Work Text:
Ilya Rozanov is torturing himself.
Each day begins in the exact same way. He wakes up to the same annoying alarm sound and picks up his phone as soon as he’s cracked open his eyes. The tabs on his browser are still open from the night before. All he has to do is refresh them.
Google search, Shane Hollander Rose Landry. Twitter search, Shane Hollander Rose Landry. Reddit search, Shane Hollander Rose Landry. He sorts the results by new. He looks at every grainy paparazzi photo, reads every article, checks every comment. It doesn’t take that long. There are a lot of words, but they’re all essentially the same. Every shitty entertainment website is just recycling the same banal content. There’s only so much to say about a blurry picture of Shane and Rose standing vaguely next to each other, no matter how hard the writers try to wring five paragraphs out of each one. There are a limited number of ways in which the average social media user can convey the general idea that they are both nice, attractive people and therefore make a nice, attractive couple. Once you’ve read one reaction, you’ve read them all.
But Ilya reads them all anyway, every day, for months. He knows more about Rose Landry than he knows about himself. Maybe he’ll bribe whoever ends up organising this year’s team trivia night to make sure they include a movie round.
He checks his texts, too. Step one, make sure that the inevitable message from Alexei is a strongly worded demand for more money and not an announcement of their father’s death. Step two, open the conversation between him and Jane. Step three, reread the most recent text. It’s from nearly three months ago. See you soon, it says. It’s not the right type of text to be so final. It feels like a loose thread at the edge of a garment, the kind that could either be cut off and discarded or pulled at until the whole thing unravels.
Step four, consider replying.
Ilya doesn’t know how many times he’s started typing something out in the box underneath. He always ends up deleting it. The messages don’t even get finished in his thoughts, never mind fully typed out and sent.
You could’ve stayed–
Fucked up of you to leave like that–
You left your shirt–
Did I do something wrong–
Fuck you–
Sorry for calling you Sh–
Saw a video of that bad hit you took, are y–
Montreal vs Boston in two weeks–
Usual time and place, or–
Are you ok–
Are we still–
Why the fuck haven’t you texted–
We shouldn’t see each other–
I don’t know why I feel so–
I l–
I miss you–
Some of them are quietly backspaced away. Others require the more aggressive approach of holding down the delete button for a good ten seconds, then throwing the phone out of arm’s reach where it can’t cause any trouble.
Ilya’s thumbs hover over the phone keypad. For some reason, he’s acutely aware that it’s been years since they last played against each other without texting about it beforehand. It feels wrong, and weirdly sad. Like he’s lost something he used to take for granted.
Flying out later, he considers. Happy game day. Something polite, something neutral. See you on the ice.
He could probably rile him up if he wanted to. Send something suggestive. Test the waters and throw Shane off his game at the same time.
Or he could be a bit more underhanded than that. There are meaner ways to fuck with Shane’s head before they play. Try not to run away halfway through the game, perhaps. Or, if he really wanted to twist the knife, something like…
He taps slowly at the screen, watching the letters appear one by one.
Does she know you like it rough?
He stares at the words for a moment. Then his stomach twists uncomfortably and he deletes the whole thing, his face burning pink with guilt like a child who almost got caught doing something naughty.
He shuts off the phone, then picks it back up to put it into airplane mode for good measure. Anyone who wants to contact him will at least have to wait until he’s showered.
—
Ilya spends the day trying his best to put Shane Hollander out of his mind ahead of the game. Whether they’re fucking or not, he likes to beat him at hockey. That hasn’t changed and it probably never will. All he has to do is seize the opportunity to do so.
He steps onto the ice in a surprisingly good headspace. He feels good about the form he’s in. He gave a decent speech in the dressing room before the game, and the other guys on the team are in a good mood. He’s not even bothered by the news that Rose Landry is in the stands with her fucking Hollander jersey on. She hasn’t watched him lose in person yet. Ilya is happy to provide that experience for her.
Montreal can get fucked.
The noise is deafening as he lines up opposite Hollander for the face-off. It’s always loud here. The good people of Montreal despise him almost as much as they love their captain, and Ilya thrives on it. It feels good to score to cheers. It feels great to score to boos.
