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Everything about what’s happening right now is a nightmare. The strobing lights, the music, the bass thudding through his body like a heart attack. The sweating glass of warm beer in his hand, the sour smell of it turning his guts, the funk of hundreds of sweating people jammed into one unventilated room. The floor is sticky. It’s hot and humid and he hates every bump of a strange body into his. Hated being pressed between Rose and Miles before, hates the way guilt crawls up his throat like bile when he thinks about how much he doesn’t want to touch her later.
Seeing Ilya giving some girl an ear exam with his tongue is still worse than all the rest of it.
There’s no reason to stand there and watch, but Shane does. He has every opportunity to leave, doesn’t. When he thinks it can’t get any worse, Ilya looks up and locks in on Shane. Grinds against his random chick. Another time he might have been smirking, teasing. They don’t do that anymore. They don’t do anything together anymore. Not even play hockey. They don’t look at each other, don’t chirp, barely score.
The feeling in his throat is threatening to make its way into his mouth, and only this convinces Shane to tear his eyes away from Ilya to find a bathroom before he pukes in the middle of Ciel and the photos show up on SportsCentre.
He abandons his glass on the nearest flat surface. There’s a tightness in his mouth, under his tongue, too much saliva. He swallows and breathes through his nose, ignores the smells. Don’t throw up in the club. Don’t end up on TMZ.
The music stops suddenly and for a second Shane is sure this is just a new level of panic attack, but then the house lights come up too and it's clear that this isn’t just Shane’s brain shutting down.
Over the confused noise of the crowd is a high-pitched, whooping siren.
“This is an evacuation folks! Some asshole was smoking in the bathrooms—please follow the nearest fire warden to an exit, be calm, let the fire crew get in and out so we can get back to the party.”
There are pissed off bartenders wearing hard hats and pulling fluorescent vests on, mustering people along, and Shane finds himself squashed in a walkway with half the population of Montreal on three sides and a cinderblock wall on the other. He knows his breathing is too shallow, his chest too tight, his hands clenched and clammy. He needs to fucking get out of here.
Bodies push up behind him. His shoulders are around his ears, his muscles are tight, his arms extend in an effort not to press his body into the one in front of him, but there’s nothing he can do to stop the ones at his back. He shouldn’t be freaking out, there isn’t even a fire. He’s a professional hockey player, he’s basically two hundred pounds of muscle and he throws guys bigger than anyone here up against the boards like three times a week. There’s nothing to freak out about, nothing.
His lips on her ear lobe. His big hands, high on her ribs, cupping her tits. His eyes, dark and angry, on Shane. Payback for running away, for ruining everything.
“You are panicking.” At first, Shane thinks he’s hallucinating, almost says yeah thanks asshole under his breath, but when he jerks his head to the left he can see sweaty dark gold curls, sharp cheekbones, a fucking stupid silk shirt with a leopard on it and the hint of a chain at the throat.
“Fuck off,” Shane says, but his voice is too high, thready.
“Hollander, you are going to pass out.” Ilya’s body is now the only one Shane can feel behind him. He’s made space for Shane by giving him none at all. He’s hot as blood across the wings of Shane’s shoulders, the pure muscle of his pecs pressing in. He’s put one massive hand on Shane’s hip, now the other, and he’s squeezing carefully. “Breathe. You are too boring to die at a nightclub.”
Shane laughs, exhausted all at once. He’s bone-tired from the game, he’s tired from being wound up like a coil at this fucking club; wound up for weeks. His eyes blur. Like a soap bubble bursting, his anxiety ebbs. The next breath is easier. The crowd surges forward again, but he’s bracketed by Ilya’s wider shoulders. Ilya’s hips bump up against Shane’s ass but he’s planted himself firmly and Shane isn’t shoved into anyone in front of him this time.
Ilya keeps them shuffling slowly forward as the bottleneck of people pours through the nearest fire exit.
He stays pressed to Shane’s ass and when he starts to get hard, Shane feels it. And starts to get hard too.
“Don’t.” Shane says it low, maybe too low for Ilya to hear it over the noise around them.
“Is nothing.” Ilya’s breath on the sweaty nape of Shane’s neck gives him goosebumps, racing down his spine. “Crowd is pushing many people together, no one can help this. Not our fault.”
“Not our fault,” Shane echoes, and, god, he pushes his ass back.
Ilya’s hands tighten. He helps Shane thrust back, jerks his hips up against the meat of Shane’s ass. His right hand creeps around, down, clutches Shane through his jeans at the top of his thigh where it meets his hip, squeezes. It pulls the denim of his jeans tight against Shane’s dick and Shane shudders and fumbles to adjust himself, get his erection up into his waistband.
It’s not cheating. They’re not even really touching, no part of their skin is touching, and he and Rose—they’d never said anything about being exclusive, and it's not even cheating anyway, and—
“Fuck, Hollander.” Ilya grunts it into Shane’s shoulder. The elastic of his underwear pulls on the skin of his dick with the motion of Ilya’s thrusts and Shane might just come, right here in his pants, in his going out jeans, in bright fluorescent lighting, with a hundred strangers crowded around them and the evacuation alert wailing incessantly in the background, and a fed up staff member shouting at them all to move forward in a safe and orderly manner.
Maybe he wouldn’t have, if Ilya hadn’t. Pulled him tight, so tight, into the cradle of his hips, a place Shane had been so many times before, if not quite like this. The sound Ilya makes is almost broken, a moan snapped in half. Heat blooms quickly against his left cheek, wet soaking straight through Ilya’s thin dress pants onto the back pocket of Shane’s jeans.
Shane comes and it shoots up onto his belly, under his t-shirt.
Mortification sets in about thirty seconds later. Ilya lets him go as they squeeze through the door into the concrete stairwell, laughter and clamouring voices bouncing endlessly off the walls.
Ilya doesn’t look at him when they emerge in the cold night air of the alleyway. Shane doesn’t do anything, lets the crowd bump him along, bump him away from Ilya until there’s five, a dozen, thirty bodies between them. The ass of his jeans is damp. He’ll have to throw them away. The hem of his t-shirt is full of cum and that will need to go in the trash too. His blazer is still on the seat upstairs. He’s not going back for it.
They didn’t kiss. They didn’t even say goodnight.
He’s almost around the first block when Rose texts, says she’s getting an Uber to his apartment and she’ll meet him there. She has his coat, and his keys. She’ll let herself in if he doesn’t mind sharing the security code. Shane swallows around the thickness in his throat, creeping back with a vengeance, and orders an Uber of his own. Rose is sweet. A life saver. He’d never do anything to hurt her. He hadn’t. They hadn’t even touched skin.
Shane swallows again and again, shoving the shame down until he almost believes it.