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February 2014
Moscow
Scott Hunter is seated in an Air France business class seat, there’s an Olympic silver medal in his hand luggage, a lovely stewardess coming towards him with a glass of champagne, and he hasn’t been this miserable in a long time.
Well, that’s not entirely true: Roughly one month ago, when he watched Kip celebrate his 26th birthday without him through the window of the Kingfisher he might have been this exact level of miserable. But something about the thought of the empty, Kip-less apartment that’s waiting for him back home in NYC is really doing a number on him right now, and all he wants to do is sleep, so he can forget about everything for a few hours – or, better yet, get so blindingly drunk on board this plane that he can forget everything for even longer.
He decides on option number two, accepts the champagne, and empties it in one long gulp.
“Whoa whoa whoa, Hunter, did Canada hurt your feelings this bad?” says a male voice with a gruff, Russian accent directly next to him.
Scott looks up and finds Ilya Rozanov looking back at him. He’s in grey sweats and a black hoodie and somehow manages to look well-rested after the flight from Sochi – probably the same one Scott just took –, all smooth golden curls and zero dark circles under his eyes. Scott hates him a little bit for it. He hates him a lot more when he pushes his hand luggage under the seat next to Scott’s and lets himself sink down in it.
“Certainly not more than Latvia hurt yours, Rozanov.”
Scott knows it‘s a low blow, something he probably wouldn’t have said under normal circumstances, and receives immediate confirmation of it by a hardening of Rozanov’s expression that makes him feel almost guilty. But then, all he needed, all he wanted was a simple bit of peace and quiet, and Rozanov thwarted that by descending on him in the middle of a fucking plane, so this is not all his fault.
Scott endures the silence between them during taxi and take-off, but when the plane reaches flying height and the stewardess comes back with the champagne bottle, he orders a glass for Rozanov as well.
“I’m not interested in celebrating your victory, Hunter,” Rozanov says, even as he accepts the glass.
“Canada’s victory, Rozanov. Get your facts straight.”
It might be Scott’s imagination, but he believes he sees the corners of Rozanov’s mouth lift ever so slightly.
“They were good,” Rozanov admits, and takes a long sip of champagne.
“Yeah,” Scott answers. “Hollander and his team did a great job.”
He surveys Rozanov’s face as he says it, and he thinks, thinks, that Rozanov’s expression might almost qualify as a smile by now. In some countries at least. Inadvertently, he remembers the Men’s Short Form Figure Skating programme a few days ago, where he watched Shane Hollander climb up to the top of the ice rink to have a conversation with Rozanov. Thinks back further to a few other interactions between them over the years that had struck him as – slightly odd. Nothing huge that would easily be noticed. Little things, glances, scraps of conversations, something that might or might not have been a hotel room number being exchanged.
This could, obviously, mean nothing. Scott is most likely imagining things, owing to his own...proclivities. And there is no way in hell that, even if there is something going on here that surpasses professional rivalry or even an unlikely friendship between two hockey players, Scott is ever going to find out. He knows for a fact that were Kip a player from a rivalling hockey team, their secret would be kept even more airtight than it already is...
Scott derails that train of thought with emphasis and empties his glass.
“They were lucky, also,” Rozanov says. “Beating you was not all skill.”
Scott looks back at him. Rozanov’s glass is empty, too.
“It never is all skill. You guys didn’t deserve that shit-show against Latvia, either.”
Rozanov shrugs.
“Happens,” he says.
Then, nothing for a good long while, until Scott starts digging in his suitcase for his phone and headphones.
“You have layover in Paris?”
“Yeah. Twelve hours.”
“Six for me.”
Scott shoots him a sympathetic look. Six-hour-layovers are the worst, too long for reading and browsing, too short to catch any reasonable shuteye. Add to that the inevitable jetlag and you’re in for a nasty readjustment period post-travel.
“Please don’t tell me you have training on landing day.”
Rozanov huffs. “Must.” He pauses, smirks. “We will win the cup this season, you know.”
Scott knows it’s not unlikely. Boston is strong this season, stronger than the Admirals, if he’s perfectly honest with himself. He’d rather swallow his own tongue than admit to it, though.
“You fucking wish, Rozanov.”
