Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Sex Toys, Dildos, Shane Hollander Has a Dildo, Bottom Shane Hollander, Top Ilya Rozanov, adult toy stores, Model Shane Hollander, Modern AU - No Hockey, Minor Shane Hollander/Rose Landry, Internalized Homophobia, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Rivals With Benefits, in the sense that they don't get along with each other but they fuck anyway, Strangers to Lovers, Rivals to Lovers, Insecure Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov works in an adult toy store, Orgasm Edging, Sexual Overstimulation, Cock Rings, Service Top Ilya Rozanov, Shane just really loves having sex with Ilya, Ball Gags, Handcuffs, Prostate Massage, Prostate Orgasms, Anal Beads, Fleshlights

Language:

English

Collections:

Heated Rivalry ➻ Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov / Shane Hollander

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-14 Completed: 2026-03-28 Words: 52,512 Chapters: 10/10

Fool Me Once, Fuck Me Twice

Summary

In which Ilya works in an adult toy store, and Shane is peer pressured.

OR

How Shane finds himself being fucked by the hot employee who was selling him sex toys.

Notes

In which the author gives things away about themselves because I would like to note a few things:
-I have never purchased a dildo. Or most of the things that will pop up in this fic. Meaning, my research on how certain items and objects are used is not extensive! So there may be inaccuracies. If anything is majorly inaccurate, please let me know!
-I have never worked in an adult toy store, nor do I know the specific ins and outs of one. So, I will be making most of the details up about that. Please let inaccuracies fall into the ‘this is fanfiction, so i’m not going to worry about it,’ category in your mind.

Other than that, feel free to enjoy Shane freaking out over things that do not need that many trains of thought.

Chapter 1: Mistress M

Chapter Notes

Mistress M glares above them both like a haunted phantom, neon bulbs behind the lettering buzzing with a faint static, the T flickering on and off. Against the darkening backdrop of the night sky, the newest adult ‘toy’ store in the city of Westmount shines out like a sore thumb, glitzy and overbearing, an aching display of ’look at me’ amongst other, drab storefronts.

Shane’d be lying if he told himself that he didn’t know the store was here. Not because he’s a customer, but rather the lack of knowledge that the store was built led others to believe you were a nun, senior citizen, or a fresh-faced baby. (Well, not so much ‘built’ rather than remodelled, occupying the empty shop-front that had been sitting there for months.)

No one knows who the elusive ‘Mistress M’ is, but Shane presumes it’s a cheap pseudonym for some cranky old man, offering his gift of accessible, affordable kinky sex to the world. Not that people have been complaining. If word of mouth is anything to go by, most of Shane’s co-workers have found themselves wandering the shelves, boasting loudly about their finds.

“Don’t chicken out now, we’ve come all this way,” Hayden nudges him in the side, nodding to the blacked-out display windows, as if Shane didn’t know that they’d purposefully walked an extra half-mile from their managers housewarming party to come here, all so Shane could get laid.

Actually, backtrack a little. Shane had made the mistake of sharing with some of his friends that in his twenty-three years of existence, he’s only been with a couple girls. Once, back when he was a fumbling teenager (a relationship that ended before it really began), and again when he was a little older, some ex-girlfriend of one of his mates, really only using him as a rebound. Naturally, a group of testosterone filled, young adults encouraged him to ask for the number of his latest brand partnership—Rose Landry.

She’s a well known dual actress and model in the American fashion industry, and was flown over to Montreal for a few months to shoot her upcoming film. Something about some handcuffing, cop-criminal flick Shane couldn’t care less to watch.

Nonetheless, when she had shown up to set for their photoshoot for Canada Dry (not Shane’s first rodeo with the brand), he had awkwardly asked for her number. Surprisingly, she’d agreed, promising they could go on actual dates before getting into the bedroom stuff. She’d said it so bluntly that Shane felt a little bad, like that was the only thing she had come to expect from men. So he nodded and told her he wasn’t looking for that anyway, and now, their first date was supposed to be tonight.

Of course, upon hearing the news, Hayden had dragged Shane over here, uncaring that his plan was to not have sex with her. (To be frank, he didn’t want the dinner date either, but who was he to admit that?) Now, they stand, bathed in purple neon, Hayden pushing Shane to the door. He’s a supportive friend at the best of times, and a pushover at the worst. He himself also has never been in Mistress M, happily settled with his partner and whatever number he is at of kids now. But he winks and practically shoves Shane through the door, a bell tinkling overhead as he stumbles into the establishment.

“I still don’t see the point of me coming in here,” Shane protests, turning back to face Hayden, who stands smirking on the path. “We’re just getting dinner.”

Hayden rolls his eyes. “Sure, you’re just getting dinner. Now go on. I’m not waiting out here all night for your ass to find something. You don’t have to make it kinky just—get something fun.”

A huff, and Shane knows he’s alone in this. Hayden will expect him to bring something out, and he can only give himself the small gratitude that Hayden decided not to follow him in—something about staying loyal to his girl, and them having enough toys already.

Inside the shop is similar to the vibrant exterior. Gaudy and in-your-face. Purple and blue LEDs lining the walls, twisting around the black shelves. There’s a tattered maroon carpet under his feet, not matching with the theme in the slightest, clearly not renovated with the rest of the place when the new owner shot all this shit in.

Shane keeps his hands shoved in his pockets as he winds his way through a display of strap ons, colourful, with the mannequins who don them splattered in neon paint, then a corner dedicated entirely to belts, whips, and even chains, most of them looking more like medieval torture devices than something he would ever consider taking to bed.

Nearing the counter, he spots the thing he’s semi-unbashful about purchasing, grabbing the box and setting them on the counter, already fisting around in his pockets for his wallet.

“What kind of guy comes into a sex-shop to buy medium-sized condoms? You can get them for cheaper at the pharmacy. It is just down the street.”

Shane looks up at the sound of the voice, words a little harsh and clearly accented, meeting the eyes of the employee, who’s giving him a deadpan stare. His outfit is all black, a white nametag clipped onto his shirt.

ILYA it reads, and even those four letters appear to be judging him, black font popping out to claw marks of shame down through his body.

This is fine. Just some condoms, he pointlessly tells his brain, pushing the money over the counter, bills crinkling together. The employee looks unimpressed. Shane is starting to think that’s just his resting face.

Ilya blinks. “Well? Not even going to look at better quality ones? Flavoured ones? Or browse the shop? Lots of things to buy but this?” he holds Shane’s condoms aloft, “is boring.”

Fuck you, Shane thinks. Honestly, who is this guy to judge him? They don’t even know each other. He attempts to laugh lightly, play the whole interaction off as a joke, because that’s the whole gimmick, right? Shop worker teases you about your terrible choices in order for you to buy more products you never needed in the first place.

Apparently, Shane’s mouth doesn’t get this whirlwind of a thought, spewing out justifications before he even needs to think. It’s the way it always has been, too deeply engraved to break out of the habit now. Shane lowers his eyes again, glancing back to the door for a second.

“Uh, no. Just those are fine. This was, uh, kind of a joke anyway.” He pauses. “A dare, sort of,” he tacks on, like his subconscious doesn’t believe the stoic man in front of him knows what a joke is.

The employee barks a laugh, tossing his head back like this is the funniest interaction he’s had all day. (Which, if he’s dealing with the type of guys Shane presumes come in here, he can see why that would be true.)

“What? You think coming into a sex-store to buy condoms is enough to complete a dare?”

Shifting on his feet, Shane remains silent. It’s one of those ever-unpleasant situations where he can never quite tell if he is being laughed at or is expected to laugh with, a confusing loop of pressing social pressure that squeezes him until collapse, brains and bits splattered on the nasty maroon carpet, fading over time to blend in with the decor. Perhaps they will paint him neon too.

The man behind the counter appears stuck, face frozen as he gawps at Shane. Not open-mouthed type shock, rather a thin-lined annoyance, muscles in his jaw twitching. If the feelings hadn’t registered in his head before, Shane would very much like to state that he regrets ever opening his mouth, and vows to never do so again, lest he spill more of his sad sex-life secrets and wind up awkwardly shifting in front of a man he hopes to never see again, if only to preserve his withering dignity.

“I don’t know why I am surprised. You are boring. Of course this is what you buy,” the man with Shane’s unwanted condoms breaks the silence, and maybe it wasn’t as long as he had been stretching it out to be. A mere second, possibly two. “Here you go,” and Shane is being handed his condoms, shoved in a non-descript black plastic bag.

His hand jerks up, outstretched over the counter to wrap around and pull in the bag, letting it hang limply by his side as he threads his hand through the handle.

“My friend is convinced I need to get laid. So,” he lifts up the bag slightly. Shit, his justifying skills are not needed right now. Just walk out the door Shane.

“Ah. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

His confusion is palpable.

“Want to get laid?”

“I mean…” he shrugs, feeling a tad foolish. He shakes his head in a so-so gesture, hoping the man interprets his body language as ‘yes, I do want to get laid, I just don’t wish to share my sex life with strangers’, rather than the ‘I would honestly rather barf then go on this date I have planned in less than two hours’ that it so painfully is.

Ilya seems to have no issues with Shane’s depressing lack of proper small talk, swinging around to hop over the counter like a madman, feet landing on the carpet a foot away from where Shane stands. He backs off a little, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What is your name?”

“Shane Hollander.” Finally, a question he’s actually equipped to answer. He’d feel relieved if it weren’t so out of place.

“Ilya Rozanov,” the man taps his name badge once, full-naming himself right back at Shane.

“Come with me, Hollander.” The man forgoes first names (Shane has decided to extend him the kindness of using his last name too, even if only in his head.) and begins his march across the store, not looking back as Shane has no choice but to follow, passing display after neon display until they reach the shelf near the middle, lined with massive phallic vibrators, coming in as more colours than Shane thinks he could name.

Rozanov’s fingers dance over the shelf as he pretends to ponder, glint in his eyes and the curve of his mouth giving away the fact that he knows exactly what he wants. Shane lets him indulge in the act, eyes flitting over his form. His shirt is just a little tight—no doubt intentional—showing off his chest and tapering down his waist. His dark jeans are loose enough to leave a little to the imagination, but his sneakers look too clean to fit the vibe of the store. Westmount is a fairly well-off city, sure, seeing this brand isn’t out of place. But it clashes with the way Rozanov acts. He’s too invested in strangers' lives, ready to spark potential arguments, tease, and smirk his way through casual conversation. Most people just nod and keep their head down, not uttering a word if everything is as it should be.

Perhaps an over-the-top shop in a dreary street is exactly the type of place a guy like Rozanov would work. Brash and standing out.

Unceremoniously, a navy blue box is thrust at him, Rozanov’s face pulling into that side-smirk that seems to alternate with his resting, flat stare.

Tentatively, Shane reaches his free hand for the box, looking between it and the man. Through the absurdity of it all, the wrongness, Shane can’t help but think of doing anything else.

“A large-sized dildo. To make up for your medium-sized cock.” Rozanov pats his shoulder before he starts walking again, heading back off to the counter. Shane splutters, pulling himself together so he can speed after Rozanov.

“I don’t—I’m not buying this,” he states. But Rozanov is already ringing up his purchase through the till. “I don’t need—”

“Do you have one of your own?” he nods to the box. Shane shakes his head.

Rozanov slides the card reader around. “$74.99. If you want partner to stick around, I would get bigger dick.”

Humiliation floods Shane’s senses. The guy is fucking with him. Clearly smug in his own act of teasing. Yet, Shane can’t help but give in to it. There’s a glint in the man’s eye that spurs him on. Makes him want to snap back.

He scans his card.

Rozanov takes his time sliding back over the box, fingers lingering even as Shane pulls it back, dumping it in the bag along with his condoms. He nods at the employee, praying he never has to have an interaction like this again (but, if this was recurring, Shane doesn’t think he majorly mind it being with this man.) and speeding out past the erotic displays, bell chiming as he pushing open the door, stepping out on the other side.

Cool air hits his face, and it’s only then does he realise he’d been flushing, cheeks undoubtedly tinged pink.

“Took you long enough,” Hayden moves forward from the lightpost he’d been leaning against, tucking his phone into his pocket. In reality, it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. “So, what did you buy?”

He attempts to peer into the bag with the same enthusiasm a young child would have when discovering they were to be getting a puppy for Christmas. Shane carefully angles it away, a secret he is not letting get out, one only to be kept between him and the Russian employee, one he will be taking to his grave.

“It’s private man, back off,” he laughs lightly, to which Hayden just rolls his eyes, knocking Shane in the shoulder.

“Yeah, sure. You seem like a real vanilla guy, Shane, but now that I look at you, I think you’re into more than you’re letting on,” he plays up the act of scrutinising Shane, staring at him as they walk.

Shane shakes his head. “It’s only the first date,” he deflects.

“Well, whatever's in there, I’m sure she’ll be a very lucky girl.”

Shane feels his heart sink, just a little.

The ceiling fan whirrs above him, blurry as it spins faster. Shane can almost imagine he’s spinning with it, going around and around in circles until his brain turns to mush, and he’s given the mercy to not have to fret.

He’d shoved the black bag into the back of his closet when he had gotten back to his apartment, keeping it out of sight. The knowledge that it’s there still plagues the forefront of his mind, an unsilenceable whisper, taunting him.

He hasn’t gotten ready for his date. He’s supposed to be at the restaurant in an hour. Vaguely, he wonders if it’s an asshole move to text Rose that he can’t make it. She’d seemed nice enough when they were doing the photoshoot, surprisingly funny. Making jokes about her belittlement in roles she was given, even if she was the lead. Always having to be saved by some bigger, stronger man.

Like a saving grace from the universe itself, his phone buzzes from the table. It’s Rose, the contact name popping up on his lockscreen, the blue light of his phone illuminating the room. He stumbles forward to pluck it up, clicking on the message.

7:08PM
Hey! Super sorry, but I can’t make tonight…my managers got me on a second round of PR shoots early tomorrow morning

We can try later next week?

The relief flooding Shane’s chest should feel good. A soothing wave of calm to battle the raging nerves. Instead, it’s like he’s been stabbed, a thick shard of glass thrust and twisted into his heart, leaking out the truth.

Quickly, he presses a rag to his metaphorical wound, each letter on the keyboard adding to his guilt.

7:11PM
That sucks
We can rearrange though, that’s fine.
Next Friday?

7:12PM
Rose Landry
Friday works, I’ll text you the location.
Sorry again!

7:12PM
Don’t worry about it

Swallowing hard, Shane clicks his phone off, pocketing it and standing up. Friday. He has until next Friday to get his shit together and go on a date with a girl he enjoys spending time with.

So why the hell does he not want to?

Later that night, when his bedroom is bathed in darkness, blinds drawn shut, countless pillows from his bed stacked on the floor, Shane beckons sleep. But his muleta must have holes, (or perhaps, darkness is blind to his calls) because his eyes close, and he’s left staring at the insides of his eyelids.

He’s all too aware of the dildo sitting in the back of his closet, waiting, begging for his attention. It scares him a little, how much of his mind it has taken over.

Because when that stupid, presumptuous idiot of an employee handed him the toy, Shane’s first thought was not about using it with his partner during bed. Instead, his perverted mind flashed the image of him, rocking his hips down on the purple silicone dick, sinking it slowly between his cheeks as he—

Shane’s standing in front of his closet, the door the only thing separating him from throwing himself so far off the deep-end he faces instant death. His shirt is rumpled, his dark blue sweatpants loose on his hips. He watches, almost outside of his body as his hand twists the knob.

The dark space is suffocatingly small, but he retrieves the plastic bag without issue, sitting on the edge of his bed to riffle through it. Medium-sized condoms, his dildo…and a small bottle of lube the employee must’ve slipped in there. Shane doubts it was a quirky addition to his toy, more a teasing jab at him. He chucks the condoms into the bottom drawer of his bedside table, leaving the lube alone as he gets to what he was really thinking about.

Quenching the voices in his mind, he opens the black box. There, nestled within, lies the toy. Purple, smooth silicone, slightly transparent. It’s bigger than his own cock, wider too. He turns it over in his hands, touching it for as long as he can bear before it goes back in the box, closed up and placed in the bag. Pushed under his bed, out of the way.

For now, at least.

The thought of anyone putting that inside themselves was enough to kill off the terrible thoughts plaguing his head.

The thought of himself putting it inside of him was enough for Shane to roll over on his bed, and decide to make use of the complementary lube.

He acts before he has the time to think any further, shucking his pants down. Slipping his hand down into his underwear. Everyone touches themselves, he reasons. It’s not like he hasn’t.

He gropes his balls softly, rolling them between the palm of his hand, working himself up. His hips rock up, and he’s half-hard soon enough, wires of arousal wrapping around his gut. He purposefully avoids touching his dick, pulling his hand away to take his shirt off, then his boxer briefs.

Slowly, he reaches for the lube on the other side of the bed. Using his teeth, he breaks the seal, spitting the plastic wrapping out and popping open the cap. It’s clear, and (thankfully) flavourless, cold as he squeezes it onto his fingers.

Shane moves onto his stomach so he can bury his head into the pillows, not having to watch his act of shame and twisted desire. The anticipation of it has gotten him to full mast, hard against his mattress as he lets his fingers trail down his back.

The coolness of the lube is stark against his warm skin, and he rubs his fingers together to warm it slightly, curling around his thighs. A finger broaches his puckered rim, lightly pressing against the muscle there.

This also isn’t his first time fingering himself. Always in the dark of his room, alone, so far removed from himself, convincing his brain that, yes, this was fine, it was normal, because it wasn’t like he was doing this with anyone else, right?

Shane gasps as his finger slides past his entrance, slipping just to the first knuckle. The smallest prick of pressure, a slight wiggle of his finger. He hones in on the sensation, letting it fill and consume him. Nothing else can matter. Nothing else has to.

His inner walls are tight from lack of regular use, clenching even around his finger, as it slips deeper, lube spurring it on. One fully sunk inside of him, Shane crooks it, whole body tremouring as he bites into the pillow. It’s clear he hasn’t done this in a while. Hardly had time to compete in acts such as this, not when he’s chock full of work. Advertisement after endorsement, after photoshoot. Over and over.

Bright flashes of the camera, his second finger circling round his rim. Click, as he poses for another brand he knows next to nothing about, a gasp as it sinks in, stretching his hole to make room for the thickness. Move here, turn this way, pose like this, no no, smile with your mouth closed Hollander.

Shane’s mouth opens as he arches his back, tipping his head up to the ceiling as he tries to swallow his moan, only resulting in it slipping out as a desperate whimper.

Say this, shout this, enunciate your words.

The pillows mold to Shane’s head as he presses his face down again, quieting himself as he manages to push in a second finger, wiggling them both inside of him. His insides are hot and tight, smooth to the touch. He presses into his walls on either side, scissoring his fingers apart at a careful speed.

It’s not enough. He’s so close to the edge yet he can’t get there, he never can. Spreading his legs a little wider, Shane adjusts the angle, getting his fingers to slide in deeper, pushing up for a second to jolt past his prostate. A zing goes down his spine, the heat of his arousal blossoming. He bucks his hips up, keeping them suspended in the air so he can use his free hand to grab his cock, squeezing around the head, looking down to see precum dribble out.

Gasping, he grabs the lube again, not caring about the cold sting as he pumps his cock, doing his best to keep it slow, adding pressure near the base, holding off from coming just yet.

A third finger is teasing his rim, needing to join the other two stretching him out inside. His breathing is harsh, trying desperately to keep himself together, have some modicum of decency.

Traitorously, his brain imagines that purple dildo replacing his fingers. It’d stretch him wider than he’s ever dared to go, unashamedly filling and taking up the space within him, hitting his prostate every time. He can see it in full clarity—slipping in and out of his cheeks with lewd, wet slaps, pace set to long and deep. But it’d slowly crawl to brutal as he’d get fucked harder—rocking the bed in his attempts to take it all.

Three fingers fill him now, and he moves each slowly, letting the burn of the stretch sink into his bones.

“Ah, fuck,” he groans, pleasure overriding him, hips rocking back in small increments onto his fingers, swallowing them deeper and deeper every time, getting the tips to scrape his prostate.

The vision of the purple dildo is still swimming behind his eyelids, refusing to change. Now though, there’s a hand pumping the fake-cock in and out of him, long fingers, holding a box of condoms aloft—

It’s Rozanov. Fucking Rozanov, some guy from a store, someone he doesn’t even know, is fucking him with a fake purple cock.

Shane’s fingers pump faster, lube squelching as it’s brought in and out of his hole, matching the same pace at which he jerks his cock. Body moving in a back and forth tandem, arching back and twisting just slightly.

His breath is coming out in short pants, matching each wave of arousal that pulses through him, hurting towards the finish line. He sees Rozanov again, bending over him, leaning close to his ear.

“Hollander,” he whispers.

It’s all Shane needs to send him over, movements in his ass stopping as he comes over himself, spilling hot down his hand and across his torso, dripping down onto the bedsheets underneath him.

He pulls his fingers out with a pop, cold air hitting his hole. Turning so he’s lying on his back, Shane exhales slowly, processing whatever the fuck that was. The times he’s done this before, it was always just to himself, maybe a vague, hazy image of someone drifting past. Why, now, has that changed? It’s not feelings. It can’t be. He met that guy for all of ten minutes and he was an ass.

Perhaps his brain is simply latching on to the last person he really talked to. It’s never happened before but it kind of makes sense that he would. In some twisted way.

Huffing, Shane tries his best to push it all down. He’ll never see that guy again. No need to be stressing over him. He climbs out of bed, no longer able to take the quickly drying come on him, moving into the bathroom to wipe himself off. He turns the shower on, stopping past the linen closet on his way back into his room, grabbing a fresh pair of sheets.

Tomorrow, he decides, he’ll take the stupid dildo back to the shop and get a refund. There’s no way that guy will be working closing and opening shifts, so he’ll be fine. Just a quick exchange, and he can forget this ever happened.

Somehow, Shane doubts Rozanov will leave his mind that quickly.

Chapter End Notes

Lent into the internalised homophobia for this one, Shane views himself as almost ‘perverted’ and ‘weird’ for thinking of sexual acts between himself an another man, or phallic-shaped appendage. However, he has a difficult relationship with it all, because on one hand he believes it to be wrong, but on the other, he very much enjoys it.

My tumblr is here

Chapter 2: No-Return Policy

Chapter Summary

“Fuck you,” he gasps, his boxers being pulled down, cock springing free.

Rozanov hums, hand wrapping around his base. “No. I am going to suck you.”

Chapter Notes

Yes yes i know let them have sex with the toys, but i really wanted their first time to be something Shane can ease into because lord knows if that man went straight into being rimmed, fucked, and sucked within an inch of his life from all the freaky shit Ilya has to offer things would probably not end well.

Anywho that being said there will be more smut next chap (and also plot because whoo i cant make a story without the drama)

It’s a rare day where Shane has no plans. (Rather, he ditched the plans he was supposed to have, in order to have a completely schedule-free day, leaving him all the time in the words (re: twenty-four hours) to freak out about the plans he doesn’t have.)

Because today, Shane Hollander has taken one giant leap for mankind, and hidden his face from the public. No leering fans will grab his ankles in the streets, pulling him back and demanding for a photo, clamouring their ever-lasting love, and oh, would he please sign their copy of a magazine cover he did back when he was nineteen, it’s the ‘only thing they have on them.’

A group of rowdy teenagers shove past him, careless in their hive-minded movements. Shane grabs the rim of his baseball cap—some American team he doesn’t really care for—and tugs it lower over his eyes, hiding his gaze from the onslaught of people. Yes, the onslaught, because there is a least fifteen people walking down this main street (teenagers included) in the middle of a Friday. Any of which could see him in all his grey-hoodied, blue jeans glory, clutching a black plastic bag like it’s his firstborn.

Thankfully, by the time he gets to the store he’d shamefully walked twenty-five minutes for, almost no one is around. Even better, the shop’s neon lights aren’t nearly as glamorous as they were against a backdrop of black, now looking dull and cheesy. An over-hyped building giving no clues to the pain it has caused Shane thus far.

Today though, shall be the end of it all. He’ll run in, get his money back, and leave, perhaps taking his cap off when he gets to the end of the block, smiling as he strolls down the street, the weight of that stupid employee no longer on his shoulders.

He walks through the door with more confidence than he had the previous day, bell dinging loudly above him, announcing himself to the many intimate inanimate objects that line the shelves.

“That good, Hollander? Coming back so soon?”

Abort mission. Red alert, hit the panic button, scream.

Right beside him, no more than three meters away, is Rozanov. The very same Rozanov that his brain had been fantasising about the night before. Fucking him slowly, leaning over him to whisper sultry words in his ear—

So much for not working back-to-back.

Rozanov is in the same outfit as yesterday, his shirt just a deep navy, hair tousled as he glides forward—all too cocky. His gaze glides over Shane like a knife through warm butter—leaving him helpless, locked under the scrutiny.

Rather than another probing question, Rozanov turns, sauntering back to his spot behind the counter, once again jumping over the top to land in place. Finally, Shane’s limbs move, and he steels himself again, walking up after him.

“Uh, no. My date was cancelled, so. I’d like to return this,” Shane unceremoniously places the bag on the counter, meeting the very unimpressed eyes of Rozanov.

“No refunds.”

Wait, what?

Rozanov continues, unaware of Shane’s inner turmoil. “People do kinky shit. I do not get paid enough to clean sex toys. Sorry.” Shane doesn’t think he’s heard a person sound more unapologetic.

Like the whole interaction didn’t even happen, Rozanov grabs the bag, pushing it into Shane’s hand, their fingers brushing from the contact, Rozanov dragging his away tantalisingly slow. Then, he grabs a dirty rag from fuck-knows-where, and pretends to be cleaning the already spotless countertop, angling his body away from Shane’s.

Shane stands there in shock, then annoyance as he shoves the bag back onto the counter. “But I paid good money for this! It’s unused. And still in the box!”

The employee just shrugs. “Save it for next date. Or put in bin. I don’t care.” He moves to look around Shane, leaving him to the side as another customer approaches the counter, some weedy young man.

It’s not the money that’s the problem. Shane is fine with not getting his $74.99 back if it means he can get rid of the huge, purple dildo lying heavy in the bottom of his bag. He’s a fitness influencer, (Of sorts, he mostly does modelling jobs for different brands, and appears on them yoga shows for middle-aged women. Alongside some brand endorsement, because apparently that’s what got him on the yoga shows in the first place.) he has the money.

Throwing it out was always an option, but the irrational fear that someone would find it and decide to trace his fingerprints was too big a deal to put it in the trash. Also, he doesn’t think the charity shop will appreciate sex toys.

Stemming in his annoyance at the employee—who the hell did Rozanov think he was, anyway—Shane seriously debates just leaving the bag in the store and walking out, never again to step foot in here.

“Did you need help with anything?” a pointed voice asks from behind him, interrupting his half-baked plans.

When he meets the eyes of the woman behind him, he finds she’s wearing similar attire to Rozanov, black shirt and black pants, one eyebrow arched up as she assesses Shane, her thick hair pulled back into a ponytail.

’SVETLANA’ her nametag reads, and are all the employees here Russian?

“Is there something you’re looking for?” she repeats, clearly confused as to why Shane’s been standing here like an idiot for a while now.

He shakes his head. “Oh, uh, no. I’m fine,” he says, wondering why she couldn’t have been the first person he spoke to when he walked in. “Actually,” he starts just as she goes to turn away. “I was wondering if I could return this?”

“Sorry. No returns policy,” Svetlana says, pointing to the sign taped on the counter.

NO-RETURNS POLICY
Mistress M does not offer returns of any kind, for any product. All customers are to understand that no refunds will be given or provided if they are not satisfied with the product. In cases of product mismanagement and breakage, returns are still not eligible, due to the nature of the products. We thank you for your understanding.

Great. So Rozanov wasn’t lying.

“I can show you similar products?” Svetlana offers.

Shane shakes his head again. “No. I’m fine, thanks.”

She nods before walking away, disappearing into the shelves.

“Are you going to use it?” The ever-familiar voice is back. Rozanov is leaning forward, hands on the counter, staring intently at Shane. He gestures to the bag.

“No,” Shane honestly replies. Despite his…actions last night, he never plans to go any further than that. Still not quite comfortable admitting to himself that he uses his fingers for those things, no matter how good it may feel in the moment. Certainly, he won’t be putting a cock—fake or not—anywhere near his ass anytime soon.

Grabbing an old receipt from the stack on the counter, Rozanov sighs, scribbling down a phone number, before handing it over to Shane.

“Call this number. Another store. They take returns,” Rozanov says flatly, but his eyes glint with something more.

Unsure whether to believe him or not, Shane decides he’s 1. Already embarrassed himself enough in front of this man for a lifetime and 2. Spent way too long in this store.

So he takes the receipt.

Picking up his black plastic bag again, Shane flees the store without a second thought, pulling his cap low over his face again as he steps out into the street, the ding of the bell the only noise signalling his presence.

As he’s making his way up to his apartment, Shane grabs his phone, typing the number into his contacts. Rozanox did say to call, but the verbal admittance of what he needs to return is too heavy, so Shane flicks off a text instead, making the decision to try and start of casual, and hope the person on the other end will know what he wants.

2:14PM
Hello

2:14PM +1 604XXXXXX Hello Hollander

Shane drops his phone.

— — —

“Don’t tell me you gave that poor boy your number.”

Svetlana stalks up to him not even a minute after Hollander has left the store, arms crossed and face impassive. Ilya should’ve known she would’ve guessed, honestly. Downsides of oversharing with her. Late nights of them getting pissed on the balcony of their apartment, confessions spilling from his lips faster than he can reign them in.

Things are better now, he tells himself. They have to be.

He shrugs, hands on the counter, nonchalant. “No. I do not know what you are talking about.”

She gives him that look. The no-bullshit, don’t lie to me Ilya Rozanov, look. She waits, baiting him into speaking by saying nothing herself, smug smile resting on her lips. Finally, Ilya cracks, turning around to busy himself with the counters that line the back wall under the desk, only partly so he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes.

“Ok. I gave him number. So what?”

“You lied to him! He was nervous! I could see the look on his face when he tried to bring that in. Seriously, why’d he buy it in the first place if he wasn’t gonna use it–” Svetlana switches to Russian, words spewing quick as she lays her opinions onto Ilya.

Ilya rolls his eyes, knowing Svetlana can’t see them. “Oh, like you’re above lying to people,” he flips to their home language as well, standing up to face her. “Besides, it was harmless. Just because he has my number doesn’t mean he’s going to sleep with me. Anyway. I am only offering because I feel bad. He won’t get use of the dildo otherwise.”

“He won’t get use of anything if you’re there! You’re seriously telling me you would—you know what, no. I’m not even going to go there. Point is, Ilya, you haven’t given your number to anyone since we’ve been in Montreal. What’s so different about a man you just met?”

“I met him yesterday. I was the one that sold him the toy,” Ilya admits without shame. “He’s—intresting.”

Ilya shoves back the spark he had felt in his heart yesterday, the leap of gunfire, shooting right out and latching onto Hollander. It was almost like his whole body was set alight from inside out, roaring and licking, wanting desperately to stoke the fire, to build and build and build the tension with Hollander until everything snapped. There was this…pull. Making him want to rip Hollander to pieces and tug him closer at the same time.

Something had clicked in his mind, and Ilya doubts he’s ever going to go back to the way he was. Every interaction with the man is unravelling him more and more.

Svetlana has the audacity to laugh. “I thought you found him boring?”

Oh, shit, he didn’t think she’d heard that too, no doubt eavesdropping from the breakroom while he played up his air of nonchalance.

“Shut up. You heard nothing,” he switches back to English, hopping over the counter and marching with determination through the shelves, weaving around in the longest route possible to the back door. Svetlana’s tinkling laugh is heard, and he glares at her as she gets behind the counter.

She catches him, and flips him off. Ilya kindly returns the gesture.

“I’m guessing you want me out of the apartment tonight?” she calls, teasing.

“No talking when I am on break!” he yells back, but they’re both half-smiling at each other as Ilya slips through the door, slamming it shut behind him. (Not on purpose, the building is old and it’s always done that.)

The back alley always feels wet, despite the lack of rain. Puddles of who-knows-what pool on the ground, Ilya dodging them with practiced ease. The wall of Mistress M constantly has moist bricks, so Ilya elects to lean against the fence blocking the alley in. Off in the distance, he can hear the soft rumble of cars as they speed past, people going about their everyday lives.

Fumbling through his pocket, Ilya retrieves his phone, checking for new missed calls. Nothing. Not surprising, seeing as Hollander left not too long ago. Still, he can’t help but feel the smallest inking of disappointment. A sense which he quickly quashes, of course. He isn’t upset that a man he hardly knows didn’t call him.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket, Ilya pulls out his packet of Du Maurier—a pack he managed to take from Svetlana’s dresser when she wasn’t home—and lights one with a steady hand.

