Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Grigori Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Ilya Rozanov Whump, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Homophobia, Dental Trauma, Tooth Trauma, Bad Parent Grigori Rozanov, conflicted brother Alexei, Horrible sports fans, Ilya Rozanov-centric, erotic tooth pulling, Canon Timeline, Teeth, The dove is not dead but there is definitely something wrong with its beak, the mortifying ordeal of being cared about, Supportive Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), Character Study, time-lapse, Protective Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-20 Completed: 2026-03-06 Words: 18,940 Chapters: 6/6

Teeth

Summary

Men do not cry. Ilya knows this, as much as he knows that being strong is only part of the battle ahead of him; being seen to be strong matters more. Ilya is twelve years old, and no longer a child. It has been four long, brittle days since his mother— since her accident.

The practice rink is busy, tonight. Under the stern tutelage of Coach Baranov, everyone here is fighting to justify their time on the ice. Hockey, Baranov tells them, often, is not a team sport. Hockey is an act of violence, and of endurance.

Ilya believes he is practiced at both.

-

Six times Ilya gets his teeth knocked out (not metaphorically), and learns to heal a little trauma

Notes

We're starting with the trauma here. It's rough, until it gets better.

Each chapter is a self-contained event, corresponding (mostly) to canon timelines. Warnings throughout for violence and hurting: the comfort is plentiful, but a long time coming.

Written entirely by a human: I'm not outsourcing the glee of playing in this particular sandbox to anyone.

Chapter 1

Chapter Summary

Moscow, 2003

[Maxillary: R -Lateral incisor (7), R - Cuspid (6), R - First Bicuspid (5), R - Second Bicuspid (4)]

Men do not cry. Ilya knows this, as much as he knows that being strong is only part of the battle ahead of him; being seen to be strong matters more. Ilya is twelve years old, and no longer a child. It has been four long, brittle days since his mother— since her accident.

Chapter Notes

Did a stealth re-write of this chapter, because writing something in the middle of a grief spiral didn't make for the best story-telling.

Moscow, 2003

Men do not cry. Ilya knows this, as much as he knows that being strong is only part of the battle ahead of him; being seen to be strong matters more. Ilya is twelve years old, and no longer a child. It has been four long, brittle days since his mother— since her accident.

The practice rink is busy, tonight. Under the stern tutelage of Coach Baranov, everyone here is fighting to justify their time on the ice. Hockey, Baranov tells them, often, is not a team sport. Hockey is an act of violence, and of endurance. 

Ilya believes he is practiced at both. He is at home in this cold hostility. Even with the stares from the other boys sharper at his back tonight — they know, of course, the news having spread like mould through oranges — he understands how fully he belongs here. Probably more than he belongs anywhere, now. 

His skates bite into the ice, and for the first time in days, the static in his head feels a little clearer. 

All Ilya needs to do, is not let them see him. He will show them he is invulnerable. 

- 

Shoulders and helmets thud around him. Words are lost in grunts and clashing sticks. 
 Ilya’s ears are ringing, his legs and back burning past endurance — they’re two hours into practice, so far — but he is still standing. He gets control of the puck for a second, two, but it’s short lived; someone crashes towards him. 

The puck slides away as the someone twists downward, like a bull attempting a pirouette. 

There’s a collective desperation from everyone left on the ice: win, or be flattened. 

Ilya catches an elbow to the neck, from a player whose name he hasn’t yet learned. It’s a dull, rushing thud, and a handful of seconds until his breathing catches back up with his lungs. Not enough to knock him down. 

He won’t be defeated. He swings the back end of his stick into the nearest ribcage and takes a shunt to the back of his knees in answer. His stick is fast, but so are theirs. Someone else goes down beside him. 

The next person to get into Ilya’s face is sweating like a tap. There’s an insult waiting in the back of Ilya’s tongue, but the words don’t come, and with this boy’s damp, heavy breath clogging his air, all Ilya manages is, “Fuck off.” 

He’s crowded from the front, sides and behind, and he’s not small enough to break out of it or big enough to disperse it. If his brain weren’t stuffed with white noise— 

There’s a sharp thump in the small of his back. A stick swinging into the back of his ankles.

All Ilya knows in this moment is that he does not want his face to land on the skate edges clamouring below. In the seconds before his brain can strategize a better solution, his body does something truly stupid: first, his hands drop his stick. Then, they grab at the arms closest to his, clambering up the other boy’s shoulders to find his balance, until he’s all but swinging from — oh, fuck, Kharkov. 

Someone, maybe Dima, maybe someone else, is laughing. “Rozanov, he is not your mother!”  

Kharkov shakes him off, spins free with the puck, and a moment later there are thin sounds of relieved celebration carrying from the benches. A win, and the end to this exercise. The sounds are muted through the closed ranks of jerseys that Ilya is still encircled by; this makeshift losers’ circle is the last place he wants to be, and yet. 

“You need Kharkov to tuck you up in bed, maybe?” asks another voice, and Ilya feels his cheeks burning — not because they mentioned his mother, but from the shame of throwing his stick, of nearly falling — but boys are not trained to expect mercy. Ilya waits for his tongue to sharpen against their cruelty, but still nothing comes. 

“Hey, hey, I will feed you hot cocoa, little Rozanov,” adds Dima, his face light as he makes a gesture of breastfeeding. 

Ilya can feel fury rushing through him like a tide. He could punch his way out, maybe, but for a long second he just wants someone to wade into this mess, pull him out of it, and tell him it’s okay. The closest he gets to his wish is the coach’s whistle, from the other end of the rink.  

Ilya lets his shoulders drop in unfamiliar defeat, hoping that the shame will be wiped from his face before he reaches the showers. Long before his brother comes to collect him. Kharkov skates past, giving him a questioning look, like he expected more from his mouthy adversary, and speeds away. I know, Ilya thinks. You’re not the only one disappointed. 

-

He’s at the edge of the ice, helmet dangling from his hand, when Dima catches back up to him. Ilya’s shoulders stiffen; just because the practice is over, doesn’t mean his guard should have dropped. He should know this. Dima is still smarting. And Ilya doesn’t know enough about Dima yet — doesn’t even know his whole name, only knows, dimly, that he should probably have hit him harder when he had the chance out there — so when it comes, he’s not braced for it. 

“Rozanov,” Dima shouts, loud enough that the rest of the retreating players look up. “Bet your mama’s glad she’s not around to see the fucking pu—”

Ilya can hear the coach rushing towards them. He’s fairly sure he can hear words of warning, too. But, his brain is still offline and his fists have been ready for this all night. It’s a swift uppercut, under Dima’s jaw, and the thunk of skull against helmet reverberates through Ilya’s knuckles. As far as sensations go, this one doesn’t suck. 

The next one, though. The next one is brutal. Dima’s stick swings through the space between them, the graceful motion only stopping when the blade of it catches Ilya’s teeth. 

- 

None of the breaks were clean. Apparently, the blade of a hockey stick is not enough to shear a tooth from the root. What it does do, Ilya is learning, a bag of frozen peas pressed against his swollen cheek, is it cracks. Splinters, even. The other thing Ilya is learning — and he really, really hates lessons like these — is that teeth have nerves in them. And blunt force trauma does not do anything to kill these nerves. What it does do, is leaves these happy little nerve endings free to catch on every bit of breath and ice and air circulating through Ilya’s mouth, and then sends its happy little signals screaming through their neural pathways, directly into Ilya’s brain. 

It absolutely sucks. 

Alexei fixes Ilya with a look of exasperation from the front passenger seat of his friend’s car. It’s a short enough drive, from the rink to their apartment, but the silence is making it feel interminable. Ilya does his best to look impassive. Stoic. Alexei sighs, beleaguered. Ilya adjusts his jacket, so it catches the melting ice from the peas and spares the already tired upholstery. 

“Father will be upset,” Alexei states, unnecessarily. 

Ilya nods, and immediately regrets the movement. He is still clutching shards of teeth in his fist. His tongue, which feels serrated, is worrying at the edges of his upper right molars. He’s not sure if it’s three teeth, or four. They haven’t even been in his mouth for long. He wanted more time with them. He wonders abstractly if maybe some lucky adults get a bonus set. Extras, lined up behind the jaw, ready to be deployed when something catastrophic happens. 

Except, he is already familiar with catastrophe, with the worsts that can and do happen, and he understands that once something is gone, it stays gone. He clutches at the shards a little tighter. 

The car has stilled, and Alexei is opening the passenger door. Less as a gesture of courtesy, more to check that Ilya hasn’t spat blood over the interior. He waves thanks to his friend, expresses no gratitude for Ilya’s relatively self-contained destruction, and hurries them to their father’s disappointment. 

- 

Their father is, predictably, furious. Alexei’s half-hearted words of mediation have, as always, done nothing to still the cold rage wetting Grigori’s scrutinous gaze. It is Ilya’s to bear, tonight, and so Alexei disappears to his room, leaving a loaded silence in his wake. 

“Does it hurt?” Grigori asks, eventually. It is not a question asked out of kindness. 

Ilya nods once, holding the now-warming peas against his cheek, as though the bulk of them might hide the swelling injury. Grigori nods in return. Good. He doesn’t ask Ilya how it happened; he doesn’t need to. Ilya wears his shame loudly. An injury like this happens through fighting, or mistakes, and neither are permitted.  

“Are you proud of yourself?” he asks, voice even. 

“No, papa —”

“Not papa,” he corrects. “Father. You are not a child, Ilya. Do not use the language of children. Do not act like one. Are you proud?” 

“No, father.” Ilya wants to bite the remaining teeth from his gums, spit them out in defiance at this horrible, sticky feeling of being a disappointment. He swallows. Tastes blood. His vision is speckled from the pain of it, and he wants to crawl out of his skin to make it stop, but he must remain focused. He is not permitted an outlet. 

“You think this is how you get to be the best?” Grigori continues. He speaks as though they have an audience, as though Ilya is on trial and he is the prosecutor. “You think the KHL will see you falling on your face, sniffling and failing, and say yes, this is the future of Russia!”

The difference between a rhetorical question and one that demands an answer is often opaque, with Grigori. Ilya knows he must give something, in the same way he knows that whatever he says will be wrong. An explanation would sound like an excuse, and an excuse is justification for discipline. An apology would sound like weakness, and weakness is justification for strengthening. 

His father fills his short glass from the bottle on the table, waiting for Ilya to fail. 

Ilya knows the trap well, and still jumps into it feet-first. 

“I was impulsive, father,” he admits, words slurred around his bloodied, heavy tongue. “It was in defence of—”

“Stop,” Grigori commands, glass gripped tight between his fingers.

Ilya does. He knows it would have been a lie, too. It was not his mother he was defending. It was his own loss, his own wounded feelings. There’s nothing to be gained by defending her now; she isn’t here to notice. She isn’t here to stop Grigori if he decides to launch the glass across the kitchen table, or from laying open-palmed hands against Ilya’s waiting face. Somehow, this knowledge seems to still the room. The glass remains unthrown, and Grigori looks, for one awful second, lost. Ilya isn’t sure if this is worse. 

“It is Friday,” Grigori states. Ilya blinks, unsure if he’s measuring the days since the accident, or something else. Ilya nods again, feeling stupid. “You will call the dentist on Monday.” 

“Yes, father,” he says. He stares for a moment at the fridge freezer behind his father’s frame, wanting the ice from inside it. He’d take anything to soothe the screeching pain of nerves in his face. Even his father’s vodka. Something he should probably call fear stops him. 

“She would be so disappointed,” Grigori says, dismissing Ilya with an unsteady wave of his hand, and Ilya knows, now, that this is the only way his mother remains in this apartment; not a shield, but a new cruelty to be wielded. He takes the bag of peas, now turning to mush in his hands, and takes himself to bed, where he tells himself he will not cry. 

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Moscow, 2009

[R - Central Incisor (8), L - Central Incisor (9)]

Ilya is eighteen years old. His escape from Moscow looms on the horizon; an abstract shape, just out of focus but, in a few short months, it will be reachable. He’s been drafted. He has a team, now. A whole new country. A chance to rewrite himself, a little.

Chapter Notes

Still heavy on the bad times, here.

Ilya is eighteen years old. His escape from Moscow looms on the horizon; an abstract shape, just out of focus but, in a few short months, it will be reachable. He’s been drafted. He has a team, now. A whole new country. A chance to rewrite himself, a little.

When Ilya is feeling good about himself, he thinks of the things he will miss. Right now, Ilya is feeling very good about himself, because Sasha — coquettish, infuriating, guileless, beautiful Sasha — is on his knees in the gym storage closet, using his tongue to make Ilya feel, if only for a few short, stolen minutes, like he owns the fucking universe.

