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Sometimes Shane thinks he hates his life.
Of course he doesn’t. Not really. It’s everything he’s ever wanted. And he’s grateful. He’s so grateful.
And sometimes Shane thinks he hates himself, but that can’t be true. He just doesn’t particularly like himself, either. And most days, he doesn’t feel much of anything about himself at all.
He and Shane Hollander have an agreement. A contract. This body will get him and the Metros to the playoffs. This body will win them the Stanley Cup. He will take care of everything else. He’ll optimize every detail to make sure Shane Hollander can keep going. Their life is built on brown rice and steamed salmon and torn ligaments and taped fingers. Shots he should have taken and shots he took but still weren’t enough.
There is no him that exists outside of it. Shane doesn’t let himself think about it too much.
His body is good for two things: hockey and sex—even then, the latter comes with an asterisk. He’s good at being available for sex, he supposes, and that is a thought he cannot afford to entertain.
In the end, both of those things are about endurance. How many hits can you take? The same kind of single-minded focus engulfs him on ice and in bed; the buzz of the arena in his ears, the puck a fixed point in his vision. The stretch of being split open, the cold of Rozanov’s fingers. How many times can you come in an hour? How much pain can you handle?
Shane can endure a lot. This he knows. He’s not small or weak. He can check a 200-pound hockey player into the boards hard enough to drop them onto their knees if he wants. He can play with a sprained ankle or slashed calf.
Rozanov makes him feel small. Not always. But he picks Shane up, pushes him down, traps him with his weight. And Shane lets him. That might be the worst part of it all, that Shane lets him do whatever he wants.
When Rozanov scoops him up, hands under his thighs, Shane should feel embarrassed. Instead, he’s elated. Rozanov tosses him onto the bed like he weighs nothing, and the delight of being wanted is worth anything.
“You didn't see this one coming,” Rozanov says, tracing the edge of a bruise with his fingers. It’s on Shane’s hip, spread across the side like a spill. He’s not in a hurry. Shane is naked and spread out under him, muscles tensing and relaxing over and over again.
“It happens,” Shane replies. His skin pebbles under Rozanov’s touch.
“Mhm.” Rozanov noses the hair below his navel, leaves an open-mouthed kiss there. Splays his hand across Shane’s stomach. “Even to Shane Hollander?”
Shane opens his mouth to say something horribly unclever and boring like “fuck you,” but Rozanov lowers his head and grins against the purple-black skin. The words don’t come out. He sinks his teeth into the flesh and Shane’s head fills with static. He tries to kick Rozanov off, but he catches his ankle and wrangles both of his legs underneath him. Sucks the skin into his mouth, between his teeth, pulls and twists. Shane’s back bows. He’s so loud. Always, with him. Too loud, flayed open with it.
“Too much?” Rozanov asks. Shane’s panting, staring at the ceiling. Too much, not enough. He can feel his pulse where Rozanov’s teeth had just been. Searing hot. Rozanov’s spit is cool on his skin.
Rozanov pinches the muscle of his thigh. “Answer me, Hollander. Too much?”
Shane shakes his head. A sharp jolt lances through him when Rozanov licks the leaking tip of his cock. “I—”
“Ah. You can’t take more.” Hand slides up. He kneads his thumb into the tender meat of Shane’s hip. Shane thinks he might be on fire. “It is fine. I understand.”
Not enough. Shane reaches to grab a fistful of Rozanov’s hair and shoves his face to the bruise. “Again.”
Rozanov kisses the spot before opening his mouth. His canines dig in, and something inside Shane clicks into place.
Montreal loses 6-2 to Calgary.
Shane’s phone pings in his pocket on his way home. He doesn’t bother to see who it is. He can already guess.
At home, he puts the game on, even though he doesn’t really need to. It’s fresh in his memory. There will be a team review tomorrow. This is a self-inflicted punishment, making himself watch his own mistakes on his huge flat TV, like he could change the outcome by feeling guilty enough.
The sounds echo in the apartment. He mutes the TV, and watches the rest of the game silent. Fixated on the small #24 who seems to fumble his way through it all.
