Chapter Text
He wants to not know when it started. Wants to be able to pretend he had been unaware of this…habit he’d picked up. Like if it had been unconscious of it, it would absolve him of any blame.
He knew though. And it was so stupid. So. Stupid. Shane tried so hard all the time to not be stupid.
Because he knew how he came across sometimes. When he stuttered or hesitated before replying to a chirp in the locker room, a friendly jibe, an unexpected question. He practiced his replies, the speed he could deliver them, the calmness he could pretend he had, the composure. Knew some people took his hockey singlemindedness to mean that was the only thing he knew or could be smart about.
Sometimes Shane agreed with them. But he still didn’t want to come across as stupid even when he was.
The first thing he had stolen from Rozanov, he had not meant to steal. It was a single dollar note, fallen out of Rozanov’s belongings in the locker room after their photo shoot together. After their shower. After Shane had been explicitly allowed to look.
He had picked it up and opened his mouth to tell Rozanov about it. To give it back. He had pocketed it instead.
He didn’t need the money, obviously. Especially not a single dollar. It wasn’t about that. He didn’t want to think what it was about.
He still hadn’t spent the dollar.
-
Sometimes it wasn’t even technically Rozanov’s belongings Shane stole. Sometimes, after they’d fucked in a hotel room and Shane was putting himself back together in the impersonal hotel bathroom, he would spot one of the wrapped handsoaps, unwrapped on the side of the sink. And it made no sense. Because ultimately that was a gross thing. Dirty hands touched the soap. He didn’t care.
The soaps often came two at a time, so he would unwrap the untouched one and use its wrapper to rewrap the used one so it could go into his pocket and Rozanov wouldn’t notice. Hopefully. He never said anything, so Shane assumed his small acts of thievery had gone unnoticed.
-
He hadn’t meant to keep them. To make it a collection. But the shoe box shoved under his bed, (next to the shoebox full of family and hockey photos, and another box of random memorabilia from his childhood,) had been getting heavier and heavier.
He only stole small things. There were several single cigarettes, bent from being palmed into a pocket and then shoved into a box. A handful of hotel soaps, carefully wrapped in their twins’ paper. A trail of hotel names. The original dollar note. A scrap of paper from Rozanov’s hotel room floor that held a few scrawls of cyrillic that Shane had forbidden himself from even attempting to translate. A lighter, still half full of lighter fluid. A hotel keycard that Rozanov had probably been fined for losing. A ripped wristband from one of the nightclubs Rozanov had visited one night after a game, before coming to Shane’s hotel room and fucking him on the floor because there was only one bed in the room and no spare sheets and Shane didn’t want to sleep in a gross bed. A stick of gum. A couple of coins. Four receipts, so faded from time that they were basically illegible. One of them had been for a bottle of gatorade Rozanov had left the room to go buy him before coming back to fuck him again. A beer bottle cap.
The only items in the box that were any larger were a few pieces of clothing. And they hardly counted as stolen items because Rozanov had told him to wear them. A pair of boxer briefs so that Shane didn’t have to walk to his own hotel without underwear, or while wearing his soaked ones. A shirt for the time Rozanov had accidentally ripped Shane’s while wrestling it off him.
He had stolen the sock though. Sometimes wondered if Rozanov still had its pair or if he’d thrown it out.
-
So. Shane was stupid. He knew that. He knew that what he was doing was stupid, even though it paled in comparison to the stupidity of hooking up with his famous rival (and that also paled even further in comparison to the stupidity of falling in love with said rival).
Being stupid didn’t stop him from doing his best not to come off that way. Didn’t stop him from hoping that no one else knew.
It felt like a safe stupidity. How would anyone know? How would they ever find out? No one else came into Shane’s bedroom. No one had any reason to look in the boxes under his bed. No one would be able to pair the insane collection of items to Ilya Rozanov, or to the infatuation Shane had for him.
-
“Let me see,” Shane said, the moment Rozanov shut the door behind himself in Shane’s Montreal apartment. “No,” he said, as Rozanov moved to push him up against the wall, “let me see it first. I’m not kissing you if it’s fucked.”
