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It’s not really a sacrifice. Not at first.
In middle school, the first time one of his classmates had found a dirty video online and passed it around on a grainy, hand-me-down cellphone, he’d known something was different. Known that he was supposed to feel something maybe, other than acute and indecipherable nothingness. The kids had gotten in trouble, the phone confiscated and parents called. Shane’s own indifference, then, felt like a reward.
That’s where it started, he thinks. Restraint equaled reward. In almost every area of his life, it was reaffirmed.
The more he focused on studying and ignored what few social opportunities he was extended, the more he was praised by his teachers and administrators, sent home with A+’s and glowing report cards for the fridge. The quieter he generally was, the less anyone bothered him or noticed he was different. When the hockey practice started up more seriously in high school, he learned how to tie in physical restraint alongside the mental—by controlling what he focused on in the gym, he could train parts of his body to be better, stronger, be more successful on the ice. By controlling his diet, he could tidy up his routines, make it one less thing to worry about so he could focus on more important things like scouts and scholarships and prospects.
He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke anything. He doesn’t party, doesn’t get caught up in team drama. He refuses to comment on an entire list of things to interviewers and press, some that he’d learned about the hard way, and all of which he has neatly categorized in a list in his notes app on his phone. He has curfews. Rituals. Alarms. Rules that he hasn’t really ever said out loud but if he doesn’t follow it feels like the whole day, week, season, year is fucked.
He doesn’t have sex. It’s not so much about there not being opportunities for it, because that hasn’t been an issue anymore. Not since the draft. Maybe since the prospects, even. Shane has almost more trouble trying to carve out some time by himself than he does just putting up with constantly being surrounded by other people.
He knows that people want him. Or at least the idea of him. That people have his magazine spreads pinned to their walls. That they flirt with him, ask for his phone number, brazenly suggest getting out of whatever establishment Shane has been dragged to that night with lowered lashes and featherlight fingers on his arm.
It makes him feel like he’s in middle school again. Like there’s this thing Shane should be feeling and he isn’t, like he’s standing on the outside of something and observing instead of participating.
The thing is, it doesn’t really bother him. Life goes on just as it always has: hockey first, the rest of it background noise. The fingers on his arm feel like television static, like water. There and gone and, ultimately, insignificant. It’s all restraint, because restraint is something that he’s choosing, not something that’s wrong with him. So it’s fine.
It’s fine, and he doesn’t think about it, and there’s hockey, and that’s more important. He doesn’t have to think about that either. It’s just a fact, and Shane likes those.
Fact: Shane has hockey. Shane is good at hockey.
Fact: Shane has restraint, which is the thing that allows him to be good at hockey in the first place. The basis of his career. Of his entire life, really.
Fact: Shane gets hard looking at Rozanov in the showers.
One of these things, he thinks as he begins to break out into a cold sweat, is not like the others.
+
It’s only after Rozanov has closed the door to Shane’s hotel room behind him that Shane starts to realize there’s been a miscommunication. It’s probably his own fault.
“I thought we could… talk,” Shane suggests, thumbs in his pockets, pulse pounding in his chest. “Do you want to sit?”
Rozanov, who’s taking his time perusing the rest of the suite as he turns in a slow circle back toward Shane, says, “No. Not really.”
And then his knuckles are grazing the outside of Shane’s hip through his shirt, gaze dark as he moves in with a purpose, staring decidedly south of Shane’s eyes. Shane’s shoulder blades hit the wall but he hardly registers it, be it for the way Rozanov catches the back of his head before it can make contact or for the way that everywhere he touches Shane feels like all of the electricity, none of the static.
But it’s fast—it’s so fucking fast, and Shane doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, and when Rozanov leans into him a little more, intense, body hard and warm, so warm against him, Shane says—
“Wait.”
Rozanov stops inches from his mouth, eyes flicking up to Shane’s. His thumb is still pressing into his hip. Shane shudders in a breath.
“You do not want?” Rozanov asks, glancing back down to his lips briefly.
“It’s not that,” Shane says, probably too quickly. “It’s just that I don’t, uh. Do this?”
The corner of Rozanov’s mouth twitches, brief levity cutting through the tension clinging to the air between them. Shane would roll his eyes, if he didn’t sort of feel like someone was stepping all over his chest.
“And what is this?”
He wishes Rozanov would back up a few steps so he could think. He wishes Rozanov was even closer.
Restraint, he thinks.
Shane shifts between Rozanov’s body and the wall and blows out a breath. “I’m trying to say that I’m—I’m celibate.”
He braces himself for the type of reaction he’d always pictured getting from the guys in the locker room, a burst of laughter or a shocked expression, jokes about his charisma or sexuality. He’d planned to stare at the edge of the mattress somewhere over Rozanov’s shoulder, but he finds himself morbidly curious, unable to look away from him.
“Celi-bate,” Rozanov repeats, face twisted up around the word. His grip slackens just a little at Shane’s hip, but doesn’t let go. “What does this mean?” he asks.
“It means that I don’t—um. I don’t have—you know,” Shane fumbles, and then, upon further anticipatory silence, realizes that Rozanov actually does not know. “...Sex,” he finishes lamely.
Rozanov’s head tilts back as he inhales, and then his chin dips toward his chest.
“Ah. You are virgin.”
This time Shane does scoff, shifting on his feet. “It’s not—like that. I’ve had opportunities, I just. Celibate means you’re choosing not to have sex.”
In front of him, Rozanov’s brows climb, and then abruptly collapse into a furrow. “I don’t understand. Why would you do this. Is punishment?”
“It’s strategy,” Shane amends.
Rozanov’s head tilts. “So you do not have sex,” he says slowly, “because… hockey?”
“I mean,” Shane lifts a shoulder, “that’s part of it. Yeah.”
The tantalizing line of Rozanov’s mouth twitches, and this time it tries to tug upward at the corners before it flattens again. When Shane risks a glance up to his eyes, he recognizes the hardly contained humor immediately.
He brings both hands up to press on Rozanov’s shoulders. “If you’re just going to be an asshole, then—”
“Hollander,” Rozanov stops him. “I have a lot of sex, yes?”
