Chapter Text
⟨X⟩
Shane Hollander closes his eyes as he steps into the rink. Breathes in. It's warmer than it's supposed to be, but it smells right. Like frost and metal and sweat. Generations of it. The most familiar thing he knows.
He'd known what it meant when he saw the code for the room on the timetable, but it's a different thing to be here. He'd been lucky in first year to avoid it, and then the same in second. But he's here now, and he has to focus, and he can't let something as stupid as his own—
Someone jostles him from behind, saying, "Dude, get out of the way."
So he does, opening his eyes and stepping through the gap in the boards. His eyeline catches first on the rest of the students, their coats and hats and backpacks, and then the desks, arrayed over where the ice is supposed to be like some kind of really shitty metaphor for his life. Under his feet the linoleum is unsteady over the plywood boards, moving just slightly under his feet as he walks towards where his course code is written across a dusty green chalkboard.
The proctor at the front barely looks at him when he sticks his hand out for the exam package.
He finds a desk in the middle, facing the scoreboard, all its lights powered down so the only things left are black digital squares. Underneath it, the standard analog clock clicks ever closer to two in the afternoon.
It's not quite game day, but it's as close as Shane gets anymore. He still has rituals.
The pencils come out of his bag first, identical— one a backup for the other. He shakes them both three times near his ear to make sure there's adequate lead in both of them. Then the spare package of lead, 0.5mm, 2B, Japanese formula. His mom had brought it back for him the last time she went to visit distant family. He's never opened it, more good luck than practicality.
That's all he needs, really. There are no calculators allowed at this exam, no cheat-sheets. Just what he's managed to cram into his head in the last several nights of frantic memorization. Both pencils already have erasers.
Still, the eraser is the last thing he pulls out of the bag. All of its corners are pristine except one, worn away and dark after his catastrophic psychology final several days ago. Shane will pick a different corner to use for this one. When he puts it down on his desk, in the top right quadrant, parallel to the edge of the desk, he places it so the dirty corner can't be seen at all.
Then it's perfect, and he's as ready as he's going to be.
At the front of the room the proctor stands, and everything goes silent, and they begin.
Shane Hollander bows his head.
⟨X⟩
He leaves the exam with forty-five minutes to spare and forgets everything about it the second the mid-December wind hits his face outside the athletic complex doors. He stuffs his hands deep into his pockets at the intersection, watching the cars race past him towards the highway. When the light turns, the bright chirping sounds from the indicator shake some of the film from his vision. Not all of it, but some. He takes the stairs up onto the main campus plateau two at a time, only pausing at the top to consider his options.
The wind decides for him, stinging across his ears. Shane turns left towards the old engineering building.
Inside, he turns left again into the stairwell and goes down down down until he's in a dank sub-basement that smells like a different kind of age and sweat. More like desperation than exertion. The door to the tunnel pulls open and he steps inside, heat rolling off the coloured pipes over his left shoulder. There are signs plastered to them warning students not to touch them, but he could, if he wanted to. Just to feel something.
The smooth concrete slopes down under his feet, uneven and epoxy-slick. He's allowed to be here, he knows, but every time he comes down here it feels like something he's not supposed to see. A dirty, practical, thing that's only allowed to exist because the alternative is worse. The kind of place people tell ghost stories about.
Overhead, the ancient yellow industrial lights flicker.
But this is where he has to be, so here he is. Out of the wind, Shane Hollander follows the path through the bowels of the university.
⟨X⟩
He comes out into the open air somewhere near the library, blinking against the light. This is a green space, in the summer, but in the winter it's just a flat expanse of nothing, the grey brutalist buildings towering overhead even more brutal in the snow. He crosses it quickly, and then down another staircase into another basement.
The arts faculty makes the best of the space they have been given. It's always been vaguely impressive to Shane, how warm the little cafe feels with its dark walls and high tables. It's almost deserted, students still in exams or otherwise choosing quieter places to study. Rose looks up at him from behind the counter as he walks in and smiles, waving.
"Is Joe here yet?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Not yet. Coffee? How'd the exam go?"
Shane can barely remember the exam at all. He says, "Coffee would be great, black, thanks. Exam was fine. Last one, that's what matters."
"And tonight we celebrate!" She says, making small cheering motions with her fists. She's been finished her finals for a couple of days— at least Shane is pretty sure she has been. That is, if the acting students take exams. Maybe they don't.
He takes the cup of coffee from her with a smile. "Thanks," he says again. She shoos him onto one of the low couches against the back wall and for a while he just sits there, letting the cup warm his hands and listening to the soft music playing over the speakers. It goes from Florence and the Machine to something he doesn't recognize, with banjos. He doesn't like it.