His cigarette has crumbled to ash under his shoe when his phone buzzes from his pocket. Rationally, Ilya knows that it wasn’t the best move to pull one over on Hollander like that. But really, who could blame him for not wanting to pass up an opportunity. Hollander had said himself that his date fell through. Ilya’s just offering to help. Grabbing the device, he can’t help but feel a flicker of pride as the unfamiliar number lights up his screen. Of course Hollander would be the person to text.

2:14PM
+1 263XXXXXX
Hello

Clicking into the messages, he saves Hollander’s contact information, listing his name as ‘Jane.’ A habit he has with male counterparts such as Hollander, and one he should probably drop, now that he’s in Montreal. Still, it gives him that sense of security. This is something that’s his, and his alone, not owing it to any prying eyes the true nature of his interests.

2:14PM
Hello Hollander

He disregards any notion of subtlety, casting aside his poorly crafted ruse. There’s no response for a long while, and Ilya is left staring at his phone screen for a solid three minutes, wishing Hollander would hurry the fuck up and respond. Technically, his break ended five minutes ago, but seeing as Svetlana had not yet dragged his ass back inside, Ilya decides to play with his life a minute longer.

2:17PM
Sorry, I lied

He sends another message, because it’s really starting to seem like Hollander has broken both his phone and his brain cells. Perhaps an apology will sober him up enough to remember how to use a phone keyboard.

2:20PM
Jane
Who is this?

Alas, a response! No, Ilya is not smiling at his phone, what idiot would smile over an electronic message? He is simply just pleased that he is now efficiently making use of his overtimed break.

2:21PM
Rozanov

2:21PM
From Mistress M

2:25PM
Jane
Do you only do digital returns?

Ilya scoffs to himself, wondering how someone could be so behind the ball. Then again, he supposes, it’d never been much of a ball to begin with. More like a deflated sack, flopping about limply in the wind.

2:26PM
Hollander I lied. We do no returns. This is my personal number
I can help you get use out of your purchase
Since your date cancelled

He sends three messages in a row, firing them off in succession with the hope Hollander will respond to at least one.

2:27PM
Jane
?

Ilya sends Hollander his address.

2:27PM
Apartment 3C third floor

Nothing is said after that. But Ilya pockets his phone. He likes to think he’s firmly inflated the ball and sent it flying, right into Hollander’s face. All he can do now is wait.

Getting out of the grimy backalley, Ilya sighs, preparing for the onslaught of questions that will no doubt be thrown his way when he so much as breathes within ten meters of Svetlana.

— — —

Apartment 3C third floor

The words spin in Shane’s head faster than the whirl of the washing machine in front of him. Around and round they go, washing out all cognitive thoughts to replace them with gelatinious mush.

He clicks off his phone.

Down on the laundry room countertop it goes, as if turning off the screen will, in turn, shut down his mind.

Instead, he’s met with the jarring clarity of the situation. Rozanov. Lying to him. Because he wanted to—he wanted—

He’d given Shane his address.

Sinking to the floor in his tiny laundry room, Shane runs a hand through his hair, letting out a whistling breath. A hookup, he states plainly to himself. That’s all this is. It’s all it will be. By themselves, the two words don’t seem that daunting. It’s when the connotations of it being Rozanov, a man that make the hill he stands atop of just a little steeper.

As perilous as it seems, Shane refuses to look down. For to look would be admitting that he could fall, and from this high up that meant certain death. Letting his head thunk back against the wall, he watches the clothes spin in front of him, soapy suds bubbling up against the glass.

In his mind, he knows what he wants to do. The decision was made the second he decided to text Rozanov back. He brandishes it around his brain, parading it about so the negative thoughts cover back, and then come forward once again, now shrouded in lust. His mind can’t do Rozanov justice. So call it curiosity, or downright need, because Shane doesn’t care anymore, mind firmly set on whatever this is with Rozanov.

Shane checks his phone. 8:30PM. Was this too early? Too late? Rozanov hadn’t given him a time, but there was only so long Shane could pace around his apartment, working himself up for this.

He stands now, in the elevator taking him up, up to the third floor. He’d been buzzed in by some old, wrinkled lady, her blue eyes stabbing right through him, dredging up the real reason he was here. Shane had swallowed, trying to keep his steps even as he stepped into the metal machine that would surely drop him off in hell. There, of course, in hell, would be Rozanov, teasing him for his greedy need for lust. Laughing as he shamefully tries to return everything he’s regretted.

Of course, Shane didn’t bring the dildo. He knows that it’s what Rozanov said he would help him get use out of, but the embarrassment of having to carry it through the city for a second time that day was too much. (And maybe, the tiniest part of him wondered what it would be like, to have Rozanov’s cock inside of him instead, not some fake silicone replica.)

The doors slide apart. Shane steps into the dimly lit hallway, peering down at the four doors, all painted the same off-white, a small gold plaque stating the room number.

3A

3B

3C

Bingo.

Setting his shoulders, he walks towards it, standing outside with apprehension. He knocks with the confidence he can muster, hovering until the lock clicks, and the door is brought back, opening into a small entranceway.

There, stands Rozanov. His hair is damp, curls more defined as they hold close to his head. He’s in sweatpants and a loose shirt, illuminated by the warm light behind him.

If Shane has any lingering regrets, they’ve dissipated, melting to nothing as Rozanov’s eyes rake over him. Knowing now what they are going to do adds a layer of intimacy to it all, sending shivers tingling down Shane’s spine, a low pulse thrumming through him.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Rozanov snaps, and it in turn pulls Shane out of it, his legs moving as he steps into the apartment.

Rozanov walks in front of him, sauntering into the main, open living area. It’s of a decent size, kitchen white marble, leading out into a small table and couch off to the right. He pauses at the beginning of a short hallway, branching off into three doors.

Leaning against the wall, Rozanov reaches a hand forward to grab at Shane’s hoodie, tugging him closer.

“Have you done this before?” his eyes flick over Shane’s face.

Shane goes with it, plunging under the waves. “Yeah,” his voice almost cracks, and he swallows back.

“With a man?” is Rozanov’s next question, hand starting at the top of Shane’s chest and running down his torso.

“No. Just women,” Shane whispers, a confession that isn’t untrue.

Rozanov nods, assessing. He seems satisfied with what he decides, and slowly—so slow it makes Shane’s heart beat double—pulls his shirt off, walking backwards into the half-open door, leading into what must be his room.

Shane hardly has time to take in the decor. All he clocks is the wall, hard against his back as he’s pressed up against it, pinned down with that gaze that makes Rozanov’s eyes so much darker than they are.

“I had thought so,” Rozanov mutters, hands slipping under Shane’s shirt.

“Have you? Been with men?”

“Yes,” is all he gives, a slight shrug to his shoulders.

Somehow, the answer stings a little, like this won’t mean as much to Rozanov as it does to Shane. This is a hookup he reminds himself. Nothing more.

Shutting his eyes, Shane rids himself of thoughts. Moves away from the wall, tugging off his own hoodie. It falls to the carpeted floor without much sound, the silence near deafening. Rozanov’s face is inches from his own, cupping Shane’s face, not letting him move.

A sharp intake of breath, then an exhale as it puffs out over his lips, and Rozanov is catching them with his own, body pushed up against Shane’s as he kisses him, so deep Shane has to tilt his head back to take it properly. Rozanov’s mouth is hot, greedily sucking Shane’s bottom lip between his own, hand at the back of his head massaging his scalp as he draws him in.

Shane sighs, body relaxing, thumping against the wall once more. He opens his mouth, arms wrapping around Rozanov’s back, gripping onto the warm skin. His whole body has been ignited, tongue in his mouth as Rozanov takes the opportunity, twining with Shane’s. It feels messy and desperate and Shane is so out of control, but he wants it, wants it so bad it hurts, a tugging in the back of his mind and spurring him onwards.

When they break apart, Rozanov holds eye contact as his hands move again, undoing the button of Shane’s jeans, a hand staying at his chest, groping his pec.

“Let me suck you off, Hollander,” he’s dropping to his knees even as he says it. It’s all Shane can do to nod, a whine filling the air.

Oh, god. That was him. Shame has no time to seep into his veins, because Rozanov is huffing, a sound akin to laughter.

“So needy Hollander,” he teases, Shane’s face flushing red-hot.

“Fuck you,” he gasps, his boxers being pulled down, cock springing free.

Rozanov hums, hand wrapping around his base. “No. I am going to suck you.”

He gives a few lazy pumps to Shane’s cock with his hand, bringing him to full mast, hard and leaking in Rozanov’s hand, blatant proof of how desperate Shane is. So long, he’s wanted this. Rozanov may have come into the equation long after Shane realised this, but he can’t imagine anyone else making him feel this way.

A wet press around his tip. That same warm heat he had felt in his mouth moments before. Powerlessly, he lets the groan fall from his lips, bracing his hands on Rozanov’s shoulders. Rozanov hums softly, hand still groping at Shane’s pec as he uses the other to fondle his ass, pushing Shane deeper down his throat. It’s so hot, his cock is on fire and the arousal in his chest is flaring up, roaring proud and deep, sinking into mind.

Looking down, Shane sees the very noticeable bulge straining Rozanov’s pants. The knowledge that he caused that flood his brain, the lust surging higher.

Rozanov is bobbing his head now, up and down as he hollows his cheeks out, sucking Shane’s cock deeper and deeper, tongue swirling around the length. Shane isn’t that big, but Rozanov’s really making a show of it, taking him just that bit more every time Shane lets another noise free.

“Yeah, yes, hngg—” Shane babbles on, a hand burying itself in those gorgeous curls, gripping firmly. Unintentionally, he tugs slightly, and Rozanov’s mouth stutters, a tiny moan slipping out around Shane’s cock.

And, oh. If that isn’t something.

Instilled with a new confidence, Shane rocks his hips forward, bucking into Rozanov’s mouth. The man on his knees groans in appreciation and encouragement, Shane rolling his hips again and again. Never harsh, or too deep, but enough for Rozanov to take him completely, nose brushing his pubes. For a moment, he keeps Shane there, fully lodged in his throat, tongue running across the vein on the underside of his cock.

Shane moans loudly, the sound filling the room, echoing off the walls, leaping right into Shane’s heart, twining with the need that’s been quickly building—

Rozanov takes his mouth almost completely off Shane’s cock, leaving only the tip between his lips.

“Wh-what’re you doing?” Shane manages to murmur through the thick fog clouding his brain.

But Rozanov smirks up at him, both hands slipping to knead the flesh of Shane’s ass, drawing him to move faster into his mouth. Shane tries his best to follow the newfound rhythm, properly fucking Rozanov’s face now, his cock slamming into the back of Rozanov’s throat with every thrust.

He doesn’t last long, after that.

With a cry as his only sign of warning, Shane’s soul leaves his body through his cock, spilling into Rozanov’s mouth. He doesn’t have time to ask if it’s okay, or if he was supposed to pull out.

Thoughts however, are now meaningless, as all is peacefully blank, whiting out the edges of his vision, leaving him only with a narrow-minded focus on his dick. Which Rozanov is still sucking, coaxing him through the orgasm, milking him for all he’s got until Shane has no more left to give.

Rozanov takes his mouth from Shane’s cock, standing up to grab at his forearms, pulling him away from the wall. Shane lets himself be led, sparks fizzling and popping around his vision. He hits something soft (Rozanov's bed, he notes absently) and is pressed back into it, Rozanov’s warm mouth on his.

Shane’s jeans are still unfastened, his cock hanging half out. He tucks himself back in, but doesn’t bother with his jeans, as Rozanov is tugging at them, silently demanding they come off. They soon join with Shane’s hoodie on the floor.

Rozanov, he notes, is still hard, made now more obvious by the fact that he’s now naked, rolling over so he’s half on top of Shane.

He’s fit, but not in an overbearing way. Arms and legs well muscled, dark happy trail leading down to his cock. And his cock, god. It’s longer than Shane’s, thicker too, almost the size of the shameful dildo he was coerced into buying. Shane knows he’s staring. How could he not?

A hand, reaching out. Brushing through that light smattering of hair down Rozanov’s navel.

“Can I touch you?” Shane breathes, the request sounding all too close to a beg. This feels more in his depth. Handjobs, he can work with.

Rozanov leans down to kiss him, whispering between the millimeters that separate their lips. “Yes.”

Despite his answer, Rozanov doesn’t give Shane the time to touch him, rolling his hips down, cock grinding against Shane’s thigh in a filthy drag. As he moves, he captures Shane’s mouth, swallowing down every embarrassing sound he makes as Rozanov works himself up, using Shane’s body as he pleases.

Had he not already come so hard he saw stars (literally) Shane would be fearing for the possibility of his dick falling off. Arousal still thrums through him, sparking hot and dangerous.

“Fuck, Rozanov—” he gasps, pulling Rozanov closer, their bodies pressed flush together. Humping up, Shane chases that thick, hard cock, frotting against each other as Rozanov comes closer and closer to his finish line.

“Ah—I’m going to come,” Rozanov says lowly, right into the crook of Shane’s neck, lips pressed against skin as he utters them. ”Hollander—”

Heat spills between them, Shane’s back arching up from the bed, tipping his head as he moans at the sensation, come flooding the tight spaces between their bodies. It’s so good, to have Rozanov close like this, panting into Shane, dipping his head in for filthy kiss after kiss, sucking on his tongue. In return, Shane licks into his mouth, taking what he can before they have to part, catching their breaths heavily.

Rozanov’s ceiling is a dark blue, matching the colour of his walls. The light isn’t on, but the two lamps either side of the bed are, giving the room a softer, dim glow. If Shane didn’t know any better, he’d assume Rozanov was trying to be romantic. The idea is so absurd in of itself that Shane chuckles lightly.

“What? Is something funny?” Rozanov accuses from beside him, eyes narrowing.

He shakes his head. “No. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Your room is nice.”

“Ah, yes. My room. It’s almost as boring as you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Next time.”

That sends Shane for a loop, wires in his brain tripping. Next time?! Clearly, he was good enough for Rozanov to want him to stick around.

So Shane manages a nod. Sitting up and rolling out of the bed he says, “Okay. I’ll see you, then,” before pulling on his clothes.

Rozanov walks him to the door. They stiffly say goodbye, and Shane is left alone with his thoughts, mind reeling.

He’s so in his own head that he doesn’t even notice he’s gone the wrong way back to his apartment until he’s a good fifteen minutes away.

The image of Rozanov, on his knees, sucking dick plagues Shane’s mind for the rest of the night, and sleep does not come.

Chapter 3: Side-Fling

Chapter Summary

“We were wondering—” a guy steps forward, someone Ilya doesn’t know, and doesn’t care to, says. His eyes catch on where Svetlana is moving a display of strap-on’s around. “—if she was taken.” He laughs and a couple of the others do too. Not Hollander. He still stands like he’s eating a wasp.

“Yes,” Ilya lies. “Are you here to buy sex toys or not?”

Chapter Notes

Please assume that when Svetlana and Ilya are speaking to each other in private they’re using Russian, unless otherwise mentioned.

Ilya is much too young to venture through the streets of a country he hardly knows the language of. He tells himself this isn’t the truth. For he’s grown now, added years of tough exterior and fight to the over-emotional child he was, built and reshaped into another thing entirely. He’s got Svetlana, and the promise of stable income, and it is enough. Anything is, compared to that godforsaken house.

“Ilya, get in,” the pot-bellied man smiles, hand pushing Ilya’s back into the taxi. He pronounces his name wrong (ew-ya) and never bothers to correct himself. Ilya finds him terribly rude, but he’s refrained from saying so, knowing he won’t be given second chances if he screws this up.

Boris Otterman is a heavy-set American, voice all too loud and teeth so blindingly white one must wear sunglasses if he were to smile. Thankfully, Otterman never chooses to do so, instead sitting like a dud in the political meetings his father used to hold when Ilya was a teenager. Otterman was still a prominent part of his father’s social circle, throwing money around in his big house he rented when he spent the summers in Russia. His parties were well known for all the wrong reasons. Yet somehow, Ilya had found himself accepting Otterman's offer to spend a few years in Canada, working for the modelling business Otterman’s oil company sponsored.

When they pull up to an adult toy store, Ilya first thinks they’ve been conned. He’s not surprised in the slightest that Otterman would own a place like this, under some fake name. Checks out too, based off of what he’s heard happens at his parties.

“What is this?” Ilya asks quickly, in Russian. Otterman may seem slow, but he’s well-versed in languages, and a steady business man. The only thing he’s truly impartial to, is of course, sex.

Otterman unlocks the door into the shop, half full with stacks of boxes, some toys already littering the shelves. It’s very tacky, and the floor is hideous.

“Well, technically, your contract for the modelling offer doesn’t start for another six months. However, since you’ve come early,”—he sends a look their way, most likely confused over Ilya’s insistence that he came as soon as possible—“I’m willing to offer you employment here. You’ll need to learn English, and handle customer service.”

He keeps marching through the store, and Svetlana nudges him. ”What the fuck? she mouths, and it’s all he can do to shrug.

Five months later, Ilya is semi-proficent in a new language, can handle the steady onslaught of customers that come into the store, he has a decent enough apartment, and he’s now free to take home as many people as he wants. Not that he does. The clientele are all taken, loud, boisterous men who proclaim their love for sex with women many times throughout their act of purchasing. Mostly, it’s been guys and girls at clubs, or people he meets in bars. Nothing associated with his work. Nothing to do with the sex toys he helps to sell.

All things considered, it’s not the worst life he could be living. He’s got Svetlana, and he rarely has to see Otterman, and he’s comfortable with the fact that no one outside of his tiny circle knows him.

Ilya breaks his unwritten rule of keeping sex unassociated with work the day Shane Hollander walks into the store. (Although, he prefers to think of it as an exception to the pseudo-rule.)

Hollander walks in, promptly fucks him over with those gorgeous brown eyes, and it’s been a while since Ilya has had an opportunity staring him right in the face like this. All his hopes and frilly fantastical headcanons are shot dead when Hollander reveals he has a date.

A date.

That is fine, he tells himself.

It doesn’t stop him from getting off to that half-smile he caught a glimpse of. He does feel a little guilty, but it had just happened, and he was still left thinking about it the day afterwards when Hollander had come back in.

Now, once again, he’s jacking off in his shower to the image of Hollander. This time, it’s much more real, the vivid picture of Hollander gasping down at him, fingers curling in Ilya’s hair as he had sucked him off, felt the cum splatter down his throat, hot and thick and—

He’s coming, hand still working his cock through it, painting the glass walls of his shower white, dripping down the sudsy surface. Sighing, he places a hand against the wall to steady himself, breathing deeply to come down from his orgasm. The sounds of Shane’s laboured, heavy breaths echo through his skull, blasting on every speaker. He can’t get it out of his head. Even as he dries off, chucking on his shirt and sweats, strolling into the living area and finding Svetlana back from her shift at the bar (a second job she had picked up alongside her work at Mistress M, for she was only holding out there until Ilya could move on to his modelling contract, and they could rise from the cum-stained ashes of their past and into a newer life), sitting on the couch on her phone.

Not wanting to feel left out, he plops down too, scrolling through his empty chatlog, the most recent being with Hollander.

“So—did he come over?” she drags out the first word, looking up at him as she begins to take out her hair, pulling out pins and setting them on the arm of the sofa.

“Yes.” He tries to keep his tone flat, a display of indifference he plays up when in fact, Hollander was so much more than that one word.

Svetlana snorts. “Not as boring in bed then?”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, finding it to be the truth, and also entirely a lie, for Hollander was never boring in the first place.

Over the next week, there’s a change in Ilya’s previously-empty chatlogs. Hollander sends a first tentative message, and Ilya finds himself replying, and somewhat warming up to the jabs he can throw back and forth with Hollander, neither one or the other seeming to get offended. It’s refreshing, leaving Ilya to debate inviting Hollander back to his apartment again. He’s done continuous hookups with others before, but…as cheesy as it sounds, Hollander feels…different. For one, he’s certainly not exchanged numbers with his partners, and two, he certainly doesn’t jerk off to the perfect picture of their face when they orgasmed.

The lingering possibility of having Hollander back in his bed hangs like a heavy bubble above him.

Friday afternoon, it finally pops.

What had been a slow day was now bleeding into a rather frustrating one, Ilya left on restock in the back while Svetlana, and Curtis, a quiet man Ilya would never suspect of working in the store, run the front. Another box shoved on the shelf and Ilya decides its near enough time for his break anyway, and swings the side door open.

Hollander.

In the shop, hands shoved in his pockets as he stands in the middle of the loud group of men, the very same type that pester Ilya with their plans on what they’re doing with their girlfriends later that night. Why would Hollander hang out with these assholes?

Break firmly forgotten, Ilya slinks in behind the counter.

“Lucky day. You take your break now,” he tells Curtis, and the other boy looks relieved to leave, ducking out of the back door without so much of a ‘good luck.’

“Hey, you work here, right?” a voice asks. A voice coming from a rather familiar face. Not from personal knowledge, much more from parasocialism because Ilya has seen this guy before. Passes his face every day when he clocks into work.

Scott Hunter, New York’s top male model for the past three years in a row. Why he’s in Canada, Ilya doesn’t know. What he does know, however, is that Scott Hunter has a very nice face to be plastered on poster-boards around the city.

“Yes. Did you need something?” Looking behind at the group again, Ilya notes he recognises a few more faces, American and Canadian models alike, most of which he knows through photos and vague mentions Otterman has given him when he was provided with the run-down of the whole modelling gig he’s still waiting to get off the ground.

The pieces are clicking quickly together, and the realisation grasps him that Hollander, the very same man he had in his bed—is a model too. Ilya hasn’t seen any of his work though. A true travesty.

“We were wondering—” a guy steps forward, someone Ilya doesn’t know, and doesn’t care to, says. His eyes catch on where Svetlana is moving a display of strap-on’s around. “—if she was taken.” He laughs and a couple of the others do too. Not Hollander. He still stands like he’s eating a wasp.

“Yes,” Ilya lies, now wishing he’d taken that break and let Curtis deal with this shit. “Are you here to buy sex toys or not?”

The guy chuckles. “Woah, okay, no need to get so sensitive over your girl, man. Sorry for asking.” He titters with laughter for a moment longer before sobering himself up somewhat. “We all had a bet, you see. And the losers, gotta buy something from here, so they can finally get fucked.”

The crowd pushes two forward. Hollander comes with his head half-down. J.J. Boiziau, semi-famous for a modelling campaign he did a while back, before Ilya was in Canada, has a cap shoved over his face.

To be honest, he’s got little idea as to why he suddenly needs to make Hollander buy another sex toy, but he certainly isn’t going to begin expressing his complaints. As he moves around the counter and in front of the group, Hollander’s eyes lift. Beneath the cool mask of slight confidence he wears, Ilya feels something deeper. An indescribable pull, instigated by the heat pooling in Hollander’s dark eyes, alluring Ilya closer, so close he teeters right off the edge and plummets to his very death, drowning in the sea of longing held behind those irises.

It’s a silent goading, encouragement. Almost as if Hollander wants Ilya to pick out something for him. And Ilya wants nothing more than to give it to him.

He stalks through the shop, brushing off pointless questions thrown at him by the group—how the fuck do you use this? Did you know I’ve tried this out with my girlfriend? So, you have good sex or what? Bet you love working here, man. Do you get discounts?—until he chucks a fleshlight in Boiziau’s direction, not glancing up to see if it lands.

“So you don’t have to keep facing the tragedy of getting no girls,” Ilya shrugs, eyes flitting back over to where they really want to be.

It’s torture. He takes in the laughter and stranged shout of protest from Boiziau as he continues walking. It’s not a large store, so he really has nowhere to go, but he manages to make a good minute out of it, keeping his eyes locked with Hollanders as his fingers lightly dance over the shelves. Subtly, he points and nods at different items, taking in Hollanders matching almost imperceivable answer. A tiny shake of the head. A firm setting of the jaw. A muttered ‘not that.’

Someone groans loudly. “Are you gonna give him something or what? We’ve got a party after this.”

Shouts of agreement, and Ilya has no time to ask his silent question, instead grabbing the cock ring and reaching it out to Hollander. He pushes it too far forward on purpose, their fingers brushing on the side of the box the others can’t see. Hollander eyes the box, but takes it, letting the others jeer playfully and bump shoulders with him.

The tension is so thick Ilya wonders how the others can’t feel it. It sits as something heavy and swelling between them, growing to all-consuming, licking up every drop of air in the room and replacing it with need so desperate Ilya is shocked he’s never felt starving before. One hookup, and Hollander is all Ilya has ever wanted. The urge to please, to twist and whimper and beg and give this man everything he’s ever wanted rears its head, letting Ilya’s too-deep infatuation for this man be known to the world.

The group pays and leaves. With it, they take Ilya’s lust, latching on to the one man who had hovered for a moment longer in the doorway, looking back for nothing more than a split second. In that moment, lighting crackles, sharp, electric waves jolting through Ilya. He’s going into cardiac arrest. He has to be. What else could explain the erratic beating of his heart?

4:24PM
Are you free tonight?

4:50PM
Jane
Yeah.

4:51PM
You know the address.

“We were wondering if she was taken.”

“Yes.”

Yes.

Svetlana was taken, and she was dating Rozanov.

Shane knew his friends were being assholes when they asked that question, and hadn’t assumed Rozanov was Svetlana’s partner until Hayden had nudged him afterwards, after those long, tense minutes of Shane raking his eyes over Rozanov, their silent communication, dick stirring slightly in his pants as Rozanov handed him the cock ring. Shane had felt the heat creep up his neck and prayed all in the room were none the wiser, lest they find out what was potentially going to happen.

Not anymore, apparently. Hayden and he linger at the back of the group.

“Hey, you don’t think he was like, actually pissed that some of the guys wanted to make moves on his girl?” Hayden says.

Shane’s brow wrinkles. “His girl?”

“The employees. Did you hear the way he said that she was taken? Man, I woulda been pretty annoyed,” Hayden continues, but the sea is roaring in Shane’s ears.

Stupidly, he feels his heart burst in his chest. Of course Rozanov was dating someone. Why wouldn’t he be? Shane was just some side-fling. To be fair, they’d had sex once. It was a hookup. Rozanov had given him his number with Svetlana right there. Either he was shameless and hated his girlfriend, or they had some kind of agreement that Rozanov could fuck who he likes. He feels more secure with this conclusion, and he forces his brain to believe it as true. No matter how far-fetched it seems.

Rozanov was in it for the sex. Shane decides in that moment that he too, is too far gone in the lustful lands of Rozanov to turn back. His heart aches from the feeling of just being used but his cock…has other ideas. If their first encounter was anything to go by, Shane’s an idiot not to continue this.

And really—what does he want? A full-time relationship with Rozanov? It’s certainly not something he’s going to get. Better be in it for the sex than nothing at all.

Hayden’s rambling finally reaches his ears, and Shane forces himself to tune in. It’s about the stupid bet. One Shane hardly understood himself, something about comparing their rankings to the times they’ve been with people, losers entitled to a sex toy to ‘get things going.’ Hence why he’s now not-so-unwillingly carrying a cock ring.

“I have a date tonight,” he shrugs to satiate Hayden.

His friend raises his eyebrows. “The same girl that cancelled on you last time?”

Shane nods. He feels a little sick thinking about it. He isn’t going to cancel his date with Rose Landry again, and the thought of Rozanov also dating someone fills the hole in his gaping chest. It’s fine. If they’re both in the same situation, it’s fine. Dating women, and having each other on the side.

Shane justifies this in his head the entire ride home, letting Hayden’s words pass by his empty brain. When he reaches his apartment, he mutters a quick ‘thank you’, and gets the hell out of there, telling himself he’s only checking his phone for the time.

His dick lights up when there’s a message from Rozanov. Or rather, Lily. A great anagram, he knows, but it was all he could think of when putting Rozanov’s number into his contacts. People are nosy and the last thing he needs is to be clocked on his male-hookup.

4:24PM
Lily
Are you free tonight?

He knows his answer before he types it. He wants this too badly to refuse, even after learning what he did. The heat from inside the store still lingers low in his gut, stirring up just thinking about it.

4:50PM
Yeah.

4:51PM
You know the address.

He tries to act like this is fine. He’ll just go on the date with Rose, not take her home, and go have sex with Rozanov instead. He feels sleazy. A dirty liar, only thinking with his dick and not his mind, never his mind, because then he wouldn’t be stuck in this spot in the first place.

The rock sinking down through his chest falls faster, and Shane tries not to think too hard.

Surprisingly, the date goes well.

They meet up at a nice restaurant tucked in the corner of the city, dim lighting, but there’s families scattered about, friends eating together, and a few people alone, so it doesn't feel romantic in the way that’d make Shane nervous.

Rose is easy to talk to. It’s stiff, but when she realises he’s not there to just get in her pants, she relaxes, and it feels casual. He learns about the woes of acting, how it compares to modelling, what Rose would like to actually turn around and say to her managers, and drinks just a little too much wine.

“So, you wanna tell me why all the guys at your company are all obsessed with that toy store?” Rose asks, taking a sip of her drink. She leans back in her seat a little, flicking her hair over her shoulder.

“Mistress M?” Shane must answer a little too quickly, judging by the flash that passes Rose’s eyes, watching him carefully.

“You know it?”

Fuck it, he may as well commit. “Yeah. Been there a couple times before. With some of the guys,” he tacks on. “They mostly go so they can brag about whatever it is they’ve bought. It’s normally unimpressive.”

This earns a laugh from Rose. “I gathered. All I hear is talk about it. I hope you’re not the same.”

Well, I had this guy sell me a dildo, and hookup with me a day later, Shane’s brain unhelpfully adds to the conversation.

“No, I’ve—never bought anything. Just a forced accompaniment when they’re feeling cocky.”

“I’m glad I found the right model then,” she jokes. Shane laughs, gulping back his wine.

If this were another reality, maybe he’d be Rose’s friend, and they’d never had gone on this stupid date at all, because Shane would have the guts to admit that he’d rather be here with—

“So, would you want to do this again?” Rose asks, cutting through his thoughts. “I hear there’s a nice Mexican place a few blocks over.”

He nods. “That sounds great, actually. I had a good time,” both of those things aren’t untrue. Shane does want to see Rose again. She was lovely to talk to, a nice ease to it all.

Rose smiles, shrugging her coat on as they step out into the street. “Perfect. I’ll test you again when I’m free. I’m packed full of meetings this week. Need to organise my schedule for some new movie I’m potentially signing onto.”

“Why not wait until it’s been confirmed?”

“Don’t ask. I certainly can’t be bothered to know. But…thank you for tonight. It was good having someone to take all the pressure off.” She leans in, bracing herself on Shane’s forearms as he kisses his cheek, pulling away softly. There’s a slight promise of something more, fizzling through the air. It never comes, going out naturally, and Shane holds her arms back, smiling.

“It was.” He returns the cheek-kiss, and they finally say goodbye, Rose heading off into a taxi, and Shane back to his apartment, only a semi-short walking distance. It’ll be good to clear his head. He needs it, if Roxanov’s promise is going to hold up the same way it did last time.

“Hello Hollander;” is the only greeting he gets before he’s being roughly shoved against the wall, held in place by Rozanov’s firm hands, grabbing at his waist and chest. The black plastic bag he’d had in his hand falls to the floor with a dulled thump. All Shane can hear is the heavy panting of Rozanov against his neck.

He wants, wants, wants. Blanks out as he’s lead to the bedroom, sprawled back on those sheets, shirt and pants and everything pulled off, leaving the two of them grappling at each other as their tongues fight, slipping and sliding out past Shane’s lips, deepening as Shane stops trying to get the upper hand, giving in. Rozanov lets out a slight note of surprise, but takes it in stride, kissing harshly down Shane’s cheek, jaw, neck. Deep red marks that are sure to remain, a wonder Rozanov’s not drawing blood.

“Ye–es, Roza–” Shane’s cut off by a moan threading through his own lips, sparking between them.

All too fast, Rozanov’s pulling back, resting on his knees as he looks down at Shane.

“What did you bring?” he questions. Like they hadn’t eye-fucked each other in that shop, goading each other on to pick a toy.

“Cock-ring,” Shane breathes heavily. “Left—dropped it when I came in.”

Rozanov gives a nod, kissing Shane once more before standing up, cock bobbing as he walks out the room. He’s back seconds later, fingers already working open the box, pulling out the blue silicone double cock ring. It doesn’t look that intimidating. But if the image on the back of the box means anything, Shane’s going to be edged within an inch of his life.

Despite the need to have Rozanov, a tingle of apprehension floods through him.

