Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shane 7:12pm

do people usually take their own drinks to house parties

hayd 7:12pm

???

hayd 7:12pm

asking like u havent been to one before

Shane 7:13pm

no i know but 

Shane 7:13pm

idk

hayd 7:13pm

wait what party are u going to

hayd 7:13pm

why wasnt i invited

Shane 7:13pm

a friend’s

Shane 7:13pm

actually forget i asked

hayd 7:14pm

u have other friends???

[Read 7:14pm]

ilya :) 7:30pm

sveta making me set up with them 😒

ilya :) 7:30pm 

meet you there? 

Shane 7:31pm

sure yeah

ilya :) 7:42pm

[Pinned location attached]

Shane makes the walk through campus that night feeling like a salmon swimming up river, right into the open and waiting jaws of a grizzly. It shouldn’t be that daunting. But unfortunately, the prospect of meeting Ilya’s friends feels about the same to his nervous system as having a gun pointed at his head. So, yeah, pretty fucking daunting.

The plastic bag in his hand crinkles as he walks, the bottle of rum inside sloshing around with each step. It’s mostly full. He may have taken a few shots before leaving his dorm for courage. Now, the knot in his gut is only slightly painful, and his skin is less clammy and more warm and tingly. 

On the list of questionable choices Shane has made – which has been growing at an alarming rate recently – this slots in somewhere amongst them. His hangover from yesterday has not long worn off, and his head still feels a little tender. And yet, drink in hand, he carries on. Because this is who he is now. More alcohol to consume, more weed to smoke, more rough sex to be had, no doubt. The Shane of a few months ago would fucking shit if he saw the Shane of today.  

Ilya is a terrible, terrible influence. And Shane is terribly, terribly whipped. 

The house comes into view not long after Shane passes through the campus park, turning up a small side street lined with parked cars and trees. Thinking back to the end of their first year, Shane recalls Hayden bugging him about getting a house together off campus; Shane hadn’t wanted to, stating that being in dorms meant being closer to the college practice rink. Hayden had rolled his eyes and made much more of a fuss about it than Shane thought warranted, but ultimately had agreed that maybe dorms weren’t so awful. Now, though, Shane wonders if his own house wouldn’t be so bad. A little more privacy. For… reasons.  

He climbs the steps to the front door – number 43, an old brick townhouse with scraggly plants out front, a rusted fire escape, and a flickering porch light. The curtains are drawn over the bay window at the front, though upstairs there’s a soft glow of light and the faint sound of music and voices bleeding through the walls.

Shane 9:02pm

outside

Through the stained glass window on the door, Shane sees a wobbly silhouette make its way down the stairs. 

“Took you long enough,” Ilya grins in the doorway. 

As it always does in Ilya’s presence, Shane’s breath catches in his throat. He swallows around it and smiles back. “You said any time after nine, asshole. It’s nine.” 

Ilya steps aside to let him over the threshold, holding the door open. Shane pointedly ignores the way his fitted T-shirt rides up over his hip as he does so, showing off his smooth skin in a way that has Shane’s brain saying bite bite bite lick kiss. 

The door clicks shut behind him, and Shane hesitates at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the muffled sounds of the party getting underway above them. He feels a warm hand press to the small of his back. 

“You look nice.”

Ilya says it, low and gravelly, right up against his ear, making him shudder. He turns and sees the way Ilya’s eyes roam over him appreciatively, lingering on the marks littering his neck from the other night. Shane’s sweatshirt isn’t quite high enough to hide all of them, but wearing a turtleneck wasn’t an option. Ilya’s gaze takes a very long time to return to Shane’s face. When it does, eventually, it’s on his lips. 

They’d seen each other yesterday. Woken up together and hooked up that evening. Fucked the night before that. And yet, if you asked Shane, he’d say every minute since has felt like the longest of his life. Pulling himself out of Ilya’s bed and detaching himself from Ilya’s lips felt worse than pulling teeth. He’s spent the past 24 hours doing little else but thinking about the way Ilya tastes. Now, he doesn’t have to keep imagining it. 

Shane crowds him against the wall and kisses him in that rushed, urgent way that he always does. He needs Ilya’s tongue in his mouth like he needed those shots at the dorm. Liquid courage on his tastebuds. Ilya lets out a surprised laugh and kisses back fervently. It’s clumsy and awkward, Shane holding the plastic bag in his left hand as his right gets a handful of Ilya’s pec, but it’s enough. The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but when they pull back they both look a little dazed. 

“Maybe I should tell them I am leaving,” Ilya says, squeezing Shane’s waist. “Take you to bed now.” 

Desire flickers low in Shane’s stomach and he has to take a few breaths to smother its flames. They’ll have time for that later. “No, come on, let’s just get up there.” 

Ilya laughs. “Don’t make it sound like you are walking to the guillotine, fuck. They are just friends. Not executioners.” 

Shane rubs the back of his neck and tries to smile like he’s not actively going through the five stages of grief. His shirt feels a little too scratchy, the tufty remnants from where he’d cut the tag out now rubbing against his nape. Every bang or shout from upstairs jolts through him like a gunshot. He’s fine. He’s chill. Be chill, Shane. 

He lets himself be swallowed up into the party. Lets the music and the sickly-sweet scent of alcohol and bitter cigarette smoke wash over him. He’s intimately familiar with this now, the feeling of a heavy baseline hitting him square in the chest and making the thoughts melt out of his ears. Shane tries to shake the anxiety from the tips of his fingers like water. 

Ilya leads him through the crowd of people that occupy the main living space of the house. It’s a cosy place, Shane notes through all the bodies and dim lights. Tight corridors lined with pretty artwork. The bedrooms that he catches glimpses of on the way past are tidy and well cared for, posters hanging from walls, polaroids on pin-boards, succulents in hanging baskets. Fairy lights adorn every available fixture. Rainbow flags are tacked on the doors. There’s no doubt that it’s a girls’ apartment, Shane thinks. No college guy has interior design sense this good. 

The kitchen and living room are one open space, and it’s there that Ilya leads them both, Shane following on his heels like a well-trained puppy, tail tucked between his legs. They skirt around the island in the centre and over to a girl who’s currently pulling a fresh bottle of something out the fridge. 

“Guest of honour is here,” Ilya announces, slinging an arm over Shane’s shoulder. 

The girl, who Shane belatedly realises is Svetlana, turns at the sound of Ilya’s voice cutting over the noise. Her curls bounce with the movement. Her eyes, lined with a smoky black and glittery shadow, slide over Ilya and land on Shane. And then her expression does something funny, her eyebrows twitching up the minutest degree and her mouth forming a slight, surprised ‘o’. Recognition. 

“Oh! Well, hey, guest of honour,” she says, a smile chasing away the momentary shock on her face. 

Ilya gestures between them both. “Svetlana, Shane. Shane, Svetlana.”

Right. Shane remembers all too quickly that Ilya’s friends are hockey fans. They know him. They watch him on the ice regularly, know his name, his jersey number, his face. Shane Hollander, hockey player at their college. Now: Shane Hollander, hockey player and Ilya’s not-so-secret fuck buddy. Jesus Christ, he wants to die. 

“Hey.” Shane sticks his hand out by way of greeting and then immediately wishes someone would axe it off. Who fucking handshakes at a house party? 

Svetlana is nice enough to not laugh in his face, though she does throw him a blindingly beautiful smile as she takes his hand and gives it a soft shake. “Nice to finally meet you.” 

Shane tries not to cringe too much at the awkwardness of it all, but he’s grateful that she’s not making too big of a deal out of the whole– 

“Holy fuck is that Shane Hollander?!”

Shane starts calculating the distance to the nearest window and the force needed to jump clean through it. 

From the opposite side of the kitchen, pushing through a gaggle of people and stumbling her way over, a familiar-looking red-head approaches them. Ah, this must be Rose. Shane recognises her from the club some weeks ago.

She’s drunk, that much is obvious. The apples of her cheeks are flushed and shiny, her full lips drawn into a lop-sided smile. She manages to bump into nearly every possible surface on her way over before finally coming to an unsteady halt at Svetlana’s side, draping over her. 

While Shane is planning exit routes, Ilya is still lazily tracing circles on his shoulder. “Rose, this is not how you greet a guest,” he chuckles. Clearly he’s enjoying this far more than Shane is. 

“Fuck, sorry,” she slurs, grinning like a kid that’s been caught doing something they’re not supposed to. “But this is huge, I mean… Sorry, Shane, but you’re, like, a celebrity or something. When Ilya said he was bringing a friend, we didn’t know he meant– I mean, fuck, we didn’t know you guys were–” 

Svetlana elbows her in the ribs. Shane doesn’t know whether to laugh or start digging a grave for himself. 

“Definitely not a celebrity,” he says through a tight-lipped smile. The shots he had earlier have really not done their job at all. “But, uh, it’s nice to know you guys like the team. Glad we’re doing an okay job.” 

“More than okay,” Svetlana says, handing off the bottle in her hands to Ilya, who accepts it wordlessly and starts peeling off the seal. She then uses her free hands to support Rose, who is doing a poor job of staying upright. “You guys were insane at Regionals.” 

“Yes, yes, he is very good,” Ilya cuts in, and whatever humble protest Shane had prepared dies on his lips. “Hockey talk can wait until we have drinks, hm?” 

He passes back the now open bottle to Svetlana, and Shane manages to snag a whiff of it on its way into her hands. Vodka, but not the cheap, acidic shit they serve in the bar on campus. It seems a little more appealing than the rum he’d brought, which is still clutched uselessly in his hand. Shane sets it down on the counter. Maybe somebody will make use of it, if not him. 

“Where did Barrett and Hazy fuck off to?” Ilya says, peeling himself from Shane’s side and helping Svetlana pour drinks into solo cups. 

“Having a smoke on the balcony, last I saw,” Rose muses. She’s still eyeing Shane with wide-eyed curiosity, which Shane does his best to ignore, shifting awkwardly on his feet.

Svetlana groans. “Get them inside, please, Ilya? I don’t want to be scraping them off the sidewalk later.” 

Shane gratefully accepts the cup that Ilya hands him. He takes a swig that’s definitely too much and immediately regrets it. 

“Fuck,” he coughs, wincing at the burn that travels down into his sternum. “Is this all vodka?”

“Obviously,” Ilya and Svetlana intone at the same time, looking at Shane like he’s just asked if water is fucking wet. 

“What, no mixer?” 

Svetlana side-eyes him. “Don’t make me hate you, Shane Hollander, we just met.”

“So gay he cannot even take his vodka straight, gospodi,” Ilya sighs, shaking his head morosely.  

Rose bursts out laughing so hard she fucking snorts. 

“Alright, fuck you,” Shane huffs, though he’s holding back laughter himself as he turns on his heel. “I’m leaving.”

“Nooo, Hollander, I’m sorry,” Ilya whines, grabbing at Shane’s arm. “We will be nice.”

Rose and Svetlana share a look that Shane almost misses, too busy getting pulled back under Ilya’s arm. It’s one of those that communicates about a million different things in just the twitch of an eyebrow. Whatever it means, Shane can’t decipher it. It looks pointed, though. But then he’s getting whisked away into the crowd, Ilya tugging him along in search of other friends to torment Shane with.

Lucky for Svetlana’s peace of mind, they find ‘Barrett’ and ‘Hazy’ on the couch instead of the balcony. They squeeze through the crowded living room, hopping over outstretched legs and narrowly avoiding up-ending the coffee table laden with snacks and more drinks. Shane follows Ilya down as he settles onto the couch next to two burly guys in backwards caps, beers in hand. They look the type to play hockey, Shane muses. Perhaps they play some other varsity sport instead.

Their eyes are locked on the TV that’s playing in the corner of the room. One’s got his legs kicked up on the low table, the other leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, engrossed in whatever’s on screen. From the looks of it, it’s some e-sports tournament. Shane’s knowledge of video games extends little beyond FIFA, Call of Duty and Smash Bros, so whatever this is, it’s new to him. 

“Roz,” one of the guys says as they sit down, “you gotta get into playing this with me, man. It’s sick.” 

Ilya wrinkles his nose. “I would rather take my balls to a cheese grater than play League with you, Hazy.” 

Shane laughs softly at the way Hazy’s face drops, crestfallen. “Man, fuck you, you’re no fun.” 

“Can you stop being fucking nerds for two seconds and say hi to our guest?”

At that, the guys break their attention away from the TV, turning to face Ilya and, behind him, Shane. 

“Oh, shit,” the bulkier guy – who must be ‘Barrett’ – says. “Sorry, bro, didn’t see you. I’m Troy.” 

Shane nods and leans over Ilya’s lap to bump fists with him. Cooler than a handshake, at least. “Shane. Good to meet you, man.” 

“Wait, is this…?” Hazy starts, pointing at Shane but glancing at Ilya.

“Yes.” 

His eyes go a little wide, and he whistles. “Damn. Ilya has good taste. Not so much you, though, Shane. Sorry, dude.” 

Shane flushes a little at the subtle compliment, smiling around the rim of his solo cup as he takes another tentative swig. It’s all very new, accepting so much praise. He’s only just about got used to taking it from Ilya – albeit the circumstances under which Ilya usually compliments him are… very different, and not something Shane can think about in public without going hot under the collar. 

“Yeah,” Shane laughs, “guess my judgement is pretty questionable.” 

“He says this, but watch how clingy he gets when he is drunk. Cannot get him off me,” Ilya says, leaning back and propping an arm behind his head. His muscles flex deliciously with the movement. 

Shane’s face gets warmer, though he tries to ignore it. “Fuck off, don’t flatter yourself.” Both of them know well enough that Ilya isn’t exaggerating in the slightest, but Shane has to maintain some modicum of dignity here. 

Troy barks out a laugh. “I like this guy.” 

“You can have him, he is so ungrateful,” Ilya says, then yelps when Shane shoves him and makes his drink slosh into his lap. 

The conversation bleeds into something easy and light as the guys go back to watching the TV, sipping beer and tapping their feet along to the music. Shane learns that Troy actually plays for the college football team, which makes his stature a lot more understandable. Apparently, he’s not doing too well in classes, though. 

(“Not cut out for this academic shit, man.”

“It’s college, dude. Academics is kind of the whole point.”)

Hazy (now known to Shane as Wyatt) on the other hand, seems to excel in his classes. Comp Sci is his major, though he doesn’t seem like the type at all. According to Ilya, who spends half the conversation ribbing him like it’s their love language, he’s a complete nerd and a total loser and a royal pain in the ass, but a great friend nonetheless. When asked how they all met, Ilya tells Shane it was through his roommate, Ryan. 

“We all joined the LGBTQ society in first year,” he explains off-handedly. “Ryan’s boyfriend is on the committee.”

Shane gawps. “Wait, so you’re all…?” 

“I’m gay,” Troy says. “So’s Ryan. Think you know about Roz already.”

“I’m straight, I think,” Wyatt adds, “but I was just happy to be involved, honestly.” 

“Such a good ally, Hazy,” Ilya chuckles and knocks back the rest of his drink. 

Shane lets that bomb settle for a moment, munching on a handful of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. Huh. It’s not a surprise that there are other gay guys on campus, because of course there are; Shane had given sub-par blowjobs to two of them before meeting Ilya. It’s more so the fact that he hasn’t really ever had… non-straight friends before. And here Ilya is, walking around with an almost entirely queer friendship group like he’s collecting fucking infinity stones. 

Joining a society would have been a good idea, but freshman Shane had been way too wrapped up in hockey to do much else with his time. And, sure, Hayden and JJ and the rest of the team are great guys, and they’ve never made Shane feel any different for his sexuality. But they’re straight. All of them. He’s never really thought much of it, until now. Having friends that can relate to that part of him… it’d be nice.

Shane feels himself relax a notch into Ilya’s side. He’s in good company, he thinks. 

Svetlana and Rose join them after a while, emerging from the throng and curling up together against the arm of the couch next to Shane. Svetlana brings the bottle of vodka with her, so they all go for a refill, Shane pouring his own this time because he doesn’t trust Ilya not to give him fucking alcohol poisoning. 

The party is much less chaotic than the one at which he met Ilya back in February, which now feels like a lifetime ago. Less rowdy frat bros and property damage, more laidback dancing and good conversation. Shane’s busy getting lost in people watching, enjoying the way the room starts to go fuzzy at the edges, when he feels Ilya’s lips against his ear. 

“Having fun?”

Shane twists around. Ilya’s face is very, very close, and he can’t help glancing down at his lips. “Yeah,” he smiles softly. 

“Done freaking out then?” Ilya murmurs, hand grazing Shane’s lower back. Shane feels his fingers slide up beneath his shirt and brush against his skin. 

“Wasn’t freaking out,” he says, voice low. He swallows at the feeling of Ilya tracing patterns above his waistband. 

Ilya smirks, noting the shift in Shane’s demeanour. His hand stays where it is – he’s not brazen enough to do anything here, on the couch surrounded by his friends – but his eyes keep flicking to Shane’s mouth. 

“You were. Just a little,” Ilya continues to tease. 

Shane feels warm and his head feels a little spinny. Maybe he’s more drunk than he thought. Ilya keeps looking at his lips, and Shane’s looking right back. Did he always have that mole beneath his eyebrow? Were his eyelashes always this long? Were his lips always so pink–

“Are you two dating or what?” 

Shane is yanked, very rudely, out of the moment. 

“Fucking hell, Wyatt,” Svetlana laughs in disbelief. 

Both Ilya and Shane pull back, though Ilya’s hand remains planted firmly on his spine. Ilya laughs, unbothered by the sudden question. 

“What? We’re all thinking it,” Wyatt shrugs, flicking the tab on his beer can absently. 

Rose pipes up from under Svetlana’s arm. “Didn’t Ilya literally tell us they’re fucking?” 

“Well, technically, at that time, they weren’t,” Troy says.

Shane, kind of wishing the couch cushions would grow sentient and swallow him, gnaws on his lip. He and Ilya aren’t dating, he knows that. But is that how they look to people? What would give that impression? 

Ilya has always been the more sexually charged of the two of them, sure, and he’s not shy about flaunting it. But that’s just Ilya being Ilya. Physical and enigmatic. He’d have sexual chemistry with a fucking lamp. 

Is it Shane, then? Is he doing something to give off… dating vibes? Suddenly, he becomes all too aware of his body, his face. Whether it’s the alcohol or the conversation’s fault, he can feel his cheeks reddening slowly. 

“Please stop talking,” Ilya, blessedly, cuts into their speculation. “You are going to make him explode.” 

Suddenly everyone’s eyes fall on Shane. 

“Uh, I’d like my lawyer present for questioning, please.”

Laughs break out around him, and Shane thanks whoever invented vodka for brewing the magic juice that makes him uncharacteristically funny. 

“Ooh, an interrogation! I wanna be bad cop!” Wyatt sits up, excited. 

“In what fucking world are you bad cop?” Troy scoffs. 

“I like it when you play bad cop in the bedroom, babe,” Shane hears Rose mumble to Svetlana, and now he’s really wishing for a way out of this conversation. 

God must be real and listening to his prayers, because someone, somewhere, suggests a party game. 

Shane ends up sitting criss-cross on the floor at the coffee table, sandwiched between Ilya and Svetlana as the rest of the group and a few others come to join in. The table gets cleared to make room for a single cup at the centre, surrounded by a ring of cards. Ring of Fire – Shane knows the game well enough to know where it could lead. He wonders if Rose and Svetlana and their roommates mind someone throwing up all over their nice vintage rug. 

They pull cards, they take turns drinking, and every so often someone pulls a King card and the cup in the middle gets filled with an increasingly toxic volume of straight liquor. Ilya pulls a 2 and chooses Shane to drink. Troy pulls an 8 and chooses Shane as his ‘mate’ to drink with him. Wyatt pulls a Jack and makes a rule that if you’ve slept with anyone in the circle, you have to drink every time they drink. 

Shane, way too many drinks deep and starting to feel the room orbiting around him, gets the impression he might be getting picked on. 

“This is bullshit,” he slurs, as Svetlana pulls another 8 and chooses Ilya to drink with her, thus pulling Shane (and Rose) into it. 

Ilya tips his head back and swigs, wiping the stray drops from his lips with his thumb. “Aw, little baby is too much of a lightweight for this game,” he coos, dropping his hand to Shane’s thigh and giving it a squeeze. 

Shane feels the room sway a little harder at the word baby and the feeling of Ilya’s fingers settling on his inseam. Still, he drinks because he isn’t a fucking pussy, and then finishes the cup for good measure. 

“Someone’s competitive,” Rose teases. 

“He just pisses me off,” Shane quips, jerking a thumb in Ilya’s direction.

In response, he gets a pinch to his thigh that makes him jolt. Ilya smirks. 

They play the rest of the game like that, Ilya’s hand on his thigh throughout the whole thing. That, combined with the egregious amount of alcohol in his bloodstream, makes Shane feel practically dizzy. 

By the time the last King card is pulled (Shane thanks God – and every other deity he knows the name of – that it isn’t him), Ilya’s hand has practically made a home for itself on Shane’s leg. In his periphery, he can feel Svetlana glancing down at it every so often. At one point, she leans over and murmurs something in Rose’s ear, and Rose leans forward ever so slightly to take a subtle look. 

Shane feels… hot. Too hot. 

“M’gonna go t’the bathroom,” he mumbles to nobody in particular, everyone too busy focusing on the poor soul who has to drink the gruesome King cup mixture. 

He wobbles to his feet, Ilya’s hand slipping from his thigh. Ilya raises an eyebrow and watches him as he goes.

The bathroom is small, but it’s empty and about five degrees cooler than the rest of the house, so Shane doesn’t mind. He pushes inside, shucking his sweatshirt off almost immediately and folding it over the towel rail. He gathers some water in his palms and splashes his cheeks, his neck. Leans up against the wall of exposed brick and lets the droplets run down his skin as he takes a moment to recalibrate. 

This bathroom, unlike the one at the last house party, is free of graffiti and coke bags in the sink. It’s pretty, like the rest of the house. There’s even a little air freshener thing with the sticks poking out the top sitting on the cistern. Very… fancy. 

There’s a knock at the door, and then someone pushes inside. Right, probably should have locked that. 

Unsurprisingly, it’s Ilya. 

“What th’fuck? You know I need to piss, right?” Shane huffs. 

Ilya grins as he flicks the lock on the door, turning around and leaning back against it. 

“Dangerous to piss with the door unlocked, no?”

“Shut up.” 

“We cannot keep meeting like this. In bathrooms,” Ilya says, a teasing lilt to his voice that makes Shane’s stomach feel like jelly. 

He looks really fucking good. As he always does, but Shane is seeing everything through the blurry lens of inebriation right now and Ilya looks like less of a person and more a holy apparition. Tight shirt, toned arms, tanned skin. Messy curls, lazy smirk playing across crooked lips. Fuck. 

It occurs to Shane that they haven’t been alone for more than two minutes since he arrived over two hours ago. Over two hours of non-stop talking and joking and pretending like he’s not going out of his mind thinking about Ilya. No wonder he feels like he’s about to burst free of his skin. And now they’re in yet another cramped bathroom, and what happens next is inevitable. 

Ilya closes the distance before Shane can, backing him up against the edge of the sink as he takes Shane’s jaw in his hands and kisses him. His lips are rough and Shane’s are open and willing, and Ilya’s tongue sliding into his mouth is welcomed with a breathy sigh. Shane grabs the back of Ilya’s neck, thick and muscular under his palm, and uses the other hand to ruck up his shirt and splay his fingers across the hard lines of his abs. Ilya groans into his mouth at the contact. 

Shane feels Ilya’s hands snake from his face and down his chest, round his waist and down to his ass. He pulls Shane’s hips closer and bucks his own to meet them, drawing another soft moan from Shane when their clothed dicks brush together. After indulging long enough in the soft give of Shane’s ass under his fingers, his palms come to the backs of Shane’s thighs. And then he’s picking Shane up.

Shane gasps softly at the display of strength, going a little light-headed with it. Instinctively, his legs wrap around Ilya’s waist, arms thrown over his shoulders. He kisses harder, more desperate. Laves over Ilya’s tongue with his own and sucks on his lower lip, panting into his mouth as Ilya sets him down on the vanity and pushes his body in between Shane’s legs. 

The wet sounds of their lips and their hushed groans are mostly drowned out by the music outside in the corridor. Back in the living room, people are chanting something that sounds like ‘drink, drink, drink’, intermingled with laughter. Shane can’t focus on it, can only feel the drag of Ilya’s lips on his and the feeling of Ilya’s fingers pressing into the curve of his waist. 

