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It started, as all things did for Shane, on the ice.
He was a prodigious teenager, barely a teenager, training endlessly under rigorous coach after rigorous coach, and the one he had in 2004 was the first one he would characterize, initially, as ‘nice.’ Oily, maybe, but nice.
He went by Kristopher, the first coach he’d had that insisted the boys call him by his first name. He checked their gear and followed that with encouraging squeezes. He patted them on their shoulders, sometimes their ass. It made Shane squirm with discomfort, but a lot of interpersonal interaction did that, so he put it out of his mind.
The feeling came back, though, when his mother looked on, a face like she’d sucked a lemon, and pulled the coach aside to talk. “He’s awfully handsy,” she’d explained on the drive home. “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
So the touches became blissfully absent. Shane was never squeezed or patted again, and maybe that should’ve felt exclusionary, but it didn’t. The other boys were, though. Just not in front of parents.
And then Kristopher kept calling Clark to his office.
Shane didn’t really care for Clark. The boy was rude, mouthy, didn’t seem to think much of Shane’s heritage. It was worse, though, when he stopped being mouthy. He became quiet, withdrawn, pale. He stopped making fun of Shane for being odd, and began, instead, being made fun of himself for the same. He struggled, now, to look at people, and Kristopher’s hands were always on his shoulders. Shane liked that even less.
He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he could tell his mother, and she would handle it. The program would be shut down. His team would be safe. But then again, this man could just as easily slip away without proof. He could run his hands over other Clarks, other Shanes, while any investigation would paint scandal over the start of their budding athletic careers.
So instead, the next game out of town, he pulled Kristopher aside. Softly, steadily, he asked to talk in his hotel room. He was gathering evidence, he told himself. He was being smart.
He wasn’t considering that they were on the eleventh floor. That in his own room, he’d figured out quickly how to detach the screen from the window. That it was one of the cheaper hotels, thus older, and the window’s opening was really quite big.
There was no record he had been in the room with his coach, no witnesses. He had only been there a few minutes before leaving. His coach had left too, admittedly in a different direction.
Standing on the sidewalk, looking at the police tape and bloody stain that evening, after being coddled and reassured and interviewed, minutes from being picked up by his mother, he felt satisfaction. He waited for the anguish, the guilt, but all he felt was a rush. The little regret he had was about doing it before the game, which was now canceled. He would’ve liked to spend the evening on the ice.
-
A few years later in juniors, that moment was so far from his current life it felt like a strange dream. The smile and hand under his jersey, the last brush of an inappropriate touch the man would ever get away with, how he scrabbled against the windowsill, hands slipping as Shane kicked fingers loose, face pinched then screaming. He hadn’t known, at 13, he had the strength to do that until it was done. He hadn’t thought he’d ever need to do it again.
But he had hoped he would, maybe.
Thinking about murder had become a hobby of his, a little release valve. He watched documentaries and shows, like so many others did. He thought about it the few times he’d been dragged to bars, about how easy it would be to slip something in someone’s drink or a needle in their neck. He thought about how in remote, snowy streets, he could run someone off the road in his car. If he pursued anyone on foot, his body, trained as it was, would help him quickly outpace them.
And then he would shake his head, look away, save his violent impulses for the ice.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready. That didn’t mean he couldn’t use his resources to keep little kits on him with a knife, some heroin, a dream.
And all this thinking about nefarious behavior meant it was easier to notice when it was happening.
He met Dallas Kent at some Canadian junior hockey gathering and, even at this young age, he was plying women with too much sneaky alcohol and pinching some dusty substance above it. He watched the girl next to him go slack and doll-like, and watched as he tried to guide her out with him. So of course Shane stopped him. Of course he asked, just for a moment, to talk privately.
Shane was aware of Dallas previously in the circuit, the boy a little younger and a lot meaner, but there had been chatter that he was quite good on the ice. It was chatter he lived up to, and Shane had enjoyed playing him.
It was a shame, then, really, that the game they’d just played would be his last.
A bathroom. A needle. A headline: RISING ONTARIO JUNIOR HOCKEY STAR FOUND DEAD AFTER DRUG OVERDOSE. A teenage girl, safely home in her bed with a horrible headache.
