Work Text:
Shane gets stuck at the foot of the bed. His clothes are folded so they won’t be creased when he puts them back on. His phone has no new messages, and his ringer is at its highest setting just in case he gets a call. If someone asks, he went on a walk because he wasn’t feeling well and needed a breath of fresh air.
This hotel doesn’t have superfluous windows or a close enough neighboring building that someone can peer in from an equally high floor. Even if they could, the lamp light is dark enough to be obscuring. He could be anyone.
But he’s not anyone, as each conscious moment reminds him. In addition to the bruises blooming on his hip where Rozanov checked him earlier tonight, burning still is the weight of thousands of fans and their screams. He’s a taut face blown up on the jumbotron, valiant captain cool under the pressure of Boston’s 4-2 lead. He’s in the fishbowl, please stop tapping the glass.
“Hollander,” Rozanov murmurs, pulling his attention. He’s spread out on the bed, leaning back on his elbows.
Shane’s gaze snaps down from Rozanov’s face, away from the weight of his expectant gaze and to the safety at the waist band of his boxers. The light grey fabric leaves little to imagine, not that Shane hasn’t been daydreaming about the leviathan hidden in Rozanov’s pants every time he has a moment with himself. He tries his best to direct his thoughts the way he wants them to fall, to make tonight freeing and exciting like things usually are between them.
The branding on Rozanov’s waistband is written in a plain, corporate font. Calvin Klein. When Shane filmed an advert for the brand, he in no way embodied the casual sex appeal Rozanov is exuding right now. It was so bizarre being in just a pair of boxers all day in front of maybe fifty people. One more time Shane, another take please, yes, one more smolder for the camera, yes your mother is here but try to give us a sexy face, more baby oil for Shane please. Shane’s face hurts remembering the effort of contorting all the muscles in his face exactly the way they wanted.
“Hollander.” That snaps Shane out of the memory. He can’t read Rozanov’s expression. It’s not mad, like Shane fears it will be. Rozanov is sometimes patient like that, like the only “yes” he will accept from Shane is one on the precipice of begging. This creates a space reinforced from the outside world, which never warps under predation like all the other boundaries in his life. Yet, it’s an opening that he has to step into, or at least, an opening he has to be mindlessly horny enough to crawl into without remembering that any surrender to Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Raiders should be pathetic and embarrassing. This requires a cocktail of bravery and mindfulness that’s escaping Shane at this moment.
“Sorry,” he replies. Shane’s hands are twitchy and cold. His thumbs scratch at his thighs where pants pockets would be.
Rozanov sits up and scoots down the bed to put out a hand. Perfect. Shane takes it and allows himself to be pulled down. The sheets have a weird cling, like too much detergent was used in the wash. Shane wonders what Rozanov does to get his own room this often. Maybe Boston strays away from the buddy system Montreal seems to love trapping Shane in. He loves hockey, and he loves Hayden, but he also yearns for a dark box without a door or window, free from the concept of time.
It’s not that he can’t afford it. It’s not that Hayden would even care. But if they asked why? What if they knew the only reason in the world you could want your own hotel room? What if they asked him? What would he say?
Shane crawls up the bed under the gentle guidance of Rozanov’s grasp. He stills but doesn’t lay down once he’s reached the headboard.
He would yearn for his cottage, but they even found him there too. He wishes he didn’t agree to that stupid Architectural Digest video. No matter how ecstatic he was to be asked to share details about the build, that satisfaction was temporary. Everything that eyes and cameras touch is left covered in fingerprints like it isn’t Shane’s anymore and it never will be again.
As Rozanov manhandles him flat on his back, he wonders if the staff really cleans thoroughly enough. He hopes they do. There’s so many videos online of people using black lights in hotel rooms to reveal horrendous stains. What if a crazy fan does that to Rozanov’s hotel room?
“Hollander.”
