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Shane had said it sometime in the middle of the series, half-joking, half not — that if the Conference Final went to Game 7, they’d stay. No flights, no media, no rushing back. Just a few days in south Florida, like the rest of the world didn’t exist.
Like any other couple, taking a summer vacation because now they could.
Then they lost by two on Florida’s home ice, and it stopped being a joke — five days and four nights of licking their wounds in dimly lit restaurants along Las Olas, mornings spent browsing thrift shops in Wilton Manors, afternoons under a sun that kissed their shoulders raw, the Atlantic loud and endless in front of them.
Shane says it on the last day, his toes in the sand, like it’s nothing — just another passing thought.
“What if we rent a car,” he says. “Drive back.”
Ilya hums at the thought, a half-smile pulling lazily at his mouth.
The next day, though, he gets a one-way rental from the Ft. Lauderdale airport while Shane cancels their flights, and by midday they’re on the highway, the coast slipping out of view behind them as they head inland, then north.
Ilya sleeps through most of Florida, the land flat and boring in a way that doesn’t make his chest tighten the way Shane’s particular brand of boring does. When he comes to, it’s in north Florida — somewhere everything looks exactly the same and like nothing at all, the navigation on the dashboard and roadside billboards his only clues.
“Live baby gators,” he reads from one of them, almost too brightly for having just woken. “I have not met a gator before.”
“We should stop.”
Ilya turns in his seat at the suggestion, suddenly more alert.
“You think they will like me, like Anya likes me?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Shane pulls off at the exit and follows the curve of the road the only way it goes, straight into the parking lot of a rundown gas station turned half farmer’s market, half wildlife menagerie. Beyond the fruit stands that sit on either side of the door, tanks are visible through the windows, half-obscured by big, neon letters painted across the glass that read things like FLORIDA ORANGES and FREE JUICE.
“I am going to save the gators from this place,” Ilya deadpans as Shane slows into a spot and shifts into park.
“Ilya, you cannot steal an alligator.”
“Watch me.”
Ilya is out of the car before Shane can even form the words to stop him. Still, he hisses Ilya’s name after him as if he can. The bell that chimes as Ilya pushes the door open just swallows the sound.
Shane shakes out his hands and stalks in after him, already rehearsing how he’ll apologize to whoever Ilya has likely already cornered, talking at them instead of to them.
Instead, he finds Ilya frozen in front of a display of what some would call souvenirs — real alligator heads, mouths open, teeth gleaming, lined up on a shelf just inside the door.
“These are not live,” Ilya says quietly over his shoulder when he senses Shane approach.
A chill cuts through him, and Shane knows it’s not from the air conditioner, despite its best efforts.
“They are supposed to be live baby gators, Shane. These are dead gator faces.”
Shane glances up at the overhead sign, the arrow pointing toward the back of the store.
“Back there,” he says, a careful hand on Ilya’s hip, turning him away.
They push through a door and are swallowed by the humidity before the heat even registers — thick, swampy, uniquely Florida in May. Shane starts to sweat immediately, but Ilya moves straight into it, toward a woman in a safari-style hat with a small alligator draped across her forearm.
“Shane, look!”
“I see,” Shane says evenly, grabbing a brochure from the rack by the door and fanning himself as he follows after him.
It’s late in the day, nearly closing time as best Shane can tell, and the crowd is thin. Ilya pushes past them anyway, two small children no match for his broad Slavic frame. By the time Shane catches up beside him, Ilya is trailing his fingers over the gator’s tail and asking if the woman can untape its mouth.
Shane lingers off to the side. Despite the brochure still moving back and forth in his hand, the air sits heavy in his chest, each breath just a little short of being enough.
He shifts his weight, rolls his shoulders like that might fix it. It doesn’t. His gaze drifts to Ilya’s back, the line of hot as he moves, bent slightly forward, fussing over the gator with careful hands.
It does nothing to help with the heat, a flush creeping up his throat when his eyes land on the strip of skin above his waistband as he bends.
“I am going to kiss him,” Ilya says, and it cuts clean through the fog.
Shane blinks, dragged back into it. “You are not—”
But Ilya is already turning, already in his space, pressing his phone into Shane’s hand with absolute certainty.
“Take the picture.”
Ilya leans in, one hand careful on the gator’s back — and glances up, just for a second.
