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Shane is face down on the massage table. When Diane guides his wrist to rest at the small of his back and pulls up hard at his shoulder, his shoulder blade coming in towards his spine, the muscles around his collarbone stretching and extending, his vision goes white.
Diane lowers his shoulder back down and shakes out his arm, places it next to his hip. He can see her feet move beneath the hole in the headrest.
He concentrates on his breathing while she works his trap, digging into the muscle, hands stripping the clumps out of the fascia, making him hiss. Couillard watches these European car race shows on flights and in the locker room, whole teams of people fixing and optimizing machinery. Little adjustments to get the most out of every minute. Millions of dollars invested in his performance, his body. Diane’s thumb drags along the back of his deltoid and he screws his eyes shut harder.
She pulls the towel from his hips up to his mid-back. Presses warm, firm hands into his triceps, then up his shoulders to his neck and back down again. Unscented oil, how he likes it, and Diane always remembers, which is why he goes to her instead of Paul. “How’s your collarbone today, Shane? This left shoulder still feels stiff.”
“It twinges sometimes. There’s supposed to be a storm tomorrow, I think? It’s worse when the weather’s changing.”
“Uh-huh,” Diane says. Her hands are warm on his shoulders. She’s been with the Metros for almost three decades: she’s seen everything, Shane thinks. Every kind of twisted a body can be. Teeth on the ice, broken bones, swelling brains, torn ligaments, blood and viscera. Sore shoulders. “How does cupping sound?”
“Yeah,” Shane says, and closes his eyes. “Thank you.”
Later, a text from Lily: Send pictures.
J: Of what?
L: Your back. I want to see.
First Shane tries to angle his phone behind his back, but he can’t get a good shot. Each picture comes out blurry or centered on his hair or without him in it at all. A sliver of a shoulder and a lurid purple circle halfway out of the frame. His finger hovers over the share button. What the fuck does Ilya want a picture of his cupping bruises for?
The arnica oil is in Shane’s bathroom. When he goes to grab it, his eye catches on the wide vanity mirror. His shirt is already off. His phone is, coincidentally, in his hand.
It takes him five more tries to get a picture he thinks he can tolerate. The lights are too bright at first so he flips the overheads off; another picture has too much sink; one has nearly half of his face in it, peering sideways at the phone screen. He’s slouching. Finally he gets one centered, with no face and nothing but nondescript white towels hanging in the background. A line of deep magenta marks walks up the back of his arm, across his shoulders, spreads down his back. They get smaller towards his neck. The flexing, Shane thinks, is not particularly noticeable. He sends the picture.
L: Sexy
L: Would look good when you’re bent over.
J: Cupping is a therapeutic treatment.
L: I know.
L: Raiders massage therapist is sadist.
L: Do you like it?
Diane does a good job, Shane types. His hips are braced against the bathroom counter. He leans harder, puts pressure on the base of his dick. Blunt and uncomfortable. It hasn’t been soft for a minute. Maybe since Ilya sent the first message.
J: It’s uncomfortable when she’s adjusting them.
L: Not what I asked.
J: I don’t think about that when I’m getting a massage.
The phone screen goes black: slide to answer. Shane meets his own gaze in the mirror. He’s pink already. “Hello?”
“Do you like them?”
“The feeling?”
Ilya hums, sounding amused; entertained, Shane knows, by prying for answers. “The feeling, yes. And the bruises. They look like love bites,” he says.
Love bites. Christ. Shane shifts against the counter. He looks back up, tilts his head to the side. At the right angle, maybe. If you just saw a single corner of one, maybe it would look like a love bite. Shane wouldn’t know what they look like on himself. Ilya doesn’t give him hickeys unless there’s already a bruise.
“I don’t think they look like hickeys, Ilya. Cupping is an extremely common treatment.”
“If I were there,” Ilya says, “I would fuck you from behind. And I would bite.”
“You can’t bite,” Shane says reflexively. “People will see.”
People will see, and then they’ll talk. In the locker room once, Shane’s towel had slipped too low at the wrong time: a set of teeth above the curve of his ass. He hadn’t heard the end of it for weeks. What was she doing back there, Hollzy? Didn’t know you were into all that. Give her my number, man. ‘You don’t have your own mother’s number?’ Hayden had asked, and then, thank god, they were laughing at J.J. instead.
