Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Hayden Pike, Troy Barrett, Dallas Kent, JJ Boiziau, Harris Drover, Roger Crowell, Elena Rygg

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe, Explicit Sexual Content, Second Chances, set in australia, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Getting Together, Situationships, POV Shane Hollander, Top Ilya Rozanov, Bottom Shane Hollander, Blow Jobs, Anal Sex, Outdoor Sex, Developing Relationship, past break up, Idiots in Love, Lack of Communication, Natural Disasters

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-25 Completed: 2026-03-19 Words: 46,559 Chapters: 23/23

Heated in the Outback

Summary

Shane Hollander is an engineer at a major mine in Western Australia. It’s hot, it’s hard and he is excelling professionally.

Then a new engineer starts: Ilya Rozanov. And it’s not the first time they’ve crossed paths.

Chapter 1: Chapter one

Shane did his best to kick his steel-capped boots against the doorframe and wipe them on the mat before he entered the office donga. It was a losing battle against the red dirt of the Western Australia outback, every floor in every building covered with it, but it still felt polite to try.

He nodded at the admin assistant sitting behind the desk in front of him before he turned the well-trodden path to the meeting room that took up half of the right side of the demountable building. A big project like the MLH gold mine always had a lot of meetings, especially for a principal geotechnical engineer, which Shane had been for the last five months. But with the ambitious expansion project they were working on, he felt like he spent half of his time in meetings. At least the admin buildings had good air conditioning.

As usual, he was promptly five minutes early to the project ‘work in progress’ meeting, but he wasn’t the first in the room. Scott Hunter, the principal mining engineer and functionally the lead of the entire mine, was sat at the table with old-school print-outs spread in front of him.

“Morning Shane,” he said with a smile. He had almost a decade on Shane, was very handsome and well-liked, always with a smile for everyone, despite the intense pressure he was under.

“Morning,” he replied, setting himself up with his laptop and opening his spreadsheet with his latest calculations and a blank word document to take notes on any action items for himself.

More people filtered into the room until it was a sea of navy and bright yellow and orange high visibility shirts. The other principal engineers chatted amongst themselves, but Shane remained quiet. He was the youngest person in the room, and it was still a struggle for him to feel like an equal to the wealth of experience around him.

“Sorry, sorry!”

The door opened once more and Kip, the project manager, hurried into the room in a fluster.

“Sorry, I was on the phone with Crowell and we went over, I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting,” he apologised as he sat down and quickly opened his laptop.  

“It’s two minutes Kip, don’t worry about it. Besides, it makes us feel better about how far behind we are on every deliverable if you’re a little late too,” Scott said kindly.

Kip smiled gratefully as he settled, and with a quick flurry of keys, he straightened and looked around.

“Ok, let’s start. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today…”

Kip efficiently led them through updates on resolved and recent incidents, risk updates, production status and Shane’s own update on ground conditions for the existing mining activities.

“Ok, now onto the expansion and update on milestones,” Kip said, to a chorus of groans through the room.

The expansion project was… a mess. Maybe that was unfair, they were all very competent at their jobs and capable of expanding. But the company wanted it to happen yesterday, for half of the cost it was going to take.

They were going to be over budget, were already behind on every milestone and the constant demanding emails from Crowell about ‘all hands on deck’ and ‘get it done’ were unhelpful and the current bane of their days.

“I know guys, but let’s run through it. Shane, how are geotechnical calcs tracking?”

“I’ve got the ground readings and an initial plot for first-in-ground drilling and assumptions, but until we have a principal blast engineer, they can’t be signed off,” Shane said. They all already knew this, but still the role of principal blast engineer remained empty. He’d consulted with the two other blast engineers on the project, but they just didn’t have the authority or experience to further the work.

“Well, we finally have good news on that!” Kip said, dimples appearing as he grinned.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and Rose Landry, senior HR coordinator, poked her head in. Her hair was as red as the dirt outside and she glanced around the room with a smile, brightening slightly as she locked eye contact with Shane.

“Sorry to interrupt, everyone! Kip, I have –” Rose indicated behind her.

“Great timing, we were just talking about him,” Kip beamed. “Let’s welcome our new principal blast engineer…”

Kip’s words were muffled by the blood rushing in Shane’s ears as Rose stepped aside and a tall, well-built man with dirty-blond curls stepped into the room.

No. No no no –

Ilya Rozanov.

It was definitely him.

Same mole on his cheek, same distinctive cupid’s bow lips, same devastating grin and disgusting levels of handsomeness.

“… better acquainted over the coming days, but as a quick whip-through, we have: Kip Grady, our project manager extraordinaire,” Rose started, pointing out everyone sitting at the table. “This is Scott Hunter, our principal mining engineer; Eric Bennett, our principal mechanical engineer; Elena Rygg is our principal electrical and power engineer; Harris Drover is principal control systems engineer; Ryan Price, our principal environmental engineer; Hayden Pike, our OH&S controller, and –”

“Shane Hollander.”

The sound of his name rolled off Rozanov’s tongue with his thick, Russian accent.

Curious eyes all turned on Shane and he knew his cheeks were probably flushing at the attention.

“Ah, we worked together a couple of years ago,” Shane stuttered out, wanting to glare at the smirk that tugged at Rozanov’s lips.

“Fantastic! It’s always easier to settle into a new workplace when there’s a familiar, friendly face,” Rose said peppily.

After a beat, Shane realised they were all waiting on a cue from him and he summoned a tight smile.

“… great. Um, Ilya has all his orientation stuff today, so I’ll set up a meeting between blast and geotech tomorrow morning first thing, sound good?” Kip asked.

Shane nodded and tried to smile more sincerely, but it probably came off as a grimace.

Fuck.

***

Shane was more than ready for the day to be over as he pulled the work ute up to the parking lot by the accommodation office a bit after 6pm.

“Thanks mate,” the two men who’d hitched a ride called out to him as they hopped out of the cab. Though there was a regular bus route between the housing camp, the admin offices and the mine site, there were always people needing to run back and forth and not enough utes to go around.

He stopped at the public bathroom block to wash his hands and face of dust before he headed to the cafeteria for dinner.

It might be early for dinner by regular standards, but the site had 400 hungry people who had just worked a 12 hour shift; the cafeteria was a mad house.

Shane got in line and collected his protein, a starch, some vegetables and filled the rest of his plate at the salad bar. He grabbed an apple juice before he headed for the long, picnic style tables and was waved down by Hayden. There was no need, they ate around the same time at the same table every day, but it still made Shane feel nice to be wanted.

“So, what’s up with you and Rozanov?”

Shane should have expected the question. Every site he’d ever worked at was always gossip-hungry. Long stretches of time in close quarters without much to do but work, multiplied by the lack of new people, especially women (much to the chagrin of the 90% male population), all resulted in people starved for entertainment.

“Nothing. Like I said, we worked together once before,” Shane said, focusing on his food.

“That wasn’t nothing. When he came in, you looked like someone pissed in your cornflakes,” Hayden joked.

Shane shrugged, still not meeting his eyes.

“He was just a bit of an asshole, when I knew him. I’m sure he’ll be fine here. He’s good at his job,” he added as an afterthought.

Rozanov was great at his job, Shane wasn’t surprised he’d been promoted to principal. And he was definitely an asshole too. But there was a lot in between that Shane had no interest in sharing with anyone, not even his friend.

Hayden made a thoughtful noise. “Ok. Where did you come across him, PNG?”

“No, um, Canada.”

“Pissed you off on your home turf, huh?”

Shane scoffed and shoved a large forkful of food in his mouth.

He was saved from having to reply when JJ, another geotech engineer who worked under Shane, sat his food down across from him. JJ had been on site for most of the day, and Shane had meant to ask him about instrument maintenance –

“Heard you have beef with the new blast engineer,” JJ said with an intrigued look.

Shane rolled his eyes in exasperation.

“He was an asshole in Canada,” Hayden filled in for him.

As though summoned by his colleague’s interest, Shane looked up and immediately caught the gaze of Rozanov himself.

He was already looking at Shane with that infuriating, amused glint in his eye, like he was in on a joke that Shane wasn’t.

Rozanov broke their stare first as he dropped his tray to a table and sat down with Rose and Kip. They always had dinner with people brand new to the site on their first night, to save them from the awkwardness of having to find a table in a hall full of strangers, like it was high school.

Usually newbies started in batches, four or five guys onboarded at a time. Not Rozanov. He was the solo star, all the attention on him – as usual.

Shane tore his glare away.

“Can we talk about something else, please? Hay, how’s Jackie?”

That got Hayden talking – they’d be lucky to get a word in the next hour, in between his besotted ramblings about his wife and kids. Perfect.

But Shane didn’t start to relax until he was on the way to his donga, intent on a shower and maybe a chapter or two of a book before an early night.

One of the perks of his seniority was that he got an edge donga – one of the few containers that faced the landscape and Lake Carey in the near distance, instead of being pointed right at the next line of dongas four metres away. When the mosquitoes weren’t too bad, he liked to sit outside and watch the sunset. As a bonus, the donga next to him, technically built in the same container as his own, had been empty for a couple of weeks, so it had been extra quiet, a real luxury in a crowded work camp.

But as he approached his door, he noticed the window on his neighbour’s donga was open, revealing the fly screen inside. It was airing out for a new occupant.

Shane’s stomach dropped.

No. No way –

“Hollander.”

There was no mistaking that voice.

Shane turned slowly, facing Rozanov as he skirted – too close – to Shane before stopping in front of his own door with a grin and a set of keys dangling from his hand.

“I know you enjoy alone time,” he said, waving his other hand carelessly around to indicate the relative isolation he was ruining.

Shane narrowed his eyes at him.

“Sorry,” Rozanov added, unrepentantly.

“S’fine,” Shane said stiffly. “Not like you picked here on purpose.”

Rozanov’s grin widened but he didn’t answer. He inserted the key, going in smoothly first time, and unlocked his door. Before he disappeared inside, he winked at Shane.

Shane turned away sharply.

He knew all about Rozanov’s charms. But now he was older, wiser and a principal engineer. He’d be keeping his professional distance.

Chapter 2: Chapter two

Chapter Notes

What an amazing response to the first chapter, thank you so much! As a Melbourne girl, LOVING the Aussie rep 💚💛

“Are you fu– freaking kidding me?”

Rozanov had red-penned half of Shane’s calculations and recommendations.

He’d gone to the trouble of getting one of his team to print them, presumedly so he could show Shane the literal strike outs and scratched comments over his meticulous work.

“Project is behind. Little baby blasts will slow us down,” Rozanov shrugged carelessly.

Shane gritted his teeth.

“The ground is complex Rozanov, look at these outputs –” Shane said, pulling up the fault analysis on his laptop.

“Bah, all ground is complex. Does not mean we –” Rozanov snapped his fingers as he searched for the English word. “Tip-toe. Development blasts should be twice that. Maybe one point five.”

“We’re better off doing more rounds until we get the survey feedback after,” Shane argued.

“Yes Hollander, we do rounds and use your cut design,” Rozanov said with an eyeroll, like he was a teenager being reminded of his curfew by a strict parent. “Look, land is well-behaved here. Like you. We can go harder than this.”

He blinked at the strange barb lobbed at him mid-sentence, but Rozanov kept talking.

“I need to see site. Let’s go.”

Rozanov stood abruptly, along with Troy Barrett and Dallas Kent, the two more junior blast engineers working under him.

Shane’s protests fell on deaf ears. He and JJ looked at each other before Shane sighed and indicated JJ bring his notepad and moved to follow. He grabbed his hard hat from the hangers by the door of the office block and followed Rozanov to the dual cab ute he’d picked.

“No, juniors ride back seat, move,” Rozanov was barking at Kent as the dark-haired younger man tried to climb in the passenger side front seat. He pouted but moved reluctantly to the back, and Shane claimed shotgun.

Shane directed Rozanov to the closest parking to the expansion site, and walked behind him impatiently as he scanned the flagged areas. Rozanov made some thinking sounds and squinted into the distance, like he would be able to see more detail on the surface than their in-depth scans could.

He didn’t remember Rozanov being so non-scientific. Though, Shane used to be more preoccupied with Rozanov’s non-professional skills.

They walked at least a kilometre with Rozanov occasionally referring to the structural mapping print outs Barrett had brought along. Shane felt like he was a kid following a treasure map. He never really had the suspension of belief or imagination for such activities when he was a kid, and had even less patience for it now when Rozanov answered every question and protest with a dismissal or condescending urge for Shane to be patient.

Shane would give him five more minutes before he demanded everyone return back to the ute and get some water.

“Ok.”

Rozanov suddenly seemed to have silently settled whatever he had been assessing.

“Ok?” Shane echoed. “We can go back to the office now and get some work done?”

Bitchy maybe, but it was hot and this was a waste of time when they didn’t have time to waste.

“Hollander, so cranky. Maybe you get more freckles in sun, not a bad thing,” Rozanov teased, before he walked over and grabbed the pen out of Shane’s breast pocket.

“We need more breakage pattern analysis here,” he said, drawing ovals around where they were standing and about three kilometres away, where there was a slight incline. “And we get core samples from here.”

“You… want more analysis?” Shane responded, surprised.

“Da. Cannot be too careful, right Hollander?” Rozanov said with a grin, tucking the pen into his own breast pocket and heading back to the ute.

By the end of the day, Shane had staunchly defended his analysis while being open and professional about Rozanov’s suggestions (he didn’t care what JJ said). Rozanov had ended up relenting on a lot, but in an infuriating way that made it seem like it was his idea instead of Shane’s.

With the way JJ and Barrett were glassy eyed, tired and cranky, and the way Kent all but scraped himself off his chair to get to the bus back to the camp, he didn’t think he or Rozanov had done much to exemplify teamwork or put the rumours of their not getting along to bed.

Shane wasn’t feeling tired though. Annoyed, maybe. But the adrenalin and frustration of arguing all day with the infuriating Russian was still pumping him up, he guessed.

He collected his usual protein, starch, vegetable and salad for dinner and felt an arm bump into his.

“You’re pink. Don’t tell me you forgot your sunscreen today?” Rose asked with a faux-scandalised tone as she fell into step with him.

“How dare you. Sunscreen is part of our PPE and I would never neglect that,” Shane answered dryly, though it was true; on site, Shane applied sunscreen diligently. An Australian sunburn was nothing to scoff at. “I just ended up spending some… unanticipated time out on site this morning.”

“I heard,” Rose said as they took their seats at the end of a table.

Aside from Hayden, Rose was his other quite-constant meal companion. While it was mostly because they were friends, sitting with Shane served another function for Rose: the small number of women in these camps often resulted in extreme levels of attention, especially for women as beautiful and kind as Rose. Bored, horny young men would crawl out of the woodwork to flirt with her the second she was alone on non-work hours.

Shane’s presence, especially when paired with Hayden and JJ or Harris and Kip, was a deterrent that got her some peace.

“What exactly did you hear?”

“That you and Ilya Rozanov hate each other,” Rose answered primly, fixing him with a look.

Shane’s lip curled.

“Come on, of course it’s news. No one has ever seen you dislike someone before. You’re Mr Nice Guy, and today I heard someone say you were spitting at Ilya like an angry kitten,” Rose said.

“Shit, that’s flattering,” he grumbled sarcastically. He might not be as big as Ilya or some of the other guys on site, but he was thirty years old, average height and he worked out. Rose’s description made him sound like a kid.

“Is there an issue I should be aware of, with him?” Rose asked in a low voice.

A swoop of guilt went to Shane’s gut. He was making people nervous and it was poor behaviour from a team lead.

“No, not at all. I’m being…” he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “He just rubs me the wrong way, sometimes. I should be more professional. He’s good at his job, and the project is lucky to have him.”

All true. As much as he’d bitched about their long excursion today and Rozanov challenging everything he’d done to date, the extra analysis Rozanov requested probably was a good idea and no one’s work was above reproach…

“There’s more than technical skills important on a site like this,” Rose reminded him, which was also very true. With two weeks of constant work before a break, in an isolated and hot, sweaty environment, tempers could run high and emotional resilience could run low. ‘Bad vibes’ and assholes could really take a toll out here.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be Mr Popularity by end of the week,” Shane assured her. As much as Rozanov didn’t mind pissing people off, he was also quick to make friends.

Rose nodded. “Ok, in that case?”

She reached across the table and lightly slapped him up the head, causing his black hair to spike up.

“Be a better example,” she said, withdrawing her hand just to point threateningly at him.

Shane laughed, brushing his hair back down. “Ok ok, but I think HR giving out corporal punishment is also a bad example.”

“Please, most of you are like destructive little boys that need a good spanking.”

Two guys who were walking past halted suddenly, their heads whipping around at the last bit of Rose’s speech. Their eyes were wide and eager.

Shane gestured them along with a tip of his head and they kept walking. They’d either be trading bawdy jokes, or thinking up some new fantasies for themselves later.

Shane lifted his brows at Rose, but she just shrugged and popped a cherry tomato in her mouth with a smile.

“Keeps my rep up.”

He snorted lightly and went back to his own food.

***

12-hour shifts were challenging. Even in the Australian summer, where daylight hours were long, it was hard not to feel like every bit of your day was taken up by work, or by washing work off your body and needing to rest.

Shane had learned early on to make every moment count, including the early hours before dayshift started at 6am. And a lot of his work happened at a desk, so a morning jog, before the sun was fully out and turned the environment into a bright, burning hellscape, was a great way to start his day without tiring himself out.

He tightened the laces on his right trainer and opened his door promptly at 4:30am. First light would be in 20 minutes or so, but it was light enough in the outback to see where he was going, especially since the camp had solar lights around the perimeter.

Movement caught his eye.

“Dobroe utro,” Rozanov greeted, his voice seeming somehow deeper in the still of the early morning.

He had already been out on their shared ‘veranda’, i.e. the rest of the slab of concrete their dongas were constructed on, decorated by plastic chairs and doormats. Like Shane, he was in work out clothes, a tight black shirt and black shorts that showed off half of his strong thighs.

“Morning,” Shane answered stiffly, reminding himself to be professional, even if it was too early to be confronted with this look, without the decency of any kind of warning.

A thought occurred to Shane.

“Where are you jogging?”

Rozanov raised an eyebrow.

“To Perth. Might get some breakfast.”

Shane rolled his eyes.

“Where you think, Hollander? Around here, to lake and back.”

“You have to be careful around the lake, there can be snakes. You should stick to the roads and paths around camp,” Shane warned him.

Now Rozanov rolled his eyes.

“Boring,” he dismissed.

“I’m serious Rozanov, there’s brown snakes around here. Didn’t you read the safety material you got in orientation?”

Rozanov fixed him with a disbelieving look. Yeah, Shane knew him better than that.

“For real, you shouldn’t go off alone, in case something happens.”

Rozanov started walking backwards. “Then come with me.”

Then he turned a jogged away from the camp, into the darkness.

Shane swore under his breath. It wasn’t his problem, he’d warned Rozanov. If he got bitten by a snake and keeled over, it wouldn’t be Shane’s responsibility.

Except that it would.

“Fuck,” he whispered again, and set off after the blond. At least Shane had his phone in his pocket and could call-in an emergency.

Because he was a dick, Rozanov didn’t slow down for Shane to catch up, but they eventually matched pace, sticking to a six foot gap between them. He tried to keep an eye on the ground surrounding them, but the synchronised sound of their footfalls and breath eventually lulled him into a sense of security.

Admittedly, the route was nicer than Shane’s normal path through and around the slowly-waking camp. They wove through tread paths from off-road vehicles that pressed them closer before hitting a dirt road Rozanov turned down for a while.

After about 15 minutes, Rozanov jerked his head back towards the camp and Shane nodded. They changed their route to make their way back.

First light was casting a dull glow over them when the little lights of the camp came into view.

Unexpectedly, Rozanov started pushing ahead, leaving Shane with a view of his, frankly remarkable, ass.

He pushed himself harder through harsh breathing to draw even with the Russian again. Maybe just a little bit ahead.

Rozanov picked up pace again.

Before Shane knew it, they were racing back to their dongas like stupid kids. Rozanov’s arm bashed into his chest as he tried to sabotage Shane and he shoved him away.

Thanks to his dirty tactics, Rozanov reached the dongas a second before Shane, reaching out to tag one of the support poles for the veranda shelter like it was a pre-agreed finishing line.

He swung around to grin at Shane, blond curls darker and clinging to his forehead and neck with sweat.

“I win,” he panted.

“You cheat,” Shane retorted, arms on his hips as he tried to catch his breath.

Rozanov shrugged. “I want it more than you, so I win.”

He dropped down to the concrete and started to stretch out his legs, casting an expectant look up at Shane.

The donga didn’t have a lot of empty floor space, so Shane joined him, stretching his hamstrings.

Both of them were still breathing heavily and in the distance, there was more sound as people started stirring and heading outside.

“You like it here?” Rozanov asked after a few moments of silence.

Shane blinked at the unexpected olive branch of small talk.

“Oh. Um, yeah. Yeah, the people are nice. The work is interesting.”

“Is hot.”

“Yeah.”

“Hotter than Canada.”

“For sure. Hotter than Russia, too.”

“Mmm, yes. But I can handle heat.”

“What, I can’t?”

Rozanov smirked. “You get pink.”

“Shut up.”

“No is ok, is cute,” Rozanov shrugged, looking up at Shane through his lashes from where he was stretching down to touch his toes.

The familiar sensation of butterflies that came with being on the receiving end of attention from Ilya Rozanov flared in his belly. He didn’t respond.

“You said that you like cold better for everything, except digging,” Rozanov said after a moment.

“… I did.”

Back in Canada, before.

“Was surprise, to hear you were here.”

“My parents moved back to Sydney last year, so when this job came up…” Shane trailed off.

His parents moved a lot for his mum’s job. He’d gone to university in Australia while they were here, and bounced around different jobs internationally, seeking work experience and also following in his parents’ wandering footsteps.

Eventually he found himself missing having family nearby, in a similar time zone, even with the limitations of fly-in-fly-out work on one’s social life.

Rozanov nodded like he understood, not teasing about him being a grown man following his parents around. Though he recalled Rozanov’s mother passed away when he was a child and he didn’t think he got along with his father.

This was… almost nice. Familiar. Remembering things about each other.

He’d missed this part. Where they didn’t just have stop-start small talk, when they could tease each other and mess around and –

And leave, without saying goodbye.

He didn’t forget that part.

“I’m gonna shower,” Shane said abruptly, climbing to his feet and fumbling his key into his lock, feeling the weight of Rozanov’s eyes on him as he did.

It wasn’t until he was in the shower – shitty water pressure because half the camp was showering about now – that he replayed what Rozanov had said.

‘Hear you were here’.

Did he mean when Rose re-introduced them, or did he know Shane was at the MLH gold mine before he took the job?

Chapter 3: Chapter three

Canada, three years ago

Shane was sitting on one of the well-used couches in the rec room, texting (actually, playing Words with Friends with his dad) on his phone when the cushion dipped next to him.

Ilya Rozanov was one of the blast engineers. Shane had sat in at least a dozen meetings with Rozanov and knew from personal experience, as well as reputation, that the Russian was cocky but smart. A tentative friendship had developed between them. At least, Shane took his teasing and chirping as friendly, it was usually softened with a grin and a knee or elbow knocked gently into his side.

Sometimes it maybe even felt like… more. Like Rozanov was flirting with him, with all the tact of a little boy on the playground. But he provoked almost everyone, and Shane couldn’t be sure that his particular brand of taunting for Shane was more than that, and he absolutely was not going to ask.

Mines were boy’s clubs. Sure, women worked on site and had a lot of skill to offer, but the culture was pretty aggressively male, which included all the delightful toxicity of arrogance, competitiveness, the expectation of machismo and to ‘man-up’, and a heavy dash of homophobia.

Not everyone Shane had worked with doled out homophobic slurs or eyed ‘non-masculine’ men with suspicion. In fact, he would say it was a small number who were overtly bigoted.

But his reputation in this industry could make or break his career, and he couldn’t gamble that, not when he knew supervisors could throw out things like ‘he works hard but he’s a bit of a fairy’ in a reference (yes, he had heard his supervisor at his first project in Queensland say that on the phone).

So, unless Rozanov did something very direct to demonstrate his interest to Shane, in a very private setting, he would assume he was just a colleague.

“You reek of smoke,” Shane complained, even as his heart stuttered when Rozanov’s knee hit his and remained there.

“Is from blowing shit up,” Rozanov lied.

Shane scoffed and put his phone down, turning his head to look at Rozanov.

He had a black beanie on with dirty blond curls peaking out from the rim and a pink nose and cheeks from the cold outside. He looked beautiful.

“You know, smoking 10 cigarettes a day doubles your risk of dying prematurely,” Shane told him.

“You looked that up,” Rozanov accused, with a smirk starting to pull at his lips.

He did.

“No, all Canadians know that. And we know that smokers, on average, die 10 years earlier than non-smokers.”

“Aww Hollander, will you miss me when we are old and I die first?”

He knocked his knee into Shane again.

“Rozy, you want in?” someone Shane didn’t know the name of called across the room, holding up an X-Box controller.

“No, I don’t want to humiliate you tonight,” Rozanov responded, which made a few of the guys laugh.

No invitation was forthcoming for Shane. They lapsed into silence for a few moments, and Shane fiddled with his phone as his screen lit up with a notification.

“You talking to a girlfriend?” Rozanov asked.

“No, um. No.” Shane didn’t expand on how he’d never really had a girlfriend, and had never wanted one. Nor did he say it was his dad, he’d probably get teased for that too.

“Pretty girls in Canada,” Rozanov observed absently.

“Sure.”

“Not so much ‘pretty’ here.”

Shane scoffed. “You don’t think Curtis has a pretty smile?”

Curtis was the project director, a heavy-set man who was perpetually beet-red and angry at everything.

“No,” Rozanov said with the breath of a laugh, which made Shane’s chest swell with disproportionate pride.

“You look pretty,” Rozanov added.

It felt like the air had been pressed out of him at the unexpected compliment. “What?”

“In photoshoot,” Rozanov grinned. “‘Poster boy’ Hollander.”

Shane groaned and let his head fall back against the couch.

The company had wanted some content for recruitment and Shane had been pulled into a few photos and a Q&A about what he loved about his job and the FIFO lifestyle. He was pretty sure he was included only because he was Asian-Canadian. Every large organisation loved having diversity in their materials – he’d been featured on the cover of a pamphlet for his university too.

“You jealous you weren’t asked?”

Rozanov scoffed now. “Mm, would not look real. Would look like model they put in, ah, ‘high-vis’ for ad.”

Shane let out a reluctant laugh. “Fuck, you’re so humble.”

He probably would though. Shane imagined he might be the first ever engineer to develop an online fan-base. Actually, it’d probably be great for recruitment. There were a lot of people who would enjoy being isolated on the worksite with guys like Rozanov.

Rozanov let out a loud sigh.

“This is boring,” he declared.

A bolt of hurt went through Shane. He was enjoying talking to the other man.

“You like movie?” Rozanov asked suddenly.

“Um, depends on the movie I guess?” Shane replied uncertainly.

Rozanov rolled his eyes, like he wasn’t the erratic, insensible one.

“I have movies and… player, thing. I am going to watch. Do you want to come?”

“… In your room?”

In return, he got an incredulous, unimpressed expression, like he was being slow.

“What, you want to bring back here?”

“Uh, no I guess… um, sure. Yeah.”

Rozanov got up and Shane followed, as casually as possible…

Chapter 4: Chapter four

Social events at the camp were few and far between. Sure, there was a rec room with a pool table and a TV and a BBQ area where some of the guys hung out for a bit after work, but there were no nearby pubs or entertainment venues, and most of the workforce weren’t the event-planning type.

Except for Rose, Harris and Kip.

They did their best to plan something for the Saturday night proceeding the second-Sunday rostered day off for the day shift.

Tonight, given the heat wave of the last few days, the ad-hoc social committee had put together a low-key movie night in the cafeteria. Shane had been roped into helping move tables alongside Scott, Barrett and a couple of other guys under Scott’s supervision who happened to be passing the building at the wrong time.

Rose and Kip were darting between the main room, moving chairs, and heating up enough microwave popcorn to feed at least two hundred people, while Harris was positioning the projector so the south wall could act as their screen.

“Sound check!” Harris called the warning as he pulled up YouTube and a few seconds later a woman’s voice sounded through the speakers dotting the room, counting down to a dance track.

Rose whooped and started dancing where she stood with a bright grin.

She pointed at Kip and gestured him closer as she sang along, twisting her waist and hips along with the beat. Kip was laughing and smiling as he danced his way closer to Rose, the two of them swept up in their own little dance party, entirely unselfconscious in a way Shane could never be.

Shane laughed under his breath at the two and glanced around to see if everyone else was similarly amused.

His gaze stopped on Scott Hunter. He didn’t notice Shane’s attention, with his eyes locked on Rose and Kip.

There was a softness to his smile Shane hadn’t seen before, a degree of fondness as he looked at his two dancing colleagues that felt private, like something Shane shouldn’t be seeing.

