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The first video doesn’t even count.
It’s a mistake to use his mouth for language at all with Rozanov’s finger two knuckles in: that squirming, unfurling very beginning part. Prying him open enough to ask: “What does it look like?”
“What?” Then, realizing, “Oh.” Rozanov’s hand stills. His eyes go from dim coal to full bright. Lit up all at once. “You have to see—I will show.”
So it’s a sloppy excuse for a mirror; it’s another way for Shane to be a little further outside of himself for a little longer. More practicality than person, more service than an object. Something for Rozanov to use—anything for Rozanov.
And nothing of Shane. Not enough left to feel the smear, struggle under the breathless squeeze of a microscope slide—a constant feeling with his hands there, with his face right there, but twice as thick now that there’s a camera aimed and unblinking at the most vulgar place he has and thing he does. There’s no struggle to this at all.
So much, there isn’t room for him. So intimate it probably doesn't even seem like it’s part of his body. That's how Shane pictures it: not even him.
He closes his eyes and presses his face into the sheets and keeps that. Just swell and sensation, just muscle. Just the press of whatever Rozanov wants in him. The video must be so steady; Rozanov’s hand is, dragging the fattest dildo they have up and down Shane’s crease. Rozanov traces a line up and down, over him. Waits for the nervous jerk of Shane’s shoulder blades before fucking in.
Drooling with lube but still—it’s so thick. Just the fat, wet head, a few inches deep and already splitting him. Shane sobs. Writhes against it. Back into it. He hitches his legs, straining the muscle in his thighs to make room, whining when that fails to ease anything. Whines because it feels good to fail, feels perfect to be ruined open with Rozanov’s kissing him, mouthing at him, dripping apologies and adoration over the stinging, sore skin like syrup.
They both end up watching, after. Shane’s surprised how bad a job it does at showing how it feels. How little it shows of anything.
“I know. Hot.” Rozanov grins, Shane too sweat-heavy on his chest to peel himself up, yet. They watch the video loop again. At this angle, you can make out most of Rozanov and almost none of Shane. It feels different than he thought, seeing himself from the outside. Exposed and unrecognizable. He kind of can’t believe people like this. He can’t believe that Rozanov likes this.
By the time the screen shows Rozanov dousing the thick length with more lube, grinding it down, about to pull it out to replace it with his thumb and with one little curl make Shane come all over himself—Shane reaches his limit, frowning. He puts a palm over the phone. “Okay. Enough. I'm grossed out enough.”
Rozanov steals the expression straight off his face, ruins it by laughing. “What’s gross? You like this.”
“Not—” Shane says. “That’s disgusting.”
“No.” Whatever laugh he had before is gone now. “It’s not.”
“I don't know why anyone would wanna watch that.”
One eyebrow kicks up. “What the fuck? You don’t watch porn?”
“Not porn like that,” Shane says, tapping at the screen to get away from it, the close-cropped view. It looks—hungry. It doesn’t feel like this could be what he looks like at all. It must be how Rozanov sees him: this empty desperate mouth. Begging, drooling, starving. Never full enough. Shane tilts the phone away. “Just. Delete it, now, please and we can just. Never do or talk about that again.”
Rozanov’s English has gotten really good. Shane used to watch the translations happen in clunky stuttering steps, written all over his face. Stopping, squinting, thick lip bitten or twitching, like running the thing he didn’t recognise around on his tongue would squeeze out the meaning. He doesn’t do that with words anymore but he does it with moments. Shane’s seen him do it on the ice. If anyone else knew what they were looking at when they looked at him, they would see it too: the hitch to evaluate, the way he can so quickly wring understanding out of anything. He can do it with words. He can do it with people.
Eventually, Rozanov stops staring.
“Okay.” The phone clunks off to the side and onto the mattress, forgotten when Rozanov rolls over, thick thighs trapping Shane’s waist. He sits on top of him, shoulders going soft with a big breath out. One hand points, the tip tapping at Shane’s nose. “No more. You are having big crisis.”
Shane makes a face. “No. I just—think it’s weird. I don’t want—”
“But you do want,” Rozanov argues. Shane’s stomach clenches. “You don’t think it’s weird. You love it.”
“No—I don’t know. Well I don’t want to see it, maybe.”
They stare at each other, Rozanov squinting down, Shane way past awe over this process. He’s just as used to knowing what Rozanov is doing as Rozanov is to guessing about Shane. It feels a little like they’re talking about something else. “Why not?” Rozanov asks. “Did you think just your face looked this way, wet and soft? Pink? Needing me? No, you are this all over,” he taps again at Shane’s mouth this time, slipping one finger past the seam of his lips. “Even inside. Especially inside.”
Shane ignores the compulsion, doesn’t suck. Just holds him there, loose between his teeth with his tongue drawing a lazy circle, chin dipping.
“I think you look very good,” Rozanov says. He sounds—not greasy and convincing like Shane expects. Too honest. Shane shuts his eyes against it. “But you don’t like it.” He hums. “Do you like that I like it?”
Shane lobs a shoulder, head bobbing once.
“More, because you don’t?”
“Stop,” Shane says, giving into the groan. He flops one arm over his face, eyes still closed. “I'm done. Can we just not talk about this, anymore?”
“Fine. But I get to keep video if I can’t have another.”
“Rozanov,” Shane says, because he should.
“Just for me, my god. Why not?” Shane opens his eyes to watch him descend into full brat. He grabs for the phone to shake it at Shane. “You act like there is driver’s license and finger prints included.”
