Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shane wasn’t even watching when it happened.

He had the game on, and he’d seen some of the beginning-- Ilya was on a tear this season, he looked amazing and was putting up great numbers, but it was early yet and Shane was pretty confident he’d catch up in the stats-- but JJ had called him and he was in the middle of a rant in French about the backwardness of team management concerning his current pet issue, and Shane had wandered out of the room with the phone to his ear making encouraging French noises. He did take the issue seriously, and as team captain was of course going to bring it up, but JJ mostly just needed to vent now, and Shane was letting him.

When he came back in the game had a stoppage of play and there were players milling around and there were a lot of shots of tense-looking faces, all looking toward one end of the ice. Someone was injured, and Shane interjected into JJ’s flow, "Hey are you watching the Boston game?"

"No," JJ said. “I don’t need to see that.”

"Somebody’s hurt," he said.

"I hope it’s Rozanov, that cocksucker," JJ said.

Rozanov was usually who the cameras would pan to during something like this, but Shane hadn’t seen him. It was a Boston player down, the camera had panned over the huddle on the ice and the player’s black-socked leg had been briefly visible, moving. A Bauer skate, the kind Ilya wore. The tense concerned faces were-- there was the alternate captain, there was-- shit that was Ilya’s linemate Virtanen, his right-winger. Like many Finns, Virtanen’s expression was normally pretty blank, reserved, but he looked unhappy, mouth pulling down and heavy eyelids tugged in by worried eyebrows.

"I think it is," Shane said. Fuck. They were playing New Jersey, who were-- well, they were New Jersey. Montreal had played them last week and they had sucked.

JJ cackled. "Serves him right, the fucker! That was a dirty check on you, last time!"

It had been holding, and Ilya had been teasing, but Shane had absolutely capitalized on him getting sent to the box for it and had scored on the resulting power play. "I wasn’t mad at him about it," Shane said.

They showed a replay, finally. It was Ilya. Two New Jersey players crashed into him at the same time, wrenching him around, and he went down and stayed down. "Oh fuck," Shane said.

"What?" JJ asked.

"No, it’s fucked-up," Shane said. "I bet it’s his knee. Fuck."

The game cut to a commercial break. "Really," JJ said.

"It looks serious," Shane said.

"Well, fuck that guy," JJ said. "Our season just got easier."

"JJ," Shane sighed.

"You hate the guy," JJ said. "As you should!"

"Not as a person," Shane tried. "Jesus, JJ. He’s just a guy. I don’t want him to get hurt. And if I wanted my job to be easier this isn’t the line of work I’d’ve gone into."

"Eh, but he’s such an asshole," JJ said.

Shane got him off the phone and texted Lily.

Shane:

I saw that. I hope it’s not as bad as it looks.

He fretted briefly, and looked at his schedule. No, he was not dashing off to a hospital bedside in New fucking Jersey. Anyway when the game came back they showed a brief clip of Ilya, sitting up, on a gurney, being wheeled down the breezeway, waving uncomfortably as he went.

Fuck, that was bad that he couldn’t even skate off. He’d really gotten crunched.

That was a season-ending kind of injury, which sucked because the season had basically just started.

A horrible, selfish part of Shane thought, well, that will make him wanting to leave Boston more plausible, if he doesn’t get to play this season. He was immediately sorry for thinking it, and even more sorry that he hadn’t been able to help thinking easier for Ottawa to afford him.

But it would cut down the scrutiny. Ilya was beloved in Boston, and Shane could understand his mother’s worry that leaving Boston would reflect poorly on Ilya. Especially if he led them to the Cup this year, it would be unthinkable for him to leave.

Shane was mostly too anxious to have coherent strategic thoughts after that. He texted Lily again, Oh the replays of that look so so bad, but then thought he’d better leave his phone alone.

He was about to lose his mind when his phone finally buzzed.

Lily:

Yeah it is bad

Shane:

Shit. Fuck.

Call me?

Lily:

It’s so late. Go to bed. Call in morning.

