Chapter Text
July 2010
Ilya had already done the post-hookup things everyone (he was sure) always did: he took a moment to linger in the after of it all (just one) then physically moved away. Had an obvious reason to leave no one would interrogate too deeply. Dressed quickly but not in a panic, not in a way that made it seem like anyone was wrong here. It always worked, it was always good, everyone would always come at least once, and then it was over. Leave without looking back. Outside, a cigarette to get back to himself. Returning to his apartment or hotel room for a hot shower, clean clothes, and finally sleep without thinking too much about the emptiness creeping back in to the places where heat and sweat and pleasure had filled him an hour before. Same as every time since he was 14, even the times with Sveta. Even those rare times when she slept next to him after it was over.
Then Hollander said, “Wait!” as Ilya put his hand on the doorknob, and Ilya had jerked his hand back. He turned his head to look at the other man but stayed by the door.
On the bed, Hollander was where Ilya had left him: sitting up, leaning against the pillows, on top of the bedspread, with his legs straight in front of him. Ankles crossed. Still naked, except for his white socks. Tanned cheeks a little flushed still, his shoulders – which had dropped during his orgasm – starting to creep back up toward his ears. He wasn’t looking at Ilya.
He was beautiful, even after Ilya had gotten what he came for. He shouldn't be. This was supposed to get Hollander out of his system, but there was something about the freckles scattered across his cheekbones that made Ilya's heart stutter in his chest.
“What is it, Hollander?” Ilya asked but what he meant was What did I fuck up that you have to tell me before I can escape? though the words in his brain were in Russian.
Hollander bit his lip.
“Listen, I won’t tell anyone,” Ilya said. Of course, why would you want anyone to know you just came with my name on your lips? was the part he didn’t say, but both thoughts lived in his head at the same time. Reassure Hollander so he could go, because that’s what you do when you’re not an asshole no matter what reputation he’d earned on the ice. And you hate yourself after you leave because being happy wasn’t something you earned by being cruel to someone like Shane fucking Hollander, Canada’s golden boy.
“That’s not… that’s not what I was going to say.” Hollander exhaled slowly, eyes still not finding Ilya’s face. He seemed nervous, suddenly, but he also didn’t seem to have noticed that he was naked, soft cock resting gently against the top of his thigh. He had seemed nervous to get naked in front of Ilya the first time. Now it was as if he'd forgotten that his clothes were still folded on the other side of the room. Did he remember that the taste of his orgasm was still in Ilya’s throat? “I was gonna ask you a question but I don’t know if you’re going to be a dick about it.”
He sounded so young.
Ilya sighed. He kept his jacket and shoes on as he carefully took a seat on the corner of the bed, farthest away from Hollander but facing him. “Ask me your question,” he said softly, and prayed it wouldn’t cost him more than walking away already was. The price of having Hollander like this was always going to have been walking away. Ilya didn't want to feel guilty about handling this moment badly too.
“I haven’t done… this… before,” Hollander said. “So I just -” biting his lip again, eyes pointing firmly at his own socks, “I don’t know if this is how it’s supposed to go.”
“How what supposed to go, Hollander?”
“This, like, when it’s over. Aren’t you supposed to… stay or something, for a while? Or are you supposed to… just leave?”
“What do you want from me?” Ilya asked, the words coming out sharper than he meant them.
“I just thought - I don’t know what the right answer is but you do so I could ask you and then I’d know. Then I wouldn’t get it wrong.”
“Fuck Hollander, you’re boring but you cannot be this boring. What do you usually do after sex? Same as with woman. Do that.” Waiting for Hollander to put all of Ilya's faults into words was harder than Ilya had expected. He wasn't sure why he cared.
“I don’t have a usually.”
Oh, thought Ilya, and then suddenly, Oh no.
“You asked if it was my first time with a man,” Hollander added softly. “You didn’t ask if it was my first time.”
Ilya put his hand on the other man’s calf. Slowly. With purpose. “Look at me.” Hollander did what he was told. His brown eyes were wet but he wasn’t crying. Just… lost, maybe, in a way Ilya had never seen him on the ice. “Hollander,” Ilya said as gently as he could, “I cannot know what you do not tell me.”
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded like this made perfect sense but no one had ever told him before. “So is it okay if I ask you? You know, questions?”
“Why you ask me, hmm? I will answer your boring questions but first you tell me why.” His thumb moved against the other man’s leg, slow circles meant to say I’m sorry I almost left you and I don’t want to hurt you and as long as you sit here naked in front of me I’ll tell you anything you want to know.
“I’m not good at people,” Hollander said, staring into Ilya’s eyes. “It’s okay, I know how my brain is. Hockey stats and team rosters I can do but people are hard. Knowing what to say is hard. Knowing the right thing. If you tell me then I can do that; I can practice it like I’m perfecting a slapslot, then I’ll get it right.”
