Chapter Text
“Hot,” Shane mumbles.
“Yes, I am.” Ilya smiles, proud of his joke, too fucked out to watch it land. He knows Shane meant the temperature of the hotel room.
“The room, idiot,” Shane laughs. Ilya's smile widens.
They lay in silence for a few moments, sweaty and waiting for the air to change, for time to close the moment.
There’s a faint buzzing noise and intermittent bumps against glass. Ilya slants his eyes toward the window, otherwise still, while Shane lifts his head off the pillow. Ilya idly watches a bee buzz along the inside of the glass. He can’t tell what kind of bee it is. He’s not allergic, probably. He should ask if—
“Are you allergic to bees?” Shane asks. He swings his legs off the bed and uses Ilya’s chest to push up and onto his feet. “Cup. I need a cup or something.”
Ilya shakes his head, tired and blissed out. His limbs are heavy. He feels sticky and suspended in time, watching Shane check the nightstand for cups and then wander over to the coffee station. Shane keeps an eye on the bee as he peels the plastic covering off the water cups. He’s still naked.
“Are you allergic? Like you’d have a bad reaction if it stung you?” Shane asks again.
“No,” Ilya mumbles. Then, “You are pretty.”
Shane turns to look over his shoulder, but he’s clearly distracted, clearly still thinking about the bee. “What?” He wanders over to the desk, tearing a few pages off the perforated notepad, still naked.
Naked, naked, naked. He might actually be perfect, Ilya thinks. His pigeon-toed walk, the raised scar on his shoulder, the purple-green-yellow near bile-like bruise on his thigh. His blackened middle toe and the third toe Ilya’s pretty sure lacks a nail. Perched on his shoulder, an angry red pimple all alone where their hockey pads rub constantly against their sweaty compression shirts. It all just doesn’t matter. Not there among the whole of him.
Shane coaxes the bee into the cup. “How’d you get in here, huh? Go on. There you go. What are you doing? There’s no flowers here. What were you thinking?”
“I was on the balcony before you got here,” Ilya says from the bed.
Shane hums, not really paying attention. He slides the stack of notepad pages over the top of the cup. He takes two steps toward the balcony then stops, looking down at his dick, which is, as Ilya has already noted, still out.
“Um,” he says, then walks over to Ilya. “Here, hold her.”
Ilya sits up. “What?” He reaches out for the cup anyways.
“Hold her,” Shane insists. He rushes over to the room’s armchair, where his clothes are folded, shaking out his briefs and looking for the tag, twisting them right ways out, hopping on one leg.
“No,” Ilya pouts.
Shane shakes his head, laughing. “Shut up.”
Ilya lifts the cup to his face to see the bee. “Tell him to leave his dick out.” He extends his arms, bringing the bee closer to Shane. “Listen to her, Hollander. I think she has something to say.”
Briefs on, Hollander grabs the cup and papers back, smile on his face. “Bees can’t talk. To us, anyway.”
The word us sounds nice, if novel. Ilya tests it out.
“Maybe she is bilingual like us.” Shane just ignores him. “Wait, are you allergic?” Ilya calls out, belatedly wondering.
“Me? I’m–ugh, she’s probably all freaked out. And she needs a flower. Fuck.” He uses his elbow to nudge the sliding door to the balcony open. “I should have poked a hole in the cup. Can she breathe?” He steps out. “Can you breathe?” Ilya hears him ask. Shane bends down into the pot at the edge of the balcony.
Ilya admires his back, his thighs, his muscled ass. He wonders idly if there are cameras. There are privacy screens separating the balconies, and his own overlooks the staff parking lot. Shane usually takes stock of these things before he acts, but he was so focused on the bee.
Ilya wipes a hand down his face. His sex-drunk brain slides tipsily into a daydream. Ilya is in the shower, a spider on the floor, calling for Shane to come get it. Then Shane wanders in, calm and quiet and smiling that sweet smile, cup in hand, there to save the day, mumbling to the spider and taking it out into a lush backyard. He’d find it a nice damp dark shaded spot to stretch its eight legs, would turn over a cool stone to reveal four little bugs dancing in the soil underneath, all to set the spider up with a nice healthy meal.
The balcony door closes. Ilya blinks back into reality, which isn’t that much different really, with Shane placing the cup on the table, saying, “I think she’ll be happy there. I wasn’t sure the flowers in the planter were real, but they are.”
Ilya smiles at him. It’s too soft. He tries to twist some sultriness in. Shane wanders closer until he’s at the side of the bed, right next to Ilya.
