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“Where the fuck did you get this?”
Shane holds ecru card stock in his hand and shakes.
“What?”
Ilya is still putting on his sweater, the ink-blue Loro Piana Yuna had gotten him for Christmas. Shane has been dressed for fifteen minutes, and it’s only itchy boredom that had prompted him to check the card Ilya had left by their hotel room entryway.
“This is nice message, I checked!”
He takes the card from Shane and opens it to his inexplicably elegant, spidery script. Jackie and Hayden, Congratulations on the new addition to your family. We are very happy for you! Love, Shane and Ilya.
Ignoring the sweet tug in his chest that Ilya so blithely signs his name for him, Shane snatches it back. “I’m not talking about the inscription.”
“So what is problem?” Ilya shakes his head and does up his top button, looking genuinely confused as he smoothes down the cabled cashmere. It fits him well and it goes nicely with the burgundy shirt Shane’s wearing, so at least they’ll look good together when they get kicked out.
Shane takes a breath, holds it, lets it out, holds it, and accepts that no amount of box breathing is going to make a new baby shower card materialize in their suite. Ten minutes before the party starts. The party that is at least twenty minutes from their hotel.
“I told you to get a nice card.”
“It is nice! Heavy cardstock, see?” He takes the card and turns it over in his fingers, catching the light on the embossed logo on the back. “I asked if it could be funny, you said yes!”
“This is not funny!”
“This is hilarious! Jackie will love it, trust me.”
Ilya holds the card up and grins, with the open-mouthed eagerness of a man holding a very adorable animal.
Beneath a cheerful illustration of a pie teeming with swirled whipped cream, bright bubble letters proclaim: YOU GOT A CREAMPIE!
~
Jackie loves the card.
She laughs so hard tears roll down her face as Hayden stares into the middle distance in mute horror. Shane eats his muffuletta salad, hoping the crunch will drown out Ilya’s gloating smile.
“You guys are so lucky you don’t have to deal with planning these showers.” Marie plops down next to Ilya, her plate teeming with mini donuts from the beignet bar. “I’d make such a good gay guy.”
Shane doesn’t particularly like Jackie’s sister. She wears heavy perfume and flirts with Ilya when she drinks too much prosecco. Shane has recurring nightmares that she will post something on Instagram that will ruin their carefully-constructed facade of professional friendship, but Ilya seems confident she has too big of a crush on him to compromise her “I’m a really big ally, I watch Drag Race!” status.
“Did Jackie pick the New Orleans theme?” Shane asks, gesturing at the profusion of purple and green party beads and Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler tiaras. It’s a loud departure from the last three baby shower themes of Our Little Sugar Shack, We Can Bearly Wait!, and Oh, Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
“It was my idea.” She leans in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “That’s where they conceived.”
Around a mouthful of mini oyster po-boy, Ilya arches an eyebrow at Shane. “I told you card is funny.”
~
“I am just saying, no one ever throws party for me, molodets Ilya, good job blowing load inside Shane, here is new expensive baby prison.”
“Oh my God, it’s a Pack n Play.” Shane grips the steering wheel and stares ahead on the A-10. “It’s for like, when they travel or something.”
They have half a dozen Matters of Business ahead of them - photoshoots and interviews and appearances, cogs in the well-oiled Yuna Hollander excellence machine. They have separate coffee, drinks, dinner and “dessert tapas, how fun” scheduled, along with “very casual lunch, the children will be present and feral” with Jackie and Hayden the day after tomorrow. Shane just needs to Not People for a while. He pushes his Ray Bans, limited edition, up the bridge of his nose.
“Is ok. Would be too many parties anyway.” Ilya squeezes his knee and turns the music up, the way he always does when Shane needs a break.
~
He’d chalked it up to the language barrier at first.
The first time Ilya said “I want to come on your tits,” Shane had been too dick-drunk to really register anything beyond Ilya pulling out of his ragged throat and taking hasty aim across Shane’s panting chest.
By the fourth time, he knew the quickest way to beat Ilya in “who comes last” was to push Ilya’s mouth onto his nipple and hold him there.
Shane knows he has nice pecs. He works hard at them, and they’re an important part of any upper body routine. A strong shoulder girdle needs counterbalance. He just never thought of them as anything other than another muscle group to target. Girls have tits, just like they have boyfriends and pearl necklaces and things Shane didn’t know he could need until Ilya had collided into his life.
It used to make him self conscious, tweaking his nipples while Ilya watched him jerk off, Ilya’s face rapt and blue-lit by some phone in Calgary or Tampa or that airport bathroom stall in Dallas. “Touch your tits for me,” and Ilya had barely bothered whispering it, his chain between his teeth and his hand down his pants as Shane had squeezed hard and stroked himself to staggering completion with the lightning-strike thought, They probably think he’s talking to his girlfriend.
~
“Touch yourself.”
Shane loves the bruises. Ilya’s hands curl into his hips, cutting sharp into soft flesh where he’s straddled on Ilya’s cock. He rolls, balancing his hands behind him on Ilya’s thighs and pushing until he feels the bite of Ilya’s nails.
“Shane.”
Shane hoards every bruise and bite, every constellation of stretched fingers he can press his hand over when they’re apart. Ilya’s thumbs dig in, goading Shane’s eyes open.