“I would be very careful. Only on cupping bruises.”
Shane sucks in a breath. Holds it. There’s muffled shuffling on the other end of the line, fabric rubbing against skin. “Some of them are too small.”
“Tiny bites,” Ilya says. “They will hurt more, but what can I do? You say no marks.”
They would hurt more, if Ilya could only bite the existing bruises. If Ilya pinned him down, kissed up his spine and along his neck. Wet open-mouthed pulling at the big ones, Ilya’s hot tongue along the back of his arm and shoulder and traps: he could suck hard, pull the meat of Shane into his mouth, worry it between his teeth. Blood vessels already burst. And then, higher, at Shane’s neck. Bruises the size of a loonie. Not big enough to fit in Ilya’s mouth, so he’d have to nip. Pinch Shane’s skin in tiny bites.
Shane can’t stop his whine, like Ilya’s teeth are in him already, pulling up blood to the surface where he’s already sore, hot and bruised and achey. “Yeah. I would have to—yeah.”
“You would have to hold very still,” Ilya muses, “even if it hurt. Even if I bit hard.”
“I’d be still,” Shane says, too fast. Ilya laughs at him through the phone. Ilya is also jerking off, probably. Big fingers on his big dick. Shane eyes the arnica oil on the counter. He puts his phone on speaker and sets it down. Reaches over. He moans when his hand closes, warm and wet, around his dick.
Someone stares back at him from the mirror. Big dark eyes, bitten lips, flushed face. Someone Shane sees more and more often, these days. One hand moving in his pants and hard tight nipples. He turns around and sits on the edge of the counter, next to his phone.
“I don’t think you could stay still. You are always”—Ilya grunts and mutters something in Russian—“always squirming around. Feels nice on my dick.”
Jesus. “Don’t say stuff like that.”
“Oh, why not? You are not hard? What are you doing, watching tape?”
“No,” Shane says. His dick is hot in his hand, slick from the oil and wet at the tip. He brings his hand up to the tip, squeezes tight, leans back on his free hand and fucks up into his fist.
“Reading? Doing yoga?”
Shane grunts. “No.”
“You are touching yourself, no?”
There’s a smile in Ilya’s voice. “Maybe,” Shane says. He pulls his sweats and underwear down. It’s loud in the bathroom, all of a sudden: the sound of his hand sliding over his dick, everything shiny with oil. It pools at the base of his dick, in his pubes. Mats them down. Looks like spit.
Russian again, longer this time. Shane recognizes at least two swear words and something that might be slut, but he hasn’t asked and Ilya hasn’t said. “Are you using lube?”
“Arnica oil,” Shane says. Watches the hot red tip of his dick peek out of his fist, over and over.
“Add more,” Ilya says.
Shane grabs for it and almost drops the bottle. Without his hand moving, it’s quiet enough to hear the rhythmic slap of Ilya—of Ilya’s hand hitting the base of his dick, dragging back up. Shane can see it, suddenly: Ilya’s broad hand twisting at the top of the stroke, rubbing precome everywhere, tugging on the foreskin. One hand rolling his own balls, maybe, if Ilya isn’t holding the phone. Salty-hot smell of precome and sweat. Technicolor in Shane’s mind. Heat in his groin and guts, getting worse when he holds the bottle over his dick and squirts oil out, when it splashes down. Soaks him. Shane fumbles the bottle back down and grabs himself tight.
“Okay.” He gasps, sucks in air between his teeth. His hand is so smooth now, perfect-frictionless-tight.
There’s more rustling on the end of the line, then Ilya’s voice comes again, louder. “Are you close?”
“Yes,” Shane says. “Are—fuck, shit—are you?”
Ilya groans and says, “Pinch yourself. Up—on bruise, hard, Shane, do it, tell me—”
Shane does, hard. Digs his fingers into the bruises, tender swollen skin and whines, high and hurt. His pulse is loud in his ears, roaring. It almost drowns out the sound of his own dick in his hand, of Ilya jerking off, of Ilya’s voice in Russian and English blending together.
“Harder,” Ilya says.