The song changes again, and Shane forgets about it.
He's half way through his coffee, feeling the caffeine buzz through his joints, when Joe turns the corner into the cafe and yells, "Shane-y, you're alive!"
The rest of the students glare at him. Rose says something to the other barista behind the counter and pulls her apron over her head. As she stuffs it into her bag on the floor she says, "Keep it down, Joe. People are studying."
Joe rolls his eyes, but he doesn't say anything else until he drops down onto the couch beside Shane, all limbs, and says, "How'd it go?"
Shane shrugs. Finishes his coffee. Finds he misses having something warm to put his fingers against. Rose comes and sits across from them before Shane has to find the words to answer him.
She says, "You're talking like he was on the brink of death or something. It was just one of his weird math exams. Shane does math in his sleep, you know how he is."
"You didn't see him yesterday, I think it was pretty touch and go there for a while."
Shane's face smiles for him. "It was fine, really," he says.
Neither of them look like they believe him, but Shane has one more trick up his sleeve. "I think I got the proof wrong on the Bayes' theorem expansion, picked an axiom that wasn't right."
He didn't get the theorem wrong. He never gets the theorem wrong. But the exam is grey and flat in his memory when he thinks about it. Mechanical. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't be able to explain it. Not in a way that didn't make them worry.
Joe makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat, and that means they're going to drop the subject. He says, "Are we celebrating?"
Rose smiles. Shane likes her smile, how it makes the room feel brighter, even in these low lights. He wishes, most days, that he liked more about her than just her smile. How easy it would be. "We are," she says.
"Where are we drinking?" Joe asks.
"Where we always drink?" Rose says. "Where do you think?"
"Rose, love," Joe says. "I want to drink something that isn't lukewarm Rickard's out of a pitcher that hasn't been properly cleaned since the Chrétien years."
She rolls her eyes at him. "You always order a vodka soda anyway, I don't know why you care."
"I don't know, maybe I'm bored, maybe I want to do something new."
Joe's idea of new things do not typically align with what Shane considers a good time. In the three years since they've started to be friends and not just people you see at the rink sometimes, Shane's had plenty of opportunity to learn the lesson. Today is a bad day for flashing lights or death metal drums.
"We could go to the speakeasy at Union," Shane says.
Joe turns his head and just blinks at him, several times in a row, before he repeats, stopping at every syllable, "The speakeasy. At Union."
"What?" Shane says with a cut-off laugh, looking away.
"Who are you? What did you do to Shane Hollander," Joe continues, grabbing him by the shoulders and giving him a shake that rattles Shane's teeth. "The speakeasy at Union. What's next, do you want to go to Moon Room? Atelier? Are you seeing someone?"
"Am I— " Shane sputters. "Am I what, sorry?"
"Joe, come on," Rose says, waving her hand between them. "You know Shane doesn't date. Lay off him."
Joe lets him go, but is still staring at him as he says, "How do you even know that places exists."
"I read."
"You read?" Joe asks. "Read what?"
"Reddit."
The last time they'd all gone out drinking they'd ended up at a crowded, neon-lit club with music that had pounded through Shane's head until his eyes stopped working. He's done a little research, since then, on quiet places to hang out with his friends. A bar that only seats twelve sounded perfect.
Joe gives him a strange look before he shakes his head and says, "I was thinking the jazz bar at the Brookstreet."
He flares his hands out and dances his fingers as he says the word jazz, and Rose laughs at him.
"No, seriously," she says. "Where do you want to go."
Joe pouts, lips pursing dramatically as he huffs. He says, "I am serious. As much as I love taking my beloved ninety-six home after a night out, I'd like to not risk passing out and ending up in Stittsville."
"That was once!" Shane says, feeling the blush creep up his neck. "You took me to Hull, it's your fault. How was I supposed to know— "
Rose reaches across to grab Shane's arm and he goes quiet. She says, "Okay, so Bierhaus then. We literally only go to Bierhaus when we're in Kanata. You're the one who said you don't want pitchers, there aren't really any other options."
"We can't go to Bierhaus," Joe says, his eyes flickering up to meet Shane's and then snapping away. It takes him a minute to understand what Joe is trying not to say.
"It's fine," Shane says. "We can go to— "
"No, we can't," Joe interrupts. He looks over at where Rose is starting to form her obvious question, one Shane hopes Joe isn't going to answer, but Joe keeps talking before Shane can tell him not to. "The Cens are playing Boston tonight. Home game. The entire front wall's a TV, and you know they'll have the game on. Don't do that to him."
Her eyes go sad, and if there's one thing Shane hates more than the idea of being in the same room as tonight's game on the biggest TV in the city, it's the idea of being pitied. "It's fine," he repeats, shaking away from Rose's touch.
