull himself away. Lemaire unintentionally helped to facilitate his escape; relaxed by the alcohol and away from the pressure of the high-profile attendees in the other room, he'd stripped off his jacket, unclipped his bow tie and rolled his sleeves up, the better to free his arms up for some animated storytelling.

It turned out that he was fox shifter, and he flashed his eyes and his teeth while he relayed his most recent run, which had briefly involved being mistaken for a real fox and chased off a farm before he'd been forced to shift back and have an embarrassing—naked—conversation with the farmer, who had been only more incensed rather than less to find him to be not an animal.

When Shane eased back and slipped away, Lemaire's eyes flicked to him, but he didn't say anything to bring Shane back, clearly enjoying having the vets' attention to himself.

Shane stuck close to the wall to get around to the door Ilya had escaped through, and managed to avoid getting captured again. He went up one flight of stairs, out of sight of the door, and took out his phone.

S: Where did you go?

He hesitated on texting, "Are you okay?" knowing that Ilya would just brush him off with a joke, if he acknowledged the question at all.

After waiting a couple minutes to see if Ilya would respond, Shane continued up the stairs. He didn't have Ilya's room number out of some unspoken adherence to the wager Ilya had proposed, but he remembered the hotel boasting of three roof top bar and lounge areas, and continued up the four flights to the roof access sign.

Even after midnight, it was over 32° C outside, and Shane's lungs briefly rebelled stepping from the honestly too-cool air conditioned interior into the moisture-sucking oven of the night air. The breath he tried to pull in through his nose burned, and he gasped for a moment like a landed fish before he managed a breath through his mouth.

The door opened on a well-appointed deck with several covered seating areas ringed with vapor and the accompanying faint hiss of the misters. He scanned the deck, which appeared empty, and almost turned around to go back down when he caught a flash of movement against the rail.

Ilya leaned on the railing, smoke wisping faintly up from his hand, looking blankly out over the glittering lights of Las Vegas below them.

He barely turned his head when Shane stepped up next to him, and only grunted in annoyance when Shane said, "You really shouldn't be smoking."

"Seriously, you're an athlete," Shane pressed. "Reduced lung capacity—"

"It's one cigarette, Hollander, let it go!" Ilya ordered sharply, but he turned it over and stamped it out on the metal railing, grinding it harder than was strictly necessary and crushing the rest of the untouched tube. Tobacco and ash drifted away into the night. "Happy?" he asked snidely, shoving the butt into his pocket.

Shane bit back both a retort and the automatic disgust at the half-spent cigarette going into his pocket to fill it with ash and tobacco. He just looked at Ilya's profile. Ilya's eyes flickered to him once, and then away, back to the skyline.

Unsure of what to say or how to ask what the call had been about, Shane turned to put his on hands on the railing and looked out over the city. From so high up, the Vegas strip gave an impression of almost serenity, closer to the endless twinkle of Christmas lights than the overwhelming bustle that Shane knew it was at street level. Beyond the strip, the rest of the city stretched out in a flat, sprawling expanse of neat grid lines. At the late hour, the city sounds layered in with the wind to create an impression more of waves than traffic.

"Everything okay?" Shane asked finally, keeping his voice quiet enough that Ilya could easily ignore him.

For a long time, it seemed like Ilya was going to ignore him. Finally, he let out a harsh breath and said, "Yes, fine." After a long, considering pause, he added, "My father." The two words came out like they'd barely escaped a war zone with their lives.

"Oh." Shane looked over at him cautiously. "Is he okay?"

Snorting derisively, Ilya muttered, "I could be that lucky." Before Shane respond to that, he roughly shook his shoulders out and said, "He is fine. Just… He wanted to discuss some things with me, summer plans." He shrugged. It was a lopsided gesture that did not manage to convey any of the sense of ease he might have intended.

"Like your training plans, or…?"

Ilya looked at him sideways again, clearly annoyed, but Shane saw the moment that he decided not to lash out. He turned to face Shane and leaned one forearm on the rail, relaxing so quickly that it was unnerving. "Yes, boring things like that. He has suggestions on how to improve myself," he said. He smiled a slow, stalking smile. "So… you have won Rookie of the Year."

Shane vacillated for a moment between wanting clarification on what suggestions Ilya's father had made, voicing his own opinions on Ilya's many and varied near-perfections, and answering the implied question.

"My room is on the fiftieth floor," he said, resolving the debate. "But…my grandfather is next door, so…"

"You don't want him to hear me telling you congratulations?" Ilya asked with a wicked smirk.

Despite himself, Shane blushed, but he was saved by his own short burst of laughter. "Trust me…you also don't want that. He would probably try to interview you afterward."

Ilya blinked at him, obviously taken aback, and Shane just shook his head. He didn't feel the need to get into Ojiichan's latest project, or his academic interest in Shane's sexuality and what that said about his species.

Reaching into his pocket—the one without the cigarette butt—Ilya pulled his wallet out. He slipped a white keycard out of one of the slots, but didn't immediately hand it over, despite Shane's hand automatically turning up to receive it. He tapped it speculatively on the railing, eyes roving leisurely over Shane's face, and then slowly down his body to the rhythm of the hollow tink-tink-tink of the card against the metal.

"Hmm, maybe…" Ilya said, pushing away from the railing and taking a loose, predatory step closer to Shane. "Maybe I do not give you this, and I say congratulations right here?"

Shane's throat clicked on a dry swallow. "I don't…" His legs tensed. He felt himself shifting to mirror Ilya's stance more than deciding to do it, chest warming on a challenging growl that he absolutely could not vocalize.

Ilya crowded further into his space, and it was either give ground, or remain locked there where anyone could look out the giant windows from the bar area and see them pressed together from thigh to ribs. He glanced at the windows; the bar was empty, the dim lighting suggesting that it was closed, but that didn't mean there wasn't… a server, a cook, a bartender still shutting the place down and cleaning up.

Swaying forward, Ilya pressed the line of his hardening cock into Shane's hip. Shane automatically pushed forward against it before he sucked in a breath and took a step back. Ilya followed him as smoothly as if they were dancing, pursuing him down the short two steps to the main deck, their bodies barely drifting more than a few inches apart.

"Ilya…" Shane tried to warn, but he had his hands on Ilya's hips, and his mouth filled with saliva, and it was a physical effort not to turn Ilya and push him against the wall, drop to his knees, and open Ilya's perfectly tailored tux pants.

His back hit the wall. Ilya pressed in tight against him, slipping his thigh between Shane's legs and rolling their hips together again. Shane rocked automatically on the bulge of Ilya's quadriceps, mouth dropping open in a low, breathless moan.

It was a highrise rooftop, over a fifty floors off the ground. No one could look up from the street and happen to see them—

Ilya's mouth slanted over his, and Shane's hands went immediately to his hair, holding his head in place and sucking on his tongue. He tasted like cigarette smoke, but Shane didn't care as Ilya moaned into his mouth, grabbed him by the hips, and pulled him in hard. Shane could hear the gallop of Ilya's pulse over the whisper-soft hiss of the misters, and he yanked his mouth away from Ilya's to gasp for air.

In doing so, he realized that there were still several floors above them, with room windows that looked down on the porch.

"Stop," he ordered, pushing Ilya back.

Ilya went without hesitation, hands going up. He took a step back, but not so far that he was out of reach for Shane to grab again.

"Not here," Shane ground out. "What's your room number?"

"4010," Ilya answered immediately, letting his hands drop to his side.

"Give me five minutes," Shane said, still panting for air, and then he pushed himself away from the wall and stalked for the stairwell door before Ilya could say or do anything. If Ilya put his hands on him again, Shane might not be able to stop himself a second time.

He had to take the stairs down three floors with the keycard clutched in his hand, and then walked the length of the hall until he found a bank of elevators to take him down without having to pass back through the bar, where his family might be looking for him, or Scott Hunter might grab him again, or Shane might have to shake hands with even one more person.

Making his strides confident and purposeful, he let himself into Ilya's room. Feeling reckless and still weirdly tight in the chest, he stripped quickly out of his clothes and hung them up in the empty closet. By the time he heard the electronic buurrrclunk of the lock cycling, he was naked, and Ilya was barely inside the door before Shane had him pressed back against it.

"Fuck—!" Ilya cursed, surprise that went to searing arousal as his hands found Shane's naked back. "Shane—"

Shane bit whatever else he meant to say off his lips and Ilya's weight dropped hard to the door like he'd gone weak in the knees.

"Knees," Ilya told him, and Shane went with his hands already working Ilya's tux pants open.

Pausing, Shane looked up at him, and asked, "Well?"

Both of Ilya's eyebrows went up, and he gaped at Shane. "Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to tell me congratulations?"

"Oh myfuckingGod, Hollander," Ilya bitched. He leaned down enough to bury his hand in Shane's hair and used the grip to pull Shane's head back.

Tingles exploded across Shane's scalp. He had to close his eyes for a second and just breathe through it, let the buzzing sensation flow down his neck and across his shoulders. When he opened his eyes again, Ilya was watching him with an intense, unreadable expression.

Despite Shane's hand squeezing the base of his cock in a rhythmic pulse, Ilya stared into his eyes for a long three breaths without moving, and then murmured, "Congratulations, Shane."

Chapter 19: Chapter Eighteen

Ilya passed by the lonely lighthouse, and then the church as the boat pulled up to the dock. Weather beaten as the church was, the ornate building was still stately and lovely. The crosses at the top of her elegant green-domed towers leaned slightly from the constant labors of the wind, and the sight of it always made Ilya feel a pang of homesickness that he'd never felt for his father house.

Sveta's grandmother had been a diminutive, but nonetheless formidable woman. Her name was Georgeta, but Ilya had always called her Granny Geta. After her husband's death—an event Ilya had always gotten the impression was greeted with grim acceptance verging on relief rather than sorrow— she had packed up her belongings, left her adult children in Moscow, and returned to her childhood home. Ilya had gone with Sveta to visit her for the first time when he was eight years old, and she had only looked him over critically, announced that he was too skinny and needed a haircut, and taken him in like her own grandchild. He had spent several weeks of every summer with her after that.

For a while, Ilya had wondered if she'd thought he really was her grandchild, as she'd never acknowledged Grigori and only ever said "your father" with a kind of exasperation that suggested she'd known him all his life. She had certainly seemed to view him with a no-nonsense motherly sort of disapproval.

At eight, Ilya had been too covetous of her bluff affection to try to bring it up. When he'd come back to her the summer after his twelfth birthday, grieving and silent in Sveta's wake, Granny Geta had pulled him against her side and patted him twice on the head and said, "Ah, so young to carry such a burden."

Ilya had cried for the first time since finding his mother cold in her bed. Granny Greta had hushed him, and taken him to that imposing church, and then filled his hands with cookies dusted in powdered sugar, and worked him to exhaustion every day afterward. He had never known his own grandparents, but he had always had her, and he'd never felt the need to clarify that he didn't really belong to her.

Immediately after her death, he had felt guilty of the way he missed her, as though he didn't have a right to the depth of his grief when she was far more Sveta's than his, but Sveta had only ever referred to her as "grandma," as though they both held an equal claim to her memory. Granny Geta had passed shortly after Ilya and Sveta's last visit, when he'd been fifteen, and it had been devastating to them both.

The weight of her passing had softened in the years since, and when he walked the familiar streets out of town and out to her isolated house just off the beach, his chest was full of only a pleasant kind of nostalgia tinged with the softest touch of grief.

The house was not large, and in the three years that he had been absent, the wind had taken a little more of the paint, buffing away corners until the wood peeked through, the once bright green door dulled to a mossy gray, and the handle no longer the shiny brass it had been once. The gate squealed when he pushed it open, and the grass was full of summer weeds. He and Sveta paid for someone to come by and keep the worst of the damage at bay, but Ilya stopped and looked up at the old house, and thought that he would bully Sveta into letting him arrange for more substantial repairs and more regular upkeep.

He hiked his bag higher onto his shoulder to get his keys out and let himself in. The inside was tidy, but it had the musty smell of still air and the quiet sense of pressure that came from a home left empty, like a held breath.

He dropped his bag in the entryway and started opening windows to get the air moving. The window in the kitchen stuck like it had since he'd been too short to reach it without crawling onto the counter, and he uttered a curse as he finally got the swollen wooden frame to cooperate and swing open.

Auntie Stefania had been by just a few days before, and she'd left a note on the fridge that he had to squint at for a few seconds before his very rusty Romanian caught up. The ancient fridge had a couple days worth of dinners and a few staples left by Auntie Stefania, as well as some dried and canned goods put away neatly in the pantry, and some ingredients for preparing more food.

He was stiff after the long two days of travel, but he didn't feel tired enough to go to sleep, so he made a circuit of the house, checking faucets and flushing toilets, and then looked into Sveta's room to make sure the bed was made and the sheets were fresh. He muscled her window open and kicked the big water-tumbled stone in front of the door to keep it open before doing the same for his own room across the hall.

He was just settling down to a lunch of freshly baked dark bread and cheesy polenta that nearly made him sob when he took the first bite when his phone started buzzing across the uneven kitchen table. It was very tempting to ignore it—he was not as insane about his diet as Shane, but he hadn't touched a meal like this in over a year and he wanted to savor it—but he saw it was Sveta and hurried to swallow.

"Are you there?" she asked in an oddly cautious voice when the call connected, directly in Russian, though she had recently started making him have whole conversations in English.

Ilya hummed. "Just got all the damn windows open. I know you're stubborn about always paying for half of everything with this house, but the windows need to be replaced, and we can't do that in three weeks. This whole house is going to fall apart next winter if it doesn't get more work. I haven't even looked at the shed out back." He tore a bite out of the bread and chewed it while he talked. "Don't argue about it, I'll make you decorate my house to pay for it, yes?"

"Ilyusha…" she said, unusual hesitant, and then she took a breath and continued, "Don't be mad."

Ilya stopped eating, stomach immediately dropping. "What?"

"…I'm not going to make it."

There was a very long minute of silence between them. "What?" he repeated stupidly.

"At least not now…maybe in two weeks I can still come, if I can change my flight," she said. "I have so much tape to review, and they need to know who we're trading and who to call up, and this job is still so new. I thought I would be finished with this before now, but I have so much to do, and they just gave me another twenty names—"

"Your flight is tomorrow!" Ilya exclaimed. "They waited until now to tell you this? I will call them—"

"Don't!" she snapped, voice losing the consoling gentleness and going hard. "Don't you dare do that to me, Rozanov Ilya Grigorievich."

He snapped his teeth together, and then spoke through them. "You told them when you took the job that you had this trip planned."

"Yes, I did," she said with a frustrated sigh. "And no one is telling me I can't go—"

"Then come!" Ilya snapped.

"If I take three weeks right now, I won't be able to finish any of this in time for pre-season, and Max Swanson—" she said, spitting her coworker's name out like acid, "—will work overtime and finish this all, and then I will just be proving I'm not good enough!"

They both sat in silence. Ilya could just barely hear her breathing hard over the sound of his own harsh breaths. He stood up from the table and paced an angry little circle in the very limited kitchen space, one hand flexing into a claw like he could get it around Swanson's throat.

Swanson had been shitty to her from day one, and it hadn't taken long for the fact that Sveta and Ilya used to fuck to get out. That had given him even more ammunition, and Sveta had been in a pitched battle with the man ever since. Their relationship hadn't done wonders for her relationship with her other coworkers, but she was so competent and unconcerned about their opinion, that most of them had shut up quickly. Not Swanson, who apparently still gossiped with anyone who would sit still long enough that Sveta had gotten her job on her knees, as if Ilya, first year rookie, had enough clout to make that happen.

