Chapter Text
The lights are brighter than they have any right to be. They illuminate every hair on Shane’s exposed forearms, every fissure in the flooring, cast a tight ring around him. Beyond, eight feet or so in each direction, he can feel the heat of the crowd, the building anticipation within the shadows, but it’s impossible to make out any faces outside of the brilliant beams, and it simultaneously feels like he’s on display and like he’s one of the last two people in the world. Across from him, his opponent shakes out his arms, and leans in. Shane can tell he’s already got something clever lined up.
“You should have stayed hockey player.”
“You fucking wish, don’t you?” Shane’s stomach squeezes. Not in anticipation of the coming fight, but from the reminder that he’d told Rozanov all about that last month, drunk and wet-mouthed. “Getting a little scared of the competition?”
“No.” Rozanov shrugs easily. He grins, showing a row of perfect teeth. He doesn’t wear a mouth-guard. Hasn’t needed one, even though Shane’s been trying really hard to make him regret that choice. “Would hurt you less.”
Shane chokes on a surprised laugh. As if anything could possibly hurt Shane Hollander worse than hockey already has.
As if he has spent the last eight months desperately searching for something that would.
“Really overestimating your right hook there, Rozanov.” He shoves his own mouth guard in. It isn’t obvious at just a glance because they’d been replaced back when Shane still had dental insurance, but he’s no stranger to the experience of losing teeth. It’s not really one he wants to repeat.
“Just sad, yes?”
“What’s sad?”
“To ruin your pretty face.”
“You shits done sniping at each other?” Marlow asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer, raising his voice to address the tight crowd around them. “Reminder of the rules. No gloves tonight. Three rounds, two minutes each. Our boys are taking it easy tonight, but they’re still going to put on a show, don’t worry. Last chance to place your bets now, with Sveta in the corner.” He waits half a minute for the final shuffle of money changing hands; most of the onlookers tonight know what they’re in for already, have already sized up the two men in the center of the make-shift boxing ring and placed their bets.
Shane bounces on his toes, rolls his shoulders, feels the world narrow. It’s not the rink, nothing is the rink, but the feeling is still so familiar, the memory so close he can almost live in it. The ice, the cheers, the weight of the eyes on him, the arena lights so harsh he can’t see anything but the jostling shoulders of the Raiders around him.
Marlow clears his throat again. “And now,” he shouts, voice rising with each word. “The highlight of your evening, the match everybody came here to see. John Doe and Ursa Major.” Shane feels the crowd reacting to him, the air thickening with anticipation. Breaths held, a moment suspended. “Get ready.”
Shane’s arms come up, one leg drawing back, a twenty degree bend in his forward knee. Across from him, Ilya smiles like a shark. His stance is less structured than Shane’s, his shoulders low and sloping, arms raised half-heartedly. He’s got this persistent aura of indifference, like he might get bored midway through the match and wander off.
But Shane’s stood across this same concrete-floored, sad excuse for a boxing ring enough times to know Rozanov’s act by now, and he isn’t fooled by it, waits poised and tense for the bell. He does, however, let his eyes wander. Rozanov’s coveralls are tied at the waist, further lending to the picture of casualness and his oil-stained, formerly white tank top glows under the shit lighting. An ocean of scars and stretch marks ripple across his tan biceps. He seems to catch Shane staring and throws in a little flex of his pecs, just for him.
When a bell chimes, Shane’s across the ring, beaten-up Reeboks squeaking against the rough cement, throwing himself at the Russian bear.
They’re playing gentle tonight, they’d already agreed. Ilya had been joking about it, but they do need to stay pretty for the match next week. The high-profile clientele love watching Shane and Ilya beat the shit out of each other, but they want them working from a blank canvas.
So no face-shots tonight. No grapples, no nails.
The nails will come out in a few hours. So will the teeth. Cuffs, once or twice. A crop, if Shane wins this match. Clamps, if he doesn’t.