Shane doesn’t say anything. Rozanov lets out a ridiculous sigh and Shane watches his fingers tapping at the screen, opening a whole menu, a lot of terrifying potential. His thumb hovers over share—pressed together like this, there’s no way he doesn’t miss the twitch in Shane’s dick. He makes an interested noise but Shane keeps staring at the phone, ignoring him until he finally deletes it permanently.
The phone goes down but Rozanov’s still staring. Shane shrugs. “Sorry for being smart.”
“Not smart,” Rozanov says. He ducks forward to leave a sloppy kiss at Shane’s temple. “Just scared. It's okay. I think this is cute, all scared.”
Shane shoves his arm. “I'm not scared. I'd just rather there not be porn of me with a big blue dildo in my ass floating around the internet.”
They’d been fooling around for years. Later, Shane thinks that must be part of why he says yes. Comfort bred in the dumbest possible chasm. Comfort tethering him to the dumbest possible man.
“Barely you. It's just—” Rozanov pinches his fingers together. “One tiny part of you. One sweet tiny little part of you. I bet we could put online and not a single soul knows this is you. No one but me.”
A brain injury, maybe. An acute brain injury that targeted his inhibitions, ate away at the already very low ability he has to regulate himself when it comes to Rozanov. Especially Rozanov saying: no one but me. It’s as logical as anything with him. He doesn’t think about other people a lot. He likes the idea of Rozanov being the only one to have Shane, even more so if anyone else could. Anyone who found the account. Anyone might have this private, wildly private part of Shane so easily and also not at all.
He’s hard again too fast to pretend it’s for any other reason. Rozanov’s hand sweeps down his thigh, palm pushing at Shane’s hipbone like there’s a door he can nudge open there.
“I mean it,” Rozanov says, sounding like someone about to get what he wants. Sounding like someone who already has it. “No one will know. Just me.”
He's promised this before. And he’s been right, sort of. No one knows about the two of them. Only it feels like the truth of it exists in a whole world’s weight anyway, and instead of the burden being shared Shane’s the only one dragged down with it. So. No one would know, but—
“How would this even work?” And then, though he knows, “What are you even talking about?”
Rozanov sits up, abandoning Shane by slipping onto his side. “Camera very close. No moles, no anything. No traceable part.”
“And what? Your phone gets hacked some day, then it comes out you’re running a Shane Hollander amateur porn account and everything goes to fucking shit?”
“I can get another phone,” Rozanov says, eyes bright. Blue and glassy, summer lake like the sun trapped under a surface, the way calm water convinces you to see how far your wrist could sink before you reach mud. “Burner, just for videos. Make an account. Post, all anonymous. Don’t you want to be famous for something you are actually good at?”
Shane laughs. “Asshole. And no. No part of me wants to be more famous.”
“Fine, not famous. Not even anything to do with you. Just your pretty little asshole. That’s all,” Rozanov wags his chin in the direction of the nightstand, the silicone Shane will have to scrub clean soon. “Just—some toy. Made for everyone else. Not you, at all.”
The next breath in snags. Shane’s cock is heavy, full, pressing against Rozanov’s thigh. He's not hard, just came, but Shane could probably get him there in under a minute. It’s almost effortless. Squirming down his body, pressing his face in, just nosing at his hip until—
Bodies are honest. Shane is good at translations, too. It doesn’t matter if Rozanov is pouring down praise, sounding like he’d rather give up oxygen than Shane or pretending to be indifferent, Shane knows from the simple swell of his cock. The way his balls tighten, the salt-sour head nudging at the back of his throat. He knows what Rozanov really wants from him, and—eyes stinging, filled to choking, Shane gives it to him.
Just some toy. His eyes squeeze cracked kaleidoscope from the velvet black of his eyelids, all of him dissolving to simple sensation, lewd function. Suck. Swallow. Even the moan Shane lets out is just for Rozanov, a vibration wrapped soft around his cock when the first pulse of come spatters into the back of Shane’s throat. Not him, at all.
–
For a few weeks the idea seems to have deteriorated, dissolved in the haze of Shane having come so hard his vision was watery and dim for whole minutes after.
Shane reminds himself it’s a good thing that nothing comes from it, nothing comes up. He won’t really let Rozanov keep a video of him, he’s not about to open—what? A homemade porn account, co-run by the two of them together, no facial shots at all or any other betraying details? How would that even work?
He thinks about it a lot. He thinks about it until it starts to sort of work.
Head injury. Dangerously lowered inhibitions around Rozanov. Not even around him—when it comes to anything to do with him. After five years Shane should be prepared, try to start taping his own mouth shut before Rozanov comes over, or at least ask him to fill it up a little faster.
But Rozanov doesn’t say anything. Shane doesn't bring it up, and for a while neither of them really reaches out much. Then they’re both on the road for a stretch and through the grace of some degenerate god, overlapping for a night in St. Louis. Boston's in early for a game the next day. A number Shane doesn’t recognize texts him to say so.
Shane sends back: UNSUBSCRIBE.
The call comes through less than a minute later. Shane hits accept and breathing is immediately hard with his chest this full. Rozanov’s voice pours into his ear. “You answer just any phone call? I thought I was the one not careful. Very bad, Hollander. What if I was a stalker?”
“This is kind of stalker-y,” Shane points out, trying to flatten out the swell of delight in his voice. “Whose phone is this?”
“I told you I would get a new one.” That same knot under his ribs, coiling tighter. Shane closes his eyes. “For tonight.”