When Ilya had tried to make an issue out of that, she'd gotten so mad at him that they hadn't spoken for almost two weeks, but after he'd finally promised to keep his mouth shut and his nose out of her business, she'd bitched endlessly about the senior analysts' digs and the way he regularly asked her, "So…spending time with Ilya this weekend?" like he had any right to know anything about her private life or to have Ilya's name in his mouth.

"Yes, okay," Ilya grumbled finally. "But you are letting me pay for this place to be fixed!"

"Fuck that, you've cancelled on me so many times!"

"But never the day before I was supposed to get here!" he pointed out, trying to make his voice sound less like every muscle in his body had turned to stones. "And you're still decorating my house!"

They fought about it for twenty minutes, Ilya threatening even more outlandish improvements to the property, and Sveta bringing up every past favor she had done for him for free, until she finally exploded, "Fine! But only the windows and the roof! And I'll decorate your house, but you're giving me your credit card, and you're still coming with me to buy furniture, and I'm putting wallpaper up in the guest bedroom!"

"No wallpaper!" he argued. It was a topic they had been bickering about since he'd bought the house.

"Yes wallpaper, and it's going to be floral!"

"Then I am also hiring someone to live here year round while we are gone, and replacing the shed!"

For someone without a drop of heritage to her name, Sveta's growl was very convincingly lupine. "The shed—!"

"—was already a death trap when were fifteen!" he reminded her. They'd snuck out there one summer to fuck in the loft away from sharp-eared Granny Greta, and the ladder had collapsed while it had both of their weight on it. They'd been saying for years that they would make it the big summer project to tear it down and rebuild it, but other, more immediate needs had always jumped to the front of the line.

Sveta cursed at him for several seconds, and then grumbled, "Okay, deal."

Ilya sat roughly back in the chair, huffed out a very irritated breath, and asked, "Who are you reviewing tape for?"

~*~

It was just after four in the afternoon when Shane finally finished his errands and was able to call Ilya. He'd stayed in Vegas for another night with Ojiichan, stubbornly dodging every leading question about Ilya, and there was a lot to do around the house. His mom had at least "front loaded" all the ad shoots so he would have almost four weeks off before he needed to buckle back down into training, and he had a list he wanted to get through so he could feel comfortable taking a week—or two—off before training camp with Ilya.

He was going to ask his parents if he could have the cabin for a week, and take Ilya up there, and…tell him.

After the All Star Game, it felt stupid that he was still holding onto this secret. He just hoped Ilya would still stay there with him the rest of the week after he found out. The thought made his heart hammer nervously in his chest as he hit the call button, and he thought there was a chance he might just blurt everything out as soon as the line connected. He started rehearsing "Hi, how are you?" under his breath just in case.

As the line rang, he looked at the clock again; it would be after eleven in Romania, but Shane had promised to call "no matter what." He was half-expecting to get his voicemail, but Ilya picked up after half a dozen rings.

"Get in okay?" Shane asked.

Ilya grumbled faintly, but said, "Yes, no issues."

Wind rumbled past the speaker, but it sounded otherwise quiet. "You're outside?"

"Yes. Is it too loud?"

Shane shook his head. "No, I can just hear the wind. It's like…almost midnight?"

"Oh, am I up past my bedtime?" Ilya asked, tone not as playful as the question warranted. He sounded stressed and pissed off, but he had spent a lot of time traveling.

"I don't know, are you?" Shane had a bedtime, as Ilya well knew, and pushing midnight was well past it. As far as he could tell, Ilya refused to set himself a bedtime out of contrariness.

Ilya made an irritated, huffing noise, and said, "Probably. Jet lag."

"Yeah, here to Europe is brutal. I feel like it's actually easier when you have a time difference of twelve hours or more. When it's just a few hours, it's like carrying rocks around for two days."

Ilya made a noise of agreement, but didn't say anything else.

"What time is Sveta getting in? Is that today or tomorrow?" He knew that Ilya would be there before Sveta, who had moved her flight to accommodate her new job, but he'd been distracted by Ilya's naked chest when they'd talked about it, and he couldn't remember the details. He didn't want to encroach on their time together, as much as he was still struggling not be irritated or jealous.

He was startled when Ilya made an unhappy, snarling kind of sound. Shane frowned, but he didn't push for anything.

"She is not coming," Ilya said finally, clearly trying to sound less upset about it than he was and failing unusually badly.

"What? What happened, is she okay?" Shane shifted to put his shoes back on. He'd never met her, but Ilya was halfway around the world, and Shane was a four hour drive or a quick plane ride from Boston. He could—

"She is fine, just stupid boss and stupid fucking Max Swanson," he said, injecting so much hatred into the name that Shane immediately assumed he should know who that was and wracked his brain for what position he played, but he couldn't remember a Swanson on the Raiders' roster. Or any team.

"She just has to stay and work," Ilya said before Shane could admit that he didn't recognize the name. As if a dam had given away, he went on a long rant about Swanson—who, Shane finally realized, was an analyst—and the Raiders' back office springing more work on Sveta at the last minute, despite knowing about her planned trip for months—something that Ilya poisonously speculated was Swanson's doing.

"Oh, but no one is saying she can't go!" he spat out finally.

"That's bullshit," Shane offered once Ilya ran out of steam. Bullshit was too tame a response, but he didn't actually know Sveta, and he didn't really have a right to get angry on her behalf. He could be angry on Ilya's behalf, but he didn't think Ilya needed that at the moment when he was steaming over how his best friend was being treated by the same club he played for.

Shane cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, I know you were looking forward to spending time with her…what are you going to do now?" A very tiny voice in the back of Shane's head suggested that he could rearrange his plans; his parents wouldn't need the cabin for a few weeks at least.

Ilya blew out a loud breath. "Go to bed and try to sleep," he said. "And then tomorrow…I don't know. Fix the stairs, I guess."

Shane just barely stopped himself from expressing any surprise that Ilya would be staying. Of course he was staying when he'd been planning the trip for over a year. While he hadn't told Shane much about his plans for the trip, he'd gathered that it was much more a working trip to fix up the old house than a lounge-on-the-beach and relax vacation.

After a few more minutes, Ilya said, "I should go to bed, or I will be up another five hours and sleep all through tomorrow."

"Okay," Shane said for lack of anything else to offer. "Good night."

"Yes, good night, don't worry—I will text before I fall asleep."

Shane smiled. "I guess I'll forgive you in advance for it being so early, since it's the off season."

"Very generous of you," Ilya said, but there was a note of amusement in his tone under the continuing unhappiness. He yawned, said, "Good night, Shane," and waited for Shane to disconnect the call.

Shane lowered the phone slowly into his lap and leaned back against the entryway wall, replaying the conversation.

Abruptly, he shoved himself off of the bench and went to fetch his laptop.

~*~

Shane landed in Bucharest in the morning, local time. He was groggy from the flight, but he'd booked the last seat available on the first flight he could get, which had turned out be in first class, and he'd managed to sleep for a lot of it.

He'd never bothered with first class flights before, viewing plane trips as an uncomfortable ordeal that were to be endured, like getting his fangs cleaned at the dentist, but he also didn't often take flights were over ten hours long.

The luxury of being able stretch out flat and sleep felt eye-opening after a month of running exhausted from one filming or meeting location to the next, and he mentally moved first class flight up in his estimation from needless luxury to justifiable business expense if it would mean arriving on a set more rested and less stiff.

He picked up his suitcase from the carousel, turned automatically to look for a sign directing him to the taxi stand, and then just stood there in the middle of the walkway, staring at the signage with realization finally catching up to him.

He did not have a next step. There was nothing in motion to keep him focused on a goal: he was adrift. After the third time he was jostled by a traveler trying to get out of the baggage claim area and onto the next leg of their journey, he sat down on a bench.

He had really just…bought a same day ticket to Bucharest and left without even telling his parents he was going out of the country?

It abruptly occurred to him that he didn't even know exactly where Ilya was in the country. He knew Sveta's grandmother's house was in a very small town and it was somewhere "east." He had no address, he didn't even know what the town was called.

Shane looked at his suitcase with the long white ribbon of the checked luggage tag dangling from the handle and asked it, "Now what?"

Its only answer was YUL → VIE → OTP.

A silent laugh shook his chest, and he had to curl over for a second and cover his mouth with one hand. He'd been so focused on solving the problem of Ilya being upset at being alone on what was supposed to be a joint trip and satisfying the immediate urge to be close to him that his brain had sort of disconnected at some point in the last twelve hours.

After getting off the phone with Ilya, he'd looked up the visa requirements for traveling to Romania. Finding that no visa was required, he had pulled up the airline website just to check if there were any flights in the next several days with a vague thought to talk to Ilya and make plans, but there had been a flight leaving that same night with one seat left, and he'd just…bought the ticket, packed his bags like he would for any trip, and called a taxi to take him to the airport.

It had registered only in brief flashes that it was not a normal or entirely sane course of action when he could have just waited until morning to talk to Ilya, but each flash of awareness had been quickly suppressed by the simple fact of being already in the process of doing it.

Across from him, a TV set against a pillar played local news. He couldn't read the subtitles, but there were words he didn't need to have translated. Vampir atac, the headline read. The video behind the newscaster panned over a clearing where techs in white coveralls knelt or moved around behind yellow tape on the banks of a river.

The scene made him shiver. The vampir was the creature that most people thought of when they said things like, "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a vampire in the dark!" They were mindless, uncontrollable, animated corpses that leapt on anything with a pulse, no different from a rabid animal in anything other than form.

He glanced around, acutely aware of his fangs in their sheaths and feeling suddenly that everyone around him knew they were there as well, but no one looked at him as they rushed past or stumbled sleepily toward the exit signs. A vampir could not have gone unremarked in an airport—or anywhere else—but that wouldn't stop the looks of fear or disgust he might get if he were to drop his fangs where he sat on the bench. Here, maybe more than anywhere else in the world.

The video changed to the weather, and Shane pulled his eyes away from the screen.

He sat there for several more minutes before he was able to get his phone out and pull up Ilya's number, swimming with the nerves that his previous focus had insulated him from. What if Ilya was angry with him for showing up uninvited? What if someone discovered him? His heritage wasn't illegal anywhere in the world, it wasn't like he would be thrown into a jail cell, but in an area with recent vampire attacks—there was never only one—he might find himself staked into a grave by a frightened civilian before he could explain that he wasn't a danger to anyone.

Shane took a slow breath. He had been dealing with this possibility his entire life, and he was practiced at setting it aside. "We will not live our lives in fear of what others may do," his mom had always told him. "You can be aware of the dangers without being a prisoner to them."

With another slow inhale and exhale, he pressed the call button and held the phone up to his ear to listen to it ring. The first thing he heard when the line connected, again, was the wind. Ilya sounded out of breath as he tersely asked, "I sent the text. It is not my fault if the service is bad and it didn't arrive."

Shane hadn't even looked at his messages. He hadn't sent Ilya a good morning text. He wasn't even sure how to calculate how late his response was; while on the road during the season, he had sent his texts based on local time, but even by local time, he was several hours late.

His stomach was so twisted with the realization of how insane everything was going to sound when he started talking that he couldn't speak immediately. For a moment, he was so embarrassed that he almost considered just asking Ilya how his day was going, pretending that he was not in an airport, and then going to the nearest ticket counter and buying a return flight.

"Shane?"

An announcement came over the loudspeaker in what Shane assumed was Romanian. He cleared his throat, hoped that Ilya couldn't hear the announcement, and asked, "Where did you say you were staying, again?"

Ilya sounded confused, but also exasperated, and, "Romania," came out snappish and with several implied insults attached.

Shane winced. "No, I know that. I mean…where in Romania…exactly?"

There was a moment of quiet while the announcement continued overhead. Very slowly, Ilya asked, "Shane….where are you?"

Lying was an option. He had coincidentally met someone from Romania and mentioned that Ilya was there; when they asked where he was staying, he'd realized that he didn't actually know. He was watching a movie, and the characters were in the Bucharest airport, and it had made him think of Ilya, alone in an old house, somewhere in the country—

"Bucharest."

Stunned silence fell over the line. The silence stretched from heartbeats, to seconds, to a minute.

"I mean—" Shane started, but he was interrupted by a peal of laughter. The anxiety fled in a white-hot surge of annoyance. "Okay, you can stop laughing now!"

"Bucharest! Why are you in Bucharest?" Ilya asked, still howling with laughter.

"Why do you think, asshole?" Shane snapped.

"Shane, kotenok! You are still so far away from me!" He started laughing again, but the utter delight in his voice loosened the annoyance in Shane's chest, and Shane ducked down to smooth his hair back and hide his burning face. "Why didn't you ask me before you came all this way?"

"You were sleeping," Shane said. His voice sounded like a petulant grumble even in his own ears, and Ilya started laughing again. "You can stop any time!"

Ilya said a rush of things in Russian. It was the first time Shane had heard him speak Russian in other than single words without being buried to the hilt in Shane's body or so angry that he lost control of his English. He sounded so incandescently happy that it made Shane's chest hurt, and for no reason at all, his eyes stung.

Shane had been trying to pick the language up, but he hadn't had much time since the end of the season, and he kept falling asleep when he tried to listen to pre-recorded lessons on plane rides. He didn't catch a single familiar word.

"Okay, okay," Ilya said finally, calming his laughter with difficulty. "There is no airport here."

"Oh." Shane blinked. "I'll hire a car. Can you just tell me where I'm going? Text me the address?"

Ilya laughed again, but shortly, and it trailed off into a fond aahhhhh. "Solnyshko…you cannot drive here either."

Irritation filtering back in, Shane demanded, "Where the fuck are you? On the moon?"

"Sulina, Shane. It is a very small town in middle of Danube River. You have to fly in by uh…what is this type of plane that drives also on water?"

Shane made two attempts to speak before he answered, "Seaplane?"

"Yes, this, or by boat. Okay, okay, this is fine. Go get very nice hotel in Bucharest, and I will come to get you," Ilya said, his voice positively dancing with joy.

Frowning, Shane asked, "How far away is it from here? You said I was still so far from you."

"Ah, I will be there late tonight, probably." There was a clattering over the line, items being set down, and then a rustle of movement and a grunt of effort. "We can come back tomorrow morning. I just need to go down to dock and find boat to go across."

Shane rolled his eyes. "You are not traveling all day to come 'pick me up,' Ilya. I'll hire a car to take me as far as I can go, and then get a boat or whatever."

Ilya starting arguing immediately, but now that Shane had the name of the town and knew what his next step was, he was already on his feet and searching for an information desk. He let Ilya continue to insist that Shane should just find somewhere nice to relax for the day, and then spoke over him once he reached the counter to ask if the clerk spoke English or French.

The clerk responded in heavily accented but serviceable French, perking up enough that Shane guessed she was excited to practice. Ignoring Ilya's arguments in his ear, he asked where he could get in touch with a car service and nodded along to her instructions, though he had to ask her to repeat herself twice when the combination of Ilya's cajoling and the clerk's accent made it difficult to parse.

Thanking her, he followed her instructions to a services desk. "I'm booking a car, Ilya. Just tell me where the closest town is to where you are, or I'll have to guess."

"This has worked out for you very well so far," Ilya pointed out, but the pout in his voice was playful.

"Yes, it has," Shane said firmly. "I'm here, aren't I?"

After a long moment of quiet, Ilya responded, "Almost," in a voice that was so full of naked affection, it made Shane blush again.

~*~

Ilya stood on the old dock and watched one of the equally old boats puttering through the waves. The sun was was creeping toward the western horizon, and Ilya had spent the day in a frenzy of activity. With the boat coming in to view, he found it hard not to tap his foot impatiently.

It had been a struggle to get himself out of the creaky old bed in the morning with a long day of physical labor ahead and only his own hands and the dark mutterings of his thoughts to keep him company. He'd picked through breakfast, and then climbed on a ladder to assess the state of the wood siding on the second floor.