This, he might miss. Not the too-familiar closet space, which holds the smells of discarded gym wear, mustering paperwork, and the evidence of countless fumbled trysts. Sasha, though, with his eagerness to learn, to please and be pleasured. It will be a shame to leave the easiness of this behind.

“Hurry up,” Ilya urges, gently. Sasha wants to make this a performance. Illuminated by the blizzard glow through the slot window, he looks almost delicate. His lashes, thick and heavy, fan his eyes and Ilya knows he has practiced this expression in the mirror. The doe-eyed tell of faux-submission. Ilya would appreciate it more, this artistry, if distant movements and footsteps beyond the storeroom weren’t tapping out an ever-closer countdown.

Sasha huffs, breath warm around Ilya’s dick, and very deliberately does not speed up.

“Sasha. Get the fuck on with it,” Ilya grits, less gently. Ilya is fast in all things, but Sasha takes a unique and cruel delight in making his pulse race through anxiety as much as lust. They both know the stakes of this race, but Sasha is much better at pretending not to care. Perhaps, he will not miss him so much. Sasha sighs, and licks his wet tongue up Ilya’s shaft. Sinks his mouth back around the head. Slowly.

The footsteps don’t sound distant, at all. They thud purposefully closer. Heavier than the janitor’s meandering pace. Slower than Sasha’s father.

Ilya’s veins are strumming with panic, his dick is starting to leak into Sasha’s still, hot mouth, and it takes all of his willpower and then some to push Sasha off him. Somehow, even Sasha responds with merciful sense, pushing himself to a standing position as Ilya rams his rigid dick back into his sweatpants. The footsteps have gone quiet. The small space around them is filled with stunted, heavy breaths.

Ilya’s heartbeat is thunder. Maybe, he thinks, they got away with it. Whoever was pacing the corridor could have backtracked, stepped into the office. Maybe—

“Ilyusha!”

The blood drains from Ilya’s face. Sasha’s, too. Fucking Alexei. Fuck. He is the only person who makes Ilya’s name sound like a curse. By the time the door bangs open, Sasha has backed himself further into the tight corners of the room.

Ilya could blurt out a thousand excuses as to why he is here, with his coach’s son and a visible erection, but Alexei’s ears are long used to ignoring him. Ilya doesn’t hear what Alexei is shouting at him — he can probably guess — because Alexei has him by the throat, and all his angry, ugly words, are mixed with enough spit to hide the venom in them.

They struggle, the way brothers struggle when one of them is stronger, but the other is bolstered by righteous anger at the disgrace he’s just uncovered. It’s a dirty fight: shoving, clawing, their bodies bouncing off the too-close walls and shelves, a chaotic orbit. Sasha shrinks downward, his eyes wide as though this is the first time in his life he’s come close to a consequence.

“Run, then,” Alexei spits at Sasha, as though he’s more disgusted by his cowardice than his actions. “Keep your cock-sucking mouth off my brother.”

Ilya is relieved, almost, as Sasha flees into the corridor. Then, he’s furious — he knows how to bear Alexei’s wrath, and the taunts of a secret not well enough kept but never brought into the open, until now. Sasha, though. In Ilya’s mind, Sasha belongs to that class of people who shouldn’t have to worry. He hurls himself back into Alexei, as though his fists could still keep either of them safe.

He’s so fired with rage that it takes him a second to register the knee in his groin, and another slow blinking, idiot second, to feel Alexei’s thick fist connecting itself to face. There’s a snap, and then a freezing hot needling pain in his mouth. The nerves in his face light up in agony, from his teeth to his eyes. He bites back, catching only air.

Alexei stills, panting. Rubs his knuckles and glowers at Ilya. Look what you did, he says without speaking.

Usually, this would be the point in their fighting where they’d both silently, grudgingly agree that enough damage is done, and they can each retreat to lick their wounds.

Except, tonight, Ilya is not ready to lose so gracelessly. There’s a howling gap where most of his front teeth should be, the familiar tang of blood gathering in the divot of his upper lip. His fucking dick hurts. Worse than that, Alexei is staring at Ilya with such a righteously pissed expression of condescension that he can barely stand it. I always knew, it says. As though what he knows is something shameful.

Ilya takes a breath, and commits. The heel of his hands connects with Alexei’s nose, and he spits out the only thing that matters: “You cannot tell father.”

Blood drizzles into the grimace on Alexei’s face. For a second, Ilya panics that he’s given him a real weapon to use against him, something more tangible than the resentful animosity that’s kept them at each other’s throats for so many years. Then, Alexei’s expression shifts. There it is. That same abject fear that there are only so many calamities their family is braced to endure. And this one, the elite coach’s goddamn son, is one that neither of them is sure Ilya would survive.

A truce, then.

“I need my coat,” Ilya breathes. Not a plea, a statement. Alexei nods his head and makes no move to stop him running back to the lockers.

“Father phoned, and you didn’t answer,” Alexei says when Ilya returns, breathing hard. Reminding Ilya that this is broadly his own fault. That Alexei wouldn’t even have been here if Ilya had been a better son. He’s also, Ilya is sure, cataloging another debt that Ilya will owe him. Alexei’s resentment to Ilya’s pending escape to the states had softened a little, when he learned about signing bonuses. And Ilya is many things that enrage their family, but he understands duty.

Ilya looks down at his phone, the battery empty, and wonders if his father has remembered that Ilya is eighteen, not eight, and does not need his brother to fetch him. He wonders if he will have remembered this by the time they both arrive home, faces bloodied and smarting.

Ilya doesn’t say sorry, because he isn’t — not to Alexei, at least. Sorry means nothing, in this family. He just follows Alexei to his car, the night air biting at his skin. The two of them dab at their faces with tissues and silently prepare for the fallout waiting for them at the end of the ride. Maybe, there is nothing he will miss about this place at all.

_

Ilya can see his escape from this sucking void of a city like an exit sign still glowing inside a burning building.

Right now, his father’s shape is obscuring the view of it. He does this, sometimes. When he worries that the confidences Ilya has grown through tenacity and skill are making him too proud, too reckless. He makes sure that he is there to teach humility. Grigori has been generous with Ilya, after all — hiring newer, better coaches, pushing him to meet the promise he’s shown all these years — because if a son of Grigori is going to step out into the world, they can only do it if they are the best. Anything else would be shameful.

Grigori holds Ilya’s jaw in his thick hands, and Ilya lets him. He opens his mouth when prompted, baring the stubs of his front teeth and bloodied gums to his father’s shaking head. He is taller than his father by entire inches, but in this moment he feels small.

Grigori lets him go, tutting in sincere disapproval. “This is what you want to show your new American team, yes?” And then, because he’s apparently fully lucid when it comes to this subject — the mortification of losing out on gold to his new overseas competitor — “You think America lets Shane Hollander fight like a sewer rat?”

The words knot in Ilya’s stomach. Polite, earnest Shane Fucking Hollander’s name doesn’t belong in this wretched pit of misery. In his periphery, Alexei is still pinching his busted nose, shirt sleeves catching the stray trickles of blood. They both know the cost of letting blood hit the carpets and neither brother is prepared to pay it.

Ilya’s attention swivels back to his father. He’s waiting for the rest of it.

“What, you have nothing to say now?” Grigori asks, and his eyes have that wide, unblinking disappointment in them that Ilya associates with his deepest feelings of shame. He is costing his father money. He is hurting his reputation. He feels like a stain.

“I am sorry, father—” he begins.

The smack that follows is fast and precise. Ilya has long learned not to flinch. Grigori is not a violent man, not in the way that Alexei is; his application of force is a lesson, not an impulse. Ilya’s cheek smarts at being asked to learn it, again.

“You want ice, for that soft skin of yours?” he taunts. Ilya takes the bait, nods, steels his jaw, and steps towards the freezer. To wear his bruises would be another insult to the people who caused them. To himself, for bearing them. He doesn’t look up when his reaching wrist is grabbed. Just stops dead. “It is winter, yes?”

The dread sinks lower into Ilya’s gut. Familiar. “Go,” he gestures to the window, to the spiraling snowflakes outside. “Go, get your ice. Come back when you’re fit to be seen.”

Ilya casts a fast, desperate look over his shoulder as he leaves the apartment for the waiting cold outside. Alexei catches it, offering the smallest, tightest nod he can. A hint of solidarity in humiliation; his brother’s car keys sit heavy in his coat pocket. It’s not the first time they’ve needed this contingency, in the absence of taxi money or friends he can call on. Ilya still can’t drive it — no point in getting a license in a country he can’t wait to leave — but the frame of it will be enough to keep out the bitter freeze of the Moscow streets until morning.

Ilya is eighteen years old, and dreaming of a city that will be kinder to him than this one.

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Boston, 2009

[Mandibular: R - Central Incisor (25), L - Central Incisor (24)]

Ilya is nineteen years old, and the world loves him.

Chapter Notes

In which Ilya encounters kindness, and isn't completely sure what to do with it.

Ilya is nineteen years old, and the world loves him. 

This might not be wholeheartedly true. He is called many, many names: pest, menace, asshole, and, on his best days, the future scourge of the MLH. But, in Boston, he doesn’t get to hear the other names, outside of phone calls from home. He isn’t weak, here. He hasn’t been called a disappointment, yet. Hell, he’s only been called faggot twice, in the last month, and as neither time involved him actively interacting with another guy’s dick, he believes it doesn’t count. 

American teams are very different to Russian ones. For one, they save the psychological warfare for other side’s players, not their own. They sometimes say things to each other like nice hustle, and good shot, instead of detailing all the ways they’ll use their sticks to punch new orifices into someone who misses a pass. They even have a team chat, and there is not a single (sincere) threat of murder in it.  

Sure, it’s not the hair-braiding, campfire singing, pep-talking banality Ilya’s father dismissed it as. And the locker room talk is its own education. But, it’s less…hostile. Until they’re on the ice, but it’s the inbetween spaces that are making Ilya nervous, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s not used to being off the offensive. 

They’re in preseason, and Ilya is balancing the expectations of his new team, of Russia, and his own integral sense of identity on his broad shoulders. He has to prove why he deserves the praise they’re already laying at his feet. Show them he’s not lazy. 

Unfortunately, today, he feels like reheated shit. His skin is too hot in his gear, and he’s got a fucking toothache of all things. And whatever else is going on with him. It would be embarrassing, except he has zero intentions of letting another human soul know that he’s anything less than invincible. 

So, he does what he knows best, and ignores it. 

He squirts ice water onto his gums, allowing himself a short grimace before his game face shifts back into position. When he turns back to face the room, Cliff Marlow has an eyebrow raised at him. “You’ll do great tonight, kid,” he says. And then, because he seems to get a kick out of the bewildered expression Ilya pulls at him for being addressed as a literal child by a man who is the same age as him, “Team’s counting on that reputation of yours.” Then, Cliff smiles in a way that Ilya is supposed to read as big brotherly, and oh boy, that is the opposite of encouragement. 

“Of course I will,” Ilya answers, swallowing cold spittle. “Other team is made of soft children and dinosaurs. I am strong Russian.” He flexes his arms at that, as though to demonstrate just how strong and Russian he is. 

“You’re a soft children, Roz,” calls Wills from across the room. “Fucking foetus.” 

It takes Ilya a moment to parse the words. He’s pretty sure the grammar is wrong, but it’s the word ‘foetus’ that doesn’t latch onto his known vocabulary of this stupid, clunky language. He’ll look it up, later. Before his brain has finished cataloguing it, his mouth is already working. “It’s okay, Wills,” Ilya says, “I can still pass to you without looking. I hear your bones creaking all the way across the ice.” 

He smiles to himself at the answering fuck off, Roz, and at the murmured agreements of him being an asshole. 

This team is nice. 

_

Coach LeClaire is less nice. Halfway through the second period, after a check that Ilya would refer to as a gentle shove at best, Ilya is pulled off the ice. He’s fine, and this is…coddling. Ilya is fine. Better than fine. He’s barely had a chance to prove why he was the first draft pick, and being led away from the game like a delicate rabbit is setting a poor precedent. 

“Your game tonight sucks,” LeClaire tells him. His voice is a floor-skimming gravel, too quiet for the surrounding players to hear much, but sharp in Ilya’s ears. “You’re going to the medic, and you’re going to get fixed.” 

Ilya opens his mouth to argue — pain hasn’t weakened his play before, so why today should be any different is beyond him — but their coach, apparently, is a man who doesn’t do arguments. “Now,” he adds, his eyes back on the game. Ilya is dismissed. He skulks away, petulant resentment heating the back of his eyes. 