Rozanov groaned, threw himself dramatically against the hallway wall opposite Shane and dropped his head back. “You are killing me, Hollander,” he said. His words slightly slurred. His lips looked swollen. “Is no big deal. Even did gargle of mouthwash so you won’t taste blood.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Shane snapped, stepped forwards to close the distance between them again, him pinning Rozanov to the wall this time, one hand firm on Rozanov’s chest.
“Mm,” Rozanov nodded, eyebrows high, eyes amused. “You have tasted me worse. Even kiss me after I eat you.”
“Shut up,” Shane grunted, annoyed to feel his cheeks already heating with a flush. “And open your mouth.”
“Ooh, Hollander,” Rozanov drawled, “You spit in it? Kinky.”
“Shut up,” Shane said again. He could feel his flush washing down over his chest. “Let me see the goddamned damage, Rozanov, because I am not fucking letting you use your mouth on me with an open wound.”
“You love my mouth on you,” Rozanov shot back, but finally complied, opening his mouth and closing his eyes.
The tooth that had been knocked out near the end of last period had seemed to be knocked out clean. A lower back molar. When it had dropped from Rozanov’s mouth Shane had imagined he could hear it dropping onto the ice.
The gum didn’t look bloody, but it did look a little inflamed. He found himself moving, using one hand to grip Rozanov’s chin to hold him in place, and the other to press his thumb in to the side of Rozanov’s mouth to nudge carefully at the edge of his gum.
Rozanov made a muffled noise, his eyes were open again. He closed his mouth around Shane’s thumb, sucked on it hard.
Shane ignored the dizzying rush in his stomach, pulled his thumb from Rozanov’s mouth, stopped him from trying to follow with his hand still on Rozanov’s chin holding him still.
“Okay,” Shane said, “kissing is fine. Carefully. You can’t go down on me though.”
“I will make up for sucking next time,” Rozanov said, his hands were on Shane’s hips, dragging him closer. “Will choke on you before fucking.”
Shane couldn’t bother acting harassed now. Let himself be kissed hard. Kissed back. Let their positions be reversed again as Rozanov pushed him back up against the wall, rucking his shirt up as he did, breaking the kisses only to pull the shirt off.
“Bed,” Rozanov instructed, holding Shane’s shirt in one hand, Shane’s pec in the other. “Maybe I let you ride me.”
“Let me,” Shane scoffed, his legs already taking him to the bed, his hands already working his trousers off. “You’re such a jerk.”
“Mm,” Rozanov sounded smug even as he folded Shane’s shirt in half before dropping it onto a chair. “You like it. You want me to be jerk to you. You want me to jerk you.”
“You’re not clever,” Shane shot back, climbing onto the bed and shuffling up it so he could sit with his legs splayed apart. “And anyway, didn’t your text say you were going to make me come without touching my dick? Y-you had some pretty big claims this morning.”
Rozanov’s grin was wide, despite how it must have hurt a little with the swelling. “Just telling you how it is,” he said, “I know you like plans, yes? And I like breaking plans, a little.”
“Hm,” Shane flexed one thigh and then the other, trying to release some of the tension he could feel building in every muscle of his body. “Sounds like you don’t think you can. Sounds like you over promised.”
“No,” Rozanov shook his head, still grinning widely as he all but stalked to the bed, climbing onto the end and in between Shane’s legs with fluid momentum. “I do not do that. I say I can. And I will. And then, when you are all… soft and wet faced after? I make you come again with my hands. Hm?”
“I don’t think we have time for that,” Shane said. Although he did already feel like all Rozanov was going to need to do was touch him for real and he’d come. They might have time for him to be able to get hard again if he came right now. “When will you learn your lesson? First saying you’d win the game tonight, and then this?”
“Would have won game if your ape did not hit me instead of puck,” Rozanov said, his hands fitting neatly around Shane’s hips and dragging him down the mattress just a bit.
“I am sorry about that,” Shane said, bit down on a gasp of relief as Rozanov ground himself down against him, hard and hot. “He - he - it wasn’t a clean hit. I ch-chewed him out after, and he got a fine.”
“Is fine,” Rozanov said, was bent down over Shane now, face hovering over his. “He thinks he is good, but he knew I would score on him if he did not hit me.”
