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The sky snows before it ever reaches the ground. December in the mountains is colder than the city—thinner oxygen, permafrost—and even when the janitor gets up early to turn on the heat, old pipes make stubborn work of warming up the hardwood floors. Ilya is eighteen. Ilya is eighteen and refuses to sleep in pyjamas or socks because nobody else does. Ilya is eighteen and pulling on his damp school uniform from yesterday to smoke outside; the moisture is sealed against his skin when he puts his coat on over it.
He traded a handful of regular cigarettes for a joint—not a fair swap by any means, but Ilya can be a good businessman when he tries. It’s all about the sell, the angle, and picking the right kind of boy who’s young enough to buy into his schtick but old enough to smoke. The snivelling kids are too scared to even loosen their ties. His lighter’s dying now and requires a lot of tender love and care to spark.
Outside, mid-December, even on a weekend, the freaky kid with bad hair and ugly glasses is out on a run. Ilya catches him through the window of the stairwell and out through the changing rooms, stale and peaty but leading to an obscure little corner of the property only he and a few others know about. The transferral of knowledge, especially esoterica about where wardens never check for cigarette butts and the padlock combinations in the kitchens, can be the difference between life and death out here. Nobody spoke about what they knew in his old school—being cagey kept you out of trouble for the most part, though the black market vodka was always cheaper and tasted way better.
He watches the freaky kid run for a while. Ilya smokes and reads sometimes, mostly set texts he wouldn’t bother to touch any other time, or listens to music if he remembers his CD player and has something worth listening to. Today, nothing. He tucks his knees up close in the shallow jut of a windowsill with a huge cabinet pressed against the interior pane. His feet have melted the snow around the reddish track. His breath is apparent, icy shards of it caught white on air, and he doesn’t stop—won’t stop—for another forty minutes or so. Occasionally he’ll lean down and touch his knees to catch a breath but the kid always gets up after.
For no reason whatsoever, Ilya signals him to come over. The kid runs another lap before he even considers approaching. Ilya knows almost nothing about him—he’s a weird sort with no friends and no enemies, likes to sit at the back of the classroom, eats on his own, that type. It’s an honourable strategy but altogether pointless since nobody ends up liking you and then you end up hanging yourself out of boredom or loneliness or whatever. It’s all the same.
Weird-hair-ugly-glasses approaches cautiously. He wrinkles his nose.
“Cold?” Ilya says, glancing at his shorts. He has sporty legs but, as far as Ilya knows, plays no sports. “It is cold,” he repeats.
“Yeah, it is,” the kid says. “Why did you—”
“You always run. Every day, always running. I wonder why.”
“No reason,” he says. “I like it. It’s easy. You don’t have to do much or think, either.”
“But you make one big circle and you end up back where you started.”
He shrugs. “I don’t mind that.”
“Not competitive?”
“I’m very competitive,” he insists. Ilya takes another drag. “Mostly against me. I time myself.” He pulls a small stopwatch out of his pocket. “I try to do a mile under seven.”
“Minutes?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Is a little sad,” he says.
“Not really.” He puts the stopwatch back in his pocket and stretches his hand out. “I’m Shane.”
“Cool,” Ilya replies.
“Aren’t you worried about anybody seeing you smoke here?” he asks. “Some boys got caught smoking here the other morning.” He exhales a little, still breathing hard, a little red. “Maybe not, I don’t know. It could’ve been a different corner.”
Ilya smiles a little. “No, because,” he says, “it’s—here, you can’t see anything. By the old wing on other side of building you think you can’t be seen but you can. Window,” he concludes, glancing upwards. “If you tell anybody, I make you cut a lump of flesh out of your leg to apologise.”
Shane winces but doesn’t step back. “That’s kinda harsh,” he says.
“Is fair.”
“If you say so,” Shane says weakly, a little frayed. He suddenly moves, adjusting his legs. Ilya briefly considers staring but that would be unkind. “Runner’s high.”
The long shorts don’t conceal much. The fabric is loose but thin, like boxers. Ilya jerks off at least an hour before any kind of sport—every other student is the kind to point that sort of funny business out, make sure you’re normal and act like everyone else. Getting a boner in the freezing mid-winter is difficult but keeping yourself warm by running or jogging is one way of going about it. Besides, it’s childish, and at eighteen you no longer wanted to be associated with childish things like voice cracks or spontaneous erections or acne even if they all still happen from time to time.
