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So he thought about sex with men sometimes. He always knew he was going pro. They warned him what that meant before the draft, not long after the first time a girl wrapped her lips around his dick. Nobody wants any surprises, his coach had told him. It was natural to think about it. To wonder.
And it made it easy to say yes to Rozanov in the showers.
“Is good maybe. To practice,” Rozanov had said. They had both already signed the contract. There was no point in pretending.
They jerked off side by side, long stripes of semen painting the tiles, swirling and disappearing down the drain. No stains, no proof. He could forget about it in the morning, if he wanted.
The second time was harder to forget. By the third time, he’s given up on forgetting, but Rozanov was right, it made sense to practice. He doesn’t want to seem too eager, like some fucking puck bunny, but he doesn’t want to be terrible either. Between slut and virgin, there has to be a sweet spot somewhere.
Rozanov must sense this, because he talks through everything. Yes, mouth here. You are a natural, you will have no problem. Fuck. That’s it. Relax jaw. Like that, da. Breathe through your nose. Deeper, yes, you can do it.
“Where did you learn all this?” Shane asks afterward, semen still coating his tongue, salty-sour. His head is nestled into Rozanov’s armpit, his chest hair scratching his jaw. He resists the urge to open his mouth and suck down on whatever skin is closest to him.
“I had a boy in Russia. I told you this.”
Rozanov seems more practiced than that; but then, maybe this all comes to him naturally in a way it doesn’t for Shane. He had always told himself that he was lucky, unbelievably lucky really, to have hockey; it wouldn’t be right to ask for more. But here was Rozanov with more – with everything really. The first draft pick, any girl he wants, and apparently Shane too.
“It is good yes, it is not rookies here?” Rozanov asks. He rubs a gentle knuckle along Shane’s cheekbone. It makes his skin buzz.
“I guess so,” says Shane. He’d never thought about what it might be like in other places. It had never even occurred to him that the program might exist everywhere.
“It will not be too bad,” Rozanov assures him. “You are too important to the league. You will make a lot of money for them. You will be safe.”
Shane blinks. He’s never worried about safety. It’s league-sanctioned, he almost says. The rep is always down the hall. It’s part of the game.
“You too,” he says instead.
“There is more we could practice together,” Rozanov offers, one hand splayed across Shane’s ass, his fingers making suggestive circles. “If you want. A first time in the room is not so good, maybe.”
Shane feels too loose-limbed, blissed out to be offended. Besides, Rozanov almost bit through his lip when he came, his mouth curled into a near snarl. They’re both getting something out of this.
He has a media coach,a skating coach, a breathing coach, a yoga trainer, a nutritionist. He practices everything; why wouldn’t he practice this. It’s part of professional hockey and there’s nothing in hockey he can afford to fail at.
*
After the game is canceled, the text comes in late, closer to Shane’s morning alarm than his bed time: we should do it. Soon. Before next season. Outside, the snow is still swirling down.
Shane’s life is a series of hotel rooms with very thin walls. They only play Boston one more time and it’s an afternoon game; they’ll almost certainly fly out that day. Maybe, he writes back.
The season dwindles away. Montreal is still rebuilding, so no playoffs, but they all know now; he’s the real deal, not a flash in the pan sent down to Laval before Christmas.
They don’t see each other again until the award dinner. It’s hard to believe sometimes how long they go without seeing each other when Rozanov looms so large and vibrant in his mind. Or maybe it’s just that he’s never really that far; on tape, on social media, their names in each other’s mouths.
After the dinner, while his parents mingle with the league’s stars, Rozanov follows him into the bathroom and shuts the door behind them, his body pressed firmly against it, keeping it closed tight.
“I have penthouse, very private,” he says, his deep rumble of a voice sending spikes of electricity through Shane’s nervous system. “We will be quick. And I will make sure you are very quiet.”
Sensing Shane’s hesitation, he steps forward, his knee slotting between Shane’s thighs. Shane closes his eyes and resists the urge to thrust into him.
“I want to get on my knees for this year’s best rookie,” Rozanov says. His tone is lightly mocking but something hums in Shane’s stomach, like a tumbler clicking into a lock. It should be worse than all-stars, his parents are downstairs for fuck’s sake, but there’s an urgent edge to Rozanov’s body language that Shane can’t quite shake.
Besides, the season is over, and all the space hockey usually fills is empty; nothing left but cavernous echoing want. He wants to go to Rozanov’s room. And he’s the rookie of the year. He earned it.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, yeah. Text me the room number.”
On the way up the elevator, he nearly panics, changing his mind twice before the door dings open. His fears are a tunnel too dark to see the bottom of, but tonight he’s mostly worried that this will all be fed back to him in the form of chirps. Maybe Rozanov just wants bragging rights. Maybe Rozanov thinks it’s the same as the room; maybe he’s not even wrong to think that. When they said keep your enemies close, he’s pretty sure they didn’t mean this.
