Archive of Our Own

Some things Shane wants because he doesn’t.

It makes sense unless he tries to explain it. He shouldn't have to; Galina’s probably got a lot of theories Ilya could borrow on the subject. Shane can guess: a tendency to fetishize his own discomfort instead of addressing it. Sex as a relief and a reprimand, the tried and true way to cauterize a limit and turn it into something fun and unfeeling, no acceptance needed. That he’s just straight up not handling his first year of retirement very gracefully.

It doesn’t matter. Shane's mostly let it go. After Christmas, Shane doesn’t bring it up again. It’s Scott Hunter who does, at a silent auction in late May, his still-thick shoulder in the shy navy suit.

“Heard you were looking for someone to put you in your place.”

It’s corny. It’s not the kind of thing he’s expecting to hear in a rented event hall. It’s not what he expects to hear from Hunter anywhere.

Now, especially. Hunter was cordial when they were both playing, at least when anyone could overhear, and he’s only gotten closer to considerate prince as the gray fills in at his temples. In the last ten years Shane can’t remember an interaction where they weren’t playing on the same line of pretending to care about some old woman’s boring Spud Island story or yawning in the coatcheck line. This is an unexpected move from a guy who spent most of his life and career being exceedingly expected. Except for the one time.

Still—disorienting. Made further so by the fact that Ilya’s been gone a while, disappeared to the car to grab something twenty-three full minutes ago. Really said it just like that: something. It’s either blunting through the discomfort or the simple stagnancy of getting older and more comfortable with time—especially around someone who still thinks of him as seventeen—that keeps Shane from firing back. He takes a full minute to process. Doesn’t spit out a chirp on stale reflex. Fuck off, you perverted dinosaur.

Instead, he’s an adult about it. Breathes through the clench in his chest and ignores the heat swimming in his stomach. Sets his drink down on the tallboy, not even that close to the edge.

“Where did you hear that?”

Hunter arches an eyebrow. One corner of his lip curls. Sexy little tilt. Shane might have bought it as authentic if he hadn’t spent the last decade living with someone who puts a lot of effort into the effortless.

“Haas has a big mouth.”

The edge of Shane's hand presses against his glass, the chill not enough to cool the room any more comfortable. He hates these events. The air is stifling late summer though the season hasn’t started, just sticky from so many people. He's wearing his glasses but a headache is already starting to glint at the edge of his vision. He knew Luca wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Shane had said so then. That old argument will be the leftovers they take home for dinner, sour scent filling up the car.

He’s miserable, aching and already half hard. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

Scott rolls a shoulder. “We didn’t.”

“Are you getting to know a lot of people now, after the divorce?”

That brings the pleasure up to a simmer, staining the inside of his ribcage. Shane's not as fast as he used to be, nowhere near as steady or graceful on the ice after the shit with his shoulder, but fuck. What a feeling, still being able to play. Conversationally, he figured: not much more than a hook, but Scott’s response comes out flat and airless, a chest slammed up against the boards with a solid check. Shane’s dick twitches.

“Occasionally. Not as often as it sounds like you do.”

“Not just me. Both of us,” Shane says. “We only play together.”

“That’s cute. Nostalgic,” Scott says. Not recovered but breathing evenly. He looks like he’d be pretty thrilled to slug Shane in the jaw if he thought he could get away with it. A lady with dessicated blonde hair trips a little into Shane getting around them, and all three of them share the same brainless sorry-about-that smile.

It’s unlikely anyone is listening in on their conversation, both the glory days of hockey and tabloid-worthy gay behavior long behind them. A just-married kiss in the middle of the ice with your sweet-faced steady boyfriend is nothing compared to now; Toronto signed a rookie with an OnlyFans this season.

And if someone were straining to overhear, they’d only find an enthusiasm level on par with selling a lightly used jet ski. That language, too.

“What are you asking, exactly?”

“I wasn’t asking. I was confirming.”

“With what level of interest?”

Hunter smiles at that. Shane had forgotten what that looked like. It’s possible he never smiled at Shane before. Not meaning it, anyway. “Well. I just think I might be a good fit for what you’re looking for, is all.”

“That’s considerate of you.”

“No. Totally selfish offer.” Wider smile. He must have gotten his teeth whitened. Shane’s ripe age of thirty-eight paints a pretty flattering glaze over mid-forties anyway, but Scott would still look good without it.

“Great,” Shane says idly, and the next breath in is chemical fruity pebble. That stupid fucking vape. His jaw tightens, the rest of him following to step neatly out of reach. The hand Ilya was attempting to rest on one of Shane’s shoulders turns into an arm draped around his waist. Nevermind the stupid Haas shit; now the drive home will be an actual fight.

“Jesus, Ilya.”

“What?” Ilya threads his fingers through Shane’s, traces a lazy loop with his thumb around one knuckle. The irritation goes subterranean.

Ilya's face, for one thing. The sacred little nothing loop he’s pressing into Shane knuckles. It takes genuine effort for Shane to keep from smiling. He blots the adoration out with an eye roll. “You know what, asshole.”

“Ah,” Ilya says, smiling. Sheepish. He turns it on Scott and shrugs. “Fine, so history repeating itself. Scott Hunter is still old and I’m still a very bad boy.”

“Not bad enough, I heard.”

