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Shaving, Ilya discovers, is something Shane approaches with a near ritualistic precision.
There are steps. An order everything needs to be done in so that Shane’s jawline ends up silky smooth.
“My dad taught me,” Shane explains as Ilya leans against the door frame to watch him pull out an entire kit.
Ilya’s shaving routine consists of using an electric beard trimmer. Shane’s consists of a Japanese made straight razor with an ebony wood handle inlaid with black mother of pearl and gold in the shape of a subtle and tasteful acer palmatum. The impossibly tiny leaves and twisting branches wrap around the handle in a gorgeous show of artistry and Ilya marvels at it when Shane passes it over for him to inspect.
Every morning that first summer in the cottage, Ilya sits on the edge of the tub with his coffee and lets himself be hypnotized. He tucks the ritual of Shane shaving right next to every other fact he hoards. He doesn’t understand it, not really. Shane takes an age and then some to grow out stubble that’s visible to someone who isn’t three inches away from his face, but he shaves every day and Ilya watches him with a quiet fascination that borders on worship.
It’s an efficient process — Shane has it streamlined to five minutes maximum — and there’s something nice about it. Something in the confident way Shane lathers up foam in a bowl and brushes it onto his face or the steadiness of his hands as he takes the razor to his face and neck with Celine Dion playing quietly in the background. It feels like something precious. It feels like Ilya has figured out how to unlock another door in the myriad of doors that hide the parts that make up Shane and been rewarded something soft and delicate for his efforts.
***
“The beard has to go,” Shane declares, glaring at Ilya’s face like it owes him money. He has the same militant gleam to his eye that Yuna does when she won’t take no for an answer. He’s wielding his shaving kit like a weapon.
According to the time on Ilya’s phone — which cruelly stabs him in the brain at maximum brightness when he checks it, Boston’s cup run ended at Montreal’s hands twelve hours ago. Nine hours ago, Ilya was in a club with a throbbing bass line obliterating his ability to think and pouring any number of glowing neon shots down the throats of his teammates to erase the sting of losing. Four hours ago, he’d stumbled home and kissed Shane and passed out face first in bed next to him. At the current ungodly point in time, Shane is standing next to Ilya’s side of the bed while Ilya tries to remember what it felt like when his head didn’t feel occupied by a hundred tiny gnomes excavating his skull.
“What?” He croaks. His throat feels exceedingly dry and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Fuck, he’s never drinking alcohol that’s unnaturally colored ever again.
“The beard,” Shane repeats. He looks absurdly put together for six am because he’d celebrated with his team with exactly two beers before switching to ginger ale and coming home before midnight.
“What is wrong with beard?” Ilya feels like he’s trying to drag his thoughts out of the mud with a shitty fishing rod.
“Your beard gives me acne. Your playoffs are over, so the beard has to go,” Shane says firmly. “I’ll shave it for you.”
“Okay,” Ilya says because this is happening whether he agrees to it or not. Shane doesn’t play around with getting acne and, if necessary, he will institute a kissing ban until Ilya gets rid of the beard. He also absolutely does not possess the cognitive capabilities to go toe to toe with an irritatingly awake Shane Hollander while simultaneously dealing with a hangover. “Can we do it in afternoon?”
Shane lets him have that concession at least, though he does make Ilya swallow several ibuprofen and drink enough water mixed with tri-oral to flood a small village before letting him pass out again. When Ilya wakes again, the slant of the sun through the windows has changed and his head has decided to start cooperating with the rest of his existence. He finds Shane in the living room, tucked into the corner of the couch with his feet up, his glasses on, and a book titled Hockey Equipment: The History of its Evolution in his hands.
God, he’s such a nerd. Ilya loves him so fucking much for it.
“How are you feeling?” Shane asks when Ilya pads over to kiss him.
“Better. Head no longer has tiny men with hammers in it.”
Shane huffs a laugh against Ilya’s lips and rolls his eyes.
