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It is hot, even with the air-con on and the visors down. Rozanov swears, complains, turns up the fan, lifts his shirt at the waist. "Hollander. It is too warm."
"Do you really think I'm controlling the sun? And did you notice I am also in the car?"
Rozanov suggests they stop. He says a cold drink would help. He says it's not a road trip without candy. He says he needs a cigarette anyway. He says it will be cooler if they get off the fucking freeway for a minute.
"I've never met anyone as annoying as you," Shane tells him, meaning it. Anyway they're not stopping; there's plenty of gasoline and no rest stops soon.
"You are sweating, Shane Hollander." Rozanov wipes a finger along Shane's jaw, and gets his hand slapped away for his pains.
Rozanov puts his finger in his mouth, briefly, like he didn't even think about it: and Shane almost drives off the side of the road.
*
"Where are we?"
Barely outside Boston. The traffic is shit.
"Pull over. I will drive."
You're not driving.
"Hollander. I can drive."
You can't drive, for one, because you aren't licensed. For two, this is a rental, and I rented it, and you're not --
"You are a terrible driver. Like scared little old woman."
Fuck you, an Asian joke? Really?
"Hollander, you are thirty kilometers under speed limit on freeway. This is terrible driving for anyone. I drive like sports racer, very professional. Never crash. If you would please pull the fuck over --"
*
Ilya Rozanov, asleep in the sunlight in the moving car, legs awkward, arm curled under his head against the window: he is not looking, so Shane looks. And looks.
The sun crosses his face and leaves it, dapples and goes, flashing and shading, and if Shane weren't driving he might take the excuse to touch him. His mouth is open a little; his hair is in his eyes.
His eyes are closed and Shane is driving and he keeps looking at Ilya, keeps wanting to touch Ilya, keeps touching this want like it's something he is permitted, for once eyes-open, instead of dappled and hidden, shaded and gone, impossible to face like this, in the sunlight.
*
He has looked before. Probably everyone has looked before, okay, but Shane has looked, feeling his throat tighten and his gut warm and his thighs tense, shift, blood flowing to many inconvenient parts of him, because for better or worse Ilya is his coworker and sort-of rival and anyway, Shane isn't gay. He isn't.
And Rozanov isn't gay. He brings women to his rooms and sends them back out a few hours later, walking crooked, fucked to radiance, glowing in the security cameras. What does it matter if he holds Shane's gaze too long? What does it matter if he was in the showers when Shane was in the showers, if he was hard in the showers, if he looked at Shane, if he smiled when Shane -- humiliated -- was looking too?
It doesn't matter at all. Neither of them are gay.
*
There is Ilya, asleep. He is close enough to touch. Shane could push back the hair fallen into his eyes; Shane could tuck the loose strands behind his ear.
He wouldn't wake up.
He would never even know.
*
"Where are we?" without opening his eyes.
Mid-way to Montréal. Almost.
"You're tired."
I'm fine.
Rozanov yawns. "I am tired from doing nothing. You are tired from driving. I should drive."
No.
"Da dah, of course no. You never do what is good."
Asshole, says Shane, automatically. He's staring at the road, grateful/not grateful that Rozanov is awake and chattering again.
"I am good at driving, Hollander. Good at long drives."
The answer is still no.
"Your answer is always no. But maybe we change it, yes? Did I tell you this before now, that in Russia, I had a girlfriend."
Congrats?
"Nadia. Smart, funny. Beautiful of course. And I like her very much, and she likes me, but we are sixteen, you know? What can you do. And Moskvý is a small town. So we go and drive." He yawns again, adjusts the seat, stretches his legs. "Her father says he hates me but he gives her condoms, long roll. I take them to use and I see -- tap tap tap -- every one has a hole through middle." He laughs.
Great parenting, Shane says.
"Yes. Her father thinks I will be rich athlete, make her pregnant, I pay money forever. But she does not want this, I don't want this. We drive and talk about our fathers."