Shane rolls his head into a glare. “Good for you?”
“And I am amazing hockey player.”
“I—” Shane starts, only for his words to dry up in his throat. With literally anyone else in the league, his reasoning would have held up. But this is—Rozanov is like—fuck. He can’t think about this. Not right now. “Debateable,” he mutters, deflating.
“No. Is proven fact. We are always in same competitions, always being talked about together for this. We are both at the top.”
“What’s your fucking point?”
“Having sex will not make you bad,” Rozanov says plainly. “Maybe it will even make you better. As good as me, maybe. Make you loose, or—relax. You are very tense, Hollander, did you know this?”
Shane grinds his teeth, but he doesn’t lean away when Rozanov’s hands slide up the side of his arms, rubbing at the knots in his shoulders. “I’m focused.”
“You are horny.”
“I am not.”
“Ah. So your dick is just that hard every shower then?” Rozanov asks.
“Fuck you,” Shane snaps, making fists of the material at Rozanov’s collarbones. He hadn’t realized his hands were still there. “I’m not—I can think that you’re—whatever, and not have to act on it. I can control myself.”
Something in Rozanov’s face hesitates. “Not doing it is… sexy? For you?”
“No,” Shane scoffs. That’s the whole fucking point, he thinks. Restraint isn’t sexy. The whole point is holding back, which is—he has reasons. It works. It’s always fucking worked, and he doesn’t owe Ilya Rozanov, of all people, an explanation for it.
A minute stretches between them, Rozanov’s eyes on Shane’s face, Shane’s locked on the white edges of his knuckles pressed to the dark material of Rozanov’s jacket. It feels like there’s something under his skin. It’s stupid.
“Why am I here, Hollander,” Rozanov murmurs.
Shane looks up, caught off guard. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice thin. “You asked for my room number.”
“And you gave,” Rozanov says. He bends a little to keep the eye contact. “You saw that I was hard, yes?”
His throat clicks when he swallows. “Yeah.”
“You know that I feel, what is word you used? Whatever for you. If whatever is meaning that I think you are hot and sexy and I want to have sex with you. Which would also be very hot, probably.”
Shane’s entire body flushes hot underneath his clothes. He’s—objectively, he hears people call him this. It’s online and in magazine articles and brand deals, and he knows that he isn’t bad looking. But even his high school girlfriend who he’d been closest to going all the way with had seemed neutral about him at best.
She’d wanted to have sex and had been clearly disappointed and a little annoyed when it hadn’t worked out, like Shane had refused to walk her dog or take out her trash. Everyone else was doing it. Shane gets that. But when it came to his body itself, she’d been mostly unenthused. It’d been the only somewhat sexual experience he’d had pre-hockey and everything else, and he hadn’t realized how much he defaults to it even now.
How it never really sticks that people could want him. How it hadn’t hurt, not really, because Shane didn’t really want anyone else either.
But. But he had. Today. Right now.
“You think I’m hot?”
“Yes,” Rozanov answers immediately. It feels good. “When you gave me your room number, I was thinking we would have sex.”
“Oh.” Shane looks at their feet. “I, um. I’m sorry. If you’re disappointed. I didn’t—I’ve never done this. Before.”
He’s said that part already, but Rozanov is kind enough not to point it out. He nods thoughtfully, tilts his head. “With a man?”
“I meant more like something this casual, but,” Shane hesitates, “yeah. That’s. That too.”
Rozanov hums, uncharacteristically quiet. Shane is still so aware of everywhere they’re touching each other, more so as the silence drags on. His own clammy palms up by Rozanov’s collar, Rozanov’s fingers having slipped back down Shane’s arms again, the hair raised in their wake, thumbs moving just slightly over the back of Shane’s wrists.
His mouth is moving before he thinks it through, his own voice registering distantly.
“So, I guess if we’re not having sex, you probably don’t want…”
“Want what, Hollander,” Rozanov prompts patiently when he doesn’t finish.
Shane looks at his mouth. “To stay.”
He shrugs.
“There are other things that we can do that are not sex.”
“Like what?” Shane asks.
“How about,” Rozanov proposes, taking one hand away to lean it against the wall beside Shane’s head, “I kiss you. Only kiss. And if it is too much, you tell me, and we stop.”
Fuck. It’s such a bad idea. But, like. It’s a compromise, isn’t it? Rozanov didn’t laugh at him. He wasn’t an asshole. This is—maybe they can both get something out of this. And technically nothing would have to change. It’s not like kissing is sex.
He licks his lips. “Just kissing?”
“Just kissing,” Rozanov confirms. “I will not touch you anywhere else. Even if you get hard.”
“Fuck off.” Shane huffs a laugh, and Rozanov’s mouth tilts accordingly. Shane glances once more to his jacket, fiddling with the decorative studded button under his pinky as he sobers. “I guess we could… we could try that.”
“Is not breaking any of your rules?” he checks, cocking a brow.
Shane shakes his head. “No.”
Rozanov’s other hand slips off of his wrist, but squeezes the outside of Shane’s fist briefly where it’s pressed against his shoulder. He leans in, close enough to feel warm breath on his face. Shane’s eyes flutter.
“You want me to stop, you push me here, yes?” he whispers.
Dazedly, Shane nods. His own head tilts forward, closer to Rozanov than the wall now, mouth slack and waiting. But Rozanov takes his time with this too, the tips of their noses touching, the slope of Rozanov’s angled one brushing against his cheek, something minty on his breath to cover up the cigarette smoke. It shouldn’t be nice. It shouldn’t be—fuck, does Shane think it’s hot?
They sway into each other’s space a little further, Rozanov leaning in and letting Shane chase him back away again. It’s subtle enough that Shane doesn’t catch on at first but when he does he fucking burns; his face, his chest, under his clothes—and only a slim fraction of it is shame. The rest of it—the rest is just want, he thinks.
The game continues, Rozanov teasing him and then pulling back, Shane’s heart hammering inside his chest. Is he supposed to make the first move? He doesn’t really think he wants to. He wants the Rozanov from downstairs, from the showers, that’s confident and direct and makes wanting things seem a hell of a lot easier than it is. Shane’s hand grips his jacket tighter when he does it again, and a noise, small and frustrated and undeniably desperate escapes his own lips.