An explosion across his sternum forces Shane more fully into the moment; he rocks back, begging his body to pull a fresh breath in. Rozanov takes advantage of the brief paralysis, throwing a series of jabs that Shane’s arms block on instinct. He returns the favor, landing a gut punch hard enough that Rozanov doubles over. If this was a different match, he’d knee him in the face, but anything above the neck is off-limits tonight, so Shane ducks close instead, tripping the bear and sending him into the arms of onlookers.
The tightly packed audience dips under the unexpected weight thrown into them, but enough pairs of hands come up to stop Rozanov from crashing to the ground, help him stand again.
There’s a bell. Are the two minutes up already?
“Out of bounds,” Cliff declares. “First round to John Doe.”
Shane uses the sixty second rest to get his breathing back in order. In the second round, Rozanov returns the favor, and Shane narrowly avoids going brain-first into the concrete. His elbow catches the brunt of it, though, and he feels something zing up to his shoulder. He’s still on the floor when Rozanov drops on his back, and he’s glad he’s got the mouthguard in because otherwise he’d have bitten his tongue, chin slamming the ground.
Cliff crouches beside them, his dark eyes flicking between Shane’s scowl and Ilya’s grin. “That’s dirty, Roz,” he says quietly, but doesn’t make a move to pull him off. “Second round to Ursa Major,” he declares. People scream, hungry for the blood they’re not going to get tonight.
“Get off me, asshole,” Shane demands, voice hushed. In response, the asshole in question grinds himself into Shane’s back and fuck. Ilya is enjoying this more than usual.
“Hard yet?” Ilya asks into his ear.
Yes. “No. Get off.”
Rozanov stands slowly, then offers him a hand. He takes it, and somewhere in the low-ceilinged room, someone boos.
“Boston really hates the camaraderie,” Shane murmurs.
“Cam—what?” Ilya shoots him a confused look, then shouts in the general direction the voice came from, “Is called good sportsmanship, pissface.” That gets him another boo.
“Good sportsmanship from the dirtiest fighter in New England?” Shane asks. They’re circling each other again, waiting for the final round to start. “Guess I’m rubbing off on you.”
Ilya smiles again, that easy disinterest sliding onto his face. Something else burns beneath it. “Later,” he promises.
Shane thinks about the crop and the clamps. He wins the third round.
Svetlana has a date tonight and wants the apartment empty, so Ilya trails Shane to the closest Red Line stop, slumps on the seat next to him when the T pulls up. The train car is empty this late on a work night.
“How is chin?” he asks when they’re seated.
“Fine.” Shane buries said chin in the collar of his coat, angling himself away from Ilya. He’s always like this, the post-fight adrenaline crash making him irritable. It just makes Ilya extra horny.
Shane’s got a nice place, a penthouse that’s easily three times the size of the apartment Ilya shares with Svetlana, and he makes Ilya wait before following him up to. When Ilya finally steps through the unlocked front door, Shane has already set out the ice packs, ibuprofen, and vodka.
“What happened to the good stuff?” Ilya asks, poking the liquor bottle with an experimental finger.
“The good stuff is for winners.” When Ilya’s jaw drops open in exaggerated offense, Shane laughs.
“I will punish you for that,” he growls.
Shane’s cheeks flush red immediately, but he shrugs, a failed attempt at nonchalance. “You can try.”
Ilya swallows two ibuprophen, grabs a handful of fabric at the front of Shane’s tshirt and twists, spinning them both so Shane is slammed up against the marble-topped counter.
Shane’s brown eyes have gone fully black, already so pliant under Ilya’s touch. His free hand, the one not full of dry-fit fabric, reaches past Shane and grabs one of the icepacks. He keeps his eyes locked on Shane’s as he draws it back, lifts it to Shane’s chin. There’s a bruise already forming there.
Despite himself, Shane’s eyes flutter closed at the soothing cold.
“We have to keep you pretty for next week,” Ilya murmurs. Shane shudders under him. “I will have to be careful. Not too many marks.”
