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They had trounced Toronto 4-1 and, although winning was no longer an anomaly for the Centaurs and hadn’t been for several years now, a victory against Toronto always tasted particularly sweet. Perhaps not quite as sweet as when they destroyed Montreal, if you were to ask Ilya, but still pretty great.
The whole team had gone to Monk’s to celebrate and were now scattered around the bar, in various states of drunkenness, clustered in little groups at tables or at the dart board. Even Shane had decided to let loose a little and was well on his way to finishing his second beer, standing by the pool table with Haasy, Troy, and Harris, a cue stick in his hand and a relaxed smile on his face.
Ilya had long since lost count of the beers he, himself, had consumed and was just starting to feel a slight pleasant buzz.
The atmosphere was jovial and light. There was a pleasing din of conversation ringing throughout the bar, drowning out the sound of 80s classics played through tinny speakers.
Dykstra returned to the table with a tray of shots for Ilya, Wyatt, and Bood who were sitting at a booth, happily chatting.
He beamed at them as he carried the tray over, whooping when he placed it on the table with considerably less finesse than the shot glasses warranted. Ilya watched as they teetered dangerously before righting themselves, some of the clear liquid sloshing onto the tray.
“Evan, no, man, please don’t,” Wyatt moaned, hiding his face in his palms at the sight of the shots. Ilya grinned at him. Not a fan of clear liquor at the best of times, Hazy had already been looking quite unsteady on his feet when he sat down with them and that had been at least one pint ago.
“C’mon Hazy,” Dykstra bellowed, a bright smile on his face stretching the split lip he’d acquired during the game in a way that must have been painful but didn’t seem to dampen his spirits in the least. “We’ve gotta celebrate! This is my week!” He squeezed in next to Bood, slapping him lightly on the shoulder, full to the brim of a restless type of energy that apparently required channeling into classic macho expressions of friendship. “First, a victory against Toronto then it’s my birthday on Wednesday and my wife just texted, promising me a birthday blowjob. So you have to do shots with me!”
Wyatt grinned wryly at the obvious delight on Evan’s face, raising his eyebrows. “Okay, I guess I’ll drink to that,” he said, conceding defeat entirely too easily.
“Hell yeah,” Bood chimed in but Ilya, who had already been reaching for one of the shots, had stopped mid motion, brow furrowing.
It wasn’t often, these days, that he got lost in the English language but this was a phrase he had never encountered before. He definitely would have remembered.
“What is birthday blowjob?” He asked, confused. Grabbing two of the shots from the tray and passing one to Hazy. “I have never heard of this.”
Was this some sort of Canadian tradition Shane had never bothered telling him about? Although he doubted Shane would have kept it to himself if he knew about it. It sounded promising.
“You know,” Dykstra said, still grinning and wiggling his eyebrows at Ilya, as though they were in on some joke together. Ilya raised his own eyebrows in return, wordlessly prompting him to explain further. He watched as Dykstra’s smile waned, transforming into a confused little frown, seemingly not entirely sure whether Ilya was ribbing him or genuinely uninformed. Apparently, deciding to take him at face value, he explained, “like, you get a blowjob on your birthday,” Evan shrugged at the table’s other occupants who laughed and returned the gesture. It seemed Ilya was the only one out of the loop.
He could tell they expected the conversation to end there, as though Evan’s straight-forward answer had actually clarified anything. Unfortunately, it did not. “Like she wakes you up with it?” Ilya questioned, trying to incite a proper explanation of the significance of the birthday blowjob.
“No,” he replied, “I mean, I don’t think she will, but that would be pretty fucking great.” This prompted further laughter, Wyatt raising his mostly empty glass in a silent salute.
Ilya frowned slightly. He felt oddly wrong-footed and no closer to understanding the in-joke everyone else at the table seemed to be sharing. It brought back latent feelings of inadequacy, from years of wading through a language that still didn’t feel like his own.
“So what then?”
“What do you mean?” Dykstra looked even more confused than Ilya by now, both Wyatt and Bood seemingly content to sit back and watch this exchange happen, Hazy looking slightly wry and Boodram openly grinning.
“Like, what makes it special?” Ilya clarified.
This seemed to give Dykstra pause. He blinked at Ilya a couple of times, as though trying to gauge whether he was being made fun of. Ilya simply blinked back at him, raising his eyebrows in an attempt to signal his earnestness, hoping that would finally inspire a proper answer. “Um,” Evan paused, “the fact that it’s happening?” It sounded like a question.
“On your birthday?” Ilya asked.
