Archive of Our Own

one.

The thing about being out to the entire fucking world is that the entire fucking world and their mothers seem to have something to say about him and Ilya. Which, fine, maybe Shane had expected that to some degree while catastrophizing in his own head about this for years and years, given just how public they are as professional athletes, but, well. He still fucking hates it.

He hates the far too invasive questions thrown at them by reporters that all have a menacing glint in their eyes, biding their time until they can sink their fangs into some story, some problem about Shane and Ilya that they can twist around into barbed-wire headlines and sensationalist clickbait. He hates all the looks and the glances thrown their way that people apparently assume he can’t see but in actuality, feels the sting of all over his body like salt in a thousand papercuts. He hates how much of them people want now, as if he and Ilya haven’t already given so goddamn much of themselves, haven’t already given heaping chunks carved out of themselves to hockey and its world over all these years.

But he unfortunately cannot control the entire internet (sometimes, in his wildest dreams, he thinks about it, thinks about using a sizable chunk of his numerous investments to buy every single media outlet and social media app out there just to shut them all down and watch the world burn; burn like the way he’s had to for hiding his relationship with Ilya).

And unfortunately, his fiancé is online enough for the both of them (which might be one of the only reasons Shane would not shut down all social media apps, if he’s being honest, because Ilya loves them a little too much).

What that really means is that at night, when they’re both sitting in bed together and Shane is reading his book du jour, Ilya will be on his phone or iPad, scrolling. And every so often, he’ll show Shane a tweet or post that makes him laugh or, contrarily, piss him off. With their outing, the amount of both have, to Shane’s chagrin, skyrocketed, and it’s an evenly matched toss-up of which one it is every time.

It’s one of these nights, when Shane is a few chapters into his actually pretty fascinating read about Soviet hockey players defecting in the late 80s and 90s, that Ilya snorts loudly, then shuffles until he can flop his head onto Shane’s shoulder and shove his phone into Shane’s face.

“If only they knew, yes?” Ilya asks, voice deep with an amused undertone as he holds the screen up for Shane to read the tweet at the top of his screen.

By the time Shane finishes reading the tweet though, there is a flare of anger heating up in the pit of his stomach. Ilya seems to find it funny, the way this stranger on the internet seems to think that Shane is Ilya’s owner, that Ilya isn’t his own fucking adult, that Shane would want to, for some reason, put him on a leash now that they’re out to the world. And based on his words, Ilya finds it comical because in reality, the truth is more of the opposite, at least in the bedroom.

But with the way things had been going lately, with both of them being attacked from every possible side all just for falling in love, Shane can’t bring himself to find the humor in it. Truly, he’s fucking pissed.

Because how dare they imply that Shane would want to hold Ilya back? How dare they imply that Shane doesn’t love Ilya exactly the way he is, that Shane fell in love with him because of the way he is?

Ilya seems to see all of these thoughts rolling around in his head as if they’re broadcasted in technicolor on his face, because the phone lowers slightly as his eyes pierce Shane’s, softening slightly. “Shane?”

Shane lets his gaze flicker to Ilya’s for a second before casting it back down to the phone. Which subsequently sends another bolt of annoyance down his spine when it catches on the tweet again.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, even though he knows that Ilya knows it’s a lie. “It’s just…weird.”

“Weird?”

“You know,” Shane sighs out, letting his body feel the heft of Ilya’s leg that’s across one of his thighs. It’s grounding, in the way that the weight of Ilya’s body always is. He puts his bookmark back between the pages he left off on, twisting to place the book on the nightstand before turning back to face Ilya. “That all these people just, I don’t know, say fucking whatever. About us. Like they know us. Like they know our relationship.”

“Ah,” Ilya says, and there’s a universe of understanding in just that one word, because Ilya is good at hearing what Shane isn’t saying at times like this. “You are annoyed by them saying I will be,” he flicks his eyes down at his phone, “dogwalked, yes?”

Shane is somehow both disgruntled and pleased at being read so easily. “Not just that, but…I know it’s like, a dumb thing to wish, but it would be great if everyone could just, not talk about us. At all. They don’t know us. And they won’t, so. They should just shut up.”

Ilya’s cheeks twitch slightly, but he pushes down his amusement, probably for Shane’s sake.

“That might be little hard to ask for,” he says drily, and Shane snorts in agreement, because yeah, he knows that’s not a feasible thing to hope for. “But you are right, they don’t know us. What they say,” Ilya uses a hand to grip Shane’s chin firmly and guide it towards him to meet his gaze pointedly, “It does not mean anything.”

Which, yes, Shane understands, and he gets what Ilya is trying to highlight. It still fucking sucks, though.

“I know,” he states out loud, pushing down his annoyance and discomfort with another sigh, though it’s faded somewhat since he first read the tweet. Because Ilya is right, it’s all bullshit, in a way. The horrors of being perceived, or whatever people say, are a little horrifying, but Shane chooses to let them flicker away for now. It’s not as important as other, better things they could be doing.

And Ilya, as always, appears to clock the shift right on cue, because he tosses his phone onto the bed behind him with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes, the tweet long forgotten.

“Maybe we should prove them wrong,” Ilya murmurs as he budges both of them down, then slowly leans over him, arms bulging on either side of Shane’s head and Shane feels like startled prey, a little bit, with how Ilya’s demeanor has transformed so quickly. He also, to no one’s surprise and least of all his own, wants to bite the bicep that’s inches from his mouth.

And so he does.

Ilya’s eyes seem to flare with heat at the sudden bite, and Shane watches him carefully as he lets his teeth pull at the skin of his arm again. He sees a small little smirk tilting at Ilya’s lips in response. A little fond. A little mean.

“Maybe we need to get you a collar.” Ilya sounds coolly entertained and detached, and while Shane’s been pulsing with need since the second Ilya was over him, the words send a flash of both slight humiliation and sharp pleasure hurtling down his spine. “Yes, щенокpuppy?”

And that’s about when Shane’s brain gracefully goes offline for the rest of the night, thankfully.

two.

Shane is married. He’s married to Ilya Rozanov, the man he’s been falling for since he was a teenager. He’s married to the love of his fucking life. Married to his favorite person in the entire world.

The ceremony had ended a few hours ago, but Shane still feels like he’s floating a little, giddy at the high of wearing matching rings, of being both legally and metaphorically tied together forever. Giddy at the way the word husband feels on his lips, and on the skin of his shoulder where Ilya had pressed it when they’d snuck into their bedroom for a quick break an hour ago. Giddy at being Ilya’s, at Ilya being his.