"It's not fine," Joe says. "I don't want to go there. What I want is one: a good drink, two: no sad Shane puppy eyes, and three: somewhere with good music. Thus: jazz bar."
"At the Brookstreet?" Rose repeats. "The hotel? You're sure? That's what you want?"
"It is," Joe says, nodding, like he's someone used to getting what he wants.
And since he is, all Rose and Shane do is sigh and, after sharing a sarcastic eye roll, agree to go with him.
⟨X⟩
The bus ride to the hotel takes forever, but it's an easier trip to do sober and surrounded by friends than drunk and alone. Shane's done it both ways, he knows. When it eventually drops them off, a short walk away, Rose takes the opportunity to ask Joe one final time if he's sure about this grand plan of theirs.
"I'm sure," he says, walking just a few steps ahead of them down the narrow, only kind-of plowed sidewalk. He pauses for a second and then says, "Look guys, I know it's not really your scene. But my opportunities for live music are pretty limited, especially this time of year. I'm desperate for inspiration for my short program for Sochi. Coach wants me to do something baroque. Again. So just— let's try it, okay? And if it sucks, it sucks, and I'm sorry we'll never come back again."
"If it sucks, you're buying," Rose says to his back. He laughs.
Joe strikes a pose, so suddenly Shane almost walks straight into him. "I thought I was buying anyway," he says. "I'm the one with sponsorship money coming. This is probably the only time in my whole career I'll make any money doing this. Just you wait until you see how good this ass looks in Lululemon— "
"Shane's ass is better than your ass," Rose interrupts. Shane can feel his neck flush.
"Then Shane can get a Lulu contract in a regular year, not now while they're getting ready to book all the pre-Olympic stuff," Joe says. They continue walking. "It's too late for him to steal my spotlight. The rest of the country will simply have to live in their ignorance."
That sentence earns them a glare as they walk up towards the lobby, just in time to get into earshot of a stern older man in a full suit.
"Sorry," Shane says, nodding his head to the man as they pass him. "The rest of the country is great."
The automatic doors barely manage to slide closed behind them when Rose and Joe double over in laughter. "Did you seriously just tell that guy the rest of the country's great?"
Shane shuffles on his feet. In moments like these he feels it more acutely, the line between them and him. Everything he understands, the small circle of it, and the overwhelming pressure of everything he does not.
"Rose, don't be mean to the baby," Joe says, still laughing as he straightens. "He's just trying to be polite."
That’s the truth of it, really. Shane is trying. He’s always trying. Even when things are supposed to be easy, surrounded by his friends.
"He's succeeding," Rose says. "Such a good Canadian boy."
The hostess at the stand outside the jazz bar at the other side of the hotel lobby gives them a weird look when they ask for a table. She still seats them, close to the bright red piano, empty on a small raised stage.
"Music starts at six," she says, handing them menus. "Your waitress will be by shortly."
The lounge is almost completely empty, low white leather chairs scattered around metallic tables. The circular central bar is the only thing producing significant light, a bright blue that feels asynchronous to the rest of the decor. Shane has to look away from it. The fireplace is easier, gas flame set burning a warm orange.
Joe makes a pleased sound as he reads the drinks menu. "An apple mojito," he says. "Now that's what I'm talking about. This is why we go to places with class."
Rose snorts. "I've seen you take a tequila shot off a girl's tits," she says. "What do you know about class?"
"And then I turned around and did one out of a guy's bellybutton, what's your point?" Joe says. "Don't shame me."
The waitress comes up to their table before the argument can devolve, a haggard looking middle-aged woman with grey hair pulled back into a ponytail. "Can I start you off with some drinks?" she asks.
Joe smiles at her. "I'll have an apple mojito— " he jerks his thumb towards Shane "— and this guy'll have a dark and stormy."
"I— What?" Shane says. He has no idea what that is. He only drinks a handful of things, normally. Water. Coffee. Beer, at a bar, Rickard's if they have it. Ginger ale, sometimes, when he's celebrating.
"Just trust me bud," Joe says, patting him on the shoulder. "You'll like it, promise."
"I'll have a blue moon," Rose says to the waitress, handing her the drinks menu.
The waitress nods and says, "I'm going to need to see some ID."
She looks extra closely at Shane's, back and forth between the card and his face before she seems to accept it. When Joe hands her his, her face lights up. "Joe Lavoie, the figure skater?" she asks. "My daughter loves you."
He's already reaching into his bag for his ever-present sketchbook. "Would she like an autograph?" he asks, looking up at her with a camera-perfect smile. It's always been strange to Shane, to watch the media training mask come up over his friend's face. It's becoming more and more common, the closer they get to the Olympics. This time next year it will be unbearable.
