Chapter Text
Shane
Shane knew that it wasn’t prudent to be practising so late. His muscles ached already, and his stomach was in knots with apprehension for tomorrow’s game. Everyone, even his most dedicated teammates, had long since left to go home and catch some much-needed sleep. Shane, however, was still here. He had loitered and slipped past unnoticed even as the janitor locked up the building for the night. He hadn’t really thought it through, but he supposed that he could claim ignorance when he was done and get the janitor to let him out again.
After all, he was Shane Hollander. That name, he thought as he laced up his skates, had grown to encompass far more than just himself. The hopes and ambitions of thousands, of his mother most importantly. The name behind the face on so many ads - a face airbrushed to a perfection that never greeted him when he looked in the mirror.
Slowly, he stood and made his way to the rink. His mind was on drills and pushing himself that bit harder, that bit faster, on working out that knot in his hip through movement that was causing him mild pain. Nothing was too small to be above his notice.
He froze, hardly daring to look up from his feet. He could hear the familiar sound of skates on ice. Who the hell would be stupid enough to have the same idea as him? No names came to mind.
When he did look up, his breath choked him immediately in its flight from his chest. The sight before him was so ethereally beautiful that the oddness of it didn’t strike him immediately. A blond man, tall and muscular, was skating along - fast fast fast, faster than he had ever seen - his feet hardly seemed to have met the ice before he was up again, launching himself at least six feet into the air with a single leisurely tap of the front of his skates to the ice. The blond was only wearing a thin shirt and pants that seemed to mould against his form and then billow out periodically - wasn’t he cold? He looked like he was dressed for a night at the clubs and not for the ice. His eyes were closed, and he looked so wonderfully serene that Shane had the distinct feeling of looking into a painting. Any frame of the sight greeting him now could easily grace any art gallery, he was sure. How could anyone be lovely? So graceful? So muscular and yet move so easily?
As the blond catapulted himself into the air again, he began to somersault forwards at an inhuman speed. How could he stay up in the air like that? Shane’s mind had so many questions at once that it seemed to have overloaded, and he couldn’t summon the language to even attempt to describe what he was seeing.
Shane must have let out a gasp, though he didn’t even hear himself make any sound, because the blond fell to the ground with a crash that reverberated through the rink. Shane could see his hands clawing into the ice as he skidded, leaving behind deep scratches. He opened his mouth to shout, and he began to run to the man’s aid, but the sound died in his throat as their eyes met.
Red. No, crimson. Crimson eyes met his, and they held such a look of hatred that Shane’s knees wobbled and his attempt to run to the man was quickly aborted. He could feel his hands sweating as his body prepared for fight or flight. It was so incomprehensible; his own reaction to the man was as confusing as everything else that he had seen so far. He didn’t have time to ponder any longer as the man was gone, and if Shane hadn’t had the vaguest of impressions of a blurred body, he could have sworn that the man had teleported away.
Or that he had been seeing things.
In fact, it wasn’t until Shane made it over to the ice to look at the scratch marks running along its surface that he could even begin to believe that his eyes hadn’t been deceiving him.
Ilya
Ilya snarled, uncaring of where he was going as long as it was away from that goddamned stadium. He had parked his Ford GT not far away, but that car wasn’t fast enough for him right now. He could run faster than any car on the market, and he did so now as he sped along the rooftops.
Had he been in any frame of mind to appreciate it, Ilya would have realised that this was not a wise choice. Svetlana would certainly have something to say about it, a small part of his mind idly mused. He hadn’t seen her in a few years, but he could hear her voice as clearly as if she was speaking to him now.
“Ilyusha, do you want the Volturi down on your head?”
Ilya stopped, using one hand to grip onto a wall to aid him. His fingers tore through the bricks and he had to take a moment to carve out a less finger-shaped hole. He hadn’t known what had made him want to skate tonight. Of course, skating reminded him of his mama, but what made this night of all nights special? Why had he broken into the Montreal stadium just to get some time on the ice?
As he looked at the hole he had gouged in the wall, he remembered that he must’ve left similar marks in the ice earlier. He cursed sharply. More evidence that he couldn’t afford to leave behind. He would have to melt that rink down somehow. Ilya groaned, turning back for the stadium. How could he not have realised? Luckily it didn’t take him long to double back and tamper with the machines that kept the ice cool. The evidence would be water come morning.
Unbidden, his mind recalled with tormenting accuracy the human he had come across earlier in the night. Ilya hadn’t really been thirsty, but he had found himself in the club anyway. He had always found himself calmest in places like that. The intent of the throngs of humans around him focused on fucking and having a good time, dancing the night away as it were. It helped him to relax the way he imagined a joint might had he been human.
