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It is Sunday afternoon when Shane’s label maker goes missing.
Correction: it is Sunday afternoon when Shane realises his label maker is missing. This means that it could have technically disappeared any time between now and when he last used it—so Thursday night.
There are only a few suspects. Three, really. Two of those lack opposable thumbs. Shane does not need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.
The label maker had been a sensible purchase, okay? Shane meal preps, mostly for himself and sometimes for Ilya, when he’s feeling up to it. He uses the label maker to, well, label what food has gone in which container, plus macros, and then puts a little sticker with the date as well. Sure, they are two grown men and thus eat accordingly, so the food never really sticks around until it goes off—but it’s just more comfortable for Shane to know what needs to be eaten first. Food has been great for him in the last few years, and he doesn’t want to fuck that up by eating something spoiled.
Ilya had laughed at him when he first saw Shane label the food, in true Ilya fashion, and then had kissed Shane’s cheeks and his forehead. It’s very you, kotik, he’d reassured Shane. Very sensible, is my Shane. And then he’d fucked Shane, folded forward across the kitchen counter, because there’s apparently nothing that gets him going quite like ‘sensible Shane’. Not that Shane had complained. It’s always a good day when he comes so hard that his eyes cross a little. And he’d deep cleaned the kitchen afterwards.
Since, Ilya has never mentioned the label maker again, just had huffed in soft amusement whenever he saw Shane neatly label his rows of tupperwares.
Which makes it ever the more mystifying why he’s suddenly appropriated the thing for himself.
But for once in his life, Shane is comfortable to sit back and relax. How much trouble can one person get themselves into with a label maker, anyway?
--
A thin, white rectangle is stuck to the top of one of the cushions of the couch. Shane squints at it, wondering if it’s a piece of trash or a stray sticker from the fruit he brought in yesterday. When he walks closer, he can’t stop the snort that escapes his nose. Couch, Ilya has aptly labeled the couch.
Shane can’t help but wonder if he has married a three year old.
Pork is stretched out on the other couch, his whip-thin tail lazily flicking when Shane makes eye contact with him. His little paws are spread out in front of him, so that Shane can see every little joint and tendon. Other people have called Pork a grotesque abomination (Ilya) and containing all of the right parts but somehow still not looking remotely like a cat (Hayden), but Shane thinks that Pork is just a perfect cat. When he jumps, all of his muscles bunch and then stretch, and when he lies down like this, a little flap of his tummy bunches charmingly underneath his little cat armpit. It had been love at first sight at the pound when Shane had gone to look for a cat. He wasn’t even supposed to pick one yet, just had gone to peruse. And then: Pork.
“You have a weird dad,” Shane tells Pork, putting his hands on his hips.
As always, Pork gives Shane a loving gaze, resting his chin on his paws. He’s got bright bug eyes, a bit too big for his skull, and when he yawns, it reveals the little snaggle tooth that sticks out from under his lip.
With careful fingers, Shane peels the sticker from the couch. It’s really tiny, a rectangle, one of the edges a bit crooked from where Ilya had clearly fought with the label maker to tear off the little strip. Somehow, that makes Shane’s heart seize a bit in his chest: the thought of his husband with those broad hands, callused fingers, fighting with the label maker. And winning, clearly, proudly showing off his first label.
Shane hesitates for a bit, the label still stuck to the top of his finger. Then he walks to the kitchen and grabs one of the ceramic bowls from the cupboard, the one Shane uses to make smoothie bowls and Ilya to eat his shitty, sugary cereals. He unsticks the label and drops it into the bowl, nodding proudly at himself.
If he had the label maker right now, he’d label the bowl Ilya’s labels. But he doesn’t, so he just puts the bowl on top of the fridge and goes in search of his husband.
--
Over the next few days, it kind of becomes a game: Ilya will label really banal stuff for Shane to find, and then Shane will find the label and add it to his bowl. So far, he’s collected, on top of the couch label: keybowl, standing lamp, fridge door handle, Shane’s skin care 1/134 items, and evil overlord’s drool dish (stuck to Pork’s water bowl).