Joe hands the waitress the signed torn-out piece of paper almost before she finishes enthusiastically thanking him, talking about how thrilled her daughter will be. She walks away smiling. Shane watches her go.
"Why do you look like that?" Joe says to him, laughing.
Shane doesn't know what he looks like, but he can imagine. "It's just weird," he says. "That people recognize you."
"Not all of us were built for fame, buddy," he says, clapping Shane on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Not a lot of people asking math guys for autographs."
The waitress brings them their drinks, and the conversation changes.
⟨X⟩
Shane does like his drink, which turns out to just basically be ginger ale with rum. Joe explains it, but the ingredients get lost in Shane's head as he takes a second sip. It doesn't matter. What matters is the ginger sharp against the back of his tongue, masking the burn of the alcohol. Joe gloats about it for a few seconds, when it's obvious he likes it, and then the music starts.
The singer is good, a woman with a deep, rasping voice, accompanied by a younger woman on the piano and a man on a bass. They play classics, most of them Shane recognizes, but can't name, from the old records at his grandfather's house. Soft, crooning, things. The volume is just high enough to block out the conversations of the scattered middle aged couples around them, without being too loud to hear Rose make jokes.
They go like that for a while, ordering another round of drinks and snacks for the table. His friends know him too well to make fun of him when he orders edamame and the hummus plate for them to share. They even convince him to have a mozzarella stick. Just one.
The whole thing is better than Shane expected it to be, and he feels himself relaxing into it. Smiling. Easy.
After a few hours he excuses himself to the washroom, and it isn't a lie. He doesn't feel like he needs to escape, or find quiet, like he usually does on nights like these. They're going to have to come here again, if this is what it's like. Over the music, he hears his friends laugh.
⟨X⟩
He stops at the bar on his way back to the table. The bartender agrees to pour him just a glass of the ginger beer from the dark and stormy, hold the rum. He does it without making a face, either, which immediately earns the entire establishment more points in Shane's head.
Someone comes up beside him. Orders a brand of liquor Shane's never heard of, on the rocks, charged to a hotel room. The bartender gives them both their drinks at the same time. Shane's, bubbling and golden with a lime slice in it. The man's, crystal clear with a single, large, ice cube.
Shane recognizes him moments before the man turns to look at him. He tries not to follow the news, but he knows who won the first round draft pick the year he was supposed to. Before everything fell to pieces. His nose is crooked, but his eyes are bright. He's looking at Shane like he's something worth considering.
"Ilya Rozanov," the man says, offering his hand to shake.
Shane takes it, feeling the familiar hockey calluses on his skin. "I know," he says. It's not what he meant to say.
Rozanov's eyebrows go up. "You do?" he says. "Don't seem like the type."
“The type?”
"To hang around at the hotel where the players are staying,"
Shane almost doesn't understand what he's talking about before his eyes flicker over the group of young women in the corner of the bar, all softly curled blonde hair and anxious smiles. They're glancing over at them— at Rozanov, really, and then turning back towards each other and giggling. He feels his face flush.
"That's not— " Shane starts, and then interrupts himself. "I didn't know this was where the players stayed."
Rozanov hums. "Sometimes it isn't. Is better than the other one. Less crowded."
Shane doesn't have anything to say to that, not really.
"Your girlfriend is pretty," Rozanov says, nodding towards Rose before he takes another sip of his drink. His lips come away shiny. Shane does not stare at them. He has had so much practice learning how to not want things.
"She's not my girlfriend," he says instead.
Rozanov smiles. "No?" he says. He nods instead at Joe, "Boyfriend?"
Something cold runs down his spine. He doesn't normally think about what Joe looks like, but Shane watches him now, gesturing broadly as he talks to Rose, sipping at his bright green apple mojito. He swallows and doesn't make eye contact with Ilya Rozanov as he says, "Definitely not."
"Then why are you here?"
He seems interested. Maybe he's bored. He's holding his glass in one hand, loose and easy. Shane wants to feel those calluses again. He looks away from Ilya Rozanov's fingers and back up at his face. "We wrote our last exams of the semester today. We're celebrating."
"Here?" Rozanov says, looking around at the almost-empty bar. He laughs and continues, saying, "Not much of a party."
He considers Shane again, for a minute, and something in his face changes. Shane looks away from it. Takes a sip of his drink. Wishes he had told the bartender to make it with rum. Two drinks is usually his limit, but the easy feeling is fading and something new is settling in his stomach. Low and dark. He starts to think about what to say to make his excuses to leave. Shane isn't good at people— not usually, but he knows what a look like that means. All the reasons a player would hang out at a bar alone after a game.