The smile doesn’t even flicker. Why should it? He doesn’t wonder how far down the root goes when someone makes a vague comment, how much mud would come up from pulling it out. Ilya never had that kind of grime spilled out in front of a full stadium. It leaves a stain. Low to the marrow, maybe, to get him where he is now. Standing next to a husband that loves him too much to fuck him like he’s worthless, thick and interested at the vague suggestion of this other man doing it.

Ilya’s hand closes around Shane’s drink. His throat bobs above the bowtie, lips shining wet. “Well, what did I miss? What were you girls whispering about over here?”

“Remember the Christmas gift I asked for last year?” Ilya’s mouth blurs for a second like static as he blinks. “Well, Scott has one. Just laying around the house. We were talking about him giving it to me.”

Scott smiles. Must have gotten the whole mouth redone; his teeth look bigger than Shane remembers. “Only if that’s good with you, of course.”

“Of course,” Ilya says.

The dinner bell chimes bright over the crowd and the air between the three of them changes. The two of them. Now, there’s something else for the car ride home. Or the driveway, if they make it that far. It was good foresight to take the Jeep; Ilya’s claims about the roominess of the Corvette backseat have never seemed to convince Shane’s knees.

“I’ll shoot you an email,” Shane tells Scott. “We can figure out what works.”

“Do that.”

A lot’s changed. Shane’s relationship to taking direction hasn’t.

–

The logistics aren’t very different from any other contract negotiation. Shane never understood flirting the way most people do it, but he’s a natural at this. The careful, familiar balance of acquiescence and confidence, glimpses of interest without any commitment. Asking for what he doesn't want in order to get what he does.

Shane emails. Scott emails back. Neither of them ever send anything after nine pm and the messages themselves are bone dry, significantly more corporate than pornographic. They don’t actually discuss much about what they’re going to do, or how they’re going to do it, which is part of Shane getting what he wants—not having to know. Mostly it’s logistics. They land on convenient timing, the night before a corny charity goal competition in Montreal. Scott will come over the night before. Drinks, no dinner.

It’s been a month, sure, but there’s no real reason for Ilya to say, “Scott who?” when Shane brings it up.

Shane doesn’t give in that easily, head bent and sweating over the sun-drenched section they’ve been working on all morning. The knees of his jeans are soft wet, black with fresh soil. It didn’t go well last year. Barely anything came up, but they’re here again anyway, backs of their necks slathered in sunscreen and probably still liable to burn all for a few sad little strawberry plants.

“Oh. You mean bad grandpa.”

Shane laughs. “Do you think that? That he’s being creepy?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. Shane squints up to get a look at him, trying to see if he means it. “But you like this, I think.”

“Creepy?”

“That I don’t like him.”

They’re both wearing stupid-looking hats. From this angle, haloed in this much daylight, it’s hard to find the unprotected part of Ilya’s expression, almost impossible to hear it in his voice. Next to his hip, supporting his idle lean, is the backyard cart. Lined up with sectioned-off store bought strawberry plants, frail things partitioned into neat rows so they can be planted in even neater rows. It’ll be a nice thing by the time they invite whoever over for a barbeque. Fruit sweating in a porcelain bowl. The first year of retirement’s been just like this; overripe squandered offer, a day away from rotting. It must look really nice from the outside, too.

Ilya keeps threatening to join Shane. Not threatening—suggesting. It only hurts because he doesn’t see that the whole conversation is serrated. It wasn’t Ilya’s shoulder, it isn’t his failure. There are a lot of things Shane went his whole life knowing—it could all be over in an instant. An injury can end everything, all of the sudden, just like that. Some things he believes without knowing how to explain it; others he knew and never really believed.

It’s still hard to believe, after a whole season gone. It seems cruel that he has to, looking up at his husband in this much sun. Believing means admitting they were equals after all and that they never will be, now.

“I don’t like that you don’t like him,” Shane says. “And you have to tell me if you actually don’t want this.”

“Do you?”

“Actually want this, or not like that you don’t like him?”

Ilya makes a gnawed noise, dipping down to transfer spindly stems in their thin plastic containers onto the ground. In front of Shane, ready to be planted. To take root and grow, obviously, though it feels a little funereal, all this dirt.

“Too many negatives. I don’t understand any of this. But I want you to fuck him if you want to fuck him.”

“I don’t want to fuck him.” It’s not that. Shane can’t remember if he ever told Ilya about the would-be fight, a hundred years ago. No point, now. “You know what I want.”

Ilya does. Knows even if he doesn’t believe it. Or understand it.

For Christmas, Shane asked for a new pack of the old compression socks he likes, an upgrade on the same brand of juicer they’ve had forever, and for Ilya to keep fucking him even when he cries and screams and begs him to stop. He expected Ilya to grin. At worst, to drag Shane up against his chest and sigh, my poor deprived husband, full access to the very best cock in Ottawa and still he wants more. He never thought Ilya would say no.

“It’s not a big deal,” Shane had argued that night, voice stretched prosecco thin. Matching pajamas and his parents house, the latter half of their lives spent perfectly in sync, complimentary with barely any effort. And now, the chasmic let down. “We basically do that anyway. Just, more.”

“We do? When? I stop if you say stop.” Ilya shifted back, didn’t get far. They barely fit in the bed he grew up in, pressed chest to chest, whispering the whole fight. “You say stop and I keep going—this is wrong, no? Who would want this?”

