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Ilya’s eyes glowered at the article he’d pulled up on his phone, against his better judgment. It was from one of those celebrity gossip sites, titled “Are Rose Landry and Shane Hollander Dating? 10 Real Photos that Say Yes!” The article was just the latest in a flurry of media attention that the two of them had gotten since first being spotted out with one another a few weeks ago. It was a stupid article with a stupid headline and stupid paparazzi pictures of Hollander and Rose Landry holding hands and for some reason it made Ilya feel stupidly angry. He was dangerously close to cracking his phone in his grip.
He’d finally tried to be nice to that stupid Hollander for once. Inviting him into his home. Asking him to stay over. He’d made a fucking tuna melt and stocked his fridge with ginger ale for that ungrateful asshole! And what did he get in return? Hollander ran away to go play couple and probably sleep with a beautiful movie star. So what if he’d (unsuccessfully) tried to get Hollander to admit his attraction to him by talking about liking women. That didn’t mean he actually wanted him to like women. The thanks Ilya got for fucking trying for once. He’d had enough of this stupid game they were playing.
“Where the hell are you going all of a sudden, Roz?” asked Cliff Marlow. Reasonable, since they were supposed to be working out before tomorrow’s game against Montreal.
“I am getting a gun.” Ilya said plainly.
“What?”
Ilya looked at Marlow like he was addressing a small child and pantomimed a gun, complete with a cartoon “pshew” sound when he pretended to fire it.
“I know what a gun is, asshole. I mean – you know what, whatever. Go be weird wherever you’re going.”
Ilya gave Marlow a toothy grin.
Later that night, Ilya returned to the hotel room he was sharing with Ryan Carmichael in Montreal. He was carrying a black bag that didn’t at all look suspicious, although he was pretty sure his Russian aura of mystique was enough to get most people to ignore the weird things he did.
“What’cha got there?” Carmichael asked, glancing up from his book.
“Gun.” Ilya replied as if it were the most casual thing in the world.
Carmichael fully looked up from his book. “What?”
Ilya took the handgun out from the bag and made a show of cocking it, showing that he’d loaded live ammunition in the magazine. “Gun.”
“You – what?!”
Ilya offered the handle of the gun out to Carmichael with a bored expression, as if to let him feel it so that he knew it was real so he could stop saying “gun” and hopefully wouldn’t have to explain to his adult teammate what a gun was. Carmichael just looked at him with a stupidly moronic gape on his face which probably would’ve been funny in any other circumstance but in this case was definitely appropriate. Actually, it was still pretty funny.
“Where in the world did you get that?”
“Not important.” Ilya turned back around and placed the gun on his bed.
“And you’re doing…what with it exactly?”
“None of your business. Maybe check news later.”
Carmichael continued to stare at Ilya from behind with his mouth slightly open, obviously contemplating whether he should do anything about his scary Russian teammate casually brandishing a gun from who knows where in their hotel room.
“You’re not planning on actually like, shooting something, are you?”
“Is not what guns are for? Shooting things, objects, people?”
The color drained from Carmichael’s face when Ilya referenced shooting people, and he realized that maybe this joke had gone too far. Well, the gun was definitely real, and Ilya wasn’t really that opposed to shooting something at this point. But he wasn’t really that interested in shooting someone. Not yet, anyway. The night was still young.
“Relax, I will not shoot anyone. As long as they cooperate.” Damn. He really couldn’t help himself. “Anyway, I will go out now. Hopefully you will see me in morning, and not from jail cell.”
Ilya stuffed the handgun into the waistband of his jeans and below his shirt. Everything was quite well hidden beneath his heavy shirt and coat. Good, since he couldn’t really afford for anything to go wrong before making it to the restaurant. He pulled out his phone and smiled at some pictures of Hollander and Rose that had been posted by fans on Twitter, fully showing the restaurant that they were dining at, just the two of them. For once, Ilya was happy that there were fans out there who had absolutely no sense of privacy. They had been posted less than an hour ago, so he knew there was still time.
Ilya sauntered into the restaurant that Hollander and Rose were spotted at. He was able to see them from the entrance, sitting in a corner that was mostly secluded from the rest of the patrons dining. Hollander’s back was largely to the entrance, so he probably wouldn’t see Ilya approaching. He confidently strode over to them, ignoring the curious looks he was getting, until he got close enough that Rose realized Ilya was heading towards their table and looked away from their conversation with a confused expression. Ilya suppressed a scowl; she was absolutely gorgeous in person as well.
Hollander turned to look at what had distracted Rose just as Ilya reached their table, causing him to almost jump out of his seat.
“R-rozanov? What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, trying to suppress his voice in the quiet restaurant.
