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Shane always liked attention.
Not the sentimental kind people wrote essays about when they wanted to sound wounded and complicated. He did not need to be seen, not in any spiritual sense. He had been seen plenty. By parents, teachers, classmates, partners, doctors with soft voices and clipboards. People had looked at him his entire life and then explained him back to himself with the satisfaction of having solved something.
Autistic, they had said when he was young.
Not cruelly. Not even incorrectly, depending on what definition they were using that year. It was simply the word that had settled over him because he was too blunt, too still, too uninterested in the correct emotional reactions. He did not protest it. Protest required attachment to an alternative.
So Shane let them have it.
It made people more comfortable when they believed his strangeness had a name.
By college, most of the obvious edges had been sanded down. He knew when to smile. He knew how long to hold eye contact before it became either rude or intimate. He knew which questions made people feel cared for and which silences made them nervous. He had friends, or close enough. He went to parties sometimes. He took people home every once in a while. He was, by most available metrics, normal.
The difference was that none of it reached very far inside him.
That was why he liked going live.
The camera did not care whether his smile came from warmth, boredom, curiosity, or technique. It only cared that he knew where to look and how to entertain The chat filled, names and comments stacking over one another, strangers arriving with their hungers already showing.
Some wanted control. Some wanted humiliation. Some wanted softness, which was always the strangest category to Shane because they asked for it with the same urgency other people asked to be hurt. They wanted him to call them good. They wanted him to tell them they were disgusting. They wanted to confess things into the glowing dark and pretend anonymity made confession less real.
Shane liked that part best.
Not the money, though the money was great. Not the attention exactly, because even that had its pleasures. What he liked was the lack of restraint. The moment when people stopped performing the version of themselves they used in daylight and became sloppy with wanting.
Tonight, he had finished his final exams, and his brain felt scraped clean. No more papers, no more lectures, no more whatever else was expected of a third-year college student.
Even better, he had special plans for tonight's stream and the apartment to himself.
Probably.
Shane paused beside his desk and listened.
The apartment gave him nothing back except the hum of the refrigerator and the faint vibration of the AC kicking back on. No music from Ilya's room. No heavy footsteps. No phone calls conducted at full volume in two languages.
Literally nothing.
Good.
Not because Shane was shy. Shyness was too simple a description and like most simple descriptions, mostly wrong.
He had streamed with Ilya home before, keeping things mostly PG. He generally avoided it when he could. Ilya existed loudly. Everything about him seemed to scream that he wasn't afraid to take up space, and unfortunately for Shane, that tendency blurred the line between his personal life and his online persona.
Anytime Ilya happened to speak to him on stream, in that brash Russian accent of his, the chat lost its collective mind.
Shane couldn't have that.
It was his show.
That was the problem with Ilya. He consumed attention without requesting it. Without earning it, sometimes. When he entered a room, eyes gravitated toward him.
He was loud, careless, and endlessly amused by his own lack of restraint. He left dishes wherever he'd finished using them. He called people out in public for lying badly. He told other students their questions were stupid when they were stupid. He laughed at jokes no one else was brave enough to admit were funny, and refused to laugh at the ones everyone else agreed were safe.
People called him an asshole.
They were right.
They also kept inviting him to places, which Shane found more interesting than Ilya himself.
Because Ilya was not charming in the usual way but he was charming nonetheless.
He did not like Ilya. Not exactly. Liking implied warmth, and Shane felt none. He did not want to date him. He did not imagine holding his hand in public or learning the ins and outs of his heart. Shane suspected Ilya’s heart, if mapped, would mostly contain spite, appetite, and a surprising amount of loyalty to people he deemed deserved it.
But Shane understood the appeal of a person who did not apologize for being badly made.
The chat was already waiting when he opened the stream page.
A few regulars appeared before he even touched the button, their usernames blinking awake in the preview window. Men with wives asleep in the next room. Boys from campuses like his. Lonely people. Bored people. People who said they wanted one thing and paid more when he guessed the thing underneath.
Shane smiled.
This was the part everyone misunderstood. They thought the screen made things less real. They thought distance meant fantasy.
It was the opposite.
People were never more real than behind the guise of anonymity
He hit live.
“Hello everyone,” Shane said.
