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The seatbelt sign goes off, and Shane knows it’s coming. He starts counting in his head, slipping down as far as he realistically can in his seat in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, if he makes himself small enough, the rest of the plane’s occupants will forget they collectively decided their away game flights would become Ilya and Shane’s Storytime for Slightly Traumatized Hockey Players.
But in his hope to disappear, he forgets to factor in the most important piece of the puzzle: Ilya Rozanov himself. Because Shane’s husband isn’t one to shy away from the spotlight. He revels in it, actually, and as much as Shane wishes he could just have a peaceful flight to Philadelphia, deep down, he’s always known it’s never going to happen.
Not with this team. Not with this husband.
Still, he can hope. Even if it is a fool’s errand.
He barely manages to count to ten before Ilya is up and hopping into the aisle, a smile on his face that would normally melt Shane’s insides if he weren’t about to have some embarrassing story of his life told to a plane full of men he works with.
Still, though, Shane’s noticed since they’ve been out and married that Ilya practically lights up any time he gets to talk about them, and it’s kind of hard to be mad when Ilya’s just excited to share the story of them. And Shane gets it, it’s what he’s always wanted, too. Well, mostly, anyway. He can’t really say he’d ever imagined his teammates knowing he’d once jerked Ilya and himself off in his hand after eating a fish sandwich, and that he hadn’t needed much in the way of lubrication because he leaks so much pre-cum.
But he’d never really imagined he’d play for the Ottawa fucking Centaurs either, so whatever. Life is full of surprises, or whatever cliché that is.
“Storytime!” Ilya says in a sing-songy voice. There’s clapping and suggestive cat-calls, and Shane can already feel his cheeks heating up. Ilya looks at him expectantly, holding out his hand, and any optimism Shand had of getting out of this dies in the brightness of Ilya’s grin.
Shane feels his body standing before he can think to stop it, helpless to do anything but answer the call of Ilya’s outstretched hand. The applause gets louder, and his blush deepens, but they had said they’d do this together, and everything just feels innately less terrible standing next to Ilya.
A fact he’ll have to keep reminding himself of when this inevitably goes south.
“What’s the story today, you two?” Evan Dykstra asks, putting his headphones around his neck, as Shane and Ilya take their spot at the front of the plane.
“We thought we would go back a bit,” Ilya says. “To the time we did an ad campaign together.”
Shit, Shane thinks. They’d talked about workshopping this story before they told it, because there’s admittedly a lot of embarrassing things involved with it. But there was a lot of hockey to be played and sex to be had, so it had never happened.
“You did an ad campaign together?” Zane Boodram asks, looking confused, along with most of the team.
Before Shane can open his mouth to answer, Luca Haas says, “Yes, the summer before their rookie seasons.”
At Shane’s raised eyebrow, Luca blushes deeply. “I-I think, anyway, I’m not entirely sure,” he stutters out with a blush blooming on his pale skin, and when Shane looks curiously at Ilya, he looks more than a little amused.
“So, this is before the tuna melts?” Wyatt asks, and Ilya nods.
“Years before.”
“Thank god,” Nick Chouinard says. “I need years' worth of back story to wipe that disaster from my mind.”
“What’s so exciting about a photoshoot?” Tanner Dillon asks, and Shane has to bite his lip to keep from smiling at Ilya’s poorly concealed annoyance.
“Maybe you’d know if you’d ever done one,” Shane spouts off without thinking, and the plane fills with loud laughter, including from Tanner himself, and more than a few ‘oooooohhhs!’.
“Damn, Hollander,” Zane chuckles from a few rows in front of them. “Have you always had that in you, or have you just been spending too much time with your husband?”
Shane’s lips pull up at the edges. “I can hold my own.” And it’s true. He’s been going toe to toe with Ilya Rozanov for more than a decade
“That he can,” Ilya says. “But to be fair, I am in him a lot, so maybe I am responsible a little bit.”
“There it is,” Wyatt calls as Shane lightly slaps Ilya’s arm and gives him a glare with no heat.
“Can we get back to the story, please?” Troy Barrett asks from the seat across from theirs. The one Shane wishes he was still seated in. “Some of us are like, really invested in hearing all of this so we can tell our nosy boyfriend all the details he’s already texting me for.”
