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Ilya wakes up the morning of the Winter Classic to find snow on the ground in Boston.
He sees it for the first time from the window of his bedroom, after he’s twitched the curtain aside to peer down at the street.
The sidewalks are blanketed. The street between them has been plowed at least once, but the snow is still drifting down in fat clumps, and there’s already a fresh layer of powder coating the tracks in the asphalt.
Ilya hasn’t seen snow this deep in years. He leans his forehead against the cold window, watches his breath paint streaks across the glass.
He thinks about standing in open doorway to his childhood home, skates in hand, staring out at drifts white as the ones down in the street below, until his eyes watered, as they are watering now.
He remembers whispering impatiently back into the house, trying to call her without waking him up, trying to get to the pond before the sun rose too high and melted the ice.
Then holding his breath, until he could hear the gentle pad of her socked feet coming down the stairs.
Ilya taps his fingertips against the cold glass and lets himself smile. He steps away from the window, turns toward his bed, reaches down to grab his phone from the nightstand.
He hasn’t texted Jane in a few weeks. Jane hasn’t texted him, either. Jane’s been busy, for the last few days, attending a bachelor party in Nashville.
Ilya knows this because he accidentally followed a few Shane Hollander update accounts, when he was drunk a few weeks ago, and hasn’t gotten around to unfollowing them yet.
He doesn’t need an update account to know where Hollander will be now, the day the Bears and Voyageurs are scheduled to play outdoors for the first time in two decades.
See you soon :) he texts Jane, before setting his phone back down.
Ilya hesitates, then. He reaches down, slides open the nightstand drawer. Touches his fingers to the thin gold bracelet lying on the bottom.
He would see her woolen socks, first, through the balusters, as she came into view down the stairs. And then her hand, trailing the banister, with that glint of gold at her wrist.
Ilya fishes out the bracelet from the drawer. He doesn’t let himself think about it as he drapes it over his wrist, turns it over, uses his other fingers to awkwardly fumble the clasp shut. Then he shuts the drawer, firmly, and heads to the bathroom to shave.
*
Once he arrives at the Bears facility, Ilya finds he’s not the only one in a good mood.
The talk in the locker room is chipper and upbeat. It’s the Bears’ first game back since the league’s winter break, and everyone seems ready to get back to hockey.
Guys are passing around holiday photos, kids and dogs in Santa hats and miniature Bears jerseys. Kohn, a teenage call-up from the farm team, is showing anyone who will stop long enough to see a video of him learning to surf in Hawaii.
A staffer is bringing around matching Bears puffer jackets and hats with yellow puff balls on the top, stitched with the Winter Classic logo across the front, for them to wear during the charter bus ride to Fenway.
Marleau, tugging his own hat onto his head, says, “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you so smiley before a game, Rozanov.”
“I like snow,” Ilya says. “And I like beating Montreal.”
He and Marleau are both drawn away, then, to do media hits. Ilya, upon taking initial questions during the scrum in the hall outside the locker room, is surprised to hear one in Russian. He looks sharply up to see a newcomer, an older American guy with white hair, looking at him over his extended mic.
Ilya says in Russian, “You’re new.”
“I’m from the Washington Post,” the American says, still in Russian. “Came up from D.C. for the game.”
“Your accent is pretty good.”
The other reporters are turning to the American, now. He doesn’t look phased, just continues in Russian. “Thanks. I worked our Moscow desk for a decade, back in the 2000s. I met a guy there who used to play pond hockey with you growing up, actually.”
He says a name, then, that makes Ilya blink. “Yes. I remember him.”
“You’re about to be playing at a ballpark,” the American says. “It’s not a pond, sure, but it’s outside. Is getting ready to play in the snow bringing back memories of those days at the pond?”
Ilya is so surprised he doesn’t even hold back his smile, like he usually would in a press scrum. He dips his left hand into the sleeve of the puffer jacket, touches his fingertips to the bracelet. “Yes, actually. I was just thinking this morning about how my mother and I used to—”
A reporter in the front row of the scrum, who had been tapping at her phone, extends it now toward Ilya. Ilya’s eyes flicker down to see what’s on the screen.
It’s an audio translation app, set to record.
Ilya’s smile fades. “Maybe we can talk afterward, if you want,” he says to the American. And then he clears his throat and turns back to the rest of the scrum, says in English, “You want more quotes, to show Montreal, make them mad? You want quote about Shane Hollander? He hasn’t scored in six games, yes?”
The English language reporters are starting to nod again. Some are laughing agreeably as they shuffle closer. “I think it’s five games without a goal, for Hollander,” one of the Boston newspaper reporters says.
“Ah,” says Ilya. “Then, today, we make is six.”
*
They’ve set up the ice right where the diamond usually is at Fenway, with the sides of the rink spanning between what would have been first and third base, during baseball season, with second base somewhere beneath center ice.