“Fuck, yeah.” Shane leans forward and wraps a hand around his cock, squeezing himself at the base. “But I’m gonna come if I-“
“Not there.”
Ilya gently peels Shane’s hand away and replaces it with his own, stroking slow and spit-wet over Shane’s dick as he tilts his chin at Shane’s chest. Oh.
He sinks down on Ilya’s cock and slides his hands up his sides, flushing where Ilya’s eyes trace over him, hungry. Shane takes his time, lifting one arm over his head, pin-up style, teasing his fingers under the swell of muscle, bottoming out on Ilya’s dick and holding him there with the strength of his inner thighs. Ilya’s nostrils flare, bull-teased, his finger dragging a precious scratch into Shane’s creased hip.
Shane pillows his head against his curved arm, grinding himself in the tight, controlled circles that keep Ilya on edge, spellbound. He circles closer to his nipple just to pull back, teasing out corded muscle in Ilya’s neck as he strains up, the tip of his tongue glinting between his teeth. Shane shakes his head, stay, and licks his thumb, wet and generous the way Ilya likes before he slicks it over his nipple.
“Fucking beautiful,” Ilya sighs, his neck still straining and his hand shaking as Shane fucks into it. There’s a strange kind of gorgeous Shane feels when Ilya’s under him. He pinches himself, gets his nipples hard and picks up his pace, riding Ilya until the stately hotel bed starts to shake and there’s sweat on his forehead, rouge flushed up his neck and a slick trail of precome dancing down Ilya’s knuckles. He steals some and paints it over his nipples, tracking the animal flare of Ilya’s lip, the rush of air between his teeth, the soft shift beneath him as Ilya’s feet dig into the sheets for purchase.
Pretty. That’s how Ilya looks at him, stares up at Shane like he’s the prettiest thing Ilya’s ever seen. Shane licks his lips, his breath hot and shaky as he bucks up and slams himself down hard enough to make everything shake and then does it again just to watch Ilya’s eyes fully slip out of focus. Ilya’s stroking him with the solitary conviction of a man who will come last if it kills him.
Shane arches back, tilting himself as he lets go and lets himself come, noting with fuzz-edged satisfaction that some of it gets past his stomach. Shane’s happy to lose this round. He’s got Ilya fucking Rozanov between his legs, and Shane’s the only one who knows how hard Ilya comes when Shane pulls him up and pushes his face into the mess striped across his tits.
~
“I love being pregnant.” Jackie kicks her feet up into Hayden’s waiting lap. “I hate losing the baby weight, but I love gaining it.” She cheers with a leftover donut and smiles as Hayden rubs her feet.
Hayden’s house is always loud. Two children streak past, followed closely by a roaring Ilya. “Dinothaur!” screams the littlest one, tripping over himself as he trails behind.
“Baby, get Shane a ginger ale.”
“Oh, I’m good-”
“And another donut for me.” She beams at Hayden, who salutes with his usual “You got it, babe,” and springs up.
There’s a crash and screams in three different pitches, and Jackie doesn’t even turn around to look at Ilya, flailing his bent T-Rex arms as he’s mobbed by the kids.
“He’s gonna be such a good dad.” Jackie smiles, perching a passionfruit La Croix on her belly. “Just wait till you see him holding a baby, it’s like you fall in love with them all over again.”
“Yeah,” Shane says. “The kids love him so much.” One of them launches off a chair, screeching as Ilya rolls away, batting his arms and groaning “No, pterodactyl attack!”
This stuff comes so easily to Ilya. Hayden’s children range from abject horror to suspicious tolerance when it comes to Shane, but they run toward Ilya like he’s playing the ice cream truck jingle at all times. The only one who picks Shane’s side in games is Ruby, the weird little bruiser Shane secretly likes best.
“They love you, too, Shane.” Jackie is being kind so Shane smiles and nods.
“It must be so nice living so close to your parents. It would be great to have my mom around more.” Jackie takes a sip of her drink. “You know, to help with the kids. That’ll be so nice for you two. You know, whenever,” she raises her eyebrows expectantly.
“Yeah, it’s nice. They love Ilya as much as the kids do,” Shane jokes, wincing as Ilya emerges from the kitchen with a child clinging to each of his ankles and one strapped to his back. Shane gets tired just watching him, but Ilya seems to possess limitless energy when it comes to sticky fingers trying to climb him like a tree.
“Yeah.” Jackie’s smile is a little too bright for this to be the answer she wanted.
“Leave the poor guy alone, Jack.” Hayden returns, ginger ale and three tiny donuts in hand. Shane accepts his drink as Hayden resumes his place at Jackie’s feet. She pops another donut in her mouth and sighs.
“Hey, at least you don’t have to worry about ruining your figure.”
There’s another crash, loud enough to turn every head. A lamp shade rolls past Ilya’s feet and three different screams erupt.
“Oh, shit.” Ilya slaps his hand over his mouth but it’s too late.
“Swear jar!”
~
“Fucking do it.”
Shane’s palms are sweating. He bunches the sheets up, kneading his own frustration against Egyptian cotton. There’s something about the crisp singularity of hotel sheets that goes straight down his spine, a sense memory of too many dimly lit years and stolen nights.
