Short, horny, angsty, I don't know, hope you like it.

“There is something for you in hall,” Ilya says.

Shane, who had been halfway through pulling on his briefs, pauses while balanced on one leg on Ilya’s bedroom carpet to look up at where the bathroom door has been cracked open.

There’s steam leaking out through the gap, obscuring Ilya’s face. “On table by door,” he says, over the sound of the shower hitting the tiles behind him. He shuts the door again.

Shane, left alone in Ilya’s room, wavers on his planted foot for a moment before regaining his balance and pulling his underwear all the way on.

It had been strange, today. Ilya had fucked him from behind, with his hands on Shane’s hips, and Shane hadn’t even had to remind him once to keep his grip away from the piercing still healing on the left side of Shane’s chest.

Shane hadn’t been able to shake the impression, even when Ilya was so deep inside him he could only breathe in shallow pants, that Ilya was thinking about something else.

And then, afterward, when Shane had sat back down on the bed beside Ilya, looked at Ilya’s chest, and thought about laying his head there, Ilya had leaned in toward him to say, “You can shower first.”

Shane had bitten back his disappointment and gotten up to follow Ilya’s suggestion.

Now he’s getting dressed in Ilya’s room, alone, skin still damp, listening to the shower from the other side of the bathroom wall.

Shane always feels twitchy, when he and Ilya don’t touch, afterward. He frowns at the visible tremor in his hands as he reaches down to collect his pants from where he’d folded them on the dresser.

Once he’s fully dressed, Shane pads in his socks out of Ilya’s bedroom, across his silent apartment and toward the front door. He’d dropped an overnight bag, there, on his way in, in case Ilya had wanted him to stay. They’ve been doing that, sometimes, lately.

It’s slightly humiliating to see it now, sitting on the floor beneath where Shane hung his light spring jacket on one of the hooks by the door.

Shane had tucked the bracelet Ilya had given him into the bag, just before he’d left the hotel. It had felt like too much to wear it here. He’s still not sure how big of a deal it had been to Ilya, to slip it into Shane’s jacket pocket the last time he was over. They haven’t spoken about it since.

He’s glad, now, that he’d left it in his bag. He’s starting to wonder if Ilya regretted giving it to him.

Shane thinks it would kill him, a little, if Ilya asked for it back.

Beside the coat hooks, there’s a rectangular table against the wall with a small, gift-wrapped box waiting on the marble top.

Shane hesitates. He is struck by the absurd concern he’s being pranked. He glances around the hall, as if there’s some possibility Ilya might be waiting there to jump out and laugh at him, before reaching up to pick up the square box.

It’s wrapped in golden paper.

Shane’s lip curls. Ilya can’t fucking help himself. It's the same color of the bear on the Boston jersey.

Shane turns the box over, carefully peels the tape back, slides the thick wrapping paper off without tearing it. He places the box down on the table, folds the paper into a neat square, places it down on the marble.

When Shane picks up the box again, he pulls the lid off to see a pair of golden cufflinks glittering on a velvet pad inside.

Shane blinks.

He isn’t sure what he had been expecting. Whatever it was, it had been raunchier than cufflinks.

The cufflinks are made of the brightest gold he’s ever seen. They catch the afternoon sunlight leaking in from the window across the hall so brilliantly it’s like they’re emitting light of their own.

Shane picks one up, carefully, between thumb and forefinger. The face is a smooth round circle. The tiny stones set in the sides of the disc sparkle as Shane turns it to the side.

“For award show,” Ilya says.

Shane startles. He hadn’t heard Ilya come into the wall. But there he is, standing just outside the kitchen, one towel around his shoulders and another slung low around his waist, face flushed and wet hair gleaming in the sunlight haloed around his head.

“You are hosting Emmys,” Ilya says. “You will wear a nice suit. These are nice for nice suit, yes?”

“It’s the Sports Emmys,” Shane corrects, looking down at the cufflink again. He can’t stop turning it from side to side, watching the way the gems sparkle. “It’s way less prestigious than the Emmys. And I’m not hosting, I’m just announcing an award winner, but—” It occurs to him, abruptly, that none of that matters. “Thank you,” he finishes, and raises his head to look back at Ilya.