He keeps his eyes down and his head focused, not even bothering to look Hollander in the eye, let alone chirp him. It’s as if Hollander isn’t even there. This face-off could be against anybody, from any team, in any rink. It wouldn’t matter. Ilya is a world class hockey player and a team captain and a Stanley Cup winner. He stands ready, his body tightly-wound and waiting.
And then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees it.
At the base of Shane Hollander’s throat is a dark red hickey. It’s fresh, no more than a day or two old, stark and striking against his otherwise unblemished skin. He seems uncharacteristically unbothered about hiding it. Maybe he’s even proud of it. Maybe this is exactly what he wanted.
It’s like he’s deployed a weapon. Ilya feels possessed. He can’t think, he can’t look away. Every fibre of his being is focused on this fucking hickey. His brain is full of visions of Rose Landry’s mouth on Shane’s neck, of Shane throwing his head back and threading his fingers into her hair the way he does when Ilya–
The referee drops the puck. By the time Ilya notices, Hollander has won the face-off. And a mere fifteen seconds later, Montreal have scored.
Ilya grits his teeth until his jaw aches.
—
The score stands at 2-1 to Montreal at the end of the second period. Ilya wants a cigarette. He’s playing like shit, and he knows it, but so is Hollander. His head isn’t in the game either. Both teams are equally disadvantaged by their captains tonight.
Boston are far from out of the game. But after a few frustratingly close chances and more than a few shit-eating grins on the faces of Montreal’s players, tempers are fraying. The team are forced to spend the intermission sitting through the evergreen ‘do not lose your heads, boys’ speech that gets wheeled out multiple times every season.
Ilya shakes his arms in an attempt to reset himself. He takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly, feeling his chest move as he does so.
He will go out onto the ice. He will score two goals himself if he needs to. He will deal with Shane Hollander and his hickey and his bullshit later.
—
Ilya sees it. Everybody sees it. Everybody except the fucking referee.
One second, Boston’s Theo Svensson has the puck and he’s flying up the ice towards Montreal’s goal. The next, Bradley Marshall’s stick is in Svensson’s skates. And the second after that, Svensson is on the floor, and Hayden Pike has the puck.
The referee’s arm stays firmly at his side. Ilya turns to glower at him, his mouth hanging open in disbelief.
‘Are you fucking blind?’ he yells. Now the referee’s arm goes up. He may be blind, but unfortunately for Ilya, he certainly isn’t fucking deaf.
Pike shoots, and the puck rips beautifully into the net. Boston’s goaltender never had a chance. The horn blares.
The crowd goes wild, and so does Ilya.
‘Motherfucker, this is a joke–’
The referee skates towards him, arm raised for the second time. Ilya’s pulse pounds against his temple.
‘Montreal goal,’ announces the referee. ‘Boston, number eighty-one, two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct. Ten minute misconduct.’
The crowd fucking erupts. Ilya skates to the penalty box with red-tinged vision, his lungs bursting in his chest. The door clatters shut behind him.
He wants to scream. He wants to drop his gloves and break Bradley Marshall’s nose with his fist. He wants to press his thumb against Shane Hollander’s hickey and watch his pupils blow wide when it hurts.
He can see Rose Landry in the stands, her face lit up with a beautiful white smile. She blurs into a haze when hot angry tears prickle at the back of Ilya’s eyes. He will not let them fall. He will not give all these bastards the satisfaction.
He spends the rest of his penalty staring at the floor.
—
Montreal win in the end. Of course they fucking do. It’s a veritable trouncing. With a final score of 5-1, it’s Boston’s worst loss this season. The atmosphere in the dressing room is rancid.
Ilya doesn’t even get the chance to take his helmet off before Marleau is in his ear.
‘Roz, what the fuck, man?’
‘Fucking leave it. Bad game, bad loss, my fault, I already fucking know all that.’
‘Is something up with you?’ Marleau says seriously, and Ilya has to bite his tongue to stop himself from snapping. It was bad enough when he was a teammate talking shit. It’s worse now that he’s a friend showing concern.
Ilya rolls his eyes. ‘Nothing important.’ He reaches for the cross around his neck and tries to force himself back into captain mode. ‘We take the loss. We win next game. And game after. And game after that. Yes?’
‘Okay, man.’ Marleau’s eyebrow is raised in a way that suggests it is not, in fact, okay. But he knows better than to ask any further questions.
