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September 2021-Ottawa
“Come on, moy zloy kotenok,” Ilya Rozanov taunted, his hazel eyes sparkling. “Try not to fall on your face this time, da? Is embarrassing for captain to skate circles around husband.”
Shane Hollander’s body lit up the way it always did when he was on the ice with Ilya. After a decade of keeping their relationship hidden, Shane still couldn’t believe that they were on an NHL team together with teammates, a coach, and fans who openly supported their relationship. The summer they just spent at the cottage had been what they both needed to put the mess of last season behind them. Ilya’s skin was still golden from days spent racing jet skis on the lake, lazy afternoons grilling outside, and napping under the sun with their dog Anya.
But Shane was ready to get back on the ice. Most of training camp so far had been spent in the weight room or doing on-ice drills but today was their first scrimmage and he was excited to be facing-off against Ilya again.
He was built for this. He knew that with Ilya and him on the same team, Ottawa was coming for the cup this year. But he was also coming for that captain title.
“Oh, you’re gonna regret that,” growled Shane.
Ilya winked.
The whistle shrilled.
Shane snapped into motion. He exploded off the line the instant the puck hit the ice, snatching the puck and pushing forward.
Ilya was already on him, his body crowding Shane’s.
Shane pivoted hard, cutting left, but Ilya had anticipated his move and placed himself right in the way, his stick barely skimming the puck before Shane regained control. No one read him like Ilya did.
He felt the heat of Ilya’s body even through his gear as they skated in parallel, dangerously close.
“Fuck off,” hissed Shane.
“Make me,” Ilya cooed, smirking.
Shane shoved off, trying to create space, trying to get his head back in the drill. This was a structured scrimmage. A controlled simulation. Coach had said the word “professional” at least six times this morning.
There was nothing professional about the way Ilya was looking at him.
Shane passed to Troy Barret on his right but Ilya cut between them, intercepting.
“Good pass,” Ilya shouted. “To wrong team but good.”
Heat flared under Shane’s skin. He pushed harder, skates biting into the ice as he caught up and slammed his shoulder into Ilya’s side. The impact echoed across the rink.
Ilya absorbed the hit with an infuriating laugh, tapped the puck through Shane’s legs, and spun away in a smooth, arrogant arc.
Shane saw red.
He chased him down again, cutting across the ice. Their sticks tangled, skates scraping dangerously close. Ilya bumped Shane off balance and Shane went skidding a few feet before catching himself.
The whistle blew again, signaling a reset, the scrimmage now a far cry from the structured drill they were supposed to be running.
Neither of them stopped.
Ilya tapped his stick twice, challenging Shane to come for him.
Shane pushed off the ice hard, dropped his shoulder, and drove straight into him. They collided stick-to-stick, turning the practice from a simple drill to something reckless, and intimate, and absolutely not regulation.
“Enough!” the ref called.
Ilya, eyes bright and hungry, didn’t even blink.
Shane couldn’t hear the groans of their teammates over the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
“You will have to skate better than this if you want to take the captain title,” Ilya goaded, grinning that stupid crooked smile that made Shane melt.
“Keep talking, Rozanov,” Shane snarled, “You’re going to pay for that when we get home.”
Ilya hummed and dropped his gaze to Shane’s lips. “I look forward to payment.”
“Great,” Troy muttered. “They’re going to kill each other.”
Across the boards from him, Harris squeaked, “Should we, like, do something? Call Coach? Call-"
“A therapist?” Troy interjected.
“I’m serious!” exclaimed Harris.
“So am I,” said Troy. “Those two have been on opposing teams for their entire professional careers. I don’t think they have any idea how to turn off their competitive bickering. This is going to be an interesting season.”
Ilya was gathering his belongings in the locker room. Most of the team was still milling around, talking, laughing, and putting away their gear. But all Ilya could focus on was Shane.
Shane’s hair was still wet from the shower, and there was a sharp edge to the way he stomped toward his stall. Ilya’s chest tightened. That little shit, always so intense, so competitive, and so impossibly infuriating, was the same man he had loved for years and every day he found that he somehow loved him even more.
He caught Shane’s eye. Shane’s jaw was set, and his lips twitched like he was trying not to grin. “You should walk home,” Shane said, voice low and clipped. “I’m not driving you.”