“Fuck me, Ilya.” They have fucked in so many hotels. Too many, really, but all of Shane’s distant yearning for home and hearth can simmer on the back burner for tonight. Shane just needs Ilya inside him, and Ilya fucking knows it. “Come on.”
Ilya only drives his tongue deeper in response, moaning against Shane’s skin. Ilya can do this all night, until Shane cries or begs or loses a firm grip on consciousness and the English language. Shane rubs his cheek against the bed, groaning as he grinds himself against Ilya’s mouth.
He’d survived lunch with Hayden’s family, two interviews, and a zoom meeting with his mother and some protein drink company, the latter of which had been spent fielding text messages from Ilya that made him increasingly grateful for the filter function.
Do they know you are going to beg for my cock later?
Please. You’ll be the one begging.
A lie, but one that got Ilya the good kind of competitive. Ilya’s been hellbent on torturing him since he’d left the final interview for the day. He’d stuck his hand down Shane’s jeans in the car and had barely removed them when they got to the hotel.
Time had gotten slippery after that, but Shane knows his drink had ice in it when Ilya started biting his way down Shane’s back. It sits, a few feeble beads of condensation clinging to coolness as it sweats into the coaster.
Shane can beg. “Fuck me, please.”
“I am fucking you.” Ilya’s voice is thick around a mouthful of Shane’s inner thigh, where he gently nips before dog-licking his way back up to Shane’s hole to fuck his tongue in as far as it can go.
“Fuck me with your cock.” Shane lets his arms run out under him, elbows sliding in as his back arches up, puppy pose. Shane can fucking beg.
“Oooh, with my cock,” Ilya says, fucker, dragging each word out as he kisses up the offered curve of Shane’s back. Shane spreads his legs, his own cock heavy and hard as Ilya slots up against his thighs.
“Maybe I fuck you with fingers first.” Ilya, smug, sinks two fingers in and spits between them, a locker room noise that shouldn’t make Shane’s balls ache like that. It drips down the back of his sac and joins the overeager pool of precome leaking from his cock.
“Fucking asshole,” Shane grits out, teeth tight and his ass more than open enough to get fucked.
“This is plan, yes.” Ilya twists, sneaking lube in as Shane moans, adding more fingers and speeding up until Shane’s eyes roll back. His heart skips when Ilya’s fingers pull out, just to feel the head of Ilya’s cock graze against his taint, too fucking far away. His mouth runs ahead of him, needy and roiling with a thousand ways to want the same thing.
“C’mon, fuck me, fuck my ass, Ilya, fuck me, do it, fuck, Ilya, put a fucking baby in me.”
Ilya stops and goes completely still, oh, shit, and Shane has fucked this one up, has fucked this up so completely, fuck fuck fuck, just like he fucked up that time in a Vancouver penthouse and asked Ilya to call him a word Ilya made clear he will never, ever use, like he fucks everything up eventually, fuck, but it can just be a joke, he can just make a joke about Hayden and -
“Say it again.”
Ilya flips him onto his back so quickly Shane’s breath knocks out of him, grappled down with his knees to his chest and Ilya breathing like he just ran here from the ground floor.
“Say that again.”
Ilya gives him a look that could flay Shane alive. He’s already pressing his cock into Shane, slick and hasty where he doesn’t even bother to look, trusting muscle memory. Shane swallows, bashful in the headlights of Ilya’s stare even as his cock twitches against his belly.
“Put a baby in me.”
“Again.” Ilya’s mouth hangs open, teeth bared as he pushes Shane’s hips up higher.
“Put a fucking baby in me, Ilya,” and then Shane’s whittled down to thrusts and moans and how much he fucking wants this, like he always wants things he can’t have. He grabs at Ilya’s back, scratching heedless and needy at flexing muscle to pull him in deep enough to stick.
“Fill me up, come on,” Shane gasps, his voice reedy as Ilya bears down on his folded body, sweat dripping into his eyes. Shane doesn’t mind the sting, or the ache inside him as Ilya pounds into him. He doesn’t need to breathe, or think, or exist outside of Ilya’s cock buried inside him, using him like Shane was built for this.
“Oh, fuck, Shane.” Ilya’s so beautiful when he’s about to lose it. He bites his lip, eyes barely focused and his curls sweat-crowned onto his forehead, ruined and regal and ready to give Shane the impossible.
“Do it, do it, knock me up.” Shane’s belly is a slick mess as his cock streaks against him, and he barely needs to slip his hand around it before he’s so close. “Please.”
Ilya’s hands dig hard where they’re pushing his knees up. “I want to, blyat,” he bites out in frustration, cyrillic discomfiture written across his face as he searches for the word. “I want to breed you.”
“Oh my God, Ilya.” Shane will leave his own marks on Ilya’s back. He comes, slick and heavy where their bellies are pressed together, unsure when he stops and Ilya starts, just that they’re both panting for breath as Ilya curls in to press his forehead against Shane’s.
Shane wraps his legs around Ilya’s waist, pulling him in, breathing in every exhalation from Ilya’s mouth, like he could suck the air out of him and leave him empty. Ilya gives him so much and asks for so little in return. Ilya kisses him and nudges his nose against Shane’s until his eyes open.
“Did I use right word?” Ilya’s eyes are bright, crinkling in the corners as he grins and glances down where Shane’s jizz is quickly going tacky against their skin.
