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“I fucking hate Toronto.”
“You mentioned,” Hayes said mildly from across the locker room. Shane let himself smirk a little as he pulled his jersey over his head.
“Yeah, well, it’s worth mentioning again. They’re just as bad as when Kent was still there.” Troy looked murderous, yanking the laces on his skates with more force than was really needed.
“This is good energy, Barrett,” Ilya said, gesturing with his helmet. “Let hate fuel you.”
“Roz.”
“I am captain, Bood, it is my job to encourage violence.”
“It’s your job to encourage us to win.”
“Eh, same thing.”
Bood made a face. “Strategic violence only please, Barrett, if you get any match bans it might actually fuck us.”
Barrett responded with a middle finger, and Ilya cackled.
His speech ten minutes later, however, started in a surprisingly serious tone, reminding everyone just how much they needed this game for rankings. It was also personal, full of little shout-outs to each of the players — some genuine, others in-jokes. They all responded a little differently. Young and Holmberg whooped at each other, Haas looked like a deer in headlights when Ilya’s attention was on him, and Bood rolled his eyes. But there was an undeniable focus and energy building among the entire team as Ilya went.
Towards the end, Ilya turned to look at Shane, eyes sparkling. “Hollander, remember not to use your backhand during the face-off, I do not want you to be embarrassed.”
Shane gave Ilya a look that was supposed to be exasperated, but was probably hopelessly fond. His husband winked, a brief moment that was just for Shane, before he turned back to the rest of the team.
“And no one let Barrett make an idiot of himself fighting, please. Bood is right, he cannot afford to lose more brain cells.”
“Fuck you, Rozanov,” came the reply, but Barrett was grinning now, bouncing on his skates. The whole locker room was.
“I fucking hate Toronto,” Ilya shouted over the increased buzz, the team getting louder to match him, “so let’s fucking beat them, yes?”
Unsurprisingly, Toronto seemed to feel exactly the same about Ottawa.
In particular, they absolutely hated Troy Barrett. He was by far the most popular target for hits. Wiebe was doing his best to help, matching the shifts for the bigger, more aggressive defensemen to the first line wherever he could in the hope they might provide some deterrent, and the penalty minutes were racking up quickly for both teams as a result.
Ilya, for his part, was punishing Toronto for their lack of attention to him. He was always wherever the defence didn’t want him to be, and he was chirping even more than normal. From the reactions of the Toronto players, Shane could tell that Ilya’s taunts were getting more vicious with each check on Barrett.
Toronto got the first goal, but Ilya scored at the end of the first period, taking advantage of Sutter and Reilly’s preoccupation with Troy to slip between them. In a clear attempt to aggravate them, he skated directly up to them as he celebrated afterwards, wearing the grin that meant he was angling for a fight.
During the first intermission, Barrett looked like storms were gathering behind his eyes.
“How are you holding up?” Wiebe asked him.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” Dykstra asked. “I think this is actually worse than watching Montreal go after Hollander.”
Shane gave Troy a commiserating look. He sympathised with being a favourite punching bag, and it wasn’t much nicer watching it happen to a teammate.
Ilya’s expression went dark with the comparison, before he schooled it back to something that more closely resembled determination. “They are being sloppy. We can use this.”
The second period started a little better. On his very first shift, Shane scored by spinning off one defender, from a pass by Haas that went directly between the skates of the other. The Ottawa crowd were loud in their appreciation.
When they got back to the bench, Ilya flashed Shane the sort of look that belonged firmly in the privacy of their home. “Beautiful,” he murmured, before turning to Haas to congratulate him on the assist.
Going 2-1 down, however, seemed to only aggravate Toronto further. The second period quickly heated up in the same way the first one had, if not worse. There were more majors than minors, now, and it felt like the entire arena was waiting for things to boil over.
When eventually it did, however, it wasn’t Troy Barrett on the receiving end.
They were coming to the end of the second period when LaPointe dumped the puck into the offensive zone, leaving it closer to Ilya than any of the Toronto defensemen. Ilya clearly knew the shot was coming and was chasing the puck down almost before it left LaPointe’s stick, catching it in the corner, close enough to the Centaurs bench that Shane could hear the spray of ice off his skates as he prepared to change direction.
From his vantage point, Shane saw Sutter’s speed and angle of entry a split-second too late to call out a warning. With his back turned to shield the puck, Ilya himself had absolutely no way to see the hit coming.