Something ugly rippled in Shane. He sat up and took most of the sheets with him. The mattress was way too small to sleep any further separate than their spines touching, facing away, but he’d do that. He’d sleep on the floor if it meant a few more inches put between him and this.

“Fine. It’s fine if you don’t get it, but don’t tell me what I’m allowed to want.”

It made sense, in retrospect. Ilya would probably shit on his chest if Shane made a wet-eyed enough argument for it, which only made this denial more of a shock. Ilya would do anything as long as Shane was murmuring yes yes yes. So not unconditional love, exactly.

“No, I meant—god. Fine, sure. But isn’t it a little bit,” Ilya bit his lip, held back to find the word. Anticipation swelled in Shane’s chest, wider and warmer until: “sad?”

Not at all the nice mean throb he’d been expecting. Disgusting would have done it. Pathetic would have strummed Shane’s spine, made a bright tuning fork of him. Sad was just, well. A more difficult shape to wrap warm interest around.

And now, six months later, the marble counter top in the kitchen is home to an unreleased model of the Omega Masticating Juicer, Shane’s sock drawer is brimming full, and they haven’t done that. Won’t. But it’s still sitting right there between them, there in the sun beating the back of Shane’s neck bright red. Isn’t it sad? To have been such a little fucking faggot, to have been punished for it—to have lost everything, and it still wasn't enough? If Shane tried to explain, Ilya would snag on the wrong root. Everything? You lost everything?

No—but, yes. There’s too much Shane will never have, and never be able to stop wanting. He knows he has a lot now. Strawberries and familiar smiling faces in the backyard, in the summer. A really beautiful house. A home in each other. Next year might be Ilya’s last year, and then it will be a swollen sort of completeness, difficult to breathe around. Shouldn’t there be some kind of reprimand for this? For feeling like all this wasn't enough, for not being able to tell the weight of what’s supposed to matter. For forever wanting what he shouldn’t.

Shane wipes at the sweat slicing down his cheek, already spanning the curve of his jaw to cut a bright line down his throat. His skin is almost too tacky with sunscreen to feel like skin at all. Shane grabs the first little plant too rough, only easing his grip under Ilya’s weighted gaze. “He’ll be in town two weeks from now. If it works, we could do it as an early birthday thing.”

The round tip of Ilya’s nose scrunches, bringing out lines in his face. It’s not fair that he’s aging so well; the slight silver glint to his hair goes gold in this much sun, wiry curls sitting on top and saturated in day. He’s too far away to pull at one, so Shane finishes with the plant and stands to do so. Dirt drops in clumps from the patches he’d pressed into his knees.

Ilya leans into him, making a face. “Sex for your birthday. So old and boring.”

“We are old and boring,” Shane says, folding completely into his offered arm. His voice thins against the soft thick of Ilya's chest. “And it’s not—”

“Shane,” Ilya snorts. “Enough.”

And it is, for a while. They unkink the hose and drench the strawberries, debate dinner and shuffle things back into the shed. Shane reminds Ilya about the dead oak on the property line they’ve got to get down. Ilya insists he has a guy for it and Shane insists the guy can’t be Ilya. They take their shoes off on the patio side of the glass sliding door, Shane chides him into leaving his jeans and soil-streaked shirt outside, too. It’s never just the task itself; Ilya always tracks dirt in the house, brings in with them the things they’re supposed to leave behind.

A couple weeks later, Shane's glasses slip down his nose while he tilts the laptop screen to get rid of the glare. Autopsying the strawberry plants that browned and died. They’d overwatered them. Too much care. There’s a tiny ding, the corner of the screen filled. Re: Proposal and a cacophony of autogenerated letters for the burner. Without much detail, zero mention of any penetration, the messages still would have given Shane an immediate aneurysm ten years ago. Now his dick gets a little full from checking his email on a Wednesday afternoon.

He wasn’t lying. It isn’t sex. It’s dirt tracked into their clean, nice, beautiful house, something that should have been shaken off and left behind, a mess Shane hates to see. Aches just to think about the smell.

–

It’s incredibly awkward.

The sensation should be familiar enough to Shane to live in like a fourth house, but it’s a completely new interior with Ilya being so stiff, too. For all the blue-glazed moments Shane spent reading something off the screen to Ilya, waiting for him to announce how much he wanted to participate—for any guarantee he wouldn’t haul Scott off Shane at any given moment, which Shane gets annoyed and a little bit turned on to think about. That first gasp—stop—and Ilya’s body deciding with blunt animal burden that it will, by any means necessary—they didn’t get very far.

See what happens, Ilya said. A few times. They’ll see what happens. And now they’re doing just that: seeing how little is happening. It hadn’t occurred to Shane until now, his knees a terse distance apart, not too close but unspread yet, that Ilya meant: I don’t think you will do this. I don't think he will. I don’t think there will even be anything for me to stop.

With Haas, Ilya did everything. Shane hadn’t noticed; that’s how good he is about doing things. Shane never really notices until he’s flat on his back, vision swimming, chin warm with drool.

