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The first time one of them stayed over, it was a nearly averted crisis.
“Hollander,” Ilya said, holding his hand out from where he was sitting, still nearly boneless, both of their come on his chest and Shane’s name on his tongue.
“I can’t, uh…do this,” Shane said. “Team meeting…I forgot about a team meeting in the morning.”
“YOU forgot team meeting,” Ilya said, slowly rising from his spot on the couch and grabbing the nearest article of clothing — his shirt from earlier, he thought — to wipe his stomach. He moved toward Shane slowly, like he would approach a cornered animal, sensing the other man was panicking.
Sure enough, up close, he could see Shane’s jaw clenched and his body trembling almost imperceptibly.
“Hollander. Shane,” he said, gently. “Is no need to freak out. Is okay.” He raised his arms slowly, telegraphing the move, and held his hands a couple of inches away from each of Shane’s upper arms.
“I…” Shane began.
“Shane. You are panicking.” Ilya said. Suddenly something came to him, something his mama used to do when he had a tough day. In a soft, low voice he said, “Hey. You want me to stay away or can I touch?”
Shane didn’t answer, but he dropped his arms to his sides and briefly caught Ilya’s eye before giving the tiniest nod.
“Okey, Hollander, I’m just going to squish you a bit — you’ll see, it will help,” Ilya said.
“Squish m…? Oof,” Shane grunted softly as Ilya’s arms came around him like a vise, squeezing him tight. One hand curled around the back of his neck, pressing firmly, fingers wound into his short hair and digging into twin spots at the base of his skull he hadn’t even realized were tense. “Oh,” Shane murmured, feeling his bones go lax.
“Hollander,” Ilya murmured. “Tell me what is wrong. Did I hurt you?”
The idea that Ilya – who even after all this time checked in with Shane in such a sweet way to make sure he was enjoying himself and nothing ever felt bad — might feel he was to blame for Shane’s freakout gave his brain the jolt it needed to reboot more fully.
“No, Roz–Ilya, not hurt,” he replied. “I, uh – fuck, you’re strong,” as Ilya’s arms tightened a fraction, providing calming pressure. “I kinda freaked out when you…” and then he mumbles something Ilya can’t quite catch.
“What, kotenok?” he asks. “You are suddenly shy? Say so I can hear you or I can’t help make it better.” Ilya has a feeling he knows what’s up, but he has no idea how to help without giving away too much of his own feelings or his plan for the day, with the pre-portioned sandwich ingredients, and then asking Hollander to say after he’s all sleepy and sated.
“I kinda freaked out when you said my name, okay?” Shane says, a little grumpily. In for a penny, he thinks — this is already embarrassing to admit, so he might as well give Ilya a little more of the truth. “It felt so…intimate compared to the usual for us. I know it’s stupid.”
“Not stupid,” Ilya says. He relaxes his arms a fraction and Shane makes a little wounded sound like he wants to be wrapped up tight. Ilya smiles to himself, realizing his mama’s technique is working. “Shane, Hollander, will you come back and sit and we talk about it?”
Shane nods into his chest, so Ilya lets go enough to tug him back toward the couch, interlinking their fingers as he does. When they reach the sofa, he sits and pulls Shane down onto his lap, Shane’s back up against the armrest.
“Okay?” he asks, wrapping Shane back up in his arms, their hands still entwined.
“Okay,” Shane says softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out. It’s just that today has been so…nice, with you asking me to stay, and making dinner, and, fuck, cuddling on the couch that all of a sudden I…” he trails off.
“Hollander,” Ilya says. “I have an idea.” Shane huffs a small laugh, and Ilya can guess what he’s thinking — it’s Ilya’s ideas that have gotten them here in the first place. “At least for today, let’s try to be honest about what we think, and maybe how we really feel.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Shane says. He takes a deep breath, thinking, Fuck, I guess I just have to rip off the Band-Aid or we’ll just be going in this circle forever. “Um…well, after everything today and then you calling me Shane, it just hit me all at once how much I shouldn’t let myself want…more.”
“More?” Ilya asks, heart suddenly thumping.
“Yes, more, but then like…I don’t know if you would even want more, and it’s impossible, it’s so stupid, there’s no way we could…but I just…I think I like you a little too much.”
Ilya sucks in a breath. “Don’t say that, Hollander, I’m not…” and when Shane doesn’t interrupt, “...worth it.”
“Ilya,” Shane says, pulled out of his own head by the statement. “What? Not worth it? You’re…”
Ilya cuts him off. “You know that was my father on the phone before, yes? He is sick, how do you say, like, losing his memory?”
