Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

1981

Sometimes, people are more complicated than they seem.

Lockheed Martin engineer Fredrick Livingston, however, is a simple man with even simpler needs. 

"Fuck," he moans. "You're fucking incredible." 

Ilya finds himself on his knees in a near-abandoned motel complex 20 miles away from Arlington, Virginia. Every time Livingston thrusts up into his mouth, Ilya takes him in deeper, pulling worshipful whimpers from up above him. 

Livingston grabs his hair and holds Ilya in place. He wants Ilya still, so Ilya, looking up at Livingston from the fan of his eyelashes, does what he's asked and falls still. His obedience brings Livingston to the edge, and the engineer gasps once, twice—Ilya's done this enough times to know when someone's about to come. 

Men like Livingston are predictable. They only like to sleep with boys like Ilya in motels like these. Seedy. Unseen. Quiet. 

No one around. 

He tightens his grip in Ilya's hair. He doesn't notice his motel door open. He doesn't notice the person that walks through it. 

The door closes. There's a click. 

Ilya pulls off. Livingston groans as if he's been shot.

A beat. Then he almost kicks Ilya in the face when he screams.

Shane Hollander stands at the foot of his bed, looking thoroughly unimpressed. 

"Fredrick Livingston. It's nice to meet you."

"It—What—" Livingston is rock hard, but his face is burning with humiliation. "Who are—I don't—What even—It's not what it looks like!"

Shane spares Ilya only a single glance. Ilya is still kneeling on the carpet, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity even as a string of spit hangs from his lips. "I think this is exactly what it looks like Mr. Livingston." 

Livingston's eyes start to brim with tears. He wouldn't be the first grown man Shane Hollander has made cry. "Fuck, shit—I'm sorry—I'm sorry—"

Shane steps closer, and Mr. Livingston flinches back. The man's voice turns small. "Are you going to hurt me?" 

Shane smiles. "We would never hurt you, Mr. Livingston," he pauses. "As long as you do exactly as I ask, and give me exactly what I want."

"Fuck," Mr. Livingston groans. "Holy fuck I've been so fucking stupid." 

"Let's start with your work," Shane calmly pulls out a notepad from his back pocket. He hands it to Mr. Livingston, along with a pen. Mr Livingston stays limp, so both items flop onto the motel bed. "You are an engineer at Lockheed Martin. You've been promoted four times in just three years. You were made senior researcher on the Department of Defense's Stealth contract about a year ago now, correct?" 

"No—No—I'm not—I don't—I don't know what you're talking about—"

"I think you are lying to me Mr. Livingston," Shane says, cold. "And I hate liars." His tone does not change from its calm drawl. "Do you want me to hate you, Mr. Livingston?"

"Who are you?!" Livingston yells now, angry. "Who the fuck are you?! North Korea?! The Vietnamese?! China?! They sending fucking kids now?!" 

Shane sighs. "If you don't give me what I want, Mr. Livingston, we will send the tape we have of you, getting your dick sucked by a boy, to your wife. Your son, he's about to start college soon right?" Livingston starts to get hysterical now. Shane levels him into silence with a sharp look. "Your coworkers. Your bosses over at Lockheed." 

"Please just kill me," Mr. Livingston begs. "Please just kill me fuck I can't fucking live like this—" 

Ilya steps in. He climbs back onto the bed. He crawls up to Mr. Livingston. Even given the extent to which Ilya betrayed him, Livingston still turns to face Ilya, watching him with dark, insatiable eyes as he approaches him. Ilya smiles, using his right hand to cradle the man's ankle. At Ilya's touch, Mr. Livingston begins to calm down. 

"Freddie," Ilya runs his right hand up Livingston's calves, resting it on his knee. "I'm right here. I'll take care of you, okay?" 

The panic starts to fade a little, from Livingston's eyes. Ilya smiles, satisfied, as he begins to stroke small, comforting circles against the divot of Livingston's thigh. 

"Maybe if you do what my friend says," Ilya says, "he'll let you see me again. Would you like that?"

Shane's staring at him. No, he's staring at Livingston. Ilya shakes his head, forces himself to focus. 

Livingston's sobs slow. He nods. "Good," Ilya hums. "So we should do what he says, okay? Can you do that for me?" Ilya looks up at him from the flutter of his eyelashes. "It would make me very happy." 

Livingston, against all odds, nods his head again. "So good," Ilya presses his face along the curve of Livingston's thigh. He fits a gentle kiss there, then another one. Shane's face remains impassive. "Pick up the pen, okay? For me?" 

Livingston picks up the notepad. He reaches for the pen Shane threw on the bed. 

"Start with entry codes," Shane orders. "Every protocol, every person you come in contact with before you are allowed into the building. Then, you are going to start writing down passwords, anything we need to access files, your clearance," Shane looks at him scribbling furiously with approval. "You're currently working on the AR-17, correct? That's RADAR technology?"

Livingston sniffs. With Ilya comforting him, he finds it in himself to look up at Shane, nods again. So Shane continues. "You are going to switch out the codes to your office safe, your briefcase, to a number system we will give you, do you understand? This number will change every six weeks."

"If this gets out," Livingston murmurs, hollow. "I'm finished. If this comes back to me, I'm a dead man." 

"We are very good at our jobs Mr. Livingston," Shane says, blunt. "No one will notice anything, unless you fail to do exactly what we ask you to." He plucks the notebook from Livingston's shaky hands. He takes a careful look at everything he wrote. By the pleased tilt of his lips, Shane seems satisfied by what he has given them. "Good. I'll be back in two weeks—" 

Livingston starts to freak out again. "No!" he begs, "No please—" 

"I'll be back in two weeks, and I will need you to give us any updates you think we should be interested in." 

"No!" Livingston yells. His voice echoes but nobody but Shane and Ilya are there to hear him. "No I don't want to see you again—" 

"Do you want to see him again?" Shane asks, calmly. 

Ilya tilts his head, makes his eyes loving and deferential. "I'll be there every time, okay Freddie?" Ilya murmurs. "If you're scared just look at me, okay?" 

When Livingston doesn't move, doesn't make a sound, Ilya pulls himself up. He reaches out to cradle Livingston's cheek, his touch once again bringing Livingston back to life. Livingston looks up at him, his eyes melting. "Okay?"