“Sorry.” Shane is ruining tonight. He stares up at the ceiling. He’ll make it up to Rozanov next time. But how? It will have to be good. It’ll have to out-do everything he’s already done. He can’t let whatever this is stop because he can’t control what he’s thinking or how he’s feeling enough to enjoy it like he should. What’s something that Shane typically dislikes that he can do for Rozanov? What is a suitable… punishment? Sacrifice?
“You think too loud.” Rozanov’s eyes trace all over Shane’s face, propped up on one elbow in a languid posture. His voice still carries patience.
Neither of them are good with their words, that's why they’re athletes. The language to describe what Shane’s feeling is trapped under the heavy existence of the feeling itself. If he was normal he wouldn’t be like this, but he also probably wouldn’t be good at hockey without… this. He shakes his head, a curt tiny wobble.
“I want this, it’s just hard.” Is what he settles on.
“What is hard?” Rozanov presses, side stepping an innuendo Shane knows he would otherwise make. First Shane is weird, and now Rozanov is all serious business. They’re making a killing out of breaking routines tonight.
Shane wants to feel how he usually does when he’s close enough to see Rozanov’s eyes like this, picking out all the different streaks of blue that make up one of his irises. Other people have eyes too: his coach, his mom, his fans, his team.
Normally, things are so hot between them that Shane crumples like he’s hollow in Rozanov’s grip. Even once he’s dressed and reassembled, pieces of Rozanov stay lodged under his skin. He can still caress the indentations inside himself where he was folded and smoothed straight again, long after a plane ride or shower separates them by distance or cleanliness.
Wearing those very seams with his fingers, the ones left in his psyche from last time, he knows deep down it’s beyond just the sex.
“You want to fuck? Or too sore from loss to take my cock?” Shane knows, even through all his own bullshit, that this is Rozanov’s bullshit. Nonchalant asshole bullshit. Same thing, different medium. He’s fucked. Rozanov is a fucked person. Shane is a fucked person for being near him. His career is on the edge just being here. He should go.
“Go fuck yourself.” Shane doesn’t have much tact. He grinds his teeth and stares at the ceiling.
Rozanov only breaks him apart because Shane’s a little bit broken already, in purgatory waiting for someone with sharp enough eyes to pluck the last sinew holding two hundred pounds of Shane Hollander together. When his clothes are back on and Shane finds himself reassembled, Rozanov’s work is clean, edges neat and stitching smooth. There is an apparent labor that Shane feels in debt to.
Now here he is again, having been left alone with himself for long enough that he’s excoriated those delicate seams with restless fingers just so he can watch something fall apart like a child.
After a long moment, the gap between them closes and Rozanov kisses him dry and simple. It’s the exact opposite to whatever’s stirring inside Shane. He is taken so off guard he can only accept the sweetness.
Soft snaps punctuate each time their lips come apart. It’s far from the kisses they shared earlier when Rozanov opened the door. Those were mindless and sexy up until Shane’s shins hit the foot of the bed and he paused to undress and fold his clothes.
Shane reaches up and flattens his hands on Rozanov’s pecs to enjoy the steep curve of them.
When he was stuck at the foot of the bed, the weight of his phone in his pocket reminded him of an article he read about the Patriot Act, and how the U.S. government can see exactly where you are as long as there’s a battery in your phone. His first urge was to take his SIM card out, but no, that would probably disconnect all his calls and someone may become worried enough to start looking for him. His mom would do that crazy thing she does when she just calls him without warning. She’d think he was dead.
“Please,” Shane mumbles now between kisses, the words garbled between them and unknowable. This is something he doesn’t really say when he’s strung like this, but he’s trying to be big and brave. Usually when he swings for the fences, stomach swooping with fear that he’s said too much, Rozanov matches the commitment. Usually.
Shane tightens a hand in his golden hair when Rozanov starts to pull back to respond. He’s too aware of his please, and he said it hoping it would be lost between their lips.
He wants this to be hot, fast, and mindless. But, he’s stuck willing himself to want it instead of just taking it, even though it’s pressed against his lips and filling his mouth with the taste of cigarettes and Gatorade.
Rozanov breaks free, eyes searching in the pleading furrow of Shane’s brow, one that he’s been served countless times before.