Shane:

There’s no fucking way I’m sleeping.

Ilya didn’t answer. Finally Shane sent him another message.

Shane:

Are you alone

Can I call?

Lily:

Y

Shane called, and after three rings Ilya picked up, and answered in Russian. Shane hadn’t made much headway on studying, but he could at least recognize that it was a typical greeting.

"Oh no," Shane said. "That bad?"

"Yes bad," Ilya said. "Surgery bad."

"Oh no," Shane said.

"Back to Boston for surgery," Ilya said. "Lot of surgery. Knives everywhere."

"Is it your knee?" Shane asked.

Ilya laughed, not a happy sound. "Is everything," he said. "O’Rourke tried to take my whole leg off."

"Shit," Shane hissed. O’Rourke wasn’t even good, was the worst part. "Well. Are you at least on the good drugs?"

"Maybe," Ilya said. "I don’t know." He said something else in Russian, but it wasn’t anything Shane knew.

"Sorry," Shane said. "Does it hurt?"

Ilya sighed. "No," he said. "Not now, I feel nothing."

"When is your surgery?" Shane asked.

"Don’t know," Ilya said. "Boston."

"I’ll try to come to Boston," Shane said. It was futile, he didn’t have time, but he could try anyway. Even maybe just for like an afternoon or something.

"Don’t," Ilya said. "Don’t worry. I will… let you know." He sounded heavy and tired.

"It’s too soon to know how bad it is," Shane said.

"No, is bad," Ilya said. "We know."

"Ilya," Shane said, pained. He wiped his face, realizing with some surprise that tears were rolling down his face.

"I will be all right," Ilya said. "Go to bed." And he hung up the phone.

Shane stared at it, thinking about calling him back, but what could he say?

Nothing. And it wasn’t like he could call the hospital and ask for details. He was no one. He cast about. There was no one at all he could call, nothing at all he could do, nothing he could even productively think about. It was awful.

He paced around the house, and paused at the bottle of wine next to the fridge. It was white wine his mom had brought over and they hadn’t drunk, so he’d taken it out of the fridge, meaning to bring it back over to hers next time he went. He could drink it. But he had so little experience with drinking, and he just didn’t think it would do him any good to try.

So he just kept pacing around the house until he gave up and tried and failed to sleep.

It was a nightmare. Ilya texted him only rarely, and explained that he was so frequently surrounded by doctors that he had no privacy to make a phone call. He couldn’t walk out in the stairwell to talk, he explained. And the drugs made English hard for him anyway. And there was nothing Shane could do.

"You look rough, brother," Hayden said, brushing his shoulder gently before grabbing it to shake him slightly.

"Not sleeping so great," Shane said. "I don’t know. I gotta-- maybe I gotta change up my diet or something."

"Rozy got fucked up good," JJ said, as he came into the room. "No official statement on it but he’s on IR, says lower body, but I got a friend on the staff who says he’s gonna need like two or three surgeries."

"I hadn’t heard that," Shane said.

"We’re playing Boston next week," Hayden said. "That should make things way easier!" And he jostled Shane’s shoulder.

"That’s not the kind of news I want," Shane said. He couldn’t lie about that.

"We hate him, though," Hayden said.

"I don’t," Shane said. "I really don’t. He’s a great player and I don’t-- I want to beat him, I don’t want him taken out of the race."

"Oh," Hayden said. "I guess that makes sense." He wrinkled his nose. "He always crosschecks me, though, and they almost never call it."

That’s because he’s not doing it that hard, Shane thought, but did not say. Ilya had been fairly penalized almost every time he’d done actual foul-worthy hits on Hayden, in Shane’s opinion. He loved Hayden, but Pike was kind of a little bitch. And the line between a legitimate hit with the stick in the hands, and a crosscheck, was a gradient and depended largely on force and form. Ilya was a master of the gradient, with such good body control he could exert far more force than it looked like he was using, so the check appeared far less serious than it was. Shane had been scolded by a ref once for diving when an unexpectedly hard hit from Ilya had sent him careening over. He barely touched you, son, this ain’t pee-wees! and meanwhile Ilya was skating away laughing.