Their combined friends and family are still sprawled in various locations throughout their property for the reception, the sun sinking lower and casting a yellowish-orange glow outside. Svetlana and Cliff have lovingly dragged Ilya off to do a ‘nostalgic’ round of shots a while ago, and Shane thinks, with a wisp of humor, that the single round has probably morphed into a few.

But Shane and Ilya are married, so the only thing that annoys Shane about it as he idly chats with Hayden, his mom, and weirdly enough, Zane Boodram is that his husband is too far away from him. He should always be attached to him, he thinks. If Shane could, he would stitch himself to Ilya. Find a way to crawl into his skin and burrow into Ilya’s ribs for the rest of his life. Go everywhere with him, make sure Ilya takes him wherever he goes, because Shane would go anywhere that Ilya is. Would do anything, he thinks, if Ilya’s next to him while he does. If Ilya’s the one that tells him to do it.

His eyes wander as he slowly tunes out the conversation happening in front of him, roaming until they land on who he’d been searching for. Immediately, Shane’s heart trips a beat at what he stumbles upon.

Ilya’s lost his suit jacket somewhere along the evening, and had apparently decided the top few of his shirt buttons should go as well, based on the cross chain and the delicious hint of chest that’s visible. His sleeves are pushed up haphazardly, revealing corded forearms that Shane urgently needs on either side of his head. Ilya’s curls are slightly messy, clearly ruffled from the way he keeps running a hand through them every so often, but the true star of the show is his laugh. Loud and unfiltered as he throws his head back at whatever Cliff says, ringing through the yard until it echoes so nicely in Shane’s ears.

Fuck, he loves him. Loves him so much, with every fiber of his being and every molecule of his body and whatever other cliche things people in love say. He feels it all surging through his body, feels the weight of husband settling perfectly in the cavity of his chest where it belongs.

Then all of a sudden, Cliff drops to one knee while Svetlana hands Ilya a bottle of…something that Shane can’t make out from where he is. Shane’s brows furrow, then raise as Ilya holds the bottle up high and starts pouring the contents into Marleau’s open mouth, and he has to fight back a soft snort at the fleeting thought that he’s traveled back in time somehow, that he’s getting a brief glimpse of what a pre-2017, club rat, Boston Bear Ilya might’ve been like.

It is, in Shane’s honest opinion, mind-numbingly hot.

Ilya and Svetlana are cheering, with a few other Bears and Centaurs near them chiming in too, but Ilya’s roar of laughter rises above them all, at least to Shane. He feels his lips twitch into a barely-there smile at the sound. Also feels a needy pang of arousal roll in his gut as he lets his gaze roam down Ilya’s body. Thick fingers clasped around the bottle that he suddenly wants clasped around his throat. A bead of sweat tantalizingly rolling down his chest that he suddenly wants to lick. The strong line of his neck that he suddenly wants to bury his face in and sink his teeth into until he leaves a mark.

Shane might’ve been half-hard since Ilya left him with an only-slightly filthy kiss earlier, but he feels his dick stirring in further interest at the mouthwatering sight before his eyes.

“Rozanov seems to be having fun.”

The sound of his husband’s name abruptly startles Shane out of his purely horny trance, but there’s something about Hayden’s tone when he says it that grates a little in his throat. His friend, for his part, has on the tiniest smirk, and the combination of the both of them starts tugging at something in the back of Shane’s mind. This feels familiar, a little. But Shane is only half-aware of what’s going on, and he can’t put it together at the moment.

“Guess he has to be, since it’s his last night as a party boy, huh?” Hayden continues with his joke, seemingly unaware that Shane is one, still trying to draw himself back into conversation and not act on his impulse to stalk over to his husband and maul him and two, not really following Hayden’s strange train of thought.

But when the words finally process, Shane stills. His hands flex as he sees the subtly confused looks on Bood and his mom’s faces, and he’s glad, absurdly relieved that this weird expectation of Shane needing or wanting to reel Ilya in is not a universally-held opinion. The fact that Ilya’s relatively new friend seems to know better than Shane’s years-old friend flits unwillingly through his brain, though, prickling a little at the edges.

“What do you mean?” Shane asks in a low and carefully even tone, and his mom’s gaze hastily flicks over to him, as if she can see the annoyance starting to flood Shane’s body. She’s always been good at that, all his life, and Shane is grateful for it. Now, though, he doesn’t want her stepping in, thinking that maybe he needs to confront this himself.

Hayden laughs a little, though Shane doesn’t really get what’s so funny about it. “You know,” he says suggestively, and well. No, Shane doesn’t know. Or, well, more accurately, Shane doesn’t agree, even if he knows what Hayden is implying.

Before he can say that, though, he hears Ilya’s voice.

“Shane, любимыйbeloved!” Shane twists his head to see Ilya crooking a finger towards him twice with a smirk on his face, and everything that Shane had been thinking about before Hayden’s interruption suddenly comes rushing back in a flush that’s so violent that it makes him dizzy.

Because all those years ago, when Ilya had been at his clubbing prime, Shane had spent countless nights lying awake, wondering what Ilya was doing miles away, in the early hours of the morning. Wondering what women and men were dancing close to him, wondering which ones Ilya would deem good enough to wrap his hands around their waist, good enough to take back to his place. All those years ago, Shane remembers what the tabloid pictures would be like the day after, remembers what Ilya had looked like, all sweaty and flushed and blissed out.

And now here Ilya is, now his husband, now all his, all sweaty and flushed and blissed out. All smug and elated and calling Shane over with a simple crook of his finger, like that’s all it would take.

So, Shane lets whatever the fuck Hayden had been saying go, lets it flutter away insignificantly.

(Because it is, in the face of Ilya’s crooked finger, in the face of being called over.)

So, Shane goes.

three.

The Ottawa Centaurs’ first actual game of the 2021-22 season is an away game against the New York Admirals. If Shane lets himself think about that for more than just a few moments, he will probably spiral about how fucking tacky that is on the part of the league after everything, how this insincere show of acceptance and tolerance is just a whole load of complete bullshit.

But if Shane knows how to do something, it’s to not let everything that happens off the ice get in the way of how he plays on it, so his first official game as a Centaur is actually not that bad. They’ve had their fair share of bumps and hiccups leading up to this game, but all in all, Shane’s begun to fit into this team and slowly find his place in their dynamic. Yes, off the ice, but also on it, luckily.

His line with Haas and Boyle has come together well with him centering, and though they’re technically second line, they’re not far off from Ilya and the first line. It had been an adjustment, to not be first-line center anymore and to not be captain anymore, after only knowing how to be both of those things for so long, but in some ways, Shane finds himself not missing his captaincy as much as he’d expected to.