_

The team medic, a man called Jerry Bruar, exudes a familiar kind of bullshit-free authority. Ilya has only met him once before, for his introductory check up. Ilya has no intentions of needing to see him again, ever, if he can avoid it. 

“So, you got checked?” Bruar asks. There’s a screen showing the live game footage in the office, and Ilya scowls at the action taking place on it. He should still be a part of it, not wasting time in this antiseptic-smelling back room. 

“Yes, of course I got checked. Is hockey. Not junior baby little league.” He’s being testy, but he’s not sure what this Bruar guy expects of him. He’s had subway rides less gentle than whatever happened on this ice and he’s still struggling to follow why, suddenly, he’s in the coach and medic’s cross-hairs. 

Bruar just gestures for Ilya to take off his jersey, then his pads, then the rest of it, until Ilya is stood in the room in his boxers and his socks. “Bruar. Jerry. Why am I doing striptease in your office when game is out there, yes?”

“Of course you’d know the word ‘striptease’. Rozanov, does this room feel cold to you?”

Ilya really doesn’t get Americans. Especially not this one, who is prodding and peering at bits of Ilya with rapidly deteriorating patience. Pointing a plastic device at Ilya’s forehead and grimacing. “No? Is hot.” Too hot. He feels like maybe he shouldn’t still be sweating, without any exertion to justify it. 

Bruar sighs heavily, enters something into his tablet, and makes a short, weary phone call in the time it takes Ilya to realize he is probably allowed to get dressed again. 

“Not your kit, Rozanov. She’s - they’re getting your home clothes. Wait here.” 

The lack of explanation is making him nervous. He looks up as a new person — someone he’s not met before, a petite woman who introduces herself as Doctor Manil — takes him by the elbow to another, equally medicinal-smelling room. She doesn’t mention his state of relative undress. 

“X-ray,” she explains. Ilya waits for more detail, sitting with the revelation that the medical suite of his team’s home stadium is rich enough to have on-site radiography. Instead of words, Manil taps at his jaw and wedges tongs inside his mouth as he opens for her. “Stay still,” she instructs, backing out of the room. A clunk and a flash later, and Doctor Manil returns, pulling the tongs out without making eye contact, and grimaces at a brightly lit screen. 

“This didn’t happen out there,” she says. Ilya is not used to toothache being cause for high-speed medical intervention, so he just nods while the rest of him catches up with what is happening around him. “How long has this been hurting?” she asks, thumb on the lower edge of his jaw. 

“Not hurting,” Ilya lies. “Not much.” 

He doesn’t understand the next words out of Manil’s mouth, as they pour forth fluently in a language Ilya doesn’t recognize. The end bit is familiar though: an exasperated “Fucking hockey players.” 

Ilya doesn’t want to suggest that perhaps, working at a stadium primarily populated by fucking hockey players was a poor career choice, but he is also slightly scared of her, so he stays quiet. 

“Look,” she tells him, impatience seething through her. She holds a mirror to Ilya’s jaw. It’s…definitely redder than it should be. Bigger, too. “How long?” she asks again. 

“I think…three days?” Ilya isn’t sure. He tries not to take note of when his body starts causing him problems, he only focuses on how to fix them. And unless it’s actively stopping him from doing what he needs to, he emphatically does not tell anyone. Why hand your weaknesses to other people on a platter? “Four. Maybe five.” 

Manil lets out a sigh that sounds older than the building they’re in. 

“You have an infection,” she tells him. “A completely avoidable infection.” Ilya likes the sound of it being avoidable. Except, the expression on Manil’s face tells him that maybe that ship has sailed. “The roots,” she points at the x-ray image of his teeth, “on these two,” she gestures at the image of his teeth. They look like two straight pegs bedded in his chin, with fault lines running to their tapered ends. “These have cracked. Not recently.” 

Ilya doesn’t remember the last time this particular bit of him took any hard damage. 

“It’s sometimes called a slow fracture,” Manil continues, printing something out and tapping notes into her tablet. “Over time. It starts to heal, but then it gets knocked again, and the process resets. Until it’s too weak to keep healing. We sometimes see it in retired players, from repeat trauma in vulnerable spots. Or sometimes…” 

There’s nothing in her expression that Ilya can read. The earlier heat he’d been feeling suddenly feels cold and clammy. 

“When it’s the face, teeth, it’s usually the top ones too. But I see you’ve already had those done.” 

Done is one word. Two glistening white crowns, fitted back in Moscow over the stubs left by Ilya’s mistake and his brother’s temper, then veneered over with the first payout from his signing bonus. 

“Last year,” Ilya admits. He doesn’t say that, now she’s explained it, that the repeated impacts — trauma, she’d called it — were such an ingrained part of how he was formed that it never occurred to him that Grigori’s warm, firm hands could still be hurting him from a continent away. 

Bruar appears in the room, holding Ilya’s gym bag. He tells Ilya to get dressed, exchanging rapid words with Manil.

“You got someone who can drive you to the hospital?” he asks. Ilya does not. The entirety of his American support network consists of his team — which includes his roommate — and his coach, all of whom are busy trying to win a game. There’s sometimes Svetlana, but she’s back in Russia right now. The only other person who comes to his fever-addled mind is fucking Hollander, and this is how Ilya finds out that maybe he is more delirious than he first thought. 

“I don’t need hospital,” he says instead. Bruar and Manil match their sighs like a soft, tired symphony. 

“The root is infected,” Manil explains with unearned patience. “The infection is spreading.” 

“This is why you’re a one-man radiator right now, Rozanov,” adds Bruar, helpfully. “You’ve got a fever and you’re thinking like an idiot.” 

They both reassure him, then. Over-explaining their long words and giving him time to catch up. Telling him that they could jump straight to oral antibiotics, but given the placement, the time frame, and the danger of something called septicaemia, they’d rather be quick about it. His new team has luxurious medical insurance, they tell him. They’re used to players fucking up their mouths, and worse. Don’t sweat it, they say. They’ll find someone to drive him to the hospital. Pull the teeth, scrape the root, and fill him with intravenous drugs until they’re comfortable he’s no longer at risk of blood poisoning. They’ll fit a bridge, between the real teeth and the new hole in his face they’re planning to make. He’ll look like new, they tell him. 

It all sounds so…dramatic. Ilya is sure, he tells them again, that he is more or less fine. 

And so, this is how Ilya finds himself, some hours later: sitting in a hospital bed in a single room, drugs siphoning into him through a tube in the back of his hand, and no one for company beyond the ever-busy hospital staff who pop in every few hours to check on him. 

His phone buzzes on his lap, once. It’s on 7% charge, not enough for him to play any of the stupid games on it or fire up another language lesson. 

It’s Marlow. Not in the team chat, either. A separate message, just for him. Huh. 

Heard your face is fucked up. Guess that makes me the handsome one now ;) 

Ilya smiles, types back: Give me 2 days and I will be gorgeous again. You will still be a goat.

And then, because he really is trying to not be a complete asshole, he sends :) 

Cliff tells him next, as Ilya’s battery ticks down to 4%, that he’ll swing by once he’s done with press, bring some of the team with him. Ilya suppresses the initial coil of horror at the prospect of being seen like this, sickly and gap-toothed. At being enough of a problem that these people are rewriting their evening plans to come and visit him. It isn’t worth it. It’s just a toothache. He isn’t worth it. 

The worry is replaced by something softer, simpler: maybe, Ilya thinks, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, to accept these bits of kindness when they happen.  

His new team is nice. 

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Boston, 2016

[Maxillary: R - Central Incisor (8)/repeat, L - Central Incisor (9)/repeat, L - Cuspid (11), L First Bicuspid (12)]

Ilya is twenty five years old, and Boston is out of the playoffs.

As far as defeats go, it wasn’t the most humiliating; he’d made at least one goal that deserved its own spot in the season highlight reel. And, he’d pissed off Scott Hunter enough that the well-behaved elder of ice hockey had wound up in the penalty bin. Twice.

Chapter Notes

The mortifying ordeal of being cared about.

(Brief vomit mention in this one)

Ilya is twenty five years old, and Boston is out of the playoffs. 

As far as defeats go, it wasn’t the most humiliating; he’d made at least one goal that deserved its own spot in the season highlight reel. And, he’d pissed off Scott Hunter enough that the well-behaved elder of ice hockey had wound up in the penalty bin. Twice. 

His phone buzzes from his locker. For one unhinged, wistful moment, he imagines that it’s Shane. Not calling to console him, of course. Unless it’s to offer a consolatory blow job. In which case— 

It’s Alexei. Of course it would be. Shane doesn’t call. Shane is getting ready to play his own game, back in Montreal, and is probably thinking about how to be the goodest, bestest hockey player in the whole damn league. Shane, who hasn’t just dumped his team out of the running in their home town, isn’t thinking about Ilya. Alexei, however, continues to make his poor life decisions Ilya’s problem. Ilya lets it ring out. 

St-Simon plants a heavy hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “Fountain later. See you there?” 

Ilya hates the Fountain. It’s a clinically ordinary sports bar, frequented by clinically boring sports fans. Not the good, freckled kind of boring Ilya is (reluctantly, derangedly) so fond of. Just, loud, back-slapping, American boring. Despite this, his team loves it. “Sure. If you need babysitter. I will be there,” he says. St-Simon looks pleased. Ilya groans silently. 

-

Three beers in, Ilya is starting to feel better. His ribs aren’t aching so much, now, and his sheer shirt is visibly upsetting at least two of the stubble-headed men hogging space at the bar. Good. The game on the screens — three of them, looming over the claustrophobic, sweaty space — is in the second period, and Montreal are in the lead. Also good. Probably. Not that he cares. 

His own team are settling into their loss with enthusiasm. Not all of them; some skipped out on the pity party to be with their respective wives and girlfriends. A few had summoned their partners to the bar. Ilya thinks that if he had a partner, someone steady — not Shane — he wouldn’t want to subject them to this place. Besides, Shane is here, sort of: his cherubic little grin is currently filling all three screens. Another goal, then. Bastard. A few of the bar patrons boo. 

“Rozanov looks like he’s gonna punch the TV!” 

Ilya spins on the voice behind him, ready to verbally eviscerate whoever had the nerve, and softens when he sees that it’s only Herz. A rookie, too sweet and maybe too stupid to take the brunt of his shitty mood. 

Before he can think of something less acerbic to say to distract from — what is this, pining? — he’s being pulled back to the table by Cliff. “Let us find you a prettier distraction than —” Cliff gestures at the screen, at the hand pats and shoulder rubs pulling Shane Fucking Hollander back out of frame, “—that.”

Ilya grins, because it’s what’s expected, and spends the next couple of hours deflecting every attempt from his team to find him, in their words, “someone to suck a real smile back onto that face.” Gross. 

-

It’s late, and the rest of the team have peeled away to their respective homes or hookups. If Ilya was smart, he’d have done the same. Taken an Uber back to his empty penthouse and swallowed enough water to mitigate the headache he can already feel forming. 

Ilya doesn’t feel smart. He hasn’t bothered to find a better bar than this one, and is expertly avoiding anyone who might tempt him to one. He doesn’t want company, so much as he wants to just not feel alone. 

Except, the vibe inside the Fountain is shifting. Imperceptibly at first, but now, it feels almost tangible. There’s the restless energy of diminished inhibitions. Ilya is usually long gone for before this part of the night can manifest. Tonight, though, he’s feeling reckless. Unmoored. The shroud of brittle misery clinging to him is starting to feel less like a shield and more like a target. Perhaps, Ilya realises, being a very visible lone Boston player, in a Boston bar, on a night when Boston have very decisively lost, isn’t very smart at all. 

If he had the smallest amount of sense left in his unhappy brain, he wouldn’t take the bait being dangled so temptingly in front of him. The bait stands a couple of feet away, a thumb of a man with a Boston jersey on. He’s grinning at Ilya and his mouth is moving. Fast, excitable. There’s enough background chatter and shitty music that what he’s saying isn’t completely clear, but the word “fuck” is there, a lot. There’s other stuff in there: loser, screwed, and then, like a needle under the skin, disappointment. The nerve of this guy. 

Ilya doesn’t swing at him. That tiny grain of sense that somehow hasn’t abandoned him, steers him to the exit instead. A cigarette, he decides. Then home. He’s wrung enough out of this night and it's drying and brittle. He’s probably tired enough by now to sleep through his thoughts, instead of letting them eat through him. 

The music from the bar — Let’s Get It Started, of all fucking things — dims as he steps outside, moving away from the entrance and rummaging his pockets for his lighter. 

