Archive of Our Own

There are enough Americans in the main Olympic Village that Scott rarely has to eat alone, but they’ve got a free day and a half while they wait for Russia to knock Latvia out of the running and most of his teammates are out enjoying the perks of being a famous athlete, so he’s stuck making conversation with the figure skaters. He’s just finishing up lunch (and a discussion on some celebrity drama about two people Scott swears he’s never heard of) when he spots Hollander sitting by himself in the dining hall, face buried in his phone, and makes his excuses.

“Hey,” says Scott. “Cool if I join you?”

“Yeah, man.” Hollander drops his phone on the table face down and waves for Scott to sit. “No Vaughnny?”

Scott laughs as he settles down in the rickety chair. “No, he found some ice dancer from… I want to say Germany?” Honestly, Scott stopped listening as soon as he heard she’s so hot. He’s pretty sure that makes him a shitty friend, but if this girl makes it longer than the last one (36 hours), he might bother learning a little more about her.

“Oh,” says Hollander, fiddling with his phone. “Yeah, cool.”

It dawns on Scott for the first time that Hollander understands. At least, Scott’s pretty damn sure he does. That they’re both sitting here, at the Olympics, in Russia, as star centers and captains of MLH teams and representing their countries— and they’re both keeping the same secret. Probably. Scott’s like 80% sure.

“Listen,” he says, when the moment stretches on a little too long. “I owe you an apology. Chirping is one thing but—”

He watches Hollander’s eyes widen and flick around the room. Make that 90% sure.

“No, man, it’s cool, you don’t have to apologize. I— I know how to take a chirp and I shouldn’t have reacted like that. And,” he continues sheepishly, “I really shouldn’t have punched you for it.”

Scott huffs a laugh. “Honestly, I’d probably have done worse in your shoes.”

Hollander grimaces. “I doubt that. Um, I should—” His eyes scan the room again, and he stands, grabbing the remains of a picked-through grain bowl. “I should really get—”

“No, wait, hey!” says Scott, and then throws his hands up as a gesture of peace when Hollander flinches. “Hollander, sit. Please.”

He doesn’t sit so much as his legs buckle underneath him, but he thunks back down in the chair and Scott takes it as a win.

It’s Scott’s turn to flick his eyes around the room, but there’s no one close enough to overhear. He drops his voice anyway. “I’m trying to say I would have done worse if someone had implied the same thing, and not just because you have shit taste. I didn’t know for sure until you reacted, but I knew enough.”

“Thanks for the confirmation I’m obvious,” spits Hollander, as he goes to stand again.

This time Scott doesn’t let him, throws a heavy arm over his shoulders and turns so the words go directly out of his lips and into Hollander’s ear. “Fucking sit down, Jesus. I’m trying to say I know how terrified you are— how terrified you must be— because I’m just as scared. And I should have known better. So I’m sorry.”

The muscles under Scott’s arm don’t quite relax, but they do release a bit of tension as Hollander turns to look at him, bewildered.

“You— what?”

“It’s not just you,” Scott says, because that’s what he’d want to hear. Then he realizes what he knows and adds, “Although, I guess you already knew it wasn’t only you—”

“No, I— I mean, yeah, I guess, but—” Hollander glances around again and Scott feels that little bit of lost tension return. “Look, thank you, but there’s no apology necessary, and we really should not be having this conversation here.”

Scott can’t actually argue with that, letting go of Hollander’s shoulder and returning to a normal, bro distance. “Come back to my room so we can finish it. Vaughnny’s gonna be with this girl until at least tonight, and there’s no game for either of us today. Please.”

Hollander hesitates just long enough that Scott’s ready to give it up as a lost cause. It hurts, because every dismissal, every person who walks away, every I can’t do this piles onto the last one, and the last one hurts. But he also knows— for sure, now— that he’s not alone, and that’s more than he ever expected to have.

“Okay,” says Hollander after a moment.

Scott can’t help the smile fighting his lips, though he tries. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Scott tries to school his features but he’s pretty sure he’s still grinning like an idiot. There’s a bounce in his step that’s probably not visible to someone who hasn’t analyzed his every muscle movement; he knows Hollander’s clocked it. Whatever. He’s not alone.

The walk back isn’t long and is nearly the same distance for both of them, with Canada and the US being separated only by the cemetery Russia has inexplicably decided to build their Olympic Village around. It feels equal parts morbid and fitting to cut through it, knowing how Russia— and everyone else— feels about people like them. He waits for Hollander to spook, to say thanks but actually— and run the other way to his own team house, especially when he keeps checking his phone, but it never comes.

They keep pace in silence, awkward like Scott is taking a hookup back to his hotel room and they’re just now realizing they don’t know anything about each other beyond being hot and interested. And, well, it’s not that Hollander isn’t hot and Scott isn’t interested, but even just knowing for sure that there’s someone else in the league is enough.