Ilya, studying the rink from where he’s stepped into the home dugout, squints against the glint of the ice in the sun.
It gives him a stabbing pain behind the eyes, the same familiar pain he would have felt when he ran out onto the crest of the hill behind his house to see the frozen pond gleaming in the dawn.
Ilya touches the bracelet under his sleeve, again. Then he turns back, down the tunnel, past a hall lined by images of baseball players and into the locker room where the Bears are getting dressed.
One of the defensemen is coming around with a stick of eye black. When he stops by Ilya’s stall, Ilya turns his face up, lets Feller paint it over the top of each cheek. Then he opens his eyes and asks him, “I look good?”
Feller studies him critically. “You look scary,” he says.
“Good,” says Ilya, cheerfully, and plops down in his stall to tie up his skates. Only once they’re laced does he remember it’s been a while since he checked his phone.
Ilya reaches back into his stall, digs in the pocket of the Bears puffer jacket until he emerges with his cell.
He has no missed texts.
Ilya frowns, slightly. He unlocks the phone, checks his conversation with Jane. His last text says it has been delivered.
He hadn’t realized it, until then, but he’d also been the one to send the last text, prior to this morning. It had been three weeks ago, before the holiday break. Shane hadn’t responded to that one, either.
Ilya feels doubt prickle at the soles of his feet.
He shakes himself. They’re both busy, he thinks. Never mind that Shane is always on his phone, right before a game. Never mind that they always text each other something, anything, before playing each other.
Ilya looks down, at the glint of the bracelet peeking out from his uniform sleeve. It looks too delicate, between the stiff hem of his uniform and the swell of his glove.
He slides his left hand out of his glove, then. Carefully pinches at the clasp, pulls the bracelet loose, reaches back to tuck it carefully into the pocket of his puffer jacket.
Then Ilya gets up, tugging his beanie firmly onto his head, and bangs his stick against the side of his locker. “Alright, boys,” he shouts, as faces turn toward him. “Who’s ready to make Montreal fucking cry?”
*
It’s even better being outside in his full gear, clomping down the long rubber pathway they’ve laid out between the dugout and the edge of the rink, breath puffing out in front of him, falling snow prickling as it settles onto his painted cheeks. The crowd in the bleachers stacked around them is whistling their approval. The sun is a dim white disc stamped in an even whiter sky.
There are sweepers on the rink, skating around with brooms and buckets, but Ilya sees as he steps through the open door and onto the ice that the powder is falling quickly enough to all but obscure the blue line.
What a beautiful thing it is, to play hockey in the snow.
Montreal is already on the ice, circling for their own warmups. Ilya, skating in a loose circle around the Bears’ zone as the rest of his team piles up and onto the rink, turns his head to look.
He picks out Shane Hollander before he even sees his number, just from the familiar posture he’s standing in as he works on his usual puck-handling drills on the edge of the left-side circle.
Hollander is in a hat with a puff ball of his own, striped in Montreal red and blue. It doesn’t look like he has any eye black on his freckled cheeks.
He looks very young, with no helmet on, and his cheeks red in the snow. He looks less like a professional hockey player and more like a kid about to skate onto a pond.
Ilya turns his attention back to his own zone, joins one of the lines his teammates are forming to run through a shooting warmup.
Afterward, he takes a puck and bounces it on his stick as he glides casually back to center ice, toward where Shane Hollander is now down by the dot, stretching out a hip.
Ilya slows to a stop on the Boston side of the red line, lets the puck drop from his stick. “Hello,” he says.
Shane glances up at him, then looks quickly away. There’s snow on his hat, snow in his eyelashes. Snow melting on his flushed cheeks.
“I like your beanie,” says Ilya. He folds down one knee on the ice, begins stretching out his opposite calf behind him.
Shane’s eyes flick back to him. “It’s called a toque,” he says. He raises himself up so that he can rotate his legs, then folds himself back down to stretch out his other hip.
Ilya doesn’t like the way Shane is not looking at Ilya. He hates the way Shane hasn’t met Ilya’s eyes. He’s aware his tone isn’t as playful as it should be when he says, “You didn’t answer text.”
Shane doesn’t raise his gaze from the ice. “Go warm up with your team, Rozanov.”
“Hey.” Shane’s guard dog is skidding up to the circle, that skinny winger with the big brown eyes, the one who always rolls out his shoulders before snapping something rude at Ilya, like he’s had to gear himself up to do it. “Fuck off, Rozanov. We don’t need any of your shit.”
“I am stretching,” Ilya says. “Is illegal to stretch?”
“You know perfectly well what you’re doing,” Pike says, stoutly. Hollander is getting to his feet beside him. The guard dog turns to bump his shoulder companionably into the side of Shane’s chest.
Shane flinches backward.
Ilya’s eyes narrow.
“Oops,” Pike says. “Sorry. I forgot.”
