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Ilya loves Shane like this.
He loves Shane in all his forms.
Shane is as beautiful on the ice as he is curled up on the couch, a small furrow in his brow, glasses perched on his nose as his eyes track the words of his latest book.
He is beautiful when he’s relaxed in the passenger seat of Ilya’s car, fingers intertwined with his own over the gearshift.
He is beautiful when he’s laid out on the dock of the lake, basking in the golden hour sunlight, bronzing his skin.
Ilya loves Shane in all his forms, it is true. But he loves Shane like this, because it is one of the few sides of Shane the rest of the world never sees.
Ilya loves Shane like this—naked and trapped in Ilya’s arms, looking up at him with glassy eyes through a heavy-lidded gaze, hanging onto every word, every praise, every soft command.
Shane is beautiful, gorgeous, pliant, and Ilya’s. Only his, all his.
Ilya doesn’t even care that he is still in his dress shirt and a pair of slacks from the team dinner—the latter growing uncomfortably tight—because he has a handful of Shane’s bare ass squeezed in one hand, jaw gripped in the other, as he easily wins the battle for dominance they play out in their kiss.
Ilya has spent all night watching his husband, waiting impatiently to be able to bring him home and take him apart.
Even well into their first season on the Ottawa Centaurs team together, their relationship no longer a secret buried under their hearts, Ilya is still not used to having Shane in his proximity for long periods of time, where they can touch publicly, but nothing more.
It’s a constant tease.
Ilya spent the entire night aching to undress his husband from the second he had helped button up the shirt, but he had to behave in front of his team.
But now, locked away in their shared home, he doesn’t.
Ilya can feel Shane hard and leaking against him, can hear the moans dragged from his lips at the flex of his fingers on his skin, and well, he wants more.
He spent all night watching his gorgeous husband, and now he wants a show.
“On the bed,” Ilya orders against Shane’s throat, lips brushing against the flushed skin.
Shane complies easily, protesting slightly at the loss of Ilya’s hands on his body before turning to walk towards their bed. Ilya gives Shane’s ass a parting tap, light and playful, that makes Shane huff, arousal barely masked in exasperation.
Ilya doesn’t follow but strides over to the corner of their room, where they have an admittedly useless chair tucked away in the corner.
For decoration, according to Shane.
According to Ilya, and much to Shane’s annoyance, it is perfect for piling up dirty laundry he doesn’t want to deal with.
For the purposes of tonight, however, it is perfectly situated in the corner, opposite the bed, giving Ilya a full view of where Shane will be lying.
“I want to watch,” Ilya declares as he turns to sit.
His ass barely makes it to the seat of the chair before he is back on his feet.
Because Shane, who had settled against the headboard while Ilya’s back was turned, is now scrambling, one arm reaching out uselessly, as if he can grab a hold of Ilya from across the room.
There is a look in Shane’s eyes—now wide and shiny and scared—that Ilya can’t name but already knows he hates.
Ilya’s heart is in a vice grip at the sheer panic painted on Shane’s face. It only eases slightly as Ilya grabs a hold of Shane’s outstretched arm, having nearly teleported across the room the second he had caught a glimpse of Shane’s distress.
“Hey, hey,” Ilya calls softly, trying to get through whatever fog of anxiety has settled over Shane.
“Is okay, moya lyubov,” Ilya reassures, the Russian term of endearment slipping out.
He knows Shane finds it grounding, a soft reminder of who he is with. No one else has ever called him that. No one else ever will.
“What is wrong?” Ilya asks, but Shane just shakes his head and tugs Ilya down on top of him.
Ilya catches himself before he crushes his husband completely, looking down at Shane, whose expression has smoothed slightly now that he is pressed under Ilya’s body.
Ilya searches Shane’s gaze for an answer to his earlier panic, but can’t seem to find one. Just as fast as the panic had settled over Shane, it now seems to be gone.
“Please,” Shane begs. His voice is shaking, but it isn’t in distress.
The falter in his words is a tremble Ilya knows well, one that follows him in his dreams. His voice is dripping with desire and unsteady with a need for release.
“‘Please’ what?” Ilya asks. He isn’t meaning to be cocky. He wants to know exactly what Shane wants because Ilya can’t work out what had just occurred moments before, and he needs to be sure.
Shane huffs anyway, like he thinks Ilya is playing dumb. He cants his hips up, pressing his obvious hardness against the thigh Ilya has wedged between his legs.
“Wait a second,” Ilya requests. He grips Shane’s jaw and studies his expression carefully. “What happened?”
“You were too far,” Shane complains. It sounds almost like pouting.
“Not far now,” Ilya soothes, brushing his thumb across Shane’s jaw line.
“Perfect now,” Shane agrees.
Ilya can tell from the sharp focus in Shane’s eyes that he means it, that it isn’t the need for a release or the headspace Shane often slips into when they are together like this.
