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“Fuck,” Shane swears under his breath. He’s standing in Ilya’s hallway when he remembers he’s not wearing his own clothes. The pants are Ilya’s. The shirt is Ilya’s. His clothes are still somewhere in Ilya’s room. And there’s no fucking way he’s showing up back at the hotel wearing clothes that are obviously not the clothes he left in. Clothes that are obviously another man’s clothes. Clothes that just happen to carry the not exactly subtle scent of Ilya’s cologne on them. “Fuck,” he swears again and then he turns to head towards Ilya’s bedroom.
He tries to undress quickly, but his hands won’t stop shaking. His vision won’t stop going in and out. He has to stop and take a few steadying breaths before he can even manage to get Ilya’s shirt off of him. And once he does, he freezes again, looking around the room, trying to find the proper place for Ilya’s clothes. He doesn’t want to just leave them on the floor or tossed on the bed. There is a stinging sharpness behind his eyes. “Fuck,” he says again. He settles for folding them as neatly as his hands will allow and stacking them at the foot of the bed.
He’s pulling on his jeans when Ilya appears in the doorway, leaning, hands in his pockets. Shane hadn’t heard him moving at all, hadn’t heard anything from the house except a ringing silence. So he startles a bit when he sees Ilya there and then he immediately, and very helpfully, notices that there is still a little bit of come on Ilya’s stomach. Fuck, he says in his head this time. He turns away, focusing again on getting dressed.
“Hollander,” Ilya says.
“I’m just—” Shane says, still not able to finish a sentence properly. He is struggling with the right leg of his jeans, suddenly his foot won’t stop getting caught.
“You’re leaving,” Ilya says, a simple observation. “You’re actually leaving.” He laughs, a short, derisive laugh.
Shane finally gets his leg into the jeans and he’s buttoning and zipping and reaching for his t-shirt. “That team meeting,” he lies again. “And like I said, I told Hayden I’d be back.”
Ilya doesn’t say anything. He keeps watching Shane from the doorway. When he speaks, his voice is quiet and he’s looking down at his bare feet. “You said you would stay,” he says. “That is what I remember.”
Shane pulls his shirt down over his body and then tugs at the hem and then adjusts the sleeves and then pulls at the collar. Unnecessary movements to occupy his body while he tries to get his head in order, while he tries to stave off the storm of panic, while he tries to make sense of Ilya standing there looking alarmingly like he might start crying and like it might be Shane’s fault. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I just, um—I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?” Ilya asks, looking up at Shane, meeting his eyes with a challenge, a dare. He doesn’t wait for Shane to answer. “Because I said your name? Is nothing, Hollander. It was heat of moment.”
Shane shakes his head. That’s not why. Not exactly.
“Because you said my name?” Ilya asks. “People say things when they’re fucking. No big deal.”
Shane can only shake his head again.
Ilya steps into the room. He takes a few slow strides across to Shane and then stops in front of him. He lifts a hand and firmly takes hold of Shane’s jaw. A familiar move that makes Shane immediately go limp and surrender. His eyes flutter closed and then open again, falling to Ilya’s mouth. His mind goes completely blank, every bit of anxiety, every reservation, every thought, gone in an instant. That unyielding touch making him feel contained and safe.
“I said I wasn’t done with you,” Ilya says. “And I’m still not.”
Shane hears himself asking, “You’re not?”
Ilya tightens his grip on Shane’s jaw, tilting his head up slightly. “No,” he says. “Take them off.” He nods to Shane’s clothes. And then looks at the ones he’d given Shane to wear earlier. “Put those back on.” He kisses Shane once. “And then come back to the living room.”
He lets go of Shane’s jaw and leaves him alone in the bedroom again.
In the hallway, Ilya pauses, listening. He hears nothing at first and then he hears Shane exhale followed by the rustling of clothes being taken off. He smiles to himself, but then he closes his eyes tightly, taking in a breath, his body shaking in a single violent wave and then going still. Dizzy for a moment like he’s just stepped back from a ledge. He opens his eyes again and keeps walking.
His phone is on the coffee table in the living room. It is vibrating loudly against the surface. His brother again. He ignores the call and slips the phone into his pocket. He takes his and Shane’s plates out to the kitchen and rinses them. He wipes the dried come from his stomach with one of their napkins. He feels his phone vibrating again. He pulls it back out, ignores the call, places it facedown on the counter. He braces his hands on the edge of the counter and takes another breath. His body shaking again. His throat tightening.
But then Shane walks in, back in the joggers and t-shirt Ilya had given him, thumbs hooked in his pockets. Ilya smiles at him, feeling everything reset itself. He wants to say: Thank you for staying. I cannot be alone right now. “Better,” he says instead.
“Sorry about earlier,” Shane says in a small voice. He opens his mouth like he might say more, but then he closes it again.
“Is okay,” Ilya says. “I was enjoying myself though.”
Shane blinks at him as if he’s surprised by that. “You were?”
Ilya comes around to the other side of the counter where Shane is standing. “Very much,” he says, hooking a finger under Shane’s chin and kissing him. It’s a soft, slow kiss. Ilya, for once, doesn’t try to control it, doesn’t try to deepen it immediately. He lets Shane kiss him back and then follows his lead. Which means they stand there in the kitchen kissing in a way that never quite escalates for a few long minutes. And Ilya finds that he is perfectly content there, with his hands on Shane’s waist, with Shane’s hands on his face, with their mouths meeting and separating, over and over.
Eventually Shane laughs and ducks away. He says, “Do you want to…”
“What?” Ilya asks, leaning back in.
“I don’t know,” Shane answers, ducking away again. “We’ve never done this before.”
Ilya laughs now. “Never done what?”
Shane shoots him one of his exasperated looks. “Spent time together,” he says finally.
Ilya studies his face. There is still some panic in his eyes but there is also a dimple by the corner of his mouth where he is smiling furtively and there is a flush in his cheeks from being kissed. “You mean time when we are not fucking or playing hockey?”
“Well, yeah,” Shane says. He has his hands on Ilya’s chest, fingers resting along his collarbone, the index finger of his right hand reaching out and touching Ilya’s gold chain, his eyes watching his finger.