“Savior,” Ilya says. He runs his hand along the outside of Shane’s bruised thigh. The bruise is so ugly up close.
“Fuck off. I thought they were endangered, but I’m not actually sure.”
“Bees?”
“Honeybees, yeah.”
“Ah.” His hand runs up and down, up and down. “This means they are almost gone?”
“Yeah.” Shane reaches over him to pick up his phone. He taps away on it, and Ilya keeps touching him. It’s nice to touch for no reason while Shane carries on. “Huh. They’re not endangered. But they’re like, uh, important? To the food chain?”
“You are asking or telling me?”
“I hate you so much. I’m telling you because I fucking Googled it. They’re important.”
Up and down, then up further to Shane’s side, then around the small of his smooth back, pulling him forward. Ilya sits up and presses his whole face into Shane’s briefs, sucking in a big filthy breath that settles something restless in his chest.
“Tell me something else,” he says.
Shane’s fingers slide into his hair.
“Okay. You should suck my dick.”
Ilya bends his neck back, laughing, looking up into Shane’s pleased face and the small shit-eating smile tucked privately into his cheek.
“Yes, okay. I can do that. You are maybe my savior.”
“Oh?” Shane’s eyes are steady on him. Ilya wants him to forget the world.
“I have never been stung by an,” he mentally corrects the article to 'a' based on Shane’s pronunciation, then chooses to forgo it completely, a passive grammatical sleight of hand, “by honeybees.”
“So you might be allergic.”
“I might be. Who knows? You saved my life maybe.”
Shane’s hands squeeze his hair and jostle Ilya’s head a little, a playful shake. “Then I want my reward.”
“Da, Hollander, you’ll get it.” He sits up properly, more stable, and pulls Shane’s briefs down. Shane’s dick is still soft, just a bit fatter than when he’s all the way wound down. He smells faintly musty, like dried pre and the faint plasticky scent of lube where Ilya had smeared and stuffed it not fifty minutes ago.
Ilya feels out of his mind a bit, tongue darting out to lick the tip, twice, thrice, four times then a fifth, then a long indulgent drag down towards his balls where the scent is even stronger. Shane hums above him, rubs his thumbs in small circles in Ilya’s scalp above his ears.
Ilya feels so warm and present, safe inside the moment like a bee in a cup. I love this, he thinks, I love this I love this I love this.
Shane lifts a leg onto the bed and moves his hips a little. He hums again. Ilya rests his lips on the tip of Shane’s dick, decides on the article, says, “You buzz like a honeybee.”
“Shut up,” Shane says, a little whiny, the way he gets. Ilya laughs.
“A honeybee,” lips still there, parted, “my honeybee," then his whole mouth is filled with cock. He groans and suckles, drools.
“Fuck,” Shane says, breathless over Ilya’s slurps and mindless moans. “Jesus Christ, Rozanov.”
Ilya’s messy desperation crystallizes into focus when Shane is fully hard. He bobs his head and adds a hand, loose but rhythmic.
Shane is so fucking hot. This never takes long. He’s a tightly wound man who puts bees in flowerpots and collects one-hundred points every year, minimum, with his perfect face and gentle hands, his sailor’s mouth and bitchy little attitude, and below it all: this sweet desperate creature just waiting for Ilya’s mouth and cock to cover and fill him and take him and eat him whole.
I love this I love this I love this.
Shane pulls his hair. “Rozanov, I’ll come," he says tightly, but Ilya whines, too.
No, he wants to say, don’t make me let you go, and Shane says, “fuck,” in a rush of air and pulses in Ilya’s mouth, hot and sticky and not that much because he came half an hour ago.
Ilya keeps suckling until Shane brings his leg down onto the floor, tugging Ilya’s hair to pull him off gently. “Off, off, ah, fuck.”
Ilya collapses back into the pillow. He’s semi hard but doesn’t want to touch it, wants to sit in horny agony and suffer for love of this game.
Shane sits on the edge of the bed, still breathing deep. “Not bad,” he says.
Ilya rolls his eyes. “No, not bad at all. Your soul tastes good, even,” he says. “I know because I just sucked it out of your dick.”
“Did you know you say dick when you’re being an asshole,” Shane mutters, “and cock when you’re actually…”
“When I what?” Ilya blinks innocently at Shane’s back. “When I’m making you come in thirty seconds?”
A pause, then Shane turns and shoves his shoulders with both his warm hands. “It wasn’t thirty seconds, oh my God.”