The defenseman barrelled straight into Ilya’s numbers, making no effort at all to slow down on the approach and driving him forward into the boards. There was a sharp crack as Ilya’s helmet hit the glass, echoing across the ice. To Shane it sounded louder than a gunshot.
The puck spat free behind the net. Ilya was in no shape to follow it. He dropped to all fours against the boards, gloves and stick scraping the ice as he tried to steady himself.
Sutter didn’t follow the puck, either. He skated close enough to Ilya that he was looming directly over him, said something in a low enough voice that Shane couldn’t pick out the words, and then with a sound that was loud and clear and unmistakeable, spat down at Ilya.
There was a roaring sound in Shane’s ears. He was over the boards, gloves discarded, before he realised that the sound was coming from him.
From the yelling and clattering of sticks elsewhere on the ice, Shane wasn’t the only one who’d seen it, but he was the closest and the fastest. Sutter barely had a chance to turn and drop his own gloves before Shane was on him, and had no time to brace.
The first grab was clumsy, Shane’s left hand snagging Sutter’s jersey, but his right fist followed up while Sutter was still off-balance. The first blow glanced off but the second landed square, catching Sutter high on the cheek and sending his helmet skittering across the ice; Shane saw skin instead of plastic and went again, this time splitting something and sending a spray of red appearing across Sutter’s face.
But then Sutter was surging back, clearly feeling the blows but with the height and weight advantage, and with more experience of fighting. Between his next few punches, Shane took an elbow to the ribs that forced some of the breath out of him, then a left hook to the side of the head that made his visor dig in a little too hard, and Sutter was able to grapple them close enough that Shane couldn’t get as much power behind his swings any more.
And then the linesmen were there, arms wedged between them, barking sternly. As Shane was dragged away, his sudden absence sent an unbalanced Sutter to one knee, the other linesman bending to peer at his injured face.
Beyond them, Shane could see Ilya on his feet. One of the refs had a proprietary hand on his arm as if to keep him from getting involved, but Ilya was making no attempt to move. He was watching Shane, and his expression was utterly unreadable.
Shane glanced down at his own hands as if surprised that his gloves were gone — several of the knuckles on his right hand were split, and his sleeve was smeared with blood, almost certainly Sutter’s. The whole thing, from the moment of the initial hit on Ilya, had lasted maybe twenty seconds.
“— done, Hollander, come on,” the linesman was saying.
Shane didn’t resist as he was pushed to the gate. As soon as his skates came off the ice, he felt like his body was his own again, and he turned and headed straight for the tunnel. He knew he was done for the night.
The cacophony of the crowd was mostly swallowed up by the concrete as he went, and everything flipped from too loud to too quiet. All he could hear was the pounding of his blood in his ears.
By the time he hit the locker room, the fury still hadn’t faded. The image of Sutter standing over Ilya played over and over in his mind, and Shane wished desperately that he’d managed a few more punches.
He ripped his helmet off and flung it towards his stall. It clanged off the bench and clattered across the floor. Good. He kicked his skates loose harder than he needed to. His breathing still felt too fast, too shallow, like his body hadn’t caught up that the fight was over.
Sutter, spitting at Ilya. The split-second look of shock on Sutter’s face as his helmet came loose. The closed-off expression on Ilya’s face as Shane had been led away.
Shane had being playing hockey for literally as long as he could remember. He had never experienced the red mist descending like this before.
God, Ilya was going to be furious with him. Maybe even embarrassed. Right now he probably regretted that Shane had ever transferred.
Shane’s knuckles were beginning to sting, bleeding a little more every time he flexed his hands into fists to try to control the shaking. Most of the blood on him was Sutter’s. His face had been pretty fucked up by the time the linesmen got in the way.
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Get it the fuck together.”
Suddenly, he needed the rest of his gear gone. He began tearing it off with far less care than usual. His blood-stained jersey disappeared into the bottom of his stall, possibly forever. He dumped his pads in a messy pile, grabbed a towel, and made a beeline for the showers.
Shane spent far longer under the nearly-scalding water than normal, letting it sluice away the streaks of blood and, with it, the lingering instinct to put his fist through something. Eventually both his heart rate and breathing had settled, and he just felt tired. He no longer wanted to rush to Ilya’s defence so much as bury his face against his chest and hide there for a while.