The chat lurched awake so quickly it was almost funny.
There they were.
Names he knew. Names he had learned by repetition before he had learned anything true about them. Freakbynature, who always pretended he was only stopping in for five minutes and always stayed an hour. thediddler26, who tipped like he had an abundant reserve of money to spend only on Shane. BrianG812, who never said anything filthy until someone else did first, and then became brave by proximity. A dozen others flickered past too fast to catch, all of them arriving with greetings, jokes, demands, little offerings of themselves.
Shane laughed, softer than he meant to.
“Okay, okay. I missed you too.”
That made them worse, naturally.
They liked when he gave them that. Not sincerity exactly, but recognition. The small proof that they were not just numbers stacked beside a viewer count. He remembered usernames. He remembered kinks, who liked being teased, who tipped extra when he did certain things. He remembered little things that were said offhandedly, tossed into the abyss of an ever moving chatbox.
He remembered because people were more interesting when they thought no one was keeping track.
Freakbynature: finals kill you yet?
“Almost,” Shane said. “But I survived out of spite.”
thediddler26: proud of you
“Don’t be sweet this early. It makes everyone nervous.”
The chat filled with laughing comments, little hearts, someone telling thediddler26 to behave, someone else telling Shane that he looked tired in a hot way, which was such a specific and useless compliment that he had to pause and reread it.
“Tired in a hot way,” Shane repeated. “That’s a first. Thank you.”
More laughter. More tips. The familiar sound of approval blooming in small electronic bursts.
This was the part people outside the room would never understand. They would call it dirty, or shameful, because those were the easiest names for any intimacy that did not follow respectability politics.
But it was not. Not to Shane.
It was comfortable in a way ordinary rooms rarely were.
It wasn’t performative or polite for the sake of being polite. Not weighed down by the expectation that everyone should pretend to want less than they did.
Here, everyone was on the same page and that was that nobody arrived here by accident.
They came in wanting, and Shane met them there.
That was the contract.
This was a playground where the possibilities felt endless, stripped of the rules that governed most ordinary rooms. Here, people could be bolder, stranger, needier, more honest.
And Shane liked that.
There was no pretending to be above desire here. No need to dress it up as something more respectable before admitting they wanted it.
For a few hours, the usual rules simply didn't matter.
“Today was a long day,” he said, leaning back against the pillows. “My brain is soup. Very expensive, college tuition shaped soup.”
BrianG812: soup reveal when
“Never. My soup is private.”
Freakbynature: liar. nothing about you is private
Shane looked at that one for a moment.
Then he smiled.
“You’d be surprised.”
That was a natural assumption, the assumption that privacy didn't exist in this realm, where familiarity had long since blurred the lines between what was shown and what was kept. They had seen enough of him to know him from every angle, in every version of himself he chose to give them.
His community might have been a little strange in that regard. His streams ranged from quiet study sessions, where he let conversation drift and interacted intermittently, to days when he let go completely and surrendered the room to whatever mood took hold.
The chat reacted immediately, because they always knew when he had given them a door and left it unlocked. Questions started stacking over one another. What kind of surprise? Good surprise? Bad surprise? Was he in that kind of mood? Was tonight going to be that kind of night? More chill? Perhaps both?
Shane let them wonder.
“Maybe I just wanted to hang out,” he said.
thediddler26: dangerous lie
“Not a lie.”
BrianG812: you rarely just wanna hang out
Touché
The room was set the way he liked it: low light, clean sheets, laptop balanced at the correct angle, the ordinary mess of his life pushed just outside the frame. Textbooks on the floor. A mug full of tea from this morning on his desk. Laundry in a heap by the closet. Evidence of real Shane, carefully excluded from the version of Shane they had paid to see.
He liked the border. The frame kept things sexy. Inside it, he was exactly what he chose to be. Outside it, he was a student with an exam headache, an almost dead phone, and a roommate whose interactions with him were limited to rent, broken things in the apartment, and the occasional, “ I used the chicken you had in the freezer… I will pay you back.”
Thinking of Ilya made Shane glance toward the door.
Closed.
He listened for a second again, but the apartment stayed quiet.
The chat noticed the glance, of course.
BrianG812: who are you looking for
“No one.”