‘We’re still going out, right?’ asks Svensson.
‘Sure,’ Marleau says. ‘I need a fucking drink after that. You coming, Roz?’
Ilya shakes his head. ‘Not tonight.’
—
He showers in a daze, his brain elsewhere while his body auto-pilots itself through the motions of washing and getting dressed. When he picks up his bag and heads out into the freezing winter air, he truly intends to go straight to his hotel.
It’s an unpleasant surprise when he snaps back into himself and realises that his feet have marched their way to Shane Hollander’s apartment. The light is on upstairs, a warm orange glow shining against navy sky and yellow street lamps. There are shadows moving in the window. Hollander is probably celebrating his 5-1 win with his beautiful girlfriend.
Ilya should leave. This isn’t who he is. This isn’t what he wants to be. He’s not a stalker, he’s not a pathetic lovesick puppy, he’s a fucking superstar. He should go to his hotel. He should pick a direction, any direction, and walk in it until he’s put a safe amount of distance between Hollander and Hollander’s apartment and whatever fucking kind of mental breakdown Ilya is clearly having.
His body doesn’t move. He simply stands there, inanimate, his eyes pointed at the fire escape but not really looking at anything at all. He’s not wrapped up enough for the weather. The wind whips at his face, stinging his cheeks and wetting his eyes. His hands are going numb. He clenches them into fists and buries them in his pockets and–
Bzzt. His phone vibrates against his frozen knuckles. The sensation reverberates through the bones in his arm, all the way up to his elbow.
Jane: Are you going to stand there all night?
Ilya stares at the screen. He doesn’t get the chance to think about how to respond, or even to chastise himself for being seen or for coming here or for ever getting involved with Shane Hollander in the first place. Sixty seconds after the text arrives, the fire escape opens, and Hollander is standing in the doorway with wet hair and tired eyes.
Ilya braces himself for– he doesn’t know what. He just knows it feels as if he’s about to be yelled at by his father.
Hollander doesn’t yell. Shane doesn’t yell.
‘Are you coming in? It’s fucking cold.’
Ilya says nothing. He walks into the building and follows Shane up to his floor as if it isn’t a terrible idea. They don’t speak, or kiss, or chase each other up the stairs.
He hesitates when they get to the front door of the apartment.
‘You are alone, yes?’
‘What? What do you mean?’ Shane sounds almost exasperated.
‘There is nobody else in your apartment?’
‘No, of course not. I wouldn’t– why would there be anyone in my apartment?’
‘Well, she was at the game, so–’
‘No, Rozanov. Rose is not here,’ Shane says flatly. He doesn’t bother holding the door for Ilya. As Ilya shrugs his coat off, Shane is already heading for the kitchen and the half-drunk glass of wine that it has to offer.
‘You don’t drink during the season,’ says Ilya.
‘No, I fucking don’t.’ He downs the rest of the glass in one mouthful. It stays in his hand as he refills it from the bottle. ‘What the fuck is your game, Rozanov?’
‘My game? My game, Hollander?’ Ilya closes the gap between them and grasps Shane’s chin, angling it upwards to expose his neck. The hickey stands bold and unmissable in the light. ‘I have better question, what the fuck is this?’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a hickey before.’
‘Not on you.’ Ilya’s voice comes out all snarling and ugly, as if he’s turned into his brother. The thought makes him grimace. He lets go of Shane’s face and takes a step back, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how he has him crowded against the kitchen island.
‘Is it from her?’
It would be easier if it wasn’t. If it was from an anonymous hookup and not from someone he loves.
Shane bristles. ‘Who else?’
It’s stupid to ask a question that you already know the answer to. The confirmation still feels like a slap in the face.
There’s a soft clinking noise as Shane sets the glass down on the counter. Then his hands are on Ilya’s face, and he’s kissing him. Kissing him, with soft lips that taste of wine and part gently to release a tiny hum of pleasure, and–
Ilya presses his palms to Shane’s chest and pushes him away. He keeps his eyes closed, casting his vision downwards before he opens them. He doesn’t want to see the look on Shane’s face.
‘You don’t get to kiss me like that,’ Ilya says. ‘You have a fucking girlfriend. If you want to kiss someone like that you can go and find her.’
