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Shane doesn't mean to say it, the first time. It's just that he's only been with women, he tells himself. It's just the way he hears the guys talk in the locker room. It's just the words he knows, the ones he defaults to in moments of passion.
Rozanov has him naked and laid out like a meal, expensive hotel sheets cool against his back and hands gripping the headboard. They're not even tied. Rozanov had just pressed his wrists to the mattress and told him to stay, and Shane did what Shane always does when Rozanov tells him what to do. He wrapped his fingers around the slats and held on. He doesn't think he could let go if he wanted to.
Since Shane surrendered to the inevitable, Rozanov's hands have been everywhere, grabbing and caressing and sweetly tracing the path down Shane's chest towards where Shane wants him. He's been teasing for what feels like hours, touches and tiny kisses and kitten licks and hints of teeth designed to turn Shane into nothing but sensation.
He hates that it's working.
He loves that it's working.
Shane feels like he's a star burning in the sky, his nerves all firing and sparking and melting him as Rozanov's sultry mouth inches closer and closer to Shane's hard, aching cock.
Except Rozanov bypasses it, smiling at how Shane shifts his hips, how he whines when teeth tease at the inside of his thigh, threatening to leave a mark Shane will have to explain away in the dressing room.
"Shh," Rozanov breathes, running his hands along Shane's hipbones as his mouth traces further down the line of his thigh. "Tell me."
Words. Rozanov always wants words. And Shane has words on a good day. He has words in two languages. Words to give reporters and analysts, words for his teammates and his coach. For a man who straps knives to his feet and slides around on ice for a living, he does a lot of talking.
But it's been somewhere between five minutes and an eternity since Rozanov started kissing him, and that fucking sinful mouth has been all over his body. Shane's nipples are hard and puffy from being bitten, his chest is a soft network of kisses and the burning memory of Rozanov's tongue crisscrosses his thighs.
"I need--" Shane swallows, trying to force the words out at the same time he's trying to hold them back. He knows Rozanov will give him anything he asks for, but the asking is hard. It's humiliating. It's embarrassing. It's horrible and incredibly hot to be forced to dig out his deepest desires and hand them over to a man who will wield them without mercy.
Rozanov waits, patient in bed in a way he isn't on the ice. He's always willing to let Shane get there, only ever pushing a little to get things moving.
The silence must go on too long, because Rozanov dips his face back down to the inside of Shane's thigh and starts kissing again before nipping with sharp teeth. Shane is going to combust. He's actually going to die.
"Fuck me," Shane groans. "Please, Rozanov. Fuck me."
The lupine smile that splits Rozanov's face is as familiar as it is sexy. "Where should I fuck you?" he asks, his voice purring deep in his chest in a way that rattles everything Shane is. "Should I fuck your thighs? Your sweet mouth?"
Shane groans. Yes. No. It's not what he's asking for, but if that's what Rozanov wants, if that's what Shane is allowed to offer tonight, then he'll take it. He just needs to feel the way Rozanov comes apart for him, the way they both shatter into something better when they do this.
"No," Shane breathes. "Fuck me--" he hesitates, feeling what blood his body hasn't sent to his throbbing cock flood his cheeks in mortification. The need is hot and immediate, the overwhelming urge to have Rozanov take him in that wild, reverent way of his. "Fuck my pussy."
Rozanov goes very, very still. Shane isn't even sure he's breathing. Instead he's staring, his eyes wide and dark, up at Shane's face.
Oh, god. Oh, no.
Shane has said stupid things before, but never something that horrified someone so badly that it ruined sex. His heart starts to pound a loud warning in his chest. Take it back.
"No, not-- I mean-" Shane starts to sit up, letting go of the headboard, but he doesn't get far before Rozanov remembers how to move, his stillness exploding into action as he moves up and over Shane, gripping his wrists and pressing them back down.
"Say it again," Rozanov growls, and Shane realizes that the stillness wasn't horror by the way Rozanov's cock is pressing into his stomach, hard and hot and utterly mind blowing even through the boxer briefs Rozanov hasn't taken off yet. Shane wonders distantly if he'll ever learn to want Rozanov less.
"Say what?" Shane is being a brat and he knows it, but he doesn't like the way Rozanov demands things, the way he takes and takes. He doesn't like it. He kinda loves it.
Rozanov presses his lips to Shane's neck, using his tongue to worry the skin under Shane's ear in a way that sends goosebumps racing down his arm. "Say where you want me to fuck you."
