Chapter Text
If Scott were a better person, he would turn this down. Fucking your much younger coworker has got to be a universally acknowledged fuck-up.
Rozanov isn’t actually his coworker, obviously, but that’s the closest Scott can get. Colleague. Peer. Fellow gets-roughed-up-every-other-week-for-stupid-money athlete. Whatever. The point is, they interact on the regular. Will be seeing each other’s faces across the ice and at league events for a long time to come (whatever Rozanov likes to say about retirement).
Sadly, Scott is not that better man. What he is, is an extremely sad, lonely, and more pertinently, horny guy, and Rozanov is, well, there. Looking like that. Having as much (or more) to lose. Gagging for it, clearly.
Rozanov wouldn’t like that characterisation, probably, but too fucking bad. He came onto Scott. His tongue is currently in Scott’s mouth. This is not Rozanov’s first rodeo, or Scott will run naked through Times Square shouting out ‘I’m a homosexual! I’m a homosexual!’
All those women, Jesus. Smoke and mirrors, but fuck, Scott never would have guessed. Rozanov has really committed to the bit, playing the playboy, and given what little Scott knows about the whole Russian geopoliticals, he guesses that’s much more necessary.
Scott has never had a beard of any kind, but he hasn’t had to. Private Scott Hunter. Clean-cut Scott Hunter. Maybe he’s religious, maybe he’s on the down low, maybe it’s none of our fucking business, so long as he’s playing good (sometimes) hockey?
He’s fucking lucky nobody had guessed. He doesn’t look like what they think gay is.
Who would think a hockey player was gay, anyway? Never mind that you have to like men a great deal, to play professional sports. Never mind the way the boys are, in the locker room, the jokes, the hazing at the sexual edge and over, the roughhousing, scuffling and scrapping, in one another’s faces at all times. Kissing each other drunkenly after winning the Cup, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, I love you, man, I love you. Spend more time with each other than your wives; know each other’s bodies (Carter’s got a mole he’s worried about on his stomach, Coulter’s left foot drags when he’s tired, Lewis has trouble with his back) better than your wives. Talking about it all the time, fag, fag, homo, cocksucker, faggot, the worst thing a man can be, but god, they all think about it so much. There’s nothing as gay as a group of straight men who play sports.
You can be bold within that. You can get what you need, or part of it. Hugged and pinched and punched, easy camaraderie that’s almost enough. And if the hand on your arm isn’t enough, if you get an ache late at night alone in your beautiful, soulless apartment, well, that’s what anonymous beach holidays a continent or two away are for. Google can tell you anything, including the kind of bar where they don’t ask questions.
It makes Scott feel sorry for Rozanov, making himself fuck woman after woman. Burying himself in their bodies, battling disgust, misery, self-loathing. Loneliness doesn’t seem quite so bad next to that.
Scott can’t get it up with a woman. He’s tried. So it was not an option for him, more vulnerable and less at the same time. He couldn’t take that route and ruin some poor girl’s life.
Is Rozanov planning to do that? Does he feel he needs to?
This is not exactly the time to ask those questions, what with Scott’s hands on that glorious ass, Rozanov doing his enthusiastic best to choke Scott on his tongue.
Besides, while they might have this in common now, Scott sincerely doubts he’d get a straight (hah!) answer out of Rozanov. It’s too personal, you can’t ask another man that. Even if you’re fucking. Especially if you’re fucking, when the fuck is just a fuck.
Before this, Scott would have said he didn’t much like Rozanov. He’s talented but that fucking attitude. Ingratitude is a cardinal sin in Scott’s book, along with pride and callousness, and Rozanov is all of those things. Grateful for none of the gifts heaped on him, arrogant about those same gifts, even those given by luck and genetics and not hard graft, and callous. Chirps like his life depends on it. Nothing is off limits. Nothing at all.
No, he doesn’t throw around slurs like most of the boys, but it’s pretty obvious now why that’s the case. If he were straight, he wouldn’t think twice. It’s the kind of person he is.
You don’t need to like someone as a person to fuck. It’s lonely and chillingly empty, but it’s all Scott can have. He knows Rozanov, he understands him now. That’s already an advance.
Now he has a secret in common with Rozanov, maybe that will breed sympathy. Maybe underneath it Rozanov is soft. Growing up in Russia, gay, that must have been hell. Maybe all the peacocking, the arrogance, the showy shit-talk, maybe it’s camouflage. He’s flamboyant in that European way, but also tough as nails. How does that read back home? Do his parents know? Does anybody know, about him? Maybe you can dig through those layers, reach somebody else inside, somebody decent, somebody worth knowing.
And maybe pigs will grow wings and soar merrily through the air and Scott will win the Stanley Cup singlehanded and announce his homosexuality live on national television.
Anyway, Scott has eyes and is not nerve-end dead beneath the waist. Whether Rozanov is genuinely a purebred asshole or not is irrelevant. Those pouting lips, the wide planes of that face, the heavy muscle along the arms, that ass – nobody’s going to kick Ilya Rozanov out of bed, no matter how much of a bad idea he is. Scott certainly isn’t planning to.
*
They were at some endless soiree, post-season fundraiser, all the usual shit, and gravitated together by accident. Penguin huddle against the greedy eyes feeling them over. Or more likely, there was no more suitable target for Rozanov’s chirping.
Those were Scott’s assumptions at the start of the evening, from ample past experience. There was no one Rozanov liked harassing more than Scott. The rest of his teammates get off lightly by comparison. Rozanov has had plenty to say about the state of Carter’s backhand, and he’d made Leberg, their rookie, almost cry with whatever he’d said last time they’d played, that Leberg refused to ‘fess up to. But he saves his best for Scott.