He knocks on the door anyway.
Rozanov is on him as soon as he steps inside.
He kisses him softly, once, twice, before he deepens the kiss, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. It seems like his mouth is everywhere, leaving wet trails on his neck and his chin, down his abs as Rozanov makes quick work of his shirt buttons.
“Quick and quiet like I said,” says Rozanov, slipping off Shane’s shirt and then his own.
Shane’s hand involuntarily clenches at the hard plane of his stomach, and he has to stop himself from dropping to his knees. He pulls down one pant leg and nearly trips over the other. He catches Rozanov grinning at him.
“Shut up,” he says, but he’s smiling too.
“Nope,” says Rozanov as he pushes him back onto the bed.
It feels like there’s a drumbeat thrumming in his dick. But other than a few quick strokes, Rozanov is singlemindedly focused on settling himself between Shane’s legs.
“See, I show you how to do it fast,” says Rozanov, his fingers slick with lube, one finger, then two sinking in, stretching and stretching until Shane’s brain feels liquid, sloshing around in his head. Between his legs, Rozanov’s eyes shine like dark coins, fixed on Shane’s face.
He said quick but it feels like he’s taking his sweet time, turning Shane into a puddle.
There’s a pause, where Rozanov is looking down at him, asking if he’s okay and he nods, afraid to look directly at Rozanov’s dick, red, almost angry looking, as it pushes in, because he knows it’s going to hurt. Rozanov moves slowly, pausing and giving Shane time to adjust with each inch, and even so, it hurts, and it hurts, and it burns, his nerves are on fire, until it’s like a flip switches, and everything that hurts feels so good, like it was always meant to feel this way, and every other second of his life, he’s been fooling himself.
At first there’s no rhythm to it, just rocking back and forth, like Rozanov is getting his bearings, and then the pace picks up. With each thrust Shane’s body shudders, back arching, nearly carrying him off the mattress.
He’s gritting his teeth, but he knows his moans are getting loud. When he gets too loud, Rozanov lets him take his fingers in his mouth as deep as they’ll go, and when he shifts his angle to something almost unbearably intense, and Shane clamps down too hard, Rozanov hands him his belt. Shane leaves teethmarks in the dark leather.
Rozanov is shuddering, gasping, his hips smacking loudly against Shane’s ass, like a clean shot. They come seconds apart. Rozanov fucks him right through it, his body going stiff and then so loose, russian curses falling like rain around him.
Rozanov collapses on top of him, panting, so with every winded breath, Shane takes in a mouthful of his damp skin. It’s dark and humid under him, like being tucked away in a tent.
Then he can feel Rozanov shift, and pull out, and he almost cries out at the loss, although Rozanov stays tucked into his side. Absently, he sticks one long finger in Shane’s mouth, thumbing at his cheek and soft palate like a stress ball. His hand is still tacky with lube.
“That tastes awful,” Shane says, pushing the finger away. “Does it always taste like that?”
Rozanov’s voice still sounds a little unsteady. “It’s not beauty pageant, Hollander. You need fancy lube to fuck?”
“We make millions of dollars, Rozanov. I think we can have whatever fucking lube we want.”
Rozanov lets out a laugh, low and surprised. Shane likes this particular laugh; he’s never heard it on the ice or during a press scrum. It feels like it belongs to him in a way so little of Rozanov does.
Shane grins back, knocks his head against his, and moves his hands to Rozanov’s scalp, digging in, making circles.
“My masseuse does this,” he says, feeling sheepish suddenly. “It always feels good.”
Rozanov makes a little humming noise, and before Shane knows it, his eyes are closing, and Shane almost gets up, and almost gets up, but his eyes feel so heavy, pulled down and down, like water into a drain.
*
His whole childhood, his father always wanted him to be less one note–you can’t just be hockey, Shane, he used to say, before he realized that wasn’t true–and insisted on taking Shane camping and fishing, to baseball games, tennis matches. Eventually, Shane’s grinding hockey schedule consumed all of his time, until all they could manage was the annual camping trip, unfolding the same dusty tent, discovering each year, a little too late, that the fishing hooks were rusty and unusable.
With his mother, he always discussed the weekend with an eye roll, like it was a shared joke for the two of them, even though he secretly looked forward to it, that little slice of a life that belonged to a son David Hollander never had.
It never occurred to him that his dad might know, even though his dad played college hockey, shared the rink with players who went pro, until the summer after his rookie year, halfway through their camping trip when he casually asks, “and socially, everything is okay?”
“The team is great,” says Shane. “Everybody’s been really welcoming.”
“And other teams? Outside of the games?”