Shane groans, almost drowning out the Russian word Rozanov says. Shane doesn't know what it means, or if he's allowed to ask. It's probably an insult. He glances at Rozanov's face, trying to gauge if this is some kind of trick. There's something there, something simmering in those heated eyes, but Shane doesn't know what it might be. He hopes -- well, no. He won't hope. Not about this. Instead he tries to follow the instruction.
"I want--" Shane can't say it. There's a mortifying feeling of exposure that goes beyond his nakedness, and it burns him. He knows his chest must be pink with blush. He turns his face away, screwing his eyes closed as he tries to breathe through the feeling.
Rozanov's breath is warm against the shell of his ear as he leans in closer. "Is easy, Hollander. You say, 'Please, Rozanov, fuck my pussy,' and I will," he whispers, and Shane can't stop himself from moaning at the words. Rozanov's hand goes skittering down his chest, coming to rest just below his navel, fingers raking gently through the hair there. "Ask me, and you can have it."
"Please," Shane breathes. Rozanov moves with the word, returning himself to between Shane's legs. He hitches one of Shane’s knees up onto his shoulder and presses his open mouth against Shane's balls. "Fuck!" Shane has to close his eyes, the sudden sensation too much to combine with any other stimulus.
The soft noise Rozanov makes against Shane's skin is all vibration, and seems to travel up Shane’s bones to lodge directly into the pleasure center of his brain. It makes something in him snap, his hips canting forward for friction.
"Fuck my pussy, please," Shane knows his voice is probably whiny, he probably sounds desperate and pathetic. But Rozanov makes that vibration noise again and slides his hands under Shane's ass, squeezing gently before wrapping his mouth around one of Shane's balls and doing something with his tongue that sends another bolt of electricity straight through him.
Shane sobs out a noise that he'll deny having made later, and that seems to be the thing Rozanov was hoping for, because for a moment his hands are gone from Shane's body. There's movement, a rustle, and when Shane pries his eyes open he sees Rozanov sitting back on his heels, his dick still clearly hard between his legs as he fiddles with a bottle of lube Shane vaguely remembers bringing here.
"Get the pillow," Rozanov says when he sees Shane looking, and Shane doesn't even have to think. He grabs one from near his head, lifts his hips and wedges it under himself, spreading his legs lewdly so he can show Rozanov exactly where he's needed.
Rozanov makes his own embarrassing noise, but in Shane's pleasure haze it just feels like approval, and it makes him roll his neck back, arching his back a little more and returning his hands above his head, where Rozanov put them.
"Fuck, Hollander," Rozanov breathes, and then his slick fingers are there, slipping between Shane's cheeks and running lightly, reverently, around his rim. "What a pretty pussy."
This should be weird. It should be silly, or funny, or take Shane out of the moment to have the man he's been competing with for years call his ass a pussy. But Shane must be wired wrong, because all he wants is more.
"Yeah?" he asks, and his throat sounds dry. His dick can't relate. He can feel the precome sliding down it. "You like how I look?"
Rozanov nods and grabs Shane's knee again, pressing it back towards his chest. "You belong in museum," he rumbles, and oh, that's his tongue, wet and soft and solid, pressing where his fingers just were.
They've done this a few times, Rozanov eating him out. It's made Shane cry before, so close to coming for so long that eventually his nervous system just gave up, and he couldn't stop himself. But he still cherishes every moment of Rozanov's attention, his gentle, insistent focus on Shane's pleasure.
"Fuck," Shane sighs, and for the rest of his life Shane will never quite know where the next words come from, but before he can even imagine them they're out in the air. "Is this how you do it with all your little girlfriends, Rozanov? Eat their pussies like you've never had a meal before?"
Instead of answering, Rozanov makes another humming sound against Shane's skin, and slips a finger in alongside his tongue. It's not quite the right angle to light Shane up the way Rozanov normally can, but he still feels the breath punch from his lungs in a soft exhale at the sensation. Somehow, everything feels so fucking good when it's the two of them. There are things Shane would never even dare to try with another person, and Rozanov reaches into his heart, his brain, his fucking soul and pulls out the things Shane usually pretends he doesn't want.
It's all Shane can do to keep his hands to himself, to keep his fingers tangled in the slats of the headboard. He wants to grab Rozanov's hair, wants to pull it a little and direct that mouth, those fingers, to the places they'll feel best. He wants to take, to make Rozanov give up all the things he knows Shane wants.