Sometimes it’s low grade, common-or-garden stuff, things they’ve all said at some point or another to watch their opponent’s blood pressure rise, but more often it’s specially tailored, a handmade chirp just for Scott. His age goes up and down according to Rozanov’s whim, one month ten thousand years old, the next, eight billion. He’s a dinosaur, a fossil, an oversteeped cup of tea (not one of Rozanov’s better ones, maybe it sounded better in Russian), a promising participant in the tortoise Olympics, on intimate terms with Baba Yaga (early years, when Roz’s English wasn’t so good), recalls the days of the pterodactyls, was present at the sack of Constantinople, oversaw the conversion of Vladimir Velikiy (Scott had to google that one and is still none the wiser for it), came down the Dnieper in a hollowed log (again, Scott is clueless), is dehydrated noodles, a wrinkled prune, ‘most improved athlete’ of the class of 1901, world record holder for fastest over-80, has many a senior moment, ought to start collecting his pension, should think about a hip replacement etc. etc.
But Rozanov hadn’t been in that mood today, had been sunk into a sulk. For a man who’d had the season he’d had, there was not a lot of jubilation going on there. He lurked with Scott at the bar, periodically downing another shot. Maybe he knew Scott would leave him alone, not pester him to talk (because Scott had never voluntarily begun a conversation with Rozanov since the kid’s skates first hit New York ice). As the evening broke up, Rozanov turned wordlessly to leave.
And caught Scott giving him a look.
A causal look, just an ordinary once-over, a brief admiration of true good looks. It had been a spectacularly boring evening and Scott was drunk without meaning to be. He never would have done it otherwise, risked being so obvious so publicly. That tux was a beauty too, fit Rozanov like a glove, real high end shit as even Scott could tell, not that he could venture a guess at the brand. Nobody should have the right to look that handsome in the same thing every other man in the room was wearing. But sue him, the kid belonged on a plinth in a Greek museum somewhere. It was just a look!
If Rozanov had been heterosexual, he wouldn’t even have understood the meaning of the look, not properly. As it was.
Those blue eyes locked onto his, and the kid looked, for a moment, stymied. Then the corner of his mouth tilted up and his eyes filled with an unholy glee. He looked like he had just been declared Eternal Hockey Champion Of All Time, like they’d just announced the next seven Cups went to Boston by default, like Shane Hollander had proclaimed his intention to retire from sport and become a Trappist monk.
One brief moment of locked contact with those evil, evil eyes and Scott felt like his soul had just been sucked out of his own eyes with a straw.
He bailed. Hell for leather, hoping none of the other stragglers clocked and wondered why in the name of God Scott Hunter was making for the exits like the room was on fire (and guess who was holding the gasoline cannister?) but within about thirty seconds he realised he had a tail.
By the time he reached his waiting car, Rozanov had caught up. Speedy little fucker.
One giant paw reached out and reeled Scott in, and although Scott could have shaken him off, he was agonisingly aware that there were probably a few hopeful paps lurking somewhere in the vicinity, looking for bigger fish than either of them.
Instead he waited until Rozanov dropped his hand (which was much slower than Scott would have liked). Waited until the hammer could drop neat and clean and brain Scott.
‘Give me a lift?’ Rozanov said instead, smiling big and toothy, making pointed eye contact. He had the kind of mouth that could only smile slyly, could only smirk. The kind of mouth that screamed ‘sex’ the moment he let its corners lift.
Or possibly Scott’s traumatised, suddenly inexplicably lust-addled brain was interpreting that wrong.
Several conflicting emotions ran helter-skelter through Scott’s mind in that moment, which he could not begin to untangle and frankly would prefer not to (he was saving therapy for retirement, when he would need something all-consuming to fill his time in the wake of losing the meaning of his life).
The conclusion he reached was that a straight man would probably not have been certain enough that Scott had been giving him the eye to call him out on it. And if he were, he would not have asked for a lift, would have punched Scott and avoided ever being alone with him again. And if he miraculously weren’t the kind to lay a guy out cold at the merest whiff of homosexuality directed his way, he wouldn’t be returning the eye with interest.
Therefore…
And honestly, it had been a long, long time since Scott has got laid, to which he can only attribute the fact he said ‘Okay’ instead of laughing in Rozanov’s face and then taking himself off somewhere to drown himself in peace and privacy.
Scott told himself it was because he needed to sort out the not-in-point-of-fact-a-misunderstanding-but-dead-on-the-money-understanding, to make sure Rozanov wasn’t going to open his beak and blurt it out to all and sundry, but it wasn’t. That wasn’t what Rozanov’s smile had said, or Scott’s original disastrous look.
If Scott let himself think about this evening’s bombshell – Ilya Rozanov is gay and has made a pass at me – he would wind himself up so much a hard-on would be a distant memory and also his brain was definitely functioning at 0.25 speed after all that booze, not the best time for psychosexual analysis and also rewriting everything you thought you knew about the world. No point. Just go with it.
In the car, Rozanov put his hand on Scott’s knee. Scott restrained the instinctual desire to slap it off and reminded himself that the driver was almost certainly not looking. And if he were, there was no proof of anything.
Everyone knew Scott Hunter had no time for mouthy rookies. And everyone knew Ilya Rozanov ran through women like water.
Unless the driver was a die-hard hockey fan, why the fuck would he recognise Scott or Rozanov? This wasn’t Canada. This wasn’t even a city with a hockey team.
So it was safe to briefly put his own hand over Rozanov’s, and it was safe to throw an arm across the backseat, and it was safe to casually let the hand of that arm dip down against Rozanov’s neck and stroke the skin there. It was safe, when the driver was distracted, cursing, by some idiot running a red light, to push his other palm against Rozanov’s groin, hard, until Rozanov made a noise between his teeth and the driver flicked his eyes up to the mirror and both of Scott’s hands were innocently back in his lap.
*
And now he has a lapful of Rozanov, squirmy and heavy and gloriously, gloriously close.
They’re in Scott’s hotel room, because Dutch courage apparently dramatically lowers Scott’s inhibitions and, more importantly, his paranoia. As soon as they got through the door, Rozanov was on him, crushing him against the wall, kissing his lips, his face, his neck. It was tragically the most exciting thing to happen to Scott that year (his usual European sex holiday having been cancelled owing to a combination of anxiety, exhaustion and a sudden dead certainty that he would be papped leaving some shithole of a club in Barcelona with a rent boy or something. He’d never paid for sex – yet – but it would be just his luck to pick up a prostitute instead of another drunk and horned up tourist).
