Chapter Text
“Okay, I can do this,” Shane tells his reflection.
He’s dressed in a burgundy tuxedo so dark you can only tell it isn’t black when it’s under the right lights. His mom said it would bring out the golden tan of his skin. She has to be right because Shane feels like he should be paler than a ghost, especially under the shitty bathroom lighting, but he looks like he usually does. Just, like, a really panicked version of his usual self.
“I can do this,” he says again, curling his fingers tighter against the edge of the sink until his knuckles go white from pressure. He nods, trying to feel as decisive inside as he sounds. “I can do this.”
Regrettably, his reflection doesn’t suddenly come to life and give him an encouraging pep talk.
“I can do this,” he repeats one more time, just for luck.
***
He can’t fucking do this.
There’s what feels like a million alpha scents oozing out from the cracks of the ornate double doors he’s paused in front of. Logically, he knows it’s just a hundred. A hundred alphas and their beta chaperones. A hundred alphas carefully vetted by his mom even though omega matching balls are sixty years out of date. They’d whipped this one up special, just for him.
Because he’s Shane Hollander.
He’s got two Stanley Cups and he’s the face of so many different brands that had wanted to show they were all about the ‘modern omega’. Shane sure as fucking hell hadn’t felt like a modern omega when Crowell had whipped out an archaic rule from the depths of the league handbooks.
Omegas must be mated by the age of 25 to be eligible to continue to play.
The NHL doesn’t want to actually lose their precious golden boy, but the board is full of old white men who would’ve debated the stupid regulation until Shane’s 25th birthday passed. Initially, they’d tried to figure something out quietly - his mom had asked if he had any alpha friends who might be willing to help. But secrets aren’t really secrets in the age of social media and practically the whole world had known in under a week. So many emails from different alphas had come into his official account that the free storage had run out.
His mom had taken action at that point, sitting him down to tell him that the best way to control this was an old school omega matching ball. It would let her and his dad do the tedious groundwork of whittling down potential alphas and it would stop the random ones trying to accost him in the streets. Under some very old laws, omegas announced for matching were off limits; any unwanted interaction after the announcement was considered a felony.
He’d thought about it. He could technically ask one of the guys and he was able to think of a couple that might say yes because of their years long friendship. But the more Shane thought about it, the more he didn’t want a mate that he was just friends with. Call him a romantic, but he wants his mate to be someone who actually loves him and who he loves in return. And it turns out, outside of hockey, he doesn’t really know anyone. So he’d agreed to his mom’s suggestion.
As soon as he had agreed, she’d started organizing with the precision of a veteran military tactician. The brands were all over the idea and there were boxes of things for him to wear for the ball arriving almost daily. The NHL also loved it: some of the alpha applications were from cherry picked players, the idea of a purebred hockey child too good to ignore.
Shane doesn’t know who made it through his mom’s process. He hadn’t wanted to know. She’d set down a stack of papers in front of him two nights ago, each one with a gallery of photos of the alpha and some general physical stats and then answers to personality questions - like a Hinge profile pulled into the physical world. He hadn’t read any of them. He hadn’t wanted to read any of them. It had felt too much like willingly picking up a live grenade with the pin pulled.
He kind of wishes he’d skimmed them now. The trepidation sliding like ice in his veins might not be as bad if he knew who the fuck was going to be on the other side of that door. The most he really knows is that some of the NHL guys have to be there and that the oldest alpha in the room is 35. It feels like not enough and too much information all at once.
Shane feels like a bucket of chum about to be thrown into a school of sharks. His suit feels like a skin tight prison but also like he’s drowning in miles of fabric. He loosens the collar a little, hoping it stops the feeling of being choked. It doesn’t help, just knocks his bow tie askew and he can’t be bothered to fix it.
“Honey,” his mom says softly, soothingly, as she glides up. “You ready?”
Shane shakes his head. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to do this. All he wanted to do was play hockey and then his body had betrayed him eight years after the designation test was supposed to be final.