Scott wasn’t married, unless you counted being married to his career. Shane had never heard him talk about a partner or family or anything, in the few bouts of friendly small talk Scott had initiated over their acquaintance. Maybe he had a workplace crush?

Certainly, Rose could do a lot worse.

“H, O, T, T –” Shane’s attention whipped back to Rose and Kip shouting out letters, their arms moving about in what he thought was a pretty average approximation of the letters, like the YMCA dance. “O, G, O, you can take me, hot to go-o!”

Shane laughed again as he finally puzzled out the lyrics while the chorus repeated. Wow, music nowadays…

Rose suddenly turned, pointing intimidatingly right at Shane.

“When you’re doing it with me, doing it with me,” she sang, dancing closer with each word. “Next chorus is all you Shane!”

“I don’t know it!” Shane called in protest.

“You’re an engineer, I’m sure you can figure out the spelling,” Rose called out. “You too Hunter!”

“I don’t dance,” Scott protested over the music.

“For project morale!” Kip called out, both hands in the air.

It was hard to resist such a simple, if humiliating, request from two such sweet people.

He and Scott exchanged a long-suffering glance and gave in.

As the singer started the chorus, the engineers spelled out the letters, reluctant and sloppy compared to Rose and Kip, but at least their requesters were happy about it.

They tightened their movements up the next round, just in time to hear a wolf whistle and clapping. Behind them, the doors were opened and men were coming in for the evening’s entertainment.

“I thought we were watching a movie, didn’t know they hired us dancers!” someone called out to raucous laughs. “Could use sexier outfits.”

“It’s a fuckin’ social.”

“I’m not slow dancin’ with any of youse cunts.”

“Hunter, do the Nutbush next!”

Scott took the teasing better than Shane; he could feel the blush lighting up his cheeks, but showing his embarrassment would only egg-on the jives.

They hurried to finish the chair distribution, though their neat lines were soon decimated by the men who sprawled out across the room.

A couple of young guys eager to get on Rose’s good side jumped forward to help her distribute popcorn, so Shane settled into a seat towards the back of the room.

He’d never had a lot of friends. He got along fine with everyone, certainly had a couple of people he counted as good friends, but he didn’t have the gift of easy closeness and camaraderie a lot of people seemed to intrinsically have. And now he was a boss, it was even more noticeable; he didn’t want to haunt JJ’s steps in social settings, or his grads Wilson and Taylor.

He didn’t mind being alone. But for events like this, where people just effortlessly socialised, he was glad he had Rose. He wished he had Hayden right now, but he was on the phone with his family and would be making plans for his R&R next week.

Shane jumped slightly as the chair next to him suddenly scraped against the ground and was plunked down in front of him, before Rozanov dragged a second closer to Shane’s left and sat down in it.

“There is rumour,” Rozanov said, apropos to nothing. He kicked one leg up so his foot rested on the chair in front of them.

“About what?”

“Us.”

Shane’s blood ran cold and he went rigid.

“What?” he hissed. He hadn’t told anyone! Had Rozanov? Had someone, somehow, figured it out by watching them?

“Rumour is that you don’t like me.”

All the oxygen left in Shane punched out of him in relief. Stupid, stupid –

“Yeah, and?”

“It is ridiculous, obviously,” Rozanov went on like he hadn’t spoken. “I am very likeable. But we must be professional and set good example, da? Team work?”

“You want me to tell people how great a guy you are?” Shane asked dryly.

“Mmm,” Rozanov thought about it. “No. Showing is better than telling. We show everyone what great friends we are, Hollander.”

Why did the edge of sleaze to his words make them more charming? Or maybe it was just the conspiratorial little smile he gave Shane, like the two of them were in on a secret. Which, they were.

Still, a smile tried to sneak onto Shane’s face.

“You want to pretend to be friends? Then stop arguing with me all the time,” Shane said.

“I do not argue, I discuss,” Rozanov argued. “It is important work we do, must be right. You must learn to take feedback, or do the ah, ‘golden boys’ not do that?”

“I’m fine to discuss, but when you pick up my print outs and just put them through the shredder, I am going to feel a certain way –”

Rozanov sniffed dismissively. “Was not your best work.”

Just because he was right about that – Wilson had led on some of the analysis and he was still learning – it didn’t make that kind of response acceptable.

“Screw you,” Shane retorted immaturely.

Rozanov’s eyebrows went up and he recognised the spark in his eye that suggested he was about to say something desperately inappropriate for a public setting.

“Don’t even think about it –” Shane hissed.

Luckily, Harris’s booming voice called for everyone’s attention.

“… screening tonight, based on popular vote. Drumroll please…”

A chorus of at least 200 feet stomping on the concrete echoed through the room.

“… Armageddon!”

A mixed chorus of cheers and good-natured boos sounded. Armageddon was about as close as they would get to being like doctors watching medical shows, or police watching cop shows.

“What is this, ‘arma…’,” Rozanov asked lowly.

“It’s um, from the bible I guess? It basically means the end of the world, like the apocalypse,” Shane said lowly. There was nothing to be embarrassed about in his view – English as a second language was hard enough, let alone random words like ‘Armageddon’ – but he knew that one of Rozanov’s few insecurities were his language skills, so there was no need to broadcast that he was translating.

“Ah. Cheery,” Rozanov said sceptically.

“It’s about this team of oil drillers that have to go into space and drill holes into an asteroid or comet or whatever, and plant a bomb to blow it up before it hits Earth,” Shane explained, reluctantly amused but how increasingly incredulous Rozanov’s expression grew.

“But… why would drillers be astronauts? Is harder to be in space than to drill?” Rozanov questioned.

“It’s a stupid action movie, you’re just meant to enjoy it,” Shane said, to Rozanov’s huff. “You’ll like it, there’s a mad Russian in it, and explosions.”

His lips turned pursed as he considered Shane’s words before he nodded.

“That is ok then. Russian will make it better, drill best hole, save world.”

Shane snorted and doggedly kept his smile directed at the ad-hoc screen, where an image of the Earth was taking up half the wall.

He half expected Rozanov to get up and find another place to sit before the movie properly started, but he just… stayed.

After twenty minutes or so, Shane shifted his weight and stretched out his left leg to rest on the chair next to Rozanov’s.

The room was loud and full of quips and hollers; when the mission crew was headed to the Russian space station, Rozanov called out “Russians to save your asses” and they were promptly pelted with popcorn.

When Steve Buchemi was complaining about landing on the wrong grid on the asteroid and the presence of iron ferrite, someone sang out “better call Hollander to check that!”. That felt kind of nice.

Despite the heckling and the blatant Hollywood fakeness of it all, the jeers were replaced by sniffles when Bruce Willis yanked out Ben Affleck’s oxygen line and shoved him back into the shuttle to sacrifice himself.

Shane struggled against the tears welling in his eyes, but had to sniff before he started dripping all over his shirt. He felt Rozanov’s eyes on him.

“Shut up,” he murmured pre-emptively.

He heard a soft scoff, and Rozanov’s foot twitched, the edge of his boot tapping Shane’s.

He quickly swiped at his eyes, and they focused back on the movie.

As the credits started to roll, the guys started to belt along with Aerosmith, and Shane stood up and stretched his back.

“Not very good. Not realistic,” Rozanov said, also standing and stepping closer to him so Shane could hear him over the noise. “Russian should have saved day. Would have if the film was not made by you stupid Americans.”

“I’m Canadian,” Shane reminded him wryly, refusing to give him the outrage he wanted.

“Same same.”

Incorrigible.

“Well, watch me embody Canadian politeness, wish you a good night and just walk away.”

“Ok, I watch you walk away,” Rozanov said, low enough not to carry which deepened his voice even more. Shane’s breath hitched at the tone, but he refused to visibly react.

He’d go let Rose direct him in clean-up efforts before slinking back to his donga, alone and maybe hiding a little from this changing dynamic with Rozanov.

***

On Sunday morning, Shane treated himself to an extra 45 minutes in bed, rising a bit after dawn to throw on his running clothes.

When he stepped out of his donga, he immediately spotted Rozanov in his own sportswear, sitting on the cheap plastic chair next to his door.

“Were you… waiting for me?” Shane asked, glancing around as if there might be another reason Ilya Rozanov was sitting on his veranda at dawn on his only day off.

If Shane wasn’t mistaken, Rozanov’s cheeks were a little pink.

“For like, five minutes, in case you get your lazy body out of bed. Don’t want to be bitten by snake without Shane Hollander to save me,” he snarked.

“Sorry,” Shane muttered, but it was hard not to grin at the obvious lie.

Rozanov muttered something in Russian under his breath and set out, silently demanding Shane follow him.

Their shared morning jog had developed into a tentative tradition, where they jogged in silence – no snakes yet, thank goodness – until they came back to the dongas, where they would stretch and have the most friendly and peaceful chat of the day with each other, before Rozanov started being a dick at work again and challenging Shane on every little thing.

It also gave Shane an unfortunate opportunity to ogle Rozanov – his activewear tended to be tight or cropped, and the way sweat beaded across his clavicle and biceps was… distracting.

They no longer raced the last leg back, but they went to the concrete in sync, stretching their legs.

“R&R this week?” Rozanov asked, his accent rolling the ‘R’s for ‘rest and recuperation’ together adorably.

“Yeah, I fly out this morning.”

“Any plans? Going to go crazy?” Rozanov teased, though his eyes were watchful.

“For sure. Might even sleep til 8,” Shane joked, leaning to reach down to his left toe. Rozanov went slightly slanted as his head tilted.

“Ooh, Mr Party Animal.”

Shane held the stretch for another ten seconds before switching sides.

“My mum is in Perth for a meeting this week, so I’ll get to see her. Run some errands, you know,” he expanded. God, he really was the most boring person on Earth. He should probably make something up, but he was truly looking forward to a lot of quiet time.

Rozanov sniffed and grabbed the bottle of water he’d taken to leaving at his door step to drink from at the end of their run. He took a long drink before grunting and lobbing the bottle over to Shane without a word.

He caught it on reflex. Usually, he just waited until he was inside to drink, but he didn’t want to seem rude or germophobic by rejecting what he was pretty sure was another little olive branch from Rozanov.

Still, he squirted a stream of water into his mouth so his lips didn’t touch the bottle. It felt too intimate, like it would mean something if he put his lips where Rozanov’s had been, and Rozanov would say something about it.

“Thanks,” he said quietly as he tossed the bottle back. Rozanov held his gaze as he wrapped his lips around the spout, taking another long drink.

The way his throat bobbed attracted Shane’s gaze like a magnet, all golden in the dawn’s light and slick with sweat. He had to swallow too, his mouth feeling too dry.

As his eyes drifted back up to Rozanov’s, the man winked.

It was like a hook into his gut, pulling out the arousal and stupid butterflies Shane was trying so hard to keep stamped down.

“Well, don’t blow anything up without me,” Shane said as nonchalantly as he could manage, which wasn’t very. He stood up quickly. “Seriously.”

Rozanov put the bottle down and leaned back, bracing himself with his hand planted behind him so his bicep bulged. The rest of his body was loose, sprawled. His legs parted further as Shane looked down at him.

With his other hand, Rozanov crossed his heart and then kissed his fingers, like a blasphemous imitation of a Christian devotion.  

Or maybe it was just Shane’s thoughts that made it blasphemous.

“See you next week,” Rozanov said, and Shane just threw up a half-assed wave as he closed his door and locked it behind him.

As though the danger was Rozanov and not the way he made Shane feel totally out of control.

Chapter 5: Chapter five

The flight back to Perth was only an hour and twenty minutes, so Shane was back in his soulless corporate housing a bit after lunchtime.

He immediately started unpacking and put on a load of laundry before he grabbed his laptop to make an online grocery order. Usually he’d be more organised, and would have ordered groceries the night before in his donga. But he’d been preoccupied.

It took a short amount of time for his chores to be done, which left him sitting on the leather couch, staring at the Raiders vs Metros game replay on streaming, but thinking about Ilya fucking Rozanov.

He tried to focus on the game, and when that didn’t work, he mentally reviewed his calendar for the week. He needed a haircut. Mum was in town Tuesday, and he said he’d have dinner at Hayden’s new place in Cottesloe on Wednesday…

That was it.

He slumped further down the couch and squeezed his eyes shut.

Maybe he was just horny. He had a dildo here, which he would never dare pack in his luggage, let alone bring to camp. He could just work the restless feelings out of his system. Or maybe he could hook up with an actual human being.

He’d downloaded Grindr before, but he had chickened out both times a chat ended in an invitation to meet up. The idea of being with a man he didn’t know was one part titillating, nineteen parts terrifying.

So, he probably wouldn’t do that.

Dammit, why did Rozanov have this power over him? He would be delighted if he knew, would probably think it was hilarious.

He’d definitely use it against Shane.

He sighed. It seemed increasingly likely that Rozanov wanted to… start up again. Which Shane couldn’t allow. Aside from the professional risk, it wasn’t good for him.

It wasn’t like he was heartbroken. He hadn’t been in love with Rozanov or anything. But it had hurt.

Rozanov was his first… everything, with a man.

It had been fun. Freeing, in some ways. Stifling to keep it secret, in most others. But they trusted each other with their shared secret, their bodies, and that was special to Shane.

And maybe… completely understandably, Shane’s traitorous mind had started to confuse good sex with feelings. A problem Rozanov had obviously not encountered.

He picked up a cushion and covered his face, attempting to smother himself.

***

Canada, three years ago

Shane panted as warm lips trailed down his throat and a hand shoved its way up his shirt to massage his pec. He tried to shift to find the space to take off his useless shirt, but with Rozanov all but pinning him to the bed, it was difficult.

Stupid, small beds. King singles barely fit one fully grown man, so they had to get creative about fitting two. Good thing they didn’t mind being in very close quarters.

Their little ‘movie nights’ had quickly devolved into sex, from the first time Rozanov had invited him back to his room.

That time, Rozanov had kissed him and Shane had freaked out and run away. He’d been back the next night to apologise and… well.

God. He was such a victim of ‘Netflix and Chill’.

“Oh fuck!” he gasped sharply as Rozanov rolled his hips down, grinding into Shane’s. He was so hard, and feeling Rozanov’s answering arousal made him feel like he was going to burst, shattering into a million pieces.

He was so fucking hot.

So far all they’d done was rub off against each other and trade a couple of blow jobs, as quietly as possible. Which was a lot more than Shane had ever done with another guy, and a million times better than his fumbling attempts with girls.

He knew Rozanov wanted more, given the attention he showed Shane’s ass. The way he slipped a hand around now, down the back of his pants and took a firm grip of Shane’s right cheek and pulled him closer to grind into him.

But a work camp room with shared walls was not the place Shane was going to lose his ass virginity.

“Hollander,” Rozanov groaned before he smashed his mouth against Shane’s again, hard and desperate and scorching.

He pulled back and Shane tried to follow, but Rozanov hovered his mouth just out of reach and whispered, “Need to get your clothes off.” 

Shane let out an embarrassing sound as he nodded eagerly. All that warm, golden skin against his, he wanted that, so bad –

The sudden slam of a door and a muffled voice outside made Shane freeze, and his body tense up like he’d been electrocuted.

Rozanov stopped what he was doing, his hand pausing under Shane’s clothes.

Footsteps echoed outside.

“You locked the door, right?” Shane hissed.

“Yes Hollander,” Rozanov said, his voice suddenly tight. He extracted his hand and hoisted himself off Shane, and not in a way that suggested he was going to tear Shane’s clothes off in the next second.

Shane sat up so he was at the top of the bed and Rozanov slumped onto the foot of the bed, his back against the wall.

They sat in silence for an excruciating minute.

“You know we’re not the only guys fucking here, right?” Rozanov asked, his voice flat but with a hint of anger. He didn’t look at Shane.

He didn’t know that. He supposed that, given the population and the environment, it made sense that maybe some ‘colleagues with benefits’ relationships might have developed, behind closed doors, like theirs…

“Doesn’t matter,” Shane said finally. “We can’t… people can’t know. About this.”

Both of them were doing so well in their careers, in five years they could even become principal engineers! Even rumours of what they did together could ruin all of that, not to mention the stares, the looks of disgust, the insults they’d have to endure…

Rozanov agitatedly tapped his fingers on his knees. The only sound in the room came from the little TV showing some action movie; Shane always insisted on putting a movie on, playing a little louder than was polite with shared walls, just in case.

“Mood kind of broken now, no?” Rozanov grunted.

Shane’s stomach dropped as he realised he was being kicked out. 

“… I can’t leave yet. With people around,” Shane said, tone a little beseeching.

“Cause being seen would be the worst,” Rozanov grumbled. “Just tell them we were watching movie.”

Rozanov let out a loud and beleaguered sigh. He didn’t seem angry, so much as… sad.

Shane shuffled forward a little, though he didn’t have the confidence to reach out and touch the other man like this.

“I… I’m sorry.”

Rozanov turned his head to face him, his expression uncharacteristically serious.

“Why are you sorry?”

Shane blinked at the unexpected, sombre question.

“For… upsetting you,” he said slowly. It felt like a trick question – he was sorry for a lot of things, but some of them weren’t within his control to apologise for.

Rozanov blew out a loud sigh and rested his head against the wall, studying Shane for a moment.

“I get it,” he finally said. “I’m from Russia.”

Shane frowned in confusion and Rozanov gave him a pointed look. He knew that? He didn’t get it.

Rozanov rolled his eyes and smiled, like Shane’s cluelessness was breaking the tension.

“Can’t be out in Russia. Am used to secrets. To being scared.”

Shane nodded slowly. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Do not want you to be scared,” Rozanov whispered, low. Intimate.

Tears burned at Shane’s eyes and he tried desperately to contain them.

“I’m not…”

But he was.

Not of Ilya. He was scared this was who he really was, and that people would hate him for it. He was scared of losing it, these tiny portions of time he got to be comfortable, he got to touch, to want someone and be wanted in return.

“Hey, shhh…”

Rozanov slid closer and Shane met him halfway, letting the slightly bigger man wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him in. He breathed in the scent of Rozanov’s skin and let the feeling start to calm his thudding heart.

After a few moments, Rozanov’s hand on his chin gently tilted his head back and Rozanov bent down to kiss him softly, tenderly, the way Shane secretly loved despite only having experienced it two or three times before.

They kissed until Shane’s lips felt all tingly and his body felt like jelly.

“You still hard?” Rozanov asked, stroking Shane’s cheek.

He breathed a bashful laugh.

“A little.”

Rozanov hummed with interest. “Let’s see what I can do about that.”

He kissed Shane one more time and moved off the bed, to his knees. Shane’s heart started thudding in his chest as Rozanov circled his hips and dragged him forward so he was facing him, legs hanging off the side of the bed and his knees spread so the Russian could fit between them.

Rozanov pushed Shane’s shirt up with both of his hands, drawing it up and pulling it over his head. He tossed it behind him without a care and cradled Shane’s face with one hand, the other dropping to his knee.

“Kiss,” he demanded, and Shane leaned forward, slotting their lips together briefly before Rozanov urged him back.

He pressed a trail of kisses down Shane’s chest and belly before he reached his covered lap. Rozanov nuzzled into his crotch and Shane’s breathing picked up as his dick responded. It was never completely dormant in Rozanov’s company, and it didn’t take much to get it to attention.

It was easy for him to pull down the band of Shane’s shorts and take him out. Rozanov didn’t need hands after that, putting his mouth to work.

But he reached back up blindly, squeezing Shane’s shoulder before dipping to rest over Shane’s left pec and staying there.

Shane covered it with his own and had to bite his lip from the sound that wanted to emerge when Rozanov did that with his tongue.

He gripped his hand tighter and Rozanov kept going, but didn’t take his hand back.

Chapter 6: Chapter six

Shane had seen barely anyone when he arrived back at camp a week later, since it was a work day for the remaining staff. And since he hadn’t kept his usual sleep schedule as well as he should have while he was in Perth, he ended up oversleeping their– his morning jog and ate a fast breakfast in his donga before grabbing two boxes of protein bars to restock his desk supply and jumping on the bus.

He checked in with Hayden first, who was in the admin donga, and sat down with him for 20 minutes to review some paperwork and accreditations for his team that he probably shouldn’t have looked at while on leave.

Then he slipped into the engineer’s main donga next door, nodding at Elena’s happy greeting and Ryan’s nod as he sat with the receiver of the phone pressed to his ear.

“Thank God!”

Rozanov’s voice boomed over the heads of everyone else who managed to be working somewhat quietly at their own, cramped desks.

“Hollander, come look at this model and tell us what is wrong.”

He wasn’t sure how Rozanov managed to look so good in the fluro orange of his shirt – Shane thought he himself just looked a bit sickly with the colouring and harsh lighting of the demountable buildings. But Rozanov looked confident in the uniform, and completely at home with a group of men glaring at him from where they sat with him at their centre.

JJ and Wilson were on R&R now, so it was just Taylor from his team and Kent from Rozanov’s team, plus the annoyed looks of a couple of other people not involved in the impromptu meeting, that were trying to bore holes in the side of Rozanov’s head.

Shane rounded the desk to study the computer screen, Rozanov practically hovering over his shoulder.

He spotted the problem almost immediately, and substituted out some assumptions to re-run the results, and after a beat and loud hum of the computer’s fan as it ran the analysis, the projections came back up looking a lot more sensible.

There were a couple of zones that were identified in red as having some potential breakage patterns that would likely mean the explosives would overperform and create more defects through the weaker, surrounding rock, which would drastically change the order and charge density Rozanov would use in his blast sequences.

Huh. One was the zone Rozanov had made them take extra samples and scans of. Good pick up.

“Gah, finally. I could kiss you Hollander,” Rozanov said, before he stood upright and glared at Kent like he didn’t just set Shane’s heart racing. “Did you pay attention?”

“But it doesn’t make any sense!”

Shane’s eyebrow rose at the petulant, loud disagreement from Kent and he straightened his posture. He rarely had to chastise anyone he worked with about respect and paying attention, despite the sometimes opinionated and hot-headedness of the teams. In his experience, conflict on these jobs was often uncomfortable, but almost always productive.

Rozanov’s eyes were flinty as he glared at the junior engineer.

“You know how to classify all of this rock mass?” he asked coldly.

Kent shifted on his chair.

“…no. But these results are different to the other site –”

“Yeah, is different sites,” Rozanov enunciated obviously.

“We should be able to do a main mass blast. It’s stable enough and we’d catch up, like, days on the project,” Kent pushed, throwing a quick, resentful glare at Shane like it was his fault. “Grady said there was a bonus for time recovery – ”

Rozanov cut him off with some angry Russian words.

“Stop. I don’t care. When your geotech tells you something, you listen,” he said firmly.

“You don’t!” Kent jutted his chin out.

“I do. Hollander is one of the best, he knows a lot more than you do. And I am much smarter than you, so I get to ask questions and bust balls,” Rozanov said.

“Thanks?” Shane muttered, though he was actually a little touched by the casual certainty Rozanov said it with.

“Go. Go somewhere else. Go ask Pike to give you manual about exclusion zones and safety for blasts,” Rozanov dismissed his grad.

Kent was red-faced and furious as he stood up and stomped out of the donga, his heavy footfalls and practically slammed doors making him seem even more immature.

“Aye ah…” Rozanov breathed out in frustration. Shane realised he was staring and turned away to go to his desk, but –

His area had been re-arranged. He hadn’t noticed when he first came in, distracted by Rozanov and the models, but where he had shared a large desk with one of the grads against the wall was replaced with one smaller desk and a filing cabinet. His desk, distinguished only by the severe neatness of his laptop, extra screen and stationary all perfectly spaced at right angles, was sitting in the middle of the workspace, back to back with –

“Hope you don’t mind. We optimised for space,” Rozanov said, good mood back as he grinned at Shane and took his place at the desk touching Shane’s.

He felt eyes on him as he considered protesting the change, but that would be silly and unproductive, right?

Shane sat down and glanced up at Rozanov, who was precisely in his line of sight beyond his screen and would be for the foreseeable future.

“It’s – what the hell is that?”

Shane was immediately derailed from his reluctant acceptance of his new placement when an image of himself caught his eye, pinned up to the blast team’s corkboard behind Rozanov.

He got up and crossed the cramped floor space to take a closer look. He was vaguely aware of snickers behind him.

It was a photo of him and Scott Hunter, both with their arms spread in a ‘T’ from the forced dance routine prior to the movie night. Scott looked handsome with his ‘aw shucks’ smile, but Shane had been caught mid-eyeroll, though also with a reluctant smile.

He looked deranged.

Next to their bodies, the text ‘eamwork makes the dream work’ had been typed out, using the ‘T’ of their bodies to start the sentence.

“How did you do this, you weren’t there?!” Shane demanded of Rozanov, taking the picture down.

“Was initiative from Rose Landry and Pike. Important message,” Rozanov said and opened up a folder on his desk, pulling out an identical picture with the same text and pinning it right back up on the corkboard nonchalantly.

Shane snatched that one down too and stomped back to his desk.

***

Rozanov was gone for most of the rest of the morning, marking out the expansion site for drilling, which Shane would verify tomorrow as the team started boring holes for the charges to break ground.

Shane popped out for a bit after lunch and when he came back, the picture of him was back on the corkboard and Rozanov was eating what Shane was pretty sure was one of his protein bars from his desk drawer.

He outwardly reacted to neither.

“Where’s Kent?” he asked, noting his desk was empty.

“Time out,” Rozanov told him, through a full mouth.

Shane had to check the corners of the office for a sulking twenty-something year old but thankfully came up empty.

“I don’t think that’s how we’re meant to manage junior employees,” Shane told him.

“No, but is how you manage children,” Rozanov retorted.

Shane didn’t argue further. He was more than happy for the office to remain Kent-free for as long as possible.

The afternoon was more peaceful, though his feet kept hitting Rozanov’s under the desk, since the taller man had no respect for the division of space relative to the end of his desk. After the fourth time, Shane gave him a light kick with the side of his boot, silently urging him back to his side. Rozanov’s head shot up and his eyes narrowed.

“Stay on your side,” Shane whispered.

In response, Rozanov kicked him.

Shane’s jaw dropped. That was so fucking rude!

Shane kicked back and caught a heel to the shin in return. The exchange got more violent until a savage attack and counter-attack happened to clash under the desks, sending both of their knees slamming into the bottom of their desks, rattling everything on the surface.

Elena turned around, looking at them like a strict teacher.

“Sorry,” Rozanov called sheepishly, and Shane gave her a tight smile before focusing back on his screen, resisting the urge to rub his now-sore knee.

When his boot hit Rozanov’s half an hour later, he just moved his own foot.

***

While the work at the main mine would continue with a night shift, the office dongas closed down at 6pm. Principals remained on-call, should anything be needed after hours, but they started to close down their laptops and finalise their work for the night before lining up for the bus back to the camp.

Rozanov knocked into his shoulder lightly as they walked over the dirt path to the pick-up spot the bus was pulling up to now.

“See you tomorrow morning?” he asked lowly.

Shane gave a quick nod, and that night, proceeded to stare at the poorly-insulated plasterboard that separated their two rooms until his eyes eventually drifted closed.

Chapter 7: Chapter seven

Shane shook his head and laughed as he stretched and tried to catch his breath.

“No way.”

“Yes, I am always right! Scott Hunter is fucking Kip.”

Shane shushed Rozanov, but didn’t stop grinning.

“Don’t say that so loud. And you have no way of knowing that. In fact –” Shane was about to school Rozanov on how he’d seen Scott making heart-eyes at Rose, until he abruptly remembered that Kip had been standing right next to her as they danced in the cafeteria under Scott’s fond gaze.

“You’re right,” Rozanov started.

“Call the press.”

“You’re maybe a little right,” the Russian amended. “If they are not already fucking, they want to.”

“Oh my God,” Shane muttered, shaking his head. There may be something to this theory though. “Don’t go telling people that.”

Rozanov ‘pshaw-ed’ him. “I am not gossip, Hollander.”

“What the hell are we doing right now, then?”

Rozanov screwed up his nose.

“Anyone with eyes knows this already, anyway,” he grumbled.

“I don’t think I’ve never seen them talk outside of project meetings,” Shane mused, though he didn’t share an office with either man, so he really wouldn’t see it anyway.

“You uh, ‘boring engineers’ and project managers, you think ‘sprints’ and spreadsheets are sexy though, yes? Maybe it gets them hot,” Rozanov said with a lascivious grin.

Shane chuckled again. “If we finish this fucking sprint and get on to the next phase, they won’t be the only ones with hard-ons in the meeting today.”

Rozanov’s chuckle was deep and rewarding.

***

The project WIP started in the usual way, but now with the empty seat across from Shane filled with Rozanov.

“First new item on the risk register, which you have probably all heard about by now,” Kip started with a look around. Eric gave Scott a friendly punch on the arm and Shane glanced around, though only he and Rozanov seemed confused.

“What is it?” Rozanov asked.

“Scotty-boy saved a life yesterday!” Bennett boasted.