Instead he holds on, swivels his hips a little and starts to try and ride the sensations.
There are very few things in the world that can make Shane Hollander not think about hockey, but Ilya Rozanov's mouth is absolutely one of them. It makes time go mushy and places stop making sense. Shane lets the universe spread out into infinity with the press of Rozanov's fingers, in the hot heat of his tongue. Shane doesn't care about anything outside of this room, this bed. He doesn't care about who's got the most goals or who's going to win the cup, and it's one of the best things he thinks he's ever experienced.
At some point, more fingers join the party, and Shane has to resist the urge to fuck himself on Rozanov's hand. It's too good, too fucking perfect. There's an edge approaching, a crash from these pleasure highs that Shane is riding, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want any of this to ever stop.
"Close," Shane breathes out, kicking out with the foot that's been resting against Rozanov's back. "If you want to fuck me--"
Rozanov's grin is downright feral when he pulls back and meets Shane's eyes. "If I want to fuck your pussy?"
Shane groans, the words hot and molten inside of him. Fuck, how does Rozanov do that? What is the accented alchemy that takes normal words that Shane hears every day in the locker room and makes them so scorching that he can barely hear them without a cognitive dysfunction?
"Yeah," Shane nods. "If you wanna fuck my pussy, you're gonna have to take a break."
Rozanov hums thoughtfully, twisting the fingers that are still inside Shane and just barely grazing that spot with the tip of one. Shane's muscles jolt in response, clenching around where Rozanov is still buried inside of his body.
"Fuck," Rozanov sighs, but he's slowly withdrawing his fingers, easing them out of Shane gently. For a moment, the eye contact between them is hot, a live wire that has both of them captivated in eachother.
And then Rozanov, who is an asshole, slaps the outside of Shane's thigh gently.
"Turn over," he says. "On your stomach. Take a breath."
Shane barely has time to register the words before Rozanov is slipping off the bed and into the little hotel bathroom. He's still half dressed, his shirt unbuttoned and clinging to his shoulders and his thighs trapped in his shorts. He looks more debauched than he would fully naked, and Shane is absolutely into it for the few seconds he gets to see before Rozanov flicks on the light and closes the door most of the way.
It takes a moment for Shane to gather his wits, and for a second he lies there and listens to the sound of running water. Rozanov is probably rinsing his mouth out. Which - Shane wouldn't mind being kissed without it, no matter where Rozanov’s mouth has been. He should probably say that. He hopes that's why Rozanov has gone, and not because there was something wrong, or because he doesn't actually enjoy putting his tongue up Shane's ass.
Cold insecurity takes a hold of Shane’s stomach, as reasons Rozanov might wash his mouth out spin through the air between them. Like maybe Rozanov is disgusted with him, or humoring him, or somehow he's going to use Shane's pleasure to make fun of him and--
And then the bathroom door opens, and Rozanov is standing there, backlit from the vanity like the god of dawn and sex.
"You okay?" he asks, taking a few steps towards the bed, letting his fingers trace over Shane's cheekbone before he brings his thumb across his lips. It's all Shane can do to not open his mouth, not suck that digit in and treat it the way he would treat Rozanov's cock.
"Okay," Shane replies, instead. "You?"
There's something soft in Rozanov's eyes, and it makes Shane's chest clench in response. "Very." Rozanov stoops, pressing his mouth to Shane's, a chaste little kiss that makes their previous activities feel incongruous at best. "Ready to keep going?"
Shane doesn't respond, just does as Rozanov asked earlier, and turns onto his front. He cranes his neck around so he can watch Rozanov, because there’s something about the way the other man moves that really sets Shane on fire - he has a grace that defies his size, both on and off the ice. Shane’s dick seems to have checked out of the situation, going half-soft from the break and the mild anxiety attack, but it stirs again as Rozanov shrugs out of his shirt and slips his fingers into his slutty little boxer briefs, lowering them to reveal the long, thick lines of his thighs around his stunning cock. Fuck, Shane thinks. His body is insane.
Rozanov wraps a fist around his dick, stroking it idly as he lets his eyes rake over Shane. Shane feels the heat of his gaze as it travels down his back and does what he knows Rozanov wants; he pulls his knees up under his hips and presses his chest to the mattress so Rozanov can replace his gaze with touch, so he can run his hand along the curve of Shane’s spine, from the nape of his neck and down, down, down, to the swell of his ass.