Shane glances back at Ilya. He grimaces, like he can tell Ilya noticed that wince.
Then he turns and skates away without another word, his guard dog following close behind, until they both join in on some drill forming in front of the Montreal net.
Ilya rises from his own stretch, turns around, skates away to join the flow of his teammates skating circles around the Boston zone.
Shane had just had time off. Ilya had seen the photos on social media. He’d traveled to Nashville with his friends. He would have had plenty of time to recover from any injuries that were nagging at him before holiday break.
He would have had time to recover, unless those injuries were something serious.
*
When Shane glides in through the snow to take the opening faceoff, his gaze is fixed somewhere around Ilya’s skates.
Ilya scowls as plants his stick, behind the dot and opposite Shane’s. “You are hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Shane mutters.
“Your collarbone?”
“I said I’m fine.”
Ilya wins the draw, handily. Maybe too handily, he thinks, as he gets the puck back to the winger behind him.
It takes some of the joy away from skating in the snow, to know that Shane Hollander is skating in the snow while injured. To know that Shane Hollander had gotten injured and hadn’t told Ilya about it.
*
There’s an extra-long break between the first and second periods, so that some country act can get out on the stage they’re wheeling out onto the ice.
They’ve all cleared the rink, but some of the guys are hanging out in the dugouts to watch the performance from the side of the stage.
Ilya hadn’t been planning on staying. It seemed to him the captain should be in the locker room, following a period in which the Bears had allowed a goal without scoring one of their own.
He’s just about to head down the tunnel when he sees Shane Hollander, standing between the home dugout and the one for visitors, inside of which a few Voyageurs players have settled for the show.
Shane’s gloved hands are curled awkwardly against his thighs, like he doesn’t know what to do with them when he can’t wrap them around a stick or shove them into his pockets.
Ilya pivots from where he’s been clomping toward the locker rooms and steps down into the home dugout instead.
Ilya stomps on his skate blades past his teammates, clapping a few on the padded shoulders as he goes, until he’s climbing up and out of the other side of the dugout.
He cups his hand over his eyes, cranes his neck, makes a show of trying to get a better view of the stage. He lets that carry him forward, toward where Hollander’s standing at the edge of the covered home plate.
He can tell Hollander knows it’s him, by the way his shoulders are stiffening beneath his uniform as Ilya approaches.
Ilya leaves a good two feet between him as he halts at the edge of the diamond.
They watch silently as the singer climbs the stage, as the cheers from the crowd reverberate from the bleachers plunging upwards into the pale sky cupped over Boston like an upturned bowl.
Ilya waits until the singer leans into his mic and starts speaking, until his voice is booming from the speakers on every side of the stadium. Then he mutters, without looking over at Hollander, “What is injury?”
His peripheral vision isn’t sharp enough to make out Hollander’s expression through the snow. He can still tell from Hollander’s tone that he’s frowning. “I’m not injured,” Hollander says. “And it’s none of your business anyway.”
Ilya frowns. “Can maybe avoid hit, if I know what injury is.”
“It’s not—” Hollander sighs. “I mean, thank you, that’s nice. But it’s not an injury. It’s just embarrassing, so I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
Ilya can’t help it. His eyes slide over to Hollander, then, to see his red flush deepening in his freckled cheeks.
He can’t decide if he’s happy or concerned that Hollander didn’t wear eye black. Happy, to see his freckles. Concerned, for how his expression will look if the camera catches them on the broadcast.
Ilya imagines his brother, watching from home. He shuffles away from Shane. “Embarrassing how?” he asks, like that’ll stop Shane from noticing.
Shane must have noticed anyway, because he takes a small sideways step of his own, puts more distance between them. The music is starting, now, thumping through the stadium speakers, forcing Shane to raise his voice slightly. “Just… embarrassing.”
Ilya makes a face. It’s difficult enough to parse Shane when he’s not purposefully trying to be oblique. “You hurt yourself? Was accident?”
“No. No.” Shane blows out a sharp breath through his nose. His eyes are still fixed on the rink, on the stage, but Ilya can Shane isn’t seeing the show at all. “I… went to a bachelor party last week.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “I know.”
Shane doesn’t seem to notice what this reveals about what Ilya’s been up to on social media. “I was drunk,” he says. “We went to a tattoo and piercing parlor. I got, um, dared to get something.”
Ilya forces himself to stop looking so obviously at Shane, to move his eyes back to the stage. “You get tattoo?”
Shane coughs. “Uh,” he says. “No. I got a piercing.”
Ilya stares at the back of the stage, uncomprehending.
After a moment, his eyes widen.
He turns his gaze back to Shane. And then his eyes drop to the front of Shane’s uniform, to the left side of the Montreal crest.
To right where Pike’s shoulder had made contact with Shane’s chest.
Shane’s face is slowly turning red. “Look back at the stage,” he says, voice low.
