Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Meet-Cute, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Anxious Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Coming Out, Idiots in Love, Sexual Tension, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Walks Ilya Rozanov Like A Dog, Hand Jobs, Oral Sex

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-24 Updated: 2026-06-16 Words: 42,533 Chapters: 13/?

Always Like This

Summary

Sveta
Help me
I am in love with a virgin

Ilya was exaggerating for comic effect, of course. He wasn’t in love with Shane Hollander. He was just absolutely infatuated with him and wanted to carry him around in his pocket and also fuck him senseless and then count his freckles while he slept beside him. So not love, just whatever that was, but still. It was a problem.

Or,
A newly-drafted Ilya Rozanov finds himself transfixed by a beautiful man in the grocery store.

A newly-single Shane Hollander does something uncharacteristically brave.

Neither of them are prepared for just how out of their depth they're about to be.

Chapter 1: Chips

The man in the grocery store was the most beautiful thing Ilya had ever seen.

He’d first seen him in the snack aisle when he’d been there looking for sukhariki, which of course he had not found. He had, however, found the man.

The man was standing in front of a shelf stacked with chips, and staring at them as though everything in his life depended on which packet he selected. He hadn’t even looked up when Ilya had passed behind him in the narrow aisle, which Ilya supposed was a good thing because he was staring at the man in a way that he was not particularly proud of, a kind of slack-jawed reverence that had no place on the face of a grown man, especially not in the middle of a snack aisle while looking at a stranger.

It wasn’t Ilya’s fault, though. He didn’t quite understand why the entire grocery store hadn’t ground to a halt to watch the man stare at the chips.

He was about the same height as Ilya, but smaller – more compact, although still muscular in his shorts and t-shirt. He was dressed as though he was leaving the gym, but his clothes looked clean and his hair was dry and styled. He immediately thought of Svetlana’s recent rant about how American women dressed.

“They are always wearing their gym clothes! Everywhere! Gym clothes are for the gym, Ilya. Leggings for exercise, dresses for dancing, jeans for the rest. Why is it always leggings for everything in this country?”

Ilya wondered what Svetlana would make of this man’s choice of grocery store attire, and grinned as he recalled their most recent conversation on their way home at 3am last Sunday.

“We didn’t come all this way for you to not fuck pretty men.” Svetlana had been drunk, leaning on his shoulder in the back of the cab. She had spent half the evening pointedly looking at the man who had been leaning on the bar, gazing openly at Ilya. He had certainly been very pretty. Ilya had remained seated at their table, pretending not to see him.
Ilya had rolled his eyes. “We came all this way for me to play hockey, Sveta.”
Svetlana had shrugged, snuggling closer to his side and closing her eyes. Ilya knew she would fall asleep before they reached his apartment, which meant he would have to half drag her out of the cab when they arrived. “You could play hockey and fuck women in Russia, Ilyusha. Here you can be all the way happy.”
“I am happy.” He was.
“Too happy, perhaps.” Her voice was barely above a mumble now. “Maybe I don’t fuck you anymore and then your dick will be sad and it will make you find a pretty man to fuck instead.”
Ilya hoped their cab driver didn’t speak Russian.

Ilya was fairly certain that Svetlana would not be complaining about this beautiful man’s outfit if she was here. She would be too busy delightedly jabbing Ilya in the ribs and attempting to push him in the man’s direction. Ilya was very pleased that Svetlana was not here, because while he was not being shoved in the beautiful man’s direction he could stand here and stare at him. The man had dark hair that flopped into his eyes, and he had… freckles. This should not be important. Many, many people had freckles. These were the different kind. The kind you wanted to count, and kiss, and pray to.

Eventually, giving up on the sukhariki and grabbing something very disappointing-looking called Nonni’s, Ilya was forced to leave the snack aisle, and leave the beautiful man where he’d found him, staring intently at chips. He glanced back over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, hoping the man would look up at the movement. He didn’t.

Ilya had never been jealous of a grocery store shelf before.

Later, with his cart loaded, he was about to head to the checkout when his phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Marleau, one of the men that would be his teammate when his first season started.

“We’re watching the game at mine later. Come. Bring snacks.”

Ilya was surprised to feel a slight lift in his chest. He wouldn’t have said he wanted to watch the playoff final with this group of loud American strangers, but Svetlana was working tonight and the idea of going home to watch it in his empty apartment felt like something he hadn’t even known he’d been dreading.

“OK.”

When he returned to the snack aisle, he was shocked to find that the beautiful man was exactly here he’d left him.

He’d been looking for the man the entire way around the grocery store, of course. Eyes scanning every aisle, gaze jumping up every time he noticed movement. He’d slowed his pace several times, not willing to admit to himself that he was trying to give the man a chance to catch up. He’d told himself that the man had only been holding a basket, that he’d probably chosen his chips and left.

But here he was.

This time Ilya had a reason to stand a lot closer to the man, and so he did. Now that he was closer he saw that the look on the man’s face was not concentration, but concern. He was surveying the chips as though one packet contained a bomb, and it was the beautiful man’s job to instinctively divine which one before the entire grocery store exploded.

Ilya could not remember ever initiating a conversation with a stranger in his life. Chirps on the ice didn’t count – the goal was to say his piece and skate away. If they had time to reply, that was a failure in delivery on his part. In Russia, the hockey world had been small and the women had approached him, so there had been very little need for him to start a conversation with literally anybody. Since arriving in America five weeks ago, Ilya had been pleased to learn how much he could achieve with nonverbal communication, saving him the need to force his brain and mouth to work together against the weight of unfamiliar English words. A raised eyebrow, a shrug, a crooked smile, or an impatient hand gesture could communicate more clearly, and certainly more quickly, than he could with a paragraph of stilted English through a thick accent. Which is why Ilya was deeply startled to realise that he was approaching the beautiful, concerned, freckled man and intending, unbelievably, to speak to him.

“Is problem just you, or also me?”

The man jumped, like in one of the videos Ilya had seen on his phone of a cat being frightened by a cucumber. One hand tightened on the handle of his shopping basket, the other jumped reflexively to his chest. His eyes widened, fixing on Ilya as though he was an intruder in his home, rather than one of six fellow shoppers in this brightly-lit snack aisle. A series of about eight things happened behind those eyes before they relaxed slightly, and Ilya would have paid a great deal of money to know what they were.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your face,” Ilya gestured to the man’s face, although this was probably unnecessary because despite his accent that much was understandable. “Is very concerned. Big trouble. I must know – is just you problem, or also me?”

The man appeared to be attempting to rearrange his beautiful face, and it was working, because now he looked less concerned and more confused. Ilya supposed that was fair, and also how his own face should probably look, because what the fuck was he doing.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t…”

“Perhaps chips is bomb. Or perhaps you work at government. Know something. We all will die? There is new virus? The aliens are coming?” He leaned forward slightly, which he distantly noted was an absolutely insane thing to do because he was already standing closer to this stranger than was reasonable in any context. “Should I return to Russia? I tell no-one if you tell me.”

The man’s face was still confused, but his eyes had softened and while nobody could describe what he was doing as smiling as such, his cheeks had rounded slightly in a way that shifted his freckles and now Ilya had to look at them all again. He was still staring at Ilya, but in a way that was more appraising than alarmed. Probably back to alarmed soon enough, Ilya conceded, given that he was acting like a maniac.

There was a period of silence, which was probably only a few seconds but was long enough to have Ilya scrambling for something else to say. He’d already spoken more words in English to this man than he had to all his new teammates combined since he arrived over a month ago, so he was finding the well alarmingly dry.

“No aliens,” the man said, right as Ilya was considering whether or not he could just wheel his cart away and pretend this never happened. “Or virus.” He paused, his face briefly becoming concerned again. “That I know of.”

Wonderful. Ilya had added a new concern to what was clearly an extensive pile for this poor worried, beautiful man. He scrambled for something to say that would perhaps confuse the man again, since his face had at least looked a little lighter a few moments ago. Unfortunately, his brain had gone entirely offline because this beautiful man had just spoken to him, and therefore it seemed to think that it had done its job and had now abandoned him entirely.

“Ah, good,” was all he managed.

“I wasn’t… I was just thinking,” the man said. Lucky for some, Ilya said pointedly to his smooth, blank brain.

“About… chips?” Ilya gestured to the shelf in front of them. “Looked like big thinking for chips.”

The man let out a sound. It wasn’t a laugh, in the same way that a twig isn’t a tree, but it was certainly in the family of sounds that are laugh related and Ilya’s chest swelled with pride that he had coaxed a joy-adjacent noise out of this extremely concerned man.

“No, not chips. It was…” the man looked confused again for a moment, then his face cleared. “I can’t even remember what I was thinking about, actually.”

This seemed unlikely to Ilya, who was quietly certain that he had never in his life looked as worried as this man had just been looking, and he was sure that he would remember any thoughts that put that kind of look on his face. Still, the man was talking to him, and accusing him of lying didn’t seem like a polite thing to do.

Fortunately the man saved him from the effort of finding yet another thing to say by adding

“Thanks for distracting me, I might have been standing here until the store closed. I do that sometimes. Get stuck, I mean. Thinking.”

The beautiful man’s cheeks flushed and Ilya needed to sit down. The blush spread to the tips of his ears, and Ilya noticed that he had two freckles on his left earlobe and also that his earlobes looked softer than anything should look on a grown man and he clenched his hands around the handle of his shopping cart before he reached out and took that earlobe between his finger and thumb and stroked it.

“Is not so bad problem,” Ilya replied, tearing his eyes away from the man’s earlobe that he was now imagining between his teeth. “I have opposite, maybe. Not think enough.” Well, definitely not thoughts worth having, anyway.

The man smiled, but it looked a little sad. “That is a problem I would really love to have sometimes.”

Ilya had once again made this poor man feel something worse than he was already feeling, and he decided that it was time to go. He imagined the man reflecting on this conversation later and remembering the time that a big, dumb hockey player had made him worry about a virus and feel sad about thinking too much when he was just minding his own business buying chips.

Which, Ilya noticed, neither of them had actually managed to do yet.

“What chips you get?”

Ilya was certain that it was the stupidest thing he’d ever said in his life, but then the sad look had gone from the beautiful man’s face so maybe it was actually the best thing he’d ever said. The freckled, still-flushed cheeks had lifted again in that not-quite-smile way, and Ilya was glad that the man had turned back to look at the chips so that Ilya couldn’t stand there and stare at his beautiful face like an idiot. He also wanted the man to turn back and face him so that Ilya could stand there and stare at his beauitiful face like an idiot.

“These.” The man grabbed a purple packet off the shelf and tossed them into the empty basket he was holding. “I don’t really eat, uh, a lot of chips, but I’m going to a friend’s to watch the game and these are his favourite.” He looked back up at Ilya, who needed to learn about six new English words for colours just to name the ones in the man’s eyes.

“We trust him?”

“Who, Hayden?”

“This chip friend, yes. I do not know these American chips.”

The man reached out, grabbed a second purple packet from the shelf, and leaned past Ilya to place them gently in his cart. “We can absolutely trust Hayden when it comes to snacks. Literally nothing else, but definitely snacks.”

Ilya couldn’t quite remember what breathing was. The man’s shoulder had brushed against his chest when he’d leaned into his cart, and his heart had stopped completely. The man smelled like Dove soap and mild stick deodorant but it was somehow the most intoxicating thing Ilya had ever smelled. He noticed that he wanted to lick the man’s armpit, but he decided to worry about that thought later.

“Perhaps I get two.” Ilya did not need two packets of the same chips, but he did need the man to lean close to him again. Actually, he was taking snacks to feed a hockey team, so maybe he did need two packets. Perhaps he needed six packets of the chips. Perhaps he needed a second cart for all of the chips that he needed. He definitely needed to think of something else to say, because now that they both had their chips the man would leave and this was an absolutely intolerable thought.

“He likes these ones too,” the man was saying, and he was reaching, reaching, for another packet on a higher shelf, and his t-shirt had lifted and there was a sliver of smooth skin above the waistband of his shorts and Ilya’s dick twitched like he was a fucking virgin and not, as Svetlana often called him lovingly, a massive fucking slut.

“This is big trust to the chip friend. I take these chips to very important place. If they don’t like chips, maybe they don’t like me.” Maybe if he yammered on about chips for long enough, his brain would come back online.

The beautiful man smiled properly for the first time and the odds of Ilya’s brain coming back online went from ‘low’ to ‘zero’. He might never have another coherent thought again. He decided that would be okay, because he could just think about the beautiful man smiling at him until he died and that would be fine.

“That’s an awfully big job for a packet of chips.”

The man was still smiling at him. Ilya nodded. He wouldn’t be talking anymore. He accepted that. Everything from here on would be even more humiliating than it already had been and there was nothing to be done about it.

Ilya was going to get very, very drunk in front of his new teammates.

“Maybe you need, like, an insurance policy?” The smile had turned shy.

Ilya stared at the beautiful man. To be fair he had already had been staring at the beautiful man, but he did it a bit differently. Maybe. He wasn’t really sure he could feel his face. “Mmm?” he managed.

“Oh, sorry. Umm. Someone to blame, like as backup. In case they hate the chips.”

Ilya nodded, or his head bobbed a bit, or maybe he stood perfectly still and it was the room was just kind of shifting around on him.

“I mean,” the man was blushing again, and Ilya was going to die. “I could give you my number, and I can tell them it was my fault.”

Ilya decided that he had completely lost the ability to understand English, because it sounded a lot like this incredibly beautiful man had just offered him his number. He would have become quite concerned that he’d had a stroke in the language area of his brain if the man hadn’t started digging in his pocket for his phone. Ilya hastened to retrieve his own, and told his shaking fingers that if they dropped his phone now he would allow one of his very large teammates to slam them in a door later. They behaved. They even managed to open a new contact, and hand his phone to the beautiful, freckled, chips insurance man.

“Shane,” he read aloud, when the man handed it back. He supposed the man already knew his own name, but it was new to him, and he needed to say it. He quickly typed his own name and number into the phone that the man, Shane, had handed to him.

“Hi, Ilya.” Another shy smile. Another five years off Ilya’s life.

He didn’t care if his teammates all got salmonella from the chips. He couldn’t wait to text Shane and tell him how much they fucking loved them.

Chapter 2: Insurance

Chapter Summary

There is an extremely beautiful man in the snacks aisle.

Shane is very brave.

Chapter Notes

Thought I was writing a one-piece, but people were super nice about it so we're back in the snack aisle for Shane's POV.

Shane Hollander fucking hated the grocery store.

It was, to him, a microcosm of everything that made it difficult to be a person. The lights were too bright, the music too loud. There were too many choices to make, hundreds of things to possibly get wrong. And the lawlessness! Given that the store was neatly ordered into a series of aisles, the human chaos inside was baffling. Why could nobody keep to the damn right?

He took a breath and tried to calm his thoughts, or he’d never get out of the car and go inside. And today, he really needed to go inside. He opened his door and strode across the carpark.

When Shane had been young his mother had told him,

“Figure out what you need, and make it work.” And he had lived by that, with relative success. He hated the grocery store, so he didn’t go to the grocery store. His groceries were delivered weekly from a saved order on his phone, which he hadn’t changed since he created it three years ago after his local grocery store had rearranged its aisles and he’d damn near had an actual panic attack trying to find the quinoa. A shudder ran down his spine as he grabbed a basket on the way through the sliding doors.

He lived by his mother’s words in almost every aspect of his life. Shane felt like he was constantly just making it work, staving off disaster by sheer force of will. And up until three weeks ago, it had been working. Mostly.

His daily routine had been perfect. Gym, class, work, study, bed. Blink back the panic threatening the corners of his vision. Dinner with his parents every Sunday. Lunch with Rose at the café next to her work on Mondays and Wednesdays. Unclench his jaw, relax his shoulders. Raiders games at Hayden and Jackie’s place. Perfect.

Rose over to his apartment for dinner on Friday nights. That part hadn’t been quite so perfect, but with a bottle of wine between them it had worked. He’d thought. Usually. And when it hadn’t, he’d found ways to make up for it. He’d watched some videos on the internet and gotten pretty good with his hands. It was… fine. Until three weeks ago, when mid-way through dinner Rose had reached over and stroked his cheek and told him she wouldn’t be staying that night.

He'd felt relieved until he’d looked up and seen her face and realised that she’d said something small, but meant something big. And then she had calmly, quietly, lovingly ruined his life.

“Shane, I think you might be gay.”

His soul had left his body. He’d seen it. Watched it ascend through the ceiling, wishing him luck as it left. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, which was strange because his heart had stopped at the word “gay” and now his chest was a screaming ache and his wine was rising in his throat and Rose was speaking again but he couldn’t hear her. She was probably telling him to breathe, but he knew he couldn’t even if he tried so he didn’t bother.

He noticed dimly that he was in the grocery store. Why was he there? Hayden. Snacks. Get it together, Hollander.

The main problem was that Rose had been right.

He’d known for a long time. Forever, maybe, but he hadn’t allowed the thought to crystallise until after high school. At first he’d thought he just wasn’t particularly interested in women, which was fine. And then he realised that he was quite interested in men, which… wasn’t. It was for other people, of course. His favourite professor was gay. Two of his high school teammates had come out in the past few years, and he’d been happy for them. Really. So great.

It was absolutely fine for everybody else to be gay. It just wasn’t what Shane was supposed to be. That, and he wasn’t really sure how to be, and so he just wouldn’t, in case he wasn’t any good at it. That seemed safest. So he’d asked Rose to be his girlfriend, learned to enjoy wine, and gotten really good with his hands.

Now what the fuck was he supposed to do?

Ever since Rose had left his apartment that night, concern and relief mingled in her eyes, Shane’s attempts at keeping his panic at bay had been becoming less and less successful. He still went to the gym in his apartment basement every morning, but he’d been staying too long and doing too much, pushing far past exhaustion until his lungs were screaming and his limbs were numb. He was going to get injured, and then he’d really be in trouble, because if he couldn’t exercise his skin got too small and his hands curled into fists every time he took his mind off them. He was still going to class, although he’d barely retained anything and for the first time in his life he had an assignment due on Monday that he hadn’t even started. His teeth hurt all the time.

He'd cancelled on his parents and Hayden three weekends in a row. He’d had to. They’d look at them, and they’d know. Not that he was gay, but that he’d lost control of it. That it was crumbling, the entire thing, and that he was powerless to do anything about it.

Hayden had texted him this morning. “See you tonight, yeah?”
It was the final. It was unthinkable that Shane wouldn’t go, crammed into one corner of their tiny couch while Hayden and Jackie lay tangled at the other end, Jackie scrolling through her phone while Hayden and Shane acted as though their high school hockey careers were essentially post-graduate degrees in punditry.
“Sorry man, still pretty snowed under with school and work is kicking my ass.”
He hadn’t even been able to say ‘next week, for sure’ like he had the last two weekends, because it was the final and there wouldn’t be a next week for a few months.
When his phone had dinged again, he’d expected a text from Hayden. A ‘no worries man’, like he’d gotten the last few times.
It wasn’t Hayden. It was Jackie.
“I hope you’re okay, but also I kinda hope you’re not because otherwise I’m not sure why you keep making my boyfriend look like a kicked puppy. Hayd misses you. I miss you. Please come tonight.”

Fuck.

He hadn’t told them about Rose yet, because Jackie would say “oh my god, what happened”, and that was not a simple question to answer. Well, it was actually, painfully simple, but he would rather leave the country than answer it. Could he spend an entire evening at their house, and not mention Rose, and not explain where he’d been, and not clench his jaw so hard his words came out mangled, and not curl his hands into fists so tight his forearms ached and his fingernails cut into his palms until he bled?

He supposed he was about to find out. Shane always tried to be a good friend – he tried to be a good everything – but sometimes he forgot that people actually cared about him. He knew that missing game night at Hayden’s was terrible friend behaviour, but he thought that Hayden would be more annoyed at his lapse in etiquette than… sad. He’d made Hayden sad. The pieces of his life crumbled further in his palms.

He'd go. He’d take snacks, all of Hayden’s favourites, just in case he couldn’t say ‘sorry’ quite enough with his words. He’d field their questions, somehow. What would happen if he just… said it? If he told them that Rose had left him because he was attracted to men? Could he do it?

“Is problem just you, or also me?”

Shane jumped. Genuinely left the ground, like he’d been jump-scared in a horror film in a dark cinema rather than spoken to in a supermarket. He whirled around to face the direction the words had come from.

His eyes settled on the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life.

His brain short-circuited.

How long had he, Shane, been standing there staring at the chips?
How long had he, this beautiful man, been standing next to him?
Wait, did he… recognise this guy?
No. No fucking way.
Was he staring? He was staring. He should blink.
The man had said something. What had the man said?
The accent. It had been Russian. It WAS him.
Say something, Shane.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your face,” the man replied patiently, gesturing at Shane’s face. Shane fought the urge to go cross-eyed trying to see his own face. “Is very concerned.” Shane attempted to relax his forehead. “Big trouble. I must know – is just you problem, or also me?”

Big trouble was fucking right. Shane couldn’t make his brain keep up with any of this. What was this guy – and Shane was still refusing engage with his growing sense that he knew who this guy was – talking about? Why was he talking to Shane at all? How were his curls that perfect? If Shane reached up and tugged one, would it spring perfectly back into place? What did they look like when he woke up in the morning? Nope.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t…”

“Perhaps chips is bomb. Or perhaps you work for government. Know something. We all will die? There is new virus? The aliens are coming? Should I return to Russia? I tell no-one if you tell me.”

Russia. Fucking hell. This was him. The guy the Raiders had just drafted. He looked nothing like the picture they’d showed on ESPN, where his face had been all hard lines and cold eyes and curls flattened against the sides of his head. This man's face was glowing and his eyes were pure light and softness, twinkling and sparkling and teasing. Teasing Shane. Something lifted in his chest. He usually hated being teased, but this felt… different. The man, the future Boston fucking Raider, why couldn’t Shane remember his name, had leaned closer and Shane decided that he really, really loved being teased actually.

“No aliens, or virus.” He replied, hearing an odd lightness to his voice that he hadn’t heard there in a while. “That I know of,” he added quickly, in case there was. He didn’t actually know for sure.

“Ah, good.” The man was staring at him intently, and Shane felt the need to explain.

“I wasn’t… I was just thinking.” Great explaining, Hollander.

“About… chips? Looked like big thinking for chips.”

Some of the levity in his chest bubbled out of his mouth in a strange “ha!” sound that he would be completely humiliated by if it hadn’t made this beautiful, twinkling man’s face light up.

“No, not chips. It was…” Shane realised that he wanted to tell this man that he’d been thinking about coming out to his best friend, but why in the world would he tell him that? Unless Shane wanted him to know that he was gay, but why would he want that? What was even happening right now? “I can’t even remember what I was thinking about, actually.” He rolled his eyes at himself internally. What the fuck was this guy supposed to say to something that patently, ridiculously untrue? The man didn’t seem about to say anything, but he didn’t look like he wanted the conversation to end, either, so Shane had better say something else.

“Thanks for distracting me,” he blurted. “I do that sometimes.” Okay, that was enough. “Get stuck, I mean.” Stop talking. “Thinking.” Fuck.

He felt the blush start below the collar of his t-shirt, crawling up his neck to his cheeks and turning his ears flaming red. He’d always hated how extensively he blushed, and now this incredibly perfect god of a man was staring at his ear with an unreadable expression. He’d probably never seen an ear turn that shade of scarlet before. The mortification of how red he’d turned was somewhat moderated at his relief that at least he’d stopped talking.

“Is not so bad problem. I have opposite, maybe. Not think enough.”

Right now, that sounded like pure bliss. Shane felt like he hadn’t stopped thinking since Rose had touched his cheek and gently ruined his life. Shane imagined how it might feel for the riot in his mind to settle into silence and the longing made his stomach hurt.

“That is a problem I would really love to have sometimes.” He saw something twist on the man’s face, the first time it hadn’t been an image of joy and light, and he realised he was being a massive downer. This guy was trying to joke around, had reached out to a stranger to break him out of a spiral, and Shane was whining about thinking too much. He expected the man to grab his chips and leave, and was startled when he spoke again.

“What chips you get?”

An absurd wave of relief flooded Shane’s entire body. His stupid, thinking brain hadn’t scared this man – Ivan? No, that wasn’t it, what the fuck was his name – away. He felt his shoulders loosen, just a little. He could do this. He could have an easy, light conversation with a beautiful man in this grocery store. He realised that he’d barely even noticed that they were in a grocery store, that the lights weren’t bothering his eyes and they must have turned the music down because all he could hear was this patient man trying again and again to pull him out of his brain. Shane decided to let him.

“These.” He grabbed Hayden’s favourite chips off the shelf automatically, the packet synonymous with his best friend since middle school. His brain gave one final surge against his attempted restraints, and he added the caveat, “I don’t really eat a lot of chips, but I’m going to a friend’s to watch the game and these are his favourite.”

Shane didn’t allow himself to interrogate why he’d felt the need to inform this future Boston NHL star that he liked hockey. No reason, just making conversation. Probably. He looked up and found the man’s eyes boring into his. He swallowed, and hoped it wasn’t audible.

“We trust him?”

