Chapter Text
“What the fuck do you want from me, Rozanov?”
Ilya supposes it’s a valid question. He has not replied to a single text from Shane since the Olympics, too embroiled in his own shit to find it in him to respond to a simple you doing okay? text.
Especially not when it’s from the one person he thinks can actually coax it out of him—everything he’s been keeping buried deep inside.
It’s just too much. Shane Hollander is entirely too much, with his big brown eyes and beautiful freckles, always asking Ilya if he’s okay and having the nerve to seem like he actually cares to know.
Each time he asks, Ilya finds himself—just for a second, before always deciding against it—wanting to be honest for once and tell him, No, Hollander. I am not okay. Everything is shit.
But if he does, he feels like the floodgates will open and it won’t be long until everything’s just spilling out of him. My father is asshole. And he is sick. My brother is asshole. My mother is dead. Only good person in my family, dead. There is no warmth waiting for me back home. And I want you more than I am supposed to. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with all that.
And he just can’t have that. It’s too… vulnerable. This thing that they have—whatever the hell it is—it’s good. It’s easy. It feels like the only thing keeping him afloat sometimes.
He can’t let it get to a place where it’s more than just a good, convenient fuck and some fun teasing in between. Even if sometimes, in brief moments of tenderness, it already feels like it’s more than that. Or at least like it’s something that can be, if they just let it.
But they don’t. They can’t.
Although sometimes, Ilya does find himself giving in to the urge to look at Shane just a little bit longer, to let his touch be just a little bit gentler, more reverent, than what it would be for something as casual as they claim this to be—albeit sparingly. Just a little bit, he always tells himself.
Sometimes, just for a moment, he lets himself indulge. He lets some of that affection bleed out of him because he feels like he’ll implode if he doesn’t.
But he always catches himself before it can linger.
He lets Shane kiss him on the forehead like it means something, sits in that warm feeling just for a moment, before he pulls away. He holds Shane tighter to his chest just for a little bit after sex, just to see what it would feel like if he were allowed to do it all night, before he gets up to leave.
And he always does. He always pulls away; he always gets up to leave. Always one foot out the door, always gone before the morning.
He lets himself get close just for a moment, just to know what it’s like. But he always takes a step back right after and makes sure the distance is back between them before the closeness can really take hold.
Sometimes, he even entertains the idea of letting the tenderness last for more than just a moment. When he’s feeling really indulgent, he thinks about what it would be like to actually stay the night and wake up next to Shane for once. Is he grumpy in the morning? Would he like it if Ilya made him coffee and cooked him breakfast? Probably not, stupid bird diet and all.
A part of him really wants to know. But he can’t. They can’t.
So he lets those moments just be moments, lets go before they can even have a chance of being more, and lives off of them until the next time he can have one again—siphoning off all the moments’ warmth until he can let himself indulge again.
Because it can’t be more than that. Because then, it means something; it becomes something he can lose. So he simply doesn’t let it.
Instead, he keeps pretending like this is nothing to him. Like it doesn’t kill him to keep Shane at a distance when he would live under his skin if he could.
“I want you to suck my dick,” he says instead. He should apologize, probably. Shane seems pissed. But he doesn’t want to. Because then he would have to tell him why he was too fucked up to reply to a single text in the first place. Then, Shane will see what’s really in his heart and might not like it, might not want to deal with all that baggage. Ilya doesn’t want to find out.
So instead, he deflects. He retreats to the more carnal of his desires because it feels like safe territory in comparison to the deeper want that he actually feels whenever he’s around Shane.
“Fuck you. You are unbelievable.”
Again, fair. Looking at Shane in this dimly lit bathroom, Ilya sees the hurt concealed behind his anger. He’s upset because he hasn’t heard from the guy in six months. And now Ilya just saunters in without a care in the world, smiling expectantly like he actually doesn’t doubt that Shane will be on his knees soon enough.
Because he doesn’t. It’s just what they do. They text sometimes, they hook up even less frequently, and they go on with their lives. What difference does six months of silence make?
“Come on, Hollander. You know you want to,” Ilya goads, the smirk not having left his face since he followed Shane into the bathroom.
“Fuck off,” Shane spits out as he makes a move to leave.
But Ilya is on him. He takes a step forward and holds Shane’s jaw in his hand—firm and commanding, just like Ilya knows he likes.
He sees Shane’s pupils dilate as he has his delicate little face in his grasp. Ah, there it is. The desire, peeking through his anger. Ilya can work with this.
“Look, Hollander. You win MVP tonight, you can go back to my hotel room and I will blow you, fuck you, whatever you want.” Ilya sees the desire flicker in Shane’s eyes with each word he says and thinks, gotcha.
But then he sees Shane’s expression shift, the fire in his eyes gone just as quick as it came, being replaced by something more like resolve. Resolve to do what? Ilya doesn’t know yet.
