Chapter Text
That morning, they did not ‘go again’, Ilya instead waking up with a groan and a headache, half asleep and surprised not to be alone.
“Dehydration,” Shane told him matter-of-factly, passing him a possibly $20 water bottle from the mini fridge. Ilya had scowled to hide his blush, the first memory of the night returning as he thought about coming dry on top of this man mere hours ago. He accepted the offering, the crinkling and snapping of the plastic highlighting the awkward quiet of the room.
Blinking blearily, he found the MVP winner was fully dressed with a tray of room service in front of him, politely picking at his fruit cup and egg white omelet, looking to all the world as though he couldn’t possibly be the freak that Ilya (now more than ever) knew him to be. Rather than call him on this, Ilya had opted to sit up, pull on a pair of boxers, and tear into the pancakes and sausages that had been ordered for him.
“I charged it to the room,” Shane told him cheekily as Ilya yawned, stretched, nodded. “I figured you could afford it.” If he expected a pithy comeback, he should’ve known Ilya was not awake enough to provide it.
Much too quickly, the moment was over. When he finished his own breakfast, though Ilya had barely started his, Hollander had stood, hesitated, almost walking out without touching him. Ilya’s body had tensed then, coiled and unsure if following him to the door would be too pathetic and desperate. He spent that vital moment staring down at half-eaten pancakes as though an answer could be found in the Rorschach-like shape of his syrup puddle. Before any revelation could overcome him, Shane reentered the bedroom and pressed a kiss to the side of his face, blushing furiously and leaving with a slam of the hallway door before the gesture could be reciprocated.
Ilya had been still as a statue at that moment, almost unbreathing. When he finally moved, it was to bring fingers to his face, a new habit forming: he didn’t know then that he would touch the spot between his ear and his temple endlessly, in silent memory, between that moment and the start of their next season.
-
In the months that followed, it was like Ilya had never left that hotel room. He couldn’t seem to stop turning over the night in his mind, plumbing for details or feelings or words he hadn’t held tightly enough in the moment.
On principle, Ilya tried most of the time to avoid dwelling, memories often like tea leaves in the hot water of his mind, taking all kinds of shapes and over-steeping into bitterness after too long.
He found no tannins in these memories though, so he indulged himself while in Moscow.
He thought, of course, about all the familiar elements of their sex, all the slick ways their bodies connected, but what echoed in his mind most loudly and potently was the praise, which had started halfway through the night (“you’re doing perfect for me”) and never stopped.
His arms had been shaking, he remembered, holding himself above Hollander. He had been looking up at him with such naked adoration, as though his long lashes and freckles weren’t ruinous enough. Ilya had never been so sweetly humiliated, humping like a dog. The entire time, trembling and rubbing against him, Shane had had his hand in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. The entire time, Shane had been murmuring sweet encouragement to him. “Yes, just like that Ilya. You’re doing so well. I knew you could do it. Does it hurt? That’s okay, it’s going to feel so good. You feel so good on me. I like you like this. You make such beautiful noises for me.”
Ilya had kissed him intermittently throughout just to make it stop, just for a moment, the words making him feel like he was going to shake apart or maybe die. That had been a fruitless effort though, as Shane’s mouth was equally devastating either way.
So now, he wore Hollander’s words like a protective amulet in Moscow, replaying them in his head endlessly, (“you’re doing so well,” “I like you like this,”) until they at times almost lost their sexualized context.
Russia had a lot of wonderful benefits, aspects he enjoyed, and he tried to remind himself of that daily. Here, he could open his mouth and never wind up feeling like an idiot; he knew the exact word he needed for everything, knew the colloquialisms and implications, knew how to turn a joke or argue on his own behalf, no matter how much vodka was in his system. Sure, he was teased a bit for acquiring an accent, but he was not othered for it the way he was for the thicker words he spoke in English, not called a Bond villain or, inexplicably, a communist. And here had food he liked, served with dill and vinegar rather than the half a cup of frying oil and corn syrup everyone seemed to want in America.
Even better than all that, there were streets in Moscow he could walk at 3am or 10am and run into people he knew, or people who knew people he knew, or people who knew his family, and only occasionally would he receive biting comments about hockey. In Boston, every quick stop was to talk about his game, enthusiastically impersonal, and he tired of it.