Rozanov kisses him. Their mouths slant together, finally, the tension in Shane’s shoulders unspooling as he leans into it further. It’s slow, measured, a test. All too soon Rozanov parts from him with a sigh, breath heavy and lower lip shiny with Shane’s spit as he sucks it back into his mouth.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” Shane croaks.
Rozanov smiles. “More?”
“Yeah.”
The second time is completely on purpose. Shane pulls him in a little by the grip at his front, lets one palm unfold so he can touch it to the side of Rozanov’s neck. Rozanov’s own hands stay above his waist but they move toward Shane’s face like he can’t help himself, touching his hair, his neck, his jaw as he moans lightly against Shane’s mouth.
It’s not like kissing his ex. It’s not chaste, or awkward, or stiff. Rozanov kisses like he knows what the fuck he’s doing, which, in a roundabout way, makes Shane feel like he sort of does too.
His tongue makes everything hotter and softer, foreign inside of Shane’s mouth. He tentatively pushes his own against it and Rozanov groans, pressing in even further like he can’t get enough.
It’s loud. Shane can hear it, the slickness of their spit, the suction each time they part for air, the lewd, desperate tremble of Shane’s gasp when Rozanov’s hand loosely frames his throat so that he can lick into his mouth. He stops to ask if that’s okay too, and Shane nearly knocks their heads together in his rush to do it again.
Eventually, it starts to get slower, more relaxed. Shane’s surprised to find that it’s just as intense that way, his body falling lax against the wall behind him again, letting Rozanov hold him up. Their breathing has gone heavy, palms clammy, and Shane is sweating beneath his clothes. He wants them off, he thinks, but he can’t bring himself to part from Rozanov long enough to do it.
Not that he would. Anyway.
By the time Rozanov finally pulls away with one last languid, indulgent kiss, Shane feels boneless and also like he’s about to vibrate out of his own body. It’s not bad, not like static. He’s hard against Rozanov’s thigh, and Rozanov is hard right back. Neither of them says anything about it.
“I should go,” Rozanov sighs, thumb moving over Shane’s cheek. The feeling in his stomach feels too much like disappointment for comfort.
“Oh. Right, yeah—sure.”
“I am, ah. Needing to take care of problem, yes?” Rozanov clarifies, deliberately pushing his hips against Shane’s thigh.
“Oh,” Shane says again, suddenly sobering a little more. He’d forgotten that most people just do something about it when they get hard. He clears his throat. “Sorry.”
Rozanov pouts, shakes his head. “Do not be. You are…” he hums, thoughtful, and tilts his head as he pulls Shane’s lower lip down with his thumb, watching it ricochet back into place. “You are very surprising, Hollander. You make me very curious.”
Shane flushes, looking at the carpet. “That’s… that’s a good word, yeah.”
They disentangle themselves briefly and only somewhat awkwardly, Shane’s knees together as he leans against the edge of the armchair to watch Rozanov fix his hair in the mirror. It’s all fucked from Shane’s fingers. He hadn’t even realized until now.
“Next time we are in same city,” Rozanov says to him in the reflection, voice a rasp and mouth swollen to bruising around his words, “you will let me know if you want this again?”
“Really? You’d be fine with just—this?” Shane asks. He feels too good still to care much about how eager it sounds.
“Is not fun for me to have sex with people who are not wanting to have sex, Hollander,” Rozanov tells him blandly. He turns around, standing a couple of feet from Shane now, and adjusts the collar of his jacket. “Like I said. I think you are hot. If you want to kiss and get hard and not touch, we will kiss and get hard and not touch. Is not difficult decision.”
But why? Shane wants to insist. There’s an entire city of people who would fuck you on the other side of this door.
He doesn’t ask. “Yeah, okay. That’s—um. Cool.”
Dropping his hands back down to his sides, Rozanov stares at him for a moment, a slow grin spreading over his mouth. He laughs once, almost like he hadn’t meant to, and then steps forward to take Shane’s face between his fingers again.
Shane goes easily when Rozanov tilts his head backward, when he leans down to leave a couple last, lingering kisses on Shane’s lips.
“Very, very curious. Hm.” His hand shifts, presses to Shane’s cheek, gives it a pat.
And then he’s leaving, and Shane is watching him go, and he pauses at the door to say goodnight, Hollander and Hollander says goodnight back and waits until he’s completely gone before falling back onto his mattress and taking a breath.
His face is tingling. There’s something warm in his chest. His mouth fucking hurts. It aches, and it’s perfect, and he doesn’t think normal people just kiss each other like that. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? He wouldn’t fucking know.
He props himself up on his elbows and lets his legs fall the slightest bit open, imagines Rozanov coming back, saying something stupid like I forgot this or I need you and then marching right up to Shane and holding him down and jerking him off until he comes. Shane wouldn’t have to think about anything that way. It wouldn’t be his decision, so he couldn’t make the wrong one.
But Rozanov isn’t coming back. It’s just Shane and his stupid, confused dick, hard and annoying between his legs. He very carefully presses a palm against his lower abdomen, and then forces it back flat to the cool, inconspicuous sheets. His dick, the fucking traitor, seems to get all the more excited at the denial.
Shane groans and tosses an arm over his face so he won’t have to look at it. That’s how he’ll survive this, he decides—out of sight, out of mind.
He stares at the bruise on his mouth in the bathroom mirror until it fogs. It feels like touching himself anyway.
+
Boston wins this time, and Rozanov looks so frustratingly good when he’s being a smug asshole that when he tells Shane his room number during the handshakes, Shane doesn’t even really have to think about it.
They’re in Rozanov’s suite this time, the bigger one, because it has a big, nice sectional inside of it and Rozanov is very good at convincing him that making out on a couch is much better than making out standing up. He’s not wrong, Shane decides.
He can think even less about his body this way, when his weight is laid out against the cushions and not something he has to actively hold up the whole time. Rozanov is heavy on top of him, beside him, broad and hard and matching Shane for strength and stamina, even if the only fucking they’re doing is their tongues inside each other’s mouths.