“For what?” Shane asks.
Rozanov’s quiet on the other end of the call. Like it’s spreading along the inside of his chest, Shane can feel his stupid grin.
“Oh, my god.” Shane’s standing in the bathroom. A big laugh filtering through the closed door promises Hayden’s headphones are still in, Jackie on the other end of a call. Still, Shane lowers his voice. “I didn’t think you were serious about that.”
“Yes, you did.” Rozanov has a way of talking that makes it feel like he has more teeth than a normal person. How a shark has two rows so that a second always snags you, scrapes off the perfect amount to swallow you whole just when you think you’ve survived the first. “When am I not serious about you, Hollander?”
–
That night, Shane wins—Shane’s team wins. Four good, clean goals, one Shane’s own, and St. Louis with a fucking goose egg. Almost a hundred games in a season and you get three or four that are this nice. Shane rubs a hand over his face to try to scrub off some of the glow before Rozanov opens the door. Not quick enough; Rozanov's empty face takes one look ar Shane and smiles huge.
“Hi,” Shane says, Rozanov already reaching over him to push the door shut. It seals with a thump, and Rozanov stays, caging Shane in with a hand over one shoulder and the rest of him crushing in a big cascade. His shoulder blades hit the door and Rozanov’s lips meet his, the force of it thudding Shane’s skull against the wood.
Rozanov hums, pulling back from the kiss with a hand at the back of Shane’s head to rub it. “Sorry. Hi.”
“Did you watch?”
“Watch what?” Fake innocent voice. Shane snorts.
Rozanov’s fingers fist in Shane’s hair, the other hand coming up to join the first and he sinks down to kiss Shane again. The bridges of their noses bang together, Rozanov’s slipping off to nudge into Shane’s cheek, mouth sparking a trail down to his throat. He pulls at Shane’s hair, paws at the side of his face until he makes a vice around his jaw and squeezes. No warmup stretches at all; Rozanov’s full first period, grinding himself against Shane’s hip, stripped down to his tented boxers and so hard he must have started early.
“Jesus,” Shane laughs, the words slurred with how hard Rozanov’s gripping his jaw. “You couldn’t—wait for me?”
“No. You take too long,” he says. He keeps kissing him, sucking at his throat. Just when Shane starts to get the slow crawl of discomfort—too much direct attention, nothing mean enough to grind against—Rozanov pulls off. “Get everything off and get on the bed.”
Shane’s usually thorough and spent twice as long in the shower this time, skin borderline scrubbed raw before he called a car. He doesn’t think they’re going to do it for real, hasn’t let himself think that. But the supplies dumped out on a towel, toys and lube and a naked black phone Shane’s never seen before, makes him grateful that he’s the type of person who carefully prepares for things he’s probably not even going to do.
“You’re serious about the video thing?”
“You did not hear me, or you did not believe me? Or you just want to hear this again?” Rozanov points and Shane smiles. He clambers onto the mattress, stripping too quickly to feel stupid about it. Rozanov’s naked except for the underwear. When he kneels on the edge of the mattress, it takes a lot for Shane not to sink forward and push his face between his legs.
Rozanov grins like he heard the urge anyway. “Fine. I will tell you again. I'm going to take a pretty video of how much your asshole likes to be played with, and you will tell me after, okay, I see. I'm so pretty down there. I'm pretty down to the—what is?” He’s holding up his arm, thumb running over the part where the muscle of his bicep fastens.
“Tendon,” Shane says.
“Down to tendon, even.” Rozanov smiles. “You cannot help it. So pretty, even inside. Perfect.”
“I don’t think the asshole is a tendon.”
“Hm. We’ll see.” Rozanov’s leer widens with Shane laugh. He bends down over the edge of the bed, rustling through a plastic bag til he settles between Shane’s legs with a box of gloves.
“What are the gloves for?” Shane asks. “Is this tendon-related? Is the video gonna be doctor-themed?”
Rozanov shakes his head, holds the back of one hand up before he stretches medical blue over it. “Too many freckles.”
“Oh,” Shane says. Weirdly sad, but that’s true. If they’re doing this, there can’t be—yeah, there can’t be anything like that. As little of either of them as possible. It hits Shane for the first time that Rozanov shouldn’t fuck him with his actual dick. On camera, anyway.
He’s about to call it off, to tell Rozanov maybe he’s serious but Shane isn’t, he’s not, about him—when Rozanov pushes two wet fingers into him at once.
Shane’s hips buck. He bears down for one second before his body goes completely liquid, a low whine spilling out with it. It’s not a lot of pressure, a few inches thrust in and then curling but he feels full to his lungs, dizzy, hot. Fever quick, more than usual. It’s possible he’s never been fucked after such a good game and he’s definitely never been touched like this while Rozanov has a camera on him, with both of them fully aware that other people will see this.
It’s hard to imagine what he looks like on the screen. To Rozanov. Sucking muscle, the greedy rim. The shade of skin in the deepest part of the permanent crease, so soft right before the furrow, darker when Rozanov pushes his spread legs further apart to drizzle lube over him. Messier than usual, one handed.
Mostly he expects to look like that: drizzled, dripping. All of him is concentrated in the fist of needy nerves right there under Rozanov’s clumsy fingers, curling into him. Searching. He brushes the place that paints an electric chord in Shane's stomach and he gasps, choking a little.