He tries not to think of the Ilya Rozanov of it all but doesn’t know what else to say.

Hollander doesn’t seem to have the same issue. “I gotta ask,” he says as Scott lets him into the Team USA building, sticking his phone back into his pocket again. “Did you, uh, tell Vaughnny?”

“No, I didn’t tell him anything. But,” Scott hesitates, “he was standing pretty close.”

“Fuck.”

“Listen, he’s… he’s cool about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, he’s straight, but...”

Hollander gives him a look. “Oh?”

“Not like that, Jesus,” Scott laughs. “And I really don’t think that’s a can of worms you want to open.”

All the mirth drops off Hollander’s face, but he looks less scared and more… upset?

“Yeah, I— Yeah. No room to talk, I guess.”

Scott fishes his room key out of his pocket, feigning as much nonchalance as he can. “How long has that been going on?”

“It isn’t,” Hollander snaps, glancing around again like there’s someone following them.“There’s nothing going on.”

The door to his room sticks, and yet has to be locked or it won’t stay closed. It swung open on its own at three in the morning their first night, and Vaughnny screamed like a little girl; by practice the next morning everyone had heard about their ‘ghost.’ Scott loves the Olympics, but the sooner they leave Sochi, the better. He shoulders it open, waving Hollander in, and makes sure the lock clicks behind them.

“So it was, what, just a one time thing?”

“It was nothing. It’s always been nothing.”

The rooms are sparse, not much more than two twin beds and two of the most uncomfortable wooden chairs Scott’s ever sat on in his life. He and Vaughnny decided early on that there was no sense in using them for their purported function, and they’ve instead become a sort of coat rack-slash-entry table-slash-luggage stand, piled with Vaughnny’s hard shell suitcase, three Team USA jackets (Scott honestly doesn’t know where the extra small came from, even Vaughnny’s trying to stay away from fucking the other Americans), and a commemorative mug filled with condoms and Russian coins. Scott is regretting this, slightly, now that Hollander is standing in the middle of the room with nowhere to sit besides one of the beds.

“Well,” says Scott, “that’s his loss, then.”

Hollander gives an awkward shrug back, alternating between looking and very obviously not looking.

Scott will swear ’til his dying day that this had not been his plan— that it hadn’t even been in his mind— when he sat down at Hollander’s table to apologize, but the second he starts piecing together the sordid image of Rozanov and Hollander— the quiet gay kid and the wild playboy who would fuck anything, including, apparently, his rival, both at the top of the world and the top of their game, Hollander just another notch in Rozanov’s bedpost— the more he feels like this was meant to be.

The next words spill out of his mouth almost without his permission. “It doesn’t have to be yours, though.”

“I—” Hollander— Shane— is definitely looking now. “What?”

“If Rozanov isn’t interested, there are other people who would be.”

Shane flinches ever so slightly at the name. Scott wonders idly just how much of the rivalry is actually something completely different, something ESPN would never be able to understand.

“Are you trying to set me up with someone?”

“Me, Hollander.”

Shane’s lips form a silent little ‘o’ as his eyes flick back and forth, taking in Scott and the room. It makes Scott want.

Scott huffs a small laugh. “Look, I’m getting over a ‘nothing serious’ myself—” he doesn’t say it was only ‘nothing serious’ because he can’t let it be anything else, that he knows, deep down, that it was serious, that it’s always going to be serious, that whatever this becomes, it will always pale in comparison, like getting silver instead of gold, but that it doesn’t have to be that way for Shane, too— “but it would be nice to actually have a use for one of the hundred free condoms people keep giving me. It can mean whatever we want it to mean.”

Shane takes a step forward. “Nothing serious?” he says quietly, but it comes out like a chirp.

“I hear that’s going around.”

“This is a bad idea,” says Shane, taking another step forward. “and you can’t— you can’t tell anyone—”

Who the fuck is Scott going to tell?

“Who the fuck would I tell?” he asks.

Shane runs a hand roughly through his hair. “I don’t know, Vaughnny, or whoever you were...” he trails off with an ambiguous hand gesture and Scott charitably fills in whoever you were fucking.

“We broke up because no one wants a boyfriend who’s so paranoid he won’t take the same subway as you,” Scott says drily. “I don’t think I’m telling him anything. And no one else knows. Not even Vaughnny.”

Unlike you and Rozanov, he doesn’t say.

“Oh,” says Shane. “That’s good.”

It’s not. It really fucking sucks, actually, but Scott also understands where he’s coming from. It’s better for all of them if the secrets stay between people who have the same thing to lose, if it’s kept between people who understand. Mutually assured destruction.

They’re standing close enough that Scott can see the dusting of freckles over Shane’s cheeks, and it’s so easy to ignore the rest of the world and take that final step forward and cradle Shane’s jaw in his palm.

