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There was a time.
Back before marriage and ‘I do’s, before boyfriends and stilted ‘I love you’s, before coming out and feeling the eyes of the world on his back, a target painted in red and dripping. Before his— their— love life became a spectacle. Before laidback, secluded days in the cottage.
Before the crisp white sheets of a muggy Tampa hotel room became the bench of a confessional booth, hands clasped between knees like a prayer, staring down the barrel of a loaded Russian gun and hoping for absolution.
Before all of that.
When Shane was Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Metros, fated archrival of Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Raiders. When 82 games a year were distilled down to a handful that really, truly mattered. The scarred ice of the Bell Centre, the ugly white lights of the Garden.
When Shane would stand in his cubby, heart pumping, staring at the little three dots on a cracked phone screen that gave way to teases, gloats, promises. When a stuffy hotel room became a way out, a way in, an escape and a prison all in the same hushed breath sighed into a neck, a fist, a pillow.
Back then, Shane had been young and a little naive and a whole lot repressed. Hot-blooded, with something to fight for, run from. Something to prove. He got it all out the way he knew how, the only way he’d ever known: on the ice. What good was talking when his blades sung with every glide, when the puck whistled on its way past a goalpost and into the back of a net, when a crowd chanted his name until it echoed off the rafters? No, he didn’t need to talk. He just needed to play fucking good hockey and let that speak for him.
Now, he knows the soft touch of a loving hand, steady arms and a rocking embrace, the I’m here and I’ve got you and I want to listen of a man who he’d never imagined loving more than anything, even more than the one thing he’d grown up loving, when ‘love’ just meant the ache of new skates and the skittering of black rubber on white ice. Now, he knows what it’s like to speak and be heard another way. But it wasn’t always like this.
Back then, anger was a carefully-wielded weapon and a useful distraction from feelings not so clear-cut, not so easily tweezed apart. Shane of the Montreal Metros was angry in ways he couldn’t even conceive yet. A fissure cracking open the side of an iceberg, freezing and glassy black at the centre. His anger rarely came to that ugly, red-hot thing that ended in shouting and violence. Only if you lit a flame under his feet and left it there to singe away at his edges, melting that icy core and revealing something gnarled and wounded in the very centre.
That Shane had been the one to throw a punch, drop gloves and rip his helmet off, muscles lending themselves to another purpose beyond just the game. That Shane had been the one to sink an elbow into a defenseman’s stomach who got a little too zealous on the boards, had been the one to take a fistful of a winger’s jersey and shove him face down on the ice, knee on his back until the scrum thinned out and the ref was pulling him off. That Shane had been the one to be pulled off Scott Hunter, spitting ugly words between the mass of bodies holding him back, that dejected, bruised thing at his core licking its wounds in the aftermath.
That Shane had also been the one to drop gloves with Ilya Rozanov. Just once.
It’s a home game like most others against Boston. Full of promise, full of anticipation, full of… something. Something imperceptible to most, but to Shane it fizzles and crackles in the air like a lightning strike. A thunder clap heard across the halls, ringing out and culminating in sparks of electricity thrumming through Shane’s body as he leans for the first face-off and meets Rozanov’s gaze.
Stakes are high and tensions are higher, so maybe that’s why in the third period, Montreal leading 4-3, a fight breaks out. Shane can’t tell who starts it, but then someone’s shoving the goalie and suddenly everyone is ready to finish it. In the middle of the scrum, Shane feels a pair of strong arms lock around his chest and yank him back, meeting a solid wall of muscle that he’s become intimately familiar with over the past couple years.
“Tsk, tsk, Hollander,” a purr in his ear, “you think you can spare five minutes in penalty box?”
Shane wriggles and strains against the grip. “Still wouldn’t be enough time for you to score, Rozanov.”
“I think it would. But is no fun scoring when you can’t put up a fight.”
The fight is still ongoing, a mass of bodies, refs hovering around the outside waiting for their cue to intervene. The crowd’s loving it, jeering and getting riled up, blood-thirsty for a good fight between their favourite team and their favourite-to-hate.
Rozanov is holding on to Shane like a vice, glove gripping his jersey as he slides them both backwards away from the action. Shane doesn’t go easy, though parts of his body surrender more willingly under this grip than he’d care to admit.
“I love a good fight between rivals, don’t you?” he continues, voice rough and silky all at once in Shane’s ear. “So much anger, hatred. Is so fun.”