Ilya accepts the clear declaration as proper, clean consent. He gives Shane’s jaw a parting squeeze before reaching up to twist his fingers into his hair, tugging his head back to expose his throat.
Shane bares his neck easily, allowing Ilya to trail a line of filthy kisses up the column of smooth skin, starting low, nipping lightly at Shane’s collarbone. When he reaches the placejust below Shane’s ear, relishing in the gasp it draws out of his husband, Ilya asks again.
“You still want?” The light tease is back in his voice, but the question is real.
“Yes,” Shane agrees eagerly. “I still want. Please.”
And then Shane demands, “Touch me.”
Ilya can’t help but smirk at the way Shane swings through attitudes, from needy to commanding in a matter of seconds.
Ilya is no longer calling the shots tonight, it seems, and maybe that’s all that Shane’s anxiety was about. He needed something and thought he wasn’t going to get it.
But there is nothing Ilya loves more than giving Shane everything he wants, everything he needs, so he leans his body weight down, pressing his thigh hard against where Shane is aching for contact.
“This?” Ilya asks, and now he is teasing again. “This what you want?”
“Yes,” Shane gasps on a moan as he arches further into the touch, lips parted, and head tilted back.
Ilya takes the bait, settling further onto Shane, blanketing his body with his own.
Shane’s fingers tangle in Ilya’s curls, tugging him impossibly closer.
“Just don’t leave,” Shane begs quietly.
The words tug painfully at Ilya’s heart. He presses their lips together, biting at Shane’s bottom lip, letting the faint pain be a reminder that he is still here before tangling their tongues.
Ilya longs for the off-season, when he can mark every inch of Shane’s skin with his teeth and lips and tongue—dozens of reminders, of promises, that he will never leave etched onto Shane’s body—without scarring the team in the locker room the next day.
For now, Ilya relies on his words. First in Shane’s language and then his own.
I’m right here. I’m not leaving. I’ll always stay. I promise. I promise. I promise.
There’s no better feeling than going to bed with Shane in his arms, clean and saited and sleepy in a post-orgasmic haze, but Ilya only sleeps for a couple of hours before he wakes with an ugly feeling settling deep in his gut.
He dreams of Shane, naked and sprawled out on top of freshly tucked hotel sheets. Usually, that image is a good start to a dream, but as the scene plays out, Ilya realises it wasn’t a dream at all.
It is a memory that Ilya wakes to.
Ilya plays that night after the awards ceremony over and over in his head as Shane sleeps silently on his chest. He turns the memory around, forward and backwards, inside and out, analysing Shane’s every expression.
Ilya was an ass that night. He knows this. He was drunk on the victory of the awards, scared to return to Russia, and even more terrified by the feeling of warmth blossoming in his chest at the sight of silky black hair and a freckled smile.
He knows he was a dick at the end, kicking Shane out, but he was on the verge of a tipping point. He could feel the numbness already taking over, the fog of depression that blankets all of his senses.
It happens from time to time, he knew that then as much as he knows that now. But then he didn’t have Shane or Galina to ease it, to help him understand it, to help him cope before he self-imploded.
Ilya was being tugged under rapidly, the trigger of returning home and the dawning realisation of the utterly destructive possibility of accepting his increasingly undeniable feelings for Shane.
Both were wrecking him equally, pulling apart his brain. He wanted nothing more than to lie in Shane’s arms and forget, but he couldn’t. Shane wasn’t his.
Ilya understands that in Shane’s mind, just like his own, that night doesn’t top the list of best hook-ups.
As far as Ilya knew, though, Shane enjoyed the sex.
Ilya has always been good at reading him, and as he replays that night in his head, the heated look on Shane’s face, the moans and gasps and begs pulled from his lips, Ilya is sure he hadn’t read it wrong.
But Ilya can’t reconcile that night with the look on Shane’s face just a couple of hours before.
Although he didn’t mean to recreate that night, it was almost the same setup.
Ilya had been fully dressed, watching from a chair at a distance, as Shane lay on a large, empty bed entirely naked and gave Ilya a show.
He feels sick at the thought that he was wrong that night, that Shane had hated it, but went along with whatever Ilya had ordered.
They had a deal that Ilya would get a reward for winning.
But a deal struck earlier in the night, where Ilya dictated all the terms, wasn’t consent, and he can’t remember ever asking, ever checking in as the night dragged on.
There is a dread-drenched thought plaguing Ilya’s mind that Shane felt like he couldn’t say no, because Ilya never gave him the chance.
Ilya suddenly can’t handle the idea of lying in this bed with a sleeping Shane pressed against him any longer, so goddamn trusting and vulnerable.
He eases his way out from under his husband and shuffles through the silent house, grabbing the pack of cigarettes he has hidden away in the empty dresser of the guest bedroom.