He should know not to show his back to an enemy. Even if that enemy is the nebulous space of a bar filled with assholes. It should be an instinct so ingrained in him, that he wonders if his time living in the States has made him soft. Or maybe he’s just a little drunk. 

Either way, a few seconds after his cigarette sparks, he’s not completely surprised when something thuds at the back of his neck. 

“I’m talking to you, asshole,” says the thumb-shaped man, as Ilya’s balance tips him forward and he catches himself on one knee. Maybe a lot drunk, then. This entitled grunt of a guy has followed him out here. How flattering. The man moves in front of Ilya and spits. A long, beery string of it. Christ. “Why’d’ya let us down, man?”

At this point, it’s less about sense than pride. He’s lost his cigarette now, and his dignity can’t be far behind. If this idiot wants to go up against him — a literal athlete — albeit a drunk, match-worn one — then it would be almost rude not to shut this shit up. Ilya’s fist is heavy, angled up into the thumb man’s sternum, right over the yellow Raider’s logo. 

Before Ilya has a chance to enjoy the sputtering, wheezing sound he makes, something fast kicks into the small of his back, tilting him forward. Ah. Shit. Thumb guy has friends. Ilya’s palms are on the asphalt now, trying to push himself back to upright because he is not ending his night being spat on by assholes outside his least favourite bar. 

He lunges upward, relearning the rhythm of fighting on solid ground. It’s been a while, and he hasn’t missed it. He lands at least one more punch, and an elbow, probably, but whoever is behind him is steadier with his footwork, and this time it’s his stomach and the front of his ribs that take the brunt of it. Air rushes out of him in a long, ugly breath. 

From his new vantage point, cheek now flush against the ground, he can see people beyond his current pile-on — people walking, stumbling, avoiding. He can still hear the distant music from the bar; the same shitty Black Eyed Peas song, just audible over the ringing in his ears. He grits his teeth and swings the back of his hand against whoever is leaning over him, feeling the burn of his knuckles against teeth. Strong backhand, fucker. 

He can’t hear what they’re saying, doesn’t care. He’s lost his height advantage and it’s harder to do damage when you’re cradling your own ribcage. The next thing he sees when he looks up, is the thumb guy pulling his own jersey off. 

“Fuck you, Rozanov” the guy says, like this complete stranger knows him well enough to be owed anything. He sounds genuinely upset. The audacity. He’s upset enough that his farewell shot, as he bundles up the jersey to drop it on the ground, where Ilya still is, is a literal kick in the face. 

The pain hits like a starburst, right up to his forehead and back down through his neck. Ilya blinks stupidly as the man — men — make their speedy exit. Fuck this night. 

He breathes out, hard and heavy. Fights to stand upright before any concerned onlookers clock who he is, or worse, offer to help. What comes out of him next is more than just breath: he vomits, hard, directly onto the jersey. 

There’s blood in it, from his nose and — fuck — his (expensive) two front teeth, and then some. Gleaming in the pool of beery puke gathered in the jersey’s folds. 

Fuck. Fucking fuck. 

He wipes his face on his too-thin sleeves, pulls a fresh, but flattened, cigarette from his pocket, and lights it. Definitely time for that Uber. 

At least his phone made it out of tonight relatively unscathed. Small mercies. 

- 

The drunken adrenaline fades, fast, into a different kind of shake. A thrumming, stinging tremble of a body that’s still processing more impact than it was braced for. Shock, thinks Ilya. Pain, but in abstract. 

It’s too quiet in the penthouse. These days, when he takes damage, there are people around to buffer him from it. Medics, coaches, team mates. Throngs of people who are broadly invested in Ilya not being injured. People who want him patched up, mended, so he can go back to menacing the opposition and racking up points. And Ilya lets them, because he wants that too. 

There’s no one here tonight. He isn’t needed anywhere, so it doesn’t matter that he’s hunched over the side of his bathtub, calculating whether he can get in it without the movement lighting his ribs on fire. 

He hisses as he bends and contorts enough to settle himself in the tub, accepting that he sucks at this sort of maths. He lets out a string of curses when he leans forward to swing the taps, and the words come out with a lisp. 

It would be nice, he thinks, if there was at least one person who still cared that he was hurting. His brain helpfully supplies a name to him, blaring it like a siren. Shows him that happy little freckled face. Then it knots those soft brows with worry. His brain starts speaking in Shane Hollander’s voice. Ilya tells it, aloud, to shut up. 

The heat helps. It takes a while, but breathing hurts a little less. As long as he doesn’t inhale too deeply. Or move too much to top up the hot water, using his toes to release the plug to make space for it. He’ll take inventory later, brush his teeth around the new — and new old —gaps, and grab ice packs out of the freezer. 

When he’s sure his hands have fully stopped shaking, he reaches for his phone. He skims over the messages — a particularly savage sequence of commiserations from Svetlana pulls a laugh out of him that he immediately suffers for — and pulls up his chats with Jane. 

It’s a long way past midnight, which means it’s even longer past Hollander’s bedtime. And it’s not like he’s messaging for a hookup; they won’t see each other now until next season, and Shane will be traveling for his next game in the morning, and he wouldn’t even want to hear from Ilya if it’s not for— 

He might be spiralling. 

He jabs his thumbs across the keypad anyway. 

Well done on your big win :)

He sends it, because he wants the feeling of having reached out a tendril of…something. As though just by thinking of Shane is somehow enough that he won’t feel so alone. Even the most tenuous connection is still a connection. 

The phone vibrates before he can set it back down again. 

Well done on your gracious exit from the competition :)

Well, shit. 

Ilya thinks for a minute. Then types, Why are you not asleep?

He watches the three dots dance across his screen and retreat. Again. And again. 

Hayd watched a horror film

Ilya has minus idea as to why Shane’s terrible team mate watching something scary is relevant, here. The three dots appear again. Retreat. Again. 

Ilya types back, impatient, You have got much worse at sexting

Three dots. 

Shane: He got scared again. Only left an hour ago

Ilya does not care about Hayden Fucking Pike. It’s bad enough that he apparently cares about Shane Fucking Hollander, and introducing a baby-faced, apparently baby-minded baby-hoarder like Hayden Pike makes this feel a little crowded. 

So you celebrate by babysitting. Very rock and roll

He tops up the hot water as he watches the little dots dance on the screen. 

The next message from Shane tugs at something in Ilya’s chest: Would have been more fun to celebrate with you, sucks you’re so far away

They don’t do this. They don’t share ordinary, non-baiting, non-hookup messages, not without teasing. Joking. They don’t offer each other the glimpses into their inner workings — not that kind, at least — and they don’t admit that they have feelings bigger than the ones in their dicks. 

Jane, are you drunk? 

Ilya sends it before he can regret trying to brush off the sincerity. 

The dots again. The three fucking dots. The space between Ilya’s shoulders is throbbing and he needs to swap the cosy heat for ice, soon. 

The reply comes faster: No. Then, Just bored

Oh, so Mr Boring gets bored? 

More dots. Tell me how your night’s going? 

Ilya lets out a long exhale that catches too many of his ribs. How is his night going. He isn’t sure he has the words. 

Terribly, he answers, eventually. If they’re flirting with honesty, he might as well give it a shot. He puts the phone down, pushes himself out of the bath, skids and rights himself. Hopeless. God, what he would give to have Shane’s strong arms wrapped around him, right now. They’d pull him out of the water, wrap him in the soft towel that is just out of reach, swaddle him into his bed and fetch the ice packs from the freezer. Maybe. Or maybe they’d just be poised at his hips, his serious face frowning at Ilya, asking why he got fucked up enough to be in this position. 

There are no strong, firm, smooth arms here, no wall of chest to fall into, and Ilya’s hands are still shaking lightly as they fumble around the towel. When he picks his phone up, there’s a new message. 

How bad?

No jokes from Shane, which means he’s probably worrying. Ilya doesn’t want him to worry. Hasn't earnt worry. 

Ilya resorts to his tried and tested method of deflection. A small truth, wrapped in a ‘Look over there!’

The worst. There was no one to suck my dick

And to elaborate, because the idea of sharing is still tempting: Boston fans are bad 

It’s true. And it could mean, the usual. Boston fans suck because they haven’t laid out the red carpet for the team to commiserate in the company of sympathetic puck bunnies. Could mean extra online shit-talking. Booing at the home rink. Threats, even. 

Except, attentive, curious, caring Shane Hollander is apparently trying to read between the lines this time, and Ilya’s phone is ringing with Jane’s name on the screen. He smacks it off the sideboard in his attempt to decline the call. No force on earth will make him answer the phone and lisp an explanation of this. 

Ilya winces as he starts to brush his teeth. What’s left of them. There are still a couple of stubs left at the front, the nubs whittled down from dentist drills in years past. It’s the side of his mouth that’s the most fucked; there’s one new, neat empty space, except the toothbrush catches on some remnants still bedded into the gum, and next to it, there’s — well, there’s still something in his mouth, for sure. But it’s more like a stalk.  

He spits, and some of what lands in the sink is solid. Fucking fucking fuck. Tiny shards of tooth mixed with pink and brown and red spittle. 

How bad? Shane sends again, and now Ilya can almost feel the scrunch of his freckled nose as he frowns at the screen. 

Now it’s Ilya’s turn to make Shane watch the three dots. He settles, eventually, on what he is beginning to feel is his own tag-line: I’m fine. 

Shane’s reply is faster: Liar. Tell me what happened?

Ilya keeps the phone with him as he pads towards the freezer, pulling packs out, one-handed. Once he’s gathered them all, and the tea-towels to wrap them in, he balances the phone on top and takes his cold, wet misery party to his bedroom. Every movement jars something new in his body. This night has aged him by decades. 

He settles under the duvet, one wrapped pack in the small of his back, one on his pillow for the back of his neck, one balanced on his chest and one in his hand, ready to put on his face. He thinks he’s caught all the places of him that are aching, throbbing or otherwise fucked up, but at this point he can’t really tell. 

Got into small fight he concedes, because he won’t say I got beaten up, because that is a thing that happens to weaker people than him. Besides, technically, he did throw the first punch. It definitely counts as a fight. 

Shit, Shane sends. I’m sorry. 

The ice is rough against Ilya’s face and he doesn’t want to manage Shane’s feelings about his shitty night. He deflects again: Now your nosy teammates will know that Lily is mean fighting girl :)

Ilya is so, so tired of deflecting. He wants to cry. He is exhausted from holding all the pain in. He sinks into his icy pillow, wincing as the cold of it drains the warmth from his skin. 

Is anyone with you? Shane asks, and Ilya can imagine that serious expression. The pensive way he holds himself when he’s trying to exert control over something that resists it. And by now, Ilya knows Shane well enough to know it’s not a question asked out of jealousy. It feels like genuine concern, and it hurts. 

He wants to keep the joking, no matter how thin it is by now, going. Wants to tease, distract, and say anything that will put the world back to the way it has always been: indifferent to his bullshit. 

Apparently, he’s been too slow at trying to come up with a reply, because his screen lights up with another incoming call. 

No force on Earth. Somehow, Shane transcends this, because Ilya’s fingers numbly accept the call. 

“Hollander.” 

There’s a pause. An intake of breath. 

“Are you okay?” Shane asks, eventually. The question feels big, and Ilya laughs at it. It comes out brittle and short. 

“I will be,” he says, because if he says ‘yes’, then Shane will hear his missing teeth. “Why are you calling, Hollander?” 

He’d expected to sound sharp, irritated, but the fragility of his own voice echoes through the line. He hates it. 

“Because you’re not,” Shane says, and his voice is so, so far away but it’s here, with Ilya, because for some ridiculous, unfathomable reason he’s chosen to give a shit about him. “You can tell me what’s wrong, Roz.” 

Ilya wishes, so much, that this were true. 

But he’s hurting, and Shane is waiting, so he tries. He offers up the shorthand version: he was drunk, he made bad decisions, some assholes made worse ones for him, and now he has fewer teeth than he started the night with. He gave up trying to avoid the words with S sounds a few words in. English is hard enough; picking through an alphabet salad is impossible. 

Shane doesn’t tell him it was his own fault the night went sideways. Or laugh at his softened words. For a moment, Ilya worries that the call has dropped, but there’s that measured, careful breathing still coming through. 

When Shane does speak, it’s simple and without drama. 

“Ilya, that’s awful.” 

Which, yes. It is. Obviously. Ilya knows this, intimately and very, very painfully. But, having someone else look through the same window at this shitshow of a night and agree with him is a warm, steady comfort. Like someone’s taken a little of the pressure off him. 