“I am hopeful for more fucking to come,” Ilya says, shrugging. “But there are also other things we can do.”
“Like what?” Shane asks, sounding doubtful.
Ilya kisses him one more time. “I will show you.”
Ilya leads him downstairs, past his home gym, and into his game room. A big room with tall windows that look out into the woods that separate Ilya’s house from the noise of Boston. There is a row of arcade games along the far wall. A pool table. Air hockey too, of course. A big leather couch in front of a TV with several different gaming systems in the cabinet below.
Shane finds it strange to think about Ilya in a room like this, playing video games, maybe even having friends over to play pool. Shane realizes he’s never really considered Ilya having friends, but of course he has friends. He must have friends. He’s outgoing and funny, charming when he wants to be. Shane wonders if he ever has his Raiders teammates over to hang out in this room with him. Or maybe the girl he’d mentioned earlier. Svetlana. He glances at the deep leather couch, shakes his head before he can imagine anything.
“Where did you get those?” Shane asks about the arcade games. He looks specifically at the old Ms. Pac-Man machine, drawn to and then completely weirded out by the pink heels she’s wearing, the pose she’s in which Shane thinks is meant to be seductive.
“I have a—” Ilya snaps his fingers a few times, trying to remember the word. “A buyer. He finds them for me. There are lots of them here in Boston.”
“You have a vintage arcade game buyer?” Shane asks, turning to Ilya.
“Yes,” Ilya says, nodding. “You are not the only one who hires people to do things for him.”
“Do you like—” Shane starts and then stops. He isn’t sure how to do this. How to ask Ilya normal questions about what he likes or what he does in his free time. He’s convinced there’s a limit to the number of questions he can ask before Ilya gets annoyed and shuts down, but he’s never sure what the limit is or if he’s already reached it.
“There was one in the shop near our house when I was growing up,” Ilya says, unprompted, leaning against the pool table, arms folded across his chest. “Lasers. Spaceships.”
“Space Invaders?” Shane guesses. He notices it’s not one of the games Ilya has here.
Ilya nods, pointing a finger at Shane. “Yes, that one,” he says. “It was in the back corner. Me and my brother would play if we had money. I was always top score. Alexei hated that. Even at stupid video game, I was better than him.” He shakes his head and laughs. “One time he finally beat my score. Five minutes later, I was top again.” His eyes go distant momentarily and then he snaps back, looking up at Shane and smiling. “So he slammed my face into side of machine.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane says dumbly, not sure how to react.
“No, not sorry. Now I am rich and have all the games I want and I am top score on each fucking one,” Ilya says, holding his arms out widely to encompass the arcade games, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Shane can only look at him for a beat, but then he laughs. “Is that a challenge, Rozanov?” he asks.
Ilya’s eyes twinkle at him. His grin turning into a genuine smile. “Challenge for you and your slow hands, yes,” Ilya says.
Shane steps closer to Ilya, their bodies pressing together, crowding him against the pool table. Shane is emboldened by the way Ilya sinks down, sitting on the edge of the table, letting Shane tower over him. “You seemed to like my slow hands earlier,” Shane says, but the words disappear into Ilya’s mouth as he surges up into a kiss.
As they kiss, Shane touches Ilya’s face, feeling his bones and his skin. Brother, Alexei, side of machine, he thinks to himself, kissing Ilya more insistently, moving his fingers gently over his cheeks, his jaw. Impossible to think that anyone would ever want to hurt him, would ever bring violence to a face like his. He pulls away from Ilya and holds him at a distance so he can see his face, just to make sure it’s still intact, still—
“What?” Ilya asks when Shane has been looking at him silently for far too long.
“Nothing,” Shane says, noticing the little lines by Ilya’s eyes, the cluster of moles near his hairline, the softness in the corners of his mouth. “You’re just—” He kisses Ilya again instead of telling him that he’s beautiful, gorgeous, the best thing Shane’s ever seen. But, recklessly, he lets himself think it and his heart goes tumbling around in his chest.
“You cheated,” Ilya pronounces when Shane beats his high score on the first try.
“It’s Donkey Kong,” Shane says, turning his head so he can roll his eyes at Ilya over his shoulder. “It’s mostly just jumping. I don’t think it’s possible to cheat.”
Shane is entering his initials for the leaderboard. Ilya watches him select: SHH
“What is H for?” Ilya asks curiously. He makes a quiet shushing sound as he reads the initials blinking on the screen.
“Oh, um,” Shane says, looking at Ilya and then looking back at the screen. “Nothing. It’s Japanese.”
Ilya looks back at him blankly. When Shane doesn’t provide further information, he says, “What’s Japanese?”
“My middle name,” Shane says. And then he turns back to the game and starts deleting the initials.
Ilya stops him, pulling his hand away from the button. “You are embarrassed to have Japanese middle name?”
Shane cheeks are flushed. “I’m not embarrassed,” he says. “It’s just—”
Ilya waits.
“It’s Haruki,” Shane says finally. “It was my grandfather’s name.”
“Haruki,” Ilya says, knowing his accent is butchering the name. His mouth can’t seem to make the right shapes for it. His tongue rolls the R in a way he can hear is not right. “Does it mean anything?”
Shane shrugs. “It means a lot of things,” he says. “Depending on the way it’s written? Like, the Japanese characters? Um, but it’s like spring or tree or good weather. Basically.”
Shane hits a button on the game that makes his initials flash and then the leaderboard refreshes and SHH is there at the top above Ilya’s initials which he has entered only as ILY because his middle name means nothing to him. It certainly doesn’t mean spring or tree or good weather.
“You don’t like talking about it, being Japanese,” Ilya says.
Shane turns around to face Ilya properly. He looks like he wants to lie again, but then his body sags. “I guess it’s never really felt like mine,” he says. His eyes are looking somewhere over Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya is learning that this helps him say hard things out loud so he lets him look at whatever is so interesting across the room. “I have a white dad and I grew up in Canada playing hockey. I don’t know. I’ve just never really felt Japanese.”
“But you are Japanese,” Ilya points out.
