includes : angst, shouting, arguments, misunderstandings, doctor!reader for charles
Lando Norris
Lando never really had the best track record when it came to taking criticism or being under pressure. As soon as he heard something negative, he’d immediately put up walls to protect his ego. It came out as defensiveness, words thrown faster than he could think. He was always too prideful to step back yet too overwhelmed to admit he might be wrong. It was no different when it came to your relationship.
It had been hours of going back and forth, voices raised, patience worn thin, the crux of it being his absence. Missed dates, shorter replies, the growing distance between you, all of which you tried to gently bring up. With the championship fight and the expectations everybody had, you understood that the pressure he was under was eating away at him. Maybe that’s why he snapped so easily, why every word from you felt like another reminder that he wasn’t doing enough. Not only was he failing as a driver, but as a boyfriend too—and Lando hated failing. So he fought it the only way he knew how.
“Fuck! I swear Magui was never this much of a headache.”
“Maybe you should go back to her then!”
“Maybe I will!”
Lando’s chest rose and fell quickly, adrenaline still buzzing beneath his skin, the argument echoing in his ears—but something shifted when you didn’t respond. His brows furrowed, the anger still lingering as he looked at you expectantly, waiting for you to yell, to scream, to say anything at all. Not because it was something you would do, but because it was what he was used to—what fights had always been like with Magui. Loud, messy, volatile. They’d shout until their voices gave out, throw words they didn’t mean just to see who would break first, only to come back hours later and pretend none of it had mattered. It was easier that way—easier to fall back into each other than to confront what had actually gone wrong. But this was nothing like that.
And as he looked at you now, tears quietly gathered in your eyes, standing there without raising your voice, without fighting back, he realized—he crossed a line—a line he didn’t know how to come back from.
Your lips parted slightly, like you were about to say something, but nothing came out. Just a quiet, shaky breath as your gaze dropped to the floor, like you were trying to hold yourself together in front of him. And just like that, the anger drained out of him all at once. In its place was immense guilt mixed in a flurry of panic.
“Hey…” he called out, voice a stark contrast from just a second ago as his hands hovered over you unsure. His heart beat more frantically with each second that passed. As a soft sob tumbled out of your lips, he felt his stomach twist.
“Hey—no, I didn’t—I didn’t mean that, okay? That was just—I was mad. I didn’t mean it like that. I just—I said it to get a reaction, alright? I wasn’t actually—”
“Considering it?” you finished for him, your expression tightening. You weren’t too sure what hurt more—being compared to his ex, or how easily her name had come up as an option, like it was an easier choice than staying. It sat wrong in your stomach. “You can’t just say things like that, Lando…”
“I was pissed!” he snapped, frustration creeping back in—not at you this time, but at himself, at the situation, at how badly he’d handled everything. “You kept going on about me not being there, like I don’t already know that!”
“Do you think I enjoy begging for your love like it’s something I have to earn? I’m telling you this because I care about us, because I wanted to fix it. But if loving you means being compared to someone else—like you’d run back to her the second I fall short…then maybe this isn’t something worth fixing at all.”
And just like that, his blood turned ice cold, body frozen while you hurry past him into your shared bedroom.
He frantically reaches for you, but you quickly slip from his hold, “I don’t want her. I don’t—(Y/N)!”
You shut the door with a loud bang, and the silence after draped over the room like a velvet curtain, muffling even the faintest whispers. As he stood alone in the quiet, he realized how badly he’d fucked up this time, running a hand through his dark curls.
Oscar Piastri
The McLaren driver was known for his calm, almost unshakable composure on and off track. Even under immense pressure, he never rushed into reaction, choosing instead to pause for a moment and think, to understand before he spoke. It was one of the things you loved most about him, with arguments typically consisting of calm understanding instead of venomous words spilled in the moment.
But like fetid gasoline feeding a fire already out of control, that same stillness could be maddening. Especially now, as you paced the living room, while he simply watched as if this were just another problem for him to solve.
The media had been getting to you lately. Their constant claims that your absence from the paddock meant you didn’t care enough about your boyfriend’s career grew harder to ignore. But the truth was, it was his decision to keep you away from that part of his life—far from the paparazzi, far from the drama. He said it was safer this way, told you to ignore it, that it was all just noise. But it was easier said than done. And with each passing day, the comments only grew louder—more speculative and more absurd than the last, with your want to join him in his upcoming race growing along with it.
“Please, Oscar. I’ll stay low, try not to get too much attention. You won’t even know I’m there,” you begged for what was the nth time that night.
“No, that’s literally impossible. I don’t want you to get mauled by a bunch of people with cameras. End of discussion,” he said with a tone of finality to his words.
Your jaw tightened, a bitter laugh escaping you. “So how long do you expect me to sit here, Oscar? I don’t want our relationship to be some secret you’re trying to hide—Like I’m something you’re ashamed of.”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His eyes had squeezed shut for a brief second, as if he could will the tension away.
“You’re making this into something it’s not,” he replied, trying to keep his voice low and controlled. “Trust me, I’m only trying to make things easier.”
Oscar wasn’t too keen on the idea of people prying into his life more than they already do, and even more so on his relationship. You had reassured him countless times that you understood it came with loving him, that you were prepared for the attention, the questions, the constant curiosity. You told him you could handle it. But no matter how many times you said it, it never quite sat right with him. He knew how invasive they could be, how quickly curiosity could turn into scrutiny, and keeping you as far from it as possible was his way of protecting you from everything that came with dating him. Even if it meant keeping you at a distance.
“Easier for who?” you shot back, hands gesturing wildly through the air. “Because it’s definitely not easy for me. I’m the one dealing with it—every comment, every assumption. I’m the one being told I don’t care about you when I’m literally asking to be there!"
“I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. I’m doing this for you,” he muttered, almost to himself. He took a deep breath, letting out a laboured sigh. His control had frayed and for a second, Oscar lost his composure. And before he could stop his tongue, it slipped.
“God, this was never a problem with Lily...” A beat of hush fell over the room, so thick it was suffocating for both of you. You stared at him in disbelief as all the fight in you dissolved in an instant.
“…What?” you whispered, his words hitting harder than anything he’d said so far. You weren’t a stranger to the name. It was his ex, the one fans never failed to compare you to. The mystery beauty that complimented his silence, the perfect engineer girlfriend to the racing driver boyfriend. You’d spent so long trying not to let it get to you, brushing off the comments, the comparisons, the way people spoke about her like she was something you were meant to measure up to. But hearing it from him was a type of hurt not even the criticism of a thousand fans could measure up to.
His head lifted slightly, like he hadn’t quite registered what he’d said at first—like the realization came a second too late. But it did come. And by then, it was already too late. And he can’t help but feel a tug on his heart as you take a step back from him, the small distance between you now feeling like a chasm. He stood up, arms lifting slightly—not enough to reach for you, not enough to touch—but hovering there, uncertain, like one wrong move might push you even further away.
“I didn’t mean tha—”
“Then what did you mean?” you asked, your voice breaking despite your best effort. “Because it sounds like I’m too much for you. Like caring about you, wanting to be part of your life, is somehow… inconvenient.”
What he once tried to keep as a civil discussion has now quickly turned into a landmine with just a moment of miscalculation. He opens his mouth but immediately stops himself, fearing that he may say that wrong thing again. But that silence, that hesitation, was possibly worse, for it was an empty space your mind filled in for yourself. Your laugh came out hollow, shaking your head as you wrapped your arms around yourself, trying to give yourself a semblance of comfort.
“Right. I think I get it now,” you murmured, glassy eyes drifting to the hardwood floor, unable to meet his gaze. But he so desperately wanted you to—because in the moments where he didn’t know what to do, you always did. You always knew what to say, how to move forward, how to steady him when everything felt like it was slipping through his fingers. That was what he loved about you, how you wordlessly took control when he couldn’t anymore. And now, as he stood there searching for something—anything—to fix what he’d just broken, you stayed quiet.
“I know you don’t want the media involved. But that’s your life… and I’ve made peace with the fact that it comes with you.” You paused, biting your lip as a stray tear fell down by the apples of your cheek. “I want to love you loudly, Oscar. I want the whole world to know just how happy you make me. But I won't stand here and be compared to someone just because I love you differently than she did.”
You didn’t look at him, didn’t offer a single word to soften the blow. You just stood there, quiet, distant, like you had already taken a step back from him in a way he couldn’t follow. Oscar opened his mouth, the words sitting right there—an apology, an explanation, anything that could pull you back—but nothing came out.
Before he could speak, you quietly turned and walked back to the bedroom. As you shut the door behind you, the soft click of the lock echoed far louder than any slam ever could. And on the other side, Oscar stood there, staring at the closed door as the weight of everything settled in all at once, mind already clamoring on how to fix this.
Max Verstappen
Max wasn’t the type to sugarcoat things. Where others softened their words or thought things through twice—Max said it as it was. He was honest and direct, sometimes too direct. But in times of thoughtless anger, that same honesty could easily be formed into sharp daggers, callous to how deep it may cut or whom it may hit. And you were no exception.
“You’re not listening to me,” you snapped, frustration finally spilling over.
“I am listening,” Max shot back immediately, tone sharp. “You’re just repeating the same thing over and over again!”
“Because you’re not getting it!”
“No, I don’t!” he said, exhaling harshly. “Schatje, it’s one dinner. There’s gonna be a bunch more.”
“It's dinner with my family, Max. You know how long they’ve been waiting to meet you. And with your impossible schedule, it’s probably going to be another year before you can fit them in,” you argued.
You’d planned this dinner months ago, carefully working around his race calendar, shifting dates, doing everything you could just to make sure he could be there. It was the first time your family would finally meet him—something they’d been asking about for far too long—and despite how unpredictable his schedule was, he’d promised he’d try. And for a while, you let yourself believe that this time he actually would.
He rolled his eyes, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “You’re acting like I’m never going to meet them. It’s a race weekend and right now I just want to rest. You know how this works.”
“And you knew about this dinner,” you countered immediately, no plans of backing down.
With that, the last thread of his patience finally snapped, frustration spilling over before he could stop it. Max felt it instantly—the rush of adrenaline, the narrowing of focus, everything else fading into the background. It was the same clarity he had on track, when instinct took over and hesitation meant losing. And right now, that instinct didn’t know the difference between racing and you.
“God, why does everything have to be such a big deal with you?” he screamed, his hands flailing through the air as if it would help him make his point. “I swear Kelly never made any of this complicated.”
Your voice went quiet, stopping dead in your tracks the moment you heard her name. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
You knew exactly what he meant. She was the daughter of a former Formula 1 World Champion—someone who grew up around this world, who understood the sacrifices without needing them explained. She fit into it seamlessly.
But that didn’t mean you hadn’t been trying. Max knew that. He saw it every time you brushed off his cancellations, never complained, told your family he was “just busy,” reshaped your plans around him and stayed by his side even when it felt like there was no place for you in his ever-changing schedule. And yet here he was, reducing all of that to “complicated”.
“All I’m saying is she was never so fucking needy. Even with a kid, I didn’t have to keep choosing between everything and her. She didn’t make everything into a problem but with you there’s always something. I’m already under pressure, I don’t need more of it when I come home.”
With every word that left his lips, it felt like another cut carved into your already broken heart, until finally—
“Well now you don’t have to.”
And just like that, the battle was over with neither of you emerging as the winner. Max looked at you, still heaving, and for the first time since it started, he was at a loss for words. Only the quiet realization of what had just been lost in the heat of trying to win. Through blurred vision, you grabbed your bag and made your way to the door, making sure to slam it on your way out.
Max blinked once, like he hadn’t fully processed what you’d said. It was like watching a crash. A battle of instinct and pride, of words thrown too fast and too hard, until one of you finally spun off track. And now there was only the wreckage. Not of a race, but of something far harder to fix.
“Fuck... godverdomme” he mumbled, sitting down on the couch with his head in his hands.
Charles Leclerc
Charles had never been good at keeping the people he loved at a distance. He liked having them close where he could see them, reach for them, know they were there. So being with someone whose schedule was as flexible as plywood quickly became the root of many of your problems.
You had built your life long before him. Years of relentless studying, sleepless nights, and exhausting shifts had led you to the life you lived now—standing in hospital halls at ungodly hours, tending to people at their most fragile, putting their lives before your own.
You weren’t about to let that go. Not for anyone. Not even him.
“I’m sorry, mon amour,” you murmured softly, already tired from the day you just had and the fight draining whatever strength you had left. You stared up at him as you rubbed circles onto the temple of your head, trying to relieve the building headache. “I really can’t come to this one. I have—”
“Another patient, another shift, I know,” Charles cut in, his voice softer than yours—but edged with something you couldn’t quite ignore. “It’s always something.”
You paused, the words catching in your throat.
“It’s not just something, Charles, it’s my job.”
“I know that. I’m not saying it’s not important, I just—” He exhaled, the sound heavy like it was a weight he'd been carrying for too long “I just thought maybe this time you could try. It’s been weeks since you’ve come to one.”
Guilt flickered in your chest. It gutted you how you couldn't be there for him like either of you wanted to, instead forced to support the Monegasque from miles away. “And trust me, I really want to be there. But people need me—”
“And I don’t?” The words came out sharper than he intended, and he winced almost immediately after.
He knew it was selfish of him to think that. He absolutely adored what you did—how passionate you were, how you gave so much of yourself to people who needed it most. He wasn’t a stranger to sacrifice, but what you did was something else entirely. Selfless in a way he could never quite put into words. Never for the money. Never for the recognition you deserved. Just there to help.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he added quickly, softer now. “I know what you do matters, I’ve always known that.”
Silence lingered between the two of you, heavier now.
“I’m just…not used to this” he exhaled, the sound tired, conflicted. “With Alex, I didn’t have to ask this much before.”
Your breath hitched, just barely, like your body reacted before your mind could catch up.
“With Alex…” You repeated it softly, like you were testing how it sounded out loud. Like maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much the second time. But no matter how many times you repeated it in your head, it did.
Alexandrea Saint Mleux, art history graduate, influencer, fashion icon and Charles’ ex. The woman who was almost always photographed beside Charles back when they were dating. She was there for the races, the events, the cameras—always just a step behind him. Which meant that when she left, there was a space beside him that sat empty. He told you that your love and support was enough, that it made every second with you even more special. But standing here now, hearing her name fall so easily from his lips, it didn’t feel like enough.
“I see.”
“Hey—no, that’s not what I meant,” Charles rushed out immediately, the shift in your tone making him realize how much he’d underestimated his words. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just—”
“No, it’s okay. I understand.” you cut in gently.
Not angry. Not loud. And somehow, that made it worse. Charles faltered, his words catching in his throat as he watched you. The way your shoulders had gone still, the way your voice had softened into something distant, and how your already tired figure seemed to deflate even more because of him.
“I can’t be there the way she was. I can’t just drop everything and follow you around the world, and I won’t pretend that I can,” your voice remained steady despite the glassy sheen in your eyes. “And I’m not going to apologize for having a life outside of you. For having something that matters to me just as much as racing does to you. But I’ve been trying. Trying to show up when I can, trying to make time, trying to be there in the ways that I’m able to.”
Your lips pressed together.
“But I’m not her. And I shouldn’t have to feel like that makes me less… like I’m not enough for you.”
“You are enough. You’ve always been enough, I swear—” he said quickly, stepping closer now, panic starting to seep into his voice before you cut him off.
“But it doesn’t feel like it. Not to you, not to me…” you whispered.
“Mon amour…” he murmured, his voice breaking in a way it rarely did. He reached for you, hesitating just before his hand could touch you.
“I’m going out for a bit. I think…we need some time to think about where this is going.” You stood up and grabbed your coat by the rack, slipping it on with slightly trembling fingers as you adjusted the fabric, avoiding his gaze.
Your hand hovered over the door handle for a second, hope flickering in his chest that maybe you'd turn back around. But that was quickly extinguished as you walked out the door, the click echoing far louder than it should have. And when it shut behind you, it left Charles standing there, staring at the space you once filled.
Carlos Sainz
It was no secret that the Spaniard was one of if not the most attractive man on the grid. Dark tousled hair that always just fell in that perfect way, brown eyes that could leave you mesmerized if you stared too long, and a body that looks like it was chiseled by God himself.
Ever since you started dating a few months ago, you watched as women threw themselves at Carlos, fawning and sometimes blatantly flirting with him as you walked by his side in the paddock.
You tried not to let it bother you, knowing where his heart truly lay. It was through small gestures—like how his hand would instinctively find yours or the way his gaze would always drift back to you no matter who stood in front of him—that helped eased your worries. It was enough reassurance in a world that constantly tried to pull his attention elsewhere.
But today was just different. The fans were more…handsy. And so, throughout the day, you found yourself holding his hand a bit tighter or pressing up against him a bit more. It all came into a boiling point once you got back into the comfort of your hotel.
“Mi amor, is everything okay? You’ve been distant all day.” His warmth envelops you as he hugs you from behind, his touch bringing a sense of comfort to your inner turmoil.
You let out a quiet breath, arms crossing over your chest as you leaned back against him, the weight of everything finally settling in now that it was just the two of you.
“It’s nothing, Carlos…” you murmured.
He frowned slightly, resting his head on top of yours. “It’s clearly something if it’s troubling you this much, Cariño.”
You bit your lip in embarrassment, knowing it sounded small when you tried to say it out loud. Some may say petty even. But this wasn’t small to you, and you didn’t want to pretend it didn’t loom over your shoulder every time you went out.
“It’s just… Earlier with the fans...” you trailed off, fingers tightening slightly against your arms as you searched for the right words.
Carlos stilled behind you for a moment, a sudden spike of worry hitting him. “What about them?”
Had someone said something to you while he wasn’t listening? Gotten too close when his back was turned? Touched you when he wasn’t there to stop it? A long list of worst case scenarios started to form in his head as you took your precious time thinking of your next words.
You hesitated, your gaze dropping to the floor. “The way they were acting. The way they kept touching you…” you swallowed. “It just felt a little too much.”
He let out a quiet breath of relief, the tension in his shoulders easing as he nuzzled into the crook of your neck, his touch gentle, grounding. “Amor… they’re just fans,” he murmured. “They get excited. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know,” you nodded quickly, almost too quickly. “And I’m trying to get used to it. I just don’t like the thought of other women practically fondling my boyfriend in front of me, you know?”
He hummed in agreement, holding you tighter and listening attentively as you poured your heart to him. He was neither trying to disregard your feelings nor defend their actions. Having to watch women swoon over your lover every day was no easy sight, and if he were in your shoes, he definitely wouldn’t be as kind nor patient as you are now.
“I’m not asking you to push them away,” you said softly, turning slightly in his hold, just enough to glance up at him. “I’m just asking for some sort of boundary”
“I understand. I’m sorry,” he murmured softly. “Becca never really had a problem with it, and I assumed you wouldn’t either.” His voice was gentle, no hint of malice in sight—but the words themselves didn’t carry the same warmth. Your hands gently pushed against his chest, the way your body went stiff in his hold not going unnoticed.
“Becca?” you whispered, your face unable to hide the faint pang of hurt at the mention of her name.
You’d never admit it, but you had always envied how easily she seemed to handle it all—the attention, the fans, the constant eyes on him. She had looked so secure, so sure of herself, so certain of her place beside him, like she belonged there without ever having to question it. And you… you weren’t. Not in the same way.
You couldn’t quite shake the thought that he could find someone better—someone prettier, someone who fit into his world without hesitation, someone who didn’t have to learn how to stand beside him. So hearing her name now didn’t just sting, it was a quiet confirmation of something you had been trying so hard not to believe.
“I see…” you mumbled, your throat suddenly feeling dry. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was asking for that much.”
His brows furrowed in confusion as he gently pulled back, just enough to get a better look at you. And despite how you tried to hide it, he didn’t miss the slight gloss in your eyes, the way your lashes clung together as the tears began to gather.
Panic set in almost instantly.
“Hey—no, no, no,” he murmured, his hands coming up to cup your face, thumbs brushing away the tears that had already begun to fall. “Mi vida, what are you talking about?”
But you only shook your head faintly, your hands coming up to wrap around his wrists—not to pull him closer, but to still them. The worst part was that the poor man had no idea what he’d said to make you so upset. Because while the name might have meant absolutely nothing to him, it meant everything to you.
Before he could pry any further, you quickly slipped away to your shared room, head hung low as your palm muffled the small sobs that escaped. Now he was left alone standing in the living room utterly confused.
an: Gosh dang this took me a while to make. As always, hope you guys liked it! Would love to hear your thoughts, whatever it might be. Toodles <3
Summary: Max always thought you never asked for much because you didn’t need much, low-maintenance to a fault, until he finally overhears the truth.
4.4k words / Masterlist
Max had always appreciated how easy you were to love.
You didn’t demand. You didn’t sulk over missed dates. There were no passive-aggressive comments about him not posting you enough or forgetting to text back when a race weekend swallowed him whole. You never made him feel guilty for the parts of his life that were already complicated. When he was travelling or exhausted, you simply kissed his forehead and told him to rest. When his schedule changed last minute, you never got upset, never made him sit through a tense silence or apologise for the same thing five different ways, you just shrugged with that soft little smile of yours and said, “We’ll figure it out.”
You weren’t just low-maintenance, you were selfless, unshakeably chill in a way that made loving you feel almost effortless. You understood the pressure, the travel, the media, the endless demands on his time, and you never tried to add yourself to the list of things he needed to manage.
You made room for his life before he even had to ask. You bent around the complicated edges of his world so naturally that, after a while, Max stopped noticing how much you were bending at all.