“Not too many,” Shane agrees, voice unsteady. “Just…some.”
“Some.”
Ilya removes the ice pack from Shane’s chin, presses it to the other man’s chest until he takes it. “Put on elbow,” he orders. While Shane complies, Ilya takes off his own shirt and then reaches for Shane’s sweatpants, sliding them down and off along with his briefs. Shane’s mostly soft now, the thrill of the fight all but ebbed out of him, but his body is swiftly correcting that. Seeing him vulnerable like this, slouched against his own countertop with half-lidded eyes, Ilya feels hard enough for both of them. He slides both hands under Shane’s athletic shirt, his cold fingers moving straight up over Shane’s abs and stomach to his pecs. Shane’s breath snags. His cock twitches.
Ilya grabs both nipples, twists hard.
Shane falls to his knees so fast Ilya’s fingers slide right off him. Then hands are braced against his thighs, fighting with the sloppy double-knot on the inside of his coveralls. Shane’s tongue slips out of his mouth as he concentrates, and Ilya needs to put a hand on the counter to steady himself as any blood that hasn’t already made the pilgrimage to his dick does so now.
“Fuck,” he hisses out. Shane’s finally got the knot open, triumph on his face. Like freeing Ilya’s dick was a bigger win than their match had been. He promptly opens his mouth, flicks his gaze up to meet Ilya’s, and swallows him down. Ilya’s abs flex, grip on the counter tightening and knees locking before he falls, too.
Ilya should be used to this by now. Should be used to Shane Hollander going to town on his cock with all the enthusiasm of a veteran porn star. But ever since that first time when Shane had left the door unlocked and he’d followed him into the dirty single-stall bathroom of Cliff’s garage, Shane Hollander’s body has utterly intoxicated him. His mouth. His ass. The sounds Ilya alone can draw out of him.
Shane’s throat convulses around his tip, and Ilya’s hips jerk forward, pushing himself deeper and slamming Shane’s head into the side of the counter. The man’s eyes go wide and wet from the pain, but he doesn’t stop what he was doing.
“Yes, Hollander,” Ilya growls. His hips buck again, and the whole counter shudders from the impact. “Fucking take it.”
The pressure is building in his balls and, with the strength of a thousand men, Ilya pulls back. He tangles his hand in Shane’s thick hair, holding him at bay before he can follow the thick trail of his own saliva back to Ilya’s hard length. “Hungry for it, aren’t you?”
Shane tried to nod, but Ilya just tightens his grip. He’s a work of art like this, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, the entire lower half of his face wet with saliva and mucus.
“Come on.” He tugs viciously, leading Shane by the hair. Obediently, falling forward onto hands and knees, Shane follows him down to the sunken living room.
Ilya is holding his hair a touch too high, and to avoid it being yanked out of his skull altogether, Shane has to stretch up. It makes his back arch and his ass look even more perfect than usual. Ilya can’t wait to be inside of it.
Everything they need is already lined up on the coffee table. Shane came to Cliff’s auto garage straight from work, which means he laid all this stuff out this morning. Half-full bottle of lube. Neatly coiled handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Crop and cane perfectly parallel. Everything evenly spaced, with a spot for Shane’s clothes.
Ilya hands over the sweatpants and boxers he’s still gripping, watches Shane fold them neatly with shaking hands and put them down. The right angles of his fold are aligned with the edge of the coffee table.
He is the strangest ex-hockey playing, pain-loving, illegal boxer Ilya has ever fucked and he wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“You won tonight,” Ilya says. He tightens his grip on Shane’s hair, revels in the way his breath hitches. “What will it be?”
They’re both surveying the table, Shane looking at the assortment as though he wasn’t the one who set it all out. Ilya lets go of his hair, lets him tilt his head up to him. He’s got his lower lip between his teeth, considering. He swallows thickly.
Nervous? That’s new.
Still, Ilya doesn’t want to push him on this, so he lets him bide his time, tugs Shane’s shirt over his head and watches him fold it while he considers his options.