He'd been in the process of nailing an only slightly newer piece of wood up to replace a piece that had fallen off at some point, when his phone had started dancing in his pocket. For one second, he'd been tempted to stand up and see if he could throw it into the sea from his ladder.

He was deliriously happy that he'd checked the caller ID first, even if his general black mood had made annoyance his first response to the hated solitude being interrupted.

Realizing that Shane was—impossibly—somehow in the country had nearly sent him tumbling off the ladder anyways, and he'd spent the rest of the day scrubbing the house down with the ghost of Granny Greta's voice reminding him that the spiders weren't going to clean in the corners for him.

Auntie Stefania had come knocking around lunch, and it was honestly surprising that she'd waited that long before making the walk. Granny Greta's house was separated from the neighbors by a wide margin that was made wider still by the nearest houses now standing empty to either side. Auntie Stefania was the closest, and she was a fifteen minute walk over the gently rolling road.

He'd startled her with a bright welcome, but she had been quickly recruited to the cause of stocking the refrigerator for not one professional athlete and a person with a normal appetite, but two professional athletes. After giving him a thorough inspection and telling him he was too handsome for his own good, she had sent him to the small market with a list and a basket.

While she'd cooked, she'd scolded Ilya for letting the house get into such bad shape, and demanded to know where Sveta was, and why they hadn't gotten married yet.

"You are young! Don't have children too soon, but what are you waiting for, getting married? She is a very pretty girl!" She'd said, wagging a spatula at him.

And then she had clucked in disapproval to learn that Sveta wouldn't be coming, but had grudgingly granted that another big, strong man around to fix that disgrace of a fence was an almost acceptable compromise.

Normally, being pushed about when he was going to marry irritated him into sullenness, but he'd let her words wash over him while he'd fixed the stair that felt like it was going to give the next time anything heavier than a cat landed on it, and then scrubbed away a year's worth of neglect from any surface that caught his eye.

Now, he forced himself to stand still and wait for the boat to slide up to the dock. He wasn't positive that it was the boat Shane had chartered, but there hadn't been much movement on the docks all day, and Shane had called him from the marina on the shore. Like most of the boats at the port—like the town itself—it was showing its age in the form of weathered paint and rust stains, and the window in front of the pilot was so cloudy that Ilya wasn't sure how the man could see through it all.

The boat bumped gently against the dock, the pilot cut the engine, and then he leaned around the shield and spied Ilya. The man very much matched his boat, weathered and lined, and he moved to the rail without hurry and without a word. Grabbing a coil of rope, he tossed it to Ilya, and then watched in silent judgment as Ilya looked blankly down at it.

With a sigh, he pointed to one of the metal hooks lining the edge of the dock and said, "Secure that," in Romanian.

Ilya pulled the rope over to it. The hook was a squat t-shape, like a much bigger version of the hook next to the windows at his old townhouse, where he wound the cord from the blinds. Ilya looped the rope around it several times and stood to see the pilot with his lips pulled to the side in disapproval.

A moment later, Shane appeared at the side with a bag over his shoulder and a sleek black suitcase at his side. Ilya held a hand out to help him off the boat, but he just handed his suitcase over and hoped nimbly up the rail, and then from the rail to the dock, as surefooted as a goat on a mountain side.

"Where did you learn to secure a mooring line?" he asked, voice dripping with all the judgment the pilot hadn't expressed, and then he knelt and undid Ilya's work.

The pilot, who had been eyeing Shane and his fancy luggage with a faint curl to his lips, huffed in surprise and bobbed his head as if in unwilling approval, but Shane was too busy looping the rope around the hook in a figure-eight to see it.

"Where did you learn it?" Ilya asked, bemused and weirdly turned on in equal measure, as Shane straightened up and took his suitcase back.

"Spent a lot of time on the water growing up," he said vaguely. He looked very tired, face drawn and pale, and his eyes were hidden by a pair of reflective sunglasses. He waved a farewell to the pilot, who grunted in response but waved back, and looked at Ilya expectantly.

For one dazzling moment, Ilya thought he was expecting a kiss in greeting, but Shane quirked his hand toward the town and asked, "Are we waiting for someone?"

Ilya reached out to take his suitcase back from him as they started walking, and they tugged it back and forth for half a dozen paces before Shane finally relinquished it. He hiked his bag further up his shoulder, but he didn't look at Ilya as he spoke.

"You didn't tell me this place was on the sea," he said with forced casualness.

"This is…" Ilya hunted for the word for a moment. "Delta. Where Danube meets Black Sea."

"Yeah, I read that on the drive," Shane said distractedly. He cast obviously around for another topic, and then tried, "It's pretty here."

"Yes, though there are not as many people now. It is not very convenient, and most young people leave for bigger cities—"

"Or somewhere you don't need a plane to get to?" Shane supplied.

"Yes, that."

The conversation was awkward, but this situation was completely new to them. Neither of them could possibly pretend that this was a casual or convenient hookup. They may have discussed words like something more and exclusive, but they had both been so swamped with the end of the season and the work that came afterward that their relationship had gone effectively unchanged in the months since.

Ilya cleared his throat and made an attempt at playing tour guide. "This is the market," he said, waving a hand grandly toward what would be called a "convenience store" in Boston. There were still a few shops open down the main street that he pointed out, though many were boarded up, and all of them showed the same weathering that could be called quaint or charming if the speaker were being kind.

When they reached the house and Ilya pushed the gate open, Shane caught it and experimentally moved it several times, listening to the high complaints of the hinges, before stepping through and letting it close behind him.

Ilya set Shane's suitcase down in the entryway, and then turned and walked him backwards down the dim hallway, out of sight of any curious passerby—or nosy aunties—who might peer through one of the still-open windows.

"You're here," he said in a low voice, mouth hovering so close to Shane's that he could feel the shiver of Shane's breath on his lips.

Shane let his bag slide off his shoulder and some of the weird, awkward tension faded. He put his arms around Ilya's shoulders and leaned in to kiss him.

"I'm here."

Chapter 20: Chapter Nineteen

"I told you I should have come pick you up," Ilya said, draping himself across Shane's chest and running kisses over his cheek. "You could have had nice night in hotel and come here today. Now you have slept all day and you look like drowned ghost."

Shane peeled his eyes open. "Thank you," he said dryly.

"Mmm, very sexy drowned ghost," Ilya added, nipping at his shoulder and then across his collarbone. Outside, the waves made gentle shuffhiss sounds against the shore, and the birds called busily over it. It was not even noon, but for Shane, that was like sleeping for a week.

Shane was soft and loose-limbed from sleep, still breathing heavily and looking like he was on the verge of dropping back off. He stretched with enough care that all the places he was sore from the recent traveling ordeal practically glowed, and the night spent in the ancient bed likely hadn't helped. Ilya wedged his hand behind Shane's neck and kneaded at the muscles there.

"How do you know what a drowned ghost looks like?" Shane asked through a yawn.

"Hmm?" Ilya glanced up from where he'd been drawing his tongue across Shane's nipple. "There is one nearby."

"Oh," Shane said, and then awareness filtered through, and he asked, "What?"

Ilya sealed his mouth to Shane's nipple and sucked, enjoying the way he arched up into it. When he let go, Shane's back flattened against the mattress, but he looked much more awake and aware. "A drowned ghost," Ilya repeated. "She lives in sea nearby to here."

Shane lifted his head to glare faintly in Ilya's direction. "Seriously?" he asked with the deep suspicion of someone who was used to being teased often.

Ilya nodded. "Yes, seriously. There are lot of drowned ghosts in Black Sea, probably, but she has been here very, very long time, and only she comes close to shore. She speaks Russian, and she likes when me and Sveta are here, so she will come sometime, probably."

Propping himself up on his elbows, Shane looked down at him with a frown. "You talk to her?"

"Sure, why shouldn't I? There are only few people here who speak much Russian, so she is bored." Ilya shrugged. "She doesn't always speak back, but she will come up a little ways offshore and listen. You have never seen drowned ghost before?"

Shane lowered himself back down and made a weird noise that was part groan and part laugh. "I have, actually. I'm just surprised you have."

"We can go out tonight and see if she is here," Ilya offered, but Shane looked less than thrilled by the prospect, and Ilya wondered if his previous experience with a drowned ghost had been a bad one. They could be dangerous, as with any predator, and he'd mentioned spending a lot of time on the water growing up. Contrary to popular myth, drowned ghosts didn't tend to prefer humans for prey, but they did sometimes get lonely and try to make themselves a companion.

"Sure," Shane said finally. He stretched again until Ilya heard his back pop, and then sighed as he relaxed.

Ilya walked his fingers questioningly down Shane's ribs, and Shane finally turned on his side and moved down the bed until he could find Ilya's mouth with his. He tasted like morning, but his lips were still soft from sleep, and Ilya pulled at them with his own, just enjoying their skin in contact.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so long," Shane said when they separated. His eyes were closed again, but his hand continued moving almost absently up and down Ilya's arm.

"I tried to wake you earlier and you almost bit me."

Freezing, Shane's eyes popped open. "I did?" he asked very cautiously.

Ilya thought about casually telling him, "Yes, your fangs were out, and you hissed at me," but he let the moment go. Anyway, he hadn't actually tried to wake Shane and Shane hadn't flashed his fangs at Ilya since arriving. "Mmm, like kitten, all growling and swatting."

The smile pulled across Shane's mouth. "Your never going to stop calling me that, are you?"

Ilya leaned in to kiss his nose. "You like it."

"I don't," Shane said, but the small, pressed smile had opened up to something Ilya could almost call a grin. "What if I start calling you…poodle?"

Ilya gave him an exaggerated look of offense. "Poodle? You would call Ilya Rozanov…poodle?"

Stifling a laugh, Shane put his hand up and tugged at one of Ilya's curls. "Poodle," he said, letting the curl go.

"This is outrage," Ilya growled. "I will have my lawyer sue you for slander!"

"Slander, very nice," Shane said, winding a curl around his finger and letting it go. "But I think that's actually defamation of character."

"Are you my lawyer now?" Ilya demanded.

"You want me to sue myself for defaming your character?" Shane guessed. "I haven't even passed the bar. We would be laughed out of court."

Ilya sniffed. "There is only one bar here and we did pass yesterday."

"Oh, my god," Shane groaned, breaking into real laughter.

~*~

After a large lunch, Ilya took Shane out to the shed and watched his face. Any one else would probably say that he was stone-faced or that his expression was blank, but Ilya had been studying the minute twitches of Shane's expressions for a long time, and he watched gleefully as Shane cycled from shock to incredulity to horror.

"What is even holding it up?" he asked, sounding almost awed.

"Rust, probably," Ilya told him cheerfully, and then he pulled the door open. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shane's hands twitch like he wanted to drag Ilya back from it, and Ilya didn't blame him. The building had managed to survive so many years under the wind that it was probably sentient by now, but as long as Ilya has been coming to the house, it had also looked like it was one butterfly-landing-on-the-roof from collapse.

"Chicken?" Ilya teased.

"I'm not chicken," Shane said automatically, but then glanced up at the sagging roof and said, "But I am sane."

Ilya made a dismissive noise. "This is good craftsmanship!" he said, slapping the side, but very gently. "Will stand for hundred years!"

"Which is why you were so enthusiastic pounding on the wall there," Shane observed. "I think this legally counts as knowingly engaging in reckless or dangerous activities. We could have our contracts terminated for going in there."

"Nonsense!" Ilya scoffed. He put on a much braver face than he felt and stepped into the shed, but he was very quick about grabbing the tool belt hanging from the corner of one shelf, the second caddy of tools, and a pair of leather gloves. Shane had one eyebrow arched at him as he backed out of the shed and carefully closed the door.

They'd had wood planks delivered two weeks before he and Sveta were supposed to arrive, and those were under a tarp a safe distance from the shed. Ilya pulled it back. The bright, golden glow of the new wood was almost offensive against the gray and glowering form of the shed, and from the speculative look that Shane passed between the shed and the pile of new lumber, he thought the shed should be afraid for its life.

"Not this time!" Ilya said. "This is for fence."

"There is literally nothing else on this property that needs to be rebuilt more than that," Shane said, pointing at it.

"Shhh," Ilya cautioned. "It will hear you."

Shane glared at him, but he did shoot an uncertain look at the shed as Ilya grabbed an armful of planks and hauled them toward the fence.

They spent several hours yanking the rotted planks off the fence and gathering up fallen stones to patch up the base. Shane was dressed in khaki shorts, a faded linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up past the elbow, and hiking boots. With the scuffed leather tool belt slung around his waist and tools dangling from the loops, leather gloves, and fine misting of sweat, he looked like he'd stepped right out of someone's fantasy.

This had not been Ilya's fantasy before, but it certainly was now.

Casting one glance up the road to make sure Auntie Stefania wasn't cresting the hill, Ilya waited until Shane had his arms full of weather worn stones and then said, "You should do porn."

Shane stumbled, dropping half his stones and giving Ilya an unimpressed look. "That would violate the morality clause in my contract."

Laughing, Ilya grabbed him by the loop of his tool belt and hauled him close. "You will make so much money," Ilya pointed out.

Shane was trying to glower at him, but his lips kept twitching upward. "I already make so much money."

"But is more fun."

Quirking an eyebrow, Shane asked, "More fun than hockey?"

"More fun for me," Ilya clarified. "We can go make one now, Mr. Handyman…"

"Fuck off," Shane told him, pulling away, but when Ilya yanked him back, he went readily into a long kiss. "You're just trying to distract me because I've carried way more of these stones than you have."

Narrowing his eyes, Ilya said, "Oh, you have?"

Shane looked at his portion of the rebuilt fence, which was undeniable higher than Ilya's.

"We will see about this," Ilya said, and quickly knelt down to steal Shane's dropped stones.

~*~

By the time Auntie Stefania came over the hill and down the path, the base of the fence was up to Ilya's ribs, and they had resorted to digging stones out of the yard to stack it up higher. The golden planks were still sitting untouched where they had been left earlier.

Auntie Stefania stopped by the fence, cast her eye over them in their dirty clothes and smudged cheeks, and said, "Well, I am sure you are both very good at hockey."

"She said my half is very good and you should keep playing hockey," Ilya told Shane smugly, but Shane just cast a dubious eye down the length of what was turning into a wall instead of a fence.

He looked back at Ilya and said, "Are you sure she wasn't looking at my half?"

Ilya did not translate that for Auntie Stefania, instead introducing them. She spoke no English and Shane spoke no Romanian, so Ilya was kept busy translating as they helped her bring her bags up to the door. Despite all the cooking she had done the day before, she had decided that more food was needed, and this was certainly not an opportunity for her to meet Ilya's friend or judge their progress.

"You will track all the world inside with you," she said at the door, taking the bags back and shooing at them until they washed their hands and forearms at the garden spigot.

"When you take that shed down, make sure you leave the corner stone so it has a place to live," she said, gesturing out the kitchen window at the shed, which did seem to be glaring at them. She set down tea and snacks for them in the center of the table. "Otherwise the spirit of that place will haunt your sleep. It has been up since dear Greta's grandfather put his hands on it, and it will not like being torn down."

Among the dishes on the tray was a jar of cherries that Shane eyed curiously when Ilya dropped two into his cup. Ilya offered one to Shane, and he only hesitated for a moment before taking his hand away from his cup and letting Ilya drop it in.

"She says there's nothing wrong with the shed, and it will stay up another hundred years," Ilya told Shane.

"She did not say that," Shane responded without pause.

"You speak Romanian now?" Ilya asked, affecting shock.

"No, but she seems very practical and not insane. Thank you for the tea," he added politely to Auntie Stefania.

