Archive of Our Own

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On the plane back from Pittsburgh, Ilya puts in his earbuds and closes his eyes. 

He’d been waiting at his gate, absent-mindedly scrolling through the reactions to his draft online, when he saw that a hockey podcast he followed had released a new episode talking about him. He downloaded it before boarding his flight, curious to see what they’d think about his draft—their theories on players and inner NHL politics usually turn out to be right, so he’s interested in what they’ll make of Montreal trading for him. The jingly theme tune plays as the plane hurtles down the runway, and Ilya feels the familiar weightlessness of the wheels lifting from the ground just as they first mention his name.

“—okay, man, moving on, we’ve gotta talk about Ilya Rozanov.”

“Fuck yes. I’ve been looking forward to this day. So, teams have been buzzing around him for years, right? CISAA Championship win for his high school in Toronto, back-to-back World Juniors wins for Russia, and the youngest player ever selected as Captain. The kid was a rocket.”

“He still is!”

“No, of course, but everyone expected the league to scoop him up right out of high school, right? I mean, that kind of talent is too good to pass up—but he went to college hockey instead.”

“The McGill Marauders are an incredible team, of course, with a historic sweep of first round draft picks from their own ranks this season and hopefully more to come, but I remember everyone wondering about Rozanov choosing school the same way they wondered about Shane Hollander.”

“And we’ll get to Hollander in a moment, folks. Now, the Marauders have been very vocal about listening to their players’ wishes when it comes to the draft, but it was definitely a surprise last year when the league chose not to draft any of the freshman players, with all of them—Rozanov included—saying that they wanted to complete school first.”

“I gotta say, I respect it. It’s a noble pursuit, of course, finishing school, and hockey isn’t guaranteed.”

Ilya’s stomach turns. He swallows hard.

“Exactly. It’s a tough game, and a tough world. Now, we talked a few months ago about how Rozanov was telling teams at the combine in December that he still wanted to stay in school, and it looks like they were planning on listening.”

“Teams actually listening to player’s needs? Dude, sounds like we’re entering a new era.”

“I don’t know about that, man, but yeah—sounds like they were gonna honour Rozanov’s wishes. We’ve heard a few reports this year of that being something they’re doing more and more recently. Now, we don’t know what exactly changed—I’m sure someone’ll ask him about it at training camp, so we’ll update you when we find out more—but suddenly, reports started coming in saying that he’d changed his mind and was looking to go to the draft. That switch-up looked almost as quick as his trick shot.”

Both men laugh, and Ilya’s mouth quirks up at the corner despite himself.

“Of course, some are wondering if it has anything to do with his brutal injury at the World Juniors in January, but I gotta say, guys, I don’t agree with that. He was back on the ice within six weeks, and he helped lead the Marauders to their wins while putting a massive number of points up on the board himself. Any doubts teams may have had about draft viability went out the window as soon as they saw that hattrick in the finals against Toronto.”

“So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Of course, Montreal instituted a legendary trade just to get a chance on him. I know we were talking only a few episodes ago about how we were looking forward to seeing Rozanov in Boston, so Montreal stealing him away is an interesting move.”

“Look, the Voyageurs are looking for a change. With such a legendary team nowhere near a Cup in so many years, it makes sense—and they’re not the only team changing things up, but they’ve certainly taken a few bold risks in this draft.”

“Yeah, and Rozanov is a no-brainer. Wicked fast, incredible control, strong skater. He’s the full package. But Luca Haas being called up to the same team interests me even more.”

“Listen, there’s no denying the kid’s got talent. His performance on the Swedish team at Worlds was great, he was the secret weapon for the Marauders in the Nationals playoffs, but he’s rough around the edges. He’s young, and he’s untested.”

“He’s a high pick, too, which also came as a surprise. Hey, what are your guesses that he’s a consolation prize for the Voyageurs?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking about it this morning, right, and I feel like I’m onto something. It feels like they’re already going for some sort of PR framing. Think about it—they want two centers for the power play, yeah, but also two players that are vying for the same spot.”

“You think they’re lining up some sort of internal struggle?”

“Hey, two incredibly talented teammates, playing the same position… it’s an interesting narrative. And maybe a familiar one. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Oh, you think they wanted Hollander instead?”

Ilya sits forward, his forearms braced in his knees.

“Have you seen him and Rozanov on the ice together? Rozanov is one thing on his own, another with Haas, but with Hollander… man, it’s like poetry on ice. Did you see that goal in the semi-finals? I swear, it brought a tear to my eye.”

“You sound fucking ridiculous, dude, but I can’t say I disagree. They famously butted heads in high school, playing on opposing teams, and it seems like there was some friction last year despite their Nationals title, but it looks like they set that aside this year as Captain and Assistant Captain. Still, Captain Hollander doesn’t look like he’s changing his mind about leaving the Marauders any time soon—”

Ilya hopes Shane hasn’t listened to this episode. He knows he listens to this podcast sometimes, and Shane won’t like the way that sounds—even if both he and Ilya know it’s the farthest thing from the truth. Ilya meant it when he said he would break up with Shane if he tried to go to the draft early the way Ilya did. Even now, he hates the thought.

“So, with everyone waiting to see what Rozanov and Haas do on the ice for the Voyageurs, and whether Hollander will get called up before he graduates, we turn to our other Marauder drafted this season, goalie Wyatt Hayes for the Ottawa Centaurs…”

Ilya listens for a minute longer while they extol Wyatt’s virtues—as they should—and then tugs his earbuds free and turns to look through the window instead. Now that the draft is over, Ilya doesn’t want to think about season predictions or the impending shift in his life. He just wants to go home.

 ***

The sun is bright the day after Ilya’s draft. It shafts in through the curtains in thick slices, bathing the living room in warm yellow light as Shane sits down on his couch and makes the call.

“Are you sure about this, honey? It’s going to be a lot to handle.”

“I know. I’ve got it. He’s got it, okay? You know how important this is.”

“Yeah, I fought tooth and nail to keep you from the same fate. I’m pretty sure the league coordinators are going to have nightmares about me for months.”

Shane laughs, blowing out a breath. “I know. And—thank you for that. I know you want me to play as soon as possible—”

“No, Shane, when have I ever said that? You know I think completing your education is an important pursuit, and I know how much the Marauders mean to you as well. I think you’re doing the right thing.”

“Have you been talking to Ilya?” Shane says, suspicious. 

Yuna laughs. “No, but I’m glad he’s got the right idea, too. I’m… I’m very happy that he’s going to be staying in Montreal with you. I just wish I could have given you more time at school together.”

“You did everything you could, Mom. I know that. And, I mean—you’ve seen how crazy the media is going over him getting drafted. This is a chance for us to have some control over the narrative, right? Establish ourselves as players. Separately.”

Even if a part of Shane dies every time he thinks of all the things Ilya will be doing that he’s dreamed of doing his whole life, too. Even if he still has to wait two more years to get the chance to experience that himself.

So what if Shane is competitive? It’s part of what makes him a good player. He wonders how many goals Ilya will score in his first season and aches with the desire to beat the record himself. He wonders who would’ve won the Rookie Award if they’d entered the league at the same time. He wonders if Ilya stepping into the spotlight will form a chasm between them so wide that when the time comes Shane can’t cross.

He slams that door shut. Today is not the day to be wallowing in his own self pity. Even if it came about through less than ideal circumstances, this is Ilya’s future, Ilya’s career to celebrate. And Ilya isn’t like that. 

Still, it stings.

He’ll just have to content himself with two more Nationals titles, then. 

As if sensing her son’s spiral, Yuna hums. “Your time will come, Shane. You know that. And until then, you have your team, school, your wonderful and caring parents… and your boyfriend.”

Shane smiles. “That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

***

Ilya slides into the passenger seat of Shane’s car with a raised eyebrow. “You know no one can see you all the way in this corner, yes? Why are you dressed like burglar?”

Shane glances down at his outfit—black shorts, black hoodie, dark sunglasses, a baseball cap—and frowns. “Fuck off, asshole.”

Ilya grins. God, he loves making Shane mad. “Ah, that is no way to talk to your number one draft pick boyfriend, Hollander,” he says in a low voice, tilting his head. “Are you going to give me celebration kiss now, or do I have to wait?”

Shane flushes but leans over to comply, letting out a little noise of surprise when Ilya immediately deepens the kiss with a deft flick of his tongue. They indulge themselves for a moment, mouths sliding over each other in a pattern that is intimately familiar yet still makes Ilya’s skin heat every time, and when they break apart Shane pouts enough that Ilya can’t help but give him a few quick pecks until his mouth curves into a smile. 

“Come on, моя любовь. Take me home so you can give me my reward.”

Shane grins, squeezes his hand, and puts the car into drive.

“Did you forget how keys work, Hollander?”

Ilya watches Shane miss the lock for the third time in his desperation to get the door open and chuckles. To be honest, he’s probably not helping by pasting himself to Shane’s back and mouthing at the nape of his neck while Shane tries to fit the key into the lock, but the other option requires him to move, which he is not interested in doing right now. 

He’s been on a cloud of joy ever since they said his name at the draft, when he realised he’d be staying. Not everything is fixed, not yet—he’s still not back in school—but maybe, maybe chances are better with him still in the city. 

Things will be better, regardless of school. Shane is here. 

Through all the meetings and signing documents and small talk with officials and the long plane ride back from Pittsburgh, Ilya has been thinking of this—Shane, here, in his arms. It only got worse after their phone call when Ilya slipped away from the afterparty, where he spent the rest of his time in a daze with his thoughts consumed by what Shane was doing to himself while he waited for Ilya to get back to his hotel. 

Shane had seriously been considering not letting him come. He’ll have to teach him a lesson for that later. 

Right now, though, Ilya has bigger issues at hand—he needs to be inside Shane, like, yesterday.

“Hurry up,” he whines into the crook of Shane’s neck, his grip tightening around his stomach to pull him flush with Ilya’s chest. 

Shane laughs unsteadily. “Taking a fucking step back, then.”

Ilya uses all of his considerable willpower to unpeel himself from Shane’s body, and without Ilya there as a distraction it doesn’t take much time to get the door open. “Fucking finally,” Ilya breathes, pushing Shane inside with a hand flat on his chest and kicking the door closed behind him. 

Their kisses are messy and uncoordinated with desperation as they clutch at each other. Shane’s hands paw at his chest, and distantly Ilya hears the sound of his zip-up hitting the floor as Shane’s fingers clutch at his bare biceps.

“This fucking hat,” Ilya gasps against Shane’s lips, sliding his hands into Shane’s hair until his backwards baseball cap falls to the floor too. “So hot.”

“All for you—ah, Ilya, fuck—” Shane’s voice trails off into a moan when Ilya’s lips attach to his pulse point and sucks hard, swirling his tongue around under Shane’s jaw just to feel him squirm in his grip.

“So, what is my reward?” Ilya says after he allows himself a few more seconds of frantic kisses, panting as he tips their foreheads together.

“Well, dinner, for one,” Shane replies, gesturing toward the kitchen. 

Ilya lifts his head to see a veritable feast on the counter, a charcuterie board and the red wine Ilya likes and a bottle of white Shane tolerates, pots burbling on the stove. “Are we feeding army?” Ilya asks, confused.

Shane just laughs, but there’s a flicker of something in his eyes that Ilya wants to ask more about. Shane beats him to the punch. “No, nothing like that,” he says, then detaches himself again from Ilya to turn off the hob. “These can sit for a while. We’ll be back.”

With that he turns, holding out a hand for Ilya to take, and Ilya practically leaps forward to intertwine their fingers and let himself be guided toward the couch. Ilya pouts. “No bed, Hollander?”

“I put a blanket out so the cushions won’t scratch your legs,” Shane says over his shoulder. “And besides, why not get off where this all started, right?”

Ilya acquiesces at the reminder of that night in November where he’d found himself at Shane’s door. “Mm, true. Good night.”

“One of the best,” Shane agrees. Tugging Ilya down onto the couch—carefully blanketed, as promised—Shane clambers into his lap without ceremony and leans in to nip at his earlobe. “So, in the spirit of that night, how about a bet?”

Ilya narrows his eyes, suspicious. His hands go to rest on Shane’s waist, fingers brushing the curve of his ass.  “Is this part of my reward?”

Shane considers the question. “Part of it, yeah.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“I bet I can make you come in three minutes.”

“Original bet was to make me hard in two. Are you scared you’ve lost your skill?”

Shane snorts. “Fuck off. No, I was trying to be gratuitous about how long you can hold back, but…” His eyes roam freely, hungrily over Ilya’s body in appraisal, and Ilya is surprised to find himself shuddering at the apathetic way he’s being studied—the only indication Shane is also affected are the blown pupils and colour beneath his freckles. 

With a roll of his hips, Shane illustrates his point and hums in agreement. “No, I think you’re right. You won’t need that long, will you?”

Ilya groans without thinking, his grip tightening around Shane’s hips, and Shane grins. 

“Y’know, I think even after we got off on the phone last night, you were still aching for it.” He leans down until their lips are brushing. “You were, weren’t you? Did you go to bed thinking about me?”

It’s the perfect combination of mocking and teasing and, if Ilya’s being honest, fact. He stares up at Shane, at the way he leans forward and tilts his head just slightly, He looks like he wants to eat Ilya alive. When Shane laughs, clearly taking in Ilya’s dazed expression, it’s pitched low—the way he’d laughed in the stairwell back at the combine, his fingers tangled in Ilya’s hair as they tried to make each other look presentable.

You’re so fucked, he’d said as he looked at Ilya’s face then, and Ilya feels like he hears the words from Shane now. He knows that he has the same expression as back then—he never could hide in his stolen moments with Shane. The muscles in his face slacken and tense in a familiar contortion, and he realises something: his heart knew, even back then. It just took a minute for his brain to catch up. 

“I was thinking about this,” Ilya finally says around a sigh, tugging uselessly at Shane’s clothes. Shane doesn’t comply, instead moving lightning-quick to pin Ilya’s wrists down at his sides.

And then: “tell me about it,” Shane says conversationally, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Ilya’s neck before pulling away to wait. After a beat of Ilya staring dumbly up at Shane, his brain catches up.

Oh, right. He’s usually the one that talks here. He can do that. “I was thinking about first night we did this,” Ilya says, and makes a noise that is definitely not a whine when Shane bites down on his earlobe. His hands twitch at his sides, but Shane’s grip is firm. “How it felt the first time I saw you on your knees for me.”

“What did it feel like?” Shane sounds genuinely curious now.

Ilya searches through his haze of need for the word in English, finding it in the passages from the Bible folded in the back of his mind—holy scripture etched for safekeeping like the crucifix’s warm metal on his chest. 

“Revelation.” Ilya can’t help it. It’s true. “But not—sexual. Or not only that. More like… I had world at my feet.”

Shane blinks several times, a calculation whirring in his head. “It was like that for me too,” he whispers eventually. His gaze flickers back up to Ilya, and when he speaks again his voice is steadier. “So, are you?”

“Am I…?”

“Gonna come the minute I get my mouth around you?”

“Fuck,” Ilya breathes out, his head thumping back against the couch. The brazen, matter-of-fact way Shane is talking is making his mind spin. “Probably. But I can go again, you know I can—”

“Oh, I know,” Shane replies, soothing. He grins. “Don’t worry. This is just the start, baby. And we have to be quick, anyway, so this shouldn’t take long.”

Ilya doesn’t have time to ask what Shane means before Shane is releasing his wrists to pull Ilya’s shorts around his thighs and ducking down in a matter of seconds.

Just before Shane pulls Ilya from his boxers, palm already rubbing at the clothed evidence of his need, he lifts his head.

“Well? I thought you were supposed to be some sort of genius hockey superstar, baby, aren’t you going to set the timer?”

 His eyes are glittering as his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, and Ilya follows the motion with so much focus that he barely notices Shane’s words until they all hit him at once and—

Oh.

О Боже.

Ilya is fumbling for his phone before his brain has time to catch up, nodding his head as he pulls up the timer with shaking hands. “Okay, okay,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. His thumb hovers over the ‘start’ button, but he makes no move to press it because he still needs a second to get a hold of himself.

Shane’s fingers close around his shaft—firm and almost non-sexual, getting Ilya’s attention. He gives Ilya’s cock a slow, firm pump then blinks up at him.

“Or are you too desperate to remember what to do?”

There aren’t enough swear words in Russian or English to translate the cursing in Ilya’s head right now. “God, Shane,” Ilya breathes. “What has gotten into you?” 

“Hopefully you, later,” Shane says pleasantly, and then pulls Ilya’s boxers down and gets a hand around him properly. “But first, I need to get my mouth on you.”

The first time he did this, on this very couch, he had been timid and uncertain. The desperation had been there, the want, just not the experience to go with it—and this Shane has it now. He sucks Ilya down with the same single-minded focus but now with a deep-rooted knowledge of Ilya’s body. He plays with the tip with his tongue, licks messily along the shaft and then swallows him down, pumping what he can’t reach with his hand already slick with spit. 

Ilya tries to thrust up, hips chasing the sweet heat of Shane’s mouth, but Shane just brackets an arm across his hips to keep him still. The force of it, the reminder that despite all of Ilya’s considerable strength that Shane could take him if he wanted to, do what he wanted with Ilya, is dizzying—Ilya feels himself getting close even quicker than he’d expected.

Shane is pulling out all the tricks, hands coming up to brush his nipple, scratch through the short hairs below his navel, dig into the meat of his thighs, and the whole time he’s moaning through it. Ilya always loves that, the way he makes noises like he’s got a hand around his cock even when he’s kneeling between Ilya’s spread legs, completely frictionless. 

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya gasps. “Not gonna last.”

Shane whines louder, doubling his efforts and swallowing around him, driving him to his climax without a single helping hand. It’s just Shane, eyelids fluttering and freckles dark against his flushed cheeks, his pert lips stretched around Ilya.

Absurdly, Ilya finds himself asking for permission to come. He’s not sure where it comes from, but doesn’t question the need—he just wants to be good for Shane, to get his reward just the way his boyfriend so clearly planned it.

That’s why he moans, “please, Shane, fuck—I wanna come.” The hand that had absently buried itself in Shane’s hair tightens, and Shane pulls off his length with a wet pop.

He blinks up at him for a beat, and then seems to collect himself. “Yeah—? Yes, baby,” he whispers, still stroking Ilya with his hand. “Good. You can come.”

He lowers his mouth back down, and only a few bobs of his head later Ilya is groaning and spilling down his throat. He doesn’t realise Shane hasn’t swallowed all of it until he rises up on shaky legs and climbs back into Ilya’s lap, braces himself on his shoulders, and parts his lips to show Ilya the pearly-white liquid on his tongue.

Ilya opens his mouth without needing to be asked, and Shane spits a mixture of Ilya’s come and his own saliva back onto Ilya’s tongue a second later. Ilya can’t help but moan when he tastes it, fingers gripping Shane’s hips tightly, and they share a long kiss with their tongues gliding over each other filthily as Ilya’s hands reach down for Shane’s cock.

To his surprise, Shane stops him before he makes contact. “Not yet,” he says, mysterious. He pecks Ilya once more and then looks over to the clock. Ilya lasted less than two minutes.

He rises instead, adjusting himself in his shorts and then dancing out of Ilya’s grasp when he tries to help. “Later, okay? Now, let’s clean up. Dinner’s going to be ready soon.”

The switch is a little startling, but Ilya can roll with it. He’s still on a post-draft high.

If Ilya had been less desperate to get through the door and kiss Shane again, he might have noticed the eight place settings crammed onto Shane’s dining room table when they came in. He might have stopped focusing on the mouth wrapped around him and instead counted the plates piled neatly next to the stove, ready to be dished up. If Ilya was floating on a cloud of joy just a few degrees lower, the haze might have cleared enough for him to spot Shane checking his phone for the third time as he rounded the counter to stir the pot.

But he wasn’t, and he didn’t. So he just stands, tucks himself back into his shorts, and dutifully refolds the blanket when Shane gives him a look. He’s whistling as he carries the duffel he dumped by the door into the bedroom, dumping it on the floor and wincing at the clunk that he knows is the bottle of Russian vodka Alexei sent him this morning. 

He leaves it to deal with later, after he’s eaten whatever incredible meal his boyfriend has cooked for him—for now he just listens to Shane’s called out instruction to change into ‘people clothes’ after his shower without complaint, grabbing baggy denim shorts and a dark t-shirt that’s just a size too small because it makes his arms look a little bigger. 

He bounces on his toes the whole time he’s in the shower, itching to get back out and wondering what plans Shane has for them tonight. Just one of many, many more to come in this apartment, Ilya thinks, smiling to himself.

Shane darts into the bedroom when he’s done, raising a brow at his shirt and kissing him on the way past. “Can you check the pot on the stove, please?” he calls out from the doorway.