And there it was again, that sense of cool satisfaction. Shane scored so many points in the months that followed that they started calling him a robot, a machine, but he didn’t mind. A machine was a perfect symphony of parts, locked together, working just as they should. It felt apropos. It felt right.
-
A few months later, he shook hands with Ilya Rozanov.
Shane was no stranger to obsession, whether that be with hockey or with other people’s mortality, but it was new for it to bloom so fast, to hit him so hard and dreadfully. He shook his hand once, then wanted to touch again, so he did, another handshake. He wanted to look, so he stared. He wanted, and wanted, and wanted.
Shane had rules now, about killing. After two strikes, he figured he needed them. Rozanov beating him in the Prospect Cup was not a murder-worthy offense, as much as it felt like it could be. Nor was going first in the draft, unfortunately.
Looking that good in the gym that night might have been, though, sweating with his thighs so wide. Shane wanted to crawl between them, to lick him. Rozanov might have even let him.
Could he kill someone for embarrassing him in a visceral, personal way, just by existing?
No, he probably shouldn’t, he thought, and took himself in hand that night instead. His mind circled the thought regardless.
He thought the obsession might go away when his team beat Russia in the second Prospect Cup, but no such luck it seemed.
And then the CCM shoot. What a fucking day. He had never met another player like Rozanov, who kept making him laugh, calling him pretty. Never had someone looked him in the eye and confessed to going out of his way to see Shane again.
Alone in the shower, he considered it, his need to hear Rozanov gasp and see his face change. He wanted to see him in private and touch him roughly and do what he wanted with him. The biggest problem with killing Rozanov was that he could only do it once, and he wanted to be private and rough with him over and over. He wanted to get expressions out of him no one else had seen endlessly. He just didn’t know how to do that.
And then Ilya joined him in the shower and, well …
He couldn’t trust himself alone with the man. He wanted to suck his cock and to stab him, and wasn’t absolutely sure which impulse would win, so neither was the best option. His room number spilled from his lips anyway. He found himself on his knees for him anyway.
Kissing Rozanov, having his mouth on him, was unfortunately an even better high than any violence Shane had ever initiated. It didn’t last as long, though; an hour later, he felt bereft, while the high of a kill lasted months. It was a whole set of new variables to weigh and measure, to decide the value of.
But then again, Rozanov hadn’t done anything but be a ridiculously hot low-level asshole. Chirping wasn’t worth dying over.
So he decided to test him.
At the All-Stars game, the perfect opportunity presented itself. In 1221, Rozanov wanted to fuck him, and Shane really, really wanted to let him. So he plotted it out in his head: He would turn Rozanov down. Rozanov would force himself on (a secretly very willing) Shane. Shane would enjoy that, and then kill him. Easy.
But then he had to be a gentleman. He had to worry that Shane was scared. He had to make himself infuriatingly more attractive, and pleasure them both and then ask for Shane’s fucking number, like he was secretly a good guy or something, and ruin Shane’s whole fucking night.
Maybe it was cute, amusing, sweet to now have “Lily’”s number, but a large part of him left the room seething.
He felt better a week later when he got the chance to strangle one of Montreal’s administrative staff for embezzling from the team’s charity initiative. Stealing six figures from money going to a women’s shelter fit the brief, he thought. Rozanov wouldn’t be his hattrick, maybe his quad instead, but that was fine. Everything was fine.
His bloodlust momentarily satiated, he felt safe inviting Rozanov to his home in Montreal. They could fuck, get it out of his system. It could just be sex. And if the evening went a different direction, the attachment he’d built to his laundry room with linoleum floors, a drain, and a hose attachment would help him clean up any mess.
When the news of the weather and cancelation reached him, he found himself sighing resignedly and rolling up his living room tarp before heading to dinner at Hayden’s. Better that the universe intervene, he considered. His obsession with this man was getting out of hand.