“Who, Hayden?” Shane was amazed that his voice sounded vaguely normal. The man’s eyes were still on his, and Shane’s mouth had gone dry.

“This chip friend, yes. I do not know these American chips.”

Thank god for Hayden. Hayden, who was the reason that he was even standing in this aisle. Hayden, who was the only reason he could confidently help this man buy chips.

It occurred to Shane that he’d already put his bag of chips in his own basket, and that if this man – Alexei? No, but that was closer, maybe – wanted to get some too, Shane would have to move out of the way. But then Shane would have to leave, because he couldn’t really just move back and stand there and watch this man choose chips. No, Shane couldn’t move, because he absolutely couldn’t leave. Yet. So, before he really knew what he was doing, he’d taken another packet off the shelf in front of him.

“We can absolutely trust Hayden when it comes to snacks. Literally nothing else, but definitely snacks.”

He noticed that the man’s hands were clenched tightly on the handle of his cart, so he leaned past him to place them directly on top of the rest of his groceries.

He would love to say that he brushed against the man’s chest on purpose. That it was a move, an act of brazen flirtation. It wasn’t. The moment Shane had leaned past him to place the chips in his cart, he’d been able to feel the warmth of him. He’d smelled cologne mingled with sweat and his stomach had swooped his legs had quite literally given out for a millisecond and he’d fallen lightly against his chest. His incredibly firm chest. He’d looked down at the man’s hands – his very, very large hands – gripping the cart handle so hard that veins stood out against his forearms and he’d realised that this man could snap him in half like a fucking twig and he fought the absolutely absurd urge to lean back against his chest, properly, and nuzzle into his neck like a baby deer.

Shane felt his dick thicken slightly. In a grocery store. Thinking about nuzzling a man’s neck. What the fuck was happening.

“Perhaps I get two.”

Shane felt a wave of immense relief as he turned back to the shelf, returning to the safe territory of having a job to do. The man needed more chips, Shane would get him more chips. He probably didn’t want two packets of the same, did he? What else did people like? He mentally scanned through images of Hayden’s kitchen bench over the years, empty packets that Jackie had dumped into bowls. He recognised a yellow bag of corn chips and reached to grab them off the shelf.

“He likes these ones, too.” This time he tossed them gently into the man’s cart rather than leaning close to him again, just in case his body did something insane like attempt to climb him like a fucking tree.

The beautiful tree of a man was looking at him seriously. “This is big trust to the chip friend. I take these chips to very important place. If they don’t like chips, maybe they don’t like me.”

Shane couldn’t help it. He smiled. He beamed. He was absolutely captivated by this man who kept calling Hayden his chip friend, and who kept talking to Shane even when he was making it difficult, and who was still standing here with him even when both of them had thoroughly exhausted their reasons to be standing in this aisle.

“That’s an awfully big job for a packet of chips.”

The man nodded solemnly, his face unreadable, and Shane’s heart rate kicked up a notch. He could feel their interaction drawing to a close, slipping away from him and he decided that he wasn’t going to let it. He couldn’t. He didn’t care what he had to do.

Figure out what you need, and make it work.

“Maybe you need, like, an insurance policy?”

The man’s face changed, incomprehension crossing his features. “Mmm?”

God, Shane was a dick. This poor man had been making this incredible effort, wrangling a conversation with Shane’s impossible brain in his second language, and Shane had just said ‘insurance policy’. His hand clenched at his side, but he forced himself to press on.

“Oh, sorry. Umm.” How the fuck did he explain insurance? He supposed he didn’t need to, really, he just needed to make his meaning clear. “Someone to blame, like as backup. In case they hate the chips.”

The man nodded again, and Shane wanted to hold him. He wanted to press his cheek against that broad chest and say thank you, thank you for talking to me, thank you for asking me about chips, thank you for making me feel like maybe I’m going to be okay, one day. Instead, he took a deep breath for what felt like the first time in weeks, firmly ignored the heat returning to his face, and said in as clear a voice he could muster,

“I mean, I could give you my number, and I can tell them it was my fault.”

He couldn’t believe he’d said it, and he certainly couldn’t look at the man now that he had. He transferred his basket to his other hand, and dug in his pocket for his phone. He had trouble extricating it from the soft fabric of his running shorts – oh my god, why was he wearing running shorts? – and when he finally looked up he was surprised to see that the man was already holding his own phone out to Shane, a new contact screen already opened. He handed his phone over and took the beautiful man’s, warm from his pocket, noting that it didn’t have a protective case and finding this both absurd and delightful. He typed his name and number with shaking thumbs, and returned it to the man who was still typing his details into Shane’s own.

The man looked down at his own phone that Shane had returned. “Shane,” he said, more to himself than to Shane, but Shane felt it in every inch of his body, and he swallowed his request for the man to say it again.

Shane looked down at his phone, which the man had replaced in his hand. Which Ilya had replaced in his hand. Fuck. That was it. Ilya Rozanov. His legs almost gave out again.

“Hi, Ilya.” He smiled at Ilya, who smiled back.

Chapter 3: Panic

Chapter Summary

It's later that evening.

The beautiful men have each others' phone numbers.

Shane continues to be brave.

“Just eat a fucking chip, you weirdo.”

Shane blinked up at Hayden, who was staring at him from the other end of the couch. “Huh?”

Hayden fixed him with a bemused expression. “You’ve been staring at the chips even more than usual. Just eat one, man.”

Shane had to admit that he had probably been staring at the chips more than was generally acceptable. More than he’d been watching the game, perhaps. It was the end of the second period, and he wasn’t entirely sure he knew the score. He certainly wouldn’t put any money on it, even if he was the kind of person that did that kind of thing.

The thing was, somewhere in this very city, Ilya Rozanov might be eating those same chips. And if he did eat the chips, would that make him think of Shane?

Shane had certainly been thinking of Ilya.

He couldn’t stop thinking about his hands and the way they’d looked gripping the handle of his cart. It made Shane’s pulse temporarily disorganise itself every time he remembered the way Ilya’s veins had snaked up beneath the smooth skin of his forearms, the way he swore he’d seen his hands clench tighter when Shane had briefly brushed against his chest. God, the feeling of brushing against his chest. He adjusted his position on the couch.

He reached out subconsciously and tapped his phone screen for the fiftieth time that evening, a new tic he’d developed for absolutely no reason all.

Shane chewed his lip, his eyes returning to the bowl of chips on the coffee table. What if Ilya texted him about the chips? Shane had tried them before, sure, but he hadn’t eaten one in well over five years. He certainly couldn’t speak on them with any authority. What if Ilya asked if he liked them? Shane had already told him that he didn’t eat many chips – god, why – but this time he could reply with something less weird. If Ilya text him. Which he probably wouldn’t.

Shane reached out, and took a chip.

“Holy shit,” breathed Jackie.

He put the chip in his mouth, and chewed.

In his periphery he saw Hayden scrambling for the remote, and a silence fell over the room that made Shane think he’d muted the break-time commentary for, and this was no exaggeration, the first time in their lives. He felt acutely aware that both Hayden and Jackie were staring at him, and he supposed that if you’d spent half of the last decade watching someone pointedly not eat chips, or anything even vaguely chip-adjacent, it might be quite a surprise to see them start.

The chip was quite nice. Tangy. He took another one.

“Shane.” Hayden’s voice sounded strange, like his throat was closing but he was trying very hard to remain calm. “What the fuck is going on with you?”

He’d been pleasantly surprised at the lack of questioning when he’d arrived at their apartment earlier, brandishing snacks for Hayden and a bottle of wine for Jackie. He’d mumbled through a vague apology about having been busy, and thanked Jackie for changing his mind about coming over. This had seemed to suffice for his friends, and although the conversation in the first quarter had been slightly stilted, they’d eventually settled back into their usual rhythm.

Now, he looked up to see Hayden and Jackie looking at him like they’d never seen him before in their lives. He was going to have to say something.

“Rose broke up with me,” seemed like the easiest place to start.

“Oh, Shane.” Jackie’s eyes softened, and she gave him a sad smile. He returned it, attempting to put “please don’t ask me any questions” into the look behind his eyes.

“What happened?” asked Hayden, so either Shane had done a terrible job with his eyes or Hayden had simply ignored them. Both, probably.

“Uhh, just… wasn’t working, I guess.” He picked up his empty ginger ale can and turned it in his fingers, deeply uncomfortable with the unwavering scrutiny still bearing down on him from the other end of the couch. He could feel colour crawling up his cheeks, and felt an overwhelming urge to change the subject.

“Weird thing happened at the grocery store on my way here,” he blurted.

He felt Jackie and Hayden look at each other, then Jackie offered a tentative and clearly concerned “Oh?”

“Yeah,” said Shane, still staring intently at his empty drink can. “I, uh, I met Ilya Rozanov. The new guy, on the Raiders.”

There was a long beat of silence. Two. Three. Shane suddenly wanted to change the subject back to Rose. He felt sweat pricking the back of his neck.

Jackie and Hayden finally spoke at the same time.
“Who?” said Jackie.
“What?” said Hayden.

Shane nodded once. “Yeah, he was uh… he was buying chips. I helped, kind of.”

Hayden placed his beer and the remote carefully on the small table beside the couch and rubbed both hands up and down over his face.

“Shane,” he said in a voice dripping with forced patience, dropping his hands and fixing Shane with a firm look, “what the fuck did you just say?”

Upon reflection, Shane realized that this was usually the kind of thing that he’d have told them the moment Hayden had opened the door. He and Hayden had been on the ice together since Shane and his family had moved to Boston when he was in middle school. To his mother’s dismay, he’d immediately switched allegiances and become a Raiders fan, and that had formed the core of a decade-long friendship with the man sitting at the other end of the couch. Two years ago Hayden had sent him a grainy, zoomed-in photo of the back of Brad Hammersmith’s head with the excited caption “LOOK WHO I SAW ON THE T!!!”. He still brought it up every time they were on the T together.

Meeting a Raider’s player, having an actual conversation with him, and assisting him with snack selection was definitely not a post-second-period casual update. It was headline news.

The problem lay in the part of the interaction where Shane’s dick had started getting hard in the middle of a busy grocery store because he was massively fucking gay, both in general and, as it turns out, for Ilya Rozanov in particular, and that had put a whole different flavour on the situation that made it feel something he probably shouldn’t tell anyone about, ever, and certainly not something he should announce the moment he arrived in his friend’s apartment contrite and bearing apologetic snacks. But now he’d said it, and fuck, he’d really backed himself into a corner, because whether they kept talking about Ilya or went back to talking about Rose they were actually just talking about…

The panic attack started the same way it always did. A rushing sound, like he was trapped behind a waterfall. Deafening, pounding water inside his ears. He felt his face settle into the familiar mask, a frozen calm screen over swirling chaos. His vision blurred, darkened, and narrowed, and he closed his eyes to fight the disorientation. Instinctively, he curled forward, hugging his arms across his stomach and pressing his face against his knees. His lungs were wet cement and his heart was pounding in his swollen throat and he was definitely, definitely going to die.

He felt the couch shift, sensed both Jackie and Hayden rising wordlessly and then he felt Hayden settle down beside him.

“Okay, man,” Hayden said gently. “You’re okay.” Hayden began to take long, deep, slow breaths, audible enough for Shane to hear over the crashing in his ears.

The first time Hayden had seen Shane have a panic attack, they’d been 16. Shane had been crouching, coiled and gasping, and when Hayden had tried to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder Shane had lashed out before he’d know what he was doing and sent Hayden flying. In the six years and probably fifteen panic attacks since then, they’d refined their technique. Hayden sat close to him, close enough that he could murmur to Shane and that Shane could hear him breathing, feel him breathing, but he didn’t touch him or ask him what was wrong or do anything at all other than breathe and tell Shane that he was okay.

As Shane began to bring his breathing in line with Hayden’s, he realized that this was his ‘telling Hayden he was gay’ panic attack, but that he hadn’t even managed to say it and he was going to have to do it all again later if he didn’t say it now. That felt like a waste, and Shane absolutely hated inefficiency.

“I’m gay,” he mumbled into his knees.

He knew it wasn’t fair, but he needed Hayden not to pause. He knew that this was not a reasonable expectation, that if your best friend of a decade comes out to you mid-panic-attack during the Stanley Cup final you’re allowed to need a moment. But if Hayden hesitated he might die, and dying might feel better than this.

Hayden didn’t hesitate. “Let’s circle back to that in a moment, buddy. Keep breathing with me.”

They sat, breathing together, until the feeling started to return to Shane’s limbs and he gingerly opened his eyes to see that his friend’s concerned face was back in full focus. Hayden offered him a tentative smile and Shane offered a watery one in return, realizing as his cheeks creased that they were wet with tears.

What a fucking day.

He’d shaken his head when Hayden had asked if he wanted to talk about any of it, and Hayden had squeezed his knee then patted his leg, returned to his end of the couch, unmuted the television, and that had been that. For now. He could sense Jackie behind them in the kitchen, giving them space, and he knew that after he left she’d be both proud and furious that Hayden hadn’t pressed him for details.

He reached out and tapped his phone as the teams returned to the ice for the third period.

1 new notification. A picture. From Ilya.

All the work he’d done breathing with Hayden was undone in a moment. The entire tapestry of space and time had been undone, so breathing was the least of his worries.

The screen of his phone went dark while Shane stared at it, and Shane tapped it again. The notification was still there. It had arrived nine minutes ago, while he was panicking.

If today was anything to go by, he was never going to stop panicking. But… maybe this feeling right now wasn’t panic? He wasn’t really breathing, but his lungs weren’t heavy or screaming. His heart was racing, but it was safely in his chest not jammed in his throat. His stomach was churning, but in a way that felt dangerously close to pleasant.

Ilya had sent him a picture. Ilya had taken those big, strong hands and picked up his ridiculous un-cased phone and taken a picture, and he’d opened a message and chosen Shane’s name and sent the picture to him. He’d chosen Shane’s name.

Shane swallowed, and opened the picture.

He saw a large coffee table, littered with phones and sets of car keys and empty beer bottles. In the middle of the table were two large glass bowls, empty aside from a scattering of chip crumbs in each.

The caption was simple. “Five stars,” followed by five star emojis.

Shane felt the absurd urge to giggle, and was exceptionally glad he managed to stifle it. Hayden had been incredible tonight, but that might have pushed him over the edge. Shane didn’t think he’d ever giggled in his life, but he’d also never given his phone number to a professional hockey player in a grocery store.

Or received a text message from a professional hockey player he’d met in a grocery store.

He didn’t know what to do. Reply, obviously, but say what? Ilya hadn’t asked him a question, and Shane was usually heavily reliant on questions to know what he was supposed to say in unfamiliar situations. He considered asking Jackie for help, which he frequently did when it came to navigating new or complex social territory, but he found himself hesitating.

If he asked Jackie for help replying to Ilya, she’d know that he’d given Ilya his number.

And that would be fine. Profoundly out of character in its boldness, but otherwise fine. He’d just told them he was gay, and he supposed an accepted outcome of gayness was Shane talking to boys. He was surprised to find that the idea of talking to Jackie about boys already wasn’t as horrifying as it had felt on his way here earlier. That’s not what was bothering him, or at least not the main part.

Why had he given Ilya his number? That question, and its absurd answer, had been creeping around the edges of his awareness ever since he’d collapsed in his car in the grocery store carpark.

He’d given Ilya his number because he’d thought that maybe – maybe – Ilya had been... flirting with him?

Which was ridiculous. Absolutely wild. He can’t have been. Ilya Rozanov wasn’t gay, was he? He couldn’t be. Shane wasn’t sure why he couldn’t be, but he couldn’t.

But if he was…

Shane swallowed. Were professional hockey players allowed to be gay? He’d never thought about it. He’d probably put a great deal of subconscious effort into not thinking about it. He knew there were pride nights, and some of the players posted in support of various charities and foundations, but none of that meant any of them were actually gay. At least not publicly.

What if Ilya actually was gay, and Shane told Jackie that he’d given Ilya his number, and a series of things that he couldn’t quite articulate happened, and then Ilya was outed and Shane ruined his career and probably his entire life because he couldn’t reply to text without help?

Absolutely not.

He started to run thought a list of possible responses. It had to be friendly enough that Ilya knew that he was pleased to hear from him, but not so enthusiastic that he scared him off. He should acknowledge the chips, but perhaps also attempt to shift the conversation away from chips, given that he’d already more than exhausted his knowledge in the area. The problem with that was that they’d quite literally only ever spoken about chips, unless you counted their earlier mentions of plagues and aliens, neither of which Shane was keen to revisit.

Shane remembered how confused and overwhelmed he’d been when Ilya had first started talking to him at the grocery store, how his thoughts had been both too fast and too slow and Ilya had stood there and repeated himself until his words had awoken Shane’s, and how light his chest had felt and how he’d been able to talk to Ilya, been able to give him his fucking number, as soon as he’d stopped thinking.

Shane closed his eyes for a moment, imagining that he was back in the store with Ilya standing beside him, eyes sparkling, radiating warmth, waiting with endless patience for Shane to find his balance. The words rose within him and before he could stop himself, he was typing.

Glad to be of service.

He couldn’t believe he’d sent it. He was going to throw up. He slammed his phone down onto the arm of the couch, screen down, and returned his gaze to the television. He desperately tried to not imagine Ilya reading his text. He reassured himself that he probably genuinely wasn’t reading it yet because it was the third period of the Stanley Cup final and he was a professional hockey player and he was almost definitely not looking at his phone right now. Shane, personally, was never going to look at his phone again.

As the final score came up on the screen, Shane’s phone let out a quick series of vibrations beneath his hand where it was still pressed to the arm of the couch, and he realized he’d been clutching it the entire time. He snatched it up as though he’d been waiting for news of an organ transplant, rather than a reply to a text from a man he’d had a singular chips-based interaction with a few hours ago.

Sad you cannot help with game

The text was followed by a slightly crooked photo of a giant television showing the same score that had been displayed on Hayden’s screen a moment earlier, followed by another text containing two emoji stars.

It occurred to Shane, as he read these six simple words for the eighteenth time, his cheeks aching from suppressing the grin threatening to draw Hayden’s hovering attention, that it was possible that Rose may not have ruined his life after all.

Chapter 4: Dots

Chapter Summary

Ilya has a list, and he needs to make it longer.

Chapter Notes

Something had broken deep inside of Ilya’s brain.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Shane. Beautiful, worried, freckled Shane with his floppy hair and a beaming smile and soft earlobes that had flushed Ilya’s new favourite shade of pink.

Ilya had thought about people before, or at least he’d thought he had. He’d spend the night with a beautiful person, and a few days later would get a very pleasant memory of an arched back or sharp gasp and he would allow himself to remember the experience fondly. That’s what he thought it had meant to think about someone, for them to pop up in his brain for a moment and bring a lazy grin to his face.

This was… nothing like that.

He kept finding himself alone in his apartment, running through the devastatingly short list of things he knew about Shane.

Shane is very beautiful
Shane does not eat chips
Shane has a friend called Hayden, who does eat chips
Shane watches hockey (he liked this one)
Shane sometimes gets stuck thinking too much, with a pained, worried look on his beautiful face
Shane is very helpful to strangers in grocery stores
Shane had given Ilya his number
Shane had texted Ilya and said “glad to be of service”

Every time he reached that last one, he had to stand up and move around his apartment, looking for something to do with his hands. He’d even put his fucking laundry away.

He’d received damn-near pornographic paragraphs of text from hook-ups before and been deeply unmoved, but that short sentence from Shane about helping him with choosing snacks sent his blood bubbling and dick stirring every time he thought about it. Which was all the fucking time.

But that was fine. It wasn’t his dick that was worrying him, he’d been wrangling that thing his whole life and honestly, they were usually pleased with each others’ choices. Wanting to fuck Shane was not the problem. It was the way he kept wondering about Shane.

Wondering what he’d been thinking about before Ilya had spoken to him at the store. Wondering what he’d snacked on while his friend was eating those chips. Wondering who else made him smile the way he’d smiled at Ilya. Wondering what his last name was. Wondering if he’d bump into Shane again, every time he left the house. Wondering what else he might need at the grocery store, even though he’d already been three times this week, because he wondered if that was Shane’s usual grocery store, and he wondered if he’d see him again.

He hadn’t.

He hadn’t text Shane again since the finals almost a week ago, either.

His mind wandered back to that night. He’d actually almost enjoyed spending time with his new teammates, even though half of them were fucking idiots. His place in the team felt awkward – the last three rookies had been drafted straight out of high school, so Ilya was already older than them at 21. Already much better than them too, and they knew it. He was closer in age to some of the guys that had been on the team for years, but he’d still been greeted with a firm “hi, Rook” which had grated against his nerves. Ilya knew how it worked – he’d prove himself on the ice, he always did – but being called ‘Rook’ by people younger and slower than him made his teeth grind. Still, it had been fun listening to them chirp away about the players on screen, almost none of whom Ilya had ever played against. He had learned a few excellent new words.

He’d noticed that all the other players left their phones on the coffee table next to their drinks when the teams were on the ice, like it was some kind of unspoken team rule, so he’d put his there too. He’d checked it after the first period and felt a surge of pleasure when he saw he had a text message, and then, for the first time in his life, a disappointed sinking feeling when he saw it was from Svetlana.

When he reached for his phone at the end of the second period there were no notifications at all, and the swoop of disappointment came again. But then, he’d supposed, Shane had nothing really to text him about. Shane had given him his number in case he needed it for chips-related matters. Ilya already had a plan to text Shane after the game and say ‘good chips, thank you’ or, ideally, something kind of like that but that also made him sound incredibly cool and attractive. But then he’d looked at the table and seen the chips bowls empty, and he supposed he didn’t really have to wait until the end of the game, so he’d snapped a quick picture when nobody was watching.

He hadn’t managed to come up with anything sexy to say, so he’d gone with saying nothing at all and sending five star emojis. Then he’d realized that it might just look like he was sending star emojis, so he’d added the words Five stars in an attempt to further impart that he was giving Shane full marks in what he hoped was an internationally recognized grading system.

Shane hadn’t replied before Ilya reluctantly returned his phone to the table to watch the third period. He heard it vibrate a few minutes after play had resumed and he had glanced around at his teammates, seriously considering picking it up right then, but when Feller had done that during the first period Connors had snatched his phone and started reading out texts from his girlfriend at the top of his voice until Feller had been able to wrestle it back from his hand, and Ilya was absolutely not going to be risking that. His hand twitched where it rested on his thigh.

The final seconds had barely ticked over on the television screen before Ilya was snatching his phone from the coffee table, and immediately almost dropping it again.

Glad to be of service.

Ilya had almost been able to feel his pupils dilate. Blood rushed up to his face and surged between his legs and he felt a little high. His entire body pulsed. His thumbs readied over the keyboard on the screen, preparing to reply with something absolutely filthy about the services he was willing to offer in return, wanting to fill Shane’s body with the same thrumming heat he was currently enjoying, when he paused.

What the fuck was he doing? Shane was talking about helping him with the chips. He had no idea why his body was responding to Shane’s text like this, but when he re-read their brief exchange, there was nothing obviously sexual in it at all. Shane had not offered, or suggested, or even vaguely eluded to any other services. He’d just replied nicely to Ilya’s nice text about the nice chips. Nice nice nice. Not filthy. Goddamn it. He was losing his mind.

Ilya could be nice. Or at least, he could be not a sex-crazed lunatic. For a minute.

He raised his phone to where the television screen was now displaying the final score, and quickly snapped a photo. It had been a genuinely shit game. He knew Shane had been watching. He would talk to Shane about the game. He sent off a quick, boring message.

Sad you cannot help with game.

He included the picture of the score, and two emoji stars.

Twenty minutes later, when Ilya was in the back of a cab on his way to a bar with a few of his teammates, Shane had laugh reacted his stupid boring message, and replied If I had that kind of power, we’d have been watching Boston in the finals!

Ilya had replied Next year I think, although, looking at the other occupants in this taxi who were currently trying to wrestle each other for absolutely no reason at all, he had his doubts. Shane had almost immediately put a little heart reaction in the corner, and that had been that.

Ilya did not want to think about how many times he’d re-read this ridiculously short exchange over the last few days. It had become a strange, subconscious habit – any time he picked up his phone to do anything, he’d first flick to the thread of messages now burned into his memory. He was glad he’d sent two pictures, because it meant he needed to scroll a little bit to see it all, and that made it feel more substantial.

Disgusting. His brain was definitely broken. This could not be normal behaviour.

Ilya knew that part of the problem was that he was bored. It was another three weeks until his official off-season training started, and another eight weeks until training camp. Ilya usually loved the first few weeks of the off-season, but he’d already been in Boston for six weeks and he was itching for his first season in the NHL to start.

He’d noticed the date this morning. Two months. Two months since his father’s funeral, since his assistant coach had grabbed his arm and hissed, “I entered your name. Don’t come back” and vanished into the crowd and before Ilya could call out to ask what he’d meant, his phone had vibrated in his suit pocket and he’d seen an email confirming a one-way flight to the USA eight days later and then, moments later, a forwarded email confirming that Ilya Rozanov had been entered into the 2025 NHL draft.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, he’d cried for the first time since he was twelve.

