Chapter Text
The first time Shane Hollander had met Rozanov, they had both walked away with a bloody nose and the beginnings of a lifelong hatred.
It had been at a game, one of the first in Shane’s high school career, and he was, to put it mildly, on top of the fucking world. At fourteen, he had already been the topic of some whispers about future hopefuls, a rising new star in hockey, but high school was where those whispers became real, tangible conversations. Conversations between recruiters, sports journalists, and other higher-ups in the NHL and CHL. Important conversations that Shane was going to headline.
It had seemed that way, when he had skated onto the ice, with his teammates at his front and back, and cheers of a crowd surrounding them. It had seemed that way when the puck had dropped and they had won the face-off. And it had most definitely seemed that way when Shane scored the first goal of the game just minutes later.
He had been in the middle of giving a repeat of that performance when a thing had whizzed right past him. A blur of crimson red and white. A name on the back of the jersey that started with an R and ended with letters that the sweat in Shane’s eyes wouldn’t let him make out. Irritatingly fast.
In one moment, Shane had the puck, right within his grasp, and the next, it was gone—swept away by this whirlwind of a player. With a growl, Shane had gone faster until he could take it back. And he had kept it too, for about a fraction of a second, before the other snatched the puck into his grasp again, with one clean sweep of his stick.
They had gone on and on like this, a game of tug of war where neither could gain the upper hand long enough without the other taking it away just as fast. The sweat rolling down Shane’s forehead was coming down in buckets now, adrenaline the only thing keeping him from going completely blind, but he swore, out of the corner of his eye, he could see a smirk on the other player’s shadowed face, below the helmet.
The thought had infuriated him just enough to shove at the other man’s shoulder, hard. The other didn’t seem to take offense to it, just shoved him right back, and Shane’s shoulder vibrated with the impact, the sudden pain costing him a few precious seconds where he fell behind.
The other player didn’t look back as he raced for the goal—the ice spraying out behind him.
Shane grit his teeth and chased.
When the other switched to his backhand, Shane’s goalie moving just as fast to shut the goal down, Shane nearly bit his tongue clean off. Because in a split-second, as in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it split second, the player had somehow, impossibly faked the backhand, keeping the puck right at his stick as Shane’s goalie dove to catch something that was not yet there, and switched to a motherfucking forehand wrist shot. It was supernatural.
Shane had never seen anything like it.
The puck had flown into the goal, a pause as if everyone was holding their breath, and then the crowd roared.
The player had turned back to him, his sharp smirk much clearer when Shane wasn’t skating for his life, and something in Shane’s stomach had roiled at the sight.
“You are a lot slower than I thought you would be,” he had said, a surprising Russian accent thick on his tongue.
So, the Russian was unexpected, but Shane didn’t even have time to dwell on that before the words registered and red-hot irritation washed over him.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean,” the other boy had said, slowly. As if speaking to a particularly daft child. “If that is the fastest Shane Hollander can skate,” his grin had widened, almost cheshire-like in nature. “Then, I am a little disappointed.”
Shane had stared, struck utterly dumb. Just who the hell did this guy think he was?
“Yeah? Well, that shot was a fluke,” he had said tersely. The other had stilled, and Shane had gotten the distinct feeling that he had struck something inside him at those words. Good. A foreign, nasty smile of his own had crept onto his face. “Good luck doing that again, jerk.”
He thought then that maybe he should have used the word asshole, or something, there to pack more of a punch—because the other had just laughed. The sound was a harsh, grating thing, and Shane wanted to snarl at the sound of it.
“Good luck stopping me,” he had said easily. There was a mole on his cheek. “Not that you can, Hollander.”
And he had skated away, apparently satisfied with getting the last word. The last name on his jersey was as clear as day now. Rozanov.
“Dude,” one of Shane’s teammates had said, sidling up to him. “What the hell was that?”
“That’s the Russian, right?” another one had piped up. “Ronaya-something?”
“Rozanov,” Shane had muttered. What a stupid fucking name.
“Ilya Rozanov. Apparently, he moved here this year,” his teammates had whispered to one another. Ilya Rozanov. Shane had rolled his eyes, pretending not to seem interested. “But I heard he was a big fucking deal in Russia. Like future Olympic champion, big deal. Think he might be scouted for a team here?”
“With a shot like that? Recruiters are probably jizzing their pants right now.”
“That had to have been a fluke, right?”
Shane had barely kept from scowling right then and there.
The game devolved quickly into a mess of desperation and aggression. Everywhere Shane turned, Rozanov was also there, like some bad omen. It was only some comfort that Shane could do the same to the other, riding his ass at every instance he had the puck, that they were nearly conjoined throughout the game. And every time, Rozanov would flash Shane that condescending smile, and the need to throw an elbow into that offensive nose grew by the second.
The final straw had been when Ilya shoved him into the boards, with Shane unable to dodge. Perhaps he was within his limit to do so, and perhaps Shane was breathing down his neck, and perhaps he had not meant to press his body into Shane’s as he did so, the lines of his chest hard and skin much too hot, even through their jerseys and protective gear.
“Too slow,” Rozanov had whispered, his eyes dark and amused. The hair on the nape of Shane’s neck prickled. “Where is your luck now?”
Perhaps.
But it didn’t matter in the end.
And Shane—he hadn’t known what had come over him in that moment, he thought he might never know, but Shane, who had always prided himself in rough, but ultimately clean games, who had never engaged in any unnecessary or excessive violence on the ice, had geared his fist back and punched the smirk right off that smug face.
“Ouch,” Shane had said. It had felt strange coming out of him, not particularly good. Still, he had said it. “Did that hurt, Rozanov?”
The helmet had protected him from most of the blow, but an explosion of blood had erupted from Rozanov’s nose. He had let out a groan of pain at that, and Shane had just a moment to relish in it before Rozanov was smiling down at him, crimson staining his teeth.
“So much,” he had said, sounding delighted and frankly, a little sadistic. And then, he slammed his helmet right into Shane’s.
The pain shooting through his nose at the impact had almost sent Shane reeling back. Instead, he had fisted a hand through Rozanov’s, the utter psychopath’s, jersey and made to slam him against the wall—a little taste of his own medicine. The refs, who had been circling like a pair of sharks, broke it up before then.
A five-minute penalty for each of them. It was a miracle that neither, especially him, was fully ejected from the game, but Shane couldn’t find it in himself to be thankful.
As Rozanov’s team scored more and more, and Shane’s chances of winning slipped by the second, the mess of emotions—anger, irritation, frustration, disappointment, and everything in between—had grown too. He bit his tongue and tasted blood. Or perhaps, it was the leftover blood from the fight.
They had lost in the end, his team.
Not the worst gap in the world, but the worst in Shane’s personal standards. He had gotten a penalty for fighting, something he had never done. His parents must be so disappointed.
He had swallowed down the cocktail of emotions and lined up for handshakes.
Rozanov’s hand in his had felt too big, his grip a little too lax. The blood from his broken nose had dried on his face, staining the top half of his lip. Not that he even seemed to notice. His gaze had been fixed on Shane’s—piercing, boring into Shane’s skin and burrowing deep into his blood vessels. Shane had let out a breath.
“Asshole,” he had muttered, his nose aching. Then, he squeezed Rozanov’s hand tight. He hoped that it would break a few bones.
“And you are most definitely a sore loser,” said Rozanov. “I am learning so much about you today, Hollander.”
“Good game,” said Shane, and tried his best not to sound like he was seething the words through clenched teeth. It’s the last you’ll ever have against me, Rozanov.
-
Seven years later.
There was little Ilya Rozanov hated more than his 7 pm philosophy class.
Everyone had warned him against the cardinal sin of taking 8 ams and especially taking night lectures, Svetlana had practically screamed it in his face at a pitch high and loud enough to shatter eardrums, but Ilya had, unfortunately, turned a deaf ear to it all. To his credit, it was the only course that would fulfill both his English and social sciences GE requirements in one fell swoop and also worked with his admittedly packed schedule as a hockey player.
And in his defense, it hadn’t seemed like the most difficult philosophy class in the world, judging from the title—the Philosophy of Sport. Well, Ilya was a fan-fucking-tastic player of one particular sport, knew it like the back of his hand, so surely, it could and would mean something in this cruel world of academia. Or so he thought, before the very first lecture, when the professor opened his 100-slide slideshow and started droning on and on.