When Ilya emerges, he is confused to finally notice the massive bowl of salad on the counter beside the charcuterie board, and it only deepens when he spots the large burbling pot on the stove and the tray of fish in the oven.

He stirs the pot with his brows furrowed, only looking up when Shane reenters the kitchen texting on his phone. “I was joking when I asked if we are feeding army, but now I’m not sure,” Ilya tells him, gesturing to the spread. 

When he looks up he sees that Shane has changed into a linen shirt open at the collar, and he is struck—not for the first time tonight—by how good he looks. Dark hair long enough to curl at the nape of his neck, freckles bright against his smooth cheekbones, and a shirt unbuttoned just enough to remind anyone looking that yes, he is an athlete. Ilya is struck, for the millionth time since Shane first entered his world, by the urge to eat him whole.

“Oh, yeah. About that.” Shane scratches the back of his head. “Uh… remember how I said we were gonna have Jackie and Hayden over for dinner sometime?”

It doesn’t take Ilya long to reach the inevitable conclusion, and his face falls. “Shane. Tell me they are not coming over tonight.”

“Um.”

“Shane.”

“I’m sorry, okay? Hayden didn’t want to wait, and I figured, y’know, get it out of the way, and I came up with something—”

“You are denying me my reward so I can make small talk with Pike over salmon,” Ilya deadpans. “Salmon, Shane. Season is over.”

“We’re being adults. And yes, with Hayden.”

“Is this new kink we are trying? Torture play? Because I would rather be waterboarded, if—”

“See, that,” Shane says, pointing a wooden spoon at him over the counter. “That kind of hostility is not welcome here tonight, got it? Besides, you behaving and having a nice dinner with my best friend…” He takes a sliding step closer, his voice dipping into something a little more playful. “That sounds worthy of a good reward, don’t you think?”

Ilya swallows hard. “And I don’t deserve one for the draft?”

Shane hums, wrapping his hands around Ilya’s neck. “You do, obviously. You just have to wait. I had a good teacher, remember? D’you know the first thing he taught me?”

“How to suck my brain out through my cock?”

Shane shakes his head, smirking as he leans in so their noses brush. “Foreplay. Teasing.”

Ilya groans as Shane steps out of his space and turns back to the pot. “Why does our foreplay have to involve Hayden?”

“Because you are a great boyfriend, and you love me, and you want to get along with my friends. And  Hayden’s going to be on his best behaviour, so you should too.”

“I will believe this when I see it.” Ilya is well aware he sounds like an insolent child as he takes a seat on the bar stool and mournfully starts opening the wine on the counter, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Pike is being human cockblock tonight. Is very rude. You would never go to their place day after he got drafted and demand his girlfriend make you dinner.”

“You’re not making anything!”

“You know what I mean.”

“I mean—no, I probably wouldn’t do that, but that’s because I’m antisocial and don’t want to intrude.”

Ilya points. “Exactly.”

Shane shoots a look over Ilya’s shoulder that makes him feel like he’s being scolded, so Ilya decides to focus on the curve of his ass in his shorts as he leans over the pot instead. “Anyway,” Shane continues. “You’ll have some buffers later. It’ll be fine.”

“What are buffers?”

“Friends, okay? You’ll like them, I promise.”

He’s using that voice he gets at practice, when he’s explaining a play he’s already thought through a million times in his head. Shane, Ilya realises, has planned all of this. There’s music playing softly through the kitchen speaker, flowers in the vase on the table, and candles on the shelf in the living room. 

Ilya’s first clue should have been the music. Shane almost never plays it when he’s by himself.

Every little detail is so Shane. After weeks of uncertainty and worry—the push-pull about what team he’d end up on, the obvious fact that he wouldn’t be finishing school looming on the horizon—coming back to him like this, meticulously designing a night where his best friend and his boyfriend can get along and going so far as to invite a bunch of mysterious buffers to smooth things over, inviting in the first night of a new phase for them with open arms… it’s almost too much for Ilya to handle.

 As soon as Ilya has control of himself, he narrows eyes. “Who are buffers?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see. They’ll help, though.” Cutting a glance back to Ilya, Shane continues in his planning voice. “Friends. It’s a dinner party. We’ll talk, we’ll share memories, we’ll clink glasses and eat the food I carefully prepared for us. It will be fun.”

“Yes, of course. Eating fish with my boyfriend is normally fun, even if I need to use secret sriracha bottle when you are not looking. Only problem is having number one benchwarmer and his too-good girlfriend and all our mystery guests when we could be naked.”

Ilya raises his hands in mock-surrender when Shane turns to glare again. “Come on.”

“Sorry, sorry. Getting it out of my system.”

“Look, it’ll be a few hours, we’ll get through it, then we’ll be alone, okay?”

“Okay, fine. I will be on best behaviour. And then I can get my reward?” Ilya teases, wiggling his brows. 

Shane tilts his head with a laugh. “It’s like you’re a puppy, wagging your tail and waiting for a treat.” 

The only response Ilya has to that is to gesture to Shane’s ass, making him flush. “I mean, yes. My favourite treat, yes?” He steps closer. “The only thing I want when I am named number one in the NHL—”

“You’re not number one in the league.”

“—Yes, I know, моя любовь. But I am in big leagues now.”

Shane nods. “Yeah, whatever, big hockey superstar.” It’s half-mocking, half-entirely serious.

Ilya can’t hide his expression when Shane calls him that, to which Shane looks delighted. “I just want dinner with my boyfriend and to fuck him like he clearly wants me to. But he wants me to wait. So I will wait.”

“Because the whole world is talking about you right now, but where are you?” Shane asks slowly as Ilya presses himself to Shane’s back.

“I came home to you instead.” Ilya feels like Shane needs to hear him say it, that small reminder after the whirlwind twenty-four hours Ilya has had that he’s back here, home, and still wants him more than ever.

Shane shudders. He makes a noise when Ilya lets his teeth graze over the back of his neck while his hands splay themselves over Shane’s ribs, pulling him close again. “So you’ll behave yourself tonight?” Shane says into Ilya’s hair, his face turned towards him.

Ilya spins him around and nods, leaning in to kiss him once. “You said I am like a puppy, but I am much better trained than this,” he goes on. “I am more like farm dog—solid, dependable, smart. Good. I will be good. Pike will be my best friend by the time the night is over.” Shoot for the moon, Ilya figures.

Shane studies him for another beat, apparently seriously considering it. “You're my farm dog, though. Always coming back home. Good recall, I guess,” he says fondly with a light chuckle, like his words aren’t making Ilya’s skin itch. Shane ruffles his hair, still a little wet from his shower, and his smile widens. “Bet you’d bark if I asked you to.” 

Before Ilya can school his face into something less revealing, or swallow back the small hitch in his breath, Shane catches him. His eyes narrow.

“Hmm… bark.”

“Woof.” 

And—

Oh.

They look at each other with the expressions of two people that have just discovered a new element on the periodic table. Ilya steps closer, hopeful that his slightly embarrassing instinct has yielded a good reaction based on the way Shane’s teeth are sunk into his bottom lip.

“Do you—”

There’s a knock on the door. 

Several seconds pass where neither of them move, staring at each other with matching combinations of heat and annoyance and intrigue in their eyes, and then Shane is straightening and fixing his hair. 

“Okay,” he says, the moment gone. “We are, uh, tabling that,” he gestures vaguely to the air between them, “for later.”

“Okay,” Ilya whispers, mostly to himself. “Yes. Okay. Can I get the door?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Shane replies, already wringing his hands and turning back to the stove. “Thank you.”

Shane seems to remember who it’s going to be a moment before Ilya makes it to the entrance, but he only has enough time to call out, “wait—” before Ilya is flinging the door open with a maniacal grin on his face. 

“Pike!” Ilya exclaims to the sour-faced man standing in Shane’s hallway. 

He’s holding the hand of a beautiful tall woman with long dark hair and green eyes that sparkle as she fixes them on Ilya. She has the kind of heart-shaped lips, Ilya notices, that he might have gone out of his way to kiss if he’d spotted them in a bar, once. Before he had more perfect lips to kiss whenever he wanted. 

In response Ilya pastes on his most charming grin, holding out a hand for her to shake. “And you must be Pike’s more beautiful girlfriend. I am Ilya.”

“Nice to meet you, Ilya,” she replies with a little laugh, taking his offered hand. “I’m Jackie. I’d say Shane has told us a lot about you, but I’d be lying. I mostly know you from when Hayden complains about you.”

Pike squeezes his eyes shut. “You didn’t need to tell him that, babe.”

Jackie shrugs with a wink, not even bothering to look sheepish, and Shane smothers a smile.

“Please, come in,” Ilya says. “We are almost finished making dinner.”

There’s a beat of silence as Pike and Jackie take off their shoes, used to the rules of Shane’s apartment, but Ilya is content to just watch with his easy grin. Pike is already looking very confused, stealing glances up at him as he tucks his shoes inadvertently next to Ilya’s. He’s obviously several sizes smaller. Wonderful.

“Hey, guys,” Shane calls from the kitchen, clearly trying to stop Ilya from making a comment about the shoes. “Come in, grab a drink.”

“Hey, Shane. So, congratulations on the draft, Ilya,” Jackie says as they move to the kitchen, glancing a little pointedly at Pike.

“Congrats, man,” Pike adds stiffly. 

“Thank you, man.” Ilya pulls out a barstool for Jackie and then throws a glance toward the other one before turning away from Pike and back to Jackie. “Shane has been looking forward to this.”

Jackie just laughs, sliding into the seat Ilya pulled out for her. “Hayden, not so much. But we’ll have fun.”

Ilya smirks. “Yes, we will.”

Shane comes around the counter to give each of them a quick hug. When he pulls Pike close, rolling his eyes at the way Ilya tracks the movement, Pike leans in to his ear and hisses loud enough for Ilya to hear, “promise you’ll avenge me if your boyfriend kills me tonight, right?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking your girlfriend that?”

Hayden pulls away, looking forlorn as he glances over to where Ilya is pretending not to listen and pouring Jackie a glass of wine while she laughs. “I think she’d side with him.”

Ilya bites down on his tongue as Shane says, “and you thought… chances with me were better?”

Hayden looks affronted. “Bro code, dude. Thou shalt avenge thy best friend’s demise, or whatever.”

“No one is dying tonight,” Shane says, then raises his voice. “We’re gonna eat, and drink, and it’s gonna be great.

“Can we help with anything?” Jackie asks.

“Oh, thank you, but that’s okay. We’re almost finished here. Ilya, can you—”

Ilya leaps at the chance to be helpful, practically scrambling over. It’s not just an opportunity to show off to Pike how familiar he is with Shane’s place, it’s also an opening for him to earn his reward. From the knowing glance Shane casts him when he appears at his side, he knows it. 

“I just need the fish out, please.”

“Okay, got it.” Ilya feels Pike watching out of the corner of his eye and can’t resist. “Do you want your special kimchi? Yuna brought up fresh batch when she was visiting last week.”

“Ilya.”

With a sigh, Ilya dons oven mitts and tugs the tray of sizzling fish. Pike is momentarily distracted by Shane asking him about their new place. Jackie gamely jumps in, leaping on the opportunity to talk about something normal—she clearly knows exactly what she’s walked into with Pike and Ilya.

“We’ll probably ask the landlord if he can do anything about the bathroom, but the rest of it is perfect,” Jackie is saying. “Now that I’m graduating, I’m looking forward to having a space of our own.”

“And a much better roommate,” Pike adds, kissing her on the cheek.

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Shane mutters playfully, and Pike glares.

“Dude, I’ve grown up since we lived together in high school,” he complains. “I don’t need Yuna telling me when to do my laundry anymore.”

“No, you just keep it in a pile on your floor.” Shane shoots him a look when he goes to protest. “I was in yours and JJ’s dorm room last year too, remember?” He wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”

“Okay, just because I don’t organize my underwear in a weekly rotation—”

“—That was one time in freshman year, I was trying a new system—”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not some, like, slob monster. Babe, help me out here. I’m not that bad, right?”

Jackie gives Ilya and Shane each a look that says yes, he is that bad, and they both laugh. “I’m sorry, Haydey,” she says, and Ilya mouths Haydey? at Pike over her head. Pike glares at him. “Last week I worked my first night shift, and I came back to all the cupboard doors open and a bag of milk spoiling on the counter.”

“Bagged milk is my second favourite thing about this country,” Ilya says cheerfully, reaching across the counter to squeeze Shane’s hand. “Nowhere close to the first, though.”  Then he seizes the opportunity Jackie gave him and turns to Pike, jovial as ever. “And is okay, Pike, I get it. Shane is same way with me. Whenever we come home, if I leave jacket on chair or forget to take my shoes off…” he shudders, making an exaggerated horrified face. “Not good.”

“It’s about the principle,” Shane says, shaking his head.

“Anyway, Pike. We understand each other, yes? We are very alike.” Ilya takes a sip of his wine, letting his look of horror dawn on him at the comparison. “We both have talented, hot partners who want us to organize fruit alphabetically.”

Pike blinks. “Uh—”

“When did we get so lucky, huh?” Ilya continues, coming around to peck Shane on the cheek and wait just long enough for him to flush before he moves along. And then Ilya figures, hey, why not land the plane. “Pike, I bet you are looking forward to next season without me.”

“Why, because without you there I’ll look so much more talented?” Pike quips wryly. Ilya always likes it when Pike tries to guess what his insult will be before he gets to the punchline—it’s like he does half the leg-work for him. 

But today isn’t the day where he’s winding up for a verbal smackdown—not yet, anyway. Instead, Ilya tilts his head to one side, his best impression of a confused puppy. “I would never say that. I was only going to say congratulations on being given the A permanently for next year. You will be very good assistant captain.”

The thing is that as much as Ilya hates to admit it, as much as he would never admit it to Pike’s face, he’s not… lying. Mostly. Pike can be a half-decent leader when he tries, and he’ll provide a good counterbalance to Marly by doing everything that Shane says. He can already picture it. Yes, Captain. No, Captain. Maybe he’d trip on his skates in his eagerness to get somewhere. He’ll have to ask someone to take a video. 

Pike looks as confused by the compliment as Ilya had intended, so he takes the win. Jackie, meanwhile, is trying not to laugh, and Shane looks exasperated but fond as Ilya passes him with his most innocent expression. 

“Uh. Thanks?”

“Anytime,” Ilya replies with a polite smile. “Моя любовь, do you want wine?”

“Oh, I’ll have some in a bit. Just a ginger ale for now, please.” Ilya pads over to the fridge and grabs a can from the shelf, already pulling a glass from the cupboard without looking. Cup, ice, ginger ale, straw. It’s a familiar enough routine, one Ilya has repeated hundreds of times over the past few months—and will happily do thousands of times more as long as Shane keeps asking—but there’s a heady rush of doing it while other people are watching, especially when it’s Hayden Pike and his girlfriend watching Ilya move through the place he has spent more time in than his dorm room this year. 

There’s also the deja vu of having an audience in Shane’s kitchen, only this time Shane isn’t afraid to touch Ilya. These aren’t his parents, these are his friends, and they want to see that Ilya is good for Shane.

So… he might make a little show of it. He might make a point of reaching into the cupboard without looking, fingers curling around the base of the glass, and whistling as he does it. He might take his time easing the straw into the glass, positioning it nicely, and then turning to hand it to Shane with a warm squeeze to the base of his neck before trailing down his spine, settling just low enough to be borderline indecent. 

Shane looks like he knows exactly what he’s doing as he accepts the glass, but also… he’s not making any moves to stop him. He looks almost entertained by Ilya’s efforts, actually, which is even better. 

But the little performance has had the unfortunate side effect of being the final straw for Pike, who sets down his beer with a look of indignation and jabs a finger at them. “Okay, enough small talk. Let’s talk about what the fuck he sees in you.”

Shane and Ilya both go still. They’d been expecting this, but not so soon. Jackie seems to agree. “It’s been less than five minutes, Hayden, you promised me—”

“I know, but—but everyone else will be here soon, and I was told to get my questions out of the way first. So…”

Beside Ilya, Shane takes a slow, deep breath and then nods. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

***

Shane’s palms are sweating by the time he takes a seat in the armchair.

It’s a normal physiological response to stress, he knows that, but he still feels fucking gross as he wipes his hands on his shorts and rests them on the worn, woven fabric. Questions. Okay, right, he’d been expecting this. 

Jackie helps, because she always does. She’s a natural balm, claiming the armchair opposite Shane and making small talk about his fireplace while Hayden sits sullenly on the couch.

Ilya crosses from the kitchen, Shane’s wine in hand—he’d left it on the counter, a sure sign he’s losing his mind—but lingers after he passes it to him. Shane considers it. Ilya could claim the other side of the couch, but he’d be sat next to Hayden who is, predictably, still lost in his head, and would be nowhere near Shane, who was especially not a fan of that part.

So Ilya chooses the more obnoxious option of perching on Shane’s chair, draping an arm behind him and just clinking their wine glasses together when Shane looks up at him. While Hayden is momentarily distracted talking to Jackie about the food—some classic joke about Shane’s bird diet or something—Shane takes the opportunity to shoot him a glare.

“You have to stop doing that,” he hisses.

“Doing what?” Ilya’s innocence is too prim to be real. Shane just waits, and finally Ilya sighs. “I’m not bothering him. I have not even asked what his girlfriend sees in him, okay? I am being good.”

“Behave.”

Shane watches the command take root, the way Ilya’s mouth twitches up at the corner just as his eyes flare, and then he’s kissing Shane on the forehead. “Always, солнышко.”

“Right.” Hayden claps his hands together, looking at them both expectantly. “Ready?”

It feels sort of like an interview. 

It feels sort of like an interrogation.

Shane ignores the thumb grazing his neck just above his collar and narrows his eyes at Hayden. “Are we really doing it like that, man? Standoff style?”

“No, we’re not,” Jackie interjects firmly. She looks between the two of them, glancing up at Ilya, and sighs. “Listen, I know I don’t know you, Ilya, and you and Hayden have been best friends for years, Shane, but… I’ve heard the other side of—all of this for the last few days.” She gestures to Hayden’s slumped form. “And I think it might help if, instead of an interrogation, he just heard your side of things, right? How you met, how you treat each other, all of that.”

Right. Okay. This is Shane’s opportunity to explain everything to them, to Hayden—and there are plenty of things in the full story that cast both Ilya and Shane in an unsavory light, but he needs Hayden to see his decision making. He needs him to understand how the two of them got here.

“Yeah, we can… I can do that.” Shane blows out a long breath. “But you can’t stop me every two seconds asking questions, okay? Seriously.”

“Just—yeah, okay, tell me.”

“How much detail do you want?” Shane asks, narrowing his eyes. 

“All of it,” Hayden says with a lot of confidence, then pauses. “Well. Leave out any parts about Rozanov’s dick.”

Shane winces. “It’s kind of all about Rozanov’s dick, buddy. That’s sorta the point.”

“Fuck. Okay, tell me all of it.”

He’s really doing this. 

He’s told this story, in whole or in part, three times now. Rose, Troy, his parents. Now Hayden and Jackie. While his parents got the most censored version, Troy probably got the least—Rose got somewhere in the middle, and later probably eked out enough details over the ensuing months to win the competition. He’s considered what version of the story to tell Hayden, but has always circled back to the truth. 

He’s Shane’s best friend, and he needs to know to understand.

Shane starts by telling him about the club with Rose, going back to her place, making out. This much, Hayden had known—though he seems a little surprised that it was actually true. He steers around some details, but makes it clear that it was not a good experience for either of them, 

He expects Hayden to interject, but actually it’s Ilya that breaks the ice first. “Do not forget that you tried to draw cat on her with your tongue,” he supplies, and this startles a laugh out of Hayden.

“Oh, honey, did you really?” Jackie echoes, with the expression of a teacher that has just been told a kindergartener has had an accident. 

Shane sighs, shooting a quick glare at Ilya. “Yeah, I did. It was—a lot, okay? And anyway, I said no interruptions. That goes for you too.”

Ilya holds his hands up, and Shane continues with a wince. If that part got Hayden, the next part can only be worse. “And then I, um. Well, I got drunk, after, and I was thinking about what Rose said about needing lessons just as I was on the Craigslist ‘missed connections’ page. And I just got thinking, y’know, about how I could learn, and—again, I feel like I should mention, I was drunk. So—so I, um… put an ad up myself?”

Hayden’s eyes bug out of his head. “For sex?”

“No, not for sex!” Shane replies defensively. He pauses. “Well, I guess technically it ended up being for sex, but—”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“That wasn’t my intention.” Now that he’s here, sitting in front of Hayden and able to glance over at the cabinet hiding the rum that started this spiral in the first place, it all tumbles out. “I kinda just wanted tips on oral, y’know, because I still thought I was straight—”

Ilya snorts, but at least has the decency to look sheepish. Shane glares at him and keeps going.