The last time he’d felt this voice against his ear, it was accompanied by moans and sweet nothings as Rozanov came inside him, shuddering against the length of his back, sweaty and breathless. Shane’s bed has been cold ever since. He knows Rozanov can’t say the same. That’s the truth of this fucked up thing. They don’t talk about it, don’t address the unsaid, the what are we’s and why are we’s. It’s a simple arrangement, nothing more. They fuck, and Shane gets back on the ice, or into the ice-cold grip of his sheets, and Rozanov buries himself in the warmth of another body to fill a void that Shane alone can never sate. It’s factual, clinical. Metal cutting through the surface of the rink and leaving scars, smoothed away after each round only to be re-opened over and over again. They can never just leave it alone, can they?
“That could never be us, Hollander. Such a polite Canadian, you do not fight like that.”
Shane watches Olsson land a nasty jab on one of the Raiders, whose head jerks back from the impact. Vicious and brutal. No, Shane doesn’t fight like that. He keeps it classy.
“Shane Hollander,” he carries on, that teasing lilt scratching at a scab somewhere deep in Shane’s chest, “can never give the people what they really want.”
And there it goes, the scab splitting open and pricking red. A mangled wound gaping open. No, Shane can never seem to give anyone the thing they really want. Not his parents, who want a perfect prodigy son who will win cups and win the heart of some girl who he’ll marry and give them perfect little grandchildren. Not his teammates, who would never accept a 'queer' for a captain. Not the hometown crowd, the hockey fans, even the league, who just want to see straight-edge Shane Hollander drop his gloves and make the manufactured rivalry worth their pennies.
Not Ilya Rozanov, who fucks his way through every city and then comes crawling back into Shane’s bed like it doesn’t mean anything, like Shane means something.
“You love my mouth too much to hit me and shut me up, da?”
A glacial fissure, yawning open. Black, icy water at the bottom of a deep crevasse. Shane shuts his eyes as he falls all the way down and hits the surface.
He slams his head backwards, feeling his helmet connect with Rozanov’s visor with a crack. The arms around his middle loosen and drop, and Shane whirls around. Rozanov’s nose is split open, leaking blood all over his lips. For a moment, there’s a dazed, confused look on his face. And then he fucking grins, eyes lighting up like he’s stepping over a hotel room threshold ready to claim what’s his, what has been his all along.
Shane just about registers the motion of Rozanov’s arm arcing through the air before it connects with his face, the punch snapping his head round on his shoulders, splitting his lip and sending blood flying across the ice. There’s a second of blissful nothingness. Then, a loud, ringing pain and a deep ache blooming across his cheekbone. He rips his helmet off, drops his gloves.
The crowd, already riled up, goes absolutely nuts. They’re roaring and stomping, pounding on the glass. They’ll get a fucking show tonight. It may end up in the history books, it’ll certainly end up all over the internet. The most beloved rivalry in the MLH now living up to its fucking name. Shane couldn’t care less; all he’s thinking about is getting his hands on Ilya Rozanov and making every second count. Because that’s all they are, really. That’s all they know how to do.
They tussle, ducking and swinging in tandem whilst scrabbling for each other’s jerseys, fistfuls of fabric to tie them together. Their skates slip and regain purchase, bodies colliding. They scuffle against the edge of the rink like two limping and lame figure skaters acting out a shitty routine, unrehearsed yet somehow innate. Rozanov’s blood is running over his lips and down his chin, staining the yellow hem of his jersey, and Shane can see it smeared all over his teeth and gums because he keeps fucking grinning, eyes wild.
Shane delivers a solid smack to the side of his head, and Rozanov responds with a swift uppercut right to Shane’s solar plexus, making him wheeze. Most of their blows are just glancing off each other, knuckles skimming skin, anticipating and dodging each others’ punches like they’re telepathically connected.
Always so much chemistry, even here, even in this.
But Shane’s feeling scrappy tonight, torn up and pried open, that grotesque, hollowed-out part of himself laid bare in the arena lights. Fuelled by the ever-present anger simmering under his surface that precedes every game, but also by the intoxicating hit of adrenaline that usually precedes sex. And this isn’t sex, but god it feels close. The raw, animalistic thing that drives them both. The physicality, muscles straining and breath coming hard and jagged.
Somewhere in the back of Shane’s mind, when Rozanov fists a hand in his hair and holds his head still to try throw another punch, or when Shane hauls him in by his jersey so hard it almost rips, he thinks that this is the closest thing to sex they’ll ever be allowed, the closest they’ll ever get to laying hands on each other in the eyes of the public. It almost makes him laugh, half-drunk on the hormones flooding his system and half-dazed from the punches Rozanov is landing. Instead, he just ends up grinning around his bloody mouthguard, lip throbbing and leaking more of that hot iron into his mouth.