Rozanov then scraped Scott off the wall, tore the shirt straight off Scott’s back (which should not have been as hot as it was, especially as three of the buttons popped off and pinged Scott in the face, and also it had been a nice, expensive consolation present to himself purchased after the Admirals had been ignominiously kicked out of playoffs).
Scott managed to retaliate, buttons flying everywhere and then stuck his hand straight down Rozanov’s pants like he was a teenager again. Embarrassing, but in the moment Scott couldn’t make himself care. After a brief interlude of kissing and groping, Rozanov stripped off his pants, waited impatiently as Scott took off his own, herded Scott backwards to the bed, and when Scott sat down, climbed straight into his lap.
Where they have remained ever since. Scott has lost all feeling in his thighs. It’s sensational.
Neither of them are fully drunk, which makes this so much worse, because it means Scott is actively choosing not to listen to the common-sense part of his brain (small, and growing smaller every month he goes without sex).
Scott’s beard must be scraping Rozanov’s neck, he’s been wearing it so short lately, but the kid isn’t complaining, is rubbing up against Scott’s face like a cat into a pliant hand. Rozanov hasn’t much in the way of stubble, it would seem, which is a shame; it’s a feeling Scott fantasises about, late and lonesome in front of the tv in his apartment. He’s not that fair, head or bodywise, but maybe he was blonder when he was younger.
Jerking his thoughts back from pointless speculation, Scott pulls his catch in closer. Not bad for an evening’s unexpected fishing.
Okay, no point playing it cool. Rozanov is beautiful. Scott has never denied this, but previously his personality seemed sufficiently repellent it didn’t present a problem.
God, all that muscle, all that strength bearing against him. Rozanov isn’t stronger than Scott, and Scott has at least two or three inches on him, but Scott has never been to bed with another athlete before. Pushing and feeling pushed back, not having to worry about too strong a grip, it makes a nice change.
‘Been to bed with’. If Rozanov could read thoughts, he’d asphyxiate laughing.
Scott’s seen Rozanov naked but not hard, so his cock isn’t a total surprise (hopeful though they all were originally that Rozanov was compensating for something), but it is a pleasant one. Long, thick, currently flushed a painful looking red and stabbing at Scott’s stomach. Not cut, which Scott is used to after all those European men.
Scott tugs at that darker hair leading down to it, just to see what Rozanov will do.
Say, ‘Fuck, Hunter,’ and try to climb Scott like a tree, apparently. The fact he’s already on Scott’s lap doesn’t seem to factor in. Before he can blink, Scott’s flat on his back on the bed and Rozanov is somehow, impossibly, closer than before, mouthing hotly at Scott’s neck, tangling their legs until standing up becomes a dangerous prospect.
‘I could fuck you,’ Rozanov mumbles into his mouth.
That doesn’t sound bad to Scott’s lust-fogged mind, but Scott isn’t stupid. It would mean something different to the kid. If he lets Rozanov stick his cock in Scott, neither of them are ever, ever going to be able to forget it and Scott would really rather not face an Ilya Rozanov armed with the knowledge of exactly how Scott sounds when someone hits his prostate dead on.
So Scott says firmly, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not how this is going to go.’ Then is too distracted by whatever Rozanov is doing to his neck to lay out exactly how this is going to go instead, grabs at Rozanov’s hips to steady himself and is distracted by another thought.
Rozanov’s ass is amazing. There it is, practically right in his face, a beautiful fact Scott cannot deny. If there was an award for Best Hockey Ass of the Year, Rozanov would win, hands down. His usual rival for trophies cannot compete. Hollander is handsome, nice body and his ass is probably fine too, but it isn’t anything to write home about. Rozanov’s though. At All-Star two years ago, Scott caught Carter (the straightest man he knows) taking a second look in the showers.
Yep, Scott likes Hollander (who doesn't?), but he’s not attracted to him. He doesn’t like Rozanov but he is wildly attracted to him. Evidently.
Well and isn’t that the problem? Scott genuinely likes Hollander. Like, as a human being. He’s a nice person, a pleasure to play, to watch. Scott loves hockey too. How could he not like anybody who plays as well as Hollander does?
Easily. Rozanov who is Hollander’s equal. An asshole, with a superlative ass.
Scott would love to get his hands on it, and right now, he can. So he does, slips his hands under Rozanov’s boxers (a somewhat surprising choice, Scott had almost expected a thong just to fuck with his head some more), sits them both up, and sets about copping a feel.
Rozanov is responsive right up until Scott’s fingers skim accidentally-on-purpose down over his asshole.
‘You haven’t?’ Scott asks. The kid’s in his lap, moaning like a whore. Scott knows he’s done this before.
‘Not recently,’ Rozanov mutters, leaning his head away. Scott chases after him, coaxes him into a kiss, waits until Rozanov’s relaxed against him. He’s good at it, once he’s no longer so frantic he’s trying to choke Scott with his tongue.
‘How long is that?’
‘A while,’ Rozanov says.
Scott puts both hands up. ‘We don’t have to. If you don’t like it. If it makes you nervous.’
Rozanov’s jaw clenches. Whatever calculations are going on in his brain, hopefully they give the answer Scott was secretly hoping for.
What? He’s not a saint. Nothing both parties aren’t fully into, yadda yadda, but if Rozanov is up for it…
‘Let’s,’ Rozanov says. Then he takes Scott’s hands and puts them back on his ass, and Scott kind of loses track after that.
Rozanov wants it from behind. Scott’s reasonably sure that’s because he doesn’t want Scott watching his face while they do this, but he’s not going to complain. The view is objectively very fucking fine. Plus, the nerves make it good, the vulnerability makes it good, as Scott knows from experience on the other end.
Scott fingers him for a while, teasing, slow, gentle, and Rozanov relaxes, starts making noise again. Rimming is out, because although Scott is generally neutral on it, he doesn’t know where the kid’s been.