His mom hugs him. She smells gently of osmanthus and sakura, the same light florals she’s smelled of his whole life and he presses his face into her shoulder like he’s five again and just scraped his knee on the playground.
“It’s okay, Shane,” she says, sounding far more confident than Shane feels about this whole operation. “It’s mostly for show. You can talk to the guys after this. I’m sure one of them will be willing to help.”
Shane nods against his mom’s shoulder. He knows the guys will help, but that doesn’t fix the overwhelming sensation that he’s slipping a leash onto his own neck. She releases him and pats his hair back down, smoothing her fingers across the spot that always sticks up after they hug. Shane tries not to hyperventilate as she fixes his bow tie. Thankfully, she leaves it in its slightly loosened state, opting to just straighten it out.
“Alright,” she says, crisp and no nonsense. “Let’s do this.”
***
Ilya doesn’t want to be here.
Here being a huge hall with ninety nine other alphas and their chaperones all mingling while they wait for Shane Hollander to arrive.
Well.
He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little curious what Hollander smells like. It’s probably something chocolatey and warm, just like his stupid freckles and his stupid brown eyes and his stupid fluffy hair. He takes an angry sip of champagne, glowering out at the room. Both the alphas and their chaperones look polished to a gleaming shine, every pair aiming to hook a prize whale.
Ilya spies Vaughn across the way, standing by Scott Hunter, and amends his estimate. Almost every pair present is looking to land the NHL’s biggest prize.
Everyone knows the story. Shane Hollander, a beta who stands toe to toe with alpha Ilya Rozanov in the NHL rankings, goes down with a sudden case of supposed food poisoning right before the first game of the playoffs in 2015 and, because keeping something secret is useless nowadays, his new designation goes raging through the internet like wildfire by the next day.
Montreal hadn’t paid the omega naysayers any mind. They’d just published a professional statement about not tolerating designation discrimination, pumped Hollander full of military grade suppressants, and dropped him back onto the ice the next game, where he’d proceeded to be faster, meaner, better than ever before, as if he knew he had to prove himself all over again. He’d done it again at the next playoff game, and then one more time and Florida was out of the running with a sniper’s pinpoint efficiency. Hollander had kept up that finely honed, almost lethal edge for the rest of the series, and then he was hoisting the cup and kissing it, the first omega to ever do so.
His face had been flushed, proud and happy, freckles standing out even more from the exertion of the game. Frustratingly, Ilya had found himself mesmerized by the way Hollander’s nose scrunched as he shouted, smile on display.
Hollander has made Ilya frustrated before and he has furtively (angrily, confusedly) jerked off with Hollander’s brown eyes and lush mouth starring in his mind. That first game after his designation went public, when Hollander had absolutely murdered Florida, he’d scored four goals before halftime. The clip from that game that mattered the most to Ilya was the one of Hollander staring up into the Jumbotron camera after his fourth goal, his eyes dark and intense and daring anyone to say he wasn’t worthy of standing on the ice. Ilya’s gotten himself off to that single image - stamped into his brain - more in the last year than he cares to admit.
And now he’s here, one of a hundred alphas all meticulously chosen by Hollander’s terrifying mother. He hadn’t really been given a choice in being tossed into the pot when the announcement of Hollander’s omega matching ball happened. The NHL had told him he was being sent in as a potential mate and that was that. No room for argument even. They’d sent in the application before bothering to inform him. He knows why they did it, too.
The prospect of a thoroughbred hockey dynasty is too good to pass up on. Hollander is strong, robust, and the NHL probably thinks they can get multiple children out of him because of it. Never mind what Hollander himself wants, no, the NHL wants a hockey dynasty and they can’t perceive that maybe that’s not what everyone wants. Ilya hasn’t paid a ton of attention to omegas in the NHL in the past, but he’s willing to bet that there’s more than a handful of them that never got handed a mating ultimatum simply because they weren’t good enough to matter. Not like Shane Hollander matters.