That’s not to say he hated his time as a captain, because he did enjoy some parts of it. Working with the fresh batch of rookies, the respect he’d held in the locker room—at least for some of his time as a captain, before well, everything—and coming up with new plays and strategies. He does miss some of that, obviously.

But the captaincy of Montreal had come with a heavy burden of a crown, the full weight of it placed on him far too young than it should have been. With barely anyone else to help him carry it, even though he had an alternate. Maybe part of that was just the gravity of being Shane Hollander, the savior of Montreal hockey. Maybe another part of that was the social aspect, the part that Shane never could really crack in the Voyageurs locker room. So maybe, if Shane is a little bit more honest with himself, he’s…relieved about not having to be captain here. That he is just another part of the team, that he can finally take a step back from the speeches and the consolations and taking the blame for every mistake his team makes. Though, from what he’s seen so far, Coach Wiebe doesn’t seem to fault Ilya for everything the team gets wrong; Shane can’t let himself ruminate on that for too long, however, for a number of reasons that he chooses not to name.

(Also, that he can witness the full effect of Captain Ilya Rozanov and everything that that encompasses. It is both aggravating and so unbelievably sexy that if Shane had not spent most of his life getting extremely adept at compartmentalizing his thoughts, he would have been in agitated, arousing agony.)

All that to say, though, the team’s building something here together, and Shane is grateful to be part of it. Grateful to get to play beside his husband every day, grateful to also compete against his husband during practices. Just fucking grateful that he and Ilya are finally living in the same city and the same house and that they don’t have to resign themselves to only getting to love each other in self-contained, ephemeral moments anymore.

And so, after they beat the Admirals in a decisive 3-1, when most of the team decides to make its way to Kingfisher, Shane does not give his well-rehearsed and tried and true Not-tonight-I’m-not-feeling-it-you-guys-have-fun-though speech. Instead, he finds himself pressed up against Ilya in a booth of the gay sports bar, his husband’s arm thrown over his shoulder casually as his fingers gently play with the sleeve of Shane’s t-shirt. Their thighs are pushed together, and at some point, Shane thinks one of them is more likely than not going to end up half on top of the other, given how many large hockey players are trying to fit into this one booth.

Some of the Admirals are scattered throughout the bar, though they seem to mostly stick to themselves. Hunter, however, along with Vaughn and Jalo, are at their table, conversation between them and the Centaurs flowing easily enough. Shane ends up being pulled into a discussion about a recently-released movie with Hayes and Vaughn, which he can only contribute to due to the fact that Rose is in it and he and Ilya had watched it to support her. (He didn’t tell her at first, but he’d found the script to be a little insufferable and the action scenes to be completely unrealistic; but then, Rose had called him out on it with a laugh before going off on a tangent about all the terrible scripts that keep coming across her desk.)

Ilya’s arm prods against him every once in a while, but besides that, Shane is not really paying attention to Ilya’s own conversation with Barrett, Bood, Hunter, and Jalo. At least, he isn’t until he hears a specific dip in Ilya’s voice, a particular tinge of his tone that Shane knows so well after all this time (and also tends to send a not unwelcome tingle through his body more often than not). An undercurrent that can only mean that Ilya’s chirping someone—or ragebaiting, as Bergy and Young keep saying during practice.

“—give my congrats to Kip, okay, Hunter?”

Shane watches Scott’s expression shift into something a little confused and a little wary. He wishes that he’d been listening to what they’d been saying before, to know the entire context for what Ilya is about to say. For his own entertainment purposes. “Why?”

Ilya’s grin is blinding. (Fuck, Shane wants to drag him out of here.)

“I heard he got brand new job,” he exclaims with excitement coloring his tone, and Shane bites down on the inside of his cheek to stop his smile, because he can tell where this is going. Ilya and Shane had already congratulated the two of them when the news of the engagement first came out, but he knows that Ilya can’t resist sometimes. “Taking care of old dinosaur fossils for rest of his life seems boring to me, but,” Ilya trails off, shrugging with a hint of a smirk tugging up at the corner of his lips.

“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Hunter sighs out, taking a swig of his beer. “I’m barely even three years older than you. You’re on the older side of the league too, you know.”

Ilya’s eyes light up with a small, devilish twinkle at that, and Shane stops pretending he’s still listening to Hayes and Vaughn, tilting back into Ilya’s shoulder instead.

“Ah, but at least I am not snail-like dinosaur and am fast enough to get puck back from the baby rookies.”

There’s a beat of silence at the table, which Shane breaks unceremoniously with a snort under his breath, though he sees Hunter flip Ilya off at the same time.

Because the thing is, okay yes, it’s a little mean. But well, it’s also true. It hadn’t been a huge mistake or anything, hadn’t been the reason the Admirals lost (because the truth is that the Centaurs did just play better tonight), but there had been a moment where Hunter lost the puck to Haas, and well. Just hadn’t been quick enough to get it back. Haas is also just crazy fast on the ice compared to the average player in his own age range, so Shane can understand how the rookie could take off with it before Hunter could properly react.

And it’s entertaining, the things Ilya notices during games and gleefully hides away in the back of his mind to pull out to tease players with later. Or at least, during the times when he’s not throwing those quips across the ice in that exact moment to start fights. And Shane kind of loves it. More than kind of loves it, actually, because Ilya is hilarious, and really, hadn’t Shane been thinking something along those lines when he’d been watching the replay of it on the bench during the next shift rotation?

(Calling Hunter a snail and a dinosaur at the same time is a new one; Shane adores Ilya so much.)

But he feels the weight of multiple eyes on his face now, despite the few chuckles that rise from some of the players, and he looks up from the table to see slightly…shocked gapes pointed at him. Which confuses Shane, because what do they have to be shocked about? Ilya chirps Hunter near constantly, especially about his age, but everyone—okay, maybe not everyone but at least Hunter, in this case—knows that Ilya never says anything truly scathing. And honestly, if you ask Shane, out of everything Ilya’s been caught saying over the years during mic-ed up games and practices, this really is one of the tamer ones.

Shane feels Ilya lightly nudge his arm with his own and he leans into the touch, and sees Ilya’s smirk grow in response out of the corner of his eye. The heavy glances seem to slowly turn away, but he feels Hunter’s lingers for a moment longer.

He meets his gaze, but Hunter pulls his away, and a mix of satisfaction and disbelief rolls around in Shane’s stomach uneasily. Satisfaction that Hunter doesn’t seem to be able to say his thoughts directly to Shane, disbelief that those thoughts existed in the first place.