They don’t . . . really talk about it? It’s harmless. Shane knows Ilya is not doing it to tease him or anything—Ilya just thinks he’s hilarious. Most of the time, Shane agrees, if in the privacy of his own head. Ilya doesn’t need a bigger head.
It’s all just a big game of cat and mouse, Shane has found. In his own way, Ilya enjoys the thrill of the chase. He enjoys being a bit quicker than Shane is, leaving a label and then acting like nothing has happened. Over time, it’ll bleed out again when Ilya finds the next way to wreak havoc. The whole cycle will repeat.
This is not the sneaking around that Shane knows so thoroughly, though. He could tip Ilya into bed and sit on his lap until the other would confess to his crimes, but where’s the fun in that? Shane enjoys seeing his husband like this, giggle-flushed and proud, a joke that only the two of them are in on.
And Ilya is considerate too, in his own Ilya manner. Shane wouldn’t have it any other way, either. When he says that he is going to prepare his food, the label maker mysteriously appears again, lying on the kitchen counter like it’s never been anywhere else. And when Shane’s loading the stacks of tupperware into the large fridge, double doors because Ilya insisted on a big, American fridge, he hears the patter of feet and then the clicking of Anya’s nails against the floorboard. When he turns around, the label maker is gone.
Shane blows out a breath through his nose. He tiptoes over where the kitchen bleeds into the living room, and peers around the corner. Ilya is sitting on the couch, fiddling with the label maker, while Anya sits at his feet, her little tail stirring the material of their rug. “Where shall we leave a label this time, baby Anya?” he murmurs to her, in Russian. “Shall we tease your other papa, hm?”
She whuffles, a soft little sound, and Ilya reaches forward to pet her between the ears. When he grins, the corners of his eyes crease. Smile lines, Shane knows. He hopes that he can make Ilya smile enough that, one day, the lines will become permanent. He figures that he has enough years left to make that a reality.
For now, he just leaves them to it. He figures that, sooner or later, he’ll find the next label.
--
The next label turns out to be at hockey training. They have an early morning skate practice, non-optional, so Shane pets Pork behind the ears and then sits down behind the wheel while Ilya carries their bags to the car. It’s spring, the air still crisp at the time of year in Ottawa, and the whole world still seems to be frozen over, not yet thawed. Before long, though, the trees swaying on the side of the road will bud their first leaves, grass shifting from brown to green, and everything will look entirely different.
At least the road is clear, not that much traffic despite the morning time, and they reach Canadian Tire Centre in no time at all. Shane backs into a parking spot, kisses Ilya firmly on the mouth, and then makes his way over to the rink. There is no reason for them to be late or mushy right now. A time and place for everything, just like how Shane likes his life to be.
“Good luck today, captain,” he tells his husband, as they push in through the back door.
Ilya gives him a tiny smile, mischief in the corner of his mouth. That’s his tell, Shane thinks, dismayed, as Ilya purses his lips into a pout. “You too, Hollander.”
A cold shiver races down his spine. Ilya has definitely done something. But what?
The answer comes soon enough, in the dressing room. Shane sets down his bag in his cubby and starts taking out his gear. The tiny white rectangle stuck to the zipper—reading zipper—makes it quite clear enough what he is looking at.
Next to him, Barrett whistles between his teeth as he stares at the tiny label stuck to Shane’s shin guard. “Damn Hollander,” he says. “Forgot which is what?”
Shane wishes he could sink through the floor right now, pulling more of his items out of his skate bag. Ilya has taken it upon himself, clearly, to label every single piece of Shane’s kit. Skate (L) and Skate (R), stick tape, not rainbow :( and even mouth guard stuck to his mouth guard. Shane is going to have to put that in his mouth. Shane weighs the pros and cons of punching Ilya in front of all of their team mates, then comes to the grim (and vaguely horny) realisation that Ilya would probably be into that. His fucking entire hockey stick, innocently leaning against the side of his cubby, is covered in labels just saying stick. There must be at least two dozen of them, and Shane is going to have to peel them all off before training while Ilya watches him, proud of himself and the havoc he wreaked. This was premeditated, Shane realises, by that delightful asshole he calls his husband.