Livingston nods, enthralled. His eyes are blown. "Okay. Okay. I'll do whatever. I'll do whatever you say." 

Ilya can't help but hazard a glance over at Shane, for real now. When the two of them make eye contact, he sees Shane, drinking him in, his eyes as dark as Livingston's, as a slow, victorious smile stretches across his face. 

"Good," Shane says. His voice is thick with glee. "Now go clean up." 

****

In the safety of their Oldsmobile, Ilya rips a red-headed wig off his scalp in one careless, yanking motion, shaking his blonde curls out from its cap. He can still taste Livingston—gross—so he rustles for a McDonald's napkin, finds one underneath his chair. He spits into it, licks his tongue across his teeth for one final sweep. 

"That," Ilya says, adjusting the mirror, "was too fucking easy." 

Shane stays silent. Instead of talking, he keeps clutching the notebook, staring, unblinking, at the right of Ilya's face. 

"What?" Ilya tries not to snap—Shane sometimes makes him feel like his skin is being peeled back. "Why are you upset? We got everything we needed, yes?" His accent slips a little, the way it does only when they are alone. "I suck dick so good I get American weapons engineer to rat on his own government." 

Instead of responding, Shane flips open the car drawer. He pulls out a pack of wipes that Ilya had no idea existed. He grabs one, two, and then, to Ilya's surprise, he leans back in to wipe the side of Ilya's mouth. 

Ilya stays very still as Shane cleans him up. 

"You have something here," Shane says. He reaches over to wipe the other side of Ilya's face for good measure. When he still isn't satisfied, he tries to scrub the rest of what he sees with his thumb.

Ilya jerks back. 

He starts the car, pretends not to notice Shane staring at him again. "Dickhead cop RA better not be awake when we get back," Ilya huffs, and with a swerve he pulls out of the abandoned car lot, tearing down Interstate 495. 

Shane starts flipping through Livingston's notes, the odd street lamp casting sharp shadows and amber angles across his serious features. The drive stays quiet, the only sound the rhythmic drumming of Ilya's fingers against the wheel. 

Finally, as if he had been working up the courage, Shane turns to him, decisively. 

"You don't have to be the one who has to do it every time," Shane says, words spilling out of him. "I'm not a child. It's just sex. It's no different than any of the other things we have to do for this job." 

Ilya almost sends them spinning off the highway when he's assaulted with the image of Shane, on his knees, staring up at Livingston. The sudden swerve is what it takes for him to get his bearings back in order. 

"Hey!" Shane frowns. "Watch it—" 

"You suck shit at seducing targets," Ilya grits his teeth. "Remember Prichard's daughter?" 

Shane throws his hands up. "Oh come on! That was a long time ago." 

"Two weeks ago," Ilya fires back. "If fate of communism rests on you getting someone into bed we would all be dead." 

Shane looks irritated. "It's a gap in our operation. We should be able to do everything the other person does. It's a liability if only one person is good at something and the other isn't." 

"No," Ilya grips the steering wheel. He would really prefer Shane to drop this conversation. He attempts a joke. "Is called division of labor." 

"Oh yay, Henry Ford," Shane snipes. "Please continue quoting the scruples of American capitalism, it makes me really want to agree with you." 

"Come on Hollander," Ilya says, trying to appeal to reason. "There is… boring things you are good at I am not. Makes sense to play to strengths. Even Centre will agree with me." 

Shane glares at him, probing and upset. Ilya lets him stew. 

"I've been working intelligence a lot longer than you," Shane finally says, soft. "Just remember that." He repeats himself. "I'm not a child. You don't need to protect me." 

Ilya wonders what Livingston would do to a mouth like Shane's. Hot, angry and nauseous, Ilya's imagination runs wild. The thought of Livingston grabbing Shane's hair, forcing him still. Of his fingers, spreading Shane's lips wider, opening him up so he can come down Shane's throat—would it egg him on, to see Shane beneath him? Would Shane be able to take any of it without crying? 

Shane doesn't know it, but there's a lot Ilya needs to protect Shane from. 

He changes the subject. "I have to visit Senator Everett's wife tomorrow," Ilya says. "So I won't be back until Thursday morning." 

If this upsets Shane, he doesn't show it. Shane nods. "I'm going to drive down to Charlottesville tomorrow to talk to Professor Alvins anyway." 

"Great," Ilya says, distant. "The good work continues." 

A moment of silence lapses in the car. Shane chews on his lip, still sneaking tentative side-long glances at Ilya, shy in a way that makes Ilya feel out of touch with reality. It makes him want to grab Shane's shoulders and just shake, very hard. Stop acting. I saw how happy you were to ruin that man's life. You aren't scared of anything. You don't care about anything. Stop looking at me like that. 

But Ilya has to keep his hands on the wheel to drive, so he doesn't. He just keeps staring ahead at the road, pretending not to notice anything. 

Whatever Shane was thinking about must've resolved itself, because Shane sighs and flops deeper into the car seat. "You know what sucks?" Shane says, breaking the silence. 

"What?" 

"I haven't even started studying for my biochem midterm yet." 

This, out of everything, finally makes Ilya laugh. "If you are as good at intelligence as you say," he smirks. "You would know every American science professor is sadist."  

Shane sniffs, offended. "STEM is useful to the cause," he smirks. "What even is 'business studies'? What are you even going to do with that? Sell the Americans a used car?" 

Ilya shakes his head, tutting. "Hollander, Hollander," he sighs. He takes his right hand off the wheel, taps his temple, shooting Shane a wink. "Anyone who spends any time in this country knows that America is business studies." He adjusts his hands on the steering wheel. He smiles. "Also, is easy A." 

**** 

When Ilya first joined Directorate H, he had expected to work with a woman. 

It was what the KGB did. Paired men with women, gave them American names, embedded them in apple-pie suburbs to give them American cover. When Ilya met up with the party general in a municipal office off of the embankment, Ilya had expected a photo of a cold and plain woman, paired with fake American passports and an even faker marriage license. He braced himself for the possibility of staring at this photo, this stranger, as he waited to receive instructions to only speak English, to have kids as soon as possible when they arrived in America.