Anya perks up from her dog bed in the living room as he crosses the bottom floor. He lets himself out the back door, not allowing Anya to follow. He’s anxious about her inhaling any secondhand smoke, even if they are outside.
Ilya settles on the steps of the porch and watches the sun slowly climb above the horizon. He lights what he is sure will be the first of many cigarettes and takes a long drag.
He is always promising Shane he will quit, but hasn’t ever been able to shake the habit for very long.
He guesses that’s why it is called an addiction.
It won’t be long before Shane wakes and tracks him down. Ilya needs to figure out what he is going to say, because he can’t let this hang unspoken.
If he is right, Ilya doesn’t know if he can live with himself; he doesn’t know how he can keep going, how he can ever trust himself to touch Shane again.
Ilya won’t make this into Shane’s problem to deal with, but he needs to know. He needs to know so he can walk away, so he can punish himself for hurting the only person he has ever loved.
“Hey,” Shane calls with a sleep-mused voice as he shuffles across the deck towards Ilya.
Ilya has to work overtime not to freeze. He deliberately unlocks his muscles one by one. He doesn’t react as Shane settles next to him, plucking the cigarette out of Ilya’s hand and smothering it out against the wood of the deck.
He tosses the half-smoked cigarette into the pile Ilya had been creating with a faint noise of disapproval at the three buds already there.
“Bad day?” Shane asks softly.
Ilya watches from his periphery the way Shane tilts his head to examine him. He knows Shane is hoping to be able to meet his gaze, but Ilya isn’t ready for it.
“No,” Ilya denies.
It’s not like today is a great day so far, but between the two of them, a bad day means depression day, and Ilya won’t lie about something like that.
This isn’t depression. This is retribution.
“Ilya,” Shane probes with just his name, reaching out to grip Ilya’s jaw and force him to turn his gaze. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Ilya wants to flinch away. He wants to ask Shane how he can call him that, how he could marry him, and how he could still love him.
But Ilya promised himself he wouldn’t make this into something Shane would have to deal with. Ilya won’t make Shane comfort him over this.
So he takes a deep breath instead and starts on the speech he had spent the early hours of the morning writing in his head.
“Last night,” Ilya starts. Shane’s brow furrows in confusion, so Ilya changes tactics and starts again.
“Do you remember that night in Vegas, after the award show?”
“Yeah,” Shane agrees. “Of course I do. I remember every night we were together.”
“Did you—Did I—” Ilya cuts himself off.
He shakes his head in frustration, tugging Shane’s hand away from his face so he can look away.
So much for rehearsing.
“Last night,” Ilya starts again. “I did not mean to, but it was kind of the same, yes? You on the bed, me watching. But the look on your face—” Ilya shakes his head, again, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Did you not enjoy it, back then?”
Shane huffs. It sounds almost like a laugh, so much so that Ilya’s gaze snaps back up to Shane’s to confirm. His husband is smiling.
“Ilya, that was some of the hottest sex we’ve ever had,” Shane says with a mild tone of disbelief, like he can’t imagine why Ilya is asking.
“So–So you enjoyed it?” Ilya asks again.
“Yes,” Shane stresses, but then his eyes dance away from Ilya’s face.
Ilya’s heart drops at the obvious lie.
“But?” Ilya presses.
“No buts,” Shane insists. “The sex was amazing, I promise, Ilya. It always is. It’s just afterwards, I didn’t feel great.”
“What do you mean? Hurt?”
“No,” Shane stresses. “It was just a shitty time in our relationship. Still new-ish, and there had been this weird distance for like months leading up to that night. The sex was mindblowing, but we barely talked, and we didn’t even kiss, so afterwards I just felt a little gross. You very clearly didn’t want me hanging around. You could barely look at me, and I don’t know. The feeling of not being wanted after just really stuck with me. It tainted the rest of the night, I think.”
Ilya mulls that over. The now-routine comfort after they have sex is so important to both of them, but there was so little of it back then when they were just stealing small moments. Neither of them was ever willing to stick around for very long after.
It was too risky. They had early flights and games to get ready for.
Even still, Ilya can’t imagine leaving Shane like that, after a night so intense, so demanding. He might not have taken advantage of the deal he had proposed, but he still hurt Shane, and the guilt is nauseating, suffocating.
“I am sorry,” Ilya apologises, but it doesn’t feel like enough. “I hurt you.”
“Ilya,” Shane murmurs, his tone slightly exasperated as he tugs on one of Ilya’s hands. “We spent the first decade of our relationship hurting each other just as much as loving each other, and the love was always unspoken.”
Ilya turns to look at Shane again, meeting his husband's steady gaze.
“We were scared, and it made us cruel. There were times when you pushed me away, but there were equally as many when I ran away. You cannot lie to me and say you were unaffected. I know you too well.”