Freakbynature: suspicious
“Everything I do is suspicious. That’s part of my appeal.”
thediddler26: roommate home?
Shane lingered on that question.
There it was again. His communityfinding the seam. His playground merging with reality. He could lie, but lying badly was insulting, and lying well took more energy than he felt like spending.
“Probably not,” he said.
The chat moved faster.
The russian one??!?
is he hot
does he know
ask him to join
tell him we said hi
no dont scare him
Shane laughed before he could stop himself.
“You’re all terrible.”
They were. That was why he liked them.
Terrible in the manageable way, inside a room he could close with one button if he needed to. There was comfort in that. Not safety exactly, because safety was another word people used too generously, but contained chaos.
“He is not joining,” Shane said.
Freakbynature: so he is hot
Literally how did they gather that from ‘he is not joining’
“I didn’t say that.”
BrianG812: you paused
Shane didn’t even care to entertain the direction of this interrogation
thediddler26: you’re avoiding
Shane tilted his head, considering the camera.
They wanted embarrassment. That was the shape of the moment. They wanted him caught wanting something off script.
Or maybe it was projection, the hope that Shane would finally bring a guest into the room.
Either way, Shane was not embarrassed.
He was curious.
Because Ilya was different from them in one important way. Everyone in the chat had come here under cover of a username, using anonymity the way other people used alcohol: to make honesty survivable. They needed the dark before they could admit what they wanted.
Ilya did not need the dark.
Ilya walked through campus with the same shameless disregard Shane saw here every night. He insulted people to their faces. Wanted openly. Disliked openly. Took up space unapologetically.
Most people kept their dirty desires behind locked doors and private tabs. Ilya carried his into daylight.
There was something almost tempting about that.
“Anyway,” Shane said, before the pause became too noticeable. “I’m not here to talk about my roommate.”
Freakbynature: tragic
Thediddler26: censorship
BrianG812: boundaries are sexy
“Correct answer,” Shane said, clapping lazily. “Gold star for Brian.”
A tip came through from BrianG812 almost immediately.
Shane grinned. “See? Positive reinforcement works.”
The chat groaned at him in text. He could feel the rhythm settle around him again, familiar and bright. A little teasing, a little obedience, a little rebellion so nobody had to admit how much they liked being led.
This was what he understood better than most people.
Desire was rarely one thing. It came braided with shame, humor, vanity, loneliness, resentment, boredom, tenderness, cruelty. People wanted to be praised for what disgusted them about themselves. They wanted to be punished for things they would never stop doing.
Shane could do that.
He liked doing that.
“Okay,” he said, letting his voice drop just enough for the room to notice. “Since everyone is apparently incapable of behaving tonight...”
The comments surged.
Shane smiled.
“Shall we begin”
Ilya knew people thought he was an asshole.
This was not, as Americans liked to say, a blind spot of his. Americans loved blind spots. They loved naming a problem in a way that made it sound accidental, like everyone was simply driving through life with bad mirror placement.
Ilya had mirrors.
He knew exactly what he looked like.
Too loud. Too sharp. Too Russian. He laughed at the wrong times. He said no without softening it. He had been told many times that his tone was a problem, usually by people whose actual problem was that they couldn’t do it as well.
So yes. Asshole.
Fine.
There were worse things to be.
The problem was Shane.
Shane was not an asshole. The opposite, actually.
Shane transferred rent money on time every month. Shane did not leave toothpaste streaks in the sink. Shane did not invite people over without warning and then expect Ilya to become decorative. Shane labeled leftovers with dates and never once said no when Ilya occasionally asked for some.
Shane was, by every measure, an ideal roommate.
But he was also very odd.
Shane was quiet in a way that made people forget he was there. He moved through the apartment like a ghost, cleaning up everything he used, barely utilizing the common spaces they shared, and rarely bringing people over.
Except that one with the stupid hair. What was his name? Zayden?
He didn't smile much, and when he did, it seemed chosen rather than unconscious. His face did not give much away unless he wanted it to.
So yes, he was odd.
But Ilya could respect odd.
Shane was a problem because he terrorized Ilya in his own home.