Rozanov leans over him again, body caging him in. “Do you want to do this?” he asks, voice a pitch softer. His deep eyes locked onto Shane’s. “I can just get you off with my hand.”

“No, no. You can—I…I want it,” Shane whispers, the confession ringing true. He does want this, he thinks he always has. “Please,” he begs.

“Okay,” Rozanov nods, leaving the cock ring to the side while he grabs the complementary lube out of the bag. His mouth dips down for another kiss, hand squeezing appreciatively at Shane’s chest as he trails down his body, sucking and nipping.

As he moves, Rozanov speaks. “Do you know what it does?”

Shane can only respond with a short gasp. He’s got the gist of it, yeah.

“It will stop you from coming,” Rozanov answers his own question, kisses pressed firmer into Shane’s skin. “Let you feel me for as long as you want, before you let go.”

“I know,” Shane mumbles, the tension between them growing thicker. “I want it.”

He’s repeating his words again, but can’t find himself to care. His brain has turned to mush, ready to be taken care of.

Shane spreads his hands across Rozanov’s shoulders, holding onto him and trying to keep his desperate noises down. When Rozanov gets to his groin, he skips it completely, kissing around the inside of Shane’s thighs instead, his lower abdomen, before taking Shane’s legs and pushing them apart.

A click as he uncaps the lube, and Shane gasps as it touches his bare skin, frightfully cold.

“Relax, Hollander,” Rozanov instructs, coating Shane’s cock in slow, barely-there strokes. “It is going to be fine.”

The assurance draws a breathy gasp out of Shane, (although it might be because of the way Roznov is fondling his balls) causing him to tip his head back against the pillows.

Appropriately lubed, Rozanov takes the cock ring again, instructions soft as he directs Shane’s legs further apart, then up, pulling the ring over his hard cock, then his balls, keeping him in place.

When he’s finished, Shane glances down at himself. If he could, he’d come right now, the sight of his cock, flushed, with the tiniest dribble of pre slipping out the slit, bright blue ring in sharp contrast with his skin. Legs spread far apart on either side. The stretch hurts, just a little, but the pleasure overmounts it.

More lube, and the tip of Rozanov’s finger is feeling around the rim of Shane’s hole, not yet slipping inside. “You look pretty,” Rozanov mumbles, almost as if it slips out.

His mouth is moving up Shane’s body once more, a hand creeping up to his pecs again, the other repeating its motions of circling around his rim.

“Hold your legs apart,” Rozanov instructs, but Shane can tell it’s more of a guide. He’s talking Shane through this, giving him the specifics so he can just feel, let Rozanov provide the pleasure.

Shane hooks his hands underneath his thighs, lifting them off the bed like Rozanov had done for him before. It’s not that high, and the stretch increases the further he holds them apart.

“Does that hurt?” Rozanov whispers against his jaw. His finger is just slipping into Shane’s hole now, getting to the first knuckle before pulling out. “Your legs?”

“Ye—eah—. A little,” he says as he moans, the pain already diminishing as he focuses in on the feeling of his weeping cock, now flushes a darker red, hard against his stomach.
Rozanov hums. “Can you hold it?”

Shane nods.

“Is the ring too tight?”

Shane shakes his head. Rozanov’s finger slips deeper into his ass, curling around just slightly. The breathy whine that escapes from Shane is enough to send him arching back on the bed, rocking his hips down to take more.

Rozanov doesn’t give it to him. He slowly—too slowly—slides his finger in and out of Shane, from the first knuckle to the third, giving him next to nothing, but it rattles deep through Shane’s bones. He wants to be filled, and he needs it now, hands running down Rozanov’s back, a way of convincing him for more.

A second finger pushes in, arousal tight in Shane’s gut. He’s seeing stars, cock dribbling and aching to come, desperate for release.

He shudders, sparks flying through him. When he collects himself, Rozanov’s fingers have slowed their pace a little, two now deep inside him, steadily pumping.

A chuckle vibrates through his chest, Rozanov lifting his head to kiss Shane’s mouth. “Not even two fingers in, Hollander.”

Shane realises with horror that he had just dry-orgasmed, arousal built so high he couldn’t hold it in. Rozanov hardly had two fingers in his hole.

“Fuck you,” is all his hazy brain can muster, earning anouther laugh from Rozanov, who’s picking the pace up, working his fingers in ernest, scissoring them against Shane’s walls.

Just as his wrists are starting to hurt from holding his legs in place, Rozanov pushes in a third finger. He’d been going for too long with two, ebbing Shane’s arousal but never quite getting him there, not after his orgasm. Now, his dick is weeping, pre-cum mixing with the lube Rozanov had slathered there earlier. With the entrance of the third finger, comes a new stimulation, the tip of them curling just-so to brush past Shane’s prostate.

“Oh—fuck—” Shane nearly howls, driven to the edge and eager to tip over. His nails dig into the skin of Rozanov’s back, undoubtedly leaving marks.

Rozanov settles himself between Shane’s legs, keeping his fingers curling and pumping, tongue darting out to lick a stripe up Shane’s cock.

He has to grit his teeth and shut his eyes in order not to come from the oversensitivity of it all, the feeling of being pleasured in so many places at once overbearing. Rozanov, however, grins through it all, mouth fitting around the head of Shane’s cock, sucking lightly. Centimetre by centimetre, he slips down, taking more and more into his mouth, the back of his throat. He sucks in tandem with his thrusts, getting Shane to rock and rut into him the best he can from his position.

Tears collect at the corners of his eyes. His cock is throbbing, ass clenching around the three and a half fingers. (Rozanov is working the fourth in without much preamble.)

“Please—Rozanov, please, I can’t…I can’t.”

Rozanov works his fourth finger in as his mouth sinks to the hilt, fingers grazing his prostate. And they hover, suspended in time while Shane pleads and cries.

There’s a lewd pop as Rozanov’s mouth pulls away from his cock, teeth gripping the cock ring. A squelch, and the fingers are being removed from Shane’s ass, taking the ring off from his balls at the same time.

Rozanov lets the blue ring drop onto the bed, then sticks his lube covered, ass tasting fingers in his mouth.

Shane whites out.

He comes without touching his dick, jerking slightly against the bed, spilling hot across his stomach. He orgasms for what feels like eons, all the edging making the cliff he falls from immeasurable heights.

Through his haze, he watches Rozanov pump his own cock a few times, before he collapses on the bed beside Shane, sighing deeply, twisting his fingers through Shane’s hair. He brings their mouths together in a kiss.

Somewhere through it all, Shane remembers he can stop holding his legs and lets them go, stretching out his hands.

They kiss until they can’t lie in their own drying cum any longer, and Rozanov offers him the shower, nodding out into the hallway.

Inside, with hot water shooting down from the slightly too pressurised showerhead, Shane lets his back hit the wall. His mind is still very much mush, gears grinding and coming to a halt. That was—the best sex he’s had in his life. He’d cried.

And it was with a man who’s already got a girlfriend. Not that Shane’s going to assume Rozanov’s straight or anything but…he’s definitely a part of some open relationship plan Rozanov has going on with Svetlana.

When he’s towelling himself off and pulling on the clothes he’d come here in, Shane admits to himself that despite that, if Rozanov offers again, well. He won’t be saying no.

Awkwardly, he hovers for a second, standing outside Rozanov’s doorway. Should he walk in? Or just leave? His cock ring is still inside, but Shane really doesn’t care.

Luckily, his internal debate is answered for him as the door swings open, Rozanov walking out. He looks considerably more stressed then when Shane had left him. He’s in his underwear, and yeah, Shane did leave marks down his back.

“Here,” Rozanov is pressing the cock ring into Shane’s hand.

“I was just going to—” Shane points in the vague direction of the front door. Rozanov nods, his brow furrowed.

“Goodnight Hollander.”

“Night, Rozanov.”

Tucking the ring into his pocket, Shane leaves the best sex of his life feeling wildly confused.

Ilya’s eyes follow Hollander’s ass as he leaves the room. His hands yearn to touch—to mold Hollander back under his fingers, have him cry from pleasure again and again—

But he refrains. The depth he’s slid for this man is stupidly inadmissible, considering the short time they’ve known each other. Ilya’s gone headfirst, wanting to provide Hollander with arousal all the fucking time, just so he can hear those moans, over and over. They replay in his mind now, and if he wasn’t already spent, he could get off to it. He could also get off with Hollander in the shower, but he’d let him slip, because the screen lighting up on his nightstand has been flashing for the past few minutes.

Thankfully, he’s left his phone on silent, but it still buzzes angrily. Not so thankfully, it’s exactly who Ilya presumed it would be.

Incoming Call: Alexei

He checks the door is shut and hits accept, leaving it on speaker as he moves around to get into his underwear.

“Where have you been?” snaps his brother, Russian harsh, slurred together, almost like he’s halfway to being drunk. “I called you four times!”

Picking up the phone, Ilya doesn’t doubt this is true, and presses it to his ear, flicking off the speaker. “Sorry. Sorry. I was busy.”

“With what?” The tone is dismissing, like Ilya just doesn’t have a life now that he’s ‘fucked off to Canada.’

“Making money for you, asshole,” he spews back, trying to keep his tone down. “What do you want?” He needs Alexei gone by the time Hollander leaves that goddamn shower or so help him.

Alexei scoffs. “Making money? It’s hardly enough. You know our father’s condition is getting worse! I’m the one over here, helping—”

“Spending all the money I provide on drugs,” Ilya cuts him off.

There’s a huff of frustration down the line. “Shut up. I’m helping the family, while you are fucking about. Sleeping with men. I know your fucking games, Ilya.”

“So what? You want more money. Is that it?” Ilya’s pacing, back and forth from one wall to another. Panic rising in his chest as he keeps glancing at the door.

“Yes. You’ve been sending us not nearly enough. Father’s condition is getting worse. You know this, yet you still don’t come back.”

He’s making Ilya feel guilty. Ilya knows this. Yet he can’t help but let it flood through him, unstoppable to its inevitable course.

“I know. I know that. But if I come back, there will be no money!”

“Start sending over more then.”

Alexei’s got what he wants, and Ilya clutches the phone tight in his hand. He fears it might break. A part of him hopes it will.

“Fine,” he bites. “Goodbye.”

His brother doesn’t respond before the line goes dead. Ilya chucks his phone to the floor, not particularly caring if it breaks.

He feels guilty for leaving Russia. Of course he does. His whole life upturned so he could come here. But he’s better off. Finally, he has the space to breathe, away from that suffocating home and the ghosts that lie within it. He’ll have to go back. He wants to see his father before he—before they lose him completely.

Just not now. Now, Ilya has a man in his shower, and arousal still lingering around his insides. He lets out a short breath, and focuses on that.

His goodbye with Hollander is silted. Like the other man knows something is wrong, but won’t ask. Ilya can’t get that look of hurt out of his mind.

11:23PM
You still have that dildo?

Chapter End Notes

not me adding plot to the fic i promised myself would be fun and silly :\

chapters should be updating every thursday !!

Chapter 4: Rivals

Chapter Summary

“Get on your knees,” he says, half-joking, not expecting Hollander to comply. But the man hardly thinks twice before he’s getting down, kneeling in front of Ilya, looking pleased.

His dark eyes flit up, following his hands as he traces up Ilya’s legs, up, up, up to where his boxer briefs contain his cock, already straining slightly, the heat getting to his head at Hollander listening so easily.

Chapter Notes

Okay as you can tell ive never been a model so we're working under the assumption that Shane and Ilya work under different companies. Otterman is Ilya’s agent, and Shane’s mother is his. However, they both represent their companies, and a portion of their pay goes to said companies.

Also! If you have any suggestions for what toys Ilya and Shane should use…please let me know! (Or you can visit my Tumblr here) I have now left guest comments open on this fic, but that may be subject to change depending on the influx of AI comments that seem to come with that. (Frustrating, I know—I hate it too)

Writing the drabbles (okay, more like mini-oneshots) of them using the sex toys was honestly really fun 😭 I just love the two of them <333

Shane is stretched around the purple dildo when Rozanov asks if he wants to come past the shop the following day. Shane moans around the stretch, stuttering out a ’yes, yes, right—right there—before Rozanov can even finish the question. He rocks his hips harder down onto the dildo, closing his eyes and imagining, just for a moment, that it really was Rozanov’s cock.

It never will be, a voice tells himself. Rozanov keeps that for his girlfriend. He can fuck you as long as it’s with sillacone replicas.

The thoughts promptly slips away as Rozanov thrusts into him again, splitting his body open and eradicating any suggestions of girlfriends from his mind.

The following day, Shane finds himself in Mistress M once more. It was inevitable, in a way. As long as he knows Rozanov, in turn he will find himself here, basking in a plethora of sex toys, half of which he can only imagine the use of.

“Hollander.” And, ever-present is the man himself, grinning at Shane from where he leans against the counter, arms crossed.

It gets significantly easier after a while. Together, they pick up a routine. Shane, head ducked low and significant features firmly covered from the public, marching through the streets. Rozanov, always just clocking out of his shift as Shane arrives. The two of them playing their game of cat and mouse, Rozanov leading Shane through the store, slight nods and shakes of his head as he directs Rozanov to what he wants.

Ball gags, anal beads, prostate massagers, handcuffs, it all gets brought back to Shane’s apartment, clutched tightly in that black plastic bag. Never does he buy more than one at a time. Always every week or so do they go through the now-familiar motions.

Being sprawled out on Rozanov’s bed is the highlight of this pattern. Shane gives himself up each and every time, letting himself sink deeper and deeper into the lust of it all, the heavy arousal that settles low in his gut even before he arrives, the anticipation bringing forth excitement. Being taken apart only to be put back together keeps Shane sane. He fears he’s becoming too greedy, wanting more and more, so much so that he has to fight himself not to stay. He keeps himself in check, leaving when they finish, nothing but a fleeting goodbye kiss to send him off into the night, knowing that he’ll be back soon enough.

He can’t keep this up forever. Eventually, Rozanov will put a stop to this, and they’ll break the pattern, splattered over the walls of their tentative acceptance of each other, reflecting a face that looks suspiciously like Svetlana’s. Shane isn’t Rozanov’s to hold close.

However, in the sanctuary of the sheets, Shane lets himself imagine it as the truth.

It’s late the night they use the ball gag. Shane had come by the shop later than he usually would, nearing closing time.

As a result, Rozanov is now fitting the strap for the black ball gag around the back of his head, double and triple checking that it isn’t too tight. Inside his mouth, the ball fits snugly, pushing his lips apart, his tongue tasting the smooth rubber. The taste is bland, but it’s soon coated with Shane’s saliva, dripping from his mouth in an animalistic fashion.

“Too tight?”

Shane shakes his head. Rozanov gives a nod.

“Kick me and I will stop,” he says seriously, eyes dark and lidded. His hands run down Shane’s thighs, nails pressing lightly into his skin. He spreads Shane’s legs apart, leaving his flushed, hard cock out in the open. “You look so hot.”

Teasingly, Rozanov presses his lips to the inner crease of Shane’s thigh, sucking a light mark. Shane’s body thrums with arousal, wanting more than anything to cry out, only to realise he can’t, restrained by the gag in his mouth, the drool spilling down his chin.

It’s all hot, too hot, a wet heat in his mouth and around his cock, driving him further into ecstasy. His tongue slides over the ball, licking around it as best as he can, thinking of it being Rozanov’s, his cock in his mouth—

Almost mindlessly, his hips rut up into the wet heat encasing his dick, desperate for Rozanov to take him deeper. Rozanov responds in kind, pushing Shane’s hips flush against the bed and going down earnestly, lewd noises filling the room.

The multiple sensations are too much, and it leaves Shane gasping for air, desperately trying to draw more in through his mouth as his hands grab onto Rozanov, cock jerking and spurting come deep down the others throat with little warning.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Rozanov mutters as he pulls off, cum dribbling down his chin. Shane’s face flushes darker. “You are so good.”

He reaches for Shane then, unclipping the gag and giving him a second to work out his jaw, before he’s kissing Shane hard, arms wrapped appreciatively around his shoulders.

The anal beads are yellow, the colour so stark against the dark navy of Rozanov’s bedsheets. They’re expensive, and the bottom two beads are bigger than anything Shane’s taken before. Still, he doesn’t feel any apprehension. Just a slow rolling heat, soothing him. Rozanov’s already got a finger in his ass, hardly able to resist, not after Shane has asked for it.

He lets himself be turned onto his front, propped up on his arms and knees, ass arching high into the hair. Heavy hands settle around his hips.

With a pop, Rozanov’s finger comes out, leaving Shane achingly empty. “First one is easy. Last is going to stretch you out. Your nice gaping hole all for me.”

Just like Rozanov said, the first bead is easy, but Shane gasps around it, more turned on by the words spilling out of Rozanov’s mouth. He isn’t sure if the other does it because he enjoys it, or because he knows Shane does. Either way, it cranks up the arousal thrumming through him tenfold.

“You okay?”

Shane nods. He wants to rock his hips back further, but he braces his willpower and holds still. Still, Rozanov doesn’t move an inch, keeping the first bead firmly inside him.

“Please, Rozanov,” Shane whispers, and the second bead is pushed into his hole. It’s bearable, a slight stretch to his hole as he accommodates them.

Rozanov is kinder now, moving Shane’s hips with one hand to get him rutting lightly back onto them. Just enough for the beads to press up against his walls, filling him that bit more.

As the third bead goes in, Rozanov’s hand moves to stroking Shane’s cock, slow, long pumps that only serve to rile him up further.

Shane is gasping for it now. “Please, please, Roz–Rozanov, I can take it,” he tries to sound confident as he assures, but it only serves to expose just how badly he wants this. (Which is; a whole fucking lot.)

“Can you?” Rozanov teases, the fourth bead bulling its way into Shane’s hole to join the rest.

The stretch is near unbearable now, pulling his hole apart and ripping him open, earning a cry of surprise from Shane’s lips.

He’s given more time on this one. Rozanov’s hand slows to a crawling pace, jacking Shane off in the slowest way possible, fully prepared to milk this orgasm for all Shane’s got. It works too, sparks flying in his gut, igniting wildfires that sear his flesh.

Shane makes it only a few seconds after the fifth and final bead is inserted. Rozanov increases his pace to sudden, jerky movements around Shane’s cock, giving him the final push. Shane busts when screaming Rozanov’s name, cutting off into a loud moan as Rozanov removes the anal beads in one go, a sparking sensation shooting up Shane’s spinal cord.

He falls from his hands and knees face-first onto the bed, cum still spurting out weakly from his cock.

Shane thinks the fluffy handcuffs look ridiculous. Seriously, how cliche is it? Big, fluffy, sparkly orange handcuffs, dangling from one of Rozanov’s fingers. Admittedly, Shane had only agreed to buy them because he’d seen the humorous glint in Rozanov’s eye when he had suggested them.

Five minutes later, and his wrists have been cuffed together, back of the chain looped through one of Rozanov’s bedposts, like a shitty porno. But the look in Rozanov’s eyes when he’d asked Shane is it was okay, if it was too tight; had melted that thought right away, leaving him only with arousal.

Arousal that soon bleeds into frustration as Rozanov toys with him, kissing firmly down his chest, hands groping his pecs. And for once, Shane can’t reciprocate, can’t card his fingers through Rozanov’s curls, run down the muscled wall of his back.

It’s nothing short of torture as Rozanov lazily pumps three fingers in an out of Shane’s hole, lube making slick noises as he does so. He keeps eye-contact the whole time, occasionally leaning in to kiss Shane, teasing him further.

Shane writhes and whines, unshameful because of how desperate he is, needing more, eyes widening with lust as Rozanov lines his cock up with Shane’s hole, probing forward, head pushing inside.

The moan he drags out of Shane is downright sinful, bed creaking as Shane tugs at his restraints, rocking forward as to greedily swallow up Rozanov’s dick. Rozanov laughs, and gives into it, sinking in inch by inch until he’s fully sheathed, hands groping Shane, breaths coming as short pants, limiting himself to tiny thrusts, rubbing Shane’s inner walls, toying with the coil of arousal.

Another rattle as Shane tugs at his handcuffs. “Faster—faster, please,” he moans, not caring if it’s too soon.

The pace picks up, slow and rolling at first, until Rozanov sees Shane reciprocate with thrusts of his own hips. He grunts, bracing himself on the headboard and he pumps deeper, faster.

It’s too much, all too fast. Sensations are driving Shane half-mad, and he’s so desperate to reach out for Rozanov, desperate to touch himself. His cock is hard and flushed dark red at the tip, aching for release.

He doesn’t register his orgasm until after the fact, because heat is filling his insides. Rozanov is filling his insides, coming white-hot, thrusting lightly through it all. It blacks out Shane’s vision for a moment, the pure overwhelming lust of it all.

“Hollander–” Rozanov groans, his cock pulling out, taking cum and lube with it. Gently, he unlocks Shane’s handcuffs, bringing the wrists to his mouth and kissing over them softly.

“So…it’s just like a vibrator?” Shane asks, holding the device—prostate massager—in his hand. It’s a cool, dark black.

“Prostate massager,” Rozanov gasps into his mouth, lips swollen and kiss bitten from where they’d been making out, Shane already aroused and ready, forgetting completely about the whole reason they’re doing this. “You ready?”

Shane nods, settling back against the pillows, legs spread, dripping lube from where Rozanov had been touching him. Now, he takes the massager from Shane’s hand, leaning over him as he pushes the tip in, Shane’s hole stretched just enough for it only to hurt a little, easing up around the pressure the more it goes in.

The massager isn’t big, enough for Shane to settle around, rocking his hips down a little to swallow it all. The front of the massager tucks just behind his balls, tiny vibrators there too.

“Good?” Rozanov asks, getting a nod from Shane. He leans off to the side, picking up the black remote that had come with it, allowing him to increase the power when he wanted.

It’s slow, at first. A gentle push, and Shane shifts, trying to get it right up against his prostate. He knows he probably won’t last long when it does, but Rozanov’s been working him up enough over the past however long they’ve spent groping and making out, and he’s not sure if he can handle it any longer.

The pace picks up, and with it Shane’s hips, rocking into the rhythm.

“Hands and knees,” Rozanov says, hands on Shane’s hips as he helps him roll over, supporting himself as the massager pounds against his prostate, hitting the right spot every fucking time.

It’s hard to breathe, the pleasure of it all amounting to something much bigger than himself. Rozanov doesn’t touch Shane’s cock, all too focused on the remote in his hand, clicking the massager faster and faster in steady increments.

“Mo–more–” Shane begs, pressing his face down into the pillows to muffle the sinful noises slipping through his lips. He’s hardly holding on, arching back as the pleasure increases, hitting the highest point—

His whole body shakes. Shane’s arms come collapsing down on themselves, knees too weak to hold up any longer. He falls onto the bed, body setting off wildfires as he rides out his prostate orgasm, trembling from pleasure.

There’s a long groan from behind him, and Rozanov is laying beside him, clearing have come himself, a sticky wetness spilling over the sheets. Shane’s cock is still hard, yet he feels boneless, wrung-out and satiated. The massager has stopped its assault in his ass, leaving Shane only to sigh deeply and press closer to Rozanov.

It’s all in his head, Shane tells himself. As long as things stay casual, he can allow himself this. The lingering promise of shattering their relationship sits heavy on his shoulders, lifted only when Rozanov’s hands are on his body.

In a desperate attempt to balance things out between he and Rozanov (re: Shane doesn’t have it in himself to turn the woman down) Shane goes on more dates with Rose. They walk through the park, have coffee, go to shitty re-runs of movies they’ve both seen. Laugh over their problems. Never once does Shane bring up Rozanov, the guilt of lying to Rose piling more weight on top of his crumbling structure. They share kisses, reminders that Shane isn’t hanging out with a friend. This is, well, someone he should have probably ‘officially’ asked to be his girlfriend. (He can’t. The words sit locked behind his teeth, cowering underneath Rozanov’s gentle hands.)

When he goes in to work, he’s jibed and ribbed by his friends (more than co-workers, just shy of friendly, but he can never find a better word), laughing about him finally getting the girl, inviting him for drinks and get-togethers and parties Shane just seems to numb his way through. Making polite conversation when necessary, but constantly waiting for the other coin to drop. For someone to mention his afflictions with a man. An unfed fear, but one nonetheless. It shoves a barrier between he and them.

But the pattern brings him happiness. Lust, and a way to just let go. He keeps trudging through the monotony to reach the golden gates that are the entrance to Rozanov’s apartment.

His life isn’t bad. Far from it. He is happy. He’s doing work he loves, he’s got money, and things to look forward to. It’s an incomplete puzzle. Everything aligns, but the final piece won’t fit. It sits, jammed in between everything, sorely sticking out when its sides don’t click.

Svetlana is growing curious. Which, in Ilya’s experience, is never the best thing. He knows it’s stupid of him to be using the apartment with Shane. That she could come home early from her shift at the bar, find the two of them. Not that it would be terrible—just—Ilya wants the time to have Hollander for himself. Call him selfish, or desperately needy, but Ilya craves the hours spent with Hollander in his room more than anything. The knowledge that he makes Hollander feels good spreads a warmth through his chest, anchoring an attachment to the real world and keeping him there. This isn’t Russia. He’s on his own (partly), and he’s free to do what he wants.

Like avoiding Svetlana. Which he is not doing right now. The boxes in the store room were unorganised, and Ilya’s offering his superior help to rearrange them. If that means Svetlana’s alone in the store front then well, it’s not an issue Ilya needs to concern himself with.

“I know you’re hiding from me.”

Ilya doesn't hide the face he pulls as he steps out from behind the boxes. “I would never,” he deadpans.

The eyeroll he receives goes so far back into Svetlana’s head it’s a miracle they don’t get stuck there. “Don’t lie. Why?”

Ilya doesn’t know why the truth sits heavy on his tongue. Like if he admits it, it’ll turn against him. Used for leverage. But Svetlana remains unmoving, expression one of stone.

“There is nothing,” he says.

“There is something.”

“...”

“Is it about the photoshoot?”

Oh. The photoshoot. Ilya’s contract with Boris Otterman had started, allowing him to work under his agency. A week and a half ago, he’d been called in for a shoot for a catalog, the kind that only ever make it into the homes of the elderly, despite Ilya sitting in nothing but a pair of tight briefs in the three of his photos that had made it. Truthfully, Ilya couldn’t care less about the photoshoot. It’s over and done with now, out for the world to see.

“Isn’t that Hollander in modelling too?” Svetlana chimes in, looking all too smug.

“Yes,” Ilya shrugs. “So what?”

She smirks. “So…are you like, trying to get his attention?” she only grins wider when she sees Ilya’s expression. “He comes over often. I have noticed that. Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean I don’t know.”

“No. Stop assuming things,” Ilya denies, making his way forward and around Svetlana, slipping out into the store front.

In actuality, Ilya doesn’t care if Hollander sees the shoot. (Okay. rebuke that, he cares a little, just enough to want to see his reaction.) Mostly, he did it for himself. A way to get money and keep his head afloat in a land that he hasn’t known for long. Modelling isn’t his ride-or-die. It’s a way of keeping out of Russia, of never having to visit that suffocating home again.

Alexei’s voice rings through his mind. His father’s condition worsening. How he should be there in person to support the family. That he can’t provide from where he is. But Ilya’s providing for himself, and in this moment, it’s all he can cling to.

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he sends a photo to Hollander. Because he might just be
another reason for Ilya to stay here.

4:42PM
Jane
What is this??

4:43PM
Me

4:46PM
Jane
Fuck you
I know that
Since when did you do modelling??

4:46PM
It is why I came to Canada
Watch out Hollander. I am coming for you

4:47PM
No way you’re ranking higher than me in the polls. Your photos are for some old people catalog

4:49PM
Wait and see Hollander.

Things descend into competition after that. Ilya is quick to gain new job offers, working mostly with underwear brands, as his photos get flaunted around the city, and further. He’s displayed beside Hollander a few times, looking at their side-by-side billboards. Hollander’s in a fine black suit, tailored perfectly to his body, holding a cologne aloft to the camera, lips slightly parted and wet. It’s downright erotic, and placed beside Ilya (who, on the billboard, has his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his briefs, looking downwards.) makes it even more so.

Months tumble by, Ilya’s time spent mostly in bright rooms, hoarded through hallways and in front of cameras. His shifts at Mistress M drop down, Otterman taking in new hires. He offers Ilya the opportunity to quit completely, an offer Ilya denies. He’s still got his routine with Hollander. It’s more sporadic now, coming in whenever Ilya is working and Hollander’s free. Still, it’s enough. It has to be. Neither of them is complaining. Not that Ilya could ever find it in himself to. Those stolen moments with Hollander in his room are only making him crave more. His greed is insatiable, growing every time he hears Hollander moan with pleasure, begging for more, leaving him satisfied and boneless by the end.

Ilya’s rise in the polls does not go unnoticed. Almost in a show of rivalry, Hollander picks up more jobs himself, an attempt to combat the attention drifting away from him. Not that very much of it is, Ilya thinks. He sees Hollander's photos everywhere. On his phone, the TV, plastered up on billboards.

“My company is losing money because your ads are doing better than ours!” Hollander says as he comes in, late one Wednesday night. It’s close to closing, which is perfect, because they have the shop to themselves.

Ilya shrugs. “Told you I would do better. Everybody wants piece of my ass.”

It gets a laugh from Hollander, and Ilya can tell he’s only half-pretending to be mad. At the end of the day, he’s still raking in a lot more. Looking up to check out of the darkened windows, Ilya draws Hollander closer, hooking his fingers into the loops of his jeans so he can plant a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Hollander leans into it, adjusting their position so they can kiss properly.

They break apart all too soon, resulting in Hollander looking up, doing the same check Ilya did.

“We should probably get out of here,” he mumbles. He pulls himself away like it pains him to do so, face twisted. His hands fret in the air before he shoves them in the pockets of his hoodie, not before flipping the hood down over his eyes.

It ends, as it always does, in Ilya’s bedroom. Hollander seems hungry tonight, holding Ilya against the wall as they share kiss after kiss, never wanting to break apart.

Hollander is tugging at clothes, wordlessly insisting they come off. Ilya is happy to oblige, shucking off his belt and pants, having to hold Hollander a little away from him as he does so, the man wanting to be all over him. Hollander takes this as his chance to abandon all his clothes, leaving on only his boxers before Ilya gives him the next command.

“Get on your knees,” he says, half-joking, not expecting Hollander to comply. But the man hardly thinks twice before he’s getting down, kneeling in front of Ilya, looking pleased.

His dark eyes flit up, following his hands as he traces up Ilya’s legs, up, up, up to where his boxer briefs contain his cock, already straining slightly, the heat getting to his head at Hollander listening so easily.

“Can I take these off?” Shane asks, hooking his fingers through the waistband before pulling back, letting it snap against Ilya’s skin.

Ilya nods, head spinning. Slowly, too slowly, his underwear is pulled down, and he’s stepping out of it, Hollander tossing it aside. His hands are roaming again, circling around and up Ilya’s thighs, feeling his ass.

He squeezes the flesh there. “Your ass is nice,” Hollander mumbles, almost as if he’s speaking to himself.

He grabs the flesh more forcefully, earning a squeak that slips from Ilya’s mouth, embarrassing and making Hollander painfully aware of how much he likes this. Just them. No toys, no new, sparking feelings that come with trying them out. Just a fast wildfire, rapidly spreading the longer Hollander stares at his cock like he wants to devour it.

“Can you—put your legs over my shoulders?” Hollander asks carefully, clearly not used to giving instructions, almost scared that Ilya will say no. But how could he, to a man as beautiful as the one in front of him?

“You can hold me up?” Ilya asks, only to be met with a nod.

So he hooks one of his legs over Hollander’s shoulder, and with another nod, jumps a little, bracing himself as he hooks the other leg over. Hollander is still on his knees, hands holding the underside of Ilya’s thighs, pulling them apart just slightly. Just enough to get his head in between, sucking small kisses into his skin.

It’s obvious that Hollander won’t be able to hold him for long, but Ilya’s sure he’ll bust in about ten seconds anyway, if Hollander keeps doing that with his mouth—

“Hollander,” he gasps, pressing his palms against the wall behind him, a feeble attempt to take some of his wait off of the man underneath him.

But Hollander is distracted, moving faster as he licks around Ilya’s rim, saliva getting him wet an ready. Ilya’s cock is hard now, and if he weren’t so worried about falling, he’d reach out to relieve himself, stave off that burning need. But he can’t, and all he’s left to do is breathe shakily, mumbling Hollander’s name as a tongue is pressed into his hole, wiggling just slightly as it presses in.

The angle is a little weird, working against them, but Hollander perservers, hands squeezing Ilya’s legs as he fucks his tongue in and out of Ilya’s hole as best he can, loosening it up enough to slip more in. The heat of it all is near unbearable, Ilya’s legs tightening where they rest around Hollander’s shoulders, bracing himself further as the man’s movements become downright filthy, sucking at Ilya’s ass like it’s his last meal.