Back in the locker room, Shane dressed quickly and, guilt blurring into a need for tidiness, cleaned up the mess he’d made of his gear. Within minutes, the team were streaming back in for the second intermission.
“Fucking hell, Hollzy, that was something else,” Young said cheerfully. “Sutter’s probably bleeding out in his stall right now.”
Shane winced. Bood drove an elbow into Young’s ribs on his way past, shunting him aside, but said nothing. Shane couldn’t tell whether he was angry or just exasperated, but Bood had been the first one to caution against unnecessary violence before the game. He probably wasn’t happy.
Haas’ reaction was arguably worse. He looked at Shane with wide eyes, as if he were completely re-evaluating everything he’d ever known about him. Privately, Shane thought that was a bit rich — Haas had idolised Ilya all his life, and Ilya had thrown plenty of punches, why should Shane be any different?
He swallowed that feeling down. “What happened to Sutter?” he asked quietly.
“Ejected.”
So Shane hadn’t completely fucked that up for them, then. Small mercies.
“He better get three matches at least.” Barrett bullied his way past Hayes’ pads, gesticulating to match the volume of his voice. “It was clearly aggravated, Sutter’s a vile fucking homophobe —”
“Leave it be, Troy,” Hayes interrupted calmly, removing his helmet so he could swig from his bottle. “League will sort it.”
“Thank you, Hayes.” Wiebe stepped forward. Shane squinted up at him nervously; he looked less angry than Shane had feared, but his expression was drawn and a little sad instead. “Hollander. You need to get checked out?”
He shook his head. He knew his face and hand would bruise up, maybe the ribs where Sutter had got an elbow in, but nothing worse than that.
“Okay. We’ll talk properly tomorrow once we hear from Player Safety. There won’t be any press for you tonight.”
“Yeah.” Shane’s voice cracked a little. He cleared his throat. “Thanks, coach.”
Wiebe sighed, before turning away to talk to the defensemen.
Ilya was the last into the locker room. He looked, if it were possible, even more intense than he had before the start of second period.
He was also completely avoiding eye contact with Shane. Shane felt his stomach drop at the sight of it.
He must be so mad, Shane thought miserably. Ilya was not usually shy to air his grievances; if he felt the need to hold back, it was a bad sign.
Shane couldn’t help himself, though. He could still remember the sound that Ilya’s head had made against the glass. He stood up and went straight to Ilya, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Ilya made a low, dismissive noise. “Of course.”
“That hit —”
“Dirty, yes. But I’m fine.”
“Did you see the trainer?” He let the hand on Ilya’s shoulder trail a little higher toward his hairline.
Ilya ducked away from the contact and turned to face him, splaying a hand against Shane’s chest as if to keep him at a distance. There was something tight in the corner of his eyes and he was talking very quietly — far worse than if he’d shouted. “Hollander. Please, not now.”
All Shane wanted was to cradle his face between both palms, gently card fingers through his hair to check for any signs of concussion or whiplash or cuts. But it was clear that Ilya would not accept that right now. Shane just had to trust that Wiebe, at least, would have made sure that Ilya hadn’t taken any serious damage from Sutter’s hit.
“Okay. Okay.” He let himself be pushed away, returning to sit in front of his stall out of everyone’s way.
Shane should be grateful, really, that Ilya was waiting to lay into him. What Shane had done was incredibly stupid; he was looking at a multi-game ban, at minimum, for jumping the boards to instigate a fight. And what had it achieved? Ilya clearly didn’t need Shane to defend him. Sutter would’ve been punished regardless. All Shane had really done was get himself benched when the team needed him.
He sat quietly until everyone headed back out for the final period. The team left him alone, clearly sensing that he wasn’t feeling talkative. Ilya didn’t look his way again.
Shane watched the third period on the locker room TV. It felt like an exercise in self-flagellation, seeing the second line fall apart without him, and having to watch Ilya and Barrett exposed to even more abuse from the Toronto players as the first line was forced to compensate with longer shifts.
The power play was the only silver lining. With Ilya sticking to centre and Haas stepping in as winger, the adapted first unit was a thing of beauty. Haas was almost as aware of Ilya on the ice as Shane was, and between the two of them and Barrett, they made the best out of the continuing dirty play from Toronto and put away two more goals.
With a final 4-1 scoreline, the locker room was exuberant afterwards. The celebratory atmosphere slid off Shane like oil on water, though, and he only stayed long enough to tell Haas that he’d done good, wanting the kid to know that the crumbling of the second line was not his fault, before he ducked out of the building to wait in the car.