The pain is on the horizon, looming. He sees it coming like a hit on the ice. Shane bites his lip, pinches harder. Let it happen. At the edge of his awareness, Ilya’s voice by his hip: do you like it, Shane, tell me, do you like it.
“God, fuck—yes,” Shane manages. He hears himself at a distance, helpless noises that stutter into a moan when he starts to come; he feels it over his whole body, pleasure-pain in his balls and gut and in every hot throbbing bruise.
He has to blink hard to clear his vision.
Then he looks down and sees the arnica oil-come-sweat mess at his groin, says, “Ah, shit,” and can’t help himself when Ilya starts laughing.
“All dirty?” Ilya asks, snickering.
“Yes, you asshole. I don’t even—what the fuck. Did you come?”
“Of course I came. You are very sexy when you do what I say.”
“Shut up,” Shane mutters. He chalks the sweatpants up to a loss and strips them off, then starts mopping up the disaster all over his dick and pubes and thighs, his stomach. He cranes his neck and peers at the bruises in the mirror. They all look the same, mottled blue and red and purple. “I don’t think you can tell.”
Ilya scoffs. “Tell what? That you came?”
“No, that I was… fuck off. The bruises.”
“Wow. Then you can get it done again, right? Before our next game.”
Shane’s dick twitches against his thigh. He hurts; shivers. “Maybe, I guess.”
“Since you like it so much,” Ilya says. “You would love Paul—Raiders’ trainer. He is evil. Loves ice baths. I think he is intimidated by my big dick.”
“Ice baths are useful to reduce inflammation,” Shane says. He realizes his mistake a second later, when Ilya laughs at him for real. “They are! I know the evidence is mixed, but I always—”
Ilya laughs and laughs. Shane hangs up, eventually. “I love you,” he says. “See you in two weeks.”
The Metros training facilities have special tubs in the clinic for ice baths. He sends a picture of the water to Ilya while he gets undressed and makes sure the heaps of ice are reflecting the overhead light. Ilya will see it and shudder. Some guys alternate cold and warm water; they say it helps them stand it longer. Shane sinks into the cold for as long as the trainers will let him.
There’s a brief moment, every time, when his body won’t cooperate. Won’t take that first step into the cold. He thinks to himself, you have to. And then he stands there in his compression shorts, muscles refusing the signals from his brain, or maybe his brain refusing to send them. But it only lasts a second; he steps into the water and, before his muscles can lock up, sits down.
It takes conscious effort to breathe in, and at first it is impossible. His entire body seizes, base animal instincts screaming at him to move, to get away. It’s like he’s not even human. Flesh and blood and bone, and all of it is cold, and that is the only thing. He is cold.
Eventually it stops hurting and his body gives in. His jaw unclenches. His blood pounds; he can no longer feel his sore knee. He slouches down centimeter by centimeter, gasping for air as the ice slides over his nipples, his armpits. The trainer calls time and Shane emerges, red and fresh and numb and alive. The adrenaline and serotonin and dopamine turn the room vivid. The feeling follows him into the shower, which is lukewarm and agonizing, and through getting dry and dressed. His mind stays blissfully blank until he checks his phone in the parking lot.
L: I knew it.
L: My balls shrivel up just looking.
L: I bet it makes you horny.
He drops the phone in his lap, face down. He starts the car. He picks his phone back up.
J: 🙄
Shane does jerk off when he gets home, to thoughts of Ilya’s hot tongue, his thick knuckles, his hand on the back of Shane’s neck, and afterwards he goes to the kitchen for his fifth meal of the day.
J: Sometimes.
Game day morning is routine. Get out of bed on the right side, leave the bed unmade, same as it was the day he got his first hat trick. So what if he's superstitious—everyone is.
Playing against Boston brings just one change. If they play Boston, he’ll wake up, go about his business—eggs, smoothie, yoga. Cold shower. And at some point, a text will get past the do not disturb settings on his phone.
Shane knows it’s Ilya’s dick and looks anyway.
It is just starting to soften, resting over the curve of Ilya’s hip, the thick muscles at his iliac furrow. Come glistening on the head and across the shaft, like Ilya jerked himself through it and only stopped when he couldn’t stand it. The same way he’ll come in Shane’s mouth or ass and keep going. Will finish on Shane’s face and feed his dick back into Shane’s mouth, shuddering, wincing, so Shane can coax the last drops out with the flat of his tongue, with his throat.