Rozanov says, "Do you want to change that?"
Shane feels his skin twitch at the tone of his voice. It should be surprising— the offer. Who it's coming from. But when Shane looks at Ilya Rozanov he sees it. Not anything like what he sees in Joe, but it's there. The hungry edge of him. Over a thousand men play in the league each year. Shane is good at statistics.
He should have known he wasn't going to be the only one with this secret.
Ilya Rozanov isn't looking at him like it's a secret, and that's what decides it. Shane tries to match his smile, but he knows his own face well enough to know it doesn't even come close. Still, Rozanov's eyes get darker.
"Eight seventy-one," he says before tipping back the last of his drink. Shane allows himself, this time, to watch his throat work. Rozanov slams the glass down on the stone bartop and continues, saying, "My hotel room. If you want to come, wait fifteen minutes. Say goodnight to your friends."
And maybe it's just because Shane is exhausted. Maybe it's because he stepped onto a rink this afternoon. And maybe he just wants it— because there has always been something stubborn in Shane Hollander. Something just as hungry as what he'd seen in Ilya Rozanov's eyes. Something else, desperate and trying to claw its way into any aspect of this life he can get his fingernails into. Even if it's not his. Will never be his. If this is the only way he's going to be able to touch it, well—
So be it.
⟨X⟩
His friends buy his excuses. He's never been one to linger on a night out.
"You sure?" Joe asks.
Shane nods his head and says, "Yeah. Ninety-three'll be here in like six minutes. Don't worry about me. I'll see you guys later, don't have too much fun."
The lights are still low and getting lower, the man playing the piano switching into slower songs as the night winds down. Joe laughs at him, sketchbook pulled open on his lap, rough figures dancing across its surface, and that means at least something has gone right tonight.
Maybe two things. Or maybe Shane is making the worst mistake of his life.
It doesn't stop him from turning away from them, waving at Rose and pulling his coat over his shoulders. Joe offers him a scarf and he shakes his head no.
Shane goes all the way outside, through the lobby doors and into the roundabout outside the hotel. He stands there, for a second, like an idiot, before he pulls out his phone and looks down at it. He jerks, like he's surprised, and turns back inside. Nobody is watching him, he's sure. Still, he forces a concerned frown onto his face as he goes back into the hotel and turns, instead, towards the elevators.
He doesn't have to wait long, after he hits the call button, and nobody questions where he's going or what he's doing here. There isn't even anyone in the hallway. Nobody comes out of the bar. It's a Tuesday night and the hotel is quiet.
Inside the elevator his nerves kick up. This is something he knows he's always wanted, distantly, in some back-corner part of his head, distracted, first, by hockey. And then, by the lack of it. He's already failed his parents once. Not lived up to their expectations. This is a smaller crime. But it still feels like one.
Then he thinks about the look on Ilya Rozanov's face, and tunnels under the university, and how some days, all he wants to do is reach out and wrap his fingers around the furnace pipes. Let himself burn.
He runs the number through his head as the floor counter climbs upwards. Eight seventy-one. Eight seventy-one. He practices his excuses in case he gets it wrong— knocks on the wrong door and looks into the wrong face. He works in software, a co-op student at Blackberry. He's here on a meet and greet trip from the campus in Kitchener. He must have the wrong floor. Shane Hollander is so sorry.
Eight seventy-one.
The doors open. The hallway is empty.
Eight seventy-one is at the end of it. Next to the emergency stairs. Shane breathes out. Practices his excuses. Comes up with a backup excuse, this is his girlfriend's room, he's been drinking. He doesn't feel like he's been drinking. His hand shakes when he raises it to knock. For a second, a long one, he almost turns around.
His knuckles hit the door. Loud. And again.
Someone inside moves. He could still make it into the stairs, if he runs and his knee doesn't give out.
The door swings open and Ilya Rozanov smiles at him.
"Now is a party," he says. Shane follows him into the room. He takes off his shoes. They stand there, for a second, close but not touching.
"Aren't you worried about them— " Shane says, gesturing back towards the closed door, and the hallway beyond.
Rozanov shrugs, nonchalant. "I am the best player in the league. If they have a problem with my habits, they will stop winning. That is their choice."
He says it like it's so easy. Maybe for him it is.
"But I am from Russia. I will play for the national team in Sochi," he continues, before Shane has the chance to ask any more questions. "It will be best if we are— discreet. You understand?"
Maybe not so easy, then. Shane nods.
"You didn't tell me your name."
Shane blinks. Breathes out. "Shane Hollander."
Some part of him expects Rozanov to recognize it, remember the rumours and the excitement and the news articles, but nothing about his face changes. He steps closer and says, "It is good to meet you, Shane Hollander."