“Half,” Shane says, squirming like he wants to get away from the question.
“Okay, half,” Ilya says. “I am half gay. Does that mean I know nothing about sucking your dick?”
“Half gay,” Shane repeats, laughing. “And I don’t think that’s really the same thing. At all.” He looks again over Ilya’s shoulder. “Anyway, the only time me being Japanese really ever comes up is when interviewers want to ask me stupid questions about adversity or whatever. So.” His eyes move back to Ilya. He swallows, frowns. “Sorry. It’s just kind of complicated for me.”
Ilya looks at Shane for a long moment. “I like your middle name,” he says. “Haruki.” He reaches for him, putting his arms around his waist and pulling him closer. “You will teach me how to say it properly? And about the different, what did you call them, characters?”
Shane freezes at the suggestion, blinking up at Ilya’s face. But then he says, “Um, yeah, I can try to teach you.”
Ilya kisses him then to save Shane from having to figure out what to do with his face. He kisses him until he feels Shane smiling against his mouth. Then he shoves Shane out the way, starting up a new game. “One more round,” he says.
But Shane stays too close to him. He stands right behind Ilya to watch him play. Then he puts his hands on Ilya’s hips and hooks his chin over Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s hand falters and he is instantly hit with a barrel. He swears in Russian and then says in English, “See, you are cheating.” Shane laughs against him, hands squeezing his hips. “Distracting me.” Ilya turns his head and finds Shane’s face close to his own. “You are very distracting, do you know this?”
Shane gives him a smile, that small, crooked, secret, sparkling eye sort of smile. “And you’re not?” he says, hands moving from Ilya’s hips to his stomach and up to his chest. Ilya leans back into Shane, allowing Shane’s hands to roam over his body. He lifts his arm, reaching back behind him, his hand finding the back of Shane’s head, and pulling Shane into a kiss. Messy, awkward, terribly urgent. They let themselves get distracted.
Shane watches himself from one of the cushy seats in Ilya’s screening room. Another room in the seemingly endless lower level of Ilya’s house. He isn’t sure what YouTube video it is that Ilya’s found but he sees himself at all ages. On the ice, and then in locker rooms with microphones surrounding him, and then in commercials he has no memory of because he hates shooting them and tends to remove his consciousness from the process completely, and then footage from the documentary he’d made at his cottage. A truly random assortment of clips edited together haphazardly. The video cuts from five seconds of Shane scoring to twenty seconds of Shane in a fragrance ad to an agonizing full minute of Shane talking about how he keeps the mosquitoes away at his cottage in the summer.
Ilya sits next to Shane, his arm draped over the back of Shane’s seat, a strange smile on his face as he watches the video with great interest.
“What is this?” Shane asks. He really hates watching himself, always has. Something about it makes him feel not real. Because he can’t reconcile the person on screen with who he thinks he is. Does he really sound like that? Move like that? Is that what his hair looks like? Why doesn’t he know how to hold his arms like a normal human?
Ilya holds his hand up. “Wait, this is best part,” he says in a hushed, eager voice.
“You’ve watched this before?” Shane asks, incredulous.
Ilya holds his hand up more sternly. On screen, Shane is wearing only underwear, walking purposefully towards the camera, looking straight at the lens, hands on his hips, and then he does this fucking weird half smile. “Jesus Christ,” he groans. “Why did I make that face?”
Ilya is laughing delightedly next to him. “I think you were trying to be sexy,” he says. He’s paused the video on Shane and his stupid smile and he studies it now, head tilted. “You can be much sexier though.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Oh, really?” he asks.
Ilya turns to him now. “Yes, really,” he says. “Let me take picture next time we fuck. I’ll show you.”
Shane shoves at Ilya, but he’s laughing, blushing. “Absolutely not,” he says.
“If you had seen what I saw on the pool table earlier,” Ilya says with a grin, shoving Shane back. “Very sexy.”
Shane thinks for a second and then turns and climbs into Ilya’s lap. “Do you actually think that?” he asks. “That I’m—” He can’t even bring himself to say it out loud, that’s how ridiculous it seems to him. He’s just been subjected to watching himself on screen for fifteen minutes and he didn’t see anything remotely sexy.
“Hollander,” Ilya says. “We have fucked three times already today. You think I am doing it out of pity?”
“No,” Shane says. He feels Ilya moving his hips against his, feels Ilya getting hard already, like maybe he thinks Shane needs proof. “It’s just hard to believe someone like you would—” He stops, hoping Ilya will kiss him or something, put him out of his misery, but Ilya only waits for him to finish his sentence. “Hard to believe someone like you would want me this much.”
“Someone like me?” Ilya asks.
“The whole word wants to fuck you,” Shane says. “Don’t act like that’s news to you.”
“Maybe so.” Ilya’s head tilts back, neck curving up towards Shane, his hands are firm on Shane’s thighs. “But I am here with you, yes? And I am—What is word? Never enough, always wanting more.”
“Insatiable?” Shane suggests. His voice shakes. The panic that’s still lurking inside him perks its ears up. They’re getting too close again. To what, exactly, Shane hasn’t figured out. Just. Too close.
Ilya nods. “Yes, I am insatiable for you.” He says the word slowly, sounding out each syllable carefully, as if he is not only trying to get the pronunciation right but also memorizing the word, storing it away for future use.
Shane climbs off of Ilya’s lap, maybe a little too abruptly. He sits back in his own seat, ignoring Ilya and his furrowed brow, his neck still arched upwards. “Let’s watch a video about you,” Shane says, pointing his chin at the screen. His whole body is tense, coiled, ready to leave again, but he is fighting it this time. He’s determined to stay. He wants to stay. Fuck.
Ilya doesn’t say anything. He sits silent and unmoving for a few moments. Then he reaches for the laptop that’s connected to his projector and hands it to Shane. “Find one of the ones you like,” he says.
“I don’t watch YouTube videos about you,” Shane says even as he’s already typing words into the search bar, even as he’s finding the one he has maybe watched more than a few times and then handing the laptop back to Ilya.