He wrenches Rozanov’s jersey again, and this time it slips off over his head as he ducks down to try wrestle free of Shane’s grip. Along with it, his shoulder pads come loose, and now his bare chest is on full display. The jersey hangs off his arms that still remain locked between their bodies, unable to fall to the floor because they’re still grabbing on to each other, both too stubborn to give up a good fight, to concede. Both too stupidly fucking horny to call it quits, but what’s new?
So Shane holds on, throwing Rozanov’s solid, sweaty body back into the boards and earning the sound of him grunting, breath knocked out of him, in his ear. A faceless crowd swarms in behind the plexi-glass, jostling to get a look, but Shane’s only focused on one thing. He hauls Rozanov forward, then slams him back again. His head bounces off the glass and he laughs, gurgled around the blood and spit, looking down at Shane with that same crazed, giddy look on his face.
Rozanov shoves back, still intent on putting up a decent fight and throwing his fists into it, even if his movement is restricted by the jersey. He lands another couple of hits on Shane’s ribs, and Shane gives him a couple back. But, in the end, Rozanov’s the one to bring Shane to his knees. As if there was any other way it would end up. As if it doesn’t always end this way.
He drives his knee up into Shane’s gut, and Shane pitches forward, blades sliding out from under him. His hand untangles from Rozanov’s jersey, body sinking to the floor. Finally, the refs rush in and unnecessarily pull them apart.
Shane gets up of his own accord, spitting his mouthguard onto the ice and watching it skitter off in a mixture of foamy, crimson saliva. The other ref still has Rozanov pinned to the boards, hand pressed against the heaving, shiny expanse of his bare chest to hold him still. They share a look, a nod. Mutual agreement, mutual understanding, respect. Something more. Something feral and hot. Rozanov licks the blood from his lip, eyes trained on Shane as he does so, and Shane watches the movement in slow motion. The ref is dragging him away, saying something off to his side. The crowd is still a sea of shouts and hollers, ringing in his ears along with the beginnings of a migraine or a concussion. Their teammates have long since separated and dispersed, the spectacle of a Hollander-Rozanov showdown enough to have them putting aside their differences for a chance to witness it.
As Shane passes by, he reaches out, hand extended. Rozanov looks down and laughs, something grim and beautiful and mad. He takes Shane’s outstretched hand and shakes it.
Later, in the dim glow of the kitchen and the twinkling of the Montreal city lights shining through the windows, Rozanov cradles Shane’s face between his hands. He stares at Shane’s split lip with something like awe and wonder.
“You were so fucking beautiful out there, fuck,” he breathes. “I was so fucking hard.”
Shane’s leaning up against the counter in the gap between Rozanov’s legs, hips pressed together. ‘Was’ isn’t right, because he can feel how Rozanov’s dick is solid and straining against his thigh. His own is just as aching.
Rozanov traces his thumb over the scab on Shane’s lip, over the bruises slowly forming on his cheekbone. He hooks a finger under Shane’s chin and tilts his head back, pressing firm, hungry kisses all over his face, one for each punch. It isn’t apologetic, Shane knows. More… reverent. Like he wants to map the damage inflicted by his hands with his mouth, layers of him imprinted into Shane’s skin like a brand.
In response, Shane reaches up and threads his fingers through Rozanov's curls, tugging on them and smiling when it makes him wince. He lets up and smooths away the sting with gentle pets, and Rozanov melts into it like a tired dog on the end of its rope. He runs his hands down over the purple and red mottling of his ribs, his shirt long removed at the door in a scuffle of desperate kisses and grabbing hands. His fingers ghost over the skin, drawing out goosebumps, then dig into the most colourful spots. Rozanov hisses and bucks his hips closer.
Shane mouths over the bridge of his nose, right over the gash there. “Is it broken?” he murmurs.
“No, you will have to try harder next time if you want to ruin my pretty face.”
Shane scoffs, and it sounds a little too much like relief.
They kiss and stumble their way into the bedroom, Shane wincing every time Rozanov swipes his tongue over the roughed-up skin of his lip. Things turn more heated, more desperate the closer they come to the bed, until Rozanov is pushing him backwards and Shane is landing on the edge of it with a huff.
He stands between Shane’s legs and looks down at him, that vague fascination in his eyes as he thumbs Shane’s lower lip again. He lingers this time, toying with it, licking his own lip as if he can feel it on his skin. Shane stares up at him like he’s kneeling before an altar, pious in the face of judgement, a man at the foot of a god. But Ilya Rozanov is no god, no wooden replica of the divine that hangs in churches and demands worship. And still, Shane will take the wafer and let it dissolve on his tongue, drink the wine in greedy gulps, until Rozanov’s flesh and blood lives within him. Because he doesn’t know how to worship anything else as much as him.