“—and, uh, part of me was doing it just for the hell of it, y’know. I was curious about what responses I’d get, but… mostly I just got spam? Then I started talking to this one person that pointed out I’d accidentally asked for men only to respond to my ad, and then I realised he was a man, and. Um, yeah. I found out he was a student and invited him over, and… it was Ilya. I mean, Rozanov.”

A long, pregnant pause falls over the three hockey players and the nursing student in the living room.

“Wait. That’s how you got together?!” Hayden screeches.

“Fuck, Pike, I think you just broke my eardrums,” Ilya hisses, shaking his head in disdain.

“Jesus Christ, Hayd!” Shane leans over and flicks him in the ear for good measure, the way Hayden used to when they were fifteen and he was trying to distract Shane from doing his homework, begging to go out and do something fun instead. He watches the memory wash over Hayden in real time, watches him sag against the reminder.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I just—what the fuck, man? Like—Rozanov, I can expect that kind of thing from. But you? Putting an ad for, like, sex lessons on fucking Craigslist and meeting with the first guy that doesn’t try to steal your money?”

“I—I took Rose’s instructions literally?” Shane tries, but his ears are burning. It’s one thing when Ilya teases him in the bedroom, talking about how desperate he is, calling him a slut, but Hayden doing it is an entirely different thing.

“You could have had some regard for safety, honey,” Jackie reminds him.

Ilya looks offended. “It was me. I was not going to kidnap him.”

“But it could have been anyone,” Hayden snaps. He’s more disgruntled than Shane expected by the revelation of how this all happened. 

“Okay, yeah, of course,” Shane huffs. “Look, I get the concern. I told myself I’d just open the door and see what kind of person responded to an ad like that, y’know, then probably go the fuck to bed. But instead I opened the door and… Ilya was there. It was a stupid idea, sure, I won’t do it again—”

“You better not,” Ilya grumbles.

“But—for me at least, it worked out.”

“How? So you opened the door, and then, like, bam—you guys have been dating since November?”

“God, no,” Shane says at the same time Ilya snorts and shakes his head. 

“No, we were…” Ilya trails off, looking pointedly at Shane for him to explain. 

“Enemies with benefits?” Shane suggests, and Ilya shrugs. “Yeah, I guess that was it. I told myself I didn’t like him, that I was just using him for the lessons, but it was more than that for a long time before I let myself admit it. I think—Ilya gave me a safe space to explore the feelings I’d been ignoring for a lot longer than I knew. Even when it was just, like, lessons, I became more confident, more focused—”

“Uh, that’s not true,” Hayden interjects. “There have been multiple times over the last few months when you’ve shown up to practice super distracted—both of you. And sometimes at the same time.” He shakes his head. “Jesus, I don’t know how I didn’t notice.”

“Well—things got a little… complicated. Not that they weren’t complicated before, with us being teammates and everything, but. Um. During the combine, I realised, for sure, that I was gay, and that I had feelings for Ilya. I, uh, tried to talk to him about it…”

Shane promised himself that he wouldn’t leave out the unsavory parts, but he doesn’t know how to explain this. The constant push-pull that had been going on between them finally snapping, how they both ran away—the Ilya perched beside him on his armrest is a far cry from the Ilya back then, but he doesn’t know how to explain it without Hayden having trouble reconciling the two the same way Shane used to. 

Thankfully, Ilya seems to sense his discomfort—or maybe he just takes the opportunity when it presents itself to keep to his promise of helping. He takes the lead.

“It was my fault,” he explains. “I was… hm. I think we both were very afraid of how we felt. Sadly for us, I figured it out first. And my fear made me lash out. To protect myself, to protect Shane, I do not know. Maybe both. But either way, I closed myself off. I was mean. I ran away.”

“I ran away too,” Shane points out, but Ilya shakes his head. 

“No, Shane, don’t.” He already knows that Shane is trying to defend him. “I was cruel when I tried to push you away. Every time. And you were kind enough to see through it. I apologised, yes, but we did not really fix anything. But then…”

“You got injured.” Shane’s voice is raw. For a minute, it feels like their two guests watching them completely disappear.

Ilya nods. When Shane looks up at him, Ilya is already waiting for his gaze. His jaw is set but his eyes are shining. “I saw a video of it. After, in hospital. It was…”

“You shouldn’t have watched that,” Shane says automatically. Ilya shakes his head again.

“I was not watching me. I was watching you. I was thinking, how can anyone see this and not know? Not see what we have? It… watching it, that was the first time I thought I saw how you felt about me.” Ilya clears his throat, apparently remembering they have other people in the room with them, and turns back to Hayden and Jackie. “So even though I was awful, and mean, Shane knew we had something. And he made me talk about it.”

“We became official during reading week in February, when we went on a trip together,” Shane finishes, unwilling to turn to see his friends’ reactions. “And… yeah. Um. That’s it. We just want to live our lives, be together. We’re not coming out, not yet—we want to establish ourselves in our careers first, y’know, separately, but then… yeah, who knows.”

“The world will be our clam,” Ilya adds with a decisive nod. 

Shane squeezes his knee. “Oyster, baby.”

“The world will be our oyster,” Ilya corrects, sounding out the word with a grin. “Ah. Устрица. Yes, makes sense. Anyway, we are in love. He makes me healthy boring food when I am injured and I give him many, many orgasms.”

Fuck. They were doing so well.

“Ah, Jesus, Rozanov—”

“Really, Ilya?”

Ilya just shrugs, leaning back against the chair like a king reclining on his throne. “What? Is the truth. They said they wanted to hear, so I am telling them. Of course, I make you actually good food, but—”

“Fuck you, my food is good too—”

“Yes, if I empty entire spice drawer in when you are not looking.”

“I make you pelmeni, Ilya, shut up.”

Ilya relents. He does really like Shane’s pelmeni, even if only he can make it taste like his mother’s. “Okay, fine. But when I had sling, you were evil. Drunk on power.” He turns back to Hayden and Jackie, who are still just staring at them. “He was obsessed with nursing me back to health. He controlled my everything. When I eat, what I eat, how much I work out.” Ilya pauses for effect, and Shane could swear he waits until Hayden’s gaze lifts to speak. “When I come.”

Hayden immediately goes a deep, deep shade of red. Ilya looks delighted.

Nervous laughter claws at Shane’s throat, but he swallows it back. He just still can’t believe Hayden is here, with Ilya, while they allude to their sex bet openly in front of them.

“Yes, he made me wait long, long time,” Ilya continues. “Made it competition, of course, and I lost, but he made it worth the wait at the end. Pike, did you know Shane can fold his legs—”

“Okay!” Shane claps his hands together, staring wide-eyed at Ilya. “Too far, they don’t need to know—”

“Is that why you do pilates, Shane?” Jackie asks, sounding genuinely interested, and Hayden makes a wounded noise—no doubt at remembering the photo, the tiny shorts, and putting two and two together with the timeline. Jackie looks gleeful when she works it out from her boyfriend’s expression. 

“I mean, no—it’s not the reason I do fucking pilates,” Shane mutters, face hot. “But. It is a… byproduct of the activity, I guess.”

Jackie and Ilya snort in unison, and Hayden looks horrified. “Calm down, Pike,” Ilya drawls, noticing Hayden’s expression. “We are boyfriends. We have sex, yes? Do you know what sex is? See, when two men love each other very much—”

“Ilya, enough.”

The only sound in the room is of Ilya’s mouth snapping shut, his sharp exhalation through his nose. It’s a wonderful, glorious silence.

Shane squeezes Ilya’s knee once, nodding at him. “Thank you,” he whispers, low enough for only Ilya to hear, then looks up at Hayden and Jackie. He can’t quite meet Hayden’s eyes when he does, and takes a deep breath. “I mean, Ilya’s not wrong. Like I said, he’s not going anywhere, and we’re in a relationship now. And—and that means we have sex, so. Y’know. Get used to that.”

Was this night supposed to be a humiliation ritual for Shane? He really didn’t think that was the intention, but that seems to be how it’s turning out so far.

Hayden looks a little faint at Shane’s words, and Jackie rushes to fill in. “That’s—that’s great, Shane. I’m happy for you, really,” she says, smiling. She winks. “I mean, he’s a total ten.”

Shane grins up at Ilya, who is still watching him quietly but winks too when Shane meets his eyes. 

“I don’t think that’s true,” Hayden says finally. “Listen, Shane, you know I love you—” for a second, his cheeks are tinged red “—I mean, you’re my best friend, man, of course, but… I still don’t know about this.”

Shane folds his arms, bristling. “Okay, so what? After hearing all of that, our whole story, what’s your problem?”

While Shane is ready to hear it, Hayden takes a moment to glance at Jackie who seems just as unsure of him continuing as the rest of the room—but he keeps going. “Okay, I want to say—I get that this was scary, for both of you,” he says, jerking his gaze to Ilya for a brief second before snapping back to Shane. “And I’m really sorry about that. And I’m really fucking you felt like you couldn’t tell me.”

It would be so nice if Hayden stopped talking then. Perfect, even. 

But he doesn’t.

“But—I still just don’t think he’s good enough for you, man.” Shane blinks, and he can’t get his voice to work fast enough to stop Hayden from turning to Ilya and continuing. “I understand that this was a hard time or whatever, Rozanov, but you jerked my boy around for months.”

“Hey, that’s not what—”

“No, Shane, seriously. Think about it. The NHL will be worse. I get you’re in the same city, but you both know the schedule is fucking brutal, and do you really think this guy can keep you two a secret in front of the entire world?”

“We’ve already been doing it this whole season, Hayden,” Shane says through his teeth. “It’ll be tough, yeah, but worth it.”

“For the guy that chirps me relentlessly?” Hayden whines. “Shane, he spent half of our last practice skating around behind me with a chair in case I ‘fell over’, like I’m a fucking five year old!”

Ilya snorts, but at least he tries to cover it with a cough. “Was good joke,” he says with a shrug. “Because you fell in bowling at team hangout last week, yes?”

That placates Hayden only for a moment. “You never stop, Rozanov—”

“Have you played hockey before? Do you know what chirping is, Pike?”

“Babe, he’s right, I think he’s just joking—”

“No, fucking—enough,” Hayden seethes, pointing a finger at Ilya. “See? You can’t let up for even a minute. You’re no good for him.”

The room goes very still. Fuck, Shane has no idea what to say, how to even begin rebutting him, because he’s so damn mad that he can’t even see straight. Hayden is still staring at him, and at his side he can feel Ilya’s whole body tense, poised for action.

It is Ilya that breaks the silence. “Have you ever thought that maybe I think you are no good for him, Pike?” he says evenly. He doesn’t have to yell for everyone to hear him, and he doesn’t wait for a response. “You listen to our story, you sympathize with our pain, our fear, and then you look at your best friend and say his boyfriend is no good because he teases you? Grow up.” His words are biting but factual, almost sounding bored, and he doesn’t look away from Hayden the whole time. “I tease everyone, I push everyone. You are not special. And you have no right to tell me this. Not good enough for him… pfft.” Ilya’s derisive snort cuts to the bone, just as intended. “Maybe if you were less selfish, I would not think the same thing about you.”

The silence that follows is infinitely heavier than before. Shane has no idea what to do. Part of him briefly considers applauding, but he settles for relaxing back into the curve of Ilya’s body behind him, feeling his heartbeat thundering against his shoulder blade.

“Again, he’s not wrong, Hayd,” Shane finally says, but his voice is soft. “I know you two have your differences, but he’s important to me. I love him, okay? So just… trust that I’m happy, we’re happy, and we’re ready to face whatever comes?”

Slowly, all the fight bleeds out of Hayden, his bristles retracting. He nods, scraping a hand over his face. “Sorry, dude,” he says. “I am being selfish. It’s just a lot, I guess. And—like Jackie said, I’m… happy for you too.”

It sounds like it hurts him a little to get the words out, but Shane will take it. “Thank you,” he says as sincerely as he can manage, and he feels Ilya relax a little against him. “And the teasing really is, like, his love language, if you think about it.”

“Is not!”

“Hayden’s love language is words of affirmation,” Jackie supplies, and Ilya looks delighted at the tidbit. Jackie claps her hands together, and the moment breaks. “Well, that was tense. And I’m pretty hungry. Shane, d’you mind if I pick at that charcuterie board on the counter until the others arrive?”

Shane laughs, and Hayden stands to follow Jackie into the kitchen. In the brief second alone, Shane turns to Ilya and tugs him down with a hand in his hair for a long, thorough kiss.

“What was that for?” Ilya says when he breaks away, sounding breathless. 

Shane grins, watching the way Ilya hungrily tracks the stretch of his mouth. “You’re a good guard dog.”

***

The mood is only slightly lighter when there’s a knock on the door a few minutes later, but Ilya doesn’t particularly care. He and Jackie are too busy stuffing themselves with cheese and fruit from the charcuterie board while Shane admonishes them from the stove. 

If Pike is too busy sulking to eat some fucking salami, then that’s his loss. 

“Shall I get door, моя любовь?” he asks Shane, who nods again. He might be playing up the pet names a little more than usual. So what?

He knows Shane isn’t having a good time, which sucks, but it’s all Pike’s fault. Ilya, meanwhile, is having a great time. 

As long as he doesn’t think about anything Pike said for too long. 

He’s pretty much past agonizing over all the ways he fucked everything up in the early days of his relationship with Shane, but sometimes things like that will send him screeching back into a realm of insecurity—particularly when the question of the future arises. It’s one thing to have fucked up with Shane in the past, but the thought of hurting him like that again when they’re finally on semi-even ground? Yeah, it kind of makes him want to tear his hair out. 

No, he won’t be doing that again. Not if he can help it. Pike just doesn’t get it. 

He has his own hopes, but he doesn’t dare to guess who will be behind the door before he opens it—he’s pleasantly vindicated when he sees Troy and Harris standing in the doorway.

“I am very, very glad to see you both,” Ilya says, pulling them inside and hugging each of them in turn. 

“That bad, huh?” Troy whispers into his ear in a laugh. 

“I was told you would be buffers tonight?”

“I think the words Shane used when he asked Troy were human shields,” Harris supplies with a grin. “And Troy filled me in a little on your whole… situation.” With a wave of his hand, he encapsulates the animosity between Ilya and Pike as well as the broader fact of his and Shane’s relationship.

“We’re ready, man,” Troy tells him. “We’re here to help.”

Ilya blows out a breath. “Thank you both, really.” He keeps his voice low, because Pike and Jackie are finally making their way over to greet the new couple. “It was… fine, I think, and then Pike kind of blew up just before you got here. I’m pretty sure Shane was about to start yelling. Or crying. Maybe both.”

“Hollander yelling?” Troy suddenly looks much more enthusiastic. “Now this I’d like to see.”

“Well, the night is young,” Ilya says with a sigh. “How is your mother, Troy?”

Troy smiles. “She’s great, thanks. Moving to Florida with her new boyfriends, actually.”

“Hoping to get drafted there and join here?”

Troy looks horrified. “If I ever get drafted to Florida, you have permission to kidnap me back to Montreal, Roz.”

Ilya steps aside to allow the two couples to greet each other while he wanders back over to the kitchen to see Shane. He comes to stand behind him in front of the stove, one hand lightly resting on his hip—not enough to cage him in, just enough contact to let him know Ilya is there. Shane leans back into the touch for a brief moment, letting out a shaky breath, then nods and straightens. 

“You okay, моя свекла?”

Shane’s brow furrows. “I don’t know that one.”

“My beetroot.”

Shane glares, but his ears are tinged pink. “I’m okay,” he says finally. “He’s… more upset than I thought. But I’m glad to have everyone here now.”

“Yes, as human shields.”

Shane winces. “Troy told you that?”

“Harris did.”

“I mean… yeah, that was sort of the plan.”

“Looks like it might be necessary, so smart choice.”

Shane bites his lip. “I just wish it didn’t have to be, y’know? Like, that whole time we were talking it didn’t really feel like he was listening, I guess.”

Ilya understands. He’d thought the same thing while he was studying Pike’s gormless expression as Shane explained their love story. Secretly, he suspects that Pike had tapped out as soon as Shane said that the story inherently involved mentions of Ilya’s dick—a move that was both disrespectful and rude in equal measure. 

Ilya’s dick was fantastic, in fact, so it was quite offensive that Pike didn’t want to hear about it. And as he’d just found out earlier, his face alone had the ability to turn the most beautiful man in the world gay, so. There. 

He wonders absently if he could get away with shoehorning in some kind of comment about the time Shane had taken all nine inches of his cock and still asked for more, tears of ecstasy streaming down his face as Ilya worked two fingers inside his hole alongside his cock. That had been a great night, and one Shane deserves to be proud of. 

He decides against it, for the first and most important reason that Shane would likely feel humiliated—and not in the fun, sexy way that Ilya sometimes did to him, but the kind that made him want to crawl out of his skin. Ilya supposed that your shitty best friend hearing about all the mind-blowing slutty sex you’ve been having with your best friend’s nemesis would do that to you. 

The other reason he decides to keep his mouth shut is because he’s trying to be good. He snapped at Pike a little earlier, he knows that, but it was in defense of Shane and he’d tried not to take anything too far—he’d simply called Pike out for his hypocrisy and selfishness, exactly as he’d deserved. Shane had seemed glad for it, actually, but Ilya doesn’t want to push his luck. 

He still wants his reward, after all. 

He settles for hugging Shane tight to him for a brief moment and pressing his lips to his ear. “Say the word,” he murmurs, “and I will kick every single person out. Thirty seconds and they are gone, yes? Or just Pike. We can keep Lady Pike, and Troy and Harris are good.”

This earns Ilya a small laugh, at least, which instantly makes his heart warm. Shane turns his head briefly, seeking, and Ilya complies with a gentle press of their lips before he pulls back. With one more kiss to the tip of Shane’s nose, he steps away. 

“Okay, I will go be good host now. Do you need help?”

“I’m good, thanks. Just gotta let it simmer for another minute, and then I’ll dish up.”

True to his word, Ilya sets about the apartment in host mode, grabbing Pike another beer, topping up Jackie and Shane’s wine, and gleefully cracking open a cider from Harris’ family’s farm before directing them all to the charcuterie board.

“Sorry about the state of it,” Jackie says with a little laugh when Troy and Harris round the counter. “Ilya and I kind of went a little crazy.”

Ilya grins. “Feral, yes. Cheese does this to people, and same with salami. Not to Shane, of course. He is immune to that.”

“I’m not immune,” Shane huffs. 

“You are currently cheeseless,” Troy points out. 

“Cheese…less?” Ilya echoes.

“Not a new word, sweetheart,” Shane tells him quietly. “It’s a Troy-ism.”

“Fuck you, it’s a word. To be devoid of cheese. To deprive oneself of cheese. Y’know, like how Shane hasn’t touched the cheese tonight even though he’s been staring at it.”

“I am not cheeseless,” Shane mumbles, looking like he feels idiotic. To prove his point, he grabs a cube of cheese from the board with his skewer and holds it up. “Besides, the season is over. Exams are done. There’s just… summer.”

Ilya knows what summer means. Another cottage, this time one that Shane grew up in, wisely vacated by his parents for three glorious, blissful weeks. The two of them, completely alone, together. It’s almost more than Ilya could have hoped for.

To round out the sentiment, Shane pops the cheese into his mouth, stuffs it into one cheek and sticks his tongue out at Ilya. 

God, Ilya is so in love with this man it hurts.

When Shane is done chewing, of course, he snaps back into hosting—pouring out some more chips to snack on while he dishes up, asking Troy and Harris what they’ve been up to. But Ilya sees the moment he swallows, the quick glance that Shane gave him before turning back to the stove, and the smile on his face is enough.

“I gotta say, I feel super grown up right now,” Harris announces a beat later. “Like, attending a dinner party. That’s shit my parents do, y’know?”

Jackie laughs. “I know, I’m feeling pretty adult recently.”

“Of course, you are official nurse now,” Ilya says smoothly as he turns to lean against the sink. “Congratulations on graduating, if I did not say it already.”

Yeah—the words fucking sting to say, if he’s being honest, but he won’t have that. He furiously stamps down the feeling.

“Thank you, Ilya,” Jackie says. “I’m really happy to be done, but also, like—” she laughs, a cascading, melodic sound that cuts through the air. Ilya is pretty sure he hears at least two of the men in the room sigh. “—the future is fucking scary to think about, y’know?”

Ilya nods. “Yes. I know this feeling.”

Jackie and Ilya stare at each other for a long beat, until Troy says, “aaaand on that note, congratulations on the draft, Roz. Voyageurs, man! Did you see that coming?”