‘God, you always think you know every fucking thing–’
‘I know you ran from my house. Then nothing, for months. Then you’re everywhere, posing for the camera, loving the attention, golden fucking Hollander with his hickey from his beautiful movie star–’
‘And how many people have you fucked since last time?’
Ilya doesn’t answer. He couldn’t, off the top of his head. It hasn’t been that many, but he doesn’t exactly keep count.
‘Yeah. I thought so.’ Shane’s voice is laced with bitterness.
‘You are jealous? You made the choice to run away, Hollander, not me. You want me to live like a monk while you marry her, buy a boring house, have three boring children–’
‘Oh my God, you’re fucking jealous–’
‘–you want me to apologise for fucking beautiful women that are fun to be around? You want me to crawl on my knees and beg “please, Hollander, please, let me love you, kiss me for cameras,” when you’re too fucking scared to let me in through front door–’
‘I don’t fucking want you to love me. I don’t want you to– to fall asleep with your arms around me, or cook dinner for me, or say my name like– like this is anything more than sex for you. We’re not supposed to be like that. You’re supposed to show up and fuck me and leave.’
Shane is furious. Ilya has never seen him like this, not even during his rare fights on the ice. It’s painful, but in a way that sets his skin alight, like when blood rushes back into a limb that’s gone numb.
He can work with this. Anger is so much easier to deal with than plain silence. And they’re supposed to hate each other, right? They’re rivals, out there, and they can be rivals in here too. Ilya can follow the story that the media have set up for them. He can play the role that he has been assigned, the one that involves being a cold, selfless asshole who talks a lot of shit and scores a lot of goals and doesn’t care about anybody but himself.
Being Hollander’s rival is easier than being whatever the fuck he actually is to Shane.
Ilya runs his tongue over his teeth, slow and deliberate.
‘Okay, Hollander. So I showed up. Do you want me to fuck you, or should we skip straight to me leaving?’
Shane looks as if he despises him. Maybe he does. He may as well. Ilya is very close to despising himself right now.
He steps up to Ilya as if they’re squaring up to fight. His breathing is heavy, his nostrils flaring slightly. Ilya is half-hard from the tension alone, but he forces himself to hold Shane’s gaze with narrowed eyes. He doesn’t want to be the instigator here. Something is going to happen, if he is patient enough to let it.
Shane chooses his words with careful precision. They hit like blows. ‘Next time we play, I’ll ask her to give me two.’
Ilya snaps. He takes Shane’s face in his hands and presses their mouths together in a harsh clash of teeth and tongues. Shane’s hands go straight to the waistband of Ilya’s pants, pushing them down just far enough to free his cock. He moans into Ilya’s mouth when he gets his hand around it and it hardens in his fist. If Ilya was better at playing his part, he would laugh. Instead, he breaks the kiss to pull Shane’s t-shirt over his head, then grasps both of Shane’s shoulders and pushes him down to his knees.
Shane’s eyes fall closed in bliss when Ilya feeds his cock between his waiting lips, pushing right to the back of his tongue until Ilya can feel Shane’s throat swallowing involuntarily around the head. There’s a pang of guilt in his stomach when Shane gags, and he moves to pull out, but strong hands grasp the back of his thighs and urge him forward again.
Fine. So this is what this is. If Shane wants to be used, Ilya will oblige.
He threads his fingers into Shane’s hair once again, holding his head steady against the kitchen island, and begins to rock his hips. Shane simply takes it, moaning around Ilya’s cock with every thrust, saliva dripping down onto his chest from his chin. For the first time since they first saw each other on the ice hours ago, he looks like he’s at peace.
‘Wow. You’re desperate for it.’ It’s supposed to be degrading, but Ilya just sounds awestruck. He tightens his grip on Shane’s hair to kill the urge to run his thumb over the freckles on his cheek, then pulls him off his cock entirely for fear of coming too quickly. Show up, fuck him, leave. He’s embarrassed himself enough already by completing the first step instead of going to his hotel like a man with any sense. He will not run the risk of failing at step two.
Shane looks drunk. It’s not from the wine, it’s from whatever happens to his brain in the place he’s sent to when Ilya fucks his mouth like this. It’s the same state he falls into whenever Ilya presses his face into the bed when he fucks him, or pins his wrists against the wall while they’re kissing, or whispers some filthy praise into his ear.