It was a long wait. No doubt Wiebe would be running the usual debrief with the team as they cooled down. Ilya was almost certainly getting dragged into media. With a game this eventful, everyone would have questions.
Shane tried not to think about how many of those questions were likely to be about him. It was common knowledge that Shane Hollander never dropped gloves. No doubt the reporters would want soundbites from Ilya in particular, and they were unlikely to be kind. Are you aware of the perception that Hollander overreacted because of your relationship? Do you have any comment to the fans who worry that your unique dynamic causes distractions on the ice? Do you think diversity messaging has made players more sensitive?
It was just over an hour before Ilya finally came out. He threw his bag next to Shane’s in the back of the car and climbed into the passenger seat, looking beautiful and completely untouchable in his suit.
“You should have iced your hand,” he said, after a long moment of silence.
He was right. Shane’s knuckles were already turning purple. “At home?” he offered, voice small.
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “Ilya…”
“Please drive, Shane.”
Shane’s chest tightened. “We aren’t gonna talk about it?”
Ilya’s eyes flickered over to him, briefly, before he turned back to look out of the window. “At home,” he echoed, and it sounded like he was working hard to keep his voice even.
By the time they pulled up on their drive, Shane’s entire body felt like a live wire, he was so nervous. He followed Ilya through the front door, painfully endeared as always by the way Ilya fussed over Anya, even mixed in as it was with an unpleasant anticipation. Eventually, Anya decided she’d had enough and trotted off. Their bags were left against the wall to deal with later.
“Ilya,” Shane blurted, as the man straightened back up, no longer able to bear it. “Please. Look at me.”
Ilya turned. His expression was darker and stormier than Shane had ever seen it.
“Say something, please.”
“What should I say?”
“I… I don’t want us to go to bed without sorting it out.” Oh, god, what if Ilya didn’t even want to share their bed tonight? “You can tell me off, I know I deserve it.”
“For what?” Ilya looked taken aback.
“The game? My… the fight?”
“Hollander,” Ilya growled, stalking several steps closer, “that fight was one of the hottest things you have ever done.”
Shane blinked. What had looked so much like anger on Ilya’s face a moment ago now looked like nothing but pure heat. “I — what?”
“You fucking heard me.” Ilya closed the rest of the gap and leaned in, until Shane could feel the heat of his body all along his front.
He swayed a little closer, the reaction automatic. “I don’t understand. I thought you’d be mad.”
“Not even a little bit.” Ilya dragged his mouth across Shane’s jaw, making him shudder and press back against the wall. “Fuck. You were like — avenging angel. So beautiful.”
Shane let his hands skim up Ilya’s arms and over his shoulders. When that earned him a kiss against the underside of his jaw, none of the pushing away he’d got earlier, he realised Ilya might just be serious. “Really?”
Ilya leaned back to give him an uninterrupted view of his single raised eyebrow. “Yes. Really.”
“But it was so irresponsible. I’m going to be out for multiple games —”
“Eh, maybe.” Ilya waved a hand, deliberately dismissive. “But you are only second best player. The team will be fine.”
Shane scoffed, feeling the grin creep over his face despite himself. “You are such an asshole.”
Ilya grinned right back. “Mmm, and you are my sexy husband, jumping in to defend my honour.”
“I thought you were, I don’t know, offended that I didn’t let you handle it.”
“Shane.” Ilya’s hands caught him around the waist. “I love that you handled it. Maybe it was not the best strategy, but it's not about that. I don’t mind being protected when it is you doing it.”
Shane felt like his entire chest had turned to goo at the sentiment.
“Also,” Ilya added, and now his tone was smug again, “I did not know you were so good at fighting. Moy tigryonok, so vicious. It was very arousing. I could hardly look at you afterwards without whole arena knowing how much I wanted to fuck you.”
Heat licked through his belly at the thought of it. “Yeah, well, he deserved it. I would’ve carried on if they hadn’t stopped me.”
“I bet you would.” Ilya’s eyes were shining with pride.
Something occurred to Shane suddenly then. He tipped his head back against the wall, groaning. “Oh my god. My parents have probably seen it.”
“Lyubimyy. Your parents know there is fighting in hockey.”
“Mom’s going to be so disappointed —”
“I fight all the time, they have never been mad at me.”