What he didn't prepare for was the party general instead sliding a glossy headshot of a boy, about Ilya's age, arresting and serious, of Asian descent. 

Ilya stared at this photo, stupid and wordless, and wondered if perhaps he was being pranked. 

"This is supposed to be my wife?" Ilya asked, genuinely confused. 

The party general probably thought he was fucking with him, because he kept glaring at Ilya, stoic and serious. Ilya realized then that he actually did recognize the general—one of Dad's old friends. He'd probably even been over to their house a couple times, when Ilya was a child. He probably was at Mom's funeral. 

The tense silence stretched, long and awkward until the party general suddenly burst into laughter. 

He reached over and clapped Ilya hard on the back. "Oh," he smiled, uncomfortably paternal. "Very funny, Ilyukha." 

This comment pissed Ilya off. Combined with the fact that the party general hadn't taken his fucking hand off his fucking shoulder, Ilya let himself imagine grabbing the general's pen and stabbing it straight through his eye. His right hand twitched at the promise of violence, but before he could act, his dad's friend released his shoulder and retreated back to his desk. 

Ilya's face returned to normal when the party general looked back up at him.

"You are Grigori's son," he said, face returning to its grim pallor. "You are educated. Your English is good. You are young. These are not traits we can afford to waste." 

He pushed a packet over to Ilya. When Ilya dragged the documents up to his face to get a better look, he realized what he was holding was enrollment papers.

University enrollment papers. 

Ilya must've looked surprised, because the general's face tightened with purpose. 

"American dominance begins in their universities," he said, every word deepening his frown, his disgust. "Their government pours money into institutions under the guise of education and philanthropy, so they can better teach their children to build weapons that will massacre our children." 

He then slammed his fist against the desk, angry and overcome. The noise cracking against the wood didn't even make Ilya flinch. "They target our allies in our home and our union," he snarled, beside himself. "Get them to abandon a better world by peddling their halls of fools gold, their capitalist brainwashing." 

Finishing his tirade, he seemed to calm down, all in an instant. He smiled at Ilya then, rueful. "Your upbringing and your youth will make you a good fit for this operation. The university is where our enemy develops its brightest minds. You and your partner," and as he tapped Shane's picture, his grin twisted into something vicious, "will be sent there to turn their brightest minds against them." 

Ilya took this in. He did alright in school, so he supposed he would probably do alright at this too. He still had a question, however. 

"I'm confused," Ilya sniffed. "Is this man my wife or not?" 

The party general stared at him for another tense, dangerous moment. It did not feel dissimilar to the ways his father—before he fell sick—would punish Ilya for taking a joke too far. The air would crack with the indignation of Ilya's insubordination, seconds before his dad struck. Ilya had to physically stop himself from salivating at the idea that maybe his Dad's friend would lunge, try to hurt Ilya, maybe even bash his brains in. 

Give Ilya an excuse to really go for it, to defend himself. 

However, once again, the party general's face cracked into even more gleeful, uproarious laughter—clapping like angry thunder in Ilya's ear. Ilya dug his nails into the bed of his own thigh, feeling the skin threaten to break. 

"Shane Hollander," the party secretary explained. "One of our North American recruits. An invaluable asset to our cause out west." He pushed Shane's papers aside to reveal records, files on his family. Ilya saw citizenship papers, and for some reason the sight filled him with a familiar, panging sadness. 

A Canadian citizen. 

"Agent Hollander joined us when he was 10—" Even earlier than me. Ilya thought. "His family has done commendable work, and have been generous partners to us for the last twenty years." 

The party secretary then pushed over more papers, this time fake. The same picture of Shane Hollander, with now different information. New name, new place of birth, new family history.

An entirely different identity. 

"We've set it up so you two will be roommates at a prestigious university in the nation's capital," the party general said. "Of course, I will send our program's best handlers to monitor your situation, ensure you two will have the intel you need to succeed." 

He ducked his head, making sure to meet Ilya's eye. "But you need to understand—for four years, he will be all you can count on in that degenerate country," the general then stood up, and laid the flat of his palms against the wooden office table. "He will be your survival." 

Shane Hollander was a Canadian citizen. Had he ever even been to the Soviet Union? What was wrong with him that he would do this—risk his life, his home, for a cause he couldn't even understand? 

Ilya took all this information in. There was only one correct response.

Ilya smirked. "Sounds like a wife to me." 

The general laughed again. When he returned to himself, he had another grossly over-familiar look on his face that made Ilya's spine crawl. 

"Grigori always loved your sense of humor."  

This finally made Ilya snap. 

Ilya bared his teeth in a horrible smile. "Now that he's fucking senile everyone's fucking funny to him—" 

In one sudden motion, the party general cracked his palm, hard, across Ilya's face. 

Ilya just barely caught himself before he fell onto the floor, his right ear ringing with pain. As if piloting his own body, Ilya pressed his fingertips to his cheekbone, tingling with a sharp sensitivity. The sensation made him laugh—quietly to himself at first, then louder, much louder. Without another word he pulled himself up. 

He cracked his neck. 

He lunged over the table and grabbed the general violently by the scruff of his uniform.

He slammed his head against the wood—once, almost twice, until the general got a grip against the desk drawers and just barely pushed himself upright. 

Two men then barged through the door and yanked Ilya off him, shoving him back down into the office chair and forcing his arms behind him. As Ilya struggled to free himself, his dad's friend fixed his uniform, trying to catch his breath as he glared at Ilya with disdain. 

The party general leaned in. 

"The people we have in this program," he said, his voice dripping venom. "They are nobodies. They are poor, starving children on the outer oblasts willing to give us everything, because they have nothing," he smiled, but this time it did not reach his eyes. "So tell me why I have Grigori Rozanov's son sitting in front of me, signing away his name, giving us his life—" 

"Fuck you!" Ilya spat.

The general just laughed. "All of us in the party, we couldn't believe it. We commended Grigori for his sacrifice, admired him for his dedication," he sighed, awed. "How much he must love his country, to give up his son for it." 

"I'm going to fucking kill you—" Ilya screamed, until one of the men next to him locked him in a chokehold, forcing him quiet. 