As they kiss – hot and needy slipping into passionate and slow – Shane feels himself go from floating high up in the clouds to sinking somewhere deep into the back of his head. Like submerging into a warm bath, letting the water and the bubbles rise up above his chest and shoulders, his nape and finally his head. It’s like this every time, with Ilya. 

Shane’s been wound up tight all night, the pressure of a good first impression weighing heavy on his back, but with Ilya solid between his thighs and under his lips and hands, Shane can forget about it. Go to whatever place it is that Ilya possesses the innate ability to send him to. Let go, relax, surrender. Submit. 

He allows himself to slip under just a little, to dip down into that inviting space for a moment as he rakes his fingers through Ilya’s hair. Now isn’t the time to go all the way, not here. That can wait until later. For now, Shane just hums into Ilya’s mouth and rolls his hips up into him and breathes in the spicy, sweet smell of his cologne. 

He doesn’t think about what Ilya’s friends think of him, or their so-called ‘situationship’. Doesn’t think about the looks and hushed whispers shared between Svetlana and Rose all night. Doesn’t think about the word “dating” at all. He just lets go, until there’s nothing left but Ilya. 

The first week of April brings with it a noticeable change of gears. With finals no more than a month away and, more imminently for Shane and the team, the final game of the season, there’s a palpable shift of focus that happens. The library gets busier, the rest of campus gets a little quieter. Practice gets more intense, they run more drills, they go harder with conditioning and training until Shane is shambling back to his dorm late in the evening looking like a zombie. 

Parties and clubs and bars are a distant memory. At least he got one last hurrah before he really had to start locking in. Alongside the extra training, he tries cleaning up his diet a little, though takeout always seems the more attractive option when laid up in bed with ice packs up to his knees and his muscles screaming. 

The team is in great shape, though, physically and otherwise. Coach is confident that they’ll take this one home with the way they’ve been showing up throughout the season thus far, but they can’t let up yet. There’s added pressure this year, with the championship game being held at home, in their college city. They can’t afford to get complacent.

One morning at practice, Shane is leaning up against the boards during a break in edge work drills when Hayden decides to broach that topic again. 

“Any updates on your man?” 

Shane groans. “Fuck off, Hayd, I told you to stop calling him that. Christ.” 

“Well, sorry,” Hayden says, all sarcasm. “So, what? I can’t call him your fuck buddy ‘cause that’s gross, I can’t call him your boyfriend–” Shane cringes– “and I can’t call him a friend ‘cause friends certainly don’t do whatever you guys are doing.” 

Shane scuffs his blade against the ice and fiddles with a loose string on his glove. “You know his name now.”

“Ilya…” Hayden rolls the name around in his mouth like it’s sour candy. He pronounces it like Eel-ee-yuh. Not quite right, but Shane doesn’t have the energy to correct him right now. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Use that.” 

Hayden rolls his eyes. He takes a swig from his water bottle and then spits over his shoulder. 

“Okay, but you’re gonna have to move it out of situationship territory eventually, right? Lock it down or something.” 

Shane wants to say something along the lines of ‘I’m not that desperate to get him into a relationship like you were with Jackie, man’ but then thinks better of it. First of all, he’s happy for Hayden and is honestly glad that he managed to convince a girl as sweet as Jackie to date him. Second, some part of saying that would feel like lying. But Shane doesn’t think about that too deeply. 

“I told you, we’re not labelling anything right now. It’s… better that way,” Shane says instead. 

Hayden eyes him from beneath his visor. “If you’re sure, buddy. But as someone that knows you way better than anyone else, I can’t see you dealing with that for very long.” 

Shane leans over and takes the water bottle, squirting it into his mouth. His eyes follow the rest of the team as they skate loose circles across the rink or stand chatting in small huddles, waiting for their next instruction. Coach is busy scribbling something on a whiteboard, so he guesses they have another minute or so. 

“So no update then?” Hayden prods. 

“No, no update,” Shane sighs. “We’re both busier now with finals and the game coming up, so not much time for other… stuff.” 

Stuff. Shane tries not to think about stuff while he’s at practice. Getting hard in his jockstrap doesn’t prove effective for focusing. 

Hayden seems too deep in thought to use that as fodder for some lame joke, which Shane is grateful for. The innuendos have truly gotten tiring. 

“You said he comes to the games sometimes, right?”

“Yeah, why?” 

“You should give him tickets for next Friday. Tell him to bring his buddies, too. You said they were cool.” 

Shane must look visibly apprehensive, because Hayden continues. 

“Dude, come on. Your parents can’t make it, so who else are you gonna give them to? Not like you have any other friends to invite.” 

Hayden, regrettably, is right. It’s disappointing that his parents can’t make it, but Shane can’t be too mad at them for missing the big game. They’ll be looking after his grandmother who’s not long had surgery and can’t get around all that easy, but at least they’ll be able to watch it on TV. 

And yeah, Shane doesn’t really have anyone else he’d give the tickets to. But Hayden’s still a dick.

“Keep talking shit,” Shane laughs. “As your captain, I still have time to make your life hell before the semester is over.”

The whistle blows. As they fall in line for stickhandling drills, Shane mulls it over. 

The following week, pre-finals anxiety must be getting to people, because Shane has walked across each of the five floors of the library about ten times and he cannot find a single fucking seat. Anywhere. 

Every desk is occupied, every booth full, every sofa slowly forming an imprint in the shape of someone’s ass. 

He wouldn’t mind so much if there were any other viable locations on campus that weren’t already full or far too noisy to be conducive to studying. The dorm is out of the question, given that someone had decided the month before finals week would be a great time to start construction work right outside his building. 

Shane gives up after his eleventh lap. He takes the elevator back down to the lobby and yanks his lanyard out of his back pocket, slapping it on the keycard reader a few times before it finally beeps and sets him free. As he’s stuffing it away, he looks up and sees Ilya walking through the revolving door at the front. 

“Hey,” he says, stepping into Ilya’s path. “I wouldn’t fucking bother, place is rammed.” 

Ilya stops short, face breaking into a smile. He shrugs his backpack up further onto his shoulder. 

“Well, fuck,” he sighs. “What about–” 

“Tried it,” Shane cuts him off. “I’m serious, don’t bother. You want a seat, try the benches on the quad.” 

The rain sliding down the glass doors at Ilya’s back is enough to explain why that’s a bad idea. 

“What is your plan then?” Ilya asks, reaching an arm out to pull Shane aside as someone passes by and nearly hits him with their bag. It’s the tiniest of gestures, but it makes Shane’s chest feel funny. 

“Uh… Fuck, I don’t know. Can’t study in my room, they’re fucking jackhammering outside or something.” 

“Oh?” 

“Not like that, Jesus.” 

Ilya laughs. “Okay. So you need somewhere quiet, ah?” 

Shane nods, tapping his foot absentmindedly. He could just put it off, but that’d be a slippery slope, and god knows when he’ll next get a chance to study before the game on Friday.

“Want to come to my dorm? Is quiet enough. My roommates are out. I usually hate studying in my room, but…” Ilya shrugs.

Shane eyes him dubiously. “Oh, and I’m sure you plan on just studying.” 

Ilya puts a hand to his heart, feigning hurt. “Please. I have some self control.” 

It’s not like you have any other options. Really, he’s being very generous. Would be rude not to accept. 

“Alright, yeah, thanks. If that’s cool.” 

“Very cool.” 

For all Shane’s reservations, they do end up studying. For a while. Hours, in fact. 

It’s surprisingly easy to get into the flow of things as he sits with his back up against Ilya’s headboard, laptop warming his thighs as he types away. Every so often, Ilya will shift in his chair and make it squeak, or cough slightly under his breath, but other than that… it’s peaceful. Quiet. A very studious atmosphere. 

Though it very nearly hadn’t been. 

“You wear glasses?” 

Shane pauses in the middle of situating his frames on his face. “Just when I read and stuff. Long distance is fine.” 

Ilya has swivelled around fully in his chair, staring at Shane who’s sitting on his bed and about to pull his laptop out of his bag. There’s a look on his face that Shane is starting to become very familiar with. 

“What?” he says, laughing a little. 

Ilya stands up and walks over to the bed slowly until he’s towering over it. Shane has to crane his neck to look up at him. 

“I like them,” he states. 

“Okay…?” Shane feels like he’s being examined under a microscope. 

Ilya doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he brings his hand up to cup Shane’s jaw, his thumb dipping beneath the rim of the frames and brushing over Shane’s cheekbone. He trails it over Shane’s cheek and then down towards his mouth, over his bottom lip. It’s almost instinctual at this point, the way Shane lets his lips part just enough for Ilya to slip his thumb inside and press it against Shane’s tongue. 

Shane looks up at him through his glasses and fights the urge to suck. 

“Fuck,” Ilya hisses, blinking a few times as if he has to physically snap out of the daze he’s in. He withdraws his thumb, leaving a trail of spit in its wake. He brings the thumb to his mouth and kisses away the moisture left there. 

“Those,” he says, gesturing to Shane’s glasses, “are dangerous.”

Shane blushes, forcing himself to chuckle in an attempt to distract his brain from drifting into his dick. “You got a thing for glasses or something?” 

Ilya shakes his head as he walks back over to his desk. “Apparently I do now.” 

Shane ends up re-reading the same paragraph of his research notes about five times thinking about that. 

Thankfully, after that, Shane managed to work through every single presentation slide he’d wanted to, plus a few extra. By the time he’s done, the rain outside has stopped, though Ilya hasn’t. He’s hunched over his desk, books and papers spread out across its surface. The glow of his laptop screen illuminates his face, which is drawn into a look of concentration that Shane hasn’t ever seen before. 

It’s quite nice to just sit back and watch him work for a while. The sound of his fingers tapping across the keys every now and again proves quite soothing, and Shane’s more than happy to settle into the pillows and relax for a bit. He scrolls on his phone for a while, then takes to letting his eyes wander around Ilya’s room and observing all the small details he hasn’t really noticed before. 

Stickers stuck haphazardly to his mirror, a couple of postcards tacked up on his pinboard amongst the photos. A ribbon that Shane remembers seeing in one of the Instagram posts from his department’s research awards ceremony. 

When he eventually gets bored with that, he moves on to snooping around. He leans over and pries open the drawer by the side of the bed and starts rifling through its contents. Ilya makes absolutely no move to stop him, so he carries on. It’s about what he expected. Condoms, quite a lot of them. A bottle of lube. A couple baggies of green nuggets – that would explain the smell. A grinder, some rolling papers, a pipe. A tangled ball of wired headphones. 

His fingers meet something smooth at the back of the drawer. He pulls it out, slowly. 

“What’s this?” 

Ilya doesn’t look up right away. “What is what?” 

“This thing in your drawer.” 

Ilya’s head turns and his eyebrows shoot up when he sees the item dangling between Shane’s fingers. A silicone ring, bulkier on one side with a small indented button on its surface. 

“Oh, so now we are looking at all my things, I see.” 

Shane spins the ring around his finger, catching it when it nearly flies off the end. He holds it up to his face, peering through the hole at Ilya, who’s smothering a grin. “Seriously, what is it?” 

Ilya starts laughing. 

“What?” 

“It’s a cock ring, Shane.” 

Shane fumbles and drops it. “What the fuck?! Why do you have a cock ring?” 

Leaning back in his chair, Ilya gives him a look that seems to say why the fuck do you think?

“I mean– I know why, I know what a cock ring is,” Shane backtracks and stumbles over the words while his face slowly turns red. 

“Oh, yes, I got that when you were using it like telescope,” Ilya says, enjoying Shane’s humiliation far too much. 

Shane stares at the black silicone sitting stark against the white bedsheets. “Shut up. I just haven’t seen one with this extra thing on it before,” he mutters, prodding at the part that juts out. “Dunno what it is.”

“Guess.” 

Shane is all of a sudden overwhelmed with the mental image of black silicone stretching around the base of Ilya’s cock. The picture is crystal clear, Ilya laying back on his bed, legs spread apart as he works his hand over his length, red and weeping and bulging against the restriction of the ring, head thrown back in ecstasy. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Does he use it on his own? Or is this something he uses with other… lovers? Oh, god. 

“Is it one of those… vibrating ones?” Shane manages to get out. 

“Ah, so you have watched a little porn, then,” Ilya replies, eyes full of mirth. 

Shane glances back down at the ring. He feels almost hypnotised by it now, imagining how it would look on Ilya. How it would sound when it turned on. How it would feel. 

“Want to try it?” 

Shane’s head whips up. “What?” 

Ilya smirks as he sinks further back in his chair. “Go ahead, try it on. Make yourself busy while I study.” 

Shane’s mouth is dry, and his dick is starting to stir. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, but the words get all clogged up in his throat. They eventually come out in a sort of choked laugh. “I’m not gonna put a fucking cock ring on while you type up notes on childhood attachment.” 

“Aw, no fun,” Ilya pouts. “Maybe another time, then. Put it back when you are done being nosy, yes?” 

And with that, he swivels back around and goes back to studying. 

Shane feels like he’s just discovered nuclear fucking launch codes in Ilya’s bedside table. He picks up the ring and turns it over a few times in his palm, stretching it around his fingers experimentally. He really needs to stop imagining Ilya wearing it. But he can’t, and now it’s basically all he can think about. He finds the little impression on the side, presses down on it and feels the ring buzz to life in his hand, flinching at the sensation. 

Ilya peers over his shoulder at the sound, smiling before turning back to his laptop. Shane presses the button again and feels the vibrations get stronger, a little faster. He presses it again, and the vibrations stop before coming back in slow pulses. Jesus Christ. He presses it again, and the ring shuts off. 

Maybe another time. 

Shane gingerly places it back in the drawer, tucking it at the back where he found it. It takes root in his brain much the same way, a small black silicone suggestion burying itself in the wrinkles of his hippocampus. He won’t be forgetting about that any time soon. 

Ilya goes back to studying quietly and Shane goes back to… Well, nothing. Except now he’s half-hard. And thinking about Ilya’s cock. At least he got his work done first. 

His eyes keep flicking over to the back of Ilya’s head, his curls glinting in the dim daylight and falling into his eyes as he works. He seems entirely unbothered by the whole thing, unlike Shane. Of course he is, being the king of the unflappable. It’s infuriating, really, how nonchalant he is. Shane wishes he could make him squirm, just once, make him get hot under the collar and desperate in the way that he so easily does to Shane. 

Ilya shifts again, adjusting in his seat, and accidentally knocks a pen loose. It rolls off the edge of his desk and falls to the floor by his feet. 

“I’ll get it,” Shane says. May as well make himself useful. 

He crouches down on the carpet and leans under the desk. It’s rolled a little ways back, so he has to scoot by Ilya’s legs to get it, reaching underneath the table top. It’s spacious under the desk. Almost enough space to fit a person. Hm.

Shane hands the pen back, but stays kneeling on the floor. Ilya looks down at him questioningly. 

“Getting up?”

Shane smiles. “I think I’ll stay here,” he says, crawling further beneath the desk on his hands and knees. “Nice and cosy.” 

Ilya peers at him as he situates himself in the space between Ilya’s splayed legs, face level with his groin. “I am still working.” 

“That’s fine. I’ll just be here. Please carry on.” 

There’s about five seconds between Ilya sighing and going back to work and Shane pressing his face directly into his crotch. 

Ilya’s knee jerks and hits the desk. “Christ,” he hisses. 

Shane breathes in greedily, nosing into the fabric of Ilya’s sweats and drawing his musky scent into his nose. He grins at the startled noise Ilya makes, pushing his face in even closer to elicit it again. 

“Think you can focus with me down here?” he asks innocently.

Ilya groans from somewhere above him. “What happened to just studying?” 

“I studied. Now I’m bored. Not my fault you’re slow.”

He’s met with a sharp nudge of Ilya’s foot in his side as a response. “Brat.” 

“Think you can do it?” he asks again. 

“Fuck no. But you can try,” Ilya replies, leaning back again to look at Shane between his legs. “And keep your glasses on.” 

Shane flushes. “Deal.” 

He starts off slow, just nuzzling into Ilya’s inner thigh, into the crease between his leg and his crotch. He nudges up against his bulge and feels his balls, his cock. He presses a kiss over it and hears Ilya’s breath hitch slightly. He smirks to himself. 

He mouths over that spot in Ilya’s sweats until he can feel him hardening beneath the fabric, a slow swelling beneath his lips. When there’s a sizeable enough bulge, Shane brings his hand up and flattens his palm against it, cupping and squeezing and enjoying the way Ilya’s toes start to curl a little.

Eventually, he gets his fingers into Ilya’s waistband and, with a little help, gets the sweats down and off, discarding them somewhere under the desk. Ilya’s erection is even more evident in his boxers, straining against the material and making a dark, wet patch at his tip. Shane feels ravenous. He puts his hands on Ilya’s knees and leans in, pressing his lips against the fabric and sucking it onto his tongue hard enough to taste the faintest hint of pre-come. 

“Fuck,” Ilya breathes, hips canting. The motion makes the back of Shane’s head knock against the underside of the desk. “Sorry.” 

Shane isn’t sorry at all. He’s having way too much fun, and he’s barely even started. 

He sucks along the length of Ilya’s cock until the feeling of damp cotton dragging against his tongue starts to make him cringe, moving instead to the supple flesh of his inner thighs. He plants wet kisses there, lets the tip of his tongue explore the smooth skin. Ilya, from what he can hear, is still typing away above his head, though the rhythm is perhaps more stilted than before.

With his mouth busy elsewhere, Shane begins to palm Ilya through his boxers again. He cups his hand around the girth, runs the length of it between his fingers, dances the pads of his fingers across the tip. He spends a while just marvelling at the thickness and the size, and how it twitches with each feather-light brush over the head. Shane is obsessed with it. How it sits on his tongue, the taste of it, how it fills him up perfectly no matter how Ilya chooses to give it to him. Like they’re both two jigsaw pieces slotting together. Shane fucking loves Ilya’s cock. 

He can feel himself getting harder just thinking about it, leaking into his pants. He needs it in his mouth. Now.  

As he pulls Ilya’s cock free from his underwear, Shane feels him stiffen and his fingertips pause on the keyboard. 

“Keep going,” Shane encourages, stroking up and down his thigh with his free hand. 

“You are making it very hard to focus.”

“I haven’t even got you in my mouth yet.” 

At that, Ilya groans, and Shane watches a bead of pre-come swell at his slit. The sight makes Shane’s dick throb. He was planning on teasing a little more to begin with, but he can’t help leaning in and licking across the tip, tasting it. Ilya’s quad flexes under Shane’s hand as he lets out a soft moan. 

The taste of him and the sound of his pleasure makes Shane’s mouth start watering. Like a dog at a dinner bell. He grips Ilya’s cock firmer at the base and angles it towards his lips, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue. He leans in and rests the tip there, dragging Ilya’s cock back and forth across his tastebuds. 

“Oh, fuck, Shane,” Ilya moans, leaning back to watch him. 

Shane meets his eyes and sees his expression darken further. 

“Looking like such a whore in those glasses.”

Shane’s eyelashes flutter as Ilya releases another dribble of pre-come onto his tongue, clearly getting off on the sight. He’s never considered anyone finding his glasses sexy before, but it’s obviously doing something for Ilya, so he’s more than happy to indulge him.

He finishes lapping up the wetness at the head, curling his tongue around it and then licking lower, down towards his hand and then up again. He knows Ilya well enough now to know he likes it sloppy. Once he’s sufficiently slippery with Shane’s spit, Shane gives him a few lazy tugs. 

“I don’t hear you typing,” he says, pleased with how nonchalant he sounds. He’s fucking dripping in his underwear, but Ilya doesn’t need to know that. 

“Fuck the typing, I want to watch you suck my cock.”

Shane laughs and laves over his slit again. “I won’t do anything unless you start studying. Finals are in a couple weeks, it’s very important.” 

“This is bullshit,” Ilya groans, hips jerking a little when Shane pumps his fist again. 

“How is it bullshit? You study and get good grades, and you get to fuck my mouth while you do it.”

Shane hears him sigh, sitting up straighter. Then the sound of typing resumes. 

Satisfied, Shane carries on where he left off. He takes Ilya's cock between his lips, slowly inching his way down the shaft and letting his tongue flatten to accommodate him. He takes him all the way down until the tip is just nudging his soft palate, not hard enough to make him gag but just the way he likes it. He moans at the weight of Ilya’s cock in his mouth, the fullness. The way he has to breathe a little shallower through his nose so as not to choke. He swallows gently and tastes that familiar saltiness at the back of his throat. 

Ilya’s foot twitches. He's still studying, but Shane can hear him breathing harder, struggling. 

Shane suddenly remembers the thought he had the other week. Of taking Ilya in his mouth and just keeping him there for hours and hours, making him come and swallowing it all and sucking him through it. He's dreamt about it. Woken up leaking and had to tug himself off hard and fast as he moaned into his pillow. Fuck, he really, really wants to try it.

He's not even sure if Ilya will be able to handle it, but he wants to try. Wants to make him feel good. 

So, he gets comfortable. Adjusts himself on his knees until he’s tucked neatly between Ilya's legs, hands coming to rest at the tops of Ilya’s thighs, by his hips. He lets his jaw relax and unhinge, resting his forehead against the softness of Ilya’s lower stomach. When he finally stills, Ilya’s cock resting heavy on his tongue, he senses Ilya pause. 

“You’re not going to move until I finish this, are you?”

Well, he catches on quick.

“Mm-mm,” Shane hums, which makes Ilya twitch from the vibration around him. 

“Fuck me.” 

More clicking, more tapping. Shane settles into that floaty, dream-like headspace. Now and then, he has to swallow to try and stop the saliva building up in his mouth from dripping out the corners. Every time he flexes his tongue against the underside, Ilya squirms and groans. 

At one point, Ilya brings his hand beneath the desk to stroke at the back of Shane’s head, down his neck, slipping beneath the hem of his shirt and splaying his fingers across the muscles of Shane’s back. Shane slaps his hand away and makes him keep typing. 

Keeping Ilya’s cock nice and warm and wet in his mouth, Shane feels dizzy. He’s so fucking turned on by it, the feeling of his mouth stretched wide and stuffed full, the sensation of almost-gagging but not. Every so often, he’ll be rewarded by more pre-come leaking out and into his welcoming throat. He’s dribbling now, all over Ilya’s cock and down his balls, wetting the band of Ilya’s boxers that are still stretched tight over his legs. 

Shane keeps his hands on Ilya’s hips, thumbs massaging his hipbones and fingers occasionally reaching around to dig into the meat of his ass. It makes Ilya jerk and moan softly, but he keeps working.

How effective of a study method this is, Shane isn’t so sure. Ilya probably won’t be getting much accomplished, and whatever he does manage to note down is most likely going straight through his brain and out the other side. Trying to study with your cock sheathed in someone’s mouth can’t be that easy. 

Ilya doesn’t let him get away with too much, though. He can’t make Shane move, but he can tease. And tease he does, wriggling his foot under the desk until it finds its way between Shane’s thighs, pushing up against his swollen dick. Shane whines at the contact and rocks into it. Ilya can only manage it a few more times, however, because it keeps making Shane’s tongue flutter distractingly against his cock. 

Shane lets his eyes slip closed as he kneels there, warmed by the heat of Ilya’s massive thighs around his body. At random intervals, he experiments taking Ilya deeper into his mouth, widening his throat just that little bit more and burying his nose further into the soft patch of Ilya’s pubes. Each time he does so, Ilya swears above him and the sounds of clicking and typing stop momentarily before resuming. 

“Okay, fuck, I’m done. Fuck this shit,” Ilya growls, flopping back in the chair. His hands come up to cup Shane’s jaw as he stares down at him reverently. “That was fucking torture. I learnt nothing.” 

It proves very difficult to smile with a cock stuffed in his mouth, but Shane manages anyway. 

“You look so fucking pretty like this,” Ilya sighs, thumbing the corner of Shane’s lips where they stretch around his girth. “Such a slut with your glasses falling off.”

Ilya nudges the frames back up onto the bridge of Shane’s nose. His cock throbs against Shane’s tongue and Shane sniffles, his nose starting to run from how long he’s kept Ilya in the back of his throat. 

“Bet I could make them all misty. Make you cry on my cock and they would fog up.” 

Shane moans. He can’t hold back anymore. 