“Lunch is in the fridge. I’ll shave you after you eat,” he says. “It’s pasta salad.”
Ilya eats the entirety of what’s left over because he’s making up for two meals at this point. He draws out doing the dishes as long as he possibly can, which doesn’t really work because there’s only three items, and then there’s nothing left between him and Shane putting a live blade to his face and throat.
It’s not that he doesn’t trust Shane to do a good job. Of course he does. It’s Shane Hollander. He’s fastidiously competent at everything he cares about doing and Ilya knows there’s pretty much a zero percent chance that Shane will slit his throat by accident. The more animal part of his brain just does not particularly enjoy the thought of anyone holding the sharp edge of anything to him, even if it’s Shane.
He still finds himself seated on the edge of the bathtub watching Shane lay out all the pieces of his kit on the counter. Shane arranges a towel over Ilya’s chest to prevent any hair from falling on him and drapes the ends over his back before he gets started on the many steps of the actual shaving. The little trash can that lives in the bathroom gets deposited into Ilya’s lap alongside firm orders to hold onto it.
Though Ilya hasn’t seen him do this in almost a year, it’s just as mesmerizing to watch Shane’s clever hands go through the motions as it was then. He clips the wide piece of leather — “It’s called a strop,” Shane had said the very first time Ilya watched him shave — to the waistband of his shorts and holds it out, twisting it so the linen side is facing upwards. In a series of deft movements, Shane strokes the razor flat against the linen several times, flipping it on the spine whenever he reaches an end.
When he’s satisfied with that, he turns the strop to its leather side and repeats it again. The blade makes a pleasant shzh noise on every pass and Ilya finds his eyes falling shut under its lull.
Celine Dion is next. Shane puts the strop away and pulls out his phone to pull her music up and shortly thereafter, her vocals drift out of his phone speaker, singing about nights of endless pleasure.
“Mm, yes, this is good one. Is like our relationship in a song. When I touch you like this, when you touch me like that,” he croons, waggling his eyebrows.
“Fuck off,” Shane quips with a small smile. He advances, holding Ilya’s electric shaver with the three sixteenths inch guard on, and Celine Dion is barely audible over the buzz of the device for the next couple minutes.
The pressure of it against Ilya’s skin is different than when he does it himself. It’s lighter, more delicately handled than when he operates it. Even with the guard on, Shane seems worried about pressing too hard. There’s a look of intense concentration on his face and Ilya wants to reach up and smooth his thumb against the furrow between Shane’s brows. He keeps his hands to himself because while he’s pretty sure Shane won’t jab him with the cutting guard as penance for moving, he’s equally unwilling to test that theory out.
Shane’s hands are firm but gentle as he tilts Ilya’s head this way and that to make sure the hair coming off Ilya’s face lands squarely in the trash can in Ilya’s lap. He works in sections, just as methodical as he is at hockey, and Ilya does his best to keep himself relaxed so that Shane never needs more than a feather light press of his fingers to shift him.
When Shane finishes, four weeks of playoffs growth has been reduced down to something that looks approximately like two days worth of foregoing a shave. The trash can gets banished back to its corner.
“Hmm, maybe I keep designer stubble look. Very Marly,” Ilya says, assessing his face in the mirror while Shane cleans the guard and the shaver and sets them back in their stands. He runs his fingers over his jawline because there’s just something about the prickliness of stubble that’s soothing to the touch.
Shane reaches out and rubs his thumb against the grain of the hair, sending tingling sensations spiraling into Ilya’s brain and down his spine to his dick. His eyes are dark; the pupils large enough to eat up his irises, leaving nothing more than a thin ring of honey brown visible as he stares down at Ilya.
The moment hangs like that — with the world narrowed down to the feel of Shane’s thumb swiping little back and forth arcs along Ilya’s cheek and the display of his thighs at the very lowest edge of Ilya’s periphery where the five inch inseam of his shorts has ridden up. Carefully, moving slowly enough to telegraph the motion, Ilya lifts his right hand from the edge of the tub and places it on Shane’s left thigh, sliding it up, up, up until his fingers dip beneath the breathable cotton fabric. Ilya pushes the hem even higher and leans in to rub his face against the sensitive skin that’s been unveiled.