The video starts up on the screen and they both sit and watch in silence for a while. A slightly younger Ilya is shouting at a player on the ice, reaching for him, and then being held back by the refs. Another version of Ilya is in a similar position, shouting what Shane can only assume are Russian curse words at some poor player from Buffalo. A more recent Ilya pushes a player from San Francisco into the boards and then holds him there, saying something to him, inaudible but clearly belligerent, until a ref pulls him off and the other player skates away.
Shane glances nervously at Ilya as he watches.
“You watch my fights?” Ilya asks in a strange, flat voice.
“Sometimes,” Shane says, realizing he’s chosen the wrong video. He thought Ilya would like seeing how intimidating he is, how much the crowd loves it when he plays the heel. And, yeah, Shane enjoys it too. Occasionally. When he’s in a particular mood. When they haven’t seen each other in a while and he wants to think about the force of Ilya’s body, the command of his voice. “I’ll choose another one.”
But Ilya’s eyes are still fixed on the screen. “Some of these are good,” he admits. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, remote in his hands, peering at himself as he tosses his gloves on the ice, grinning and swinging at a Tampa Bay player.
Shane watches Ilya on screen laugh as he’s hauled off of the Tampa Bay guy. His sweat-damp hair clinging to his forehead, his chest heaving, his eyes alight with trouble. “It’s kinda hot,” Shane says. “To me. I mean.”
Ilya turns his head, looking at Shane with those wide eyes of discovery. “You touch yourself to this?” he asks.
Shane’s body goes hot. He folds his arms over his chest. “No,” he says. Ilya keeps looking at him. “Okay, maybe I did once.” Ilya is still looking at him. “A few times. God. Fuck off.”
He expects Ilya to run with that, to lean closer to Shane and ask him for details, to ask him for a demonstration right now as the video plays, to tease him until they’re both achingly hard. But instead he only smiles and sits back, watching the video just as closely as he had been before.
“When I was a younger player,” Ilya says after a while. His voice is very quiet and Shane keeps his eyes on the screen. “I did not want to fight anyone.” On screen, Ilya body checks someone and sends them toppling onto the ice. “Even that, I did not like doing.” Shane looks over and sees a grimace on Ilya’s face as the player in the video struggles to pull himself back up. “I liked skating. I liked passing and scoring. I liked being good at hockey. I did not like hurting people.”
Shane shifts in his seat, feeling even more guilty now for choosing this video.
“There was a game when I was thirteen,” Ilya says and Shane hears him swallow around the word thirteen as if it is a hard knot in his throat. For a second, it seems like he might not go on. “Some championship. Game was tied. The other team had the puck. I could have gotten it. Kept them from scoring, from winning. But I could not bring myself to—” Ilya takes the remote and pauses the video. He looks at Shane. “The idea of shoving my body into this other person’s body. I couldn’t do it.”
Shane holds his breath as Ilya talks. He thinks he understands what Ilya means. Despite the padding and all the training on how to hit someone so that they don’t get injured, there is still something startlingly violent about it. He remembers when he’d been thirteen and body checking was finally allowed in his youth league. It had scared him too, even if, like all things hockey, there had been something instinctual about it for him. “I used to worry the player I hit would get mad at me,” Shane says, laughing gently. “I was always saying sorry whenever I hit someone. Like, out loud. On the ice.”
Ilya laughs too, his eyes moving over Shane’s face. “Yes, I can imagine that,” he says, and then he’s quiet, looking steadily at Shane, as if he’s imagining him at thirteen, as if he can see him clearly. Then he looks away again. “I was mostly afraid I would like it too much,” he says. “My brother, my father, they are violent men. I don’t want to be like them.”
“You’re not,” Shane says, surprised by the conviction, not just in his voice, but in his heart.
“No?” Ilya asks dryly, gesturing at the screen.
Shane looks at the frozen image. Ilya mid yell, face contorted in anger. He takes the remote from Ilya and presses play again. “Look,” he says. Ilya starts moving again. And when he finishes shouting, he smiles, a big, bright, goofy smile, and he says something else to the player he’d been yelling at, something that makes the player shake his head and laugh begrudgingly as he skates away from Ilya.
Shane rewinds the video a bit, back to one of Ilya’s more aggressive body checks. He hits play and there is Ilya slamming the player into the boards hard, but then, after Ilya has passed the puck, he glances back briefly at the player he’d hit with a small nod to himself when he sees him get back up and skate off.
“I think,” Shane says, looking at the screen. His heart beats fast. “I think maybe this is why I like this video. You’re aggressive but then you’re not at all. You’re like that with me.” He clears his throat. “In bed.”
“On couch, in shower, on pool table,” Ilya adds, grinning at Shane.
Shane feels warm all over and it’s not embarrassment this time. It’s something else.
He turns his eyes to the remote and pauses the video again. “Come on, let me find another video,” he says.
Ilya hands him the laptop and Shane types ‘Ilya Rozanov hot’ into the search. He easily finds another video he’s watched more than once. Probably made by some teenage girl, but Shane prefers not to think about that. It’s mostly clips from locker room interviews. Ilya shirtless, sweating, unbearably charming. Or Ilya in behind-the-scenes footage from photoshoots. Posing, flexing, in various states of undress. All of it set to a lewd, bass-heavy R&B song.
Ilya watches silently. He bites his bottom lip to keep from smiling. “This is better,” he says.
They watch a few more videos. Highlight reels. Clips from games they played against each other, games they weren’t involved in at all. They are laughing, shouting at the screen, earnestly discussing game strategy. Shane lights up in a way Ilya’s never seen before. He speaks confidently and easily about the technique and stats of players on other teams. He is animated, vibrant, completely himself.
“You really love hockey,” Ilya observes in a lull between videos.
“Yeah,” Shane says, like it’s obvious, of course he loves hockey. “I really do.”
Ilya is scrolling through YouTube to see if there’s anything else worth watching. “It is important to you,” he says.
Shane thinks about that and then says, “It’s my whole life.” He is very serious about it.
Ilya closes the laptop, suddenly over watching any more hockey videos. “Let’s go back upstairs,” he says.