It’s a light touch, almost a caress. But it makes Shane want to howl as those lithe fingers - the ones that handle Shane’s body and a hockey stick with equal skill and brutality - slide along his skin.
"Fuck," Shane breathes, somewhat awed that this is all it takes for his body to start reacting again, for the fire they had carefully banked to spring back from the embers inside of him.
Rozanov responds with a word in Russian, which Shane is relatively sure is just "fuck" but Slavic. He’s been a professional hockey player for long enough to recognize the swear words in a number of random languages, even if he doesn’t always get the nuance. Still, Rozanov’s mouth is magic in a way that none of Shane’s teammates have ever managed. He doesn’t pop a half chub when Ivanov from San Francisco calls him a stupid son of a bitch on the ice, but those same sounds would be lethal coming from Rozanov’s mouth.
Rozanov, who is now moving behind Shane, hands gently and slowly spreading his cheeks. "Are you on the pill?" Rozanov asks, and it takes Shane’s lust-addled brain a full 20 seconds to parse what that sentence even means.
"What?" Shane’s almost afraid that Rozanov will keep talking, but he’s terrified that he’ll stop.
"Birth control," Rozanov says, running the pad of his thumb down to where Shane is loose and open for him, where his body is begging for the rough fucking he needs so badly. "Are you on it, or do I need condom? I don’t want to make you pregnant."
Shane groans, pressing his forehead into the sheets. Fuck. Why is that so hot?
There are condoms in Shane's bag, and he had intended to use them, but the question makes him change his mind. "You don’t need a condom," he says with a voice that sounds rough enough to need resurfacing. They normally use them, if only because Shane doesn’t usually like the mess, but right now he doesn’t care about any of the very good reasons to ask Rozanov to wrap it up. Shane wants to feel him bare, hot and unhindered.
"Good," Rozanov presses lightly with his thumb and Shane jumps at the sensation. Rozanov’s resulting chuckle is dark and so sexy that Shane wants to fucking die about it. "Ready?"
Shane nods, lifting one hand to give Rozanov a thumbs up. Immediately, he feels the blood rush to his face again as it dawns on him that giving his partner a thumbs up to penetration might be the single least sexy thing he’s ever done.
There’s a soft noise and the sensation of a little more lube dripping onto Shane’s hole before he hears the tell-tale wet sound of Rozanov slicking himself up. Shane concentrates on the oncoming pleasure to stop himself from tensing. Rozanov won’t hurt him on purpose, he never has. But Shane’s body still reacts with a kind of instinctual protectiveness every time, and he has to concentrate to get himself to a place where he can lie back and take it.
The first press of Rozanov inside of Shane’s body is white-hot intensity, so perfect and so right that it almost feels unreal. Shane doesn’t know how it can be this good every time. It doesn’t feel possible, but here they are.
Rozanov goes slowly - he always goes so achingly slowly at first - and Shane just holds on for dear life, rocking his hips gently to encourage him.
"Relax," Rozanov breathes, running a hand between Shane’s shoulder blades, pressing gently to the back of his neck. "I have you."
"Fuck," Shane says, letting his breath out on the word. Rozanov has been a fucking attentive lover since their first fumbling blowjobs, which flies in the face of everything he is on the ice. It’s that dichotomy that keeps Shane coming back, he thinks. That mix of fire and sweetness.
There may come a day when Shane Hollander is sick of Ilya Rozanov’s contradictions, but right now he can’t imagine liking anything more.
"Sweet little pussy," Rozanov grates out, like his teeth are clenched around the words. "Letting me in like you know who you belong to." Shane hadn’t thought he could be more turned on, but suddenly he’s fully hard and his heart is pounding in his ears.
"You like-" Shane chokes on the next words before he can say them because he can feel Rozanov’s pelvis pressed to his ass, his quads to Shane’s hamstrings, and it’s a lot to take in. Quite literally.
"What?" Rozanov asks, his voice condescending, but he’s not moving, and Shane knows he won’t until he’s given the okay, until Shane grants permission to fuck him.
Shane shakes his head no, suddenly embarrassed to keep up this silly bit while he’s got a man inside of him.
Rozanov’s hands find his waist, fingers pressing into Shane’s belly on the rough side of reverent. "Tell me, Hollander." He rocks his hips, just barely, and something inside of Shane is becoming a dangerous inferno.