The same slides, as Ilya found out rather nastily at the next lecture, during a surprise pop quiz, were not available online either. The class was a nightmare, certifiable. The class should have been dropped and Ilya should have just sucked it up and squeezed another two courses into his schedule.
Ignorance was what led him to the Philosophy of Sport. But his hubris—his damnable, detestable pride—was what kept him there past the drop date.
And now, staring down at the giant F scrawled in bright red on his latest essay, he was well and truly fucked.
The girl beside him, who somehow seemed to have caught a glimpse of Ilya’s paper, let out a shocked noise. He glances at her and pointedly slides the paper into his backpack.
“Do you think he will let me do a make-up paper?”
“Maybe,” she stammers, blushing a bright red, like she didn’t expect him to actually speak to her. He doesn’t know why—it’s not like she just let out the loudest gasp known to man in his vicinity, all due to his shitty grade. “Um, that grade isn’t so bad.”
Her previous horror had said otherwise.
When Ilya asks Professor Smith, very politely and charmingly, about a potential make-up paper, the old man takes one look at his face and laughs.
“Being an athlete is no excuse to not work hard, Mr. Rozanov.”
“I am studying hard,” Ilya says, pointedly. “I just need another chance. Please, I need to maintain my GPA to keep my spot on the team.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to boost your grade with other assignments in my class,” the old man squints, and Ilya tries not to scowl down at him. He opts for another charming smile instead–his teeth feel like they’re going to crack in half at this point—and Professor Smith hardly blinks. “If you apply yourself and really focus.”
“I—”
“I know that as a hockey superstar, you must think everything should be handed to you on a silver spoon—” Professor Smith’s lips twist, all pomp and tweed superiority. The old man was throwing thinly veiled insults at him in the form of English idioms. Great, Ilya really should have dropped out when he had the chance. “—but, in academia, you must work for what you want.”
“I always work for what I want, sir,” Ilya says. He pictures throttling Professor Smith around his wrinkled, liver-spotted neck and choking the English idioms out of him. It’s a pleasant thought. “I am just asking for a little grace, yes?”
“Frankly, Mr. Rozanov, other people in your…situation are doing just fine in this class, without extra grace. Perhaps you should look to them for some guidance on your next assignment.”
Ilya frowns. “My situation?” he asks, and the old man sighs, like he cannot believe that a student is asking him a question in a classroom, where students are, famously, known to ask questions. Ilya really needs to throttle this man.
“You are not the only hockey player taking this class,” is all Professor Smith says before he turns away to pack up his briefcase, effectively ending the conversation. But it’s all Ilya really needs.
Not the only hockey player to take this class.
There was really only one other person on the team, Ilya’s university team, to be stupid enough to take an evening lecture where the professor graded like he had thought the grading system started with the letter C, and was, perhaps, the only faculty in the entire school who did not give some grace to the star hockey team.
Only one other person was stubborn and insane enough, and, funnily enough, was also probably the one person who would rather light himself on fire while jumping into a pool of gasoline than help Ilya with anything.
And Ilya almost laughs, right then and there.
Before he can, something brushes against his arm, the brush of skin against skin causing goosebumps to rise against his flesh. A person hurrying past and accidentally knocking against him. Ilya steps to the side, casually, and glances up to see none other than Shane Hollander scurrying away.
Even with his back turned, it’s so obviously Hollander—all close-cropped dark hair and horribly bland gray T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, sculpted from brutal years of strength training and swinging a hockey stick across ice. It’s in the way he carries himself, tightly wound up, like his skin fits badly over his flesh and bones. It’s just Hollander, as Ilya has known him to be for years.
“What,” he finds himself calling out, and Hollander freezes at the sound of his voice. “You can’t even say ‘I am sorry?’ I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice.”
Very slowly, Hollander turns around. Ilya eyes those familiar freckles again—smattered across Hollander’s cheeks and the bridge of his strong nose. It always came as a surprise, those freckles.
What never was a surprise, though, was the thinly veiled irritation on Hollander’s face whenever Ilya opened his mouth.
“Rozanov, I barely touched you,” he says, in that blunt tone of his. “My arm, like, grazed your arm.”
“And how do you know I was not hurt by that graze, Hollander?” Ilya says, straight-faced. “Besides, is it not polite to apologize, even if you did not really harm the other person?”
Hollander blinks.
“Which one is it—did I mortally wound you or did I not at all?”
“Like, I said,” Ilya says and steps closer to the other man. Hollander’s shoulders square, as if preparing for a fight, and Ilya fights the urge to laugh in his face. “Does it matter which one it is?”
“Yes,” Hollander says. “Of course, it matters.” There’s a flush rising on his face, a lobster sort of red that Ilya has seen and categorized multiple times in his life. He’s been on the opposite end of this particular color on this particular face, many times.
Shane Hollander’s flush of annoyance: Category 3. Not life-threatening just yet.
Ilya smiles.
“Then, would you be nicer to me if you hurt me very much?” he switches his backpack to his left shoulder, the one Hollander hadn’t brushed up against. “Recruiters all over the world are fighting to have this arm represent their teams, did you know? Gladiator pit fights in the NHL and CHL headquarters. Lots of blood.”
“In your dreams, Rozanov,” he switches his backpack to his right shoulder. “Actually, I think you’re suffering from a concussion. A twenty-year-long concussion. In your…brain.”
He winces at his comeback, and Ilya’s face hurts from how wide his smile has gone.
“So, would you be nicer to me if I was really hurt?” he asks again, and waves his arm in Hollander’s face. “Ouch,” he deadpans. He hopes Hollander cusses him out, like how he did when they first met—practically spitting with rage, dripping with fury.
“Piss off,” says Hollander, eloquently, and switches his backpack to his left shoulder. Not a swear, unfortunately, but the shade of red coloring his cheeks darkens into a brick red.
Rapidly approaching Category 4 of annoyed Shane Hollander, venturing towards straight-up pissed off. Ilya wants to push him to that edge, to see Hollander succumb to as much emotion as his uptight, neurotic brain will probably allow at this moment. He wants Hollander to snap.
It’s not a particularly new desire, but it still burns true—even after seven years.
Ilya tilts his head, endlessly amused, and Hollander’s eyes narrow.
“Good Boy Shane Hollander is not so good after all. What would the people think?”
“Fine, Christ,” the other man sighs. His ears might start steaming soon, Ilya thinks. The thought delights him. “I’m sorry. So sorry for harming, or maybe not harming, your arm, and so sorry I didn’t say it sooner, so this conversation wouldn’t have happened. Is that what you wanted to hear, Rozanov?”
“Well yes, that is what I have been saying for the past ten minutes,” Ilya nods, satisfied. “You have finally processed those admittedly simple words. Well done.”
Hollander scowls.
Ilya grins pleasantly. Pats Hollander on the shoulder with as much condescension as he can muster—and all Rozanovs were born with condescension in their bloodstream—and brushes past the other man, arm against arm. Tries not to laugh when he hears Hollander grumble to himself behind him, properly irate. Walks out and is immediately bombarded with people, teammates, pretty girls who all want his attention, his words, him.
His palm itches, and the goosebumps on his arm haven’t quite faded, despite the relative warmth of the evening.
“Roz,” someone calls to him, and Ilya doesn’t think about it.
-
Some small part of him has always wondered what Shane Hollander would be like as a captain.
Even when they were butting heads and slamming each other against the boards and antagonizing each other through hell and back, it was a thought that lingered. Captains came in all shapes and sizes, with some serving more as figureheads to the team, while others more like second coaches. But what sort of captain was Shane Hollander?
Hollander’s hand on his teammate’s shoulder after a particularly bad fight, pulling him away from the fray. Caring, probably more often than not.
Hollander’s teeth, stained with blood, baring down at one another as another teammate makes a bad call and tries to shoot a goal, when it’s clear to anyone with eyes that the puck will be stolen away from him in moments. Unforgiving, likely at times.
Hollander roaring in victory, head tilted back, stick high in the air, as they took home gold—his freckles stark against the lights of the hockey stadium, his pride a physical beacon. An absolute fanatic, most definitely.
Ilya didn’t have to wonder for long.
