Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Fuuuck… Shane!”

A blinding hot tremor ripped through Shane at the same time as Rozanov’s release splashed in thick waves over his fist. A tremor that stole the air from his lungs. His eyes flew open, pupils dilating rapidly as he watched the tension start to leave Rozanov’s face. Watched him jerk one last time and melt against the back of the sofa, his bright eyes hazy with ecstasy.

“Ilya,” he heard the word leave his own mouth in barely more than a whisper.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck fuck fuck.

He kissed him. It wasn’t filthy. It wasn’t perfunctory. That kiss told so many things and held for so long and was, god, so perfect. Too perfect.

And this bronze-curled Russian, the one he’d been sneaking away to secretly fuck for their entire MLH careers so far, was now looking at him with the softest eyes he’d ever seen. Was laying more kisses into his skin with warmth and intention, like was giving away parts of himself rather than taking what he could for pleasure’s sake.

Shane could try to convince himself it was sex-drunkenness, the post-coital euphoria he’d become accustomed to seeing on Rozanov’s face at the completion of each of their hookups. But the feeling that was gnawing up through his gut told him this was something different. Something dangerous.

He had to leave now.

“I, uh…” Shane stammered as he pulled his face away from Ilya’s – Rozanov’s – and grabbed for the shirt he’d been wearing. “I should…”

Heat and panic surged through him as he stood from the sofa and Rozanov’s lap, trying to turn the shirt right-side out. Focusing only on what his hands were doing so he could extricate himself faster.

He made the mistake of glancing up at Rozanov, and the confused hurt in the other man’s face stopped Shane dead in his tracks.

Stay.

He’d asked Shane to stay. Now he was wordlessly begging him not to go. Shane knew Rozanov wouldn’t verbalize that, would probably only try to disguise the need with sarcastic chirping, but his sorrowful expression and his upturned, supplicating palm were more honest than any words designed to match them.

Shane opened his mouth to try and make some kind of excuse. Team meeting, I forgot. Hayden really will wonder where I am. I can’t do this. I want this too much, and you don’t, and it will hurt.

His tongue felt like lead slag in his mouth. Before he could summon enough willpower to form a single word, Rozanov spoke first, gently, searchingly. “Hollander.”

Call me Shane again. Those words, by contrast, felt ready to leap out of his throat.

Looking down at the shirt he was holding, Shane realized with a rash of embarrassment that his hand was still covered in cum, and he’d smeared it in sticky white webs on the fabric in his haste. His usual compulsion for cleanliness – a blessedly familiar feeling to grab onto right now – took over and broke the moment open enough for him to mutter something about needing the bathroom.

As Shane turned and walked deeper into the house, he heard Rozanov huff out a disconcerted laugh behind him. Fuck off, he wanted to tell him, a rote response by now that held less and less heat with each time he said or thought it.

At the same time, he wanted to feel that laugh against his lips. He wanted to stifle it with kisses and clean away all the uncertainty from it. He wanted it to turn into Russian words whispered hot into his mouth. Shane’s feet moved forward onto the white tile, but his heart was screaming at him to go back to that sofa and that man.

Fuck.

Only after locking the bathroom door behind him and turning on the sink did Shane realize how fucking loud the rush of blood through his own ears was. How he was panting shallow and noisy, wheezing like he’d just finished a sprint. How unbearably tinny everything sounded and how bright the vanity lights were. He washed his hands as quickly as possible and splashed cold water over his face before moving to sit on the edge of the giant soaker tub in the corner. Shane buried his face in his palms and his head between his knees as he worked to pull himself out of the overwhelming captivity of panic.

I called him Ilya.

Fuck, he looked so happy about that.

It took about ten minutes to breathe somewhat normally again, the whole time during which he was terrified of Rozanov knocking on the door. But no knock ever came, and Shane felt dumb in hindsight for worrying so much about it. Rozanov had always seemed to know when Shane needed more space, and had always been willing to give it. His brash, infamously dickish behavior on the ice belied a quiet understanding and care in private. A feeling of safety that made the sneaking around feel less like danger than it probably should. That Shane, if he was being honest with himself, had always put his trust in Rozanov to provide.

So why the fuck was Shane freaking out so much now?

Well, he just called you by your first name. And you wanted him to do it again.

You want him to. Still.

He began going over the events of the day in his mind. Rozanov had asked him to get on top during sex. “I want to look at you today, Hollander,” he’d said with his hand brushing over Shane’s freckles between heated kisses, he’d asked with what Shane could have sworn was… tenderness.

He’d asked him to stay. They’d – there was no other word for it – cuddled in bed and on the couch. And Shane had watched him make tuna melts for them both while he clutched a can of chilled ginger ale that Rozanov had no reason to have in his fridge other than the fact that he knew Shane liked it. Somehow. Even though Shane had never told him that.

That alone, Ilya making him food, having the ginger ale ready, had been so jarring Shane hadn’t known what to do with himself. Had almost wanted to run right then, but instead had veered the conversation over to hockey and kept a few cushions’ worth of distance between himself and Rozanov as they’d watched the Buffalo-Minnesota game.

And then Rozanov had started talking about… girls. About other hookups with them. For some fucking reason. He’d asked Shane why he never heard about his own exploits with girls.

“What the fuck?” Shane uttered to himself now, shaking his head incredulously, almost angrily. He knew Rozanov liked to get under his skin, but that had been too far even for him. It had hurt. But then to add another element of confusion to this fucked-up mixture, Rozanov had said he liked Shane.

“Not as person, of course.” That couldn’t have been more obviously insincere if he’d put air quotes around it, not with the shy and warm way Rozanov had been looking at him. Like… how did Shane not notice that before? And that meant…

Oh, my god.

The realization slammed into him and almost made him breathless again. But this time it wasn’t panic. Maybe it was a tiny bit, but it was quickly engulfed by a familiar tingle that filled Shane’s entire chest cavity. A desperate, squeezing ache that almost scared Shane even more than the first-name-basis had, with how quickly it roared back into life after lying dormant so long. He had worked to squash these feelings in himself years before, after leaving Rozanov’s hotel room the night of the MLH awards in 2014.

He’d almost succeeded, for a while. Meeting up only every few weeks to months, and only for scant hours at a time, helped keep things simpler. But the flame had been lit back then, and Shane could not deny from the sparks licking their way through his veins now that he had never stopped holding that vigil for Rozanov. He’d always known that hope would never be met, that longing wouldn’t ever be reciprocated and that he would have to fully deal with by breaking things off eventually.

But… Jesus. He’d seen the reverence in Ilya’s eyes after he came, heard him say Shane’s first name as though it were a prayer. Felt the way they’d kissed unsaid words into each other, that Rozanov had pressed lips to his face with a palpable relief: Finally, you’re here, finally I see you, I’ve found you at last.

Something had shifted vastly. And Shane had almost let it tumble him out the door and them into oblivion. He’d almost shattered what he’d wished for, had never dared to ask for, before he even realized it was being placed in his hands.

His hands were shaking, he realized. Oh, god. What if he was wrong? What if all these signals were just his brain playing tricks on him? Like… wishful thinking or something? Or the after-sex haze making things look rosier than they ought to? Maybe he should have just left. It would have been simpler. Wouldn’t it?