Ilya folds his arms over his chest. “I do not have crystal ball, so no.” He glances over at Shane, unable to help the small smile on his face as he watches him dip a fresh spoon into the simmering pot and take a tentative sip, frowning before adding a few bay leaves to the pot. “But it was good surprise. Very, very good surprise.”

“You’re on a three year contract now, right?” Jackie asks. “Sorry, I feel like I’m the only one here who doesn’t know how the whole thing works.”

“Don’t worry, I’m in the same boat,” Harris says with a sheepish smile. “I just take the pictures and ogle my boyfriend, so I get very lost whenever Troy starts explaining statistics to me. I fell asleep one time. Sorry.”

Troy grins down at him, and Ilya thinks it might be the happiest his friend has ever looked. “We’ll try and keep the hockey talk to a minimum, then,” Troy promises, reaching over him for another chip from the bowl.

The only problem seems to be that none of them can think of something else to talk about. They lapse into a heavy silence that is only broken by Shane’s phone dinging in his pocket, and as he rummages for it Ilya turns back to the group.

“Okay, well someone has to come up with a new topic,” Troy hisses.

“Uh… what are everyone’s summer plans?” Ilya tries.

“Jackie and I are going to Ibiza with her whole family,” Pike says, perking up suddenly at the mention of the summer. “Drinks, beach, pool, repeat.”

Ilya bites his lip to contain his smile. He happens to know that Ibiza is a real hotspot for gay bars. He takes a silent moment to pray: may Hayden Pike stumble into one accidentally and get accosted by drag queens. Or maybe beautiful Jackie goes too, and she is whisked away by a much hotter lesbian.

“We’re doing other stuff too,” Jackie insists. “I want to relax, yeah, but I also want to explore. I’m making the most of my time off, thank you very much.”

Ilya is helping assemble the dishes as Harris politely asks about their itinerary, and then explains that he and Troy will be spending the summer on the farm. “With all the dogs?” he asks, perking up at the image in his head of Harris’ family farm.

“Yes, with all the dogs,” Harris replies, used to Ilya’s repeated questioning ever since he found out Harris’ family runs a dog shelter. “You guys should come visit sometime.”

“Yeah? Maybe we will,” Shane says with a smile, to Ilya’s surprise. He jerks his head in Ilya’s direction as he plucks each piece of fish from the tray with his tongs. “This one needs some new friends to play with.”

Everyone laughs except for Pike and Ilya, for vastly different reasons. Ilya’s face is hot, but Shane just challenges his gaze with a raised eyebrow. 

To Ilya’s mortification—and Shane’s great amusement, no doubt—Harris joins in. “Oh, does he need to be socialized?”

Shane’s eyes narrow at him. “Yeah, he doesn’t play well with others.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. Subtle, he mouths, and Shane just winks.

Fucker.

“Sorry for doing my job,” Ilya says in a low voice, just for Shane, then turns back to the rest of them again. “Anyway, we will be eating soon, and later we will make plans to see all of Harris’ dogs.” He peeks at Shane hopefully. “Maybe we will take one home…?”

“No, Ilya.”

“Eventually,” Ilya tells Harris, solemnly nodding. He leans in conspiratorially. “I will surprise him with it if I have to.”

“Ilya.”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he sing-songs in response. “One day, but not now. I will settle for staring wistfully at Drover family dogs instead.”

“Wisftully? That’s a big word for you, Roz,” Troy says with a laugh.

“Hey, I am Russian, not stupid,” Ilya shoots back, used to this playful banter. “I am literature major, you know this—or, I mean… I was literature major.”

The reminder hits him like a blow to the stomach, sending him reeling in front of his friends for several long beats. He recovers with a quick smile, hoping that Troy is the only one looking that knows him well enough to see it doesn’t reach his eyes. “What is saying? You can take the boy out of McGill, but you cannot take McGill out of the boy?”

Troy grins, soft and understanding. “A-fucking-men to that. So what are your summer plans, you two? When does training start?”

Ilya gratefully accepts the change in topic. “Not until September. We are going to Shane’s cottage next month.”

Pike’s head jerks up. “He’s going to Newboro?”

Ah, of course. Shane had mentioned that Pike had been to the Hollander family cottage several times before. They have fond memories there together, apparently. Whatever. Pike’s reaction is a little overdramatic for Ilya’s taste—as everything he does usually is. 

“Yes,” Shane says calmly. “My parents invited us to use it while they’re gone.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be there for that, either,” Troy says under his breath, and Ilya smirks at him. 

“They’re really—” Pike stops, swallows. He looks dumbfounded. “They really like him that much?”

Ilya’s heart could burst with pride at the way Shane says simply, “yes, they do.”

Pike blinks. “But—”

Another knock at the door. God has truly serendipitous timing.

Ilya frowns at Shane. “You did not say anyone else was coming.”

Shane shrugs. His eyes are glittering. “I didn’t say everyone was here, either. Go see.”

The door is only a few footsteps away, but it only takes Ilya half that to realise who it is. He hears her in the hallway before he sees her, the cackle of a laugh that he spent his childhood coaxing out of her with increasingly hair-brained comedy routines, and he looks back to Shane with a bright grin. 

When he opens the door, Sveta is still laughing and her fingers are intertwined with Rose Landry’s, who is looking very pleased with herself.

“Ilyusha!” Sveta exclaims, leaning forward to wrap him in a hug. He laughs, but dutifully lifts her up with a squeeze before putting her back down again.

“Wow, Sveta, it feels like it has been years,” Ilya deadpans, and Sveta rolls her eyes, adjusting her long floral skirt. 

“Yes, well,” she waves her free hand, then holds up the one tangled with Rose’s. “I was visiting Rosie, and then we got a text saying you two needed some backup, so…”

“Here we are,” Rose says with a grin. She even does some jazz hands.

Ilya shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he leans down to hug her, too. “Good to see you, Rose, even if I cannot get rid of this one.” He ignores Sveta swatting him on the arm and steps aside. “Come in, come in.”

Rose tugs her sandals off gracelessly and practically flings herself across the room at Shane, a blur of denim cut-offs with a flowing blouse that billows as she runs over. Ilya focuses just long enough to hear the laughter punched out of Shane when Rose collides with him, babbling something about two months being too long and rehearsals for her play in New York taking forever, then turns away. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ilya says to Sveta in Russian, echoing himself from earlier. He means it even more now, even if he just left Sveta a few hours ago.

Sveta just smiles, tugging him close and tilting her head back. No doubt she’s taking in the tightness of Ilya’s jaw, the slight wariness in his eyes that still lingers even now that Pike has been in the apartment for a while. “I’m glad I’m here too,” is what she finally says in return, squeezing his side. They survey the kitchen in amiable silence for a beat. “You know, you have way too much testosterone here. That’s your problem. I feel bad for Hayden’s girlfriend.”

“Jackie is too good for him,” Ilya confirms, feeling his stomach twist at echoing Pike’s indignation for him earlier before he realises that Sveta wasn’t actually talking about that. “Three and a half out of four men here are gay, if that helps.”

Sveta hums. “A little. Not enough though. Your hatred of Pike is very masculine. Lucky for you—” she boops Ilya on the nose “—we’re here now. You’re welcome.”

As Sveta and Rose go around greeting everyone, Ilya steals a moment to return to the stove and kiss Shane on the cheek before he continues helping him dish up. 

“Thank you for inviting them,” he says quietly. 

Shane grins. “Even if you still don’t like Rose?” he teases.

Ilya sighs, glancing back at where Rose is excitedly cooing over pictures of Harris’ dogs. “She is very hard to dislike,” he admits, and then thinks back to a minute ago when Rose had practically tried to climb Shane in an effort to hug him. “But still. I think she is touchy with you on purpose. To make me jealous or something.”

“Probably. I told her about it.”

Ilya’s ears ring. “What?”

Shane shrugs. “I told her you get jealous of her touching me, given how all this started.” He sneaks Ilya a glance as he slides the last piece of fish onto the plate, and his reddened cheeks are the only indication that he’s feeling anything about this. “Told her the sex is always super hot after, too, so she’s probably just doing me a favour.”

“Hollander.”

The word comes out before Ilya can stop it, somewhere between a sigh and a growl and entirely inappropriate given the dinner party they’re attempting to host for their friends, so he starts running through the Marauders playbook in his head to will his cock not to join the conversation. 

When he opens his eyes—he hadn’t realised he’d shut them—Shane is grinning. “Problem?” he asks, tilting his head, and in this second Ilya wants so desperately to pin him down and fuck him bent over the kitchen counter that he can taste it. He doesn’t even particularly care that their friends are still in the room, and suspects that he’d actually enjoy showing off in front of Rose, making a point of who Shane really belongs to. 

But Ilya is being good, so instead he takes a long, deep breath and unclenches his fists. “Later?”

Shane nods. “Later.”

That’s enough for now. 

Getting everyone to the dinner table is a little bit like herding cats, but Ilya manages to corral them eventually. He dutifully runs the plates back and forth, topping up drinks and generally being the stellar host that he is, until eventually he notices Shane puttering in the kitchen and goes over to him once more.

“Coming, мой помидор?”

Shane thinks for a second, then frowns. “My—my tomato?”

“Yes. Because when you are embarrassed or nervous, you go red like tomato. Like right now. So, are you ready?”

Shane sighs. “Nope.” He wrings his hands. “I know I’m usually the Hayden defender, but he’s really starting to piss me off tonight.”

“I know.” Ilya tugs him close to kiss his temple. “But it will be better now everyone is here, yes? He is… um… diluted.”

Shane raises his eyebrows. “That’s a new one.”

“I was reading article about squash. English thing, I think. Anyway, is not important.”

“No. Okay.” Shane blows out a long breath, hesitates, and then nods. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

Ilya and Shane claim their seats at the end of the cramped table, side by side. They’ve ended up with Sveta and Rose flanking them on either side, which Ilya suspects is on either Sveta or Shane’s parts. He’s glad for it. 

“Rose, I just wanted to say that I loved you in Dark Knights,” Jackie is gushing as they sit down. “Are you working on anything new?”

“That’s so sweet, thank you,” Rose replies, smiling. She tosses her hair, and Ilya is pretty sure everyone in the room but two sigh at the sight. “I just finished rehearsals for a play I’m doing this summer, actually, but…”

Sveta nudges her. “Go on, tell them what the next project is,” she says with a grin, looking proud.

“They did say I could announce it…” Rose smiles bashfully. Ilya would be taking notes on humility in the face of compliments if he cared. Shane probably is doing just that. “I just got cast in the adaptation of the X-Squad comics.”

Both Pike and Harris in particular erupt with excitement, gushing with theories about which comic storyline will be adapted and what character Rose is playing, but she refuses to divulge any further details because of the NDAs she signed.

“C’mon, Rose, just tell us if you shapeshift,” Harris pleads. “Like, half of them do, so it’s not even a spoiler.”

Rose bites her lip. “Yes.”

“Fuck yes, you’re playing Leela?!” 

For all of Rose’s accolades, she really isn’t a very good actor in real life, Ilya thinks. Her reaction to Harris’ blind guess is all the evidence that they need.

The first few minutes of their meal are then spent with Rose frantically trying to convince the table not to leak anything online while they all laugh at her misfortune, After that, everyone compliments Shane’s cooking. Ilya beams with pride as they all lay on the praise, knowing how hard Shane worked on the meal, and takes massive hulking bites and chews obnoxiously until Shane pays attention to him so he can chime in as well. 

“Very good, Hollander,” he mumbles around his mouthful of fish and vegetables. Shane rolls his eyes, but under the table he nudges Ilya with his knee. 

Ilya nudges back. To their left, Sveta raises an eyebrow in their direction.

“You know, Hayden never explained how you all know each other,” Jackie says, looking around the table. “Of course, I know Troy from the team, and Harris, you’re the photographer, right?”

Harris nods. “I work for the school newspaper, but I also freelance for the university and do some social media stuff for the hockey team specifically. I’d love to do publicity for more teams in the future.”

“That is very cool,” Sveta says, the normal human equivalent of screaming that’s so fucking awesome!! “Are you a hockey fan?”

“Grew up a Centaurs fan, but more by birth than anything else,” Harris admits. “Since being at McGill, though, I’ve come to love watching the Marauders play and gotten more into it since then.”

“Hm, I wonder why,” Ilya says under his breath, making Troy blush and everyone else laugh.

“And how about you?” Jackie asks Rose and Sveta politely. “Of course, I know how you each know Ilya and Shane, but how did you two meet?”

Rose’s jaw drops. “She knows how we met?” she says to Shane, sounding incredulous.

Ilya wonders absently if Shane has processed the fact that every single person in the room knows the full story of the two of them, barring maybe Harris who might just be spotty on a few details.

Shane, true to Ilya’s newest pet name, goes bright red. “Um, Ilya told them. Obviously.” 

This gets a laugh out of Rose. “Oh, I should’ve guessed. Y’know, Rozanov, I’m still waiting for those flowers that you owe me for sending Shaney stumbling dick-first into your arms.”

Sveta howls with laughter at this, and Ilya can’t help but join in when he takes in Shane’s chagrined expression. “Of course, Landry. I will send you one thousand roses. One for every orgasm I give Shane when you could not—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Shane squeaks, clapping a hand over Ilya’s mouth. Ilya just licks his palm, making Shane pull away with a grimace as everyone else (barring Hayden) laughs.

“To answer your question, Jackie—as Ilya’s best friend, it was my duty to help him get his head out of his ass. It took a while, and I’m pretty sure I begged for a lobotomy halfway through so I wouldn’t have to think about everything I knew, but we got there eventually. Anyway, Rose was the same thing for Shane, so…”

Ilya knows that Sveta was intentional in not using the same ‘best friend’ label for Rose she used for herself, probably knowing Pike would have a bitch fit, but the man bristles at the sidestep anyway. Child. 

“It took us a while on the Shane front, too,” Rose adds, apparently oblivious to Hayden’s expression. “They’re just as bad as each other, honestly. Especially because it took Shane a while to even realise he was gay. We were working on it for months.”

“I go to UofT, and Rose has been in Toronto a lot for filming, so…” Sveta shrugs, a smile dancing across her dark lips. “We met up, formed a union against those two and did some matchmaking, and the rest is history.”

“That’s so cute!” Jackie gushes.

“Uh, you did not do much matchmaking,” Ilya points out, offended by the implication. “Craigslist did matching. You are not Craig.”

“You have no idea what we did in December,” Sveta mutters under her breath. Ilya’s eyes narrow. 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What?” Sveta blinks innocently. “Nothing.”

“That is not nothing. But you and Rose didn’t even meet until, like, February.”

“Hm.” Sveta’s face is far too neutral to actually be casual.

“Svetlana Vetrova.”

“Ilya.”

“Explain yourself, or I’ll show everyone your drunk texts crying about how much you miss me,” Ilya says in rapid Russian. 

“Fine,” Sveta huffs, then switches back to English. “Rose texted me back in December.”

“You slid into her DMs? Nice,” Harris whistles. 

“It wasn’t like that,” Rose says, flushing in a way that implies it was at least a little bit like that. “I knew Ilya had a best friend he was staying with over the break, and I knew she knew what was going on. Shane was being useless—”

“Hey!”

“You were spiralling, babe,” Rose says gently. “Convinced Ilya hated him, but I had a strong suspicion it was the opposite because, I mean—” she pats Shane’s cheek “—just look at that face!”

“We filled each other in, got caught up,” Sveta says with a shrug. “It was… useful. Even before we were this, it was nice having someone else in a similar boat.”

“And what is ‘this’, exactly?” Ilya presses, smirking.

Rose turns pink, but Sveta just rolls her eyes. “She’s my girlfriend, obviously, numbnuts,” she says. “We’re in a lesbian relationship, remember? Unlike some people, we didn’t need to have sex at least thirty times before we realised we had a crush on each other.”

“The first time was enough to realise we were in love,” Rose chimes in, grinning maniacally, and the two of them high-five without looking. 

“I was right,” Shane whispers under his breath, looking wide-eyed and a little in awe. “It’s so much worse with both of them at once.”

“Anyway,” Sveta says pointedly. “Yes, we got a proverbial U-Haul on the second date. Whatever. I thought we were talking about how dumb Ilya and Shane are?”

“We were not, actually,” Ilya interjects.

“Well, we are now, because God,” Rose says with a laugh. “Are all boys that stunted with their emotions?”

“No,” Pike and Troy say, at the same time Harris, Sveta and Jackie all say, “yes.”

Shane waves his forkful of salmon in the general direction of the whole table. “I’m liking this team-up even less.”

“Aw, sorry, Shaney,” Rose coos, leaning over to pinch Shane’s cheek again before he slaps her hand away with a playful growl. “We love you, really.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Shane grumbles.

“Everyone be nice to your host,” Ilya chastises, hooking his ankle with Shane’s under the table. “Very disrespectful. I will have chef spit in your food next time.”

“The chef thinks there won’t be a next time if everyone keeps being so mean,” Shane adds.

“The fish is delicious,” Sveta tries, but the compliment is a little off-set by the way she sticks out her tongue at Shane, who just rolls his eyes. Ilya, for his part, can’t stop grinning at his best friend and his boyfriend getting along for long enough to do anything else.

“Is there miso in the sauce?” Rose asks instead, and Shane visibly brightens, launching into the tale of his journey across Montreal’s shops to find white miso. 

As he talks, his foot inches its way up Ilya’s calf. Ilya is torn between kicking him away and leaning back and letting Shane do whatever he wants to him. It’s not like they haven’t toyed with exhibitionism before, of course—Ilya’s phone call to Marly had been proof enough of that—but Ilya quickly recognises that the touch now isn’t even inherently sexual. It’s more in between claiming and self-soothing, Shane calming down by reminding himself that Ilya is there, the promise of later still lingering on their tongues. 

“Are you going to be at a hospital here in Montreal?” Harris asks Jackie a few minutes later. They’ve been making a concerted effort to stay mostly away from the topic of hockey, but Ilya can feel its presence lingering over him—for all the players at the table, it’s an easy conversation topic that gets them all involved, but he also knows better than to discuss team matters with their significant others at the table.

It’s not like he’s on their team anymore, anyway.

“Yeah, super close to our place,” Jackie replies. 

“Oh, you’re living together now?” Sveta asks, taking a sip of her wine. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, we’re super excited.” Jackie gives a pointed look over at Pike, who was pushing his vegetables around his plate like a stroppy five year old but looks up and gives a nod and weak smile of agreement. “Of course, it’ll only be better once he’s graduated as well. Then we can finally get started, y’know?”

Sveta frowns, confused, but Rose catches her drift immediately. “Kids?”

As Ilya’s face contorts in horror, Pike and Jackie smile at each other with wide, adoring eyes. It’s sickening. 

“Yeah, we think so,” Jackie says.

“I’ve always wanted to be a dad,” Pike adds.

“Are sure world needs more of you, Pike?” Ilya can’t help but ask. “I think we have enough already.”

“Whatever, Rozanov.”

“No, really,” Ilya insists. “The amount of Hayden Pike in the world is perfect.”

He could leave it there. If he was truly good, he would. But Pike is still sulking and generally being a wet blanket on the evening, despite everyone else working over time to keep the conversation flowing with everyone included, and Ilya is still a little pissed from earlier.

“Well, almost perfect,” he continues, and he feels Shane suck in a breath beside him. “Hey, Pike, what are your thoughts on chopping off your leg? Would probably have better balance on one skate anyway—”

Pike’s fork clatters on his plate, and for a minute Ilya wonders if he’s going to lunge across the table. He’d relish the opportunity, actually, so he’s a little disappointed when he doesn’t. 

“Fuck off, Rozanov.”

He spits it with so much hatred that Jackie actually looks taken aback, putting a hand on her boyfriend’s arm and whispering, “Hayd, cool it.”

“No, is fine,” Ilya says quickly, his blood heating to a rolling boil. “Of course, Pike is top example of man. Strong genes. Children will probably come out reeking of Axe already.” He thinks about adding and failing their business classes, but he decides that airs too much on the side of genuine insult rather than the strange in between that he’s going for. 

“Well, that sounds really exciting,” Rose tells Jackie sincerely, ensuring that Pike has no time to reply to Ilya. “Congratulations to both of you.”

“What about you? Are you planning on kids?” Jackie asks, and then claps a hand over her mouth. “God, sorry, I sound like my mom—”

“No, it’s okay,” Rose says with a laugh, then shrugs. “I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe down the line, when my career’s a little more established—”

“—When you’ve won your first Oscar,” Shane interjects, and she smiles. 

“Yeah, I mean, maybe. I think a baby would be much more likely to like me if it knew their mom won an Academy Award, right?”

“That is the first thing it says in What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” Sveta agrees gravely. “Win an Oscar before pregnancy.”