He’s so, so close. Ilya can feel himself tumbling off the edge. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that this time Hollander is the one giving him pleasure, and not the other way round. Still, the thought isn’t stopping Ilya from tossing his head back, hitting the wall with a dull thud as he groans, long and dragged out.

Hollander's tongue keeps moving as Ilya comes, white dripping down his stomach, some catching in Hollander’s hair. His legs shake, and he’s falling down the wall, unable to keep himself up. Hollander manages to pull his tongue out, smiling up at Ilya as he sets him on the floor, arm wrapping around his waist as he leads them the few steps to the bed, falling onto it together.

Ilya’s mind is hazy, and it’s hardly a thought when he reaches to stroke Hollanders cock, needing to do at least something for him. Hollanders gone in a few deep strokes, moaning Ilya’s name as he tucks forward, head resting on Ilya’s chest.

“Was that good?” he questions after a while, the only previous sound being their breathing filling the room.

Ilya’s hand cards through his hair. “Yes. On bed next time.”

Hollander chuckles. “Yeah. My arms were getting pins and needles.”

“What?”

The man blinks at him. “...Pins and needles? When your arms go all tingly from the loss of blood flow.”

“Oh. Yes.” And then he pulls Hollander in for a kiss, deep and capturing, all teeth and tongue.

Shane Hollander,
Your shoot date for Calvin Klein has been arranged for the 14th of this month. This date has been fitted into your calendar, and will begin at 10:00 through to 12:30.
As standard, the requirements for this shoot are…

Clicking off the email, Shane sighs as he tucks his phone into his pocket, getting out of the car and heading into the non-descript building, to head into the photography studio.

Admittedly, booking this job in the first place was only the third-most embarrassing thing he’s had to do in his life. Having your mother as your agent was not a pro for when you wanted to book an underwear advertisement. Thankfully, he’d evaded her questions with the excuse that his company wanted to push different areas. Truthfully, Shane booked this because of Rozanov.

Not for Rozanov. But to prove to the man who had suddenly started and overstaken Shane’s career in a matter of months that he too could play the game. People online had already started to compare the two of them, seeing as Shane was still relatively new to this. And because it seemed like every billboard of his in the city was stuck right beside one of Rozanov. They wanted more, Shane’s not-so-scandalous advertisements nowhere near thirsty enough for their standards.

He tries to keep his smile to himself as he goes through hair and makeup, but he catches himself slipping. Just the thought of bettering Rozanov in the one competition he thought he could win. That pit of jealousy grows deeper in his chest, carving out a hole in his heart. He knows Rozanov’s not his to keep. But Shane needs to keep him. He doesn’t think he can afford to lose Rozanov now.

Under the lights, Shane is flawless. He arches and turns, pouting and posing for the camera. His mother leaves the room at one point, to aghast at the way Shane leans into it all. Shane spreads his legs, gives the camera the cockiest grin he can muster. Mirroring Rozanov’s. Fueling the heat between them. Giving the people what they want while knowing this is all for one man.

Three weeks later, when the photos go public, Rose is the first one to text him. It shouldn’t be surprising, considering how often they’ve gone out now. Somehow, Shane has made sure it’s never gone past making out and a few light gropes here and there. He still feels as if it’s betraying Rozanov, despite the man quite literally having a girlfriend.

12:02PM
Rose
img.jpg
Since when did you do this kind of modelling?
What other things have you been hiding from me, Shane?

12:10PM
It was an in the moment thing
And my mom was in the room for most of it

Great. Totally unsexy. Well done bringing that up, Shane.

12:12PM
Rose
haha problems of having your parent as your agent
The photos still looked great though
You should do more underwear shoots 😉

12:15PM
If I can get my manager to sign off on them

12:15PM
Rose
Do more!!! You’d be great!

12:20PM
Do you want to come to my friend's leaving party this weekend?
He’s moving to Europe, and hosting this big thing at his place

It seems like the best compromise Shane can offer. Someone from his company is hosting an (essentially) open to all party this Saturday. Just, Shane never really confirmed that he’d be there. Now, he supposes, seems the better excuse of them all. He knows it’s a little weird for people to be going out for months and not have sex. He knows it’s totally normal too. But the taunting jabs from his co-workers linger just a little too deep under his skin, hooking onto the outer reaches of his mind.

Hooking up at loud, stuffy parties is not Shane’s thing, but it (at the very least), gives him the space to talk to Rose and then take her home, if she’d be willing. If not, it’s a weight lifted off of Shane’s chest, and he can breathe properly once again.

12:22PM
Shane
I was already invited to that, actually!! But I’d love to go with you
See you there?

Shane hearts her message, acting like he’s not trying to quell the rising guilt in his gut. This is completely fine.

When he still hasn’t heard anything from Rozanov an hour later—not that he that bothered, obviously—Shane decides to just text the man himself. He doesn’t think Rozanov’s at work, and so he sends over the photos that were released to the public, no message attached.

2:43PM
Lily
holy shit hollander
What the fuck is this

2:44PM
My recent photoshoot

2:44PM
Lily
Why the fuck did I not know? You are trying to steal my job

Also your cock is not that big

2:26PM
???
Yes it is

2:47PM
Lily
Do not lie. I know how big your cock is Hollander
I know they stuff you.

2:28PM
...fine, maybe they did stuff the boxers.

2:28PM
I like your real cock better

Some stupid, warm, syrupy feeling coats Shane’s insides, dripping from his head to his feet, melting him down into a goopy, sappy mess. When did it get this far? How is his body so reactive to a fucking text message? He’s had sex with this man multiple times, he should not be freaking out over his phone screen.

A sliver of worry runs through him then. Worry that when this all goes heads up, Shane won’t be able to bounce back. That he’ll be too far gone for Ilya Rozanov to be anything other than heartbroken.

Chapter End Notes

thank you to everyone who's been reading so far!! yall's interactions make my day!!

Chapter 5: Stupid Girlfriends

Chapter Summary

Rozanov’s jizz is in Shane’s ass.

Chapter Notes

this chapter is one of my favourites, i just freaking love them at parties/clubs

I know the existence of the manor isn’t super accurate, but lets all collectively let it slide

The house is upside down. Or perhaps Shane is the wrong way up?

Regardless, he’s buzzed, static tingling under his skin as he’s dragged forward by the arm. With a slow blink, the world flips, clearing his haze of half-drunk, half-asleep thoughts. He’d made the mistake of pregaming at Hayden’s place, a group of the guys that’d also been invited to the party filling him with a couple more drinks than he’d like. Somehow, he’d fallen asleep in the back of Hayden’s car on the way here. Thankfully, it saved him from the idiots his friends become when drunk.

So, stumbling only slightly as he tries to get his head on right, Shane steps through the massive double doors into the manor that was supposedly built back in eighteen-whatever the fuck, but now just resembles a bougie night club.

Bright strobe lights flash down from the ceiling, a myriad of colours illuminating what must be hundreds of bodies in shades of purple and blue. They spill into the foyer where Shane stands, flooding in from the open archway off to the right that, when he walks through, leads into a cavernous room, arched windows lining the side blacked out. Music is thumping from an indistinct source, some sensual, fast paced K-Pop everyone seems to be jumping out of time to.

The makeshift bar in the centre of the room is an oblong circle, standing out only by the swarm of people around it, clamouring for drinks.

“Shane!” a voice yells from his left. J.J. “C’mon, we’re meeting up with the girls!” he’s yelling, despite being no more than two metres away.

Shane nods, following mindlessly, hastily unbuttoning his pale blue shirt, the heat of the room already getting to him. Clearly, this is less of a party and more of a ‘lets get shitfaced then leave to have sex’ type of scene. Not that Shane hasn’t been to these type of things before. Just, well.

This time he actually has a date.

An arm is wrapping around his shoulders, tugging him into their side. “Hey. Funny seeing you here,” Rose smiles, pressing a kiss to his cheek before pulling away a little, leaning back against a small table her and the rest of his friend’s plus one’s have managed to snag.

Wishing he had a drink to occupy his hands, and also to get him just a little more buzzed than he is now, Shane accepts the casual affection and nods. “Yeah. You look nice,” he compliments, partly because he knows he should and partly because Rose does.

It’s a bright, well, rose coloured satin dress, dipping in a low V down her chest, clinging to her hips and ending at the tops of her thighs.

“Thanks. Thought it’d be funny,” she smiles. “Do you wanna go grab a drink?”

Shane agrees, grateful to be getting away with his friends, a couple of which have already skipped the prerequisite of dancing and are not-so-subtly taking their partners off into the labyrinth of hallways that jut out of the main room, no doubt heading to find one of the many empty rooms that fill the labyrinth that is the manor.

Pushing their way through sweaty bodies, they head to the bar, Rose’s hand interlaced tightly with his own, weaving them into an open spot.

“What would you like?” she yells over the din. Shane yells back in kind, saying that he really doesn’t mind, and thanking her for shouting. “The drinks are free. Why the hell do you think so many people are here?” she laughs when she passes him a plastic cup of something he doesn't recognise. As rich as this party may be, he can never escape the presence of shitty glass replacements.

Trying to fend off the nerves that come with the inevitability of what surely must happen by the end of the night, Shane takes only moderate sips of his drink—something fruity and a little too sweet— when they make it back to their table. He’s offered a seat, and he takes it, trying not to be too obvious as he shifts, paranoid that the plug will slip from inside his hole.

Two hours previous…

”Hollander…” Rozanov groans as he cums, spurting hot and wet inside Shane, hips canting forward to drag his cock against Shane’s prostate every time, one hand fisted in the sheets, the other wrapping around the back of Shane’s shoulders.

Shane draws himself close enough to seal their lips together, moaning into the others mouth as he too comes, only serving to add to the heat between them, worlds expanding and colliding.

He’d come over earlier than usual this time. Rozanov had something on later tonight (Re: he finally wanted to spend time with his girlfriend after using Shane for so long.), and Shane was at that stupid party. (Only stupid because he had to hang around drunk, sweaty people all night, and potentially walk away as one of those couples with Rose to find a private room in that huge manor.)

Still, they had had time to tease each other around Mistress M, grabbing something, and heading back to Rozanov’s apartment immediately after.

Now, Rozanov keeps his flaccid cock inside of Shane as he reaches for the butt plug. He’d washed and prepped it, and Shane, in the heat of the moment, said they should use it tonight, claiming to Rozanov that he had nothing on. Rozanov seemed reluctant at first, but had given in when Shane had moaned and begged for it.

“Oh, god, yes, yes, yes.” The plug slides in without any preamble as Rozanov pulls out, keeping the come inside. His legs feel slightly sticky with some spillage, but then there’s a warm mouth sucking away the last remnants.

His legs tremble, arms reaching down to pull Rozanov up, holding the other man close against his chest.

Rozanov kisses down his neck. “You good?”

“Yeah. Yes. I’m good. It’s good.” The plug is smaller in width than Rozanov, and it fits snugly inside his hole, keeping him plugged up with Rozanov’s cum.

A hum. “Don’t leave in for too long. If it hurts.”

Shane laughs softly, slowly raking his fingernails down Rozanov’s back. “I won’t.”

Ilya’s head keeps hitting the roof of the car every time they drive over a speedbump. Which, is every three fucking seconds. They’ve been winding up this driveway for what feels like ten years, passing shrubbery and tightly packed gravel that screams rich asshole. (Ilya would know, he grew up around and inside these estates.)

Their Lyft driver isn’t talking, but he smells heavily of weed, wafting off him and sticking to Ilya’s clothes. He should probably care a bit more, he thinks. Svetlana is routinely taking swigs from a flask she’s brought, tucked away in a hidden pocket of her dress. (Ilya still doesn’t understand how, that thing barely covers her ass and it's tight everywhere, the bright patterns making it hard not to notice.)

“Who invited you to this party again?” Svetlana asks, dark eyes flitting over to him.

“One of the producer’s sons from the photoshoot. I forget his name.”

She takes this answer, passing the flask over to him. “Apperently most of the young modelling scene from around here will be there. Whoever it is has, like, crazy parties. Free alcohol and shit.”

“So why’d you bring this?” Ilya hands back the flask.

“Because your stupid ass didn’t want to come out and pregame with me, so I was a lovely friend and am doing it in the back of some pothead's car with you.”

It’s loud. Feeling the bass in his chest loud, words indistinguishable over the yelling and jumping and pure noise coming from everyone around him. Svetlana was right about it being busy, this place is crammed.

They line up at the bar with the intention of grabbing something to drink, but the wall of bodies blocks them out, forbidding them from getting even an inch closer than where they already stand.

“Just dance with me!” Svetlana insists, tugging his arm off in another direction.

They don’t dance.

They don’t dance, even though the music is pounding, bursting into Ilya’s skull.

They push through hoards of people, because his friend has seen someone from her second place of work (yes, the bartending job she attends without Ilya), and is insistent on talking to them.

They don’t dance, because Ilya is being offered a drink from a flask from a girl with green hair. (Not Svetlana’s flask. This one has a purple metallic sheen, and burns as he swallows it down.)

The music continues, and they don’t dance. Instead, Ilya lets himself slip into the places where the song lulls, hiding out in the gaps between notes. Differing coloured lights wash over his skin, illuminating across his dark shirt. He lets the conversation between Svetlana and her friend drift through one ear to the other, effectively tuning out.

He accepts more offers to drink. Big parties like this have never really been his thing, anyway. Perhaps if this were another night, in another place, he’d find someone to bring home.

Hollander, moaning around the butt plug being pushed inside of him. Hollander, groaning as he stands up from Ilya’s bed, stuffed full of his come. Hollander, somewhere Ilya isn’t, because he’s stuck at the stupid party, and can’t even take anyone home, as the one person he wants to sleep with isn’t even here.

Hollander, whose body moves under the purple lights, falling over his skin as he jumps around with a small group of people.

Hollander, who is right here, at the same stupid party Ilya is attending, and moving around with a part of Ilya inside him.

“Svetalana. Come dance,” he instructs his friend, who just shrugs her shoulders, going with it as she drags the green-haired girl, and another person Ilya can’t quite recall along with them.

It’s awkward. His friends aren’t willing to dance more than lightly grinding on the girls that are with them, or sway their hips from side to side in a rhythm that in no way matches the beat.
Shane has opted for somewhere in the middle, sticking close by Rose’s side as he moves to the deafening bass, plug fitted snugly inside him with every slight twist of his hips. Yet another reason he can’t sleep with Rose tonight. Realistically, he knows he should’ve just taken the plug out, but he’d had no time between leaving Rozanov’s and pregaming at Hayden’s. And from then to noe, he’s been surrounded on all sides, leaving him with no option but to get out of here as fast as he can, and alone.

“I love this song!” Rose exclaims through Shane’s thoughts.

She brings herself closer, hands curling around his forearms as she dances (to the beat, thankfully), turning her head back to toss the hair out of her face. Shane doesn’t recognise the song, something just as loud and blaring as the others, but takes the opportunity for what it is and draws them both further away from their small group, into a little pocket of free space.

Rose is all loose, easy smiles and gentle touches, coaxing Shane out and into the music. It’s not at all elegant, nor does it hold any semblance of a ‘dance’, but it’s fun. The two of them jumping to the beat, twisting and turning, laughing as Rose spins Shane around.

The drums roll off into the ending of the song, and it feels only natural to lean in, meet Rose halfway and press a kiss to her mouth. It’s fairly chaste, lingering only for a soft second before Shane’s pulling away again. Rose backs away a little, lifting her arms up to jump along to the much faster paced song now picking up.

Shane’s eyes lift to look back at where his friends are—

And meets the eyes of Rozanov. Ilya Rozanov. The same Rozanov who’s cum is currently filling him up.

Judging by the crease between Rozanov’s brows, he’d seen the kiss. Not that Shane gets why the other would be upset. If he can have a girlfriend, then why can’t Shane?

There’s a rock sinking through Shane’s chest, falling further, further down. Shane cannot place which cliff face it crumbled apart from, but he is aware enough of the fact that soon he’s going to stop falling, and the impact will hurt indefinitely more than the denial.

A warm hand on his shoulder, Rose’s face dipping into view. “You okay? What’s got you staring off into the distance?”

Shane nods, desperate to play it off. “Just, uh—saw someone I know—”

“Oh, who?” she adjusts her eyeline to settle on the same sight Shane had been feasting upon moments before. “...Ilya Rozanov?”

“You know him?” Shane blurts far too quickly, thrown off by the fact that anyone other than him could know of Rozanov’s existence.

“He’s the new model who just started up, right? In all those magazines made for senior citizens.”

Well, no shit someone would know Rozanov if they too were in the modelling scene. Calm the fuck down Shane.

The crowd shifts, cutting Rozanov off from view. It sobers Shane up slightly, enough to have him bopping back along to the beat, hands gently back on Rose’s forearms as they move together.

Everything is fine.

Rozanov’s jizz is in Shane’s ass.

The music is only getting louder, or maybe it’s the number of people yelling around him. Has the crowd grown thicker? How many people were invited to this, anyway?

The butt plug is held inside him, bottling up the simmering anxiety that threatens to leak out of him.

Feet moving to a beat he can’t pick out the words to. Hands dampened with sweat, constantly rubbing down his shirt to dry them. Did he mention it was hot in here? With all the bodies pressing around them? How many people were invited to this, anyway?

Voices, none belonging to the one he wants to hear, so he tunes them out. Talking. Laughing. At him? No. Something else. He’s a part of their circle, unable to make eye contact with anything but the laces of his shoes, letting them joke while he hunches in on himself, Rose standing to his left and people, people brushing past him.

How many people were invited to this thing, anyway?

Bathroom. He’s in the bathroom.

It’s newly renovated, all white marble with gold offsets. A long wall of sinks, gold-plated mirrors hanging above them. The actual toilets are through a rounded archway behind him, all of the stalls empty bar one.

He’d lost it a little then. The heat, the people, the spend in his ass getting to him. Crawling under his skin.

In.

Out.

He breathes.

Then spins on his heel, all with the intention to head into the toilet stall and take this goddamn plug out, then half-stash it away, and pray no one draws it back to him.

Like all great plans, nothing goes to plan.

As Shane steps through the archway, a body comes through from the opposite direction, turning the corner at such an angle he doesn’t see Shane until—

They’re crashing into each other. The man reaching out to steady Shane. An apology slipping out before Shane can think, looking up to meet those wide, brown eyes.

“Hello Hollander,” Rozanov smiles with all the confidence in the world.

Shane freezes. “Hi.”

The man moves past him to head to the sink, leaning back against it, tucking his phone into his pocket. Whatever he had been doing, it clearly wasn’t using the bathroom.

“I did not know you were coming,” Rozanov’s face pulls into a slight frown. “Having fun?”

He stalks forward, hands on Shane’s hips, rubbing his thumbs over in small circles. His eyes flick over Shane’s face, assessing. Searching for something he can’t seem to find. He settles, then leans closer, and it’s all Shane can do to accept the kiss. Forgetting about where they are. About who could walk in at any moment.

From all the chaos outside, Rozanov’s mouth is grounding. Shane’s mind is more settled than it has been this whole night.

Rough hands on faces, cupping the back of his head, tongue drawing through his lips and into his mouth, kissing hungrily. Like Rozanov wants this just as much too.

“Do you still—” Rozanov’s muttered question is left unfinished, but implied by the way he gropes Shane’s ass.

“Yeah,” he breathes softly, chasing those lips as they slip away from him again.

This earns a slight groan from Rozanov, now back to kissing him with more fervor. Neither of them notice the door opening until drunken footsteps thud across tile, invading their space.

They jump apart so fast it gives Shane whiplash. The man that is ambling past them is too pissed to put together what was happening right in front of his eyes, undoing his zipper as he heads to the urinals. Shane doesn’t know who to thank for the blessing.

“We should go back,” is all he says to Rozanov.

“Does it hurt?” is the question he gets in response, followed by the action of Rozanov departing the bathroom, quick behind Shane.

He shakes his head. Can’t bring himself to speak about it, not when there’s people loitering in the hallway, and even more where it widens out into the main hall.

“Good. Do not leave it in overnight.”

“What if I do?” he gets the snark to respond, shyness forgotten at the opportunity to pettily argue back.

Someone trips over their feet in front of them, and they side-step out of the way.

“I would—”

“Shane!”

Rose’s hair is looking considerably more disheveled than it was when Shane left her, and her makeup slightly smudged. She’s flanked by four more girls, two of which Shane notes as his friends plus ones.

In a show of half-drunk affection, she kisses his cheek. “We were heading to the bathroom, but I’ll catch you later?” she says, shooting a glance at Rozanov. “Ilya, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good to meet you. Rose Landry.” The greeting is quick as Rose’s girlfriends are growing more impatient, pulling her along. She disappears with a laugh.

Rozanov has stopped walking. Instead, he turns to face Shane. “She your plus one?”

“Yeah. Is Svetlana yours?” he shoots back in a similar manner, because copping bullshit for bringing his not-really girlfriend to some dumb party is not what he needs. (From Rozanov of all people. The guy with an actual girlfriend.)

Rozanov tilts his head in a ‘yes.’ “Not that she would give me choice otherwise. I like her though. Not boring. Like you.”

They’re walking again, and Shane feels the lighthearted jab for what it is. Still, it prickles something nasty inside his chest. No wonder he’s with Svetlana. How Shane ever thought he had the potential for a chance, he doesn’t know. (Rozanov’s cum sitting inside of him tells a different message, one Shane chooses not to read.)

Maybe if he were a girl, and Svetlana a guy, he would get to be Rozanov’s plus one for this event. His plus one in life.

“At least my girlfriend doesn’t think I’m boring.”

He doesn’t know why he says it. He tries to mold it into the same tone Rozanov was using, but it sounds wrong coming out of his mouth. The tease falls flat.

Girlfriend.

He doesn’t know why he lied about that part too. (Well, he supposes he and Rose could sort-of-count for dating, but it’s not like they’ve made anything official. Then again, it’s not like Rozanov’s going to go around telling people the lie.)

He doesn’t know why a coil of jealousy and longing rears its head, begging for attention. When it doesn’t receive, it opens the chasm between each one of Shane’s rips, ripping and flowing into the darkness that holds himself, tearing it to shreds.

Bodies are pulsing past him again, jumping to the music, he and Rozanov perched on the fringes of it all.

“Girlfriend?” echo’s Rozanov’s voice, dull and quiet against the backdrop of lively sound.

Shane turns to admit that they’re not quite official yet, but Rozanov is already gone. Slipping away into the depths of the crowd, disguising himself amongst the mass. Shane is unsure if he was called away, or left on purpose.

Shit, was he not supposed to mention the fact that he had a girlfriend? An unspoken rule that had sat between them now broken clean in half, snapped by Shane’s inability to just be honest straight up, rather than go along with things because he wanted to jab and joke with Rozanov.

The manor feels smaller, purple lights brighter, blinding as Shane pushes through the crowd. Sweat. Laughter. Yelling.

At least my girlfriend doesn’t think I’m boring.

Girlfriend.

Girlfriend?

Do you still—

Do you still carry that piece of me around with you?

Ilya doesn’t know what to do with himself. He bodies through the crowd, shoving past people with no regard. What he’s searching for, he can’t quite place.

Hollander has a girlfriend. A partner, probably this whole time. Right behind Ilya’s back. Not that they ever clarified they were exclusive but, well, Ilya could at least admit he was sleeping with other people!

Jealousy rips like an ugly hole through his heart. A wound far too fresh, pulling him apart from inside out, leaving his bloodied heart pulsing on the floor, each erratic thump matching the beat. He hasn’t felt this kind of rage in a long, long time. Before he came to Canada, at the very least. He thought he’d managed this, that his new start would bring along a newer, better side of himself.

His plans clearly aren’t foolproof, because anger is gripping him white-hot, squeezing the last dregs of rationality from his mind. The spiked drink he’d had earlier serves only to ass fuel to the fire, killing off all appropriate responses.

He doesn't hate Hollander. Can’t. How could he ever?

Ilya hates himself. For being so stupid. For getting—once again—with a partnered man. (And the first two times were in Russia, and hadn’t gone on for nearly as long as he and Hollander have been.)

The crowd is thickening. Pressing in around him from all angles. Yet no one pays an ounce of attention to him, leaving Ilya ignored as he barrels to his unsuspecting target.

“Ilya—woah—what the fuck!?” Svetlana exclaims, stumbling back as Ilya teeters forward into her, catching himself on her shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“He has girlfriend,” Ilya mumbles into her shoulder, all tension leaving his body, flipping over into something much more overwhelming. An emotion he can’t quite name.

Clearly confused, Svetlana lifts her hands to wrap loosely around Ilya, patting his back a couple times before pulling away. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“Hollander.”

He doesn’t receive a response. Just a sharp sigh and tug on his arm, parting the crowds with her murderous glare, as she marches them through.

Back to a little table she’d snagged with her work friends.

Back to the (now three) flasks of what Ilya knows to be spiked drinks, taking a swig before offering him one.

“Forget stupid Shane Hollander and his stupid girlfriend,” she grins.

Burning, crackling down his throat, settling in a pleasant warmth; pooling low in his belly. It tickles in the most delightful way, somehow much nicer than when he had drank before. He doesn’t stop himself as he takes another mouthful. And another.

And another.

Forget that stupid Shane Hollander and his stupid girlfriend.

And his stupid girlfriend.

Forget his stupid girlfriend.

By the time Ilya makes it onto the dance floor (although, he would hesitate to call it that, instead opting for a ‘writhing mass of bodies.’), he can hardly take note of what he’s doing, moving and weaving through people, letting them touch him, lift his shirt up, grace their hands down his back.

In return, Ilya lets his hands and eyes wander. Forget stupid Shane Hollander.

He grinds back on the guys and girls that come up to him, slings an arm around their waist, or the small of their back, steading his body against their own.

Lights pretty the room.

Twist and morph everyone’s faces into one far different. Gorgeous curves and slopes, planes of soft, clear skin. Unwavering, deep brown eyes, sucking Ilya in, in, in.

He wonders if Hollander’s girlfriend knows that he has a man’s ejaculate up his ass.

This thought spurs him further, mouth curling into a smirk as he rolls his hips, cupping and feeling up the woman in front of him. She’s saying something, low and sultry, but Ilya lets it filter from one ear to the other.

Hollander and his stupid girlfriend.

Colours are hazy. Ilya’s movements much to slow. Everything is. Like wading through toffee, thick and compressing.

Only when he struggles to draw a breath in the humid atmosphere, does Ilya decide to leave, pushing through the blockade of people to reach the closest exit, tumbling out of wide glass doors and down into the cold night air, the throbbing mass of people thinned out, only a few here and there, high or making out. (Plus one taking a dip in the ornate, archaic fountain.)

Even out here, the world still spins. Whatever those drinks were spiked with, it was far too strong, and Ilya should not have taken as much as he did.

Stars melt, the moon wanes, and Ilya stands in the middle of it all, feeling like some cosmic joke. Let it only be him to find the worst guys. To throw his passion into it, only to be met with the seemingly ever-present barrier;

of stupid girlfriends.

Shane doesn’t try to find Rose. Instead, he seeks out a quiet bubble of peace, bee-lining for it. From within, he observes. Sees the people smashing drinks back, dancing and grinding, words slurring together as they yell the lyrics for songs Shane doesn’t know.

As expected, he gets restless, fingers playing with the buttons on his shirt, foot tapping erratically to a beat that is solely his own. His bubble is fast being encroached, party-goers having no regard for where they stand.

The doors leading to freedom are all much to far away, so Shane heads for the next best place.

The bar.

Perches himself close enough to the counter to be away from the sweating bodies, but just far enough so he can seem nonchalant enough to not buy a drink. (Or, get a free one.) It is here, that his mind spirals further into Rozanov. Rozanov, who is somehow not okay with open relationships, despite being in one himself.

But maybe that’s just it. Rozanov isn’t okay with it because he never considered what they had sufficient enough to be a relationship anyway. It makes Shane roar with guilt and humiliation aimed at himself, one, for being so stupid, and two, for being the one to insinuate that what they have is something more.

The reality of that must’ve struck Rozanov, leading him to run off like he did.

Still. The matter is confusing, and it warps Shane's mind in the worst way. The sweet smell of alcohol is getting worse, creeping up around him and making him a little light-headed. (On a second note, that may be due to the influx of people standing a few metres away from him, clearly passing around a joint.)

So, reluctantly, Shane makes his way through the throng of the dancefloor. His head is pounding. His left shoe sticks to the floor every time he takes a step, having made the mistake of trodding in someone’s spilt drink.

Before he can reach the comfort of his tiny table, a lower beat plays, the lights dim, bringing everything down so much lower. However, through the darkened room, Shane can still make out the cut of his collarbones, his right height and stature, those hands with long, long fingers feeling up Svetlana’s hips.

Until he’s not.

Until what he’s really seeing dawns on Shane, and he crashes into the conclusion that Rozanov isn’t dancing with his girlfriend. It’s another woman, hair in dark, long braids, hips swaying suggestively to the song.

When it ends, she moves on, and another takes her place. Seamlessly as ever, Rozanov dips into dancing with her, more a heated grind than anything. Rozanov doesn't so much roll his hips as quickly buck them into the air, but it still makes for quite the sight, a single beat of sweat dropping tantalisingly from his temple to his shirt, another’s hand roving up over his chest, circling around his pecs, squeezing the flesh there.

That’s Rozanov’s thing.

A flash of what could almost be jealously, hot and hard strikes him right through the chest, making Shane catch himself as not to stagger over. Rozanov isn’t just dancing with the girls. He’s touching them, feeling them up. Cupping breasts and waists and thighs and—

Shane isn’t special.

Rozanov chose him, but Shane isn’t special.

He was one amongst many that Rozanov has chosen, and he certainly won’t be the last. Rozanov fucks around with just about every person who throws themselves at him, and Shane was none the wiser, wishing, like an idiot, that he was the one.

Rozanov’s lips are dangerously close to another's. Shane spins on his heel, heading for the closest exit. He thinks he might be sick.

Barrelling right out of the doors and into the cold night air throws Shane off a little bit, too distracted by his simmering rage (aimed at himself) to really care about what he’s doing. Stupidly, he kicks a rock, landing it in the fountain.

”Hey!” someone yells indignantly, sticking their head up through the water. Who the fuck takes a late-night swim in a fountain?

Mind distracted for a moment, Shane takes up a brooding position against a brick wall of the manor. Not that he’s one to brood. It probably more so looks like he’s constipated, fretting and worrying his nerves over something too far out of his depth.

Rozanov, dancing with those girls.

Touching them.

He probably takes them home too.

Shane needs to go home. His mind is too clouded to function, and he’s been gone long enough that Rose and his friends will be questioning where he went. He’ll just head back in there, tell them somethings come up and he needs to leave—

And bump right into Ilya Rozanov. Literally.

Stepping back from the man, there’s a long stretch of silence, the two parties staring each other down.

Shane is the first to snap.

“Have fun cheating on your girlfriend?”

His question isn’t scalding or accusatory. He sounds unstable, voice breaking in the middle of it. Like he’s unsure of why he’s even letting the words fall from his lips.

Rozanov just looks confused. A slightly startled expression taking over his features. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Fuck you,” Shane mumbles more than speaks, shoving past Rozanov quickly, so the other man doens’t have time to grab onto him. Not that Rozanov makes an attempt.

“Hollander—what the fuck, Hollander!” Rozanov yells, voice drowned out by the music as Shane passes through the doors.

The interaction was short, and Ilya still feels like he majorly cocked it up. He can’t bring himself to question it, slight details slipping, like the exact sound of Hollander’s voice, the way his face had looked. All thanks to the drugs, probably.

He walks. Ensures it’s the opposite direction to Hollander. Loops around himself enough to pretty much get back to where he started, now twenty metres above ground, fingers clinging on to the freezing metal as he climbs the fire escape. It’s not dissimilar to the one he had back on his house in Russia, the same he used to scale up as a kid, and lay sprawled out on the roof, watching the day pass while looking up at the sky.

Now, he finds a dewy patch of grass, leading into a much more ornate and safer set of stairs, coming up from the floor below onto the flat portion of the roof. Croquet balls are packed in bags against one corner of the fence.

Flopping back, Ilya gives in. Tries to lessen the onslaught of feelings hurtling towards him by staring at the stars, imagining himself ingrained in the cosmos, drifting alongside stars and moons, no longer plagued by the worries of the mortal realm.

The drugs warp his perception of time, and his vision of the surroundings. Ilya could’ve been lying here for hundreds of years, and he would never have noticed.

The idea is barely half-formed in his head, and much more of a desperate measure.