A distant clatter of plates broke Shane out of his spiral. Rozanov was cleaning up their lunch in the kitchen. Christ, Shane kind of had run. Just into Rozanov’s bathroom, but it wasn’t as though he was out there facing all this.

He stood and crossed to the sink again, scrubbing his hands over his face and straightening up to full height as he checked himself in the large mirror. Shane noted with annoyance how scared and confused he looked too, an echo of Rozanov’s earlier expression. He exhaled a huge sigh and nodded at his reflection as he schooled his features into a veneer of calm. He could talk himself back into the same room with him. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, he could tell you to get out of his house and that he never wants to see you again. Shane hated that he considered that a distinct possibility. But if that was what happened, at least this complicated thing could finally be over, and he could try to move on.

Or he could pretend it was nothing. That would be par for the course and keep them on the treadmill of clandestine hookups, and maybe Shane could shut that part of himself down again that risked hoping for anything more and he could just content himself with the sex, with pretending that was all it was.

Or he might finally be honest about it being more.

He said he likes you, what if he said that he…

Shane let his eyes drift closed as he imagined those words exhaled by Rozanov into his own lips, his hair, his ear… he had never let himself want this. Had never named it. He was naming it now. And that was more terrifying than anything else that had happened that day.

But his hands and his breathing were steady. His nerves weren’t going to send him running this time. Whatever awaited him out there, he’d face it. He’d steeled himself for the worst, and maybe, by some lightning-strike chance, for the best.

Before he could overthink things any further, Shane unlocked the door and left the bathroom, tossing the shirt he’d taken with him into the laundry basket as he padded purposefully back to the main area of the house.

When Shane rounded the corner, Rozanov was scrubbing the burnt cheese off the baking sheet he’d used for their tuna melts. He didn’t immediately notice Shane, who took the opportunity to try and assess Rozanov’s mood. He was working carefully and with focus, no aggression or frustration in his movements. His face was calm, but maybe a bit… sad. Vulnerable. Shane felt a pang of sorrow at having left him to clean up both their literal and metaphorical mess that way.

Their plates were still unrinsed in the other sink. Shane wordlessly walked over and picked up the one on top, running the surface under the water until the crumbs and tuna flakes washed off. This one was Ilya’s, he could tell. He left more mess when he ate.

Whoa. He had just called him that again. It had come into his mind just… effortlessly.

This still had the potential to hurt so, so terribly. But Shane was telling himself he was okay with whatever outcome. Even though he was toeing a line that could not be uncrossed. Even if his nerves were burning in waves across his body.

He noticed then that Il… that Rozanov was watching him and had stopped scrubbing. Shane risked a glance his way and found a tiny smirk playing on the man’s lips.

Okay. So, kicking me out isn’t happening. That’s one to cross off the list of shitty outcomes.

“Thank you,” Rozanov murmured simply, tipping his head toward the plate Shane was rinsing.

Shane glanced up at him with a small smile. “You made food, the least I could do is help clean up.”

Rozanov pursed his lips, nodding in consideration. “I let you finish this, then.” He put the soap-covered baking sheet back in the other sink and leaned back against the counter next to it, crossing his arms over his massive chest as he smirked at Shane.

Shane cast him a sidelong look and shook his head as he shifted to stand in the middle of the two sinks and grabbed the scouring pad. He could feel Rozanov’s eyes burning into him as they swept down and back up his body, and Shane realized he was still shirtless. “I, uh… I put your shirt in the laundry. It was kind of a mess.”

“Kind of?” Rozanov teased. “You were using it like a fucking tissue. You know I have real tissues, Hollander, yes?”

“Shut up,” Shane chuckled as he rinsed the soap from the remainder of the dishes and cast about for a kitchen towel. “Uh, do you…?”

“Here,” Rozanov pushed off the counter, grabbing a towel from the drawer pull he’d just been leaning against and handing it to Shane. He braced himself on one palm against the counter again, still watching Shane quietly as he dried and stacked the plates. His head was cocked to the side in a way that Shane found insanely cute. Jesus, when had he started thinking Rozanov was cute?

He had to physically swallow a giddy laugh that threatened to bubble out of him. How fucking embarrassing. Almost more embarrassing than what he knew he had to admit now. “I wasn’t consciously trying to…” he gestured vaguely toward the bedroom. “I got kinda… freaked out.”

Rozanov hummed thoughtfully. “I know. Was… a lot.” He pressed his lips together and looked toward the floor as a heavy silence hung between them for a few seconds. “You are okay now?” he finally asked, the lightness in his tone betrayed by a tremble on the word “okay.”

Hearing that tiny scratch of fear in that voice made Shane want to wrap Rozanov in his arms and just… keep him there. Instead, he looked up and held his gaze steadily, purposefully, making sure Rozanov knew there was nothing he was hiding when he said this. “I’m okay. I’m still here.”

Now Rozanov took a step in toward him, his eyes flickering between both of Shane’s in that way he’d noticed they did when he was taking in something important. Shane felt his fingertips brush against his waist, sending shivers through his skin at the point of contact. He let that strong and gentle hand guide him in until he was nose-to-nose with Rozanov, breathing him in.

“Will you still stay?” Rozanov asked him, steadier but so soft. Shane couldn’t have said no to this voice and these eyes and these hands even if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to, so the choice was made for him.

His smile betrayed him even before he spoke, and he saw Rozanov mirror it as a delighted grin spread across his features. Shane couldn’t help but brush his fingers over Rozanov’s cheek. “I’m all yours tonight.”

Could it be for other nights, too? Every night we have after this?

“All mine,” Rozanov echoed him in a slow purr, grasping Shane’s jaw in that way that made him submit every damn time, and then he took his mouth with fierce tenderness, and whatever remaining apprehension Shane might’ve had about outcomes, about them going back to their old pretenses, evaporated then and there.

He pulled Rozanov closer by his neck and grabbed a fistful of curls as he melted forward into him, his knees nearly giving out with the relief of the weight that had just lifted from his chest. Rozanov hummed a hot sigh into his mouth, and before Shane realized what was happening he was hauled up by strong arms onto the countertop.

Shane heard a fork clatter into the sink, but it sounded far away in comparison to the loud breaths and whispered moans passing between them. He pulled Rozanov as close to him as he could, wrapping his legs around his waist and bearing down hard on his mouth. Shane’s heart jumped when Rozanov whimpered beneath him and snaked his hands around Shane’s back, fingers nestling themselves between his ribs and holding there as though they could absorb into him. He felt mad for this man. He felt like he wanted to shift his whole being inside him.

And it was with that impossible feeling thrumming in his body that he let the name slip out again into the air they were gasping for between kisses. “Ilya–” he barely managed to get the second syllable out before their mouths crashed together again. Shane felt that vigil candle was flaring into a torch, and he didn’t care anymore how much it showed. He wanted Ilya Rozanov. He wanted all of him.