They were recruited by the same university, the best of the best, and soon, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—the rivals who gave each other matching concussions in one game, matching black eyes in another, and matching broken legs at the championship finals—were now Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—the teammates.
Nobody could believe it. One newscaster said that they were probably going to kill each other before the first game.
“Putting Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on the same team and expecting them to get along,” she had scoffed. “We’ll be losing two of the top NHL prospects by the end of the first university semester. At the very least.”
Almost three years later, and Ilya hadn’t been murdered by Hollander yet, so there was a win.
What wasn’t exactly a win, was Hollander being chosen for captaincy this year, their third year. It was more of an outrage. When Coach Wiebe had announced it, a few people had banged their sticks on the ground in approval, though others were quiet. Some teammates patted Ilya’s back, but Ilya hadn’t looked at them.
Because Hollander, who had been staring at the coach and probably processing the news, had suddenly smiled a self-satisfied smile that only seemed to come out after an unexpected victory—a wide and fierce thing. His eyes had shifted to Ilya’s then, and Ilya had to look away.
“Fucking rigged, man,” Dallas Kent had muttered in his ear.
The loss of capitancy had stung, sure, but Ilya was never one for wallowing. Never for hockey.
“Hollander once headbutted me on the ice so hard, I lost a tooth, and then he kicked that tooth very far away from me,” he had said, good-naturedly, as he had skated past Coach Wiebe a few practices later. Hollander was nearby, studying Coach’s notes. Both of them had looked up, and Ilya had wiggled his fingers at Hollander’s scowl. “I had to crawl to get it back. Just wanted to let you know. I know how important good sportsmanship is for all captains.”
“You slammed my head into the boards and made me blackout for five minutes, during a game,” said Hollander. “The hell do you know about good sportsmanship, Rozanov?”
Ilya had tilted his head. “I don't remember it being five minutes. Maybe seven. Very long nap, seemed like you needed it.”
“Oh, you were keeping count, were you?” Hollander had snorted. “Sadists aren’t good captains either, just so you know.”
“But Sleeping Beauty is?”
Hollander’s scoff had been music to Ilya’s ears.
“Rozanov, Hollander,” Coach Wiebe had muttered, running a hand over his eyes, now squeezed tightly shut. He always did look a little exhausted when Ilya opened his mouth, but correlation didn’t equal causation, so Ilya didn’t think too much about it. “Shut the hell up.”
They had shut the hell up, but Ilya had waved his fingers at Hollander again, before skating off to the rest of their teammates, and Hollander had given him The Finger in retaliation. All good fun.
Still, Hollander wasn’t an awful captain.
Caring? Yes, even to Ilya at times, though it was mostly for the good of the game. Unforgiving? Absolutely, and particularly of simple mistakes, as the perfectionist that he was. A fanatic? Most certainly, but Ilya couldn’t befall a man in his house of worship—even if that man was Shane Hollander. So it wasn’t all bad.
Even when they lost, he wasn’t terrible.
The locker room was always quiet after a loss, but never silent. The other team’s cheers filtered through the walls every time, even if they were miles away, and it seeped through the metallic lockers, down the showers, and into their ears.
It’s no different now.
“Motherfucker,” Troy Barrett grumbles, quietly to himself. Ilya nudges his shoulder with his and the first year slumps on the bench. “That was—”
“Fucking awful,” Kent says, obnoxiously and obviously. He kicks at a locker.
“We should get cleaned up,” Hollander’s voice, sturdy and unwavering, even in the face of their horrible loss.
He stands tall, unbroken even as the rest of them slouch, and something turns in Ilya’s stomach at the sight. Maybe with annoyance at Hollander’s refusal to visibly wallow like anyone else would. Maybe with sympathy at how his lip quivers, just barely, under the low light. Or maybe something else entirely, that Ilya really doesn’t have time for right now—like, at all.
“Fuck off,” Coleman mutters, and Ilya frowns.
Some of the team had always had issues with Hollander; mostly, from what Ilya had gathered, due to prodigious skill and the fact that he was, statistically speaking, the second most talented player in all of U Sports. After Ilya, of course. It was an open secret that NHL and CHL recruiters were already knocking at Hollander’s door every day, that actual brands wanted to do paid sponsorships with him, and that he had already asked to join the Olympic team once—it was that serious.
Jealousy in a sport as famed and elite as hockey was expected. Ilya wasn’t exempt from the green-eyed stares, either. But this year, there had been an underlying, serious resentment simmering from the moment Hollander got captaincy. Nothing too upfront or obvious, but it was growing by the day.
A festering wound.
Ilya fingers the crucifix on his neck, watching.
“You just cost us the game,” Kent snaps. “And you want to open your fucking mouth, Hollander?”
Hollander stares, unflinching. Unimpressed, but clearly taking account of Kent’s words. A bead of water runs from his damp hair down the length of his throat. “How did I do that?”
Kent rants and raves, a madman throwing darts every which way and hoping one of them would land. Says something about Hollander hogging the puck, particularly when Kent was near, like Hollander is legally obligated to pass him the puck at every point in time. Ridiculous.
“This isn’t the Shane Hollander show,” he hisses.
“I never said it was,” Hollander says, blunt. Always so blunt, Hollander. Ilya digs his thumb into the cross. “I’ve passed to you every period, Kent.” And you’ve missed every time, goes unsaid, but they hear it–everyone does. Kent goes red.
“Bullshit.”
“Review the tape,” is all Hollander offers before turning away. “Coach wants us to head out in ten.”
He leaves like that.
Ilya’s thumb digs into the golden edges of the cross, harder and harder. He might be able to prick himself on the thing soon, and draw blood, if he keeps pressing.
“Fucking—” Kent says under his breath, probably on his way to call Hollander a few choice words. Ilya rolls his eyes and stands. He has little patience for Kent on a good day. It was not a good day.
The man looks up at him, a little surprised, and Ilya thinks that the stigma and punishment and bad reputation that one gets after punching a teammate is too unfair. Not all of them had a teammate like Dallas Kent, after all. Ilya moves forward, looming over the other player, and something like trepidation flashes over the other’s eyes.
Punching would be very lovely.
“Stop whining,” he says, instead, voice frosty even in his own ears. He relaxes his hand—when had he made a fist?—and the muscles in his hand ache in response. “We lost and now, we move on. Get drunk.”
The mood lightens at that.
“Red’s?” Singh, the first year, asks, softly. The infamous college bar that served alcohol to just about anyone who could slur out that they were legal. A perfect place to nurse wounded egos.
“Red’s,” Ilya nods. “So, go,” he tells the underclassmen, and they scurry out of the locker room in under five minutes. The upperclassmen follow suit, though more slowly.
“If you ask me, you should’ve been our captain, man,” Kent whines to him, as he pulls a shirt over his head. “Not that—”
Ilya shuts his locker, turns.
“But nobody did ask you, yes?” he says, bored of Kent and his complaints and his boring fucking life, and leaves.
-
The bar is a crowded, noisy place—just as it always has been and always will be. The floor is sticky under Ilya’s designer sneakers, his vodka cold and cheap. It’s perfect.
“Man,” Troy says, “you are, like, so fucked.”
He waves Ilya’s paper around and nearly smacks an unsuspecting girl ordering a round of shots. She glares at him. Troy doesn’t seem to notice.
“Like, so extremely fucked.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “I have gathered that.”
“No, I don’t think you have,” Troy says, frowning. “This was the first big assignment, right?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. The girl at the bar catches his eye, and she smiles at him, sparkly gold eyelids lowered. He smiles back, blithely, as the dread from before makes itself known again. “Four papers total and one final. Those are the only assignments.”
“If you get one more grade like this,” Troye says. “Even just one, there’s no way you’ll be able to get the grade needed to stay on the team.”
The girl tilts her head toward a table in the corner of the bar, where her horde of pretty, tipsy friends wait. They wave and wolf-whistle when Ilya glances their way, beckoning him closer. The girl smirks at him, sealing the invitation, and she really is pretty, and Ilya is tempted.
“All my other grades are passing,” he says, taking a sip of his drink. The dread sinks from his throat down to the pit of his stomach, heavy. “Excellent, even.”
Even so, he knows what Troy is going to say even before the other opens his mouth. The dread expands and deepens.