Forcing his numbed fingers to work, Ilya fumbles his phone out of his pocket. It’s almost dead, the tiny red sliver in his battery bar smirking back at him, laughing because he was stupid enough to not put it on charge.

His vision swims. Everywhere he looks are little red bars, flashing brighter and angrier all across the rooftop.

With a clatter, they fall, dropping off the edge. Despite having his legs firmly knelt in the soaking grass, Ilya’s stomach drops, like he to is plummeting.

His password declines three times before letting him in, fingers shaking too bad to click the numbers properly. He can hardly think straight, mind whirring so fast. Like the lights inside the manor. Pretty, neon strips of purple, cutting through each and every person.

Shane, standing stock-still as the lights douse him with life. Halo around his head, beckoning Ilya closer. An illusive vision, sensual and slow, quite like the rest of the world—

Call Rejected

His phone beeps with the message. Ilya hadn’t even registered calling. He clicks to ring again, eyes catching on the blurring letters, screen far too bright in the darkness that envelops him.

Jane

He’d called the one person he was trying to escape. Of course his smashed up mind would.

Like before, the call is rejected. Ilya knows Shane must be denying them, because it’s much too short to have rung out in full. Filled with sudden determination, Ilya spam hits the call button, sending through one after the other after the other. His dislike for Shane dissipates with every Call Rejected.

Ilya doesn’t care. He just wants.

After what must be the tenth time, Shane stops declining his calls. No, this time, Ilya pushes himself up from the wet grass, tottering over to the edge of the rooftop, fingers curling hard around the brick wall that keeps him from falling.

Audio-Message, recording

“Hello Hollander.”

His back slides down the wall as he turns. With a shaking hand, he presses the phone to his ear. Even if he really knows Shane isn’t on the other end.

“You asshole. I hate you. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why do you have girlfriend? Do you not see me as worthy girlfriend? I do not have girlfriend. I could be yours.

“You come into the shop, Hollander. And everyone is an asshole. But you. You are funny. Never boring. Not boring to me. I did not call you boring. No. Liar. Liar told you that.”

The air is cold, and the brick behind his back is cold. And the ground is cold, under his cold legs, and Ilya is cold, freezing to death in an avalanche of feelings.

“I think I am liar, Shane. I want to be with you at this terrible fucking party and then you tell me you have a girlfriend. A girlfriend. When you have been sleeping with me, for weeks. Maybe we were not exclusive. Maybe I did not specify. Maybe I am greedy.”

Ilya’s father was greedy. The men who hung around him were greedy, sucking resources and money off of everyone else like leeches, taking and taking.

Ilya is not his father, but he is greedy. Wants to leech off of the happiness Hollander exuberates, suck it all up and keep it for himself. Feed off of the love Hollander emanates.

“But I want you so fucking bad. I think I will die if I do not kiss you. I do not think I care anymore about your girlfriend. I can be whatever you want Shane. Everything for you. I will let you have me,” shakily, he exhales. His fingers are trembling. “Shane. I—”

With a mocking beep, the voice message shuts off, his phone’s battery well and truly giving out. His phone falls to the ground with a clatter.

”Fuck!”

Ilya hops on one leg to cradle the foot he had kicked against the wall, finding himself shooting upright after the death of his device. Sucking in a breath, he stands on two legs once more, trying to pull himself together. Instead, it only serves to blur his vision, and send a rolling wave of nausea coursing up his stomach.

He thinks he’s sick. Thinks he remembers vomit splattering over the ground beneath him. Thinks he hears Svetlana’s panicked yell, shouting about how she went around asking everyone where he was. Thinks he recalls being pushed into a car, and driven home.

He thinks of Shane. How badly he wants the man.

Colours mix together, scenery blurring past him. Through it all, Ilya can only make out Shane’s face, radiant and beautiful through it all. Ilya knows then that it doesn’t matter how Shane sees him. As long as he can still hold the other close, he’ll be happy.

Even if it’s not truly what he wants.

Shane shuts his phone off after the last however-many-calls. Over and over and fucking over Rozanov rings. Over and over and fucking over Shane denies them. He just needs to leave this stupid party.

Free from the obligation of having sex, he leaves alone. Trudges down the tightly-packed gravel driveway, gulping in the biting air, filling his chest with it. The stars above are few and far between, light pollution making them near impossible to see. Still, few persevere, twinkling down upon him.

Shane should feel happy.

When he reaches the bottom of the driveway, he gets in an Uber with one of his co-workers, offering to pay for the ride until it reaches his place.

The lamposts outside are dull. The flickering banner of Mistress M’s looks worn down, a pitying thing in the dark of night. Shane turns his head away from it, but he can still see the reflection of the colours in the opposite window.

He should feel happy.

Far later that night, when he finally removes the butt plug, cleaning himself up, Shane lets the tears fall. Dripping down his face in angry rivulets.

The plug falls, disregarded as it rolls onto the bathroom tiles.

Chapter End Notes

kudos/comments are appreciated!! thanks for all the support so far!!!

Chapter 6: Russia

Chapter Summary

Generations of blood lie beneath his feet. Tying him to the soil. Keeping him tethered, no matter where he goes, to the Earth near his home. Ilya will always be here. It’s in his roots. Intertwined in the write-out of his life from the moment he was born.

Chapter Notes

i didn't order angst with a side of my potato salad

Photos litter his social media, salt pressing into a still-fresh wound. Hollander pressing close to his girlfriend as they talk, heads bowed. The two of them leaving the manor together, a shot of them getting into a taxi. All released by the people who were there, desperate to get information about the new American actor who’d joined in with the Canadian crowd.

Articles written by amateur ‘up-and-coming’ journalists, defending Hollander’s bachelor status, or sinking their teeth right into the meat of his and Rose’s relationship. On both ends of the spectrum, it’s cruel, harsh opinions. Cutting open their characters and demanding you see the relationship that’s based off nothing more than parasocial speculation.

Unfortunately for Ilya, he’s an outlier to that statement. A first-hand witness, if this were a crime scene.

At least my girlfriend doesn’t think I’m boring.

The terrible sinking feeling in his gut still hasn’t dissipated, even a week later. What added to the weight was his voicemail, which, after waking up with a splitting headache the next day, he attempted to delete, only to realise his stupid phone wouldn’t let him take it away.

So it sits, resting like an open wound in Hollander’s inbox. Probably played over and over, laughed at by him and his girlfriend. Anger bubbles hot within Ilya, refusing to let him function properly, keeping him tightly wound and snappish. It also locks his mouth, leaving him alone in his problem, despite Svetlana asking over and over if anything was wrong. She’d lessened her questioning after coming to her own conclusion that Ilya was just mad about the spiked drinks. And apologies by offering to take over his shifts for the past week. Which, is both good and bad. Good, as it allows Ilya to block Hollander’s number and never have to see him again, and bad, because Ilya hasn’t seen Hollander since that night.

With his love life in shambles, Ilya turns to modelling, the one career choice that finally isn’t having any repercussions. Signs up for shoot after shoot, planning on working himself to the bone so he can push Hollander away and never have to think of him again.

If only it were that easy.

“Is this your first promotional ad?” his makeup assistant asks, gum in her mouth smacking loudly as she chews, the pink wad threatening to fall out and land in his freshly-curled hair.

Shifting the tiniest bit further away, he gives a slight incline of his head. “No. I advertise for brands before.”

“Aw, but none like this, hm?” she nods to a massive poster of some rich, snobby clothing brand Ilya’s personally never worn. (Or plans to, given how hideous his outfits for the shoot look.) “A real modelling shoot, not them silly underwear catalogs in the back of magazines.”

Ilya stays quiet, hoping his silence is taken as agreement.

“Hey! Ilya, right?”

The voice is directed at him almost immediately after Ilya loops round the corner and into the shooting room proper, full with its usual bustle of people, cameras and lights being fixed and moved.

“Rozanov’s fine,” he says in lieu of a greeting, sharp eyes flicking up to Rose Landry’s.

Because of course he wouldn’t check who he was doing these promotional endorsements for. He’s always worked solo so far, and he never suspected the jobs his agent sent through had a partner.

Never suspected that said partner is also the girlfriend of the boy he’s fucked more times than he has fingers to count on.

But he’s an adult, and he can suck it up, just for this one two-hour shoot.

He has to.

Honestly, it isn’t even that bad. Rose vaguely recognises him from the party, and the numerous shoots he’s done so far. She tells him so between outfit and set changes, claiming he’s not as he seems, but she likes him all the same.

Not as much as I like your boyfriend, he thinks, very pointedly, staring at the back of her head.

This photoshoot isn’t as sensual as the one’s Ilya’s been doing, instead draping him in rich suit jackets and fur coats, leaning on geometrical boxes and spheres, his hand lazily hooked around Rose’s waist, across her shoulders, having her head resting against his arm.

However, this shoot is bigger, the high-name billboard shit that Hollander usually does. It’ll push Ilya up the charts, definitely. Especially so, really, considering he’s pairing with Rose Landry, who’s only in Canada for minimal time.

Ilya selfishly hopes Hollander will follow her back to America.

Far deeper down, he knows that if Hollander were to call, he’d come, no matter how far he was. If he was galaxies away. For he’ll let Hollander take him in any way the man so desires. He’s far too attached to let go, couldn’t untie the shackles connecting him to the other, even if he had the key to unlock them. Hollander could have all the girlfriends he wants, but if he even expressed an inkling of need for Ilya, Ilya would fucking deliever. Punch his expectations right through the roof.

As the director calls the final photo, and Ilya stretches out his sore back (from being draped over aforementioned sphere for the past quarter-hour) he hears the voice he’s managed to avoid for the past week.

Shane Hollander. Right here, in the back of the studio, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, drawstrings in his mouth as he stubbornly looks at the ground, clearly having noticed Ilya long before he was spotted.

Ilya takes that initiative and fucking runs with it, ignore Hollander too as he ducks into his changing room, grabbing his bag, jamming his phone in his pocket. As the rescue of a lifetime, it begins to ring, aggressively vibrating.

And like a life-ring being pulled away from him, the caller ID reads; Alexei. Great. He’s more than likely following up about his rushed call the previous week, which Ilya has taken in the last cubicle of the bathrooms at that god-awful party.

Ilya’s already feeling a pleasant buzz when he shoulders his way through the bodies and into the bathroom, just on the cusp of it enough to accept his brothers call, thanking everyone that the bathroom is empty, and shutting himself in the last stall, phone jammed against his ear.

“What?” he snaps, feeling far too annoyed to actually care about his tone. “I gave you your goddamn payments on time.” Despite speaking in Russian, Ilya still keeps his voice low, leaning his back against the wall.

“It’s not about the payments,” Alexei snaps back. “It’s father. I can’t take care of him any longer, not when he’s like this.”

“So? You want me to come over there and pick up your slack, like always?” Ilya fires back, frustration rising.

Alexei’s bullshit always follows the same route. Pleading and begging Ilya for things he can’t provide, guilt-tripping him into following through with them. The annoying part is, it works mostly every time. It’s part of the reason it took Ilya so long to actually get out of the country, bound by obligation and responsibility.

There’s a sharp laugh. “I want you here for once. With the family. Not fucking off to do your ‘modelling’ in Canada. You’re jeopardising my chances of doing what I want.”

“Which is what? Sitting back and getting high? Ignoring our father so you can funnel more money out of me?”

“Why are you so mad, Ilya?” Alexei’s tone takes on a teasing manner. “Just come home. Fix the bullshit you've pulled us into.”

“I can’t come back right now. I’m busy.”

“Always. Always too busy, too hard-working, to good for us, huh? Wanting to keep your shitty life private from us so we don’t see every way you lack?” There’s banging on the other end of the line, Alexei moving about wherever he is, storming through the house. “I know you are whoring yourself out. Don’t act like I didn’t know what was happening when you were in Russia. You’re just doing the same thing over there. Hidden.”

“Alexei—” Ilya’s undoubtedly pitiful protest falls off, ears twitching as he hears the door to the bathroom open, and someone some inside.Fuck.

Pulling the phone away from his ear, he holds his mouth up to the speaker. “I have to go. Stop fucking calling me over useless shit.”

This only serves to set Alexei off more. “Useless shit? Is that how you think of your family?”

Ilya hangs up before his brother can spew more shit. Leans forward, head pressing against the cool tile of the cubicle wall. A moment to breathe.

Back in the dressing room, Ilya answers the call, waving of his agent as they walk past his door.

“Father’s passed,” are the first words out of his brother's mouth, and the last Ilya hears before the waves come crashing in, silencing it all as he sinks into the closest chair, phone slipping from his ear.

His father is dead.

The man he had put so much effort into impressing. Into taking care of. Who, at one point, was the man he looked up to almost as much as he looked up to his mother. Who showed Ilya how to talk and wrangle people into getting what he wanted, how to bargain and take while still maintaining a cool facade.

Who now, he’s left alone for months, all so he could dick around in Canada, an unknown country, with unknown people and two now equally shitty jobs. Posing for the camera while his father posed as someone who remembers what it’s like to have that warm, familial bond with his sons.

It’s sickening, spearing a hole through Ilya’s chest. Only just missing his heart, a fortunate act, as it is already bleeding out for another.

“—Ilya? Ilya!” Alexei’s pointed voice comes snapping back through the line, wrangling Ilya’s attention and presence, breaking the ringing emanating through his mind.

“I’m here,” is all Ilya can force out, hitting speaker on his phone so his hands can clench into fists.

Silence. Then; “You’ll need to come home now.”

“I know.”

Alexei hangs up, and the line goes dead.

Ilya is slow-moving as he rises from his seat, shouldering his bag and marching out of the studio. He doesn’t even mentally address Hollander as they pass each other, just gives a casual glance Rose’s way, letting his gaze flit over them for a second as they get in Hollander’s car. Then, he’s getting in his own, speeding away from the shitshow his life’s become as the waves come back, crashing over him. For a moment, Ilya wonders what it would be to let himself drown.

The tide is lapping at his feet as he steps into his childhood home. Stuffy and overly grand, it penetrates its wealth right through his eyes, leaving him blind to the terrors these walls contain. Alone, Ilya walks through the carpeted foyer and into one of the smaller living rooms branching off of the side.

Alone, because while he had told Svetlana, this was something he was made to do alone, flights were too full to get them both on the same one, a slight wedge of animosity between them from the moments Ilya wouldn’t tell her about the party. About why she found him on the roof, rambling into his phone like a crazed man.

“Finally. You came,” Alexei drawls the second Ilya steps into the lounge, hand twirling around the ice in his glass of some dark liquor, one leg crossed over the other, as if he’s the king of Russia and not a poorly hidden addict living under the guise of being the only functional son.

Ilya does not let his brother's attitude put him off—rather, he chooses to close himself off, slipping into the impenetrable mask he so usually wears inside this house.

“You’ve made yourself comfortable. Have fun putting the funds together for father’s funeral?” Ilya shoots back—a silent assassin in his words, jabbing but not cruel, laced only in the in-betweens of his breaths.

Ilya takes a seat across from his brother, not touching the alcohol in an effort to maintain his mask perfectly.

Alexei’s face hardly twitches. “There was no need. I see you already saw them arranged to on your flight over.”

It was true. Ilya had spent it hunched over in the airport, sending out the money needed to cover the cost of a funeral service and his burial. Thankfully, his family’s funerals were all planned in the same way, and deciding what they would do for Grigori Rozanov wasn't that difficult.

“No thanks to you,” Ilya responds curtly.

The house is much too suffocating. Even breathing the air that lies between the walls tastes thick, his mouth cloying up with tar, sticking his teeth together.

Alexei just sips his fucking drink, and it very nearly smashes through the mask Ilya’s desperately holding on to.

Over the next couple days, Ilya busies himself with the finalities of the preparations, drill, mindless tasks and conversations that have a tighter chokehold on him than being in the house himself. The only reprieve it gives is the task of distracting his mind from the troubles he’s left behind. If he piles more and more things onto his plate, keeps up the facade he crafts, then he’ll never have to worry about slipping. Falling too far off the deep end and not being able to swim out.

He runs around the gardens. Weaving through paths and light foliage, upping his pace from a jog to a sprint for the final stretch, feeling his lungs burn and feet slam against the ground in a too-loud, disjointed pattern. Sweat trickles down from his hairline and over his forehead, a physical reminder of his exertion.

He takes long showers, standing under the heavy, warm spray and pumping his cock quickly, rutting his hips into his hand. It’s not enough—nothing ever will be without Hollander—but still he uses one arm to brace himself against the shower wall, panting sharply as he attempts to hold off for as long as he can, squeezing the base of his cock. All he can think of is Hollander. Standing under those neon lights. Sprawled across his bed. Shoved up against the wall. His eyes fluttering closed as he comes, moaning around Ilya’s name. In thick ropes, Ilya comes too, splattering over the shower wall, sliding down the glass, mingling with water droplets and slight flecks of soap. With a heaving sigh, Ilya slumps to the floor, hand falling from his spent cock as he urges himself to get up immediently—he can’t be seen as weak, wrung out over some boy.

He pushes himself in the gym, weights slamming against the ground as he drops the bar, pushing his curls out of his face. His lungs expand, screaming for air, and Ilya relishes in it, breathing deeper to feel the burn. Proof that through all this bullshit, he’s still alive.

He sits quietly in empty rooms, staring blankly at the crappy wallpaper, too many indistinguishable patterns and colours blurring as he blinks. Curls a little further in on himself in his chair. Is he an orphan? Or is that word reserved for children, younger beings who still need their parents.

Ilya still needs his.

He misses his father. Regrets that he was too stubborn to come back. To give a final goodbye, to watch his father fade further away until he was no more. He was a good man, stuck with disease. Forgetting his friends. Then memories Ilya held so close to his heart. Then people he worked with. Saw every few days.

Silently, Ilya grieves. Lets it push and push and push down upon him, a boulder keeping him deep under the sea. Ignores his brother. Goes through the motions of making funeral plans. Of waking up the morning of. Putting on his formal attire. Brushing his curls back.

Keeping his face impassive as he watches dirt being shoveled over the coffin, the last trace of his father buried under earth.

Alexei’s hand settles onto Ilya’s shoulder. The contact is unexpected, lifting Ilya’s head to face his brother. The look he receives back is one he hasn’t witnessed in years, one of open understanding. Ilya isn’t the only one who’s now lost both his parents. There’s tears in Alexei’s eyes, albeit unshed.

Together, they bow their heads, watching the last of their father’s grave be smoothed over.

Later that night, they drink. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the front room, fire roaring up a few metres from them, light smoothing over their features. For a flicker of a second, they’re children again, chasing each other around the house, their mother’s laughter bouncing off the walls.

“So, you staying here?” Alexei says around another mouthful of the good liquor, the kind they keep lying about on shelves but never actually use.

Their conversation has been somewhat stable. Alexei prodding questions Ilya’s way, nodding and accepting answers. It’s a hell of a lot more than what Ilya’s used to.

Ilya tenses his fingers around the neck of a bottle. “In Russia? No. I will leave…soon. I have work.”

“Back in Canada? That gay modelling shit?” his words aren’t as harsh as they would be, dulled by the pain of their loss and the alcohol.

A clink as Ilya’s bottle is put down. “Yes. Modelling. It’s not gay. I’m posing for fucking photos.”

His brother shrugs mindlessly, like it’s all the same. “So what? Seems pretty fucking queer. All that makeup and shit. That’s why you’re in Canada, no?”

Ilya’s brows pull together in confusion. “I’m in Canada…to be gay?”

“Because you cannot be gay in Russia?” Alexei states like it’s obvious. “In Canada it is allowed. So you go there.”

Ilya…gets what his brother is trying to say. In the weird, roundabout way he worded it. For some truth of the assumption, Ilya did know that Canada was a whole lot more open to the idea of queer people than Russia ever will be. It’s a freedom, to be allowed to be with whoever he likes.

“Not entirely,” he corrects, taking another sip, feeling the burn slide down his throat. “But part of the reason, yes.”

“You hate this family.”

“...”

“You give us very little of what you earn, and still you give us nothing?! You’re too busy providing for your own fantasies to care about the rest of us! Do you see now Ilya? You are tearing this family apart!”

“There is nothing left to tear apart!” Ilya spits back, unsure when the conversation went from semi-civil to a shouting match. Then again, this is his brother, and he’s never been able to get along well with his siblings. “Dad is fucking dead! We have no family, Alexei!”

This is met with silence. Silence so profound it rings in Ilya’s ears, burrowing into his skull and crawling down his spine. Alexei’s face flickers through emotion after emotion, from disbelief to sadness to anger, hot and fast. Like it always has been for the Rozanov brothers. Speaking before they think. Blowing off steam by yelling at others.

“And still you choose to leave me! All alone!”

“I visit you! I send you money! I pay for your fucking drugs, and alcohol. I give you this.”

“But it is not enough, Ilya!”

“It is never enough! You always want more! You are so fucking selfish!”

Alexei stands up in a fast movement, and for a fleeting second, Ilya thinks his brother will strike him. Raise his fist and slam it into his cheekbone.

Nothing happens. Alexei grabs the bottles, and leaves, storming out the room muttering slurs, about how much he hates this situation. Like it’s hard for him.

Ilya goes to be late that night. He doesn’t talk to Alexei for the rest of his stay, emotions too heavy. Now, they’ve crossed a line somewhere. There’s a shared knowledge that they’ll never bounce back from this. Never trust each other again.

Generations of blood lie beneath his feet. Tying him to the soil. Keeping him tethered, no matter where he goes, to the Earth near his home. Ilya will always be here. It’s in his roots. Intertwined in the write-out of his life from the moment he was born.

He will never escape the inevitability of death, but perhaps it could be somewhere else than his family estates bleary graveyard.

Technically speaking, it’s not really ‘theirs’, in the sense that only family members are buried here. His father just bought the land surrounding the family plots in full when his mother passed. Now, although a forever home to hundreds of people, it sits proudly under the Rozanov family name.

It takes eighty-four steps to reach Irina Rozanova. She rests under the same generic tombstone all Rozanov’s receive, a clean marble, shinied to perfection and well-maintained. The only singularities lie within the tiny handprints pressed into the concrete that seals the headstone to the ground. Ilya and Alexei’s. Taken from a time he can now hardly bear to recall, but wishes desperately he could remember more than he does.

Ilya slumps unceremoniously down in front of the grave. The flowers lie limp in his hand, quickly wilting with the frigidness of the air. He hastily shoves them in front of the headstone, arranging them nicely in his best attempt at an apology.

Then, he moves back, watching the wind pick up leaves and blow them past, scattering them to places unknown. Taken from their home to another, far crueler place to die, shriveled up and shattering under one's shoe with a crunch so satisfying you must step on it once more, just to see if it would make the noise again. (And when it inevitably doesn’t, one moves along down the path, forgetting of the life they had trodden all over.)

The shattered leaf sits numbly, collecting the pieces of themselves as their vision blurs over the name etched on the marble in front of them. A short sentence about how she was loved. About how she will be missed. Her death and birth under that. All now, that is felt of her, spare the decomposed body underground.

Out of habit, Ilya scoots further backwards, not wanting to sit on his mother. It was a paranoid fear that had stayed with him through his teenage years, worry that he was disgracing the woman he cared so much for.

A safe distance away, Ilya unlocks the gates and lets the world crumple down upon him. The bruising weight of everything—the past few months, moving to Canada, his father’s passing, Shane—settles down on his shoulders. Quickly sinking through his chest, into his gut. Ilya only wishes it were tangible, something solid and real, so he could vomit it all up, chuck it onto the ground and neatly dispose of his feelings.

But being with his mother has always made Ilya feel a little more like himself, so he lets it overwhelm him. Shuts his eyes, and sighs deeply, feeling it all wash through and cleanse him out. Silently, his mother observes, her memory wrapping around him, arms bearing the weight Ilya cannot.

It is then, for what seems to be the first time in years, that Ilya lets himself cry. The connection he holds to this land rings true through his blood, yet he wants nothing more than to be safely wrapped in the arms of a man, in a country foreign and not-quite-so unknown anymore.

Tears do not flow so much as drip down his cheeks, an unmeasured rhythm. They’re hot as they run down the rivulets of his face, pooling on the ground he sits on, dripping down his neck and into his jacket.

The wind tries its hardest to dry his reddened face, but it cannot dampen the grief inside Ilya. The guilt. For not being here enough. For everyone leaving him far too soon and much too late, giving him only the realisation that he should’ve tried harder. Alexei’s words ring true.

He knows his father is able to reunite with his mother now. Still, it leaves him filled with jealousy, because he can’t be with Hollander. Hollander is a bright, untouchable object, the rich, expensive vase in your living room your parents tell you never to touch. But Ilya has never been one to listen, and he was damned from the moment he had Hollander’s mouth against his. Knew his heart could beat for no other like it did for Hollander.

What he has is not quite love. A steady, growing infatuation, and desperate need for more. His relationship with the other has solely been built on competition, sex, and goading each other forward. Ilya knows so much yet so little about Hollander, but he’ll take what he can get, knowing the real side of the man is reserved for Rose—a woman Ilya could never hope to best.

For what feels like the billionth time, Ilya assures himself that he’s okay with this. Hollander can use him however he so pleases, as long as it ensures Ilya gets to hold him close, buried deep inside him, tracing his body with the utmost care.

As quickly as they come, Ilya disregards these thoughts, feeling it would be disrespectful to get hot and bothered over a man in front of her. With a sigh of collection, he presses forward, kissing his fingers and resting them on her headstone, mumbling softly. An old Russian song, one he knows from his very early days of childhood.

He breathes for a moment longer before stepping back, turning and walking the five paces to the left, where his father lies, freshly buried, headstone matching that of Irina’s, bar the handprints. Ilya too, spends a minute here, lump in his throat as he remembers all the times his father couldn’t—the constant mix-ups and repeated apologies. Asking for Ilya’s mother. Asking for the same badge to be pinned to his jacket every half-hour. Asking people he didn’t see often who they were.

“I love you papa,” he murmurs to his father, and it’s perhaps the most honest he’s been. He cares greatly for the man now gone, bound by the shackles of his own mind, tied up over his late lover’s death.

Ilya’s boots crunch over leaves as he walks out of the graveyard, back in the direction of the house. His head is less muggy, but his problems are no closer to being solved. His only gratitude is the weight bearing less on his shoulders, now more like a comfortable, thick scarf, slightly suffocating and itchy.

His departure from Russia is quick. Two days later, when the brunt of the paperwork and funeral prices are done and paid, he wishes a fast goodbye to his brother and gets the next plane back to Canada.

Life moves back to its new normal. Hollander no longer visits the store. Ilya forces himself to not look at the countless pictures popping up on his feed of he and Rose, undoubtedly a happy couple. Ilya throws himself into modelling now more than ever before, bursting through the back pages of catalogs and onto big, billboard screens. Even progresses to doing video advertisements, giving cheesy one-liners about how much he just loves this cologne scent he would never use a day in his life. More and more people come to recognise him, and it’s a miracle he’s managed to keep his identity as an adult store worker relatively quiet to the public.

Alexei is still trying to call him, their heated shouting match not doing anything to stop him. Voicemail after voicemail piles up in his inbox, claiming the same thing over and over. That he’s a slut, a queer, a lying cheater, and hates his family. It’s grating on Ilya’s nerves with the repetitiveness of it all. Over and over these same things are pushed into him, undoing all the efforts he had put into forgetting about Canada before his trip to Russia.

Ilya thought he’d finally left that house. Somehow, it wasn’t enough. He needs more. A final act of defiance, something so big Alexei will leave him alone, Hollander will come crying back to him, and Ilya can take his fucking life back, living it the way he wants to.

So, boldly, Ilya presents the idea to Otterman, ensuring to send it through e-mail so he doesn’t have to be there in real time if shit goes fanward. The reply he receives is more or less what he anticipated, a stream of questioning, asking Ilya if he really wanted to go through with this, what it would mean for his brand name, and so on. Ilya just accepts this and insists he’s moving forward with it, not allowing himself any time to properly think.

His brother wants to keep calling him, dragging Ilya back again and again to the roots of his family tree? He’ll give them all something so scandalous they won’t stand to talk to him again.

When the confirmation comes through that he’s landed the job, and a second model is willing to work with him, Ilya just smirks, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

One step closer to being independent.

Chapter End Notes

sorry not sorry about the lack of sex in this chapter, I felt having a deep one centred around Ilya's feeling and his late parents felt a little insensitive, and I wanted to explore him without the fallback of sex the he seems to rely on to 'fuck out his feelings'

Chapter 7: Revelations

Chapter Notes

Lights twinkle softly down from the ceiling, the LED’s programmed to flicker through different variants of brightness, casting low shadows across the customer’s faces. Right back into the little booth Shane shares with his parents, nestled in the corner, away from the protesting children, the sappy couples, and that one person who’s sent their meal back four times now.

“He can’t seriously be complaining about the sauce on his steak not being the right consistency. It gets to a point where he’s obviously doing it for the attention. Honestly, you’d think he’d have better places to be than sitting alone eating dinner,” Yuna tuts, all in one breath, eyes casting away from the red-faced man and back to her son.

David sets his hand on his wife’s arm, nodding to the waiter who’s coming over to take their orders. Shane doesn’t really hear what he orders, or if it’s really what he wanted. (Actually, he can answer that, it’s never what he really wants, having to stick to his low-calorie, high-fiber, zero flavour diet. Then again, he’s become rather accustomed to the bland flavours.) His mind is elsewhere, still drifting lazily along at that party, bobbing and weaving through unfamiliar faces in pursuit of the man he doesn’t think he’ll ever get to touch again.

Shane still isn’t entirely sure what changed between them that night. It’s been a little over two weeks and he’s seen Rozanov a grand total of one time, in which he had been completely ignored, and only seen the man rush out to his car. In all fairness, he hadn’t spoken to Rozanov either, too shocked when he realised the model Rose was working with was, well, him.

The missed calls sit untouched in his inbox, denied and turned down before Shane finally shut his phone off. He hasn’t messaged Rozanov. He doesn’t think he ever will. He isn’t sure what to say. Most of it had already tumbled out in a semi-drunk haze at the party, out on the grass where they had yelled things Shane hardly remembers.

A bright phone is pushed over to his side of the table, which Shane takes without question, drawing himself out of his line of thought. (It always seems to be about Rozanov, now.) Picking it up, he lowers the brightness, reading over some offer his mother has received from the company he works under, requesting a second model for an underwear campaign.

“I think it will be good for your publicity,” Yuna tells him when Shane hands the phone back.

His father nods along to this, crossing his hands over each other on the table. “If you wish to do it, that is.”

The seriousness from both his parents is a little unnerving, because in his years of doing this, there’s never been this much tense air around their suggestions.

“Uh, sure. I can do it,” Shane shrugs, reaching for his glass of water. He watches his parents over the rim.

They exchange a glance, looking back at him.

“Are you sure?” David asks, leaning a little over the table. “This is…quite the big statement to make. It’s not bad, just…different. From what you’ve been doing.”

“But the company did ask me to offer him the job,” Yuna shoots back at her husband, her hushed voice doing nothing with how close Shane is to them.

“And what does that say about him?”

“What does it say about me?” Shane interrupts, setting the glass on the table and tapping along the sides with his fingers. “I’ve modelled with other people before.”

His mother sighs. Takes Shane’s hands in hers. “It’s not just that. The company has a request from another agent for a double shoot. It will be…suggestive.”

“It’s with another man,” David cuts in, not harsh, or mean, just stating the facts.

Shane has worked with other people before. With other men before. But then it was products, and they were shown individually, no traces of anything sensual.

After all that’s happened the past few months, the request feels like a blow to the sternum, knocking his heart right out of his chest. It evokes a creeping feeling of paranoia. That somehow, people have found out about his not so hetero exploits and are using this as his exposè. That all his fooling around with Rozanov will be leaked, accusations and claims piling on top of each other the second the shoot is released to the world.

A thought that Rozanov is behind all this, orchestrating Shane’s downfall so he can collect collateral, and laugh right in his face. Shane figures he probably deserves it, after the party. Then again, would Rozanov do such a thing? Be as petty as to let this fall onto Shane, simply for the fact that Shane had a girlfriend when they were fucking?

“So, what do you say?” Yuna looks at him, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her face.

The silence swallows Shane whole. He can just say no, and not have to worry about this. But he’s got nothing against two men doing an advert together. Hell, he probably would’ve said yes without this much pause a few months back.

But his problems weigh heavy, something Shane can’t shake.

Despite that, he still feels inclined to agree.

“I’ll do it,” he says, meeting his parents' eyes. “It’s fine, honestly.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Yuna approves, already getting out her phone to presumably email the company back with Shane’s approval. “You know, this will be so good for your publicity viewings, people can be—”

The chatter fades to dull background noise as Shane drifts. Scrutinising over every time he and Rozanov could’ve been seen out in public together. Almost never, he thinks. Not unless someone was constantly watching Mistress M. Or was at the party, which feels the much more viable option. But everyone was smashed, and the only thing he and Rozanov talked about was the annoyance over each other's supposed girlfriends.