“Jesus Christ, Shane,” Ilya chuckled as he forcibly pulled back a bit. Shane realized he’d been kissing him so desperately that he hadn’t given either of them a second to breathe. He huffed out a winded laugh and let them have a moment now, dropping his hands to the counter to steady himself as he opened his eyes to meet Ilya’s breathless smile beneath him. His hair was a ruin of unspooled curls thanks to Shane’s frantic tugging.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” Shane murmured teasingly. “Say it one more time?”

“Say what?” Ilya raised his eyebrows in mock ignorance, his expression morphing into a devilish smirk as he leaned just out of reach of where Shane was trying to kiss him.

“My name, asshole.”

“Hmm, who is this guy again? He’s so boring I almost don’t remember…” Ilya frowned in a visage of false concentration.

“Fuck you,” Shane chuckled. “You’re so–” He didn’t know what he would have said next, but it didn’t matter, because Ilya leaned forward at that moment and caught his lips so gently. His hands lifted to cradle Shane’s face with a delicacy Shane didn’t even know Ilya was capable of as he held them both there a long moment. Then Ilya broke off the barest amount, his lips still lightly pressed into Shane’s, still wet between them, and Shane felt Ilya take his hand from the cool counter and press it slow but firm into the warm skin of his chest just below his crucifix.

A strong but rapid pulse was thudding steadily beneath Shane’s palm. It sent a shimmer of longing up Shane’s entire body that he sighed out into Ilya’s mouth.

“Feel it?” Ilya whispered against his lips. Shane could only nod, his mouth suddenly parching. Ilya’s lips ghosted over Shane’s skin to press a kiss to his jawline, then one on his cheek, then his temple. “This only happens when you are near me. Just you, Shane. I need you to know this.”

Shane’s throat went thick and tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He felt Ilya slide his own fingers between Shane’s on his heart and curl them together as he pressed slow, reverent kisses to Shane’s earlobe and on down his neck. Shane tried to keep a shudder out of his breathing as he closed his eyes against the urge to cry for the strange, indefinite joy that was welling up throughout his body. His next breath came in a hitch as he impulsively took Ilya’s other hand and pressed it to his own heart.

Ilya stilled completely for a long moment, his lips hovering against Shane’s neck, but beneath the pause Shane felt Ilya’s heart jump against the heel of his hand. Ilya looked up at him with questions swimming through his eyes that brightened to something like wonder as he pressed his hand in closer.

“It’s just you, too.”

Shane could feel he was so close to crumbling that he instinctively ducked his head, but Ilya pulled him back up by his chin with an almost-silent “No” and a Russian word Shane didn’t know but sounded like it could be a pet name. Ilya’s face was utterly soft with concern and care that Shane had never seen in him before. He surrendered then, closing his eyes and letting the tears drop as his forehead fell against Ilya’s with a solid thunk.

Ilya began murmuring soft words to him in Russian. Shane didn’t understand a single one, but the gentleness and depth in them was unmistakable. He caressed Shane’s heart with one hand as he brushed the other over his cheek, lips, and jawline, searching out and wicking away any tears with soft, careful fingers. It was so unexpectedly sweet, and so much like what he’d never dared to hope Ilya would do, that Shane was fighting not to burst into sobs and smother him in tear-salted kisses.

He was also fighting back the only words that were ringing through his head over and over right now, that he was still so terrified would ruin everything, would collapse this tower they were building, no matter how caring and tender Ilya was being at this moment.

Christ, what was happening?

Whatever it was, it felt so completely right. Not just good… right. Like they’d been waiting to arrive here. Like they could ride out this shift together and transform in unison, hand in hand, and not lose sight of each other ever again. Shane wanted that so much. He was full to bursting with these things he didn’t know he’d wanted, hadn’t braved putting words to for how doing so would have made them real, made them hurt.

They were becoming real now. And they didn’t hurt.

The sheer loudness of that want made it so that he didn’t process for a second that Ilya was speaking English again. Shane blinked his eyes and lifted his head slightly. “Sorry, uh, what?”

Ilya chuckled at that. “I just ask if you are okay now.”

Of course he’d ask that. Ilya had always checked in with Shane during vulnerable moments, but it had almost always been in the context of sex. This was so entirely different. They’d seen every inch of each other’s bodies numerous times, but this was maybe the most honest and the most naked they’d been with each other in all these years. It was one thing for Ilya to fuck him, to take him physically, but they were here laying open their hearts. Really looking. Really seeing.

But they’d done so together. Neither of them had held back or made light of this. Shane had chosen not to run. That was no small thing.

“I’m more than okay,” Shane answered, bringing Ilya’s hand to his lips and kissing the base of his palm. He watched a rare blush come into Ilya’s cheeks as the Russian smiled with relief.

“Good,” Ilya nodded. After a moment, his lips quirked up into his characteristic lopsided smirk. “I still am not done with you.” He bared his teeth as he roughly squeezed Shane’s ass cheek, and Shane squeaked in surprise. He was about to call Ilya some choice words when the other man pulled him off the counter, laughing, and kissed him quickly.

“Thank you for staying,” he said sincerely, and Shane just nodded, feeling relieved and glad that he had stayed. Ilya squeezed his shoulders once before letting go of him to continue cleaning up in the kitchen.

For the rest of that day, things felt so light and easy and moved so fluidly with Ilya in a way Shane didn’t think he’d ever experienced. He was used to the thrilling fire of competition on the ice against him as his rival, or the intense sexual tension of their hotel room hookups, or annoyance at Ilya’s constant ribbing and the way he knew just how to get under Shane’s skin (not to mention the skin of every other player in the league).

But now Shane was making himself at home at Ilya Rozanov’s house, and they were taking up each other’s space in ways that weren’t strictly sexual. Ilya would every now and again grasp at Shane’s fingers and squeeze them lightly or plant a kiss on his cheek as he went past him, and his wide, cheeky grin made an appearance every few minutes. Shane realized he also couldn’t stop smiling, and their eyes would linger on each other doing the most mundane things as though it were the loveliest sight either of them had gotten to witness.

They found themselves cuddled under a blanket on the chaise longue of Ilya’s enormous sectional watching “X-Squad” as the sun went down. Ilya was stroking his fingers through Shane’s hair as Shane nestled his head in the crook of Ilya’s shoulder, absently tracing patterns on his wrist where it lay idly next to them on the sofa.

Shane flinched slightly when an explosion from the film jump-scared him, and he felt Ilya’s body shake with a small chuckle before he leaned his head onto Shane’s. At that moment, the camera zoomed on a newly introduced superheroine with auburn hair and tanned skin, a stylized catsuit clinging to all of her curves as she stood tall against her on-screen opponent. She was uncommonly gorgeous, Shane thought.

“That’s uh, Rose Landry, yes?” Ilya wondered aloud, snapping his fingers to jog his memory.

Shane nodded. “Yeah. Hayden’s a big fan of hers.”

“Ah. So he does have good taste sometimes.”

Shane rolled his eyes. “If you met his wife, Jacki, you’d know it’s more than just sometimes. She’s the best.”

“I could see you with someone like her.”

“With Jacki?” Shane lifted his head, giving Ilya an incredulous glare.