“Yeah, man,” he said, slapping his arm as though Ilya had finally gotten it, which, unfortunately for all concerned, was not the case.
“But is just normal blowjob?”
Dykstra’s grin took on a slightly awkward edge, “yeah, I mean... Caitlin doesn’t like doing it all that much and with the kids we don’t really get the chance that often so it’s like a rare treat.”
A slightly awkward silence followed.
“Oh,” Ilya said, retroactively feeling a little bad for having made Evan explain himself to that extent if the poor man was this excited about the prospect of a blowjob happening three days from now. Still, that opened up a whole well of new questions and, even as Dykstra turned away from his gaze, clearly ready to drop this particular topic of conversation, Ilya could feel the curiosity bubbling in his stomach.
Chronically unable to leave well enough alone, he had to ask, “how rare?”
Dykstra rubbed at the back of his neck, turning back to Ilya, he looked somehow both exasperated and vaguely embarrassed, “I don’t know man, like, a few times a year?”
“A few times a year?” Ilya repeated incredulously and perhaps a bit loudly although the ambient noise of the bar muffled it somewhat, with only a couple of his teammates raising their heads at the noise. Upon noticing the source, they all turned back to whatever had been occupying their attention before the outburst, seemingly writing it off as another instance of Rozanov simply being Rozanov.
Ilya turned beseechingly to Bood and Wyatt, desperately needing to gauge their reactions to this news. Surprisingly, neither one looked particularly perturbed.
Ilya’s lips were slightly parted, his eyes wide, but apparently neither of the other men found this at all shocking.
“This is normal?” He questioned, aware he was probably being rude but completely unable to help it.
Bood shrugged, “yeah, I mean,” he said, “I was in a relationship for a couple of years where I think she went down on me like four or five times.”
What with Ilya having hijacked the conversation, their shots still sat untouched in front of them. Perhaps it would be polite to let the matter go, to celebrate poor Dykstra’s tragic special occasion blowjob and swallow his curiosity but Ilya had never been particularly adept at politeness for politeness’ sake and he was in the company of friends so he couldn’t resist pushing this conversation further.
“What about now?” He asked Bood, whose lips immediately tugged upwards in a self-satisfied smirk.
“Well, I’m lucky, Cassie really likes it so I usually get up to, like, two a week.” He wagged his eyebrows at the guys, drawing a grudging sound from Dykstra and a little whoop from Wyatt.
“And this is a lot for you?” Ilya asked, incredulous.
Bood shrugged, making a face that vaguely translated into, ‘I mean, yeah.’
Ilya turned to Wyatt, needing to hear from everyone at the table. “What about you?”
Wyatt looked unsure about whether or not to answer at first but seemed to decide it wouldn’t be a breach of Lisa’s trust to share this with the guys.
“A few times a month, I guess, maybe once a week.”
With every answer Ilya’s astonishment grew.
He’d been aware that he and Shane had more and probably better sex than most other people. Actually, definitely better. That was an area in which he was well versed and he was aware that no one quite shared Hollander’s enthusiasm for having a cock in his mouth but he hadn’t been aware of just how dire the situation seemed to be for other people.
Sure, he hadn’t been in a committed relationship before Shane but he had taken plenty of people home and, without actually having compiled any data on the matter, would say those hook-ups included a blowjob element probably 80% of the time.
“Jesus, Roz,” Bood said, “how often are you getting your dick sucked?”
Ilya frowned, halting only for a moment before answering, “most days.”
It did, indeed, seem like Ilya was the outlier judging by the guys’ reactions.
A smattering of, “holy shit,” “most days?” and “Jesus” was apparently the feedback that revelation warranted.
“You’re getting blown on the daily?” Bood clarified.
Ilya shrugged, “most days,” he repeated, “sometimes less, sometimes more, especially if we have the day off.”
“You’re getting several blowjobs a day on days off?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good on Hollzy,” Bood said and Ilya bristled a little at that.
“Wait,” Wyatt interjected, “how often are you giving blowjobs?”
Ilya shrugged, “about the same, little less maybe.” After all, Shane was often so eager for Ilya to fuck him that he barely even had patience for preparation, frequently taking care of that himself before pouncing and sucking Ilya down to the root until he couldn’t take it anymore and threw Shane down on the nearest available surface. Shane loved nothing more than feeling Ilya grow hard in his mouth and never wasted an opportunity for it. Also, if given the choice between getting his dick sucked or his ass eaten, Shane would pick the latter every time so if they were purely talking about blowjobs, not oral in general, Shane was definitely ahead of him in numbers.