On the side, he can see said husband lose his shit, tears damn near in his eyes as he tilts his head back, body shaking with the force of his cackles. He looks fucking gleeful. Shane has never met anyone who makes him want to strangle and kiss him in equal measure.
Delicately, he picks his way over to Ilya.
“You’re going to regret this tonight,” he murmurs, leaning closer to the other so that his breath tickles the fine curls that droop in front of his ear. He can hear some of their teammates heckle them behind him, but he’s past caring about that right now.
Ilya’s eyes darken to something appreciative. “Is that a promise?”
“Work hard today and we’ll see,” says Shane.
That night, after what was indeed a successful training, Ilya clearly emboldened by what Shane had promised him, Shane rides Ilya until Ilya cries. Every time he’s about to come, his hands tightening on Shane’s hips, Shane slows down. In the end, Ilya has tears beading from the corners of his eyes, his face screwed up in pleasure, and Shane is so hard that he nearly sees stars when he comes. His climax causes him to tighten around Ilya, which sets off the other man with a hoarse shout of Shane’s name and a stream of slurred Russian.
“Are you going to change your ways?” Shane asks afterwards, collapsing next to Ilya, sweaty and fucked out.
“If it gets you to act like that,” says Ilya, licking his lips, “I don’t think so.”
On one hand, Shane has half a mind to hunt down that damn label maker (there’s only so many places it can be in this house, after all) and rip it in half. On the other hand, he really would like to see what Ilya comes up with next. For now, he decides to lie low and take it as it comes. Who knows, maybe Ilya will surprise him.
--
Pork Hollander, Shane will admit to himself, is not really a model worthy cat. He’ll probably never make it to the cover of a bag of cat food or one of those posts about those fish oils that promise healthy, glowing coats, and definitely won’t be the face of those car commercials that liken the sleek body of their car to a feline trotting along, bushy tail sweeping behind them. Pork is naked, smells kind of off from time to time, and when he grooms himself he can really make the grossest, wettest sounds with his little sandpaper tongue.
But he thinks Pork is cute, and that’s what counts. When he first stared at Shane from that cage at the pound, letting out the tiniest, most pathetically wet meow, Shane had been immediately sold. Shane is not really an impulsive person, not if you don’t count this whole thing with Ilya, but he’d been at the front desk signing release papers on Pork before he knew what was happening.
Of course, Pork is a really stupid name. Shane agrees with Ilya on that. But the cat had come with the name, and Shane thinks it would probably confuse him if they were to change it. No matter if Ilya says that it looks like the cat does not have enough brain cells to have an opinion on his name.
Alas, Pork and Ilya did not become the fast friends that Shane and Pork are. It just takes time, sometimes, Shane knows. Cats are particular creatures.
When Ilya comes to bed that night with a scratch on his arm, four clean lines that have already mostly scabbed over, Shane does not stare at him with judgement, no matter what Ilya might claim later. But he does raise his eyebrows.
“Shut up,” Ilya grumbles.
“Did you try to make friends again?” Shane says, his voice a soft coo. He wraps his arms around his husband’s shoulders and presses a kiss to the corner of Ilya’s mouth. “You’ll get there one day, my Ilyushenka.”
Ilya shudders against him. “Something like that,” he says, and then leans forward to claim Shane’s mouth more thoroughly.
Shane quickly gets lost in the push and pull of him and his plush mouth, and the matter of Pork is pushed to the back of his mind. It’s crazy how Ilya’s touch alone is enough to wipe all of the thoughts from his mind. Crazy and also addicting. Surging into the kiss, his hands tighten around Ilya’s arms, a frisson of pleasure running up his spine. Before long, they are rutting against each other, horny teenagers style, and the satisfying orgasm that follows wipes any questions from Shane’s mind. He falls asleep after Ilya cleans them both off, sated.