Finally, he moves. He pulls back slowly, letting Ilya’s cock drag over his tongue as he suctions him between his cheeks. Ilya’s moan comes out as a low rumble, deep in his chest, and his fingers move from Shane’s face to his hair. Shane takes him out nearly all the way, pausing at the tip to regain his breath, then sinks down again. And again. Bobbing his head up and down, swirling his tongue and getting lost in it. 

Ilya starts swearing in Russian. His body starts to tense up. He’s close already, unsurprisingly. Shane probably couldn’t have lasted this long; he would have come with his dick enveloped in Ilya’s mouth without him even having to move. 

Everything is so wet and messy now. Shane slurps up the spit that escapes his mouth and catches the rest with his fist, jerking Ilya’s cock shallowly at the base as he sucks him off with fervour. Ilya’s eyes are fixed on him under the desk, watching through hooded lids. 

“Close,” he warns, gritting his teeth and breathing harshly through his nose. 

Shane hums greedily, letting him know how much he wants it. 

Ilya’s lips start to curl, eyebrows drawing together. 

“Want to come on your face.” 

Shane whines. No. He wants Ilya’s come down his throat, not wasted on his face. He wants to taste it so fucking badly it’s absurd. But he can’t pull off now to tell him that. He’s too close, and Shane is too impatient to edge him any more than he already has.  

“Come on, let me come all over your pretty glasses.” 

“Mm-mm,” Shane hums around his cock, sucking harder. 

Ilya's fingers tighten in his hair, like he’s about to pull him off. 

“Please, Shane, fuck, please, I will come so fucking hard. Please let me.”

Oh god. The sound of Ilya begging for it, voice husky and breaking around the syllables, makes Shane's stomach tighten so hard he almost comes in his pants. As much as he wants to taste Ilya’s load all over his tongue, there’s no way in fucking hell he can deny him now. 

Shane continues to pump his fist as he lets Ilya’s cock fall out of his mouth with a gasping breath that quickly dissolves into a whimper at the loss of its weight, its taste. But it’s worth it for the sound Ilya makes when Shane takes it and slaps it against his swollen lips. A moan coloured with the closest thing to desperation he’s ever heard from him.  

“Ah, fu–!”

Ilya wrenches Shane's head back as he comes. The perfect angle for him to shoot his load all over Shane’s face. It hits Shane's lips fist, dribbling down his chin, and Shane sticks his tongue out to catch what little taste he can. Then it hits his glasses, his cheeks. He closes his eyes and is grateful for it a moment later when some splatters over his eyebrow and runs down his eyelid. 

Ilya's hips haven't stopped thrusting shallowly into Shane's fist, and Shane can feel him twitching as he grunts through the waves of his orgasm. Shane wishes he could see his face, see the dazed expression and the heat in his eyes. Instead, he settles for licking his lips, collecting every last drop of Ilya’s come that he can reach, savouring it on his tongue. 

After a few more twitches, Ilya falls still and the chair squeaks as he sags back into it. Then, there's a rustling of fabric, and Shane feels his glasses being pushed up from his eyes and the soft touch of cotton against his eyelids. Ilya is cleaning his face with his shirt. 

“Wish I could take a picture of you like that,” he murmurs. “Fucking hot.”

Shane smiles as Ilya dabs at his eyebrow and eyelashes, swiping most of the come off them.  

“Eyes okay?”

“Thank god I had my glasses on,” Shane says faintly, still hard as a brick and lightheaded. 

“Sorry, you just–”

“Looked fucking hot, I know.” 

Shane blinks his eyes open carefully, grimacing at the way his lashes stick together. His fingers are still curled around Ilya's cock, now softening in his palm, and Ilya offers the shirt for him to clean his hand with. It does the job, temporarily. As he does that, Ilya slips the now filthy glasses off and puts them aside on the desk. Shane will stress about the mess later.

As he imagined, Ilya is watching him with blown-out pupils and a slack jaw. Shane can’t help but to preen, feeling very smug to have had him so worked up that he was begging. He’s used to being the one doing the begging, but Ilya? That’s definitely going to be the feature of many, many wet dreams to come. 

“Your turn now,” Ilya purrs, rolling back on the chair slightly and tapping his thighs as an invitation.

Shane follows, crawling out from under the desk until he’s clear to stand up. His vision goes spotty at the edges as he comes upright, blood pooling in his dick, and his knees ache from being pressed against the floor for so long. Still, he wastes no time shucking off his shirt and sweats and climbing onto Ilya’s lap, squeezing his knees into the gap between Ilya's thighs and the chair’s armrests. Ilya wraps an arm around his back to steady him.

Chest to chest like this, Shane suddenly feels shy. But then Ilya is tugging him down for a kiss and none of that matters, the insistent slide of Ilya’s tongue over his proving all-consuming. Shane moans into it, hard and wanting. Ilya, taking the hint, gets his free hand into Shane's boxers and onto his aching cock.

His calloused hand squeezes and works over the shaft, the pad of his thumb pressing into Shane’s slit and smearing the wetness there until Shane is sensitive and shuddering. Ilya breaks the kiss momentarily to bend his neck and spit right over Shane’s cock, using the added lubrication to start jerking him off harder. 

“Hah– Fu– Shit–” 

Shane pants into his mouth now, barely kissing. Their faces are so close that he can practically feel Ilya’s eyelashes fluttering against his. He grips the back of the chair over Ilya’s shoulders, fingers clenching and unclenching as he feels his orgasm start to build. Ilya drags his lips from Shane’s mouth across his jawline and down his throat, finding the spot on his neck that drives him fucking wild. He sucks, hard, and Shane loses it.

He comes with a sob, bucking up into Ilya’s hand and spilling all over his fist and between their bodies, covering Ilya’s bare chest and stomach. Through the aftershocks, they share a lazy kiss. Ilya fucks his tongue into Shane’s mouth, and Shane happily takes it, spent and woozy and in utter bliss. 

A while after, once Shane has untangled himself from Ilya’s lap and the chair, and has haphazardly cleaned himself (and his glasses) in the bathroom, he flops back onto the bed amongst his forgotten books and laptop. Ilya, now clothed again, crawls up his body and lays on top of him. 

“Successful study session, wouldn’t you say?” Shane quips. 

Ilya scoffs. “For you, maybe. I started key-smashing halfway through your stupid game.” 

Shane’s head crooks up. “What?!”

“You expect me to be able to think straight with my cock down your throat?” he says, exasperated.

Shane bites the inside of his cheek, smiling. “I mean, you could have at least tried…” 

“Tried. Did not work. If I fail exam, is your fault.” 

“Alright,” Shane groans. “No more studying together. We can’t be trusted.” 

“You can’t be trusted.” 

“Shut up.” 

Friday night rolls around all too soon. Shane is prepared, he knows he is, but the nauseating twist of his stomach before he steps out onto the ice comes all the same. 

It’s like skating through TV static, the whole arena wired and electrified with an energy that screams expectation. Shane tries to shrug it all off, to let the eager eyes of the hometown fans slide off his back like water off a duck’s. It’s too much weight to carry tonight. And he needs to be light on his feet if they want to win. 

Halfway through the first period, Shane knows a victory will be hard fought. It would be boring if it wasn’t, and at this level it’s to be expected that their opponents will be just as hungry and play just as hard for it. But, ultimately, the pendulum will swing in the direction of the team that doesn’t let their hunger make them sloppy. And Shane (blowjobs aside) hates being sloppy. 

During a line change, Shane gets the opportunity to look out into the crowd. His eyes search the sea of familiar jerseys until he spots them – Ilya and his friends. They’re also wearing the team colours tonight, blending into the masses, but Shane would be able to pick Ilya’s blonde curls out of a line-up from 300 feet away. As he locates them, they wave and cheer, and he raises a gloved hand in return. 

In the end, he had caved and invited them.

Shane 11:10am

do you guys have tickets to the game on friday?

ilya :) 2:03pm 

no 😔 they sold out before svetlana could get them 

ilya :) 2:03pm

you know how much they’re charging to see your team these days?

ilya :) 2:03pm

fucking insane

Shane 2:10pm 

oh so we aren’t worth your money ok

ilya :) 2:11pm

for $150 i expect you to come into the stands and suck me off in between periods

Shane 2:11pm

fuck off 

Shane 2:12pm

i have 4 tickets going if you want them, free 

ilya :) 2:12pm

seriously?

Shane 2:13pm

seriously

ilya :) 2:13pm 

do they come with a blowjob or is that just if i spend the $150

Shane 2:14pm 

just take the fucking tickets ilya

The sight of them makes Shane’s chest bloom something warm and delicate, almost bashful at the fact that he has an audience. Well, besides the hundreds of other people in the arena, that is. But these people are the ones he really wants to impress. 

The thing in his chest hardens a little, shapes itself into something more like determination. He’ll make sure he puts on a good show. Maybe bring out some of that aggression that Ilya always says he should carry more of on the ice. 

No. Focus, idiot. No stupid penalties. No fucking showing off. No distractions.

Shane steels himself and tunes back into the game. 

In the second period, Shane takes a hit to the face that, thankfully, leaves him mostly unharmed besides a bruised lip and bleeding gums. No chipped teeth, thank fucking god. When the refs come over to check on him, he spits blood onto the ice and waves them off. 

“I’m good. Let’s keep fucking going.”

If the opposing team wants him off the ice tonight, they’ll have to send him out on a stretcher. 

Shane plays what might be the best game he’s played in months. Perhaps it’s the fuel of the hometown crowd’s cheers, or perhaps it’s the heat of a particular gaze on his back from halfway up the stands. Either way, Shane fucking devours the game like it’s lunch. 

They win. 3-2, a close game. Down to the final minutes, but ultimately theirs. 

The celebrations that follow are raucous, rowdy. The cheers and whoops don’t stop in the locker room or even the showers, nor on the team bus back to campus. The mood is astronomically high, and Shane lets himself get whisked up in it. He’s earned it. 

“No fucking way you’re getting out of this tonight, Captain,” JJ hollers in his ear. He’s already texting the location of their first bar to everyone he knows. “First round is on Hollander!” 

Technically, Shane had sworn off any more alcohol in the lead up to finals, but the circumstances tonight are exceptional. He can allow it, just this once.

Somewhere amidst the chaos, he manages to shoot a text off to Ilya. 

Shane 9:23pm

heading to bar on west st

He’s not even sure if Ilya and his friends will come. Sure, they came to the game, but that was with the incentive of free tickets. Shane wonders if he’s being presumptuous to think that Ilya would celebrate the win like his own, and he cringes at himself. But then a reply comes through. 

ilya :) 9:25pm 

see you there captain 😉

Shane’s stomach flips. Captain. Yeah, he likes that. 

The bar is rammed, and becomes even more so when the entire hockey team descends upon its unfortunate, unprepared doors. It’s nothing special of a place, but the music is good and the drinks are cheap, and their standards are abysmally low. Bodies pack into the small space and join the collective ebb and flow of the crowd, moved by the uniting force of the bass thumping over the speakers. Bartenders flit around like moths drawn to the alluring flame of cash held out in the hands of whoever’s willing to pay more for faster service. 

Shane ends up buying a round of shots as promised – neat vodka. Working on his tolerance for it. It burns like acid, and Shane’s not the only one who retches as it goes down. But it’s a quick and easy solution to a very pressing problem: everyone wants to be drunker, now. So more shots are bought, more beers pulled. Foam spills onto the sticky bar top and the grimy, faded floor beneath their feet. 

The team commandeer a few booths around the edge of the room, squeezing in shoulder to muscular shoulder, all laughs and high on their victory. Shane perches on the end, next to Mitty and across from Hayden. He’s opposite the doors, so he gets a perfect view each time they open and shut, and thus is able to pinpoint the exact moment that Ilya and his friends enter the building. 

Shane feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, and he knows Ilya is texting him to let him know that he’s arrived. He gets up before he’s even checked it. 

“Be right back!” he shouts to Hayden across the table. He gets a thumbs up in return. 

Shane pushes his way through the crowd and tries not to slosh his beer everywhere as he does so, heading in the direction of the bar. It doesn’t take him long to find them. Svetlana, gold earrings swaying as she motions over a bartender. Rose and Wyatt on either side of her. Ilya at the end, nearest to Shane, leaning over the bar and looking down at his phone. 

His broad shoulders are what Shane registers first, the way they fill out the team jersey he’s wearing, fabric pulled taut over the muscles of his back– Wait. It’s not just a regular team jersey. It’s Shane’s jersey. There’s his name and number, emblazoned on the back. Hollander. 24. Fuck. 

“You came,” Shane says, raising his voice above the music to draw Ilya’s attention. 

Ilya looks up from his phone and grins. “There he is, man of the hour! Captain of the fucking champion team!” 

Shane huffs a laugh at the enthusiasm as Ilya drapes a hand over his shoulder and spins them both to face his friends.

“Shane! Congrats!” Rose yells, clapping her hands together excitedly. 

Wyatt throws a friendly punch to his shoulder. “Good fucking game, man!”

Svetlana turns around, drink in hand, with a smile. She reaches down and squeezes Shane’s forearm earnestly. “Beautiful work, Shane Hollander, I could kiss you.” 

Shane blushes with all the attention and rattles off his humble thank-yous. The weight and the heat of Ilya’s arm around his shoulder, his hand resting against the swell of Shane’s chest, is very distracting. All the more so when it tightens as Ilya leans in slightly to mutter something directly in his ear. 

“You did so good tonight.” 

It’s simple, but effective. Said with that husky flavour to it that Ilya usually reserves for directly after sex, sometimes still buried deep inside, when he strokes a hand through Shane’s hair or down his chest and lets the praise spill out. Shane bites his lip. 

Clearly it’s the reaction Ilya had been hoping for, because he pulls back and looks down at Shane with a shit-eating grin. And then he adds insult to injury.

“You like my jersey, Hollander?” 

He turns his back to Shane and peers over his shoulder. Shane’s eyes are once again drawn to his name stamped across Ilya’s back. Like a brand. A claim. Oh, god. 

Shane starts chewing on the inside of his cheek, then remembers to smile and act fucking normal about it. Act like he’s not getting turned on by Ilya wearing his hockey jersey, for Christ’s sake. 

“Aw, am I your favourite?” he jokes. Jokes are good. 

Something about that makes Ilya’s eyes darken a little as he turns back around. Oh, yes, there’s the ‘C’ on the front, too. Shane catches a heated look flit across his face, before his expression turns back to a lazy smirk. 

“Eh, you are okay. But this was the only one left at the store, so…” 

Shane laughs, exasperated. 

“That’s complete bullshit,” Rose snorts, rolling her eyes. “He was literally fighting to get–” 

“Okay, more drinks for you,” Ilya cuts her off and starts waving over the bartender again. Rose starts laughing.

“Are we sure getting her drunk is going to make her stop talking?” Wyatt asks, expression doubtful. 

At that moment, the crowd around them parts and through it comes Hayden, clearly searching for something or someone. Shane figures he’s that someone. 

“Dude!” he shouts, unnecessarily loud since Shane is right fucking next to him. “Come on! Mitty’s got more shots and Cap has to drink when we drink, remember?” 

Shane feels Ilya and his friends’ eyes all land on Hayden. 

“Hey, yeah, I’ll be there. Gimme a sec?” Shane says, jerking his head a little in the direction of the group in the hopes that Hayden will take the hint. He does not. 

He looks at Shane with a perplexed expression, the alcohol clearing making him a bit vacant.

“Hayd, this is Ilya,” Shane supplies, hoping that’ll clear it up a little for him. He gestures to Ilya as he says it, and Ilya just smirks and waves. 

Hayden’s glassy eyes may as well turn into fucking crystal balls with the way they widen, finally recognising who Shane is standing next to. “Oh, shit! You’re– Hey, man.” 

“Hi.” Ilya is still grinning. Shane feels his hand resting on his lower back. 

Svetlana, Rose and Wyatt are just taking in the scene, sipping their drinks. It’s painfully awkward. 

“Mind if I, uh, steal him from ya?” Hayden continues. “Team business.” 

Ilya shrugs as if it’s of no consequence. The hand on his back snakes to his hip and squeezes, as if saying otherwise. As if to say, Yes, I do mind. Fuck off. Shane thinks he needs to be more drunk to confront that thought. 

“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” Shane says, throwing an apologetic smile to the group. 

“Hey, go celebrate, man!” Wyatt reassures him. “Big night for you guys!”

Shane slips away, following Hayden back through the throng of bodies and uncoordinated limbs. The small of his back feels warm, like Ilya’s fingers were hot metal pokers scarring into his skin. It doesn’t need to have left a mark. Shane already has plenty. 

They do shots gathered around the booth table, tequila this time. Salt on the back of the hand, chased with lime, the whole stupid ritual. Shane winces and gags, and the guys laugh and clap him on the back, chanting “Cap, Cap, Cap!” as he downs it all in one swift go. 

Shane only half pays attention when his teammates’ conversation resumes. The rest of the time, he’s thinking about fucking Ilya in that jersey. Or, rather, Ilya fucking him. He’s not even sure why it has such an effect on him; he always thought the idea of his teammates getting turned on by some pretty girl wearing their jersey and nothing else underneath was kind of… juvenile. Narcissistic, even. 

He gets it now. 

They spend the rest of the night orbiting around each other, he and Ilya. Two planets on different courses, occasionally passing each other by and then drifting apart again. Shane gets whisked up by his teammates, taken from bar to bar, crawling their way through West Street. Bar crawls don’t make sense to Shane. They all serve the same cheap, shitty drinks and play the same loud music. But it makes his team happy. And Shane will indulge, because tonight is the night to do so. 

Later, when Shane is too drunk to resist being horizontal, Hayden gets him back to the dorm in one piece. Shane succumbs to the siren song of his bed and nearly passes out there and then. But not before he sends a few jumbled texts through bleary eyes and with clumsy thumbs. 

Shane 2:17am

wwhher aer you

ilya :) 2:18am

at karaoke

ilya :) 2:18am

not my idea

ilya :) 2:18am

where are you?

Shane 2:18am

home

Shane 2:19am

siiing me. a song

ilya :) 2:20am

go to bed 

ilya :) 2:20am

you are drunk

Shane 2:20am

yo ulookedf uckjng hot in my. jersey

It takes a few minutes for Ilya to reply to that. Long enough that sober Shane would start overthinking it. Drunk Shane nearly falls asleep. The text tone wrenches him out of a drowsy daze. 

It’s a picture. Ilya, in the dirty stall of a bathroom, phone angled high. Jersey pulled up at one side, caught between his teeth, exposing the toned lines of his stomach, the hair around his navel. All the way down to his pants that he’s pulling down slightly with his other hand. The ‘C’ is just visible on the other side of his chest, over his pec. Shane spends a few minutes just zooming in. He thinks he might be drooling all over his pillow. 

ilya :) 2:25am

[Image]

ilya :) 2:25am

for you

ilya :) 2:25am

captain

Shane 2:27am

ffuck

Shane 2:27am

nee dnyou to fukc me in. it

ilya :) 2:27am

cute 

ilya :) 2:28am

we’ll see

ilya :) 2:28am

go to bed 

Shane rolls over onto his back and drops his phone off the edge of his bed. He falls asleep feeling exhausted, intoxicated, and very, very horny. 

When Shane doesn’t reply again, Ilya locks his phone with a smile. Good, he’s sleeping. He’ll need it, by the sounds of it, too drunk to even type properly. 

Ilya pushes out of the cubicle and leans up against the bathroom counter. It’s dingy, much like the rest of the karaoke place, but it’s nothing compared to the multitude of disgusting club bathrooms he’s found himself in over the years. He decides to linger a little longer than necessary, trying to avoid having to listen to Wyatt’s god-awful crooning. 

He thumbs open his messages with Troy. 

Ilya 2:30am

be glad you had practice tonight

Ilya 2:30am 

wyatt is singing your duet song at karaoke 

Ilya is drunk, pleasantly so, but not so much that he can’t string a few sentences together like Shane. He can’t say he’s surprised, though, at how fast Shane had lost his faculties. Ilya had watched his teammates from across the bar forcing upon him shot after shot, and Shane – being the good sport he is – had taken all of them. 

The celebration is well-earned. He’d played a phenomenal game. Even to Ilya, who wouldn’t exactly consider himself an expert on all things hockey (despite how much he loves to tease Shane and act otherwise), Shane was near flawless. Every pass well-executed, every shot well-timed. He deserved all the praise. 

It’s unfortunate that Ilya couldn’t be the one to give it to him tonight. He’d barely seen much of Shane after their brief meeting at the bar, before Shane’s teammates had sucked him back into the festivities. But Ilya was content so long as Shane was happy, and on more than one occasion he had caught himself smiling as he watched him across the room. That thought gives him pause, a weird sensation pulling at his intestines, and then it’s gone. 

After the bar, Ilya and his friends had moved on to the club. Shortly after drifting to the dancefloor, Ilya had found himself pressed up against some girl who had been more than happy to press back into him. Face buried in the crook of her neck, he’d mindlessly dragged his lips over her skin and breathed in her too-sweet perfume. But the interest had fizzled out rather quickly. Instead of vanilla and coconut, Ilya’s brain wanted musk and sweat. Images of Shane on the ice, flushed and perspiring, kept flashing behind his eyelids. The girl’s lips were red with bright lipstick that had rubbed off onto her teeth. It just made Ilya think of Shane’s lips, glistening with flecks of blood that he’d spat onto the rink. Ilya had found the sight oddly arousing. He ended up separating himself from the girl eventually, the excuse of needing a smoke spoken off-handedly into her ear. 

In the smoking area, Ilya had sparked up as Rose stood shuffling on her feet with her lit cigarette in hand, scooting closer into Svetlana’s side for warmth. Conversation buzzed around him, but Ilya’s thoughts drifted to Shane again. More specifically, his reaction to Ilya wearing his jersey. His expression hadn’t given too much away, but Ilya could read the subtle changes well enough by now. Shane had liked it. A lot. 

Now, standing in the bathroom and reading back over Shane’s very drunk texts, Ilya realises just how much of an effect it really had. 

Need you to fuck me in it. 

Ilya smiles to himself and files that away for later. 

The next couple of weeks pass by in a haze of long nights and early mornings, all made possible with copious amounts of coffee and Red Bull that is probably considered hazardous to the human body in such quantities. But Shane will worry about that when he’s not on the edge of a stress-induced heart attack. Though, maybe all the caffeine isn’t helping his blood pressure. 

Whatever. 

Shane is sick of libraries and study halls with ticking clocks that follow him into his nightmares. His eyes hurt from lack of sleep. His brain hurts from information overload. His neck hurts from falling asleep hunched over his desk one too many times. 

Whatever great mood he’d been in after winning the game quickly sours, the joy short lived. At least he’d had a couple of days to recover from the hangover. 

He doesn’t see Ilya at all, nor do they really text very much. Shane figures he’s busy. It’s the better alternative to the other option plaguing him. That being the scenario in which Ilya had read his drunk, stupid texts about wanting to get fucked in his own jersey, and had been (justifiably) weirded out at Shane’s perverted narcissism. So far, there has been very little to put Ilya off, but maybe this would be the thing to do it. 

Shane decides to believe that Ilya is just busy. 

A few days before his last exam, he gets a text that assuages any anxiety.

ilya :) 3:35pm 

i'm fucking FREE 🎉🎉

ilya :) 3:35pm

finals suck my dick

Shane 3:36pm

nice!

Shane 3:36pm

how are you gonna celebrate?

ilya :) 3:36pm

🌳🌳🌳

Shane 3:37pm

that’s code for weed isn’t it

ilya :) 3:37pm

no i’m joining green peace

Shane 3:37pm

shut up

Shane finishes his final exam without much fanfare. His idea of celebration is going to the Vietnamese place on campus with Hayden and Jackie and getting the biggest bowl of pho he can stomach, plus a fancy drip coffee with the condensed milk that tastes like pure crack. 

He slurps up the fragrant broth and noodles and fresh vegetables and feels his body being healed from the weeks of abuse it's been put through. He shoves two spring rolls in his mouth at once and chases them with another ladle of soup.

“M’in heav’n,” he mumbles around the mouthful. 

Jackie laughs. “Any plans for your birthday yet?” she asks, deftly pinching a slice of pickled radish between her chopsticks and popping it into her mouth.

Ah, yes. His birthday is next week, May 10th. Last year, he hadn’t done all that much to commemorate it. Finals week had fallen a little later, and he’d spent the day studying. This year, he’s a free man.

Shane chews and swallows before replying. “Not really.”

“Dude, come on,” Hayden says, rolling his eyes. “We’re doing something. It’s the big 2-0.” 