He’d been drafted sixth, but that was fine. He’d been playing shit hockey for the last year and he knew it. Sveta had followed once they knew where he was playing. Boston. He’d googled it and it looked fine. Boring, maybe, but fine. Ilya could enjoy himself anywhere. And he was in the goddamn NHL. He’d play for a team that lived on fucking Sesame Steet if he had to.

So yes. He was bored, impatient, excited. Even nervous, a little bit, probably. Shane was a much-needed distraction, and that wasn’t so bad.

Perhaps he’d feel less pathetic if the text chain was a little longer?

Worth a try.

His thumbs hovered over the keyboard on the screen and he chewed on his lip, absently noting with vague irritation that his knee had started bouncing.

Ilya didn’t really think about what to say people. He just said things that were true, and then people felt however they felt about it. Not his problem.

His mind ran though a list of things he could say to Shane that were true.

You are very beautiful and I think about you all of the time
I am very good at hockey and for some reason I need you to know that
I want to snack on your earlobes
I think I am maybe lonely
I have eaten two bags of our special chips this week, and there are three more on my kitchen shelf
I do not know why, but I need to know your last name

True was not going to do it for him today. He suddenly felt very tired. He was not going to be able to seduce the beautiful man, and he realized with an unsettling thump in his chest that really, he just wanted to talk to him.

Hello
What are you doing?

Boring. Fine. Whatever. He didn’t care, as long as Shane replied.

Three dots appeared in the lower left of the Messages app before his screen had even gone dark. He ran his thumb up and down the screen, as if trying to coax the words into arriving faster. The thrill and relief of seeing the dots made him wonder why the hell he hadn’t text Shane sooner.

Hello! Nothing, just making dinner at home. What about you?

Shane makes dinner. Shane has a home. He supposed these were things he already kind of knew, but he added them to his tiny list of facts anyway.

Nothing
At home also
What is for dinner?

He’d first written “what is dinner?”, but then he realized it looked like he was asking Shane what dinner was, so he’d used his translation app. For. He always forgot for. Stupid language. He felt like he was playing with one arm tied behind his back.

Just stir-fry. You?

Ilya stood from the couch and walked to his kitchen, bending to open his freezer door then crouching to take a photo. It was crammed with the ‘extra-large’ frozen meals he’d found in the grocery store on one of his many visits this week.

Probably one of this, he captioned it.

The replies came almost immediately, one after the other.

Oh my god, Ilya.
There are so many.
Please tell me that’s not all you eat?

Ilya grinned at his phone. So, Mr. No-Chips was concerned about his frozen dinners. So very horrified, in fact, that he’d said Ilya’s name. He felt a rush of victory, like he had in the grocery store when Shane had laughed. Kind of laughed. Almost. Made a sound. Whatever. He remembered how Shane’s eyes had lightened, how his cheeks had lifted when he realized Ilya had been teasing him.

No
Sometimes I eat pizza

He imagined the deepening horror on Shane’s face, and his smile broadened. He leaned his elbows on the kitchen counter, holding his phone and waiting for Shane to reply. This time the dots took longer. Ilya tried not to care. Shane was probably cooking, or eating, or something. He waited, staring at the screen. He had to tap it a few times to keep it from going dark.

Finally. Dots.

Don’t you guys have dietitians?

Don’t you guys have dietitians?

Don’t you guys have dietitians?

Shane knew who he was.

When had he known? Right away? Had he known when he’d given Ilya his number?

Had Shane only given Ilya his number because he knew who he was?

Did it matter?

Not right now, it didn’t.

I meet in three weeks
Right now is freedom

The replies arrived immediately again this time.

You can’t eat like that for three weeks!
You’ll die of sodium poisoning.

Then more dots, indicating a third message on its way. Then the dots vanished. Then they were back. Gone. Back.

Ilya was torn between feeling delighted at getting to observe this indecision in real time, and desperately needing to know what Shane was typing and deleting. His fingers drummed impatiently on the side of his phone. Finally, the dots remained in place for long enough that he knew Shane had settled on something to say, and then they were replaced by a message.

Let me cook you dinner sometime next week so you actually make it to the first game?

Ilya needed to sit down. He dropped into one of the bar stools lining his kitchen island, his eyes still glued to his phone screen. He read the sentence again, and again, and again and he knew that he would be repeating it to himself for the rest of the evening. He was pretty sure he was going to be able to recite it on his deathbed.

Rising to the top of the swirl of emotions in his chest was… awe. This beautiful man was so fucking brave. He really didn’t understand how these two parts of Shane fit together – how could he be the tense, worried man stuck with his thoughts in the chips aisle, and also this bold, confident man who had given Ilya his number and now asked him to dinner? Ilya needed to know everything about him so that he could understand.

It made Ilya want to be brave right back.

It was a stupid, competitive impulse, but he was being cautious and Shane wasn’t. Shane was taking the lead, and Ilya was barely keeping up. Shane kept knowing what he wanted and making it happen while Ilya sat around wondering.

This would not stand. Ilya knew what he wanted, too.

Tomorrow?

A pause, mercifully brief. Dots. Why was Ilya holding his goddamn breath?

Sure, tomorrow works.

Chapter End Notes

Your comments have added years to my life. Thank you, I love you.

Chapter 5: Pasta

Chapter Summary

Two beautiful men eat dinner.

Chapter Notes

The intercom buzzed at 7:08.

Shane had been standing in his kitchen stirring a pan of meat sauce and trying to decide if it needed more salt, or more wine, or more anything. Sugar, maybe? He tried to channel his mother, whose recipe this was, but who never actually followed it properly. Shane had never made it for himself, let alone for someone else. Pasta was a treat, a food he ate at his parents’ on special occasions, and it was absolutely not on the weekly rotation. But the photo of frozen meals that Ilya had sent was comprised almost entirely of various forms of pasta – lasagna, carbonara, cannelloni – so he was making spaghetti. Well, right now he was making the meat sauce, which definitely needed… something. He cast his eyes around the kitchen for inspiration, noticing the state of mild chaos. A pot of water sat beside the meat sauce on the cooktop, waiting to be boiled for the spaghetti, which was still in its package on the counter. A block of cheese was lying on a chopping board, ready to be grated. The tins from the tomatoes were still in the sink. His heart rate jumped, but he forced himself to breathe. He had time. He had planned it by the minute, and he was perfectly on track.

He heard the buzzer, and froze. His eyes flew to the clock on the wall, and then to his watch to confirm that the clock on the wall wasn’t malfunctioning.

He snatched up his phone and scrolled to the last message he’d sent Ilya. He didn’t really need to; he knew exactly what it said. It was burned into his brain, just like every single detail of every other interaction they’d had. He re-read the familiar words anyway. His address, followed by

I’ll have dinner ready for 7.30.

He’d agonized over that text. He’d agonized over pretty much all of the texts, but especially that one. It was the politest way he’d been able to think of to say “don’t be late”, which he absolutely was not going to say, but desperately needed to convey. Apparently what he’d failed to convey was “don’t be twenty two fucking minutes early, either”.

The buzzer sounded again. Shane looked down in horror. He’d spent forever that afternoon deciding on an outfit, but he hadn’t wanted to cook dinner while he was wearing it in case the sauce splattered. He was still dressed in his grey running shorts and black tank top he’d changed into when he got home from class - the things he owned that he least minded getting splashed with tomato sauce. The things that he least wanted to be wearing when Ilya arrived, especially since he’d been wearing these exact same shorts the last time they’d met and once had been far too many times already. The kitchen was a mess. The table wasn’t set. He’d showered when he’d come back from class, thank god, but he hadn’t put his cologne on yet. He could feel that his hair was even flatter on his forehead than usual from leaning over the steaming sauce.

Maybe, he allowed himself to hope, it wasn’t Ilya. Maybe someone else was pressing his buzzer. Someone with the wrong apartment number, or one of those religious people who went door-to-door. He’d never hoped for a visit from one of them before, but right now he’d be so grateful to see anyone other than Ilya that he might just buzz them up. Perhaps they could stir the sauce and talk to him about Jesus while he got changed and did something to his hair.

He picked up the handset that connected to the intercom.

“Uh, hello?”

“Is Ilya,” crackled Ilya’s voice.

Shane started trying to do math. Not his strong suit, even at the best of times, but this was an emergency.

How long would it take him to get changed? At least two minutes, realistically, given that the shirt he’d decided on was still on its hanger in his closet and that he’d have to do the buttons. Three minutes, in case he didn’t line the buttons up right on his first try in his panic, and he would absolutely be panicking. Four, if he wanted to fix his hair afterwards. Which he’d need to.

It would take Ilya about ninety seconds after Shane buzzed him in to walk to the elevator in his building, and ride to Shane’s apartment on the fourth floor. How long could he leave him standing there before he answered the door? Ten seconds? Twenty?

The math was not working out.

He closed his eyes and pushed back on the glimmers of panic that had been threatening for the last few hours. He didn’t know why he’d thought he could do this. The uncharacteristic bravery that seemed to have possessed him since he’d met Ilya a week ago had vanished. It had been fading away in bits over the afternoon and now it was completely gone, leaving him hollow and exhausted. He wanted to tell Ilya to go home and then sit on the floor right here in his hallway and cry until the not-quite-right meat sauce was a burned mess in the bottom of the pan. He would throw the entire pan in the trash, he decided, so he never had to look at it again. These shorts could go in the trash, too.

“Shane?” the receiver was still pressed to his ear. “I can come up?”

Shane hit the button that unlocked the building’s front door.

He used his ninety seconds to stand very, very still in the hallway. He tried to steady his breathing and pressed the comparatively cool backs of his hands against his cheeks which had, predictably, started flaming. There was a knock on the door, and Shane allowed himself a final deep breath before moving to open it.

He’d forgotten how beautiful Ilya was.

He could have sworn he hadn’t. He had, in fact, spent many hours actively thinking about just how beautiful Ilya was. And yet here, standing in front of him again, Shane was absolutely floored. Ilya was stunning. Shane’s eyes drifted from his curls to his eyelashes to his crooked smile and the strong line of his jaw, down to his neck where he could faintly see his pulse. Shane felt his own pulse quicken at the sight of it. He was wearing black jeans that hugged his thighs, and a plain black t-shirt that was tight enough to hint at the outline of his absurdly sculpted pecs. Shane felt his mouth go dry, and tore his eyes away.

He stepped backwards into his apartment so that he didn’t step forwards into Ilya’s chest. “Uh, come in.”

Ilya moved into the space Shane had just stepped out of, looking around as he entered the apartment. His eyes settled on Shane, scanning his face, and he looked mildly concerned.

“Shane? Are you okay?”

“You’re early,” blurted Shane. He couldn’t believe he’d said it. He was such a fucking baby. His hands clenched into immediate fists at his sides and he shoved them into his pockets, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to relax them even if he tried. His throat burned and for a mortifying moment, he worried that he was actually going to cry.

To his surprise, Ilya gave him a sheepish smile.

“Yes, sorry.” His eyes were warm, and gentle, and Shane felt himself relax just a little. “I wanted to watch you.”

He wanted to what? Shane felt faint.

“Maybe I learn some cooking?”

Cooking. Right. Relief flooded Shane’s body. Ilya had come early because he was sick of living on those shitty frozen meals and wanted to learn to cook.

A cautious smile was attempting to shift Shane’s frozen features. Shane was a decent cook. It was the only part of the evening that he’d felt any level of confident about, despite his mother’s less-than-comprehensive recipe. He wasn’t sure he loved the idea of cooking with an audience, but the meal was mostly done. He could boil pasta and grate cheese while Ilya watched.

“I wanted to change,” Shane mumbled, looking down at his tank top and shorts that were, mercifully, not splattered with meat sauce. He could’ve been wearing the outfit he’d chosen all along. He felt Ilya step towards him, and lifted his gaze.

“This is good.” Ilya’s eyes trailed blatantly up his bare arm, over his shoulder, and across the low neckline of his tank top, and Shane whirled around and led the way through the living room to the kitchen before he spontaneously combusted. He’d never felt the sensations in his stomach before – low, and churning, and hot, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw up or laugh.

He knew for sure that he wanted to run his fingers through Ilya’s curls. He wanted it so badly he could almost feel them beneath his fingers already, even though his hands were still clenched in his pockets as he approached the cooktop.

“Smells good,” Ilya said from behind him, and then he was leaning over Shane’s shoulder to look in the pan, and even though they weren’t touching Ilya may as well have been pressed directly to his back the way Shane’s skin flushed and pulse skittered.

He’s not gay, he’s not gay, he’s not gay. It had become Shane’s mantra in the last week. It had sometimes felt like the only thought tethering him to sanity. Even now, he felt the words settling his heart rate. If Ilya wasn’t gay, which he wasn’t, then Shane was being a massive fucking creep, and Shane Hollander was not a creep. He was not going to stand in his kitchen and fantasize about his house guest who had accepted Shane’s invitation to dinner because he was new to the country and living off frozen meals.

“You want to stir the sauce or grate the cheese?” Shane asked as he turned the pot of water on to boil.

“Grate, I think,” Ilya replied. A brief vision flashed through Shane’s mind of how Ilya’s muscled arms would flex as he pushed the cheese along the grater. Fucking hell. He’d managed exactly six seconds and now he was being a creep again.

Get it together, Hollander.

He was not going to watch Ilya grate the cheese. He’s not gay.

Shane grabbed the cheese and chopping board from where they were waiting on the bench beside him and relocated them to the small dining table that separated the kitchen from the living room. Ilya settled into a chair and pulled the board towards him, and Shane returned to the sauce, resolutely turning his back to Ilya and stirring with far more focus than the almost-completed sauce justified. He should leave it alone, put the lid on the pan and let it simmer and thicken, but he needed something to focus on and the water was taking forever to come to the boil. Did it usually take this long?

“How long have you been in Boston?” Shane was proud of that question. Friendly, interested. Not creepy, and not about hockey, which Shane was sure the thing that most people asked Ilya about first.

“Ah, not long. Since few days after draft.”

Of course. Ilya hadn’t even known where in the US he was moving to, hadn’t gotten any choice. He’d just had to wait until his name had been announced and then just… moved to whichever strange city he was told to. The idea made Shane’s brain hurt. He couldn’t even imagine it. He’d literally vetoed the entire concept of grocery shopping because someone had rearranged the aisles.

“Is Boston… okay?”

“Mmm. Yes. Team is good, I think. Some idiots but good coach.”

That’s not what Shane had meant, but maybe Ilya didn’t want to talk about how he felt about moving to Boston. And if Ilya wanted to talk about hockey, Shane was delighted to oblige.

“Yeah, Reilly is great. He got two cups with Tampa a few years back before we bought him out.”

They chatted about the Raiders while the spaghetti cooked. Shane was surprised that it was mainly Ilya asking him questions about the team, and he felt a rush of pride that he could fill Ilya in on some of the details that he wanted. Shane drained the pasta, and turned to face Ilya to ask him something, but he immediately forgot what.

Ilya had pushed his chair away from the table and was leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. Shane’s eyes trailed up the smooth expanse of Ilya’s flexed bicep, over his elbow where it met his toned forearm with its visible veins that had haunted the edges of Shane’s vision since he’d first seen them in the grocery store. His eyes flicked down to where Ilya’s shirt had ridden up slightly, locking on the line of hair in the middle of his stomach that trailed down and vanished beneath the waistband of his jeans.

Shane dropped the lid of the pot. It clattered loudly into the sink, making Ilya jump and sit up straight, removing the thrilling trail of hair from view.

“Fuck, sorry,” Shane muttered, turning back to face the sink, face flushing. “It was hot.”

He hoped Ilya thought he meant the lid.

He’s not gay, you’re being gross.

Shane retrieved two wide, flat bowls from the cabinet and set about filling them with spaghetti and sauce. He remembered the size of the frozen meals in Ilya’s freezer, and ladled some extra sauce onto his. He brought both dishes over to the table, placing Ilya’s in front of him and the other down in front of the empty seat on the opposite side of the table. He was amused to see that Ilya had grated almost half of the block of cheese and was still going, forming a small mountain on the chopping board.

“Can I get you a drink?” Shit, Shane should have asked earlier. He’d been so thrown off by Ilya’s early arrival that he’d completely forgotten to offer him anything. His mother would be mortified. “I have wine, or ginger ale, or beer. Or water, obviously.”

“Ah, yes. Wine is good if you are having, thank you.”

Shane opened the fridge and retrieved his favourite Californian chardonnay that he’d purchased from the liquor store that afternoon. As he poured two glasses, he was struck by the familiarity of the scene. A Friday night, dinner for two at his tiny kitchen table, a glass of wine to help settle his nerves. How could something feel so familiar, and so incredibly foreign?

Shane sat down across from Ilya, pushing one of the wine glasses towards him over the table.

“Thanks for coming,” he found himself saying.

“Thank you for asking.” Their eyes met for a moment, and Shane quickly lowered his to his pasta. He’d spent so much time over the last week thinking about those eyes – the long lashes, the heavy brows, the way they’d been warm and teasing and sparkling and knowing all at the same time – that it was completely overwhelming to have them here, in his kitchen, looking at him again.

He watched as Ilya raised a huge forkful of pasta to his mouth, and saw his eyes close as he chewed slowly. Shane had never seen anyone chew attractively before, but he could watch Ilya eat for hours. His strong jaw worked and the muscles in his neck shifted and Shane’s eyes were trapped in the hollow of his throat as he swallowed, and then Ilya groaned.

Groaned.

Shane had been doing so well. He really had. He had been keeping a lid on every unhinged, hormonal thought that had crossed his mind all week. Sure, more had simply cropped up in their place, but Shane had ignored those too.

It had been a long week.

Ilya groaning was a step beyond him. His senses flooded. He was hard, instantly. Harder than he had been in a long time. Image after image of Ilya making that sound with Shane’s lips on his skin flashed behind his eyes and each one sent another throb between his legs. He wanted to get up and leave, he needed to go somewhere, be anywhere that wasn’t within touching distance of this man, but he knew his straining erection would be obvious in his stupid fucking running shorts if he stood so he was stuck, trapped helplessly behind the slide-show playing in his mind.

Guilt and shame flooded his stomach and bile rose in his throat. He’d never had thoughts like these, ever, about anyone. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. It was like he’d seen Ilya in the grocery store and every thought he’d ever cut off before it could start had arrived all at once. With friends.

He isn’t fucking gay, Shane.

Shane was dimly aware that Ilya had complimented the pasta and he smiled in his direction, keeping his eyes unfocussed as he glanced up then returning his gaze immediately to his own plate. He reached for his wine with a shaking hand and took a long swallow, then another. He could do this. He could make it through this meal and get this man out of his house and then eventually he could forget about him and his mind could recover from whatever the fuck this was. He curled his other hand into a fist on his lap, and unclenched his jaw so that he could speak.

“What’s the KHL like?” he asked. “Does it work much differently than the NHL?”

Ilya looked up from his pasta, seemingly surprised by the question. Shane supposed they’d kind of stopped talking about hockey a while ago, but he needed to ask Ilya questions about things that he could talk about with minimal input from Shane while he wrestled his body back from the edge it was trying to launch itself over. It worked; Ilya talked and Shane asked appropriate follow-up questions and the rest of the meal passed without further incident, Shane’s body gradually recovering and returning to his control. They stayed seated long after they’d finished eating, talking about hockey and Russia and Boston and the movies Ilya had watched on all the flights he’d been taking. Shane was surprised to learn that they had very similar taste in films.

“Do you have girlfriend?” Ilya asked as Shane slid back into his chair, placing a hot cup of tea in front of each of them.

Shane froze for a moment, his heart thrumming in his chest. “No,” he replied firmly, trying to put a lot of unspoken meaning behind the word. And perhaps it worked, because after a moment Ilya asked

“You have… boyfriend?”

Shane locked his gaze with Ilya’s, and shook his head slowly. Ask me more, he pleaded with his eyes. Please, keep asking.

Ilya’s eyes had dropped to his tea, which he had clutched between his large hands. He didn’t seem like he was going to say anything. Fuck it.

“Do you? Have a girlfriend? Or a… a boyfriend?” Shane hated how thin his voice sounded, but he needed to know.

“No.” Ilya’s eyes were back on his, and his voice was clear and even. “I have had both, before, but nobody now.”

Oh my fucking god oh my fucking god oh my fucking god holy shit holy shit holy shit.

Shane felt giddy. He felt everything. He didn’t think there was a single emotion he could name that wasn’t currently coursing through his veins. He was terrified and exhilarated and he realized that Ilya was watching him cautiously and that Shane was just sitting there doing nothing except feeling every feeling under the sun. He wondered which ones Ilya could see playing out on his face.

“Do, uh…” Ilya was watching him closely as he spoke. “Have you…”

Well, this was going to be embarrassing. Fuck it.

“I’ve, uh, only dated girls. Only been… only been with girls, I mean. I haven’t dated any men, I haven’t… but I’m, uh… I’m gay, I think. No, I… I am. Gay. I’m gay.” Shane swallowed his humiliation and met Ilya’s eyes.

They were dancing.

Shane had thought he’d seen Ilya’s eyes sparkle in the grocery store, but that was nothing. Ilya was looking at him right now like he was the fucking Milky Way and Shane could see his own light reflected in Ilya’s eyes.

He didn’t know what he expected Ilya to say next, but his heart dropped when Ilya pushed his chair out and stood from the table. “I can see you again? Soon? Next week?”

“Oh,” Shane tried, and failed, to keep the disappointment from his tone. “Are you… going? Now?”

“I think so, yes.” Ilya was already moving towards the hallway. Shane felt confused, and completely crushed. He trailed after Ilya, leaving puddles of his earlier elation on the floor. “But only if… I would like to see you again. Soon,” Ilya repeated.

They’d stopped at his front door, and Shane found he couldn’t meet Ilya’s eyes. “Yeah, sure.” He felt miserable, despite Ilya’s repeated assurances he wanted to see him again. Why was Ilya leaving so suddenly? Had Shane said something wrong?

And then Ilya’s finger was under his chin, and with gentle pressure he was bringing Shane’s face up so their eyes met, and Ilya’s eyes were still so warm and so bright that Shane felt the edges of his dread drop away.

“What is your last name?” Ilya asked, his finger still under Shane’s chin, his eyes still locked on Shane’s.

What? “Hollander.”

Ilya’s eyes closed briefly, and the smile that crossed his face made heat settle deep in Shane’s stomach. Ilya leaned closer towards him, using the finger beneath Shane’s jaw to tilt his gaze even higher, until their faces were so close he could feel the breath of Ilya’s next question on his skin.

“Have you ever kissed a man, Shane Hollander?”

In Ilya’s accent, Shane’s name sounded like a purr, and a promise, and Shane’s heart was racing wildly, and he shook his head, and then Ilya’s lips were on his.

It was a sweet, soft, gentle kiss. A simple press of Ilya’s lips to Shane’s, but it still drew a low moan from Shane’s throat and he tried to part his lips against Ilya’s, desperate for more, but Ilya was pulling back. Not far, just far enough that their lips were no longer touching. Ilya had closed his eyes, looking almost pained, and then he was reaching back behind him to open the door of Shane’s apartment and Shane was barely able to fight the urge to grab the front of Ilya’s shirt as he stepped backwards into the corridor leading to the lift.

“See you soon, Shane. Thank you for pasta,” Ilya said, and then he was gone.

Shane managed to close the door behind Ilya’s retreating figure before he sank to the floor, leaning his back against the wall and pulling his knees to his chest, his fingers pressing to his lips where Ilya’s had been just seconds ago.

“Holy shit,” he whispered into the silence.

Chapter End Notes

Obsessed with you all and the love you keep showing for my version of these darling boys <3

Chapter 6: Plan (part one)

Chapter Summary

Ilya needs a plan to help him navigate unchartered territory.

He gets a bit of help.

Chapter Notes

Sveta
Help me
I am in love with a virgin

Ilya was exaggerating for comic effect, of course. He wasn’t in love with Shane Hollander. He was just absolutely infatuated with him and wanted to carry him around in his pocket and also fuck him senseless and then count his freckles while he slept beside him. So not love, just whatever that was, but still. It was a problem.

He leaned against the wall of the building a block down from Shane’s apartment. He’d left – run away, if he was being entirely honest with himself – before he could even order an Uber, and having to wait was grating his already jangling nerves.

To help pass the time, and distract himself from thinking about the entire running away situation, he thought about all of the times that Shane had blushed that evening.

He’d blushed when he’d told Ilya off for being early. Ilya hadn’t known how much that would throw Shane, and he’d tried really hard to feel bad about making him so stressed, but it meant he’d gotten to stare at Shane in a tank top all evening so he couldn’t bring himself to regret it too much.

He’d blushed a little when he’d dropped the lid of the pot. Ilya might not have noticed that one, Shane had turned away and busied himself immediately, but the tips of his ears had given him away when he’d bent down get the plates. Ilya was starting to feel mildly concerned that he had some kind of ear thing now, because looking at those scarlet ears bending down into the cabinet had done something to him and he’d had to pick up the cheese and resume grating to keep himself in his seat.

Shane had blushed a lot when Ilya had complimented his cooking. Ilya had almost been able to feel the heat radiating from him after he told Shane how good it was. Shane had gotten so flustered that he’d swallowed half of his glass of wine in two mouthfuls and then started asking Ilya questions about hockey in Russia like he was doing an interview for a sports magazine. It had been very, very cute.