“You know the rules,” the other shakes his head. “One fail and you’re benched.”
Ilya swallows and looks away from the horror in Troy’s face, not unlike the expression on Ilya’s classmate. Something about it grates. He meets eyes with the girl again, and she stares at him, a little confused, probably as to why Ilya is still rooted in his seat and not going towards her.
Ilya wants to go to her. To forget this conversation ever happened in the first place. To drown this growing, monstrous dread in vodka and lovely women.
Instead, he smiles again at her, a little apologetically, and turns back to Troy.
“I think you should get a tutor,” Troy says.
“Already looked. No philosophy tutors who teach this topic. Very niche. Very stupid of me.”
“What about your classmates?”
His brain, stupidly, flashes to Hollander in their class, earlier that day—the annoyed red flush on his face, his dark, furrowed brows, and the way his mouth twisted as he swallowed back a curse. In your dreams, Rozanov. Ilya smiles a wry smile.
“Not a chance,” he says.
Troy groans, like he’s the one who’s on the precipice of flunking out.
“I should have dropped out when I could. I really hate that professor.”
“No make-up attempts?” Troy asks, and Ilya shakes his head, tracing the rim of his cold glass. Troy lets out another long groan. “Man, you can’t get benched. You just can’t, not this year–not when we’re so close to actually winning. We need you out there.”
Ilya clutches his hand to his heart. “Is this a love confession?” he asks. “I am flattered, but you are not my type.”
Troy turns red.
“Of all the guys on the team, you would be the absolute last one I would f-fuck, Roz.”
Being rated lower in terms of fuckability than Dallas fucking Kent stung, even if Troy was joking. Ilya rolls his eyes. “Please, you don't mean that. I am very good.”
“Well, I don’t doubt it,” Troy mutters. “The number of girls who’ve sung your praises could fill a small concert venue.”
“Few guys have sung my praises, too,” Ilya says. “Very loudly and enthusiastically.”
Troy blinks.
“Oh,” he says, then blinks harder, in rapid succession. “Wait, oh, so, you’re—”
“Yes,” Ilya says.
“But you…Women—”
“Very much yes,” Ilya says again, drumming his fingers on the bar. “Most of the time, even.”
“But?” Troy is still blinking very fast. Ilya thinks he may have lost an eyelash or two. “You’re also gay.”
“Bisexual,” Ilya corrects. “Half gay. Whatever you want to call it. Don't really care.”
“Half gay,” Troy’s voice rises in pitch. He is gripping his water very tightly.
“More like thirty percent, if we are being technical,” Ilya hands him a napkin. “You are spilling.”
“I’m,” Troy stammers. He doesn’t take the napkin, and Ilya just pats the water droplets on the bar instead. “Why did you not tell me before? How–how did I not know?”
“I did not know if you would be a good person to know. Is not something I go around advertising anyway.”
“Right,” Troy says. “Hockey is very…” his face darkens. “Yeah.”
“Hockey and other things,” Ilya says, eyeing Troy. The other man was shifting in his seat, not uncomfortable but antsy. Like he wanted to blurt something out, and it was killing him not to. A laugh bubbles up in Ilya’s throat; he swallows it back down. “You can say it.”
Troy bites his lip. “Say what?”
“I don't know,” Ilya takes a sip of vodka. “You look like you want to say something.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t have anything I want to say. Ever.”
“Okay,” Ilya says. He drinks his vodka and eyes the rest of the bar. All of their teammates made it out tonight, drinking their sorrows away. All except one.
He frowns. Hollander wasn’t usually one to miss team get-togethers, he took his role on the team seriously, which was both admirable and laughable, so Ilya could usually count on seeing a flash of dark hair, a smattering of freckles nearby.
Hollander never liked when he approached him at these parties, but it never stopped Ilya anyway.
“Where is Hollander?” Ilya asks.
“I think he decided to go to that frat party, phi delta something,” Troy says, distantly. Ilya raises a brow.
Shane Hollander, at a frat party? Now that was something one didn’t see every day.
“Why?” he asks, and Troy gives him a weird look.
“Dunno,” he says. “Why does anyone want to go to a frat house? Probably to get hammered?”
He could get hammered with us, Ilya does not say.
“He does not drink,” is what comes out instead. Troy shrugs.
“I don’t know, Roz. What the hell, I barely know him,” Troy frowns. “Though, some of the guys have been talking and they’re saying he’s a little—”
“A little what?” Ilya asks, a touch too sharp.
“A little…off this year,” Troy shrugs. “Seems like something’s bothering him, I guess.”
“Or these guys are bothered by him,” Ilya says. “And making a shit excuse for it.”
Troy shrugs again, staring down at the ground. “They’re assholes,” is all he says, before falling into a pensive silence. Ilya tries to take a drink of his vodka, but he barely tastes it as it goes down. The girl has left to go back to her friends, and while there is the occasional glance thrown his way, they do not invite him back.
Why does anyone want to go to a frat house?
Troy’s words ring in his head. Hollander was in a dirty, sticky frat house, just a few blocks away from the rest of his team. From Ilya. From the comfort of other people tied to his one and only god—hockey. And for what?
Maybe he was dancing, awkwardly bobbing his head along to the trap music and 2010 throwbacks. Maybe he was inhaling the secondhand smoke, not indulging but allowing himself to be a bystander, eyes shut in guilty pleasure.
Ilya taps his glass against the table.
Maybe he was fucking.
Ilya stands. His skin itches, and something hot crawls over his skin, a suffocating blanket. “Let’s leave,” he says.
“What?”
“Everyone is drunk enough, yes?” Ilya pulls his cigarettes out from where they’ve been stuffed in his back pocket. “I want to dance.”
“Um, okay?” Troy says, slowly. He gestures for the rest of the team, who down drinks nearby. “Where to next?”
“Wherever,” Ilya says, and strides out. The nicotine is a balm against this strange itch, this heat, though it’s not quite enough to wash it all away. He smokes the cigarette down to the filter anyway.
Troy is quiet beside him, lost in his thoughts; their team is rowdy and completely drunken behind them.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Troy’s voice is nearly a whisper. “I promise.”
Ilya tilts his head back and blows smoke into the night sky. The clouds of gray nearly shroud the moon completely.
“Okay. And I will not tell anyone that you would rather fuck Kent than me. My secret is a thousand times less embarrassing than yours, but I will be kind enough to keep it.”
“Fuck off, Roz, genuinely.”
-
Hollander is nowhere to be found in this frat house.
There are, however, other distractions.
“Sucks you lost the game,” a girl shouts in his ear, over the thumping bass of the music. Someone shoves into her, making her step closer to Ilya. His hand goes to her waist. “I saw your shot, at the end.”
Ilya grins. “You were watching me? I was very nice to watch, I am sure.” He leans down, lips brushing her ear ever so slightly.
“Sure. Even when you’re losing,” the girl says and kisses him.
Frat houses were not entirely pleasant, even when drunk, but they did seem to have a certain charm to them when there was a tongue stuck down your throat. He kisses her back, holding her close, and she hums in approval.
“Do you wanna?” she breathes out against his ear. The itching in his skin is back at full force, and Ilya thinks he might do anything that would scratch it. He grabs her waist tight.
“Always.”
She pushes him into a random frat guy’s room, left unlocked. A rookie move on the guy’s end, but Ilya feels little sympathy, as the girl shoves him against the wall and kisses Ilya silent. He pulls her close, lets his hand drift to her ass, then up her miniskirt, and smiles at her moan of approval.
He toys with the edges of her panties, hooking a finger against the fabric and—
“Oh, fuck,” she gasps, ripping away.
“What?” Ilya asks. “Are you okay?”
“I have to go,” she splutters. “My boyfriend’s waiting for me.”
Ilya blinks. “Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, he promised he would pick me up and I lost my phone,” she rambles, patting her skirt down. “So sorry, raincheck?”
“Well,” Ilya says, slowly. “If your boyfriend doesn’t mind.”
“Nah,” she grins. “He prefers it.” Okay, then.
As the girl—Roxanne, she introduced herself as, before kissing Ilya’s cheek and flouncing away to where her equally odd boyfriend was probably waiting—leaves, slamming the door behind her, Ilya sighs. As petulant as it was, he was hoping to get laid tonight, and Roxanne was gorgeous.