The photoshoot will amount to nothing. He knows this. He’ll do it, it’ll release, and his life will continue on as normal.

He’ll date Rose, actually ask her out, and probably never see Rozanov again. Outside of billboards and advertisements, Rozanov will slowly fade out of Shane’s life, leaving behind the collection of sex-toys under Shane’s bed, now collecting dust in their box.

Shane doesn’t know when he fucked himself over this bad, but he supposes it was inevitable. He was never meant to have the relationship he wanted, especially not with another man. With Rozanov. Their quick-fucks were viotile, meant to amount to nothing more. Never sleeping in the same bed, waking to the dawning sun, making breakfast together in the light of the kitchen. It’s far-away, a fantasy just out of his grasp.

Their food comes, and Shane picks at it in silence, letting his parents fill in the gaps where he’s lacking.

The car ride to the studio is mostly silent, dragging onwards from their dinner meal a good two weeks ago, some jaunty pop song flooding through the speakers.

Shane still hasn’t spoken to Rozanov. Hasn’t dared go back to Mistress M, although now more out of fear that he’ll be found out. That everyone has eyes on him, watching, waiting for the wrong move to be made.

Inside, it’s as much the same as it always is. Shane shrugs off his jacket, sits in the chair while the stylist muses over his hair, waiting for the other model to show up. His mother keeps up a steady chatter, going through more modelling offers Shane’s received, and telling him exactly what she thinks of the new promotional ‘influencers’ on her Instagram feed.

When the door to the room swings open, it seems Shane’s head is the only one that turns, eyes flicking up to meet his modelling partners—

Rozanov’s. His eyes flick up to meet Rozanov’s, who stands in the doorway with a matching shell-shocked expression, wired earphones hanging over the neck of his hoodie, one hand shoved in the pocket. His light eyes jump around the small dressing room, taking in the stylists, Shane’s mother, the man in the corner who Shane presumes is Rozanov’s agent.

Everyone but Shane himself, who Rozanov firmly ignores, pushing past that wall of tension to sit in his own seat, start up a conversation with the man who comes over to fuss with those curls.

The paranoia in Shane stands, confused, at a crossroad. Rozanov must have played some part in orchestrating this. But the flicker of surprise across his features means he hadn’t intended for Shane to be the other model.

Whoever put them in this predicament it’s too late now, the both of them too stubborn to outright refuse. Feeling the tension curl around the room, across desks and makeup bags, swirling around chairs to strike Shane right in the heart, keep his opinions against doing this firmly pinned.

After sitting through talks with the intimacy coordinator, and the director, Shane is taken to change, packing his boxer briefs (as they always seem to do), and guided out to the set, which has been made to resemble a living room, deep, comfortable couches with an ornate coffee table in front, careful carvings making up for the otherwise lack of decor. The photos are to be in greyscale, dimmed and darkened around the edges. Shane had seen the concept shots.

Perched on the very edge of the couch, the director gets Shane to try out a few different angles on his own, moving and shifting him around the scene, before they finally bring Rozanov in.

Seeing him in the advertisements does nothing compared to how he is in real life. His light eyes seem to glint darker, muscles flexing and tensing as he sprawls out on the couch, cocking his head to the side.

“Hello Hollander,” he murmurs, lips barely parting. There’s no teasing lilt in his tone, and his eyes flash to something vulnerable before settling back into their darkened demeanor.

“Rozanov,” Shane nods, moving into his position on the other side of the couch, spreading his legs apart just enough. “What was the rush for?” he says, and there’s a pause as the director tells them to move, and the coffee table is re-angled.

Rozanov looks confused, before it clicks. “Was in Russia. My father passed.”

Shane’s brain does a double-take, realigning everything he knew about Rozanov and twisting it to fit around this new information.

His father died.

Suddenly, Shane feels bad for acting like an asshole, and blowing Rozanov off the whole time until now.

“It is fine. He is in better place now,” Rozanov supplies, jaw ticking with tension as they stand up, and people come in to change the set.

Off to the side they stand, Rozanov taking the offered water bottle.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea,” Shane gives.

He receives a shrug. “It is fine. You do not need to apologise,” Shane watches as Rozanov’s throat bobs, gulping back the water like it’s his lifeline. “No more talk about him now.”

Shane nods, hands on the table as he leans back against it, staring at the floor. Rozanov’s hand moves to hold the table as well, centimetres away from Shane’s. The skin where they almost touch feels too hot, prickling with goosebumps. Shane’s mouth feels dry. It’s the wrong time to be getting bothered like this, after talking about Rozanov's departure to Russia, and as they stand here, both naked bar their underwear. The heat from the times they’ve been like this before creeps in, sinking its teeth into the tightly coiled arousal in Shane’s gut, long since untouched. It’s all he can think of now.

“How’s your girlfriend?” he asks, because if there’s one thing that can will away his potential boner, it’s speaking of the thing that brought so much distance between them.

Rozanov’s breath hitches. His head turns too fast, confused. “...Girlfriend?” he questions, like Shane is insane.

“Yeah,” Shane brings himself to look back. “Svetlana?” he prompts.

Emotions Shane can’t read present across Rozanov’s face long before he speaks. “Svetlana is not my girlfriend. I told you I don’t have a girlfriend—”

“What?” it’s out before Shane can think to reel it back in. Keep his thoughts on sure lockdown.

More silence. Broken only by the director calling them over to set. Rozanov never told him Svetlana wasn’t his girlfriend. That he doesn’t have a girlfriend at all. What the hell is he talking about?

“Svetlana is only friend. I have never dated her.”

Shane has to be called over to set again, standing stock-still in his daze.

After that, his brain can’t let his thoughts go. Whenever Rozanov touches him, electricity crackles under his skin. Light blooms from a thousand suns and contorts to fit inside the pads of Rozanov’s fingers, settling around his hips, breath panting hot and heavy down his neck. A hand interlocking fingers with his own as he curls an arm around Shane’s waist. Their heads on each others shoulders, mouths close to grazing necks but never quite getting there.

It stirs the heat in Shane, giving his cheeks a rosy flush he attempts to play off as being too warm. In reality, every stare he gets from Rozanov burns hotter. It’s stifling now, the heat, turning up all his senses. He reads every touch as sexual, having been denied from the pleasure for so many weeks.

He knows something is missing. That the confusion with Rozanov thinking he knew about his single-status was alluding to something else, but in this moment, Shane can only feel the desire.

The shoot ends all too soon, the director calling a wrap on the final take, Shane stumbling back into the tiny, private changing room they had given him. He leans against the wall once inside, sliding down onto the bench attached. Letting his head fall back. Beads of sweat glide down his skin, hair thoroughly mused from where he’s been running his hands through it.

Rozanov had to have felt the tension. How could he not, when the air was so thick between them? Stifling, all-consuming as they touched. Being this close to Rozanov again is dangerous, and entirely the reason Shane hadn’t wanted to see him again. For it’s always led to this. Sex. The canal need to get each other off, to have that hot, slick press of their bodies together. Never had Shane known anything else when he is around Rozanov.

It’s a careful balancing act. Not giving too much. Not allowing themselves to get too caught up in the emotions of it all, permitting themselves to just sex. No strings attached, for Rozanov had a girlfriend.

But he never did. The fact that shattered Shane’s thin wall of defence, letting his emotions ride in high and proud, demanding he get close to the man once more. Tell Rozanov that he too, has no girlfriend, and allow his mind to give in to his body’s needs.

Shane is moving before he can think about his destination. But he doesn’t have to. He knows where he’s going. Would know a thousand times over.

Rozanov’s changing room is across the hall from Shane’s and in less than ten seconds, Shane is knocking on the door, consequences be damned. He knows what he felt. The thick ropes binding them together the longer they posed for the photoshoot, hands wandering all over each other but never really allowed to touch.

“What—” Rozanov doesn’t get his first word out before Shane is in the small space with him, breathing heavily. “Hollander. Wrong room.”

With a shake of his head, Shane disagrees. “No. No, this is right. I—”

He must appear a crazed man as he steps into Rozanov’s space, eyes flitting over those gorgeous features, sloping and sharp, with a gentleness Shane has come to know over their repeated hook-ups.

His hands settle around Rozanov’s hips. He keeps them loose, giving Rozanov the opportunity to pull away. But Rozanov doesn’t. Just breathes, air fanning across Shane’s lips as their emotions lie unspoken between them.

“What do you want?” Rozanov asks, his own hands cupping the back of Shane’s head. “Sex?”

Shane answers by pressing his lips to Rozanov’s.

The pleasure is immediate. Rolling and thick, sparking alight all the fireworks in his stomach. He moves his lips against the other man’s, feeling the soft plushness of them. Before he’s being pushed away.

Oh. Rozanov wasn’t kissing him back.

Instead, the hands have moved from his hair and settled on his chest, sending Shane staggering back a couple steps into the wall behind him. Rozanov’s breathing heavily, searching for something he can’t quite find.

“You have girlfriend,” he says, raggedly, like that one kiss had stolen all the air from his lungs and is refusing to give it back.

Shane knows, logically, that throwing himself at Rozanov wasn’t the most forward thinking plan. Especially when there are gaping holes in his knowledge of this whole girlfriend-not business. Especially since Rozanov is under the impression that Shane and Rose are a thing. Which…Shane supposes they kind of are. It’s just not official.

But like most things concerning his dick, Shane finds that it all fades to background noise, narrowing down to one point;

“Just fuck me.”

Shane doesn’t move. Lets Rozanov decide to pound his face with his fist, or his ass with that gorgeous cock.

“What the fuck—Hollander—we are expected to be out of here in five minutes,” Rozanov hisses, jerking a thumb at the door. Shane wishes he would jerk his cock instead.

He shrugs. “Rozanov. Ilya,” he pleads, hoping the first name is enough to tip him over the edge.

A huff. “You are so needy—”

It’s not at all judgemental. Fond, if Shane knew Rozanov thought of him that way.

Then, they’re kissing, and everything's been set back into place. Shane gasps into it, not too concerned about sounds leaking through the door, not when he finally has this, a man he’s been thinking of for so long willingly taking him apart in his arms.

Shane sets his hands to working at Rozanov’s boxer briefs, tugging them down as much as the other will let him before it’s him that’s turned, pushed against the wall by the hand on his upper back, his own underwear brought down just enough to not soil or wrinkle when Rozanov undoubtedly enters. They’re still company property, after all.

“No lube,” Rozanov gasps, mouthing Shane’s neck. “Gimme spit.”

Like Shane’s a dog, Rozanov offers his hand. Like an obedient prized bitch, Shane spits, coating the palm of Rozanov’s hand with his own saliva, cock jumping at the thought of it being shoved back inside of him.

Rozanov makes quick work of it, conscious of the time they don’t have, each passing second arousing more suspicion. For Shane, it only arouses his cock, heart hammering out of his ribcage at the thought of being fucked again for the first time in weeks.

Three fingers are in his ass, scissoring his tight walls apart, when Rozanov comments.

“Fuck Hollander. You’re tight. Not using the toys I gave you?”

The very thought has Shane reeling over the edge. “No,” he gasps around another stifled moan. “Just wanted your cock. Oh—oh, ye-yeah!” he fails to quiet this, and welcomes the two long fingers that slip into his mouth as a way of shutting him up.

Eagerly, Shane sucks them in further, wrapping his tongue around the digits. “Are you ready?” grunts Rozanov from behind him, the fingers in his ass curling and stretching out one more time before exiting with a wet, lewd noise, almost immediately replaced with the head of Rozanov’s cock.

Fingers in his mouth preventing him from speaking, Shane hums a yes, nodding his head. Rozanov’s free arm loops around his waist from behind, then he’s pushing in, the feeling burning and pulling Shane to the max, wholly underprepped for his, but gagging for it regardless.

“So tight,” Rozanov repeats, using his hold on Shane’s body to push him back onto his cock, rather than thrusting forward. “Just relax. You feel so tense.”

The fingers slip from his mouth and drag a wet, sticky trail down from his chin to his navel, circling around his hard cock to squeeze his thighs. Then up, up again settling his arm over one shoulder and across his clavicle to rest his hand on the other. Rozanov is embracing him now, holding Shane close against him.

Words befall the both of them, the air filled with wet, slapping noises as Rozanov squeezes Shane tight, his hips fucking up into Shane’s hole, the burn and pressure overtaken by the slowly unfurling coil in his stomach, shoving him closer and closer to his orgasm.

It feels…initmate, in a way their sex never has before. Like Rozanov is clinging to the last lifeline he feels he has, dragging this out as much as he can without actually using more time than they have. Shane arches back against Rozanov, his back a curving C as Rozanov’s thrusts get sloppy, arms tightening.

”Shane—” he gasps, pulling out just in time to cum into his fist, a fair bit of it splattering onto the wall.

Shane doesn’t register the use of his first name, too busy whiting out himself, eyes rolling back.

They get plenty of side glances when the finally come out into the main area (Shane a good minute before Rozanov), but everyone is too polite to mention their extended absences when getting changed. There’s a few more people he has to talk to before he’s allowed to leave, heading out with his mother to where they’ve parked the car a couple blocks away. She fills him with her usual chatter, then hums along to the radio as they drive to grab coffee.

Shane does his best to remove that encounter with Rozanov from his mind, wiping it fresh and storing it away for later contemplation, and not when he’s sitting in a car with his mother. Still it lingers, and he finds himself wishing that Rozanov had finished inside, trying not to let himself feel disappointed over the fact.

Rose
3:24PM
Want to meet up tomorrow?
I leave Canada next week

His saving grace, thankfully, comes in the form of Rose Landry.

3:28PM
Yeah, that’d be great
Can’t believe you’re leaving so soon

Rose
3:30PM
It certainly feels that way haha

A large part of Shane is sad to see Rose have to leave so quickly, not after they became as close as they did. But the other part of him regrets this closeness, and wants to pull as far away from it as he possibly can. They’re not official, not yet, and this will probably be Shane’s last chance to ensure it stays that way. Not for Rozanov. For himself.

He wants Rose to find someone who isn’t sleeping with another man. Who will love her back in the way she gives. Shane has known for a while he’s not that person. That he probably never will be, at least not to any woman.

His heart sinks, and he feels like the biggest asshole ever, but Shane knows he has to end things. However he does it, it’s going to hurt. So he forces himself to breathe, even though it does shit-all to help.

A chill is just starting to set in, tendrils of cold seeping under the cuffs of Shane’s jacket and up his arms, giving him the slightest shiver. At this time in the afternoon, the park is bustling, parents trying to wrangle their kids into having some semblance of control, teenagers overtaking all the playground, sitting atop of the monkey bars and laughing at each other.

Rose is by the coffee van, and comes over to him with a smile as Shane approaches, handing him a warm paper cup. The heat is more delicious than the drink itself, fighting off the chill and easing the tension coiling inside Shane like a livewire, ready to snap and tear him apart with it.

They walk, feet shuffling along the path as they take the outside loop of the park, trees rustling with the wind.

“I’m heading back to America next week,” Rose starts, getting straight to the point. “My agents have me lined up for another film.”

“Locked up again?” Shane jokes, to which Rose just rolls her eyes.

“What do you expect? It’s the same every time. You’d think people would tire of it by now, honestly.” She shakes her head, ponytail bouncing with the movement.

A dog sniffs Shane’s leg as it passes them, over too distracted on their phone to notice. “Are you looking forward to going back though?” Shane questions, circling around the inevitable topic.

Rose shrugs. “I suppose. At least it’s being filmed in my home state, so I’ll get to live at home, rather than the stupid hotels they have me holed up in over here.”

The drink is warm as Shane takes a sip, heating his throat. “I’ve never really experienced that. Montreal has pretty much all the studios I go to.”

“It’s a little hard sometimes, although I can’t really complain, getting waited on like I do,” Rose hums. “How was your last shoot, by the way?”

Terrible. Sickening. Good. Horrible. Arousing. The best sex Shane has ever had.

“It went okay,” is all that comes out instead.

Rose snorts. “Just ‘okay?’ C’mon Hollander, give me more than that.”

Yes Hollander. Cum for me, cum for me—

Good boy.

Shane swallows hard. “It was…different. To what I usually do.”

“I’m sure you looked good. More than. Much better than the other guy,” Rose teases, knocking her shoulder lightly against his, taking Shane’s reluctance to speak as embarrassment.

Rather, it’s a black pit, and at the bottom is Rozanov, mouth curving into a smirk as he grins up at Shane, not making any attempt to reach for him, knowing Shane will come regardless. It’s their bodies tightly pressed together, Rozanov’s hands around Shane’s hips, presenting him to the camera as he mumbles in Shane’s ear. Telling him how good he looks. Their animosity is forgotten as they slip back into the ways of sex, letting their arousal take the lead, pushing all other thoughts of each other out of their minds as they touch mindlessly, needing to get off.

Now, despite the cold, Shane feels a drop of sweat trickle down his back. “Maybe,” he says offhandedly.

They continue their walk in silence for a couple minutes, but it doesn’t feel awkward. Rather a natural lull between them. Both taking sips from their quickly-cooling drinks as laughter gets louder around them, nearing the playground. The raised voices of parents yelling. Car doors slamming shut and whizzing past.

“I guess this will be the last we’ll see of each other for a while,” Rose is the first to break the silence. “I’m flying out to Vancouver tomorrow night to do a couple promotional things there before actually flying into the states.”

Shane knows what she’s trying to imply. He’s only caught it because it’s the only thing he’s thinking of as well.

“I’ll call,” he offers. It feels like the truth. He wants to call Rose after she leaves.

“To catch up? Or—because we’re something more than just people who go on dates with each other?”

Rose has turned to look at him, and he can’t put it off any longer. The feeling is gaping in his chest.

This isn’t because of Rozanov.

This is for Shane. A recognition of his own feelings, and only those related to Rose. No other people are included in his decision, for it is his alone.

Steadying himself, Shane takes a breath. “...as friends. If that’s what you’d want. It’s what I do.”

His eyes meet hers, and Rose looks…a little hurt, eyes widening and lips party slightly. But she sucks in a breath, and collects herself.

“Friends.” She echoes. “...Have you…always seen us as that?”

Truthfully, Shane shakes his head. “No. I only saw that after we had gone out a couple times. I just…don’t see myself with you as anything more than we are now.”

“Friends who go on dates and occasionally kiss?” Rose jokes, and it is said lightheartedly.

“Okay, maybe not the kissing part,” Shane concedes, letting a small smile play on his lips. The pit is still growing in his stomach, guilt lining the edges. He feels as if he’s letting Rose down, sounding like some douchebag who stings girls along for the fun of it. “Seriously. Uh. This isn’t because of you—it’s just—I’m not interested in anything more than this, and I’d rather still have the chance at being your friend than getting into a relationship that might not work out?”

His words all come out in a rush, pushing against each other to be said. Rose takes a moment to pick through them, dumping her coffee cup in the bin and standing there, lips pursed.

After a breath, she speaks. “Thanks for being honest. Most guys do tend to jump into a relationship that falls apart far too fast.”

Shane comes closer, discarding his cup in the same bin, unsure as of what to do with his hands now he has nothing to hold.

“I also think I…was looking for a relationship. I do really like you Shane,” Rose admits honestly. “I like what we have now. You feel so…easy to talk to. Definitely a big change to the shitty people I meet in the industry. But I’m not going to force you into a relationship if you don’t want one. I’m okay with this now.”

Shane blinks. Unsure.

Rose scoffs slightly, wiping a tear from under her eye and pulling Shane in for a hug, hand rubbing down his back in a slow caress. And Shane finds himself hugging her back, taking the moment to right himself.

When they pull away, Rose’s eyes are brighter.

“Are you sure about us being friends?” Shane says. He can’t help it.

“Dunno. Are you going to start talking drivel? Telling me how amazing my films are, and how much you just loved watching me in handcuffs—”

A bubble of laughter escapes Shane’s lips.

“No, but seriously, I like being friends with you, Shane. Of course I want to continue. But you owe me big time for breaking my heart.”

Shane can tell she’s only half-joking, but he nods seriously, taking one of her hands in his. “I’ll do anything.”

“Like soft serve?” Rose grins, nodding over to the lengthening line of kids outside the pink ice-cream truck.

Shane protests his way of eating the flake before the ice-cream is correct, all while Rose laughs at him, managing to smear soft serve over his nose.

The pit in Shane’s stomach closes, but doesn’t go away. Now, it will lie dormant, waiting for the moment his tenuous relationship with Rozanov bubbles over and explodes.

Ilya is in his apartment when the dread sets in. The niggling fear at the back of his mind, the same one that’d been sitting dormant ever since he emailed Otterman about the photoshoot.

He can’t go through with this.

He knows it’s going to go big—the brand they’re advertising is international, and a pretty huge fucking deal. It’s undeniable that it will make it back to Russia. Which, admittedly, is exactly the place he wanted to piss off most when he signed up to this.

Hindsight is a bitch. So is his partly rage-fueled need for proving to people that he can so whatever the fuck he wants.

Sinking down onto the couch in his living room, Ilya drags a hand down his face. Knows that he can’t let this photoshoot out. It’s too risky, too much of a statement. To bold. Alexei would murder him on sight if Ilya ever stepped foot in Russia again if it were released.

Shit, he’d never see his parents again.

This is what sinks the boulder down through his gut, twists the knife right into his heart, plunging deep, splurting out a vivid, gory red.

Hand shaking as he reaches for his phone, Ilya sighs, screwing his eyes shut and willing the tears back. Thinks of how pathetic it was, to hold Hollander like that. A mimic of an embrace by a lover, yet so far removed.

The tears don’t fall, settling instead as a large lump in the back of Ilya’s throat.

Chapter End Notes

The one pov i have of ilya in this chapter and its just me putting him through the wringer sorry everyone.

Happy ilya next chapter promise

Chapter 8: Feelings

Chapter Summary

2 New Voicemails

It glares back at him like a question, the two unheard voicemails sitting placidly in his inbox. One from a little less than half an hour ago, and the other from weeks back. Why he didn’t check it, he doesn’t know.

Chapter Notes

Sat down for like five hours straight and locked in for this one cause a03 was playing with me [it kept coming up and down for about two days]

Slightly slower chapter, but it’s muchly needed after the shitstorms the others have been, winding down as our boys talk about their feelings with the help of people that are far too above this.

Also reminder that throughout their whole conversation Ilya and Svetlana are speaking in Russian!

Two days after the photoshoot, Shane receives a call. A call he doesn’t answer, as he’s busy driving, and you probably shouldn’t be on the phone with your agent/mom while speeding down the quiet streets of the city.

When he does, however, make it safely inside his apartment with his multiple quotes and a headache from trying to buy a new fridge (as his has always been just too small for its dedicated fridge-gap in the kitchen, and it’s really been ticking him off) he picks up his phone, flicking over to his voicemails, as his mother is never one to wait around and wait for the other person to call back.

2 New Voicemails

It glares back at him like a question, the two unheard voicemails sitting placidly in his inbox. One from a little less than half an hour ago, and the other from weeks back. Why he didn’t check it, he doesn’t know.

Setting his phone on speaker, he moves around his kitchen, pulling out whatever he needs for his Thai Noodle Salad (as per instructed by Google).

“Hey Shane. I’ve got an email from the company and Rozanov’s agent telling me that the shoot’s been cancelled. It won’t be going out to the public. Still unsure whether you’ll have to do a re-do or not, and if it was a management thing. I said nothing about pulling it, but I can believe why Rozanov’s side wouldn’t want it publicised. Kind of an asshole move, don’t you think? To have everyone take the time out of their day to make that, while knowing it was never going to go through. And they made the offer—”

Shane snorts at his mother’s incessant rambling, then stares glumly down at the rubbery carrot in his hand, long since turned bad, rolling around in the back of his fridge like it was. (And definitely not because Shane didn’t eat it. Oh no. He chooses to blame all his problems on that stupidly small fridge.) Chucking it in the bin, he listens to the rest of his mother’s voicemail, Yuna getting carried away while there’s no one there to stop her. During that time, Shane manages to prepare his whole salad, and get the meat cooking.

When it’s finally over, and his phone goes silent, do the implications settle in. Cancelled. Rozanov had called off the photoshoot. Or Rozanov’s team. Whatever.

Why?

Ideas ping-pong around his brain, each more lacking than the last. Most likely, Rozanov’s agent wasn’t impressed with the standards, or the photos themselves, or the potential implications behind them. It happens more often than you would think.

A small part of Shane is glad. It means no one outside of that studio will he him and Rozanov, pressed close and tight, hot breaths on each other's necks, a low, thrumming heat pulsing between their bodies. The whole thing had felt so far removed from what they were experiencing the days previous. Cold, immovable silence replaced by heat filling the gaps between them again. Like when they were still regularly fucking, not just having a quick one in a tiny changing room. The feeling of it lingers, tying knots around his heart. Not just the sensation of sex, but the thoughts behind it too. The careful way he was held. Pressed close against Rozanov’s chest. Loving.

If one could ever describe their relationship as such.

The meat sizzles loudly in the pan. Outside, the sky is darkening, slipping past a gentle sunset into twilight, stars encroaching in on visibility. The light above him is a warmer tone of white. Not something Shane picked out, but an element he likes nonetheless.

Taking the opportunity to drive his winding thoughts away from Rozanov, Shane clicks on to the next voicemail, not reading who it’s from, and fully prepared to disregard it as junk.

The message starts with static-filled wind, and the rustling of clothing. Frowning, Shane pauses for a second while peeling his (much better quality) carrots. Then, he has to set the peeler down completely, fingers clenching around the edge of the countertop in white-knuckled shock.

”Hello Hollander.”

The flames from the stove lick up the sides, curling in around the food. Stars no longer emerge from their cocoons, but battle for space in the sky, pulsing brighter and further and bigger, gandering for attention.

“You asshole. I hate you.”

Rozanov’s words are slurred, like speech is nothing but a foreign concept. His accent is slipping, harshening the vowels and jutting around consonants, all spoken in a deep, desperate tone. Shane pulls himself away from the countertop and to his phone.

It was delivered the night of the party. Somewhere during the time of Rozanov repeatedly calling him, and him shutting his phone off in annoyance. Somehow, he’d missed this for weeks. Sitting dusty and raw in the bottom of his inbox.

Over the speakers, Rozanov continues on. ”Why do you have girlfriend? Do you not see me as worthy girlfriend? I do not have girlfriend. I could be yours. You come into the shop, Hollander. And everyone is an asshole. But you. You are funny. Never boring. Not boring to me. I did not call you boring. No. Liar. Liar told you that.”

He could’ve known. The realisation hits him softly. A light blow. Then, the wind changes, and the bruise is being pressed against, fingers digging it deeper and deeper into flesh. All this time, the weeks spent agonising over that tiny fact, all for it to have been proved untrue. Weeks ago, he could’ve known this, understood that Svetlana was only Rozanov’s girlfriend in his head. That Shane was the only one calling them that. He doesn’t know how he would’ve acted, but a part of him is confident he’d have talked to Rozanov, and they’d be on considerably better terms than they are now.

I could be yours.

Rozanov wants him. Ilya—Shane decides, last names feeling like an old prejudice— wants him. Would take Shane as his own. The way his words steady around these words, like it’s the one thing he’s most sure of. Juxtaposing, Shane feels his first tears fall, hot and unbidded down his cheek.

“I think I am liar, Shane. I want to be with you at this terrible fucking party and then you tell me you have a girlfriend. A girlfriend. When you have been sleeping with me, for weeks. Maybe we were not exclusive. Maybe I did not specify. Maybe I am greedy.”

He’d strung Ilya along. It’s the only thing Shane can think. He’d supplied and fed into the lie that he had a girlfriend. Their relationship was never specified to be monogamous, purely because Shane had assumed it wasn’t. Had made peace with that.

Apparently, he calmness towards it was false, because the Thai Noodle Salad is burning in the pan, and the rubbery carrot in his bin is just peeking out, lid not quite having closed on it properly.

“But I want you so fucking bad. I think I will die if I do not kiss you. I do not think I care anymore about your girlfriend. I can be whatever you want Shane. Everything for you. I will let you have me. Shane. I—”

Nothing. The message is cut off. Hands trembling, Shane reaches for his phone, but that’s all there is, a cut-off message laced with nothing but guilt.

Only when his smoke alarm goes off does he move, chucking the burnt food in the bin, cleaning up the mess he made out of his kitchen.

Ilya’s words roll around his head, melding into one another. The brunt of their miscommunication hits him full-force, ice-cold water after weeks of boiling kettles, squealing their distaste.

It takes Shane longer still to come to the conclusion that he should probably talk to someone about this. All of this. Not a licensed professional, but…a casual conversation.

Had Ilya been a girl, maybe Shane wouldn’t be so utterly terrified.

He’s aware that most of the guys he works with aren’t exactly the most…supportive. It was never really mentioned until something ‘queer’ was shoved right in their faces, and the onslaught of hatred would come spewing after it, so much so it became a common expectation for everyone to begin the tirade of homophobia. Coming to them with his boy problems would get him laughed at at best. At worst? Shane can hardly entertain the idea in his own mind.

Shane can’t put this on Rose. Not after their not-really breakup, after they agreed to be friends. Telling her he was being fucked by a man the whole time they were ‘together’ is a final blow to the gut Shane could never deliver even if his life depended on it. Perhaps one day, when this is all smoothed over and tied neatly into manageable packages with slim pink bows, he’ll present one to her.

Ultimately, he decides to stay silent, sinking into his migrated-to spot on his couch. There’s a panicky feeling in his chest he can’t seem to shake, growing with every inhale. He’s itching to do something about it, even if it’s not necessarily helpful.

Shane messages Ilya.

After what feels like eons, Ilya is back in Mistress M, wiping down the countertop he stands behind as a group of young-looking men meander through the store, laughing and pointing at items. He can’t find it in himself to care, ducking under the counter to shove the rag and cleaning spray back. Considering the whole shitshow fiasco of the stupid photoshoot he did with Hollander, this feels like a job he can control. He hasn’t been offered anything since the last shoot, and as frustrating as the press is starting to become (okay, there’s been three articles written about his sudden departure from the modelling scene, shoved in the back of newspapers nobody reads, but he likes to think his point still stands.) having sex toys to sell keeps his mind off of the worst of things.

When he looks up again, all six of the young men are staring at him, not even pretending to look away when he levels his stare. It only serves to spur them closer, approaching the counter as if they’re going to steal his lunch money.

“You work here?” one of them sneers, nose wrinkled in disgust, as if it’s not blatantly obvious. His hair is bleached blond and shaved close to his head, the tanned skin of his right arm hardly visible under the swath of tattoos, from knives to breasts.

Ilya leans his hip against the counter. “Yes. What you want?”

A taller boy moves closer. “You sell like, gay shit, right?” The look on his face tells Ilya that the last thing these boys are here for is ‘gay shit.’

Ilya crosses his arms. The boy's smirking face morphs into Alexei’s, shaggy black locks to a lighter brown, chest broadening. “Men’s section that way,” he gives them nothing more than a nod of his head.

“Cool,” Alexei laughs, and all six of them snicker as they turn to move over to the left of the shop, a hive mind in with their actions.

Ilya fiddles with the counter. Ignores the echoing laughter and countless slurs thrown around from the boys mouths, prodding and teasing each other with the display toys. Daring each other to buy it. Placing stupid bets on which one of them would get fucked with the ten-inch flesh-coloured dildo that sits atop of the shelves.

It’s a joke. A sharp reminder of what would’ve happened, had he let that photoshoot out to the public. The unwillingness to understand who he is, the surface-level teasing and taunts that would undoubtedly descend into something deeper, forbidding him from his home. Suspicions of his sexuality were going to arise, and then be confirmed as Ilya stood powerless to defend them.

“You want me to kick them out?” Curtis asks, sliding up in front of Ilya. Admittedly, Ilya still hasn’t gotten around to knowing him all that well, bar a few casual conversations here and there. Silently, he doubts the quiet man’s ability to rid these kids, but he nods anyway, pretending to be indifferent.

Twenty seconds later, and Ilya is listening in to the harshest talking-to of his life, Curtis towering over the boys, mouth set into a firm line as he speaks, never once raising his voice. He discreetly lays digs at the boys for their not-so-subtle homophobia, telling them they would be blacklisted at all the sex-toy stores in the city if they didn’t mind their mouths. By the end of it, the boys are starting to look a lot less like Alexei, and very much more like the assholes they are. Curtis watches them down the street before heading back in, shaking his head.