But it still wasn’t worth a penalty. A hard check wasn’t an illegal check, even if it knocked you down. And Ilya wasn’t doing it to injure, which was where Shane drew the line.

God. Maybe all of this was past tense. Ilya was such a masterful player-- but you needed two legs for it. Shane pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You’re really upset about this," JJ observed, surprised.

"It’s an upsetting injury," Shane snapped. "I’ve almost had that exact thing happen to me any number of times and it’s just unpleasant to think about."

Not to rub it in, but Shane was the kind of player who got double-guarded like that, and Hayden just wasn’t, nor was JJ. It wasn’t that Hayden wasn’t dangerous with a puck, or even JJ, but opposing teams knew to never leave Shane open, and sometimes that meant he got mobbed.

"I guess you’re right," Hayden said.

Shane’s phone buzzed with a photo from Ilya. He opened it, and it was an x-ray. He frowned at it for a moment, trying to discern what Ilya was trying to show him.

It was an x-ray of Ilya’s left foot. As far as he could tell it was completely normal.

Another message arrived.

Lily:

I sext u

feet pic

People like that yes?

Shane:

Your foot is very sexy.

Ilya sent another photo. This was an x-ray of his left hip and part of his pelvis. The shadow of his dick and balls was kind of visible.

Lily:

my hottest nudes

Shane:

You’re so goddamned weird

Also beautiful

Very beautiful but I have to delete that pic you know

Lily:

I challenge u to jerk off to it first

Shane:

Challenge rejected I need your nudes to include skin

Lily:

I can’t believe u 😞

Shane:

Would you jerk off to my bones? I will call your bluff on this.

Lily:

I could absolutely get there

lil bit upset u doubt me

Shane resolved to ransack his own medical records at some point to send his gnarliest x-ray pics to Ilya as revenge, and went on about his day.

Ilya sounded better on the phone. "I saw what you did," he said. "I saw that. I was so happy."

"When?" Shane adjusted the phone against his ear, and went to sit down. He’d been in the middle of something but this was more important.

"When O’Rourke and Cooper tried to do the same to you as they did to me and you dodged them and they hit each other!" Ilya crowed. "Was perfect!"

Shane grinned despite himself. "Okay that was pretty sweet," he admitted.

"O’Rourke got hurt, too," Ilya said, "which he fucking deserves."

"He does," Shane said. "I mean, I wouldn’t hurt him, but it was his own incompetence that made that happen."

"Best thing you could do for me," Ilya said. "You are so good for me."

It made Shane warm inside, which was sort of stupid, but, well. He hadn’t exactly done it for Ilya but he hadn’t not been thinking about Ilya for, shit, most of the game actually.

"Well," Shane said. "I try. So-- I will see you next week. Can I bring you anything?"

"What would I need?" Ilya sighed. "There is nothing I can use. I can’t do anything so I can’t need anything. It is so boring here."

"Is your team taking care of you?" Shane asked.

"Yes, of course they are," Ilya said.

"Well," Shane said. "Then I guess I’ll just bring myself."

"Yes," Ilya said, but he didn’t sound as enthusiastic as Shane had kind of been expecting. He sighed. "I have missed you. It would be good to--" He paused. "I can’t exactly do most of the things we like best."

Shane spared a single wistful thought for getting railed against a wall, and said, "I think I have reasonable expectations, Ilya."

"Mm," Ilya said, and he was clearly thinking about something else. Well, he had a lot going on.

"I’ll see you then," Shane said. "I can’t wait."

"Yes," Ilya said, which wasn’t really an answer, but oh well.