However, this could not counterbalance the rest of it. Moscow had the oppressive weight of his family and their ever-growing distaste for him, simultaneously too successful and not successful enough, too present and too absent, always too much his mother’s son.
Here, he could not let his eyes slide over the pleasing lines of an attractive man without the punch of lust immediately being followed by a swell of fear-sweating nausea. That, too, was a problem.
He could stomach that, as he always had, but the worst of it was who this life made him; he became taciturn and harsh, a simmering anger beneath the surface which was the hallmark of all the men in his family. Gone was the playful silliness he most enjoyed, about hockey and life and other people, because levity was an unwelcome guest in his family home, a vulnerability. Here, he was slowly bending into a shape more like his father, a shape he hated. There was no distraction from the tangle of darkness growing in the back of his mind.
All this combined to make it so in summers like this one he felt like Persephone in Moscow, but Demeter had forgotten him, had died, had had ‘an accident.’ He was lost to the underworld forever. At least, until the MLH would summon him back.
So he clung to the light he could find. He replayed the praise. He texted Hollander.
-
It took the initiation of six distinct text conversations, three reciprocated, for Ilya to notice the pattern. It wasn’t about substance or time of day, no. Hollander was deliberately only replying to every other set of texts, every other conversation. It was so perfectly measured and regimented, so Shane-like, that it sparked fondness and laughter when he noticed.
It also made his teeth itch in frustration. This was likely in vengeance for ignoring him previously, for driving the insult home in the shower, Ilya concluded. I am the desperate slut now.
So, the next time in the pattern that he knew Hollander wouldn’t reply, he called him out on it. He declared his intentions. Certainly, it would only make Hollander dig his heels in harder and resist, but eventual victory would be sweeter if the rules of the game were clear to them both. He couldn’t have Hollander thinking he could one day break his own rules and get away with it, for instance.
I see what you are doing.
You read all, but only reply every other time, no?
Every second conversation.
I am being punished.
That is okay though.
I will break you, Hollander. 😈
Of course, he didn’t reply to that. That was fine; if he had, it would’ve been too easy. Instead, Ilya made a game of it, messaging outlandish things at times that were bound by pattern to go unanswered.
Your soda ad plays here sometimes
Shop attendant asked if I knew you
I said of course, yes, that is my girlfriend
You are my girlfriend, yes, Hollander?
If not, would be embarrassing how easy you spread your legs for me
He could tell, even if their next conversation was benign in content, that Hollander’s responses were tight and clipped and angry about the previous one. Still, he was not called out. He was never explicitly answered. He kept trying.
I smoke every day here. It is awesome.
About to buy supercar. New, bright yellow.
Better investment than real estate, yes Mr. Landlord?
You would not survive in Russia; I have eaten a pound of сметана today alone
You know what this is?
Sour cream
Probably still healthier than stupid Canadian Tim Hortons
There is only one feeling in the world better than sex
You know this?
It is lifting the cup
And they say if you pee in Stanley cup it is yours forever, so …
I think I will leave Boston and return to Russian hockey this fall instead
What do you think, Hollander?
It was unsuccessful. Hollander was an apathetic wall. No reply, no reply, no reply.
-
Two weeks into these attempts, he went for an audio message instead, sent first thing in the morning in Moscow, when he imagined Hollander must be sliding into bed. He knew his voice was rougher in the morning, accent thicker from its disuse of English. He knew that would be exactly how Hollander liked it.
“Mm, I am laying in bed thinking of you this morning, shlyukha. I am thinking of your tight, perfect little hole. Should I tell you what I would do to you?” Of course, he didn’t wait for a reply. “I would roll you over and look at it, kiss it till you are whiny, no? Suck on it a little. Then I would spit. You would like; you love spit in your mouth. Spit in your hole is also good. I will show you.” He hummed, body hot at the thought of it, “I will push it in with one finger. I could make you cum with just one, against that spot that makes you scream. You would be begging me to fuck you, not even fully prepped yet, yes? Mm, I would be tempted, I admit. I think I will fuck you with just the tip for a bit, drive us both crazy with how tight you are, before prepping you to be all wet and ready to take the rest of me.”
A shaky sigh rattled out of him at the thought of all this, at his own boldness just saying it. His dick was more awake than the rest of him. He looked down at where it rested, drooling, ready, declaring its utter inability to understand that a distance of time zones prohibited actual fucking.