That even the hockey players around them wait for Shane to fucking nag Ilya. Tell him to cut out the chirps, which is just plain stupid when Shane likes hearing them, when he thinks they’re pretty fucking funny. When he likes that Ilya is a little mean and voices things out loud that Shane’s thinking in his head. And isn’t that the perfect fit?

(Sometimes, Shane will let those thoughts slip off his tongue when it’s just Ilya around, and they always seem to make Ilya break out into loud, uncontrollable laughter that warms Shane’s chest and makes a slow, pleased smile spread on his face. He likes being the cause of Ilya’s happiness. He likes making him laugh.)

Shane almost wants to snap at Hunter for it even though the conversation has already moved on a bit ago, wants to tell him he’s being fucking rude and weird, but then Ilya leans in closer to him.

“Time to go, моя любовьmy love?” It’s whispered in his ear, Ilya’s breath hot as his lips just barely brush the top of it, and a small shudder runs through Shane.

He nods once, feeling a sudden sense of urgency to get out of the booth they’re in right fucking now, his previous train of thought trailing out of his ears weightlessly. It’s a little insane, how just one look or one touch from Ilya can still make Shane lose his fucking mind even after over ten years. It had been that way when they’d been 18, when Shane had felt Ilya’s fingers brush his for the first time as they sat sweaty and panting on a gym floor, staring at each other in a way Shane could not stop. And it’s still that way now, as he feels his husband’s fingertips lightly graze the junction of his shoulder and neck, the touch soft and teasing.

Fuck, it was time to leave. Now.

By the time the both of them make it back to their hotel room, Shane’s blissfully not thinking of anything but the weight of Ilya’s hands pressing down on his wrists and the hot, languid haze seeping through his brain.

four.

The Centaurs are currently on a four-game winning streak, and it’s exhilarating.

After all the shit that happened at the end of last season, Shane is just glad that he gets to be on a team that doesn’t care who he goes home to (or, they do, but in a less disgusted and more supportive way) and that he can just play hockey.

Of course, it isn’t always like that, since the number of slurs and comments thrown his way on the ice has significantly increased post-outing, at least with certain teams. But right now, Shane feels a little unstoppable, on the high of good hockey and winning.

A combination that always seems to get his blood pumping more than usual. Somewhere along the way, Shane thinks that some of the wires in his brain must’ve gotten twisted or crossed somehow. Synapses connecting the endorphins of hockey and the endorphins of sex until somehow hockey became sex and sex became hockey and now, they seem a little too intertwined for Shane. Entangled in each other, and inevitably, entangled with Ilya.

(Because hockey and sex, to Shane, had always been a blinding, neon arrow pointed right at Ilya Rozanov.)

But, anyway. Shane’s horny.

Which isn’t anything new, really, but his baseline levels of horniness seem to be a little more elevated than usual. Ilya, of course, isn’t complaining by any means, but Shane finds it slightly unnerving, how much he fucking wants and wants and wants.

Especially in places and at times when he probably—no, definitely—shouldn’t.

Like now, while sitting on the bench in the Centaurs’ home locker room as he laces up his skates before their game against Tampa Bay. Now, with all of their teammates present and at various stages of kitting up, the room filled with the noise of Ilya’s pre-game hype playlist and the buzz of multiple conversations scattered around.

But Shane can’t help it, not when Ilya is a few feet away with the bottom half of his gear on and had stopped midway while pulling on his long-sleeved gray compression shirt to look at something Bood’s showing him on his phone. Not when said compression shirt is sitting bunched up right at the top of his chest, pressing down slightly on his pecs, with the ridges of his defined abs fully on display. Not when his arms are bulging obscenely in the shirt, and Shane abruptly thinks that nobody should be looking at his husband right now. Not when he looks like that.

His mouth feels dry, all of a sudden.

Shane hears a muffled snort somewhere near him, and his gaze flicks over to see both Chouinard and Dykstra smirking his way. Fucking hell.

“All good, Hollzy?”

Shane glares at Dykstra. “Fine,” he grits out, though he knows that neither of them are being vicious with their teasing, and is really more peeved about having his personal stare-at-Ilya time interrupted. It took some time for him to reach that particular conclusion for himself, rather than simply listening to Ilya telling him that this team is different, that it’s good in a way that other teams—chiefly, the Voyageurs—aren’t. But now, he doesn’t feel like a stranger intruding anymore, doesn’t feel like every teasing remark is specifically crafted to insult him, doesn’t feel like he’s the punchline to every joke.

It’s…nice, being on a team like this.

“Y’know,” Chouinard starts, and Shane barely holds back from rolling his eyes at what he’s sure is an incoming quip, though he does spot Ilya pulling down his shirt in his peripheral vision. He takes a split-second to mourn the loss in his head. “It’s kind of wild that no one figured you guys out when this is how you look at each other.”

“Fuck off.”

“Yes, fuck off, Chewy,” Ilya cuts in with a grin, apparently having sauntered up behind Shane at some point, and he leans forward against Shane’s back. One of his arms lands casually over Shane’s shoulder, forearm pressing across his collarbone. And Shane’s so glad he’s come to loosen the ‘maintaining professional boundaries at work’ rules he’d been dead set on after just a few months (he loves touching his husband; fucking sue him). “It is not our fault Selena has not looked at you like that in a long time. Me and Shane are best husbands, everyone knows this.”

Laughs reverberate through the room, and even Shane’s lips curl up, while Chouinard throws up a middle finger at Ilya. The first part is a blatant lie—Shane and Ilya do get a little too many details in the WAGs chat, after all—but he can’t help but compare how a similar taunt would’ve gone in the Voyageurs locker room. Not pretty, that much he’s certain of.

“Oh, did you guys hear that Burke’s wife left him last week?” Hayes interjects as he straps up his leg pads, lifting his brows a little at Ilya as he does. “Maybe don’t say that usual shit to him, Rozy.”

Ilya, in turn, huffs. And Shane is inclined to agree, because Burke’s had that coming. Good for her, after all the cheating and other shit the Tampa Bay center’s pulled over the years. Shane’s a little surprised she stayed this long after that picture of him and two women—neither one his wife—had leaked during the awards last year in Vegas.

It also probably doesn’t help that Burke is a racist and homophobic piece of shit and threw some of the vilest slurs at Shane last time their teams had played. Ilya had nearly knocked his lights out; hell, Shane had nearly done it too when he heard a few of the things the center had spit at Ilya. Needless to say, it hadn’t been a clean game, and that doesn’t bode well for tonight.

The team also seems to be thinking something along those lines, because Dykstra moves closer to pat Ilya’s shoulder twice.

