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Shane had spent his whole life trying to win over the people around him, though it never came easily and usually ended in complete failure. He lacked charisma, and his shy politeness was often mistaken for dullness. Shane was awkward, reserved, and so obsessed with hockey that even his few friends rolled their eyes when he started analyzing his last game out loud, discussing what he should have done to score more goals.
He couldn’t tell when people were laughing at him and when they were being serious; he misread others’ intentions and didn’t pick up on hints. He tried desperately to fit in, but he just couldn’t figure out what was expected of him. At fourteen, his best friend Madison came to a school game with a “Go, Hollander!” sign, then caught up with him by the locker room and asked if he wanted to celebrate the victory with her.
Madison was thrilled when he invited her home. She chatted sweetly with his mom over a cup of tea and laughed at every silly joke his dad told, and then kissed him on the lips as soon as they went up to his room.
“I thought we were friends,” Shane said quietly as the front door slammed shut behind Madison. Yuna silently pulled him close, gently stroking his head, and he let himself cry, burying his face in his mother’s shoulder for the first time since he turned six.
“You should have realized!” she said before grabbing her purse and rushing out the door without even saying goodbye. That was when Shane finally accepted that he would never find the right person.
Over time, he convinced himself that he didn’t care. Life was falling into place: he’d become a professional athlete, made it to the NHL, and learned how to act normal. He still didn’t feel like part of the team, but now he had friends who seemed to genuinely love him, even if he never quite understood why Hayden was happy to have him over, and his wife agreed to choke down low-calorie food for dinner just for him.
Even if he sometimes felt terribly lonely, so what? He couldn’t win at everything; you always have to sacrifice something, and in his case, the price of a career, privilege, and a secure future was a mere trifle—a sense of belonging.
He tried to keep everything under control, but there were so many things to consider: how to distribute eye contact among several conversation partners, the width of his smile, and the clarity of his speech. His voice had to sound steady, his shoulders had to be squared, and his hands couldn’t nervously fiddle with his shirt sleeves.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his soul existed separately from his body, and he was merely a puppeteer pulling the strings. The friendly touches his teammates exchanged without a second thought felt foreign and unnecessary, and required careful planning on Shane’s part. He had to seize the right moment, calculate the duration of the touch and the lightness of the pressure, all just to make the contact seem appropriate.
But Shane never thought about touching Ilya. His hands roamed over Ilya’s body even when his thoughts were far away, digging into the skin and squeezing the strong, taut muscles. Ilya’s body was godlike and provoked a wild, almost animalistic desire in him, setting all his organs ablaze from within.
He couldn’t get enough of him, and even though they lay so close that their breaths mingled into one—it wasn’t enough; nothing was enough to satisfy his hunger. Shane wanted to get under his skin and see if Ilya felt as incomplete as he did.
He’d never felt this way before, and the best part was that he didn’t care. The painful arousal and need outweighed all his other feelings, shutting down the rational part of his brain, pulsing and building in his head until he couldn’t think of anything else but Ilya’s cock.
As soon as they were in the same room, Shane shut out the real world. He saw, heard, and felt nothing around him; all that mattered was Ilya and his firm, alluring body, his strong arms that always knew exactly how to touch him, how to hold him in place so he couldn’t move, and his big cock, to which Shane quickly became addicted.
Even if Shane’s obsession seemed strange to him, Ilya didn’t object, never objected, only bit his lips and grinned so smugly that Shane had to kiss him again and again, just to wipe the smirk off his face, but his mouth always invariably returned to his cock, even if Ilya forbade him from sucking —Shane was ready to kneel for hours, as long as his mouth was filled to the brim with cock, his jaw aching, and saliva dripping down his chin.
Under any other circumstances, Shane hated it when anyone touched his face. He spent so much money on his skincare products, gave up dairy, and changed his pillowcases every two days—not so that someone’s dirty hands could ruin everything—but in Ilya Rozanov’s bed, acne and bacteria ceased to exist.
“Such a cute little face,” Ilya said, slapping his cock against Shane’s cheeks. It was disgusting, but Shane’s dick twitched with every slap, with every restrained urge to turn his head and take Ilya’s cock into his mouth, so he just lifted his head, letting Ilya run the head of his dick over his cheeks, then rub the pre-cum right into his skin with his palms, occasionally landing half-joking blows. “Such a shame it went to a whore like you.”
The first time that word slipped out of his mouth, Ilya froze in fear. Shane should have been outraged, defended his honor, and put him in his place, as he always did on the ice when Ilya went particularly far with his insults in an attempt to rile him up, but Ilya’s cock was still inside him, and Shane wanted to come so badly that he only groaned in response, his hips twitching uncontrollably.