The following morning, Shane is awake first, as he is so often. Spring has arrived to stay, the season winding up into a tight race to play offs. The sun is golden where it spills into the living room, falling across Pork’s naked back where he is perched on the top level of his bespoke cat tree (Shane got it fitted into the living room specifically, in the same colours as the rest of their house) and the white rectangle stuck to his back.
Eyes narrowing, Shane makes his way over. Pork goes easily when Shane picks him up, sagging into Shane’s hold like a willing sack of potatoes. Naked rotisserie chicken, reads the label stuck to his haunches.
Shane pinches the bridge of his nose between the fingers of his free hand. He stamps one foot against the floor. “Ilya!” he bellows, up the stairs. And then, again: “Ilya Rozanov!”
In his arms, Pork gives a sleepy twitch, but does not do more than flick his whiskers at the sound.
Luckily for Ilya, he is very attuned to Shane’s moods. He’d been slumbering when Shane left the bed, not asleep but not really awake either, but now he’s at the top of the stairs within a minute. With messy curls and swollen eyes, swollen mouth, he picks his way down the steps. His torso is still bare, sweatpants slung low on his hips. Shane refuses to be seduced by those hips.
“What,” he says, brandishing Pork like a weapon, “did you label our cat with?”
Ilya raises one eyebrow, then the other. A slow smile starts playing around his mouth, lighting up his entire face. “What?” he says, and he’s clearly fighting to keep his voice even. “You cannot read, my dearest Shane?”
Shane waves Pork at him. The cat allows it, swaying from Shane’s hand, the smelliest dumbbell in existence. “Do not call our son a naked chicken!”
“That thing is not my son,” says Ilya, immediately. “Our son would be lovingly crafted from our combined sperm. It would have your hotness and my ass. It would not look like whatever that is.”
“Just because he’s adopted does not mean he is not your son!” Shane frowns at him, using his free hand to cover Pork’s ears. “Just think about how sad he’ll be if he hears that you don’t consider him your real family.”
He is leveled with a flat look. “He’ll live.”
Realisation strikes Shane like a lightning strike, and he groans. “That is why you were scratched up yesterday! This is really what you want to risk getting an infection for, Ilya?”
Ilya shrugs. “Terror beastie was a bit faster than I thought he’d be. He’s built like a chicken nugget.”
Affronted, Shane gapes at him. “A chicken—a chicken nugget?” He places Pork back onto the cat tower, where said cat flops over onto his side with a little prrow! of a noise, then starts noisily licking the space between his toes. Shane quickly tugs the label free from his skin, noticing to his relief that it is not stuck that tightly. Then he starts advancing on Ilya, who always allows him to come closer easily with lidded eyes, defenses down when it comes to Shane.
“I’ll show you chicken nugget,” Shane mutters, which is the worst comeback ever, probably, and then slaps Ilya’s bare chest with the flat of his palm. The label that he had been cradling in his palm sticks to Ilya’s pec, just above his nipple, wonder above wonder. And Shane’s hand leaves a print against Ilya’s palm skin, the width of his palm and his chubby fingers.
Neutrally, Ilya looks down at it. He hums. And then he grabs Shane by the hips and hauls him closer so that he can pick him up. Squealing in a very manly way, Shane wraps his legs around Ilya’s waist and allows himself to be carried up the stairs. If all of that makes Ilya want to ravage him, Shane can hardly say no.
And Pork and Anya live downstairs anyway. What they don’t know cannot hurt them.
(The naked rotisserie chicken label makes it to Shane’s bowl. Shane did not put it there, but he can make a guess as to who did. He should really throw it out, in solidarity with Pork, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. It’s—whatever.)
--
Ilya’s obsession with the label maker continues. It’s probably his longest fixation, not counting Shane, and though he finds increasingly creative ways to make Shane blush and squirm, he also manages to make Shane fall more and more in love with him. Which he did not think was possible, but here is Ilya Rozanov, smashing through everything Shane ever thought conceivable.