“Yes,” he agrees. 

“I wish I was there,” Shane says. 

“Oh, you think you would have done better?” Ilya asks. “Come to rescue me. My knight in linen armour.” 

“Fuck off.” A pause. “I mean, now.” 

Ilya goes quiet at that because he wants that too. He shouldn’t, he knows that. And he can’t have it, anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.  

“It would not matter, Hollander,” Ilya tells him, feeling the effort of building the wall he’s trying to re-establish, between him and his feelings. It’s exhausting, but he persists. Brick by slow-moving brick. “You cannot put teeth back in. Or un-bruise stomach.” 

“I’m just saying,” Shane says, and he still sounds so calm, so gentle. Firm. “That you shouldn’t have to go through it. On your own.” 

“Why did you call, really?” Ilya asks again. His voice is cracking. He’s pretty sure he’s just bitten a part of his own tooth that his earlier cleaning missed. He hates these unsolvable statements, these shoulds. There is just what is. 

“You sounded like you were hurting,” Shane explains, as though this were a good enough reason. Ilya sniffs. “And…people care about you, Roz,” he adds. He didn’t say I care; he just gave Ilya enough, with enough conviction, to convince Ilya that maybe, what he’s saying could be true. A hypothetical. People could be anyone. 

The last of Ilya’s instincts to bite back, to deny it and say something cruel, leave him. That wall coming back down. 

“Thank you,” he tells Shane, and means it. 

- 

The next day hits Ilya like a mallet. All of him feels out of proportion, like his bones have outgrown his skin. His head thuds out of sync with his heartbeat, and his mouth is dry as dirt. 

There’s something damp at the back of his neck, weighing his soft pillow down and of course. His skin-warmed, melted ice packs, now sticking to his skin. Last night’s version of Ilya also apparently lacked the foresight to put a glass of water on his bedside table, and right now, Ilya hates that guy. 

It’s not until Ilya reaches the bathroom mirror that he thinks he might let his earlier self off the hook. The left side of his face has swollen, from cheek to brow, in a way that makes his eye look like a plum someone has tried to take a bite out of. His mid-section has a whole other colour palette going across it; the yellows and pinks of the season’s matches now eclipsed by blues and greens and nearly-blacks. 

Thank fuck he has nowhere to be for a while. 

He gulps down water, brushes the teeth that are more or less there, and hauls himself back into bed. 

His phone flashes with a message. Jane. 

My mum could probably find you a dentist sponsorship :)

It makes Ilya smile. Wide enough that he can feel his cheek pushing into his eye and he should probably stop that, maybe.  

He starts typing out a reply, about what Yuna Hollander could likely negotiate for him. Then wonders if he’s ready to admit to Shane that he knows the name, and reputation, of his mother. Maybe he cares a little, too. 

Instead, My mouth will be working just fine next season, followed by a devil emoji. 

It’s enough, for now. 

Chapter End Notes

A few more days until the fifth chapter. Thank you for reading!

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

Ottawa, 2019

[Maxillary: L - Lateral Incisor (10)]

Ilya is twenty eight, and is learning that admitting to problems is not a weakness. He also knows that the progressive application of this knowledge is not linear.

Chapter Notes

We're sneaking an extra chapter after this one, before this reaches its happy conclusion. The tooth stuff gets a little weird.

Ottawa, 2019

Ilya is twenty eight, and is learning that admitting to problems is not a weakness. He also knows that the progressive application of this knowledge is not linear. 

He hears his therapist, Galina’s, voice in his head, asking him how he would feel if Shane were to call his own problems inconsequential. Ilya huffs at the imaginary voice. She’s right: he knows that if Shane so much as stubbed his toe, Ilya would be peeling his socks off and kissing it better. And that Shane would probably mutter gross, Ilya, before trying to figure out if he had a hitherto unexplored foot fetish. Ilya imagines pressing his tongue into the spaces between each toe, wonders how much of Shane’s foot he could fit into his mouth, if Shane would hook the edges of his mouth while he suckled on— 

“Rozanov, you good?” Coach Wiebe interrupts. 

Ah. Practice. Ilya returns to the physical space he’s in, blinks at Dykstra, who is skating towards him, proffering curses and apologies. 

“Sorry, man, fucking thing — did it get you?” 

The offending puck is already far away from them, having successfully rebounded off Ilya’s smarting jaw, now happily unattended in the middle of the ice. No wonder they haven’t made playoffs in a decade. Christ. 

“Yes, it fucking got me,” Ilya says, his jaw feeling heavy, warm. And, because he’s their captain, and because Wiebe looks like he’s panicking in that quiet way where he starts gesticulating too much, he adds, “Am fine.” Then, because he’s still annoyed: “Trying to make me less pretty won’t help that mug of yours.” He follows it up with a grin, but the rest of his face doesn’t catch up to it, still throbbing against the impact. Fuck. 

Wiebe is still looking at him with concern, and Ilya bristles under expressions like these. He is fine, this is only a practice, and surely the bigger issue here is how Evan Fucking Dykstra managed to deflect a shot so limply that it only smarts. If he just improved his angles, it should have taken his fucking face off. He likes the guy, he thinks, but as a team, they’ve got their work cut out for them. 

Ilya does what he always does when he gets injured. What they all do. He shakes it off, waves a hand up and says again to Wiebe — who is still hovering too close, like a restless bee — “I am fine.”

Practice resumes, and by the end of it, Ilya doesn’t mind that part of his face still feels like it’s been sandblasted, or that Dykstra won’t stop saying “sorry, man, sorry,” whenever he’s within hearing range, because the team — his team — have at least done enough to prove that they don’t completely suck. Sort of. Which is good, because their next game is against Montreal. And Ilya’s thoughts wander back to Shane, to his (hopefully unstubbed) toes, and to how he can throw the other captain off his game. 

-

The post-practice medical check up is efficient. Terry is perfectly decent, and Ilya has not yet figured out how much bullshit he’s willing to tolerate from him. There’s no point in having a line if it can’t be toed a little. 

“Pain scale?” asks Terry, holding Ilya’s jaw in one hand and making notes on a tablet with the other. 

“One,” Ilya lies. 

Terry’s expression doesn’t shift from dispassionate professionalism. “Right.” Then, “And you didn’t think to ice it two hours ago?” 

Ilya can see enough of his reflection in the small mirror to know that the side of his face has puffed up. Like a hamster, maybe. But, from here it looks pink, not black or purple or any of the other colours that might have him confined for more thorough observation. 

Terry makes a non-committal hmm, lets go of Ilya’s jaw for long enough to grab an ice pack, placing it purposefully into Ilya’s waiting hand. “Teeth all good?” he asks. 

“Yes. All good, all there,” Ilya says. It’s not a complete lie; the ones of his that are still his are there. Terry didn’t ask if they were likely to stay that way, and Ilya doesn’t see any point in mentioning this. He doesn’t have time for the emergency dentist, so this feels like a problem for later. He tongues at it — his anchor tooth, as he thinks of it, next to his two front teeth, one of the last real ones at the top — is definitely shifting. But it’s more or less where it should be, and that is good enough for Ilya. 

It’s good enough for Terry too, who doesn’t ask that Ilya opens his mouth to show him. Just opens Ilya’s fingers around the clutched ice pack and, with the weariness that can only come from years of working with prideful hockey players, gently reminds him “it works better if you actually put it on your face.” 

Ilya obeys before Terry can mistake his slowness for signs of a concussion, thanks him, and leaves. 

- 

The game had been a mess. Full of should haves, and almosts. There were good moments; Luca scoring, Shane losing the first face off, and only one dirty check that had set Ilya’s sore jaw aflame all over again. Overall, though: not their best night. The defeatist in Ilya had wanted to accept that they probably had a lot more like this to come. The captain in him shut that part up, and buoyed the home locker room with little bursts of affirmations to a team that was too used to losing. 

Now, on the drive back to his own house, Ilya is feeling better. Namely, because Shane will be meeting him there. Shane, fresh off his 4-2 win against him, will want rewarding for his victory. Shane might also want some sympathy for his crappy team, too. Sure, Montreal had won, but they hadn’t played cohesively, at all. Shane deserves better in all things, and Ilya would like to remind him of that. He tongues at his tooth, testing whether it will stay in place for the fourteen hours they will have together, and the many ways he’ll show him. 

The tooth shifts, easily. Right up to the root. Fuck. Thank god nothing hit him in the dick, at least. 

-

“Good game,” Shane chirps from the doorstep, like he’s trying (and failing) to be a brat. 

“Get in.” 

Ilya has only been home for long enough to change into sportswear and set the lighting to what he hopes is atmospherically moody. He angles the good side of his face towards Shane. He’s fooling neither of them; Shane has already seen the blooming bruising from the ice, now substantially more mauve and mottled than when it started. Ilya is fairly certain that the shock of it is what won him the face off. For now, though, it can be ignored. There are more important things. 

Kicking the door shut behind them, Ilya steers Shane to the stairs. He smiles to himself as Shane visibly grapples with the urge to first take his shoes off and tuck them tidily away, nudging him instead with an impatient “up”. 

Shane uses his two fucking second headstart to the bedroom to — yep, there are his shoes. Being neatly positioned next to the wardrobe. Saints above. 

Ilya adores this about him. Truly. But he has also spent two weeks waiting for a chance to chow down on this man, and if he has to wait for him to painstakingly peel off each garment and put it in its correct place before they can even touch each other, he might burst. 

“Shane,” he starts, and, as though his thoughts had been audible, Shane turns away from him, chin tucked to his chest as he starts carefully, slowly, unbuttoning his shirt. 

Ilya is so many things. Patient is not one of them. 

“Ilya,” Shane answers, and even though the words are being spoken into his shirt, the bastard, teasing smile is audible from here.  

Ilya presses himself into Shane’s back, wraps his hands over Shane’s, and wrestles for the buttons. “Ilya, you’ll tear—”

Shane lets Ilya turn his head, then his body, until their open mouths are pressed together and their hands shift their focus from clothing to the bodies inside them. God, he’s missed this. The way Shane forgets to worry. The way he trades control with Ilya in hard-won increments. And right now, the way that Shane’s still very clothed thighs have trapped Ilya’s, and his hand is pawing Ilya’s dick through his shorts. 

Ilya could crawl inside Shane’s skin and stay there. Wrap his fingers inside his ribs and make a nest in the hot warm spaces there. He breaks their mouths apart, ignoring that his own is throbbing more insistently and not entirely from pleasure. It’s just enough of a moment to peel his vest off and shuck his shorts. He needs contact. He picks at Shane’s buttons with more purpose and an ounce more patience. They’ve touched. Shane is here, granite hard, and he can bear to wait a few more seconds. Just. 

“Tell me how you want your reward,” Ilya asks, knowing that making Shane asks for things makes him squirm. Blush too, sometimes. If he’s lucky. 

Shane doesn’t blush. He frowns into his shirt as he folds it. This is not a frowning scenario. If he’s still concerned about the fucking buttons, Ilya swears he will make Shane come so hard over his own laundry that he’ll regret ever caring about it. Except, Shane will already have a plan for removing come stains. He— 

“Your face,” Shane says, and holds the damn shirt in front of Ilya. 

“Yes. Is sore. You know what is not sore?” Ilya asks, still trying to figure out why in the world Shane’s shirt is taking up valuable attention when their dicks are right there. 

“Ilya,” Shane says again, and now he sounds impatient. Worse, he sounds worried. Ilya nuzzles at his neck, holds Shane close to him, tries to soothe the stress out of him. His face is fine, he is fine, but what is not fine is having his boyfriend literally in his arms but somehow not demanding to be fucked through the floorboards. It’s been two weeks. “Ilya. You’re bleed—”

Something in Ilya’s mouth makes a small popping sound. Fuck. Fuck. 

Ilya burrows his face further into the nook of Shane’s shoulder as Shane — gently — pushes him back, taking Ilya’s face in his hands. 

“Show me.” 

Ilya turns his face, as much as he can, away. Looks at the wall, not at the wide, brown eyes looking at him with such concern that he doesn’t think he can bear it. Like the sheer weight of it is something for people with stronger foundations than his. 

“Is nothing,” Ilya says through nearly closed lips. His hands find Shane’s thighs, fingers walking up them, and he adds, hopefully, “after?” 

“Not after,” Shane corrects. He sits Ilya down on the bench at the foot of his bed, straddling him so they’re at eye level. “Now.” Then, because he is Shane, “You’ll get blood on your sheets.” 