They’re both hard again, one of Shane’s thighs pressed between Rozanov’s from when Shane had rolled half on top of him again a few minutes ago. He feels unmoored, frantic in a way that he probably shouldn’t find as exciting as he does, their hands skimming all over each other’s clothes, less hesitant, more just blatantly eager.
Every so often, Rozanov’s hips will pitch upward beneath him, bucking once and then muttering a string of curses and apologies like he can’t even help it. It makes Shane feel sort of like he’s on top of the fucking world, seeing Rozanov this way—he doubts anyone ever denies him anything, has ever done this with him before. It’s pathetic, for both of them really. It’s hot.
The disappointment returns when Rozanov grabs his hips and lifts him off by a little with a wince, the denial sharper and deeper than before. Shane legitimately wants to argue about it.
“Fuck,” he sighs, deep and low and wrecked, panting with his head knocked back against the sofa. “Fuck, Hollander. Stop. Stop, stop.”
Shane, having dragged his mouth across Rozanov’s jaw in the time it’d taken for him to use his mouth, pulls back to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“If the rule is still no sex we should stop,” Rozanov warns. He shifts under Shane again, lips pitched open. “I am, ah. I am close.”
“Oh,” Shane says, like this isn’t something they’d both known would probably happen. He leans back slightly, glances down at the generous bulge in Rozanov’s pants. He hasn’t seen it since the showers. “Well, it’s not, like… I mean, the rule is no sex for me.”
Rozanov blinks. “You have broken my brain, Hollander. You will have to be more clear.”
“You could get off,” Shane blurts, eyes flicking between Rozanov’s face and his chest. “If you want to.”
“If I want to,” he repeats slowly, then curses again with a groan in Russian. “You are sure?”
Shane nods. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
He doesn’t ask again. In seconds he’s ripping the hand that’d been generously massaging Shane’s bicep and shoving it toward his lap, nearly breaking the button as he slips his fingers inside and palms himself.
Rozanov groans even louder then, borderline pornographic as his back arches slightly off of the couch and into his own fist. It must feel good, Shane thinks distantly. His brain is sort of fucking offline at the moment, and he’s suddenly very aware of just how much spit is inside of his mouth.
Rozanov must be too. He rips his hand back out, pulls the arm he’s got out from underneath Shane so he can adjust a little bit. His pants get opened further, pushed down his hips, and then his cock is there and hard and smeared wet at the tip, curved up toward Shane, and some deranged part of Shane’s brain sighs and says there it is as if it’s a precious artifact and not a dick he’s only seen one time for maybe two minutes.
Cupping a palm underneath his mouth, Rozanov spits brazenly into it and then wraps a hand around himself again. Shane watches every muscle in his body tense, rippling with relief, a flush crawling up his cheeks and down his chest as he jerks himself quick and rough.
“Fuck,” he spits.
“Feels good?”
A moan gets caught in Rozanov’s throat. “So fucking good, Hollander,” he says, and then he twists a hand into Shane’s hair to drag him down to his mouth.
They kiss hard and messy for a handful of seconds, Rozanov’s composure deteriorating as he curses and takes Shane’s lip between his teeth. And this is nice, it’s—it’s really fucking nice, and Shane would do it all night if he could, but he has a feeling Rozanov might not last long after how long they were kissing, and he wants to—he really wants…
He lifts his head, lets Rozanov kiss wet and sloppy down the side of his neck and behind his ear while Shane focuses on the vision of him jerking off. He wonders if this is how Rozanov does it when he’s alone or if he’s playing it up, if he’s just this desperate for anyone or if it’s Shane that’s reduced him to a moaning, aching mess.
He wonders if Rozanov’s ever jerked off to him before. He’s not quite brave enough to ask.
Rozanov touches himself with the ease of someone who must’ve done it hundreds of times, and Shane watches his technique, memorizing it without really trying to. The rhythm of it, the pressure, how he turns his wrist just right to accommodate the extra skin around the tip that Shane doesn’t have on his own dick. A couple of times he sinks his fist down to the base and squeezes with a low moan, other times he stays up near the top, a sticky string of thin white from the head to his thumb before he’s back to fucking himself quick and hard.
“Are you close?” Shane asks.
Rozanov honestly fucking whimpers against his jaw, stuttering all over as his hips buck up to chase the pressure of his fist.
“So close,” he mutters, panting hot right on Shane’s throat.
Before he can think better of it, Shane, desperate and greedy and selfish, hooks a leg over Rozanov’s to keep him still, then grabs Rozanov’s wrist and takes it away from his cock. Rozanov whines, pushing against him.
“Wha—?” is as far as he gets before Shane reaches down and picks up where he left off.
He looks up just in time to watch Rozanov’s eyes rolling backward, and then quickly back down to watch his own fist swallow and spit out the length of Rozanov’s cock over and over again. It’s so slick, harder than Shane thought it would be but also weirdly soft, and he sort of wants it in his mouth, but most of all he wants to watch Rozanov come. He wants to be the one to make Rozanov come.
It happens only seconds later, Shane working him over precisely the way he’d already seen Rozanov doing it before, and a handful of strokes in he’s jerking, cock spitting white onto the back of Shane’s hand.
Shane keeps going then, fueled by pure adrenaline and delusion, until Rozanov is whiny and oversensitive and curling shaky fingers around his wrist to get him to slow to a stop. There are teeth marks in Shane’s shoulder where his shirt’s fallen down a little. He can hardly feel them right now.
Rozanov has a hand over his eyes when Shane chances a glance back up to him, his chest rising and falling harshly as he tries to catch his breath. Eventually his palm slides down and off his chin to collapse against his stomach, and Rozanov stares up at him, a crazed look in his eye.
“What. The fuck,” he breathes.
The world starts to bleed in a little more—the buzz of the hotel’s AC, his own startlingly uncomfortable erection pressed against Rozanov’s leg, Rozanov’s come still drying on the back of his hand between them.