Shane’s parents have already called and apologised profusely that they won’t be able to be there this year, and for such a ‘big birthday’ too, even though Shane has told them not to worry about it like five times already. He doesn’t see how 20 is much different from 19, other than the fact that his age no longer ends in -teen. They’ll probably celebrate when he goes home for the summer, anyway. His parents will host something at their house by the lake and invite the extended family and it’ll be fun. 

For now, though, he can’t think of a single thing he wants to do. 

“Fine, I’ll think of something.”

Back at his dorm that evening, pleasantly full and more than a bit exhausted, Shane pulls up his text messages. 

Shane 6:57pm 

i’m finally free too 

ilya :) 6:57pm

good for you 

ilya :) 6:57pm

getting drunk to celebrate?

Shane 6:58pm

fuck no 

Shane 6:58pm

we got pho but that’s about it 

Shane 6:58pm

hayd and jackie are making me do something for my birthday though

ilya :) 7:00pm

it’s your birthday?

Shane 7:00pm

not today, next week

ilya :) 7:01pm

i see

ilya :) 7:01pm

taurus

Shane 7:01pm

no way you're into the horoscope stuff

ilya :) 7:02pm

svetlana is 

ilya :) 7:02pm

says i am a “typical gemini”

ilya :) 7:02pm

whatever that means 

Shane 7:05pm

so your birthday is in june?

ilya :) 7:05pm 

??

Shane 7:05pm

i googled

ilya :) 7:06pm

aw, trying to see how compatible our signs are?

Shane feels his face warm. He may have clicked on a link or two, though had deliberately ignored the section on Love and Romance. He may have skimmed the section on Passion and Intimacy, though. He’d clicked out after the first sentence. 

“Taurus seeks deep, tactile connection while Gemini prefers variety and may get bored easily…”

Shane 7:06pm

no i just wondered if the stars say why you're such a dick

ilya :) 7:06pm

😐

In the end, Shane settles on something simple for his birthday. With the weather being decent, and with Hayden’s car being sat in the parking lot and collecting dust throughout the semester, they end up driving a little ways out of the city to go for a hike, just the three of them. It’s a rare opportunity, one that Shane doesn’t get much between classes and practice. Now seems like the best time, just before they all head home for the holidays. 

Hayden says he could have thought of a hundred better ways to spend his birthday. Shane says it’s a good thing, then, that it’s his birthday, and to suck it the fuck up. Jackie sides with Shane, because she’s always been the smarter of the two. 

They spend the day out, stopping for lunch along the way. By the time they finish up and drive home, the sun is dipping below the horizon and Shane is staring out the window of the passenger seat with a satisfied warmth spreading through his limbs. 

Back at the dorm, he spends a long while in the shower. Shortly after he emerges, his phone pings. 

hayd 8:16pm 

present outside ur door for u buddy

Shane pauses, a confused frown pulling at his mouth. They had agreed they weren’t going to do gifts, but okay. He pads over to the door, adjusting the towel around his waist, his mind flitting through all the possible things that could be waiting for him beyond it. 

None of his guesses are even close. 

He swings open the door, eyes on the ground because that’s where he expects his gift to be. Instead, there’s a pair of black sneakers. Attached to a pair of legs. Ilya’s legs. 

“What the fuck?” 

Ilya is standing in Shane’s doorway. And he’s wearing Shane’s fucking jersey. 

“Surprise.”

Shane’s brain takes about half a second to catch up, and then he’s fisting his hand in the front of Ilya’s – his – jersey and yanking him across the threshold. Their lips are on each other within another second, the door slamming shut at Ilya’s back when he’s shoved into it unceremoniously. He tastes like mint, underlaid with cigarette smoke, and it drives Shane crazy.

Ilya laughs, low and husky, into Shane’s mouth. “Hello to you too,” he says between kisses, hands splaying against the warm skin of Shane’s lower back.

“What the fuck?” Shane says again, breathlessly this time, when he eventually pulls back. “Did Hayden let you in?” 

“He is very nice guy. Good at planning surprises, too.” 

Shane feels lightheaded. The concept of Ilya and Hayden working together to arrange anything makes his head spin, let alone… what? Birthday sex? Shane starts laughing, and it sort of sounds hysterical. 

“How…?” Shane trails off. He can’t focus, because he’s all of a sudden reminded of the fact that Ilya is wearing his jersey. 

His hand uncurls around the material, sliding down the front of Ilya’s chest over the ‘C’. He swallows, feeling himself getting hard already. Fuck. 

Ilya smirks. “You like your gift?” 

“How arrogant of you,” Shane says, voice weak and lacking any kind of conviction. He’s too turned on. His eyes roam over Ilya’s chest, broad and full, then back up to his face. 

“I will take that,” Ilya says, gesturing to the growing bulge beneath Shane’s towel, “as a yes.” 

Shane kisses him again to shut him up, cheeks flaming. Shit, that’s embarrassing. Hard already just from Ilya wearing his fucking merch. He’s insane. 

Ilya moans softly into his mouth and Shane presses his body closer in reply, fingers twisting into his curls. Shane parts his lips and allows Ilya’s tongue inside, sliding against his in the way that makes him feel famished. 

“Wait,” Shane says, pulling back again. “Hayd’s across the hall. We can’t…” 

Ilya chuckles, skimming his fingers over Shane’s waist and making him shiver. “He said he has headphones. Will be fine.”

Oh my god. Shane can’t quite believe his own luck sometimes. Not only is he fucking the hottest guy to walk the earth, but his best friend is also the world’s best wingman. He’ll need to think of a way to repay Hayden later. Right now, more pressing matters call for his attention. 

He sinks to his knees. Ilya lets out a soft noise of surprise, which quickly melts into appreciation when Shane leans forward and breathes against his clothed cock. Shane nuzzles closer, mouthing over the length as it slowly begins to plump up. His hands roam over Ilya’s thighs and around to his ass, over his hips and up his stomach, one palm cupping the fullness of his pec. 

Ilya indulges it for a little while, letting Shane get him fully erect. Then, he hauls him upward. The towel falls off Shane’s hips and pools at their feet. 

“Look at you,” Ilya coos, his hands stroking down Shane’s sides, eyes fixed between their bodies where Shane’s cock hangs heavy. 

“You gonna fuck me?” Shane says, voice thick with arousal. 

Ilya grins. “You want me to, yes?” 

Shane nods. 

“Want me to keep this on?” 

Ilya gestures to the jersey. Confliction grips Shane like a vice. On one hand, he’s thought about nothing but Ilya fucking him in that jersey ever since game night, rutting into his mattress like a dog and picturing Ilya beneath him as he bounces on his cock. On the other hand, Ilya’s body is too fucking beautiful to be hidden, too solid and warm and inviting to not be touched when they fuck. Shane bites his lip. 

“Maybe you should wear it,” Ilya says, picking up on the hesitation. “Is yours, after all. And I like the idea of fucking a champion in his jersey.”

Blood rushes to Shane’s cock so fast he goes dizzy again. “Fuck,” he chokes. “Yeah, that. Do that.” 

Ilya pulls the jersey off over his head, and Shane’s breath hitches at the sight of his muscles flexing as he does so. He slots his hands through the neck and holds it open, waiting for Shane to slip his head through. Shane complies, pulling it on the rest of the way and delighting at how much it smells like Ilya’s cologne. It’s big, bigger than his own, and it falls to mid-thigh. Or, it would, if his thick, leaking cock weren’t in the way. The material bunches over it almost comically. 

Nothing about Ilya’s expression suggests he looks funny, though. No, he’s looking at Shane like he’s going to eat him alive. 

“So wet,” he breathes huskily, reaching down and taking Shane’s cock in his palm. 

Shane thinks back to that night in the club bathroom, how Ilya had teased him for getting so wet and slippery… like a girl. His stomach swoops at the memory. Ilya had fucked his thighs and called it a pussy and Shane had loved it. More than he cared to admit. 

Unbidden, Shane cants his hips forward into Ilya’s hand. His dick slides against the skin and leaves a glistening trail of pre-come over his palm. “Mmf–,” he moans, catching the sound in his mouth and trying to muffle it. His hands, unsure what to do with themselves, find Ilya’s shoulders and cling on. 

Ilya curls his fingers and gives Shane’s cock a few lazy pumps, spreading the slickness over his length and rubbing his thumb over the slit in leisurely circles. Shane’s brain starts going hazy, warmth spreading through his stomach, and his eyelids flutter. 

“Let me taste you,” Ilya hums. He brings his hand up between their bodies and Shane can see the way the pre-come clings to his fingers, sticky as he spreads them apart and it webs between them. His tongue darts out, right between the V of his digits, and he licks it up. Like he’s eating pussy. 

Shane’s breath shudders in his chest. “Kiss me.” 

Their mouths meet, more desperate this time, and Shane tastes himself on Ilya’s tongue with a moan. Ilya gets his hands under Shane’s legs and hoists him up until his legs are wrapped around Ilya’s waist. Then, with surprising ease, he walks them both across Shane’s room until his shins are meeting the edge of the bed and he’s dropping Shane down onto the mattress, the springs bouncing beneath him. 

“On your knees,” he orders. “Get the lube.” His belt clinks as he unloops it from his jeans and begins to unzip them, toeing off his sneakers at the same time. 

Shane crawls up the bed, not even all that embarrassed at how the jersey slips up his back and shows off his ass. He fumbles in the drawer and grabs the bottle, plus a condom, then gets himself situated. The bed sinks as Ilya climbs onto it behind him, and Shane shudders at the feeling of a hand sliding over the swell of his ass and up his spine. Then, he gasps when he feels Ilya sink his teeth into the meat of his right cheek. 

He bites hard enough to make Shane’s cock dribble onto the sheets, sending his nerves short-circuiting and crossing the wires of pain and pleasure. 

“Oh, fuck,” Shane moans, squeezing his eyes shut.

He feels Ilya’s lips curl up against his skin, then his tongue laving over the indents made by his teeth. “So pretty,” he murmurs. “I cannot wait to ruin you.” 

Shane mewls, hips jerking forward automatically at the words, heat licking up his spine. His cock throbs. 

Ilya opens him up on his fingers, taking an agonisingly long time, made even longer by the fact that he pauses every time Shane begs him to just fucking get on with it already. It only serves to turn Shane on even more, the drawn-out anticipation of having Ilya’s cock inside of him, making him lose all rational thought. He doesn’t care if it hurts a little. He wants it now. 

“Shh, baby,” Ilya murmurs, leaning over Shane’s back and brushing his lips over Shane’s ear. His breath tickles, and Shane keeps trembling. “I know, it feels good, hm?” 

“Yes,” Shane moans, hands fisting in the sheets when Ilya spreads his fingers inside him. 

“You want more?”

Shane just whimpers, fucking himself back into Ilya’s hand. His eyeline is already moist with the beginnings of tears, so fucking horny and achingly hard that he can’t hold them back.

“Tell me,” Ilya says, stretching Shane open a little further. 

“Yes, fuck, Ilya,” Shane whines. Pathetic, just how Ilya likes him. The jersey slips further up his back as he moves his hips again, bunching up around his shoulders. Ilya tugs it back down. 

“Can I ask you something?” he says as he sits back on his heels, withdrawing his hand and wiping it on the sheets. The loss of stimulation, all at once, has Shane stalling as he processes the question. 

“What?” 

Ilya palms his ass unhurriedly, dips his thumb between the cheeks and parts them. The air hitting Shane’s hole, wet with lube, makes him shiver a little. The feeling of Ilya tracing his rim makes him shiver even more. 

“I want to fuck you raw.” 

Shane’s head drops to the mattress with a strung out moan. Fuck. He’s thought about it, of course he has. Taking Ilya skin-to-skin, what it would feel like. Getting to feel the heat of him. Being filled up with his come. 

“That’s not,” he pants into the crook of his elbow, “a question.” 

Ilya huffs a laugh. Yeah, Shane can still be funny, even with his brain sitting in his dick. 

“I am clean. I got a test,” Ilya continues, rubbing up and down the back of Shane’s thigh. 

Shane feels him sit up slightly, and then feels the blunt head of his cock pressing against his hole. 

“Oh my god,” Shane whines. It takes every bit of willpower in his body not to push back and take Ilya to the hilt right this fucking second. 

“Is okay?” 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. More than okay. So fucking okay. 

It goes unspoken, the fact that Shane is also clean. Unnecessary information, clearly, when it’s obvious that he hasn’t slept with anyone but Ilya. That fact would sting, if Shane could bring himself to care right now. Instead, all he can think about is Ilya fucking him bare.

“Yeah, shit,” Shane says. “Fuck me, please.” 

Ilya groans, deep in his chest, and Shane literally feels the pre-come drip out of Ilya’s tip and onto his rim. Holy fuck. Ilya wants this just as badly as Shane does; maybe he’s even dreamt about it like Shane has, too. The thought makes him absolutely giddy. 

There’s a click of the lube cap opening and the soft sound of it squirting into Ilya’s palm as he gets himself ready, drawing back from Shane ever so slightly as he does so. Shane can’t even bring himself to turn over his shoulder and look, too overcome with the anticipation of it all. Instead, he rests his forehead on the sheets and breathes slowly, trying to relax and let himself open up. It’s Ilya’s first time fucking him raw as much as it’s his first time taking it. He wants to make it good. 

When Ilya eventually lines himself up again, Shane moans at the feeling. The expectation of pleasure, not yet there but so tangible he can feel the phantom stretch already. Ilya’s hand squeezes his hip. Ready? Shane reaches back and pulls himself open. Fucking ready. 

“Fuck,” Ilya breathes, and then sinks into him. 

Their moans coalesce in the quiet of the room, both reacting to the feeling in tandem. Shane can’t help but clench around the head of Ilya’s cock as it pushes past his rim, the absence of waxy latex allowing him to feel every minute detail. 

“Holy shit,” he whimpers into the bed. 

“Relax,” Ilya murmurs, stroking up his back. “So tight, Shane.” 

Shane focuses on releasing the tension in his muscles and is rewarded with another couple of inches. His muscles want to spasm at the sensation, and he does his best to keep them still. To help things along, he sinks his chest down further onto the mattress, arm outstretched in front, hips pushing back even more. The movement opens him up wider for Ilya’s cock to slide in the rest of the way.

“Motherfucker,” Ilya groans, nudging right up against Shane’s prostate. 

The feeling is so good it’s fucking absurd. So good, in fact, that Shane almost doesn’t notice the odd press of something distinctly foreign against his hole, at the base of Ilya’s penis. 

“What…?” 

Shane uses the hand he’s got holding himself open to assess it, fingers blindly searching for where he’s stretched around Ilya’s cock. There. Unmistakeable. Firm and smooth. 

“Happy birthday,” Ilya purrs. 

It’s the fucking cock ring. 

Good lord. 

How the fuck did he get this lucky? Shane is convinced he must have been a monk in his past life or something. Enlightened and saintly, a devout worshipper who has now been reborn and is destined to be rewarded for his good deeds tenfold. Because there’s no other fucking way he’s got it this good. Just when he thinks sex can’t possibly get any better with Ilya, his assumptions are blown clean out of the water. 

“I can fuck you much longer like this,” Ilya continues, gently rocking into Shane. “You want that?” 

Shane nods listlessly. “Yes, holy shit. Wanna feel you for days.” 

Ilya groans and Shane feels his cock pulse inside. “You will, I promise.” 

And then he starts moving properly, and Shane loses himself in the sensation. He lets his hand fall away to join the other in the sheets, gripping on as Ilya starts rucking up against him, that delicious drag of in and out. Everything feels so much more like this, without the condom. Just potent, concentrated pleasure. 

“Love taking you like this,” Ilya growls, kneading Shane’s ass as he fucks into him, opening him up so that he can watch himself disappear inside over and over again. “So fucking hot.” 

Shane moans and feels himself clench around Ilya’s length, feels the way it heightens the sensation even more. Ilya’s hand slides up his back, over the material of the jersey.

“You take my cock so well, Captain.” 

Ilya purrs the word, lengthens it out, rolls it off his tongue like it’s something dirty. Shane sees stars. Heat rushes through him, an all-over explosion of arousal that has his hair standing on end. Holy fuck. The moan that stutters past his lips is desperate and keening. 

“You like that, hm, Captain? Getting put on your knees and fucked,” Ilya drawls, punctuating the final word with a brutal thrust that sends Shane sliding up the bed. 

“Oh, god,” Shane mewls. Yes, I love it. Put me in my place, take me however you want. 

“What would your team say if they saw you like this? What will Pike think, knowing you want to get fucked in your own jersey? Like a slut.” 

Shane can feel himself getting close already, the euphoric slide of Ilya’s cock against his walls making his mind fuzzy. And Ilya’s dirty talk isn’t helping, just an endless babble of filthy words that go straight to his throbbing dick. 

“My slut, moy shlyukha.” The Russian makes Shane’s head spin. “I could fuck you in the locker room, take you against the wall while everyone watches.” 

Shane whimpers. His cock leaks against the sheets, balls pulling up tight as Ilya drives into him.

“Let them see just how good you are at getting fucked. Such a good captain.” 

“I’m gonna–” the words dissolve into a drawn out moan. He’s so fucking close. 

“Touch yourself, make yourself come,” Ilya grits out. 

Shane reaches beneath his body and finds his length, wrapping his fingers tight as Ilya’s hips slam against him. Everything is so wet; his cock, his ass, lube and pre-come mingling on his skin and making the sound of Ilya’s thrusts even more lewd in the quiet. 

It takes no more than a few strokes, and Shane comes. He spills over the sheets, swearing into his pillow as Ilya fucks him through it with a ruthless pace. His whole body tenses, clenching around Ilya’s length hard enough to have him hissing, and if he wasn’t wearing the cock ring, Shane is certain he would have come too. 

“That’s it,” Ilya breathes, stroking up and down Shane’s waist as he trembles through his orgasm. “So pretty.” 

He gives Shane a moment to come back to earth, then pulls out slowly. Shane hears him swear under his breath. Despite having come, he feels bereft at the loss of Ilya inside him, filling him up so perfectly. He feels the tight ring of muscles clench, forcing out a trickle of lube that runs down his balls.

“Want you,” Shane mumbles, reaching back blindly and finding Ilya’s hip. He squeezes, trying to goad him back inside. 

“So greedy,” Ilya chuckles, rubbing the tip of his cock over Shane’s swollen rim, teasing. “I am not done with you yet, don’t worry.” 

Shane wipes his hand – the one that’s been holding his dick and is now covered in come – onto the sheets. They’re filthy now, anyway. May as well. He feels Ilya shift behind him again, the bed creaking as he moves up it and situates himself amongst the pillows before pulling Shane toward his lap. When Shane climbs astride him, he gets the full view of Ilya’s cock and the thick, black silicone hugging his shaft.

“Holy fuck,” he murmurs, fingers reaching out to ghost against it, trailing up Ilya’s length. “Does it hurt?” 

Ilya’s cock is an angry shade of red. The veins… Shane has never seen anything like it. His mouth fucking waters. 

“No, doesn’t hurt,” Ilya says, wrapping his own fingers around Shane’s and making him stroke more firmly around the shaft. His head knocks back against the headboard with a soft groan. “More like… ache. Like my dick is going to fucking explode if I do not come right now.” 

Shane tries to look sympathetic, but he’s too turned on by how thick Ilya’s cock looks. Too absorbed by the idea of having it stuffed deep inside, of having all that stored-up come pumped into him. Ilya continues guiding his hand, controlling the pace, and Shane feels hypnotised by the way it disappears into both of their fists. 

“Sounds painful,” he says after a moment. 

“It will be worth it, trust me.” 

Shane gulps. Yeah.

“Think you can ride me?” Ilya asks, letting Shane’s hand go and bringing his fingers to cup Shane’s jaw instead, thumb rubbing over the faint patch of stubble there. 

Shane can already feel himself getting aroused again at just the sight of the cock ring and its effects. His dick is still coming around, but he’s certain it won’t take too long, not with Ilya buried inside of him. 

“Yeah,” he nods. 

Ilya leans in, pulling Shane forward by the chin, and kisses him briefly. He licks into his mouth and sucks on his bottom lip, groaning softly, before letting him go. Shane wishes he’d do that forever, but kissing and lining himself up at the same time wouldn’t be the easiest.

So, he pulls back and sits up a little, shuffling further into Ilya’s lap until he’s hovering over his crotch. It doesn’t take long for him to position himself, the swollen head of Ilya’s cock catching against his rim, and then he sinks down.  

Ilya’s head rolls back on his shoulders with a guttural sound, his eyes squeezing shut as Shane’s heat envelops him again. It’s always incredible, Shane thinks, knowing the effect he can have on him. He rolls his hips experimentally and watches Ilya sink his teeth into his lip. The feeling of Ilya’s girth stretching him open once more makes Shane dizzy. Particularly when he finds the angle that makes Ilya’s cockhead nudge against his prostate, causing his whole body to shiver and his dick to start perking up again.

The jersey still hangs loosely off Shane’s body, the hem pooling in their laps as he starts lifting and lowering his hips. He tries holding it out the way at first, but supporting himself on Ilya’s chest is more important. Necessary leverage. 

“Come here,” Ilya says after a moment. He pulls the hem of the jersey out of the way and brings his other hand to Shane’s chin, thumbing his lips and encouraging them to part. Shane obeys, lets his mouth fall open, and Ilya pushes the material of the jersey inside. 

It should be gross, the fabric dragging on his tongue, a makeshift gag. But Shane just moans. Ilya pushes the hem inside with his fingers as deep as is comfortable, and Shane lets him, biting down on the material and holding it there. 

Ilya withdraws his fingers. “Such a good boy,” he coos. 

Shane can only whine, the sound garbled around his mouthful, eyes pricking with the praise and the heady sensation of Ilya stuffing him full, so fucking full. His dick pulses, and he can feel it swelling between his legs again, starting to drip. 

“One more thing,” Ilya says, halting Shane before he can resume his movements. 

Reaching between them where they’re connected, Ilya fiddles with the cock ring momentarily. Wanting to ask him what he’s doing but being unable to, Shane just looks at him quizzically. Ilya grins. 

When the cock ring hums to life, Shane’s soul leaves his body. 

Ilya’s entire cock pulses inside of him, from base to tip, and he feels every glorious inch of it. 

“Mmff–!” Shane sputters, lurching forward into Ilya’s chest at the feeling that shoots through him, like someone has set alight to his nervous system. 

Ilya steadies him, but his own body shudders just as well. If it feels this good for Shane, he can’t even imagine how it feels for Ilya. 

“Cannot fucking believe how good you feel for me,” Ilya grits out, chest heaving. “So fucking tight and hot–” His words trail off into a drawn out moan, fingers squeezing tight around Shane’s hips as the vibrations wrack through their bodies. 

Shane starts to move, legs unsteady beneath him now as he sinks into Ilya’s lap. The continuous pulse of the cock ring travels up Ilya’s length and permeates through Shane’s walls, stimulating him from every possible angle, every side. It’s so much. It’s so fucking good. 

In no time at all, he’s back at that familiar edge. Bouncing in Ilya’s lap, gripping his shoulders so hard that it’ll probably leave bruises in the shape of his fingers, Shane rides him like it’s punishment. The bed creaks and rocks with the force of it, their bodies meeting with a sharp slap every time Shane drives himself downward, swallowing up Ilya’s length as deep as he can take it. 

Neither of them have much capacity for words. Shane, practically drooling around the jersey and clamping down on it so hard that his jaw aches. Ilya, heavy breaths and strung out moans filling the air that is now thick with musk and sex. 

Shane mewls into the material, something to the effect of: I’m gonna come again.

Ilya gets the idea. His fingers lock around Shane’s hips like a vice, no longer merely feeling but now controlling. He yanks Shane to a stop and thrusts up, so fucking deep that Shane can practically feel it in his stomach, and hits his prostate. And then he stays there. 

Shane practically sobs. Ilya’s cock vibrates and pulses and throbs against the small bundle of nerves, sending rhythmic waves of unbelievable pleasure crashing into him. His brain turns to complete mush. His vision goes white. His whole body spasms. 

He comes, harder this time, convulsing in Ilya’s lap as his cock spurts all over their stomachs. His mouth falls open in a silent shout, and the jersey falls from his lips in a wet heap, clearing the way for a broken string of moans to tumble past his lips shortly after. Hot, wet tears roll down his face. The feeling is so overwhelming, and it just keeps fucking going. 

Ilya must be in ecstasy or complete hell. His eyes have rolled back and Shane can feel his muscles twitching with every shudder, every pulse. He hasn’t even come yet. 