Rozanov doesn’t say anything to that, but he does give Scott a rather interesting look. It’s long and intense and makes Scott feel altogether too warm under his collar. Then, the moment is over, and Rozanov’s expression shifts back to stoic disinterest.
“I’m having vodka now. You?”
***
Scott has definitely, beyond a doubt, had way too much to drink.
He’s nursing his second glass of water after two glasses of champagne and two additional glasses of vodka, but he still feels lightheaded, and Rozanov next to him has become an unignorable distraction.
The lights aboard the plane have been turned down, and technically Scott is busy watching Man of Steel on his in-flight entertainment system, but the sounds of explosions and U.S. military types shouting commands keep getting interrupted by surreptitious glances at Rozanov’s side profile in the artificial light of both their screens. Scott has been trying to beat his brain – and other parts of himself – into submission for roughly two hours by now, because he really could have done without the realisation that Ilya Rozanov is hot in a way that he himself finds personally attractive – but something about tonight’s perfect storm of alcohol, tiredness, raw nerves, hurt feelings and Rozanov being a surprisingly companionable person who might or might not have been flirting with Scott earlier must have pulled some kind of deep-seated trigger.
Scott leans back, closes his eyes, breathes and opens them again, intent on following the action on screen. Superman is currently coming to some sort of heroic realisation in space during an emotional conversation with his father – is it his father? Scott can’t tell. It’s not like he has been following the plot in any adequate way, shape or form.
“I like him.”
Rozanov’s voice, all of a sudden, and Scott flinches. He is leaning over the middle console, right into Scott’s personal space, his eyes fixed to Scott’s screen. He smells faintly of shampoo and some sort of aftershave. Tom Ford?
Like it fucking matters.
“Who?” Scott manages, pausing the film.
“The actor. Cavill.” Rozanov’s eyes find Scott’s, and his lips curl, before – in a very, very soft voice – he adds. “He is hot.”
Scott feels his insides go cold, then scorchingly hot. Rozanov is still looking at him. Scott swallows. Rozanov’s eyes follow the movement of his throat.
Fuck.
Scott has definitely, beyond a doubt, had way too much to drink, because...
“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “He is.”
And just like that, it’s out. Rozanov has pried him open. Not gently, not like Kip, between two rounds of smoothies and sex, in the privacy of his apartment, a hand on his shoulder and lips to his temple. This, accosting him over the middle console between two Air France business class seats with a devilish grin, feels more like an act of violence.
It’s also strangely, blazingly, incandescently hot.
Scott wants to kiss that grin off Rozanov’s face, wants to bury his hands in Rozanov’s curls and put his mouth to work elsewhere, wants to throw him on a mattress and fuck him into oblivion. Something about Rozanov’s expression tells him that he wouldn’t be disinclined.
They look at each other a moment longer, before Rozanov slowly moves back into his own seat.
Scott doesn’t really have an excuse for what he says next.
“At least they gave me a reasonable place for the layover this time.”
“What’s reasonable for you Americans, Hunter?” Rozanov’s voice drips sarcasm, but Scott can hear the interest shimmer through.
“The Intercontinental Le Grand is just reasonable enough, I think.”
“Mh,” Rozanov makes. “Four Seasons is better. Do you at least have suite?”
“Presidential,” Scott gives back.
“Sounds okay,” Rozanov says, without emotion, and unpauses the movie he has been watching. Iron Man 3.
Ten minutes later the lights go back on, the pilot announces their imminent descent into Paris, and Scott wonders for a long moment if he has suffered a nervous breakdown and dreamed the events of the past two hours up.
“Was not so bad flying with you, Hunter,” Rozanov says, after they have touched ground and he has dug his duffel bag out from under his seat.
“Could have been worse,” Scott agrees.
Rozanov gives him something adjacent to a smile and a very quick, very subtle once-over.
“You dropped something on your seat,” he says. “Don’t forget.” He nods. “Bye.”
Scott frowns, looks at his seat again. There is a folded paper napkin on it that hasn’t been there seconds ago.
He picks it up, opens it – and feels his pulse speed up.
Someone has written a U.S. phone number on the paper, followed by a place – Intercontinental –, and a time – 12 a.m..
Scott checks his phone screen. 1.5 hours from now. Enough time for him to get to the hotel and have a shower. Enough time for Rozanov to have a shower in the business lounge and get to him.
He swallows. This is crazy. Not only crazy: Dangerous and stupid, too. Reckless.