Ilya does. He couldn’t even begin to guess what his expression looks like. He hopes it looks at least vaguely similar to that of someone who really, really likes country music.
*
After the game, standing shirtless in his stall, Ilya exchanges a few rapid-fire texts with Jane.
Come over, he writes.
The response pops up instantly. My team is doing stuff.
After.
I don’t know if I can. I’ll let you know.
I want to see.
Maybe.
I want to bite.
No.
Maybe I will kiss instead.
It’s not healed yet. And then, immediately after, It’s kind of embarrassing.
Ilya can feel a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s never in his life met anyone quite as bad at sexting as Shane Hollander. Can kiss other places, he suggests.
The typing bubble pops up, then disappears. After a moment, it returns. It takes Shane a full minute to send, Ok.
“Big smile for a big-game player,” Marleau says, clapping Ilya on his shoulder as he passes. “Always feels good to come back and beat Montreal, huh?”
“Best feeling in world,” Ilya agrees. He drops his phone into his stall, face-down, so that he can continue stripping off the rest of his snow-soaked gear.
*
When Ilya opens the door for Shane, he finds Shane standing outside like a model of contrition, with his gaze to the tile and hands clasped behind his back.
He slips past Ilya into his apartment, then pauses to toe off his shoes at the door and hang his winter coat on the peg beside Ilya’s Bears-branded puffer before wandering down the hall and into Ilya’s kitchen.
Ilya shuts the door behind Shane. Bemused, he follows.
Shane, who has paused by the kitchen island, turns around to face Ilya. “Can I have a drink?” he asks.
“Sure,” says Ilya, shrugging. “You want vodka? Beer?”
That blush rises up to stain Shane’s cheeks, again. “Water, please.”
Ilya gets him a glass. He watches with increasing interest as Shane lifts it up, takes a sip, and then tips the glass farther back so that he can gulp down the rest.
Shane puts the glass on the counter with a clunk, breathing hard. He scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth. And then he says, in a rush, “I really didn’t plan on getting the piercing.”
Ilya blinks. “Okay.”
“I was drunk, and someone dared me.”
“Yes. You said.”
“When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t believe I’d really done it. I thought I’d just dreamed it.”
Ilya studies the increasingly rapid rise and fall of Shane’s chest. He had looked up what to do for someone having a panic attack, once, after Shane had mentioned having them. He wonders if Shane would be offended if he started preparing a large bowl of ice water for him to dip his face into. “You know is okay to do something stupid,” he says instead. “Everyone does stupid things, sometimes. Even Shane Hollander.”
Shane gives a tight smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “The piercing guy took a photo,” he says. “I didn’t even notice it was happening. My friend told me after.”
Ilya says, “Oh.”
Shane’s attempt at a smile wavers. “Fuck,” he says. “Everyone’s gonna know.” He plants his elbows on the kitchen island, then, and leans abruptly forward to bury his face in his hands.
Ilya rounds the island. He gets his hands on Shane’s shoulders, pulls him upward and turns him into Ilya, so that Ilya can wrap one hand around the back of his neck and place the other over his spine.
He feels Shane turn to press his face into the side of Ilya’s neck.
Ilya says, “You know straight guys get piercings, yes?”
Shane’s eyelashes move against the side of Ilya’s neck as he blinks. “Nipple piercings?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, stroking slowly down the back of Shane’s t-shirt. “Straight guys, they have nipples, too.”
Shane gives a shivery laugh against Ilya’s throat.
“You were drunk, at bachelor party,” Ilya says. “This is normal. Yes?”
“That’s normal,” Shane mumbles into Ilya’s neck. “But—”
“Be drunk at party, is normal. Be stupid while drunk, is normal. So, not big deal.”
Shane draws away from Ilya. He steps back, but doesn’t remove his hands from where he’s loosely clasped them around Ilya’s waist. His eyes are dry, but his bottom lip is red and bitten. “The Montreal media is gonna hate it,” he says. “I might get sponsorships pulled.”
“Good thing you are rich already,” Ilya says.
Shane laughs again. His face is relaxing, now, his breathing slowing to a more normal pace. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Yes,” says Ilya. He slides his hand away from Shane’s back, reaches up to get a light grip under his chin. “I am always right. Is time you learned this.”
Shane blinks up at Ilya. “I would’ve checked with you,” he says, quietly. “If I’d actually planned on doing it.”
Ilya studies his pretty face. His eyes are big, his expression earnest. “Checked?”
“Yeah,” Shane says. His blush is getting hotter, now, the skin beneath his freckles turning as red as it had been out in the snow. “I would have asked you what you thought about it, first.”
Ilya frowns. “Is your choice.”
“Well, yeah,” says Shane. He tries to turn his face away, but Ilya tightens his grip, holds his chin firmly in place, so that Shane is forced to keep facing Ilya as he mutters, “But I would’ve wanted to see if you’d like it.”
