Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe, Casual Sex, Friends With Benefits to Lovers, Jealous Ilya Rozanov, Jealous Shane Hollander, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Self-Esteem Issues, Drunk Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Irina Rozanova Haunts the Narrative, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Top Ilya Rozanov, Bottom Shane Hollander, Is it ever casual????, Happy Ending

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-24 Words: 57,347 Chapters: 5/5

Tour de Force

Summary

Shane had told his manager, verbatim, that he “trusts her judgment” to pick the opener for his first ever world tour.

Her “judgment” shows up to soundcheck with a parking ticket in his hand and a crimson hickey on his neck. Her “judgment” is Russian DJ, Ilya Rozanov.

Notes

Me after turning my “what if they were musicians lol” one-off thought into a 50k+ love story taking place across 15 cities: I just made some BULLLLLLSHITTTTT!!!!!!

If Shane Hollander / Ilya Rozanov were on tour together, I just KNOW they would turn off Ticketmaster dynamic pricing.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

TORONTO

It’s a testament to how utterly frazzled Shane is, shivering in just a t-shirt and fiddling with his faulty in-ears, that when a broad-shouldered man dressed in all black waltzes in front of him, he turns to his manager. He asks, low enough that the man doesn’t hear, “Is this the sound guy?”

Rose stares blankly at him. First, she approaches the man, mutters some greeting to him Shane can’t make out, and gives him a brief side-hug. She tugs Shane by the arm until they’re a few steps away. “Shane.” 

“My vocal’s really low in my ears.” Shane points to his ear. He flicks the microphone off. He has never been simultaneously more grateful for a soundcheck and more exhausted during one. 

“Shane,” she repeats. “That’s not the sound guy. Don’t tell me you don’t know who that is.” 

Shane gulps. He drops his hand from his ears. He turns back around, where out of the corner of his eye, the man stares back at him with a vaguely amused grin that has Shane dropping eye contact fast. His hair is dirty blond, which Shane can see now that the hood of his jacket has slipped loose. A few curls droop down his forehead, but stop short of icy blue eyes. 

Shane racks his brain. “He is, um.” 

“You -” Rose points an accusing finger towards Shane’s chest - “didn’t read my email.” 

“I read all my emails.” 

“You missed one, then.” She shrugs. Shane finds this hard to believe; he has all the details of the tour, from the staging to the shift rotations of the trucking staff, tattooed onto his brain. He even dreams about it. “It’s fine. I told you I’d take one thing off your plate, and I did. I just thought you knew by now.” 

“Knew what?” Shane whispers, an air of foreboding in his tone. A brief, long-ago conversation that seems ancient today hovers at the forefront of his consciousness. I trust your judgment. “Who is he?” 

“Opener,” Rose says, with an air of permanence, as if rattling off her birthday, which is next month. Or the date Shane’s first ever world tour begins, which is today. “He’s a DJ. Few million streams. I vetted his set list.” 

Shane dares a glance behind him. The man is uncrumpling a piece of paper in his hands, his tongue darting out between his lips in concentration. “Fuck.” 

“I’ll introduce you.” 

“No, no, wait.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “Maybe you lead him away somewhere. I’ll introduce myself once I’ve done some research.” 

“Relax. He knows who you are. That’s all that matters.” Rose peers over her shoulder and lifts one pointer finger up, as if to signal to the man to wait. He has been doing a fine job of it so far, anyways. She makes pointed eye contact with Shane, who naturally stares down at his shoes instead of returning it. “No one expects you two to be friends. He does his set, you do yours.” 

Shane grits his teeth. “What’s his name?”

“Jesus. I thought you’d recognize him.” Rose simply shakes her head. “Rozanov.”

Shane furrows his eyebrows. He peers up at her. “Rozanov?” He repeats, the name foreign in his mouth. 

Behind them, someone clears his throat. “I know I am pale, but not invisible, no?”

Shane winces so hard his nose scrunches. The words are spoken with an accent, firm and blunt. Something Slavic, surely, and deeper than Shane thought possible. It lacks the cheery lilt of the American singers Shane considered to open for him seriously enough to withstand small talk for. That, of course, was all before he pawned this entire task off to the much more socially adept Rose. 

Shane turns around slowly, schooling his face into something resembling neutral during the rotation. Rose approaches the man first. Shane follows like a dog being taught to heel. 

“It’s great to have you here,” Rose says. 

Rozanov twitches his head in what might be a semblance of a nod. His icy eyes are narrowed, flickering over Shane’s face. In an attempt to avoid staring right at them, Shane’s eyes drop to Rozanov’s neck. A faded, purplish welt stains his neck, surrounded by a lighter marking that forms an outer ring.

His throat is a bullseye. Rozanov has shown up with a hickey. 

“Shane Hollander.” Rozanov quirks one eyebrow. “Money man. You pay for these?” 

Rose elbows Shane until he realizes a hand has been outstretched in his direction. Shane grabs the crumpled paper and stretches it taut. PARKING VIOLATION, it reads. $90. 

“Sure.” Shane forces a smile, which he has never been very good at. He’ll probably have to pay it out of pocket. He tucks it into the waistband of his cargo pants, which is a mistake in that it brings Rozanov’s eyes down to his hips. “So. It’s great to meet you.” 

“And you.” Rozanov’s eyes are still on Shane’s waist. 

“Rozanov,” Shane says, testing the weight of the name in his mouth. It grabs Rozanov’s attention quicker than Shane can decide what to do with it. His face is so angular, a sharp cheekbone sloping into a chiseled jaw, that Shane finds it easier to look at his neck, even though it’s marred. “Is this sort of an Adele thing, or…?” 

Rozanov tilts his head. The movement is so subtle, and yet a fluffy coil of hair flops with it. “Adele. Thing?”

“Do you ever use your last name too, I mean?”

Suddenly Rozanov is pressing his lips together and craning his head away. Shane is slow to recognize it as an effort not to laugh. When his head twists, it only makes the veins in his neck pop out more. They run underneath the hickeys like a meteor dropped on railroad tracks.

Shane removes his in-ears fully, as if they were preventing him from executing a social interaction and not his God-given personality. “Sorry.” 

“No, no.” Rozanov simply shakes his head. Finally, his face breaks out into a smile, a small one that bares a row of pearly teeth. He tamps it down until it’s a subtle quirk of the lips. “Rozanov is the last name.” 

“Oh.” Shane blinks harshly. He feels heat rise to his cheeks, while at the same time a breeze makes its way across the stage and he shivers. Rozanov’s right hand flies up to the zipper of his jacket, oddly, before stalling and dropping back to his side. Shane eyes Rose in desperation. 

“Shane needs to finish going through the setlist.” Rose points to backstage. “I can get you set up back here, okay?”

“Can I watch?”

Shane coughs out something like a laugh despite himself. “My soundcheck?”

“No, your baptism.” Rozanov makes himself smile. “Of course the soundcheck.” 

Shane shivers once more. Rozanov’s hand flies to his jacket, again, so Shane speaks before Rozanov can move any further. “I don’t think so, sorry. Nerves. Another night.” 

Rozanov tilts his head. This time, when a swoop of hair falls into his eyes, he pushes it back impatiently. “So you are okay singing in front of thousands in…” He checks his watch, a silver one that blankets the veins of his arm. “Five hours. But you cannot sing in front of me?”

Shane ducks his head despite himself. And, because he’s him, he is honest. “Guess so.” 

----

Shane squints at the open laptop in front of him. 

Rose pokes him with the handle of her fork. “Eat.” 

“I am.” Shane picks up his salad bowl and drums his fingers along the rim. He sets it back down on the tiny coffee table that fits in his dressing room backstage. 

“You’re not.” She moves to shut the laptop, and Shane swats her hand away. 

Shane sits back and rubs a hand through his hair. He hits “Images” on the Search results and takes in the photos of Rozanov, sweat-soaked with bulky headphones clamped down on his ears. “I don’t get it.” 

“His appeal?”

Shane’s face flushes. “No. Not that.” He continues scrolling. “Why open for me, you know? My songs are… sad.” 

“They’re emotional,” Rose corrects. “They’re upbeat, a lot of them, even though the lyrics hurt. And really, it’s not about you and him. It’s about the audience.” 

Shane’s mind snags onto the phrase. You and him. “About the audience. Meaning?”

“You appeal to women and gay men. They love the depth of your work, but also the way you look.” Shane knows this, rationally, but he still finds it odd to hear that anyone finds him appealing at all. In lieu of finishing her thought, Rose gestures to the computer.

“So what?”

“So.” She points to the computer more emphatically. “Rozanov. Girls and the gays. They love him. And I know how he… looks,” she says delicately, “but he doesn’t just do house music. He’s open-format. I told him to do indie-electronic for you. And he layers on his own vocals, but highly processed. You know that style.”

Shane picks at a loose thread in his hoodie. “I guess I was picturing someone younger than me. You know, someone I could mentor.” 

“He is younger than you,” Rose says. Shane’s mouth drops open. “Well, by a month.” 

“I just meant…” Shane scratches the back of his neck. “Nevermind. Yeah.” His cheeks burn at his own nonsensicality. 

“He looks like he could eat you for lunch, yeah?” 

Shane chokes out a laugh. Yes, he thinks, though he is too embarrassed to vocalize it. 

“I know. Trust me, I know. But again, you hardly have to talk to him if you don’t want to.” 

Shane zooms in on one photo, in which Rozanov’s headphones are wrapped snug around his pale neck. He is shirtless, chest glistening with sweat, and the muscles in his abdomen seem carved out of stone. 

“Won’t they expect me to do that?” Shane’s voice is small.

“Who, the fans?” 

Shane bites his lip. “Yeah. Or, just. Be sexy.” Most of his fans think he is, if their screams are any indication. He can listen to his own vocals on replay, and he does, to critique them. But he can’t stomach watching back a single video of himself to verify the truth in their assertions.

“You are sexy.” Rose bumps her shoulder with his. Shane predicted she would say so, so he hardly registers it. “And anyway, no. Not at all. It’s the perfect combination: He -” She points to the shirtless Rozanov on their screen - “is one night stand material. You are boyfriend material.”

Shane blinks hard. He’s offended, whether on his own behalf or Rozanov’s.

“And the fans want both,” she concludes simply. “They want to fuck him -”

“Jesus, Rose.” 

“And date you.” She bundles her compostable napkin and tosses it into her empty salad bowl. “At the same time.”

Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “Can you not say it like that?”

She shrugs. “You’ll see, tonight. They want both, and it’s only your show that can give it to them.” She smiles smugly. “I’m a genius.” 

It takes everything in Shane to distill the note of panic in his voice into something neutral. He lays his head back against the couch. “I hope so.” 

----

The extent of Shane’s investment in Rozanov’s opening set is the three occasions in which he pops his head out of the curtains to watch.

The first time, Shane peeks his head out to watch the fans file in. His venues are all standing-room-only on this tour. The label is frustrated, knowing he can sell out stadiums if he tries. Shane himself watched Rose attempt to articulate to the executives, in a corporate-speak Shane cannot emulate if he tried, that “the thought of an entire stadium perceiving Shane Hollander makes him sick.” 

Thus, standing room. Mid-size venues at maximum capacity. Women and men alike elbowing each other to press against the barricade. 

The second time Shane peeks his head out is when Rozanov makes his entrance. All Shane can see is the back of his head, his golden curls taking on a shade of brunette that rivals Shane’s hair in the dim lights. He begins with a slower, moodier beat that Shane is shocked to realize he recognizes. The fans stare up at Rozanov with glazed eyes. The ones at the barricade make grabby hands at him, as if he’s a toy they want to play with. They’re having fun; even Shane can tell, and he has a mind that likes to convince him the opposite is true nearly every opportunity it has. 

The third time Shane peeks his head out, Rozanov is ending his set. He is sweaty from jumping and humming into a microphone that spits out an auto-tune garble, almost alien-like, and yet pleasant in its oddness. His fingers dance over the mixer in a blur, too quickly for Shane to detect any pattern to it. 

And then the song culminates in a crescendo. For a moment it’s as if Shane’s ears get plugged, and all he can see is the gaping mouths of his fans, screaming soundlessly. 

His hearing comes back to him in time to pick up the warm, heavy sound of Rozanov panting into the microphone. His exhaustion is palpable, so much so that he seems to groan into the mic, whether purposeful or not. And then he says, “Who wants to see Shane Hollander?”

Shane’s stomach swoops. The crowd roars. Rozanov tsks into the mic, reprimanding. 

“I can’t hear you,” he scolds, teacher-like. Shane wishes, suddenly, he could see his face. “I can keep him to myself, you know. If you don’t want to see him.”

The crowd comes alive, booing and cheering in some odd amalgamation that has Shane clutching his microphone in a white-knuckled grip.

“Okay, okay.” Rozanov quirks his head. “So, try again.” This time, he hollers: “Who wants to see Shane Hollander?”

The stage rattles with the sound. Shane reaches up to cover his ears until he realizes all the backup dancers and band members can see him. When Rozanov walks off, he passes Shane for the shortest of seconds, during which he locks eyes with Shane, ice-blue meeting brown, and gives him a firm, confident nod. 

Then Rozanov is gone, and the lights come up, and Shane takes center stage. 

----

Afterwards, Shane buttons his dress shirt where it sprang open during the encore, sweat staining the nape of his neck. His drummer, Hayden, claps him on the back and screams an unhinged compliment that includes the word “titillating” into his ear, though Shane can’t make out the rest. 

He feels higher than he’s ever felt after a show, and he knows himself well enough to recognize a crash before it’s coming. He excuses himself, politely, to his dressing room. He runs through his deep breathing exercises three times and when that doesn’t work, settles for riding the panic out while pacing the length of the stuffy room. When it’s over with, he dabs his face with an oil blotting sheet before unlocking the door and emerging into the flurry of bodies backstage. 

He walks to Rose. “You were fucking amazing,” she says when she spots him. 

Shane’s face breaks into a small smile. “Thank you.” 

Rose’s eyes drift somewhere next to and slightly above Shane’s eyeline. “And so were you.” 

“Too kind.” Shane jolts at the sound of the rumbling voice. He turns and finds Rozanov, still clad in the muscle tee he wore on stage, with a wry smirk on his face. Rozanov points to a plastic bin on the floor. “By the way, I put these in here. But maybe you have somewhere else you want them?”

Shane’s curiosity gets the best of him. He peers into the bin, bending at the waist to do so. Inside are stacks upon stacks of bras: a lacy pink one nestled in the basin of a larger brown one, a blue silk one peeking through underneath, and the elastic band of a Nike sports bra alongside it. 

“They throw them,” Rozanov says by way of explanation. Shane’s face, if possible, reddens further. Rozanov’s eyes go alight, seeming to notice. “Normally, I donate them.”

“Normally,” Shane repeats, almost to himself. 

Rozanov licks his lips. “Perks of the job.” 

Shane makes a stilted choking sound in his throat. Rose perks up. “I’ll take care of them.” And then she does, picking up the bin and balancing it on her hip. Before Shane can comprehend it, she is walking away. Shane feels Rozanov’s eyes on the side of his head, so he turns reluctantly to face him head-on. His pale neck, and the little moles dusting it, catch Shane’s attention. So too does the hickey, which has begun to tinge purple and green. 

“You did well tonight, Hollander.” 

Shane feels the compliment in all corners of his body. Rozanov reaches up to scratch at his neck, right along the faded hickey, as if drawing attention to it. 

“Mandy can, um, help with that.” Shane gestures to his own neck. “She’s our makeup artist.” 

“Oh?” Rozanov feigns ignorance. “But I like it.”

Shane gulps. He attempts friendly conversation. “Do you have a girlfriend back home?” 

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Rozanov says slowly, “or a home.” He grins wide, all pearly teeth. It’s at odds with the statement, Shane thinks. Nothing in Rozanov’s simple smirk offers Shane any hints about how to respond. 

“Well, where do you live?”

“Canada, mainly.” 

Shane’s eyebrows draw in. “Okay.” He gulps again and drums the pads of his fingers against his thigh. The outfit he wore on stage feels stifling, suddenly. “I’m from Ottawa. But I live in Vancouver.” 

“Ah, Vancouver.” Rozanov’s blue eyes sparkle as they widen. “Always wanted to go.”

Shane’s hands curl into small fists. “Well. Friday.” 

“Friday?”

Although Shane himself only learned the identity of his opener the first day of tour, this for some reason makes his chest tighten. “That’s the next stop. We’re leaving in the morning. Early.” 

“How early?”

“Six.” 

Rozanov groans, throwing his head back. The utter drama of the movement is overshadowed by the way his Adam’s apple bobs. 

“Why? You have somewhere better to be?” 

“I have a gig at a nightclub tonight.” Rozanov says it simply, as if discussing the weather. 

“You just performed,” Shane replies, dumbly. 

Rozanov smiles. “Yes. Money is money.” 

“When is your set?”

Rozanov checks his silver watch. “Three hours.” 

Shane checks his phone. Three hours from now is one in the morning. “Will you be able to wake up in time?”

Rozanov considers his words. “Depends. Will you come get me if I don’t?”

Shane huffs, choking out a laugh. “Rose doesn’t need another person to babysit.” 

“I did not say Rose.” 

“Well.” Shane scratches the back of his neck. He forces his eyes anywhere but on the man in front of him, who seems to be taking up more and more space in Shane’s line of sight the longer he pushes his gaze away. “Are you going back to the hotel first?”

Rozanov leans back. It’s only then that Shane realizes he had been inching closer. “Yes. You?”

Shane nods. Rozanov hums at him, a question without asking a question, so Shane verbalizes. “Yeah. Yes.” 

“Good.” Rozanov licks his lips. “Good.” 

They leave in separate cars, anyway. Shane goes to bed at eleven, after washing his face twice and applying moisturizer. Rozanov does whatever he does before a late-night gig. Shane doesn’t know and doesn’t need to. 

Shane doesn’t see Rozanov board the plane, but he must. Rose would kill him if he didn’t. 

The plane takes off with little fanfare. Shane shuts his eyes, turns on a podcast, and tries to sleep. 

----

VANCOUVER

Rozanov tugs his shirt off onstage. Shane, watching from the wings, notices even the most elemental of muscles jutting out beneath Rozanov’s skin: a cord by his collarbone, the cleft between the blocks of his abdomen. 

He throws the shirt into the crowd, expecting a woman, perhaps one of the many flinging posters around with Shane’s face on them, to catch it. Instead, an eagle-eyed father of a teenage girl snags it. Noticing this, Rozanov turns around, his bare back facing the fans, and drops his act of nonchalance. 

Shane watches from behind the curtain with thinly veiled awe: Rozanov, with his hardened muscles and musk of sex, giggling into an open palm out of view of the audience. Behind him, the dad waves Rozanov’s sweat-damp shirt in the air like waving a flag in surrender. 

Then Rozanov schools his face, turns back around, and hooks his headphones back around his ears. He continues the set with a smirk. But Shane memorizes it, lest he forget: Rozanov laughing sweetly into his own hand.

----

After the show, Rose walks off with the latest bin of bras. Shane makes the same mistake as last night and lets her, leaving him alone with Rozanov. 

In the two hours since Rozanov’s set, he has since put a shirt back on: this one a black long sleeve that hugs his waist. The shirt is pulled taut around his broad shoulders. It somehow looks more scandalous than if he were wearing nothing at all.

“Is there a stain?” Rozanov looks down at his own chest in amusement. 

Shane averts his gaze. “No. Uh.” He remembers his earlier hopes: serve as a mentor to his opener. Embody someone they can look up to. “Great job on your set. You really know how to engage the crowd.” 

Rozanov simply tilts his head, something analytical in his gaze. Shane fills the silence. 

“And I know it’s hard,” Shane continues. “I opened for my fair share of artists too.” 

“It is not hard.” Rozanov’s blond eyelashes seem to fan his face. Shane notices a mole he hasn’t seen before along Rozanov’s jaw. “Other things are hard, yes. This, no.” 

Shane attempts to clear his throat. His gaze flickers to the simple lounge area where his dancers usually stretch backstage. It’s deserted now, though Shane can’t recall how long ago the last person left. “Well. That’s good you think so.” Shane gestures vaguely to the emergency exit. “You can take the private car back with us to the hotel. We have a day off, then the flight to LA isn’t until the afternoon.” 

Rozanov trails a hand down his own arm. Such a simple movement, on him, appears choreographed. “How private?”

Shane flushes. He works hard to meet Rozanov’s sparkling eyes. “I’m a professional,” he splutters. 

“Yes,” Rozanov says. “Of course. I know this very well. Your voice.”

“Thank you,” Shane says, and then he realizes Rozanov hardly articulated a full compliment. His face reddens further. 

“There is nothing like it.” 

There’s the rest of the compliment, then. Shane shifts his weight, foot to foot. “The car’s probably outside by now.”

“What is your room number?”

Shane blinks on reflex, a form of a flinch. “At - at -” Shane drops his eyes down to the scuffed hardwood flooring. “At the hotel?”

Rozanov raises one eyebrow, his pink lips pursed. “Yes.” 

The words seem to come before Shane can claim them as his own. “1410.” 

“Well, if I come to 1410 tonight at…” Rozanov juts his chin out. “Nine o’clock?”

Shane feels an unfamiliar coil of heat in his stomach. It’s not the panic that surges after adrenaline wears off during a show. He worked through that already. It’s still panic, though, some new breed of it. “It’s already nine o’clock,” Shane huffs, though no sound comes out. 

The end of Rozanov’s pink lips quirk up. He looks almost bashful. “Right.” There’s that smile again, like Rozanov giggling into his palm. It fades as quickly as it came. “Midnight, then.” 

Something about the disorder of the sentence quiets the screaming in Shane’s head. This is new, but he’s not the only one it’s new for. “I might open,” he says, his voice quiet.

Rozanov blinks, slow and amused. “I might knock.” 

----

Shane has rehearsed what he’ll say when, or if, Rozanov knocks. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I am a professional. 

Rose once told him to stop apologizing when he’s done nothing wrong. He amends the script while buttoning and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt in turn, unsure which makes him appear more at ease. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I am a professional. 

A firm knock echoes through the silent room. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Shane mutters. He cranks the doorknob lightly enough that it loosens, then steps back. Rozanov pushes the door open himself from the outside and shuts it behind him without looking. 

In Shane’s hotel room, Rozanov is a new creature: Handsome, yes, but also casual in a way Shane hasn’t seen before, wearing a white cotton shirt and jeans. His curls look delicate and springy. His eyes are dark.

“I thought you might chicken out.” 

“I - look.” Shane reaches up to his own collar. He must have been trying to button it back up when Rozanov knocked, but now he feels where the cloth parts, unbuttoned and exposing a sliver of his collarbone. “I’m a professional,” he says, uselessly. 

Rozanov licks his lips. Shane feels it in his throat, somehow, and in the low of his back. “Hollander,” he says, deep and delicate. He takes a step closer to Shane and then around him, circling him. In an instant, Shane is now closest to the door. “You will need to use your voice, you know. The one I like.” 

Shane gulps. “How do you mean?”

Rozanov extends his hands until long, slender fingers wrap themselves around Shane’s waist. The touch throws the air from Shane’s lungs. Slowly, Rozanov pushes Shane backwards until his shoulderblades knock against the wall. The door knob digs into the meat of his back. Shane lets it. 

Rozanov leans in until his lips are a hair’s breadth from the rim of Shane’s ear. “Speak up,” he says. “Do you want me to leave?”

Shane exhales. It is shaky even to his own ears. He opens his mouth and no sound comes out. 

Rozanov leans away until they’re eye-to-eye. His hands drop from Shane’s waist, and he takes a step back. 

“It’s fine.” Rozanov is calm when he says it. 

It feels like static where Shane’s waist should be. Shane eyes Rozanov’s big hands, now limp at his sides, thumb rubbing against his forefinger. It looks self-soothing, if Shane didn’t know any better. 

“You need to move,” Rozanov says after another long silence. 

“What?”

“The door. You are blocking.”

“I didn’t -” Shane cuts himself off and sighs. “This is hard for me.” 

“That’s okay,” Rozanov says simply. “I will go.” 

“No.” Shane says it and then his stomach twists. Rozanov’s face slackens. 

“No?”

“Put them back,” Shane says. Rozanov’s eyebrows draw in. “Your hands,” Shane adds weakly.

“Ah.” Rozanov nods once, as if a soldier obeying orders. He regains the space he lost from stepping back and then some, moving so close that his nose touches Shane’s. His big hands find Shane’s waist again and settle there. “It doesn’t have to be a thing.”

Shane parses the meaning. Rose’s words echo in Shane’s head: He is one night stand material.

Shane looks up. He meets a pair of blue, searching eyes. Shane gives him the slightest of nods. Rozanov leans in and joins their lips. 

Rozanov’s lips are soft and gentle, moving against Shane’s like water. He tastes of cigarettes and mint toothpaste. He smells like ginger, or maybe it’s Shane’s own smell intermixing with his, and they’re too close for Shane to parse them out.

Rozanov pulls back slowly, just long enough to look Shane in the eyes again. Shane bears it because it’s short and because he has never seen eyes like Rozanov’s before, blue in some lights and green in others. 

Then Rozanov is kissing him again, harder this time, slipping his tongue past Shane’s lips. At the same time, Rozanov’s hands claw their way up from Shane’s waist, along his ribcage and finally up to his chin to grab it and lift it upwards. 

Rozanov moans into Shane’s mouth. Shane makes a noise like a whimper in response. His cock chubs in his pants. Where their hips are joined, he can tell that Rozanov’s is too. 

Shane lifts his own hands up to Rozanov’s shirt, tugging at it clumsily. Shane feels a loss when Rozanov breaks the kiss, but then Rozanov grants him a win by tugging his shirt off entirely and kissing him again.

Rozanov’s chest is one thing on stage. It’s another entirely when Shane can feel its heat under his hands. Shane roams his fingertips across Rozanov’s pecs, then up to his biceps, going so far as to squeeze them. He’s greedy, he knows, and maybe looks a bit ravenous. 

Rozanov tugs on Shane’s shirt. Shane obliges, lifting his arms up long enough for Rozanov to take it off for him, though beyond his haze of lust is a twinge of self-consciousness. 

Rozanov breaks off his kiss at Shane’s mouth, a string of saliva connecting Shane’s bottom lip to Rozanov’s top one, and mouths at his neck instead. Shane presses his lips together, yet still he groans. Rozanov mouths lower and lower, past Shane’s collarbone. 

Without pausing the kisses, Rozanov travels so low, his lips against Shane’s stomach now, that he drops to his knees. 

He looks up at Shane through half-lidded eyes, mouthing at Shane’s belt buckle like it’s his last meal. He says, slowly and against the metal, “Will you give me what I want?”

Shane’s right knee buckles. Rozanov steadies him by reaching two hands up to anchor his hips against the wall. “Holy fuck,” Shane stammers. And then, “Yes. Please.” 

Shane reaches down to his own belt buckle to loosen it clumsily. Rozanov smacks his hand away and undoes it himself. When it’s unbuckled, Rozanov tosses it over his shoulder carelessly, where it flies into the nightstand and sends Shane’s glasses case clattering to the floor. 

“Jesus,” Shane huffs. Rozanov unzips Shane’s jeans and pulls his cock loose from his underwear in one fell swoop. “You have - fuck - a hell of an arm.” 

“Not just my arm,” Rozanov replies coolly. Shane is about to respond, but then Rozanov wraps his soft hand around the base of Shane’s cock and it takes everything in him not to slide down the door and go boneless. “This good?” 

Shane groans, his eyes squeezing shut. Rozanov squeezes Shane’s cock again, a brief one to grab his attention. “Hey.”

“Yeah. Yes.” 

“Okay.”

Shane opens his eyes just wide enough to see Rozanov line Shane’s cock up with his pink, pursed lips. First, he licks a stripe from the base of Shane’s cock up to the tip, the shiny surface of his tongue leaving a trail of wet. “I don’t know if I can really stand up right now,” Shane says weakly. 

Rozanov holds Shane’s cock steady in front of his lips, as if holding a hotdog at a baseball game. “The bed, then?”

Shane nods. “The bed.” 

Shane expects Rozanov to get up off his knees, and so Shane takes a mental picture of how he looks like this: the strong, sinewy lines of muscle, the peek of his shoulderblades Shane can see if he really leans forward, and the dewy look in his big eyes when he gazes up at Shane through his eyelashes. 

On the way up to standing, Rozanov roves his hands over the underside of Shane’s legs. When they get up to his thighs, they lift. Shane yelps, one hand scrambling to grab onto Rozanov’s shoulders, the other searching for the doorknob in some desperate attempt to balance himself. 

Then Rozanov is lifting him up off the ground and carrying him to the bed. 

“What -” Shane cuts himself off, settling for wrapping both of his arms around Rozanov’s neck and his legs around his bare waist.

Rozanov deposits Shane on the edge of the bed without fuss. Rozanov climbs on top of him until he’s firmly above Shane on the white sheets. 

“Sorry, just - can you take your shoes off? Please?” Shane asks. 

Rozanov’s face breaks out into a small grin. Slowly, he reaches down to his feet and tosses his right shoe off the side of the bed, then his left. “Better?”

Shane nods. “Yes. Thanks.” 

“Okay.” With no preamble, Rozanov leans over and takes Shane into his mouth. 

“Holy -” Shane arches up off the bed. His hand seats itself in Rozanov’s hair, and some small voice in the back of his mind registers that he yanks on the curls too hard, hard enough that Rozanov gags on his cock. Still, he recovers, reaching one hand up to palm at Shane’s chest. Shane taps his shoulder almost impatiently. “I’m gonna - if you don't get off, I will.”

Rozanov continues his ministrations. His hand palming Shane’s chest begins tapping it, Shane’s only signal that Rozanov heard him at all. And then, Shane can’t help it: he comes, and it’s into the wet heat of Rozanov’s mouth and his hollowed-out cheeks. Shane does so with a choked-off cry. It sounds eerily like the beginnings of a high note on stage. 

Rozanov pulls his mouth off with a smack. Shane’s eyes are shut, but he hears a gulp. 

Shane feels a dip in the mattress next to him, and the smooth skin of Rozanov’s arm against his. He cracks open an eye to find Rozanov splayed out next to him, shirtless. Shane himself is nearly naked, his boxers still pooled by his ankles. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Shane croaks. 

“Thank you,” Rozanov says. 

Shane’s eyes go wide. Rozanov swallowed his load and is thanking him? “I think that’s my line.” 

Rozanov turns his head sideways against the stark white pillowcase and grins at him. “No, mine. You come how you sing. Pretty.”

Rozanov pushes a curl out of his face. His neck gleams with sweat. Shane drops his chin to his chest, his cheeks reddening. Then he straightens up, leans over, and undoes Rozanov’s belt buckle. 

Rozanov makes a small, throaty noise, although Shane has hardly touched him yet. When he finally does pull Rozanov’s boxers down, his cock springs loose and smacks Shane in the cheek. 

“Fuck,” Shane mutters. 

“You don’t have to do it all,” Rozanov says, as if Shane is completing a crossword puzzle with him, not debating the logistics of fitting nine inches of girth into the throat he pays his bills with. 

But if there’s one thing Shane hates in this life, it is being underestimated. 

“I do.” He gives one perfunctory lick along the underside of Rozanov’s cock, then stops to tug his boxers down fully and fling them off the bed so Shane isn’t the only one naked. Then he takes a deep breath, forces his throat to relax, and takes Rozanov in. 

Any prior hookup Shane has participated in involves background music of some sort: in part because of his profession, but also because of his awkwardness. Now, the only sounds filling the room are the gurgles and smacks of Shane’s mouth around Rozanov’s cock. Shane uses his right hand to pinch Rozanov’s hip experimentally, and is rewarded with a deep moan that reverberates in Shane’s ears. 

A few things motivate Shane to give this act his all: one, Rozanov’s lack of expectation. His small, satisfied grin when Shane came down his throat; if he had any expectation of reciprocated pleasure, he didn’t show it. Thank you. Secondly, these small sounds coming out of Rozanov’s throat, low and muted, like he is trying to stay silent but he can’t.

Rozanov taps Shane’s head gently but rapidly. “Soon,” he says. Shane takes Rozanov's hand from his head and interlaces their fingers together instead. Rozanov’s hand is warm and soft in his, and his thumb rubs across Shane’s knuckles. 

Rozanov comes into Shane’s mouth. Shane pulls off, swallows, and coughs. 

With the little strength he has left, Rozanov pushes himself up off the bed into a seated position and smacks Shane’s back, not unlike burping a baby. 

“I know,” he says in sympathy. 

Shane's cough turns into a stilted laugh. His voice, when he speaks, is hoarse. “Do you? Have you sucked your own dick? God.” 

“I’d make it smaller if I could.” 

That, out of everything all night, forces a laugh out of Shane. He hides his face in his hands. “You’re an asshole.”

“Come. Lay back.” One of Rozanov’s palms comes to push against Shane’s chest. Shane falls gently against the bed until they’re laying side by side. 

It must be at least a minute of complete silence. Shane’s breath shoots out of him impatiently. Rozanov’s is calm and steady. 

“You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?” Shane’s voice comes out croaky. 

“No.” Rozanov reaches up to scratch his chin. “Are you?”

“Of course not,” Shane replies, fast.

“Good.” They sit in silence for a few moments. The patch of skin where their shoulders connect feels aflame. And then Rozanov pushes himself up off the bed and disappears beneath the side of it.

Shane sits up quicker than he means to. Rozanov stands back up, this time with his boxers in his hands. 

Rozanov must sense Shane’s eyes on him. He pauses with the boxers pooled around his knees, his cock hanging limp and heavy between his legs. “I have a gig tonight.”

“Oh.” Shane watches him redress. He pools the white bedsheets over his own hips to conceal himself. “This late?”

Rozanov nods. After he tugs his jeans on, he pulls his t-shirt over his head. It ruffles his hair and makes it stick up like a kid’s. Shane begins the process of counting the moles on Rozanov’s stomach and feels a pang of distress when the shirt covers it. 

“Don’t forget about the flight,” Shane calls out. 

“I won’t.” Rozanov stares at him head-on for a few seconds. “I am a professional, remember?”

Shane lets out a small breath. “Right.”

“Goodnight, Hollander.”

“Goodnight.” 

The door shuts firmly and echoes throughout Shane’s room. He rubs a finger along his eyebrows and shimmies around on the bed. He settles against the mattress dip where Rozanov rested moments ago. He lays there until Rozanov’s warmth is replaced entirely by Shane’s own.

Then he drags himself out of bed for a cold shower.

----

LOS ANGELES 

Shane Hollander is on vocal rest because of a blowjob. 

No one on staff knows the reason, but Shane wakes up feeling like it's plastered across his forehead. As he zips up his suitcase, attempts a simple vocal warm-up and frowns when it comes out choppy. He texts Rose: Vocal rest until show tonight. Can you let the team know? 

On the plane to LA, Shane sips on a scalding cup of ginger tea and shuts his eyes, attempting to sleep. After an hour of zero luck, he texts Rose again: Is Rozanov on the plane? 

Rose

Yes. Why wouldn’t he be?

Rose

He giving you trouble?

Shane ponders the word. Trouble. You come how you sing. Pretty. Is that trouble? 

Shane

No. Just checking. Thank you!

They stop for Erewhon on the way from the airport to the concert hall. Shane orders a celebrity smoothie with blue algae in it. Rozanov orders what looks to be three slices of pizza and a vegan fudge brownie. They take separate cars to the venue. In Shane’s black SUV, Rose and Hayden discuss soundcheck timing. Shane wonders absently about Rozanov’s car. His head dancer, Camila, boarded that one. Are they sitting in silence? Is Rozanov doing his pre-show ritual? Does he even have one? Is he making her laugh?

“I miss Shane,” Hayden complains. 

Shane scowls at him. He opens his Notes app and types, I’m right here. 

“I miss your voice,” Hayden corrects. “By the way, you owe me a recording of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’” 

Rose cackles. “Your kids are spoiled, you know. I mean, custom lullabies from Shane Hollander? I want one.”

Shane grins despite himself. I can send one to you too if you want, he types. Baby Shark?

Rose leans over and reads the message. When she’s done, she rolls her eyes. “I’m still waiting for an actual song about me to go on one of your albums.”

Shane smiles devilishly as he types. Didn’t I send you a preview of “Best Manager Ever”? It’s gonna be my next big hit.

“Ha ha,” Rose mocks. “At this rate, Ilya fucking Rozanov is gonna get one before I do.” 

Shane stills, his thumbs poised above his keyboard. 

Hayden says, “That guy’s a little cuckoo, don’t you think?”

At the same time, Shane croaks out, “His name is Ilya?”

Rose and Hayden glare at him from their respective sides of the car. “You’re on vocal rest!” Rose reprimands. Shane lifts a hand to his throat and nods. “And yes. The only reason I know is because I handled his travel documents to get him from Canada to the States.” 

“I don’t trust dudes who are all mysterious like that,” Hayden says. “Like, why don’t we know your real name? Why are you so muscular? It doesn’t add up.”

“I think you’re just insecure,” Rose offers. 

Hayden scowls at her. 

“Shane likes mentoring people,” Rose continues. She shrugs. “So it works out.” 

Hayden chuckles. “Shane mentoring Rozanov is like a kitten babysitting a mountain lion.”

Shane types, Hey! 

“But you know what I mean,” Rose amends. She takes out her phone and begins drafting an email as she speaks. “Shane has more fans, more industry connections. That sort of thing.” 

Something in Shane’s gut twists. He feels pinpricks on his face, the initial warning signs of panic under his skin. He thinks about it now, too late to undo anything: He is more famous. He is better connected. 

The car slows to a halt at the back of the venue before Shane can make himself sick. He lets himself out and walks backstage, where a vocal steamer awaits him. Shane presses the mouthpiece to his face and inhales the warm, moist air, letting it soothe his throat if not his nerves. 

From the corner of his eye, Rozanov - no, Ilya - arrives alongside Camila and their videographer. His sweatpants hang low on his hips, a black hoodie riding up where he lifts his arms up to stretch. 

Ilya glances at him. Shane looks pointedly away and takes another inhale. 

A low voice, from behind him: “That because of me?”

Shane jumps. He turns around to find Ilya looking at him curiously, his ocean eyes playful. 

With one hand holding the vocal steamer against his lips, Shane takes out his phone, opens his Notes app, and types, You wish. 