“Oh, dementia?” Shane asks. “I’m sorry, that’s horrible.”
“Yes, dementia,” Ilya says. “Now, sometimes, he asks me to bring bread from the store on my way home. But before that, he was…not a kind man, but an honest one. I know I am too loud and too scattered, and too lazy, and too much, not worth being more with.”
“Ilya,” Shane says again, taking Ilya’s face between his hands. “Mon cher, I don’t see that in you at all. Sure, you act like an asshole on the ice but you are so kind, and funny, and smart, and you make me feel so good” — Ilya raises his eyebrows at that, and Shane lightly smacks his chest — “Shut up, you know what I mean. You’re worth…everything.”
Ilya’s eyes are burning, and he tries to deflect. “Wait, a minute ago you were having panic attack and now you are having to be nice to me?” He sniffs a bit. “Sorry.”
“No sorries,” Shane says. “Being nice to you is not a hardship.” He looks at this beautiful man’s face, trapped between his hands, and sees a tear slide from the corner of one of his eyes. “Hey. Hey,” he says, shifting his weight so he’s fully on top of Ilya now, straddling him, engulfing him in a tight hug. Ilya sniffs and turns his face to the side, arms coming around to squeeze Shane tight as he rocks them together gently, holding on, clinging to the idea that they could have this even if it’s crazy.
“I,” he starts, face buried in Shane’s neck, ready to spout a bunch of reasons about why Russia makes this all a little too dangerous, but his mind casts back to just minutes ago when he urged Shane to be honest. Fuck. I guess I must take my own advice. “There’s a million reasons why not, including that Russia — and my father and brother in the police — is not safe for people like me. But,” he pauses to swallow, “Yes. I would…want to be more, if we could.”
Shane pulls back to lean their foreheads together. “Me too,” he whispers. “But, um, maybe we don’t have to solve all of that today. As long as we both know it makes us happy and we want to keep doing it and maybe…see where it goes?”
“Mm, I like this thought,” Ilya says. “I think it is enough for now even if we don’t know exactly how it will work to know that we want it to work, yes?”
“Yes,” Shane says. He’s running his thumb over the mole on Ilya’s cheek, his eyes full of feelings that aren’t ready to be said yet, but Ilya can sense them and feels suddenly lighter that maybe, just maybe, they’re on the same page.
They hold each other quietly a few more moments before Ilya says, “Thank you for not leaving, Hollander.”
So quietly it’s barely more than a breath, Shane whispers, “Shane.”
“Thank you for not leaving, Shane,” Ilya says softly, cupping the back of Shane’s head gently and pulling him forward into a soft kiss.
“Now,” he says, rubbing his hands gently along Shane’s thighs as the smaller man straddles him, “You are here with me, yes? Let’s get upstairs and brush teeth and get you to bed — cannot mess with precious sleep schedule.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says, with no heat behind it, and Ilya hears the exasperated fondness and the unsaid words behind it and thinks, I love you so fucking much, and instead of saying that out loud, uses all the muscle at his disposal to stand up from the couch with Shane still wrapped around him. He expects Shane to put up a fuss, and melts a little when instead he wraps his arms tighter around Ilya’s neck and just says “Don’t you dare fucking drop me.”
Ilya throws his head back and laughs, carrying Shane straight up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he drops him with an unceremonious little bounce on the bed and proceeds to pin him down and kiss him thoroughly. And, well, if teeth brushing doesn’t happen until much later and the sleep schedule is largely forgotten, who can blame either of them as they soak in the words they’ve said and the unspoken ones hovering just out of reach but there like a beacon in the darkness.
***---***
The second time they stay over, this time at Shane’s place, it’s basically by accident — it’s so late it just makes sense.
Ilya, who prides himself on his stamina, can barely make it to the shower on jelly legs after they’ve absolutely wrecked each other. He’s going to be jerking off to the mental image of Shane riding him, throwing his head back in ecstasy as he comes, for months, he can already tell.
And they’re in Shane’s real apartment, not the downtown sex condo he’d bought in a fit of panic about their situation. Ilya never thought he’d be this lucky.
He brings Shane a warm cloth, gently wiping his stomach, hauling him up to send him to the shower next, then sits down and starts pulling his boxer briefs back on, head buzzing in a sort of floaty way. I wonder if this is how Shane normally feels, after, he thinks idly.