But there’s no sleight of hand to it now. Ilya’s not doing anything. He’s got one leg folded underneath the other, slumping in the dark leather of the good chair, waving his drink idly while condemning the entire western conference with Scott. There’s a trickle of silence in between their voices because Shane thought putting music on was stupid, too obviously intentional; he hadn’t considered something in the room inevitably would be. That without the stereo to point a finger at, it would be him. Dumb and intentional. Palms flat on his thighs, legs apart, feet flush with the carpet and not hearing so much as generally throbbing.

“Shane loves it,” Ilya says.

Shane sets his drink down on the coffee table, fingers buzzing. “Loves what?”

Ilya’s smile curls like a lazy puff from his stupid vape, thin, lazy wisp at the edge. “Weren’t you listening? So rude. If this is how you’re going to be tonight, you should apologize.”

Shane’s throat is hot, a burn hard to swallow around. He hasn’t had a sip of anything in too long, can’t excuse the sensation. Embarrassment stains up his neck, pinks his cheeks.

“Shut up, asshole.”

“Is he always like this?” Scott’s still looking at Ilya, laughing when he stands. His back arches with a slow stretch.

“Brat? Sometimes.” Ilya lies. His jaw tightens, mouth in the shape of a smile. “Not always.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Shane says.

“Why not?” Scott puts his glass down, no coaster. Wanders around the coffee table to get to the wide wingspan of the mantle and pluck up a framed photo to examine. He glances over one shoulder at Shane. “Does that make it feel like you don’t matter?”

Shane rolls his eyes. Ilya stands, eyes somewhere just past the shoulder Shane’s sunk into the couch. He looks between them for a second that feels like a yank on Shane’s collar and fakes a yawn. Fits the words in at the end of it, gaze now boring into Shane’s. “I will go outside for a while, I think. Maybe garden a little bit.”

All that effort for the effortless. It catches Shane off guard anyway, even after twenty years. “Garden?”

Scott’s holding a different frame up to look down on, on his third now, putting them all back on the mantle a little crooked. He isn’t even paying attention. Shane feels expected and boring and sweaty, like an ignored charcuterie board. There’s a dull thick shine inside of his chest. A considerate knife turning.

“Yes.” Ilya shrugs. Pats his pocket that's distorted by the clean outline of the stupid vape. Rain freckles the sliding glass door, glowing like honey under the outdoor light. “Nice night, you know.”

It’s a smooth sound, the door slipping closed. The room feels more filled with him emptied from it. Scott doesn’t say anything, just turns back to the photo he’s holding up and lets the silence squeeze Shane for a few more moments. He shifts, uncomfortable. He wore the wrong shirt.

“He was saying you used to love ASG,” Scott gives him, eventually. The bent head, the bow of his neck against the broad muscled stretch of his back makes him look like one solid, set jaw. Like a left open trap, teeth benign for the time being.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.”

“That makes sense.”

The trap stuffed with bright, store bought bait. Lazy. Shane sits up a little, annoyed to so easily see it, more so with himself for giving in anyway. “Why?”

“Every narcissist did.” Back to Shane. The tendons in his neck ripple with the motion of a shrug. “It’s that urge to set every single record, even the fake ones they make up for the kids.”

“Sounds like something a guy who never set any records would say.”

Scott gives him a smile over one shoulder, glossy and flat, the way he used to look in magazines. Used to. A long time ago, but Shane’s thrilled to find it still has the same effect; the irritation gnaws deep enough to eat the years. He almost forgets about his shoulder, forgets he isn’t right back there with everything still ahead of him. Breathing the unmined ore of the rink, about to hurl himself against the rocks in the hope of clawing out something tiny and worthwhile, of building a legacy one brittle little stone at a time.

Shane would forget they were looking at each other across the very nice living room in his very nice house if it weren’t for the photo Scott holds up, waving it at him.

“You guys were so adorable.”

Ilya and him, matching helmets banged together, matching jersey-swathed shoulders, wrapped around each other with big matching grins. The first year on the Centaurs. Practice—Shane wouldn’t let his face do that in front of an actual crowd. “I guess. Not as much as you and Kip, though. The big reveal. Everyone loved that.”

Scott laughs. A brassy, out of tune noise. “Not everyone.”

“Okay. But it wasn’t like you got kicked off your team for it.”

Scott looks at him over the edge of the photo. Looks down at him. “You had it very easy. Do you not know that?”

“When?” Shane asks. This isn’t what he’s here for. His brain buzzes with the vague intention of getting them back on course but the rest of him can only think: fuck this guy. “When we were hiding for years? ”

Scott snorts. “When were you hiding?”

Shane sets his jaw. Maybe the whole thing’s over. Maybe Ilya saw this coming from a mile away: that they would bash grudges against each other like tired old rams and limp apart without anything more than the sore, still-wet wounds left worse.

Scott's shoes flatten the carpet. Usually Shane asks people to take them off. Or Ilya does, letting out that blunt little whistle and whirling his fingers at the ground. He didn’t this time, and Shane hadn’t wanted to ask. It’s a blessing now. Head to toe, Shane dislikes him. More and more every second.

Scott continues. “I’m surprised people didn’t catch on sooner. It was embarrassing to watch.”

Where is Ilya? How long is a few minutes—if it’s like last time, half an hour. Shane can’t stop moving his hands, clenching and unclenching at his sides, palms scraping down the front of his thighs, heat staining his voice. It’s hard to remember how old he is. “You didn’t know. You didn’t know for a long time.”

“Yeah? Is that what you’re still telling yourself? That you were good at hiding?”