One night, after dinner that Ilya has cooked—pelmeni and blini with sour cream and salmon—they undress each other with vigor. Shane is not surprised that it has come to this point: he’s been ready to have Ilya right then and there from the moment Ilya had told him to sit down at the kitchen island after he came home from a meeting with the team’s physiotherapist, a dish towel slung over his shoulder while he folded the Russian dumplings with practised ease.
Now, though, as Ilya steps out of his trousers, Shane’s eyes drift towards his waist. There is a white, by now familiar, rectangle stuck to the waistline of his boxers. Property of Shane Hollander. Below that, he’s managed to wrangle an arrow from the label printer, clearly pointing to where his dick is tenting the fabric.
“Did you plan this?” Shane asks, stepping forward and pointedly jabbing his thumb into Ilya’s hipbone.
“Is not my fault that I am so fuckable,” says Ilya, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I just knew that my husband would not be able to resist me.”
Shane groans, and drops to his knees, pulling the boxers along with him as he goes. He takes some time to peel the sticker off the fabric and very carefully sticks it to the space below Ilya’s navel. The arrow still points to what belongs to Shane. And he knows how to work what’s his, grinning in delight around Ilya’s cock in his mouth as Ilya’s hands tangle in his hair. Turns out that Ilya knows how to work him in return. He finishes in Shane’s mouth; Shane swallows it all, sticks out his tongue like a good boy. Ilya looks like he’s been punched in the stomach.
Other times, though, Ilya is so sweet that Shane can hardly believe that this gentle person decided to fall for him in return. He makes Shane’s smoothie exactly how Shane likes it, despite the faces he pulls the entire time, and then labels the bottle in it with smoothie belonging to the most beautiful husband ever. He has to print it on two separate labels.
Shane takes the smoothie with him to the commercial shoot Farah has booked for him, and enjoys the gentle ribbing the stylist team gives him for it. He snaps a photo of the bottle in between shots, posts it to his Instagram, and scrolls through the flood of notifications that immediately comes in.
I must be the lucky one, he has written in the caption. Smoothie made by the most thoughtful husband ever.
That night, they don’t even make it to the bedroom. Ilya lets Anya out into the garden, and Pork makes himself scarce as soon as he advances on him, skin wrinkling as if he is trying to fluff himself up in defense. Then, they fuck on the living room rug, fast and hard, and Ilya marvels out loud at how flexible Shane still is as he folds Shane’s legs over his shoulders. It was not a bad idea to keep a bottle of lube in every room of their house, Shane supposes, and then thinks nothing much at all as Ilya finds his prostate with deadly precision.
Some things can not be labeled. Shane’s love for Ilya is so big that he cannot even put it into words. With Ilya crouched over him, skin flush with pleasure and eyes wide and blue, he thinks that the other might feel the same. It is a heady rush.
--
Early morning. Shane peels himself away from Ilyas’s chest, though not before pressing the softest of kisses to the top of his cheekbone, and blindly stumbles into comfortable clothes. The sweater might be Ilya’s or it might be Shane’s—by now, there’s really no use in making the distinctions anymore. From the smell of it, though, when Shane brings the collar up to his nose, Ilya wore it last. It makes Shane smile.
Anya is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs when he makes it down, her tail wagging quietly. Watery grey light flushes inside through the windows, the sun not up yet but teasing the edge of the horizon through the clouds.
Shane grabs Anya’s leash from the hook next to the door and she comes tottering over, nails tapping against the floor. When he couches down to fasten the clip to her collar and stroke his nails across the line of her spine, he notices a label pressed into the wiry curls between her ears.
The world’s goodest girl.
Rolling his eyes, Shane carefully peels the label away, making sure he doesn’t tug on Anya’s fur, and then drops it into the bowl. “Your daddy is so silly,” he says, stepping into his running shoes. “But he is right.”
She does, expectedly, not respond to that. Shane does privately acknowledge Ilya’s claim that she is a very smart dog, so she probably agrees with Shane’s judgement.