His mother is miles away. His dad’s voice, careful, intended to give away nothing, does precisely the opposite. Shane inherited his dad’s inability to lie, but not, it seems, his ability to avoid situations that require lying.
“Everybody’s been super friendly,” he says again in his best approximation of cheerful. It has the patina of truth, which is all his parents really want.
“Except for Rozanov, obviously,” his dad says, a real smile on display now.
“Right,” says Shane. “Except for Rozanov. Obviously.”
It feels like he’s holding the truth in his mouth, like it could just tumble out if he doesn’t pay enough attention. He’s going to have to get better at this. Rozanov might have tips. Maybe it’s as easy as relaxing his face the right way. But he hasn’t heard from Rozanov since the awards dinner. Which is good, probably. Shane should’ve been the one to end it, but the result is the same.
Like his Juniors coach used to say, an ugly win is still a win. Sometimes, that’s all there is.
*
So Rozanov takes most of his firsts. But not all of them.
There’s no marking on the door. The room itself is unnervingly sterile, white on white, barebones shower in the corner. A king bed, crisp sheets tucked into tight hospital corners, thrown out and replaced every game. The cleanest walls in the whole damn stadium. Somehow that makes it feel grimier.
“It’s your first time, kid, right?” asks the player. Ken Harbison, a streaky right wing who gets hot and then very cold. The part of Shane that thinks his first time should be a star, someone like Scott Hunter, is a little offended and he hopes it doesn’t show on his face.
“Yes,” he says.
Shane is standing with his hands at his sides. He wishes there was somewhere to tuck them away.
One of his socks has a hole in the big toe. The tiled floor is cold against his skin. His gaze is aimed right at the shower. It really is immaculately clean. He wonders what kind of NDA they have the cleaners sign.
Harbison gives him simple, easy commands. Arms up. Shirt off. Pants off. Mouth here. Hands there. Further down. Yes. Good.
His dick is long and skinny, crawling with veins, bright white, almost gleaming under the fluorescent lights. Rozanov was right; he’s glad that he’s done this before; knows how to use his tongue, how to push past his gag reflex, and breathe through it. Harbison smells freshly showered but there’s still a taste of sweat, like the funk has burrowed into his skin. He lets out little grunts that pick up in intensity until his dick is straining in Shane’s mouth.
“Get yourself ready,” Harbison instructs him.
Shane dutifully grabs a fresh tube of lube. The bottle has Montreal branding, what the actual fuck. For one second he wishes Rozanov was there so they could laugh at it together.
He practiced this all summer. His hands shake a little but they get the job done. Shane is sort of surprised to discover he’s hard. Harbison doesn’t even seem to notice; doesn’t seem interested in that part of Shane at all.
When he pushes inside, for a second Shane tenses up until he box breathes his body into submission. There’s pain, but pain is just the body’s way of sending a message. Shane gets to decide when it matters.
The pressure and the rhythm are different from what he’s used to, but it’s not so different from fingers or a dildo. He could be at home in his bed. He could be anywhere.
Harbison is efficient, and it feels like almost no time at all before he’s moving fast, on the verge, the slap of his balls on Shane's ass echoing against the tile. Shane’s hand moves to his dick, but he doesn’t stroke it, just tightens his fingers around the base of his cock.
Afterwards, Harbison claps him on the back. Not bad, rook, he says.
He’s not a rookie anymore. The words are in his mouth and they die there.
Of course, Rozanov knows. The text from Lily is already waiting for him when he settles into the couch in his apartment, the lights dimmed to a warm glow, a cold ginger ale in his hand.
Are you okay?
His stomach lurches twice. First, because Rozanov fucking knows. Second, because it confirms that there are chats out there that he’s not looped into, will never be looped into. He doesn’t know if Rozanov has been picked yet; doesn’t even know how he would go about getting that information. Maybe he was already picked. They’re five games in and most people would say that Rozanov has the most punchable face in the league. For some players, that might be a turn on.
Shane decides to tuck that thought away while he scrolls up in the thread. For the past four months, all the texts are from Shane, and even those are sparse. He’s deleted the worst of them, couldn’t bear to look at them in the light of the day. The details are blurry, but he remembers the shape of them: fuck you. you just wanted to beat everybody else to it.
He won’t respond, he decides. Let Rozanov stew. Let him fucking wonder for once.
Shane cracks open the soda tab and sucks down a sweet, fizzy gulp. He presses an ice pack against his knee, swollen up like an over-ripe plum. It hurts enough that it almost distracts him from the raw tenderness between his thighs and in his ass.
Two minutes later another text from Lily: Harbison is not bad guy.
Then, could be worse.
Another minute passes before, was just mouth and hands?