Ilya tilted his head, smirking and trying to fight the warmth swelling in his chest. Ilya had agreed to Shane's request to not show public displays of affection at work. He knew it was the smart approach. But it wasn’t even the preseason yet and Ilya was not certain he was capable of keeping to that agreement. He was desperate to get home as soon as possible. “I can walk home faster than you drive your boring Jeep Cherokee anyway,” he said.
Shane’s frown deepened, though the little glint in his eyes betrayed him. “They’re called speed limits, not speed suggestions and you drive like a maniac.”
“Better than being stuck behind your slow ass.”
“Slow ass? You’ll see when I get home first.”
Ilya grabbed one of Shane’s elbow pads and flung it across the room to buy himself a headstart before snatching his bag and running out of the locker room.
“Asshole!” He heard Shane yell after him. He covered his smile with his hand and started jogging home.
“Uh… so, are we going to talk about that?” Troy asked, after both men had left.
Harris, who was in the locker room under the pretense of gathering statements for the Ottawa Centaurs social media page and not at all to ogle Troy in his hockey gear, waved toward a small whiteboard on the far wall. “Well… if you really want to quantify it…”
Wyatt Hayes leaned in, smirking. “Oh, we’re doing this? The chart?”
Zane Boodman laughed, “I think after the scrimmage today we need to move them to solid orange.”
Luca Haas, shook his head with mock solemnity. “A solid orange. That’s… dangerous territory. Pre-red. Pre-catastrophe. Definitely alarming.”
Harris nodded vigorously. “Exactly! We all know the drill. Green is ‘smooth sailing,’ yellow is ‘slight chaos,’ orange is ‘approaching full-blown war,’ and red is ‘actual relationship danger.’”
Evan Dykstra raised his hand. “I propose we officially move the color after today’s scrimmage. That last hit Shane laid? Definitely tipped it into orange territory.”
Wyatt laughed. “Honestly… orange might be generous today. I’d almost push for red if Ilya had managed to trip Shane while stealing the puck.”
Luca’s mock serious expression turned more genuine. “Has this gotten to the point yet that we need to talk to them?”
Harris nodded, gripping the marker like a general ready for battle. “I think it has. Before it escalates any further. We need… an intervention. Or at least a strongly worded conversation about… keeping the chaos contained.”
Wyatt grinned, elbowing Bood. “I vote intervention. Full-on, sit-down, let’s-make-sure-the-marriage-survives style.”
Bood laughed. “Agreed. Orange today. One more hit like that and we’re pushing red. We can’t risk it. This is our year but we aren’t going to make it to the playoffs if they can’t work together.”
Troy groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I cannot believe we’re literally monitoring their marital health like it’s a sports stat.”
Wyatt snorted. “This is the most Ottawa Centaurs thing we’ve ever done. Ever.”
Shane slammed the door to the house behind him, tossing his keys onto the counter in frustration. His heart was still racing from practice, from Ilya, from the way his husband made him furious and thrilled in equal measure.
Ilya was leaning against the kitchen counter, casually sipping water with one eyebrow raised. “I won,” he said simply.
Shane growled low in his throat and charged at him just like in practice earlier, gripping his hips against the counter and crushing their mouths together. The familiar slick heat of Ilya’s tongue in his mouth simultaneously worked to soothe and escalate his heart rate. He roughly moved one hand up through his curls, punishing him for every word he spoke on the ice.
He couldn’t wait another second. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of Ilya’s grey sweatpants and sank to his knees, pulling them down with him. His mouth watered at the sight of Ilya’s rigid cock, knowing he was just as worked up as Shane. He licked the underside in one stripe, then sucked the head into his mouth and looked up to meet his eyes. Ilya had one hand in Shane’s hair and the other was stroking his thumb back and forth across his cheek. The look in his eyes was one of pure adoration. Shane hummed and took him to the back of his throat, unable to look away from his loving gaze.
“Moya lyubov,” Ilya whispered, caressing his thumb across the freckles under Shane’s eyes.
The moment was so gentle that Shane gasped in shock when Ilya suddenly reached down and jerked Shane back to his feet before pressing his chest to the cool counter top. “Fuck,” Shane groaned, as he felt his own pants being pulled down to his knees.