He couldn't even walk into his own kitchen and behave like a normal person when Shane was standing there in sweatpants, hair messy, drinking his tea first thing in the morning like he had no idea he was ruining lives.
Shane was easily one of the hottest students on campus, and the worst part was that he seemed only half aware of it. He had this easygoing attitude that made people gravitate toward him despite seeming not to care for the attention. He had a soft smile that he selectively shared, and a body Ilya tried very hard not to think about considering they shared an apartment and a Wi-Fi bill.
And he was pretty sure Shane used that body to record porn online.
Ilya had figured out pretty quickly what Shane did online. Not because he was snooping at first, but because the apartment walls were thin and Shane was not exactly silent. There were certain sounds a person could explain away once. Maybe twice.
After that, denial became a choice.
And Ilya, unfortunately, was not strong enough for denial.
No one needed that much lighting for ordinary video calls unless they were running a cult or selling scripture to strangers, and Shane lacked the charisma for religion.
The first time Ilya had heard him through the wall in the middle of the night, he had nearly choked on his drink. Not only because he was shocked, but because the Shane he witnessed speaking to classmates like he was rationing oxygen became someone else when he heard him through the walls.
Someone Ilya suspected was closer to his true self.
The soft voice was not fake. The teasing was not fake. Even the sweetness, when he used it, had edges. He sounded amused, patient, cruel in small, controlled doses. He sounded like someone holding a match and letting other people lean toward it.
Ilya didn't know exactly what site Shane operated on, despite trying and failing to find him on the ones he knew. But he suspected Shane had fans and knew he went live sometimes. That's about it.
He told himself it wasn't a big deal.
Shane was grown. Free to do what he wanted. Ilya had always believed people should do whatever made them happy as long as they weren't hurting anyone.
And Shane seemed to be doing well for himself.
Hell, he drove a G-Wagon.
He was doing very well for himself.
Still, Ilya got jealous.
Not in a reasonable way.
Jealous of strangers. Of people who got to see this whole other side of Shane that Ilya only heard pieces of through drywall like a pathetic Victorian spirit.
Ilya pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.
“Idiot,” he told himself in Russian.
This was not sustainable.
A man should not lust after his roommate. It was impractical and inconvenient. If Shane was not interested, then Ilya would have to keep living with the knowledge that he had made his home even more strange. If Shane was interested and they did something stupid, then afterward it would be awkward. Both outcomes were unacceptable.
Also, Shane paid rent on time.
This mattered.
People underestimated what a blessing it was to find a roommate who was so punctual and didn't leave hair in the shower drain.
By the time his class ended, Ilya was already tired, hungry, and trying very hard not to think about Shane. This had become a hobby of his, apparently. Trying not to think about Shane. He was terrible at it, but he remained committed.
He walked back to the apartment expecting it to be empty or quiet or at least normal.
It was not.
The first thing he heard when he opened the front door was Shane’s voice.
Low. Breathless. Different.
Ilya froze with his hand still on the doorknob.
For a second, he just stood there, staring down the hallway. Shane’s door was closed, but there was light underneath it, soft and colored, shifting faintly against the floor.
Then he heard Shane laugh.
Not his normal laugh. Shane’s normal laugh was brief and functional. This laugh was softer. Lower. Almost lazy.
Ilya hated it.
He stood very still in the kitchen.
From Shane’s room came the faint blur of his voice, gentle enough that the words were hard to catch. Then silence. Then another laugh.
There were many things Ilya could tolerate. Bad weather. Bad coffee. American bread.
He could not tolerate Shane making that sound
He should leave.
This was obvious. A decent man would leave as quick as he arrived. A practical man would put in headphones. A mature man would admit to himself that his roommate was an adult with a private life and that private life was none of Ilya’s business.
Ilya was many things, but apparently not any of these men.
He remained in the kitchen, listening.
And because Ilya was apparently determined to ruin his own life, he stepped closer.
The door was shut, but not completely not enough to be latched. All he to do was apply the smallest of force.
In the future, when he was back in his right mind, he would call it a moment of weakness. He would say Shane had driven him to this point, to the point of insanity. To a curiosity so strong it bordered on desperation for another side of Shane, one that had never been made accessible to him.
So he pushed the door.