Ilya feels jealous of him sometimes. If there’s a version of such a paradise for him, he doesn’t get there through sex. Maybe he would, if it were safer. If he knew he could fall asleep afterwards and wake up to someone who wanted to stay.
Shane peers up at him with dark, desperate eyes. His lips are slick with spit, his cheeks flushed pink. He’s beautiful. It’s intoxicating, knowing that he’s the only person who gets to wreck Shane like this. It makes him feel like the king of the whole world.
Not the only person, his brain supplies unhelpfully.
Ilya reaches for Shane’s wrist and pulls him to his feet for another rough kiss, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and biting gently. Shane whines and presses himself closer to Ilya’s body in response, and Ilya decides he can’t be getting any of this from Rose Landry. Shane is not acting like a man who has a satisfying sex life with one of the hottest women in the fucking world. He is acting like a needy little slut.
‘Come to bed with me,’ says Shane against Ilya’s lips, and Ilya’s teeth are clenched again, his mouth downturned in frustration. Come to bed with me, as if they’re lovers and not just…two people using each other for sex, as Shane seems to think.
Ilya is going to do it anyway. And then he looks at the hickey. Sees Rose Landry on Shane’s neck, in Shane’s arms, in Shane’s bed with all of those useless fucking pillows.
Has he even bothered to change the sheets? If they go to bed, will it smell like her perfume?
‘No. Get a condom. I fuck you here or not at all.’
Shane’s face crumples, although he tries to hide it as he turns to climb the stairs. Ilya stays behind, alone, and feels like the biggest asshole in the world. If he heard about someone else treating Shane like this, issuing bullshit ultimatums and insisting on fucking him in his kitchen, he’d lose his shit. And yet here he is, doing exactly that, not even compromising by suggesting the couch in case he’s fucked her there as well. He knows enough about Shane’s general aversion to germs to know this is going to make him feel weird every time he cooks for the next six months. And Ilya is going ahead anyway, because Shane is absolutely right about him being horribly, painfully jealous.
His chest feels tight. He doesn’t want to be shitty to Shane. Not properly. He wants to give him shit about the hickey, because it’s easier than looking under the proverbial rock to examine why a single mark has made him feel so unhinged. He wants to be rough with him in bed, but only in the way that he knows Shane loves, and then he wants to wrap them both up in the duvet and fall asleep with his head on Shane’s chest.
He wants to spend time with him. Go out for food, get drinks, see a movie. Talk about hockey. Rib each other about their teammates. Make each other laugh.
Like friends. Friends who fuck. Secretly. And don’t fuck anybody else.
Or maybe they do, but they don’t flaunt it. They don’t date. They don’t trend on Twitter, they don’t get photographed on cute dates, they don’t turn up to games with hickeys on their necks.
Maybe Ilya wouldn’t fuck as many other people if he wasn’t constantly trying to get his mind off the fact that Shane Hollander is in love with somebody else.
The reality of that hits him like a bucket of cold water as Shane returns. As Rose Landry’s boyfriend walks back down the stairs with lube in one hand and a strip of condoms in the other so that Ilya can bend him over his fucking kitchen island.
‘She is okay with this?’
‘What?’
‘Your girlfriend. She won’t mind you…’ Ilya gestures between them uselessly.
Shane looks at him as if he’s said something idiotic. ‘She’s not going to know. Obviously.’
It doesn’t make a difference, really. Ilya is going to fuck him anyway. But he might have the decency to feel even worse about it later, now that he knows there’s a whole new level of illicitness to add to the list.
‘I didn’t think you were the type.’
‘What? What the fuck are you talking about, Rozanov?’
He deposits the lube and condoms on the counter in front of Ilya with an unspoken here, are you going to fuck me or not?
Ilya is dealing with a lot of feelings right now, but a particularly prominent one is confusion. He’s not sure how much clearer he can make it.
‘You, cheating on Rose Landry!’ he says loudly.
‘Can you just drop it? I don’t want to talk about Rose.’
Of course you don’t want to talk about Rose. I don’t want to talk about her either. I want to go back to knowing very little about her, actually.