“Sorry. Shit, um. Sorry, I should’ve asked you—I didn’t think—”
“Hollander.” Rozanov grabs his wrist again and squeezes. “Stop. Is good. Really, really good. I promise. You can touch me as much as you want. I don’t mind.”
He leans up a little on his elbow, reaches to the end table behind them to grab several tissues from the box. Shane watches dazedly as Rozanov wipes off his hand for him, over the backs of his knuckles and between his fingers, then tosses the used one back onto the decorative coffee table to their left.
With his other hand he touches the back of Shane’s head again, his hair, his neck, urges him back down for a kiss. Shane chases his tongue around until he doesn’t feel so worked up. Close to—to something.
When they part, warm and spit-sticky, Rozanov gently squeezes his hip. “Are you sure you do not want—?”
“No,” Shane says. He shakes his head. “I’m—I’m good.”
“Okay,” Rozanov agrees. He doesn’t think he convinces either of them, but Rozanov’s hand lifts off of him anyway. Shane wants it back as soon as it goes.
They stay there a little bit longer, pushing curfew, just until Shane’s heart isn’t kickdrumming in his chest anymore, until the ache between his legs is manageable enough that he can pull his sweatshirt down over it and get back to his own room without inadvertently scandalizing anyone or himself.
Rozanov laughs at him as he goes, and Shane flings a middle finger over his shoulder as he steps into the hallway, pretending like he isn’t grinning just the same.
+
Shane is broken.
He wakes up with his alarms. He runs through his routines. He has his scheduled meetings and practices and games, memorizes his plays and manages to paste on a smile or extend a handshake in front of the cameras when he needs to.
He’s also woken up hard more nights than not, rutting against the sheets until they’re wet, dreaming about rough hands and soft lips and the way his name sounds in strong Russian syllables when it can’t be held back anymore.
He doesn’t come. But it’s close. It’s too fucking close.
It’s a Pavlovian nightmare. Shane sees an advertisement for the brand of underwear Rozanov wears and he gets hard. He offhandedly passes a man that smells like smoke in the airport and he gets hard. He looks at a vaguely similar set of fucking couch cushions and, oh yeah—he gets fucking hard. If he doesn’t figure out a way to stop it, he can see the headlines already. Shane Hollander: Hard on the ice, and off of it apparently, too.
And still, none of it compares to what happens in person. It’s like Shane’s sexual attraction has been sitting at neutral for so long that now, once he’s gotten a taste, he’s full speed ahead. No brakes, no traction. Just the slant of that cocky fucking smirk, that intermittent this is okay?, that look of complete satiation on Rozanov’s face when he comes. It’s like an invitation, even though Shane knows it isn’t. It’s like something primitive in Rozanov’s body is calling out to his, taunting him just like the real Rozanov does—you could feel this good too, Hollander.
Fuck. He’s broken. He’s broken, and he’s going to have to quit hockey and retreat into an early retirement because his center of gravity has tilted off its axis and all he can think about, like some sort of twisted, cosmic joke, is Rozanov’s dick.
It’s only in the aftermath of cold showers and unsatisfying dreams in lonely beds that he dares admitting to himself that maybe—maybe: he just needs to get laid.
If only it were that fucking simple.
+
“You want the same thing?” Rozanov exhales right up against his mouth, mint and smoke and spit as he backs Shane up against the wall.
It’s already too easy to lean into it, into him; to the way their bodies fit together, Rozanov’s hand on his jaw, Shane’s on his waist, mouths like magnets. Rozanov kisses the very corner of his lips while he thinks, which coincidentally makes it pretty fucking difficult to do.
But. “I thought maybe…”
Rozanov leans back only slightly, kneads at his arm, cocks a brow. “Maybe…?”
“Just,” Shane licks his lips, grabs Rozanov by the shoulders and pushes him back a little. “Tell me if I should stop, okay?”
“Okay,” he drawls.
Tipping forward, he follows his instincts, touches his mouth to the attractive little mole right between Rozanov’s collarbone and the curve of his shoulder. Rozanov makes an appreciative noise and brings a hand up to the back of his head, but Shane has an end goal here. He’s got to focus.
He slides a hand underneath the hem of Rozanov’s sleeveless shirt, and he leans back to strip it off easily. Shane’s palms press against firm pectorals, fingers spread, pressing in gingerly to mimic what Rozanov did to him the last time, grabbing when it makes him moan.
He runs the tips of his fingers over the hair on Rozanov’s chest and across one of his nipples, tries to keep his mouth moving in tandem and attempt to make it look like it’s not a patting-his-head-and-rubbing-his-stomach type of situation. The muscles flex underneath warm skin, Rozanov generous enough with his touch and his noises that he feels like maybe he’s succeeding.
The knee that he’s got between Rozanov’s denim-clad ones bends a little, Shane’s lips dragging down in between Rozanov’s pecs, his hand skimming across rippling abs. He closes his eyes as he sucks a kiss against the top of Rozanov’s ribs, and then he gets impatient and drops the rest of the way to his knees.
“Fuck,” Rozanov moans to himself, low and drawn out as he slips a hand into Shane’s hair and looks down at him. “You want to get on your knees for me, Hollander?”
Shane’s entire face burns. He feels hot all over. He nods, hopeless, with his forehead against the denim. “Yeah.”
Rozanov’s nails scratch over his scalp and make him shiver. Then it’s his knuckles, rough but tender against Shane’s cheek. Finally, he hooks two fingers underneath Shane’s jaw and lifts, forcing his face to tilt upward.
He presses down on Shane’s lower lip with his thumb, watches the split of his mouth. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
Shane swallows. “Too long.”
Rozanov’s mouth does this terrible, amazing thing, twisting up at the corner. The lamplight sparkles in his eyes—the blue eaten up by the swell of black pupils.
“Then I will not keep you waiting, hm?”
He immediately turns his face back into Rozanov’s lap, and it’s mortifying, how much he wants this, but it’s also—safe? It’s quieter down here, and warm, and the floor feels steady beneath his folded knees, Rozanov’s thighs like pillars. The denim against his cheek makes it all real in a way that he can’t ignore, the texture of it dry and rough against flushed skin and a slick mouth.