The walk they take around the neighbourhood is a small one, just enough for Anya to get her wiggles out and do her business. In that regard, they are both quite similar to each other: both eager to get back to Ilya as soon as possible. And Shane can’t even fault her for that either, because morning cuddles in the Hollander-Rozanov house are the things he used to dream of when he was younger and not quite sure of himself yet. Even Pork gets to indulge, which he does with great fervour, if only because both him and Ilya are still too sleepy to be antagonistic to one another. And Pork’s attempts to suffocate Ilya by lying on his chest—Ilya’s words, never Shane’s—have at least become less successful since his diet started working.
After fifteen minutes, they make it back to the house. Shane toes off his shoes and carries Anya up to the second floor while she licks his chin, Pork winding around his legs with a sleepy sort of disgruntlement that he carries with grace. When he slides back into bed, Ilya makes a quiet, sleepy kind of noise, but settles again almost immediately.
Almost quietly, the world starts waking up around them. The sun wins it from the clouds, spilling golden light through the windows. Shane, tucked up against Ilya’s side with his nose pressed into the space between his shoulder and neck, Anya curled up in a little ball behind the small of his back, notices nothing of it.
--
Ilya’s good days far outnumber his bad days. That’s probably why it seems to hit him so hard whenever he does have a bad day.
Shane ducks out early that morning, a photoshoot on the other side of town. He leaves Ilya asleep in the bed, pressing a kiss to Ilya’s bare shoulder, and then arranges the blanket around Ilya so that he doesn’t wake up too cold.
When he makes it back to the house, so late in the afternoon that it is almost evening already, Ilya is still in bed. And so are Anya and—surprisingly—Pork.
Ilya barely stirs when Shane pushes into the bedroom again. The only sign of life coming from him is the flutter of his eyelashes and the rhythmic way he is stroking Pork, which the cat seems to allow, probably because he can also tell that Ilya is doing so well. In fact, the cat seems to be leaning into the touch, a small but decisive purr rumbling from his chest.
“Hey,” says Shane, quickly toeing out of his socks and rounding the bed so that he can brush Ilya’s curls away from his face. “Hey.”
A shift in the blankets. Ilya’s eyes flick towards Shane, sadness clouding the blue of his irises to a stormy grey. He lets out a low sound, something along the lines of a sigh, and Shane’s heart wrenches in his chest at the mournful tone it carries. He cups Ilya’s face in his palm, thumb against the corner of his mouth, and leans forward so that he can press their foreheads together. For a moment, they just breathe each other in, in the stillness of the room, heartbeats matching. Ilya’s breathing slows down; Shane hums, grateful.
Then Ilya twitches, his hand reaching out to the side. “Anya,” he says, and nothing else.
“I’ll take her out,” Shane reassures him. He turns to the wiry dog, still curled up on Ilya’s side, a determined look to her little face. “Give her some food and kisses.”
Ilya’s eyes squeeze closed. “Bad dad.”
Shane’s chest caves in like someone has stuck a knife between his ribs, aimed for his heart. He brings up his other hand to Ilya’s face so that he can tilt his face up, forcing their eyes to meet even if it makes his own breathing speed up. “Anya loves you as much as you love her,” he says, with a fierceness he believes in. “She does not mind staying with you. And I am here now, so I will take care of her, and then come back for you, okay?”
“‘Kay.”
Before Shane leaves, he grabs Pork and places him on Ilya’s chest. The cat settles with a little grumpy noise, his tail flicking. Ilya gives him the stink eye, though he does not shoo Pork away. “Pressure therapy,” says Shane, proud of himself.
As he slips out of the room, Anya at his heels, he turns around to look at his husband one last time. He is petting Pork again, rhythmic strokes. The cat has closed his bug eyes in bliss.
When Ilya had labeled Anya as the world’s goodest girl, he had not been lying. Shane lets her out in the garden, where she immediately does her business and then sniffs around the bushes a little bit. She comes back to him when Shane calls for her, and does not make a fuss when he leaves her alone downstairs with a bowl of food.