Shane’s breathing hitches above him and he sways forward nearly imperceptibly. The miniscule movement feels impossibly gigantic against Ilya’s face and he grazes his cheek against the Shane’s leg with a little more vigor. Pink welts up across the winter season paleness of Shane’s inner thigh and Ilya nuzzles into it, kissing his handiwork.
“Could stop here,” he muses, pulling back to admire the patch of heated skin.
Shane swallows visibly. His adam’s apple bobs hard in his throat and his hands scrunch against his legs just within Ilya’s view.
“No,” Shane says eventually, barely above a whisper, fingers clenching and unclenching. He looks positively drowned in lust, as if saying no to Ilya’s stubble is the hardest choice he’s ever made and he’s had to run a marathon to keep himself in check.
The self control Shane possesses has a very pesky and unfortunate inclination of showing up at inopportune moments, such as when Ilya is trying to seduce him by mouthing at his thigh. Instead of letting Ilya drag the waistband of his shorts down with his teeth to run his lips and tongue over his dick, Shane steps backwards out of Ilya’s admittedly not very firm hold and gets started on the next step.
He plugs the sink drain and turns the water as hot as it will go while Ilya white knuckles the edge of the tub with both hands to prevent himself from scrambling off it and dropping to his knees on the cold hard tile. One of the many tinctures gets fished out of the bag and Shane droppers a few golden pearls of liquid out of it, instantly wafting a scent that’s enticingly fragrant and warm and almost creamy into the bathroom at large. Steam rises gently from the sink basin as Shane shuts the water off and plunges a flannel into it. He holds it there for a bit before lifting it up and wringing it out. He repeats this one more time and then covers Ilya’s face with it, hands curving against the planes of Ilya’s cheeks over the blissfully warm towel.
Warmth is a primal creature comfort Ilya indulges in frequently. Unlike Shane — who seems to have an internal body temperature of approximately a thousand degrees at all times and keeps his room at a steady sixteen degrees when he and Ilya aren’t sharing — Ilya has the body temperature of a normal human being and thus actually enjoys things that make him feel warm. This towel is no exception. Ilya sinks into it with a groan, eyes shuttering without his explicit say so, and he practically melts into Shane’s hands.
Shane chuckles above him and Ilya can’t even be bothered to come up with something witty because he’s too enamored with how the soft damp cloth feels against his skin. It stays against his face just long enough for the heat to go from pleasurably toasty to benignly warm before Shane removes it and Ilya hears the splash of Shane reintroducing it to the water. He opens his eyes just enough to watch Shane squeeze it dry and return to apply it to Ilya’s face again.
“Fuck,” Ilya murmurs, drifting in a cocoon of exquisite smelling warmth, stars bursting behind his closed eyelids.
“It’s nice, right?”
Shane’s voice is low, soothing and a little teasing all at once, and Ilya hums an agreement, just about ready to fall back asleep. Alas, the towel cools and the lights flare back up on the other side of Ilya’s closed lids. He hears Shane’s hands enter the water once more and then the cascading splash of the cloth being wrung out a third time. The deeply pleasant heat returns and Ilya goes boneless, listing forward until Shane’s holding up the entire weight of his head between his palms.
A bereft noise escapes him involuntarily when Shane removes the towel for the third and final time. Ilya manages to crack his eyes open when the splash of the cloth hitting water is followed by the squirting noise of a viscous liquid being pumped. Unfortunately, it’s not lube and Ilya says as much with dramatic disappointment, to which Shane rolls his eyes.
Shane swishes the dense brush in the bowl and gradually, a marshmallowy dome foams up. It wobbles and threatens to spill over the sides of the bowl as Shane moves back into Ilya’s space but ultimately makes the choice to keep its form. The lather itself has no fragrance that Ilya notices as Shane carefully paints it across the lower half of his face, avoiding his lips and nose expertly.