It was fine, he eventually writes back. Because he’s polite. We shouldn’t be talking about it anyway.
Rozanov doesn’t respond, which leads to another round of internal recriminations. Charlie Brown with the fucking football again.
They don’t text again, but the next time the Raiders play Anaheim, Rozanov gets five minutes in the box for a check that leaves Harbison dazed. Shane almost expects to see cartoon birds dancing around his head.
You can’t do that. Promise you won’t do that again, Shane writes later, once the anger has passed, and he’s jerked off, just once.
Hours later, when he’s probably out at the club, girls hanging off his biceps, Rozanov finally responds: No.
*
It happens again. Everybody knows that Rozanov likes to instigate fights but not everybody realizes that he rarely takes swings. He saves those for anybody stupid enough to pick Shane. Not always, but often enough to be a pattern. Luckily nobody else is looking for this particular pattern.
During the last fight, Rozanov’s lip was punched open, and blood dripped down his chin, splattered his jersey. Shane watches the video on a loop, his dick tenting his sweats.
He doesn’t touch himself. It’s like pain, he decides. If he doesn’t act on it, then it doesn’t matter.
There’s a box where he can tuck these kinds of things away, save them for the right moment. Every once in a while, he lets himself dip into that box, like it’s a decadence, something that can only be permitted in small doses. Pain can be sweet too, if you get your mind right.
There’s almost too much to choose from. Everything in the locker room he’s never allowed himself to look at directly; eyes laser focused on the heavy duty black rubber floors that follow him from timbits all the way to Montreal.
He’s fourteen. The captain lines up the rookies in the showers and orders them to come. Jerk it, Hollander, he sneers, so Hollander does, quickly, shamefully, belly full of hot tar, saliva gathered in his mouth.
He’s fifteen. She’s a few years older, or maybe she’s just arrived into her adult body early; his mother keeps telling his coaches that he’ll get a few more inches this summer. Her mouth tastes like alcohol, something fruity that’s stained her lips and tongue ruby red. She finds the empty bedroom. When he touches her, he tries to imagine narrating it to the team, the way they always do––wasn’t even wearing a bra, went for my zipper right away, she was fucking wet for it––but his mind keeps slipping away. I’m sorry, he ends up saying, I’m sorry, backing into the door, and finding half his team waiting outside, peals of laughter. Guess Hollander can only score on the ice. Later, his hand wrapped around his dick, he tries to remember her face, but it keeps dissolving; he thinks about that day’s scrimmage instead. Bodies slamming into bodies until bones crunch. The grunt of air leaving their chests. The bite of ice in his skin. His hand, his boxers sticky under the sheets.
He’s sixteen. His right winger, mediocre; dreaming of a stint in the AHL, no threat to Shane’s greatness, is standing next to him, close enough to feel the brush of his bare thighs, his eyes fixed on the smallest player on their team. They should let us do it like the pros, he says. That’s how you find the fags.
Maybe he was thinking of that when he asked his coach, but why, when he confirms the rumors that Shane had always assumed were wild fantasies invented by teenage boys with too many concussions. Shane had lost the World Junior Championship just the month before. He still spends a few minutes, every day, thinking about the abrupt curve of Ilya Rozanov’s upper lip.
“You boys work hard,” his coach says, hand heavy on Shane’s shoulder. “You deserve it.”
It takes Shane years to realize that his coach had no idea what the answer was. In the meantime, he accepts it as his due. It’s true; he does work hard.
And it’s allowed. The league said it was okay, in just these small ways. Not to keep, but to look. To touch. A warm cock buried in his throat; that unlikely mix of soft and hard. Strong arms, thick legs, and always the smell of ice and gear in the air.
*
For most games, Shane has a system. He takes his forfeits frequently enough, but not so often that anybody thinks about it. No captains, no rookies. Somber players who take the tradition seriously, don’t make a fuss; full lips, ideally, and enough experience to give a decent blow job. He always showers first and wears his walk-in suit. He tries to remember to offer a pillow because the tile is unforgiving on knees. Shane keeps his voice down, just lets out a small groan when he finishes. Thanks, he says, at the end, when they’re both fully dressed again. Manners are still important. He likes to imagine that players whisper, Hollander, he’s not bad, he follows the rules, acts like a professional.
But when it’s Boston, everybody knows that Hollander always picks Rozanov. And Rozanov always picks Hollander. It’s part of the rivalry, part of their legend.
And they play their best hockey against each other, so more often than not, the forfeit belongs to one of them.
But from the very first time, Rozanov told him, I don’t fuck in here, and Shane accepts this limitation, like he’s accepted all of Rozanov’s rules. Just once Rozanov gets carried away and breaks that promise. And when Shane invites him over to his apartment later that night, he never responds. They don’t talk about it again. The pile of things they don’t talk about keeps growing.