Then, so slowly it’s almost laughable, he writes out with one hand: It can’t happen again. 

Ilya frowns at the screen. Rather than speak, he takes the phone from Shane’s hand, his fingers brushing up against Shane’s to do so. He types a sentence underneath Shane’s entry. 

But it felt so good :( 

Shane rolls his eyes. He snatches the phone back with his free hand and types: Good luck with your set.

Ilya attempts to grab the phone back. Shane shakes his head firmly, sucking in another inhale of the misty air. 

Ilya huffs and crosses his arms. He takes out his own phone, opens Google, and types into the Search bar: Always so professional, Hollander. 

He locks his phone and walks away. 

----

The crowd in LA is the most fashionable, attractive one Shane has ever performed in front of. They’ve taken to wearing bangles around their wrists with his initials and dressing in the blue pastels of his album cover. 

His voice doesn’t waver, like he feared. When the lights go down and he stumbles back to his dressing room, the panic attack that overtakes him is a perfunctory one. He dispels it easily with his breathing exercises until the only feeling left is a small knot in his chest. He can handle that; he always does. 

He walks out of the dressing room with a smile pre-plastered on his face. It’s not his fault that the first person he runs into is Ilya, who in his narcissism or perhaps his naivete, assumes it’s meant for him. 

“You were wonderful,” Ilya says simply. Shane feels the compliment in his ribs, loosening the knot. “What is your room number?”

Shane winces. “I said -” 

“I know what you said. But what did you mean?”

“I just - I can’t. I’m sorry.” He opens his mouth to explain why, but he finds suddenly that the longer he stares at Ilya’s big eyes, or the way he’s worrying at his bottom lip, the worse Shane’s resolve becomes. “And the car is here, anyway.” 

“Can I come?” 

Shane tries to drum up a reason why not. But this is his opener, the artist who he shares headlines with, and they’re going to the same place. “Yeah. Of course.” 

Ilya takes the passenger seat, since the windows up front aren’t quite as tinted as the ones in the back. Shane sits next to Rose and picks at the skin around his thumbnail while she rattles off travel plans to the both of them: San Francisco tomorrow night, followed by Chicago. 

They enter the elevator as a trio. Rose presses “8.” Shane glances sideways at Ilya, who has packed himself into the corner of the elevator, farthest from the buttons. Shane suppresses an eye roll and presses “11.” 

“Sleep well, boys,” Rose says. She hugs Shane and blows Ilya a kiss before stepping out onto her floor. 

The doors slide shut. The silence is so palpable, Shane can cut it with a knife. The quiet is music in and of itself. 

On floor 11, Shane steps out. Ilya follows. 

Shane shoots him a cold look over his shoulder. The hallway spans both to the right and left of the elevator hall. Shane turns left. After a beat, so does Ilya. 

Shane lasts ten paces before he whips around. “Can you stop following me?”

Ilya chuckles joylessly. “Of course that’s what you think.” 

“Well, can you blame me? You didn’t even press a button.” 

“This is my floor.” 

Shane gulps. “I don’t believe you.” 

Ilya reaches into his pants pocket - and of course it had to be those same low-waisted sweatpants from the afternoon - and procures his keycard with all the drama and poise of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. After waving it in front of Shane’s face in figure-eight loops, he stomps down the hall, where he stops at the door directly across from Shane’s. 

He presses his card against the scanner. It lights up: green. 

Shane takes a deep breath in. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry.” 

Ilya keeps his hand loose on his doorknob, propping the door open without passing through it. “It’s fine.” 

“No, it’s -” Shane reopens his eyes and rubs at them blearily. “Can I just say something to you really quickly?”

Ilya’s eyebrows draw in. “Okay,” he says slowly. 

Shane eyes both ends of the hallway. “Not - not out here.”

Ilya’s expression goes slack. He jiggles his doorknob. “Do you want to come in?” 

“Maybe you come to mine,” Shane says. Rose’s earlier words percolate in his mind: More fans. More industry connections. “Or - sorry, no. Yours is fine.” 

Ilya holds the door open for Shane and flicks one lamp on at the same time. The light is warm and soft.

Shane starts speaking before Ilya can even shut the door behind them. “It’s about the other night. I wanted to apologize to you.” 

In the orange lamplight, Ilya’s eyes bulge. “What?”

Shane fiddles with his fingers. “I feel like I maybe took advantage of the situation. Or, at least, I’m in a position of power, and I could have stopped it, but I didn’t stop it. I’m older -”

“One fucking month.”

“Don’t defend it,” Shane says. The more he speaks, the more he spirals. “I am better connected than you. To the industry, I mean. I can already tell, Rozanov, that you’re very talented. And I don’t ever want you to think that… that doing anything with me is expected for me to go out on a limb for you. To vouch for you.” 

Thus far, Ilya has watched Shane with wide, unblinking eyes. Then, his face breaks and he laughs. 

Ilya doubles over, then, clutching his own stomach. He waves one finger in the air, as if asking Shane to hold. 

Shane crosses his arms. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s just,” Ilya pants. He finds the strength to lift his face back up to meet Shane’s eyes. The lamp illuminates a red flush across his face. “Are you high?”

“No!” 

“Hollander,” Ilya says. His voice is precise and slow. “I asked you where your room is. I showed up. I kissed you.” 

“But,” Shane protests, “I have more connections.” 

“I don’t want your connections.”

Shane blinks. “Gee, thanks.” 

“I don’t want your fans. I want your money, maybe, yes.” Ilya shrugs and smiles to himself. “I am taking a different path than you. I want to do movie scores. Festivals.” 

“You do?”

Ilya nods, once. “I told you. It doesn’t have to be a thing.” 

Shane scratches his chin. “Casual,” he says slowly, testing the word in his mouth. 

Ilya chuckles. He swipes a stray curl off of his forehead. “I’ve never debated it like this, like fucking Parliament. But yes.” 

Shane bites his lip. “But I’m supposed to mentor you.” 

“Says who?”

“Rose. And teach you stuff.” 

“Then teach me stuff.” Ilya takes a step closer and drags his pointer finger down Shane’s forearm. “How you like to be touched.” He leans in, his lips by the shell of Shane’s ear, and whispers: “How you like to be fucked.” 

Shane’s breath catches. “I assumed -” He gulps and tries again. “I assumed you had a gig tonight.” 

“I do.” 

“So -”

“I’ll cancel.” 

Ilya leans back from Shane’s ear, self-satisfied. Shane’s eyes dart from the strong cut of Ilya’s nose to the mole on his cheek. Ilya watches him, his arms back against his sides. 

Shane doesn’t so much lean into Ilya as he does barrel into him. He smashes his lips against Ilya’s, landing half on his actual lips and half on the pale skin around them. Ilya’s hands reach up and attach themselves to Shane’s face, maneuvering it where he wants it with firm fingers on the underside of Shane’s chin. 

Shane’s brain is full of facts. When Shane was younger, he’d memorize sheet music. These days, he memorizes convoluted choreography he doubts he can even pull off and the translations for “Are we having fun tonight?” in Spanish and German for upcoming tour dates. 

Now, with Ilya’s hand under his chin and the other caressing his cheek, he lets himself forget. He lets himself relinquish control. 

It’s how he finds himself stumbling further and further into Ilya’s hotel room. Ilya walks them both towards the bed, Ilya leading but refusing to break the kiss to see where they’re going. He trips on his own suitcase and falls backwards. Shane reaches for him and manages to keep Ilya upright with a hand tangled in the neck of Ilya’s hoodie. With the material bunched up in Shane’s hand, it lifts the hem of the hoodie up above Ilya’s hips, exposing the deep contour of his V-line.

Ilya layers his own hand atop Shane’s against his chest. “My hero.” 

Shane rolls his eyes. His heart beats like gunshots in his chest. 

On the bed, clothes come off in this order: Ilya’s hoodie, then his sweatpants, then Shane’s pants, then Shane’s shirt and finally his boxers. He is left, again, as the first one naked. Ilya presses a kiss against the hollow of Shane’s throat.

Shane says, so fast he’s not sure Ilya even understands, “I don’t want to suck your dick.” Ilya peels his lips off of Shane’s neck. “Er, sorry. I do, actually. I really do. But I shouldn’t.”

Ilya’s eyes alight in recognition. “Vocal rest.” 

“Fuck off,” Shane mutters weakly. “Yes.” 

“You kill me, Hollander.” Ilya kisses Shane’s throat again and Shane can feel the grin spread against his jugular. 

“Maybe we can - I dunno -” Shane racks his brain, which is suddenly empty of all “casual” sex acts to suggest. He thinks about it again: maybe casual isn’t in the act, but in the attitude towards the act. And in that case, if Ilya were to open him up, it could be casual. But he couldn’t suggest that first thing. It’s too forward. But Ilya is forward, right? Ilya is kissing his neck and humming against it and making it very hard to make rational decisions. 

“Hollander,” Ilya mumbles against Shane’s throat. Shane looks down right as Ilya cranes his head up to meet his eyes, his lips swollen. “Stop thinking so hard. Okay?”

“I was thinking the normal amount,” Shane defends. 

Ilya brings his left hand up to rest, gently, against Shane’s throat. The heat from the pads of his fingers rests atop the saliva he deposited from all the kissing. “About?”

Suddenly, staring at Ilya’s face is out of the question. Shane is so overwhelmed, and so hard, from the simple hand around his throat. He stares at the clock on the nightstand instead. Ilya follows his gaze. 

“You’re worried about the flight tomorrow?” Ilya drums his fingers along Shane’s neck, feather-light. 

Not at all. “Sort of.”

Ilya smirks, then. “Lucky you,” he says, and uses his hand not on Shane’s throat to fondle Shane’s hipbone, “I am good under pressure.” 

Ilya leans over Shane’s cock with a curious glint to his eyes, as if forgetful that they’ve already been acquainted. He lobs a mouthful of spit onto it and rubs his own saliva into Shane’s skin. 

“Fuck.” Shane grabs onto Ilya’s wrist, the one attached to the hand on his throat, for stability.

Ilya wraps his hand around Shane’s cock, twisting it up and down in a circular motion. “Is this how you do it?”

Shane attempts another breath that comes out stilted. Ilya must confuse it for too much pressure against Shane’s throat, because he loosens his grip. Shane shakes his head and taps on Ilya’s hand. Ilya raises an eyebrow, intrigued, and grips his throat harder. “How I do what?” Shane manages. 

“Touch yourself.” 

Shane watches Ilya’s hand move deftly around his cock, more enthusiastic than Shane has ever attempted to please himself. “I guess.” 

Ilya slows his hand. “You guess?” He echoes. 

Shane makes a noise that can only be described as a whine. “You know.”

“No,” Ilya rebuts, the ghost of a grin on his lips. “Is it the same?” He corkscrews his hand down Shane’s cock. “Better?” Shane’s hips lift up off the bed without him trying to. Ilya pushes them back down. “I want to know.” 

“I have no idea what the hell you’re saying right now,” Shane whines. His mind is both blissfully empty and alarmingly full. Visions flash behind his eyelids: The veins of Ilya’s hands. The wetness of his lower lip. “Just - don’t stop.”

“Bossy.” Ilya raises a single eyebrow and laughs. With anyone else, Shane might feel embarrassed. Now, he feels vindicated. He, prickly as he may be, can make someone like Ilya Rozanov laugh.

Ilya leans over to deposit the spit collected in the curve of his tongue onto the tip of Shane’s cock. When it makes contact, Shane arches up off the bed unwillingly. He wraps his hands around Ilya’s forearm that connects to his neck, as if it’s a handlebar. “You, too.” 

Ilya continues jerking him off. “Hm?”

“Boxers.” Shane’s face twists in pleasure. “Off. Please.” 

Ilya raises an eyebrow. But he obliges, tugging his boxers off until they’re both naked and tangled in Ilya’s sheets. 

“Lay back,” Shane says, and he feels an odd tinge of nostalgia in the instruction, throwing Ilya’s own words back to him. Ilya does, though with his eyebrows furrowed. 

“Like this, boss?” Ilya asks, laying straight as a rod next to Shane on the bed. 

Shane bumps him with his shoulder. “Please don’t call me that.”

Ilya smirks at him from the corner of his eye. “I knew you would not like it.” 

“And you still said it because…?” Shane asks. And then, to be devious, he licks across his fingers and wraps them around Ilya’s cock before he can respond. 

“Because I like - da,” Ilya groans. “Chyort.” He levels Shane with a competitive look and reaches for Shane’s sensitive cock with the hand closest to where Shane lays on the bed. “Because I like your angry face.” 

Their skin is touching all down their bodies, from their shoulders to their knobby knees and even their toes. Shane jerks Ilya off while Ilya jerks him off. For the most part, they stare down at their respective hands to make sure the rhythm is right. 

But then Shane has a thought, and that thought is to take his eyes off of Ilya’s cock for just a moment to look at his face, and Ilya must think the same because he looks up too.

For a moment, all they do is stare. 

But they can each see how the other’s shoulder twists with the jerking motion. And suddenly, something about it feels to Shane to be so utterly juvenile, like the summers he used to spend at hockey camp as a kid before he fell in love with music. In late nights in his camp cabin, the first time he ever felt inclined to touch himself, and to think about boys of all things while doing it, he wanted to ram his head into the ice rather than confront it.

And now he’s here, sharing a bed with a man, but one who was once a boy, and feeling a little like he’s confronting it. That they’re each confiding a secret in each other: I like to touch myself here. And this is how. 

Shane isn’t sure which of the two laughs first, only that Ilya laughs louder and it makes Shane wheeze.

“It’s funny, yes?” Ilya manages between gasps. Neither has stopped jerking the other off.

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. “Why’s it funny?”

Ilya laughs again, his cheeks red, and then he moans. A moment later, Shane comes. With a choked-out groan of “Hollander” under his breath, Ilya does too. 

Ilya lets out a deep sigh when they’re done. Since he was facing Shane when he came, his load coats the bedsheets. Shane came onto his own stomach.

“Reminds me of when I was younger,” Ilya says after a while. 

It’s an odd thing to say. Shane somehow knows exactly what he means. “Yeah.” He sits up in bed. “I can -” He makes a vague gesture to the bathroom. 

“No.” Ilya gets up himself. It’s like watching a sculpture walk, and his muscles are the least important reason why. Ilya walks with a confidence that can’t be imitated, as if he never learned the word for ‘self-conscious,’ whether in English or Russian. Like, if Shane were to define it, he’d tilt his head like a puppy and ask, What do you mean?

Ilya returns with that breed of fluffy towels you can only find in hotels. He wipes Shane’s stomach with it and then uses the other side to mop up the most visible stains on the bedsheets. 

“You can sleep at mine if you want.” Shane isn’t thinking when he says it. He recovers by adding: “Your sheets.” He gestures vaguely to the mess. 

Ilya pats the mattress. “No. It’s okay.” 

Shane nods. “Yeah. Of course.” 

Ilya disposes of the towels. When he returns from the bathroom, he crouches over his suitcase, a tiny one with a tear on the side and one wheel missing. He procures a fresh pair of boxers for himself. 

Shane gestures to the door. “I should go.” 

Ilya pauses by his suitcase. “If you want.” Something must flicker in Shane’s face. Ilya adds, “You don’t have to.” 

Shane begins pulling his clothes back on rather than responding. 

“You are excited about San Francisco?”

Shane blinks. This is llya, continuing to speak to him. “Sure, I mean.” Shane shrugs. “Probably all we’ll get to see is the venue.” 

Ilya approaches the bed again, this time to plug his phone into the nightstand. “I read about the Golden Gate Bridge. Looks nice. I was hoping to go.” 

Shane tugs his shirt back over his head. “Lots of suicides there.” His head, full of facts, spits one out. “Over 2,000 since it opened.” 

Ilya doesn’t speak. He rubs a hand over his lips, as if to keep his breath in.

“Sorry.” Shane cringes at himself. “Ignore me. I can ask Rose if we can drive over it.” 

Ilya shakes his head simply. He unplugs his phone, flicks it on, but hardly looks at it before he plugs it in again. 

“I’m sure the view is great.”

“No.” When Ilya finally breathes, it’s almost a gasp. “Don’t ask Rose.” 

Shane picks at his thumbnail. “I didn’t mean to yuck your yum.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ilya says tightly. 

Shane opens and closes his mouth, like a fish. “It’s sorta like, when someone is excited and -”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Ilya says. He sounds exhausted, all of a sudden. “Tell me tomorrow.” 

Shane presses his lips together. Something in Ilya’s tone tells him he doesn’t want to hear it, even tomorrow. “Okay.” Shane walks to the door and puts his shoes back on. “Goodnight,” he calls out.

It’s about thirty seconds of Shane waiting dumbly by the door before he registers that Ilya is not going to say it back. He leaves the room and closes the door soundlessly. He watches Ilya’s shadow as the gap between the door and the frame closes in. He lays himself back against the bed face-first, his sharp face smothered atop the pillow.

----

SAN FRANCISCO

Shane and Ilya arrive at the venue in separate cars. Shane’s SUV drives over the Bay Bridge, a beast of white and blue pillars, some that have since faded to gray from the rain. It’s the same shade of gray as Ilya’s sweatpants last night, Shane’s mind supplies. 

Once he has driven through the Financial District and seen enough Patagonia vests to dress an army, Shane comes upon the venue. He eats a kale salad for lunch and meets with the band to decide tonight’s surprise song. He goes with Hayden’s first suggestion and doesn’t overthink it twenty times over like he usually does. By the time that meeting concludes, he stares out onto the stage and finds Ilya’s DJ booth surprisingly bare. 

“Shouldn’t Rozanov be here by now?” Shane asks Rose, nodding his head in the direction of the booth. 

Rose smiles to herself. She takes out her phone, taps a few icons, and turns it to Shane. She displays a selfie of Ilya dangling from the side of a wooden cable car. As if the vibrant red lanterns in the background weren’t an indication enough, he has a half-eaten pineapple bun between his teeth.

Alongside the photo, he wrote Rose: Got distracted. Sorry! 

“Of course he’s in Chinatown.” Shane rolls his eyes because he thinks he should. Ilya looks like a puppy, his golden hair swept back from the wind and a pastry between his pearly teeth like a bone. Rose turns the phone away, and Shane has just enough restraint to stop himself from asking her to send it to him.

“That’s Rozanov for you.” Rose locks the phone. She’s still smiling. “But he said he’d be here before 4.” 

Shane feels something unwelcome settle under his skin. “Does he text you often, or…?”

“Yeah,” Rose replies. Shane feels itchy. “He asks about flight info, mainly. Sometimes he’ll text during those nightclub gigs of his.” 

“Oh.” Shane’s voice comes out strangled. “What kind of stuff does he say?”

Rose furrows her eyebrows. “The most random things. I don’t even remember." She takes her phone out again. Shane watches her thumb move along the screen, feeling more and more tense the longer she scrolls. “Here. Things like this.” 

She orients the phone to Shane. He reads the message. 

Hi Rose, sorry for the time. Can I take cocktail glass with me on plane? Pls someone gave it as gift and it has my letters.

Another message, below it. 

Not my letters, I mean it has my I.R.

INITIALS! That is it

Rose turns the phone back to herself. “I think his English gets all jumbled when he’s drunk.” 

Shane nods, processing the information. Despite Rose being his closest confidant, he feels something childish bubble up inside him, some need to spit back at Rose a piece of information he knows about Ilya that she doesn’t: He wants to do movie scores. He has moles across his upper thighs. He squeezes his eyes shut when comes. He sometimes even moans my name. 

“Oh. And he asked me for your phone number.” 

Shane flinches. “What?”

“Yeah,” Rose says. “In Toronto, right after you two met.” 

Shane’s phone feels like a useless hunk of metal in his pocket. “Did you give it?”

Rose stares at him with a curious look in her eyes. “I told him if he wants it, he should ask you. I know you don’t like people giving out your number without permission.” 

“Right.” Rose knows him so well. She wants what’s best for him. He has to remember that.

“I assume he asked you?”

Shane scratches the back of his neck. “Uh. No, actually.” 

Rose stares at him a moment. “Well. It could be good for you to have his, in any case. Do you want me to send you his contact?”

Shane is ready to say “yes” quicker than he should be. So he says the opposite. “No thanks. It’s fine.”

Rose nods in understanding. “You two see each other so often, I doubt it makes a difference.” Shane feels a ping of panic seize him, before he remembers: The tour. Obviously. “And I understand if you don’t want him blowing up your phone, asking what time he needs to set his freaking alarm.”

Shane nods, because he doesn’t like it when his colleagues don’t have their shit together. That’s why he respects Rose so much: he can trust her to carry some of the burden, especially when his anxiety gets the best of him. 

“Or if the peanuts in the hotel room get charged to him or to management.” Rose chortles. “Or if they have Interstellar on the plane WiFi.”

“I love that movie,” Shane whispers. 

Rose shoots him a small grin. “You should ask him about it, then. It wouldn’t kill you to make a friend, hm?” She pokes him in the shoulder. “And I don’t agree with Hayden. I think he’s annoying, sure, but harmless.” 

Shane furrows his eyebrows. “What does Hayden think?”

Her phone buzzes, so she takes it out. She begins drafting an email, her focus wavering. “Just, you know.” She waves her hand vaguely. “He’s so online.” 

Shane scratches the back of his neck. Does he know? 

Rose receives a phone call and takes it, shooting Shane an apologetic look. Rustling behind Shane has him whipping around to the opposite end of the stage. 

Ilya walks in, red in the face and lugging a media player in each arm. He deposits them on the desk. His eyes flicker, as if sensing Shane’s attention. “Hollander,” Ilya greets, an easy smirk on his lips. 

“Rozanov.” 

“I have much respect for your culture now.” 

Shane scoffs. “I’m not Chinese.” 

Ilya winces. “Sorry. I mean, your diaspora.” He says the word oddly, emphasizing the wrong syllables: dee-ah-SPO-rah. 

“Nice one,” Shane says softly. 

Ilya scratches his nose, almost sheepishly. “I maybe said it wrong. I read more than I speak.” 

Shane focuses on Ilya’s simple sneakers, one pair of laces undone, to avoid the fact that that is maybe the most attractive thing he has ever heard. “Well. I’ll take credit, if you’re offering. You liked it there?”

Ilya plugs in his USB drive and situates himself in front of his media players, his pink tongue darting out in concentration. “Chinatown?”

Shane nods. 

“Yes,” Ilya gushes. His finger drags along the touchpad, turning a dial. A song comes out at full blast; Ilya turns the volume down to a hum. They both watch as a small meter climbs from red toward yellow. “Everyone is very kind. Many grandmas touched my arm. Maybe it’s important to their culture, like handshakes in Russia.” 

Shane eyes Ilya’s outfit: A tight black muscle tee that exposes the contours of his biceps and all the moles dotting them. “Right,” Shane says, his voice measured. 

Ilya attaches his headphones and holds one earcup to his ear. He removes it after a moment, staring at Shane again. “Sorry.” 

“No, no.” Shane gestures to his equipment. “This is what soundcheck is for. I’m - I’ll go away. I’m distracting you.” Ilya simply stares at him. Shane tells his body to walk away. Instead, he steps closer. “What’s that button do?”

“Which?”

“This one.” Shane points to the unassuming black button Ilya adjusted moments ago. 

“Ah.” Ilya smiles at him, a small one, but it reaches his eyes and makes Shane’s heart flip. “Gain knob. It controls how strong the signal is before it goes to… to those.” Ilya points to behind them.

“The speakers,” Shane finishes. Ilya nods. He presses play on a track. The kick drum thumps softly through the booth monitors, a pleasant sound.

“Watch the meter,” Ilya orders. Shane obeys, following a thin row of lights beside the channel. They glow green. Ilya slowly turns the gain clockwise. The lights climb until they’re yellow. He removes his hand. “Now you.” 

Shane licks his lips. He grabs onto the dial, twisting it further. The lights flash red, and the sound distorts into something ear-splitting. Shane twists the dial in the opposite direction, wincing. “Sorry.”

“No sorry,” Ilya says firmly. “I wanted it to happen, to show you. The crunchy sound - we want to avoid that.” 

Ilya pauses the track and loads another one. 

“Every song is mastered differently,” Ilya adds. “This is why I check gain every time.” 

“Oh.” Shane stares at the path the headphones make across Ilya’s head, parting his curls. “It’s a lot of work.” 

Ilya shrugs and gestures to the myriad of knobs and meters on his equipment. “I could use all of these. But I don’t.” He looks at Shane and his eyes widen. “Not for your shows. Of course - I always try. I just mean, sometimes, the nightclubs. I get lazy.” 

“I doubt you’re lazy.” 

“I am.” 

Shane brings his thumbnail to his mouth but drops his hand at the last second. “Maybe you mean tired.” 

Ilya’s eyes drop to Shane’s nose. “If you say so.” 

Shane stares back, first at Ilya’s lips, but then at his eyes until the contact is so intense that Shane can’t bear it. Finally, he says, “Do you want my phone number?”

Ilya chortles. “Yes.” Something devious flickers in his eyes, then. “Though we have not needed it before.” 

Shane shoves Ilya half-heartedly. He barely budges, anchored to the floor like a statue. “Fuck off.” 

Ilya takes out his phone. “What is it?”

Shane crosses his arms defiantly. “I changed my mind. You’re not getting it.” 

“Hollander.”

“Nope.” 

Ilya does an exaggerated frown. “I am not above begging.” 

Shane clears his throat. He thinks of dropping his arms, but he keeps them crossed. “Okay.”

Ilya smirks. He taps on his phone. “So it’s…?”

“No,” Shane says. “Okay. As in, beg.” 

Ilya blinks once. He sucks on his own bottom lip, coating it with saliva. Then, he sets his phone down onto the DJ booth, looks carefully over Shane’s shoulder, and drops to his knees. 

“Jesus,” Shane cuts in. His eyes dart around the empty stage. “Rozanov -”

“Please, Hollander.” Ilya’s blue eyes look even bigger from above, the stage lights twinkling within them. He clasps his hands together, then thinks better of it and wraps them around the backs of Shane’s knees. “I need your phone number.” 

“Okay, okay.” Shane gestures frantically to Ilya to stand up. 

Ilya maneuvers his hands up Shane’s legs until each of his palms wraps flat around Shane’s hips. He sits up so his butt is no longer on the floor, the full weight of his upper body resting on knees that dig into the metal. He brings his mouth dangerously close to Shane’s clothed crotch and whimpers, into the fabric of Shane’s jeans, “Please.” 

“I said okay,” Shane repeats. Then, for good measure, though he’s half-forgotten what he is agreeing to, he whines out, “Yes.” 

Ilya freezes against Shane’s crotch. He drops his arms against his sides and picks himself up off the floor, making a gesture as if to dust off his hands. He hands Shane his phone with a self-satisfied smirk.

“You’re evil,” Shane murmurs weakly. He types in his number.

“You’re hard,” Ilya mutters back.

He is, achingly so. “Can we meet tonight?” Shane asks. He can hear the desperation in his own voice. 

Ilya stares down at his shoes, his eyes catching on the bulge in Shane’s pants. “I can’t.”

Shane’s face falls. “Right.” 

“I have a show.” Ilya drags a lone finger across a few dials, stroking them but not twisting. “You can come, if you want.” 

Shane’s mind catches on that phrase: If you want. “What time?” He asks, despite himself. 

Ilya smiles sheepishly. “Two.” 

“Jesus.” Shane watches Ilya’s fingers. “Two in the morning? We’re flying to Chicago tomorrow.” 

“I will wake up.” 

“You’ll be a zombie.” 

Ilya moves his hand from the music player to Shane’s wrist. His fingertips dance over Shane’s pulse. “In Chicago, before the show. I want you.” 

Shane fights the surge of arousal that overtakes him. Annoyance takes its place. “Because you’re going out after? Again?”

“No.” Ilya squints at him. “Because I cannot wait any longer. And,” he says, leaning in to brush his lips against the shell of Shane’s ear, “neither can you.” 

When Ilya pulls back, his eyes are on Shane’s bulge. Shane untucks his shirt from his pants to hide it. It falls just short of his pants zipper.

“Fuck off,” Shane mutters weakly. 

“Tomorrow,” Ilya says simply. All it is is a plan to fuck. Somehow, to Shane’s ears, it sounds like a promise. 

----

The next morning, Shane lays in his plush hotel bed with a strawberry peel-off face mask on his face. He opens Twitter and types in “Rozanov.” 

The first result is a video posted late last night, at The Grand Nightclub. Shane can just barely make out Ilya’s shadow behind the DJ booth in the blur of the preview photo. He clicks on it anyway. 

As Shane should have expected, if he’d been thinking for even a second, dancing women crowd Ilya behind the booth. The video is taken from the ground, pointing up at Ilya. He has one earcup to his ear while his other hand dances across the music player.

He’s focused, that much is clear, but distractions abound: The woman to the left of him decides, seemingly out of nowhere, to attach her lips to Ilya’s neck. Ilya allows it, even bares his neck for better access. He glances at her once but doesn’t linger.

Another pair of manicured hands come up from behind him, around his waist. This time, he smirks, but he also does a small shimmy that Shane might find endearing in any other circumstance until eventually she lets go. The woman with her lips on his neck attempts to touch one of the knobs, maybe even the gain knob. He pushes her hand away.

The video ends, finally, with a third woman bringing Ilya a shot. He stares at it for a moment, notices her holding a matching one, and they knock it back in unison. 

He has a cheshire grin on his face after he downs it. The woman with her lips on his neck places palms on either side of Ilya’s cheeks and orients his head in her direction. Ilya seems to consider her, for a moment, and then consider the crowd, so much so that for a brief moment Ilya stares straight down the barrel of the camera. It feels like he’s staring at Shane. 

He adjusts one knob on the player, and then he leans in and kisses her. The crowd erupts. Shane locks his phone and tries to breathe. 

----

CHICAGO 

Shane knows it’s Ilya banging on his hotel room door simply by the heaviness of the knocks. 

It’s late morning. Sunlight streams through the curtains. The unobstructed view of Lake Michigan winks out at Shane. They have an hour before soundcheck. 

Ilya knocks more fervently.

Shane cracks open the door and lets Ilya in. 

“Did my set make you deaf, or something?” Ilya asks, a playful grin on his lips. “I was knocking forever.” 

Shane scans Ilya. His eyes fly to Ilya’s neck, as if her lipstick marks might still stain it. There is nothing, of course. Just his smattering of moles and an expanse of pale skin.

“What?” Ilya asks. 

“Did you kiss someone last night?”

The sentence sounds juvenile even to Shane’s ears. Ilya tilts his head. “Yes,” he says, slowly. “Is that a problem?”

Shane considers it. He met Ilya with the largest hickey known to man on his neck. He takes his shirt off every third show, like clockwork. He told him, before any of this began, It doesn’t have to be a thing. 

And Shane had agreed. 

“No,” Shane says finally, speaking through the lump in his throat. Then: “Come here.” 

Ilya does, moving quicker than Shane has ever seen. 

“Shoes off.” 

Ilya sighs and rips his shoes off, throwing them over his shoulder. They hit the front door with a thump. 

He stops himself rather abruptly in front of Shane, close enough that Shane can feel Ilya’s hot, minty breath against his face. In the afternoon light, Ilya’s eyes are light and wild. 

Shane touches Ilya first: a soft swipe of his thumb against Ilya’s forearm. It’s so gentle, Shane can hardly feel it himself. Ilya must take it as Shane granting him some unspoken permission, because he lifts his hands up to grip Shane’s neck, hard enough to leave slender indents from his fingers. He drags Shane’s face forward and kisses him. 

Shane yelps into Ilya’s mouth, a small and surprised sound. Ilya’s right hand sinks into the dark hair at the nape of Shane’s neck, simultaneously tugging and pushing until Shane’s thighs hit the edge of the mattress and he topples backwards onto it. 

Ilya follows, catching himself with palms against the mattress until he is crouched over Shane, his head blocking the sunlight. He dips down to catch Shane’s lips again. Shane lets out a small, contented sigh that Ilya swallows down. Shane grasps at Ilya’s sleeve, and Ilya tugs his shirt off with one arm. His shoulders are bare and glowing in the light. 

Ilya helps Shane out of his own shirt, then his pants. Ilya’s pants and boxers come off next, all at once. Ilya breaks the kiss only momentarily to tug Shane’s boxers down with his teeth. Then he climbs back up to Shane’s lips and kisses Shane so hard his nose bends.

It’s at least ten minutes of Ilya mouthing hungrily at Shane’s lips, drifting every now and again to his neck, that Shane whines with want, “Hurry.”

“The mouth on you,” Ilya chastises. He kisses Shane again, for good measure. Ilya’s lips are coated almost entirely in saliva. It should be disgusting. Somehow, it’s delicious. “Fine.”

He extricates himself from Shane’s lips and, with a subtle tilt of the head to Shane, as if tipping his hat in goodbye, he shimmies further down the mattress until his head is by Shane’s hips. 

“Need me to kiss you here?” Ilya asks. Shane lifts his head up to clarify, but then he feels a finger against his hole, and he knows.

“Yes.” Shane’s hips buck up at the thought. “Please.” 

So Ilya does. He tongues at Shane’s hole, making the soft skin of the exterior and the warmth of the interior wet with his saliva. He uncaps a bottle of lube, procured from some place Shane doesn’t see - a pocket, perhaps - and prods one finger into Shane, an experimental one. 

Shane doesn’t budge much when it enters. But when Ilya curls his finger inwards, Shane feels it somehow in both his stomach and his chest all at once. “Fuck,” he whispers, more to himself than anything. 

“I am adding another.”

“Great, thanks for the - fuck - play-by-play.” 

Ilya pauses with two fingers in Shane’s hole. “I’m sorry. You are using that tone with me?”

Shane freezes up on the bed. Ilya curls his fingers in and Shane feels tingly all over. “Fuck off. Fine. Sorry.” He rattles off every phrase his brain can think of, and one of them happens to be: “I need you.”

“Fuck,” Ilya curses. “Now?”

“No, when we’re in Paris,” Shane mocks. “What do you think?”

“Probably then, too,” Ilya remarks, and then he smirks, wide and happy. 

Shane swats at him playfully. His heart seizes with anxiety when his hand actually collides with Ilya’s cheek, the sound something like a slap. But Ilya just grins at him, as if pleased Shane hit him in the first place. 

Jesus. 

“I have - um - condoms in the drawer.” Shane gestures vaguely to the nightstand. 

Ilya pulls open the drawer swiftly. When he pulls out the seemingly infinite chain of condoms, he laughs. “You think this will be enough?”

“Fuck off,” Shane murmurs, weaker than before. Ilya kisses him again, tongue-first. He adds a third finger, briefly. Shane gets tingly all over. Then he pulls away and tugs the condom on. 

“Tell me how it feels,” Ilya says. Shane almost rolls his eyes, but when he meets Ilya’s gaze he finds something sincere, almost concerned, within them. Then he lines himself up, somewhere by Shane’s hips where Shane can’t quite see himself, and Shane feels the tip of Ilya’s cock breach him. 

Shane arches up off the bed involuntarily. “Ho - woah. Holy fuck.” 

Somewhere between paradise and a stretch that nearly hurts, Ilya bottoms out. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Shane whispers. “Go slow, please.” 

Ilya looks down at him through blond eyelashes. He leans down and kisses Shane’s nose. The movement jostles Shane’s hips, where Ilya’s cock is nestled inside him, but Shane accepts it nonetheless. “Zayka,” Ilya says from above him. “Of course.” 

So Ilya does, dragging his hips back sluggishly. After a while, Shane kicks at his butt with the leg that isn’t pinned down by Ilya’s weight. “Hard, now.” 

Ilya stops staring at where Shane’s ass meets his pelvis. His gaze snaps up to Shane. “What?”

Shane cringes. “You heard me.” 

Ilya’s jaw drops open. “‘Hard, now?’” He echoes. “Is what you want?”

He’s already imagined it about a hundred times. “Mmhm.” 

Ilya tilts his head, as if considering. He nods, once. And then his hips snap up, pushing himself unfathomably deeper inside. 

Shane feels it all, of course. What’s more is the sight of Ilya towering over Shane like a muscled machine, his biceps straining with the weight of holding himself up. A thin gold cross dangles above Shane’s lips, twinkling from the Chicago sunlight streaming past the curtains. 

The sound of Ilya’s hips smacking against Shane’s ass is obscene in the quiet of Shane’s hotel room. What’s worse is Shane’s breathy moans that each thrust chokes out of him, despite his wish to keep quiet. 

Somewhere between Ilya thrusting into him and jostling him around on the bed, Shane loses his last semblance of self-control. He asks, whiny and petulant, “Did you fuck her?”

Ilya doesn’t slow his thrusts so much as elongate them: rolling his hips, making Shane feel every goddamn inch. He lets out a long breath. “Who?”

“The woman you kissed,” Shane says. Ilya thrusts into Shane again, and Shane arches up off the bed with a groan. Ilya places a palm flat against Shane’s stomach to push his body back against the mattress; it turns Shane on more than it should how easy his body is for Ilya to maneuver. 

“Have some faith, kotik.” Ilya fills Shane up again, to the hilt, and then leans down to kiss his cheek, of all things. “No. I kissed her so she’d stop messing with the board.” 

Shane can’t help it. He asks, breathless and panting, “That why you kiss me?”

Ilya tsks. His face is so close that his necklace pools in the hollow of Shane’s collarbone. “I kiss you because I want to fucking…” Ilya leans down, mid-thrust, and sinks his teeth into the meaty dip of Shane’s neck. “Eat you.”

It stings, but only for a second, and then it sends pinpricks of pleasure all across Shane’s skin. 

Shane has his eyes squeezed shut, but the next time Ilya leans down carefully to kiss him, he cracks them open. 

The sunlight streaming into the room hides nothing. This isn’t a late-night hookup, or a drunken mistake. This is Shane, letting someone inside him for the first time in over a year. And it’s someone who cares enough to make it good, who cares enough to interlace his fingers with Shane’s and hold them spread-eagled against the mattress as if on a cross. 

It’s someone who is red in the face with effort, his blue-green eyes squinted and his eyebrows drawn. Someone with a crown of golden curls like a halo. 

Ilya’s thrusts slow. From the outside one might not be able to tell, but Shane can feel everything, so of course he notices. “Change?” Ilya asks, moving his hands away from Shane’s to grip his hips. 

“Yeah. Yes.” As if that weren’t enough, Shane nods. 