He thought about specifically describing the feeling of taking him raw. He could gloat that it was his right alone, and tell him that it was the source of infinite fantasies, covering Shane in his spend, pushing it back inside when he leaked. He wanted to put words to how perfectly slutty Shane had been to offer that, how all-consuming and diabolical and fucking stupid it was to do with a whore like Ilya, but even he knew where not to push his luck. He wouldn’t risk having that privilege taken away.
“I will hold you up against my chest, next, on shaky thighs. Appropriate punishment for what you did to me, I think, making you suffer and tremble and work after coming all over yourself for me. I also have such good ... how you say? Leverage. Such good leverage in that position. You would only be able to take the cock I give you. So sad for you, my squirmy, needy kótik. I would take care of you, though. I would take care. You would love it. I would come so deep inside of you, you would taste it. And then you would tell me thank you, I think.” He grinned at the thought of Hollander receiving this, hard and wanting and indignant all at once. “You’re welcome, Hollander. So good for me. I am sure of it. Sweet dreams.”
He ended the message and sent it, took himself in hand to start the day off right, and received the read receipt mere minutes later.
Still, Hollander did not respond.
-
He couldn’t survive on scraps of Hollander alone. He had to eat what was offered. He had to sleep and rise and scratch and fuck and exist in this birdcage of a country. He had to pretend with stalwart conviction that the days weren’t empty and the nights weren’t awful. That he didn’t keenly understand the emotional landscape of his mother.
It was one such awful night in Moscow, and the kettle of his mind was boiling.
Fresh from a fight with his brother, left side of his face aching in a distant way that was bound to worsen, and entirely bathed in misery, Ilya stepped outside to breathe in the night air and reached for his cigarettes.
The worst of it, really, was that his brother's knuckles had connected with the same side of his face that met Hollander’s mouth that morning in Vegas. Now the flesh there was tender and pulpy, ruined, and would be discolored soon.
He should’ve broken Alexei’s nose. Calling him a leech was fine, true even, but a broken nose would’ve been better.
Without meaning to, he found his phone, thumbing to Jane’s contact.
One look told him this next text would be the unanswered one. Blyat.
He scuffed his shoe on the cement and lit up, trying to put his phone away, trying not to think about it, endlessly frustrated with himself that he felt the impulse to message at all.
Even knowing it would be ignored, he wanted to message anyway. Maybe that could be fine, though. Good, even, that he could feel something so deeply and not be recriminated with the acknowledgment of it.
A little drunk and a lot lonely, he texted in Russian for full plausible deniability: Я ненавижу это место. Сегодня вечером я скучаю по Бостону. И я скучаю по тебе.
I hate it here. I miss Boston tonight. And I miss you.
He was halfway through his cigarette when he got a message back, devastating in its simplicity.
I miss you too
-
Shane’s summer was passing in a haze.
For months, he caught himself wondering if Rozanov thought about their night together as much as he did, if he reflected on it and thought it was hot, or if Shane looked ridiculous in retrospect, a housecat playing a lion. Shane could hardly believe what had come over him, what had possessed him to be so demanding, but he couldn’t deny he had liked it.
Waking up in the dark, hours later, Ilya had still been wrapped tightly around him. He pictured it alone in Ottawa still, with his eyes closed when he laid down to sleep: the pressure of thigh on thigh, Ilya’s arm carelessly thrown across his ribs, gold curls on his own pillow. He knew they had rolled apart at some point in the night, but later they must’ve found their way back together, so he had stayed there, controlled his breathing, pretended to still be asleep until he felt so full of fondness that he couldn’t anymore.
Rozanov after waking, sleepy and barely functional, was equally lethal, ripe with all the danger to his heart of bringing a small child to the humane society. Can we keep him? Please? Please?
No. Pet, feed, release. It was fortunate he had returned rapidly to his dick-ish self in messages. Easier to dismiss, then.
Shane’s attempt to seem nonchalant over text had fallen flat on its ass when he had structured it so rigidly, but still, even when Rozanov called him out on it, he thought it could be fun to win a stupid game against him. To have his own attention, rather than Ilya’s, be the prize.