"I know now," the party secretary said, over the chaos. "Everything we heard was true. You are crazy." His bloody face dripped onto the white starch of his uniform. "Just like your mother." 

Ilya roared. He thrashed and fought, hateful and angry. The force of his punches, the adrenaline gave him temporary strength to just barely shove his mouth free—

"You don't know shit about my mother!" he shouted, trying to lunge forward, unable to lose the men's grip on him. They began to drag Ilya away, to where Ilya didn't know. "You don't know shit about my family!"

As he got hauled away, the folder, with all of Shane Hollander's information, laid on that table for one last second before the steel door slammed in his face. 

****

"This is so fucking stupid," Shane groans. 

A Sigma Chi party deteriorates around them, bodies writhing drugged and haphazard against choppy bass lines and syrupy synth-pop hits. 

Ilya stops dancing to lean his head down. "What?!" he shouts, just to mess with Shane. "I can't hear you!"

Shane glares at him, unimpressed. Flashing strobe lights first illuminate his cheekbones, then his neck, then his lips in stuttering, alternating colors. Shane leans in closer, sneaking a paranoid, wary eye around their perimeter. "I don't think this is what The Centre had in mind in terms of finding an 'in' at the Department of Defense," he hisses. 

People are pushing in and out of the hallway, dancing and laughing and dragging hookups to couches and upstairs bedrooms. One dude bumps into Shane and Shane almost bodies him into the floor, the guy pouring almost half his jungle juice down Shane's front. The frat guy mumbles something that could be an apology, but he scrambles off his feet and dives deeper into the house before Shane and Ilya could say anything.  

Shane whips around, glares at the guy's retreating back in a I've killed people before-type way. He flattens himself against the wall. 

"I hate it here!" Shane shouts. The fast and heavy roll of an Oberheim OB-Xa shakes the foundations of the house through its speakers, and Shane's bad mood prompts him to shoot a glare at the equipment now. "Of course an American fraternity would spend over ten thousand dollars on a sound system and not toilet paper."

Ilya decides then, for the integrity of their mission, there is only one thing he can do. 

In one smooth, confident motion, he starts unbuttoning Shane's shirt. 

"What—" Shane slaps Ilya away. "Stop that!" 

"You look like a cop!" Ilya explains. "You need to loosen up!" 

"You dragged me here under false pretenses! I thought this was a mission!" Shane shoves his watch in Ilya's face. 12:05 a.m. The night is just getting started. "Instead I'm at this gross D.C. frat house on a Thursday night!" He huffs. "I have a lab report due tomorrow!" 

Ilya sighs. Sometimes it's hard being the smarter one of their duo—it's a burden Ilya bears like a martyr. In one casual motion he grabs Shane's chin, savoring Shane's breathless little gasp when he physically turns Shane's head to where he needs him to look. 

He directs Shane's gaze to one Rose Landry. 

"Recognize her?" 

The Landry operation is as follows. Rosanna "Rose" Landry is the daughter of one Nathaniel Landry, the current deputy secretary of defense. According to field notes, she's resentful of her family, evident by her choosing to go home sparingly despite living only a train ride away. Her field of study—theater—also happens to be the subject of frequent and persistent mocking from her brothers and her father. 

A rich, starving artist who takes great pride in being subversive and anti-establishment. Rose's presence, dancing—bright, blonde, and beautiful—in the center of the university's douchiest frat—is an anomaly.

Shane's eyes, previously clouded by a dreamy, milky haze at Ilya's touch, suddenly sharpens into grim focus. He shifts his head, nudging Ilya's hand away from his chin, so he can whip around and face him. 

"We can get into Landry's office another way," Shane insists. He still looks upset. 

"Sure, we can," Ilya says, breezily. "But this is easiest way, no?" He smirks in Rose's direction, appreciating the dip of her hips, the waistline of skin. "Way more fun too." 

"She doesn't even go home that often," Shane hisses. "She hates her family, remember? How is seducing her supposed to help us bug her dad's office?" 

Ilya scoffs. "Oh yes, she does not go home often. Only Christmas, and President's Day. And Easter. And then again at Republican spring convention. Where she will be around her annoying family who will not shut up about her useless degree and lack of a serious husband." 

Shane laughs incredulously. "So… what? You're going to be her boyfriend? Get her to take you home to her family? No one is going to believe you as one of those apple-pie, young Republican types." 

Ilya shrugs. "You are right," Ilya says. "They will not believe me." 

He looks at Shane, meaningfully. 

Shane opens his mouth, closes it. "You can't be serious." 

Ilya smiles, showing almost all his teeth when he does. "Girls like her, they need a nice boyfriend their family will like." He looks at Shane now, dragging his eyes up and down his rumpled, linen button down, his sensible slacks. "Is kind of like cover, you understand? They get their nice boyfriend, who will make their family laugh, who will impress parents enough with his grades, his career—" Ilya leans in now, to whisper in Shane's ear, "Nice boy to distract the family, so she can do whatever she wants behind their back." 

Shane tries to turn to face Ilya, but the movement brings him close, so close their lips almost ghost against each other. "Rozanov," he whispers, so quiet no one can hear. Ilya's last name, his real last name, feels like a lance through his heart. "There has to be another way." 

Ilya pulls away, draws himself to full height. 

"Sure," Ilya nods. "Cleaning lady's son goes to community college across town. We can poison him, threaten her with his death unless she plants bug for us. Refuse to give her son antidote for months, keep her son sick, weak, so she has to change out recordings again and again for us."  

Shane narrows his eyes, flinty and mean. "Yeah," Shane snaps. "What's wrong with that?" 

Ilya finds himself getting annoyed. "It is messy as fuck," Ilya says, flatly. "But you seducing Rose Landry will give us regular access to the Secretary of Defense for the next four years." 

Shane falls quiet, just glaring wordlessly at Ilya, which means that he knows that he has a point. "You said you were ready," Ilya continues, gentle but firm, "to handle these kinds of operations." 

Shane chews on his lip, frustrated. "I can't…" Shane trails off. "I can't… pretend to love someone for four years," Shane looks at Ilya, resigned. 