Mercifully, blessedly, finally, he’s able to reach for the button on the ring and turn it off. 

The vibrations stop, and Shane feels his whole body go slack. For a moment, they just breathe. 

“Okay?” Ilya asks eventually, sounding as wrecked as Shane feels. 

He tries to find words. “Ah… Mm…” Good enough. 

“Going to fuck you properly now,” Ilya says, stroking his hand up the dip of Shane’s waist. “Give you my come.” 

Shane whimpers. Oh, god, finally.

Somehow, Ilya finds the strength to flip them both over. Shane is utterly limp, and unfortunately can’t make any effort to help. It’s unreal, how hard Ilya still is inside of him, how hard he’s been all this time. It must be fucking torture, Shane thinks through the haze in his mind. 

Ilya arranges their limbs carefully, gently. He helps Shane slip out of the jersey, now soiled with spit and lube and come. He uses it to wipe down Shane’s chest and stomach, then his own, mopping up the majority of Shane’s release. 

“Maybe you should wear this to next practice,” he says as he admires the streaks of come marring the text of Shane’s name and number. “Show everyone what a mess you make for me.”

Shane sinks into the mattress with a soft moan. He’s utterly spent, but Ilya’s words still have a way of getting under his skin and firing up his libido. 

Ilya balls up the jersey and discards it on the floor. He leans over Shane, then, and brackets him in between his elbows. Like this, they’re face to face. So close. Close enough that the handsome slopes and shapes of Ilya’s face go a little blurry at the edges. Shane feels Ilya’s lips brush his, puffy and a little chapped from the gag, and the slide of his tongue soothes them. Shane just about musters the energy to kiss back, slow and sleepy. 

He could drift off like this, still stretched open around Ilya’s cock. It’s bliss. 

But then Ilya begins to thrust shallowly, and Shane gasps in overstimulation. 

“I know, I know,” Ilya coos. “You did so well, baby.” 

A soft, feeble whine crawls up Shane’s throat. Ilya strokes his hair. 

“Just take a little more for me, ah? And then I will fill you up like you want.”

Oh, does Shane want. He’s never wanted something more. 

“Yes, yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, cock-drunk and brainless. “Come inside me, please, I want it.” 

Ilya makes a starved noise and starts to move faster. It takes him all of a few thrusts to reach breaking point again, so worked up and pulled taut, hips pistoning in jerky movements. The stimulation barely even registers to Shane anymore, so fucked out and numb that it’s almost just a deep, dull throb in his belly. 

All he can do is take it, take every fucking beautiful inch that Ilya gives him. He was right when he said that he’d ruin Shane. Nothing else could compare to his. Nobody else. Nobody else could fuck Shane the way Ilya fucks him. Nobody else could take him to the limit and then push him further, until he’s sore in the best way and passing out from pleasure. 

That’s the only thought Shane can focus on as Ilya drives into him, chain swinging like a metronome to the beat of his thrusts. Just how lucky he is to have Ilya. And how utterly fucked he is that he now wants nobody else. 

In the midst of his daze, so fast that Shane doesn’t even have time to process it, Ilya pulls out and slides the cock ring off. And then he orgasms.

He just about manages to thrust back in before his come starts to spill out, sliding home with no resistance and pumping warm, thick ropes deep inside of Shane, right where he can feel it. Like a rush of endorphins, it floods Shane’s body and makes him go woozy with the sensation.

“Oh, fuck, Shane.”

Shane is in the clouds. His hole flutters around Ilya as he orgasms, feeling some of the come leaking out as he fucks Shane through it. It’s dirty and messy, messier than anything he’s done before, and he loves it. He wonders why they’ve never done this before. Wonders if they can do it again and again and again.  

Ilya’s body curls against him, his forehead knocking against Shane’s as he trembles in the aftershocks, and Shane uses the last of his strength to wrap his arms around him, holding him close. It’s intimate, even more so than having his come filling him up and dripping down his legs. But it feels right. 

As Ilya comes down, the rock of his hips slowing to a halt, Shane trails his fingers along his spine, damp with sweat. Ilya, in a similar fashion, brushes his hand over Shane’s cheek. The salty streaks of his tears still cling to the skin, wetting his hairline, and Ilya leans in and traces them with his lips. Kisses the wetness from Shane’s cheekbone and temple. Tender. 

Still sheathed inside, he says, “Okay?” 

Shane sniffles, finds his voice. “M’okay. You?” 

Ilya dips down and kisses the curve of his Cupid’s bow. “Yes, very okay.” 

They lay together for a long time after, wrapped in each other’s scent and warmth. Long enough that Shane is certain they fall asleep, just for a moment, chests rising and falling in tandem, hearts beating in time, skin to skin. 

The clean up is, as expected, the worst part. Shane grimaces at the feeling of come leaking out of his swollen rim when Ilya inevitably has to withdraw himself. With the fog of arousal and lowered inhibitions now lifted, the practicalities of having someone shoot their load inside of him dawn on Shane all at once. 

Ilya is kind enough to get up first and bring him a damp towel to clean up between his thighs. But then Shane has to make the perilous walk to the bathroom, and the sensation of more come and lube sliding down his legs isn’t one he’ll forget for a long time. Ilya, fucked out and a little silly, laughs at the way he waddles across the room. 

“Shut up,” Shane huffs, slamming the bathroom door in defence of his dignity. What’s left of it, anyway. 

After a lengthy trip to places he’d never thought he’d go to, Shane crawls back into bed beside Ilya, who’s made himself perfectly comfortable in his absence. 

“So,” he says, pulling Shane onto his chest and entangling their legs together, “you like your birthday present?” 

Shane smiles sheepishly. “What do you think?” 

“Thank you, Ilya, was the best gift ever, I owe you ten thousand blow jobs.” 

“Fuck off, I don’t sound like that.” 

They readjust and sink further into the pillows. 

“Have you ever gone bare with someone before?” Shane asks carefully, already guessing the answer but curious to hear it nonetheless. 

Ilya cards his fingers through Shane’s hair. “Yes,” he says, after a moment. “But not for a long time.” 

“Who was it?”

“A girl from high school. I was sixteen, stupid. She got pregnant.”

Shane tenses against him.

“She had abortion, but I felt terrible. Did not do it again after that.” 

Ilya leans down and noses into Shane’s strands, breathing in deeply. He presses his lips to the crown of Shane’s head, and Shane feels himself relax.

“Have you… used the ring before? With other people, I mean?” 

“No. First time,” Ilya admits. “Usually I just play with it myself. That was… new. Very good.” 

Shane preens, hiding his smile in the crook of Ilya’s neck. That feels fucking fantastic. 

“Thank you,” Shane mumbles into his skin. 

For the sex. For you. For everything. 

Ilya strokes his face with the kind of gentle touch Shane isn’t sure he can stomach. 

“Of course.” 

Shane goes home for the summer with everything he needs sandwiched into one large suitcase. He’ll be back on campus earlier than most to get a head start on training and coursework before the start of the new hockey season. Before then, however, he’ll at least get some time to himself to see family and soak up the sun. 

He’s looking forward to it, more than he realised. 

His parents throw him a belated birthday party in their backyard, complete with an egregious amount of lawn chairs and a barbecue that his dad insists on slaving over the entire afternoon. As expected, they invite the extended family, and thus Shane spends most of the day catching up with relatives he hasn’t seen in years. Lots of ‘Wow, look how much you’ve grown!’ and ‘So, any nice fellas on campus you’re going to bring home to mom and dad?’. Shane smiles politely and dodges the question, says he’s far too busy for all of that. He leaves out the fact that he’s not quite so busy that he can’t spare a few nights here and there smoking weed and getting his guts rearranged. He’s not sure they’ll take that all too well. 

The rest of his break is spent doing absolute, sweet FA. He swims in the lake, goes for walks with his mom in the mornings before her workout classes, plays on his clunky PlayStation 2 that he’s had for god knows how many years and still runs like a trooper. Training still takes priority, of course, and he pays his dues in the gym each day and puts in a good amount of time at the nearby rink. But between that, Shane uses the excuse of the summer to do as little as humanly possible. 

In the early days of the break, he and Ilya still text on and off. General stuff about home life, Shane complaining about the overbearing nature of his parents and Ilya complaining that he wished his aunt actually cared a little more. Shane wishes Ilya a happy birthday in June, and Ilya jokes that it won’t be ‘happy’ until he gets a nude. They even manage to steal a couple of moments alone long enough to… relax together over FaceTime. That’s new for Shane. Kind of embarrassing at first, though that feeling quickly dissolves when he watches Ilya stroking himself through the grainy pixels of his phone camera and moaning Shane’s name. 

But, after a few weeks, things dry up. Shane’s texts go unanswered, and as much as he tries to pretend that he isn’t bothered by it, telling himself that Ilya is probably just enjoying his summer like any normal person, he still… worries. And then he gets a text one morning that just reads:

ilya :) 6:12am 

sorry, family stuff

It’s vague. Maybe it’s an excuse, and he’s really just losing interest. Maybe the physical distance has killed the spark, like a candle wick burning low and then fizzling out, choking on itself. Maybe now that Shane is no longer in convenient fucking distance, he’s not really worth the effort. But Shane brushes those thoughts off, stomps down on the anxiety creeping in. He’s sure Ilya is being honest. And, anyway, it’s none of his business, Ilya’s personal life. Not really. It’s not like they’re together, or something. 

So Shane continues on as normal, and before he knows it, he’s making the long trip back to campus in August. Bright-eyed and refreshed, sporting a deeper tan and more freckles, and ready to dominate another season.  

He and Hayden have the dorm to themselves for a little while, so they make the most of it and spend many nights sitting in the kitchen smoking weed and watching TV, catching up about their break and commiserating their sore muscles now that Coach is back to putting them through their paces. And Shane doesn’t worry about Ilya. Not at all. 

The fall semester of their third year officially starts in September. The leaves will cling on to the trees for a little longer, and the nights will stay fairly balmy, but that will change soon enough. 

Shane wonders how he’ll change. So much happened last year that the Shane of a year ago almost feels unrecognisable to him now. What will this semester have in store? 

Late one evening, although it’s more like the early hours of the next morning, Shane is sitting at his desk poking at a steaming pot of cup noodles with a fork when he gets a text. It flashes up on the screen and momentarily pauses the YouTube video he’d been watching. 

ilya :) 1:33am 

meet me at the park? 

Huh. 

They haven’t spoken since Ilya’s last message to Shane in July. It sits there, a blue bubble hovering above the message he’s just sent. Shane hadn’t replied at the time, unsure what to say, so he’d just reacted to it with a thumbs up. Kind of a dick move, looking back. 

Well, he can’t say he’s not surprised. He really had started to believe that maybe their… thing had run its course. He’d done his spiralling over the summer and had almost come to terms with it, but now Ilya is texting him like nothing’s changed. And, well, has it? Shane supposes there’s an easy way to find out. 

The park is an interesting choice of meeting place. Usually, and especially at this time of night, it would be Ilya’s bedroom. This is… public. And Shane is up for a lot of things, he’s realised, but sex in a public park seems a little too far, even for him. So, the only conclusion is to assume this isn’t about sex. And that’s even more interesting. 

He goes. Pulls on the first sweatshirt he reaches for in his closet, then realises that it’s Ilya’s. He never had given it back, and neither had Ilya Shane’s.

The campus is quiet at this time, though the soft, perpetual glow of the street lights lining the cobbled paths makes it feel a little more lively. Shane’s footsteps sound louder than usual, his breathing a little more audible in his ears. He can’t tell if his heart rate is increasing because of the gentle hill he has to walk up to get to the park, or for another reason. The anticipation of seeing Ilya again, perhaps. 

Shane spots him on the grassy verge, sitting with his knees tucked to his chest and elbows resting atop them, looking out over the park. He jogs the rest of the way to meet him, hands in his pockets. 

“Hey,” he says, a little breathless.

Ilya looks up. “Hey.” 

Shane settles himself down onto the grass next to him without being asked, keeping a small amount of distance between them. He’s not sure what this is about yet. 

He appraises Ilya for a moment, and feels Ilya doing the same back to him. Assessing each other. Ilya no doubt noting the richer colour of Shane’s skin, the way his hair flops a little more into his eyes. Shane notices Ilya’s hair has grown out a little, too. But the biggest change he notes is in his face. He looks… drawn. Tired, maybe. And not the kind of tired you can simply attribute to lack of sleep, but something deeper, something at bone-level. 

“You okay?” Shane asks, bringing his knees up to mimic Ilya’s position. He picks a stray blade of grass from his leg hair. 

Ilya just nods absently in lieu of an actual response. His eyes slide from Shane back to the view, the park stretching out beneath them and the lights of the city twinkling just beyond the treeline. There’s too much light pollution here to see the stars, but Shane imagines that on a clear night like tonight, there’d be hundreds of them glinting above their heads.

“How are you?” 

The question takes Shane aback. He wasn’t really expecting it. It’s not like Ilya to initiate these kinds of conversations, much less to ask Shane such a vague question as how are you. 

“I’m… good, yeah,” Shane starts, unsteady. “Good summer, though I always wish it lasted longer. I’ve been back a while, with training and all that.” 

Ilya nods along, almost listening. 

“What about you?” Shane prompts. 

An odd expression passes over Ilya’s face. Something like discomfort, which then melts away into humour. And then he chuckles. “My summer? Was okay. Some family stuff, you know.” He waves a hand dismissively. 

“Yeah, you said. Sorry I didn’t, you know, reply. At the time. I didn’t want to pry, or anything.” 

Eloquent. Good job, Shane. 

“Is okay.” 

There’s a heavy pause. Somewhere, an animal skitters through the grass and disappears up into a tree. 

Shane debates for a moment, then says, “You wanna talk about it, or…?” 

Ilya shrugs. His eyes are still fixed somewhere off in the distance, like he’s not entirely present, like he’s watching something play out in front of him that Shane can’t see. 

“Is not a big deal. My father died.” 

Oh. 

Ilya’s not sure why he asked Shane to come out tonight. 

He’d been back on campus no more than a few days, having come back at the earliest opportunity. There was no way he could have stayed in that house any longer. The air there was suffocating, like noxious gas pouring out of some unseen hole in the wall and choking him in his sleep. The stench of grief. It was sickening. 

Coming back to his dorm had meant breathing easier for the first time in weeks. Sleep did not come so easily though. Ilya tried drinking his way into unconsciousness first, and while it helped put him out, he certainly didn’t wake up feeling much better rested for it. Weed was the obvious second choice, but neither smoking nor edibles did anything beyond making him feel trapped inside his own skin. It never usually had that effect but now, typically, when he needed it most, it was useless. 

He’d been up tonight pacing within the four walls of his bedroom like a caged animal, until eventually he couldn’t fucking bare it any longer. He’d pulled out his phone and made the impulsive decision to text the one person he knew would be available. Selfishly. 

And he’d come. Shane, sweet and obedient, had come at his call. True and reliable. 

And now Ilya feels sick for it, realising that of course Shane wouldn’t just come without question. There were always questions. It’s one of the things he finds most endearing about him, that endless curiosity. Now it makes Ilya want to shrivel up and disappear from view. 

Shane’s looking at him with something like concern, and that makes it even worse. He hadn’t called him up for a pity party. But there he is, eyebrows furrowed and lip catching between his teeth like he’s… worried. Ugh. 

“Ilya…” 

“I am fine, really.” 

“You texted me in the middle of the night to come meet you at a park. That doesn’t scream fine to me,” Shane scoffs. 

And, well, yeah. He’s right. In the realm of things that are normal, texting your regular fuck buddy for a midnight conversation about your dead dad doesn’t really fall within those parameters. What the fuck are you doing, Ilya? 

“Yes, I suppose so,” he concedes. 

“Why me? Why not Svetlana or one of those guys?” 

Because I am selfish and I knew you would come. Because I am starting to rely on you more than I care to admit. Because I like you more than them. 

“Because,” Ilya shrugs. Just because. 

Shane doesn’t seem satisfied with that, but drops it anyway. Good. Instead, he says:

“You weren’t close with him.” 

“No.”

“But are you… upset about it?” 

Ilya isn’t sure how to answer that. Is he upset? 

The most straightforward answer would be no, not really. But it wouldn’t be the most truthful.

Grief is a strange thing. How does he grieve someone he hasn't had contact with in 6 years? How does he feel upset for the passing of someone who thought his very existence was an insult to human nature? How does he miss someone who hadn’t spared a thought for him ever since he up and left his home country at the tender age of 14 and moved halfway across the world to live with a woman who, at the time, was a near stranger? 

How indeed. 

Losing his mother felt like being cleaved in two, like his organs had been forcefully ripped from his body and then stuffed back in the wrong way. Losing his father felt like… nothing. Just a strange hollowness where pain or anger or sadness should occupy, but instead left bare. 

“It is complicated.” 

Shane nods solemnly at that, like he understands that something as complex as grief can sometimes only be summed up by those three words. Ilya’s heart aches in his chest at the simplicity with which Shane holds out his hands and receives it. 

“Can I do anything?” 

Shane makes the offer without fully understanding what it is he could do. He’s still reeling a little from Ilya opening up to him about something so personal, something that he feels like he isn’t qualified to know what to do with. 

It’s not clear why Ilya asked him of all people to meet him tonight, and it’s obvious that he’s not going to tell Shane why. So Shane settles on doing what he can with the limited information he’s got and with a general sense of what to do and what not to do when someone tells you their dad just died. 

Offer support. Ask what they need. Be a shoulder to cry on. That’s what friends do, right? And they are friends. Just friends. With benefits. Nothing more than that. 

“You could take off your clothes and dance naked. Would cheer me up.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane laughs, exasperated. “I’m serious. You didn’t call me out here just to get me naked, I know that much.” 

Ilya’s face softens. “No.”

Shane’s fingers twitch in the grass where they’re planted not too far from Ilya’s hand. The urge to inch closer and intertwine their fingers is so strong that Shane has to physically restrain himself from doing so. Holding hands, that’s… couple stuff. That’s not what they do. 

“Maybe you should talk to the campus counsellor about it,” he says, to distract himself from doing something stupid. 

It’s a genuine suggestion, one that he thinks might actually be of some benefit to Ilya. Certainly better than trying to talk to Shane, who can barely think straight and is too busy getting caught up on not overstepping some imaginary line than providing actual, decent emotional support. Get it together, dude, fuck. 

“No,” Ilya chuckles, brushing off some lint from his sweats. “Is really not that big of a deal.” 

Shane scowls at him. “You know, if you’re planning on being a therapist some day you should really start leading by example. You know that right?” 

Ilya rolls his eyes with a groan. “Ugh. You are so annoying.” 

“And right.” 

“I will be fine,” Ilya says, heaving himself up off the grass and standing up. He offers a hand out to Shane. 

Shane takes it with a huff, a little peeved about how nonchalant Ilya is being about it all, but decides not to press him any further. He can make his own decisions, after all. Shane’s of no authority to make him do anything. 

Ilya pulls him to his feet and then steadies him with a hand on his waist when he wobbles a little, losing his balance. “Wow, missed me so much you are dizzy.” 

“You wish, asshole,” Shane mutters, though the words grow a little faint when he feels the warmth of Ilya’s palm against his side and realises how close they are. How they haven’t been this close in months. 

Ilya’s eyes flit back and forth between Shane’s, then drop to his mouth. Shane’s breath halts in his throat. When they kiss, it’s a mere brushing of lips, a soft press that demands nothing more. Shane feels his body react on instinct and has to pull away first before he gets too worked up. 

“I, uh, should go. Class in the morning.” He swallows. “Are you gonna be okay?” 

Ilya is looking at him with an unreadable expression, soft yet somewhat reserved. 

“Yes, stop worrying,” he says, stepping back and letting the cool night air fill the gap between their bodies and dissipate the tension. “You are annoying when you worry.” 

“Fuck you, I’m trying to be nice,” Shane laughs. 

“Shane Hollander, such a saint.” 

“Alright, I’m going.” 

They end up walking most of the way back together, splitting off from each other when they get nearer their respective dorms. 

Shane gets into bed, still wearing Ilya’s sweatshirt, and tries not to think too hard about the implications of whatever that conversation was. Ilya needed to talk, Shane was available. Ilya explained why he was absent, Shane had listened. No hidden motives, no underlying feelings. Just someone going through some shit who needed to vent to anyone who would lend an ear. 

Nothing special. It doesn’t mean anything. 

Shane sleeps, and in the morning he makes himself move on. 

Towards the end of September, Shane’s parents come to visit for the weekend. 

While it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to come by so early in the semester when Shane only saw them just over a month ago, it generally works out to be the best time for it. With the season not commencing until October, Shane isn’t quite yet slammed with classes and coursework and practice as he otherwise would be. So it proves a good opportunity, and together they can enjoy their time relaxing and exploring the city while they can. 

His parents book a hotel just off campus for the night, and Saturday evening they decide on dinner at a local, fancy steakhouse. A rare treat, since Shane will probably be living off plain chicken, rice and broccoli for the next few months. He’s not used to swanky restaurants, though. He maybe owns one dress shirt, and when he pulls it out the depths of his closet, it’s wrinkled to all hell. When he showers, he hangs it up in the bathroom and lets the creases drop out. 

Conversation over dinner mostly revolves around Shane’s training program and his team, what their approach is going into the new season. His dad jumps in here and there with his own pointers, and Shane’s happy to let him get involved, mostly because he thinks it helps him re-live his own college hockey days a little. His mom talks about work at the bank and their plans to go on a Caribbean cruise over Christmas, just the two of them. Sounds like it’ll be good for you, Shane says, not at all jealous. The ocean is terrifying.

At one point, about mid-way through the second course, Shane’s napkin slips off his lap. He leans over in his chair to grab it and feels the collar of his shirt fall open to one side.

“What’s that, honey?” his mom asks around a mouthful of green beans.

Shane straightens back up, napkin in hand. “What’s what?” 

“Your neck, it looks bruised,” she says, concern colouring her voice. 

“Oh, uh, I dunno,” Shane chuckles. “Probably from practice.”

Practice in the loosest sense of the word would be correct. If you consider testing how deep you can take your situationship’s cock down your throat and how long you can stave off an orgasm with said cock in your ass ‘practice’. Yeah, Shane was practicing. 

He should have been more careful, knowing his parents were coming in the next few days. But Ilya has that way about him that makes Shane throw caution to the wind and say fuck it. He also had gotten a fresh batch from his dealer, and Shane may or may not have bought in. Double the lowered inhibitions. And now he’s sporting a hickey the colour of grape juice just above his clavicle, all because Ilya can’t control that filthy mouth of his. 

Oops.

Shane’s dad peers over the rim of his wine glass. “Looks like a hickey to me.” 

“David!” his mom gasps, scandalised. 

“Jesus, Dad.”

“What?” his dad says, mostly unfazed. “I know what those are.” 

Shane does not need to know that. And he really does not need to be having this conversation. He’s going to crucify Ilya and then himself when he next sees him. 

Yuna sets her cutlery down with a soft clink. “Shane, are you seeing someone?”

“No, Mom, oh my god, it’s nothing. I swear.” Shane wants to put his head in his hands, but that would be a little dramatic. And it’s bad manners to put your elbows on such a pristinely-pressed white tablecloth. 

“We won’t pry, honey. We just want to make sure you’re being… safe.” 

Please, Lord, strike me down now. There’s no way they’re about to have the birds and the bees conversation over rib-eyes and red wine jus. 

“Can we please not talk about this?” Shane asks, more than a little desperate. 

His parents share a pointed look. Whatever unspoken communication passes between them seems to quell his mother’s curiosity for now, and she goes back to her green beans with a small shrug as if to say ‘Alright, fine.’ 

His father, on the other hand, perks up. “You know, if you aren’t seeing someone, Jim from work as a son…”

Shane groans. 

Ilya 9:41pm 

LOOL

Ilya 9:41pm 

and then?

shane 🥸 9:42pm 

and then my dad started trying to set me up with some guy from work

Ilya 9:42pm 

from the treasury board? he wants you to date a fossil? 

shane 🥸 9:42pm 

lol no the guy is like 22

shane 🥸 9:42pm

apparently he volunteers as a firefighter or something

shane 🥸 9:43pm

my dad thinks he’d be “good for me”

Ilya 9:43pm

volunteer firefighter pfft

Ilya 9:43pm

and i knit sweaters for orphan kittens

The whole thing, Ilya thinks, is absolutely hilarious. Laying in bed, he tries to imagine the look on Shane’s face when his parents saw the mark on his neck. How he’d probably blushed and gone all awkward and fidgety. How he’d have avoided the question and stumbled over his words. Oh, what a sight that would be. Ilya wishes he could’ve been there.