Ilya returned it with his own mocking side-eye. “With Rose Landry, idiot.”

Shane sat back from him as a familiar pang hit him in the gut for the second time that day. Enough was enough, and he was ready to get to the bottom of it. “Why do you keep talking about this?”

Ilya gestured toward the TV innocently. “Talking about what? This is first time I mention her.”

It was Shane’s turn to give Ilya a withering look. “Fuck off, you know what I mean. Earlier you were, like, asking about girls and saying how you sleep with all these women. How you basically have a woman in every port. Maybe more than one,” he muttered, crossing his arms and looking back toward the TV, where Rose Landry’s character was strutting purposefully alongside the other members of the squad.

Ilya studied Shane for a few moments. “You are jealous.” It was a statement, not a question.

Shane felt himself flush hot pink as he bit both his lips. Fuck, he wished he was better at lying. But… that was sort of the point, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to lie. “Maybe, yeah,” he finally said warily.

“Why?” Ilya pressed him. His expression wasn’t playful or mocking anymore.

Because I want it to just be me you sleep with. Because I’m fucking in love with you. The words crashed through Shane’s brain, and he stuffed them down as he searched for an answer that was in any way acceptable to say out loud.

Ilya must have noticed the desperation building in Shane’s expression, because he looked down at his lap and blinked a few times before letting out a small sigh. “What if I told you I have not seen any of these women in months?”

Shane knitted his brow in confusion. “You haven’t?”

“No.”

“Not even Svetlana?”

Ilya smirked at that. “Of course I see her, she is good friend. But not for sex, no.”

Shane leaned forward off the couch cushion, trying to catch Ilya’s eye. “Then, why…?”

“Just because I do not hear about you with girls, maybe you still fuck girls sometimes, yes?” Ilya asked point-blank, looking up to stare at Shane with a demanding intensity he couldn’t quite place.

Shane couldn’t stop himself from grimacing with disgust at that. He tried to shutter his expression into a more neutral one, but it was too late. Ilya’s eyes widened and he looked stunned for a few seconds. “Hollander, you don’t?”

“I just haven’t wanted to, okay?” Shane replied defensively. “I’ve been focused on hockey, and–”

“And on getting railed by me,” Ilya snarked, shaking his head as he leaned back against the couch. He looked positively victorious at this knowledge. Shane would have been mortified if he weren’t so busy reeling from this admission that neither of them was hooking up with anyone else.

“Does that… does knowing that make you happy? That it’s just you?” Shane risked after a minute of the only sounds being from the movie in front of them.

Ilya let his head fall to the side as he looked at Shane, his eyes flicking to his lips and back up. The hard Slavic lines of his face settled into something gentler while the silence grew thick and weighty between the two of them. He took Shane’s hand and drew it up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles sweetly. “Why you didn’t just tell me?”

Shane felt a rush of heat across his cheeks. “Because it’s…” It was still a struggle to be this straightforward, to try and peel back the excuses, the half-truths, when they’d been constant defenses between them before.

Fuck it.

“Because it wasn’t supposed to matter. Because we were never ‘something.’” He swallowed, choosing the tone of his next words carefully to wash any trace of bitterness from them; he wasn’t here to lash out against walls that it was quickly becoming clear they both wanted taken down. “There were a few times you made that pretty clear before.”

Shane had expected maybe some defensiveness that he would have to talk Ilya down from, or maybe just shutdown, but it was neither: Ilya blinked up at him with a sorrowful, wounded look, as though their positions had been reversed in those times Shane was referencing.

“I hurt you. Those times.” It was also not a question, and it held no trace of anything but regret.

Shane nodded. He wasn’t going to downplay it, but he also didn’t want Ilya to feel worse than he should. He knew there was probably good reason, even if he didn’t know what it was. Maybe in time it would make sense. In a weird way, it made a kind of sense now.

Ilya squeezed Shane’s hand between both of his and kissed it harder, more urgently. He looked Shane in the eye with that same bare sadness and sincerity as he let their hands fall to his lap. “I’m sorry. You deserved better than that.”

Oh, wow.

And Shane felt his bones settle from a tension he hadn’t realized they’d been holding themselves in. Settle deeper in love with Ilya.

“I forgive you,” he said without a second thought. Because of course he did. He was so ready to let all that past pain and uncertainty wash away forever, and leave nothing but real and honest in its wake.

He watched a warm and endearing smile cross Ilya’s face, and then heard him murmur something equally warm in Russian before he sat up to cradle Shane against his body again, landing a soft kiss on the top of his head.

“Shane, I…”

“Hmm?”

“I never had ‘something’ with anybody before. Maybe… I am afraid I will not be good at it.”

Shane craned his head up to nudge Ilya’s and give an encouraging smile. “Well, the tuna melts were a good start, I think.”

Ilya matched his smile and nudged him back. “And what about bad movies on the couch?”

“You think this is bad?”

“If it were good, I think you would tell me to shut up so you can focus.”

Shane wheezed out a laugh at that and settled back against Ilya’s chest. “You’re not wrong.” A contented sigh eased out of him as his free hand began unconsciously tracing the contours of Ilya’s bare torso. “But… I think you will,” he mused out loud, the words sounding almost nonsensical if he weren’t so sure Ilya would understand them. “I think we both will. If we try.”

Ilya’s grip on Shane’s waist tightened, and in one smooth turn he angled Shane’s face upward with a steady grip against his nape, and he kissed him in a way that felt like gratitude.

It threw Shane for such a dizzying, euphoric loop that he lost all sense of where he was in space apart from under Ilya’s searing, talented mouth, until he opened his eyes as the kiss broke off and he was laid up against the arm of the sofa, pinned beneath Ilya’s body.

“I want to try. Is why I bought ginger ale. Is why I wanted you to stay. You make me…” Ilya’s brow creased and thumb ran along Shane’s cheekbone as he seemed to search for the right words. “You make me feel like I can. Will you let me try?”

Shane felt breathless and boneless, and he knew it wasn’t because of any physical exertion. He just nodded, and Ilya covered his lips with his own and kissed him slowly with a feeling undefined but undeniable. Shane felt his body swept up again in that mad desire to merge with Ilya at every point of contact, every touch of skin against skin.

A car skidded loudly to a crashing halt on the screen, and both of them jumped a bit at being pulled out of the moment. Shane chuckled and turned away from Ilya’s lips long enough to suggest turning the movie off, and Ilya did and then tossed the remote away, and then the only sounds in the dark room were of wet kisses and sighing breaths and of hands sliding along bodies.

It was a familiar space to be in with Ilya, one where the physicality of the two of them together, all over each other, dulled them to everything that existed outside of it. The difference now was the reverberations of what they’d said, what they both knew was happening, making each touch feel just a bit more wanting, linger just a bit more. The difference was in Ilya staring down at Shane for longer before he kissed him, and in how he pulled Shane in and cradled him against himself.

And the difference was in how Shane wanted him. Wanted him body and soul. His whole being ached for Ilya.

“I need you,” Shane murmured into Ilya’s lips just as they separated. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to be for now. “Please, Ilya.”