Ilya surveys the room again, noting that, aside from Vaughn, there’s at least three other NHL players that he can currently see. All of them are either Hollander’s teammates or friendly acquaintances, which makes Ilya the outlier. Even the PWHL isn’t immune to the siren call of nabbing Hollander, judging by the four tall women he recognizes. Ilya knows he’s here not because Yuna Hollander wants him here, but most likely because the NHL stipulated something about letting him be there if she wanted control over everything else.
He takes another angry pull of champagne, trying to ignore its too sweet taste coating his tongue. Svetlana puts her hand on his arm and he exhales noisily through his nose.
“Slow down. You don’t want to be drunk before the man of the hour gets here,” she scolds in Russian, her tone mildly amused.
Ilya scoffs.
“We are Russian. It takes more than bubbly water to get us drunk,” he replies.
He drains the rest of the glass to underline his point and Svetlana rolls her eyes at him. God, he really wants a glass of good vodka. Even a beer would suffice, but the wait staff circling only have platters of tall thin glasses filled with pale yellow bubbling liquid. He grabs another one from a passing tray just to have something to hold.
Murmuring starts up by the door and Ilya looks over to see Hollander and his mother making their way into the room. Hollander is making a face Ilya is intimately familiar with. He’s seen it so many times through the last seven years that he can conjure it from memory. It’s the same face Hollander makes when he squares up against Ilya on the ice. All the same determination and laser focus until Ilya chirps him and wins an eye roll and the world’s tiniest smile as a prize before the puck drops.
Fuck.
Fuck.
This is a terrible time to have the revelation that maybe, just maybe, incredibly infinitesimally, he might like Shane Hollander. And now there’s a chance Hollander will turn that eye roll and smile on another alpha? Someone who isn’t Ilya?
Absolutely not.
Hollander is his fucking rival. He needs to be on the ice, moving like he was born with it in his blood, not chained to some halfwit loser who’ll nag him into stepping off. Maybe he’ll end up with one of his teammates and they’ll have a very vanilla life and the fire that burns inside Hollander will slowly go out under the pressure of starting a family.
Fuck that. Ilya can do better than anyone else in this room, in the world even. He won’t lose to some prissy little doctor or lawyer or whatever the hell the other alphas in this room are. They can’t provide Hollander the kind of fuel he needs in a mate. But Ilya knows that he can keep Hollander’s fire stoked, feed it for as long as Hollander wants to play hockey or until injury forces his retirement. He knows every way to get under Hollander’s skin, every tell, every minute reaction he has and how to invoke it. Like fucking hell is he going to let Hollander sink under the dragging undertow of some stupid alpha who doesn’t know.
He polishes off his new glass of champagne and starts moving toward Hollander.
“Where are you going? I thought being here was just for show,” Svetlana asks as they wind through the bodies. She keeps up with him effortlessly, face haughty and imperious, and the crowd subtly parts before them. Ilya contains a sneer; any alpha cowed by Svetlana isn’t worth Hollander’s time anyway.
“Change of plans,” Ilya mutters, focused on the nervous fake smile Hollander gives some simpering twit of an alpha.
He barely has time to see Svetlana’s brows climb into her hairline before he’s making an impulsive decision he can’t undo.
“Hollander,” he calls out and the alpha part of his hindbrain preens when Hollander whips around, drawn to his voice like a magnet.
The fake smile slides off his face, replaced with that half irritated half competitive look, the one that makes him look alive instead of a doll being dragged around for show. The look he seems to reserve especially for Ilya.
“Rozanov,” he greets, mild, placid, a little bit wary. Yuna Hollander looks a lot more calculating, her eyes narrowed like she’s just figured out what Ilya has figured out about himself. He doesn’t want to know what she saw on his face when Hollander turned to look at him so he schools his features into a characteristic smirk. Hollander’s hackles go up, like they always do, and he says, still so polite even through gritted teeth, “Didn’t know you were going to be here, Rozanov.”
Ilya sidles forward, cutting in front of the bland, boring, blonde alpha in a beige suit to lean in and quietly purr, “Should have guessed, no? We have a lot of…heat between us.”