He goes on, and Shane is listening-not-listening to this, he is thinking about the distance gone and the miles to go and the overheating needle shifting on the check-engine gauge; he's thinking of how far to a gas station and he's thinking of a younger Ilya Rozanov, half in love with a beautiful girl and everything she could do for him, the ways she could trap him, the ways they could snare each other.
The road is entrancing and the conversation is filling his mind like water and it's impossible to think of Rozanov like this: young.
*
It is impossible to stop thinking of him being young. Was his hair longer? Did he have an awkward stage, everything in his face at odds? Bad teeth and acne? All Shane can imagine is the same Ilya, shorter and thinner but still cocky even at seven years old, mouthing off on some kiddie rink -- and beautiful, even then. Shane stupidly almost asks Were you always this good-looking? and bites his own tongue instead, deliberately hard, pressing down until it swells.
He makes a tiny, pained sound.
Rozanov pauses in his monologue and looks at Shane, and tilts his head, and doesn't go on.
*
Silence awhile. Shane says, unable to stop himself, unwilling to hear the answer: Your ex. She didn't end up pregnant?
Rozanov shrugs. He says, "She do -- used to do a thing to help me on long drives."
Help you. Flatly.
"Mm. Yes. With her mouth. And her hands."
Shane feels warm. His blood is awake.
You know I don't want to hear this.
"Always slow," says Ilya Rozanov; he's leaning his head against the window again, seeming drowsy, careless, confiding. "There is no hurry. She reach across and rub gentle over me, slow and nice, make me hard."
Please stop talking.
"You do not like slow?"
Shane's hands clench around the steering wheel. I'm fucking driving, Rozanov. And you're a fucking asshole.
"I know you are driving," says Rozanov. "This is why I say this." His voice is deep, quiet, sleepy. It feels like a hand running down Shane's spine.
Shane tries not to obviously shiver, and succeeds. He tries not to look over, and fails: so he sees Rozanov is not looking at him, he is looking straight ahead, a strange, dreamy, unfocused expression in his face.
I thought you didn't kiss and tell.
Rozanov closes his eyes. "I do not do this thing usually. But she was a good girl, my Nadyusha."
What ... what happened to her?
"Happen, nothing. She is married. Children. We do not talk. My father ..." He says something in Russian, apparently trying to think of the right translation, because it's in the same mild tone. "My father did not like this -- driving with girlfriend. He says to me that I am sixteen years old, I have hockey one and two and three, girls are never. Do not think of it."
He really expected a sixteen year old boy to stop thinking of girls?
"Well," says Rozanov. "I did stop with girls then. But I think he would not be happier that I fuck Sasha next."
Shane doesn't answer.
"Sasha is little name for Alexander," says Rozanov, in his translation voice. "Sasha is my coach's son."
Rozanov.
"You do not know this?"
No! No, I --
"You do not try this?"
Shane makes another mistake and looks at him: and Rozanov is looking back.
*
His eyes are so clear.
Shane can't fucking breathe.
*
Looking at him makes Shane's chest hurt. It makes his dick twitch. It makes him want things, think of things, consider things. It makes him sick to his stomach, sick in his mind, guilt mixing with fear and desire, a fetid inability to act: all of him is unhealthy. His great, impossible wanting.
You do not try this?
Leave me alone.
*
He is so beautiful and Shane wants him so much and it is impossible to misunderstand the meaning of his expression, even if you're trying as hard as Shane is trying; impossible to misunderstand his low murmur of "We try this?" and his hand, now on Shane's hip, spreading long fingers over Shane's thigh, pressing in just a little. Just enough for Shane's muscle to tense, not voluntarily, and his knees to shift apart.
*
Shane reaches over. He turns up the air conditioning.
Rozanov laughs.
*
"I'm hot," says Shane. "You need to move your fucking hand." He's proud of himself: his voice doesn't shake at all, and he managed to get it out without saying Please rub me.