That night, Ilya lasted much less than usual, unleashing whole monologues at him in Russian, the content of which Shane could only guess at, and the next time it all happened again. With each encounter, Ilya became harsher, but he was so hot and filled him so perfectly that Shane didn’t mind: he took all the insults, all the harsh, cruel words and slaps so well, as if he’d been born for it. Besides, wasn’t Ilya right in every single one of his humiliations? Deep down, Shane had always known that it was all about him, and no hockey achievements could ever change that: he was pathetic, good-for-nothing, and useless, and everyone around him knew it too, but they kept quiet, letting him fill in the blanks for them, leaving him confused and uncertain, keeping his hopes alive—but Ilya wasn’t one of them.
Ilya gave him what the rest of the world couldn’t—stability, even if in real life he was the complete opposite of that word. Interacting with him was more like an emotional rollercoaster of cold silence and candid moments, but in the dim light of the bedroom, Shane always knew he’d get what he wanted. What he deserved.
Ilya never made promises he couldn’t keep, never showered him with kind words that weren’t true. His bluntness bordered on rudeness, if it didn’t cross into it, but it was never insincere. He said only what he thought, and believed in the truth of every word he spoke. He never left Shane unsatisfied and confused, shattering him into a thousand pieces each time, but always putting him back together again.
Ilya always knew what he wanted and never hesitated to ask for it. He demanded obedience and gave orders with such confidence that Shane’s mouth filled with saliva. Ilya reveled in his power over a rival he couldn't always subdue on the ice, while Shane unquestioningly surrendered control to him, happily playing the role of a limp doll in someone else’s skilled hands. Ilya was experienced and understood his body perfectly, using Shane for his own pleasure while still being kind enough to fulfill everything Shane lacked the courage to ask for. He knew him better than Shane knew himself: somehow Ilya always sensed what he was missing, what he craved, and was always ready to give it to him.
Ilya never asked him to choose or forced him to make any decisions. He didn’t even need to think: it was enough simply to do whatever was asked of him, so Shane obeyed Ilya without question every time he told him to get on his knees or spread his legs or pleasure himself while he devoured him with a hungry gaze from across the room, only to lose his restraint after a few agonizing minutes and pound every last bit of shit out of him.
Shane always found it amusing how Ilya mocked him for being so insatiable, but never noticed how greedy he himself was. They’d never discussed monogamy, and Shane knew he was far from Ilya’s only sexual partner, but he still flew into a rage every time he saw Shane with others. If even a single questionable photo slipped into the press, Ilya would go crazy.
“You’re such a fucking loser,” he whispered heatedly right into his ear, pressing him into the mattress with all his weight, holding his head in place with one hand. His other hand clamped down on his thigh with an iron grip, preventing him from moving, and Shane could come just from that feeling of helplessness. “Pathetic whore, hungry for cock. Just look at yourself, dripping like a bitch, ruining my bed, and I haven’t even touched you. But that’s enough for you, isn’t it? This is your place. You’re mine, you belong to my cock, and no one else will ever be able to break you, no one else will ever be good enough, because compared to me, they’re nobodies; they don’t know you the way I do. They think you’re a respectable member of society, but I know the truth. I know you’re a nobody, that you’re nothing but a fuckable body, always ready to take my cum."
Shane couldn’t answer, whimpering in response as Ilya’s low, snarling voice dug one humiliating truth after another out of his head. He was pinned between a body and the bed, and there was nothing he could do about it: Ilya was taller, stronger, broader, and could do whatever he wanted with Shane, and he would agree to anything because he knew his place. He was broken and tense after the loss, but under Ilya’s weight, all his anxieties no longer mattered, dissolving somewhere between lust and a strange, twisted form of love.
Ilya didn’t love Shane. How could he, when the only things coming out of his mouth were mockery and insults? Ilya might have liked his submissiveness, the ease with which Shane gave in to him and fulfilled all his dirty fantasies. He could soothe his ego every time Montreal beat Boston on the ice, letting Shane beg for Ilya to let him come.
That suited Shane just fine. Ilya could hate him, think he was weird and boring, call him a freak all he wanted—as long as Shane found peace in his suffocating embrace. Sex might have been just another form of entertainment for Ilya, a power game and a pleasant pastime, but as long as he pulled Shane close, tracing soothing patterns on his skin until he came to his senses after yet another orgasm, Shane didn’t care. It was enough for him that Ilya was willing to give him anything. Even if it was a spit in the face.