“Seriously, fucking kids.” He slides behind the counter next to Ilya, jerking his thumb at the back door. “You can take your break now dude. Technically, I was late to clock in anyway.”

It’s a lie. Never in his time of working here, has Curtis been even a little late to his shift. Still, Ilya takes the offer for what it is, swinging his legs over the counter.

“Thanks,” he mutters, not making eye contact as he makes to leave.

Curtis doesn’t seem offended, like it’s everyday that he deals with shitty people. “It’s no worries. My fiance works in teaching, so you pick up a few things on how to deal with assholes.”

Ilya nods like he understands. Right now, he just wants to get out of his own head. Stop seeing Alexei at every turn.

Svetlana corners him that night. The second Ilya gets in, he can tell his roommate has something to say, her smirk not-at-all subtle as she looks up from the couch, nails freshly painted and an array of different bottles spiralling out around her, all of which she pushes away as Ilya’s pulling off his shoes.

“Come Ilya. Sit,” she tells him in Russian, setting aside a nail file and tucking her leg up closer so she can start on her toes.

Ilya carefully selects the other couch to perch upon, looking around the room as if the walls would bite, hands on his knees, back ramrod straight.

“Cutris told me you were off today. Said you went all distant when a group of boys came in,” Svetlana starts, cutting right to the point, leaving Ilya no space to overthink or even consider she could be meaning something else. “It’s not like you to shoot down an opportunity to tell assholes to get fucked.”

He takes back everything nice he’s ever said about Curtis. That man is far too snakey and kind for his own good.

“Jesus, sit down properly, you look like you’ve got a stick up your ass,” Svetlana eyes him from her couch, pulling back over the various nail polish colours. “I’m just trying to ask if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.” He shifts back, letting himself slouch down on the couch slightly.

“You still haven’t told me about your father.”

Ilya stills. “Not much to say anymore.”

Svetlana sounds exasperated as she speaks. ”Ilya. You have not told me a thing about your visit to Russia. You are telling me nothing of interest happened? You and your brother got along fine, and you feel fine?”

“I feel great.”

Thwack. Ilya misses the nail polish flying straight for his chest and it lands, not quite hard enough to bruise. Still hurts like a bitch though. He rubs over the stop with his hand. Svetlana levels him with a glare.

“Tell me what’s been going on. You’re not some god, Ilya. Your problems are not just going to vanish if you sit around moping.”

She sighs. Ilya doesn't dare interrupt. Holding out her fingers, she begins to count off.

“You won’t tell me about your family. Hollander hasn’t been here since the party. Which I found you high at, stumbling around on the roof like a fool. You cancelled the photoshoot you did with Hollander, and you won’t tell me about anything. It’s always so secretive with you. The illusive Ilya Rozanov, incapable of digesting his emotions and spewing them out in an articulate manner.”

“You can’t spew articulately,” Ilya defends, feeling like a kitten perched in its mother’s jaws by the scruff of its neck.

He receives another bottle of nail polish thrown his way. Svetlana has actually moved on to painting her toenails now, a dark reddish-brown that matches her fingers. Nothing more is said, Svetlana having completed her piece, waiting not-so-patiently for Ilya to get his act together.

He flounders, finding he can’t. Hollander seems too sensitive to touch. Alexei means spilling his feelings raw.

“...Father is buried near my mother. The ceremony was dull.”

He receives a hum, and lack of eye contact as Svetlana focuses on her task. Ilya’s grateful for it. Makes it feel much more like he’s talking to himself. Not that he ever verbalises these sort of thoughts. There’s a first time for everything, he supposes.

“You supposed it would be,” Svetlana adds to the conversation as she dips the brush in again. “I apologise for not being there.”

He shrugs. “It’s fine. Alexei was…a lot. Probably better that you weren’t there to fight him.”

“Did he do anything to you?” A valid question, a million different answers, none of which feel right.

“Only yell. And bitch.” Svetlana snorts. “He got drunk after the funeral. I did too, I suppose. He shouldn’t be latching onto me for a while.”

“Glad you finally told him to piss off.”

“Not exactly, but he got the message all the same.” Tilting his head further back against the back of the couch, Ilya stares up at their ceiling, contemplative. “About time for him to finally leave me alone.”

He keeps silent at the realisation of how good those words feel, a crucifying weight lifted off his chest. Like a speed motion picture, Alexei’s face runs through his mind, fading into dull background noise as Ilya lets his eyes close.

Svetlana allows him a minute before a nail file is thrown at his face, jolting him out of the resurgence of memories. “You still haven’t told me about Hollander. What’s going on with you and him?”

“There is no ‘me and him,’” Ilya denies, mouth moving before his brain can. “Not anymore.”

Sveltlana’s eyes light up. “So there was something there before?”

“No. Hollander has a girlfriend. The whole time.”

This renders Svetlana shocked. Or, at the very least, silent, gears in her mind no doubt churning over these words. The implications of them. When she speaks again, it’s to ask for details, and begrudgingly, (although, secretly, Ilya’s finding it both anxiety-inducing and relieving to be saying this out loud) Ilya gives her them, skimming over the part when they fucked ‘exclusively’ for weeks, (like Svetlana isn’t acutely aware of all the times Hollander ‘stopped by’ their apartment) before he gets to the party. He tells her about Hollander revealing he was dating someone. (And later realising that someone was Rose Landry, and this, Svetlana audibly gasps at, claiming to be a fan of some of her work, shocked that Hollander has such a girl.) About their fight. Him coming up to the roof, and leaving Hollander a shitty voicemail he’s heard no response from.

“..Seriously? He said all that shit and then ghosted you?” Svetlana cuts in, her nail-painting session half-abandoned as she grows too invested in the story. “Why the hell did he accept to do the photoshoot then?”

“He probably didn’t know. It was an anonymous request. I asked Otterman to do the shoot.”

Svetlana’s brow furrows further, missing steps in the story, pieced in the wrong order. Mentally, she shuffles to place them together, but draws a blank.

“You told me Otterman asked you to come in for the shoot.”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“I—”

“No. Wait. Did you want the shoot to be with Hollander?”

“No.”

“So then why—”

“I don’t know. He just picked up the job.”

“I’m asking why you requested to do a photoshoot like that in the first place. I didn’t know you wanted to plaster your sexuality out there like that. I know it was supposed to be suggestive. Even if the public presumes you’re straight, they’d have suspicions when looking at it.”

Ilya snorts, deciding he can play this one off. “Well, that’s why I told them not to go through with making it public.”

He watches the expression on Svetlana’s face melt into one of disappointment, huffing as she picks back up her nail polish to start working on her second foot.

Ilya knows he isn’t giving her much of anything, but he’d rather like to keep it that way. That whole piece of himself, the one concerning Russia, his sexuality (a term he’s always found both broadening and restrictive) and everything he bottles up alongside it. Best if he tucks it safely away in the back recesses of his mind.

“Do you want Shane to talk to you again?” Svetlana changes tact, shifting to an easier side of conversation. “In any context.”

Does he? He recalls the feeling of having his body all flush against his own in the changeroom, body dark and heady with desire, craving nothing more than to sink into that soft flesh. Even thinking of it now sends a tiny thrill of arousal through him, slicing open his splayed out fears and jumbled words.

“Hollander,” he chooses to correct Svetlana instead, delay the inevitable for a moment longer.

She laughs at him. “You’ve fucked him, and you’re still using his last name? Come on Ilya.”

All embarrassed over something he knows he shouldn’t be getting flustered over, Ilya caves, thinking back to the scarce times he has called Hollander by his first name—rushed moments during sex, slipping from his drug-addled mind through to his pliant lips.

“Fine. Shane. Whatever.”

”Whatever,” Svetlana mocks him, laughing at her own delight. “So. Do you wanna see him again, or not?”

“He does not want to see me.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Ilya sucks in a deep breath, wishing for strength. “Maybe. Maybe I do want to see him again. But he has a girlfriend. And he has been ghosting me. It will be a waste of my time.”

“Or it’ll result in you two hooking up again,” Svetlana adds unhelpfully, finishing off painting her last toenail, stretching her legs out across the couch to let them dry. “You know, I’m starting to think Mistress M’s losing income because of him. If anything, you should just talk to him to let him back in the shop again—”

“I don’t want to fucking have sex with him, Svetlana!” Ilya explodes, the rage spurring from a place he thought he’d had on lockdown. “I want him to not have lied to me! I want him to not have a girlfriend at all!”

Silence. Filled only by the clatter of a nail polish bottle falling from the coffee table, jolted when Svetlana had jumped slightly at Ilya’s outburst. A sliver of guilt wedges in with the trillion other emotions he’s feeling right now, none of them coming out right, fighting for dominance in his chest.

Ilya only realises he’s risen from the couch when he lowers himself to sit back down onto it, hands clutching the fabric in an attempt for something to calm him down. (It doesn’t work. Ilya doubts anything will, right now.)

“Oh,” Svetlana whispers quietly, a newer expression re-forming on her face. The tones of light teasing and interest washed away by the steady realisation. “You…really like him.” It’s not an accusation.

Pathetically, Ilya nods. Ducking his head into his hand, turning away so he doesn’t have to face anyone. And a minute later, Svetlana, at the cost of her freshly painted toenails, is moving to sit beside him, an arm around his shoulders.

He’s not in love. The texts, and the sex, the taunting each other around the shop, goading the other on to find the toy they wanted. They were always too far apart, orbiting around the same sun. Ilya yearns for more. He’s fallen in love with the idea of loving Shane. Of having him as something he can call his own. Fallen in love with the idea of being loved in return. Had things gone differently, perhaps he would’ve spoken to Shane. Perhaps now, they would be dating, and Ilya would have someone love him back, without having to withdraw the pieces of himself he keeps close.

“You should talk to him,” Svetlana whispers, after a solid few minutes of running her hand through Ilya’s hair, letting him slump against her. “Even if it’s just to tell him to fuck off.”

That gets Ilya to laugh, just a little. He sits up, only to have Svetlana move as well, her back resting one the opposite end of the couch, shoving her feet into Ilya’s lap. “You ruined them. I need a re-do,” she insists, a smirk on her face.

Ilya groans, pushing her feet away. “Get your feet off me. Do it yourself, I am busy.”

“Busy as my salon stylist, come on,” Svetlana teases, kicking at him lightly with her foot, which Ilya bats away again, leaping up from the couch.

He leaves the room laughing, shaking his head at his friend. The silence that had sat between them recently has loosened, back to that comfortable familiarity Ilya can ease himself into. Now though, he desperately needs a little headspace, if only to piece together the last of his thoughts.

His phone buzzes when he enters his room.

Jane
6:32PM
I heard your voicemail

Shane goes to sleep with a writhing mass of caterpillars in his gut, swarming and clumping together like they’ve all been summoned for his humiliation ritual. The good side of all of this is that Ilya hasn’t yet blocked him. Or called him to yell at him. Or texted him back anything. He’s even turned off his read receipts.

So yeah, Shane may be freaking out just a little. But honestly, when isn’t he? He’s faced with a double negative; if Ilya responds, he’ll have to face the consequences that ensue. If he doesn’t, Shane will have to bear the heartbreak for however long he manages to live.

It’s not love.

It’s not.

Restless, he rolls over, getting out of bed and dropping to his knees, reaching under to grab the not-so-secret box underneath. Dildo’s, the cock ring, prostate massager, everything he and Ilya have used is in there, glaring up at him. He sets it aside. Taking it out of hiding and setting it on top of his bedside drawers, an unspoken promise.

Tomorrow, he’s going to return these. Stupid store policy be damned.

His regret is stung high in his chest, calling out its actions from where it’s propped up. Shane had lied, and kept Ilya under that lie. Time after time they had fucked, with him seeing someone on the side. He and Rose were never sexual, but Shane knows that’s not the point. His lack of romantic feelings towards her are not the point. It’s everything else.

All the words feel stuck on Shane’s tongue, glued to the roof of his mouth. His options all lead to dead-ends. The fear of being found out presses down like a crushing weight. A homosexual.

He gets in the shower. It’s nearly the following day. Water pelts down on his back, freezing cold on his burning-up skin, sticking to his shirt as he makes an attempt to peel it off, chucking the wet garment on the shower floor.

Breathes. Shuts his eyes, and focuses only on the steady rise and fall of his chest, heart thumping and alive.

He knows the only way he can possibly claw himself out of this is by talking to Ilya.

He can only hope Ilya will take him back.

It’s nearing four in the afternoon when Shane runs out of mindless tasks to do. His whole apartment is spotless, he finally put in an order for his new (correctly-sized) fridge, and has meal-prepped the next two weeks of his life. (Which, admittedly, was purely because he made enough servings of overnight oats to feed an entire family gathering.)

Sex toys in the backseat of his car, Shane pulls up to Mistress M’s storefront. Then immediately continues on down the road, and getting out in front of a much more socially-acceptable store for knitting patterns and colourful yarn, decorated with the same drab exterior as everything else in this city.

He’s two steps out onto the street before he clocks the fact that his box is clear, from the IKEA set his parents had given him when he moved into his new apartment. Shit.

A whole fifteen minutes later, Shane pulls up in front of Mistress M’s on foot, having decided his plan to not-so-inconspicuously shove the sex-toys inside of his jacket was bound to fail, and choosing to leave them in the footwell of the passenger seat in his car. Alone, he walks in, giving himself only a second to feel self-conscious. The bell dings, alerting everyone of his presence.

Namely, the only other person in the store. Who just so happens to be the employee.

Ilya’s head of curls lifts to meet Shane’s eyes. Then stays there, watching as he approaches the counter. Rests his fingers on top of the wood.

“Can I get you anything?” Ilya asks. It’s not cold. Or defensive. Rather, Ilya sounds like he’s desperately trying to hold back on the little pride he has left.

Words leave Shane’s brain. What little he had planned out for what he was going to say leaps out of the window. “...I was…going to return some things,” he says, like they’re back where they were a couple months ago, with Shane awkwardly holding his dildo. “But, I forgot there’s—”

“No return policy,” Ilya fills in for him.

They stare at each other for a moment. Something crackling between them. Whoever makes the next move, is the decider.

“I suppose you would like something new?”

Shane nods dumbly. “Yeah.”

“For a couple?”

Are you still with Rose?

“No,” Shane swallows. “We broke up before we really even got together.”

Ilya stills. Moves around and out of the counter this time, not swinging his legs over in his usual manner.

“A single toy then? Or are you seeing other people?”

Shane’s next words are breathless. “If you’ll have me.”

Surprise flickers behind Ilya’s eyes.

He’s glancing around the shop, then stepping in to invade Shane’s space, a hand running through his short hair before his mouth dips in, stealing a kiss. It’s chaste, but Shane gives into it all the same, hardly holding back his want. The growing ridge between them is crumbling—albeit slowly—pieces falling to desperation as the want comes back, stripping Shane of his actions to have a conversation with Ilya.

Like clockwork, they fall back into their old routine. Ilya leads him across the shop, pulling him into the aisles and around displays. And Shane follows, thinking of how it always seems to result in this. The two of them, feeding into their carnal desires. Not thinking they can have one another if it’s not for sex.

But Ilya’s hands are on Shane’s hips, gently holding him. Eyes dark as they move down to Shane’s mouth. Flick back up again. It’s easier like this, to pretend nothing between them is happening. They both flow into it like they no nothing more.

The bell dings. Blaringly loud in the quiet space. Chancing a glance over the shelves, Shane can see a young couple walk in, a girl with a white halter top pulling her partner along to the back. Ilya’s hands leave his hips.

“I get off in an hour,” is all he offers, pulling away to take his position behind the desk.

Shane awkwardly hovers in the shops across the street, after Ilya’s instruction to wait elsewhere. He doesn’t want to leave. Leaving feels like giving up. Like he’s admitting he doesn’t want to do this. (He very much does.)

When Ilya finally exits the store, his plain black shirt covered by a dark red jacket, Shane is meeting him, popping up by his side slightly breathless and only a tiny bit embarrassed because of it.

“You have car?” Ilya asks, hands kept casually in his pockets. “Svetlana drove us here. Her shift ended two hours ago. She will be in our apartment.”

“Yeah. I’ve got my car.”

No conversation ensues as they walk, just a cracking roll of tension between them, growing hotter with each passing step, which seem to echo off the buildings around them, reverberating ten times louder before hitting Shane’s ears, fueling the fire in his gut, stoking it until it burns.

“What the fuck Hollander?!”

The fire is extinguished.

Shane laughs.

Ilya has slid into the passenger seat, and promptly seen the not-at-all-subtle box of sex toys he never brought in. At his laughter, Ilya looks up, scandalised, picking up the dildo and jabbing it in Shane’s direction.

“You were actually going to return these?”

“Yes, that’s what I told you. The box was just…not the most conspicuous,” Shane shrugs, starting the car. Ilya huffs, chucking the dildo in the box before tossing the whole thing into the backseat—out of sight, out of mind.

“Honestly Shane,” he hears Ilya mutter, so lowly under his breath Shane wonders if it was meant for him at all. He ignores it, eyes firmly set on the road, gripping the steering wheel with more force than needed, muscle memory guiding him through the streets to his apartment complex.

It doesn’t occur to Shane that Ilya’s never been over to his place until he’s pushing open the door, revealing the living room beyond, and all that his life contains. Ilya hums in slight approval, but it’s all Shane gets from him. Something heavy is settling on his tongue, almost ready to fall forward.

Hands wrap around his hips. “Do you want to?” Ilya murmurs right into his ear. Posed as just that; a question. Opening the gates just enough to allow that steady simmer of arousal to seep through. To let the pattern they’ve grown so accustomed to take hold.

“No toys,” Shane turns, hands slipping down to grab handfuls of ass, squeezing between his fingers. “Just want you.”

I do not have girlfriend. I could be yours.

I could be yours.

Shane is pushed against his bedroom wall, mind hazy as to how exactly he got there, Ilya shirtless and continuing to lose more clothing, mouth locking onto his own. A pulling, wet heat. Shane groans, feeling Ilya fill out against his thigh. Shane locks his arms around the others neck, forbidding Ilya from touching anywhere but his mouth, desperate to be held.

Hands slip into the hem of his pants. Pliantly, Shane steps out of them. Even if he didn’t it wouldn’t have mattered, Ilya’s hand cupping his ass, moving to the front for a moment to fondle his balls.

”Fuck, Ilya, bed,” Shane stutters between gasping breaths. Ilya is quick to listen, face set in a determined expression, like nothing can deter him from this very task.

“You want me, Hollander?” Ilya whispers as he disregards the remainder of his clothing. “Came to the shop just to see me? Just so I could fuck you?” Dark marks are sucked onto his neck as Ilya crowds down on top of him.

It’s all Shane can do to press the flat of his palm to Ilya’s back, and use the other to feel up his ass.

“Shane,” he says around a moan, guiding Ilya’s head further down, wanting, needing this more than he can even fathom.

If Ilya is surprised by the use of first names, he doesn’t show it, biting gently around Shane’s hipbones, a hand teasing him but never quite reaching where he needs it to be. Scrambling, Shane searches for the lube, knowing he left it in his drawer. When he procures it, Ilya bats it away, letting it bounce limply onto the bed.

Two long, pale fingers crawl their way up his chest, neck, chin. Teasing at the entrance of his mouth. Shane lets them in. Lets his tongue roll around them, sucking them further down into his throat.

At the same time, Ilya lowers himself a little further, finally giving up his teasing and wrapping his lips around the head of Shane’s cock. Without preamble, he sucks, swallowing down centimetre after centimetre until he’s swallowing around a good two-thirds of it, using his only free hand to pry Shane’s right thigh to the side, giving him better access.

Feeling in control, Shane rocks his hips down, matching the rhythm with the fingers on his mouth. Swallowing around them until they hit that delectable point at the back of his throat, before grinding down, bucking straight into Ilya’s mouth. Ilya catches on soon, giving Shane the thrusts and speed he wants. Already, Shane feels like a splattered mess, so tantalisingly close to the best orgasm of his life.

”Uh–ghhn—Sha—nnggh—”

A thrill runs down his spine at Ilya’s poor attempt to moan his name with a mouth full of cock. Shane wants more—he needs it now.

With a pop, he releases Ilya’s fingers from his mouth, slick-coated and shining. Ilya groans, using this as his incentive to swallow down all of Shane, nose buried in the fine trimmings of pubes at the base of his cock. Avidly, Ilya’s head bobs up and down, coming nearly all the way off Shane’s cock before sinking back down again, just as hungry and desperate as the last time.

“F–Fuck, Ilya—” Shane gasps, hand clenching the sheets.

“Keep calling my name,” Ilya smirks, bringing his saliva-coated fingers to Shane’s hold, probing the rim with the tip. Then, he goes back to sucking, giving SHane double the pleasure as he teases his rim.

Shane is squirming for it by now. He wanted to cum three minutes ago, but Ilya knows exactly how to keep his thrusts from venturing into orgasmic territory.

“Please. Please, Ilya, please. Need you. Ugn–please, pleasepleaseplease—”

It becomes a warbled mess.

Yet Ilya keeps teasing him, one finger pushing past his rim and into his hole, the tight muscles closing around the intrusion.

“I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna—”

The heat is gone. Of course. Shane should’ve predicted. Ilya would deny him pleasure because they both need this to be one act. A desperate calling for the other, dragged out as long as they can make it, and far too short at the same time.

”Ilya,” Shane, for the first time, pouts.

“Spread for me, Shane,” Ilya responds, words surprisingly tender, a hand easing his thighs apart. “Hold yourself.” Shane does. “Good boy,” Ilya purrs, moving up to meet his mouth with a kiss, slipping his second finger into Shane’s hole, stretching him out slowly as he pushes them deeper and deeper, curling sightly.

Shane can hardly speak now, reducing to a withering mess of whimpers and moans, begging for Ilya’s dick in every way but the verbal sense. This is what they’re good at. Falling hard and fast, getting caught up in the sex of it all. The feelings, but only those that fall under them being intimately close, of Ilya stretching him out, pounding deep inside—

He fears the inevitable conversation. Wants it to be said like this. The words whispered between their parting lips, Ilya kissing over him once more as he pumps his fingers at a leisurely pace, adding a third after he grabs the lube, an act Shane didn’t even catch him doing.

His body rocking against the bed, Shane gives in to the lull of it once more, letting his eyes flutter shut. His cock is weeping, standing rock-hard against his stomach, begging for attention Shane knows he can’t give to it. It trickles pre-cum, some of which smears Ilya’s face as he kisses the tip gently.

“Shit, Ilya. Please. I’m ready. I’m ready,” words succeed him long enough to push his point across.

His ass is left empty almost immediately, cold air rushing in to fill his hole instead, Shane shivering uncomfortably. His legs burn from where he’s been holding them up for so long, his core tensed and tight.

Ilya’s head brushes over his hole. Slips in for a moment, plugging him full of what he’s been wanting for so long. The next, it’s gone.

Shane huffs. “Don’t—don’t be a tease.”

“Relax,” is the instruction Ilya gives back, sliding up to wrap his arms around the backs of Shane’s shoulders.

As Ilya sinks into him, Shane considers, for a moment, that perhaps they don’t need to talk at all. That maybe, they can just have this. Something purely physical, their bodies touching and knowing one another so intimately. Ilya bottoms out, and this possibility feels like the truth. The inevitable course Shane’s life will take.

Slowly, Ilya’s hips begin to move. A slight rolling pattern, shallow thrusts as he builds himself up.

“Harder.” Shane’s not having it. He needs his future to be real, an act only achieved if Ilya would just fuck him deeper.

Shane’s arms drop from his legs as the pace does pick up. He scratches them down Ilya’s back, tugging at his curls, digging into the meat of his thighs. Lets his body go lax, Ilya’s cock switching the angle slightly to nail his prostate every time, drawing long moans out of Shane. Wet slaps as the lube and spit pushes between them, but it’s not enough, as Shane’s hole aches from the stretch. It makes him giddy.

Ilya’s mouth drops to his neck, sucking hard on the skin there, right into the junction of his shoulder. It’s delicious, a thrill thrumming deeper down into Shane’s arousal, pooling it and spiking upwards. He looks down, watching his hole swallow Ilya’s cock. It drags a groan out of him, his eyes rolling back, head sinking deeper into the pillows.

”Ilya,” he calls out blindly, his world crashing down in blurs of technicolour, fireworks are he orgasms, spilling across his chest with the grace of a man driven half-insane. The name feels good around his lips. Shane wants to moan around it forever.

The only inclination of Ilya’s orgasm is the squelching wetness as he pulls out, cum dribbling from Shane’s ass and onto the bed. He’s glad the sheets aren’t fresh.

Through the post-orgasm fuzziness, Ilya’s lips meet his, moving softly as they wind down, sprawled over the top of each other. Shane’s brain is in that perfect space—content with the warmth around him, willing to give into it more.

“Was good?’ Ilya hums against his lips.

Shane sighs as kisses are dropped across his clavicle. “Yeah. Better than fucking in a changing room.”

His words bring stillness. The implication that they still have things to talk about, no matter how much they want sex to fix things.

Another kiss to his mouth. “I want to be the best for you.” And Ilya’s pulling away, out of Shane’s room, disappearing into the hallway, door left swinging open behind him.

Before Shane can decide what he wants the confession to mean, Ilya’s back, a warm cloth sliding over his skin. They could’ve both gotten in the shower, but the potential for that to lead to more sexual endeavors sticks out like a neon sign, brighter than that of Mistress M’s.

“Let me do you,” Shane whispers, taking the cloth from Ilya’s hand and pushing him back into the bed, hands grazing over the smooth planes of his skin. Over the slight dip of his hips, lifting his legs up to feel his ass, trailing all the way down to Ilya’s knees, then to his stupidly firm calf-muscles.

To say he’s gorgeous would be an understatement. Ilya shines, all gentle, soft light, spilling from his skin in steady waves. No part of him is out of place, moles dancing across his skin like a map to his body. Shane forgets the act of cleaning Ilya off and kisses every one, pressing his lips to warm skin.

“Shane. What are you doing?” Ilya almost chuckles, his voice holding mirth. And god, even his name falling from Ilya’s lips sends his heart flipping over itself, ready to beat out.

Shane smirks, tucking his face into the crook of Ilya’s neck and collapsing half on top of him, far too giddy to care. “Taking care of you,” he mumbles. “You always seem so tense.”

A warm hand rests on his back. “We should talk.”

It sounds silted, like Ilya is forcing the words out, but at least he’s said them, now letting them hang out in the open, desperate to be acknowledged. Shane lets out a steady breath, separating himself. Moving over to the other side of the bed.

“We should,” he agrees. It feels like the safest option. Except now his heart is flipping from sheer terror, a billion different reasons why this is going to go wrong.

“So…” Ilya punctuates. Not to be an ass, but to fill the pressing silence. To make this feel more like an adult conversation. Like they didn’t just have sex, all because their ability to talk without it seems to have been lost in the manuscript somewhere, rendering them incapable of any other option. Shane mulls the word over for a moment, staring up at the ceiling.

“Let me get dressed.”

Chapter End Notes

There’s one more chapter after this, and chapter 10 will be the epilogue!

Thanks for reading so far!!

Chapter 9: Stupid Boyfriends

Chapter Summary

It’s strange, Ilya thinks, having someone to care for.

Chapter Notes

For a fic mostly about sex there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of it, so this is me trying to make up for that lol

Yes i know this is late but i make the posting schedule so technically no it’s not, this is exactly the time i planned for it to be up ;)

Anyway enjoy my crazy spiral of angst/fluff/smut/angst/more fucking smut because i can’t get my dirty, dirty hands off these two.

Shane gets dressed. Then showers. Then spends another five minutes in front of the mirror running his hands through his hair, huffing and pouting over every micro-expression he catches himself making.

Eventually, he realises he’s been trapped in the small bathroom for too long, and he must leave to face his problem. Namely, Ilya. Who, when Shane pads softly into the kitchen, is standing over the counter, shoving his face with some sandwich he undoubtedly made from whatever products Shane has stashed in his fridge.

It loosens the tension. If only a little.

Like he can sense the nerves rolling off Shane’s skin, Ilya pushes a second sandwich towards him wordlessly. And so together, they hold tense eye-contact as the chicken and coleslaw sandwiches quickly disappear.

The lurching realisation of actually having to talk hits Shane like a freight train. He suppresses it with the subtlety of a brick.

“Let’s walk, Shane,” Ilya jerks his head in the direction of the door. Shane’s nerves are floored as his name passes Ilya’s lips. Dumbly, he nods, remembering to pull on a jacket as they descend to the ground floor of his apartment, then out into the street. Over to the very same park he last saw Rose. Silently, he curses how full-circle this all feels.

Hands gripping the bottom of his jacket, Shane decides to start with that. “This is where I broke things off with Rose.”

“Oh. Did you want to go somewhere else?” It's infuriatingly cute how concerned Ilya seems.

Shane shakes his head. “No. No, here is fine. Nice…grass. Y’know.”

“Do I know if a park has ‘nice grass?’” Ilya retorts, pulling a terrible attempt at Shane’s accent.

“Fuck you.”

“We can go back to apartment—”

”Ilya!” Shane knocks him in the shoulder. “Not in public!”

“Okay. Fine, fine. But we are going to be talking about our sex life. So.” Ilya doesn’t seem that all bothered.

Shane tries to get himself back on track. “Yes. So. Like I was saying. Rose.”

“You were dating.”
“Not—quite,” Shane kicks a pebble on the gound, watching it skitter a few metres ahead. “I mean. We went on a few dates. But nothing was ever labeled.”

Words are coming out of his mouth at the pace of a sloth, forcefully dragging them from his brain. Ilya has shoved his hands in his pockets.

Then, he huffs. “When you were seeing me?”

“At the same time. Yeah.” Shane doesn’t see the benefit in lying. Not now. Not when a stupid mistake had got them into this situation in the first place, leaving them bound to each other by nothing more than their sexual desires. “We—Rose and I—never were…intimate. And I assumed you were dating Svetlana. So I guess I also made the assumption that, well. We weren’t exclusive. That since you were seeing someone, it was fine for me to as well.”

They turn into the deeper thicket of trees lining the outer edges of the park. “Svetlana and I never dated,” Ilya says. Not softly, but it holds no harshness either. Just a fact. “Why did you think so?”

Shane feels embarrassed just thinking about it. “I dunno. Heard you telling the guys when they came into the shop months ago that Svetlana was taken. Thought you were dating her. And that’s why you got angry.”

“Would you get angry if someone was asshole to Rose?” Ilya questions.

“I—mean yeah? Because she’s my friend,” Shane puzzles over his answer for a moment.

“That’s how I feel with Svetlana. Very good friend. Not girlfriend.”

Shane nods. Understanding. He feels stupid now, knowing his numerous freak-outs were all over nothing. That his desperation to want feelings towards Rose was pointless, that every move he tried to make was still going to fan the shit right back at him.

“Girlfriend?” echo’s Rozanov’s voice, dull and quiet against the backdrop of lively sound.

Shit.

The party.

“You thought Rose and I were dating,” Shane voices his conclusion. “I lied to you at the party.”

“Why?”

For a moment, there’s a quiver in Ilya’s voice. A crack in the walls they’ve both built up around themselves. Like he doesn’t believe what Shane wants is him

There’s a stifling silence that follows the question. Why? Because he was jealous? It was a heat of the moment thing, never meant to be as meaningful as this?

The truth weighs in his mind. “I still thought you were dating Svetlana then. I guess I was…trying to make you jealous?”

The trees grow thicker as the light filters in thinly. Ilya makes a shuddering noise—then, a laugh.

The ringing sound is jarring compared to the seriousness of Shane’s words. But Ilya doesn’t stop, doubling over to catch himself as he wheezes. Shane’s never seen him laugh like this before. Doesn’t think he’s laughed, period.

But it’s beautiful. They way his brows pinch together, smile digging up the dimples either side of his face. When he looks up, dragging in a breath, the light catches, illuminating his curls in a swirl of golden yellow. A halo around the most gorgeous angel.

“C’mon Shane. You don’t find it funny?” Ilya chuckles. “I thought you had girlfriend. You lied. Because you thought I had girlfriend.”

With no one around them, Ilya moves closer, ducking his head to rest against Shane’s shoulder. The warmth of the moment vanishes everything. Shane catches a laugh rising in his chest. Lets it out. Like two maniacs, they stand in the park, clutching each other and laughing over the stupidity of it all. Shane knows it goes much deeper than this, but to finally have the ability to laugh over it feels freeing. Like the whole party is just some big, crumpled mess they can leave in the trash, along with their insinuations about each other's girlfriends.

“Fuck off. It’s not that funny,” Shane retorts when he’s composed himself, lightly nudging Ilya back. “We had the wrong assumptions for months. I didn’t even realise you wanted to be exclusive until your voicemail—”

Ah, shit. The topic they’ve purposely been skirting around.