Shane’s eyebrows rose as Bennett and Harris wove a story of cat-like reflexes and selfless disregard for personal safety as a crane, a poorly-secured load and a distracted grad wearing earmuffs almost met disaster, if not for Scott Hunter.

“He tackled and rolled the kid and two seconds later, the load was blasting apart on the ground right where he’d been standing,” Harris gushed. “It’s on CCTV, I’m working on retrieving and cleaning up the footage. For the incident report, of course.”

Everyone at the table congratulated Scott on his fast reflexes, which the man bashfully waved off.

“The bad news is we have to slow down production until everyone on the live site has re-done their load lifting and securing training,” Kip said, but looked at Scott with stars in his eyes. “But it pales to the good news that no-one was hurt.”

Rozanov caught his eye and darted his glance between Kip and Scott in an obvious suggestion of their earlier conversation.

It confirmed nothing. Shane himself was kind of looking at Scott with more interest. He was very masculine, and attractive…

But Shane was confirmed gay, even if only to himself, so comparing his response was a flawed experiment.

By the time they worked around to the expansion project, attention turned to Shane and Rozanov and Rozanov nodded his permission for Shane to deliver the good news that they’d found a way to claw back two days in the project schedule.

Though they’d still be over a week behind the original milestones, the update made Kip beam his most sunshine-y grin and almost tear up at the good news. It was easy to forget the pressure Kip was under, reporting into that asshole Crowell more than anyone else, because he never passed on his stress. And he had a puppy-like energy that made you feel good about making him happy.

“Guys, that’s amazing,” he gushed earnestly.

Even Rozanov was affected. He smiled – not a smirk, not a joking grin – a real smile at Shane.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Shane said lamely, but with a grin. “Um, Hayden is looking over the plans now.”

Hayden confirmed they were setting up the exclusion zones compliant with site safety legislation and ensuring everyone was up to date on their accreditation.

“And where did we get to on the refuge chamber?” Kip asked.

“We’re moving the chamber that covered grids 24 to 28 since they’ve shut. It’ll take a day to install,” Hayden said.

“I can give you men for installation on the 20^th, if that suits?” Scott offered, looking at Hayden but seeming unable to stop his gaze from darting to Kip.

Kip’s grin turned even brighter.

Shane automatically glanced at Rozanov, who waggled his eyebrows at him in a very ‘told you so’ manner.

He couldn’t look at him again without the risk of laughing.

“Ok, final items… the R&R calendar has been updated, please check it. Ilya has very kindly agreed to be flexible with his calendar and moved his R&R back to fit better with the timelines. While we do not want to make a habit of this kind of thing, Ilya we really appreciate you making this work,” Kip said.

Shane clicked on the shared Google Calendar icon on his desktop and saw that yes, Rozanov’s R&R was pushed back, and now he matched the same rhythm as Shane.

It made sense – they were working so closely at this stage of the project and while things didn’t have to grind to a halt if one of them were away, it was certainly a lot more productive to have two weeks together in a row rather than one week in every three.

The meeting ended with the usual reiteration of the weather conditions – they were still in a heat wave – and they all said their goodbyes.

It was about twenty minutes later, back in their office, that Rozanov suddenly sat straighter.

“Govnó, you see this?” Rozanov asked.

“See what?”

Rozanov got up and circled Shane, pressing into his space and knocking his hands away from his mouse and keyboard so Rozanov could click out of his modelling program and open his email

“Hey,” Shane protested half-heartedly.

Rozanov ignored him and opened a new email from Harris, addressed to the principal email group. A video file was attached, and Rozanov double clicked on it.

The player opened, showing a close-up of one of the live production zones. Harris must have cropped the video, so it was focused on a central point, a bit blurry, but faces were clearly distinguishable.

From this angle, Shane saw the load of materials being craned falter, and the young man who shouldn’t have been walking around underneath a live lift.

Suddenly, Scott Hunter sprinted into view. He made it look like the video was sped up, though the rest of the movements on screen remained at regular speed.

Scott grabbed the man by his shoulders and propelled him forward and just as Harris had described, kept them rolling once they hit the ground.

They were briefly obscured by the load, probably a ton or so, crashing violently to the dirt.

“Holy shit,” Shane said, watching enraptured as multiple bodies swarmed into view shouting, and Scott and the man he’d saved popped up. “He’s like Captain America.”

Shane took his mouse back from Rozanov and clicked back to the start, watching the incredible footage again.

Rozanov made a grumbling sound.

“He moves ok, for an old guy,” he said, his previous impressed tone long gone.

Shane scoffed and knocked his shoulder into Rozanov, still standing too close to him over his computer. “Jealous.”

Rozanov pressed closer, his waist melding around Shane’s shoulder.

“Not of old man,” Rozanov said, and Shane looked up at him. He pouted teasingly. “You don’t think I look like Captain Russia?”

His accent turned ‘Captain’ into ‘Kep-tin’ and Shane had to look away from the sheer adorableness, and the headiness of looking up at Rozanov, so close to him.

He cleared his throat.

“That’s the Red Guardian, and you don’t want to be him.”

“… what?”

“In the comics and the MCU, there was a Russian attempt at the super soldier serum and they ended up with the Red Guardian.”

Rozanov huffed and pulled away, taking his body heat with him so Shane felt strangely bereft at the sudden absence.

“Hollander, you are such a nerd.”

Shane screwed up his nose. He considered it a pretty well-known bit of trivia.

When Rozanov sat back down, he played the video twice more in revenge, enjoying the way Rozanov’s jaw tightened at the sound of the replayed audio.

***

Shane headed to the admin office next door with his lunch to eat with Hayden and ask for some extra training for Wilson and Taylor – he’d thought it would be great for them to shadow the blast team on the biggest production days, for professional experience. Rozanov would let them, he enjoyed an audience, and he was a good person to learn from.

He frowned as he saw the picture of him and Scott with their arms outstretched with the text ‘ask Risk Assessment: Document it now’ on the board near Hayden’s desk.

Hayden was on the phone so Shane crossed to Kip, to let him know that Rozanov was making Kent write the revised timelines for blasting, so there would probably be a slight delay Rozanov was unlikely to have informed Kip of.

Kip didn’t seem to notice him as he stopped next to him, since he was focused intently on his screen.

The screen which was showing Scott’s daring rescue, on mute. He’d have to remember to tell Rozanov tomorrow morning.

Shane cleared his throat and Kip jumped.

“Shane! Hi!” Kip said loudly, glancing back at his screen and realising he’d been caught out. There was no amount of quick minimising of tabs that could help him now.

“Pretty incredible, huh?” Kip asked, nodding to the screen.

“For sure. We’re lucky to have Scott Hunter around, I think.”

“Yeah,” Kip breathed.

“So um, I just wanted to let you know about the entry of the new milestones?”

Kip minimised – not closed – the video window and navigated to the project management software. Shane explained when the updates would be published for Kip’s approval.

“Great, saves me an email, thanks Shane,” Kip said. “And I meant to say, and I hope it’s not too condescending; way to go on the teamwork.”

Shane tilted his head, not sure he understood.

“With Ilya. I know you guys didn’t necessarily get off on the right foot, for whatever reason, that’s your business. But you guys seem to be working well together and are kicking goals for us now, so… thanks.”

“Yeah um, I guess it’s working out ok. Thanks,” Shane said awkwardly, nodding his farewell and scurrying back to Hayden, who wouldn’t make him talk about how he was getting along with Rozanov.

Or at least, he could tell Hayden to shut the fuck up. Telling Kip to shut up would be like kicking a puppy.

Chapter 8: Chapter eight

Chapter Notes

The worst of the heat wave broke on Friday with storms and a little rain, to everyone’s relief, and with more sedate temperatures expected for a couple of days, the mini social committee had been able to plan outdoor frivolities for Saturday night.

Sides were commandeered from the cafeteria and the BBQs fired up for a sausage sizzle. Rose had to herd away half the guys wanting to supervise the meat cooking, claiming a ‘first in gets to cook’ rule. Strange, how men were drawn to a grill.

Eric Bennett ruled the vegetarian burner with an iron fist, and one of the mining supervisors called Boodram talked loudly about adding spice and flavour to the other meats he seemed to have sweet-talked the kitchen staff into giving up.

Most of the guys had changed out of their work gear and were down to shorts and singlets, including Shane himself. He let the more hungry and rambunctious men get food first before he loaded up his plate. Just as he was about to spear a forkful of his salad, it disappeared as another paper plate was plunked on top of it.

“Hold this for a second, would you? My sandal’s come undone,” Rose said. She held herself steady with a grip on Shane’s shoulder and leaned sideways, bringing her foot up and trying to snap the sandal straps back.

She wobbled precariously and Shane steadied her waist with his one free hand, hoping the dual plates would stay balanced. Rose laughed and tried again, leaning heavier into Shane.

“Just sit down?” he suggested. He didn’t really want to wear the potato salad and tomato-sauce-drenched sausage Rose had on her plate.

“No, I can do it,” she insisted, swaying a little before she let out a noise of triumph and went back to standing like a normal person.

“Thanks,” she said, picking her plate back off his. “Which of the activities will you be participating in?”

Shane looked around. Someone had fabricated some giant Jenga blocks out of 2x4s and Rose had dug up two sets of bocce balls to use on the slightly dry, grassed area right of the BBQ shelter.

It wasn’t nearly enough activities for everyone, but most people seemed to prefer to chat and laugh amongst themselves, or heckle those playing from the sidelines.

“Um, none?”

Rose was already shaking her head in disapproval.

“You’re a leader in this project Shane, you have to work by example.”

“I don’t think stacking wood is in my job description.”

Rose waved away his dry observation.

“Volunteer for soccer later. I don’t want it to crash and burn.”

“Yes dear,” he intoned. “Anything else?”

“Can I have one of your napkins?” she asked, a smear of tomato sauce on the side of her mouth doing nothing to take away from how pretty she was.

Shane took one of the small stack of napkins he held under his plate and stuck it to the sauce on her face with a smile. She giggled and cleaned herself up as Hayden joined them.

Rose waited until most people had eaten and checked her watch for the time. About half an hour before the sun was due to set, she stood up on one of the picnic seats, Shane poised to catch her if she stumbled, and called for attention.

“Attention all athletes! Anyone who wants to take part in the soccer tournament, for glory and for the special tray of brownies, personally baked and decorated by me,” a couple of cheers sounded. “Please gather over here. Only those wearing joggers or sneakers please!”

About twenty guys came forward and Shane figured he was safe from volunteering duty.

Rozanov was one of the volunteers. Figures he wouldn’t miss a chance to show off.

“Amazing! We’ll split into two teams – any brave souls willing to be captains?”

After a beat, Rozanov stepped forward.

“I will. Me and Hollander.”

The guys jeered and Rozanov smirked at him, tipping his chin up in a ‘what are you going to do about it’ kind of gesture.

“Grudge match,” he heard someone say with delight amid the ribbing.

Fine.

“Yeah. Fine.”

One of the guys Shane had never met clapped his shoulder and shook him in a weird, congratulatory way. Rozanov still smirked.

“Alright,” Rose clapped. “Split up evenly – Team Russia or Team Canada.”

In lieu of jerseys or bibs, Rose handed out orange high-vis vests to Team Russia and yellow to Team Canada. Shane quietly let his rowdy team decide where they wanted to play, weighing in to settle ‘forwards’ versus ‘mid-fielders’ when they stalled in disagreement.

Rozanov was loudly declaring himself a striker and pointing to his team with orders for where they’d play. The guys just laughed and agreed with him.

Since Rozanov was a striker and intent on scoring, Shane was pushed into centre-back to mark him for their ‘rivalry’, which he was repeatedly told was ‘what the people wanted to see’.  

Their audience gathered around the small, ad-hoc field and Rose gestured him and Rozanov forward with a coin.

“Ilya, call it,” she said as she flipped it cleanly through the air.

“Head,” Rozanov said, winking at Shane.

“Heads it is!” Rose called happily as Shane narrowed his eyes.

“We will kick first,” Rozanov said.

And the match began.

Shane didn’t watch a lot of soccer – being from Canada, he cared more about hockey – but he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be such a contact sport.

Other guys were getting into friendly-shoving matches and grabbing each other’s vests to pull their opponents away from the ball until Rose blew her whistle to break it up. It probably looked similar to what Rozanov was doing to him, but Shane doubted the other guys were as homoerotically charged.

Rozanov was all over Shane, almost as much as the ball. He pushed his hand onto Shane’s chest and his abs to ‘defend’, he slipped his hand up the back of Shane’s vest to grab a fistful of his singlet and pull, enough so that he was showing more skin. He pawed his biceps and taunted him by dribbling the ball while holding his shoulder tight and at arm’s length, so Shane couldn’t reach it at the end of Rozanov’s stupidly long legs.

Shane would like to hold his head high and claim innocence, but he checked Rozanov a couple of times, almost tangling their legs to get the ball back and kick it to his team. When he felt the puff of air and curse of the Russian against his neck, he was struck with the sudden fear and real possibility that he’d get hard, so he backed off a little.

Still, it was fun. A lot of fun, even if they ended the half tied 1–1.

They stopped for a water break and for some of the guys to tap out and be replaced by fresh bodies.

“Will it be embarrassing for you to lose, as captain?” Rozanov asked him, breathing heavily and smirking at Shane.

“We’re tied,” he reminded the other man.

“I have been taking it easy on you,” Rozanov teased, stepping closer. “Don’t want to embarrass you in front of colleagues. But they deserve a show, no?”

“If you think you can give it to them,” Shane answered daringly, arching an amused eyebrow. “Bring it on.”

Rozanov outright grinned, and he mouthed ‘bring it on’ in a silent echo of Shane’s challenge.

“Just keep it friendly, boys. Do not give me more paperwork,” Rose joked as she slid past with extra water bottles for anyone still thirsty.

She held out a bottle to Shane. “What do I always tell you?”

“Stay hydrated, stay well,” Shane parroted.

Rose raised an eyebrow at her unfinished mantra for outback living. Shane darted a quick look at Rozanov, who had stopped smiling and was watching Shane and Rose intensely.

“Stay hydrated, stay pretty, stay well,” he mumbled, knowing she wouldn’t let it go. He took a long draw of water, sure that Rozanov would tease him mercilessly for that.

“You should listen to me, I’m always right,” Rose claimed, tapping him on the arm before moving on to hand out the rest of her burden. She was worse than his mother. In fact, the two women would get along well.

Shane turned slightly bashfully back to Rozanov, but he’d turned away, clapping members of his team on the back and psyching them up for ‘round two’.

Light was slowly fading on them, so they all piled back onto the grass to decide the ‘grudge match’, which Shane felt was quite the exaggeration.

He was once again marking Rozanov when he got the ball. Rozanov checked him hard, more aggressive and less flirty than before when he’d been focused as much on contact with Shane as the ball.

Where before he would have been half-leaning on Rozanov to try to get the ball back, this unexpected change-up caused Shane to fumble and give Rozanov the space to kick the ball, straight and true, to the goal.

“What, too pretty to tackle me?” Rozanov growled in his ear before darting away.

Shane ground his teeth and jogged after him. He thought they’d been getting along. He could be as competitive as the next guy, but this was a different Rozanov.

What did he even have to be pissed about? If anyone should be playing a bitchy ball game, it was Shane.

Team Russia won 4 – 2. Some of the ‘Team Canada’ members were already challenging their comrades to a ‘re-match’ with the pool table inside.

Suddenly, a half-full water bottle hit him in the chest, and Shane fumbled to catch it before it fell to the ground.

“Do you really need to be told to drink water?” Rozanov mocked. Shane could feel curious eyes on them, even as people started to trickle away.

“Game’s over Rozanov, you can drop the attitude.”

That seemed to annoy him even more.

“Shane Hollander, so above us all. So perfect, never with the emotion.”

That hurt.

It was hardly the first time he’d been accused of thinking he was ‘better than everyone else’, or of being emotionless and robotic. His reserved nature sometimes made people draw the wrong conclusions. He didn’t think Rozanov was one of them.

He glared at the other man but refused to have it out with Rozanov in public after a stupid social sports match. So he turned the other cheek, and walked away. He would stew in his donga and would no doubt come up with some kind of devastating but appropriate response he should have served Rozanov with before he fell asleep.

He was still sweaty by the time he stopped outside his door and he hovered in the fresh air, though it would be cooler if he went inside and turned on the air con. Footsteps came up behind him.

Of course Rozanov had followed him. This man was fundamentally against others having peace.

And… oh great. He was just here to stand near Shane and stare kind of menacingly at him.

Well, Shane wouldn’t be chased inside by a surly Russian man acting like a petulant teenager.

“You know, you could try being more professional,” Shane snapped, knowing it wouldn’t help perceptions that he had a superiority complex.

Rozanov’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Because you are ‘Mr Professional’?” he asked derisively.

The sarcasm felt different to usual. “What?”

“So professional,” Rozanov mocked, waving his hands in emphasis and stepping closer, letting his extra couple of inches of height loom over Shane. “You’re fucking HR!”

His head bobbed in aggravation and his nostrils flared.

“What? No, I’m not!”

Rozanov huffed and rolled his eyes.

“I’m not! Rose is my friend. And fuck you for saying that. You know I’m –”

Shane cut himself off before he could say ‘gay’. He’d never said it out loud before, but Rozanov had firsthand evidence…

“She calls you ‘pretty’ and touches you always, because she is your friend?” Rozanov said doubtfully.

“That’s – no, the ‘pretty’ thing is just something she says, it’s not… and she touches me, sure, but an appropriate amount,” Shane insisted. He had a strong suspicion that Rose thought he was lonely and touch-starved, which was why she was more affectionate with him than was perhaps normal. He didn’t correct her, because he was pretty sure she was right.

“And why the hell would you care anyway?” Shane jutted out his chin, daring Rozanov to admit… whatever was happening.

Rozanov huffed in irritation and muttered a string of rough Russian. Cop out.

“What do you want?” Shane demanded, his voice teetering from angry to desperate.

“You know what I want,” Rozanov shot back in a voice so deep and so close, he could almost feel it rumble through his own chest.

For a moment they held still, tension crackling between them.

Shane had an idea what Rozanov wanted. He wasn’t so sure about himself.

Rozanov reached up, framing Shane’s chin in the V of his thumb and forefinger in a gesture that was so familiar it made him ache. With his hold, he tilted Shane’s head back by the extra couple of degrees it took to perfectly seal his mouth over his.

The kiss was the polar opposite of chaste. He immediately felt the swipe of Rozanov’s tongue against his lips and when he opened his mouth, Rozanov let out an agonised groan and dived in like he was starved. Which was apt, because Shane felt devoured.

He wasn’t entirely sure when he’d closed his eyes or how he’d let himself be pressed against the wall of the donga, but he was hyper-aware of everywhere Rozanov was touching him, even the ghost of body heat he had on his knuckles from making tight fists in Rozanov’s singlet.

To any passers-by, there would be no mistaking what was happening between them.

The thought finally penetrated Shane’s melting brain and he shoved Rozanov back so they broke apart.

“Don’t do that in public,” he gasped, the protest automatic. He probably should be saying something along the lines of ‘don’t kiss me’, but that would be a bit disingenuous, given how he was already getting hard.

A tense, complicated expression flashed across Rozanov’s face before ending in a frown.

“No one else is here,” he rumbled, and took back some of the foot or so Shane had forced between them.

Shane looked around, to the sides and over Rozanov’s shoulders. As he checked his left, Rozanov pressed a kiss to the edge of his jaw.

Shit.

His head lolled back instinctively and Rozanov swooped in to take advantage of his weakness to press his lips down Shane’s throat. The sensation made him shiver.

Shane turned back and Rozanov met him halfway, capturing his lips once more. His hand crept under Shane’s singlet to rest on the skin of his waist.

Rozanov pulled back just enough to whisper against Shane’s mouth, “We were always so good together…”

Fuck, yes they were. They should slip inside and do more of the things they had been so good at…

Until people found out, or until Rozanov iced him out and left Shane confused with a bruised ego and broken –

He pulled back, pushing at Rozanov who went compliantly back a couple of steps. Shane turned his back on the man and stepped in front of his door, clumsily grabbing his keys from the pocket of his tented shorts.

“Hollander,” Rozanov started behind him.

“We shouldn’t. Do this.” Why wouldn’t the key go in the damn hole?!

“Hollander.”

Rozanov’s voice was imploring and it made Shane feel weak, like he could just swoon back into Rozanov’s arms and be caught.

“Good night.”

Finally his door opened and he stepped into his room, closing the door behind him without looking back.

It took a long minute for him to hear the sound of Rozanov’s footsteps moving away, and the sound of his door opening and closing.

Chapter End Notes

They were almost going to play AFL, but I gave in to the soccer ball reference in episode 6 + I watched Ted Lasso recently 😙

Chapter 9: Chapter nine

Shane spent his Sunday off hunkering down in his tiny donga and torturing himself with thoughts of Rozanov. He pathetically listened to the other man come and go, only daring to sneak out for lunch when he could be as sure as possible that he wouldn’t run into him.

He was having a hard time remembering all the very good reasons he had been pissed and determined to be cool and detached with Rozanov this time round.

Well, he remembered the reasons. They just didn’t feel as convincing now as they had been a couple of weeks ago.

Rozanov was an asshole, but he’d always been an asshole. Shane had kind of liked some of his asshole tendencies, it made him funny and confident and clever.

It just felt cyclical, like for every con, there was a pro.

Ok. This called for a pros and cons list, to help him get everything clean and straight in his head.

He sat at his desk with a loose sheet of paper that he had every intention of shredding when he was done, and drew two columns.

It took him less than five minutes to distil the complex reasons for and against having a sexual relationship with Rozanov.

Pros:

x I really, really want to have sex with him (No point lying about that)

x Seniority = unlikely for private relationship to end in me being fired or disciplined

x Rose will still give me a good reference if things go to shit

x Our dongas are the best possible configuration for privacy + sneaking around

x No-strings fun (He didn’t want to do the math on how long it had been since he’d had sex with another person)

Cons

x If we’re found out by anyone, gossip will spread and guys on site could taunt / harass / mock us and make the site hostile

x I could be accused of unprofessional conduct and/or hurt my reputation

Huh.

Well, looking at this, it was a no-brainer. The ‘cons’ were all worst-case scenario, and the pros… they appealed. Especially the first one.

He picked the pen up, and tentatively added one more under ‘con’:

‘I could get attached and it will hurt when it ends.’

They weren’t good at the ‘communicating’ part, personally, or professionally, even. Shane wanted to throw up from nerves at the very idea of talking about emotions with Ilya Rozanov.

After hours of fretting over it, the conclusion he came to was:

Maybe he could do it.

***

Shane’s stomach was practically tied in knots when he got up Monday morning, brushed his teeth and got changed into running gear. He cringed a little at himself as he picked out a singlet with the longest dips at the side, i.e. the sexiest sportswear he had in WA.

He hovered by the door until his watch read 4:30am exactly, and stepped out.

He pretended to be very preoccupied stretching his legs as he heard Rozanov’s door open and close.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” Shane answered, darting a glance up at the other man. He looked good, he always looked so damn good.

Shane set off first. They always went in the same direction, though not necessarily the same track every day.

Rozanov caught up and for five minutes, as the lights of the camp grew more distant, the rhythmic thump of their footfalls and breathing, both in sync, was all he could hear.

“You think about it?”

Shane startled a bit. They never spoke on their run.

“I did. Didn’t hear you do anything about it,” Rozanov said, panting only a little bit because the man was unfairly fit.

“What?” Shane stumbled.

“Thin walls,” Rozanov answered, still jogging. “And you are noisy when you come.”

He was already flushed from jogging, but this made Shane’s cheeks heat like a gas burner.

“Shut up!”

Fuck, was he joking?! Was he referring to times when they’d been together before? Had he heard Shane through their shared wall at some point in the last couple of weeks?!

Fuck, he was such a menace.

With newfound determination, Shane failed to make the turn for a circuit back to camp, jogging forward another several meters to a large tree on the side of the dirt road.

Behind the cover of the dry foliage, he stopped. Rozanov stopped beside him.

He allowed himself a minute to catch his breath, aware that he was being watched intently the whole time, before he moved closer. He still wasn’t 100% sure what he was going to do. Talk, maybe? Something more, hopefully. If he could muster the courage to be assertive –

Rozanov closed the distance between them, bringing one hand up to cup the side of Shane’s neck, uncaring of the sweat gathered there. His face hovered over Shane’s, enough that he could feel puffs of air, but with an aggravating inch of distance.

Shane closed it.

It was a messy, frantic clashing of mouths and bodies. Shane immediately runched-up Rozanov’s stupid, tight t-shirt, running his hands over his stomach and up his back, back to his front and up over his pecs.

Rozanov’s hands quickly migrated to Shane’s hips and around to his ass, shamelessly squeezing. As Rozanov changed the angle of their kiss, Shane decided ‘fuck it’ and stuffed his hand down the front of Rozanov’s shorts.

His breath caught at the feel of him, the thrill of such a gorgeous man getting hard in his palm.

Their lips smacked as Rozanov pulled back to moan.

“Fuck, Hollander…”

It was like he poured fire through Shane’s veins, and kissing and heavy petting suddenly wasn’t enough.

Shane dropped to his knees.

His hands were shaky with overwhelmed want as he tugged down Rozanov’s shorts and underwear. Hands came to his hair as he leaned forward and mouthed at the hard length in front of him.

“Fuck Hollander, you like that…”

Shane burned with the dirty truth. But it wasn’t like he was the only one into this.

He took the head of Rozanov’s cock into his mouth, hollowing his cheeks and starting to bob his head. He was a little rusty, a little frantic, but he wasn’t trying to win an award for technique here. He just had to mind his teeth and make Rozanov come before a car or a snake stumbled across them.

Rozanov grunted and one of the hands in Shane’s hair grabbed his shoulder instead as Rozanov swayed dangerously.

Good. He hoped it was hard to stay upright, the asshole deserved a little hardship alongside his outback blowjob. Still, he held Rozanov’s hips to steady him.

“Da, fuck, like that,” Rozanov groaned as Shane took him deep as he could go without gagging – again, he was out of practice, he could do better.

His name was mixed in amongst heavy breaths and wet sounds of his mouth moving, and the soundtrack, the feel of fullness in his mouth and the knowledge that it was Ilya Roaznov whose knees were trembling and dick was leaking into his mouth, all had Shane more turned on than he could ever remember being.

“Blyad, I’m going to come,” Rozanov warned him.

Shane made a noise of acknowledgement and kept going until Rozanov tensed and his mouth was flooded with cum.

He hastily swallowed to a loud, rapturous groan. With a twinge of reluctance, Shane pulled off, only going as far as to rest his forehead against the skin of Rozanov’s thigh as he pulled his own cock out.

He swallowed again through panted breaths, the salty taste of Rozanov still on his tongue, as he took himself in hand. He couldn’t help but whimper as he stroked himself. He was slick with precum and so close to the edge that it would only take seconds –

Rozanov stroked his hair, not unlike a dog, but it was sweet enough that it made Shane rock his head into the movement.

“Takoy milyy… takoy seksi, Hollander…”

With a choked groan, Shane came onto the red dirt beneath them both. His open mouth brushed Rozanov’s thigh as he came down and he breathed in the smell of his damp skin.

“You ok?”

He broke out of his trance at the Russian-accented check-in.

“Yeah,” he answered roughly. He tucked himself away and stood up a little unsteadily, using Rozanov to balance himself. Rozanov kept a hold of Shane’s forearms until he more surely stepped back, entirely uncaring about his own nudity.

“Good?” Rozanov checked again, and when Shane nodded, he tweaked his chin and leaned in for another, far more chaste kiss.

Completely carefree, Rozanov pulled his shorts back up and cast an obvious, amused look at the wet soil.

“Next time, I do that,” he winked.

Shane couldn’t help but smile. “Deal.”

Dawn was catching up on them, so they jogged back to the dongas by the shortest route and had to skip their lingering chit chat if they wanted to shower and get breakfast.

Maybe it was just the happy-come-hormones coursing through his system, but he was feeling rather good about his choices this morning, after yesterday’s careful considerations.

The feeling of Rozanov in his mouth, the fire of kissing him, the promise of more… All were stark reminders of why they had started hooking up back in Canada. Despite how risky it was, how cautious they had to be, the way Shane’s stomach was always tied in knots and the paranoia when they were within 20 feet of each other in public; it felt incredible. He never felt as alive as he did with Rozanov, never as satisfied, never as close to the possibility of being happy and comfortable with himself.

Of course, that was a risky road to tread, opening himself to being crushed by it ending. Not that he’d been crushed last time, he wouldn’t go that far…

But the sex was objectively good. And it was meant to be fun, not weighed up with lists and rational argument and the possibility of it ending badly.  

As long as they kept it away from their work and kept it private…

And left no marks, he thought to himself as he used a bar of soap to wash the red dirt off his knees.

Chapter 10: Chapter ten

Once a month, the weekly project WIP grew in size and length to include more stakeholders, including the junior staff both Shane and Rozanov carted after them into the temporarily-transformed rec room, now conference room.