"Ah, he has more manners than you," Auntie Stefania observed when Ilya translated for her. She warmed up sour soup and sarmale for them, dropped generous dollops of sour cream on the stuffed cabbages, and then threw some sausages into a hot pan.

"Neither of us are going to be able to skate after three weeks of this," Shane said in dismay, looking down at his plate. He glanced up at Ilya and stilled, obviously reading the shock on Ilya's face. "What…?"

"Three weeks?" Ilya asked.

Shane flushed. "I thought…I don't have to stay that long," he said in an undertone, looking anxious.

"No, three weeks is perfect," Ilya said hastily, taking a sip of his tea to hide his face.

"What is he saying?" Auntie Stefania asked.

"He is worried you will make him fat," Ilya said, grinning at Shane over the rim of his cup and enjoying Shane's suspiciously narrowed eyes in response.

"Good!" she declared, waving her spatula between them. "Look at you both, like dried fruit!"

The end of the season had worn them both down to looser fitting clothing, and while Ilya disagreed with like dried fruit, he didn't think Shane had to worry about the extra fat and calories. It would probably put him back in better shape faster than his normal diet, especially with three weeks of physical labor ahead of them.

She sat down with them once the sausages were cooked and interrogated Ilya on the plans for the house, and then asked if Shane was married and offered to introduce him to her niece—a very pretty, hardworking girl who lived in Oradea and was studying to be a doctor. She was specializing in fae heritage patients at a very prestigious school, did Ilya know?—and gave them a laundry list of things they needed to work on. She very confidently asserted that a pair of big men could finish it all if they didn't mean to be lazy, though Ilya thought it would take a whole construction crew a month to get through it.

"You boys be careful at the shore," she told them at the door. "There have been vampire attacks recently."

Shane stilled. Vampir was not hard to translate, and Ilya winced. "She says there have been some feral vampires here recently, probably on the river banks." He gestured away toward the southwest.

Shane nodded. "I saw that on the news in the airport. That was…that was here?"

Ilya shrugged. "Not in Sulina, I don't think. Sometimes they fall in the river and wash up somewhere. There are many predators around that like to eat them, so they do not often get to people. Also, they do not swim." He tried to think of how he could reassure Shane without making it obvious that he thought Shane might need to be reassured.

"Some places have alligators, Romania has vampir." He shrugged. "They are used to them here, it is not very big deal. The one you saw on news might have been somewhere else. They are everywhere."

Nodding again, Shane said, "Right."

~*~

At sunset, Ilya found Shane out in the sand with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the water. Ilya stood at the back gate for a while and just watched him. He was at just the edge of the sand, maybe only a step or two off the scruffy grass, and unmoving as he watched the sun sink.

Ilya pushed away from the gate and passed Shane onto the beach. "Come on, let's see if Madam Ghost is here," he called back over his shoulder.

Shane hesitated so long that Ilya was already out climbing out on the rocks piled out into the water before he started moving closer to the surf. Waving, Ilya said, "Come on, this one out here is nice to sit on." He leaned down to put his hand on the rock and lowered himself to it, keeping his knees bent so his feet were out of the lapping waves.

"I'll stay here," Shane replied, his voice taking on a nervous cadence. He was still a dozen long paces away from the water's lapping edge. "You could stay back here, too," he tried.

Shane had been confident stepping off the boat, but when Ilya looked back, he was eyeing the water with distinct unease. Ilya tilted his head and wondered if this was a weird vampire thing he'd never heard of before. He knew Shane wasn't allergic to sunlight, his dinner on the pier in San Francisco had been smothered in garlic, and as far as he knew, the myths about vampires of any kind being unable to cross moving water were bullshit.

Other than that, he didn't know what things vampires could or couldn't do. He also found it unlikely that Shane would be unable to swim or even be afraid of the water after the way he'd handled the "mooring line," and the unhesitating way he'd leapt from the boat's railing to the dock. Maybe he just didn't want to get his boots wet.

Pointing out to the waves, Ilya said, "Look at that way. If she is here, she will not come very close."

Ilya called out to her. He didn't know her name—no one he'd ever asked did, and she'd never answered him when he'd asked. He just called her Madam Ghost, and if she was nearby, she would come up and peer at him from some yards out.

In Russian, he said, "Madam Ghost, I have a very special friend for you to meet. His name is Shane and I…I like him very much." He glanced back at Shane, suddenly nervous that Shane had spontaneously learned Russian. "Sveta is not here with me, and I was not here with her last summer, or the summer before that, I am sorry. I stayed away a long time." He waited to see if there was any movement among the waves, but if she was out there, she was choosing not to surface.

He spent a couple of minutes telling her about his life since he'd seen her last. He usually did on the first night he was there, but after the conversation with Sveta, he hadn't had the energy and wasn't in the right mood to talk to a ghost.

The first time Madam Ghost had spoken to him was the summer after his mother died, when he'd sat on the rocks and cried for hours, and cursed his father, and his brother, and even—to his continuing shame—his mother, and kicked uselessly at the waves. He'd fallen in while smacking his shoe against the surface of the water, cutting up his legs and palms on the jagged rocks.

She had come up close for the first and only time, and pushed him back up the boulders. He hadn't even realized it was her until he sat up, soaked and shivering in the breeze, and saw her with her pale hands still braced on the rock. Her face was very white and she had shark's eyes, black and dull, and shark's teeth to match.

"I was a mother once," she'd told him in a wet and rasping voice, and then raised her hand to look at Ilya's blood where it had run in pink rivulets down her fingers. She'd licked it off with an air of consideration and said, "I could be a mother again. Do you want to come with me, Sunshine Child?"

Ilya had nearly gone. If he'd given her his hand, she would have pulled him in, and down into the cold depths, and maybe he would have been ghost then, too. Or maybe he would have just drowned—most people did, no one knew why some of them woke back up.

He'd thought about Granny Greta and Sveta finding his drowned body on the beach and told her, "No, thank you," and she had shrugged her white-green shoulders and stayed on the rock until Ilya had been driven inside by the shivers.

"Ah," Ilya said after another few minutes. "Maybe she is off hunting somewhere." He pushed himself back to his feet and carefully made his way over the rocks and back into the surf. Shane watched him walk through waves, flinching at Ilya's shoes getting soaked through.

"There's going to be sand everywhere now," he said in a deeply resigned voice, confirming that his early concern had been for his boots.

"There is always sand everywhere all the time," Ilya told him, grinning. Even with the semi-regular tidying Auntie Stefania did, he'd swept half a beach out of the house the day before.

The sky had gone mostly dark, and the beach was entirely empty. When Ilya stepped up close and closed his hands around Shane's waist, Shane only glanced around once before setting his forearms on Ilya's shoulders and letting Ilya sway them both gently side to side.

"This is…really nice," Shane said in a whisper. "Being…just…together."

"Yes," Ilya agreed.

"Ilya, I—" His breath came out on a shiver, caught. He tried to speak again, but then stopped and leaned his forehead against Ilya's. After a very long time and two more false starts, he said, "I'm sorry Sveta cancelled. But I'm glad I could come."

Ilya sighed softly and tilted his head back until he could kiss Shane's forehead. Part of him wanted to push for what Shane had really just tried to say, but he bit it back and instead wrapped a hand around the back of Shane's head and tucked him to his neck. Like he always did, Shane tensed for a moment, and then relaxed. "I am glad, too."

Shane's body came gradually to rest more fully against Ilya's, but when Ilya skimmed his hand down Shane's spine and into the back of his shorts, Shane pulled back to say, "No, we are not having sex in the sand."

Ilya squeezed the firm globe of his ass and then slid a finger down his crack. "Why? You are afraid Madam Ghost will come watch? Let her watch, she is so bored."

"Because it's sand," Shane insisted, but he wove his fingers into Ilya's hair and pulled him for a hard, wet kiss.

When they separated, Ilya was winded, but he still asked, "But you are okay with audience?"

It had grown too dark to see Shane roll his eyes, but Ilya felt it as Shane dragged him back into another kiss and started walking backward off the beach. He drew Ilya with him, and they made stumbling progress through the sand and scruffy grasses, and all the way back to the gate, which Shane fumbled open. Like the front gate, it shrieked in protest to moving.

"Fix that tomorrow," Shane mumbled to himself, but he barely pulled his mouth away long enough to get the words out before dragging Ilya back in.

Ilya kicked his wet, sandy shoes off at the back door, and Shane made a frustrated noise before shoving Ilya away so he could lean down and untie his, but Ilya had no time to complain; Shane had the laces undone and the boots off in record time, and then they were weaving through the kitchen. The house was dark, and there were no street lights to cast a glow through the windows. They knocked into every door frame, table, and cabinet, clothes coming off haphazardly on the narrow staircase, hands catching at the walls.

The bed squeaked loudly when Shane finally pushed him down on it, and Shane stopped at the sound. He choked out a laugh and said, "How close are the neighbors?"

"Very far away," Ilya reassured him, shuffling up the bed and holding a hand out for Shane to follow him. The bed was ancient, and it had been ancient even when Ilya was eight, and it narrated their progress up its length with the dedication of a sports commentator.

"I don't know," Shane said, straddling Ilya's hips and giving an experimental bounce. "Autie Stefania seems like she has good ears." He bounced again and added, "I think my parents could probably hear this from Ottawa."

"Then we will tell them there are mice everywhere, all the walls…totally infested," Ilya suggested, sitting up and wrapping his arms tightly around Shane's back. He kissed and licked at Shane's chest, and then rubbed his evening stubble over the sensitive skin until Shane started to squirm.

Finally, Shane caught his face and pushed him down to the mattress. He twisted to lean over the side, fishing for his duffle bag where it had been pushed underneath the bed, and Ilya was caught by the way the scant light from the window made hills and valleys of his rib cage, lovingly folded around his muscles, and caught on the stripes of his stretch marks.

Ilya slid his fingers softly over Shane's skin, mesmerized by the way it pebbled it under his touch. When Shane straightened with condoms and lube in hand, Ilya ignored them both and continued just memorizing the texture of his skin, the geography of his body.

Shane remained quiet and let him touch without interference. He moved his arm when Ilya nudged it out of the way without comment, watched Ilya's fingers ghost down his thighs, and arched beautifully when Ilya ran both hands up his back.

"Where did this one come from?" Ilya asked, fingering the scar high on his arm.

"Accident on the lake one year," Shane said.

They had both whispered, which was ridiculous in an empty house with no one but a water ghost for fifteen minutes in any direction, but it didn't feel ridiculous in that moment. Ilya waited for more, but Shane didn't volunteer anything else. Instead, he grabbed Ilya's hand and shifted it to his ribs, and then pulled it down his side, over the curve of his ass, and then lifted himself so he could press Ilya's palm to the curve of his calf.

"One winter, I tried to do a flip in my skates," he said, capturing Ilya's thumb and rubbing it over the slender scar describing an arch over the thick swell of muscle and down nearly to his ankle. "I was thirteen. Managed to somehow catch the back of my leg with my opposite skate when I fell down. Thirty-two stitches. I was so terrified I would never be able to skate again that my mom didn't even yell at me."

Ilya pressed his thumb down the length of it. It was so faint that he might not have felt it at all if he hadn't been directed where to put his fingers. He kissed Shane's ribs and said, "Very lucky."

Shane agreed with a wordless hum, holding himself up so Ilya could continue to pet up and down it. After another moment, he eased Shane back down and took his hand, and then leaned back and set Shane's palm over the puckered scar across his hip.

"My brother and I were playing sword fighting," he explained. "With sticks. His sword broke and he stabbed me."

Shane jolted. "He stabbed you?"

"Only very lightly," Ilya said. "A few years after that, maybe I would say he did it on purpose, but not then. I was ten and he was fifteen, and our mother was still alive. He was being very nice to me that day, and he felt bad. He carried me inside and he did all my chores for two weeks. Our father was…hard on him for it."

He didn't say anything more than that, and Shane didn't press, just rubbed his fingers over the scar tissue like his could smooth it away.

"And here," Ilya said, he took Shane's hand again and pulled his left leg up. He had to bend Shane backwards, but Shane went without a tremble, letting Ilya drag his hand down his shin to a smooth patch of scar tissue usually hidden by his leg hair. "Motorcycle," he said.

"Ilya!" Shane gasped immediately, jerking upright. "You ride a motorcycle?"

"Not for a while, but yes, I can. This one…fell on me," Ilya said, omitting the circumstances, "and it was very hot. Pinned my leg until I could kick it off."

"That could have been the end of your career," Shane said.

It could have been the end of his life, but Ilya didn't say that, he just leaned over and grabbed Shane's calf. "Yes, it could have."

Shane huffed, but Ilya could practically feel the ire seeping out of him. He put his hands on either side of Ilya's head and drew him up for a long, slow kiss. "Be more careful," he said against Ilya's mouth.

"You, too. No more flips."

"No more motorcycles," Shane countered.

"Eh…" Ilya hedged, and kissed away Shane's next words, and then the next when he tried again, and the next. Finally, Shane relaxed in his arms and let it go, though Ilya did not think he'd given up.

After a long moment, Shane pressed him back to the mattress and skimmed his fingers down Ilya's ribs. The light had fully faded, and the moon had not risen. The bedroom was dark enough that Shane was only a darker shadow moving above him. He shifted back down Ilya's thighs and slid the back of his hand down Ilya's belly and under his half-hard dick.

It hardened for him quickly, too obedient, and Ilya bit his lip to stifle a moan, but when he reached for Shane's dick, Shane distractedly knocked his hand away.

"Let me do this for you," he said, rubbing his thumb up the shaft of Ilya's cock in a massaging motion, and then stopping to play with his foreskin for a long minute. When Ilya's hips started moving, Shane pushed him down, and then shimmied further down the bed. Ilya heard his feet thunk against the chest at the foot of the bed; Shane adjusted himself, making the bed squeak and rattle.

Ilya's amused huff turned to an appreciative moan as Shane ran the flat of his tongue up Ilya's cock, and then folded his lips over the head. He pulled off with a loud, wet pop, and restarted the process. It was not enough contact to be anything more than a tease, and Ilya had his hands hovering on the brink of grabbing Shane's head and holding him down, but he endured the curious torture for the sake of hot noises Shane made as he got into his task.

By the time Ilya's control finally snapped and he dragged Shane up the bed to the enthusiastic applause of the bed springs, Shane was breathless and hot all over. Ilya encouraged him onto his side and then pushed his knee up. Shane's spine twisted in a casual exhibition of his flexibility so he could wrap an arm around Ilya's neck and haul him up for a messy kiss while Ilya ran his fingers over Shane's hole, back and forth, stopping randomly to push a fingertip inside just for the catch in Shane's breathing. They stayed like that for another small eternity while the moon rose and pale silver light slipped across the floor, until Shane finally found the lube and the condom and dropped them in the narrow space between their bodies.

Pushing into Shane's body was always very nearly a religious experience. Once Ilya had himself sealed as tightly to the curve of Shane's hip as he could get, he stopped to rest his forehead on Shane's chest.

Shane rocked against him subtly, making small, breathy whimpers of sound in the back of his throat, and Ilya finally pushed himself up until he had leverage to move and rocked with him. The slow creea-kt of the mattress kept time with every thrust. Ilya stayed at that slow pace, feeling almost as if his body didn't belong to him, or that he didn't have a body at all. The world was just the synchronized rush of their breath coming in and out together, Shane's hand tangled in his hair, the beat of Ilya's heart in his own ears.

The build came slowly. Ilya was nearly sobbing for breath and not sure if he was grateful for the building pressure or agonized by the impending end, but Shane had a hand on himself, and he murmured encouragement in a voice too low and breathless to have words, and Ilya tucked his head down to Shane's chest and came in silent, pulsing waves.