Well, he saves her number on his phone. There was always next time. Maybe she would bring her boyfriend along too.
Trudging to the connected bathroom, Ilya scrolls through his contacts. It takes him a moment, but he finds what he’s looking for—Hollander’s phone number. He taps to open a new text thread between them, the very first text thread.
Other than the team group chat, they’ve never texted, just the two of them. It was a little odd—knowing someone for years, understanding what the different shades of red they blushed meant, recognizing their scoffs, but never sharing a simple text. Ilya shakes his head. He was buzzed, alright.
What party are you at?
He finds himself typing out. His finger hovers over the send button.
Would Hollander respond if Ilya privately messages him? Or leave him on read? If he was in a bad enough mood, would he block Ilya entirely?
Ilya didn’t know. But some howling, hungry part of him wanted to find out.
The sound of a door opening interrupts his thoughts.
The mumble of voices—people entering the bedroom, a couple? Ilya distantly makes out the rumble of a man’s voice and the higher pitch of a woman’s. Definitely a couple, probably drunken and eager to have found an empty room to fuck in.
Ilya turns his phone off and makes his way to the door. It would be awkward, randomly popping up from the bathroom as a couple gets hot and heavy with each other, but the only thing worse about an awkward exit was missing the opportunity to one. He was no vouyer and the thought of being trapped on the toilet, trying very hard not to listen to grunting and moaning, was not a pleasant one.
Then, fingers inches away from the doorknob, he hears it.
“Shane,” the girl says. “Hold on.”
Shane.
Ilya freezes.
The name wasn’t particularly a rare one, anyone could be named Shane, but—
“Oh, I’m sorry. Um, are you okay? Should we stop?”
But not everyone sounded like Shane Hollander. Even muffled through the door, it was definitely him.
Ilya’s hand closes around the doorknob, but he doesn’t open it, quite yet. Shane Hollander with a girl. Hollander had his girlfriends, sure, like all hockey players did, but it had been a while. Not that Ilya had really noticed, of course.
He wonders who this one is. If she looks like the others.
“I feel like I should be asking you this,” the girl says, and Ilya’s attention is jerked back to reality. “Should we stop?”
“I,” Hollander says, and there’s a tinge to his voice. Conflicted. “I don’t know?”
“I think you do,” she says, and Ilya frowns. “What happened to what you told me before?”
“I just don’t know. I mean, I, maybe, thought I did. But, like, how do I know for sure?”
“Oh, Shane.”
Ilya is officially lost. He thinks it might be a language barrier thing; English was still hard for him sometimes, despite all his years in Canada. But one didn’t have to be an expert in the English language to understand the sheer conflict in Hollander’s voice.
Whatever was going on was personal, and as much as Ilya loved to see Hollander succumb to his emotions, the thought of snooping into whatever this was made him grimace. He goes to turn the doorknob, preparing to be met with confused stares and uncomfortable pauses.
“Really, how does anyone know that they’re gay?” Hollander asks. “Isn’t that something you figure out at birth?”
Ilya nearly falls over.
Gripping the doorknob to keep his balance, he stares at the door. How does anyone know that they’re gay? How does anyone know? Hollander was, maybe, at least thinking—
“I’m not sure that’s how it always works,” the girl says, gently. “Latent sexuality crises are a thing.”
“Yes, but, every gay person has always just known. It’s been who they’ve been since they were kids. But not me. I’ve had girlfriends,” Hollander seems like he’s pacing right now. “I liked them. I like women.”
The girl laughs.
Ilya blinks, eyeballs stinging. He doesn’t think he’s blinked in a while. And God, he needs to get out of here.
“Hey,” Hollander says.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” she snorts.
“I like you. I’ve liked you more than I’ve ever liked any other girl before.”
“And I’m flattered,” she says, sweetly. “But, if our relationship was indicative of the most you’ve liked a girl, I gotta say, Shane—I’m not totally sold on your straightness. No offense.”
Get out, get out. Ilya searches the bathroom for…anything—a vent to squeeze out of, a secret hidden door that would teleport him away from this conversation that wasn’t his to be listening to. Briefly, he considers flushing himself down the toilet.
“Offense taken,” Hollander says, though it sounds like he might be grinning, a little. Then: “I just…I don’t want to call myself something I’m not sure of. It’s not something you can take back easily. Especially in hockey.”
Ilya considers the toilet again. Wonders what the logistics are of crawling through the sewage pipes.
“Okay,” the girl says. “Okay. But you also shouldn’t force yourself to make out with people you don’t want to, just to prove a point. It’s not really that fun for the other parties either, you know.”
“Am I that bad of a kisser?” Hollander asks. He jokes. Ilya can’t remember the last time he heard Hollander tell a joke. This whole night feels like a big cosmic joke. He turns away from the toilet, reluctantly.
“No,” the girl laughs. “But I’m here for you, if you ever need to talk. Just, y’know, not to kiss. Do you want to head out, maybe? Grab some food?”
“I’m okay. I think I’ll just go home. Tired.”
“Yeah, that game was pretty shitty. You held your own, though,” something like amusement filters into the girl’s voice. “Rozanov played well, too, other than that last shot.”
Ilya blinks at the sound of his name. He finds himself drifting back to the door, bracing against the doorknob. His ears strain, listening for Hollander’s response.
“I wouldn’t know,” Hollander says, bluntly. “I wasn’t paying attention to him.”
And bullshit. Ilya remembers the second goal he had made, thanks to an assist from Young, remembers the booes of the crowds, and absolutely soaking in it. The distaste, the hatred, and all the vicious admiration and the weight of hundreds of eyes on him. That’s right, look at me.
And he distinctly remembers Hollander clacking his stick against his, albeit also a little reluctantly. He remembers looking into Hollander’s dark eyes, the wry twist of his mouth, and baring his teeth right back.
Hollander had been fucking paying attention.
“Lucky shot,” he had said.
“Good luck doing that again, jerk.”
A younger, more cherubic version of Hollander glaring up at him, baby fat still clinging to his cheeks, and his temper fraying dangerously at the edge. Fourteen-year-old Hollander had surely found Ilya abhorrent, a stain on his squeaky-clean, perfect record.
And in turn, fourteen-year-old Ilya had found him fascinating.
“Luck? I’m sorry, I am not familiar with what that is,” said Ilya, twenty and still a little fascinated with Shane Hollander. “Must be a Canadian thing, yes?”
“You’re Canadian too, dick.”
Ilya had winked. “Only on paper.”
“Good luck stopping me, not that you can, Hollander.”
“Sure,” the girl says now, and she is most definitely smiling. “I’m heading out, okay? Call me.”
Ilya hears when she leaves. The room stays silent, but Hollander doesn’t seem particularly inclined to leave either. He groans, and Ilya feels it in his soul. If he could, he really would choose the sewage pipes over this.
But, he couldn’t, and one of them had to make the first move. He swallows down rare apprehension and opens the door.
“What the fuck,” Hollander shouts.
“Hello,” Ilya says.
“Wh–Rozanov? What the hell were you doing in there?” Hollander’s eyes dart over to the bathroom. “Were…were you in there the whole time?”
“I was,” Ilya says. “Trust me, I wish I was not. I was there before you came.”
Hollander’s face pales. His freckles disappear as his apparent horror grows.
“And you heard...everything?”
“I did,” Ilya winces.
“Were you spying on me?” Hollander snaps, his eyebrows cinching tight together. His arms cross over his chest, his bland white shirt pulling at the carved muscle of his biceps. “Rozanov, what the actual hell—”
“Whoa,” Ilya raises his hands. “I was not spying on you. I was in the bathroom. We were separated by a wall. A thin one.”
“Then, you should have left!”
“Where? Through the plumbing system?” Ilya asks, incredulous. “Trust me, I did consider it. I was thinking very hard about how to flush myself down the toilet. The logistics.”
“Through the door!” Hollander shouts at him. “You should have left through the door.”
“When?” Ilya asks again, suddenly a little irritated himself. “When in this conversation should have I opened this door, walked into this bedroom, and left, Hollander?”
“Don’t,” Hollander growls.
“When you were kissing this girl? When you and her started talking? When you—” Ilya stops himself, and Hollander seems to pale even further.