But when Rozanov seems ready, when he’s shoving back against Scott’s two fingers and saying impatiently ‘Hunter, get on with it’ while Scott fumbles with the condom in his free hand, when Scott gets on top of him, he gets maybe an inch of his dick into him before he stops at the appalling sound Rozanov produces.
‘Keep going,’ Rozanov grits out. Scott doesn’t. Thinks to wait it out, until Rozanov loosens a little, but he doesn’t, only gets stiffer.
Scott pulls out, shoves Rozanov down and rolls him over so he can see his face.
‘You okay?’ he says again. ‘We don’t have to.’
‘You want to. If you’d just go on with it.’
‘Not if you don’t want to,’ Scott says firmly. ‘I am not a rapist.’
‘I did not say that,’ Rozanov mutters sullenly, but he’s drawing his legs in, sitting up.
‘You’ve been fucked before?’
‘Obviously.’
‘You’re going to have to give me more than that, kid.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Rozanov barks furiously.
Scott backs away on the bed, hands raised. Waits.
‘Older guys only,’ says Rozanov finally. ‘I had friend, but I fuck him.’
‘Back in Russia?’
‘Mm. Coach’s son.’
‘You are a bad idea made flesh,’ Scott says. It comes out way more affectionately than he means it to.
‘I think you like it,’ Rozanov says in a deep, raspy voice.
‘Does that actually work on people?’
The kid shrugs. ‘Mostly.’
Yeah, well, that voice, that face, those pouting lips... Scott's willing to lay down a heavy chunk of his retirement fund that Rozanov hasn't ever had to try to get someone into bed. Not properly. Spoilt. Used to getting his own way.
Case in point. Bored of the conversation, Rozanov pushes Scott backwards and crawls on top of him again. It’s like being in bed with a very handsy boa constrictor. Metaphorically, obviously, boa constrictors don’t have hands, Scott isn’t as uneducated as all that – shut up, brain.
'Stop thinking, Hunter.' Great, now the kid's a mind reader.
In a bid to prevent any further dead-on-the-nail revelations for the night, ‘You can call me Scott, you know.’
Rozanov makes a face. ‘Terrible name. So unsexy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Why do Americans have no real names? Why are you all called Mason and Colt and Brayden?’
‘What kind of name is Ilya?’ Scott fires back.
‘That is microaggression,’ the kid says, poker-faced. ‘Xenophobic. Also you are saying it wrong. Stick to Rozanov.’ He says it differently, in a way Scott is not even going to attempt.
‘You are a nightmare,’ Scott tells him, and kisses him to put an end to the conversation.
Rozanov being Rozanov, he kisses back, then pulls off for air and keeps talking.
‘It’s old name, biblical, what is ‘Scott’, even? Like Scotland? You are named after a country? A country you are not even from?’
‘Fuck you,’ Scott says without ire and slaps his ass. Rozanov goes real quiet. Is he blushing? Fuck, he’s blushing. And he’s still hard.
‘From behind,’ Rozanov says again once he’s recovered from whatever Scott’s not very impressive power play just did to his brain.
Has nobody this kid’s fucked ever tried to put him in his place? Do none of his camouflage fucks ever push back? Not that Scott knows anything about what women are like in bed.
When Scott fails to respond, Rozanov shoves lightly at him. ‘Get up, or are you having a heart attack?’
‘Do you really want to?’
Or is he trying to prove a point? Scott is so hard it hurts right now, but he is not going to put his dick in Rozanov if he’s doing this out of some weird competitive drive. Shit, was that Scott’s fault, saying whatever it was about being nervous? Trust Rozanov to make even sex something you need to win at.
Rozanov groans and rolls off Scott and across the bed, incidentally giving Scott a very good view of everything he is missing out on.
‘Yes, for fuck’s sake! Before you die of old age. Would be so sad, and also, how do I explain to the press, was act of mercy, let sad old man fuck me as his final wish, but then he died before he even –’
‘Are you sure? Didn’t go so well the first time,’ Scott interrupts. Tries to stick to his point, and whatever remains of his morals that didn’t go flying out the window the moment he had Rozanov on top of him, crushing all the feeling out of his thighs.
‘Why, you have a better idea?’
Maybe if Rozanov can see him, he won’t freak out.
Look, Scott’s trying. But he’s only human, and also Rozanov is clearly used to getting his way, at least in the bedroom, and he’s insisting it’s fine, and also it is actually really pretty hard to think while he’s doing that thing with his hand, moving it down between his thighs to grasp his cock in the most unnecessarily showy way ever. Touching himself, like that will charm Scott into doing what he wants.
Watching somebody else masturbate shouldn’t be so fucking hot. Rozanov must know it’s short-circuited Scott’s brain, is smirking slightly now, stroking himself slowly.
‘In my lap,’ Scott suggests. ‘Since you seemed to like it so much earlier.’
Is that – yes, fuck, Rozanov is flushing, all the way down to his chest. Wow. Score – two, if Scott rounds generously, to Scott. This night is just full of surprises, isn’t it?
‘Don't know what you're talking about. You think maybe you need your memory checked?’ Rozanov tries. His mouth droops the moment he’s said it. Presumably he can hear exactly how unconvincing that was.
At Scott's unimpressed look, ‘Fine. Move over, old man, since you cannot do the work yourself. Please let me know if you think your hip will give.’
Scott considers swatting him again, but then Rozanov is worming his way across the bed and back on top of Scott. They shift together, until Rozanov is up, kneeling, thighs straddling Scott’s. He bullies Scott back towards the headboard and gets a good grip on his sides.
In what is a pretty reckless move for someone who just said it has been a while since he bottomed and who also nearly cut off the blood flow to Scott’s dick off with how tight he was not even ten minutes earlier, he does his best to sit straight down on Scott’s cock.
Scott lets out an oof, feeling distinctly winded.
‘Try not to come straight away,’ Rozanov says. He also sounds winded. Scott is kind of amazed he was able to do that. He is still really tight, like snap-your-dick-off-if-you-move-wrong tight. And not nearly as sure of himself as he’s pretending. Scott strokes a hand down his side, reaches up to kiss him. Rozanov kisses back then sets to work.