Carefully, he slides his palms up from Rozanov’s knees to his hips, curves his fingers over the side and pulls until the jeans and his boxers come down all at once. He only gets them to mid-thigh before he gives up, his attention quickly redirected elsewhere.
He moans around the weight of Rozanov’s cock in his mouth, and Rozanov curses loudly, touching fingers to the side of his head like he wants to tangle them in Shane’s hair and grab. Shane’s glad that he doesn’t now though, that Rozanov lets him map out the territory on his own time. Time which he does not intend to waste.
His mouth is already wet and slick with spit from kissing, lips stinging swollen enough that it takes little effort to use them to cover his teeth. His eyes close as he pushes himself down the length of it, salt and skin on his tongue, until the thick head of Rozanov’s cock is budging the back of his throat. Curious, Shane inhales through his nose and then swallows.
Rozanov curses in English this time, and Shane feels a little pride bloom in his chest as he pulls back and starts up a rhythm. His nerves had made everything pinpoint but as he sinks into the feeling of it he unlocks even more; the heat of Rozanov’s body, how hard he is in Shane’s mouth, the flavorful tinge of his excitement and the scent of soap and sweat and the smoke that seems to cling to him just about everywhere.
Shane’s palms slide up the front of his thighs and over the muscle, the hair, fingertips digging into the meat of his ass to pull him closer. He can hear Rozanov panting now, the slap of his hand against the wall above Shane’s head, his other one burying itself further to the root in his hair.
He does grab this time, tentatively starting to direct Shane’s head in a subtle forward and back. Shane’s brain laps it up, commits it to memory, unable to resist flicking his eyes up to Rozanov’s face, his upturned chin and open mouth, the deep wrinkle of his brow. Shane touches a hand to the flexing muscles of his lower abdomen and Rozanov hisses, fingers tugging at his hair to pull him off.
He stumbles back a step and reaches down to take himself in hand, jerking off loudly and brazenly right in front of Shane’s face.
It happens too quickly to decide what exactly it is that Shane really wants—if he’d like it on his face or his body or in his mouth. Those things are all far away compared to the shot of arousal that he’s reminded of when he watches Rozanov get himself off, and suddenly, startlingly, Shane realizes he’s close.
He shoots a hand down, wrestles it underneath his pants to wrap tight, tight fingers around the base of his dick, cursing himself for the way he hadn’t realized he’d been using Rozanov’s leg for friction.
His head drops against Rozanov’s thigh—trembling at the muscle a little as he finishes off into his own palm above Shane—with his eyes pinched shut and his mouth sucking in sharp, measured air, every part of his body tensed to stop his own release.
“Hollander,” he hears after a minute. “Are you—?”
“I’m good. I just. I just need a minute.”
Tentatively, Rozanov’s clean hand returns to his hair. It’s a different touch now, not to grab or direct or hold, but just—easy. Light, sifting through the hair at his temples all the way back to his nape, rubbing at the tightness there.
“You know nothing bad will happen if you let go, yes? If it is accident or—other. On purpose,” Rozanov tells him quietly, carefully. “It is not a bad thing to let yourself be touched or to feel good. If you want.”
It’s the most genuine he’s ever sounded. It toes the line too far into something like concern that Shane’s dick finally seems to get the message, and he gradually loosens the vice of his fingers, pulling it from his pants as he tilts away from Rozanov’s hand.
“I know that,” Shane says. “I know. I’m just going to—I’m gonna shower really quick.”
Rozanov’s fingers fall to his side as Shane grips the wall and pushes himself onto his feet, grimacing at the lingering oversensitivity, the way his dick is still pulsing angry in his ruined boxers. He can tell that Rozanov starts to say something and then thinks better of it, stepping out of the way to let Shane hobble off toward the bathroom with at least a scrap of his pride still intact.
He shuts himself in the en suite and closes the door, cranks the shower on to cold first thing so he doesn’t have to hear Rozanov on the other side of it. Doesn’t have to picture the look on his face.
The shower is, presumably, terrible, and Shane hates every inch of the tiny, icy knives that come raining down on him until the heat is stomped out and he just feels sort of numb. He stares down between his legs with the same look he watches post-loss game footage with, that sinking feeling of possibility he already knows will end in disappointment. When his dick rests soft again against his thigh, Shane picks up the soap and hurries through the rest of his shower, eager to sleep.
It doesn’t feel like an achievement this time.
“You—you’re still here,” he says dumbly when he steps out of the bathroom in his towel, stopping short at the sight of Rozanov leaning against the desk with his arms crossed.
At the sound of his voice Rozanov’s head turns, and he gestures loosely toward the bland, copy-paste frame hanging on the wall adjacent to him. “Da. Admiring the art.”
Shane blinks at him as he pushes off the desk and closes the distance, already dressed in his clothes again. Why hadn’t he left? Shane thinks. Rozanov sticks out a hand, and Shane can only blink down at that too.
“Give me your phone.”
His eyes flick back up to Rozanov’s face. “What?”
“I give you my number,” he explains patiently. “So that you can text me if you change your mind about things for next time.”
“Next time?”
“Hollander,” he says. “Phone. Give.”
Walking over to the nightstand, Shane swipes his phone off the corner and powers it back on—an extra precaution born of his own compulsory fear that he’ll have accidentally called his mother or something prior to seeing Rozanov—and then hands it over obligingly.
Shane stares at him, mind still caught somewhere on the floor between Rozanov’s thighs and relatively useless, as he types in a new contact for himself, even his familiar paranoia too far out of reach to put a stop to it.
When Rozanov hands the phone back, it feels heavier in his hand. Shane closes his fingers around it and holds tight.
“I will leave you to recover after ice bath now, yes?”
Shane’s shoulders drop a little with a scoff. “It’s wasn’t an—”
“I know,” Rozanov interrupts. He gives Shane an exasperated little smile, then shuffles on his feet, glances toward the door. “Get some rest, Hollander.”
He ducks his head. “You too, Rozanov.”