“Hm,” says Ilya. He slides his other hand down from the back of Shane’s beck, moves it gently over the front of his shirt. Closes his fingers in a gentle, careful squeeze over the left side of Shane’s chest, cupping his hand to avoid pressure in the center.
He can feel the hard outline of the piercing, just barely scraping his palm.
Shane’s mouth drops open.
Ilya reaches his thumb from under Shane’s chin, tugs at Shane’s lower lip. “Show me,” he suggests, his tone as light as he can manage. “I will tell you if I like it.”
*
Shane tries to pull the curtains, once he’s in Ilya’s bedroom. Ilya, already naked and sitting on the side of the bed, says, “Don’t. Please.”
Shane darts a look over his shoulder at Ilya, then looks distrustfully back at the window.
“I like to watch the snow,” Ilya says.
Shane’s expression softens. He lets go of the curtains. He steps away from the glass, though, gets as far back from it as he can before he starts undressing.
Shane is winter-pale. He has put on weight, since Ilya last got to see him naked. It might be because he’s gotten stricter about his diet; Ilya always hears him talking about it in interviews. Ilya can see the extra muscle in the flex of his thighs, in the ripple of his tight ass as he turns to put his folded pants on Ilya’s dresser.
Shane shrugs off his shirt, then, with his back still to Ilya. He folds it carefully on top of his pants before turning.
There’s a thick white square of gauze taped over his left nipple.
Shane follows Ilya’s gaze down to the bandage. “Extra padding,” he says, sounding apologetic, for some reason. “You know, for the game.”
He reaches down, then. Carefully peels back the tape.
It’s a barbell. He’d gotten a little gold barbell.
His nipple looks soft, swollen. It hasn’t healed yet. The delicate red skin is still distended around the post.
Shane puts his hand on his left pec, splaying it to avoid brushing the piercing, his pointer and middle finger spreading into a vee on either side. Ilya can see the tips of his fingers trembling, slightly, against his smooth skin. “Well,” he says. “What do you think?”
Ilya finds his throat is abruptly very dry. He swallows, licks his lips.
Shane is watching Ilya’s mouth. His fingers sink into his pec, pressing white divots into the skin on either side of the piercing. “You can’t touch,” he says.
Ilya doesn’t quite recognize the voice that emerges from him, when he speaks. “I can’t?”
“It’s not healed,” Shane says. His eyes are very bright. He’s straightening the hunch of his shoulders, like he’s starting to feel more confident this is going to go well. “The piercing guy said no one can touch it for…” His voice falters as Ilya rises from the bed and takes one step across the carpet toward him.
Shane backs up, less like he’s retreating and more like he’s looking for something to brace himself against. His free hand, groping back behind him, finds the edge of Ilya’s dresser. “Six months,” he finishes, breathlessly.
Ilya crowds him against the dresser, pushes him back until he hears Shane’s ass bump into the drawers. Then he gets one hand over where Shane’s is still spread over his left pec, over the split of his fingers around the piercing. Leans in to peer closer.
“You can’t touch,” Shane says again. His voice wavers a little.
“How do they do it?” Ilya asks. Shane’s nipple is swollen around the intrusion of the post. Ilya’s fingers twitch with the impulse to reach out and make it worse.
“The piercing?” Shane says, weakly.
“Yes.”
“They have… clamps,” Shane says. Ilya, who can feel Shane’s dick stiffening, who loves watching Shane get hard from nothing but his own filthy thoughts, shifts back to keep his thigh out of reach. “They clamp it on the end and stretch it out. And then they slide the needle through the stretched part.”
“Hm,” says Ilya. He turns his gaze, then, to the tight bud of the untouched nipple on the other side of Shane’s chest. He reaches out a hand. “Like this?” he asks, and sinks his nails into Shane’s unpierced nipple, pulls at it with a light tug.
Shane makes a sound like all the air has abruptly left his lungs.
“Well?” Ilya asks. His nails still have a grip on the edge of Shane’s nipple. He pulls at it again, gently, enough to stretch the thin skin. “It was like this?”
Shane stutters before he manages to squeak out, “Kind of.”
“I want to do next one,” Ilya says.
He gets his eyes on Shane’s face, then, to make sure he sees the way Shane’s eyes widen.
“What,” Shane says. It’s almost a squeak. His hips stutter forward.
Ilya leans away, makes sure to keep his thigh just out of reach. “If you get other one pierced,” he says. “I want to do it.”
“Um,” Shane says. It’s definitely a squeak, this time. “I think you have to be a professional for that.”
Ilya shrugs. “Will learn, then.”
He pulls his nails free of Shane’s nipple.
Shane reacts more strongly to that then he had to the initial pinch, visibly wincing through a full-body shudder as he gets a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the dresser behind him.
Ilya is reaching in for another pinch when Shane gets a hand on his shoulder, pushes him back. His cheeks are very red, beneath the freckles. “Wait,” he says, his tone close to urgent. “Wait.”