Ilya smiles. It is brief and wonderful. He pulls out, and even though he does it slowly Shane still cries out. Ilya lifts him up by his hips and flips him over on the mattress. 

He runs a hand down the column of Shane’s spine. When he reaches Shane’s lower back, he tugs it upward, lifting his ass up off the mattress. Shane keeps his head against the sheets, creating an arch. Ilya continues stroking up and down Shane’s back, feeling for the knobs of his spine, and when he gets to the bottom he massages his fingers into Shane’s ass.

Shane cranes his neck uselessly to get a glimpse of Ilya behind him. It’s more embarrassment than anything that forces Shane to speak. “Any day now.”

“Sorry,” comes Ilya’s voice. It’s alarmingly sincere, as if he truly hadn’t noticed the time passing. Shane feels Ilya’s body lean over him, pressing a chaste kiss to his shoulderblade. “Was admiring the view.” 

When he straightens up, Shane has to remind himself not to whine at the loss of warmth against his back. Shane can feel the prod of Ilya’s tip against his hole. When he thrusts in fully, Shane whimpers, and if his head weren’t already against the sheets he’d probably have bowed his face into them just to muffle his own sounds. 

Ilya thrusts into him from the back, jostling Shane around with the movement. One of Ilya’s hands travels down to press against the side of Shane’s head, holding him in place. “Fuck,” Shane croaks. 

“You like that?” Ilya moves his hand to Shane’s forehead, where he pushes the hair out of Shane’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Shane says into the sheets. 

Ilya groans, though it’s hard to hear over the chorus of skin hitting skin. “You - feel -” He plunges all the way inside Shane with each word, a new form of punctuation - “So - good.” 

The words twist in Shane’s stomach, building a home there. So good. 

“You know,” Shane says, because he can’t ever let things go, “this producer messaged me. He’s, um. Older.” His sight has gone all blurry, whether from arousal or the beginnings of fucked-out tears. “Wants to -  fuck - meet tonight.”

Above him, Ilya mutters something. Shane can’t hear it over the slap of his ass against Ilya’s hips. 

“You think I should?”

“You’re busy tonight.” 

“Am I?” Shane asks, testing. There is something in Ilya’s voice, some irritation, that Shane wants to swallow. “Since when?”

Ilya spits on his hand and strokes Shane’s cock with it. “Since now.” 

Shane’s rebuttal dissolves into a throaty moan. The combination of Ilya fucking him from behind and stroking him through it gives him about ten seconds before he comes all over the sheets. Before he does, Ilya leans over, his chest blanketing Shane’s back. Shane has a second to feel Ilya’s nose against his shoulder, right above his puckered hockey scar that never quite healed right, before Ilya bites down, and hard. 

Ilya bites him, and Shane comes. 

Ilya does slow his thrusting, to be fair. Shane swats at whatever part of Ilya’s body is closest to him, the sound of the smack echoing through the room. “Keep going,” Shane murmurs, spent.

“You’re okay?”

“Mmhm.” 

Ilya lasts hardly a minute longer inside Shane before he comes too, with a shudder. He pulls out, slowly. He at least has the wherewithal to collapse next to Shane instead of on top of him. 

Shane cracks an eye open. Ilya is red in the face, panting hard, his chest coated in sweat. He ties off the condom and throws it haphazardly off the side of the bed.

“I will pick it up,” Ilya says between pants.

Shane closes his mouth: he was right about to ask him to. No need, then. He shifts around on the mattress, sidling an inch closer to Ilya’s warmth. “Now the bed’s all dirty.” 

Next to him, Ilya smiles. He reaches over and scratches behind Shane’s right ear, a bit like one might pet a dog. “I think I like Chicago.” 

It’s so unexpected a comment that it tears a laugh out of Shane. “Name one thing you like about the city of Chicago.” 

Ilya’s hand switches from behind Shane’s ear to stroke under his chin. Shane dodges the touch, ticklish. “I like the hotel.” 

“Hm.”

“I like the guy I fucked at the hotel.”

Shane rolls his eyes. He leans over to pinch the skin of Ilya’s neck between his fingers, a jolt of pain he’s starting to realize Ilya likes. Ilya makes a chomping noise with his teeth. 

“I might go clean up,” Shane says, after a while. 

Ilya is up and out of the bed before Shane can say otherwise. He enters Shane’s bathroom. 

As Shane waits, he reaches for his phone on the bedside table. He scans the notifications with half-lidded eyes. 

Rose 

Hi, just FYI the car is coming in 30 to take us to Aragon Ballroom. 

Rose

The car is here! Come down ASAP. Thank you.

Rose

Shane. We’re leaving soon and I can’t get ahold of you or Rozanov. What’s going on? 

Two missed calls from Rose Landry. 

Then, only two minutes ago: 

Rose

Convinced the driver to wait 15 more mins. Please hurry and let me know if you’re okay. 

Ilya returns from the bathroom with an obscene number of fluffy towels. “Your room is way nicer than mine,” he says, frowning. 

Shane can hardly hear him. He jumps out of bed, suddenly humiliated to be naked. 

“Hey.” Ilya sets the towels down. 

“I’m late,” Shane spits. He reaches a hand into his hair and tugs, a shortcut he takes to ground himself quickly. “Fuck. Everyone’s waiting downstairs.” 

“Wait,” Ilya protests. Shane brushes past him, attempting to pick his clothes up off the floor, article by article. He grabs Ilya’s boxers instead of his own and tosses them over his shoulder, impatient. “Why don’t I tell Rose we need ten minutes.” 

“There is no ‘we,’” Shane sneers. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck.” He scours the carpeted floor. “Where’s my shirt?”

“Hollander. You are already late. What’s a few minutes more?” Ilya gestures to the bed. “Let me hold you.” 

“I don’t need to be held.” Shane rubs the creases out of his forehead. 

“Five minutes.” Ilya takes out his phone and begins typing at the same time as Shane shakes his head. 

“What part of ‘I’m late’ do you not understand?” 

Ilya shoves his phone into Shane’s face. “Look.” 

The texts seem to shout back at Shane. 

Rose

No worries. Take your time. See you in a bit! 

Shane lets out a ragged breath. Despite all his panic to redress, he is still naked. 

“Five fucking minutes, Hollander,” Ilya urges. “Go back to bed.” 

Shane presses his knuckles into his eyelids. He feels Ilya’s hand on the small of his back and lets himself be led back to bed. Ilya lays out the towels and climbs onto them. Shane does too. 

Ilya lays himself down, the sheets pooled by his hips. Shane, reluctantly, gets underneath them too. Ilya tugs Shane against him, Ilya’s chest to Shane’s back. 

“This is stupid,” Shane whispers. 

Ilya pulls Shane somehow closer. He places his heavy, muscled arm across Shane’s bare waist like a lap bar. With his other hand, he draws circles in Shane’s hair. “Okay,” he replies simply.

They settle into companionable silence. Ilya’s chest rises and falls against Shane’s spine, this simple proof of his being alive. His fingers twitch in Shane’s hair. His skin is so hot it burns. 

Shane would choose it, he thinks, rather suddenly: would choose this sweltering heat if it comes from him. Would sweat through his skin, curled up here with his chin tucked into his own chest, if it meant being held. If it meant Ilya doing the holding. 

Seconds or hours pass. Shane is none the wiser. Behind him, Ilya stirs. “S’ been five minutes.” 

Shane sits up, his joints cracking. He doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet. 

“Sorry. I know you are fine. It just didn’t feel right,” Ilya says. “To rush.” He shrugs and scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “Maybe it was no difference.”

In lieu of responding, Shane offers Ilya a small smile. In his head, he thinks: It made all the difference. 

----

“I can’t believe you crowd-surfed.” 

“It was more of a crowd-walk.” Shane chuckles lightly into the phone. He’s twirling around on his desk chair back at the hotel, basking in the post-performance glow. “I was feeling bold, I guess.” 

“Very,” comes Yuna’s voice from the phone. “You’re trending on Twitter.” 

“Oh? I don’t go on there much.” 

“Your opener is trending too.” She pauses for a moment, so all Shane can hear is her light breathing on the phone. “He’s very fit.” 

Shane licks his lips. “Are you looking at pictures of him shirtless?”

“It’s trending!”

“Mom.”

“It’s the algorithm!” She laughs. “Hey, remember when we went to the Canadian Museum of History?”

“And dad knocked over all the mugs in the gift shop with his butt? Yeah.” 

She groans. “Oh God. Don’t remind me. If your album didn’t do as well as it did, we’d still be paying those off.” 

Shane laughs. After a moment, he quiets. “Why’d you bring this up, sorry?” 

“Oh.” He can hear her smile over the phone. “Rozanov looks like one of those Greek sculptures we saw.” 

Shane feels like pounding his forehead against the headboard. “Mom.” 

“You’re welcome to disagree.” 

Shane bites his lip, because he doesn’t. 

“I miss you, honey.”

“I miss you too,” Shane whispers. He means it more than she knows. 

A knock sounds on Shane’s door. He jolts. 

“What was that?” Yuna asks. 

“Nothing,” Shane says. “Just, someone’s at the door.” Not nothing, then. “I don’t know who,” he adds, except he does. 

“Don’t open,” Yuna says. “It’s probably some deranged fan.” When Shane doesn’t respond, the knock comes again. “Shane, I mean it. There are people who camp outside the hotel for you. Don’t open.” 

“Okay,” Shane says slowly. He leans in and checks the peephole. Ilya is fluffing up his hair. The fisheye-angle makes him look like a bobblehead. “I should go.”

“Call Rose.”

“They’re gone now, anyway,” he lies. He squints into the peephole again. Ilya is biting his thumbnail. 

“Call her anyway. Please.” 

“Okay. I love you.” 

“I love you.” 

Shane hangs up. When he leans into the peephole again, Ilya is walking away. 

Shane swings his door open. “Hey,” he whisper-yells. 

Ilya turns around. His lips are folded into a thin line. “Hi.” 

Shane runs a hand through his hair. “You want to come in?”

Ilya chews on his bottom lip. He seems to come to a decision, and squeezes past Shane to enter the room.

Shane shuts the door behind them softly. Despite having visited this same room earlier that day, Ilya paces the length of it, walking from corner to corner. He enters Shane’s sprawling bathroom, flicks on all the lights, and paces the length of it too. 

Finally, Ilya comes out of the bathroom, walks over to the bed they fucked in, and peels back the sheets. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Is he here?” Ilya asks, rather abruptly. 

Shane runs a hand through his hair. “Who?”

“The producer.” Ilya says it with a sneer.

“Oh.” Shane feels his own cheeks redden at the memory of when he first brought him up. “No. That - that was just something I said.” 

Shane thinks only after he says it that he might have laid his cards out too cleanly: That was just something I said. In the moment, it had felt integral: for Ilya to know Shane sifts through mountains of DMs, from fans and celebrities alike, begging for his time. Begging for a quick fuck or a stilted reply. 

He needed Ilya to know that people want Shane. Even though Shane doesn’t want any of them back.

Ilya flicks a stray curl off his forehead. “But I heard you speaking.” 

“I was on the phone.” Shane registers details he didn’t notice through the peephole: gray bags under Ilya’s eyes. He blinks slowly, as if even that motion requires effort. 

“With who?” Ilya’s tone is cutting. He winces after he says it. “Er. Sorry. You don’t have to say.” 

“It’s fine. It was my mom.”

Ilya’s face relaxes by a fraction. “Oh. I did not think of that.” 

Shane smiles despite himself. “Don’t you ever call your mom on the road?” 

Ilya shrugs his jacket off. He stares at the curtains behind Shane’s head, rather than at him. “I call my brother.”

“That’s really cool, that you have a brother.” Shane tries to catch Ilya’s gaze again. “I wish I had a sibling.” 

Ilya laughs. Shane isn’t sure what’s funny. “What?”

“No, just.” Ilya shrugs and laughs again. “Nothing.”

Shane licks his lips. “Your brother. Is he a lot like you?” 

“Hollander,” Ilya says slowly. He brings a hand up to Shane’s cheek, close without touching. “I did not turn down a thousand fucking dollars at TAO Chicago to talk to you about my brother.” 

His shutdown of any conversation that doesn’t veer into the sexual makes Shane prickle. He swats Ilya’s hand away. “That was your choice, so. You can skip the guiltrip.” 

Ilya’s face drops. “Wait.”

Shane crosses his arms. It feels important, suddenly, to make a point of this. He says something he’s not sure he means. “I think, maybe, you should leave.”

“I did not mean it like that,” Ilya says, slow and measured. 

Shane looks hard at Ilya’s sleep-addled face. His tone softens despite himself. “How did you mean it?”

“Like - well -” He gestures vaguely around the room. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know that.” Shane squints. He’s still sore from having Ilya’s full length inside of him. “If anything, you owe me,” he says, half-joking. 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees readily. Shane blinks, confused. “It was my fault I cancelled the job. Too lazy to go.” Shane sees not laziness but exhaustion in the soft lines of Ilya’s face. “I don’t want to talk about my brother. There is nothing to say.”

Shane unfurls his arms so they’re back against his sides. “Okay.” 

Ilya finally meets Shane’s eyes. The intensity of his gaze makes Shane falter. “You are much more interesting to me.” 

But now Shane is curious. “Is he back in Russia?”

Ilya groans. His eyes drop to the floor. 

“That’s not a hard question.”

“Yes,” Ilya deadpans. 

“Yes, it is a hard question?”

“Yes, he is back in Russia.” Ilya’s voice has gone monotone. 

“I think I’m just realizing,” Shane begins, gulping, “I don’t know much about you.” 

Ilya blinks a few times, his long eyelashes fluttering. “Ask me anything about music. Hm? I will answer.” 

“Okay.” Having Ilya’s full attention on him makes Shane’s skin feel fiery and bruised. “Are you the first in your family to pursue music?”

Ilya groans again, though this time he cuts himself off. “That’s not music. That’s family.”

“It’s both.” 

Ilya chews his lip. “Are you?”

Shane falters. “What?”

“The first.” 

Shane nods. “My dad works for the Treasury Board of Canada. My mom’s my manager, but all the travel’s not good for her. So she hired Rose.” 

Ilya smiles. “All the travel is not good for you either.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Shane meets Ilya’s gaze with a soft smile of his own. “Why’s that?”

“Is either jetlag or you are crazy. Because this big Russian you forgot you hired keeps showing up at your door. And you keep letting him in.” 

Shane chuckles. Ilya seems to brighten at the sound. “Hey,” Shane protests, after a solid few seconds of staring at Ilya’s lips. “You didn’t answer my question.” 

Ilya brings his finger close to Shane's cheek again. This time, when Ilya rests his fingers against Shane’s freckles, Shane lets him. “I have a problem, zaychik. I want to answer you.” He leans in, so his hot breath hits Shane’s nose. “But I also want to kiss you.” 

“Right.” Shane bites his lip to keep his smile from spreading obscenely wide. “Because it’s been so long since you kissed me.” 

Ilya huffs. “Hollander.” His voice is very deep and a tad shaky. “Do I have to beg?”

Shane wants to say it’s reverse psychology. It’s really his own desperation. He whispers, by Ilya’s right ear: “Please.” 

Ilya leans in and plants a slow, languid kiss to Shane’s lips. Shane forgets to close his eyes so he gets this view of Ilya’s hair, so close he can parse out the individual strands. Ilya is warm, and the skin at the nape of his neck is soft as a puppy’s. 

“I was gonna -” Shane starts and stops. Ilya leaves the minimum space required between their lips that allows Shane to speak. “I was gonna watch a movie.” 

Ilya chuckles, deep and throaty. This time Shane presses their lips together, a close-mouthed kiss he steals away quickly. “You kicking me out?” 

“No,” Shane whispers. “Do you want to watch?”

Ilya straightens up a bit. “I want to if you want to.”

“Okay.” Shane’s heart thunders in his chest. He turns the TV on and directs the flimsy remote to the Wes Anderson film he had pre-selected to watch tonight. Ilya settles on Shane’s bed as if it’s his second home, and Shane sidles in next to him. Ilya places a heavy arm across the pillows behind Shane’s back. His forearm seems to sear into Shane’s skin. 

They last roughly three minutes. Shane can see Ilya’s face from the corner of his eye, tilted so it’s obvious he’s looking at Shane and not the TV. Shane meets his gaze and then Ilya is on him again, kissing ever so slowly. 

Ilya reaches up to grab Shane’s cheek. Shane threads his fingers into Ilya’s hair. Shane tugs the strands experimentally. Ilya groans into his mouth. When Ilya slips his tongue past Shane’s lips, Shane moans, threadier than he’d like. Ilya presses his lips deeper against Shane’s, as if he could push far enough and swallow Shane’s sounds before they come. 

Ilya kissing Shane on the lips turns into Ilya kissing Shane on the neck, and then Ilya veers so far down that he’s pecking Shane’s stomach. Eventually he lays his head down there, his forehead pressed into Shane’s lap. 

Shane takes the moment to refocus on the TV. Characters he does not recognize speak about a conflict he wasn’t paying attention to. But it’s not music, and it’s not the ethical implications of sleeping with your co-worker, so it soothes Shane’s mind to focus on it nonetheless. 

Hardly five minutes pass before a soft, breathy sound escapes Ilya’s lips. Shane can feel the vibration from his lap: Ilya is snoring. 

Shane chews on his lip. Ilya’s body atop his skin is heavy, his own personal weighted blanket. He figures Ilya might rouse by the end of the movie, so Shane leans back, careful not to move his hips, and watches.

By the time the credits roll, Ilya hasn’t so much as flinched. As slowly as Shane can, he shimmies his way off the side of the bed, slipping his body out from under Ilya’s head. Ilya’s forehead thumps against the mattress when Shane finally stands, and he winces preemptively, but Ilya just keeps snoring. 

Shane flosses and brushes his teeth. He washes his face and applies moisturizer. Finally, with little else to do, he packs his toiletries into his suitcase for the flight to New York, despite the fact that he’ll need to take them back out again in the morning. 

If there was ever a time to wake Ilya up, it would be now. 

He looks smaller like this, curled up on his side, his arms packed into his own chest as if to shield himself from a hard blow. His snores have devolved into airy breaths. Shane can sleep through those sounds, he thinks, if he needs to.

He swallows down the lump in his throat and slides into bed opposite Ilya. Ilya might be angry, come morning: Why didn’t you wake me up? 

What can Shane say? That the bags under his eyes made Shane pause? That his small breaths made Shane falter? That after years of sleeping on his own, he prefers to be packed into a tight corner like this, in his own bed that he paid for with his own album sales, if it means proximity to Ilya’s sleeping heat across the mattress? 

If Ilya asks, he’ll say he fell asleep too. Around when you did, yeah, I don’t really remember. 

Shane flicks the lamp off and hikes the blanket up over his shoulder. He flips over and throws it more securely over Ilya too. He risks waking Ilya to tuck the blanket underneath his back, so it’s as tight around him as a cocoon. 

To the sound of Ilya’s breathing and the low buzz of traffic on Lake Shore Drive, Shane falls asleep. 

Chapter End Notes

It's so fun for me to write Hollanov in different contexts! What did you think of their first time, how they're feeling towards each other, etc?

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

NEW YORK CITY

Camila bumps Shane’s shoulder during rehearsal. 

His dancers are in loungewear, hoodies with only one arm through the sleeves, sweatpants that lay artfully loose on their hips. Shane is wearing a blue button-up that closes in too tight around his throat. He likes to think that is what’s making him feel awkward and clumsy with his footwork. But he always feels that way when they practice a dance number. 

All to say, when Shane’s head dancer bumps his shoulder, he expects another note on his movements: loosen your hips, roll your neck, feel the music. 

Instead, she says: “You should come out with us tonight.” 

Shane chuckles. “Right. More dancing is what I need.” 

She grins at him. Her teeth are perfectly straight and white. “Hey, you’re doing great.” She scratches the back of her neck. “I just wanted to extend the offer. Rozanov’s performing tonight at the Avant Gardner, and a few of the dancers are coming out.” 

Shane’s eye twitches. “Oh?”

“Yeah. He said he’ll pull some strings, get us a table.”

Camila stares at something over Shane’s shoulder. Shane follows her gaze and finds Ilya chatting animatedly with the lighting technician across the stage, his hair fluffy and unkempt - a little like he looked when Shane woke him up the next morning. 

“He’s really just a teddy bear,” Camila continues.

Shane stares at her forehead for so long, he thinks it might implode. 

“He has this tough guy exterior. But if you actually talk to him, he’s really nice.” 

Shane forces a smile. “Yeah. I have talked to him, but.” 

“Right.” She tilts her head, considering. “If you’re really feeling generous,” she says, voice soft and feminine, “maybe you could wingman? Just, I dunno. See if he’s interested.” 

“In you?” Shane clarifies, then winces. “Er - yeah. I can.” Shane inhales a labored breath. “What’s not to like, you know?” 

“Aw, Shane.” She reaches up to stroke Shane’s cheek. He flinches slightly when her cold fingers touch him. “Anyways, I just wanted you to know you’re always invited. I’d kill to spend a night out with you.” She gestures to the rest of the dancers stretching behind them. “We all agree that you’re, like, our favorite artist we’ve ever toured with.” 

“Thanks.”

She addresses the crowd on stage. “We’re gonna break for lunch, okay?”

Shane walks towards his dressing room. He takes the path that passes by the lighting booth. When he walks by Ilya, he doesn’t make eye contact, but he does brush their knuckles together. It’s rough enough that Shane can hear Ilya’s breath hitch. Ilya trails off mid-sentence. 

After a moment of waiting in the wings, Shane hears footsteps. 

Ilya hardly opens his mouth before Shane says: “Dressing room.”

Shane walks towards the door. After a few beats, he hears heavy footsteps behind him. Shane opens his door, shuts it, and waits ten seconds. He doesn’t flick the light on, so when Ilya knocks, and Shane opens the door and yanks him in, he can hardly make out Ilya’s shadow. 

Ilya clears his throat. “You will murder me?” 

“Maybe,” Shane says. Ilya feels his way up Shane’s arms to grab onto his chin, gripping it. Shane lets his face be maneuvered. 

“I want to see you,” Ilya murmurs. 

“Too bad,” Shane breathes. Ilya pulls Shane in by his chin and kisses him. He misses Shane’s lips and brushes against Shane’s nose instead, and then he moves lower and overadjusts, so his tongue prods Shane’s chin. Ilya chuckles and Shane smiles and then Shane plants a wet kiss against Ilya’s lips, on target this time.

They kiss in the darkness. Time passes oddly with no light; the wet sounds of their lips fill the room instead. Ilya is more vocal now than he was even last night, groaning and mumbling against Shane’s lips. His hands travel underneath Shane’s overly formal shirt, his fingers fiddling with Shane’s buttons. It makes him thankful he wore it, even if he looked like a choir boy while dancing. 

Shane breaks the kiss when Ilya’s hands travel to his belt buckle. 

“Sorry,” Ilya says. 

“No, no.” Shane feels for the light switch on the wall. When it turns on, Ilya winces and covers his eyes. Shane, used to the flashes from paparazzi, doesn’t. “We just - shouldn’t, probably. Here.” 

Ilya’s eyes rake down Shane’s body and back up to his face. There’s something hungry in Ilya’s eyes, so Shane walks over to the makeup mirror and pieces it together: His lips are swollen. His cheeks are red, his freckles as stark as paint splatters on his cheeks. The collar of his shirt is unbuttoned and splayed wide, exposing the dip of his collarbone.

Shane turns back to Ilya, and because he can, undoes another button. Ilya takes a step closer. Shane holds a hand up.

“How come I didn’t get an invite to Avant Gardner?” 

Ilya’s eyebrows draw in. “You are joking if you think they can afford you.”

Something within Shane preens, despite Ilya’s missing the point. Shane is something expensive, luxurious. Rare. 

“I don’t mean to perform. I mean, you invited all my female dancers. And Camila.” He tries for an indifferent tone. It comes out monotone. 

“I -” Ilya cuts himself off and chuckles. “Is that what she told you?”

“And that you’re a ‘teddy bear.’” Shane says it with a tight, stiff smile. 

Ilya rubs circles into his forehead with his forefinger. “She asked about my plans tonight. I said, I am working. She said where, I answered.” He shrugs. “She invited herself.” 

“You’re getting them a table, though.” 

Ilya presses his lips together to keep from smiling. “I did this thing, which you may not know. Because I never do in front of you. I lie.” 

Shane licks his lips. “If you said you’re getting them a table, get them a table.” 

Ilya tilts his head confusedly. “That is why you have this look, like you are setting me on fire with your eyes? Because I am not getting them a table?” 

Shane picks at his shirt sleeves. “I’m just saying. Do what you want.” 

“Is that what you’re saying?” 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t - honestly, I don’t know. I’m not making sense.” He stills. Weakly, he says, “I wish you weren’t busy tonight.” 

Ilya offers him a small smile. “Me too.” 

“Then cancel,” Shane says, before he can stop himself. 

Ilya doesn’t respond right away. Shane withers with each second that passes. “It’s good money.” 

“Right.” Shane scratches the back of his neck. “It’s just, you seem pretty tired, still.” 

“I am always tired.” 

Shane chews on his lip. “Then wouldn’t it be good to relax for a night?” 

“Is that what we do?” Ilya smirks. “Relax?”

Shane groans. “Okay. Fine. Have fun tonight."

Ilya stares at him hard. “Do you want me to tell her?” 

“Who?” 

“Camila.” 

“What?”

“That we’re…” Ilya shrugs. “That we are fucking.” 

It’s such a dirty word to describe it. Maybe it’s the only one that fits. “No,” Shane hisses. “Of course not.” 

“Or you can tell her,” Ilya says. “I don’t mind.” 

“Rozanov. Is it not glaringly obvious no one can know? I mean, we’re actively on tour. You’d get fired. I’d be… I dunno. Disciplined. And if the label knew…” Shane shudders and adjusts his shirt cuffs again. 

Ilya pauses, as if any of this is new information. “Your staff. Do they know you are gay?” 

“Yes. Everyone knows.”

He came out years ago. He writes lyrics using “you,” but if he didn’t, the fans know he’d use “him.” 

“Does anyone know you… like men?” Shane asks, timid. 

“Yes,” Ilya says. “I have said I like both. An interview, somewhere. People like to forget this, but.” 

Shane picks at his fingernail. “Have you ever been with a man?” 

“You.” 

“Besides me.” 

Ilya smirks. “Trick question.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

“You don’t actually want to know.” 

“I’m just curious.” 

“Yes,” Ilya says finally. 

“A lot of them?” 

“Define ‘a lot.’”

Shane’s face drops. He tries to hide it, but he’s too late. 

Ilya just laughs. “One other. Back in Russia.” His smile dulls to a small one. “But you must know, I am no nun.” 

“Just one other,” Shane echoes. He bites his lip. It comes out anyway. “Who?”

“Jesus, Shane,” Ilya says, chuckling. “You’re as bad as I am.” 

At the same time, Shane whispers, “Sorry. Forget I asked.” Then he scrunches his nose up. “You’re not bad at all. You’re, like, so relaxed about these things.” 

“Yes. Every time Matthew grabs you for the lift, I want to strangle him.” Ilya smiles, all teeth. “Relaxed.” 

Shane swipes at Ilya’s arm lightly on behalf of his dancer; Ilya dodges the move deftly and laughs. 

After a moment, Shane meets Ilya’s eyes. They’re so wide and perceptive that he stares down at Ilya’s neck instead, counting the moles there.

“I know, um, that we can see other people. I mean, that’s what casual is.” Shane sneaks a look at Ilya’s face: perfectly neutral. Shane wrings his fingers. “I’d just prefer not to know. I think.” 

Ilya blinks slowly. 

“And for you to get tested.” Shane gulps, and adds, though he doesn’t foresee including anyone else in his evenings: “I will too.” 

Ilya nods. “I’d want to know.” 

Shane squints. “If I… with someone else?”

“Yes. I’d want to know.” Ilya leans back against Shane’s dresser. “Simple things. His name, his address, has he always had a death wish?” 

Shane chortles and shoves Ilya’s shoulder half-heartedly. Ilya grins back at him, wide and satisfied. “Funny.” 

“Kidding,” Ilya sing-songs. “I am ‘relaxed,’ remember?” 

Shane rolls his eyes. “Right. Don’t jump Matthew tonight, okay? He’s doing his job.”  

Ilya straightens up from the dresser. It’s past lunch. Shane wishes he could stop time and count Ilya’s eyelashes, compare the lines of their palms, and feel Ilya’s lips on his neck all at once. 

Instead, Shane reaches for the door. Behind him, Ilya cracks his knuckles. “Only because you asked so nicely.” 

—— 

Shane spots Ilya watching from the wings during the encore. Before he can overthink it, he makes a pulling gesture with his hands. 

Ilya, still sweat-soaked from shaking the stage with the jumps of his opening set, looks behind him, as if Shane could be pointing to anyone else. 

Shane gestures again, more frantically. Ilya’s eyes widen. He trots out onstage rather meekly, and the crowd erupts. Their screams seemed impossible to surpass before Ilya comes out, but now that he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Shane, the entire room seems to rumble. 

Ilya has his small smile on, a genuine one that brightens his entire face. 

Shane closes his eyes to sing the final line. “Before the moment’s gone,” he sings, the microphone moist from sweat in his palm. When he opens his eyes, the stage lights seem to block out everything through the blur: his fans, his dancers, Hayden with his drumset. But not Ilya: Ilya’s shadow is clear and bright. He’s shifting his weight foot-to-foot, shimmying to the beat. Shane sings, and Ilya dances.

Shane is meant to stare out into the audience at the final note, so he does. But he can see, in the corner of his eye, that Ilya is looking at him instead. 

----

The ringing is so piercing, it cuts through Shane’s white-noise machine and his sleep. It rouses him from a dream of he and his mom shopping for clothes, of all things. 

Shane fumbles for his phone and sees it’s nearly four in the morning. The screen lights up: Some 718-number. New York City area code, which tracks, as he was until now sleeping soundly in a Manhattan hotel room larger than his living room. Surely it’s spam. 

Shane answers anyway.

He waits for someone on the other line to speak, just in case it’s a stalker. 

All Shane hears, for many long moments, is heavy breathing. Then, “Hollander?”

Shane sits up in bed. “Yes,” Shane says slowly. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” comes Ilya’s sleep-addled, slightly irritated voice. “You wouldn’t happen to be near Brooklyn, hm? Eighty-third… Pre-sink? What the hell is…” A quieter, indistinguishable voice sounds out. “Precinct,” Ilya corrects. 

Shane rips the blanket off his legs. “You’re in jail?”

There is a pregnant pause. “A little.”

“What the fuck?” Shane tugs his pajama pants off and fits himself into his jeans. 

“They say I can leave, but only if someone comes to get me.” Ilya raises his voice, then. “I tried to tell them I only act drunk at these things. But no. They say, ‘you are drunk.’” Ilya scoffs. “I tell them, you are drunk.” 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “Don’t tell a police officer they’re drunk. Don’t - don’t even speak to them. You have the right to remain silent.”

“The what to what?”

Shane winces. “Nothing. I’ll - I’ll come, okay? Where are you?”

“This is stupid.” Ilya scoffs on the other line. “I did not want to call you.” 

“Great,” Shane says tightly. 

“Rose wouldn’t pick up.” 

Shane’s chest stings. He places a palm flat against it. “Just tell me where you are.” 

“I said it. Are you making fun of my pronunciation?” The word comes out odd. Prow-nun-see-nation.

“Which number precinct? Eighty… eighty what?”

“Three.” 

“Okay. Okay.” Shane takes a few deep breaths that strangle more than calm him. He can take a rental car from the hotel lobby. He can be there in thirty minutes. He can bail Ilya out, if it comes down to it. He can threaten to kill him for getting into this mess in the first place. 

“The lady is telling me I have to hang up now.” 

“Okay.” Shane presses his lips together. “I’m gonna be there soon.”

There’s rustling on the other end. “You can wake Rose, if you prefer. If you are worried about how it looks.” 

“I’m not worried about how it looks,” Shane hisses. “Stay put. Don’t talk to anyone.” 

“Okay.” And then the line goes dead. 

The drive to Precinct 83 is a blur. Shane double parks on a side street and abandons the car with its hazards on. He can think of about three hundred reasons why he shouldn’t be here, but an image flashes of Ilya dragged into a cell, handcuffed and alone, is reason enough to stay. 

He stumbles into the station and speaks hurriedly to the man working the front desk. “I’m here for Rozanov. Um - Ilya Rozanov. What’s he being charged with?”

The man checks his desktop computer lazily. He moves like a sloth and looks like one too. “There are no charges against Mister Rozanov at this time.” 

Shane’s eyebrows draw in. “What?”

“He was arrested on suspicion of violent assault. We have since reviewed the security footage. He’s free to go.”

Shane struggles to follow. “Then why was he brought here in the first place, sorry?”

“On suspicion. Of violent assault.” Shane flares at the irritation in the man’s voice. “You can come with me.”

Shane follows him through a narrow passageway. He spots Ilya between the metal bars of a holding cell, a smudge of dried blood on his chin.

“You should know,” the officer tells Shane, “it took three of our guys to shove him into the holding cell.”

“Are you saying,” Ilya drawls, his head lolling where he tries to hold it up, “I am fat?”

Shane pointedly ignores him. He turns to the officer. “What happened, exactly?” 

“We responded to a call of a violent altercation at Avant Gardner. Sources at the scene led us to believe that Mister Roz…” The man hardly attempts to finish Ilya’s name. “...Was the initial aggressor. Just now, we reviewed security footage that told a different story, so.” He gestures mutedly towards the holding cell with mild disdain. “He’s free to be released into your care.”

Shane’s care. “Alright. Um. Sorry about all this.”

The officer seems to soften, just slightly, at Shane’s words. Shane wonders if perhaps he recognizes him. “Some people are just trouble, son.”

Shane chews on his lip the entire way through the man releasing Ilya from the cell. He looks fine, physically, save for the redness on his chin, but where his sleeves drift up Shane notices thin wires of redness encircling each of his pale wrists. His eye bags are particularly pronounced.

Ilya signs something that Shane thinks sounds suspiciously like an agreement not to sue, and Shane attempts desperately not to notice pairs of curious eyes on his bare, tired face. He almost asks Ilya for his sunglasses, just to conceal himself. He manages to quell his anxiety enough not to. 

Shane leaves the station first. Ilya follows a few paces behind. Shane unlocks the rental car, fitting himself into the driver’s seat. Ilya opens the passenger’s side door and slams it shut. 

Shane’s hazards are still on, a dull, rhythmic ticking like a bomb about to blow. His fingers flex and fold on the steering wheel. The joints make small cracking noises. 

Finally, Ilya clears his throat. “Do you know how to drive?”

Shane shoots him a scathing look. “Fuck off.” 

“We are not moving, so.” Ilya sits back into the seat. He uses his right hand to rub circles into the skin of his left wrist. “I thought I would ask.” 

“Are you okay?” It comes out sharper than Shane intends. 

“Ah.” Ilya smiles. It’s plasticky, as if he were giving an interview. “So this is what you look like when you are mad.” 

“What the hell happened? Did they handcuff you?”

Ilya stops rubbing his wrist. He sits on his fingers instead. “We are blocking traffic.” 

Shane sighs, but one glance in the rearview mirror reveals Ilya is right. Reluctantly, Shane flicks the hazards on and begins the winding journey from Brooklyn back to their Manhattan hotel. 

At a red light, Ilya mutters, “Yes.” 

“Yes what?”

“Yes, they did handcuff me.” 

Shane winces. “Jesus Christ.” He turns to look at Ilya in the passenger’s seat. Behind them, a car honks, and Shane jumps. He notices the green light and presses the gas. “Is it all over Twitter?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

“Oh, you know. I was in jail.”

It takes everything within Shane to stay quiet the rest of the ride. He parks in the underground parking garage for the hotel and takes out his phone. He opens Twitter and sees it: ROZANOV trending. 

“Fuck.”

“Fuck what?” Ilya leans over the center console, and together, they watch the first video that pops up: Ilya behind his DJ booth, a cigarette behind his ear and headphones clamped around his neck. The camera is shaky, but it captures a man, no younger than forty, shoving aside a few nameless women to reach for Ilya’s equipment.

Ilya, for his part, pushes the man’s hands away rather gently. The second time they come up, though, they wrap around a glass jar on the booth stand. The Ilya in the video twists to turn towards the man, and Shane pauses the video reflexively.

“Is that a tip jar?”

Ilya nods. 

“Rozanov,” Shane starts, “your songs get millions of streams. The hell do you need a tip jar for?”

“It’s ironic,” Ilya says. 

“Right.” Shane drums his fingers impatiently on the rim of the phone. “You swung at a man to save, what, thirty bucks?” 

“That is not why I swung,” Ilya says coldly. “It was the principle. And, it was at least one hundred.” Ilya gestures to the screen, petulant. “Press play.”

Shane does. The man grabs Ilya’s tip jar, and then he reaches over to try to snag one of Ilya’s two customized, unreasonably expensive mixers. When his fingers wrap around the equipment, Ilya shoves him back. The man swings at Ilya, and Ilya dodges the harshest path of the swing but still gets nicked in the chin. 

He swings on the man and it lands perfectly. It’s almost satisfying. The man is out cold, the crowd erupts, and the video turns to black.

Before Shane can get a word in, the next video autoplays: Paparazzi capturing Ilya being handcuffed in the streets. 

“Fuck,” Shane mutters. He feels dizzy, suddenly.

“What?” Ilya pushes the phone away. “They admitted it. They made a mistake, hm? It was… in defense. Whatever they say in the US.” 

“Self-defense,” Shane fills in, and then his head falls against the steering wheel, wincing. 

“Hollander, you are having a panic attack.” Ilya reaches a hand up to stroke Shane’s shoulder. “Charges are dropped. What’s the problem?”

“The video. The - the everything.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “God. Everything.” 

“What?”

Shane turns to him. Ilya’s eyes widen, and it only takes one blink for Shane to realize why: Shane can feel his own eyes glistening with unshed tears.

Ilya gulps. “Hollander -”

“Not here.” Shane pops the driver’s side door open and begins a brisk walk through the hotel lobby. Ilya follows. 

There is no one else in the elevator, but when Shane presses the button for his floor, Ilya follows him off it unthinkingly. Shane’s hands tremble as he presses his key card to the handle. Inside, his sheets are rumpled and his pajamas scattered across the floor, like a quick-change backstage gone awry.