It was bizarre to play the Raiders without Ilya. They were clearly not quite themselves without him, but they hadn’t fallen apart. They’d had time to try a few things to replace him, and Shane had watched tape of it. They were a reasonably deep team, and that was something Shane thought nobody really made enough of. Rozanov was given the credit for their success, not undeservedly, but in the wrong ways. Yes, he was their primary scorer, but he was not the only one, and while he did a lot of heavy lifting for their offense, he was just a component in their system. Without him, they still had a formidable defense, and a very methodical offense. Ilya made flashy plays but they were within the context of, actually, a very Russian-style offense, which relied on consistent, patient networks of passes, wearing down opposing defense and then making room for, usually, Ilya to score a flashy goal. But those flashy goals were almost always the culmination of a methodical assault, featuring thorough control of the puck. It took a lot of skill to do that, and it took a deep bench to keep it up.

Some of it was surely Coach Desjourneys, but looking at tape of the old pre-Ilya Raiders, Desjourneys had not had this in his arsenal before Ilya’s arrival. Perhaps he’d known about it, and hadn’t been able to implement it until then. But Shane privately thought Ilya deserved credit; perhaps not for the idea, but for the implementation at least, certainly.

And so, in Ilya’s absence, the forwards who’d trained with him were continuing his methods, and the team had experimented with slotting different forwards into that center position, to substitute for Ilya. They were starting to have pretty good success with last season’s hot rookie, Aaron Robertson, now a sophomore, who’d texted Shane the night of the draft.

There was a semi-secret group chat, that Shane was in. He’d been inducted into it his rookie year by Kyle Little, a right winger from Detroit, who’d approached him a little nervously before a game and asked for his number. Shane had looked into Little’s dark eyes in his copper-skinned face, and considered for just a moment where his mother’s mental list of every Asian in MLH-track hockey began and ended. Sure enough, Little was Anishinaabe-- specifically Ojibwe-- and curated a semi-secret group chat he called The Brown Guys, which included most everybody in the MLH who wasn’t a white guy.

They generally didn’t talk much, but it was a really useful tool for checking in once in a while. There was stuff you couldn’t complain about to your team, exactly. The chat was mostly secret for that reason; even the chillest, most enlightened white guys sometimes felt weird and twitchy if you brought up anything adjacent to race. But Shane had, once he became a team captain, used the list heavily to get insights into things he needed to look out for. It was sort of new for him to think about stuff like that from that angle; he’d mostly tried to ignore it unless someone was making it his problem, to the point that Kyle had nervously asked if he "identified as white", which had briefly pissed Shane off but after a moment (he’d smoothly moved on with the conversation and managed to process it in the background, and soon enough to loop back to it in conversation, and it had been one of his major conversational triumphs of the season) he’d been able to explain that he just had found that if he brought it up people got weird, so it was easier to avoid it if at all possible. But if he was in team leadership he had to think about that stuff, and there were issues that guys of other ethnicities had to face that he hadn’t thought of. It was really important for him as a team captain to know about those things, and know to look for them.

He was the only team captain in the MLH who was in that chat.

Robertson had been inducted into the list in the run-up to the draft, because he was a hot prospect, and he was Black-- biracial, for anyone keeping score, which Shane well knew people only did if they could count it against you. Shane had really hoped the Metros would get him, but fresh off a Cup they weren’t exactly getting hot picks, and the Raiders snapped him up. So he had been surprised to get a text from Robertson that night. He’d written back, and it hadn’t taken long for Shane to wheedle out that Robertson was nervous about having a Russian captain, because Russians in specific, and Europeans in general, had a somewhat justified reputation for not being the most enlightened about racism. (It wasn’t like Americans or Canadians were better, per se. The actual worst were definitely among their number. But on the whole it was easier to know up front, with them; European racism could blindside you from an angle you weren’t expecting.)

Shane had called him and talked to him for a good while, then, laying his fears to rest as best he could. And he liked the kid. Bertie was young, talented, earnest, eager to please, but already just a little bit jaded. And he was smart.

Ilya liked the kid too, and had appreciated Shane quietly passing along Bertie’s worries. Ilya checked in about it with Shane more than Shane had expected. But Boston was as white as any MLH team, more so at the moment-- there was no one else on the team in the Brown Guys chat this season. And Ilya revealed there was a chat like this for Russians too, and nobody else in Boston was in that chat either.