Ilya pauses, his hand hovering in front of Shane’s chest. He waits.
Shane’s throat bobs as he swallows. “You said you would tell me if you liked it.”
Ilya couldn’t have stopped himself from smiling, then, if he’d tried.
Before Shane, back when he was going out more, a lot of the women he’d known had liked to flirt by playing coy. It’s better, much better, when Shane sets his jaw and forces himself to ask earnestly for something he wants so badly he’s shaking with it.
“I like it,” Ilya tells him. He extends his index finger, then, and circles lightly over Shane’s unpierced nipple. It’s starting to look as swollen and puffy as the one with the barbell in it. “You will look pretty, when you heal.”
Shane shakes, a little, beneath the touch. “What about now?” he whispers.
“And now,” Ilya murmurs, “you look pretty when you hurt.”
Shane shudders. He leans back against the dresser. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth.
He waits, for Ilya to do what he wants.
It’s moments like this when Ilya thinks maybe it’s not so crazy that he checks Hollander’s tagged photos on Instagram so often, that he made a burner Twitter to follow those Hollander gossip accounts. It’s moments like these when it feels like it’d be crazier not to be obsessed with Hollander.
Ilya leans in. He has plans, ideas. He means to just close a light kiss over Shane’s lower lip and then pull back so that he can watch Shane chase him. But Shane’s mouth is so warm beneath his, and lips are already parted, so it’s easy for Ilya to lick inside.
They both shudder, when Ilya touches his tongue to Shane’s.
Ilya loses track of things, then, just a little. He gets his hand up to Shane’s jaw, forces his mouth open wider, eats into his mouth. It’s only when his other hand rises to get an automatic grip over Shane’s left pec that he remembers where he is.
Ilya pulls back, dropping his hand from where it had gotten dangerously close to Shane’s piercing. He opens his eyes in time to watch Shane lean in, try to get his wet, messy mouth back on Ilya’s.
“Get on bed,” he says, and gives Shane a gentle pat on the cheek.
When Shane’s eyes slide open, it’s only halfway. He looks almost drunk. He slowly peels himself off the dresser, steps past Ilya. Climbs onto the bed, up by the headboard, and turns so his back is against the pillows as he pulls his legs up in front of him.
Then he sits there, naked and hard, and looks expectantly at Ilya.
His mouth is swollen and wet. The barbell threaded through his left nipple is gleaming in the snow-filtered sunlight.
Ilya reaches behind himself, pulls open the top drawer of his dresser without taking his eyes off Shane. He gropes around inside until fingers close over a condom, around the bottle of lube. Then he steps forward, stops at the foot of the bed to look down at Hollander. “You know what I am thinking?”
“No,” Shane says, hoarsely.
“I am thinking you look pretty.”
Shane’s blush has touched his ears, his neck. He’s fully hard, although he hasn’t gotten anything more a brief brush against Ilya’s thigh. The barbell is a bright gleam against the flush spreading across his chest.
“I like you in gold,” says Ilya. “I want you decorated. I want you in necklace, rings. Maybe piercings in ears.” He drops the supplies onto the comforter by Shane’s feet, then climbs up over the foot of the bed to kneel there on the mattress and stare down at Shane.
“I don’t really wear jewelry,” says Shane. His voice is hoarse.
Ilya smiles. He closes his hands over Shane’s ankles, and even that touch makes Shane’s dick twitch against his stomach. “You will for me.”
He hadn’t phrased it like a question. He waits, anyway, for Shane’s response.
Shane’s entire face is red. He nods, slowly.
“You will look so pretty,” Ilya says. Sighs it, really. He removes one hand from Shane’s ankle to reach down, grab the condom, bring it to his mouth so he can bite open the wrapper. After he smooths it on, he gives himself one slow, shuddering stroke, just for good measure, just to watch Shane’s eyes follow the movement of his hand. “And you’ll be very good for me.”
“Yes,” says Shane.
Ilya slides his left hand, up from Shane’s ankle, past the side of his calf and up his inner thigh. “You cleaned?”
“Yes,” Shane says again. This time, it’s just his mouth moving around the shape of it. There’s no air behind it, to make the word come out.
“Good boy,” says Ilya. He reaches for the bottle, pops the cap, tips some into his palm.
Shane, watching, draws his knees up.
Shane is not particularly good at hiding his emotions from his face, even at his most collected. Like this, it’s exacerbated, Ilya can see everything. His mouth drops open, when Ilya presses at his rim. His eyebrows draw together, when Ilya slides his thumb and forefinger inside, then collapse apart when Ilya spreads them.
He is smooth and slick, inside, and the pressure against Ilya’s finger is so tight it’s making Ilya’s dick ache. He curls his index finger upward, crooks it toward himself.