“Hollzy here’s gonna need to hold you back more than usual tonight, huh, Cap?”

His tone is light, infused with jest and objectively, Shane knows that the question is mostly a joke.

That, however, doesn’t stop the way his temper flares instantaneously.

Again? This bullshit, again?

Ilya may be known for his slightly rougher play style and fights on the ice, but they’ve never been just for shits and giggles; they’ve never been dirty. It infuriates Shane, how much of the league and its fans don’t understand just how smart Ilya is, how perceptive he can be.

It’s like they forget that Ilya is Ilya fucking Rozanov, the second-best hockey player in the league. It’s like they forget that Ilya has been playing professional hockey for a majority of his life at this point and is well-fucking-aware when to pick fights and when not to. It’s like they forget that Ilya is his own person, that Shane does not fucking control him.

Sure, Ilya’s let his temper get the best of him a few times since rookie season, but what hockey player hasn’t? Shane feels the rumble of his own anger roaring in his chest, in his head.

Because if Ilya does pick a fight out there tonight with Burke, Shane has the utmost trust that it’s for a fucking reason.

And honestly, Shane suddenly wants to blurt out what he really thinks about Ilya fighting dickheads on the ice. So that Dykstra and the rest of the team can finally understand, can get what’s going through Shane’s head when he sees Ilya throw his gloves down.

When he catches a glimpse of Ilya with bruised knuckles and a trail of blood dripping down his bottom lip as he calls out mean little chirps at the other team with a smirk on his face, Shane is not thinking about how Ilya shouldn’t have done it. Not thinking about being on the ice so that he could have pulled Ilya away from the scrum.

No, Shane is almost always thinking about how unbearably hot Ilya looks. It’s unfair, really, how good he looks with red streaks on his face and the back of his hands. With wet curls and sweat trickling down into his jersey. It’s unfair, really, how entranced Shane gets at the sight. And Ilya always seems to know it too. Always sends a quick wink Shane’s way as he’s led to the penalty box. Another thing that Shane wants to say he doesn’t find attractive, but unfortunately, Shane’s flint of desire had been awoken by Ilya Rozanov and his flirty, cocksure self at 18 years old, and 13 years later, not a thing about that has changed.

Hockey is sex and sex is hockey and both are Ilya and Ilya is both.

So all Shane wants to do right now is rant and rant until all of that is burned into their teammates’ brains. Until it’s etched in stone, the enormity of Shane’s desire when it comes to Ilya, and the rage he feels when someone suggests he tone down the sharper edges of Ilya’s personality.

He fell in love with those sharp edges, fell in love with the jagged teeth poised at his neck.

It’s times like these that Shane wishes people could know Ilya the way he knows Ilya, though part of him is possessive over his husband at the same time. Possessive over the fact that only he gets to know Ilya so intimately, so fully. But he is just so fucking tired of being in this situation, of having to continuously battle against the longstanding reputations of Shane Hollander, the golden boy of hockey, and Ilya Rozanov, the devil of hockey.

If only they knew, Shane remembers Ilya saying once, after he’d shown him that moronic tweet all those months ago, and he can’t help but think of that now. If only they fucking knew.

“Shane?”

It’s a gentle prod, murmured only for Shane. Apparently Shane had been so stuck in his own outrage that he had completely missed whatever Ilya responded with to Dykstra. Hence, the team’s already latched onto a separate topic of discussion, one that Shane barely listens to as he lets out a controlled sigh and drops his shoulders.

“It’s fine,” he says, tilting back into Ilya for a second, just enough to reassure his husband. “I’m fine.”

Ilya hums out a short sound, and Shane knows that he doesn’t quite believe his lie. He’s always been a bad liar, but Ilya seems to have a special knack for catching him out. He doesn’t say it though, seemingly to correctly decide that right before they hit the ice isn’t the time to bring it up, and Shane is sure he’ll get called out on it later tonight. That logic, however, doesn’t appear to apply to other things, as Shane senses Ilya bending down until his voice is right next to his head.

“Don’t think I did not feel you staring before, Hollander,” Ilya almost purrs in his ear, and Shane feels flushed all of a sudden, the previously forgotten flutter in his stomach ramping up again. The whiplash from irritation to this makes Shane a little fuzzy, arousal thrumming and tingling. Ilya’s other hand lands on his other shoulder, close to his neck. But this one, unlike the other, is covered with Ilya’s glove. He feels the synthetic leather of one of Ilya’s fingers stroke up and down the back of his neck, once, then twice.

Holy fuck.

Shane can’t help but shudder at the sensation—why the hell does it feel so good—and he hears Ilya’s soft, amused grunt.

“I should have known, малышbaby.”

(Hockey is sex and sex is hockey and both are Ilya and Ilya is both.)

Ilya removes his hands and takes a step away from him, and Shane grits his teeth, trying to wrench his body back into control.

“Fuck you.”

“Hm, no,” Ilya voices, bowing over to whisper one last thing just for Shane. “I will fuck you, yes? And maybe I will wear gloves. Who is to say, Hollander?”

And then he walks away.

What a fucking asshole. Shane’s lips twitch up into a small smile as he sighs and goes back to lacing up his skates.

five.

Contrary to what most people seem to believe about Shane, he doesn’t actually have hockey news or old games running on their TV 24/7, because he’s not actually insane. Because contrary to popular belief, he isn’t actually a hockey robot that only powers on to hit pucks and win games.

That being said, however, there currently is a sports news channel pulled up on TV, but only because Ilya and Shane had been planning to finally watch some new car-related action movie that Ilya’s been excited for, and Shane is waiting by himself on the couch for his husband to finish showering.

Shane absentmindedly listens to the news anchors as he texts the Hollander family chat, responding to his dad’s questions about what time they’re coming for dinner and whether Ilya is okay with chicken parmesan again (Shane doesn’t think the answer to that will ever be no, and he says so in the chat).

It must’ve been a slow news day or something, because Shane vaguely hears the newscasters talking about an American football player’s post of a new ginormous cat tree he bought for his two cats (“Guys, how adorable is that!”) and a basketball team’s recent trend of absurd disguises to hide from paparazzi (“Don’t think those mustaches are putting in any work, if I do say so myself, Mike.”). It’s not even news, just random gossip that he can’t imagine people actually care about. What a complete waste of airtime, honestly. He rolls his eyes, finally hearing the water shut off in the bathroom.

Shane reaches for the remote to switch over to Netflix, but freezes when he suddenly hears his name.