Upstairs Ilya’s phone waits on the kitchen counter where he left it. He picks it up and immediately regrets it. There are a couple of missed calls from Alexei, one from his father, a handful of angry texts, a voicemail. A sharp ringing sound fills his ears. He closes his eyes and puts the phone back down.
“Is everything okay?” Shane asks, his voice cutting through the noise. Ilya opens his eyes and sees Shane standing there, right next to him, glancing at his phone.
Ilya thinks about telling him about all of it. Everything. His entire family history. His dead mom who he misses every single moment of every single day. His horrible father whose mind is leaving him, making him more horrible. His even worse brother who hates him and is convinced Ilya owes him something. The heavy guilt that is crushing him slowly because he is here and not there, because he cannot seem to fix everyone’s problems no matter how much money he has, because nothing he gives them is ever enough.
“Fine,” Ilya says, turning and smiling at him. “My brother is asshole, that’s all.”
Shane nods and then, without warning, presses the side of his face against Ilya’s bicep. The gesture is awkward, neither of them sure what to do with it. Eventually Ilya drops his own head down to the top of Shane’s. They stay like that for the shortest of seconds, but it feels like longer to Ilya, it feels like years and years, it feels like a lifetime of something Ilya isn’t sure he deserves and so he holds onto it while he can. But then they move apart again.
“I want a drink,” Ilya says. “You want?”
Shane stands there, not moving, staring ahead at nothing, and then comes back to life. “Um, sure,” he says with all the enthusiasm he’d had about liking girls earlier.
Ilya smiles to himself as he opens the freezer and pulls out the bottle of vodka. He pours a little into two glasses, more in his than in Shane’s. “Is not the best vodka,” Ilya says apologetically, watching Shane take a sip and make a face.
They move to the couch, taking up their opposite corners again. Ilya hates the distance between them, but he notices that Shane seems more relaxed like this. He also notices that Shane isn’t drinking his vodka, just holding the glass and periodically looking down at it. “This is a great house,” Shane says after a few minutes of silence.
Ilya looks around and shrugs. He has almost zero interest in this house. It was big and expensive and furnished and somewhat secluded while still being convenient to the arena so he bought it. But he asks, “What do you like about it?”
Shane gets up and starts to walk around the living room with his glass in one hand. He is barefoot. Ilya’s joggers are tight around his thick thighs while the t-shirt hangs, almost billowing, around his arms and torso. He is impossibly cute as he walks with his head turned up to the ceilings, as he moves to the wall and touches it lightly, as he wanders to the wall of windows that stretches from the front door through the living room.
“It gets really good light,” Shane says even though it’s dark outside right now. He points up to a skylight with a pleased little smile on his face.
“Yes, it is beautiful in morning,” Ilya says. “When sun is coming up.” He hasn’t actively thought about that before, but it’s true. The pink and orange morning sunlight cuts sharply through the windows, flooding the entire floor with light, and everything feels peaceful. It’s the time of day when he often feels the presence of his mother wrapping around him, gentle and warm. He talks to her then, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently in his head. Little things about the day ahead of him, the game he played the night before, dreams he had, and, more and more frequently these days, Shane.
Shane looks down from the skylight and at Ilya. He seems to think for a moment and then says, in a voice that doesn’t quite sound like his own, “I guess I’ll see for myself.” He immediately turns away, pretending to examine some of the art on Ilya’s walls. So he doesn’t see the way Ilya smiles at that, wide and unchecked.
“It’s a good layout too,” Shane goes on. “It’s open but each room still feels like its own space.”
Ilya nods, taking a sip of vodka. He sinks deeper into the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table, as Shane continues to wander around, looking at shelves, furniture, random pieces of decor. Ilya’s eyes follow him. He tries to see this house as Shane is seeing it, as something worth marvelling at rather than simply the place where he sleeps and fucks and eats for a few weeks out of the year.
Shane’s back is to Ilya and he’s focused on some glass vase that came with the house, an irregular shape, twisting and curving at all angles, completely nonfunctional. Then Shane says, “You know, we haven’t kissed in, like, two hours.”
“Okay,” Ilya says slowly, not sure what he’s getting at, doing the math to see if he’s right.
Shane picks up the vase, weighing it in his hand and then putting it back carefully, almost lovingly. “It’s nice,” he says.
“That thing?” Ilya asks. “You can have it.”
“No, I mean,” Shane says. He turns around. He takes a drink form his glass and does his best not to make a face when he swallows this time. “Being with you and not feeling like we have to be—”
“Oh, not kissing me is nice?” Ilya teases.
“Not kissing you is awful actually,” Shane says, laughing. “But it’s nice to spend time with you. Like this. Not fucking or playing hockey.”
Ilya’s heart gives a sudden and lurching beat in his chest, reminding him that it’s there, reminding him what it’s used for. “Come here,” he says to Shane in a low, rough voice.
Shane crosses the room without hesitation, setting his glass down on the table and climbing easily into Ilya’s lap. He holds Ilya’s face in his hands and looks down at him, glassy-eyed. They still don’t kiss.
“And you wanted to leave,” Ilya says.
Shane’s thumb brushes over his cheekbone, slips down to the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad you didn’t let me,” he says.
Shane’s thumb moves along the curve of Ilya’s bottom lip and Ilya feels drunk even though he has not had nearly enough vodka to be drunk. “I lied before,” Ilya says. “I do like you as person. Not just your mouth.” He pauses. “I like you very much.”
“I like you too,” Shane says and the hands holding Ilya’s face start to shake. “Very much,” he adds, his voice fading to almost nothing. He is scared and so is Ilya. Because he’s still lying. He doesn’t like Shane. That is not the word for it.
Shane bends down and their lips finally touch and the kiss is light and delicate, their mouths melting perfectly together. It is the kiss Ilya’s mouth had been seeking earlier, right before Shane walked away from him, the kiss Ilya knew would confirm something for him, something he’s suspected for a long time.
Shane’s fear has only just been replaced by desire when the doorbell rings. He doesn’t stop kissing Ilya though. He doesn’t want to. He never wants to. But then the doorbell rings again, longer, and he pulls his mouth from Ilya’s, breathing heavily. “Should you get that?” he asks.