The first thing he was aware of in the aftermath was the steady thump-thump-thump of Shane's heart under his ear, and then the comforting glide of Shane's fingers petting down the back of his neck.

"It seems like I'm in love with you," Ilya said in Russian, devastated by the reality of it.

Chapter 21: Chapter Twenty

Chapter Summary

Warning

Warning for violence and blood!

Over breakfast, Ilya was quiet and withdrawn. Shane felt muzzy-headed himself and sore from the previous day's labor, the extended spinal twist the night before, and sleeping in the small, noisy bed. If the heavy food didn't put him out of shape by the time he got back to Montreal, that bed was going to end his career. Besides being loud and advertising the position of its springs, it was not intended for two full-grown professional athletes, and he might genuinely need to move to the floor.

After breakfast, Shane stood in front of the death trap shed with his fists on his hips for a solid minute before he was willing to brave it long enough to hunt through its belly.

"Don't choose now to fall in," he warned it as he opened the door. "Be nice, and I'll bring you something later," he added, feeling a little ridiculous, but Ojiichan had instilled in him a respect for old things and the spirits they sometimes grew. If he had ever met anything they had grown a spirit, it was this shed.

The walls creaked menacingly when the wind blew, everything was coated in a layer of dust and grit, but it was surprisingly organized, and many of the tools and supplies were incongruously new.

He quickly found what he was looking for and took the wire brush and oil out to the back gate. The ocean wasn't visible with the short rise of scrub between the house and the shore, but Shane could hear the waves lapping at the sand.

He forced his attention to the gate, scraped away the worst of the rust, and oiled the hinges until it moved silently. Like a lot things at the old house, the hinges at least badly needed to be replaced, but the gate itself was a pretty cast iron design that just needed a coat of paint. From the flakes still clinging to the metal, it had once been green, maybe to match the color of the front door.

When he went around to the front gate to repeat the exercise, he found Ilya at the fence, nailing a new plank up. He had a can of white paint set off to one side, brush resting atop it, and three nails between his lips. Shane stopped and took one side of the board, holding it in place for Ilya to knock the nail in. He was awkward with the hammer, and Shane guessed that the extent of his carpentry experience was on this crumbling house, but he got the nail in without hitting his thumb or Shane's.

Ilya nodded at him in acknowledgement, but he didn't say anything, and he didn't quite meet Shane's eyes as he put another nail into the board and gave it a shake. It held firm to the ancient post, and he turned away to get another board.

Shane stood for a moment, uncertain of the change in the temperature between them, but also unsure of how to ask about it. Ilya couldn't have slept any better than he had, and he was probably just as tired and sore, but the tension that had been dispelled over the previous day spent playing as much as they were working was back three-fold, and Shane wondered if he'd done something wrong.

"Okay?" Shane asked.

Ilya nodded. Around the pair of nails still dangling from his lips, he said, "Yes, I can do it."

Picking the brush and oil back up, Shane went to tend to the front gate, but the tension followed him and the quiet didn't lift through painting the fence in the front, or their lunch of cold cut sandwiches and tea.

"I think we should try putting the mattress on the floor tonight," Shane said half way through his sandwich. They were in the shade on the back porch, Ilya sitting on the edge of the porch swing and Shane on the cool concrete steps.

"Tired of the mice?" Ilya asked, some warmth coming back into his voice.

"Very," Shane said with relief. "Though I'm not sure it wouldn't be more comfortable directly on the floor at this point."

"We can sleep out on the beach," Ilya offered, lips twitching.

"You can sleep out on the beach," Shane retorted, but his eyes were drawn automatically to the back gate and the scrubby grasses visible beyond. The house was elevated slightly, and from the porch, Shane could just make out a hazy stretch of dark water. It was overcast, and the sky and the water were nearly the same shade of blue gray.

Casting a look at the sky, Shane took the last bite of his sandwich and swallowed the tea. He'd been uncertain about the cherries the day before, but he found that he liked the contrast of the sweet syrup and the slight tang of the fruit, and he carefully pulled the pit out with his teeth and tongue and let it roll back into the cup.

"Think we can get that fence down and back up before nightfall?" he asked, looking over the gray planks hanging at chaotic angles all down the length of it. Unlike the fence in the front yard, this one did not have a stone base, and the bottoms of the planks were nearly black from years of water damage and wind.

"Hmm," Ilya said with a great show of being uncertain. "Maybe if Sveta were here instead of this slow hockey player…"

"Slow?" Shane asked, glaring, but he was still nursing the bruise of Ilya beating his lap time at All Stars by almost half a second. "Me?"

"So slow," Ilya groaned.

"Okay, let's see who's slow. That's your half," he said, pointing to the right of the gate, and then he jumped down the steps and jogged for his tool belt.

Behind him, Ilya cursed, and then there was a flurry of movement as he scrambled out of his seat and came running down the slight slope of the yard after Shane. Shane scooped his belt up and yanked on his gloves as he passed Ilya on the way back to the fence, laughing as Ilya made a purposefully clumsy attempt to trip him, which he easily dodged.

~*~

Ilya dropped into the grass with a loud groan, arms splaying out wide. They had managed to get the fence down, and the remains of it lay in chaotic piles around the yard, but Ilya had realized only too late that getting it back up before nightfall had been a very optimistic goal. With Shane goading him the whole way, he hadn't been able to protest the challenge, and the last of Ilya's black mood had vanished as they worked at a frenetic pace.

Shane had slowed down only when it came to nailing the new boards in place, but he was confident with the hammer and managed to get most nails in with a single blow. Ilya undeniably won the race to pull the old planks down, but Shane had smugly come over to help him put up the last quarter of his half of the new fence.

"This was bad idea," Ilya complained, rubbing his forearms. What would have been a leisurely three day project for him and Sveta, interspersed with afternoon drinking and swimming breaks, had turned into a mad rush that he and Shane only finished as the light took on that soft golden hue just before sunset.

Now, the sky was pink with sunset, and the night insects were starting to hum, and they hadn't even stopped for dinner.

"You only say that because you lost," Shane teased, but he made an involuntary noise of discomfort as he lowered himself to the ground at Ilya's side.

"You cheated," Ilya insisted. "You are obviously secretly a construction man."

Shane snorted. "Yes, when I'm not practicing hockey, playing hockey, or training for hockey, I put on a hardhat and build houses."

"Don't forget your modeling," Ilya reminded him.

"Yes, when I'm not modeling," Shane said with a dry tone that made it clear he did not see himself as a model, despite the number of things he had modeled for just this summer.

"And the porn," Ilya added.

"No, I do that while building the houses," Shane said. If his cheeks hadn't flamed red, his delivery would have been perfect.

Despite the terror of realizing that "I like him very much"—enough of a dangerous and stupid thing for him to do—had already slid recklessly into "It seems I'm in love with you," Ilya was…happy, laying on the grass next to Shane, sore, and filthy, and surrounded by rotting wood. Three weeks was not a long time to have this, and he might never have it again, but he was helpless to do anything about it now, and probably had been from the first time he'd looked down at Shane and asked, "Can I stay?"

Ilya swatted Shane's belly, grinned at the ooaf of surprise and Shane's knees automatically coming up, and said, "Let's go."

He levered himself out of the grass and stretched his aching shoulders, already walking for the back gate.

"Where are you going?" Shane asked, as if there was anywhere else to go out the back gate, but he followed when Ilya pushed it open on now smooth and silent hinges and lead the way back to the beach.

"To wash all the sweat off," Ilya said, stopping at the border of the sand to take his shoes and socks off. "Take your shoes off so you don't get sand in them," he said, gesturing to the boots with his chin and stepping into the sand.

"I'm okay with the shower back at the house," Shane insisted.

"You can't swim?" Ilya asked. "Scared of the water?"

Shane barked out a laugh and said, "I am a very good swimmer, and no, I'm not scared of the water. I just prefer to shower in a shower, like a normal person."

"Scared of Madam Ghost?" Ilya pressed, backing down the beach. Like Shane inevitably did, he followed, but he didn't take his shoes off, and he stopped a healthy distance from the waves.

"I'm not scared of her. Just…come back to the house. It's getting dark."

"There is still enough light for maybe….mmm, twenty minutes? Moon is full, it will be fine, like daylight," Ilya coaxed, holding his hand out and curling his fingers in invitation.

Shane stayed rooted to his patch of sand, crossing his arms. "No, Ilya, it's not safe to swim at night," he insisted.

"Then come with me, so I am not alone!" Ilya felt the waves lap at the back of his ankles, and Shane took two steps forward before stopping. His eyes flickered to the water, and his expression dropped into a pure sort of longing that took Ilya's breath away.

"You are not scared?" Ilya prompted for confirmation.

"No!" Shane insisted.

"And you can swim?"

"Yes, I already—" Shane dropped his weight and held his hands out forestallingly when Ilya rushed him. "No, Ilya, wait—!" He caught Ilya's shoulders and tried to push him away, but Ilya had come in low and managed to grab him around the thighs.

Making a loud noise like a battle cry, Ilya lifted Shane off his feet. He meant to drop Shane to his shoulder, but Shane locked his elbows so he was posted up, throwing Ilya's balance off and nearly sending them both tumbling to the ground. Ilya turned, faltering slightly under his weight, and started back toward the water.

"ILYA!" Shane snapped, suddenly deadly serious. "Put me down, now!"

Ilya stopped immediately. Shane's voice echoed in his head, and his pulse jumped. He set Shane down very carefully and watched in confusion as Shane took several hurried steps away from the wet sand, face pale in the diminished light, eyebrows locked together, and lips pinched.

"I said no," Shane said, hard and angry.

Ilya held his hands up. "Okay, I am sorry," he said, watching Shane carefully.

Shane dragged his hands roughly through his hair, and then did it again, chest rising and falling rapidly. "Ilya, I need to tel—"

A chilling shriek bounced off the water, and Shane's head snapped around toward the sound. Ilya quickly followed the direction of his gaze, but he barely had time to register the weirdly crouched figure a short ways up the beach before it shrieked again and came bolting across the sand in a slipping scramble, running alternately upright and then tripping and bounding forward on all fours.

Ilya took a stumbling step backwards, landing on his ass in the surf, too shocked to even yell as he pushed himself frantically through the wet sand.

The creature's terrible face loomed, for one impossible second so clear that Ilya could have counted all its white and gleaming teeth, and then a streak cut across his line of sight. In the next moment, Ilya could only stare in dumb incomprehension, unable to connect Shane in his head to the mass of limbs rolling in the sand a short distance away.

Shane let out a sharp, pained yelp of noise that drove Ilya back to his feet. The vampir snarled in fury, swatted at Shane where he lay prone, and turned back to Ilya with a guttural, spitting snarl. Ilya darted to the side as it lunged at him, tripped back into the sand, and then rolled out of the way and directly across a stone. He barely felt the impact of it against his spine, and had it in his hand before he'd even registered what it was.

He threw it hard, hitting the vampir square in its grotesque face. It fell backwards with a sickening crunch and a spray of dark blood, but before Ilya could even turn to Shane, it was back on its feet, shrieking and diving for Ilya again.

At first, he didn't register the sound.

One moment, the vampir was so close that Ilya could smell the stench of it, and the next moment, it had stumbled to its knees with a pathetic, warbling cry, clutching at its head.

The sound came then, something that was not whale song, and not the fury of a storm at sea, and not the sweet whistle of wind through rocks. It was the sound of the ocean breathing, as deep and haunting as the pulse of Ilya's heart when he stayed under the water too long, something at once terrifying and so beautiful that he felt the tears on his cheeks long before he'd realized he'd started to cry.

Moaning and whimpering, the vampir crawled through the sand toward the surf, and Ilya turned on legs he couldn't control anymore to face…Shane, standing shin-deep in the water. His shirt was soaked black on one side, and Ilya must have hit his head, because he looked…hazy, almost, as he held a hand out toward the vampir slowly dragging itself into the water, crying and gnashing its teeth all the while.

Shane's eyes were very dark, and his mouth was open, fangs dropped. It took Ilya several slow blinks to connect Shane's mouth being open to the sound still wrapping around Ilya and making the whole world sway.

The vampir reached him, one horrid clawed hand out and straining. Shane brought his hand up to take the creature's wrist. While Ilya swayed on the shore, Shane closed his hand tight on the vampir's desiccated arm and yanked hard to pull it upright. He caught the creature's neck in one hand, dropped its wrist to grab the top of its head, and then a great CRACK sounded, so loud that Ilya flinched.

Shane closed his mouth, stumbling, and dropped the vampir to splash into the water.

The sound abruptly ceased, leaving Ilya panting, tears streaking down his face, and completely unable to grasp what he was seeing. Shane's eyes lifted slowly to meet his. On his knees, he swayed with the waves, and he looked ghostly, and ill, and terrified.

Pushed by the waves, the vampir came to rest on the beach, silent and still but for the jostling of the water. Ilya looked slowly down at it, and then back to Shane.

Gasping wetly, Shane struggled upright, one hand clutching his side, but where his legs should have been, there was just a hazy mirage, like he had water pouring out of his blood soaked shirt.

"…Shane?" Ilya asked. His voice sounded helpless and childlike with confusion in his ears, and so far away, like he was hearing himself through the water.

Shane tried to take a step forward, cried out, and fell again.

The cry and the loud splash knocked the insulating shock away as effectively as being doused in ice water, and Ilya lurched toward Shane.

"NO!" Shane snapped in that same voice from earlier. As it echoed in his head, Ilya heard the ghost of that noise underneath it.

He froze at once, staring at Shane's pale face. Shane had one hand up to ward him off, the other clutching his side. His expression was strained as if he was trying to lift something too heavy. Abruptly, his hand crashed back into the water, and he gasped out a pained whimper.

Looking up at Ilya like his heart was breaking under his ribcage, Shane said, "Please…run…" and then collapsed face-first into the surf.

Ilya's knees unlocked, and he stumbled the last two steps into the water and splashed to Shane's side. Falling to his knees, he caught Shane's shoulders and hastily turned him over, one shaking hand coming up to wipe the sand away from his face.

Shane's shirt was soaked with blood, and it fanned out into the water, appearing black with the sun very nearly gone. Ilya pressed a frantic hand to the spreading stain, scanning the beach as if there were paramedics on site to rush over and get Shane on a backboard and take him away.

"Shane!" He shook Shane roughly—there was so much blood—but Shane's face was lax in unconsciousness, and he knocked against Ilya with each wave like he was made of rags and yarn.

Reluctantly letting go of the wound, Ilya got to his knees and lifted Shane's chest and shoulders up as he stood, dragging him backwards and out of the water. Despite his lower body flowing into the sea like he was made of water himself, Shane was just as heavy as he'd ever been, heavier maybe, like the Black Sea had taken hold of him and was reluctant to let him go.

Ilya's heels hit something solid. He fell, dropping Shane back into the sand, where the waves returned to lapping lovingly at the watery length of him. Realizing that it was the vampir he had tripped on, Ilya shouted and kicked with automatic fright. The soggy corpse barely budged, and Ilya scrambled back over it to pick Shane up again, heart thundering in terror.

Shane's lips were parted, and his mouth moved faintly as he breathed, fangs still visible.

"Shane, please wake up!" Ilya yelled, pulling him further out of the surf and onto dry sand, away from that creature.

"What a pretty cousin of mine."

Ilya shouted in shock and fell again, landing with Shane on top of him. He looked down and barely stopped himself from screaming as he registered a long, dark shape just below where Shane's feet should have been. A pale hand reached up, and Ilya pulled Shane frantically away, but the hand came down and did not pass through the shifting water of Shane's leg, but held him fast.

The figure pushed itself up on its elbow, long, dark hair falling in wet tangles over a pale face, flat shark-like eyes, and a mouth that opened on wicked, serrated teeth.