He’s so grateful for Ilya’s easy charm, the nonchalant way he can clear the air when Shane starts to burrow into his own head. “Yeah. Right word.” He smiles and kisses Ilya until he goes soft, and he lets himself whine when Ilya slips out of him. Shane’s about to roll into his habitual little spoon when Ilya stops him.
“Keep your legs up.” Ilya shrugs. “So it stays better.”
He splays his hand over Shane’s stomach and presses softly. Shane’s warm all over, throbbing a well-used heartbeat from head to toe. He’ll feel the ache for days, delicious and secret inside him.
“Jackie said they had to try many times for Arthur.” Ilya cushions his head on Shane’s chest and kisses along his skin, dragging his fingers up and down Shane’s shellacked happy trail. Ilya never minds the dirty parts.
~
There are nights when Ilya wants to crawl inside him.
That’s how it feels, when he presses every inch of skin he can against Shane, fucks him so slow they barely move, so deep Shane can feel it in his lungs. Ilya barely gives him room to breathe.
Spider-monkey, that’s what Shane had called it once, and Ilya had needed visual proof that this was in fact a real animal and not some new creature Shane had invented just to tease him. It’s meant in jest but also the kind of sincerity Shane struggles with. He can tease Ilya about it, but there are nights where that’s the last thing he wants to do. Nights when Ilya is quiet, when he offers some small, guarded part of his nightmarish childhood and curls up wounded around it afterwards.
Ilya’s tooth has been bothering him. Shane catches him pushing at it with his tongue when they’re watching TV, walked in on him pulling his lip up to look at it in the bathroom mirror. Ilya winces around a spoonful of ice cream one night and Shane finally asks.
“Is that from Murph?”
Ilya had gotten slammed on that side of his face a few months back, but Shane didn’t remember anything happening to his mouth.
“Is from when I was kid. Broke it.”
“Playing?”
“Sort of.” Ilya’s quiet for a moment. He sets his ice cream down on the coffee table and leans into Shane’s waiting chest, tucking his head under Shane’s arm. “After game. I thought this boy wanted to kiss me. He did, until he did not.”
Shane tucks his hand into Ilya’s hair, spiraling a curl. “He hit you?”
“No. He beat the shit out of me.” Ilya shifts, curling into Shane as his fingers close around his cross. “I fucked him up, too, of course. But he told coach it was my fault. Didn’t say why but I think my father…understood,” Ilya sighs, muffles it into Shane’s t-shirt. “I had to get this thing with the root, like the inside?”
“A root canal?”
“My father told doctor not to use anesthetic. So I would learn consequence.” He adds gravity to the last word, an attempt at mockery that Shane ignores. He just pulls Ilya half-way onto his lap and kisses him, bad tooth and all.
“I’m so sorry, Ilya.” Shane says it so often, resigned to repeating this like a rosary when he can’t name the pit that opens inside him for this smaller Ilya he never knew, this poor fucking kid who crawled out of all that the kindest, brightest man Shane has ever met. “It’s been bothering you?”
Ilya nods mutely against his chest before he sighs. “I don’t like the dentist so much.”
“I’ll go with you, ok? I know a really good guy here. And he won’t tell anyone. About us.”
Ilya’s smile is happy-sad, the soft one that always lingers around his eyes. He blinks, glassy for a second before he buries his face in Shane’s shirt again. “Ok.”
“I’ll stay the whole time. I promise.”
~
It’s a tide, this swell of darkness that pools around Ilya’s feet from time to time. There’s days where it’s better, where Ilya is raucous and sarcastic and finds joy in the stupidest things, where he’s brash and bossy and rails Shane so hard he’s left with one brain cell and a puddle of his own drool.
Tonight Ilya clings, wrapped around Shane long past the point where things go soft and sticky and Shane wouldn’t mind a shower. Ilya hasn’t opened his eyes since he came.
Shane isn’t oblivious to his awkward social exchanges. He knows what the guys say – that he’s wooden, a brick wall, a machine. He knows, he’s just never felt much cause to care. These things are just as much an athletic asset as they are a social demerit.
Ilya kneads at his chest, his breath in matched tempo as he squeezes, inhale, strokes, exhale, so softly Shane’s not even sure he’s awake. Shane’s arm is pins-and-needles and his ass is a texture he can only describe as “gelatinous” but he won’t move a muscle until Ilya does. Shane is heavy, but so are the anchors that keep things from crashing onto the rocks.
~
The babies all look the same to Shane.
Jackie always points out how this one looks just like Hayden, or this one has her aunt Helen’s nose, or this one looks just like fucking Marie, who’s currently sitting as close to Ilya as humanly possible.
The new boy looks like a squished root vegetable, but he scrunches up his nose with minimal protest when Uncle Shane dutifully takes his turn to hold him. He’s so small, and Shane remembers from the last one that there’s a spot under his little striped cap where his skull isn’t even knit together. That anything can start out this delicate and reach adulthood is a miracle. Someone held Ilya like this once, when his little head was just a boiled potato with bones sliding around in it.
“Babies are crazy,” Shane says as Ilya comes up behind him, having deftly extricated himself from Marie.
“He likes you.”
“He’ll grow up to like you more, don’t worry.”
“I am the funcle.” Ilya shrugs, the fact so self-evident even he can’t argue it.