Something in Shane’s face gives him pause. Not enough to stop, but enough.
He shifts, angling himself a little closer, like he’s making sure Shane can see him, then presses a quick, deliberate kiss to the top of the gator’s head.
Shane taps the screen.
Ilya is at his elbow within seconds, his voice low and close against Shane’s neck. “When did you eat last?”
“I didn’t stop at all,” Shane says slowly, thinking back over the miles. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
“Sorry to pry, but there’s free juice inside,” the woman with the gator says, leaning in. “It might could help.”
“Thank you,” Ilya says over his shoulder, guiding Shane toward the door. “Tell Wallace I will think of him.”
Ilya steers him back inside, and doesn’t stop until he’s got a paper cup of juice in Shane’s hand, already nudging it up for him.
“Drink.”
Shane does, his eyes closing at the brightness against his tongue, and Ilya watches without saying anything, eyes flicking over his face, waiting for his color to return.
When it does, Ilya asks, “Outside, yes? To sit?” softer now, and guides him out into the heat and over to the benches tucked against the building behind the fruit stands, fans spinning overhead fast enough to push the air into something almost bearable.
He nudges Shane down onto one, and takes a seat next to him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touch despite the press of the heat.
“Better?”
Shane takes another sip, breath coming easier now, the tightness in his chest loosening one small fraction at a time. “Yeah — it was just so humid back there.”
They sit like that for a moment. The fans rattle overhead, pushing the late afternoon air in slow, uneven bursts. Somewhere off to the side, a crate shifts, wood scraping against concrete, but it all feels distant, secondary to the steady, quiet pressure of Ilya beside him — knee pressed cleanly against knee, sweaty and sticking.
There’s a charge to it, like there always is for them. Any touch not enough.
“You were jealous,” Ilya says quietly, his words landing softly against the side of the peach crates that sit between them and the parking lot.
Shane turns his head just enough to look at him. “Of what?”
“That I kissed Wallace.” Ilya’s mouth tilts. “That is why the dramatics?”
Shane lets out a laugh that’s tinged with exasperation. “I’m not jealous of a fucking reptile, Ilya.”
Ilya hums like he doesn’t believe him. Or like it doesn’t matter if he does.
His knee shifts, pressing more firmly into Shane’s for a second before he pulls away, the absence of it immediate and noticeable. Then he’s on his feet, one hand trailing along the crate of peaches where Shane’s fixed his vision. He brushes a thumb over the soft skin of one — the one that sits atop the pile, arched toward him like it’s waiting to be touched, held, pressed into.
He gives it what it wants, his palm gliding across its flesh.
Shane feels it — thick and heavy through him in a way the humidity has nothing to do with — and shifts where he’s sitting, the bench rough under his palms.
Ilya glances at him, catches the shift, the redness at the tips of his ears.
He stills his hand.
“You are staring,” he says, quiet, almost thoughtful.
Shane exhales through his nose. “And you’re being painfully obvious.”
There’s a small, pleased sound that rides low out of Ilya’s mouth, and Shane wants to ignore it in the same way he wants to swallow it whole. Instead, he sits on his hands and leans his head back against the glass, his hair catching on the paint, masking an E in RIPE, JUICY, SWEET.
But he doesn’t look away.
His lashes dip low, nearly brushing his cheeks as he watches Ilya’s fingers move again — slow, unhurried — over the mound of peaches.
Ilya stills on one — the largest of them — and lifts it, turning it once in his hand with an easy, deliberate weight to it, his thumb pressing in just enough to feel the give before easing off again, like he’s deciding something.
Shane watches the way his grip shifts, the slow drag of his thumb across the skin, the mark it leaves behind.
Ilya brings it up without hurry and rests it against his mouth, the soft curve of it pressing into his lower lip, holding there for a second, his breath catching slightly as the fuzz brushes his skin, before he moves, drawing it slowly across his mouth so it pulls at his lip on the way past.
Shane’s throat works — just barely — around a swallow.
Ilya’s tongue follows. A slow, deliberate press along the seam, tracing it once, then again. Flatter the second time, slower.
Then he bites.
The skin stretches before it gives against his teeth, and when it does the juice breaks loose all at once, spilling over his fingers, running down the inside of his wrist in fat droplets.