Scott should shred this napkin, go to his hotel room, sleep, come back here in the morning and fly out to New York without another thought wasted on Ilya Rozanov and his lips, hands or cock pressed against Scott’s body. Fly out to New York and settle back into his familiar, empty apartment, pick up his familiar, empty routines and spend his days and nights looking at the empty space where Kip should be.
Scott pulls up his contacts app and punches Rozanov’s number in.
***
The knock at Scott’s door comes at 12.06 a.m..
By that point, he has been going out of his skin for roughly one hour. A bit more than that, if he’s honest; the drive from the airport alone was a nerve-wracking affair. Things got worse at the hotel due to Scott’s irrational fear that he might be texting his hotel room number to the wrong person, despite checking the napkin roughly 15 times before pressing “send” and not divulging any more information than a simple four-digit number, only in case Rozanov might have given him the contact details of one of his teammates just to fuck with him. The short “ok” he received as an answer at 11.20 p.m. served to relieve some of that particular anxiety – before the remaining forty minutes were spent showering, shaving and gathering lube and condoms. It doesn‘t help that Scott’s brain has been working overtime during the entire ordeal, constructing and deconstructing scenarios of Rozanov on his knees, his back, his stomach, pressing strings of filthy, half-choked words into Scott’s skin as he got fucked within an inch of his life. Scott forced himself, at a certain point, to slow down. After all, he had zero confirmation, whether Rozanov was even into that – at first glance he did seem more the dominant type. But first glances can be deceiving, and that knowledge – in turn – sent Scott’s thoughts into turmoil once again.
It's no wonder that he is very worked up indeed when the knock finally comes. Actually, and against all of Scott’s anxieties, it is Rozanov who is standing in front of Scott’s door, when he opens it. His nose and cheeks are pink from the cold, his eyes stark blue in the low lights of the hotel hallway, and he has changed into a different pair of sweatpants and -shirt, too, black over black.
Scott nods at him, feels his pulse rap in his throat as Rozanov enters, closes the door behind himself.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he says, as if Rozanov was visiting his room for a polite talk over tea, not clandestine sex, and Rozanov nods.
“Okay.”
That’s all Scott gets before Rozanov is in his personal space, his hand down Scott’s sweatpants a few degrees too cold, where it’s covering Scott’s half-hard dick in a confident grip. Scott moans, despite himself, and Rozanov’s answering grin is insufferable.
But this is not Scott’s first rodeo, far from it, and something tells him that Rozanov’s brazenness is not just confidence. It’s nerves, too. A challenge to match his pace and a way to get the anxious dancing-around-each-other over with as quickly as possible. Scott can work with that. In fact, he’s grateful.
“This what you call manners, rook?” he asks, once he’s gotten over the surprisingly fast beginning to this encounter, buries his hands in Rozanov’s hair and kisses him, hard. The air leaves Rozanov’s lungs in a drawn-out breath, and Scott turns them around, pushes Rozanov back through the suite, towards the master bedroom, pulling at his jacket until he starts divesting.
He’s an excellent kisser, practiced, not sloppy, and good at matching his partner’s rhythm. Scott is positively surprised. Not that he has wasted many thoughts on Ilya Rozanov’s qualities as a lover until this very day. But if that thing with Hollander is actually a thing (which Scott is starting to think it really, really might be, simply by the evidence currently presented to him), Hollander could certainly have made worse choices.
“Haven’t been a rook in years, Hunter, get your facts straight,” Rozanov says, but he’s breathing heavily, and Scott can feel his erection digging into his thigh. This is definitely doing something for Rozanov, Scott pushing him around, and – well – so much for deceiving first looks.
Scott loses his own shirt, then helps Rozanov get rid of his. His chest is delectable, and Scott bows down to lick at it, one hand still in Rozanov’s hair, the other gripping his arse, pushing him in to get some friction on his cock. Rozanov says something in Russian, before it gets swallowed by a moan, and Scott grins against his skin, follows the trail of hair on Rozanov’s abdomen and the scent of arousal down with his lips, until he is kneeling.
“Sit,” he says, and Rozanov does, lets Scott pull his sweatpants down. Rozanov’s cock is beautiful, of course it is, and Scott doesn’t lose any time, gives one greedy lick to the whole length of it, before he swallows it down.