(They’d done the math and there were approximately the same number of Russians as there were not-white guys in the league. There was only one guy who was in both chats, a mixed Asian Russian guy from Novosibirsk whose family were Kyrgyz exiles during the Soviet era. He didn’t say much, but Shane thought he was really funny on the rare occasions he chimed in. Ilya confirmed he was funnier, and chattier, in Russian, but he skated for Philly so neither of them saw him much. Shane had delightedly passed along an advertising gig from a company who’d wanted him to sit on a horse. Aitmatov was delighted to do this one, while Shane would rather have died.)

(Ilya was the only captain in the league who was in the Russians groupchat.)

Bertie had settled in well enough in Boston after all, and all the work Ilya had put into him was paying off now as he started his second season. He was mostly a clean, earnest skater, but within the context of Boston’s offensive network he was starting to blossom, and had begun to fill the space Ilya’s injury had left vacant with increasing confidence.

Shane itched to work with him, because he’d have loved to mold the kid in his own image a bit, give him more of his own methodical approach. But it was clear Ilya, and Desjourneys, were doing pretty well with him.

Unfortunately, tonight Shane’s job was to destroy him, and he did, fairly effectively shutting him down. It felt sort of bad, but Shane could see the plays their offense was setting up, could see where Ilya would have fit into it, but Ilya was both perceptive and fast enough to make it so that even if Shane could anticipate where to be, he wouldn’t be able to disrupt the play. Bertie almost was, but most of the time, he just wasn’t quick enough, couldn’t quite anticipate that Shane would be there, and so Shane stole the puck or at least disrupted the shot a solid dozen times, preventing Bertie from getting on the board. And Shane’s counterpart on the second line, Andropov, was quick enough to largely do the same. He was familiar with that style of offense, which helped.

Bertie beat Shane one time, dodging just successfully enough to prevent Shane from stealing the puck, getting his body in position to screen it so he could make his shot, and he got it through on Miitka’s glove side.

It was Boston’s only goal. Montreal only managed three, but it was a fairly commanding defeat.

It wasn’t a playoff or anything, so there was no handshake line, but Shane stopped at the Boston bench. He would never have dared to do this with Ilya present. The players weren’t expecting him to stop, so none of them said anything. Shane leaned in and said, "Bertie, keep doing what you’re doing."

"Don’t fuck with him," Cliff Marleau snarled, irritated.

"No," Shane said, "I mean it. You’re doing awesome." Bertie had been looking down, but he glanced up now, and a slow smile spread across his tired face. "It’s too much pressure on you right now but you’re almost there, man. You’re almost there. You’re so good and you’re going to be one of the great ones. And I mean soon, maybe this season. You just need to keep going."

"He’s not fucking with me," Bertie said to Marleau. "He’s just like this for real."

Marleau considered Shane a moment. "He is," he said. "Well, fuck off anyway."

"I will," Shane said, laughing, and skated away.

He let himself into Rozanov’s house with the key he had now, wiggling out of his shoes and wandering across the wood floor in socked feet. "Ilya?"

"Here," Ilya said. He was in the living room, and the couch was clearly set up as a kind of recuperation station, with all kinds of supportive pillows, and instead of the nicely-interior-designed space there were now weird side tables and clutter, and a wheelchair sitting, waiting.

Ilya looked tired and sad and weirdly small, smothered in a big hoodie and a blanket, and the TV was still playing on the sports channel. It had flicked over to the evening game. Shane came over and sat down in the chair near the couch, which was obviously intended for visitors to sit in. There were several chairs around, and it gave an impression that he had visitors frequently. He probably did.

"Bertie played really well," Shane said. "That kid is a treasure."

"You shut him down with no mercy," Ilya said.

"Well," Shane said. "I mean. I had to. But I told him after, how close he was. He’s really good, Ilya."

"Now you broke his spirit," Ilya groused. "I spend so long, build him up, and here you come and make him feel like shit."