It opened the slightest bit, just enough for him to see the room washed in color, the laptop open, Shane on the bed looking nothing like the quiet man who drank tea in the morning and Ilya's entire brain stopped working.
Purple lights adorned the space, the haze washing over a bed draped with a white fuzzy blanket. A collection of pillows lay against the headboard, white and black, the three colors surprisingly not clashing at all but instead mixing into boldness and softness. Ilya's breath caught. He hadn't expected it to look like this.
The purple light shone over every part of the bed, and Ilya's eyebrows rose as he saw a vibrator placed on the mattress, a tripod set up at the edge connected to a laptop. He turned his head and saw the stream was already live, the comments flooding the side panel, donations scrolling too fast to read. How the hell was he this popular? And how much money was he making? Probably a lot, none of this was cheap.
White satin briefs hugged the V of Shane's hips, the flesh peeking out, the tightness showcasing his ass prominently. The curve made Ilya lick his lips absentmindedly, the fabric digging into his ass so the color contrasted beautifully with his honey skin. His own arousal strained upward, barely contained by the satin.
"I bought a new toy just for this stream. Something to look forward to after finals week." Shane's voice was even raspier, and he flushed as he brought a hand to his briefs, pulling them down slightly so his cock sprang upward. It was bigger than Ilya had expected, but then, Shane had a nice body. Of course his cock would measure up.
Shane's hand caressed himself, playing with the precum beading at the tip with his pointer finger, seeing how far a string of it could stretch, then bringing his finger to his lips.
He giggled when he touched the tip again.
"I'm so sensitive right now, like everything feels times ten." His other hand was playing with his balls, massaging them slowly. He finally gave himself a few strokes.
"Okay, now for the new toy I got, it's the vibrator that I saw you guys talking about a few weeks ago, the one where you guys can control the pulses with tips." He reached over for the vibrator, bringing it closer.
Immediately the tips came in. Not that Ilya could really see the screen from his perch at the doorway like a creep, but he heard it, like tokens being thrown on hardwood.
"I haven't even turned it on yet, guys," he said with a self-satisfied laugh. Then he leaned over closer to the laptop, pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, and sprang upward excitedly, a grin cutting across his face. He teasingly pulled the rest of the underwear down, his ass now completely bare and Shane flaunted his curves and the prominent dimples on his back, swiveling his hips seductively.
"The chat room is members only now." His voice dropped a few octaves, like the more aroused he got, the harder it was to speak.
His dick looked like a steel rod drooling on his abs, but he ignored it in favor of slicking lube across his fingers and moving his hand down slowly to his hole.
He'd obviously done this many times, and the way he captivated his audience was everything. The way his thick dark eyelashes fluttered, his pink lips parted, his dark hair swinging as he cocked his head, his fingers entering his ass it was all way too fucking hot. He dragged his fingers inward, and Ilya marveled at the sight of his normally so put together, laid back roommate coming completely undone in front of a camera.
"Ughh god." Shane stuttered, thrusting his fingers in and out, eyes rolling back slightly. His knuckles rammed into the base, presumably brushing his prostate, because his voice went up an octave and he let out something between a whine and a moan. He messily buried his fingers in himself once more, the warmth tightening around him.
Ilya found himself getting hard at the sight. Moving his own hand to his pants, hooking a finger under the waistband of his boxers, suppressing a groan as he wrapped a shaky hand around his own cock. His thumb trailed over the tip, already beading with precum, and his mind was exploding as he realized he was fucking palming his dick to his roommate fingering himself.
He waited for the guilt to come. It never did. He was going to hell.
"fuck" Shane cried dragging out the word, throwing his head back, as he dove into the sheets.
Ilya's eyes widened.
It shouldn't have been so surprising, but he'd actually never heard Shane curse before. Shane was usually so polite, so measured, that Ilya had simply assumed he didn't.
Shane, the nice Canadian boy who didn't swear and didn't leave dishes in the sink.
That made sense.
This did not.
Ilya ran his hand over his dick again, clamping his other palm over his mouth in a measly attempt to stop the pleasure fighting his brain, his teeth biting into flesh in an attempt to stop any sound at all.
