Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Recreational Drug Use, bipolar Ilya Rozanov is my raison d'etre, vaguely gross sex stuff

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-10 Words: 3,960 Chapters: 1/1

the phone is a fine invention

Summary

So they fuck, then shower, then settle out by the fire under Shane’s nicest Pendleton blanket to sip them and touch each other. Ilya strokes through Shane’s hair with a firm hand. The night sounds around them are delightful. Out in the lake, a fish jumps. The water laps gently against the dock, the vaguest ding, ding, ding. Shane’s brain is very quiet.

“Hmmm… tell me. Favorite color?” Ilya grumbles. Shane is lazing across his front. “Favorite food.”

Notes

If you read & commented on my latest fic thank you, I love you more than life itself.

They have their claws in me okay.

Ilya is infinitely charming and sweet as sugar. Shane realizes this soon into their now-official relationship and marination at the cottage, particularly post-meet-the-parents, post-I-love-yous.

Each new facet of Ilya’s infinite, sparkling personality that Shane is able to unlock he covets greedily, like how Ilya checks the stove three times after they’re done cooking to make sure it’s off, how Ilya smacks loudly on gum during his workouts and likes to blast a crazy playlist that’s basically just Russian rap and Madonna, with some metal sprinkled in. Enough metal that Shane had put a blanket ban on the speakers if they were working out together. He can still hear the tinny music from outside of Ilya’s earbuds, even over his podcasts. Enough to worry about his hearing.

Ilya is sometimes quite fruity, when he relaxes. He’ll drape a limp wrist at Shane’s cheek when he maneuvers Shane to rest his head on his arm in the tub at bathtime, will giggle high-pitched and squealing if Shane surprises him.

He’d gleefully housed an entire bottle of pink wine while gossipping with Yuna after the second dinner, animated and delightful like how gay guys can get around their straight girlfriends. He had been totally unwound, hair slowly growing more tangled and frizzy as the night went on, gripping Yuna’s elbow and laughing to the ceiling, long, elegant neck thrown back and cording.

Shane had been tired, and eventually had realized he’d been sitting in silence just watching them, that his cheeks ached from smiling at Ilya, at his mom, at the dim light of the lamp casting across them both and the hazy feeling of one beer.

Shane likes to hold Ilya’s entire head in his lap. It’s very heavy, and large, and it grounds his hips like he is free to release every modicum of tension within his body into the couch. It always starts with his ears, a burning at the feel of Ilya’s silken curls between his fingers. Then the feeling trickles down to his shoulders, his neck, through his chest, until his entire body is humming and good, is the only way he could explain it. He likes to take a handful of Ilya’s curls and squeeze gently, likes to wrap them one at a time around his pinkie finger and then unwrap them, curl them up again with little twists. He likes to press the back of his hand against Ilya’s forehead, his heavy brow, like he’s taking his temperature.

Ilya can be achingly gentle. Sometimes he takes one of Shane’s fingers between two of his own just to hold it softly. If Shane reads to him he drifts off to sleep in minutes, always lightly snoring. His snores are more of a purr, low grumbles that Shane likes to feel against his cheek with his head on Ilya’s chest.

And that napping, Ilya loves naps and can take them anywhere. One morning after a marathon night Shane had been in the shower and come out to Ilya asleep with his cheek on the table, oatmeal half-eaten before him and spoon tilting in his relaxed hand. He’d woken him with a finger trailed under his eyes and across his elegant nose, bundled him up in his arms- his giant, giant man, brought him right back to bed. Hadn’t given a second thought to leaving food out to rot. Had fallen asleep right then with Ilya’s purr around him and big arms bracketing him like he was freezing cold and leeching Shane’s warmth.

Ilya looks very handsome while smoking. He blows the smoke upwards with a little underbite, or he lets the cigarette hang precariously between his generous and oil-painted lips, right in the middle as he sprays the hose at Shane while he tries to lie in the grass. He likes to smoke while cooking. Of course, Shane does not allow this inside, but they are on vacation. He allows Ilya to make him salsa and guacamole outside, where he can smoke and twirl a glass of vodka between his long fingers.

