Chapter 2: Home Ice
The dots went away for nineteen minutes. Ilya knew because he watched every one of them pass on the clock on his stove, standing in his kitchen with his coat still on, like an idiot.
Then the intercom by the side door buzzed.
He had never heard his intercom buzz this late. It was a horrible noise, a flat buzzing bleat. He pressed the button so fast he nearly broke it, and didn't say anything, and didn't need to.
Two minutes later there was a knock on his door. Soft. Twice. The hotel knock.
Shane was standing in the corridor in his navy coat, buttoned to the throat, with a Montreal Metros toque pulled so low over his ears it was practically a disguise. He had his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears, and he looked like a man who had just walked through enemy territory, which, Ilya supposed, he had.
"You texted me your address," Shane said.
"Yes."
"In writing."
"Yes."
"Ilya, what if somebody..."
"Somebody what? Reads my phone? Finds out I know where I live?" He stepped back to let him in. "Come inside before the neighbours see Shane Hollander in a stupid hat. Mrs Castellano on six is a big fan. She would faint."
Shane came inside. Ilya closed the door. He didn't turn the lock twice; he turned it once, like a normal person in his own home, and he saw Shane notice.
Then Shane took off the toque and stood in the middle of the entryway and looked around, slowly, at everything. And Ilya realised with a strange swooping feeling that this was the first time. Six years. Shane had never seen any of it. The coats on hooks, the bench with a pile of hockey tape and a stack of unopened mail. The long open room beyond with the windows full of harbour lights, the grey couch Ilya had bought because it was big enough to lie on full length, the shelves of books in two languages. The kitchen, too clean, because Ilya mostly ordered in. The framed photo on the bookshelf of a dark-haired woman laughing at a camera, which Shane walked straight over to and stopped in front of and didn't touch.
"Is that your mother?"
"Yes."
Shane looked at it a long time. "You have her smile," he said.
Ilya didn't know what to say to that, so he took off his coat.
It was different. He had thought it might be. He hadn't known how much.
In hotel rooms they were fast. They had always been fast. The door would close and Shane would be on him, or he'd be on Shane, and the first time would be up against the wall or on the floor or halfway across the bed, desperate and rough and wordless, as if they had to get it out of their systems before they could talk. Ilya loved that. He had always loved that. But tonight Shane stood in his living room with the harbour behind him and his coat still on, looking at him like he didn't know where to start.
So Ilya started.
He crossed the room and undid the top button of Shane's coat. Then the next one. Shane let him. He stood very still and watched Ilya's hands, and his breath was coming a little quicker by the time Ilya got to the bottom and pushed the coat off his shoulders and let it fall onto the couch.
"Hi," Ilya said.
"Hi," Shane said, and his voice cracked in the middle, and he grabbed Ilya by the front of his sweater and kissed him.
They kissed for a long time standing there in the living room. Ilya had not done that in years, maybe ever. Just kissed him, with no clock running in his head, no flight in the morning, no cleaners in the hallway. Shane's mouth was warm and tasted faintly of the mint he must have chewed in the car, and his hands moved up under Ilya's sweater and spread flat over his ribs, and he made a small, helpless sound when Ilya slid a hand into his hair.
"Bedroom," Ilya said, eventually, against his jaw.
"You have a bedroom."
"I live here, Hollander. Yes. I have a bedroom."
"I didn't..." Shane laughed, a little shaky. "I didn't think about it. That you'd have a bed. That you sleep somewhere."
"Come," Ilya said, and took his hand, and led him there.
His bedroom was dark except for the city through the window, and the bed was unmade, because he had not, in fact, expected company. Shane stood at the foot of it and looked at the rumpled sheets and the second pillow and the book face down on the nightstand, and something in his face went soft and wide open, and Ilya couldn't stand it anymore. He pulled his sweater over his head and dropped it. Then he took hold of Shane's shirt and tugged it up, and Shane lifted his arms without a word, trusting him completely, and Ilya thought he might actually die.