"It’s stupid," Shane gasps, and then he glances over his shoulder to see the furrow on Rozanov’s brow, the slack look of his mouth where he’s panting slightly. "You can move."
Rozanov does; he barely pulls out an inch before easing back in. "Fuck," he spits, his fingers tightening on Shane’s waist.
Shane has to agree. Fuck sums it up pretty well.
He and Rozanov haven’t had a lot of sex by some metrics - five or six times a year for a few years - but it’s more sex than Shane has had with anyone else. And it’s always so fucking good that Shane wonders why he would ever sleep with anyone else.
And the best is when Rozanov starts to fucking talk. His English is way better than Shane’s Russian, but he still loses bits of it when they’re in the heat of things, and that drives Shane absolutely wild. Rozanov could be reciting his ridiculous rules for drinking vodka and Shane thinks it would probably rev him up if it was in Russian.
"You feel so good," Rozanov moans, starting to move a little faster, and Shane pushes back to meet his thrusts, pleasure sparking along the length of his body.
"You like it?" Shane breathes, closing his eyes as Rozanov gets a hand on the back of his neck again. He’s starting to feel a little drunk with it. "You like fucking my pussy?"
It’s what he had wanted to say, earlier. When he chickened out. But the noise Rozanov makes, a desperate, keening moan of sensation, erases anything in Shane that might have been embarrassed by the phrase. It's a noise that is going to be the soundtrack of his best dreams for a long time.
"All the girls," Rozanov breathes, leaning in to get his lips on Shane’s shoulder. "In all the cities. Yours is best."
Those words are so impossibly hot that they almost destroy Shane. He makes a noise that might be a shout and might be a moan and is probably both before he wraps a hand around the base of his cock to keep himself from coming. "Holy shit," he pants, and he can't see Rozanov's face but Shane still knows exactly what smile is on it, can picture the glee in those sharp eyes any time Shane starts to lose control.
"Does any man fuck you as well as I do?" Rozanov growls.
The question burns. It's actually painful. Because there's a true answer and a safe answer and Shane really, really doesn't want to protect his heart in this moment. He wants to confess how few other men there really have been. How few other men he ever wants there to be again.
Shane swallows the emotions, sends them down deep where they can't hurt him. "No," he says. "You. You fuck me best. This is-- fuck!" Shane feels the humiliation rising again, but he wants to get Rozanov back for the question, so he pushes through the mortified moment and whispers. "You own this pussy, Rozanov."
Rozanov's breath is hot on Shane's neck as he lets out a wounded moan, his thrusts getting harder and wilder and more brutal. Shane wonders if he'll have a limp tomorrow, if he'll have to go lie to the physio about tightness in his quads so Hayden doesn't ask too many questions. He's looking forward to feeling this for days.
"Turn over," Rozanov breathes, easing back from Shane's body to give him space. "Let me see your face when I make you come."
Shane definitely whines at that, because somehow Rozanov is hitting all the right buttons tonight. He turns onto his back and grabs his knees, rolling his hips back so Rozanov doesn't even have to try to slide back into him.
"Shit, Hollander," Rozanov's voice is unsteady and his hands are hot as he uses one to grab Shane's pec and the other to press Shane's knee back even further so he can get deeper. Shane wants to fucking die from how good it feels, and how much he fucking loves the face Ilya Roazonov makes when he's overcome with pleasure.
Rozanov ducks his head so they can kiss, and as Rozanov licks into his mouth, Shane has the insane idea that maybe this other man needs to be inside of him as much as Shane needs him there. That maybe Rozanov could want him for more than this. Or more of this. Maybe all the time. Forever.
It's a dangerous thought, and as much as Shane would love to follow it to a place where they're holding hands and making dinner and teaching their twin girls to skate, he can't. He can't go there while Rozanov's cock is pressing against his prostate, while they're sweaty and wild and wrapped in each other. If he does, he knows he'll never come back from it.
So instead he lets go of his knees and grips Rozanov's forearms, pressing his fingers into the tight corded muscles there and rolls his hips down. He kisses back, letting his tongue touch Rozanov's and tasting the slight mint flavor from his bathroom trip.
And then Rozanov sits upright with Shane's legs over his shoulders and fucks him, using every trick in his considerable playbook to start Shane's fall towards the edge. Rozanov is intense and sexy, making soft little pleasure noises and biting his bottom lip as they both chase pleasure with the other's body and Shane doesn't ever want to look away. But what takes Shane apart, what tears him into careful pieces is Rozanov pressing two fingers to the head of Shane's dick. The way Shane knows he would touch a girl, to make her come.