"I can’t go easy on him," Shane said. "But he knows. He almost had me most of those times, and he did get me once. It’ll only get easier. He’s really fucking good."

"If you don’t break him," Ilya said, and groaned and rubbed his hands down his face.

"He’s not you," Shane said.

"He’s not me," Ilya said. "I would beat you every fucking time."

"You would’ve beat me approximately 49% of those times," Shane said.

"Fifty-one," Ilya said, eyeing him.

"Depends on the year," Shane said. "I think we still would have beat you tonight."

"Easy to say," Ilya said, and waved a hand. He picked up the remote and turned the television off. "You sit all the way over there. Did you come just to chat?"

"Maybe," Shane said, with a laugh.

Ilya sat up, frowning deeply as he rearranged the pillows and his injured leg carefully on the couch to let him do it. "Come, sit," he said, patting the space directly next to him.

Shane obeyed, and Ilya half-lay in his lap, looking up at him. He looked tired and resigned and sad. Shane petted his hair, which was damp; he’d clearly just showered. Well, at least he could do that. He was only a week or so out of surgery, but that was enough for incisions to heal, Shane supposed.

"Did you eat?" Shane asked.

Ilya hummed a vague affirmative. "You?"

Shane nodded. "I’m good," he said. Normally petting Ilya’s hair unwound him a bit, and Ilya was fond of being cradled in a lap, but this didn’t seem to be doing it for him tonight. "You seem pretty tired. How’s the pain?"

"It is okay," Ilya said. "I can’t move very much."

"The surgery went okay," Shane said, because it had, Ilya had told him about it in some detail. While still loopy the next day, and he’d been unusually talky, loopy and tearful, but he’d seemed mostly upbeat. "How’s it healing? Are they pretty hopeful?"

"Yes," Ilya said. "But I can’t do any exercise at all, not even arms, not anything, until they say so. And I am so bored. And it hurts. You know this."

"It does," Shane said. "Not just the injury. Everything."

"Yes," Ilya said. When you were used to working out as a job, suddenly not being able to work out at all was a very unpleasant shock to the system. When Shane was on strict rest for his concussion at the end of the previous season, all of his joints had ached, and his muscles had felt like they were gnawing themselves. It had been horribly unpleasant, and the whole time it had been overlaid with the dread of how hard it would be to get back in shape.

"They must have you on some steroids," Shane said.

"Of course," Ilya said. "So none of my clothes fit. Not that I could get dressed anyway."

It felt really good to hold him, though. He was big and warm and solid and alive. He didn’t smell quite right; there was a faint medical odor, and he normally had a faint whiff of cologne and cigarette smoke even post-shower. But he was off cigarettes entirely, and didn’t seem to be bothering with cologne. At least his shampoo smelled familiar.

After a little while Ilya sat up enough to kiss him, and they made out for a little while, but it was awkward and difficult and they couldn’t really get anywhere. Eventually Shane said, "We should either get in bed or give this up."

"Bed, then," Ilya said. He couldn’t bear any weight on the bad leg, and wasn’t steady enough for crutches, but Shane could take most of his weight over his shoulders, and help him hop there. Only because it wasn’t far.

He peeled Ilya out of the hoodie, but then Ilya wouldn’t let him keep going. "No no," Ilya said. "Leave shirt on."

"I want to touch you," Shane said.

"No," Ilya said. "Not while still light. Maybe in dark." He got his leg carefully arranged on the bed, grimacing, then lay back and flapped his hand. "You get naked."

Shane obeyed, slowly, taking his clothes off and shaking them out and folding them, mostly because it made Ilya laugh. "The nerdiest striptease of all time," Shane said.

"Oh," Ilya said. "Oh yes. Even better, put your reading glasses. And leave your socks. And then fuck me like that. I like that."

"That’d make for a weird centerfold," Shane said, pretending to pose.

"I would love it," Ilya said. "Oh my god. Your clean white socks. Please take for me picture like this."

Shane took his socks off. "I didn’t bring my glasses," he said. "I always leave them in my carry-on with my e-reader."