Ilya studied the situation for a moment. They were in the corner of the restaurant where things were pretty quiet, but he supposed that his arrival had turned some eyes towards the interaction since as far as anyone knew, Ilya and Hollander were rivals on the ice and Ilya had never met Rose (which was true).
“I’m here for you, Shane, and I will not take no for an answer.” Ilya was tired of calling him Hollander. Tired of these stupid hockey-related formalities.
“Shane?” Rose said, a bit louder than Ilya would’ve liked. Her eyes flitted between the two of them, trying to fit this new piece of information into her understanding of their relationship.
“He’s uh, you know, his English is, uh…” Shane stammered with the worst possible excuse he could have chosen.
People around were starting to take notice of what was perhaps an altercation brewing, so Ilya decided he might as well use his fun new toy to get them some privacy. He turned around to the face the rest of the restaurant, which thankfully only had a few scattered patrons and wait staff.
“Alright, everybody out, or I will start shooting.” Ilya announced plainly to the group of onlookers.
He raised the front of his shirt to reveal the handgun tucked into his waistband, which got some surprised gasps, but still didn’t really get anyone moving. So Ilya did the only reasonable thing in this situation: he continued acting like a movie villain. He took the gun out and cocked it before firing a single round into the floor (he didn’t want to fire upwards in case there were people upstairs). Thankfully, that was enough to finally convince people he wasn’t just joking around, and the restaurant cleared pretty quickly.
Ilya turned back around to see Shane staring at him with the most dumbfounded expression he’d ever seen. Rose had this weird, dreamy look on her face that Ilya couldn’t quite identify. The contrast was pretty stunning.
“Did you just – that’s a real gun? With real bullets?!” Shane gasped out.
“Yes. Thought I might need it, but right now Rose Landry seems very reasonable, I think.”
“You were planning on shooting Rose Landry in public?”
“No, not really.”
“But you have real bullets.”
“Yes. Is more, ah, like real thing?”
“Authentic?” Rose supplied.
“Yes. Authentic. More authentic this way. Blank bullets do not sound same.”
“What? How do you know that?”
Ilya shrugged his shoulders. “Father is police. Brother is police.”
“…And your mother?”
“Dead.” Ilya paused for a beat. “And also police.”
For some reason, that last statement seemed to have absolutely horrified Shane, who was staring at Ilya with a look of abject horror.
“Ah, that last part was a joke. The police part, anyway.” Ilya clarified. It didn’t help with Shane’s mortified expression.
Shane scrunched his eyes closed and groaned. “So really, why are you here?”
“I do not think you and Rose Landry are compatible.”
“Wow, compatible?” Shane seemed to be impressed by that word. Ilya grinned. He’d looked up that word on the taxi ride over. “Wait no, not the time for that. So what you were really going to do was threaten Rose to break up with me?”
“More or less.”
“Because we’re not…compatible.”
“Because you are gay.” Ilya clarified, assuming that Shane wasn’t quite getting the implication.
Rose broke out into laughter at that answer, a loud, boisterous sound that was not at all stymied, visibly shocking Shane. Ilya had no idea why but clearly this woman didn’t seem to be all that upset by this revelation.
“See? Even Rose Landry thinks so.” Ilya said, motioning to her with his free hand.
“Please, just Rose is good.” She said in between laughs. “I’m laughing because we just had this conversation like, 10 minutes before you came in and did all of this!”
Now it was Ilya’s turn to be shocked.
“Shane, you came out to her? To Rose?”
“No, I basically pulled him out of the closet! I was just telling him that it’s okay that he’s gay and now you’re here telling him he’s gay to his face!”
Ilya and Rose exchanged a look of incredulity before they both burst into laughter, Ilya doubling over and Rose leaning her head onto the table. Their shared jubilation echoed off the walls of the restaurant, turning it into a bit of a cacophonous chorus. Shane just sat there, looking between the two dumbfounded and trying to figure out how his life had become such a farce.
“Wait, wait, why are you even doing this? The last time we met it…did not end very well.” Shane said.
“Yes, because you ran away. We had pretty moment and you ran away.” Ilya said, somewhat bitterly.
“I’m sorry I freaked out, but I just…couldn’t accept that we were getting so close. I hadn’t even accepted that I wasn’t straight. It was terrifying to think about.”
Ilya’s face softened. He still didn’t let go of the gun. “That hurt me. I wanted to chase you down and hold you forever. And I realized, it hurt so much because I…I think I love you, Shane.”
Rose let out a little squeal, her hands covering her mouth like she was watching a movie play out in front of her.
Shane’s eyes seemed to glisten a little bit more in the dim lighting. “I think I love you too, Ilya.”
“And you are not saying that just because I have gun, yes?” Ilya said, waving the gun around a little less than carefully.
“Yes, yes I am. I mean it, gun or not.”