Ilya thinks about that day when he asked Shane to stay, but Shane had fled with their combined release still covering Ilya’s stomach and hand, the bed still unmade from their nap, the ingredients of their lunch still strewn about on the counter.
He thinks about the way he stumbled through cleaning the aftermath, a scolding shower turning his skin an angry red, a tightness in his throat that he resented, the way he scrubbed off any evidence of Shane’s presence in his house.
It doesn’t ease the guilt—just because Shane had hurt him, it doesn’t absolve Ilya of the greater sin of hurting Shane—but it does make it easier for Ilya to breathe around the heaving rock of ugly emotions wedged in his stomach.
Ilya slumps sideways into his husband, leaning his head on Shane’s shoulder. Shane is quick to wrap an arm around him, securing a grip around Ilya’s waist, pulling him in close. He buries his other hand in Ilya’s curls, scratching lightly at his scalp.
“Has this kept you up all night?” Shane asks softly.
“I slept a little.”
“Ilya,” Shane complains lightly on his name, concern leaking into his tone. “You should have woken me.”
He shakes his head against Shane’s shoulder.
“You did not see your face last night. You were scared. Of me.”
His voice breaks on the words.
Ilya knows he is like his mother. The same kind of sadness is undeniable. But he never wants to be like his father—cold and cruel to the people he is supposed to love, to care for unconditionally.
“No, I wasn’t,” Shane disagrees, tugging Ilya away from him so their gazes can meet. Shane frames Ilya’s face in his palms. “You have never scared me, you could never scare me, not like that. I needed you close last night. We spent the whole evening dancing around each other, and I just wanted to be able to touch you. I was worried doing it like that meant I wouldn’t get to have you after.”
“I will never leave you like that again,” Ilya promises.
Shane just smiles, “I know. We don’t run from each other anymore. I am not even opposed to trying it again. I just might need a little warning before and reassurance you are still there during.”
Ilya nods, filing away that information for later.
“I was worried I took…advantage of you. We made a deal, but not the same as permission, and I cannot remember even asking.”
Ilya knows this is exactly what he promised himself he wouldn’t do, fish for reassurance when he doesn’t deserve it, but Shane shakes his head in vehement refusal.
“You always ask,” Shane assures. “I have never felt unsafe with you, and I can handle myself, you know. I’m not helpless. You are a big, strong hockey player,” Shane jokes lightly. “But some say I am one as well.”
Ilya drops his head towards Shane, pressing their foreheads together.
“Okay,” he accepts.
He still feels wound up and exhausted at the same time, but the tight anxiety in his chest, the guilt in the pit of his stomach, has eased enough to take a slow, deep breath.
The rest will fade with time, with little moments throughout the day where he can prove to himself that Shane is okay, that he is right.
Shane gives him a moment to collect himself before tilting his head up to press their lips together, slow and soft and full of reassurance.
“Come on,” Shane commands as he stands, pulling Ilya up with him.
He gives Ilya a pointed look towards the cigarette buds. Ilya scoops them up and dutifully follows Shae back inside.
He allows himself to be led into the kitchen, tossing the cigarette remnants into the trash.
Shane presses a glass of water into his hands and dips his hand into Ilya’s pocket, searching around for the pack of cigarettes hiding there, and confiscates them.
Shane waits for him to drink it all before pulling him back to the bedroom. Ilya is pushed lightly into lying down under the covers as Shane sits against the headboard, pulling a book into his lap.
Ilya is a little surprised Shane is willing to deviate from his morning routine, but selfishly decides not to comment. Instead, he rolls towards his husband, pressing his face into his hip, one arm slung across his lap.
Shane drops a hand to Ilya’s hair, scratching soothing circles.
“Sleep,” Shane orders.
“Yes, sir,” Ilya mocks, but the words are already weighed down with sleep. He presses his lips to Shane’s hip, where his shirt has ridden up slightly from the way he is propped against the headboard, and closes his eyes.
When Ilya stirs a couple of hours later, it isn’t to the panic of a nightmare in the shape of a memory. He can’t remember what he dreamt of, but Shane had slid down at some point to join Ilya in sleeping, and he wakes to the warmth of his husband's back pressed firmly against his chest.
It strikes Ilya again, for the second time in one morning, the vulnerability of holding his sleeping husband in his arms. But it isn’t just the vulnerability, it’s the trust, the blind comfort.
Shane was right; they spent so much of their relationship hurting each other, regardless of intention. Ilya knows it isn’t the most sane thought, but he would sooner kill himself than hurt Shane again.
Because Shane sleeps peacefully in the circle of Ilya’s arms, knowing that Ilya will watch his back, and that is a kind of trust that would kill him to destroy.
Ilya will protect it with everything he has. He’s never been one to make the same mistakes twice.