Chapter Text
November 2018 — Boston
The sun is setting low over Boston, casting the city in its last halfhearted beams of amber light before slipping past the horizon. It’s still early. November means the days are considerably shorter, with the last slivers of daylight failing before most people have even properly sat for dinner.
Fifty stories below, commuters are beginning to spill out of office buildings and toward public transit. The apartment—with its expansive windows and sprawling urban views—is completely insulated from the noise of honking and businesses and tens of thousands of pedestrians moving past the residential building each day, heading wherever it is they need to be.
It's most often peaceful, this absence of the city’s B-roll. Other times, when the mood is wrong, the shape of the silence feels the opposite. Lonely. The TV regularly hums in the background to cut the effect.
There is nothing particularly special about this Wednesday evening. The energy in the apartment is noncommittal, the day having been neither extraordinary nor necessarily bad.
SportsCenter has been on for the last half hour or so, filling the expansive living space through an exorbitantly expensive surround sound system that puts many commercial theaters to shame.
The sound reverberates off minimalist art that hangs from the nearby walls and vaulted ceilings—the installations curated but rarely enjoyed the way expensive art is meant to be. It’s plainly ornamental in a way that’d read rapacious to anyone in a lower tax bracket.
The one person who inhabits the penthouse has tuned out the sports commentators a while ago. The topic is of little significance. The TV is on for the exclusive purpose of passing the time less quietly until sleep invariably arrives.
Tupperware with precooked leftovers prepared by a private chef sits at the edge of the glass coffee table partially finished, a protein smoothie and a Diet Coke parked nearby. It’s early enough in the season that the body has retained its bulk from the summer.
Exhausted from the day’s practice but relentless against the call for an early turn-in, Ilya is lying against the back of an expansive ash gray sectional, one knee up and the other knocked out sideways.
He’s been absently scrolling Instagram for the last hour. For what, he has no idea.
“—and Hollander’s foundation charity event next month,” a newscaster says.
Somewhere distantly, Ilya is aware that every muscle of his physical infrastructure has stiffened fractionally, fingers no longer moving over his phone’s screen. His eyes flit up to the TV and narrow, as if someone has flicked cold water in his direction.
Shane Hollander is beaming at Ilya from the massive OLED. He is poreless and gorgeous and looking ever the part of a millionaire athlete-turned-philanthropist.
Ilya’s full attention moves to the screen without his permission now, chin rising from its comfortable position near his chest. He drops the gold crucifix he’d been idly mouthing on from between his lips.
Shane looks good in every picture. He is so beautiful in this particular photo that it borders on obscene—black hair perfectly styled, a very thin suggestion of a white t-shirt hugs his pecs and upper abs pornographically under a fitted black blazer.
He’s wearing his true smile. The real one that crinkles the outer corners of his eyes and accentuates his full cheeks. He looks elated—delighted by something at the precise moment the shutter snapped.
Ilya stares at his mouth.
Jesus Christ he looks good.
Each time Ilya has seen a new photo of Shane in the last year, it’s felt like he’d been checked into the boards—aggressively so. Whoever is styling Shane these days has seemingly called in a person tailoring favor with god.
“-first major public appearance since his unexpected retirement from the Montreal Metros earlier this year,” the anchor adds as Ilya’s eyes drop to the chyron. The newscast is covering an upcoming gala to raise money for Shane’s nonprofit retirement project.
Ilya feels his own heartbeat hammering in his neck. The bruised knuckles in his right hand from last Saturday’s game are pulsing dully just beneath the skin.
His back aches slightly from the small but significant strain this specific name has elicited from his body involuntarily—a Pavlovian response that had been carved into the architecture of his person without his consent or consciousness.
Ilya’s fingers are waiting for instruction, still suspended midstroke in the space above his phone.
He inhales sharply through his nose, realizing the mechanism that allows him to breathe without thinking has momentarily faltered. He exhales slowly, the outbreath stuttering around an attempt at control.
The news topic changes just as quickly as it had been mentioned—like an afterthought. Like something less than significant to anyone who was not Ilya Rosanov, career “rival” of Shane Hollander.
Ha, Ilya thinks wryly as the conscious thought does its driveby, what a fucking joke. It was not ever really funny, the discourse around this thing between them. Not to them, at least. It is markedly less so now.
Eighteen months. It has been eighteen fucking months since he’d last spoken to Shane.
Well. Spoken didn’t really capture what he’d done.