Shane got up and the two of them kissed passionately, with burning need like they’d never kissed before. Shane pulled at Ilya’s hair, feeling all the way down his back until his hands came to rest just above that gorgeous ass of his. Ilya hadn’t bothered to even put the gun away, the cold metal running against Shane’s neck sending shivers down his body.
Rose was a bit taken aback by the way Ilya was carelessly handling that gun as he and Shane shamelessly made out in the empty restaurant. But, she’d been waiting for the chance to fujo out for ages since Miles was interested in sharing every detail about his relationships with her but not with letting her actually see them much. To be fair, he probably knew her well enough know she’d absolutely fawn over them. But this, this was grade A, hot off the presses, her-eyes-only fujoshi material and she certainly wasn’t going to let something silly like the fear of getting accidentally shot by Ilya Rozanov get in the way of it.
“This is so hot.” Rose said under her breath.
Ilya broke the kiss and cocked his eyebrow at her. She was watching with intent, and while she didn’t exactly look turned on there was definitely something about her expression right now that was less than innocent.
“You like?” Ilya asked Rose. “We could always use audie—“
Shane smacked the side of Ilya’s head, causing him to recoil. Thankfully Ilya had been trained in gun safety from a young age by his late father, so his finger hadn’t been anywhere near the trigger. Unfortunately for Shane, Rose was too locked in to be concerned.
“Just an audience?” Rose asked, a little bit sultry. Ilya was starting to like her even more.
“Well, might work if you peg Sh—“
Shane smacked Ilya’s head again, which briefly made him wonder how many times tonight he could get hit in the head by Shane before it lead to permanent damage. It was very easy to tease Shane with Rose.
Surprisingly (or not?) the news of Ilya and Shane revealing their relationship in a very public and dramatic way had somehow overshadowed the fact that Ilya had walked into a public restaurant and used a gun to make everyone leave so that they could have a heart to heart. The police did try to charge him, for intimidation, reckless endangerment, or something like that, and probably other things too, but Ilya was too busy being happy about being out with Shane to really care. He’d let the expensive lawyers he hired figure out what to do about that. It did mean that Ilya had to miss the All Star Game, but that was a small price to pay for being with Shane.
Unfortunately, Shane was not exactly happy with Ilya for what he’d done. Which, he will admit, was a little bit extreme. Maybe the gun was unnecessary actually, but it certainly made for some good drama. Fortunately, nothing had really happened to their careers. The media was more interested in the Rozanov-Hollander story than anything else, so that evil bastard Crowell couldn’t make an official statement about what he really wanted to say without setting himself up for a discrimination or libel lawsuit. So it was easy enough for Ilya to get Shane back on his side with some prodding (in more ways than one) once the initial media firestorm calmed down. Well, it calmed down in the sense that a category 5 hurricane weakening to a category 4 could be considered “calming down”, but the sheer number of articles being written about them seemed to have slowed down somewhat.
Shane was at least not upset at Ilya enough to give him the spare key to his home in Montreal, which is where Ilya now sat, awaiting Shane’s return from a travel series. As soon as he heard a car pull up to the front of the house, Ilya sprang up to his feet, ready to welcome his boyfriend home. He pounced on Shane the moment the front door opened, wrapping him in a bearhug and wheeling him around inside the house.
“Whoa, damn hold on let me put my stuff down first!” Shane groaned out, air being squeezed out of his lungs by Ilya’s grip.
Ilya planted a thick kiss on Shane’s cheek and let him go, using one of his legs to gracefully close the still-open front door as Shane put his things down.
“OK. I held on,” Ilya said right as Shane shrugged his backpack off and onto the floor. The two of them met together, their mouths hungrily searching for one another, for any bit they could grasp onto. Ilya pushed Shane forward as the two of them almost literally sucked faces, until they were toppled onto the couch in Shane’s living room, Ilya trailing kisses all along Shane’s neck as he squirmed beneath him.
“Holy…what’s got you so worked up?” Shane managed between Ilya’s relentless attacks.
Ilya pulled back and looked at Shane with a crazed look, having hoped that Shane would ask something exactly like that.
“Well, I have surprise for you! A big one.”
Before Shane could ask for clarification, the two heard a familiar voice trail in from somewhere deeper in his house.
“Hi boys,” said Rose as she peeked around a corner. Ilya let Shane sit up so that the full extent of his surprise could be seen.
Much to Ilya’s joy, Shane’s eyes widened comically large as he saw Rose, wearing nothing but suggestive lingerie and twirling what was most certainly a bright pink strap-on in an outstretched hand. Her smile spread even wider as she took slow, sensual steps towards the couch.
“Shouldn’t have told me that you prefer to be the hole, Hollander.” Rose said huskily.
Shane collapsed back onto the couch, covering his face with an exasperated sound. Tonight was going to be a long, long night.