This was also the one meeting Roger Crowell, overall project director, deigned to join. Not in person of course. Kip had to get up early to fit out the audio conferencing so Crowell’s voice could boom through the room full of people.

“… can’t be delayed for holidays,” Crowell scorned, cutting off Kip as he reminded everyone that the core expansion team would be on R&R next week.

“It’s a requirement of the Enterprise Agreement,” Kip said calmly, though with the air of someone who had said it many, many times before. “And it’s good timing for the blast schedule. The team has been working very hard and will come back to tight timelines –”

Crowell just let out a ‘harrumph’ sound that sparked static. Shane was glad he joined the meetings from Perth. Crowell in person would be even worse, even without the spittle Shane was sure he was spilling all over his desk in a comfortable, air conditioned office in a high rise building.

“And how are we going to catch up on the week and a half you’re delayed?” Crowell demanded.

He spat ‘week and a half’ like every member of the project team had physically pissed on the timeline in front of him and he was outraged.

Shane had never been on a project that didn’t deliver at least three weeks late. He thought Kip and the team of principals had done a great job in planning out the work and recovering from delays, like Rozanov’s position being vacant for a few weeks.

“We could increase the charge density to speed up blasts.”

It was like the room was suddenly charged with a thousand volts of electricity. They all went tense.

Rozanov turned to Kent, who had spoken, with wide, furious eyes that made the younger man visibly cower.

Good. Arrogant idiot.

“Good, do that,” Crowell said, like it was a done deal.

“We cannot do that, the very recent graduate should not have suggested,” Rozanov said stonily. “We have solid plan that has already made up some days in timeline. Going too big with bad blast now would be unsafe. Could even ruin whole site, make it unstable.”

Rozanov might seem reckless on the outside – many blast engineers were once little boys who loved to blow-up and burn stuff – but he was a skilled and serious professional when it came down to it, and the safety of the team was paramount to all of his actions.

“Who –” Crowell started, rudely scoffing. “Can I get someone who speaks English to do the talking? Get the techs to sign it off.”

Shane could see Rozanov’s jaw clench tight from where he sat and his face go a little red as he angrily glared at the speaker unit.

It was racism, and unacceptable. Shane also felt anger flush through his cheeks and for a split second, considered calling Crowell out for it. He wished he was the sort of guy who had the guts and the clever, cutting words to do it.

Still, he could lend support to Rozanov professionally.

“This is Shane Hollander, principal geotechnical engineer. Rozanov is right, any stronger blasts are ill-advised. The scope and ground structure are complicated, and Rozanov’s approach is high-intensity, but within the project’s acceptable risk profile.”

“We’re talking about blowing shit up, not fucking rocket science or an investment portfolio,” Crowell’s voice rose on the speaker.

Like there was no cross over between major explosions and hard-rock mining, and rocket science. He wouldn’t dignify the comparison between the risk of killing people and the risk of a poor investment with any further thought.

“I want to be clear, sir: I cannot sign off a more aggressive approach.”

For a few moments, there was only silence. Shane’s eyes flicked up and met Rozanov’s.

He was already looking at Shane, his expression intense but not displeased.

“Ok, so we’ll proceed with the documented plan, and Shane and Ilya will provide a written update end of week on progress,” Kip jumped in.

The sound of a huff too-close to a receiver blasted through the speakers. “Just get it done.”

“Right. Next on the agenda was the excavation timings…”

***

Shane was propped up in bed at 8pm, wearing just sleep pants and reading a book, when a knock sounded at his door.

He didn’t recall a time on this project where he’d ever had a visitor to his room. But he knew exactly who to expect when he opened the door.

Rozanov slipped in smoothly, barely all the way in before Shane closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing?” Shane asked.

Rozanov raised his eyebrows. “I wanted to borrow a cup of sugar, neighbour.”

Shane rolled his eyes. That was kind of on him for asking a stupid question.

Rozanov looked around the room, though it was identical to his own. He picked up the one photo Shane had with him in a frame, one of him and his parents from when he graduated university. He studied it for a moment before putting it back, now purposefully turned away from the single bed.

He turned back to face Shane.

“We should probably talk…” Shane suggested, without much confidence.

Rozanov tilted his head, a little smirk playing on his lips.

“We can, if you like,” Rozanov answered mildly, though nothing in his expression or posture suggested he wanted to talk.

Shane swallowed harshly.

He looked so good. Smelled good too; Shane could see stray curls around his face were still damp from a shower. Rozanov had always used the same expensive bath products. His personal grooming was always immaculate.

Shane gravitated closer. Just by a couple of slow steps, but in the small space, it was a lot. Rozanov just stood by his bed, relaxed and sure of himself, like he knew he was a magnetic force.

“We already hooked up today,” Shane said. Was he protesting? Shut up Shane!

Rozanov just looked amused.

“You need more time to recover? Thought I could have my turn…”

He was in reach of the Russian now, he realised, as Rozanov settled hands over his hips, half on his pants, half touching his bare skin. He felt fingers dig gently into his flesh as Rozanov drew him close.

But he didn’t kiss him straight away. Instead, he ran proprietary hands up Shane’s torso, up over his pecs until he was squeezing Shane’s shoulders in half a massage, half feeling him up. All the while, Rozanov’s gaze moved between tracing his own movements and Shane’s eyes.

It was surprisingly intimate and sensual. It made him want to melt into Rozanov’s arms, wind himself around the other man so they were too entangled to separate. Dazedly, he realised he was already swaying forward.

Still, he caught Rozanov’s self-satisfied smirk before their lips pressed together and Shane’s eyes slipped closed.

Rozanov licked his way into Shane’s willing mouth but the kiss remained surprisingly tender, with none of the urgency of their last two kisses, but still plenty of hunger. After too long, Shane finally found the wherewithal to touch Rozanov back, sliding his hands up the back of his shirt and back down to grab the hem.

He tugged it up. He didn’t think of moving back until Rozanov separated them, stepping away just far enough to yank his own shirt the rest of the way over his head. When he reached back out for Shane, his kisses were more fleeting and teasing, distractions while he steered Shane by the waist until the back of his knees hit the side of his bed.

Rozanov was full on smirking down at him as he pulled Shane’s pants over his hips and then pushed him down to sit on the edge of the bed.

But he didn’t follow. Shane was left looking up at Rozanov, past the bulge in his trackpants and up to the devious leer on his beautiful face.

“You want my mouth,” Rozanov said. It was not a question. He carded his hand through Shane’s hair affectionately.

Shane couldn’t look away, but he could feel his dick almost throbbing in the air of the room, leaking in anticipation of what Rozanov would do next.

“Yes,” Shane answered roughly.

Rozanov hummed, like he wasn’t totally convinced.

“How bad?” he prompted, voice low enough that Shane could feel it rumble through his chest.

“Rozanov,” he tried to warn. But his attempt only seemed to delight the other man, judging by the way his eyebrows went up and he had to fight a grin.

“Hollander…” he replied mockingly, his voice decibels lower and more smooth and masculine than Shane could ever hope to replicate. He settled on glaring up at him instead.

One of Rozanov’s hands was absently rubbing his own, still-concealed hardness, and the hand in Shane’s hair drifted down to brush over his lips instead. When Rozanov tried to push two fingers into his mouth, Shane snatched his wrist to hold him still.

“What, you forget how to do it? Are you buying time?” he challenged, daring Rozanov to abandon his teasing game and suck Shane’s goddam dick before his balls turned blue.

Rozanov cupped his neck, and Shane kept a loose hold of his wrist.

“Bet I can make you come in less than 30 seconds.”

Shane felt his face heat. He had never been able to hold himself back long, with Rozanov, and it had been a while since he had a partner…

“No bet,” he gritted out.

That earned him a deep chuckle and kiss, before Rozanov dipped lower, kissing Shane again on the chest as he went to his knees.

Shane’s breath came out with a quiver.

Rozanov hovered for one second over his cock, breathing hot over the head before he swallowed him down and proceeded to humiliate Shane with the most white-hot fucking suction and enthusiastic head-bobbing he could have ever dreamt up.

“Jesus, fuck!” Shane exclaimed. He grabbed onto the back of Rozanov’s shirt for dear life, his body half-curling around his head. He couldn’t help the gasps and groans he let out as Rozanov devoured him.

It had barely been any time at all – certainly within Rozanov’s anticipated 30 seconds – when he felt his balls draw up and his stomach lurch, warning him he was about to tip over the precipice.

“Rozanov –” he tried to gasp out the warning, and the man certainly heard him, but didn’t care.

He sucked out Shane’s soul and immediately swallowed it, adding a torturous couple of licks over his slit at the end that made Shane shudder violently.

“Holy shit,” he slurred. He blinked slowly, belatedly realising the blood that should be helping to power his brain had all rushed to his lap. He’d take a couple of minutes to recover.

Shane’s legs were moving and he looked down, realising the Rozanov was taking Shane’s pants the rest of the way off. Which was probably a good thing, because if he tried to walk right now, he’d probably face plant, let alone with the added obstacle of pants twisted around his knees.

As he watched, Rozanov stood and shucked his own pants, placing his impressive, flushed erection less than a foot away from Shane, right at his eyeline. In line with his mouth, too.

Shane mustered his remaining faculties and grabbed Rozanov’s hips, drawing them close enough for him to nuzzle the warm skin of his shaft. Rozanov hissed above him, and cradled the back of Shane’s head, far more gently than one might assume someone as strong as him would.

“Da,” he encouraged. He took hold of his erection and held it steady, dragging the tip along Shane’s bottom lip, even as Shane eagerly opened his mouth wide.

“Fuuuuck,” Rozanov breathed as he fed his length into Shane’s mouth. He hollowed his cheeks and closed his eyes, every one of his senses filled with Rozanov. He moved his tongue and sucked in what was probably a clumsy way, compared to Rozanov’s other experience, but at least he could apply himself with enthusiasm.

“Wait, wait,” Rozanov said rapidly, pulling out of Shane’s mouth.

He let out a breathy laugh and Shane realised he was looking up at Rozanov with an open mouth and a deprived frown.

“Eager,” Rozanov breathed in amusement as he swiped some excess saliva from around Shane’s mouth. “Back up.”

He obediently scooted back on to the bed, followed by Rozanov. It was a tiny surface area and rather than some silly fight for dominance that would end with one or both of them falling off, he let Rozanov manhandle him (plus, it was hot). He ended up a little short of his head on the pillow, flat on his back while Rozanov loomed over him.

He was so big, he blocked out the overhead light. It made Shane shiver. Then, even worse, he choked on a half-moan, half-gasp when Rozanov pressed against him and he realised that in addition to all the warm, golden skin, he could feel the wet trail of Rozanov’s cock, from both spit and precum, against his belly.

“Are we just gonna lay here –” Shane started to ask, albeit shakily, in an attempt to keep his pride intact. But Rozanov leaned down and stole the rest of his words from his mouth.

Oh, the urgency was back. Rozanov wasn’t as unaffected by his self-imposed edging game as he pretended. His lips felt swollen and tingly, and though he didn’t want to stop, there was something else he’d like to be doing with his mouth.

Something that Rozanov was rocking into his abs.

Shane reached down, wrapping his hand around Rozanov’s length and stroking him.

Rozanov groaned against his lips and clunked their foreheads together, panting against Shane’s mouth for a moment before he drew back.

“Ok, ok,” he slurred, as though Shane was the pest hurrying him along. Excuse him if he wanted Rozanov to get off sometime before they had to go to sleep.

There wasn’t enough space for them to both lay on their backs or shuffle around, so Rozanov ended up tugging Shane down the bed. Shane bumped against the wall, one of his legs was hanging off the bed awkwardly, and Rozanov must have been centimetres away from falling off entirely, but he managed to settle so Shane could hover over his waist.

Honestly, it would have been easier and faster for Rozanov to just get up, since Shane was trapped between him and the wall. There was something sweet about the idea that he hadn’t wanted to leave the bed.

For a brief moment, he considered teasing Rozanov for a bit, the way he had done to Shane.

He got as far as flicking his tongue across the wet tip, but when Rozanov let out a deep moan, Shane’s willpower collapsed. He dived down, doing his best to make Rozanov feel the way he’d just made Shane feel.

By the continuous hum of groans and deep breathing, he was doing ok. Then Rozanov cupped his jaw and started thrusting a little. Not enough to gag him, but enough proof that he was enjoying what Shane was doing to him. The thought made Shane tremble.

“You want it?” Rozanov breathed.

‘It’ could be a few things in this context, but Shane was onboard with everything but stopping. He made a noise of agreement around his mouthful and kept bobbing.

“Fuck!” Rozanov cursed, and emptied himself into Shane’s mouth.

The sound of their hard breathing filled the room as Rozanov came down, hitched only when the bigger man pulled Shane back up to the top of the bed – fuck, why was it so hot – and shoved his tongue into his mouth.

After a gratuitous kiss that was more licking than anything else, they both rested their heads back on the pillow, their bodies twisted half on their sides.

“Fuck.” Shane broke the silence first.

“You kill me Hollander,” Rozanov replied. Pride bloomed in Shane’s chest.

Shane let himself look at Rozanov. So close and at this angle, he couldn’t admire all of him, and he wasn’t about to sit up and blatantly check him out like he kind of wanted to.

He was pretty sure Rozanov was a little bigger than he had been a few years ago, his legs slightly thicker with muscle. Cute little moles dotted his neck and torso, and he had new tattoos too. Shane reached over and traced one of the new pieces, a black sketch of three mountain peaks, about double the width versus its height. It was placed in the dead centre of his chest, right beneath his pecs.

Rozanov looked down at where Shane’s finger was tracing the peaks.

“S’new,” he said.

He wondered if it was for Russia, though he was pretty sure Rozanov grew up in Moscow, and didn’t think mountains were nearby. It kind of reminded him a little of Banff in Canada, come to think of it.

Rozanov’s fingertips tickled as they brushed over Shane’s hair, a similarly gentle touch to how he was touching his ink. Moments like this with Rozanov were few and far between (precious, he thought secretly).

“Forgot that tattoos got you hot,” Rozanov said, ruining the moment.

“Shut up,” he laughed, snatching his hand back.

“Is that why you still don’t have any?” Rozanov asked, tugging playfully on the longest ends of Shane’s hair. “Would you keep getting hard every time you saw them?”

Shane scoffed and pushed Rozanov’s shoulder, which made him tip back and flail for a second. Shane reached out and they clasped each other’s forearm, pulling Rozanov forward again so he didn’t tip off the side.

“Jesus, these beds,” Rozanov chuckled, and they kissed again through smiles.

After a few minutes of leisurely making out, Rozanov eventually pulled away and rose. Shane watched as he dressed himself. Rozanov didn’t mind, by the way he was angling himself and flexing.

“Was fun,” Rozanov said, an eerie echo of some of the first ever times they’d had together. “I will sleep well tonight.”

“Glad to help.”

“See you tomorrow morning,” Rozanov said as he headed towards the door, before turning to face Shane with a smirk.

“Just jogging, yes?”

Shane reached behind him and grabbed a pillow, flinging it towards the door Rozanov quickly escaped through with a laugh. It uselessly hit the wood and flopped to the floor.

Shane shook his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“Oh my God…” he murmured, covering his face.

Chapter 11: Chapter eleven

The next night, at 8:15, Rozanov knocked on Shane’s door again.

“So, this is going to be an ‘every night’ thing?” Shane asked as he let the blond-haired man in.

They’d had another disagreement today, with Rozanov goading him and JJ about seismic results until they had to walk away for a breather. The only reason Shane was opening his door right now was because JJ, incensed, ended up putting together the best defence for the report he’d ever seen from the younger man. Though, he had been a little concerned about the mash of French and English cursing he’d been muttering under his breath for that part of the afternoon.

Rozanov was already advancing on him, resting his hands lightly on Shane’s waist to urge him to step backwards.

“Coming makes me think better,” Rozanov said as Shane’s back touched the wall that separated the main room from the ensuite. “And is very important project stage…”

“Oh? So, this is for the project?” Shane asked sarcastically, cupping the erection Rozanov had brought in with him.

“No, that’s for you,” he replied with a purr, kissing Shane’s lips then his chin. “On your knees.”

***

“I’ve been thinking about north perimeter charge density.”

Shane was still catching his breath, slumped against Rozanov’s sweaty form on top of the covers when the Russian man spoke.

“… are you serious?”

Rozanov gave him a flat look. “Yes Hollander.”

He let his head flop back against the pillow in disbelief.

“I thought you were joking about thinking better after you come.”

“Would never joke about that,” Rozanov said as he pushed himself up to sitting. Shane resisted the urge to pull him back down to get at least five more minutes of afterglow-basking.

But rather than getting dressed, Rozanov just sat on Shane’s desk chair and opened up his laptop.

“Password?”

Shane blinked over at him.

“Seriously?”

“I can try to work out,” Rozanov said, clacking loudly. “Boring123.”

“Stop, you’ll get me locked out!” Shane complained, hoisting himself up to slap Rozanov’s hands away. He sighed and entered his password. He’d have to watch like a hawk that Rozanov didn’t send any emails or Slack anyone under his name.

Shane turned briefly to pick up his underwear as Rozanov opened some of the reading software.

“What about the north perimeter?”

“Is near that weak line you found. I think maybe we do smaller charge there. Don’t want to… knock-on?” he asked the last of Shane with a furrowed brow.

“’Domino effect’,” Shane provided.

Shane had been talking about that with JJ today, and was due to validate the potential for fracture tomorrow. It was hard not to overhear other people’s conversations in the cramped office, but they all learned to tune out what wasn’t directed at them. Maybe Rozanov was having a hard time tuning people out, or didn’t have headphones? No, he’d seen Rozanov wearing them when he’d had to circle around him to get to his desk after visiting the site or the other office.

“This is what you meant?” Rozanov asked, scrolling through long lists of charted data.

“Hang on.”

Shane reached over to the trackpad to navigate to the right data set. Rozanov pushed himself back in the chair by a few inches, presumedly to make room for Shane, he thought – until he grabbed Shane by the waist and pulled him onto his lap.

“Easier,” Rozanov immediately dismissed Shane’s protest before he could even voice it.

But it wasn’t like he was upset at the feel of Rozanov beneath him, even if he worried for the stability of the chair under the weight of two grown men.

“Here it is,” Shane said, and leaned across the desk to grab his glasses.

Rozanov huffed and shifted him so Shane was sitting across his lap at a perpendicular angle.

“Ungh, I love your glasses.”

Shane turned to him in surprise.

“My glasses? Really?”

Shane often wore contacts, especially when he knew he was going to be on site, but this was far from the first time he’d worn them in front of Rozanov.

“Mmm. You don’t know how hard it is to sit across from you and focus on stupid computers when you are wearing them,” Rozanov said.

He nuzzled into Shane’s neck, dragging his lips across his skin. Shane laughed at the ticklish feeling as his cheeks flamed red at Rozanov’s compliment. Should he wear his glasses more? Less?

Which was an issue. Bits and pieces of their… time together were slipping into work. Just glances, or references, or Shane’s new tendency to meet Rozanov’s goading with humour and relaxed response instead of teeth-grinding frustration (this afternoon’s argument notwithstanding).

It was ok so far, he thought. Sure, Kip had once again congratulated him on great teamwork, and Elena had mentioned that she had to go back to timing her breaks by the clock rather than using the culmination of their arguments as milestones through the day.

But if he started blushing and staring at Rozanov every time he put on his glasses, people would notice something was up.

Shane showed him the radar mapping and rock mass classification, even though Rozanov called it boring and told him to hurry to the point. Looking over the charge map together, they discussed the risks and impact on the rest of the schedule if they were to make changes, but ultimately agreed that dialling back the northern-most charges would make very little difference to anyone but would make the two of them sleep a whole lot better at night.

“I like this. When you actually behave like a sensible human being and listen to reason.”

Rozanov dug his fingers into Shane’s sides, a threat of being tickled or manhandled.

“Perhaps if you sat on my lap in the office, I might be more ‘sensible’.”

Shane’s heart briefly stuttered at the image, and the thought of how everyone would stare and be horrified at them.

“I dunno. It’s not that comfortable,” he joked instead, wiggling a little against the burgeoning hardness he’d been aware of at the back of his thigh for the last five minutes.

Rozanov growled playfully, dragging his teeth over Shane’s bare shoulder.

“There’s better ways to sit on it…”

Even stronger heart palpitations and a hot swoop of arousal wracked through him.

He’d never…

He wanted…

Did he?

He couldn’t answer that for himself, let alone for Rozanov.

So Shane got up, Rozanov’s hands trailing after him.

“You’ll change the charge density tomorrow, yeah? I’ll finish the official recommendation tomorrow morning for documentation.”

Rozanov looked up at him with confusion at the sudden shift in tone.

“Ok…”

Shane collected his pants with great focus, and dropped Rozanov’s in his lap with a tight, probably not reassuring smile.

Rozanov slipped back into his clothes, looking back at him with a furrowed brow often enough that he opened his cupboard door and busied himself sorting his three t-shirts before plucking one up to put on.

“See you tomorrow,” Rozanov said as he paused at the door.

“Yeah.”

With a final, puzzled look, he left.

Shane cringed, burying his face in his clean shirt.

***

The next couple of days were busy as the blast and geotech teams rolled out the development blasts on the expansion site. Wilson and Taylor were permanently on Shane’s heels, as were Barrett and Kent on Rozanov’s.

The days were long and Shane reviewed readings in his donga at night, so as not to delay anything the next day.

He thought it would be a good excuse to shorten (but not give up) his illicit visits from Rozanov and avoid any requests or conversations that might make him squirm.

But Rozanov took to laying on Shane’s bed, shamelessly nude, playing on his phone while Shane worked.

It was strangely domestic, and distracting. And sometimes led to a second round.

On the last day before the core team was due to go on R&R, Shane was running a full diagnostic of all the monitors and measurements available to him to make sure that there wouldn’t be a disaster as the coverage team continued a small, continued series of development blasts in his and Rozanov’s absence.

The other principal was leaning over his shoulder, muttering about numbers and charts, though Shane knew he had a good understanding of everything on his screen.

“I’m not seeing the need for any adjustments,” Shane finally concluded.

Both of Rozanov’s hands clasped his shoulders and shook him jovially.

“What did I tell you, huh?”

“What would we have done without you, Rozanov,” Shane said wryly.

“Barrett can handle the rest,” Rozanov said, and righted himself to point at Barrett directly. “And only call me if there is emergency.”

Barrett held up both hands in surrender.

“I’ll do my best to not interrupt your revelry.”

Oh. Rozanov hadn’t mentioned any plans, but they hadn’t really talked about anything that wasn’t work. And he’d gone longer than he was supposed to without time off. He probably did have plans. Extrovert, life-of-the-party, fun plans. With other people.

“…Hollander might answer his email. But do not let Kent out of your sight,” Rozanov was finishing warning Barrett, as though Kent was not sitting two metres away and gaping at him in offence.

“I do not want to be disturbed.”

Chapter 12: Chapter twelve

Canada, three years ago

Shane glanced down at his unanswered text message.

‘I can be over in 5?’

Sent 15 minutes ago.

They hadn’t been together for a week; Shane was getting jittery in anticipation. Which was silly, because he had gone a lot longer without sex in the past, but now he was like, keyed in to expect it. No man should get excited by the generic bedspreads of a work camp bedroom, but those ugly patterns had so often been the backdrop for Rozanov’s gorgeous body, that Shane’s brain had made unfortunate connections between the two.

Maybe even beyond sex, Shane had found himself… almost missing Rozanov.

The other man hadn’t just been absent from their night-time rendezvous, he’d been out of sorts at work too. Not as spirited during the day, his sarcasm having a slightly meaner edge.

It’s possible it was work that had Rozanov down. The blast team’s role in the project had wound down, and the work that was left for them wasn’t exciting or big in scale. They’d probably be reducing the team soon (which didn’t make Shane’s stomach clench). But that was project-based work! You did your thing, got paid and moved on to the next project. Rozanov was very employable, capable of much more intense work than the site in Canada had to offer him now.

If he was thinking about leaving… God, Shane would actually miss him. Not just the regular sex, but he was funny. Fun. He enjoyed being around him, when he wasn’t being mean and spikey, which was most of the time, until very recently.

Would Rozanov miss Shane back? He knew Rozanov thought he was kind of boring. And he was, which Shane was mostly ok with. Would Rozanov move on to the next, slightly-less-boring guy to fuck around with?

He shook his head. It wasn’t really his business, was it?

But looking back at their thread, he noted it was triple blue, including tonight’s unanswered message and his ignored invite from two days ago.  

Shane was officially worried.

While it wasn’t likely that the reason for Rozanov’s non-response was that he was laying unconscious on his floor, Shane would feel better if he knew he was ok. So he pulled on his shoes, his parka and his beanie and stepped out for a walk.

He headed straight for the sheltered area behind the central cafeteria that the smokers favoured. Even though he shouldn’t be smoking, Shane hoped he’d spot Rozanov there chatting with other guys, to save him the decision as to whether or not he’d go to Rozanov’s room and knock or even worse, try to peer through his window.

As soon as he turned the corner, even 10 meters away, he recognised Rozanov’s form, alone in the low light. He wore his own parka and a beanie, and the red glint of the end of his cigarette caught his eye.

He was fine.

Shane should turn around before he was spotted.

But before he did, Rozanov took out his phone and the glow of the screen lit up his face. He took another drag of his cigarette as he looked at the screen.

So his phone wasn’t broken, or left behind somewhere. He just wasn’t responding to Shane.

That annoyed him. How hard was it to text back ‘not feeling it tonight’?

He headed towards Rozanov, not sure what he was going to say –

Rozanov shoved his phone back in his pocket, his face sad. Sad.

It made him freeze in place. He’d never seen a sad Rozanov before.

Then Rozanov looked up and he was caught.

His face locked down so quick Shane would have doubted he’d ever seen anything but the flat look Rozanov fixed him with, if he hadn’t had a chance to see him unobserved.

Shane slowly approached Rozanov, more hesitant now but running away without saying anything would be weirder.

“Hey.”

That didn’t garner a response.

“I was just…” Shane gestured loosely around him, as though taking a walk after dark in the cold is something that Shane ever did. “Um, you doing ok?”

“Fine,” he said gruffly. Finally, an answer.

“Really? Cause… you seem upset,” Shane probed rather lamely.

“Oh, do I?”

His tone was dripping with warning: ‘do not approach’, ‘do not probe’.

‘Leave now’.

Silence lingered and Rozanov glared into the middle distance.

“You haven’t answered my texts,” Shane said, flushing a little when he realised it sounded like a complaint. “You usually do, I thought maybe… I dunno…”

“I’m not in the mood Hollander.”

If the air wasn’t already icy, that would have chilled it by several degrees.

“For – no, I know, that’s ok. I just… you haven’t seemed like yourself?” Shane tried again. “And, you know, if you want to talk about anything…”

“Talk?”

Shane shrugged helplessly. “Yeah. I’ll listen.”

Rozanov’s hand hesitated as it rose, cigarette between fingers, back to his mouth. His eyes flicked to Shane and then down.

He was wavering.

Shane took a risk, stepping closer and putting a hand on Rozanov’s shoulder, squeezing in an attempt at comfort.

Rozanov heaved a weary sigh and just as Shane was bracing to be shaken off, Rozanov’s head tilted so his mouth and nose were pressed against the back of Shane’s hand. He lingered there with his eyes squeezed shut, like he was starved for touch. Rozanov and Shane touched a lot, but maybe it was a kind touch he’d been waiting for, one without expectations or strings attached.

Shane was suddenly filled with the impulse to hug the man.

It kind of seemed like he needed it.

The sound of a cough from somewhere further behind them made Shane jump and snatch his hand away like he’d been burned.

Too late he realised the sound had come from far away, accompanied by already-fading footsteps of someone walking buildings away, never in their line of sight.

But just like that, an even stonier Rozanov was sneering at him, any hint of openness gone.

Guilt bubbled in Shane’s gut like a poison.

“Sorry, I…” Shane reached for words, even as he felt the gaping distance between them. “If you still want to talk, I can come back to your room… if you want?”

“No, I do not want,” Rozanov said, his Russian accent thick, making the words sound even more clipped.

“Look, I know it pisses you off when I –”

He was cut off by a harsh string of Russian.

“Not everything is about you Hollander! So annoying,” Rozanov complained, agitatedly stubbing out his cigarette. “Your constant whining and being nervous is boring.”

Well. That was like a punch to the gut.

His eyes burned and Shane willed, with everything he had, to not let any tears fall.

“Just fuck off. Before someone sees you with me and it spoils your precious reputation,” Rozanov said bitterly, looking anywhere but at Shane.

Shane backed away. “Fine. Fuck.”

He waited until there was a building between them before swiping away his tears.

***

The next three days were spend studiously ignoring each other in the office and whenever their paths crossed on site.

On the fourth day, Rozanov was gone.

***

Shane was waiting by his phone. He’d taken to checking their stagnant thread hourly when he wasn’t at work, which was mostly short messages like ‘leaving now’ and ‘unlock your door’.