And yet, despite everything, Shane likes the version of Rozanov he finds there; gentle, chatty. He soothes everything that he will irritate later.
Hurry up, Hollander, he likes to say with a wink. I have hot date after this. Best tits you’ve ever seen. His hand dig into the crease where Shane’s thighs meet his ass.
His smile is almost sweet, nothing sharp behind his teeth.
*
Shane knocks softly at the door, barely waiting for a response before he pushes it open.
Rozanov is sprawled against the headboard with a giant ice pack on his shoulder. His lips are swollen and crusted with blood, like they’ve been kissed by a hammer.
“You okay?” Shane asks.
“Shoulder is fucked up again,” he says with a grimace.
Shane is strangely touched that he’s sharing his injury with him. Last time, he almost blacked out from the pain in his ankle before he admitted to Rozanov that they needed to switch positions.
“I thought for sure you’d have the forfeit tonight,” says Shane.
“Eh, trainer gives me painkillers, make my dick soft” - he must see something in Shane’s face that means, what the fuck am I doing here then, because Rozanov pats the spot on the bed next to him, and says, “give me one hour.”
“Admirals game starts soon,” he adds.
Hollander considers complaining, almost says, you could’ve said something, but an hour isn’t that long. And New York is holding onto a playoff spot by the skin of their teeth, so both their teams are invested in the outcome. There’s no reason he needs to watch the game in a different hotel room, instead of right here.
When Shane sits down next to him, the mattress dips under their weight. He can’t recall if they’ve ever watched hockey together before. It feels illicit, like insider trading, except lots of hockey players are friends, they must watch games together. This might be one of those things that seems weird to him but is perfectly normal.
So he watches the game, but he’s distracted, almost hypnotized, by the curve of Rozanov’s throat, bobbing as he chugs a bottle of coke. The playoffs are a few weeks away and it looks like he’s getting a head start on his beard. Shane wants to know how the stubble would feel on his skin. By the end of the season, Rozanov’s beard will be fully grown out, soft, probably nestled between some girl’s thighs.
They’ve never fucked during the playoffs. There’s not even a winner’s room after the first round. The stakes are already high enough. And they need to conserve energy.
“Hunter looks sharp tonight,” Shane says after his first goal.
“Everybody looks good against Buffalo,” Rozanov says, waving his hand dismissively.
During the commercial break, Shane can feel Rozanov’s eyes on him. He wonders what would happen if he put Rozanov’s soft dick in his mouth, and just let it stay there until the rest of the hour was up.
“I think Hunter is gay,” says Rozanov.
Shane scoffs. “Why the fuck would you say that.”
“He picked me after our last game–”
Shane interrupts. “He doesn’t do that. The Admirals don’t even have a room anymore.”
Everybody heard about how Hunter made New York get rid of their program as part of his last contract extension. Every time Shane thinks about it he feels a twinge of something - regret, resentment. He thinks about what his mother would say if she knew. But he can’t be everything for everyone. There are too many battles to fight and he’s still not sure which side he’s on.
“It was in Boston.”
“Still,” Shane says.
Rozanov shrugs, a universe of things communicated in the arch of his eyebrows, the quirk of his lips; yes, but, you know how it is, or maybe, yes but, I pushed him too far.
Sometimes Shane wants to ask him if his face was always this expressive or if it’s something he learned because of the language barrier. It’s exactly the kind of question that will turn Rozanov’s voice into ice, get him a blowjob, and then kicked out of the hotel room.
“Jesus, what did you say to him?”
Rozanov smiles, pleased. Shane knows better than anyone that his chirps are a kind of foreplay. Rozanov could make anybody angry enough if he wanted to. So maybe he wanted to.
When he doesn’t offer anything else right away, Shane gives in. “So why do you think he’s gay?”
“Just a feeling.”
“He liked it too much?” asks Shane. There’s a version of this conversation floating out there that’s his personal nightmare. He should know where the traps lie.
“Only assholes like it, Hollander.”
Shane waits for the obvious joke but nothing comes.
Shane doesn’t like the room exactly, but there are times when it seems like his dick does, so maybe he’s an asshole. People like to say he’s nice but sometimes he thinks he only knows what the shape of nice should look like.
“You’re telling me you never like it?”
Rozanov gives another exaggerated shrug, the ice pack nearly sliding off his shoulder, even with the tape. They’re not supposed to talk about it like this. It’s just that they’re already breaking so many rules.
“Yeah, because you hate sex so much.”
“I do not need help from NHL to get laid.”
Shane doesn’t have a response to that because it’s so obviously true. Anyway, it’s not meant to be liked. It’s tradition.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off my ass,” Rozanov finally says a few minutes later, after the television zooms in on Hunter’s face after his second goal. “He wanted me to fuck him, but he didn’t want to say it outloud.”
