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Shane looked around the locker room. He smiled at the way that the small groups had formed as the team had changed over the last year. There were new people who had been traded over; Shane had met them but hadn’t really gotten to know any of them. It was going to be an interesting season. They were aiming to be at the top of the division because they hadn’t done too bad the year before, and now they had Shane and Ilya there.

They were both on the second line tonight, and it would be decided later in the season when they were moving to different lines because it was how they worked best. But right now the first line was the players who had been there longer. Marleau worked well with Ilya, and that part would be staying. The preseason had been a lot of moving around and trying new things because it was easy to do that. The games they had were good. They had actually won all of them; some went into overtime to get the wins, but they very much won them all. It was going to be interesting to see what else ended up happening over the course of the season. The team was good, and they were working well together.

Ilya bumped into him, and Shane smiled at Ilya before he looked out at the rest of the team. They were not ready for what having Shane and Ilya on the same team meant for the scoring race in the season.

They were ushered to the ice for warmups, and there was a loud roar from the crowd as they took the ice. Shane made a lap around the whole half of the ice, tapping the glass where kids were pressed to it with signs. There were a few he saw that he could end up giving up some pucks from. Boston had embraced them, and it had been a lot of fun getting used to the city. The fans of them kept to themselves when they were out and enjoying a meal, but before and after that meal, or when they were on the streets, it was open season. They were still respectful when they did it. Which was good because the fans needed to remember that just because they were young, they were a bonded pair.

Preseason had been its own beast, but this was different. This mattered. This was the kind of game where it mattered. Where they had to show the city and the other teams what they could do. They were playing Montreal because the SHL had a sense of humor and put the two biggest rivals in the division for the first game. The crowd was half and half for the most part, with Boston just being close enough that they could fill the away stands with ease. They weren’t sure what was going to happen at the moment, but they knew that this was going to be a hard game.

The Metros looked like they were going to try and make this a rough game, which was funny since Boston was usually the rougher team of the two. Shane figured it had to do with the Metros being pissed that they didn’t get Shane, or both of them, on their team since they had the second pick. There were times when second picks got fucking pissed when the best was taken by the first pick team. It made no sense to Shane at all. He didn’t know what kind of shit the teams were thinking when they did that. The draft lottery was random, and that meant that it was just going to be what it was going to be. He didn’t know what went into it as far as behind-the-scenes shit. He knew the mechanics of who got what draft pick and so on. It was just that things were never going to go the best way for a lot of the teams with their shit.

“Shane,” Ilya said.

Shane looked up, and he saw the small smile on Ilya’s face, and then Ilya was moving toward him. Shane sat up and he knew what Ilya wanted. It was something that had been born of the last few weeks where they got ready for games. Ilya didn’t want to show weakness to anyone, but when two of the other bonded pairs on the team did their own little pregame ritual of some sort, Ilya talked to him about doing their own. He got between Shane’s legs, and Shane buried his face into the compression shirt that Ilya was wearing before he got his hand under the back of it to splay that on Ilya’s back, the touch grounding him more than anything. He could feel the surge in good feelings through Ilya, not arousal or anything close to that, at least not yet. That would come later when there were goals scored, insane moves, or just one of them being an utter shit to the other team.

“Better?” Shane asked, not moving his face from where it was buried in Ilya’s stomach.

“Much,” Ilya said. He started to card his fingers through Shane’s hair, and it was good, a little grounding for him as well. Shane waited for the first touch on his mind from Ilya, and then he wrapped up Ilya in the shield that he had perfected in a lot less time than others thought that he would. Ilya knew that it would take him less time because it was crazy to think that Shane would not be good at something that was going to allow him to play hockey. There was nothing that was going to stop either of them from playing.

Shane knew that he loved hockey more than Ilya did, but that didn’t mean that Ilya would stop playing for anything because Ilya wanted him happy. Shane felt like he loved Ilya, but they hadn’t really said those words yet. He didn’t know if what Ilya felt for him crossed that line yet, but then he also knew that Ilya had a lot more issues around the idea of love, and it would be hard to even try and figure out what kind of mental minefield his love would be for someone like Shane.

