Work Text:
The light hits different in the rink. Not just the fluorescents overhead, but the blinding white rebounding softly off the ice. It washes out all the details so that Shane can only see the movement of the players around him.
He’s always been so determined, found it easy to focus, but it’s never easier than on the ice when everything narrows down to just the game.
Everything except Ilya. Even from the far side of the rink, with the lights stealing the intricacies of his face and the helmet obscuring everything but the line of his jaw, Shane knows his face so well he could complete the picture. The pull of his mouth barely visible sketched out into a crooked grin, mouthguard half out. An image burned into Shane’s retinas from seeing it inches away on the other side of a face off.
Shane can also immediately recall the weird mix of infuriated and fond that face makes him feel. So cocky and brash. So beautifully, miraculously sure of himself.
It should’ve made him mad, or jealous maybe. Ilya never doubts himself on the ice, and it makes him a force of nature. Shane is a force of nature on the ice because he’s constantly proving something to himself.
And yet. It makes Shane’s heart race. It makes his heart feel bruised from the sheer fucking amount of affection it holds.
Shane would probably watch him for hours if it wasn’t so much better to be on the ice with him.
Ilya winning the face off and skating away so fast he makes the other players look like scenery. Ilya scoring and throwing his arms out wide, soaking in the screams of the crowd. Ilya, sweaty and breathless, leaning in to smack a kiss against Shane’s cheek as he returns to the bench.
Ilya, Ilya, Ilya.
Shane’s never found it easy to love things without making them his whole personality. He knows that doesn’t always show on his face, but he’s pretty certain when they autopsy him one day he’s going to have Ilya and hockey engraved together onto his bones or something.
It’s a kind of intensity he reckons would scare a lot of people, but Ilya breathes it in like oxygen for a spark. On his bad days he worries they’ll burn out. On his good days he knows they’ve both got an endless supply of air to give.
When they pack into the changing room, he and Ilya barely touch. Shane’s still too shy to feel easy letting the world in on this thing they kept secret for so many years, and they agree anyway – the locker room is a space for the Centaurs to be a team, they don’t want it to become the Shane-and-Ilya show. It doesn’t stop the others from throwing innuendos at them until Shane’s ears turn red and Ilya’s laughing with his head thrown back.
Still there’s an intimacy to getting changed next to each other, sharing looks under their eyelashes. There’s little signs of their life together, like the stick tape they now share because they’ve always used the same brand even though they like to tape their sticks in different ways. It sits on Shane’s shelf, and Ilya’s cubby is home to a hoodie Shane knows is only there so he can steal it.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t kiss in the changing room, because when no one is looking Ilya will run a warm hand up his spine and let it rest at the nape of his neck.
Sometimes they’ll catch each other’s eye, and Shane’s smile is so subtle that from the outside no one but Ilya knows the filth he’s imagining.
Most of the time after games they get called in to the media circus together, but on the days they only want one of them, the other will wait out by their car so they can drive home together. Shane likes waiting for Ilya even when it’s cold, because Ilya loves riling up the media and he’s always happy when he’s managed to think of a particularly chaotic statement to unleash on them.
On those days, Ilya will press him against the door of their deeply unsexy SUV and bring his hand to the side of Shane’s throat to kiss him, obscenely slow and lingering. He’ll trail his lips to Shane’s ear and whisper profane fantasies to play out when they get home, and Shane’s mind will stop so completely that Ilya has to be the one behind the wheel.
Bood always leaves the rink late because of physio, and he’ll reliably catcall them across the parking lot any time he catches them.
Even with them both turned on, there’s never any rush when they get home. They’re not meeting in hotel rooms anymore. They’re not so starved of each other that all they want to do the moment the door closes behind them is kiss and kiss and kiss.
They walk the dog and eat dinner and let the heat simmer between them.
When they finally fuck, they have all the time in the world to drag it out, laughing and panting. Ilya can tease him with slow fingers and his open mouth tracing damp kisses down Shane’s chest. Or they can fuck hard and fast, eyes rolling back and sweat slick where their bodies meet.
Either way, they get to shower together after and curl around each other in bed. Sometimes Shane will read with the background noise of Ilya’s sleeping breath and get distracted by the way the light touches the curls of his hair and the strong planes of his face.
He never gets over the novelty that he knows Ilya’s face just as well in the soft light of the bedside lamp as he does in the floodlights of the rink.