"Yes," says Rozanov, laughing still, "you are very hot" -- but he does it: he takes away his hand, dragging the fingers, curling them around the gearknob instead, rubbing the ball of it with his thumb. He says, contemplatively, "I did not know I like freckles before."
Please fuck me.
Shane keeps his eyes focused ahead.
"It is always funny to me how this happens, you know? I like this or that, is normal, but then I meet someone and ..." An open gesture. He drops his left hand to his own leg, rubbing his knee. "Now I see freckles, or eyes like yours, brown eyes, with that long flat line to them, we call it mindal, I do not know the English --"
"Almond-shaped."
"Yes. This. I see this and I think: Yes. Because it is on you. And I have that feeling, that same yes when I see you."
"Rozanov."
"Is it No, when you see me?"
Please just put your fucking hands on me. Just pull down the zipper, put your fingers inside, and --
"Leave me alone," says Shane. His voice breaks on the words, like he's a child, like anyone can look at him and see clear to the bottom of what he wants.
Rozanov does.
*
They don't talk about anything at all for a while, then. The sun beats down, boiling into the car no matter how they adjust the shades; it ripples on the asphalt, looking like pools of water that disappear every time when they approach. Mirage.
This place is a mirage, this space between them: it will disappear if he gets any closer. It will ebb away and take his entire life with it.
*
"I am hungry," Rozanov is saying, "it is half fourteen --"
"Two-thirty."
"Da, okay, so is time for food, yes? And cigarettes. This is terrible for me, you are cruel unfeeling master, refusing me to smoke in the car."
"It's a rental car."
"I have an addiction, Hollander. This is biological need."
Shane is halfway through replying "You're just an asshole" when the engine overheats and gives up.
*
They make it to the side of the road.
Rozanov says something which seems to be Thank fucking fuck I can finally fucking smoke because he does not even bother getting his cellphone before he lights up, stepping away from the roadside under the shelter of a shade-tree, breathing in deeply. He is watching Shane, who has opened the hood and is now cursing.
"You know things about cars?"
"Nothing."
"Then what are you doing?"
"I don't know. Maybe it'll be something obvious --"
"Like dial on screen that says engine is too hot? This is the obvious you need?"
"Fuck you," tiredly. He shuts the hood and goes beneath the trees, a little way away. Calls for help.
Rozanov finishes one cigarette and has another.
Shane Hollander, who hates smoking and drinking, who lives on a pure whole-food macro diet and gets enough sleep and obeys his personal trainers and flosses his teeth twice a day and puts on sunblock before he leaves the house --
Shane is jealous, with a full-body ache, of all of this. He wants to be every part of it: the cigarette held in Rozanov's fingers, the lips parting to suck it in. He wants to be the air and the ashes, the sweat gathering on his forehead.
He turns away and talks to the tow truck.
*
"Come on."
"What? What are you doing. What are we doing."
"They said to let it cool down and try it again. So we're trying it again."
"They cannot come here and, you know, pull the car?"
"Nobody can come out for hours, and it's just overheating. If we can make it to the next rest stop, we can get a place for the night and go on tomorrow early in the morning, before it gets hot. It'll be fine. We'll even make practice." Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
"I do not think you know this much about cars," says Rozanov, which predictably leads to more complaints about how Shane drives, and then they're back on the road, windows down and air conditioning off, fan blowing hot air full-force. "Is this what tow driver said?"
"Yeah, asshole. Actually it is."
"And you always do what people tell you to do?"
"When they know more than me."
"You are so boring."
"Fuck you."
"Is too hot for this." He puts his hands under his head, leaning back against the headrest. "We fuck later." He has circles under his eyes, gray half-moons, and sweat has darkened the tshirt under his arms.