Ilya had been leaning against the bar, pretending to nurse a drink, when he had felt it. The intent of others was always more obvious when it was directed towards him and he would feel it now as if the man was whispering into his ear.
“What an ass. What I’d do with it if I could get my hands on it. But wait, I have…”
Ilya hadn’t needed to read minds to know that was what he was thinking. He knew the man had GHB in his pocket. He had to be fifty at least, too old for this particular gay club, though not older than Ilya, and he looked even more out of place with it his cheap suit with visibly-growing sweat stains.
It had been easy to put his drink down on the bar and turn to pull out his phone and pretend to check it. Ilya used his phone mostly as a prop when he was hunting, the last few years had made it so that it seemed suspicious to be without one. He did have Svetlana’s information, though and he had considered sending her a message. The last he had heard from her, she had invited him to join her in Russia to visit some old friends of hers, but as he had made clear, he hadn’t been to Russia since before the Soviet Union collapsed, and he wasn’t going to break that streak any time soon.
Even preoccupied as he had been, Ilya had felt the intense triumph as the man’s plan of drugging his drink had gone off seemingly without a hitch. Ilya had rolled his neck languidly as he turned to face the man and flirt.
As always, it had been simply too easy to lure the man with his acting as if the drug had taken effect on him. Too easy to allow himself to be dragged out of the club and into a back alley. What he hadn’t expected was for the man to start talking to him in Russian; filthy, disgusting insults that he hadn’t heard in decades that had sent him into a rage.
It had taken longer than he would have liked to clean the blood from the walls, and he had had to find a suitable place to hide the body as there was no way that anyone would chalk the death up to a drug overdose - the body had been nearly decapitated with the force of his bite. The interior of his car had been ruined, Ilya thought with fresh annoyance.
And so…and so Ilya had found himself on the ice for the first time in years.
How he hadn’t heard the thrumming heart of the human watching him nor smelled him, Ilya would never know. He would never know why he ran away instead of dealing with him, either. No loose ends. It was the way of things with any of his kind. Leave no stories behind, or you would soon find the Volturi at your back.
You were glutted on blood already, the reasonable part of his mind pointed out.
There are many ways to kill a human, came the sharp repost.
Ilya clenched his jaw tightly, dropping down from the roof and into an alleyway quickly. He wasn’t dressed to blend in, he was still dressed for the club. It was fortunate that he didn’t have any blood on him.
“My little bunny, didn’t I teach you to eat with manners?”
Ilya couldn’t remember her face well anymore. The curse of his existence being that while his memories of his new life remained perfectly clear, his human memories faded more with every passing decade. Still, he fancied that he remembered her saying this to him once.
Quickly, but not inhumanly so, Ilya dropped down from the rooftops and began to walk back to the abandoned house that he was using while he was in Montreal. He had money in bank accounts somewhere or other, but for the last few months he hadn’t bothered. Just as he left his car on the other side of the city, he didn’t bother to book hotels to stay in either. It wasn’t that he enjoyed such dingy surroundings, but the less of a trail he left behind the better. And it didn’t much matter where he stayed. Ilya had grown tired of playing human.
Canada was overcast most of the time which suited him. Ilya didn’t like to be cooped up during the day. If he wasn’t so particular about the morals of his prey, Ilya would happily live in the woods, surviving on hikers. Perhaps he would become an urban legend. But the part of him that thought he still remembered his mama’s voice kept him from fully succumbing to his basest nature.
The moment that he entered the abandoned building, Ilya pulled out his phone and began to search through the Metros lineup.
A cruel smirk tugged at his lips. “Shane Hollander…”
Shane
“I can’t believe the game got cancelled over the ice fucking melting!” Hayden said for the fifth time, the repetition not dulling his annoyance in the slightest. “I mean, fuck, what the fuck? I’ve never heard of the cooling system breaking before. Have you?”
Shane would have felt the same were it not for the fact that he had a hunch about what had happened. “Uh, no.”
“Do you think it was sabotage?”
He actually chuckled at that.
“What?” Hayden asked, offended.
Shane shrugged. “You have an active imagination.”
He felt vaguely ridiculous saying that when he had spent the entire night hyperventilating in his bed. In fact, he had been glad that the game wasn’t happening because he was in no fit state to play. He hadn’t slept a wink.
Whatever it was that he had seen last night, it wasn’t a human. Shane could almost feel his mind threatening to give up as he tried in vain to think of any explanation for what he had seen that didn’t involve a spider bite or kryptonite. But then, no one had talked about superheroes being so fucking beautiful. He would have remembered. Even in his memory, his chest ached with the urge to get closer to the blond even as his instincts had told him to run.