There's a single king bed in the middle of the room in front of a bright red accent wall. Rozanov turns away from him and walks towards it, stripping off his shirt. Underneath, the muscles of his back move. He will expect Shane to do the same.
He probably expects this is something Shane has done before.
"You don't have a roommate?"
Rozanov looks back at him over his shoulder and says, "I snore."
Shane laughs. He knows when he's being lied to— at least sometimes. Good players get good accommodations. That's a rule he remembers. Rozanov says he's the best. If the rumours are true, the things his parents say when they think he isn't listening, then there's no argument. Nobody on the ice who can hold a candle.
Shane takes his coat off. Thinks about hanging it in the closet, almost does, but then he catches Rozanov watching him and throws it over the chair instead.
In the low light, Rozanov's skin gleams golden. With his pants slung low on his hips, he walks back towards where Shane is still just standing there. Staring.
"Nervous?" he asks.
Shane thinks he should be, but he isn't. Uncertain, maybe. He bites his lip. Lets himself want it. Rozanov grins.
“You say stop, I stop,” Rozanov says. “You push me away, I stop. Easy.”
Shane nods and Rozanov steps closer.
“Otherwise,” he says, low in Shane's ear, and his hands burn on Shane’s waist, even through his shirt. “I don’t stop.”
"Okay," Shane says, tilting his head back, and that's all it takes. Rozanov mouths at his neck, a long line up to his jaw. Shane makes a high sound, unbidden, when his teeth catch the shell of his ear. His hands come under his shirt, teasing along the waistband of his jeans.
Shane finds his own hands and puts them on Rozanov's waist, the back of his neck, pulling them closer together.
And then they're kissing— hot and heavy and wet. It breaks only long enough for Shane to pull his shirt over his head, throwing it onto the same chair as his coat. Rozanov is on him again in an instant, with more teeth, one of his hands in Shane's hair, tangling, the other coming down to cup his ass, fingers firm enough that they threaten bruises in the morning.
Shane gets his own hands into the waistband of his jeans, thumbing the button. "Do it," Rozanov says into the humid space between them. "I want to see you."
"You too," Shane says, and they separate, breathing heavy. The fabric drops down his thighs. He steps out of his jeans and tries not to think about the scars on his knee, the thick pale ropes of them. What they give away. He worries, only briefly, that Rozanov will ask, but Rozanov isn't looking at his knee, he's looking at Shane's mouth, his chest. This close together, Shane can hardly see their feet at all.
"Touch me," Shane pants, in his underwear in a hotel less than twenty kilometres from his childhood home. "Please."
Rozanov's hand cups him, pressing the heel of his palm into Shane's cock as he grinds against it. He slots their mouths together again, biting at Rozanov's lip. Shane's hands grab at his pecs, working both nipples between his fingers and Rozanov uses his spare hand to do the same. Shane could get off like this, he realizes. He's not even naked yet. They're still standing. He says, "Stop, wait."
Rozanov steps back, not completely, but his hands come away and Shane almost whines. "Not like that," Shane says, moving to the bed. "Not yet."
"Were you going to come, Hollander?" he asks with a smirk. Shane doesn't bother to answer him, stripping off his underwear and throwing them to the side. Trying, and failing, to keep all his clothes in one pile.
"Come here," he says, sitting on the bed and fighting the embarrassed urge to cover himself. He's hard, achingly hard, and he puts a hand on himself just for the relief of it. Two fingers, up and down, slow.
Rozanov watches him with the same hungry eyes from the bar.
He rummages around in his bag for a second and then comes back with a condom and small bottle of lube, throwing them onto the bed beside Shane. He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and pulls them down, kicking them away. He stands, the hard length of his cock bobbing against his chest. Flushed dark and shiny at the tip. Shane feels his mouth water.
Rozanov steps between his legs, crowds himself over Shane. He spits into his hand and reaches down to grab both of their cocks, rubbing them together. They fall back onto the bed. Shane moans on a particularly rough up-stroke and he feels, more than sees, the way Rozanov smiles against his teeth.
It's different than doing it himself. The slide of skin. The heat of it. Shane hears it when Rozanov clicks the lube bottle open. The slide between them gets better. Easier. Then Rozanov's hand goes lower, past Shane's heavy balls to his perineum, and when all Shane does at the feeling is moan again, lower.
He needs it more than he's ever needed anything before in his life. A desperate, empty thing. "Please," he hears himself beg. "Please."