“Hand,” Shane says, so quietly it sounds like an exhale. “Please.”
Ilya is still for a full minute while Shane watches him with those big, wet eyes. His freckles have faded a little over the winter months, but Ilya could find them blind, in the dark.
“Hollander,” he tries. They’ve been over this. He has asked before, Ilya has refused before.
“I know.” Shane swallows. “Please?”
That first time, in the dirty bathroom, it had been simple. They were drunk, they were strangers, they’d fought the toughest match of either of their fighting careers (Ilya’s career decidedly much longer than Shane’s, but still), and they’d jerked each other off with spit and an expired packet of lube Ilya found in his wallet. He’d put his hand on Shane’s neck as he brought him to the edge, and Shane’s eyes had widened in response and hadn’t that been a surprise? Then he’d pushed closer into the grip, whispered more in a way that was impossible to argue with, and come into Ilya’s hand as the grip on his throat tightened.
The second discovery had been equally an accident. This time they’d been fucking in Cliff Marlow’s office (he still hasn’t told him), and Ilya accidentally slammed Shane’s leg into the sharp corner of the metal filing cabinet. He’d stopped, been about to pull out and check on him, but Shane was coming before he could help himself.
It had devolved from there.
In the months since, the only thing Ilya hadn’t done was use his hands. He’d tried a few times, but memories rushed up around him, stale air and the rattling of a radiator, a woman crying, the overhead light flickering because Papa refused to buy a new bulb while this one still mostly worked.
Shane sighs. “Never mind. Sorry I asked.” He bumps his head against Ilya’s knee. “Cane, please?” He opens his eyes even wider, because he fucking knows the effect he has on Ilya, doesn’t he? But Ilya is already reevaluating all his earlier decisions.
Shane Hollander knows better than to ask for his bare hand, which means Shane Hollander knows something about Ilya that isn’t which ankle is weaker and just how to use his tongue against the bottom of his foreskin and which shitty vodka Ilya would choose sobriety over. And the thought of that, of Shane knowing something and maybe guessing more, is enough to override any other fear and disgust Ilya is feeling.
So when Shane least expects it, goes in to give Ilya’s leg another nuzzle, Ilya backhands him.
He does it high, does it soft, angled so it won’t do any real damage to Shane’s face. The moneymaker, Svetlana had told him in English. In fact, he thinks it hurts his bruised knuckles more than it hurts Shane, but the result is enough. Shane’s head jerking to the side, his body shuddering, his cock twitching beneath him. He lets out a small noise, high-pitched and pathetic that Ilya feels in the base of his stomach and fuck isn’t this heat the best thing, the worst thing, that Ilya has ever felt?
Ilya walks over to one of the armchairs, the one closest to the floor-to-ceiling windows. All of Boston is visible from here, glittering and dark. Ilya wonders what the view is like in the daytime, if he’d be able to see the tiny people on the tree-lined streets far below, or if they’d be blocked out by the thick orange-red sea of Boston in the autumn. He wonders if the trees are even still full now, or if November has already stripped them bare. Maybe when he leaves later, he’ll look up, just to check.
“On your knees on the seat,” he orders. “Lean against the back.”
Shane crawls over and fuck, Ilya wants to be inside of him already, but Shane is being obedient and so Ilya can have enough self-control to give him a reward first. He waits until Shane is settled in, knees sinking into the cushion, hands gripping the back of the armchair. He drops the first experimental smack on Shane’s left ass cheek. Watches him jump, watches the skin flare red and then slowly return to its normal porcelain. The memories are quiet. “I start now,” he says. “You can hump chair. But if you hurt yourself on roughness, do not complain to me. And.” He lets the word sit in the air. “You will count every hit. If you miss one, I restart. Count again.”
“How many are you doing?” Shane keeps his chin tucked, addressing his white-knuckled grip on the chair. His whole body is quivering.
Ilya leans in, presses a kiss to his shoulder. It’s cold, bumpy with gooseflesh. “Is secret.”