“Come to bed with me, sweetheart,” Ilya purred in his ear, pressing his hand against the growing bulge in Shane’s pants and wringing a soft, desperate moan out of him. He got up, taking Shane’s hand and pulling him off the sofa and toward his bedroom through the dark house.

When he had the door closed behind them, Ilya ordered Shane to stay put, leaving him with a light kiss on his cheek. He went about the room turning on all the table lamps and standing lamps, bathing the space in a warm low-light glow. Shane let his eyes drift along the path Ilya took, let himself openly adore him. It still felt like a fantasy to be able to do so without worry.

Finally, Ilya made his way back over to Shane, guiding him back against the bed with a hand spread across his chest. Shane held his breath, his body accustomed to waiting for an order, a clear step, a taking, a physical manipulation from Ilya.

None of those things happened.

Ilya’s palm slipped from Shane’s chest and around to the small of his back, his fingertips traced patterns there and dipped in and out of the dimples along his spine, and Ilya kissed him light as air, letting his lips brush faintly along Shane’s cheekbone. “Tell me what you need,” he murmured, each consonant a soft, precise burst in his accent.

“You,” Shane breathed as he settled against the steadiness of Ilya’s hand on his back. “Need you. All of you.”

Ilya whispered something faintly in Russian in response and kissed in front of Shane’s ear. “You said you are all mine, yes?” Shane nodded before Ilya pulled back for eye contact that felt like a spark shot into Shane’s head. “Then I am all yours, too.”

 And as Shane wrapped him in a fierce kiss and pulled them both down to the bed, he felt he might never stop falling again.

Both having been shirtless for most of the day, it was easy enough to pull themselves out of sweatpants and boxer briefs and let them pool at the foot of the bed. Shane loved it whenever they could simply become a tangle of warm limbs intertwined, erections pressed hot against each other’s stomachs, lips and hands mapping the lines of one another’s bodies. The first moments of being naked with each other were often moved past too quickly to savor, but they let it stay tonight, let their hands drift and lips hover against each other, let the want of everything possible become tangible and transparent.

“How do you always taste so fucking good?” Ilya purred against Shane’s throat, ducking his head to nip at his collarbone and then soothing it with the flat of his tongue. “And always warm. And so soft…” He dragged his lips along the line of Shane’s sternum, triggering a flash of goosebumps over his body. “Is so annoying how perfect you are.”

Shane couldn’t help but roll his eyes a little at that, but it was overtaken almost immediately by euphoria as Ilya closed his lips around a nipple and flicked his tongue against it the way he had learned years ago was like a jump-start to the pleasure center of Shane’s brain. His thumb brushed over the other one, traveling down the terraces of Shane’s ribcage and hip furrows until it reached the center of him.

A loud gasp escaped him as Ilya’s hand cupped around his balls, thumb stroking the seam and rubbing circles around the fullness of his sack. “Oh, my god,” Shane breathed, craning his head back against the bed with nothing but dizzying pleasure swimming inside him. He indulged a whine as Ilya’s palm dragged flat along his length, trapping it against his stomach, before his fingers wrapped one by one around his shaft and stroked him slowly down to the base.

“Oh, Christ, yes,” he whispered just as Ilya raised his head to kiss him again and begin a trail of sloppy kisses from his lips downward. It was all too easy to surrender against the heavy slide of Ilya’s hand on his cock and the way his kisses cooled one by one against his skin, left him wet and shivering with pure want.

“Please, Ilya,” Shane found himself begging, rocking his hips up to coax him into a faster rhythm, or to get Ilya’s mouth around him, or… he didn’t know what. He just wanted. With Ilya it was always that way, the want was never sated, even in the wake of the best orgasms he’d had with him. There was something deep and fundamental that always pulled him in the direction of Ilya, even from hundreds or thousands of miles apart. It might be folded into the back of his brain, or forward and present like it was right now – but it was never not there.

And right now it was so, so loud. So loud that Ilya was reflecting it back into him, looking down on his body between every kiss he landed like he couldn’t believe Shane was real beneath him.

“Can I…” Ilya faltered at finishing the question when he pulled Shane’s torso up into his lips as though magnetized, leaving a bruising kiss on his ribcage.

“Can you…?” Shane petted his hand through Ilya’s curls in encouragement.

Ilya sighed as he ran the flat of his tongue along the groove in Shane’s abs. “Wanna fuck you. Can I fuck you? Shane, please, I want…” Whatever words he would have finished with were lost in a low moan from Ilya’s throat as he lowered his mouth onto Shane’s cock, suckling and tonguing at the head as his hand still worked him slowly from the base. Shane answered with an unabashedly loud moan, throwing his head backward as his body buckled on itself under the ministrations of Ilya’s talented hands and mouth.

“Do whatever you want to me, fuck, take me, take everything…” Shane babbled, his voice thin and choked as he draped an arm over his eyes, already blinded by the waves of pleasure Ilya had him riding through.

Ilya groaned around him as he took Shane all the way down, both hands gliding over the creases of Shane’s hips, up his ribs and back down, digging in his fingers as he went. Shane felt the bed move with Ilya rutting his hips against it instinctively and whimpered both with the sensation of being swallowed whole and the sudden, keen ache he had for Ilya to be inside him.

“I want you to fuck me, please, Ilya, please,” he mewled. He was not above begging at this point.

Though the loss of that mouth around him as he sucked hard off Shane’s cock with a wet pop left him twinging with emptiness, the burning lust in Ilya’s sea-dark eyes promised so much more. Ilya took Shane’s forearm from where it rested against his head, lacing their fingers together and kissing the back of Shane’s hand before he guided it down between their bodies. “Get yourself ready for me,” he said. “I want to watch you.”

Shane obeyed without hesitation, beginning the work of opening himself up as Ilya sat back off of him. He kept one hand on Shane’s thigh and started stroking himself slowly with the other, biting his lip and breathing slow and deep as his eyes wandered over every inch of Shane’s body. He was murmuring something under his breath as his gaze sizzled the air between them.

Shane was reminded distinctly of their night in Vegas years prior, when Ilya had watched with a practiced detachment as Shane pleasured himself for his benefit. He had fucked Shane hard into the bed, then walled him off and let him leave without so much as a kiss. It had stung so terribly, and left Shane feeling used and rudderless where his emotions were concerned. He had sealed that part of himself off from their interactions from that point on. Had filed anything more under “impossible” so it wouldn’t hurt.

That was not where they were now. Ilya was no longer hiding the pure want in his eyes, not sparing a single touch, not taking Shane for granted or keeping himself masked behind domineering confidence. As Shane slipped a finger inside himself and worked it in a careful circle, he kept full eye contact with Ilya, even resisting the reflex to blink as he budged up to a second knuckle and a shuddering grunt released from his throat, goosebumps rushing up his entire body.

He saw Ilya’s hand tighten on his thigh, imprinting his flesh as he gripped him with raw desire. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he breathed. “Shane, I…” Shane held his breath as he saw Ilya’s eyes widen, but in the next moment Ilya was kissing his bent knee and trailing hard kisses up his thigh, as though he were trying to busy his mouth for just long enough to swallow whatever he’d been about to say.