On the other hand, Ilya can't even keep track anymore, how many people he's gotten to fall in love with him in this country. All the different people he has been: fuckable, lovable, unavailable. Every single one of them, desired, until the very end. 

"Make yourself believe it."

Shane looks at him, unimpressed. "Thanks." 

"I am not kidding," Ilya says. "Find a way to make it real. Be someone who can fall in love with her." 

Shane's expression does something complicated then. His widened gaze, his furrowed brow. He seems to realize in real-time that Ilya is being entirely sincere. Instead of answering, Shane groans and buries his face into his hands, hiding the way Ilya notices he does sometimes, when he gets overwhelmed. 

So Ilya lets him hide. Bodies flash in a series of strobing lights, everyone a blur of nonstop motion. Only Shane and Ilya stand, entirely still, Shane with his hands covering his eyes, a bit of his ears, and Ilya just waiting for him. 

Slowly, Shane raises his head. Resigned yet determined. 

"What do you need me to do?" Shane says. 

****

They fall into position thirty minutes later. Ilya has his arm laid up on the wall as he chats up a girl he thinks he remembers from his writing seminar. Talking to her puts him at the perfect angle to watch— 

Shane, who walks up to Rose. He has his hands shoved into his pockets, disarming and sweet, exactly as Ilya instructed him. Ilya can't help but smile victoriously to himself when he sees that Rose's apprehension is already starting to fade. 

Shane motions to the seat on the couch next to her. She scoots over, making room for him to sit. The two start talking, and it's not long before he hears her laugh, loud enough to be heard over the music. 

When Ilya looks over, he sees Shane grinning, lopsided and disarming. 

As Ilya expects, his stomach clenches into a hard unpleasant knot. He grits his teeth, tries to focus instead on the girl in front of him. It's better this way. he reminds himself. She's harmless. So he doesn't let his sudden nausea distract him from laughing at his conversation partner's joke, to then trailing a flirtatious hand down her hair, along her cheek. He winds the girl in, keeping Shane and Rose in his periphery. 

Shane has his arm thrown over her shoulders. Rose is looking up at him, and she can't stop laughing. 

To bury his feelings on that matter, Ilya drags the girl up in front of him and kisses her.

She's a good kisser. He winds his hand against the back of her neck, pulls her in deeper. He wraps his other around the small of her waist, pushing her up against him. 

As he kisses her, he wonders what he would do if Shane were a mark. 

The Shane Hollander operation. For this fantasy, Ilya is helpfully reminded of the way Shane looked at him when Ilya gripped his chin. Shane seemed to like it when Ilya pushed him around. Maybe that's what Shane needed—for someone to make him take it. Maybe Ilya wouldn't have to work all that hard. Maybe by the time Ilya is finished with him, Shane would be begging for it. 

The girl is now panting against his lips, as Ilya pulls her more insistently against him. He feels himself push her shirt up, his fingers skating underneath the hem of her skirt. The two of them start grinding against each other, foreheads pressed close together, when Ilya looks up.

Just in time to see Rose, with a mischievous grin, pulling Shane up off the couch. 

Pulling him up through the crowd, up the stairs, around the bannisters—

Before the two of them disappear entirely. 

Shane doesn't come home that night. Ilya doesn't wait up for him. 

****

Their first field mission together had been a disaster. 

They had driven nearly 24 hours to a classified U.S. Navy training camp down in rural Texas. The entirety of that journey was spent in complete silence, Hollander staring diligently forward, back never relaxing entirely into the leather car seat. 

They'd only been working together for two months. Supposedly their mission was simple. Their jobs were to weaken the security systems at the Naval training camp, opening key access gates so their handlers, or their bosses, could slip in and kill the actual targets—two field commanders—inside. 

Except Ilya knew the second he got there The Centre gave them bad intel. The ground was thick, swampy. Notes failed to mention key routes that trainees took everyday to patrol the grounds. Ilya, with his flashlight in his mouth, was hands deep in the wires of the camp's electrical system when two boys in military fatigues walked up. 

They were young. Younger than when Ilya joined the KGB. Ilya had tried to save them. He smiled, affable the way Americans always were. He told them that he was a sewage transporter, here for a routine check up, and that he would be out of their hair in a couple minutes. 

The younger one seemed to believe him, even. Ilya swore he was prepared to turn the other way. 

The taller one however, agitated and paranoid, opened his mouth, about to scream. 

So Ilya had to kill them. 

He got the first one right in between the eyes. The second one, the younger one, lunged at him. Ilya had no choice then but to throw him to the ground, mud sloshing against Ilya's uniform as he wrapped his hands around the kid's neck.

Ilya was not some sentimental idiot. These boys made their lot with the American military. Ilya is saving the lives of thousands by killing them both right here.

Yet, when Ilya looked into this kid's eyes, he saw it.

Determination.

The kid slapped Ilya's wrists. When that didn't work he reached out, tried to dig his thumbs into Ilya's eyes. Ilya just shifted away, pressing down on his windpipe harder. 

Even as the kid's face turned purple, he still didn't stop fighting. 

It seemed so unfair then, in that moment. That Ilya had to live, while this boy—who wanted to live more than anything—had to die.

So, as if possessed, Ilya let go. 

The kid swallowed choking, gasping breaths, clutching at his throat. He only needed a second to recover before he tackled Ilya onto the ground, and switched their positions.

His hands wrapped around Ilya's neck. 

In a foreign country, with no name, no family, no home anymore, Ilya felt himself go limp. 

Just give him what he wants. 

Except then the boy suddenly stilled. His eyes, once alight with panic, went dark. He pitched forward. His dead, empty face flopped down to the ground by Ilya's head. 

Ilya, sucking in hard, desperate breaths, trying to get air back into his lungs, looked up. 

Shane Hollander stood over Ilya, face splattered in blood. His gun and silencer, once pointed at the back of the boy's head, remained trained on Ilya. 

"Get up," Hollander snapped. Ilya didn't move. He just stared at him, eyes locked onto the muzzle pointed right at his forehead.

In the dark, the intermittent light throwing Hollander's bloodied face into stuttering focus, Hollander looked inhuman. 

"You want to die?" Hollander snarled. "Then die." 