Though, that would mean going to dinner with Shane’s parents. And, while that could be grounds for some very interesting conversation, Ilya thinks it’s probably best not. He’s not exactly… good with parents. Anyway. 

Against his will, that same juvenile sense of pride wells up in his chest again at the prospect of Shane walking around with Ilya’s mark branded on his skin. It’s the same feeling he’d had before when Shane’s friend, Hayden, had been watching them on the quad once and Ilya had, quite visibly, made his claim then and there. 

It’s quite amusing that Shane’s parents would see such a thing and immediately start trying to set their son up with a respectable, well-to-do guy. And a volunteer firefighter? Ilya has heard more convincing lies on the Tinder profiles of guys who think they’re 6’4 when they’re actually pushing 5’10 at most.  

shane 🥸 9:44pm

i’m serious lol 

shane 🥸 9:45pm

he even gave me his insta, look 

shane 🥸 9:45pm

[Instagram link attached] 

Ilya scoffs and taps on the link. The smirk quickly fades from his face. 

The guy is, to put it plainly, fucking hot. Row upon row of selfies and mirror pictures pop up, alongside the odd artsy shot of a salad bowl, or a sunset, or a cute fluffy dog. He’s shirtless in… far more of them than Ilya would argue to be professional, but he’s hardly one to talk. 

And the worst part is, he is a fucking firefighter. There’s even pictures of him in the damn uniform, crouched in front of the big red truck or sliding down the… Jesus Christ. Sliding down the fireman’s pole. 

This is a prank. Ilya is being pranked. 

There’s no way this guy is real. All wavy brunette hair and huge muscles and perfect white teeth. What the fuck? 

And then he remembers that he shouldn’t care. So what if Shane’s dad at the Treasury Board of Goody-Two-Shoes Canada knows some kind of Adonis-turned-banker-turned-model civilian who he thinks would be a good match for Shane? Good for him. Ilya doesn’t care. At all. 

Ilya 9:48pm

he is hot

Ilya 9:48pm

you should ask if he will let you slide on his pole

shane 🥸 9:49pm

ha ha very funny

shane 🥸 9:49pm

i already told my dad i’m not interested 

Ilya grins, despite himself.

shane 🥸 9:50pm

besides, brunettes aren’t my type 😉

Ilya 9:51pm

yeah, me neither

shane 🥸 9:51pm

i hate you 

Ilya 9:51pm

😘

Ilya wouldn’t call it… jealousy. Jealousy would imply that there is something or someone to be envious of, and why on earth would Ilya have any reason to be envious of either of the two hulking guys currently chatting to Shane Hollander across the campus gym?

Jealous is not the word. 

Perhaps ‘irritated’ would be more apt. 

Ilya slams the barbell a little too aggressively back onto the rack, making the girl next to him jump slightly. He’d throw her an apologetic smile, but he’s too busy watching Shane laugh at something one of them just said. 

It’s one of those relaxed, carefree laughs where his nose crinkles and makes his freckles scrunch up and the lines around his eyes deepen. His upper lip pulls back and disappears, showing off his pointed incisors. Ilya wants to know what’s so fucking funny. 

He swings a leg over the bench and straddles it, arms resting on his knees, breathing heavily from the exertion of his workout. He wipes a few stray droplets of sweat from his forehead, runs his fingers through his damp roots. Taps his foot against the padded, foam floor. 

Shane is smiling. Ilya can just about hear snippets of their conversation over the music playing through the gym speakers.

“–that goal, man! Fucking crazy stuff!” one of the guys says.

“–best on the team, so fucking good,” the other says, clapping a hand on Shane’s shoulder, fingers squeezing his trap muscle. 

Shane, already a little flushed from his workout, blushes deeper. “Ah, not really, I…”

Blame the testosterone or the endorphins or whatever other hormone that rules the instinctive, animalistic part of the brain, but Ilya gets up. He gets up and he walks across the gym to where Shane is standing between the two guys and biting his lip coyly, fiddling with his water bottle. 

Ilya reaches them in a few strides. He sidles up to Shane and, before he can react, takes the bottle from his hands, bringing it to his mouth and taking long, sustained gulps from its nozzle. He maintains eye contact with both of the guys as he does so, and watches their expressions turn from momentary surprise to confusion. 

Shane, clearly too taken aback to say anything, simply looks at Ilya like he’s just pissed in his cereal. That’s fine, Ilya can deal with that. He likes when Shane gets a little mad, anyway.  

“Uh, anyways, man,” one of the guys says, “good to meet you.”

“Yeah, see you around.” 

And with that, they turn and leave. Ilya is more than satisfied. 

“What the fuck was that?”

Ah, he speaks. 

Ilya smirks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and passing the water bottle off to Shane, who snatches it back. 

“What?” 

Shane splutters. “What d’you mean, what?” 

“I was thirsty,” Ilya shrugs. 

“And you didn’t bring your own fucking water?” 

“I wanted some of yours.” 

Shane wavers between exasperation and amusement for a few moments, before amusement wins out and he cracks a smile. There we go. Ilya grins back and brings his fingers up to brush Shane’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. 

“Next time ask first, asshole,” Shane mumbles, going a brighter shade of red that makes Ilya want to take him right here on the gym floor. The mirrors would certainly make it interesting.

“Or I could just do this.” 

Ilya snatches the water bottle again and squirts it into his mouth. Half of it misses and trickles down his chin and his neck, soaking the neckline of his muscle tee. Shane’s eyes follow the rivulets down his skin with rapt attention, lingering on Ilya’s throat when he swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs. 

He breaks his gaze away a moment later, blinking as if suddenly remembering where they are. 

“Go use the water fountain, you dick.” 

Somehow, on a Thursday night at the beginning of October, Ilya finds himself at a Sip ‘n’ Paint pottery class. 

It’s being hosted at some kitschy studio downtown, the kind with hanging plants and fairy lights strung up in the windows and with shelves and shelves of bowls and mugs and plates and vases lining the walls. There’s a decent collection of art on the walls too, all pastels and earthy tones, most of them abstract drawings of a woman’s silhouette or breasts. All very tasteful.

Ilya does not fit in here. But Rose had a last minute assignment come up, and Svetlana had already booked it three weeks in advance and paid the deposit. So, here he is. Drawing wobbly penises all over the side of a mug while he sips rosé. Svetlana is not impressed. 

“You’re a fucking idiot, Ilya.” 

Harsh. But, coming from Svetlana, it probably holds some truth. 

“Neither of you have slept with anyone else for over six months and you’re pissed about him possibly making it official with someone else?” She flicks the end of her paintbrush with a flourish and adds on another petal to the flower she’s expertly crafting.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Both the part about Ilya being ‘pissed’, and the part about not having slept with anyone else. 

Ilya hasn’t told Svetlana, or anyone else for that matter, about the girl in Russia over the summer. Didn’t feel the need to, really. It was a one night stand that was altogether horrendously unsatisfying, for both him and no doubt the poor woman he subjected to such a sub-par performance. She had brown hair and freckles and was convenient, and Ilya had been selfish, his heart not truly in it. She’d be nice enough about the whole thing and had left shortly after, pulling on her slinky black club dress and heels. They’d used a condom, but Ilya still changed the sheets afterwards. 

Other than her, however, Ilya hasn’t fucked anyone besides Shane since February. 

“I am not pissed,” Ilya counters, taking a sip of his complementary wine and setting it back down. “He is free to meet whoever he wants, I do not care.” 

Svetlana raises an eyebrow. “So you’re okay with him dating the hot, sexy fireman?” 

Ilya smudges one of the dicks he’s drawing. “...Yes.” 

“You’re the worst fucking liar I know, Ilya. Admit it.” 

He sighs heavily and drops his paintbrush into the jar of water, slumping back in the chair. “Fuck, what do I do?” 

“Tell him you like him, tell him you want to make it official, I don’t know. It’s obvious there’s more than just sexual chemistry between you two, a blind man could see it for Christ’s sake.” 

Ilya barks out a laugh. 

“I’m serious,” Svetlana continues, chuckling into her wine. She takes a sip and swipes the red off her lips, then carries on painting. “Rose and I could see the way you were looking at him at the party last semester.”

“Looking at him like what?” 

She smiles knowingly. “Like you couldn’t have cared less about a single other person in that fucking room.” 

Ilya scrunches his nose disapprovingly at the thought. He doesn’t make gooey eyes at people. That’s not him. 

“He is interesting to me, so what?” he retorts, unwilling to let Svetlana bully him into some kind of love confession. 

Svetlana rolls her eyes, dipping her brush back into the pink and dabbing at the clay mug again. “That’s not just interest, believe me.” 

“So what?” Ilya sighs. “Why does this mean I have to make it official? Says who? I am not someone who dates, you know this.” 

“Yes, yes, you fuck and rail and bang,” Svetlana says, sarcastic and a little too loud for Ilya’s liking. The women at the table next to them pause their conversation momentarily and exchange a look. Ilya sinks lower into his chair. 

“Exactly,” Ilya replies in a hushed tone. “You know this better than anyone.”

“Ilya, we didn’t move past the sex part because I realised I was a lesbian, you dingus.” 

“Okay, fine, bad example. But I don’t date. I would not even know how to date.” 

It sounds ridiculous to say aloud, but after years of emotionless hook-ups and some semi-regular flings that never lasted longer than a few months, the concept of ‘dating’ is largely foreign to Ilya. Scary, even, if he’s being completely honest with himself. 

There are simply too many emotions involved when it comes to dating, too many feelings to be aware of. Not just your own, but then someone else’s on top of that. Growing up with an emotionally stunted father and a dead mother, Ilya hadn’t exactly had a model relationship to learn from. Hell, even his aunt had chosen to remain single well into her fifties. What did that say about relationships, then? 

Ilya grew up only understanding ‘love’ and relationships in the context of movies and television, with all their dramatic confessions and grand gestures. Until Svetlana, he hadn’t come close to anything like that which he’d seen on screen, and then she had come out and that had put an end to that. And it was better that way, really. He’d be a terrible partner. Closed off and hard to love, like his father.

But Svetlana laughs at the absurdity of his answer, and rightly so. It does sound absurd. 

“Babe, I hate to break it to you, but you’re doing it. You’re hanging out and fucking exclusively– as far as you know, he hasn’t been with anyone else, right?” 

Ilya confirms that with a nod of his head.

“Right. So what do you think that is, exactly?” 

“Friends with benefits, no?” 

Svetlana seems pretty close to flinging her brush across the table and smacking Ilya square in the forehead with a nice lashing of baby blue paint. That, or breaking the whole mug across his cranium. 

“The key word is exclusively. You know that word, don’t you? Somewhere in that fat head of yours.”

“My head is normal sized,” Ilya pouts. 

“And your brain is miniscule in comparison,” Svetlana says, jabbing the end of her paintbrush at him. “Too miniscule to realise that you like him more than just a friend you fuck occasionally.” 

Ilya sighs, defeated. He doesn’t even have it in him to finish his penis-mug. Oh well. 

“Or not, what the fuck do I know?” she continues. “I’m only your best friend. But I can’t tell you what your own feelings are. You need to come to that conclusion on your own.” She sets her brush down and reaches across the table, squeezing Ilya’s hand in hers. “I just think you’re not being honest with yourself, for whatever reason you’ve cooked up. And I think you deserve to let yourself have whatever it is you want. What you really want.” 

Svetlana always gets a little more soppy when she’s had wine, Ilya thinks. He squeezes her hand back and offers her a smile, a silent thank you. He’s not quite drunk enough to start spilling his guts or get emotional over a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, but he knows Svetlana understands his heart well enough to be gentle with it when needed, and a little firm when not. 

Maybe she’s right. She usually is. But Ilya isn’t sure he’s ready to confront whatever it is he’s been feeling for the past few months. It’s too raw, too bloody. The fresh wound of his father’s death and the complicated feelings around that have already proven too much. He doesn’t need to add a ‘figure out your feelings for Shane Hollander’ shaped cut to his growing collection. 

Though, as with all wounds, leaving it untreated can only end poorly. 

Between a busy day of back-to-back classes, Shane manages to snag some time with Hayden and Jackie over lunch. They grab a table at The Grindhouse and get coffee and sandwiches, inhaling it all as they talk. 

“And then he what?” 

Shane coughs up a crumb, breaking into a laugh at Jackie’s reaction. “Yeah,” he says around a mouthful, “he comes over and just takes my water bottle and starts chugging on it–” 

“Oh my god.” 

“–and the guys were obviously fucking freaked out or something, ‘cause they just left. It was so weird.” 

Hayden and Jackie are both looking at him incredulously, Hayden a little more disgusted and Jackie… Jackie looks like she has stars in her eyes. 

“That’s so fucking hot,” she says reverently around her sourdough. 

Hayden turns to her. “Hot? That’s weird as fuck, babe.” 

Grinning at the controversy he’s caused, Shane takes another sip of his coffee. It burns on the way down, hot and frothy. 

“No, oh my god, you don’t get it. If you did that I’d probably mount you,” Jackie says with full conviction. 

Both Hayden and Shane stare at her blankly. 

“You would mount him?” Shane asks. Surely she’s being dramatic. 

She blinks between the two of them, realising they’re not quite getting it. “It’s possessive! It’s hot! He’s like… a dog pissing up a tree.” 

“And that’s hot to you?” 

Shane chews thoughtfully around his sandwich while he processes that. Pissing up trees aside. Possessive? What reason would Ilya have to be possessive when Shane was just talking to some dudes in the gym? 

Fuck, sure, he says a lot in the bedroom. Stuff like you’re mine and so good just for me and my slut and… Okay, so maybe there’s a theme. But that’s pillow talk, that’s shit people say in the moment when they’re too cock-drunk to think straight. Shane knows by now that Ilya doesn’t mean anything specific by it, he just knows the praise gets Shane riled up.

But that possessiveness, or whatever it is, doesn’t follow them out of the bedroom. Shane’s learnt that. And whatever feelings he may or may not have about Ilya, he’s not going to project that onto him and read into things where there isn’t anything to read into. Ever since their conversation in the park last semester, Shane has gotten pretty good at accepting the reality of what they are. At least, he thinks so. And he’s not going to fuck that up now by getting into the weeds of thinking Ilya is suddenly acting possessive over him. No way. 

Shane slowly dials back into the conversation, jumping in during a pause. “Look, we’re just fucking, he has no reason to be possessive, or whatever. He probably just thought it’d be funny to mess with me. He’s a dick like that.” 

“Hon, believe what you want, but I know things,” Jackie says, twirling her straw around in her glass, ice clinking against the sides. “He wants you. And he’s marking his territory.” 

Shane flushes, very aware of the bruises littering his neck. Marking his territory. 

Yeah, that’s one way to put it.   

Around Halloween, the campus really starts to transform. 

In fitting with the season, the leaves on the trees fade into shades of burnt orange and brown, matching the bright colours of the pumpkins that start cropping up at nearly every turn. Every stoop, every window seems to become home to some creepy, carved squash. Students hang ghostly garlands in the windows of their dorms, others spider webs or bats. Everyone truly gets into the spirit. 

As is yearly tradition, Shane’s team holds a draw to see who will host the annual Halloween party. They huddle in the locker room one morning before practice, drawing names out of a glove. This year, it falls to JJ. He takes it in his stride, arguably the most outgoing of all of them and probably the best host, in Shane’s opinion. Last year, it had been Comeau’s responsibility, and he’s still living down the utter shit-show it had turned out to be. JJ won’t make the same mistakes. He’ll make it one to remember. 

And speaking of memorable, there’s the matter of the bet. 

Also an annual tradition, the bet always serves to make things a little more interesting. While the party last year may have been pretty dire, the bet had salvaged the night somewhat. It had been Olsson that had lost, which meant he’d been at the mercy of the team to pick his costume for the night. And, man, had everyone pulled through. It nearly cost them (or rather Olsson) a public indecency charge, but seeing him turn up in a neon green mankini had been well worth it. 

The bet is fairly simple. The first person to arrive late to practice at the start of the semester loses. Nothing crazy, but it keeps morale and discipline up, and they all take great enjoyment in seeing who they can fuck with the most to make late. A tactically induced hangover here, a punctured tire there. That kind of thing. 

Shane, being the captain and therefore the one with the biggest reputation to uphold, has never once lost the bet. He’s early, he’s punctual. He doesn’t slip up.

Except this year, of course, there’s a variable that he’s never encountered before. Ilya. 

It’s such a rookie error, going over to Ilya’s dorm the night before morning practice. He should know better. But Ilya texts, and Shane’s body is moving on a motor all of its own, and the next thing he knows is he’s getting fucked within an inch of his life and then promptly passing out in Ilya’s bed. The following morning, he wakes up in a blind panic. Not even sprinting across campus can save him. He arrives, only two minutes late, to the shit-eating grins of his teammates who look like Christmas just came early. And he loses the bet. 

And now, the night before Halloween, Shane has the honour of getting his costume revealed to him in front of everyone. 

“Oh my fucking god. No fucking way.” 

Hands clap him on the shoulder. Snickers travel around the room. Hayden leans in close.

“A bet is a bet, buddy.” 

Shane regrets ever being born.  

shane 🥸 8:36pm

you got the address right?

Ilya 8:37pm

yes you sent it like five times

shane 🥸 8:37pm 

oh right lol sorry

Ilya 8:38pm

you still haven't told me what ur wearing

[Read 8:40pm]

Ilya sighs and checks his reflection in the rear-view mirror again, flicking a stray curl off his forehead that has come loose from the rest of his hair, slicked-back off his face with copious amounts of gel. If Shane wants to be cagey about his Halloween costume, fine. Ilya will find out soon enough, anyway. 

If anyone were to look into the cab as it passes, weaving through the streets of the city on its way to Shane’s friend’s apartment, anyone would think it was some kind of macabre clown car. 

Ilya, in the backseat, ‘blood’ dripping from his lips and smearing the front of his white shirt, tucked neatly into a black cummerbund, fake vampire fangs protruding from his mouth. Troy at his side, a very convincing zombie, his clothes dirtied and torn and hanging off him in strips, skin a mottled shade of green and purple. And Wyatt, in the front seat, donning a ridiculous blonde wig and a He-Man get-up that leaves very little to the imagination. 

For once, they’d made an effort. Partly because Shane had emphasised that this party was going to be, in his words, ‘one for the ages’, and partly because Ilya does not want to be upstaged by any of Shane’s friends. He has to make a good first impression, after all. 

Ilya had even gone to the effort of buying ‘proper’ fangs, not the shitty plastic ones that slip off your teeth like poorly-fitting dentures, but the actual, good-quality ones that glue on to your incisors. He’s not really sure how he’ll get them off later, but if he can’t… Well, at least he’ll look intimidating for a while. He runs his tongue over them experimentally and grins in anticipation. He can already picture Shane’s reaction. 

They arrive at an apartment building not too far away from campus, one of the expensive-looking ones with high windows and a polished lobby. Clearly, this ‘JJ’ is in another tax bracket entirely. They take the elevator to the upper floors, and Ilya spends most of the ride fiddling with his shirt collar. 

“Dude, relax. Unbutton it any more and it’ll fall off,” Troy says, nudging him in the shoulder. 

Ilya bares his fake teeth at him in a mock snarl, making him laugh. He pops another button for good measure, exposing more of his chest and the gold chain around his neck.

“Man, I hope Shane’s buddies are cool,” Wyatt muses, swinging his fake sword around and narrowly avoiding hitting Troy in the shin with it. 

“Will be fine, they are all annoying hockey players like him,” Ilya says. “Talk about trick shots or something, you will make friends fast.” 

Ilya secretly thinks it’s cute when Shane rambles about mundane things like trick shots and backhands. He won’t tell him that, though. 

The noise of the party hits them directly as the elevator doors slide open. God forbid this guy has neighbours, Ilya thinks. Maybe he gets away with it because he is rich. Walking down the corridor, they wouldn’t even need to have known the apartment number, since the blaring sounds of a Bad Bunny album being played at full volume leaks under the threshold, accompanied by flashes of colourful light. Not the stereotypical soundtrack for a Halloween party, but Ilya appreciates the guy’s taste. 

Tacked onto the door are lines of caution tape and stickers of blood splatters. Shane had given Ilya the code beforehand, so he punches it into the fancy keypad to the side and watches as the green light flashes to signal it’s unlocked. They push their way inside, and immediately Ilya can see why Shane had been hyping this up. 

First off, the corridor is filled with smoke. And not the kind that Ilya is familiar with, either. No, the guy has a literal smoke machine pumping out clouds of wispy fog that settles around their ankles and lingers in the air like fine mist. Hanging from the ceiling are rows and rows of garlands, stringy webs with plastic spiders clinging to them, black and orange confetti, tiny pumpkins and paper ghosts. The hallway is relatively empty, save for a few people who must have split off from the main event to grab a quiet moment to talk. The real party, where the music and voices and colourful, strobing lights are coming from, is happening further inside. How fucking big is this guy’s apartment?

“Holy fuck,” Wyatt breathes.

“Tell me about it,” says Troy, similarly awed. “This is sick.” 

They cross the length of the hallway, batting the garlands aside, and turn the corner into the main area of the apartment. The space opens up into a large, open-plan area that must be the living room, dining area and kitchen all in one. What kind of student is rich enough to have a dining table? 

Here, there are bodies everywhere. People in all manner of weird and wonderful costumes, some scary, some slutty, some so weird that Ilya doesn’t even know what he’s looking at. The commonality is everyone is dressed up. And to get an entire student body to all put this much effort in, Ilya thinks JJ must be a fucking magician. Shit, maybe that’s his costume for tonight. 

“Where do we even go first?” Wyatt says over Ilya’s shoulder, hesitating in the doorway at being confronted with so many people.

“We get a drink,” Ilya replies. The ‘and then find Shane’ part of the sentence goes unspoken.

They push through the crowd towards the kitchen, Ilya noting more of the impressive decorations on his way. Chalk outlines taped to the floor, a bloodied mannequin head hanging precariously from a light fixture. He’ll have to take a picture for Svetlana and Rose, they’ll appreciate the craftsmanship. 

In the kitchen, there’s a large island in the middle that seems to be the designated bar for the night. Bottles upon bottles are stacked together; they’re practically spoilt for choice. Beer, liquor, even wine. There’s also some kind of punch situation going on, a fancy mixture of fruit (fresh fruit, damn) swimming in brightly-coloured liquid that’s being served out of a huge, plastic skeleton head. 

“I want whatever that is,” Wyatt says, eagerly collecting a solo cup from a stack and dunking it straight in. The juice-liquor-syrup mixture splashes on the counter. 

“Fucking hell, Hazy, watch it.” 

Ilya peruses the selection briefly before settling on an interesting-looking bottle with Korean characters on it. Soju, it reads in English, pear flavoured. Sure, why not. He cracks the lid and takes a sip. It’s fucking good. It has the same sharp, ethanol taste of vodka, but light and clean like the best kind. It goes down like pear-flavoured water. Dangerous. 

Looking around, Ilya has to believe there was some kind of committee behind the set-up for this party, because there is quite simply no scenario in which a college athlete went to such lengths for one night. But, then again, college athletes have a history of surprising him. Speaking of which… 

“I will be right back,” he says, cupping his hand so Troy can hear him better over the music. 

“Lasted a whole two minutes, buddy, proud of you,” Troy laughs. 

“Go fuck yourself,” Ilya says with a grin, and then sets off in search of the person he’s most interested in seeing. 

Unluckily for Hayden Pike, he is the first person Ilya sees that he actually recognises. And only just, for that matter, his appearance mostly hidden under his ridiculous werewolf costume. He’s hanging out by the couch on the far side of the room, a large L-shaped thing that hugs a coffee table and faces an expensive-looking flatscreen TV. He’s flanked by two people Ilya doesn’t recognise, a guy and a girl. The girl must be the girlfriend Shane had told him about – Jackie. She appears to be dressed as a much prettier, less dorky she-wolf. 

Ilya approaches them with a wicked grin, all fangs. “Hello.”

It takes Hayden a moment to register the person behind the vampire costume, and then his eyes widen. “Oh! Hey, man. Good to see you.” 

Ilya gets pulled into a half-hug, half-handshake, which is kind of endearing. Perhaps he needs to stop calling Shane’s best friend a dork. 

“Looking fang-tastic!” 