The first one is easy. He strikes him. Shane gasps out, “One.” The memories stay quiet.
The second is, too. Shane counts it.
Ilya drops the third strike precisely on top of the second, slotting his fingers against the imprint of his own hand. It’s harder this time, but Shane is obedient.
The fourth is, once again, layered precisely. The counting comes a little slower.
Five, six, seven, and eight he lays in rapid succession, all spread out. Shane’s ass and the backs of his thighs are red now from it, the count slurring a little. At nine, Ilya is sweating from the exertion. He is still rock hard.
At ten, Shane gives in and humps the chair.
It can’t be pleasant, Ilya knows that. It’s some rough canvas material, probably something very fancy that only MLH money can buy. Shane ruts against it, moans.
“You did not count.”
The ruts stop.
“We will start from one.”
Shane remembers his numbers this time. The feeling of striking him is intoxicating, the memories all but gone, shoved away in some box in that back of Ilya’s head where they belong. Shane is writhing, barely biting out the numbers. Ilya pauses at 23, massages him hands into the muscles there. The skin is so hot. Shane shudders away from his touch. “One more,” he promises. Shane trembles violently, shakes his head.
“Please no,” he begs.
“You can take it, dorogoy.” Sweetheart. It slips out before Ilya can stop it. He strikes him. Waits for the number. Clears his throat when it doesn’t come.
“Twen…” Shane gasps. “Twenty…twenty four.” His head drops forward, pressed into the chair. And then, to Ilya’s surprise, he says, “one more?”
Ilya kneads his ass again. There are bruises forming there, and his own arms are tired. He kisses him again, the same spot as before. “No. Not tonight.”
“Please.” Shane sounds almost desperate. “Not…not twenty four.”
Is this another strange quirk? Like the folded clothes and the fridge full of ginger ale and cabinet stocked with seaweed snacks and chickpea puffs? He presses another kiss in, this one to the sweat-drenched back of Shane’s neck. “I said no,” he repeats, and drops a little nip right there, biting just hard enough that Shane will feel it through the haze. “Do not ask again.”
Shane whimpers, and that’s all Ilya has restraint for. He twists around, grabs the bottle of lube, and sets to work on Shane’s ass, moving quickly from one finger up to two up to three. Shane is pliant and ready, yielding easily to Ilya’s ministrations, sinking back onto his heels so he’s at the right height for Ilya, standing behind him.
When he sinks in, Shane moans in pleasure-pain, Ilya’s hips grinding into the fresh bruises.
The first time Ilya bottoms out, all Shane can feel is the burn of the stretch, the pain washing down the meat of his ass, the ghost of twenty four ashy on his tongue.
Then he pulls out, slams back in hard, and all Shane can feel now is Rozanov. His teeth sink into the too-expensive fabric of the chair, and he feels Rozanov’s nails scraping down his back, every nerve in his body zeroing in on those ten points of pain, the trails of broken red skin scorching in their wake.
He can take it. He can take all of it. For twenty five years, taking it was what Shane’s body has been conditioned for. With his career gone and life all but over, taking the pain is the only thing he’s still good at.
“Fuck, Hollander.” Ilya seizes his hips, pushing him down a few inches, and the weight shifts from his knees to his glutes so he’s stuck holding a kneeling squat, ass hovering over his ankles. Ilya presses against his back, forcing his arch deeper, and he doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to hold himself like this, half-suspended with his jellied arms failing to take any weight off.
Then Ilya slams in again, and the angle is so perfect that Shane sobs, a broken sound that is an accumulation of everything he’s been holding back since he fell to his knees on the kitchen tile. Ilya chuckles, then slams in again, and his stupid right hand spasms on the chair back, pain shooting out from his elbow all the way down his scarred forearm and back up, so blinding and unexpected that Shane’s legs go soft and he falls back, accidentally spearing himself even deeper on Ilya’s cock.
“Roz—” The sound cuts off, choked. Ilya’s arms are suddenly around his waist, holding him up, and Shane feels like a doll with the strings cut — pathetic and weak-limbed, every muscle giving out on him at once.
