Chapter Text
The moment that the door fell shut behind Shane, the condo fell uncomfortably quiet. Ilya felt as though his bones had been filled with molten steel—burning hot with desperation yet too heavy to move. The only thing Ilya could hear over the roaring of blood in his ears was the incessant ticking of the wall clock. He couldn’t stand it. Sweats still shucked around his hips, Ilya fought against the steel in his limbs and forced himself to stand, half-stumbling across the living room to yank the clock off the wall and pull the batteries out. The ticking stopped, and so did the pulse in his ears, leaving him alone in a deafening silence so different and disorienting from the warm clarity he found in quiet with Shane.
Ilya knew that he should have expected this. People like him and Shane, in situations like these, didn’t do “couple things”. They didn’t do domesticity, didn’t cuddle on the couch after lunch. He knew such lavish fantasies were unattainable, but often he felt like an orphaned lamb, seeking normalcy in the warmth of his flock to fill the hole in his heart that had been gaping since he was twelve years old.
But Ilya had known, maybe since before he was twelve years old, that flock wasn’t enough. He sought to soothe his ache in the impossible and craved what he could not have without harm—he’d found in his youth that the wolves offered comfort like no other. He found his wolves in sex, alcohol, maybe a bit of drugs when he was younger. Shane was his wolf. Shane was warm and supple and licked Ilya’s wounds; but Shane bit. He bit Ilya’s chest, strong jaws crushing ribs and sternum and teeth sinking into the warm, pumping flesh within.
Ilya snapped out of his thoughts only partially when he heard rain begin to fall outside, pattering against the windowpane and rolling down in fat rivulets. Shane would have to get home in this weather. Maybe I should call him. He might still be waiting. I could drive him. But Ilya knew that Shane was stubborn and convicted, even when that conviction was a double-ended blade that pierced them both down to their very souls. With this in mind, Ilya silenced his phone and slumped back on the couch. Despite the inherent dreariness of Boston weather, the rain provided a much-needed relief from the Shane-less silence of the apartment. He heard a car door outside, and absently watched Shane’s Uber pull out into the rainy streets through the window.
Their plates were still on the coffee table. Ilya’s was spotless, despite a few crumbs, and Shane still had half of his sandwich left, save for a bite out of the corner. Shane never finished his plate, unless he felt it to be rude—and when he did, he’d force himself to eat until he felt sick—this was something that Ilya had learned in his eight years of close yet subtle observations of Shane Hollander. Maybe this meant that Shane was beginning to trust him with more than just his body; it was such a menial thing, but Ilya felt an overwhelming surge of adoration at the thought of Shane trusting him enough to leave his plate half-empty. But that thought quickly came tumbling down, spilling out of the cusp of his conscience, when Ilya thought vividly of the way that Shane had fled his apartment, like a spooked animal.
Maybe Ilya was the wolf, and Shane the frightened lamb.
———
It had felt longer than it was, but Ilya ended up spending about five minutes staring blankly at his text thread with ‘Jane’, hoping something would pop up. Maybe Shane would change his mind. He would text Ilya, “Can I stay longer?” and he would be at Ilya’s door, damp from the rain, bangs plastered to his forehead, cheeks and lips flushed from the cold. Ilya would kiss that cold away and hold him like he was something more than a fuck-buddy. They would bask in one another’s warmth, as two lambs huddled in the warmth of their shared stall, something more than an impossibility at the cusp where pasture met the woods.
It didn’t take long for Ilya to shake himself out of his reverie. It was unrealistic, he knew, maybe selfish, to think there was any possibility Shane could stay. Ilya tossed his phone on the couch, face down, and scrubbed his hands over his face, rough palms scraping over the stubble that’d grown overnight. “Ебать.” He needed to get his shit together. This couldn’t go on. But he wanted Shane, so badly. He wanted to keep him all to himself, keep him away from anyone or anything else. Maybe he could kidnap him, he thought sardonically. Who was stupid enough to try to kidnap Shane Hollander?
Before he could begin to spiral, the silent room was pierced by the brash buzz of the intercom, mounted by the front door. It was probably a delivery, Ilya thought, only half-willing to go answer it. He hauled himself off the couch, trudging sluggishly across the room to press the button to speak. “Yes? If it is package, leave it with the receptionist,” he said into the speaker, not really trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.
“Oh, no, I’m the Uber driver, here for Mr. Hollander?” responded the thickly-accented voice of a young Bostonian man, Ilya supposed. It would make sense, given their locale. “Sorry for the delay. Also, you are Ilya Rozanov, yeah? My brother is a big fan–”
“Shane left in Uber fifteen minutes ago,” Ilya interjected, his voice coming out far more harsh than he intended. What fucking car did Shane get into?
———
Shane had stood at the bottom of the stairwell of Ilya’s condo for five minutes, gasping like he had run a marathon. His mouth was uncomfortably dry, but he was certain that he’d start dry heaving if he had any water. He was whiteknuckling the stair railing, brows pinched so tight his head was starting to pound. What a fucking joke I am, Shane thought miserably, finding it so pathetic he almost laughed. He couldn’t believe he’d done that. What kind of loser was he, to flee Ilya’s apartment, on the brink of throwing up, simply because Ilya had called him by his fucking name? He’d fled like a jumpy animal, mind racing and blank all at once; all he could hear was the blood in his ears and the voice in his head screaming get out, get out, get out, get out.
