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Shane's still kind of reeling from the events of the evening.
Usually, it's kind of a lot, when he gets a pocket of time to go see Rozanov. They've got a well-established routine, though. Either play hard and fast against each other, or schmooze at some event that neither of them give two shits about. Shane goes back to his hotel room to prep and change, and a hotel room number gets exchanged. Shane will freak out and shake like a goddamn chihuahua in the hotel hallway until Rozanov opens the door, or sit on the edge of his bed and all but vibrate with anticipation until Rozanov knocks. They'll relish in some teasing back-and-forth, because Rozanov's goals in life seemingly center around hockey and pissing Shane off, and he's very ambitious about both. Then, once they've gotten all of that out of the way, Rozanov will pull Shane in for a kiss that is so mind-melting and all-consuming that it's a shock that he's able to stay on his feet, and so it all goes.
He's not reeling from that. Well, he's not only reeling from that.
It's just that he walked out of the bathroom to see Rozanov's shower-damp curls tumbling over his hotel pillow, and he's snoring, just a little, and Shane can't stop fucking thinking about what it'd be like to wake up to Rozanov's soft snuffling all the time as if it's something he could ever allow himself to have.
Instead, he settles on the other side of the double bed and stares at the ceiling, wondering how long he can enjoy this before he has to wake Rozanov up and send him on his merry way. One-thirty, probably, is the hard limit. Montreal's got an early flight home tomorrow, and Rozanov clearly needs to get home and get some real sleep if he'd gone from awake to this in fifteen minutes.
Rozanov, who's casting a muscled arm over Shane's bare chest and inching closer to rest his head on Shane's bicep, still dead to the world but seeking warmth anyway. He's always been a tactile person, from what Shane can tell, patting his teammates on the back, checking his opponents into the boards with unrestrained enthusiasm, running his hands along every inch of Shane's skin that he can reach while he takes him apart.
Like everything else Rozanov does, Shane lets it happen, embraces it, even.
This is such a bad idea, he'd said, the first time Rozanov had bullied his way into Shane's personal space. And oh, how bad of an idea it was, now that he's got Rozanov nuzzling his nose into Shane's skin, letting out a deep, contented hum once he's found a place to settle himself. Dumbfounded, Shane tentatively rests his own palm on Rozanov's back, smoothing over the muscle there like Rozanov has done for him once or twice.
He's rewarded with a barely-there twitch at the corner of Rozanov's mouth that could maybe be called a smile, and Rozanov completely melting into his touch. Shane can't help but melt with him just a little.
Rozanov looks good like this, even with half his face unattractively smushed into Shane's collarbone. He looks younger. Less weary. Like there's an edge to him all the time that's been softened just a bit by sex and sleep and Shane. Shane sort of wonders who put that barely-perceptible pinch into Rozanov's brow. He wonders if anyone but him has ever noticed that it's there; the possibility that he's the only one makes him devastatingly sad, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little self-satisfied about some part of Rozanov appearing only for him.
Mumbled words are spoken into Shane's skin, unintelligible and definitely not English. Not even the Russian language books that Shane's been trying to keep up with could give him any hope of understanding them.
The thing is, Shane wants to understand him. He's really, really trying.
He lets his hand wander into Rozanov's hair, twirling a strand around a finger every once in a while. They're soft; he must take good care of his curls when he's not doomed to hotel conditioner.
And then Rozanov turns his head, just so, and says something Shane can finally make out: moya lyubov. My love. Two vocabulary words that Shane had learned on day fucking one of his mission to understand Ilya Rozanov in his mother tongue. The first was out of necessity, learned along with the other pronouns and tenses and such. The second one on a whim, just in case he ever needed it. Rozanov says it so warmly, his rich voice curling around the words gently like he's never hurled an insult, and tightens his arms around Shane's middle, and Shane's heart threatens to beat out of his chest with something that feels a hell of a lot like panic.