“Gotta do it while I’m young and hot,” Rose argues, and Sveta leans in to kiss her on the cheek. 

“You’re always hot,” she murmurs, her voice low, and Ilya suddenly feels a lot more sympathy for her having to watch him and Shane make out over FaceTime when he was in the hospital. 

“Only one person at this table was named ‘McGill’s Hottest Male Athlete,’” Ilya points out with a grin. The ranking came out a few weeks ago, and Ilya has never cared less to be number three on the list. Well. He’s way hotter than that volleyball player at number two, at least.

Shane flushes. “It’s a stupid list, anyway. Probably the editors for the school newspaper just fucking around.”

“Hey, I know the editors for the newspaper, thank you very much,” Harris interjects. “And that list was made based on university-wide voting.”

“Hear that, Hollander?” Troy teases. “You’re the people’s princess.”

“Yeah, Princess Diana, Shane Hollander, practically twins,” Rose agrees in a deadpan voice. “But seriously, Shane, I thought about making that picture they used as my screensaver. You look crazy good.”

Ilya knows Shane agrees, since he was given forewarning about the article and the option to choose what image went along with his name. If he didn’t, they would have chosen pictures from media day—which Shane very much did not want, even though Ilya told him repeatedly the picture of him biting the puck was devastatingly hot. Whatever. Ilya ordered a copy—or three—of the photo himself, and Shane instead went with an action shot from the league playoffs this season where he’s caught mid-power play, face stoic with determination and his right leg a blur as he drives across the ice. 

“Thank you,” Shane replies, flushing a little. 

“You’re gonna have the entire university falling over you after this,” Rose says, her eyes glittering, and Ilya immediately catches on.

“You do not have to stoke my jealousy, Landry,” he tells her with a smile. “Shane is very good at it himself. He does not need your help.”

“I have to say, I do think it’s funny,” Sveta says thoughtfully, “that Shane is the most awkward, least smooth person I’ve ever met—”

“Hey!”

“—and yet he has people falling over him left, right and center. And the best part is he doesn’t even realise, because he’s too busy looking at Ilya.”

Shane looks adorably confused. “What?”

This makes Sveta laugh. “Exactly my point.”

“Shane is most beautiful man in the world, yes,” Ilya says, feeling both proud and a little impatient. 

“Well, obviously you would say that,” Sveta continues. “And that’s what I’m saying. Shane, you wield so much power.”

Slowly, Shane tilts his head and turns to look at Ilya. Without hesitation, Ilya’s brain helpfully supplies images of earlier, the promises he’d made for his reward if Ilya was a good boy. Shane could get kings to kneel before him, Ilya thinks. 

“You have no idea,” Ilya mutters. 

“I mean, I think I have some idea.” It’s Harris, looking a little sheepish to interject but unable to help himself. “I got a look at the media sales the other day, and they’re off the charts.”

Ilya puffs out his chest. “This is because of me, obviously.” He deflates. “And Hazy and Haasy, of course.”

“Shane’s sales have spiked, too. Like, dramatically.”

“With the article, it makes sense,” Troy adds. “Hollzy’s a catch, and the world’s catching on.”

“Ah, Hollzy,” Rose sighs with exaggerated despair. “The one that got away.”

“I mean, to be fair, I had a bit of a crush on Shane, too,” Harris says, making Ilya’s head jerk up.

Wow. And Harris was doing so well in Ilya’s books. 

“And Troy had a crush on both of you,” he adds, which makes it marginally better, especially when Troy immediately goes bright red.

Pike looks around the table in disbelief. “Everyone here except Jackie had something with either Ilya or Shane?” he says slowly.

“He has finally caught on,” Ilya says, approving. “Yes. Maybe we both have power, hm?”

Pike wrinkles his nose, making him look even more like a mole rat than he already does. “Ew, did you turn this dinner into some kind of swinger’s party?”

Immediately, Sveta and Troy both put an arm across both their partners as if to protect them from the idea, all of them shaking their heads. Ilya can’t resist.

“Is that what you think gay people hanging out is like, Pike? We always have to fuck at the end?” He tilts his head. “Or are you hoping it’s a swinger’s party, because—”

Ilya hasn’t decided yet if he is going to finish the set-up with a joke about Pike needing help to fuck his girlfriend right or secretly wanting to fuck Shane, both of which he has already decided are true anyway, but he doesn’t get the chance to try either option.

Pike’s face is screwing up in horror as he splutters, “no, fuck, no! I don’t want to see—”

He stops himself, but his eyes darting to Ilya and Shane are answer enough.

Rose tries to keep the conversation moving, blurting out something like, “well, we’re off limits, but given all our meddling getting them together I think—”

“You.” Pike whips his head over to look at Rose and then Shane, ignoring Ilya completely. Apparently he’s on a roll now, all the grievances he’s had over the past half an hour spilling over all at once. “You told Rose fucking Landry about all of this and not me? They’ve been scheming and you’ve been doing this in secret this whole fucking time? Seriously, man?”

***

Those two words make Shane snap.

Seriously, man?

It might be the derision dripping from his voice, or his aghast expression, but Shane thinks what makes him bristle the most is that he knows Hayden. After everything, he met Hayden first. They lived together for a year—eating dinners with his parents together, training together, staying up late watching movies. He shared a wall with Hayden, he—he stood guard at a fucking house party while Hayden lost his virginity to Samantha Grace in the fucking guest room, okay? They know each other, and trust each other implicitly.

So the fact that Hayden is acting like Shane is a whole new person—and dragging his friend into the crossfire—is seriously pissing him off. 

“Why do you think I told Rose and not you, given this reaction?” 

Shane’s steady, calculated voice is exactly the blow he intends it to be. He watches the impact absorb over Hayden’s face, ripples of anger and disbelief and shame and embarrassment crossing his expression until finally it takes the shape of regret.

But it’s too late for that now. Shane is mad.

“You’re not an idiot, Hayden, you know Rose found out because she saw the truth firsthand,” he begins. “But she also had the care and compassion to keep checking in with me. Ever since you found out about Ilya, you haven’t asked me a single question about myself. You only text me to complain about him. So what’s your problem?”

“W-what?”

“What’s your problem?” Shane repeats himself, his voice loud but steady. “Seriously. You tried giving your reasons earlier but they’re all bullshit. Did you come here just to sulk and ask questions and then make faces at the answers and, like, prove to me somehow that Ilya is wrong for me? Because you can leave if that’s the case.” 

Unbidden, Shane’s hand drifts to Ilya's knee beneath the table, and Ilya squeezes his hand. 

“I’m the same person you lived with when we met, who you’ve played on a winning team with three fucking times. We used to have a knocking code, Hayd, through our bedroom walls, remember that? And now you’re looking at me like I’ve transformed, like I don’t remember the fucking code. I’m still me.” Shane bites his lip. There’s a moment where he could choose to swallow it down, but he waits a beat longer and says it anyway. “Hayden, barring about three months, I’ve been half in love with Ilya almost the entire time I’ve known you.”

Harris makes a noise of surprise. Rose gasps. Sveta just grins maniacally. Troy and Jackie wear mirrored expressions of apprehension, poised to intervene but otherwise content to observe.

Hayden stares at him. It’s like Shane can see the math running in his head. “But—you—what? We met in… you didn’t meet him until the year after, at Worlds.”

Shane shakes his head slowly. He can feel Ilya looking at him, but he doesn’t dare turn his head. “I had a tape.”

Sometimes in high school, when Team Canada’s old practice footage wasn’t working at calming him down, he’d go searching for something else. Sweden’s videos were okay, if a little bright, and he liked studying the stickhandling of Team Poland, but he usually ended up circling back to the familiar lines of the Canadian team. And then one day he stumbled on the Russian junior team, a simple misclick of his mouse leaving him stumbling in a new direction, and something changed.

Looking back, he’s pretty sure his eyes had found Ilya immediately. It was back when Ilya was still assistant captain—Shane’s gaze had flickered to the boy with the ‘A’ on his jersey barely a minute in, a blur of movement catching his attention, and his gaze stayed there like it was glued on. He’d known there was some young phenom on the Russian team that everyone was saying was the Russian Shane Hollander, but at the time he tried not to pay much attention to the media. 

He used to say it messed with his game, ignoring the articles his mom forwarded to him and refusing to Google himself, until one day he gave in and read every article ever written that mentioned his name. 

And then he was suddenly seeing Ilya Rozanov, live and in stereo, watching him spin around the defense and flick his wrist to send the puck sailing into the top-right corner of the net with the confidence of someone who already knew where the puck was going to land before he ever made the shot. He glided around the boards, coming to stop at the bench to say something to one of the players. 

Even now, Shane can see it perfectly in his head. The way Ilya’s mouth moved, his gloved hand gesturing back to the goal before his shoulder lifted in a shrug. The camera cut off whatever wild gesture the player on the bench was doing in response, something Shane had been unreasonably annoyed about because he could only see broad hands waving and couldn’t figure out what he was saying, but it perfectly captured the way Ilya’s head bent back in a cackle in response.

He’d skated off right after that to practice a lethal power play, so it was perfect. Shane could pretend the blush on his cheeks was just him being impressed at the obvious skill, and not the golden-haired boy with his head tilted back under the arena lights, laughing like nothing else mattered.

He’d watched the tape a lot. It didn’t calm him, not the way the Team Canada video did, but it did something to him that he kept returning to—some strange mix of arousal and admiration that he couldn’t detangle. It wasn’t enough to get hard, he didn’t know yet, but he couldn’t deny it enough to look away. It was that sensation that led him to keep watching, captivated by the boy that moved on the ice like everyone around him was just set dressing.

And then he’d met him, live and three-dimensional, smelled the cigarette smoke and his European cologne, then played against him, and all the way through high school he’d watched the same video in secret—his covers over his head, volume turned all the way down, eyes so close to the screen he was pretty sure they would go Rozanov-shaped if he didn’t stop. Over and over again, he watched that clip: Ilya laughing and then skating off for the power play, like he hadn’t just rewired a Canadian player’s brain five thousand miles away. 

If Shane was being honest, he’d never really thought about that being a sign of his sexuality before. He’d been just about able to blame it on awe, or jealousy, or something in between, and refused to look at it closer than that. He always had been good at that, ignoring the thing until it was staring him right in the face—it had been long after he’d been fucked for the first time for him to admit that he was in love with Ilya, after all.

“I never realised,” Shane continues, his voice hoarse and too loud in the silent living room, “but I wasn’t watching because I wanted to beat the team. I was watching because I wanted to watch you. It wasn’t until, like, Christmas break that I figured it all out, so it took me a second, but… yeah. It was always you.”

Ilya stares at him, his mouth slackened in shock. For a moment, Shane wonders if he’s going to be mad—his eyes are dark and stormy, unreadable in a way Shane is unfamiliar with, and he thinks it means that Ilya will say Shane is a stalker or something for watching the videos in shameful darkness.

Whatever. Ilya waited outside his apartment in subzero weather for almost two hours once to talk to him, and Shane knows now that he had done the same thing before Shane ran away to Ottawa. If anyone’s the stalker, it isn’t him.

That’s not how Ilya reacts, though. 

“You never told me this before, Hollander.” Ilya’s voice is shaky, too. 

Shane shrugs, looking down. He can’t meet Ilya’s heated gaze, not now. “I don’t know, I was—embarrassed, I guess.”

A hand lifts to stroke the back of Shane’s head down to his neck, squeezing once. “I used to watch you, too.” He says it quietly, like a confession. Another soft squeeze to his nape. “I just did not know why until you put that ad up. But before that… we were always watching each other, yes?”

Unbidden, memories of the Foundry flash through Shane’s head—when he stood and watched, helplessly, as Ilya made out with a beautiful faceless woman, then kissed her neck and watched Shane back. When their eyes had locked, Shane felt like the entire world disappeared.

Jesus, it really has been Ilya the whole time. Shane kind of can’t believe how long he spent trying to convince himself otherwise—that he wasn’t gay, yes, but also that his teammate showing up at his door wasn’t the answer to a prayer he’d been silently making since that day in the freezing cold Ottawa parking lot when their eyes had first met. An excuse for them to join hands, to touch without pretense or malice, to explore what Shane never knew he always wanted.

Shane sucks in a breath. This kind of revelation isn’t a new one, and he knows he’ll have a thousand more with Ilya—it still leaves him dumbfounded all the same. Ilya is looking at him like he knows exactly what he’s feeling, but neither of them have time to luxuriate in it at the dinner table with their friends all staring at them.

“God, they’re really as bad as each other, aren’t they?” Shane hears Sveta whisper to Rose under her breath. 

“Hayden,” Shane says without breaking eye contact with Ilya for an extra beat, slicing through the moment before turning his head. Hayden looks a little surprised to be called upon, actually, which is fucking stupid because this whole night is about him.

“You might not like it, man, but you do have to deal with it. Ilya has been a part of me for all but three months that we’ve known each other, so whatever domain you’re trying to stake over me, just—stop it. You’re still my best friend, okay?”

Over the course of the last few minutes, Hayden’s face has continued to redden, but only now does Shane notice that he’s also white-knuckling his fork.

“But—I’m not, Shane, am I? I’m not your best friend, Rose is, because if I was actually your best friend you would have told me, not kept all this fucking distance from me this whole time! I’ve barely seen you out of practice for months!”

There it is. It takes Shane several beats to control his voice enough to speak.

“Like I said, Hayden,” he says very slowly. “I’ve had a lot going on. I didn’t see you enough outside of practice, sure. I’m genuinely sorry about that. But I was fucking scared, okay? And the point is I’m not anymore. And I was avoiding seeing you and Jackie together, because it felt weird being on my own, knowing I couldn’t do the same with my partner. And now I’m not. So you’re mad because there’s this, like, distance between us, but you’re not seeing that this—” he gestures to the group sitting at the dinner table, all looking at him in varying states of shock “—is me bridging the gap. Seriously, man, can you stop being so childish for like, five seconds and listen to what I’m saying? Can you just—listen to me when I tell you that I’m good? That I’m sorry, and that I’m trying to spend more time with you because I need my assistant captain to help me win two more Cups, and I also need my best friend.  Because, also, I can call two people my best friends, for the record.”

In the dead silence that follows, Troy and Harris both looking pointedly anywhere but at the table while Rose and Sveta look like proud parents, Ilya speaks up.

“Sveta is my best friend,” he volunteers. “And she was very good with me and Shane.”

“I think the words you’re looking for are fucking saint-like, thank you,” Sveta quips, and Shane wonders if Ilya will give her enough time to blurt out all the things he’d made her translate for him when he was in the hospital. 

“Yes, okay. But Troy is also my best friend. And Marly. And probably Wyatt, depending on how much he talks about comic books that day. It is possible to have many, yes?”

After a beat, Hayden croaks, “then how are they the best?”

Shane rolls his eyes. This feels familiar. “What are you, five?”

“Apparently. Listen… fuck, I’m—I’m sorry, man.” Hayden takes a deep breath, and Shane recognises the sight of his friend trying to get a hold of himself, the same way he does when he’s filled with adrenaline after a big play and buzzing with energy on the bench. When he looks up again, he appears a little calmer, his eyes filled with regret. “I’ve been acting really immature tonight, because—yeah, I’ve been… I don’t know, jealous, or whatever, and feeling left out of such a big part of your life.” He holds up a hand when Shane goes to interrupt. “But it’s pretty fuckin’ obvious now that I didn’t deserve to given how I’ve been acting, anyway, so… thank you, I guess, for making the effort now. I’m sorry I’ve been acting like a piece of shit about it.”

“And?” Shane presses, nodding his head in Ilya’s direction. 

Hayden sighs. “And Rozanov, I’m sorry for acting like a piece of shit to you too.”

“You can’t be okay with me being gay and not be okay with me dating Rozanov,” Shane points out, thinking back to the calmness of Hayden’s initial reaction to when he came out compared to his behaviour tonight. “That’s an unfair barrier.”

“And for the record, I am sorry for hurting you with my teasing,” Ilya replies, and he sounds like he's trying not to add anything else. Thankfully, he keeps his mouth shut.

“Sometimes,” Hayden grits out, “it is funny. Only sometimes.”

Ilya looks triumphant. “See? I am hilarious.” 

“Actually, I have a bone to pick with you too, Rozanov,” Shane says, turning to him, and maybe he did have a little too much wine tonight. Ilya blinks.

“You are picking bone? Huh?”

“Figure of speech. Same thing I said to Hayden goes for you as well. Don’t think I haven’t seen you trying to stake your domain over me too. It’s like you’re pissing on me to mark your territory, and I’m not a fire hydrant, so stop it.”

Ilya looks dumbfounded. “I am not a dog, either.”

“Oh, you’re not?”

Slowly, as he stares at Shane and Shane stares back without trying to hide all the thoughts he knows are scrawling across his irises right now, Ilya’s cheeks go bright red.

“I told you Russians blush,” Shane says with a grin, triumphant, but when he turns back to the group he’s confused at their dumbfounded expressions. He didn’t say anything that bad, did he?

***

The thing about having a dinner party with your boyfriend and his best friend and five of your friends is that no one ever told Ilya how hard he would get watching said best friend get whacked. 

It’s not only because Pike deserves it or because he gets off on yelling—Pike does deserve it, obviously, but Ilya isn’t a psychopath. It’s all because of Shane. Ilya has never, ever seen Shane act like that. When he talked back to Pike he was not only confident, but also standing up for what he believes in, for Ilya, without a second of regret or shame. He apologised sincerely, but also didn’t relent in calling Pike out for his shit, and he didn’t even have to raise his voice to have the guy cowering at his feet.

It’s fucking hot. 

Ilya presses his foot to Shane’s as the conversation moves on, Harris quickly jumping in with some debate about the newest blockbuster in cinemas that Rose easily scoops up and runs with. Ilya really is glad that everyone else is here tonight—not only because he likes everyone seeing how hot his boyfriend is when he’s mad, but also because they really have served as great dampeners. Ilya can guarantee that there would have been a lot more reactivity and yelling if they’d been alone, and he doesn’t think he or Lady Pike could have taken that. 

The rest of dinner goes smoothly, Ilya easily jumping in with stories of his and Sveta’s childhood when prompted or jokingly quizzing Troy on Matt Damon movies to prove his prowess. Beside him, Shane is back to his amiable self, and besides overserving everyone when they ask for seconds there’s no evidence of the emotion from the past few hours. The only display Ilya gets is a private one, Shane’s foot wrapped around his ankle so that their knees press together beneath the table. 

Ilya silently glows for the rest of the meal. 

They move back to the living room afterwards while Shane goes to the bathroom and Ilya leaps at the chance to top up everyone's drinks before returning to his perch on Shane’s armchair, even going as far as to rinse all the plates and stack them in a pile so they can deal with them quickly when everyone leaves.

Or maybe in the morning. Ilya really hopes Shane wants to get fucked badly enough to leave them until the morning. 

Shane returns a few minutes later, looking a little flushed. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” Ilya asks quietly when he reclaims his seat, allowing Ilya to pivot and swing his legs over his lap. 

“Yeah, all good,” he says, but he shifts slightly in his seat. When he notices Ilya still frowning at him, he grins sheepishly and lowers his voice. “Just waiting for everyone to go.”

The conversation keeps flowing enough, and Ilya is genuinely enjoying hearing about Rose’s play and the new fosters at Harris’ family farm, but he’s also had a long fucking twenty four hours—he’s buzzing with anticipation, and he doesn’t realise that his impatience is showing until Shane puts a hand on the knee slung over his lap to stop him from bouncing it again. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, low enough that only Shane can hear, then jumps back into the conversation. “Ah, Rose, do not listen to Troy. I have never had drink with tiny umbrella in it, ever.”

“You sure about that?” Shane teases. “Because I’m pretty sure I have a few pictures on my phone of you drinking a Cos—”

“I drink vodka or beer,” Ilya shoots back firmly. Then, because he’s both looking for a new conversation topics and trying to get points with Shane, he asks, “Hayden, Shane mentioned you tried my vodka recently.”

It takes Pike a minute to recall the night he and Shane had come back here after the bar for a nightcap not long after playoffs, but when he does his eyes widen. “I thought JJ just ran out of rum and started keeping something else here for emergencies instead.”

“No. This was me. Was good?”

Begrudgingly, Pike nods. “Yeah, actually. Really good. I had no idea vodka could taste like that.”

“Becuase you are used to drinking North American hand sanitizer,” Ilya says sagely, and then brightens. “Hold on, wait here.”

Ilya dashes off to the bedroom, returning a minute later with a small bottle of Russian vodka. When he sees Sveta frowning at it, he says quickly in Russian, “present from my family. Arrived this morning. I will not drink it, obviously, so…” He switches back to English and turns to Pike. “A gift. For… peace.”

“Like an olive branch?” Pike asks, and Ilya points at him.