“You’re better with them. I’m not good with kids.”
“This is not true.” Ilya squeezes him around the waist. “You are bad with most people, not just children.”
Shane snorts and knocks him with a hip. “Asshole.”
“Swear jar,” Ilya whispers, just as the baby starts crying.
“I think he is hungry,” Ilya announces, as if the minute hiccups and grimaces of this little thing are easily legible. He slides the baby from Shane’s arms and brings him, perfectly head-supported, over to Jackie.
By all locker-room accounts, Jackie is a certified level-10 MILF. Hayden always took this teasing with a good-natured smile, and only now that Shane is their guarded version of settled does he understand the blushed pride that would creep over Hayden’s face when the guys would rib him for how good Jackie’s boobs looked at the Christmas party. It’s kind of hot when a ton of people want to fuck the person you take to bed every night.
“Come here, hungry boy,” Jackie coos, accepting Ilya’s delicate hand-off and pulling her shirt open.
It probably should have tipped Shane off that his first thought when presented with Jackie’s bare breast was “mammals give birth to live young and are covered in a fine layer of hair” like there was a museum plaque tacked to the coffee table. He didn’t want to stare, but he didn’t want to not stare too obviously because it’s not like she was doing anything wrong. Breastfed babies have better immune systems and score higher on cognitive tests. Shane has maybe researched this topic, at least until he gets a little clammy and files it under Later Problems.
“That’s my boy.” Hayden slaps a hand onto Shane’s shoulder. He beams as he looks over at Jackie, radiant where she sits nursing while Ilya says something that makes her laugh. Ilya is, of course, perfectly at ease, neither staring nor ignoring as Jackie switches the baby to the other side.
“He’s already so big,” Shane says, certain this compliment will land.
“I know! He’s a little milk monster, Jackie’s been a frickin’ champ.” All the “wife-guy” teasing Hayden gets in the locker room is cheap, but it’s also fair.
“He’s got a good latch.” Marie appears beside them, a fizzing mimosa in her hand. “I couldn’t get any of mine on, Lord knows I tried.”
Maybe they didn’t like the taste of White Claw. “That’s, uh, tough.” Shane nods, looking to Hayden for support and finding him t-shirt-tugged away by one of the twins, demanding mediation with a thieving sibling. Marie clinks his empty hand with her flute.
“One more thing you and Ilya don’t need to worry about.” The way she liquifies Ilya’s name in her mouth makes his hand curl. “You know, if you two need a surr-”
“Shane!” Ilya, beknighted, appears beside him, loud and overly friendly. “Sorry, big emergency, you need to come see picture Ruby made for you.”
Shane’s led by his wrist down a hallway and around a corner and finally into a guest bathroom. It’s the one with pink crane wallpaper and the black and white photo of a very pregnant Jackie cocooned in billowing silks, which she and Hayden have described as “tasteful” on at least six separate occasions. Mammals give birth to live young and are cov-
“I lied. There is no picture.” Ilya grins and kisses him, and Shane can set his anxious phylogeny aside for a while.
“Can we go soon?” Shane breathes against Ilya’s neck, wishing he could just mammal there for the foreseeable future.
“Half an hour.” Ilya looks at his Rolex before he tuts away Shane’s groan of protest. “Half an hour, I will do all the talking. Then we can go home.”
He kisses Shane again and cracks the door, making sure no one will see them exiting together before he adds, “And then I will suck your dick so good you will cry. Like little baby.”
~
Shane’s on his back the first time he says it.
Ilya’s been fucking him for so long Shane’s toes are going numb where they’re wrapped tight around Ilya’s waist. Locked together, Ilya rocks into him, huffing breath against Shane’s neck and brushing sweat against Shane’s jaw.
“So good,” Ilya mumbles against his skin, a soft hint of stubble raking after it.
If Ilya has flavors of sweet this one’s slow as maple syrup, both of them suspended in amber as Ilya shifts his hips enough to hitch a soft noise out of Shane. He’s shaky all over, every nerve ending he possesses fried over-easy from Ilya’s relentless attention. Pleasure and pain are such closely-knit things now, and Shane had cried a little the third time Ilya had gotten him off with his mouth and four fingers goal-bent in his ass.
The fireplace crackles, sending a burst of light that frames Ilya’s face over him, an icon of halo’ed curls and flushed skin, possessed with the unquenchable fire he gets when he needs to fuck Shane like he’ll die if he stops.
Shane aches, muscles sore and his ass throbbing its own heartbeat, his pores worn out from pouring sweat and rippling goosebumps, lips bruised from Ilya’s kisses and his cock and the relentless prayer of Ilya’s name.
There are nights when Shane begs and cajoles and baits Ilya, when he just needs to get fucked so hard he can’t taste anything but Ilya inside him, wipe down the dry erase board and restart his brain, control-alt-delete. Shane knows that yawning thing, the hunger they share for oblivion in each other, knows what it’s like to have its jaws clench around you and shake.
Shane threads his fingers into Ilya’s hair and tugs, firm and steady, until Ilya pulls out of his blinders in Shane’s neck and blinks at him, glazed, dazzled, so fucking beautiful Shane’s hand shakes before he schools it back to firmness. He pushes Ilya’s face down, watches Ilya’s lips fall open, muscle memory and soft surrender folding Ilya’s face into sloe-eyed bliss as he closes his mouth around Shane’s nipple.