He makes it back to their bedroom probably twenty-five minutes later. Ilya has emerged from his blanket cocoon a little bit more by that point; something embarrassed pulls at his mouth when he makes eye contact with Shane across the room.
Shane picks up Pork and slings him over one shoulder. The cat makes a dismayed noise when he is plucked away, as if he’d actually done a one-eighty on Ilya in the thirteen hours Shane had been gone. It wouldn’t surprise him, in all honesty. There is a magnetism to Ilya, an attraction that cannot be denied even by the hockey players around them. He did not become captain of their team without his charisma, bucketfulls of it.
“Sorry, Pork Hollander-Rozanov,” he whispers in the cat’s ear as he goes. “Daddy needs to talk to your papa, okay? I’ll give you extra salmon treats tonight.”
Pork, being Pork, does not respond to that verbally, but he does seem to relax in Shane’s arms.
With everything taken care of, Shane goes back to Ilya. To him, a natural course of action, like how rivers run to the sea. Ilya is waiting for him, and something in his expression shifts and cracks when Shane crosses the bedroom to crawl into bed beside him.
“You did not text me,” Shane whispers, tracing the curve of Ilya’s jaw with his finger. “You could have told me that you were having a hard time.”
Ilya shrugs once more. “I did not want to bother you.”
“You could never bother me, moy lyubimyy,” Shane says, immediately. “You are my stars and my sun, and I could never tire of you. If you are having a hard time, I hope you’ll tell me. So that I can do for you whatever you need me to do.”
Pensive silence. Ilya exhales. “Okay.”
Shane rolls onto his side, lifting his leg so that he can seat himself across Ilya’s hips. A grounding touch, but also a way for him to reach over to the nightstand. He’d spotted something there, when he’d carried Pork out of the room. Something important.
Now, Shane expertly works the label maker as he prints out label after label. He attaches them to every part of exposed skin he can reach, first leaving a kiss there and then pressing down the sticky rectangle as he says the words out loud. My husband, below his eye. Brave, on his collarbone. The strongest man I know, on the swell of his bicep. My guiding light, across his heart. Who inspires me every day, on his chestbone. A reason for me to keep going, across the back of his hand. Label after label he prints, the gear of the label maker whirring as he punches out letter after letter with deadly precision.
After the third or fourth label Shane sticks to him, Ilya seems to come to life again, a flower blooming. A flush starts high on his cheekbones, spills down to his pale chest. “Shane,” he says, almost like a prayer. “Shane.”
Shane drops a kiss to the bridge of his nose, the ridge of his eyebrow. “You deserve this,” he murmurs. “I’ll remind you, over and over, every day. As much as you need it to believe it.”
Ilya’s eyes well up with unshed tears.
“There is no me without you,” says Shane, fiercely. “I love you, moy lyubimyy. And I’d do it again and again.”
“I love you too,” Ilya gasps. “So much.”
They fall to each other at dizzying speeds. Ilya is sweaty, so the labels don’t stick to his skin perfectly. Shane does not mind, ignores the feeling of plastic sliding between their bodies as he leans down to kiss Ilya firmly on the mouth.
By the end of it, Shane has not fixed Ilya. There's nothing to fix: this is just who he is, and Shane married him to stick together through thick and thin. But Ilya is smiling something small and soft, and pressing into Shane’s hug like it is second nature to him, their bodies fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle. Shane could not ask for more.
--
The following morning, Shane goes to the bathroom to find that Ilya has stuck all of the labels to the outside edges of the mirror above the sink. Shane blinks at his reflection, surrounded by the loving phrases, and smiles to himself. The labels will probably leave sticky smears by the time Shane will peel them off, but for now, he can leave them up. It’s good for Ilya to be reminded of these truths over and over again. This is only the least of what he deserves.
--
Sometimes, Ilya fucks Shane exactly like he wants it, deep and hard and so satisfying he thinks he might die from it. And sometimes, they make love, slow and pleasurable and so sweetly that Shane might, again, drown himself in the pleasure of it.