“Hollander.” Ilya gestures vaguely as Shane paces the length of the room. 

“I’m worried,” Shane begins, his voice weak, “they’re gonna fire you.”

Ilya’s eyebrows draw in. “‘They’? The club?”

“No, no.” Shane attempts another lap of pacing. Ilya grabs him by his upper arm, pinning him in place. “My label.” 

“What?” Ilya loosens his grip and runs a soothing thumb over where he held it hardest. “From the tour, you mean?”

Shane nods. “They’re very strict about my image. These photos, the fight - it’d be viewed as a blot on my reputation, to be associated. Everything needs to be perfect.” He recounts an internal marketing presentation he’d been forced to sign off on about his image. “‘Sensual, not provocative,’” he quotes. “‘Bold, not controversial. Sweet, not submissive.’” 

Ilya’s lips twitch upwards at the last word. “And, what, me getting handcuffed on the sidewalk is not sweet?”

Shane glares at Ilya, who drops his playful smirk. “I’m serious.” 

“I know you are. But it’s your tour, is it not? Isn’t it up to you?”

Shane chews on his thumbnail. “No. No way. I mean, everything needs their approval. My album, the cover art, the stage props. The outfits I wear onstage.” 

“Are they even allowed to replace me now?” Ilya scratches his head. “I thought I signed something.” 

“You did sign something, and it probably said you’re at liberty to be let go at a moment’s notice.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut. 

“I don’t think it would say that. Unless it said ‘do not fuck Shane Hollander,’ I’m fine.” 

Shane ignores the comment. “Didn’t your lawyer explain it to you?”

Ilya laughs, a full and unbridled one. “My lawyer. Right. My ‘team’ is one friend from Russia who probably spilled borscht on the contract before approving it.” 

“Fuck, fuck.” Shane attempts to tug himself out of Ilya’s hold to pace again. Ilya keeps him still. 

“So, what - that’s what this is about? You are scared I’ll get fired?”

Shane hears the unsaid: Is losing me what you’re so upset about? “Yeah,” he whispers. 

Ilya bites his lip. “Maybe they did not notice.” 

At that moment, Ilya’s phone buzzes. Shane jumps to check it first, and Ilya lets him. It’s a meeting invite for the morning, four hours from now, sent by INTERSCOPE RECORDS Management. Titled: “Incident Review.”

Shane winces. Ilya shrugs. “That doesn’t sound too bad?”

Shane squints at the invite. “That can’t be right. We’re supposed to be on a flight to London then.” 

He checks his own phone. He opens email and loads it three separate times, but no new notifications crop up. 

“Shane,” Ilya says delicately, and his voice makes Shane want to crumble, “you’re not on the invite.” 

Shane locks his phone. “Fuck.” 

“It’s okay. Hm? Don’t worry. My agent, Svetlana - she is on here. She will make a case for me.” Ilya strokes his own lightly scratched chin as if lost in thought. “She’ll be awake now. Moscow time. She doesn’t use email, though, and she might not have a phone now. Last time we called it was broken. But -“ 

“Fuck it,” Shane interrupts. “I’m joining that call.” 

“And miss your own show?” Ilya shakes his head. “No way.” 

Shane stops himself just short of saying I’m not leaving without you. “I won’t miss it,” he says instead. “I’ll join the call and then whatever happens, I’ll take a later flight.” 

“And miss soundcheck?” 

Shane gulps. “It’s been done before.” 

“By you?” 

Ilya’s mildly star-struck face makes it clear he already knows the answer. “Well.” Shane can feel his entire face flush. “No.” 

Ilya dons a small smile that stretches over his entire face. “You like me,” he teases, raising his eyebrows. 

“Fuck you.” 

Ilya’s hands find their way to Shane’s waist. “Can be arranged.”

Shane strokes Ilya’s wrists, soothing the redness there. “We have four hours until you could be out of a job.” 

“I heard four hours.” Ilya grins, a Cheshire one. “Is more than enough.” 

Shane’s breath comes out in short bursts. “Isn’t there something better we should be doing?”

Ilya tilts his head. He leans in and kisses the corner of Shane’s lips, which twitch and burn underneath Ilya’s skin. “If I think of anything better,” he whispers, “you’ll be the first to know.”

Ilya’s hand travels from Shane’s waist to his cheek, cupping it. Shane reaches up to thumb at the thin cut on Ilya’s chin. 

“But,” Ilya continues, his blue-green eyes flickering from Shane’s lips up to the crease of his brow, “there is no one better.”

Shane might be weak. But he feels strong, in a way, when Ilya looks at him like he’s a prize: the same far-off look he gets when he watches Shane sing from his perch backstage. 

Shane lets his eyes flutter shut. Ilya’s pink lips move forward and plant themselves onto Shane’s. Ilya slips his tongue in right away, and Shane yelps around the intrusion. Ilya reaches his hands up to cradle Shane’s cheeks so hard he thinks they might bruise. With the force of his face against Shane’s lips, Ilya pushes Shane back and back until his calves hit the foot of the bed and he collapses onto the rumpled sheets. 

Shane unbuttons his own jeans while Ilya undoes his fly. They both seem to notice this at the same time, so their hands swap: Ilya’s pale fingers fumbling with Shane’s pants, and Shane’s hand brushing Ilya’s thickening cock through his jeans as he yanks them down. 

When both their pants are off, Ilya leans down and kisses Shane’s collarbone. He whispers into it, “Krasivyy.” 

“What?” Shane mutters. 

“Beautiful.” Ilya kisses the line of Shane’s jaw. “Fucking beautiful. Like the sky.” 

It might be some Russian translation. Shane gets the gist. “I’m gonna be really fucking mad at you if you get yourself fired, okay?” 

Ilya doesn’t respond, just leans over Shane on the bed, arms braced on either side of Shane’s head, and slips his tongue into Shane’s mouth again. Ilya moans into it, as if Shane’s taste is a delicacy.

Still, Shane can’t leave it alone. He taps Ilya’s mole-dusted throat. “Okay?” 

Ilya pulls away, though a strand of saliva connects his top lip with Shane’s bottom one. “You like fucking me that much?”

Ilya said all the words - he just added an extra. You like me that much? 

Shane uses this particular angle of Ilya dangling over him to brush a golden wisp of hair out of his line of sight. “Maybe.” 

Ilya leans down and kisses Shane’s forehead. His necklace, a golden cross, slips past Shane’s neck and into his hair. “I only think of you.”  

Again, Shane wonders: Is it a Russian translation? But then Ilya’s hands are back on his cheeks, and his tongue is back in Shane’s mouth, and his beautiful groans fill the room as if he were already inside Shane when in actuality their boxers are still on. 

Ilya makes quick work of taking Shane’s off. Shane makes grabby hands at Ilya’s shirt until it’s up and over his head. Ilya helps Shane out of his, undoing each of the buttons, though Ilya’s fingers have gone shaky in a way Shane can’t help but smile at. 

When they’re both naked, Ilya runs his hands along Shane’s ribs. They settle by his thighs, squeezing the tanned flesh there. Ilya leans down, laps at Shane’s inner thigh with his pink tongue, and bites it. 

“Jesus,” Shane says, and hopes it covers up the way his cock jumps. “What is it with you and biting?” 

Ilya shrugs, the muscles under his skin jumping. He moves forward to press a chaste kiss to the head of Shane’s cock. “I want to eat you.” 

Shane mumbles something incoherent when Ilya takes him into his mouth. Ilya pulls back to lob a wad of spit on the top of Shane’s shaft, then sinks his mouth down onto it. Shane’s fingers wind their way into Ilya’s hair, tugging hard.

He yanks Ilya’s hair so fervently that at one point, he pulls Ilya clean off his cock. 

“Ow.” Ilya reaches up to wipe his own drool off his chin, but thinks better of it and rubs his chin against Shane’s hipbone instead. 

“Sorry,” Shane mutters. He scrunches his nose up at the saliva on his hips. 

“You’re funny.” One of Ilya’s hands travels beneath Shane’s hip to pull at the supple skin of his ass. “Is it open for business?” 

Shane swats him. “Fuck off. It’s not an ‘it.’” 

Ilya takes both hands off Shane to hold them up in surrender. Shane whines a little at the loss. “I am trying to see if you want to be fucked tonight, Hollander. It’s okay if no.” 

Shane half-rolls his eyes. He cuts the movement off midway to reach for Ilya’s shoulders, dragging him closer. “Okay. Yes. It’s open for business.” 

Ilya grins against Shane’s lips. “Zaychik. You are sweet.” 

Most of the time, Shane thinks of himself as neurotic, awkward, and perhaps a bit vain. But maybe he is sweet. Maybe he is funny. Maybe he is all these words Ilya ascribes to him as if doling out prescriptions at a pharmacy. 

Ilya’s head has traveled between Shane’s legs. He presses a close-mouthed kiss against Shane’s hole. “You want this how much?” 

Shane resists the urge to snap back, and he lets the word coat his soul. He is sweet. So he replies, breathy and honest: “So much.” 

Ilya kisses his hole again. “Me too,” he says. One of his hands reaches up to thread his fingers with Shane’s. “Me too.” 

Ilya opens Shane up with his tongue to start, and then slips his fingers inside. Every once in a while he abandons Shane’s hole to press a kiss to the head of his cock, teasing. But also, Shane thinks, tender. 

Ilya brings the head of his cock against Shane’s hole, making contact once. He looks down at Shane, assessing. Shane nods. 

Ilya pushes himself inside. Shane feels it in waves, as inch by inch Ilya disappears inside of him. Halfway through, Shane winces, the most minuscule upturn of his lips. 

Ilya stops and leans down, the movement jostling his own cock inside Shane slightly. “Okay?” 

“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.” 

Ilya pets Shane’s hair. “Hey. No sorry.” He kisses Shane, tongue-first but somehow with more feeling than lust, and fits himself fully inside. 

Ilya uses each of his hands to pin Shane’s wrists against the bed, on either side of his head. He seems to rethink the motion and lifts them. 

“No,” Shane says. 

“Hm?”

Shane gulps and fights to maintain eye contact. “I liked that.” 

Ilya grins. “Oh.” He pins Shane’s hands against the mattress once more, firmly this time. Shane couldn’t move his arms if he tried. “I wish I had my handcuffs, still. You’d like that, huh.” 

With no other defense, Shane jostles his own hips, creating friction that has Ilya emitting a startled sound. “Yeah,” he says, smiling. Because what good are secrets now. “I would.” 

Ilya’s eyes light up, and he begins thrusting in full. His hips smack against Shane’s ass and Shane travels farther up the bed each time, like Ilya is dead set on inventing a new form of public transit. Ilya groans into the air, making sounds for the both of them, which gives Shane some small permission to stop muffling his own moans: these throaty keens, breathier and higher than he’s ever made before.  

Ilya leans down while they’re fucking, bringing the crown of his head down to where one of Shane’s hands are pinned against the mattress. He gives Shane a knowing look, and Shane takes it and runs, grabbing a fistful of Ilya’s curls and yanking them so hard Ilya’s neck jolts. 

But he moans too, so Shane finds another handful of hair and twists that too. Ilya fits so well within him, his body opening up to let Ilya inside. At the same time, Ilya’s shoulders block out the beginnings of sun rising behind the curtains, a shield made just for him. 

Except, of course, Ilya is not just for him. 

Ilya makes a choked off sound into Shane’s ear. Shane twists against Ilya’s grip and finds that it’s loosened. It’s the only warning Shane gets before Ilya pulls out, his arms shaky where they hold himself up. 

Shane says, “On me.” 

Ilya comes onto Shane’s stomach. His right arm gives out, but he catches himself, panting. Then he’s right back down to Shane’s cock, taking him in until the head hits the back of his throat. He gags and then makes up for it. His hands, no longer around Shane’s wrists, stroke instead at his cock and his inner thigh. 

Shane comes with a whine into Ilya’s mouth. Ilya pulls off and swallows, though some come dribbles from his lips down the wound on his chin. 

Unthinkingly, Shane drags a finger through Ilya’s come on his stomach and brings it to his lips. 

“Fuck,” Ilya says. He climbs back over Shane, dipping two fingers into his own come. Ilya dangles his fingers in the air above Shane’s mouth. “Open,” Ilya says, softly.

So Shane does: he parts his lips, his tongue laying patiently within, as come drips from Ilya’s fingers into his mouth. Ilya scoops some more by Shane’s belly button and does it again. When Shane closes his mouth to swallow, an extra drop hits his freckled cheek. Ilya smiles and licks it off his skin. 

Despite his stickiness, Shane lets himself be tugged flush against Ilya, their foreheads knocking together. Ilya pulls Shane in so his cheek rests on Ilya’s chest and their hipbones touch. He strokes a hand through Shane’s brown locks. 

“I feel bad I came first,” Ilya says, after a while. 

“Don’t feel bad.” 

“I tried to wait,” he continues. “I couldn’t help it.” 

Shane smiles softly. “Couldn’t help it,” he echoes, prideful. 

Ilya grins. “You, though. You must have a thing for bald guys.” 

“Oh, shut it,” Shane says, not meaning it. He strokes Ilya’s curls gently now, extending an olive branch. “You liked that.” 

Ilya thumbs at the dip in Shane’s collarbone. “Yes.” 

They resume a moment of silence, punctuated by Shane resting his cheek back on Ilya’s chest. Ilya’s warm breaths hit the back of Shane’s neck, where goosebumps stand at attention. Eventually, Shane asks: “Were you a DJ back in Russia?” 

Ilya’s thumb stills. “A bit.” 

“A bit,” Shane repeats. “What does that mean?” 

“I always wanted to. But my father -“ He cuts himself off and chuckles. “Anyway. Yes, is your answer.” 

“But your father what?” Shane props his head up on one elbow. 

“Ah.” Ilya gestures to their bodies. “Can we not talk about him?” 

Shane blinks. “Okay. Well, my mom was worried about me becoming a singer. That I’d be too anxious, not ready for the spotlight.” 

“You are great in the spotlight.” 

Shane smiles. “Thanks. Though she’s right, in a way.” He reaches for Ilya’s gold necklace, playing with its weight in his fingers. “Does your mom ever worry about you? You know, pursuing this path?” 

Ilya stares up at the ceiling. At first, Shane thinks he’s working himself up to answer honestly - to reveal something, anything, about his childhood. Seconds pass and Shane wonders if he’s even going to answer at all.

“Or your dad,” Shane supplies. “Or - I know you said you had a brother.” 

“To worry you have to care,” Ilya says offhandedly. “Anyway.” 

“Do they…” Ilya takes hold of his necklace and Shane relinquishes control, pulling his hand to his side instead. “Do you miss them a lot? When you’re touring?” 

Ilya fondles his necklace. His eyes have gone hazy. “My mother.” 

Shane nods. “Me too.” 

Ilya strokes Shane’s back with his right hand as the knuckles of his left brush his cheekbone. “Enough of this. I want to hold you.” 

“We can’t miss the meeting.” 

“I know,” Ilya says. He leans over Shane to peek at the alarm clock. “We did not fuck for four hours, you know.” 

Shane grins despite himself. “You wish you could last that long.” 

“Negodnik,” Ilya mutters. “Rascal. Let’s sleep while we can. I will set an alarm.” 

“I will set an alarm.” Shane reaches over the nightstand for his phone. “You don’t exactly have a track record of waking up on time.” 

“My record is perfect.” Ilya thumbs at Shane’s waist where the cream bedsheets have pooled. “All charges dropped.” 

“Oh God.” Shane winces. 

“Hey.” Ilya pulls the sheets higher up Shane’s body, until they cover his chest. “Don’t worry.” 

All he knows is how to worry. How to wonder if this is the last time he’ll feel Ilya’s hands on his. He settles for: “I’ll try.” 

Shane sets his alarm for two hours from now. He rests his head back against Ilya’s chest. Ilya falls asleep easily, his sternum rising and falling. 

Shane lays awake, moving with it. 

——

Ilya rouses abruptly, thirty minutes before the alarm is set to go off. Shane, whose cheek was plastered to his chest, gets thrown off as Ilya fights to sit up. 

Shane yelps, purely out of surprise. Ilya rubs his eyes. It’s not a sleepy motion, but a frantic one, his wrists twisting like a screwdriver. 

“What was that?” Shane asks, as delicately as he can. 

“Sorry.” Ilya unballs his fists and presses his fingertips into his eye sockets. 

“You can go back to sleep, if you want.” Shane eyes the alarm clock. “I’ll wake you in time.” 

Ilya shakes his head. “No. It’s fine.”

“Were you dreaming?”

Ilya shoots Shane a lopsided smile, like he can’t quite get the mechanics right. His eyes are dark and difficult to read. “Yes.”

“About?”

Ilya adjusts the cross around his neck, shifting it so the clasp is at his nape rather than against his chest. “Nothing good.” He pets Shane’s arm. “Hey. Let’s eat.” 

“Oh. I don’t really know if I can stomach anything.” 

Ilya shoots him a pointed look. “I’ll order. Room service. You like eggs?”

“I do, normally. But -”

Ilya quiets him with a chaste kiss on the lips. “Just lay back and look pretty, hm? Let me feed you.” 

“With my money,” Shane grumbles. That earns him one of Ilya’s deep, throaty laughs. “But fine.” 

When the food arrives, they eat in companionable silence. Shane texts Rose a cryptic message that he’ll be attending the morning meeting, and that he’ll need her to push back his flight to London. 

“I feel bad,” Shane says as he pokes his omelette with the fork. “I’m messing up all her travel plans.” 

“I get that. But also, you are her boss.” 

Shane forgets that, sometimes. “Yeah.” 

“And you’re Shane fucking Hollander.” 

He forgets that too. Or what it means, anyway. “Thanks,” he whispers. 

Ilya empties his own plate. He gestures to Shane’s omelette, which has been thoroughly dissected and hardly eaten. “Done?”

“Yeah.” He pushes the plate in Ilya’s direction. “Have it.” 

Ilya shakes his head. “Let’s save it.” He walks to the mini-fridge and sticks the plate inside. 

Eggs taste horrible out of the fridge and Shane will never eat the leftovers. He picks at the loose threads of the bedsheets rather than mention it. “We can’t take the call from the same hotel room.” 

“I’m sure we can, as long as we explain why.” Ilya pauses for a moment, long enough for Shane to furrow his eyebrows in confusion. “It’s because we had sex,” Ilya supplies. 

“Fuck off.” Shane throws a pillow at Ilya’s head. “You’re a child.” 

“That you fuck.” 

“You’re disgusting,” Shane hisses, though he’s also laughing. “Like, actually repulsive.” 

“I am repulsive to you?” Ilya picks the same pillow up off the ground and throws it at Shane’s chest. Shane catches it easily; it was more a toss than anything, which somehow makes Shane feel warm inside. “You are the opposite to me. You are pulsive.” 

“That’s not a word,” Shane counters. “I think.” 

“Oh, but it is.” Ilya takes a bow. “I told you. I read.” 

Again, it’s so attractive Shane has to remind himself to breathe. “Fine. You win. But you have to leave.” 

“Okay. I join from my computer, you from yours?”

Shane nods. “Is yours charged?”

Ilya smiles sheepishly. “No.”

Shane eyes the alarm clock. “Go charge it, then. Dummy.” 

Ilya holds a hand over his heart. “Makes me so hot when you call me this.” 

Shane rolls his eyes. “Asshole.” 

“That too.” He smiles devilishly and leans in. Shane closes his eyes, prepared for a kiss on the lips. Ilya kisses his forehead instead. “Any last words for me?” 

Shane has none, except that he hopes they aren’t really his last. “Be polite, but apologetic. And quiet. Matt likes to hear himself speak.” 

“Matt?” 

“The head of my label. Who you should probably know by now.” 

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Canadians are so uptight.” 

“He’s American, actually.” 

“I’m talking about you,” Ilya says cheekily. Shane sits up from the bed to begin shooing Ilya out the door. When it shuts, the room is so eerily quiet it makes Shane’s breath hitch. 

Fifteen minutes later, he props his computer open at the hotel desk and joins the call. 

“Shane,” Matt says. “How’s the tour, bud? Didn’t expect to see you here.” 

“Yeah, um, it’s good.” Shane wrings his fingers in his lap. “I asked to be added. Just want to stay in the loop.”

“Alright. Well.” Matt adjusts a tie around his neck that looks to be strangling him. Shane recognizes his background as the corner cubby in Universal Music Group’s Santa Monica office. Perhaps he got promoted. “I think you know why I called this meeting.”

“Hello,” comes Ilya’s deep voice as he joins the call. His Zoom name, for some reason, is “BigRozanov1000.”

From his computer, Shane texts him: Change your Zoom name right now

That’s so unprofessional

Ilya types back, unmuted so the entire call can hear the clacking of his fingers on the keyboard: How do I do that? 

Then:

Would this be better? HollanderFucker123 

Shane exits out of iMessage entirely. He can see Ilya biting his lip, holding back a smirk. 

“I’ll get right to it,” Matt says. “Frankly, we are disappointed with the turn of events last night. I don’t think I have to explain why throwing punches and getting handcuffed in the street goes against the policies we have for our artists.” 

“I’m not your artist, technically,” Ilya interrupts. Shane cringes. “Since I am independent.” 

“By ‘our’ artist, I meant your association to Shane.” Matt plasters on a polite smile, though the annoyance in his eyes reveals how obvious this point was to him, as if Shane is a product he owns. “And thus far, our marketing budget has been rather generously used to bolster your music, Rozanov, as well as his in co-promotional materials. And frankly, the events of last night have made us reconsider this investment.” 

A ‘ding’ sounds, alerting participants that someone new has joined the call. The name reads ‘Svetlana Sergeevna Vetrova.’ 

“Sorry I am late,” the woman says in accented English. She looks to have joined on a toaster, her camera is so blurred. Slowly, it unpixelates until Shane can just about make out her delicate features. “I’m here on behalf of my client, Rozanov.” 

“Hi, Sveta,” comes Ilya’s voice. It’s soft and familiar.

“Right.” Matt clears his throat. “We at Interscope are finding it difficult to justify flying Mister Rozanov out to Europe for the remainder of the tour. Especially if this is the gratitude that is shown in return.” 

“If I may,” Svetlana says, and then the screen transforms as she shares the tabs on her desktop. Though she’s already doing it, she says, “I’m going to share my screen, if that’s fine.” 

“Sure.” Matt watches the screen open to Twitter, where the photos of Ilya in handcuffs resurface. “This is exactly what I mean. He is - and I’m sorry to say this - a walking PR disaster.” 

“Maybe,” Svetlana says. She clicks to a different tab, another Twitter link. “Or maybe not.” 

The Twitter link in question is a preview of the fight scene inside Avant Gardner. Shane cringes. He wishes Svetlana would stop showing the clips. They only seem to egg Matt on. 

Svetlana presses play on the video, which Shane sees now has over four hundred thousand likes. It is in part the fight video from the club, but with superimposed lyrics to Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” across Ilya’s silhouette. As Rihanna sings the lyric “Pay me what you owe me,” Ilya’s fist collides with the man’s face. 

Svetlana exits the video and clicks to another tab, this one on Instagram. “This video alone has three million views.” It is, again, the clip of Ilya punching the living daylights out of the attempted thief, but with the caption: Need a man who don’t play about me like this. 

“You might think,” Svetlana says, “that this means this cultural moment only resonates with female audiences. But that’s actually not the case.” 

Shane gapes a little; how she has managed to reclassify Ilya’s brawl as a “cultural moment” is beyond him.

She opens a new link, another Tweet with hundreds of thousands of likes. It is written by none other than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He wrote, “If that Rozanov video doesn’t motivate you not to skip arm day, I don’t know what will.”

Svetlana switches, then, to a tab containing a graph. “As you can see, in the last eight hours, Google searches for ‘Rozanov’ have increased.” 

“Obviously,” Matt cuts in. 

“Yes. But what is perhaps more interesting is that searches for ‘Rozanov music’ have also nearly tripled. And so have his active streams on Spotify.”

Matt twirls on his desk chair. “That’s great for him. He’s not my client.” 

“In that you are right. But -” She opens a second graph - “searches for ‘Shane Hollander music’ have also increased. So have his daily streams. And there are at least three distributors of counterfeit Hollander merch who are now printing t-shirts with Hollander’s album on the front, and Rozanov being handcuffed on the back. Sales are in the thousands and counting.” 

Matt’s eyebrows draw in. “Is that true?”

Svetlana opens a new tab and Googles it. Shane sees it for himself: t-shirts that look like his official tour merchandise, except manufactured by third-party distributors, with Rozanov smirking at the mercy of a police officer across the shoulderblades. 

Svetlana stops sharing her screen. Shane sees his own incredulous face reflected back to him. One look at Ilya shows Shane he’s just as surprised. “The virality of this moment is a strength,” Svetlana says. “You’re well within your right to fire him. It’s just that you might be making the worst business decision of your career.” 

It is very quiet on the call for five long seconds. 

Finally, Matt says: “It’s clear you did your research. But -”

“I agree,” Shane interrupts. 

“What?”

“I agree,” Shane repeats. “This - um - this can actually net out to a positive for the both of us. Increased awareness, cultural buzz. More eyes on the tour.” 

“Sure, but the blowback could be immense. What is trendy one day is classless the next. And your entire brand, Shane, is to be classy.” 

He is classy, Shane thinks to himself: so classy he’s allowed to be gay so long as he’s never seen with another man. So classy he’s allowed to sing about sex but God forbid he have it. 

Shane gulps and pictures isolating all of the anxiety in his body and dropping a bomb on it. “Yes, well. It’s my tour, at the end of the day. And I don’t want anyone else.” 

“You… don’t want anyone else,” Matt repeats, slowly.

“As an opener.” Shane nods and forces a smile. 

Matt runs his tongue over his front teeth. “Well. I think we can all see why it was important for me to arrange this call. We’d be like chickens with our heads cut off otherwise.” 

“So important,” Ilya chimes in. He is being a kiss-ass, obedient to what Shane advised him to do. Shane could crawl through the computer and kiss him. 

“Rozanov - it goes without saying that if you get into any sort of trouble like this again, it’ll be a different story.” 

“I promise to work very hard for you.” Ilya’s expression is awfully sincere. “I apologize, and it won’t happen again.”

Despite this attitude being Shane’s recommendation, his stomach feels twisted. Ilya was only defending himself, after all. “I assume this means we’ll be rebooked on the next flight out for the European leg?” 

Matt types something out on his computer. “Yes. Though we’ll have eyes on this situation, of course. To ensure it doesn’t devolve.” 

“Both of us?” Shane clarifies. 

Matt offers a grim smile. “Both of you.” 

Shane can’t stop a grin from spreading across his face. Svetlana’s computer seems to take the win as an excuse to bug out, turning her into another shapeless blur. She drops off the call without so much as a goodbye. Ilya, for his part, looks so relieved he could cry. 

The call ends. Shane slams his computer shut and fast-walks to the elevator bay. Ilya’s room is on the fourth floor, and he can make it down quickly if he rushes. He presses the down arrow. The first elevator that arrives onto Shane’s floor opens. Shane peeks in, and Ilya is already inside. 

Shane steps in before Ilya can step out. “I wanted to -”

“Me too,” Ilya says, smiling. The elevator doors slide closed, and neither hits a button. Ilya grabs Shane by the hips, slams him against the mirrored wall, and kisses him. 

It’s messy and all tongue. Ilya’s hands abandon Shane’s hips to cradle his face, craning it upwards. Shane’s neck twinges in pain. He loves it. He tilts his head farther up. Ilya, in turn, strokes his thumbs along the river of freckles beneath Shane’s eyes. 

Shane’s phone buzzes. He tries to take it out of his pocket and Ilya whines, using his flat palm to cover Shane’s eyes so he can’t read the notification.

“Stop that,” Shane complains. Ilya grins and drops his hand. 

It’s a text from Rose: Got you both booked for the next flight out. Meet in the lobby in 30 minutes. London, here we come!

Ilya is quite obviously also reading the text over Shane’s shoulder. “Thirty minutes is enough time to fuck you, hm?”

Shane giggles, high on adrenaline and relief. “Three minutes is enough time, actually. If my memory holds.” 

Ilya pinches Shane’s hips. “You’re a dirty liar. I have never lasted three minutes.” 

“Five, maybe.” 

“You’re annoying. At least ten.” 

Shane just smiles. “Whatever you say.” 

They’re still in the elevator. Shane should be mindful that someone else could summon it and the doors would slide right open. Shane should be mindful, and yet he’s leaning into Ilya’s hands where they grip his hips, and his fingers are playing with the cross around his neck. 

“It’s your fault,” Ilya whispers by Shane’s ear, “for feeling so fucking good. Hm?”

“Right.” Shane can hardly see Ilya through how hard he’s smiling. “I’ll work on that.” 

“You better.” 

“Please tell Svetlana she’s an angel. She really defended you, and -“ I owe her, he thinks, but says instead - “she’s very smart.” 

Ilya’s eyes light up, prideful. “She is the one good thing that came out of Russia.”  

Shane wants to say: Two good things. Instead, he manages to pry Ilya’s hands from his skin. “Go pack.” 

“No nickname?” Ilya frowns. “Dummy? Asshole? Nothing?”

Shane presses the button to open the elevator doors. Ilya stares back at him with a look of thinly veiled betrayal. Shane grants him this one win. “Go pack, asshole.” 

Ilya grins until the doors close. 

----

LONDON 

Shane’s favorite part of walking offstage is ripping off the velvet suit he wears during encore, the silk tie knotted like a small noose around his throat. The outfit fits him like a glove, but the heavy velvet traps the heat of the stage lights. His sweat stains become a second skin. 

When he stumbles back into his dressing room, he’s already tugging at his collar. 

“Hey.”

Shane jumps. “What the fuck?” He whips around. “Where are you?”

Ilya peeks out from behind Shane’s dresser. His curls, freshly damp, are glued to his forehead. “Hey,” he repeats. His hoodie is soft and loose around his frame. 

Shane presses a hand to his feverishly beating heart. “You scared me. Were you camping out in here?”

Ilya approaches Shane with a look Shane can only describe as hungry. “Yes,” he says, quietly. He grabs Shane’s chin, tilts it up, and kisses him. 

Shane is so tired he could collapse. He kisses back easily. Ilya’s hands grip his waist. When Ilya reaches for Shane’s suit jacket, Shane pulls back, blushing. 

“Wait.” Shane gestures to his body. “I’m so gross. I’m sweaty everywhere.” 

“Where?” 

Shane rolls his eyes. It’s so obvious, from the way the roots of his hair have stiffened to the sheen under his eyes. “Everywhere.” 

“No, but where?”

Shane blinks. “My neck, my -”

Ilya leans in and licks a hot stripe from the base of Shane’s throat to his jaw. He pulls back, smacks his lips, and gulps. 

“Um -”

“Where else?” 

Shane’s breath picks up. “This - this isn’t fair. You already showered. I’m -”

“Shane,” Ilya says delicately. “Where else?”

A drop of sweat slides from Shane’s hairline down his temple. “My hair.”

Ilya steps forward and presses a line of open-mouthed kisses across Shane’s hairline. He leans down to kiss Shane on the lips. Shane tastes his own saltiness on Ilya’s tongue and shivers. 

Ilya pulls back, grinning. Before Ilya can ask, Shane says: “My chest.” 

Hands pull at the velvet suit jacket. It falls to the floor. Ilya undoes the buttons of the white dress shirt underneath. He peels it off Shane’s skin, the sweat making it stick. Ilya massages Shane’s right pec, before leaning down and taking the nipple into his mouth. 

“Fuck,” Shane whispers. It’s partly intrigue and partly arousal. Ilya licks his way up from Shane’s nipple to his collarbone. 

“Tastes so good,” Ilya whispers into Shane’s sweltering skin.

Shane laughs, partly to cover up his own embarrassment. “There’s no way in hell it tastes good.” 

There’s one loveseat in the entire dressing room, a plush white one that Shane sat in before the show as Mandy applied his stage makeup. Shane only notices it now because Ilya drags him towards it and, slow enough that Shane can resist if he tries, bends him over the armrest. 

Shane’s cheek hits the fluffy white fabric. The armrest digs into his hipbone. Ilya whispers, from behind him: “Want me to prove it?”

Shane can’t see Ilya anymore, can only hear him. Ilya pets down Shane’s back and stops at the waistband of his pants. “Okay,” Shane manages, his voice weak. “Prove it.” 

The jangle of Shane’s belt buckle as it comes loose fills the room. Ilya tugs his pants and boxers down, so they pool at his ankles. There’s the telltale sound of Ilya’s knees hitting the floor. And then: “Are there cameras in here?”

Shane’s breath hitches. “You think I’d let you do this with cameras in here?”

Shane doesn’t know if Ilya is smirking, but from the sound of his voice he must be. “No, but. God. I wish I had a video.” 

Shane is about to ask of what. But then there is a tongue prodding his hole, and he finds he can hardly speak at all. 

Ilya eats him out, brazenly and hungrily, moaning against his entrance. Shane’s entire upper body twitches, culminating in his face pressed so hard against the chair he thinks it might leave an imprint on his cheekbone. 

Ilya pulls back a bit, and Shane feels a wad of spit meet his skin. Ilya kisses his hole again, using his tongue to spread his own saliva deeper.

Still, Shane is nothing if not an overthinker. He’s well aware he just went through what many would consider to be a three-hour long workout. “You can stop if it’s gross.” 

Ilya pulls back just long enough to say, his voice as weak and spent as if he was the one bent over the chair: “You’re fucking delicious.” 

For some reason, the words hit Shane’s heart more than his cock. He wiggles his hips, maneuvering them higher up the armrest. “Do we have time?” 

Behind him, Ilya hums. “Fuck. You tell me. I want you so bad.”

Shane nods against the armrest. He feels dizzy. Perhaps the blood has rushed to his head. “Yes. Okay.” 

Ilya’s tongue prods Shane’s hole again, only this time, his fingers join in: two to start. It burns sharply, and then it fills Shane so deeply he whimpers into the fabric. A third joins, and then Shane can hear Ilya’s joints cracking as he gets himself up off his knees. 

Shane hears Ilya unzip his pants. It’s only now that Shane pictures what Ilya must have seen the whole time: Shane, entirely naked and dripping sweat, bent over like a sculpture on display. He adds to his mental picture Ilya, fully clothed and showered, lining himself up behind Shane with swollen lips. 

When Ilya thrusts inside, Shane can’t help it: he moans, loud and prolonged. His cock is trapped against the plush chair, and as Ilya begins to rock inside and out, each push only grinds his cock further into the cushion.

“Jesus,” Ilya mutters from behind him. Shane is almost embarrassed by how immensely the sound of skin slapping against skin echoes throughout the room. But he’s adding to it, too, with his throaty moans and whimpers. “A little quieter, Hollander. Just so no one hears.” 

“Don’t stop,” Shane murmurs, and then moans out again. 

Ilya does stop, at least for a second, during which Shane cries out again, eager for friction. Ilya presses Shane’s own sweaty velvet jacket up against his face. “Open.”

Shane breathes out shakily. But he does. He parts his lips, and Ilya stuffs the jacket into Shane’s mouth so fully that for a moment, he can’t breathe. 

And then Ilya fucks into him again, harder this time, and Shane truly gets the breath punched out of him. He remembers belatedly how to inhale through his nose. Now, his moans are muffled by his own jacket, his saliva mixing with congealed sweat to soak the sleeve stuffed deep down his throat.

“Mhm,” Ilya groans from behind him. He bends over so his chest blankets Shane’s back. His arm wraps around Shane’s front, first around his chest. Then his hand reaches up to grip at Shane’s throat, stroking it. “You like that?”

Shane moans through the gag. Ilya adjusts his grip on Shane’s throat, as easy as if he’s holding the strap of his suitcase or the container for his headphones. Shane wants to be added to that list: things Ilya holds with pale, veiny fingers spread-eagled like he’s afraid to drop them. Things Ilya owns. 

“I’ll take it out,” Ilya continues, somehow able to speak as he’s fucking into Shane. He reaches for the jacket stuffed between Shane’s lips. “I was just worried - the sounds -”

Shane shakes his head. His eyes light up, defiant, hoping to communicate what his voice can’t: Keep it in. Ilya raises his eyebrows, but acquiesces, releasing his grip on the jacket. The sound he makes the next time he seats himself fully within Shane is a lot like a moan too. Like he might need a gag himself. 

“You don’t understand,” Ilya mutters, then, rather cryptically. 

Shane makes a garbled noise through the jacket stuffed in his mouth. Ilya reaches beneath the armrest to tug on Shane’s cock, and the garbled noise dissolves into a moan. 

“You don’t understand," Ilya continues, “how fucking riled up I get, watching you perform.” 

Shane makes another garbled noise. Ilya reaches forward and tosses the jacket away. In its absence, Shane chokes, his mouth dry. 

“Sorry,” Ilya murmurs, and pets Shane’s shoulderblades, practically the only area of him he can reach. “Want to hear you when I say this.” 

“When you say what,” Shane whimpers, his voice breaking. Ilya is still stroking his cock, almost absentmindedly, as they’re fucking. Shane’s mind is somewhere else entirely. 

“You’re so sexy on stage.” 

Shane breathes out unevenly. “What, like, my outfits?”

Ilya makes a disgruntled noise. He sounds spent, too. “No. Is more like - fuck.”

He fits his fingers into Shane’s sweat-soaked hair, tugging at the strands. It forces Shane’s head up. He can see himself, at least from the nose up, in the hair and makeup mirror across the room. Mostly he sees Ilya, still in his hoodie, looking like he can hardly hold himself up. 

“Is more like, you work so hard.” Ilya thrusts in again. Shane jolts against the loveseat. He can see his own eyebrows furrow in the mirror. Ilya, as if sensing this, yanks Shane’s hair harder, forcing his head up higher. “You put so much effort, Hollander. Every performance, every song. You’re a natural, but you also - you’re motivated. And when you sweat. When you can hardly breathe. It’s so - you’re fucking - hot.” 

Shane’s chest pulses. He wishes he wasn’t too fucked out to etch these words deep into his brain. He could use them the next time a wave of self-hatred threatens to pull him under. “You like - fuck - that I’m a hard worker?” 

Ilya nods, panting. 

Shane thinks it might be playful: to recall one of their earlier conversations. “Why, because you’re lazy?”