Rozanov's wet finger touches him where he's most exposed and Shane whines. Pushing Shane's good knee up into his chest, Rozanov slides his finger inside. It's not enough. Rozanov must be able to read his face because he slides a second one in beside the first and the stretch burns in the way he needs. He claws his fingers into the muscles of Rozanov's shoulders. Feels the muscles move as he works Shane open.
"You love this," Rozanov says into his mouth. "Look at you. Begging for it."
What Shane answers him with isn't anything close to words.
Rozanov's fingers disappear and Shane whines again, until he looks down the length of his body to see how Rozanov is rolling the condom over his cock,
He presses the tip of it to Shane's hole, pauses for a second to look at Shane's face, and then grins, pushing in. It is everything, and like nothing he's ever experienced before. So different from silicone, the heavy heat of it. The way Rozanov groans as he slides inside, until his hips are pressed right up against Shane's ass, as close as he can be. "Fuck, Hollander," he says. "You're tight."
He feels tight. Coiled, like a wound spring. "Move. Rozanov, fuck me."
So Rozanov does. Fast, and hard, with his hands bruising on Shane's skin. The rhythmic slap of them together the only sound in the room over their heavy breathing. For the first time in a long time— years, maybe— Shane forgets about his life outside this moment. All he is is a body, pleasure in flesh, and then something in his knee slips where Rozanov has him pushed apart. Shane grits his teeth, shifts Rozanov's weight, and the new angle has both of them gasping.
One of Rozanov's hands down to grab his cock, stroking in time with his thrusts. Rozanov smells like sweat, the plastic of new shoulder pads, and smoke.
"Did you win tonight?" Shane hears himself ask, all breath.
Rozanov pauses when he hears it, cock almost completely out of Shane's body. He teases the head around Shane's hole, slipping in the mess of lube. "We did."
And then he pushes back in, all the way to the hilt, and Shane bucks, back arching off the mattress. He's making sounds, he knows, high pitched as Rozanov drives into him.
"Do you like that?" Rozanov asks, twisting his grip on Shane's cock. "Being fucked by a winner?"
The calluses on his fingers catch on the sensitive skin and it hits him all at once. Shane comes— whiteout— all-consuming— onto himself.
Rozanov fucks him through it with long, deep strokes, until he shudders and stills, panting, braced on his forearms on top of Shane. They breathe like that, together, until the aftershocks pass, sharp jolts of electricity that buzz up Shane's spine. This is what it's like with another person.
His eyes are still closed when Rozanov groans and rolls off of him. It's cold, in the hotel room. Without his body heat. Shane shivers.
"Some party," Rozanov says as he stands. The mattress dips and Shane opens his eyes to watch him leave. "Congratulations on your school."
He pulls the condom off and ties it, throwing it into a trashcan near the desk.
Shane wonders if this is the sort of thing you tell people— when it's your first time. He almost opens his mouth to say it when Rozanov walks around the bed and into the bathroom. Shane hears the sound of running water and closes his mouth. He has better things to worry about than a hockey player's reaction to his vulnerability. Ilya Rozanov is not a man with a reputation for sweetness. He knows what tonight was.
Besides, Shane can't ignore the pain anymore, radiating out from his knee in a low burn that means nothing good. That's a higher priority than a man he'll never see again.
He throws the edge of a blanket over his nudity, his mess of scars. The edge of it lands in the cooling puddle of cum on his stomach. So be it. Hotels have lots of blankets. The stretch takes him twisting, slotting the muscles and tendons back into alignment. It twinges the place at the core of him that's still open and sensitive. If he were doing this properly he'd be suspended between two chairs, or stacking one ankle over the other. But he doesn't have the luxury of properly, right now. It doesn't mean he's not going to have to walk out of here. He feels it when it goes right again, a snapping kind of relief.
Coming back into the room with a towel in his hands, Rozanov says, "What are you doing?"
"Old habit," Shane says, bending his left leg instead, feeling the pull through his hamstring and into his spine, just for the symmetry of it. When he's done he takes the towel from Rozanov and wipes himself off. He looks unimpressed by the blanket. The wet spot.
"To stretch after sex?" Rozanov asks. "You said you were a student, not an old man."
"After exercise."
Rozanov laughs. "You would be a good hockey player. The coaches always nag about stretching."
Shane's body is so full of old hurts that this one almost doesn't land. "You're the expert," he says.
Rozanov's phone buzzes on the side table before he can say anything in reply, multiple times in quick succession. Shane watches him thumb it open, the way his face twists as he stares at it for a second before pulling it up to his ear and turning away.
He says something into the receiver that Shane can't understand. He sounds angry. Maybe that's just how Russian sounds.
It goes on for several long minutes, so Shane busies himself with getting dressed, re-doing the stretches around his knee before he trusts it to hold his weight. By the time he has his coat on, his hands stuffed into the pockets so he doesn't have to find something else to do with them, Rozanov is off the phone.