Ilya looks a little taken aback, face paling in the dancing sunlight. “...Did you really listen to it?”

“Uh, yeah. I did,” deciding the best option right now is to walk away, Shane sets off down the path again, eyes firmly focused on the way the leaves encroach the path. “It was just sitting in the back of my inbox.”

“I was hoping you never heard it,” Ilya gruffly admits, guard firmly raised. “I was…very drunk.”

“I could tell.” Shane tries to keep the need to tease out of his tone. Ilya’s not going to leave just because he implied the wrong tone. Still, he feels this is a topic they’re going to walk around eggshells on.

It’s so dangerous—viotile—because it held the implications of more. Of wanting to label whatever it is they have going on. Doing so feels like dunking himself in freezing cold water.

I do not have girlfriend. I could be yours.

Ringing through his head, the words send a flutter of something warm through Shane’s chest. The barest buds of a flower, threatening to tip Shane’s feelings over the edge and bloom. Images flash through his mind, showcasing what could have been. He and Ilya, hand in hand. Strolling through this very park. Shane leaning over the table at the restaurant he went to with Rose, giggling over something inconsequential only they understand. Late night phone calls when neither of them can sleep, moving into an apartment together. One with a correctly sized fridge. Space in the closet to hang up two sets of clothes, just to have them merge together anyway as they slowly forget which items belonged to who. Hours spent in Mistress M, picking out toys together as they move through the shelves. Ilya fucking him slow and deep, dragging every whine and groan out of Shane with that infuriating quality of his.

Softly, the words that’ve been scratching the back of his throat tumble out. “Did you mean it?” Shane whispers in the air between them, holding his breath. “Or was it just…some drunken ramble?”

Are we only ever going to be nothing more than this?

There’s a long, long wait. It stretches eons, each second considerably longer than the last.

“I was drunk,” Ilya eventually supplies with a small shrug of his shoulders. Like the voicemail was as inconsequential as that.

The reality Shane had crafted comes tumbling down, plucking every possible future with Ilya out of reach. Moving from where they were dangling just out of reach to impossible heights.

He lifts his gaze to meet Ilya’s. “Is this purely sex then?”

“But I want you so fucking bad. I think I will die if I do not kiss you. I do not think I care anymore about your girlfriend. I can be whatever you want Shane. Everything for you. I will let you have me.”

Up, up, up. Further and further away it’s pulled. In tandem, Ilya’s face morphs into something akin to terror. As if he too has had the realisation that this—whatever it is—is slipping through their clasped hands faster than water in a downwards stream.

A definitive shake of the head. “No!” it rings too loud in the hush of the trees around them. “I—I like you Shane. I meant the voicemail. It was—just—stupid,” he hangs his head, “because I was very drunk.”

But I want you so fucking bad.

“Is…are you embarrassed about it?”

Are you embarrassed of me?

Ilya clears his throat. “No. Never embarrassed of you.”

The flowers in Shane’s chest bloom. “I want you so fucking bad,” he mimics the words played over the tinny speakers of his phone. “I can be…your boyfriend. If you’ll have me.”

Ilya looks like Shane’s just given him all the stars in the night sky. “Shane. Of course I will have you.”

When they gravitate in to kiss, Shane doesn’t hold a second of worry that someone could see them.

It’s strange, Ilya thinks, having someone to care for. Not that he hates it. Or regrets agreeing to date Shane. He just can’t ever remember having someone who wants to be such an active part of his life like this, not after his mother’s passing. It’s hardly been a month, yet he and Shane have settled into some sort of a comfortable routine.

Publicly, (or, as far as the press is concerned) he and Shane are now very good friends, taking on a couple of modelling campaigns together. Svetlana knows of their true relationship, and he’s fairly sure Rose Landry is aware as well. Other than that, they don’t hold hands in public, or morph into one of those aggressive PDA couples Ilya’s had enough trauma from to last him a lifetime.

What they do in private is a whole other story. Ilya’s helped Shane move in his new fridge, repaint the walls of his apartment, and they’ve drove right out into the middle of nowhere, just to lie on the hood of Shane’s car and stare at the stars twinkling above them, keeping themselves up to the earliest hours, just to talk about everything and nothing.

Oh, and there’s the sex. Their old routine of Shane coming into the shop weekly has slotted right back into place. Though, most of the time now it doesn’t involve the actual purchasing of a toy, their home collection already amassing two separate boxes. Ilya smirks as he slides behind the counter, glancing up at the clock. Ten minutes until he clocks off. Shane should be pulling up any second.

Pale fingers drum on the countertop.

“I heard you sold sex toys for a discount?”

Cool eyes meet warm brown. “Only if you test them out.”

“Depends what you have on offer then,” Shane smirks right back.

This isn’t foreplay, Ilya tells himself as they set off at a steady pace around the store. The lights are dimmed (because it’s close to closing, why else would they be turned down?) and each sex toy appears more erotic than the last, a route specifically designed for walking through and being able to see it all. (For convenience, obviously. Customers like to know their options.) Shane’s wearing a navy hoodie, drawstrings frayed from where his insists on putting them in his mouth. If Ilya wasn’t as weak for him as he is, perhaps he wouldn’t find it so endearing.

“Didn’t you get a new order of stock in?” Shane asks, turning to smile at Ilya. There’s a hungry glint in his eyes Ilya’s come to recognise.

His hands freely wander to Shane’s hips, slipping under the fabric of his hoodie, holding on as Shane walks them backwards. “Yes. Thought you would like it. To your left.”

Shane turns the corner around the shelves, and pulls away from Ilya as his face lights up—an act he still tries to smother, despite Ilya thinking it rather hot—eyes roaming over the model Ilya had spent the previous half-hour setting up. (Only because these crappy model dicks need a lot of tape to get sex toys on them correctly.)

“See something you like?” Ilya teases, a hand curling around Shane’s hip. Not tight, just enough pressure to remind Shane they need to get moving as Ilya’s been waiting, impatient for this all day.

Knowing he holds the control, Shane leans back, huffing a laugh. “I guess this is good enough.” And with his pale hand, he plucks one of the freshly-delivered boxes off of the display table, turning around with delight.

It’s a fleshlight. Clear casing around blue silicone, with inbuilt features of the newest technology to really make that head feel real. Ilya couldn’t keep his eyes off the box as they drove to Shane’s apartment (now a far commoner ground for their sexual endeavors, after Svetlana firmly forbidding Ilya from anything of the kind in their own space.) hands flitting between the road and the box. The toy he knows to be inside.

Lying in all its glory on the bedsheets, it’s a whole other world of undesirable. Purely because Ilya has Shane right underneath him, sucking dark marks onto his neck as he hands trace all over that gorgeous body.

“Fuck. You are so good Shane. Beautiful for me.” Hot pants fill the air between them. “Want you to ride me.”

A broken off moan is the only response he receives, quickly followed by Shane’s firm hands flipping them over, lips already swollen and red—Ilya can’t help himself when he steals another kiss, deep and demanding. He wants to be inside Shane, now.

“Do you know how this works?” he asks through gasped breaths as Shane turns over the freshly-sanitised fleshlight, still on top of Ilya, rolling his hips down in slow movements, the both of them already growing hard.

With a click of the button, the fleshlight activates, vibrating in Shane’s hand. “I’ve never known one to vibrate before,” he murmurs, flicking it off again.

“Special model,” Ilya trails his hands up Shane’s torso, then around to his backside, relishing the gasp from the other man's lips as a finger breaches his ass hole, slipping in without any resistance. “...Did you prepare for this?”

It’s not an accusation, but the darker lilt to Ilya’s tone makes it sound like one. Like he’s ready to punish Shane, take away the opportunity of sex if his partner’s hole is lovely and loose, perfectly stretched for him. (As if Ilya ever would, he knows far too well he’ll kneel to any one of Shane’s sexual demands.)

All he gets in response is a sly smirk, and Shane lifting up enough to drop back down onto two fingers. The heat is unimaginable, hot and wet from the lube. Speaking of, Shane plucks it from the sheets, disregarding the fleshlight in exchange for pumping Ilya’s cock, preparing his treat for consumption. And god, does Ilya want to be devoured.

When he feels himself broaching the edge, he groans, telling Shane to back off. “Lube the toy. And your cock.”

Of course, Ilya doesn’t let Shane touch his own cock, wrapping his hand around the shaft and pumping hard and fast, just a couple quick strokes to distribute the lube. Arousal is clawing at him as he lets go, gripping and demanding.

“Shane. I need you. Need you. Please. So bad.” Words pour out of his mouth before Ilya can register them. He finds he doesn’t care. Not when he’s like this, completely and utterly out of his mind for the man on top of him, strong thighs lifting up to angle himself perfectly over Ilya’s cock. Letting Ilya take the fleshlight and push is over his weeping cock, not yet turning it on.

Shane groans in pleasure and promptly sinks down onto Ilya, taking half the cock in one go, bouncing up and down again, bottoming out. His head tips back, adams apple bobbing as he swallows harshly, chest expanding as he takes it from both ends.

Ilya presses his hands into the small of Shane’s back, urging him to lean further forward, just enough so he can sneak a kiss. “Breathe Shane. Tell me when to move,” Ilya whispers against perfect lips, mind buzzing at the feeling of being bracketed by Shane, cock twitching with interest inside those hot walls.

There’s a long, rolling moment of heat. Encompassing the both of them, dropping into Ilya’s stomach as hot pleasure, building and building as a hand reaches between their two bodies. Then, the steady thrum of the fleshlight, pumping around Shane’s cock.

”Ngh—Ilya—you can—hah—move.”

It’s all the notice Ilya needs. Taking hold of Shane’s hips, he fucks up into that hole, directing Shane’s movement. The sounds are filthy, wet, suction slurping from the fleshlight, vibrating and pounding onto Shane’s cock, not sparing him an ounce of mercy. Even through the clear plastic of the fleshlight, Ilya can see just how desperate the stimulation is making Shane, abs tightening with the attempt to keep himself from tipping over the edge.

Teasing, Ilya slows down his already snail-like thrusts, needing a better position to properly fuck faster, but not wanting to move, needing to see Shane bouncing on his inches. “C’mon Shane. Ride me if you want it faster. I know you cannot last.” Up, and up his hands trail, squeezing those enticing pecs. All movements stop down there. Ilya waits.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long for Shane to relent, tipping himself forward so his hands are gripping Ilya’s shoulders, bucking his hips down to roll back onto that cock, filling himself up to his heart's content.

”Ah, yeah, yeah Shane, like that—” encouragement spews from his mouth, hands taking the time to appreciate Shane’s figure while the rest of his body relaxes, meeting Shane’s thrusts halfway but otherwise taking it, allowing himself to feel. And fuck, does it feel good.

Ilya’s cock must be making pace with the fleshlight now, his words spurring Shane faster. Beat after beat his cock disappears into Shane’s ass, knocking his prostate as Ilya begins to actually snap his hips up to meet his boyfriends, knowing he’s far too close to the edge not to go full-send.

Snapping up, down, up, down. Fleshlight suctioning round Shane’s cock past pleasure, boiling towards a mountainslide of overwhelming. Ilya’s cock, aching for release, begging to pump Shane’s tight hole full of everything they’ve kept from each other these past months. Of everything they are now.

Ilya isn’t aware of who comes first, far too occupied in the feeling of it all. Body spasming as he unloads into Shane, his hands firmly holding down the other’s hips, ensuring he feels every last drop spurt into him. Shane laps it up, pulling away from Ilya to arch back, bending in a delicious curve.

Without knowing where he gets the hand dexterity from, Ilya manages to click off the button vibrating the flashlight, sliding off of Shane’s cock with a loud squelch. Where it rolls off to, Ilya doesn’t care. Instead, he lays back against the pillows, chest pumping up and down, sucking in cool gasps of air.

“Mhm, Ilya—” Shane calls in a breathy sigh, head tucking into the corner of his neck as they come down from their respective highs. “So good,” he murmurs. Ilya doesn’t answer verbally, hand instead pressed against the sweaty planes of Shane’s back, an attempt to push their chests closer, to keep their heartbeats in tandem.

Ilya kisses the skin between Shane’s ear and neck. “You not sore?”

A shake of the head.

“Tell me if you feel anything.”

“Feel good.”

“No, Shane—if you are hurt.”

“You could never hurt me.”

Arms tighten around Shane’s waist, assisting in lifting him up just enough so Ilya’s softened cock can slip out, spent and covered in fluids. Cum leaks from Shane’s ass, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it yet. So Ilya takes his opportunity and rolls Shane off of him, before diving in to press kisses to his face, lingering and teasing. They’re feather-light, warm and gentle.

A giggle. Shane fucking giggles, pushing Ilya off him like a blushing schoolgirl, still acting half-dopey after his climax. “What are you doing?”

“You. Preferably,” Ilya says as a half-joke, but the light gleaming in Shane’s eyes confirms his statement is very much going to become reality. “...let me clean the cum off you.”

“Just join me in the shower?”

And Ilya could never say no to those pleading eyes.

The bed has been abandoned in a mess of tangled sheets, dried cum, and one lone fleshlight, half-tucked under a pillow. Half-cracked, the bedroom door is left open, peering out into the small hallway. Ever-thin, the walls let too-loud moans leak out, pouring desperately out of the space left under the door of the bathroom.

Inside, it’s filled with steam, water temperature cranked up high, mirror fogging, condensation dripping like sweat. The shower glass hides all and nothing, near opaque if you were to bar the obvious outline of a body pressed roughly up against it, dark black hair dripping, cascading down his face, temples, and into that gorgeous, waiting mouth, held open as he rolls his hips.

Ilya thinks even the angels people speak of aren’t anywhere near as beautiful as the god above him. Sculpted, Shane stands, one hand fisted in Ilya’s hair, demanding as he pulls his boyfriend off and onto his cock, a throbbing mess of arousal. Ilya gives it everything he’s got and then some, hollowing out his cheeks while he licks around a pulsating vein.

Spreading his knees further apart, he ignores the pressure placed upon them from the slick shower floor tiles, the way the grooves will undoubtedly be melding patterns into his skin. Pain is hardly a concept when he has all of life’s pleasures in his mouth, free for his taking.

Gripping Shane’s thighs, Ilya relaxes, more of that wonderful cock sinking deeper into his throat. It earns him an appreciative moan from his boyfriend.

”Fuck, yes Ilya, just like that—”

More pressure as his hands squeeze that smooth flesh, holding Shane in place. He knows he hardly has any control in this situation, but it’s nice to pretend he does, knowing he won’t be surprised when Shane pushes back, dominating over his mouth with his dick, pumping it faster, deeper.

Ilya’s own erection goes ignored between his legs, left standing upright and leaking, the heat from the shower only making things worse. In a way though, Ilya prefers the heat, as it serves only to wrap tighter around his arousal, spurring him onwards. Mind growing crazed, back to its basic functions as all he can think of is Shane’s cock, leaking hard and hot in his mouth, slamming relentlessly into the back of his throat. A hand, directing his every movement on said dick, keeping the perfect angle and pace.

Heat spills between his thighs. Ilya gasps, too lost in his own head to feel it coming, nearly choking down the length of Shane’s cock. All this makes Shane do is pull out, and with a few long strokes cum is streaking across Ilya’s face too, painting him a sticky white. Quickly, it’s washed off by the water cascading down, but Ilya ducks his head, still needing a few seconds to breathe.

“You should probably stand up,” Shane offers an indiscriminate amount of time later, slipping an arm around his back to lift him to his feet, keeping their bodies close as they huddle under the spray. “Are your knees okay?”

When he looks down, they’re bright red, indents of the tile left behind, still yet to fade. “It is fine, Shane. Does not hurt.” He exemplifies this by pressing a kiss to the side of Shane’s perfectly pretty face. “We should probably get out through. Water wastage.”

“Mhm. Let me clean you up first though….” Shane’s hands have miraculously become lathered up with body wash, rubbing up his biceps firmly.

It takes a further twenty minutes for them to leave the shower.

When they finally do, their skin is pruned, they smell the same, and Ilya is handed a pair of Shane’s sweatpants and an old shirt, dark navy and black respectively. They fit fine, if only a bit tight around the ass. The sheets are stripped too, everything shoved into the wash while Shane re-makes the bed, Ilya wandering into the kitchen to pick out something for them to eat, finding himself starving after their recent activities.

Somehow, the only thing in Shane’s fridge is a drawer full of vegetables (not surprising), half a pack of Canada Dry (not surprising, considering how much advertisement he does for them), a block of ancient cheddar and an open jar of pesto (both fairly surprising, considering the rest of the fridge is mostly pre-made meals and a sad egg carton, one lonely egg tucked away in the far corner.)

Moving onto the pantry and finding pasta, Ilya sets a pot of water to boil. Leaning against the countertop as Shane comes out the hall and into the kitchen. His hair is sticking up in every which direction, clearly untamable. He doesn’t appear particularly bothered by this, slouching into one of the seats at the counter and just…staring. Until of course, Ilya cracks, moving around the counter to come beside him, when he’s then interrupted by his phone.

His phone. Buzzing angrily from the couch, where he had left it as he walked in, not wanting this exact thing to happen as he was getting it on with Shane. Sighing, he moves to pick it up, the call disconnecting right as he goes to answer.

Almost immediately, it rings again, the caller ID stating Alexei. Of fucking course. Ilya lets it ring out again. He’s not letting his brother ruin his night with Shane, despite how much they may have ‘reconciled’ when he was back over in Russia.

Sighing, he doesn’t notice Shane come up behind him until his boyfriend has already seen the caller. “...Is that your brother?”

“Yes,” Ilya hisses, hitting decline on the call again and setting his phone to silent. “He is just being an asshole.”

Shane tugs Ilya back to the direction of the countertop, pulling out his seat to sit and face Ilya solemnly. “Why don’t you like him?” His question is punctuated with a massive mouthful of pasta being shoved in his face. Surprisingly, it lessens the tight band of worry constricting Ilya’s chest.

He knew, eventually, that his problems with Russia would come to light. That he’d have to lay his heart bare to Shane, describe every gory detail of a past he doesn’t particularly want to dive into.

His conversation with Svetlana presses to the front of his mind. She’d known about most of it already, of course, but it had helped. Even if it sucked.

Decidedly looking down at his food, Ilya shrugs. “He is an asshole,” he repeats. “Begging me for money so he could blow it on his habits.”

A clink of a fork against ceramic. “What, like drugs?”

“Something like that.” He isn’t going to explain. He’d gotten out before it had really gotten bad, anyway. Safe in his cocoon of comfort, forking over money more and more often. “I guess. I moved here…to get away. From Russia. For a little bit.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Shane nodding. “Do you have any family here?”

“Svetlana.”

Another huge bite of pasta. “She seems pretty nice. Maybe I can meet her?” Shane glances up.

Ilya’s frozen. His heart is hammering all too fast, even though Svetlana knows who he likes. Has met people he’s fooled around with before. But he isn’t fooling around. This; what he has with Shane, is something real. Almost tangible, hanging between them and tying them together with miles of thick rope, keeping them eternally bound.

The fear of others finding out who he really is rings through his skull. Alexei, yelling and screaming, spitting slurs and profanities. His acceptance never fully shown, only weakly presented though reading between the lines of words that were said when drunk. The affluent families that frequented their house, meeting with his father. Their whispered words, and loud displeasure. Pointing and talking and acting grateful because it would never be their child. Never someone they could know.

“Maybe,” Ilya offers. He’s stuck in the one position, words rolling around his head. “In Russia they are…not open to this. Us. Being together. Svetlana…she is good. She does not mind. Maybe though, if other people find out, I would not be going back to Russia. And I have—my parents there. I want to visit them.”

There’s a terrible screeching as Shane determinedly scoots his stool over, setting a hand on Ilya’s arm. Ilya lets it slide down, their fingers interlacing. “We don’t have to tell people—”

“No. No, if you want to. We can,” he interrupts quickly. Hastily, he adds, “Not everyone.”

This earns a laugh. “Not everyone.” Shane agrees. “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

“Yes, Hollander. I am sure. This is not Russia. Part of why I move here. Also for the hot models.”

“I thought it was Shane now?”

“I thought I was only going to call you that if you didn’t ask me stupid questions.”

“Asking if you’re okay is not a stupid question!” Shane defends pointlessly, for Ilya is already on his side. “I know it’s…probably weird to have to come out to people about this. It is for me to, I don’t…I don’t even know what people are going to say.”

“We will do it together,” Ilya says, snapping the band around his chest in half.

“That was kind of cheesy,” Shane huffs, knocking his shoulder into Ilya’s. “Is this what you’re going to be like now? Quoting insufferable one-liners?”

“I am not insufferable, you asshole—”

“Fuck you, I never said that.”

“Sure you didn’t, Shane,” Ilya grins, having way too much fun with this, all his big, heavy feelings growing lighter as he manages to land Shane’s mouth on his own, nearly teetering them both off of their stools.

Ilya knows they still have a long way to go. That coming out, and digging up his past, and finding more out about Shane too is only in the near-future, just waiting for them to touch on it. For now though, they laugh in the kitchen, knowing the sex toys under Shane’s bed are the catalyst to it all. The starting point for them getting to know each other.

Cheesy one-liners be damned, Ilya knows that this is only the beginning, and he smiles at the thought of reaching the end with Shane by his side.

Chapter End Notes

Please, feel free to comment (i promise i dont bite), it’ll probably get the final chapter up much sooner, i love hearing about what you think of this fic + what you think these freaks should be getting up to

Chapter 10: Suck a Dick Hollander

Chapter Summary

Ilya gets sucked off.

Chapter Notes

Just for the shits, i thought this was funny #someonepleasetellmeimnotfunny

One year later…

Ilya’s in a field. Shoes covered in mud (yes Shane, he is rather ticked off about this, did he see what they cost?), people ducking and weaving all around them, yelling at old friends or family or whomever it is they’re finally reuniting with again. Quite frankly, Ilya does not care, and would much rather be back in Shane’s apartment, lazily grinding against each other as they watch another episode of some shitty reality TV depicting far too many tears for the level of filler the celebrities have in their faces.

Of course, that dream can’t happen, because Ilya is at a wedding. Tailing behind Shane as they make their way into the venue (an old, lichen-covered barnhouse, exterior a dull brown, made bright with swathes of flowers in harsh oranges and yellows. A perfect sunset.) to try and find Curtis, the man of the hour.

It had been both a surprise and not when Curtis had sent him an invite to his wedding a few months ago (a couple weeks after he had quit his job at Mistress M to pursue some astrophysics degree Ilya wasn’t even aware he was working on.) with a little invite sent over email. Ilya hadn’t considered them super close friends, but he liked the guy enough. It was hard not to, with Curtis’ easy-going attitude and knack for telling assholes to fuck off.

Plus Ones (or twos) encouraged, the invite had said.

So Ilya brought his boyfriend. Svetlana brought herself, since she also received an invite, and her new not-quite-boyfriend. (Situationship, she had told him.) But Svetlana is nowhere to be seen, only people dressed in dark oranges and reds, a few sprinkled with lighter hues of yellow and dusky brown. Ilya himself is in a red suit, with a white undershirt. His tie is a burnt orange, pairing with Shane’s suit.

Together, they push through the increasing throngs of people, reminding Ilya all too much of the stupid parties his father used to throw. Stupid, because next-to-nothing ever came out of them, simply an outlet for drinking and gossiping. A right pain Ilya mostly got through because of the pot he would smoke, or the sex he would have. (Rich assholes love to spend money on lavish bathrooms, he’s found.) Now, however, would be an inappropriate time to do any of those things, so Ilya knows his only option is to thug it out.

Thankfully, a tall, dark haired man has decided it’s Ilya time, and comes slamming straight into him out of nowhere, sparing Ilya from the tight press of the crowd.

Not so thankfully, the man catches himself, peeling back to mumble a half-baked apology. “Hey! Sorry about that, in a rush, you know—oh!” tall man smiles. “Ilya, right? Shayan,” he introduces, in the casual way that implies Ilya should probably know who the fuck he is.

A moment passes by. Ilya does not take the hand Shayan offers. Shane clears his throat awkwardly beside him.

Shayan laughs, brushing it off. “Ah, I guess we have never met before. Curt forced me to learn the names of all the guests. Sorry, I’m his fiance. It’s lovely to meet you. He tells me your joint experience in the store was…something to be remembered,” he talks, easy in his conversation, seeming to not care at all that two men are gawping like idiots in front of him. Far more collected than Ilya could ever wish to be.

“Nice to meet you,” Shane offers politely. He takes Sahyan’s still outstretched hand. “I’m—Ilya’s plus one.” Not boyfriend. At least, not to the public.

“Nice to meet you too. But look—I was supposed to be over by the main farmhouse getting ready twenty minutes ago, because my sister forgot my suit at home and—ah, forget it. I hope you enjoy the wedding,” Shayan rambles, looking very flustered, clearly in a bit of a muddle from his undoubtedly big day. Ilya nods dumbly, and the groom to-be disappears through the barn doors.

“I didn’t know they were gay,” Shane whispers lowly as they drop their gift off at the table, his eyes darting around the room. “Like, that Curtis was getting married to a man.”

“That is what gay is, Shane.”

“I know! But—”

“I did not know either.” They find their way to their seats, somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Looking at everyone beginning to sit down now, Ilya realises Curtis is friendly with a lot more people than he’d imagined.

“Boo,” Svetlana says flatly, sliding into the seat beside Ilya, wrapping an arm around his shoulders so she can press a kiss to his cheek. “Hey Hollander.”

“You can just call me Shane.” Shane pokes his head around from Ilya’s side.

With an eyeroll, Svetlana groans. “But I’m commemorating Ilya’s time of confusion and deep, homoerotic feelings. Let me have my fun, Shane.”

“Oh, are you two like, together?” A voice interrupts from beside Ilya’s best friend. Her situationship. He pushes his glasses up his nose, blinking. Ilya can only clock the fact that this may be the most stereotypical ‘nerd’ he’s ever seen.

“Suppose,” Ilya shrugs, not making eye-contact. In response he gets a muttered ‘cool’ before the guy goes back to trying to tangle his fingers with Svetlana’s.

Shane nudges him. It’s not subtle. Ilya stamps on his foot. Which again, is not subtle. Shane lets out a muffled ‘ow.’ Then nudges Ilya again.

“What?” he hisses.

Shane’s face is inches away from his own now, eyes flickering with joy, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly. “Did you just call us boyfriends?” he whispers.

“No.” The denial comes quick. The shit eating grin on Shane’s face comes faster.

“Fine. Maybe.”

Then, for a second, Shane’s lips are pressing against his cheekbone, pulling away before they kiss it completely. Ilya thinks he might just explode.

They hold hands the whole ceremony. Okay, well, ‘hold hands’ is a term used loosely. Their hands are settled next to each other, pressing together. From about halfway through the ceremony to the very end, where people begin standing up, shuffling out onto the farmland for photos while people take down the chairs to replace them with long tables, full of food. Ilya’s lightheaded.

They don’t know anyone at the wedding, so the only photo they manage to squeeze into is the group one, far too many people crammed together to fit in the frame. Afterwards though, they’re left to wander the muddy grounds. Ilya’s nose wrinkles when Shane makes this request.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of nature,” Shane laughs.

“No. What is out there, Shane? I do not know. You do not know. No. I will not.”

With a sigh, Shane agrees to go back into the comfortable safety of the barn, slough Ilya does wader how long this thing has been standing for.

The reception hasn’t quite started when Shane is convinced to head back inside—a prime opportunity he takes.

Call him weird, but the feeling of Ilya actually confirming their relationship (to another person, no less) sent an excited thrill through Shane. Not arousal, but pride, white hot, coursing through him. Proud that he means something to Ilya. That what they have isn’t contained behind closed doors, occurring only for the notion of sex. The verbal validation sets him off on a high, and perhaps it’s that overconfidence that leads him to drag Ilya through the back doors of the barn.

He hears a sigh behind him. “Shane. No outside.”

He doesn’t respond, maneuvering them across and into one of the porta-loos stationed out back. To be fair, they’re all inside nicely built wooden cubicles, with a sheltered area in front housing the sinks underneath. Once inside, Shane takes in just how small the space is. Ilya is pushed right up against him, and the backs of Shane’s knees are hitting the toilet edge.

So Shane closes the distance with the one way he knows how—by kissing Ilya. It’s meant to be short, but he comes in way too hard, hands cupping the back of his boyfriend’s head as he delves in. Ilya kisses back, giving and giving, tugging on Shane’s red tie.

“What you doing?” Ilya breathes in the sliver of space between them. “We are at wedding. No sex.”

“Just let me suck you off. At least,” Shane replies, direct, pulling on Ilya’s suit. He’s gotten more clear with what he wants over the past year, going from suggestive to blunt. He’ll tell Ilya what he wants, and leave the man begging for more. Now though, he just wants to get his hands all up and over that clean-cut body of Ilya’s.

Gears tick in Ilya’s head. He’s working his jaw for a split second before—

“Fine. Quick, Shane.”

Shane nods. The fact that they’re at a wedding doesn't bother him in the slightest—matter of fact, giving this blowjob will probably help him in loosening up a little. Work out some of the energy in his system so he can properly talk to people later.

Ilya’s pants slide over his ass like a dream, and Shane sinks to his knees quickly, head pressed right up against his partner's crotch, no room given in the tiny wooden cubicle. Fingers slipping into the waistband of Ilya’s boxer briefs, Shane tugs them down firmly, letting Ilya’s cock spring out. He’s barely half worked up, but Shane isn’t bothered, fingers reaching behind to dig into the plush ass, lips wrapping around the tip of his boyfriend’s cock.

It’s beautiful, as always. Eager to respond as Shane covers it in saliva, as messy and sloppy as he can. He uses a hand to pump the spit down, stroking Ilya to full hardness, cock standing erect and proud. Already, Ilya is trying to muffle noises, but whimpers are slipping out, heaven to Shane’s ears.

Mouth around that dick, Shane gets to work, swallowing it down, head bobbing far enough to inhale Ilya’s pubes. Quickly, they manage to build up a rhythm, Ilya’s hips canting fast into Shane’s mouth, cock slamming into the back of his throat. (Shane’s grateful his gag reflex is nearly non-existent)

Flames of arousal are building, igniting him from the inside out. The thought of anyone being able to walk by and hear them gives Shane a little bit of a power trip, head growing giddy as he remembers them doing this in similar situations in the past. Making out in bathroom stalls, quick handjobs in closets, getting bent over one of the chairs in a changing room on modelling jobs. It was deliciously hot. Despite their relationship being pretty much a secret, the knowledge that anyone could call them out for this right now is doing all sorts of things to Shane.

Clearly, he lets himself get too distracted, because Ilya’s hand finds its way to his hair, tugging on the dark strands. “Fuck, Shane. Let me come. Let me,” he begs, whispering.

He knows Ilya is into this too, if the way his breathy pants and fast jerking hips indicate anything. But he’ll play it up like he wants Shane to make it hard and fast, have it over within a matter of seconds. If they had more time, or weren’t crammed in a portable toilet, Shane would’ve blown this out. Sucked off his cock then eaten out his ass too.

But the pressing social conformity of not missing a wedding reception to get your boyfriend off hits a little too hard, and Shane starts stroking over whatever his mouth can’t reach, folding Ilya’s balls with the other hand, rolling them in his palm.

“Hold—hold stop,” Ilya mumbles, his words being thrown out the window as he keeps Shane’s head in place, instead just using his mouth, thrusts growing faster. It’s all Shane can do to kneel there and take it, eyes watering.

Through his unshed tears, he looks up at Ilya, watching his boyfriend's face contort with pleasure, tipping back to hit the door of the movable cubicle. He drives faster, faster, until finally he hits home, coming down Shane’s throat.

Not wanting to have to clean up, Shane swallows, throat moving around that perfect cock.

Ilya groans. “Yes, yes,” he chants.

When Shane pops off, he stands on shaky knees, glancing at himself in the tiny mirror. He’s a mess, lips pink and swollen. And he’s still hard in his pants. Thankfully, Ilya gets the memo and wraps his arms around Shane, rocking their hips together gently, placing a kiss behind his ear.

“Are you finished!?” There’s a particularly angered yell from outside of the cubicle. A guest wanting to pee, most likely.

Shane and Ilya freeze, but don’t let go of each other, Shane silently shaking with laughter Ilya struggles to contain. They stay dead-still until the clear sounds of stomping footsteps edge away.

“Fucking portaloos,” the guest mutters loudly.

“You;ve got five minutes,” Shane tells Ilya not so loudly, letting his boyfriend flip their positions, back landing heavily against the door.

And if they ended up missing the first twenty minutes of the reception, well, no one says anything.

Chapter End Notes

thanks so much for seeing this out to the end!! feel free to leave a comment, they're much appreciated <3