Rozanov pushes the pad of his thumb into the scab until it breaks open. As fresh blood wells up, he takes his thumb and smears it across Shane’s lips and then pushes in, warm and metallic on his tastebuds. Shane moans, eyes fluttering closed. He’ll take this, too, and be grateful. Rozanov pulls free and swipes over the split skin again, collecting more blood on his thumb, before sucking the digit into his own mouth and tasting Shane with a groan. What a sick, wonderful thing.
Shane hauls him down by the neck, kissing him like he’s starved. It’s bitter and sweet all at once, blood intermingling in their mouths as their tongues meet over and over. Rozanov grinds his knee onto Shane’s crotch and has him panting into his mouth in pleasure and pain. Their pants come off, and Shane whimpers when Rozanov lays over him and slides their lengths together in lazy thrusts.
“You looked so g– good,” Shane babbles against his lips. “Nose fu– fucking gushing all over you, shit.”
He’s whining, hips rocking up as the images of Rozanov all bloodied and punch-drunk replay behind his eyelids. Rozanov laughs, low in his throat.
“Want to see me all busted up, Hollander? You like that?”
“Only when it’s–” Shane cuts himself off with a moan. The feeling of their cocks brushing sends sparks up his spine, the un-finished admission sitting heavy in his throat. “Only when it’s because of me.”
Rozanov groans and kisses him harder, and Shane delights in the way it hurts.
Right now, there’s clips being posted online of their fight. Videos of the interviews after, Shane soaked in sweat, dried blood clinging to the cracks in his lip, it’s a shame it came to that, we have a lot of mutual respect for each other as players, sometimes emotions boil over, we’ll reflect on our actions. Condemnation and celebration on both sides, hockey violence on the big screen for all to point fingers at and give their two cents. None of it matters, here in the dark four walls of Shane’s bedroom, between Rozanov’s thighs.
The world will keep spinning and with it will come stories spun, but Shane will live here in this warm pocket beneath Rozanov’s mottled and marred skin and pretend like none of it fucking matters.
When he takes Rozanov into his mouth and sinks down until his throat is full and his eyes are teary, the stinging of Shane’s lip is a reminder that with pleasure comes an equal amount of pain. There’s nothing won without something lost, nothing gained without something left behind. There are great things he cannot have in this world without suffering for them, and Shane knows that better than anyone. So he takes Rozanov’s cock on his tongue and swallows around it, pulls off and slides back down, makes the good thing last. Suffers the burn of his girth stretching apart his sore, swollen lips, if only to chase the sweetness of his moans echoing against the walls.
“Fucking pretty mouth, Hollander,” Rozanov says, voice like gravel in the back of his throat as he watches through glazed eyes and hooded lids. He grips the back of Shane’s head, at the base of his skull where his hair is longest and he can grab it, pulling Shane off of him for a moment. A thick string of drool escapes Shane’s lips as he moans and pants, soothing his cracked lip and running down his chin. Rozanov takes his cock in his other hand, taps it against Shane’s busted lip once, twice.
He grins. “I liked breaking it open. You looked so surprised, fuck,” he moans, squeezing himself like he’s trying not to cum from the thought. “Wanted to kiss you right there, in front of everyone. Split your fucking lip and lick it clean–” he trails off into a guttural sound, slapping his cock against Shane’s mouth while Shane can only pant and whimper and beg, eyes glazed and utterly wrecked.
“Let me,” Shane chokes out, “please.”
Rozanov feeds his cock back between Shane’s bleeding lips and surrenders to sensation.
When he gets close, hips twitching and muscles clenching beneath Shane’s fingers, Shane pulls off before things can end all too soon. The sight of him, glistening with Shane’s saliva and the ruddy smears of blood from his split lip… it’s proof of a job well done. Something endured for something gained. When Shane licks him clean, Rozanov cards his fingers through Shane's hair with a gentleness, moaning his name like a hymn.
“On your knees,” he says. Face down, ass up.
Shane hesitates. “There’ll be blood on the sheets.”
Rozanov laughs and relents, pushes him back into the pillows, arms bracketing his face. “So you only dirty me up, huh, Hollander?”
“Yes,” Shane breathes as he kisses down his neck, over his nipples. “Only you. Just you.”
