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“Oh God, Hollander!”
Ilya makes this choked sound that he only makes when he’s about to come, and Shane feels a sick sort of sweetness at the fact that it’s him, or his body anyway, that’s making his rival so weak. Ilya’s thrusts become stuttered, off-pace, like he’s having trouble keeping himself upright.
Shane, meanwhile, is on his back, the satin sheets crumpled around his body. He feels Ilya move in and out of him almost like an out of body experience. Now that he’s experienced touching himself with Ilya watching, he’s not sure he can ever do it alone: like trying the most expensive, saccharine vodka and trying to settle on Smirnoff for the rest of time.
It just can't be done. He can’t go back.
“Fuck, Rozanov,” Shane huffs. He gets no warning from his own body other than what feels like fireworks, pinpricks all down his torso to his length, before he comes in a burst, spurting up against Ilya’s torso.
Ilya stutters to as much of a stop as he can manage, asking: “You okay?”
Shane nods, spent.
“Yes?” Ilya asks, again. He wants a verbal confirmation, Shane realizes.
“Yeah,” Shane huffs. “Keep going.”
Ilya stares down at him, chest rising and falling like he’s run a marathon, and then his face blurs once more as he starts up his thrusting with new fervor into Shane’s sensitive heat.
Shane lets himself go slack as Ilya chases his own release. He’s so exhausted that he can’t muster up the energy to be embarrassed as his own come coats not just Ilya’s chest but his own stomach. He feels his legs slacken around Ilya’s moving body, so Ilya reaches his hands up and around Shane’s calves to hold him in place.
The hands around his legs are soft and gentle, which must be hard for someone like Ilya right now, all hard edges and calloused hands. He’s too busy chasing his own release, now, which is fine, what Shane did seconds prior, in fact.
Shane bites his lips, which feel awfully dry. He hates that sensation, that dryness. Ilya’s eyes are squeezed shut as he thrusts, biting his lips to keep from moaning and then moaning out anyways. His hands move up from Shane’s calves to his stomach, feeling his way up Shane’s body and smearing Shane’s come as he goes.
It’s just Shane’s face, his lips, that haven’t gotten much attention tonight.
“I’m gonna - Hollander -” It’s all the warning Shane gets before Ilya is spilling inside him into the condom. It’s as if he’s a puppet with his strings cut off, because right after it’s like Ilya can’t hold himself up any longer. He collapses half on top of Shane, half against the mattress, with a satisfied groan.
Shane cranes his neck on the bed to get a better look at Ilya as he lies face-down. He wants more than anything, suddenly, to see that face and those lips, or to feel his hands stroking Shane’s face. Which is odd, because his hands were just stroking nearly everywhere else, yet it still doesn’t seem enough.
Ilya props himself up on his elbows. “You kill me,” he groans.
Shane offers him a lopsided smile. Then, sensations flood back into his body and he shivers without meaning to. “I’m sticky. And thirsty.”
Ilya stands up from the bed soundlessly, walking his carved body over to the now empty chair he sat in when he asked Shane to touch himself. His empty glass of vodka is there too, and he walks out of the room briefly to grab another glass.
The second Ilya walks out of the room, Shane’s chest gets tight. When Ilya re-enters, and doesn’t even look at him, it gets tighter.
“Your reward,” Ilya announces, crawling back into the bed. He hands Shane a tall glass of his expensive vodka and a towel. Shane holds the vodka with one hand and the towel with the other.
He turns to Ilya, expectant, but finds that Ilya is lighting a cigarette. And fine, it’s his own penthouse, he can light a cigarette. What that means is it leaves Shane to clean himself up. He does, halfheartedly, with the towel, before abandoning it on top of his groin as if to hide himself. He takes a lengthy gulp of the vodka, wincing.
Shane’s attempts at conversation drift to hockey, and then, of course, to Russia. “Do you even like it there?” Shane asks, turning to Ilya. His heart drops, a little, to find that Ilya is focused deeply on his cigarette, and still hasn’t met his eyes.