After he finds it, Rozanov is relentless. Rubbing right there at a brutal pace. Rough, thick fingers. Shane’s toes curl. He’s too close, he doesn’t want it to end yet. “Roz—ah, Rozanov, don’t, I wan—”
“What about toy?” Rozanov’s jaw firms, his hand slows. He’s hot enough to be sweating, melting under the same heat Shane is, curls darker and a little matted. It must look like that between Shane’s legs, the hair that gets softer and softer into the split of him. He swipes his thumb up the crease, draws a slick circle over the sensitive rim. Shane groans and Rozanov does it again. “I thought you were just toy. Toys don’t talk.”
“Fuck,” Shane bites out, hips curling, jerking up into nothing. He feels perfect, like this, even with his cock trapped against his stomach, drooling into the dip of his bellybutton. He’s so—
“You are not in charge, here.”
Shane actually does watch a decent amount of porn. When they started fooling around he wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing. In the summers, or the longer stretches of months when they end up not talking, his most reliable jerkoff asset gets too complicated and then it’s too weird and sad to put a hand on himself and remember Rozanov. So it's something he catches immediately, the bad porn acting. The way Rozanov gives commands like he’s reading a list of ingredients to see what Shane’s allergic to. Really, not a command at all.
Shane pushes back down on him, thrusting up, clenching. Rozanov pulls out to the tips of his fingers and Shane swipes a sloppy hand over the duvet, pushing two of the toys down toward him. “Okay, then—fucking hurry up. Fuck me like you said.”
Rozanov’s eyebrows go up like he just found it, the one thing that will make Shane’s stomach churn.
“Turn over.” Rozanov slaps the meat of his ass, blunts a pleased noise when Shane listens, crashing down on his elbows. One calf is nudged up, Rozanov unhappy with the height Shane folded it at. The amount of exposure and lack of connection like this—facing forward and facing nothing, cheek shoved against the sheets, obscenely exposed—makes his stomach simmer.
Shane doesn’t know what Rozanov grabs until he feels it start to press at his rim. They’re the closest thing, or he grabbed them on purpose because he’s spiteful in specific ways. The first time they tried them was the only time. They feel fine, slick and big, just—the shape is off. Really full, then nothing, full and then nothing, never deep enough. No constant straining pressure like the dick-shaped stuff, no heartbeat hum like the ones that vibrate. Rozanov works one bead after the next in deep, the swell stretching him, the burn cresting and then gone when it sinks past the twitching ring of muscle.
When Rozanov gets them all in, or whenever he decides to stop, he stops. Stays just there for a second, playing with him, thumbnail tracing and then pressing at the wet rim. Then, he tugs one out. It's too much. Shane can’t, knows he isn’t capable, squirms and whimpers and starts to say so and then before the next breath he feels it. Just enough of the bead pulled back to keep him stretched out, held right there, then pushed back in. He starts to fuck Shane in dumb thudding tiny thrusts. It's relief and nothing like that.
Straining his neck in a way that will probably cramp later, Shane turns over one shoulder to see him. He looks so—
“Jerk yourself off,” Rozanov grunts. Usually it’s: touch yourself. Mostly: touch yourself for me. Kind of a girl phrase, Shane always thought. He never liked it.
But this feels right. He doesn't have to close his eyes that tight against the stream of reedy praise that follows—good, always so good for me, perfect—he doesn’t want to watch after and see that he’s pretty—he wants this, plain and naked and way past pretty. Stripped to base, writhing body, bare apart from the unforgiving pulls on his cock. Fat, greasy beads way too big and then somehow inside of him. He wants to watch and see the squirming, the nervous clenching, lube in an unreal glisten, and the way his body shakes and begs and needs and not recognize himself at all. He wants to look at this and know there’s no way that it could be him.
When he starts to come, Rozanov yanks the beads out all at once. Shane makes a sound that’s between a sob and a wound.
For a nice, thick moment, there isn’t any difference. He can’t tell himself from the mattress, Rozanov’s finger from Rozanov’s toy, Rozanov’s face from the unblinking, unyielding eye of anyone else. It’s all weight and attention, need and loss. It's just one smothering feeling, Shane too buried under it to even be.
–
Rozanov took care of everything. It’s comforting to know he can be diligent about something other than hockey, he can commit himself to a plan if the prize for doing so is good enough. Shane already knew, really. For better or worse, and worse, and worse, Shane’s yet to see him not dedicate himself fully to something, especially if he shouldn’t.
But there’s an account, a blank profile picture and a scramble of letters for a name, a very small subscription list—
“How did you get people to join? There isn’t even anything here.”
Rozanov taps at the screen, shows Shane the bio he’d written, a chain of words so embarrassing Shane’s brain immediately blurs them. “People like it, I told you this. People love asshole.”
“Ugh,” Shane says. Uncomfortable hearing it again even while his is electrically sore, still sort of thrumming. “I kind of thought you were just trying to make yourself feel better for being a freak.”
“Mhm,” Rozanov hums, noncommittal. before Shane can figure out how to word it—can you show me the video, and also not show me because I think I want to see it too much and I'll be grossed out, but if I'm not grossed out I'll be disgusted with myself? But I want to make sure before you post it, and if people aren’t into it I’ll be so embarrassed, and if people are into it I’ll be so disgusted and embarrassed and that’s what I want, I think, out of—Rozanov posts it.