Ilya doesn’t mean to laugh. His dick is still painfully, uncomfortably hard, and yet he’s being treated like a spooked cat in a vet office. Shane’s strong, warm fingers, that should be cupping his balls right now, are instead teasing the edges of his mouth. Ilya refuses them. Shane sighs, soft and low. It’s not a fed up sound; it’s the noise he makes when he’s thinking. Finding solutions. Looking for ways to be a better person, a better partner. It makes Ilya want to kiss those fingers. 

“I’ve got an idea,” Shane says. 

Ilya lets his eyebrows answer this one. Last time Shane had an idea, it involved them restructuring every aspect of their lives to angle them towards a future they still haven’t reached yet. Ilya isn’t sure he has the energy for another big idea, yet. 

Shane climbs off him, and he hears the familiar shunt of the bedside drawer. The equally familiar pop of a cap. Footsteps, speeding to, and then back from, the bathroom. When Ilya looks up, he’s relieved, and only slightly confused, to find Shane fully naked, at last. And, mercifully, still strainingly hard. 

“This - this might suck,” Shane says, squirting lube into his left hand. “Let me distract you?” 

Ilya risks opening his mouth because that sure was a choice of words. “Please, Hollander. My brain will leak out through my dick if you don’t—”

It was a trap. Of course it was. Shane’s right hand crawls inside Ilya’s open mouth. Not in a sexy way. In a using his knuckles to hinge his jaw open way. The indignity alone would be enough to soften him, except Shane’s left hand is wrapping around Ilya’s dick, sliding a short, leisurely rhythm around it. 

“Agh?” asks Ilya. 

“Are you with me?” Shane asks instead.

Ilya isn’t sure he is, at first. But, if he trusts anyone in this world, it is Shane. And he’s in pain either way. Better to enjoy it. He raises a hand to give a thumbs up, and winces. 

Shane leans a kiss into Ilya’s hair. “It comes out now,” he explains patiently, “because otherwise one of us is gonna swallow it.” 

He’s right; Ilya doesn’t want to think too hard about the the tiniest thread of whatever is holding the stubborn bastard tooth almost in place. 

Ilya thinks, briefly, of Shane swallowing his loose tooth, keeping it nestled inside the soft tissues of his big warm body, and doesn’t find the idea nearly as horrifying as he thinks he should. 

“Open wider for me,” Shane says, gently, and Ilya can’t tell him that that’s his line, because he’s dumbly obeying. His tongue finds Shane’s fingers, fumbling the inside of his mouth. His hands find Shane’s hips, and he clings. 

“You good?” Shane asks, and now he really is stealing Ilya’s words. He blinks, once for yes. Shane nods, slows his left hand and drags it over Ilya’s balls, massaging, rolling. This is going to cross so many wires in his brain the next time he’s at the dentist.

Shane hesitates, the fingers in Ilya’s mouth stilling. Long enough for Ilya to push his tongue into the space between fingers, lapping at them. Suckling. He tastes salt, a hint of soap, and what he assumes is his own blood, thin and sharp. Even with the pain, this is still comfort. His Shane, holding him, being held, fingers pinned under Ilya’s tongue. His own fingers press harder into Shane’s skin, holding him like an anchor. 

“You’re being so good,” Shane soothes. Ilya isn’t used to being coaxed like this. And yet, he can feel the tug in his stomach, the growing build of tension behind his balls, the leak from his tip as Shane thumbs at it. Ilya appreciates Shane’s dexterity, he thinks. Overachiever that he is, of course he’s just as proficient with his left hand. Ilya tilts himself further into the touch, closer, wanting Shane to plant both hands on him, to block out the world with his body. 

Shane leans over him, kisses at his temple, his cheek, his neck. Presses his mouth into Ilya, possessive and solid. 

His mouth hurts so fucking much, and he doesn’t like to conflate pain with pleasure, not this intimate, uncomfortable kind, but he knows — inexplicably and entirely — that even if he gets taken apart, Shane is the only person with the patience to knot him back together again. 

“You’re nearly there,” Shane says, and Ilya is so overwhelmed he wants to cry. It’s too much. He’s close. His whole body feels like a current looking for a circuit break, signals sparking in the wrong place. Except. Except, Shane is grounding him. Shane has his whole body in his grip and he’s pulling him closer, closer. It’s reverent. It’s closer than he’s been to anyone and Ilya will give himself to this, to Shane, completely. 

Shane’s left hand is moving with more purpose, and his right hand — the one holding his mouth so wide he’s nearly gagging — pinches at the loose tooth. 

Ilya knows what’s coming. For an awful second, he doesn’t want it. Any of it. He could step outside his body, just for a moment. Everything stills. And then, Shane’s voice: 

“Are you ready, moya lyubov?” The words wash through Ilya like a tide. He blinks again, once. Heat pooling in his groin, his mouth, his brain. Fuck. Shane’s hands, both of them, start moving again. “Come for me.” 

He does. It bursts onto his stomach, onto Shane’s. His tooth comes free in the same heartbeat. 

Before he can exhale, Shane’s mouth is on his, a mess of saliva and blood and relief. Ilya folds into the wall of Shane’s chest. Held, safe. Together. 

For long moments, there is just their shared breathing. Heavy, shaking. 
 
“That was…a lot,” Shane tells Ilya’s hair, pressing kisses into his forehead. His cheek. The sore side of his mouth. “You okay?” 

Ilya nods into Shane’s armpit, pulls him closer — close enough that their skin doesn’t feel like a barrier between them, like they are one solid entity. Conjoined. 

“You have good back up plan,” Ilya says eventually, the words barely escaping. Talking might hurt, still, but that hasn’t stopped him so far. “If hockey stops working for you.” 

Shane pulls back, and Ilya can’t see his quizzical expression, but he can feel it. 

“Mister dentist,” Ilya explains. 

“Shut up.” 

“No.” 

Ilya extricates himself from their sticky embrace, slowly, not wanting to give up the contact but aware of the need for reciprocity. And, because he wants to see how his next words land on Shane’s face. 

“Your turn. Let me suck you.” 

Shane blanches. “More room in there now,” he gestures to his mouth, tonguing the gap where his tooth once was, with obscene glee. “For your cock, I mean,” Ilya adds, helpfully. 

“Jesus Christ, Ilya.” Shane sounds outraged, but he’s smiling. A loose, relieved, easy grin that Ilya wants to drink into himself. Keep it preserved inside him, forever. 

“We should shower,” Shane tells him, pulling Ilya upright. He’s softened, just a little. 

“You haven’t—”

Shane cuts off Ilya’s protest with a kiss, slow and languishing, on the uninjured side. “We can. Later. After.” 

The concept of letting Shane just take care of him, that it’s not a transaction, and that Ilya doesn’t always have to give something to justify taking, isn’t said out loud. But he hears it anyway. Understands it, in the way Shane holds him. 

Galina would be proud, he thinks. Hell, never mind his therapist; Ilya is proud of himself, for this. 

- 

Ilya wakes to soft morning light, partially obscured by Shane’s thinking face. He’s not exactly looming, but the steadiness of his pose gives the impression that he’s been studying Ilya for a while. 

“Good morning.”

“Mmm,” Ilya answers. Content, and only slightly apprehensive. 

Their hands find each other’s under the blanket, twining, knitting themselves close and comfortable. Shane’s dick stiffening against Ilya’s thigh. 

“Your face didn’t get hit during the game,” Shane says. 

Ah, Shane. Always the multitasker. 

“Oh, you were there? I didn’t notice” 

“Shut up.” 

Ilya turns himself onto his side, presses himself against Shane’s skin to let him know that he also has something important that they could both be dealing with, right now. 

“Your were all…busted, before,” Shane continues, then puts his mouth to better use by pressing hot, lazy kisses on Ilya’s nipples. Ilya answers with fingers in Shane’s hair, and then with a soft rebuke. 

“You like this busted face.” 

“I mean,” Shane says into Ilya’s neck, his hands reaching for Ilya’s stomach. Ilya pushes himself closer to trap it. “You didn’t say anything. Didn’t get it fixed. When did it even—”

Ilya bites at Shane’s mouth, shushing the interrogation. He’s fully awake, now, and so is his dick, and this conversation feels a little too close to therapy to be welcomed in this warm, intimate space. 

“If I promise to tell you after,” Ilya breathes, “will you let me fuck you quiet first?” 

There’s the smile he wanted to see on Shane’s face. Cheeks folding into freckled crescents . “Fine. But I’m not gonna be quiet about—”

Ilya flips him, then. Pushes that sweet, smiling face into the warm pillows, then tugs his hips up so he’s flush against his thighs. 

“Bottle,” Ilya instructs, and Shane is way ahead of him, hands already reaching for the dresser. 

Ilya makes a mess with it, drizzling it first over himself, over Shane’s hole, then wrapping his slick, wet hand between Shane’s legs to coat the heavy shaft of Shane’s cock. 

Normally, he prefers Shane to do this part. Enjoys watching the heat bloom in his face as he presses fingers into himself, open-mouthed and purposeful. Obedient. Hungry. This morning, Ilya wants to prove to Shane that he can take care of all of him. 

Ilya dances his fingers across the skin there, teasing. Grins to himself at the light fuck Shane breathes out. 

“Is good?” he asks, still not pushing anything in. 

“Fucking — get inside,” grits Shane, looking over his shoulder to glare at Ilya. It sinks into a smile at seeing Ilya’s face, then a loose-jawed, eyes closed exhale when one finger presses in. 

Ilya is careful. Always careful. Impatience gnaws at him from the inside, but he needs to measure out the pressure in increments. Shane, apparently, is not loving this cautious, steady approach this morning. 

“Hurry the fuck up, Ilya.” 

“So bossy,” Ilya teases, but he’s already obliging. Drinking in each flinch, each contracting, expanding breath. He waits until Shane is incoherent with needing, then stills his hand. Stills his whole body, for a second. 
 
Long enough for Shane to drag himself off him, pivot on his elbows so he’s lying on his back, and long enough still for Shane’s legs to lock around Ilya’s back to pull him forward. 

“Fuck me,” Shane pleads, and he sounds almost furious. 

“So impatient,” Ilya says. “Say please,” he adds, staying purposefully still. 

Shane’s heels dig into his back, thighs solid against Ilya’s hips. 

“Fuck. Please, fuck me, Ilya. I wanna see you.” And then, even though Ilya is moving now, tilting Shane’s hips so he can push in, “please.” 

Ilya does. He tries for steadiness, which works for a minute, maybe, until Shane starts trying to set his own, much faster rhythm. Fucking, yoga. Fuck. 

Words fizzle out of Ilya’s head. There is just him, and Shane, and the us they create. Hands all over each other, Shane’s blissed out gaze that bores through any thoughts. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna—”

Ilya shunts harder, like he’s trying to reach into the brain of the panting, messy body glistening under him. It’s perfect. He’s perfect. He lets himself go, gasping. His vision crowds with white, for a moment, as he sinks his body over Shane’s and presses their mouths together, swapping hungry, spent breaths. 

Shane’s release is…enthusiastic. Most of it caught between their chests, but there’s some on Ilya’s neck. His hair, too, he thinks. It doesn’t matter. Not to him, and in this moment, apparently, not to Shane, who is planting wet, loose, biting kisses along Ilya’s jaw. 

It’s a few moments of contented, sated breathing into each other’s skin before Shane speaks again. 

“You texted about Evan’s shitty music,” Shane says, stroking the sore side of Ilya’s face. “And you told me they were getting a dog.” 

This is not the post-fuck conversation Ilya was expecting, but he trusts that it will assemble into something Ilya can follow, soon. Hopefully. 

“I did not realise I fucked you so hard we need to run concussion checks,” Ilya tries. 

“Fuck off,” Shane laughs. “I just mean. You were sharing all these little details. Of how the last few days were going.” 

Ilya thinks he knows where Shane is going with this. He doesn’t try and steer out of it, this time. 

“Yes. I want to share things with you. You share things with me. That is how conversation works.” 

Shane kisses the tip of Ilya’s ear, then his warm cheek, then the top of his lips. The next thing he says is almost spoken into Ilya’s mouth. 

“You didn’t…you didn’t say, at any point, ‘I also got hit in the face and it hurts like fuck’,” Shane says, and the small thrill of him saying fuck into his open mouth pulls at something warm and primal inside him. 

“It was not important,” he says, then kisses Shane’s mouth closed. “Just hockey injury.” 

“So?” Shane asks. 

Ilya maybe hadn’t considered the need to explain more. “So, it happens all the time. You were in playoffs with a sprained ankle last year! And that time your knee was so big it looked like you had a whole head stuck to—”

“You know about the ankle because I bitched about it to you,” Shane explains, almost carefully. “And about the time Drapeau ‘accidentally’ slammed his locker door into me and I had headaches for, like, a week.” 