“What difference does it make?” Ilya wipes at his nose, sniffling, before taking another drag. The smell is putrid and all-consuming. Shane takes another swig of the vodka, which tastes possibly even worse. And he’s not even supposed to be drinking on his new macrobiotic diet, so there’s that.
“A pretty big one, I think,” Shane responds, smiling weakly. His eyes search Ilya’s face for a twitch, anything to betray emotion. But Ilya’s face is as impassive as ever.
Ilya takes another long drag of his cigarette. “I need to sleep,” Ilya murmurs next to him on the bed, his voice distant.
“Yeah, me too,” Shane rushes to agree. His fingers drum against his glass of vodka and he chugs the rest in one go. “I should, uh…” He moves to stand up off the bed, the soiled towel dropping from his stomach, and his knees buckle.
Shane stumbles but remains upright, his vision blurring. But the glass in his hands slips from his trembling fingers, and, to his absolute horror, shatters all across the floor of Ilya’s penthouse suite. His vision is spotty, but a quick glance back to Ilya shows he went from staring resolutely down at his cigarette to shooting up from the bed in an instant at the shattering sound.
“Fucking hell,” Ilya mutters, sighing deeply. He walks over to the mess of glass around Shane’s bare feet, rubbing at his forehead like this is the worst possible turn his night could have taken. Ilya opens his eyes and stares right into Shane’s, and that’s when Shane realizes his problem with the night:
They never kissed.
Ilya looks more like he’d rather kill Shane, now, than kiss him. “Sorry,” Shane offers meekly. He wants nothing more than to flee the penthouse, but he’s trapped in a mess of shattered glass.
“Don’t move,” Ilya warns, and then he leaves the bedroom again.
Shane feels pinpricks in his eyes and realizes belatedly that they’re the beginnings of tears. He blinks harshly while gazing up at the sprawling ceiling, the chandelier becoming less and less blurry as he staves off the tears. The humiliation of standing in his own mess of glass, with his actual own mess of come still smeared on him, naked, in front of Rozanov, who possibly didn’t find him appealing enough tonight to even kiss him…
He makes a low choking sound in his throat.
He’s quiet when Ilya walks back into the room, holding a broom and dustpan in one hand and Shane’s shoes in the other.
Ilya throws the broom onto the bed and holds out Shane’s shoes. “Step into these,” Ilya instructs. He bends down and holds out the right shoe for Shane to step into. The feeling of his bare foot entering the shoe sends shivers down his spine, but he’s worried if he asks for his socks, Ilya might actually throw him out.
He manages to get the shoe on. Ilya holds out his left shoe up to Shane’s hands, and Shane realizes it’s because Ilya expects him to put his own shoe on, rather than Ilya holding it out for him again.
“Thanks,” Shane says, his voice small.
“You are okay?” Ilya’s tone is deadpan, but Shane can tell from his intonation it’s meant to be a question. Now, both his feet are firmly inside his suede shoes.
“Yeah. Can you bring me my clothes, please?”
Ilya stares at him, puzzled. “You can get them, no?”
Shane stares back down at his feet and almost laughs at his own stupidity. He put his shoes back on, duh. He spares Ilya one last glance before he steps out of his own pile of glass into the next room, walking over to his neat pile of clothes on the couch.
He hears a tinkling of glass shards moving against one another from the other room. Ilya must be sweeping his mess up: just another piece of evidence in Ilya’s mind of Shane’s incompetence.
Shane dresses himself fully, even removing his shoes to slip his feet back into his socks. Even the relieving sensation of his socks is not enough to cover up his feeling of shame.
When he bends down to put his shoes back on, he feels another wave of dizziness overtake him like a tidal wave over his head, and he stumbles again, catching himself against the hardwood floor on one outstretched hand.
He breathes in sharply, attempting to ground himself.