“It’s ok, baby.” Shane’s breath catches as Ilya pauses. He’s called Ilya all kinds of shit in bed, Yes, Sir, Daddy, Please, I love you so fucking much I could die and everything in between. Sometimes the softer volleys are the scariest ones to land.
He feels Ilya’s moan before he hears it, need at a register so often inaudible Shane can just make out the shape of it. It seeps out from Ilya’s mouth, pleading, pleased, a small hunger that Shane can feed. Ilya shifts, curling himself so he can latch onto Shane and drive his cock in deeper.
“Baby.” Shane curls his fingers, gripping Ilya’s hair and pushing his mouth flush to Shane’s skin. He sneaks his other hand down to get his thumb next to Ilya’s jaw, urging him open, wider. “That’s it, get it.”
Shane rallies his strength and rolls himself under Ilya, meeting his thrusts as Ilya starts to move, his mouth sucking artlessly at Shane’s skin.
When Shane jerks off to this later, it’s the noises he’ll summon first- the wet moans of Ilya’s mouth around his nipple, the flick of sweat-slicked skin sliding together, the sucked-back pull of his hole when Ilya slides out of him just to bury his cock deeper, the hock of spit under Ilya’s tongue before it runs warm and hungry over Shane’s fingers.
Ilya’s fucking gone. If he opened his eyes they’d be rolled back, but some things are better swaddled away. He’s sucking bruise-hard at Shane, the muscles of his jaw rolling under Shane’s grazing fingers, cheeks hollowing in reflex rhythm with the quickening of his cock. Shane’s legs slide against sweat and fever-warm skin while Ilya's muscles flex in animal instinct, his hands pawing at anything that gets in their path.
Shane will be marked and sore and achingly grateful for days.
“Come for me, baby.” He grips harder at Ilya’s hair, knows so well how a bite of pain makes it that much sweeter when Ilya comes. He digs his heels into Ilya’s back, kicks him deep, closes his eyes. Whatever Ilya’s moaning against him isn’t English but it’s not entirely foreign to Shane. He just wraps himself tighter around Ilya and strokes through his hair as he shudders.
“It’s ok, baby.” Shane drinks in the milk-musk of Ilya’s curls, tracks the halting fall of Ilya’s breath against him, counts the beat of his own pulse in the livid bruise Ilya has nursed over his heart. Ilya spider-monkeys around him and Shane just holds, steady and boring and all the things that he hopes can keep Ilya from washing away.
Ilya’s eyes are wet when he finally looks up at Shane.
“I love you, baby.” Shane’s had love bricked into him from birth, but Ilya’s had to build it all himself. He kisses Ilya, kisses every inch of him he can get to, his sweaty forehead, the heavy slope of his brow, his snuffling nose, the darling moles that dance down his cheek like the tears Shane wipes away with his thumb. “Ilya. I love you so much.”
Ilya takes his kisses and gives them back double, code-switching between Shane’s name and a host of graceful, lilting words Shane is learning to recognize, I love you, My God, I love you.
Ilya’s eyes eventually glide back into focus, stunned and shining. “I think this time was twins,” and it’s half a joke, a life raft Ilya often throws out. Ilya can take refuge wherever he needs.
“Triplets,” Shane counters, grateful for the pleased smile that cracks over Ilya’s face.
They shower together under water that’s warmer than Shane likes but just right for Ilya. He’s used to it now, the way Ilya Velcro’s onto him, and if Shane misses some spots or leaves a sud unrinsed it’s not the end of the world.
They bundle back into bed, skin-to-skin, Ilya’s head cradled against his chest as he finger-paints over the mark blooming onto Shane’s chest.
“You will have bruise.”
“Good.” Shane hoards them all but this will be a trophy-piece. He stretches out, sore all over with the promise of dead-weight sleep and the days-long echo of Ilya inside him. Maybe pain isn’t weakness leaving the body. Maybe it’s just proof he can give Ilya what he needs.
There’s a peace etched on Ilya’s face that Shane would freeze there if only he could. This is a thing he’s learning, that he can’t fix everything. He can’t fix a lot of things, but if Ilya finds any comfort in Shane’s body it’s his to take. At least Ilya knows he won’t let go.
“I love you, Shane.”
Shane’s halfway into the warm bubble-bath of sleep when Ilya murmurs, “I hope they have your freckles.”
~
“Do you want more pudding?”
Ilya is nested on the couch, the only word for the overwrought pile of blankets and pillows Shane had coddled around him when he’d gotten him back from the clinic.
Ilya shakes his head. “I’m going to miss my hole.” He pokes gingerly at his swollen lip before Shane gently pushes his hand down.
“The doctor said not to mess with the stitches.”
No one kisses the cup with all their teeth intact. Ilya’s tooth had finally given up the good fight, and today he’s the proud owner of a shiny new titanium implant. It’s the most routine surgery imaginable but Shane is still unspeakably happy to see him home and surrounded by every mushy food item Shane could think of.
“Hooole,” Ilya croons, giggling and flopping his head back and doing the little shoulder shimmy he does when he’s getting a good snack. Shane gently scratches through his hair, smiling. Ilya’s home and safe and he’s high as a fucking kite on oxycodone.