He looks so Russian, eyebrows heavy with concentration, pink knuckles. No matter what he is doing to get caught up with that face on his face, he always sidles little sneaky glances at Shane every thirty seconds, pretty mottled hazel eyes flashing with delight just at the sight of him, cigarette sometimes held right between his teeth as he grins wide and then closes his mouth to rip it harshly, funnel out smoke like a freight train after.

He is a man of extremes. Shane has always known this, but gluts himself on it for two stretching weeks. Ilya is either up or down, full-speed or wrapped up in blankets in bed that he likes to sneak over his head and under his chin, cozy. Every millimeter of him is precious and dear. His pretty eyelashes, the handsome curve of his jaw, the veins at his inner elbows.

Shane has to put his mouth on every bit of skin. He spends a night obsessively pinning Ilya down right in the dead center of the bed and trailing his lips in lines from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. A trillion kisses all along him. He flips him over and touches each mole, counting. Ilya keeps reaching back for him to try to feel him up, making him lose count again, and again, and again.

Ilya’s ass is a revelation. Every inch of him is Shane’s, for Shane to do as he pleases. Ilya is teaching him Russian very slowly. He eats pickles out of the jar with his fingers, not a fork.

Shane keeps a locked note on his phone with a list of things that Ilya says he likes, and things he merely deduces that Ilya likes. It doesn’t have a title, but starts off with “American Spirits - blue” and trails down and down into “presents,” “yellow peppers (more than green/red/orange),” and “needs nice bathrobe?” Shane has forty-one things listed, so far. He’s a little worried it’ll get too long. Maybe he can do one for each month, to keep things categorized more neatly. Or, he could separate lists into categories. Like, “Food,” “Drink,” “Books,” etc. It just depends.

Ilya laughs a lot. Shane had known this, but now that they’re spending days and nights together it’s even more apparent. Ilya laughs more than anyone Shane has ever known. Sometimes Ilya smiles or laughs to himself for no reason. Shane would like to crawl up inside of his brain to watch what goes on, what makes him laugh like this. If he asks, Ilya will sometimes explain, but sometimes it’s as if he doesn’t have the words and will just haul Shane in to make out with him.

Ilya has deep laugh lines around his eyes and down his cheeks that crack open when he smiles, around a cigarette, with water dripping down his face, in the car in the dull heat.

Ilya buys them some kind of sparkling THC drinks one afternoon while they’re in town for groceries. Shane finds it somehow impossible to deny him this because he’d smoked a bit in high school and remembered liking the feeling, also couldn’t imagine denying Ilya anything. Secretly likes the idea of being safely impaired with him more than alone or with anyone else. Already misses him, if he thinks too hard about it. Wants to be so close to him that he’s inside of him.

So they fuck, then shower, then settle out by the fire under Shane’s nicest Pendleton blanket to sip them and touch each other. Ilya strokes through Shane’s hair with a firm hand. The night sounds around them are delightful. Out in the lake, a fish jumps. The water laps gently against the dock, the vaguest ding, ding, ding. Shane’s brain is very quiet.

“Hmmm… tell me. Favorite color?” Ilya grumbles. Shane is lazing across his front. “Favorite food.”

Shane smiles. He’s already feeling it, his forehead nice and warm, his own heartbeat slow in his ears. Ilya trails a finger down the curve of his neck.

“Um, blue,” Ilya scoffs.

“Bo-ring!” He is speaking hushedly. That growling rolled r goes right down to Shane’s toes. Shane giggles.

“Favorite food, I guess… if you’re talking like, bad food, pizza maybe? But with lots of stuff on it. All the meat, and veggies, olives. Pineapple.”

Ilya hums. Scratches at his scalp. Shane shivers, slaps a hand down on Ilya’s big thigh under the blanket.

“And?” Shane asks.

“Okay, um. Black? Maybe red. Food I like… hot chip. Ice cream, maybe. Can’t decide.”