“You lied.” Ilya’s voice comes from somewhere far away, or at least it sounds like it does. He’s bringing the dustpan of glass back into the main room, where Shane is still doubled over and blinking rapidly. Ilya has put his boxers back on, but nothing more: a clear inversion of the earlier events of the night, where Shane was naked and Ilya fully clothed.
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” Shane manages, pushing himself back to a standing position. Once he’s upright again, he finds Ilya in his blurred vision. His knees feel weak, and he tries to rest his weight against the chair he remembered was placed right behind him, only to stumble again, the space empty. And oh, that’s right: Ilya pulled that chair away. That’s what started this all.
“You lied. You are not okay.” Ilya throws the glass into the trash. The sound radiates through Shane’s pounding skull.
“What difference does it make?” Shane spits, remembering Ilya’s words earlier in the night. “I’m sorry for the mess, and your glass. I really am. Goodnight.”
Shane marches toward the door, moving in what he hopes is a straight line, and actually manages to wrap his hand around the doorknob and yank it before fingers encircle his wrist and tug it back.
“Hollander,” Ilya growls.
“Rozanov,” Shane responds back, tone sickly sweet. “I want to leave.” He yanks his hand out of Ilya’s tight grip and pulls the door open again, slipping through it before Ilya has a chance to respond, to cuss him out or make fun of him or do whatever it is Rozanov is most likely to do.
And anyways, Shane is fully dressed and Ilya is still in his boxers, so he has a headstart at least to beeline to the elevator and down to his own penthouse suite for the night.
“Hollander, stay.” Shane hears Ilya’s voice from right behind him in the hotel hallway, and he whips around.
Ilya is standing opposite him in the hallway, chest rising and falling like it was when he was thrusting into Shane, in his boxers.
“Stay,” Ilya repeats.
“I’m not a dog.”
“You don’t look good,” Ilya insists. Shane scoffs, incredulous. He feels another bout of dizziness, so he leans against the hallway walls, his face pressed against some flowery wallpaper, in what he hopes is a casual lean and not a dramatic swoon.
“Gee, you’re doing wonders for my self-esteem,” Shane whispers. “You need to go back inside before someone sees you out here dressed like that!”
“Come back with me,” Ilya says. “I should have - I did not mean - Okay. Come back.”
“I don’t wanna go another round, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Shane mutters, feeling his face redden. He definitely doesn’t want another round where Ilya can barely look at him.
“No,” Ilya insists. “Not that. I will make tea.”
Shane shakes his head. “I have tea in my own penthouse!” Then, his head gives a particularly strong pulse, and he can’t help but wince. When he opens his eyes, Ilya’s face looks almost pleading, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Hollander. I am cold. I am in boxers. I messed up.” He says each of these sentences as if one naturally leads into the other. “Come back inside.”
Shane eyes Ilya warily. The sound of another door in this hallway clicking open is enough to startle Shane from his lean against the wall. Ilya steps behind Shane this time, a hand on his back to usher him forward, back to Ilya’s penthouse.
Shane enters silently, hardly moving from the entranceway even after Ilya shuts the door and drifts over to the couch. Ilya stares at him for a few beats before sighing, standing up again, and ushering Shane over to the couch. Ilya takes a throw pillow from another seat and shoves it behind Shane’s back.
“What is wrong with you?” Ilya asks. Shane prepares to deliver a biting response, but when he locks eyes with Ilya, he sees a swirl of concern in them. “I meant, what is the matter? You are sick?”
“No, ‘course not. My body’s like a well-oiled machine.” The current black spots at the outskirts of his vision suggest otherwise, Shane thinks, but doesn’t say.
“Hollander,” Ilya offers. “Help me here. I turn around, I hear glass shatter. I clean it up, but then I see you again, and you are falling over. In the hall, you look like you are in pain.”
Shane fidgets in his chair. “I don’t owe you an explanation. I apologized for the glass.”
“I do not care about the glass!”