Ilya’s half-closed eyes take a second to fully open. “What? No.” His mouth reaches for Shane’s again.
The doorbell rings a third time, a few short presses this time. And Shane suddenly realizes that means someone’s out there, a person is standing outside Ilya’s door and Shane is just here in Ilya’s lap making out with him with all of the lights in the room on and a wall of windows to his right. He scrambles off of Ilya, nearly falling over in the process, and then moves quickly to stand in the space between the living room and the kitchen.
Ilya laughs at him from where he’s still sitting on the couch, shirtless, his legs spread open, his erection blatantly obvious in the pants he’s wearing, his lips swollen, his hair a mess. He gets up casually. “Relax,” he says, slipping his slides back on his feet. “I will make them leave.”
Shane moves further into the kitchen and listens to Ilya shuffle to the front door. He can’t see, but he hears the door open and then he hears a feminine voice speaking Russian to Ilya. The voice is teasing, laughing, and then inquisitive. Shane wonders if this is Svetlana. If Ilya already had a date with her planned before he’d invited Shane over. If she’d canceled on him and so Ilya had invited Shane over as a backup plan, a consolation prize. If she was here now to make it up to Ilya.
Ilya says something back to the woman in Russian and Shane hears her sigh and ask something else.
“Not tonight, no,” Ilya says in English this time. His voice is tender, familiar, almost loving. Shane’s stomach twists.
Svetlana—because who else could it be—asks another question, dropping her voice to a whisper.
“It’s no one you know,” Ilya answers, again in English. “But, yes, going well. I think.” Shane hears him smiling around the words. But then he frowns. Is he admitting to her that he’s with someone else right now?
Svetlana says something else. Her tone has shifted and now she sounds worried and serious. Ilya responds to her, switching back to Russian. He talks for a long time. Shane thinks he catches the word for father and maybe also Alexei. They go back and forth for a few minutes. Sometimes their words sound terse and angry. Other times they sound gentle and caring. Then they’re silent for a moment.
“Call me,” Svetlana says in English.
“Yes, yes,” Ilya says. “I will.”
The door closes and Shane stands there trying to make sense of what he’s overheard.
“I told you,” Ilya says, stepping into the kitchen and standing at the opposite end from Shane. “Svetlana is a friend.”
“Did she come here to—” Shane can’t finish the question.
“To fuck? No,” Ilya says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the island. He picks up his phone and starts tapping and swiping on it. When he’s found what he’s looking for, he turns it around and holds it out to Shane.
Shane steps closer and looks at the phone. It is a picture of Ilya but he must be only ten or eleven. There is a girl with an arm around his neck, about the same age. Her curly hair is inching into Ilya’s face, making him squint one eye at the camera. They are both smiling ridiculously.
“I have known her for a very long time,” Ilya says, pulling the phone back and turning it around so he can look at the picture. “And we love each other, but it is not—” He stops, looking at something else on his phone, his brow furrowing deeply. Shane watches him press and hold the button on the side, turning the phone off completely and then putting it back down on the counter with a sense of finality. “It is not romantic.”
“You said you two fuck sometimes,” Shane says, still trying to understand.
“Yes, sometimes,” Ilya says. “Is just casual, Hollander. Anyway, we don’t really. Anymore. Not for a while.” He pushes away from the counter, sliding his hands into his pockets. “She is busy. And I am also busy.”
Shane looks at him. “Busy,” he says, fighting a smile.
“Yes. Very busy,” Ilya says, approaching Shane with his head tilted back, a gleam in his eyes.
“How did you get this?” Ilya asks, touching the scar on the back of Shane’s shoulder, the skin there raised and lighter than the rest of him.
Shane twists his head trying to look, but he gives up and drops his head back down to Ilya’s chest. He is lying on his stomach, half on top of Ilya, in his underwear. The bedroom is dark. They kissed for a while, but they have not fucked yet. Shane doesn’t seem to mind, and neither does Ilya. Either they’ll fuck again or they won’t. For once, there is no sense of urgency about it.
“It’s so stupid,” Shane says.
“Tell me,” Ilya insists, still trailing his finger over the scar, outlining its oblong shape.
“Some kid pushed me,” Shane says. “And I fell back onto this fucking sharp rock. Sliced me open.”
“Did it hurt?” Ilya asks quietly.
“I don’t really remember,” Shane says. “I was twelve. It bled a lot.”
“Why did he push you?” Ilya’s voice strains against the sudden wave of anger going through him.
Shane doesn’t answer right away. Ilya traces the scar over and over and over.
“Who knows,” Shane says finally. “I said something he didn’t like. I was always saying the wrong thing or not understanding a joke or correcting people when they didn’t really want to be corrected. I hadn’t learned how to fake it yet.”
“Fake what?” Ilya asks.
“Being normal, I guess,” Shane says.
Now Ilya goes quiet. He is thinking that he should have been there. Somehow. He should have protected Shane.
Shane sits up, resting on an elbow, turning his face toward Ilya. He looks at him closely, seeing something in his face. “It happened a long time ago,” he says.
“And yet you still have scar,” Ilya says tightly. “Because you were what? Not normal enough? Not as boring as those other stupid fucking kids?”
“So now I’m not boring?” Shane asks, smiling at Ilya.
Ilya doesn’t smile back. “Do you do this with me?” he asks. “Fake it?”
“No,” Shane says without taking even a second to think about it. “Maybe at first, but—No.”
Ilya nods. “Tell me his name.”
Shane laughs. “I honestly don’t remember,” he says. “Andrew something.”
Ilya takes a deep breath in through his nose, nostrils flaring, lips pressed together.
“I thought you didn’t want to be violent,” Shane points out.
“That was before I knew about Andrew something,” Ilya says.
Shane moves, crawling between Ilya’s legs, sitting there with his own legs folded beneath him, his hands on Ilya’s thighs. “You should save this energy for our game tomorrow,” he says, leaning forward and kissing Ilya.
Ilya kisses Shane back, holding his face in his hands. “Every single Metro will be Andrew something tomorrow,” he says, dragging his lips along Shane’s jaw. “Except you.”