Now, it is like that second thing. Ilya had manhandled Shane onto the bed, had opened him up on four fingers until Shane was begging and pleading for it, and had then slid home with gentle but constant pressure. Shane’s dick is hard and flushed against his stomach, untouched, and every inch of Ilya sliding home—because he would live inside of Shane, if that was possible, build his house there—sets of fireworks behind his closed eyelids. Ilya likes it like this, which Shane knows without Ilya having to tell him, because missionary is not boring. It allows the two of them to pant into each other’s mouths without having to contort their bodies into weird angles (thirty-one has not been kind on Ilya’s hips and Shane’s knees) and it also means that Ilya can see every micro-expression as it crosses Shane’s face.
Shane is already close to bursting when Ilya finally bottoms out. He actually has to reach between their bodies and grab his dick firmly around the base so that he doesn’t shoot off early, something Ilya notices and comments on only with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
“Shut up,” says Shane, with less than half of the heat he’d intended to put behind it. Maybe one-third of it. “And fuck me.”
“Your wish is my command, moy printsessa,” Ilya murmurs, and starts doing just that.
It’s going to be one of those nights, Shane notices, almost immediately. The one where he’ll be crying through his orgasm, and Ilya will be holding him, kissing his blushing cheeks as he hammers Shane’s prostate with deadly precision. His toes curl into the bedding below them. He can’t wait.
His orgasm, when it hits him, hits like a fucking punch to his gut. A bullet striking the soft parts of him. He howls as he clenches down around Ilya, cock spurting out stream after stream of come as Ilya works him through it. Ilya starts pulling out, but Shane locks him in place with his legs, curling them around Ilya’s hips and locking his ankles together. The pain of it is only bliss.
Ilya comes inside of Shane with a string of Russian swears, and it causes Shane’s eyes to roll back into his head. If he hadn’t just come and wasn’t, you know, thirty-one years old, he’d think his dick would have given a valiant effort to go again.
This time, he does allow Ilya to draw back, his softening cock slipping out of Shane’s ass along with a few blobs of come. Shane can feel them run down the back of his thighs. This will become dirty in about thirty seconds flat, but for now, he enjoys the casual possessiveness of it. Especially when Ilya starts rubbing it into his skin, almost thoughtfully.
But Ilya also notices when Shane starts twitching, a bit overstimulated. He presses a kiss against the corner of Shane’s mouth and then his bottom lip, and slips into the bathroom to grab a washcloth. First, he rubs himself down, and then Shane. It feels like heaven.
As he is falling asleep, warm, sated, soft, Shane feels how Ilya pulls away from him. Then he hears the whirr of a gear, a snap of a sound, something tearing. Through his lashes, he sees Ilya stand next to the dresser, hunched forward carefully. He probably has his tongue poking out between his lips too, just a flash of it, like he always does subconsciously when he is focusing on something. Shane’s so in love with him that he could burst with it. He spins his wedding ring around his finger and smiles to himself.
Two beats later, Ilya slides into the bed next to him again, cold thumb pressing against Shane’s hipbone. There’s a sticky touch there, one that Shane has grown almost familiar with over the last few days.
He turns to ask Ilya what he’s branded Shane with, but Ilya hushes him and presses a kiss to the swell of Shane’s bottom lip. It always does well at shutting him up. With a content sigh, Shane leans into the touch, threading his fingers through the short curls at Ilya’s nape, and smiling when Ilya hums against his mouth.
In the end, he forgets all about the label and doesn’t think about it until the next morning. And then, it is only because he spots his own reflection in the mirror after doing his business, still clad only in his boxers, and sees the white rectangle stuck to his hip.
Russian, spelled out in the Roman alphabet: Ilya’s beloved.
With a smile, Shane presses his thumb against the label, basking in the feeling of it. And then he goes back to bed, where Ilya is still curled up underneath the blanket, golden curls spilling against the pillow, just so that he can kiss him awake.