He had been giving himself little rewards each time he didn’t text Rozanov back: when he called him his girlfriend, he touched himself about it. When he said he was smoking, Shane bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, stood out on his balcony, and burned one as though it were a stick of incense, never pressed to his lips but simply dwindling down to ash in his presence, exuding the scent of Ilya. When he mentioned buying a flashy vehicle, Shane fingered himself in the back of his own car, imagining being fucked in Rozanov’s new one.
When he messaged about a truly disgusting amount of dairy product, he had secretly, quietly, eaten the barest trace of sour cream from the tub in his parent’s kitchen, feeling it slide against the back of his throat as he pressed his forehead to the cool door of their refrigerator. His mind went floaty with the thought that for that singular moment, his and Ilya’s mouths tasted the same.
Foolishly, that felt dirtier than the car thing.
The pissing comment was revolting, but at Rozanov’s mention of the cup, he allowed himself to rewatch the end of the Boston v San Francisco game in private. He did so in absolute stillness as the pride and heartache and lust of watching it came roaring back, not allowing himself to move regardless of how he ached to, regardless of his imagination conjuring himself licking the sweat off of the Boston captain. He wouldn’t add to this horrific blend of feelings, or get off to a text that disgustingly immature. He wouldn’t.
Threatening to stay in Russia was not a turn-on. His vision went blurry and he threw his phone across the room at that one, before getting up to retrieve it with a certain steady shame.
And then the audio message. Rozanov’s voice. It arrived in the middle of the night and had him losing his mind for the rest of the week. Downloading and saving it was bad idea, as was replaying it for most of his evening jerk off sessions. He had tried once, kneeling, to achieve the position described with his (purple, dammit) dildo, but it was slippery and awkward and not big enough, poorly managed without a chest behind him to lean on. The imagined effect wasn’t the same as this poor imitation. Better, then, to listen on his back, working his cock at a frustratingly slow tempo or slipping wet fingers against his rim, breath hitching and quiet as he held off, as he listened for the words ‘so good for me, I am sure of it.’ The rolling phrase now touched a live wire to the waters of his body each time he heard it, sparks deadly and undeniable.
With the effect he had on Shane even in silence, the end of this game could only be avoided so long. It had really felt like only a matter of time until he gave in.
-
Four days and zero messages after he did, the exchange sat incriminatingly on Shane’s phone screen.
Congrats, he thought bitterly. You broke me.
All it took was the smallest crack in Rozanov’s armor, though. Just a brief imagining of him alone on a terrible night, and Shane was reaching back.
You know. Like an idiot.
He was partially successful at shoving it out of his mind until the next morning, day five of no messages if one were counting, when his phone rang. He let it go for some time, not purposefully but more from shock, ringing three then four times before he fumbled and answered, breathing, not daring to speak first.
It could be someone else, after all, he considered. Ilya doesn’t call.
Immediately, his shoulders dropped in relief at Rozanov’s voice. “Save me, Hollander. They are ruining pelmeni.”
“… What?”
“Pelmeni,” he repeated, as though the word rather than the whole encounter was the problem. “You know, like dumplings, only better. They are ruining with spinach. Not on inside, but outer, outside bit.”
“The dumpling wrapper?” he answered flatly.
“This, yes! Is green. Horrible.” He made a clicking sound of dismay with his tongue. “Problem is Moscow wants to be Paris, Paris wants to be New York, and Americans hide vegetables in food for stupid children. And now for everyone. In Russia, we do not do this. We do not hide vegetables from children; we say eat, children will eat.”
Shane listened silently, no less confused than the minute prior.
“Have you had pelmeni?”
“… No.”
He heard Ilya groan, the sound making a shameless beeline for his cock. “You are so boring.”
“So you’ve told me,” Shane answered. “I'm on my way out.”
“Hot date?” He heard the sounds of cans against glass, and tried to picture the scene. Ilya in a grocery store maybe? A late-night bodega?
“It’s morning here,” Shane corrected. “I’m going on a run with Hayden. By the lake.”
“Romantic,” Rozanov drawled.
“Shut up,” Shane laughed, surprised. “Really, I’m headed out. Was there something that you needed?”
“Ah, thank you.”
Shane paused for a minute, sure he must be talking to someone else, an attendant, a cashier. And then he registered, of course, that the words were in English. “What?”
“Thank you, Hollander. For message last week. Was very nice on bad night. Very needed.”