“You were," Shane says. "Really good. I didn’t think—I thought you were just any other guy on the ice calling me that.”

“Calling you what?” Scott settles near the couch, the side of one shin pressed to the low cushion. Arms crossed to bring out the bulge of his biceps. “Faggot?”

Shane blinks, and Scott’s mouth wrenches tight. “You’re so easy.”

“It didn’t matter, I guess,” Shane says. No clean opportunity for a check. He can’t get a full breath in, legs spread, chest turned to Scott and slowly, meticulously, being convinced open. This is a sloppy scramble against the boards, this is shoving and grabbing for any piece of a jersey he can reach. “All that—you were so convincing. It’s not like it helped to keep him around.”

This: Shane knows. Remembers a body harsh and pure against another body, relives the very first time. It’s as liquid as ever. The years haven’t taken Scott Hunter’s underused ability to land a bare fist before the dropped glove even hits the ground. No knuckle really, but a slam like that when Scott crushes Shane, knocking him off the cushion, bulk forcing him hard on his ass. His glasses go down somewhere with a clatter while his elbow gets lodged into a corner of the sectional. Weird angle; bad shoulder. Scott’s lucky or he did his research. Either way, it wrenches out a low groan.

The sound doesn’t slow Scott at all. No helmet, no mouthguard, just one solid arm locked over Shane’s chest. Palm pushed into the muscle,trying to crack Shane's shoulder open like the shell of a lobster, to smear a tender amount of him into the carpet. Shane almost gets some leverage, trying to scramble out of the corner he’s stuffed in, but then there’s a knee in Shane’s stomach, a worse noise. A fist in his hair snapping the arch into his neck.

Every nerve lights up, so bright it’s hard to breathe through. Scott works his way over Shane’s collarbone until there’s an elbow wedged into his windpipe. Shane’s eyes sting, wet while he swings. The blunt pulses of his fist earn a quiet grunt or two and nothing else. It doesn’t matter. This ist working for him; he doesn’t need to win. Shane forgot it could be like this: no distance between urge and relief, scratch and itch. Everything is red.

Same burn in his chest that he had back then. Shane's always hated Scott Hunter—his condescension and lazy way of wearing the crown, that your boy shit. That shit. That stupid smile—he’s a lot crueler than people think. Most people are. Did he know? He must have fucking known—you’re starting to sound like him. Fucking faggot. It didn’t mean anything for Scott to pry open Shane’s stomach in the middle of the game and leave gut and verity spilled bright all over the ice. No bruise, no gash, nothing that heals. Just that humiliated stain humiliated, Shane covered in it and completely unable to be, knowing he couldn’t be exactly what he was, all in front of everyone. Shane fucking hates him.

And what the fuck for? Scott got everything. The legacy, the airtight reputation. He got the shining gold moment with the man he wanted so badly, the big storybook kiss. He got to choose how the world knew, didn’t have the decision clawed away from him. Never had his worst fears realized one by one. It doesn’t matter if Shane turned out to be a little better at holding on—Scott still had everything first. Everything.

There’s nothing but that in Shane’s body: the liquidity of a wound that spreads hungry and can’t find an edge, resentment condensed to fit in one fist, connecting with the side of Scott’s cheekbone. The noise of it drips something hotter than thrill down the back of Shane’s throat. His face feels sunburn bright. It seems insane there’s enough blood in his body with so much of it throbbing in his cock. He wrestles his way on top.

“You’re so—easy,” Shane bites out. He gets another second more of victory before the pain explodes in his shoulder. The loud pant twists into a wet whine.

“Yeah? Is this easy?”

One buck, another to knock him off. Shane does go easy, the top of his body doll sloppy, slumping like a marionette with sliced strings. He’s faster than Shane remembers, a wallop of body like the whistles just gone off, like Scott hadn’t even been playing up until then. His bad shoulder slams into the coffee table and Shane lets out a yell he’ll probably hear before falling asleep for the rest of his life. Raw and open, peeled wide red. Truth gouged out of him on the ice in front of everyone.

Shane struggles, “Come—fuck. My shoulder, lay off.”

“What’s wrong? You don’t like it?” Scott’s thumb digs into the muscle, the rest of his fingers pinning him. Jaws closing to work the dull, dark ache deeper. Dirty fucking fighter. Neither of them were like this, in a real game. Neither of them had the chance to be like this. Scott’s other hand gropes between Shane’s thighs, up the inseam to settle over the bulge of his cock, straining and sore against the zipper. “That’s not what it feels like.”

Shane can’t get a word out after that. Scott’s grip slips down his arm, bends it back, sends a new sort of pain singing up the stretched tendons. His palm flattens over Shane’s dick and he doesn’t even do anything, no real press, just a reminder. Of course he knows. He must have known. He—

“Do you think you’ll come like this?” Scott says, and Shane shakes his head, defensive, embarrassed.

Scott nods. Starts to push the heel of his palm in.

“I’m going to fuck you.” With the other hand, Scott twists his arm back in jutty little increments, like a hotter, second pulse. “What was it like, that first time? I bet you loved it. You always looked like you would love it. I bet you thought something was breaking, fucking ripping right in half. That you’d never felt anything like that. Scared you might not again.”