The notion flashed through Shane… just a split second of wondering before his own fingers finally reached his prostate and the sensation punched a groan straight from his gut like it always did. Ilya began watching him again with his cheek pressed to Shane’s knee and hand stroking himself a little faster, his eyes hazy with lust.

“I’m ready,” Shane told Ilya after he felt himself relax into the feeling of being stretched, when taking him full in would be equal parts pain and pleasure. He knew their thresholds well by now and knew how he wanted to feel Ilya tonight, and probably for a few days after. “Come here.”

Ilya wasted no time, unwrapping and sliding on the condom he’d plucked from his bedside table in seconds before he crawled over Shane again, lining himself up and leaving a peck on his flushed lips. He palmed Shane’s face gently and nodded once to check in, and Shane nodded back. They both moaned out loud and shivered as Ilya pushed inside and paused for them to settle. Shane whimpered needfully at the familiar but always ecstatic sensation of being filled and taken, but on a devious whim he clenched himself like a vise around Ilya before the other man could start moving.

Ilya’s response was everything Shane had hoped for. “Oh, fucking fuck, Shane!” he keened out, his head collapsing onto Shane’s shoulder and hand curling into a trembling fist in his hair. “Don’t stop doing that. Don’t let go of me,” Ilya gasped, and he began to move inside him, rutting in until they were flush together.

Shane gritted his teeth and tensed hard through Ilya sliding back out of him, almost imagining he could trap him inside. He watched Ilya’s face contort in torturous bliss and heard a choked sound catch in his throat. When just the head of his cock remained inside, Ilya opened his eyes again, catching his breath a moment, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward before he shoved roughly back in, forcing a loud moan out of Shane.

“Fuck, you’re so tight for me,” he growled dangerously as he rolled his hips, slowly out, slamming forcefully to the hilt again. “Just for me.” He lowered himself to grip Shane’s head in both hands and pierce him with his eyes, breathing hot into Shane’s mouth as their rhythm began to notch up. Shane dug his fingers into Ilya’s back, trying to gain purchase somewhere for what he knew was about to be the ride of their lives.

“Oh, fuck, you feel incredible,” Shane whimpered as he felt a firework set off in his body at each thrust. He bit his lip as he looked at Ilya on top of him, keeping control of their pace by tightening his ass around every pull of Ilya’s cock and stopping either of them from going too far too fast. Shane wanted this to last, but he also wanted to see Ilya lose himself in it. He wanted to see how beautiful he looked when he was completely out of his head.

Within minutes of that controlled torture, his lover’s eyes were wild and blown dark and unfocused, and sweat was already shining on his face, with some of his curls sticking to his cheeks and forehead. He looked gorgeous and insane, and Shane thought he might tell him so, but instead he turned his head the moment his mouth opened to suck Ilya’s thumb inside it, swirling his tongue around each knuckle as he pulled him in deeper. Ilya sank his cock into him again and stopped, breathing shallow and tremulous with nostrils flaring and lips parted as he watched Shane lose himself in oral worship. He uttered something low and dangerous in Russian, and Shane let his eyes burn into Ilya’s with carnal desire.

“Tell me,” he slurred around Ilya’s thumb, cradling it along the length of his tongue.

Ilya inhaled sharply. “You make me crazy. You make me want to tear you open and crawl inside you. Fuck…” He began moving again, as if by instinct, and let his mouth drop on top of Shane’s without pulling his thumb out, a reckless, wet kiss that both of them would have probably found too much outside of sex, but was utterly perfect right now. Shane felt in that moment that he’d be happy to die for the fulfillment of the urge Ilya had just put English to.

As he released Ilya’s thumb from his mouth and let it drag a trail of saliva down his cheek, he pulled him down to kiss him deep and hot and wrapped his legs high around Ilya’s waist. Ilya took the invitation to fold his body over Shane’s and sank himself even deeper in, snapped his hips faster, unleashing a strained growl against Shane’s throat that turned into a string of ecstatic, choked-off Russian curses as Shane dragged his fingernails down Ilya’s back, leaving what he knew were going to be visible scratches. He didn’t care. He didn’t think. He just felt Ilya in him, around him, everywhere, like an inferno that would never stop searing him.

“Harder,” he begged, and Ilya gave him everything he possibly could, pounding into Shane with such ferocity that it pushed them both up the bed with every thrust. He still had the wherewithal to quickly position a pillow between Shane’s head and the headboard. Shane automatically braced his forearm against it while sinking his fingers into Ilya’s ass cheek with the other as he was slammed backwards into himself.

He cried out without an ounce of shame at every thrust, coiling tighter until he lost the capacity for words as Ilya fucked him like he might never get to again. Ilya was gasping out what Shane was sure were the dirtiest of phrases in Russian, his voice rough and low and breath scorching hot against his neck, and Shane wanted badly to answer him back with words he didn’t know. Instead he wrenched loud, desperate cries from his throat and his fingernails carved paths through the flesh of Ilya’s back as he felt himself being fucked completely apart.

“Oh, fu… oh god–!” Shane whimpered as he felt his body begin to contract involuntarily, back arching high off the bed and tremors rippling violently through him.

“Yes, come for me, beautiful,” Ilya ground out breathlessly next to his ear as he hammered even faster into Shane and sank his teeth into the muscle of his shoulder. It was more than enough to get Shane over the edge, it was enough to lift him to heaven, and by god, he– 

“Ilya, I love you…” he moaned out before he could stop himself, and even as Shane felt his release spurt over his skin, his eyes flew open and stomach dropped.

No. Oh, no no no. Not now. Please not now.

Ilya only paused for the barest moment, his hand stiffening against Shane’s head. It wasn’t a second later, though, that a long, loud moan ripped from his throat as his whole body bucked and lost all rhythm, pulsing inside Shane and pushing as deep as possible as he came hard. Shane was frozen and wide-eyed beneath him, his mind scrambling to think of a way to justify or walk back what he’d just said. To somehow not lose Ilya, to somehow not let himself be lost, to have somehow not ruined everything…

But Ilya didn’t move off of him. He let his body collapse against Shane’s as he gasped for air like he’d just finished a bag skate. He buried his face in Shane’s neck and embraced him so tightly, clutching him like he would be swept away if Ilya let go.

And Shane heard his panting turn hitched and broken. Felt his body shudder with interrupted breaths. Felt something wet run down the side of his neck.

Ilya was weeping.

Shane’s heart pinched hard as he brought his arms up around Ilya’s sweat-covered back, combing his fingers through the curls at the back of his head. “Shh, hey,” he tried to soothe him, closing his eyes and preparing himself for the worst. “I’m sorry. Ilya, I…”

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Ilya sniffed as he shook his head beneath Shane’s hand. “Just tell me you mean it.”

What?

Shane paused to take it in, continuing to stroke Ilya’s hair a moment as his gut begin to settle. His heart was still pounding as he turned his body on the bed so they could lie face-to-face. This beautiful Russian man’s blue-green eyes were shimmering, his face red and teary and his lip quivering visibly, and he looked more like a scared child than Shane had ever seen before.

And he knew in that second they weren’t ruined. They weren’t lost.