He doesn’t get to see Ilya’s face again. Ilya has already turned away, lifting up the towel around his shoulders to scrub it through his hair as he walks back down the hall. “Have to get ready for practice,” he calls over his shoulder. “See you later, Hollander.”

Shane watches Ilya turn the corner and vanish deeper into his apartment without looking back.

Sometimes Shane wishes he had someone he could talk to about sex. It’s an absurd thought; it’s one he’s thought before. It would be nice to have someone else, a neutral third-party observer, to explain to him how to tell the difference between what someone does because it turns them on, and what someone does when they're thinking about you even when they're not already getting hard.

Maybe Shane would be able to act more normal about all of this, if he did.

“See you later,” Shane says, quietly, way too long after Ilya turned out of sight. He carefully places the cufflink back on the velvet before sliding the top of the box back on and reaching for his duffel.

*

Shane usually makes sure to put some distance between himself and Ilya’s place before calling a car, not that rideshare drivers anywhere outside of Canada ever seem to recognize him. It’s just for good measure.

It’s a beautiful day today, though. The air feels cool and fresh against his cheeks. The tree branches hanging over the streets are heavy with shivering pink clumps of cherry blossoms.

Shane walks farther than he normally would, ignoring the annoying weight of his duffel thumping against his back. It feels good, when he turns his face upward, to feel the sun on his cheeks.

He is pretty sure Ilya had said, earlier, that the Bears didn’t have practice today.

The sidewalks are crowded with people enjoying the weather, enough that Shane tugs his hat low down over his face in case any of running into any passersby who happen to be hockey fans. People are drinking coffee at sidewalk cafes, window shopping at boutiques that have thrown their doors and windows open to let in the air.

One of the storefronts across the street catches Shane’s eye.

He stops and turns to look. The glitter from his peripheral vision turns out to be coming from the front window of a pawn shop, where mannequin torsos draped in jeweled necklaces are watching him sightlessly through the glass.

Shane hesitates, but just for a moment. Then he’s hiking up his duffel bag, jogging across the street, waving at a car he’s jaywalking in front of before hopping up onto the opposite sidewalk and approaching the pawn shop.

The bell over the door rings as Shane steps inside. It’s a small shop, small enough that Shane has to turn sideways to shuffle in through a narrow entryway hung with guitars and old clocks.

A balding man waiting behind a glass counter laden with watches looks up when he sees Shane. “Hello,” he says.

It’s impressive how much Boston accent he can fit into just that one word. “Hello,” Shane echoes, and steps forward. He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, emerges holding the gift box. “I was wondering—”

God damn it. Shane had really thought, until that moment, he was going to be able to get through this without blushing.

Shane swallows and pushes through it. “I was wondering if you could tell me how much these are worth,” he says, and slides the box across the counter.

The man has bandages on the tips of his fingers, but he doesn’t wince as he slides the lid of the box off. Shane watches his face to see his eyebrows lift, minutely, when he sees what’s inside.

The man turns, digs around on a workbench behind him, returns holding a small eyepiece shaped like a figure eight.

He lifts it to his right eye and bends over the box, peers down at the cufflinks. “Wow,” he says.

Shane swallows. “Wow, what?”

“Gorgeous cuts on the diamonds,” the man says. “Really high quality.”

“Diamonds,” says Shane. He is aware his voice sounds faint.

The man lowers his eyepiece so that he can stare at Shane. Then he leans back in to peer at the cufflinks, prods at the right one with his bandaged fingertip. “Value’ll be down, slightly, because of the engravement. These will still resell real well, though. I’d have to look into a few things, but I’m sure we could get you at least 8k.”

Shane says, thinly, “Eight thousand dollars?”

Every time the man removes his eyepiece, it’s to give Shane a look like he’s trying to figure out whether Shane’s an alien who just landed on earth for the first time. “Yeah, dollars. As opposed to what?”

“Wait,” says Shane. He feels like his thoughts are lagging, like he’s somehow struggling to keep up. He feels a little stunned. “Did you say engravement?”

“Yeah,” says the man. “The one on the back.” He carefully pinches one of the cufflinks, turns it over, shows Shane the other side of the golden disk.