Okay, yeah, still a fucking dork.

“Yes, you too. And nice to finally meet you,” Ilya says, turning to Jackie and choosing to ignore the cheesy joke for Hayden’s sake. 

Jackie grins and offers her hand. “You too, Shane’s told us a whole lot.” 

Ilya smirks. “Yes, I am sure he has,” he says, taking Jackie’s hand and dipping his head to give it a soft peck. It’s what a gentlemanly 300-year-old vampire would do, after all. 

Hayden shoots daggers at him. Jackie laughs and curtsies, playing along. 

“Where is he, anyway?” Ilya asks, eyes flitting around the room as if he might be able to pick Shane out in a crowd full of ghosts and werewolves and zombies.

There’s a momentary pause, an exchanging of looks, and then a soft laugh travels its way around the group. Hayden grins, looking impish. 

“Oh, buddy, he’s not hard to spot, trust me.”

Hm, okay. 

“I think he went to the bathr– Oh! There he is.” 

Ilya turns in the direction that everyone now seems to be looking, their eyes glinting like a genuine pack of wolves sizing up a meal. His eyes don’t quite pinpoint him at first, still scouring through the collection of garish outfits in his eyeline, and then– 

Ilya’s jaw hits the fucking floor. 

Shane is wearing a maid costume. 

It’s like something out of Ilya’s most elaborate, pornographic fantasies. All lace and silk and ribbons and– fuck. He doesn’t know where to look first. 

The black dress is short, impossibly so, swishing as Shane walks and revealing the layers of white lace underneath. That’s where Ilya’s eyes travel to first, taking in the ruffles that caress the tops of his legs, the fucking lace garter that stretches around the enormous circumference of his tanned thigh. It even has a tiny black bow on it.

The corset of the dress, criss-crossed with white ribbon and complete with a dainty apron around the waist, is struggling to stay together over the expanse of Shane’s chest. Obviously not meant to be worn by a 6-foot, 200-pound hockey player, the material is pulled taut, almost exposing his nipples below the lace neckline. The straps hang loose and torn beneath his arms, obviously sacrificed in his attempt to pull the thing on. 

Lastly, the outfit is complete with a dainty lace headband. 

Ilya thinks he may have died and gone to sexy maid roleplay heaven. 

Shane doesn’t look Ilya in the eyes as he approaches, eyes fixed to the floor as he shuffles over in his white sneakers. At least he’s not in heels. Ilya would need to be escorted out in a straitjacket and taken to a padded room if that were the case. 

The blush that spreads across Shane’s cheeks and down to his chest is fucking divine. All rosy and freckled and shy, looking practically edible, and Ilya finds himself gripping his bottle of soju so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter. He’s very glad for the fact that he’s also wearing dark, semi-loose pants, because the things Shane is doing to his body would be very difficult to hide otherwise. 

“Don’t,” he says as he approaches, “say a fucking word.” 

Ilya couldn’t if he tried. For once in his miserable fucking life, he’s actually lost for words. Instead, he just stares at Shane, eyes ping-ponging up and down his body. 

“You look beautiful, buddy, come on!” Hayden says, sniggering into his drink. “White is really your colour.” 

“Oh, imagine him in a wedding dress,” Jackie coos. 

Shane, still very much not looking at Ilya, scowls at them with as much ferocity as an angry kitten. “I will kill all of you and then myself, I swear to God.” 

“Come on, tell him he looks pretty, Ilya,” Jackie says, waving her hand at Shane and tugging on Ilya’s elbow with the other. 

Ilya swallows down the desire clawing its way up his throat and throttling his vocal cords. He wets his lips and feels his fangs scrape against his tongue. “Yes,” he says, slightly strangled. “Very pretty.” 

At last, Shane picks his gaze up off the floor and drags his eyes to meet Ilya’s, toying with the hem of his dress awkwardly. Ilya isn’t sure exactly what his face is doing right now, but it must be something pretty spectacular, because the moment Shane meets his eyes, Ilya watches his pupils dilate and the tips of his ears redden. 

“I lost a bet,” he says, simply. Seemingly challenging Ilya to say something, anything.

Ilya wants to fuck the person who made that bet and give them his life savings as a thank you afterwards. 

“Oh, you did not pick this out yourself?” Somewhere in the part of his brain that hasn’t yet deteriorated into goop, Ilya finds the ability to crack a joke. 

“Fuck off,” Shane gripes, shoving him playfully. The movement makes the muscles of his tanned chest and shoulders ripple and the lace neckline of the dress slip down a centimetre or two, revealing a sliver of his nipples.

And just like that, Ilya needs to get him alone. Immediately.

He clears his throat. “Please excuse us,” he says with a polite smile to Hayden and Jackie.  He doesn’t even bother to listen to their reply, already wrapping his fingers around Shane’s bicep and practically dragging him in the opposite direction. 

“What the hell–” Shane protests, sneakers squeaking across the hardwood floors.

Ilya isn’t listening. He sets his drink down (somewhere, he doesn’t really know where), and pushes through the crowd with Shane at his heels. At the first door he comes to, he swings it open and – after a brief check of the room’s contents – yanks Shane inside with him. 

It just so happens that it’s a small, cramped coat closet. 

“Maybe a fucking hello?” Shane says, incredulous. 

“Hello,” Ilya replies, and then kisses him stupid. 

He backs Shane the short distance into the wall behind him, hands finding his waist as he slides their lips together, nipping at his plush lower lip and licking into his mouth when Shane gasps at the feeling of his fangs. 

Shane goes willingly, sagging back into the cluster of coats and pulling Ilya with him, his hands curving around the back of Ilya’s neck and dragging him into the kiss with an aggression that Ilya finds stunningly erotic. Ilya moans against his lips, hands beginning to roam over his body.

His fingers find the backs of Shane’s thighs first, slipping up under the lace skirt and kneading the meat of his hamstrings where they meet his ass. He locates the garter and slips his digits beneath it, feels the elastic stretch taut over his hand as he pulls it back and then lets it slap back onto Shane’s skin with an audible sound. 

Shane gasps and then moans heavily, hitching his leg up Ilya’s hip and using his heel to pull Ilya even closer, their hips bumping together. Continuing his journey up Shane’s thighs, Ilya drags his palms up over the swell of his ass, massaging the flesh with a needy groan, the sounds muffled into the hotness of Shane’s mouth. His fingers travel up higher, expecting to meet the hem of Shane’s boxers any second. And then he stills. 

He feels Shane go motionless against him, and when Ilya pulls back, a thin string of saliva hanging between their swollen lips, Shane looks mortified. 

“Are you wearing panties?” Ilya rasps. 

Shane nods. 

Every ounce of blood in Ilya’s body rushes to his cock. “Fuck–” Ilya doesn’t even finish the sentence, he’s already dropping to his knees, hooking Shane’s knee over his shoulder and pushing up his skirt. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Hollander.” 

Matching panties. Lace trimmed. With a little black bow. 

People often throw around the phrase “This is the greed they talk about in the Bible.” Ilya’s heard that one a lot. But not even biblical levels of greed can explain the devastating urgency Ilya feels at the sight of Shane’s cock bulging against soft, white silk panties. 

I am dead. This is heaven. Goodbye, cruel world. I will live here now.

Ilya plunges his face into Shane’s groin without second thought, his tongue meeting the delicate fabric that is growing tighter by the second as Shane’s cock starts to swell beneath it. He finds the tip within no time, suctioning his lips around the outline of it and flicking his tongue against it in short, quick motions. 

“Oh, fuck,” Shane mewls, bucking into it and digging his heel into Ilya’s back. 

Ilya lets the dress fall over his head as he frees up his hands for more worthwhile activities. Tucking his fingers beneath the lace hem, he yanks the panties aside and releases Shane’s cock, now fully erect, and uses his other hand to hold him at the base as he swallows him down the back of his throat. 

Shane convulses, a muffled shout bouncing off the walls of the coat room, somewhat stifled into his hand. He releases a thick, fat bead of pre-come into the back of Ilya’s throat, and Ilya tastes it with a shudder of pleasure. Shane’s moans are stilted and slightly muted when Ilya starts to bob his head, the noise suppressed by the layers of lace and cheap nylon around Ilya’s ears, but he doesn’t need to hear Shane to know how much he’s enjoying it. His whole body is trembling, hips jerking against Ilya’s lips on each downstroke when Ilya’s nose meets his pubic bone. 

Outside, the track switches to a new song and a chorus of hollers and whoops break out. Little does anyone know of the entirely different party happening just beyond the thin door that separates them from the corridor. There’s no lock, but Ilya would probably kill anyone who tried to step through that door anyway. Not even King Arthur himself could pull him from Shane right now. 

“Ilya, shit, m’gonna come, fuck,” Shane starts to babble, his hands scrabbling at Ilya’s shoulders where he finds them beneath the hem of his skirt. 

Ilya practically growls, the hand gripping Shane’s length now sliding back behind his balls, between his cheeks and finding his quivering hole. He circles it with his finger, puts the slightest amount of pressure there. Just a suggestion. 

“Oh god,” Shane wheezes, sounding almost teary. 

The mental image of him – flushed and tearful in his maid costume and coming undone in Ilya’s mouth – makes Ilya’s brain spark out. No rational thought remains, only the singular desire to have Shane spill his fucking load down his throat. 

Ilya sucks him hard, once, twice more. Pulls all the way back and flicks his tongue across Shane’s slit. 

Shane comes, his heel leaving bruises on Ilya’s spine and his moans getting lost into the tight, curled ball of his fist. His come floods Ilya’s mouth and Ilya gulps it down like he’s fucking dying for it, sucking him dry and to the point of overstimulation. 

Before he gets to his feet, he pulls the panties back into place. He isn’t finished. 

Letting Shane taste himself on his tongue, Ilya kisses him filthy and slow up against the wall. His hands run through Shane’s hair and knock the headband off, causing it to clatter to the floor, immediately forgotten. The fangs, surprisingly, don’t make it that hard to kiss. Though, when Ilya pulls back again, he sees that some of the fake blood has smeared itself on Shane’s chin. 

“Messy,” he purrs, swiping at it with the backs of his knuckles, then leaning in to lick the rest off. 

Shane hums softly at the feeling, like a cat being groomed. Indulging him further, Ilya licks up his jaw and over the shell of his ear, enjoying the way that makes Shane quiver and gasp. He laves down his throat, mouthing and kissing and sucking softly, until he’s hovering right over Shane’s pulse point. 

“Want to know how it feels to be bitten by a vampire?” he asks huskily.

“You gonna turn me?” Shane breathes, tilting his neck already in anticipation.  

“Mm,” Ilya purrs. “Make you my immortal slut, mine to fuck forever.” 

He drags the tips of the fake fangs over Shane’s skin and watches him erupt in goosebumps. With his palpable excitement as permission, Ilya sinks his teeth into Shane’s neck and sucks. 

“Oh,” Shane whimpers, going rigid beneath Ilya’s grip on his waist. 

Ilya does it again, moving higher, following the vein that protrudes prominently along Shane’s jugular. He doesn’t bite hard enough to actually draw any blood or hurt him, but just enough to have him whining and his eyelashes fluttering. Ilya is still painfully fucking hard, and as he bites and licks and sucks, he grinds himself against the solid muscle of Shane’s thigh. 

When he can no longer stand the aching throb in his cock, Ilya pulls back momentarily and admires his handiwork. A smattering of marks, already blossoming dark pink and purple, with two pronounced teeth marks at their centre. 

“You liked that?” he says, checking Shane’s expression. There’s no sign of discomfort there, only dazed bliss.

“Too much.”

Ilya claims his mouth again before flipping Shane around, shoving him up against the wall as he did in the club bathroom, forcing his chest down and making him arch and bend over. The movement perfectly presents his ass, hugged by the silk panties. Ilya’s mouth goes dry. 

“You gonna fuck my pussy?” Shane asks, saccharine and innocent and totally obscene. 

Ilya’s eyes roll back in his skull. “You are going to fucking kill me.” 

Wordlessly, Shane brings his feet together and squeezes his thighs tight, pushing his hips back. Ilya, ascending beyond the mortal plane of existence, fumbles to catch up, unzipping his pants and shoving them to mid-thigh, freeing his cock that has been screaming for attention ever since they got in here. 

“So good, getting yourself ready for me,” he groans, spitting into his palm and stroking himself as he runs a hand over Shane’s pert ass, patient and waiting. 

He flips the skirt up over Shane’s hips and watches the way the ruffles cascade over his back like modern art, showing off more of the panties and how they struggle to contain all of him within their delicate confines. Any other words Ilya might have die on his tongue at the sight. 

Instead of talking, he pushes himself forward and fucks into the warm, tight crease of Shane’s thighs. He slides in effortlessly, made easier by the smooth glide of silk against his skin. It’s sinful, how good it feels. It’s heavenly. 

Ilya ruts against Shane like that, holding his hips in place as he thrusts against him, fucking up against the now-softer bulge of his cock, his balls. It almost feels like sliding between the folds of a pussy, silky and enveloping, and Ilya’s breath stutters in his chest at the sensation. Shane grips Ilya’s length tightly between his inner thighs, squeezing so perfectly. His breath comes in short pants, hitching every time Ilya’s cock slips in. 

Ilya’s pace is rough and a little desperate, not like his usual steady, strong thrusts. He’s too worked up, too horny for his own good seeing Shane like this. 

“Wish I could fuck you like you deserve,” he pants into the stuffy quiet of the closet. “Fill you up and leave you dripping in those panties when we go back outside.” 

Shane has to shove his fist in his mouth to keep from moaning too loud, but Ilya feels his thighs quiver at the idea. It makes Ilya thrust harder, more ragged. He’s losing rhythm, but the silk against his cockhead is driving him insane. Bending over Shane’s spine, Ilya flattens his palm to the wall, leaning over to speak directly into Shane’s ear now. 

“You want that, hm? My come inside you while you talk to all your friends?” 

Shane whimpers beautifully. “Fuck, yeah, Ilya.” 

Ilya grunts and snaps his hips, feels the silk catch and glide across his tip. Feels Shane’s cock beneath it, twitching and reacting to his words. Feels the heat rushing into his belly, his groin, rushing up his shaft.

He comes, muffling his own noises into Shane’s shoulder, biting down on him and making him squirm with pain and pleasure. His come spills out against the soft material of the panties, directly against Shane’s balls, soaking the fabric and dribbling down his inner thighs and back onto Ilya’s cock. 

“Mm, Shane, fuck,” he breathes, chest heaving against his back and hips jerking with each pulse of his orgasm. 

When he eventually recovers and separates himself from Shane, he spends a long moment just admiring him, awestruck. 

“M’all wet now,” Shane whines, straightening up and wincing at what must be the feeling of come clinging to his costume and sliding down his legs. 

Ilya resolves the latter problem by ducking down and licking long stripes up his inner thighs, collecting his own release on his tongue and feeding it back to Shane in a sloppy kiss. They make out for a while like that, Ilya still half-naked and Shane wet between the legs, until the song changes again outside and they get dragged, rudely, back to reality. 

“We should go,” Ilya says, tucking himself away and smoothing out his shirt to the best of his ability. 

“I can’t fucking believe I’m going to have to walk around for the rest of the night with your come drying between my legs,” Shane grumbles, though he doesn’t seem too upset about it. 

Ilya smirks. “You like it.” 

“I don’t.” 

“But you like me.” 

Shane’s expression falters almost imperceptibly, then smooths out. “I hate you, actually.” 

Ilya chuckles. “Yes, yes. Now go.” 

He slaps Shane’s ass on his way out, delighting at the way it makes his ass ripple beneath the skirt. Shane takes a second to survey the corridor before slipping back out into the noise and the chaos. Ilya follows not long after. 

They catch up with Troy and Wyatt a little while later, finding them in the corner by the pool table (pool table in his apartment, wow, okay) chatting to some of Shane’s teammates. Shane dips off to collect drinks, since Ilya has lost his and Shane is due another, leaving Ilya alone with them momentarily. 

“Do I want to know what you’ve been up to?” Troy says as he saunters over, eyeing Ilya’s mussed hair and smeared vampire makeup. 

“I was busy,” Ilya grins, a flash of fake fangs. 

Wyatt, eyes catching something over Ilya’s shoulder, wolf whistles obnoxiously. “God damn, Hollander!” 

Ilya breaks into another ridiculous grin as Shane joins them, passing off another soju to Ilya and nursing a beer himself. He’s blushing again. 

“Fuckin’ hell, dude,” Troy also whistles, “lookin’ good.” 

Ilya’s face immediately drops into a scowl, and both Troy and Wyatt break out in laughter. 

“Holy fuck, Baz, be careful,” Wyatt wheezes. “Roz is going to smother you in your sleep if you make a play for his man.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Ilya gripes, taking a hefty swig of the soju to hide his annoyance. “You are both idiots.” 

Shane, clearly relieved the attention is off him for a second and more than happy to take part in ribbing Ilya, snorts under his breath. Ilya turns and raises an eyebrow at him. 

“What was that?”

“No, nothing,” Shane snickers. “You’re just so cute when you’re mad.” 

Both Wyatt and Troy let out a chorus of ‘oooh’s, glancing between him and Shane like they’re watching a championship tennis match. Ilya laughs incredulously. 

“Ah, coming from someone who acts like tiny baby kitten when he is angry. Sooo scary,” Ilya whines sarcastically. 

He and Shane exchange blows back and forth, getting each other more and more riled up. They get so absorbed that, at one point, Wyatt murmurs something under his breath to Troy that sounds a lot like “So, when do they start kissing?”. Ilya doesn’t even notice. 

The rest of the night bleeds into early morning, filled with good conversation, good music and good drinks. The entire time, Ilya thinks about his come between Shane’s legs.

At one point, he and Shane somehow end up on the same team as Wyatt and Jackie in a game of pool against Troy, Hayden, JJ and Mitty. The two of them bicker the entire time, Ilya nagging Shane for his shooting posture and Shane whisper-shouting in his ear that he can’t fucking bend over the table or else risk flashing his soaked panties to the entire room. And that shuts Ilya up real quick. 

After the game, Ilya gets a proper introduction to their gracious host, and comes to realise that he’s just as larger than life as Shane described him; definitely capable of hosting such an insane party. They bond over a shared love of Bad Bunny, while Shane just nods along and pretends he knows what the fuck they’re talking about. 

Later on, the group gathers on the couch and swaps stories from high school. Wyatt tells the story he’d heard from Svetlana about Ilya getting busted with a pocketful of cigarettes and mini-liquor bottles at their school’s Field Day. Hayden tells the story of the time that Shane asked their biology professor if bees really reproduce by ‘rubbing their tips together’. Jackie tells everyone about the time she had sex with a senior in the back of his truck in the school parking lot in the middle of the day, and everyone spends the next ten minutes fucking with Hayden because he looks absolutely distraught. 

The conversation then turns to sex, which then promptly devolves into taking turns to tell everyone the craziest thing they’ve each done in the bedroom. By this point, everyone is far too many drinks deep to hold anything back.

“I tried doing it upside down once,” says Wyatt. (“How the fuck does that even work?” says Troy.)

“I deepthroated a guy and then threw up all over his dick,” says Jackie. The look on Hayden’s face suggests that this story is also not about him. 

“I, uh, did poppers before a Grindr hook-up and… let’s just say he had to change the sheets,” says Troy. (“What are poppers?” says Shane. “Oh, you sweet summer child,” says Jackie.)

“I asked a girl to call me ‘daddy’ one time. I kind of hated it,” says Hayden. 

“I snorted cocaine off somebody’s ass,” says Ilya. 

Shane’s eyes go wide. “You what?”

A ripple of laughter travels around the group, some disbelieving and some outright impressed. Ilya shrugs. “Was a while ago, do not recommend. Don’t do coke, kids.” 

Quite deliberately, Ilya hadn’t chosen one of his many memorable escapades with Shane. As many as there are to choose from, Ilya wouldn’t so willingly embarrass him in front of his friends. And Ilya has plenty of other wild, sexually deviant stories to draw from. None more pleasurable than any with Shane, though.  

But then it’s Shane’s turn. And everyone turns to him, expectantly. 

“I, uh…” Ilya can see the cogs turning in his head, can see him sorting back through his memory and turning pink as he does so. “I sucked a guy off at a party while my friends listened through the door.” 

Wyatt howls. “Shane, my man!” 

Troy slaps him on the back. “Nice.” 

“Wait, when? Who?” Jackie says, leaning forward in her seat. 

Shane begins to turn very red. Ilya tries to smother his grin behind the rim of his bottle. It doesn’t work very well.

Jackie’s eyes flit from Shane to Ilya. Ilya to Shane. To Hayden, who looks like he’s trying to do mental long division. Back to Shane. 

“Shut the fuck up!” 

And then she’s squealing, and Troy and Wyatt look thoroughly confused, and Ilya is spluttering a laugh and coughing back up the soju he just tried to swallow. She grabs Shane’s arm and shakes him, pointing wildly at Ilya. 

“That was you? And him?!” 

And then it finally dawns on Hayden. “Wait!”

“Oh my fucking god,” says Shane. 

It really turns out to be a great, great night. 

Shane wakes up feeling like he’s been hit by a bus. 

He really needs to stop drinking so much, but then how else would he celebrate Halloween? Or Thanksgiving? Or Christmas? Or Easter – wait, don’t people give up alcohol for lent? Whatever. 

The fact is, his head fucking hurts and the sun is too bright and he regrets ever being born. 

A couple of painkillers, a glass of water and about two hours of reflection time later, Shane feels less disdain for life and more like a person again. Maybe just the hollowed out shell of one, but a vaguely human-shaped blob. 

He checks his phone once his eyes feel more adjusted to the light, squinting at the screen through heavy lids. 9:35. Too fucking early. He swipes into his texts and reads through them, his brain parsing through the words slightly too slow. 

hayd 3:47am

if u see this dontt hrow up in ur sleep 

hayd 3:47am

jackie nd i tucked u in so u shouldnt

Okay, so Hayden and Jackie had put him to bed last night. Good to know. 

wyatt (hazy) 3:11am

get home safe dude!!!!!!!!

Shane smiles. He’s growing a soft spot for Wyatt. 

ilya :) 3:18am

i told hayden i would take u home but he said no 

ilya :) 3:18am

he is very annoying 

ilya :) 3:20am

not my fault u drank 1 million shots and then threw up 

Ah. That explains the taste in Shane’s mouth. And why he hadn’t woken up next to Ilya, like he’d half expected to. 

Shane 9:42am

i’m alive

Shane 9:42am

barely

Shane 9:42am

i didn’t throw up on you did i?

He figures Ilya won’t be awake yet. Shane certainly doesn’t want to be. He has class this afternoon, but missing one lecture won’t be disastrous, will it? 

Still, he makes himself get up, peeling himself out of bed and staggering into the bathroom to shower and wash the taste out of his mouth. He’s still in remnants of his costume, mainly the dress and – thank fuck – his underwear. That would be a mortifying sight for Hayden and Jackie to have uncovered. The apron, his garter and his headband are nowhere to be seen. Oh well.

Shane spends the rest of the day nursing a headache, but at least he feels clean. He even musters up the gusto to make food. Instant ramen, but still. 

Some time in the afternoon, his phone buzzes.

ilya :) 2:56pm 

↪️i’m alive

good

ilya :) 2:56pm

↪️i didn’t throw up on you did i?

no, not on me

ilya :) 2:56pm

on your cute little apron 

Shane winces. 

Shane 2:57pm

oh, gross

Shane 2:57pm

sorry you had to see that

ilya :) 2:57pm

it’s ok, kind of my fault

ilya :) 2:58pm

i made you try absinthe 

ilya :) 2:58pm

you didn’t like it

Shane tries to piece together some disjointed memories of the night. Mostly, he just recalls being in the coat closet with Ilya. Heat floods his body. As if having read his mind, Ilya sends another text. 

ilya :) 2:59pm

how is your neck 😉🧛

Already having done a thorough assessment of himself in the shower, Shane can confirm with certainty that his neck is – as the experts say – bruised to fuck. 

Shane 3:00pm

i looked like i’ve been mauled, thank you 

ilya :) 3:00pm

send me a picture i want to see 

Shane pulls his sweatshirt – Ilya’s sweatshirt – to the side and snaps a picture of the bruises and fang-shaped marks littering his throat. It whooshes off a second later.

ilya :) 3:01pm

fuck that’s hot 

ilya :) 3:01pm

i love marking you  

Shane feels his stomach clench a little at the words. There’s something he loves about seeing the evidence of Ilya’s lips on him days after. 

ilya :) 3:02pm

letting everyone see who you belong to 

That, however, strikes something in Shane’s chest that settles oddly, and not in a good way. More like a dead weight. Usually, he’d let it pass. Shove it down. Today, however, it starts to prickle. Like a sunburn that makes your skin peel and itch and crawl. 