“I mean it, Ilya. I love you. I’m… I’m crazy in love with you.” He carefully wiped the tears away from Ilya’s face and watched as a disbelieving, grateful smile shuddered across his lips. Ilya grabbed Shane’s hand and kissed it over and over before pressing it to his own cheek, squeezing his eyes closed and letting out a long sigh of relief.

For long minutes as Ilya settled Shane stroked his hairline, felt his exhalations against his wrist grow fainter and steadier. The air between them seemed to pulse with a strange mix of anticipation and revelation, with everything now said and still unsaid. Shane held him in patience and gentleness, and soon enough saw Ilya’s eyes flutter open to look up at Shane with such plain devotion that it almost meant more than the words themselves.

“You are sure?”

“I am.”

“This is not a dream, is it?”

In response, Shane pinched his arm, and Ilya recoiled with an offended frown. “Ow,” he said, then an elated grin burst onto his face and he laughed open and loud, and Shane couldn’t help but laugh too for the sheer disbelieving joy of it all. He scooted closer to Ilya and they held each other’s heads as laughter bubbled between them and melted into theoretically terrible kisses where their teeth clacked for their inability to stop smiling. It was Shane who finally sealed a proper kiss against Ilya’s mouth, finally quieted them enough to hear the same oath in the silence that had passed between them on the sofa earlier that day.

 You’re here. I see you. I’ve found you. Finally, you’re mine.

“Tell me again,” Ilya pleaded in a whisper, holding both Shane’s hands in his own.

“I love you, Ilya.” Saying it out loud felt unreal.

“I love you, too. Oh god, Shane, I love you so much. I want you so much.” And Ilya was combing his fingers through Shane’s hair and looking at him like he was the only thing that mattered in the world. Shane could have never in his wildest dreams imagined Ilya looking at him that way.

They held each other and kissed for what felt like hours, suspended in a bubbled moment that Shane knew he’d remember forever. They would examine how this had shifted and recast everything later, how it might complicate things logistically – but right now, Ilya was murmuring sweet nothings into his lips, Shane was kissing his gratitude into Ilya’s skin, they were snuggling and twining limbs together and breathing each other in and whispering “I love you” over and over. Right now they could just float in it, they could just be here.

He only realized they’d fallen asleep when he felt Ilya gently tapping him on the shoulder to rouse him. “Mmf?” Shane grunted questioningly, lifting his head from Ilya’s collarbone.

“We should shower,” Ilya muttered, turning to peck Shane’s cheek.

“What time is it?”

“One o’ clock.”

“In the morning?”

Ilya snorted at that. “No, the sun decided to sleep in.” Shane squinted his eyes open to see that, yes, it was still completely dark out.

“Come on,” Ilya tapped his shoulder again and began to sit up. “Shower. You still have cum all over you and you hate to be dirty.”

Shane went without any protest. He waited in front of the mirror, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, while Ilya turned on the water for them. Looking over at him, Shane noticed with a mix of shock and pride that he had indeed left very long scratches down the length of Ilya’s entire back and in curves around his shoulder blades. And there were some distinct fingernail-shaped marks on his left ass cheek, too. And on the nape of his neck. He had really gone to town.

“What? What are you looking at?” Ilya asked as he glanced over his shoulder and caught Shane’s stunned expression.

“Um… your back.” Shane couldn’t fight off the blush that was creeping into his face. Ilya frowned and left the shower to see what Shane was talking about in the mirror. His eyes just about bugged out of his head. “Wow, Hollander,” he muttered, laughing. “Trying to mark me?”

“I was kind of not thinking about it. Or about anything.” Shane looked sidelong at Ilya and smirked. “It was really hot, though.”

Ilya hummed his agreement and stood behind Shane to drape his arms around him. “Looks like I marked you, too,” he purred, tonguing the bite impression that Shane had only just noticed was on his shoulder. “Now you’ll think of me whenever you’re in locker room.”

“I already do that,” Shane remarked, and Ilya squeezed him affectionately. Then Shane sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Jesus, Hayden’s going to give me so much shit for this.”

“What does he expect after you spend night away from the hotel? Probably he wishes his wife would bite him like that,” Ilya quipped, goosing Shane’s butt before stepping back into the shower. Shane followed him in and shut the door as Ilya stepped under the spray first. He was happy to just stand back and watch the water run down every chiseled line of this glorious man, but Ilya had other plans. “Come,” he said, gently tugging Shane’s hand. “Let’s clean you up.”

They both soaped and rinsed each other in a way that felt oddly functional and non-sexual for where they were. Shane made sure to be as gentle as possible when lathering the soap over Ilya’s back, where he could see with a twinge of guilt that he’d broken skin in quite a few spots. “Sorry I was too rough,” he mumbled as Ilya drew in a hiss at the contact at one point.

“Is okay, you were not,” Ilya assured him. “I love seeing you lose yourself.”

Shane stopped his hand briefly, hovering it over his spine. “What do you mean?”

Ilya turned around to face Shane and caress his chin and mouth. “You are always thinking. Is hard for you to relax, yes?” There was no judgment in his tone, but Shane still frowned a little defensively. Still, he couldn’t say Ilya was wrong.

“But I get to see you when you stop thinking. I get to see you let go. Is part of you that nobody knows except me. And I fucking love it. I love it every time.”

Shane was winded by this admission. He wondered for a split second if he was still asleep, if this was only his brain creating a world that couldn’t be real, where Ilya said things like this to him… before Ilya leaned in and took his mouth tenderly under the running water, and he surrendered all his disbelief. In Ilya’s arms, beneath his lips, it was easy to let himself let go again.

Neither of them felt like they could get back to sleep that soon. Nerves were buzzing and there remained a seemingly endless string of events to recontextualize, of thoughts to bare. So after Shane dabbed antibiotic ointment over the worst scrapes Ilya had sustained on his back, they each pulled on clean boxers and sweatshirts fished out from the closet, and Shane offered to make them tea that they could share in the living room. Ilya looked deeply happy as he watched Shane work, but now that the initial high of confession had ebbed back, he was holding himself in a cautious, vulnerable way.

It wasn’t hard to imagine why, but Shane felt his heart drop just a little anyway.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Shane asked after he came from the kitchen with two hot mugs of tea and found Ilya staring pensively out the window.

Ilya shot him a puzzled look as he took his mug. “What the fuck are you saying?”

Shane couldn’t help but laugh at that; he’d always been charmed by the way Ilya was markedly baffled when he heard new idioms he couldn’t parse on his own. “It’s an expression. It means tell me what’s on your mind.”

Ilya’s face fell with his shoulders, and Shane could see him trying to formulate how to best put things into words. “I’m so in love with you, Shane. When I’m with you I can almost forget everything else.” His face looked terribly heavy even as he smiled, and Shane made note of the ‘almost’ there.

“Then why do you look so sad?” Shane asked gently, sweeping his fingertips over Ilya’s knee in an effort to soothe.

“I don’t know what we are going to do.” Ilya sounded so small.

Shane tried not to show that he was feeling every bit as small and scared about that, too. He continued tracing his fingers along Ilya’s kneecap and said nothing. It seemed like right now Ilya’s thoughts needed room to breathe, and support to be drawn out.