It was refreshing. Comforting, even. Being with you never felt like another obligation waiting for him when he got home. You were warmth, quiet, peace… but it also made it easy for Max to coast.
Because when you said you didn’t need flowers, he believed you. When you told him birthdays weren’t a big deal, he took your word for it.
When you said you didn’t mind that his attention was always half-distracted by Red Bull, his sim rig, his phone, or whatever new team crisis was unfolding in the background, he didn’t stop to wonder whether you meant it. He didn’t ask himself if you were genuinely fine with being loved in the gaps, or if you had simply learned to make your wants small enough that they never became inconvenient.
He didn’t notice that every time you said, “Don’t worry about it,” you were teaching him that he didn’t have to.
Until he saw the way your smile dimmed at Daniel’s girlfriend’s birthday party.
The boat was filled with champagne and noise, a private Monaco affair organised by Daniel, of course, because no one else could make a birthday party feel quite that excessive and still somehow charming. There was a neon sign glowing above the bar, a curated playlist that seemed suspiciously full of songs Daniel liked more than his girlfriend did, and custom cupcakes with everyone’s faces printed on them. Max didn’t even know you could do that.
You sat beside him with a drink in hand, your shoulder brushing his every now and then as the boat rocked gently against the water. To anyone else you looked perfectly fine, but Max had started paying closer attention now.
Your laugh came half a second too late, your smile faded too quickly, and your eyes kept drifting back to the couple across the deck.
Daniel’s girlfriend had her arms slung around his neck, his jacket draped over her shoulders, and a glittery tiara with Birthday Girl written across the front sitting slightly crooked on her head. Daniel kept adjusting it for her, grinning every time she swatted his hand away, and when she leaned into him, he kissed her temple without seeming to think about it. Thoughtless in the best way, like loving her out loud was simply instinct.
“You made it!” Daniel said, pulling Max into a hug before turning to you with even more enthusiasm. “And you look amazing. Seriously, come on, look at you.”
You laughed, a bit surprised, and looked down at yourself like you hadn’t expected anyone to notice.
Max noticed that.
Daniel’s girlfriend came over next, glowing, happy, adored. She hugged you tightly and thanked you both for coming, then turned to show you the bracelet Daniel had bought her. It was delicate and expensive, the kind of jewellery Max would never have picked out on his own because he would have convinced himself he didn’t know what he was doing and given up before trying.
“He surprised me with it this morning,” she said, beaming. “And he pretended he forgot my birthday for, like, ten minutes, which was evil, but then he had breakfast set up on the balcony.”
Daniel, overhearing, lifted his glass. “Romance is alive and well ladies and gentlemen.”
Normal Daniel. Loud, teasing, affectionate Daniel, who made a spectacle out of caring because he had never been embarrassed by warmth in the same way Max sometimes was, but then Max looked at you.
You were smiling. Of course you were smiling.
You were always polite. Always kind. Always good at being happy for other people, even when something inside you was quietly aching. There was something different about it then, something Max had never noticed before because he had never had reason to look for it.
Your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes.
You didn’t look devastated, you didn’t withdraw your hand from his arm or go quiet in a way anyone else would pick up on. You just looked at the bracelet on Daniel’s girlfriend’s wrist, then at the flowers, then at the wall of photos, and for half a second your expression morphed into something almost wistful.
Max felt it like a punch he had no right to react to.
The conversation moved on around him. Daniel was talking about the cake, someone else was laughing about how long it had taken to get the decorations right. His girlfriend was telling you how Daniel had been secretly planning it for weeks, badly, apparently, because he almost exposed himself several times.
You laughed at the story.
You said, “That’s really sweet.”
Max heard the softness in your voice.
For the first time all night, Max looked at the party properly. He looked at the flowers. The photos. The custom menu cards with her name on them. The cake Daniel had apparently taste-tested three times because the first one “didn’t feel like her.”
Then Max looked at you.
You were standing beside him with nothing from him except your own practiced understanding.
No flowers.
No post.
No planned birthday dinner he hadn’t rescheduled.
No little public signs that he was proud to love you.
No evidence, really, that Max Verstappen had ever looked at the woman beside him and thought, she deserves to feel chosen.
His stomach twisted, because suddenly he remembered your last birthday with a clarity that made him feel slightly sick.
He had been in Milton Keynes for simulator work. He’d called you late, later than he meant to, and you had answered in bed, face lit softly by your phone screen. You had smiled like you were happy just to hear from him. He had apologised again for not being able to be there. You had said it didn’t matter and he had promised to make it up to you. You had said, “Don’t stress, honestly. I had a nice day.”
Had you?
Had you really?
Or had you said that because it was easier than admitting you had wanted him there?
He thought about the flowers you always claimed not to need. The birthdays you said weren’t important. The dates you never demanded. The posts you never asked for. The attention you pretended not to miss.
Beside him, you glanced up. “You okay?”
Max blinked, pulled out of his thoughts by the gentleness of your voice. That made it worse somehow, even now you were checking on him.
“Yeah,” he said, too quickly. “Fine.”
You studied him for a moment, clearly not convinced, but you didn’t push. You never pushed. You simply nodded and looked back towards the others, your shoulder brushing lightly against his sleeve.
Max hated that too. He hated that you gave him space even when maybe he deserved pressure.
He hated that you had made yourself so easy to keep that he had forgotten keeping you was still something he had to actively do.
For the rest of the night, he couldn’t stop watching you.
He watched Daniel’s girlfriend pull you into photos, watched you laugh as someone handed you a party hat you refused to wear for about ten seconds. He watched you compliment the decorations, watched you ask questions about the planning, watched your fingers lightly brush over one of the flower arrangements when you thought no one was looking.
You liked flowers.
Of course you liked flowers.
Maybe not in the over-the-top, expensive, social-media way, but you liked them. He could tell by the way you touched the petals carefully, the way your face warmed when Daniel’s girlfriend told you Daniel had chosen them because they reminded him of a dress she once wore in Monaco.
Max stood there, silent and increasingly irritated with himself.
How many things had you convinced yourself you didn’t need simply because he had never offered them?
How many wants had you softened into jokes so they wouldn’t feel like demands?
How many times had you made yourself smaller around his life and called it love?
Later, when everyone gathered around the cake, Daniel made a speech. A terrible speech, because it was Daniel, so half of it was jokes and the other half was him pretending not to get emotional. Then he spoke about how his girlfriend made his life better. How she put up with him. How she deserved more than one night of being celebrated, but he hoped this was a decent start.
Everyone laughed.
His girlfriend cried.
You smiled.
Max felt like the worst boyfriend in the world.
He complimented you in private, usually quietly, usually after you’d done something for him. He told you he loved you, yes, but often in bed, or before hanging up, or in passing when one of you was leaving. He assumed you knew. He assumed choosing you privately counted the same as making you feel chosen.
On the drive home you were quieter than usual.
Your head rested against the window, city lights sliding over your face in brief flashes. Your heels were in your lap because you had taken them off the second you got in the car, and your fingers played absently with the strap like your mind was somewhere else.
Max kept glancing over. Usually he liked quiet with you, it was comfortable and easy, you didn’t need to fill every silence.
Tonight the quiet felt full of everything you weren’t saying.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked eventually.
You turned your head, smiling faintly. “Yeah. It was lovely.”
Lovely.
The word sat between you.
Max swallowed. “Daniel did a lot.”
“He did,” you said, and your voice was warm. “It was really sweet.”
There it was again. That careful admiration.
Max’s hands flexed around the steering wheel. “You like that kind of thing?”
You looked at him properly then, brows lifting a little. “What kind of thing?”
He shrugged, trying to sound casual and failing. “All of it. The flowers. The photos. The big party.”
You looked away and gave a small laugh, the kind that tried to make a truth sound harmless. “I mean, I don’t need all that.”
Max’s chest tightened.
That wasn’t what he had asked.
“I didn’t ask if you needed it.”
Your fingers stopped moving against the shoe strap and for a moment you said nothing. Then you looked down and smiled again, but this one was worse than the one at the party because it was meant only for him, meant to reassure him, meant to protect him from feeling bad about something he had already done.
“I just think it’s nice,” you said carefully. “For her. Daniel clearly put a lot of thought into it.”
Max nodded once, jaw tense.
Thought.
That was the word that stayed with him.
You didn’t need a private room full of flowers or a custom cake or a wall of photographs. You probably didn’t even want something that big, but you wanted thought. You wanted evidence that he had paused, considered you, and chosen to make you feel loved on purpose.
Max, who could analyse tyre degradation over fifty laps, who could remember tiny setup changes from races years ago, who could spend hours perfecting a sim lap by half a tenth, had somehow convinced himself he was incapable of remembering to buy you flowers.
“I should have done more for your birthday,” he said.
You went very still.
The car felt smaller suddenly.
“Max…”
“No,” he said, because he knew that tone. He knew you were about to let him off the hook again. “I should have.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
You exhaled quietly and looked out of the window again. “I told you it was fine.”
“I know you did.”
“Then why are you bringing it up?”
Because I finally saw your face, he wanted to say. Because I finally realised you have been asking for so little that I stopped giving you even that and I do not know how to forgive myself for not noticing sooner.
But Max had never been good with words when they mattered most.
So he said, “Because I think you say things are fine when they're not.”
Your mouth pressed together. That tiny movement cut through him more than any argument would have.
You weren’t angry, but part of him wished you were. Anger would have given him something to meet, something to fix, something loud enough that he couldn’t ignore it, you just looked tired and that was worse.
“I don’t want to be difficult,” you said after a while.
“You're not difficult,” he said immediately.
You gave him a small, sad smile. “I know. I just mean… your life is already a lot. You have so many people needing things from you all the time I never wanted to be another thing on the list.”
“You are not a thing on the list.”
“Aren’t I?” you asked softly.
Max didn’t answer fast enough, once again words failed him, he hated himself for that.
You turned your face back towards the window, and the reflection showed him the truth he had been avoiding all night. You weren’t crying or making a scene. You weren’t asking him to turn the car around or apologise in some grand dramatic way. You were simply sitting there beside him carrying a hurt that had clearly existed long before tonight.
He figured you’d be home from your errands by now.
Probably curled up somewhere in the apartment, wearing one of his hoodies like you always did when he was away for more than a few days. Maybe on the sofa with your knees tucked beneath you, scrolling mindlessly through your phone, or half-watching one of those comfort shows you liked to put on in the background while you waited for him. The thought came easily, warmly, and Max found himself smiling before he had even opened the door properly.
He liked coming home to you.
He liked the small signs of you scattered through his space. Your shoes by the door, your hair tie abandoned on the coffee table, your mug in the sink because you always forgot to rinse it. Your presence had softened the apartment in ways he hadn’t realised he needed, turning it from somewhere he slept between races into somewhere that actually felt like home.
The apartment was quiet when he stepped inside, but not empty.
Max kicked off his shoes and shrugged out of his jacket, already turning toward the living room when he heard your voice from the bedroom. Then he heard your best friend’s name, and realised you were on the phone.
He didn’t mean to eavesdrop. He was about to call out, to let you know he was back, but something about your tone made him stop before the words left his mouth. So he stayed quiet, halfway down the hall, one hand still resting against the wall.
“I’m not upset he did all that for her,” you were saying. “It’s sweet. It is.”
There was a pause.
Max’s body went strangely still.
He knew, instantly, what you were talking about.
“It’s just…” You exhaled shakily. “He’s never done anything like that for me.”
The words hit him hard. Max stared at the floor, heartbeat slowing into something heavy and uncomfortable.
“I don’t ask for much,” you continued, and your voice was smaller now, like you were embarrassed to even say it out loud. “I know I don’t. I never wanted to pressure him or make him feel like he had to go out of his way when his life is already so much. I thought if I was easygoing and low-maintenance, it would make things easier on him.”
His throat tightened.
“But sometimes—” Your voice broke so softly he almost missed it. “Sometimes I wish he’d do something without me having to ask.”
Max’s fingers curled around the edge of the wall.
He could feel every careless assumption he had ever made beginning to turn over in his head, one after another, each one worse than the last.
You didn’t care if he forgot plans, if he came home distracted, if he said he would make it up to you and then didn’t, because something else came up and you smiled like it was fine.
“Maybe I enabled it by alway saying I was fine... but I don’t need grand gestures,” you went on, voice wobbling now. “I know that’s not really him, and I don’t want him to be anyone else. I don’t want a big show just for the sake of it, but it would be nice to feel special sometimes… to feel like he thought about me without me having to ask.”
Max’s chest ached.
He looked toward the bedroom door, but he couldn’t move.
“I just want to know he wants to do those things for me,” you whispered. “Not because he’s apologising or because someone else did it first… because he loves me enough to notice.”
Max couldn’t breathe properly.
He hadn’t known.
He really hadn’t known.
He thought you meant it when you said you didn’t care about birthdays, anniversaries, flowers, or all the romantic things he had always been bad at. He had thought that was part of what made you you. Unbothered by the kind of performative relationship stuff he had never known how to do properly.
The conversation ended a few minutes later.
He heard the soft rustle of sheets then your footsteps moving across the bedroom floor. Max reacted too late, still trapped in the weight of what he had heard and only barely managed to step back into the hallway before you came out.
You stopped when you saw him.
For one awful second, neither of you said anything and then he smiled and wrapped you in a hug pretending like he hadn’t heard a word.
That night Max sat alone in the dark of the living room for a long time, head in his hands. He couldn’t bring himself to move, couldn’t bring himself to do anything except sit there in the silence and let every word he had overheard replay in his head until it felt carved into him.
He kept hearing your voice.
“to feel like he thought about me without me having to ask.”
He pressed the heels of his hands harder against his eyes.
God.
How many moments had you swallowed your disappointment before he could even notice it was there, dimming yourself down just to be easier to love?
It gutted him.
You hadn’t asked him for the world. You hadn’t asked him to become someone he wasn’t. You only wanted to feel considered. Somehow he had made the best thing in his life feel like she had to be grateful for whatever was left of him at the end of the day.
You deserved fireworks, even if you were the kind of girl who said she didn’t need them. You didn’t want more from him. You just wanted to matter enough for him to give it anyway.
You didn’t expect anything to change.
Max was always kind, attentive in the ways he knew how to be. He noticed when you were cold and passed you his hoodie without making a big thing of it. He reached for your hand in crowded places because he liked knowing exactly where you were. He remembered how you took your coffee, which side of the bed you preferred, the shows you put on when you needed background noise. He loved you. You knew he did.
So when he suggested you take a weekend off together “Somewhere quiet, just us” you didn’t overthink it. You figured he wanted to disappear for a couple of days, somewhere without cameras, team radios, sponsor obligations, or someone asking him about tyre degradation.
It wasn’t until you stepped onto the lakeside dock in Switzerland that you realised something was different.
The cottage was small but charming, tucked away by the water with warm wood walls, soft cream blankets, and floor-to-ceiling windows that made the whole place glow with the late afternoon light. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t the kind of place chosen to impress anyone, it felt private, thoughtful, almost painfully intimate.
Inside there were your favourite snacks arranged in the kitchen. Your favourite wine chilling in the fridge. Your comfort blanket folded over the armchair by the window. Your favourite book was already resting on the bedside table, the old, worn copy you had once told him you reread whenever your head felt too loud.
You frowned, turning slowly back to him. “Did you… did you set this up?”
Max leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, trying for casual and not quite managing it. “Maybe.”
You narrowed your eyes, sceptical. “What’s going on?”
His smirk softened a little. He just looked at you and there was something unusually careful in his expression, something that made your chest tighten before he had even said a word.
“I listened,” he said.
You blinked. Max glanced down briefly, like the words felt awkward in his mouth, but when he looked back up he didn’t look away again.
“I didn’t realise how much I’d taken for granted,” he continued quietly. “How much you gave by never asking. You made it easy for me, but that doesn’t mean I should’ve stopped trying.”
Your throat tightened.
“Max…”
“No, let me say it,” he murmured, taking a small step closer. “You always said things were fine. That you didn’t need flowers, or birthdays, or plans, or all the extra stuff and I believed you because it was easier because it meant I didn’t have to think about whether you were only saying it so I wouldn’t feel bad.”
You swallowed hard, looking away before your face could betray too much.
He walked you further inside, his hand warm at the small of your back, and that was when you noticed the little table by the window. It had been set for two, facing the lake as the sun began to lower behind the mountains. Candlelight, flowers, two plates, homemade pasta that looked slightly lopsided and very clearly like his doing, and a little folded note beside your place.
You stared at it for a second before picking it up.
In his messy, all-caps handwriting, it said:
I SHOULD HAVE MADE YOU FEEL SPECIAL BEFORE NOW. I’M GOING TO DO BETTER.
Max’s face shifted immediately, concern cutting through the nervousness. “Schatje…”
You shook your head quickly trying to laugh it off, but your voice came out thin. “I wanted to be cool,” you whispered. “I wanted to be the girlfriend who didn’t care about all that stuff. I thought if I asked for too much then I’d just become another pressure for you.”
Max stepped closer and cupped your cheeks, his thumbs brushing away the tears that slipped out despite your best efforts.
“You are the most important person in my life,” he murmured. “You always are.” His voice dropped softer, rougher. “I wish I could give you the world and I’m sorry it took me this long to show it.”
You looked at him then, really looked at him, at the nervous set of his mouth and the careful way he held you, like he understood now that easiness was not the same thing as not needing anything.
Then you finally kissed him.
Later that night you were curled against his chest with the fireplace crackling softly in the background, the cottage wrapped in that quiet, golden kind of warmth that made everything outside feel very far away.
Max had one arm around you, his hand resting beneath the hem of your sweater, fingers tracing slow, absent patterns against your skin.
You smiled into his shoulder, cheek pressed against the soft fabric as you listened to the steady beat of his.
“So,” you mumbled, voice sleepy but teasing, “is this a one-time gesture or…”
Max’s chest moved beneath you as he chuckled. “Oh no.”
You tilted your head slightly. “Oh no?”
“No,” he said, tightening his arm around you. “You’re getting so much romance now it’ll annoy you.”
You looked up at him trying and failing not to smile. “Really?”
He nodded solemnly, like he was discussing race strategy. “Really. I’m talking airport reunions. Flowers for no reason. Random poetry.”
“Poetry?” you repeated, laughing already.
“Bad poetry,” he corrected. “Very bad. Rhymes way too much.”
“Oh, God.”
“And a cheesy playlist,” he added, completely serious. “Maybe several. One for the car. One for when I’m away. One with songs you’ll make fun of me for.”
You laughed properly then, burying your face in his neck as warmth spread through your chest. It was never about the playlist, or the flowers, or whatever terrible poetry Max Verstappen might attempt in the name of love.
It was that he was thinking about it. That he had finally understood the difference between you not needing to be spoiled and you still deserving to be cherished.
Max turned his head and pressed a kiss into your hair. “I’m serious,” he murmured, quieter now. “I don’t want you wondering anymore.”
Your laughter softened. You lifted your face again, looking at him through the firelight. “Wondering what?”
“If I think about you,” he said. “If I notice. If I care enough to try.”
Your throat tightened, but this time the feeling wasn’t painful. Max brushed his thumb along your cheek. “I do,” he said. “I’ll show you better now.”
For a moment you just looked at him, then you leaned in, pressing a slow kiss to the corner of his mouth before tucking yourself back against him.
“That sounds perfect.” you whispered, smiling against his neck.
Summary : if lando asked, she’d do it. that’s the problem. he knows she’d do anything for him, and he keeps asking anyway — until one misunderstanding, one missed sponsor meeting, and one final betrayal cost her everything.
Paring : lando norris x female reader
Warnings : angst, unrequited love, one-sided pining, emotional manipulation, being led on, humiliation, miscommunication, neglect, workplace fallout, getting fired, no happy ending,
If Lando asked for the moon, Y/N would have learned how to fly.
That was the embarrassing truth of her life.
Not that she loved him.
That had become almost ordinary to her, folded into the rhythm of race weekends and late nights and the humiliating little lift in her chest every time he said her name.
No, the embarrassing part was that he knew.
Maybe not every detail of it. Maybe not the nights she lay awake replaying things he hadn’t meant. Maybe not the fact that half her life had started arranging itself around his moods without her permission.
But he knew enough.
Enough to know she would stay.
Enough to know she would fix it.
Enough to know that if he smiled first and asked second, she would say yes before the question had even finished leaving his mouth.
He liked that.
That was the part Y/N hated herself for understanding.
He liked being wanted. Liked being taken care of. Liked the certainty of her, the way she was always there, always soft for him, always ready to make his life easier.
He liked the devotion.
He just didn’t care about the girl attached to it.
“Y/N.”
She looked up too fast.
Lando was leaning against the office doorway, cap in one hand, team quarter zip half undone, still sun-warm from outside. Pretty in the kind of thoughtless way that should have made a person less dangerous and somehow only made him worse.
He smiled the second he saw she was looking.
“There you are.”
Her pulse kicked.
“What do you need?”
His grin widened.
“See? That’s why you’re my favourite.”
Across the room, Mia didn’t even bother hiding her expression.
Y/N looked back down at her laptop. “You say that to get things.”
“Yeah,” Lando said easily, crossing the room. “And it works.”
He dropped into the chair beside her desk and pushed his phone into her hand.
Two schedule blocks. One sponsor appearance. One media stop. Same time.
Y/N closed her eyes for a second. “You said yes to both.”
He leaned back, stretching his legs out. “Probably.”
“Lando.”
“Definitely.”
She started fixing it while he watched her do it, perfectly relaxed now that the problem belonged to someone else.