“Comeau is,” Shane began, and then gave up on the excuses when Rozanov bit at his earlobe, “Fuck.”
“Yes,” Rozanov said, his grin loud in Shane’s ear, “he is a fuck. I fuck you now, so we shut up about ape.”
Shane was okay with that.
-
After - once Rozanov had made Shane come on his cock, and after he had gotten out of bed to get Shane water and made Shane drink it, and after he had pulled Shane - all loose and damp with sweat - back against him, and after he had used both his hands to wrench another orgasm out of him -
After all that, they showered. Sometimes they showered one after each other, but Shane felt like his legs wouldn’t hold him, and his arms didn’t want to let go, so they showered together. Rozanov with hands much more careful and soft than usual, and Shane with his mouth against Rozanov’s neck, leaving marks he knew he shouldn’t.
They dried off and dressed together in near silence, both of them exhausted from the game, the orgasms, and also for Rozanov, the injury.
“Our plane is at five,” Rozanov said, leaning against the wall as he pulled huis shoes on. “In morning. Disgusting time.”
“You get up at five for training all the time,” Shane pointed out. His plane didn’t leave until eleven in the morning.
“Disgusting every time,” Rozanov said firmly, straightened back up. “Okay, Hollander. Next time I see you, mouth will be healed.”
“Better be.”
“Until then you can jerk off to thoughts of me making you come so hard twice tonight that you cry.”
“Shut up,” Shane scoffed. He’d only cried once, and only a little, and it wasn’t really crying. “God. Do you have all your shit?”
He knew for a fact that Rozanov did not have all his shit, because Shane had already spied the tank top Rozanov had been wearing under his shirt, crumpled up underneath the chair. Had already imagined it in his shoebox at home.
“Oh,” Rozanov said, his hand slapping suddenly at the pocket of his jeans, “I almost forget, I have - for you -” he grunted, scrabbling in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a small ziplock plastic bag.
Shane stared at him and the bag. Couldn’t make out what was in it with only the soft light from the lamps.
“What?”
“Is my tooth,” Rozanov grinned, “I saved it for you.”
“What,” Shane repeated, stepping closer so he could see that the vague shape in the bag was indeed Rozanov’s tooth. A little smear of blood drying on the inside of the bag. “The fuck? Why would you -”
“For your collection,” Rozanov shrugged, thrust the bag at Shane’s chest. “Or do you need to take it when I don’t see? Is that rule? I can drop and pretend to forget about. Like my shirt.”
Shane’s whole body was suffused with heat - not like the heat it had been overwhelmed with earlier with Rozanov wringing pleasure out of him - a rolling flush of dread and shame and stupidity.
“Rozanov -” he said, voice cracking and stopping.
“Is okay,” Rozanov said. He hadn’t lowered his hand yet, hadn’t lowered his gaze from Shane’s face.
No one was meant to know. Especially not Rozanov. Especially. Not. Rozanov. How long has he known? Had he seen Shane shucking soap in one of the bathrooms and hiding it in his pocket like an insane creature? Had he laughed about it with other people? Had he left things out on purpose like a game to see if Shane would steal them?
“Hollander,” Rozanov said, his voice not as amused as it had been.
“You have to leave,” Shane said, the only words that came to him. He turned from Rozanov shakily, his shoulder bumping Rozanov's outstretched hand, and he dropped the bag. “I’ll - I’ll get you your shirt. And then. You can go.”
“Hollander, I don’t want my shirt,” Rozanov said, slow, heavy.
Shane stopped mid stride, kept his back to Rozanov. Shame was eating him alive. Was making his hair stand on end. “Then go,” he said. “Just. Just go. Please.”
Nothing. For a long moment, no movement, no words. Then a long exhale from behind Shane, and he heard the rub of shoe on floor, and the door was opening. Footsteps. Door closed. Silence.
He stayed stock still a moment longer, and when he turned to make sure Rozanov was gone, he saw the bag with the tooth in it still on the floor.
He should just throw it out. It was waste. He should throw out the tank too.
He should. But he was stupid. Even when he was ashamed and scared. He wrapped the tooth bag in the tank, and folded them both small in the corner of his luggage. They would both go into the shoebox. The last things to go in.