Shane’s eyes go so wide Ilya can see the whites all the way around. His cock gives a visible twitch against his belly.
Ilya relents, then, pulls the pad of his index finger back. Works on stretching him, until he can fit three fingers inside, and then four, until the slide is smooth and easy, and Shane is twitching and groaning with every push, working his hips downward like he’s trying to follow Ilya’s fingers on every pull back. His dick is starting to drip.
Ilya stops moving his hand. Waits, with Shane stretched around his knuckles.
Shane gives a long, low groan.
“You aren’t going to come yet,” Ilya tells him.
“Rozanov,” says Shane. There’s barely a breath behind it.
“You aren’t going to come when I’m not inside you,” Ilya says.
“I don’t know if I—” Shane shudders. His dick twitches once more against his belly. “I’m really close. I don’t know if I can wait.”
“You can,” says Ilya. “Because you promised to be very good for me. Remember?” And he slides his fingers out, very slowly, careful not to hook them inward, to brush Shane at his core.
It’s still almost too much, for Shane. A vein pops out in his neck as he strains, teeth gritted, biceps bulging as he curls his fingers into the mattress. His cock moves again.
Then Shane subsides into the mattress, gasping for air, his dick still hard against his belly.
Ilya bares his teeth. Gets his hand wet, slicks it messily over himself. He leans forward, over Shane, braces one hand on the mattress beside Shane’s torso.
The slide inside is slow, and hot, and slick, sweet pressure that has Ilya’s eyes nearly crossing.
And then his hips are pressed to Shane, and he’s all the way inside.
Shane lurches upwards, like he’s crunching into a sit-up. His eyes are wide, almost panicked. He grabs at the sides of Ilya’s face, his nails scoring over Ilya’s ear and his scalp, and stares up at him open-mouthed as he bucks and shudders and starts to come, untouched.
Just from feeling Ilya inside him. Just from squirming on the hard length of Ilya’s dick.
Ilya leans down, snaps his teeth shut an inch away from Shane’s piercing. Then he turns and closes a bite around Shane’s other nipple.
Shane arches into him, even as Ilya leans back, teeth clenched, and tugs.
Shane’s nipple stretches taut between them.
Ilya jerks forward. He gets only a dozen rabbitting thrusts before he’s giving it up, groaning into Shane’s chest as his cock spasms against the grip of Shane’s body.
*
“I’m sorry,” Shane says, in the bathroom, afterward.
Ilya looks over from where he’d been leaning into the mirror to dab antiseptic wash, just like Shane had insisted, over the scratches behind his right ear. “Sorry about what?”
Shane grimaces. He’s sitting on the side of the tub with a medical kit on his lap, and he’s currently wiping a freshly-unwrapped saline towelette over his pierced nipple. “Sorry that was so quick,” he says.
“Yes,” says Ilya, crumpling up the cotton ball he’d been using and leaning over to drop it in the trash. “Is very difficult, to have beautiful boy obsessed with my cock.”
It’s impressive that Shane still has the energy to blush. He looks down to root through the kit. As he pulls out a square of gauze he says, gaze still lowered, “I’m not obsessed. And you came quick, too.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “I did.”
Shane looks up. The corner of his mouth quirks. “You’re so fucking smug.”
“Yes, well,” says Ilya, watching Shane fumble one-handed with the roll of medical tape. “I win game, today. Of course I am smug. You want help?”
“Okay,” Shane says.
Ilya steps across the bathroom, takes the roll of medical tape out of Shane’s hand. He rips off a small piece, leans down, smooths it over one edge of the gauze Shane is holding over his pierced nipple.
“I should say congratulations,” Shane says. “About the win.”
Ilya bites back his smile. Shane says it like someone’s held him at gunpoint and ordered him to. “Thank you,” he says, and tapes down the opposite side of the square against Shane’s smooth skin.
“It was fun,” Shane says. His tone is less begrudging, now, if only slightly. “Even if we lost.”
“Yes,” Ilya says, taping down the third side of the gauze. “Is always fun, playing hockey in snow.”
“I used to play pond hockey, a lot, when I was a kid,” Shane says.
Ilya’s hand stutters on the final tear from the tape roll. He frowns, leans over to shake the mangled piece off his hand and into the trash, before trying again. “Yes?”
“Yeah,” Shane says. “There was a pond we’d drive to, down the road, when it was cold enough for it to freeze. My parents would bring nets, and we’d bring extra sticks, so all the other neighborhood kids could play. It was so fun.” His tone is wistful. “It was pretty much the last time I can remember playing hockey where it didn’t matter if I won or not.”
Ilya presses the last piece of tape into place. He doesn’t pull back his hand, then, just holds the tips of his fingers lightly against Shane’s skin. “I played pond hockey, too,” he says.
Shane smiles, slowly, almost shyly. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “Could see pond from hill behind my house. My mother walked with me, in mornings, before school.”