Ilya clutched Shane harder and carefully greeted, "Madam Ghost."

"Little Sunshine Child," she replied, giving him a ghastly smile. Her voice was just as awful as he'd remembered. "Is this your friend? Who you like a lot?" she asked. Her eyes had no pupils, and Ilya couldn't tell if she was looking down at Shane or still staring at him, but he resisted the very strong urge to yank Shane out of her reach.

"Yes," he said, stumbling over the word. "Can you help me?"

She tilted her head one way and then the other. "I can take him with me," she mused in the same way she had once offered to be Ilya's mother.

"No, thank you," Ilya said, desperately struggling to keep his voice polite. Madam Ghost was not more dangerous than any other large predator, but that only meant she was exactly as dangerous as any other large predator. If he had spent many hours talking to her, and she had helped him once, that did not mean that she had any capacity for affection; it did not mean she wouldn't rip Shane out of his hands and disappear with him into the depths.

Ilya saw the shape of the vampir behind her and swallowed hard, stopping himself from just directing her attention to it so he could pick Shane up and run. Instead, he carefully said, "We have a fresh kill, there."

She twisted to look at the vampir. "Yes, fat and fresh." Her head swiveled back, blank face giving no hint of an expression. "Your mate is a fine hunter."

"Yes, he is," Ilya agreed. He put a hand down to press on the dark stain on Shane's side again, and Shane moaned faintly in his arms. "If you help me save him, you can have our kill," Ilya tried. He had started to shake, either from the cool wind blowing across his wet body, or the proximity of her teeth, or Shane lying so quiet and still in his arms.

"Hmm," she hummed. "That is generous of you, Sunshine Child. You could both come with me. We could be very good hunters together. I will teach you."

The automatic shout of denial crowded into Ilya's chest. He swallowed it down and said, "That is very kind, but no, thank you."

"Pity," she said with something roughly approximating a sigh, if a sigh had been poured out of a concrete mixer. "Bring him back into the water. He is a water thing, unhealthy to be dry for so long."

Ilya looked helplessly back toward the house. There was a first aid kit, he thought, in the kitchen. Hadn't Sveta put one on there? He looked back down at the blood welling between his fingers, and then the lapping waves.

What could he possibly do with bandaids and antiseptic spray? He could make it to town in maybe fifteen minutes if he sprinted, but he couldn't carry Shane there in less than thirty, and he didn't even know if the medical center would be open, if it was even still there at all.

"Come," she said, flopping awkwardly over, and then twisting to look back at him, expression somehow expectant for all that it was still as blank and unreadable as a shark's.

"You won't…You won't take him?" Ilya asked hesitantly.

She made a clicking, grinding noise, something like rocks tumbling together with razors. To his horror, Ilya realized it was laughter.

"Do not be insulting now, when you have spoken to me so prettily." She turned back toward the water and hauled herself through the wet sand with remarkable speed, barely stopping to grab the vampir by the ankle and drag it into the waves behind her.

"Fuck," Ilya cursed. He looked back toward the house one last time, and then pushed himself to his feet and pulled Shane up with him and back into the waves.

"This way!" Madam Ghost called with a playful sort of glee, leading him over to the rock jetty where he had spent so much time sitting and talking to her over the years, and then down the length of it, until Shane was floating freely in the water and Ilya had to struggle to keep his feet.

She looked at him critically, and then dived down with her prize and disappeared. Ilya was immediately swamped with fear and cursing himself. Maybe she wouldn't take either of them, but if Shane bled out in Ilya's arms, blood loss aided by the relentless pull of the waves, she couldn't be blamed or said to have broken her word.

Just when he'd decided to try to make it back to shore, she surfaced again, close by his elbow. Without a word, she caught his hand in hers, skin slick and unpleasant like oiled seaweed, and then slashed a sharp rock across his palm.

Ilya hissed and tried to drag his hand out of her grip, but she didn't seem to even notice his efforts. Pushing his hand at Shane's face, she said, "Feed it to him, now."

It was difficult to keep his grip on Shane in the constant motion of the water without being able to hold onto the rocks, but Ilya pressed his bleeding palm to Shane's lips. Shane was still and unresponsive, the motion of the waves just smearing Ilya's blood across his face.

Madam Ghost plucked at Shane's shirt and leaned down as if to sniff at the wound Ilya could barely see through the waves. She lapped at the blood in the water with all the delicacy of a wine connoisseur at a tasting.

"Don't—!" Ilya started, but his voice was cut off in a startled hiss at a sharp pain in his palm, followed by heat. He automatically tried to jerk his hand away, but Madam Ghost caught his wrist and held it there until Ilya realized that Shane had bitten him, was conscious enough to have bitten him.

Madam Ghost ducked into the water and came up on Shane's other side. She made an unsettling cooing-purring noise and stroked a hand over his hair, and then repeated that horrible laughing sound when the strands clung tightly to her fingers.

"Such a long, long way from his cold oceans," Madam Ghost mused, de-tangling her fingers with unexpected care and drawing her hand away. In the poor light, it looked like Shane's hair was moving on its own, trying to grab her again.

She blinked her fathomless eyes at Ilya for a long time, which was deeply unnerving, but she was helping to hold Shane afloat, and Ilya couldn't risk telling her to fuck off.

After a while, she pulled Ilya's hand away and sniffed it, and then her other hand flashed up again, raking the stone over his palm once more, before pushing it back down. Shane didn't bite him again, but Ilya felt a gentle suction on his palm and hoped that it was Shane and not just the waves pulling at the blood.

Ilya lost track of the time and drifted into a strange state almost like sleeping. Darkness fell at some point, so complete that Ilya could only see Madam Ghost because of the paleness of her skin, and then the moon climbed slowly up.

Madam Ghost ducked into the water sometimes, leaving Ilya briefly struggling to both hold Shane and keep himself upright, but she came back each time, though she'd stopped speaking. He wondered vaguely if it hurt her to speak; her voice definitely sounded like it wasn't accustomed to use.

Some eternity later, she said, "Go home now, Sunshine Child," and then she ducked below the waves a final time, and did not come back up again.

Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-One

Shane woke to a pounding headache and a sickening, metallic taste at the back of his throat. He put a hand up to his forehead with a groan, covering his eyes and squeezing his temples.

"Shane!"

Shane's body tipped as a weight settled beside him, and he reached out automatically for Ilya. "My head hurts," he rasped.

"Yes, you lost so much blood," Ilya said confusingly. He got his arm under Shane's shoulders and helped him sit up, squishing pillows behind his back and shoulders until he could relax against them.

Shane felt a cup against his lips and took a sip. He'd been expecting water, but it was some kind of salty, room temperature broth. As soon as the first of it hit his tongue, he found himself gulping it down until Ilya had to pull it out of range.

"Slow," Ilya said.

Peeling one eye open, Shane squinted at him in what he hoped was an annoyed scowl, but he could barely see Ilya at all. After a moment, Ilya put the glass against his lips again, and Shane pulled at it more slowly. It settled his stomach, and by the time he'd finished the glass, the headache had mostly receded, and he was able to cautiously open his eyes.

"What—" The memories slammed into him as soon as he saw Ilya's pale face, and he froze only a moment before slapping a hand over his side. He remembered the searing pain of the vampir slicing into his belly, the horror of seeing it turn toward Ilya, and then—

"…I meant to tell you," he said, pushing the words out through the tight grip on his throat. "I tried to tell you. I'm so sorry. Are you… are you okay? Did it hurt you?"

Ilya hushed him. "It's okay, Shane, I know. It didn't hurt me."

Shane felt so fatigued that he could barely recognize the swirling cocktail sloshing through his stomach: relief, anxiety, remorse. Misery. He forced himself to meet Ilya's eyes. They were in the living room, the curtains were all drawn, and Ilya was lit by the soft yellow glow of a lamp.

Taking a breath, Shane tried to reassure Ilya, "I'm not dangerous, normally, I'm really—"

"Shhhhh," Ilya interrupted, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I know already."

Shane winced. He had been such a coward. He'd had good reasons not to tell Ilya in the beginning, and even good—or at least defensible—reasons after Ilya's disastrous hookup had thrown their routine off track, but it had been months since Ilya had told him, "Yes, I would want that." All Shane's excuses—the season, not seeing each other for weeks at a time, the ad shoots, even the plan he'd put into place to take Ilya to his parents' cabin—felt hollow and weak in the face of the horror at what had nearly happened.

"You shouldn't have found out that way," he said, closing his eyes. "I was trying to tell you when—"

"Shane," Ilya stressed, starting to sound anxious himself. "I already know."

"Now! I should have told you in Vegas at least, if not months—"

Putting a hand on Shane's cheek, Ilya turned Shane's face until their eyes met. Speaking very deliberately, Ilya said, "Knew. I already knew."

For a long moment, the words failed to penetrate, and then some abomination of shockangerpanicfear flashed through Shane's chest, crowding in around his lungs until he had no room for air, until it seemed like even his heart would stop beating. He went cold around that tearing storm, felt numbness settling into him.

Speaking as if with a stranger's voice, Shane asked, "How long?"

Ilya's thumb tapped restlessly against Shane's cheek. "Always," he admitted finally.

Shane stared at him blankly. "Always? What does that mean?"

"The first time," he said with a sigh. "In L.A., after I blew you, I looked up, and…" He made a vague gesture toward his own mouth.

Too stunned to even snap his hands up to cover his mouth, Shane just stared, and stared. He shifted his weight uncomfortably on the couch, trying to get a grasp on absolutely anything. He felt…confused? Relieved? Some tension he hadn't even realized had been clinging to his neck released all at once. Ilya already knew, which meant he didn't have to say it. He already knew, and he hadn't run away.

He already knew, and he'd never told Shane he knew.

Annoyance rose up to the surface, infusing some warmth back into his limbs and grounding him in his own body. "Why didn't you tell me you knew?" he snapped.

"Why didn't you just tell me that?" Ilya demanded with matching heat, waving his hand in a gesture toward Shane's face. They just stared at each other for several long seconds, the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the mantle the only sound other than their breathing.

"Fuck," Shane said finally.

Ilya's shoulders did not relax as much as fall. For some reason he looked nervous and wary, like Shane was going to scream at him or drive him out of the house.

Scrubbing his hands over his face, Shane said, "I tried to tell you so many times. I just didn't know what you would think, and the longer I went without saying it, the harder it felt to say it, and I didn't even know if we—if you—…This could…this could ruin my life, Ilya."

"I know," Ilya said quietly, expression softening. "At beginning, I didn't say anything because I thought you would never see me again if you knew I knew." He shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably, looking at Shane sidelong.

Shane winced. If he'd realized he'd dropped his fangs that first night, he…he didn't know exactly what he would have done, but never being alone in a room with Ilya again would at least have been high on the list.

"Also, it was hot," Ilya admitted. The ghost of a smile pulled across his mouth. "Very hot. You are very hot. Could not risk never getting this ass again." He reached down and squeezed at Shane's hip, but too gently for the crudeness of his words.

When Shane glared at him, he just said, "What? This is very true." After another long exhale, he continued, "And then I did not say because…it did not matter." He gave a lopsided shrug. "So you have dark hair, and dark eyes, and beautiful freckles, and fangs. And also…maybe you should not trust me, and maybe then I wanted you to feel…" He made an unhappy noise and looked away from Shane before finishing, "Safe. To tell me."

The irritation flooded out of Shane so quickly that he felt lightheaded in the wake of it. He reached down and hooked his fingers around Ilya's where it was still curled lightly over his hip. "I do trust you. And I really did intend to tell you. I had this whole plan…I was going to take you to my parents' cabin, no distractions—"

"No escape?" Ilya teased faintly.

The blood drained out of Shane's face, his eyes went painfully wide, and he hurried to say, "No, that's not—"

"Shane. Joke. Sorry, bad joke. I am asshole, we know this." He gave Shane a weak smile.

A charged silence fell, and then Shane steeled himself and asked, "Do you have…I mean, you must have—questions?"

Ilya seemed to think about it for a long time before giving Shane a careful look and saying, "You are not vampire."

Shane winced. "No!" But then he bit his lip and tried to explain, "I am—I'm sanguinivorous. So…yes, I kind of am a—vampire, but not like that thing, and not like…Obviously you know I can be in the sun, no silver allergy, no garlic allergy—"

Ilya's eyebrows furrowed. "Sangu-? What?"

"Sanguinivorous. It just means that blood has nutritional value for me. But I'm not an obligate sanguivore," he hurried to add.

"Shane, please," Ilya pleaded, clearly frustrated.

Shane's hand had tightened on Ilya's. He forced his grip to release and tried to get more comfortable, but Ilya turned his hand over and grabbed Shane's fingers before he could move too far away.

Briefly closing his eyes, Shane focused on breathing and gathered himself to speak again. He opened his eyes and kept his voice calm and sure. "It just means that I don't have to drink blood to survive. I don't even need it to be healthy. In fact, I've only ever had it when I was a ba…by…"

A faint sense of wrongness tugged at him as he said it, and he frowned, tongue working against the roof of his mouth. His eyes tracked down, and he finally registered that Ilya's right hand was wrapped in gauze. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Between pushing on that weird muscle in his throat to activate his pull and waking up on the couch, things were hazy, but…he remembered his knees hitting the sand, the weakness, Ilya rushing toward him—

"Did I bite you?" he demanded, shoving himself further upright. He grabbed for where he knew he should have a wound on his side, but there was only soreness, more like he'd had a hard workout than he'd had his belly torn open. "Did I hurt you?"

"No—Yes, you did bite me—Stop, Shane!" Ilya grabbed him as Shane tried to kick the blankets off, his stomach turning so hard that he gagged, suddenly aware of how warm he felt and the heaviness in his stomach. "Don't throw up! Do you think this grows on trees?" Ilya demanded, holding his arm up and shaking it at Shane.

It was such an absurd thing to say that Shane stopped struggling to get away and just stared at him with his mouth hanging open.

"You did bite me," Ilya repeated, pushing until Shane dropped against the pillows. "But only after I put my bloody hand in your mouth, so this is my fault."

"Why would you do that?" Shane demanded, grabbing Ilya's wrist and trying to assess the damage around the bandages. The light was too poor for him to see anything, but did Ilya's skin feel warm? How long would it take for infection to set in? "You thought I was a—! And you—! Why would you—? I could have killed you!"

Ilya scoffed, pulling his hand away. "You barely even nibble," he said dismissively. "Not even as bad as day old kitten."

"This is not a joke, Ilya!" Shane snapped, horrified.

"Shane, you would not even bite me enough for blood to keep coming," Ilya told him, obviously exasperated. "Madam Ghost had to keep—"

"—Madam Ghost?"

"Yes, she helped me. She took that vampir, it was very good deal for her. Then she helped me hold you up in water, and cut my hand, and now you are not dead. Okay?" He leaned forward abruptly and pressed his mouth to Shane's, tongue shoving insistently past Shane's lips, and then he pulled away just as quickly and met Shane's eyes. He looked equal parts furious and frightened. "You are not dead."

Shane felt like all the strings tying that storm of conflicting feelings into his ribcage had been cut in one swipe. His hands shook as he put them up to Ilya's face and pulled until he had Ilya's mouth again. They kissed frantically for a long time, Shane's heart pounding in retroactive fear, and Ilya shaking against him.

When they separated, Shane pushed their foreheads together hard enough to hurt. "You're not dead, either. I was so scared when that thing jumped for you."

Ilya murmured to him in Russian, too low and fast for Shane to even register it as more than sounds. "You saved me," he gasped finally, in English. "Oh, my god, Shane."

"You saved me, too," Shane whispered back, holding him carefully.

"And I also carried you all the way back to the house," Ilya said with a wet laugh.