“Yes. This. But I think olive vodka would be disgusting, so… here. Potato instead.” Ilya thrusts the small bottle in Pike’s direction, who takes it hesitantly after a beat. 

“Are you sure? I don’t want to—”

“Take the stupid vodka, Pike.”

“Right. Well, um. Thanks, I guess. That’s really… nice.”

Pike still looks like he’s bracing for impact, for the punchline where Ilya will laugh at him and snatch the vodka back, but Ilya is quickly discovering that Pike’s mistrust and confusion is just as entertaining as his anger. 

The gift also has the added effect of signifying the end nearing, and conversations begin winding down a few minutes later—Rose promising to show Harris and Pike pictures from set next time they see each other, Sveta eagerly typing in the name of the romantic restaurant Jackie recommended. Ilya gamely participates in each one, asking insightful questions because he’s really fucking good at this when he wants to be, and in between he watches Shane soak in the normalcy of a dinner party with two other couples. It’s perfect. 

“We should get going,” Jackie says eventually around a yawn. They’ve been here for well over three hours by now. “Shane, Ilya, see you next week?”

“Ah, yes. Our brunch date. We will be there.” Ilya shoots Shane a cheeky look. “I will be having six pancakes, and maybe three jugs of syrup—”

“Or perhaps a salad.”

Rose blinks. “Did he just make a White Chicks reference?”

“Yes, and the best part is he has no idea,” Ilya says gleefully, wrapping an arm around Shane and placing a smacking kiss to his temple. “Shane Hollander, accidentally referencing culture since… wait, how old are you again?”

Shane glares. He knows that Ilya knows how old he is, of course, but the literal brain can’t stop him answering. “I’m nineteen.”

Ilya gasps, wrenching himself from Shane’s grip. “Oh, God!” he screeches, loud enough that the others look over in surprise. “You are too young for me. Lady Pike, am I going to jail? Am I cougar now?”

“You turned twenty two weeks ago, you little shit,” Shane hisses, but he’s grinning as he straightens his shoulders. “And I’ll be twenty next week.”

“Hm, I am not sure…” Ilya trails off, keeping his expression uncertain. “You are definitely too young. Maybe we should not have sex now, until you are old enough for me.”

To his surprise, Shane doesn’t whine or complain or beg or even get his sad angry kitten eyes. He just laughs, pitching his voice low so the others saying their goodbyes can’t hear. 

“Yeah, like you could last that long after today. Baby, you’re hard right now.”

It’s the kind of antagonizing that might have—and has—turned into a bet some other time, but tonight all Ilya can do is nod dumbly. It’s not like Shane is wrong, after all, because he looks down and realises that yes, his t-shirt isn’t doing much to cover his arousal. 

Jesus. Ilya’s always been pretty good about controlling himself—Shane is the one that’s desperate for it physically, begging as soon as Ilya gets in his vicinity to touch, to be touched. 

Ilya doesn’t think that’s going to be the case tonight.

Ilya turns away to crudely adjust himself, and when he turns back the only evidence that Shane had watched is his pink cheeks. Before he gets a chance to say anything, though, Shane is walking off to say goodbye to Troy and Harris, promising that they’ll make plans to hang out again soon. 

“This has been fun, Lady Pike,” Ilya says to Jackie, kissing her cheek as he gives her a hug. 

She laughs. “Not so sure Hayden or Shane would agree, but… yeah, it kind of has.”

Ilya waves a hand. “We are through worst of it. Pike and I are best friends now, yes?”

The man in question sidles up to Jackie, wrapping an arm around her waist as he shakes his head. “Don’t know if I’d go that far, but…” he nods. “Yeah. Sorry I said you were no good for him.”

“Ah, already forgotten,” Ilya says easily, ignoring the words still rolling around in his head that indicate that is very much not true. 

“You’re an idiot, but you got there eventually,” Jackie adds to Pike fondly.

Pike looks offended. “Idiot?” he echoes. “You said you’d have my back!”

“I did! I didn’t jump in and agree with Ilya or Shane at any point. And I didn’t say you’re an idiot to the whole group.” She pats Pike’s cheek. “It’s just Ilya.”

“Yes, it’s just me.” Ilya grins maniacally. “And we are best friends now, Pike.”

With Pike over with Shane and apologising again, Ilya smoothly drifts over to Sveta and Rose instead. “You had good time?”

Sveta laughs. “Yeah, weirdly. Watching Hayden get whacked was super entertaining.”

“It really shouldn’t have been, but…” Rose trails off, shrugging. “What can I say? I loved it, too. I love when Shane’s mad.”

“It’s funny, but also kind of scary,” Sveta adds.

“Yes, angry little kitten, very scary,” Ilya agrees. “Anyway, um. I just wanted to say, to both of you… that…”

“God, Ilyusha, sometime this week.”

Ilya glares at Sveta. “I wanted to say thank you to both of you. For, y’know. Everything with me and Shane. Even if I still have no idea what else you did besides listening to each of us rant.”

Sveta’s eyes are glittering. “Mostly just listening,” she agrees, but doesn’t elaborate further on what the rest was.

“Well, whatever it was, thank you. You are both very good friends to us, so, um. Thank you. Shane will probably come over in a minute and thank you as well, so just—pretend I did not say anything, okay?”

Exactly as Ilya predicted, a few minutes later Shane is waving goodbye to Pike and Lady Pike and returning to their group. “Thank you guys, seriously,” Shane tells Sveta and Rose when everyone else is gone. “For everything. We put you through a lot, we know.”

“Well, this makes it all worth it,” Rose replies, leaning in to kiss Shane’s cheek quickly. “Congrats again, Shaney.”

“I will translate for you anytime if it makes him less of an idiot,” Sveta adds, shooting Ilya a cheeky grin.

They stand there in silence for a beat, until Ilya raises a pointed eyebrow at Sveta. Rose is the one to notice. “Oh, of course! You guys probably want to, um—” she makes a series of crude hand gestures that would make a nun (and do make Shane Hollander) blush, and then steps back.

“While you do that, we are going to—” Sveta’s ensuing gestures make Rose gasp and squeal with horror as she tries to bat her hands away, but Ilya notices that she doesn’t actually refute any of it. “So, y’know. Bye.”

Ilya forces himself to hold them hostage for one more beat, just long enough to make plans for them to see Sveta next time she’s visiting Montreal in August, and then they’re gone. Finally, they’re alone.

But Shane doesn’t pounce on him immediately like he’s expecting. Instead, he turns to Ilya and rakes his gaze over him with folded arms, assessing—Ilya stays still and waits. He can be patient.

“Please.”

Oh, fuck, that didn’t take long.

Shane raises an eyebrow. “Please what?”

“Fuck—touch me, Hollander, kiss me, something. I have been going crazy all night.”

Shane chuckles, low and dark. “Oh, I know. I’m the one with your hand creeping up my thigh for all of dessert, remember?”

Ilya flushes. He’d been hoping that part of being good also included a little being bad, but his efforts at the dinner table had been summarily rebuffed. He hadn’t complained, because, again. Waiting.

“Yes, Shane, I am desperate for my boyfriend to touch me, and I want to touch him too. So please.”

Shane hums. Waits a little longer. “Okay,” he says, and Ilya springs forward eagerly only to be stopped by Shane’s palm flat on his chest. “Not yet.”

Ilya pouts. If his words come out with a whine, he pretends it’s intentional. “Was I not good during dinner?”

“You were good,” Shane confirms. “Very, very good. I just… want to give you your reward in the bedroom.”

The way he says it makes it sound like Ilya might not get to come straight away, which is fine. He had suspected there would be some kind of game tonight, something to draw it out, which he is more than okay with—he’d do anything Shane asked him to, after all. 

But disappearing into the bedroom without even a kiss makes him feel a little unmoored, so he swallows hard and tips his chin up to meet Shane’s gaze.

“Can I have kiss first, please?”

Shane smiles and steps forward. “Always,” he whispers, and presses their lips together. 

It’s not enough, not nearly enough—barely past chaste, only the whisper of tongue sliding inside Ilya’s mouth before he gets the chance to chase it—but Ilya smiles anyway, feeling his chest grow warm. Yes, this, his brain whispers. After the past twenty-four hours, all you need is this.

Shane leads him down the hallway with a few more gentle kisses, ushering him into the bedroom with the promise that he’d be back in a minute. 

“Can I take clothes off?” Ilya asks as Shane disappears into the bathroom, and Shane laughs. 

“Up to you.”

Ilya thinks about it for a moment and then strips his shirt and socks off, deciding to leave his shorts on. He always loves seeing the way Shane has to take an extra beat of focus to slide the button through the hole, easing the fly down so the zipper’s teeth didn’t get caught like it had once, in the early days. Ilya had laughed it off, but Shane was terrified of ruining his clothes in his haste to get them off. Now Ilya secretly covets the moment that the haze has to clear for just a minute to focus on his task before it comes right back. The care he takes to get destroyed.

He flops down on the bed and considers posing before deciding on something neutrally suggestive—one arm slung behind his head, the other lazily scratching at the small trail of hair below his belly button. He has no idea what Shane is doing in there or how long he’ll be, but he hopes he doesn’t have to wait long. The obscene tent in his shorts and persistent ache in his groin is evidence enough that he might not survive it. 

As it turns out, he also might not survive Shane’s plans for him tonight. 

“Close your eyes,” Shane calls out from the bathroom, his voice muffled through the door.

“I have seen you naked before, Hollander,” Ilya reminds him, but he closes his eyes anyway. “Okay, I am not looking.”

He hears the sound of the door creaking open slowly, footsteps approaching the bed—they stop, shuffle around a bit like Shane isn’t sure where to stand, and Ilya bites down his smile. Finally, he hears Shane’s voice again, much closer this time. 

“You can open your eyes now.”

There, stood at the foot of his bed, is Shane Hollander clad in a pair of sinfully tight black briefs, Ilya’s Montreal Voyageurs jersey, and nothing else.

Oh, fucking—

Shane takes Ilya’s stunned silence as an invitation to do a slow spin, highlighting the ‘ROZANOV’ emblazoned over his broad shoulders and the curve of his ass peeking out beneath the hem. Ilya takes in the sight hungrily, raking his eyes over Shane’s bare thighs, the column of his neck stretching out of the blue and red jersey, the way the colours make the flush on Shane’s cheeks even more prominent.

“Do you… like it?” Shane asks, shifting from foot to foot. His fingers tug at the hem of his briefs, then flutter at his sides. “I, um—we talked about it once, so I thought… I just grabbed it from your bag when you got home.”

Shane is nervous. The confident aura around him dissipates in an instant as the moment stretches on and still Ilya can’t produce coherent speech, until finally his lips part and what comes out is a low noise Ilya has never made before, something between a whine and a groan.

“Fuck, Shane.” Ilya’s voice sounds hoarse even to his own ears. “You have no idea what you look like right now.”

Shane’s cheeks flush darker as he looks down at his feet, but when he looks back up his eyes are glittering. He takes a slow step towards the bed. “Tell me.”

“So fucking hot,” Ilya mutters, sitting up to tug Shane forward with a hand enclosed around his wrist. He has half a mind to follow through and pull him all the way down onto the bed, but Shane keeps his feet firmly planted so Ilya doesn’t push him. This is Shane’s show, after all. He settles back against the pillows, propped on his elbows, and allows himself another hungry perusal of Shane’s body. “You have no idea, малыш. You are fucking vision. I want to fucking eat you, looking at you all dressed up in my jersey.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “I knew this would turn you on.”

Ilya hums. “Yes, but not just because of this—” he reaches forward again and spins Shane around, running a finger over the stitching of his name on the back. His fingers dip lower, brushing over the swell of Shane’s ass, and Shane shudders. “Because of this.”

“What do you—”

“You are showing not that I own you, but that you own me, yes? Dressing up in jersey like puck bunny.”

Impossibly, Shane’s blush deepens. “Shut up.”

“No, you are,” Ilya insists. “My little puck bunny. You want to be fucked in your boyfriend’s jersey, yes? Show everyone who I belong to?”

Shane’s teeth sink deep into his bottom lip, and he’s looking at Ilya like he’s considering allowing himself to be tugged onto the bed so Ilya can have his way with him—and for a moment, Ilya wants that, too. He wants to show Shane exactly what the sight of him in the jersey does to him. 

But actually, he can do that from here. Without breaking eye contact, Ilya trails his free hand down his stomach to crudely grasp his own cock over his shorts, the pressure making him gasp. “You have no idea,” Ilya says again. “You have killed me tonight, Hollander. No brain cells left.”

This jolts Shane into movement, because he climbs onto the bed but still maintains a distance from Ilya. “Mm, no. Not yet, at least. Give me a few minutes.”

Ilya chuckles, giving his shaft another languid pump. “Sweetheart, I don’t think I need a few minutes. Just kneel like that in front of me and I will be done.”

“Ah, ah,” Shane tuts, putting a hand on Ilya’s knee and crawling over his prone body. He makes a little noise, pausing in his movement, but he continues before Ilya has the chance to ask about it. “Not so fast. I have plans, remember?”

Ilya huffs and resigns himself to the knowledge that he probably won’t get to come in the next few minutes. “Okay, fine. What are these plans?” Ilya narrows his eyes. “Please tell me I get to fuck you in that jersey.”

Shane snorts. “Obviously. But… not yet.”

“Do I have to beg again? Is this what you are waiting for? Because honestly, I think I am ready now—”

“No, just shut up for a second,” Shane laughs, leaping to pin Ilya’s wrists to the bed when he makes grabby hands for the hem of the jersey. He settles himself over Ilya’s hips, raised up just enough that Ilya gets no friction but close enough that he can feel the warmth radiating from Shane’s spread thighs. “Do you want to hear my plan or not?”

“Yes, Hollander. I want to hear your plan. Pretty please.”

The nerves from before are gone from Shane’s body, replaced by a comfortable confidence that speaks of someone who has run tonight over a thousand times in his head. Ilya himself has done just that, but without the knowledge of Shane’s agenda he was forced to come up with a thousand different scenarios, all made equally enjoyable by the simple fact of Shane’s presence. 

Shane strokes his hand up Ilya’s bare chest, squeezing his pec and swiping a thumb over his nipple before moving back down. “You let me take care of you,” he says simply. “Show you how much you deserve this.”

And… okay. Wow. Yes. Okay.

“Yes. Please.” Ilya swallows hard. “What… what will you do to me?”

Shane smiles, continuing to rub Ilya’s torso and scratch over his sides slowly. “Whatever I want,” he says, like his attention to Ilya’s body is as much a gift for him as it is for Ilya. “I was thinking about something you asked me to do a while ago that we never got around to…”

“Yes,” Ilya says, immediately nodding. “Okay.” He pauses. “We are talking about my ass, yes?”

He’s not stupid. He’s felt Shane dancing around it for months now, a brush of his finger or dip of his tongue before he returned to Ilya’s cock, and—it’s the one thing Ilya has never pushed Shane to try. 

The thing about Shane Hollander is that he learned sex in the context of something like submission. 

That’s Ilya’s fault, obviously, but it’s also due in no small part to some natural part of Shane coming to light. Shane loves getting fucked. He even loves getting fingered in a way that Ilya just can’t understand, even if he knows the mechanics of it intimately, and Ilya learned quickly that Shane saw anything to do with his ass as the ultimate form of submission. 

Ilya understood. Together they learned give and take, and now Shane is faced with flipping it completely. Now, he’s ready to take that step.

Shane rolls his eyes, somehow managing to look a little embarrassed—like he isn’t straddling Ilya wearing his jersey, his own cock spreading a wet patch on his briefs as he talks about playing with Ilya’s ass. “Yes, we are talking about your ass.” He grins. “It’s a good ass. A very, very good ass.”

Ilya smirks. “Second best in whole world, probably.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ilya can tell Shane is fighting the urge not to roll his eyes again. “So… is that a yes?”

Ilya blows out a long breath. “Yes, Hollander. Take me apart.”

Shane doesn’t need to be told twice, but he doesn’t immediately tear Ilya’s shorts off. Instead, he takes his time—he starts with Ilya’s face, peppering light kisses over his eyebrows, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his chin. Each brush of his lips makes Ilya huff out a laugh, and Shane smiles each time as he pulls back to find a new spot. By the time he finds the corner of his mouth, Ilya can’t help but turn his face to slot their lips together properly—Shane indulges him with a few long, lazy strokes of his tongue, then nips at his bottom lip once and pulls away. 

“What do you think about… me tying you up? Your hands?” 

That’s an easy answer. Ilya will give whatever Shane tells him to. They’ve done this before, albeit the other way around, and Shane knows what he’s doing. 

Ilya has taught him well. 

“Okay. Yes. Fuck. You still have cuffs from night after finals game, or—”

As if like magic, Shane produces an item he must have placed on the bed when Ilya wasn’t looking, and it is immediately familiar to him, because it’s his—it’s the silk black tie from the draft yesterday, the one he was wearing when he got chosen to stay home, to stay here with Shane. 

“So, I was thinking about this…obviiously,” Shane says in a voice that very much sounds like he’s beginning, and Ilya swallows back his smile. Ilya’s hands drift to his hips, squeezing and tracing lazy circles into the mesh of his jersey before slipping underneath. “A-and, um, I wanted to tie you up with it but I didn’t want your arms crossed over your head, then I thought… just—here.”

Shane hurls something else at Ilya’s chest, and he realises with a start that it’s a dark red tie. Plain, attractive but unassuming, and yet Ilya knows the colour instantly—it’s the exact same blood-red of the suit he wore yesterday.

“When I’m drafted,” Shane says, surprisingly even given how Ilya notices his hands trembling, “I’ll wear that one. So we’ll be—I don’t know. Tied together, I guess.”

“Shane…”

“I know, it’s stupid—” Shane is shaking his head, turning away, and Ilya moves lightning fast to tug him back. 

“Not stupid, okay?” Are Ilya’s eyes pleading? Probably. He hopes Shane gets the message. “Not stupid at all. Very, very romantic.”

Just in case, he pulls him down for a kiss, devouring him filthily for a few measly seconds before pulling away.

“Я люблю тебя. You are perfect, мой зайчонок.” When Shane frowns, clearly trying to place the word in his scattered Russian dictionary, Ilya reaches up to smooth the crease between his brows with his thumb. “Little bunny. Do not fight it, because is true. So yes. Tie me up with this one, then wear it. Please.”

Shane looks pleased at Ilya’s reaction, running his hands over the soft silk of the matching ties. Ilya can practically picture it now—Shane tiptoeing over while he was in the bathroom to snap a picture of his suit material or holding up different options against the blazer to find the closest match, performed with the same stealth he must have used to get Ilya’s jersey from his duffel when he wasn’t looking. 

He hesitates before going further, though, so Ilya lifts his arms above his head, wrapping them around the posts of Shane’s headboard, and waits. Shane doesn’t move for a long beat after that, eyes roaming Ilya before he reluctantly climbs off to properly secure his wrists.

As Ilya watches Shane secure his right wrist with his black tie, he sort of can’t believe the sight. Deft fingers unravel the bind and hitch it around the post, thumb pressing just beneath Ilya’s palm as he makes one loop, two, crosses, and fastens it. It unfolds in a matter of seconds, a handful of disbelieving blinks, and when he’s done Ilya tugs and finds his hand perfectly secure. There’s enough give to be comfortable, enough bite to remind him it’s there, and a loop curling up that he can twist to reach if he wants to pull free.

“Fuck, Shane. Where did you—ah. Scouts.”

Shane shrugs and bites his lip as he sits back on his knees and shifts in place. Ilya wonders if that flush goes all the way down to his chest yet. He hopes Shane will let him track it with his tongue. 

“I took an advanced knot-making course to get a badge once, but it was kind of boring, so I ended up kind of teaching myself online,” he says, like that’s a normal thing for a person to say. 

Ilya is delighted. 

“How did you teach yourself, then? What, shibari workshops or something?”

Shane looks horrified. “I was nine! No, I did fucking—hand knots, like fishing and stuff.” He glances up at the tie securing Ilya’s wrist, and his freckles turn impossibly darker under his blush. “This one is, um. Modified.”

Ilya hums. “Ah, so now you have looked up shibari workshops.” Shane avoiding eye contact is all the answer Ilya needs. “Okay. You will show me all the knots you have learned later. For now, do this one again, please.”

Shane complies, and a few seconds later Ilya’s other arm is bound by the red tie Shane picked out. He stares at the material contrasting the pale skin of his inner wrist as he tests the fastening, and has to swallow hard as he nods. 

For a moment, the thin mask over Shane disappears as he meets Ilya’s gaze. “Is there anything you, y’know, don’t want me to do?”

Ilya thinks about it for a long beat. “No. Probably there is nothing I would not let you do to me.”