“What do you want?” He asks this because he must love to torture Shane. Shane huffs.
He wants Rozanov to handle him in that way that releases Shane’s soul from where he is sutured to the inside of his body. There’s not really words to describe that. He wants Rozanov’s voice to be received by a cavernous mind, words plastered like subtitles on the back of Shane’s closed eyelids. He wants to stare at his own pathetic reflection in Rozanov’s eyes until he feels like the only version of himself that exists is the one in the mirror of a large black pupil. He wants to stay long enough that infinite reflections of himself appear there, his image greening out and becoming increasingly hazy with each iteration until he is nothing.
That’s a lot of abstract thought for two closeted professional male hockey players, especially with their shared penchant for ignoring big, love-shaped elephants in hotel rooms.
Rozanov isn’t making any demands in the harsh tone Shane knows he is capable of, because maybe he knows they will fall on muffled ears and never hit brain matter. Maybe he knows they will make this worse; that they’ll dissolve into chirping or Shane will vibrate at just the right frequency that he’ll fall apart in a booming, metal screeching crash.
Rozanov throws the dog a bone: a simple instruction.
“Come here,” he whispers, soft tone dampening the directness of the command enough that Shane can pretend it's a question instead. Who else gets to hear Ilya Rozanov speak like this, in this soft, controlled tone?
They settle back into simple kisses, little pecks. Shane wants to try indulging in the wet slide of their tongues, but with how hyperaware he is right now, the wet-on-wet, slippery texture will turn his stomach. He focuses instead on playing duet to whatever Rozanov is doing. He’s warm and solid.
Rozanov tilts his head so Shane’s lips fall on the corner of his mouth, then chiseled cheek, and then jaw. After so many spiraling journeys to where he’s guiding them, there’s a silent expectation that Shane will follow him as Rozanov rolls onto his back.
Shane’s rewarded for doing so with a hum. It’s not more instructions yet, but he knows he’s still not pliant enough to receive them without spooking. He instead nuzzles his nose into the smell of expensive cologne in the soft valley behind Rozanov’s ear.
Two soft hands corral Shane between muscled thighs, both of their dicks remaining ignored. Shane follows the trail of beauty marks that speckle Rozanov’s chest dutifully with his lips, a well worn path for him. He presses down harder to feel the resistance of Rozanov’s dense muscles against his nose, the heat of his blood as the skin flushes under Shane’s worship.
He’s sure Rozanov will be pleased to be so dutifully kissed this many times, so that he’ll feel well appreciated for all the effort and time he wastes fixing Shane. The brush of his hard on against Rozanov’s leg wakes him up a little bit. He grinds down to chase the feeling.
Their builds are similar, and Shane sees strong men every day, but none are like this. None of them have a perfect face like this or sigh like that when Shane finds his teeth nipping and tugging at the sparse hairs at the very beginning of Rozanov’s happy trail. Shane lets out a long sigh, face smushed down and hidden. Against soft skin, eyes closed, he competes with himself to collect and catalog a diverse library of tiny, pleased noises.
There’s still no spoken feedback for him. In the silence, Shane thinks of the cleaning staff who will have to deal with the disaster they’ll make of the bed if he’s not careful to stop them. In a great show of strength, he lets the thought float through his head without grasping for it, accepting the risk that he’ll cross that bridge later or maybe forget it entirely. This is an egregious amount of mindfulness for someone who has begun fully humping the leg below him.
His dick, in its war against his brain, seems to have expanded its territory and colonized the muscle fibers of his hips. Imperialist.
He takes a box breath like he’s supposed to when he needs to relax and continues his nuzzling. His nose travels a circle around Rozanov’s belly button in a wide arc, slow and familiar like a morning warm-up lap on fresh ice.
Shane slips his tongue into the shallow fold of skin that’s formed with the way Rozanov is half laying and half sitting against the headboard. Spit flushes his mouth at the salty taste, and he goes back in for a second serving. His lips meet the rough elastic waist band of Rozanov’s boxers. Now, he’s much too close to a hard cock to reread the formally triggering branding on the waist band or care much about it. His back teeth click against each other with the force he puts into gnawing at the elastic. The wet, rough give of it cushions his bite.