“Do you want to keep talking about Vaughnny, or…?”

Shane doesn’t wait for another option— just leans in and kisses Scott. It’s sweet, just a smooth slide of lips, but Scott pulls away with a flinch and double checks the curtains are pulled tight. They are, because he and Vaughnny never open them even though they cast the room into a patchy yellow glow, but there’s some bone deep instinct to check anyway.

He turns away from the window, satisfied, and reels Shane back in, letting it escalate into something filthy. It doesn’t last long. Shane pulls away and sinks to his knees on the cheap laminate, black mold creeping in the corner, to fish Scott out of his pants. He tests the feel, leans in to give the head a soft kitten lick, and then tries to suck Scott’s soul through his dick.

You don’t get that good at sucking cock from a one night stand. Hell, you don’t get that good at sucking cock from a decade of watching gay porn and the occasional hookup— Scott would know. It’s the first time he starts to think he’s maybe misjudged the situation a little.

“Whoa, hey, Hollander— Shane—” he says, pulling him off.

Shane stares up at him, lips spit-slick and eyes heavy-lidded. He looks fucked out already and they’ve only been at it a minute. “Is something wrong?”

Scott can’t help but run a hand through his hair, and Shane leans into it. “Slow down, babe. We’ve got all afternoon, you don’t have to rush.”

Shane blinks slowly, then nods. “For sure. Slow down. Got it.”

And then he— slowly, so slowly it’s almost torturous— slides his lips over Scott’s dick and drops down, down, down, until his nose is pressed hard against Scott’s skin, like he’s trying to go even deeper. Scott groans out a curse, then tugs gently on Shane’s hair.

“Okay, alright,” he says, “I am way too old to be coming five minutes in, you gotta give me a break.”

Shane, eyes still glassy but thankfully no longer trying to make Scott see God, mumbles with an edge of a smile, “Too much, too good.”

Scott chuckles. “I mean, yeah, something like that. C’mere.”

He tugs Shane up into his arms, wipes at the edge of his mouth and gives him a soft kiss. Shane chases after it when he pulls away.

“What do you want?”

Shane blinks at him again. “Um. Whatever?”

Scott gives him his best Captain face, and it seems to knock his brain back into his body.

“No game tomorrow, so,” says Shane carefully. “You could fuck me? If you wanted.”

Christ, what Scott would give to have the confidence of youth and Shane’s talent to say, ‘oh, it’s fine, I don’t have the Olympic quarterfinal game for another two days, you can stick your dick in my ass and it won’t affect my game,’ and mean it.

“Yeah,” breathes Scott. “Yeah, if you want me to.”

Scott loves undressing his partners, loves peeling off every layer to reveal the skin below. He’s not thinking about Kip while he's got his hands on another man, really, he’s not, but if he were, he would think that Kip loved being undressed, unwrapped, by Scott almost as much as Scott loved doing it. Shane… Shane endures it, which Scott only really clues into when he comes up from tossing their pants to the side and sees the tightness around his eyes.

“Look, we can stop any time.”

The pained expression vanishes completely, Shane’s eyebrows flying up. “What? No. I mean— unless you want to.”

Scott leans in, pressing a kiss to his lips. “No. If you’re good, I’m good,” he says, practically into Shane’s mouth, before he pulls away just enough to look down their bodies. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

“Oh,” says Shane. “Um. Thanks. You too.”

Shane leans back in for a sloppy, open mouth kiss that still feels practiced, skillful in the way he coaxes Scott’s tongue back into his own mouth. It’s easy to stand there, to let Shane lead as they learn each other with mouths and hands.

Eventually, he pulls away. “Okay, okay,” he says, trying to get himself in check more than anything. He nods his head toward his bed. “Hands and knees?”

Shane doesn’t respond, just goes to follow Scott’s implicit request while he fishes a condom out of the mug. Idly, he thinks he should take it home— the mug, a Russian coin, a condom embossed with the Olympic rings— for Kip, that it would be the kind of souvenir he’d appreciate, before he remembers that it doesn’t matter if he’d appreciate it, because what he’d really appreciate is a boyfriend who doesn’t need to sneak around at the Olympics just to fuck. And also that he’s got a very hot hockey player currently in his bed; he also totally remembers that.

Scott turns back to the bed to find Shane’s discovered his lube, one finger already circling his rim— he doesn’t remember, now, where he first left it, the drawer of the rickety bedside table, or maybe under his pillow, or even out in the open, next to the alarm clock (he and Vaughnny have probably spent too many nights in shared hotel rooms at this point, that he’s so unconcerned he doesn’t even know). It strikes him again, just how beautiful Shane is, like he hasn’t seen him on a billboard in Times Square, more model than athlete. He clears the room in two easy strides, blanketing himself over the arch of his back and pressing kisses down the bumps of his spine.