“I am still very sorry I have not murdered him for that, solnyshko,” he says, kissing Shane’s temple because he still sincerely regrets not flattening that guy to the floor after he heard about it. “Your team is made of assholes.” 

Shane smiles, faintly tense, but perseveres. “I know it comes with the game. Obviously. But I think you don’t like to admit when you’re hurting?” 

Ilya doesn’t mean to turn away from Shane at that. It’s just that his body rolls itself, slow and softly until he’s on his back and his face is looking at the opposing wall. 

“There’s no point,” Ilya says, voice quiet even to him. “Is just hurt. Is nothing.” 

Shane is on top of him, thighs planted either side, and his chest — his sticky, messy chest — folding down until he’s a warm, heavy weight on top of Ilya. 

“But it’s you who’s hurting,” Shane says, frustrated. “You get that?” 

Ilya isn’t sure he does. “You can’t fix it, Shane,” he says, and it sounds unkind. He didn’t mean it to. He searches Shane’s face for signs that he’s pushed him away, but he’s met with that same soft, smiling warmth. 

“I know that. I think.” There’s a long, quiet pause, where Shane’s nose scrunches and his brows knot a little closer. “You can still tell me, Ilya.” 

Ilya is still uncharacteristically quiet, like he’s processing a new approach to admitting to all the feelings he has, not just a select few. 

“Please,” Shane continues. “I want to know. I might not be able to help, but you won’t just be trying to carry it on your own. Please?” 

Ilya considers making a joke, promising to message Shane if he gets a papercut. Or, calling him out on the emotional warfare he’s employed by saying please, twice, and then fixing his soft dark eyes on him like he’s the only person in the world who matters. What he settles on, is, “Okay.” 

And then, because Shane still has that tiny furrow of doubt in his face, and because Ilya wants — needs — him to know that he really would give him the world if he asked: “I promise I will try.” 

He means it. He will. 

Chapter End Notes

So... the tooth is probably going to end up in their throne room.

And they still have a little more healing to do, between them, so we get one more trip to the dentist (to be updated in the next few days).

Thank you for the comments!

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

Ottawa, 2021

[Mandibular: R - First Bicuspid (28), R - Cuspid (27)]

Ilya is 30 years old, and tonight, he is determined to be the biggest pain in Montreal’s collective ass that he can be. It’s already a high bar; he’s been raising it for his entire hockey career after all. But now that Shane is off their team and safely on his, he’s feeling decidedly less playful about it.

He needs to see Montreal obliterated.

Chapter Notes

Ilya is 30 years old, and tonight, he is determined to be the biggest pain in Montreal’s collective ass that he can be. It’s already a high bar; he’s been raising it for his entire hockey career after all. But now that Shane is off their team and safely on his, he’s feeling decidedly less playful about it.

He needs to see Montreal obliterated. 

Shane is…less than thrilled, about Ilya’s plan to antagonise them. Ilya has watched Shane turning the other cheek for a few seasons too long, and he wants him to unleash a little well-deserved hell on his former team. Except, Shane has been wearing his dread for weeks. It’s there in the tightness between his shoulders and the increased hyper-restrictions of his meal plans. Whenever Ilya tries to strategize beyond gameplay logistics, Shane locks up, talks about repercussions, says things about it not being worth it, and shuts it down. Shuts himself down. Ilya’s been trying to crack that protective shell open for days and it’s only getting thicker. 

Right now, Ilya is watching the anxiety manifest in a restless tap-tapping of his fingers against his smoothie flask. 

“We should get there early,” Shane says. Voice clipped, eyes focused on the kitchen counter he’s sat at, the flask, then the window — anywhere but Ilya. “Or, we could run more plays. Maybe Wiebe—”

“Shane.” 

Ilya leans over Shane, pressing himself into his back, resting his chin on his head and wrapping his arms around Shane’s front. Holding, not trapping. 

“You are freaking out,” Ilya says, unnecessarily. He stays still; a reassuring pressure, he hopes. Ilya tries, so hard, not to hold onto hate. Or spite. Or vengeance. It’s the sort of energy that festers and turns to rot, and he has a life now that is so big, so warm and so kind, that hatred shouldn’t have a place in it. It’s just that, when he’s seen the way Shane’s old team had treated him, that fury surges through him like it’s brand new and hungry. 

Shane wraps his own arms around Ilya’s, pulling them to his chest and holding them in a hug. “I know,” he says. “I know.” 

“We can go whenever you want,” Ilya says, because Shane needs to be able to control what he can. And in this moment, this includes Ilya. “But, I think you might like to relax. First. Maybe?” 

Ilya demonstrates how they might do this, by pressing himself a little closer to Shane. The angle for this is not perfect; seated on the stool, it’s the small of Shane’s back that is now flush to Ilya’s crotch. But the point is being made. 

“Fuck off,” Shane smiles. “You’re impossible.” 

“Impossibly good to you, I know.” 

Ilya kisses Shane’s neck. Then his ear, then his hair, until Shane leans his head back to meet his mouth. He tastes like spinach, and Ilya is being a very good husband because he doesn’t break the kiss, or mention it. Instead, his hands find Shane’s hips, then the inside of his thighs, tapping them until Shane unhooks his feet from the stool to open them. Shane is ready to be relaxed, too. 

“Here?” Shane asks. He sounds hopeful, but also hesitant, like he needs instruction. Ilya is good at this part. 

“Here,” he agrees. “Elbows on the counter.” Shane obliges, leaning until his face is resting against the cool granite. “Good,” Ilya affirms. “Stay.” 

He doesn’t want to make Shane wait. Not when his anxiety is threatening to outrun his arousal at any second. It’s just that, he hadn’t had the foresight to leave lube in the kitchen. Rookie error. 

In the handful of seconds it takes Ilya to sprint back to the kitchen, Shane’s face has started to close off. 

“No, no,” Ilya tells him, hands pressing wide circles into the back of Shane’s shirt, like he’s dough being flattened. “Stay with me, solnyshko.” 

He works his hands under Shane’s shorts, kicking the stool out of the way, holding, pushing, pressing, until Shane makes a soft, guttural groan. 

“They have no idea how good you are,” Ilya tells him, and means it. He shoves the waistband of Shane’s shorts down, pooling them above his parted knees. “You owe them nothing,” he continues, and he wishes he’d chosen an angle that let him see Shane’s face more clearly, or let him grip that mouth in his own, but for now he uses his hands, his teeth and his body to hold Shane in place. “You owe me, sure. And maybe yourself. A bit. But mainly me.” And to make sure the point isn’t lost, because he needs Shane to really hear this, “Understand?” 

Shane nods, cheek against the worktop, mouth open and eyes glossy. 

“You understand, moy lyubovnik?” he repeats, preparing Shane with one damp finger, then two, then— 

“Fuck,” Shane answers. “Yeah. I— fuck. I do.” 

Ilya wants to melt every time Shane says those words: the memory that Shane chose him, always. Still chooses him. Him. He’s also sure Shane knows this, and deploys them as a form of emotional warfare, but given the immediate circumstances, he’ll let him have this one. 

Ilya takes his time getting Shane ready. Each time Shane lets impatience win out and starts backing into Ilya’s hand, Ilya slows a little more. Tells Shane how much he fucking matters, how he’s better than every other player they’ll share the ice with, tonight. “Except me, of course,” he says, pushing in. 

“Fuck you, Rozanov.” 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, holding Shane’s hips with bruising firmness. He doesn’t let Shane choose the rhythm, this time. Dragging out the pressure, the hold and the friction. Groaning as Shane tightens around him. Shane’s forearms are shaking against the counter, and it’s this obedience that nearly undoes him; the way that his entire body is folded to everything Ilya asks of him, like his body — his sculpted, nurtured, beautiful body — exists only for Ilya to take his pleasure out of. 

“Touch my fucking dick, Ilya,” grits Shane. “Please.” 

Ilya is not above teasing. 

“Nyet.” 

Shane’s whole body is a tremble, and it’s making it impossible to hold on for much longer. He’s close to tears and it’s too much, too perfect — except, Shane is lifting an arm off the counter and this isn’t how they’re doing this. Ilya smacks it back down, holding it in place and Shane fucking whimpers. Fuck. Ilya might be seeing stars, right now. All his energy is surging into his dick and he has maybe seconds before—  

“Ilya, fuck.”

Ilya gives in. His hand barely skims the leaking head of Shane’s cock, before they both come, hard and long and messy. 

“See?” Ilya says, pulling Shane back into his chest as the shaking subsides, planting slow, wet kisses on any bit of his skin he can reach. “We make the best team.” 

“We’re not — we’re not taking this to Wiebe as a team-building activity,” Shane says, pulling his shorts back up. There’s a small amount of tension creeping back into his voice, but it’s surface level. His smile is still there, open and loose. “I’m gonna shower.”

“Don’t clean yourself too well,” Ilya says, pulling his own pants up. “Keep me inside you. Maybe it will make your hockey better tonight.” 

“Oh, fuck you.”

“No,” Ilya tells him. “Fuck them. Tonight, we fuck them.” 

- 

Ottawa fans may be lower in numbers than Ilya is used to, but they make up for it in spirit and volume. It’s one of the few stadiums where the odd rainbow flag pops up amongst the sea of hats and coats, outside of Pride Night celebrations. Ilya may miss the ease and animosity of playing for Boston, but there’s a niceness to Ottawa that he’s learning to enjoy. 

More than that, he loves his team. He’s given them all the brief for tonight: Montreal cannot win. Montreal can take their too-quiet fans and their bigoted players shuffling back home with their tails between their legs, because the Ottawa Centaurs will not let them leave until they’ve been annihilated.

They’re warming up on the ice, and the tension is already thickening. Metros players skimming a little too close, words too blunt to be chirps, conspiratorial laughter. Playground shit. 

Drapeau is the first one to break formation, sliding into Shane’s space. Ilya pretends he’s not listening, not watching for the telltale rise of Shane’s shoulders as he braces for whatever’s next. 

“Hey Holly,” Drapeau says, like he’s reuniting with an old friend. Like he didn’t light that bridge on fire and take a shit on it last year. “It’s good that you’re, uh, so…open for the visiting team, yeah?” 

Christ, these men are children. It’s nothing they haven’t heard a hundred times already. Since being outed, they’ve been the recipients of the most bewildering language throughout the league, and all it’s really done is show how unimaginative most of these assholes are. That, and how much the refs are prepared to let slide. As long as no one says the F word into a mic, it’s all pretty much permissible. 

Shane doesn’t take his eyes off his stick. “Always happy to accommodate you, D,” he says, and then he does something Ilya has never seen him do in his life: he winks. Ilya feels it in his pants. Fuck. 

“What the fuck, man,” mumbles Drapeau, skating away from Shane like he’s trying to outrun the implications. 

What follows is a relay, of sorts. Players from Shane’s old life, trying their hand at little wind-ups. At the last one, a newer player Ilya doesn’t remember, a transfer from Tampa, Shane simply skates away before he’s managed two words. Impervious and indestructible. Perfect. 

Ilya is treated to a visit from Comeau — still far enough way to not be considered antagonistic, but pointed enough that both teams are watching as stealthily as they can. Comeau opens his mouth, and Ilya decides that he has absolutely no need or desire to hear what he has to say. 

“Save it,” Ilya tells him, grinning. “Don’t use up your only lines before we play. You need your breath, old man.” 

When the ref ushers them back to their own spaces, it’s not Ilya he’s shouting at, but at the sheepish “fuck off, Rozy,” from Comeau.

- 

The game is going hard, in Ottawa's favour. They’re in the third, sweating, grinning, bumping helmets. It’s not been an easy lead to maintain; the checks and chirps have been relentless, from both sides. The thing is, Shane is currently playing with the kind of tight ferocity that is making Ilya want to pin him to centre ice and fuck an impact crater in it so deep that even the Zambonis won’t be able to smooth it over. It’s taking a lot of willpower not to say as much to him, as they move into each other’s orbit. 

Someone big and fast gets in his way, and if Ilya didn’t love the game so much, he’d be furious that these assholes are interrupting perfectly good foreplay. 

“Not the first time you’ve done that tonight,” calls a voice to Ilya’s left, as Shane rights himself on one knee against the boards. Prick. Ilya’s there to intercept the puck, and, because he’s not getting sent to the pen this game, he doesn’t ram his stick into the mouthy prick — Leyland — who’s knocked his Shane over. 

