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Ilya remembers falling to the ground as a child. The dirt had ground into the palms of his hands, scraping the flesh, and he wonders now how it had not occurred to him to cry until he saw the blood bloom to the surface. HIs mother had held his hands as she cleaned them, murmuring soothing noises that meant everything and nothing.
He’d started to wail when he saw her take out the tweezers, and she’d shushed him in earnest then. It wouldn’t do to have his father come in and find him crying. He’d swallowed down the sound, but still flinched away as she moved to pick the small stones out of his skin.
Ilyusha, she had said, to keep it inside will hurt worse than taking it out.
He thinks of that now, the warm weight of Shane in his lap tethering him to the present as he rocks back and forth.
I like you a little too much. It felt like we were something. Would you want to be, if we could? Shane, with surgical precision, pulling stones from him until every part of him is scraped raw.
He buries his face further into the curve of Shane’s neck and releases a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
Shane pulls back and god, Ilya had half convinced himself for months that there was no way Shane Hollander was as beautiful up close as his memory had told him, but if anything, he’s even more exquisite. He hopes that when they put him under the earth one day it is the same rich brown of the eyes looking back at him. “Don’t apologize. I want to be here for you.” His thumb brushes just under Ilya’s eye. “I want to be here with you.”
Ilya is an open wound and he will bleed out soon. All he can do is take Shane’s face gently in his hands and kiss him, the sweetness of it melting with the salt of his tears. He feels as much as he hears Shane’s soft moan as he licks softly into his mouth. The hardening length of Shane’s cock presses into him and Shane pulls back with a hiss. Ilya freezes.
“What’s wrong?” He’s alarmed to hear that his voice sounds like a croak. “We don’t have to.”
“No,” Shane sighs, and Ilya shrinks inward. Shane’s eyes widen. “No! That’s not what I meant. It’s not that. I just don’t want to… take advantage of you, I guess. If you didn’t want it.”
“Hollander,” he rasps. He feels like he is crawling on broken glass. I have not ever stopped wanting it. “I have not ever stopped wanting you.”
It’s not what he meant to say and it’s too honest, too true a thing, but Shane’s eyes go molten and drop to his lips again. “Oh.” Then he’s surging forward, kissing Ilya like he’s going to eat him alive.
Do it, Ilya thinks wildly. I will be inside you however you let me.
***
Shane is laid out on the bed, naked and golden in front of him. Ilya knows there must be other works of art in the world as beautiful, but for the life of him, he cannot think of a single one as he bends his head reverently to take Shane’s nipple into his mouth.
“God,” Shane chokes out. “Ilya.”
The sound of his name from Shane’s lips knocks the breath clear from his lungs. “Say it again.”
“Ilya,” Shane murmurs. “Ilya, please.”
He cannot take this. His heart will stop any moment. But he moves down Shane’s body to lick a stripe up the length of his cock. The shuddering moan Shane lets out only spurs him on and he swallows him to the root, feeling his throat constrict around the head. His finger gathers some of the wetness dripping down from inside his mouth and he begins a slow circle around Shane’s hole as he works up a steady rhythm.
“I missed this.” Shane is panting now, his chest rising and falling like the rolling tide they watched at sunset. “I missed you. I missed you so fucking much.”
Ilya pulls off him with a cry and grasps the base of his cock, dangerously close to coming just from Shane’s words, the thought that Shane had felt even a fraction of what he had. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Shane’s thigh, not sure which of them is trembling. “Shane.”
He never forgets that Shane is just as strong as he is, but he is occasionally surprised when it’s displayed. Ilya is pulled up into a fierce kiss so forcibly that he’s sure there are strands of his hair between Shane’s fingers that have been pulled out at the root. He cannot bring himself to care when Shane growls at him. “In me. I need you in me.”
His ears are ringing. “Fuck. Okay.” He’s able to reach the bedside table and grab the bottle of lube, feeling worlds apart from using it the night before as he had gripped his own cock and spilled over his fist imagining almost exactly the scene before him. He drizzles the lube over his fingers and presses one just outside of Shane’s hole, slowly working it inside.
“Oh my god.” Shane’s voice is breathless. Ilya doesn’t know whether to look at his face or the place where his second finger is beginning to push in. Shane has always opened for him so beautifully. He thought he would never see this again. He wonders how he would have survived without it.
He is whispering in Russian against the crease of Shane’s thigh as he works a third finger into him. Sweetheart. Beautiful. Mine. Only thinks the words I love you, I’ve loved you so long I think it’s too deep in me to cut out. “Are you ready?”
“Please, yes.” His eyes are hooded and blown black with desire, and Ilya moves to get off the bed. Shane grabs his wrist. “Where are you going?”
“To get a condom, there are some in my bag, I have to–”
Shane shakes his head and pulls him close. The head of his cock catches on Shane’s rim and Ilya nearly goes cross eyed at the small whine Shane lets out as he lifts his hips, chasing the sensation again. “No. Fuck me. Now.”
“I will, I’m just–”
“I’m clean.”
Ilya goes still.