When it’s time to turn it off, Shane takes a deep breath and drags his palms over his face. No use crying over spilled milk. A good saying. He slaps his own cheek once. Wallowing won’t help anyone.
Shane goes to bed and doesn’t check his phone.
lily: sloppy play hollander
lily: sucks to watch
lily: what did 14 say. he get under your skin?
lily: you look like angry kitten. very cute
lily: it’s just one game
lily: hollander?
Shane takes his frustration out on the treadmill right after he wakes up. The steady beat of his sneakers hitting the belt is almost meditative. The numbers go up, up, up, meters turn into a kilometer which turns into kilometers. It’s addictive when you know all the ways you could be better. His thighs burn. Shane dials up the speed a notch.
Eventually, the sound of blood rushing in his ears drowns out everything else.
He stops when his vision tilts. Shane braces himself on the handrails and leans his forehead against the console. Every exhale feels like it’ll drag bile up his throat. He realizes, distantly, that he’s swaying. He can’t see anything. Someone is mowing the lawn outside. That’s silly, he nearly says, it’s November. The sound gets louder when he tries to turn his head.
He drags himself to the shower once his vision clears.
The mirror in his bathroom reveals last night’s damage: two large, dark bruises spread across his shoulder and ribs, pouring around his pectoral. With morbid fascination, Shane teases the edge of one with his nails and then pushes his knuckles into it.
The ache constricts his chest. He takes his phone and pulls up the camera.
jane: I had a bad day. That’s all
He sends the photo and then sets the phone back on the counter. Screen down.
Could any of your girls take this, he wants to ask. Does this make me special? You can throw me around all you want. Am I better than your girls? Am I your girl?
Outside all the hotel rooms, the only time he gets to have Rozanov is in the rink. They’re both free here, in a way. Even though they’re surrounded by hundreds of people and cameras that track their every move. Rozanov slams Shane against the boards, elbow digging into the small of his back, and he thinks: this is mine. It will bruise later, he’s sure of it. In the privacy of his own home, he will press his fingers against it and think: he did this to me.
At least I can have this.
After the game, Rozanov pushes him face down into the couch cushions, bent over the armrest. His palm rests on the splotchy mess of purple and blue. Pride surges through Shane. I can take anything you’ll give me, he tries to say. This is what he built his body for. The crass violence of it all, this sport his whole being is centered around. His body is a tool, something to be used.
Rozanov pinches the skin between his fingers, like a warning, before his hand lands on the bruise with enough strength to sting. Shane goes abruptly still. Heat slicks his back.
“Fuck,” he breathes out.
“Okay?” Rozanov asks, and Shane is glad he can’t see his face, the shape of his mouth.
“Oh, fuck you.” He has nothing and everything to prove. “I can fucking—”
Rozanov hits him again. The words dissolve into a warbled moan.
The first time he’d let Rozanov into this apartment is distant now. The memory is fuzzy and Shane is sick with it. He doesn’t want Rozanov to be gentle. It would kill him, surely, to have Rozanov touch him like that again. Shane knows how it’s supposed to go now. They never mean it like that. It’s just a little fun, easing frustrations after a game. There’s an end, and they just need to reach it.
Whenever Rozanov puts his hands on him, Shane feels beside himself.
Rozanov shoves two of his fingers into Shane’s mouth when he fucks him. They press down on his tongue, probe deeper until Shane nearly gags. Those fingers could rip his tongue out. Shane closes his teeth around them. He can take anything Rozanov’s willing to give him.
Spit dribbles down onto the leather below him. Please, please, please, everything spills out of him, garbled around his fingers. Rozanov leans down and crushes Shane under him.
Specks of white light burst behind Shane’s eyelids as Rozanov bites down on his shoulder. He wonders if it’s enough to draw blood.
It’s just a little fun. Nothing serious. Shane holds onto that fact. So that he doesn’t lose his mind, if nothing else.