Frustratingly, despite that conclusion, news of his rival seemed to be everywhere. The Google Alert he had set up didn’t help, showing pictures of Rozanov with different women all the time, pressing their mile-long thighs against him and making Shane’s blood boil. Another month went by, and Rozanov slipped ahead of him, only for a week, in their scoring race, and that was the final straw. Shane decided two things:
1) This obsession was a liability. It had to end.
2) He could kill one person for personal reasons. As a treat.
He vacillated wildly on that last point, eventually considering he could let himself plan it, at least. Planning could help scratch the itch. Having a plan didn’t mean he’d have to execute it.
As soon as he let himself think about it, though, the idea consumed him.
He had a hard time pinning down how he wanted to do it. There was an icky, cold feeling when he pictured Rozanov dead, but the idea of holding a blade to his throat was thrilling, and tying him up equally so. Choking him also held great appeal, but he had a hard time picturing a hand on Rozanov’s throat without imagining his other hand on Rozanov’s cock, which definitely wasn’t the point here. He would play it by ear, maybe. That had worked out so far.
Timing was easier to plan. They only saw each other so often.
The best time to do it, really, would be just before Rozanov headed back to Moscow. His American friends would think he’d headed home early, and his family in the old country would believe he had stayed in the states longer. The confusion would delay the manhunt a precious few days, enough for Shane to be sure he was well away from the fallout.
So that’s when he would do it, he decided. He would kill Rozanov after one of them won Rookie of the Year.
-
He was right, of course, that they would both be nominated. He was thrilled that he was the one who won; he loved a victory, of course, but also it would pull the spotlight away from Rozanov.
Too much away from Rozanov, he considered, as he did his third, sixth, dozenth sweep of the room to no avail. He nodded along with Hunter. He did a single shot and declined any further. He left to look for his rival.
He found him on the roof, smoking, looking at the lights of the city. The view, as he had been told, was amazing. Rozanov still somehow was more beautiful.
He felt sad, suddenly, that this was about to be over between them, that he would see Rozanov here, then in his hotel bed, then not at all. Maybe he would keep his chain as a memento. Keeping his clothes, a lock of his hair, would be too far.
If only there was a way to keep everything about Rozanov, to clutch him to his chest possessively, while his heart was still beating. That was an absurd idea, though. How would that even work, really? He didn’t know how to abduct someone. Rozanov would be mean and stupid about it anyway, and ruin it. He wouldn’t get it. How could he possibly understand?
He had to break the spell. That would quickly be accomplished by talking to him, he was sure. Rozanov was always such a dick.
“I don’t know if it’s worth jumping over,” he told him. A push could be easy, he considered, but artless. Unsatisfying. He had done that already before. Always a good idea, though, to make the thing look like a suicide.
“Party all done?” Rozanov asked, tilting a glance at him. “Early, no?”
“No, it’s still going,” he affirmed, a few steps back. “Didn’t see you down there.”
“Not my night,” he answered. “Big night for you, though.”
He didn’t know what to do with Rozanov’s good manners. “Yeah, well, it could’ve gone to either one of us.”
“It went to you,” he countered.
Of course he can't handle losing to me once, Shane considered, his relative sobriety helping him tamp down on that anger. After all, pissing him off would not help lure him back to his hotel room tonight. So instead he said “I guess I was hoping to celebrate with you, that's all.”
Rozanov turned his infuriatingly smug, perfect face to look at him. “Really?”
Shane shrugged. “Not every day we’re in the same hotel.”
“And if I were to, say, go back to your room,” Rozanov offered, hook, line, and sinker. “How would we celebrate, hm?”
“First, I’d give you some mouth wash so you don’t taste like an ashtray,” Shane said. “The rest, you’d have to be there to find out.”
-
So easily, painfully easily, a few minutes later had them stumbling through Shane’s hotel room door, kissing.
As soon as they were inside, true to his word, Shane pushed him off. “Bathroom. Go.”
Rozanov did so with minimal grumbling. Maybe he would have grumbled more if he knew what he would emerge to. As it was, Shane filled syringe after syringe from little vials as he waited, hearing Rozanov swish and spit.
Rozanov re-entered the bedroom and froze, watching Shane work. “What is this? New kink?”