The letter ‘R’ is etched into the center.

The man says, “Are you alright?”

Shane swallows. He looks back up at the man. “What?”

“Are you alright,” repeats the man, slowly. “You made a weird noise.”

“Um, yes,” Shane says. “Fine. I’m fine. I… thank you for the information. I’ll be in touch, if you, um… have a business card or anything.”

The man doesn’t say anything else. He just places the cufflink back in the box, sets the top back on, and slides it over the counter to Shane.

He hands Shane his card with an expression that says he knows Shane is never going to use it.

*

Shane spends a few minutes pacing back and forth on the asphalt behind the back entrance to Ilya’s building, until he’s sweaty, and the duffel bag is cutting into his shoulder, and he’s agitated enough to give in and text Ilya. Can you come get me? I’m at the back.

And then he has to wait there for another few minutes, tapping impatiently at his phone and wondering if he should give up and circle around to the front of the building and attempt to invent a lie good enough to impress Ilya’s doorman, when the latch to the door at the back stairwell clicks open.

Ilya doesn’t open the door all the way. He holds it just far enough that he can look out, his expression shuttered. He’s in a Bears t-shirt and jeans.

“You don’t have practice today,” says Shane. His heart is beating very fast.

Ilya frowns. “What do you want, Hollander?”

“Can I just…” Shane glances over his shoulder, into the parking lot. “Can I come in?”

Ilya hesitates, for a moment. Then he steps back, pulling the door open.

Shane steps into the back stairwell, a grey concrete room filled with bikes and snow shovels and bags of salt, and drops his bag. As the door bangs shut behind him Shane rounds on Ilya, who is standing by the side of the stairwell, and says, “How much did those cufflinks cost?”

It comes out as a demand, really, more than a question.

Ilya doesn’t look smug. He looks almost afraid. “Does it really matter, Hollander?”

“Yes,” says Shane, fiercely. “Those are diamonds.”

Ilya licks his lips. “They are… subtle. Small. Not too flashy, on camera.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Shane says. He takes a step toward Ilya, who shifts back, almost imperceptibly, into the shadow of the stairs. “How much were they?”

“Hollander,” Ilya says.

“How much?"

"I can't remember."

"How much did they cost, Ilya?”

Shane can see, even in the dim beneath the stairwell, as Ilya’s pupils dilate. He says, his voice hoarse, “Maybe… ten thousand, I think.”

Shane reaches out. He puts his hand in the center of Ilya’s chest and pushes him back further into the shadow under the staircase.

Ilya’s shoulders are still smacking into the wall beneath the stairs when Shane drops to his knees on the concrete and scrabbles at Ilya’s fly.

Ilya's voice cracks, this time, when he says, “Hollander.”

It’s easier for Shane to swallow him down, when he’s mostly soft like this.

Ilya lets out a noise, a deep grunting sound that makes it sound like he’s just been punched in the gut. There’s a soft clunk, like his head has just fallen back against the wall.

His cock is getting harder, stiffening against Shane’s tongue, nudging at his soft palate.

Shane’s eyes slip half-closed. He’s starting to drool. His mouth makes a slick sound as he pulls back.

He presses three wet kisses to the head before he opening wider, sucking Ilya back inside.

Sometimes it embarrasses Shane, how much he likes this. He can’t remember why, now. Ten thousand dollars, he thinks. And then he closes his eyes, half-yawns to open his throat, and swallows Ilya down.

Ilya is saying something above him, although Shane can’t quite make it out. Either it’s in Russian, or it’s getting garbled by the way he’s hissing it through his teeth. Ilya’s hands come down, clamp hard over each side of Shane’s face.

Pin Shane’s head in place.

It feels like an electric shock at the base of Shane’s spine. Shane jolts in Ilya’s grip. One of Shane’s hands snakes down to grip at himself, hard, through his pants.

Ilya tightens his hold, curls his fingers around Shane’s ears. And he begins to slowly, carefully, move Shane’s head over his cock.