He laid him down in his own bed. That was the part that undid him. Shane Hollander, freckled and flushed and breathing hard, sprawled across Ilya's sheets with his dark hair against Ilya's pillow, looking up at him. Ilya knelt over him and just looked for a long moment, and Shane let him look.
"What?" Shane said finally, embarrassed.
"Nothing. You are in my bed."
"I've been in a lot of your beds."
"Those were not my beds," Ilya said. "Those were Marriott beds."
He went slowly. He wanted to. He worked Shane's belt open and got him out of his jeans and spent a long time with his mouth on Shane's stomach, on the sharp line of his hip, on the inside of his thigh, until Shane was squirming and swearing in two languages and pulling at his hair. When Ilya finally took him in his mouth Shane's whole body arched off the mattress and the sound he made was loud. Not hotel loud. Not muffled into a pillow, or a fist, or Ilya's shoulder. Loud, ragged, unguarded, filling the room.
Ilya pulled off and looked up at him.
"Again," he said.
Shane's face went scarlet. "The neighbours."
"I own this floor. There are no neighbours." He licked a slow stripe up the underside of Shane's cock and watched Shane's head fall back. "Be as loud as you want. Nobody will hear except me."
So Shane was loud. Ilya took him apart slowly, with his mouth and then his fingers, slick and patient, opening him up until Shane was shaking and begging him in a voice Ilya had never heard from him, cracked and desperate and completely shameless. By the time Ilya rolled on a condom and pushed into him, slow, both of them groaning, Shane had his heels dug into the backs of Ilya's thighs and his nails in Ilya's shoulders and his eyes wide open.
"Okay?" Ilya asked, very still, buried in him.
"Don't you dare stop."
He didn't stop. He moved in him slow and deep, and Shane met every thrust, and the bed creaked and the headboard knocked against the wall and neither of them cared. Ilya kissed his throat, his jaw, his open mouth. He pinned one of Shane's wrists to the mattress, gently, and laced their fingers together, and Shane squeezed back hard. The city glittered behind the window. There was no lock turned twice, no curtains drawn tight, no flight in the morning. There was just this, and Shane gasping his name over and over like a prayer, and Ilya's whole chest aching with how much he wanted to keep him.
When Shane came, he came with Ilya's hand wrapped around him and his eyes on Ilya's face, and he didn't look away. He always looked away. He always turned his face into the pillow at the last second, hid it, like it was the one thing he could still keep back. Tonight he held Ilya's gaze and came apart right there with his mouth open and his eyes wet, and it was the most beautiful thing Ilya had ever seen.
He followed him over a moment later with his face pressed into Shane's neck and Shane's arms locked around him, shaking.
Afterward, they lay tangled in his sheets in the dark. Shane was heavy on his chest, breathing slow, fingers tracing idle patterns through the hair on Ilya's stomach. Ilya was staring at his own ceiling and thinking that he had never once in his life been this happy in this room.
"I like it here," Shane said quietly.
"Yes?"
"Yeah. It smells like you. All of it." He was quiet for a bit. "I always wondered what your place looked like. I used to imagine it. In hotel rooms. After you left."
Ilya's throat went tight. "What did you imagine?"
"I don't know. Somewhere colder. Emptier. Like a... like a bachelor pad. Leather couch. Lots of mirrors." Shane laughed into his skin. "Not books. Not your mom."
Ilya ran his fingers through Shane's hair. He thought about Svetlana, and the empty Christmas, and the letter sitting on his kitchen counter under the hockey tape that he had read eleven times.
"Shane," he said. "I need to tell you something."
Shane went still against him. He lifted his head. In the city light his eyes were very dark, and already a little scared.
"Okay," he said.
"My contract is up in July. Boston wants to re-sign me. They made an offer." Ilya took a breath. "So did Ottawa."
The silence went on a long time.
"Ottawa," Shane said finally, very carefully, like it was a word in a language he didn't speak.
"Yes."
"Ottawa is..." Shane swallowed. "Ottawa is two hours from Montreal."
"Two hours and ten minutes," Ilya said. "I checked. In good traffic." He made himself hold Shane's eyes. "I'm going to sign it, Shane. I'm going to say yes."