“There’s really not that much to tell,” Shane says with a shrug, and again hopes this will be enough even though it’s very, very clear it won’t be. “We did a photoshoot and then hooked up for the first time after that.”
“There’s no way that’s it,” Troy says. “This is you two we’re talking about.”
“Oh, there is much more,” Ilya, of course, answers unhelpfully. “Shane is just being modest.”
“That is absolutely untrue.”
“It had been a long day, and we had been shooting for hours and hours, and couldn’t manage to keep a straight face anymore. Not that Shane has ever held a straight face, because he is gay.”
“Ay oh!” calls Zane, as Shane rolls his eyes.
“You’re not straight either,” he grumbles.
“So, what else happened?” Luca asks, his eyes expectant behind his glasses, so Ilya goes on.
“They released us to go shower, and Shane had been so attracted to me all day, he immediately had a reaction to seeing me naked.”
There’s a collective gasp from around them, and nearly everyone’s eyebrows shoot up into their hairline. Fuck, this was going to be worse than he thought.
Thankfully, though, no one seems grossed out at the thought of Shane having an inconvenient shower erection, so that’s something. As big a group of idiots as they are, Shane can at least be grateful that they’re infinitely more mature and accepting than most of his old teammates.
Which, speaking of maturity, “You literally told them all about me rubbing our dicks together two days ago, I think you can say ‘erection’,” Shane chides, and Ilya’s grin only widens.
“God, I love my life,” Troy supplies with rapt attention, while their coach pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I think it’s possible to know too much about my players,” Wiebe says, and Evan holds out his headphones.
“Want to borrow these, Coach? They block out the sound of the two of them really well. Had to use them on the last trip.”
Wiebe shakes his head, while Shane’s eyes grow wide, and he can feel his cheeks burn.
“No, it’s fine. I’m in too deep, now.”
“That sounds like something I heard through the wall in New York,” Evan says as he puts his headphones back around his neck, and Shane kind of wants to melt into the floor and become one with the hideous carpet beneath his feet.
He’d fucking told Ilya he couldn’t keep quiet enough to have his husband’s tongue literally up his ass. But he can’t actually complain because that particular salad tossing had come as a reward for the hat trick he’d scored against New York.
Excelling at hockey and sexual rewards from his husband. His two favorite things.
“Were you absolutely mortified, Hollander?” Nick asks, bringing Shane back to the much more present issue of finishing this stupid story about his shower boner.
“Yeah, what a way to tell a guy you’re super into him,” Zane teases, and Shane knows he can’t really let that stand, because Ilya had been just as dumb. Just as fascinated and horny.
“Okay, to be fair, Ilya was already into me, too,” he tells the plane. “He suggested to CCM that we do the shoot together because he wanted to see me again.”
“Is that true, Roz?” one of the rookies asks, and Ilya appears to think for a few seconds.
“It might sound vaguely familiar.”
“Right,” Shane deadpans, and the team laughs. “And don’t let him fool you, he got hard, too, as soon as he saw me.”
Ilya rolls his eyes, but the curve of his lips says he's anything but annoyed. “This also sounds vaguely familiar.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Shane quips. “And do you want to tell everyone what you did with your erection, Ilya?”
“I may have stroked it a bit,” he says with a nonchalance that Shane will always envy, because he’s never been cool about anything in his entire life. Especially this. Especially when it comes to him.
This news results in a more than minor uproar of voices chorusing their disbelief at Ilya’s boldness.
“You did what?!”
“Wow.”
“Holy shit, Roz.”
“I mean, I get it,” Troy says, and Luca nods along with him.
“Subtle as a ton of bricks there, Roz,” Wyatt says with a fond and amused smile.
“It took him almost 8 years to realize he was gay,” Ilya defends. “Imagine if I had not done this! We might not have ever hooked up, and he would still be trying to convince himself he’s just waiting for the right girl to come along and be attractive to him.”
Everyone seems to think that’s a fair point, and Shane finds he can’t really argue it either. He’d been incredibly dense for a very long time, and even if it had mostly been in an attempt to protect himself, he doesn’t really like to think about what might have happened if Ilya weren’t quite so bold.
Of course, Shane had also been bold enough to stare back, so maybe they were both a little crazy.
“What happened next?” Zane asks, and Ilya turns toward Shane and smiles like he’s remembering one of his favorite things.
