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Ilya’s phone buzzed against the nightstand, a wasp of a sound in the dark hotel room. He groaned, rolling over, burying his face in the starched pillowcase. Too early. Or too late. The glowing red numbers on the clock read 2:17 AM. Wrong number. He let it go to voicemail, but a second later, it buzzed again. A text message. From Shane Hollander.
Pick the fuck up.
Ilya stared at the screen, the blue-white light painting his face in a sickly glow. Dread curdled in his gut. Hollander. What the hell could he possibly want at—another buzz—2:18 AM on a Tuesday in a city a thousand miles away from where Ilya knew he was supposed to be? He thought about ignoring it, about powering the phone down and rolling back into the drunken oblivion he’d been courting. But the message was so strange and demanding. Imperious even. An order Ilya felt a sharp urge to disobey.
Pick up, the phone buzzed again. Please.
Please was slightly better. With a sigh that felt like it was dredged up from the soles of his feet, Ilya swiped the screen. “What?” he rasped, his voice a gravelly mess.
“I knew you were awake.”
Shane’s voice was a smooth purr down the line, but there was an undercurrent of something else. The faint clinking of glass, the low murmur of a crowd. He was in a bar.
“Some of us sleep after games, Hollander,” Ilya shot back, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard. The room spun, just a little. “It’s a novel concept. You should try it sometime.”
“Didn’t score tonight, Rozanov? Nothing to celebrate?”
Ilya’s jaw tightened. “We won. That’s all that matters.”
“Right. That’s all that matters.” There was a pause, another clink of glass. Ilya could picture him, leaning against some shiny chrome bar, swirling amber liquid in a tumbler, that stupid smile on his face. “Saw your post-game interview. You looked tired.”
“I’m fine.” The words were out too fast, too sharp. A lie. He wasn’t fine. He’d played like shit, and he knew it. Fumbled passes, shots wide, a complete lack of fire. He’d been a ghost on the ice, and the media had noticed.
“Liar.” Shane’s voice dropped, became something more intimate, more dangerous. “You played like dogshit and you know it. You’re letting them get in your head, Rozanov. Again.”
“You don’t know anything,” Ilya snarled, the shame of the game, of being seen through so completely by him, turning hot in his stomach. “Fuck off, Hollander. I don’t need this from you.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Shane’s sudden acquiescence was more unnerving than the goading. “Just forget it.”
But he didn’t hang up. Ilya could still hear the bar noise, the soft rhythm of Shane’s breathing. He was waiting. He was always waiting. For Ilya to break. For Ilya to come to him.
“What do you want?” Ilya’s voice was barely a whisper now, all the fight drained out of him. He was tired. So bone-deep, soul-crushingly tired.
“Same thing you want.”
The words hung in the air between them, a challenge and an invitation. Ilya’s heart started to beat a little faster, a heavy, painful thud against his ribs. This was their dance. The push and pull, the insults that were really questions, the hate that was really… something else. Something hungry.
“And how many have you already had?” Ilya asked, trying to find the upper hand, to regain some semblance of control.
“Enough,” Shane said, and in that single word, Ilya heard the whole story. The win, the two goals, the adulation, the loneliness. The quiet desperation that followed the bright lights. They were the same. God, they were the same. “But I’d have more if you were here to buy.”
“Vancouver’s a long way from Seattle, Hollander.”
“Not that long. And we can pretend,” Shane said, and the raw honesty in his voice stripped Ilya bare. “We’re good at that, aren’t we?”
The only sound was the static on the line, the frantic, silent screaming of Ilya’s own conscience. He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. It would only make it worse. It always did.
“Where are you?” Ilya heard himself ask, the words feeling alien in his own mouth.
He could hear the smile in Shane’s voice when he replied, the slow, victorious spread of it. “The Fairmont. Room 714.”
*
Three hours later, Ilya stood outside that very door, the carpeted hallway hushed and sterile. The flight had been a blur of boarding passes and cheap airport coffee, a desperate, irrational leap into the void. His heart was a jackhammer against his sternum. He raised his hand to knock, hesitated, then let it fall, the sound too loud in the silence.
The door swung open almost immediately.