Wyatt let out a low whistle which was cut off by Dykstra's question, “you guys have been together for years though, what the hell were you like when it was new?”
Ilya shrugged. “Back then, we only met when we played each other and maybe for awards, All Stars, that type of thing.” It wasn’t until Shane transferred to Ottawa that they really got to spend more than a couple of nights in a row together except for summer. “It was years before we ever slept in the same bed.”
Wyatt nodded, a sympathetic smile on his face.
“Still, that was a while ago,” Bood pointed out, “this is Hollzy’s fourth season with us.” Ilya just nodded. “You guys have been living together that whole time. You don’t even have to be away from one another for roadtrips, like most of us.”
He didn’t really know what to say to that. Maybe most people would have slowed down by now. Maybe the urgent need to have Shane under him or on his knees in front of him should have faded somewhat in the years that had passed but it hadn’t. Ilya wasn’t sure it ever would.
The thought of a Shane Hollander who didn’t drop to his knees as soon as he got Ilya through the door; who didn’t wake him up from between his legs with his tongue lazily dragging up his shaft; who didn’t beg Ilya to let him just hold him in his mouth until he was ready for another round was as unthinkable as a Shane Hollander who no longer cared about hockey. Ilya couldn’t quite imagine it.
“Oh,” Wyatt said, something like comprehension dawning on his face, “is it because, like, other things require more preparation so blowjobs are, like, your go-to?”
Ilya slowly shook his head, slightly amused by this question, “no, we fuck most days, too.”
He really didn’t think any of this was such a huge revelation. These guys shared a locker room with both of them and it wasn’t exactly uncommon for there to be some traces of the night before in the form of bruises, scratches or other marks on either his or Shane’s body. Not to mention the amount of playful ribbing they’d been subjected to over what the guys sometimes overheard on the road, through the walls of their hotel room. Still, a small “wow, okay,” escaped Wyatt. Bood just nodded silently, eyes a bit wide.
It was Evan who eventually broke the silence, brows furrowed and eyes slightly narrowed, “I’m not sure I believe you, man,” he huffed a little laugh, “sure this isn’t just because you need to live up to your reputation from the days you were pulling a different chick every night?”
It was definitely playful but Ilya’s jaw dropped open in mock outrage, “you think I would lie?”
Dykstra shrugged, grinning at Ilya, “wouldn’t put it past you.”
“How do you think Hollander locked me down?” he asked, a wolfish grin stretching his lips. “That mouth had a lot to do with it. Why would I not want it every day?”
“Oh, I’m not disputing that you want it. It’s that you claim you get it every day that I doubt.”
“Wow,” Ilya dragged out the vowel of the word, letting it stretch, “you really don’t know Shane,” he replied, smile never wavering.
Dykstra still looked unconvinced.
“It is one thing he is better at than hockey,” Ilya continued, dropping his voice a bit conspiratorially, perhaps leaning a little towards smug, “and he loves showing off.”
Bood snorted at that and Ilya leaned back in the booth, stretching his legs out under the table.
“Anyway, how do I know you guys are not lying?” he challenged, “trying to make me go easy on you next practice because of your sad no blowjob lives?” The joking accusation raised some immediate protests from the guys that seemed centred on the idea that their lives were not sad and blowjob-less and that Ilya was simply unaware of what qualified as normal. He quelled them with a raised hand, continuing to speak over them, "unlike you, there’s an easy way to fact-check what I’m saying,” he told them, nodding his head towards where Shane was busy lining up his last shot to sink the 8 ball.
He let his gaze linger on his husband as he adjusted the cue minutely, taking in the position of the remaining balls on the table. It seemed to be a slightly unfortunate line-up, the 8 ball tucked too closely to the side rail for it to be a clean shot. Still, Ilya watched as he pulled back the cue and sent it careening into one of the corner pockets, much to Troy’s chagrin.
Ilya couldn’t help the proud little smile that tugged at his lips and watched as Luca whooped at the victory Ilya would bet money Shane carried him to. He then slapped Troy on the back, shaking his shoulder a bit in a mocking commiseration all while beaming at Shane, high fiving him triumphantly, before saying something that made Shane smile in a slightly self-deprecating manner.
“Hey, Hollander,” Bood called out in a booming voice, causing Shane’s head to snap up from his conversation with Luca. “Can you come over here?”
He made his excuses to Luca, Troy, and Harris, and slowly walked over to the table. Once within arm’s reach, Ilya immediately tugged him to his side and wrapped an arm around his waist. He delighted in how naturally Shane’s hand made its way to the nape of his neck, fingers immediately carding into the hair at the back of his head. “What’s up?” he asked.