“Shane tried to tell me we should forget what happened, and I told him he was a very bad liar. And then I asked him for his room number.”
“And you gave it to him after that?” another of the rookies pipes up, and Shane can only shrug.
“You try having all of this,” he gestures towards Ilya’s chest and crotch, hand waving in a circle to emphasize, “in your face in just a towel, and tell him no. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”
Troy leans forward, his hands gripping the armrests of his seat. “Were you freaked the fuck out, Hollander?”
Shane laughs and runs a hand through his hair as he remembers the absolute ball of nerves he’d been while he waited in his hotel room for that fateful knock on his door. “Uh, yeah. I had no idea what I was doing. I even put my suit on for a few minutes because I wanted to look nice.”
This sets the plane abuzz with laughter and more than a few ‘awws’ and Ilya laughs along with them, pure affection evident on his face. “You never told me that,” he says once their teammates have quieted a bit.
“Why would I?” he responds. “Besides, it would have been better than the Canadian tuxedo you wore.”
“I have never been more proud of you than I am in this exact moment, Roz,” Evan chimes in.
Ilya ignores him in favor of smugly saying. “I did not hear you complaining when you were moaning into my mouth as you took the jacket off.” And Shane guesses he has a point. Ilya had looked hot even if it was a little ridiculous.
Before he can say anything else, Ilya suddenly looks like he’s remembered something important. “I don’t think I ever told you I ran into your mother in the elevator before I met up with you.”
That sends Shane’s eyes bugging a bit. “You what?”
“Yes, she was heading down to the lobby as I was going up to your room.”
Horror floods through Shane. “Oh, my god, do you think she knew?”
“No,” Ilya’s expression once again turns so, so fond. “And I don’t think it matters so much now, love.”
Oh. Right. Of course. His mom has known about them for years. Everyone knows about them now. They’re married. Even if his silly nervous system sometimes forgets that very important fact.
“Wait, so your mom was in the hotel with you when you hooked up for the first time?” someone shouts incredulously, and Shane’s head whips back towards their team.
“What if she had walked in on you fucking?!” Tanner Dillon helpfully supplies. “What if she was like…horrified or something?”
And god, somehow, in all of his anxiety about that night, Shane had never really considered that his mother might turn up. He had just been terrified about being so fully attracted to Ilya, his very skin buzzing with what might happen.
“We did not fuck that night,” Ilya says. “And trust me, the only thing she would have been disappointed in was that I tricked Shane into thinking I was not going to reciprocate his blowjob. The Hollanders are very giving people.”
“So you did reciprocate?” Wyatt asks, and Shane can tell that if Ilya says no, Wyatt will probably think a little less of him.
“Of course, I did, I am not an asshole,” Ilya says, and he’s already grinning before everyone starts loudly booing him.
“Was he actually good to you, Hollander?” Zane asks. “Or do we need to hold a vote and strip him of his captaincy?”
“Not how that works,” Wiebe interjects.
“I swallowed and everything!” Ilya exclaims as if that act alone should be enough for him to keep the ‘c’ on his jersey.
It does seem to win him back some favor, as several of the men shake their heads, and Shane hears a few ‘good man,’ while Troy proudly says, “That’s my best friend.”
“We still haven’t heard confirmation from Hollander,” Nick says when things have again died down. “Was he good to you?”
It’s completely unnecessary, and he’s not entirely sure what to make of the protection these men offer him so freely, even when the offender might be their own captain, but he’s really glad for it all the same.
Shane catches Ilya’s gaze, and he smiles. Nearly half a lifetime has passed between them, and even though they were shit at communicating for so long, now, they can say so much without saything anything at all. I love you. Thank god we made it this far. I couldn’t do any of this without you. I’m actually really glad I got hard in the shower and that you started touching yourself in front of me.
He smiles, because how can he not when Ilya is looking at him like he hung the moon and the stars? “He was great,” Shane breathes, before a small laugh leaves him, still amazed after all these years at the improbability of them. “Fuck, that first kiss we had was like lightning. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Ilya’s hand finds his, his thumb a comforting stroke against Shane’s skin. “I hadn’t either,” Ilya says reverently. But of course it doesn’t last because this is Ilya Rozanov, and he’s still a menace even amidst the sweet moments. He winks and then goes on, “It is no wonder you dropped to your knees so fast.”