“Yeah, because you’re Ilya Rozanov.”
“And you are Shane Hollander.” Ilya lifted Shane’s bruised hand to his face and kissed just below his knuckles, very gently. He kept up a burning eye contact the entire time. Then he licked between the index and middle fingers, sending a jolt of heat to Shane’s cock. “Second best player in the MLH.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Shane shoved at Ilya’s shoulder with his free hand, torn between irritation, laughter and arousal. Mostly arousal.
Ilya pressed his body in closer, swirling his tongue maddeningly around Shane’s fingers again, before releasing them with a pop. “Your right hook is much better than your backhand,” he said conversationally. “You have been holding out on me for years.”
Shane groaned, this time for an entirely different reason. He was most of the way to hard and this little tease wasn’t enough any more. “Shut up and do that properly.”
Ilya gave him a long, serious look. “Fucking make me,” he murmured.
Something dark and hot pooled in Shane’s stomach at the thought of it: demanding, pushing, taking exactly what he wanted. The way Ilya was looking at him was both a challenge and a plea.
Shane had their positions reversed, Ilya’s back against the wall, in an instant. With one hand he held Ilya’s hip in a bruising grip, and the other he brought back up to his mouth, pushing in with two fingers to the point where he could feel the back of Ilya’s tongue.
Ilya let him. He was pliant, responsive. He gazed back at Shane with heavy-lidded eyes, sucking obediently, letting his own hands fall slack to his sides. When Shane pressed his thigh between Ilya’s legs, he was already completely hard, and moaned pitifully through Shane’s fingers at the feeling.
This sort of surrender was so rare from Ilya. Shane realised just how much he hadn’t been joking about being turned on by Shane fighting over him; the reaction made him feel powerful.
“Did you get hard, on the ice?” he asked, leaning in to whisper in Ilya’s ear. He pulled his fingers free and let them trail down his jaw, enjoying the dirtiness of leaving behind a wet trail of spit.
Ilya turned his head to press kisses against his neck. “Yes. Shane. It was so hot.”
“And in the locker room, after? Is that why you wouldn’t let me touch you?”
“Was too much.”
“It’s not too much now, then?” he teased, canting his thigh a little higher, feeling Ilya’s balls heavy against his leg as he pressed them up against the underside of his cock.
Ilya’s mouth had fallen open in pleasure, and his brow was furrowed in what almost looked like pain. His hands landed on Shane’s waist, pulling him closer. “It’s not enough, please.”
“Okay, okay.” He moved his leg back to give Ilya some breathing room. Ordinarily, he would long since have handed the reins over, letting Ilya give him exactly what he needed, as he always did. But tonight Ilya clearly wanted Shane to take it himself.
And why the fuck not? Shane could take what he wanted from his clearly willing husband.
“I’m going ride you,” he said, matter-of-fact, cupping Ilya’s face roughly to make sure he was listening. “Alright?”
Ilya made a low, desperate sound, and lunged forward to press their lips together. “A lot more than alright, Hollander, fuck,” he breathed.
“You sure you can last long enough for that?” Shane teased.
Teeth snagged on his lower lip as if in punishment, quickly soothed by Ilya’s tongue. “You always claim you are faster than me.”
“Oh, fuck you, Rozanov.” Shane let the kiss turn filthy, licking into Ilya’s mouth. He could feel Ilya smirking, and was struggling to keep his own smile from forcing the kiss apart entirely. “Upstairs, now.”
Ilya needed no further instruction. He pushed away from the wall, hands gripping the backs of Shane’s thighs to wrap them around his waist and haul him up. It sent a shiver of anticipation up Shane’s spine. He loved that Ilya was strong enough to manhandle him like this, even though Shane was hardly delicate.
If he’d been less turned on, Shane might’ve voiced some second thoughts about letting Ilya carry him all the way up a flight of stairs. He settled for mouthing along the underside of llya’s jaw, enough to spur him on, but not enough to send them both tipping down a staircase.
At the edge of their bed, Ilya let Shane get his feet under him and then sat, looking up at Shane through his lashes. His fingers tugged gently at Shane’s waistband.
“Please. I want to.”
Shane nodded, letting his own fingers tangle in Ilya’s curls as Ilya tugged his pants and underwear down just far enough to free his cock. This wasn’t quite the script he’d been writing in his head, but the day he said no to Ilya’s mouth would herald the heat-death of the universe.