And then he’d really, really blushed when he’d told Ilya he was gay. That one was Ilya’s favourite. Ilya had never been in the position to want to offer to help someone else with their English before, but listening to Shane get that sentence out would have been painful if it hadn’t been so fucking delightful. So delightful that it had almost distracted Ilya from what Shane was actually saying, until Shane had looked up at him with those shining eyes that said, very plainly, I would like to do gay things with you.

And that would have been fucking perfect, if it hadn’t happened seconds after Shane had told him that he’d never done gay things before with anyone else.

Ilya had had about five seconds to get out of that room or he would have been on his knees under that kitchen table, swallowing Shane’s come in about three minutes flat. Two, maybe, if that hungry look Shane had pinned him with was anything to go by.

His dick throbbed furiously at him as he thought about the undisguised longing in Shane’s eyes. It had been doing that intermittently since the moment he’d leapt up from the kitchen table, and he couldn’t really blame it. He knew Shane would have loved everything his dick had been screaming at him to do, and Ilya sure as hell would have too. Hell, it might well have been his favourite thing he had ever done. But he’d panicked, and he’d fucking left, and now he was standing on the side of the road like an idiot waiting for this stupid Uber to take him back to his empty apartment and why the hell wasn’t Svetlana texting him back? Did she not understand that this was a genuine goddamn emergency?

Ilya rubbed a hand over his brow. How had this happened? He was Ilya fucking Rozanov, for god’s sake. He was good-time Ilya, see-you-once, gone-in-the-morning, never-caught-your-name, this-means-nothing Ilya. Never in his life had he given someone a little kiss and walked away when it seemed very likely that there was far, far more on offer and when he wanted everything that was on offer with every cell in his body. And he couldn’t really explain to himself why he’d done it, except for the feeling deep in his chest that he wanted to do this right, and the sudden concern that he didn’t actually know how.

Because the thing was, Ilya had lied to Shane. Kind of. Just a tiny lie. Semantics, maybe.

He’d told Shane that he’d had both boyfriends and girlfriends before, but… he’d never really had either.

And it hadn’t mattered, really, this little lie, because Shane hadn’t actually been asking about his relationship history. He’d been asking about whether Ilya might be interested in him. And Ilya had wanted to answer that as simply as humanly possible because he needed Shane to hear a crystal-clear, resounding, unmistakable yes. Explaining the details of his dating history, or, more accurately, his sex life, had seemed counterproductive to what he was trying to achieve.

Which, apparently, for the first time, wasn’t sex. Or at least, not only sex.

Did he want to be Shane Hollander’s boyfriend?

He seriously considered throwing up into the gutter. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

SVETLANA
THIS IS VERY SERIOUS

As he settled into the back of the finally-present Uber, he tried to think of how to convey the gravity of the situation in a way that Svetlana would understand.

I HAVE LEFT HIS HOUSE WITH AN UNTOUCHED DICK BECAUSE I AM CONCERNED ABOUT HIS FEELINGS

He saw Svetlana begin typing immediately, and despite his misery he smiled at the predictability of his best friend.

This is the best day of my life
Am on my way to your house

Ilya had rented his house in Boston from a listing he’d found online before he’d even arrived in the city after the draft. It was close to everything he needed, and full of glass and chrome and dark wood that he’d been drawn to immediately. He’d sent the link to Svetlana when they were on the phone together that evening, and she’d approved.

“Will you live with me?” he’d asked.
She’d laughed. Absolutely cackled. He’d had to wait for her answer while she gasped and caught her breath, although he was fairly sure he’d guessed what it would be. “Oh my god, no, you giant idiot. Never. I’m not your fucking wife.”
But she had rented a shitty little apartment on the same T line as his, just four stops away. She slept over at his at least once a week, and they each had keys to each others’ places, so Ilya thought maybe Svetlana was the idiot for paying rent when she didn’t have to.

Ilya stared out of the window at the passing lights of Boston, thinking.

No, not thinking. Goddamn it. He was wondering again.

Now that he had successfully escaped the situation and the distance between him and Shane Hollander’s beautiful gay eyes felt reassuringly and devastatingly safe, he had started to wonder what Shane had made of the evening. More specifically, what he’d made of Ilya’s rapid departure.

He’d looked confused, which reminded Ilya of the first time they met. Both times Ilya had been acting in ways that were extremely confusing even to him, so Shane’s clear lack of understanding about exactly what the hell Ilya had been up to had made perfect sense in both situations. In the grocery store Shane’s confusion had been mingled with concern, but that look had been etched on his face well before Ilya had even spoken to him. Tonight, it had been mingled with hurt, and that was entirely Ilya’s fault. The thought made his jaw clench. Of course he’d looked hurt. Shane had told Ilya he was gay and looked at him with big bedroom eyes and Ilya had shot up from the table like he’d been electrocuted. He’d tried desperately to tell Shane how much he needed to see him again as he’d left, had kissed him even though it felt like it had nearly cost him his life, but had it been enough to make up for his hasty exit?

He was forced to admit that it almost certainly hadn’t.

How did people do this? Feelings? This was an actual fucking nightmare. He’d left because he was trying to be good, and now Shane was hurt and his dick was mad at him and if he’d just stayed and done what he felt like doing, everybody would be very, very happy right now. And god fucking damn it, did he want to make Shane Hollander happy.

Ilya’s thumbs were flying over the keyboard of his phone before he’d even realized he’d decided to text him.

Monday
You will come for dinner at my house?

The three dots appeared for a moment, then vanished. He waited, but they didn’t come back. He forced himself to wait an entire two minutes, but his screen remained resolutely dot-free. If he hadn’t seen the flash of Shane typing, he could tell himself that he just hadn’t seen his texts. But he had, and he wasn’t replying.

Shit. Shit.

Please?

The dots mercifully returned, and this time, they stayed until they were replaced by a message.

I’m not eating one of those frozen things.

----------------------

Ilya’s doorbell chimed at 7.30pm on the dot, and he couldn’t help the grin that broke over his face. He’d been wondering whether Shane would be early as payback from Ilya’s invasion last week, or maybe late as punishment for Ilya’s rapid exit. It turned out, Shane was not a man of revenge. Or at least, not a man that was willing to sacrifice being perfectly on time to seek it.

His smile faltered when he opened his door and saw Shane on his front step, hands balled into fists in his pockets, mouth pressed into a straight line, eyes looking determinedly over Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s chest hurt and he clenched his own fist against the urge to reach out and stroke Shane’s cheek, to run his thumb over those beautiful freckles and whisper in Russian until the tension melted out of Shane’s forehead. Not now, Ilya, he told himself firmly. This is okay. You knew he was upset. He still came. Stick to the plan.

Svetlana had been, as usual, equal parts extremely helpful and entirely useless. He had laid awake for over an hour after he’d gone to bed that night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about which pieces of her advice he would use, and which he hoped to god he never actually had the need for.

This part of the evening was all Svetlana, and he was incredibly grateful for it. The plan felt like firm ground under his feet, and allowed him to plaster a smile to his face as he turned and gestured for Shane to come inside. He waited while Shane slid off his shoes, pausing to place them neatly next to a pile of Ilya’s next to the door, which Ilya stored away to be delighted by later. He led Shane down the wide hallway to the kitchen, where the Vietnamese take-out he’d ordered was already waiting on the kitchen island. He’d never eaten Vietnamese in his life, but google had assured him that it was generally considered one of the ‘healthier’ cuisines, and he’d ordered from the highest-rated restaurant in Boston even though it had been over an hour across town and the app had made him confirm his delivery address three times. It had arrived five minutes before Shane had, and Ilya took this first success as a good omen for the rest of the evening.

He gestured to the two stools he’d pulled to the end of the island, each with an empty plate and cutlery already waiting on the counter in front of them. He’d placed them across the corner of the island from each other, rather than side-by-side, so he could look at Shane without having to turn his head. Shane perched stiffly on the closest one to the door, looking like a bird poised for flight. It’s fine, Ilya told himself. At least he’s sitting.

“Drink?” he asked, his voice sounding absurdly loud in the tense silence that had settled since the doorbell had rang. “I have wine, beer, coke? Vodka?”
“Just water, thanks.” Shane’s eyes still hadn’t met his. Ilya grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge, gazing longingly at the beer before he closed the door and turned back to where Shane was staring at the piles of take-out on the bench with an unreadable expression.

“Vietnamese okay?” he asked, suddenly concerned. The plan did not allow for Shane to not like Vietnamese, because he had nothing else to feed him other than frozen pasta or chocolate cereal.

“Yeah, it’s… great, actually.” Shane finally looked at him, and Ilya felt it in every inch of his body, and Shane’s expression was still unreadable but Ilya allowed himself to believe it had warmed, or even just eased, a tiny bit. “I just… do you like it?”

Ilya wanted to smile again. How did Shane know him so damn well already? “Don’t know,” he admitted. “I have never tried. Looks good though, no?” It didn’t, really, if Ilya was being honest, but he was going to eat it enthusiastically anyway. Shane was still looking at him and Ilya found it was his turn to look away, busying himself loading his plate and offering each dish to Shane as he finished. He was unreasonably pleased when Shane took some of everything, including an extremely weird looking salad thing that Ilya hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to put on his plate. Okay. So far so good. Now for the hard part.

“I am sorry for leaving your house very fast,” he blurted as he settled onto his own stool. He paused, taking a breath, and looked up to find that Shane’s eyes were locked on his. “I got nervous.”

He’d looked up a lot of English words, and that one seemed to fit best.

Shane’s eyebrow lifted. “You were nervous?” His voice was outright disbelieving.

Ilya wasn’t sure why anyone would admit to something as mortifying as being nervous if it wasn’t true, so he hadn’t really planned for how to convince Shane that he wasn’t, inexplicably, making it up. “Yes. Very nervous.”

Shane lifted his second eyebrow to meet the first one where it had vanished beneath his ridiculously cute floppy fringe and looked at Ilya expectantly. Say more, his look instructed, and Ilya swallowed. He nodded pointedly at Shane’s plate and Shane picked up a fresh spring roll, his eyes not leaving Ilya’s as he waited for him to elaborate. Goddamn it.

“I have been with many people, but…” Why was this so difficult? And why wouldn’t Shane stop looking at him? “Usually just one time. I have not been wanting to see them again.”

Shane continued to watch him silently. Ilya was gripped by the overwhelming urge to paste on a smile, say ‘just kidding, wasn’t nervous, just got bored so I left’, watch Shane walk away forever, and drink half a bottle of vodka in the bath. He was pretty sure being set on fire was more comfortable than this. Ilya hunted for the right words, wishing that he could just send his thoughts directly to Shane’s brain. A small selection of them, anyway. He was tired, and he wanted this part of the conversation to be over, and so he took a deep breath and steeled himself against the wave of terror rising in his chest.

His mother's words wrapped around him. Yes, it’s scary. But you’re brave. He straightened a little on his stool and made his words as clear as he could.

“I was nervous because I like you. Is new for me. I was not sure how to do.” He knew that last sentence wasn’t right even as the broken English tripped out of his mouth, but he didn’t care.

Shane’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. It looked a little comical and Ilya would have laughed out loud if this hadn’t also been one of the least funny moments of his entire life to date.

“You like me?”

Ilya fought the urge to roll his eyes. Shane Hollander was very cute and very clever but also pretty fucking slow.

“Yes.” He started to say more, but he was stopped dead by the shy smile that had appeared on Shane’s face. When Ilya returned it with one of his own, it transformed into a radiant beam that illuminated Shane’s features and Ilya was a ruined man.

“I like you, too,” Shane said quietly, and it took everything that Ilya had inside of him to keep from launching at Shane and taking him on the kitchen island right between their near-full plates. But that was not the plan, and the plan was working very, very well so far, so Ilya contented himself with reaching out and placing a hand on Shane’s leg, just above his knee, and squeezing for a long moment before returning it to rest on the counter.

“Eat your dinner,” he said, and Shane did, which sent a thrill down Ilya’s spine. They sat in alert, comfortable silence, stealing glances and smiling at each other as they ate. Well, mainly while Shane ate. Anticipation was swirling in Ilya’s stomach which was making it hard to swallow, and the food was kind of gross anyway, so he took what he hoped were an acceptable number of bites and waited for Shane to clear his plate. The moment Shane had finished, Ilya stood, and Shane’s eyes snapped to his. His expression was unreadable again, but this time it was due to the sheer number of emotions fighting for dominance behind his eyes. Ilya knew the feeling.

Anxiety appeared to win the battle to the top of Shane’s emotions. Time for part two of his plan.

“Come.” He took Shane’s hand, noticing that it was trembling slightly, and gently tugged him off his stool, leading him into the living room where a giant sectional sofa sat facing the absurdly large television that Ilya had purchased on his first day in Boston. He sat in the centre cushion of the couch and Shane dropped down in the corner, just out of reach. His hands closed into fists and Ilya smiled at him gently.

“You are nervous.” It wasn’t a question. Shane nodded anyway. “Is okay. We both are nervous, about different things, yes?” Another stiff nod.

Ilya wanted to reach out and touch him, so he did. He took Shane’s clenched fist between his hands, and ran a thumb over his knuckles until they relaxed enough for Ilya to tangle his fingers between Shane’s.

“Do not worry,” Ilya told him, trying and failing to keep the note of triumph out of his voice. “I have very good plan for this.”

Chapter End Notes

This fic started as a very non-sexy one-shot meet-cute so I'm very aware that's what y'all originally signed up for, but it's pretty hard to write these boys and keep their hands off each other. This was our final chapter before they enter a new phase in their relationship, so if the sexy stuff isn't your thing then this is where we part ways. Thanks for coming on this little adventure with me.

On the other hand, if you've been WAITING for them to start touching each other, the wait will be over next chapter.

The comments on this silly story remain my favourite place on the entire internet. <3

Chapter 7: Plan (part two)

Chapter Summary

The talking part of Ilya's plan went well.

He's pretty confident about part two.

Chapter Notes

As warned at the end of last chapter - we're about to get a bit handsy, and then get steadily more handsy as the chapters go on. If you're just here for cute boys flirting in the grocery store, consider this fic completed!

The plan from here was all Ilya’s, and he was extremely proud of it. He wasn’t usually proud of himself for much other than hockey or other performance-based activities, and he’d certainly never been proud of something his brain had produced before.

“I think we are nervous to be good for each other, yes?” His thumb was still running back and forth over Shane’s knuckles. Shane nodded for a third time, but Ilya kept looking at him and gently raised an eyebrow. He was going to need Shane to use his words for this part.

“Yes.”

“This is nice problem, no?”

Shane smiled shyly at him. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So maybe we don’t worry so much to be good at it.” Ilya picked up the remote and switched on the TV, which was already loaded to the movie he’d decided would be perfect for the evening. It was one that Shane had talked animatedly about when they’d been talking about films on Friday, which he’d told Ilya that he’d gone to see twice at the cinema and then again in IMAX, and had been genuinely horrified that Ilya had never seen.

“This is good movie, yes?”

Shane nodded, and Ilya looked at him expectantly again. Words, Shane.

“Yeah, it’s a good movie.” His voice sounded unsure, and Ilya could see thoughts shifting behind his eyes again.

“Shhhh,” Ilya said, as though Shane had started listing his thoughts out loud. “Listen. I will sit, watch this movie. Easy for me, I will be very good at this. Look.” He released Shane’s hand and scooted back into the opposite corner of the couch, his legs stretched out along the chaise. “You will sit here beside me.” He patted the cushion next to him, and smiled patiently at Shane. After a moment’s hesitation, Shane shuffled along the couch to sit beside him, not touching but close enough that Ilya felt the cushion dip beneath Shane’s weight. “Good.”

Shane flushed, and Ilya tried to not let his smile turn wicked. He’d added ‘Shane blushes deliciously when complimented’ to the very top of list of things he knew about Shane Hollander after Friday evening.

“Now I will watch this movie. But you have seen three times, yes? So probably you are bored. So maybe you want to, I don’t know, do something else instead? To me, maybe, since I am right here.”

Shane’s voice was hoarse. “Like what?”

“Whatever!” Ilya gestured down his body. “Look, play, touch. I do not care. I will be watching this very good movie, so you are just entertaining yourself. If you are bored. Otherwise we watch movie together. Is good either way.”

Shane’s swallow was audible, but it did nothing to clear the thickness coating his voice. “You want me to touch you?”

“No, no. Is not for me, I want nothing. I am watching the movie, will be distracted. Will probably hardly notice.” To make his point, he pressed play on the remote, and settled back against the cushions. He leaned his right elbow on the arm of the sofa, and rested the hand closest to Shane on his own thigh, trying to give off the impression of someone entirely unbothered about whatever happened next. He felt Shane draw his legs up underneath him and settle back into the couch beside Ilya, leaning slightly towards him, their shoulders almost touching.

They watched the first ten minutes of the movie in total silence, neither of them moving a muscle. Ilya’s chest felt tight and he realized that he was even breathing shallowly, as if he was scared that even the movement of his chest might frighten Shane away. He started to wonder if they really were just going to watch the movie together, which he supposed would still be pretty nice, when he felt Shane shift closer to him on the cushion.

He stopped breathing completely, waiting.

Shane edged closer until their shoulders were touching, his right shoulder pressed against Ilya’s left. A wave of anticipation flooded Ilya’s body, a surge that started in his core and set his fingers and toes tingling. He kept his eyes resolutely on the screen.

He almost jumped when he felt a feather-light brush against the back of his hand where it rested on his leg. He glanced down, and watched two of Shane’s fingers trailing over his skin, agonizingly slowly, exploring the wide plane of his hand and circling his knuckles. He forced his gaze back to the television, trying to ignore the swell of his dick as Shane’s touch slowly ran up and down the length of each of his fingers in turn.

After the entire back of Ilya's hand was on fire from his touch, Shane’s fingers grazed the skin of his wrist, then wandered up along the back of his forearm. They moved in smooth, drifting loops, creating patterns that Ilya could feel long after they’d moved on. He felt Shane carefully trace each of the veins that wound their way beneath his skin, and Ilya felt like his entire body could feel every light touch of Shane’s fingertips.

When every inch of reachable skin had been touched in countless gliding swirls, Shane gently turned Ilya’s hand over until his palm was raised. His fingertips continued their exploration on the pale underside of Ilya’s forearm and Ilya fought against the urge to let his eyes drift closed. He felt like Shane was touching parts of him that nobody had ever touched before, he wondered why everybody wasn’t touching each other’s forearms the way that Shane was touching his when it felt so fucking good. Shane was using all four fingers now, trailing them in smooth lines up and down and back and forth over the sensitive skin between his wrist and his inner elbow, and then gently up past the inside of his elbow towards his bicep. He felt Shane’s fingers hesitate as they met the sleeve of his t-shirt, and it took every muscle in his body to stop himself from looking up at Shane when he felt his touch lift away entirely. There was a long moment, and Ilya missed Shane's fingers on his skin like it was oxygen he'd removed rather than his touch.

“Um, Ilya?” Shane’s voice wasn’t much louder than a whisper.

“Mmm?” Ilya half-turned his head in Shane’s direction, but kept his eyes on the screen as though he was concentrating, continuing the pretence that he’d been paying even a tiny bit of attention to the movie since he’d first felt Shane’s fingers on his skin. He deserved a fucking Oscar.

“Can we… move, a bit?”

Forget the Oscar. His snapped to Shane’s. They were shy, but also bright with excitement and Ilya’s pulse skittered.

“Of course.” He made a show of pausing the television. “How do you want?”

“Could you… lie down? Um, but this way.” Shane gestured along the length of the couch.

Shane turned himself sideways to allow Ilya room to move. Ilya quickly rearranged himself, stretching out over the sofa and placing a cushion behind him. He lifted his left arm and tucked his hand behind his head, leaving the side of his body closest to Shane stretched long. Shane was still crammed sitting sideways awkwardly between Ilya and the back of the couch, and Ilya could see from his face that he was second-guessing himself.

“You can…” Ilya gestured a throwing motion at the bulky cushions lining the back of the couch behind Shane, and Shane lifted them and tossed them over to the floor. The large sofa was almost as deep as a double bed without them, and Ilya stretched out more comfortably now that Shane had more space.

Ilya’s breath stopped in his throat as he felt Shane lie down on his side next to him, his elbow bent and his head propped up on his hand so his face sat higher than Ilya’s. Shane had positioned himself so that their bodies weren’t touching, but close enough that Ilya could feel the heat of Shane’s body along his side. He regretted telling Shane to remove the cushions, imagining Shane’s body pressed against the full length of his own. He was glad he’d had the foresight to wear his thickest pair of jeans. Patience, Ilya.

They spent a moment settling in to their new positions before Ilya felt Shane’s fingers trace over his t-shirt down the center of his chest where his crucifix lay, coming to rest at the base of his sternum then tracing back up and along his collarbone. Ilya wished to god he hadn’t been wearing a t-shirt, heart hammering as he imagined the feeling of Shane’s fingers running directly over the skin of his chest. Shane started more of the swooping motions he’d been doing earlier that Ilya could still feel imprinted on his forearm, but his fingers kept catching in the folds of Ilya’s t-shirt. Ilya was about ten seconds from offering to take it off, even though that was extremely not part of the plan, when Shane made a frustrated sound and tugged sharply at the hem.

Ilya’s eyes shot up to Shane’s, questioning. “You want…”

Shane nodded, and Ilya sat up and ripped his t-shirt over his head so quickly he was sure he’d find it torn when he retrieved it from the floor later. He lowered himself back onto the couch, keeping his eyes on Shane’s face as he scanned Ilya’s naked torso.

The heat he saw in Shane’s eyes filled Ilya’s core with molten liquid and he tensed his entire body against the urge to flip over and pin Shane to the sofa beneath him. For a brief moment he was worried he was actually going to do it, was going lose his grasp on his self-control and to ruin this entire goddamn thing with the burning strength of his need for this beautiful man staring down at him with hunger in his eyes, but then Shane’s fingers resumed their wandering and Ilya was frozen in place. He returned his gaze to the television screen.

Shane’s touch started light and tentative and then suddenly it was everywhere, sweeping over his ribs and down his sides, tracing the lines of his abdominal muscles and the outlines of his pecs, carefully avoiding his nipples which felt so tight and hard they ached. Ilya was completely hard now and he could feel his ability to remain still and silent under Shane’s fingers decreasing by the moment. Shane flipped his hand over and ran the backs of his fingers down the length of Ilya’s torso, the scratch of his fingernails adding another layer of pleasure that Ilya wasn’t sure he could withstand.

Then he felt Shane press a gentle kiss to his chest between his armpit and his nipple, and he cracked. The moan that he tried to stifle escaped his clenched jaw, coming out more like a thoughtful “Hmmm.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ilya could see Shane look at him. He kept his face turned to the television, but he was sure that Shane could see tight muscles in his jaw and the way his lips were pressed together.

Shane brushed his lips against Ilya’s chest again, and Ilya could feel the smile pressed to his skin. “Did you say something?”

“No,” Ilya gritted out. “Was just thinking about movie.”

“Oh.” Shane nodded sombrely, trailing a solitary finger down the line of hair from Ilya’s bellybutton to the waistband of his jeans. “What’s happening in the movie?”

Ilya bit back a gasp. The smug delight in Shane’s voice made Ilya think that perhaps he may not be getting an Oscar after all. “I think they are in space, maybe.” His voice was hoarse.

“Mmmm,” murmured Shane, running his finger languidly from one of Ilya’s hipbones to the other, tracing back and forth over the line where his skin met the denim. “Why are they in space, Ilya?”

Ilya inhaled sharply and reached down and caught Shane’s wrist, raising Shane’s hand so he could no longer touch his flaming skin. “Enough of this touching, I think,” he said, his teeth clenched so hard that he was afraid they might crack. The plan had been for Shane to gain confidence, not for him to turn Ilya into a panting mess.

Shane looked down at him innocently, a slight pout on his mouth. “But the movie isn’t finished.”

“Yes, well,” Ilya’s voice still sounded slightly strangled, even with Shane’s fingers held safely out of reach. “You did not tell me that this movie is 100 hours long.”

Shane’s eyes twinkled. “We can swap places, if you’re bored.”

Ilya’s brain was flooded with images of a naked Shane laying before him, looking up at him with those beautiful eyes, writhing beneath Ilya's touch. He had never heard the sound that came out of his own throat before, a groan so deep it was almost a goddamn growl. He closed his eyes against the pulse of longing that threatened to turn off his thoughts entirely.

There had been some serious fucking miscalculations in the plan.

Ilya fought to regulate his breathing or his or heart rate or anything that might help him wrestle back over the situation, but his body ignored his bid for power as it thrummed with heat and longing.

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice was softer now, the teasing lilt gone.

Ilya didn’t open his eyes or release Shane’s wrist. It did not feel wise, yet. “Yes, Shane?”

There was a pause, and an edge in Shane’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “Can we? Swap places?”

Ilya’s eyes flew open. Shane’s cheeks were pink, and he looked hopeful and embarrassed and almost afraid and so fucking beautiful that Ilya wanted to die.

Ilya swallowed. “You want me to…”

Shane nodded, then met Ilya’s eyes. “Yes.”

