Chapter Text
It was a cold October in Saskatchewan. Shane tugged his beanie down further over his ears as he stepped out the door, eyes trained on the figure leaning against the wall a few meters away.
“Ilya Rozanov?” He called out as he approached. The man looked up from where his hands were cupped around his face, revealing the unlit cigarette perched between his lips. Shane hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face—how could one of the top prospects be so willing to risk his health like that? Still, he offered his hand. “Shane Hollander, I wanted…”
The wind shifted, and Shane trailed off at the mix of scents it brought with it: cigarette smoke, cologne, something sharp and metallic, and a musky sort of fur smell. He stared at Rozanov, shocked. From the knowing smirk that touched the other man’s lips, he’d recognized Shane’s surprise, as well as what it was for. He took the cigarette from his mouth with one hand and shook Shane’s with the other.
“You are vampire?” He asked, replacing his cigarette and pulling his lighter from where he’d stashed it in his pocket when Shane first approached him. He lit the end and took a long drag.
“Uh,” Shane blinked at him. Right, werewolves had good senses of smell, too. Obviously. “Half, technically. And you’re… a werewolf.”
“Mm,” Rozanov said noncommittally. He turned his head away from Shane and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“You’re an awesome player to watch,” Shane said.
Rozanov turned back to look at him. “Yes.”
Shane wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was still wrapping his head around the fact that there were other inhumans in the sport—he’d never met or heard of any, which made sense regardless of whether there actually were any. He certainly wasn’t forthcoming about his own inheritance, so he could understand others doing the same, but it was still surprising to encounter another inhuman in the same field when it seemed like, for all intents and purposes, he was all alone.
Safe to say he had a lot of questions. But before he could voice any of them, Rozanov had placed his cigarette back between his lips, and all Shane could think to say was: “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke here.”
“Okay,” Rozanov replied, blowing his smoke off to the side again. Shane’s eyes caught on his jawline, and the way his hair curled out from under his beanie. His body felt too warm, his mouth too dry. The smell of smoke and fur tickled his nose. For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other, the gap between them looming awkwardly—Shane had so much to say, and no idea how to say it.
So he didn’t.
“Anyways, I—I should go,” He glanced back at the door he’d come from. “They’re waiting for me. But, um, good luck,” he added, extending his hand again. Rozanov reached out to take it, again, a smile turning the corners of his mouth upwards. He was very handsome, Shane couldn’t help but notice, and he felt his cheeks flush a little at the thought.
As he turned to leave, Rozanov called out, “You will not be so nice when we beat you.”
“No, that’s—That’s not happening.” Shane retorted, but he was smiling. For some reason, the chirp didn’t feel all that antagonistic—it was almost playful. Rozanov inclined his head slightly in response, akin to a shrug.
“See you in final,” he said.
Shane went back inside. When the door closed behind him, it took the smell of cigarettes and fur with it.
It was hard to smell much of anything on the rink besides the ice itself. To Ilya, who relied a lot on his sense of smell to tell him who and where people were outside of his field of vision, it had been a difficult learning curve when he began to play professionally. Now, he was a bit more used to it, though it was still a little disorienting right at the start of a game.
This was part of why Ilya didn’t love hockey as much as his dad wanted him to. It wasn’t that he disliked it, of course, but Ilya’s love had never been so much for the sport of hockey as it was for the act of playing it. He loved flying across the ice and chasing the puck and getting physical with other players, and he really loved winning. But he got the same enjoyment from roughhousing with Sveta, or running around chasing squirrels in the woods as a wolf. He was just lucky that hockey let him feel that way while also doubling as an extremely well-paying and famous job. Even if it was difficult to coordinate his shifting around his game schedule, especially around full moons, when the line between his humanity and his wolf began to blur.
The International Prospect Cup final, Russia vs. Canada, was intense. Ilya checked Shane Hollander into the boards, a thrill running down his spine at the brief sensation of the other man’s firm muscle under his padding before shooting the puck out from under their skates. They chased it across the ice, skates leaving slashes and shaved snow like open wounds in their wake. Hollander was a fucking incredible opponent, and Ilya hadn’t felt so alive in a very long time.
Russia won. When he got to Hollander in the handshake line, Ilya leaned in partly to tease him and partly for the chance to catch a whiff of him. He hoped to see him again soon—vampire or not, Shane Hollander seemed like easy, naive prey.
After their first meeting, though, they barely interacted with each other beyond chirps and checks and the occasional press conference. So Ilya took it upon himself to make the first move, and arranged a photoshoot for the two of them together, which, based on their interaction in the shower afterwards, seemed to do the trick. Hollander fell hook, line, and sinker, and Ilya was excited for a good fuck and a fun night.
Ilya was used to one night stands—in fact, usually it was an established rule for him to never hook up with the same person more than once. Otherwise, they tended to get attached. Sveta was a rare exception to this rule, obviously, as she had been his closest and dearest friend since as long as he could remember.
So, naturally, he assumed that night with Hollander would be much the same as any other hookup. Of course, there was the added appeal of getting to teach him the ins and outs of how things worked with another guy, because there was no way Hollander had done that before. In that sense, he was technically correct: Hollander was very new to being gay.
What Ilya hadn’t expected was, well… everything else about Shane Hollander. He was visibly nervous, of course, but also so eager, and responsive, and endearingly awkward. The fluttery swooping of Ilya’s stomach when he watched Hollander fold his clothes as he undressed was frankly embarrassing, yet he couldn’t stop a smile from breaking out across his face. He left before Shane could tell him to go, strongly averse, all of a sudden, to hearing even that slight form of rejection.
“Good night,” he said, watching Hollander watch him from where he was still sitting, arms crossed, on the bed.
“Night.” Hollander replied. Ilya breathed in the scent of him that lingered by the door: sweat, cedarwood, ice. And, underneath it all, the copper tang of blood.