Alone, afterward, Shane climbs underneath cold sheets and thinks of you know nothing bad will happen if you let go and it is not a bad thing to let yourself be touched or to feel good until it repeats so many times that the words bleed together.
These ones, though, don’t lose their meaning the way that restraint does.
+
Giving Rozanov his number had been a big, big mistake.
He’s clicked on Lily’s contact more times than he cares to admit to, scrolling through the very brief, typically very explicit messages and a couple of random photos just dimly lit enough not to be incriminating.
He sexts. Shane has never messaged with someone like that before. And he likes to send the most risky, downright depraved things directly before games.
The most fucked up part of it is that it’s making Shane play better. He’s not superstitious and typically he’d be eager to attribute his recent winning streak to literally anything else before fucking Rozanov. But really it’s just simple cause and effect; the fact that Rozanov’s keeping up with his games at all makes something feel lit up in his chest, but the filthiness of his words, words that he picked out and typed and sent to Shane—it’s. It does something for him.
It makes him vibrate. It makes him lethal. Senses heightened, instincts honed. It makes him desperate to work out the energy, to feel the chill on his face when he skates, to absorb the impacts, to hear the whistle of the stick as he chases a puck into the net. In a roundabout way, it makes him remember why he fucking loves what he does.
Everything around hockey itself is managed, regimented, controlled. But the hockey itself is just pure passion. He doesn’t think. He just does and is and for once, nothing else fucking matters.
On a regular night, the game is his release. He can ignore Rozanov’s texts from a different time zone once the adrenaline has faded and the buoyancy of a win makes him feel a little smug and perfectly able to ignore the thrum of want that’s slipped into nothing but background noise.
But then they play Boston again.
I bet you would cum a lot first time.
I’ve had an orgasm before, asshole.
Recently? Rozanov sends. On purpose?
Shane pauses. Fuck off.
You get so wet I can see through pants.
?? No you fucking can’t.
Is true. And hot. The typing bubble floats for a moment. Want to make things interesting?
Is that ever a good idea with you?
Rozanov sends back a devil emoji. If I win tonight maybe I get to see how wet I can make you without making you cum. Will not even need to touch. But you will beg probably.
Cocky much?
Ah so many jokes. You make it too easy “Jane”
Well. It doesn’t really matter. You’re not going to win, so.
Now who is cocky? Rozanov types. Then, Fine. What would you ask for? If you manage to beat best most talented hockey player in the league
Shane thinks: the same fucking thing.
I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, he sends.
Fuck.
Are you as hard as I am right now?
Shane slams his locker closed and finishes strapping on his gear. The ice is familiar and indifferent as always.
+
Boston wins by one fucking point. It ruins Shane’s victory streak. He should be furious.
He should be, except that it’s the most exciting game he’s played all season so far. He and Rozanov had passed scores back and forth like some kind of fucked up foreplay, and Shane wonders if maybe Rozanov gets the same feeling he does, being out there, thinking of the dirty messages immortalized in his phone.
He knows he’s fucked when Rozanov checks him—hard—against the boards, and Shane fucking moans. It’s mortifying. He’s never seen Rozanov grin so wide, all teeth and bad, bad intentions, skating away with the puck and Shane’s pride.
It’s the winning goal. Tomorrow, maybe, Shane will be irritated about it. But now. Now.
“What, no congratulations?” Rozanov boasts when he lets Shane into his hotel room, wearing nothing but sweatpants and a smirk. “I think I will not cash in on my prize until you say oh, Rozanov, you are so sexy and talented, please—”
“Shut up,” Shane snaps. And then he grabs Rozanov by the shoulders and shoves him back toward the bed.
His shoes get kicked off but there’s no time for any of the rest of it. It means Shane is still fully clothed when Rozanov’s back hits the mattress with a little oof, his face slack in intrigued surprise, his hands big and warm on Shane’s hips where he’s searching for skin.
Shane lands on his lap, inelegant and uncoordinated. The vibrating he feels is going haywire now, his typical after-game relaxation routine ripped apart with Rozanov’s lewd threats. The second he was off the ice he was thinking about it, about seeing how far Rozanov could push him, about if he really would get as wet as Rozanov said, about what might happen if he accidentally—if maybe Rozanov didn’t stop, and—
“Kiss me,” Shane says, breathy and desperate for something to do.
Rozanov’s head surges up off the mattress, one hand on the back of Shane’s head to pull him down just as eagerly. They kiss hard and wet, spit and teeth and a damn good imitation of the moan Shane had let out on the ice earlier. Only now everything is warm, and there’s no gear in the way, and Shane’s so turned on that he sort of wants to cry about it, which is also making him fucking harder. What the fuck.
He pushes his weight down harder when Rozanov tries to roll them over, and they both groan—Rozanov, presumably, at being shoved back down and held in place, and Shane because the shifting has put his dick right up against the band of Rozanov’s sweatpants at his hip.
The pressure is fucking divine. Shane’s mouth opens against Rozanov and Rozanov’s tongue slips in like he’d been waiting for invitation, devious and deep and flicking up against the roof of his mouth and his canines. Shane sinks them into the plush line of Rozanov’s lower lip when he pulls away, and Rozanov shakes underneath him.
His hand fists at Shane’s hips, ripping his flushed, furrowed face away to glance down between them.
“Fuck, Hollander. You—this is—?” he pants, rubbing at the back of Shane’s neck.
“Shut—” Shane tries again, even though it slurs around the edges. His eyes are rolling back, pleasure hot and thick and unfamiliar in his stomach. “Shut up, Rozanov,” he manages, but it comes out more like a whine than anything else.
Rozanov listens, miraculously. The dull thrum has escalated to a livewire, electricity sparking everywhere they’re touching. Shane feels insane, knows he’s going to be horrified with himself after this, but he can’t make himself stop.
He drops down to put his mouth against Rozanov’s pulse, to take the beat of it between his front teeth and taste it with his tongue. He’s hard and strong and at Shane’s mercy like this, and Shane digs in a little harder and thinks deliriously: he’d let me leave a mark. Shane’s lips move over his jaw, his chin, across his mouth and to the other side.