He doesn’t get the chance to yank them down. Rozanov flips the two of them over, grunting against Shane’s dead weight.
Shane squints against the flash of lamp light that hits his face as he’s shifted. It’s hard but not impossible to breathe with Rozanov straddling his chest. His arms are trapped at his sides.
“Open.” It’s an easy instruction. It takes a moment to travel from Shane’s ears to his brain. He opens his mouth slowly, hyperextending to warm up the muscles of his jaw before settling. The normalcy and familiarity of the practice is delicious. His tongue sits pink and ready, served on the plate of his lower lip.
Rozanov’s middle and ring finger slide into a wanting mouth, tasting like salt and soap. Shane rolls his lips over his teeth and opens his eyes. He sucks and licks like his mouth is a chisel, greedily scanning for cracks in Rozanov’s composure that let him know he’s chipping apart too. His eyebrows furrow and his eyes bounce back and forth between Shane’s mouth and eyes. The darkness in his gaze invites Shane to swallow down his pride
He reaches until straining to poke the fleshy beginning of Rozanov’s palm before sliding back over the grooves made by the underside of his knuckles.
Shane Hollander is good at taking instructions, tuning out unhelpful noise, and implementing constructive feedback. This has gotten him very far in life – all the way to this four star hotel. He wants more of them, harsh and hot.
Rozanov whispers praises as Shane makes his mouth as soft as possible against the callouses on his fingers. When he bends down to make out with Shane’s top lip, he finds himself reveling in the spitty mess that it makes of his face. The fingers on his tongue press down deeper and fuck back and forth, fleshy pads finding the flat part at the back of Shane’s throat where his gag reflex lives in order to goad the evolutionary reflex.
“Fuck,” Rozanov murmurs, pulling his face and hand back. Shane’s mouth remains ajar without the command to close it. His eyes are glossy with tears from the choking and unfocussed from whatever this is. He doesn’t even find himself caring as two spit-covered fingers wind up on his cheek. Rozanov’s hand smushes up his lips and grips his jaw. His head swings under the ministrations.
“What do you want?”
Shane hums and the sound catches on all the spit in his throat in a strangled noise. The space behind his tongue, one usually forgotten and unfeeling and subconscious outside of moments such as this, feels raw. Maybe he isn’t conscious. Maybe he’s dreaming. Maybe this part of him is a warped, misshapen one that exists only in unawareness until Rozanov demands Shane find it in the woods of his psyche, kill it, and present its stuffed corpse for dinner like an exotic bird.
“Hollander.” Shane studies Rozanov’s expression, one typically unreadable to him despite the long history between them.
Maybe this is who he is subconsciously. That sounds a lot like: maybe this is who he is naturally. Shane lets that thought pass. Things are getting easier to ignore: the annoying clicking of the AC, the scratchiness of the sheets, life outside this room. The silence that follows each ignored anxiety or stimulus brings him great relief, and he settles into emptiness like an old cotton sleep shirt.
“You want me to get you ready for my cock, yes?”
Yes.
He doesn’t have to respond verbally. Rozanov’s fingers trapeze around in the rather small space of Shane’s mouth. His hair is tousled and his eyes are satisfied slits, looking down at Shane over the arch of his cheek bones. He digs at the squishy, painfully sensitive place under Shane’s tongue and slips his thumb under his chin in a pinch that hurts enough to whimper about. Through spitty breaths, Shane keeps his twitching tongue supple, relaxing it into sensual swipes over Rozanov’s knuckles. He’s rewarded with another jab to the back of his throat, pulling a gag out of him. His abs clench with the effort. Saliva leaks out of the corners of Shane’s mouth.