Shane is already about to come, but in the second before he does he feels Ilya’s fingers freeze up against his cock. “Yes,” Ilya says simply. His voice seems to have lost some fight. “Lazy.” 

Shane comes. It’s all over the loveseat. Now that he’s slightly returned to his senses, he realizes that was not a smart decision. Ilya pulls out, which Shane takes to mean he’s coming too. Ilya has the wherewithal to at least come on the hardwood floor, where they can wipe it up.

“That thing needs to be burned,” Shane comments, eyeing the discarded jacket on the floor by Ilya’s mess. He begins the arduous process of peeling himself up off the chair after being bent over it for so long. Blood rushes back down his body, and he stumbles. 

Ilya catches him with a hand on his elbow. He’s looking anywhere but at Shane’s eyes. It’s so unlike him that Shane asks: “You okay?” 

Ilya jumps as he meets Shane’s gaze, as if startled. He smiles easily. “Before I was inside you, now I am not. Of course I am not okay.” 

Shane smacks him on the chest, his fingers sinking into the fabric of the hoodie. “I can’t believe you kept this on the whole time.” 

“You wouldn’t have been able to see me even if I took it off.”

“Yes, I would have.” Shane gestures around the room. “The mirror,” he says. And then he blushes so ferociously it looks like an allergic reaction.

Ilya gathers Shane up in his arms and kisses his cheek. “Right. The mirror.” 

Ilya begins scrubbing Shane’s come out of the white loveseat as Shane redresses. A knock resounds at the door, startling them both. 

“Shane? You in there?”

It’s Rose, sounding awfully concerned. 

“I’m coming in,” she says, and then the doorknob rattles. 

Shane just manages to make it to the door to slam it shut as Rose opens it an inch. He pants with his back shoved against it, wincing. 

“Shane? What the hell’s going on?” She jiggles the doorknob. “Is it a panic attack? Knock twice if it’s a panic attack.” 

With his back against the door, Shane watches as Ilya’s eyebrows draw in. 

“It’s not a panic attack,” Shane whispers, as if he can make his voice carry only through the slit in the doorframe. Ilya dumps the wipes he’s been scrubbing the chair with in the trash and stands up, crossing his arms. 

“I know how you get after a show.” Rose’s voice is calm and sincere, yet it does nothing to soothe Shane’s mortification. 

“I - I know. It’s not that. I was calling my mom. And getting changed. I’m not… decent,” he says, even though he is, now. “That’s why I’m not opening.”

“Alright. Well, the driver’s out back whenever you’re ready, but take your time.” Rose pauses. “Rozanov left already. I couldn’t find him anywhere.” 

And then she’s gone. Shane relaxes as he hears her retreating footsteps through the door. 

Ilya’s phone rings, startling them both. He fishes it out of his pockets, stares at the screen, and tucks it away again. 

“You can take it,” Shane says, his voice quiet. 

Ilya ignores him. “You get panic attacks?”

Shane kneads his fingertips into his forehead. “Um. Yeah. After I perform.”

“Every time?”

Shane exhales a shaky breath. “No. Of course not. That - that’d be -” Crazy, he almost says, except that’s exactly how he feels when he comes down from one. “I typically feel sorta sick, after. But it’s not always…” He makes a vague gesture with his hands. “A thing.” 

Ilya begins approaching him, his eyes wide and unblinking. “How come after? Not before?”

No one has asked Shane that. At first, he can’t articulate a response. “When I’m performing, it’s like, fight-or-flight.”

“What is that?”

“Survival mode, basically. And then after, maybe it’s that the adrenaline wears off. But I just think to myself, if something went wrong, ‘what if people hated it?’”

“But you always do well.” Ilya reaches up to stroke Shane’s arm, right beneath the sleeve of the t-shirt he shrugged on. 

“Then even if I do well, I think, ‘what if I can’t do that again?’” Shane laughs, a mirthless and awkward one. “I know it’s weird.” 

“It’s not weird.” Ilya rubs his arm again. 

“Or - unhealthy, maybe.” 

Ilya offers him a small smile. “Maybe,” he admits. 

Shane chuckles again. He squeezes his eyes shut. “I told you my mom was terrified when I became a singer.” He opens his eyes again, and Ilya’s soft, concerned face fills his vision, those dirty blond eyebrows furrowed just so. “I bet you’re wondering why I even do it.” 

“I know why you do it,” Ilya says. His pink lips part, and his breath smells of mint and cigarettes. “You have a beautiful voice. You write beautiful songs. You are a very creative person, Shane. You can’t help it. Right?” 

“Yeah,” Shane whispers. 

“If you could do it, if you could make music, and be anonymous, you would. Hm?”

Shane gulps. His voice breaks when he speaks. “Yeah.” 

“Oh,” Ilya says simply. His hand drops from Shane’s arm and wraps around his back instead, pulling him in. Ilya presses Shane’s cheek to his chest and hugs him. 

“I love my fans,” Shane says into Ilya’s chest. His eyes, inexplicably, have begun to well. “Of course I love them. I don’t mean to be -”

“I understand,” Ilya says. Shane’s hair presses against his throat, and he feels the vibrations when Ilya speaks. “It’s okay. I understand.” 

Shane manages to blink back his tears before Ilya can see them. He takes deep breaths of Ilya’s hoodie. Ilya, in turn, rocks Shane back and forth a bit in his arms, as if soothing a baby. 

From his jeans pocket, which is pressed against Shane’s thigh, Ilya’s phone rings again. 

“Blyat,” Ilya mutters. Shane steps out of his arms as he fishes the device out. He taps a button on the screen and it stops ringing. 

“Who is it?”

Ilya shakes his head. “Nothing.” 

Shane blinks. “Nothing?”

“My brother.” Ilya shrugs and shoves the phone back into his pocket. 

“Shouldn’t you see what he wants?”

Ilya flashes him a cynical smile. “I know what he wants.” 

Shane opens his mouth to respond. Ilya beats him to it. 

“Were you panicking, tonight? When I… when we fucked?” 

The word makes Shane flinch, though it’s all they did. Fucked. “No. You would’ve been able to tell, trust me.” He shrugs. “I guess you distracted me, in a way.” 

Ilya chews on his lip. “In a good way?”

Shane shakes his head and smiles. “Of course in a good way. I came all over the freaking furniture.” 

Ilya throws his head back and laughs. After a moment, he quiets, and his face gets more somber. “If me being here helps, I will stay. I can meet you in the dressing room after shows. Tell you what I liked. Talk. Until you feel good.” 

A lump builds in Shane’s throat. Talk. Until you feel good. “I’d like that, yeah. If you don’t mind.” 

Ilya tilts his head, as if Shane had said something funny. He looks like a puppy again, all soft edges and fluffy hair. “Of course I don’t mind.” 

Shane’s eyes flicker to the dressing room door. “I hate to do this. But I should go. And…” He trails off. 

“And I can’t come,” Ilya finishes. 

Shane winces. “I’m sorry. It’s just - you heard Rose. She thought you left.” 

“It’s fine.” 

“I’ll walk out first. If you can wait five minutes before you leave for the hotel -”

“Okay.”

He still feels slightly sick at the thought. “I’ll pay for your Uber.”

“Shane,” Ilya says. “It’s fine. I’ll -” He cuts himself off and sighs, a long and ragged one that almost makes Shane say fuck it and stay behind with him. “I’ll call my brother while I wait. Maybe my father is awake.” 

Shane brightens despite himself. Ilya has confided in him one personal fact, albeit a miniscule one. “Okay. It’ll be good to hear from them.” 

Ilya stares up at the ceiling. He finally looks back down, meeting Shane's eyes. “I’ll see you in Spain?”

Shane offers him a small smile. “Yeah. Or on the plane, obviously.”

“Right,” Ilya says. “But you don’t sit in my section of the plane.” 

It’s true: management books Shane in first-class and Ilya in business alongside the band. To request a change now might look suspicious, and at the very least costly. “So in Spain, then,” Shane acquiesces. 

Ilya leans in and grips the back of Shane’s neck. He drags him forward and kisses him, his lips slow and warm. “Adios,” he says, smirking.

Shane rolls his eyes. His heart seems prime to beat out of his chest. He grips the door handle and twists it. “Adios.” 

Chapter End Notes

Yayyy Spain! Poor Shane has anxiety in every universe I write him in.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

MADRID

They’re at baggage claim in the Madrid-Barajas Airport. Shane dons his usual disguise: a baseball cap and sunglasses broad enough that they conceal his freckles. Even still, there is one lone paparazzi snapping photos. 

Rose is writing an email, and Hayden is playing Flappy Bird. Ilya has walked a few paces away, taking a phone call. 

Hayden looks up from his phone when Ilya’s voice carries in frantic Russian. They both look over to where he’s gesticulating wildly. “Jesus,” Hayden says. “He’s scary.” 

Shane replies before he can think better of it. “He’s not scary.” 

“He looks scary,” Hayden corrects. “And that dude -” he nods in the direction of the paparazzi - “is probably taking a video.”

Rose stops writing her email and sighs. “I’ll go over there. If he wants to yell at someone, he can do it in the privacy of the hotel.” 

Shane watches as Rose approaches Ilya. The second Ilya locks eyes with her, he drops his waving hand to his side and cuts himself off. He whispers something into the phone Shane wouldn’t be able to make out even if he were within earshot. 

When Rose drags Ilya back, he’s just ending the call. The only word Shane can pick out is “Papa.” Then Ilya presses a button on the phone and shoves it into his pocket. When his eyes land on Shane, his forehead loses its crease and his eyes soften. 

“Was that your dad?” Shane asks, his voice low. 

Ilya’s eyes widen fractionally, then narrow. “Ah. You speak Russian now?”

Shane chews on his lip. “I know the word for father.”

Ilya nods. “Okay. Good for you.” 

Shane should be used to the non-answers by now. He still feels heat rise to his cheeks, a harsh and unwelcome one. 

Rose wraps her arm around Shane’s shoulder. Ilya follows her movement with sharp focus. “Any big plans for the day off, boys?”

Shane stills under Rose’s hold. “Sorry?”

“The day off,” Rose repeats. 

“We have the day off?” Ilya asks. 

Rose turns to Shane. “Of course. Remember I had to fight Matt tooth-and-nail for it? You get a free day between North America and Europe.” 

Shane takes his sunglasses off, as if that will help him to hear. “But England is Europe.” 

Ilya smirks. “Mister geography over here.”

“Okay, whatever.” Rose smiles. “Free day between North America and mainland Europe. So, Madrid is your oyster.” She looks between Ilya and Shane in turn. “What do you want to do?”

“Tour the Royal Palace,” Shane says. 

At the same time, Ilya says: “Churros.” 

“You can get a churro anywhere,” Hayden retorts. He has finally pocketed his phone, sparing Shane the sound effects of Flappy Bird. “Seems like a poor use of time.” 

“Sometimes I wonder, why doesn’t this little guy like me?” Ilya reaches over to fluff Hayden’s hair. Hayden attempts unsuccessfully to dodge the touch. “Then I remember. His wife always comments on my Instagram.” 

“She’s just a fan of techno,” Hayden sneers. He shoots a knowing look to Shane, as if to say: Get a load of this guy. Shane tries his best to conceal his smile. 

“Yes.” Ilya smirks. “She is a big fan. I know. I can mail her a signed Rozanov shirt. You know, the ones of me in handcuffs. What’s her address?” 

Hayden scoffs. “You just love to hear yourself -” 

Shane takes a careful step between the two boys. “Guys,” he says placatingly. “What if all four of us go somewhere? Anyone else want to go to the Palace?” 

Rose offers Shane a pitying smile. She flashes her phone, which has already booked a Bolt, the Spanish form of Uber, to their terminal. “Oh, honey. I’m going on a solo trip to Toledo. But you three have fun.” 

Hayden looks between Ilya and Shane. “Jackie’s flying out to meet me here, so -” 

Ilya’s eyes light up. “Oh, great.” 

“So,” Hayden continues, his glare scathing, “I’m meeting her at the airport in an hour. Sorry, Shane.” 

Shane’s shoulders sink. “Oh. It’s fine. That sounds like fun.” He avoids Ilya’s eyes as he says, “I guess us two will make our own way to the hotel.” 

Hayden pats Shane on the shoulder, as if to soothe him. Rose gathers him up into a tight hug before they go. It irks Shane, a bit, how neither bid Ilya goodbye as they leave. But as they climb into the sleek black car Universal Music sent for them, Ilya doesn’t seem distraught - just sleepy, rubbing his eyes like a Magic 8 Ball. 

“So,” Shane begins. He eyes the driver carefully, who seems to be either unaware of their identities or uncaring. He aims for nonchalance and not the soul-splitting anxiety he feels. “You gonna do your own thing today?”

Ilya turns his head away from the window. The weight of his full attention is almost crushing. “I don’t want to see the Royal Palace.”

“Why not?”

“It’s for tourists.” 

“We are tourists.” Shane crosses his arms, petulant. “And I don’t want to eat churros all day.” 

Ilya leans in across the middle seat. He wraps a hand around Shane’s head, dragging him closer until his pinkish ear is flush against Ilya’s lips. “New plan. What if I fuck you on your hands and knees in the Presidential Suite?”

Shane splutters. Ilya lets go of him, his grip so strong that in doing so Shane bounces against the car door. Quietly, he hisses, “No.”

“No?”

Shane’s cheeks go red. “Well. Maybe.” 

Ilya smirks from across the cupholders. 

“But I don’t want to spend all day in the hotel. I’d like to actually see the city.” 

Ilya scratches his nose and takes out his phone. He types away at it, almost absentmindedly. 

“Hello?”

Ilya looks up. “I am getting us tickets.” 

“Tickets?” 

Ilya leans over and brushes his thumb over the tip of Shane’s nose, like he just can’t help himself. “For the Royal Palace.” 

----

Shane forces Ilya to wear a ball cap over his hair. The blond curls. They give you away. And Ilya had said, That’s just because you like them. But he fits the hat over his head anyways. They’re both wearing sunglasses, dampening the warm lighting and the allure of the high ceilings. It’s as casual a disguise as they can manage. 

The Grand Staircase, an ornate marble beast designed by Sabatini, is filled with the foot traffic of Madrileños and tourists too busy posing to spare either of them a second glance. 

In the Hall of Mirrors, Ilya leans in close to Shane’s ear and whispers: “I’d fuck you here.” 

“God,” Shane says, leaning away. A ferocious blush rises to his cheeks. “We’re in public.” 

“And? No one is looking.” Ilya takes his phone out. “Come on. I will take a photo of you.” 

Shane rolls his eyes. “No thanks.” 

“Please.” Ilya pouts at him, a subtle jutting out of his lower lip. “One nice photo. You can send to your mom.” 

“Fine.” Shane takes his sunglasses off, lifting up a peace sign. The gargantuan wall lined with mirrors shines behind him. Ilya takes a few. As he does, Shane notices he’s smiling: this far-off, fond tilt of the lips. 

“Got it,” Ilya says finally. He pockets the phone. “I’ll send to you.” 

In the Throne Room, fit with velvet walls and two royal thrones on a raised platform like a platter of food, Shane says: “Let me get one of you now.” 

Ilya obliges. He poses as close as he can get to the bronze lion statues blanketing each side of the throne. 

“Smile, please,” Shane complains. “Stop trying to look all brooding.” 

“Show me something to smile about, then.” Ilya raises his eyebrows. 

“Rozanov.” 

There’s something disciplinary in Shane’s tone. Ilya fidgets, but settles on a wide, if a little forced, smile. 

“Great. Got it.” Shane opens his iMessage chat with Ilya to send them over. “You can send these to your mom, too.”

Out of the corner of Shane’s eye, Ilya’s face falls. His smile flickers and his eyebrows furrow. Shane lets his phone hang at his side, suddenly uninterested in its contents. “Are you -”

“Hello!” A chipper, accented voice from behind surprises them both. Reflexively, Shane feels for his sunglasses, but they’re no longer on his face. They’re still hung on his shirt, having taken them off for the photo. “I am a huge fan, Shane. I’m going to the show tomorrow. You’re, like, my everything. Look!” She clicks her phone on, and a picture of himself grinning onstage is her wallpaper.  

“Wow. Yeah, wow. It’s great to meet you.” Shane fumbles through the reply and smiles extra widely in hopes she doesn’t notice. He feels as if he’s being watched under a microscope, with Ilya here to dissect the fan interaction and point out his social misgivings. 

“Can I get a photo?” 

Shane nods. “Of course.”

“I can take it,” Ilya says. The fan deposits her phone into Ilya’s hands. She wraps an arm tight around Shane’s waist. He lays his arm around her shoulders. 

When Ilya hands the phone back, she turns to him. “You looked so sexy getting arrested.”

“Oh,” Ilya says. Shane stares hard at him. He seems to have difficulty computing what she’s saying, or at least responding to it in real time. 

“You introduced me to that song. ‘Bitch Better Have My Money.’ I love Rihanna now.” 

“Thanks,” Ilya says. He looks to Shane, and when they make eye contact, he seems to reboot. “You know, if I get arrested here, they might let me stay longer.” He smiles and winks at her. She squeals. 

“Please, you have to! Come live in Madrid. We love you here. Can I get a photo?” 

Ilya nods, at the same time Shane says: “I’ll take it.” 

“No, no.” She shakes her head. “With both of you. A selfie! Please?”

Shane and Ilya lock eyes. Shane shrugs, so Ilya says: “Yes. Give me the phone, though. My arms are longer.” 

Shane shoots him a cold look. “No, they’re not.”

“They are.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say.” Ilya holds up the phone and together, the three of them smile for the selfie. He hands the phone back, the fan squeals her way through a goodbye, and they’re left alone in the Throne Room once more. 

Shane picks at his thumbnail. Ilya grabs the sunglasses off Shane’s shirt collar and fits them back onto his face. The shades dim Ilya’s expression, but he’s smiling, at least. 

“I’m sorry if I offended you.” 

Ilya tilts his head. “What? When?”

“I don’t know. Did I say something?”

“No.” 

“No? When I took your photo?”

“No,” Ilya repeats. He smiles. Leaning in, he says lowly: “The only thing I am offended by is how good you look right now.”

Shane gulps. But Ilya really does look fine: amused, if anything. Reluctantly, Shane unfurls the trifold map of the palace. “We still have the armory room and the servant’s quarters.” 

Ilya leans in by Shane’s pink ear again. “I’d fuck you in -”

Shane smacks his shoulder. “Stop,” he hisses, blushing. “You know there are people online who make dedicated lip reading videos? Just act normal, for once.” 

Ilya leans back, considering. “Can I use a code word?”

“If it’s a normal one.” Shane shrugs and starts walking. When they enter the Royal Armory, Shane finds rows upon rows of helmets, lances and breastplates. He’s reading through an informational placard about Emperor Charles V's suit of armor when Ilya comes up behind him. 

“Imagine you wear one of these while I tickle you.” 

Shane makes a sound eerily similar to a snort. “That’s your code word?”

Ilya grins. He nods his head towards another throne cordoned off by red rope, this one no less grand than the one in the Throne Room. “I want you bent over that. Hands behind your back. Tickle you so good you cry.” 

Shane snorts again, though this time his entire face is hot. He speaks past the lump in his throat. “I can’t take you seriously when you talk like that.” 

Ilya smirks. Shane watches his lips move with a focus he relegates to songwriting. Ilya’s lower lip ripples, the mole on his cheek moving with it as waves carry seaweed to shore. “That is rude,” Ilya says. “I am very serious.” 

“If you keep looking at me and not the exhibits, I’m gonna tickle you.” 

Ilya’s lips part, a look of shock overtaking his face. “Do you want to tickle me?”

Shane squints. “Huh?”

“I’m open to it.” Ilya rubs his thumb over his own lower lip. “If you really want to. Do you really want to?”

Shane wonders if his sunglasses can hide a full-body flush. “I want you to shut the fuck up.”

“Oh. So you can say ‘fuck’ but I can’t?”

Shane steps around Ilya to continue the walking tour and makes a point to bump their shoulders. Ilya, not expecting it, stumbles back. 

A few paces later, Shane looks over his shoulder to make sure Ilya is following. He is, and with a grin so wide Shane forgets what exactly he was worked up about. 

In the Service Wing, Shane reads the placard detailing where servants lived and worked while Ilya attempts to translate the centuries-old Spanish inscriptions on the sides of furniture into English in his head. 

Shane turns to him. “Do you think in English or in Russian?”

The light streaming in from a stained-glass window lights Ilya’s eyes like a Christmas tree as he meets Shane’s gaze: blue on the outside, and green near the middle. One word doesn’t capture it, but a paintset might. 

Ilya considers the question. “Russian,” he says finally. “You?”

“English.”

Shane licks his lips. Ilya’s eyes track the movement. “Not French?”

 “Ah. No. Though I get by pretty well.” 

“You have entire songs in French.” Ilya says it as if the words are harmless and not a knife to his throat, because only his earliest songs, the ones long removed from his setlist, are in French. “You don’t just ‘get by.’” 

“That was a long time ago,” Shane whispers. By ‘long time’ he means he was eighteen posting songs filmed on his iPad to YouTube, and in his lyrics he betrayed himself, singing of wanting a woman when he never has. He sang of wanting her not in the intellectual way but in the tactile, physical way he wants Ilya, from his fingertips to his kneecaps to his neck. To the mole on his cheek. 

But the songs are in French. Perhaps Ilya never worked out the meaning. 

“You are lucky,” Ilya says. 

“Why?”

He pokes a finger at Shane’s temple. “To think in English.”

“Do you prefer it to Russian, you mean?”

Ilya drops his hand. “Who is the voice you hear in your head? Speaking your thoughts?”

He’s never thought about it much. He practices speaking a thought in his head. It is: I feel something when he looks at me.

“My own voice, I think. My own speaking voice.” 

Ilya’s shoulders sag, as if in relief. “Good.”

“Isn’t yours?”

Ilya turns back to face the staff bedrooms. “It’s my father’s.” 

Shane imagines a door opening, letting the slightest sliver of light in. “And you wish it were your own?” 

Ilya turns back to face Shane. He tucks a stray curl back under his hat where it escaped. “Or yours. Anyone, really.” He points to the rightmost corner of the exhibit, to a corridor connecting the bedrooms to service staircases. “Why is the door so small? Were people really that short?”

Shane is good at this: not pushing. So good it could be a sport. “Maybe. This must have been so tough. All crowded into one room. No privacy.” 

Ilya nods, sympathetic. 

Shane stares at the side of his face. “No place to tickle,” he adds, and Ilya’s reaction is like a firework bursting over the beach: laughing until his shoulders shake. 

----

Shane searches for his reflection in their vat of shared chocolate sauce. Ilya disrupts his efforts by dunking the tip of his churro, breaching the surface.

“This is one-hundred year old chocolate,” Ilya says through a mouthful of food. There is chocolate smear caked into the corners of his lips. 

“Jeez. I hope not.” But Shane knows what he means: Chocolateria San Gines was founded in 1894. They’re sitting outside of the historic churro shop on a slight slant, the surface of the liquid chocolate the only indicator of the imbalance. 

“You gonna try it?” Ilya pushes the chocolate cup closer to Shane’s side of the metal table. “Or do I need to chew it first, like mother bird?” 

Shane sets down his coffee cup. He pulls a churro from the bouquet they came in with all the grace of a toddler lifting a dumbell. He dunks it into the chocolate and rushes to stuff it into his mouth fast enough that it doesn’t drip over his clothes. 

“Well?” Ilya asks. 

Shane chews thirteen times before he swallows. “Fine.” 

Ilya chuckles. “Fine, what?”

Shane groans. 

“Say it,” Ilya orders. 

“Fine. It’s good.” 

“Just good?”

“Really good! God.” He moves to dip the churro in again, then hesitates. “Do you mind?”

Ilya shakes his head in disbelief. He opens his phone, cranes the screen to Shane, and types into his Notes app: Do I mind if you double-dip? No. Signed, man whose tongue has been in your ass.

Shane shoves Ilya’s shoulder. It’s as sturdy as marble. Ilya grins and locks his phone. “You asshole,” Shane chastises. “We’re still in public.” 

Ilya lifts his hands up in surrender. ”That’s why I typed it.”

“Doesn’t make it better,” Shane says, and aggressively dunks his chewed-off churro into the chocolate for good measure. 

“I am on my best behavior for you.” 

“For your sake, I hope it isn’t your best.” 

With the final stump of his churro, Shane dips it so deeply into the chocolate that some of the liquid covers the tip of his fingernail. He lifts it to his lips and pauses before they part. “You want it?”

Ilya shakes his head. “It’s fine.” 

Shane shakes his head, too. He outstretches his hand across the table. “It’s yours.”

Ilya raises a single eyebrow in Shane’s direction. Shane doesn’t budge, just wiggles the dipped churro in his hand, so a few drops land on the shiny table. 

Finally, Ilya leans in, his eyes locked on Shane’s. Before Shane can process the motions, he brings his lips around the stump, his teeth plucking the churro right from Shane’s fingertips. With his index finger, he swipes a dollop of chocolate still staining Shane’s fingertips, brings it to his mouth, and sucks. 

Ilya smacks his lips. After he swallows, he says, “Thank you.”

Shane lets out a shaky breath. “Of course.” 

Ilya’s phone begins to ring, vibrating on the table facedown. Ilya licks the last stroke of chocolate off his thumb and picks it up. When he sees the screen, his nose twitches, as if he smelled something sour. He looks up at Shane.

“I… sorry.” Shane just nods at him, a silent permission though he needs none. Ilya gets up and takes the call inside the churro shop, of all places, disappearing behind two swinging doors. 

Shane scrolls idly through his email inbox while he waits: a music producer he needs to respond to about a feature, a request to review cover art from his VMAN photoshoot. A fan approaches him timidly and asks for a selfie. He obliges, smiling wide. When she takes her phone out, he notices a smudge of chocolate on his cheek through the camera and curses Ilya internally for not mentioning it. He asks her to wait to post until later that night, so he doesn’t get swarmed. She nods solemnly and gives him her word. 

And then Ilya comes back out, his face flushed. He’s holding two plastic spoons. When he sits back down, he spears them both into their leftover chocolate with an aggression the cup hardly deserves. He sets his phone down with a clatter onto the table. Shane’s eyes flicker to the screen. It’s open onto a banking app. From the red and yellow winking back at him, it might be Wells Fargo. 

Ilya locks his phone and the screen goes dark, revealing only thumbprints. “Should we get drunk?” 

Shane watches with mild curiosity as Ilya begins spooning liquid chocolate into his mouth. “We have a show tomorrow.”

“And we will for the next month. So.” Ilya shrugs and licks the spoon. He slides the cup in Shane’s direction. 

“No thanks,” Shane says. 

“I’m getting drunk,” Ilya says, with an air of finality. He tugs the chocolate cup back. The sun has just begun to set behind him, the pinkish sky forming a halo around his head. “Come or don’t.” 

That stings, a little. “I’m sure we can find something we both want to do.” 

Ilya shoots him a funny look. His eyes rove Shane’s body, from his forehead to his feet. Shane still has his coat and sunglasses on. He’s so covered up that the sexually charged glance is almost humorous. “Of course there is something we both want to do.” 

Over Ilya’s shoulder, a group of girls point in Shane’s direction and whisper to themselves. Shane stiffens. “People know we’re here,” he whispers. “I think I want to go back to the hotel.” 

Ilya follows Shane’s gaze to the cluster of onlookers. “Okay. Yes.” He meets Shane’s eyes again. “Sangria at the hotel?”

Shane grants him this one thing. “Sangria at the hotel.” 

----

“You probably shouldn’t,” Ilya slurs. He’s shed his shoes, his jacket and the first few buttons of his dress shirt. They’re on the couch in Shane’s Presidential Suite at the Universal Music Hotel Madrid, a room clearly built for patrons of the arts if not for artists themselves. There’s a speaker attached to the ceiling, where Ilya is queuing his own unreleased house beats from his computer.

“But you did,” Shane protests. He’s slouched over in the widest chunk of the sectional couch. Ilya had refused to sit there. Stretch your legs out, Hollander, he had said. Ilya packed himself into the thinner area instead. 

“I am Russian. I can handle liquor.” What they’re debating is if Shane should also add brandy to his sangria. Thus far, Ilya has harbored the bottle like a hostage between his legs.

Shane is two glasses of sangria in and swiping for it. “Don’t be rude. I’m your boss, practically,” he says, and then laughs. 

Ilya chuckles too. “All this time, it is you who will fire me.” He takes a swig directly from the brandy bottle, teasing. “Not Matt Shat.” 

“Matt Schmidt,” Shane corrects. “And you still have chocolate on your face.” 

Ilya groans and sets the brandy down to check his face in his phone camera. What he finds is perfectly unblemished skin. In his distraction, Shane reaches over and swipes the bottle, taking two large gulps. 

“Yebat,” Ilya curses. “What happened to the Shane who has a show tomorrow?”

“I killed him,” Shane says, and then giggles, hiding his face in the couch cushion. Ilya fits his fingers between Shane’s chin and the fabric and forces his head up. 

Shane meets his gaze, though his sight has gone blurry. “You’re gullible,” Shane mumbles, grinning. 

Ilya lifts his thumb from its grip on Shane’s chin to instead pry at his bottom lip. It parts for Ilya easily. “You’re pretty.”

Shane paws at Ilya’s arm through his shirt. He feels Ilya stiffen under his touch, flexing his bicep when he sees Shane’s hand headed his way. “Just pretty?”

“No,” Ilya says. He pushes his thumb forward, experimentally. Shane opens his mouth further until Ilya’s thumb meets his tongue. He closes his mouth over the digit, suckling on it, gauging by the way the pulse in Ilya’s neck jumps that he should moan with it in his mouth. “Sweet, talented. Mine,” Ilya tacks on at the end.

He says it almost like an afterthought. To Shane it’s like the world halts.

Shane moans around his finger. Ilya plucks it out and it makes a wet noise Shane should hate. He thinks oddly it could have a home in the bridge of a song. “Yours,” he whispers. 

Ilya is on him before Shane can think twice about his own admission, though when Ilya clambers over Shane he does so clumsily. It’s the first time he’s truly moved since they started drinking. He sways over Shane’s chest and knocks over his half-empty sangria cup with his foot. 

Shane just giggles. “It’s fine,” he says, because Ilya is wincing and eyeing the floor. “We’ll clean it after. I don’t care.” 

“Sober Shane would care.” Ilya’s gold necklace dangles over Shane’s lips. 

“Good thing he’s dead,” Shane says, and laughs again. 

“Hey.” Ilya leans down lower. On purpose or accident, Shane isn’t sure, he feeds his own necklace past Shane’s parted lips. “I don’t want him dead.” 

Shane moans around the intrusion in his mouth, all metallic and salty, a mix of the elements and Ilya’s sweat. Ilya curses from above him. He uses his knuckles to stroke Shane’s cheekbone. 

Eventually, Ilya plucks his necklace out of Shane’s mouth, but only to replace it with his own lips. The brandy tastes fresh on Ilya’s tongue, as if it commingled with his saliva to form a new flavor. They kiss like that, slowly and sloppily, and Shane even thinks he drools a little, but Ilya burps which should make it even. 

Ilya pulls away from the kiss and sways again. Shane sits up and pushes him so his back hits the couch cushion, sandwiching Ilya’s hips between his thighs until he’s straddling him. “Are you religious?” Shane asks, as he unbuttons Ilya’s shirt. 

“Uh -” Ilya gropes at his necklace, his knuckles turning white. “I believe in God. But practicing, no.” 

“Sorry, it’s just -” Shane cuts himself off and chooses now to shove his face into the couch cushions again. “Was that disrespectful? What I just did, where I put that in my mouth?”

What is perhaps more disrespectful is that Ilya is tugging Shane’s shirt off while he’s busy overthinking. “No,” Ilya says. “The owner is dead. And God is distracted.” 

“He’s not looking?”

Ilya grins at him. His face is like an angel’s, his curls splayed around his head against the fabric. His bare chest glistens, a river reflecting light from the sun. “I prayed He wouldn’t.” 

Shane laughs, a hearty one as he helps Ilya shrug his shirt off. He takes the liberty of removing both his pants and Ilya’s. He climbs on top of Ilya’s lap and stares down at him through his eyelashes. He’s like a butterfly with its wings pinned down against a board, prime for dissection.

“What do you want?” Shane asks. 

“To fuck you,” Ilya says easily, and bucks his hips up. His hardened cock pushes at Shane’s boxers, a visitor begging for entry.

Shane flops over Ilya’s chest until their noses touch. “I mean,” he slurs, “is that all?”

And if Ilya is who Shane has built him up to be, he should know. He should know what Shane means. Shane watches as something in Ilya’s eyes shutters, closes up shop, and Shane’s stomach twists before he can pinpoint what it is he lost. 

“I want…” Ilya gulps and sucks in a breath so labored Shane wonders if he’s sitting on Ilya’s lungs instead of his hips. “I want to suck your cock.”

It should make Shane float. He sinks instead, but he clambers off Ilya so he can do as he promised. Ilya rolls off the couch and his bare knees hit the floor with a thump. Shane wants to ask if he’s okay, did that hurt, but Ilya tugs his boxers off so the air hits Shane’s cock and he loses access to language.

Ilya takes him into his mouth in one fell swoop. Shane loses all sense of right and wrong and fucks into Ilya’s mouth, so harshly he gags and pulls off. 

“Shit. Sorry.” Shane reaches forward from his perch on the couch to pet Ilya’s hair, which is all frizzy and sticking up in odd places. Ilya leans into the touch, like a puppy, and shakes his head. 

“Do it.” Ilya smirks. His lips are so wet it’s obscene, from his own saliva and Shane’s precome. “Fuck my mouth.”

“But I want to come when we…” 

“And you will,” Ilya says, like that’s all there is to it.

He opens his mouth, and if he could unhinge his jaw like a snake Shane gets the sense that he would. He takes Shane into his mouth again. This time, he grabs Shane’s arm and directs it to his own hair like a claw machine. Shane lets his fingers sink into the curls. Ilya nods, once, his mouth full of Shane’s cock. 

Shane has hardly fucked anything in his life. Ilya’s strong-armed gaze, and perhaps the brandy to bolster it, gives Shane the confidence to start thrusting.

He gyrates his hips in and out of Ilya’s wet, soft mouth. With his other arm, Ilya pushes at Shane’s hips, helping him find a rhythm. Ilya makes these small noises, a wet gurgle and then a throaty groan. Once when Shane thrusts so hard he feels he might’ve pulled something in his thigh, Ilya’s eyes squeeze shut, wincing. Shane goes cold. But then Ilya opens his eyes again, the blue mixing with the green, and directs Shane’s hips forward with an even stronger grip.

The look in his eyes is challenging: I dare you to stop. So Shane doesn’t.

“I’m not gonna last,” Shane mumbles, and it’s all the warning he can provide, alongside drumming his fingers along the shell of Ilya’s rosy ear, before he whines and comes hard down his throat.

Ilya keeps Shane’s hips moving, fucking into his mouth until the last of Shane’s come has been forced out of him. Ilya pulls off, swallows, and gasps. 

With his mouth finally empty, Ilya sits back so his shoulderblades hit the glass coffee table with a thump. He leans his head back, Adam’s apple bobbing, until his hair fans the countertop. His throat pulses as he pants.

Shane pokes a mole on Ilya’s neck. “Are you dead?”

“Yes,” Ilya croaks. He lifts his head back up, where it lolls like a bob on a pendulum. Shane is reminded again of how drunk they are. “I needed to fuck you, like, yesterday.”

Shane grins cheekily. “You did fuck me yesterday.”

Ilya smiles too. His face is flushed, pink as the sky when the sun sets over the Saint Lawrence River. He adjusts himself in his boxers. “I’m so fucking hard right now.”

Shane ponders this. “But I’ve hardly touched you.”

Ilya shoots him a lopsided grin that has Shane’s stomach doing backflips. He flicks a curl off his forehead. “Don’t be stupid. When you sound like you sound, and when you get the - the little -” Ilya leans in, back leaving the coffee table, and presses the pad of his index finger between Shane’s eyebrows - “scrunch here.” Ilya leans back, self-satisfied. “I almost came.”

Shane scoffs. “That’s not possible.” 

“It is for me.” Ilya flashes that lopsided smile again. “I like seeing you feel good. Seeing you come. That does it for me.” 

Shane fondles Ilya’s hipbone where it pokes out from underneath his skin, right above the waistband of his boxers. “I feel the same.”

“No, but.” Ilya shoves himself up off the floor, wobbling, using the coffee table as leverage. “You’re better at taking it.” 

Shane watches as Ilya plops himself back down on the couch. “Better at taking it,” he repeats. “Taking what you give me.” 

Ilya nods soundlessly. It’s somehow more rousing than if he were to make a noise. He leans in, unspeaking still, and just when Shane thinks he’s aiming in for a kiss he plants each of his hands on Shane’s shoulders and shoves him back against the cushions. 

Shane lands with a yelp. Ilya grapples with Shane’s wrists, clumsily, but pins them up above his head where Shane can’t see them. 

He grins down at Shane as if a king peering down on conquered lands. “Gonna work you open.” 

“Good,” Shane says, almost carelessly. He’s so giddy he could almost squeal, so of course the most amusing thing he can think of is to feign boredom. Ilya uncaps a bottle of lube and begins warming it between his fingers. “Good timing too. I was about to fall asleep.” 

“Can’t have you falling asleep on me,” Ilya says, feigning concern, and then he thrusts two fingers inside Shane and curls them upward. They find his prostate almost immediately. 

“Holy fuck,” he gasps, wriggling on the couch. 

Ilya smirks wickedly. “Do you even deserve it?” He mocks, and when two fingers have gotten comfortable he adds a third. “Deserve to be fucked?” 

 Shane is just in a mood. “To be tickled, you mean,” he says, and then giggles and then moans when Ilya curls his fingers again. 

“Are there condoms?” Ilya asks, but only after he’s lined himself up with Shane’s hole, not entering but touching, as if giving his puckered skin a peck. He must have forgotten. Shane too. 

Shane makes a vague gesture. “I wanna feel you. Like last time.” 

Ilya nods from above him. He leans down, pinning Shane’s wrists again over his head. He changes his grip to be one-handed, and with the newly freed one, strokes Shane’s throat almost lovingly. “I’ll pull out.” 