“Get off—” Shane grunts. Pain sparks in his squinted vision, fireworks sparking and spreading. He’s leaking into his jeans. So close his stomach clenches. “Fuck—stop. Stop, Hunter, get—”

It’s like he doesn’t hear him. Scott keeps one arm yanked back, so Shane can do nothing but squirm, useless and pinned under him. And still fighting, getting louder while Scott’s palm starts to knead. Shane can feel him, the thick hot line of his cock wedged up against one spread leg, grinding and hot. “Fucking—what an unreal feeling, right? You’d do anything for it. You look like you’d do fucking anything for cock. Everyone thinks it’s so brave. You know that—fuck, you know it’s not true. You know. It’s pathetic.”

Shane hadn’t noticed how much it’d been building until the sting spills past his shoulder, pain drenching deeper than muscle. Finally—the sink of a mean jaw, the sloppy relief of being held together between the sure shape of teeth. His cock kicks, starts to spurt. Shane makes a wet sound, strains not to look up and see the dark stain on his jeans when Scott peels away his palm.

“Really pathetic,” Scott repeats, pronouncing the word flat like he’s taking it right off a page. Empty. A little like he’s not talking to Shane at all. Quiet as a thought. “Faggot.”

The floor falls away and Shane’s being arranged at the edge of a cushion, whining and brainless, legs spread. No permission. The clink of his belt being undone. The throb of his shoulder like his heart’s leaking. There’s still that big hand on his arm, grip like a set jaw, holding it wrong. All of it’s wrong and hard to make out under the pink-thick haze. Scott's hand on Shane’s ass feels like anyone’s, he spreads Shane’s ass like it’s anyone’s, anything. An easily plucked piece of overripe fruit. Dripping with juice.

Shane barely feels Scott’s thumb finding, pushing in. It’s numb, clean. Most of Shane exists in the warm buzz curled in his palms, twitching and empty with one arm trapped under his back. Hot ache instead of a shoulder. He can’t really feel any of this. It’s now and before, a long time ago, and Shane is barely anywhere. There isn’t enough of him left to be anything other than content.

The noises he's making don’t sound that way.

“You like it rough.” Almost a question. Scott’s got his stubbled cheek scraping against Shane’s and three fingers in him, drizzled with lube but not enough, too dry, too rough. He pulls out and Shane’s body arches a little. Then, the head of his cock, stretching and stretching. Something vivid in him squirms; Shane vaguely remembers having a body. An asshole, being pried into. Scott says, “I never thought I did.”

He wipes at the wet on Shane’s face, over the broken noise coming out of him and says, “Don’t you ever wish you were normal?”

Does he like it rough? What’s wrong with him? Why isn’t everything enough?

What’s missing in him that other people have—why hasn’t he ever wanted the right things?

Red where Scott’s filling him up, red all over the ice. No one could see it then but everyone knew—Shane worried every day that everyone knew, carried the terror himself so wide it was worse than anyone finding out. They all knew already, in his head, every day. Scott fucks into him and he doesn’t feel it at all. Just quiet: the squeak of the cushion, the calm beyond their bodies, the tight, terrible sound of himself.

“Where are your glasses?”

Tap at his temple, reminding Shane he still has a skull. Enough brain to know: this doesn’t make sense. The right voice for the wrong moment. Shane’s free hand lifts up, wrist slack. His palm is clasped and then caught.

The pace slows. Ilya tuts. “You said you wouldn’t start without me, Hunter.”

Scott’s laugh sounds turned inside out. “You are such a liar.”

Shane’s vision is too smeared to translate the look between them, but then it breaks and Ilya smiles. That face. Folded close and letting Shane squeeze his hand like the rubber lip of a life raft, and smiles. “Sometimes.”

The next breath in is brimming with shrill chemical. Tearing through Shane's chest like paper, but the rip wakes him up. He tries to sound stern. Says, “Ilya,” only it comes out a gasp.

“What?” Ilya squeezes Shane’s hand back, a huge brute grip that Shane can feel so deeply it’s like he found a way to dip inside Shane's ribcage. “Do you want me? Is that what you want?”

“Fuck—just,” Shane pants, trying to dig himself out from Scott’s weight. He eases up but only after Ilya makes a sound, says something. Low voice but nerve-licking like a door unlatching. Shane means to get up, shove him away, tell him off for the thousandth time about his stupid vape. To tell him—fuck off, I’m getting what I want, I want this, I like this, I deserve this. I don’t deserve you. I want the wrong things. Everyone always knew. You smell like the earth outside.

It wouldn’t matter if he could explain—his tongue’s too thick to get anything else out. Thick everything—his cock bouncing up against his stomach, a needy pearl of precome messy in the hair there, the loss when Scott pulls out. His swimming, heavy head, lolling with his chin to his chest. The grope over Shane’s calves, folding him up, rearranging him. Ilya. The scent, sour, soil lush. Then, familiar and solid, his chest to Shane’s back.

It’s embarrassing in a new way. So much soothing, rubbing, Ilya cooing over his shoulder with a hand at his face, closing over his cheek, thumb prying open until he slips inside. Shane’s lips seal around him, tongue and throat working to suck. His eyes close, the whole of him heavy and happy and barely paying attention to the shifting happening underneath, more and more. The slight scrape of a button undone. Jeans. Dirt from the garden carried inside.