He’d groveled, actually. He’d begged. He’d cried—the ugly one that happens in the space of profound grief and immeasurable loss. Shane had cried, too. The difference was his mind had already been made up by the time this conversation happened in person.
A definitive choice for two people made unilaterally by one.
Ilya is still watching the lower third of the television, having stopped seeing it minutes or hours or days ago. He blinks twice and brings a calloused hand up to his face to pinch the space between his eyes. The other hand, still holding his phone, falls to his lap.
His head tilts back against the couch and he shakes it back and forth.
He attempts to unlock his own musculature. He fails—the body doing what the body does all on its own.
He heaves a massive exhale through puffed cheeks as his fingers push deeper into his eye sockets. White dots pepper his vision for a few moments before he drags his palm slowly down his face.
His right hand pulls absently at his earlobe—a small, grounding thing. He’s staring at the ceiling and not staring at the ceiling because he is not in this room or in this house or even in this city.
He is back in a penthouse in Montreal. He is pleading. He is watching himself fail to convince the most important thing in his life that he could make the world bend around the specificity of their will because that simply is not possible.
He knew it, and Shane had known it.
It still felt like a two-ton weight on his chest—something he’s carried in spite of himself for the last year and a half. A form of contrition, maybe, for being unable to give Shane what he’d needed to believe in the sustainability of an “us.”
Goddamn it.
He comes back to himself as his eyes dart around his apartment, vision roving for any small comfort to latch onto. None presents itself.
He is long past the inebriation phase of attempting to fill this particular hole in chest. It serves nobody to stuff it with numbness.
His eyes drop to his lap as his thumb moves to unlock his phone. He navigates to his texts and opens the thread with Jane.
Dozens of blue bubbles with no delivered or read receipts—just a stream of consciousness going absolutely nowhere. Shot into the ether on the off chance Shane had at some point changed his mind or unblocked Ilya’s number or some other unforeseen third option that has not yet made itself evident.
Ilya closes his messages app and opens his browser. He types “Shane Hollander gala” in the search bar and clicks the first reputable link he finds.
He scrolls through the news article knowing that it will change nothing.
Ilya has known that Shane started a hockey foundation for kids shortly after he’d retired. Both pieces of information had been mentioned around and not necessarily to him, specifically.
Ilya had become so imperiously bitchy at the mention of Shane Hollander that people stopped trying to broach the topic.
He certainly hadn’t spent hours, days, months searching for a modicum of information about Shane’s life after hockey. Not on planes, on buses, at home—definitely not at the fucking club and among his teammates in the locker room.
He absolutely hadn’t drunk texted “Jane” on innumerable occasions asking for second chances or professing he’d fucked up or simply writing “i miss you” for the hundredth time.
Some texts he drafted, some he actually sent, some lived in his head when he stared at their old exchanges—lots of “what’s your eta” or “call me” or “i can’t wait to see you”. Small things that’d also been the glue that held together Ilya’s precious and fragile little world for years.
What exactly are we doing? Ilya wonders passively. Texting the fucking text man for texts?
Come on, man.
Shane’s retirement had been a bit of a mystery. There was no injury reserve, no family emergency that required his full attention, no clear reason for his exit other than his own apparent agency in deciding that he’d played enough professional hockey for one lifetime.
Of course, there were rumors, the likes of which Ilya suspects at least partially contributed to Shane’s decision.
At one time, Ilya thought he knew Shane better than anyone. But Shane’s mind is a confounding labyrinth that vaults itself at the first whiff of threat or instability. The reasoning that guided his decision-making when he fully shuts the world out was and has remained a mystery to Ilya. A puzzle he’s never been able to fully solve, even when it felt like he had all the pieces.
Shane had come out his last year playing hockey. Or rather, he’d come out to his team. It was after his and Ilya’s breakup—a fact that Ilya still finds profoundly hurtful even if he knows he has no right to attach himself to this part of Shane’s experience.
He’d have done it with him. He’d have done anything for Shane and had told him as much, many, many times.
The rumor had spread fairly quickly in the league. And while some social media threads had latched for a short time, it was never substantiated or even explored to any significant degree by mainstream media.
People seem more than happy to leave it well enough alone.
But by all indications publicly and professionally available, Shane Hollander is doing just fine. He’s been photographed a few times with the same man, whom Ilya has deduced is the boyfriend.
The extent to which Ilya picks at that particular wound is generally relative to his level of intoxication, and the details don’t always stick come morning.
He knows enough.
The man—Julian Henderson—doesn’t have social media, the first thing Ilya learned about him. Ilya did, however, find Reddit and gossip forums to be excellent tertiary sources to what news rags and blind items occasionally turn up.