Scott is only human. He gets two handfuls of that ass and just tries to hang on for the ride.
It’s great. Scott has neither fucked nor been fucked in months, and could come from fucking a hole in the wall, probably, but even if he’d been getting some every night, this would still be a top tier fuck.
Rozanov looks disgustingly good, a pornographic dream, as he bounces on Scott’s cock. Athletic stamina for the win, all the hours in the gym that produced those absurd thighs are paying off.
At first he stays sitting up, showing off, those hips rolling, throwing his head back to show the line of his throat like he knows exactly how crazy it’s making Scott, but gradually he slows a little, leans forward close enough to kiss.
‘Tired?’ Scott pants against Rozanov’s neck. Rozanov grunts a negation, but his pace keeps slowing, and it doesn’t look like he’s close to coming yet either.
Scott waits until he closes his eyes, then tightens his grip, tips him over and settles on top of him. Somehow Scott’s cock is still inside, which is worthy of a little recognition, in Scott’s opinion. Sexual gymnastics are much harder than they look.
Rozanov is open-mouthed, staring up at him, as Scott starts fucking him properly. He manages to croak out an imperious ‘Harder,’ as Scott gets into his stride, pounding him like they’re both teenagers, but otherwise the only sound is the slap of flesh, all the ridiculous noises two bodies make together.
Wow. Finally, finally Scott has gotten Ilya Rozanov to shut up. He’s not even moaning, eyes screwed shut, mouth gaping, hands clutching at Scott.
Scott will be damned if Rozanov doesn’t come first. He thrusts harder, buries his face in Rozanov’s neck so he can bite at it savagely, and tells himself to get a hand on Rozanov’s cock. He works a hand under himself, pinches a nipple on his way down, and before he can even reach Rozanov’s cock, Rozanov is throwing his head back, shaking and shaking, juddering, legs flexing against Scott’s back, one of his feet neatly nailing Scott in the kidney, thankfully not so hard that Scott has to stop moving. Coming without being touched.
The ridiculous, agonised face he makes suggests this is a surprise to him too.
Scott can’t manage that trick himself, personally, and he’s never made anybody else do it. It’s so insanely hot, he thinks, fucking into Rozanov hard, harder, until he comes with a groan he stifles against Rozanov’s neck.
So fucking hot, Jesus Christ, how is Rozanov topping Scott’s list of subliminal sexual experiences?
Rozampv is catching his breath when Scott manages to lift his head up. He looks shocked by his own body. Smugness has always been disturbingly attractive on Rozanov; Scott’s sure his own self-satisfied face is much less sexy, but fuck it, it’s his turn.
Sex is a competition, and Scott has definitely, definitely just won.
*
‘The fuck was that about anyway?’
Rozanov had made half a noise towards bailing and Scott had collapsed across him to stop it. Five minutes ago, Scott was still inside him, they haven’t even showered yet. Where the fuck are the kid’s manners? Does he always bail on his hookups like this, or is Scott special? Or is just the secret-life-of-homosexual-sin ones?
Rozanov is giving him a look, not the one from earlier, more what-the-fuck-are-you-rambling-about-now-old-man, eyebrows up and eyes out. He is perhaps two inches from Scott’s face, so the effect is intense.
‘That,’ Scott says, taking in the absolute carnage they’ve made of the bedsheets with one sweep of his hand.
Rozanov keeps the look on for another moment then shrugs.
‘You are hot,’ he says, stress heavy on the h. Scott blinks. He knows he’s not unhandsome, he’s not that self-loathing, but he’s also that much older than Roz, as Roz is always making clear.
Wait, is that what all the chirping is about? Is Rozanov pulling his fucking pigtails?
‘For dinosaur,’ Rozanov adds airily. Scott pinches his nipple hard enough he yelps.
‘You need to be polite, you’re so fucking spoilt,’ Scott tells him.
‘And you are mean,’ Rozanov whines, pouting. Jesus, what a brat. Scott hefts a pec into his hand, puts his mouth where his fingers were, and Roz shuts up quick. He’s getting hard again already. Scott moves down the bed, hikes a flailing leg over his shoulder and starts sucking him off.
Rozanov makes a punched-out noise, writhing back against Scott’s mouth. Sensitive. Scott grins to himself as best he can around Roz’s dick and pulls off long enough to flick his tongue over the glans. The punched-out noise is repeated with interest.
He’s different during sex. Not how Scott would have guessed he would be. Despite all the pre- and post-coital shit-talk, there’s no chirping during it. A lot of moaning and squirming and trying to take charge (and currently trying again, if the commanding hold on Scott’s hair, steering him like a pair of reins, has anything to say).
That surprised, fucked-out face he’d made after he came the first time – Scott’s willing to go bail that Rozanov has never not been on top in a sexual encounter, metaphorically speaking. He might have been fucked before, but clearly whoever those men were, they did a half-assed job.
Scott has never been interested in coming over all dom or daddy, but with Rozanov it’s tempting. An understandable desire for the first time. Rozanov needs someone to put him down hard, knock some of that overweening confidence out of him.
When Rozanov mouths off, Scott has a sudden and inexplicable urge to put him straight over his knee. Which Scott is not going to do, but it’s there. It would be for the good of his soul and moral character. Obviously.
Scott is fast approaching thirty, but he definitely isn’t old enough to be Rozanov’s father. He’s still a young man, but Rozanov makes him feel ancient, all that vim and vigour and getting hard again almost immediately, wow, Scott does not miss being nineteen. Twenty. How old is Rozanov? Scott should maybe feel weird about that particular element, but he himself was eighteen and panting after much older guys, so it’s just going to have fly.
Abruptly the hands in Scott’s hair yank forward, and Scott finds himself pressed down, nose shoved painfully against Rozanov’s pubic bone, as Rozanov comes straight down his throat.
‘That was rude,’ Scott scolds, once he’s finished nearly choking to death on semen. What a way to go. Scott is usually a spit kind of guy anyway. ‘Give a guy some warning. And don’t grab.’