Somewhere in Shane’s big head, a voice tells him that he looks sexy like this, with his arch rival’s fingers making a toy of a mouth. This mouth, which earlier tonight was adept at politely and pretentiously implying Rozanov should go fuck himself on international television, is drooling on his very fingers as they prepare his throat for fucking. The contrast has his eyelids fluttering. His ignored cock feels like a twenty pound dumbbell sitting on his stomach.
“Always so good for me.” The word always would be heavy and concerning in another context. Here, mouth full, Shane is beginning to feel like an extension of Rozanov’s hand. His lips quirk up in a smile at the praise. He wants more.
Rozanov smirks back like he does in the handshake line after a Montreal loss. With fingers jamming up the signal between his brain and face, Shane Hollander does not care. He’s busy holding back a slew of coughs for this audience of one, head jerking back on the pillow against the intrusion in moments where he loses the fight to be good and pliant.
Shane wishes for a moment he had any experience at all outside of these meetings so he could swallow Rozanov down in one whorish go like the guys in the porn he never lets himself finish. Some mornings he finds himself stuffing his toothbrush further back than needed.
The fingers stop pumping to sit just against Shane’s gag reflex. It has him cracking open as he works to swallow around the intrusion. Eye contact, typically a process overwhelming and mechanical, is becoming easier. The weight of Rozanov’s gaze slides right through Shane and thunks against the back wall of his skull. His own eyes are wide and willing, trying to communicate that the roughness is working; he’s coming out, wanton to the point of disgusting.
Rozanov looks good, really good, curls catching the lamp light and glowing.
Remembering his hands exist, he feels them fly to Rozanov’s dick before he’s fully aware of what they’re doing. It’s hard and hot and glorious against his palm. His mouth becomes empty and the sheets slide under his sweaty back as he’s dragged to the edge of the bed.
From where his head almost hangs off the ridiculously tall, plush hotel bed, he has a beautiful close-up view of the precum beading at the end of Rozanov’s nine inches. Rozanov, with his disgusting vocabulary and giant cock, who is sculpted by gods and smells like salt and alcohol, has a soft apprehension in his gaze. Meeting it in challenge, Shane drops his mouth wide and presents his tongue.
“Is okay?” Rozanov asks. He strokes himself and it pushes another bead of precum out of his tip. Tease. If Shane tries to think of something to say, it’s going to make him use his brain. That would be unpleasant. He attempts the patience Rozanov showed him before.
“Say please.” Asshole.
He doesn't want to move, but Shane finds the strength to hook Rozanov by the back of the legs. He pulls him close enough to lick the soft pillowy underside of his balls. At the taste, he moans like a whore because he is one.
Rozanov gives him what he wants, accepting the clear difference now between this person and Shane Hollander. The hard, wet head fills his mouth before breaching the muscles of his throat. The shaft is dry still and sticks to Shane’s tongue. His stomach tightens at the intrusion but the finger fucking earlier took the edge off of his gag reflex. He’s rewarded with a large, warm hand on his abs, another clamping around his throat so Rozanov can feel himself make room inside of Shane from the outside.
Shane revels in the pathetic, airy sounds that are punched out of him with each movement, body curling against the large hand that grips his pec and pinches his nipple and pushes him down. Before, his acute awareness of the movement of his muscles grounded him in this moment, but now, even that awareness is starting to slip. With each thrust, with each wet gurgle pulled from him, Rozanov takes with him a little bit more of Shane’s careful control of his body.
It's an all consuming task to be welcoming in response to his throat’s abuse, even after the fingers. Shane works his tongue back and forth in a way he hopes is nice, keeps his teeth out of the way, straightens his throat under Rozanov’s hands, and fights the ache in his jaw. It's like skating and handling the puck while avoiding defenders, a dance of focus and intensity that demands the attention of his entire nervous system.
The light against Shane’s closed eyes flickers as Rozanov moves forward and back. Shane watches the patterns behind his eyelids. His lips ache where they cushion the bite of his teeth, and his cheeks hurt, but he doesn’t let up on sucking. He can’t, not now that the reflex to gag has finally faded away and he can relish in the rhythm of it all without fear of hurling.