“Jesus,” Shane says, ripping the phone away with both hands. “What the fuck, Rozanov? I didn’t even get to—”
He accidentally starts it from the beginning, screen filling with just what Rozanov promised. Really tight focus, nothing further than the first shivering inch of his thighs. Not even the duvet, not even the freckles on the back of Rozanov’s fingers. Just dim lit slick and latex sinking in, fingers fucking into a hole. It's really humiliating. It's ugly. It makes him feel the way good sex does, spread too warm and wet to recognize himself.
Shane feels so stupid about the awe and still can’t believe how exposed he is, how much the inside of him looks just like that: an inside. How much he stretches around whatever Rozanov gives him, how open he stays when he leaves. How obvious it is that he’s this needy glistening empty thing.
Then, the beads. It's an absolutely impossible fit and Shane’s mouth falls open a little watching the first go in, the second. The easy way they disappear into him. It doesn’t make sense, looks like something the body isn’t supposed to do but Shane takes it too easily for there to be any mistake. He gets what Rozanov means, groaning it against Shane’s neck when they fuck. He is made for this. He looks made for this.
Next to him, the real weight alive and warm, Shane glances up to find Rozanov watching. Shane's face instead of the screen. Shane looks back down.
The video misses a lot of the things Shane feels most. Rozanov plays it without sound, so the whispered thrum of his own voice is missing. Breathing with his mouth open against whatever part of Shane is closest, lips wet on the skin, all that sweet, you’re so sweet, wider for me, yes—so wet. That’s good, doesn’t that feel so good? Perfect—
“Do you like it?” Rozanov asks. The screen’s the only glowing thing in the room aside from his voice.
“No.”
Shane looks up after a while to find Rozanov watching him. It feels like Rozanov’s been watching him for a long time, still waiting on the full translation. Still running through the list of ingredients to make sure the quality is good, that it's all fresh and correctly portioned and only specifically meant to make Shane this one kind of sick. He smiles. So handsome it hurts. “Good.”
–
St. Louis was lucky—or unlucky, depending on the time of day and what Shane makes of the whole thing with Rozanov. They aren’t going to see each other for a few months. Shane can’t tell if it went well, if they’ll do that again. If Rozanov liked it.
He only has to wait a week to find out.
After a set of Romanian Deadlifts—in the middle of a set, three reps in, form fucked the second he hears the ding of his phone—Shane gets a screenshot from Lily. No message attached. A comment that out of context would look like any other horny weirdo on the internet. Coloradoguy70 says: hot I would love to fuck you on the beach with bead fill both holes and ooz all ur milk out for everyone to see, I had it done to me it feels so good in public.
Feeling weird—already out of breath, now sprawled on his gym floor, feeling too much to fit in his chest—Shane hits the button without thinking.
“Wow,” Rozanov says, “Big celebrity—”
Shane can’t wait. “I didn’t think about how gross this would be. That's such a gross comment.”
Rozanov shifts for a second, a muffle that feels like a tv fading out. Shane wonders if he has people over, if he’s at his place, if he feels like Shane does, if they ever have the same stuff churning around their ribcages or if it’s all just short-lived, stupid—
“Do you want for me to take it down?” Rozanov says. “If you—”
“No, god. I mean,” Shane laughs, sort of baffled. Sort of feeling insane. He wishes they were in the same place. not even the same house, just. The same country would be great. A five hour drive seems way too far and he wouldn’t, ever, anyway. “What do you think?”
“Thinking you are about to run away from me with brand new lover who promises to fuck you on the beach? Not the best but not such a big surprise.”
“Yeah,” Shane laughs. “Everybody likes the beach, I guess.”
“Yes, all those famous bikini shots of you.” Rozanov makes a crazy sound like what he thinks a jaguar sounds like. Shane laughs. It doesn't usually happen so quickly, missing him like this.
“There would be so much sand though. He couldn’t have ever actually used those on a beach, right?”
“You want me to ask? Maybe he makes videos too?”
“Fuck off. When can I see you again?” Shane hears the question, quickly recalibrates. “Or when’s—yeah, when can we do that again? I wanna make another one.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I have some ideas.”
“Like what? I fuck you and then you come?”
“Go fuck yourself. But we could, I think. If you wear a condom it’s—I don’t think anyone would be able to tell that it’s your dick. I want it to be you, I haven’t gotten to see that, and then—”
“You are insane,” Rozanov swears. Sounds hot, overheated, stuck the same pink-cheeked way Shane’s been for the whole call. “Who is this? This is insane person. this is not my—” he stops short. So, he does have people over. “Not my Jane.”
“Ugh,” Shane groans. “Come on.”
“Not my beautiful baby girl.”
“Stop,” Shane laughs. “Really, when do you have, like, a few hours? If we have the same night off in between home games I could drive down halfway and meet you somewhere.”
“No. I will come see you. As soon as possible,” Rozanov tells him. There's a pause, shuffling, and Shane thinks he’s walking further away from whoever he’s with before he realizes he’s looking at his phone, peeled from his ear to pick through his calendar and figure out how to do this. “One week from Thursday?”
Shane checks his own schedule. “Not thursday. But, I could do that Friday? or the Tuesday after?”
“Tuesday after. Mwah,” Rozanov says, a big pronounced kiss into the speaker. Almost warm from the phone’s humming battery. It shocks Shane silent for a second before a different voice comes through, someone laughing and yelling on Rozanov’s side of the call, too near not to put on a show for. “Mwah, mwah, mwah. Every kiss for my pretty girl.”
“You don’t really talk to girls like this, do you?” Shane asks. “You sound like my aunt.”