Shane strained to hear the mocking edge, but found none. “Any time.”
“Good. Good.” He heard Ilya sniff and mutter something indecipherable in Russian. “That was all. Have good run,” he told him succinctly, and hung up.
Minutes later, a picture of a frozen bag of vivid green pelmeni landed in their text chat. See? Shameful.
Shane grinned, surprised to have received no smug or snarky victory lap. For that alone, he knew then that he would end up responding to all of Rozanov’s stupid texts as the season rapidly approached; really, it could be considered a reward for good behavior.
-
So yes, he continued to text. He also bulked, so much so that baked chicken felt like the neutral taste of his own mouth, needing the tone and heft of his legs to be ready for the grueling battle of hockey season and giving more attention than necessary to his pecs, maybe, as someone he knew liked to grab them. He ran, and increased his ice time, and read his books and spent days tacky with make-up and squinting into bright lights on advertising sets.
Rinse, repeat. A normal summer, with the exception of the constant buzzing of his phone. And one other thing, maybe.
His mind, in drifting to their night together, also drifted toward the Google searches that had gotten him there. So he began reading, researching, wondering what else he might want to do. He started a spreadsheet.
He told no one. He kept texting Ilya.
It was fluid and easy, now that the punishment was over. Daily. Pointless. Bad feelings only surfaced one more time, in late August, with seventy-two hours of silence after a meaningless exchange about French and Russian grammar was broken by Rozanov bitching about his cardio routine.
Shane didn’t let it slide this time. Two and a half of those days felt shitty, left on read after daily texts for a month.
Don’t do that.
What?
Don’t take so long to reply.
Text me back faster next time.
Okay baby. 😘
He knew he was being dumb and needy. He knew he was being made fun of. But he also knew now that his replies were wanted, that when asked Rozanov would listen, that this feeling wouldn’t happen again.
Sure enough, he didn’t once wait more than twelve hours for a text back during the last three weeks of summer. Despite time zones. Despite awkwardness. Despite everything.
Training camp, and their game the week following that, couldn’t come soon enough.
-
Next week. Scary murder alley after? We will meet?
Yes
Bring your A game. You’ll need it
On ice or after? ;)
Both, of course ;)
-
A week later found them leaning over each other at face-off, grinning.
“What, no chirps?”
“Was going to say something but, I am in good mood.” Rozanov shrugged a little. He then opened his mouth, maybe to actually chirp this time, but Shane replied before he could.
“Good boy.” Shane smiled as his rival’s face went slack, and won the face-off handily.
-
Face-off notwithstanding, Ilya wasn’t sure he’d played a better game of hockey in his life.
Sure, yes, it was the earliest of early season. His team wasn’t gelling yet, still mildly uncoordinated on the ice. Marleau might have slacked a bit in the summer, seemingly struggling to keep up.
That was not Ilya’s problem, though. He won the game against Montreal on his skill alone, nauseated by the adrenaline as his team barreled into him again following his fourth goal in the game, 4-2 with only a minute left in the third period.
He knew it was too much, that he was pushing far harder than necessary so early in the season which was always an injury risk, but it felt like Hollander had electrocuted him, had lit him on fire. He didn’t have words to express it, just that he quite desperately wanted it to happen again.
-
The feeling remained all the way into Hollander’s building. The Montreal captain was slightly damp and relaxed, smiling. He was a bit broader, hair a bit longer, a slight tan making his freckles delectably prominent, the realness of him miles better than any of Ilya’s imaginings.
The moment Hollander reached for him, hand on his neck, Ilya pressed his Canadian against the door closing behind them, kissing him with the same intensity he had scored with. “I want you. I want you,” he told him, a redundancy between kisses that said the same thing. “Next summer I will kidnap you to Russia.”
“Oh my G-d, you’re fucking crazy,” Hollander replied, clinging all the tighter for a moment before pushing him away. “Get off me. Upstairs. Now.”
Within the condo, he waited for Hollander to come to him again, which was not to say he waited long. They were on each other immediately, Ilya gripping his face to control the kiss, demandingly entering his mouth as surely as he would demandingly enter the rest of him, his controlling movements notably amplifying Hollander’s excitement. Curious and restless, Ilya’s hand slipped back from jawline to hair, which he gripped and tugged experimentally, hard enough to hurt.