Shane snorts. Ilya drops the act in English more and more the later it gets, and much more with Shane than with anyone else. He’d thought Ilya’s rough skipping over the minutiae of proper grammar and sentence structure was normal until Ilya had been drunk with his parents and still enunciating and using his articles- this type of comfort is just for Shane to bear witness to, and he holds it close to his heart in cupped hands where he keeps all of Ilya’s secrets, big and small.

Someday he will be fluent in Russian for him. They will build their own secret world. The thought whirls a bright thrill through his core.

“What is funny,” Ilya deadpans. Shane makes little circles with his thumb on Ilya’s warm thigh. His head is starting to feel so big, the world closing in around them nicely with his high. “Is funny to you, Hollander?”

Shane can’t help laughing, not when everything feels so good. Not when he’s this happy. He sits up so he can look Ilya in the face, presses a really chaste kiss to his pouting lips. Starts laughing again in the middle of it and bites Ilya’s chin.

“No, it’s. It’s charming. You’re such a dirtbag,” he laughs. Ilya is smiling despite himself. Shane kisses him right on the tip of his nose. “Baby.”

Ilya’s face fractures prettily at that, and he reaches out to wrap his arms around Shane and hold him back against him, kissing the top of his head like he’s been doing for, well, years now. It’s always felt achingly romantic, always served to pull Shane further into that warm underwater place Ilya can take him. Holding out his hand. Beckoning. Safe and good.

He loves this. Almost wishes they could do this during the season, but maybe this is something made more special for the warm summer around them and Ilya’s slight sunburn on his nose and cheeks. It’s hot when Shane presses his own nose to it. He’d pinched Ilya’s nose while roughhousing before their shower and Ilya’s perfect body had given him a massive undulating delicious shiver in return.

“I love you so much,” Shane says. Ilya’s thigh twitches under his palm.

“I love you,” Ilya whispers. “Don’t think we done. What is, hm. You like smell so much. Maybe no favorite?”

His tone is one of wonder. It makes Shane blush, that he’s noticed. Not just Shane huffing his undergarments and armpits and taint but also his diffusers, all of the products in his linen closet. His cleaning products, carefully vetted and chosen by exacting turns of scent in his own nose.

That’s the embarrassing part, his particularities. He’s never liked being seen. But his high keeps washing over him and big words are in his brain like, you love these little things about him, too, let him notice.

“I don’t know, I might. Let me think,” he says. Ilya huffs a long, relaxed sigh. The sky is so pretty, riddled with stars. The moon hangs low. It reflects off of the lake in a million mirrored slits and crescents. Shane feels like he is rocking on a boat, here atop Ilya who is steadfast in caging him still. “I like the smell of the ice. With popcorn. And. Well.”

Ilya humphs a questioning sound. Shane twirls his pointer finger in his blond leg hair. He is so blond, all over. Shane’s heart aches to have known him as a child, cheeks red with winter cold. Wants to hide him away so nobody can even look at him, mine, mine, mine.

“Shane. You did not answer. Tell me,” Ilya presses a finger to his bottom lip and strokes back and forth. “Favorite smell.”

Shane is so, so high. Ilya is so warm. His life is so perfect. He snuggles deeper into the blanket, lets his eyes blink down to shut and then valiantly tries to keep them open, again. He doesn’t want this to end. It feels like the couch and Ilya beneath him are hovering off of the ground. He thinks of the rush of air and hotel hallway and Ilya’s stupid masculine cologne, the smell of his skin fresh from the cold, the wool of his coat the instant they see each other again.

“I like. When you come into my room,” he says. His words are slurred enough for him to swallow and try to reorient himself a little. Ilya tenses beneath him and then releases, kisses his head again. Like he perfectly understands.

“Me too,” he says. Shane is smiling again, and his head is so warm and Ilya is so sweet.

As all good things must come to an end, Ilya carries him to bed piggyback. He turns around and squats so that Shane can sit and then slump back down onto the bed. He loves this bed so much- had spent months picking out the mattress and frame. And now to have Ilya share it. Their marital bed. Shane blushes just at that unbidden thought.