Shane stood there, shirtless, in just a pair of grey sweatpants that hung low on his hips. He looked… terrible. And beautiful. Dark circles under his eyes, a day’s worth of stubble, but his body was a work of art, all lean muscle and beautiful skin. He held an almost-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. He didn’t smile. He just looked at Ilya, his gaze a physical thing, a weight that settled on Ilya’s shoulders.
“You are so stupid, Rozanov,” Shane said, his voice rough.
Before Ilya could reply, Shane’s free hand shot out, fisting in the front of Ilya’s hoodie and yanking him into the room. The door slammed shut behind him, the sound of the lock clicking home like a gunshot.
Then Shane’s mouth was on his.
It was punishment. All teeth and tongue and desperate, angry pressure. Shane tasted of whiskey and spite, and Ilya kissed him back with just as much fury, shoving him against the door, their bodies colliding with a painful thud. He grabbed Shane’s hair, pulling his head back, biting at his jaw, his neck, tasting the salt of his skin.
“God, Hollander, calm down for five seconds,” Ilya gasped as Shane’s hands fumbled with the zipper of Ilya’s hoodie, tearing at it.
“You’re one to talk,” Shane growled, finally managing to get the hoodie off, then tugging Ilya’s t-shirt over his head. His hands were everywhere, hot and possessive, mapping Ilya’s chest and stomach with a rough urgency. “Flying across the country at two in the morning because I told you to.”
That was new. Usually it was Ilya throwing shit like that in Shane’s face. It was a neat twist of the knife, and it hit its mark.
The fight went out of Ilya then, replaced by a wave of raw, aching need. He slumped against Shane, their foreheads pressed together, both of them breathing hard. Shane’s grip loosened, one hand coming up to cup the back of Ilya’s neck, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin there.
“Shut up,” Ilya whispered.
“Make me.”
So Ilya did. He kissed him again, and this time it was different. Slower. Deeper. All the anger bled away, leaving only the hollow ache underneath. Shane made a quiet, broken sound in the back of his throat, and the bottle of whiskey slipped from his fingers, hitting the plush carpet with a soft thud. He wrapped both arms around Ilya, holding on tight, like he was the only solid thing in a world that was spinning apart.
“I’m gonna fuck you so hard against that door, Hollander,” Ilya growled, biting at Shane’s earlobe. Shane just shuddered and nodded.
The door, it turned out, was too flimsy. They fumbled and bruised each other on it, until the only reasonable thing to do was find the nearest wall. Shane tore off his own sweatpants and turned his back to Ilya. Shane pressed his palms against the wallpaper, his breathing ragged. Ilya pressed the front of his body against Shane’s back, inhaling deeply, feeling the shuddering tension in the other man’s body. He closed his eyes and let himself savor the heat of it.
They stood like that for a long moment, pressed together, Shane’s ribs expanding and contracting with each ragged breath.
“You do this when I’m not around, Hollander?” Ilya growled low in his ear.
Shane’s head tipped back, his hair brushing against Ilya’s cheek. He huffed a silent, scornful laugh. “What, send sad drunk texts to fuckbuddies who live a thousand miles away? You’re one of a kind, Rozanov.”
“Mmm.” Ilya placed his big palms on Shane’s shoulders, dragging them down over his chest. A sharp intake of breath from Shane at that, his body starting to melt beneath Ilya’s hands. He was always so tense. Tension in the way he carried himself, the way he looked at Ilya when they were on the ice together.
“What about this?” Ilya kept moving his hands down Shane’s torso. He played with his navel, just the lightest touch, before sliding down to his hips. Shane was already hard. Of course he was. “Do you do this?”
He took Shane’s cock in his hand and pumped it once. Twice. Reveling in the sudden loss of control when Shane arched against his hands, a soft groan pulled out of him.
Shane’s head fell forward, his forehead against the wall. “I think about you when I jerk off. When I can’t sleep. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Slut,” Ilya growled, scraping his teeth against the side of Shane’s neck, but there was no venom in it.
Shane thrust into Ilya’s fist, grinding his hips back against Ilya’s hardness. His breath was coming in shallow gasps now, and Ilya could feel the barely-restrained tension in his muscles, like a bowstring pulled taut.