Ilya pushed himself up to his elbows then raised into a sitting position, shuffling over to press against the back of the couch as Shane stretched out where Ilya had been, pausing to remove his own t-shirt with a bashful smile at Ilya before lying back against the cushion.

Ilya took a moment to drink in the man laying before him, his eyelashes and freckles and smooth, flawless skin, his plush lower lip and the exquisite curve where his neck met his shoulder where Ilya wanted to bury his face, maybe forever. He took in his dark nipples and muscled but somehow still deliciously soft stomach and the dip of his hipbones beneath the waistband of his pants. His eyes travelled lower, to the unmistakable bulge in his jeans that was marked by a darkened circle of precum-soaked fabric. Ilya felt his own dick throb and leak and he wondered if he was going to come in his pants from just looking at Shane Hollander.

He raised his eyes back to Shane’s, watching his face intently as he asked “Where can I touch you?”

Shane didn’t hesitate. “Everywhere,” he whispered, his eyes steady on Ilya’s. “Touch me everywhere.”

Chapter End Notes

[redacted apology for potential lack of promised heat due to feeling overwhelmed by compliments, y’all are the best]

Also, I think I'm gonna need some new tags. Suggestions?

Chapter 8: Play

Chapter Summary

Ilya may have come up with this game, but Shane is determined to win.

Chapter Notes

This one is dedicated to outofavortex for a) helping me feel less weird about the number of times I use the word 'touch' in this chapter, and b) saying incredibly kind things all the time always.

The moment Shane’s fingers touched the back of Ilya’s hand, something inside of him changed forever.

He felt parts of himself crack and shift and fall away, and the parts that were left rearrange themselves around the ones that were blooming and rising, expanding to fill the empty spaces in his chest that he’d never even known had existed. He sensed himself doubting things he’d always known and realizing things that he already knew and he wondered if he’d ever felt more or less like himself in his entire life.

He couldn’t really believe he’d actually reached out and touched Ilya. That alone was enough to send his sense of self spiralling out of orbit. He’d been sitting there, muscles frozen, eyes darting between the television screen and Ilya’s body beside him, for he didn’t know how long. His brain had been a whir of doubt and indecision. He couldn’t just reach out and touch him, could he? He knew that Ilya wanted him to, knew that he was supposed to, but he just couldn’t imagine how he’d even go about it. He was too far away, the angles too awkward, and now it’d been too long; he’d probably made it weird. No. He couldn’t do it, and maybe that was okay. Maybe if he didn’t do it, his world would stay on its axis, and he could go to bed tonight disappointed and knowing who he was.

But… those hands.

Those hands had been the subject of so many fantasies since the moment he’d seen Ilya in the grocery store. He’d pictured those hands running over every part of his body. The simple memory of them tightening on that shopping cart had never yet failed to send his pulse racing. The thick, visible veins snaking up the back of those hands and up those broad, muscled forearms made him so turned on he almost felt nauseated. And now Ilya had placed that hand right there, resting in his lap within Shane’s reach, and told Shane that he was allowed to touch him, and he was seriously considering just… not? Walking away this evening without the knowledge of how those hands would feel beneath his skin?

No.

All of a sudden, he couldn’t not close the gap between them. His body had been moving closer to Ilya’s before he’d even realized that he’d decided to do it, and then they were touching.

But touching didn’t feel like a big enough word to describe it. He looked down to where his fingertips rested on Ilya’s hand and wondered how he could feel those tiny points of contact over every inch of his skin, turning him into a single humming nerve that was completely exposed and still somehow desperate for more.

Shane dragged the tips of his fingers slowly over the back of Ilya’s hand, marvelling at the warmth and softness of it. He took his time to explore the gentle ridges of the veins and tendons beneath Ilya’s skin, pulse in his throat as his fantasies took physical form under his fingertips. Feeling bolder already, he trailed his touch up and down the backs of each of Ilya’s fingers in turn, circling the ridges of each knuckle. He chanced a glance over at Ilya, whose eyes were intent on the television. Shane didn’t know if he was relieved that he wasn’t being watched or disappointed that he hadn’t drawn Ilya’s attention, but the feeling of Ilya’s hand beneath his touch quickly demanded his focus, and he returned his eyes to where his skin met Ilya’s.

He skated his touch up over Ilya’s wrist and over the broad plane of the back of his forearm, thrilled at the fiction of the curled hair covering Ilya’s arm against his fingers. He remained here for a while, tracing the visible lines of Ilya’s veins again and again as if he’d be asked to create a map from memory. Eventually he needed more, and he gently lifted Ilya’s hand from where it rested on his thigh and turned it over so that the palm, broad and strong and calloused, was facing upwards. He thought about how it would feel to have those hands on him, tangled in his hair or sliding up his thighs or gripping his waist, and his touch became more certain, long sweeps of all of his fingers over the entire length of the pale, sensitive skin on the underside of Ilya’s forearm. He felt Ilya’s arm tense for the briefest moment, the muscles fluttering beneath his touch before they relaxed, and even though Ilya’s gaze was still locked on the screen, his face looked as though the calm expression was being held there by sheer will. Satisfaction mixed into the steady beat of overwhelming emotion coursing through his veins. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be trying to make Ilya feel good, but he couldn’t help but want to, maybe even need to.

He tried to run his fingers higher, but the sleeves of Ilya’s t-shirt almost covered his entire upper arm, and he wasn’t sure about pushing it up. He also realized that, as much as he wanted to touch Ilya’s bicep, feel every ridge and curve of it under his fingers, that his eyes had been roaming over Ilya’s chest and the long line of his torso, and he decided that the bicep could wait. He felt awkward, though, with his right arm crushed between them, and he didn’t want to have to lean across his own body and Ilya’s to reach the full width of Ilya’s chest. He braced against the first stab of worry and self-consciousness that he’d felt since the terrifying moment right before he'd reached out and touched Ilya’s hand.

The return of his anxiety made him realize that it was nothing short of a miracle that he’d done all of this touching, this exploring, without a single worried thought in his head, and that felt like literal, genuine magic. He needed to just take a breath and figure this awkward positioning out because every second that his skin wasn’t on Ilya’s was a fucking waste.

“Uh, Ilya?” his voice sounded thin and breathless, and he wasn’t going to care about that right now. Ilya inclined his head towards him with a questioning sound without looking from the screen, and this time Shane was grateful that he could ask for what he needed without the burn of Ilya’s gaze on his.

“Can we move a bit?”

He’d barely managed to finish the question before Ilya’s eyes snapped to his. Shane saw that they were dark with desire and a throb rang through Shane’s entire body with such force that it almost gave him a headache. Any lingering anxiety was gone and all that remained was the desire to touch this beautiful man who was giving him this incredible gift of feeling no pressure to be perfect for the first time, maybe, in his life.

“Of course.” Ilya paused the television, although Shane had a mounting sense that Ilya had been paying very little attention to the movie. “How do you want?”

The possibilities in the question made Shane’s head spin. He wanted so many things in so many ways that he might never leave this couch again.

For now, he just wanted to touch him without the barrier of his own arm between them. He thought about how he could position himself so that the entire length and width of Ilya’s body would be his to explore.

He told Ilya, with bravery that didn’t feel like his, the way that he was picturing Ilya’s body laid out before him and he barely even winced at the awkward, clumsy moments as they rearranged themselves on the sofa. To his relief, Ilya seemed to immediately understand what Shane was picturing. He stretched out in front of Shane and, sensing his discomfort, mimed clearing the cushions from the back of the couch. Shane tossed them onto the floor, allowing him the space to settle down beside Ilya, positioning the lower half of his body at a careful distance. He had no idea when he’d gotten so hard. He’d barely noticed it until now, but lying in this position with Ilya’s body stretched in front of him, he felt acutely aware of how it might feel to push forward and grind himself against Ilya’s thigh. The surge of desire made him dizzy, and his heartbeat stuttered. He allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and allow his body this moment to adjust to this incredible new world opening up in front of him.

It didn’t take long for the need to keep touching Ilya to draw his attention, and the sense of focus helped settle his mind and calm his body. Ilya lay in front of him, broad and warm and waiting, and there were so many places Shane needed to touch that his hand hovered for a moment before settling in the center of his chest, the spot that Shane’s shoulder had brushed in the grocery store and that he’d imagined pressing against every day since.

He could feel the outline of the necklace Ilya had been wearing every time Shane had seen him through the fabric of his t-shirt. He ran his fingers up and down the broad, strong lines of Ilya’s chest, and it was so fucking good, but something was missing; it didn’t feel quite as good as he’d imagined. He knew instantly that he needed the warmth of Ilya’s skin beneath his fingers again. He kept his fingers trailing over the lines of Ilya’s collarbone as he tried to open his mouth and ask Ilya to take his shirt off, but he couldn’t get the words out. He tried again, but he couldn’t form the words. He felt a stab of frustration and humiliation and desperate need that had him reaching down and pulling wordlessly at the hem of Ilya’s shirt.

Ilya turned his head to look up at Shane and Shane felt insanely close to leaning down and pressing his lips to Ilya’s but that seemed like it might be against the rules of the game, and Shane loved this game that Ilya had made up for him so much that he might cry, later, when he thought about it, so he kept his head propped on his hand dragged his gaze from Ilya’s lips to his questioning eyes.

“You want…” Ilya gestured at his t-shirt, and Shane wasn’t sure he’d even nodded yet before Ilya had ripped off his shirt and tossed it to the floor. Shane looked down at the body stretched out in front of him and felt a surge of pure heat and lust so strong that he thought that he’d actually come, and he froze, relieved a moment later to still feel the trapped, aching hardness in his jeans that remained present after the initial surge of desire had ebbed. Shane’s mouth was actually watering as he let his eyes roam over Ilya’s sculpted, muscled torso, lying long and bare for Shane to touch. Shane’s eyes scanned lower and saw the angle of Ilya’s hardness in his jeans, and his fingers throbbed in time with the rest of his body as he reached out and ran them gently over Ilya’s collarbone, tracing the same lines he’d drawn earlier through the t-shirt and unable to believe how much better it felt now with the heat of Ilya’s skin beneath his own.

He tried to keep his touch light and playful, but he felt himself pressing more firmly into the curve of Ilya’s pecs, needing to feel the strength and hardness of the muscles beneath his skin. He flattened his hand to run it slowly, firmly, down the sides of Ilya’s torso from his armpits to his hipbones, and he felt Ilya’s breath shudder beneath his touch. He used a finger to firmly outline each and every visible muscle of Ilya’s abs and then did it again and again, transported by the feeling of the muscles contracting in his wake. Thrilled with power, he flipped his hand and ran his fingernails from the base of Ilya’s throat down to his belly button and ached as he felt Ilya’s entire body tense underneath him.

He couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and placing a kiss against Ilya’s chest to the side of his hard nipple that Shane hadn’t quite been brave enough to touch, yet, and he swore he felt the vibration of Ilya’s throat as he let loose a poorly suppressed moan.

Shane grinned as he pressed another kiss to the same spot.

He’d won the game.

“Did you say something?” he asked Ilya, attempting to keep his voice light.

“No. Was just thinking about movie.” Ilya’s voice was hoarse, and Shane thought it was impressive that he’d spoken so clearly given that he could see how tightly Ilya’s jaw was clenched.

“Oh,” Shane nodded, trying to look serious. He was bursting, almost gleeful.

He’d been avoiding paying too much attention to the area between Ilya’s belly button and the waistband of his jeans, and he now gave it his full focus. He circled Ilya’s belly button with a light, lazy finger and then pressed it firmly into the trail of hair and ran it slowly down until it met the line of Ilya’s jeans. He saw Ilya’s erection swell and felt his own do the same.

“What’s happening in the movie?”

“I think they are in space, maybe.” Shane could tell that Ilya was trying to keep his voice steady, but it sounded like it was being forced through gravel.

Shane hummed and ran his finger firmly along the entire line of Ilya’s waistband where it met his torso, almost dipping beneath the fabric as he slowly crested his touch from one hipbone to the other, and back again. “Why are they in space, Ilya?”

He jumped as Ilya’s grip closed tightly over his wrist, snatching Shane’s hand from his skin. Shane’s eyes snapped to Ilya’s and saw that they were almost completely black and filled with fluid heat and lust that looked like it bordered on the wild edge of rage. Shane’s breath caught in his chest, and his pulse went wild. He realized that this might be the best moment of his life, ever, this intoxicating mix of wanting and playing.

“Enough of this touching, I think.” Ilya’s voice was a warning, and Shane was fucking invincible.

“But the movie isn’t finished,” he pushed, voice full of false innocence that he was sure wasn’t reflected in the heat he could feel in his eyes.

“Yes, well. You did not tell me that this movie is 100 hours long.”

Shane glanced up at the screen. They were barely an hour in. He fought back a smile and met Ilya’s eyes.

“We can swap places, if you’re bored.”

The sound that Ilya made changed everything, a groan of longing that dismantled Shane’s entire foundation. The want drained from Shane and was replaced by need, real and raw, sending an ache deep to his bones. Ilya’s eyes had closed, and Shane felt like he was untethered, lost and alone in the turmoil of the strength of the emotions cresting inside him. He needed Ilya’s hands on him, large and strong. He needed to be held together so he could come apart.

“Ilya.” Please.

“Yes, Shane?” Ilya hadn’t opened his eyes, and Shane felt close to panic, but he fought to keep his head above the water.

“Can we? Swap places?”

Ilya’s gaze was on his, and he felt the beginnings of relief, but it wasn’t enough. His body was still lost at sea, begging for an anchor.

“You want me to…”

Shane didn’t have time for Ilya to be careful with him anymore. Not right now.

He nodded, then added “yes” as he remembered Ilya’s silent command from earlier. It felt like a memory from someone else’s life, from the time before he was truly himself. He lay down on the couch, stretched out in front of Ilya, and every second stretched as his body floated further away from him. He needed to feel the press of Ilya’s body so that he could find his own.

“Where can I touch you?” Ilya was asking.

“Everywhere,” and then, in case Ilya hadn’t understood, “Touch me everywhere.”

There was less than a second, and then Ilya’s lips landed on his, crashed into his, their mouths crushed messily together for a moment before Ilya pulled back slightly, and Shane felt the wet slide of Ilya’s tongue over his own. He reached for Ilya’s hand and brought it to his waist, pressing it down in a plea for Ilya to hold him and then strong hands were gripping him, hauling at him, hips pressing and legs tangling, and Shane wasn’t falling, he was soaring. A constant noise left his throat, moans and whimpers and pleas and gasps merging into a single long sound into Ilya’s mouth on his.

One of Ilya’s hands crested the achingly hard length of his erection and squeezed, and Shane scrambled free of the touch, tearing his mouth from Ilya’s to blurt “Stop.”

Ilya’s hand flew into the air, and Shane saw the worry and resignation and guilt on Ilya’s face as clear as if the words themselves had been tattooed there, and Shane knew that Ilya thought that he’d been right, that Shane wasn’t ready. A hysterical laugh threatened to rise in Shane’s chest at how wrong that was, and he spoke quickly before Ilya could convince himself that this had been a terrible mistake.

“I don’t want to finish in my jeans, and I’m… I will.” He’d be annoyed at himself for being unable to say the word come later.

Comprehension dawned in Ilya’s eyes; the storm of concern was replaced by something so warm and lovely that Shane’s stomach swooped, and he leaned up to kiss this beautiful, perfect man. He felt Ilya’s hands, impossibly gentle, working the button of his pants and then inching down his fly so fucking gingerly, like Shane’s cock was a live bomb ready to explode and kill them both. He lifted his hips, and Ilya tugged his jeans lower, just below the curve of his ass, and then he was pulling Shane’s boxers down, and for a moment, the freedom from the constraint of his hardness trapped inside his jeans felt incredible. And then Ilya’s hand wrapped around him, and he was coming, his entire body clenching and shuddering as rope after rope of his cum painted his shirt, and he heard himself repeating Ilya’s name with every pulse of his cock.

“Oh my fucking god,” he groaned, raising his arm to cover his face, unable to believe he’d just come so hard before Ilya had even had a chance to stroke him. Humiliation knotted his stomach and absorbed the buzz from his blood. He felt Ilya’s fingers circling his wrist, and he tugged Shane’s hand away from his eyes, raising it to his lips and kissing his knuckles.

“You do not hide from me, Shane Hollander.” Ilya kissed the back of his hand. “That was so fucking good.” Lips on the inside of his wrist. “You are so fucking hot.” A gentle bite where he’d just kissed. “I nearly came just looking at you.”

Shane flushed and wriggled, his discomfort easing slightly but still swirling inside of him. “Really?”

“Shane. Why do you think I stop you from touching? Is so good I…” Ilya swallowed hard, and Shane leaned up and kissed his throat. Ilya’s words dissolved into a low groan, and Shane became acutely aware of the hard length pressing against his hip, and he slid his hand down Ilya’s side.

“Can I?” Ilya’s eyes followed Shane’s to the bulge in his jeans. “It might not be good, but I…”

“No.”

Shane’s eyes snapped up to Ilya’s. “I… no?”

Ilya shook his head. “No. Is rules. If you worry about being good, you cannot touch.”

Shane probably wasn’t in love, right? This feeling in his chest was something else. He kept his eyes on Ilya’s. “Okay, then… I’m kinda bored, can I play?”

Ilya let out a low moan. His hand was between them, shoving hurriedly at his own jeans and boxers and freeing his cock before Shane could catch his breath. Which would have been a waste of time anyway, because the sight of Ilya’s massive, naked erection knocked all the air from his lungs and all the thoughts from his brain. The head of Ilya’s cock was smooth and deep red and shiny with precum, and Shane was sliding his hand over it before he could even think about what he was doing. Ilya was making delicious sounds into his neck, but Shane barely heard him as he ran his fingers up and down Ilya’s shaft, gently first, then grasping at it, his hand forming a fist as he felt it throb and pulse under his touch. He adjusted his hold and gave a few tentative strokes, then Ilya’s hips were thrusting forward to meet his grip, and he moved his hand faster, tugging at Ilya and matching his rhythm and then Ilya was swearing and groaning his name, and Shane had never seen another man come before but it was fucking incredible. He didn’t know whether to look at Ilya’s face or his cock or the spurts of cum mingling with his own on his t-shirt, and he supposed he’d have to do this about a thousand more times to get his fill of all three.

He vaguely noted that Ilya was sucking on his earlobe, flicking it with his tongue, and it felt amazing. Shane felt his cock stirring despite the fact that he’d just had the longest, most powerful orgasm he’d ever experienced.

“Is it always like this?” Shane murmured, thinking he might genuinely die if it was, because surely the human body was not made to withstand feeling so fucking good.

Ilya’s teeth bit down gently on his earlobe, then released it. “Never in my life has it been like this.”

Chapter End Notes

Wee note to subscribers: (hi, I love you) I've been thinking for a while that Chips is becoming an increasingly ill-fitting name for this little story and while I'm sure that changing the title of your fic eight chapters in is extremely not the done thing, I'm going to plead fan-fiction ignorance here because I want to. So next time I update, you'll be alerted that there's a new chapter in Always Like This - please do not be confused, it's just Chips by a less "this was going to be a one-shot" name.

If you consider this to be an unforgivable crime against fan fiction, I'll miss you. xo

Chapter 9: Touch

Chapter Summary

Shane gets to re-visit his new favourite piece of furniture.

Chapter Notes

As he walked up the driveway to Ilya’s house that Friday, Shane felt mildly concerned that he may actually have become some sort of sex addict.

He’d thought about Ilya and the sounds Ilya made and the feeling of Ilya’s hands on him and the throb of Ilya’s cock in his fist as he came for what felt like every waking moment since he’d left his house on Monday night. He woke every morning achingly hard and he would jerk himself off thinking of the way it felt when Ilya’s hand had closed around him and there would be relief, for a moment, but it was never long until the pool of heat and longing settled back into his stomach. And now he was about to see him again and the need was so strong that he almost hated it, or at least wished it was less so that he could feel more in control of the wild pull of it.

He could see down Ilya’s hallway through the glass panels beside the door, and visions of leaving on Monday flooded him.

Given the state of his t-shirt he’d borrowed a hoodie from Ilya to go home in, which had seemed like a good idea until he’d emerged from the bathroom and walked up the hallway to where Ilya was waiting for him by the door. Ilya had taken one look at him and backed him against the wall with his hands pressed to Shane’s hips, murmuring something in Russian and then kissing Shane so deeply that his knees had gone weak and it was only Ilya’s hands pinning him to the wall and thigh pressed between his legs that kept him upright.

“Ilya,” he’d gasped, managing to pull his mouth away only for Ilya to move his wet, open kisses along his jaw and down his neck. “I need to go.” Ilya’s mouth was relentless and Shane had fought against the wave of desire threatening to drown him. “Please, Ilya, I have class and work and-“

Ilya must have heard the genuine plea in his voice because he’d given Shane’s neck one last gentle kiss and stepped back with a slightly pained expression. “Okay. I let you go only if you tell me when you will come back.”

Shane had smiled shyly at him. “When do you want me to come back?”

Ilya’s eyes were glinting. “Tomorrow.”

Shane had laughed, although he hadn’t been entirely sure if Ilya had been joking. “Not tomorrow. Friday?”

“Friday? Shane, this is so long. Is just Monday now!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Shane had said quietly, running his hand up and down Ilya’s arm. He didn’t want to wait until Friday either, he didn’t even want to leave right now, but he knew he would already be freaking the fuck out enough this week without destroying his routine as well.

Ilya had seemed to pick up on his genuine regret and smiled at him. “Is okay. Friday is good. You will come here? I will order dinner?”

The idea of having takeout twice in a week had made Shane’s stomach twist. “Maybe I could cook for us? Here? You have a great kitchen.” He’d blushed at the genuine enthusiasm in his voice.

“You want to cook for me in my kitchen?” Ilya’s voice was low and full of heat and Shane hadn't been able to meet his eyes as he nodded. “Fuck, Shane. You will kill me. Okay. You send me recipe and I shop, yes?”

Shane shook his head. “I can bring stuff, it’s okay.”

Ilya had rolled his eyes. “Shane, I do nothing all day. I will go to grocery store for the dinner you will make us.”

And so here he was, to cook them dinner. And maybe, hopefully, to do one of the hundreds of other things his brain had been conjuring graphic images of since the moment he’d left on Monday.

He rang the doorbell and marvelled how different he felt than the last time he’d pressed that same doorbell just a few days ago. Last time he’d felt near tears; lingering hurt and confusion and apprehension and insecurity and downright fear twisting around every nerve. Most of those feelings were still here, he realized, but they were so much quieter now in the face of the overwhelming thrill of getting to see Ilya again. Of getting to be touched by Ilya again.

And then there he was. Opening the door, and smiling at Shane, his golden brown curls all loose and lovely and ready for Shane’s fingers and his t-shirt just tight enough to show the curve of his muscled chest and his sweat pants slung so low across his hips that Shane’s pulse lost its rhythm. He knew that Ilya was watching him as Shane’s eyes roved over his body and he forced his gaze back to eyes that were a shade darker than they’d been a moment ago.

“Hi,” Shane managed to say. Better than the silence he’d managed last time Ilya had opened the door. Progress. He worked on regulating his breathing as he followed Ilya down the hallway towards the kitchen. He could do this. He could cook them dinner and have a pleasant conversation without fantasizing about Ilya like some kind of deviant.

But then they got to the kitchen, and Shane stopped dead. Ilya had neatly laid out everything he would need to make dinner, all of the ingredients pre-measured into little dishes, he’d even already diced the vegetables. Shane’s chest flooded with warmth and when he looked up, Ilya was looking at him with the most ridiculously proud, bashful look on his face that broke the final tether Shane had on his self-control.

Ilya must have seen something shift in Shane’s eyes, because his gaze dipped quickly to Shane’s lips and he was saying “Maybe we have dinner aft-” but Shane had already closed the distance between them and before Ilya could finish his sentence Shane’s mouth was on his, hot and hungry. In less than a moment, Ilya was backing him up against the counter and grinding his hips against Shane’s and Shane could feel that Ilya was already hard too and he thought he was going to burst into flames. He felt a momentary flush of shame at the strength of the need unspooling inside of him, at his complete inability to do anything but want when he was with Ilya, but Ilya’s moan as Shane’s fingers tightened in his curls tore his attention back to the man before him.

“Tell me what you want,” Ilya whispered, his lips moving down Shane’s neck and then back up to his ear.

“I…” Shane felt a twinge of anxiety, ripping him out of the moment. He didn’t know what he wanted, or how to put any of it into words anyway. He thought he just wanted Ilya, but he didn’t want to say that. What did Ilya want him to want?

“Shane,” murmured Ilya, lips roaming over his throat. “I can feel you worry. I did not say to worry. I said to tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know, I…” Shane’s head dropped. How was he so terrible at this? Why couldn’t he just say what he was thinking? “I don’t know what I want.” Except maybe that he wanted to cry at how badly he was fucking this up.

He felt Ilya smile against his neck, and the edges of his anxiety became less sharp at knowing that at least Ilya wasn’t mad at him for being so miserably uptight. “Have you been thinking about me?”

Shane’s blood turned molten and he felt his face heat at the same time his cock swelled. “Yes.”