He stays there for a second, mouth still closed around the flesh, before pulling back slowly, lips slapping together wetly before he chews once and then again, his gaze lifting to Shane.
The juice gathers at the corner of his mouth, slips down his chin, follows the line of his throat, disappearing beneath his collar, and still he doesn’t wipe it away, just shifts his grip and takes another bite, deeper this time, lips pulling around the skin, tearing into it as it spills again, messier now.
Shane’s grip tightens beneath his thighs on the edge of the bench, the wood pressing into his palms, his mouth dry, breath turning to shallow pants.
“Still not jealous?” Ilya asks.
Shane’s jaw flexes, just slightly. “You need to pay for that.”
Ilya’s mouth curves behind the shape of the fruit, a bead of juice falling from his chin to the tops of his shoes.
“No,” he says, easy. “I think you do.”
Shane doesn’t answer. He’s still watching him — the glisten at his mouth, the wetness collecting at the base of his throat — and it lands deep and heavy.
It doesn’t feel like jealousy.
It feels like need.
“Get in the car,” he says, and his voice comes out more evenly than he expects it to.
“But I haven’t finished,” Ilya says, and there’s no real resistance in it, just that same quiet amusement, the way he’s watching Shane now like he’s waiting to see what he’ll do.
Another bite, another spill of juice, and Ilya chases it lazily against his lower lip with a swipe of his tongue.
Shane doesn’t look away when he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a few bills, drops them blindly onto the bench, the movement automatic, like his body has already decided the next step for him.
“Now, Ilya.”
The world still isn’t quite steady when he stands — there’s a brief tilt to it that he rides for a few steps — but he pushes through it. The world could split in two and it wouldn’t matter to Shane. Not when he sees the way Ilya tosses what’s left of the peach aside, wiping his hand once on his shorts.
The car holds the heat of the day, thick and unmoving, and for a second Shane just stands there with the door half-open, looking at him — at the mess of him, the wetness of his mouth, his throat, his hands — and it hits all at once, heavier than before, like the feeling has finally caught up to him.
Then he’s moving, reaching across the center console, his hand finding the back of Ilya’s neck and pulling him in. Their mouths fit together and Shane can’t stop himself from running this tongue against one lip, the other, the corner of his mouth, down against his throat, just to taste it, to taste him.
“This is you not jealous?” Ilya murmurs into Shane’s hair as he moves against him.
“Fuck you,” Shane says low, a rake of his teeth following the words where they land beneath Ilya’s jaw.
“Here? In Wallace’s parking lot?”
Shane pulls back just enough for Ilya to catch the tail end of the eye roll, but it’s undercut by everything else — the flush high on his cheeks, the tension in his mouth, the way he’s still half across the console, like he hasn’t quite decided whether to lean back in or not.
“Hotel,” Shane says instead, already turning the engine over.
The air kicks on hard, rushing through the car, stirring up the heat and the lingering scent of it — sweat and sweetness, peach.
It’s only two exits before they find one, set back from the road by about half a mile, pale and crumbling in the Florida heat like everything else around here.
Shane pays for a night while Ilya stays in the car, knowing enough about the South not to push it, and when he comes back they circle around to the rear of the building, the room tucked out of sight. They don’t speak as they get out, don’t touch, look over their shoulders — falling into something old and ingrained — before slipping inside.
The door barely closes behind them before Shane is on him, tongue lapping at his throat, hands fisting into the hem of his shirt.
Ilya exhales sharply, his head tipping back against the door for a second, hands coming up to Shane’s sides like he means to steady him and ends up holding on instead.
“Say it,” he murmurs as Shane’s mouth works against him.
Shane doesn’t stop, like he can ignore it if he keeps moving, mouth sliding higher, teeth dragging against skin.
“Ilya—”
“Tell me what you want.”
“You,” Shane admits against his collarbone, the word pressed there more than spoken, his tongue following it into the dip of his throat.
Ilya’s hand fists in his hair and pulls him just slightly back, not enough to break contact entirely, just enough to interrupt it. His eyes find Shane’s — heavy-lidded, steady — and he holds them there, long enough for Shane to feel it, long enough to make him breathe.
“No,” he says evenly. “Say it.”
There’s a beat — longer this time — where Shane doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just stands there caught in it, and then something in him settles.
He nods once, still not looking away.
A challenge. He’ll meet it.
“Eat me.”