He’d tried to type out a message.

But what would he say?

‘Hope everything is ok xoxo’

Or would that be too annoying, too boring?

Rozanov had been clear how he felt about Shane. And in being so blunt, it was even more painfully obvious that their ‘relationship’ had just been a cure for boredom, a little bit of fun woven out of sub-optimal options.

Just thinking about Rozanov making do with Shane, despite his apparent dislike for him, made his face burn and his stomach churn.

Still, he couldn’t help but check the thread, looking for a new message or three dots to suggest Rozanov was thinking about him too.

He even stalked him on LinkedIn, but there was no update about a new job.

Shane slammed his phone into his bedding, feeling desperately pathetic. The darkness and cold of Canada weren’t helping his mood either.

Maybe a change of scenery would help…

Chapter 13: Chapter thirteen

The tiny airport waiting area was a sea of fluorescent yellow and orange. It always was – the tiny airport was serviced by privately chartered flights organised for the FIFO workers. Men ready to fly out spilled out the doors, smoking and talking near the entrance.

Shane was sitting next to Hayden, immensely looking forward to the moment, two and a half hours from now, when he’d be free of the crowds and unpacking his suitcase in the quiet of his own place.

Hayden’s chatter was interrupted by the loud ringing of his phone, which Shane knew was his wife Jackie’s personalised ring tone.

“Hey babe!” Hayden answered cheerily, nudging Shane before he got up to try and take the call somewhere a little more private.

His seat was empty for about ten seconds before Rozanov dropped into it.

“Hollander.”

“Rozanov.”

The blond man stared at him thoughtfully, long enough that Shane wanted to squirm in discomfort. Was anyone else looking at them, thinking it was weird Rozanov was trying to engage him in a staring contest?

“L-looking forward to some time off?” Shane asked, to break the silence and Rozanov’s pensiveness.

“Mmm, yes.”

Usually you couldn’t get Rozanov to stop talking, or teasing!

“You’re in Perth, right? Staying there, I mean?” Shane asked.

“Yes,” Rozanov replied. “Same for you?”

“Yeah. My parents are in Sydney, so sometimes I visit them on R&R. Not this time. It’s another four and a half hour flight, and the time difference isn’t much, but it can be a rough way to start R&R,” Shane prattled.

Rozanov made a noise of acknowledgement.

He was the one that sat down next to Shane. Did he have nothing else to say?

“You have house? Apartment?” Rozanov finally asked.

“Uh, no. I’m just staying in corporate housing, near Elizabeth Quay.”

“On the Esplanade?”

Shane’s eyebrows rose. There was no way Rozanov knew enough about Perth to be able to ask that, unless…

“You too?”

“Neighbours again,” Rozanov grinned. “Level 9.”

“Level 6,” he returned.

“Ha, I am on top.”

Shane rolled his eyes at the innuendo and subtly (he hoped) looked around to see if they were getting any strange looks.

They weren’t. Everyone was excited for their own plans and listening to music or talking to each other while they waited.

“We should share cab. Is most… environmental,” Rozanov said.

“Environmentally-friendly, yeah. Can’t argue that.”

His palms felt sweaty, but he couldn’t wipe them against his thighs without notice. Ilya Rozanov was going to be in the same building as him for the next week. Without the insulated feel of the camp and the intrinsic boundaries of their remote-facing dongas, that kind of proximity felt odd. Different. Intimate.

Would he knock on Shane’s door at night?

Would he answer?

Hayden came back then and started to quibble with Rozanov about him taking his chair, which only made Rozanov sprawl his legs wider and get more comfortable.

Shane held up his hands when Hayden looked expectantly at him, refusing to get involved.

“It was mine!” Hayden complained back at Rozanov again.

“What is phrase? Snoozing and losing, you are familiar with this?”

“My bag is right here!”

“You can move it, I won’t stop you.”

“You move Rozanov.”

“I am tired from all the work this week. Unless Hollander wants to sit on my lap so you take his seat…”

Shane shot him a sharp glare. “No thank you.”

Rozanov shrugged.

“You should stand, Pike. Too much sitting is bad for you. You are safety-man, you do not know this?”

Hayden’s cheeks were flushed from the argument. They should call that Rozanov-Red, he had a way of eliciting that shade out of even the most balanced and calm person.

“We’ll be boarding in a couple of minutes anyway, let’s go to the gate,” Shane offered, standing up.

“Fine,” Hayden ground out, throwing one more look at Rozanov before stomping away.

“Thanks for that,” Shane said to Rozanov lowly.

He got an angelic smile in return. “See you in Perth.”

***

Shane found Rozanov again at the Perth airport, in an artful slouch against a pillar with a duffle at his feet. The man walked beside him to the line of taxis outside, let Shane give the address, and neither bothered with conversation for the car ride.

Shane had his key card in hand to let them into the building, and the elevator. He scanned it with a ‘beep’ and hit ‘6’, before stepping back to give Rozanov the space to tap in his own floor.

He continued to lean against the back of the elevator, watching Shane. The doors closed and the lit-up numbers climbed.

At ‘6’, the doors opened and Shane stepped out. As he had started to suspect, Rozanov stepped out after him.

Familiar, anticipatory nerves fluttered in his stomach as he led them to his apartment. Once inside, Shane put his bag down and toed-off his boots, and heard the sound of Rozanov doing the same before he turned around.

His tongue felt too big for his mouth, and words trapped in his throat. This felt different. This wasn’t even really his place, just a soulless rental, but here was Ilya Rozanov standing in front of him. No one else around, no deadlines. Nothing to worry about. Just them.

“Do you, uh, want some lunch or something?” Shane asked wanly.

“After,” Rozanov said, making Shane’s pulse jump.

Rozanov unbuttoned his work shirt, watching Shane all the while, before letting it fall carelessly to the floor and pulling off his singlet to follow onto the pile.

Shane belatedly started undoing his own buttons too, but was not quick and nimble enough. Rozanov guided him back until his butt hit the kitchen island, pinning him there to thoroughly kiss him.

He lost focus on his clothing in favour of Rozanov’s tongue in his mouth and wrapping his arms around the other man and greedily pressing his hands against bare skin.

The material of his shirt tugged as Rozanov took over undressing Shane. He was not shy about it either, exploring every bit of revealed skin like a prize.

“… Hollander?”

And he was asking him something.

“Hmm?”

Rozanov tilted his head back to rights from where he’d been exposing his throat for Rozanov’s attention in a way that was probably more slutty than he intended.

“You have full size bed, yes?”

“Uh, yeah. It came with the place.”

Rozanov breathed a laugh.

“It did, hmm? I’d like to see you spread out on it.”

“You would?”

It shouldn’t be a surprise – of course Rozanov was attracted to him and liked to see him naked. He knew that. Just, the request was… startling.

Rozanov was nodding at him with a soft kind of smile.

“Now?”

“Oh, yeah,” Shane said, jolting into action a little too quickly. He unthinkingly grabbed Rozanov’s hand and tugged him behind him toward the bedroom. Rozanov adjusted his grip and squeezed his hand, and did not let go.

Chapter 14: Chapter fourteen

Shane was stirred from sleep by the sound of his phone ringing. He fumbled for it on his bedside table, and by the time he held it up to look at, he had a notification saying ‘Missed Call’ but focused on the white numbers: 7:12am.

He groaned. The first couple of days of R&R were the only days he let himself sleep until 8. Who the heck was ruining this? Was it JJ, was something wrong on site?

He blinked as the phone screen lit up with a call again.

‘Ilya Rozanov’.

He swiped to answer.

“What?”

They’d only ever called or texted each other for professional purposes. If you could count Rozanov telling him ‘hurry up’ when he was on his way to the site or back to the office or reacting to Shane’s messages with emojis, as being ‘professional’.

“I want breakfast.”

“How is that my problem?”

They had ordered in lunch yesterday afternoon, after, using Rozanov’s phone. So he knew that Rozanov knew how to do it.

“Hollander,” Rozanov said, like he was shocked and disappointed. “You don’t care about my needs? Making sure I stay big and strong?”

“No.”

Rozanov tutted.

“You are very poor representative of city. I do not know where is good to go.”

Shane sighed out loud, even though he was smiling into the speaker. It’s not like he’d get back to sleep now anyway.

And there was no one around to comment on how strange it was to see them sitting together, or anyone that would ask why they were leaving the same building so early to have a meal together.

“I’ll be ready in 20. Meet you downstairs.”

***

It turned out that Rozanov’s ‘invitation’ to breakfast was also a demand to accompany him on his errands. A stupefied Shane followed him to Hay Street mall where Rozanov brought new socks and got a prescription, condoms and lube from the pharmacy, all of which Shane politely pretended not to see, while having a small heart attack two aisles away.

He pulled Shane into an electronics store and brought a smart watch, recommending Shane do the same. He declined until he could do his own research, but at least Rozanov seemed to have intended to purchase the watch. He also brought new Nikes, seemingly on a whim.

Shane got (some) of his own back by browsing a stationary store for 20 minutes and getting a cool new clipboard with a case for storage and more of the retractable black pens he liked. Rozanov was bored stupid after five minutes, but he deserved it – if only because Shane was pretty sure Rozanov was responsible for taking and losing at least half of Shane’s pens.

He also made Rozanov pay for lunch.

By mid-afternoon, Shane was helping to schlep Rozanov’s groceries up into his apartment, which was almost identical to his own. For a moment he hovered by the kitchen island, thinking maybe he should leave now the work was done… He helped himself to a ginger ale that he’d added to Rozanov’s basket as he considered his next step.

“Sit down. You can watch me set up my watch, so you know how to do yours,” Rozanov half-ordered

Maybe not as surprising as he’d prefer, Shane did what he was told.

And ok, the features did seem pretty cool.

“Do you think it picks up what is sex or what is exercise?” Rozanov asked, as he tapped through the watch touch screen fifteen minutes later.

“Jesus, Rozanov,” Shane shook his head with a snort.

“What?”

“That’s the worst, most un-sexy segue I’ve ever heard.”

Rozanov scoffed and rolled his body in an unfairly sinuous way, landing so his knees were on the floor and his torso over the cushion, so he just had to slide a little further to plant himself between Shane’s willingly-parted legs.

“Nothing I say is ‘un-sexy’.”

They met each other halfway in a kiss, lingering until the hands Rozanov had been rubbing up and down Shane’s thighs started to slide up to his waistband.

Shane relaxed back against the couch as Rozanov leaned down, nuzzling his hardening cock through his jeans. He couldn’t help but weave his hands into Rozanov’s soft curls, scratching gently against his scalp in a way he knew the other man loved.

Rozanov purred, not unlike a cat, and undid Shane’s button and fly. He shoved his face against Shane’s cock, still concealed by his underwear but very much on board with the attention.

A little beep sounded from Rozanov’s wrist. It took a second for Shane to process what it was.

He was helpless against the pleased smile that came when Rozanov quickly undid the band and dropped the new tech to the couch, so it wouldn’t betray his escalating heartrate as they kept going.

“Wait,” Shane laughed. “Was that a malfunction? Cause we’re not having sex yet, and you’re not exercising, so what was –”

Rozanov growled playfully, though there was a dusting of pink on his cheeks, and grabbed Shane’s hips, tugging him further down the lounge and a little off-balance so he’d shut up.

 “Be careful or I’ll strap it on you, and see what raises your heart rate,” Rozanov threatened. The way Shane’s heart was thudding in his chest, the way it always did when Rozanov was this close to him, was enough to make him stop laughing and give up further taunts.

Shane threaded a hand back into Rozanov’s hair. “Your little gadget interrupted something,” he reminded the man looming over him.

“Oh?”

Rozanov held his eyes as he trailed a hand down to cup Shane’s dick through his undone jeans.

“Mmmm, I suppose I could get you off with my mouth…” Rozanov considered. “Or I could fuck you.”

A hot bolt of raw want went through Shane, before being swarmed by nerves.

“Would you like that?” Rozanov asked lowly, nuzzling into Shane’s throat, giving him the kind reprieve of not demanding eye contact.

Did he want that?

YES.

No.

Probably yes. Rozanov was likely very good at it. He knew that much, even if it twisted his belly with irrational jealousy.

But… it always struck Shane as shockingly intimate. The preparation, the positions… surely it required a lot of patience and could go wrong? What if, despite his deepest most unspoken fantasies… Shane hated it? If it hurt, would his partner stop?

“You let someone fuck you before?” Rozanov asked, his voice cutting through the buzzing in Shane’s ears.

He shook his head silently.

The warm puff of air he felt against his throat made goosebumps spring up over his arms.

“You touch yourself there?” Rozanov went on, his voice pitched so much lower. Shane felt sweaty. Was he sweaty?

His breath hitched in his throat.

“You do,” Rozanov decided, finally pulling back enough for Shane to be pinned by his blue eyes. “You like it?”

“I haven’t… I mean, yeah, but… “

God, let the couch swallow him. He did not have the courage to tell Rozanov that he had occasionally, with a lot of lube and shaky fingers, fingered himself. Nor did he want to admit he had the light skin-coloured dildo, currently hidden in a box, that he had used a grand total of three times. The feeling of fullness had been pleasing, but the amount of preparation he needed to do, physically and emotionally, to use it wasn’t worth it most of the time.

Rozanov settled back a little, his face more serious.

“You want to fuck?”

He could say no, and the other man would drop it…

Shane nodded.

“But not now?”

Shane ducked his head.

“Hey, is ok,” Rozanov crooned softly. He tilted Shane’s head back up so he could press a sweet kiss against his lips.

Shane gathered up his courage and spoke, before nerves could steal away his voice.

“Tomorrow?”

Rozanov’s eyebrows went up with surprise as the request registered, before a pleased, hungry glint took its place.

“Da. Tomorrow. But for now…”

Shane gasped as Rozanov cupped his still-hard dick, and let himself get lost in the feeling.

***

The two men ended up sprawled over the carpet of the living room after a rather passionate exchange. Shane thought he could easily drift off here, even with Rozanov’s spread knee resting on his stomach, where it had flopped after Shane rolled off after finishing him with his mouth.

The trill of a phone sounded, and Shane recognised it as the customised ringtone he set for –

“It’s just my mum. I’ll call her back later,” he said as Rozanov lifted his leg to let him stand up. He let his knee flop down onto Shane again and Shane absently brought up his hand, stroking over the sparse hair over Rozanov’s knee and the bottom of his thigh.

He considered scooting himself back up so he was side by side with Rozanov, rather than lingering with his head at waist-level, but it felt like that would be admitting too much, or breaking the softness of this moment and prompting them both to get up and get back to real life.

“Your family is back in Russia, right?” he asked, tracing slow swirls over Rozanov’s skin with his fingernail.

“Da. Kind of.”

“… what does that mean?”

“Most of them are dead.”

He said it bluntly, but with a kind of flatness that felt forced. Shane’s fingers stopped for a second as he processed what Rozanov had said. He restarted with two fingers stroking his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Can I ask…”

When? How? What did Rozanov do without family? Shane was so close with his parents, if not geographically, he couldn’t imagine…

“My mother died when I was young. And my father… he died three years ago.”

Shane’s movements went a little wonky again as he did the math.

“While I was in Canada, yes,” Rozanov answered his unasked question.

Oh.

“Is why I had to leave,” he added, confirming the conclusion Shane had already drawn.

“I had wondered,” Shane said softly. How many emotions, how much doubt and resentment were eased with the truth? Rozanov had been so withdrawn before he left, and Shane had thought it was because of him…

Of course, it didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. He could have been worried about his father and grown to dislike Shane at the same time. And the ghost of Rozanov’s words still haunted him in his most self-conscious moments. Maybe they would sting less, knowing the weight that had been on Rozanov’s shoulders when he’d lashed out at Shane?

“Yes,” Rozanov said, and Shane could feel a new tension in his thigh. He stopped tracing light, nonsensical figures and wrapped his hand around the top of his knee in a loose grip, wary that Rozanov might try to pull away. Still, he stroked his thumb in a slow, what he hoped was soothing, motion.

“There was much to do, at home. It was…”

He was pretty sure the next muttered words were Russian.

“And my brother…. Took time.”

“Are you still in contact with your brother?” Shane asked, pretty sure he knew the answer already, from Rozanov’s previous tone.

“No. We had fight. Bad fight,” Rozanov corrected. “I did not look pretty, after.”

I wish you had called me, was what Shane thought immediately. Though what would he have done? Flown to Russia, nursed Rozanov back to health? They weren’t like that. Maybe he could have just told him…

“I’m sorry,” Shane said. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Under his hand, Shane felt Rozanov relax a little.

“Neither did you,” Rozanov said quietly.

He didn’t have to clarify what he meant. The exchange they’d had.

It somehow felt better, knowing Rozanov remembered it all too.

“I was asshole.”

His scalp tickled as Rozanov brushed over the tips of his hair, before sliding his hand through the black strands properly.

“Well…” Shane tilted his head toward Rozanov. “I’m pretty used to that.”

Rozanov hissed playfully and tugged on his hair.

“It’s ok,” Shane added, just to be sure. “I’m sorry too.”

“We are… better now, I think,” Rozanov added, with a hint of hesitation. “Than we were before.”

Their affectionate stroking, of Shane’s hair and Rozanov’s knee, had fallen into sync. It was really nice; he’d never shared this kind of casual intimacy with anyone before.

“Yeah. We are.”

Chapter 15: Chapter fifteen

By 8:30 in the morning the next day, Shane had firmly entered ‘waiting mode’.

He’d been up at 6 and had gone for a run to try to work out the nervous energy already gathering, before jumping in the shower to wash himself thoroughly. He’d probably shower again in the afternoon, before he went up to Rozanov’s…

There was only a little meal prepping he needed to do, and some laundry – but he was quickly out of chores.

He tried a book, but couldn’t focus. He tried a podcast, but stopped once he realised he had no idea what was being said. He opened his work email, but just ended up flagging things to review later when he had his brain online.

So he ended up jittering around his apartment like an idiot, wandering room to room.

He was doom-scrolling Instagram when a text popped up.

‘You coming up?’

‘Or cumming up’

😘

Shane stared at the messages. He’d just… imagined it at night.

But this was perfect.

He was just in a t-shirt and shorts, should he change? Maybe he should shower again?

He settled for a rapid, second brushing of his teeth as he shot off the reply: ‘I’ll be up in 5 minutes’.

***

Shane rubbed his sweaty palms against the fabric of his shorts before he knocked on Rozanov’s door.

It opened a couple of seconds later to Rozanov’s shirtless form, trackpants slung low on his hips. God, he looked good.

“Hey,” Shane greeted breathlessly.

“Hi.”

His voice was so smooth and deep it made Shane break out in goosebumps. And his eyes… they were hungry. Almost twinkling with delight too, which made him even more beautiful, and alluring.

For a last second of respite and to take a breath, Shane turned sideways and kicked off his slides by the door.  

Before his second shoe was all the way off, Rozanov was blanketing his back, wrapping his arms around Shane’s midsection and planting a kiss on the side of his throat.

Shane sagged back slightly in his hold, immediately taken by how strong Rozanov was. He could take all of Shane’s weight, even carry him to the bedroom if he wanted.

Shane had been warring between excited and nervous all morning, but this was tipping the scales and rapidly stiffening his half-hard dick.

Rozanov was making a coordinated assault, slipping a hand up his shirt, his breath and nose tickling along Shane’s hairline and ear, and grinding himself into Shane’s backside.

He let out a noise at the feel of Rozanov’s erection pressing between his cheeks.

“You still want?”

“Yes,” Shane breathed. It was easier to brace his arms against the wall and push his ass back wantonly when he didn’t have to make eye contact with Rozanov at the same time. “I want. I… I really want.”

Rozanov let out a pleased sound, right under his ear, and ground harder against him, grabbing Shane’s hip with one hand to hold him steady.

His other hand was massaging Shane’s pec. He paused to playfully pinch Shane’s nipple and huffed a laugh at his responding squeak.

The hand on his hip slipped under his waistband, tugging one side down.

“We gonna do it here?” Shane gasped. He was mostly joking, though the idea of fucking in the doorway was hot, if a little advanced for him.

Rozanov grunted and he was abruptly spun around and his mouth claimed in a bruising kiss.

Then Rozanov swooped his hands down around the back of Shane’s thighs and lifted him into the air.

“Fuck,” Shane hissed as Rozanov forced his legs to wrap around his hips. He clung to the larger man both for survival and to rub himself against him like a cat in heat.

Shane lost himself in a kiss as Rozanov moved them through the lounge towards the bedroom. But where he had been expecting to be thrown backwards onto the bed, he found himself instead released onto his feet in front of the doorway, Rozanov staying close to hold him steady.

“Wha’?”

“No clothes in bedroom,” Rozanov said, stepping back and smoothly dropping his trackpants. He wasn’t wearing underwear and he was hard.

Shane couldn’t be blamed for being momentarily distracted by his swaying cock then his perfect, round ass as he strolled nonchalantly into his room and sat back on the bed, propped up by pillows.

“That’s not a rule,” Shane protested.

Rozanov cocked an eyebrow. “Is my rule. For cute Canadian boys with gorgeous freckles and a hot mouth.”

He finished his little house rule with a leer that made Shane blush and want to grin like a loon.

Shane huffed and bit his lip, but his smile was probably obvious, and complied.

As always, he took the time to neatly drape his clothes over a chair, since he didn’t like re-dressing in clothes that had been crumpled on the floor.

Even though Rozanov had seen him naked dozens of times, he was keenly watching Shane’s every move and stroking himself as he shed his few layers. He threw in a low whistle as Shane pulled down his underwear. It flustered him a little – he wasn’t some ridiculous Adonis like Rozanov, and nothing about his stilted movements was sexy or teasing. But standing in front of the bed let him take his own fill of Rozanov.

They rarely had the space to admire each other like this – usually they were pressed so close as soon as they got naked, that they only got up-close glimpses of each other. That had its advantages of course, but now he took a minute to take in everything Rozanov had so confidently on display.

He was built and broad, a perfect canvas for the tattoos Shane had traced with his fingers and his tongue. His gaze traced down the trail of dark hair that he’d kissed, leading down his hard length and thick thighs he wanted wrapped around him.

Rozanov drew his hand slowly up and down his cock.

“Don’t worry, it will fit,” Rozanov teased.

“M’not worried,” Shane murmured. He wasn’t. Nervous, sure. But horny-as-fuck was a better descriptor right now, which perhaps was dulling his common sense about what was easily achievable for those nine, hard inches.

He climbed up on the bed and was greedily grabbed by the blond man and flipped on his back with a gasp. His train of thought was quickly derailed by the series of filthy kisses Rozanov initiated, until he was half-melted into the bedding, panting and dazedly blinking up at the figure looming over him.

“Any way you want to do it?” Rozanov asked in a rough voice, softening the blunt question with an absent-minded kiss to the hollow of his throat.

“Um,” Shane floundered, mind completely blank of a sensible answer. “Any way that you prefer it is fine.”

He both heard and felt the short laugh Rozanov breathed against his jaw as he dropped his head and echoed ‘is fine’ in a low voice.

“Hollander, I have pictured you every way,” Rozanov purred, now catching Shane’s eyes with pure lust shining through. “And we can do much better than ‘fine’.”

Shane’s answering shiver turned Rozanov’s grin lecherous. He rolled his hips down so he rested in the cradle of Shane’s thighs and kissed him again. Shane ran his hands up Rozanov’s arms, enjoying the flex of his muscles.

Rozanov released his lips, but only leaned back a couple of inches to speak.

“Like this? Ok?” he asked softly.

Shane nodded jerkily and craned his chin up so Rozanov would kiss him again.

Eventually Rozanov leaned away from him, which he protested, belatedly realising he was collecting supplies from his nightstand.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I will not leave you,” Rozanov crooned with amusement.

He should probably be embarrassed, but instead he just felt hazy, almost a little tipsy. Drunk on skin contact and pheromones maybe.

Rozanov shifted his weight back and a sound was punched out of Shane’s throat when he abruptly pushed Shane’s thighs up so his knees were at his chest, completely exposing him to Rozanov’s hungry eyes.

“Beautiful…” Rozanov muttered. “Here, here hold…”

Shane squeezed his eyes closed as Rozanov coaxed him into holding his own legs apart and his ears started to buzz as soon as he heard the sound of the cap coming off the lube Rozanov now held.

A distant part of his brain registered that Rozanov was murmuring to him as he stretched him open, but Shane was only made up of sensation and insensible sounds.

It never felt anything like this when he tried it alone.

Suddenly he was empty and his eyes shot open.

“Ilya…” he muttered, and he was blanketed by the other man, reassuring kisses calming the stupidly bereft feeling that quickly welled up. Rozanov moved him effortlessly so his legs were curled around Rozanov’s hips, leaving Shane able to wrap his arms around his shoulders.

Then Rozanov reached between them, lining himself up against Shane’s entrance.

His face swam into clear focus, his eyes drilling into Shane’s.

“Ok?”

Shane nodded jerkily.

The slow press transformed into a feeling of fullness that brought tears to Shane’s eyes.

Rozanov’s moan cut off suddenly.

“You – am I hurting you?”

“No!” Shane gasped, shaking his head and tightening his hold of Rozanov in case he tried to pull away. “Keep going.”

He could feel Rozanov watching him closely as he bottomed out, which made Shane moan and Rozanov breathe out shakily.

“Still ok?” Rozanov asked, with a tremor in his voice.

“Fuck yes,” he answered, and Rozanov grinned a second before he kissed Shane. Then his hips moved.

“Ahh!” Shane gasped, his head bowing back against the pillows built up behind him. If it was this intense the entire time, he’d last maybe three minutes.

Rozanov was everywhere.

Rozanov was inside of him.

Shane shivered again and then Rozanov’s tongue was in his mouth. He kept kissing him until Shane was unable to respond, his mouth slack as he gasped and moaned between increasingly hard thrusts.

Rozanov pulled back a little, giving him more leverage and the ability to look between Shane’s face and where they were joined, like he couldn’t decide which to focus on. He grunted and changed his angle just a little –

“Holy shit!”

Rozanov was nailing the spot that sent shockwaves of pleasure up his spine and down his legs. He clenched hard around the man, his fingers digging into Rozanov’s biceps, and his slapping hips worked faster as Shane panted at the unstoppable surge of sensation wracking him.

“Like that?” Rozanov grunted.

He couldn’t respond except to let out the whimpering sounds that felt like they came from deep in his gut.

Shane had barely given his dick a thought since Rozanov settled between his legs, save for some tantalising brushes against Rozanov’s hard stomach. But now he realised it was throbbing and leaking, and felt like –

Like –

Fuck, he was going to come.

“Oh God,” he slurred, looking between them in disbelief. He drew tight like a bowstring.

“Are you –”

Shane pulsed and with a cry, spilled all over his stomach without being touched.

“Fuck,” Rozanov barked as he stared at the mess between them, his hips moving faster and losing their rhythm. “Hollander, God.”

He was so dazed in surprise and twitching from aftershocks that he almost missed the moment Rozanov tensed and froze before a shudder when through him. That meant he was coming inside him, Shane realised with an echoing pulse of heat.

Rozanov slumped over with a drawn-out moan, still inside him, and indulged in a sloppy but sweet kiss.

Shane pressed back. He knew that once he had all his faculties back, he’d do his characteristic over-thinking and probably develop anxiety over how intense today had been, and what it would mean for their ‘colleagues-with-benefits’ relationship and his own sexuality and emotional wellbeing.

But for now, he could just bask in the fact that Ilya Rozanov had made him come his brains out.

***

“So,” Rozanov drew out with a smug grin as he finished running a warm, wet cloth over Shane’s torso.

“Yeah,” Shane said mildly, even though none of his limbs were fully cooperating with his brain yet.

“Just ‘yeah’? Cause you killed me Hollander.”

He exhaled a short laugh, opening his eyes to smile at Rozanov.

“That was so fucking hot.”

 “Da,” Rozanov agreed, slumping down next to Shane, one arm stretched above them so he could brush his fingertips over Shane’s brow and smooth through his hair. “Could tell you liked it. Did you know you were going to come so fast, hands-free?”

“Shut up,” Shane grumbled.

“No, is hot. You took me with you,” Rozanov reminded him, his other hand coming up to Shane’s chest. He lightly circled his fingers around Rozanov’s wrist.

“Maybe next time we’ll last more than five minutes,” Shane joked.

Rather than take another teasing stab at Shane for being the one with the worst stamina, Rozanov just smiled and hummed softly in agreement, leaning in just enough to softly press their lips together.

It would be so easy to drift off, even with the sun lighting the room through the partially open blinds, as his nervous system calmed down and Rozanov’s rhythmic stroking of his hair soothed him.

“Your hair is getting longer,” Rozanov murmured.

“Mmmm, I need a haircut,” Shane acknowledged.

“You have somewhere good here?”

“I go to ‘Just Cuts’.”

Rozanov’s hand stilled in his hair and Shane peeked through squinted eyes to see his face twist in a confused frown.

“’Just… Cuts’,” he repeated with disdain.

Such a snob.