Rozanov’s following moan is loud enough that it would worry Scott, if they were in a hotel room smaller than this one, but they aren’t, and Rozanov can be as loud as he fucking wants to be, the thought of which makes Scott’s own cock throb. With a great deal of willpower, he resists touching himself through his pants, leaves his hands on Rozanov’s thighs, warm skin, tough muscles underneath. Rozanov is trembling ever-so-slightly, his cock jerking against Scott’s lips, his breath coming unevenly through his open mouth. His fingers are in Scott’s hair, seemingly uncertain if they’re allowed to grip, and Scott smiles around his cock, places his hand on Rozanov’s in his hair and shows him where to pull.
“Fuck, Hunter,” Rozanov says, once he’s figured out how Scott likes it, and Scott hums around his cock. He can tell that Rozanov is close, can tell it by the roughness of his breathing, the salty leak of precome in his mouth. With a last, indulgent lick across the head of his cock, he pulls off and looks up.
Rozanov is flushed from cheeks to chest, his pupils huge, his lips bitten, his curly hair in disarray. He’s beautiful in this light, like something carved from marble in one of Kip’s art history books. Scott swallows. He will not follow this trail of thoughts, not now, not with Rozanov in his bed and his cock achingly hard in his pants.
“You’re good at that,” Rozanov says. “Not so boring as I thought.”
Scott smiles, inadvertently, both at the butchered grammar and the content of the sentence.
“Not as boring as you thought,” he corrects, mostly to rile Rozanov up, and surges, pushes him back on the bed and pulls his own sweats and boxer briefs off. Rozanov’s eyes land on Scott’s cock with blatant interest, and Scott likes it, how unfiltered and focused his lust is.
“You here to correct my grammar or to fuck me?” he asks, and Scott’s breath falters, before he manages to get a hold of himself again.
“Would you like that?” he says, finally, and Rozanov looks at him for a while, something pensive in his eyes.
Eventually, he seems to come to a decision.
“Have tried it once and didn’t like it,” he says. “But I think you...could be good with you.”
Scott feels a sudden, irrational stab of anger at whoever fucked Rozanov in the past and didn’t do a good job of it, followed by a very powerful impulse to not only do better, but so well, in fact, that Rozanov might consider giving up topping altogether. The impulse is accompanied by an odd rush of warmth. Rozanov doesn’t know Scott that well, but he trusts him enough to share this part of himself and make an honest request. Scott can’t imagine that Rozanov shares things or makes requests very often.
“Alright,” he says, places a hand on Rozanov’s abdomen and hopes that his eyes communicate everything he is not saying. Thank you for telling me. I’ll make this good. “Get on your stomach.”
Rozanov’s ass is an actual vision, and even though Scott has known that this would be the case ever since he grabbed hold of it earlier, seeing it spread out in front of him is something entirely different altogether. He doesn’t say anything to that effect but can’t quite help a pleased sound falling from his lips when he traces the cleft of it, before he remembers what he is actually here for, opens the lube he left on the nightstand earlier, and gets to work.
Rozanov is wonderfully reactive when Scott opens him up, one finger circling, rubbing, dipping, then two. Scott places his clean hand at the nape of Rozanov’s neck, firm, reassuring, his digit and middle finger playing with the curls at the base of his head, a mirror gesture of what he is doing further below.
When Scott starts crooking his fingers, Rozanov starts making sounds, low, pleased ones. His hips are moving, seeking out the friction of the bedsheets below, but also pushing back on Scott’s fingers, which Scott counts as a good sign from own experience. He considers giving Rozanov a third finger, but he can feel the tension of his muscles, the growing impatience in his movements, and decides against it, allows himself to zero back in on his own arousal, rolls a condom on and spreads some more lube on his cock, liberally and with no regard for the bedsheets. Rozanov is pushing back against him insistently when Scott moves up and places a long kiss at the nape of his neck, his hand still in Rozanov’s hair.
“You tell me, if you don’t like it, Rozanov. Okay?”
Rozanov nods, lightly, one side of his face pressed into the pillow. He’s blushing, breathing heavily and his eyes are closed. He looks very, very turned on, which Scott counts as another good sign.