“What do you think happened, then?” Hayden said, pulling Shane from his thoughts.
“Dunno. Haven’t thought about it.”
“You’re so fucking boring.”
“Sure,” Shane replied, not even bothering to be riled up by his friend’s teasing. His thoughts couldn’t move away from that night for more than a few moments at a time.
“What’re you gonna be doing tonight then since we won’t be playing.”
“Early night probably.”
Hayden groaned. “Seriously, why are you so boring?”
“We’re athletes, Hayden. I, for one, want to keep my body in peak condition.”
“Boo!”
Luckily for Shane, Hayden dropped the subject. Jackie couldn’t even really pretend to care that that game was postponed, just telling him to get back home to help with the kids. Shane chuckled to himself at how sad Hayden had looked to not be playing.
It wasn’t like him and he knew it. Shane knew that normally he would be far more upset but he couldn’t bring himself to be. He couldn’t even pretend to himself that he wasn’t eager to get back to home so he could attempt to do more research about what he had seen. Unfortunately, ‘beautiful fast man red eyes’ just gave him results from WebMD for various eye conditions.
Ilya
It was almost challenging to find the human, Shane Hollander. He had clearly hired some company to hide his personal information. Ilya never bothered himself with individual humans. By dint of his diet, he preferred not to think of them in depth. He imagined it was the same way that humans preferred not to think about the animals they ate.
“There’s a reason they don’t put the name of the cows on the burgers,” Ilya remarked to himself, chuckling.
He didn’t bother with humans, so he had never had to think much on how to find one. Ilya had heard of some truly formidable trackers before. The Volturi had one, Demitri, who he had heard could track someone down merely using their essence - no one could escape him. Ilya had no equivalent ability, but he had his nose and his memory of Hollander’s scent. That was enough.
The challenge of following Shane’s scent proved to be a good distraction for him. It found Ilya breaking into the Metro’s practice rink again, this time to find some item of his that he could use to refresh his memory.
Under the cover of night, Ilya loped along the streets of Montreal at a pace that could be considered a sprint for a human. Perhaps it was odd for him to be exercising at this time of night and in such unsuitable clothes. Ilya grumbled to himself internally about the myriad rules and restrictions that living in any proximity to humans imposed on him.
It was harder to follow Hollander’s scent as he was in a car, but not impossible. Ilya found himself outside an upscale apartment complex. It would have been too much to hope that his quarry would be on the first floor.
If anyone had been around to see, and had indeed had the night vision necessary, they would have seen a blond man scaling the walls of the building, peering gingerly in to check every window as he went. And if they had had exceptionally good hearing, they would have caught the Russian curses on the wind.
The human’s curtains were open when he did find him, at least, so Ilya took a moment to take him in. Ilya could see that he was beautiful for a human. His features were very regular despite being a professional hockey player (maybe that denoted his ability), and his body twisted in the sheets shirtless, reminding the vampire of a classical painting.
Ilya remembered how strangely deformed humans had looked to him as a newborn. As his sire had acclimated him to feeding discretely, he had had a chance to look at them and he had been vaguely appalled. Ilya had grown too used to the perfect regularity of vampiric features. How could any of his kind ever want to fuck one of them? He had heard of it, but he would never understand. For Ilya, the most attractive thing about a human had always been their blood.
And Shane Hollander did smell sweet to him. Not overwhelmingly so, and he had recently fed so it wasn’t hard to ignore the feeling. But as he continued to watch the human sleeping, to watch the planes of his well-developed chest move as he breathed, Ilya could almost fancy that his mouth was watering for other reasons.
But no, he thought quickly, Shane Hollander might be curiously handsome by human standards but he could never compare to one of my own. Could never truly inspire lust for anything other than his blood.
Still, as he looked, he continued to dither. It would be simplicity itself to steel into the room and drain him dry. Leave no trace behind. Shane Hollander was famous, so it wouldn’t do to be sloppy.
Unbidden, an image of the human, his skin leached of colour and his eyes a burning red, entered his mind. He could picture it so clearly. But for some reason, it seemed wrong, and it wasn’t until Ilya realised that the transformation process would remove his freckles too, that realised what about it had bothered him.
Ilya counted the freckles dusting Hollander’s nose as he continued to deliberate. He only got far enough to realise that hanging off of a building wasn’t a good idea, so he snuck inside. The window wasn’t even locked, though he supposed the human saw no reason to with being as high up as he was.