Hollander’s face goes brilliantly pink as he jerks back. His mouth is parted around an insult, Ilya’s eyes flicking down to memorize the shape of his lips, before he remembers where they are and settles for clamping his jaw shut to glare.
Ilya’s smirk widens.
Perfect.
Let Hollander remember what real passion is. Let him remember that Ilya is the only one who can truly work him up. That knowledge alone will weed out almost everyone in the room now that Hollander isn’t drowning himself in the well of golden boy expectations.
Ilya winks, enjoying the way Hollander bristles like a cat, and then moves to Yuna Hollander, bowing slightly and holding his hand out. She places her own into it, palm down, brows raised like she knows exactly what he’s doing, and he brushes a formal kiss across the back of her knuckles.
“Mrs. Hollander,” he greets, riding the high of Hollander’s eyes narrowed at him in outrage. “I don’t believe you’ve met my chaperone, Svetlana Vetrova, before.”
***
Shane is still seething. He doesn’t know the names of anyone he’s been introduced to in the last half hour because he’s sinking a phenomenal amount of brainpower into trying not to think about Rozanov’s infuriating smirk. He’s not thinking about Rozanov’s low voice, accent curling around square English words to round them out, rumbling about heat between them. Nope. Not at all.
Nor is he thinking about the way Rozanov’s suit looks sculpted onto him, perfectly tailored to show off his broad shoulders and strong frame as he moved between Shane and the other alpha like he had every right to brazenly interrupt.
And then!
Rozanov had used his goddamn audacity to try to charm his mom. All picture perfect manners and kissing the back of her hand and presenting his chaperone like he’d stepped out of an 1800s etiquette book on courting. He’d been polite for the entirety of his introduction and, just as his mom had turned to move onto the next alpha, he’d winked at Shane again behind her back.
His mom pinches him in the side lightly, reminding him that they are still actively at an event and that he should be paying attention instead of getting lost in thought. The fact that it’s Rozanov he’s getting lost in thought about is something she doesn’t need to know.
Shane nods as the next alpha introduces himself and his chaperone. He has no idea how many alphas they’ve spoken to - or really, have spoken at him because he’s about as useful in conversation right now as a doorstop - nor does he know how many are left. Every one of them is washed out under the echo of Rozanov’s voice snaking through his head.
It doesn’t help that Rozanov seems to be perfectly positioned to be exactly in Shane’s line of sight. There’s a crowd of people between them but somehow, all he can see is Rozanov leaning against the far wall with a glass of champagne, whispering with his supermodel of a chaperone. She leans in to whisper something in Rozanov’s ear and he chuckles, shaking his head. The sight of it makes something weird and misshapen take up residence in his chest, a strange pulsing thing that makes him angry and nauseous all at once.
Rozanov looks up then and the room narrows as they lock eyes. His mom is saying something, something he should probably pay attention to, but all he can process is the way Rozanov brings the long flute of champagne to his mouth and tilts back exaggeratedly to take a steady pull while maintaining eye contact. His throat moves mesmerizingly and Shane swallows reflexively, his own throat dry. Rozanov clearly sees because that infuriating fucking smirk makes a reappearance and Shane rips his eyes away, hot under the collar and confused.
Thankfully, his mom directs them into a new area that puts Rozanov out of sight, which hopefully means he’ll also be out of mind.
“Hey Holzy!” Vaughny envelopes him in a hug and back pat that Shane returns. Next to him, Scott Hunter waves with a quick smile. As an alpha, he’s a bit of a standout in the spread of beta chaperones. Usually, Hunter’s designation as an alpha would disqualify him from the role, but he’s mated, which makes him an acceptable choice.
“You made the cut?” Shane asks, teasing.
“Oh fuck off,” Vaughny laughs. “I’m amazing.”
They both know he’s here because the NHL forced an application for him (among others that Shane is desperately trying not to think about) and because his mom thought he might want to end up with a friend if he couldn’t choose anyone else. Being mated to Vaughny could be fun, but the guy is straighter than an arrow. It’s not like they’d be a bad match, but Shane knows it would never be able to progress beyond friendship.