“Okay, the Metros are going to be rough as fuck with us,” the coach said as he came into the room.

The team was mostly dressed, and just a few last things needed to be put on for all of them. Warm-ups would happen, and then they would be playing the first true game of their careers. Shane was excited. He didn’t pull his face from Ilya because their ritual wasn’t done, but they could both listen.

“We are going to make them regret ever coming here,” Marleau called out.

Shane laughed a little, and when Ilya dropped his hand from his hair, Shane sat up, and he grabbed his last set of pads he needed to put on. Ilya helped him get them on and fixed the way they needed to be. Then Shane was looking up into his eyes. There was something there that hadn’t been there before. Shane swallowed at the thick feeling in his throat from it. Maybe Ilya did love him but wasn’t sure that it was welcome. Their sexual relationship and the bond were good; it was just the other shit that seemed to be the biggest issue that they had going on. Shane didn’t care. He didn’t mind at all about the love part of things. It would be nice to have it returned, but he also knew that this had started as something to help them both: Shane to make sure that he wasn’t going to get thrown in jail for hiding himself as an online Guide playing in the normal league, and Ilya to escape Russia before it was figured out that he was an online guide as well and be forced into the military service as well as bond with a Sentinel of some kind who was probably going to treat him like shit.

“Finish getting ready and get out there for warm-ups. Hollander and Rozanov, do not go anywhere near the red line. Make sure that they cannot get a stick across the line and touch you. Do not make this easy for them.”

Shane wondered what the coach had heard that made him worried about them being hurt in warm-ups, but they could do it.

“Anyone have any questions?”

“Yeah, how much can we respond?” Connors asked.

“I’ll let you know based on what they fucking do during warmups,” the coach said.

Shane wasn’t going to be happy about this until he knew what the feel of the game was, and he hoped that the Metros were projecting as much as Shane figured they would be because then he could know. He could get a read on people; that was something that even Guides couldn’t really shut down without making it a big thing. It was just natural to them. Just like the Sentinels were good at tracking where the other team was, the sound of the puck on the ice. The Guides had to make sure that they could keep up. Which was why Shane found it so fucking stupid that Guides couldn’t play on a team with the Sentinels unless they were bonded. It was the kind of thing that made Shane wonder if the league would ever change to allow it. He would never let go of Ilya. They worked well, better than they should. The bond between them was no different than the bond between Sentinel and Guide, given that no one had thought anything of either of them being together.

Russia had tried a few things to get Ilya back, but since Ilya was bonded to Guide from Canada, Canada was never going to send Shane to Russia. So Russia just had to live with Ilya defecting. There had been a few grumbles about it, but in the end, it couldn’t be proven that Ilya went there to bond with anyone. It happened by accident even if Shane knew the truth of it. He knew that Ilya had come to Canada with the whole thing of finding a Guide to bond himself to, or if things worked out better, a Sentinel. That was what had Shane worried. Ilya said that he had been looking for a bond, and Shane knew that if a better Sentinel had come along, then Ilya would have gone with that one, and Shane would be alone to play without the one who made Shane play the best game he had ever played. He still thought about what would have happened in the normal leagues if they had not bonded. Would Ilya have gone there? Tried to escape that way? Then they probably would have gone to the first and second draft pick teams and been rivals instead of a bonded pair. Shane didn’t like that idea. He had been attracted to Ilya from the start of things. He had just buried that because it wasn’t needed at the point.

“Ready?” Ilya asked when Shane finally stood up.

“Always,” Shane said.

Ilya grinned, and then he led the way to the lineup for them heading onto the ice.

—

Ilya looked around at those who stayed. The fans were all in the stands, talking, and most of them were focused on the ice where the team was skating around and waving, thanking the fans for being there before they headed into the tunnel to get cleaned up.