Shane stops moving. He holds his throat open and takes it. It’s so loud, the sound of it, the wet echo in the stairwell. There is drool dripping down his chin, a hot ache at the back of his mouth. He’s so turned on he’s shaking with it, all over, from his lips over Ilya’s cock to the hand frantically rubbing at the front of his jeans, against the stiff press of his dick against the denim.

Ilya grunts. He twitches his hips upward, pulls Shane’s face in toward him.

It’s like Shane’s being used.

Shane’s hand spasms on the front of his jeans.

And then Shane is spurting come into his briefs, and it hurts, it fucking hurts, the friction of the denim too much, the jerky press of his hand not enough, but he can’t help it, he’s dizzy with how turned on he is, he’s sick with it.

Ilya’s fingers tighten over Shane’s face. He holds Shane’s skull in place, curls down over Shane, grunting as his cock pulses come against the roof of Shane’s mouth.

For a moment, they stay like that, Ilya hunched over Shane, his hands still clamped over Shane’s ears, his dick slowly going soft on Shane’s tongue.

Then Ilya loosens his grip, and they slowly disentangle.

Shane sits back on his heels, panting, and licks his lips. He’s still twitching all over, from the tips of his fingertips to his toes. He isn’t sure if his legs are going to hold him, once he stands.

His pants are starting to feel heavy and uncomfortably wet, and the room is coming back into focus, and it’s like he’s suddenly realizing— “Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “Are there cameras in here?”

Ilya, still leaning against the wall, tugs his briefs clumsily up over his ass before sliding down to sit on the concrete, opposite where Shane is still kneeling, his legs sprawling out as wide as the jeans still shoved halfway down his thighs will let him. He’s still trying to catch his breath when he tells Shane, “No. No camera.”

“But how do you know,” says Shane. He raises a shaking hand, finds his chin is still wet with drool, starts frantically mopping at his mouth with his sleeve. “What was I fucking thinking, oh my god, I—”

Ilya reaches out, grabs Shane’s wrist, pulls his hand away from his lips. He leans in and closes his mouth over Shane’s.

The kiss is long, and warm, and chaste, just lips and barely any tongue, even though they’re both still open-mouthed and panting.

Even though all Shane can taste is come.

When Ilya pulls back, his hair is messy, and there’s still a red flush high on his cheeks. But his expression is serious, as he looks at Shane. “I know,” he says, “because I took camera.”

His hand is still loosely circled around Shane’s wrist. Shane finds himself wishing Ilya would tighten his grip. “What?”

“Camera was in that corner,” says Ilya. He reaches up his free hand, points toward the ceiling over Shane’s left shoulder. “I stole camera. You always come in this way. I thought, maybe no camera, you won’t worry.”

Shane swallows. He says, after a moment, “If your building gets robbed, it’s going to be your fault.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, solemnly.

Shane reaches up. He closes his free hand over the fingers Ilya has loosely wrapped around his wrist. “I’m embarrassed,” he whispers.

Ilya’s eyes dip down to the front of Shane’s pants.

“Not by that,” Shane snaps, pulling his thighs together, wincing at the pull of the damp fabric. “By… I’m not materialistic, okay?” He realizes, as he says it, how ridiculous it sounds, when he’s still sitting here in a pool of his own come because of how excited he had just gotten at the idea of diamond cufflinks. He soldiers on anyway. “You don’t have to spend money on me. You shouldn’t spend money on me.”

Ilya looks back up at Shane’s face. He wraps his fingers tighter around Shane’s wrist, tight enough that Shane can feel his bones creak.

Shane can feel his eyelids droop lower.

“Is embarrassing for me, too,” Ilya says.

Shane’s eyes stutter back open. “What? Really?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Because I am doing it for me.”

“Doing what? Spending a crazy amount of money on me?”

“I spend because I like you in pretty things," Ilya says. "Is for me, not you.”

Shane feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “That’s really selfish of you.”

“It is,” Ilya agrees, his expression still serious. “You are very good, to let me decorate you. You…” he hesitates, then.

It’s not the way he pauses when he’s trying to think of an English word. It’s more like he’s trying to brace himself for something.

Ilya says, after a moment, “You still have bracelet?”

Shane’s eyes widen. “The one you gave me?”

“Yes,” says Ilya.