After a second, he said, quieter, “I knew you’d sort it.”
That voice.
That exact voice.
Warm enough to feel personal. Light enough to deny later.
Y/N kept her eyes on the screen. “You always know I’ll sort it.”
“Because you always do.”
He said it like praise.
It wasn’t.
It was ownership.
She handed the phone back a minute later.
“There. You’ll have to leave the sponsor thing early.”
He looked at it, relieved. “You’re actually unreal.”
Then he looked at her.
Really looked.
And smiled in that lazy, devastating way that made it feel like he had chosen her out of every person in the room.
“Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Before she could stop herself, she smiled back.
That seemed to satisfy him.
Of course it did.
He reached out, brushed two fingers over her shoulder, and stood.
“Love you.”
Y/N froze.
Mia looked up immediately.
Lando had already made it halfway to the door.
He glanced back when he felt the silence.
“What?”
Y/N’s throat tightened. “What did you just say?”
His mouth curved.
“Relax.” He gave her a look like she was being sensitive on purpose. “You know what I mean.”
And then he left.
Mia waited exactly two seconds.
“He’s evil.”
Y/N let out a thin laugh.
“No,” she said, still staring at the doorway. “That would require effort.”
⁜
He led her on in ways that were hard to explain to people who hadn’t seen it.
Because it was never enough to be undeniable.
That was what made it so effective.
If he had kissed her once and regretted it, she could have hated him.
If he had told her outright that he liked the attention, she could have left.
If he had been careless enough to say I know you love me and I don’t care, at least there would have been honesty in the cruelty.
Instead, he gave her moments.
Little ones.
He would find her in crowded rooms and stand too close.
He would text her past midnight with you awake? and then, after she answered immediately like an idiot, follow it with need a favour x.
He would say things like I only trust you with this and you get me better than anyone here and stay with me for a sec in a tone soft enough to make her forget she was still technically at work.
He never promised.
He never had to.
Hope did all the labor for him.
One night after a sponsor dinner in Abu Dhabi, Y/N was outside by transport trying to reorganize cars when Lando came down the hotel steps with a brunette tucked under his arm.
He saw her and smiled.
“You’re still here.”
It was almost impressive, how he could make that sound intimate when all it really meant was good, the thing I need is where I left it.
“I work here,” Y/N said.
“Right.” He stepped toward her, lowering his voice as if this were something private. “Can you cover for me if anyone asks?”
Her eyes flicked to the brunette waiting by the car.
Then back to him.
“Cover what?”
He gave her that look. The one that said don’t make this difficult while still smiling.
“Just say I left early. Sponsor exhaustion. Whatever sounds official.”
Y/N stared at him.
For one awful second, he looked almost amused.
Then he softened, just a little.
“Please?”
There it was.
The tilt in his voice. The sweetness. The quiet confidence that she’d fold.
Because she always did.
Y/N swallowed. “Fine.”
His smile turned pleased.
“Knew I could count on you.”
Then he turned and walked back to the brunette without another thought, leaving Y/N standing there under the lights with her phone in her hand and her dignity somewhere under his tires.
That night, she lay in bed replaying knew I could count on you until she wanted to scream.
Not because it was kind.
Because it wasn’t.
Because it was certainty.
Because he knew exactly what she was and kept using her for it.
⁜
She asked him out on a Wednesday night.
Later, when everything had already gone wrong, Y/N would keep coming back to that moment and wondering if that had been the last clear warning she ignored.
The office behind hospitality was nearly empty. Most people had gone. The overhead lights were too bright, the air-conditioning too cold, the whole room suspended in that late-night stillness where everything felt more honest than it should.
Lando was sitting across from her desk in a hoodie, elbows on his knees, watching her rebuild the next day’s schedule because he’d changed his mind about three separate things and expected the universe to rearrange itself accordingly.
He looked tired.
Tired Lando was dangerous.
Softer. Slower. More likely to say things that felt true.
“You always take care of me,” he said.
Y/N kept typing because looking at him felt unsafe. “Someone has to.”
He smiled.
“No, but you do.”
She glanced up.
Big mistake.
He was already watching her with that unreadable softness he slipped into sometimes, the one that made her feel chosen and stupid in equal measure.
He tipped his head.
“You like taking care of me.”
It wasn’t a question.
And because she was tired too, because she was so tired of living inside things he could deny, Y/N heard herself say, “What if I do?”
He blinked.
Then smiled a little, like he thought she was being bold in a way that amused him.
“Then I’m very lucky.”
Her heart started racing.
There should have been a fire alarm inside her for moments like this. Some mechanism that said: he is doing it again. He is giving you just enough to keep you standing still.
Instead, there was only that awful bright hope.
She set her laptop aside before she could lose her nerve.
“Do you want to go out with me sometime?”
He frowned slightly.
“Out where?”
Her mouth went dry.
“On a date,” she said, because if she didn’t say it plainly now, she never would.
At that exact second, his phone lit up.
He looked down instantly. Swore under his breath. Grabbed it off the desk.
“Yeah, yeah, one sec...”
He scanned whatever message had come in, half-listening, already leaving her.
Then, distracted, he nodded and said, “Yeah, sure.”
Y/N stared at him.
“Really?”
“Mmhm.”
He was already typing.
She should have heard it then. The vagueness. The inattention. The fact that his yes had not landed on her at all.
She didn’t.
Or maybe she did and hope just drowned it.
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Text me,” he said, still looking at the phone. “Tomorrow’s a mess.”
And somehow she still went home glowing.
That was the pathetic part.
That a half-heard yes from a man who wasn’t even looking at her still felt like being chosen.
⁜
He didn’t show up.
Of course he didn’t.
Y/N sat alone at a restaurant in Monaco for forty-six minutes, checking her phone like each time might produce a different result.
Nothing.
No text.
No call.
No apology.
At minute fifteen, she told herself he was late.
At minute twenty-eight, she told herself something urgent had come up.
At minute thirty-four, she started to understand.
At minute forty-six, she knew.
He had never heard her properly.
Or worse : he had heard enough to answer and cared too little to remember.
The waitress came over with that careful smile people wore when they knew they were witnessing something embarrassing and wanted to pretend they weren’t.
“Would you like another minute?”
Y/N swallowed. “No. Just the bill.”
Her phone buzzed when she was halfway back to the hotel.
It was him.
For one stupid second, her whole body lit up.
Then she opened it.
need you to move tomorrow’s sponsor breakfast
She stopped walking.
That was it.
No sorry.
No where are you?
No I forgot.
Just need.
Y/N typed back before she could talk herself out of it.
you didn’t come
The reply took less than a minute.
to what?
She stared at the screen so long it dimmed.
That hurt more than anything else could have.
Not because he said no.
Because he didn’t even know what he had failed to show up for.
She typed nothing.
Another message came in.
seriously can you move the breakfast?
Then:
please
Then:
you know i wouldn’t ask if i had another option
Y/N laughed out loud on the sidewalk, the sound sharp enough to make a couple passing by glance at her.
There it was again.
The lie they both participated in.
As if she were the last option.
As if he didn’t come to her first because he knew exactly what she’d do.
She replied:
can’t. it’s mandatory.
He didn’t answer after that.
The next morning, he missed the sponsor breakfast anyway.
By afternoon, leadership knew.
By two o’clock, HR knew.
By two-ten, Y/N learned exactly what he had told them.
⁜
The conference room was too cold.
That was all Y/N could think at first, sitting across from the woman from HR and two senior staff members while they arranged papers in front of themselves and wore expressions that already had the decision built into them.
This wasn’t a follow-up.
This was a dismissal with good posture.
“There have been concerns,” the HR woman began, “about judgment and professionalism where Driver Norris is concerned.”
Y/N frowned. “What?”
The senior PR lead folded his hands. “Yesterday evening and this morning created a situation that we can’t ignore.”
Her stomach dropped.
“The sponsor breakfast?”
“In part.”
The HR woman looked down at her notes.
“We were informed that there may have been confusion caused by you regarding his evening plans, and that this may have contributed to him failing to attend his mandatory breakfast commitment.”
Y/N went still.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically.
Literally still.
She stopped breathing for a second.
Then said, carefully, “I’m sorry. Confusion caused by me?”
The PR lead glanced away.
No one answered immediately.
That was answer enough.
Y/N’s voice came out thinner than she wanted. “What exactly did he say?”
The HR woman’s expression stayed neutral.
“That he believed there had been a misunderstanding created by you around a personal outing, and that his schedule may not have been communicated to him clearly enough afterward.”
The room went white at the edges.
There it was.
Not just that he’d missed the breakfast.
Not just that he’d forgotten her.
He had let them pin it on her.
Maybe because it was easier. Maybe because he’d been annoyed. Maybe because he hadn’t even thought through what it would do.
That almost made it worse.
Y/N laughed once.
The sound came out awful.
The HR woman softened slightly. “I understand this is upsetting.”
“No,” Y/N said, before she could stop herself. “You don’t.”
All three of them looked at her.
And because some final piece of her had already cracked open, the truth slipped out.
“He didn’t even know it was a date.”
Silence.
Immediate and complete.
Y/N shut her eyes.
Too late.
When she opened them again, the HR woman had gone very still.
“I see.”
No, Y/N thought.
No, you really don’t.
The PR lead cleared his throat. “This only confirms the blurred boundaries we’ve been concerned about.”
Blurred boundaries.
What a clean phrase for something that had ruined her so thoroughly.
By the time they said terminate your contract effective immediately, she was no longer really hearing them.
Badge revoked.
Apartment linked to role.
Access removed.
Pack your desk.
She nodded because her body knew how to perform compliance even while the rest of her was in freefall.
At one point, the HR woman said gently, “Why would you put yourself in this position for him?”
Y/N looked at her.
There were a hundred true answers.
Because he asked.
Because he knew.
Because he kept asking.
Because I loved him and he liked that more than he liked me.
Instead she just said, “I made a mistake.”
It was the smallest lie she had told about him.
⁜
She went to find him immediately.
Not because she thought he would fix it.
Not because she thought he would even be sorry in the right way.
Because she needed him to hear it from her.
Needed him to know that this one, at least, had landed somewhere real.
He was near hospitality, half-dressed for the next obligation, phone in hand, talking to someone from media while two sponsor reps hovered nearby.
He looked up when she said his name.
“Oh...hey.”
Hey.
Y/N almost smiled at that. The ordinariness of it. The complete mismatch between his tone and the fact that her life had just been taken apart because of him.
“I need to talk to you.”
He glanced at the people around him. “Can this wait? I’m about to...”
“No.”
That got his attention, briefly.
He stepped half away from the group, enough to suggest privacy without actually giving it.
“What happened?”
Y/N stared at him.
Then said it plainly.
“I got fired.”
His brows drew together.
“For what?”
She actually laughed.
There it was again. The confusion. The pure, undisturbed confusion of a man who had moved through his day never once imagining that another person’s world might have collapsed under the weight of his convenience.
“For you,” she said.
That made him frown. “What?”
“I got fired because you missed the sponsor breakfast. Because HR thinks I mishandled your schedule. Because apparently you told them I confused you about your evening plans.”
His expression changed.
Not enough.
Just enough to say he understood this might become inconvenient.
“Y/N, I didn’t...”
His phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Actually looked down.
At his phone.
While she was standing there trying not to come apart.
Something inside her went very quiet.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “One sec.”
He typed a reply.
One sec.
That was the line her mind would come back to later. The thing that would hurt in all the empty places long after the rest of it blurred.
Not the firing itself.
Not the date.
Not even the blame.
One sec.
As if devastation could hold.
As if she still existed in his life as something that would wait until he was finished with the important stuff.
Y/N let him finish.
Then, when he looked up again and said, “What were you saying?” with the faint impatience of someone trying to catch up to a conversation he’d half-missed, she just looked at him.
Really looked.
At the charm.
At the carelessness.
At the almost-boyish confusion that had gotten him forgiven by too many people for too long.
At the man who knew she would bleed for him and still found ways to ask for more.
“I said,” she told him quietly, “I got fired.”
He stared.
Then glanced over her shoulder because someone from media had just called his name.
He was already leaving again.
Even now.
Even here.
Y/N felt the last of her hope die so cleanly she almost mistook it for relief.
“That’s insane,” he said absently. “I’ll talk to someone.”
“No, you won’t.”
He frowned, distracted. “Why are you doing this now?”
That almost made her laugh.
Doing this now.
As if heartbreak had scheduling etiquette.
“Because you blamed me.”
“I didn’t blame you.”
“You let them.”
“That’s not...”
“Lando,” the media guy called again, closer now. “Now.”
He turned his head, annoyed.
Then looked back at Y/N.
And in that pause, that tiny split second where he clearly wanted this conversation to be over because he had somewhere else to be, she finally saw him as he was.
Not torn.
Not secretly in love.
Not scared of what she meant.
Just inconvenienced.
By her feelings. By her firing. By the timing of a mess he hadn’t meant to make and didn’t especially want to clean up.
He had always known she’d risk it all for him.
He’d just never thought that might become his problem.
Y/N stepped back.
He said her name, but only because she was moving away.
She smiled then.
Small. Sharp. Done.
“You should go,” she said. “You’ve got media.”
Something flickered across his face.
Guilt, maybe. Or annoyance. Or just the discomfort of being seen too clearly for the first time.
“Y/N...”
But she was already walking.
And the awful, perfect thing was that he let her.
Of course he did.
Because he always thought there would be time later.
This was the deal, the perfect alibi, because the more they gave into the public performance (the whole bromance thing), the safer the truth became. They were now hiding in plain sight, basically. If Carlos acted awkward or flustered, that could raise actual questions. But if he just played along, if he gave the world the charming, exaggerated version of their partnership, then it became a joke.
The illusion was a beautiful, profitable thing. And Charles was starting to slowly convince himself that it was enough, that maybe the world loved them like this, that they would love them like this for real, that nothing could ever threaten them.
Or part 5 of my charlos as footballers au that is finally all up and finished✨⚽🏟️
Life off the pitch was pretty good, too. Decidedly better. They had well since left behind the days of furtive escapes and what was happening now felt solid. They were still secret, of course, and Charles was content with that. He was very happy to have an universe of his own for just him and Carlos to inhabit, he held no illusions of the world ever letting them have their peace. So, he was fine. Their places were still technically separate, but a toothbrush, a charger, and several changes of clothes had permanently migrated.
That's why he didn't notice the cracks happening.
Or, part 4 of that football au where Carlos and Charles both play at Real Madrid now but things get a little more complicated
synopsis. Weeks later, the weight of your guilty conscience hadn’t eased a bit. That’s why you found yourself at the club tonight—though, of course, the only person you ran into was Ilya Rozanov. ✴︎ MASTERLIST ✴︎ BAD IDEAS, REPEATED MASTERLIST
pairing. Ilya Rozanov x Hollander! fem! reader contains. angst…., yearning…., bitterness, no use of y/n, tension, profanity, partying, alcohol use word count. 2,1k
…THREE WEEKS LATER
It had been a long time since you last saw Ilya. Or at least, it felt long. The last time had ended with everything falling apart—voices raised, feelings bruised, and you literally kicking him out of your apartment. It hadn’t been months or years, not even close. Maybe a few weeks. Two? Three? Four? You honestly couldn’t tell anymore. Time had slipped through your fingers in a strange, blurry way.
You lost track of it somewhere between trying to forget him and spending hours on the ice, skating until your legs burned, trying to outrun the memory of him. You lost track of it watching Boston games on your TV, telling yourself you were only watching for the sport, only watching because it was habit. But every time he appeared on the screen, you felt that familiar twist in your chest.
You kept telling yourself he was different now—not Ilya, just Rozanov. The old version. The cocky, sharp-edged, impossible Rozanov who didn’t look at you like you mattered. It was easier that way. Cleaner. Less painful.
And your family… that was its own mess. A week ago, you’d gone to a family lunch fully expecting disaster. You’d braced yourself for questions, for judgment, for your mother’s voice rising an octave the way it always did when she sensed trouble. But nothing happened. Shane hadn’t said a word. Not a hint. Not a slip. Your parents were completely oblivious.
And honestly… that shocked you more than anything.
What do most athletes do when they want to forget? They push too hard. They stay out too late. They chase noise because silence hurts more. And that’s exactly how you ended up here—at the first club your friends managed to drag you into.
At first, it felt almost normal. Just you and your friends, drinks in hand, the bass thumping through the floor, everyone laughing too loudly over the music. For a little while… you actually forgot. The lights were bright, the room was warm, and the world felt far enough away that you could breathe without thinking of him.
For a moment, it was easy to pretend you were fine.
You sat at the bar, swirling a glass of something strong and definitely too expensive, watching the ice melt in slow circles. The music thumped through the floor, loud enough to rattle your ribs, but for once you didn’t mind. Noise was easier than thinking.
“Gosh, I love this song!” your friend shouted over the music, eyes bright with the kind of joy only a crowded club and a few drinks could create.
She bumped your shoulder, grinning. “Come on, let’s dance!”
You barely had time to open your mouth before she and the others grabbed your hands and pulled you off the stool, dragging you straight into the sea of bodies on the dance floor.
It took a few seconds to adjust—to the lights, the heat, the press of people—but then the rhythm caught you. You let yourself move with it, laughing when your friends spun you around, singing along even when you didn’t know all the words. You let the music take over, let the alcohol soften the edges of everything you’d been trying not to feel.
For a little while, you did exactly what people with too much in their system always did.
You let yourself forget.
Within minutes, a few guys around your age had drifted into your circle—laughing, joking, trying way too hard to keep up with the energy of your friends. One of them leaned in a little too close, shoulder brushing yours as he told a joke that actually made you laugh. For a moment, you let yourself enjoy it. Let yourself be distracted. Let yourself pretend the night was simple.
Then it hit you—that prickling awareness along your spine, the unmistakable feeling of being watched.
You turned slowly, eyes scanning the room, the lights, the crowd.
And there he was.
Rozanov.
Leaning against the far wall like he’d been carved into the scene, casual and impossible to ignore. Of course it had to be him. He wore some ridiculous t‑shirt with a giant tiger on it—something only a Slavic millionaire with too much confidence could ever pull off. And somehow, on him, it looked perfect.
His eyes were locked on you. Not just watching—pinning you in place. Seeing straight through the noise and the lights and the guy still talking beside you. You were laughing with someone else, smiling, moving like you were finally alive again… and he was standing there surrounded by a cluster of girls who clearly wanted his attention. Maybe because he was an NHL star. Maybe because he was just so stupidly, unfairly attractive.
But he wasn’t looking at them.
He was looking at you.
And the air between you felt charged, sharp, like the night had just shifted under your feet.
You tried to focus on your friends, on the music, on anything other than him—but your eyes kept drifting back. He hadn’t moved. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t waving, wasn’t trying to flirt. He was just… watching. Quietly. Steadily. Like he was trying to read you from across the room.
Every laugh you forced, every dance move, every sip of your drink felt too loud under his gaze. Your chest tightened, and a strange, irrational guilt washed over you. Why am I even here? Why does it feel like I’m doing something wrong?
You stumbled a little on your heels, the floor tilting for a second, and one of your friends grabbed your arm. “Hey, you okay?” she asked, eyes narrowing with concern.
You nodded quickly, forcing a smile you didn’t feel. “Yeah. Just… dizzy.”
But the smile didn’t reach your eyes, and you knew she could tell.
Then, out of the corner of your vision, you saw him move. Not toward you—toward the hallway. Toward the quieter part of the club where the music softened and the lights dimmed. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to.
Your heart hammered against your ribs.
You knew exactly where he was going.
And for reasons you couldn’t fully explain—reasons you didn’t want to examine too closely—you slipped away from your friends and followed him.
You hesitated for barely a second before pushing the restroom door open.
Ilya was at the sink, washing his hands like he had all the time in the world. When he caught your reflection in the mirror, one brow lifted slowly, almost lazily.
He scoffed.
“Wrong restroom,” he said coolly. “Men only.”
You rolled your eyes and stepped farther inside, letting the door swing shut behind you. “Very funny.”
He grabbed a paper towel, drying his hands with slow, deliberate movements before turning to face you fully. Up close, he looked… unfair. Relaxed in that infuriating way only he could be. Broad shoulders, that stupid jawline, eyes that always seemed to see too much. Like he hadn’t been unraveling you from the inside for weeks.
He tilted his head, lips curling into something sharp and humorless. “What? You gonna report me now? Brother already did that part?”
“That’s not funny,” you snapped, the words coming out tighter than you meant.
“Isn’t it?” he shrugged, the movement sharp. “Thought we were calling things jokes now. Like ‘weekend fling.’”
The words landed like a punch. You felt them in your stomach, in your throat, everywhere.
You crossed your arms, suddenly aware of how small the room felt, how close the walls were, how close he was. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“No?” He stepped closer, just enough that you could feel the heat of him, just enough to make your pulse jump. “Then why follow me into the bathroom, Hollander? Nostalgic? Or you just miss making bad decisions?”
Your jaw tightened. “You’re being an asshole.”
He smiled—slow, bitter, nothing like the soft grin you used to get. “Yeah. That’s what happens when you get kicked out of an apartment after being told you were… what was it?” He tapped his temple, pretending to search for the memory. “‘One, max two nights.’”
You looked away, the guilt rising fast and hot, curling tight in your chest. You hated how much it still hurt him. You hated that you’d been the one to put that look on his face.
You clenched your fists, stepping a little closer even though every part of you screamed not to. “So now it’s just funny to you? To… mess with me?”
He tilted his head, that infuriating smirk widening like he’d been waiting for this. “Mess with you? Me? Oh, Hollander, I’m insulted. I’m simply pointing out facts.”