He shoved the gun closer, so close that Ilya could feel the silencer graze the spot between his eyebrows. 

"But don't," Hollander hissed, "drag me down with you." 

****

Ilya is reading an American magazine with a lot of half-naked women in it when Shane comes charging back into their dorm. 

Ilya doesn't even look up. "Fun night?" Ilya drawls. 

Shane shuffles around the room, mindlessly rearranging the books and pens on his desk. He refuses to meet Ilya's eye. "Yep." 

Ilya snorts. Shane's so bad at lying sometimes. 

"Oh?" Ilya closes his magazine. A brunette pin up looks up at him, doe-eyed, when he puts the cover on his bed. "Tell me more." 

"There's nothing more to tell. We hung out. I'm going to see her again this weekend." 

"Hollander," Ilya purrs. "I am your partner. Is important to communism you tell me everything." 

Shane manages to blush even harder. He quickly unbuttons his shirt, shoves his slacks down, and before Ilya could properly admire his half-naked body Shane pulls himself into the covers, and turns his back to Ilya. 

"Well," Shane says, muffled, to the wall. "That's everything I found mission relevant, so." 

Ilya swings his legs over the side of his mattress so he can sit up. He leans forward, grinning. "The people I fuck will do anything I ask, after just one night," Ilya drawls. "Do you think Rose Landry would do anything you ask her? After just one night?"

Shane grabs a pillow from underneath his head, and throws it as fast as possible in Ilya's direction. Ilya easily catches it out of the air—spy reflexes. 

Ilya considers Shane. "Did something bad happen?" he asks, a bit more serious. "Were you unsafe?" 

Shane stills, and Ilya braces for his answer, wondering what he would have to do if Shane said yes. But Shane turns back around, faces Ilya. "No," Shane says, earnest. "Nothing bad happened. She's honestly really nice. I like her a lot." 

Ilya throws his hands up in celebration. "Great! Amazing." 

Shane chews his lips. The way he presses his head into the mattress makes his hair stick up in a painfully endearing way. 

"How do you do it?" Shane asks, in a soft, embarrassed voice. "Make it real?" 

Ilya raises his eyebrows. "Ah. You could not," he smirks, gestures to his crotch, "perform?" 

Shane's face closes up in an instant. "Forget it," Shane snaps. "Why do I even bother?" 

Shane flips back around to face the wall. Ilya stares at the line of Shane's back, the strong set of his shoulders, curling in on himself. Ilya wished it was harder to reconcile the boy lying across from him now to the killer that once pointed a gun at Ilya's forehead. 

If that were the case, maybe Ilya wouldn't have found himself so defenseless against him. 

He sighs, scrambles his brain, tries to talk in a way Shane would be able to understand. "Well," Ilya says. "How do you make it real in the field?"

Shane doesn't respond. But Ilya knows he's listening, so he continues. 

"It's no different than hurting someone," Ilya says, easily. "You do not bother yourself with thoughts of family, or person, when you kill a target. You just know you have to do it. So you turn yourself into someone who can." 

Shane peeks back up over his covers. He pushes his blankets to the side, swings up to sit and face Ilya. His spine is ramrod straight. "When I am in the field, I think about the cause we are fighting for," Shane says. "The fight for an equal and just world." But then, like a cut puppet, his strings sag, and he buries his face into his hands, letting out a loud, frustrated groan. 

He mutters the next words into the safety of his palms. "But that… doesn't get me hard." 

When Ilya and Alexei were kids they would shoot firecrackers out of Ilya's bedroom window. The cardboard would heat, molten hot, against their hands for just one terrifying second before it shot off into Moscow's skyline. 

The situation now does not feel dissimilar. 

"What gets you hard, then, Hollander?" 

Shane looks up. At such a simple question, his eyes blink wide, caught off-guard. 

Sometimes, as the firework heated up in Ilya's hand, he would hold onto it for just a second longer than usual—feel it sear, hot and painful, against the soft flesh of his palms. 

"Tell me what you did," Ilya feels each word out, slow and syrupy, falling apart on his tongue like sand. "Tell me how you fucked her." 

Shane jerks his gaze back down, mumbles something that Ilya doesn't catch. There's something burning in Ilya that makes him feel it in his teeth. 

"You act tough," Ilya says, lowly. "But you can not even say it out loud."

Shane's still not looking at Ilya, and while he waits Ilya feels like his blood is boiling in his body.

Finally: 

 "You," Shane chokes out. 

Ilya's mouth tastes like metal. His heartbeat practically thunders in his ears. "What?" Ilya repeats. 

"I thought about you," Shane says, in a small voice. He doesn't elaborate, and the desire to pull every little detail out of him makes Ilya feel like he's now burning out of his skin. 

"What about me, Hollander?" 

Shane doesn't respond. 

Ilya grits his teeth. "Tell me." 

The admission stays hidden, cloaked. "How you'd touch her," Shane says, barely audible. "How you'd kiss her—" Ilya sucks in a harsh, uneven breath—"How you'd make her feel good." 

Ilya has fucked up a lot in his life to end up in this position—nameless and stateless in the enemy's capital. The least he could do, with his newfound second life, is not fuck his coworker, his coworker who is essential to making sure he doesn't get tried for treason in an American prison. 

Ilya didn't know how he let this happen. He was careful, goddamnit. 

But Ilya was only human, because Shane was too, in the end. Socially awkward. Serious. Easy to provoke. Freckles. Brown eyes. Perfect lips. 

In just six months, Ilya found himself sexually obsessed with Shane Hollander. 

And people like Ilya, they only get a once in a lifetime shot to sleep with someone like Shane Hollander.  

He feels that familiar burn now, overwhelming and all-encompassing, when he opens his mouth next.

"Do you need me to teach you?" 

The question lands like a bomb in the middle of their dorm room. 

"Yes." 

Ilya feels like he's seconds from crashing a forty thousand dollar car. 

He smiles, breathless. "Say please." 

"Please," Shane chokes out. His hands are clutched tightly to the mattress by his sides. His voice cracks, and this only makes him more embarrassed, ducking his head.