Their first time had been a test, maybe. Like being hazed in your rookie year. There are scripts he’s had to learn, a lot of them. J.J. slaps his ass before a game for good luck, and Shane knows he has to laugh a certain way. Williams kisses his cheek in the locker room, messy and wet with champagne and says I’ve fallen in love with you, Hollzy, and Shane pushes his face away with a grin and then Williams thumps his back so hard he can feel it in his lungs. And it doesn’t matter if Shane can’t find the appropriate response right away, because that’s just how he is. Our awkward little captain, someone says when he takes too long to reply. You know how he is.
That’s what it had been, then. A test. And Shane had failed, but Rozanov still thinks he’s worth the trouble. Shane is good at being available. For him.
Shane doesn’t want or need anything, except to win and to consume Rozanov whole.
Shane doesn’t want or need anything, and that’s why the aftermath is the worst part, sometimes.
He comes back to himself in pieces. Feet, legs, arms. It’s all so blurry. He tries to blink it away.
The mattress shifts as Rozanov’s weight disappears. That is good, Shane tells himself. They both have early flights tomorrow. Shane doesn’t move to clean up. He’s shivering.
The cold dampness of baby wipes against his skin pulls him to the surface. Rozanov wipes away the come on his belly, the remains of lube between his thighs. Shane stares at him in a haze. He’s still there.
Shane’s eyes sting.
Rozanov returns to the bed and Shane reaches for his body heat like he’s bending toward sunlight. He tucks Shane’s head under his chin and strokes his hair and says something Shane can’t hear over his own heart, climbing up his throat and trying to lodge itself between his teeth. He’s going to cry. He doesn’t want to, but he’s going to.
Seven minutes. Shane gives himself seven minutes and then says, “I need to shower.” A familiar routine. He stands up and can’t see anything. The sound of a lawnmower drones on in his ears. Shane stares at the floor, into the black void in front of him, endless and hungry.
A hand on his shoulder. Shane’s own hands feel so horribly cold and detached from his body.
“Hollander?”
“Just a little dizzy,” Shane says with a swallow. “It’s fine.”
When he doesn’t move any closer to the washroom, Rozanov asks, “Do you need to eat? Maybe your, ah, blood sugar is low.”
Blood pressure, Shane wants to correct him. A sudden drop in blood pressure. It’s called orthostatic hypotension or postural hypotension. Does he need to eat? He had green tea before the award ceremony. It’s a natural appetite suppressant, he’d read. He didn’t want to look too bloated on the stage. Orthostatic hypotension occurs when blood pools in the legs and fails to return to the heart quickly enough. It can be caused by—
“Hollander.”
“I ate in the morning.”
Rozanov picks up his phone and unlocks it. Sets it back down. “It’s midnight.”
“I need to shower,” Shane repeats.
He doesn’t wait to hear what Rozanov says next. He closes the bathroom door behind him and the hot steam that fills the room is enough to make him dizzy again.
It will pass. The thought reassures him somewhat. It will pass.
In the locker room where he’s surrounded by everyone else, Shane is hyperaware of his body. Slouched forward so he can lace his skates. He watches his fingers and hands move and they might as well be someone else’s. It doesn’t look right, but nobody’s paying attention to him. Shane isn’t even quite sure what they would see.
If someone looked at him right now, would they notice something’s irrevocably wrong with him? In moments like this Shane feels like a tall, overgrown baby who only recently has become conscious of the world around him. Like he learned to walk only a few days ago. He realizes he’s rocking back and forth on the bench and wills himself to stop.
It will pass. But Shane doesn’t even know what “it” is.
On the ice, all air gets punched out of Shane’s lungs when one of Toronto’s defenders crushes him against the boards. It’s a dirty hit. Shane’s knee buckles under him, and his elbow absorbs the force of the fall.
Then Hayden is there, like it’s his job to defend Shane’s honor.
“Too much of a pussy to throw a punch, Hollander?” the guy sneers. “Scared to ruin your pretty face?”
Shane can’t come up with a clever retort. His elbow hurts. He pushes himself up and shakes his arm. The throbbing pain is familiar and comforting.
The next time he’s pinned under Rozanov, Shane asks him to hit him.
Rozanov automatically lays his hand over a bruise on Shane’s chest. Shane takes his wrist and guides it to his cheek, already red and hot to touch, and Rozanov blinks.
