Chapter Text
It starts subtly. So subtle most people would probably miss it. Ilya Rozanov is not most people.
He has always been observant, almost to a fault. He comes by it honestly. He gets it from his Mama, who had taken one look at the way he smiled at his teammate on his children's hockey team and promptly pulled him aside for a talk on the walk home. He was nine, and still short for his age, when she had squatted in front of him on the chilled Moscow sidewalk and met his eyes with a gravity he didn't quite understand.
“Love is the best gift God has given us, Ilyushka. Did you know that?” It was said with gravity, and harsh lighting of the early evening had made her look far older than her 28 years.
“Yes Mama,” he said haltingly, unsure what he had done wrong for her to say it so stoically.
“It is never wrong. You understand? It is God's gift to us so it can never be wrong.” She had said it almost angrily, and the way her golden curls drifted in the wind made her seem as though she were dancing with electricity.
“Yes Mama,” he had shifted uncertainly on his feet, still feeling as though he were being admonished but not quite sure what for. Her eyes drifted over his shoulder, and looking back on it, Ilya was sure she had not really been speaking to him.
“It is not wrong,” she’d repeated harshly. Then she’d seemed to deflate, her anger draining out of her as she met his gaze again.
“It is not wrong. But people, we are flawed and we are stupid, sometimes we do not appreciate the gifts God gives us. So, sometimes–” she’d cut herself off and taken a deep shuddering breath before she continued,”sometimes, love can be dangerous.”
“So you must be very careful Ilyushka. You understand?” She’d placed her hands on his shoulders, then, and shook him slightly like she was trying to make the message sink in.
He had not understood then. But his mother’s strange energy, and his nearly oppressive need to please her had made him nod his head eagerly.
“I love you Mama.” He had said simply, and she had smiled at him sadly as she traced her gaze over his face.
“I know Ilyushka, you have so much love to give.” She had pulled him into a hug that stole the breath from his lungs, and they had grabbed piroshki on the way home, a rare treat.
Back then, Ilya had not understood what she was saying. He had not understood for many years. But the strange conversation, her odd intensity, had made the talk stick in his head. It struck him with the force of a truck at fifteen, the first time his coach’s son smiled at him mischievously, and he finally understood what his kind and brilliant mother had been trying to tell him.
It had struck him again, at 17, right before he left Russia for the first time. He had been quietly shifting through his mother’s old possessions in the drafty attic, desperate to find something of her he could take with him. He’d waited until well after his father and Paulina were asleep to creep quietly up the creaky stairs to the back of the room where his father had thrown the beaten up boxes. It was there he’d found a faded floral box of his mothers old letters. He’d flipped through them dispassionately, generic happy birthdays and well wishes from people he knew and people he didn't.
It was there he’d found it, an old polaroid pressed into a birthday card signed All my love, Natasha. It was his mother, much younger than he’d ever seen her, hair cropped almost to her ears and curling in a frizzy halo around her head. She was smiling in a way he didn't know she had been capable of, so wide and bright he could barely see her squinting eyes. She had been leaning her head against another girl, with a gentle smile and silky raven hair.
The edge of the polaroid, right under the dark haired girl’s face, was a smudged thin gray, as though someone had rubbed that spot with their thumb many times.
People had always told him he was just like his mother, more often before she died, but still quietly or drunkenly afterward. It was in that dusty attic clutching a well worn photograph, he began to wonder just how right they might be. Most times he was grateful for it. In his darker moments, when he felt the world would be better off without his burdensome soul taking up space, he would curse her for it. He always apologized in his prayers afterward, when the darkness inevitably lifted, and reminded her how grateful he was to see so much of her in himself.
For example, his mother’s nearly supernatural perceptiveness. He was certainly grateful to have inherited at least a modicum of that. It had always served him well, on the court, where he could see just how a goalie was going to lean before they did. It had served him well in other places too, in clubs where he could divine just which beauty at the bar would be most likely to invite him back to their place. And in Saskatchewan, when a pretty boy with dark doe eyes and a smattering constellation of freckles had held his hand for just a touch too long.
The point is, Ilya notices things other people miss. He noticed, the first time Shane Hollander put his mouth on him, the hesitant way he’d sucked Ilya down, just a hint of too much teeth. He’d noticed the second time Hollander put his mouth on Ilya, the way he mimicked exactly what Ilya had done to him, so long ago.
Ilya had been teasing when he’d cooed at Hollander, “Let me show you how to do this.” But Hollander had obviously taken the instruction to heart, so eager to please as he always was, Ilya should not have been surprised. He’d drawn his tongue along Ilya’s frenulum, let his mouth get slopping and wet and used his hand to jerk the part of Ilya’s cock his mouth couldn't reach as his other hand traced up Ilya’s abs and chest, just the way Ilya had done to him.
Hollander was a quick study, no surprise there, and every move and technique Ilya used was inevitably mirrored back to him with startling precision.
It had worried him at first, he was concerned Hollander might be too focused on ‘performing’ to really lose himself in pleasure the way Ilya wanted him to. But Ilya had realized later, it was just what Hollander did. Part of what made him such an impressive athlete, the way he could unconsciously, perfectly replicate a move he’d seen only once.
And Ilya could admit, in the privacy of his own mind, the possessive thrill it gave him every time he saw his tutelage in Shane's actions. I taught you that, the dark greedy thing in his mind would whisper when Shane drew his teeth lightly over Ilya’s nipple.
All you know of pleasure, he’d rejoice when Shane matched his rhythm easy as breathing, you’ve learned from me.
So, it's subtle the first time it happens, that Shane uses a move Ilya hadn’t taught him. It’s a little thing, when he sucks on Ilya’s earlobe gently, draws his teeth over it and blows teasingly. But Ilya is nothing if not his mother’s son, so of course he notices.
It startles him so much, this new move, that he pulls back from where he was sucking kisses down Shane's freckled neck. He meets Shane’s lust darkened gaze with such a shocked look it startles Shane out of the sex-drunk daze he sinks into so easily.
Shane blinks at him in confusion as clarity returns to his eyes, “You ok?” he asks it haltingly, as though he has no idea what Ilya is reacting to. He might not, dense as Shane can be sometimes, he might not have noticed all of his little moves and habits have come from Ilya.
Until now, the green monster in the back of Ilya’s head murmurs cruelly.
“Yes,” it comes out gruffer than Ilya intended, and he has to clear his throat before continuing.
“You have new moves now, yes?” His eyes flit back and forth between Shane’s with an intensity he is sure belies his teasing tone. Shane, of course, takes him at his word, rolling his eyes and grumbling, “Shut up.” in that exasperatedly fond way of his. He flips Ilya onto his back with an easy strength that could only come from a professional athlete and licks into Ilya's mouth the way he always does, and Ilya lets it go.
But he doesn't stop thinking about it.
Ilya has never done that. Shane has never done that, because in the years they have been doing this Ilya never taught that to him. But Shane, sweet and eager to please, naive to the pleasures of the flesh, does not do what he has not been taught.
So, who? He thinks on his way back to his hotel, on the plane ride home, on the bus to their next game, in the club as he should be getting drunk and having fun, in his bed as his hectic mind wont let him rest.
Who?
Who?
Who?
Who taught that to him?