Ilya, as if compelled, rises to his feet. In two short steps he crosses the small distance between their dorm beds, lording over Shane as he stops, just between Shane's knees. Shane's still avoiding eye contact, so shy and hesitant, so he tips Shane's face up, gentle but firm, up so he has no choice but to look at Ilya, towering over him. 

"It's like an interrogation," Ilya murmurs. With his pointer finger still tipping Shane's face back, Ilya uses his thumb to gently brush over Shane's lips, eyes following the way they part, unquestioning. "People—they tell you what they want in the way they stand… the way they walk…" Ilya just barely teases the tip of his thumb into Shane's mouth, just barely skating to the edge of plausible deniability. "The way they look at you," Ilya smiles. "You know exactly how they want to be fucked without even saying a word." 

Still standing over him, Ilya can see the way Shane's eyes soften, looking at Ilya like he's the only thing tying him to Earth. Despite this, Shane still tries to act nonchalant. "Asshole," Shane stammers. "You're bragging. There's no way you can know all that—"

Suddenly, Ilya shifts his grip. Shane makes a noise when Ilya breaks the barrier and pushes his thumb into Shane's mouth. This moves his entire hand so it grips the soft flesh of Shane's chin, his cheeks, in one, firm grasp. Shane widens his eyes, watching Ilya now with a nonzero amount of panic, which only turns Ilya on even more. "For example," Ilya smirks. "I can tell you just need someone to hold you down. To tell you exactly what you want, and take it from you." 

"Uh," Shane wraps his tongue around Ilya's thumb. "I—" 

Ilya's smirk grows mean. "Rose did not do that, did she? She didn't know what to do with you." He tilts Shane's chin up higher, forcing his neck back so he can treat himself to hearing Shane gasp. 

"Rozanov—" Shane stammers. "I don't—I—" 

With nothing but a hand on his chest, Ilya flattens Shane, back-first, against the mattress. He crawls on top of him, enjoying the sight of Shane, with his arms laid supplicant, palm-side up by his head. He watches Shane's chest rise, then fall, completely at Ilya's mercy. 

If Ilya wanted to act on any of the hundreds of horrible things he's been wanting to do to Shane for the past six months, he could just do it. 

What the fuck am I doing? 

Ilya must've pulled back, because—

"Please," Shane says, a touch incoherent, "Please—Please don't go." 

He feels Shane push his hands up the back of Ilya's shirt, rubbing his thumbs against the divots of Ilya's waist. Ilya tries to shake away the red haze in his brain, daring him to pull Shane apart. 

"I—" Shane swallows. "I want this." 

Ilya surges on Shane, roughly shoving him back down onto the bed. Before Shane even gets a chance to recover Ilya descends on him, hands running wildly and uncontrolled up Shane's body, frenzied and feverish. 

"Rozanov," Shane gasps, "Slow down, come on—" 

"Come here," Ilya groans. "You want to learn—how to fuck—"

Ilya can't help himself. Confronted with Shane, shirtless and blushing and breathless underneath him, Ilya has to lean down and have his first touch be raking his teeth across the meat of Shane's pecs and biting, sucking and savoring at the skin. 

"Fuck!" Shane moans, loud and intense, before slapping a panicked hand across his mouth. Movement outside their dorm stirs. 

The two of them, in a fit of panic, immediately shut up. 

They stay frozen on top of each other, trying to listen for any indication in the hallway or through the walls that they could've given themselves away—that maybe someone heard them. 

Only after thirty seconds, Shane and Ilya panting against each other, trying to catch their breath, do they start moving again. 

Ilya props himself up against his elbows, so he can rummage feverishly around Shane's bed. He finds Shane's shirt, gray and well-worn. 

He holds it in his hand. But before he can do what he wants with it, he has something very important to check off first. 

This close, all Ilya has to do is cradle Shane's neck. Shane tips his head back, obedient.

Ilya finally kisses him. 

With his hands all over him, Ilya can feel Shane fall apart on his tongue. Shane moans against Ilya's lips, and at the sound Ilya has to pull Shane more insistently toward him, muffling the wild sounds Shane fails to hold back by kissing him deeper. 

The hot line of Shane's dick starts to press insistently up through his boxers. Ilya pushes himself up, which makes Shane whine in protest when Ilya separates from him. "Holy fuck," Ilya groans, when he sees Shane, completely gone, eyes cloudy and unfocused, half-naked under Ilya with his blushing, freckled skin. 

Ilya's still fully dressed on top of him. 

"Uh…" Shane swallows. "Rozanov?" 

Ilya looks at Shane's t-shirt, wrapped around his hand. 

"Ask for it," Ilya grunts. 

"What?"

"Beg me to touch you," Ilya pants. 

Shane needs to stop staring at Ilya like that, like he's something begging to be broken. Ilya can't be held responsible for the things he does to him if he continues. 

"Please touch me," Shane groans. "Please I need you to touch me—" 

Ilya takes Shane's shirt, and carefully rolls it. Shane's eyes widen in indignation when Ilya then, with two firm fingers, pulls Shane's mouth open and stuffs his shirt in it, gagging him. 

"No sounds," Ilya pants, trying to keep himself under control. "You want to learn? Just listen. Just watch." 

Shane makes a protesting sound, his lips stretched around his gag. This act of defiance only makes Ilya harder. So Ilya pins Shane back down onto the bed, pressing his palms to the bed as he sucks kisses down the line of Shane's exposed throat. 

Shane's head thuds back to the mattress, mouth stuffed shut, eyes half-lidded. 

Ilya ducks back down, starts kissing Shane's chest. As he wraps his lips around Shane's right nipple, tongue hungry and insistent, he snakes his hand down, down the strong planes of Shane's stomach, to land between his thigh, cupping Shane's boner through his boxers. 

Shane moans, so loud he can still be heard behind the gag. His eyes practically roll to the back of his head, as Ilya feels his dick move underneath his hand. The head rush is too intense, so Ilya steadies himself by sucking harder onto Shane's chest, playing him with his tongue when Shane tries to buck up, finding more pressure. 

"You're about to come, aren't you?" Ilya pants, his hot breath against Shane's skin. Shane can only whine in response, keening and desperate. "You need to be able to tell," Ilya says, in between heavy breaths. "You need to know when a target is almost finished, and it's up to you to decide whether or not you are done with them."  