Shane was talking to someone with a microphone because he had been the first star of the game, with Ilya and Mitty being second and third, respectively. The shutout was nice, but with a hat trick each, something that Ilya wasn’t sure had ever been done like that before, it had been a tight race for who was coming out on top; if Shane hadn’t had two assists on two of Ilya’s goals, he probably would have been the second with Ilya the first star.

When Shane stood up, done with the interview, Ilya headed for the tunnel to meet him. There were a few more cheers, and Shane waved to the fans who were cheering at them. Ilya waved as well before they were gone from sight.

As soon as they were mostly alone, Ilya pressed Shane to the wall and buried his face into his neck. Their helmets were long gone, and Ilya hoped that either of them hadn’t left them anywhere that would make it hard for the equipment people to find. It would hopefully be a little easier to remember to at least bring them into the locker room from out there.

“We were fucking great,” Ilya said as he rubbed his nose up and down Shane’s neck.

“We were. We were so fucking good. I hope that they don’t expect that from us all the time,” Shane said. He worked a hand under not just the jersey and pads but the undershirt as well, and Ilya was so happy when he felt that hand on the skin of his side. He reveled in the feel of Shane’s skin on his, and he hoped that once they got to the locker room, he could get Shane alone in a shower because he needed more skin. It wasn’t even sex. It was just the need for his Guide to be there, touching him. He could feel the way his senses were going a little crazy, the ones that his Guide gifts ramped up. He still didn’t quite understand how it was possible to hide like he was, but his mother had known he could, and he never questioned it.

There were looks from some of the others on the team, usually from the bonded pairs, even the ones whose Guides were not players on the team but other kinds of staff; that meant that it was easier to travel with the team. They all looked at him like they didn’t know what was wrong with him but knew that something was. Ilya ignored that. He always had when it came to how people treated him back in Russia. He wasn’t going to allow them to disrespect Shane, though. The hockey IQ that Shane had made him stand out, and it wasn’t always good. Ilya had found it endearing and something that he loved, but in the end, it was something that also made it hard for Shane to connect with the team. It had been easier when it was fun things, the stupid fun things that they did to bond, but once they were on the ice for practice, the team realized that Shane locked in and focused in a way that made him not as fun.

Shane wasn’t there to be fun, and he wasn’t going to be. Ilya got him out of his head sometimes, but most of the time it was just the way that Shane was. It wasn’t something that could be seen as a downside because look at the results of it. There had been nine goals, and between the two of them, they had two-thirds of them.

“Ready to clean up?” Ilya asked.

“Yeah, please.”

“They will probably want us to talk to someone together.”

Ilya didn’t push that too much in the few other things that they had done for media so far when it came to after the preseason games and such, but today he was going to, and he would make sure that they saw how much Ilya needed Shane touching him to keep him grounded.

“After we shower, I can’t focus until I’m clean,” Shane said.

“Da,” Ilya said.

There were a few seconds where Ilya thought that Shane was going to push things a little more on staying like they were before they headed back, but then Ilya was pushed back by Shane. He led the way to the locker room. The rest of the team was in there, and they were in various stages of getting clean. They would be heading for a meal when they were settled and ready to go. The kitchen in the team part of the facility had a good spread of things, and Shane had put in their order of what they wanted after the game. It was going to be the way they did things for a while, at least until they were used to the whole grueling schedule. They might even keep with having their post-game meal there all the time when at home. If they were on the road, there would be other ways to get meals.

Shane had tried to settle into some kind of weird diet, but Ilya had put his foot down a little bit about some of the aspects. He wanted Shane to feel good about what he ate, and Shane did enjoy a lot of things that Ilya just couldn’t stand to eat over and over again, but there was more than being a Guide that was going on with his Guide. He knew that there were texture issues with certain things, and he had felt the disgust one time when something made it into a meal of his that he didn’t like the texture of. Ilya never wanted to feel that again. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to eat that item again either, which kind of sucked. The one time he had tried after Shane had eaten it, there had been the echo of what it felt like.