He knows Julian works in private equity. He’s tall and fairly fit, a former collegiate heavyweight rower who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton.
He’s big in the way that mattered for Shane—at least 6’2, and muscular. But he’s less impressive than he ought to be to someone who’s spent decades optimizing his body for elite professional hockey as Ilya has.
As Shane has. Neurotically, actually, and with a good deal of restriction that Ilya and Shane used to bicker about constantly.
The handful of occasions Julian and Shane were papped together had been pored over detail by excruciating detail, a neat little self-flagellation ritual Ilya had picked up at some point and has yet failed to kick.
Like smoking, Ilya is less interested in the harm it causes him longterm. The immediacy with which he indulges both habits foregoes any kind of critical thought in favor of instant gratification. He knows it hurts him. He does it anyway.
With Google alerts, which he conveniently “forgets” that he enabled for both names.
Julian is always well dressed and exudes a quiet luxury that smells expensive through the screen. Ilya is no stranger to custom tailoring. He’s not fucking blind.
Julian has tan skin—almost olive, depending on the light—deep brown hair, a strong jawline, and full eyebrows that sit low over wide eyes. He has what Ilya finds to be an inarguably punchable face, unbiased as he is in this assessment.
Shane’s are big, brown, and beautiful. Soft. Open and curious.
The boyfriend’s eyes read onyx—glassy, black—even in images where they were both smiling, though Shane and Julian were most often captured expressionless, suspended in what appeared to be domestic mundanity.
It unsettles Ilya for reasons he chooses not to explore in any conscious way. It really isn’t his place, even if his search history argues otherwise.
Shane is particular. He likes attention but he rarely indulges it further than some lighthearted, low-stakes flirtation. He is also profoundly private. Ilya has found it utterly fascinating they’d been spotted together with any kind of regularity as to happen more than twice.
He often wonders what compelled Shane to hit the ‘fuck it’ button on his own outing and chalks it up to his retirement.
There’d been a time when that career deadline had potentially meant something for Ilya and Shane. A future, maybe.
Shane had instead picked one with somebody else. It happened sometime between his and Shane’s conversation in May of last year and now.
It still cuts Ilya to his marrow. It still makes him nauseous. It still makes him want to break things in his own home—which he has. More than once.
Maybe if Ilya buys a ticket to the gala he cou-
No, his more logical brain says to the impulsive part that is presently being very, very loud. No. You cannot and will not do that.
The truth is, he gave money to charities all the time. Buying a seat or a whole table for the evening would be neither extraordinary nor unusual. Good for hockey, arguably, given the celebrity of it all. Certainly good for those kids.
Except this is Shane’s gala for Shane’s foundation that Shane founded and runs. And insofar as Ilya can tell, Shane wants fuck all to do with him.
Ilya locks and tosses his phone a few feet down the couch like it’s personally insulting him. Much as he can sit here and roll in this shit for the next few hours, indulge a minor crash out, he has work tomorrow. The games are insistent stabilizers that keep him in line.
Otherwise, well. More of this.
Not good.
As he’s gathered by way of habitual repetition the past year, his checking the internet or social media or the old text thread with “Jane” doesn’t turn up a new reality in which things had gone down differently.
He stands from the sectional, bowing backwards slightly to crack his back and runs a hand through his hair, heaving an exasperated sigh of deference. He gathers the dishes from the coffee table and carries them to the kitchen. He throws the Diet Coke can in the recycling under the sink.
He turns on his heels and walks in the direction of his bedroom. He’s not present in his body in any way that counts.
He will not be attending the gala. He will not be ambushing Shane. He will not be thinking about this missed opportunity for days.
He will absolutely be thinking about this for days.
Ilya reaches to the nape of his black t-shirt and hauls it over his head with one hand, every muscle of his back working through the movement, lats clearly defined even in his bulk. His left shoulder cracks with the effort.
He tosses the shirt toward a hamper just inside his walk-in closet. It catches the edge noncommittally.
He drops onto his bed, down pillows heaving an audible poof as his massive, aching body crushes the excess air out. He reaches up with one hand and idly touches the cross resting against his clavicle.
Staring up at the ceiling, Ilya can see the photo from the newscast as clearly as if it’s being projected above him in high definition, Shane smiling from the place where Ilya’s eyes are fixed in a thousand-yard-stare.
Ilya is thinking about Shane’s mouth in the image.