Ilya pushes his hand up and over the waist of Shane's boxers, lifting up so his forehead is pressed to Shane's, so he can feel his muffled,  trembling gasps. 

He leans in, ghosts his lips to the shell of Shane's ear. "I'm not done with you." 

Ilya wraps his hand around him. Shane's eyes shine when Ilya starts stroking, warmed by the heat of him. Ilya switches to sucking on the other side of Shane's chest now, and Shane sounds hysterical, noises racking through him higher and higher as Ilya jerks him off with more intention. 

Shane looks down, his mouth moving against his shirt. It sounds like gibberish, it sounds like he's being destroyed with pleasure. But Ilya finds it in him to drag himself up, pressing a hand against Shane's mouth, looking at him for confirmation that he will be quiet as Ilya pulls the gag out. Shane brings his hands up and drags Ilya toward him, bringing them face to face. 

"Rozanov," Shane pleads. "I want—I want to come—" 

"What did I tell you?" Ilya groans. Fuck he's so hard right now. "If you want something, you need to beg for it." 

"Please make me come," Shane pleads. "I need you to make me come please I want you—"  

Ilya doesn't even let him finish his sentence. Shane suddenly grips the sides of Ilya's head, his hands burying into his curls, and pulls so hard that Ilya sees stars. With his thighs constricting tightly around Ilya's waist, Shane comes all over Ilya's hand, and all over his front. "Holy fuck," Ilya groans. "You are so fucking wet—" his dick is actually pulsing—"fuck I'm—" 

The second Shane finishes Ilya unceremoniously tugs his pants down, frees his dick. The twin is too small so Ilya gets on his knees on the floor, and with his head buried in his arm, laid up on the mattress above him, he starts jerking himself off furiously. He hears Shane struggle to catch his breath above him, helpless, wanton panting, and this only makes Ilya harder, so hard he feels he's going to shoot off in just a couple more thrusts. 

Ilya feels the mattress dip. He feels Shane wrap his hand around Ilya's wrist, pulling his face free. Ilya looks at Shane, frowning, his own hand still tugging insistently at his dick. 

Before Ilya can say anything otherwise, Shane gets off the bed, and with his strength easily nudges Ilya to the floor. Ilya falls back first, and just as quickly Shane crawls on top of him. Ilya barely bites back a groan when Shane wraps his hand around Ilya's dick, watching with pure fascination as he slowly jerks Ilya up, and down. 

"Hollander—" Ilya reprimands. 

"I watched you do this to so many people," Shane whispers, sex-drunk. 

Ilya's face burns. The embarrassment at his degradation only makes Ilya burn hotter. "Shane—" Ilya slips out, like a fucking idiot. 

But Shane doesn't seem to mind. "I want to make this good for you." He looks away from Ilya's dick, meets Ilya's eyes. "Tell me if I'm doing anything wrong, okay?" 

Shane turns, fumbles around in the dresser behind them. He fishes out a condom. He rolls it over Ilya's dick. 

That's all the warning he gets before he takes Ilya into his mouth. 

Ilya thinks he actually sees white. Barely the tip goes in between Shane's lips, as he starts tentative and careful, always wanting to know how much he can handle before he presses on further. He accidentally takes too much of Ilya at once, and he chokes, the feeling of his throat constricting around Ilya's dick almost making him shoot off. Ilya, his head cloudy and unclear, pulls Shane off, panting heaving breaths—"Go slow," Ilya grits out. Shane nods, and starts methodically working Ilya's pulsing dick back into his mouth. "Fuck, just like that. Fuck. Good—you're so good—" 

Shane whines at this, moaning around Ilya's dick, making Ilya grow harder in his mouth. "Fuck," Ilya gasps. Shane, without Ilya even needing to tell him, uses his hand to make up the rest. His eyes are half-lidded, cheeks red, looking as if he's savoring the taste of him. Shane only gets to suck him off for maybe fifteen seconds, before Ilya has to yank Shane up, by the hair, in a fit of panic, as he hisses, "I'm going to—shit—" 

When Ilya's done, collapsed against the floor, he can only sneak a look over to Shane. Shane stares at him with such open hunger that Ilya can only groan. 

"Fuck," Ilya mutters. Fuck, this was an insane thing to do, even by Ilya's standards.  

Without thinking too much about it, Ilya reaches out and pulls Shane close to him, if anything to at least get him to stop looking at Ilya like that—like he wants to devour him. The two of them collapse on the floor of their dorm room, Ilya shoving Shane around so he's pillowed against Ilya's chest, carding his fingers through Shane's hair. 

Shane buries his face deep into Ilya's armpit. The two of them lay there, panting, Ilya staring listlessly up at the pockmarked dorm room ceiling, Shane buried face-deep into Ilya's armpit.  They stay like that for a while before Shane speaks. 

"I get it now, I think," Shane says. He still sounds loopy and sex-drunk. 

"What?" Ilya can only manage, still trying to find his way back to reality. He holds Shane closer to his chest. 

"How to do it," Shane says. "How to make it real." 

Ilya looks down at Shane. "Yeah?" 

Shane still doesn't meet his eye. He just buries himself into the safety of Ilya, his body loose and carefree underneath the cage of Ilya's arms. "I just need to think of tonight," Shane says, so quiet that Ilya almost didn't hear him. 

Ilya feels his heartbeat rise. "Hollander—" he starts. 

Ilya had a handler once. Last he heard she died on the field, a couple years ago. She said she went to school with his mom, before Irina dropped out. In training, she always told him: it feels better if you make it real, Ilyusha. 

Sex was real, his grief was not. So he had a lot of sex. Girls in school bathrooms, women in their marital beds, men in kitchen hallways, boys in locker room closets. Whoever was offering, Ilya took them up on it. 

Did he make it real, with Shane? 

Shane makes eye contact with Ilya now. He lifts his head up. His hair is a mess. He's blushing all the way down to his chest. He's sweating and covered in their come. 

But Ilya only sees conviction mirrored back at him, when he looks back at him. 

"If I want to make it real," Shane says. "I just have to think of you." 

Shit, Ilya thinks. I'm so fucked.