He feels Rozanov’s presence like sparks across the back of his neck before Vaughny’s eyes flick to the left and he tips his chin to warn Shane. Hunter stands a little straighter, eyes crinkling at the corners in suspicion. Shane tosses a prayer into the universe to please fucking let Rozanov be less of an asshat than usual. The last thing this night needs is Rozanov starting shit with Hunter until they end up brawling.
“Rozanov,” Vaughny says, his smile wide and easygoing. The tension of Rozanov’s arrival fizzles like a lit fuse in sand and Shane has never been more glad for Vaughny’s magical social lubrication abilities.
“Vaughn,” Rozanov replies, inclining his head. His breath ghosts over Shane’s temple and he swallows, trying not to think of how close they have to be standing for him to feel that. There’s no way for him to move either: his mom’s to his left, Vaughny’s in front of him, and Svetlana is angled to his right. He’s trapped in the conversation, hyper aware of Rozanov at his back, how close he is with every exhale. “You are here, too? I thought NHL had standards.”
“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too, Rozanov.” Vaughny laughs and Rozanov cracks a smile.
Rozanov is a big warm presence at Shane’s right shoulder as he and Vaughny razz each other. He’s close enough that his scent envelopes Shane like a blanket. There’s the same smoky expensive cologne he always wears, with the occasional intoxicating undertone of something Shane can’t quite describe. A small folded square brushes into his palm and he closes his fingers over it instinctively. It’s a piece of napkin that he quickly shoves in his pocket, panicking that someone might have seen Rozanov pass it to him. Rozanov continues bantering with Vaughny without any indication that he’s just slipped Shane a note.
A quick, furtive look around tells him that no one else has noticed either. His mother is checking her phone, Hunter is taking canapés off a waiter’s tray, and Svetlana looks supremely bored, staring off at one of the stained glass windows and sipping at her glass.
Shane excuses himself for a moment to get something to drink and ducks into a secluded alcove tucked just out of the way of most of the crowd to unfold the napkin with nervous fingers. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Maybe an insult that Rozanov decided needed to be on paper or maybe it’s just a piece of trash because he wanted to fuck with Shane.
1814, 9pm
He inhales sharply and scrunches the napkin back up before unballing it again. The message remains unchanged, in the same blue ink he’s seen Rozanov sign a million autographs in. Shane stares at the note, breathing shallow and shaky. It can’t possibly mean what he thinks it means. Sure, maybe he can’t think of another interpretation for the note, but that can’t possibly mean Rozanov actually wants to…
His head prickles and he looks up to see Rozanov staring at him. He’s leaning against the balustrade, one arm around Svetlana’s waist as she checks her phone. Shane stops breathing as Rozanov’s eyes track down to his hands, to the white flash of the napkin in his fingers, and then back up to his face. He holds that eye contact, mouthing ‘well?’ with a questioning little nod. It’s only when Svetlana turns away from her phone to ask Rozanov a question that the spell breaks, the moment snapping in two like a wire drawn too tight, as Rozanov looks away to engage with her. Shane remembers he needs oxygen and he whirls around, shoving the note back in his pocket. He gulps for air, willing his hands not to tremble as he walks over to the non-alcoholic mini bar and gets a glass of ginger ale from the person manning it.
The rest of the ball is a blur, mostly faces he doesn’t care about; three more hockey guys; Rose Landry, somehow, who smells like strawberries and tells him about being a Michigan girl with three brothers so of course she knows hockey; four PWHL players who look exactly as enthused about this circus as he feels but who are nice enough.
The last guy of the night is tall, tall enough that Shane has to look up to meet his eyes, and his voice is deep and warm. His hair is slicked back but strands are already escaping to curl over his forehead, hanging in a way that looks roguish and handsome. He’s got big hands, high cheekbones, and green eyes that sparkle delightedly when Shane introduces himself, like he’s truly happy to be meeting Shane because he’s Shane and not just because he’s a high profile omega. Visually, he looks like he could be Rozanov’s brother. He smells like something tart and refreshing and if that fucking napkin with blue ink bleeding into it wasn’t burning a hole through Shane’s pocket, he’d be more interested.