Shane flinches without meaning to at Ilya’s raised voice. Ilya pauses, pressing his lips together into a thin line.
“Sorry. Do you want tea?”
Shane stares back at Ilya, a look of muted surprise on his face. Ilya Rozanov, apologizing to him? “Yeah, I’ll have some tea.”
They’re both quiet as Ilya trots over to the kitchen, flicking the electric kettle on. While he waits for the water to boil, Ilya walks back over to the couch and hands Shane a glass of cold water and a piece of chocolate, one item in each hand. His eyes linger on Shane’s hands when he accepts the glass of water, as if checking to make sure it’s steady in his fingers.
“I’m not gonna drop it,” Shane assures, and hopes that it’s true.
He sips his glass of water and sets the chocolate down carefully on the coffee table, like it’s something delicate. When Ilya returns with Shane’s cup of tea, he sets it on the coffee table. Shane reaches for it, and Ilya grabs onto his wrist again, as gently as earlier when he wrapped his slender fingers around Shane’s calf.
“Hot,” Ilya warns. Shane nods and sits back on the couch, sipping his cold water.
“Thanks,” Shane says, feeling rather useless. Ilya stares back at him, his blue eyes wide and searching.
“Was it the vodka?” Ilya asks.
Shane shrugs. “Maybe. I guess I had a lot of it, more than I should’ve. And I didn’t eat today.”
Beside him, Ilya’s face drops. Shane takes the silence as his cue to pick up his tea and blow on it gently before taking a sip. It’s sweet, and Shane is embarrassed that his first thought is worry that Ilya put some artificial sweetener in it, which is totally against his diet. He’s too ashamed to ask, and anyway, the tea is warm and comforting against his lips.
Ilya is still staring at him with curious eyes. Shane feels like a bug under a microscope. “You had no food today?”
Shane shrugs again. “Uh, no. Today was a travel day, and then I was busy at the award show. It happens sometimes.”
Ilya blinks at him. “But there was a buffet there, remember? Little cheeseburgers?” Ilya makes a pinching gesture with his hands, as if to show how small the cheeseburgers really were. “They did not give to you?”
Shane smiles softly at Ilya. “I saw those.”
“The fried chicken, on little sticks,” Ilya continues. He holds his pointer finger out as if to demonstrate the skewer. “You did not eat it?”
Shane shakes his head again.
“You should’ve told me,” Ilya breathes. “I would bring it for you.”
Shane sighs deeply. “It’s just this diet I'm on. I can’t eat any of that stuff.”
Ilya seems to debate what to say for a few moments. “Well, the MVP of the league is not following this hell diet.”
Shane scoffs. “MVP this year. I’m coming for you next year.”
Ilya studies Shane’s ashen face for a moment. “Hockey is serious sport. You must fuel with food. All the time.”
Shane rolls his eyes and scratches the back of his neck. “I know hockey is serious, thank you very much. And, for the record, I fuel myself.” Ilya gives him a long look, so Shane adds, rather sheepishly: “As long as the fuel is, like, within certain parameters.”
“This means…?”
Shane eyes Ilya warily. He suddenly becomes aware more than ever that Ilya is still in only his boxers, his muscular, mole-speckled chest on display. Shane takes a longer sip of his tea. “How can I be sure you won’t hijack this diet for yourself?”
Ilya smirks, which somehow just makes Shane even more peeved. “I prefer human food to dog food, so no, I will not be hijacking this diet.” He says “hijack” like “hee-jack,” like he’s testing a word he’s never used before in his mouth.
“Okay, fine. Essentially, it’s whole grains, vegetables, and legumes. You know? Beans?” Shane explains. Ilya’s face flares in annoyance, but Shane powers on. “No sugar, no dairy, no red meat. Nothing processed. It keeps my body predictable.”
Ilya’s curious, studying expression makes Shane want to squirm and hide away. “Did you predict you’d faint in Ilya Rozanov’s penthouse?”