“My face,” Shane clarifies. “I want you to slap my face.”
Rozanov takes his face in his hand, eyes scanning for something. “You are sure?”
“Please,” Shane mouths, throat dry.
He gasps when Rozanov’s open palm connects with his cheek. Shane’s cock drips all over his stomach.
“Harder,” he hears himself say.
The next hit is sharp. It knocks Shane’s head to the side. For one, blissful moment, everything sounds distant. His skin tingles. Numb, and then hot. He’s vaguely aware of his whimpers.
Rozanov pushes inside him, and Shane is going to choke. On this. On him. He looks at Shane like he’s never seen him before. So good, Hollander. So soft for me.
Then he backhands him across the face.
Shane grins. It’s a smug, satisfied little thing.
Shane hopes his helmet doesn’t crack as his head impacts with the ice. His whole body shatters into fragments and everything goes quiet, like he’s underwater, ears full of cotton. There’s pain, too, enveloping his head and pulsing behind his eyes, but it doesn’t register immediately. Shane wonders if the helmet is a lost cause now. It was a nice helmet, he thinks and shuts his eyes against the bright lights of the arena. What a waste of a very good helmet.
Then he’s in a hospital bed. Someone’s in the room with him. Did I teleport here, he asks, but no one answers. It’s probably not that important, then. He really needs to piss, so he says that, too, because someone should know. He hopes someone hears him.
“Did we win,” he slurs the next time he comes back to consciousness.
Fingers card through his hair. So light they might not even be there. “Don’t worry about it right now, baby,” his mother says, which means they lost. Shane should apologize. To her and to the team.
“‘Kay,” he mumbles instead. The press of lips against his forehead makes him feel like a child.
Four days later Shane’s in Ottawa, in his parents’ living room, watching as Ilya Rozanov gets sent to the penalty box for slashing Comeau. The Bell Centre is livid. Rozanov smiles, innocent and bright, and shrugs.
“What does he get out of it?” Yuna asks. Clicks her tongue. “Does he just do it for fun?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Shane acknowledges it with a small “huh” and grabs his phone.
jane: The fuck is your problem?
It’s for me, he would say, if it didn’t sound insane. Still, Rozanov looks directly into the camera when his two minutes are up and for a second Shane feels like he’s staring right into the ugliest parts of him.
If they’d been playing against Boston a few days ago, would Rozanov have visited him in the hospital? Ottawa’s captain had. Shane can imagine Rozanov there, standing at the door while Shane is still loopy and slipping in and out of consciousness. He would have been easy, then. As if he wasn’t always easy for Rozanov. It’s Rozanov’s favorite thing about him. Always so desperate, Hollander. So needy. Can’t get enough. Funny how Shane hates it, like this, thinking back on it. Hates being needy. What Rozanov reduces him to. What an easy and convenient fuck. A slut.
And if Rozanov had been there, he could have manhandled Shane onto his belly effortlessly, moved the flimsy hospital gown aside, and Shane would have let him. He wouldn’t have any other choice but to let him. Let Rozanov take what he wants. Not give him the opportunity to protest. Shane’s body would have been loose. Soft and pliant. Rozanov could have fucked him through his drugged up haze—
Montreal scores at the beginning of the third period.
Shane is sick. It spreads its tendrils everywhere in him, whatever it is. Reaches every dark corner. It won’t pass.
lily: tell comeau to not be annoying next time
lily: you were not here so had to take it out on someone else
It’s December when Shane sees Rozanov again.
He leans in close. For those few precious seconds before the puck drops, it’s just them. Hollander and Rozanov and the small, shared space between them. Shane’s mouth is dry. There are sparks behind his eyes, in his chest, and he’s never felt this alive.
“You look very pretty tonight,” Rozanov says. He’s staring at Shane’s lips. “Is it all for me?”
“You wish,” Shane says. Everything kicks into action.
It’s possible nothing will ever come even close to how it feels, playing against Rozanov. They’re like kids, chasing each other around the rink. Rozanov’s heavy gaze is like a prize. I have your attention. I know you’re looking at me. Can’t you see how I’m the only one who can keep up with you? Shane knows he’s good. He wouldn’t have gotten this far if he wasn’t good, if he wasn’t one of the best. The rules they have set are easy. This is something he can give Rozanov. No one will question it.