There’s an awkward silence between them now. Turns out that it’s not very sexy to send a guy to fetch condoms instead of taking him to bed like he wanted. Especially not when you follow that up with reminding him of the girlfriend that he’s cheating on. Shane looks like he’s beginning to regret letting Ilya into the building in the first place.
They should stop this. They should sit down and talk and agree that this is over now. Or Ilya should just walk out, and let Shane fester and overthink in his wake the way that he was forced to back in Boston.
Whatever they do, they absolutely should not have sex.
Ilya should not take off his shirt. He should not wrap his hand around the back of Shane’s neck and rest the pad of his thumb against the centre of the hickey. He should not savour the half-gasp half-whine that escapes Shane’s lungs when he presses down hard on the bruise. But Ilya frequently does things that he is not supposed to do, and the idea of leaving this apartment knowing that there will never be a next time is hard enough without depriving himself of a ‘this time’ as well.
He can feel Shane’s pulse beneath the hickey, its beat strong and urgent against Ilya’s thumb. Shane’s eyes are molten in the glow of the kitchen light.
‘Me and Rose, we’re not–’
So much for not wanting to talk about Rose. Ilya raises two fingers to Shane’s mouth, which opens obediently and automatically. His cheeks hollow as he begins to suck.
Ilya presses his fingertips down against Shane’s tongue.
‘Shut up, Hollander. We fuck, we don’t talk.’
He withdraws his fingers, letting his thumb trace the edge of Shane’s lower lip as he breaks the trail of spit that follows, then turns Shane around so they’re both facing towards the kitchen island. He reaches for the lube, rips open one of the condoms, and Shane steps out of the last of his clothes. Ilya doesn’t bother, leaving his own pants around his thighs. It feels almost clinical, but Ilya supposes that it is clinical compared to their other hookups. Last time was different to usual, in a way that Shane clearly isn’t comfortable with. And this time is different to usual in an unpleasant new way that neither of them seem to be thriving on, but they both know the alternative is even worse.
Ilya kisses his way across Shane’s back as he preps him, nipping at the skin with his teeth and tracing over the muscles with the tip of his tongue to ensure it reads more filthy than romantic. He pulls out as soon as Shane starts rocking back against his fingers. It’s only a matter of time before he begs to have Ilya inside him in that plaintive, pleading voice he likes to use, and Ilya would like to avoid that if possible. It is liable to turn him stupid, and that’s the last thing either of them need after spending an entire evening making one bad decision after another.
He rests his forehead against the nape of Shane’s neck as he pushes inside him. Shane’s skin is warm, and he smells of shampoo and clean sweat, and no matter how many times they fuck, Ilya will never stop marvelling at how fucking good it feels to get his dick inside him. Shane takes his cock perfectly, just like how he plays hockey perfectly and speaks French perfectly and does fucking everything perfectly. His fingers curl around the edge of the counter as Ilya bottoms out.
He takes hold of Shane’s hip with one hand and plants the other between his shoulder blades, leaning his weight on his arm to really drive home the sensation of being pinned down. Then he begins to move.
He doesn’t start slow. There’s no checking in this time, no asking Shane what he would prefer. Ilya simply takes. He rocks his hips with full force, pulling Shane back onto his cock with each thrust, sweat breaking out on his forehead from the effort. Shane is fucking beautiful like this, pinned underneath him with his back arched in pleasure, his breath reduced to uneven gasps. Ilya could fuck him forever.
Well. He would if he could. There are many reasons why that is not actually possible, and one is his impending orgasm and the biologically enforced refractory period that insists on following. He slows down, not quite ready to let go of this yet. He takes his hand off Shane’s back, opting instead to take hold of a handful of his hair and squeeze the strands gently between his fingers.
Then Shane turns his head to the side to look up at him, his expression hazy and fucked-out and gorgeous. Unfortunately, it’s completely secondary to the hickey that is still right fucking there on his neck and insists on capturing Ilya’s attention. Ilya doesn’t want to see it. He focuses instead on the sight of his own fist in Shane’s hair and leans forward, pressing his body closer until his breath is ghosting across Shane’s ear.