‘Sorry,’ Rozanov says. He sounds chastened. ‘Did not mean to.’ Huge eyes are suddenly trained on Scott’s face, those bee-stung lips quirking up in a smile that has no right to be so enticing. ‘Let me make it up to you?’
*
Make it up and then some. That mouth, that cocksucking mouth that looks built for wrapping around Scott’s dick, was exactly as good as it looked. Where did Rozanov even get that kind of practice? Scott isn’t small. He’s bigger than Rozanov, thank you very much. But Rozanov took him straight down, no choking, no tears, not even a moment to ease into it. Just like earlier, even sex is an all-or-nothing event for him. Somebody should show him how good it is when you slow down, but that somebody is absolutely not going to be Scott.
There were fingers teasing behind Scott’s balls as that mouth worked him over, and then, when Scott was least expecting it, fucking deep-throating him, swallowing around him like it was nothing, those eyes sparking amusedly as Scott shouted Holy fucking shit, like the worst kind of small budget porno, and came so hard his vision fuzzed.
Rozanov hasn’t tried to leave again yet. After he blew Scott, he was hard again, so Scott pulled him up against his chest and jerked him off. Oh, to be nineteen again. Forty is when the refractory period thoroughly starts fucking you over, apparently, but Scott is no longer at the age when he feels like there are live wires under his skin every time he sees a hot guy bend over, thank god.
It was strangely nice, for a handjob. Rozanov sitting between Scott’s legs, not trying to take charge, amazingly (Scott must have tired him out a little), leaning his head back against Scott and gasping, not even talking shit as Scott coaxed him on with a litany of dirty talk, the kind of shit that sounds ridiculous in cold blood, but completely did it for both of them just then. Roz moaning and moaning as Scott murmured in his ear, talked him through it like a spooked horse or a nervous virgin, gone all soft against Scott until he suddenly tensed up and came all over Scott’s hand.
And he stayed that way afterwards, as Scott finally managed to haul his own desiccated carcase off the bed in search of water and one of those shitty hotel flannels. Let Scott clean them both up, then waited for Scott to lie back down and snaked his way back on top of him.
Too tired and fucked out to pretend he doesn’t want to cuddle, evidently. Scott’s not going to complain. It’s been a long, long time since anybody’s stayed longer than it took to get their pants back on.
Everybody’s after that human connection, one way or another. Secretly, Scott has longed to sleep with somebody he already knows, who he is going to see again. Someone he could and did have fun with. The faceless men in Malaga, Ibiza, in a shitty little resort town in Croatia (not a good place to trawl for gay hookups as it turns out), they might lie down with Scott afterwards, but just as often not. A kiss goodbye if he’s lucky, and then they’re gone.
Scott has done the same himself.
This is not any different, he tells himself. Enjoy while it lasts, enjoy it for what is, you cannot take this rabid creature home with you, he belongs out on the street or in the wild, to minimise the maulings that would follow. Metaphorically speaking.
A conservative estimate would put Rozanov at 180lbs or so, of which at least 160 are currently crushing the air out of Scott’s lungs. Unlike earlier, the kid seems to have no immediate plans to move. Maybe he’s planning on a fourth round, the randy little goat.
Ugh. Bad description.
Anyway, Scott’s feeling tenderer towards Russia’s finest spiky spoilt fuck. Sex like that could make you fonder of anyone.
And no, he was right earlier, you don’t have to like someone to have good sex with them, but it’s hard to muster up his usual weary dislike when Rozanov’s nuzzling into his chest, like maybe Scott won’t notice if he’s sneaky about it. Like he isn’t straight-up letting Scott cuddle him and liking it. He’s like a cat in a sunbeam with a saucer of cream to boot. It’s fucking endearing. It’s cute. Big eyes and curls, all snuggled up and Scott’s for the night.
‘What are you doing this summer?’ Scott asks idly, winding one of Rozanov’s curls around his fingers.
‘Nothing.’ Rozanov’s breath is hot against Scott’s chest.
‘Staying in Boston?’
‘Going to Russia at the end of the week,’ Rozanov mutters reluctantly.
‘Nice. To see your family?’
‘Mm. Nice. Sure.’
‘You have siblings?’
Rozanov’s head jerks up off Scott’s left pec.
‘Hunter, we fuck and now you want to play twenty questions?’
Twenty questions, Jesus Christ, who taught him that one anyway? So much spikier than he pretends. On the ice, that laughing, chirping asshole, and occasional moments of temper, but everything seems to roll straight off his back – that’s some impressive cover. Sensitive after all.
Scott snorts.
‘It’s a human question. If you understand what that means.’
For a moment he thinks Rozanov is going to stalk straight out of there, stark naked. Instead he clenches his jaw, turns his head away into the pillow.
Handle with care. Far more prickly than he seems, for someone who dishes it so gleefully.
‘Fucking hedgehog,’ Scott murmurs to himself, stroking his hand over Rozanov’s curls. He’s wanted to do that all night, if he’s truthful. They’re so soft. ‘Stop being so spiny, pull them in.’
From what Scott can see of the side of his face, Roz is wide-eyed. Like nobody has ever in their life done such a thing as stroke his hair.
How is it normally, with you? Scott wants to ask. Do none of your women touch you? Do you always have to be the strong one? Always in control.
Strange, because if there is one thing Scott has picked up about men who fuck women, it’s that they tend to want to pillow their aching heads on a soft breast when offered the chance. Weep out their woes to their woman, beg for comfort from Mommy.
It would be different for Rozanov, who has far more going on beneath the surface than Scott had ever guessed. He’s got a headstart because playing hockey against someone is a pretty good way of getting to know them. No, he doesn’t know when Rozanov’s birthday is or what his favourite childhood memory is, but there’s that basic understanding that can only be reached on the ice. The clues are there, impossible to put together right now, but not even discernible to any of the women falling into bed with Rozanov, who don’t know him, have never met him before, might have seen him play but haven’t understood what the way he moves on the ice means.
And obviously Scott knows Rozanov fucks men, and those poor stupid girls don’t.