That’s when it hit you—he was making fun of you. Or pretending to. Or using it as armor. You couldn’t tell. You never could with him. Half the time he was a wall, the other half he was a storm, and you were always stuck trying to guess which version you were getting.
“Facts?” you scoffed, heat rising in your chest. “What facts? That you’re a narcissistic asshole who can’t take a hint?”
“Ah, finally! Some fire.” His eyes lit up, sharp and amused. “I was worried you’d gone soft after Boston.”
He leaned back against the sink like he owned the place, arms crossed, posture relaxed in a way that made your pulse jump. He looked too calm. Too collected. Like none of this touched him the way it touched you.
“But really…” he continued, voice dropping into something almost mocking. “Look at you. Following me into a men’s restroom because of some guilty conscience. That’s… impressive.”
“Impressive?” you repeated, disbelief slicing through your voice. “You’re ridiculous.”
But underneath the anger, something else twisted—hurt, confusion, the sting of knowing he was doing this on purpose. Pushing. Poking. Trying to get a reaction because it was easier than admitting he cared.
And you hated that you still cared too.
He chuckled—low, amused, shaking his head like he genuinely couldn’t believe you. “Ridiculous? Me? Oh, Hollander… you make it too easy.”
“Easy?” you snapped, stepping closer even though your chest fluttered in a way you hated. “I’m not—this isn’t—”
“Not easy?” he cut in, one brow lifting with sharp precision. “Tell me, following me into the men’s restroom… is that supposed to be bravery? Or guilt? Or are you just stupid?”
Your jaw clenched so hard it almost hurt. “Maybe all of the above. Happy now?”
He leaned in, just enough to brush the edge of your space, just enough to make your breath catch. The smirk stayed, but there was something darker behind it—something that made your pulse jump.
“Very,” he murmured. “It’s… entertaining. Watching you pretend you’re tough when you’re clearly a complete mess.”
“I hate you, Rozanov.” The words came out sharp, spit like venom. And for a split second, you almost believed them. Maybe this was what Shane meant. Maybe it really was in Hollander blood—this instinct to bristle, to fight, to flare up when you were scared. Part of you wanted to punch him. Part of you wanted to cry. And part of you—God help you—wanted to kiss him.
“Mhm. Sure you do.” His voice was soft, almost bored, as he brushed past you with effortless ease, like you weren’t the storm he’d just stirred up.
He didn’t look back.
He just walked out, leaving you standing there in the too‑bright bathroom, heart pounding, hands shaking, and absolutely no idea which part of you he’d just set on fire.
You stayed frozen, staring at the closed door like it might swing back open if you just wished hard enough. Like maybe he’d come back in with that annoyed little huff, ready to argue again, ready to stay.
But the door didn’t move.
And you felt yourself sink.
You wanted to disappear. Pretend none of this had happened. Pretend he had never happened. Your mind spun in frantic circles, reaching for escape routes that didn’t exist. You could run away to Mexico. Start a drug cartel. Change your name. Get a terrible fringe and claim it was a “new era.” Honestly, every option sounded easier than dealing with Ilya Rozanov and the mess sitting heavy in your chest.
Because Rozanov probably hated you by now.
And you?
Well.
You didn’t know what you felt—but it definitely wasn’t hate.
It was something messier. Something that sat low in your stomach and twisted every time you breathed. Guilt. Regret. That awful, sinking pull that told you this wasn’t finished, no matter how desperately you wanted it to be. You’d said things you couldn’t take back. You’d pushed him away because it felt safer than admitting you cared.
And now he’d walked away first.
That was the part that stung the most—the part that lodged itself under your ribs and refused to budge. You’d spent weeks trying to forget him, trying to outrun the memory of him, and somehow he still managed to leave you feeling abandoned.
You pressed your palms to your eyes, trying to steady yourself, but the ache didn’t go anywhere.
angel kisses (ilya rozanov x fem!reader) (an ilya x bunny prequel)
summary: ilya rozanov meets a surprising young woman in a toronto alleyway.
uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.
♡ the shane & ilya collection
tags: fingering, p in v, oral (m!receiving), hair pulling (of course), some anti-toronto maple leafs sentiment
note: the reader insert used in this fic is the same insert called “Bunny” from the if you want it series (tagged in the shane & ilya collection)
toronto, canada. 2011.
Car horns and ambulance sirens blare like wildlife down the street. The cold bites at Ilya’s fingers, pressed to his mouth to inhale from the withering cigarette bud. He stopped being able to feel them a few minutes ago. But it feels good.
Better than being in there.
Around the corner, the heavy steel door of the night club whines open and clangs shut every few minutes. Short bursts of deep, thumping music come in waves, alternating every few swings. The line was lengthy when he got here, and it’ll be even longer when he leaves.
He just needs a little longer out here. Here being the dim, snow-laden alleyway. With the half-crushed boxes and plastic garbage bags, and remnants of other people’s cigarettes. He’s pretty sure there’s a pile of vomit frozen into orange ice by the dumpster. He’s not sure why he keeps glancing at it every few drags. He just knows it keeps his head steady, his heart rate even. He doesn’t have to think about anything else. Vomit is a wonderful thought given the alternatives.
“Jesus.”
Ilya lifts his head, peering at the open mouth of the alleyway, street side. Snow falls in hurried flurries against the reddish glow of the street lamp, a sideways slant along the wind. He can see every breath of the girl scuffing her heels along the sidewalk, little white clouds into the open zipper of a ginormous purse.
She rummages, dangerously oblivious to Ilya’s presence. Her dress is tight, a dark fabric that might be black but it’s so dim he can barely tell. He can tell that her arms are bare though, just as naked as her legs and feet, exposed to the freezing snow. He abandoned his coat inside, as well, too concerned with his next cigarette to snatch it from under the ass of Marleau’s next conquest in their booth.
The girl continues to rummage for a moment longer—complete with plastic clacking and things snapping—before she lifts her head with a long, tired sigh. It deflates her body entirely. She’s mid-pout when her eyes finally blink open and land on Ilya.
She stops. Jolted by his presence, she straightens immediately, and lets out a tiny: “Oh.”
He lifts his brows once, pulling the cigarette from his mouth. “Hello.”
“Can I…can I actually bum one of those?”
She points to the cigarette now dangling at his side. He flicks it with his ring finger and a fleck of ash sails into the snow with a faint plap. Ilya nods, balancing the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he fishes the pack out of the back pocket of his jeans.
She approaches slowly as he flips it open and slides a filtered end up from its collective. He holds the pack out to her, but makes no effort to move from his brick wall resting point. Her heels click softly over the concrete, crunching over salt and ice before they stop in front of him. This close, he can begin to form the features of her face.
“Thanks,” she murmurs, reaching with slow, gentle fingers to pluck the treat.
Once between her lips, Ilya brings the lighter to the end and cups his palm around the flame. Efficiently lit, she inhales until her cheeks hollow, lips pouted perfectly and faintly shiny with gloss. The butt glows a gentle orange. Ilya slips the lighter and cigarettes back into his pocket, and they pull the cigarettes from their mouths in unison.
Two thin plumes of smoke unfurl between them toward the street. The light there hits the side of her face, beaming over gorgeous cheekbones.
She notices, with the same careful and silent nonchalance, that he’s just as beautiful. And, as they tap their ashes and claim opposite sides of the alleyway walls, she concludes that she knows him. Or, of him anyhow. If she wasn’t sure before, she’s definitely certain when the gold cross makes an appearance over his chest.
But she pretends not to realize, and begins to rummage through her purse again. Ilya watches on quietly, even though his cigarette is gone and about to burn his fingers. He stubs it out against the brick behind his thigh, subtly and without announcement.
With her rummaging comes the escape of a few items along the snow. A tube of lipgloss, a pack of gum, crumpled receipts, a Blackberry. She groans softly as she bends to retrieve the most precious of these items, shaking off the bits of white from their surfaces.
“You left something,” he says, lifting his chin toward a bedazzled pink lighter by her left foot.
She glances up at him and then over at the sparkly object, quick to pluck it between her fingers and drop it back in her purse with the other escapees.
“Ha-ha. I swear, my whole life’s in this purse.”
He hums, tipping his head at the black leather on her arm as she stands again. Her legs are long and that dress is short.
“Mm, yes, is big purse.”
Her head snaps down to the purse against her hip. “It’s not that big. This style is very in right now.”
One side of Ilya’s mouth curls into a smile. He hums again, and even that has an accent to it. There was no denying who was standing before her, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to go about it.
But she realizes he’s not smoking anymore. Just standing there across from her, head tipped back against the brick, eyes set on her over the slope of his nose. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans, arms just as bare as hers in a black t-shirt. Her cigarette flung somewhere in the snow on the descent to her purse a while ago.
“You’re Ilya Rozanov,” she says.
Ilya hums. “Mm, yes.”
She likes the way he says this. Almost one term, mmyes. A monosyllabic, affirmative hum. He doesn’t roll his eyes, doesn’t widen his shoulders, or lift his chin like a man ready to deny or boast about it.
He just stands there. Watching her.
“You just punched Benoit Beau in the face about…oh, thirty minutes ago,” she continues, checking the clock on the BlackBerry in her palm.
Ilya’s eyes flicker toward her hand before finding her gaze in the dimness. “Yes.”
God, was she that little prick’s agent? A publicist ready to chew him out? He hadn’t even meant to hit the idiot, he just stopped ignoring every gnawing thought telling him to do so.
One too many cheap shots at the goalie, one too many comments thrown bench-side, one too many moments spent near Benoit fucking Beau tonight. Any other player would’ve done the same. It didn’t help that Ilya’s been harboring the knowledge of what waited back home all week. The calls from Alexi and his father, the reminders of his failure clogging up his inbox.
Even a better man would’ve cracked.
“I dated that unfortunate man for almost a year a while back. So I just wanted to say thanks for that.”
Ilya watches a smile take over her face, and he knows then that he’ll be going home with her tonight. Or her with him, either would work. Whatever got them naked quicker.
“You are welcome,” Ilya says, and all the while he stares at her and wonders what kind of sounds she’ll make.
Her smile fades to something coy, playful in its lingering. She adjusts the purse on her arm and her heels click once on the ground.
“Well, I gotta get back to my friends. But…thanks again, Ilya.”
She wiggles her fingers in a small wave, another smile thrown over her shoulder as she heads back toward the street like she knows he’ll still be watching. He is, of course, and it gives both of them an equal thrill to know it.
Ilya watches until she disappears around the corner, and he listens to the door shriek open and clang closed. His fingers twitch for another cigarette, but there’s something glistening in the snow where the girl stood, and he steps forward to pick it up.
Angel Kisses is the name of the pink lipgloss in Ilya’s palm.
Oh yeah. She was his tonight.
♡♡♡
“Yo, we’re heading out!” Marleau calls over the music, motioning with his thumb toward the brunette twirling her hair at the edge of the booth.
Ilya glances at them over the rim of his glass and nods. His tongue is sour with liquor when he sets it down.
“Okay.”
Marleau claps Ilya on the shoulder and slides out of the booth, winding his arm around the girl’s shoulders. They mold into each other, slithering their way through the mass of sweaty bodies in the dimly-lit crowd.
With the assistant captain gone, it leaves Ilya with only a few other teammates. People he doesn’t really hang out with more than necessary. People who already have their dates in the booth, at the bar, in the bathroom, some are even calling cabs right now.
Ilya found his night in the crowd some time ago. But he’s waiting.
She’s tucked in a corner booth with her friends, a group of women all similar in age, a sea of colorful dresses and tiny purses. He can see her big ass purse even from here and it makes him want to smile. She’s drinking something in a stout glass, a dark liquor. She’s only had a few, and she doesn’t do shots.
She’s rotated the dance floor a few times, but she keeps spinning around. Slowly eyeing the room, seeking him out. And Ilya’s been here, watching. Waiting.
He checks his phone as he throws back the last shot of tequila. It’s 1:13 and there’s a text waiting.
Jane: Bet Toronto is boring. Boston will be fun in 2 weeks (12:34 am)
Ilya slips his phone in his pocket and slides out of the booth. He takes his time sliding his jacket on, five drinks in and annoyingly steady on his feet. His head is only a little woozy, and if he’s lucky, he might remember some of tonight.
The music is deafening, and the closer he gets to the other side of the room, the deeper it becomes. It settles in his throat, pulses deep in his ears. He sifts through the crowd, angling his shoulders through bodies, avoiding watching gazes that follow him to the booth in the corner.
Her friends look first. Three sets of eyes that bulge and pop like little squeeze toys. He avoids them, too. He comes to the edge of the booth closest to her, leaning close to shout over the music.
“You are coming?”
God, she fucking hopes so.
The girl grabs her purse by the handles and shimmies to the edge of the booth, peering up at Ilya with a gentle smile.
“Let’s go.”
He holds out his hand and she tosses goodbyes to her friend as she slips her fingers into his palm. Their hands are warm and sticky pressed together. The club is thick with sweat and liquor and he’ll be happy to leave it.
The first rush of air is a slap in the face. Ilya sighs in heavy relief, hesitant to slip his coat on to let the cold soothe his overheated body a little longer. Beside him, the girl tips her head left and then right, up and down the street.
“Should we call a car?”
Ilya nods. “Mm. Do you live close?”
She straightens, eyes flitting to his face. “Um, I do. But—“
“—we can go to hotel, if you want. I have nice room.”
She tips her head to peer up at him, and for a moment they just stand there. The line for the club seems ever growing, rumbling and buzzing with impatient, giddy chatter. Cars whizz by in wet whooshes of snow-slush. White flakes glimmer as they flitter around, collecting in her lashes, atop her hair. Ilya has one on his cheek that seems to refuse to melt.
“No,” she says, and there’s that soft, coy smile again. “Let’s go to mine.”
♡♡♡
His mouth first finds hers in the elevator. They’re standing there, waiting for the red numbers to rise, and she’s shifting on her heeled feet—when suddenly he’s in front of her, inching her back into the wall with two firm hands on her waist. His eyes flicker between hers for a beat, giving her the chance to push him away. But she’s putty, all loose and liquid and plaint, and she’s tipping her chin up to offer her mouth to him.
He takes it, carefully at first. Their lips mold into each other like cushions butting together. Until they taste each other—cigarettes and liquor and something fruity on the corner of her mouth—and they’re pressing harder. Ilya nudges her flat against the elevator, as flat as she’ll go with the railing stabbing her spine, and his tongue takes opportunity. It slides into her mouth and along her own. A gasp rattles free just as her arms wind over his shoulders, fingers gliding through his hair.
She’s soft and warm and an excellent kisser. He’s firm and overwhelmingly scorching and an even better kisser. Her teeth scrape his bottom lip and he grunts in surprise.
These angel kisses come with a little bite.
The elevator levels with a gentle wobble, and they pull away as the door dings open. Their hands intertwine again on the journey down the hall. She guides them to her door, where she fumbles through her giant purse again to find her keys. The door clatters against the wall inside once unlocked, and she makes a show of wrapping her hand in his shirt and tugging him inside.
“This will go,” Ilya demands, snatching at the purse on her arm. He places it on the island counter behind her.
“What’s next?” she asks, voice a syrupy purr.
Ilya steps back, tongue sliding along his bottom lip to conceal a grin. This was fun. She was fun. Typically, girls just threw themselves on the bed and let him take them. But she was playing.
“Shoes.” He keeps his voice plain, flat, his gaze the same. It makes the authority of it all jolt through her like a slash of lightning.
She unbuckles the left shoe, then the right, and steps out of them. Her bare feet bring her down a few inches. Ilya hums, sliding his arms out of his jacket to toss it behind her, next to her purse. Her eyes roll over the broadness of his shoulders, the curves and bulges of his defined muscle in the black t-shirt.
“Dress,” he says next, nudging his chin at the black fabric suctioned to her body.
She hums, giving a small turn on one heel so her back is to him. Her chin tucks over her shoulder, a flash of doe eyes that flutter expertly.
“Can you help unzip me, Mr. Rozanov?”
He swallows. Yes, he thinks, this one likes to play.
Ilya steps forward, the shape of him like one firm, hot mass behind her. She sets her head straight, finding a spot on the wall and boring into it—but seeing nothing. Feeling only his hand approaching, fingers skittering over her shoulders to move her hair away.
Her inhale trembles through her lungs, shudders in her chest. His knuckles drag along the notches of her spine, feeling for the zipper in the dimness of the apartment. He tucks the metal between his thumb and forefinger and drags it down. Slowly, glacially, the zipper snicks to the base of her spine.
Ilya’s hands slip under the softness of the fabric, into the warmth beneath. Her skin is smooth, delicate, and her body twists a little when he traces the curve of her waist with two callused palms.
“Mm,” he hums, stepping even closer. He fits his head over her shoulder, leaning until his breath tickles her skin.
He scatters gentle kisses over her shoulder, lets them trail along the top of her back. His mouth finds her neck and she lets her head fall to the other side, baring the channel of her throat to him. He goes for it with a firmer touch, lips latching to the skin there with fervor. She gasps, hands flying to find him behind her. They wriggle through his hair, mussing the golden curls up front before journeying to the nape of his neck, where she gives them a little tug.
Ilya’s pressing himself against her now, pushing her into the kitchen island. His hard cock strains against his jeans and digs into the small of her back, over the swell of her ass, and she shifts her hips to call attention to it. He pulls one hand from beneath her dress to brace her jaw, holding the expanse of her face between his fingers. It makes her feel small, wonderful, under his control.
He pulls his hips back and gives into the smirk that comes with the tilt of her hips still searching for him. He pops his hand over her ass in a sharp smack and she slams her hands over the counter with a blissful gasp.
“Mm, knew you were tough girl. You like it like this, yes?”
She nods into his hold on her face. “Yes. Want you to fuck me.”
He hums again, slipping his hand under the hem of her dress. Her thighs part on instinct, a small whimper squeaking through the room when his fingers press into the damp patch of her panties.
“Soon,” Ilya promises. “You will be patient.”
She nods again, a little quicker. “I’ll be patient.”
Ilya’s fingers press into her cheeks to tip her head back. It falls into his shoulder, her eyes blinking brightly up into his gaze. He fits his mouth over hers as his fingers curl between her flesh and the thin cotton of her underwear. He slips them into the heat of her, slowly and without pause, until he’s knuckle deep. He swallows the groan she releases and feels it hum against the back of his throat.
She’s tight and hot around his fingers, pulsing with every deep, prodding motion he makes. She’s unabashed with her noises, whining and crying into his mouth that attacks hers, fighting the hold on his face to search for more. At some point, her hand slips from his hair between their bodies, gliding down the firmness behind his t-shirt, the hardness straining under his belt. Ilya huffs against her top lip.
“This is me,” she breathes hard, nose brushing his own, “being patient.”
Ilya snickers and curls his fingers cruelly. It makes her thighs quake, her body dip a little downwards. Her whine cuts through the quiet of the apartment like a crack.
“This is me,” he says, tugging her lip between his teeth before letting it go, “being nice.”
She mirrors his scoff of a laugh and rubs her hand against his clothed cock again. “Then let’s stop. No being patient, no being nice.”
He hums, quickening his fingers between her legs. The slick sound is enough to make his ears scorch and her jaw unhinge, though no sound releases. She feels an orgasm burn deep in her belly, a chill sweep up her spine.
“Is what you want?” he murmurs.
She’s never nodded so quickly in her life, and she can barely speak but pushes out a struggled: “God, yes.”
What she didn’t want was for him to take his fingers out of her, but he does it anyway. Before she has a chance to really pout about it, Ilya steps away and inhales sharply through his nose. She turns slowly, still a little unsteady on her bare feet, the straps of her dress slipping off her shoulders with the zipper undone. Ilya shifts his shoulders and her eyes flit to the sheer expanse of them. She’s thankful her lamps are on timers and there’s enough light in the apartment to see him adequately.
“Dress off,” he commands, hands reaching for his belt buckle. The metallic tinkle practically has her salivating like some Pavlovian bell trick.
She keeps watch of him as she slides the straps of her dress down her arms, as she shimmies her hips to fit it down her thighs. A black strapless bra and matching lace panties lie beneath. Ilya pops the button of his jeans and hooks his fingers in to shove them down. His shirt whips off as he steps out of them, kicking them somewhere near the fridge.
Once they’re equally half-naked, Ilya allows himself a moment to admire. The shape of her body, the way it winds and curves and falls. The way she shivers a little and it makes her bottom lip jut out. The way her fingers dance awkwardly at her sides, but she’s still somehow adorably sexy about it.
A soft smile touches Ilya’s face. He curls two fingers toward himself in a lazy motion.
“Come here, milaya.”
The Russian word rolls off his tongue like silk and it makes her jolt from her staring. She skitters forward, bringing her hands to the firm heat of his shoulders when she reaches him. Ilya cups his hand to run the back of his knuckles over her stomach. He cocks his head and leans down an inch or so, bringing his mouth to hover over her own.
She tips her head back and waits for another kiss, lashes fluttering together. Their breaths echo back and forth, stuttered and shallow. He smells like cigarettes and the warm musk of an expensive, European cologne. The chain on his chest glimmers between firm, defined pecs.
His top lip brushes hers for a mere second before he stills. She waits. But he does not kiss her.
Instead, he tips his head the other way and watches her brows cinch together.
“On your knees,” he whispers.
Her eyes pop open, and they dance between his own for just a moment before she sinks to her knees before him. Two hard thumps against the floor and the brush of her palms over her thighs. She perches there with the expertise of someone who’s been here before. Ilya is not the first man to order her there, but he enjoys being the one to have her there now.