Rozanov’s hip digs into Shane’s thigh. There’s an older bruise there, from when they played against Carolina a few days ago. Maybe Rozanov knows this. Maybe he doesn’t. Still, Shane wants to imagine there’s something possessive in the way he rams into him, and a wave of hot, oppressive arousal pulls at him. Shane wants to snarl and sink his teeth into Rozanov’s neck and bite until he bleeds. In front of all these people.
He wonders if Rozanov ever feels this way. Does he want Shane like Shane wants him? A want that’s so visceral and awful it eats him alive.
Inside Shane’s apartment, Rozanov catches him by the waist and bites into the soft meat of his mouth. His right hand drifts to Shane’s hip and then lower, fingers grasping at the fabric of Shane’s sweats.
“Clothes off,” he says into the juncture of Shane’s neck. Pushes him toward the stairs. In the bedroom, Shane strips and folds his clothes, piles them on top of the dresser.
Rozanov grabs a handful of thigh, dark purple, and watches the hard muscle ripple beneath as he squeezes. Shane’s knee buckles. He smears his lips across Rozanov’s throat, where his pulse beats wildly. A fluttering bird. Shane grinds down against the rough denim, polite little circles.
“Very eager,” Rozanov murmurs, his smile pressed against Shane’s ear. “I think you missed me.”
“Mmm, fuck you.”
Rozanov sits down on the edge of the bed. He looks more like himself here. In the soft lighting of Shane’s bedroom. “I want you on your knees.”
At some point kneeling between Rozanov’s legs became so familiar it started to feel safe. Now he sets his hand on the nape of Shane’s neck, dangerously warm and grounding. Shane looks up at him and wants to tell him all of his sick fantasies. Rozanov would call him disgusting and then leave, and Shane would be miserable but it might be what he needs. To feel miserable.
Rozanov is endless. Like an ocean next to Shane’s pathetic, shallow puddle. Sometimes he looks at Shane and his face twists into something he can’t read. Like it pains him to see Shane. Maybe it does.
“I won,” Rozanov says. His voice is almost soft. Shane rolls his eyes and gets him out of his jeans and boxers.
The hand on his neck moves to his hair, then, as Shane suckles on the head of Rozanov’s cock. He lets Rozanov push his head down, all the way until the tip hits the back of his throat and he gags, eyes burning. Shane exhales roughly through his nose when Rozanov pulls him back. He thumbs Shane’s bottom lip, slips it in through the corner of his mouth and hooks it inside his cheek. Shane is slowly starting to drool.
Rozanov pulls his thumb out. Wipes it across Shane’s cheekbone. He guides him back down, and Shane can’t look away.
“I won, so I can ask for anything,” Rozanov says. He sounds strange. Strangled. He nudges the bruise on Shane’s thigh with his foot and Shane whines. “What if I put you on your knees there, after the game. In front of whole Montreal. In front of your team.”
Shane's stomach twists. He remembers—a week ago, Columbus’s center had glared at him at the face-off. His tone had been condescending. They let a faggot like you wear the C, huh, he’d said. He didn’t mean it like that, Shane knows, they never do. It’s just a chirp. A game to see who’ll snap first. An insult in the sea of many. It’s just hockey.
Rozanov threads his fingers into Shane’s hair and tightens his grip. Shane tongues the underside of his cock sloppily and thinks about it. What he is. He feels dazed from the heat between his legs. If he asked sweetly, maybe Rozanov would call him that. Slap him again, hard enough to knock him out.
“Ah, you like it,” Rozanov coos above him. “Always so hungry, yes?” His grip on Shane’s hair turns painful. Shane moans. “Then everyone would know you’re a whore for it.”
He can be anything Rozanov asks of him. Anything he needs.
“But I think”—Rozanov pulls him back up again, and Shane sucks a kiss into the length of him—”this is only for me.” His foot bumps against the bruise again, harder.
Shane looks up at him, eyes stinging with tears but not overflowing, and he wants to beg. Please.