It shouldn’t be this scary. Shane Hollander wasn’t a chicken. Shane Hollander took hits on the ice like a champ, finished games with bloody noses, and dealt with the slews of reporters asking him borderline-invasive questions about his personal life and what it felt like to be a mixed hockey superstar in a world full of sparkling white. But when Shane Hollander’s fuckbuddy of eight years called him Shane, in a voice all too soft, he was filled with a terrible feeling that began in the pit of his belly and seized his heart, like claws had torn through his chest to rip out the muscle within. It pushed up into his throat, hot and sour and sharp, overwhelming him with its intensity.
But there was also a softer warmth, something heavy but soothing, like the weighted blanket Shane’s mother had gotten him when he was a child, that he still sleeps with to this day. It was a pleasant pressure, seeping into his limbs, his chest, and Shane let himself think for a moment that maybe this could be. He could be Shane on Ilya’s lips, he could be Shane in Ilya’s throat, in his mind. He could be more than something to fuck, more than something that was pushed aside the next morning and saved for later. He could be more than cold leftovers—but that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Shane knew that Ilya wasn’t that kind of man, and they didn’t live in that kind of world.
Shane needed to get out of this fucking building. He felt suffocated by the stale warmth of air circulating through the stairwell; it was arguably a far nicer stairwell than the one in his apartment, but it felt just as stifling. He used his shoulder to push through the door. It was pouring rain, even though it had been sunny just hours ago. What a treat, he thought, squinting through the downpour. He checked his phone; the app said his Uber was twenty minutes away. Fucking great. Shane knew that if he even dared to look up at the condo, at Ilya’s window, he wouldn’t be able to fight that overwhelming, painful urge to run back up those stairs, dripping wet from the rain, and stumble into Ilya’s warm, dry embrace.
Shane hated how much it hurt to be away from Ilya at that moment. For nearly a decade, he’d spend months apart from Ilya—of course, it hurt then, and it was frustrating how much Shane missed not only Ilya’s touch, but his company. But now, after fleeing Ilya’s apartment, leaving him with eyebrows furrowed and worried, Shane felt a pain so sharp that he could’ve mistaken it for a heart attack.
He startled out of his thoughts when a car pulled up, a black minivan with heavy tinted windows. The Uber had gotten here early. The driver’s side window rolled down, and a man probably five years older than Shane popped his head out. He was wearing sunglasses, which was an odd fashion choice in this weather, Shane thought, but he had seen worse. “Hi, uh… are you here for Shane? Hollander?” Shane asked awkwardly, feeling stupider than he had all day.
“Yeah. Get in,” the man said gruffly. The van was missing a front plate, but Shane assumed it had a back plate, and chose not to comment out of fear of coming off as rude. He slid into the backseat of the van, pulling his hood off. His bangs were dripping and plastered to his clammy skin. “Back to your hotel, yeah?”
“Yes, please, uh, the address is—” Shane began, but he was quickly cut off.
“I know where it is.”
Shane swallowed thickly. That sounded odd, but maybe it was just an offhand comment, maybe a joke. He was famous after all, he supposed. People were bound to know where he was staying. He rested his temple against the cool windowpane, of which was tinted so darkly that it painted the outside world in a strange hue of twilight. It was disorienting, but so was everything else Shane had experienced today.
The silent drive gave Shane the unwanted opportunity of drowning in his thoughts. Thoughts of Ilya, of his big, rough hands, of his perfect lips and mole-spotted skin. Of the way he’d attentively made him a sandwich, given him a cold ginger ale—even though Shane knew Ilya hated them—and how he’d so gently said his name, a whispered secret between the two of them; a secret just like everything else they shared. He desperately craved that domesticity, that little sliver of normalcy in the mess that was them. He craved to curl into Ilya’s side, inhale the scent of him, share his warmth and taste him. He craved gentleness, but he too wanted to bite. He wanted to bite into Ilya’s skin, his neck, his heart, mark him as mine, mine, mine. To keep him all for himself, in the slice of a life they had cultivated yesterday, in the slice of a life they would never have.
Shane spooked out of his fantasy when the van came to an abrupt stop. He looked out the window, squinting against the tint and the rivulets of heavy rain, realizing he didn’t recognize his surroundings one bit. “Uh, you might’ve taken a wrong turn, I know the neighborhood is confusing, I—”
The man in the driver’s seat opened his door, leaving it open as he rounded the car to open Shane’s. He was silent, sunglasses still obscuring his eyes. “Sorry, I–uh, is everything okay?” Shane asked dumbly, unable to hide the slight waver in his voice. His gaze flitted down to his phone in his lap, open to his and Ilya’s chat thread. Without thinking, he sent Ilya his location, quickly—right before the man with the sunglasses grabbed Shane by the wrists, wrenching his arms behind his back and hauling him out of the car. “What are you—fuck!” Shane couldn’t stifle the embarrassing, pain-induced voice crack that was torn out of him when his arms were yanked, shoulders pulling unnaturally.
“Quiet. Keep quiet and this won’t be so hard,” the man murmured, breath hot and rank against Shane’s ear, with a voice that was too calm.
Who was stupid enough to try to kidnap Shane Hollander?