Frustratingly, Ilya referring to himself in the third person sends a spike of arousal down Shane’s spine. Still, he fidgets in the chair, setting down his cup of tea. “I didn’t faint. And, like I said, I’m fine. Thanks for the tea. But I’m leaving now.” He moves to stand up, but he feels two open palms against his shoulders, pushing him back down onto the couch.
Ilya holds up one pointer finger, as if telling Shane to wait there. Shane obeys, albeit with a foul look on his face. He watches as Ilya picks up the hotel phone, dials some number, and says into it: “Hi. Room service, yes. I’d like two cheeseburgers.” He covers the phone as if to ask Shane something, but decides against it, speaking into the phone: “No, no ketchup. Mayo. And pickles, many pickles.” He hangs up the phone without a ‘thank you.’
Shane begrudgingly picks up the cup of tea again to take another swig, feeling only slightly more clear-headed. “Two cheeseburgers. Good for you. Do I need to be here for this?”
Ilya tilts his head, like a puppy dog. “One is for you, Hollander.”
Shane’s lip twitches. “No. I’m leaving.”
Ilya crosses his arms, sculpted biceps bulging at the motion. “No. You are eating a cheeseburger.”
Earlier tonight, Shane had no problem following Ilya’s orders: Touch yourself. Now, receiving one feels like a slap to the face. “No, I’m not.” At that exact moment, his stomach gurgles, loud enough for both of them to hear.
Ilya gestures vaguely in Shane’s direction. “Your stomach says you are.”
Shane shoots up off the couch, blinking back the creeping dark spots in his vision. “You’re such an asshole.”
He makes for the front door of the penthouse again, adrenaline powering him. He’s glad he has that, at least, because he really is running on fumes tonight.
Ilya stops him with a hand around his wrist, tugging harder this time, so Shane whips back to face him. When he does, Shane gives him a half-hearted shove backwards, which doesn’t make Ilya flinch at all. Still, he glances up at Shane’s face, sees his expression, and takes a deliberate step backwards, as if the push actually did force him back.
“You are hungry,” Ilya says.
“I just told you about my diet! I literally just explained how I don’t eat that stuff.”
“Your diet is stupid.”
“You can’t force-feed me a fucking cheeseburger,” Shane hisses. “Let me leave.”
Ilya sighs deeply, his form sagging in a way that betrays how exhausted he is. For a moment, it gives Shane pause. And then he says, eyes drifting down to his own waistline: “I can feed you something else.”
Any other day, Shane would respond with a classic ‘you’re an asshole.’ Today, he balls his hands into white-knuckled fists to keep from lashing out.
“What?” Ilya says, his face an expression of genuine confusion.
“I already told you I don’t want to go another round.” Shane wipes his nose with the back of his hand absentmindedly. Ilya’s eyes follow the motion. “You think you know what I like. You buy the cheeseburger. You ask me to - to touch myself, to let you watch. But you’re really just doing what you want.”
Ilya stays quiet for longer than Shane expects. When he finally speaks, his voice is uncharacteristically small. “You did not want to do that?”
Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Hollander.” Ilya’s voice is more desperate now. “If you are not comfortable, ever, I need to know.”
“I was comfortable,” Shane insists, feeling overwhelmed, his stomach empty and his head crushingly full. “I enjoyed it. That’s not it. I’m having - I’m having trouble explaining.”
Ilya stares back at him, eyes vacant, and suddenly the step back he took feels like an uncrossable chasm. “Please try.”
Shane moves to sit down, then, at one of the chairs across from the couch, still feeling light-headed. Ilya follows him like a loyal dog, still maintaining enough of a distance from Shane that he can breathe.
“Hollander,” Ilya tries.
Shane squeezes his eyes shut again. “We - we - ugh.” He opens his eyes and stares anywhere except Ilya’s face, eyes drifting to his abandoned cup of tea on the coffee table and then lower, to Ilya’s bare feet. “We didn’t even kiss.”