Shane tried to laugh, but all he could say was, "Okay, you win that one. I'll carry you next time."

Ilya put his head down on Shane's chest and said, "No next time." He twisted around and pressed in close to Shane's side, somehow managing to fit himself onto the edge of the couch so he could put his ear over Shane's heart. "What was that you did?" he asked softly. "To make the vampir stop?"

Despite everything, Shane felt his cheeks heat. "I'm, uh…My heritage is Iso Onna—well, not onna, because…" Shane cut himself off from explaining that onna was "woman," but as far as anyone could tell, he was the only Iso Otoko on record. He took another breath, and continued, "It's…I'm really closer to being a siren," he admitted.

Ilya twisted to look up at him at once, a delighted smile stretching gradually into a grin. "A siren?"

"Shut up!" Shane ordered, but Ilya just wiggled until he was straddling Shane on the couch, back cushions going all askew while he worked his knee underneath them.

"You sing?"

Shane pulled a face. "No. Definitely not. I have a terrible singing voice. In elementary school, the music teacher gave me a triangle to ring instead of singing," he said, flushing in remembered embarrassment and glaring at Ilya's somehow even more radiant joy.

With a short burst of laughter, Ilya asked, "How is this possible?"

"I don't really have…it's not a voice, not like a European siren, it's…I don't know, it's like…a muscle in my throat? I've never used it on you before, I swear."

Ilya picked one hand up to wave the reassurance aside like batting a fly out of his face. "So this sound you make…this is why that vampir stopped and went to you?"

Shane shrugged unhappily. "I didn't even know if it would work, I just had to try something. It's a…it's a pull."

Quirking his head, Ilya asked, "Why was I not pulled?"

"I don't know, it's not like I practice it," Shane said, feeling himself go snappish. He tapped his fingers on the back of Ilya's neck and forced himself to hold eye contact. "I was focusing on the vampir, not you…but you didn't exactly run away."

Ilya hummed thoughtfully. "This is true. And…your legs?" he asked cautiously.

Shane's blush intensified. "It's a kind of camouflage. That's why I didn't want to get in the water. I can't help it…It only happens in seawater."

"Yes, I have seen you in shower enough to know it is not whenever you get wet," Ilya said with a sarcastic lilt, but he leaned down and kissed Shane again before pulling back and nervously asking, "Can I see?"

Shane wanted to pretend he didn't know what Ilya was asking, but that wasn't fair after everything that had already happened. He carefully parted his lips, tipped his head back against the cushions, and let his fangs drop out of their sheaths. His breath came in fast, short bursts while he waited for Ilya's reaction. Logically, after everything Ilya had already seen and how long he'd known, Shane didn't have a reason to be nervous. If Ilya was going to run from him in fear or lash out, he would have done it that first night—Jesus Christ, the very first night.

Ilya put his fingertips gently on Shane's jaw and brushed his thumbs over the corners of Shane's lips, and then he leaned down and very carefully set a kiss to one of Shane's fangs. Shane was so shocked by it that he stopped breathing, and when Ilya sat back up, the fang was left tingling.

"Hot," Ilya said, but his voice was so wet and warm with emotion that Shane felt a sudden, shocking urge to cry.

He swallowed the swell of tears back and tapped gently on Ilya's injured hand. Ghosting his fingers over the gauze, he looked back up carefully and asked, "Is it very bad? This is your dominant hand."

Ilya shook his head. "No, it is okay." He stretched his fingers out and wiggled them. "Does not even hurt…I think, maybe you made it not hurt."

"What? What do you mean I made it not hurt?"

Ilya's lips twisted into a sweetly shy expression. "When I got you back here and dry, I thought you should have more, maybe? But you just licked and licked and licked and didn't even wake up, and it stopped hurting."

Some deep, frightened part of Shane thought he should never be able to laugh again after—his mind twisted away from the image of a dark shape, leaping—but he found himself choking back a laugh, and then the laugh escaped from his chest, tunneled up his throat, and bashed against the backs of his teeth.

Ilya watched him, wide-eyed, as he covered his face and laughed almost silently into his palms.

"What?" Ilya demanded. "Shane, what is—are you okay? Shane!"

Shane reined his laughter in with difficulty. "Opiorphin," he gasped out.

"…Okay, probably that was a word, and you need to sleep now."

"Sorry," Shane said, "Just…something the team doctor said to me once. We should go have it looked at it tomorrow, to make sure it's not infected."

"Okay," Ilya said with suspicious alacrity. "But now, sleep."

~*~

Standing in front of the antique brass free-standing mirror, Shane steeled himself. With a bracing breath, he carefully pulled the hem of his shirt up slow inch by slow inch.

Two roughly parallel marks skipped across his lower belly in a diagonal from just below his ribs to just into the cradle of his hips. The marks were a pale pink at the ends, but an angry red in the centers. They were welted up, like cat scratches, and the larger of the two gave up a smear of blood when he ran a trembling finger over it. One scratch, much fainter, was so pale above the others that it could have been an impression left by a crease in a blanket.

On the other side of his torso, a very large bruise covered his lower ribs, but it was in that nasty yellow stage just a day or two from fading entirely. Otherwise, his skin was pale and he felt shaky and weak, but…

His eyes drifted back to the scratches. They could have—must have been a glancing blow. He didn't have much fat anywhere, and, particularly at the end of the season with virtually no recovery time between the last game and the fist ad shoot, he was at his thinnest. If the scratches had been anything more than superficial, the vampir would have come away with a fistful of intestine.

But it would have bled a lot. They were long, and even after…one of them was still open. He couldn't imagine what it must have looked like in the moment, or how scared Ilya must have been.

Scared enough to accept help from a drowned ghost. Even if she was known to him, it was incredible, both that Ilya had talked her into helping and that she had actually helped.

Shane had always healed quickly, but this was far beyond anything he had experienced. The fact that the blood had really made that much of a difference made him shudder. The wounds looked like they'd been healing for days or weeks, not less than twelve hours.

There was a creak behind him, and he spun to find Ilya standing quietly in the doorway, expression still but not unreadable. When Shane dropped his shirt, Ilya's eyes followed it down and lingered on Shane's side, as if he could see the scratches through the fabric.

Without a word, Ilya stepped into the room and slowly brought his hands up. Shane almost didn't feel himself tense until Ilya's hands made contact and his muscles jumped.

"Does it hurt?" Ilya asked softly. He had his chin tilted down and he looked up at Shane through his lashes, his thumb running so softly over Shane's side that the touch barely stirred the fabric of his t-shirt.

Shane shook his head. "A little sore," he admitted when Ilya's eyebrow twitched. "But nothing…I wouldn't even know they were there if I hadn't just seen them."

He watched Ilya nervously. Ilya had been amazingly calm the night before on the couch, but he'd had a chance to think on it since then, maybe even to have nightmares about it. Shane looked for any hint that Ilya was uncomfortable or frightened, but he only seemed worried and sad, maybe.

Shane reached down and gently curled his fingers around Ilya's wrist. He tugged very softly, but Ilya easily surrendered his injured hand. Keeping his eyes on his task, Shane carefully unwound the gauze and examined Ilya's palm in the cool morning light.

Two jagged scratches ran across his palm. They were red, and his palm was warm, but they looked clean, and there was no shine, puffiness, or fluid that Shane would expect in an infected cut. It was close enough to his face that could smell it, and there was nothing wrong in the scent.

There was also, Shane noted with a shudder, half a dozen smaller cuts that were certainly from his fangs.

"I'm so sorry," he said, forcing himself to look up at Ilya's face. He found Ilya watching him intently, eyes soft and glinting.

Ilya shook his head. "No, do not…please do not say sorry." He tilted his head until he knocked softly into Shane's temple. "You are alive. I wish you took more. Do you want…?"

It took a moment for Shane to fill in the rest of the question, and he flushed. "No. Thank you, I—No, that's okay."

Ilya's chest rose and stilled in a brief hesitation, but Shane cut off any further suggestions of blood drinking by bringing Ilya's palm to his mouth and kissing the center of it. Feeling embarrassed and silly, he darted his tongue out to lick at the deeper of the two scratches and felt Ilya shiver.

It was strange, but also strangely comforting to drag his tongue over the wound, and he just kept doing it. There was a faint metallic tang that made his stomach cramp, which almost made him stop, but Ilya put his other hand on the back of Shane's head and stroked slowly down his neck and then back up.

Shane fell into an almost meditative state for a few minutes, shivers running up and down his spine and scalp tingling with prickling electricity. When he pulled back, Ilya had his fingers buried in Shane's hair and was looking at his own hand very curiously.

Shane's hair clung when he tried to step back and the flush bloomed hotter on his cheeks. He reached up and smoothed his hair down, freeing Ilya's fingers. "Sorry."

"I thought it was only the water last night," Ilya said, still looking at his fingers while he flexed them slowly, though Shane had pulled far enough away that his hair was no longer clinging.

"It's…don't laugh," Shane warned severely. "My hair is prehensile."

Ilya's eyes flicked left-right, and his eyebrows went up. "Prehensible? Oh my god!"

Shane glared weakly.

"Tell me what is this word and I will decide if I will laugh," Ilya said, capturing his hips when he tried to turn away and dragging him back in.

"Prehensile. It moves," Shane explained. "I can't really control it very well, and I have to keep it short, or people act…weird about it." His mom had told him that, when he'd been little, there had been an endless parade of strangers who seemed to be unable to stop themselves from touching his hair, even without his permission—or hers—until she'd given up on letting it grow and cut it short.

Ilya didn't laugh. He reached back up to slide his palm over Shane's hair again, looking charmed rather than disturbed. "Why does it do this?"

Blushing and feeling deeply uncomfortable, Shane explained, "If I were…" In the wild? Hunting? "My ancestors would sit on the shore and use their voice to pull someone to them…and then, when they got close enough, they use their long hair to…trap their…meal." He flicked his eyes up to Ilya for his reaction, but Ilya only looked fascinated. "I think it would honestly be more useful underwater for catching fish."

Ilya hummed and reached up again to skate his fingertips over Shane's hair, as if he had not just been told that it was essentially a weapon. "What other super powers do you have?"

Shane cut his eyes away, irritated, and said, "They're not super powers. This is just my biology."

"Okay, okay," Ilya said with a fond kind of exasperation. "What other things can your biology do?" He tilted his head and asked, "You can breathe under water?"

Shane shook his head. He stifled a sigh, took Ilya's hand, and pulled him to the bed so they could sit. He'd never had to have this conversation with anyone, and he'd been alternately dreading and steeling himself against it for months. It was only natural that Ilya had questions, and he definitely deserved answers. Shane just hated talking about it.

"I can't breathe under water. My grandma could. But…I do have a second eyelid, and I can hold my breath for almost an hour."

"An hour?" Ilya blinked in surprise and then his lips curled slowly into a smile. "This is very useful, yes?" He wiggled his eyebrows.

Despite himself, Shane let out an amused huff. "I have to remind myself to pull off you and breathe at like…normal times," he admitted. When Ilya snorted his way into happy cackles, he dropped back to the bed with a short groan and covered his burning face with one hand. He reached out with the other to slap at Ilya wherever he could reach. "You're an asshole."

Ilya twisted to lay half on top of him, curling over to bite at Shane's jaw. "Now you do not have to do that," he pointed out in a heated murmur.

Shane let his hand drift down Ilya's back and agreed, "No, I don't."

 ~*~

Ilya was able to convince Shane that he would be laughed out of the office if he went in to have his hand looked at when it looked like a couple of almost-healed scratches, but Shane did drag him in to town to address what he called, "a totally insufficient first aid kit, seriously, what are you even supposed to do with this?"

Ilya's hand really didn't hurt, but he wasn't stubborn enough to continue working on house repairs just to prove he could, and risk injuring it seriously. He had two months before training camp started and the last thing he needed was reduced strength or range of motion in his dominant hand.

So, he'd let Shane hustle him out of the house and they'd walked into town together under the watchful eye of a gathering summer storm.

While Shane poked through the pharmacy offerings, squinting at packages as if he could spontaneously learn Romanian, Ilya bought himself some tea and a plate of cookies and sat at one of the small tables outside. The air was filled with the crackling static that promised thunder later.

"So, what have you done now?"

Ilya startled, nearly spilling his tea, and looked up to find Dr. Grozav looming over him, grocery bag hooked over his forearm. He gestured to Ilya's wrapped hand, and then sat down across from Ilya with a deep sigh.

"There will be rain soon," he said. "These knees always tell me so, even if my eyes can't see the damn storm right there." He waved a vaguely annoyed hand at the sky. Dr. Grozav had to be in his sixties, but he looked much the same as he always had. Ilya had been thinking the man was in his sixties for as long as he'd known him.

"Well?" The doctor prompted, bringing his hand down to flick his fingers at Ilya again.

"This is nothing," Ilya said hastily. "Fell on the jetty. Just some scrapes."

Grozav snorted. "You are always crawling all over that jetty. You'd think you'd gotten good enough at it to stop falling."

Dr. Grozav had treated Ilya after he'd fallen in the sea at twelve. Despite Ilya never going back to him for a similar injury, he always acted like Ilya was tumbling from rocks every other week. "Yes, sir," he agreed simply, knowing better than to argue.

Making an impatient gesture, Dr. Grozav captured Ilya's hand and unwound the gauze. He looked critically at the scratches and pressed his thumb into Ilya's palm several times. "Barely even scratches," he declared. "See they don't get infected."

"Yes, sir."

Dr. Grozav wrapped his hand back up and took a cookie when Ilya nudged the plate across the table. "I shouldn't eat these," he said through the powdered sugar caught on his lips. "What are you doing out on that jetty? That beach is even closed to tourists right now from the vampir outbreak."

Ilya paused in sipping his tea and kept his voice carefully neutral as he asked, "Have there been many?"

"Not many," Dr. Grozav said, unconcerned. "The outbreak is over on the bank." He made a vague gesture behind his shoulder, encompassing all of the Danube behind him. "That rusalka who stays out by your old Granny Greta's place, she has been very busy, bless her. And very happy, I'm sure! Two have made it to shore, but they have been sent back, and she snaps them up like candy." He made a quick grabbing motion with one hand and then took another cookie.

Ilya resisted casting a guilty look behind him toward the store. "She has been in the Danube?"

"Oh, yes," he said, brushing sugar off his lips. "She's crafty, that one. Fouls up boat engines when she's in a mood, but she is very good for grabbing those damn vampir. They have been bad this year." He made a tsking sound and shook his head. "Some nonsense about it being oppression to bury your dead right away, like the vampir just have a right to go around attacking who they want!"

Ilya rolled his eyes and suppressed a wave of fury. "How stupid."

"Yes, well, I think they have learned now! There will be a stop put to it, and that rusalka will be annoyed and go tear up my engine again, damn her!" He waved off his own complaint. "Ah, I will take her some pork sometime, and she will maybe leave my boat for another season."

They talked for a while longer. Ilya politely asked about Dr. Grozav's wife and three daughters, answered as shortly as possible when asked about his father and brother, and silently endured more questions about Sveta.

"Take that shed down. It will grow a mouth one day soon," Dr. Grozav was saying when Shane stepped out of the store with his bags. "But make sure it has some place to live." He waggled a finger at Ilya in warning.

Ilya introduced Shane and Dr. Grozav, and translated the pleasantries between them, but any further conversation was interrupted by a deep grumble of distant thunder.

Dr. Grozav held a hand out past the awning to catch a fat rain drop. "You had best go home, now," he decided, dusting his hands off on his thighs and standing. "Don't be caught out in the storm, and stay away from those damn rocks."

"Yes, sir," Ilya agreed.