He’s close enough to see the way Shane’s eyelashes fan against his cheek in the middle of his slow blink. “Did she skate with you?” he says, his voice quiet.
Ilya looks down at Shane. There is a pain, sudden and deep, in his chest. “No,” he says. It makes her feel more real, suddenly, to tell someone else something only he knows about her. “She was scared she would fall through the ice.”
Shane nods. He leans forward, into the pressure of Ilya’s fingers against the gauze on his chest. He presses his forehead into Ilya’s belly and rests there.
Ilya looks down at his bowed head. He cups a hand over the back of Hollander’s smooth hair. Presses down, gently, with his palm.
*
While Shane is showering, afterward, Ilya wanders restlessly through his apartment. The sun outside is filtering through the gently falling snow. It is quiet except for the hum of the heating unit. It’s warm and peaceful, and Ilya has won a game and came so hard it hurt within the last few hours, but he’s still pacing like an animal in a cage, his heart thrumming against his breastbone, his fingers drumming against his thigh.
He wishes Hollander would leave without saying anything, so Ilya wouldn’t have to look at him again.
He wishes Hollander would stay.
Ilya halts in his entryway, glances over toward the door. His eyes land on the coat rack, where his Bears puffer jacket is hanging beside Shane’s blue wool coat.
Ilya hesitates.
He steps forward, reaches for the Bears jacket. Gropes his way along the slippery fabric until he finds the pocket.
Ilya dips his fingers inside and wiggles them until he touches the bracelet.
He pulls back, then. Looks down at the thin gold chain piled in the center of his palm.
Ilya doesn’t let himself think about it. He closes his fingers over the bracelet, turns his hand over. And then he reaches over, slides his fist into the pocket of Hollander’s coat, and opens his fingers.
He steps back and turns to walk quickly back to the kitchen. He is suddenly badly in need of a drink.
*
A few days later, Ilya’s just wrapped up practice and a brutal session with the team physical therapist that has sent him stumbling into the locker room on wobbly legs when he collapses back into his stall and lifts up his phone to find he has a text from Jane.
Studio still hasn’t posted that pic, it reads. I think maybe they didn’t know who I was.
Ilya grins. Win more games in Nashville, he suggests. Maybe if you stop losing they start knowing.
If Shane is surprised to find out Ilya knows enough about Montreal’s season to be familiar with their record in Tennessee, it’s not clear in his next text. Fuck off.
Glad they didn’t post, Ilya writes.
Me too.
Pics should be only for me.
A pause, then. Ilya shuffles around, getting his shower kit together, before his phone buzzes again. I’ll send something later, it reads. And then a follow-up, one that makes Ilya’s heart jump: Btw, is this yours?
Ilya chews his bottom lip. He opens the attached photo to see the bracelet laid out over Shane’s outstretched palm.
Shane had carefully untangled it, and laid it out in a precise circle, before taking the photo.
Ilya had managed to put what he’d done out of his mind, the moment he’d stepped away from Shane’s jacket. Now, in the stark light of the Bears locker room, it’s clear how far he’s overstepped.
He supposes there’s nothing for it, now. Gift for you, he types. Then he hits send, tosses his phone back into his stall, and leaves it there while he heads off to shower.
When he returns, however, he can’t stop himself from immediately reaching for his cell, turning it over to see two new texts up on the screen. It’s so nice, Shane had written. And then, Is it vintage?
Ilya chews on his lip. He types out a few attempts at responses, quickly deletes them. Eventually settles on, Yes.
He can’t bring himself to ask for a photo of it on Shane’s wrist.
Shane would have sent one, if he’d asked. Ilya knows this, just as he knows Shane is braver than he is.
*
Two months later, in Montreal, Shane comes skating up to the neutral zone during warmups. He stops, then turns his back to Ilya before folding into a frog stretch on the opposite side of the red line. “Hi,” he says, over his shoulder.
Ilya, folded down into the ice with his knee pulled up as close to his chest as he can manage, grunts, “Careful. Your guard dog will come barking.”
“My guard dog?” Shane pauses. He’s still turned away from Ilya, but Ilya can hear him snort a moment later. “Oh, you mean Hayden. Funny. Anyway. My right shoulder’s sore. Nothing serious, but.” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
Ilya relaxes his knee with a grunt, rises up from his stretch. “Will hit you in left shoulder, then,” he says.
Shane gets to his skates, too. “I’d expect nothing less,” he says, and glides away.
The rest of warmups and the national anthems feel like things Ilya has to make it through to speak with Shane again. And then they’re over, and the crowd is buzzing, and Shane’s back in front of Ilya, gliding up opposite him in the circle, where the ref is waiting to drop the puck.
Shane grins at Ilya. He bends down. “Good luck, Rozanov,” he says, and plants his stick on the other side of the dot.
Ilya looks down in time to catch a glint of gold just inside the edge of Shane’s right-hand glove.