Wet heat surrounded him with little warning and Shane’s eyes fluttered closed in bliss. Ilya’s tongue cradled the underside, and his throat made slick, guttural sounds as he worked more and more of the shaft in with each bob of his head. Sometimes when Ilya did this, he liked to tease with a graze of teeth, or pulling away to give little kitten-licks to the tip, or sending his fingers roaming free to toy with other parts of Shane’s body. There was none of that here now, just a slow, focused rhythm. His hands stayed gentle on the backs of Shane’s thighs.
When Ilya’s nose finally made contact with Shane’s pubic hair, he paused. Shane opened his eyes to see that Ilya was gazing up at him, clearly waiting for eye contact. He swallowed, deliberately, so that Shane could feel the clench of his throat around him, and put his hands on his own knees. Shane tightened his fingers in Ilya’s hair and got a satisfied sound and a little nod in response.
Shane knew Ilya expected him to fuck his face, hold him in place and thrust in over and over. They’d done it the other way around in the past and both enjoyed it. It would be so incredibly hot.
Instead, Shane moved his hands to cradle the sides of Ilya’s face and slowly, carefully, pulled him off his cock, and then just as slowly and carefully guided him back on, feeling every millimetre of the slide into and out of his throat. And then again, and again, and again.
He held Ilya in place for a little longer each time, gave him a little less time to pant and gasp for air in between. Ilya didn’t look away from him once, the heat in his eyes not dimming even as tears began to form in the corners.
Eventually, even the glacial pace was getting too much for Shane. The way Ilya’s throat was working around him each time was too good, the way he was looking increasingly debauched in half a suit was too hot, and Shane didn’t want to finish yet. He pulled Ilya off one last time and took half a step away.
“Delicious, Hollander,” Ilya said, voice a little rough. He wiped the back of his hand over his chin where drool had leaked. “You don’t want to feed it to me again?”
Shane leaned down to kiss him. “Maybe, if I don’t come on your dick first. Get on the bed.”
Ilya was tearing off his clothes before Shane had even finished speaking, and crawling backwards up the bed to rest against the pillows.
Shane shed his own clothes with only a little more care and followed him, detouring to fetch the lube and drop it on his chest as he threw one leg over his lap. “Fingers, please, now. I need you.”
“You have me, sweetheart. Come here.”
Ilya guided Shane to sit a little further up his body where he could reach better. Two slick fingers appeared to pet gently at his hole, at first just rubbing, and then the tips dipping in, one then the other.
“You want both right away?”
“Yes, do it, Ilya — oh —” Shane let his head tip back in pleasure at the feeling, the stretch a little rough but with the clear promise of turning sweet.
Ilya was so good at this. He knew Shane’s body so well by now that he didn’t need to look to know exactly how to crook and spread his fingers to stretch him open properly, how to graze over Shane’s prostate with just the right amount of pressure to tease what was coming later. The angle could not have been good for his wrist, and his own dick hadn’t enjoyed a single touch yet, but Ilya showed no sign of displeasure. He was once again staring up at Shane like the rest of the world had fallen away entirely.
Shane couldn’t wait. “Three. Do three.”
Ilya obeyed immediately, fingers retreating only for as long as it took to coat them in more lube. When he pressed back in, the stretch was so much more pronounced; Shane rolled his hips involuntarily and couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like if, one day, Ilya put his entire hand inside. He shivered at the thought and tipped forward to muffle his cries in the crook of Ilya’s neck.
“Please, Shane,” Ilya said, after several long minutes. “Tell me you’re ready.”
Shane let the feeling last for a couple of moments longer, just because he could. “Okay, yeah, I’m good.”
He sat up a little on his haunches, listening to the sounds of the lube cap clicking open and Ilya slicking up his own cock, biting his lip at the sensation. Shane grinned down at him, knocked his hand out of the way, lined up and sank down the first inch or two.
Ilya groaned. In an effort to stay still, he was grabbing Shane’s hips so hard there were bound to be bruises. Tomorrow, Shane would press on them to feel the reminder.
“So good,” Shane told him as he slowly sat down the rest of the way. “So hard for me.”
“I have been hard for hours. If you don’t start moving soon I will die.”
“Can’t have that, can we?”
Shane started up a steady rhythm, using his hands on Ilya’s chest to steady himself. Ilya made a litany of noises low in his throat each time his cock pushed in, and didn’t look away from Shane’s face once.