Ilya lifted the back of Shane’s shirt and started kissing and licking down his back. “That was a cheap hit today. Very unprofessional,” Ilya murmured against his skin.
“Oh shut up and fuck me, Captain.”
Shane heard the distinct sound of a lube packet being torn open, followed by slick fingers against his opening. He released a breath as he felt Ilya working him open with one hand and kneading his sore muscles from a day on the ice with his other hand. His legs were jelly by the time he felt the head of Ilya’s cock press up against him.
“There. This is what you needed?”
“Yes,” Shane shuddered. He always needed this. He always needed him.
It had been difficult, finding the right balance between their personal and professional relationships at practice this week. Shane knew they would need to continue working on that, he especially, since he was more worried than Ilya about how the team saw them, especially after the way things had ended in Montreal. But this was simple. It had always been simple for them, long before they understood or had the words to communicate what they were to each other. Their bodies had known first, moving in sync years before their minds caught up.
The Next Morning
Shane stepped into the team meeting room, hair still damp, adjusting the sleeve of his hoodie, with Ilya trailing behind him. The two men immediately froze, realizing that all conversation had halted the second they stepped through the door.
Shane blinked and looked around at his teammates. “What is happening?”
Wyatt clasped his hands together with exaggerated gravitas. “Gentlemen. Please have a seat.”
Harris stood up from where he was sitting next to Troy and walked to the front of the room. “Thank you both for coming. We know tensions are high.”
“What?” Ilya said, “This is my meeting that I called to discuss next week’s schedule with the team. Harris, you should not even be here, you are not a player.”
“Daddy, please,” Luca Haas said, pinching the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.
“Daddy?” Shane sputtered.
Luca paled. “Wait, sorry, not like that. I meant, you two are the team dads and–”
“We are not the team dads,” said Ilya.
“You bring us snacks!” said Young.
“They mean that you’re leaders,” Troy offered weakly. “Like symbolic parents. I think.”
Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “Symbolic parents who nearly murdered each other yesterday.”
“We didn’t–” Shane started.
“You did,” Harris said, thrusting his phone forward as evidence. “We have it on video.”
“What?” Shane stammered. “Who took a video?”
Several hands went up.
“We’ve been tracking your fighting since the start of training camp,” Harris continued, gesturing behind him to the whiteboard that someone must have wheeled in from the locker room. There was a rectangle that was colored in with green, yellow, orange, and red, and a big arrow pointing at the orange section.
Ilya stared at the stupid group art project at the front of the room, “What the fuck?”
Bood chimed in, “We just want to check in with you guys since we had to move to orange yesterday. Before the situation escalates.”
Ilya blinked. “Escalates how?”
“Um… potential… uh… divorce?” Troy muttered.
Shane’s jaw dropped. “Divorce?”
Troy winced. “I just… yesterday you were yelling and hitting each other and fighting in the locker room. It felt like my parents all over again.”
Ilya suppressed a laugh, trying to be considerate. “Troy, buddy. We are not getting divorced.”
But Troy still looked anxious, and the rest of the team exchanged disbelieving looks.
"It just feels like you've been fighting a lot lately," offered Wyatt, "You guys are married but... I don't think I've ever seen you touch outside of physical blows on the ice."
Ilya whipped his face towards Shane with a triumphant look.
Okay, maybe Shane could admit that the zero PDA policy was too extreme if this is what their teammates thought.
“So you guys resolved whatever the issue was yesterday?” Bood asked.
A huge stupid grin split across Ilya’s face.
Shane turned bright red and refused to meet anyone’s gaze.
Harris dropped his marker, horror etched across his face. “Oh no. Was yesterday, was that… flirting?”
The room went quiet.
Shane rubbed the back of his neck. “Listen, we weren’t… okay, maybe a little…”
Dykstra buried his face in his hands. “We staged an intervention because you were… doing foreplay??”
Shane sputtered. “What, no! That wasn’t foreplay.”
Ilya cut in dryly, “Was pre-foreplay.”
“Ilya!” Shane squeaked.
Troy quietly stood up, walked to the front of the room, and bent over to grab the dropped marker. He then erased the arrow pointing at orange with the back of his hand, and drew a new one at bright green.