“Shh.” Ilya pulls Shane’s back to his chest, somehow holding most of Shane’s 200 pounds like it’s nothing, cradling him. “Shh, dorogoy.” Shane still doesn’t know what that word means, assumes it’s slut or something similarly graphic, said in that mind-fuckingly tender tone. He feels lips press against his shoulder blade and Ilya is holding him, rocking Shane side-to-side, flirting with the border of patronizing just as he loves to do. “I have you, kotek.” Another kiss, equally gentle, and the softness of it burns in a whole different way. How is he so fucking tender? How has he figured out how to keep Shane exactly on the edge of what he can tolerate, hold him on the brink with a better understanding than Shane has of himself?
The pain in his hand is fading. The pain on his ass has settled into a dull throb. Shane flexes his thighs experimentally, and they feel strong. Ready. He’s ready.
Shane nods, the most minuscule little motion that Ilya only feels because he’s got his cheek pressed against Shane’s. The reaction is dramatic. Ilya draws back like Shane burned him, shoves him forward so hard that the chair itself teeters up on its hind-legs, then crashes down with a thud that reverberates from Shane’s knees to his ass to Ilya’s cock.
Ilya wraps one hand around to plant on Shane’s stomach — leaving his cock leaking and ignored just below it — and buries the other one deep in his hair, forcing Shane’s back to arch viciously and his thighs to drop back into that agonizing half-raised pose.
Ilya holds him there for a few seconds, his own cock only just barely inside Shane’s hole as Shane settles into a complete understanding of the predicament he’s in, of the way he is being held like the world’s finest bowstring, arched and quivering and aflame. His cock has been leaking a steady stream of precum since Ilya slammed his head against the counter, and he forces the blurriness out of his eyes to look at the drops of it staining his fancy chair.
Then Ilya jerks his hips, slamming forward and pulling Shane back at the same time, burying himself so deep Shane thinks he feels him in his throat.
“Roz—” he tries again.
Ilya slams into him, and the ferocity with which he hits his prostate makes Shane’s vision double. “Don’t fucking come,” he growls, directly into Shane’s ear. He follows it with a harsh snap of his teeth, then bites down on Shane’s lobe, canine digging deep into the soft flesh. “You come, I keep going but with clamps too. Da?”
“Da.” The syllable has to crawl its way out of him. Shane’s thighs burn. His ass burns. His left hand, buried so deep in the chair back he thinks it’ll be permanently dented, burns. His tear-soaked cheeks and cock-bruised throat burn.
He is so, so close to coming.
“Good.” Ilya releases his lobe but stays there, close. He presses down with the hand on Shane’s belly, making him moan and squirm. “With you like this, I can feel myself inside you. So deep, dorogoy.”
Shane’s not sure if he’s telling the truth. Does it matter? When Ilya presses harder with his hand, Shane can certainly feel him, every inch filling him, giving his body everything it craves.
He whimpers, clenches repeatedly around Ilya and the man groans in his ear. “Good boy.” And he sounds so wrecked, so hot and close and out of control, and Shane did that to him. Shane, whose body is rapidly running out of uses, who is best utilized for hurting others and being hurt in turn, is pulling the most ruined sounds out of the gorgeous, sadistic man behind him.
With another groan, Ilya pulls back. “Okey,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Okey.” And then he fucks into Shane like he was made to give it to him, like Shane was made to take it, and the sound that tears out of Shane’s ragged throat is as needy and aching and wet as his cock is, and his scarred right hand drops to his balls, pulls them away from his body for just a little longer, you can make it you can be good and then Ilya’s hand slides up from his stomach, tweaks his nipples on their way to his neck and he says “come for me, dorogoy,” in a voice that tips Shane over the edge and drags Ilya down with him, tumbling down the precipice and smashing them against the rocks before they finally, finally sink into the cool waters waiting below.
For a moment, Shane thinks he might be dead.