Shane hastily pulled his fingers out with a lewd squelch that echoed in the quiet room. He slowly swiveled his hips again, turning his body so his ass protruded toward the camera. He smirked devilishly, wiping hair from his face. And he just looked so hot, like he knew what people wanted to see and he would give it to them.
Ilya still couldn't exactly believe this was happening, that Shane was currently about to insert a vibrator into himself. His slippery fingers grasped the toy, and he didn't bother lubing it up, it was already slick from his fingers alone, plus the lube leaking out of his puckered hole would provide enough slip.
"This is the part you guys are waiting for, right?" Shane’s eyes drifted shut, those pretty, thick dark eyelashes of his fluttering as he teased the vibrator at his entrance.
His finger found the switch at the end of the toy, clicking it to the lowest setting. His mouth opened in a silent moan as the vibrator slid into his hole, and his eyes fluttered open slowly, tears beading at his waterline. Damn, he looked so fucking full. Ilya wanted nothing more than to be that vibrator, to be the reason Shane looked and sounded like that.
But he wasn't the vibrator. He was the creep at the doorway, tempting fate every second he consciously chose to stay and watch.
Ilya couldn't stop the thoughts swirling in his head, all the obscene things he wanted to do to his roommate, all the ways he wanted to fucking demolish that smile and that beautiful perfect ass. He wanted to grab him by the hands and pin him against the bed and pull down his own fucking pants and thrust his dick in his mouth. He wanted to fuck his throat until he came. He wanted to flip him over and pin his head down to the white pillow on his bed and finger his ass relentlessly before fucking him so hard he couldn't remember his own name.
He couldn't stop his hand tightening around his cock, his hips moving into his fist, his teeth clenched, eyes watering with the effort it took to remain silent.
Shane pumped the vibrator in and out, moaning particularly loud every time a bundle of tips came in, almost punishingly, like his audience wanted to see him overstimulated to the point of mindless dysfunction. And Shane gave in, pumping the vibrator faster, hand tightening into a fist around his sheets, eyes falling open, jaw slack, staring into nothing, until he wrenched out a sound that made Ilya's knees weak.
He immediately removed the vibrator, wrapping a fist tight around the base of his cock, thighs trembling, drooling against the pillow, whole body shaking as he staved off the orgasm.
"Shit," he gasped, "that was intense."
He fell back against the pillows, chest heaving, tears gathered at his lashes from overstimulation, blinking rapidly as he tried to focus on the chat. He laughed, breathless and wrecked.
"Didn't want to come yet," he murmured as he picked up the vibrator again, still slick, and ran it up and down his cock with no urgency at all. Lazy, like he had all the time in the world.
The hum of the toy was barely audible now, dialed low. His head lolled back into the pillows, throat exposed, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed, a small, satisfied smile playing at his lips. He looked like he was floating.
And of course, when you tempted fate, fate always pushed back.
Something buzzed in his pocket.
His phone.
Ilya's heart dropped immediately. What if his phone hadn't been on silent because of the stupid exam rules? the idea of potentially getting caught is enough to force him back to reality
He checked it.
A message from Svetlana.
Я чертовски завалил финал по химии, так что беру торт, присоединишься? I fucking failed my chem final, so I'm getting a cake. Join me?
Ilya stared at the text.
Then he looked at the scene in front of him and back at his phone.
He had been watching Shane without his consent. Sure, Shane was live, but Ilya hadn't been invited to watch. He had no right to be standing here.
The gravity of it hit him like a train.
He had invaded someone's privacy. Not accidentally, not because he'd stumbled into something he couldn't have known about, but because he'd been curious enough to open the door. Why did he open the fucking door.
What the fuck had he done?
There definitely was a special room in hell reserved for people who violated their roommate's privacy, and he had just earned himself a stay.
Jail first, probably.
Hell after.
He typed
А водку? And vodka?
Desire made people stupid, and Ilya worked very hard to be stupid only on purpose.
He quickly stepped away. He contemplated shutting the door, but he didn't want to risk making any noise, so he left quietly, if not exactly calmly, making it outside of the apartment before checking his phone again.
Svetlana had replied immediately.
Да, мы заедем в винный магазин, который продаёт нормальный алкоголь по пути. Yes. We'll stop at that liquor store that sells the good stuff on the way.
Ilya smiled despite himself.
He was fucked.