He thinks about how Shane’s tongue slips out to wet his lips when he’s nervous or horny. How he sometimes looks a little ashamed when it happens, involuntary as it is. His cheeks blush a deep pink under his freckles like he’s been caught.
Ilya thinks about how those lips look wrapped around his dick, Shane on his knees in a hotel room or Shane’s unnecessary residential fuck pad while Ilya face fucks the tears out of him. His own rock hard cock hanging between his legs untouched. Leaking pre-cum all over himself—the inside of his thick, athlete’s thighs just dripping with it. The floor gathering a pool with Shane’s unspent cum. He’s always so fucking wet.
Shane also, more than any other partner Ilya has ever been with, loves choking on Ilya. All nine inches of him. Loves gagging as Ilya works to fit himself in the back of Shane’s throat while drool trickles over his chin and tears track heavily down his cheeks.
He likes to hum and sigh and rut against the air in the room. It makes Ilya insane.
Ilya’s hand moves down his chest, slipping beneath the band of his sweatpants. He’s fully hard, cock throbbing with the memory of that mouth sucking Ilya’s soul straight out of his dick.
Speaking of leaking.
Ilya runs his thumb over the slit at the head of his cock and smears the pre-cum down along the thick shaft, moving his hand slowly.
He thinks about the white shirt under the black blazer. He thinks about what is under the shirt under the blazer. Shane’s perfect, dark brown nipples, which Ilya loves to lazily suck and bite and squeeze and twist while Shane pants please, Ilya, please, please.
Ilya makes a sound in the back of his throat.
Low. A little too loud.
His hand is picking up momentum. He thinks about the mornings when they'd had enough time to spend the night and Ilya could fold Shane in half first thing and eat his ass before fucking him into the mattress until Shane screamed.
God, Ilya would do anything to tongue fuck Shane’s supple hole right now. Shane always opened up so easily for him before they fucked, like his body was engineered for the sole purpose of performing a vanishing act on Ilya’s cock.
And either hole, really. Historically, Shane hadn’t been picky.
Ilya imagines licking into Shane and playing with his rim while he works him open, gliding over the muscle as it loosens so good for him. The sound—squelching and obscene—mixing with whatever sounds rip out of Shane, who’s already long past the point of caring.
Sometimes he could still taste where he’d cum the night before, when Shane had been too tired to shower after they fucked. Taste his own cum dried on that perfect body.
Ilya loves that part as much as the sex itself, taking Shane apart while he writhes and pleads for more and more and more, not even fully understanding what he’s asking for.
Fu- oh fuck. Oh god, Ilya. Fuck me, please. Please.
Ilya’s hand is moving faster. He’s twisting on the upstroke while flitting his forefinger over the head to pull the pre-cum back down his length. And he's fully lubricated now, hand sticky and wet.
Ilya works himself hard, thoroughly. He pumps himself and imagines he’s fucking Shane’s hole raw, his favorite thing in the world. Watching his face do the beautiful things it does when he’s entirely fucked out.
He thinks about Shane finishing on himself, cumming all over his stomach untouched and panting and desperate as Ilya follows his own orgasm. Back aching, arms shaking, the body fully giving out on itself after whatever adrenaline they’d chased for an entire game beforehand.
Back when Ilya could look down see what he’d done, and they’d both loved it.
He would look into the whole of Shane taken out by his cock with his irises blown wide and his beauty and his tears and Ilya’s name on his lips like something nasty and disrespectful and reverent all at once.
Ilya thinks again about Shane’s fucked out, gaping hole, watching it flutter and contract around nothing—his body already objecting the loss—as Ilya pulls his cock out-
Ilya tenses and feels his climax tear through him, stomach clenching, breath catching, and back bowing as he slows his stroke and milks his dick through the final few shudders.
His knuckles are properly throbbing again, a split having reopened in one from the sheer force with which Ilya had been jerking himself off.
He keeps his hand wrapped around the memory of something he no longer knows but misses just the same as his dick begins to soften in his grip, fully spent.
His chest is heaving as he steadies his breathing. He rests his cum-covered hand against his stomach, avoiding the small pool of ejaculate covering the lower half of his abdomen. His left arm slings heavily over his eyes and he shakes his head, too tired to examine any of this shit.
He lets out a deep sigh—a heavy one, the sound reverberating softly against his bedroom walls.
Eighteen months. With unavoidable post-nut clarity, Ilya wonders seriously if this will continue forever—this jacking off about Shane Hollander, someone he can no longer have.
It honestly might.
It probably will.
Fuck.