“—ander, has apparently been loosening up the reins a little, guys.” The male anchor—Mike, which Shane notes in his head, just in case—sounds gleeful, and it immediately rubs him the wrong way. “He and his husband, fellow Centaur and captain Ilya Rozanov, were seen two nights ago at Ciel after their game in Montreal. And let me just say,” Mike laughs a little, and Shane’s glare deepens at the screen as he waits for what is obviously going to be one of the stupidest things he will hear in his life, “It was not safe for work, if you know what I mean.”

The female anchor, Erica, chimes in with another laugh, and Shane starts running numbers in his head for what it would cost to outright buy this station. It can’t be too bad, can it? Sure, it might not be the best investment if he plans to just chuck it all into the dumpster, but maybe he can just fire Mike and Erica instead; that seems like a good compromise.

He’s so caught up in his flawless compromising that he almost misses what Erica says. When Shane finally processes it, though, he kind of wishes he had. “Not the Shane Hollander we’re used to seeing, it’s gotta be Rozanov’s influence, that’s for sure,” she says with a sly smile. “Maybe it’s time to shorten that leash a little, Hollander, eh?”

Shane’s blood runs cold, and then starts boiling.

Maybe it’s time to shorten that leash a little, Hollander.

What…the fuck. How in the fucking hell did Shane just hear that on TV, from a news channel? How in the fucking hell was that aired on live television?

Shane’s heard a lot of things over the past year, ever since his and Ilya’s relationship has come out to the public, but this might just be one of the worst ones. The fact that Shane wouldn’t have even known about it if he hadn’t turned on the news just pisses him off even more.

Vaguely, he knows his relationship is talked about, due to the so-called scandal that it started with. Vaguely, he knows that the gossippers and the journalists love to prod at it, love to hop, jump, and skip over every boundary Shane has drawn in the sand when it comes to him and Ilya. Vaguely, he knows the general public assumes things about them that are categorically false and just plain idiotic.

But vaguely knowing all of those things doesn’t at all stop the indignant flames that spark in his chest.

“Okay, I am thinking we first watch the 8th movie so we get good recap, and then start th—”

Ilya’s voice cuts out as he rounds the corner of the sofa and sees Shane seething at the TV. His and Ilya’s names, as well as a brief headline, are still showing on screen, and it doesn’t take long for his husband to put it together.

“Ah, another day, another bad piece of gossip, yes?” Ilya asks, inflicting some humor into his tone even as he walks up to Shane and gently pries open his grip around the remote before turning the TV off. “I vote we ban news channels in this house, everyone who agrees, raise your hand.”

Ilya playfully tosses his hand up, but Shane is about five seconds from logging onto his Twitter account and doing something Harris might yell at him for.

Maybe it’s time to shorten that leash a little, Hollander.

Okay, maybe make that two seconds.

“Shane,” Ilya tries again, a little more seriously, standing in front of him now. “You are okay?”

He shakes his head, words stuck in the back of his throat, refusing to dislodge. He hates this, he hates fucking Mike and Erica, he hates that he apparently has to spend the rest of his life fighting against the notion that he doesn’t like Ilya.

Not that he doesn’t love him, because most people aren’t saying anything about that. No, they’re just saying that he doesn’t like Ilya. That he’s someone to put up with, rather than someone that Shane wants to spend every waking minute of his life with. Someone that is, in every single fucking way, Shane’s person. Someone that knows exactly how to make him laugh and someone he doesn’t have to hide his quirks from and someone who allows his own asshole side to shine when Shane wants it to.

Shane loves Ilya, is in love with him. It’s just that Ilya is also his best friend.

He can’t even imagine any circumstance, any situation, where he doesn’t want to have Ilya with him. Shane would never leave Ilya’s side, if that was a reasonable thing to do, somehow. During the summers at their cottage, during those blissful two weeks they have just to themselves, it almost does feel like they’re stuck together. A woven thread between them, not letting either of them get too far from the other.

They’re some of Shane’s fondest memories, and the ones he replays in the back of his mind when they’re inevitably forced back into the real world at the end of summer.

Needless to say, Shane likes Ilya so fucking much.

“Okay,” Ilya responds, slowly gliding his hands, warm and firm, up Shane’s arms until he reaches the knobs of his shoulders. Gently pulls until Shane’s head hits Ilya’s stomach, and Ilya starts running a hand through the strands of his hair. “You do not need to talk, just listen, okay?”

Ilya’s other hand slides under the collar of Shane’s shirt, and the heat of his palm strokes up and down his back in a soothing motion. It’s a little scary how good he is at this, at calming Shane down and grounding him, even when Shane doesn’t say a word.

“You are angry, is okay. These people are so annoying, buzzing like little flies in everyone’s ears, and I am sure you are not the only one who gets angry at them, yes?”

Shane nods against Ilya’s belly.

“But the good thing is, one click, and boom! They disappear.” The sound effect makes Shane snort, though he muffles it against Ilya’s black tank. “What they think, what they say, is not important. Every reporter in the world could say that you are, what? Holding my leash and controlling me? But, Shane. It changes nothing. We do not have to do what they say.”

He lets out a quiet hum of agreement. Finally feels the words unstick in his chest after taking a few, controlled breaths. “It’s just so dumb. I like you so much. Why the fuck would I ever want to change you?”

Ilya drops the hand in his hair to the back of Shane’s neck, squeezes once, and Shane knows it’s a quiet acknowledgement of his rhetorical question. Knows it’s also a voiceless reciprocation of the sentiment repeated back to him. But this is Ilya, and Shane can feel the heat radiating from his hand on his neck, and the tight squeeze has the not unwanted side effect of sending a sudden pang of want through his body.

“You like me,” Ilya repeats, dragging out ‘like’ in a sing-song tone like a middle-schooler would. It’s so stupid. Fondness explodes in Shane’s chest. “You like me, Hollander?”

Shane finally pulls his head off of Ilya’s stomach, looks up at him with a half-glare. “Yeah, I do. Asshole.”

Ilya’s lips slowly stretch out into a stunning smile that hits Shane right in the gut, sends him reeling just a little. He’s so beautiful that it drives Shane mad sometimes, that he gets to have this man all to himself for the rest of his life.

The hand on his neck squeezes again, and Shane feels a similar squeeze echo in his stomach. Ilya reaches up to tangle his fingers into the bottom of Shane’s hair, before closing his fist, and tugging.

Fuck.

Desire ricochets through him, needle-sharp and dizzying. The arm under his shirt pulls out and Ilya grips Shane’s chin, tilting his head back until he meets his gaze. Shane feels frozen under the waves of lust, not sure if he’s even breathing.

“You are good now?”