They are roughly the same size, but Ilya did not even grunt carrying him. He is so strong. He is a few inches taller than Shane. But they are both big. Shane loves their muscles knocking against each other, loves being strong against him.

“I have to brush my teeth,” he says. Ilya is standing over him, his bare right foot in both of his hands. He’s massaging it fiercely, bending and twisting it so that Shane squirms, until he raises it to his face and kisses his heel, his arch, each toe.

“I get you toothbrush, lover,” Ilya says into his skin. Licks between his toes for a second. Drops his foot unceremoniously. Shane is vaguely aware that he’s getting hard, but not pressed enough to start doing anything about it. He’s at perfect temperature laying back in just his sweatpants, no shirt.

Ilya strips his shorts off, nothing underneath. Shane blinks and blinks and just stares at his cock. It twitches a little under his gaze. Sweet. Then he’s turning around to show Shane that perfect ass, stalking off to the bathroom.

Shane is palming himself over his sweats when Ilya returns, toothbrush in hand. The toothpaste is already on it, and he hauls Shane up by his armpits and hustles him to sit up against the headboard to brush. Shane’s eyes are closing and Ilya is glowing golden before him, all of his features bright in the lamp Shane had agonized over purchasing, the perfect tone of light, maybe, for Ilya’s skin.

His pupils are blown out and his body is cut and delicious. Shane likes that he doesn’t groom any of his body hair, that it’s just wild and natural. He would grieve it like a death if Ilya took a razor to his bush. He’d join a commune with Ilya in the seventies. Maybe then-

Shane brushes, until he realizes he has nowhere to spit. Ilya presses a gentle finger into the space right between his eyebrows, wiggles his jaw a little, grinning.

“No,” Shane garbles around toothpaste.

“Da. Please, please, Shane,” Ilya says. He looks crazed, eyes flashing with glee, but also deadly serious, the way he starts to look when Shane is before him in the bedroom. Shane is fully hard, right now. “Please.”

Shane groans, but pulls the toothbrush out of his mouth and gathers everything, disgusting, to his tongue. He has cotton mouth, kind of, and it’s making his saliva thick and gross, but Ilya tilts his head below Shane’s and sticks out his tongue and greedily slurps receiving Shane’s toothpaste and spit and probably bits of dinner, whatever Ilya hadn’t already licked out of his mouth in the past couple of hours, anyways. He grins around it as Shane glares at him, practically prances off to the bathroom where Shane cringes at the sound of him spitting it out. At least he brushes his teeth afterwards.

Ilya likes to press all up and across him naked right when they get into bed together. He likes to touch the scar on Shane’s shoulder, keeps coming back to it when Shane is sucking him off. Like he wishes he could have put it there.

He likes to yank Shane around by his ankles, force his legs open, squeeze his calves and biceps and anywhere he can get his hands on Shane every moment they are together. Tonight, all of this feels so good and all of Shane’s skin is so sensitive and elevated in the best way.

Ilya kisses all around his dick, wet warm kisses slow and licking over and over again between his lips before finally taking him into his mouth. Shane falls asleep right after he comes, can’t help it. The pillows are too lush, Ilya is here with him. He remembers trying to reach for Ilya, and something very warm and lovely surrounding him.

Ilya will eat anything. This means he will also eat Shane’s “rabbit food,” as he calls it, without complaint. He scarfs all of it down and somehow has endless compliments for Shane’s cooking- but he is clearly the talented one of the both of them in the kitchen.

He has a real sense for cooking, knows what to add and when, things that Shane has tried and failed to execute successfully. Rose had tried to teach him how to make a vodka sauce from scratch, once, and Shane had been totally at a loss as to how he should “season to taste.” But everything Ilya cooks is delicious, and he pores over Shane’s dietician-approved cookbooks to try to make things that Shane will eat.

This drives Shane crazy, a little, but he is trying very hard to welcome Ilya right into his life as much as he can. Ilya cooking within his parameters is compelling and wonderful. Shane is just nervous at his frown as he flips through the pages, the little glances he sneaks at Shane when he thinks Shane isn’t looking. It’s okay.