“How often are you getting blown?” Boodrom asked without preamble, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Yeah,” Dykstra chimed in, “‘cause we’re not convinced your husband isn’t a filthy liar.”
He could feel Shane’s fingers still in his hair as he absorbed what he was being asked.
There was definitely a time when Shane would have shut down immediately at such a question but that was before; back when the locker room was a terrifying place full of bigoted idiots who didn’t know how good they had it that Shane Hollander deigned to breathe the same air as them.
Ilya made a dissatisfied noise and pushed his head back against Shane’s hand, encouraging him to resume his earlier motions, which he did with an indulgent smile thrown in Ilya’s direction.
It had been a learning curve for Shane, going from their relationship being a closely guarded secret to something that could be brought up in casual conversation with teammates, but he had long since stopped looking for hidden malice in such questions and mostly took them in stride these days.
“I mean, it depends,” he said, scratching his nails against Ilya’s scalp in a way that nearly had him purring. “What time of year is it?” he asked.
Bood snorted.
“What, you have a schedule?” Wyatt asked, brows furrowing.
“No but, like, is it the off season? Are we headed into training? Is it during the season? During the playoffs? Directly after playoffs?” Ilya couldn’t help the satisfied hum that escaped him as he recalled the last time they were together directly following the playoffs.
He could feel everyone’s eyes fall on him and let his lips spread into a wide smirk.
“Okay, now I gotta know what you guys are like after playoffs,” Dykstra said, although the expression on his face suggested he wasn’t sure whether he really wanted to know; bracing himself for whatever the answer may be.
“Did we win?” Shane asked and Ilya loved how seriously he was taking this question, loved how he needed clarity to provide the most accurate answer; loved him.
“Sure,” Evan replied, “we won the fucking Stanley Cup. Now, how often are you getting blown?”
Shane made a thoughtful noise, clearly casting his mind back to recall an actual answer, based on experience. “Last time it was four?” he said before catching himself, “no, five. Wait, are we only counting if it’s to completion?”
Ilya huffed a laugh, squeezing Shane’s hip and pulling him more tightly against his body.
“Not necessarily,” Wyatt said.
Evan immediately chimed in, “but it has to be for at least a few minutes.”
Shane nodded, accepting the premise, “Okay, then yeah, five.”
“That’s pretty in line with what Roz said,” Hazy conceded, “he said most days a week.”
“Wait,” Shane stepped in, “you were asking for a week total?”
Silence briefly descended on the table, the ambient noise of the bar’s other patrons taking over as Ilya beamed with unrestrained glee.
Hayes was the one who broke it. “What answer were you giving?” he asked, eyebrows high and eyes wide.
“Well, we said directly following the playoffs. I thought you meant, like, the day after.”
Bood, who had been taking a sip of his beer sputtered and choked on his drink, coughing to clear his airway. Dykstra slapped him on the back as he fought to get a breath in edgewise.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasped once he’d mostly recovered, “you guys are insane.”
“I mean, we were celebrating,” Shane said in an embarrassed tone, his cheeks flushed.
“It was his fifth cup,” Ilya told them, grinning like the cat who got the cream.
That was met with a chorus of groans before Bood seemed to think of something, “how the fuck did you even find time for that?” He asked quizzically.
Dykstra jumped on immediately, “yeah, hold on, we had, like, a full parade. We were celebrating essentially the whole day.”
Ilya’s grin was so wide you could count all of his teeth, staring up at his husband’s blushing face, deferring to him.
“Well,” Shane stalled, obviously trying to suss out the least revealing way he could answer that question. “We woke up at home,” he started, his blush deepening as his eyes flitted over the table, “and we didn’t really stay out that late.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed before adding on, “and I blew him in two separate bathrooms.” Of course, one of those had ended with Shane bent over the sink and Ilya forcing his head back by his grip on his hair, making him maintain eye contact with himself as Ilya pounded into him from behind but he’d definitely stayed on his knees for more than a few minutes before that, so it counted.
Wyatt looked aghast as a sudden realisation seemed to wash over him. “Oh, god,” he groaned, “is that why you guys were late for Ilya’s speech?”
Neither one of them felt the need to answer that, Shane’s blush and Ilya’s predatory grin were answer enough. He could hear a muttered ‘Jesus’ escape Dykstra.
Bood, however, valiantly pressed on, “okay, you guys having no self control aside, how often are we talking during the season?”
Shane was biting his lip, his nails still scratching at Ilya’s scalp though his movements seemed to have taken on the edge of self-soothing, rather than the earlier intentionality. “I’d say at least every other day.”