With the surrender of evolution’s protection from death by choking, maybe even the most primal part of his brain has been hijacked by Ilya Rozanov.
He revels in that thought, twitching on the bed. He’s shrinking. The shapes in the darkness of his closed eyelids swirl. He tries to follow their patterns, enamored. Blue, black, white, and green spots pop and shrink down like they are flying away from him, smaller and smaller. Maybe they are not floating away, but he is sinking, slinking away from the dancing reach of the lamp light to a dark place.
Rozanov’s thrusts become slower and deeper. Shane tries at first to take big gulps of air in between each one, keeping in time, but he’s lost the ability to maintain rhythm. His lungs burn and he makes no effort to save himself or fight against it. His own placation is delicious, and an evil part of him thinks he’d be happy just to drink Rozanov’s come and be left strung out on the bed, a blue-faced mess like this.
When Rozanov pulls all the way out, Shane’s mouth tries to follow like he’d rather have his sinuses stuffed than breathe. A fresh and thick wave of foamy saliva, frothed by Rozanov’s ministrations, spills from his mouth all over his lips and cheeks.
His face is cold and his neck is not strong enough yet to even attempt lifting. Rozanov does this for him. A large hand cups the back of his head and pulls it from where it was bent back over the edge of the bed with respect for the muscle strain sprouting there.
The hands pull him up into sitting and then push him back down for fucking. If Shane allows himself to, he can believe that the room is spinning around him while he remains cemented in place. He likes that idea.
Shane winds up with his ass in the air and his cheek on the bed, lubed fingers working him open. He sighs and digs his nose into the thick comforter that lies bundled up at the end of the bed where his head has wound up. The pressure of the intrusion is in no way unfamiliar. He widens his thighs and arches his back to accept the force of two and then three fingers. His arms are crumpled in a disheveled heap, pinned under his chest.
“ Da, Hollander. Fuck. Fuck.” Rozanov’s unoccupied hand grabs the mass of Shane’s ass, reigniting the bruise on his hip from today’s game. He smiles deliciously to himself, trying to arch even further to pull more praise out of Rozanov’s lips. This is hot. He is hot. He’s hot and he’s about to be fucked. His hip should hurt like hell with the way his bruise is being groped, but it doesn’t. He’s about to be fucked by Ilya Rozanov.
The clarity of Shane’s desire is breathtaking. He pushes his chest into the bed, using the body he’s trained for decades to be perfect at hurting Rozanov’s ego to instead seduce him into a mumbling mess. Rozanov guides his cock to where three fingers have worked Shane open, pressing in with a delicious burn. Hands at his hips stop Shane from bludgeoning himself back and rendering him unable to sit still on his flight tomorrow. He’s happy to be so needy. He pushes back again just to feel the hands tighten.
“Please, please, please. Roz–” His eyes roll back into his head and stay there under the pleasurable tug of each thrust. Rozanov plants a hand near Shane’s head to pull the comforter back from where it was blocking his face. Shane watches the two of them in his mind’s eye.
Neither of them last long,
The pace is punishing, each thrust knocking against the places inside Shane that have him moaning high in the most pathetic area of his register. He tries to keep rhythm, meeting them, but his knees start to slip from the sheer force Rozanov is using to jerk him back and forth. The hotel bed is hard in a way expensive mattresses are, giving only slightly and forcing Shane to absorb the power of each thrust. He slips and winds up flat against it.
“Hollander, fuck.” Rozanov slurs out a plethora of expletives. Many of them include Shane’s last name in that delicious way his accent makes it sound. He follows Shane’s falling posture until he’s pinning Shane’s neglected, hard cock against the mattress.
Shane’s face is hot and red against the sheets, breaths labored and wet. He’s losing his grip on looking sexy and good, his stomach almost hurting with the way he’s being strung out on Rozanov’s cock. He imagines Rozanov’s abs and thighs clenching with each thrust, the rippling of the defined muscles of his shoulder caps as he holds himself up over Shane, his clenched frown as he gets closer to release.