Shane nods quickly, the fury from before having melted down into something softer the second Ilya got his hands on him. Morphed into something desperate the second Ilya tugged at his hair. “Yes, yeah,” Shane rasps out, unable to do anything but watch a flicker of mirth shine in Ilya’s eyes.

Ilya uses his hold on Shane’s chin to move his head up and down, nodding for him like he’s answering his own question again, and Shane’s starting to drift now. Leaving his body in Ilya’s capable hands as his mind starts dissolving into nothing but ripples of heady sensation.

And when Ilya finishes examining Shane’s face—apparently determining that Shane is not lying this time—when Ilya starts to gradually guide Shane’s head closer and closer to him, well.

The movie can wait.

plus one.

The article, unfortunately, comes out during a morning practice, which means that when the team is back in the locker room after and grabbing their phones post-showers, Shane immediately hears about it.

“Shit.”

Shane pauses packing his gear into his bag and twists towards Wyatt, who looks like he’s mid-grimace, eyes darting from his phone, then to Shane, and then to Ilya.

Well, this can’t be good.

Ilya’s brows raise in a silent question, while Wyatt opens and closes his mouth a few times, floundering a little awkwardly.

“Uh, so an article just got published,” he finally says, and Shane’s stomach crashes to the floor. “It’s, well. Here.”

Shane takes Wyatt’s phone as his pulse picks up, feeling Ilya’s head bend over his shoulder behind him to read with him, and hears a quiet Блядьfuck a split-second later.

Couple Goals Alert: Five Times Hockey Superstar Shane Hollander Walked Ex-Playboy Husband Ilya Rozanov Like A Dog!

“Hollander.”

Shane ignores Ilya. He scrolls down, skimming through the pictures and all the ways they describe Shane as a ‘sexy, scolding husband’ that apparently knows ‘just how to keep his husband in check.’ All in all, the piece at best paints Ilya as an immature idiot and Shane as his weary, berating partner and at worst makes it seem like Ilya is a callous human being whose entire personality needs wrangling into something tamer every so often.

The storm of ire and aggravation brews darker, and louder, in the depths of his chest as he keeps scrolling. 

“Shane.”

The only silver lining is that it’s reassuring, a little, that Wyatt was hesitant to show him this, because the Centaurs seem to have finally learned how much shit like this gets to Shane. It might’ve been all the times over the season that they’d look at Shane, expecting him to hound Ilya about something, and Shane had done absolutely nothing. Called him an asshole with a wide grin on his face because he’s funny as hell; didn’t defend the supposed ‘victim’ of Ilya’s chirping, joining in on the taunts instead.

There had been one time at one of Zane’s barbecues when the team had been casually watching the Winnipeg and Los Angeles game playing live, and discussing one of Winnipeg’s defensemen: a big, unruly player that tended to land some hits that were always just on the wrong side of dirty. Ilya’d been quipping something petty about his Corsi, about how Winnipeg really needed to stop letting player seniority determine their lines and move some of their second and third-line players up.

But Shane had to step in at that point, because the Corsi value that Ilya had mentioned had been wrong, was lower, actually. He might have also said something possibly a little rude about Pierce’s last turnover along with it (because, really, the defenseman needs to get his shit together, or is at severe risk of getting traded away soon).

It had led to a couple of slightly stupefied chuckles—barring Ilya’s booming cackle, of course—but also a few surprised looks at him from the team. However, the number of them had gone down from what it used to be, so. Shane remembers being glad they’d at least been realizing, thankfully.

Now, though, staring at this stupid article from—he takes a quick peek at the URL—Pucks for Gossip, Shane finds himself, once again, fucking pissed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shane demands loudly, and he sees Zane and Nick both wince out of the corner of his eye. But he’s hurtling rapidly through his own thoughts now; thinking about all those years of hiding and sneaking around and everything he had to do—everything they had to do—just to be with the love of their life, all for everyone to do this. All for everyone to talk and talk about what Shane deserves and what Ilya deserves and how after everything, ‘of course Shane doesn’t actually like Ilya, that would be absurd.’ How their reputations precede and characterize them in every single way, even when it comes to who they are now and not who they were portrayed as a decade ago.

His grip around Wyatt’s phone is tight, tight enough that he knows the texture of the case digging into his skin is going to leave an indentation. Shane feels fingers touch his own, gently prying until his hand loosens enough to pull the phone away from him.

“Okay, Hollander, любимыйbeloved,” he hears through the ringing in his ears, a deep voice that cuts through every other sound as hands land on both his shoulders with a light smack. “Time to go.”

It’s been a while since he’s been this bothered, the last time being during the first Montreal game of the season. His wrath had been imminent then, too, but it had been easier to manage when Shane could translate all of his anger onto the ice when he played. Unfortunately, this irritation doesn’t seem to have the same kind of obvious release valve.

Shane is still not fully processing his surroundings until he realizes Ilya had shepherded him out of the locker room and nearly all the way to their car, both of their gear bags on his shoulder.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Shane mutters, pressing his thumbs into his eyes as Ilya tosses the bags into the trunk. The pressure makes it a little easier to breathe. “That was…”

“No one is blaming you,” Ilya reassures, sliding into the driver’s side. “You know the team understands, yes?”

“Yeah.” Shane exhales, somehow both annoyed at the situation and annoyed at his reaction to it. “I didn’t mean to get that mad, though.”

Ilya is quiet for a few beats, tapping a finger against the wheel as they wait at a red light. “I think…I think you have maybe been mad about this for a long time. Today was just—what do you call, last straw?”

“I hate the way they talk about you.” Shane’s voice is harsh, thinking back on everything said in the article and feeling his stomach roll again. “I hate the way they talk about me, and us, but. You, the most. It’s so—so fucking shitty.”

“Shane, you know I do not care about them, right?” Ilya asks, gaze moving over to Shane for a quick glance. “People have always talked shit about me since rookie season.” His tone gets a little lighter, a small smirk tugging at his lips. “Is the price I pay for being sexiest player with fattest ass and best backhand.”

Shane punches him in the arm. “Fuck you. You do not have the best backhand.”

“But no argument for fattest ass?”

And, well. Shane has eyes. Shane is well-aware of what his husband’s ass looks like. Is intimately familiar with its curves and weight and the firm feel of it under his hands. There’s only one answer to this question, truly.

Ilya must have read the answer on his face, because he snickers, making Shane punch him again.

“I know it bothers you,” Ilya says in a more sober voice, a few minutes after dramatically pretending Shane’s punch fatally wounded him. “But, I promise, I don’t give a fuck about them and what they think. I know what you think, and that’s all that matters to me.”