Hollander keened. “Fuck yes, Rozanov. Do that again.”
Always accommodating in sex, he did, earning a little whimper that went straight to his cock. “Clothes off, Hollander,” he demanded, and Shane, as always, complied.
He spoke with Shane’s whimper still in his mind, voicing a thought that had circled his brain all summer. “In Vegas,” Ilya started, looking at the pants he was shedding rather than the person he was speaking to, “you did not seem put off by the suggestion that I might hurt you.”
Hollander paused, shirt off his torso but still trapping his arms before he shook himself from stillness, removing it fully, folding it. “That could be interesting. We’d need some ground rules, though.”
They were both in their boxers now, which could be very good or very bad, he considered, for the following discussion. “Ground rules?”
“Yeah. Like, there’s things you can’t do to me.” Adorably, he was holding his stack of folded clothes defensively in front of his chest. “And I’m not going to do a scene like that and then send you away; that’s like a stay-the-night, eat-something-and-be-nice-after kind of scene.”
“Scene,” Ilya replied teasingly. Hollander kept saying that word. He grinned at him. “You do many of these ‘scenes’? You are professional now?”
Hollander wasn’t looking at him, but he didn’t look embarrassed either. “When I want to.”
A bolt of rage went through him, mind whirring with blinding lust and jealousy at the images that the mere implication of others conjured. Three months, he thought. It’s been three months since Vegas, when it was only me. What have you been doing since?
Embarrassingly, and more quietly, hurt followed, feeling a crack run through the protective shell Shane’s praise had built around him. How many others have you told were amazing? Who else has been ‘doing so well for you,’ hm?
Hollander wasn’t looking at him. He had put down his clothes, and was looking at his hands, listing his requirements. “No pissing, no blood. No permanent marks.” He took a breath before adding, “And you can be mean to me, but no shit about my race, okay?”
Ilya’s blood ran cold and hot at the same time. “Who has done this?” he demanded. Hollander looked at him questioningly. “I will kill them.”
The intensity startled a laugh out of Hollander. “I mean, no one, in this context.” At his continued look, he scoffed like Rozanov was being absurd. “The race thing, it’s a thing in hockey. You know that.”
In a general sense, sure, but about Shane Hollander? No, he hadn’t known that. He still wanted to kill them, but he knew that Hollander would not take kindly to being treated like a damsel in the hockey world. By eviscerating their team or siccing his D-men on them, if Hollander wanted, he could surely handle them himself.
Instead, the word ‘context’ stuck. All the possible contexts.
Hollander interrupted his thoughts. “Did you want to plan a scene or just fuck?” He blew out a breath. “It wouldn’t actually take that much planning. You know what I won’t do. You’d have to stay the night, like I said. Otherwise, yeah.” His face was bright red. “You could hurt me tonight, if you wanted to.”
Ilya looked at him for a long time, arms still crossed, memorizing his features. His own quietness seemed to discomfit Hollander, but he couldn’t help it. He needed the moment to think.
He could hit him, if he wanted. He’d done it before, in a club once. The girl had loved it. He could slap Hollander until he was drooling, redden his ass until he couldn’t sit the next day, make him apologize and sob as he came.
He imagined slapping him between asking who had fucked him, over and over and over again. He knew he could get an answer.
Then: “No.”
Hollander’s angry kitten face was back in full force. “Fine. Fuck. It was a stupid idea anyway.”
“No, no it was not,” Ilya disagreed. “I cannot do this tonight. This scene thing.” He waved a hand. “It is bad idea to hurt you when I am angry.”
“You’re angry?” Hollander asked, voice suddenly more uncertain than he had heard in a long time. Since the bathroom in Vegas, probably. “Why?”
Ilya brought fingers to the bridge of his nose and looked away, the motion of his head deliberately non-committal. He answered at an oblique angle. “Who are you fucking like this? Tell me.” he demanded.
Hollander’s blush reached the middle of his chest. “It’s private.”
“Oh?” He leaned against the wall so as to not throw his hands in the air. “I did not ask name and date, Hollander.”
“It’s none of your business.”
That was probably true. Regardless, he pushed. “If we cannot be, how do they say? Open and honest. If we cannot be open and honest with each other, we cannot do scenes.” He shrugged. “Just fuck, which is fine to me.”