Shane splits apart and comes back together when Rozanov fucks him. Nothing like that ugly, glacial thing that yawns open and swallows him up, but like the pages of a book unfurling open, spine cracked and well-loved, falling apart in his hands.
He rocks into Shane with stuttered moans, and Shane can’t get enough of the feeling of his cock stretching him open, filling him up, gliding into his tight warmth over and over and making his legs shake. Shane locks his ankles at the small of Rozanov’s back, digging in and knowing it’ll make him hurt, make him reminisce about having his tailbone slammed into the boards of the rink. It only makes him drive in deeper, and Shane’s head falls back with a cry as his pace increases, thighs slapping against Shane’s ass like he wants to bruise there too.
When his legs go slack with pleasure, Rozanov grabs his calves and shoves them up by his ears, bending Shane in half and putting just the right amount of pressure on his aching ribs. Shane feels every single bone sigh and bend under the weight. With the new angle, Shane can see Rozanov’s cock sliding into him, opening up that space for himself inside Shane that only he owns, only he has the keys to. It’s a filthy sight, and Shane is blinking away tears of pain and ecstasy as he watches, transfixed.
“That’s it,” Rozanov growls, “watch yourself take my cock, krasivyy. You take it so well, just like you took those punches, ah?”
Shane mewls, hiccuping breaths caught in the limited space between his ribs. They’re so tender, everything is so tender, so much. But he can take it, because Rozanov says he can, and he wants to be good. So he does.
“Hnnh, yes, fuck,” he whines, his hands pawing uselessly at Rozanov’s shoulders, his chest, silently wishing him closer because to ask would be too much to bear.
But he knows Shane, perhaps not his heart but definitely his body, and so he bends forward as he thrusts and meets Shane in another searing kiss.
Shane orgasms like he’s seeing the sky break open above him. His body, battered and broken, arches up into Rozanov’s like a bowstring drawn tight, quivering in his hands and waiting for release. Only when Rozanov lets go, biting down on his shoulder and rutting into him with unrelenting, raw need, does Shane finally let himself cum. He cums and cums, spurting up on his chest and his neck, muscles trembling with exertion and screaming. His fingers find Rozanov’s face, flushed and tender with healing wounds, gripping and holding their mouths together as he clenches around his cock and wrings him dry.
Rozanov shudders. “Oh God, Hollander.” His voice cracks, hoarse and spent and beautiful.
When he pulls away, his mouth is stained red. Shane tries not to think of it as a claim.
Blood turns the shower water pink. It mingles and disperses at his feet, cloudy rose, before fading and turning clear again.
They take turns washing each other, something usually only reserved for nights where showering turns to shower sex. But tonight, under the spray, Shance winces as Rozanov helps him lift his arms, letting him rub soap over his sore ribs, his chest, down his back. In return, Shane washes his hair, soaping up his curls with seaweed shampoo and massaging his scalp while Rozanov’s eyes slip closed. It’s intimate, but it’s not sexual.
Shane sits on the bathroom countertop as their hair dries, towel slung around his hips, Rozanov between his legs. He’s dabbing gently at Shane’s lip, applying an antiseptic salve to the cut that’s already scabbing over again. In the steam and the residual warmth of the bathroom, Shane goes limp under his touch, boneless and ready to succumb to sleep. He repays the favour by adding a glob to his finger and swiping it across the gash that cuts Rozanov’s nose bridge in two. Tit for tat. Equals.
Rozanov leaves not long after. Shane changes the sheets before they’re even cold.
The scab opens up again and again over the next few weeks, as is typical with lip injuries. Shane would be more annoyed about it, but every time his tongue darts out and tastes the metallic tang of blood, he thinks of him.
He manages to avoid seeing much footage from the fight online, does his best to avoid it. He can’t, however, avoid his teammates, who haven’t stopped going on about it.
“Fuck, Capitaine!” JJ says, shoving his phone under Shane’s nose in the locker room. “You really fucking did a number on him, ah?”
Forced to look, Shane has to confront the consequences of his actions, the rotten fruits of his labour. It’s a single still image, mercifully not the whole sordid affair.
Ilya Rozanov, shoved up against the glass with Shane’s fist around his jersey, that manic, hungry look in his eyes, nose split and blood streaming down his chin, colouring his teeth. And he’s looking at Shane like he’s just seen heaven.
“Shame you didn’t break his nose, that fucker deserves it.”
Shane can only smile, biting his lip, breaking open the skin. He’d do it over and over just to get a taste, if that’s all he can have. If that’s all he’s allowed.
He’ll settle for iron, if he can’t have Ilya.