Though the urge to fuck into Rozanov fast and hard is almost overwhelming, Scott goes slow, careful, feels for the tension in Rozanov’s thighs when he pushes in, seeks and finds the small line of discomfort around his mouth and waits for it to smooth out. When he bottoms out he stays, for a moment, breathes, lets Rozanov breathe. Then, he manoeuvres them both slightly back, until he can push a lube-covered hand around Rozanov’s waist, where he finds him, to his personal delight, rock-fucking-hard.
Scott smiles.
“You like it,” he notes, strokes Rozanov once, twice.
“Shut up and fuck me already,” Rozanov retorts. His voice sounds used, raw, and his hips push back against Scott’s cock. It’s incredibly hot. Scott pulls, then thrusts back to where Rozanov’s body grips him tight and good, and he knows he’s not going to hold out long here, but on God he’s going to make Rozanov come first.
He kisses Rozanov’s shoulder, bites, licks along his ear shell, which Rozanov acknowledges with a deep moan, so Scott does it again, considers, for a moment, if he should go there, if Rozanov wants him to go there, before he takes the leap and murmurs:
“You’re doing so good. Taking it so well from me.”
Rozanov moans, louder this time, and yes, fuck yes. Making Rozanov lose it like this probably shouldn’t make Scott prouder than placing 2nd at the Olympics three days ago but somehow, right now, it does, scratches a primal, possessive itch somewhere in the depth of his stomach. He goes faster, deeper, develops a rhythm and feels his orgasm build at the base of his spine, the promise of a tidal wave, spurred by Rozanov’s irregular breathing, the sounds he makes.
“You gonna come for me, Rozanov?” he asks. “Gonna be good and come on my cock?”
As if he had spoken a magic word, Rozanov groans and does, coats Scott’s fingers and half his own chest in his release, tightening fiercely around Scott’s cock, who isn’t far behind, lets himself be swept away. For a long, golden moment his world is reduced to Rozanov’s skin, Rozanov’s scent, the heat of Rozanov’s body.
It doesn’t last forever, though, of course it doesn’t, and eventually Scott is pulled back to the bed, out of Rozanov’s body, into his own head. He puts some space between them, and Rozanov rolls over to face him. His curls are sticking to his forehead and his eyes look hazy, his pupils only shrinking down to their normal size in increments. He looks positively fucked out.
“You good?” Scott asks.
Rozanov smiles at him. A real, honest-to-God smile. “Yes,” he says. “I was right.”
“Right with what?”
“That it would be good with you.”
Scott can’t help but smile back. “My pleasure.”
“Mh,” Rozanov makes, then frowns, slightly. “You like both? Fucking and getting fucked?”
“Yes,” Scott gives back. “How’d you figure?”
Rozanov tilts his head. “You seem to know how to...be on the other side. How it feels.” He nods, half to himself. “I like that I know now. What it’s like when it’s good.”
His eyes wander away from Scott, towards the clock on the nightstand. “Fuck. I need to go to airport. Flight in three hours.”
Scott watches him climb off the bed and disappear to the bathroom. He should be cleaning up himself, shower, but he’ll do that once Rozanov has left. Right now he can’t get himself to move.
There’s rummaging in the other room, Rozanov picking up items of clothing, before he comes back round to the bedroom, dresses himself. Scott watches his golden skin disappear beneath layers of black.
He knows that whatever this was will likely never happen again between the two of them, and he’s surprisingly fine with it. This was nice, very nice. It doesn’t need to be more than it is.
Rozanov, however, surprises him once more when he sits down on the side of Scott’s bed, now fully dressed, and looks him in the eye.
“Who’s Kip?” he asks, earnestly, and the question hits Scott like a freight train, painful, unprompted and unprepared.
“What?”
Rozanov shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. “You don’t have to say. Just...you said his name when you came, is all.”
Scott tries to swallow. It doesn’t work, his throat is too tight. “He’s...he’s...” he begins but can’t continue. He feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
No.
He can’t cry in front of goddamn Ilya Rozanov, not now, not ever. He swallows again, this time more successfully, and keeps the tears down.
Rozanov looks at him, something warm in his expression that Scott has never seen there. “Is okay, Hunter. Is fucking difficult enough without having to say, I know.”
He bows forward and gives Scott a soft, almost chaste kiss on the lips.
“See you in two weeks,” he says, gets up, and leaves.
It’s only once the front door has snapped shut behind him that Scott allows himself to cry.