Shane would like to rub his nose along the filthy crease of that arm and lick the sweat off his skin. He can feel the blush in his own cheeks, the sweat damp on his back, the way he is looking, how Rozanov sees him look: but he can't stop himself anymore. There's no space between the desire and the action.
He manages to say, faintly, "You're disgusting. You're a freak."
-- And he sees, from the corner of his eye, Rozanov's smile.
*
The sky is still bright with summer-sun whiteness, and the engine is quite warm, when they find a hotel. "Wait here," Shane tells Rozanov, terse. He shuts the car door a bit too hard and goes into the lobby.
He feels Rozanov watching him, feels how unsteady and awkward his own gait is, feels the rub and press of his dick against his pants, half-hard, as he has been all fucking day, being near Rozanov, smelling him, feeling the ghost-memory of his hands on Shane's thigh, his thumb on Shane's jawline, his voice in his ear, rough and low.
Nevermind.
*
"Can I ... do you have two open rooms? One night."
The worker at the front desk doesn't even check. "Yeah, we have vacancies. Name?"
Shane Hollander, hockey god, says "It's for ... um ... It'll be under ..."
He glances through the window, to outside, to the parking lot. Rozanov is there inside the car: he has pushed back the seat and rolled down the window and propped a foot on the dashboard, knees akimbo. He's smoking, of course; one arm is out the window, cigarette dangling ash.
He looks fucking edible.
He looks like a fucking mistake.
"John Smith," says Shane.
The worker gives him a flat stare that reminds Shane so strongly of Rozanov's are-you-fucking-kidding-me expression, that he actually feels warm again, even in the ice-cold marvelous forced air blowing down on them.
Shane clears his throat. "Just one room, actually."
"Two queens?"
"Uh -- what?"
"Beds," she says, again without blinking.
"Two is fine. Great. Good. Yeah. Thanks. Please."
He's already regretting this.
*
Outside is miserable again, not only because it's sweaty as the devil's balls. "We're in 105," he says to Rozanov, who is outside the car now and looking out at the dusk, finishing what has got to be his tenth cigarette of the day.
"Only one room?"
"It's all they had."
Rozanov says, with no inflection, "They are so busy here they can put no other cars in parking lot?"
"Maybe it's a cleaning thing. I don't fucking know. So you get the choice. Do you want a bed or do you want to sleep in the bathtub?"
"I want to fuck you in a bed. Are there two of those for us? Or only one. If only one bed, you sleep in wet spot, da?"
"Firstly --" he drags out his bag from the backseat, settling the familiar weight on his shoulder -- "you're an asshole. Secondly," shutting the door, "there's going to be no sex, and you know that. Third --"
Shane turns around and bites back a yelp.
Rozanov is so close. "What is third?" His cheeks are pink with heat or sunburn and he smells of old smoke and sour body and he is close enough to touch, close enough to see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the individual hairs falling in his face, curling loose around his ears, damp with sweat.
Shane can't speak.
Rozanov reaches out -- slowly -- Shane could stop him any time at all -- and rubs a thumb on the edge Shane's mouth. It is almost paternal; he could be wiping off food from an infant learning to eat: except that Shane is caught by it, unable to breathe, tied up in his own reaction, so hard that he can't move or speak or breathe. It's a ridiculous response, all outsized to what is actually going on, but --
"Room number is what?"
"105."
"Okay," says Rozanov. And then, almost kindly: "Hollander, go. You have keys."
*
Shane makes it inside the room and unfolds the luggage rack and drops his bag on it and turns to see Rozanov, sitting on a bed, waiting.
"I wanted that one," Shane tells him.
"So okay, you have it," says Rozanov. He comes close -- pushes Shane, a nudge -- and puts his hands on his neck. He is so warm. Shane is so warm.
"We shouldn't so this."
"Do what?" says Rozanov. "Who is doing? I only want to look." Tugging up at the hem of Shane's shirt. "Is road trip, yes? We are tourists. Is so much to see."