Little control freak, little strong man. There must be other men. Rozanov must try to take charge the way he had done his best to with Scott.
Do they let you?
Scott has fucked a lot of men. Has Rozanov? That blowjob, the supreme confidence with which Rozanov made a move to begin with, he must have more than minor experience.
My coach’s son… older men.
The kind of older man who goes for a boy Rozanov’s age, they aren’t always kind or careful.
And if this was in Russia…
‘I have a brother,’ a muffled voice suddenly says, mostly into the pillow. ‘He is asshole.’
‘Oh, so like you, then?’ Scott teases.
There’s a pause.
‘No. Not like me.’
‘Older or younger?’
‘Older.’
‘Does he play hockey too?’
‘Not any more. He wasn’t good enough.’
‘What does he do then?’
‘Police.’
That means something different in Russia, Scott’s willing to bet. They’re corrupt there, right?
‘What about your parents?’
‘Father is also police.’
Yikes.
‘And your mother?’
A sharp inhale.
‘Stop with the questions. We have fucked, if you wanted interview beforehand, too late.’
Whiny voice, petulant, maybe sliding into genuinely pissed off.
‘You can ask them back,’ Scott says, amused.
‘What is spiny?’
Huh, he’s been hanging onto that one.
‘Prickly. Like a hedgehog.’
A suspiciously long pause follows.
‘Uh, a small animal, furry and with spikes on top. Curls up into a ball when it’s frightened. You have those in Russia?’
They don’t have them here, now that Scott thinks about it, though they’re everywhere in kid’s books.
Affronted voice: ‘Obviously. Word is very different.’
Another long pause, Scott almost dozing off, mesmerised by the smooth sensation of those curls under the flat of his hand.
‘You go home for the summer?’
‘No, well, I mean, yes. I stay in New York, that’s home. Might fuck off to Europe for a while, go lie on a beach somewhere.’
If he can damp down his paranoia long enough, that is.
‘What about your parents? You don’t see them?’
He’d told him to ask. It’s not Rozanov’s fault. Scott’s hand stills on his head as he scrambles for a way to say it. All these years, and still he never knows how to say it.
‘What, you can ask, you say ask, but I can’t ask?’ Snappish, fuck.
Scott takes his hand off entirely.
‘No, uh, I lost my parents when I was twelve.’
‘How sad for you,’ Rozanov says flatly and for one searing red moment, Scott could punt him to the other side of the room without a second thought.
He's not that guy. He breathes through his nose. The only way to teach someone like this is –
‘Yeah. Well. Good for you, going back to Russia. Go home and let mommy patch you up, hey?’
And now it’s Rozanov who looks like he’s about to punch Scott. He’s up and off the bed before Scott can even try to make amends or give in to the childish impulse to say But you started it!
Men and their mothers. Scott’s mother is dead, and he’s less tender about her. Sort of. Mostly.
The remnants of both their suits are by the door. Rozanov stoops and starts pawing through them, cursing as he discovers the state they’d left his shirt in between the pair of them.
‘You don’t want to shower first?’
‘No, I go now.’
‘Look, kid, if I said something that –’
But Rozanov is yanking on his pants, moving to stand in front of the mirror to make himself neat. He looks at himself and swears.
Scott winces. There are already two red patches coming up on Rozanov's chin, his neck and chest are scraped raw in four separate places, and there are two large hickeys (wow, back to the glory days, Scott, how old are you again?) on his neck.
‘I am going to Moscow in two days, what the fuck, what the fuck Hunter?’
‘You rubbed your face against my beard! I didn’t hold your head against my neck for fuck’s sake, you were like a cat in fucking heat.’
Fuuuuuck, too far. Storm clouds coming in over that beautiful, angry face.
‘I didn’t mean that. Sorry. You marked me up too, look,’ Scott says, pointing at his neck and chest, which look like he’s had an intimate encounter with a leech.
Tit-for-tat, they are back on the playground all of a sudden.
‘It is just a hickey! You can say girl gave it to you.’
‘You can say the same,’ Scott retorts.
‘What am I meant to say, I fucked girl with beard, she gave it to me? They will know!’
‘How will they know?’
‘Who doesn’t know what fucking beard scrape looks like!’
‘You mean beard burn,’ Scott says without meaning to. ‘They won’t know, why would they know? Are they fucking guys too? Tell them it’s a rash.’
‘My brother has a beard!’ Rozanov says nonsensically. There’s a real note of hysteria in his voice.
Scott’s never seen him like this, another new side to Rozanov but even more unexpected somehow than the obvious big bombshell. He’s not even trying to control himself, it hasn’t even occurred to him. It took Scott a solid half an hour and also actually fucking penetrating him to get him to stop fronting, but suddenly, it’s like he’s someone else. Young and very frightened.
‘Calm down,’ Scott says automatically, trying to make his voice soothing. ‘Cover it up, wear a high shirt, a turtle neck, I don’t know.’
Vaguely in his head, Carter patting one of the rookies on the back, consoling him for a break up, You never tell girls to calm down when they’re mad, it only makes them madder. Scott has really got to consider taking Carter’s advice more often, even if it feels like it should not apply to enraged teenaged Russians.
‘You fucking asshole,’ Rozanov says through his teeth. ‘I cannot explain this. It is the middle of the summer, how can I cover it up?’
‘Can you delay your flight? Tell your family something’s come up.’ Scott’s never been good at troubleshooting. Nothing can be easy with Rozanov, can it? But that’s shitty, he should have been more thoughtful, the poor kid’s panicking…
‘I cannot fucking do that. I say I come Friday, I have to come Friday.’
‘Say you’re sick.’
‘You can get on a fucking flight when you’re sick.’
‘With flu?’
‘Unless I am dying, I can get on plane. What kind of excuse is ‘I am sick’?’
Sneering, but none of the smugness, teasing, none of the usual edge to his cutting remarks, that say, this is all just a game to me.
‘You have a meeting with your agent? Management wants to talk to you?’
‘That’s worse,’ Rozanov chokes out.
‘Flight’s been cancelled?’ Scott tries.