“We left the one single stall open,” Marleau called out.

Ilya took it as the consideration it was. The preseason games had been more fun, with the newbies getting used to things and new lines to try; the older guys hadn’t been in nearly as many games as they could have been. Instead, there had been a lot of things that were being tried out.

“Thanks,” Shane said before Ilya could answer.

The whole thing felt weird to Ilya, but he didn’t know why it did. He looked around the room, trying to see if someone was focusing on them more than they should be. There was nothing. He worked on getting naked and would help Shane get the last few items off if Shane was taking too much time, like he sometimes did; the small mistakes were going through his head as he tried to make his game the best. It was rubbing off on him, not him constantly picking apart his game, but wanting to be the best for Shane, just like Shane just wanted to be the best for himself. He had never once felt like he had to be the best to show the world that he deserved to have Ilya Rozanov as his Sentinel. Even if Ilya wasn’t a Sentinel. No, Shane just wanted to be the best, and Ilya would make sure that the world knew that they were both the best, trading off who was the best in each small moment, but over the course of their careers, they were going to be evenly matched.

“Ready?” Shane asked.

Ilya looked at where Shane was getting ready to head to the showers. his towel and supplies in hand and a grin on his lips. Ilya looked down at where he had just taken off his socks and still had his underwear to go. Shane had been so focused on getting naked that Ilya was the slow one this time. Ilya laughed and waved for him to go first.

It took a moment for Ilya to follow him, but he did. He shut the door to the single, and the sounds from outside disappeared. It was good. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen between them. Nothing they did could be heard; they would clean up after, and the feelings of a job well done would keep Shane feeling like he had the best orgasm in the world for a while.

Shane was under the water when Ilya joined him in the shower portion of the stall. His towel was left beside Shane’s, and his stuff hung on the book on the wall. The little caddies of supplies to make sure that none of them got rashes in places that would not be good were good. Ilya loved the small stuff that was used in the arenas for Sentinels so much. Russians saw them as tools, and that was all they would ever be. They would be fed to make sure they could keep on being tools, but the small stuff was to be forgotten. Rash because of the shampoo given to them? Oh well. Be a better tool, and you’ll get better supplies.

Ilya stepped under the water and got most of the sweat off him that way for a moment before he grabbed his rag to clean up his face because he didn’t want the sweat dripping into his eyes. He would do his hair next, but he had his process of what he liked to do. They worked in tandem beside each other, their arms brushing as they cleaned up.

When there was little else to do, Ilya reached out, and he pulled Shane close to him; he didn’t crowd him into the wall like he wanted because he felt a little off-kilter. He waited for Shane to cuddle in close before he wrapped his arms around him; he kissed him. The simple brush of lips was what started it, and then it turned into something more. All of Ilya ached for him. He wanted his Guide right there with him; he wanted to be inside for him so much, and the want of that flared with shock. Ilya hadn’t felt the need to claim Shane like that after a preseason game and not even after Team Canada games, not even the one where they had played against Russia and beaten their asses.

It was going to be hard to stop them as long as the Team Canada captain didn’t fuck shit up and add people who didn’t like to share the spotlight. Neither Shane nor he was one who went for the kinds of shots that were not gettable if there was someone else there who had a better shot. Assists were just as good as goals when it came to their Team Canada stuff. There were a lot of things that were going to become better if the team started to gel more, at least for the Sentinel and Guide side of things.

Ilya was in his head, and he didn’t feel it when Shane started to move until he was on his knees already, and he was nosing around Ilya’s soft cock. Ilya braced a hand on the wall, and he let his other hand card through Shane’s hair, and then he pulled him closer. Fuck, he hadn’t been thinking of getting off even if they were in the room; now one would know it. He wanted to get Shane into bed and take him part, making him come on just his cock. He loved that most, getting Shane to beg and plead for what he wanted while Ilya’s cock was buried inside of him.