"Of course you have e-reader," Ilya said. "For boring hockey books."

Shane climbed into bed, under the covers, helping arrange things so Ilya’s leg was supported, and then he put his hand against the front of Ilya’s crotch, and Ilya sighed deeply.

"On these meds my dick don’t work," he said.

"Oh," Shane said, "I’m not surprised."

"No?" Ilya raised an eyebrow.

"Mine didn’t," Shane said. "With the collarbone." He shrugged. "I mean, it didn’t matter, because I didn’t see you anyway, but. It super didn’t work, for that first little bit while I was on the good stuff."

"Oh," Ilya said. He tugged Shane closer to kiss him. "I can’t be much good to you," he said, "but maybe you fuck my mouth."

"You don’t have to," Shane said dubiously. "I don’t think we could make that very comfortable for you."

"I hoped I could get dick to work," Ilya admitted. "But. I should have told you. Not much good."

"I don’t need that," Shane said. "I always like your dick but that’s not why I came."

"I can’t even have you jerk off on me," Ilya complained. "Because I am nothing to look at now either."

"That’s not true," Shane said.

"No," Ilya said, "I am all weak and flabby already. Depressing how fast it happen."

"Ilya," Shane said, snuggling up against him. He put his hands up under Ilya’s shirt. Ilya tried to push him away, but couldn’t really get the leverage. His skin was soft. Maybe his muscles weren’t hard ridges under his skin, but his body was warm and felt so good to touch. "Just let me love on you a little."

"Don’t," Ilya said uncomfortably, pulling his shirt down. He did seem genuinely distressed. "Stop. I’m not-- any good like this."

"Ilya," Shane said, shocked. "Do you think I’m that shallow?"

"No," Ilya said, distraught.

"Shh," Shane said. "Listen. I’m bad at saying the right thing. I’m gonna fuck this up. So let me just--" He sat up, kneeling next to Ilya, and bent over and took Ilya’s face between his hands. "Shh. This is hard. I love you, ok? And not because you have washboard abs and a huge cock. Those are like, bonuses."

"Oh, bonuses," Ilya said. "What like, the signing bonus for becoming boyfriend was huge cock but now I spent it all and you have just regular me for the rest of contract."

Shane laughed. Of course that was how Ilya would know the word. "A bonus just means like, an extra," Shane said. "As long as I have the rest of you I can take or leave the cock."

"Is part of me though," Ilya said.

Shane nuzzled in and kissed him. "You remember when we got high at the cabin," he said.

"Sort of," Ilya said.

"And you told me you loved me whatever shape I was," Shane said. "And then you said I only loved you because of your shape."

"Maybe," Ilya said.

"And I said that wasn’t right," Shane said.

"If you remember it this well you probably weren’t really high actually," Ilya said dubiously.

"No I was," Shane said. "But I remember being annoyed that I couldn’t figure out how to say what I meant."

"Ha," Ilya said, "welcome to my whole life."

"You have another language to be smarter in," Shane pointed out. "I just have this one and I still don’t know how to explain myself."

Ilya pulled back a little, but only to chase Shane’s mouth and give him a kiss. It was more sweet than hot but it was acceptably affectionate. "You are plenty smart in English," Ilya said. "And maybe I use as the excuse. Oh if I said in Russian I would say right, and that is just a lie, I would be big bonehead in any language."

"Just with a bigger vocabulary," Shane said.

"You were supposed to disagree with me," Ilya said. Then he sighed. "But you wouldn’t know that."

"No, I believe you," Shane said. "You’re too witty in English not to be even better in Russian. Anyway, I’m horny as fuck, so I’m going to suck your dick for a while and then probably jerk off. You can just lie there if you want."

"I don’t think sucking my dick is going to do me any good," Ilya said.

"If it doesn’t feel good, I’ll stop," Shane said. "But I want to do it anyway."