Shane smiles, leaning in for a kiss, but he pulls away when Ilya tries to deepen it. Ilya growls, his body moving to grab him, and finds that he… can’t. The ties around his wrists pull taut, his neck cranes, and Shane hovers just above his range of motion with a devilish smirk on his face.

“How does it feel?” he asks, and he sounds genuinely curious. And a little breathless.

Ilya rolls the question over on his tongue, trying to decide what the answer tastes like. Weirdly, freedom is the first thing that comes to mind. A complete surrender of control, trusting what Shane will do to him. Like this, he has no choice but to lie there and take it. 

He’d always thought he would hate this sort of thing. He’s tied partners up in bed before, and he and Shane toyed with that physical submission long before the league playoff finals when they finally tried the cuffs they’d been talking about, but he’s never had any desire to do it himself.

Maybe he has some tangled thoughts about submission, too.

But now that he’s here, with no choice but to submit to the person he trusts most in the world, he finds he doesn’t… hate it. He really doesn’t hate it, actually. There’s a pleasant buzz in his veins that has nothing to do with the hum of arousal, because he knows he’s going to come but he also knows that he is going to be taken care of. 

Shane has planned all of this out. He’s thought through the scenarios, gameplanned accordingly, and now the only thing left is for Ilya to let go.

“Good,” he says finally, his voice scratchy. “Really good.”

***

Ilya has been quieter since Shane tied him up.

Not in a bad way, just… new. Something Shane doesn’t recognise. There are parts that are familiar, of course, the small hitch in Ilya’s breath when Shane wraps his lips around a nipple or his bitten-off moan when Shane scrapes his teeth against the sensitive bud, the soft groan when Shane bites down on the meat of his pec and sucks a dark bruise into the flesh, then another. 

It’s just that usually they’re accompanied with hands gripping his hair, his waist, his ass, or words like yes, so good or more or come on, Hollander, I will not break, you can go harder than that. Tonight, Ilya’s dirty mouth is just a little more muted—the only sounds filling the room are Shane’s wet, desperate mouth making its slow exploration of Ilya’s body and Shane’s name falling periodically from Ilya’s mouth in a soft sigh.

Shane thinks about it for a minute as he skates his hands up Ilya’s sides, sucking another bruise just under his collarbone. The silence doesn’t feel like a bad thing, more like something in Ilya has eased.

Like he’s surrendered. 

From the way he’s breathing fast and blinking up at Shane with wide, round eyes, he’s enjoying himself as much as Shane is. Shane grins to himself and continues sucking bruises into Ilya’s chest, mouthing lazily up his arms and pressing sloppy kisses into the skin just above his armpit just for the excuse to breathe him in. 

Shane usually doesn’t get the time to explore Ilya’s body like this. It’s stolen in snatches, early mornings where he traces the moles dotting Ilya’s back or ducks his head under the covers, after a long practice when Ilya lets him play with his hair while they watch TV. Often times the mission to pay attention to Ilya’s body is quickly followed by Ilya flipping him over or pushing him against the wall, which. Well, Shane’s not exactly saying he minds it, but he appreciates the opportunity to lavish attention on Ilya and flip the script.

Ilya starts getting a little more shifty when Shane ducks his head but moves right past his cock, instead moving down his calves, running his hands over the muscle in Ilya’s strong thighs as he kisses his kneecap. He moves lower still, pressing his thumb into the arch of his foot, kissing his ankle, starting the slow exploration upwards.

With a steadying breath, Shane gently pushes Ilya’s knee to one side so that he can set his mouth to the inside of his thighs, and above him he hears Ilya whine high in his throat. He’s still not begging or saying anything else, not yet, but he’s shifting a little against the mattress, testing the ties. Shane can practically feel his body buzzing with anticipation.

Shane lifts his head from the impressive bruise he’d been working on. “Still good?” he checks, and Ilya huffs an incredulous laugh.

“I think my dick will shrivel if you do not touch it soon, Hollander.”

Shane pinches the skin of Ilya’s inner thigh, just sharp enough to make him hiss and jerk his head up to look at him. “Greedy,” he admonishes, feeling at first awkward and then vindicated by the way Ilya’s pupils dilate at his disappointed tone. “That doesn’t sound very good to me.”

“No, I am—I am good,” Ilya tries, but Shane tuts and shakes his head. 

“I’m not sure,” Shane replies, inching his hands higher beneath the hem of Ilya’s shorts. “I think I have to test you.”

Ilya nods, wrists jerking against the restraints again before he seems to remember himself and relaxes. “Okay. Yes, fuck—I will show you.”

“We’ll see,” Shane replies noncommittally, then tries to look as apathetic as possible as he taps Ilya’s hip to lift himself up and then eases his shorts and boxers down in one go, leaving him with the sight of Ilya’s gorgeous, aching cock. He’s already flushed red with a bead of precome glistening at the tip, and Shane licks his lips even as he does his best to roll his eyes. 

“So desperate for it already, Rozanov,” he comments, trying to keep his voice even as he runs a finger along the prominent vein on the underside of Ilya’s cock. He hopes it reminds Ilya of all the times he’s traced it with his tongue, and judging by the way Ilya’s hips jerk up, he succeeded. He tuts again, closing his fist around the base of Ilya’s cock and giving it a squeeze. “Ah, not so fast. No moving, okay? You just lie there and take it.”

The click of Ilya’s jaw as he swallows hard feels like it echoes in the too-quiet room. Slowly, he nods.

Shane lowers his head again, now not wasting any time. He closes his lips around the head of Ilya’s cock and sucks, working his tongue at the underside as he lowers himself down to take a little more. This isn’t supposed to be a proper blowjob, more just a few sucks to ease Ilya into it, get him relaxed, but Shane quickly finds himself getting distracted by the task. He’s captivated by the hitches in Ilya’s breath as he fights to control himself, the way his cock twitches in his throat when Shane manages to take a little more. 

It feels a little empty without Ilya’s fingers gripping his hair hard enough to pull it out or thrusting into Shane’s waiting mouth, but he soon decides he likes it like this, too. Like this, he can work at his own rhythm, categorizing the lexicon of new sounds falling from Ilya’s lips and the hiss of the silk ties scratching against the wood as he tugs at them.

Shane knows well enough from the change in Ilya’s breathing that he’s close, so he quickly pulls off and ducks to mouth at Ilya’s balls as he slides his hands under the strong thighs bracketing him and pushes up, up, up. Ilya isn’t quite as flexible as Shane, and has no hands free to hold himself still, but Shane doesn’t mind keeping his arms braced as he guides Ilya’s knees to his chest. 

“Still okay?” Shane asks, and Ilya bites his lip and nods. 

“Yes. I trust you.”

That’s all the confirmation Shane needs.

He’s thought about this a lot for the last few months, and decided a while ago that doing it like this would be best. Ilya might have been the sex master when they first started sleeping together, but Shane has learned a thing or two over the past six months—he’s known long enough that this is a big deal for Ilya, and figured that ceasing control completely would stop making Ilya feel like he has to hide behind any air of bravado. He has no choice but to surrender, and Shane thought that would help.

He’s right. He feels Ilya squirming as he lowers himself down to his stomach, but as Shane comes face to face with his ass he goes very, very still. It feels like he’s waiting for something, maybe, eyes trained on the ceiling and teeth sunk into his bottom lip, so Shane lowers his gaze.

“Wow,” Shane breathes, and he knows from the noise coming from the back of Ilya’s throat that praise is the right way to go here. He’d been waiting for Shane’s reaction, for some reason, as if Shane has never seen his asshole before—though he supposes never in this context. “You’re so perfect, baby. Even here.”

Ilya flushes then wiggles his ass for a beat before he remembers that he’s not supposed to do that and stills. Shane doesn’t give him a second to think about it too much—with a stuttering breath to try and calm his galloping heart, he leans in. 

And it’s… fine. Good, even. Down here, the smell of Ilya is warm and intoxicating, making Shane want to bite into his supple flesh, and while his nose is pressed against some hair he finds that yes, Ilya is as well-groomed down here as he is everywhere else. It doesn’t even taste bad, just the familiar taste of Ilya’s skin and something a little deeper, muskier.
The first tentative lick over Ilya’s hole has the Russian jumping with surprise, and he makes a high, keening noise when Shane does it again. 

Shane lifts his head. “Good, right?”

“Fucking—Shane, please.”

That didn’t take long.

Shane returns to his task, alternating between long, slow licks and sucking kisses right over Ilya’s entrance. He remembers the first time Ilya did this to him, the way his brain seemed to detach from his body as he was overcome by the feeling of wrongwrongwrong and a much stronger chorus of rightrightright. It felt dirty, debaucherous, and like an act of devotion Shane didn’t dare to quantify even at the time—now, he understands.

The first time Shane works his tongue inside of Ilya, the point pushing just past the tight ring of muscle to dip inside before retreating, Ilya’s entire body shudders. His breath is coming faster now, so Shane matches the desperation, ignoring the throbbing between his own legs and spitting directly over Ilya’s hole before smoothing over the saliva with his thumb and diving back in.

It doesn’t take long for Shane to realise that he’s actually good at this. Unlike his horrific experience giving oral to Rose, his mind never wanders—it takes some focus, given everything he has going on, but he’s wholly focused on his mission: coaxing as many moans and sighs from Ilya’s body with deft strokes of his tongue as he can. Is it because he knows Ilya’s body more intimately, he wonders? Or is it simply because Rose didn’t have the right anatomy for him to enjoy? Shane isn’t sure. Probably both. 

Either way, his ministrations are getting more reactions as time goes on and Ilya grows more desperate. Shane keeps his touch on just the right side of teasing, never enough to have Ilya coming but enough to keep him on the edge. 

Ilya is trembling intermittently, full body tremors that subside and return like a crashing wave. Shane learns quickly to feel it coming, flattening his tongue and licking long, dirty stripes up to mouth at Ilya’s balls before dipping back down again just as the next wave crests. Ilya’s erection had flagged a little when Shane first pushed his legs back, a combination of nerves and no friction, but now when Shane glances up he sees that Ilya is fully hard and leaking profusely over his stomach. 

An even better sight is Ilya’s face. He’s flushed down to his chest, curls mussed from where he’s been tossing his head back and forth on the pillow and plush lips glistening and reddened from where he’s been biting into them. His pupils are blown so wide Shane can barely see the blue-green of his irises anymore, and this is how Shane knows Ilya is ready.

“You want my fingers, baby?” Shane asks, and Ilya nods.

Ilya’s hole is glistening from Shane’s efforts—and Shane is sure the lower half of his face has met the same fate—but Shane still wants to be cautious. He leans over to the nightstand, digging the half-empty bottle of lube out of the drawer with ease and setting it to one side with one hand still pushing Ilya’s knees back. He eventually has to pull away this hand too to open the bottle with the soft snick of the cap, and Ilya whines at the loss of contact before shuffling one foot over to press his toes into Shane’s thigh.

“Okay, let me know if it’s too uncomfortable,” he says as he slicks up his fingers. This is an unfamiliar routine—Ilya almost always opens him up, and even when he doesn’t he’s usually hovering over Shane, watching with hungry eyes and instructing as Shane does it. He’s never done it to someone else.

It’s not like he doesn’t know what to do, though. He’s been around the block once or twice. He takes his time circling his middle finger around the rim, pressing in just slightly before easing back out again, and it doesn’t take long before Ilya is whining and shaking.

“Please, Shane, give me your fingers or let me move,” Ilya pleads, and Shane can’t help but comply, because he’s never heard Ilya sound so wrecked so soon. 

He manages to work his middle finger in to the first knuckle before Ilya bears down at the intrusion, and Shane winces. “Jesus, you’re tight,” he hisses, watching with rapt attention as his finger disappears into Ilya’s body. “Am I always this tight?”

“No, you are loose and well-fucked,” Ilya drones, falling back into his usual demeanour before it bleeds into his desperation. “Keep going, I can take it.”

“I know you can,” Shane whispers back, bordering on the verge of reverence as he eases his finger in a little further. “Keep that leg up, too, now that my hand is busy.”

Without thinking he goes back in for more, licking at Ilya’s rim while he pushes his finger inside. It’s not as good with the chemical taste of lube, but Shane can overlook it for the sound Ilya makes when his tongue dips in beside his finger.

Ilya’s tight, but Shane knows what it feels like. This he knows the mechanics of. “Breathe, baby,” he instructs, smoothing a hand along the back of Ilya’s thigh. He coaches Ilya through a few deep breaths as he pumps his digit in and out a few times, licking around the edge to soothe the stretch. “Good. How does it feel?”

Ilya grunts, shifting against the intrusion. “Weird. Like…”

“Full?” Shane suggests, and Ilya nods.

“Yes. Full. Can I… oh, yes—” Ilya cuts himself off as Shane slides another finger inside, and this time Ilya is relaxed enough for him to push all the way in. Ilya makes another noise when Shane curls his fingers, searching, but still has enough wherewithal to coo mockingly at Shane when he can’t immediately find it. 

“Fuck you, it’s just fucking—different at this angle, alright?” Shane grits out as he straightens, adjusting his grip to fuck his fingers in one more time, and this time he feels it—the swollen patch of his inner walls that is unmistakably Ilya’s prostate.

Ilya’s reaction is all the confirmation he needs. His eyes fly open, bound hands scrabbling uselessly at the headboard as he arches his back, pushing into Shane’s fingers in unconscious search of more. “F–fuck,” Ilya groans, mouth parting in ecstasy.

“Found it,” Shane announces, feeling very proud of himself, and Ilya glares.

“More, more, more,” he chants. 

He doesn’t sound nearly as far gone as Shane wants him to be before he moves on to the next phase of his plan, so Shane takes a punt. He swats Ilya on the back of the thigh just below the curve of his ass, tutting, and just as he’d suspected, Ilya’s cheeks go bright red.

“Ask nicely,” he instructs, trying to sound authoritative, and it only takes a millisecond before Ilya is complying.

“Please, малыш, I want your fingers—fuck, anything,” he babbles. “I want to be good, please, I want to come.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” Shane says, sliding two fingers back inside Ilya easily and lowering his head once more. Ilya is still mumbling, litanies of please and fuck and Shane that have tumbled from Shane’s mouth more than once when the roles are reversed, and Shane just pets at his side, kisses over his hole as he watches his fingers pump in and out.

Shane hits his prostate on every thrust, because let it never be said that Shane is not a good student. He applies his lessons with a confident focus, of knowing he knows how to use his hands and mouth to bring Ilya pleasure. He scissors his fingers and licks in between them, making Ilya cry out when he curls his digits, and lifts to mouth at Ilya’s balls while he picks up the pace.

“Still good?”

“Shane, fucking—” Ilya rolls his hips, fucking himself down on Shane’s fingers, and Shane sort of can’t believe his eyes. His Ilya, the one that fucks him into the mattress so hard he cries seven days a week, currently has Shane’s fingers buried inside him and is desperate for more.

“You’re fucking perfect,” Shane says fiercely, twisting his wrist to hit Ilya’s prostate on every thrust. Now Ilya looks gone, flushed and panting and wild-eyed as he stares down at Shane. “Think you can come like this?”

At the next pointed crook of Shane’s fingers, Ilya laughs disbelievingly. “Ah, yes—fuck, I think so—”

Shane keeps his rhythm steady, wondering if his wrist will cramp if he does this for much longer. He doesn’t particularly care it’s just the kind of thing to know for next time—and he really hopes there will be a next time, because he’s surprised even himself with how much he enjoys it. While he may never be Ilya, may never want to fuck Ilya properly—the same way Ilya doesn’t want Shane to fuck him—he loves feeling like he is wholly and completely giving something to him, taking care of him the way he deserves. 

The first time Ilya had fingered Shane it felt like a revelation. He just wants to be able to do the same thing every once in a while.

It’s clear that Ilya also hadn’t expected to enjoy this as much as he is, because his sounds pick up again as he gets close—he’s still shuddering, sort of like the ties securing his wrists are humming and making his whole body vibrate, but now he’s also whining, moaning and gasping around Shane’s name. 

“You really love this, don’t you?” Shane says conversationally as he sits up on his knees, once again ignoring the ache between his legs as he shuffles forward and wraps a hand around Ilya’s cock. It twitches and pulses in his hand, hard enough that Shane can feel Ilya’s thundering heartbeat even down here. Despite what a mess he is, Ilya manages to keep both his legs in the air without support, and Shane hums in appreciation. He doesn’t wait for an answer to his question. “Yeah, you do. Fuck, you look so good like this, baby. I can’t wait to show you the other surprise I have for you.”

“Oh, fucking—” Ilya’s eyes roll back in his head once Shane starts stroking his cock in time with the languid rolls of his wrist. “Shane… fuck, I’m close—”

“Do you wanna fuck me next?” Ilya doesn’t reply, and Shane presses hard against his prostate in response, making his leg jerk as he makes a sound that is half-gasp, half-laugh. “Or do you wanna come like this?”

“Ah—both, I want both, please,” Ilya moans, and Shane shuffles up as best he can to catch Ilya’s lips in a filthy kiss. It’s all tongue and teeth, and Shane’s going a little out of his mind with arousal but today is about discipline and by God does he have a job to do before he can come himself. He still can’t help but groan into Ilya’s mouth, pressing their foreheads together.

Shane musters a voice that’s not quite teasing, not quite serious, and goes for it.

“C’mon, superstar, you gonna come for me?”

 “Please, малыш, yes, ah—”

Shane had thought about edging him or denying it completely, but now he can’t help himself. He leans in closer, positioning himself just above Ilya’s reddened cock, opening his mouth to speak before he can think better of it. 

Well, Shane figures. Might as well see it through.

“Come for me, rook.”

***

The response is immediate, like Ilya’s body had only been waiting for permission to explode. One, two strokes with Shane’s tongue pressed against his tip and a crook of his fingers is all it takes. Ilya’s face is screwed up in pleasure but his eyes are open to watch as Shane pulls back when the first pulse hits his tongue, shifting so that the rest of it hits his face—his cheeks, his nose, and finally over his open mouth. 

Ilya can’t hear anything over the ringing in his own ears, the coil of want low in his belly finally pulling taut and snapping. This orgasm was already unlike anything he’d ever experienced, a slow moving tidal wave rather than a fast crash of whitecaps, but the sight of the mess he is making over Shane’s face is the cherry on top.

Ilya fights his vision threatening to white out to mentally capture the moment. They don’t really do this much, both because Shane has a recurring fear of pink eye and Ilya usually prefers to come inside him instead, but today Shane wants it, and Ilya does too. 

“Fuck, f—Shane,” Ilya gasps, panting as the aftershocks subside and Shane finally stops moving his fingers enough for Ilya to focus. Ilya winces when Shane gently removes his fingers but it’s made better when he crawls back up Ilya’s body until he’s level with his face.

Ilya is still catching his breath when Shane opens his mouth to show him the come still pooled on his tongue. There’s more splattered over his perfect freckles, the bridge of his nose, but his dark eyes are perfectly clear and almost totally black with desire. The red on his cheeks matches the red of Ilya’s jersey, he thinks, just like the red of the tie on Ilya’s left wrist matches his suit. He feels his brows furrow, another fuck slipping from his lips as he realises that yes, this is it, this might be the happiest he’s ever been—and then he’s opening his mouth too. 

The come slides between their lips as they press together, both of them moaning in unison, and Ilya luxuriates in the feeling of hungrily sucking on Shane’s tongue for a while until he has to pull back to appreciate the sight of him some more before gently cleaning up the errant ropes near his eyes with a tissue. 

“You are a vision, Shane Hollander,” Ilya says firmly, and Shane laughs.

“Not so bad yourself, Ilya Rozanov,” he replies, because yes, Ilya is still tied up, flushed and sweaty with his half-hard cock on his stomach. When Shane leans down to kiss him, though, the arousal pressing against Ilya’s stomach through the jersey becomes too much to ignore.

Ilya can’t hide his surprise. “You did not come already?”

“Fuck off.” Shane bites his lip. “I think it’s because, um… I don’t know, I’ve been holding out for so long.”

What? Did Shane get a concussion? “You came last night, моя любовь, on call with me.”

“No, I mean—” Shane shifts, and it’s only then that Ilya notices the sweat beading at his hairline. “I was gonna wait a little longer to show you, until you were fully hard again, but… okay. Don’t laugh.”

Shane thinks about it for a moment, then awkwardly clambers off the bed and stands to pull his boxers down. He’s a little more careful about it than he usually is, Ilya notices, but he’s quick to climb back up to Ilya’s body. 

“I’m gonna untie one hand, okay? I want you to touch me,” he tells Ilya. When Ilya can’t properly formulate a response, his brain still scrambled from his orgasm, Shane taps him on the cheek. “Okay?”