“I love you,” Shane states, the words rolling off his tongue like melted butter because they come so easily to him now, feel entwined in his very existence. Because he feels as if he had been created specifically to love Ilya Rozanov, created specifically to slot himself into the crevices of Ilya’s body and soul. “I like you, too,” he adds after a moment, because that feels important to say after the article.

Ilya pulls into their garage, shifting into park before reaching over to tangle his fingers into the hair at Shane’s nape. “я тебя люблюI love you,” he says, tugging Shane in to nip at his lips first, then capture them into a full kiss. Ilya’s finger trails down Shane’s jaw as he pulls back, which is just an unfairly effective distraction, honestly. “And I like you, too.”

Stupidly, the statement makes his heart skip over a beat, maybe two. Shane feels silly, like a lovestruck teenager who had just learned his crush that he thought he had no chance with liked him back, despite having been with Ilya for almost half his life at this point. Fuck.

Ilya pecks his lips one more time, before getting out of the car, and Shane follows.

“So, everything is good?” Ilya questions, seeming the slightest bit disappointed when he opens the door and no dog comes scampering up to him. They’d dropped Anya off at Shane’s parents for the weekend, and the pout on Ilya’s face causes Shane to make a note to himself that he should go pick her up after his morning run tomorrow instead of the day after. “No more worrying about stupid article and stupid journalists?”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, and technically it’s not a lie. He’s not worrying about them, but okay fine, he knows that this is a paper-thin excuse at best.

But, as much as he tries to forget about it completely, he can’t.

Because the thing is, the thing is, this whole ‘golden boy of hockey’ schtick that he’s been boxed into since the beginning of his time in the league has started to feel more and more like a cage ever since he and Ilya had gotten outed. Has started to become especially stifling and suffocating when the biggest thing that Shane had been keeping a secret from everyone the entire time had already been exposed to the world in probably the worst way he could’ve imagined.

After all that, Shane’s been finding it harder to, well. Give a fuck, sometimes.

Not about everything, but some things, at least, seem insignificant in the face of everything else they’d been put through. And, as a matter of fact, after the way they were treated by the media specifically—how they are still treated by them—Shane can’t imagine why people would be surprised if he…bitches them out a little.

So, actually, if everyone pauses and thinks about it, this whole thing really is the media’s fault, not Shane’s (days later, when the team is inevitably forced into another media training workshop after this whole incident, Ilya will absolutely crack up at this explanation; Harris will simply send Shane a glare that is half-weary and half-amused).

Okay, maybe Shane gets a little carried away with it. He hadn’t meant to, but he doesn’t even lift his head up from where it’s bent over his phone until he hears his name being called.

“Hollander,” Ilya yells from across their house, and Shane jerks his head up, forgetting for a moment that he isn’t by himself when he hears footsteps padding down the hallway hastily. “Hollander!”

Ilya bursts into the kitchen with a wide grin splitting his face, slightly unhinged in the way it gets when his husband is truly delighted about something. Shane can’t help the affection that blooms between his lungs at the sight, dropping his phone on the counter as Ilya crowds him back into it.

“Shane, моя любовь, мой герой, мой идеальный, идеальный мужmy love, my hero, my perfect, perfect husband,” Ilya starts, and Shane flushes at the adoration so plainly evident in his voice combined with the large hands squeezing his sides at the same time. “Do you have something to tell me maybe?”

“Uh.” Shane’s eyes dart over Ilya’s face. “No?”

“So it was not you that logged in to your Twitter account and retweeted million tweets in ten minutes? It was ghost?”

“It wasn’t a million,” Shane complains automatically, back straightening up in the small amount of space he has. His denial, unfortunately, only serves to confirm the truth.

Ilya tosses his head back and laughs, arms curving around Shane’s lower back as he lets his weight fall forward and rest on Shane. His body shakes with it, and his amusement is so vivid, so contagious, that it fills up the room until Shane thinks that the kitchen seems a bit brighter than it had been before.

He can’t stop his own lips from curling up in response, even as he tries to stifle it into something less obvious. But his chest is bursting with it, bursting with the infatuation and devotion and love he has for Ilya, and he feels a little on top of the world with it.

Shane would fight a hundred hockey players in a gladiator-style battle to the death just to hold Ilya’s hand. He would post another thousand tweets defending him and calling out annoying journalists and media outlets just to make him laugh like this. He would walk barefoot through a snowstorm and swim across all the seven seas and burn the entire fucking world down just to find him.

“The fans think you have lost your mind,” Ilya gleefully declares once he finally calms down a little, though another chuckle forces itself out again. “They are calling you ‘a little shit’ on Twitter, Hollander.”

The words make him snort, and he uses a hand to play with the curl that’s falling over Ilya’s face, fingers tracing over the shape of the coil delicately. “Maybe you really did seduce poor, innocent little me over to the dark side, Rozanov,” Shane says sarcastically, and Ilya’s eyes gleam.

“Poor, innocent little you stared at my dick in the showers when he was eighteen.”

“Fuck off, you looked at me first, asshole.”

“Ah, so you are liar now also? Wow, how the mighty have fallen.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hm.” Ilya hums, moving impossibly closer—because neither of them have moved even a centimeter away from each other the whole time—to bite the top of Shane’s ear lightly before murmuring, “Maybe I will. I should reward my милый щенокpretty puppy for how loyal he is, no?”

One of Ilya’s hands slides up his chest to wrap loosely around the base of his neck, and a quiver rattles through Shane’s bones at both the words and the way Ilya uses a single finger to tip his head to the side. The line of his neck is now exposed, vulnerable to the heat of Ilya’s mouth and the wet of his tongue and the sting of his teeth.

“Fuck.”

Ilya chuckles against his pulse point, a little condescending, and Shane’s stomach clenches hard at the sound. “You want?”

Shane has just enough wherewithal left to hazily think that if the answer to that is ever a no, he’s probably been replaced with an actual government hockey robot like the one some people say that he is. But that thought also vanishes into thin air when Ilya leans back and smirks.

“Go, then.”

Hours later, Shane and Ilya will be lying in bed, both reading with unrestrained mirth as Ilya scrolls through Twitter in the aftermath of the chaos Shane had caused. Hours later, Shane will reluctantly respond to Harris’s text with an apology that he doesn’t really mean and that Harris knows he doesn’t really mean. Hours later, Ilya will be in his arms and everything will be warm and happy and good.

Right now, though, Shane doesn’t think about that. Doesn’t think about anything but getting up the stairs as fast as he can, Ilya’s footsteps battling against his as they run and shove at each other, laughter echoing off the walls in the perfect cadence of Shane’s heartbeat.