“Breathe through your mouth. It’ll keep you from inhaling it,” Shane instructs with a murmur. Ilya’s lips part automatically and his breathing reorients itself as per Shane’s direction.
Shane sets the bowl and brush aside. He grabs the razor and gravitates back to the edge of the tub. His knees knock against Ilya’s and Ilya spreads his legs obligingly to make room. Shane is just as much a furnace as always in the swatch of space where his outer thighs meet Ilya’s inner thighs. Ilya has always found it a bit unfair that Shane feels so warm and yet is not actually warm enough to leave a lasting brand on Ilya despite the way Shane radiates heat as if he’s holding an entire firestorm’s worth of embers just beneath his skin.
His left hand is a tender pinpoint against the underside of Ilya’s chin, tipping his face up and to the right to bare his cheek. Ilya tenses at the first touch of the thin blade, which Shane seems to have anticipated because he holds steady until Ilya relaxes again. The following swipe — “Always against the grain, Ilya. It gives you a smoother finish.” — slowly traces the contour of his cheek up to his ear, sending a heady mix of danger and pleasure frissoning down his spine. Shane works in confident strokes, breathing so steadily that Ilya can use the cadence of his inhales and exhales to count time.
After each pass, Shane wipes the razor clean on the towel hanging on Ilya’s shoulders before nudging the hand under Ilya’s chin until he’s satisfied with the new position. The broad gliding strokes are followed up with a series of dexterously quick flashes of the razor on all the more fiddly slopes of Ilya’s lips and the edge of his jawline. Each movement of the blade against him sends more and more of that tingling sensation racing to his dick.
Ilya is rock fucking hard in his sweats by the time Shane finishes his face. He’s panting a little and Shane’s eyes are gleaming rounds of obsidian as he gazes down at Ilya and keeps up that aggravatingly unperturbed four in four out breathing count. His gaze flicks a little lower and Ilya knows he’s tenting the worn out fabric of his pants — probably darkening the light grey with precome, but Shane just steps back and retrieves the towel from the sink. Water pours from it as he twists it, somehow fitting with the dramatic orchestrals of whatever Celine Dion song they’re on now. Shane runs the flannel across Ilya’s face, cleaning up any remaining lather.
The brush and bowl are up again and Shane says, “Tilt your head back,” and Ilya does. He shudders at the first touch of the brush to his throat and whines as it smooths a firm unerring line up to the point of his chin.
“Shane,” he gasps as the third overlapping stroke goes right up the center over his adam’s apple.
Shane ignores him and sweeps another fat line of foam onto him. Ilya’s grip against the tub is so tight his fingers creak in protest, but if he stops holding on — if he takes even the slightest amount of pressure off — he’s going to lose the rest of his extremely harried self control and lunge forward to get his mouth on Shane’s cock. The fifth and final brush stroke is half the speed of the others and Shane looks at him, a split second of a glance, and Ilya is suddenly aware that this is now a research expedition. Shane has discovered something new about Ilya — fucking hell, Ilya has discovered something new about himself — and he intends to figure out where the bounds are.
The blade under the point of his chin sends off a cascade of instincts and he fights through all of them, drawing in massive heaves of air through his nose to prevent himself from making any sudden movements.
“Good?” Shane asks, finally starting to sound a little breathy.
“Good,” Ilya grunts and he finds himself holding his breath as the blade begins to move.
Shane skates the blade down Ilya’s throat to his collarbone in one evenly paced slide that feels like it takes hours. It has the hair on the back of his neck standing on end and his dick drooling. There’s no sting or bright sizzle of a cut and as soon as the blade recedes, Ilya inhales shakily and holds it as Shane sets up for the next pass. He follows the same order as when he brushed on the lather: two long strokes on the left, short flicks down the central line over the ridge of his adam’s apple, two more matching strokes on the right.