“Moya lubov. My whole entire world,” Rozanov says, hanging up before he can hear the hitch in Shane’s breath. The same air is kicked out of him a second later, spent on a stupid, loud laugh when Rozanov’s text comes through: your aunt calls you a pretty girl????
–
They start seeing each other more often, after that. Rozanov buys a tripod. Shane’s ideas mostly are that he fucks something and comes but Rozanov gets more and more into every one, both of them egging each other on over shape and size and stamina. Shane mostly stops watching the videos.
But he likes knowing that they exist—that somewhere, he exists just like that. For anyone else. Slick drooling out from the wrinkled little crease, how eager and raw and small it looks. It's a lot. It feels like they’re having sex in separate bodies.
For Rozanov, it’s not really sex. Just his hands in those gloves, the really close crop, the toys. Rozanov doesn’t fuck him with his cock and sometimes they’re both so worn out after trying to squeeze in two or three videos within a few hours of seeing each other—after a while, it’s been a while.
Shane wants to say something then can’t think of a way to without sounding—exactly the way he doesn’t want to sound, like he’s the greedy insatiable need underneath the muscle. What did Rozanov say? Pretty to the tendon. That's not it. He’s definitely never seen one of the videos and thought he looked nice. He thought: starving. Hungry to the marrow and brainless down to the bone.
They text each other about the weirdest or worst comments, but less and less lately. It doesn't feel like he’s getting bored, but maybe it’s having the opposite effect on Rozanov. It turns Shane on because it doesn't turn him on, but it’s possible Rozanov is less into it because he’s so into it. Shane makes a joke about it once. Sends him a screenshot of one of the particularly degrading comments and says it sounds just like him. Rozanov doesn’t respond.
Most people are more into watching him getting fucked with the plug than the beads, everyone has ideas for humiliating costumes, cages and rings and the orgasm denial, borderline torture stuff Shane’s on a serious level never understood, except for the way they’ve already been doing it for a long time.
It's about getting what you want and not getting it at all. It's about needing something so bad you’re willing to accept it as an ache, dented and dribbling, so badly it doesn’t matter that it’s almost all pain with only the thinnest glint of relief. They don’t really do that stuff, mostly. They don’t need embarrassing captions or specialty silicone; he and Rozanov do enough of it, already. Getting what they want and not at all.
When they’re pulling into the throttle of traffic outside of the Boston airport, a text comes through with a room number and—after Shane confirms with a search—a hotel he hasn’t heard of. He texts back a single question mark then hits ignore the second the call comes through, hurries out: I’m with people, swallows back the slight plunge of disappointment in his stomach. It'd been working too well recently, both of them happening to be alone or in between one thing and the next, available to answer the phone. It's been working too well, generally.
Rozanov doesn’t respond to that or try again. The person Shane sees on the ice doesn’t resemble the one that’ll open the door for him later, so Shane commits, too. He takes the misplaced urge churning in him and applies it to every second he has on the ice. No moment or room in his chest to spare when Rozanov keeps his eyes anchored to the puck at the face off, no stupid little chirp, silent, set jaw. Shane’s a second too late and then he’s gone.
It’s a good game to watch, probably. It's not fun to play but it gets Shane something further than fun, way deeper than pretty, the actual real thing. Rozanov is wrong about all of this. It's not supposed to look nice. It should hurt. Shane prefers the hurt, he wouldn’t want to like it, even if he could. Montreal loses but Shane takes the trophy of a thought with him into the shower after anyway, a cold, glinting belief while he grits his teeth through the cold water. Reminding himself. Clenched like a fist. Brutal, bashing repetition: he wouldn’t want it any other way.
At the hotel, the door pulls open before Shane’s knuckles connect with the wood so there’s a slight lurch in his stomach—surprise this time, not disappointment—when Rozanov doesn’t follow that with the same reckless energy he slugged himself around with on the ice. Shane expects his skull to slam against the wall again, to be shoved up against anything and then moved however Rozanov wants. It's almost embarrassing then to just walk into the room, past his thrown open arm, the almost blank face.
Almost. Shane can do these translations, too.
“You guys won, you know. Other people still consider hockey a team sport, so. It shouldn’t matter that you weren’t the highest scorer for one night.”
Rozanov closes the door behind them and then goes for the makeshift bar he put together on the hotel desk, two glasses, one of which he knocks back and empties already. Shane’s eyebrows go up.
“And what’s with the hotel? Did they repossess your house, or something?”
Rozanov holds the glass out to Shane, comes close enough to do that and not any closer. He has a weird current like this, electric with something other than Shane’s used to. Lower, sulkier buzz. "I have people staying.”
“Oh,” Shane makes himself take a sip. Tiny and he can’t help wrinkling his nose after, the small sour-bright swallow of it ripping down his throat. That gets Rozanov to smile, a little. “Wow, you left behind a whole orgy for this? I should be honored.”
“My brother,” Rozanov says, and then nothing else.
Shane nods. He doesn’t know what it means but he can guess: the sharp set of Rozanov’s shoulders, the fact that they’ve been grabbing for idle conversation in between bouts of sex for years and Shane’s never once heard an innocuous story about the guy. Shane’s actually never heard his name. “Sorry. Stupid joke.”
“They all are.” That coaxes the smile out fully, an echo of it full in Shane’s chest. “That’s what I like about them.” Rozanov puts two fingers at the edge of Shane’s glass and tilts it towards him, doesn’t pull back until Shane brings it up to his mouth again. Then, more like a dent than a shrug, he says, "I did not bring toys, this time.”