Shane sucked Ilya’s cock into his mouth, and it was still mostly soft, but it hardened as it just sat there on Shane’s tongue. He didn’t do anything, just held it there. Didn’t even suck at all. It was too fucking good, and Ilya couldn’t help but moan at just being held inside of Shane’s mouth like that. Shane’s mind touched on Ilya’s, and then they were melding, something that Sentinels and Guides weren’t able to do; there were a lot of things they could, but this meld was something that they had realized that the other bonded pairs they knew were not able to do.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya said.

Shane shivered at the use of his last name. They didn’t really use one name or the other more when in the locker room and around the team. Either slipped out with ease. At home it was always Shane and Ilya. Ilya moved his hand down the base of Shane’s skull, and he used it to make Shane move, getting him to finally bob up and down on his cock. Shane loved being like this, and the echo of that was there in the medal and down their bond. The meld was still so new. It had happened once when they had been cuddled in bed after sex. They could achieve it when not horny, but they were able to get there quicker when they were horny, either coming down from it or getting at the start of it. He wasn’t sure what he was going to feel when Shane finally started to do more than just bob up and down.

The first brush of the head of his cock at the back of Shane’s throat had Ilya nearly buck further into Shane’s mouth, but he didn’t want to make him gag, so he forced himself to stay still. He loved this so fucking much. He moaned as he let himself go when he felt Shane swallow around the head of his cock. That was new. It was so fucking new that it took everything for Ilya not to come right then and there. He could feel that Shane needed this to wreck him. He needed this to let go of whatever was going on in his mind. So Ilya moved the hold from the base of Shane’s skull to the top, where he could grip his hair and really start to fuck his mouth, slipping down into his throat every few thrusts. It was really fucking good.

“More, Shane, fucking hell, more,” Ilya said before slipping into Russian. He knew that Shane couldn’t understand the words, but he knew the intent. Shane was learning Russian, but it was going to take a long fucking time for him to be fully fluent enough to pick up at the speed that Ilya talked most of the time. There was so little time that he was able to sit and have a lesson, even if Shane was working on it in other ways.

When Ilya was close, he held Shane’s head still and really fucked his mouth. He could feel that Shane was close, and his hands were still on Ilya’s hips. He hadn’t touched himself at all. Which wasn’t a shock since with their bond, they could get each other off without even touching each other. They had done that a few times when the bruises were too much and too painful to be close, or they were just so tired that moving more than just being in each other’s arms was too much.

It was something that Ilya had been dreaming about, burying himself so far in Shane’s throat that he wouldn’t be able to taste Ilya on his tongue until Ilya pulled out. Coming down his throat was a claim on him. Something that no one had ever done, which wasn’t saying much because there were a lot of things that neither of them had done before. They were having all kinds of firsts when it came to sex, and it was fucking good.

It wasn’t until Ilya was pulling out and one last little spurt of come landed on Shane’s tongue that Shane came, the pleasure from Ilya spiking and forcing the orgasm on him. Shane pulled off his cock, and he breathed while he pressed his face to Ilya’s hip, the water landing on both of them. washing away the little bit of sweat that came with orgasm and a really good fucking.

A few moments later, Ilya pulled Shane up and started to use Ilya’s rag to clean him up a little, with a little soap, a little water, and a lot of care before he left Shane leaning against the wall and did the same for himself. They were clean, and that was all that mattered. They would get dry in the outer room and then head to grab their clothes to start to get dressed.

Most of the team was out of there. They were all either headed home to get dinner or something else.

“Media when you are dressed?” the PR lead asked with his back to the room, standing in the one door that all of the staff used to talk to the team.

“Yeah, we will be good,” Ilya answered. He could feel that Shane was still kind of floating from his orgasm, which was just fine because it helped Shane get out of the headspace of the game.

Ilya knew that they had a few things to get through. A few things to make sure that they were on the same page, but they were both playing the sport they loved, and that was all that mattered; the rest of it was just noise that they had to get through. Together they could do anything.

The End