“Fine,” he says. “Fine. Okay.”
“Okay.”
Hollander huffs out a sharp breath. “I should go,” he says.
“Me too,” Ilya says. He pauses, waiting for Hollander to say something else, but when nothing comes, he turns to the door.
“Did you really hear everything?”
Ilya stops. Turns back. Hollander stands before him, hair slightly mussed, a rigidity to him that Ilya is now starting to understand why there is. He gnaws on his lip as he waits for Ilya’s response.
“Yes,” Ilya says, because he won’t lie. “I did.”
Hollander both somehow tenses and droops at the same time, and he looks so unlike himself that Ilya can’t help but keep talking.
“But I am a good secret keeper. I have already learned a pretty big secret today, and I have sworn to take it to the grave.”
“Really,” Hollander says, sounding very incredulous. It’s a bit insulting.
“Yes,” Ilya nods. “Barrett thinks that Kent would be a better lay than me, which is both ridiculous and very humiliating for him. A terrible secret. Much worse than yours.”
Hollander stares for a long beat, like he’s trying to decipher if Ilya is fucking with him.
“You’re a horrible secret keeper. And Barrett has shit secrets too,” he says, eventually.
“Maybe,” Ilya says. “But to be completely serious, I will keep your secret. I will not tell anyone.”
“Yeah?” Hollander says, sounding unconvinced. He squares his shoulders, readying for a fight that, for once, Ilya will not give him. “How do I know that you won’t go blabbing to the rest of the guys? They already have enough to say about me, and you would probably benefit most from talking. So, how do I know that you’ll absolutely keep your mouth shut, Rozanov?”
“You don't. You will just have to trust me.”
The scowl on Hollander’s face is familiar. The slight fear in it is not. It turns Ilya’s stomach, just for a second, so he sighs.
“Besides,” he says. “It will be very hypocritical of me to tell them anything, yes?”
Coming out twice in one night. Let it be known that Ilya was very proud of his identity. Or something.
Hollander stares. Ilya waits for him to figure it out.
“What?” he says, a little stupidly. Then, his eyes widen into saucers—utterly shocked. “What.”
“Yes, I get that reaction a lot,” Ilya says. “Not just to this revelation, but to everything else I do. Sometimes, even from walking into a room.”
Hollander doesn’t even comment on his cockiness; he’s that baffled. Ilya really scrambled his brains. It was quite satisfying to see Hollander stupefied by him and him alone. It had been a while since he had really shocked Hollander to the core like this.
Seven years ago, to be exact, when Ilya had stolen his puck away from him. Shane Hollander’s wide-eyed surprise had been a welcome introduction to Ilya’s new life in Canada. It was a welcome experience now, too.
“You?” Hollander splutters.
“Me,” Ilya says.
Hollander stammers some question about girls and Ilya’s reputation as a ladies' man, just like Troy had. Ilya smiles, wry.
“Often,” he admits. “But not always.”
“Not always,” Hollander whispers to himself. He stares at Ilya, throat bobbing, and for some reason, Ilya’s skin prickles. Not in irritation, per se. Maybe anticipation.
“How long have you known?” Hollander asks, a little desperately.
“For sure? Sixteen. But I did have thoughts before then. Desires.”
“Desires,” Hollander chokes out. “And, um, how did you figure that out?”
“My turn,” Ilya says and studies Hollander. He squirms a little under Ilya’s gaze, but doesn’t look away. Classic Hollander. “How about you?”
“I don’t know,” Hollander says, and Ilya fixes him with an unimpressed look. He looks away this time, breaking the staring game. “I don’t know, okay! I don’t know for sure, but—”
“But?”
“I think maybe,” Hollander’s voice dies. He swallows. A party rages on around them, people drunk and screaming to some bad throwback song, but in this room, Ilya doesn’t think of them. His eyes are on Hollander. He waits, and Hollander swallows again.
“Maybe I’m gay,” he says. And his words are cataclysmic.
He blinks, stumbling backwards a little, like the words have physically knocked the wind out of his lungs, just a bit.
Ilya, for his part, tries not to act like the floor is collapsing underneath him. He leans on the doorway, casual. “Okay.”
“I never,” Hollander says, starting to pace the length of the room again. “I never thought I was, before? It never really crossed my mind. I mean,” his eyes dart to Ilya for half a second, before his cheeks turn a light pink. Ilya watches the color bloom and fade in a split second. “You said it right? Thoughts a-and desires? Sometimes, they were there, but they weren’t that important. I could ignore them.”
Hollander stops.
“And I had girlfriends! A few of them.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “I remember them.”
“And they were…nice. Fine. The sex was—” Hollander’s face flames red. Fire engine red, a color Ilya is familiar with on the other’s face, but never in a context like this—no rage or determination. Just a raw sort of openness. “Fine.”
“Not a word people use to talk about sex very often,” Ilya offers, and Hollander shoots him a withering glare.
“Some parts of it were good,” his mouth twists. “And others were okay. I was fine with it too, and then, I—”
He flushes harder, cherry red, and looks pointedly away from Ilya’s face. “I started thinking more this summer. And it was harder to ignore this time.”
“This summer?” Ilya asks, frowning. “During training camp?”
“Er. After that,” Hollander squeaks out. “I, um, started dating Rose around that time too.”
“Wait…Not Rose Landry?” Ilya gawks. He nearly falls for the second time that day. “You were dating Rose fucking Landry? Why did I not hear about this?”
“Yes? She was in here just now. I thought you were listening to everything.”
“I had no idea I was listening to Rose Landry,” Ilya rubs his eyes. “Hollander, proof of your gayness, I think we have just found it.”
“Shut up,” Hollander snaps at him. “Anyways, like I said, I seriously don’t want to label myself as 100%...gay until I’m sure that I am.”
Ilya gives him another look, and Hollander scowls back at him.
“I could still like women. Maybe this is a—”
“Please,” Ilya grumbles “If the next word you say is ‘phase,’ I will give you a bloody nose.”
“I mean, how can I know for sure? I’m not going to call myself something and re-label who I am as a person just based on a few dreams and thoughts. And what does this mean for hockey, for signing onto a team, for playing? You might think it’s easy, Rozanov, but it’s not.”
Ilya blinks.
“Of course it’s not,” he says, quietly.
Hollander frowns.
“So how did you know for sure?”
Ilya blinks again and pushes past the shard of unexpected hurt lodged in his throat. Hollander was just lashing out, faced with the daunting reality of every person going through something like this. Ilya had been there, done that. Besides, when had he or Ilya ever spoken considerately of each other? Their conversations were always composed of teasing jabs and grumbles of annoyance, since the moment they met as rivals, and even now.
Hollander wasn’t even his friend.
So, he lets the hurt go.
“How did you know, Rozanov?” Hollander repeats, impatient. Ilya considers him, then shrugs.
“I fucked my coach’s son,” he says, casually.
The other man’s jaw drops.
“You what.”
“Yes,” Ilya smiles. “It was fun and very hot and I realized that I would very much like to do it again. Not just with him, but with other people. So, then, I figured it out.”
“So that’s how you…” Hollander trails off. Ilya nods. “Huh.” He goes silent for a beat, then two, and Ilya can’t help but ask, wanting insight into Hollander’s neurotic, strange brain.
“What are you thinking about?”
He doesn't really expect the other to give him a coherent response. Maybe the middle finger, if he was finding Ilya particularly annoying. So what actually comes tumbling out of Hollander’s mouth causes Ilya to still.
“I’ve never done…anything with a guy before,” Hollander mumbles. It’s both a surprise and not at the same time. The revelation still unmoors some part of Ilya. He clears his throat.
“I am assuming you have done many things with other men, Hollander,” he says, just to be an ass. “Eat with them, breathe near them, talk to them—”
“I’ve never had sex with a guy before,” Hollander cuts in. “There.”
“Hm,” Ilya says. “Do you think that would help?”
His face flames red. “It couldn’t hurt, right?” Ilya doesn’t have a name for this particular shade of red; it’s entirely new, and the unfamiliar makes his palms sweat a little. His heart thuds.
“I don't know,” he murmurs. “It might hurt a little at first. But not for long, if he does it right.”
Hollander splutters.
“So, you don't think you can label yourself until you experiment?” Ilya asks. “Is that what you mean?”