L: Was thinking of your pretty face.
Shane unrolls his acupressure mat and taps away from Ilya’s dick. The mat is covered in tiny plastic spikes; they dig into his bare back and turn his skin red. A guided meditation track drones on in the background. He shifts, breathes. Melts into the mat, into his visualizations. The puck on his stick blade, the windup, the shot. The goalie’s glove closing around nothing. The impact against the net, the sound of it, the cheering, the celly. The ice under his skates. All of it is crystal clear in his mind, in his sense-memory.
The mat leaves imprints deep in his skin. Whether it increases circulation or not, he doesn’t know. The Metros won their game after his first time trying it. So he sticks with the mat. Sticks to the mat, too, when he tries to sit up.
Shane deletes the picture of Ilya’s dick before he leaves his house. And empties his phone’s recycle bin, and triple-checks cloud storage, and deletes the rest of Ilya’s texts, too, for good measure.
The visualization partially works: he scores twice, but so do Marleau and Feller. It’s Sebbin, not Ilya, who sends Shane into the boards towards the end of third period, during Boston’s PP, but it’s Ilya’s stick against his, stealing the puck while Shane is pinned down. It’s Ilya’s backhand sending the puck past Mitty and into the corner of the net, and it’s Ilya screaming and throwing his arms around his teammates, and it’s Ilya who skates off the ice victorious.
The Metros all have their own ways to lick their wounds. Shane begs off the club and heads home early.
The trainers looked him over after the game and palpated his hip. He’d seen Sebbin coming and tried to twist away, but his hip flexor had twinged and refused to contract for a split second, which was all the Raiders needed.
“Nothing wrong with your range of movement,” Aaron says, before sending him out of the clinic. “You had, what, twenty-seven minutes of ice time? That’s huge. Anybody would be exhausted, Shane. We can do more single leg isolation work if you’re worried about it.”
When Shane gets tired, the Metros lose games. This is not true of everyone. It frustrates him, sometimes. That he wins games; that he loses them.
But Aaron is right—there’s nothing wrong with his hip. Shane stands in his apartment dirty and sore and hungry and sets about fixing those problems before Ilya arrives. He gets his TENS unit out after the shower, while his chicken is microwaving, and peels the plastic off the little oval pads. Carefully, he sticks a set onto his lower back, then his stomach. He adjusts the settings until he can feel the buzzing-prickling-needling and his muscles contracting without his permission. Until he no longer feels the soreness.
The electricity builds and dissipates in the cradle of his hips, steady pulses through his ass and back and abs tighten up and static bursts under his skin. An almost-hurt that reminds him of Ilya’s dick inside of him, the first time he got the angle just right, and of Ilya’s eyes on his skin. It sparks up his spine before settling hot and wanting in his guts. He is half hard. He tucks the controller in his pocket. His phone goes off—L: 10 minutes.—and he eats, checks his phone, flosses, turns up the intensity on the TENS unit, brushes his teeth. Checks his phone again.
L: Coming up.
Shane’s feet move towards the door, lights out of focus in his vision, stumbling over himself to get at the handle. Then Ilya, standing there, a little surprised. Lips twitching up at the corners.
“Going to let me in?” he asks.
Shane grabs him by the shirt, and then Ilya is against the wall and the door is closed. Shane kisses him. Licks inside his mouth, tastes vodka and Ilya’s spit, familiar. Ilya is too much to fit in Shane’s hands, too much to hold: his hair, his jaw, his shoulders, pecs, ass. His dick. Shane grinds up against Ilya’s hip and pants into his mouth and it has been weeks and weeks of his own hand and Ilya’s voice over the phone, Ilya telling him how to fuck himself, Ilya in his ear and not his bed. “Come on,” Shane says. “Come on, come on—”
Ilya’s hands are dry and cold on Shane’s skin, rubbing his shoulders and then sneaking up under his shirt. Gloves for Christmas, Shane thinks. Look up good brands. The sticky pads of the TENS unit tug on his skin, and Ilya’s fingers feel along the wires and to the spots they’re stuck to. He draws back and doesn't let Shane chase the kiss.