He hums, bringing his knuckles to her cheek. They stroke the soft flesh there, where something sparkly catches the light.
“Do you want to suck my cock?”
A heat flushes through her and settles in her cheeks painfully. She nods, tongue numb in her mouth.
Ilya tuts, shaking his head softly. “You are not being polite, milaya. Tell me.”
She swears he can feel the warmth emanating from her like chimney smoke. “I want to suck your cock. Please, Ilya.”
The added plea makes something spark in his belly and it rushes right to his already hardening cock. He hisses out a breath and snatches at her hair.
“Go on.”
She wastes no time, hand reaching for the fabric between her and the task at hand. She tugs his boxers down, cupped under the fullness of him, and fits her mouth over the weeping, pink head.
Ilya groans, both hands sliding through the softness of her hair to brace her head. “Fuck, yes.”
She finds a suction that makes him grit his teeth together and wills the ache in her jaw to numb if it means he’ll keep watching her like that. She works her mouth over him languidly, tightly, tongue gliding up and down the underside of his cock. He’s hot and heavy in her mouth, jabbing at the back of her throat when he gives her gentle nudges further down. He breathes heavily through his nose and doesn’t moan much, but it’s the low grunts and groans that tumble through his reserve that fan her flame. She works harder, sucks tighter, just to hear more.
“Fuck, milaya, you are so good.” His accent thickens when he’s pleased and it makes her wriggle on the floor.
She’s so fucking horny she could die.
Ilya guides her head up and down his length a few more times before his fingers twist in her hair. He pulls back once—hard—and she gazes up at him with a gasp. They wait there together for a moment of blood-rushing quiet. Panting, gasping for air, equally flushed and tingling.
Ilya motions with those same two fingers as earlier. “Up.”
He helps her—he’s not that cruel—with their hands latched together. Once standing, he braces a large, warm palm against her jaw and catches her mouth. It lasts a moment, a gentle exploration, and then he’s pulling away.
But her hands snatch at his biceps, nails piercing the firm, golden skin, and she’s pulling him back.
Ilya groans against her mouth, pulling an equally desperate sound from her when he nips at her lip. She bares her teeth back, and Ilya loses all reserve.
The floor falls from beneath her when his hands swoop under her thighs, pulling her up to straddle him standing. She loops her arms around his neck, excitement swirling in her belly.
“Where is bedroom?” he murmurs against her mouth.
She points over his shoulder with a nonsensical hum and he whirls around, striding toward the open door. He kicks it shut behind them, still devouring her mouth until he drops her on the center of the bed. She bounces once and flashes Ilya a breathy grin from where he looms at the end of the bed.
He’s fucking massive.
“You are tough girl,” he purrs, reaching out to trace his thumb over the swollen plush of her bottom lip.
She takes it in her mouth, delighted by the salty musk of his skin. His lips part, eyes glazed as they admire her swirling her tongue around his thumb.
It pops from between her lips softly. She tucks her chin, eyes boring into Ilya’s dazed gaze.
“Then treat me like it.”
Ilya snickers, patting her cheek gently with his spit-slick hand. It’s enough to make her lashes flutter for a moment.
“Okay,” he says, and then he’s yanking her to the end of the bed by her ankles.
Her panties are bunched somewhere on the bedroom floor and her bra flings toward the door in a matter of moments. Ilya pulls his boxers off the rest of the way and nudges them aside, hands running the length of her thighs. The flesh there is soft and supple, and they quake a little when they touch his hips.
“You have condoms?”
She tips her head back toward the headboard and points to a wooden nightstand beside the headboard. Piles of books, a small ceramic lamp, a pair of glasses folded up—and a drawer. That’s all Ilya can focus on as he hurries to open it and fishes out a half-empty box. He wonders, as he resumes his spot between her thighs and tears the package open, if #13 used the other half of the box.
He wonders if he’ll get to use the rest.
Ilya taps his cock against her core, an obscene, wet smack that makes her wriggle on the bed. Her hands reach for his, still bracing her thighs. He pulls her down a little further, barely on the bed, and hooks her legs around his waist. His body radiates heat like a furnace, and everything about him is firm and hard.
He inches in slowly. Her back arches, head thrown back into the bed. He watches intently as he bottoms out, sheathed fully inside of her, their mouths equally frozen in a stupid, open stance.
“Fuck, so tight,” he hisses, glancing down at the place where their bodies meet.
“You’re so big.”
Ilya huffs out a laugh and tests out a gentle nudge. Her moan is soft, breathy, a little gravely. He does it again, rocking against the bed, into her, listening to the headboard thump behind her little gasps.
“Harder,” she croaks, fixing her head back into place to blink shiny eyes at him. “Please, harder.”
A thrill zips through Ilya like a chill. He leans forward, and the angle shifts him inside of her to nudge a soft, spongy spot that makes her cry out. He glides one hand in her hair, pulling tight at the roots, and keeps the other against her jaw, just along her throat. His thumb tips her chin up, keeping her focus on him. His hand in her hair keeps her steady, just where he wants her.
She has nowhere to go.
And as he begins to move his hips at a pace that makes the room shake, she suddenly can’t think of anywhere else she’d rather be.
“Fuck, milaya,” he grits out, red in the cheeks and splotchy all over his chest. A thin sheen of sweat begins to gather down his back, under his gold curls.
Her hands are on his arms and then in his hair, gripping for purchase as he fucks her so deep and hard she feels it in her fucking throat. Like she can’t breathe, like Ilya’s taking all the air out of the room with every drag of his cock inside her.
It makes her woozy, dizzy, a little stupid, so much so that she can’t even fathom the idea of simmering her noises. They come out unadulterated, animalistic. She sounds like she’s being torn apart.
Ilya loves it.
He licks a stripe along the column of her throat and slows down. Her breaths harshen to pants, but they’re deeper, more air in her lungs. He ruts against her with long, languid pulls and pushes of his hips. Her thighs buzz on either side of him, her fingers trembling against the nape of his neck where her nails are scratching aimlessly.
Ilya murmurs something in Russian against her throat, latching on to suckle gently. She shivers, squirming beneath him and twisting a curl around her finger at the back of his head.
When her breaths begin to even out again, Ilya pulls back and looms above her. He gives the fat of her thigh two quick taps.
“Want you on top, milaya. Show me you want.”
He steps back, sliding out of her slowly. She pushes off on her elbows and flips around, crawling after him when Ilya settles against the headboard. He hums when she straddles him, hands trailing up and down her waist, over her hips. He grabs her ass with both hands and smirks when she squeaks.
“Yes, like that,” he mutters, watching her line him up with his entrance.
She sinks down slowly, inch by inch, and they both groan when she’s fully seated. There, they pulse together for a minute, soft breaths passed in the short distance between their mouths. Her hands are delicate over his shoulders, sliding along the sides of his neck. Her body is exquisite, Ilya thinks, and he lets his eyes drag over the shape of it as she shifts her hips ever so slightly.
She arches her back, pushes her hips forward. They wind once, twice, a counter clockwise motion that grinds them together. Her nipples are hard pebbles in Ilya’s face, and he leans forward to take one in his mouth.
“Oh,” she gasps, fingers gripping at his hair.
He lets his teeth graze the sensitive bud and she jerks, hips stuttering in their smooth, circular motions. He taps her right ass cheek with a heavy palm and sinks his teeth into her nipple at the same time. She shrieks, hopping atop his cock.
“Mm,” he hums, detaching from her tit with a wet pop. He moves his hand from her ass to knead the flesh there. “Thought you were tough girl.”
His voice is a patronizing rumble, and she answers it by bouncing again, releasing her beautiful little noises that make Ilya groan. He keeps hold of her hips and sinks back into the headboard, content to watch her hop on his cock with fervor. But she seems to have other ideas.
She leans forward and puts her hands on his neck again, inching until he has to look up at her, until she’s gazing down at him with her lip between her teeth and his cock half inside of her. She slams down on it again, an impact that has Ilya pushing off the headboard with a gasp. Her mouth splits into a grin, thumbs pressing into his jaw to tip his head back. She takes his mouth in a wet, hungry kiss and presses their foreheads together.
“I. Am,” she huffs out.
Ilya lets out something between an exhale and a chuckle and slides his hands over her ass again, giving it a firm squeeze. “Mm, you are. I like girl to toss around.”
“God, please toss me around,” she groans, suddenly plaint against him, their chests touching when she leans forward.
Ilya flips them quickly, shoving her face in the pillows with a steady hand on the back of her neck. He keeps the other on the dip in her spine where her back arches beautifully, where her ass bounces back at him with every hurried pound of his hips as he begins to pummel her into the bed. Every squeal and whine comes muffled by the mattress, but they’re still just as loud, just as wild.
“Yes,” he growls, followed by a jumble of Russian. “Take it.”
Thoughts are hard to come by as the slam of Ilya’s hips steal every inkling, but she has enough willpower to feel the tingle of her orgasm gathering. She tries to alert him, but all she does is flail and cry, and Ilya leans back to bring a heavy palm down sharply over her ass.
“Tough girl,” he coos. “You will take it.”
He knows by the way she convulses when she finishes, the way the sheets below her soak with tears. Her fingers squeeze around whatever’s closest—the mattress, the sheets—and don’t let go.
And Ilya doesn’t stop.
He slows down, just barely. A steady push and pull, a torturous rhythm when she’s already on edge.
“Ilya,” she cries into the bed, reaching back to press on his abdomen with a trembling hand.
He relents, carefully lifting his hips until his cock slips free. She collapses against the bed in a weak pile of limbs, legs twitching as she gasps for air. Ilya flops onto the other side of the bed and carefully peels off the condom.
He barely has a moment to reach for his own throbbing cock before there’s movement next to him, a rustling of the sheets. They bunch up when she twists around and crawls his way, bent over his thigh to put her mouth over his cock.
“Oh,” he groans, hands flying to her hair.
Despite the fact that she couldn’t lift herself up if she tried, her head works up and down, mouth hot and tight and wet over him. She lets her tongue glide along the underside of his cock, wriggling when she got down to the base to sweep over his balls. His leg jerks at the sensation, another moan rumbling through him.
“Fuck, milaya. I am—“
Spurts of warmth enter her mouth and coat her throat. She holds herself steady, cock lodged deep to pulse in her mouth. She swallows as much as she can and carefully lifts up, pausing to suckle on the pink head as she goes. Ilya chuckles, sweeping his hand over her hair to her cheek, where his thumb rubs under her eye.
Her cheek presses to his thigh, collapsing once more with a tired sigh. Ilya lets his hand rest atop her head, equally as spent and draped against the headboard. He tips his head back and closes his eyes, knowing he’ll be collecting his clothes and trudging back to the hotel soon.
But for right now, he can rest.
♡♡♡
Ilya startles some time later to a sharp clacking. He lifts his head, suddenly a leaden weight, away from the headboard. A few blinks bring the room back to him, an unfamiliar territory. Large windows give view to a city skyline, looming buildings with very few lights on, and the pale lilac sky of the space between dusk and dawn. The bed is soft beneath him, a pale pink comforter and matching sheets.
He doesn’t have to search long for the source of the clacking. It’s directly across from him, pressed against the wall at a wooden desk. A white glow illuminates the space before her, a laptop opened on the desktop. A bright blue shirt covers her now, knees tucked up on a round, green chair. Her fingers work quickly over the keyboard—very loudly.
“You are clicking very loud,” Ilya announces.
The girl gasps, twisting around. A pair of glasses rest on her nose now, oversized and interestingly adorable. She pushes them up to rest at the crown of her head when she sees Ilya blinking back at her, hands resting in his lap. She’d drawn the blankets over his legs at some point, though he remains naked beneath them.
“Sorry. I just had to get this idea down.”
She turns back around to the computer and Ilya hums. He throws the blankets back and carefully steps down, wincing at the cold floor beneath him. He locates his boxers near the end of the bed and plucks them from the ground, slipping them over his hips with a snap of the elastic band.
He comes behind her at the desk, one hand bracing the chair and the other beside her laptop. He squints at the computer screen—far too bright for this time of night—and watches the words appear at lightning speed.
“My god. You work a lot.”
She shrugs. “I guess.”
He pulls back to gaze down at her and immediately plucks at the shoulder of her t-shirt.
“Uh, davai—what is this?”
She continues typing. “Huh?”
“What are you wearing?”
She stops and glances down at her chest and the stark white maple leaf on the center of it. “This is my bed shirt—“
“Uh, no. Get up.”
He only sounds like he’s half joking, and she furrows her brows together as she gets to her feet. Ilya immediately frowns at the Maple Leafs shirt over her body, hanging loosely down to her thighs.
“You cannot wear this around me,” he says, shaking his head at it. “This is…this is wrong.”
She laughs, pulling at the hem. “What?”
“Take it off.”
She peers up at him, brows raised. “Are you serious?”
Ilya folds his arms over his comically large chest, and even with his dick out, it’s intimidating. He mirrors her look of expectation and juts his chin out.
“Take it off,” he repeats.
She huffs, quickly lifting the shirt over her head. She tosses it on the bed, standing there naked except for a pair of clean panties.
“Happy?”
Ilya drops his arms and hums, a soft smile touching his face. “Yes. Much better.”
She rolls her eyes playfully, and he closes the gap between them to grip her jaw in that overbearing hand. He tips her head back and plants his mouth over hers. A firm, punctuation of a kiss. When he pulls back, Ilya grins again.
“What is your name?”
A giggle bursts forth from her mouth, her cheeks blazing with warmth. “Oh my god, I never told you my name?”
“To be fair, I do not think I asked.”
They chuckle together, and she gives him her name in a gentle murmur. He repeats it, his accent thick around the syllables.
“You are like animal, by the way,” he says, releasing her face to step back.
She follows him through the door of her bedroom, folding her arms over her hardening nipples.
“An animal?”
“Yes.” Ilya pads into the kitchen, collecting his clothes one by one from the floor. He tosses his t-shirt over his head and drapes his pants over the back of the couch, facing her as he does. “Like animal in heat.”
She flushes, gazing down at her bare feet over the rug. “Oh—“
“Like bunny. Is cute.”
She peeks up at him through her lashes, relief flooding her at the small smile on his face. He hoists his jeans over his hips and pulls the zipper, belt tickling loosely over his thigh. Her lip quirks up, and she hopes he can’t see very well in the darkness of the apartment.
Ilya keeps his jacket off and folded over his arm as he approaches, tucking a curled finger under her chin. He bends at the waist, shoulders broad and wide, and hovers his mouth near hers.
“I bring you better shirt next time.”
Her eyes bulge as he pecks a gentle kiss against her mouth. “Next time?”
Ilya stands to his full height, humming approvingly. “Yes. We play Toronto again next month. You will still live here, yes?”
She follows him to the door. “Uh, yes?”
“Okay.” Ilya twists the knob and opens the door a few inches, turning to flash another grin. “I will see you next month.”
She breaths a small laugh. “Okay. Um, goodnight, Ilya.”
He steps into the hall, poking his head through the gap in the door. “Goodnight, Bunny.”
The door snicks shut, and she exhales softly into the quiet of the apartment. She walks back into the bedroom and closes her laptop, turning to the disarray of her bed. There, she finds the flash of blue—the Toronto Maple Leafs shirt.
She folds it carefully and opens her closet, putting it at the very top.
♡♡♡
It’s not until the next day, sometime in the evening, that there’s a knock at her door.
“Coming!”
She hurries from the couch, her movie paused on the tv. She trips over her slippers on the way there, curses herself, and opens the door.
On the welcome mat, a black shirt and a ripped piece of paper await. She bends to collect them and glances down the hall, catching only the square of Ilya’s shoulders as he walks away.
The Raiders t-shirt smells like him, soft and worn from wear. Tucked between the folds is a front-row, bench side ticket to the Toronto v Boston game next month. On this, a yellow sticky note that reads:
So you can watch me beat your boyfriend.
The torn legal pad paper on the t-shirt is wrinkled and scrawled with horrible, nearly illegible handwriting.
Now you can burn the other one. See you next month.
"It's him, isn't it?" Your eyes darted from his face to the phone, your heart leaping from your chest and drowning itself in sorrow.
"No."
You sucked your teeth in, weaving shaking fingers through sweaty hair. "Dont. Lie. To. Me. Ilya."
"Fine. It was him." A deep inhale to an old, stale cigarette. You wanted to fucking throw it across the room. Maybe his apartment would catch fire. Maybe the beautiful trophies and uniforms and memories will burn.
"Why do you keep answering the phone when you promise not to?" You felt an ache that was deep, deep in your gut.
He shrugged, now refusing to answer at all. From barely anything to nothing at all. You were truly losing him. To a fellow hockey player who understood every single thing about his life that you didn't. It hurt like a sharp paper cut to the heart, stinging and fine, blood seeping through the slit.
"I know that I don't get it. I know that I don't understand like he does. But you love me, don't you, Ilya?"
"Of course."
"Say it."
He exhaled smoke, long and gray, clouds exploding through the room with lack of response.
you can have it (ilya rozanov x shane hollander x fem!reader) (part four—finale)
summary: bunny does her best to say goodbye
uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.
♡ if you want it (part one)
♡ if you still want it (part two)
♡ if you need it (part three)
♡ the shane x ilya collection
tags: p in v, use of “good girl,” voyeurism, oral (m!receiving), angst at the end (the whole ex bf thing will make sense with the prequel fics) but honestly not really because they’re all fine with it!
*note: SHANE IS GAY AS FUCK!! like he’s still gay. he has no romantic feelings for Bunny, they are simply fucking around. he cares for her as a friend and is simply attracted to their sexual desire for each other. that’s it. let people fuck around sometimes. if anything, he gets off more at the idea of ilya watching them fuck/watching ilya fuck her (voyeurism king) than he does actually fucking her lol. sorry, that’s how it goes sometimes. also I don’t really like this fic but like. oh well.
may. montreal.
#24 🏒: *sent attachment* (6:52 pm)
made me think of you :) (6:52 pm)
🐇: lol (10:28 pm)
“‘Lol?’ What the fuck?”
“She is busy, Hollander.”
“Yeah, but it’s been, like…weeks. She just keeps saying ‘lol.’”
“You sent picture of a bunny with glasses, it was not even funny. She is being nice.”
Shane glares at the pixelated picture of his boyfriend in his hand. Ilya’s eyes scan his screen, a white glow illuminating his face as he remains on the screenshot Shane sent him.
The text he sent Bunny, regrettably, was not that funny. But he just needed something to say to her, something to get her to reply. It feels like they haven’t talked in weeks. Not really, not about things that mattered.
“Do you think she’s mad at me or something?” Shane leans back into the hotel headboard, adjusting the glasses on his nose.
Ilya sighs, and there’s a crisp rustling that makes Shane flinch. Ilya reappears with his eyes dead-set on Shane now, the white glow gone and replaced by the soft yellow illumination of lamplight. He’s in bed, back home in Ottawa. The glimmer of his gold chain glints along his chest, settled where the cross lays between his pecs.
“I do not know, did you leave her naked again?”
Shane’s face hardens into complete disapproval, and Ilya snickers to soften the blow.
“Kidding, I am kidding—“
“Don’t even joke about that, Ilya.”
“I won’t, I am sorry. She is not mad at you, she is just busy.”
Shane sighs, tucking his free arm up to fold over his equally bare chest. His eyes bounce down to Ilya’s frame, just nipples-up free to him on the screen. He misses him. Desperately, achingly. The hotel beds are cold and lonely and he misses their shared mornings, the breakfasts and coffee and morning runs.
He misses feeling Bunny’s soft body wriggling between them.
“Has she been texting you back?” Shane asks.
Ilya shrugs, adjusting against his pillows. He pulls his lips down into an unbothered frown, and Shane suddenly hopes the answer is ‘no.’
“Not much. We have not really talked since few weeks ago, when we played Toronto.”
He sniffs, and Shane swallows noisily. “Oh yeah? When was that?”
The corner of Ilya’s lip curls upward. “You remember.”
april. toronto.
“Oh, fuck.”
Ilya’s breath came in harsh puffs through tight teeth, chest rising and falling with an uneven pulse. Nothing like the steady, slapping thrusts that had Bunny scrambling for solid ground. Her fingers ached around fistfuls of the comforter, mouth dropped open to emit drool and drag it over the bed with every writhe of her body. The noises leaving her were inhuman. She could feel the blood in her head, rushing and rising like bread in the oven. She could barely breathe, could feel every nerve in her body screaming. It was so fucking hot in that room.
“Fuck, you guys are so fucking hot.”
It came from across the room, Shane’s voice a little muffled and full of static. He had his thumb over the speaker, a little preoccupied with where his other hand was, working slow and languid over his throbbing cock. He felt like he’d been staring at the screen for so long that the rest of the room faded away, a vignette around the bright glow of Bunny and Ilya going at it like animals.
She wondered what he looked like right now, but her head felt like a leaden weight on her neck. She imagined his cheeks all pink at the top, a rosy glow behind his freckles. His pouty mouth parted to release soft, shallow breaths. Those broad shoulders flexed, his stiff biceps bulging, the gentle shake of the screen every time he—
“Let him see you, dorogoya,” Ilya gritted, and breath whooshed through Bunny like a slap when he yanked her up.
The tight fist in her hair moved quickly, fingers pressed into her cheeks to squish her lips together. She whimpered, the flesh over her ass rippling into her hips with every slam of Ilya behind her. It took a few blinks for her to register, to find the screen and the man on it across the room. Ilya’s phone was propped against a stack of books on Bunny’s dresser, and Shane filled the expanse of the screen like a god.