It’s nothing to get his pants all the way off. He’s still wearing the nice shirt. There’s too much at once—dirt on the couch. Naked thighs folded up to his chest, hips tingling, a handsome face between his knees. Someone’s husband’s steady breath swelling against a spine. His cock at the split of Shane’s ass. Not in. Shane squirms; still not in. Sticky heat. His thighs get pried wider, Scott a full weight again. His hands are sweatdamp, slapping at someone. Ilya’s thigh, Scott’s bicep. Bodies and need, Shane the dissolving wedge between wanting and having.

“Okay,” Ilya says. “That’s good, come on.”

“Wait,” Shane slurs. Feels the first press of them both and knows then. “Hold on—wait.”

Ilya’s hand wanders. He’s sticky, syrup by the time he finds one of Shane’s nipples, fingering it through the rough texture of his shirt. Thumbing the nub until Shane jerks. Sighs. Heat and relief, barely body. Except where Ilya’s cock is full and familiar against him, hot and thick in the crease. The head bumps at his rim, open like an eager mouth. Drags over him, not in. Fumbling. One ripe red stretch. Shane arches into it.

“Come on,” Ilya says again. What’s left? Shane has everything. There is no filing this sort of ache. Ilya fists Scott’s hair and yanks him close enough to kiss. “No more teasing—put the viagra to good use.”

Scott laughs. It’s so genuine that Shane doesn’t recognize it. He pulls away from Shane to spit in his hand, stroking himself. Ilya’s is still gripping his hair, fingers guiding Shane’s hip, the three of them one sloppy knot. “Aren’t you gonna lube him up again? Go slow and tell him how good he is?”

“Fuck—” Shane gets out, ignored aside from the crush of both their bodies. Their cocks, nudging. “Stop, don’t—”

Ilya’s thighs tense on either side of him. “No, no. He can take it. He’s good.”

“This is good for you, huh?” Scott says, voice hard, eyes drifting back to drill into Shane’s. The head of Ilya’s dick catches on his hole. Shane bucks up, groans and thrusts back down onto both of them. Two slippery, swollen cockheads held together with Ilya’s fist. Thumb squirming at him, soothing Shane to settle down, breath at his ear and cooing to ease him into—

He can’t do this. Shane jerks his head back, trying to see him, choking on a whine. “No—no, I can’t. Ilya no.”

“Yes, Shane. Yes.”

“Don’t—”

Ilya’s palm slaps over his mouth, smothering the sound. Shane's tongue slides flat against the skin, humid, now thick with spit. He tastes like plush soil, loam in the back of Shane’s throat. Dully, he thinks, it is a nice night.

“Rozanov,” Scott says.

“Shut your fucking mouth and fill him up, Hunter.”

That makes Shane sound like an empty gas tank, a porcelain bowl put out for anyone. Sweet and red and eager. Shane squeezes his eyes shut tighter, kaleidoscope sparking in the steady black. Please. He can’t tell what’s actually coming out of him. Please give me a second. Please stop, please don’t. Don’t stop. Please fill me up, please, please—please—

The first fuck in is skull emptying. Every edge goes, each limit, no line between the out of tune sore of his shoulder or the perfect chord of pleasure struck then. Barely a fuck. Just the crown—both of them squeezing inside of him. Shane makes a sound he’s never heard himself make before, sinks down into the heat. Not a thrust, maybe a searing, single inch further in. The next unlaces whatever stitches still held him whole together—twice as full, twice as—different angle, uncomfortable and way too much. Burning.

“No, no, no,” Shane babbles, drooling around Ilya’s fingers. Almost no room and still the fear swells in him—real pain. Not a nice ache. He might really rip in two. They haven’t filled him up halfway and Shane can feel them both in his throat. There’s no room, he doesn’t believe there could possibly be more than this—it feels just like his first time.

“Yes, you can, you can—”

“I can’t, Ilya—please.” His voice cracks, soaked open with tears. Ilya’s fingers slip out of his mouth. He smooths the wet down his skin, then his nails bite into Shane’s slack jaw and hold him.

Ilya’s quiet and everywhere. Scott laughs. They plunge thick into him until they can’t anymore and finally, Shane so full he can’t feel his fingers, only knows the brim of them where they meet the sure curl of Ilya’s, one in between the next, bodies blurred together further than Shane understood to be possible.

Ilya agrees, he must. He can’t get any deeper and then he does. Scott, too. They start up a rabbity, no-rhythm pace. In and in and in. Ilya's voice is a murmur Shane feels first in his chest. He smells—“Da. Perfect.”

One body can't have this much. Scott kisses him, jaw rough and perfect, red against Shane’s clean face, Shane’s salt-wrecked, hot face. Ilya’s hand slips down the seam of his chest, tensed belly, his crying cock. Shane doesn’t know or want, just is, squeezed and used. Fucked dumb. He can’t stop crying. Is he? Everything feels wet. Can’t tell tears from syrup, ugly from good, Ilya from Scott from himself. It only makes sense that he’s coming when Ilya murmurs hot in his ear, breath to match the splash of sudden warmth. Good. That’s good. This is perfect. Everyone—Shane does have everything. Everyone knows.

His chin slumps to one side, mouth open and needy Ilya kisses him, fucks him. Scott fucks him and kisses him. Fucking faggot, and good, and what if he wasn’t? What if he wasn’t this much, this hungry, this thrilled, this senseless and swollen from so much spoil. Loved anyway, loving anyway. Adored so thoroughly he can’t remember what to do with his chest, sometimes, feels rotten on the inside from ripe attention.