Ilya hummed against his skin. “Good. You touch yourself, while you think of me?”

Oh, god. “Yes.” His voice was barely more than a croak.

Ilya moaned, his kisses on Shane’s neck becoming wetter and hips pressing him harder into the counter. “Tell me what you think about. That is what you want.”

Shane gasped. “You. Touching me. Fuck, Ilya. I want you to touch me.”

Ilya ripped away from him. “Couch. Now.” He pulled Shane behind him to the sofa, the very sight of it sending another rush of pure heat pulsing through Shane’s body as he remembered laying there in his ruined t-shirt. Was this how people became attracted to furniture? He’d seen a show about it in a hotel room once. He’d worry about that later, because Ilya was dropping onto the couch and pulling Shane down on top of him and then flipping them both over and now his body was underneath Ilya’s and god, this was it. This was what he needed.

“Yes,” he breathed, and Ilya’s lips were back on his, and Shane’s hands were roaming over Ilya’s back and he was wrapping his legs around Ilya’s waist and they were both groaning into each other’s mouths. He thought of something else he wanted. “Take your shirt off. Please.”

Ilya moved off him just enough to free Shane to remove his own shirt while Ilya hauled his over his head. Shane expected Ilya to lower himself back over his mouth immediately, but Ilya’s eyes roamed his body hungrily for a moment before he lowered his mouth to Shane’s nipple and oh, fuck. Shane’s hips lifted off the couch and his head pressed back into the cushions as every muscle in his body tensed. Ilya’s tongue was swirling and flicking and Shane had never felt anything quite so incredible in his life, wave after wave of low, thrumming pleasure flooding his veins. Ilya’s hand found his other nipple and he moaned and clutched at the couch beneath him. “Ilya, fuck, I need…”

Ilya’s lips released his nipple and kissed his collarbone, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. His voice was low and rough in Shane's ear. “I want to use my mouth. Can I?”

Shane nearly came at the words alone. “No, I won’t last, I can’t…”

Ilya kissed him gently, cutting him off. “Trying to last is good game for another time, but not now. Now we are just feeling good together, yes?”

Shane nodded, but then frowned and shook his head. “I just want to feel good for longer, I keep… it’s so fast, with you.”

Ilya smiled at him wickedly. “You are going somewhere after dinner? This is just,” he waved a hand dismissively, “first round. Taking edge off. More fun for later, hmm?”

The promise of later filled Shane’s chest and shattered his resolve. “God, yes, okay.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow, that filthy smile still on his face. “Okay?”

Shane desperately wanted to cover his face but he knew Ilya wouldn’t let him so he tried to ignore the flaming in his cheeks. “Yes, use your, fuck, Ilya…” Even saying the words was driving him close to the edge. “Use your mouth, please.”

And then Ilya’s body was gone from over his and strong hands were unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them down his legs. Fingers were hooking into the elastic waistband of his boxers and tugging and Shane felt his erection spring free. He felt exposed and vulnerable and unmoored, lying naked in front of Ilya, but then Ilya was settling between his legs and a large, warm hand came up to rest against his chest, pressing him gently to the couch like Ilya knew that Shane needed help to stay inside his own skin.

Shane gasped as he felt Ilya’s lips press a firm kiss to the base of his cock, which turned into a moan as Ilya’s tongue licked a broad line up his shaft. “Oh my fucking god.” He closed his eyes and clenched every muscle he could still control.

“Shane, look at me.” Shane looked down at Ilya and almost died, those eyes staring up at him from between his legs, Shane’s erection so close to his mouth. “This will feel good. Is meant to feel good. You will come in my mouth, probably very quick, and I will like it very much. Okay?”

Shane nodded, unable to speak, and Ilya seemed to be willing to let him get away with it this time, because then Shane’s cock was in Ilya’s mouth and stars shot across his vision. He could feel Ilya’s tongue swirling over the head before he was sliding Shane deeper into his mouth and Shane had received blow jobs before, but this was something else. This he could feel all the way in his toes and at the base of his skull and there was nothing else in the world except Ilya’s mouth and the building pressure in his balls and the pit of his stomach. He didn’t even have time to warn Ilya as his orgasm slammed into him, but it was like he knew before Shane did anyway because he was already swallowing around him and Shane came so hard it hurt. He couldn’t even moan properly because his lungs were clenching along with every other muscle in his body, tensing and twitching and pulsing with the strength of his orgasm. Once it was over he felt Ilya make his way back up to lie half on top of him, face in his neck, arm over his chest, leg across his hips, pressing him so deliciously into the couch that his entire body melted into a puddle of absolute bliss.

Shane wondered if he ever wouldn’t feel spiritually transformed after an orgasm from Ilya. He’d only had two, but he felt like they might be two of the most significant and destabilising events of his life. He also wondered how Ilya already knew more about what Shane needed than he did, how he knew even right now that pressing Shane into the couch was keeping the good inside his body, stopping it from escaping through the cracks.

Shane wanted to say ‘thank you’ but that felt a bit weird. “That was so good,” he whispered instead, although he was fairly certain that Ilya had been able to divine that for himself. Ilya brought his face up to meet Shane’s and kissed him slowly, and Shane could taste his own come in Ilya’s mouth and he froze for a moment, certain that he was about to feel some sort of panic or disgust, but it never came. He just felt good.

He wanted to make Ilya feel good.

He could feel Ilya’s erection still hard against his hip, and he wriggled slightly, offering a moment of friction, almost as a question. He felt Ilya move against him, an answering press of his hips against Shane’s.

“Now you tell me what you want,” he murmured into Ilya’s mouth.

Ilya’s body stilled against him, and he pulled back from the kiss to meet Shane’s eyes. He took Shane’s hand and pressed it against the hard line of his erection. “I want you to touch me.” Hearing his own words repeated back to him made Shane feel a dizzying mix of embarrassment and desire. He squeezed his hand around Ilya’s cock and his pulse fluttered as Ilya groaned and ground harder into his touch.

“Not… my mouth?” Shane asked, unsure what he wanted the answer to be. Part of him loved the idea of having Ilya’s cock in his mouth, but he was also fucking terrified that he’d be terrible at it.

“Mmm, no. Later, maybe. Now I just need you to touch.” He pressed into Shane’s hand again.

Shane grappled with the wave of disappointment and relief. It’s good, he told himself. This is better. This you know how to do. He thought about the ways it felt best when he touched himself, and he blushed as he asked “Do you have any lube, or anything?”

“Fuck, Shane,” Ilya moaned. He rolled off Shane enough to reach down and unbutton his own jeans. “Mouth, lube, we can do this later.” He took Shane’s hand and slid it into this boxers. Shane instinctively wrapped his fingers around Ilya’s length, breath skipping as he felt how hard and hot he was. “I am so hard all week thinking of you.” Ilya kept his hand over Shane’s, guiding it up and down over his cock, the head now poking free of the elastic of his boxers as their hands worked his cock together. “And now you are here and I need to come in your hand right now or I will die.”

Shane’s entire body was liquid heat. He could hear his blood roaring in his ears, the pressure of it blurring his vision. Ilya’s hand dropped away from his once he seemed sure that Shane would keep up the fast, steady pace he’d set, and it was now gripping Shane’s thigh so tightly it was almost painful. Shane watched Ilya’s face intently, cataloguing every crease of his forehead and clench of his jaw as Shane’s hand worked his erection. He could feel Ilya getting closer to his own orgasm, the delicious sounds he was making against Shane’s neck becoming steadily more urgent.

Overcome by a wave of boldness, and probably also the lasting sting of disappointment from Ilya not wanting his mouth when he’d offered, he put his lips to Ilya’s ear and whispered, “Show me what I’ll be swallowing later.”

Ilya came immediately, letting out a string of profanities in both English and Russian as hot come spurted up his chest and pooled around Shane’s fist where it was still trapped inside Ilya’s boxers. Shane could see Ilya’s pulse hammering in his throat and he pressed his lips to it, needing to feel the thrum under his own skin.

“Shane Hollander,” Ilya’s voice was weak. “Fuck, that was… Who even are you?”

Shane wasn’t entirely sure that he knew anymore. Definitely some kind of sex addict, he decided.

Chapter End Notes

Mainly set-up for the next chapter! Thanks for the support on the name change x

Chapter 10: Want

Chapter Summary

Ilya is trying to do things differently, but Shane isn't playing along, and it's not going well for either of them.

Maybe it's time for them both to stop thinking for a while. What's the worst that could happen?

Chapter Notes

Quite a bit of this chapter centres on an interaction in the last few paragraphs of the last chapter, if you need to pop back for a refresher!

For the second time in a week, Ilya was sitting on his couch in the moments after Shane had left his apartment, reeling. He’d never felt more out of his depth in his life.

He’d moved to a new country and been drafted to a fucking NHL team with more confidence and calm than he could navigate a single goddamn evening with Shane Hollander.

He couldn’t figure out where he kept going so wrong. He’d spent over an hour prepping the stupid vegetables before Shane arrived, longer than it probably would have taken Shane to make the entire meal from scratch, but he did it imagining the look in Shane’s eyes when he saw it. A sweet look, he’d thought, warm and fuzzy. It would all be very nice.

Instead, Shane had looked at him like he wanted Ilya to fuck him until they both forgot their names, and he’d had Ilya on the couch essentially begging Shane for a hand job and humping the man’s fist inside his underwear like a desperate teenager within fifteen minutes of knocking on his door.

So, yes. It had not gotten off to a great start.

Okay, fine, it had gotten off to an excellent start. It just wasn’t the start that Ilya had been planning. The kind of start that he thought he should be doing with Shane, the kind of start that he kept trying to do but failing miserably because Shane didn’t really seem aware that that’s what they were supposed to be doing and instead seemed determined to light Ilya on fire seven different ways in every single interaction.

After the brilliant/disastrous start they’d eventually made it back to the kitchen, and dinner had been cooked. They’d talked and eaten and smiled nicely at each other, and Ilya had mistakenly felt like perhaps he had the thing back under control.

That illusion had shattered the moment that Shane had abruptly stood up from the table the moments their plates were empty, and had looked down at Ilya expectantly. Ilya had blinked up at him, unsure exactly what Shane was trying to communicate with his gaze.

“Coming?” Shane had asked.

Ilya had felt his brow crease with confusion. “Where?”

It had been Shane’s turn to look confused. “I mean… couch, I assumed, but…” he’d blushed, and Ilya was not okay. “If you want to go for bed instead, we could?”

Ilya dug his fingers into his thighs under the table and counted very slowly to five in his head. The image of Shane in his bed had hit him like a bus and that was very inconvenient timing given that Shane was currently behaving in a way that required his full attention. “Bed?” was all he managed.

Shane had actually put a hand on his hip, looking slightly annoyed. “You said we could… do more… after dinner.”

That was when Ilya had known, conclusively, that he was absolutely, comprehensively, fucked. He had sat there, stunned, completely unsure of what to do with himself. He had never been less sure about how to handle a situation in his life.

He wanted Shane. Wanted him so badly that he’d set three new PBs in the gym this week just trying to do anything else with his body other than want him. The thought of how it would feel to press into Shane for the first time had quite literally make him trip over his own feet while he was running yesterday. He’d been dreaming about Shane, waking iron hard at 3am before falling back asleep only to dream about him again.

But Shane had only kissed a man for the first time a week ago, and only touched a man for the first time on Monday. So Ilya was reigning it in.

Shane, on the other hand, seemed to be doing whatever the opposite of that was, and now Ilya was dying. He closed his eyes and took what he hoped would be a steadying breath.

“Oh.” Shane’s voice was small and sad. Ilya’s eyes snapped up to his face, and he realized that Shane had been standing there silently watching Ilya think and had clearly generated some very-wrong conclusions. He was now looking at the floor, cheeks flushed, and Ilya could see the tell-tale curves of Shane’s fists in his pockets. “If you don’t want-”

Ilya was out of his seat before Shane could finish that thought, his hands on either side of Shane’s waist, pulling him against his body, pressing their foreheads together.

“Shut up,” he said, inelegant but needing to stop Shane’s current line of thought before he had enough time to come up with the words he needed in English. “I want.”

“Didn’t look like you wanted.” Shane’s voice was quiet and his eyes were still staring intently at his socked feet. Ilya was once again blown away by these two sides of Shane, the boldness and the fragility, and the speed that he could switch between them. It was as though Shane was always inhabited by both, that the bravery and fear were constantly fighting each other in a battle to the surface, and whichever side won always seemed to be able to punch Ilya in the throat and leave him staggering.

“Shane.” Ilya nudged Shane’s chin up with his thumb, then ran it along his jaw until his hand was cupping Shane’s cheek. “This is new for you. I am trying to not want too much, too fast. But I want, very much. I think you know this.”

Shane’s smile had been soft and sad. “You’re right, I know. I just get in my head about it. I wish I could stop thinking.”

Ilya was reminded of first seeing Shane in the grocery store, and the pinched, concerned look he'd had on his face. A second memory quickly replaced it of Shane's face on the couch earlier that evening. Keeping his eyes on Shane’s, his free hand coming up to cup Shane’s other cheek, he stroked his thumbs along his jaw. “I have seen you stop thinking a few times now, I think.”

Shane’s eyes had flicked down to Ilya’s lips then back to his eyes. “Can you… now? Make me stop thinking, I mean?”

Ilya wondered how many times a man could think I’m so fucked in a single evening, but he decided that maybe it was time for him to stop thinking too. It sure as hell didn’t seem to be helping him get a handle on the situation. He fought against the urge to ask Shane what he wanted again, because he knew the question would send Shane right back into a spiral of anxiety and he had just told Ilya that he wanted to stop thinking and god, Ilya wanted to give him that. He’d had spent all of his time with Shane so far pushing back on the version of himself he’d always been before, the version of him that thought with his dick first, but that guy had been very good at getting people to stop thinking. So he decided, for both of their sakes, to let that version of himself run things now. Just for a bit.

Don’t let me down, old friend.

Still holding Shane by the jaw, Ilya had kissed him. Slow and deliberate, a few gentle presses of his lips before licking his way into Shane’s mouth. He ran his tongue over Shane’s lips, along his tongue, swirling and flicking until Shane was moaning softly into his mouth. He caught Shane’s lower lip between his teeth and sucked hard, biting at the soft flesh before releasing it and licking the sensitive skin. He felt Shane’s hands sliding up underneath his t-shirt, skimming his waist and coming to rest on his back, pressing their bodies more closely together. Ilya slid his hands back until they were tangled in Shane’s hair and tugged his head back gently, allowing him a better angle to kiss down into him, insistent to the point of possessiveness. He felt himself taking more of Shane’s weight as he weakened against the force of Ilya’s kiss and Ilya only pressed deeper, every sound that Shane made sending him further into his own need to hear more. Suddenly he didn’t want Shane making these whimpers and moans into his mouth anymore, he wanted to hear them properly, wanted to rip them straight from Shane’s throat to the roof and the walls and fucking bask in them. He briefly thought about taking Shane into his bedroom, but even in his lusty haze he’d known that probably wasn’t wise.

“Couch,” he instructed hoarsely, and Shane took an unsteady step back from him, eyes glazed, lips swollen and wet, and Ilya felt almost beside himself with desire. He took Shane’s hand and lead him to the couch, pushing him down to sit on the center cushion and grabbing a cushion to kneel on between his legs.

“You wanted me to make it last this time, yes?”

Shane nodded, eyes wide and wild. Ilya raised an eyebrow at him with a sly smile.

“Yes,” Shane’s voice was somewhere between a whisper and a gasp.

“This means you will have to use your words, even more than last time,” Ilya told Shane as he unbuttoned his jeans. He tapped Shane’s hip. “Up.”

Shane lifted his hips and Ilya pulled down Shane’s jeans and boxers in one motion, raising each of Shane’s legs to slide them off completely. Shane was loose and compliant in his hands and Ilya pressed an affectionate kiss to the inside of his thigh.

“I will try to pay attention, but you will tell me if you are going to come.”

Shane nodded, then swallowed. “Okay. Yeah, yes.”

Ilya smiled slowly up at him. “That was many words, very good. Let’s practice some more before we start. Say Ilya, I’m going to come.”

Shane shook his head, cheeks flaming, mouth pressed closed. “Can’t… can’t I just say stop?”

Ilya pressed another kiss to Shane’s thigh, a little higher than his last one. “No. Stop means you do not like. Gives me fright.” Another kiss, higher, nearing the crease between Shane’s thigh and his hip. “Say Ilya, I’m going to come.”

“Fuck.” Shane was squirming. He brought up his hands to cover his face, and muttered “Ilya, I’m going to come.”

“Almost.” Ilya kissed the same spot on Shane’s other thigh. “Again. No hands.” There was a long pause, and Ilya bit Shane’s thigh gently. “Come on, храбрец.”

Shane’s hands came down to rest on Ilya’s where they were placed either side of him on the couch, and Ilya tangled their fingers together. “Ilya, I’m going to come,” Shane whispered, and Ilya’s heart grew about three sizes. My brave boy, he thought, and he would absolutely have panicked about that thought, but right now he had some bravery to reward.

Shane’s erection lay against his stomach, red and swollen. Ilya hadn’t had time to really admire it earlier but he did now as he took it in his hand, giving it a few gentle, lazy strokes, humming as he felt it twitch and harden even further in his grip. Ilya had admired a great many naked bodies in his life, but looking at Shane’s dick in his hand, he thought that it might actually be the most beautiful he’d ever seen. He leaned forward and licked it, his tongue long and flat on the underside of his shaft, then slowly up each side. Shane was writhing beneath him, but Ilya could feel him fighting back his moans.

This would not do. Those moans were his to hear.

He licked up beneath Shane’s shaft again but this time flicked his tongue when he reached the head, lapping at the pre-cum leaking from the tip. He swept his tongue around the sensitive ridge where the head of Shane’s dick met his shaft and was rewarded with a moan so deep it sent a shiver up Ilya’s spine. He sucked Shane deep into his mouth, and glanced up to see that his eyes were closed and his head had fallen back against the couch cushions. He looked as though he didn’t have a single thought in his head and Ilya felt a rush of pride mixed with determination to keep this man safe from his own mind for as long as he could.

And so he had, and Shane had been very brave and told him that he was about to come three times, and on the third time instead of pulling off he’d slid Shane deeper into his mouth and hummed and swallowed as Shane moaned and swore and clutched his hair and came down his throat.

“That was so good,” Ilya murmured, leaning forward and pressing a firm kiss against Shane’s hip. “You were so good for me.” Shane’s fingers were loose in his hair now and he tugged gently, pulling Ilya up towards him. Ilya rose and settled on the couch beside Shane, pulling him against his side. Shane nestled his cheek against Ilya’s chest and stretched his arm over Ilya’s waist. Ilya couldn’t quite believe how nice this felt, and he was struck by the deeply unsettling realization that despite the fact that he was so hard he was aching, he wouldn’t mind just holding Shane against him for the rest of the evening.

Shane, as per usual, seemed to have a different idea a few minutes later as he stirred against Ilya’s side and murmured “Your turn,” into his neck, and Ilya very quickly changed his mind about being okay if his dick remained untouched. Shane’s earlier whisper about swallowing his come ricocheted around his brain and rerouted all of his senses and it took him a moment to register that Shane had asked him for lube.

“Hmm?” Ilya managed, attempting to get his brain at least part-way back online.

“I want to do it with lube this time,” Shane elaborated, eyes shy but face determined.

And Ilya wasn’t disappointed. He wasn’t. That would be a ridiculous way to feel when this incredible, beautiful man slid his slicked hand over his dick so fucking sweetly, fast then slow then fast again, watching Ilya’s face so intently to learn what he liked, gently tugging his tightening balls in his other hand and scratching them lightly with his nails until Ilya was clenched and squirming and shooting long lines of come onto his bare chest. It was an extremely un-disappointing hand job, and Ilya of all people was of the firm belief that the things uttered during sex were far from binding contracts, so it would be incredibly hypocritical of him to hold Shane to those words he’d whispered in his ear earlier.

But... fuck. Those words had rearranged something inside him. He could still feel them on the roof of his mouth and the backs of his knees and he knew he would be hearing them every time he closed his eyes at night for a very, very long time. But Shane had changed his mind, and that was okay. No, it was better than okay, it was actually fucking amazing that Shane hadn’t done something that he hadn’t wanted to do, just because he’d said he would. The thought filled Ilya with an odd swell of pride that had him kissing the top of Shane’s head, now nestled beneath his chin where they still lay tangled together on the couch, but the wave of affection didn’t dislodge the growing concern in Ilya’s chest.

It was definitely okay that Shane had changed his mind. But… why had Shane changed his mind?

Ilya felt certain it was because he’d done something wrong. He’d been working so hard to be right for Shane, to be good for him, to be different this time, and he’d consciously chosen to drop the effort and been his old dick-driven self, and Shane had seemed to love it but… had he? Or had he seen a version of Ilya he’d never met, and didn’t like? A more predatory, controlling Ilya that-

“Okay, I should go.” Shane’s voice ripped him out of his thoughts.

“Go?” Ilya repeated numbly, fighting to retrieve his brain from the gloomy spiral it’d just been steadily descending. He felt like he had when he’d repeated ‘bed?’ earlier, like he was scrambling to follow Shane down a road he hadn’t even known they were on, and all he could do was echo Shane’s words back to him until he could figure out where they were going. He hoped Shane would put it down to Ilya struggling with English, rather than the rather less flattering reality that Ilya was just struggling to keep up with Shane.

“Yeah, I better head home.” Shane was stretching out against him, the movements briefly pressing their bodies closer together before he swung his legs over the edge of the couch and sat up. Ilya fought the urge to reach out and pull him back down, to wrap his arms around Shane and hold him to his chest until Shane somehow knew that Ilya was sorry for whatever he’d done wrong.

“You can stay longer?” Ilya offered, looking up to where Shane was now pulling his underwear back on. “We could watch movie, or…” his voice trailed off as Shane continued getting dressed. He supposed, now he’d thought about it, that he’d assumed Shane would stay the night. He felt briefly disoriented as his own assumption, given that it’d never been one he’d had about a hookup before. He noticed the word ‘hookup’ catch uncomfortably against something sharp in his chest, and wondered if overthinking was somehow contagious. He’d never had so many thoughts in his fucking life.

“No, I should go.” Shane looked down at him and smiled, but Ilya was too filled with dread and thoughts to feel any warmth from it. “I had a really great time,” he added shyly.

No, you didn’t, Ilya wanted to scream. You didn’t, and now you’re leaving. He swallowed and hoped his smile looked genuine. “Me too.” He reached down to retrieve his own underwear, suddenly feeling incredibly naked. He stood and examined Shane’s eyes for hurt, or distance, but his smile seemed genuine and his eyes were warm and Ilya had possibly never felt this confused in his entire life.

“Can I see you again next week?” Shane asked, and Ilya grasped at this like a lifeline in the ocean.

“Yes, of course.” He tentatively reached a hand to cup Shane’s cheek and felt a flood of relief as Shane pressed into it for a moment.

“Is Friday okay? My place?”

“Friday?” Ilya’s newly-made resolution to not dumbly repeat Shane’s words back to him was not going well, but an entire week without Shane felt like an entirely unreasonable proposition. He was only slightly humiliated that he’d pretty much yelped the word rather than spoken it.

Shane laughed and leaned forward to kiss him. A gentle, soft kiss that Ilya fought against the desperate urge to deepen. “Yeah, is that okay? You don’t have plans?” There was a tease in his voice that soothed something in Ilya, a tease that held hope and reassurance that maybe Shane really was okay. Okay, maybe, but still leaving. Actively walking purposefully towards the door.

“Yes, am very busy. Will rearrange,” Ilya muttered towards Shane’s retreating back, and Shane looked over his shoulder to shoot him a brilliant smile that Ilya wished he’d been fast enough to take a photo of, to look at when the fear and concern rose in him like he knew it would the moment the door closed with Shane on the other side.

And here it was, now, as he settled back into the couch. He’d just had what, on paper, sounded like it should have been a truly excellent evening – he’d come twice, for Christ’s sake, and a beautiful man had cooked him dinner and trusted Ilya to take him apart and swallow him down, first quickly and then slowly, both times with Ilya’s name in his mouth. But instead of feeling satisfied and sated, a nervous unrest was causing his knee to bounce and his thumb to run restlessly over the seam of the cushion.

Fuck that stupid clause in his Raiders contract. He needed a goddamn cigarette.

Chapter 11: Practice

Chapter Summary

Shane identifies a skill deficit, and struggles with correcting it.

Chapter Notes

Dropping this one slightly early since people were VERY concerned about Shane's rapid departure.

Shane Hollander had seven days to get really, really good at blow jobs.

Actually, by the time he took out sleep, work, class, study, the gym, and the people in his life he should probably continue seeing, he probably had about 36 hours.

He was almost certain that 36 hours was extremely not enough time given the degree of the learning curve he’d identified that evening, but he couldn’t exactly skip class to work on this. Could he? No, he definitely couldn’t. Unless it got to, like, Thursday, and it was going really badly.

What the fuck? No, Hollander. Not even then.

Probably.

First things first. He settled back onto his couch with his laptop and opened an incognito browser tab. Nobody other than him had ever even used his laptop, let alone checked his browser history, but the idea of typing what he was about to type into his regular browser made his stomach churn even faster than it already was.