Shane emerges from the bathroom and Ilya starts to say “I should…”
“No,” Shane says. “Rozanov…Ilya…stay. Please. It’s so late.” Let’s try to be honest, Shane hears Ilya saying a few months ago. “And I just…want you to stay.”
“Okei,” Ilya says, his accent thick because of the late hour. And definitely not because of the emotion he’s swallowing down. “I will stay.”
They collapse back into bed, Shane’s head resting on Ilya’s chest, Ilya’s fingers gently running through his hair until they fall asleep, exhausted, sated, and wrapped up in each other.
***---***
The third time they stay over, it feels natural. It’s the last week of September, and they’ve just played a preseason game against each other. The stakes are low, but Montreal wins, 3-2, and Shane can tell the whole time that Ilya seems off. He has a goal and an assist, so anyone who doesn’t know him intimately would never be able to tell, but something about him seems exhausted. His chirping is lackluster, he seems a fraction slower than usual — again, nobody but Shane would ever even notice — but just a little…off.
Jane: I’m on my way home from the arena, just let yourself in when you get here – front door code is 1410.
Lily: Okay.
Not even a chirp about the sentimental door code? Something’s definitely up, Shane thinks.
He hears the sound of the door unlatching and quickly wipes his hands on a dish towel, slinging it back over the handle of the fridge and heading toward the entryway of his penthouse.
Ilya is closing the door behind him, facing the wall as he toes his shoes off and stows them on the rack beside the door, comfortable in the routine here. He drops his duffel bag on the floor, ready to pick up and take to the bedroom later — maybe much later — and turns toward Shane.
The chirp about the game that Shane was about to make dies out as he takes Ilya in — dark circles under his eyes, looking sort of hunched in on himself in a way that’s totally uncharacteristic for the usually cocky, charismatic man.
“Ilya, what’s…?” Shane doesn’t even get the words out before Ilya strides two steps forward and captures Shane’s mouth with his, slanting their lips together and reaching a hand up to grip the side of Shane’s face.
Shane lets out a small hum of pleasure as Ilya backs him up into the wall, losing himself for a moment in Ilya’s gorgeous, plush lips. But something still feels…off, and a little mechanical, about what Ilya is doing.
Shane pries his lips away. “Ilya. ILYA,” he says, tangling his fingers in Rozanov’s curls and tugging his gaze upwards to meet his own eyes. Ilya holds eye contact for a split second, just long enough for Shane to see what looks like devastation in his gorgeous blue-green eyes, before breaking away to look to the side. He runs a hand down Shane’s side and around to cup his ass, pressing their already hardening cocks together through their soft joggers.
But Shane gently grips his chin, tilting their faces back together, and says “No.”
“No?” Ilya rears back as if in shock, dropping his hands instantly. Shane’s never said no to…well, anything…before.
“No, baby, not like that,” Shane says. Ilya feels a tiny thrill through the fog in his brain at the term of endearment. “Of course I always want you. I just feel like something is…not right? You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
Ilya tries to ignore it, tries to capture his mouth with heat again, desperate to lose himself in their usual routine of want, need, more, but Shane draws back again, placing his hand on Ilya’s chest.
“You’re the one who taught me we don’t do anything that both of us aren’t 100% in on,” he says, echoing something Ilya said to him, god, nearly ten years ago at this point. “You clearly aren’t in the right headspace for this, Ilya.”
“But we get so little time…” Ilya begins.
“No,” Shane says firmly. “It doesn’t matter how little time we get, we only do this when both of us are all in and in the right frame of mind. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”
Ilya takes a deep breath, wondering how clean to come. Let’s try to say what we really mean, he thinks, lightly cursing his past self for having said that out loud. He looks up toward the ceiling, willing himself not to cry.
“Today is the…I don’t know the word…when my mother died?” he whispers, almost like a question, willing Shane to understand and just let him get back into seduction.
“Oh, the anniversary?” Shane says, those big brown eyes looking up at him with – not pity, which would make him chafe, but something like kindness, understanding, maybe even love? He can’t even dare hope. “God, Ilya, I’m so sorry. Come here.”
Shane pulls him toward the couch, all soft leather and overstuffed cushions, something they can really sink down into. Shane sits first, in the corner half leaning his right side against the armrest, and pulls Ilya down half on top of him, solidly into his arms. Ilya is sort of laying across his lap as Shane’s hands stroke his hair and torso. And yes…maybe this is okay, to talk about this a little when he doesn’t have to look him in the eye as he says it.
“You never said, um, how did she die?” Shane asks.