Shane finds, alarmingly, that he cares very little if Ilya does. He nods wordlessly. Ilya leans in and kisses him, all tongue. Shane tastes remnants of his own come in Ilya’s mouth.

Ilya’s hand squeezes his throat when he enters Shane. It might be the alcohol, or perhaps Ilya’s house music still pumping through the room, but Shane yowls like a cat when Ilya bottoms out. The sound is lewd, overly loud, and downright dirty. 

But it’s everything. It’s the hand on his throat. The hand binding his wrists. The skin on skin, Ilya pushing into Shane barren as the day he was born. 

“You like that, don’t you?” Ilya says, as he fucks into Shane in earnest. Shane’s body jolts on the couch with each movement, as if being electrocuted. In a way, he feels he is. “I should just stay here, hm? Stay inside you?” 

Shane nods, groans, babbles. “Hmm, yes. Want you - fuck - in me. Always.” 

“What about soundcheck?” Ilya leans down and kisses the corner of Shane’s lips as he rocks in and out. Shane chases Ilya’s face as he rises up, so Ilya gives him a proper kiss this time, hand squeezing at the base of his neck. “You wanna practice your songs, bouncing on my cock?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Shane stutters. He squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, Ilya is the picture of exertion above him, veins popping out of his neck.

“You wanna try your little vocal exercises? With my cock in your mouth?” 

Shane groans. “Yes. Please.”

“I wish you could feel how it feels,” Ilya continues. “Being inside you.” 

“How does it feel?” Shane manages. Ilya kisses his throat, then his nipple. 

“You’re so fucking tight,” Ilya rasps. He kisses his collarbone, then. “Still. God. Fuck.” 

Shane continues to rock against the couch, something like a rug burn forming across his lower back. It’s fine, he thinks. He’ll get dragged across hot coals if it means more of this feeling: this tightening in his stomach, his pulse high in his ears. 

“Wait,” Ilya says. His hips stutter, a bit, and Shane whines in complaint. Ilya pets his hair as if to soothe him. “I have an idea.” 

Shane is more focused on the lack of movement inside of him. “Hurry,” he whispers. 

Ilya leans over, his fingers grabbing for his phone across the coffee table. The movement makes him pull out of Shane halfway, and the slow friction gives Shane goosebumps. 

“You’re being very loud, tonight,” Ilya says, his phone in hand. 

“Sorry,” Shane says automatically. Ilya is still inside him. It feels like they’re one, like Shane is speaking to his own occipital lobe. 

Ilya kisses him again, close-mouthed and sweet. “Blyat. No. I love it. I mean -“ The next part is rushed, and slurred on top of it from the brandy. “Can I put you in a song?” 

Shane tilts his head. Ilya fucks into him, a strong snap of the hips that has Shane shifting up the couch and crying out. 

“That,” Ilya says, and fucks into him again. Shane can’t help it: he moans and moans. “I have sound presets. Like, you can say ‘fuck off’ into the mic and I turn it into a bassline, instead.” He leans down and scoops Shane up in his arms, so his forearms become a new layer between Shane’s shoulderblades and the couch cushion. “No one will know, but you will. That the song has the sounds you make when you come apart.” 

Shane is embarrassed by how turned on he gets. And how little he thinks about saying no. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Okay. Give me something to get loud for, then.”

Ilya grins from above him, shark-like. He clicks a button on his phone. Shane sees the beginnings of a voice memo running, the short red lines varying in height.

“Tickle,” Shane shouts, louder than he means to. The lines shoot up. Ilya laughs, unbridled and sweetly. “It works.” 

Ilya sets his phone down on the coffee table. “I’ll delete it after.” 

“I don’t care if you do,” Shane says, and somehow he means it.

Ilya chews his lip. Then he leans down by Shane’s ear and says: “Gonna take you on your stomach, now.” 

Shane sucks in a tight breath. 

“You want that?” 

Shane nods dumbly. Ilya tracks a finger across his lower lip. 

“Zaychik. Use your pretty mouth.”

“Please,” Shane whispers. “Fuck me on - on my stomach. Make me take it.” 

Ilya curses from above him. He’s squinting, as if trying extra hard to focus. He pulls out, rubbing his fingers over Shane’s ribs as Shane winces. 

As if flipping over a pancake, he hoists Shane by the hips and plops him back down onto his stomach. 

Shane lays there, boneless, cheek pressed into the fabric, before remembering what they’re doing and lifting his hips up himself. Shane feels Ilya’s tip prod his rim again. 

“Beautiful,” Ilya says from behind him. It means something, when all Shane can see is the fraying threads sticking up from a couch in a nameless hotel room. He wiggles his hips, as if dangling a treat in front of a dog. 

Ilya wants it badly, if the speed with which he pitches himself back into Shane at that moment is any indication. 

And Shane thought it was brutal before, when Ilya had his wrists above his head. Now Ilya brings a palm down flat against Shane’s forehead, shoving his face into the cushions. 

Shane moans out at that, loud and unbridled and slightly muffled. The neat stitches of the couch leave an imprint on his cheek, a stencil over his freckles. 

Shane grapples for purchase on the couch, but it’s too narrow to capture his full wingspan, so he finds himself gripping the glass countertop of the coffee table instead. 

“This is just for me, hm?” Ilya says, panting. 

“Yeah,” Shane babbles. “Just for you.”

“No one’s fucked you how you’re meant to be fucked,” Ilya continues, and rather than the usual peacocking he sounds almost resigned. “I can tell. You feel so fucking good. Around me. Only me.” 

“Really?” Shane says, just to say something, though the tail end of the word dissolves into a muted “fuck” when Ilya hoists his hips up even higher to meet his pelvis. 

“Anyone else has you like this, I’ll fucking kill them.” 

That isn’t the healthiest, a small part of Shane supplies. But he groans out at the words anyway. “I don’t want anyone else.” 

Shane imagines Ilya saying: I don’t either. 

“That’s how I like it,” he says instead. He kisses Shane’s back like he did after their first time.

When he strokes Shane’s cock while fucking him, Shane’s body responds before his mind does: seizing up and coming all over the couch. 

Ilya manages a few more thrusts before he pulls out and spills onto Shane’s shoulderblades. 

He squishes Shane up against the backrest of the couch so he can pack himself in next to him, though the entire left side of his body dangles perilously over the edge. 

A few long minutes pass where neither speaks. Shane breaks the silence with a huff. “Well.” 

Ilya fits his right arm around Shane’s waist and tugs him flush against Ilya. Ilya is panting, hard, his chest twitching and flushed. 

“Okay?” Shane asks.

Ilya looks over at him oddly. “I should be asking you.” 

Shane shrugs loosely. “I think I broke the sound barrier. I’m fine.” 

“I’m fine also. Good.” 

Shane fumbles with a strand of Ilya’s hair. “You’re a little pale.” 

“There is a country,” Ilya says, “people come from. Is called Russia. These people -“ 

Shane smacks him lightly on his sweaty chest. “You know what I mean.” 

“I’m dizzy,” Ilya says finally. “It’s nothing. Will go away.” 

Shane tries to catalogue in his head exactly how many tries it took for Ilya to admit this. “I think we drank too much,” Shane says. 

Ilya appears to form a rebuttal. The words die on his lips. He pats Shane’s stomach instead.

“I’ll get us some water,” Shane says. 

He has never seen Ilya stand up so fast - so fast he stumbles. 

Shane pushes himself up so he’s sitting on the couch instead of sprawled haphazardly over it. His back is all sticky. When Ilya comes back he hands Shane a water glass. Shane chugs it in one go. 

He looks at Ilya. “What about you?” 

Ilya meets his eyes. “Oh.” He gets up, fumbling once more, and comes back with two waters: another for Shane and one, half-filled, for him. 

Shane nods his head in the direction of the coffee table, where Ilya’s phone is facing upwards, screen so bright he winces. The sun has gone down, now. The room is dark and filled with shadows. “Got any great content, Spielberg?” 

Ilya reaches over to end the recording on his phone. He grabs his computer and settles it over his bare thighs, still naked. 

“Maybe you should cover your webcam,” Shane mutters offhandedly. 

Ilya’s eyes don’t leave his screen, but with his left hand he feels around the couch for Shane’s thigh and pinches the skin. Shane kicks his leg out on reflex, hitting Ilya right in the ribs. Ilya groans, but rubs his thumb over where he pinched Shane until the skin smooths. “You’re paranoid, zaychik.”

“What’s that one mean?”

“Bunny.” 

“Can’t you call me something cooler? How do you say ‘lion’?”

“Pomidor.” 

“Pomidor,” Shane repeats, clumsily. A grin overtakes Ilya’s face. Shane sits up, affronted. “You’re lying.” 

“Clever pomidor, you are.” 

Shane leans over Ilya’s shoulder, so he can see his laptop screen easily. He nips at Ilya’s ear. Ilya doesn’t swat him away, like he expects. If anything, he leans closer, baring his neck for better access. “What does it actually mean?” Shane mumbles, his lips on the shell of Ilya’s ear. 

“Tomato,” Ilya says. “Because you get red like one.” 

Shane allows himself to be momentarily distracted by Ilya emailing himself the audio file. 

“I use Ableton,” Ilya narrates. He drags the audio file into a mobile app, Ableton Live, where it appears as a waveform on a track. “It’s German. Here,” he says, and deposits his laptop onto Shane’s legs, where it’s warm from Ilya’s body heat like sourdough right out of the oven. “Pick the clip you want.”

Shane gulps and drags the cursor to a spike in the waveform, about a quarter through the audio. “Fuck me on - on my stomach,” comes his own voice. He slams the space bar and shudders. 

“I’m not drunk enough to listen to this,” he whispers, cringing. 

Ilya presses the space bar again. “Make me take it,” comes Shane’s voice, breathy and low. 

“Oh God.” Shane hides his face in his hands.

Ilya pries them off as if he has pliers for hands. “That’s so fucking sexy, Hollander. You don’t even know.” 

Shane groans. He skips ahead to later in the clip. It’s Ilya’s voice this time, even more breathless than Shane’s. “You feel so fucking good. Around me. Only me.” 

This time, Ilya is the one to cringe. His nose scrunches up and he drags the cursor back to Shane’s portion. 

“So now you’re embarrassed?” Shane accuses, grinning. 

“It’s not even what I said. It’s - I sound like fucking Dracula.” Ilya scratches his nose. “I hate my accent.” 

Shane’s grin slides right off his face. “What?”

Ilya drags his cursor around, trimming the clip around Shane’s words. He cuts the rest, and the sound waves tumble into a tiny trash can graphic in the bottom right corner of his screen. “I have many distortion effects I use,” Ilya says. “You choose.” 

Shane just blinks. “I really like your accent.” 

Ilya chuckles, then. He scratches the nape of his neck. “Sure.” 

“I do,” Shane insists. “I really do. It’s unique.” 

“Unique like the sound of a dental drill is unique. Hm?” Ilya orients the laptop in Shane’s direction. “Pick an effect, please. Or I pick for you.” 

Shane chews on his lip. His gaze darts between the screen and Ilya, who is remarkably still except for a slight twitching of his right eye. Shane outstretches his arm towards one of the buttons, between Saturator and Amp.

“Overdrive,” Ilya murmurs. There’s a level of approval in his voice. “This is a good one.” 

He drops the distortion effect onto the clip, running through keyboard shortcuts too quickly for Shane to replicate them himself. Ilya’s fingers are long, veins bulging from his hands as they dash across the keys. 

He plays it out for both of them. Where before, Shane sounded downright porny - “make me take it” - he sounds instead like he’s been pushed through a guitar amp, the words thickened and roughened. The pitch has dropped so low that it isn’t a sentence at all, but instead a low, distorted beat. 

Shane hears an echo of his earlier words, but only because he’s listening for it: “take it… take it…”, in a low, reverb tone. It sounds nothing like Shane. It’s hardly a human voice at all. 

“That’s incredible,” Shane mutters, his breath catching. 

“You like it?” Ilya turns to him. They should really put their clothes on; his bare bicep against Shane’s makes it hard to think. “Should I mask it more? I can make you into an instrument. No words.”

“No. I like how it is.” Take it, take it. A command. Or, Shane hopes, a prayer. 

“Now, I click here,” Ilya explains, and Shane follows the screen obediently. An external window pops up, for a purpose Shane isn’t sure of. “I assigned it to a pad. So I can use the sound when I want in a set. To add to the song. I’ll just click a button.” 

“Gain knob,” Shane recalls. 

Ilya smiles. “Basically.” 

He shuts his computer and sets it back onto the coffee table. Shane blames it on the alcohol when he tugs Ilya by his neck back against the couch and kisses him hard on the lips. 

Ilya slips his tongue in. Easy, automatic. Like riding a bike, or bowing on stage. He tastes just the same as he did twenty minutes ago, but Shane wants Ilya’s tongue deeper, so deep he chokes on it, just to see. It’s like the perfume ad his mother booked him in last winter, when the Diptyque team poked and prodded him like cattle and he left smelling faintly of figs and the sea. What are the top notes, heart notes, and base notes of Ilya Rozanov? Has Shane tasted them all?

It’s Ilya who pulls back. His lips are so swollen Shane almost wants to apologize. He spreads them into a grin. “Am I going back to my poor person room?”

Shane uses his thumbnail to stroke Ilya’s knee. He’s all out of witty quips. On the menu tonight is only whatever raw thing is cooking in his chest. “‘Course not.”

They walk into the bathroom together. The sink has two faucets, one long basin connecting them both. They use the same one anyway, Shane to wash his face and Ilya to brush his teeth, crowded together as if by magnets.

They shower together. Shane washes his own body and Ilya washes his, except for when Shane can’t reach the dried up come across his shoulderblades. Ilya helps with that, scrubbing until Shane’s skin is smooth. Maybe scrubbing a little longer. 

Shane brushes his teeth twice, but still tastes brandy on his tongue. C'est la vie. He tosses Ilya a pair of his own boxers, since he knows Ilya’s aren’t clean.

Shane climbs under the covers. Ilya insists he’s too hot, so he lays on top of them. He tugs Shane flush against his chest. 

“I thought you were hot,” Shane whispers, once the lights are off. 

Ilya shimmies up on the bed so Shane’s head fits underneath his chin. When he speaks, Shane feels his chin bob. “This is different.” 

Shane thinks to himself: That’s it, isn’t it? This is different. 

----

It’s still dark in the hotel when Shane wakes. For a moment, he thinks he’s at his parent’s house. Perhaps because he dreamt he was there. Perhaps because he felt so safe.

A ragged gasp sounds out, remarkably similar to the one in Shane’s dream, and he wonders then if it wasn’t from a dream at all. 

Something peels itself off of Shane’s back. “Peel” as in it’s all wet, sticky. Sweating. 

Shane tugs the string that turns the bedside lamp on. Ilya is sitting up, his mole-covered back facing Shane, legs dangling off the bed. 

“Hey,” Shane mumbles.

He rubs his eyes, reaches over, and pats Ilya’s back. It’s damp. Ilya jerks away from the touch. 

“Hey,” Shane repeats, stronger this time. He sits up. “What’s going on?”

Ilya turns his head so Shane can see just his profile. He’s breathing quite hard. “I may go.” 

Shane furrows his eyebrows. “Go?”

“Yeah,” Ilya says, and then he stands up and takes the two steps down to the living room of Shane’s suite, with the couch and all their strewn clothes. 

Shane forces himself to sit up in bed. He checks his phone. “It’s four in the morning.” 

“I may go to my own room,” Ilya replies, like he didn’t hear Shane at all. His curls stick to his forehead as if gelled. He shrugs his shirt from last night on. It’s backwards. 

Shane swings his legs off the side of the bed. “But -” 

“Don’t,” Ilya says. “Go back to sleep. I will text you, okay? Tomorrow.” 

“Did I -” His voice cracks. He feels stupid lifting his legs back onto the bed so he doesn’t. “Did I do something wrong?”

Ilya pulls his pants back on. “You were asleep.” 

“I don’t understand.”

Ilya’s gaze goes steely. “So, of course you didn’t do something wrong.” 

Shane wonders if that’s meant to be soothing. Frustration bubbles in his chest. “You asked to stay here, you know.” 

Ilya sighs, and it catches so many times in his chest that Shane wants to ask if he gets panic attacks too. When he speaks, though, his voice has steadied. “Some nights, I just don’t sleep well. Tonight is like that. If I stay, I’m just going to wake you up.” 

Shane fumbles for words. He settles on: “Do you want to talk about it?”

Ilya licks his lips. He walks back, this time to Shane’s side of the bed. 

When he’s close enough that Shane can see the mole on his cheek, Shane tries again. “You can talk to me about these things. You know that, right?” 

Ilya kisses him on the lips, close-mouthed. It neutralizes Shane so efficiently that he sags against the headboard. 

“I will text you,” Ilya repeats. He walks out. Shane hears the door shut but doesn’t see it. 

He waits quite a few minutes before tugging the lamp string again. The room returns to darkness. He tries to return to sleep.

----

Shane does wake up to a text: a few, in fact. He reads them through the pounding in his skull. 

Rozanov

Can’t stop thinking about last night 

Rozanov

You are so fucking hot 

Rozanov 

When is the car taking us to the venue, by the way? 

Shane replies: Did you end up getting some sleep? 

A few minutes pass without reply. Gnawing on his lip, he sends another text. 

And it’s 1 pm for the car

Ilya replies: Perfect thank you

----

Soundcheck functions the same as usual. Shane practices his Spanish crowdwork with Camila. The only line he gets stuck on is “¿Cómo estáis esta noche, Madrid?”

During Ilya’s set, Shane watches from the wings, something he hasn’t done in a while. He is just as energetic and wild as he always is. He nails the Spanish perfectly. He even says things no one on the team asked him to say. 

“Hay muchísimas mujeres guapas entre el público esta noche,” Ilya yells, and his enthusiasm makes up for the stilted pronunciation. 

Shane nudges Camila by the arm. “What does that mean?”

“‘So many beautiful women in the crowd tonight,’” she translates. “He has tricks up his sleeve, that one.” 

Shane can only nod along. 

In Ilya’s last song, “Any Toys Here?”, the chorus crescendoes at the same time as a familiar beat thumps in the background. The words are so blended that it’s only because Shane’s listening for it that he hears it: take it, take it. 

His entire face blooms red. Ilya presses some buttons that must loop the sound, some iterations quieter than others. 

Camila scratches her head. “Is this a remix, or something?” 

“I think it always sounded like this.” 

“No…” She trails off. “This version’s, like, sensual. I love it.” 

When it’s Shane’s turn to come on, the crowd positively explodes. He gets the Spanish right, if their screams are any indication. One curly-haired woman at barricade holds up a poster with his face on it, a screen grab from an old Calvin Klein shoot. Scribbled on it is: “MARRY ME SHANE.” 

After the encore, he swings open his dressing room door. Bumping into Ilya with the lights off startles the panic right out of him. 

“Jesus,” Shane mutters. 

Ilya is the one to flick the light on. “I told you I’d wait here for you.” 

Shane rubs his forehead. He shrugs off the second copy of his velvet jacket that his costuming team so generously obtained for him, and tries not to think of what happened to the last one. “Yeah. Sorry. I forgot.” 

“Feeling okay?”

Shane nods. “No need to talk me off the ledge, I think. It went well. Right?” He adds, because he’s not him without words of affirmation.

“Very well,” Ilya agrees. He is in a plain white tee. The lines of his chest show through. “They went crazy for Hayden’s solo. And that never happens, so.” Ilya offers a smirk that shows he knows he’s being cheeky and doesn’t care.

Shane chuckles. “Uh. I do want to stay and talk.” Shane stares at him and feels something hot and strong squeeze at his chest. His moles, his eyes, his hair. His voice. “But I have a meeting tonight. It’s been postponed a ton and I can’t be late.” 

Ilya drums his fingers along the countertop by the makeup counter. “Oh. I didn’t know.” 

“Yeah, well.” Shane tries to keep the hurt out of his voice. “I was gonna tell you this morning. After we woke up.” 

Ilya’s mouth forms a small ‘O.’ “Who’s it with?”

“German producer. Lukas Bauer. Do you know him?” Shane reaches for the dry shampoo and sets about spraying his hair with it. It’ll stave him off until he can get back to the hotel and shower. “His stage name is just BAUER. He’s actually -”

Ilya’s voice cuts through the tin of the spray and the milling of feet outside the dressing room door. “No.” 

Shane ceases the spray. “No?”

Ilya rubs a rough palm over his mouth. He tugs the skin of his chin down with it. It snaps back into place. “No. You can’t.” 

Shane can’t help it: he scoffs. Then it turns into a chuckle, a strangled one. He sets the hair spray down on the counter - not delicately enough, because it tips over with a clatter. “I’m sorry?”

“He’s bad news,” Ilya says. “I worked with him before. He won’t get behind the mixer unless he’s on something. And when he’s on something he’s handsy.” 

“‘Handsy,’” Shane echoes, confused. “Well. Um. Thanks for your concern. But this has been in the works for a while. I signed the contract. I’m doing the feature. And, anyway, my vocals will take maybe an hour to record, so it’s really not -”

“Where are you meeting?”

Shane doesn’t want to say, for some reason. “The hotel.” 

Ilya shakes his head and spits out a mirthless laugh. He rubs his eyes again. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” 

“Come on,” Shane says. “It’s the Universal Music Hotel. It’s owned by the label. There are studios in the basement.” 

“The basement!” Ilya is almost gleeful in his astonishment. “He’s a weirdo, Shane. You are not meeting him in the basement.” 

“I’ve been on Zoom calls with him. I’ve called him, emailed him. We’ve exchanged lyrics.” 

“Oh, wow. You’ve exchanged lyrics.” His sarcasm makes something hot flare in Shane’s chest. “Who else will be there? Rose?”

Shane chews on his thumbnail. Quietly, he mutters, “No.” 

“Who, then?” 

He aims for a casual tone. “Just… just us.” 

Ilya’s shoulders droop. He does look genuinely sick, then, and it makes Shane want to take a deep breath and try the whole conversation over again. “Why not Rose?” 

“She’s busy.” Then, extricating his thumbnail from his mouth to show a semblance of calm, he says: “How about you come, then? If you’re so torn up about it?”

And then Ilya does actually deflate. His face loses some color. There’s a crease between his eyebrows that Shane wants to take a rolling pin to and smooth out. “I can’t.” 

“Because?”

It’s Ilya’s turn to chew his fingernail. “I have a gig.”

He might as well have picked up the dry shampoo can and thrown it at Shane’s head. For a moment, he can’t even speak. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.” 

“Why? You do remember what happened last time, don’t you?” 

“It’s good money.”

The gaps in his knowledge are like a wrecking ball to his skull. Ilya has dragged the same torn-up suitcase from Toronto across the Atlantic. He wears the same tattered jeans every soundcheck. “Why do you even need all this money?”

Ilya takes so long to respond that Shane actively steels himself. He pictures Ilya like an onion: peel, peel, peel.

What eventually comes is this. “Does that concern you?”

Not peeling, but the opposite. It tears a strangled sound from Shane’s throat. He presses his fingertips so deep into his eye sockets it hurts. 

“Shane -”

“No, I mean.” He lets his hands drop. “You’re right. Why would it concern me?”

For a moment, Ilya looks relieved. “See?”

“Why would it concern me,” Shane continues, “when I’m just someone to fuck? Right?”

“No,” Ilya replies, stern. “That is not true.” 

“It’s - it’s fine. That was the ‘arrangement.’” He says ‘arrangement’ with such disdain it transforms his entire face. “We fuck, and then you go fuck someone at the club, and that’s what casual is.” 

“I don’t do that,” Ilya says, quickly. “I haven’t been doing that.”

“Why? It’s ‘allowed,’ you know,” he sneers, his voice cracking on the last word. “I open up, and you don’t, and that’s what this is. I should really just get it through my head.” 

Ilya scoffs. “I do open up.” 

Shane swallows down a lump in his throat about the size of Jupiter. He tries to get his bearings. Tries to be delicate. “Do you?” 

Ilya crosses his arms. “Yes.”

Shane waits for more. Nothing comes. 

“I wish you would tell me just one thing,” he whispers. His voice sounds pathetic even to his own ears. “One thing about you. Something real. Not work, not - not sex. Just you.” 

For a moment, all Ilya does is swing his head around, cracking his neck. But his face is all pinched up, like he’s tasted something sour. Like he’s gearing up for something big.

When he speaks, Shane feels as though all the air has been sucked from the room. 

“Okay. Okay.”

He drums his fingers against his chin. They’re trembling. 

“My real name,” he says, “is Ilya.” 

Il-ya. Pronounced just like that, two strong syllables, two soldiers standing at attention, as if Shane has never heard it before. 

“I - Oh my god.” 

“What?”

For one long second Shane worries he is going to vomit. 

“What?” Ilya repeats, insistent. 

“You think -” He cuts himself off and whips around for the nearest trash can. The wave of nausea subsides, just barely. “You think I don’t know your fucking name?”

Ilya looks like he’s been slapped. Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. The name that’s been bouncing in Shane’s head all these weeks, like a melody you can’t shake.

“I mean -” Ilya stutters. “I dunno. I never…” 

I never told you. Shane remembers now. It was Rose who told him. His eyes begin to burn. 

“You can’t find it online,” Ilya says. “I don’t just give it out, you know. I…” He trails off, wringing his fingers together.

In Shane’s line of sight, his silhouette blurs. Shane blinks to dispel the wetness, but instead it forms a droplet and dives down his freckled cheek.

“Ilya,” Shane manages. The sound is so new on his tongue. To speak it now is like stomping on a fresh bouquet. “We should end it.” 

Ilya licks his lips. “Okay. I agree. We calm down. We talk tomorrow.”

“No, I -” Shane wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “We should end it. This. Us.” 

Ilya leans against a lone chair in the dressing room. Shane wonders if he’s unsteady or just exhausted. But then he’s wincing, and squinting like something hurts. “Come on. Shane. I’ll tell you something else. Okay?”

Shane just shakes his head. 

“I will,” Ilya says, undeterred. “Something else. Something real.” Then his face starts twisting like he’s going to cry, and Shane can’t take it anymore. 

“Stop.” But Ilya doesn’t, and his face turns so tortured it’s almost scary, like Shane is hurting him, twisting his arm or carving into his skin. So Shane raises his voice. “Stop. I mean it.”

“But that’s what you wanted!” He accuses. He throws his hands up. “That’s what you asked for!”

“Yes, but you look like you have a fucking gun to your head! That’s - that’s not what I want.” 

And it’s his own fault, he thinks. Shane wants something Ilya never promised him. They’re not dating. Never were. But he wants Ilya to want to tell him the hard things. Like Shane wants to tell Ilya the hard things. 

And it’s not something that can be forced. He realizes that now. He realizes it as he looks at Ilya and Ilya stares back at him like a threat to be contained, and not a person to be known. 

In Ilya’s silence, Shane speaks through the wetness in his throat. “It’s better for the tour, anyway. It’s better to, um, just be professional. Cordial.” 

Ilya rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t see why it can’t keep on the way it was.”  

That’s their biggest difference. Shane sees it now. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. If Ilya won’t say it, he will. “I can’t.” 

Ilya rubs his nose. It’s so harsh it leaves behind a red mark. He chews on his bottom lip, though he’s calm otherwise when he says: “Don’t be alone with this man, Shane.” 

Shane feels around for his phone, just to know it’s where he left it in his pocket. He can’t sing tonight. He’s not even sure he’ll be able to breathe. “Okay,” he chokes out.

“I mean it.” 

“I said okay.” 

“Promise?”

He sucks in a sharp breath. No more tears fall. He forces them back as if defying gravity. “I promise.” 

Ilya glances towards the door. It’s a perfectly innocent one made of maple wood. “That’s it, then?” 

“Well, um.” Shane’s voice breaks. “Can you delete the voice recording?” 

Ilya’s entire face tightens. Shane knows the feeling: how can an entire eternity fit between last night and tonight? But he fidgets with the collar of his white tee with one hand and with the other, fishes out his phone. He taps a few buttons and looks up. “Alright.” 

“Can I see? That it’s gone?”  

Ilya’s eyes blow about twice as wide. He mutters something in Russian, then meets Shane’s gaze, incredulous. “If you think I’m such a piece of shit, why’d you fuck me in the first place?”

Shane has no answer for him. He can hardly bring himself to speak.

Ilya chuckles emptily. He hands Shane his phone and lets go, so quickly Shane nearly drops it. He scrolls the Voice Memo app. The most recent recording is from a month ago. 

Shane hands it back with shaky fingers. Ilya grabs it and shoves it into his pocket. “Can I leave, now? Are you done?” 

Shane nods. “Please make sure no one’s in the hallway,” he whispers. 

Ilya tips his head back and shakes it with his eyes glued to the ceiling. He mumbles more in Russian; even if Shane spoke it he might not understand. “No more secret now,” Ilya murmurs. He meets Shane’s eyes, his blue eyes dull. “You must be thrilled.” 

It feels like a punch. Shane wants to scream - of course I’m not thrilled, you motherfucker, how could you even - but Ilya is out the door. He slams it shut. Maple wood. 

No more secret now.

The only chair in the room is the one Ilya leaned on. Shane sinks to the floor instead. He recognizes this feeling in his body as if greeting an old friend. Blood pulses in his ears, blocking out sound. His fingers begin to tremble. He shoves them under his thighs. They protest and twitch against the hardwood as if strangled. 

His breath catches. He coughs. His vision tunnels. It’s all familiar, except for the wetness on his cheeks, twin tear tracks like claws scraping down his face. One slips off his chin and onto his knee. The other drips into his mouth, so salty he sputters. 

He’s had enough of these to know he’s not dying. It just feels like he is. But it’s hard to explain this to lungs that won’t take in air and skin that prickles so deeply he feels aflame. 

There are such things as good coping skills and bad coping skills. Or at least, better and worse. Shane digs his index fingernail, the only one not bitten to the quick, into the opposite forearm as hard as he can for three seconds, releasing on the forth. He does it again, counting aloud to get his timing right. 

When he stands up he takes an oil blotting sheet to his face. It looks how it looks. He can’t change it now. 

He walks out. The room is empty, save for a janitor employed by the venue and Rose. 

“I heard yelling,” she says. “What was that about?” 

Can he go back in time? Sharing a sink? Sharing a bed? 

“Nothing,” he mutters. “Creative differences.” 

Rose bristles. “That’s uncalled for, on his part. It’s your show.” 

Shane scratches his eyelid. “Can you cancel my meeting tonight?” 

Her eyebrows furrow. “With BAUER? You signed a contract.” 

“Postpone it, then,” he spits. “Or I’ll record on my own and send the file. Artists do that all the time, now. In case you didn’t know.” 

Rose is quiet for a long moment. Her eye twitches. “Okay,” she whispers. 

She’s halfway out the door when Shane croaks out a “thank you.” She doesn’t turn around.

He’s never spoken to her that way. 

Ilya’s voice floats in his head, from New York: “I get that. But also, you are her boss.” 

At least Shane has confidence that Ilya won’t bail on the tour. The confidence comes from the knowledge, painful but practical, that he didn’t lose what Shane lost tonight. 

A warm body, maybe. But a friend? A partner? 

Shane could almost laugh. Yes, Ilya won’t bail on the tour. He can hear it in his voice. It’s good money. 

And that’s what matters, in the end. Shane is nothing if not professional. 

Chapter End Notes

I laughed, I cried

(No actually)

Reactions to this?

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

Blur is good. Stumbling is good. Blinking away smoke is good, and so is the bass thumping in his head, and the unique curdling of his stomach that only comes when he drinks without eating. 

The woman dancing next to him, and slightly on him, though he tries to side-step, is brunette. Curly, but the spirals are blurred too. 

Her boyfriend, or husband or guy she fucks or friend, is screaming at her from below the platform to get out from behind the DJ booth. His face is pimpled. If Ilya squints, though, they almost look like freckles. 

He’s lost count of the number of drinks he’s thrown back. He has taken them when offered and requested more when no one asked. 

He is playing a pre-mix, one long audio file he recorded weeks ago. He’s still groping knobs, pretending to mix. Occasionally before the beat drop he drags his gaze up to the crowd and jumps with them, though last time he did that he stepped on the brunette woman’s high-heeled foot and she yowled like a cat. 

It’s so lazy, what he’s doing: pretending to adjust the channel faders and nudge the filter to thin the sound, when in reality he might as well have pressed the “play” button and left. 

He checks his phone. He can leave in thirty minutes. He’ll Uber back to the Universal Music Hotel, or maybe take the train if he’s ballsy. He’ll hit the button for the fourth floor, not the tenth, because he is going to his room, not Shane’s. 

It’s all fine. So fine that when a group of girls elbows their way behind Ilya’s booth, he squints at the one farthest from him because she has brown hair and it’s cropped short - French bob, he thinks it’s called - and she is long-limbed and she has birthmarks on her cheeks that could pass for freckles, or at least a caricature of them.

Then she opens her mouth, screaming along to the song, and her voice is so shrill, so off-beat, that the illusion dissipates. 

Shane Hollander has only ever sounded like music. 

Thirty minutes passes by quickly. Ilya flags down the club promoter, the guys usually responsible for booking him in the first place. They’re these slimy motherfuckers who have around fifteen gorgeous women orbiting them like scantily clad electrons to a nucleus. People cheer and clap as Ilya fumbles his way through a goodnight note. One man even grabs him by the scruff of his neck so he’ll pose for a selfie. He thinks he throws up a peace sign. He might have forgotten the pointer finger. Twitter will let him know in the morning.

“Fucking electric,” the promoter says, and shakes him by his shoulders. Between his Spanish accent and Ilya’s Russian one, they’re playing an enticing game of pretending to understand what the fuck the other is saying. “You going to the afters? You have to.” 

“Uh,” Ilya says. He thinks of how to say “no” in Spanish. He remembers it’s just that, “no,” and bursts out laughing. 

“Te perdiste ya, eh? You’re gone.” He claps Ilya on the back and Ilya stumbles.

“Bathroom? Where’s the…?”

Ilya lets himself be led to a smaller room. Themed, probably. Disco? He’s not sure. There is at least one disco ball. He sees three but he’s not so prideful to assume he’s seeing straight.

In the bathroom, he drops rather unceremoniously to his knees. The promoter is still here, standing near the ceramic sink.

“Can you leave?” He mumbles. He retches and vomits into the toilet.

“Shit,” the man mutters. He does leave, then. 

Ilya coughs and spits. A trail fails to escape his lips. He tries to slurp it back up but he disgusts even himself so he mops it up with the collar of his white shirt instead. 

He rests his forehead against the toilet seat. He imagines the bacteria unfolding a bridge and jumping ship from about a million Spaniards’ asses to his sweat-soaked, Russian forehead. 

Time’s up, he thinks, and drags his head up to vomit again.

The promoter returns, this time with a glass of clear liquid. He nudges Ilya in the shoulder with it. 

He takes it and tries to apply the meager Spanish he learned for their show earlier tonight. “Gracias.”

He takes a sip and chokes on it. The promoter starts laughing. 

“Fuck you!” He swallows the enormous swig he already poured into his mouth. Not water, not by a long shot. It’s vodka, and not the flashy kind. He tosses the rest of the liquid onto the promoter, aiming for his crotch so it looks like he’s soiled himself. 

“Hey, hey!” The man snatches the glass from Ilya’s hands. “That’s how we do it! You can’t be hungover if you never stop drinking.” 

Ilya pushes himself up from the ground. He notices only now that it’s strewn in toilet paper. He flushes his own biohazard down the toilet and washes his hands in the sink. 

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” the man continues. Now he’s dabbing at his groin with paper towels. “You drink like a fish. And you’re Rozanov. I thought you could hold your liquor.” 

“I can,” he spits. He makes eye contact with the man through the mirror, then switches his gaze to his own reflection. The skin under his eyes is gray and dabbled in sweat. He rubs his nose with his thumb. “You tell anyone about this, I’ll fucking kill you.” 

“Okay, okay. Jesus.” 

Ilya shoulders past the promoter. The exit loses some of its flair because he stumbles and collides with the door frame. He makes it to the curb and hails a taxi.

He’s not nauseous anymore. His stomach is vaguely prickly, on account of not eating. Surely there’s a Spanish Taco Bell open at this hour.

But soon enough he’s outside the hotel. Sooner still, he’s fumbling with his keycard and entering his hotel room.

If he turned the bathroom lights on, he’d see one figure in the mirror and not two. So he brushes his teeth in darkness.

He falls into bed naked. There is something soothing about the cool bedsheets on his bare skin. He gives himself an hour before he predicts he’ll wake up sweating such bullets that he’d rather set the sheets on fire than crawl back underneath.

Advice from his mother, about shopping of all things, floats to the forefront of his mind. He’s surprised he was even listening; back then he used to tune her out like the tin of a radiator. Back before he knew better. 

She used to say, “If you don’t love a dress in the store, you’re not gonna like it any more at home. So don’t take it home.” 

And Ilya had said, I don’t wear dresses, Mama. That’s so stupid.

But it applies to him, too. He sees that now. He tried his hardest to show Shane the best version of himself. My brother is normal-annoying, yeah, not like he’d dangle me off a cliff to gather up loose change. My dad, he’s fine, sure. He remembers my face when we call.

If Shane doesn’t want him now, with the best parts of himself on display, he’d never like the whole picture. 

You’re not gonna like it any more at home. 

He checks the bedside clock. He has three hours before their flight to Paris. 

It’s hard to explain to anyone outside of Ilya’s head that sleep is the best part. Even if he doesn’t get too much of it. Even when he wakes up gasping. 

Paris will be fun. Paris is filled with women: short and stout, tall and thin, artistic and pragmatic. 

He closes his eyes and sees Shane where his eyelids should be, which is what he expects, except the Shane he sees isn’t sprawled on his back or panting on his knees. 

It’s the Shane who slipped between two elevator doors as they closed, grinning ear-to-ear after Svetlana’s verbal takedown of his boss and ordering him, in the bossiest voice he could muster: “Go pack, asshole.”

Don’t take it home. 

Ilya falls asleep. 

—— 

PARIS 

Ilya arrives at the venue separately from Shane and his team, in a Toyota instead of an Audi and with windows fractionally less tinted. When he walks in, Shane and Rose are sidebaring with the lighting crew. 

They both look up when Ilya joins them backstage, as if Ilya’s footfalls were boulders tumbling down a hill. 