Perhaps it’s the hangover making him irritable, or the lack of good sleep, or some other arbitrary reason, but something about Ilya’s message pisses Shane off. Who he belongs to? Shane doesn’t belong to anyone. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Of their arrangement? No labels, nothing official, no strings attached. Certainly no attachment to one another. 

But then Ilya has the audacity to think that, what? Just because he leaves a few hickeys on Shane’s neck he has some kind of ownership over him? Fuck that. 

Sure, it might just be the same, usual sex talk stuff that Ilya always does. But Shane has spent the better part of a year shoving down feelings and emotions that might get in the way of this carefully curated thing between them. Talking himself out of feeling stupid, juvenile things like jealousy whenever Ilya spoke about his sexual history while, in the same breath, calling Shane mine in the bedroom.  

Maybe it’s one rule for Shane and another entirely for Ilya. Ilya is allowed to feel possessive, to tell Shane how much he just loves that Shane has never had anyone else, that nobody else has ever had him either. He’s allowed to bite and mark and piss up Shane like a fucking dog up a tree, barking at any guy that so much as looks at him, because what? He was the first? 

Shane locks his phone and throws it across the room. It hits the wall with a dull thump and bounces onto the bed. 

He needs to calm down, go for a walk. He’s surly and hungover and clearly not thinking straight, because Ilya should not be riling him up this much. 

Shane doesn’t text him back. 

For the next week, Ilya’s phone may as well be glued to his nose for how much time he spends checking it for any sign of life from Shane. 

After their very brief conversation the morning after the Halloween party, Shane hasn’t replied to a single one of Ilya’s texts. At first, Ilya just thought he’d fallen asleep or something, too hungover to respond. But then the next day came, and there had been nothing. And then Ilya had sent a picture of himself in the gym, hoping to provoke something from him, but still nothing. After a few more attempts to spark conversation, Ilya had given up. 

Shane has read every single one. 

Ilya starts to wonder if he’s done something wrong. Had he gone too far at the party? Had Shane not liked it? It seemed as if he very much liked it, and he’d been fine the rest of the evening until he’d gotten a little too inebriated and had to be helped home. 

Maybe he’s mad at Ilya for getting him so drunk, for giving him the shots that made him puke. But, again, he’d seemed fine the following morning and hadn’t made a big deal out of it.

Ilya re-reads their last few messages a few times, trying to work out exactly what might have been the trigger for Shane to pull away. The hickeys. Shane usually loves when Ilya marks him up, gives him a few mementos to remember their time together. He likes seeing them on himself, and has even said so to Ilya. So what could be so different about it this time? 

After turning the whole thing over in his brain for a few days and coming no closer to a conclusion, Ilya nearly resorts to texting Hayden Pike just to ask if he knows anything. But that would probably be weird, and Ilya isn’t entirely certain he can handle Shane’s friend and all of his annoying questions. So, he doesn’t. 

Instead, he gets his head down in class for the first time in a long time, and spends the rest of the time hoping he’ll catch sight of Shane around campus. Typically, he doesn’t. It’s not like Ilya even knows his schedule and can just coincidentally bump into him outside his lecture halls either. And he knows better than to just show up at his practice unannounced. 

But then, one Saturday night, he gets some interesting information. 

sveta 6:18pm

are you coming to the alley 2night?? 

The Alley. Ilya hasn’t been there in a while. It’s a queer-friendly club just off campus that he and his friends had frequented a lot in their first year, not long after joining the LGBTQ society. 

Ilya 6:18pm

is this my invite

sveta 6:19pm

oh i thought you knew abt it

Ilya 6:19pm

??

sveta 6:19pm

well shane is gonna be there

sveta 6:19pm

he didnt tell you??

Ilya 6:20pm

he told you? 

sveta 6:20pm

no he told wyatt

sveta 6:20pm

who then told me 

Ilya 6:20pm

oh ok

sveta 6:21pm

maybe he thought you were already coming 

sveta 6:21pm

anyway pls come it’ll be fun

Ilya 6:22pm

[Reacted 👍 to a message]

Ilya reads through Svetlana’s messages with a gradually-worsening crease between his eyebrows. Why would Shane invite Ilya’s friends to a club and not tell him about it? 

Heat flashes through his chest, something quick and searing before it dissipates. It’s accompanied by the image of Shane, sweaty and flushed and tipsy, dancing with some stranger pressed up against him. Ilya shoves the thought away with an acrid taste creeping up the back of his throat. 

It shouldn’t be so irritating. Shane is well within his right to go out to whichever club he pleases and invite whoever he wants. He’s also allowed to get drunk and press his ass into some sleazy motherfucker’s crotch and– God. When did Ilya start… caring so much? The feeling is wholly foreign and extremely uncomfortable.  

Part of him doesn’t want to go. If Shane has gone out of his way to not invite him, then why should he go along and ruin the fun? Why should he involve himself where he’s not wanted? Ilya can entertain himself just fine, can go out to any other club and get drunk and pick up whoever he wants and not think about Shane fucking Hollander. 

But the other part of him, a part that has been steadily growing in size over the past few months and making a home for itself inside the tight walls of his ribcage, cannot resist the opportunity to see Shane again. Like an addict going back for another hit, like a sailor bewitched by a siren’s song, Ilya cannot help but to succumb to obsession.  

So, he gets ready and he takes a cab and he meets his friends at the club. 

As it turns out, Shane hadn’t invited anyone per se. 

He had apparently let slip in conversation to Wyatt that he’d been thinking about hitting up The Alley on Saturday with Hayden and Jackie, just to see what it’s like. Which had then led to a loose, informal invitation, leading to Wyatt telling Svetlana, Svetlana telling everyone else, and then Ilya. Who is now standing at the edge of the main club room, brooding as he watches Shane laugh and talk with some guy at the bar. 

He looks good. Really good. His hair looks a little different, more styled than usual, like he’s put wax in it or something. It’s pushed slightly off his forehead, a few strands falling into his eyes in a way that looks effortless. Sexy. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans, nothing extraordinary, but the way they cling to the tight lines of his body is exceptional.

The guy he’s talking to looks… fine. Utterly normal. Nothing special at all, if you ask Ilya. But Shane is talking to him with an earnest expression, all wide-eyed and curious, nodding along like the guy is telling him the most interesting story he’s ever heard. And when he smiles, the guy leans closer. And Shane doesn’t pull back. 

Ilya downs the rest of his half-full drink and starts moving toward the bar for a fresh one. He squeezes through the crowd and makes his way to the end of the long bar top, where it just so happens that the bartender is currently mixing an order. It’s also where Shane is sitting. 

“Excuse me,” Ilya says as he slips between the barstools that Shane and his friend occupy. 

Shane looks momentarily confused at the intrusion, and then his expression morphs into one of annoyance. He looks as if he’s about to say something, when the other guy pipes up.

“Hey, man, we’re talking here,” he huffs, throwing his hands up.

Ilya looks down at him apathetically. “And I am ordering a drink. You want to talk, don’t come to a club.” 

“What a fucking asshole, right?” the guy says, leaning around and directing that to Shane.

Shane chuckles and it sounds strained. “Yeah, totally.”

“I’ll go wait over there, meet me when you’ve got your drink.” The guy gestures to a small seating area on the other side of the club. Not sure why you couldn’t talk there in the first place, but okay, Ilya thinks. 

“Sure,” Shane nods. 

The guy gets up and Ilya tries not to laugh at the seething look he shoots at him, puffing out his chest and sauntering off. Now satisfied that that has been taken care of, Ilya rests his elbows on the bar top and drums his fingers against it. 

“What the fuck is your problem?” 

He turns to Shane, who is now glaring at him. “My problem?” 

“Yeah, what the hell is your problem?” 

Ilya chuckles incredulously. “What is my problem? What is your problem? Avoiding me like the plague for a week, not replying to texts–” 

“Jesus Christ, I’m not your fucking dog!” 

Shane shouts loud enough over the music that the small group behind him in line at the bar turn to look. Ilya blinks, stunned at the sudden outburst. 

“I don’t walk around campus with a collar on that says Property of Ilya Rozanov, do I? I don’t have a fucking microchip in my neck with your name on, do I?” Shane says, chest heaving. Ilya’s never seen him look so pissed off. “No, I don’t. So get off my ass!” 

Ilya just stares at him. “You are drunk.” 

Shane laughs sardonically. “Fuck you.” 

He deflates slightly, clearly having gotten out whatever it is he wanted to say. Ilya gets the impression he’s been holding that in for a while. 

“Okay,” Ilya says. “I will leave you alone. Clearly I was interrupting something.” 

“We were talking.” 

“Great, go talk. Do not let me stop you.” 

The bartender, finally, comes over and places down a fresh drink in front of Shane. He thanks her and slides a bill over the bar. For a moment, he seems to hesitate, caught between getting to his feet and staying put. There’s a war of emotions playing out across his face, frustration and something like weariness. Eventually, his face hardens, and he gets up. 

“Fine. See you around,” he says, taking his drink and slipping past Ilya back into the crowd. 

Ilya doesn’t know why he sticks around after that. He should go home, light a joint and fucking forget about whatever stupid thing had passed between him and Shane at the bar. He should give Shane space, since that’s clearly what he needs, for whatever reason. 

But he doesn’t. He stays, and he drinks, and he watches Shane go from talking to dancing, swaying to the music with that fucker too close behind him, sliding an arm around his waist and dipping his head to say something in Shane’s ear that makes him blush. And then they’re fucking kissing. Ilya watches the guy pull Shane’s head back and press their lips together, Shane’s eyebrows twitching up in surprise before surrendering to it. The guy kisses him all wrong. His rhythm is fucking terrible, he uses too much tongue. He sucks on Shane’s mouth like a dying fish and Shane just lets him. He’s too fucking nice. 

As much as he wishes he could, Ilya can’t look away. His stomach feels rotten, twisting itself into something ugly, deep in his torso. He’s never felt anything like it. No amount of vodka will dull the feeling either, and if anything it makes it worse. 

The guy pauses his abuse of Shane’s perfect lips to pull back and murmur something into his ear, his hand trailing lower down Shane’s waist as he does so. Shane looks… conflicted. He smiles, a pretty convincing performance of coyness if Ilya didn’t know him better, but his eyes dart around the room like he’s nervous. 

Somehow, they pick out Ilya among the crowd. Their gazes meet, Shane’s eyes widening ever so slightly at the realisation that Ilya is already watching him. The look lasts maybe a few seconds, but clearly it’s long enough for Shane to make up his mind about something. He turns back to the guy and nods, and then they begin to leave together. 

Ilya feels his stomach drop out, and then he feels… nothing. Quiet, simmering acceptance. Okay, so Shane is leaving with him. That’s fine. He can do whatever he wants. Ilya will not go after him, because he has no right to, because Shane had told him to – word for word – get off his ass. And hadn’t Ilya promised himself to do just that if Shane said so? 

“I’m not your fucking dog!” 

The words ring in Ilya’s ears. No, Shane isn’t his dog, not by any stretch. Ilya is the one with the pretty pink studded collar and the bone-shaped nametag with Shane’s name on it. He’d said to himself last semester that he’d follow Shane around like a mutt on a leash for as long as Shane would let him. And now, he’s dropped the leash. Given Ilya the command.

So, Ilya will go. No protests. If that’s what Shane wants, to have some ugly, boring guy slobber on his mouth in a club and then take him home afterwards and fuck him with all the finesse of a drunk elephant, that’s fine. Perfectly, completely fine. 

“I’m leaving,” Ilya says into Svetlana’s ear on the dancefloor. 

She pauses mid-sway, stilling against Rose’s body. “What?” 

Ilya doesn’t reply, turning on his heel and walking out of the club. 

He makes it halfway across campus before he unleashes his frustration on a trashcan. He immediately regrets it when his foot connects with the hard metal with a clang that sends pain shooting up his leg. 

“Motherfucker, cock, shit, fucking bitch–” 

Now limping, he almost makes it the entire way to his dorm before he gets a text. It’s probably just one of his friends checking in, asking where he went, but he looks anyway. 

shane 🥸 11:54pm

help please 

shane 🥸 11:54pm

[Pinned location attached] 

Ilya had been pretty tipsy when he left the club, but the sight of Shane’s message sobers him immediately. Help please. Something must have happened. Something with that guy. 

Any anger he’d been feeling melts away, replaced only with cold dread. His only thoughts now are on making sure Shane is okay, right after he knocks the fucking shit out of that bastard that he left with. Before he can even process it, he’s pulling up the location and running. 

The location Shane has sent is on a quiet residential street corner, not far from the club. It had taken Ilya twenty minutes to make the walk back to his dorm. It takes him ten to reach Shane. 

Shane looks up when he hears footsteps. 

He’s hunched over, resting on the slanted bench beneath the bus stop and cradling his hand to his chest. It throbs nastily. He’s been trying to make himself look smaller and as inconspicuous as possible, but at the sound of feet pounding against the concrete, he looks up in alarm. 

He relaxes when he realises that it’s Ilya. He appears from around the street corner all at once, head whipping around frantically before he spots Shane beneath the glass shelter. As he approaches, now slowing to a jog, his eyes dart around the quiet street. He looks dishevelled and windswept and is panting heavily. 

“Are you okay?” 

Shane realises that he must have ran all the way here. His chest tightens, his throat closes up a little. 

“Yeah, sorry, I’m okay.” 

“Did he hurt you?” 

The guy from the club. Ilya is worried. “No, no,” Shane says.

Tension visibly bleeds from Ilya’s muscles. He’d almost looked fucking murderous when he came around the corner, and if he were a stranger Shane would have probably taken off running in the other direction. 

“Nothing happened,” he continues. “We were leaving, but he just kept being weird and pushy and–” 

“I will fucking kill him,” Ilya says, nostrils flaring, visible puffs of air passing through his lips. “Where is he?”

Shane laughs softly. “It’s fine, relax. I took care of it.” 

He uncurls his fist from his chest and holds it out, showing the bloodied backs of his knuckles. His hand trembles slightly, still jittery. Ilya’s furious expression cracks a little, eyebrows quirking upwards. Then, he grins.

“You punched him?” 

Shane breaks into a grin too, a little delirious from the alcohol and adrenaline. “Yeah.” 

“Wow,” Ilya whistles, collapsing down on the bench next to him and making it rattle. “If I was not so fucking angry right now, I would be horny.” 

An uncontrollable giggle spills from Shane’s lips. Ilya looks at him like he’s crazy, and yeah, he kind of feels a bit crazy. It’s been a weird night. 

“I’m serious,” Ilya says, turning stern. “If I see that motherfucker I will break his face open.” 

“I was kinda worried he’d come back,” Shane says, running his thumb over his knuckles. Beneath the blood, they’re already starting to bruise. “I think I scared him off, but I didn’t know if he was gonna come back with his buddies or something.” 

Ilya nods. “That’s why you texted me.” 

“Yeah. Sorry.” 

“Why sorry?”

Shane shrugs, embarrassment creeping in now that the moment has subsided. “I was kind of an asshole. In the club. I shouldn’t have asked you to come back like that.” 

Wordlessly, Ilya reaches over and takes Shane’s busted hand in his, bringing it to his lap and resting it on his thigh as he examines it. He checks over the knuckles with light brushes of his fingertips, being careful not to press. 

“I don’t mind.” 

Shane’s chest aches painfully. He doesn’t deserve that. 

Ilya looks up with a gentle grin. “I’m sorry that he was a prick.” 

“Don’t be,” Shane says, chuckling. “I kind of knew he was, anyway. I guess I just went along with him ‘cause I was pissed at you.” 

Ilya’s fingers still against his skin and he looks up quizzically. “What?” 

“I mean, yeah,” Shane laughs. “Did you think I actually wanted to sleep with him?” 

Something passes over Ilya’s face, and then he shrugs, nonchalant again. “I don’t know. You seemed very annoyed that I interrupted you.” 

Shane rolls his eyes. “I was annoyed because you keep being… weird. And possessive, or whatever. And I don’t get it, ‘cause you’re the one that said we should be ‘friends with benefits’–” Shane uses his free hand to make air-quotations– “but then you start acting like that, pissing up me like a tree–” 

“I am pissing on you?” Ilya blinks.

“It’s an expre– Never mind,” Shane sighs. “The point is, you’re acting like you’re jealous, or something, and it’s freaking me the fuck out.” 

The words spill out of Shane like a breath he’s been holding for hours. When he stops talking, Ilya is quiet, seemingly taking it in. 

As the silence stretches on, Shane finds himself watching the street light across the road blink intermittently, buzzing faintly. He withdraws his hand from Ilya’s lap when it starts to go numb, flexing it a little. Somewhere down the street, a car honks and then passes. 

Finally, Ilya speaks.

“I don’t like seeing you with anyone else.” 

Oh.

The confession sort of hangs there for a moment, neither one of them doing anything about it. It’s not as shocking a revelation as it maybe would have been a few months ago. The way Ilya has been acting the past few weeks, Shane has sort of worked that much out by himself. Ilya is jealous. 

But that’s not fair. Not when it was his idea in the first place to keep things casual. 

Shane steels himself.

“So why don’t you just ask me out?”

There. I said it. 

Ilya, who has started chewing on a hangnail, now pauses. “I am not good with… dating stuff.”

Despite the seriousness of the moment, Shane can’t help but chuckle. “I’m no expert either, but I think what we’ve been doing for the past few months is pretty close to it.” 

As much as Shane has tried to deny it to himself, mostly for the sake of not ruining things, it’s true. They fuck, they hang out, they get coffee and dinner and go to movies, they text near constantly. Is that not dating? 

“I don’t know. Yes, maybe. Probably,” Ilya says, as if he’s also just coming around to the reality of it. 

“Look,” Shane says, shifting on the bench to turn his body and face Ilya. “I’m not trying to force you into a relationship, or whatever, if that’s not what you want. I know you’re…” he searches for the words, waving his hand vaguely, “...more of a free spirit, or whatever, and I’m boring–” 

Ilya laughs. “Did the horoscope tell you this?” 

Shane flushes and swats at his arm with his good hand. “Shut up.” 

“I don’t think you are boring,” he says softly, leaning back against the graffitied wall of the bus shelter. “You are probably the most interesting person I have ever met.” 

“Fuck off,” Shane scoffs, though it comes out sounding weaker than he intended. Ilya’s words hit him square in the solar plexus, winding him.  

“Is true. I am obsessed with you and your boring hockey talk, and your freckles, and your glasses, and your stupid dinosaur socks–” 

“Hey! My mom got me those.” 

They both start laughing, Ilya sitting back and looking at Shane with soft eyes, Shane peering back with warm cheeks and his stomach swooping like crazy. Well, now is as good a time as any to confess, Shane. Better get on with it. 

“I think about you too,” Shane says. “A lot. After you told me about your dad–” 

Ilya shushes him with a hand on his thigh. “Not now, please.” 

“No, I know.” Shane hesitates, then covers Ilya’s hand with his own. “I just mean I was worried, you know? And even before that, when you told me about your family and Russia and your mom and… how you’re afraid of dying. I still think about that stuff. I… care about you. How you’re doing. And I guess I didn’t think I was allowed to care. But I do. I really do.” 

Shane looks up, having zoned out as he was speaking, and is taken aback by the sight of Ilya’s eyes looking a little watery. Oh, god. 

“I think about other stuff too,” he continues, though Ilya cuts him off with a sniffle and a thick laugh. 

“Oh, other stuff, ah?” 

“Oh my god, can we be serious for like two seconds?” 

The moment dissolves into laughter again, but Shane doesn’t mind if it means he gets to see Ilya smiling like that. All big and toothy, a real genuine smile. His eyes are still a bit glassy when Shane curls his fingers around Ilya’s palm, turning their hands over and interlocking their fingers in his lap. 

Holy shit, we’re holding hands. 

Ilya doesn’t pull away, either. Just squeezes back, firm and reassuring. 

Shane takes a deep breath. “I want to be exclusive. With you. Whatever you want to call it.” 

Ilya sits up straighter, shuffles along the bench slightly so their knees are touching. “Not what I want to call it, not this time. What do you want to call it?” 

It dawns on Shane all at once, what an insane turn this night has taken. Never in a million lifetimes would he have expected to end up sitting at a bus stop with Ilya, spilling his guts out and having Ilya do the same in return. Talking about all the feelings and gushy stuff that Shane has tried so hard to keep down all this time. And now he has confirmation that Ilya feels the same.

He could die right now and be happy. The bus could come along any minute and plow into the bus stop and send Shane packing to the pearly gates and he’d be perfectly satisfied. 

Well, not just yet. 

“Boyfriend. I’d like you… to be my boyfriend.”

The grin that splits across Ilya’s face is almost blinding. “You want to make me your boyfriend, Shane Hollander?” 

“Yeah,” Shane replies, earnestly. “Is that okay?” 

Ilya takes a few seconds too long to reply for Shane’s liking. Please don’t tell me you need to mull this over now.

“I have never been a boyfriend before. Not sure I will be very good at it,” he says eventually. 

“Well, that makes two of us,” Shane says. “It can be both of our first times. Lose our boyfriend virginities together, or whatever.” 

Ilya scrunches his face up in disgust. “Never say that again, please.” 

“Yeah, sorry, that was fucking gross.” 

Another laugh forces its way up Shane’s throat. God, he can’t stop fucking laughing. He’s so giddy, so utterly happy it’s absurd. And Ilya seems to feel the same, eyes lit up with something tender and raw when he looks at Shane and brings their conjoined hands to his lips. 

He kisses the back of Shane’s hand, bloody knuckles and all, and then leans in and slots their lips together. 

Ilya kisses him gently first, just feeling rather than tasting, then becomes more insistent. Shane kisses back with a low hum caught in the back of his throat. Their fingers end up in each other’s hair, lips pressing together and breaking apart with soft, wet noises. Shane’s hand throbs when he tugs on Ilya’s curls, but he ignores the pain in pursuit of something better. 

They kiss like they’ve never allowed themselves to before, letting hunger subside into something more sated, no need to rush. Shane takes the time to catalogue every flavour of Ilya’s mouth, and Ilya uses his tongue to map Shane’s. It’s an exploratory kiss, one that says I want to know you on this and every level, I want to know how you taste in the morning after brushing your teeth, I want to know how you taste in the evening after dessert, I want to know your taste blindfolded. 

Their hands don’t roam far from each other’s hair or faces, the rest can come later. For now, Shane scrapes his fingernails over Ilya’s scalp and hears him purr, and Ilya cradles Shane’s face and swipes his thumbs over his freckles. 

From somewhere down the street, someone wolf whistles. Shane feels himself blush, smiling sheepishly against Ilya’s lips, and Ilya growls and presses in closer, caging Shane’s body in with his and shielding him from any onlooker’s view. Protective. Possessive. This time, Shane doesn’t mind one bit. 

When they break apart fully, minutes later, their lips are red and glistening, their breath coming a little shorter. 

“For the record,” Ilya says, swiping his thumb over Shane’s bottom lip. “Yes, is okay. I want to be your boyfriend.” 

Shane beams. Even with the words hitting his ears and taking root in his brain, he still can’t quite believe them. Ilya wants to be his boyfriend. He actually wants to be his. In every way, not just sexually. He wants to slap a name on it, to put it on a banner and wave it around and say ‘Hey, everyone, this is my boyfriend Shane Hollander, and I am his, and his alone.’

Relief, among a multitude of other emotions, floods Shane’s system. For a while, he thought they were destined to be friends with benefits for eternity, stuck in that oblivious limbo of the in-between, always skating around the idea of commitment but never quite biting the bullet. And now, one uncharacteristic outburst and a bloody fist later, all in one crazy evening, they’ve somehow stumbled out the other side as boyfriends. Oh, how the night changes. 

He never thought he’d see the day where he actually locked down the Ilya Rozanov.

Shane could practically take flight, he’s so happy. He is also, very suddenly, extremely horny. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s the fact that he can now say, with utter certainty, that the hottest guy on earth wants to be his fucking boyfriend. Either way, Shane wants to get out of here.

“You wanna go back to mine or yours?” 

Ilya considers. Then, “Mine. I want to smoke. And then I want to fuck my boyfriend’s brains out.”