“Not exactly,” Shane replied, finishing the syringe he was on, before walking Rozanov through his kit. “I’ve got a number of things in here, some drugs, some poisons. This one is my new favorite, though, when I want to prevent a struggle.” He held up the little clear syringe, fluid beading on the needle tip. “This is succinylcholine; it’s a paralytic.” At Rozanov’s blank look, he clarified. “It makes it so you can’t move.”
Surprisingly, Rozanov didn’t scream or yell or try to hit Shane. He frowned, expression maybe a little hurt but otherwise unreadable, and of all things, he moved further into the room, pulling his jacket off of the chair.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Shane snapped.
“You are going to kill me, yes? I would like another cigarette, I think. You,” he gestured at Shane, his black gloves, the knife on the counter, the kit. “Faster than cancer, no?”
“You’re very relaxed about this.”
“I think about dying every day, Hollander. You cannot scare me.” He opened the door to the balcony and leaned in it; Shane considered wrenching him back from that, in case he decided to lean out and scream but that didn’t seem to be what was happening here. Instead, as stated, Rozanov lit up and took a long drag, blowing it back out through the side of his mouth. “You are tired of comparison, then? You want to be, eh, alone at the top?”
The idea was horrible enough to make Shane freeze where he stood, pausing as he set up. “Uh, no, actually. I really like playing you.”
“Mm,” he agreed with a nod. “Yes. Same.”
Shane shook his head, miffed at the distraction. “Don’t start arguing for your life or some shit. It’s not going to work. Now that you know, I really can’t let you out of here.” He almost felt apologetic about it, but he couldn’t risk his career, or everything his parents had helped him build.
Rozanov held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hollander, if I wanted to stop you, I would try with my dick. You will miss him very much, I think. Sad for you.”
“Fuck you,” Shane hissed back, hands clenching.
“No, sadly. I wanted to fuck you very much,” Rozanov volunteered mournfully. “Have you begging for my cock. You will have to beg someone else now.”
“No I won’t!” He snapped. “I’m not fucking gay, Rozanov. With you gone, I-” he cut himself off when Rozanov started laughing.
“You think what, I die, you stop liking dick? You like dick only for me?”
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go at all.
“It’s not about that. Fuck.”
“About what, then? Not about hockey or sex you say. Why kill me, Hollander?”
His cigarette was almost finished, Shane considered. They’d really have to stop stalling after this. He had to stop staring at Rozanov’s lips.
“I have not told anyone, you know,” Rozanov finally said quietly. “About us.”
“I didn’t think you had. I just … I can’t be distracted by you anymore, okay? Do you get that?”
Rozanov shrugged. “Not really, no.”
“You’re, ugh.” He breathed out through his nose, grappling with his words. “I can’t stop thinking about it. About digging my nails into you, choking you, tying you up.” When he wasn’t interrupted by any pithy commentary, his words snowballed and continued. “I want to touch you everywhere, to have you completely at my mercy. I want, I need to be the only person to hear what you sound like, when it happens. This is the only way.”
“Only way?” Rozanov repeated back to him softly.
Shane closed his eyes tightly as he spoke. “The only way you can be entirely mine.”
It felt good, to talk about it and finally say the words out loud, even if he had been speaking them into his own hands. It also sounded psychotic, he considered, but the thought was a distant one. When he looked up at his audience, he saw the slackness in Rozanov’s expression, his blown pupils, the tent in his slacks.
“You can’t be fucking serious right now. Really?” Shane said with a gesture.
“I-” Rozanov started and then, horrifyingly, he blushed. It was the most beautiful he had ever looked. Shane hated him a little for that, in that he didn’t hate him at all. “No one wants me so much, Hollander. Is strange, yes, but is hot, too, no?”
Shane scoffed. “Everyone wants you. Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“They want, yes,” he agreed. “They do not want me. No one wants to keep me.”
“Well, I do,” Shane admitted wryly. “Lucky you.”
“Lucky me,” Rozanov echoed, and he didn’t sound sarcastic.
“Why aren’t you fighting this more?” Shane asked, giving voice to the curiosity if only in an attempt to change what had become a distinctly romantic atmosphere.