It took Ilya a little while to get over his own lack of response, but it didn’t stop Shane from getting into a mental place where he was really enjoying himself. Because even if Ilya wasn’t hard, that was still Ilya, and it was still his cock, and he tasted of clean skin and maybe some lotion and just a hint of body musk, and when he was soft like this Shane could get the whole thing in his mouth with reasonable ease. Obviously it wasn’t as sensitive as it was when it was hard, but Shane could still work over the same spots, and after a bit of attention Ilya was twitching and breathing hard.

Shane was hard as a rock and leaking steadily, not letting himself hump Ilya’s leg or the mattress, letting the pressure build and build, up on his knees and bent so Ilya could see how hard he was, how he wasn’t touching himself at all, how into this he was, and that was probably working more than his tongue to get Ilya into this.

"Let me touch you," Ilya said, pawing at Shane’s shoulders.

"No," Shane said, pulling off only enough to say it. "No, I’m not done here."

"I’m not going to-- aagh," Ilya said, giving a full-body twitch as Shane swallowed him down.

When Shane was soft, his penis kind of retracted into itself, and was much smaller. Ilya’s didn’t really do that, it got soft and floppy but it stayed fairly long, retracted snugly into the foreskin but still not very small. It wasn’t entirely soft right now, though it wasn’t hard, but it was still big enough to reach Shane’s throat, and hard enough that if he pushed the foreskin back off it, the foreskin would stay retracted.

So Shane swallowed, and it was a lot easier than when Ilya was hard, for sure, but it was still worth doing, it was still delicious, still fucking hot, still satisfying to that same place in Shane’s brain that went quiet with pleasure when he did this.

Ilya was swearing in English, and saying words Shane didn’t know and suspected weren’t whole words in Russian, and he twitched and shuddered and groaned and actually whimpered, and after a few more moments of this, Shane could tell that he was coming, even still mostly soft, shuddering and gasping up into Shane’s mouth, his hands tight in Shane’s hair.

Shane pulled off just a little, holding him in his mouth, and waited until Ilya subsided, panting, and then let him go. "See," he said, "I wasn’t done."

"Fuck," Ilya panted. "Shane, fuck."

"Yeah," Shane said, buzzy and warm all over. He sat up, and crawled closer to Ilya.

"Let me touch," Ilya said, dazed. "Let me-- fuck." He was useless, limp and noodley and sweet, and Shane took himself in hand.

"I’m gonna come on your face," Shane said, "if you won’t take your shirt off."

Ilya grinned at him, and opened his mouth, turning toward him. "Yes," he said.

It took about five seconds, and Shane kept his eyes open to watch Ilya’s face, eyes closed and mouth open and grinning, tongue out. "Yeah okay," Shane said, and let go, and it was kind of a lot and not all of it made it onto Ilya’s face but most of it did.

He let himself admire it for a moment. Ilya squinted one eye open, but the other was stuck shut and he left it, laughing breathlessly.

"Fuck, you’re hot," Shane said, and considered just collapsing there, but decided he’d better not. "Hang on, let me clean you up."

"Mm," Ilya said, and licked some of it off his lower lip.

It was two weeks later when Ilya sent Shane another photo.

Shane was at his parents’ house, but nobody was standing behind him, so he opened the photo, figuring it was probably safe given Ilya’s current condition.

It was a picture of a sheet of paper with some heavily-black image printed on it and a puddle of something on it. What? He started to type when a text came up.

Lily:

I told u

Shane:

what

He looked again at the image. The piece of paper was a print-out of an x-ray. Oh, it was the x-ray Shane had sent. The one where his collarbone was broken. In it, his head was blocked off with a lead drape, so it really was just his shoulder and a bit of his chest, the fracture in the bone highlighted with an oval the tech had drawn on. The puddle was kind of striped across it.

Lily:

I told u I could get there from your bones

Shane:

OH MY GOD??????

Lily:

I just think about your tits

they were almost in frame

I think of them

easy

Shane:

I

I kind of think your brain should be studied

like in a lab or something

"Who’re you texting?" his mom asked. Shane glanced up.

"Ilya," he said. "I think he’s feeling a little better."