Why is he saying any of this? Rozanov just needs to lie: I have a rash, the doctor thinks it’s fungal. I fell badly on the ice, skinned my face against it and it burnt me. Or buy a high-necked top, there must be ones suitable for the summer heat, which can’t be much to speak of in Moscow anyway.
The anger is draining from Rozanov’s face, that cold, sneering mask going back on.
‘Oh yes, what a good lie, so convincing, so long as nobody thinks to check whether there are flights after it.’
All this fucking fronting, so exhausting. If he won’t help himself –
‘Well, I suggest practicing your lying. Or wear a scarf. Your family won’t –’
‘Won’t what? What the fuck do you know about this? Fucking American. All the same.’
‘Whoa, kid, I didn’t mean –’
Rozanov wheels round and screams right at the top of his lungs, ‘Don’t fucking call me that!’
Scott did not sign up for this. If the anyone heard Rozanov’s voice – it’s not like earlier, when the noises he was making might be mistaken for Scott’s, because sex changes everybody’s voice.
He gets up off the bed and into Rozanov’s face before he can think it through.
‘Do not shout at me. We fucked, you’re marked up, my bad, but you didn’t exactly say it would be an issue. Calm down, take a deep breath, we’ll talk it through and come up with something.’
Scott may be remembering exactly why he’s never liked Rozanov before tonight, but he’s not a monster. This is partly his fault, the least he can do is help Rozanov come up with a good lie.
‘Fuck,’ Rozanov says, pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes are bright, he turns his head away over his shoulder and Scott abruptly realises that he’s on the verge of dissolving into angry tears.
Scott has never made anybody cry in his life, or not that he can remember. Who is he intimate enough with, to have the power to reduce them to tears?
There’s this brief urge to put his arms around Rozanov and make it all alright, but at this stage he might lose an arm.
Then Rozanov is moving again, flinging his jacket on without bothering with the tattered remains of his shirt, and before Scott can even open his mouth to – apologise? – the door is slamming behind him.
For a moment, it seems possible to go after him.
Scott exhales, collapses back into the room’s sole armchair. He’s entirely naked, rubbed raw. The whiplash of the end to what had been a very nice time for both of them (he’d thought at least), it’s too much.
What would he even do if he caught up with Rozanov? Drag him back to the room and pelt him with suggestions Rozanov’s just going to shoot down because he’s too worked up to believe there’s any way to conceal this? What if someone sees him? They are both dishevelled, Scott hasn’t even got his clothes back on, and anybody who sees Rozanov is going to know exactly what he’s just been doing.
Yeah, the sex is definitely wearing off. Booze too. In the cold light of day, this is all going to look so much worse. It’s bad enough now, in the dim glow of the hotel room. Scott took Rozanov home with him. They walked into the hotel separately, but anybody could have seen them. A lifetime of caution, of following the rules, and Scott blew for what?
A very, very good fuck, with somebody he didn’t – doesn’t? – much like but now has to feel sorry for, somebody who is clearly way more of a nervous wreck than Scott (professional nervous wreck and thus qualified to spot others) than anybody could guess. Somebody Scott could have stood to be kinder to? Rozanov is young, stupid with it, easily unnerved (yeah, yeah, hypocrisy at its finest). Maybe there haven’t been so many men for him after all.
Sex always ends with regret for Scott. Tristesse on steroids, mixed with an entirely healthy and rational fear of what might come out of his lapse. Even when he’s doing it a thousand plus miles away from anyone who might know him.
This is so, so much worse. What if Rozanov panics more than he already has? What if he confides in someone? What if he lets something slip?
Calm down, Scott tells himself. The slightest hint of gayness, and Rozanov might get his head bashed in when he heads back to Russia. Is it that bad in Moscow? Scott has this vague sense that it’s that level of bad in some parts, but what does he know. That borderline hysteria, that’s not a good sign, but it’s also a reminder that Rozanov is very young, is blowing things out of proportion. There are ways to deal with his neck, but he flew into such a panic he couldn’t see that.
Poor kid? Scott is somewhere between sympathetic and too focused on his own monumental fuck up to worry after Rozanov. If the press get hold of it – but if the press get hold of it, again, Rozanov might get his head kicked in and Scott doesn’t want that… Could he get Rozanov’s number off someone, check in tomorrow – well, later today – try and talk him down, help him out and through that, make completely sure he’s not going to do something stupid like out Scott to the fucking press.
Jesus fucking Christ. Straight men only have to worry about getting their lay pregnant, lucky sonsofbitches.
Shouldn’t have asked questions. Rozanov was right, what had that been, a job interview?
Maybe he was right, too, in the order of operations: fuck, and then get the hell out. The siren call of physical affection, the temptation to lull your fears, your loneliness, your longing, put it all to sleep against another man’s body, Scott’s not immune to it, and neither is Rozanov, it seems, and that’s dangerous.
Never mind. They can both forget about it. It meant nothing but that Scott was lonely and had a moment’s indiscretion, that Rozanov took advantage, or Scott took advantage, or they both took advantage of each other, that they were ships passing in the night, that they were both lonely together and thus, briefly, not lonely at all. They can slip off into their separate solitudes again.
Before tonight, Scott has had not one ounce of respect or liking for Rozanov. Not as a human being. When he took that dirty hit in a game they played against each other three months ago, Scott hadn’t even blinked, where normally he would have been raging that anyone on his team could pull that kind of shit against another player.
He can remember that, and forget Rozanov’s head on his shoulder, his great weight pressing against Scott’s chest, the desperate way he kissed and the complete abandon with which he sucked cock. How it had felt to have his undivided attention, his need, all pointed at Scott like a compass needle to true north. How it felt to be held in those strong arms, and to return that embrace. His face as he came, each time the same agonised contortion, the same complete loss of control. The note in his voice as he lost his temper, childlike, silently pleading with Scott to make it all right and then refusing every option, like an over-tired child who could be pacified with nothing.
Scott is always lonely. It’s nothing new. This was an evening, not enough time to put aside the habits of a lifetime. Easily forgotten, it was just a fuck.
Just a fuck.