“No—” Shane stutters out, halfway to a moan, “no marks.”

He may be less experienced, but he’s not an idiot. “Of course. Just between us, yeah?”

Shane tips forward, face pressed into the pillow, and nods.

“Do you want me to take over?”

A beat passes, then two, and Scott contents himself with touching as much skin as he can manage, cataloging every scar and bruise, before Shane’s head turns enough to manage more than a mumble.

“What?”

He slides his hand over Shane’s arm, tracing down from his shoulders to where his fingers are stretching out his hole. “Do you want me to take over?” Scott repeats.

The answer takes another moment to come and when it does, it’s a nod that still seems confused. Scott mentally curses Rozanov and whoever else Shane has been sleeping with. Has no one ever asked? It’s not that he was planning on a bad performance, but it’s this thought that spurs on something in Scott. This is going to be the best goddamn hookup Shane Hollander has ever had.

They both lose themselves to it, the easy, gentle stretching, the moving and twisting of Scott’s fingers inside Shane as he presses up and asks for more. There’s probably a little too much lube, if there can be such a thing, dripping down their sweaty skin onto the sheets. A towel would have been a good idea; Scott still has to sleep in this bed tonight, but he’s too wound up to care.

When he can barely stand it any more, he finally, carefully, pulls his fingers away, shushing the bitten out curse Shane mumbles into the pillow. The Olympic symbol stares back at him as he fumbles the condom open with slippery hands until it rips in two. Christ, he hopes that’s not a metaphor.

“Alright babe, you ready?” he asks when he’s rolled it on, and at Shane’s sharp nod, presses in to the tight, wet heat.

Shane’s erection has flagged, and Scott gives him time to adjust, slowly working up to a gentle rock, until Shane’s pressing back against him.

“Harder,” Shane says, and Scott realizes he’s finally picked his head up from where it’s been buried against the mattress.

He follows the request, slamming his hips just a little more. It punches a moan out his own mouth, loud enough that he almost doesn’t hear Shane say it again.

“Harder— fuck, Hunter—“

This time Scott doesn’t listen. “Don’t want it to be too much,” he mumbles, half into the sweaty skin of Shane’s neck, half into his ear. “‘s the Olympics, you’ve gotta be on your game.”

Shane groans back, clenches down on Scott in response. Scott runs a gentle hand down Shane’s side, slowing his thrusts into something deeper, a rolling of his hips.

There’s a bruise on Shane’s shoulder, mottled enough that Scott doesn’t know whether it’s from Sochi or the regular season, a healing yellow-green-purple, and he presses soft kisses to the edges. It pulls out a soft sigh from Shane, not pained, but not pleasure either. Unsatisfied, maybe. His own orgasm is building, and he reaches around to wrap his hand around Shane, matches their pace in the twist of his wrist, but he’s too far gone already, and his hand stutters as the heat in his gut washes over him.

Only half aware, he lets his hand be knocked away in favor of Shane’s own, lets Shane fuck himself fast and hard on Scott’s cock, barely manages to mouth at whatever skin he can find, until the awareness coalesces into too much and he pulls away.

A whimper escapes from Shane’s lips, and Scott shushes him.

“Shit, I know, sorry,” he says, “C’mon turn over, can I?”

He barely knows what he’s asking, but Shane follows anyway, flipping onto his back. He looks pained, face screwed up tight like he’s fighting for a good bounce and getting nothing but post. Scott slides a hand between Shane’s legs, angling to press two fingers against his prostate, but Shane knocks it away as he tugs and tugs and finally comes with a moan that sounds more relieved than anything.

The come is barely cooling on Shane’s stomach and Scott’s afterglow is only just beginning when Shane heaves a sigh and says, “I should go.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Neither of us can afford for someone to see me here,” says Shane, and okay, yes, that’s true, but it also sounds like I don’t want to.

Scott watches him stand, tugging clothes back on with practiced casualness, and feels the pit in his chest cave back in.

“Thanks,” says Shane. “This was, um, nice.”

He opens his mouth to agree, but something else spills out.

“Can I get your number?”

Shane freezes in the middle of shaking out his shirt. Scott can’t see his face, but he can see the way his back and shoulder muscles have tensed.

“Not for, like, a date or anything, just— it’s nice to know there’s someone else, you know?”

Scott watches Shane’s shoulders soften incrementally before he unfreezes.

“Yeah,” he says, before yanking his shirt over his head. “Yeah, it is.”

Scott’s pretty sure Shane has never been alone in this, has certainly known he wasn’t alone by the end of the All Star Game of his rookie season, which is as good as from the beginning, but he also knows that whatever’s going on with Shane and Rozanov, it can’t really feel like he’s got someone to lean on. Someone who understands, like Scott does.

It’s nice, to not have to be alone.