A sound slips from Shane’s mouth, a combination of a sigh and a laugh, as he angles his throat to Ilya. “You’ve gone soft, Rozanov,” he breathes out. “We’re gonna fucking kill you.”
And Ilya has no choice but to fall in love with him. Completely. Devastatingly.
“Fuck,” Shane says, squeezing his eyes shut. And he tries to hold back the thought forming in his head, tries to push it down, make it wait, just a little bit longer, not now. Because Ilya’s tongue is inside of him, pressing in deeper and deeper, while one of Ilya’s hands works his balls, and it’s not exactly the most romantic moment of Shane’s life. But there, stepping out of the haze of pleasure, pushing past the lingering fog of panic, is this singular, shining thought: Shane loves Ilya. He loves him.
Shane arches his back, head pushing into the pillow, his hands falling into Ilya’s hair and gripping. And, oh fuck, he loves him.
Between Shane’s legs, Ilya is making small noises as he licks at him, soft Russian murmurings, little hums of satisfaction. Shane thinks he hears the word sweetheart but he can’t be sure. Between the three sips of vodka he had, Ilya’s tongue circling his entrance, and the love that is now drifting around freely inside his head and his heart, it wouldn’t surprise him if he was hearing things, seeing things, not thinking straight. And so maybe he doesn’t actually love Ilya. Maybe he can take back that thought and chalk it up to all of those things that are altering his perception right now.
For a second, Shane is relieved. He doesn’t love Ilya. He just loves what Ilya is doing to him. Nothing’s really changed. Life can go on as planned.
Except. He’d thought the same thing earlier, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that what made him try to run away? Wasn’t that what they kept getting too close to? Hasn’t he been having this same thought the whole night? Over and over? In every beat of silence between them?
“Oh, god,” he sighs as Ilya’s tongue is replaced by two of his fingers, slick with lube, sliding in easily. He loves him.
“Is good?” Ilya asks, his accent thicker, heavier, just like it always is when they’re fucking. He kisses the base of Shane’s cock. A small, soft kiss, his lips lingering there as he waits for Shane’s answer.
“Yeah, good,” Shane manages to get out. He loves him. He lifts his head and looks down at Ilya and he loves the way Ilya smiles back at him, loves the way he drags that smile up his cock, loves the way he presses that smile to his tip, tongue darting out to taste him, loves the way his fingers hook inside of him, brushing against his prostate right as Ilya swallows him down.
And then, just like that, it’s all overwhelming. The thoughts of love. The heat of Ilya’s mouth. The stretch of Ilya’s fingers buried deep inside him. The bits and pieces of Ilya that Shane’s gathered tonight trying to come together and form a complete picture. Shane feels like he might shatter. “Wait,” he says out loud.
Of course Ilya immediately slows and then stops, pulling his mouth off of Shane’s cock and then carefully slipping his fingers out of him. He sits up and looks at him with concern. “Are you okay?” he asks.
Shane nods. “I’m okay. Sorry,” he says. He knows he needs to give him an explanation, but he can’t think of one right now. He can only think that he loves him.
“It’s no problem,” Ilya says easily and Shane fucking loves him. “If you are not having fun, we stop.”
“I was having fun,” Shane reassures him. Ilya comes and drops down on the bed next to Shane, turning on his side and resting a hand on Shane’s stomach, dropping a kiss to Shane’s shoulder. Shane really, really loves him. “It was just—”
“Too much,” Ilya provides.
“Yeah,” Shane says. “Maybe.”
“Afraid I will call you Shane again?” Ilya asks, smiling in the dark room. Shane loves him.
Shane shakes his head. “Not what I’m afraid of,” he says. More honest than he means to be.
Ilya looks at Shane, taking that in. “Shane,” he says.
Shane breathes out. He lifts a hand to Ilya’s cheek. “Ilya,” he says.
Ilya comes back from the bathroom and is momentarily surprised to find Shane in his bed, naked, stretched out, an arm raised behind his head, his face awash in the glow of his phone. Ilya stands for a moment, watching Shane type something into his phone and then scroll for a bit, biting his thumb nervously. “Planning another getaway?” he asks, stepping into the room.
Shane looks up, startled, but then smiles. “No,” he says. “Just reading some emails.”
“Boring,” Ilya says and he wonders if Shane can hear the adoration dripping from the word.
Shane flushes so Ilya guesses he probably can. “Should I agree to a Speedo campaign?” he asks, looking thoughtfully at his phone. Then he hears what he’s just asked Ilya and shakes his head. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
Ilya jumps into the bed, landing on top of Shane who gives a quiet oof and then laughs. “Tiny swimsuits, yes?” Ilya asks, breathless, lifting himself up onto his hands and knees, looking down at Shane.
“Yeah,” Shane says, rolling his eyes.
Ilya drops a kiss onto his mouth. “You don’t like them,” he says. “Photoshoots, commercials.”
“I hate them,” Shane admits. “But they’re part of the job.” He looks again at his phone, but then puts it to sleep and drops it somewhere in the bed. “And my mom thinks it’s important for someone like me especially to be, I don’t know, visible.”
Ilya feels the way Shane’s body shudders at the simple thought of being visible. “Ah,” he says. He sits up with his knees on either side of Shane’s waist. “It is pressure for you?”
Shane sighs. “I want to play hockey,” he says, reaching for one of Ilya’s hands, pushing their fingers together. “That’s all.”
Ilya glances down at their hands. His hand, Shane’s hand. He twists their fingers together more tightly. “Okay, so don’t do campaign,” he says.
“I wish it were that easy,” Shane says. He squeezes Ilya’s fingers and then lets his hand go. And Ilya knows that he cannot be in love with him. He sees now that being in love with Shane Hollander does not fit into reality. It is impossible. It does not work.
“It is late,” Ilya says, moving off of Shane and lying down next to him.
“Oh,” Shane says. “Yeah. We should sleep.”
Shane tries to make Ilya’s face out in the dark as they lie facing each other. He can see the shining whites of his eyes, but not much else. And he knows Ilya’s face after all this time, but he hasn’t seen it like this. Lying in his bed. On the verge of sleep. Looking at Shane. He tries not to worry about what he might be missing.