It made Bunny clench around Ilya like a vice.
“She loves to be a fucking slut for you, Hollander.”
Shane moaned, head tipping against the pillows behind him for just a minute before he picked it back up, blinking blearily at the sight of Ilya slowing down. Deep, long, bed-rocking grinds against Bunny’s ass.
“Fuckkk,” she whined, eyes pinching shut.
“Don’t you love that Bunny?” Ilya asked, using his grip on her face to pull her head aside, urging her focus back on him.
Her brows furrowed, her thoughts coming like electrical sparks. She could barely keep herself up, her arms quaking, palms sore against the mattress. She was on the precipice, wobbling over that razor-thin edge with barely any strength—
“Tell me, Bunny,” Shane commanded, and his voice was so soft and low she almost worried she had imagined it.
Ilya eased up on her cheeks, fingers loosening just enough to grip her jaw instead, the gentle pressure of his fingers propping her up enough to bring her back to somewhat-stasis. She sucked in a sharp breath and felt a tear trickle down her cheek when she blinked at the pixelated Shane across from her.
“I l-love when I’m your slut.”
They didn’t ask who she meant, because they knew she was speaking to them both. From the time she opened the door and Ilya dropped his pants—and their naked bodies writhed and twisted and humped together before Shane’s dark, watching gaze—to the moment Ilya shimmied back into his clothes and kissed her goodbye, Bunny belonged to both of them. Even if Shane couldn’t be here physically this time.
“Fuck, good girl,” Shane sighed, catching his lip between his teeth as he quickened his strokes over his cock.
Ilya hummed, pinning Bunny flat to the bed with one sharp thrust of his hips. He fell against her, a heavy mass almost swallowing her whole. He reared back just enough to brace the bed with one hand and pin her head down—fingers buried in her hair—with the other.
He leaned down enough to let his mouth brush her ear and mimicked in a deep, Russian drawl:
“Good girl.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Shane murmurs sheepishly, rubbing at his collarbone absently.
Ilya can see the start of a pink flush creeping over the other boy’s neck and it makes him grin. He slips a little further down the bed and under the covers, reaching for the growing tent in his boxers.
“What about you? When you saw her last month?”
“What about it?”
“Did you make her mad then?”
“What?” Shane furrows his brow, zipping up straight. “No. She definitely was not mad.”
Ilya laughs and it comes out breathy, a gust of muffled static in the speaker. And then his voice follows, so gravely and low that it rumbles through Shane excitingly. “No, it did not seem that way.”
april. ontario.
“I’ve never understood this movie.”
Her head sat comfortably on Shane’s chest, legs tucked up on the couch with her knees along his lap. He had one hand on her leg, aimlessly, the other still holding the remote. His brows were furrowed, mouth drawn poutingly at the television.
“You’re the one who put it on.”
“I thought you liked it.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I saw you watching it on Instagram.”
Bunny lifted her head, unable to help the smile that laced her mouth upward. He felt her gaze, the heat of her softness beside him practically radiating, but the throb of shame that filled him pulsed almost too loudly.
“You watch my Instagram.”
She knew he did. She saw his account pop up in her watch count every day, the verified mark and the @ shanehollander24 never something she’d get used to seeing so casually on her page. Ilya rarely ever watched her stories, never liked her posts even after all these years. Shane peered on her life like an old friend.
It made saying no to him that much harder, and when he called and asked if she’d stop by while he was in town, she could only play hard to get for an hour or so before she gave in.
But no sex, she promised herself. We’ll just hang out as friends.
“Yeah, I mean…sometimes,” Shane murmured.
Bunny dropped her head back on his chest again, drawing her hand over the firm surface of his stomach. He wound his arm around her shoulders, kept his hand unassumingly along her back. She couldn’t stop smiling.
And one glance at his pants—the loose-fitted cotton Nikes in that whorish grey he knows she likes—led Bunny to believe that her “no sex” promise might be broken.
It started with his fingers, sliding along her back, tracing her spine. Then his mouth, kissing her head, letting out soft, trembling pants. The tent over his crotch grew taller, restricted by the cock pressing up against it. Her fingers ached to reach out and touch it.
And when she could no longer fight the urge, and she let her fingers skate over the hardness beneath the soft grey cotton, Shane moaned so loudly it broke any delusion that she might withhold. It broke any restraint Shane might have had.
His hand was in her hair, guiding their mouths together, tongues sliding and licking messily. He shot up on his knees, angling so he could drop her on the cushion, hoisting one leg over his hip. The hardness pressed into her core and pulled forth a small gasp.
It took a matter of moments for them to undress, for his fingers to find their way inside of her. He nearly split the leather under his hand with the pressure of his grip, clutching the cushion beside her head. His fingers were not quite skilled, were still searching and wandering and figuring their way out, but it was the hunger in which he pleasured her, the way in which he watched her that mattered most. The heavy, lustful gaze that pinned her down, and the shallow, wanton breaths that fanned her face.
She gripped his shoulders when their mouths met again, teeth sinking into his bottom lip when she came. He groaned at the slight sting, hard cock dragging over her thigh.
And then she was scrambling to the floor, knees scraping over carpet to place her mouth over his cock. He threw his head back against the couch with a huff of breath, hands gathering her hair, holding her head.
“Fuck, Bunny,” he whined. “So fucking good.”
The only thought that bothered to form while she worked her mouth over him was: Ilya.
Shane felt for his phone somewhere within in the mess of the couch, and when he found it he swiped the camera open to a clear view of Bunny.
“Ilya…will wanna…see this,” he panted, finger trembling over the red ‘record’ button.
He captured all the sloppy, wet noises of Bunny’s mouth and all the heavy gasps and huffs behind the screen. 4K clarity of the moment Shane pulled her off by her hair and she stuck her tongue out, and his release painted her mouth and the lenses of the glasses she wore (just for him).
And when she used his guest room shower, Shane watched the video back with flames in his cheeks.
Jane: *sent attachment* (2:36 pm)
Delete that immediately. (2:36 pm)
Lily: no chance (7:13 pm)
“I have a game in Toronto next week, I will talk to her then,” Ilya says.
Shane nods. “Okay. I just don’t want things to be weird between us, you know?”
“So do not make it weird.”
Shane narrows his eyes at his boyfriend, who lifts one corner of his mouth handsomely. “I’m gonna hang up on you.”
“Mm, not before I see you, dorogoy. Been thinking about it all day.”
It’s the way he practically whines—a little downturn of his mouth into something like a pout—that has Shane grinning.
“Well, I wanna see you, too.”
Ilya kicks at the blankets frantically, hooking one hand into the band of his boxers. “I thought you would never ask.”
♡ ♡ ♡
may. toronto.
What remained of winter was lonely for Bunny. The boys spent it alternating cities and finding moments of alone time when they could. She was happy to squeeze in when they wanted, when they called. But when they didn’t, she found herself lingering in her living room, all alone in a Metros sweatshirt or a pair of plaid pants.
She sent countless ‘sorry, can’t :/‘ texts to her friends with no excuse to give except Theodore in her lap and a longing in her chest the size of the Canada. The photograph of her and Ilya on the fridge became painful, and she slipped it in a shoebox the other day. They were too young, too sweet, and she remembered all too well what she believed when that picture was taken.
This means something to him, too.
It wasn’t that she still believed that. She could see the love and adoration pulsing between Ilya and Shane with crystal clarity, and whatever feelings she harbored for Ilya dwindled years ago.
But didn’t she deserve that, too? From someone—anyone? A person to be loved by, wholly and singularly. Occasional threesome be damned, there was only person each man loved and it was each other.
So, when the texts came, she didn’t answer them. She let them marinate in her notifications, sent short, uninterested replies if any. It pained her to see Shane’s bubble appear and disappear in what she could only assume was confusion. Just as painful was to watch Ilya’s phone call go to voicemail on her countertop. His contact photo was still the shirtless mirror selfie he sent her half a decade ago from a hotel in a foreign city. He looked like the epitome of a Masshole and the younger Bunny (who sent a shameless bra and panty-clad photo back) loved it.
But what was the point?
It was a glass of white wine and her ex boyfriend’s one a.m dm that did it.
benoitbeau13: Hey, I know it’s been a while. Not sure if you’re still in the Toronto area, but would love to catch up sometime.
She found herself typing her reply before she could find an Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander-shaped excuse not to.
Hey, yes I am :) I’d love to.
♡ ♡ ♡
An episode of Sex and the City hums through the apartment as Bunny bends before the bathroom mirror, plucking a pesky eyebrow hair. She’ there, precariously separating tiny hairs, when the front door rattles with a harsh pounding. The tweezers clatter into the sink when she flinches.
“Coming!”
Benoit, a friend, her mom dropping by unexpectedly: all perfectly reasonable ideas as to who stood on the other side of the door. But when she swings it open, the last person Bunny expects to see is the very man standing there: Ilya.
“Oh,” she chirps, eyes comically round.
Ilya pulls off the doorway, hands reaching for her shoulders immediately. “Hello, Bunny.”
He pulls her in for two sharp kisses, one smacked on each cheek. Her hand braces his side, firm muscle under the flap of a clean leather jacket.
She lets her lips pucker into soft air kisses back. “Hi?”
“I can come in, yes?”
He breezes past her into the apartment, taking in the space as though he’s never seen it before. She nudges the door closed behind him and watches him wander into the kitchen. He grins upon the television glowing with the vulgar happenings of Samantha Jones.
“You are watching porn. You missed us so much?”
She snorts, rushing to grab the remote and shut it off. “I’m getting ready to go out, actually. Why are you…here?”
The click of her heels attracts his attention, and Ilya watches her saunter back into the bathroom. She reappears moments later with a makeup bag in hand and he takes a moment to finally look at her, instead of whatever he seemed to be searching for before. A black dress hugs the shape of her with little to the imagination, but with every intention of definition. Her skin shimmers gorgeously, her eyes darker than usual. How he remembered her to look when they were younger, all dolled up and on the town.
“You look beautiful.”
She pauses, eyes sliding his way as she retrieves the black purse sitting on the coffee table. “Thank you. I have a dinner.”
“Mm, yes.”
He knows what he’s looking for the minute he finds it, but it’s still disappointing to see.
The Toronto fucking Maple Leafs cap thrown on the armchair in the corner. The bright blue sack of crap just sitting there. Ilya doesn’t need to pick it up, but he does—and it’s just as he suspected.
#13. Benoit fucking Beau.
“What the fuck is this?”
Bunny whirls around and freezes when she sees the cap held by the adjustable snap—like a rodent by the tail—in Ilya’s hand.
Oh. That.
“Uh—“
“Tell me you are not back with this…this fucking guy,” he sputters, motioning toward the cap with an open hand.
“Ilya—“
“—With Brad?”
“His name is not Brad,” Bunny deadpans, eyes rolling as she opens the clasp of her purse and retrieves a tube of lipgloss.
Ilya knows what his name is. He knows that almost ten years ago, he punched #13 at a night out after the game, and that the very woman before him thanked him for it. She called the guy unfortunate, and smiled when she said it.
How did she get back to here?
“Tell me you are not back with that idiot, Bunny.”
A heart shaped mirror sits in her palm and she busies herself with peering into it, running a glossy brush over her top lip. The flesh begins to shimmer in the low lamplight.
They let the silence settle for a while. She waits for him to correct himself, to readjust and set the hat down, apologize. He waits for her to put the mirror down and look him in the eye, and promise she’s not that dumb.
When neither get what they want, Bunny sighs and snaps the mirror shut.
“We’re reconnecting.”
The Russian’s brows raise to an extreme level, creasing his brow in a deep line. She avoids the look by sitting on the edge of the couch and adjusting the strap of her heel.
“You are joking, yes?”
It feels like an admonishment and she tries not to let it cut her. She fiddles with her earring, searching around for something else to do while she waits this out.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because he is a fucking idiot! And shit at hockey. I am good at hockey.” Ilya shrugs absently, tossing the cap on the chair again.
Bunny rolls her eyes again and stands from the couch. “Well, you have someone, Ilya.”
He watches her walk into the kitchen and haul the fridge door open with such force the condiments rattle. He scoops Theodore from his spot at his feet, holding him against his shoulder as he follows Bunny.
“What does that mean?”
The bottle of wine is properly chilled but already half gone. The stopper comes free with a resounding, hollow pop. Bunny takes a sip from the mouth of it and Ilya sets the cat down on one of the island chairs.
Bunny wipes at her mouth with her thumb and with ruined lipgloss, gives Ilya a look that withers. “You have Shane, Ilya. And he has you. Who do I have?”
His arms cross, leather creaking under muscle. His eyes bounce around the room for a moment, unseeing, and he gives another shrug.
“You have me.”
She huffs, wriggling the stopper back into the neck of the wine bottle. “I never had you.”
It slices Ilya expertly. A precise, clean cut. He watches the back of her head when she turns to put the wine in the fridge, her shoulders when she slams it closed. The way she avoids him, won’t look at him, won’t even come close. Suddenly their years are catching up to him. He’s never known Bunny to be like this—closed off, quiet. Maybe it was even worse than Shane thought. Maybe she wasn’t mad at either of them, but something far, far worse.
She was done.
“So you are with Brad so that you…are not lonely.”
Bunny turns, one hand bracing the marble counter separating her and Ilya. Her eyes are downturned when they meet his.
“I’m with Benoit because we like each other. He wants me, and it feels good to be wanted. Doesn’t it?”
There’s a cluster of freckles near Shane’s right eye and it crinkles up when he smiles. He laughs at Ilya’s jokes even when they aren’t that funny. They have a routine, a life, a love. If someone were to ask Ilya what the one thing he could not live without was, Shane’s name would fall from his mouth.
Ilya drops his arms and exhales. “Okay.”
The soft, monosyllabic phrase is a balm over Bunny’s aches. Her heels hurry in quick clicks over the floor, and then she’s falling into him. He folds his arms over her shoulders, tucking her into his chest as closely as he can. He fits his head over hers, cheek pressed to her hair. Her arms are tight around his middle, cheek to chest.
The warm, bittersweet embrace of old friends.
“He’s different now, I promise,” she offers softly. “You know I’m careful.”
Ilya nods. “I know. He is still shit at hockey, though.”
She laughs and it skips through him like a stone over water. Their bodies begin to tilt back and forth in a stunted rhythm. But it’s soothing. It’s sweet.
“You’re not mad at me?”
Ilya could almost laugh at the irony. The boy in Montreal who winged over the phone and the girl home in Toronto were made in the same vein. Ilya always had a soft spot for whatever they were made of.
“No, dorogoya. You should be happy, you deserve it.”
“This feels so silly,” Bunny laughs, but he feels her hold tighten. “We were just…”
“Lovers?”
“Well…”
“Fuck buddies?”
“I guess.”
Their laughter melds together into something gushy. He pulls back enough to kiss the top of her head, hands lifting to hold her face. His thumbs press under her cheekbones, palms warm and rough against her skin.
“Call us when he starts to bore you.”
She rolls her eyes, but his mouth is only a half smile and she knows he means it. “…okay, Ilya.”
He dips down slowly, a painful trek to the very surface of her mouth. Their lips brush gently, a whisper of flesh on flesh—before he lets them touch completely, pressing together in delicate firmness. Bunny closes her eyes and promises to commit this to a very nice memory. Something to think back on when she inevitably misses him, and wonders how he’s doing.
Ilya mirrors her, eyes fluttering shut as he lets his tongue dart out and slip between her lips. But there are no mashing mouths and twisting heads. No greedy hands and heavy pants, or the burning need for more.
There is only this kiss, tender and sweet and fueled by years of history.
They pull away, and their eyes blink open together. She smiles, running a finger below his eye along his cheekbone.
“I mean it,” he murmurs.
She nods. “I know.”
Ilya inhales sharply, and she knows by the square of his shoulders that he’ll be leaving soon. His breath comes with a waft of her perfume, and he’s grateful she found her scent and stuck with it all those years ago. A single breath brings him back to twenty-one years old, when they haunted hotel rooms and the world seemed new.
He pats her cheek gently and takes a wide step away. “Okay.”
“Let me tell him,” she calls after him, taking much smaller steps behind him toward the door.
Ilya turns, eyes darting to the Metros schedule on her refrigerator, an Ottawa schedule held up by magnets beside it. The photograph of them was gone. But in its place was still the promise of something. The promise that she’d be watching, no matter what.
“Okay. Maybe do not mention Brad—“
“—his name is not Brad—“
“—Hollander hates Toronto even more than me.”
She rolls her eyes, and they sparkle with unshed tears, held at bay carefully. She wonders if Shane will care, at the end of the day. If he’ll miss her, the way she’ll miss him and the softness of his eyes.
She knows he’ll ask to stay friends, that they don’t need the benefits. But she needs a clean break. She needs a life of her own, just as Ilya and Shane do. They deserve that, too.
In the doorway, Bunny and Ilya linger equally. She keeps the door ajar just enough for her head to fit through, to prevent Theodore from escaping after Ilya. And the Russian tucks his hands in his pockets and nods once, a tuck of his chin toward his chest.
“Goodbye, Bunny.”
She touches her temple to the door. “Bye, Ilya.”
His walk to the elevator is slow, aimless. He lets his feet sway, his shoulder bump into the wall beside another apartment door. He watches the welcome mats change, the numbers grow smaller. He hits the down button with his knuckle and steps onto the dimly lit elevator silently.
He leans back against the railing and exhales, fishing his phone out of his back pocket.
Jane: Tell Bunny I said hi! :) (7:55 pm)
Ilya crafts his response before he can think too hard. Carefully tacked-out letters with slow-moving fingers.
Lily: she was not home (8:45 pm)
♡ ♡ ♡
It’s past midnight when she gets home and she has two missed calls from Shane.
His contact name, the glaringly obvious to all but the oblivious ‘#24’ looms in the back of her mind as she washes her face free of the night’s makeup. As she steps out of her dress and eyes the pair of plaid pants in the hamper. The Raiders t-shirt balled up and thrown in the back of her closet. The Metros sweatshirt under it. They lost their respective Ilya and Shane scents long ago, but reminders of them come like phantoms when the items are resting on her body.
But she keeps them there, in the darkness of the closet. She pulls a college t-shirt on instead, feet bare as she slides into bed. It’s there, as she nestles against a stack of pillows along the headboard, that she picks up her phone and clicks on Shane’s contact.
The dial tone sends her heart sailing to her throat. He answers on the second ring.
“Hey,” he chirps.
Bunny swallows, tugging the blanket over her bare legs. “Hey.”
“Just a sec.”
There’s a hollow clang, a set of hurried, echoed steps, and the jingle of keys. Another thunk as a door shuts. She pictures Shane entering his apartment, the sleek windows and modern light fixtures. She only visited the Montreal estate once months ago.
“Okay,” he breathes, a rush of air that crackles in the speaker. “Sorry, just got home.”
“That’s okay.” Bunny toys with a loose thread in the hem of the top sheet.
“Ilya said he stopped by but you weren’t home.”
She blinks, lifting her gaze to peer out at the half-curtained window. The night is an inky blue, bejeweled by the warm lights of the city buildings around her. Ilya’s mouth on ber own, their soft, murmured goodbyes, a set of blue eyes blinking their silent departure—had it all only been a few hours ago? Was it really so permanent, that moment in time?
“Uh, yeah. I was out.”
There’s a pause that hums absently. Like the blinding lights at the dentist. The silence feels just as clinical.
“Oh.”
Bunny twists her finger in the sheet. “I, um…met someone.”
“Oh.” This time when he says it, it’s bright and alert. It’s written in bold and underlined in red in her head.
Bunny is saved from trying to muster a reply when Shane speaks again.
“Wow, um. No, that’s good. Obviously we don’t…yeah, that’s good.”
She exhales softly, a little shudder warbling from her chest. “He plays for Toronto.”
He scoffs loudly through the line and she cracks a smile. It’s relieving, the ease that suddenly nestles between them. Like that first time, when her tongue touched him and their eyes caught in a fire of desire and a promise of intimacy. A shared and strange intimacy that became addicting, confusing, painful.
She reminds herself of this as she waits for his voice to reappear.
“Toronto, blech,” he groans, a blazing display of disgust.
“I know, I know. But he’s nice.” She giggles, and a tear slips down her cheek.
She swats it away with a jolt.
“Well, he better be,” Shane murmurs, and there’s a metallic clank on his end.
She wonders what he’s doing, which room he’s standing in, what he’s looking at. She wonders if he’s in his typical post-game hoodie, if he’s already shucked off his sneakers by the door. She wonders if he’s already called Ilya to say goodnight.
“Otherwise, I’d have to…kick his ass.”
That gets another laugh out of her, and it makes her heart swell when he joins in softly. The soft slurp over the line leads her to think of a can of ginger ale and a lopsided smile around the metallic mouth of it.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Fuck yeah.”
Bunny shimmies down against the pillows, slipping further under the covers. They come up to her shoulders now, tucked under her chin.
“I saw that fight with Scott Hunter a few years ago, you’re definitely scrappy.”
That makes him snicker, and she sinks her teeth into her bottom lip to hold back another grin. She twists in the bed, wrapping the blankets around her.
“Yeah, well…this is it then? Not even gonna say hi when I’m beating your boyfriend’s ass—“
“Shane—“
“—on the ice, obviously.”
Breathing around a laugh makes her sound like she’s choking, but Shane is grinning on the other end and doesn’t care. He’ll miss her voice.
“I’ll say hi,” she promises. “But our clothes will be on.”
He hums. “Shame.”