Whatever pace they struck starts to fall apart. Scott gets sloppy, sinks into Shane’s shoulder and mouths at the skin. Pulls out with a grunt and finishes between Shane’s thighs, face breaking into a smile at Shane’s sloppy moan, the way his hands reach immediately to feel it.

He knows the second before Ilya starts to come, feels it, him. There’s a low, familiar sigh when he gives into it, breath hot on the back of Shane’s neck like the sun outside, like soil, always known and every time brand new when he spills into him. It’s too much. Everything.

–

Clean up takes forever. Shane’s shoulder throbs in a sweet way—not the ache itself, it’s just been a while. He missed waking up with a well-used body. How a strain means you’d meant something to the game. He’ll worry about the couch tomorrow.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then? The fundraiser thing?” Scott asks, not really asking. The collar of his shirt isn’t enough to cover the skinny red welt Shane left on his neck.

“Maybe,” Ilya says.

“We said we’d go,” Shane reminds him.

“Maybe we will go. Long night, you know. Not used to such rigorous exercise. My body is so frail these days, wears down easy.” He puts on a big yawn and Shane feels the spread of it like a stretched palm inside his chest.

“Okay.” Scott looks between them. Smiles. No gloat to it, not the glossy Sports Illustrated stunner. A little tired. There’s some rugburn where Shane shoved him hard against the carpet. People fit a lot into one body. “That was fun.”

Ilya nods and pulls him in for a goodbye kiss that’s more sound than suction. He refrains from laughing until they’re out in the humming night, falling onto the weatherproof cover thrown over the outdoor sofa. The belly-bouncing sound of his starts Shane’s up, and then the backyard is full and giddy. Damp air, coy with that just-finished rain scent.

“Fun,” Shane repeats. His brain is maybe half-functional. He can’t really feel his fingers and he took his time in the shower, went slow, will probably feel the shit with his shoulder for a week, nevermind how it’ll be to sit down tomorrow. It doesn’t feel like there’s ever any coming back from being this torn open, but he’s been surprised by his body’s given, leapt-past limits before. It’s hard to tell: what things mend and which you just learn to live around.

“What was it for you?”

“Not fun.” Shane looks up. “That’s like, a dinner party that you didn’t have a good time at.”

Ilya’s mouth curls up. “Are you worried about this? Scott Hunter’s good time?”

“No,” Shane says. Always, a little bit.

Ilya fishes his vape out of a fresh sweatpant pocket and sighs. “You should be friends with him, maybe. I think he is lonely.”

“Really? Why does he have to be lonely to want to put his cock in me?”

Ilya thumbs at one temple. Tired, too. “I did not say this.”

“We don’t have anything in common,” Shane says.

This time, Ilya's laugh almost scares him. It bursts out of him so loudly Shane’s surprised the thick-leaved trees don’t twitch. He’s in new clothes, scrubbed clean and smelling like soap and skin, curls dark and dripping down the collar of his shirt, but Shane can still feel dirt on him. The palms sunk inside soil, clumsy, searching, set on telling root from rock.

Shane nudges an elbow into his ribs. “What’s funny about that?”

Ilya pulls him close, planting a sloppy kiss to the side of his face. “Everything.”

For a while it’s quiet. Then, Shane asks, “Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, smiling. What an irritating, irrationally perfect person. He composes himself, which just means sitting up the slightest bit. “What about you, Shane? Not fun. What did you have?”

Shane watches Ilya take a deep inhale of the vape, flimsy and shining off the light from the living room between his thick pink fingers. Watches just those, annoyed to see them swallowed in smoke. Eventually gets away from Ilya’s mouth to look up and find him looking.

“Um. A late Christmas gift. It was missing a bow, though. You could have put a bow on him.”

“Ha,” Ilya pronounces. Dangerous to glance back at that mouth but there’s no choice in it, for Shane.

“I don’t know. I got what I wanted.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything to that. Inhales on the vape with his jaw cut to the side so the smoke streams out and away from Shane, like that will do anything. Like he isn’t always five minutes from getting back inside Ilya’s mouth.

He says he’ll quit. Sometimes he claims he already did when they’re being extra shitty to each other. Shane loves him so much. In the morning, they won’t go to that fundraiser. In the morning, they’ll fight. In the morning, they’ll be different. Shane will be on his back in the gym, body coiling into a new stretch to try and ease the raw sting of his shoulder. Ilya will be loud in the shower, Ilya will be annoying about what they’ll do for dinner, Ilya will be perfect. A husband that squints at the right strawberry plants and chooses well, fills things up, sets them out ripe and blushing and eager to be eaten.

“Good,” Ilya says. “Nothing means more to me in the world than Shane Hollander getting what he wants.”

“Sure. Unless you count vaping.”

“That’s different thing. Separate interest.”

“Separate how?” Ilya wiggles one hand around, clarifies nothing. “That makes no sense.”

“It does not need to. Is true. Both are important but very different. It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, tilting to spill completely into him. “You’re so complicated.”

“Mhm. At least I am the only one. You are very simple creature.”

He is, now. It feels like he is now. In the morning they’ll—have a morning. That’s already a lot. Everything, really.