“Oh,” Shane says, nodding, bottom lip against the glass. It burns and he keeps it there, mumbling the next thing. “That’s okay. We can make—whatever. I don’t care. I actually—”
Shane fumbles the phone, catching it with a clash against the in his glass, spilling half his drink after Rozanov tosses it to him. “You can keep making video on your own, if you want. But I'm done.”
“What?”
“I'm done,” Rozanov says again, standing what feels like way too far away. “I'm done with it. you’re right. Is gross.”
Shane’s face screws up. His hands feel too full. The path he carves to get to the desk steers very clear of Rozanov. Both the drink and the phone down with a thud. “Okay. What? I thought you liked it.”
Rozanov shakes his head. “No. I like you.”
The swallow must be loud enough for both of them to hear. “Oh. Well, yeah. We can just—go back to before. That's fine. It was your idea, anyway.”
Rozanov hums. “Yes. the whole thing, all my idea. Always: just my idea. Well, my idea tonight is, I'm tired.”
Shane’s face is burning red and nothing’s even happened yet. It feels dangerously like something completely separate is happening. They’re about five feet apart; Shane has the crazed idea to crawl to him on his knees. Not an idea—a need. “What does that mean?”
“You are smart, I thought. You are just being smart? Okay, Hollander, be smarter about this.”
Rozanov’s hands are elegant. His shoulders are. The glass goes with him in the sweeping exit for the bathroom. No lopsided slump to him that explains the mood or the weird accusation. He doesn’t seem drunk at all. He seems—tired. Shane’s heart seems louder than the swallow had, bashing against the inside of his ribcage.
The bathroom is well-lit. Bright enough Shane’s breath stutters, bright with mirrors surrounding the vanity, the sink, the tile behind Rozanov’s shoulders. There are a lot of mirrors. Enough that Shane can’t miss Rozanov’s slumped disinterest. Glancing away from the flat line of his mouth only gives Shane the shape again—they’re both undeniably here. Shane regrets following him into the bathroom, a twinge in the same thick root of remorse that Shane always feels when something goes off-kilter with Rozanov. Regret for coming in here, for listening to him about the videos, for wanting him badly enough to do both. For the first time, the commercial and the shower after, for having ever wanted him at all.
Maybe this is all some insane punishment for that. Maybe every day since the one they first met, Rozanov has been determined to show Shane not only that he can have a cigarette wherever he wants, but to prove that he can have anything, everything, even the one thing he can’t. It feels like that. It hurts like that—a toy glanced over in a drawer, only enough for a few hours and then shut back into the dark, alone.
"I don’t give a shit if you don’t want to have sex or whatever,” Shane says, forgiving himself for the shake in his voice because of how many fucking reflections of him there are in here. "I just don’t know why you couldn’t say that before. Why I had to come all the way here to hear it.”
Rozanov gives him a thick look. "I didn’t say I wouldn’t fuck you.”
“Well, what the fuck? I don’t—what’s happening? Let’s fuck then.”
“Okay,” Rozanov says. Voice as flat as his mouth. “Sure.”
Shane makes a trapped sound. “What are you doing? Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Rozanov’s hand goes flat on the counter. Three or four times, three or four different angles, echoed in the glass all around them. "I know what I'm doing. What are you doing?”
"I don’t know. You’re the one that—”
“No,” Rozanov says. “I'm not the one. You, too. Both of us. Not just I am doing it to you. So, what do you want? What are we doing, Hollander?”
Drawn like a dull magnet, Shane’s one step away from being pressed up against him. Rozanov’s hard to look at. Handsome, but worse—really bright. Even his voice glows. The glare makes Shane’s eyes ache, it hurts not to see the honest shape that light makes out of any room they’re in, out of the dim inside of Shane’s chest. It’s hard not to look right at it, with him.
Shane goes to kiss him first. Has that ever happened before? It’s revelatory and quick, a bare brush of their lips together before Rozanov pulls off. Blue eyes, the mud-soft bottom of a lake Shane’s been stuck under for—but no. He’s right. Rozanov poured out something abundant enough to drown in but Shane stepped in willingly, knowingly. Shane held his breath and shoved under the surface. Shane stayed.
It hurts because he’s not small or shoved away, there isn’t really any toy to him. He’s never any less like this, that’s the problem. That's the ache; a growing pain. Rozanov makes him more in every way. Whatever translation he made of Shane, broader than language, deeper than body, Shane’s too much with him. He doesn’t fit back into himself, after.
Rozanov isn’t patient but he’s waiting.
"I want you,” Shane says. Quiet, a rippled admission in the weird acoustics of the bathroom. The tile bounces it back softly and he sees himself in the corner of his eye, all the angled reflections of his mouth making the same true thing. "I really like this. I want this, a lot.”
He can’t even tell if they’re going to have sex, if he wants to, if just being in a room or laughing on the phone with him is starting to make Shane feel like that. Warm and worthwhile, made for this.
Rozanov is still watching him and Shane puts a hand on the counter, voice unsteady. "I like it. I just really like—it feels good. I like how it feels.” The next thing takes an extra moment. feels more impossible coming out than any of the crude things they took videos of going in. "I love the way I feel with you.”
“Good.” Rozanov makes a noise like a stitch sinking in, the start of a smiling gash closing. “Okay. Good. So that is what we’re doing.”