His mom makes a speech to close the night out and Shane offers a smile to the room at large, his eyes still fixed on Rozanov. It’s like a homing beacon, every time he tries to look away, he finds his gaze wandering back, searching for Rozanov in the crowd. It doesn’t help that Rozanov seems to have no compunctions about staring right back at Shane, and why would he? He’s a prospective alpha at an omega matching ball, no one is going to call him out for looking at the omega it’s for.
The speech finally ends and Shane and his mom walk out to the elevators. He mumbles responses to his mom’s chatter as she tells him that she thinks the ball went well. He barely hears what she’s saying as she walks him back to his room, too in his head about the note in his pocket. The goodbye is automatic, muscle memory piloting him as he leans in to kiss her cheek and tell her good night. As soon as he shuts the door, he yanks his jacket off and fumbles the note out. Shane paces back and forth, acutely aware of the napkin’s texture against his fingertips.
It’s a terrible idea. What the fuck was Rozanov thinking?
What the fuck is Shane thinking? He shouldn’t even be considering this.
He should throw the napkin away and go to bed and wake up in the morning to go over the profiles and pick out the bare minimum of five people he wants to court him.
“Yeah,” he says to the empty room, hand hovering over the trash can. “Yeah, just throw it away. Just throw it away.”
For some reason, he can’t make himself unpeel his fingers from his palm.
***
Ilya looks at the clock again. Still 9:03. He feels his mouth twist unhappily.
It was a long shot to begin with. Trying to tempt Hollander. Picture perfect, scandal free Hollander who’s probably never considered being pinned down by another man, alpha or not. Never mind that he’d spent most of the night either staring at Ilya or looking around for Ilya. Hollander had certainly looked like he’d been considering it when Ilya had caught him looking at the note in the alcove. The way his eyes had been wide and surprised as he’d looked back, like he couldn’t believe that Ilya would want him. As if he had no idea about how he looked, the way the deep, subtly reddened black of his suit had made his skin glow gold under the room’s lights.
9:04.
Ilya sighs gustily and shakes his head. Hollander isn’t coming so he might as well shower and get ready for bed. It’s disappointing and something else he can’t quite name. Spurned? Rejected? He shakes his head again to clear it. There’s no reason to feel rejected. Hollander hasn’t removed Ilya from the running yet. Just because he’s not showing up for a tryst that was admittedly a spur of the moment choice even on Ilya’s part doesn’t mean rejection.
Even if that’s what it feels like.
Determined to stop thinking about Hollander and his freckles, Ilya strips and steps into the bathroom. He’s just about to turn on the water, hand on the tap, when there’s a quiet knock. Ilya almost brains himself on the shampoo dispenser with how quickly he straightens up. He hurriedly wraps a towel around his waist and half sprints to the door. A quick look through the peep hole reveals a distorted Hollander in a hoodie, glancing nervously back and forth down the hall.
He hauls the door open.
“Hollander,” he says, trying to sound cool and sexy instead of overly eager.
“Fuck,” Hollander says quietly and bullies into the room.
He stands there, hands twisting in his hoodie pocket, chewing nervously on the hood string. His eyes don’t seem to know where to land, running down Ilya’s body to the towel before jerking back to his face, bouncing to his chest, and then to the room beyond.
“This is such a bad idea,” bursts out of Hollander, teeth still holding the hoodie string. His eyes are wide, wildly akin to a startled deer, and Ilya is torn between the urge to hunt and the urge to soothe.
It’s too early to decide which way to go yet, so Ilya hums and takes a step closer. Hollander’s eyes flick up to his face, his mouth drops open, and the hoodie string falls out. He doesn’t move away though.
“Rozanov,” Hollander says, soft and breathy. It’s a good sound, one that makes his alpha instincts roll over and request for Hollander to put Ilya’s head in his lap and stroke his hair. It also makes him want to spread Hollander out on his bed and nip and kiss and fuck until all Hollander can say is Ilya’s name in that cottony, hitched way.