Ilya hums, low and pleased, a curve finding his lips.
“Like what?”
Shane exhales, something that’s equal thirds frustration and embarrassment and need, and then softer, his voice pulled out of him more than given as he says, “Like a peach.”
Ilya moves on it immediately, closing the space between them, the weight of him guiding Shane until the backs of his knees hit the bed and he goes down with it. The bedspread is gone in one motion, stripped clean and tossed aside, before Ilya’s hands are at Shane’s shorts, tugging them down, folding them almost absently into something neat and setting them on the bedside table.
In another moment — in a different version of this — he knows Shane would want to shower first.
He doesn’t care.
He hooks Shane’s legs high over his shoulders, teeth sinking into the ripe curve of his ass as if it’s what his mouth was made for. Then, before Shane can complain or lean into it, he presses his tongue flat against him, dragging it in a long, deliberate line over his hole and up to his balls, pulling one into his mouth, then the other — the weight and salt settling heavy on his tongue.
Shane moans above him — high, breathy, a sound that lands somewhere between new and familiar — and Ilya has to look up at the way Shane’s head tips back against the stark white pillows, the brief loss of control in it, before he moves and does it again, slower this time, like he’s chasing that exact reaction.
He gets it, along with Shane’s hand moving into his hair, pulling him closer.
It’s all the direction he needs, and his buries himself in him — mouth working slower now, more deliberate, the taste of Shane mixing with the sweetness still on his lips, hitting him harder than he expects. It’s enough to pull a low sound from him against Shane’s skin and he doesn’t even try to hide it.
“Fuck, do that again,” Shane spits out.
Ilya doesn’t need to be told twice. He drags his tongue over his hole again, slower still, letting it linger, his throat trading a moan for the taste.
Shane mirrors it, the sound spilling down the length of his body stretched out beneath him, and Ilya grows frantic then. He laps at Shane, pressing his tongue into him until his jaw burns and spit drips from his chin onto the sheets, fingers gripping at his hips and denting into the flesh like he’s been promising all along.
“Put your mouth on me,” Shane gasps above him, his fist tightening in Ilya’s hair. “I’m gonna—”
Ilya barely has time to move before Shane comes, half on his tongue, half against his lips — messy in exactly the way he wants it, and he doesn’t wipe it away. He just stares up at Shane the way he did around the peach — daring, wanting. Dripping.
Shane’s eyes land on him and catch, hold. Then he reaches down, swiping his thumb across Ilya’s mouth — half smearing it there, half gathering. Ilya takes it in without hesitation, a brief lick of his lips before they close around Shane’s thumb, slow and deliberate as he sucks it clean.
“Juicy,” Ilya says around a swallow, Shane’s thumb still resting at his bottom lip.
A laugh cracks out of Shane, and all he can say is a breathless, “Fuck off.”
Ilya smiles and presses his mouth to the pad of Shane’s thumb, then the heel of his hand, but doesn’t move right away, just settles against him instead, one arm loose across Shane’s waist. For a minute, neither of them says anything, then Shane’s stomach growls against the quiet, the sound vibrating under Ilya’s jaw.
Ilya huffs something like a laugh and presses his mouth once against Shane’s ribs, then lower.
“We should go,” Shane says finally, though he doesn’t move. “Find something to eat, get back on the road.”
“Mhm,” Ilya hums against his navel, a hand reaching for Shane’s shorts.
The air outside is thicker still when they step out, the late-day heat clinging quickly to their skin, the car almost burning when they climb in. Shane turns the engine over, lets the air kick on, and they don’t speak as they pull back onto the road, the quiet between them easy now.
A few miles on, the state line slips past almost unnoticed, Georgia announced in blue and white on a roadside sign, and not long after that another leans into view, sun-faded and a little crooked at the shoulder.
FRESH PEACHES. ¼ MILE ON RIGHT.
Ilya leans forward slightly as they pass it, reading it out.
“Shane,” he says gravely. Then, “We should stop.”
Shane exhales, eyes still on the road, though they fall shut for a second at the absurdity of his husband.
“Next year.”
Ilya doesn’t answer right away, his tongue swiping once along his lower lip as he grins out the window, the exit coming into view and slipping past.
“Okay.” His hand finds Shane’s knee, thumb pressing into his thigh, testing the pressure. “I’m full anyway.”