“I like your hole.” Ilya’s grin is still lop-sided from the local anesthetic.
“Applesauce?” Shane offers, food being the only recourse to distract Ilya when he can’t kiss him. A week is a small sacrifice to avoid infection but they will both bear it like a cross.
“I made mashed potatoes, too.”
Ilya goes so still and serious that Shane freezes, certain something has gone wrong, that he’s having delayed cardiac arrest from the sedation, that Shane had given him the wrong pain meds and he’s about to have a stroke, that –
“You will be very good mamochka, Shane.”
Shane peels open an applesauce and stirs it, savoring the tiny fireworks in his chest.
~
Shane Hollander makes little girls cry.
“They will not say this, Shane.”
He’d been so excited to do an event with Ilya. It’s a rare thing when they can be at least collegial in public, let alone remotely affectionate. The girls’ hockey thing isn’t even his event, it’s Ilya’s, and Shane had just gotten invited along for good publicity. Not that he isn’t happy to help – if he’s learned one thing from Hayden’s brood, it’s that little girls are possessed of a primal violence so vast it should be weaponized.
They’d been posing for pictures with two sisters from Halifax, each of them facing off against one of the girls. Ilya had looked so, so happy, pulling stupid faces in between takes and mugging for the camera.
Then Shane had turned on his blade and stick-slapped a five year old flat on her face. While it turns out she wasn’t hurt, the wail of abject suffering she loosed on the ice had made him sure she’d broken half the bones in her body and ruptured her spleen in the process.
“She is fine. And it was accident! Happens all the time.”
“There were cameras!”
“Will be funny story when she is big-deal goalie.”
Ilya’s driving them back to their hotel. Shane is so fucking sick of hotels. He’s sick of hotels and tinted windows and smiling enough but not too much when he’s within spitting distance of Ilya in public.
“I can’t deal with any more PR shit right now.”
The PR shit isn’t actually that bad right now, but Shane’s t-shirt is too tight and he’s thirsty and he can’t stop replaying the flash of horror on Ilya’s face when that girl's visor had thunked against the ice.
“This is not big deal. She will get ice cream cone and tell everyone at school she met famous hockey player. And also that you were there.” Ilya steals a glance at him as Shane sucks his teeth and pushes his sunglasses up his nose. “Ok,” Ilya adds quietly, shrugging as he makes the last left before their hotel.
“Drink.” Ilya presses a water bottle into his hand and Shane gulps it, sulking, that’s the only word for it.
The hotel lobby stinks like hothouse flowers and victory cigars. Shane picks at the label on his water bottle, pops the convex plastic over and over as they ride the elevator up, digs his thumbnail into the ridged cap as Ilya double checks that no one can see and opens their door with his key card.
Shane keeps his sunglasses on and his hat down, and both of those things are still on when Ilya slides the latch-lock on their door shut and slams him up against it.
“Finish this.” He nods at the water bottle in Shane’s hand, his arm bent over Shane’s head to block him in against the door. Shane drinks.
“Good.” Ilya takes the bottle and throws it over his shoulder, smiling tightly as it bounces across the floor. He does the same to Shane’s hat and sunglasses, ignoring Shane’s hiss of protest as his Ray Bans land somewhere under a button-tufted chair.
“Ilya, we need to – ”
“You need to shut the fuck up, Shane.”
Ilya’s arms are boxed in on either side of him, his big body crowding into Shane’s space until Shane can’t smell anything but Ilya. His face turns, involuntary, closer to Ilya’s armpit, like he can huff away the static that’s building up under his skin. Ilya’s hand closes over his jaw and it all runs out of Shane, one long sigh, better, it’s so much better as Ilya’s thumb and forefinger press down, pushing his mouth open as he shushes and drags his lips over Shane’s.
Then Ilya spits in his mouth and everything shuts the fuck up.
“Shirt off.” Ilya shakes his jaw before he releases it, rough and quick. Shane tugs his shirt over his head, awkward where Ilya isn’t giving him much room to move. Ilya’s bare-chested just as quickly and Shane’s fingers flex, so eager to touch him but he won’t.
Ilya doesn’t move, just holds his hands flat against the door by Shane’s head and rocks his hips forward, pressing them together. Shane is so fucking hard already.
“Pants.”
Shane shucks out of them, barely bothering to push them past his thighs as he takes his boxers right along with them. Ilya raises one pointed eyebrow and looks down between them, where Shane’s cock is swollen and grazing against the obvious bulge in Ilya’s jeans.
“You think I mean yours?”
He grabs Shane’s jaw again, tight enough to make Shane moan. Ilya keeps him tugged up, eyes on me, so Shane has to grope his way around Ilya’s belt buckle and his fly, dig a back-hand into the elastic of his boxer briefs. It’s tight and frustrating and Shane’s eyes roll back when Ilya’s cock finally brushes against his.
Shane’s knees start to fold, trigger-point ready to suck Ilya’s dick until he loses his voice, but Ilya just grips him mean by the jaw and keeps him pinned.
“No. You suck my dick later, as reward.”
Shane makes an ugly noise as Ilya shoves his jeans down enough to let him spread his legs and nudge his dick against Shane’s stomach.
“What, your hand is broken from hitting little child?”