Ilya is always sticking his fingers into sauces and licking them, and then sticking them back in after adding something without washing. Eventually, Shane had to give it to him when he insisted, Hollander, is just me and you, what you think finger has been in your ass will give you illness now, because is food? I put my mouth on your asshole. I eat your come. Taste like sugar. You-

Shane had cut him off with a hand over his mouth, which he had licked. He’d replaced it with his mouth, let Ilya play with him for a second until the things in the pan had started bubbling ominously. Ilya had spanked him as he turned to go back to his stool at the bar, where he had been perched to stare at Ilya as he cooked.

After that Ilya had diligently finished the sauce but not without taking his fill of looking Shane up and down every chance he got. The sauce had been very good.

Ilya likes Shane’s feet. This was embarrassing, at first. He hadn’t known how to react when Ilya had been touching him all over after he came and then had crawled down to the foot of the bed and kneeled, pressed Shane’s right foot against his hard cock and against his stomach, so hard and wet and wiggling his toes despite himself, and then immediately while grinding against Shane had taken his left foot to his mouth to suck and bite.

Shane had almost worried for half a second that it had been a joke he was supposed to laugh at, but no, Ilya was spurting precome like crazy and groaning and his eyes kept rolling back behind long blond lashes. Shane had been drifting off post-orgasm and everything.

So soon enough it had become something else just in the long list of things Ilya could get off on or about with regards to Shane. Shane likes his feet, too, every part of him is interesting and arrestingly gorgeous. Ilya sprawls out on the bed like a God, legs sloping and abs popping and chest massive, veins all down his arms and he never moisturizes like Shane does but his skin is so soft and even and delicious to kiss and lick.

Ilya will watch anything on TV. Oftentimes it’s with a childlike wonder, too, and he confessed to Shane one morning as they flipped through the channels while eating breakfast on the couch that he used to love more than anything watching American TV when he was a rookie. Said everything was so outlandish and stupid and mind-numbingly pointless that he couldn’t help but watch.

Shane is learning that Ilya is a very talented storyteller and comedian, and also that he would be very, very good with kids. Shoves that somewhere deep.

When Ilya is free to monologue, he works himself up into a frenzy of humor at each and every laugh he gets out of Shane, somehow using that to get funnier and funnier until Shane can hardly breathe for laughing. And after, Ilya always looks so pleased with himself. My charming man, Shane keeps thinking fondly.

It is very easy to spend a lazy day with Ilya. They never run out of things to do, even if they are boring things. He is starting to suspect that Ilya can enjoy boring. Shane has never really been comfortable in silence with anyone before. He’s always felt like he had to fill it, even with Ilya at the beginning. A couple of days into their vacation, he had realized that he hadn’t worried about that once. It was like that part of his psyche was gone from him, disappeared. Ilya fucked it out.

They’ve been sitting quietly doing puzzles, napping on the couch. When Shane reads to Ilya until he falls asleep, he continues to read out loud softly in case he wakes up and needs to be lulled back down. They cook with music playing. They watch Olympic hockey from the 80s and 90s, a lot, and yell at the TV.

Their first week and a half together goes slow like honey. In this exact fashion. And the last few days are whip-quick, hatefully short like winter sunsets. One of them they spend totally in bed, sleeping then touching over and over, and then the day before they are due to leave Shane is stricken with a profound sick sadness that makes it so he can hardly do anything but cling to Ilya with hands so sweaty that he actually feels pretty gross about it.

Ilya is subdued, more than Shane has ever seen him. Not even awkwardly watching-not-watching him smoking in bed in Vegas had the atmosphere been this strained, everything hanging open between them. That knowing.

Rose had sent him a Jenny Lewis song once, with a lyric that went, and the phone is a fine invention/it allows me to talk endlessly to you. So they will, once Shane is nestled in Montreal and Ilya is slamming doors and speeding cars in Boston. Past Shane’s bedtime. They’ll meet halfway.