Shane tries to imagine them together. They’re almost exactly the same height. Massive chests, tapered waists, thick biceps. A matched set. It’s somebody’s wet dream.
Something oily and hot squirms in his stomach. It could be jealousy. Could be something else. He wonders if Rozanov’s dick is going to work tonight.
“So, anybody who looks at your ass is gay?” says Shane, heat in his voice. He feels a little sick.
The word gay in his mouth is a physical thing, too large to fit properly. He thinks of the Tampa defender with the plush red lips that he usually picks there. How sometimes he boards Shane harder than he needs to, his knee right up against his back. How wet his mouth gets.
“Scott Hunter isn’t gay. No way,” Shane says again with confidence he doesn’t entirely feel. “It’s just the room.”
“Do you want to know what we did?” Rozanov asks, even though he already knows the answer; has known this about Shane before he did.
He moves his hand, large and warm, to Shane’s crotch, one finger tracing the outline of his dick. Rozanov’s gaze is hot on his face, like a sunburn, except Shane can’t figure out how to peel it off, and he’s been trying and trying for years now.
Shane closes his eyes.
“Yes,” he says. Relief washes over him. “Please.”
*
“Let me guess, fucking Rozanov,” says J.J., raising his eyebrows at Shane.
Shane tightens the towel wrapped around his waist, trying to tamp down on his alarm. “What?”
“Don’t you ever get sick of that asshole? Jones said that cocksucker never shuts up in there.”
The ambient music suddenly gets louder, saves Shane from needing to respond. He scored the winning goal, but he passes on his forfeit that day; time for somebody else to get a turn, he says, smile plastered on.
J.J.’s words are still echoing in his head when he lets Rozanov into his apartment. He steps into his space, hands reaching, but Shane backs away, lower lip trapped between his teeth.
“I was thinking. The guys were saying, do you think it’s weird––maybe we should pick other people sometimes?”
Rozanov’s face instantly smooths out. Like he’s wearing a mask of himself. “I can pick another Metro next time, if that’s what you want,” he says as he shrugs his coat off and drops it on the shoe bench.
He walks past Shane towards the living room and Shane finds himself following.
“Hayden would lose his mind.”
“Pike,” Rozanov spits out the word. He slumps into Shane’s couch. “I wouldn’t let him within five feet of my dick.”
“So who would it be?”
“Mm, maybe Mahoney,” Rozanov says, leaning back, his arms stretched across the top of the sofa, deltoids bulging.
“Fuck you. No way. He’s a third liner,” says Shane, offended for reasons he doesn’t want to look at too closely.
“He’s very nice to look at,” says Rozanov. “You never noticed?”
“No. I don’t look at my teammates like that. And, Jesus, he’s terrible. Have you seen his edges?”
Rozanov smiles and Shane can't help but grin back. “I guess it’s really not that often,” Shane reasons.
“Might be strange if we stopped now,” agrees Rozanov. “People would talk, wonder why we break tradition. Maybe ask questions.”
Shane releases a sharp breath. “Yeah, okay,” he says, which Rozanov seems to take as permission to untie Shane’s sweats and free his dick.
“I don’t want to talk about your terrible teammates anymore,” says Rozanov.
“Is there something else you wanna talk abo-?” Shane asks, cut off as Rozanov pulls him down by the front of his shirt. Their mouths meet, teeth clacking together loudly.
“I bought a new car yesterday,” says Rozanov, one hand snaking up his shirt, the other starting to work on Shane’s dick.
“Of course you did. Let me guess - Ferrari?”
“Porsche,” Rozanov says. He says the word like it’s something filthy. It’s so obvious what he’s doing; putting them back in their roles. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
“Why do you even like them so much?” he asks.
“You know how it feels, when we’re on the ice? So fast, like flying? I want to always feel that. Also,” he says, leaning closer, smiling wolfishly, “girls like them. “
“So, just whatever, as long as it feels good?” Shane asks, carefully ignoring the last statement.
“Why not?” says Rozanov and then, as if in illustration, takes Shane’s dick into his mouth, his nose pressed into his groin, hands gripping Shane’s ass. Like it’s that easy, to just take what you want. When he’s here, like this, he can almost believe it.
Later, his heart rate still elevated, his back sticky, Shane says, “I still can’t believe you’d pick fucking Mahoney.”
“You are really so surprised I would want a beautiful man to suck my cock?” Rozanov squeezes Shane’s soft dick, pulls him back so he’s nearly in his lap.
Shane makes a face at beautiful man, like Rozanov has said something obscene.
“Not everything is about hockey,” says Rozanov. He runs a finger along Shane’s dick and it pulses hopefully.