Still naked, he stares over at Shane like he's thinking about asking for another round. Shane looks at the red wall behind the headboard instead of the look in his eyes. If he doesn't go home tonight his mom will worry. She'll ask where he's been. Rozanov laughs at him, and the look fades.
"Give me your phone," he says, holding out his hand towards where Shane is still trying to find his excuses to leave.
Shane just blinks at him. Once, twice. He manages to stammer, "Wha— what? My phone? What for?"
"You want to do this again?" Rozanov says, gesturing with his fingers. "Phone. My number."
Shane's hand is already wrapped around it in his pocket and his body moves before his head catches up. He hands it, unlocked, to Rozanov.
All his old hockey photos are still in an album, but they're buried. The background is just a picture of the lake, frozen over and covered with drifting snow. There's nothing immediate on the device that will give him away. The hole in his chest. Rozanov taps at it, pulls open the messaging app, and then hands it back.
"Lily," he says. "My contact. Discreet. You will be Jane."
"You want to see me again?" Shane asks, because it's suddenly the only thing he can think about. Feeling Rozanov's skin under his palms. The familiar way he cuts his hair. The way he smells, still, somehow, like the only thing Shane Hollander has ever wanted. Getting the chance to get this close again.
"Boys in this country like to talk," Rozanov says with a shrug. "Gossip, all of them. Not you."
"How do you know that?" Shane asks, and he means it to come out like a joke, the way Joe would say it, but instead it comes out half-choked, like a confession. Rozanov only stares at him.
"I know," he says as he finally gets out of bed, sliding his legs into a pair of boxers.
He walks Shane the few steps to the door. It's crowded, in the narrow space, with the both of them. Rozanov is taller than him, by an inch or two. Shane pauses as he goes to open the door. In another universe, if this were something it isn't, this is where Rozanov would bend down to kiss him.
"Is not serious," Rozanov says instead, gesturing between them. "This."
Shane laughs and it comes out sounding nervous. He looks over Rozanov's left shoulder, into the dark bathroom. "I know. You're a busy guy."
"Hockey is my life," Ilya Rozanov says to him as Shane pulls open the door and steps outside. "I don't expect you to understand. Good night, Shane Hollander."
It's the last thing Shane hears before the door closes behind him, and then he's alone in the hallway. Walking away.
⟨X⟩
He hits the call button for the elevator as he closes his eyes and finally allows the emotion to break across his face, knocking the back of his head into the wall, listening to the whir of the lifting machinery behind the doors.
He doesn't cry, won't cry, not here in this outdated hotel where all his dreams are sleeping, but it is a near thing.
The elevator dings open to his left and it's not empty. It should be empty, this late, but three men inside are laughing, reeking of beer. Shane doesn't know what his face is doing as they stumble past him, but one of them peers down at him, eyes blurry, and says, "Stop glaring at me, bud. You're on the team, right? We don't play again until next week. You rooks need to lighten up."
Shane only steps around them and into the elevator, pressing his thumb to the door close button. It holds open for longer than it should, long enough for Shane to watch them laugh somehow louder, bright with alcohol and victory. They forget about him before he stops being able to see them, so sure they are of themselves. He hears one of them say, "Yo, dude, do you think we could like— get some chicks up here? I know cap said no distractions but like— "
When the doors finally close, all Shane can see is his own reflection, distorted back at him in dented steel. He watches the floor, instead, as the elevator brings him down.
The air outside the hotel bites at his exposed skin. He pulls the collar of his coat higher up his neck and wishes he'd taken Joe's offer of a scarf. When he calls it, using the last of his phone's battery, the automated voice on the other side of the bus stop line tells him the last bus of the night is due in eight minutes. It's not long enough for Shane's pride to lose the battle against the cold.
Leaning against the pole, all he does is stand there and watch the wind in the trees, the way the snow drifts over the leafless rose bushes in the gardens. Eventually, the bus comes to stop in front of him.
He flashes his student pass at the driver, stepping up into the warmth. The bus is deserted, all bright lights and blue fabric seats. Shane chooses one against the window, close to the back. The driver watches him sit down and opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but he seems to decide against it, choosing instead to just close the door and turn on the engine. They pull away from the hotel.
Shane watches the suburbs blur past the window without really seeing them.
After only a few minutes, he pulls the cord and gets to his feet, swaying, as the bus pulls into the station. There's another bus that will take him closer, due to arrive in twenty minutes. It's not worth standing around for. So he makes the easy decision to walk the rest of the long, frozen, way to his parents' house, where all that waits for him is this life he has, now.
As if it could be anything else.