Neither of them draws breath. The only movement in the room is his crucifix swinging like a pendulum above Shane’s face. His eyes are wide open and trusting, a rabbit offering itself to a wolf. “Shane–”
“You get tested regularly, right? I did before coming here. I’m clean.” The line of Shane’s throat moves as he swallows hard. “We don’t need it.”
He cannot remember how to breathe or blink or swallow. All of his autonomous functions are taken over with a need so powerful that he’s lightheaded. “Are you sure?”
Shane nods. “Yes.” A pause. “Please.”
If Ilya has ever known how to deny Shane anything, he’s forgotten how. He leans down to capture his mouth in a kiss so harsh he can feel where his teeth are going to bruise his lips from the inside, a mark he can trace with his tongue later. He breaks away so can look down to see the head of his cock breach Shane’s rim and holy Jesus Christ, the feeling of his hole slowly pulling him into the heat of his body is like nothing he’s ever experienced in his life. He hears a wounded sound and realizes with a start that it’s coming from his own throat. He has badly misjudged which of them is the hunter and which of them is the prey.
The memory of Shane’s face the first time he had entered him has been permanently tattooed on his brain for years. There have been very few nights where the image of Shane arching back with his eyes closed in bliss has not haunted him, so many times that he knows it as well as his own. But this Shane, the one underneath him right this very moment, is going to be his undoing. It’s the same mouth open around a soundless cry, the same eyelashes fanning over freckled cheeks, the same shock of black hair against a pillow, but the expression is peaceful in a way that Ilya has never seen.
In comparison, Ilya is unraveling. He can feel every cell of his body vibrating on a frequency that threatens to dissolve him into an entirely different state of matter. Here, inside Shane with nothing between them, he is going to split apart and be made new, something beyond flesh.
“Does it–” Shane’s eyelashes flutter. “Does it feel different?”
The sound that leaves him is either a gasp or a laugh. “Yes.”
“Is it good?”
This must have been how it felt to take my first breath the day I was born. “So good.”
Shane’s answering smile is sweet and syrup slow. “Ilya.”
Ilya’s ribcage is going to crack from the inside out. “Shane.”
There is no oxygen making it to his brain right now, he’s certain. His thrusts are slow but he can already feel the telltale pressure at the base of his spine, and Shane’s every breath and moan lands on his skin like a spark. If he doesn’t pause for a second, this is going to be over very soon. In desperation, he tries to pull away but Shane pulls him in deeper and wraps his legs around him. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I have to,” Ilya gasps, “I’m too close, I have to–”
The hand that had been gripping the sheets reaches up to grip Ilya by the jaw, and he falls silent at the feral look on Shane’s face. His eyes are fever bright. “I want to feel you in me when I leave here. Give it to me.”
The last fraying thread of Ilya’s restraint snaps.
He grips Shane behind his knees and folds him in half, fucking deep into the hot clutch of him so hard that his vision blurs at the edges. A torrent of Russian words break the dam of his gritted teeth and he cannot stop them.
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me, I’m going to die inside of you one day because I can’t find the strength to let you go and save us both, don’t ever ask me to let go again–” and then he’s coming, spilling into the place where he's buried to the hilt, forgetting every word he knows in any language except Shane, Shane.
The sound of where their bodies meet is slick and obscene and Ilya is crazed with it. Shane whimpers, grabbing the back of his neck so hard that Ilya is sure he’s left fingerprints. “Ilya, oh my god, I can feel it, oh–” He breaks off on a gasp and comes, untouched, his release spurting warm between them. The sight feels so much like a miracle that Ilya thinks for one brief, wild moment that there must be something like a God after all.
He hopes the wet feeling on his face is just sweat.
His movements slow to a gentle grind as Shane comes back down to earth, his eyes dreamy and unfocused. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Shane’s fingertips reach up to touch his cheek, feather light and delicate. Ilya turns his head to kiss them. “I know we’ll need to clean up but can we stay like this for a minute? Just for a minute.”
“Of course.” I would stay just like this for the rest of my godforsaken life if I could. “As long as you need.”
***
“Wow,” Shane surveys the room sheepishly. “We kinda wrecked this place.”
“Mm, yes. I will tip housekeeping very well.” He is reclining on the bed, his fingers tracing lazy circles on Shane’s kneecap. Shane is already dressed again and he knows the clock is winding down.
“Feels like I should chip in,” grins Shane. “Considering.”
“I am too much of a gentleman for that.”
“Fuck off, you absolutely are not,” Shane huffs out a laugh. He puts a hand over where Ilya is touching his knee. “But maybe next time we can do this in my room, to be fair.”
Next time. The words land like a benediction. “Next time.”
Shane sighs. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
Ilya feels the squeeze of Shane’s hand before he stands. Shane looks unsure for a moment that passes so quickly he can’t be sure he didn’t imagine it, but then he bends to kiss Ilya once, twice, so tenderly that it aches. He walks to the door, turns around for a second. “What?”
“Nothing.” I am still dripping out of you. I want to be in you all the time, the way you’re in me, down to the bone. “Good night, Shane.”
His answering smile is small and private, as if he can read Ilya’s mind. “Good night, Ilya.”
The door closes, and Ilya closes his eyes. When he falls asleep, he dreams of falling, but the ground never comes.