Ilya hardly notices Rose. His eyes snap to Shane. His soft brown hair is ruffled, sticking up in odd places where it catches the light. His almond eyes are wide and unblinking. He has an easy tan from the Spanish sun, the kind that makes his freckles darken against his cheeks.

He is so utterly captivating, in a gray quarter zip with a stain on the collar and sweatpants that drag on the floor, that for a moment Ilya cannot breathe.

Shane meets Ilya’s gaze for a fraction of a second before Shane averts his to his feet. 

“You look like shit,” Rose tells him. 

Ilya clears his throat. “I think the word is ‘rugged.’” 

“Look. I’m all for having a supplemental income. But if your night shows begin to interfere with the tour -”

“Rose,” Shane cuts in. A voice isn’t something Ilya thought he could miss, but he does. “It’s okay.” 

Ilya scoffs before he can help it. It certainly wasn’t “okay” with Shane last night. He hides his mouth behind the back of his hand until he’s neutralized his own expression.

“I’m just saying.” Rose crosses her arms, defensive. 

“You both watch me tonight,” Ilya says. He points at each of them in turn. “Watch me perform, and tell me if it interferes. Hm?”

Rose shrugs. It’s fine - it gives Ilya something to prove. Her phone buzzes, and she orients it so Shane can see the screen. He nods at her and she walks off. 

And then they’re alone.

What did Shane expect from him last night? To dump a lifetime of baggage at his feet, knowing it would send any rational person running for the hills?

What does he expect from Ilya now?

It turns out, Shane doesn’t expect anything at all. He keeps his eyes glued to the floor and walks off, in the direction of his dressing room. 

Ah, Ilya thinks. That’s how it’s going to be. 

----

Nothing can interfere with a Rozanov performance: not two hours of sleep, or unanswered texts from his brother, or Shane Hollander standing in front of him with wet eyes saying, “we should end it.” 

He screams into the microphone. He rips off his shirt, actually tears it in half, and tosses each tattered rag into the crowd. He crowd surfs. One woman reaches for his bare abdomen. He takes her hand and drags it down his chest, then lifts her hand to his face and kisses her knuckles. 

The crowd screams so loud his eardrums hurt. After directing his own crowd surfing like an air traffic controller, pointing in the direction of the stage to be deposited back to it, he leans into the mic stand and yells, “Who wants to see Shane Hollander?”

They cheer and jump. 

Ilya shakes his head. “Shane doesn’t spend time with just anyone. No, he’s picky. Ver-y picky.” 

Murmurings spread throughout the crowd. 

“Are you worth Shane’s time? The energy it would take for him to come out here?” They cheer, but it’s not enough. He yells, “Are you?”

They scream, jumping off their feet. Ilya looks to the side of the stage. Shane is covering his ears, shielding himself from the sound.

Ilya waves his goodbyes and steps away. Normally, he watches Shane’s entrance. Tonight, he forgoes it in favor of rifling through his personal belongings where he’s left them in a cubby backstage. 

He takes his phone out first. He has a missed call from Alexei. Then, as if sensing his dread, his phone begins to ring. 

“Fuck,” he mutters in Russian. He answers.

Alexei fills the silence the only way he knows how. “It’s out.”

Ilya bristles. He adjusts his grip on the phone, his knuckles whitening. “Can you put Papa on the phone?”

“He’s sleeping.” Alexei sighs. “Ilya, it’s out.” 

“How the fuck is that possible? It’s been two days.”

“It’s possible because you sent half of what I asked for!” 

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut. “You don’t need ten thousand fucking dollars for one month’s medication. This is - it’s a joke.” 

“Sure, it’s a joke to you, because you’re not here. You’re not seeing him. It’s not just for the medication.” 

“It’s for what, then? The shit you put up your nose?”

“It’s not half of what you put up yours. You’re out every night.” 

“That’s - the - where do you think the fucking money comes from? I’d rather be home! I’d rather be sleeping, not -” 

“Ah, home? By home you can’t mean here. You can’t show your faggot face here.” 

Ilya chews on his lip. He’s used to this, by now. “I wish you’d call when he’s awake.” 

“Send the rest of what you owe -” 

“Go to hell,” Ilya hisses. 

“- and maybe I will.” 

Ilya massages his temple with his thumb and forefinger. “Let me try to find extra work tonight.”

“It’s laughable, what you call work.” 

“Yeah, well. If my money’s so dirty, you should get your own.” 

“You’re not as important as you think you are, Ilya. We can all live without you. You must know that.”

Ilya blinks a few times, as if it’ll help him hear better. “Okay,” he says simply. 

“So when -” 

“Once I have it,” Ilya says. “Don’t call me again.” 

“But hurry -” 

He hangs up. 

He had booked a gig tonight, is the funny thing. Back in Chicago, the night he first fucked Shane, he called up the four-story Paris nightclub and explained rather hastily that something had come up for that same night. He couldn’t make it. He had other plans. 

He fucked Shane once, and promptly cleared his schedule for their one night in Paris. Now, scrolling through his message history to find the promoter who reached out, he laughs to himself. 

He had grand ideas: to fuck Shane on a bed of rose petals in the city of love. Buy chocolate strawberries and lick the syrup off Shane’s chest. Now, he looks back on it all as rather presumptuous. He pictures instead falling asleep in Shane’s arms, waking up having wet the bed from a nightmare. It hasn’t happened in six years, but with his luck it could. Real fucking attractive, he is.

He finds the contact in his phone and presses “Call.” 

“Rozanov?”

“Hi, Louis. Yes.”

“Man! Jailbird, you are. I saw your stunt in New York.” 

“Yes, stunt. Yes. Um, I changed my mind.” 

It’s quiet on the other end of the line. “About?”

“Tonight,” he says impatiently. “The show.” 

“Ah. Your schedule freed up?”

Ilya bristles. “Obviously.”

“Rozanov, we’d love to have you. Especially now. But you cancelled, man. We booked someone else.” 

“Someone better than me?” 

Louis chuckles. “Someone cheaper than you.” 

“I don’t care about the rate,” Ilya mutters. “Give me what you’re giving him.” 

“It’s 500 for four hours. One to five a.m.” 

Ilya takes the phone off his ear and curses in Russian. It’s chump change. He brings the phone back to his ear. “Yes.” 

Louis makes a startled noise. “You’re really willing -”

“Yup,” Ilya grits. “It’s your lucky day.” 

“We’ll need a picture of you, to promote on social. And just so you know, it’s gonna be packed in there. It won’t be the amount of security you’re used to.”

“Go to Getty for the photo. And I don’t give a fuck about security.” 

There’s a gulp on the other end of the line. “Noted.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says. “See you tonight.” 

“We’re really so thrilled -” 

Ilya hangs up. 

----

Ilya sleeps for an hour and a half that night. He wakes up with an unusually lengthy chunk of memory missing. 

He checks his tags on Twitter. He scrolls through the hashtag #ROZANOVINPARIS, finding videos of his set, selfies he doesn’t remember taking, and a single tweet that reads “this motherfucker is higher than a kite rn” with five thousand likes.

It’s not true, anyway. He was drunk. 

Once he’s assured his blackout didn’t turn into a PR disaster for Svetlana to mop up, he swings his legs off the side of the lumpy hotel mattress. It irks him that Shane’s mattress is probably perfectly calibrated, in a hotel room triple the size of Ilya’s own.

He stands up. His vision tunnels and he promptly crumples to the floor. 

The flight to Amsterdam is slightly over an hour long. He planned to sleep his hangover off on the plane. It is only now, as he blinks away black spots in his vision, that he considers an extra hour might not be enough time.

He contemplates texting Rose. Is he allowed to take a sick day? 

Then he pictures the local opener they might book instead - some smimy Dutch rapper to replace Ilya for the night, to ogle Shane and proclaim him as his musical and lyrical inspiration. Maybe he’ll video call his two loving parents with Shane by his side, screaming, “I’m opening for Shane Hollander, mom!”

So, no. Ilya is not texting Rose. 

He texts the Dutch promoter instead. 

Can’t make it tomorrow night. Sorry 

He gets an incoming call, which radiates like an air horn in his ear. He types: 

Can’t call either

The man writes back. ?? We’ve been building up hype for this for weeks, what do you mean?

Ilya feels like someone took a bulldozer to his head. He sends: Unbuild it

He blocks the number and crawls on his hands and knees to the bathroom, where he sets up camp next to the toilet in case his body makes like a volcano and erupts. 

His phone buzzes with a text from Rose. 

Leaving for the airport in 5. Meet in the lobby

He rubs his eyes. She might as well have told him she’s shipping him back to Russia. 

He replies: See you soon!

And dry heaves into the toilet.

----

AMSTERDAM 

Ilya has his legs kicked up onto the couch backstage after the show, six unread texts from Alexei on his phone, when Shane and Rose approach him on either side like some kind of ambush. 

He sets his feet onto the floor so he can run if he needs to.

Surprisingly, it’s Shane who speaks first. He’s dripping sweat and his eyes are wide, like he’s been spooked. “We were, um. Are you okay?”

Ilya saw himself in the mirror this morning. He looks ghoulish, permanently pale and vaguely ill. But he also begged Mandy to apply concealer under his eyelids before he went onstage. He is slightly offended it wasn’t enough to put them off his trail. 

“We just wanted to check in,” Rose adds, filling the silence. 

Ilya’s eyes dart between the two, wagering which he feels most irritated at. Whether justified or not, betrayal sits deep in his chest. Shane won’t speak to him at all without a chaperone. 

Ilya measures his words. “Did you dislike my performance?”

It’s Rose who answers. “No, it was great. The usual. But -”

“No, no. I take feedback. Be honest. What did you not like?”

This time Shane answers. “You know that’s not what we’re talking about.”

We. Ilya could laugh. So he does, a humorless chuckle. “What else is there to talk about, if not the show? We keep it professional, yes?”

Shane licks his lips. He wipes some sweat off his forehead, and for a moment looks so distraught that Ilya reimagines him as a priest, someone who’s worth Ilya wiping the concealer right off and confessing his sins. Then the expression smooths, and he pulls Rose gently by her elbow. “Have a good night, then.”

Rose stares at each of them in turn. “But -”

“Rose,” Shane urges. “It’s fine.” 

Ilya takes that as his cue to stand up. “Good talk. I’m leaving.”

“The car’s coming to take us all in ten,” Rose tells him. 

“I have my own ride. Thanks.” 

He walks out of the venue and collides immediately with a score of overeager fans, which he could have anticipated if he thought for even one fucking second. He suffers through a dozen selfies and makes it to the nearest train station. He’ll figure out Dutch public transit if it kills him. It’s a simple thought that drives him forward: that he doesn’t need help, least of all from Shane Hollander. 

There’s something else his mother used to say, and of course Ilya remembered it because prepubescent boys love everything unholy and gross: You can’t polish a turd. 

Ilya is handsome, but he is who he is on the inside. Ilya couldn’t give Shane what he needed. Such is life. 

When he gets to his hotel room, it’s almost midnight. He collapses in bed, shoes and all, and falls asleep draped over the bedsheets like a martyr. 

—— 

BERLIN

“I thought I had the day off,” Ilya grumbles.

The CEO of some German electric car company has picked Shane up personally to schmooze him for a brand deal. As such, the taxi from Berlin Brandenburg Airport to their hotel is just him and Rose, for a change. 

“I sent you multiple emails,” Rose replies, curt. She’s sorting through her own inbox on her phone. 

“I only use my computer to make music. I never check that stuff.” 

“Don’t you have Gmail on your phone?”

“What, like an old person?” He shakes his head. 

Rose locks her phone and finally sets her perceptive eyes on him. “The event itself is only three hours. There are about a hundred fans who just paid an arm and a leg to meet you both, so you’re going to sit pretty and withstand it. Okay?” 

Ilya does the math in his head. “That is less than one minute per person,” he says, frowning. “Why would someone pay for this?”

“Meet-and-greets are a common marketing strategy. I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long without doing one. And,” she adds, her voice chipper, “you won’t be alone. You’ll have Shane by your side.”  

Yeah, he thinks. That’s the whole fucking problem. He switches tactics, then. “I get why people want to meet Shane.”

The reasons are so obvious they don’t have to be named: he is talented, kind, humble, and looks like a baby seal who wished to become human.

“Why me, though?”

Rose tilts her head. “Are you seriously asking me why someone would want to meet you?”

Ilya gets the sense it would be a misstep to say yes. “I mean, I get asking for a selfie in the grocery store. But, to pay? To meet me?”

“They’ll be meeting both of you. You first, then Shane. I’ll be there to keep the line moving.” 

Ilya groans. “I just, I don’t know. I’d rather fuck every person in line than make conversation with them.” 

Rose smacks him in the arm. “Get your mind out of the gutter.” 

“I mean, I’m bad at this stuff. Talking stuff.”

“You’re doing just fine right now.”

“And I don’t like compliments,” Ilya continues. “I’d rather they say my music is shit.” 

“Shane’s not much better,” Rose says, sympathetic.

A memory presses up against his eyelids, of Shane preening as Ilya called him beautiful. “But Shane likes compliments.” 

“Yes, but then he gets so awkward afterwards that you wish you never said it at all.” She makes a motion to dust her hands off. “Point being, both of you need to suck it up. If you’re not having a good time, pretend that you are.” 

“So, pretend. Is your advice.” 

She nods briskly. “You might think you’re musicians. Today, though, you’re actors.” 

----

The meet-and-greet area is set up off to the side of the concert venue, sectioned off with black and red stanchions. At the center are two step-and-repeat backdrops, each matte black with Shane’s name and his sprawling logo in a repeating pattern. There are also some props: a cardboard cutout of Berlin’s TV Tower and bits of graffiti-style lettering. 

Ilya stands on his taped mark in front of his backdrop, and Shane on his. 

From a brief glance outside, a line has already formed. At the front are two women, one wearing a shirt with Shane’s grinning face on it and the other wearing one of Ilya in handcuffs. 

Ilya stares at Shane from the corner of his eye. Droplets of sweat are already collecting on his forehead, and he’s picking at his thumbnail as if digging for gold. 

“You feel like a doll on the shelf, yes?” Ilya asks him. 

Shane jolts and looks up. They’re an awkward distance away. He seems to take a step forward before remembering the tape on the floor and shifting in place instead. “Yeah.” 

“Me too.” 

Shane blinks a few times. His eyelashes are so long, even from here, like one of those folding fans Ilya used to buy off Moscow street vendors. “Did you sleep okay last night?”

“Fine. You?”

Shane nods stiffly. “Yeah. Pretty well.” 

Rose comes through with security flanking her on either side, overseeing the process. “We’re ready when you two are!”

Neither of them speak, but something in their expressions must give her the okay. 

Ilya greets the first two fans easily, complimenting them on their graphic tees. He feels exposed, to start, with Shane having nothing to do except watch Ilya’s fan interaction unfold. But then Rose is ushering the women towards the camera for the photo with Ilya and sending them Shane’s direction. 

Ilya glides through the surface-level conversations like water. He deflects when they compliment him and picks something to compliment them on instead. Sometimes he grasps for such straws that he points out the sound of their voice, when really, each pales in comparison to Shane’s. 

One fan in her thirties explains to Ilya, in the forty five seconds she has with him, that his music helped her through her mother’s death. It tears the breath from Ilya’s throat. He mumbles a thank you and is still overly dazed when they take their photo, her hand tight around his waist and his around her shoulders. 

It would’ve been so easy, he thinks, to say, I can relate. 

Instead, he bids her goodbye and watches as Shane waves her over with a smile. 

He is still replaying what she said - and what he didn’t - when he turns back to face the next person in line. 

Alexei has shaved his face for the occasion. 

“Hello,” he says, his English stilted.

Ilya stumbles back. They both look to the floor and notice where he’s drifted from his mark. Reluctantly, he steps back onto the tape. “The fuck are you doing here?” He hisses in Russian.

“I am excited to meet you, ‘Rozanov,’” Alexei replies in English. Alexei always thought it was stupid, and downright shameful, that Ilya goes by their last name. “Though maybe more excited for Shane Hollander.”

The thought of Alexei being close enough to Shane to touch him has Ilya seeing red. His face has slimmed, his heavy-lidded eyelids aging him a decade when only a year has passed since Ilya saw him last. 

Before Ilya can speak, Rose does. “Time for the photo!” 

“This man needs the bathroom,” Ilya manages. Shane’s eyes flicker to him, but he keeps his gaze on Rose. “Me too. We’ll be back.” 

Before anyone can protest, Ilya has a hand on Alexei’s shoulder, guiding him to a coat room across the venue. Once inside, Ilya lets go and crosses his arms. He slips back into Russian easily. 

“How are you here?”

“What, I can’t come visit my baby brother?” Alexei picks at a loose thread at the collar of Ilya’s shirt. Ilya presses his lips together to keep still. “You need a haircut.” 

“Who is watching Papa?”

“My wife, Ilya. Jesus. Calm down.” 

“How can I calm down? Why would you fly out here and pay for this fucking clown show?”

“Because you won’t talk to me otherwise,” Alexei spits. A wad of it lands on Ilya’s cheek. “And because you’re going to pay me back.” 

Ilya lets out an incredulous laugh. He is standing next to a cluster of empty hangers and they rattle when he gestures. “It’s impressive, how your mind works. Truly.”

“You -” Alexei points a jabbing finger against Ilya’s chest - “are selfish. You’d rather waste thousands partying with Shane fucking Hollander than send a penny back to us.”

“Either I’m a useless failure or I’m a millionaire hoarding cash, Alexei. You can’t have it both ways.” 

Alexei picks at another thread, this time on Ilya’s shoulder. “You’re lucky he doesn’t remember you.” 

On this topic, Ilya is stubborn. “He does.”

“If he remembered, he’d be fucking ashamed. Your music is glorified noise. Those people out there?” Alexei points to the door, which is cracked open and letting light in. “They pay to see you whore yourself out.”

“He does remember me,” Ilya insists, because it’s the only issue that matters to him. “Not every time, but most.” 

“He has gotten worse. Not that you would know.”

“Maybe because you never put him on the phone when I ask.” 

“How about you pay me when I ask! I flew to fucking Berlin for you!”

“You’ve never done a thing for me,” Ilya hisses. “You flew to Berlin so you could line your own pockets and stuff your fucking nose. And I did send you money, for God’s sake. Last week.”

“Do you think I pull these numbers out of thin air? You sent me half of what I need. I can’t pay the pharmacy.” 

Ilya threads his hands through his hair. He tugs on the strands, feeling a satisfying zip of pain at the roots. Alexei is right; he needs a haircut. When he drops his wrists to his sides, curls flop unceremoniously into his eyes. 

“I am sorry if you came all this way thinking it’d be different than on the phone,” Ilya says, softly this time. 

Alexei’s expression is perfectly blank. Ilya locks eyes with him anyway. It feels important, somehow. 

“I sent you all the money I have right now. I mean, what else can I do? Do you want the fucking shirt off my back?” Ilya pulls at it, this fraying blue button-up he bought at an estate sale in Canada. His voice fractures, thick with emotion. “Honestly, Alexei. I am trying my best.” 

In retrospect, Ilya should have expected it. Vulnerability reminds Alexei of their mother. 

A fist slices through the dust-filled air and careens hard into the bridge of Ilya’s nose.

Ilya reaches up on instinct to cover his face. Blood gushes through the gaps of his fingers. The pain makes him gasp, and the blood drips past his open lips like a wave creeps onto shore. 

He stumbles back, catching himself on the clothing rack, but it has wheels so he slips to the ground instead. “Motherfucker,” Ilya spits. 

Alexei is a wiry, thin-looking man now, but he has always cared deeply about his clothes. Today, he is wearing pointy dress shoes. He sends the toe of one into Ilya’s ribs.

Ilya jolts, like a live wire. But he’s stronger than his brother, although he is younger, so he stumbles to his feet and swipes at Alexei’s neck with the hand not covered in rivulets of blood. 

Alexei dodges and smacks Ilya’s hand down for trying. “You’re a fucking coward.” 

When Ilya was young he used to creep up on unassuming lizards in the yard and capture them by their tails. He feels a little like he’s trying to capture one now. He reaches for Alexei’s wrist. 

Alexei pulls out of the hold again, this time whining. “You ruined my life.”

Ilya feels, oddly, like they’re kids again, testing how hard each can slap the other. “Yeah, right,” he fires back, and makes a choking sound as he swallows blood. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “I don’t know you well enough to ruin your life. And, by the way,” he says, and gestures crudely to Alexei’s stubby nose, “why don’t you wipe the fucking powder off your face before you come to me crying -”

Both of Alexei’s hands come up and fit themselves around Ilya’s throat, dampening his words like water on a flame. Alexei is willowy, so this would all be manageable if his fingernails weren’t overgrown, these built-in tools that separate and portion out his drugs. Now they burrow into Ilya’s neck. The pain is white-hot, what Ilya imagines a knife to the neck feels like. His own fingers are slimy and wet with blood as they protest fruitlessly against Alexei’s shoulders.

From the corner of Ilya’s line of sight, fluorescent light floods the room and exposes their private brawl. 

Alexei drops his hands. Thank you, Ilya thinks, heaving. He turns his head to the doorway. Oh no.

Shane brings a hand to his perfect lips. He gasps, and for a hazy second Ilya worries Shane is going to faint. “Oh, fuck.”

In the next moment, his dolllike face gets obstructed by three lumbering security guards who haul Alexei up by his armpits, scooping him like a lump of coal. 

They take him away, leaving just Shane in their midst. His face is red, like he’s wearing performance makeup. He rushes over and crouches down on the floor, so they’re eye-level. This is when Ilya realizes he himself is on the floor. 

“You’re bleeding,” Shane whispers. He reaches out to clutch Ilya’s wet face. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner. I had a feeling, but I never thought - I just didn’t - I don’t know. We’re gonna get you to a hospital.”

“Woah,” Ilya says dazedly. His next breath comes out strangled. He coughs. “No hospitals. No thanks. It’s just a nose bleed.”

He pries Shane’s hand off his face and wipes the smear of blood that transferred onto Shane’s skin against his own pants. No messes here.

“What do you mean you had a feeling?”

“He seemed odd,” Shane manages.

His hands drift to Ilya’s neck. Ilya can’t imagine there’s much to look at there. Alexei had his hands around him for, what, fifteen seconds? Twenty? Most people can hold their breath for a minute, he rationalizes. This is hardly a brush with death. 

“We’re gonna get you cleaned up, okay?”

“Give me a paper towel and I’ll do it myself.” He stands up, then, because he can. The more he acts like a pregnant woman swooning in the heat, the more he’ll be treated like one. “You should go back out there.” 

Shane’s eyes bulge. God, those eyes. “There’s no way -”

A German security guard joins their huddle. He seems happy, if anything, to have something to do with his hands. “Rozanov. We’ll send him to the station at your word. Do you want to press charges?”

Ilya wipes his face with the collar of his shirt. Not much blood comes off, which irritates him, because that means it’s started to dry. “No,” he says, and licks the tips of his fingers to clean up his face like an old cat. 

Shane’s eyes widen again. So wide it looks like it hurts. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

The security guard jumps in. “Were you aware you had a stalker?”

Ilya wets his fingers again. He hates this part. Hates it, hates it, hates it, in a way he won’t ever get used to, even though he’s had years of practice, starting at age twelve when he told Svetlana his mother wouldn’t be bringing over more shortbread cookies anytime soon.

“I don’t have a stalker.” 

Shane’s face contorts into this look of utter confusion that Ilya might find endearing in different circumstances. Maybe he even finds it endearing in this one. “Then who -”

“He is my brother.” Ilya looks down at his shirt. It looks like he slaughtered a pig on it. He looks up at Shane, who looks like someone just slaughtered Ilya. There is genuine horror on his face, which is interesting because to Ilya, his brother is just this mousey-looking guy who blows up his phone sometimes. “Alexei, is his name.”

“Alexei,” Shane repeats, groggily, which makes something protective swell in Ilya’s chest. 

Rose joins them in this coat room, and Ilya cuts her off before her frightened face can manifest into one of those godawful questions that take the form of ‘are you okay.’ 

“Can I be excused? To the hotel?”

Rose looks him up and down. “Of course. But your nose -”

“Is fine,” Ilya finishes. “Not broken.” He honks his own nose, gripping it between his thumb and forefinger like a birthday clown for added effect. “It was a family issue. Resolved now. Everyone happy.”

He grins, yet no one looks happy. He wonders if he still has blood in his teeth. 

Rose looks like she would rather die than say what she says next. “If it was really a family issue, then, um, we do have eighty people out there, some of whom flew out from other countries -”

Shane interrupts. “Look at him, Rose!”

“I know, I know. I’m talking about you,” she says, wincing slightly. 

Shane shakes his head. But Ilya beats him to it. “I agree.” 

Shane whips around, fixing him with a look like he’s just committed treason.

“Shane should meet the rest of the fans. I’ll sneak out through the back. Tell them I’m sick.” 

Shane shakes his head more fervently. “That’s not right.” 

“According to who?” Ilya shoots back. “I want to rest.” 

“But -“ 

“Alone,” he adds. 

Shane flinches. 

“What do you say?” Rose asks Shane, timidly. 

A vein jumps out of Shane’s sharp jaw as he clenches it. “Alright.” 

That’s that, then. 

Ilya at least gets the luxury of taking Shane’s private car back to the hotel. He zips his coat up past his chin and ducks his head in the elevator. 

When he gets to his room, crusty with blood and heavy with embarrassment, he lingers in the doorway of the bathroom. Realistically, this should be his first stop. Yet all he wants to do is sleep. 

He faceplants onto the white pillows and does just that. 

——

Nothing irks Ilya more than being woken up. These days, he does it to himself, dragged out of sleep by dreams of his mother. Yet the knocking at his hotel room door keeps getting louder.

Ilya stumbles to his feet. He winces when he notices he turned his white pillows pink. He approaches the door with his phone in hand, ready to call - God, who would he call if Alexei came back for him? His brother is police. Though the Germans may not take kindly to Alexei’s version of keeping the peace. 

Ilya leans in and peers through the peephole. It is not Alexei but Shane, his head of brown locks uncharacteristically large through the fisheye lens. 

Ilya opens the door. In Shane’s hands is a plastic bag bursting at the seams. Ilya can only make out the silhouette of a tissue box before Shane speaks and then his eyes are drawn, like always, to Shane’s lips. 

“I knew you weren’t going to take care of yourself,” Shane scolds. 

Ilya isn’t sure if he lets Shane in or if Shane pushes past him. But in the next moment he’s inside. 

On his way back in, Ilya steals a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He has blood flaking off his skin, purple discoloration under his eyes, and a handful of crescent-shaped cuts along his throat.

“Okay then. You’re right. Do you want a prize?”

Shane halts, actually freezes, leaving his bag of materials only partially unpacked on the bed. “Are you really choosing now to push me away?”

Ilya scoffs, but it comes out stuffy, and it’s also painful when he moves his throat. A memory from childhood pops into his head, unbidden: it’s Alexei at twelve years old, stepping between Ilya and the stray dogs that paced hungrily down their Moscow street. 

Then he thinks back to that night in Madrid. “I was not the one who pushed.”

Ilya can see Shane visibly struggle to hold back his words. He empties his plastic bag and pats the mattress. “Please,” he whispers. 

Ilya walks over and sits down. 

Shane pulls out a packet of wet wipes. All the writing on the front-of-pack is in German. He plants himself on the mattress and tugs one out. He is wearing a big sweater, the collar loose enough that at the right angle, Ilya can make out the contours of Shane’s chest. 

Shane wipes Ilya’s right cheek first. Ilya flinches when the moisture hits his skin.

After a minute of Shane pawing at him, Ilya grabs his wrist. “You are not pressing hard enough.” 

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

Ilya gives him a funny look. But when Shane wipes down his left cheek, and then his chin, he does press harder, and the process goes by quicker. 

Shane dumps the dirty wipes onto the nightstand. He takes out a cloth and tilts an opened bottle of water into it until it’s damp. He grabs hold of Ilya’s chin and pushes it upward. 

For a moment, Ilya resists, and he can tell Shane feels it because he drops his hand. Then he tries again and Ilya lets himself go lax. 

Shane pats at Ilya’s throat. Like a blind man feeling for grooves on the wall, there’s no strategy to it. Ilya wonders if this part is more for Shane than for him. 

Shane sets the cloth aside on the nightstand too. It is dully pink, like those tie-dye shirts kids make in American summer camps. Shane takes out his phone and shows Ilya his face in the Camera app. 

“Nice,” Ilya comments.

The reality is he looks worse than he’s ever looked. He’s all red and purple and not in the rugged way he likes, because his nose is swollen and tender. He can no longer blame the dishevelment on all the dried blood. He is humiliated, suddenly, that he let Shane stare at him long enough to clean him up. 

“Do your parents know he treats you like this? Alexei, I mean.”

There is an anger in Shane's voice when he says Alexei’s name that Ilya doesn’t currently share. He thinks about Alexei’s small body between Ilya and the dogs. 

“Well,” Ilya says, without preamble. “My mother is dead.” 

It is odd that the object of his torment can be conveyed in so few words. Four. My mother is dead. 

“And my father is sick,” Ilya continues, “so he does not remember me. Or, sometimes. Not often. But I don’t want to complicate things.”

Shane’s face is indescribable. So shell-shocked it’s almost funny. Exactly what he feared. 

Ilya, without warning, bursts into tears. 

“Oh,” Shane says. Ilya contorts himself in such a way that he can hide his face in the bedsheets, but Shane pulls him up, so forcefully Ilya sways, and tugs Ilya flush against his chest. 

Ilya has cried before, presumably. Though it’s been a while, it has never been this loud. These are shrieking, guttural sobs muffled by the yarn in Shane’s sweater. Shane gathers the rest of Ilya up in his arms, one arm wrapped around his yawning shoulders and the other anchored to the side of his head, keeping him in place. Shane’s chin fits itself atop Ilya’s hair, and Ilya thinks about how it hasn’t been shampooed in days and how that’s probably gross for someone like Shane who won’t even rewear jeans without a wash. Shane is pressing his nose into it anyways. 

Snot drips out from Ilya’s nose and onto Shane’s sweater. “Sorry,” Ilya coughs out. He tries to separate himself so he can wipe away the stain but Shane only clutches him tighter, his cheek squished from the pressure. Once Ilya is tight against him again he rocks them both, backwards and forwards with a rhythm like a song Ilya can’t place. 

“Oh God,” Ilya chokes out, and tries to laugh. 

“Shh,” Shane coos. His lips are in Ilya’s hair, speaking into his curls. “I got you.” 

He keeps rocking them. Ilya doesn’t know how long. His sobs peter out until the only sounds he makes are sniffles to keep all his snot in. 

Eventually, Shane pulls back, though only to hold Ilya’s head up with a palm against each cheek. His thumbs rove Ilya’s cheekbones. “I don’t know the best thing to say, but I’m really, really sorry you had to go through that.”

Ilya attempts a joke. “I forgive you.”

Shane strives for what’s probably supposed to be a playful thwack to Ilya’s eyebrow, but it’s so gentle it hardly lands. “You know what I mean. Ilya, I -” Shane cuts himself off. “Can I…?”

Ilya feels his eyes wet all over again, thinking about the kind of person he is that makes someone like Shane ask for permission to say his name. He nods.

“Ilya. I’m so glad you told me. I mean, I’m sure you’ve told people, but still.” 

“Not really,” Ilya admits. “She died when I was twelve. The other kids found out. Svetlana is who I told.”

“Your manager Svetlana?”

Ilya nods. 

“Was she the only one?”

Another nod. 

“She swallowed a bottle of pills. My mother, I mean. Not Svetlana.” 

It’s Shane's turn to nod. He blinks a few times and gulps harshly. 

“Obviously. Um. So, yes. And I found her, like that, which is why I sometimes have trouble sleeping.”

Ilya realizes he’s not really explaining himself well. It’s not clear enough that the dreams aren’t all bad, not by a longshot, that sometimes all they do is sit and talk, him and her. Shane strokes his fingers through Ilya’s hair and scratches when he gets to the nape. 

“You can imagine why I didn’t want to tell you.” 

The fingers in Ilya’s hair still. Shane’s lips twist, like he’s in pain. “Oh. Because… because you thought I wouldn’t react well?” 

“Well, no,” Ilya says, matter-of-fact. “Because I want to be with you.” 

Shane does not speak for a long moment. It is so long, in fact, that Ilya wonders if he truly has broken Shane’s brain with all his baggage and bad wiring.

“Obviously,” Ilya adds. 

When Shane does speak, his expression is incredulous. “What part of that was obvious?” 

Ilya balks. “What do you mean? I thought -”

“I thought,” Shane interrupts, “you only wanted me for sex.” 

“No.” Ilya shakes his head fervently. Though, he looks back on how he acted and softens his voice. “I can see why you would think… that. But, to me, there are certain extra things you just don’t tell someone you like.” 

“Extra things? Ilya, these are essential things that make you you.” 

Ilya throws his hands in the air. Shane’s fingers retreat from his curls, startled. “Okay, sure, but what kind of fucking person wants someone after hearing that?” 

A tear slips over Shane’s freckles and down his cheek. Ilya thinks, great, I’ve made him cry. 

“Me.” 

Ilya wants to be closer, close enough he can see down Shane’s shirt again, inappropriate as it sounds. Then he flinches. “What?” 

“What kind of fucking person?” Shane echoes. His eyes are wild and bright, like a deer’s. “Me.”

Ilya just stares. “But,” he begins.

Then he decides it’s easier instead to grab a handful of Shane’s sweater and hold it in place. Shane tilts toward him, almost imperceptibly, but Ilya catches it like a sailor reading the wind. He tugs Shane all the way forward. He topples onto Ilya’s chest, his elbow slamming into the bruise on Ilya’s ribs. 

Ilya lifts Shane up by his chin, which is soft with the barest glimmer of stubble, and kisses him. 

Ilya’s brain short circuits. Shane’s lips, satiny and wet, part as Ilya slips his tongue inside. Shane lets out a startled noise. Ilya knows he must look crazy, but he opens his eyes mid-kiss to catch a too-close glimpse of Shane’s eyelids, close enough to count his eyelashes. This is Shane’s tongue in his mouth and Shane’s fingers in his hair. Here is visual proof.

Ilya slips his hands underneath Shane’s sweater. He roams for a bit, enjoying how Shane flinches and shivers in his hold, before he settles his hands on Shane’s bare waist. His skin is hot as a furnace. Shane fingers the collar of Ilya’s dress shirt and slips his hands down the back of it, where they find a home fondling Ilya’s shoulderblades. 

It’s not so much an escalation as a survival instinct. Ilya needs to be touching as much of Shane as possible. It is one thing to make up for lost time, and another to realize, or hope, that you have more of it. 

Shane tilts his head, deepening the kiss. It’s all well and good until their noses brush together. Ilya groans against Shane’s mouth, wincing. 

Shane pulls back. “You’re hurt.” 

In for an inch, in for a mile. “I’m happy.”

Shane’s jaw drops. With his lips parted, Ilya kisses his top lip, then his bottom, then sticks his fingers into Shane’s mouth so he dodges and writhes in Ilya’s lap. Eventually he steadies himself on Ilya’s shoulders. “Me too.”

Ilya braces himself, because he’s still him, but throws the question out anyway. “So. Next steps. Or, sorry. It’s not a job interview. But. Would you try this?”

Shane makes a face indicating he understood none of what was just said. “Would I try…?”

Ilya tries not to ram his head into the wall. “Being my boyfriend?” 

Shane tugs his bottom lip behind his front teeth until it disappears fully behind the white. Ilya wants to whine, like a child with his toy stolen. “Yes,” Shane says, breathing heavily. “Will you be mine?”

Ilya grins. Nevermind that it sends spikes of pain across his face. “Yes. Though I think that was implied when I asked.”

“Shut up.” Shane kisses Ilya, hard, suckling on his top lip. 

He pulls back. Ilya rubs his palms down the swell of Shane’s back, settling on the dimples there. “I can’t believe you want me.” 

Shane frowns. “Hey.” 

“I don’t mean it like that,” he says, to soften it. Shane rubs the creases out of Ilya’s forehead. “It just surprises me. I don’t know.”

“I have issues too. You’ve seen it. I’m constantly second-guessing myself. I have stage fright, probably, and a panic disorder, so.” Shane blushes ferociously. “You’re signing up for that part too. No take backs.”

“I know that,” Ilya says, stroking Shane’s spine. “I would not think less of you because you struggle sometimes.”

Shane shoots him a pointed look. When Ilya doesn’t reply, he tilts his head, as if saying, You’re so close. Ilya feels it - that something within him take a new form. It’s almost like a chemical reaction, beakers clanking around in his chest. Paradigm shift. 

Shane doesn’t name it, and Ilya is grateful because he is not sure he could put words to it either. Instead, Shane pets the bruises under Ilya’s eyelids. “Has your brother reached out?”

“No. I don’t think he will - for a few days, at least. He is ashamed.”

Shane tracks his pointer finger down the slope of Ilya’s nose. “And today. What did he want?”

“Money.” Ilya meets Shane’s eyes. It is unbelievable to Ilya that Shane’s look of devotion is aimed at him, but it is. “That is why I do those stupid gigs. I send money, and Alexei takes care of Papa.” 

Ilya feels stupid, saying “Papa” like a dawdling little boy, but Shane just blinks at him like he understands. “What’re you gonna do?”

“About him?”

Shane nods. 

“I want a clean break. I am thinking, I’ll pay him, but only for his flight and the ticket to our event. Then I owe him nothing.”

Shane chews on his lip. Ilya shifts his hands to Shane’s hips, fondling at the bump of bone on either side. 

“What? What do you think?”

“You want to pay him back,” Shane says, delicately, “for the flight he took to punch you in the face?”

Ilya winces. 

“Sorry.” 

“No.” Ilya squeezes Shane’s hips, a reassurance. “I am the one who is sorry. Sorry that I shut you out.”

“I understand it better now. You were… scared, maybe.” 

Ilya nods.

“I’m probably the nosiest person you’ve ever met, though, so…” Shane tries for an easy smile, but Ilya can see the anxiety underlying it. “I hope you don’t feel like you have to keep things from me.”

Ilya squeezes Shane’s knees, this time. “I’m going to try. Really hard. And about this - this fucking Alexei stuff, too. I care what you think.”