“We are archrivals. This is hard enough. We both are captains of our teams. Our lives are at least four hours apart and… what is word?” Ilya bit his lip thoughtfully. “Limited. Limited because of schedules. And we live under microscopes, so even seeing each other during breaks is…” he trailed off into heavy silence.

Shane swallowed hard. Everything Ilya was saying was true. They’d both known this for years. Admitting they loved each other wasn’t a magic balm for their circumstances, and he knew that.

It didn’t keep him from trembling so much his tea rippled in his cup as he dared to speak his next words.

“It looks pretty impossible on paper, yeah.” But. There had to be a “but” to this. There had to be something that could edge between all of those obstacles and clear a path forward.

But Shane didn’t know what that was. Ilya clearly didn’t, either.

“If you…” Shane swallowed again, his throat feeling thicker by the second. “If you want to call this off, I’ll understand. We can just make a clean break. Go back to being just… rivals.” He stopped speaking as his voice began to shake on the final word.

Ilya didn’t even let the suggestion hang in the air for a second. Shane saw his mouth tighten briefly before Ilya pulled his head in to kiss him long and hard. He felt the torsion in his soul begin to loosen as he closed his eyes and let Ilya declare through his lips what they both knew: they had never been ‘just rivals.’ Their connections on and off the ice were inextricable from each other. It’d be like trying to separate Siamese twins that shared a heart.

“I ask you to stay and eat my food and drink ginger ale and watch movies and I tell you I am fucking in love with you. And you think I would let you go now?” Ilya chuckled as he pressed their foreheads together. “I do not ever want to let you go again. Do you understand?” His eyes held a raw and fierce desperation that Shane had only ever seen during high-pressure moments on the ice, where the outcome of a game rested on his unique cross of aggression and precision in a split-second moment. At those times, Ilya put everything on the line and more often than not reaped the reward for it.

So to see it from him now gave Shane a bloom of hope that he held close to himself. He nodded. “Then we do this for real. We find a way. We’re both smart and resourceful and… hell, we have money at our disposal to work with.” This pulled a fond grin from Ilya. “We can make it easier to be something.”

Ilya swept his thumb across Shane’s freckles, studying him with quiet affection. “What is that ‘something’ for you, Hollander? What do you want for us?”

Shane’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest at the easy use of the word ‘us’ in regard to him and Ilya. Us. You and I are an ‘us’ now. Holy shit.

“I want so many things for… us,” Shane tested out the word in his mouth, and it left him grinning. “I want more days like today. Want to text and facetime about just anything and everything. I want to spend summers with you at my cottage, have my parents meet you, tell you every day that I love you. Maybe we can even go to Russia sometime, if we’re careful–”

“Nyet,” Ilya blurted out, grabbing Shane’s wrist as his eyes went huge. Shane startled back at the intensity of Ilya’s reaction. “O-okay, no Russia then,” he stammered, and Ilya seemed to realize what he was doing as he blinked and loosened his iron grip on Shane. That response had come from somewhere deep. Somewhere Shane had glimpsed in tiny moments before, the most recent of which was Ilya’s phone call with his father that afternoon.

“Sorry,” Ilya murmured, taking another drink of his tea to regulate his nerves. “Yes, I don’t think you can ever go to Russia with me. Is dangerous not just because of laws there.”

Shane frowned. “Do you… wanna tell me about it?”

“I will sometime. But, finish what you were saying.” He offered a half-smile and listened with a slight tilt of his head.

“Well, I mean, I just want to have more time and more… I guess, honesty? Between us. I want to know everything about you so I can love every piece of you. I wanna…” Shane hesitated, but decided to brave it, because what the hell. “I wanna build a life with you. Not just get a night here and there. I want to be with you, Ilya. I wanna be yours, completely.”

Ilya’s eyes had progressively taken on a shimmer as Shane spoke, and he blinked it back now, smiling warmly. “What you said.”

Shane broke into giggles at that and caressed Ilya’s cheek, poking his distinctive mole. “Sounds like we’re in agreement then.” He leaned in and landed a soft kiss against Ilya’s forehead. “I know we aren’t gonna figure it all out tonight, but we have time. We can do this. We will.”

Ilya shifted between Shane’s legs so his side faced into him and nuzzled into his neck. “Ty ne znayesh', skol'ko radosti ty mne prinosish'. Ya nikogda nikogo ne lyubil tak kak lyublyu tebya.” The sound of the hushed words fell over Shane like a soft weighted blanket.

“I wish I could understand Russian,” he said regretfully as he combed his fingers through Ilya’s curls, softer and less defined for being freshly washed.

Ilya’s lip twitched up at the corner. “Maybe is a good thing you don’t yet.”

“Why?” Shane chuckled, noting the ‘yet’ with a dash of optimism.

Ilya tapped his thumb on his mug as he gave an embarrassed shrug. “Sometimes… probably a lot… I tell you things that maybe I don’t want you to know what they mean.”

Shane’s eyebrows shot up at that. “What? Like, cussing me out or something?”

“No, I can do that in English.”

“Fuck you,” Shane replied with a smirk, taking a sip of his tea. Then he noticed Ilya was staring at him with so much feeling. It took him a moment to connect the dots. “…Oh.”

Ilya nodded slowly. Shane felt a rush of butterflies in his stomach as his mind raced back over all the times he’d ever heard Ilya speak Russian to him. Today it had been many, many times.

“How many times have you told me ‘I love you’ in Russian?” Shane asked in a trembling voice.

“A few. All today. Before you said it.”

“When did you know?”

Ilya didn’t answer for a long moment, simply staring at Shane with soft eyes. “You know when. Because is when you knew, too.”

“Today,” Shane nodded. “It happened today.”

“Yes.” Ilya’s hand drifted up to caress Shane’s cheek. His palm was warm and comforting from holding the mug. Shane grasped his hand to press a long kiss into the center of it and watched an adoring smile grow on Ilya’s face.

“Thank you for asking me to stay, darling.”

Ilya’s eyes snapped up at the word, a childlike smile playing at his lips. “‘Darling’? You just called me this?” He sounded and looked thrilled, and it made Shane feel equally thrilled.

“I mean, is that okay?”

“Is it okay?” Ilya rolled his eyes in disbelief at the question. “This will stop my fucking heart. The headlines will say ‘Ilya Rozanov drops dead at peak of his career from Shane Hollander calling him ‘darling’.” Before Shane could answer, Ilya set his tea quickly on the coffee table and wrapped himself koala-style around Shane, rubbing his face into the crook of his neck.

“Call me this every day, dorogoy.” His voice came out in an affectionate croak. “Stop my heart every day.”

“I don’t know if that’s a medically sound decision,” Shane grinned as he enfolded Ilya in his arms. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, “…Darling.”

Ilya made a noise somewhere between whining and laughing and hugged Shane even harder. “So literal always. I love you.”

“What is… doro…?”

“Dorogoy. Also ‘darling,’ in Russian.”

Shane suddenly knew keenly well what Ilya meant about stopping his heart.