Ilya laughs at him. “No, actually, I didn’t know I did this. But you are right, I think.” It makes him feel stupidly warm. Shane knows something about him. The something in question is mundane at best, crude at worst, but still something, still knowledge he now had and always would, even if all this stopped.
Shane continues. His hands stay where they are. “You’re quick with your jokes these days. In your second language and everything. I can barely joke in my first language.” His ears are red.
Ilya warms at the compliment. “Thank you,” he says, and means it. “You have jokes sometimes.”
Shane purses his lips like he thinks Ilya’s lying and lays on his back on the sheets, trapping Ilya’s legs under him, lifting his arms over his head, letting the ceiling fan wash cool air over his whole body, spit-wet dick, damp armpits, and all. His briefs are still rolled halfway down his thighs. He’s heavy. He’s a grown fucking man.
And Ilya…
Ilya has fucked Shane Hollander all the way into their adulthood. From Shane Hollander the rookie to Shane Hollander the captain of the Montreal Voyageurs. From shy and awkward stranger to stern and solid whatever Shane is, not a stranger anymore, not a friend but somehow the person Ilya feels closest to in the whole world. Close without even trying. Just raw, all the time. Skinless. It makes him mad. It makes him want.
He wants crazy things. He wants to rub Shane’s dick all over his chest. He wants to shove his nose in his armpit. He wants Shane to kiss his forehead the way he does sometimes under cover of sex and darkness. He wants to check on the bee together, naked on the balcony, and coo into the dirt. He wants to say the name Shane out loud. Spit it into the moment and watch it bend.
He could do it right now. Any second, Shane will get up to leave. The surety of the end means there’s not much time left to ruin.
Have a safe flight back to Montreal, Shane. Goodbye, Shane. Did I dream you up, Shane, or are you the person I’m beginning to think you are?
“Fuck,” Shane says, “can I shower here? I’m so sticky.”
Predictable. Still, Ilya pretends to think. “I worked very hard to make you this sticky. Is disrespectful to shower so soon, I think.”
Shane swats his left pec. “Disrespect.” He pinches Ilya’s nipple, not even looking. “Disrespect was all the goals on Latvala last night. Did you see that shit?”
“Was nasty,” says Ilya, nodding, rubbing his stinging nipple. “Latvala is no good with cross-ice passes though. East to west and it’s over. He is always this way.”
“Yeah, obviously. Four goals against and they were all the same. Kind of embarrassing. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Okay. I will not tell Western conference Finnish goaltender who I have never spoken with before that you are an asshole. But only because you are right. Even you could net one against him cross-ice…on your backhand. And that is proof of how shit he is, because your backhand is—“
Shane thwacks his stomach. “My backhand is a thing of beauty.” He heaves himself up off the bed and pulls his briefs up. There are red marks on his thighs where the elastic dug in, bisecting his bruise.
“Is weak.”
“It’s refined and graceful. Like a bird.”
“Hollander. Please be serious.”
“Hm. No. I play them next week. Think Latvala will fix it by then?”
“He is thirty-three years old. If he hasn’t fixed it yet, he never will.”
Shane nods, picking his clothes up. He looks like he’s about to say something else but changes his mind. He walks to the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
Ilya stands up when the water kicks on and pulls on his sweats. He opens the balcony door and goes to the planter. The plastic cup is there in the soil, lip lodged under a small pink flower, table set for a perfect afternoon. The bee is gone.
Ilya sits on the balcony’s chair. He leaves the door open, damn all future bees and potential allergies. A few minutes later, Shane sticks his head out, hair wet, smelling like hotel soap.
“I’m out,” he says.
Ilya imagines standing up and kissing him goodbye. Today was a fluke. A game in LA for Ilya and a grocery store commercial for Shane. Boston’s out of the playoffs after trading a handful of assets for a goalie tandem that never hit their stride. It’ll be months, almost half a fucking year, before they see each other again. Ilya feels abruptly sick.
He stands to go inside.
“You’re good,” Shane says, waving a hand. “Enjoy the nice weather.”
Ilya sits back down, uncertain. Shane blinks at him once, still halfway out on the balcony. “I’ll, um. See you around?”
They won’t. Ilya stands back up.
It’s awkward. Shane won’t meet his eyes. He lifts his hand to Shane’s jaw and cups it, leaning in for a dirty kiss. Shane’s hand rubs up his back. It’s not really a goodbye kiss. It’s not much of anything. Just an excuse to get close to him again.