Ilya can’t decide at first, finally feeling loose-limbed and buzzing from surrendering to his restraint, but Shane is above him and waiting and he realises that yes, he very much wants to touch Shane, like, yesterday.

“Yes, okay. Very okay.”

Shane tugs at the loop below Ilya’s wrist, rubbing gently at the red marks before pulling down. He’s adorably careful about checking for any aches and pains in Ilya’s arm, relenting only once Ilya has told him three times that he’s okay, and then he sits in Ilya’s lap. The mesh of his jersey brushing against his spent cock makes him shudder. 

Instantly Ilya agrees with Shane’s decision to untie him, because the buzz under his skin somewhat settles as soon as he gets his hands on Shane’s body. He rubs a flat palm down his chest, grazing his cock, and when Shane’s hips jerk Ilya reaches around to grab his ass and guide his movements.

But in grabbing a handful of Shane’s pert ass, his fingertip grazes something strange at the same time Shane’s hips stutter again, bringing their cocks flush together. They groan in unison, but Ilya’s quickly turns into a gasp when his fingers inch further inwards and his brain identifies the situation with a sluggish, disbelieving jolt. 

Shane is wearing a buttplug.

Ilya slowly drags his gaze up to Shane’s face, finding him flushed but waiting for their eyes to meet.  Ilya can only gape up at him for several long seconds, hungrily drinking in Shane’s moan when he taps against the base of the toy. 

“Fuck,” is all Ilya can manage for several long moments until his brain comes back online. “How long did you have this in, Hollander?”

“A while,” Shane admits breathlessly. 

“How long?”

Shane presses back into Ilya’s hand on the plug. “A while. Not the whole dinner, though. Pretty sure I would’ve come during it if I put it in before.”

“Baby…” Ilya breathes. “How? How did you manage? How did I not notice?”

Shane chuckles, but it fades quickly into a moan when Ilya grips the plug and pulls just slightly before pushing it back all the way. “Fuck, Ilya—“

“Yes?” Ilya repeats the movement, watching Shane’s mouth part into a perfect ‘o’. 

“Yeah, God, right there,” Shane groans. “I was—fuck. Good at hiding it. I…”

“What, sweetheart?”

“I already came,” Shane confesses. “Um, as soon as I put it in. Which helped, I think.”

It’s official. When Ilya dies tonight, please write on his epitaph died doing what he loved: Shane Hollander.

“Turn around,” Ilya says quickly. “Please. Show me.”

Shane bites his lip and spins a little awkwardly, giving Ilya a perfect view of his own last name stretching across Shane’s back as he adjusts, and then he lifts the hem of the jersey and—

“Holy shit, Shane,” Ilya whispers, staring at the flared base of the silicone buttplug, the way Shane’s body stretches around it. “I am dreaming. I have to be dreaming.”

Shane laughs and wiggles his hips a little. “C’mon, baby, you can play with me til you get hard again.”

“Oh, that is not issue.” Shane looks down, and Ilya sees the sharp exhale when he realises that Ilya is already fully hard. He chuckles wryly. “I have been hard as a rock since I realised what a dirty slut you are.”

The effect of Ilya’s words are immediate—Shane shudders and ducks his head, so for good measure Ilya taps on the plug again to make Shane gasp. When he lifts his head once more, Ilya can see the dark flush spread over his cheeks. Ilya can always trust Shane to get off on being called dirty, the same way he can trust Shane to get off on being called good.

“I still want to play with you, though,” Ilya says, and soon finds he doesn’t mind still being partially restrained. He doesn’t completely trust himself not to lunge for Shane and bury himself inside him as soon as he gets the other tie off. 

 Like this, he can focus on Shane and not his own pleasure—the way his fingers dig into the flesh above Ilya’s knees when he pulls the plug out to its widest point, watching Shane’s rim stretch around it, then fuck it back inside to a litany of groans and gasps.

He does it a few more times, twisting the base, pressing it with the flat of his hand so it goes in as far as it can go. Experimenting. He’s never used a toy on Shane before. Now that he’s got NHL money—or will soon—Ilya thinks he might have to change that. 

It’s good that he makes the plans, because it doesn’t take long before Shane is whining and pushing back against him. “Please, Ilya, please. ‘M gonna come again, and—fuck, I wanna come on your cock.”

“Fuck,” Ilya agrees, reluctantly withdrawing his hand. “Okay, okay, untie me.”

Shane turns over his shoulder and raises his eyebrow. “You don’t want me to ride you?”

Ilya swats his ass, just close enough to the plug to jostle it and send another sweet sound tumbling from Shane’s perfect lips. “Of course I do. I want you in every position. I just want to be able to hold you while I do.”

Shane complies, clambering off of Ilya—a travesty, really, even if it’s for a good cause—and unties his wrist, treating it with the same reverence as he did to Ilya’s left. Once he’s confirmed that Ilya’s arm didn’t, like, fall off or whatever, he returns to his position and this time both of Ilya’s hands find his hips.

They both let out matching sighs of relief at the sensation, then laugh at themselves. “Tying up is good idea,” Ilya observes as he rocks Shane gently back and forth over his length. “I liked it more than I thought. Thank you.”

“And… my fingers?”

Ilya tilts his head. “Me coming my brains out was not answer? Yes, Shane, your fingers were perfect. Just like you.”

“But you don’t want it while we fuck?”

“No,” Ilya growls. “I want to fuck you just how you deserve. Is my reward, but this part is also yours, yes?”

Shane nods. “This whole thing has been a present to myself, to be honest.” He gestures at himself in Ilya’s jersey. “Well, wearing a Voyageurs jersey…”

“Is everything you dreamed of?” Ilya asks, rubbing the mesh between his fingers. 

“Almost,” Shane replies as he gestures vaguely to his back where Ilya’s name is written. He shrugs. “But anyway, I should be asking you that?”

“No, is not everything I dreamed of,” Ilya replies, then squeezes Shane’s hips. “Is more.”

Shane smiles, seeming genuinely delighted by Ilya’s answer, and leans down to kiss him but makes a noise at the change of angle, pressing his forehead into Ilya’s chest to gather himself. “I don’t even know if I can come anymore,” Shane admits with a disbelieving laugh. “I feel like I’ve been so on edge for so long that I can’t see where the cliff even is, if that makes sense.”

“It does not, but I understand anyway. And is not true. You will come, малыш, you just have to remember how.” A grin stretches over Ilya’s face, slow and feral. “I will show you.”

Between one heartbeat and the next Ilya springs up, flipping Shane around to his hands and knees with a kind of dexterity even Ilya didn’t know he had, and then he watches with rapt attention as he pushes the plug in and out, nice and slow. 

Shane presses his face down into the mattress, moaning brokenly as Ilya finally tugs on the plug enough for Shane’s body to flare around the widest part only to push it back in one more time. He slips his hand under the jersey, running his hand up and down Shane’s back to soothe him as he trembles. 

Considering the sight in front of him, Ilya decides that this is the moment he knows he’s made it. He has it all, the image of a future already taking shape in his mind—and the sight of Shane’s body bent in supplication, writhing against the sheets while he lets Ilya play with him, is the perfect image of that.

It’s even better that Ilya gets to bend down and lick the sweat pooling in Shane’s back dimples, but that’s all the teasing he’s capable of now he’s seen the lengths Shane went to to be ready for him.

“Please, Shane,” he begs before he knows what he’s saying, mindless with want. “Please, малыш, please let me fuck you.”

It’s only natural that he pleads, because looking at Shane right now makes him want to kneel down and pray. 

He leans over to catch Shane’s smile when he nods into the sheets, and with a sigh of relief he returns to the plug. He keeps petting Shane’s back and sides, licking over the rim as it stretches around the wide base to soothe the burn—and because he needs to taste Shane—until finally Shane’s body gives and the plug slips out of his body.

Shane makes a noise somewhere in between a moan and a sob, his hole fluttering around nothing, and he whines. “C’mon, baby, fuck me.”

Ilya slicks up two fingers and pushes them inside without ceremony, making Shane cry out. He adds a third immediately, and he glances at the plug with interest—it’s a solid size, almost as thick at the widest part as Ilya’s cock, and Shane’s hole feels loose and ready. My perfect, perfect boy, Ilya thinks.

“Condom?” Ilya has to check, but he wants—

“Fuck no, c’mon,” Shane says again, but Ilya is clearly taking too long slicking himself up because a second later Shane is turning around and pushing him onto his back. 

It’s not like Ilya resists much, but he’s not a small guy—and Shane still hauls him up onto the pillows like he weighs nothing, climbs back into his lap and then grips his cock and sinks down all in one fluid motion. Ilya’s eyes roll back in his head at the sensation of being inside of him because holy—

“Shane, oh my—”

Shane takes a moment when Ilya is buried to the hilt to breathe, and Ilya watches his eyelids flutter with fascination as he adjusts to the new intrusion. It isn’t long, though, before Shane is lifting himself up on trembling legs and slamming back down, quickly creating a brutal pace. All of the patience and teasing from before is gone, leaving Shane only desperate and wanting.

“This what you wanted, Rozanov?” Shane pants.

“Yes, fucking—ah, thank you—” 

Ilya tightens his grip on Shane’s hips and starts fucking up into him, nailing his prostate on the first try and making Shane go boneless in his arms. When Ilya frees one hand and lifts his jersey he sees that Shane’s cock is hard and angry-red, smearing precome all over his abs as he bounces, but Shane doesn’t seem to even notice as he chases a different kind of pleasure.

Shane’s rhythm is fast and hard, but the consequence of holding out for so long soon starts to catch up to him. His hips stutter, legs shaking, and he frowns. Ilya doesn’t waste any time. Shane smiles and shuts his eyes when Ilya holds him up and pistons his hips into him from below. He looks blissed out and contented, fucking himself down in tandem, and Ilya is ridiculously close already but Shane doesn’t look like he has the brain cells left to stroke his own cock now.

That’s fine. Ilya is more than happy to do it for him, slipping his hand back under the jersey with a spit-slick hand Shane didn’t notice with his eyes shut and wrapping it around his achingly hard cock. Shane’s eyes fly open, fingernails digging into Ilya’s chest.

And then he opens his perfect, kiss-bitten mouth, head tilted back, and says in a carefully practiced voice, “sil—sil'neye, pozhaluysta.”

Harder, please.

Ilya has Shane back on his hands and knees and is sliding inside before he even knows what happened, an animalistic growl rumbling in his chest. “When—the fuck—did you learn that?” he groans, in time with his hard thrusts.

Shane is grinning maniacally, fingers clenching and unclenching in the sheets as he presses his face down and arches for more. “Knew that would work,” he says, almost to himself. 

Ilya leans down until his chest is flush with Shane’s back, his golden cross dangling between Shane’s shoulder blades. “Хочешь ещё?” Ilya says in a low voice, right at Shane’s ear, and he feels the shudder run through his whole body. “Я тебе дам ещё.”

The thing is that Ilya can’t actually give him more for long, because, well—how could anyone last buried in Shane’s tight heat? It’s relaxed but somehow still a vice grip on Ilya’s cock, a sensation that lights all his nerve endings down to his toes, and he knows quickly that he has to help Shane get to the edge too.

His relentless pace helps, and it would be driving Shane up the bed with the force if Ilya didn’t have his hands locked around Shane’s hips. He keeps thrusting, gasping at the sensation as he leans down to get a hand back around Shane’s cock.

“Feels so fucking good, Shane, fuck,” he growls. “Look at you, face-down and taking my cock like you are made for it. Идеальная шлюха.”

“Pozahaluysta,” Shane cries again, and Ilya hauls him up to wrap his other hand around Shane’s throat. His grip is just tight enough around the sides to restrict the blood going to Shane’s head, and Ilya feels his cock jump desperately in his hand as he nods frantically. “Spasibo, spas—fuck, Ilya, I’m gonna come, fuck, fuck—”

Shane clenches down around Ilya when he comes, pulsing wildly and shooting rope after rope onto the bed. Ilya topples after him with something like thank you falling from his lips too as he spills into Shane, keeps moving his hips to coax Shane through the aftershocks until one final pulse of come dribbles from his spent cock and he collapses in Ilya’s arms. 

“Holy fuck,” Ilya says when he has regained the ability to speak, voice croaky, and Shane seems to have just enough energy to hum in agreement. 

He makes his usual whining and complaints when Ilya pulls out of him, and considers asking Shane is he wants the plug back to keep his come there but decides his hole looks puffy and reddened enough. Instead he settles Shane on his side, carefully tipping him away from the wet spots, and races to the bathroom to get a warm washcloth and a glass of water.

He gets to work cleaning Shane up with gentle swipes of the cloth between his legs, making Shane stir and sit up a little. He blinks, slow and cat-like, and Ilya hands him the water.

“I think—shouldn’t I be doing this for you sometimes?” Shane says with a frown when he’s done taking a sip his words slow and sluggish as the veneer of desire still glimmers in his eyes but quickly fading into contentment. He winces when he shifts and looks down. “I think I ruined your jersey.”

Ilya waves a hand, focused on his task of wiping Shane down. “We can wash it.” He stops, considering as he brushes a finger along the obvious splatters of Shane’s come against the blue mesh. “Or I will get another one, say I lost this one. We get this framed.” 

Shane rolls his eyes, flushing. “Shut up.”

“No, I will,” Ilya insists. “A monument to the best sex ever had. By anyone, maybe. Ever.”

Shane raises his eyebrows. “You liked it that much?”

Ilya gestures to his spent cock flopped against his thigh and his flushed chest, then down to his ass where his come is already beginning to leak out. “I don’t know, Hollander, what do you think?”

A smile overtakes Shane’s face then. “Good. Me too. It was so fucking hot, seeing you like that. And then after…” he trails off, clearly lost in the memory of just a few minutes ago. “Yeah. Perfect.” He frowns. “But we got the bed all dirty.”

Ilya sighs, his heart full to bursting with love for the man across from him. “Will you say that every time you come on the sheets, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

Ilya shakes his head, but his smile is fond. “Okay. Quick shower, I will change sheets, and we will go to bed, yes?”

“I can help with the—”

“No, you will sit there like pretty princess while I do it,” Ilya says firmly. “You will barely be able to walk.”

“Fuck you, I can fucking walk—” 

To prove his point, Shane rolls over and tries to stand up. He manages to keep his balance, but his legs are trembling constantly and he only waddles a few steps before the wince is too obvious for Ilya to ignore. 

It’s pretty telling that Shane doesn’t protest much when Ilya scoops him up and carries him bridal-style into the bathroom, flipping on the shower and easing them both inside a second later. He makes sure the water is just below scalding, exactly how Shane likes it, and makes quick work of lathering them both up. Shane is adorably unhelpful, barely managing to lift his arms when Ilya asks and purring like a cat when Ilya buries his fingers in his dark hair. 

Ilya scatters kisses over his shoulders as they rinse off and then climb out, arguing the whole way about whether Ilya should let Shane rub cream into his wrists even though the marks are barely visible or why Shane should be the one to do the sheets instead. In the end, they negotiate and Shane dumps the dirty sheets into the washing machine, only not taking the jersey as well when Ilya pleads to keep it draped over the chair as a reminder, just for now.

They clamber back into the bed less than five minutes after climbing out of it, naked and sated and so, so, so happy.

“Thank you for tonight, моя любовь.”

“Thank you for not killing Hayden. And for sticking up for me.” A beat. “And for the sex, I guess.”

Ilya gasps in mock horror. “You guess?!”

Shane laughs, shrugging against him. “No, I’m kidding. It was incredible, as always.”

“Я люблю тебя, малыш.”

Shane hums, rubbing their noses together before pulling Ilya close for a long kiss. “Teach me how to say it back.”

Ilya swallows hard and blinks in the darkness. “New lesson plan?” he says hoarsely.

“Yes. I’m a master now, haven’t you heard? Now tell me.”

“Я тоже тебя люблю,” Ilya says, sounding out each word slowly. 

“Ya… to-tozhe tebya lyublyu. Was that good?”

Ilya kisses the tip of Shane’s nose, his forehead, his freckles. “Perfect.”

***

A few days later, Shane gets a phone call.

He takes it out on the balcony while Ilya sleeps just to be safe, not wanting to get his hopes up just in case, but a few minutes later he’s climbing back into bed with tears in his eyes and his heart in his throat.

It takes some coaxing to get Ilya up like it always does, the Russian blinking sleepily into the morning light as he slowly takes in Shane’s expression. 

“What is wrong, sweetheart?” Ilya asks, frowning.

Shane wipes his face with the back of his hand. “Nothing. No, I have news. My mom did it."

"Did what?"

"You’re back in school.”

It takes several long beats for Ilya to comprehend what Shane is saying. “I—what?”

“You’re back in school,” Shane repeats. “It’s gonna be super fucking hard, because you still have to attend a certain amount of lectures in-person still, but it sounds like they’re working out a schedule for online classes now—”

All the breath leaves Shane’s body as he’s flipped onto his back and attacked with kisses. “I will graduate?” Ilya asks into Shane’s neck, pulling back to look at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Shane nods, tangling his fingers in Ilya’s curls. “Yeah, baby. Better get studying.”

***

OCTOBER 2012

…and taking the NHL ice for the first time tonight was rookie Ilya Rozanov, fresh out of two years playing for the McGill Marauders. Despite early setbacks in the first period he fought through the defense with relentless precision, seizing every moment with lightning-fast reactions and the hockey IQ fans have come to recognize from his time playing college hockey. He scored the first goal of the night, and assisted two more leaving the score at 4-1 against the Panthers. 

Notably absent from the ice was Luca Haas, a teammate of Rozanov’s from McGill that had commentators and fans alike scratching their heads when he was drafted fresh out of first year. It seems the Voyageurs are content to keep this one in the incubator for now, but sources in the months since the draft have said that Haas might be acting as a replacement for Shane Hollander. Hollander’s notable absence from the draft this year was attributed to him wanting to finish school, but speculation is that it could be due to prior knowledge of the trade instituted by the Boston Bears or possibly a concern that he would be drafted to the same team as Rozanov, who he has a long history with as both a teammate and a player.

Friendly or feuding? The media cannot seem to confirm, because despite Rozanov’s repeated comments about Hollander’s ‘boring’ nature in the press he seems to have the utmost respect for him as a player and a captain. Hollander is conversely tight-lipped on Rozanov’s personality, instead choosing to highlight how they work well together as a team and how he wishes Rozanov the best with his NHL career.

So, while only time will tell on their future careers together, outlets claiming a lasting rivalry between the two were left spinning tonight when Shane Hollander was spotted in the crowd at the Voyageurs stadium with the entire Marauders team by his side. Sat behind the Voyageurs bench, the Marauders got a ton of screentime on the jumbotron—most notably for their matching t-shirts, which appeared to have Rozanov’s face on them. 

Spectators were also confused to see Hollander brandishing an old-fashioned megaphone in the stands, but he didn’t use it to the Voyageur’s advantage—or disadvantage. While new assistant captains Hayden Pike and JJ Boiziau grabbed the megaphone a few times to lead the crowd in Voyageurs cheers, Hollander mostly kept the megaphone for himself, and apparently was extremely focused on the ice throughout the game. Rozanov glanced up several times, seeming pleased and touched by his teammates’ support.

Last month Rozanov spoke openly in an interview for the first time about his struggle with the draft. He emphasized his extreme gratitude and excitement about the upcoming season, but also stressed that finishing university was important to him and apparently a goal of his late mother, who he also spoke briefly about for the first time. He concluded by announcing that he had ‘worked out a deal’ with the university to attend classes in a hybrid schedule of online and in-person lectures, and is on track to graduate on time with a degree in Russian Literature. He also took the time to thank his new agent, who is apparently choosing to stay out of the public eye for now. While announcing your continued education is an odd way to conclude a press conference about your recent signing with an NHL team for your rookie season, we have to respect the dedication. 

Whatever their feelings about each other, Hollander must have been impressed by Rozanov’s outstanding showing tonight. He’ll surely be hard at work preparing the Marauders for their own upcoming season and third Nationals run, but whatever team Hollander ends up on, there is no doubt in this author’s mind that really, he’s preparing to catch up to Rozanov. Will the two players match up by the time Hollander enters the league? Only time will tell.

Shane puts down his phone, the article abandoned on the webpage, and twists in Ilya’s arms to face him. Ilya’s new couch in his apartment is much comfier than Shane’s old one, he has decided, which is helpful because Shane has spent almost every day since Ilya moved in here. He’ll have to go back to his apartment eventually, keep up the pretense somehow, but he’s waiting until Ilya leaves for his first away game and the bed feels too cold without him.

“This article is bullshit. Catch up? Baby, I’m coming for you.”

Ilya smiles, tugs him closer, and unpauses the show playing on their TV, Russian subtitles already loaded. “I know, малыш. I can’t wait to see you try.”