“Fine by me,” Hollander corrected automatically, exasperated. “And whatever. We’re wasting time anyway.”
Ilya closed the gap between them and kissed him once, hard. He tried one more time, drawing the words out. “Tell me.”
“Quit it,” Hollander grumbled, yanking them back together.
“I think you want to,” Ilya goaded, their lips brushing as he spoke. “I think you want me to know.”
“No one!” The words burst out of him. “Fuck. I hate you.”
“No one?” The words had the ring of truth to them. “How do you know so much, then?”
“There’s this thing called the internet,” Hollander told him, dripping with sass.
“Mm, and you took notes?” He tormented him while running hands down his back, enjoying Hollander’s little shiver. “Wore little glasses? Pen and paper? Took test?”
Hollander frowned. “How do you know I wear glasses?”
Holy fuck, all of a sudden Ilya was salivating at the mental image. “You do?” He bit Hollander’s ear a little in excitement, disappointed when his victim leaned away. “You must show me.”
“No!”
“Mm, you must, though. You can scold me while wearing them. Another ‘scene,’” he suggested giddily, with a sigh. “I am not angry anymore,” he confessed.
“Well, I don’t want to do that tonight, because now I’m mad at you,” Hollander objected.
“Really?”
“No, just …” Hollander did that thing with his teeth that meant he was having trouble with words. Ilya waited him out. “Just regular sex tonight, please. I missed … never mind. I just want to do it the normal way.”
Please, he says. “Of course.” ‘The normal way’ seemed to be loose phrasing for their first time, given they had only gone all the way twice and last time was distinctly not normal. Still, the gentle light and same bedroom as the first time he’d had Hollander was doing something to him, too, and in that moment in a naked, honest, animal way, he simply wants.
So he drops to his knees and takes.
-
After, showered and getting dressed, the topic circled back. “You were really actually angry, that I might’ve been with someone else?”
Ilya paused and considered lying. Then thought better of it. “Yes.”
He heard a quick intake of breath as though he shocked him. “You want to be monogamous?” Hollander asked tonelessly. “I mean, only having sex with each other?”
I mean yes, I think so, probably.
“Girls,” he offered instead as he finished buttoning his pants. “We can fuck any girls we want, but you want cock or kink, you come to me.” He knew it was unkind, that neither of them were admitting Shane quite possibly only wanted cock. If Hollander was lying to himself, Ilya found suddenly that he was not above taking advantage of that.
“And how many girls have you been with, since?” The tone was as delightfully bitchy as the question, making Ilya smile. Since Vegas? Since you made a game of destroying me?
“Two.” Hollander appeared shocked that he answered. “We are being honest, yes?”
It was true, he had had sex with two people that weren’t Hollander, both over eight weeks ago, both meaningless and, to him, disappointing, comparison the thief of joy. He had stopped getting off to his own imagination and instead was getting off to visceral memories, events he dreamed about. He was, in some ways, a changed man, or maybe a dog, waiting at the door, panting after his owner.
“First girl could not ride like you, very disappointing.” He made sure while saying this to don his most infuriating smirk, adjusting his jacket. “And neither had your, how you say? Throat game?”
Truly, he had no room to complain; these hook-ups were nights he would have enjoyed massively a year prior, and likely his own unenthusiastic participation had been the cause of any lackluster coupling. His standards were simply too high now. Having the hottest player in the MLH ride you until you cried tended to do that, apparently.
The ungentlemanly words were for Shane’s benefit. They worked, he noticed, as his rival tried to smother a smile. “And you used condoms?”
As if you have any doubt. As if that shouldn’t have been asked much earlier in the evening if you did. “Always.”
The smile did break free, then, before Shane leveled a teasing look at him. “Two in three months, Rozanov? You might be losing your edge.”
“I was distracted, maybe,” he admitted. “Too many good memories.” He was happy to be on the same page. He was gutted that Shane didn’t seem to have the same jealousy he did.
Shane’s agreement cut sharply through that thought. “Okay. Yeah. Girls only, for both of us,” he nodded, before looking away with a blush. “And next time, you’ll hurt me.”
Ilya cupped Shane’s face and kissed him gently, sweetly, his other hand soothingly running down his arm. He spoke the words directly into his mouth, a loving promise. “Yes, Shane. Next time, I will hurt you.”