Shane breaks away and licks his shiny mouth. “Okay, damn. Bees really do it for you, huh?”
Ilya laughs, relieved. “Yes, I guess so.”
Shane smiles and backs away toward the door. “Bye, Rozanov. Don’t be too jealous when I make playoffs.”
I will be. I’ll be jealous, and I’ll fucking miss you.
“Wildcard if you’re lucky. Pathetic. Go away, Hollander,” Ilya says, trying to grin.
Shane turns, looks out the peephole, opens the door, and casts a furtive glance up and down the hallway. Dance done, he’s gone.
The door latches shut. It’s very quiet. The fan whirs. The air conditioner kicks on and bleats into the empty room. Ilya suddenly feels like he might cry.
It’s just getting harder to leave and be left.
The yawning desire to know Shane doesn’t cinch shut anymore. It just lingers in him, wide open and horribly empty, with nothing but years of rushed hookups to fill it up. What does it mean, that Shane folds his clothes? Ilya knows he does it. But why? So he’s the kind of person to bundle insects up and move them outside instead of swatting them dead. Did he even say whether he was allergic to bees? Everything Ilya knows about Shane is like this. A bastardized fact. Passively observed, not willfully disclosed. Shane Hollander is a fraction of a real person, and even that is enough to spin Ilya out of his mind with want.
Ilya goes to the bed and lays back the way Shane did, arms back, face tilted up to the ceiling fan, sticky sweat drying on his chest.
Something very strange and horrible is happening inside him, and he’s not an idiot, he’s not blind to his own experiences. The intensity of his reaction to Shane is taking longer and longer to fade. It was always there, but a week, two even, was enough to get him back on even keel. Time isn’t helping anymore. One day, this ache won’t fade at all. That day could very well be today. He feels beat up enough by Shane leaving to believe that it might be.
His phone buzzes on the floor somewhere. It must have fallen out of his pocket at some point. He heaves himself up and crouches on the floor to read the message. It’s Cliff asking if his “lonely ass is coming out tonight,” and it hits too close to home for him to respond right away. He texts Shane instead.
Send link you found about bees
It’s a little trick he’s learned. Texting right after he leaves is a reminder to his body that the goodbye isn’t forever. He can kind of talk to Shane still. In a way.
Shane responds in under a minute. It’s just a link to a National Geographic article from 2015.
Ilya messes around on the Internet himself for a while. He realizes he’s smiling at his phone and schools his face, embarrassed even where no one can see. Finally, he finds what he’s looking for and sends it. Here, now you can learn about Russian bees.
The link is to a Russian grammar blog and goes over soft and hard ‘b’ sounds. Ilya is very clever, and Shane should know.
Wow, you’re so clever, Shane sends, mirroring Ilya’s thoughts, and it makes him feel better and worse all at once. It makes him feel like they actually know each other. Do they?
Ilya’s brain keeps snagging on Shane’s concerned voice, pitched low for the bee, saying, “Can you breathe?”
It makes him think of Shane’s face scrunched up in Sochi, asking, “Are you okay?”
Ilya had stumbled into Shane’s care like the bee in this stuffy hotel room. Shane put her in the flowerpot, right where she was meant to be, but like Ilya, her first impulse was to fly away.
Ilya stands up and walks to the shower. The room is still humid, and there is a towel folded in the corner of the room. He hates that it’s there. Shane should have stayed. They should have fucked again and talked more and eaten a late lunch and sat on the balcony and waited for the bee to come back. Ilya should have asked him to stay.
The rest of the day passes this way. He plays a game, takes a puck above the ankle, loses the game, waits for his bruise to bloom. Shane should have stayed. He peruses his calendar in the hotel bed, flicks from one month to the next in a sick scroll. Boston and Montreal have a preseason game in September, then nothing until November. Shane should have stayed.
Time unfurls in front of him. Somehow, after nearly eight years, Ilya knows he is mere hours from being fully in love. The clock has paused, the weeks will pass, but come September, come November, come Shane Hollander within touching distance, then, the countdown will resume. If he asks Shane to spend the night, that’s it. That’s the rest of his hours, done in a day.
He locks his phone and sets it on the nightstand. The balcony door is open. He picks his phone up again and texts Shane.
Honeybee never came back
Yeah, she’s a bee with wings.
:( Did you ask her to stay?
Again. She isn’t bilingual.
But if she was like us?
Go to bed, Lily.
Goodnight, Jane