Ilya swallows, feeling the words burning as they escape his throat, something he’s never told a single other soul (Sveta knows, but she knows because she was around at the time. He’s never had to say the words out loud).
“By accident,” he says woodenly. “She accidentally swallowed a whole bottle of pills.”
Shane’s hand stills momentarily and then presses, digs, into the nape of his neck, grounding him and somehow relieving a headache he didn’t even know he was carrying. “How old were you?”
“Twelve,” Ilya says. He swallows once more, laying bare one of his heart’s deepest secrets: “I found her.”
“God, Ilya,” Shane breathes, squeezing Ilya to him. “I…” He desperately wants to navigate this right so Ilya feels comfortable to share and won’t clam up. “Tell me about her?”
“She was so funny, and so beautiful, and so sad,” Ilya says. “I don’t want you to think she was weak. My dad was so hard on her. But she was like the sunshine — she used to take me skating and we would walk through the markets in Moscow and she would buy us each a hot cocoa and we would hold hands and look at the goods for sale and talk to the shopkeepers and sit on a bench and make up stories about the people who would walk by. Not mean stories, but nice ones where each of them was the main character in their own story. Maybe this person is hurrying to the store at lunch to get ingredients to make their daughter’s birthday cake, and this one is going to take his motorcycle for a ride later.”
He suddenly realizes his face is wet, and feels wetness on his hair too. He looks up and sees Shane is crying quietly, wiping his own eyes and then gently, so gently, swiping his thumb under Ilya’s eyes to dry them. “She sounds incredible,” he says. “Just hearing that much, I can see her in you.”
Ilya’s next breath comes out in a sob, and he tucks his face deep into Shane, somewhere between the crook of his neck and his armpit, and breathes in that scent that’s so uniquely Shane, and finally, finally lets go of some of the emotion, knowing he’s with someone safe, someone who cares. I love you, he thinks, ya tebya lyublyu, but he can’t quite get the words out.
Shane holds him for what might be five minutes or five hours, stroking his hair and his arms, letting Ilya cry and share little stories about his mother.
After Ilya has cried himself out, they sit for a while quietly, Ilya’s hand splayed over Shane’s chest, Shane’s fingers still carding through Ilya’s curls. Finally, Shane speaks softly, murmuring, “Come on, baby, let’s get you up and get you in the shower and then it’s off to bed with you.”
“Here?” Ilya asks, barely audible.
“Of course, here. And I’ll be right by your side,” Shane responds. Then, nudging Ilya playfully in the ribs, he adds, “By the way, two can play this game…” and before Ilya can put together what that means, Shane is standing up with Ilya in his arms, cradled sideways like they’re going to cross the threshold.
Even though Ilya is still sad, he barks out a laugh and scrabbles for purchase. “Ghospodi, Hollander, put me down…would not want to be the reason you get injured and team misses playoffs,” he says.
Shane laughs and does let him get his feet on the floor — he’s strong but not quite sure he’s up to carrying the slightly larger man up a whole flight of stairs, especially bridal style. He brushes his knuckles over Ilya’s cheek and then down his arm, interlocking their fingers and tugging. “Come on,” he says, holding his hand all the way to the bathroom. “Let’s help you rinse all this away.”
In the bathroom, Ilya has a moment of How is this my life? when he realizes he’s now been in Shane’s actual house enough that he knows how to work the controls for the fancy dual-showerhead system deftly. He smiles softly as Shane putters around the bathroom, setting out towels and grabbing some clothes from his dresser in the bedroom while they wait for the water to heat up before stepping into the huge glass enclosure.
Exhausted, worn down by the game and the emotional weight of the evening, Ilya glances at the shower shelf, looking to pick up some kind of shampoo or body wash to get this over with, and suddenly his breath catches. Shane – his beautiful, neurotic Shane, with his minimalist, perfectly decluttered apartment and his handsome, stick-straight hair that brushes his collar – has a bottle of Ilya’s curly-hair shampoo right here in the shower niche. Not under the cabinet or in the guest bath, but in the shower next to his own products as if it’s a given someone will be here at any moment to use it.
Ilya sees his hand almost as if it’s attached to someone else’s arm reaching out to pick up the bottle. His eyes are burning with more tears — maybe if he lets them fall here, in the steamy blast of the two showerheads, they won’t even be noticeable.
Shane notices him freeze up and reaches for the shampoo bottle, their fingers brushing, throwing Ilya back — god — nearly a decade to their hands touching over his water bottle in a hotel gym after the draft.