This was a bad idea. No, scratch that, a terrible idea. Kissing Rozanov that first time was bad enough. Texting him was worse, and fucking him even more so. Trying to be a good friend, or whatever the hell they are to each other, by learning Russian was the worst idea of them all.
And all of these terrible ideas have brought Shane to where he is: stuck in this double bed with two-hundred-something pounds of professional hockey player sprawled on top of him and talking in his sleep in a hotel room in Boston, blissfully unaware of the turmoil he's causing while Shane doesn't have the heart to wake him up just yet.
Secretly, Shane wants to hear that endearment fall from his lips again. He wants it kissed into his spine while Rozanov fucks him and he wants it murmured into his temple while he makes them coffee in the mornings after. He wants to steal away that tenderness and hoard it, all for himself. But it's not something meant for him, is it? It's probably Rozanov's subconscious providing images of some girl, maybe a girlfriend that he sweet-talks while he's back home, someone who he doesn't need to keep in the shadows. She probably doesn't know about Shane or Jane or any other Jane Doe that Rozanov's brought back to a hotel room.
His heart breaks for her a little, and for himself with how badly he wishes this was all his own to hold onto. Sweet nothings continue to fall from Rozanov's mouth, easy as anything. At least, Shane thinks that's what they all are. He can only make out a few words and sentence fragments, but they sound affectionate. Rozanov tucks his face back into Shane's shoulder and lets out another one of those soft little snores.
It would be so nice, to have this and not feel guilty or heartbroken. And he doesn't have the heart to wake Rozanov up, not when he's sleeping so deeply, clearly so exhausted after a hell of a game and two rounds of sex that were only marginally less physically demanding. Instead, Shane leaves a feather-light kiss on his temple and stares at the ceiling until the clock at the bedside ticks past one in the morning.
It takes another couple of minutes to really overthink how he's going to wake Rozanov up. Kisses are… probably too much. He doesn't want to just shake him awake, though, and leave him startled while he comes to in an unfamiliar place.
He settles for a few gentle strokes across Rozanov's shoulders, and a soft call for him. "Rozanov, hey, it's late."
"Mmh?" Rozanov murmurs eloquently. "Five more minutes, moya lyubov."
In English. He'd asked in English. Well, except… except that. Which means—
"Rozanov. You've gotta go home. I'm flying out early tomorrow," Shane says, a little more urgent this time. He doesn't want Rozanov—Ilya—to go. He wants him to stay here. Maybe Ilya would even be perfectly content to sneak out in the early, early morning, and they could really have a night together, even if it were fleeting. But Ilya is Rozanov and Shane isn't Rozanov's anything, because there isn't another option for them, and he can't stand to hear all this talk out of Rozanov's mouth when it's not really his to hear.
Unless, of course, it is. Unless Ilya is banking on the language barrier, or simply slipped up because he was half-asleep. It's not like Shane has said anything to Rozanov about learning a whole other fucking language. They don't talk about these things.
"Hollander. Please. Let me have five more minutes of this," Ilya murmurs, trying to press himself closer to Shane as if they're not all but melded into one being. He almost sounds kind of… small. Vulnerable. "I will leave you alone after five minutes."
Shane kisses the top of his head and, like he did with every little touch while asleep, Ilya relaxes against him. He wishes that he could take Ilya's face in his hands, meet his eyes, and get it into his head that he never, ever wants Ilya to leave him alone. "Okay," he whispers instead.
Ilya mumbles something in Russian into the side of Shane's throat in return, and it's muffled, but some of the words sound a little bit like the one that Shane is terrified and desperate to hear again.
Shane gives Ilya ten minutes to doze off in peace. He tries to pour his response into their kiss goodbye, because he doesn't quite have a good handle on the vowels yet, and he wants it to be perfect when he finally finds the courage to speak it out loud.
Hopefully Rozanov gets the message, anyway, even if he forgets all his own sweet-talking by morning.