They ran the last five minutes back to Granny Greta's, and they were soaked by the time they made it through the door, dripping water all over the tiles once again. Ilya hadn't cleaned up the muddy mess in the kitchen he'd dragged in the night before, and now the front of the house was wet, too. Granny Greta would have smacked him with the broom for the mess, but it was hard to be concerned about it when he had Shane alive and holding his arms out stiffly as a puddle slowly formed underneath their feet.

Grinning, Ilya turned and pressed Shane to the front door. The whole house smelled like the oncoming storm, and Shane tasted like rain. He sealed their wet bodies together and pressed insistently into Shane's warm mouth, taking kiss after kiss off his lips until they were both shivering from the chill and laughing faintly during brief separations for air. Air that Ilya needed but Shane, as he had wonderfully demonstrated that morning, did not.

They pulled off their soaked clothes right there at the front door and left them in a soggy heap. Shane yelped at a loud crash of thunder, his jump covering Ilya's own startled jolt.

"Don't laugh," Shane chided, but he was grinning as Ilya dragged him away from the door and to the stairs.

"What? I am not laughing," Ilya said through laughter, nipping at Shane's bottom lip.

The great fury of the storm masked the rattle of the bed frame, and seemed to make Shane bold. He did not bury his head in the pillow when he ordered Ilya, "More, fuck—harder! Are you even—ohmygo—are you even trying—?" And when Ilya turned him onto his back, he gripped the headboard and lifted himself free of the mattress, trusting all his weight to Ilya and the iron frame.

Ilya gripped him harder to keep him from hitting the headboard and rose to his knees, less thrusting as grinding upward while Shane gasped and shook around him.

The image of Shane straining to hold himself up, neck craned to look down at where their bodies joined, face highlighted in the purple flashes of lightning would stay with Ilya for the rest of his life.

"Stay like that," Ilya ordered when Shane tried to lower himself back to the mattress.

Shane cursed at him, but he pulled himself back up with trembling arms and rolled his hips down against Ilya's. "Fuck—I can't—"

"What?" Ilya prompted. "You need something?"

Light flashed across Shane's slick body, and then a roll of thunder BOOMED through the house, so loud that it could have been in the room with them. Shane shouted, nearly lost his grip on the headboard, but caught himself before he hit the mattress.

"Holy shit—fuck-Ilya-please."

Ilya took his uninjured hand away from Shane's hip and licked his palm, gratified by Shane's almost worshipful moan in response, and then he wrapped it around Shane's leaking cock and stroked roughly. He was so wet that Ilya probably hadn't needed the spit.

"Thankyou," Shane babbled, arching hard into Ilya's hand and then grinding back down on his cock.

He tried to tuck his face against his violently trembling bicep, but Ilya squeezed him hard in warning and said, "No, no more hiding from me," and Shane immediately looked back up at him, so Ilya had a perfect view when his fangs snapped out of their sheaths just as he came, shuddering and shouting into the thunder.

Shane lost his grip and crashed back to the bed in a lull in the storm that the mattress eagerly filled. He spasmed hard around Ilya's cock, twisting and straining through his orgasm, and then collapsed all at once, panting and still twitching with aftershocks.

Ilya worked his hips in short thrusts until Shane's pleased whimpers turned to genuine discomfort, and then pulled out of his body. He yanked the condom off and threw it negligently off the bed, putting his slick hand down to work himself in a fast, brutal rhythm.

"Make a mess of me?" Shane requested in a drunken slur, working his hips in lazy thrusts and watching Ilya, open-mouthed and fangs still extended.

"You have—fuck—you have done that yourself already," Ilya gasped out, dropping forward to hover over Shane's body, straining for the peak, and then nearly startling himself out of it when another great crash of thunder made him shout, but he was already so close that the leap in his pulse sent him hurdling over the edge.

Shane's fangs had retracted by the time Ilya had enough brain cells firing to lean down for a kiss, but he went searching for them anyway, dragging his tongue around Shane's teeth.

"Oh, my god," Shane said on a badly suppressed laugh. "That's why you do that?"

Ilya dropped his forehead to Shane's shoulder. "It's hot," he whined.

"You would cut your tongue open!"

Biting Shane hard enough to make him shudder, Ilya said, "Don't care." He slowly relaxed until he was spread over Shane's body, sighing out all the frantic thrumming of his heartbeat, still keeping time with the storm outside.

Shane wrapped his arms around Ilya's shoulders and leaned his face against Ilya's hair. They stayed like that for a long time, listening to the storm slowly passing overhead.

"Ilya?" Shane said softly after five or six quick flickers of light were followed by a shattering BOOM that left a ringing silence in its wake and made them both jump.

"Hmm?"

The bob of Shane's throat working against Ilya's forehead made him twist his head enough to look up at the side of Shane's face. Shane had pulled his lower lip into his mouth, and he chewed on it restlessly.

Ilya waited through the next flash of light and roll of thunder, saying nothing, and Shane finally let out a slow breath and asked, "Can I…is it okay with you if I tell my family? About you—about us…?"

The breath froze in Ilya's lungs. "You—?" Ilya pushed himself up so he could see Shane's face, even just in the quick pulses of the lightning. "You want to do that?"

Shane's head twitched in a nod, and then he did it again, more deliberately. "Well…honestly, Ojiichan already knows. I didn't confirm it or anything, but you were not very subtle," Shane told him with a faint note of accusation. "At the awards, I mean."

"Shane…if people find out about you, it would be very bad for you, yes?"

Shane winced, but nodded, already turning his face away from Ilya. Ilya caught his chin and dragged him back.

"If people find out about me, it will also be very bad," Ilya said only after Shane met his eyes again. "People in Russia."

"Your family?" Shane guessed.

"Yes, them also." Ilya did not wince, but he didn't need to think hard about what his brother and his father would do if they learned of Ilya's secrets; that he liked men, that he liked Shane, that he was fucking a vamp—an Iso Onna, or whatever the fuck. His free hand fisted in the sheets as he stared into Shane's eyes, liquid whenever the lightning flashed.

Ilya was suddenly so angry and so tired of having to imagine what his father and his brother would do. He leaned down and kissed Shane hard, and then pulled back.

"I understand," Shane said, obviously sad and disappointed. "I won't—"

"Tell them," Ilya interrupted harshly. Shane blinked at him, mouth working soundlessly. "Tell them," Ilya repeated. "If you want them to know. If you are sure about…me. I also want them to know."

Shane grabbed him by the back of the head, hand shaking, pulled him down into another bruising kiss, and kept him there with the storm insulating them from all the world.

When Shane let him go, Ilya set their foreheads together and brokenly confessed, "I love you."

He felt Shane go painfully still underneath him. The house seemed to tremble under the next burst of thunder, and Ilya had a horrid, gripping moment of doubt, before Shane pressed their faces back together and said, "Fuck, I love you, too."

Chapter 23: Epilogue

The headrest felt cool against the back of Ilya's head. He let his breath out slowly and tried to calm the wild racing of his heart without Shane realizing that his heart was racing.

Their hands were tangled together over the gear shift. Shane felt solid underneath him, so steady and calm that Ilya felt kind of insane for being worried. They weren't going into this blind. Shane's family already knew, about them, and about Ilya.

But Ilya had just spent a month in Moscow, back under his father's criticisms and his brother's endless demands, and Polina sighing and complaining about this or that until Ilya agreed to pay for this to be fixed or that to be replaced. He'd spent every possible minute out of the apartment, running for hours and staying at the gym until he had to drag himself back for dinner each night, where Polina whined that he didn't like her cooking, despite the number of times he'd told her that he was on a performance diet.

Three weeks of Auntie Stefania's cooking had put some roundness back to the curve of his belly and filled out his thighs and chest, but he would be in poor shape if he ate nothing but the rich, fatty foods Polina fed his father.

And also, he hated her cooking.

He'd flown from Moscow back to Bucharest, and then on to Ottawa with a long layover in Paris. It had been over twenty-four hours of travel, and he'd been so dead coming off the plane, that he'd almost just sat down at the terminal to sleep in one of the horrible chairs. But Shane had been waiting for him in the parking lot, so he'd pulled his cap down lower and forced himself through the long line at customs and the exhausting wait at baggage claim.

Shane had gotten them a hotel close by, but Ilya barely remembered anything from finding Shane's nondescript SUV to waking up after noon the next day.

"My grandfather is here, too," Shane said as they left Ottawa, turning to give Ilya a small smile. "He was…very adamant about being here."

Ilya nodded. He'd learned a lot of interesting things about Kichi in the last month, and about all the Hollanders. Learning more about them hadn't made Ilya any less intimidated by them. If anything, his anxiety had only grown legs and started chasing him at night.

"Fuck," Ilya burst out. "I'm so fucking nervous."

Shane gave him a look of concern. "We can turn around. Rent a cabin, just the two of us."

"No, of course not," Ilya bit out. "Just. I don't know. Tell me a story."

This had become a frequent ask of Ilya's over the last month. At first, it had been a joke, but Shane always floundered for a minute and then earnestly told him something about his childhood, or some folktale his grandfather had shared when he was a kid, or about the fans who stopped him on the sidewalk to share their opinions on any number of things they usually had no clue about.

After a lengthy pause and a few false starts, Shane said, "When my great-grandfather was in his twenties, he lived in this little fishing village on the coast of Japan. One evening, he was walking home, and he saw this woman washed up to shore—"

"Very pretty," Ilya guessed, grinning.

Shane nodded. "Very pretty. Long, beautiful hair, whatever."

"Probably naked."

"I don't know about that, but yeah, probably. Are you telling this story?" Shane asked peevishly, but he smiled when Ilya moved his hand out from under Shane's and set it on his thigh instead. "She was unconscious, injured, bleeding. So, of course, he went to see if he could help her."

"And then he got eaten," Ilya added sagely.

"No, he did not get eaten! Shut up, or I won't tell you," Shane warned. "Anyways. She was obviously not human, but she really was injured. So he took her home, and he bandaged up her wounds—I don't know what it was," he interrupted himself before Ilya could say anything. "We'll say it's a shark bite, okay? But when she woke up, she did try to eat him."

Ilya laughed triumphantly. That's how these old stories always went. Some idiot walked up to a creature he knew wasn't human because she was so otherworldly beautiful, and then he got eaten. It was both speciest and misogynistic in the worst way, but it was very common. There were signs all over every beach Ilya had ever been to warning people not to get too close to rusalki, mermaids, or marine life that might or might not actually be animals. The picture was always some stick figure in shorts getting dragged down into the water by a smiling mermaid.

Women in the old tales were lured into woods by charming satyrs or crying babies.

"But she didn't actually eat him," Shane stressed. "She was still hurt, and my great-grandfather convinced her not to eat him, and in exchange, she could stay with him during the winter, until she got better. He even put his blood into her soup." He blushed faintly at this, and Ilya made a contemplative noise.

All the rest of the time they had been in Sulina, Shane had stubbornly refused any more blood, and had looked at Ilya in absolute horror the one time Ilya had asked to be bitten. The only time he'd agreed to, face burning, was when Ilya had cut himself shaving and then pouted at him until he'd reluctantly licked the nick clean.

But maybe in soup…

"Well….I guess things happen when you're trapped in a hut together all winter," Shane said. "So…there was a baby."

"Yes, things happen," Ilya parroted, deeply amused. "We should go be trapped together in a hut all winter, yes?"

"Kind of hard to work that around the season," Shane pointed out. "So, that was my grandma. My great-grandmother left the baby with my great-grandfather and he thought he would never see her again. My grandma was, apparently, weird and the neighbors gossiped a lot, of course, but he loved her. And then, a couple years later, my great-grandmother came back for another winter."

"And things happened," Ilya prompted.

Shane rolled his eyes over to Ilya, but just said, "And things happened. And then there were twins. My two grand aunts. I never met them. But, I guess my great-grandmother was…jealous? Of the babies? Or maybe just because she was not human. But eventually, my great-grandfather decided to leave to Japan. There were four girls by then, and they came here to Canada. My grandmother was the least…" He struggled to find a word, and finally, wincingly, settled on, "Human? The others had an easier time with people, I guess, but my grandma struggled to fit in with humans and spent a lot of time in the ocean. "

"And then she washed up to shore one day and did not eat Kichi?"

Shane uttered a short laugh. "Not really. Ojiichan was a student at university, and she had been convinced to go, too. I guess they ended up in some creature philosophy class together, and, according to Ojiichan, he said something 'real stupid.'" Shane's voice rose in a clear quote, "and grandma just…tore him down so hard that he fell in love."

Ilya laughed. "Oh, so this is genetic," he said. "Being mean is the way to win hearts in your family."

With a shrug, Shane said, "I guess so."

"So they got trapped in a hut together all winter?" Ilya prompted.

"They got married," Shane corrected. "And had my mom. Actually, all of that side of my family are women. My…uh? Grand aunts? They each had like three or four daughters a piece, something like that." He lifted his hand briefly from the steering wheel in a shrug.

"We're not very close with them, but I'm the only male cousin, as far as I know. I mean, my great-grandfather did marry again, so I think there are a couple male cousins from that side? But I've never met them. My mom was actually so sure she was having a girl that she didn't even bother finding out while she was pregnant. I was…a surprise."

Ilya squeezed his thigh until Shane glanced over at him. "Are all of your baby pictures in pink?"

The deep flush was the only answer Ilya needed, and he grinned broadly, even as Shane hurried to say, "Not all of them!"

"We will see," Ilya said. "I will ask David to show me. He will be happy to talk about your baby pictures."

"Don't," Shane said in warning tone, but the tilt of his lips was already resigned.

"What was your name supposed to do be, when your mom thought you were baby girl?" Ilya pressed.

Shane scowled at him. "I'm not telling you, or you'll probably just change my contact name again."

Ilya still changed Shane's contact name all the time. Currently, it read "SH pretty freckles & still v slow."

Turning his attention back to the road, Shane continued, "So I guess my grandma continued to be the least human in the family, which caused some problems after my great-grandfather remarried? And even after my mom was born, she would just leave sometimes, I guess. Days, weeks…one time, like eight months? And then she would just come back like she'd never left, bringing some fish, or shells, or—" He huffed an abbreviated laugh. "Literal sunken treasure? But when my mom was…sixteen, I think? She just left again one day and didn't come back. Ojiichan never remarried. I think he's still waiting for her to wander back in and ask what's for dinner."

Shane had warned Ilya that his mom was very, very punctual and deeply focused on honoring commitments and being where she had said she would be. She expected the same out of others and got anxious—and angry—if Shane, David, or her father were late to anything. Ilya abruptly understood why. Never knowing if her mom would be home when she came back from school or when she would see her next would be agonizing in a way that even Ilya's loss could not fully understand.

He, at least, had known that his mom would never be there when he opened the door after that day.

They continued to talk about Shane's family as the landscape passed by the window. Ilya felt more at ease for the rest of the drive, at least until they started winding away from the main thoroughfares and into a neighborhood of nice houses with large properties.

"Are you ready?" Shane asked when he pulled into a driveway and turned the car off.

"Yes," Ilya lied. "I have met them before, this is fine."

Shane gave him a long look, but he didn't voice any disbelief. He leaned forward and kissed Ilya softly. "It's going to be okay. They already like you."

Ilya pulled away from the kiss and stared at Shane with narrowed eyes until Shane amended, "Ojiichan and my dad like you, and my mom does like you, she just…hasn't realized it yet. But she will. You made a good impression with your I am shy speech at the awards," he added with a faint look of mingled annoyance and disbelief. "Just be yourself."

"Myself is not always very nice," Ilya said softly. He'd meant to make it a joke, but it came out so painfully sincere that he winced.

Shane knocked their foreheads gently together and said, "Genetic, remember? Being mean is the way to win hearts in my family."

Ilya laughed unsteadily, but he let Shane pull away and followed him into the house.