“Rozanov, just fuck me already. God.”
“Just like that? No stretching? No condom?” Ilya slid one hand down further, following the crease of Shane’s ass, pushing his fingertip gently at his hole. Shane groaned. “I didn’t know you liked it quite that rough.”
He reached around again with the other hand, closing his fist once more over Shane’s cock, gratified by the way it jumped at his touch. “Tell me what you want.”
“Fuck. Fuck. I want… I want your cock in me, Ilya,” Shane choked out, his voice wrecked. “I want it so bad.”
The way Shane said it was so fucking earnest that it made something ache in Ilya’s chest. He almost wanted to stop teasing, to give him the sweet release of touch he so clearly needed, but no. There was a game to play here. Always a game.
“But it will hurt,” Ilya said in Shane’s ear, slowing his fist to an agonizing crawl. “I’ve got a nice dick, Hollander. Everyone says so.”
“Please,” Shane gasped, arching into the touch. “Rozanov, I want it to hurt, you son of a bitch, I—”
Ilya’s free hand landed in Shane’s hair and yanked hard. He pressed his hips forward, grinding his bulge against Shane’s bare ass. “Hey,” he murmured, his voice low, soothing. “This isn’t the part where you’re mean to me. Say something nice.”
Shane gave a choked laugh, some of the tension in his shoulders draining. “It is a nice dick,” he murmured after a beat, all the tension and anger from before drained out of his voice. “Such a nice dick, Rozanov.” He swallowed, pushing back against Ilya’s lap. “Can I please have it?”
God, but he sounded broken. And with that tone of voice, Ilya felt suddenly and stupidly real, rooted to the earth and so very much alive.
So he dug one hand into Shane’s hair and kept the other around Shane’s dick, and slowly fucked him with all the restraint and patience he could muster. Slowly, and without very much lube. Just his spit and his precome.
There was a moment of quiet when it started; just Ilya’s cockhead inside Shane, with one hand tight around Shane’s waist. “Breathe,” Ilya said, his voice somehow loud in the stillness of the hotel room. Shane inhaled shakily.
Then he breathed out and with that Ilya pushed in fully, splitting Shane open, feeling the slow, trembling stretch of his muscles, his taut shivering.
Shane’s hips tipped back instinctively, bearing down on him, and the moan that came out of him was utterly obscene. “Oh God, fuck. Rozanov.”
Ilya held him there, deep, for a long moment. Every moment Ilya stalled was agonizing, but that was the point of it—to punish Shane, and to tease himself in the process. Their bodies joined, this was a liminal space, where things that usually roiled with tension could be soothed and put away, if only for a moment.
When Ilya did begin to move, Shane reached his arm back to grab at Ilya’s thigh, squeezing encouragingly. He kept squeezing every time Ilya pushed in, as if urging him on.
Ilya’s balls throbbed at that. A ragged, vulnerable gasp caught in his throat, and he brought his hand over Shane’s mouth reflexively, to keep him quiet.
But Shane kept squeezing his thigh, so Ilya sped up until it felt like he was truly fucking Shane. Truly using him.
Even at this pace, with Ilya’s hand over his mouth, Shane kept making tiny noises with each thrust, half-strangled muffled things that almost sounded like pleading, or sobs. Ilya liked that. He liked seeing Shane vulnerable.
They found their rhythm soon. It was smooth. Seamless. They always fit together just right, despite all their bickering and the insults. Ilya fucked him as long and hard as he could, but of course it couldn’t last forever. He felt himself leaking into Shane. Filling him.
Shit. That thought tipped him over the edge and he moaned softly into Shane’s hair, pouring himself into his rival’s body.
“F-fuck,” Shane stammered, muffled under Ilya’s hand. Ilya pulled out of him, not unkindly. He spun Shane around to face him, smirking at Shane’s wetness, at the mess he’d made of him. It never got old. He fisted Shane’s cock one more time, all slick with precome now.
“You’ll need more than that, huh?” Ilya murmured.