She squeezes her legs together and sighs. “Shane.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s for the best.”
“…yeah.”
“You love him.”
“I do,” he says immediately, and it’s colored with truth. A warm, honeyed truth.
“And that’s enough.”
In his apartment in Montreal, Shane sinks into the armchair by the fireplace. He hoists one leg over the other and peers out into the window, where the night is still. Ilya’s asleep in Ottawa, conked out on his stomach most likely. Shane sent him a goodnight text anyway, something to make him smile in the morning.
if you need it (ilya rozanov x shane hollander x fem!reader)
summary: shane and ilya drop by bunny’s place to offer apologies and promise friendship—but they quickly tumble back into the benefits, too.
uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.
♡ if you want it (part one)
♡ if you still want it (part two)
♡ the shane & ilya collection
tags: angst, hurt/comfort, bunny is horny asf Shane is desperate as hell and Ilya needs to chill, oral (f!receiving), choking, biting, hair pulling, call it as it is this is dom!Ilya, overstimulation, cum swallowing/swapping Jesus this is filthy, rough rough, rough!
note: it helps to have the context of The Long Game when reading this. in my mind, this takes place kind of at the beginning of The Long Game, when Shane & Ilya are very much in a committed relationship but still hiding it from the world. ilya is ready to come out to the world at any minute but shane is still fearful and worried.
toronto, canada. february.
“Are you almost done with machine?”
“There’s another one over there, use that one.”
“I want this one.”
“Ilya—“
“Shane.”
Shane puffs out a breath, letting the leg press slam back into place with a metallic clank. Ilya stands over him on the mat, hands on the slivers of his hipbones peeking out from beneath a dangerously cropped muscle shirt. An old Raiders tee, torn and ripped on a hot summer day at the beach. Ilya was so tan that summer. They were so in love.
And not that they’re not in love anymore—but things have been off. The cold winter days of training and playing and practicing were not as sunny and playful as those summers at the cottage.
Certainly not after what happened with Bunny.
Though not much has been said about the incident, Shane knew Ilya was upset for the way he acted.
“Is rude, Hollander. You left her—you had just fucked her. How would you feel?”
“I know! I know, okay, I’m sorry. I just freaked out.”
“I understand. But you should have talked.”
“I know.”
“She deserves apology.”
“…I know.”
Not much came after that. Shane planned the call to Bunny on various occasions the week after that night at his condo. He prepared texts in his notes app, tapping and deleting and starting all over again, only to delete the draft altogether without ever sending one. He watched her Instagram stories (dick move, he knows), tried to peek at the texts between her and Ilya.
But he knew those had grown scarce, too. She pulled away from even Ilya, who had done nothing wrong at all.
So yeah. Things were strange these days. There was an odd, tense ball in Shane’s chest at all times, and an odd, tense distance between him and Ilya most of the time.
Shane slides the lock on the leg press into place and swings free from the machine, pushing to stand with a grunt. His legs are deliciously sore, thighs on fire from what had already been an hour and a half at the gym. Ilya’s spent most of it between the treadmill and the bench press. He always manages to make hundreds of pounds look like light weight.
Ilya slides into the seat of the leg press and pushes the lock open, the Adidas sneakers on his feet pure white under the fluorescents.
It’s Shane’s turn to stand there with his hands on his hips while Ilya adjusts the weight and gets his legs moving. He glances at his boyfriend in his periphery, panting and sweating and a light shade of pink.
“What?”
“Are you almost done?”
Ilya grunts as he extends his legs. “I just got here.”
“No, I mean with your workout. I want to go home.”
Ilya huffs through his nose, a bead of sweat trickling from his hairline down to his temple.
“I just got here,” he repeats.
Shane huffs and turns sharply on his heel. “Fine.”
Ilya keeps his face blank and his tone cool despite the irritation fizzing in his chest. “Fine.”
Shane snatches the towel from the handle of the treadmill and stomps toward the door, throwing it open to the hall before the locker room. The door to the locker room bangs into the wall at the force Shane opens it, and he flinches at the echo that welcomes him.
Luckily it’s empty, though thick with steam and bleach. He runs the towel roughly down his face to wipe it free of sweat before collapsing on the bench between a row of lockers, pressing his elbows into his knees.
He knows what will fix the biting annoyance between himself and Ilya. He knows exactly how to fix what went wrong. It’s not that they have to have her back over again, or even back in bed. He just has to say sorry. He just has to make it right.
He tells this to himself, murmuring softly as he reaches up and flicks his locker open. He retrieves his phone and licks away the salty sweat pooling along his upper lip, swiping it open to the Montreal Metros logo on his home screen.
He scoffs at her contact, the number saved without a name. As if someone might take his phone, snoop around, and know instantly that the contact named Bunny was the lover he shared with the man only few knew as his boyfriend. He’s such a fucking idiot. Too careful, too cautious.
But he doesn’t know anything else.
Shane’s just about to tap on the call icon when the locker room door swings open. Ilya sniffles as he saunters in, out of breath and shining with a thin coat of sweat. He swings his locker open on the other side of Shane, taking a deep drink from the water bottle waiting inside.
“Okay, we can go now,” he announces.
Shane locks his phone and slips it in his gym bag, sighing softly. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
♡♡♡
Ilya insists on driving, holding his hand out expectantly in the gym parking lot until Shane slaps the keys in his palm. Shane doesn’t think much of it, settling in the passenger seat with exhaustion like a hard ball behind his eyes, thinking of all the rice and salmon he’s gonna make at home—until Ilya makes a turn away from the condo.
“Uh…it’s a right turn, Ilya,” Shane says, watching their exit disappear down the road.
Ilya continues in the opposite direction. “Yes?”
“So you’re going the wrong way.”
“Mm, yes.”
Shane shifts in his seat to look at Ilya, whose face is cool and clean. Shadowed by the visor of a faded Raiders cap, still a little pink from exercise, but completely free of worry.
“What’s going on?”
Ilya motions with his chin toward the road. “Bunny lives few blocks from here. Apartment, big high rise. City girl.”
Shane feels the color drain from his face, the heat literally slip out of his body. He shifts back until he’s facing the road again.
“Oh.”
They drive for a while in silence. Just the hum of the tires over the road and warm air blasting from the vents. Shane watches building after building go by, watches as the lilac evening turns to a deep violet sky. As the city lights turn blinding, and they feel a long way from the safety of his condo.
Ilya pulls up to the curb of, as he described it exactly, a tall high rise. A city girl apartment. All windows and a doorman that Shane worries will look right through him if he goes up to that door.
Ilya puts the car into park and rests his head against the seat, watching Shane stare into the glass door of the building. He reaches over and cups his cheek, rubs his thumb under his eye.
“We do not have to go, if you don’t want.”
Shane closes his eyes, leaning into Ilya’s hand. He exhales deeply through his nose. He’s grounding himself, as Ilya’s seen him do so many times.
“I do. I have to, you know?”
Ilya nods, waiting patiently. Shane reaches over and rubs his hand along his thigh, more a comfort for himself than anything.
“I want to make things right,” Shane says.
Ilya pats his cheek, smiling even though he cannot see. “I know. She wants that too.”
Shane opens his eyes. “She does? She said that?”
Ilya hums, tipping his head thoughtfully. “Mm…no. She has not been texting much. But I know her. And I know what it looks like to care about you.”
Shane flushes, letting the smile tugging at his mouth show its face. He turns and presses his mouth to Ilya’s palm, soap-scented and a little clammy. He wouldn’t stop sweating from the gym until he took a long, cold shower at home. Shane had an uncanny ability to be fine the moment he sat down.
But his smile slips almost as soon as it comes. He holds his hand over Ilya’s against his cheek, as though bracing him for what’s to come.
“I just…don’t think we can do this anymore, with her. It’s too complicated. I mean, it’s already bad enough with us. Only seeing each other every few weeks, not being able to tell anyone—it’s a lot.”
Ilya nods, glancing off at the door of the apartment over Shane’s shoulder. “Yes. Is a lot.”
“Do you think she’ll understand?”
Ilya forces a small smile, and it’s weak and wavering. “Yes. Bunny is tough girl, remember?”
Shane nods, but just barely. “Yeah. I remember.”
Maybe too tough. Maybe, like Shane, Bunny didn’t let herself feel very much. As much as they should, as much as one’s allowed. Almost like they gave themselves a limit, and anything past that was too much.
It made Shane difficult to love, he thought.
“Then we will break it to her nice, yes?”
Shane nods again, this time a bigger show. “Yes, of course. And we can be friends. I’d like to be her friend.”
Ilya smirks. “Yes, she is very good friend.”
Shane snickers, pulling Ilya’s hand from his face. “Not that kind of friend.”
Ilya turns the car off and takes the key out of the ignition, dropping it in his pocket. He pops the door open to the cold. “I know. She is fun to brunch with.”
“Since when do you go to brunch?”
“I was not always fucking you in hotel rooms, you know.”
♡♡♡
They stand outside of her door for a while. Shoulder to shoulder, the heels of their sneakers touching. The hallway is painted a deep navy, all the doors exactly alike. There’s a welcome mat before hers: that rough, brown material that hurts dog paws. She doesn’t have a dog then, Shane thinks.
A door down the hall slams shut and Shane jumps. He cranes his head back to follow the sound beyond Ilya’s wide shoulders. Ilya raises his brows at him.
“You are paranoid.”
Shane turns back to Bunny’s door. “I’m not.”
“Are you going to knock?”
“Yes.”
But almost a full minute ticks by and Shane still doesn’t knock. Ilya rolls his eyes and raises his hand, bringing it to the door with a harsh pound. Someone else’s dog barks from the door behind them, and this time Ilya tosses a look over his shoulder. Shane can’t bring himself to form a joke about it.
Ilya brings his fist up to knock again when the door swings open, welcoming a gust of cold air and the smell of cinnamon.
And standing in the doorway is a much softer, undone Bunny. A pair of grey sweatpants and a white sweater, so fuzzy and soft. Brown slippers cover her feet, embroidered lining around white fur. Her hair’s pulled away from her face, perfectly messy, and a pair of oversized glasses perch on her nose.
From behind them, her eyes bulge wide. “Ilya…Shane. Um—“
“We were in neighborhood, came to say hello,” Ilya explains.
The three of them stand there a moment, Shane and Bunny gaping and Ilya tapping his finger on his wrist, hands crossed over each other in front of him.
“Hello,” he says.
Bunny blinks, turning to him. “Um, hi. You were in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, just working out.”
She hums, glancing between them again. Shane looks at the collar of her t-shirt instead of her face, the faded material limp and wilting with age. Ilya keeps tapping his finger, irritation reddening his neck. He's standing too straight, like he's being inspected—and Shane's slumped like he's hiding.
It isn't entirely inaccurate.
Before anyone can say anything else, a ball of grey fur comes prancing into hall from between Bunny's legs. Shane steps back and Ilya coos, squatting to scoop the cat in his arms.
"Oh, Theodore, malen'kiy prints. Cannot believe he is still alive."
Bunny sighs, temple falling against the door. Ilya scratches at the cat, Theodore's chin. Shane can hear him purring even from here and he almost wants to roll his eyes. Even literal cats purr for him.
"Yeah."
Ilya pulls the cat back a little, held up toward the hall lights like The Lion King. He furrows his brows and screws his nose up at the animal. "He got fat."
Bunny laughs softly and Shane exhales for the first time since they reached her door. "Yeah to that, too. Well, come on."
She steps back, swinging the door open to the apartment. Ilya glances at Shane as he steps in, hoisting Theodore over his shoulder. As though sensing that he'll hesitate, Ilya reaches one hand back and tugs Shane forward by the hem of his sweatshirt. He stumbles in consequence, jostling Bunny back into her own apartment door.
"Sorry," he murmurs, hands instantly at her waist to steady her.
She holds herself still, avoiding his mouth angled at her own. She turns from him almost completely, glaring into the empty hall. "It's fine. Just come in."
He lets go immediately, stepping back, feeling like he's been physically burned. He turns for Ilya, who's tipped in half, letting the cat climb over his back to reach the post for him near the wall of windows.
Shane blows out a slow breath, wiping his hand over his face. Bunny shuts the door and hurries to the marble island where a laptop and an evening of mess awaits. A half empty water bottle, the last sips of an iced coffee, a wine glass, a journal and pen, and an empty bowl. Bunny snaps the laptop closed and gathers the other items in her arms.
Shane’s eyes roam over the apartment as she tinkers in the sink, the three of them quiet all the while aside from Ilya’s small murmurs to the cat.
A stainless steel fridge decorated with postcards and photos: Bunny and her friends, Bunny and a woman with the same eyes, Bunny and another Raiders player—wait. No. Bunny and Ilya, years younger. Ilya was still hard then, still disgruntled and creased. Bunny was just as soft, hair longer, cheeks chubbier. She was grinning at the camera and Ilya had his arm around her shoulders, staring the lens down like an enemy. He was in all his hockey gear and the ice was pure white behind them.
Her furniture doesn’t match but she clearly values comfort over style. A stack of magazines sits on the coffee table with a vase of flowers, dvds in their cases by the tv. All the lamps have a soft yellow glow—not the harsh, sterile white of fluorescents. There are blankets strewn over every chair or couch, more in a basket by the corner. She has a yellow toaster. Shane doesn’t know why that makes him smile.
Oh, but the smile slips at the Raiders pendant flag hung behind the tv, among the framed photographs and vintage mirrors.
Ilya seems to be all over this house, and suddenly Shane feels curdled and clustered with self doubt. Did Ilya want this all along? Did he just want Bunny to be a part of what they had? Did they ever end things, or were they together all along?
They’re silly, stupid thoughts, Shane knows. But they zip through his mind anyhow.
“I wasn’t expecting guests,” Bunny murmurs, turning with her head bowed to collect the last of her night from the island top.
Shane quickly averts his gaze from scrutinizing her apartment. “No, it’s nice.”
“You should have seen it back then,” Ilya chuckles, stepping away from the cat to lean on the counter. “Everything was pink.”
Bunny scoffs and rolls her eyes. “I had a pink couch.”
“Was enough.” Ilya makes a face of disgust. “What is that stomach medicine…”
“Pepto?”
“Yes! Was Pepto couch.”
She giggles despite herself, and Shane visibly relaxes. She can’t be that mad at him, right?
But her laughter fizzles, and Ilya’s smile turns painful. His eyes slide to Shane across the room, and Shane can only pretend he doesn’t notice for so long. Ilya has the nerve to clear his fucking throat.
Bunny looks between them as she comes back to the island. “Look, guys—“
“Hollander has something he’d like to say.”
“I can speak for myself.”
The men look at each other, and for the first time Bunny sees something other than love between them. Not rage, not hate, but certainly something toeing the line of anger. Frustration. Ilya’s jaw knots when he clenches it, and all the soft, boyish sweetness of Shane’s face is gone.
“Well—“
“I do want to say something,” Shane interrupts, turning to face her. “But I can say it myself.”
She raises her brows. “Okay.”
He sighs. “Can we…go sit?”
Bunny turns to Ilya, who whirls around mechanically and stomps to the living room. He collapses in an armchair under the glow of a floor lamp, pulling the white fur pillow resting there in his lap. Bunny follows slowly, and she tucks her legs up when she sits on the couch. Despite it being his request, Shane’s the only one who doesn’t sit.
Instead, he paces. He runs his fingers through his hair and tugs at the strands at the nape of his neck. He toys with the strings of his sweatshirt, avoids the watching gaze of Theodore from his window-front perch.
Ilya tips his head back against the chair and sighs. Shane shoots him a serrated look.
“Listen,” Bunny starts, and when she adjusts the glasses on her nose, Shane feels his resolve begin to crumble. “I get it, alright? You were scared, you were confused. It was shitty, but I don’t, like, hate you.”
Shane stops, standing before her on the other side of the coffee table. “You don’t?”
Her eyes round behind the glint of her lenses. “Of course not, Shane. Is that what you thought?”
His hands rise and fall in an empty gesture, slapping down on his thighs. “Well, I would.”
Bunny adjusts, sitting up on her knees on the couch. “Why should I hate you?”
Shane’s mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for water. He looks to Ilya, but the man only shakes his head and shrugs. Is not my question, Shane can practically hear him grumbling. Sometimes he hates how he doesn’t help him out when he knows he can’t find the words. But why should Ilya speak for him?
When he can’t seem to find an answer, Bunny finds it for him with another tired sigh. And tired is the only word he can use to describe her, all bundled up and dopey-eyed. She falls back into the couch like she might curl up and sleep.
“I get it, guys. It was fun while it lasted, right? And we can be…friends. Like me and Ilya.”
She turns to the Russian, who nods with a small smile. He’s stroking the fur of her pillow like it’s another cat. “Yes, friends.”
Bunny nods, looking back up at Shane. “Friends then?”
He looks at her. Really looks at her, for longer than he’d like. Longer than what’s comfortable for any of them. She looks to Ilya again, who sits forward in her fluffy chair that she uses for reading. He tips his head to watch Shane, whose face is so blank it almost scares him.
They’re all in a deep state of unrest when Shane finally nods. Numbly. Stiffly. Just once. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at the empty couch cushion next to her.
“Yeah. Friends.”
Bunny nods back and stands up from the couch. “Okay.”
She walks around the coffee table, and Shane isn’t sure where she plans to go. To him, to hug him? To put her chin on his chest the way she did a few weeks ago? When she called him baby and he felt his insides stir. Or maybe to Ilya, to beg him to take his meltdown of a boyfriend away because he was freaking her out.
Before she can do anything, Shane decides for her. He grabs her by the sleeve of her white sweater, pulling her to him slowly. She goes, but turns her head to watch him in the corner of her eye. She steps into him, their hips touching. He lets her sleeve go to wrap his arms around her shoulders, tugging her against him with one rough pull.
She grunts, bouncing against his hard chest. For a moment, her arms just sit there, unmoving. She lets him hold her and does not hold him back. Hidden in the ridiculous pile of hair atop her head, Shane lets his face crease in any way it wants. In agony, in regret, in shame. He pinches his eyes shut as far as they’ll go, until little spots dance in the blackness behind them.
But then he feels her hands along his shoulders, holding him back. He sighs, and it almost sounds like a groan. Throaty and full of relief.
“I’m sorry,” Shane murmurs against her head.
He feels her nod under his arms. “I know.”
Shane closes his eyes, lets himself exhale so deeply, it deflates him entirely. He drops his head to her shoulder, fits it into her neck. She runs her hand along his back, up into his hair. Every inhale comes with a mouthful of his sweatshirt: a cologne-laced musk, heady and warm. She can hear the steady thump of his blood rushing under her cheek, pressed to his chest. Could he hear hers, when he was lying on her chest? Did it stutter the way she thought it did, when she felt him pulling away?
Bunny pulls away first, slowly inching back. She turns to Ilya immediately, where the Russian busied himself with stroking Theodore, cooing to him softly in Russian. She wonders if the feline remembers him, if his scent stayed the same after all these years. It did to her. The first night at Shane's condo, when all three of them were together, Ilya was exactly the same. The way he smelled, the way he tasted—it all came rushing back like a tidal wave.
Her cheeks were burning and Ilya was looking at her with a soft smile.
Bunny blinks hard and tosses her head aside, clearing the sudden hoarseness of her throat.
How would being just friends work exactly?
"Well," Ilya sighs, standing to his feet. He tosses the white pillow back on the chair and gives Theodore a gentle pat on the butt to scoot him away. "We should go."
He walks to Bunny with open arms that she curses herself for falling into so easily. They fold around her, pulling her close, so close her nose dips into the collar of his sweatshirt.
"Bye," she murmurs into his chest, and she wonders when she'll see him next. She feels like she only just got him back, as a friend or not. She missed their friendship.
She pulls away in time to see him push the visor of his cap back, twisting it around to rest like an awning over his neck. He grips her chin and tips it up, and blood rushes to her cheeks with stinging heat.
"Bye," he whispers back, and then he's pressing their mouths together.
She squeaks, and Shane hears his breath wheeze through the room. Did friends kiss like this? Did they put their hand around their jaws, pull them up until they're clinging for a lifeline on those massive fucking arms? Did they slip their tongues in the other's mouth, moaning with every glide of wet heat?
These friends did.
Jesus, Ilya was going for it. Moving his free hand to the plush fat of her ass, grabbing it with the full weight of his palm. Swallowing the gasp that leaves her, muffling it with another intrusion of his tongue. He slides his hand from her chin to the back of her skull, pulling her close, keeping her stationary—but where the hell would she go?
When their mouths pop apart, Bunny blinks in a sugary daze. Ilya licks the taste of her off his lips, spit-slick and swollen rosy pink.
Ilya adjusts his hat back in place and sniffs. “Hollander, let’s go.”
He doesn’t bother looking at Shane, who’s standing there watching him walk toward the door in an equally stupefied daze. His fingers ache in the tightly-balled fists at his sides. He stopped being able to feel his tongue a few minutes ago, and he’s worried if he talks it’ll come out like mush.
But Bunny turns to him, aching for just one word. They listen to the door swing open, to Theodore chirp his goodbye to an old friend as Ilya slips by.
And Shane steps forward, pulling Bunny into another quick and stiff hug. He pecks the top of her head and clears his throat, removing himself from her body like she’s a hot coal.
“Uh…bye.”
He ignores her small huff of a sardonic laugh as he turns to go. Ilya’s waiting at the door, bracing the frame with both hands to fill the expanse of the exit. He’s looking at Shane like a panther in the brush, daring him to misstep.
