Work Text:
Ilya Rozanov did not like the moon.
Well, that was not quite true. He was indifferent to it, mostly. It was a distant comfort in the night sky, and sometimes, looking up to its pale face in the bluest day delighted some small, childish part of him, like a curious boy finding a toy soldier misplaced among the building blocks. But mostly, the moon could disappear any day, for all he cared about it. His shots hit no harder when its face was full, his mood no darker when it was gone, and he knew himself well enough to understand that it was not some huge, faraway rock that pulled the tide of his life.
So no, he did not really like the moon. But he felt some strange kinship to it. The irresistible pull, caught between the flaming Sun and the fragile Earth. The constant, obsessive orbit around a single point, agonising to be closer, despairing to keep away. The darkness that flourished in the shadow, and all the things that bloomed when the Sun finally turned its gaze. The certainty that to come crashing down would bring destruction to the both of them.
Although he was luckier than the moon, in that regard. For all the influence and protection it cast on and around the Earth, the satellite could never touch the planet it cared for with such devotion. Ilya, at least, and perhaps there was something out there to thank for it, perhaps some space rock threading a cape of shadows over the world to allow him this blessing, Ilya could touch Shane. He could breach his orbital course around the puck to push his fingers into the hard curve of Shane's hips, the powerful muscles of his thighs, the delirious warmth of his mouth. He could kiss the very air out of his lips, clutch at the drumming of his heart underneath his breast, catch the roiling waves of his pleasure on his tongue. He could do all of this and more, because somehow he was born a little Russian boy and not a giant ball floating in space, tethered by gravity and longing.
Their movements were the same, though. Constantly in each other's way yet somehow never in each other's grasp, not quite, not wholly. Ilya shifting to pull Shane into his journey, like asking for a joint photoshoot, and then pushing away, as far as he could stand it, when the Sun came too close. When the real world came too close. Perhaps they should have kept rotating. Never crashed into each other.
Some revolutions, Ilya almost let himself believe that he would finally slip out of Shane Hollander’s orbit. That the gravity he was choking on would release its hold on him and let him drift away into the cold, empty space. Because whatever awaited him out there could not be worse than the crushing, suffocating tidal wave of want and impossibility that threatened to pull him under whenever their mouths collided. In Vegas, he’d felt as though the tether had loosened. In Sochi, he’d thought he’d managed to break away. Fuck, after Boston, after the apparition of a new, brighter moon in Shane Hollander’s sky, he’d almost believed the impact of the arrival had firmly knocked him out of trajectory and into the welcoming void. But of course, their cycle was inevitable. He’d find himself back into Shane’s pull night after night, however long this meant for them, drinking in the rising waters as if they were the one thing that kept him breathing.
Ilya looked up at the moon, cigarette smoke curling around his lips. Its thin crescent hung in the night sky like a blade, promising tomorrow and not quite yet at the same time. Swearing an oath as old as it was to shelter secrets and half-whispered truths for just a while longer, silently begging its charges to hold on until it came back, bearing a different shield to soften the flames of the Sun. Ever-constant, ever-changing. It was the one witness to Ilya's strays, self-inflicted betrayals and indulgences he shouldn't crave, and it was no witness at all. No voice to cry his shame to the world. No hands to pry his heart open.
Maybe its core was as full of the planet as Ilya's was filled with Shane. His Earth. Strong, kind, impossibly hot Shane Hollander. The tether between them was merely gravity, and it was as foolish to try to resist it as it hurt to do so. Ilya wanted many things, but severing this thread was, selfishly, not one of them. Selfishly, because Ilya wanted to hide him away from the rest of the world into their cocoon of shadows, keep him to himself, while the rest of the world needed Shane Hollander just as much as Shane Hollander needed it. As much as it hurt him. As cruelly as it waited for him to slip up and loosen the wick that would set him on fire.
The moon could not stand without the Earth. The Earth would shatter without the Sun. And Ilya Rozanov would lose himself without Shane Hollander.
Ilya Rozanov hated the moon.