Shane whimpered and looked away, and that was probably confirmation enough. He fucked Ilya’s hand again. He was always so quick to stoop to being used. He wrapped his arms around Ilya’s shoulders and held tight. Then he gave Ilya an utterly filthy kiss. Ilya closed his eyes and tasted Shane’s mouth, knowing all the while that Shane’s hips were bucking frantically in his fist.
“Rozanov,” Shane whispered. The sound of his own name was like a flare in Ilya’s brain. His balls clenched tight and his skin flushed hot.
“Yeah, come for me,” Ilya groaned, hand jerking. “Fucking do it, Hollander.”
Shane’s eyes flickered shut and his forehead crumpled inward. “Fuck,” he managed to choke out. And then he came, spurting in thick, hot streaks across Ilya’s stomach. “Oh fuck. Rozanov.”
“Yeah?” Ilya murmured. Shane came quietly, but hard—his cum hitting Ilya’s skin with nearly painful force. He must have been so keyed up, from all the flirting and the tension. Maybe it’d be out of his system soon, for both of them.
Their orgasms had barely finished before Shane crumpled to his knees, panting. He swayed in front of Ilya’s still throbbing dick, pressing his forehead to the sweat-slick muscles of Ilya’s stomach.
Shane exhaled deeply, and reached for Ilya’s balls with shaking fingers. Ilya let him explore, and was surprised at how soft and reverent Shane’s fingers felt. When he lowered his lips to his skin and began to clean him off—with long, sure strokes of his tongue—it felt like fire all over Ilya’s body.
“Oh god, Hollander,” Ilya hissed, tangling his fingers in Shane’s soft hair.
Shane looked up at him. He pulled off, smiling around Ilya’s shaft. “Good?”
“So good,” Ilya growled. “Jesus.” He thought that might be it, but Shane was far from done cleaning him up. He wasn’t stopping until he’d sucked up every drop of sweat, spit and come from Ilya’s pelvis.
“Where… where did you learn this?” Ilya croaked, shaking as Shane cleaned him off with his tongue. Shane said nothing; he merely continued his careful task.
It was hard to hold Shane after that, as their breaths evened out and the afterglow crested. It felt intimate, in a way they usually avoided. A more pure sort of intimacy. But it was Shane who broke that intimacy, standing slowly and going to the bed. The one they’d somehow avoided messing up.
Ilya trailed Shane to the bed. It felt big, empty, cold. But not as cold as the floor.
Ilya got in the bed gingerly, not sure what to expect. What he definitely didn’t expect was the way Shane cuddled into him.
Huh. All right. Perhaps for this, one night, in this new city, Ilya would indulge his rival.
“You good?” Ilya asked softly, finding Shane’s hand. He interlaced their fingers. There was no reason to ask the question, but maybe this, too, was part of it.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Shane glanced up at him. In the shadows, he looked angelic.
They didn’t bother pulling the covers up over themselves, even in the near-freezing AC. Ilya heard his own breath even out soon. The bed was dark and soft.
“Hey, Rozanov,” Shane murmured after a little while. It was amazing he was still awake. Ilya made an acknowledging noise in response.
Shane sounded nervous. “Um. We’ve got another game in two weeks, right?”
“Two weeks,” Ilya echoed, already too close to the brink of sleep. He wondered what game Shane was talking about.
“And another game… a month after that?”
“Hm.”
Then, surprisingly, Shane brushed a lock of hair out of Ilya’s eyes. He whispered: “And two months after that, one more game.”
He stroked Ilya’s hair more forcefully, looking away, unsure. Ilya blinked and met his gaze. He reached to squeeze Shane’s hand tight.
Shane swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing in the dim light. “It’s really gonna kill us, isn’t it? This year.”
It sounded like a confession, though it was more a statement of fact. Their schedules were hell this season, packed to the gills with roadie after roadie and endless travel. And if they had the time, they spent it together, at each other’s hotels or apartments, doing whatever came naturally to them. But all of that together meant one thing—there was no fucking time to breathe.
“Yeah,” Ilya agreed. He kissed Shane’s palm. His knuckles. “But it’s worth it.” It sounded like the kind of promise he never intended to keep, but he knew that with Shane, at least, it wasn’t a lie.