‘She can’t give you this, can she?’ Ilya says without thinking. The words spill forth like water from a burst pipe. He can’t stop them. He can’t take them back. ‘She can leave hickeys on your neck, but she can’t fuck you so hard you feel it the next day. She can’t put you on your knees where you belong, she can’t fuck your throat until you gag, she can’t suck your cock exactly the way you like it.’
His other hand reaches between them and wraps around Shane’s cock so he can stroke him in time with his thrusts. His dick is hard and leaking, wet with his own pre-come.
‘She can’t give you what you need because she’ll never be me, Hollander,’ Ilya says, and Shane falls apart beneath him, his cock pulsing as it coats Ilya’s fist with his come. Ilya’s hips stutter, and he’s seized with a sudden, primal urge to spill his own release across Shane’s skin. To mark him. To claim him as his own.
He pulls out and discards the condom, then takes his own cock in his hand, groaning as his come splashes across Shane’s back. And fuck, he’s going to be jerking off to this mental image until he dies. Shane Hollander, bent over the counter, looking back over his shoulder with his whorish fucking bottom eyes, his back covered in come and his hole well-fucked and slightly gaping. It’s modern art. A picture of him belongs in the Louvre.
And then Ilya comes back down to earth, and all he can think about is how Shane doesn’t like to be dirty. How he doesn’t like weird sensations on his skin. How it’s obvious from Shane’s expression that he’s weighing up the options of staying in his current position or standing up and having to feel Ilya’s spend sliding down his back.
Everyone who has ever called Ilya an asshole has been right.
He pulls his pants back up and grabs a bunch of paper towels from the roll on the other counter, then wets them with warm water and gently wipes the mess off Shane’s skin. Washes away any trace of his presence, the way he can’t clean off the hickey. The way he can’t scrub himself free of the hold that Shane Hollander has over him.
He swaps the paper towels for a clean dish towel, then presses a kiss to the now-dry skin at the base of Shane’s spine by way of apology.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have–’
‘It’s fine.’ Shane picks up his clothes and starts to get dressed again. It only takes a second for Ilya to pick up his shirt and put it back on, so he spends the remaining time simply standing there awkwardly. The atmosphere feels like lukewarm bathwater.
‘I should probably go.’
‘Okay. Yeah.’ It’s noncommittal, as if Shane doesn’t care either way. He’s not looking at Ilya, he’s looking at the floor.
It feels fucking horrible.
‘Are you okay? I don’t want to leave if–’
‘I’m fine, Rozanov.’ Shane’s voice cracks slightly as he says Ilya’s name. It’s not obvious. Ilya wouldn’t have noticed it if he’d only met Shane a couple of times. But they’ve been doing this for years now, and it’s unmissable to his ears.
Ilya’s arms ache to hug him.
‘Shane–’
‘I need to sleep. Early start tomorrow. Make sure you push the fire escape closed behind you. Please.’
You’re supposed to show up and fuck me and leave.
Ilya grabs his coat and proceeds to the final step. He double checks that the fire escape is properly closed. He shivers in the alleyway behind Shane’s apartment and tries not to think about how he feels completely fucking empty.
He can’t go back to the hotel and sit by himself. He can’t be alone with his thoughts. Not like this.
An electrical charge is crackling quietly beneath the surface of his skin. He is primed and ready to self destruct.
He lights a cigarette, takes a long, drawn-out drag, and begins to put a plan together.
He’ll get out of this horrible fucking alleyway. He’ll do what he should’ve done hours ago. He’ll go out with his team. He’ll drink shitty low-budget vodka and listen to shitty music and put up with shitty comments about his shitty performance during the game. He’ll find a girl on the dancefloor and make out with her until he can no longer taste Shane’s kisses on his tongue. She won’t lecture him for smelling of cigarettes. She won’t make him feel anything complicated. She can come back to his hotel if she wants. He’ll shower, because he’s not that disgusting, and then he’ll fuck her without thinking about Shane Hollander even a single time. When she leaves in the morning he won’t remember her name. Easy. Simple. The way it should be.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens his messages. He’s not expecting anything from Jane, and yet his heart still sinks pathetically when his notifications are blank.
All the more reason to join his team at the club. He needs to get out of his head. He wants to feel obliterated.
Ilya: Still out?
Marleau: Yeah, we’re at Ciel. You in a better mood yet?
Ilya: Fuck off. There in 20.
Ilya: Have shots ready.