He nods. “Scientific method, right? That’s how the best theories are proven.”
“Hypotheses,” Ilya corrects. He watches Hollander crinkle his nose, and his stomach flops again at the sight. Something close to want taking root.
“Same thing.”
Not really, Ilya wants to say, but instead, he tilts his head and asks, carefully:
“Have you even kissed a man before, Hollander?”
“I told you,” Hollander says. “I haven’t done anything with a guy before.”
So he hadn’t.
Ilya grins, pleased.
“Would you like to?”
“I guess. Sure. I mean, sex and kissing, they go hand in hand, right?” Hollander babbles. Ilya pushes himself off the doorway and stalks closer to the other. Hollander watches him, wary, but doesn’t stop talking. He also doesn’t move away. “It would be a little weird to be okay with sex but not kissing, right?”
“Mhm,” Ilya hums, not listening. He eyes the graceful arch of Hollander’s neck, the smooth, unblemished skin there. He steps closer.
“Kissing can be more intimate than sex, from what I’ve heard,” Hollander’s eyes dart over Ilya’s face, lingering on his lips. Ilya grins and the other man makes a small noise at the back of his throat. “I-It doesn’t seem that different to me.”
“Right,” Ilya nods, still not listening. He’s a breath away from the other man, the tips of their shoes brushing.
From this close, every freckle on Hollander’s face is visible, and Ilya thinks of pressing a thumb against the constellation. He wonders, if he pressed hard enough, those freckles would smear right off, along with whatever it was that jumped in Ilya’s ribcage every time he saw those freckles. If only.
Hollander stares back at him, chest heaving. Ilya cocks a brow at him and tries for a smirk. It comes out a little wobbly, even that he can admit to himself. They stand like that—just watching each other—until Hollander, now all sorts of shades of red and pink, each more unfamiliar than the last, breaks it.
Ilya hadn’t really expected anything less.
“Kissing isn’t really all that, if you really think about it,” says Hollander.
“Yes,” says Ilya. Their noses brush, and he can hear Hollander’s breath hitch. “Can I kiss you?”
"Oh," Hollander stares at him, shocked, despite every sign leading up to this moment pointing to Ilya kissing him. It takes a moment for him to nod, almost shyly.
Ilya, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate.
He kisses Shane Hollander.
At first, Hollander remains stiff, his lips like two pieces of marble beneath Ilya’s lips. Ilya wants to laugh. It comes out a little like an inpatient growl instead.
“Hollander,” he murmurs, against the other’s closed mouth. “Open your mouth.”
“Um,” Hollander blinks at him. He looks a little dizzy. “I–”
“Yes, just like that,” Ilya kisses him harder and runs his tongue against Hollander’s upper lip. Hollander lets out a muffled squeak against his mouth, but, then, finally, he kisses back.
And oh.
Kissing Shane Hollander is not something Ilya’s really pictured before, at least not consciously, but, God, is it good. He’s responsive—inexperienced, yes, and a little irritated about it, judging from how hard he bites Ilya’s lip, as if needing to prove something—but responsive, nonetheless. In his eagerness, Hollander’s teeth even end up sinking into his own bottom lip, and Ilya licks into his mouth, soothing the sting, and he moans.
Christ.
His hand finds Hollander’s hip, the other going to his jaw—moving his face where Ilya wants it. He half expects the other to fight it. He doesn’t, though he doesn’t quite sink into it either—Ilya’s touch. His own hands remain curled by his hide.
There’s a stiffness to Hollander, a rigidity, an awkwardness that always comes with venturing into foreign territory. At least, always for guys like Hollander, who were probably used to being the best of the best. Ilya laughs against his mouth.
Hollander stiffens even more. “What?” he breathes out, as Ilya nips at his lip.
“Touch me,” he says. He drags his mouth along Hollander’s cheek, toward his jaw. Hollander shivers underneath his ministrations.
“I am touching you,” he rasps.
“No, you are not,” Ilya sinks his teeth into the corner of Hollander’s lethal jaw. “You have your hands down there. I am up here.”
“I-I,” Hollander pants. He’s arching up into Ilya, his face craned to the side to give Ilya more access, more skin, his chest pressing flush against Ilya’s. Their hearts race in unison, a matching thudthudthud that would have Ilya mildly worried for the state of their blood flow, if he wasn’t a little preoccupied with the fact that Shane Hollander was practically begging for his touch. “Right there—Don’t leave a hickey.”
“Mm,” Ilya hums. He kisses the place right below Hollander’s ear. “Touch me, and I will not leave one.”
“I said, I am touching you, dick.”
“No,” Ilya says and grazes his teeth over the skin of Hollander’s throat. “You are not.”
“Rozanov,” Hollander stammers. He sounds drunk with it. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Ilya asks, mildly, and presses his teeth, just a little harder. He moves as if to bite down and—
—Hollander squeaks and throws his arms around his neck.
“You always make everything much harder than it should be,” Ilya says and kisses Hollander for it. Hollander sinks his fingers into his hair, tugging. Ilya hisses at the sensation, arousal skating down his spine.
“And you’re always way more annoying than you should be,” Hollander mumbles against his lips. “We all have our faults.”
Ilya wraps an arm around Hollander’s waist, feeling the muscle there, and pulls him close. “My fault can also be a talent.”
“In what world?” Hollander scoffs, and Ilya kisses the scowl right off his face.
Hollander’s arousal manifests in a few interesting ways, and Ilya drinks each one up. It’s in the way he whines against Ilya’s mouth, his voice pitching upwards in a way Ilya’s never heard before. The way his arms go tight around Ilya’s neck, the way he shifts onto his tiptoes for closer access. The way his mouth goes a little slack against Ilya’s, losing some of that aggressiveness and raw fight.
“Rozanov,” Hollander stammers.
“Hollander,” Ilya murmurs, drunk off of him. He shifts closer, and—
Hm.
He grins, head spinning with need. Hollander flushes harder.
“You are hard,” Ilya comments, unnecessarily. But Hollander is—straining against the fabric of his jeans. Much harder than Ilya has ever seen anyone get from only kissing. So responsive, Shane Hollander.
Ilya licks his bottom lip.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Hollander says.
“Is Captain Rozanov, not Captain Obvious,” Ilya says and, with his arm around Hollander’s waist, drags their hips together. Their crotches brush, and the pressure nearly makes Ilya’s cock, stiffening more by the second, weep with joy. “Please don't refer to another man while we are dry humping, Hollander. It hurts my feelings.”
“Captain, my ass,” Hollander’s eyebrows knit together. “And who the hell says dry humping?”
Ilya wiggles his own eyebrows and grinds forward, manhandling Hollander’s own hips back to meet him halfway. Their cocks drag against each other, more roughly this time, and Ilya gnaws his lip at the bite of Hollander’s zipper against his thigh. A whimper spills from Hollander’s mouth.
“Are you going to cum?” Ilya murmurs into the other man’s ear. Hollander shudders against him, hips rocking forward clumsily. Ilya laughs, and holds his waist tight, forcing Hollander still.
“Are you gonna cum?” Hollander shoots back, breathlessly. Even restricted, he’s still trying to grind against Ilya’s thigh, his hips moving in tiny, mindless circles—seeking friction, seeking Ilya’s cock—and Ilya could groan from it. From Shane Hollander, moving his hips like a needy slut.
“No,” Ilya nips his ear and grinds their hips together, in one harsh, sudden move.
Hollander shouts, throwing his head back.
Ilya can feel Hollander’s cock spasming against his own. He’s probably leaking through his boxers right now. God, Ilya can picture it right now, Shane Hollander’s poor cock, aching and dripping messily all over his thighs, soiling his perfectly white underwear—underwear Hollander had probably carefully picked out today, not knowing Ilya would be ruining them.
He smiles so hard, he can taste blood in his mouth. He feels a little insane.
“You can cum now, you know, if you want. I will not laugh at you. Much.”
“Fat chance,” Hollander spits out. “N-not if you don’t.”
“But I would rather cum in you,” Ilya says, and Hollander gapes at him, eyes wide, cheeks flushed.” And I don't think you can handle that.”
He bares his teeth. “You might cry.”
Hollander’s cheeks darken into a ruddy red. He swallows.