He clenched and unclenched his fists where they hovered over the keyboard. He forced himself to relax his hands and tapped his fingers lightly over the keys without actually pressing them, then drummed them on the smooth surface next to the trackpad.

If he couldn’t even type it, how the hell was he actually going to do it?

how to give good blow jobs

His screen immediately filled with endless links. Well, at least he wasn’t alone in needing help.

He’d felt so confident after their first time on the couch that evening. Well, no, confident was a bit of a stretch. He’d been petrified at the thought, but he’d had the vague sense that he could probably, maybe, almost do something loosely along the lines of what Ilya had done to him. Enough so that he’d been disappointed and a little hurt when Ilya turned him down when he’d offered to use his mouth. He’d been almost indignant that Ilya was being so careful with him, as though he was too inexperienced know what he wanted.

It turned out, as he later realised, that he’d only had that false sense of potential competence the first time around because he’d come before Ilya could really get started. A couple of hours later, with his entire cock buried in Ilya’s throat, feeling Ilya’s nose make contact with his pelvis as he swallowed Shane down whole with a satisfied hum, he’d realised that he had made a monumental miscalculation.

Shane gagged if he brushed his tongue too vigorously. There was no fucking way he could do anything even close to… that. His face burned as he remembered whispering to Ilya about swallowing his come. Choke to death on it, more likely.

He’d hastily offered a second hand job instead, and once he’d semi-recovered from the mortification of backing down from his earlier promise, he’d thought he’d done an okay job. Even a bit better than okay, maybe. It had actually been fucking great for Shane, at least. He had loved touching Ilya for so much longer than he had before, learning how to coax the moans and gasps out of him, loved watching how his face took on an intensity close to fury as his orgasm approached. He’d loved the moments after, too, when Ilya had held him against his chest and murmured to him in Russian, but then the anxiety had started to really set in. What if there was to be a round three? Was that a thing that people did? Shane had never even done a round two before tonight. All of his sexual experiences prior to Ilya had ended with a feeling of profound relief that he’d survived it, and always with the desire to kick the next one as far down the road as was practically possible. But with Ilya… well. Shane had been the one practically stomping his foot and demanding round two, and he was fairly certain that if he’d stayed on that couch pressed against Ilya to watch a movie, sooner or later his body would have started to stir for more. And then what? A third hand job of the evening? He was no expert, but surely that was against some sort of code.

He sighed. Ilya had been right; he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

But goddamn it, he was going to learn. Starting right now.

His eyes scanned the search results desperately. Going off the blurbs, they all seemed to be repeating the same few pieces of advice. Make slurping sounds! Act enthusiastic! Don’t forget his balls! None of these websites seemed to quite appreciate the gravity of his situation. He supposed that was his fault, given what he’d searched. The results might be more helpful if he’d googled ‘how to not throw up and/or die while sucking a giant cock down my throat’, but Shane barely knew how to continue being a person in a world where that sentence existed in his brain and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be typing it out. He closed the tab instead and tried to force air into his lungs.

Perhaps this wasn’t really a theory situation. He could watch some porn, he supposed, perhaps give some visual learning a try, but he really didn’t see how seeing other people be incredible at giving head was going to help him to do anything except feel worse. What he really needed to do was… practice.

He hesitated for a moment before opening a new tab and logging in to Amazon. He’d been trying not to use it since Jackie had sent him that article about workers being forced to pee themselves because they weren’t allowed to take bathroom breaks, but he decided that this constituted something of an emergency.

This time he only stretched his fingers once before typing ‘dildo’.

It took everything in him to not slam the laptop screen closed as the page filled with pictures of… well, dildos. Realistic, veiny ones and lurid pink ones and ones that vibrated or – he swallowed hard – thrusted. His mouth was dry and his pulse was racing as he scrolled down the page, taking in the vast array of options. Most of them had thousands of reviews and his mind reeled at the fact that while he had been off living his life, thousands of people had been here buying dildos and then logging back in to helpfully review them. It felt oddly beautiful, and it also made him want to pass out.

His eyes snagged on a picture of three black silicon vaguely penis-shaped items of different sizes labelled ‘training set’, and despite the fact that the rating was a mere 4.2, which was far below anything he’d usually consider purchasing, he’d hit ‘buy now’ and entered his payment details before he’d even taken his next breath. He wasn’t sure exactly what constituted a highly-rated dildo, but he doubted that he needed them to do the things that most people were asking of them. It’s not like he was going to put them in his… Jesus Christ. The panic attack that had been lurking in the periphery of his vision crept closer, gently gripping his throat. The weight of the reality of the last few hours sank onto his shoulders and grew spikes in his chest. He’d come in a man’s mouth, twice, and jerked a man off, twice, then come home and bought a three-pack of dildos on Amazon.

“Oh my fucking god,” he gasped, and bent forward to clutch his knees.

On Tuesday evening, Shane was staring grimly at the blank message he’d opened to send to Ilya.

Hey, sorry, have to cancel Friday, he typed.

He re-read the words about fifteen times but didn’t press send. It was good, simple, straightforward. Except… what if Ilya asked why? He should build that in. It was too far in advance to say he was sick, or that there was any kind of emergency. He could blame assigments or work, like he always did, but he felt like somehow Ilya would see straight through that.

Hey, sorry, have to cancel Friday. Forgot about a family thing I can’t get out of.

Okay, that was decent. Nobody could be mad that he needed to see his family, and he’d told Ilya how close they were. But then… what if Ilya asked to reschedule? There was no point making new plans for next week when he’d clearly just have to cancel them again, and he couldn’t really say ‘based on my current trajectory I’ll be ready in about six weeks, maybe two months to be safe’.

Hey, sorry, have to cancel Friday. Forgot about a family thing I can’t get out of. I’m actually really busy for the next few weeks, so

Shane dropped the phone as it started to ring in his hand. He scrambled to pick it up and almost dropped it again when he saw it was Ilya calling him. He hadn’t accidentally sent the message already, had he? Fuck.

He would just ignore it and send Ilya the text once it was finished, he told himself, as his traitorous thumb was already swiping to answer the call.

“Hello?” he croaked.

“Hello,” Ilya replied cheerfully. Shane’s stomach did a little flip at the sound of his voice. Why couldn’t his body just be on his side, for once?

There was a brief stretch of silence. Shane supposed it was technically his turn to say something, although he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to say. Surely the person that called was supposed to announce the purpose of the conversation?

“How are you?” he asked, somewhat lamely, but it sounded more polite than ‘why are you calling me?’ which was the first thing that had come to mind.

Ilya seemed to consider the question carefully. “Little bit good, little bit bad.”

What the hell was Shane supposed to do with that? “Oh?”

“Mmmm.” Ilya’s hum down the phone sent a surge of heat pulsing through Shane’s entire body as he was seized by a memory of how that same sound had felt when Shane had been buried in his throat.

“Why?” Shane desperately hoped he’d have something intelligent to say at some point, but it wasn’t feeling particularly likely.

“I have met someone I like very much, but he makes me wait a very long time to see him.”

Oh. Shane’s heartbeat skittered and his face flushed and he was glad he was already sitting down as he felt his limbs lose all of their power. He wasn’t sure so many things had ever happened in his body off the back of a single sentence.

“That’s very rude of him,” he managed.

“Mmm, yes. Also he left my house very quick last time, makes me worried. Even harder to wait so long.”

“I can’t give you head,” Shane blurted, and hung up the phone.

Well. That was one way of doing it. Probably the most mortifying way humanly possible, but at least it was done. It felt like an oddly fitting bookend for how weird Shane had been acting in the grocery store when Ilya had first approached him. A suitable close to this bizarre little episode that felt like it had been pulled from someone else’s life, with only the incredibly awkward opening and closing scenes recognisable as Shane.

He could end this chapter knowing he’d tried. He really had. Shane Hollander was not a quitter, but he was a realist. He had gagged and retched around the smallest of those fucking toys for days and, yes, he’d made a bit of progress, which would have been great if only Ilya’s cock was about a third the size that it was. And he’d been trying to tell himself that maybe it was okay, that maybe he could be a relatively successful gay man even if he couldn’t get a sex toy into his throat, until about thirty minutes ago when he’d gotten the email inviting him to go on the waiting list for a Raider’s season pass. He’d been mid-way through calculating whether he could actually afford a half-season pass this year when the realisation had struck him directly in the chest.

Ilya was going to be a Boston fucking Raider.

Half of the goddamn city would be clamouring to suck his dick. Many of them skilfully, or at least without running the risk of throwing up their last meal all over him in the process. He was certainly not going to need Shane’s incredibly unimpressive efforts. The clarity was so stark, so undeniable, that he’d immediately retrieved his phone and started to text Ilya, but then Ilya had called him, and then Shane had done… that, and now it was over.

It was a relief, really, he told himself firmly as he stared at his phone, definitely not hoping that Ilya would call him back. Yes, it felt something close to devastating right now, but it was for the best. He would keep up his practicing, and then maybe, in a few months, when he was ready, he’d meet someone else. And no, they might not have Ilya’s smile, or his curls, or his patience for Shane’s nonsense, or his sixth sense for exactly what Shane needed before even he did. But, and unlike any of the other lies he’d used to console himself, this one was an actual genuine benefit; they also wouldn’t be an NHL player. Because even if Shane got fucking incredible at blow jobs, he was fairly certain that he didn’t have the mental fortitude to be one of many people providing them to Ilya Rozan-

His intercom buzzed.

Shane blinked at it. It was 8.15 on a Tuesday evening. He didn’t think anyone had ever buzzed up at 8.15 on a Tuesday evening. Who would?

It buzzed again. It was the police, his anxiety informed him. His parents were probably dead. It was the only reasonable explanation.

He stood and lifted the receiver, panic attack prepped and ready to go. “Hello?”

“Hello, is Ilya.”

Shane’s brain had absolutely no idea what to do with itself. For a few seconds it was doing so many things at the same time, he almost felt like it’d gone blissfully blank. A moment later, a truly staggering number of thoughts and feelings slammed into him at full volume and he felt a little hysterical.

“You’re at my house.” Shane hadn’t chosen to speak, let alone chosen which words to say. He supposed these were not his finest work, but he didn’t actually care all that much. He was still living in the time about ten seconds ago when he’d learned that Ilya was the person who’d pressed his buzzer, waiting for it to make even a small amount of sense. His phone call with Ilya had ended exactly four minutes ago. Ilya could not be at Shane’s house, because Ilya had just been at his own house, calling Shane.

“Am outside, yes. Am not actually at your house, because you have not hit button.”

“Oh. Yeah.” It was a fair point.

“Shane?”

“Mmm?”

“Hit button, please.”

Shane gave up on attempting to have any power over his body, and reached up and hit the button to let Ilya in.

He wondered dimly what he usually did in the time it took people to arrive at his door. For some reason, he couldn’t quite clearly remember ever buzzing anyone other than Ilya up. Last time, he’d stood like a panicked statue because Ilya had been slightly early. This time, he felt like he’d gone straight through panic and out the other side. His body felt strange and floaty, almost untethered from reality. He wasn’t looking forward to the moment gravity returned.

Time stretched disconcertingly around him, and he supposed he didn’t really need to wait for Ilya to knock so he went and opened the door. He could see Ilya emerging from the elevator down the hall and surveyed him uncomprehendingly as he approached. Yes, that was Ilya. Here at his house, as if summoned by the text message still waiting to be sent.

“Hello,” he said to Ilya for the third time in ten minutes, and then, before he could stop himself, “What are you doing here?”

Ilya shrugged. “You hung up phone, so…”

Shane blinked at him. “Yeah, okay, but I mean, like… how did you get here?”

“I walked?”

Shane felt like he was losing his mind. “What? How? From where?”

Ilya sighed deeply, as though Shane was being the one refusing to make any fucking sense. “I was at a bar, near to here. I could feel you worry all the way from bar so I thought I will text you. I can see you are already writing so I wait, but you are writing and writing and I can feel worry coming down my phone now too. So then I call you, and then you hung up phone, so now I come here.” Ilya looked pointedly over Shane’s shoulder into his apartment. “Can I come in? Or we talk here in hallway?”

Shane scanned Ilya’s short speech for something he could disagree with, found nothing of substance, and stepped back to let him in. “You couldn’t feel me worrying.”

“Half of city can feel you worrying.” Ilya walked past Shane into his living room and dropped onto the couch. He looked irritatingly at home, and Shane had never felt less at home in his life despite being in his own fucking house. He didn’t understand how Ilya kept answering his questions without actually telling him anything. What was he doing here?

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked instead.

“No. Come sit.”

Shane sat. Ilya was sprawled over the middle cushion on the sofa, so Shane crammed himself into a corner, his feet folded underneath him, eyes on his hands where they were gripping each other in his lap.

“So,” Ilya said. “On phone, before you hung up, you said-”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” It was something of an understatement. He’d rather die. Might actually quite literally die, if Ilya made him say it again. The idea alone made him want to throw up, which made him think of yesterday evening’s toy-sucking attempts on this very couch, which made him realise that his Amazon purchases were sitting in their little box under his coffee table, clearly visible from Ilya’s position on the couch. It was a plain, nondescript black box, but Shane felt sure that if he looked at it Ilya would follow his gaze and somehow know exactly what was inside it, so he kept his eyes firmly on his hands, now clasped so tightly his knuckles were pale, and tried to ignore the flaming in his cheeks.

“Okay,” Ilya said after a long pause and his voice was slightly different. Softer maybe. Shane could feel Ilya’s gaze on him, but he didn’t look up. “So show me text.”

“What?” Surprise had Shane’s eyes darting up for a second before he returned them immediately to his lap. He didn’t know why, but he had the sense that looking at Ilya would be distinctly unhelpful for what little remained of his composure.

“Your text. I saw you typing, before I called. You were writing, what they say, great American novel? Is waste if I don’t read it.”

“That’s your fault,” Shane muttered. “I was about to send it when you called me.”

“Yes, but then you hung up before I could ask, so now is your fault again.” Shane jumped slightly as Ilya’s hand appeared, extended, in the corner of his vision. “Your phone. Give.”

There was no reason at all why Shane should let Ilya look at his phone. None. There had been no reason for him to answer his call or to let him into his apartment either, but he couldn’t do anything about those now.

Ilya’s fingers waggled in his periphery, and Shane handed over his phone without looking up. There was something wrong with him. He wondered if Ilya was drugging him somehow. It was the accent, he told himself. It gave Ilya a sense of authority, or something. He fiddled with the hem of his shorts as he waited for Ilya to finish reading. It didn’t take him long, because despite the fact that he’d been sitting there composing it for about five minutes, it wasn’t even three complete sentences.

“Ah,” said Ilya. His voice was unreadable. “I see.” The stitching in Shane’s shorts was coming loose under his thumb, but he continued twisting it. “So… what?”

“So what, what?” The thread broke free of the fabric. The shorts were ruined. They’d been his favourites.

“You are busy for a few weeks, so. You did not finish.”

Shane was unpicking the hem of his shorts intentionally now, watching the seam come away from itself slowly. “Oh, right. So, you know. Might be hard to find time, to, you know, hang out.”

“Ah.” He wished Ilya would stop saying that. It made him feel like Ilya understood far more than Shane wanted him to. “You are very busy right now?”

“No.” He couldn’t be bothered making anything up.

“But still you do not want to hang out?”

Fuck. He didn’t have a response for that. Actually, yes, I’d love to hang out. I haven’t even known you for three weeks but spending time with you is already my favourite thing to do. There’s just no point, because even if I’m somehow enough for you now despite the fact that I can’t suck your dick properly, I’m definitely not going to be soon, not when you have so many better options, and that is going to crush me. And I know that, but I’m still answering your calls and buzzing you into my apartment because I cannot stop myself, so I really want you to stay and I also want you to go the fuck away.

He obviously wasn't going to say any of that, so he shrugged instead.

“You have NBA game?”

Shane’s eyes snapped to Ilya’s face properly for the first time since he’d sat on the couch, but Ilya was looking over at the PlayStation on the cabinet underneath his television. “What? Yes? Why?”

Ilya stood and retrieved the controllers, tossing one to Shane before settling back down at the other end of the couch. “I am Lakers.”

Chapter End Notes

Sorry about all the plot in your porn. No treats for these boys until they've used their words. Regular service will resume very shortly, promise.

Chapter 12: Picasso

Chapter Summary

Ilya realises he's made a mistake.

Apparently, he'll say almost anything to fix it.

Chapter Notes

“You know, I thought this would be funny but it’s actually kind of sad.”

Ilya glared up at Svetlana from where he’d been lost in thought, staring at his phone on the table. “What?”

“You know,” she said, waving her hand in his direction. “This. Ilyusha in love. It’s boring.”

Ilya knew he would be paying for that ‘in love’ exaggeration until one of them died. He didn’t mind which one of them it was at this moment, he just hoped it was soon. “Fuck you, it’s not funny.”

Svetlana rolled her eyes. “I know. I just said that.” She took a long sip of her drink, and raised her eyebrows at him. “So? What’s the problem now?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, taking a pull on his own beer. And then, because it was all he could think about so he might as well say it, “I think I fucked it up.”

Svetlana threw her head back and laughed, and suddenly Ilya was very sure which of them should die first. “Already?”

“I hate you.”

“You love me. Tell me, then. What happened?”

So he told her, in as much detail as he felt like trusting her with when she was being such a bitch, about Friday night. “And then he left! Saying oh, I need to go home. See you in a week. Then nothing.”

Svetlana reached over the table, and held both of his hands in hers. “Ilyusha. You know you are very handsome, and very good at hockey, yes?”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

“You are also a fucking idiot.” She released his hands with a gentle push and smirked at the look on his face. “I will be praying for that poor boy.”

Ilya was so outraged he was almost spluttering. “What the fuck did I do?”

She sighed and leaned back in her chair, as though participating in this conversation was taking years off her life. “He has never done this before, with anyone. You are a player in his favourite fucking team. Terrifying already, no? He says hey Ilya, let me, I don’t know, draw you a stick figure. My first time drawing, ever. I have never even held a pencil, but I will draw something for you. And you say, okay, sure, but let me show you how I’m fucking Picasso first? Check out this masterpiece. And then, what, you expect him to still have a go at his shitty drawing? Jesus Christ.” She smirked at the dawning horror on Ilya’s face. “You better fix this so that you can get laid, because I’m never fucking you again. This whole thing is incredibly unattractive.”

Ilya’s whole body had gone cold. He couldn’t even bring himself to gloat that Svetlana had called him, what, a sex Picasso? It was a stupid fucking metaphor, but beneath it he knew she was right. He hadn’t been able to handle feeling out of his depth with Shane for one goddamn minute so he’d slipped right back into hookup mode and ripped all of the confidence out from underneath the man who had whispered those filthy, beautiful words in his ear.

Ilya snatched his phone off the table. His body had filled with a terrible, nervous energy and he couldn’t sit here a moment longer. “I am going.”

Svetlana gave a lazy shooing gesture. “Please do. Text me when you’re less pathetic.” Ilya scowled at her over his shoulder as he pushed out of the door and into the street.

He didn’t actually have anywhere to go so he leaned against the wall outside the bar, fingers twitching to reach into his back pocket for a cigarette that wasn’t there. He opened his text thread with Shane instead, and his heart thudded when he saw that Shane was already typing. He absentmindedly pushed off the wall and started down the street, eyes still glued to those little dots on his phone. Ilya hadn’t chosen to meet Svetlana at this bar just because it was close to where Shane lived. It was also close to Sveta’s work, and Marleau had told him he should go because they had lots of local beer on tap. So. Three reasons. Which one was the main one wasn’t important. It also wasn’t important that he’d just happened to start wandering in the direction of Shane’s apartment.

He glanced up to cross the street, and when he looked back down the dots were still there. They weren’t doing the coming-and-going dance that he associated with Shane not knowing what to say. He loved imagining Shane in those moments, picturing how his eyebrows would be furrowed and eyes narrowed in concentration as he typed and deleted furiously, trying to get his words just right. He didn’t know what to picture now, though, as time stretched and the dots didn’t so much as flicker. What the fuck was he writing? A speech?

Ilya’s stomach dropped. There was only one kind of speech someone would be writing to someone they’d hooked up with a couple of times, run out on, and had plans with in a few days’ time. Dear Ilya.

It was suddenly very important that Ilya did not receive that text. Without thinking, he hit the call button in the corner of the screen and immediately lifted the phone to his ear in case Shane quickly sent the message when he saw Ilya calling. Then Ilya could tell him he hadn’t seen it and then Shane would have to explain and then Ilya would talk him out of it. No problems, he told his heart rate pointedly. Please calm the fuck down.

It rang for longer than was reasonable when he knew full well that Shane had his phone in his hand, and then finally the outgoing call sound gave way to silence, and a moment later, Shane’s voice. “Hello?” He sounded like Ilya was calling to arrange a convenient time for his execution.

“Hello,” Ilya replied, suddenly very aware that he had no plans at all for this conversation. He thought about what Svetlana had said. He needed Shane to know that Ilya didn’t care what he drew, that Ilya would think they were fucking works of art. That yes, Ilya had been to many museums, but that anything Shane drew would be the best thing he’d ever seen. That Shane didn’t even need to draw him anything, really, and he’d still be Ilya’s favourite artist. He really wished Svetlana had used a different fucking metaphor. He had no hope in hell of converting this one to English without sounding insane. He acknowledged to himself immediately that it might not be so much a language issue, given that he already sounded insane to himself in Russian.

A long pause, then Shane spoke again. “How are you?”

Ilya grinned. So fucking polite. He’d been told off his whole life for having terrible manners, and now he understood. Manners were delightful. “Little bit good, little bit bad.”

“Oh?” Shane still sounded like a man facing death.

“Mmmm.” He supposed he didn’t really have to explain Sveta’s stupid metaphor. Maybe he just had to tell Shane that he liked him. Why was that harder? Not as hard as getting that text would have been, he told himself, if it said what Ilya thought it might.

“Why?”

Fuck it. You are brave. “I have met someone I like very much, but he makes me wait a very long time to see him.” Ilya’s stomach was churning and his hands had gone slightly numb, but he’d done it. He felt almost giddy, dampened only by the silence at the other end of the phone.

“That’s very rude of him,” Shane finally replied, and Ilya took his first proper breath in what felt like hours.

“Mmm, yes.” He wondered if Shane still thought he meant that Shane was making him wait a long time for sex. Fortunately, he was now a man who said brave things. He would do it again. “Also he left my house very quick last time, makes me worried. Even harder to wait so long.”

If someone had given Ilya a thousand chances to predict what Shane was going to say next, he’d have failed.

“I can’t give you head.” And then the distinctive silence of an ended call.

Well. Okay.

On the bright side, they hadn’t tiptoed around it. On the less bright side, fuck. He was too busy being annoyed at himself to be annoyed that Svetlana had been so completely right. He’d just had to show off, hadn’t he? Had to make Shane feel as good as he could, and now he’d scared him off. What a fucking idiot.

He was striding towards Shane’s apartment now, quickening his pace as the anxiety and regret gripped him. He knew that Shane would hate this unplanned intrusion, but they were both going to have to do a number of brave things this evening if Ilya was going to have a hope in hell of still having plans on Friday night.

Getting Shane to let him in to his apartment had actually been easier than Ilya had worried it might be. Shane seemed less stressed by his arrival than he was extremely, and very endearingly, baffled. He kept blinking at Ilya then looking surprised to see him all over again, as though he’d expected Ilya to disappear every time he closed his eyes. But now Ilya was successfully on Shane’s couch, and Shane was curled into a ball just out of reach, and his confused blinks had given way to an intense stare directed firmly at his fists clenched together in his lap, and Ilya had the distinct sense that this next part wasn’t going to be easy at all.

Shane had just gone ahead and blurted it out over the phone, right? Perhaps they could try that again.

“So,” Ilya began, trying to sound far calmer than he felt. “On phone, before you hung up, you said-”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Of course not. That would be far too easy, and the gods clearly wanted Ilya to suffer for his sins.

Okay, fine. He’d need to take a different approach. Shane had clearly used up all of his staggeringly honest declarations for the evening. Something snagged in Ilya’s brain. Perhaps there was one that he’d missed.

“Okay, so show me text.”

“What?” Shane’s eyes had darted up, almost meeting Ilya’s before he’d forced them back down to continue glaring at his hands as though it was their fault Ilya was on his couch right now. Ilya usually wanted all of Shane’s attention firmly on him, but he was quietly relieved that his own hands were taking the heat at the moment.

“Your text. I saw you typing, before I called. You were writing, what they say, great American novel? Is waste if I don’t read it.” Slightly ironic, given that he’d gone to fairly extreme efforts to avoid the text being sent at all, but at least now he was here to talk Shane out of whatever the hell it said.

“That’s your fault,” Shane muttered. “I was about to send it when you called me.”

Ilya held back a laugh. Now was not the time to enjoy how adorable Shane was being. “Yes, but then you hung up before I could ask, so now is your fault again.” He extended his hand, palm up. “Your phone. Give.”

For a long moment, he thought Shane was going to refuse. He couldn’t blame him, really. If a man you barely knew stormed into your house uninvited and demanded that you give him your phone, you should probably alert the authorities rather than go ahead and hand it over.