Ilya’s face twists. He opens his mouth to respond, but they’re interrupted by a loud knock on the front door.
“Fuck,” Ilya mutters in Russian under his breath. He glances back at Shane, something troublesome deep in his eyes, and Shane takes it for the cue that it is: it means he needs to hide.
He drags himself back to the bedroom, back to their rumpled sheets, and barely tries to dodge the area of the floor his glass shattered against, uncaring if he steps on shards or if he doesn’t. He either has full confidence in Ilya Rozanov’s cleaning abilities, or he is too numb to care.
Shane sits on the very corner of the bed as Ilya returns, two metal trays of cheeseburgers and fries in his hands. The burgers are huge, but Ilya still manages to carry both trays with one arm, balancing them on his bicep.
Shane eyes him warily. “I’m still not eating that.”
Ilya simply nods, placing the trays on top of the now empty chair where he sat when he told Shane to touch himself. He moves to stand in front of Shane where he sits on the bed. Then, as if he realizes how much taller he is from this position compared to Shane, he sits next to him on the mattress instead.
“Hollander,” Ilya starts, then stops, scratching the back of his neck. He presses his lips together. “I did not realize.”
“Don’t,” Shane says weakly. “It’s fine. You’re not my - we’re not - I shouldn’t expect that.”
“I want to kiss you,” Ilya says. “Always.”
Shane’s voice is timid. “Then why didn’t you?”
Ilya picks at his thumbnail. “I wanted to see you touch yourself. Obviously.” He smiles shyly.
“You’re an asshole,” Shane counters.
“Obviously, but,” Ilya continues, “I just got - is it? - I got 'caught up.' And I wanted to kiss you, at the very end, when I gave you the vodka. Because you did very good job. But then I was thinking about Russia.”
Shane recalls that he was the one to introduce that topic. “Mood killer?”
“Killer,” Ilya agrees simply. “But that is not an excuse.”
Shane shrugs. “You seemed mad about the glass.”
“I do not care about the glass,” Ilya repeats, this time softer. “I was just surprised. It - it…”
Shane spares a glance at Ilya from the corner of his eye. “It scared you, Rozanov?”
Ilya rolls his eyes playfully. “Russians do not get scared.” Shane risks a full glance at Ilya’s face, and Ilya meets his eyes. “Okay. It scared me.”
Shane nods, processing this. His stomach, as if voicing its own concerns, growls again.
Ilya reaches over to pluck one of the metal trays, pushing it towards Shane. Shane shakes his head. Ilya’s face falls again.
“You are hungry, but you don’t eat,” Ilya mutters. “Imagine if we had game today, and I had checked you into the glass.”
“Yeah, can you stop doing that, by the way?”
Ilya stares at him blankly. “You need to eat on game days.”
“I do eat on game days,” Shane argues. “I eat according to my diet. Days like today, I try to limit them. And, about the diet: you don’t have to like it. It’s not your body.”
Ilya huffs. “But I like your body.”
Shane can’t help it: a small smile creeps in on his face. He bumps his shoulder against Ilya’s. “Unfortunately for me, I also like yours.”
Ilya straightens on the bed, then, his head tilting as a thought surfaced. “Your diet, you said it was red meat and vegetables?”
Shane rests his head in his hands. “Not even close.”
Ilya groans. “Okay. Tell me an actual meal you will eat right now. A fish?”
Shane fiddles with his fingers. “Maybe, grilled salmon with steamed vegetables.”
Ilya has taken his phone out, and Shane receives a buzz from his own phone in his pocket. Leaning over Ilya’s shoulder, he sees that he has texted that order to “Jane” in his contacts.
“Any rice?” Ilya asks.
“Um,” Shane starts, still staring blankly at the text, “yeah. Brown rice.”
Ilya sends over yet another text: Brown rice. Shane’s phone vibrates again against his thigh.
“Stay here,” Ilya instructs. Shane does, drumming his fingers on his knees as he waits. He hears the faint sound of Ilya’s voice in the main room before he’s back in the bedroom, this time standing over Shane.