It's intoxicating and heady and Shane's orgasm body checks him into the metaphorical boards; he's stunned, gasping for air as he feels himself spill hotly onto Rozanov's fingers and his own belly.
"Such a good girl," Rozanov purrs, and Shane wishes he could come again just from that, from the idea of being his rival's good girl. There's something wrong with him. There are a lot of things wrong with him. There's one, specific thing wrong with him, and it's the way he can't stop wanting Ilya Rozanov.
Rozanov, who has slowed back down but hasn't come, is giving sharp little thrusts into Shane's body, fucking him through the orgasm and waiting to see if he wants more. The restraint is admirable, and Shane thinks that when he finally finds a girl to settle down with, he should remember to do the same.
"Okay?" Rozanov asks, meeting Shane's eyes.
"I wanna feel it," Shane breathes, bearing down lightly on Rozanov's cock. "I want you to come in me." He feels the grin on his face, wide and loopy from post-orgasm endorphins. "Knock me up."
Rozanov starts outright babbling, the words that Shane can't understand flowing freely from his lips as he starts to move again. He's downright frantic, his hips slamming into Shane with bruising intensity and his hands grabbing at Shane's body. It's hot, it's wild, and Shane is still on the right side of overstimulation to enjoy it as Rozanov takes his pleasure.
He comes with his eyes closed and his mouth open, his breath stuttering in little grunts and his hands pressing fingerprint bruises into Shane's thighs, where Rozanov is hanging on for dear life.
The feeling of his release inside of Shane is hot in so many ways - not just the physical sensation, but the idea that maybe, in this small way, there's a little piece of Rozanov that Shane gets to keep for just a moment.
Rozanov falls forward, unmindful of the mess Shane left on his body with his own orgasm, and their mouths find each other, languid kisses soothing the burn in Shane's body where he's been bent in half for too long.
"That was hot," Rozanov says, after a moment, before rolling off of Shane and groping for the box of tissues on the bedside table. "You like being one of my girls?"
"Go fuck yourself," Shane replies, taking one of the tissues and seeing to his chest, trying to wipe clean what Rozanov smeared between them. "Ugh. I need a shower."
Something flickers over Rozanov's face, which Shane decides to call annoyance because the alternatives are non-starters. "Shut up," Rozanov says, leaning down to lay one of his devastatingly soft kisses on Shane's mouth.
Shane grins into the kiss, letting Rozanov have his moment. Not that he's complaining, of course. But when they break apart, he does take the opportunity to lick his lips suggestively. "Wanna shower together?" he asks, knowing that it's all a game, all a joke. Not even Rozanov would be up for a blow job twenty seconds after what they just did. But maybe he'll offer to wash Shane's back. And that would be almost as good.
Rozanov sighs, a put-upon noise of fond exasperation. "Fine, yes," he says, though he doesn't move off of Shane to let him get up. It's getting dangerously close to cuddling, and Shane thinks that if he doesn't pull them out of this bed in the next minute, he's going to start naming those imaginary kids and figuring out what to call their youth hockey team. So he pokes Rozanov in the side.
"Up," he says. "Off."
Rozanov grumbles, but he does as he's told, standing and then offering a hand to Shane to help him up.
"Hey," Shane grabs Rozanov's hand, letting himself be pulled to his feet.
"What?" Rozanov says, an exaggerated look of annoyance on his face as he turns to the bathroom.
Shane hesitates as Rozanov turns on the shower. He knows what he would say in a world where he was allowed to say it. In a place where this was more than casual, more than just some fun two bros have between hockey games. In a world where Rozanov was his, where this was a relationship.
But this isn't that world. They're nothing. And he knows they're nothing and will never be something. So the words can't come. They can't be said or heard or even thought, not really.
"Don't hog the water or I'll kick you out," Shane says, stepping into the bathroom.
"Okay," Rozanov doesn't sound disappointed, because he can't want anything more than that. It's impossible. Any emotion in the word is being put there by Shane's overactive imagination. He steps into the shower, tilting his head back and letting the water run over his face, over his ears so all he can hear is the rushing sound as it goes by.
And if Rozanov says anything after that, Shane makes sure he doesn't hear it.