They take each other’s clothes off carefully, quietly. There’s a divot between Rozanov’s eyebrows when he really concentrates, figuring out the right word or the meaning of an unfamiliar one, the next move in his last shift on the ice for the night, the inside of someone. The mirror catches it, there now while Rozanov gets his shirt off, seals his chest against Shane’s back to reach around for his belt. It’s more exposure than Shane’s used to, and that’s all he’s ever really had with him.
When he catches Shane closing his eyes in the mirror, Rozanov pauses with the uncapped lube in one hand to slap his ass lightly. “No. Look.”
"I’ve seen us both naked before,” Shane says, glancing over one shoulder at him.
Rozanov returns the smile. “Yes. But now you will see how we look like together. How much—how you look, with me. And you will not tell me again you don’t know what we are doing.”
The next exhale arrives as a gasp, some voice to it, splashing hot against the mirror with the angle Rozanov has him at. One big hand set between his shoulder blades, showing Shane. This is what they look like. Rozanov feels further down, into the split of him, and Shane watches the bliss crack his soft mouth open to find Shane that way—soft, open.
It’s a struggle to keep his eyes open after that. Rozanov’s mouth is more expressive than Shane remembers, so honest he’d been smart to stop looking at it lately. This isn’t the sort of thing that ever leaves; Shane can feel the shape of it spread hot on the inside of his chest. Feels it with every breath. He’s pretty—they both are, Shane’s eyes wet and wide, Rozanov’s bitten lip when the thick head squeezes at the rim, the pink pout curling when he sinks in. The dent between his brows gets deeper and the blush leaks down from his mouth, bright at the stark tendon in his neck, smudged on his wide chest.
Shane knew already. The vein that gets stark in his neck, the way the blush spreads brutal to his chest, choking his cheeks. Rozanov must: Shane’s mouth is slack and open and soundless, saying everything. They don’t translate each other—if anything it’s the opposite. Everything else has to strain and stretch and try to make sense around this, a meaning laid bare and bright. It’s more forever than any recording could catch. More of anything, the most—the rest of the world must borrow meaning from this.
Rozanov drives into him and Shane groans, bears down, presses back. They find each other in the mirror—they both know.
Shane doesn’t have to think his asshole looks pretty—none of this is pretty. It blew past beauty a long time ago, made all the designated attractive things seem flat and brittle. This is bigger than that.
“Fuck—” Still, when Rozanov stutters into shallow, quick little thrusts, one thumb sinking down the split of Shane’s ass until he’s rubbing at the rim, almost digging inside and he chokes it out, red-faced, thick-voiced, “Pretty. See—you look good, Hollander. Perfect for me.”
Shane feels it. Awful and perfect, all-encompassing, nothing left out. He’s any version of himself, he’s the blunt of pleasure between his legs, the moment where Rozanov disappears into him. The place where there’s no separation between them. Whole. That's how they look. It's what they are for each other.
–
It should be embarrassing, stumbling boneless in the bathroom after. Rozanov making that delighted, shocked noise and practically having to carry him to bed. Not practically. Shane’s knees hit the edge of the mattress and he spills into it. Ass raw and red and recently attended to with a damp towel, a cursory clean—Rozanov hadn’t said to stop watching, so Shane saw him do that too. Saw the wince and immediate ease in his own jaw, the way he pulled into himself under Rozanov then spread out twice as much. They were both breathing loud, like one big thudding chest together, twin lungs needing, one heart.
He’s still drunk, maybe. The two sips of vodka, the sex. The way he is. Shane reaches a lazy hand up and Rozanov crashes down on his entire arm.
Shane’s tongue is still thick, too slow to keep the words from coming out wet and warm. “Are you really done with the video thing? We could still make them, just for each other maybe, if we’re really careful. I don’t know. That’s stupid, probably. It just feels—I don’t know. Hot. It makes me feel hot.”
Rozanov’s too tired and thick to make the sarcasm work, ruined completely by the way he’s rubbing a slow pointless circle against Shane’s chest, pressing at it with one palm. “You? Even though it’s so gross?”
“Fuck off. It’s—yeah, kind of. I mean, that part, it’s so—but it’s good.”
“Good because you don’t like it?”
“No,” Shane says. Whines a little when Rozanov pauses to thumb open one of his closed eyes. Too bright a face for this late in the night. “Stop. It’s just—I just like it. You're right. It looks good. I like how I look with you.”
“Shane Hollander. So conceited.”
Shane keeps his eyes closed. Thinks of the blue glove blotting out the freckles on the back of his hand, covering the way the tendons move like he imagines the inside of a piano might, playing Shane just as easily as any instrument.
After a long stretch of quiet, Rozanov says, “I like this, too.”
Shane looks up to find him and smiles. Rozanov has been for a while; that kept-secret, sweet curl of his mouth that’s made a permanent dent on the inside of Shane’s chest. He drags the pad of his thumb over Shane’s brow. There's a question he isn’t asking, an apology Shane won’t make. Rozanov knows. He’s not like the comment Shane sent him at all. He’s not like anyone else, no matter how hard Shane tried to make him.
There’s no translating this. Whatever’s between them is the raw material that makes the rest of it meaningful.
It doesn’t matter if there's an account, if there’s a thousand videos or they never make another one. If it’s a fat bright silicone dick or Rozanov’s tongue, Rozanov’s toys, Rozanov’s thick-knuckled, naked freckled finger pressing into him.
Standing in separate countries with Shane’s cheek pressed to the phone, he can still feel Rozanov inside of him. It’s the same completion, the same amount of forever, either way.