“Well, I think you should sleep on it,” Shane says. He eyes the clock on the nightstand, hidden behind a pile of dirty wipes. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Matter of fact, you should probably sleep now.” 

Ilya tightens his grip on Shane, white-knuckled. “Stay,” he whispers. 

Shane grips the back of Ilya’s head and kisses him hard. They separate with just enough space that Shane mutters, against his lips: “Okay.” 

For the next fifteen minutes, Shane forces Ilya to ice his nose. When Ilya takes his shirt off to slip under the sheets, Shane gasps and acquires a second ice pack for his bruised ribs. 

Shane forgoes his multi-step skincare routine in favor of splashing his face with water from Ilya’s less luxurious hotel sink. They climb into bed, congealed on one side of the mattress like two overgrown puppies. 

Ilya doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he does remember the feeling of Shane’s cheek pressed into his bare arm, mumbling about how it’s too rigid to be a pillow, then drooling all over it anyway. He remembers Shane’s right leg spread across Ilya’s ankles like he was staking a claim. He remembers also Shane telling him, “wake me up if you get a nightmare,” and Ilya wondering distantly if he’d gone insane because he told Shane he would and he meant it. 

The first thing Ilya thinks when he wakes is that Shane was wrong. But it’s only in the sense that Ilya does not, physically, feel any better, but actually five times worse. 

Aside from feeling like his throat has been flattened by a skid steer, though, his head is clearer than it’s been in weeks. Shane wakes up about thirty-four seconds after Ilya does, like some form of Bluetooth connection. He presses a kiss into Ilya’s saliva-soaked arm.

“Good morning,” Ilya mumbles. 

“Morning,” Shane returns. His eyes fight the seal of sleep and flutter open, startlingly brown. “Your bruising looks worse.” 

“Thanks,” Ilya says dryly. 

“That’s good. Means it’s healing.” Shane cups Ilya’s cheek with his hand and says, rather cryptically, “What do you think?” 

Somehow Ilya knows what he means: what does he think about Alexei. More generally, Ilya thinks he is like a cockroach, unkillable. But resilience is an admirable quality in a family like theirs. 

Ilya did dream last night, and about his mother at that. They talked over tea sandwiches. The topics themselves are too fuzzy for Ilya to remember, with the exception of one mantra he recalls her saying. Let go. Let go. Let go. 

For fear of actually getting checked into a mental hospital, or at the very least losing his very recently acquired boyfriend, Ilya doesn’t mention the dream. But he wants to let go.

“I think,” he says, “I’m not giving him a fucking cent.” 

—— 

Shane doesn’t want Ilya to fuck him while he’s injured. Ilya protests and accuses Shane of finding his new nasally voice, courtesy of his swollen face, supremely unattractive. 

Rose scrambles to find a new opener for the show that night in Berlin. They end up with an indie-rock duo, two women married to each other. 

They sound great. Ilya scrolls on Twitter under #SHANEHOLLANDER to get snippets of Shane’s performance, which is so wonderful it makes his chest ache.

Shane slinks into Ilya’s hotel room again that night, uncaring that his own room is likely twice the size. 

They kiss like teenagers for an hour, sloppily, lacking rhythm. They lay sideways on the bed, facing each other, neither energetic enough to lift their heads off their shared pillow. 

Ilya jerks Shane off until he buries his freckled nose into the crook of Ilya’s shoulder and comes against Ilya’s torso with a whine. His come lands on Ilya’s ribs, blanketing his bruise almost perfectly. 

“You should try paintball,” Ilya comments. He scoops Shane’s come off his body and slurps it into his mouth, almost unthinkingly. “You have perfect aim.” 

Shane shudders and mouths at Ilya’s neck before groping down his body. He takes Ilya’s cock into his mouth, lapping at the head - partially to preserve his throat for their next show in Seoul - and fitting Ilya’s remaining length into his open, saliva-slick palms. Before Ilya comes, but as Shane senses it building, he pops his swollen lips off and asks, “Do you want some?”

Said with all the innocence of asking Ilya to split the last churro. He is so sexy it hurts. 

“Da,” Ilya groans. When he comes down Shane’s throat, Shane gathers the come up in his mouth, slinks up Ilya’s body all spider-monkey-like, and spits into Ilya’s open mouth. Ilya gulps and drops his jaw to take in more, but Shane just swallows the rest and wipes his come-covered lips with the back of his hand. 

“Refreshing,” Shane says, after they’ve both caught their breath. 

Ilya cackles. He grabs onto Shane’s wrists, bucks his hips to throw Shane off him, and tosses him onto the mattress. He crumples Shane’s limbs up, arranging them into a ball he can tug flush against his stomach. If Shane is cramped in his new contorted form, he doesn’t say so. He just purrs against him, contented. Ilya fishes for Shane’s phone when he asks for it and watches over his shoulder as Shane goes through work emails, his back pressed into Ilya’s chest like two pieces of a puzzle. 

Chapter End Notes

Ilya POV!! Yay! Thoughts on Berlin?

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

SEOUL

When Ilya remembers they have a day off between the European leg of the tour and the final two dates in Asia, he nearly jumps for joy. 

His face is less swollen today, more pink than purple. Mandy takes one look at it and confirms she can cover the bruising in makeup and clears him to perform in Seoul. Shane has an all-day meeting with a Korean producer, SUGA, so Ilya spends the day hunkered in his hotel room fiddling around on Ableton Live. He has a song he’s been working on that requires a softer voice. He is thinking of asking Shane. One tough question at a time.

Shane doesn’t need to knock on Ilya’s door to enter this time. Ilya gave Shane his only room key. 

“Hi there,” Shane says, softly, like greeting a puppy. 

Ilya walks up to him about as giddy as one. Ilya pushes the door closed behind Shane, grabs a fistful of his fleece quarter zip, and pushes him up against the wood. 

“Ow,” Shane mutters, though he’s smiling. Ilya notices the door handle pressing against Shane’s lower back and drags him firmly to the adjacent wall, where his head rests against a picture frame instead. He imagines it’s only marginally more comfortable. 

Ilya grabs either side of Shane’s face and kisses him hard. 

Shane hums into his mouth, reaching his hands up lazily to thread fingers into Ilya’s hair. When Ilya pulls back, Shane is staring above his head. Ilya deduces his curls must look insane. Hopefully Shane likes the mad-scientist look. “Good meeting?”

“Great. He had a few songs to show me. Lyrics are still a work in progress, though.” Shane drags his index finger under Ilya’s eyes, where only light bruising remains. “Was hoping you could help me with those.” 

“Me?” Ilya points to himself. “If you want to sound twelve years old, maybe.” 

Shane leans in and kisses Ilya, so quick he could blink and miss it. “You’re really smart. Mister ‘Pulsive’? And diaspora?” 

Ilya grins wildly. “Did not know you were keeping track.” 

If Shane’s freckles could come alive, Ilya suddenly has this thought that he would pop them into his mouth, one by one, and eat them like those Nerds candies he buys at the airport. Shane smiles, stretching the pink of his lips. “Always.” 

Ilya glances at the bedside clock. It’s not even five o’clock, but the jet lag has Ilya ravenous anyway. “Did you eat?” 

Shane shakes his head. 

“Can I…” Ilya feels himself redden like a tomato in early fall. “Can I take you out to dinner?”

“Yes,” Shane replies, quickly, and blushes. 

Despite the fact that their final show is just days away in Tokyo, Shane admits shyly that he wants sushi. What he says goes, so off to sushi they go. 

It’s this hole-in-the-wall place with enough available tables that they snag a booth in the back, under lanterns that oscillate between red and pink. On the walk there, they don ball caps and sunglasses. They’re careful not to stand close enough that their shoulders brush up. Here in the booth, Ilya nudges Shane’s dress shoes under the table with his sneakers. Shane looks up at him and smiles. 

Ilya hands in his credit card when Shane gets up to use the restroom. Shane comes back outraged, then grateful, then worried that he has become another expense on Ilya’s docket. Ilya isn’t sure if there are words to explain how different it is: to spend money on his thankless brother, or to spend on a man who looks at you like you outdid the sunrise.

On the walk back to the hotel, standing a respectable distance away, Shane clears his throat. “You know, you never once asked if you could ‘tickle’ me tonight. Is this a new record?”

“Maybe I have matured.” Ilya looks behind them for pedestrians before leaning in. “And do I have to ask, when I know you want it so bad it hurts?”

Shane bumps Ilya with his shoulder. It makes him stumble, then cackle like a Disney villain. “Asshole.”

“Yes, we will need that.” 

“You -” Shane stutters through a few options. “You motherfucker.” 

“Dirty mouth you have.” 

Shane groans. “No more talking for the rest of this walk.” 

Ilya tilts his head, considering. “And no talking after.”

Shane bites his lip but can’t beat the smile that creeps onto his face. 

----

At Shane’s behest, they go to his room this time. They step into his gargantuan waterfall shower together, large enough that it has a bench. Ilya allows Shane approximately two minutes to wash his hair before he drops to his knees and starts sucking Shane off. Water splatters into his eyes, blurring his vision, but he keeps them open anyway to see how Shane’s chest twitches and shivers.

When Ilya first stepped into the bathroom, he thought about those Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cartoons he watched translated into Russian at Alexei’s house. There was always some kid to be wrangled there. The mouse would gesture to an item and say, rather cryptically, “It’s a surprise tool that will help us later.” 

Ilya feels this way about the shower bench. He gets Shane bent over it, his ass dabbled in water droplets and smooth as silk. Ilya fucks one finger, then two and three, in and out of Shane whose poor cheekbone is mashed up against the glass shower wall. Ilya asks him twice if he wants to move and Shane just moans and shakes his head against the glass, smushing his face into it further.

The lube is finicky, half of it swirling down the drain, so Ilya slathers as much as he can into Shane’s hole, which is still, almost alarmingly, tight. 

“I can’t believe,” Ilya pants, his cock lined up with Shane’s entrance, “I am fucking my boyfriend.”

Shane strains his neck to attempt to look back at Ilya, a drowsy grin on his face. Then he presses his face flat into the glass again. “Do you mean metaphorically, or physically? Because I’m feeling pretty empty.”

Ilya laughs, almost maniacally. This fucking brat. My brat. And he fucks into him, his cock disappearing inch by inch like a magician’s vanishing act. He thrusts in slowly though he wants to go fast, until Shane adjusts to the stretch and whines out that he wants it harder. 

The waterfall shower dumps so much water on them it should be an environmental concern. Somehow, Shane’s moans are louder than the water by tenfold. Ilya’s hands can’t decide where to grip, so he alternates between Shane’s lithe hips and the curve of his waist. 

In one long draw of his cock out of Shane’s hole, Ilya grabs each globe of Shane’s ass and spreads them wide like dough stretched for baking. He watches the magic of himself reappearing outside of Shane’s rim and his eager hole sucking Ilya back in.

Mine, mine, mine, Ilya thinks as he kneads the skin of Shane’s ass. He says so. “Mine.”

“Yours,” Shane replies, muffled and whiny. 

They had a conversation the night of the Berlin show. Ilya hadn’t fucked anyone else since the tour began, but Shane brought up, much to Ilya’s chagrin, the one woman he kissed in San Francisco. Ilya found the concern about herpes only slightly humorous considering they had kissed what felt like ten thousand times since, but apart from fiddling around on his computer on his free day in Seoul, Ilya got tested and passed with flying colors. 

Nevermind the generational embarrassment he experienced attempting to translate ‘chlamydia’ from Korean to Russian to English. Now, Ilya strokes Shane, just once, before his entire body tightens like a coil while hugging Ilya’s cock and he comes onto the ceramic bench.

Ilya lasts only a few more thrusts before he squeezes onto Shane’s hips so tightly he is sure he’ll leave a bruise. Shane moans, high and throaty, so Ilya squeezes harder. He bucks his hips in one last time and comes so deeply inside Shane that he worries it struck his vocal chords. 

He stays inside Shane because it’s wonderful in there, like an all-inclusive resort. Shane goes limp against the bench, sleepy and smiling. Ilya pumps Shane’s expensive hair conditioner onto his palms and lathers it into Shane’s hair from behind him, his cock and come keeping Shane filled. 

Shane’s approval comes in low hums as Ilya massages his scalp. He’s such an artist, Ilya thinks. Even these sounds are like music. 

They stay like that, Ilya lathering Shane’s hair and pressing kisses into the puckered scar on his shoulder, until the head of Ilya’s cock gets too tender. He threads his fingers into Shane’s hair one last time before pulling out. He hisses as he drags his cock out, watching Shane’s rim catch on his length as if urging him to stay. 

He wants to see his own come leak out of Shane’s wet hole. But more important is flipping Shane over and grabbing his chin to kiss him, his lips wet and soft and tasting faintly of hair conditioner. 

Ilya dabbles a few close-mouthed kisses along Shane’s undereye freckles. He grabs the conditioner bottle in bewilderment. “Did I get some of this in your mouth?” 

“Yeah,” Shane admits. He grins. “I don’t mind.”

Every fourteen minutes on average, Ilya’s mind goes how is this possible how is this possible how is this possible. He strokes Shane’s cheekbones with his thumbs. “You’ve had worse, hm?”

Shane nods. “That brandy. Yuck.” And he sticks his tongue out to show Ilya just how disgusting he found it. Ilya takes that opportunity to lick Shane’s tongue, which Shane finds even more disgusting. 

Washing off takes longer than it should because they are both exhausted and would prefer to apparate to bed. Shane tosses Ilya a t-shirt from his suitcase, soft and cottony, and he throws it on. They climb under Shane’s covers at only ten in the evening. 

Ilya yawns. “I’m tired,” he complains. He throws a heavy arm across Shane’s chest. It lands with a thump.

Shane smiles at him. “Wow. Ten p.m. and he’s turning in. Have I domesticated you?”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s, like -”

Someone knocks on the door. 

Ilya gets up first, because his first thought is to let Shane rest. When Shane stands up also, he realizes this is Shane’s hotel room and thus Shane’s visitor. 

The knock sounds again, and a voice perks up from behind the door. “Shane.” 

Rose, Shane mouths to Ilya, as if Ilya has never heard Rose speak before. Shane makes a shooing gesture to Ilya, who slinks reluctantly into a closet out of view of the doorway.

Shane opens the door a few seconds later. “Hi,” he says, overly enthusiastic. 

“I’m so sorry to drop by at this time,” she says, voice frantic. “I’m just worried. I need to get a hold of Rozanov tonight. The venue has a question about the setup of his booth and it can’t wait.” 

“Oh.” Ilya can practically hear Shane’s gears turning. “Have you tried texting him?”

“Well, he’s supposed to be at the hotel right now. I dropped by his room. He’s not there. It’s like, dude. You’re on thin ice. So I was wondering if you’ve heard from him.”

“Uhh,” Shane says. “Good question.” 

“Let me give him another call.” Ilya doesn’t have a second to prepare before his phone, discarded on the nightstand, is blasting his latest ringtone of his own song “Any Toys Here?”. It’s the Shane remix, obviously. Not that Rose would know. 

Ilya just lets it ring, partially out of fear of Shane chewing him out for leaving his hiding spot. But it seems like Shane knows they can’t hide his presence, because he calls out. “Rozanov? Um. Rose needs you.” 

He turns the corner with what he hopes is an unassuming look on his face. “Hello.” 

Shane gulps and turns to Rose, who is still standing in the doorway. “We’ve been working on a song together. Rozanov and I. We’re just finishing up a meeting.”

Ilya smiles at her. It’s plasticky but convincing enough. He consciously avoids looking to Shane for what to say next. “Yes,” Ilya agrees. “Next stop is the studio, we think.” 

Rose invites herself into the room. Shane, bewildered, shuts the door behind her. 

“You two are fucking.”

Shane chokes. On what, Ilya isn’t sure - his own saliva? And, worse, he doesn’t respond. 

Ilya flounders, since he knows Rose half as well. “We are fucking… making a new song!”

“No,” she counters, eyes narrowed. Her eyes dart between them. “Oh my God. This is a thing.”

“Whattt?” Shane says, faux outraged. “Rose -”

“You -” Rose points to Shane - “have beard burn. And you -” She turns to Ilya - “are wearing a shirt that says ‘Hollander Family Reunion, 2008.’ Like, guys. Spare me.” 

Shane fondles his chin self-consciously. “I do?”

“Yes,” Rose says, softly. “You can borrow my Aquaphor. God.” She tugs Shane towards her by his forearm and wraps him in a hug. 

When she finally pulls away, Shane looks less sickly, but more emotional. “You guys don’t owe me an explanation,” she says. “At all.”

“I do,” Shane replies, wincing. “You’re my friend. I was going to tell you, I swear. But we only recently… just…” Shane looks to Ilya, helpless. 

“We are dating,” Ilya supplies. “Boyfriends.” 

Rose gasps. 

“Don’t worry. We’re not going public,” Shane rushes. 

“Yet,” Ilya adds. 

“Not until the tour’s over, at least. I know how Matt -”

“Shat.” 

“Schmidt,” Shane corrects, “would react.”

Rose nods, taking it all in. “Of course. I mean, take your time. Although, most likely he’d be over the moon.” 

Shane shirks back. “I’m sorry?”

“Well, what with the fans and all. You two could be holding hands and he’d see dollar signs overlaid onto the fingers. You know his type.”

“His type,” Shane repeats, his eyebrows furrowed. “How could… us,” Shane says delicately, taking a step closer to Ilya that Ilya mirrors with a step closer to Shane, “possibly be financially lucrative? Matt is always saying, without quite saying it, ‘be gay but not so gay that women don’t go to your shows.’” 

“And this is pretty gay,” Ilya supplies. 

Rose considers them both with narrowed eyes. “Do you really not know?”

Ilya furrows his eyebrows. “Does this ‘Matt Shat,’” he sneers, “have a thing for Shane?”

“No,” Rose refutes. “Or, possibly, because it’s Shane and everyone has a thing for Shane.” Ilya grunts his disapproval. “But that’s not what I mean. The fans have been wanting this the entire tour.” 

Shane looks so astounded he moves to sit down on the edge of the mattress. Ilya sits down next to him and lays a careful hand on his knee. Rose’s eyes catch on it, but Shane doesn’t shrug him off. 

“‘This.’ What do you mean ‘this’?” Shane asks. 

“You two. Together.” Rose crosses her arms. “Doesn’t the word ‘Hollanov’ mean anything to you?”

Ilya scratches the back of his neck. “A spice?”

Rose massages the wrinkles out of her forehead. “Shane, I never really brought it up to you because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s just chatter online, anyway. You can block it out. But it’s been a pretty persistent thing.”

Shane gulps. “Like, for how long?”

Rose offers him a grim smile. “How about, since night one?”

Ilya’s eyes widen. “No way.” 

Rose turns to Ilya, almost accusingly. “You were the ringleader of this movement. Remember what you said into the mic at the end of your Toronto set?” 

Ilya shakes his head, though he has his suspicions.

“It was, and I quote, ‘I can keep him to myself, you know. If you don’t want to see him.’” 

Shane goes beet-red. “That was just crowdwork,” he stammers. “That was not flirting.” 

“That was flirting,” Ilya corrects.

If even possible, Shane reddens further. 

“This is all to say,” Rose says, her voice softening, “don’t feel afraid. Okay? Of what the public thinks, or the label. I’m behind you all the way. And, by proxy, that goes for you too, Rozanov.” 

Ilya tightens his hold on Shane’s knee. “Please,” he says. “Ilya.” 

Rose grins so wide it brightens her entire face. She leans in for a group hug of their muscled limbs and her lanky ones. When she pulls back, she points to Ilya. “By the way. Roz- er, Ilya. The venue is saying your rider lists a different mixer than Shane’s locked setup. They need to know if you can use the house system.” 

Ilya waves a hand. “Whatever’s in the booth is fine.” 

“Really? Just standard CDJs?”

Ilya nods. “As long as it is standard Pioneer setup, I’m fine.” 

“Noted.” Rose looks between them both. “Well. I know there’s a show tomorrow, so I’ll leave you to it. To sleeping, or - even if not. You know me. I’m sex-positive.” 

Shane hides his face in his hands. “Rose.”

“Hey! I think I’ve reacted pretty well, all things considered. Imagine what Hayden would say.” 

Shane cringes. “We can’t tell Hayden.” 

“I second that,” Ilya says, “but only because I need him in constant panic his wife will leave him for me.” 

Rose laughs on her way out. After she leaves, Shane turns to Ilya, color flooding his face. “I can’t believe this is my life now.” 

It lands oddly in Ilya’s chest, like an expression of regret. But then Shane grabs hold of Ilya’s hand and interlaces their fingers. 

Shane brings their joined hands up and presses his lips against Ilya’s knuckles. Ilya’s chest turns to putty. If he were standing he’d be brought to his knees. “Just how I like it.” 

----

TOKYO 

The applause goes on for so many minutes Ilya has now focused all his energy on keeping the smile plastered on his face. 

It is not so difficult, considering his arm is wrapped tight around Shane’s shoulders and Shane is actively trying to stifle happy tears against Ilya’s arm. 

Ilya knew ending in Tokyo would mean something special to Shane, but this - the wild, childlike energy he brought onto stage, the sheer amount of crowdwork he did with his Japanese fans - still astounds Ilya. There is hardly a dry eye in the entire venue. Ilya thinks, distantly, that Shane is the hardest working person he has met his entire life. 

Ilya isn’t sure if Shane called him up on stage at encore as a courtesy or because he needed Ilya like he needs water between songs. Either way, he is taking his sweet time to unburrow his nose from Ilya’s armpit. People must think they’re good friends. It’s not a lie, really. 

Shane finally untucks his face for a final wave to the crowd. The stage lift begins its descent, taking the two of them down with it. Shane waves at the crowd so ferociously that he smacks Ilya in the face. 

Ilya clutches his cheek with one hand, laughing, and uses the other to follow suit with a wave of his own. 

When they are firmly backstage again, Shane slumps against the nearest wall. His entire face is blotchy, his nose red as a reindeer’s. The full-body flush, combined with the sweat and the wetness of Shane’s eyes, sparks a nod of interest from Ilya’s cock that he worries is vaguely immoral. 

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Shane gasps. He knocks his head back against the wall. “Wow. Nine countries. Gone. Like that.” He snaps his fingers. 

Ilya pats Shane’s shoulder, which seems friendly enough. A few members of staff are milling about. 

Shane turns to him. “Was the show okay, you think?”

Ilya’s mouth drops open, outraged he would even ask. “Shane.” 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut and smiles. “I know, I know. I’m insane.” 

But he knows Shane needs to hear it. “It was so good. So good I cried.”

This is not technically true, but Ilya can predict that a version of himself would have cried, if his relationship to crying wasn’t so fucked up it happens once every ten years like a tsunami.

“This was the perfect end. You did it, in a way no one else could. And now you can rest.” 

Hayden walks by and claps a hand down on Shane’s other shoulder. He nods in Ilya’s direction. “This guy bothering you, superstar?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Is your wife bothering you? With those pesky… hm… how you say… divorce papers?"

Hayden scoffs. “Dude, I’m not getting a divorce.” 

“Not that you know of,” Ilya replies, ominously, “yet.” 

Hayden leans in close to Shane’s pink ear. “He gives me the fucking creeps.” 

Shane staves off his giggle until Hayden walks off. He turns back to Ilya, his brown eyes sparkling and his voice turns all business-like. “Being here, in Japan, makes me miss my mom. Like, so much it hurts.” 

Ilya nods in understanding, before Shane’s face crumples like a paper ball. 

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean - like -” Shane stammers through an explanation. “That’s insensitive.” 

“Hey,” Ilya soothes, and risks brushing their knuckles together where their arms hang. “I am not fragile.”

“But -”

“Talk about her,” Ilya insists. “I want to hear.”

Shane opens his mouth to speak, abruptly shuts it, and opens it again. “You should come with me.”

“What?”

“Where is your return flight to?”

“Montreal,” Ilya says, eyebrows raised. 

“Is that where you live?” Shane asks, then hides his freckled face in his hands. “Wow. We really did this whole thing backwards, huh?”

Ilya grins at him. He has started likening Shane, in his mind, to a ladybug, with his pretty spots and the luck he brings. “Yes. I live there. Although, my lease is up. So -” 

“Come to my cottage.” 

“Your - what?”

“My cottage,” Shane continues, speaking fast now. “It’s just outside of Ottawa.” 

“Ew.” 

Shane smacks him in the stomach. God, Ilya loves it when he does that. “What’s so bad about Ottawa?”

“It’s boring. No nightlife. It’s…” He drifts off, staring at Shane and his expectant eyes and his flushed face, and realizes those things don’t quite matter to him anymore. “Well. Tell me about this cottage.” 

“If you really don’t need to go back to Montreal, we could change your flight. We could spend some time there, a month or two at least. It’s where I do all my songwriting. And it’s so private. No one would know.” Shane flashes Ilya a hopeful smile. “We’d be completely alone. Together.”

Ilya looks around and finds the room temporarily empty save the two of them. He takes his chance and plants a quick kiss on the slope of Shane’s nose. “Well,” he grins, “I do like the sound of that.” 

----

OTTAWA

“I thought you said we’d be ‘completely alone,’” Ilya grits. 

Shane turns to him from the driver’s seat and places a hand on Ilya’s thigh. “You’re, like, freaking out. You know they’ll love you, right?”

In theory, Ilya wants nothing more than to meet Shane’s parents. He analogizes it to meeting the inventor of chicken parmesan, or meeting the mastermind behind the “Block” button on iPhone that has shielded him from Alexei’s latest barrage of messages. Of course Ilya wants to meet the two people who joined forces to create the best person he has ever met. 

But it has been a long time since an adult met Ilya and liked him, which is perhaps why he feels like someone threw his spleen into a laundry machine and watched as it tumbled. He tells Shane just that.

“I’m an adult and I like you,” Shane counters. 

Ilya gestures vaguely. “I mean a premium adult.”

Of people their parents’ age, Ilya’s sample size is his father, his step-mother, and his first talent manager who found him so insufferable she dropped him after twenty business days. Statistically, no one above the age of 25 enjoys his company.

The other aspect is Ilya is exhausted. Air travel from Tokyo to Ottawa is the closest glimpse into hell Ilya will ever get until he dies. He and Shane take about a trillion photos with fans while dawdling at various layover gates: Tokyo, Los Angeles, Toronto, and then Ottawa.

Some fans have the gall to ask why they’re traveling together. Shane always answers for them: it’s a coincidence. They’re taking the same flights, but parting ways come touch-down in Canada. 

Ilya, honestly, would prefer not to lie. But it’s different for Shane. He is more famous. Thus he is more private, almost by definition. Thinking about it any longer makes Ilya’s chest hurt, so he doesn’t.

Shane parks in front of an unassuming two-story house with a well-kept front yard. 

“Fuck,” Ilya curses. 

“What?” 

“I don’t have flowers.”

Shane furrows his eyebrows. “Why would you need flowers?”

“I don’t know? For your mom?” Ilya unlocks his phone clumsily. “Maybe I can DoorDash some.” 

“Ilya. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” 

“Oh. Maybe I could take from some bushes.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Shane says, and grabs him by the scruff of his neck to kiss him over the center console. Ilya inhales Shane’s scent, toasted almonds and coffee. It’s like his own personal anesthetic. His shoulders droop and he relaxes, albeit marginally. Shane pulls back and levels Ilya with a serious look. “I promise we don’t have to stay long. I just want them to see how wonderful you are.” 

Me too, Ilya thinks. That’s the whole problem. 

When the door swings open, the woman who answers it screams out for fifteen seconds straight and swings Shane around mid-hug like a ragdoll. She pulls back and meets Ilya’s eyes. 

“Rozanov - there you are.”

“Please. Call me Ilya.” She hugs him too, more of a perfunctory one. She smells a bit like honey and a lot like Shane. 

As she leads them in, she turns to Ilya. “You are so handsome. Obviously, that’s not what’s important, and you do have a grilling coming your way. But I’ll have you know that Shane has brought some ugly men here.”

“Mom,” Shane scolds. 

“It’s like how outdoor cats will bring a rat to your doorstep. Like, ew, get that thing away.” She leads them both to a dining table that is already set with plates and a steaming pot of pasta. “You two hungry?”

Ilya grins despite himself. “Starving.” 

----

Ilya comes to realize that Yuna Hollander has dual priorities: keeping Shane rich and keeping Shane happy. She balances both with ease. 

“We need to review your Coachella contract,” she tells Shane. Ilya is busy slurping pasta into his mouth while trying not to make the slurping noise that comes with it. “I flagged a couple things. Nothing major.” 

“Ilya got an offer too,” Shane says, poking Ilya under the table. 

“Yes,” Ilya says through a mouthful of food. He cringes. Which is more disrespectful - not speaking when called upon or speaking through a mouthful of food? He wishes there was a manual for these things. 

Yuna nods. Shane’s father, David, is next to her too, gnawing into a piece of garlic bread. “I assume you have your lawyers on it,” Yuna says. 

Ilya experiences his first misstep. “I don’t have lawyers.” 

She balks. 

“Yet,” he adds, to soften the blow. 

“You got so much publicity from the tour. Surely you have a team around you like Shane does.”

This might be the part where she deduces Ilya is a lazy bum. He has not opened the Gmail app on his phone for the past three weeks. He is embarrassed, but not enough to change his ways. It’s just that his alone time with Shane is so precious, and all he can think about is getting hands on him - or, alternatively, doing the dishes and scrubbing the floors so Shane will get his hands on Ilya. 

Shane is into that stuff, apparently. C’est la vie. 

Ilya’s voice comes out sheepish. “Not really.”

“She’s like a shark,” Shane’s dad chimes in, rather ominously. Ilya sits up straighter in his chair and sets his fork down. “She smells blood in the water.”

“Oh,” Ilya manages. He locks eyes with Shane across the table and tries desperately to bump their feet together. 

“What I mean is the Coachella contract is the blood,” David clarifies. 

“Um,” Ilya stammers. “Is this my blood?”

David tilts his head. “I suppose, since it’s your contract. Anyhow -”

“Honey.” Yuna interlaces her fingers with David’s on the table. She makes a soft shushing sound. “Stop. You’re scaring the boy. You know that quote, ‘Is it better to speak or to die?’”

David feigns outrage with a clownish look of surprise on his face. “You want me to die?”

At the same time, Ilya says: “Did you get that from a book? I love that one.”

Yuna brightens. “Really? You’ve read Call Me By Your Name?”

Ilya nods. “Aciman is amazing.” To avoid coming off as pretentious, he adds, “I didn’t understand the whole thing. You know, English.” 

Yuna waves her hand. “I’m sure you understood it better than most. We have a copy in our bedroom. Shane, you would like it. It’s two men. Gay.”

“Oh, great,” Shane says dryly. 

“You would like it for other reasons too,” Ilya whispers. Shane hears it and smiles. 

“Okay.” Yuna folds her hands together. “Ignore all the blood talk. We are a perfectly normal family, I assure you. What David meant is, I am more than happy to review your contract for you. We want to make sure it’s to your benefit.” 

Ilya is stuck on the usage of we. 

“How does that sound?”

“Wow.” Ilya’s voice comes out soundless and overly meek, so he tries again. “That would be. Um, that would be great.” 

And he means it, possibly more than he’s meant anything in a long, long time. 

----

After that, David and Yuna make a few appearances at Shane’s cottage. One time Ilya grills burgers for the four of them and insists on taking the singular burnt patty. Afterwards, Ilya tries to stand firm on loading the dishwasher on his own, but Yuna comes over to help. She inserts a ceramic plate in a formation he knows Shane doesn’t favor, so when her back is turned Ilya discreetly picks it up and rotates it. 

She turns to him when she sees it. “That’s how Shane does it.”

“Hm?”

“How he loads the dishes in,” Yuna says. 

“Oh.” Ilya feigns ignorance. “Yes, maybe.”

She rinses off a dirtied plate and passes it to him to load up. After she does, she pats his head, just once, like striking a bongo or petting a puppy. “You pay attention,” she says. “I like that.” 

After Shane’s parents leave that night, Ilya fucks Shane into the mattress. They end in the shower, attempting to maneuver from the bed to the bathroom with Ilya still buried inside Shane because Ilya thinks it’s funny and Shane thinks it’s hot. They continue fucking under the scalding spray of water. Ilya finds it fitting. They’re both so bone-tired they want to get dirty and clean at the same time.

That night, Shane scrolls through work emails on his computer while Ilya plays Temple Run on his phone. Abruptly, Shane closes his laptop to launch a rather loaded question Ilya's direction. 

“Does being around my parents make you sad?”

Ilya deduces what he means: the Hollanders are functional, and the Rozanovs are a dumpster fire. Ilya says as much, and Shane gets all pink in the face, saying that’s not what he meant when he asked. 

Ilya assures him it’s fine. It’s the truth.

And in terms of whether Ilya is sad, he’s not. He feels grateful and hopeful: grateful Shane had this growing up. Hopeful he will have it for a long time.

----

It’s weeks later when Shane approaches Ilya on the couch at the cottage, flopping right on top of him like a fish and conveniently blocking Ilya’s view of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the flat-screen TV.

“Hey,” Ilya protests, his face smashed against Shane’s neck. He realizes his power and sinks his teeth into the soft flesh.

Shane yowls and sits up, rubbing his neck. “Asshole,” he accuses, though fondly. “Have you packed?”

For Coachella, he means. The answer is no, because the cottage is a magical place where only he and Shane exist and Ilya is not ready for 125,000 concertgoers to stand between them. “No,” he admits. “How was your interview?”

It was with Variety, speaking to Shane about his upcoming unnamed album. Shane chews on his fingernail and stares idly at the TV. “Good.” 

“So it wasn't good,” Ilya deduces. 

“I want to tell people,” Shane says, rather suddenly. 

Ilya furrows his eyebrows. “About the album?”

Shane stares at him almost mournfully. “About us.” 

Ilya could kiss him. He remembers he is in a position where that’s normal, what with having a boyfriend, so he does, slowly and sensually until Shane whines into his mouth. 

“I want to tell fucking everyone,” Ilya says when they break away. “But I thought you didn’t.”

“Yeah, well. I’m stressed about it, if I’m being honest. But the journalist kept asking about ‘Rozanov,’ and I kept having to dodge.” Shane imitates his own voice with finger-quotes. “Saying ‘I don’t know what he’s up to. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know who he is,’” he mocks, “when, Ilya, I fucking do.”

“You want people to know,” Ilya repeats, to be sure. 

“I want people to know, and then I want them to shut the fuck up about it afterwards because it’s our business.”

Ilya laughs. “You and me both.”

Shane rubs his face. It takes on a solemn look that has Ilya sitting up straighter against the backrest. “I’m proud of you. You know? I’m proud of us. I don’t want to hide it. I don’t want to treat this like it’s… you know.”

“Dirty,” Ilya says. He knows. 

Shane nods miserably.

“It’s like what your mother said,” Ilya recalls. “‘Is it better to speak or to die?’”

Shane rests his head against Ilya’s chest, considering. He tilts his nose so he inhales the syrupy scent from Ilya’s sleep shirt, which is always some level of sweat-damp. The answer is there, in the gap between their skin.

----

COACHELLA VALLEY

Ilya has never seen so many people in one place before. 

Tens of thousands of mesh tops, cowboy boots, and body chains file into the Sahara Tent as the sky bleeds into sunset. Ilya’s stage is a giant open-sided tent - as close to a nightclub as you can get in the palm tree-laden valley. 

The sheer amount of people in attendance is Ilya’s dream and Shane’s nightmare. Shane began his performance over on the Main Stage only fifteen minutes ago, the largest of nine event stages. His stage is equipped with massive LED screens and a runway so long Ilya thinks they could live on it, provided they set up a mini-kitchenette at the end.

There are two absolutely inconceivable truths of the moment. The first is that thousands of people showed up to a musty desert tent, packed tight as sardines, to see Rozanov perform. 

The second is that Ilya is as close to shitting bricks as he’s ever been, thinking of what he is about to say after he finishes his opening song. 

The music peters off and screams overtake it, animalistic and utterly unapologetic about it. The sheer amount of substances everyone is on in this singular tent could power an army. 

“I am so excited to be here,” Ilya pants into the mic. Sweat drips down his forehead. He wipes it with the hem of his muscle tee, which prompts another chorus of elated screams. 

They decided that Ilya would be the one to say it. But in the quiet solitude of Shane’s sun-streaked backyard, it was utterly impossible to visualize the sixty thousand people standing in front of him now, half of whom have their phones out. 

“There is only one downside of performing at Coachella,” Ilya continues once he’s caught his breath. He smirks, lazy and contented, and adjusts his grip on the microphone. “It’s that I can’t watch my boyfriend perform.”

The crowd erupts in murmurs. Ilya spots an entire gaggle of fans at the barricade who didn’t have their phones out scramble to fish them out. 

Part of Ilya thinks: Just rip the band-aid off. 

But also, he loves this band-aid. He would do anything for this band-aid. He would die for, and perhaps more importantly, live for, this particular band-aid. 

So he drags it out. 

“Have you seen him?” Ilya brings a palm up to his forehead, pretending to shield his eyes and gaze frantically into the crowd. “About yay-high?”

Ilya holds up a hand level with his nose, which he knows Shane is going to find absolutely infuriating since they’re practically the same height. 

“Brown hair?” Ilya gestures to his own curls. The crowd continues to stir. But he has in his possession the absolute nail in the coffin - the final, most unmistakable clue. Ilya points at his own flushed cheeks. 

“Freckles?” 

If Ilya thought he had ever seen a crowd before, he was wrong. 

They come alive as if electrocuted. The stage shakes, so much so that Ilya stumbles and laughs as he catches himself. Ilya knows they’re taking videos of him. What he hopes is someone takes a video of them, so he can show Shane when they’re splayed on top of each other back in the hotel. They’ll be drunk off the desert heat and Ilya will whisper into Shane’s collarbone, Look. They see us. 

Ilya resumes his place behind the DJ booth. When he clamps his headphones over his ears and raises the microphone, the words don’t come right away. He’s smiling much too hard for that.

“Anyway. If you see him, please tell him: ‘Shane. This next one’s for you.’” 

Chapter End Notes

Comments mean so much to me. If you read this entire thing and got this far, I am genuinely SO grateful. This is my longest work to date and Google Docs was glitching on your girl majorly.

If you’re unsure what to share, tell me which Hollanov city was your favorite!! I am so curious.