Shane handed it over, and Ilya’s heart did something extremely unusual in his chest.

He tapped to open their message thread on Shane's phone and spent a moment reading and re-reading the words still sitting in the little box at the bottom of the screen. His jaw tightened and he fought the urge to swallow, fearing that it would be audible in the silence.

Hey, sorry, have to cancel Friday. Forgot about a family thing I can’t get out of. I’m actually really busy for the next few weeks, so

“Ah. I see.” Shit. This was terrible on two fronts. First, he’d been right; Shane was trying to get rid of him. And second, there was no untapped honesty here to help him at all. In fact, he was fairly certain that the second two sentences were outright lies. “So… what?”

“So what, what?” Shane’s voice was quiet. Ilya looked up from where his eyes had been glued to the unsent text, and saw that Shane was in the process of destroying his shorts in his effort to keep from looking up at him. He fought the urge to reach out and take Shane’s hands between his. For the shorts’ sake, obviously.

“You are busy for a few weeks, so. You did not finish.” He didn’t know why he wanted Shane to say it out loud when they both knew exactly how Shane had planned to end that sentence.

“Oh, right. So, you know.” At least Shane had the decency to sound embarrassed about his stupid lie. “Might be hard to find time, to, you know, hang out.”

“Ah.” Ilya didn’t know why the words landed in his gut so heavily when he’d known they were coming. He watched as Shane steadily unravelled more and more of the thread from his poor shorts. “You are very busy right now?”

“No.” Grudging, but not another lie. He’d take it.

“But still you do not want to hang out?” Ilya held his breath and watched Shane’s face.

For a second, it looked like Shane was going to cry. His eyes were still staring into his lap, but the intensity gave way to a softness that made Ilya swallow around a suddenly dry throat. He watched for a few long moments as Shane wrestled with something he couldn’t see. Come on, храбрец. Let the brave side win.

After a pause that felt like hours Shane simply shrugged, and Ilya released the breath he’d been holding. He could work with a shrug. Honestly, he’d have worked with anything, but a shrug was a better starting point than some of the alternatives. He followed Shane’s gaze into his lap, where his hands had abandoned his ruined shorts in favour of one thumb rubbing the knuckles of his other fist so hard Ilya worried they’d be raw in the morning. If they were going to continue this conversation, which they absolutely were, he was going to need to give Shane something to do with his hands, and maybe also his brain. His eyes cast around the room, and settled on a PlayStation. Perfect.

“You have NBA game?”

“What? Yes? Why?” He felt Shane look up at him, but this time it was Ilya keeping his eyes averted as he stood to grab the controllers from next to the console. He threw one to Shane and dropped back onto the couch, carefully putting even more distance between them as he settled into the opposite corner to where Shane was still pressed into a tight ball. At least he was now clutching a PlayStation controller rather than trying to remove the skin from his knuckles or stitching from his clothing.

“I am Lakers,” Ilya announced, because it was non-negotiable and important to get out of the way.

They’d been playing for about ten minutes when Ilya attempted his first approach.

The first few minutes had been… rough. The silence had been awkward, and neither of them were playing the game well or having anything that could even come close to being described as ‘fun’, and Ilya was starting to feel like maybe he had made yet another error. But then he’d looked over at Shane for a moment too long, and done something so stupid in the game that Shane had audibly snorted, and Ilya had indignantly pointed out that he was still winning even without his full attention, and then they were playing properly, and it was fine. And once it had been fine for a while it started to feel really fucking nice, actually, in a slow, deep way, like relaxing into a warm bath.

So, naturally, it was time for Ilya to ruin it.

“I think,” he said cautiously, keeping his eyes firmly on the game, “that you do not have family thing on Friday.” He felt Shane freeze for a moment beside him. “Is fine, focus on game. I am just asking.”

Shane resumed jabbing at his controller. “No. I don’t have a thing.”

“Mmm.” They played in silence for another couple of minutes. “So you cancel for another reason, yes?”

Shane was silent for a moment, but kept playing. “Yes.”

“You will tell me why?”

This time Shane dropped his controller to his lap, and turned to glare at Ilya. “I already did!”

“Game, Shane.” Ilya nodded pointedly towards the screen and waited for Shane to resume playing before he continued. “You did not tell me reason. You said something, yes, and perhaps I hear wrong, or maybe English is bad, but was definitely not reason to cancel plans.”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” Shane muttered, and Ilya silently prayed that he possessed a secret reserve of patience he’d never known about before but would be able to tap into in order to survive this evening.

He said nothing, and they played on. He noticed Shane’s shoulders drop slowly, still far too tense for a man playing a video game, but he looked less like he was trying to physically turn himself inside out. Their pointless video game banter had resumed, and Shane had even smiled at him a few times and god, how was this almost as good as what they’d done on Ilya’s couch last week?

“I think I will come on Friday still,” Ilya said thoughtfully into a moment of silence.

Shane hit pause on his controller and turned slowly to face him. “What?”

“You said you do not have family thing? So I will come over.”

Shane narrowed his eyes. “I know, but I still… I don’t… I still don’t…”

“The reason you cancel is very stupid.” Ah, shit. He hadn’t meant to say it quite like that that. His prayers for additional patience had evidently gone unanswered. He fumbled around for something to add. “I do not even like it, so is fine.” What the fuck? Not that.

Shane was gaping at him. “You don’t like… what?”

Well, he was in it now. “Uhhh, you know. Mouth. On me. Do not like.”

“You don’t like getting blow jobs?” Shane sounded incredulous, his eyes wide with surprise and confusion. It was the longest he’d looked at Ilya this entire evening, and Ilya noted with satisfaction that despite the shift in conversation to something dangerously close to the previously forbidden topic, Shane’s shoulders hadn’t returned to clench up around his ears again. He remembered how Shane had inexplicably relaxed when Ilya had been acting unhinged in the grocery store, and wondered if Shane had some kind of mild mental instability kink. He’d never heard of that before, but it would be highly convenient for Ilya if he did. He’d look it up later.

Ilya shook his head. “No. Very boring. Just a mouth, what is so good?” He kept his eyes firmly on Shane’s to keep them from looking down at the mouth he’d spent an unflattering amount of time imagining wrapped around his cock as he came into his own hand. “Usually don’t even finish.”

“Ilya.” There was the hint of a smile in Shane’s voice. Ilya’s stomach dipped and his chest soared. He’d fucking done it. At what fucking cost, his dick muttered, but this entire thing was his fault anyway so fuck that guy. “Be serious.”

“Very serious. I think I am actually, what is word?”

“Lying?” Shane was grinning properly now, and despite his efforts Ilya was looking at his mouth, and who fucking cared if he never felt it on his dick if he got to watch it smile like that, if he got to look at the way Shane’s freckles rearranged themselves as his cheeks lifted.

“Allergic.” He tried, and failed, to keep the smile off his own face.

He felt Shane’s laugh in every fibre of his body. “You’re allergic to getting head?”

“Yes. Terribly. Could die. So I will come over on Friday only if you promise to keep mouth away from me.” Ilya’s brain tilted. What in god’s name was he saying and why was he smiling like this and where had this feeling in his chest come from and how was the man he was staring at right now so fucking beautiful?

Shane was still laughing, but he rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

Ilya was leaving while he was ahead. He was far too experienced in dealing with Shane Hollander by now to believe it would last for long if he stayed. He tossed Shane his controller as he stood up and stretched before heading for the door. “I will see you on Friday, even if you cancel again.” He left before Shane could answer, but thought he heard an amused “fuck off” as he closed the door behind him.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter and the next one have been giving me a tiny bit of trouble, so patience and gentle pats appreciated. (Don't be too nice, though, or I'll spook. It's so fun in this brain!)

Also, I have never played the NBA playstation game, and I'm extremely sorry if that became evident within seconds of them turning it on. Shane played as the Celtics, obviously.

Chapter 13: Allergic

Chapter Summary

Ilya is determined not to waste the evening he rescued from the jaws of death.

He is prepared... for almost anything.

Chapter Notes

Last week: Svetlana, an unscheduled visit, Ilya discloses a terrible allergy.

Ilya arrived at Shane’s apartment building on Friday both a) actually having been invited there and b) at the time he was told, which marked a significant improvement over his previous two visits. Despite these developments, he felt the same sense as he had on both prior occasions; that he was about to walk into a situation that his life to date had not adequately prepared him for.

No, not a situation. A person that life had not prepared him for. A man, with dark eyes and soft earlobes and constellations on his cheeks, who seemed to delight in doing the exact opposite of what Ilya expected him to do, whenever he least expected it. Trouble.

Ilya couldn’t fucking wait.

He had a plan for the evening. He’d decided that that’s where he’d first gone wrong a week ago, letting Shane Hollander into his house without a proper plan in place for managing him. He’d had a plan on the Monday, and while nobody could accuse it of having gone seamlessly, it was the only encounter so far where neither of them had exited abruptly, leaving a storm of emotion and a confused human in their wake. Plans were clearly critical to survival in this scenario. Having barely rescued this evening from the jaws of death, Ilya was not about to just head in and hope for the best.

The plan for tonight was not as elaborate as the first one he’d come up with, but he thought it would be sufficient. There were three key elements.

First, he needed to keep Shane distracted. Shane, it seemed, could not be trusted to think on his own for very long without the risk of something going severely sideways. Ilya could not just settle in to what he assumed was a comfortable silence like he had on the couch last Friday, holding Shane warm against his chest, only for Shane’s thoughts to rip through the room and send him sprawling. Quiet moments with Shane would have to wait until after he’d convinced him he wasn’t going anywhere. So, probably sometime next decade, Ilya thought, and then very firmly did not panic at the warmth in his chest that accompanied that idea.

The thought of that timeline had inspired part two of the plan. Ilya needed to adequately convey to Shane that he likes him. Like, likes him likes him. Ilya was sure that part of Shane’s attempt to cancel tonight had been a slight misalignment in their understanding of precisely what it was they were doing here. Ilya accepted that this was almost definitely his own fault, because whenever he examined exactly what he wanted this thing with Shane to be too closely he felt a strange, restless nausea and pointedly thought about something else instead. He’d tried to circle close to it in the last couple of days in order to prepare for tonight, but he hadn’t been able to get much further than the fact that he wanted to see Shane, a lot, and that he didn’t want to stop seeing him. Maybe if he could get that across, Shane would be less… spookable.

The third and final part of the plan was simple. No initiating any below-the-belt contact. Automatic veto of any ideas generated south of his navel. No exceptions, lesson learned. He’d jerked off in bed this morning, and then again in the shower before he left, in the hopes that that’d quiet any input from his very opinionated friend between his legs.

A three-part plan for Shane Hollander management. Keep him busy, tell him how much you like him, let him lead any sex stuff. Easy. Ilya had this covered.

Ilya had it covered, right up until he didn’t.

The first two hours of the evening had gone incredibly well. Textbook.

He’d walked in to find Shane’s dining table laden with warm, soft tortillas and a pan of spiced meat and every taco filling he could think of, and he’d fought the overwhelming desire to fall to his knees – whether to weep, take Shane into his mouth, or propose, he wasn’t sure. Fortunately, given that none of those were advisable, he resisted the urge and stayed upright on slightly unsteady legs. He’d kissed Shane, because the plan allowed for that, but when the kiss deepened he’d taken a seat at the table rather than dragging Shane to his bedroom. They ate, and laughed, and Ilya had gotten to watch Shane lick sour cream off the corner of his lip as a reward from the universe, and he’d only gotten a tiny bit hard about it.

Then he’d gotten really, really fucking hard when Shane had pressed him into the couch him and whispered “I missed this” while reaching down and grasping Ilya’s cock through his shorts. He’d gotten even harder when Shane had taken Ilya’s hand and placed it against his own straining erection, looked up at Ilya through his eyelashes, and asked “can we do it at the same time, this time?”

And they had, tugging at waistbands and scrambling their hands inside each other’s underwear, finding a rhythm and moaning into the other’s names into their open mouths, gasping and spilling into each other’s fists with their foreheads pressed together and chests heaving.

And then, because he was now a man who planned, Ilya had retrieved the backpack he’d dumped beside his shoes at the door and loaded the game he’d brought with him before Shane had returned.

“We’re playing Ninja Turtles?” Shane asked from the doorway as he emerged from the bathroom, voice dripping with scepticism.

Ilya chose to forgive this, and not just because he was probably physically incapable of not forgiving Shane for literally anything.

“We are playing best game ever made.”

“Big call,” Shane had replied, but accepted the controller Ilya handed him, and Ilya didn’t even call him boring when he chose to play as Leonardo. Ilya played as Donnie, just to be funny.

As they played, Shane relaxed and happy on the couch beside him, Ilya took a moment to congratulate himself on the execution of the plan. Well, on the first and third elements of it, anyway. He wasn’t sure he’d done quite enough to keep Shane’s thoughts running rampant when he left.

“I am very glad you let me come here tonight,” he said, knocking his knee against Shane’s and looking up at him briefly from where their turtles were fighting an enemy on-screen.

Shane blushed and pressed his knee back into Ilya’s, but didn’t meet his gaze. “Thanks for not letting me cancel.”

Ilya nodded, both outwardly to Shane and inwardly to himself. Nicely done. Now they could finish the game and maybe get each other off again before he left and everything would be-

“I’m sorry, for that, by the way.” Shane’s voice had turned serious, and another brief glance up told Ilya the easy smile he’d had all evening had fallen from his face. Shit.

Talk about your feelings, Ilya. It’ll be fine, Ilya. Tell him you like him, Ilya. Now he’s frowning at the fucking turtle game, Ilya. Goddamn it.

“Is okay.” Ilya knocked Shane with his elbow. “I fix it, am big hero. Good for ego.”

Ilya saw Shane nod out of the corner of his eye, but his face was still serious. Ilya cast around for something stupid and distracting to say, but before he could settle on anything, Shane was talking again. Rambling, really, if Ilya was being accurate.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you, I actually really did, I just got all in my head, you know, because I haven’t done any of this before, and you’re obviously really really good at it, and I kinda freaked-”

“Shane,” Ilya interrupted, feeling the final threads of his grip on the evening escaping his grasp. “It’s okay. You don’t have to-”

“I’ve been… practicing.”

Ilya must have breathed wrong, or something, because he choked. Fully, actually, choked on his own spit, to the point where it looked like Shane was about to reach out and smack him on the back. Ilya waved him off and sucked in an unsteady breath. “Wh… what?”

Shane flushed. “Nothing. Never mind.”

There was only one thing he could be talking about. He’d been practicing… giving head? On who? Ilya swallowed hard. He did not need to know anything more. He did not want to know anything more. Nothing good could come from continuing this conversation. He was not going to ask. “Practicing?”

Shane nodded. “Yeah. To, you know… learn. Get better.”

Ilya’s hands reflexively tightened on his controller. Jealousy, red hot and violent, streaked through his veins.

The emotion, although instantly identifiable, felt foreign under his skin. He’d never felt it in his own body before. But he recognised it instantly as the one he’d seen flash in his father’s eyes so many times in his childhood. The look that would have his fingers clenching marks into his mother’s forearm if she so much as acknowledged another man when they were in the city. The look that would turn their house into a living landmine the moment they got home, even Alexei able to sense the danger and keep his gaze on the floor as the fury raged on their father’s face. ‘You’re mine,’ Grigori would scream at his vacant-eyed mother, long into those nights. ‘Nobody looks at you but me.’

Ilya had never known if it was his desperation to not become his father that had informed his views on sex. He liked to think that it hadn’t, liked to think that his belief that everybody should do whatever they want – should feel as good as they can, as often as possible, with whoever they like – was something that was purely his. And if it meant that he’d never had to deal with the jealousy that had terrorised their household, that was just an excellent bonus.

Ilya forced himself to suck in a breath and tried to settle the riot in his chest. Shane was not his, and it wasn’t his fault that Ilya hadn’t so much as made eye contact with anyone else since he first saw Shane in the grocery store. Shane was more than allowed to practice on anyone he pleased.

And Ilya was allowed to murder them. Well, perhaps not allowed, but certainly going to. Fuck. No. Stop it.

“This is why you can’t see me for so many days? Schedule too busy with practice?” His voice was remarkably light.

Shane shrugged, giving an embarrassed half laugh. “Kinda, yeah.”

Ilya closed his eyes, momentarily unable to cope with the images slamming into his brain. Shane on his knees for a series of men. Other men’s fingers in his soft, dark hair. Shane swallowing other men’s-

It would probably be extremely poor manners to throw up the tacos Shane had made them all over his coffee table. He swallowed hard. He is not yours.

“Did you not consider,” he gritted out through a clenched jaw, desperately trying to keep the lightness in his tone and probably failing miserably, “practicing on me?”

Shane grinned at him, seemingly unaware of the fact that Ilya was on the verge of a murderous rampage swiftly followed by a complete mental breakdown . “I thought you were allergic?”

“I have decided,” Ilya replied, attempting to infuse his voice with a calm he was not experiencing in the slightest, “that every man in Boston is allergic.” I am not my father, I am not my father, I am not my father. He really might throw up.

Shane looked at him for a moment, eyebrows creased with confusion, and then he laughed.

He did not just laugh. He absolutely lost it. He cackled so hard he bent double and almost slid off the couch.

Ilya stared at him. Shane looked up at Ilya’s face, which if Ilya had to guess was currently a mask frozen between wild jealousy and utter bewilderment, and laughed even harder. Shane’s face was flushed and there were tears in his eyes and Ilya thought that he had been confused by Shane Hollander in the past but this was something entirely new.

“What?” Ilya asked tentatively, almost certain he didn’t want the answer but seemingly unable to stop himself requesting information anyway.

Shane looked as though he tried to compose himself to answer, but failed spectacularly. He was gasping now, almost wheezing, and Ilya began to feel slightly concerned that Shane was having some kind of actual allergic reaction himself.

“Shane,” he tried again. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Shane exhaled between heaves of laughter. “Fuck, sorry. Gimme a…” he dissolved back into giggles. “Hang on.”

Ilya waited with patience he felt like great men should write poems about, and watched Shane slowly wrestle himself under control.

“I’m sorry,” Shane repeated, clearing his throat and taking a deep breath that was far from steady but seemed to settle the last of the laughter. “I’m sorry, I just… your face.” His lips twitched upwards again and Ilya saw another fit of giggles threaten to overcome him. “No, I can’t… Can you look at the wall, or something?”

Ilya raised his eyebrows at Shane incredulously, and something in his expression seemed to settle Shane enough to knock the last of the laughter out of his throat. He lifted his shoulder and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his t-shirt, taking a final deep breath before turning back to Ilya with a determinedly calm expression.

“No, sorry,” he said again, and his voice had only the slightest edge of amusement remaining. “I’m okay. I didn’t mean… I wasn’t practicing on other people.”

Ilya had an immediate image of Shane trying to suck his own dick, and shook his head slightly. “What? How do you practice, then?”

Shane’s cheeks were already pink from his burst of hysterical laughter, but they now flushed the deepest shade of red that Ilya had ever seen on a face before. He watched as the blush spread to Shane’s ears, and he knew he would have been entirely captivated if he hadn’t needed Shane to answer his question quite so urgently.

“I bought… toys.” Shane’s voice was barely a whisper.

Ilya’s entire body malfunctioned at once. His heart stuttered to a stop in his chest. His stomach swooped. His brain went entirely blank, and then gradually refilled with an entirely different series of images that sent his entire body’s blood volume directly to his dick, his brain draining so rapidly that he genuinely thought he might pass out.

He vaguely wondered what they would write on his gravestone. Here lies Ilya Rozanov. He met Shane Hollander. Rest in peace.

Shane was looking at him, embarrassment and the beginnings of worry sharpening his features as he waited for Ilya’s response. “Like a… training set. I bought it online. I thought it was dildos, but I think it was actually, um, butt plugs?”

Ilya tried to make a noise, and failed. His lungs were jammed in his throat. The throbbing between his legs was painful where his now fully-hard cock was trapped in his shorts. His hands tightened on the controller still clenched in his fists, and he heard the plastic creak in his grip. The remnants of jealousy had mixed with the onslaught of lust and he felt like his very bone marrow was on fire.

“Shane,” he managed to choke out. “Stop talking.”

Shane’s eyes widened with confusion. “I’m sorry, I- is that bad? I just wanted to be better, before I-”. His sentence cut off into a surprised breath as Ilya lurched towards him.

Ilya’s mouth crashed against Shane’s first, his body pressing him into the couch a moment later. Blind need near desperation flooded him as he pressed himself as close to Shane as he could, one hand gripping his waist and the other sliding up to tangle in the hair at the back of his head. He felt their teeth clash together as he kissed down into Shane inelegantly, licking into his mouth and sucking his tongue, frantic to transfer some of his own desire directly into him. Shane made a sound beneath him and Ilya lifted his mouth away just enough in case he was trying to say something, but Shane chased his lips and dragged him back down into the kiss, moaning into Ilya’s open mouth as it met his own. Ilya shifted his hip to grind directly against Shane’s hardening erection, gasping as Shane pressed his own thigh between Ilya’s legs, the increased friction blurring the edges of his vision. Ilya couldn’t believe it had been barely more than an hour since he was coming in Shane’s hand, the strength of the desire roaring through him felt like he hadn’t been touched in months. He distantly noted that he might be breaking his third rule for the evening, but Shane Hollander had bought sex toys online and practiced on them because he wanted to make Ilya feel good, and Ilya was a simple man. There was only so much he could do.

“You don’t have an epi pen in that bag, do you?” Shane pulled away long enough to murmur against the corner of Ilya’s mouth.

“Epi pen?” Ilya managed to ask in reply, lips trailing along Shane’s jaw and settling to kiss beneath his ear.

Shane groaned and pressed harder into Ilya’s hip. “Allergy medicine.”

“Fuck, Shane.” He began muttering in Russian, lips still pressed to Shane’s throat. “I need to be inside you. This is fucking unreasonable. How are you real? How do you even exist?”

Shane moaned softly, turning his face to give Ilya easier access to his neck and reaching down to grasp Ilya through his shorts. “Please? Can I?”

Ilya was a ruined man. “God, yes.”

The sight of Shane kneeling between his legs nearly sent his fourth orgasm of the day ripping through him before Shane’s lips could even make contact with his cock. But then they did, and oh, god. He’d been imagining this for three weeks, and he hadn’t even come close. Shane’s lips were soft and wet, placing kisses along his length and over the throbbing, red head. His tongue lapped over him, long stripes and swirls and the sweetest little licks and Ilya was helpless against the moans rising from his chest. Then Shane parted his lips and slid the head of Ilya’s cock into his open mouth, and Ilya had never felt anything better in his entire life. Shane didn’t take him in far, barely more than the tip, but his hands gripped the rest of his length and his tongue was flat against the spot beneath the sensitive rim and his mouth didn’t stop moving and it couldn’t have been more than three minutes before Ilya only just managed to haul Shane off by the back of his neck in time to come all over his chin and the long column of his throat.

He watched as Shane’s tongue darted out to taste the come that had landed just below his lip, and if there had been even a tiny bit of come left in his balls he would’ve orgasmed again on the spot.

Shane was leaning against the door frame, watching Ilya struggle into his shoes. They’d stayed pressed against each other on the couch until they’d both almost fallen asleep, and Ilya’s body felt slow and lazy beneath him. He wanted to stay, wanted to wake up tomorrow with Shane’s back warm against his chest, but Shane hadn’t offered and Ilya didn’t want to push it after everything had gone so well. Next time.

“When will I see you?” he asked, straightening up and kissing Shane lightly. “Don’t say Friday again.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Shane’s protest was countered by the sudden flush in his cheeks.

“Oh, you were not?” Another kiss. “What were you going to say?”

Shane laughed against his mouth. “Fuck you.”

“Monday or Tuesday. You choose.”

That shy smile was going to be the death of him. “Monday?”

Ilya resisted the urge to sink his teeth into Shane’s cheek. He’d never wanted to bite someone so much in his life. “Monday.”

Shane stepped back to allow him room to leave. “I guess I shouldn’t be practicing on anyone over the weekend?”

Ilya froze. Thoughts slammed into him at the same time from every corner of his brain, leaving him disoriented. He is not mine and I am not my father collided with but I want him to be and I don’t know how to do this and his head was swimming and Shane was looking up at him, hopeful and shy and challenging and Ilya knew that everything he could possibly say would be wrong, because he didn’t know how to explain that he wanted Shane to do absolutely anything he wanted, all the time, but also that Ilya really fucking wanted to be the only thing that he wanted to do.

He’d been silent for too long. “You can do whatever you like.” Shane’s expression flickered, then fell. Fuck. “Maybe nobody you actually like too much though, hmm?”

“Huh?” Shane’s voice was small, and Ilya knew that what he said next carried all of his hope on its back.

“Well, obviously I will have to kill them, and I don’t want you to be sad.”

Shane met his eyes, and Ilya saw the ghost of a smile behind them. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mmmm,” Ilya replied gravely. “Big power, big responsibility.”

Shane had kissed him again before he’d left. Maybe it had been enough.

Chapter End Notes

If you enjoyed this chapter, thank outofavortex for making me publish it.

Next week: Jackie not-yet-Pike, and two very brave boys.