“Yeah, it’s a franchise. You just walk in and they cut your hair for cheap. Super fast.”

Rozanov was outright disgusted now.

“Like fast food for haircuts?” he demanded. “No. No, I will make you appointment, show you how to do it right.”

“I don’t want to pay more than $40 for a haircut.”

Rozanov scoffed, even as his gentle ministrations started again.

“You are so cheap, Hollander. There is other world of luxury, you will like. I take care of it.”

“But a nap now?”

Rozanov hummed again, and pressed a kiss to Shane’s forehead as his eyes closed.

“Yes. Nap now.”

***

Before Shane knew it, he had spent his entire R&R with Rozanov.

And it was fun.

Rozanov had bullied him into going to the beach, the pub, three restaurants and a stupidly expensive barber-cum-spa that plied him with espresso, scalp treatments, oils, balms and a manicure!

In-between bouts of sex.

Well, he’d been a little tender after the first time, but determined to do it again before heading back to site, the day after tomorrow.

Rozanov had happily indulged Shane, and now they were laying in Rozanov’s mussed-up bedding, cooling in the aftermath.

“Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?” Rozanov asked and Shane’s heart kicked at how it was a given they’d spend at least half the day together.

“Not really.”

“There is nothing you want to do, in all of the city, in all of the country?” Rozanov demanded dramatically. “So boring!”

“Well…”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, there’s some things I wanna do, that I haven’t got around to yet,” he admitted.

“Like what?” Rozanov asked, leveraging himself up on his elbow to rest his head on his hand and watch Shane with a level of attentiveness that made him want to squirm.

“Not, like, for tomorrow. Just stuff – I guess it’s kinda touristy –”

“Hollander, what is it?” Rozanov cut him off with a fond eye roll.

“Um, have you heard of Rottnest Island?”

Shane leaned over to the bedside table where he’d left his phone, pulling up his internet browser and typing in what he wanted to show Rozanov in Google Images.

“They have these… uh, ‘quokkas’,” he said, tilting his phone so the other man could see the image results.

Rozanov took his phone out of his hands, scrolling through and enlarging images to take a closer look.

“They smile!” he said in surprise, peering at the adorable little marsupials.

“Yeah, they have no natural predators, so they’re really friendly with people,” Shane explained, leaning closer so he could see what Rozanov saw.

“We have to go,” Rozanov demanded.

Shane chuckled. “We don’t have time. You need to book a couple of days in advance, if you wanna hire a bike and everything.”

He’d looked into it a while ago, but going alone hadn’t appealed. Shane liked his own company but sometimes being eternally single and an introvert with few non-work friends got a little lonely.

Rozanov shot him a wounded expression.

“You tease me with the cutest animals to ever exist? And then tell me I cannot go to them?”

“You asked!” Shane laughed. “I didn’t tell you just to deprive you – to tell you about what you can’t have,” he clarified before Rozanov had to ask.

Rozanov still pouted, scanning through the adorable pictures some more.

“Next time then,” Rozanov said.

The damned butterflies in his stomach ignited again at the demand. Did that count as a date? Pre-planned, spending time together doing something fun?

Shane let his chin rest on Rozanov’s shoulder as he kept scrolling.

He kind of hoped it counted.

Chapter 16: Chapter sixteen

Shane and Rozanov shared an early morning cab to the airport, knocking their knees together over the middle seat. Once they got in the long line for drop off, Shane angled his leg away; he’d gotten used to casual touches with Rozanov, he had to get himself out of the habit.

Their gate would have been obvious without looking at their boarding passes, from the sea of high-vis shirts gathered, and the familiar man waving cheerfully at Shane.

Hayden’s wave froze mid-air as he realised he was walking next to Ilya Rozanov.

The slight downturn of Hayden’s lips was in stark contrast to the shark-like grin that Rozanov sent him.

“Rozanov,” Hayden greeted cooly, his baby face and general lack of experience in being intimidating making the effort more cute than daunting.

“Pike,” Rozanov nodded back. “I’m surprised you lasted the whole R&R.”

Hayden narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“A week is a long time. I thought there would be some kind of check-box emergency. Or what if a hard hat went missing, who would there have been to alert?”

Hayden’s cheeks went pink and his nostrils flared while Shane rolled his eyes.

Rozanov actually had a lot of respect for safety standards on site, he was always compliant and lecturing his team to be so as well. He just liked to antagonise Hayden.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t like a mask settling over Rozanov, like he was slipping into a character. He was always like this, a ‘troll’ deep down to his soul. He loved to tease and get attention, albeit with different motivation for different people; he still needled and taunted Shane till his blood boiled sometimes, even though it was more likely to end in glaring and fucking instead of glaring and huffing, like now.

Ok, maybe he did also keep a softer side of himself private, a side with sweet smiles and octopus-level cuddling, which Shane had caught precious glimpses of.

But he didn’t change who he was, he didn’t transform identities to be his work self and his personal self.

Not like Shane did.

“Roz!” Another man Shane didn’t know called out a friendly greeting, and Rozanov left them, with a final wink at Hayden, to greet the other man.

“That guy’s a jackass,” Hayden grumbled, turning back to Shane.

“Yeah.”

“Did you arrive together?” he asked, brows pulling together in confusion.

“Oh, uh yeah. Turns out we’re living in the same building,” Shane shrugged. He hoisted his duffle bag higher on his shoulder and simultaneously pushed up the collar of his shirt, hoping the edge of the love bite Rozanov had left on him was still covered by material.

“Commiserations, mate. You deserve a break from him – bad enough he haunts your fucking steps at work.”

Shane twitched, and he couldn’t help the way his eyes darted through the crowd to track Rozanov, now laughing with a couple of other guys.

“I mean, he’s not so bad,” Shane defended weakly. “He’s good at his job, he catches stuff other people miss. He just likes to do it in the most annoying way possible.”

Hayden didn’t seem inclined to be as charitable as Shane.

“He must have been out searching for girls to annoy while he was on leave,” Hayden said offhandedly. “Oh God!”

Hayden turned to him with comically wide eyes, and Shane’s heart seized in his chest.

“Please don’t tell me he was knock-and-running your door or some shit? Just to get his fix as a menace?” Hayden asked. “Or if he was, we can tell Rose and maybe have him fired?”

He looked so hopeful, Shane had to breathe a laugh over his still-rapidly racing heart.

“Nah, hardly saw him,” Shane said.

The lie tasted bitter.

***

Shane led one more check of the newest scans and data, before giving Rozanov the nod to proceed with the scheduled boxcut blasts, ahead of this Wednesday’s big, mass blast.

In the Monday WIP, they all discussed the plans for excavation, led by Scott Hunter, which would be accompanied by more trim blasts and then holing-through.

“Ok,” Kip said, bouncing a little in his seat. “That puts us at three days ahead of the revised schedule!”

Shane knew that was still nine days behind the original schedule, but they’d take wins where they could.

“First round inspection, and the lighting and refuge chamber installation, is all on schedule for the 19^th to 21^st,” Hayden confirmed.

“Why do you need three days for that?” Kent asked scornfully.

 As was becoming his brand, everyone tensed and looked incredulously at the graduate.

Shane glanced at Rozanov and could see the proverbial steam coming from his ears and the anger at having given Kent another chance to be professional and exposed to these meetings, and seeing him screw it up.

“I’m just saying, there’s an easy day to recover for the timeline there,” Kent claimed pompously. “Crowell would like that.”

“Yeah, nah… we don’t cut corners with safety protocols or legislative compliance,” Hayden told him, doing his best to not talk down to Kent.

“What if we –”

“No.”

Rozanov cut Kent off with a clipped but projected voice. Kent had enough sense to close his mouth, but his single braincell only had a moment of power in it.

“But –”

“One more word, and you’re shadowing Pike for the next month to fill the gaps in your understanding of blasts and mining,” Rozanov warned.

Hayden didn’t seem on board with the threat, but it worked.

“Three days is a great get-back,” Kip added, to everyone’s nods. “Ok? Next on the agenda…”

Shane hung back a little as the meeting room cleared at the end of the WIP. Not as obviously as Scott, who was closing his laptop at a ridiculously slow speed and gravitating towards Kip. But it gave Shane the margin to step out behind Rozanov and fall in sync with his steps, enough of a gap between them and Kent, Elena and Price, who shared their office.

“Apparently Kent took a call from Crowell last week, and now they’re best friends,” Rozanov said to him lowly, his teeth almost grinding with annoyance.

“Great,” Shane murmured. He really didn’t like that guy. “Think maybe we should quarantine him? I don’t want him infecting my grads with his brand of superiority, or recklessness.”

Rozanov hummed, and with just his tone, Shane knew he was shaking off his frustration and was ready to be the Main Menace again.

“I don’t think geotechs can be reckless. Too boring to misbehave.”

 Shane shook his head. “Asshole.”

“Hollander, come on. You don’t think you are ‘good boy’?” Rozanov crooned, sliding a bit closer to whisper close to his ear. “I think you are good boy.”

Even without the use of his hands, he made Shane swallow thickly and all the blood in his brain flooded down, so he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Rozanov threw him a smirk and sashayed into the office donga ahead of him, leaving Shane to take a couple of deep breaths of warm air before following.

***

Watching the enormous plumes of dirt explode up in neat, sequenced patterns was so satisfying, it made Shane better understand why someone would choose to be a blast engineer, rather than committing to the nuances of studying and monitoring structure and ground performance like he did.

Rozanov whooped and clapped next to him with a grin almost as bright as the Australian sun as the first mass blast finished and the dust started to fall.

They were at a vantage point a kilometre away from the blast, to make sure none of them were hurt by falling debris. All the engineers who touched the expansion project were there, including Harris taking a video of the blast.

He panned the camera to the group, but naturally gravitated to the most animated.

“What a day, huh? Fucking beautiful,” Rozanov crooned enticingly straight into the camera.

“Ilya!” Harris chastised. “Social media friendly!”

Shane wouldn’t be surprised if the video found its way into recruitment materials, with a strategically placed beep.

While it was a rewarding milestone to watch, the mass blast made it so there were tonnes of dirt to move and lots of results to analyse before they could even get into the heart of that, so Shane held out a hand for Rozanov to shake, which he did with a pleased smirk, then Troy, JJ and the grads, before he clapped Hayden on the shoulder and headed for one of the utes with a smile.

Eight hours later, adrenaline and celebration had faded as he and Rozanov poured over the sensor data on his screen.

“North-side and west-side both over-performed,” Shane muttered again. He scanned the insensible results with a frown.

The rest of the office had cleared out, leaving them a ute to get back to camp later, once both men were satisfied that they understood what happened today and what impact it would have on the excavation plans.

Things weren’t dire. There were no obvious structural issues from the blast, even on the tricky north-side. Still, if Shane’s analysis had been flawed, or Rozanov had specified the charges as too large for the outcomes they wanted, they needed to know to correct for the future.

But Shane’s analysis remained true, and he concurred with Rozanov’s set charge capacity. The reality just didn’t quite line up.

“Maybe there’s something we’ll see tomorrow,” Shane finally said, leaning back in his chair. “Excavation starts south-side anyway, so we have time to run more diagnostics.”

Rozanov’s scowl at the screen eased a little as he ran a hand over his face. He’d been stress-eating his jar of Darrell Lea red liquorice bullets; he’d discovered ‘the best chocolate to ever exist’ when they were in Perth. Now he leveraged them for political mind games, only granting access to his stash to those who pleased him. So far, only Troy Barrett and Ryan Price had ‘earned’ any bullets.

“Da. Maybe we do more trim blasts – slow and steady. And move next mass blast south-west. Will plan tomorrow.”

Shane turned in his office chair and studied Rozanov with a smile.

“’Slow and steady’. Did I just hear you right?”

Rozanov groaned. “What is it in English? ‘Rub it in’?”

Shane’s smile fell away a little as he pondered Rozanov’s thoughts further.

“It’ll cost us another day or so with the clean-up blasts, won’t it?”

Rozanov sighed tiredly. “Yes. Maybe I will send Kent to tell his buddy Crowell. Save Kip the trouble.”

Shane hesitated for a moment, remembering that they were alone in the donga – hell they were alone for a few square kilometres – and scooted his chair a little closer to rub Rozanov’s shoulder consolingly.

“We’re still ahead,” he reminded the other man. “And we knew that side was going to be trouble.”

“But we accounted for it,” Rozanov complained.

They had.

But Shane shrugged. “Just how it goes, sometimes. And we’re not in a bad spot, we just have to tread more carefully in the next phase.”

“Mr Positive,” Rozanov rumbled.

Shane scoffed lightly but kept rubbing Rozanov’s shoulder, turning into more of a massage.

“I don’t feel so positive,” Rozanov said, before a new glint entered his eyes. “What will make me feel better…”

He tilted his head to rub his cheek against the back of Shane’s hand, before dropping a kiss on his wrist. Then his forearm, and leaning forward in his chair, another kiss on the delicate inside of his elbow.

“What’s that?” Shane asked, too breathless from the sweet kisses trailing up his arm.

Rozanov swayed closer, his mouth close enough to graze Shane’s lips.

“If you suck my dick.”

The crude request, made in a (technically) public setting, had no right to make Shane as shaky and enthralled as he felt.

There were security cameras on the outside of the dongas, pointed at the entrance ways, but none inside. No one was around…

Shane’s hand moved slowly down from Rozanov’s shoulder, over his chest. The man leaned back in his seat, eyes intent but with a hint of surprise, like he hadn’t expected Shane to grant his request, even as his pants started to tent.

Speaking of, Rozanov spread his knees wider and Shane pushed his own chair away, dropping to his knees.

As he started on Rozanov’s fly, and felt reverent hands comb through his hair and run over his shoulders, he understood that he’d be replaying this scene at his desk for weeks, knowing what they’d done here as soon as they’d had the opportunity to be alone.

Oh well. It’s not like he wasn’t already completely pre-occupied by Ilya Rozanov in every place and aspect of his life.

Chapter 17: Chapter seventeen

Chapter Notes

A time jump!! Back to work, there will be Mine business and events populating the rest of the fic... 🤫

Two months later

The first, major phase of excavation had been laborious but stayed on track, much to Kip’s delight and Crowell’s passive aggressive silence.

Since they’d reached the desired depth for the first grids of the new mine site, they’d hit their three-day inspection and safety installation check exactly on time.

“Can I tag along?” Shane asked Rozanov as he stood up from his desk. He held up a digital camera. “I volunteered to help Hayden take photos for documentation.”

“Sure Hollander, but make sure you only get my good side,” Rozanov said as he led his team out of the office, nabbing his hard hat as he went.

“Which side is meant to be good?” Shane asked playfully.

“Was trick answer. All my sides are good. Right, left; front, back,” Rozanov called out confidently. And didn’t he have every reason to be.

Shane scoffed for the sake of their audience, but followed with his eyes drifting down to watch the back view of Rozanov swaggering toward the vehicle.

“Barrett, you drive. I want to check some stuff with Hollander,” Rozanov said, opening the back seat door.

Everyone froze for a moment with shock. Rozanov never gave up a front seat.

“S-sure,” Barrett said eventually, prompting Kent to head for the front-passenger seat with a smirk. Shane followed more sedately.

That asshole better not be planning on trying to feel Shane up in the backseat while his team drove them to site. He wouldn’t put it past Rozanov. When it came to sex, he had proven himself insatiable. And proven Shane insatiable too.

He would never jinx it by saying it out loud, but things were going so well with the two of them. Shane had never spent so much time around one person in his adult life, and as a dedicated introvert, he would have thought so much time face to face would drive him crazy.

But it didn’t. On the whole, that is. Rozanov still did plenty to drive him a little crazy. For instance, they’d hit a groove in the office, even if part of that was Rozanov ribbing and riling and being a pest, while Shane practiced his deep breathing and only occasionally rose to his bait. Though, Shane was mindful of their luck in being surrounded with mostly men during the day. If they spend more time together around Rose, they’d already be figured out. He was also pretty sure Elena had been suspicious at some point, but he thought he’d adjusted well enough to throw her off.

Then they’d be on R&R and Shane could soak it all in, and hold almost nothing back. On the various trips out of their apartments, for Russian-stimulation time, they sometimes held hands. Which felt so juvenile to get excited about, but it still sent a thrill through him.

The sex, needless to say, was phenomenal. Shane was a confirmed bottom, no doubts remained.

So even though they weren’t out, or officially boyfriends – partners? – it was great. Sometimes the sneaking around was even exciting, an illicit adventure to see how much they could get away with.

Sometimes it was awful and left a pit in his stomach. In Rozanov’s too, he knew. Not that they talked about it. But Shane knew it was his hang-ups that kept them closeted. He was quietly grateful Rozanov never really pushed him on it.

God, even thinking about him as ‘Rozanov’ was a barrier Shane wasn’t ready to drop, for an irrational fear that he’d slip at work and call him ‘Ilya’ in front of the wrong person and everyone would immediately realise that he was gay and regularly taking it up the ass, and should therefore be stonewalled from any and every future camp, site or work endeavour.

So irrational.

(But maybe not that irrational?)

(God, he was such an overthinker.)

(But maybe that could happen, or at least some form of it…)

But for real, he had been thinking about telling his parents. Not necessarily about Rozanov, not straight away. But about himself. Being gay.

He was pretty sure they would be fine with it. Maybe not even all that surprised, given Shane’s prolific lack of girlfriends. And even if they were surprised, or a little thrown off, Shane had every confidence that his parents loved him and would be ok with it.

It felt like a safe starting point.

Shane’s line of thinking was cut off with the sound of a screen door clanging and a shout of ‘hey!’

Kip jogged over to their group, vehicle doors open.

“Guys, you’re headed to the new site, yeah? Mind if I catch a ride out with you?”

“Sure,” Shane was the first to answer after a pause.

Rozanov looked a little put out – he’d definitely been planning something not kosher – but Shane dutifully slid into the middle seat, leaving the door open for Kip.

Rozanov slid in next to him and pressed their thighs closer together than was necessary, even for three grown men crammed into the backseat.

“Have you got anything in particular you need to do on site? Or just want to take a look?” Shane asked, noting that Rozanov’s fingers lingered after he clicked his seatbelt into place.

“Oh uh, thought I’d give Hayden a hand with documentation,” Kip said, avoiding Shane’s eyes and looking out the window.

Shane tilted his head. Why was Kip lying? Unless Hayden really needed two assistants for like, 15 minutes of support work.

“And it’s exciting to see it all in person, isn’t it? The fruits of all our labour. A bit more impressive than my spreadsheets,” Kip added cheerfully, settling more back into himself.

It didn’t take long to get to site, and Barrett pulled the ute into park next to the other couple of vehicles lining the site.

It really was impressive, the half-done enormous pit that they’d mine for gold and make a fortune out of – well, for the company and their stakeholders. They moved down the flagged, dirt path, down to the ground level. Shane stopped to snap a few pictures of the site from a bird’s eye view as they went, and Rozanov hung back with him, leaving an increasing gap between them and the others.

Shane snapped two pictures with Rozanov front and centre, even though it would be a jump-scare for Hayden when he saw them.

“If you want pictures of me, I can take more interesting ones for you,” Rozanov winked.

“You send me a dick pic on the phone I use for work, and you’re dead,” Shane retorted.

Rozanov pouted, playfully this time. “Maybe I give you real picture. The instant one, you –” Rozanov mimed shaking.

“Polaroid,” Shane provided.

“’Polaroid’. You can keep it under your pillow and take it out to look at it when you’re lonely in bed,” he crooned.

“If I’m awake in bed, I’m probably with you.”

That made Rozanov grin, and Shane wondered if the whole point had been to get Shane to admit he didn’t need a photo when he could have the real thing.

“But if you wanted to give me a picture, I wouldn’t be opposed,” Shane admitted, only a little bashfully. He had a couple of photos from some of their R&R outings squirreled away in a special folder on his phone, which he would never admit to Rozanov that he did indeed look at sometimes when they were apart. Another one for his collection would be nice.

He got Rozanov’s ‘delighted’ look in return – raised eyebrows and a bright smile, which Shane personally thought was one of the sweetest, cutest things to ever exist.

“Hmmm. We will see.”

They kept walking down to the site, when Rozanov nudged him in the side.

“Ah, why Kip was so curious about the site today,” Rozanov said, pointing at a massive, flatbed truck.

Which Scott Hunter had just jumped out of the passenger seat of.

Kip was crossing the distance between them with a smile that was viewable even from this distance, and they watched as Scott ran a hand through his hair before he stopped in front of the shorter man, returning his dopey smile.

Rozanov had been right: they were so clearly into each other.

And Shane hadn’t heard a bad word about it. Not that he really had an ear to the ground, given he was rather anti-social and mostly existed in his own bubble with engineers, Rose and Hayden, but still. Glancing around, he couldn’t see any sneers directed at the flirting men.

But he also wasn’t the only one watching them, which made him sweat from just the suggestion that he and Rozanov could attract that same kind of focus.

They’d caught up to Barrett and Kent at the bottom of the adhoc dirt ramp, and Shane’s blood froze at what he heard.

“… didn’t think there’d be poofs here, flaunting it and shit.”

“Hey,” Barrett said sharply, turning to face a sneering Kent. “Watch your mouth.”

“What?” Kent laughed cruelly. “I’m not surprised about the project manager, but Hunter is blue-collar. Ha, it must be like his dream job, surrounded by sweaty, dirty men all day. No wonder he took so long on excavation, he was probably busy perving. I wonder if the guys get extra R&R if they suck his –”

Next to him, Barrett’s hand was curled in a fist, like he might shut Kent up with a punch, but it was Rozanov’s voice that got him to snap his mouth shut.

“Get back to the vehicles.”

His voice was chilling, even in the hot summer air. He’d seen Rozanov pissed before – often at Kent – but this was another level.

“What?”

Rozanov stepped closer. Shane had gone stock still in horror, when faced with the manifestation of his biggest insecurities, albeit from a nasty little shit everyone hated. But now he moved, since there was a real possibility Rozanov was going to punch this idiot.

He put his hand on Rozanov’s chest, getting in front of him and angling his body part-way between the two, just in case. Kent eyed the move and it made Shane want to snatch his hand back… but he would be damned if Rozanov got disciplined or fired for assault when he could have stopped it.

“I said, get back to vehicles. I will deal with you later, but before that, you think about fact that you are the least talented and experienced person on site. And no amount of bitching about men who like men, or women or both or none, is going to make you any better.”

Kent’s face was pinched and he went to argue back, but Rozanov held up a hand and he showed a rare sign of sense and didn’t argue.

“Another fucking word, and you are fired.”

Kent stomped away, and a heavy silence settled on the three men as Shane lowered his hand. Both Rozanov and Barrett looked pissed.

“I can drive him back to site, and let Rose know to stand by, if you want,” Shane offered. Even though the last thing he wanted was to be in a car, alone, with a homophobic and pissed Dallas Kent, Shane thought he was probably the safest option available.

“No. He can wait for another car,” Rozanov snapped, before continuing down to the site where others were gathered, tension radiating up his spine.

“Ah, you ok?” Shane awkwardly asked Barrett. Both men tended to be quiet, he wasn’t sure he’d ever talked directly to him before.

“Fine. Guy’s a jerk,” Barrett said uncomfortably. His fists were still clenched.

“Yeah.”

Barrett started walking and Shane fell in step with him. Well, this would be painful. But it seemed like the younger man needed this.

“You said something, though.”

Barrett scoffed. “Yeah, I was really articulate.”

“I don’t know what I would have said, in your position,” Shane admitted. “But a lot of guys wouldn’t have said shit. Would have just laughed or said something homophobic back. Happens plenty, on sites like this.”

Barrett didn’t reply, but his head was tilted like he was listening.

“You don’t have to have a whole lecture or clever comebacks to be a decent guy.”

The younger man nodded curtly, and Shane noted, with some panic, that Barrett’s eyes had a wet sheen.

“You know, Rose will probably want to talk to you. About what he said. She’s good to talk to, she’s one of those people who knows what to say. And how to listen,” he cleared his throat. “Or you could talk to me, or Ilya. Or any of the leadership team.”

Barrett’s head was tilted down and he didn’t answer.

Shane looked around – it was going to be his escape, but he kind of wanted to be closer to Ilya right now, even if they wouldn’t really speak to each other.

“Can you take some photos that fit the whole site in? It needs to include the walkways and perimeter around the opening,” Shane asked, handing over the digital camera and pointing towards the expansive, empty area he’d have to walk across to get the wide angle.

Barrett nodded. “Yeah, thanks,” he said roughly, taking the camera and walking away with the excuse for a breather.

Shane would mention it to Ilya – once he was calm, he would be good for Barrett to talk to.

Chapter 18: Chapter eighteen

Chapter Notes

Is it... talking?! 😮

Despite Shane’s previous insistence that they would not be doing anal outside of R&R, given the limitations of the single beds, limited laundry facilities and disposal of condoms, he knelt at the bottom of the narrow bed, shuddering through an orgasm with Rozanov deep inside him.

It was hard to not do it, ok? Sex with Rozanov was like a drug; the more he had it, the more he wanted it. And there wasn’t much to do in camp when you weren’t working.

Maybe he’d have to show more restraint or caution if his neighbour wasn’t the guy moaning his name and making the bedframe creak.

In fact, Rozanov had volunteered his room for tonight, since he didn’t care if they broke the bed.

They did some roughshod clean up before Rozanov climbed on the bed and tugged Shane along, making him lay on top of him, head resting on his upper chest.

“I miss big bed,” Rozanov said, his chest vibrating under Shane’s ear.

“This is nice though,” Shane said, rubbing his smooth chest against the trail of hair on Rozanov’s chest. “I mean, there’s not that much difference between you and these lumpy mattresses.”

Rozanov pinched his ass cheek, making Shane squeak.

“You like my lumps,” Rozanov said, kissing the top of Shane’s head absently. “And I like you as blanket. You can stay. We will skip jogging and drag ourselves out in time for breakfast.”

Shane’s heart skipped a beat. They’d only done a couple of sleepovers, in Perth. It was so delightfully, terrifyingly, domestic.

“That might horrify Hayden,” Shane joked weakly, picturing himself and Rozanov showing up at the cafeteria, mussed and affectionate.

Usually a mention of Hayden in front of Rozanov resulted in a reliable scoff or mocking comment about his friend. But he stayed silent.

“Would it be so bad?” Rozanov asked, with a guarded tone. “If some people knew?”

Even though he wasn’t moving, Shane froze. And he knew Rozanov could feel the tension that entered his frame, which made his stomach roil with guilt on top of nerves.

“I… I just…”

Just… what? Was low-key terrified of what people would say, do, if they knew Shane was gay and with a man? That it would somehow spiral and result in the end of the career he loved?

After a few more beats of agonising silence, Rozanov spoke again.

“Sorry. Is ok,” he mumbled, kissing the top of Shane’s head again.

Of anything he could have said, that was probably the most painful. He’d let it go, for Shane. To not upset him, Ilya would swallow what was bothering him.

His old supervisor’s words, the stray, homophobic insults he’d heard thrown around on various sites, and Kent’s words disparaging Kip and Scott, echoed in Shane’s head.

But shouldn’t Ilya’s and Troy Barrett’s actions echo too? Shouldn’t what he knew about them, about Rose and Hayden and Scott and Kip and Harris and Elena and everyone else he respected on the site, be what influenced him, not the bigotry of people he didn’t even care about?

Of course. But it was easier to think it, harder to blaze forward and live his professional and personal life by it.

Shane took a deep breath, willing down his panic. He could swallow that for Ilya.

He brought up an arm to rest on Ilya’s chest, and rested his chin tentatively on his forearm, so he could look at the man as they spoke.

“What… would you tell them?”

 Ilya studied him intently.

“That we’re together.”

“Are we?” Shane asked.

Shane knew it was a bad question before anger shuttered Ilya’s expression.

“I just mean,” Shane stuttered. “We haven’t really talked about it…”

“When would we have talked about it?” Ilya asked crossly.

Fair point.

Ok, he couldn’t have this conversation laying naked on top of the other man.

Shane sat back, mindful of his knees, and got up to at least put his pants on.

“Shane, do not walk out,” Ilya ordered.

“I’m not going to! I just don’t want to have this conversation with my dick out,” Shane said, stepping into trackpants he belatedly realised were Ilya’s, but they would have to do.

Ilya wasn’t so encumbered with his own nudity, so Shane opened his cupboard and grabbed some shorts off the shelf, tossing them to him.

He slipped them on and then bullied Shane into sitting on the bed and pulled his desk chair out, placing it between Shane and the door, and sitting on it backwards.

“In case you try to run,” Ilya said.

“I’m not the one who ran away. I’m the one who was ghosted, remember?” Shane snapped.

Shane immediately felt stupid and petty for saying it. He knew now that Ilya had far more important things he was working through at the time, with his father’s passing, and it wasn’t strictly fair to bring up such old wounds as a trump card in a fresh argument, was it?

Ilya’s face was tight, but he gave a jerky nod in acknowledgement.

“I am sorry.”

Shane blinked. He’d expected that they would kick off, not…

“You are?”