“You are hurt?”
Shane shakes his head. “Just a little sore. Almost forgot I was wearing it,” he says, and reaches into his pocket for the controller.
Before he can turn it off, Ilya’s fingers curl around his. He stares down, Ilya’s hand over his hand, Ilya’s thumb stroking along his. Big hands, rough hands. Ilya’s thumb drifting down to the plus button. “You could leave it on,” Ilya says. “Might be fun.”
Might be fun is how Ilya has suggested butt plugs, fucking raw, lingerie, sixty-nining, candlewax, and making a sex tape. The last one, Shane refused. “The wires could be a bad idea,” Shane says.
This is not a refusal. Ilya smiles, teeth fake-white and gleaming, and leans in to kiss Shane’s jaw. His tongue is hot and wet on Shane’s ear. “We will try it,” he says, and puts his teeth to Shane’s lobe.
The controller lights up. Shane is the one who tries to jerk away when the voltage gets suddenly higher, and he whimpers at the tug of Ilya’s canines.
Ilya releases Shane’s ear and draws back. He plucks the TENS unit out of Shane’s slack hand, looks at him, heavy gaze lingering on where the wires disappear under Shane’s clothes, on where Shane’s dick is tenting out his sweatpants. He meets Shane’s eyes, this time, before he turns it up again. Shane’s abs flex hard against the sting.
“Walk,” Ilya suggests, and Shane does, trailing wires, the controller in Ilya’s hand.
He looks at Ilya over his shoulder before taking his shirt off, once he’s in the bedroom; at Ilya’s nod he starts stripping. It is harder to fold everything neatly with two sets of wires in the way and Ilya does nothing to help. Shane stands, naked, dick jutting out, for Ilya’s inspection. The fireplace is soft golden heat at his back and each pulse from the TENS unit pulls his muscles tight, stands him up straight.
Ilya kisses him again, slips his tongue into Shane’s mouth for Shane to suck on. Then he walks backwards, tugging on the wires. He sets the controller down while he peels his clothes off, his too-tight clubbing clothes, his clothes for winning. “You played well.”
“Not that well,” Shane says.
“No,” Ilya says. “Not your team. But you did well.”
“Mitty wasn’t bad.”
Ilya makes a face. Raises his eyebrows and says, “Only so much he can do, with no defense. I almost feel bad.”
He’s naked, finally, sprawled out on Shane’s blue bedspread. There are fewer pillows, now that Ilya sometimes spends the night. You don’t even like those ones, Ilya had said. It’s your bed. What is the point, if you do not like it?
“Only almost?”
Ilya grins and shrugs, faux-sheepish. He has never been sorry to win. But then, neither has Shane. “Come here,” he says, and when Shane steps forward, he puts a big palm on Shane’s hip, finally warm, and his mouth on Shane’s dick, and when he swallows Shane down, all wet heat and pleasure, he turns the voltage up again.
For a moment, Shane thinks he’s coming. It turns his whole body tight, up this high, the buzz of the electricity in his hips and heat and current in his guts, shivering almost pain. It is pain, maybe. At the peak of the pulse, it makes him flinch, bursting along his nerves and drawing his balls up tight. Like his whole body is his dick, like it’s all getting sucked. He doesn’t realize how hard he’s tugging on Ilya’s hair until Ilya’s pulling off and giving Shane a look.
“It’s intense,” Shane says. “Sorry, it’s just—”
“It hurts?”
Something like that. “If it gets higher.”
“Do you want it higher?” Ilya asks.
Ilya is very beautiful in the light of the fire and the bedside lamps. He is golden and just starting to sweat, and having him in Shane’s Montreal bedroom always reminds Shane of the first time, when Ilya was so sweet with him. Ilya is still sweet with him.
“Yeah,” Shane breathes.
“On the bed,” Ilya says, and helps Shane settle on his knees, helps him arrange the wires. Turns up the TENS unit at the same time as he sticks a finger up Shane’s ass unceremoniously, and laughs at Shane’s groan. “I like that you get ready for me,” he says, nosing up Shane’s neck. “You would let me fuck you against the front door.”