“Sure, but I mean, forfeits are actually about hockey.”
“Forfeit is about sex, Hollander. I know you know this.”
“Yeah, but not like - not like that. Like it’s just tradition, burning off steam, you know? A little extra motivation. I mean half the guys are married. It would be kinda fucked up if you thought about it that way.”
Shane rolls onto his back, frowning at the new stain on his couch.
“Fucked up,” repeats Rozanov. “Okay, yes would be.”
“Like us,” adds Shane.
“Like us,” says Rozanov slowly. “Explain.”
“It’s just, I don’t know, taking the edge off. It doesn’t mean anything. Like that.”
Something flickers across Rozanov’s usually unreadable face. “Sure, okay. Like that.”
His hand has never left Shane’s dick, and now he digs his nails into the shaft until Shane groans and his cock fattens. Rozanov kneels over him, the heavy weight of his body pressing Shane into the couch. His shoulders stretch out endlessly above him.
Shane closes his eyes until Rozanov tugs the skin above his eyelids.
“Fucking look at me, Hollander,” he says so Shane does. He looks impossibly beautiful and impossibly cold. Everything about him gives off the scent of anger. Everything except his hands, moving in quick determined strokes.
Shane looks at him the whole time, until he finishes with a groan like he’s been suckerpunched. His dick feels stretched and sore. And by the time Shane finds the used damp towel, buried deep in the couch cushions, Rozanov is gone.
*
The next time they play Boston, they both play listlessly. As if neither of them could bear to pick. After that, Shane returns to form, but week after week, he passes on his forfeit.
He tells himself it’s for Rose. It just wouldn’t be right. He’s not in love, but could be, maybe. If he can get his head in order he could be in love any day now. It’s right around the corner.
*
He gets picked less and less too. Every once in a while, some foolish kid, hopped up on adrenaline and self-satisfaction, dares to dream big enough to put Shane Hollander on his knees.
They always regret it later. And it’s not just Rozanov now; it’s Hollander’s teammates, it’s every veteran, hanging on to their knees with tape and a prayer, offended by any disruption to the system. Shane is a winner. Two Stanley cups; another on the way if this hot streak sticks. Captain. He’s served his time.
Still. Sometimes, it can be nice. If they’re brave enough to pick him, they usually know what they want from the experience. Cocksucker, one mutters, big coarse hands on his face, brown eyes swallowed by black, and Shane’s mouth is fast and hungry.
It’s fine if you don’t use lube, Shane tells the next, and he watches him hesitate for a second before sliding the condom on, and pushing him onto his back.
This is what he signed up for, he reminds himself. This was the game. They told him it would hurt.
*
For as long as he can remember, sex with women has always been a little bit like watching porn. Sexy in theory, maybe, but in reality, just body parts under harsh light. People playing their parts. Not so different from the room, really, at the end of the day.
He doesn’t expect sex with Rose to be like that. Not when she’s so undeniably beautiful. Famously beautiful. And yet, and yet. At least the lighting is better.
When Rose asks him what’s wrong, he almost says, you didn’t earn it. It feels too late to realize it’s too late.
The fifth time, she tries a different tack. After all, she loves to tease. And he forgot that she knows hockey too, that her brothers would have heard the rumors, even if they didn’t take them seriously. Very few people take them seriously.
“Have you ever tried role play?” she asks.
“Like what?” he asks, cautious.
“Like maybe I’m the brand new rookie, who can’t believe I just got called up, and uh oh, I was just picked by the big, sexy hockey star.”
She curls a thick strand of hair around her fingers and flips it to the side. Her lips are a shiny pink.
He doesn’t know what’s on his face. Nothing good, probably.
“Sure,” he says.
“You hate it,” she says flatly. There’s hurt in her face and he put it there. “Just say you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it,” he says. “It could be fun.”
“Okay. Right. That’s the voice you use for things that are fun. C’mon, Shane.”
He opens his mouth and closes it. He doesn’t want to lie to her and his thoughts end there.
“Can you just tell me something you would like? One thing? It can be anything,” she says.
If this conversation happened a few weeks ago, she might’ve flirted through it, leaned forward to flash the sweet curve of her breast or nudged him playfully in the thigh. Now her fingers tap against her own leg. Her patience is drying up.
He hesitates. Sometimes he feels like that part of his brain was empty until Rozanov started putting things there. Maybe this was always where he would’ve ended up or maybe it was something Rozanov made, back when Shane was still clay in his hands.
It didn’t matter; this was the shape of him now, there was no going back.
“One thing,” she says. “And don’t say me. Tell me something true, Shane. I deserve that.”
She huffs and leans back into the couch, putting a body’s worth of distance between them. For a second, he remembers Rozanov sitting in that exact spot, taking up more space than one person should be able to.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
There might be an answer off to the side, somewhere in his peripheral vision, but he’s spent too much time not looking at it.