His scent filled the room and Ilya took a second to take a lungful of the air. It made his jaw clench with the need to bite down but then a wave of nausea overtook him at the thought. If only he could just make himself thirsty enough to feed again…
“Mmm,” Hollander mumbled in his sleep, twisting onto his front almost as if he was presenting his ass to Ilya.
It was a shame that humans were so delicate, he thought idly as he watched.
Ilya cursed himself. It had been too long indeed since he had had sex if he was considering a human of all things. He had a few vampires both male and female that, when they happened to be in the area, he would meet up with. It was simple and the arrangements happily lasted decades without him having to really know a thing about any of them. It seemed that the other vampires that, like him, had not found their ‘soulmate’ were happy enough to keep it casual. Though lately he had not run into any of them. Perhaps he needed to be proactive and go looking sometime.
It wasn’t until the sun began to rise that the blond realised how much time he had wasted taking in the human’s looks. In defeat, he made his way back to the abandoned house that served to contain him during the day. How could he have not just killed Hollander while he had the chance? Because he was good looking? How shallow could one vampire be? Ilya cursed himself all day and into the evening. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
The moment that he was able to, he went back to Hollander’s apartment, intending to wait for him there. He hadn’t intended, however, to spend so much time going over the place, nor had he expected to have so much fun with it. The place was perfectly furnished, but as if it was a show home. Maybe it was, in essence, if he wasn’t there a lot. It was immaculately tidy, also, which seemed to point to it being less of a home and more of a home base. There were things for Ilya to look at, though. Childhood photos, medals and trophies, plenty of home gym equipment. In short, the entire place spoke to the human’s love of hockey, seemingly to the exclusion of all else. There seemed to be no signs of other humans ever spending time here, not even any lingering scents.
Ilya refused to think of why that made him happy.
He rolled his shoulders back as he took in another lungful of Hollander’s scent. If asked, he wouldn’t have known why he did it, but perhaps he would excuse it as wanting to get ready for feeding later. After all, it had only been two days since he had fed and he usually went at least a week, if not two when he was staying in the same place so as to not draw too much attention. Ilya wasn’t thirsty at all, really, but as humans liked to say ‘he could eat’. Perhaps like having desert after a large meal.
Ilya didn’t bother hiding as he heard Shane came down the hallway towards his apartment. In fact, in a bout of dramatism, the vampire laid himself across the large sectional that contained the strongest concentration of Shane’s scent second only to the bed.
Shane
Today had been another odd day. Or rather, the day itself hadn’t been odd, but he had been. Shane was half-convinced that he was going mad. Maybe being closeted all of this time had made him imagine some ‘sexy man monster’ as a manifestation of his homosexual tendencies. He snorted to himself as he got into the elevator. If he were in a movie, then perhaps.
As he finally reached the door to his apartment, patting himself down for his keys, he swore that he could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end, though it wasn’t cold. He dismissed that thought, though, as he got the door open and made his way inside.
Even before the door clicked shut, Shane knew that he wasn’t alone. Even before he looked over to the couch in his living room. Like something from a nightmare, the blond man from the ice rink was in front of him. He looked, for all the world, like he was simply relaxing after a long day of work, perhaps. Stretched out, all elegance and long limbs and looking at him down the bridge of his nose as his head was tilted back against the cushions.
Shane’s heart spluttered, and he snapped his eyes back to his door.
“Will you run?” the blond spoke, and his voice was so deep and sensuous that it stopped Shane in his tracks. “Would be more fun if you did.”
Where was his accent from? Shane knew it was a stupid thing to be thinking, but that, along was how much more stunningly beautiful he was from this closer distance, was all he could think of.
“You’re real?” was all Shane could manage to choke out.
A slow grin spread over the man’s face, and his eyes, already crimson, seemed to gleam brighter. It was only the overt malice in the expression that stopped Shane from letting out a sigh. He couldn’t have been more stunned if he had been tased, he was sure.
The grin dropped from his face all at once as he simply stared at Shane, though he couldn’t think why. Had he made a social faux pas of some kind? Trust him to fuck up a home intruder situation.
“I should kill you, you know,” the man remarked conversationally, his head tilted to the side as if he was puzzling something out.
Shane stepped back automatically, about to make a break for the door, but before he could take another step, the man was right there in front of him - standing almost nose to nose.
“Don’t you know is rude to leave mid conversation? At least you could actually try to run away properly…”
A shiver ran down his spine at just how calm the blond sounded. Truly as if this was utterly mundane, and maybe to him it was.
“What did I do to you?” Shane asked, aware of how petulant he sounded.