“Wish I’d seen you properly before you showered.” Ilya’s clean hand came up to touch Shane’s freckles and the sore spot on the side of his face where the visor had dug in, and then to bring Shane’s damaged knuckles up to his mouth for a gentle kiss. “You looked like a warrior, covered in my enemy’s blood.”
“Weird time to find out that blood does it for you, honestly.”
Ilya laughed breathlessly, planting his heels for leverage so that he could start helping with each roll of Shane’s hips. “You do it for me.”
“Oh, god.” The extra power behind each thrust lit Shane up from the inside. He sat back into the cradle of Ilya’s thighs and found that the new angle really worked for him, forcing Ilya’s cock deeper, brushing more firmly against his prostate. Suddenly the careful pace he’d set was nowhere near enough. “Ilya. Please, please fuck me.”
“Tell me how.”
Shane didn’t know how to be in charge right now. “I don’t know, any way, just don’t stop —”
“Okay, is okay, I’ve got you.” Ilya flipped them with a well-practised motion and his hips began working in earnest, picking up the pace now that it was his to control. It was perfect; Shane let out a long moan to show his appreciation. “Do you need…?”
“No, like this. So close.”
“So good, sweetheart. Come on, come for me.”
Barely two minutes later, Shane did, cock completely untouched. Ilya fucked him through the aftershocks of his orgasm and then slowed, looking down at him with a clear question in his eyes.
Shane grabbed his ass to encourage him. Tonight, he wanted that feeling of being fucked past the point of over-sensitivity. “Don’t stop. In me.”
Ilya wasted no time in going for his own orgasm, leaning back for a better angle, curls a wild halo around his head. When he came minutes later, hips stuttering through the final few thrusts, it was with a drawn-out groan of Shane’s name and the most beautiful expression of bliss on his face.
Shane let Ilya collapse on top of him and press him into the mattress like an extremely muscled weighted blanket. He joined up constellations on Ilya’s back, as their heart rates slowly returned to normal and the residual stickiness gradually began to feel less sexy and more gross.
Just as Shane was starting to feel uncomfortable, Ilya kissed his shoulder. “Be right back.”
He returned with a wet washcloth, a glass of water, and an ice pack. “Drink, and put this on your hand.”
“Pretty sure you got more injured tonight than I did.”
“Mmm, but it is not nearly so unusual for me. Or heroic.”
Shane rolled his eyes, but put the ice pack over his knuckles anyway — now that he was paying attention to them again, he could admit they didn’t feel great — and let Ilya clean them both up and rearrange Shane’s body until he was tucked against Ilya’s side, head pillowed on his chest.
They hadn’t always had this after part, curled up together, neither of them with anywhere else to be or anything to hide. Shane treasured this part of the routine all the more as a result. The fact that Ilya was only fastidious about cleaning because he knew it bothered Shane made it infinitely sweeter.
It was always Ilya looking after Shane, in the end. Since the very beginning. Not what Ilya had wanted this evening.
“Sorry,” Shane said sheepishly. “I know that wasn’t quite… um. What you were hoping for.”
Ilya looked utterly aghast. “Shane. I just had the best orgasm of the whole week. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I know you were enjoying — y’know, how we started out. Sexy husband in charge.” He could feel the heat in his face, although he wasn’t quite sure if he was more embarrassed for giving in before they finished, or for taking charge in the first place. “And I sort of fumbled it at the end there.”
“Fumbled. My incredibly hot husband begs me to fuck him, and he thinks this is a fumble.” Ilya was making that exaggerated face of incredulity that he did to make Shane laugh, and it was working.
“You know what I mean.”
“Oh no, the beautiful man I am sleeping with is being bossy. Oh no, now he is being needy.” Ilya put the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically. “There is actual meme for this, you know. I have got me a man who can do both.”
Shane gave him a playful slap. “Shut up.”
“I mean it.” Ilya grabbed his chin to make sure that Shane paid attention, knowing he would squirm away from compliments if he could. “I like all versions of you.”
“Including the version who gets a three-match ban because he lost his temper?”
“Especially that version.”
“So you’re really not angry?”
A sweet little kiss was pressed to the top of his head. “No. I am lucky, to be stood up for like this. Especially by you.”