Shane spreads his knees, arches his back. Squirms against the stimulation: his ass, his lower back and groin seizing with the shock running through him. When Ilya twists his fingers, it spreads over him like a wave, white-hot pleasure against the needling pain. His balls throb; he can’t come. Not yet. The voltage drops off and his muscles unlock, melt, open, loosen. Two fingers, now, Shane thinks, and Ilya murmuring good, perfect against his back.
“You get tighter, did you know?”
The electricity builds and fades. “What?”
“When it turns on. You clench up,” Ilya says, and kneels up. One hand planted in the sweaty small of Shane’s back, one notching the head of his dick at Shane’s hole, and then he pushes in, wet, lube from somewhere, a stretch getting in even after two fingers, because Ilya likes it tight and Shane likes when it aches, and once the head is in the TENS unit turns up again. He seizes up. Ilya’s dick inside him is like a fist, huge, coring him, in his guts with Ilya thrusting hard against Shane’s shaking locked up muscles; he is spasming, doesn’t recognize the sounds coming out of him, and Ilya has to pin him by the neck. There is nothing but the zing on his skin and the hot length of Ilya’s dick and clenching down on it, over and over, and how easy Ilya moves when the electricity lets up, and how he pries Shane open when it comes again. He is a body, or not; a mess of nerves receiving Ilya’s dick and Ilya’s shocks, a warm wet thing to squirm and hurt with Ilya holding the key.
He keeps squirming, pushing himself back so Ilya can work him open, until it’s static and heat buzzing through his veins and gathering in his groin. Each burst of pleasure-pain brings it closer, too soon; Shane spreads his knees to get Ilya deeper. “Gonna come,” Shane says. That, too, in Ilya’s hands.
Ilya wraps his fingers around the base of Shane’s dick, squeezes, puts an end to that. “Not yet,” he grunts. “Is like a massage, sweetheart, baby, you get so tight, you let me—do you want it, do you want more—”
Maybe Ilya’s fingers won’t be enough to stop it after all. “I want more, but you have to—higher, and come in me. Ilya,” Shane says, and he can hear the whine. He shudders at the sound of his own voice, at Ilya’s eyes on him, face on fire. Knows he sounds like a slut, knows Ilya likes that. Knows Ilya likes him begging and raw.
And then knows very little, when Ilya turns it up again and again. He is twisting on Ilya’s dick, he realizes. His muscles and his whole body, trying to escape the stinging piercing pain: he is whining and screwing himself onto Ilya’s dick and Ilya’s thighs are slapping against his and Ilya is turning him inside out. “You can,” Ilya is saying, “I’m going to—you can—”
He loses track of himself, when he comes. The orgasm is in his entire body. Like he’s coming from everywhere; it’s bizarre. He is not sure how long it lasts, because when the electricity peaks halfway through, it’s almost like it starts all over again, in his ass, his hole and his hips, clench-release-pain-pleasure around Ilya’s dick. It lasts forever, maybe. It knocks him right out of his head.
Ilya must have turned the TENS unit way down, he realizes later, when he’s lying on his side. It is a pleasant tingling on his nerves, and Ilya is a sweet thickness in his ass, still. A sweet warmth pressed up to his back and nuzzling his neck, kissing his shoulders and nipping at his traps.
“Was fun,” Ilya says, after Shane shifts a bit. Shane can hear the question in it, now.
Shane wriggles until he can get his arm behind Ilya’s head, his hand in Ilya’s hair. His eyes on Ilya’s face. “I liked it,” he says. “Thank you.”
Ilya leans in, kisses him: it’s soft, just the edge of teeth. In his bed, just how Shane likes him. Shane curls into him, sweaty back to sweatier chest, fitting their bodies together. Diffuse pleasure radiating outward, and Ilya’s arm reaching around him.
“You want to change the sheets?” Ilya noses into the damp hair at Shane’s nape and flattens his hand on Shane’s chest.
“Not yet,” Shane says. It’s easier to ask when he’s filthy, thighs sticking together with come and lube, when he’s stripped bare, when he’s already put himself in Ilya’s hands. “Stay?” And he doesn’t need Ilya to answer, not when he’s smiling against Shane’s skin, but he wants to hear it anyway. One night every two months. So what if it’ll hurt tomorrow.