“You trust me to tell you what’s right, Hollander?” Ilya said but he thought fuck what am I doing here?
“I mean, yeah. I do.” Like it was a fact and it was simple and it made perfect sense. The idea that Hollander would trust him, Ilya Rozanov, for any reason Ilya could think of made him want to scream or tear his own fucking skin off. Nothing about this night was going the way he'd expected. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!
But what Ilya said was, “Okay then ask your questions and I will help you practice for your next hotel room with a scary Russian hockey player so you know how to leave.”
“Fuck you, Rozanov, you’re not scary,” Hollander said with a laugh the same way he’d laughed when Ilya had said you want me to, uh, lie on the bed and let you do it some more? “Will you be honest with me, though? Because I’ll believe you and I… I’ve trusted people before.”
Ilya’s thumb kept moving slowly against Hollander’s leg. Waiting.
“Some of the guys on my old team, they figured out I’m like this and things they told me turned out not to be true.”
“What kind of things?”
“What I’m supposed to say to girls and how to be in the locker room. Stuff to make me look stupid when I did what they told me.”
Something happened in Ilya’s chest he didn’t want to examine too closely. His hand stopped moving. He said, carefully, instead of the other things he suddenly wanted to say, “Did they hurt you?”
Hollander shook his head. “Not like that. It was embarrassing, and I know I am the way that I am okay? I don’t need to be reminded there’s something wrong with me even if they think it’s funny.”
There’s nothing wrong with you, was the thought, and you’re perfect Shane Hollander, but the words came out as, “Those guys were dicks,” instead. Hollander laughed again and Ilya’s thumb started moving again. “Ask me your questions,” Ilya said next. “I won’t lie to you.”
Yes I will I fuck everything up.
“Did you want to leave? Is that how it’s supposed to go?” Hollander asked as if he hadn’t been the one who panicked at the idea that Ilya might tell someone. As if Ilya hadn’t immediately said he had an early flight to catch and Hollander had said the same.
“It depends on what you want, I think. For me, I meet someone at a party, I know what they want. I want it too. We get together, we fuck, it’s simple. They don’t want me to stay so I don’t.”
“Did you think I wanted you to leave?”
Ilya leaned across the bed and kissed Hollander’s leg, softly, next to where his own hand rested. Hollander’s skin was warm. “Why do you not take off your socks?” he asked witout looking up.
“That’s not what I asked you, dude.”
Ilya shrugged a little. “You want, we make deal: You ask me, I ask you. Is fair, no?” The hair on Hollander’s leg was soft and dark.
“I don’t like hotel carpets,” Hollander said. “Who knows how often they’re cleaned? It’s disgusting and if I take my socks off I have to think about it more than I want to.” He put a hand on Ilya’s shoulder, giving him a tiny shove. “Your turn to answer.”
“Oh so I am Mr. Answer Man for you, hmm?” but he hid his smile by kissing Hollander’s knee. “Mr. Encyclopedia.” Another kiss. “You just want me for my brain.”
“Rozanov, you promised.”
I didn’t promise to break myself open for you, Ilya thought, and then okay maybe I did.
“The first thing you said after was I couldn’t tell anyone. Not, it was good for you, or, you want it again. Just, I am secret you don’t want anyone to know.” Shameful. He rested his head against Hollander’s leg and waited to be told he was right.
But the strong hands that had pushed him on the bed thirty minutes before were now pulling him up as Shane got onto his knees on the bed, facing him. A hand lifted his chin so the two men were looking each other in the eye. “That’s not what this is,” Hollander said. So fucking earnest. “I was scared, okay?”
“I scared you?”
“Not you, Rozanov, but yeah. I mean, you’re not scary but you could tell someone and then it gets back to my locker room and those guys look at me like I’m a freak. Like I’m a joke.”
“Hey, hey,” Ilya said, catching Hollander’s face as the other man started to hide his eyes again. Lifting him up with one hand, wrapping the other around his waist and pulling him close. “I would never do that to you.”
“Well you are kind of an asshole,” Hollander said quietly, but his lip twitched when he said it.
“Yes,” Ilya agreed, “but not like that.” He kissed Hollander on the corner of his mouth. Kissed the side of his jaw, felt strong arms come up to hold him back, felt Hollander’s cock hardening between them. “We have same secret, Hollander.” And because it was safer than what he wanted to say, he added, “And you are very hot. So maybe I stay and touch you some more.”
“You think I’m hot?” He grinned as if this was the greatest thing he’d ever heard.
“Well, you know, not bad for second best hockey player in the league.”
Hollander laughed, loudly, and shook his head. “Take your clothes off, asshole.”
I am so fucked, Ilya thought, but he grinned back.