“No,” he responds impassively as he takes Ilya’s wrist and loosens his grip on his jaw before letting their arms fall to the side. All the fight in him from earlier seems to have dissipated, overtaken by want only for a brief moment before it settled into this, whatever this is.
“No?” He raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, confused but still playful, still of the belief that he can get Shane in his bed tonight with just a little more teasing.
“We’re not having sex tonight.”
“Ah, you want to save it for next season? Make it sweeter with the wait?” Ilya continues to tease, eyes unashamedly wandering down to Shane’s mouth, hand coming up to touch again before it’s abruptly stopped in its tracks by Shane.
“No, Rozanov. I—” He takes a deep breath, like whatever words are about to come out of his mouth he has to physically claw out of himself. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“What?” Ilya panics for a second before he manages to school his expression to something more neutral. The furrow in his brows remains though, as he looks all over Shane’s face for an explanation.
Surely this is just the anger talking, right? Shane’s just too pissed off to have sex right now, but that’s fine. Ilya can charm him again soon enough… right? That has to be it.
“This,” Shane says as he gestures between them. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend like… Those six months, Rozanov, I—I just wanted to know if you were okay, you know? With the Olympics and everything, and… I don’t know. Whatever else you have going on.”
Ilya did always think Shane probably knew on some level that he was dealing with something. He never told him of course, so he didn’t know what exactly. But it was probably evident enough in the way he always shut down Shane’s attempts at deeper conversation, flinching ever so slightly at any mention of his family before painting a stoic expression right back onto his face.
Maybe that’s why Shane has been patient with him, giving him grace even when he maybe didn’t deserve it. Because he held on to the belief that Ilya being closed off had more to do with whatever it was that he was dealing with internally, as opposed to Shane himself. So why now? Has his patience just run out?
“So to not hear from you for months… And right after we just—” Shane’s voice falters, and it shatters something within Ilya to hear him sound so pained. He wants to make it stop, wants to reach out and provide some sort of comfort. But he’s never really been good at that.
He doesn’t know what to do. He feels frozen in place, wanting so badly for the sadness in Shane’s eyes to go away, but knowing full well that he’s the reason it’s even there in the first place.
He turns the words over in his mind again. And right after we just—
Shit, so that’s why. No wonder his patience ran out. No wonder he was so pissed. Ilya didn’t even realize that his six months of silence came just after the first time they went beyond hotel room hookups and actually fucked, right in Shane’s bedroom. God, he must think Ilya’s such an asshole.
But Shane has to know that that has nothing to do with why he didn’t respond, right? He has to. But then again, how could he? Ilya hasn’t told him anything.
He thinks about apologizing, reassuring Shane that he didn’t just chase him for years so he could fuck him, only to ghost him for six months after. But he can’t find the words.
Seeing Shane like this, the part of him that always wants to give in to this beautiful man is dangerously close to taking over. But Ilya still finds it in himself to push it back down.
“I just can’t keep doing this,” Shane continues as he clears his throat and quickly regains his composure. “You can’t just come back after all that and expect me to be right back on my knees when I… I was just worried, you know? And I thought that maybe we—”
“Hollander,” Ilya tries to interject. This conversation is going places he’s nowhere near ready for.
But Shane just sighs as he continues. “I keep trying to, you know… I don’t know. Get through to you, somehow. Beyond just this, whatever this is. I keep trying but you shut me down and push me away every time and I just—”
“Hollander.” He tries again, but Shane looks determined to either finally crack him or just walk away completely.
And Ilya knows; of course he knows. He knows that Shane’s been trying. He would always ask questions, always try to get to know Ilya better, always ask if he’s okay. But Ilya has never really given him anything beyond a perfunctory answer.
He’s just not ready for those floodgates to open. Will he ever be ready? He doesn’t know. But if he ever does open up to someone, he wants so badly for it to be Shane.
But he doesn’t think he even has the time to find out, because the look on Shane’s face tells Ilya that he’s had just about enough.
They’ve been doing this little dance for what, five years now? And no matter how sparse their interactions may have been in that time, there’s no denying the pull they both feel towards the other. They aren’t really anything, but maybe they could’ve been if Ilya didn’t take a step back every time Shane tried to take a step forward.
And Ilya wants. God, does he want. But he can’t. Not when he feels like such a fucking mess inside, and when the world around them feels like even more of a mess.
Maybe he was a fool to think they could keep going like this, with him giving just about enough to keep Shane around, but not giving him nearly as much as he deserves.
They stand in silence for a moment, like Shane is giving him one last chance to open up, one last chance to give him something, anything really at this point.
As the silence stretches and it becomes clear that Ilya has nothing to say, Shane finally walks away.
“Goodbye, Rozanov.”
“Hollander,” he calls out one more time to Shane’s retreating back, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to say.
His arm reaches out before he can think about it, but Shane’s already out the door.
Six months of silence makes a world of difference, it turns out.