“Of course,” Shane says. “I wear it all the time.” It had felt weird, really, to take it off before coming here today.

Ilya’s expression relaxes, slightly. Shane hadn’t even really realized how tense it had been, until it goes loose.

Shane is about to say something when Ilya abruptly starts to rise, getting his feet underneath him, tugging at his grip on Shane’s arm and pulling up his jeans with the other. “Come,” he says, fumbling his fly closed one-handed. “Let’s clean.”

“So many showers, today,” Shane mutters. His knees creak as he stands.

Ilya gives his wrist another little squeeze. “Can do together,” he suggests. “To save time.”

Shane tries his best not to sound too eager when he says, "Okay."

“But I really do have thing, later,” Ilya says.

Thing, Shane thinks. Not practice, then. Maybe not even with his team.

If Ilya wanted to tell him what it was, he would. It’s not like he would have said anything about it to Shane at all, if Shane hadn’t insisted on coming back here, if he hadn’t forced his way into Ilya’s building and shoved his face onto Ilya’s dick.

If Shane hadn’t made Ilya tell him, for a second time, he can’t stay the night.

For the second time that afternoon, Shane swallows his humiliation. He says, again, “Okay.”

He steps forward, then, and lets Ilya lead him by that grip on his wrist out from under the stairwell, around and up onto the stairs.

He doesn’t say anything about the duffel bag he’d dropped by the door. He can just grab it on his way back out. Hopefully, Ilya hadn’t even noticed he’d brought it.

*

Shane is backstage in Los Angeles, a few days later, leaning up against a wall in a new suit, makeup on his face and gel in his hair, listening to whatever award introduction’s taking place right now as he scrolls through social media.

He’s doing his best to distract himself from the fact that he’s about to go out there and tell a joke. When he’d said it into the empty room during the mic test earlier that afternoon, all he’d been able to imagine was a crowd full of people looking at him like they couldn’t imagine anyone being less funny.

Shane’s good at hockey. He doesn’t really know why he keeps getting roped into doing anything else.

The attempt at distracting himself turns out to work too well. Shane’s thumb pauses, mid-scroll, over a post from an Ilya Rozanov fan account.

Shane knows he shouldn’t look. He’s muted most of the big Rozanov accounts, by now, because when he kept clicking on the posts the algorithm kept feeding him more to the point he got afraid that Hayden, or someone, would grab his phone and open his feed to discover it’s mostly Rozanov highlights.

It’s not even fair, really, that it would look weird. At the end of the day, Shane does like watching Rozanov play hockey.

He really does have beautiful hands.

This post isn’t a game highlight, though. It looks like a paparazzi shot, taken from the sidewalk outside of a bar, or maybe a club.

Shane wonders if it’s from the same day as the last time he saw Ilya. That night when Ilya had said he had a thing.

He hesitates. He glances around to make sure no one’s standing beside him, in this dark backstage passageway draped in black canvas and wires, before tapping to expand the photo.

Ilya’s smiling. His collarbone is visible beneath the buttons undone at the top of his shirt. He has a cigarette, in one hand, held loosely at his side.

He’s with his friend, that gorgeous thin Russian girl with the big curls, the one whose father won those Olympic medals with Russia. His big hand is tight around her slim waist, pulling her in close against his side as they walk in step.

Shane stares at the wide spread of Ilya’s fingers, digging into the bunched-up side of her dress. He can tell Ilya’s gotten not just fabric but flesh in his grip. He knows exactly what that grip feels like.

Ilya’s friend has gold bangles stacked on her wrist. The way they’re reflecting the flash of the camera makes it look like they’re emitting light of their own.

“Shane,” someone says from beside him.

The screen goes black as Shane automatically locks his phone. He looks up to see one of the show aides standing across from on the other side of the backstage hall, smiling at him through the headset mic over her mouth.

“Your cue’s coming up soon,” she says, cheerfully. “Follow me, and we’ll get you ready to walk out on stage, okay?”

Shane forces a smile. “Okay,” he says. As he falls into step behind her, he reaches down, slides his hand under the edge of his right suit-jacket sleeve, gets one finger over the warm gold disc of the cufflink.

He presses down until he can feel the shape of the etched letter R against his wrist.