Work Text:
He cleared his throat. “The thing is... I kind of prefer to be the hole. Than the peg.”
“Ha!” Rose threw her head back in delight. Shane laughed too. He felt lighter, suddenly.
Rose gave him a mischievous look over the rim of her wineglass.
“So. Lily.”
Shane nearly choked on his wine. Rose smiled at him, knowingly.
“His name’s not Lily. Is it?”
Shane shook his head. “No. It most certainly isn’t.” His heart felt funny. He thought it might be the wine.
“Want to tell me what his name is?”
Shane had the crazy idea that perhaps she was asking a question that she knew the answer to.
“Er—I’d prefer not. Not right now, anyway. I have…” he looked around carefully. No one was around them, and he trusted Rose so deeply. He knew she would keep his secret. “I left him on…weird terms,” Shane said finally.
“Do tell.”
For the first time in a long time, Shane looked at her. Really looked at her. Not as someone he should be sleeping with because that was what guys did, but as someone who he was friends with.
And if he wouldn’t tell his friend, who could he tell?
He took a deep breath and said, “we’ve been…hooking up…ever since our rookie year.” Rose raised her eyebrows. “Constantly. Every time we play together. It was…just sex.”
The best sex of my life. He thought, unhelpfully. He continued.
“But…last time was. Different. We met at his house. We’ve never met outside of hotel rooms before. Then he made me lunch. It was…”
Scary? Weird?
“Kinda nice.”
The words were out of his mouth before he even knew what he was saying. And he couldn’t take them back.
He continued.
“So…after we ate, we started…watching tv. And cuddling. We never cuddled before.” He said seriously. He glanced at Rose. She looked at him and smiled. A safe space. He took a deep breath and continued.
“So…I jerked him off. I didn’t know what else to do. And he…he called me Shane. He’s never called me Shane. Ever.”
Even as he said it, he realized how silly this all sounded.
“So…I left.”
He almost whispered those words, like it was the last breath of a dying man uttering his biggest, deepest regret on his death bed.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“Well…not like that, no. We played together the other day though.”
Shane covered his mouth with his hand. He didn’t mean to let that detail out.
“The game I didn’t go to? The day we went to the club together?”
Shane nodded. The game was up. Rose tapped the table impatiently.
“So, text Ilya - oh, sorry, Lily - and apologize. Right now.”
Shane stared at her like she had just grown a second head. She laughed.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
***
Ilya and Svetlana were watching hockey in bed together. They had just fucked, and it was…fine, Ilya thought dully. But it was nothing like it had been with Shane Hollander.
Svetlana changed the channel, and the fucking documentary about Shane Hollander’s cottage came on. Ilya stared at it.
He was angry. Not at Shane. Not at Svetlana. Not even at Rose Landry. He was angry with himself. For letting himself get so twisted with Shane that he felt borderline possessive.
Svetlana was staring at him. He could feel it.
“What’s wrong?”
She muted the show but didn’t turn it off. He didn’t turn to look at her. She looked back and forth from Ilya to Shane on the tv.
“You either truly despise him like everyone says you do. Or you love him more than anyone can believe. Which is it?”
This sentence made Ilya turn to look at her finally. She gasped.
“Oh. You’re in love.”
“You should get dressed.”
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t upset. He was just…sad. Svetlana sat up on the bed, wrapping the blanket up to cover her body.
“No.” She said quietly. “You…what’s going on, Ilya? How do you even…” her voice trailed off as his phone buzzed. He ignored it, but she said, “It’s Jane, isn’t it? Jane is Shane.”
He turned to look at her. She looked rather blurry now.
“Oh, Ilya.”
She changed the channel on the tv, and it was a report about Shane and Rose Landry. She quickly turned the tv off altogether.
“No one can know, Svetlana.”
Ilya spoke quietly and slowly, like he was trying to hide both his emotions and his struggles with English.
“You think I’m gonna tell anyone?”
She turned to look at him.
“Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”
Ilya took a deep breath. And he didn’t hold back. He told her, in Russian, about their first meeting in the alley, about the hotel gym, about their first hookup.
He told her about Vegas, about Shane giving him a private show, and while he didn’t go into specifics, he made it abundantly clear that he and Shane had been going at this for a long time.
He stopped when he got to the last time they were together.
“Then, he left. Got scared. Ran away.”
Svetlana looked at him like he was a book she had just opened up.
“What really happened?”
“I asked him to stay.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And he didn’t?”
“He did for a bit. Made him tuna melt. Needed to keep his energy up for more fun.”
“Okay. Then what happened?”
Ilya looked uncomfortable here. “We…we had fun, and then—“ he sighed. “I called him Shane.”
“And you had only ever called him..?”
“Hollander.”
“Ilya. Sweetheart,” the term of endearment was not lost on Ilya. They didn’t use these very often except when Svetlana was trying to explain something very simple to him. “Bless you. You did…too much. Way too soon.” She waved her hand at the television. “Even I could tell you that he’s a little ball of walking anxiety. So he bolted?”
Ilya nodded. “And now he’s dating Rose Landry. Who can love him. Give him things I never could.” His voice broke at these words. He shook as he said, “I can never love him publicly. He deserves better.”
The silence between them in that moment was deafening.
“When do you see him next, Ilya?”
“At the all stars game. Next week.”
“Talk to him then.”
“No.”
Ilya wasn’t mad, but he made it very clear that he was not going to do that. Svetlana sighed.
“If you don’t shoot your shot, you might miss out.” She got out of bed and started getting dressed. “Just…try it. Or better yet, text “Jane” and apologize. Right now.”
She grabbed his phone and glanced at the screen before crying out. “Speak of the devil.”
She showed it to Ilya. There, clear as day, a text from Jane:
“I’m sorry. See you next week?”
Ilya looked at his phone, and he could feel a huge smile creeping up across his face. He thought tears were starting to form, but he quickly wiped them away.
Svetlana stared at him. He was so in love, it was nauseating and totally cute.
“Lover boy, what are you going to say to him?”
Ilya started typing a response. Svetlana read it over his shoulder.
“Knew you couldn’t stay away from this 9 inch—“
Svetlana grabbed the phone out of Ilya’s hands and erased the message without sending it.
“You are not sending that.”
And she texted “Jane” on his behalf:
“I’m sorry, too. I’d really like to see you.”
***
Rose gave a squeal of joy at “Lily”’s text.
“See? He wants to see you too!”
Shane looked from Rose to his phone, frowning. Rose had confiscated his phone for this purpose. She sent him another message.
“I…I know I reacted without thinking. I just got scared, Ilya. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Rose,” Shane began, frowning. Rose looked at him.
“What’s up?”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Does this sound like him?”
***
Svetlana smiled wide at the message that came in from “Jane”.
Ilya looked at her, wanting to grab the phone out of her hands. But maybe, just maybe, she was better at this. He had never been a good communicator. So he chose to let her have her moment.
For now.
“I’m sorry too, Shane. I fucked up. I know I did too much with you in hindsight. I just wanted to spend as much time as possible with you. I got selfish, I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.”
“That sounds nothing like me, Svetlana.”
Svetlana rolled her eyes. “Girl, you really think this is Shane I’m texting right now?”
He grinned at her. Maybe Rose Landry was to Shane as Svetlana was to him. He could work with that.