“Our flight tomorrow was rescheduled,” Rozanov says, curled around Shane’s bare, used body. He says it into Shane’s armpit. Like he doesn’t want him to hear it.
Shane doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with this information, so he says, “That sucks.” He supposes it’s the correct reaction. He wouldn’t like it if his schedule suddenly changed.
Rozanov doesn’t say anything else.
A week later, he sees the photo on Twitter.
Rozanov’s hand looks huge on the girl's waist. She’s small. Frail. He’s leaning down, whispering something to her ear. The open cut of her dress reveals the sweep of her spine, the smooth planes of her back. The lovely pale skin. It’d bruise like a peach. His thumb is tucked right under the edge.
Shane doesn’t linger on the photo for too long. He feels sorry for her, in a way. And then—you’re a whore for it, Rozanov had said, and there’s an ever-growing, gnawing sense of dread in Shane’s belly. Does he say that to her, too? Does he mean it?
There’s never been anyone but Rozanov. No one has seen him like Rozanov has. This is only for me, like he owns Shane, and it feels good, good, good and then it just feels bad. Shane knows the rules of their arrangement, but isn’t it unfair?
Isn’t it humiliating, he wants to ask her, to know you’re just a warm hole to him. He can see his reflection on the dark screen of his phone. Isn’t it humiliating to know we’re the same?
On his hotel bed in Washington, Shane watches Boston’s game which took place earlier that day. He’s studying. He’s diligent like that.
Someone punches Rozanov in the face; he can’t tell who or why because his attention is on Rozanov’s smile and his split lip and the blood smeared around the corner of his mouth. Shane wants to kiss him. Bite his lip and suck on it until his teeth are red with blood.
His cock swells in his boxers. He doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him.
Rozanov spits. The glob of bloody saliva lands somewhere on the ice. The base of Shane’s spine tingles. He’d asked Rozanov to spit in his mouth once. Rozanov had pressed down on the hinges of his jaw until Shane was forced to open his mouth. Then he’d spat and pushed his fingers into Shane’s waiting mouth, petting his tongue.
Shane’s head had been full of things he couldn’t say. I want you to be inside me all the time. I want to eat you. Tear you to pieces. I want you to live inside me. He swallowed around Rozanov’s fingers, pulling them deeper with a hand around his wrist. His eyes had been wet and blurry and there was this horrible, empty pit inside him. Like he could never be full enough.
That same pit is now there, gaping open.
Later, the same player gets checked into the glass by Rozanov. It looks brutal. Shane pinches the skin on his bicep and twists until it turns wine red.
Shane keeps coming back. They keep circling each other. It’s only because the sex is good, but that’s just his futile, doomed attempt at lying to himself. The sex is good, yes. But. Shane’s resolve crumbles when Rozanov looks at him. He lets himself be moved. Pushed and pulled. Rozanov kisses his tears and says you cry so sweetly, Hollander. My sweet boy. So good.
Shane is able to ignore the pit inside him, then.
Rozanov says he wants to look at Shane. Have him in daylight. With the giant windows of his house surrounding them. And Shane rides him, because he likes it when Rozanov looks at him. He lies on the sun-dabbled bed, his hands everywhere, and words spill out of his mouth, most of them in Russian. Shane presses his mouth on the bow of his lip and his cheek and bridge of his nose and his brow. He wishes he could voice his thoughts too, anything and everything.
Shane lets Rozanov roll them. The sheets smell like him. He can’t escape. Doesn’t want to.
Rozanov’s cross rests in the hollow of Shane’s throat. Shane gets an arm around his neck and buries his hands in his curls and holds Rozanov there. Smothers face against his neck. Rozanov’s panting, his breaths hot and damp against his skin. We could run away. We could leave right now and go wherever we want, just us. Shane squeezes Rozanov so tightly he might suffocate him. Climb into my mouth. You can make a home behind my molars. Shane bites his earlobe. His chest will burst open and there will be an Ilya-sized hole there, a place for Rozanov to curl up in.
Shane holds his breath when he comes. Everything goes unsaid at once. They don’t mean it like that. It’s just hockey.