Shane heard what Ilya wasn’t saying: that there had been a long stretch of his life in which no one stood up for him at all. He squeezed his eyes closed against the surge of love and sadness that thought caused. “I would’ve dropped gloves for you from our rookie season.”
“Mmm, I know.”
“You do?”
Ilya grinned. “I remember cat-fight between you and Scott Hunter. Was clearly about me. You have always been obsessed with me.”
Shane jabbed a finger between Ilya’s ribs. “Yeah, well, you were obsessed with me too.”
“Still am,” Ilya replied proudly. “And the whole world knows it.”
Shane squeezed his husband a little tighter. He knew that Ilya, despite years of worrying what his own country might do to him for it, had always had a less complicated relationship with being public than Shane himself. The thought of the whole world knowing was exclusively a good thing to him now. And yet.
“Is that what it was about, what Sutter said to you? Me? Us?”
The chest underneath his cheek rose and fell with a deep sigh. “Who cares what he said? He is an idiot. And now you have made him even stupider with your surprisingly good right hook.”
Sutter had spat at Ilya. Shane still couldn’t get past the image. To think that someone could hate the idea of two men being married so much that they would go that far. “So yes, then.”
“I did not say that.”
“Ilya.”
“Not everything is about you, Hollander.” Ilya’s voice was deliberately light. “Get over yourself.”
Shane tipped his head back a little so he could give his husband a long, serious look. Maybe with a little bit of wide-eyed pleading, because although it felt ridiculous, it historically worked.
Ilya’s smile faded a little into something more resigned. “He brought up my mother.” Shane’s heart began to pound. “Said that she would… not be proud.”
The fury from before was suddenly hot and clawing in Shane’s throat, all over again. “He fucking what?” He levered himself halfway upright, staring down at Ilya with a mix of horror, anger and desperation.
“I know he is wrong,” Ilya said quickly, as if that was the cause of Shane’s concern.
“Of course he’s wrong. I’ll fucking kill him anyway,” Shane hissed. “Next time we play Toronto, I will kill him on the fucking ice. Maybe even before then.”
Ilya used his superior strength to wrestle Shane back down against his chest, even though Shane fought it the entire way. “This is why I did not want to tell you. If you go to jail for murder, we will not have nearly so much sex.”
“Tell me you at least told Wiebe. That’s not fucking okay, Ilya, he can’t fucking say shit like that —”
“He is in plenty of trouble already.”
“Not as much as he deserves!”
“You are very pretty when you are being righteous.”
“Ilya. I fucking mean it.”
Another deep sigh. “Shane, sweetheart. Please. I’m fine.”
Protecting Ilya was the most natural instinct in the world, and yet Shane so often didn’t know how to go about it. Physically, Shane was under no illusions that his husband could both take and throw a punch better than him. In other ways — the ones that perhaps mattered more — Shane sometimes felt even more powerless, when Ilya was hard to reach, or worse, when Shane did a bad job of reaching. Right now, he felt like he’d failed, knowing there was someone walking around who had gotten away with being so cruel to Ilya.
But Ilya wouldn’t want to hear that. “I love you, so fucking much,” he said instead. “And you deserve so much better than fine.”
Ilya’s hand curved over his jaw, tilting his face up. His eyes were very soft. “I already have it. I have perfect.”
The gentle tone, all the miles of skin in easy reach, they were beginning to soothe some of the worst edges of Shane’s anger. He pressed his cheek harder into Ilya’s warm palm.
“And I am perfect,” Ilya added, his smile transitioning into a smirk. “It makes me regular target of jealousy. You will probably have to defend me many more times before we retire.”
Shane scoffed, but he knew the smile pulling at his lips gave away that he didn’t really mean it. “If it gets you that hot every time, maybe I will.”
Ilya laughed, delighted. “You are a dirty tease, Hollander.”
“I’m not the one with the weird blood kink —” he cut off with squawk as Ilya rolled them so that he was half on top of Shane.
“Tell me you don’t get hot and bothered when I win fights, hmm?”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do. You are — what is the word? Degenerate?”
“Wow. Degenerate.”
“Yes. I am married to a very violent degenerate.”
Shane looked up at Ilya. His eyes were unclouded, shining with humour and fondness. He was whole and unhurt, a heavy weight pressing Shane comfortingly into the mattress. He was focused completely on Shane and not on the hateful shit that had happened on the ice earlier. He was absolutely beautiful.
Fuck Toronto. Shane had won in every possible way tonight.