It takes some stick work to manoeuvre the puck to Luca, and a little more until Ottawa boost their lead with another goal. Ilya could drink in the abject mortification on Drapeau’s face right now. 

He settles for winding up Hayden. He’s an easy target, but right now he’s the only one of the Metros that Ilya doesn’t want to string up from the rafters. And therefore, the only one he can safely talk to without earning a game misconduct. 

“Hey, Hayden,” he starts. “I know you like babies, but why do you have so many on your team?”

He skates away before any more accusations of ragebaiting can reach him. 

- 

He’s back on, with Shane, for the final few minutes. Montreal have a 4 goal deficit, and not a hope in hell of making it up. They’re lurching across the ice like the sorest of losers, and Shane is running rings around them. Literally. 

The whole game, Montreal have played as though they expected Shane to be his precise, careful, forceful self. The good boy, playing within the rules, living up to the standards of imposed by being a role model. An example. What they’ve been met with tonight is a version of Shane that is, for want of a less evocative word, unleashed. He’s churned players into boards, weaponised his whole body, and met every homophobic or covertly racist chirp with humour, spit, or both. Ilya will tell him, later, that he is sure it was partially due to his come, but for now he’s just alive with the spark of it. 

Montreal’s interception is brutal. 

Ilya feels Shane drop before he sees it; a thunk, a clatter of kit, body and helmet. A sideways skid against the ice. 

In the long seconds it takes to watch Shane curl into himself, hands tucked away on instinct, Ilya propels himself towards him. Someone is blocking his way. Someone else — fucking, Comeau — is spitting on the ice, too close to Shane’s face. Ilya is going to murder him. 

The refs and players are swarming. Bood is at Ilya’s right side, ready to hold him back from whatever he’s about to do, except Comeau is yelling at Ilya to come get your pansy husband. Ilya’s gloves are off before the words are out. He shakes off Bood’s hand on his shoulder as Comeau squares up to him, chest blocking his view of Shane, mouth full of slurs. Ilya spits at the ground, sending his mouthguard flying. Ah, shit. His fist is ready; he’s aiming for Comeau’s neck. Instead, he catches air. There’s something sharp across the base of his shins — an impact, and then a drag — he’s hooked from behind, yanked backwards, except the rest of his body is tilting forward. 

His knees hit the ice first. Hard. He braces for the rest of the fall; hands tucked into fists, elbow up to cushion his head, but the angle catches wrong; his jaw hits something before it touches the ice and there’s a crunch. Fuck. 

He’s seeing stars for the second time today, and this is a lot less fun this go around. 

What happens next is a mess. From his vantage point — curled into himself, head down, hands freezing against the ice under his jersey because he is not putting them in the path of anyone’s skates to push himself upright — Ilya can only see so much. What he hears, though, above the blood rushing in heavy whooshes through his ears, is his name. Not Rozanov, but Ilya. It’s Shane’s voice, ripping fast across the ice, and Ilya thinks briefly of echolocation. Like he could find Shane through any darkness, any chaos. The next thing that lovely voice says — roars, really — is “Fuck you, Comeau,” accompanied by a heavy thud. 

From Ilya’s cold place on the ice, he has the best seat in the house to watch Gil Comeau clatter downwards, helmet giving a short little bounce, as he lies on his side, stunned, staring directly at him. 

The fuzz of stars in Ilya’s brain is thickening, but sheer spite gives him the lucidity to grab onto that eye contact, grin, and spit. 

The last thing Ilya sees is Comeau’s horrified expression, at the red, toothy spittle sprayed across the ice between them. The last thing he feels, is hands beneath his armpits, pulling him upright, carrying him off the ice. The last thing he hears, is Shane’s adrenaline-soaked voice in his ear: 

“Fuck, that felt good.” 

- 

Shane tells him, later, that the next thing out of his mouth had been “Fuck, Ilya, are you okay?” because apparently, Ilya had laughed once, then immediately wilted, bodily, and it had taken both him and Wiebe to carry him to the medical room. Ilya doesn’t mind, at all, that Shane’s concerned words came secondary to his satisfaction, because he’s never thought anyone deserved a little retributive violence more than his husband. 

Shane disagrees. He’s wearing his guilt plainly, revisiting the final minutes of the game in excruciating detail, as he stacks ice packs, microfibre wraps and sports tape on the coffee table. Ilya lifts the first one and rests it against his still throbbing jaw. His dentist is going to kill him. 

“It wasn’t even Comeau I was mad at,” Shane explains, leaning to wrap the next of the ice packs around Ilya’s left knee. “I mean, I was mad. At him.” 

Ilya tests the tension and his range of movement. It’s like a deep sea creature is kissing his leg, but he’s had less pleasant sensations. It’s going to make some of his more pleasant activities a little harder, but he’s sure they’ll manage a workaround. 

“You were feral,” Ilya tells him fondly, as Shane kneels between his legs to repeat the wrap on his right knee. “Like, ah, opposum. Let me do your ribs?”

“A…possum?” Shane asks, standing up and pushing the next pack into Ilya’s chest a little too forcefully. 

“Yes. Shirt off,” Ilya instructs, and the way Shane moves to his words is definitely softening a few of the aches coursing through him. “Closer,” he says, taking in Shane’s multicoloured ribs. “Scratchy, bite-y feral thing.” 

“Oh, you wish,” Shane says, and he’s leaning in so close that Ilya’s face is flush against his chest. He kisses a nipple, just because it’s right there and it would be rude not to. “I didn’t bite anyone,” Shane adds, except he sounds almost wistful about it. 

Ilya reaches around his torso to wind the wrapping in place, once, then twice, then a third loop of the tape. “Next time, then. Not too tight?” he checks, and then, because he can’t argue with the reflexive urge to see an injury on his man and want to kiss it better, he does. 

“Mmm.” Shane sits back down on the floor, curling between Ilya’s padded knees, and rests his head on Ilya’s thigh. “I wanted to take out Leyland,” he says. His hands are running small circles on Ilya’s stomach. Ilya strokes his hair in answer. “He’s the one who hooked you.” 

Ilya hadn’t known this, at the time. Knowing whose stick it was that put him down didn’t help the fact that he’d been floored by it. He’s grateful for Shane for keeping score. And to Bood and Barrett, who’d apparently gone after him, but he’s already been en route to the sin bin, saving the Centaurs any more retaliatory penalties. 

“You will get him next time. Then you can bite him.” 

“I’m…I’m not gonna bite anyone, Ilya,” Shane says, as though he is answering a legitimate coaching suggestion from his captain. 

“Okay,” Ilya concedes. “He probably tastes bad. Me though, I do not taste bad.” 

Shane takes the bait, between his teeth, and presses his mouth to the inside of Ilya’s thigh. “You don’t,” he agrees. Kisses the same spot, then nips, a little higher. And Ilya wants this to progress, he really, desperately does — but his body still feels raw. Too cold, too warm, not…not together enough. He’s about to say as much, but Shane is already shifting the touch back to comfort, not teasing. 

“How bad is it hurting?” Shane asks. 

“Not…” Ilya catches himself. “Not good.” 

Shane murmurs in agreement, rests his head back into Ilya. 

“I know it’s hockey,” Ilya continues, stroking Shane’s head. “If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not the real thing,” he says, the familiar sentiment echoing through years of training. Conditioning. 

“That’s not what tonight was,” Shane corrects, and for a second, he sounds so miserable about it. Defeated. Like it was inevitable. The residual homophobic bullshit that’s been dogging them since the outing. 

“No,” Ilya agrees. “It was about your old team being terrible fucking people.” 

“Yeah,” Shane sighs. Then, “Still felt good laying Comeau out, though.” 

It hurts, to laugh, but Ilya can’t help it. Despite the pain of it all, the knowledge that Shane Hollander, cleanest player in the entire league, flattened the guy — moments after his own fall, no less — will forever be one of his favourite memories. Shane’s laughing too, and this has to be killing his battered ribs. 

“Our whole team had our backs,” Shane says, sobering, with a hint of wonder. “They’d have probably skinned Leyland on the ice if the ref hadn’t got in the way.” 

This revelation isn’t new to Ilya; the last two years have been a vibrant showcase of the kind of casual kindness that had been absent from everything he’d been taught to expect from the world. He’s worried that it’s been made new to Shane. Tonight was about more than just protecting teammates; it was about defending the people you cared about, whether they’re on the ice or off it. He needs Shane to understand this, the way Shane has been helping him. 

“Here,” Ilya gestures, patting the sofa next to him. “I need you closer.” 

Shane climbs up, and folds himself into Ilya’s chest, letting out a laboured groan as his ribs adjust to the movement. “Better,” he agrees. “How’s your jaw?” 

“Fucking terrible,” Ilya laughs, switching hands to adjust the ice pack and use the other to hold Shane’s shoulder closer to him. “Will be fine in a few days. Stop worrying, solnyshko. How are your ribs?” 

“They suck, and I’m allowed to worry,” Shane grumbles. “We all are.” And then, “You care so easily.” 

Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just pulls Shane a little closer. 

“You’re there, for everyone. Little stuff. You’re there for my dad, when he’s overthinking stuff on boardgame nights, you think of the right thing to say to talk him back down.” 

“Is easy,” Ilya answers. “Your dad is like you. Except I can’t calm him down the same way. Would not be appropriate, I think.” 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” 

Ilya smiles into Shane’s hair and tries very hard to not explore that line of thinking any further, because yikes. 

“And with the team. Especially the rookies. The ones who’ve come from outside Canada—”

“Yes, America is a scary place to be from,” Ilya says, sagely. 

“Shut up. You give so much. You see so much. I’ve never known anyone who cares as much as you do.” 

“Is easy,” Ilya says again. “Especially with you.” 

Shane makes a contented noise, curling himself closer into Ilya, then mutters a quiet fuck when his ribs complain. He’s still got his pensive, thinking face on, so Ilya knows he’s not quite done, yet. 

“Hey, hey,” Ilya says gently. “We should go to bed. Lay flat. Help each other up?” 

Shane nods, winces. “You see what I mean?” he asks Ilya, pointedly. 

Moving with two ice packs strapped to the knees is not easy, but with enough patience, balance, muttered swearing and shared support, they manage the short walk to the bed. 

Ilya collapses first, planting himself flat on his back, sticking his arms up in the air for Shane to join him. 

“I don’t wanna break your ribs,” he says, instead placing himself gently next to Ilya. Ilya rolls over him, wrapping his legs across Shane’s. “Fuck, your knees are cold.” 

“So is your chest,” Ilya answers, pulling the blanket up so it covers them up to their chins, in a perfect nest. 

Shane is stroking Ilya’s face when he speaks again, thumb running small loops over his too-warm jaw. “You’re so easy to love.”

“You are saying I am easy?” Ilya asks, chin resting on Shane’s chest so he can be sure his indignation is visible. 

Shane doesn’t tell him to shut up, or fuck off, or any of their usual playful deflections, and Ilya feels slightly guilty for making a joke from Shane’s sincerity. 

“I mean, I don’t think you always know that? I think…sometimes, you think you have to earn the same care that you give to everyone else.” Shane is speaking carefully, cautiously, like even now, he’s still afraid of spooking Ilya with big feelings. “And we’re not exactly…we’re probably gonna have more shit like tonight. Not as bad, I hope. But we get banged up.” 

“We do,” agrees Ilya, biting his tongue to not make a play on the fact that Shane has just talked about being banged. His eyes are prickling and dammit, he is not going to cry because  his fucking husband is being nice to him. 

“You don’t have to earn it, Ilya,” Shane says. “I just…I need you to know that. I care about you, I love you, because it’s as easy to me as breathing.” 

Fuck, Ilya is definitely crying now, tears dropping onto Shane’s neck where he’s nestled. “Breathing is not easy for you right now,” he counters. “Your ribs are fucked up.” 

“Oh my god. I’m trying to tell you I love you, you asshole,” he says, and now his voice sounds wet, too. “And that I will murder anyone who tries to hurt you.” 

Ilya doesn’t try and hide the fact he’s crying, putting his damp face on Shane’s, kissing him with his too-sore mouth. 

Shane murmurs the words into the spaces between Ilya’s teeth. “Ya tebya lyublu.”

“I love you,” Ilya agrees. “So fucking much.”

- 

Chapter End Notes

With apologies for this update taking so long. Life (and death) has been playing havoc with everything.

The upside to having a fresh load of emotional upheaval is that I am apparently hiding out in fictional hockey-land for the foreseeable, and have a few more Situations I would like to put these guys in. Maybe less dental-oriented for the next round.

Thank you for reading! I am also on tumblr as Muffichka, but it's an untagged dumpster fire in there.