Each one has more of that combination of danger and pleasure firing through him like bolts of lightning. He’s breathing like he’s just finished a double shift on the ice and there’s a matching erection distending the front of Shane’s shorts and still, Shane stays on task, wiping Ilya’s neck and daubing more foam in the places that don’t quite meet his high expectations.
The blade returns in another set of deft but drawn out gestures and Ilya’s dick jerks with each one. The base of his gut is a rolling mass of electricity and he just needs to get a hand on himself, he needs Shane to tell him it’s okay to touch him, he needs—
“Stay,” Shane says, voice so rough the word scrapes like sandpaper.
The towel comes back one last time — nearly cool to the touch compared to Ilya’s overheated skin — to clean up everything. It’s followed by a cotton round soaked in witch hazel and the earthy smell of it lingers as Shane buffs it gently across his face. Another container emerges from the bag and Shane doles out a pea shaped amount of balm with a tiny spatula. He warms the balm between his fingers until the white of it turns clear and shiny and then his hands are back on Ilya, rubbing in gentle circles from his chin to the hinge of his jaw and then down his throat.
“Shane, please,” Ilya begs as Shane stands there inspecting his handiwork. His thumbs caress the newly bare planes of Ilya’s face.
“Okay,” Shane murmurs and Ilya surges forward like a horse out of the race gates.
His fingers have achieved rictus from holding onto the tub so tightly for so long. He doesn’t care. He forces them to work, ignoring the way they scream at him as he yanks Shane’s shorts down and rubs the head of his dick over the smooth expanse of his cheek once, twice, three times before he swallows Shane to the hilt, nose grinding into twitching muscle.
“Oh fuck, Ilya,” Shane mewls. His hands twist into Ilya’s hair and he feels Shane double over, tucking Ilya into the curve of his body. Every ragged noise dripping from his mouth is pornography of the most exclusive kind, curated specifically for Ilya and no one else. He digs one hand into the meat of Shane’s hamstring to hold him steady and he shoves the other hand down his sweats, setting a near punishing pace with a nasty twist of his wrist at the head on every stroke. He matches the rhythm with his head, pointing his tongue along the vein that runs the underside and fucking himself onto Shane’s dick because the ironclad grip he has on Shane’s leg prevents him from doing it himself.
Ilya knows, fucking knows, that Shane was drawing things out. He’s seen Shane perform this routine before, knows intimately that it’s on average a three minute affair for all the ritual that Shane puts into it. But it’s been twenty minutes on the clock of Shane working devastatingly slowly in some sort of sadistic tease for them both that has worked so goddamn well that Ilya barrels over the edge of orgasm almost before he knows it’s happening, with Shane coming down his throat and his hand working furiously through the aftershocks.
Shane collapses to the floor, dragging Ilya down with him by the grip he still has on his curls. They lay there, catching their breath until Ilya’s knee protests the weird angle he’s wedged himself into because of the tub’s proximity. He hauls himself up the length of Shane’s torso to his face and the rebellion settles.
“You,” he declares, running an appreciative hand over the silkiness of his freshly shaven skin, “are very good at this.”
Ilya dips down for a lazy kiss, the casual Sunday-morning-lounging-in-bed-before-brunch type of kiss that has no place existing while Shane has the next round of playoffs in four days.
“And you are never shaving me again,” he concludes after they’ve broken apart. Ilya isn’t sure he can handle this again any time soon — at least not in a way that doesn’t involve nurturing a non-ideal Pavlovian response to razors.
“No? Can’t convince you to make this an annual tradition?” Shane asks, all coy flirtation and smug half lidded eyes.
Ilya mulls that over. Once a year seems about the right cadence to have a blade to his throat — to experience the intimacy of trusting himself to someone whom he knows won’t hurt him but could all the same. It sends a fresh shiver through him, goosebumps rippling across his skin.
“Yes, okay, once a year,” he promises, sealing it with a kiss.