“I do not want to hurt you,” Rozanov admitted, “And I do not want, so much, to go home.”
“Oh.” For the first time, Shane felt a twinge of guilt. “Won’t your mom and dad m-”
“No, Hollander. My mama is dead. My father, asshole.” He threw the charred filter of his cigarette into the trash and closed the balcony door. “No one will miss this. Well, a friend maybe. Sveta. You, sounds like. No one else.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking for the first time nervous. “It is time now, yes? We should, how you say? Get on with it?”
And fuck, he seemed more human than ever now, insecure, sad, unwanted, nineteen and dreading going home. He was larger than life on the ice, but here, his humanity was overpowering.
All of a sudden, Shane couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t do it because tomorrow would be worse without Ilya Rozanov, and somehow, Rozanov didn’t seem to know that or feel that or understand. All his other kills had made tomorrow better, but still they had fought him. Rozanov wasn’t going to fight this. He didn’t seem to understand that he was important.
“No.” Shane stated abruptly, rolling up and putting away his supplies, pulling his gloves off.
“No?” Rozanov asked, eyebrows raised.
“You do that a lot, the parroting thing,” Shane pointed out as he zipped and stowed his kit.
“My English is not so good,” Rozanov replied, meandering over to watch the process more closely.
“Talk to me more often then,” Shane offered blithely. “We can practice.”
“Ah.” Rozanov nodded. “Will our conversations always be so interesting?”
Shane laughed. “Probably not, no. You didn’t see anything, by the way. This didn’t happen.”
“Mm,” Rozanov agreed, looking like he was fighting a laugh, before he pulled Shane in and kissed him. “This also, no?”
“Yeah,” Shane agreed frantically, pulling him back for another kiss. “This room was empty, basically.”
“I should ask,” Rozanov started, as they moved to unbutton each other’s shirts hastily. “No death tonight?”
“Later,” Shane nodded, dropping to his knees. “I can always kill you later.”
-
After, lying in bed together, Ilya (“Ilya. Call me Ilya. I may die in the morning,”) held him tight and fast, not making a swift motion to shower, dress, leave. Shane considered pointing him toward the exit, discomfited by the break in routine, but realized with startling clarity that he didn’t want to. That holding him, somehow, felt like one piece of the puzzle in discovering what could slake his Rozanov-specific desires.
“You want me to be entirely yours?” Ilya asked quietly, in the darkness.
Shane turned his face into the pillow, ashamed. “That didn’t happen, Rozanov. We agreed.”
“Is important, though,” Ilya countered. “I liked that part.”
“Oh.” The silence between them was thick, heavy, awkward. Shane surprised himself by breaking it, running a hand down Ilya’s back. “You want to be entirely mine, then?”
Ilya’s face burrowed further into his neck, warm breath from his nose against Shane’s collarbone as he nodded, the little motion flopping some curls into his face. “I think you can have what you want,” he said softly, “with me alive, maybe.”
That didn’t make any sense, Shane wanted to argue, but the alternative was feeling more horrible by the minute, so he let the words play out.
“You can tie me up, choke me, keep me. I can make certain sounds only for you. No strangers from parties. I would like, I think.” It didn’t feel like Ilya was begging for his life. It felt like he was begging for something else entirely. “You dug your nails in tonight, was good. I would like this very much.”
Shane hummed in agreement. That arrangement actually sounded a lot more pleasant than his prior plans. “What about this summer? You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I must. But with good reason, I could come back early, maybe.”
“You’d do that?” Shane said in surprise.
“If you asked, yes. If you wanted.”
He hoped Ilya couldn’t feel his heartbeat speed up at the suggestion. He really could have him. He wouldn’t have to lock him in a basement or anything. Not yet, at least. “If you’re fucking with me,” he began.
“Not like this,” Ilya countered. “I would not make this joke. Cruel to both of us, to do that.”
True. Ilya had never been cruel. If he had been, the other part would’ve been easy. “Okay then. Yeah. Come back early. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Is that a threat?” Ilya asked, tone teasing.
“Always,” Shane answered, sealing their agreement with a kiss.