“Hollander,” Rozanov replies, a low rumble pulled from deep in his chest.
Hollander swallows thickly, eyes still going back and forth between Ilya’s face and the towel as Ilya continues to prowl forward.
“This is a bad idea,” Hollander says one more time even as his hands slide around Ilya’s waist. Ilya hums again and slots his hand under Hollander’s chin to tip his face up.
“I think is excellent idea,” Ilya murmurs before slotting their mouths together. Hollander groans, melting into the kiss, hands immediately trying to pull Ilya into him.
He’s clumsy, unpracticed, and Ilya has to remind himself not to just slam the smaller man against the wall and take what he wants, what the alpha part of his brain urges him to do.
“Take this off,” he says against the corner of Hollander’s mouth as he runs his hands under the hoodie. His fingers come into contact with smooth warm skin and the sound Hollander makes is shocked and wanting.
“Yeah, okay, yeah,” Hollander says and scrambles to pull his hoodie off, Ilya’s hands following the expanse of skin upwards as it’s revealed. He leans down to press a kiss to the hollow of Hollander’s throat, feeling the way his breath shudders through him.
To his disappointment, Hollander only smells of hotel soap when Ilya breathes deep against his collarbone. In theory, he knows that strong suppressants wipe out scent entirely, but this is the first time he’s actually experiencing it. It smells wrong, too clinical, too clean, like the essence of Hollander has been hidden away under a thousand layers. It’s okay though. If Hollander doesn’t have a scent of his own for the time being, he can wear Ilya’s. The thought has him groaning into the crook of Hollander’s neck and he feels the way Hollander’s head tips to the side to give him space.
Fuck, he might die if he doesn’t kiss Hollander immediately.
Ilya slides his hands into Hollander’s hair, diving back in for a desperate kiss that gets matched. Hollander tastes like ginger ale and Ilya chases the taste, sucking on Hollander’s tongue. He backs off with a nip to Hollander’s top lip and steps backward - Hollander stumbles out of his slides to stay with him, hands tight on Ilya’s hips for balance - and leads them to the bed. Ilya lets himself fall back onto it and Hollander lands on him with a quiet “oof”.
He’s a delicious weight on top of Ilya, his heart hammering hard enough that Ilya can feel it where they touch. His brown eyes are wide, dark with banked lust, and his lips are parted and Ilya gives into his urges to slide his thumb into Hollander’s mouth. He sucks on the appendage, tongue licking across the pad.
“Okay, yes?” He asks, brain scrambling to form something coherent in English. Hollander looks very okay but he wants to know. He needs proof Hollander wants this, wants him. A quick nod and a humming mmhmm as Hollander continues rolling his tongue around Ilya’s thumb are all he needs.
Ilya tucks his other hand to cradle the base of Hollander’s skull, fingers playing in his hair. He presses his thumb against Hollander’s bottom lip and Hollander goes with it easily, mouth slipping open under the slight pressure. His freckles are a constellation across his cheeks, illuminated by the orangey glow of the nightstand lamp. Ilya brushes his fingers over them and Hollander closes his eyes, leaning into the touch.
“Take your pants off,” Ilya orders, low and raspy. Hollander scrambles off to obey and Ilya slides up the bed to watch him yank his sweatpants off and fold them.
It’s cute. It’s annoying. It’s annoying how cute Ilya finds the view of Hollander carefully pleating his sweatpants into thirds and then folding his underwear in half to stack on top. He places the clothes on the TV console and turns back around, hands clenching and unclenching nervously by his sides.
Ilya settles against the mountain of pillows and drinks his fill of the sight, eyes roaming over hard earned muscle padded by a layer of fat. He traces the swell of Hollander’s chest, the slopes cutting across his hips to point to his cock, hard and bobbing in the air. He lets his gaze roam down the trained thighs, the taper to the knees, and the curve of his calves. His eyes linger on Hollander’s socks, pulled halfway up his shins, and Ilya resigns himself to the fact that he finds it adorable.
“Come here,” he growls, crooking a finger to beckon Hollander forward.