The fact that Ilya has been shirtless through this all is not lost on Shane in this moment, not when Ilya is staring down at him with something more than lust in his eyes.
Shane reaches up to his own white button-down, undoing the top two buttons. Ilya’s tentative hand on his shoulder makes him pause.
“You said you did not want," Ilya says.
Shane tilts his head, considering. “I just. I want to - I don’t even know.”
Ilya’s eyes dash over each feature of Shane’s face like he’s memorizing them. Ilya leans in and, when his lips are only a hair’s width away from Shane’s, he says: “This okay?”
Shane fights the urge to laugh, given just how much of himself Ilya has already touched tonight. But he nods, the motion brushing his lips against Ilya’s bottom lip and up against his nose.
Ilya sinks down, pressing their lips together firmly. Shane’s lips move greedily against Ilya’s own, setting the pace, and it’s only then that Shane realizes how much he truly needs this. Ilya’s hand reaches down to cup Shane’s face, tilting it, deepening the kiss.
Shane strokes over Ilya’s face, over the mole on his cheek, moaning hungrily into Ilya’s mouth, who swallows the sound down in turn. Shane lets himself fall back against the mattress, and Ilya climbs on top of him, his movements slow and gentle - a stark contrast to his self-assured dominance of that same night.
And Shane wants both of these Ilyas, he realizes: one to make him beg and writhe, and the other to kiss him sweetly through it all.
Another knock of the same pattern as the previous one sounds throughout the penthouse.
Shane breaks away from the kiss first, feeling a sweet satisfaction at seeing Ilya mouth at the open air in the immediate second afterwards, as if he couldn’t get enough of the sensation. Ilya reluctantly climbs off the bed and leaves the bedroom again.
When he comes back, it’s with a full plate of sizzling salmon, a healthy scoop of vegetables, and a heaping pile of rice overflowing from its bowl.
Shane’s jaw drops. “Asians don’t need this much rice, you know,” he says, breathless.
Ilya presses the plate into Shane’s lap. “I ordered extra. Just in case.”
Shane shakes his head, but he doesn’t have it in him to pretend to resist this gesture. He scoops up some rice with his fingers and drops it into his mouth while Ilya fishes around for a set of cutlery for him.
Ilya takes his place sitting on the edge of the mattress next to Shane. He lifts both cheeseburger platters onto his lap and hands a fork and knife to Shane, who grabs it and in doing so, transfers a few beads of rice onto Ilya’s hand. Ilya licks up the rice before reaching for a french fry.
“Oh God,” Shane moans, digging into his meal. “This feels, like, as good as sex.”
Ilya furrows his eyebrows. “It is steamed vegetables. That can’t be right.”
Shane laughs, breathless.
“Please tell me you are joking,” Ilya continues, looking awfully distraught.
Shane grins, his cheeks stuffed with salmon. “I’m joking.”
Ilya smirks back at him. He grabs one cheeseburger in one hand and the second burger in the other and stacks them on top of each other. He spares a glance at Shane, noticing he’s nearly done chewing a bite of salmon, and presses a chaste kiss to his lips, the motion so quick that Shane can’t even think to close his eyes or pucker.
When Ilya pulls back, he opens his mouth so wide it’s almost snakelike to take a humongous bite of both cheeseburgers, one on top of the other.
Shane throws his head back, chuckling. “You’re gross.”
“Am I gross or asshole? Can’t be both.”
“You can, actually, and you are.”
“Fine. So I am gross. But you like gross.” Ilya gestures down to his bare chest, but also to Shane’s dwindling pile of unseasoned steamed vegetables.
“Yeah.” Shane spares a glance down at his plate, the metal of the near-empty tray gleaming back at him, and casts a longer one towards Ilya: this buff Russian athlete with cheese sauce around his lips and a little on his boxers. He smiles softly to himself. “I guess I like gross.”