Chapter Text
It wasn’t that sex with Ilya was bad. No, the sex had been fantastic from day one, though Shane would privately admit that he didn’t have the most context for comparison. Sex with Ilya was at alternate turns earthshattering and incredibly tender, and sometimes looking forward to it was the light that kept Shane going through tough weeks and brutal practices. If he kept working hard, then he could keep playing hockey, and if he kept playing hockey, then eventually he could see Ilya again. Simple math that didn’t need looking at very hard, thank you.
But some of their encounters were more memorable than others. There was the time after the MLH Awards that they’d both been so drunk that their whiskey dicks couldn’t get much done and Ilya was so frustrated that Shane thought he was going to pop a vessel or something.
There were the nights they didn’t have enough time, when it was all so fast and messy that it became a vaguely pleasant blur, over far too soon, goodbye kisses mashed against the corners of mouths before you knew it.
And then there were the rare occasions when Ilya was determined to move at the most leisurely pace possible. It wasn’t the slowness that was hot to Shane, though maybe that was a small part of it. It was how creative Ilya seemed to get when given a large enough canvas of time to work upon.
There was another MLH Awards night that came to mind: the night Rozanov had won MVP, just weeks after he’d won the cup.
He’d been so unbearably smug that night, and after he’d given Shane the cold shoulder for months. A stronger man than Shane Hollander would have told Ilya Rozanov to go fuck himself and walked away. But Shane was weak. Terribly, terribly weak. So he’d taken the elevator up to Ilya’s penthouse hotel room, and he’d sat on a bed and he’d done whatever Ilya told him to do for an entire evening.
Afterwards, descending in the lift back down to his own room, Shane had been overwhelmed by two diametrically opposed ideas. The first was the incompleteness of the evening. The things they hadn’t done. The way their lips had never even touched. The second was the low, burning fire in his gut that wouldn’t go away for days afterwards. It hadn’t been perfect, but damn, it had been hot.
Shane spent the rest of the summer thinking about that night, about Ilya Rozanov, trying to piece together what it was about that particular encounter that had done it for him. He found himself on the types of websites he always immediately cleared from his browser history, searching for things that made him blush in the privacy of his own home.
He learned the term “JOI” (Jerk Off Instructions), which was helpful, but not quite right. Some of those videos did it for him, but others fell short. It was when he started comparing the common tags on his favorite videos that he put the pieces together. And that led him down a rabbit hole that took him to a very interesting place that… well. He enjoyed it.
That could have been the end of it. Just a new little tidbit of information about himself.
There was just one problem.
Ilya was Ilya, he was never going to be anything else, but he was never quite the same as that night in Vegas. And Shane… Shane was starting to crave it. It didn’t help that in the weeks or months between hookups, he kept watching videos, and his mind kept unhelpfully mixing reality and fiction in this strange, dreamlike swirl and it was slowly driving him insane.
Shane tried to keep quiet about it. He really did. Shane Hollander was not normally the type of person who complained when the service he was getting was perfectly adequate, if not exactly what he wanted. If you forgot the cheese on his cheeseburger, he wasn’t going to say anything.
He didn’t really eat cheeseburgers anymore, but that wasn’t the point. Shane knew not to ruin a good thing.
But god, he couldn’t stop thinking about better things.
It was November, 2015, before he got the nerve. Almost a year and a half since Vegas, because he was kind of pathetic when it came right down to it.
They were at the Montreal condo, Shane still reclining on the rumpled sheets while Ilya looked around for his underwear that had gotten thrown to the wind in their hurry to get undressed. It had been far too long a wait this time. They’d both been impatient. Now, they could take the afterglow slowly, and Shane used the opportunity to admire Rozanov’s ass as he bent over to peer under the dresser.
“Where the fuck are they?” he grumbled, standing up straight once more with a deep pout on his face.
“You can borrow a pair of mine,” Shane offered.
“Ah, you want to steal my boxers to sniff when I am gone? Is okay, you could have said.”
It used to be that when Rozanov teased him, Shane mostly just got pissed off. And he still did, sometimes. But he’d come to realize at some point just how funny Ilya was, even in a second language. And sometimes… sometimes he said things that made Shane shiver, just a tiny bit.
He hoped Ilya didn’t notice.
But then again, maybe it was a topic worth broaching. Shane had been trying to bring it up for ages, but the moment never seemed right.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said, trying to keep his tone casual.
“Ah.” Rozanov nodded as he pulled out the top drawer of the dresser and found the change of clothes Shane kept here, “This is dangerous for you. You might hurt yourself.”
“Fuck off. Can you be serious for two seconds?”
Ilya shrugged as he pulled on a borrowed pair of briefs.“I can be serious for long time, but is hard when I keep getting distracted by your dick.”
Shane himself was getting distracted by the idea of Ilya wearing his clothes, but he rolled his eyes and threw a pillow over his groin. “Better?”