Ilya shrugged self-consciously.

“I did not know you wanted me to contact you.”

Shane felt his nose scrunch up. “You thought I’d prefer not knowing where you were or what was happening with you?”

“I was kind of a dick,” Ilya said bluntly. “I did not think you would care what was happening with me.”

He tried to take a calming breath and answer with empathy and maturity, really. Instead, his mouth blurted, “Of course I cared!”

He wanted to leap up and stomp around, but given he’d get a pace and a half in the narrow donga, he had to be satisfied with throwing his hands up in the air and staying on the bed.

“Jesus Ilya, I care about you! Of course I wanted to know that you were ok, I wanted to be there to help you deal with shit. Fuck. Don’t ever think about pulling that shit, ever again. Got it?”

Ilya’s eyebrows were so high they were almost lost in the blond curls falling over his forehead.

And he was trying not to smile.

“Are you laughing at me?” Shane demanded.

Ilya brought a hand up to half-cover the toothy grin on his face.

“No –”

“You prick –”

“I’m not laughing!” Ilya interrupted insistently. “I am happy! I am happy you care about me, because I care about you too.”

It was a strange sensation, to have your righteous anger completely deflated at the same time as your heart and belly started doing flips.

“Oh.”

Ilya hummed, smiling more fondly at him now. “Even if you are boring and act like angry kitten. You are also smart, and cute, and a good fuck.”

He was 95% sure he was being teased, but he still narrowed his eyes at Ilya.

“There it is. Angry kitten.”

“You’re an asshole,” he informed Ilya matter of factly, and not at all as an endearment.

Ilya scoffed playfully before his expression grew more sombre.

“But… you do not want people to know. About,” he waved his hand. “Being gay?”

It was a mild shock to his system, hearing himself labelled as ‘gay’ so casually. But it didn’t make him flinch or want to fly into denials.

“Is it that? Or me?” Ilya continued.

“No, it’s not,” Shane rushed. “It’s… not like, you, personally. But being… gay, and sleeping with someone on the job? It’s –”

“’Unprofessional’,” Ilya inserted, mocking thick in the word.

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“I say it like it is: stupid.”

“It’s not.”

Ilya leaned in, his chest pressed as tight to the back of the chair as it could be. “You are not my boss. I am not your boss. We do not fuck around on work time.”

Shane sent him a pointed, ‘you sure?’ expression.

“That was overtime,” Ilya argued. “There is no conflict.”

Shane took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess there’s not.”

Ilya tilted his head, softening a little. “There will be people who do not like it. Being gay, or bisexual, being in relationship with someone at work.”

‘Relationship’ made Shane want to squirm and hysterically giggle.

“But I do not want to work for them,” Ilya finished plainly.

“I mean, I don’t want to either. But it’s not that easy,” Shane said. “There’s not thousands of jobs out there for specialist engineers, you know?”

Ilya nodded.

“Ok. But you know, you do not have to throw a- a party, like Mardi Gras.”

Why could Shane so clearly picture Ilya in a Mardi Gras parade, miniscule outfit to show off his carved body, having the time of his life?

“Huh?”

“I mean, there is no question about who you like to fuck you have to answer for job.”

“Well, no.”

“You do not have to announce like marriage.”

 “I guess not.”

“You can tell your friends you are gay without telling Crowell or putting it on your stupid LinkedIn.”

Shane sighed. He made it sound so simple.

“Are you… ‘out’? To anyone?” he asked eventually.

Ilya shook his head. “No friends here.”

That made Shane frown. “You have friends.”

Ilya was friendly with everyone – at least, familiar with everyone, in that teasing, sarcastic way of his. In fact, Shane would say there was only a handful of people that would be actively considered as ‘unfriendly’ with Ilya, like Kent and Hayden. And probably Shane himself, if other people were asked.

But there was a difference between friendly colleagues and friends you confided the secrets of your sexuality to.

And… he couldn’t think of anyone Ilya was that kind of ‘close’ to.

“What about Troy Barrett? You guys get along, right?” Shane asked, feeling a bit like a mum who felt guilty about not setting up playdates for their kid.

Ilya’s brow arched elegantly.

“… you want me to tell Barrett that I am bi? That would make you more comfortable?”

 “No. I mean, yes, if you want to. Just… all the same things you said. You can tell people,” Shane said, flustered.

Ilya remained unflappable.

“I do not care if people know I like men. I care about them knowing…” he wordlessly gestured between the two of them.

Ilya wants people to know he is with Shane. Like, ‘relationship’ with.

Wow.

If he ignored all the homophobia, landing Ilya was like… winning the lottery. He was crazy hot, and fun and brilliant and… wanted people to know he picked Shane.

Through sweaty palms and thudding heart, Shane found himself excited by the idea. They could sit together at meals, and he could talk about his R&R with people – his R&R time had never been so interesting and adventure-filled, and he hated that he felt like he had to be careful of hoarding details about what he’d done, to avoid revealing Ilya’s part.

“Ok,” Shane said carefully, wanting to get the words right. “I’ll – I promise I’ll try. I’ll really think about it, and I want – I mean, I don’t want to –”

He huffed in frustration. Ilya, with English as a second language, managed to express himself perfectly and profoundly in a sentence. Why couldn’t Shane?

“I want that too. And I want you to be happy. Please don’t think I’m anything but proud to be with you.”

Shit, that wasn’t presumptuous, was it? Ilya more or less confirmed they were boyfriends, right?

Ilya’s smile was unbearably fond, and it soothed Shane’s anxieties like a balm.

“Proud you landed ‘stud’.”

“Who taught you that word?”

Ilya swung his leg up and over the chair as he stood and approached Shane. But instead of crawling over Shane and covering his body with his, like he expected, he kneeled at the side of the bed, half pulling a willing Shane over to him.

He ran his hands up and down Shane’s biceps, leaning in to make heartachingly earnest eye contact, their faces close enough to share breath.

“I do not want to rush you, just support you,” he said softly. “Thank you for thinking about it.”

Shane initiated the chaste kiss, but Ilya was the one who drew him into a hug and held him there, without any further agenda, for 10 minutes straight.

Chapter 19: Chapter nineteen

The second mass blast had charges that overperformed. Again.

Ilya was ready to tear his curls out, which would be an enormous shame.

“It makes no fucking sense,” Ilya gritted out, pacing agitatedly. They were once again staying late at the office, all alone, so Shane felt comfortable reaching out to smooth his hand up and down Ilya’s hip and waist, which got him to stop pacing.

“Look, we’ll run the numbers again. We’re not way out of margin,” Shane said, ending on a hesitant tone.

This blast had varied even more from their projected models and parameters than the first. The readings from the north-line were out of whack, the vibration trace putting Shane on alert. He suspected the north-line side would need to be re-evaluated and the blast and excavation plan re-configured; until he could confirm the integrity of the area and rule out progressive fracturing, he couldn’t sign off on any personnel working in those grids.

“No, your analysis is perfect, like always. You do your job, I am one fucking up,” Ilya said.

“Your charge layout was perfect too –”

Ilya snorted roughly.

“Clear it was not.”

“No, it was. It really was, and I wouldn’t just say that for your ego. I wouldn’t have signed it off with you if I thought the charges would over-do it.”

Shane frowned. “Thinking about the variables here… I mean, what if it wasn’t the design? What if it was an error in execution?”

“I supervised laying the charges,” Ilya said, but his tone was more thoughtful and less self-flagellating.

He tapped his foot, staring through the back wall for a few moments before he jumped back into action.

“We cannot check the bore holes anymore, but we can look at charges.”

Shane followed Ilya down the low-lit path with the torch he’d pressed into his hand. At the end was possibly the most well-constructed, expensive but small containers on the whole site, save for the refuge chambers:

The explosives magazines.

There were four white containers lined up next to each other, each with big block letters on the sides and front spelling ‘EXPLOSIVES’.

Ilya stopped at the first, putting in his key – only he, Scott and Hayden had copies off – and Shane put in the second key he’d signed out from the office donga.

“Ok, inventory,” Ilya said with distaste, as he lay the tablet he held down on one of the crates once the overhead lights were on. “This says how many crates per container, and how many charges per crate. The mass is on front, and on side of charge.”

Shane nodded, easy enough.

“We can only open one container at time, so we will check all these things.”

“Ok, I’ll start this end,” Shane said, pulling out his little flip notebook and a pen, to Ilya’s fond look.

Shane proceeded carefully. The cylindrical rounds were stable, having progressed beyond cartoon-style red sticks of dynamite, and detonators were stored far away, but still. There was a reason people like Shane technically weren’t allowed to be in any of these containers without Ilya by his side.

They worked in silence, counting and checking labels, until both men had worked up and down the half-full container.

It took them forty minutes, and both stood grimly over the tablet with their results.

“I counted five lower mass charges replacing higher mass rounds in crates A7, A8, A12, A16 and A19,” Shane said, consulting his notepad.

“Me too. Fuck.”

Ilya punched through a few buttons on the screen until they got to a wall of text.

“Fuck. No, no that asshole, neveroyatnyy malen'kiy ublyudok,” Ilya spat.

There, in the detailed logs kept for explosives on site, was ‘Dallas Kent’s name on the last three lines of audit, though Shane knew it was against the ISO standards for the same person to be controlling sequential checks.

“Not an accident then,” Shane murmured, though it was already obvious to him that whoever was subbing out explosive charges was purposefully trying to hide their actions.

“We need to check the other containers,” Ilya said tightly.

“I’ll call Hayden.”

Ilya just nodded, without snarky comment. If somehow Shane hadn’t realised how serious this shit was, that would have done it.

***

The 6:30am meeting the next morning was tense. Rose had wanted to keep it as contained as possible, but still the room was filled with Shane, Ilya, Hayden, Scott, Kip, Troy, Kent and Rose herself.

“A finding of an alarming nature has been brought to the attention of the senior project team this morning, based on an audit run by Ilya and Shane last night,” Rose started sombrely.

Ilya’s glare was straight-up menacing, made worse by his eyes being slightly bloodshot like Shane’s and Hayden’s, following a late night of investigation and documentation.

“Someone has been switching charges to higher mass on blast days, and trying to cover up what explosives they stole,” Ilya cut in bluntly. The way he glared at Kent like a laser beam made it obvious to everyone who this ‘someone’ was.

“There were abnormalities found in the explosives magazine inventory,” Rose interjected, holding up a hand at Ilya. “And we need to get to the bottom –”

“We know it was you.”

Ilya was having none of Rose’s balanced and calm approach. Kent tipped his chin up defiantly, even though Shane could see his confidence only went skin-deep.

“Prove it.”

“You idiot, you are logged as signing off charge inventory!”

Kent’s eyes flicked to Troy beside him, like he was considering trying to throw him under the bus. Judging by the shock on his usually stoic face, Shane was willing to bet Troy had not had the slightest idea of what Kent had been up to.

“Even if – it’s not stealing,” Kent mocked. “All the explosives on site belong to the company and they’re earmarked for the expansion.”

He actually managed to render Ilya speechless for a moment. But at least Ilya wasn’t throwing himself over the table to throttle Kent.

“I’ve run the numbers,” Kent continued arrogantly. “Trim blasts take two or three times longer to lay, and blowing more up front saves time.”

Shane couldn’t believe Kent had made it through university with this attitude. It was like a culinary student saying they might as well bake the food at 300 degrees Celsius cause a higher heat would cook the food faster.

“Our plans were data-driven and we calculated those charges –”

Kent turned a particularly nasty sneer on Shane, surprising enough that he cut himself off.

“Your ‘plans’ were pussy bullshit.”

Wow. He might not have needed to hold Ilya back yet, but maybe if push came to shove, Shane would instead be holding Kent’s arms back while Ilya lay some well-deserved punches.

Surprisingly, it was Scott Hunter who leaned forward with the most serious, no-nonsense expression that looked a lot like ‘father’s profound disappointment’.

“What you did is profoundly negligent, and illegal.”

Finally, finally – Kent reacted in a way half-appropriate for the deepness of the shit he was in.

He paled and darted his eyes around the group, as though looking for allies. Finding none, he said, “Call Crowell.”

Shane actually felt a little bad for him. Kent had misread Crowell in a major way, if he thought the project director would be on his side now he was a pronounced project liability.

“Are you suggesting you were… directed to manipulate the charges?” Kip asked carefully.

“It saved time! We were missing opportunities, he said there would be a bonus for anyone who got back days, and higher blast volumes get back days!” Kent rushed out.

“No it doesn’t, moron,” Ilya barked.

“The site is now open to fractures and faults that increases the danger for anyone working underground and could devastate the expansion entirely,” Shane said, admittedly an exaggeration on where he believed they currently were, but that was a matter of pure luck for Kent.

“Do you want to be sued for the value of a gold mine?” Ilya demanded.

Kent audibly swallowed but otherwise remained silent.

Hayden spoke up, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “I called WorkSafe last night, and they’ll probably send someone this afternoon to commence an investigation. They’ll want to speak to everyone here, and I’ll ask that everyone keep this matter confidential until the investigation is completed.”

It was a vain hope; word would get around, as it always did on sites like this.

“We can do no more blasts until investigation is done,” Ilya added, to Scott and Kip’s twin grimaces. Ilya was the first to stand, and the rest followed.

“No, you’ll stay here with me until you can be interviewed by WorkSafe,” Rose said sternly to Kent, who had started to rise. “Needless to say, your employment here will be terminated. I.T will remove your access and we’ll arrange for transport back to Perth tomorrow. You are free to seek legal advice, but we can’t allow you to access any of the site laptops.”

Shane hesitated at the door. Kent was agitated and a reckless idiot, and he didn’t like the idea of Rose being alone with him.

“I’ll stay too,” Kip said, with a look at Shane. “Ilya, Shane – I’ll put in a meeting at the end of the day for you to bring us up to date with wherever you get to with your forecasting on what this means for the site, if that’s ok?”

They gave synchronised, terse nods as they headed out, Shane on Ilya’s tail.

Chapter 20: Chapter twenty

Chapter Notes

🫨🫨🫨

Eventually, they came to the conclusion to move away from the potentially problematic north-side with its weak line, prone to fragmentation, in favour of expanding further southward. It would incur some additional costs, and unfortunately, would eat up all the days they’d gotten back in the timeline, so the expansion project was back to being just over two weeks behind schedule. Kip put on a brave face when he was told, but Shane could only imagine the colour Crowell must have turned when he was informed of recent developments.

Ilya and Hayden were intensely grilled by the MLH investigation team and WorkSafe, which led to nights with Ilya that swung between holding him to try to stave of self-flagellation, and being thoroughly ravished by an Ilya determined to prove his proficiency at making Shane lose his mind and use of his legs.

He wasn’t the only one struggling. Troy Barrett had been shouldering way too much burden himself, wracked with guilt about not seeing what Kent was doing, and having been duped into letting Kent take Troy’s turn in the regular explosives audit. Ilya had taken him aside and assured him he was not to blame, and Shane was charmed to realise Ilya was keeping a close eye on Troy and continued reassurance. If only he’d be so kind to himself.

Eventually the investigation was concluded, pending a full report with a more transparent and multi-check system for inventory tracking, and the remaining team was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Kent though, would be lucky to ever find work again, and WorkSafe’s ruling on whether he would be barred from industry for a period of time or face fines was still pending.

But the poisonous cherry on top of this shit sundae was that Roger Crowell was now travelling to site to ‘get things under control’.

And Kip had used his puppy dog eyes and good will to get Shane to promise to escort Crowell through his meetings and (repeat) debriefings as the ‘technical expert’.

He was trying not to pout that Ilya, Hayden, Elena and Scott had all scored an escape from the awful project director with an onsite inspection of the fully-excavated grids on the expansion site.

 “Just swap with JJ, tell no one,” Ilya had told him when Shane had been looking for sympathy the night before. “Or tell Hunter that you think Kip is tense and will need massage after Crowell and you will give. Hunter will stay to guard his man, then you come with me.”

“You should send Troy and stay with me,” Shane argued back, but only half-heartedly. As much as he didn’t want to be around Crowell, he wanted Ilya around the man even less.

“No, no – Barrett comes with me, important for teaching,” Ilya insisted.

Now, sitting in a meeting room with Kip and Crowell, he again envied the team’s distance. There was no way Crowell was going to site in his suit, given he even scrunched his nose at the red dirt streaks at the entrance of the office donga.

“… then we’ll open the first half of the site before the second half is finished,” Crowell was saying, as he tried increasingly outrageous demands to fast-track their progress. 

“We can’t have personnel drilling and hauling that close to an active construction,” Shane replied calmly. Though it was not his area, he feared it was common sense. “It wouldn’t pass inspection, it would make the blast schedule a mess and even if it wasn’t non-compliant with state legislation, you wouldn’t get any experienced miners willing to take the risk.”

“Use the ones on work visas, they won’t care about fuckin’ red tape,” Crowell dismissed. “You get warnings for inspections, just clear it out beforehand.”

“We can’t expect any workers to operate in unsafe conditions. And I will assume the suggestion of illegal activity was a joke,” Shane said tersely.

Kip’s eyes were wide, either from Crowell’s ‘ideas’ or how his reliable, cool, calm and collected Shane Hollander was starting to show he was cross.

“You can assume that your jobs rely on MLH making a profit with this expansion, not costing more fuckin’ money!” Crowell said snidely.

Shane bit his tongue at the suggestion that MLH use Crowell’s salary to pay the difference; his absence would only have a positive impact on the project overall.

Crowell’s next set of outrageous demands and threats was derailed by a sudden shaking, like someone had backed a truck into the side of the donga. The table and chairs rattled, Shane’s pen sliding across the table surface.

“What the hell?” Crowell demanded.

“Tremor,” Shane provided. It had only lasted a couple of seconds, unlikely to be over 3.0 magnitude.

Seismic activity wasn’t particularly common in Western Australia, but mines were structured to be able to withstand these kind of disturbances.

“Small one,” Shane continued. “The teams will sound off to make sure there’s no damage.”

With a sudden, sick feeling, the north-side fractures on the expansion site came to mind. The weak lines he and Ilya had been worried about from the start, the ones that could have been exacerbated by Kent’s recklessly overcharged blasts.

Rock was tricky. Seismic activity could wreak havoc, even if above ground, it felt like nothing.

And the half-finished site didn’t yet have all the structural integrity supports due to be installed before production began.

Shane stood abruptly. “We should check in with the team.”

It was highly unlikely that a small tremor like that would cause any serious damage, even close to some weaker rock.

With Crowell’s protests trailing him, Shane walked out of the meeting room to the large VHF radio unit sitting on a console by Scott Hunter’s desk. Out on site, radio was more reliable than mobile phones, and Shane switched on the unit to hear male voices already checking in with location and status.

Hayden would usually be the one jumping in to ensure every unit checked in. Shane glanced up to make sure the assistant safety coordinator Comeau was on it. He was clicking frantically on his computer, likely to access the full log of employees on site this morning and who their team leads were.

Both Scott and Hayden, at least, would have radios on them if they were underground on the new site.

Maybe Ilya too.

But even after a dozen’s men’s voices came over the waves, sounding perfectly calm from the main site as they reported all was well, he didn’t hear any of the voices he was listening for.

Comeau was still checking off units, looking a bit overwhelmed.

Shane picked up the hand microphone, holding the transmit button down.

“Hunter, check in. Repeat: Hunter, check in.”

He released the button, and heard only a crackle of static before echoing silence.

“Pike, check in. Repeat: Pike, check in.”

Nothing. He gave it another agonising moment.

“Rozanov, check in,” he said next, his voice breaking a little on his name. “Repeat: Rozanov, check in.”

Kip caught his eyes, and he saw reflected there the same dread that was weighing his stomach to his feet.

The radio silence was heard everywhere. Everyone would be collectively holding their breath until they heard from the team.

“Bennett checking in,” Eric Bennett interrupted the silence. The first crackle of noise jumped Shane’s heart into this throat, but now it sunk again. “I’m close by the new site and I have a vehicle. I’ll run by.”

“Copy Bennett. Proceed with caution,” Shane replied.

“Should we go too?” Kip asked, his voice tight, looking to Shane for answers.

He shook his head.

“No. If – if something has happened, we’ll be better equipped to coordinate from here,” he answered mechanically.

There could be tonnes of rock and dirt on top of Ilya right now, on Hayden and the rest.

And he was standing here, holding a fucking radio.

Shane abruptly strode over to the shelves by Hayden’s desk, quickly locating and pulling out a binder with a large ‘ERT’ on the spine. He brought it back over to the radio, slamming it down on the desk and starting to leaf through the pages.

“What’s that?” Crowell asked.

“The Emergency Response Plan,” Kip answered for him.

Crowell threw up his beefy hands. “Woah woah, we aren’t there yet! We’re not shuttin’ down operations just cause a couple of people are late to answer their radios.”

The screen door banged open and Harris walked in.

“I was driving when the tremor happened, where are we at?”

“Just one work party unaccounted for,” Shane said, shooting a look at Comeau who nodded hesitantly. “They were supposed to be underground at the expansion site.”

Maybe they finished early and were heading back to the offices in vehicles with broken radios, having misplaced their handheld radios in a series of freak accidents?

“No alarms from the main site, that’s good,” Harris said, coming to a stop next to Shane. “Who are we missing?”

Kip started to list the names. “Scott Hunter, Hayden Pike, Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett…”

Shane grabbed the nearest laptop at Harris’s tiny, aborted gasp, logging in to his own account to get the seismic measurements.

“…Elena Rygg, JJ Boiziau, Cliff Marlow and Ryan Carmichael.”

Looked like a 2.8 local magnitude tremor at the closest seismograph to where Ilya and the others were supposed to be. It told him nothing new, and for once, having more data did not comfort him.

“Bennett checking in, I’ve arrived on site,” the radio crackled to life again. “I can see displaced rock and earth at the entrance. Unclear what the extent of the fall-of-ground is. Three vehicles are here, and empty.”

Fuck. Fuck.

“Copy. Don’t get any closer until we have more information,” Shane instructed, though he knew Bennett was sensible enough to have determined that for himself.

They were in there. A seismic-induced rockfall.

“Have we dialled the refuge chambers?” Harris asked quietly.

“No,” Kip said, running a hand over his face. “It’s ah…. 8 and 15 installed, right Shane?”

It was a good question – radio couldn’t be relied upon to penetrate the amount of earth that could be sitting on top of them now, which was why refuge chambers came equipped with VOIP phones.

In addition to comms systems, a refuge chamber would come with everything the team needed to survive: independent oxygen sources and CO₂ scrubbers, air con, water, food rations, first aid supplies… The chambers were 20 person capacity, so the eight of them would be as comfortable as possible, if they were indeed in there.

As though summoned, the landline phone on Scott’s desk in front of him trilled. The ID read: RC8.

Shane felt his shoulders physically sag as he drew what felt like the first, decent breath he’d taken in the last several minutes. He shakily reached out and pressed the speaker button.

“Scott Hunter, checking in.”

Scott’s voice was rough, but the answering sigh from Kip was rougher.

“I’ve got Rozanov, Pike, Rygg, Barrett, Marlow, Boiziau and Carmichael here with me, all accounted for.”

“Very glad to hear it, Scott,” Shane answered shakily. “Can you confirm everyone is in good health?”

“We’ve got at least two sprained ankles, but overall, ok,” Scott replied.

“Can you provide any insight on what happened?”

“We felt the tremor, so we started to head to the chamber as a precaution. Then the ceiling and walls started to come down on us, so we moved much faster to the chamber,” Scott explained.

“Fucking north-line fault,” he heard in a muffled, Russian accent in the background.

Shane closed his eyes. He felt they were wet, and he didn’t want to start crying in front of other people, half out of concern that someone like Crowell would call him unfit and try to wrestle him away from the phone (over his dead fucking body).

In the background on their end, Harris picked up his handheld radio and slipped into the meeting room, to broadcast that they had contact from the missing team on the phone, and for everyone to standby.

“We heard a secondary collapse once we were inside, but it wasn’t on the chamber, so we’ve still got full access to open and close the door.”

“Ok Scott. Stay put until we can get clear readings of the gas and ventilation of the tunnel,” Shane ordered.

“Copy.”

Of course, Scott knew that, just like they both knew that from this point on, everything they said and did was going to be recorded for the inevitable investigation and report to come.

“We’re going to organise ourselves here and get to work on a plan to get you guys topside safely,” Shane promised. “We’re going to commence hourly check-ins, on the hour, but you give us a call any time if you need anything, alright?”

“Appreciate it. Is everyone else safe and accounted for?”

Shane glanced up at Kip, prompting him to speak.

If he got that much comfort just from hearing Ilya’s voice, maybe Scott would appreciate hearing Kip’s.

“Uh, yes. Affirmative. No other damage reported, everyone accounted for.”

Scott’s relieved sigh held multiple levels, Shane thought. “Good. Good, I’m glad. Thank you.”

“We’ll get back to you with confirmation of the Incident team and what our next moves are. Hang tight.”

Chapter 21: Chapter twenty-one

The main office donga automatically became crisis HQ, and the Emergency Response Team assembled, though with the glaring absence of the principals stuck underground.

Without any intention, Shane found all eyes looking to him as Incident Commander. A part of him wanted to reject the job – someone more experienced than him should do it, surely? No doubt it would be Scott Hunter assuming control, if he were here to do so.

But as much as the leadership role was a heavy and intimidating mantle, Shane wasn’t sure he could trust anyone else in it. This incident was personal for him, and he wasn’t sure there was anyone who would be more committed to getting this right than him.

He quickly assigned Kip to lead on coordination of communications, and Eric Bennett and Carter Vaughn drove in, assuming responsibility for Equipment Coordinator and Underground Coordinator respectively. Shane didn’t know Vaughn well, but as Scott’s second-in-command, he trusted that he knew what he was doing.

Rose and Harris were on standby, ready to support them too.

Unfortunately, Crowell was still around, ready to hamper their every effort. He’d blown a gasket when the ERT officially called a halt to all underground activity across all mines on site. At least Kip had convinced him to take the main meeting room as an ‘office’ to get on the phone with MLH PR and lawyers, to cover his own ass.

“The specialty team from MLH is at the airport, and scheduled to leave in 30 minutes,” Kip informed him, hanging up his own phone.

“Good, thanks.”

Shane was leaning over Wilson’s shoulder, having summoned him and Taylor to HQ so they could rebuild the ground model and run every possible reading to assess ground stability and locate any stress fields and further collapse risk. Shane was simultaneously guiding and checking his grad’s work, and assessing access routes to get to the refuge chamber safely

The current frontrunner route was the most simple and elegant approach of a crosscut from an adjacent tunnel, not too much higher than the partially-collapsed tunnel. Thank God for the position of the adjacent level; without it, they’d be tunnelling a narrow chute from the surface to get the team air and supplies, but they’d be stuck underground for two weeks, until they could safely clear all the collapsed rockfall and dirt.

It was the best solution, Shane was sure. Pretty sure. Mostly. He had to get this right. It was a life and death decision – for Ilya, everyone else in the chamber and the rescuers – and there was very little margin for error in this rock.

“I think it’s time for an update.”

Shane nodded his agreement with Kip. Though his fingers twitched with the desire to pick up the phone and handle it himself, they all had assigned roles for a reason.

Kip settled by the phone and dialled the chamber on speaker. Everyone quieted when Scott picked up.

“Here’s what we know so far,” Kip cleared his throat. “There are two collapsed sections: one about 80 metres away from you, another about 20 metres away.”

It might sound like a decent distance, but there would be all manner of debris surrounding the collapsed sections, right up to the doorstep of the refuge chamber. That was probably how multiple ankles were sprained. But at least the door of the chamber wasn’t blocked in.

“The good news is, there is an adjacent level nearby that was undamaged. They’ll most likely be doing a crosscut to you guys, but they’ll have to overshoot it quite a bit, so they don’t bump the collapsed sections and trigger more faults.”

All things going well, and with some patience, they’d all stroll up the tunnel, walk the inclined crosscut and jump in a vehicle to be whisked back to safety.

“We’ve alerted the MLH underground emergency response team for their expertise, and notified local emergency services. We’re also getting in contact with your families.”

“Thanks Kip,” Scott chimed in.

“You are very welcome. We are running every scenario here to make sure we get you out safely.”

The sound of a scuffle and a protest from Scott crackled over the phone line, before Ilya’s voice rang out clear and beautiful.

“Has Hollander already found best place to dig, but is checking it 12 times?”

Shane couldn’t help the loud, amused scoff he inspired. Kip gestured for him to answer.

“It directly benefits you to have these calculations verified.”

Ilya blew a raspberry.

“We all know your numbers are right Hollander, stop jerking around and send in diggers.”

Shane rolled his eyes fondly.

“Hollander is running a tight ship here, and we are going to be data-driven. No risks, ok?” Kip weighed in firmly, but with a smile. “The chamber has power and supplies for 72 hours for 20 people, so you’ll be snug, fed and watered until we can get to you.”

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to use the chemical toilet in front of your colleagues,” Elena called out in the background of the chamber phone.

Those gathered in HQ winced.