He seemed to genuinely consider the question for a moment, giving Shane time to take in how truly amazing he smelled. He had never taken any illegal drugs, but he imagined that the way he could feel his awareness altering second by second must be similar.
“Well,” the blond drawled, “is not what you did, but what you saw.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, though truly he didn’t see at all.
Despite it all, Shane couldn’t make himself run. Not that it would do any good to try, he knew. He was rooted to the spot, fully taking in every second of time that he had with the blond, for better or for worse. He couldn’t look away. His chest was heaving, and Shane forced himself to slow his breathing if only so he could get another hit of that scent.
“I can’t leave you to tell tales,” the man explained. “Would be bad for me, very bad.”
And a look of genuine worry clouded his face, pulling his brows together. Shane’s hands itched to reach up and smooth that look away somehow.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he breathed.
“Is that so?”
Shane, sensing that maybe he was getting somewhere, ploughed on. “I haven’t told anyone so far! What would I say? No one would believe me.”
The blond chuckled. “True. No one would.”
“What…what are you?”
“Don’t you think ignorance is bliss, Hollander?”
“How do you know my name?” he asked before feeling stupid. If the man had found his apartment, he obviously knew his name too.
The blond thankfully disregarded that question. “I think, Hollander,” he purred Shane’s last name in a way that made breathing a supreme effort, “you should be thinking about what I’m going to do with you instead.”
Shane swallowed hard, but even still, he didn’t step back. Couldn’t step back. Despite it all, all he wanted to was to reach out and take the blond’s perfect face between his hands and-
But then he was alone. He whipped his head around and saw the man on the other side of the room, looking at him with an expression that bordered on fear.
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically.
“Don’t say sorry,” came the halting reply, he was smiling but the expression didn’t quite reach his flashing red eyes. “I said I’d kill you and you…”
Want me.
Shane knew that was what he was thinking, and it was true. Somehow, that was all he wanted. It felt as if such an otherworldly creature had come into his life by chance and he had to get as close as he could. Everything else, including threats of murder, came second to that overwhelming need. It must have been written all over his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
The blond rolled his eyes. “Stupid human. You have wrong reaction.”
Shane wasn’t surprised by that. Of course, he wasn’t human. No simple human could look like that.
“I don’t want to die,” Shane admitted. “But I…” he paused, forcing himself to look away from his face, “I want to prove that I won’t say anything. Can’t I try?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he sighed. “Blyad! I don’t know why I’m talking to you.”
“I’m glad,” he admitted before he could think it through.
He snorted, sounding a little wild. “I know!”
“Can’t you give me a chance?” he asked, unable to look away any longer.
The blond seemed torn, glaring at Shane hard. Silence stretched between them for a long time.
“Fine. I will know if you say a thing to anyone,” he narrowed his eyes. “Ever.”
Shane nodded quickly, “thank you.”
He wanted to say more, but found that he was alone. He turned to the window in time to see the curtains moving. Shane could have known he was alone, though, simply from the way he collapsed to the floor, the intoxicating feeling that had been keeping him upright leaving along with the man.
Ilya
Insanity had come for him, Ilya was sure. Perhaps it was a few centuries early, but it had arrived no doubt. Never in all of his years as a vampire had any human ever had that particular reaction to him. Sure, he had grown adept at masking the natural predatory aura that he exuded in order to hunt, in order to allow his charm to entice his prey closer. But this had not been that situation, it had been the opposite, in fact. Was he losing his touch? But no, Hollander had been afraid, but that hadn’t seemed to stop him from want to…
Ilya shook his head to bring him out of his thoughts. Yet again, he hadn’t killed the human. He had given his word that he wouldn’t unless he said something and his word was his bond. What if his trust had been misplaced? Hollander hadn’t intended to decieve him, but humans were fickle. What if he changed his mind, simply in order to have a crazy story to tell at the bar? He was a celebrity, what if he mentioned it in an interview? Ilya could picture it.
“What’s the craziest thing that ever happened to me? Well, I saw this man once in the rink after hours, he was super fast and strong and his eyes were so red… A few days later, he broke into my apartment to threaten me into keeping silent, must have been some freaky stalker or something but I never saw him again, so…”
But no, even if that brought Hollander to the attention of the Volturi, that wouldn’t implicate him, would it? Except, of course it fucking would. Ilya had heard tales of Aro, and how he could read every thought someone had ever had with one touch of his hand. He could pull Ilya’s face from Shane’s memories and it would be open season on him.
Momentarily, he contemplated going back, but he had promised and so he would wait and he would see. Though, perhaps, it would behove him to remain close to the human, at least for now.