"You've seen me before." He's certainly seen Rozanov every goddamn day, walking around comfortably nude in a way that raised eyebrows even in the locker room.
And: okay, right, he has seen this before. He knows what Rozanov looks like. They've shared showers and hotel rooms and plane rides. It's not strange unless he makes it strange.
Shane puts his hands on Rozanov's waistband and, slowly, takes down the button, slowly works down the zipper -- this is more difficult -- the dick behind it was pressing against the fabric, now pressing against Shane's hand --
And every thing else in the world drops away.
Shane goes to his knees and takes Rozanov's cock in his mouth a bare second before Rozanov swears and knots his fingers in Shane's hair and pulls him up, kissing him hard enough to draw blood, tugging off his shorts and pushing him back on the bed and crawling on top of him in what seems like one movement, kissing his neck with a languid confidence that is all out of odds to Shane's own desperation, digging his fingers in Rozanov's waist and back, pulling him tighter, biting -- whatever he can reach, bicep and shoulder and finally a nipple in a way that gets a fucking response, startled laughter and "stop, stop, you will take it off"
and Shane rolls to be on top now, his knee between Rozanov's legs and pushing them apart to kneel between, bending down for more kisses while Rozanov holds him there, sucking on his tongue in a way that makes Shane shiver and pull off, more laughing, the asshole
and now he is touching Shane, down his stomach and down further, murmuring and thumbing the hair leading down, the vee of his hips, hands curling over his hips, fingers on his ass
and Shane is so hard it actually hurts, and
*
Rozanov is not gentle. Shane doesn't want him to be gentle and probably Rozanov wouldn't listen anyway, the way he moves them both like he's slamming Shane full-contact and twenty miles an hour into the boards, taking Shane's cock into his mouth and swallowing around the tip, pulling off to draw lines up from the base that feel like icewater in the cooled room, against his still-hot skin: Shane has one moment to think I must smell terrible before that mouth is on him again, spit running down, and he can't help it can't help it -- he looks down.
Rozanov is looking up. His mouth is around Shane's dick and he doesn't have a hint of regret or shame or fear or impatience on his face
and Shane comes so hard he whites out.
*
Surfacing to Rozanov on top now, kneeling around Shane's waist and kissing his mouth like he's wanted it for years: Shane tastes his own come and it's absolutely disgusting and he can't stop kissing back.
He wants to never leave this motel. He wants to ruin Rozanov for anyone else. He runs his hands along that fucking body and gets an absolutely holy noise in response and it's his turn again: how can he still want this? but he's twitching to hardness again and Rozanov is very much there and Shane shuts his eyes and opens his mouth, he gives in gives in gives in, holding loose, letting Ilya Rozanov gently fuck his mouth: he's too fucking tired to fight getting what he wants, too tired to complain when he pulls out and pulls up his face to kiss, finishing grinding off on Shane's stomach, reaching down between them to finish Shane one more time, kissing him again, holding him upright while he kisses him, rubbing the tip while Shane whimpers and pleads, kissing Ilya, kissing him back.
*
Later, when Shane is nearly asleep:
"What was it you say not to do? Before now. Outside."
Oh my god. Shut up.
"I remember you say no fucking. I know that one."
Gloating isn't cute, Ilya.
"No, no, you were very good, very strong. Big conviction. You told me there is no fucking and no kissing and no cuddles, I think was third."
Mm, says Shane, with his head tucked against Ilya's neck.
"You are hard man, Shane Hollander. Tell me no to everything I want."
More people should tell you no. It builds character.
"What means this?"
It means you're an asshole. And you deserve to sleep in the wet spot.
"But you will not do this to me, I think."
Too tired to move beds. Sleep now.
You smell like my come, Ilya says, low and hot in his ear: it's the most delicious feeling, Shane hates him so fucking much. And he's going to make Ilya pay for that. Tomorrow. When practice is over. When they're alone.