Then he feels the scratchy fabric of the couch under his cheek, the warm softness of a blanket around his shoulders, the cool brush of air against his bare, aching cock and ass.
He blinks, eventually focuses in on Ilya, naked and moving through the kitchen: dropping his used condom in the trash, pulling fresh ice packs from the freezer, getting drinks.
When he walks back over, he’s somehow got two glasses balanced in one large hand like he’s some sort of professional waiter. He’s got the painkillers, ice packs, and a rag pinched between his other fingers.
“Okay, Hollander,” he says softly. “Stand up for me. Slow and easy, okay?”
Shane’s knees crack when he stands. Ilya dips forward, catching the blanket and pulling it back onto his shoulders before it can hit the floor. He hands Shane four ibuprofen and watches him drink half his water while he wipes the remnants of cum from his stomach and dick for him with a damp towel. It’s a kitchen towel, Shane notes absently, but the thought floats away as easily as it arrives.
More importantly, Ilya is lowering himself to the couch, guiding Shane to lie down on his side next to him. Shane drops his head on the warm waiting thigh, feels hands coast through his hair. He sighs heavily, feels Ilya sag back into the couch behind him, and lets his muscles finally, finally relax.
Ilya takes five deep breaths, settling into the afterglow. Then he reaches forward, careful not to disturb Hollander on his leg, and grabs the stack of fancy gel bead ice packs. He uses a pillow to prop two against Shane’s flaming ass cheeks. When Shane shudders reflexively, he hopes that his body’s physical response to it isn’t obvious. (It is. Of course it is, Ilya’s still naked and Shane’s face is inches from his flaccid dick. Formerly flaccid dick. And Ilya is just a man, after all. A man with a mean streak and the prettiest good boy inches from his dick.)
He ignores his lower body’s rapid recovery. He forces Shane’s hand flat on the couch cushion, lays another ice pack over his bruising knuckles. A few of the packs are the fancy kind, with a strap to wrap around something. He puts one of those on Shane’s right elbow where he took the hard fall, lets his fingers coast over the tidy geometry of scars racing down Shane’s arm and across his hands, wraps another ice pack around his other hand. “Where else?” he asks.
Shane struggles to recognize what is happening in his body, but Ilya remembers the chin clip, holds one of the packs there with one hand while he turns focus to his own flesh.
He’s taken his Sveta-prescribed post-match painkillers already (“to reduce swelling, dipshit. You think I care about your booboos?”) so all he feels is the dull pulsing of a good fuck still coursing through him. Still, he takes stock of the injuries, ices his abdomen and knuckles. He and Shane are probably going to break skin next week at their rich person event. He hates those events, feels like monkey doing tricks, or a toy on display. (Pull their strings and watch them beat the shit out of each other!) If he and Shane aren’t mindful of it, they’ll have to patch up before they can fuck, and that’s always a bit of a boner-killer for Shane.
Ilya, on the other hand, thinks he might like the tender bits a little too much.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of icing, resting. He will allow himself twenty minutes of sitting here doing nothing, twenty minutes of being lazy.
Then Ilya’s going to text Svetlana her forty minute you’d both better have your clothes on or else I’m joining warning and catch a train home.
Twenty minutes, and then he’ll gently rouse Shane from his nap on Ilya’s thigh, put on his clothes, and walk out. He won’t linger longer than it takes to tuck a pillow under Shane’s head. Maybe he’ll refill Shane’s water glass and leave another stack of pain killers with a sticky note that says not before 4am. But he won’t card his hands through that soft hair one more time, or tug Shane up and guide him to the bathroom to wash them both off. Won’t look at the time, sigh heavily and say T stopped running twenty minutes ago. Guess I stay here tonight, yes? in a voice that perfectly veils all of his pleasure at being forced into Shane’s proximity for a few more hours.
He won’t do any of that, regardless of how many times he’s fantasized about it.
Twenty minutes. And then all the minutes until he sees Shane again next week. Nothing more, nothing less.