“Here, let me,” Shane says, about to open the cap on the bottle and tend to Ilya’s curls, having no idea what kind of existential crisis the existence of this bottle is causing in the man facing him.
Ilya feels the tears spill over as he yanks Shane to him, murmuring over and over into his hair, “Shane. Ya tebya lyublyu. Ya tebya lyublyu.”
He can’t stop the words from bubbling up in English, too, clunking his forehead to Shane’s a little too hard: “I love you.”
Shane moves his head back slightly, hand coming up to grip Ilya’s face. “Holy shit.”
“I mean…”
“Ilya. I love you too.”
Shane, his beautiful, shy, awkward boy, doesn’t break eye contact for even a millisecond as he speaks. Ilya collapses, knowing Shane will be there to take his weight. “Fuck, Hollander.”
“Oh my god, I love you so fucking much,” Shane says, tangling his fingers in Ilya’s hair. “I think I started falling in love the first time I saw you.”
“Yes,” Ilya says, sniffling into the crook of Shane’s neck. “Your pretty freckles and your defense of anti-smoking ordinances caught me right from the start.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says in a tone that means — maybe has always meant — I love you so much. Ilya can hear it for real now.
After a moment, Shane pries the shampoo out of his hands and pours a dollop into his own palm, nudging Ilya to bend slightly at the knees so he can reach up to gently massage it into his scalp.
“You have my shampoo,” Ilya says.
“Yes,” Shane replies, “Well, you get grumpy when your hair gets all poofy from not having the right products. And also…I sometimes just open it and the smell makes me feel like you’re here with me.”
“Mm, really, Hollander?” Ilya teases gently. “And what do you do with THAT feeling in the shower, hmm?”
Shane can clearly sense his exhaustion, knows Ilya’s not really up for escalating things right now, so he just says, “Next time we’re in here I’ll show you, love. But for now, let’s get you dry and into bed.”
Love. Ilya feels like if lightning struck him right now he’d die happy. “Okay, lyubimiy. You will help me get dried off.”
They finish washing, stealing kisses as they do, and finally step out onto the cushy bath mat. Shane quickly scrubs his own hair and body dry, wrapping a towel around his waist, before gently reaching up with a second one to blot Ilya’s hair — Bozhe, he has been paying attention to curly hair care, apparently, Ilya thinks — and dry his body gently.
Shane grabs a pair of joggers and an incredibly soft tee he had brought into the bathroom earlier and hands them to Ilya.
“I have my bag,” Ilya starts to protest.
“Please,” Shane responds. “Let me take care of you. Let me wrap you up and love you.”
And how can Ilya say no to that?
Shane, now immersed in his skincare routine, passes him one of his fancy moisturizers, and without thinking, Ilya dips his fingers in and smooths some over his face. He grabs his purple toothbrush out of the cup by the sink — when did they become People Who Have Toothbrushes? he briefly wonders — and completes an abbreviated evening routine, marveling at how it feels to stand side-by-side with Shane at the double vanity, spitting into their respective sinks. So domestic, he thinks, letting the feeling warm him. He reaches up to press a hand to his mother’s cross, thinking, I miss you, Mama, especially today. I hope you can see him. I think you would love him just like I love him.
Shane takes him by the hand and leads him to the bed.
“I, uh, last time you were here you seemed like you had a crick in your neck, you know, after, so I replaced the pillow with a taller one,” Shane says.
Ilya feels his eyes burn again, but simply pulls Shane in for a kiss. “You…Shane. That’s so thoughtful.”
They gravitate toward their sides of the bed – they have sides of the bed! — and pull back the covers, getting in. Ilya turns onto his left side, toward Shane, but Shane, blushing, says, “No, um, can I…?” and sort of scooches them the other way so Ilya — Ilya! — is the little spoon, wrapped in Shane’s smooth, muscular arms.
“I…Shane. Sweetheart. What?” he can tell he’s barely making any sense at this point, overwhelmed with sadness and exhaustion and love for this man.
“Let me take care of you,” Shane says. “I want you to feel every bit of how loved you are, especially today.”
And Ilya hums out a sigh and lies there with Shane’s warm, strong body pressed against his back, feeling Shane’s beautiful heart beat, knowing Shane is purposely taking slow, calm breaths so that Ilya will mirror him — a technique Ilya has used on Shane so many times — and he drops into a deep sleep, safe in the knowledge that he’s protected in the arms of the man he loves, and who somehow, incredibly, mind-bogglingly — loves him back.