And Shane wants to. Fuck, does he want to. He wants to grip the back of her hair the way he knows she likes. He wants to devour her mouth and hear her whine, the way he likes. He wants to rip her clothes off and pin her arms down and—
“Hollander.”
“Yeah,” Shane snaps, walking through the door and knocking Ilya’s right arm down as he goes.
He stomps ahead of him down the hall, the thunder of his sneakered feet thumping in time with his blood, slamming in his ears. In the back of his mind, Shane knows Ilya is following, but he can’t bring himself to care right now. He cares only for the hard strain against his sweatpants, the horrible ache of need in his chest that weeps like something split wide open. He’s felt it before. In the low light of hotel rooms when he was nineteen years old. Nineteen, twenty, fuck—even just a few years ago. When he scrambled to get dressed and pretended Ilya was still asleep, the way Ilya pretended to be asleep, so they didn’t have to say goodbye. So they didn’t have to look each other in the eye in the light of day.
Shane slams on the elevator button, pocketing his anxious, fidgeting fingers. Ilya approaches slowly, waiting a few feet away as the red, blinking numbers rise.
“We agreed,” Shane spits, staring down his warbled reflection in the steel of the elevator. In his periphery, Ilya cocks his head in that stupid Russian way. “We agreed to just be friends with her.”
“We are.”
“You aren’t! You just—you kissed her.”
The elevator is four floors away.
“Yes. You kiss Rose all the time, is same thing—“
“That is not the same thing.” And this time Shane does turn to him, cheeks hot and fists clenched again.
He steps to him, and he can’t quite figure out why the fire inside him is burning so hot. White hot, a temperature almost agonizing. Ilya blinks back patiently, because maybe he can. Maybe he knows Shane better than Shane even knows himself. Or maybe he just knows what Shane isn’t letting himself feel.
Ilya closes the gap between their bodies, and he knows in any other world, Shane would be recoiling and running for distance—but he isn’t thinking straight. Bunny’s got his thoughts twisted, puréed into an incomprehensible nothing. It’s the way Ilya felt—and feels—about Shane.
“What do you want, Hollander?” Ilya gravels. Each word rumbles through Shane beautifully.
Shane looks over Ilya’s shoulder at the empty hall. The elevator dings beside them, and the doors part to a wood-paneled box. A woman steps out with a haul of grocery bags, and Shane steps away this time. He rubs at his temple and sighs, meeting Ilya’s eye from the short distance they now have.
Ilya nods and moves aside, gesturing down the hall. “Get her then. Just stop thinking, Shane.”
Bunny’s just taken her hair down and poured a glass of wine—which she has every intention of taking to bed—when a loud bang collides with her door. She jumps, muffling a yelp with the back of her hand. She wipes the sip of alcohol from her mouth and hurries to the door, glancing through the peephole.
The door opens an inch wide and Shane’s on her—throwing it open the rest of the way, gripping her by the nape of her neck, the curve of her waist, yanking her to him like he needs her to breathe. He groans into her open mouth, walks her blindly to the nearest solid surface. Her back arches over the edge of the island, urged by Shane’s overbearing weight and desperate attack. His mouth moves to her cheek, her jaw, along the column of her throat. She grabs fistfuls of his hair in her fists, gasping for air and struggling to find it.
The door to her apartment slams closed. She jumps, eyes flying open to find Ilya standing before it, arms crossed over his chest. Heat laps at her belly, gathers in her head like air in a balloon. Shane remains undeterred, sucking at the spot below her ear until she whines.
Ilya raises his chin, tips his head to the side. He watches his boyfriend ravage the girl struggling to breathe—the girl he gifted to him. There’s a power to that, he thinks. That he gave Bunny to Shane and he can take her away, too. He thinks.
Ilya nods at Bunny, who finds herself watching him for permission. At this motion, she tips Shane’s head back with her fingers in his hair and guides their mouths together again. He moans against her lips, tongue lolling out lazily, hands wandering beneath the flaps of her sweater, then under the hem of her t-shirt to slide along her bare stomach. He groans throatily when his fingers brush the hard, naked pebbles of her nipples.
For a while, Ilya just lets it happen. He lets their breathing roughen, shorten to sharp pants and huffs passed between slick, open mouths. He lets Shane knead—paw, more like—at Bunny’s tits, lets Bunny throw her head back and whimper at it. He even lets Shane start taking off her clothes, pushing the cardigan off and pulling at the strings of her sweatpants. He waits until her comfortable articles of clothing are on the kitchen floor, and Shane’s sweatshirt has been thrown somewhere aside, to make his move.
They don’t hear him approach, not between all the gasping and whining. It’s pathetic, really, Ilya thinks. The way they so easily fell into worshipping each other.
Did they forget who ran the show?
She hears the sharp hiss of breath whooshing before she feels him being pulled away, and Bunny opens her eyes to find Ilya wrenching Shane off of her by his hair. His face scrunches in a pleasures pain, head tipped back to bare a beautiful throat. Ilya has a hold of the hair at the back of his head, a great fistful in a strong, ringed hand. He has that calculated, empty look on his face, softened only by the fiery glow of passion in his gaze.
Bunny grips at the island behind her, chest rising and falling with labored breath. She watches Ilya take three small steps backwards, pulling Shane with him as he goes. Steered by his hair, Shane releases small, exhaled gasps until Ilya stops them.
“I think,” he says, tipping his mouth to brush against Shane’s cheek, but keeping a steady eye on Bunny, “you still owe Bunny apology.”
Shane’s knees hit the floor with two hard thumps when Ilya urges him down, dropping him before Bunny without another word. She watches him go, pupils blowing wide, jaw going slack. Ilya lets his lip twitch into a half smile, loosening his grip on Shane’s hair.
Ilya turns to Bunny and pats the marble of the island. “Hop up, Bunny.”
She swallows, glancing again at a kneeling Shane before inching herself up onto the island. The countertop is a cold jolt against her flushing skin, a welcome reprieve from the overload of absolutely insane need. She’s never been so horny in her life.
Ilya hums, bending his fingers to skim over Bunny’s warm cheek. He pets over the soft flesh, head tipping this way, that way, inspecting her carefully. She keeps her eye on him directly, despite the hot breath going directly to her core from the floor. Shane’s placed directly between her legs, thighs parting on their own accord—and with the help of Shane’s wandering hands.
“So pretty,” Ilya murmurs. “Pussy is pretty too, yes?”
He pulls back to look at it and she burns bright hot, letting out a soft laugh.
“Jesus,” Shane huffs from the ground.
Ilya tightens the grip on his hair again and the other man groans. “You think so, Hollander? Maybe you should start there, yes? Say sorry proper way.”
Bunny looks down at Shane, the tops of his cheeks a violent shade of red. She begins to pull her knees together again, squirmy and suddenly bashful.
“If you want—“
“Fuck yes,” Shane sighs, and he fights against Ilya’s hold to press his mouth to the soft flesh of Bunny’s thigh.
Ilya smirks, relaxing the hand in Shane’s hair to run his fingers through the mass of it. His other hand burrows in Bunny’s hair, sliding around the nape of her neck supportively.
“Good, get to work, Hollander.”
Shane obediently follows, leaving open-mouthed kisses along the insides of her thighs, using his hands to hook around her knees and keep them spread. He brings them over his shoulders, pressing up on his knees to remain eye-level with the counter. He works his way to the apex of her thighs, where her need throbs and pulses.
He dives in with a wriggling tongue, and Bunny throws her head back with a whimper of his name. Ilya releases his hold on Shane to press his hand firmly into her chest, guiding her back flat against the counter. Sprawled there, he steps around until he’s standing beside her, bracing the counter on either side of her head to attach their mouths.
Another slow, languid kiss that confuses any thoughts trying their best to form in Bunny’s head. She feels them forming, but they fizzle and fade before she can even remember what it was she wanted to think. Ilya’s wrapping his hand around her throat, just under her jaw, and the blood rushes to her head in a swell of blissful ecstasy.
And Shane’s between her legs lapping and sucking like a man on a mission, like a starving dog given a feast. He savors the sounds muffled by Ilya’s mouth, wishes selfishly that he’d pull away so Shane could hear them fully, and know they were all for him.
But Ilya’s on Bunny with just as much need, licking along her mouth and scraping his teeth over her cheek. Her attempts at moaning and whining trail into wheezes from the hand around her throat, but it makes every effort that much more exciting. It makes Shane work harder, pulling her down along the counter until a squeak of flesh on marble erupts through the static. Until he’s buried between her legs with nowhere for her to go, her tremoring thighs held steady by Shane’s strong arms caged around them, pressing into his ears until he can barely hear a thing.
Ilya pulls away from her mouth and holds her throat, keeping her pinned to the counter—as if she’d go anywhere. She’s perfectly content where she is, pinned by Shane fucking Hollander and Ilya fucking Rozanov to her own kitchen counter, half drunk on white wine and ready to ride the nearest thing that approaches her.
Bunny sucks in a much-needed breath when Ilya releases her throat, hands scrambling to remove his shirt and pants. The gold cross around his neck glistens in the low light of the overhead fixture, and the semblance of a thought of Bunny’s floor-to-ceiling windows giving a 4k picture of her current threesome comes and goes when Ilya’s cock slaps against his stomach.
It takes some force, but he pulls Shane from Bunny’s thighs and cups his hand in front of his mouth. Shane blinks, face pink and wet, panting over Ilya’s palm—and then he spits into it. Ilya releases his hair and lets him get back to work, snickering when Bunny whines, her hands flying to Shane’s head in a desperate attempt for grounding.
She receives none, however, when Ilya strokes his cock with the hand Shane spit in and cuts off her air supply with the other. Her back arches from the counter, body twisting sideways. She has no idea where her body thinks it’s going, she just knows it has a mind of its own. Moving on its own accord, fueled by the pleasure building and tingling between her legs and the fuzzy, airy feeling in her head from the hand around her throat.
“Fuuuck, this is hot,” Ilya growls, the wet slap of his hurried stroking registering through the lap of Shane’s tongue and Bunny’s hoarse wheezes against his heavy palm. “Hollander should apologize more, hmm?”
She tries to nod, but she isn’t sure her head moves at all. Ilya takes his lip between his teeth, digging in hard. He watches Bunny’s face contort, feels her body temperature rise, watches every fraction of her begin to vibrate.
“She is going to come, Hollander,” he announces. “Keep going. Do not stop until I say.”
At hearing this, Bunny writhes for release. Her impending orgasm and the promise of torture is as exciting as it is terrifying, and the feelings melding together create a build sure to explore. Ilya was an expert in this—bringing you to the edge, letting you tumble over it, and watching you fall until you couldn’t take it anymore. Until you were sobbing, begging, willing to do anything.
There was a time in Boston a few years ago when Ilya kept Bunny crying for two hours. Suddenly her thoughts work well enough to remember this.
The tears bubble and spill as Shane sucks at her clit hard enough to trigger her release. Ilya lets up on her throat enough to let her breathe into the scream, the one Shane so desperately wanted for weeks. He groans at the gift of it, poking his tongue into the wetness of her pulsing hole, feeling her clench around him.
Ilya groans, his own release approaching at the mere sight of Bunny’s untamed display of pleasure. She was never shy in her satisfaction, and he always liked this about her. Sometimes, Shane held himself back, especially before. Afraid to give himself away fully, fearful of being mocked, terrified of the aftermath when they’d part ways and he gave too much of himself.
Bunny was never plagued with these ideas. Not with Ilya, and now not with Shane.
At Ilya’s command, Shane continues on, sucking and licking Bunny through her high until he can barely keep her still. Until she’s pushing at his head so hard his neck hurts from the resistance and she’s practically flailing for air.
Ilya moves his hold to her jaw and pulls her head aside, jerking his cock against her mouth. Her eyes flutter shut, gasping and panting and twisting her lower body.
“Open,” he grumbles to her, voice wavering with his own approaching orgasm.
She parts her lips, tongue lolling out. He rubs the weeping tip of his cock against the heat of it, and then he’s spurting into the wet cavern of her mouth. On her tongue, on her chin, over her cheek, on the fucking kitchen counter. He’s everywhere, and Shane still hasn’t stopped.
Ilya waits until he’s given her every drop before tiredly patting Shane’s head. “Is good, Hollander. Let her breathe.”
Shane pulls back slowly, pressing a gentle kiss to her clit that makes her jerk painfully. His hands massage at her thighs, easing their aching tremble. He watches her flatten like a thrown noodle against the counter, sure to fall if she were to be placed on her feet. She’s breathing like a player on the ice after a day’s worth of practice, and she’s covered in cum.
Normally, he’d scrunch his nose and complain about Ilya making a mess—but something about the sight of it on her makes his insides wrench. He has the sudden, perverted idea to lick it off her.
Ilya turns to Shane, sees this thought forming in his head, the way his dark eyes trace over Bunny’s destroyed body lying limply.
“Go ahead,” he tells him.
Shane slowly stands, and he joins Ilya on the right side of Bunny. She blinks her eyes open, peering up at them dazedly.
“Give him a kiss, dorogoy.”
Bunny moves her head the only inch she can manage, and Shane swoops down to slide his tongue along the mess of her. He cleans it from her face, keeps it gathered on his tongue as it dips into her mouth. They share Ilya between their mouths and Ilya feels his softened cock hardening just from the absolute filth of it.
He hums, petting the top of Bunny’s hair and the back of Shane’s. They’re both clearly spent, Shane’s shoulders slumped, Bunny still struggling for breath.
“My sweethearts,” Ilya coos. “So good for me.”
Shane pulls away from Bunny slowly, stroking her cheek with the back of his knuckles the way he likes to do. He rubs his thumb into her cheek, enjoys the way her eyes flutter closed.
“I think,” she pants, voice cracked and gravely from strain, “I need a soft surface. Back…is…killing me.”
Shane hooks one arm under her knees and the other around her back, hoisting her into his arms. He takes her to the living room, plopping her on the couch and taking her shiver as a reminder that she’s still bare. Ilya tosses him her clothes one at a time, and soon she’s dressed back in her t-shirt and underwear, tucked under the fluffy leopard print blanket strewn across the arm of the couch.
She pats the cushion next to her head, and Shane—still fully clothed—cups her head and lifts it as he slips beneath her. Her head falls into his lap with a soft, content sigh.
“Ilya?” she calls softly. There’s a soft gentle panic in her tone.
He enters her line of vision in the living room, still shirtless but covered with the sweatpants he came in. A glass of water and a plastic straw wobble in his hand.
“I am here, dorogoy,” he whispers.
The apartment suddenly seems so quiet. The sky darkened to black sometime in the confusion, and now the only light that graces the room is the warm glow of the few lamps flicked on.
Bunny closes her lips around the straw that approaches her, drinking willfully. Ilya kneels beside her on the rug, running his fingers along the swell of her cheek. He tucks her hair behind her ear, brushes Shane’s fingers when the other man comes to feel it, too. They lock eyes over her head, and Shane tries a small smile. Ilya’s is painful at best—and sad. It was always sad these days.
“Sleep, Bunny,” Ilya commands softly, placing the water glass on the coffee table behind him.
Though already drifting, she reaches out blindly and finds his hand. “Will you stay? Just for a bit.”
He swallows. In his peripheral, Shane continues to stroke Bunny’s hair. He shifts and shuffles on the couch, leaning his head back against the plush cushion. He seems relaxed, comfortable. He looks at home.
“Yes. I will stay.”
He tucks her legs into his lap when he assumes the cushion beside Shane, and Bunny burrows further into her new cocoon. And the room is so quiet. A clock ticks from a bookcase, full of colored spines and mismatched trinkets. The sound of city life beyond the windows comes like static. A door slams somewhere down the hall, muffled and distant.
Shane reaches along the back of the couch and cups the back of Ilya’s head. He plays with a curl there, gives him a gentle squeeze around his neck.
He waits to hear Shane tell him he loves him.
But they drift off to sleep, and Ilya remains awake.
♡♡♡
Bunny wakes to a cold breeze through the room. The distant blare of a car horn and the whizz of tires below. She stirs, fumbling for her phone on her nightstand, her glasses atop a book—only to find a hard knee and a big hand. She blinks her eyes open slowly, finding the black screen of the tv and the empty living room. Shane’s lap below her head, his hand placed lazily over her cheek. She hears his soft, breathy snores before she even peeks.
She lifts her head slowly, achingly. Where Ilya once sat at her feet, an empty cushion awaits. His cap sits on the coffee table, the water glass now empty.
Lifting the blanket around her shoulders, Bunny carefully slips free of Shane’s loose hold. She glances at him as she stands, shimmying beneath the blanket. His head is tossed back against the couch cushion, mouth hanging open to emit drool and gentle breaths.
She snickers softly, slipping her glasses back over her nose. Ilya must’ve taken them off when she fell asleep. They were folded carefully on the coffee table near his hat. She notices, with pleasant relief and surprise, that her cheeks are soft and bare. She imagines Ilya carefully wiping her cheeks with a cloth while she slept, and her heart aches sorely.
The Russian, as she suspected, is on the balcony. Wintry wind whistles through the glass door, left ajar. She shivers as she nudges it open, ensuring Theodore is nowhere to be seen before stepping out onto the cement. She shuts the door behind her and turns to see Ilya in the orange glow of a flame. The butt of a cigarette burns in a halo of red as he inhales deeply.
“Hey,” she murmurs.
His lips detach dryly from the paper in his mouth. “Hey.”
Ilya’s sprawled out sideways on the cushioned couch in the corner of the balcony, puffing a plume of smoke from limp lips. Thanks only to the bright city lights and glow of his cigarette, Bunny can make out the angled features of his face. There’s a storm brewing within them, plaguing his brow with a furrow and his mouth with a hard line.
She hugs her blanket tighter around her body and pads over, feet bare on frozen concrete. She tucks them up into her lap when she sits beside him. He’s fully dressed again—besides the hat—and he’s staring out into the cityscape blankly.
Bunny reaches over with two fingers and plucks the cigarette from his hand, bringing it to her own mouth to inhale. He makes a small, sarcastically dissatisfied sound, but watches her blow the smoke out silently.
Ilya retrieves the cigarette with steady fingers and balances it in the corner of his mouth, shuffling up to motion Bunny over.
“What?” she asks.
“Come here.”
She lifts on her palms and wriggles closer, and Ilya shifts to ease the discomfort. When their knees are touching, he brings his hands to brace her neck, tipping her head back carefully. She closes her eyes, a hollow flutter in her chest like a caged hummingbird.
“Was too rough,” he grumbles.
Bunny eases his hands away and watches him puff around the cigarette. “You weren’t. You know I loved it.”
His eyes bounce around her face, studying wordlessly. He places his palm to her cheek and swipes his thumb over the soft, soap-scented skin. She takes the cigarette from the dip of his mouth and ashes it on the concrete. The crease of his face hasn’t eased—in fact, it’s only deepened. Folded into something akin to misery.
She takes his hand and brings it to her lap, watching her own fingers trace the valleys of his knuckles, the deep violet squiggle of veins.
“Am I coming between the two of you?”
Ilya plucks the cigarette back and takes one long, deep drag. It sails over the balcony railing, zipping down like a lightning bug. He pulls at the back of his hoodie with one hand and claws it off, shoving it over her head before she can protest.
She lets him swaddle her in his warmth, pulling the hood over her head and tying the strings tight beneath her chin. She lets him replace the blanket, draping it over their laps, and tug her into his side with one heavy arm around her shoulders. She falls into him, cheek on his shoulder, the tickle of blond curls against her ear.
“Is not you.”
Bunny nibbles on the skin of her bottom lip, scraping her teeth over the surface of the sting. “Something else?”
Ilya exhales deeply. Air feels heavy in his chest, like a dumbbell slammed down. He rubs his hand over his eye, twisting until spots decorate the darkness. His response forms and hesitates on his tongue. The thought of what he might say tastes acidic, sour like something rotten.
Bunny turns and tips her head up, nothing but a nose poking out and big eyes blinking up. Ilya avoids her gaze, keeping his straight ahead at the night before them. He’s afraid he’ll cry if he looks at her.
“You love each other,” she whispers. She sounds so sure.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “But I think I cannot love in silence.”
A swell of hurt rushes through her chest. Bunny reaches up, placing her hand on Ilya’s cheek.
“Oh, Ilya.”
He turns at her prodding fingers, mirroring her gesture against her own face. He rushes forward and smacks his lips against her head. When he rears back, his eyes are wet, and his smile is painful again.
“And now we have you. Another secret.”
Her fingers loosen at his jaw. Like a door opened to the snow, Bunny suddenly feels cold all over. As though the winter had only just reminded her it was there. As though she went wandering without a coat. That familiar ache nips behind her eyes.
“You don’t have to have me, Ilya. I’ll walk away, and I’ll be fine.” After a while, she wants to add. But it isn’t fair.
“You love each other so deeply, I can tell. Don’t let me get in the way.”
Ilya shakes his head, pushing on the back of hers until it falls back onto his shoulder. “Is not you, Bunny. I promise.”
She thinks of Shane snoozing happily on her couch in the room behind them. She thinks of Ilya’s pajama pants folded neatly in her drawer, Shane’s sweatshirt on the back of the bathroom door. She thinks of a hockey game in Boston when she was twenty years old, and of a night in a hazy hotel with a man that left before she could fall asleep. She thinks of the name Jane on his cellphone, and with bright clarity, realizes it sounds a lot like Shane.
They were together long before Bunny had any claim over Ilya, and she wanted it to stay that way, no matter what her body told her—no matter what Ilya told her.
She concludes, as Ilya lights another cigarette and rests his head atop hers, that she’ll make the decision for them.
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