“Oh, fuck you, Il-” is all he manages before Ilya slides three fingers into his mouth and Shane’s sucking them before his brain can catch up.
“Shh.” Ilya fucks his fingers into Shane’s mouth, far enough to make Shane gulp. He can be good. He scrabbles for Ilya’s cock, clumsy as he wraps a hand around it. A warm dribble of spit oozes from the corner of his mouth before Ilya catches it with his other hand.
“Now you are being good.”
Ilya reaches between them and strokes Shane’s dick, up to the tip and sliding back down. Ilya’s jaw works as Shane matches him, and Ilya doesn’t even look down as he spits, just locks his eyes on Shane and pushes his fingers deeper into Shane’s mouth. Shane moans, heat flaring under his skin as Ilya’s spit glides down their knuckles.
“You are being very good.”
Ilya works him faster, matching each stroke with the press of his fingers into Shane’s mouth. Shane makes it as loud as he can, wet and sloppy the way Ilya likes as he sucks at Ilya’s fingers and twists his wrist over the head of Ilya’s cock. He cranes his neck forward, begging Ilya’s hand deeper inside, his eyes swimming with latent tears and the filthy pride that he can barely remember his gag reflex any more, that he’s made himself so good for Ilya he can hold his breath and flex his throat and take it, take whatever Ilya gives him and pray for more.
“Fuck, Shane.”
He comes in Ilya’s hand and gasps a greedy breath, sore and shaky. Ilya barely slides his fingers out before he kisses Shane, pressing in closer to wrap his hand over Shane’s and stroke himself faster.
“Where do you want this?” Ilya’s breathing heavy, working his hand over Shane’s, quick and vicious. “Your mouth? Your face?”
“No.” Shane shakes his head and wrestles his hand free, taking a moment to appreciate the flare of Ilya’s nostrils, the pull of his neck as he holds himself, waiting. Shane tries to sink gracefully to the floor and manages a thudding collapse to his knees. He looks up at Ilya looming over him.
“Come on my tits.” Shane presses them together for all he’s worth.
“Fuck.” Ilya’s so fucking pretty when he smiles likes that. Ilya’s hand strips his cock, slick and dirty, webs of Shane’s come and spit and hopes and dreams slinking down to join Shane’s knees on the hotel carpet.
“Please, baby.”
Ilya paints him white.
~
“I do not think this would be bad on you. A little baby weight.”
Ilya’s still on top of him, warm and heavy against Shane’s back.
“Would be sexy.” He kneads at the curve of Shane’s hip, where there will be some new marks for Shane to forget-me-not his fingers over when they’re apart for the next few weeks. God, they’ll probably heal before they’re together again.
“I hate these pillows.”
Shane tries to tuck his head against his arm, fails to do anything his neck likes, and makes a frustrated noise into the mattress.
“Are you hungry?” Ilya asks.
“No.” Shane isn’t hungry. His dad would say he’s borrowing problems, but sometimes the future looms so large and uncertain over his head it eclipses everything, even the good things right in front of him.
“I’m sorry.” Shane rolls out from under Ilya and settles on his side. Ilya pushes himself up and nods down, frowning.
“I forgive you, Shane. For making me come so hard that my balls still hurt.”
“Stop it.” Shane still smiles.
“Then what are you sorry for?”
“For everything. That we can’t just. Be like everyone else.” It’s too much to say it all at once.
“Shane.” Ilya cups his hand against Shane’s cheek, so gentle Shane could cry. “I just licked my come off your tits. We are not like everyone else.”
Shane barks out a laugh. “I love you. So much.” Shane had thought the same thing when Ilya had spat it back into his mouth, because Ilya knows how to get his hands into the fertile soil of Shane’s heart and dig.
“I am sorry, too. I am sorry we have to be secret. I am sorry we have to wait for so long.” Ilya kisses him.
“But we will have all these things, ok? Big house and big parties and all of our friends will buy me presents because I fuck you without condoms.”
“Ilya.” Shane studies the easy smile on Ilya’s face. It’s all so much more complicated than that, but Ilya can just shrug it off. That’s the thing with Ilya. All that light inside him burns so bright it has to cast a shadow somewhere.
“I want that. One day. Even if I’m a terrible parent.”
“No.” Ilya shakes his head, all jest dropping from his expression. “You will be amazing. You are,” Ilya waves his hand, gesturing at some self-evident truth Shane can’t see. Shane raises his eyebrows, because even Ilya’s blinding faith in him can’t eclipse the number of times Shane has been resolutely terrible with children. Ilya ignores him and soldiers on.
“You make me feel like,” Ilya pauses, his brow knit together as he corrals his words, “like I deserve to be loved just because I exist. You love that I am better hockey player than you, and better looking, and more popular, and I think your mom kind of likes me better now.”
“She does not.”
Ilya shrugs. “But you also love me when I am sad. When I am not the best. When I am kind of fucked up.”
He presses his hand over Shane’s heart.
“I think anyone who is loved like this will grow up very lucky.”
And finally, it’s Shane’s turn to settle his head on Ilya’s chest, to count the steady bassline of his heartbeat and nose into the warm musk of his skin. He rests his thumb over Ilya’s cross, warm where it’s ever-present by Ilya’s heart. Ilya kisses his head and hums against him.
“But I think we should get dog first.”