“Yes and no,” Rozanov said with a mournful sigh, “What are you thinking about, Hollander?”
And now came the part where Shane had to be brave. He just had to open his mouth and say it. “I… like doing this with you.”
That made Ilya grin. “Good. Then we should keep doing this, yes?”
“Just shut up for a second and let me finish. I like what we do together. But sometimes I think about doing…” He paused, words failing him. “Other stuff.”
Something strange flickered over Ilya’s face for half a second before he bent down to pull on his jeans and Shane couldn’t read his expression anymore. “You do not need my permission to fuck girls. Or boys. Do whatever you want. Is your cock.”
While the reassurance was comforting, it wasn’t what Shane was looking for. “No, I mean… I want to do other stuff with you.”
Thankfully, Rozanov looked up at him again, though his face was pinched by confusion. “I am not following. You want to do what? Parcheesi?”
This was useless. Shane groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “No. God, just forget about it.” He slid off the bed, standing and starting to look for his own clothes.
But, after only a second, Ilya was standing in front of him, hands on both his shoulders. His face was deeply serious. “Hey. I am listening. But I do not understand. Help me understand.”
They didn’t talk like this often. Not about things that were hard to say. They skated along on the surface of things and talked mostly about hockey, if they talked at all. But Ilya seemed to sense Shane’s distress, that this thing was clawing at the inside of his chest, threatening to burst out. He hadn’t even joked about Shane’s dick being out again, which was a big leap in maturity for Ilya Rozanov.
“Do you remember Vegas?” Shane asked softly, “After the MVP awards?”
Rozanov’s face softened, a cocky grin spreading across his face. “Ah, yes. I won. Very good night for me. For you too?”
Shane laughed, shaking his head. “In some ways.”
“Spit it out, Hollander.” Even with all they’d grown, Rozanov still wasn’t the most patient man in the world. But he rubbed soft circles into Shane’s tense shoulders as he said it.
Deep breath. “I want to try BDSM,” Shane said, “It stands for Bondage-”
“Yes, I know what it stands for,” Ilya cut in. He didn’t look angry or disgusted or anything like that. They might as well have been having a conversation about who was going to make the playoffs, for all his face changed.
“Oh. You do?”
That devilish grin was back. “Yes. I have watched porn. I am not a nun.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. So.” Ilya slid his hands up Shane’s neck, tangling his fingers into dark hair, “What do you want to do?”
It was becoming increasingly hard to think with all the touching Rozanov was doing, as well as the possibility hanging in the air. The tempting idea that maybe, just maybe, he might get what he’d been dreaming of for over a year.
“I just told you,” Shane breathed, barely a whisper.
Rozanov shook his head. “What you said is like saying ‘I want to play sports’. There are lots of sports, all very different. We could play golf. We could play baseball. But you like hockey. What is your hockey, Hollander?”
Shane had done a lot of research. An unhealthy amount, probably. He’d watched so many videos, read articles, devoured stories, and he’d liked quite a lot of it. But his only experience was that one night in Las Vegas. So when Ilya laid it out like that, basically asking him where he wanted to start, Shane was at a loss. It was like looking at a menu where everything sounded good, but also most of the things sounded a little scary at the same time. Ilya had asked him a reasonable question, but Shane had no idea how to answer it.
“Can I… get back to you?”
“Yes,” Ilya said, releasing Shane’s hair and giving him a peck on the cheek, “Get back to me. When you watch kinky porn, you will text me and tell me what you think about it.”
Even after all this time, there was a part of Shane that instinctively resisted whenever Rozanov got like this. “Why would I do that?” he snapped, pushing Ilya away and snatching his boxers off the floor.
Ilya hummed, stepping back to lean against the wall and watch Shane with a panther-like expression. “Because you want to be good for me, I think. That is your uh… skating. Basic part of hockey.”
“Fuck off.” Shane knew he was bright red by this point, and he kept getting dressed, regretting that he’d even brought this stupid idea up.
“Okay,” Ilya said with a shrug. He found his shirt and pulled it over his head as he made his way towards the door. “Do or do not. Does not matter either way. I will see you in Boston next month, yes?”
And suddenly, now that Ilya was leaving, Shane wanted to give it all up. He wanted to try again, do whatever Ilya asked, fall to his knees, prove he could be… good. Fuck, Rozanov might have a point.
“Uh. Yeah. Next month.”
Rozanov stopped in the doorway, looking over his shoulder with that coy, knowing smile. Goddamn this absolute asshole. “Goodbye, Shane Hollander.”
How dare he know Shane that well?
Fucking hell.
It took Shane a week before he had the nerve to text.
Shane got rid every single text the next morning, his dreams having been plagued by nightmares of the whole team finding them. But he reread each one first, taking his time, his heart pounding as he pressed delete, delete, delete.