A sniffly, aborted cry comes out of the back of Shane’s throat as he comes untouched against the bed. He twitches with it, body almost numb despite all of the pleasure.
The rhythm, once punctual, dissolves into an erratic mess. Shane clenches down in one last attempt to be good.
Rozanov collapses on top of him, suffocating. Despite being crushed still to the bed, his sense of balance lilts like he's just spun around too many times before sitting still. The motions above him – inside him – are so muffled and far away.
“Good, yes?” Rozanov murmurs. Shane is half asleep, floating down the lake at his cottage in a big tube, tanning in the summer. Rozanov's voice is warm like the sun on Shane’s skin in this happy place, high in the sky, cosmic and indomitable.
Some time has probably passed, a condom tied and in the trash and a washcloth passed over each of them. Shane can’t move for a few long moments. His arms are still crushed under his chest, legs half spread, asshole clenching in the open air. Ever the masochist, he welcomes these aches like he welcomes the pain after a punishing day of practice. He forces himself to turn his head, muscles protesting.
Rozanov is hot and wet, plastered to Shane’s side. His face is flushed and his beautiful curls are flat against his forehead. Shane’s eyes follow the curves of them. They sit in perfect crescents like tiny little cartoony moons.
Rozanov’s face lacks its usual hardness. The shadow that usually gives his eyes their sunken, mysterious nature is gone. His eyebrows rest relaxed on his brow and his lips are swollen from kissing. Shane’s mouth splits into a careless smile and he hopes that’s enough of a response. He’s keeping his voice locked away, safe in his chest and not necessary. Without it, he’s a free agent without the autonomy of choice. Right now, that is a lovely thing, to be empty and obedient.
“You are good. Very good,” Rozanov doesn’t care about Shane’s lack of response. As his sweat starts to cool, an airy feeling expands in Shane’s chest and empty head. He feels so cold where Rozanov is not pressed into his side. He pushes his cheek into the bed to feel the pressure of it against his face.
“Pretty,” Rozanov says simply. He reaches out a hand to run his fingers softly through the hair around Shane’s ears and neck where it is the shortest. The action is a sharp contrast to the way he was gripping the locks and pushing Shane’s head into the mattress a far away moment ago.
Shane blinks. He blinks again. He blinks a third time, slow, squeezing his eyes so he can watch the fuzzy unfocused shapes of his eyelashes obscure his field of vision. He is tethered to this earth by Rozanov’s hands, truly. The fingers dancing in his hair are very nice.
Despite these things, his delicate mood threatens to sour against the wet spot beneath him and with how freezing the room is. His feet are dangerously close to the pillows, which are made for heads, not feet. If these things don't change, it's going to kill his vibe.
They move up and off the bed with sluggish bodies. Rozanov rips the top sheet from where it had been militantly tucked in and pushes Shane to lay down in a dry patch.
The comforter lets out a crunchy noise. Shane watches its giant white mass fly over his body, flat backed on the bed like he’s cloud watching. It settles onto him and, a moment later, so does Rozanov. He tugs Shane so they fold into each other, his head on Rozanov’s chest.
A thumb plants itself between Shane’s eyebrows and presses down in the crease where he usually sports a furrowed brow. The muscles ache deliciously at the massage. Soft things are murmured, many in Russian, but enough are understandable as praise. The sweet words keep the fear threatening to close in on Shane at bay: the fear that he was too much, too wanton, too needy… loud… gay… whatever.
The words guardrail the climb they both know Shane is going to make back up to awareness.
In a moment, Shane is going to be hungry and too sweaty to rest comfortably without showering. If he doesn’t say anything for long enough, focussing on keeping his words deep down, Rozanov will pull him into the shower and wash him like he’s something precious. He’ll towel him off and ask him questions that will be increasingly difficult to answer with just a nod or shake of his head. Rozanov will shepherd the two of them back into their bodies, back into the people they usually are, and back to the distance that being who they are requires of them.
For now, Shane rests with a small smile on his face, his breathing slow. IIya traces patterns on his back.