“I guess we’ll either end up best mates, or it’ll become a hunger games situation in here,” JJ could be heard saying.

Another rustle sounded, alongside Russian-accented grumbles, and Scott was back.

“I think we can keep the predictions to a minimum and preserve some battery,” he said, in a very grown-up way. “Talk to you again in an hour Kip – HQ.”

***

Shane’s plotted route was being studied by Vaughn and Bennett on site, to get their expertise on the drilling side of things. Shane was the ultimate authority on the plan, but it certainly didn’t hurt to get more eyes on it.

“Plan looks good,” Vaughn said simply.

“Good to hear Vaughn. I still want to run it by the specialty response team, they’ll be landing soon. But in the meantime, can you proceed with a prelim penetration?”

“Copy that Hollander, we’ll make a pilot drill hole and get back to you with ground response in an hour.”

The VHF went silent again, but Kip was quick to get back on the phone with the chamber.

“Bathroom break,” Shane muttered to Rose who was sitting next to him, having just distributed coffee to everyone crammed into the small building.

She squeezed his wrist as he stood up, which he appreciated more than he could convey right now.

The door of the cramped bathroom closed behind him and Shane immediately dug his palms into his eyes, letting out a shaky breath.

It was getting more hectic as people arrived, wanting answers and instructions. All from him.

It was overwhelming, but he couldn’t be overwhelmed now. There was no time for a breather where he wasn’t doing something – which was a reminder to turn and face the toilet to actually take care of business.

He should be doing more though.

He couldn’t let go of all the geotech work to Taylor and Wilson, though both young men were coping well. Taylor was on site now, mostly being Shane’s eyes and ears and carrying equipment, and Wilson had eyes glued on seismograph readings and a radio clutched tightly in his hands to call an ‘abort’ at the first hint of movement.

Ilya was right, Shane was overworking his planned route. He knew rationally that it was a good plan, they had resources and opportunities, and everyone was alive and well-supplied, giving them the time to do it right and make adjustments if they needed to.

It was Shane’s job to make sure they all stayed alive.

He could be overwhelmed later, once everyone was out and safe. Maybe when he was curled around Ilya in bed and this disaster was able to start to fade into a bad memory.

Maybe then he could also allow the horror ‘what if’, the multiverse possibility of Ilya having not made it to the chamber in time. It could come out, the way it was trying to claw to the forefront now and pull jagged sobs from his chest.

Later. Hold it now.

He finished up and washed his hands before emerging again to the thick of it, to hear rising voices.

Crowell was puffed up in the middle of the room, with Kip trying to calm him down. When the large man spotted Shane, he switched all of his focus and ire to rip into him.

“I’ve been on the phone, and been told that we don’t need to compromise the adjacent tunnel,” Crowell sneered at him.

“Using the adjacent level is the best and safest route for recovery,” Shane told him, firm but calm. He couldn’t say he cared much who Crowell had been talking to.

“We’ve already got one tunnel out of commission, but you want to make it two, just – just willy nilly?”

“Every decision is being made with the utmost respect for the potential consequences.”

Crowell stepped closer, squaring up against Shane, practically puffing his chest up.

“Bullshit. The adjacent tunnel is to be left alone. We’ll send them down supplies and clear the collapsed tunnel.”

Shane had both the reputation and countenance of a calm and gentle person. But he was not a small man, not inexperienced, and not a coward.

“No.”

Crowell blinked at him, the calm but definitive response taking the wind out of his sails for a second. But once he processed, the fury came right back.

“Do it, or you’re fired!”

“I said, no. You don’t have authority here, I do as Incident Commander. We are following the plan that will extract the team in the quickest and safest way. Not the way you think will do the least damage to your long-term profits.”

He stared down Crowell with his flintiest glare.

The idea was detestable, to preserve pathways in the hope to get back to mining sooner. Crowell was probably thinking that the collapsed tunnel had to be cleaned out anyway, so might as well do that now and make the eight people trapped behind the rockfall wait.

Crowell’s face turned from red to puce.

“You’re fired! I’m taking over as Incident Leader.”

Spittle hit Shane’s face and it was a struggle not to flinch. Disgusting.

“No, you’re not. You have no idea how to do this job and clearly have no intention of prioritising the extraction of our personnel. Now you’re taking focus away from rescue efforts. You might as well get back on a plane to Perth, because you’re sure as hell getting out of this building.”

Shane crossed to the donga door, opening it expectantly.

“You fuckin’ little prick –”

“And you’ll recall, Crowell, that we’re recording everything that happens in HQ, so we capture every decision. What would your lawyers and PR team think about this conversation surfacing? Nice bit of fodder for the 24 hour news cycle, and the regulator would probably be interested. What do you think?”

Image and personal consequences. Probably the only compelling argument for Crowell, outside of money.

Crowell looked around, blustering, and shouldn’t have been surprised to find a total lack of support for him in the room. In fact, everyone was looking at Crowell so coldly that it was clear what they thought of his plans and where their loyalty lay.

“I’ll have your job by the end of the week!” he threatened as he stomped out. Shane threw the door closed behind him.

A moment of silence held the room.

“Should have transmitted that to the refuge chamber. Hearing Crowell taken down a few pegs would have lifted their spirits,” Harris said.

There was a round of restrained laughter and Shane released a loud breath. That actually felt pretty good, as an emotional outlet for the day and a long-overdue confrontation with Crowell.

“I’ll let the teams know to disregard any instructions they might get from Crowell,” Kip said with a renewed pep in his voice.

The situation was far from resolved, but at least now they’d be able to tackle it with a bit more peace.

Chapter 22: Chapter twenty-two

Kip Grady: We’ve broken ground, and the team has all the temporary support materials ready to go in great time. You’d be proud, Scott. We’re on our way to you now.

***

Now Shane had entered the most difficult phase of the rescue: waiting.

It was, of course, the most dangerous and intensive phase of drilling, but for him as the geotechnical engineer, he was only able to compulsively monitor the updating data and the updates from the rescue team.

The specialty underground response team had arrived a few hours ago, including a geotechnical consultant Kyle who headed straight to the site. The team lead Maria, sat near Shane and the third member, a media handler, was with Rose. They’d agreed on his proposed access routes and the roster for personnel changeover, which was due to take place soon.

He wasn’t very good at feeling idle. His leg was bouncing up and down and he wondered if he would actually be more use going to site and helping load the tunnel support materials or hell, digging by hand… but then he wouldn’t be able to hear the hourly check-ins and that would probably drive him even more insane.

His anxious thoughts were interrupted by a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Shane, can I grab you for a sec?”

Shane followed Rose to the second, tiny meeting room she, Kip and Harris had been using as a phone room.

“We’ve contacted everyone’s family and arranged for transport and accommodation in Laverton, they’ll start arriving shortly. The motel is letting us set up the dining room as the family hub, so I’m going to set myself up there.”

“Yeah, sounds good. Make sure Miles is ready to take over as point of contact for a while so you can get some sleep tonight,” Shane reminded her.

“Will do. Just, one more thing… we’ve been trying to find a contact for Ilya. His emergency contact details were just a string of text to satisfy the mandatory field. We’ve been debating whether or not to ask him directly on the phone, but it’s a public line, so that could put him in an awkward position,” Rose said with a sympathetic wince. “I wanted to see if you knew any more about his situation? Or anyone he’d want contacted?”

Shane was shocked for a moment, but decided not to ask Rose why she’d ask Shane, of all people, about Ilya Rozanov’s family. He had a feeling it would shine an unflattering light on how subtle and mysterious he thought he was.

“Uh, no. I mean, his parents are gone. He doesn’t… really have any family.”

“Oh.”

Rose looked so genuinely sad, it bizarrely made Shane want to smile. She was so genuinely good, down to her core.

“We’ll get Kip to let everyone know their families have been notified, and ask them as a group if there’s anyone else they want contacted?” Shane suggested.

Rose nodded. “Good idea, yeah. Do you need anything else from me before I head out?”

“No, thanks. You’ve done great work today, thank you for taking care of the families – but remember to take care of yourself too.”

Rose raised her eyebrow and looked at him with a mix of disbelief and fondness. “Right back at you, honey.”

He didn’t get a chance to respond before she wrapped him in a strong hug.

“It’s all going to work out,” she said softly by his ear, and Shane tightened his grip around her waist in silent thanks.

***

Kip Grady: Please provide an update on your air quality and CO₂ levels.

***

Kip Grady: Families are arriving at Laverton and they’re keen to welcome you all out.

Scott Hunter: Thank you Kip, good to know. The team is keen to see them too, and looking forward to, I quote, “extra R&R time and flights on the private company jet”.

Kip Grady: Copy Scott. Apart from the wishful thinking, any change in the condition of personnel?

***

Harris Drover: Hi team, we’ve had a brief changeover of personnel – Kip’s been forced to catch some Zzzz’s.

Ilya Rozanov: Copy HQ, we too have forced the old man to nap.

Harris Drover: Good to know. How is everyone doing?

Ilya Rozanov: Fine. Troy is being very brave about bad ankle, much less whining than Pike.

Troy Barrett: Ilya!

Hayden Pike (background): Piss off.

Ilya Rozanov: What? Is good for them to have full story of bravery.

Troy Barrett: Ok– for the record, then, if we’re talking about ‘stories of bravery’. Scott didn’t mention earlier that before we even felt the full tremor, he and Ilya had like, a Jedi mind meld moment where they looked at each other and knew what was coming. We were on our way to the chamber before the ground even finished shaking. And he half-carried Pike into the chamber after he tripped.

Hayden Pike (background): He doesn’t need to be hyped up Barrett.

Ilya Rozanov: Is true, very clever and heroic.

Harris Drover: That’s amazing Ilya. I mean, not the part where Troy mixed up sci-fi franchises – that hurt a bit. But you guys saved lives today.

Ilya Rozanov: Thank you Harris. Maybe you show Troy the films when you are both on R&R?

***

Kip Grady: Please advise your battery percentage and estimate runtime.

***

15 metres in 24 hours. It was a good result. It’s not like they were about to blast to quicken their progress, not with the tumultuous state of the rock and with Ilya and Troy in the chamber.

But still, from here, it felt like every metre was agonisingly slow.

It was not actually the drilling part that was slow, though. It was putting the supports in place after each round – bolts, mesh, fibrecrete – all the things that would keep the crosscut tunnel in tact and everyone currently underground safely able to get out again.

Shane’s eyes were starting to blur from the numbers staring at him from the screen, on ground movement and deformation, pressure and stress cells… Most of it was fed through from Kyle and now Wilson, who had taken over for a shift on site.

He was about to ask for an update on the gas detectors and ventilation flow sensors when someone started snapping in his face.

“Mr Hollander!”

He blinked twice up at Maria, the specialty response team lead, who had been clicking her fingers a foot from his face.

“You with me?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Shane muttered, leaning back in his seat, feeling slow and heavy. “I was just thinking –”

“You’ve been awake for what, 28 hours?”

It was more like 31 hours, actually.

“Take a nap.”

Shane immediately started to protest.

“I am going to insist, Hollander. We’ve got some cots set up in the meeting room now, so go grab a couple of hours. And yes, I’ll come and wake you if anything happens.”

By how slow the possible responses were coming to Shane, he thought she was probably right.

“Ok. Yeah, ok. Thanks.”

Maria smiled down at him.

“You can get up now.”

“Fuck, yes. Sorry, I – I’ll sleep for a bit,” Shane said, abashed as he peeled himself out of his desk chair and shuffled to the meeting room.

Sunshine was still coming through the drawn blinds, but his body clock was way off so he didn’t think it would be a problem.

He laid down on one of the cots, too tired and distracted to linger on how many people had laid on the same sheets and pillows, and drew out his phone. He put in a three hour alarm, just in case. He also had a follow-up text message from his parents; they’d called about four hours into the crisis, once the news had broken online (Shane suspected his mum had a Google alert on his name and this mine). They’d been relieved to find out he wasn’t one of the ‘trapped miners’ and had let him escape with no more detail once he told them he was on the response team and was busy.

But their message ‘Thinking about you xx. Call ANY time if you need to talk or if hearing how proud we are of you will help!’

He smiled tiredly and switched to his photo album, thumbing through till he got to the shots he was looking for.

This one was his favourite. It was a picture of Ilya in a backward cap and muscle tank, a blinding smile on his face posing behind a quokka, looking like it was also smiling at the camera. Ilya had been so thoroughly charmed by the little creatures, Shane had to practically drag him to the ferry to get him home at the end of the day.

He’d wanted to make the photo his phone wallpaper, but he hadn’t. In case someone saw it.

That was so fucking stupid.

If someone had seen it, he could have just told the story of their trip, teased how Ilya was far more tolerant of animals than people. Maybe preened a little about how gorgeous and sweet his boyfriend was.

Ilya wasn’t going to die (he couldn’t). But if something had happened… No one would know what he meant to Shane.

Maybe even Ilya himself.

Would Shane have grieved in secret, too ashamed of himself and how he’d made Ilya keep their relationship hidden?

Stupid, he’d been so fucking stupid.

He locked his phone without exiting the photo, so it’d be there on his screen when he unlocked it again.

He’d fix it. Once they fixed this whole crisis, he’d fix him and Ilya.

Shane turned on his side, curling up a little, and almost immediately faded into sleep.

***

Kip Grady: The team has confirmed they’re one more round of drilling away from breaking through to your tunnel.

Scott Hunter: Copy HQ. We’ve been kept awake by the sound of the drilling getting closer, but no one’s upset about it.

Kip Grady: Good to hear. They’re installing supports now and anticipating about five hours until they’re through and can be running ventilation checks. Hang in there for us.

***

Just over 50 hours stuck in a 7m x 2.5m container.

Shane had been glad to be in a position to drive the rescue efforts, to make sure everything was done the right way. But he was also selfishly glad to have not been with the team underground – he would not cope well with that kind of proximity with his colleagues.

Even spending the last two and a half days in the office donga was a bit overwhelming to his senses, culminating in a dozen people clustered around the VHF unit, listening intently to the action happening a few kilometres away.

Thankfully, someone had delivered baby wipes, deodorant and toothbrushes and paste to the donga, so it was bearable – just.

“Some debris around the chamber, we’re setting up a spotlight to guide the exit,” Vaughn commentated.

It was a bit silly, how they hung on every word and sound coming through the radio. They knew the rescue team, led by Vaughn, was safely through a (mostly) cleared walkway, having emerged from the crosscut pathway 50 metres away from the refuge chamber.

And they had hung up the phone from the team in the chamber not five minutes ago, all in fine health and looking forward to the knock that was soon coming on their door, since protocol was not to open until the external ‘all clear’ had been provided.

This moment should be almost anticlimactic. The rescue was 99% done, save for the actual ‘getting out’ part.

Still, they all leaned forward just a bit when Vaughn transmitted, “OK, external environment clear. Let’s get our people out.”

He’d locked down the transmit button on his mic, so they got to hear the creak and clunk of the door of the refuge chamber opening.

Then the beautiful sound of whoops and cheers as the trapped team stepped out.

An overlapping series of thanks and good-natured jeers poured through.

“Thank fuck –

“ – about time – ”

“Holy shit, I’m so glad to see a different person –”

 “Hey – let’s get you the fuck out of here.”

Applause and handshakes broke out in the donga, and Shane was hugged three times.

Technically it wasn’t over until they all emerged into the fresh air and sunshine, but Shane still felt like a weight had come off his shoulders.

“Amazing work Hollander,” Maria stepped up to him, shaking his hand with a smile. “You ever want to spend less time in the field, you’d be a great candidate for a response team.”

“Thanks, but I don’t know if I want to repeat this, ever.”

Maria laughed lightly.

“I hear you. Look, I’ll monitor the rest of the extraction and wrap things up here. Why don’t you take a vehicle and head to town? See the team with your own eyes. Take Kip and Harris with you, yeah?”

A lot had been packed into the last couple of days, and Shane struggled to remember if Maria and Rose had met or had any crossover, or if Maria just happened to sound a lot like Rose.

Either way…

“Thanks. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

Chapter 23: Chapter twenty-three

Chapter Notes

Shane, Kip and Harris arrived at the motel before the rescue team. They had longer to walk before they could jump into a vehicle, and they were carrying minor injuries too.

There was a brief moment of disappointment when they opened the doors to the dining room and the people inside started to rise, only to realise it wasn’t their loved ones.

“Might be another 30 minutes or so, folks,” Harris called out.

They split up, Kip trailing over to Rose and Harris introducing himself around with the kind of easy confidence that came with being an extrovert, no doubt hoping to provide some distraction and make the time go faster for the families who had already been waiting so long.

Shane headed straight for Jackie and the kids.

“Shane,” Jackie breathed with relief, hugging him tight and fast. “Rose said you were running the rescue efforts?”

“Ah, coordinating from the office, yeah,” Shane confirmed. “Are you all up to date?”

“Yes, Rose has been great. We know that daddy has a sore foot, but he’s ok,” Jackie said, as a reminder to the kids.

“Where’s daddy now?” Ruby, or Jade, asked.

“He’s on his way – he has to move slow because of his foot, but I know he can’t wait to see you guys. He’s been grumbling over the radio about wanting some good food,” Shane answered as cheerfully as he could.

“That sounds like daddy!” Jackie joked, though Shane could still detect the tightness around her eyes.

“I can wait here with the kids, if you want to run to the bathroom or anything?” Shane offered quietly. He’d never looked after children alone, but he was pretty sure he could handle 20 minutes of supervision; it would be easy, after all the herding and orders of the past couple of days.

“I’m ok, thanks,” Jackie declined gratefully.

Shane stayed with the Pikes, answering the odd question from the girls who seemed in a fine mood, despite the recent uncertainty. He otherwise looked around, trying to catalogue who was who.

He could easily identify Elena’s mother, talking to Rose, and thought the man jiggling his leg and staring into a cup of coffee nearby probably belonged to Elena too.

There were two sets of parents that could belong to Troy or to Carmichael, though a young woman emerged from the bathroom and rejoined one of the couples, so he assumed them to be the Carmichaels.

Two other women were sitting nearby, both with wedding rings, and he assumed one belonged to Marlow – maybe his wife and a sister? He doubted either of them belonged to Scott Hunter, given the attention he showed Kip.

JJ’s parents and girlfriend were also easy to identify, and he felt duty-bound to approach and introduce himself, assuring them all that he’d heard JJ in decent spirits, reciting his hunger games joke and telling them how great and clever an engineer JJ was.

He faded into the background after that, noting the entry of a few more people he recognised from site who were probably close with the rescued team.

Anticipation grew as Harris’s 30 minute estimated window came to a close.

Then from inside, he heard multiple vehicles pull up, one after another, in the car park and a loud group of voices rise.

Everyone stood, looking to the door hopefully.

The room collectively held its breath.

Then the doors opened.

Elena sailed in first, followed quickly by JJ, Carmichael and Marlow. All of them looked tired, their hair lank, but happy.

They all rushed to their family members after a quick glance around the room, the sound of laughs and crying growing quickly, before Shane’s eyes went expectantly back to the door.

Next came Hayden on a pair of crutches, his left foot shoeless with a bandage wrapped around it. Scott hovered behind Hayden’s right elbow, ready to catch him if he slipped.

“Daddy!” Jackie and the girls ran to him and he swayed when the girls hit him, held upright with a grin by Scott and Jackie.

Shane was happy to see his friend well, but his eyes went back to the door.

Finally, Troy entered, also on crutches.

But Shane’s eyes locked on Ilya beside him.

His usually bouncy curls were limp, his skin slightly more sallow, but he was there.

For a moment, Shane had to lock his knees under him, in danger of folding to the ground and letting out dramatic sobs of relief.

Ilya’s eyes darted furtively around the room, his face set like stone. Shane was reminded that he didn’t have any family here, no parents or siblings to rush forward, like Troy’s were rushing to him now.

But he did have a partner.

Shane was striding toward him before he consciously thought about it, and he got to see the moment he caught Ilya’s eye.

An achingly vulnerable expression of relief mixed with yearning yanked on Shane’s heart, threatening to break it as he watched Ilya try to school it into something more unaffected.

“Hollander,” Ilya greeted as he got closer.

“Ilya.”

He breathed it like a prayer as he slammed into the larger man, wrapping him in a bruising hug.

“Thank God,” he whispered in Ilya’s ear, squeezing his eyes shut as they threatened to tear.

Ilya’s arms wrapped around his back, squeezing him just as tight.

“Thanks for getting us out,” Ilya replied quietly, his accent and voice sounding thick.

He couldn’t let him go just yet, even if the hug was going longer than was acceptable for a ‘bro hug’. He could not bring himself to care what other people thought right now.

Then the hoots and whistles started.

Shane pulled back far enough to look over his shoulder, and was taken aback to realise that it was not them who had garnered any attention – it was Scott and Kip, caught in a passionate embrace in the middle of the room.

It was like there was no one else there, as far as the two men were concerned.

Scott was cradling Kip’s face like he was the most precious thing he’d ever handled, and Shane could just make out the way Kip’s hands were clenched in Scott’s high-vis shirt like he wasn’t going to be separated from him ever again.

And everyone was happy for them.

Of course, ‘everyone’ wasn’t in the room, and those that were, were all predisposed to be in a good and accepting mood from their safe return and reunion.

Still. He was happy for them both.

Shane slipped his hand down between them, reaching Ilya’s hand and intertwining their fingers. He wasn’t big on attention, ever, and even if they were out, PDA would remain at a minimum with only the most extreme exceptions. Like right now.

Scott and Kip had stopped kissing but were still tight in an embrace.

It was almost as nice to see people turn away and leave them be as it was to have seen them smiling.

Shane turned back to Ilya, finding his eyes wet. His bottom lip gave a tiny wobble as Shane squeezed his hand.

“You need to see the medical team, c’mon,” Shane instructed. Everyone else was busy, even Harris had pulled up a chair for Troy to sit and was fetching another to elevate his foot. He could get Ilya checked over quick while everyone else was occupied.

“I’m fine,” Ilya insisted, but let Shane move his grip up to his forearm and tug him toward the motel room where a local doctor and nurse had kindly agreed to check over the team, to save them the time and effort of visiting the local hospital.

Most were on a flight out this evening with their families. It was indeed on the MLH private plane, so not everyone would fit. He knew Ilya and Scott had already volunteered to wait for a regular flight out tomorrow morning. Troy had volunteered too, but that had been shot down due to his injury and instead, JJ and his family would be lingering one more night.

“Get your blood pressure taken, let them listen to you breathe and tell them your name, date and place,” Shane ordered. “Then we’ll be able to disappear.”

Before they left the room, he caught Rose’s eye and got a knowing wink.

***

Other people probably noticed Shane mother-henning Ilya Rozanov (if ordering him to ‘sit his ass down’ could be considered nurturing), but they were soon left in their dust as they commandeered a vehicle back to camp with two guys Ilya knew.

They separated long enough to shower in their respective dongas, since the showers were unfortunately too small to fit two grown men. But soon Shane was feeling fresh, dressed in comfy clothes and shuffling through Ilya’s unlocked door.

The other man was taking longer to primp, which Shane couldn’t blame him for – at least they hadn’t been conserving water in the office donga, so Shane had a chance to splash himself a bit. But Ilya finished up quickly so he could slip on a pair of trackpants and wrap himself around Shane on the twin bed.

“This is better than hard seats and spooning Troy,” Ilya murmured into his hair.

“You better not have spooned with another man.”

“Was like war-rules, for comfort until homecoming. You are still my main guy.”

“I’ll sprain his other ankle,” Shane promised drowsily.

They just held each other in silence for a while, which quickly slipped into dozing. Until Shane’s phone trilled loudly.

Shane jolted, having been in the lovely, floaty zone where REM sleep was moments away. He reached over Ilya for the phone he’d left on his desk, in case it was Maria or someone needed something from him he’d forgotten to do.

The screen read ‘Mum 💛’

He swiped to answer, bringing the phone to his ear.

“Hey mum.”

“Shane honey, how are you? We saw everyone was out online and wanted to check in how you’re doing. You’re not still on site are you? You’re resting? Your dad’s here too.”

“Hey buddy.”

Ilya grumbled slightly at the interruption to his nap and tried to burrow directly into Shane’s sternum.

“Hey guys. Yeah, it’s over, happy ending,” he said, his voice a little deeper from being so close to blessed sleep. “Sorry I didn’t text, I’m just exhausted.”

“Of course you are! We just wanted to make sure you’re ok.”

“Thanks. I am. I’m great, actually.”

He glanced down, his vision a sea of damp, light brown curls that smelled of Ilya’s expensive shampoo.

His partner.

“That’s good. Well, we don’t want to keep you –”

“Yeah, I’ve got to sleep, but there’s actually something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Shane interrupted impulsively.

“Oh?”

He inhaled deeply, making Ilya’s head rise with his chest.

“I’m gay.”

Ilya’s head shot up, wide eyes regarding Shane with total shock.

He gave him a calm little smile. It was ok.

“Oh. O-ok, I can’t say I was expecting to hear that today, but… great,” his mum said, clearly shellshocked.

“Really great. Shane, we love you buddy,” his dad added.

“And we’re so proud of you!”

Fuck, he loved his parents so much. He knew they’d support him, but still, his eyes pricked with tears.

“Thanks you guys. And – I’m seeing someone.”

Ilya’s mouth was opening and closing, like he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was hearing.

“Someone really special.”

Shane took another breath. This was a good idea, right? Maybe not THE most romantic, but it felt... right.

“And I love him.”

Ilya’s brows crinkled and his eyes filled with tears. He ducked his head back into Shane’s chest, rocking his forehead against his collarbone as his shoulders quivered but he tried to stay silent.

Shane’s spare hand stroked up and down Ilya’s bare spine.

“I think you’ll really like this guy. Maybe soon… you could meet him?”

Down the line he heard a slight sniffle, which could belong to his mum or his dad.

“We’ll book the flights as soon as you give us the go ahead,” his mum said gently. Happily.

A lump had formed in Shane’s throat now too.

“Ok. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Ok honey. Talk to you then. Love you.”

“Love you both too.”

He disconnected the phone and shoved it under the pillow so he could hold Ilya properly, with both arms like he deserved.

Ilya sniffed and looked up, the prettiest thing Shane had ever seen with bright blue, hopeful eyes.

“Who is this ‘guy’?”

Shane laughed wetly, reaching up with one hand to wipe away a stray tear that escaped Ilya’s eye.

“This infuriating, beautiful, clever, fun, smart ass engineer who loves to blow shit up. Half of the site is in love with him, the other half is jealous, and none of them can compete with him. I’m kind of obsessed,” Shane said, smiling and crying a little at the same time. “You’d like him.”

Ilya rubbed their noses together.

“Not as much as I like you. I love you, so much.”

Ilya was pressing his lips to Shane’s almost before he finished talking, in a series of chaste kisses since both of them were too weepy to do much better.

“It’s all I could think about when you were down there,” Shane confided quietly. “How much I love you and how you didn’t know.”

Ilya laughed.

A wet, short little giggle, but still!

“Hey!”

“Sorry – just, the same,” Ilya said, his smile goofy and sweet. “I thought I might die without getting to tell you I love you. I thought about saying it on phone, but…”

Shane breathed out a sound of amusement. It would have been quite the distraction, for him and others.

“Maybe we can leave the big declarations and displays to Kip and Scott?” he asked with only a shade of hesitation. “But I’d like to tell more people. At least, friends. The ones who haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Who has figured out?” Ilya asked.

“Rose, for sure. I think Elena too, Maria, who you don’t know. Kip and Harris suspect something, maybe? I’m not sure.” Shane listed, thinking as hard as his exhausted brain would allow.

Ilya pulled back a little, a familiar smirk spreading across his face.

“Well, Shane, the whole office knows I want to fuck you.”

Shane’s eyes bulged.

“What?!”

“I mean, is obvious. I always flirt,” Ilya shrugged.

“Antagonise,” Shane corrected automatically. “So… what? We actually don’t have any announcement to make? People already know?”

So much for his epiphany.

“Mmm, suspect maybe, for you. But is good! Now they will know I got my goal. Got my man.”

Shane groaned as Ilya lowered himself back down to kiss Shane again, and so they were touching from toes to lips.

“… your parents won’t visit straight away, da?”

“I think we can have this next week, just for us,” Shane answered. He needed more time to psych himself up for his parents meeting his boyfriend, mostly to try to explain his mother to Ilya.

“Sounds good. Just sleep and sex, I think,” Ilya said.

“And maybe a quick dinner with Hayden.”

Ilya groaned dramatically, but Shane cut him off with a kiss.

Chapter End Notes

It's over 🥹🥹🥹

Thank you so much to those of you who followed along and left supportive comments - they've brought me so much joy! I've had a great time writing this super niche Hollanov AU, and I'm amazed that so many people have liked it. Special acknowledgement to the Aussie readers 😚

And AMAZINGLY, WanderingWays has created an ADORABLE bit of fan art from last chapter - please go see it, so sweet

https://www.tumblr.com/the-witch-of-the-wandering-ways/811461697605926912/need-this-posted-somewhere-in-order-to-share-it