This brings more than few catcalls and some raucous applause, and Shane is certain he now looks like a tomato as he glares at Ilya once again even though he knows he has room to say anything different. Taking Ilya into his mouth for the first time had been a life-changing experience.
But that doesn’t mean he has to take Ilya’s ribbing lying down. Or on his knees as it would be.
“I would like to add that while I did drop to my knees first, he barely lasted thirty seconds before he pulled me off because it was, ‘too much, too good.’”
There’s more catcalling and clapping, and Shane watches as Troy shakes his head, and he thinks he hears him say something like, “Of course Shane Hollander is good at blowjobs.”
But before he can even begin to process what that could mean, Ilya is talking again, a finger on the hand not holding Shane’s pointing straight at him. “And you should have seen the way this one folded his clothes and left his socks on.”
Shane purses his lips at this, knowing full well he’s making the face Ilya calls ‘the angry kitten’ but then Ilya speaks again, softness crinkling around his eyes with his smile as Shane’s insides flip in the same way they had the very first time he’d shaken Ilya’s hand. “It was perfect.”
There’s a moment of quiet where Shane is so wrapped up in his husband, he almost forgets where he is. But of course the Centaurs could never let that stand.
“God, how did no one ever clock you two?” Evan says. “The way you look at each other is so fucking obvious.”
There’s a round of agreement, and Ilya says lowly where only Shane can hear, “Heart eyes.”
Shane bites his lip to and nods. Maybe it really had been a miracle no one ever noticed.
“So, that’s when you started hooking up regularly then?” Troy asks. “Just so I have the timeline right for Harris.”
“No, we didn’t actually fuck for two years,” Ilya pouts as if the memory is personally offending to him while everyone’s mouths, Wiebe included, drop open in shock.
Nearly everyone talks at once.
“I’m sorry what?”
“Two years?!”
“What the fuck?”
“You seriously went from mutual shower boners to not hooking up on the regular for two years?”
“How did you two ever manage to get your shit together?”
“So, what’s the story of how you finally had sex?”
Ilya holds up his hands in a surrendering gesture that does little to stop the noise while Wyatt starts loudly protesting that many people considered oral sex to be sex and that no one should assume Shane and Ilya were any different.
Just another day with the Centaurs, he guesses.
“A story for next time!” Ilya finally says above the continuing murmurs, which leads to a round of disappointed groans.
“Does that story include the sex building?” Zane questions. “Because I don’t think we spent nearly enough time on that.”
Ilya wiggles his eyebrows, his face lighting up with amusement. “It most certainly does.”
And fine. They can talk about the sex building Shane had panic bought, because the thought of having Ilya in his home sent him into an intimate spiral. But if they were going to talk about the sex building, they sure as hell were going to talk about what happened directly after it.
“Yeah, followed immediately by Ilya ghosting me for six months, and then making me plead with him to suck my dick in a bathroom at the NHL Awards.”
There’s another round of loud surprise, and Shane can hardly believe how much he’s leaning into this whole storytelling thing now, but the arrogant ‘that’s my fucking husband’ look Ilya is giving him has him practically floating back to his seat, even as the team around them continues to protest that they can’t just leave things like that.
But they can. Because it’s their fucking story to tell, and he loves that they can tell so much of it now without the pain attached to it. It’s a testament to how far they’ve come.
“Are you going to tell them about how I watched you open yourself up for me after I won MVP?” Ilya whispers seductively in his ear when they reach their seats.
“Only if we talk about how you saved those selfies of us on your phone for years and years.”
He know these things aren’t equal. Not even close. Ilya keeping photos is sweet and romantic and Shane fingering himself open is just horny, but at least Ilya isn’t bringing up the time he made Shane come hands free the first time they’d hooked up in the sex building. That certainly isn’t nothing, even if he’s keenly aware there’s no real escaping it.
Not with this team. Not with this husband.
“You are something else, Shane Hollander,” Ilya says his face nuzzling into the side of Shane’s.
Shane turns toward him, their noses bumping together. “I learned from the best.”
Ilya’s responding laugh is so warm, Shane feels it coursing all the way through him. “No,” Ilya says. “You have definitely had that in you all along.”