“I am very glad you stayed,” Ilya’s voice says, a glimpse of his teeth as he smiles.
“Me too,” Shane says. “I had a good time.” He pauses. “And I’m sorry again. About almost leaving.”
Ilya’s face disappears completely in the dark. He has stopped smiling. He has closed his eyes. “Why did you want to leave?” he asks. “What was real reason?”
And Shane finds it easier to answer him in the dark, easier to be honest. “I felt like we were getting too close to something I know we can’t have,” he says.
“What can’t we have?” Ilya asks, his eyes reappearing. Shane can almost make out the gray-blue of his irises. Under the covers, Ilya’s hand finds Shane’s hip. “Incredible sex?”
Shane doesn’t take the bait, refuses the easy way out. He’s determined to actually say something, anything, out loud this time. “We can’t have anything real,” he says.
Ilya blinks, his eyes flashing on and off.
“Can we?” Shane asks.
“I am not sure,” Ilya answers after what feels like forever. “Do you want that? Something real?”
Shane swallows. He moves a little closer. Ilya’s warm hand curves around his hip, fingertips pressing at the base of his spine. “Yeah,” he says, almost inaudibly.
“With me?” Ilya asks.
Shane can’t help but laugh at that. And, god, he loves him. “Yes, with you,” he says.
Ilya goes quiet again, but he presses his hand firmly to Shane’s back and pulls him closer. Shane drops his head to Ilya’s chest, waiting, waiting, waiting.
“I think maybe,” Ilya starts, and Shane can feel the words vibrating in his throat. “Maybe we can try.”
Shane nods. That’s all he can do with his heart in his throat, beating away. He kisses Ilya’s chest, the base of his throat, and then finds his mouth. I love you, he says with the press of his mouth. And he swears Ilya’s mouth presses back the same way.
“Fuck,” Ilya says at the sound the coffee grinder makes when he presses the button on it. Louder than it’s ever been before. Sounding like an airplane is landing in the kitchen. He tries to get it done as quickly as possible.
Because Shane is still asleep in his bed. Ilya had woken up before him. He’d sat up and looked at Shane, sleeping on his back, his lips just slightly parted, his eyebrows pinched together like he was worried about something even in his dreams. Ilya had kissed the furrow between them, kissed the corner of his mouth, and Shane hadn’t stirred. So Ilya left him to sleep a little longer.
When the coffee’s been ground enough, Ilya stops and listens. But he doesn’t hear any movement from the bedroom. He puts the coffee grounds into the coffee machine. The one he’s used maybe once or twice. He tries to remember what all the buttons and settings do, which one will give him just normal coffee.
“Fuck,” he says again when this stupid machine also starts in on its whirring and hissing. Far more noise than Ilya thinks is necessary for making coffee. He sighs and puts his hands on the counter, closing his eyes briefly.
Maybe we can try. Ilya presses his eyelids tighter as he remembers those words. How foolish, how stupid. He already knows they will try and they will fail. And then Shane will be out of his life forever. Which is something he can barely even begin to contemplate.
“Morning.”
Ilya opens his eyes and turns around. Shane stands in the kitchen’s entryway in his boxer briefs, his hair a mess, a nervous smile on his face. Ilya quickly strides over to him, kissing him, lifting him, placing him on the counter. Shane laughs into Ilya’s mouth, legs wrapping around his waist, arms wrapping around his neck.
“Good morning,” Ilya says when they finally part. He touches Shane’s face. His fingers try to tame some of Shane’s bedhead, but his hair springs back, sticking out at all angles. Shane watches Ilya, his eyes bright and happy. Ilya stubbornly, selfishly wants him right here always.
The coffee machine gives a tiny, quiet beep to let Ilya know that it is done. “Do you drink coffee?” he asks Shane, realizing he doesn’t even know. There are so many things about Shane he still doesn’t know, so many things he wants to know. Maybe we can try.
“I do,” Shane says, unwrapping his legs from Ilya and letting him go. “Just black.”
Ilya fills two mugs and hands one to Shane. “Come,” he says, nodding his head to the side. He leads Shane out to the living room.
“Holy shit. You weren’t kidding,” Shane says when he steps into the room.
Their timing is just right. The sun slices through the windows and the skylights, bathing the entire room in blonde light, golden and crisp, tinted ever so slightly pink, catching the dust motes floating in the air, warming everything.
Ilya sits down on the couch. Shane sits down right next to him. Ilya puts an arm over the back of the couch and Shane leans back against his chest, holding his coffee in both hands, watching the light. Ilya watches the light too, the soft light that inches over Shane’s legs, his stomach, interrupted now and then by the shadows of dancing tree branches.
“I love it here,” Shane says. He moves his coffee to one hand and pulls Ilya’s arm from the back of the couch, draping it over his chest. Something about him this morning is different, freer, more confident.
“Yes,” Ilya says, watching the light as it falls over the bottom half of Shane’s face. “Me too.” He sips his coffee and sees a flash in the corner of his eye, light bouncing off of the terrible vase Shane had picked up and examined the night before. He looks over at it and the light flashes again, brighter somehow, insistent. And he says in his head, Okay, okay. Yes. I will try.
Shane turns Ilya’s arm over and kisses the inside of his wrist. A painfully delicate gesture. “So,” he says, and he closes his eyes as the sun moves over the rest of his face. “Are you, like, my boyfriend now?” He laughs at his own question and then Ilya starts laughing too.
“Are you mine?” Ilya asks him. He hears the way his question sounds. He hears that he has phrased it oddly. But he doesn’t correct himself.
Shane tilts his head up, looking at Ilya. Ilya tilts his head down, looking back at him.
“Yes,” Shane says with a small nod.
“Yes,” Ilya says, lips stretching into a smile.
Shane lowers his head, settling more deeply against Ilya. He sighs. “I should go soon,” he says.
“Okay,” Ilya says, bending to kiss the top of Shane’s head.
Neither of them moves. The light keeps shifting, climbing up and up towards the ceiling. They stay where they are on the couch and watch it together.