“You guys are fucking insane,” Dykstra concluded.
“Is not my fault,” Ilya told him, “is impossible to say no when my sexy husband is always begging for my cock.”
Shane’s hand fisted in Ilya’s hair, tugging at it in dissatisfaction and Ilya’s eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head. “I do not beg,” Shane argued.
Ilya twisted out of his hold to shoot him an incredulous look.
“Oh, so we are lying to our friends now?” he asked, eyebrows raised, before turning back to the table “yes, my mistake, must be someone else who is always saying, ‘please, Ilya, please, I need you.’”
Shane scoffed before adding, “you beg for me just as much,” in a petulant tone.
“I would never,” Ilya said, which was admittedly a blatant lie.
“Oh, really?” Shane questioned. “Not even when I tried to make us adhere to the ‘no sex during playoffs’ rule, during my first season with the Cens?”
“You were the one who broke that rule,” Ilya pointed out.
“Only because you started jerking off in front of me while watching porn!” Shane exclaimed, drawing the attention of several other tables.
Ilya couldn’t help the self-satisfied smirk that tugged at his lips. It had been one of his more ingenious plans.
“We are saying the same thing, Hollander,” he said around his grin, “just using different words.”
He could hear someone at the table mutter a “Jesus Christ,” which did nothing to deflate his ego.
“Just out of a sense of morbid curiosity,” Bood interjected, “when was the last day you guys didn’t have any sex?”
It didn’t take long for Shane to come up with the answer. “I was in New York for a photoshoot for a couple of days like two weeks ago.”
“Doesn’t count if you’re not in the same place,” Wyatt told him promptly.
Accepting the premise, Shane visibly cast his mind back, trying to remember when the last time had been. “There was that flight to Philadelphia last month that got delayed and we practically had to head straight into a game,” he said finally, “we were too tired for anything after that.”
Ilya hummed, “yeah, but I sucked you off you in the shower that morning,” he reminded him, causing a slight flush to colour Shane’s cheeks.
“Oh, right.”
Ilya’s grin only widened as he watched the mounting exasperation of their teammates, Dykstra pointedly rolled his eyes at him when Ilya caught his gaze.
“Then I guess it was when Ilya had the flu,” that had been over two months ago and it certainly hadn’t been for a lack of trying on Ilya’s part but, apparently, a high fever and a miserable cough were not attractive traits to Shane, who’d refused his advances, even after Ilya had promised not to kiss him to lower risk of contamination.
His fevered offer to simply lie back and let Shane make use of his cock had not been received with the overt enthusiasm he had come to expect from Shane.
They hadn’t had sex for three whole days. It was an awful experience that left Ilya vowing he would never again let himself get sick.
It seemed to take a minute for the guys to recover from that, all well aware of exactly when Ilya had last been sick due to the two games he had missed while dutifully staying in bed to recover, as his loving husband had so kindly ordered him to do under threat of murder.
“Well, to Hollander,” Dykstra finally said, raising his shot glass and both eyebrows, “and to you, you lucky son of a bitch.”
“To Hollander,” Wyatt and Bood echoed and despite knowing that every single one of them was supposedly straight and verifiably in a committed monogamous relationship, Ilya felt the need to remind them that Shane was his and his alone so he shot them all a glare in turn before raising his own glass.
“To my husband,” he said, tapping the shot glass on the table and downing it.
He then looked back up at Shane’s unfairly gorgeous face. He smiled at him, hopelessly smitten, and delighted in the way he could see Shane’s breath catch in his throat, a lovely little blush rising to his cheeks, his bemused expression turning vaguely dazed.
God, he was so in love with this man. Helplessly infatuated with him.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Ilya said, rising to his feet while dragging one hand up Shane’s side, “I’m going to see whether my husband would like to blow me in the bathroom.”
Dykstra playfully booed him as Wyatt choked on his beer and Bood let out a bellowing laugh.
Shane playfully smacked Ilya on the arm before wrapping his own around him.
“Your husband would not,” he assured him, his soft gaze never straying from Ilya as a pleased simper played at his lips. “But he might be convinced to take you home right now.”
Ilya just nodded at him, entirely besotted.
He would take his man home and worship him the way he deserved. Lay him out and show him just how deeply he was appreciated.
Ilya had always known how lucky he was to have Shane. He'd certainly spent enough time desperately craving him while having to content himself with nothing but an hour or two every couple of months. However, it was possible that he felt particularly grateful after that conversation.
After all, there was no need for a concept like a birthday blowjob when your husband treated every day like a special occasion.