At some point he’s dimly aware of the fact that Rozanov isn’t kissing him back anymore. Isn’t doing much of anything beside the hands at his hip and his neck, holding, watching, his mouth open and his eyes flicking across Shane’s face and down his body in between them.
“Hollander,” Shane registers distantly. A warning, maybe.
“Rozanov,” he says in blind response. “Rozanov. Roz—”
Shane’s eyes snap shut as he pushes up on a hand and tilts his hips, and—yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s it. It just feels good. He’s not gonna—he’s not. It’s just adrenaline.
He feels like he’s in a dream. The kind that’ve been driving him crazy the last several months, the kind where he wakes up embarrassed and unsatisfied and thinking about Rozanov anyway. He moans, delighted by the reminder that that isn’t the case this time, dropping flat onto Rozanov’s chest. He digs his fingers into the dip of Rozanov’s waist, nose underneath his jaw where he smells like sweat and soap, scrambling to get a knee further up the bed so he can keep rocking against his hip. He could get used to this, he thinks. He could really, really get used to this.
Time suspends for what must really be just seconds of frantic movements, until Rozanov fists a hand in the back of Shane’s head and pulls him up for air, until their mouths are aligned again.
“Hollander,” he says, firmly this time. “Do you want?”
It doesn’t feel so complicated this time.
He nods and shoves his lips to Rozanov’s to kiss him again, and Rozanov’s hand tightens in his hair, his legs finally shifting just enough to slot Shane right up against himself, and Shane chokes on a noise he’ll swear on his fucking life he never made, and then.
And then he comes.
He freezes for all of a second and then dissolves on top of Rozanov in a pathetic puddle of himself, rutting against the outline of Rozanov’s dick in his pants, drooling spit against his mouth, nothing but static in his ears.
One by one, things come back slow. The sounds he’s making, breathy and wounded and higher than he’d like for them to be. Rozanov’s own voice low and steady, saying things he can’t make out. He’s shaking, kind of, the tight pull of the rubber band that usually feels like it runs from the base of his head down to the root of his spine suddenly lax as if it’d snapped and broken.
He’s shuddering through the aftermath of it when he’s rolled onto his side, his weight shifted so that Rozanov can reach down for his own dick and get himself off. He kisses Shane eagerly through it, panting against his lips as he fucks his own fist and groans.
For several long moments, the world feels—softer than it usually does. Less rigid, less like Shane’s going to cut himself on the sharp edges of his own meticulous making. There is only heat, and breath, easy touch from someone who doesn’t look at him like a product or something to fix, and a bone deep satisfaction that not even hockey can quite replicate.
But then the mess in his pants starts to cool, heart rate going back into range, and Shane grimaces and rolls onto his back, sweaty clothes sticking to his skin. He stays there, after, because his limbs feel like wet noodles and the only thing more embarrassing than what just happened is visibly not being able to walk after it.
Rozanov’s mouth brushes his shoulder, and then Shane feels him peeling up the fabric of his shirt. He gives easily this time, letting Rozanov strip it off and then disappear for his customary post-coital tissues. It adds salt to the wound. It makes Shane toss an arm over his face to hide his smile.
The bed dips again seconds later when he comes back, and Shane feels those same lips press to the bone of his hip. His lower stomach next, then over his ribs, body heat crawling over him like a shadow as Rozanov makes his way up his body back to his face.
“Hollander,” he murmurs somewhere around his chest. He kisses Shane’s chin, then the tip of his elbow that he’s got flung over his eyes. “Hollander.”
“Mnh,” Shane articulates. Eloquently. His body is still so heavy, like he could maybe take the best fucking nap of his life. Is this normal? “Go away.”
“No.” Rozanov succeeds in wrestling his arm away—not much of an achievement, in Shane’s current state—and he straddles Shane’s middle as he stares down at him. “Fuck. You are so hot.”
“‘Cause I just came in my pants like a fucking teenager?” Shane mutters, flushed.
Rozanov leans down to kiss his neck, and Shane shuts his eyes and turns his head for more. “Mm. So desperate. So needy,” he says, squeezing Shane’s hip. “Talk to me. You have been waiting long time, no?”
“I…” Shane starts, swallows. Opens his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. Hollander.” He lifts up again, face serious now. “No. If you liked, there is nothing wrong with it. Did you like?”
“Of course I fucking liked it, Rozanov.” It’s a fucking understatement.
“Okay. Then all is okay.”
It can’t be that simple, Shane thinks. But then Rozanov’s mouth is back on his, the world still narrow and light, and maybe it’s okay to linger in it for just a little bit longer.
“You won,” Shane sighs when Rozanov nuzzles at his neck again. “Was s’posed to be your pick tonight.”
“This,” Rozanov says before he’s even finished talking. “I would choose this. I would have—fuck, Hollander.” He makes a frustrated noise, like he can’t find the words. “You have no idea. I will be thinking of this for a very long time.”
Shane blames the orgasm for the grin that spreads across his face, thankful that Rozanov’s too busy skirting the line of leaving a hickey to notice. “Yeah?”
“You will let me, next time?”
“You want to?”
Rozanov pinches him. “I have been so obvious. I said Hollander you are so hot and I want to have hot sex with you. You were so horny you did not notice.”
He snorts. “Fuck you.”
“But I would much rather fuck you,” Roanov breathes hot, right at his ear. He props up on an elbow, weight deliberately not pressing Shane’s spent dick further into the mess in his boxers, and kisses the high part of Shane’s cheek to look him in the eye. “We do not have to, of course. But I would like to make you come. Next time. I will beg.”
That seems promising.
“Next time,” Shane echoes.
“Next time,” he confirms, still holding Shane’s eye as he tugs on his lip with his teeth. He groans when Shane doesn’t look away—it’s easier not to, in this headspace, he thinks. “You are going to ruin me.”
Without really meaning to, Shane says, “Same.”
Rozanov laughs, mocks his accent with a same of his own, and Shane kisses him even while he’s talking, and the world doesn’t end.
+
Rozanov texts him after Shane’s next game in St. Louis and says See? Not cursed.
Shane sends back fuck you, still a little high off of his landslide victory, and then the address to his apartment for next time.