“I could,” he says, after a beat, very bravely. “Handle it.”
Desire crashes through Ilya in a wave. He shoves his hips into Hollander’s, in a motion that feels more like he’s fucking into the other, rather than grinding. He hears Hollander choke on his spit.
“You think so?” he manages through bared teeth, so overcome with want-heat-desire he can barely see straight. He repeats the motion again and again, taking, and Hollander holds him closer, taking it all. “Okay. Then, I will teach you—how to handle me. All of me.”
He crushes Hollander’s lips into a brutal kiss, all teeth and tongue, and Hollander kisses him right back. Just as furiously.
“Though you might still cry,” he says, in between kisses.
“Or you might,” Hollander gasps out, and then he trembles. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, Rozanov—”
“Cum,” Ilya murmurs.
Hollander fights it. It’s probably his body’s natural response to Ilya telling him to do something, resistant and utterly stubborn. But even he, with all his prodigious strength, can’t fight off the inevitable.
Shane Hollander cums in fits and bounds: His dark eyes roll back first, brows furrowing. Tiny whines are swallowed back, silenced even before they’re let free from his slack mouth. A shame. Then, he fists Ilya’s hair and holds him close, but not gripping so tight that Ilya can’t continue rocking their hips together shallowly—coaxing Hollander through the aftershocks.
It’s extremely fucking sexy.
Ilya kisses Hollander, his own cock aching. He refuses to cum in his jeans—he hates the feeling—but everything about this is erotic enough that he thinks about saying fuck it. Or maybe, he should shove Hollander to his knees and cum all over that pretty, fucked out face.
His dick pulses in approval.
Hollander slumps, apparently all done cumming his brains out. Ilya catches him and, shockingly, Hollander lets himself be held, in a moment of strange softness. He smells like pine and something herbal.
The docility lasts for only a minute before Hollander seems to come to.
He leaps back. Ilya watches him go and carefully places his hands into his pockets.
“Um,” Hollander says, very eloquently. He fixes his shirt, smoothing at nonexistent wrinkles, and studies the air just above Ilya’s ear. Very flustered, judging from the leftover blush on his cheeks and the way he refuses to make eye contact. Ilya’s neglected dick twitches. “So.”
“So,” Ilya says back.
Hollander swallows, throat working, and Ilya thinks about letting him flounder for a bit. He decides not to be that much of an ass.
“So, are you sure about your gayness yet, Hollander?”
Hollander blinks.
“More than before, I guess,” he admits, and Ilya smirks. “But not yet, obviously. It was just one kiss.”
“Yes, and you ‘just’ came in your pants after ‘just’ dry humping me,” Ilya says, pleasantly. Hollander scowls and the familiar expression of irritation is almost enough to make the tension in the air lessen.
“That sounds really unsexy.”
“Obviously, it was sexy enough, because you ‘just’ orgasmed.”
The growl that slips from Hollander’s lips is almost inhuman. He looks like he might pounce on Ilya again—though, whether it was to fight or something else entirely—Ilya did not know. Full of anticipation, he rocks back on the balls of his feet and shoots another smirk in the face of danger.
Hollander eyes his mouth for a second before shuttering whatever hunger was on his face.
“Whatever, Rozanov. I need to go.”
Disappointment kills the anticipation, effective immediately. What a shame. Ilya rolls his eyes. “Well, then,” he says. “Goodbye.”
“Okay,” Hollander says, but lingers. He looks at Ilya for a long beat, as if psyching him up to say something. Ilya waits, because while he’s not really a patient man, the look on Hollander’s face says that waiting might be worth it.
To hear whatever interesting thought Hollander’s neurotic little brain was cooking and getting ready to verbalize.
“Did you mean what you said earlier? When we were…” he bites his lip. Ilya stands at attention. “Kissing.”
“Dry humping,” Ilya corrects, distracted. He steps a little closer to Hollander now, and Hollander fidgets. Though, like before, he doesn’t back away.
“I’m not calling it that,” Hollander says. “Did you mean what you said? That you would teach me?”
Teach me to take your cock, he doesn’t say, but anyone with working eyes and a working dick could read that between the lines. Teach me how to get fucked.
Ilya, personally, is suddenly so hard, he thinks all the blood may have rushed from his brain to said cock. He clears his throat.
“Do you want to learn?”
“Maybe,” Hollander says. He blushes awkwardly. Ilya grins.
“You want me to fuck you?”
“Not you specifically,” Hollander grumbles, folding his arms. “Like I said, I just want to try. If I’m gay, I’ll like it, right? Probably? Maybe?”
“Not exactly how it works,” Ilya says. “So do you want to have sex with someone else—to experiment?”
“Probably?” A rush of strange irritation floods Ilya at that…But what did he care that Hollander wanted to try fucking other men? In all honesty, questioning guys, the experimental ones who didn’t know what they were, were always the exhausting ones. The ones to handle with kiddie gloves. The ones who were very fragile.
And Ilya never tolerated those kinds of hookups. Therefore, theoretically, he shouldn’t tolerate Shane Hollander.
And yet.
“But you want me to fuck you first,” He says, anyway, because he can’t help himself. Hollander nods.
“And do other things.”
And do other things, he said. And do other things. Ilya blinks, both horny and a little out of his depth.
“Why me?”
“Because allegedly you can keep a secret,” Hollander shifts on his feet.
“And I made you cum your brains out just now,” Ilya says. Hollander grimaces at him, but he doesn’t deny it, which is a win. And also, if he did deny it, he would be an outright liar. “So you want me to be your sex Yoda, basically.”
“That thing probably doesn’t know what sex is. His species reproduces asexually, if anything,” Hollander sighs. “But, I guess, that’s a way to describe it.”
“Of course, I am very good at sex,” Ilya says, seriously, and Hollander groans. “So I understand why you asked me.”
“Well, I’m already regretting asking you. Is that a yes?”
“A yes to being Canada’s golden boy’s sex tutor,” Ilya muses. Hollander’s face is rapidly turning a burgundy shade. This one is achingly familiar. Shane Hollander’s flush of annoyance: Category 7.
Approaching serious danger.
“Why not?” he smiles. Hollander’s shoulders slump, and some of the red drains from his face. Crisis averted.
“You’re not tutoring me in anything, Rozanov,” Hollander says. “It’s not like I’m bad at gay sex.”
“If you say so,” Ilya says, and pauses. Tutoring.
A lightbulb clicks in his head.
“Why don’t we make it a trade?”
Hollander frowns.
“I need to trade something for you to teach me about sex?” he asks, incredulous.
“Well, you are getting something from me. Two things actually: Life-changing sex skills and an opportunity to fuck me—”
“—Oh, give me a break—”
“—But,” Ilya says. “What am I getting out of this?”
“The opportunity to f-fuck me,” Hollander snaps, and yeah, Ilya eyes the bridge of his strong nose, the cut of his cheekbones, a pretty fair point. He smiles, anyway.
“I am helping you, and I don't even like you very much, Hollander,” he says. “The least you can do is help me in return, yes? Make it worth both of our time.”
Hollander’s eyes narrow.
“In what way?”
“You tutor me,” Ilya gestures to himself. “Philosophy of Sport. I am shit at the class. Total and complete shit.”
Hollander scowls. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Rozanov. You aren’t even studying philosophy, what are you doing in that class? It’s an upper-level course.”
“Oh, like you are studying the subject?”
“I’m a philosophy minor, man.”
Ilya had not known that. He shrugs and plows on.
“Anyways, I am doing poorly, and I can’t fail a class—you know the rules. One strike and you are out: A very, very stupid fucking rule. But is the rule.”
“So,” realization dawns on Hollander’s face. “You need me to help you study and pass the class.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “You tutor me, I teach you. A fair exchange.” He holds out a hand. “Sounds good?”
“This is such a bad idea,” Hollander says, as he eyes Ilya’s hand. Then, after a minute of contemplation, he takes it in his own—callused palm against callused palm.
Ilya squeezes his hand tight, and Hollander squeezes him back, just a little harder.
“Is a deal.”
“Like, such a bad idea.”
“I don’t know what you’re doing right now,” a drunken voice comes from behind them. They drop their hands, whirling around to see a frat boy standing in the now-wide-open doorway. “But can you guys, like, get the fuck out of my room?”