“I mean yes you deserve that,” he clarifies, “you deserve more than that. Obviously.”
“Okay,” she says. “To be clear, I’m not mad at you, Shane, although maybe I should be, but you see right, you see why this can’t work if you can’t answer that question?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think maybe I’m kinda fucked up about sex.”
“You and everybody else,” she says with a self-deprecating eyeroll.
“I don’t know. You seem shockingly normal about it.”
That makes her laugh. Sweet and high, like bells. Her face is so beautiful and there’s nothing about it that he wants.
*
His life is a series of rooms with thin walls. Some of them have rubber floors. Some are tiled. All of them are closets. Most of them are traps, one way or another. None of them have Ilya Rozanov in them.
Although he’s starting to think that maybe Rozanov knows the way out. If he was talking to him. If he would just look him in the eye on the ice, just once. But he only knows one sure way to get them alone together.
*
Shane gets there first.
He waits for him on the bed, his head curled into his knees. No windows; just the door, and on the other side, the league rep, the rink, his team, everybody waiting for him to come out with a smirk; it’s true what they say, Rozanov never shuts up, not even in the room.
He closes his eyes and he’s not here anymore. He’s remembering the time Rozanov woke him up at three am with his tongue already in his mouth, and they kissed and kissed, open mouthed, no finesse, just recirculating air, until his jaw was numb and his cheeks were scraped raw. The time they slept through his alarm, and when he woke up the morning sun was streaming in; dappled light on Ilya’s face, torso speckled with moles like a bird’s egg, and Shane had to breathe so quietly, so carefully because it felt like there was spun glass inside his chest.
He belonged to Rozanov then. On the ice he belonged to Rozanov. Maybe he belongs to him everywhere except here. It’s the first time he sees it clearly. The room isn’t for them. No victor, no spoils. It’s for the league. It’s a reminder of who’s in charge. And it’s not them, it’s never been them.
The door creaks open and closes. Shane scrambles up.
“Hollander,” says Rozanov stiffly. He looks right at him and through him, jaw set in stone.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says. His face, his shirt, everything feels soggy. There’s salt on his tongue.
“How do you want me?” Rozanov asks. Other than the flare of his nostrils his face is perfectly still.
“You—you don’t have to do anything, I don’t care what they do to me, I just, I needed you to listen.”
“Fine. I’m listening, Hollander,” he says. “Say what you came to say.”
Rozanov’s hand plays with the outside of his ear, tugs down on the lobe.
It’s a nervous tic, which Shane knows because he knows him well enough to know some of his tells, because he watches him like he watches the game. He’s better at reading hockey, but he’s learning. He wants to learn. He wants, he wants.
“Can you sit?” he asks and when Rozanov doesn’t move, he nods. “Okay, yeah. That was fucked up what I said. Like really fucked up. And I’m sorry.”
Rozanov hasn’t said anything but there’s something softer about the set of his face. Like some of the ice has leaked out. He sits down on the edge of the bed, his long, beautiful fingers gripping his kneecaps. Shane wants to put himself in those hands.
Shane takes in a deep breath, like a swimmer waiting on the diving board.
“And the thing that really sucks about what I said is that it wasn’t true. If anything, it’s the opposite. Sometimes, I feel like this is the only thing that’s ever been real.”
He reaches for Rozanov’s hands, tries to interlace one with his own. Rozanov stares down at where their fingers are joined, his jaw working. He looks down and then he looks at Shane and then he looks down again. He doesn’t move his hand away.
Shane ducks his head closer to Rozanov’s face. He’s been thinking all day about the shape of his mouth, the punctuation spot of the mole in his cheek, but he doesn’t quite make it; ends up with his face buried in Rozanov’s neck.
“I don’t really want to. Here. Anymore,” Shane says into his skin.
His voice comes out soft, thick, like it needs to be stirred.
“Shh,” says Rozanov. They always say there are no recording devices, but nobody knows for sure. They’re the best hockey players in the world and even they don’t know. “You know we can’t do that.”
His deft fingers make quick work of the buttons on Shane’s shirt. Shane lets him undress him like a doll.
“We will be quick, m—” he cuts himself off. “Let’s be quick and quiet. Like little mice. And then I will drive you home.”
Rozanov pushes him onto his back, pulling at his waistband and wrapping his hand around his dick. Ilya’s hands are steady, familiar, precious to him, and Shane’s body obeys; more muscle memory than desire.
Shane closes his eyes, the fluorescent lights gleaming white at the edge of his vision. He tries to imagine he’s on the ice, maybe they’re playing together. No crowds, just a puck and the ice as far as he can see. He’s always been safe on the ice.