“I’m not offended,” Ilya says. He’s stamped somebody’s cum down the drain before, so this is fairly tame.
“It’s not—you.”
“Not me?” he says. “Not me punishing you? You were not thinking about that?” He twists the edge of the joint against the damp windowsill and throws it in his coat pocket. “Shane, why don’t you have friends?”
“I’m going to go back to my run,” he says, presenting Ilya with his shoulder. Ilya touches it and finds his shirt damp with sweat. “Can you…?”
“Of course you can,” Ilya says. “Me? I’m bored. Boredom is cancer. Are you bored?”
“I’m—”
Shane’s lip twitches. His body is nice, Ilya concludes, even fully clothed. His boner presses up tight against his stomach. Boredom is worse than death, after all, and a suitable punishment for it is—“You don’t want to?”
“Want to what?”
“I suck your cock,” Ilya says plainly.
“Huh?” Now he’s properly red, all hot at the tips of his ears. His glasses are sort of askew and he rubs the long, messy patch of hair on his head. “What?”
“Nobody will see,” Ilya insists.
“That’s not what I’m—you only just met me and I don’t even know your name.”
“Ilya,” he says, rubbing his thumb against the waistband of the shorts. “What, you've never done it before? Not even with a girl?”
“A girl…” Shane mumbles. He bites his lip. “No, no, I haven’t. And it’s not easy—it’s actually very complicated, Ilya, and I hope you know that it has to be with someone special, or—”
“Special,” Ilya says, poking his chest. “There. Shane is special now.”
“Uh…” He glances around. “OK, just a little.”
“Just a little,” Ilya copies.
It doesn’t matter to him. This is the easiest thing of all—moving abroad, representing his family and his country to a bunch of unreceptive teenage dweebs with snotty noses and gelled hair, passing exams, that’s the difficult stuff. Sucking a guy off in the sober morning is almost laughably irrelevant to the rest of his life. He’s never once thought about it, not even when he fucks Rublyovka private school girls with nice skinny ankles, and the only thing getting him down a bit is the blades of grass wetting his knees. His mouth’s a bit cottony and Shane is almost nowhere near him.
“Come close,” Ilya says.
“Before you—” Shane clears his throat. “I lied before. I do know you from French class. I didn’t—you’re never there and I didn’t speak to you but I know—” Ilya pulls his shorts and pants down in one go, revealing his ruddy thighs and cock, hopeful and boundless youth, dark pubic hair excessively groomed short. He’s already leaking at the tip. “Sorry. I felt like I should say something.”
“No problem,” Ilya says. The truth is this—the guy Ilya was fucking with before, the son of some high-flying Armenian couple, got kicked out for dealing E and it’s been a dry spell ever since. He doesn’t tell Shane any of that; he reeks of tattle-tale and sweat-damp skin, very masculine. He presses the tip of Shane’s cock to his bottom lip. “I don’t care about that.”
At best it’s interesting. Slightly interesting. Not very interesting.
Shane shivers at the feeling of Ilya’s cold hand against the base of his cock in a very nice way—the first time? Ilya doesn’t remember his first blowjob, giving or receiving. Shane lets him swallow around the slightly sour ridge of his foreskin and tongue across the shallow vein, mouthe hot and wet and willing all over his cock, watch him gasp and hands wave around because he has no idea what to do with them.
Ilya tries to guide Shane’s hands to his hair but he’s clearly too invested in not fucking into Ilya’s mouth to focus on anything else. It’s flattering. Kind of sweet, even. Ilya lays his tongue flat and presses the ring of his tight mouth to where Shane’s been shaving his pubic hair.
“I—” Shane gasps. He grabs a handful of Ilya’s hair—due for a cut anytime soon, Ilya remembers. “Going to—” His glasses steam over. He makes a guttural noise like he’s about to puke, as if it’s that serious, and pulls his slippery cock out of Ilya’s mouth just to jerk off into a thatch of dead grass. Ilya watches silently as he bends over something serious and continues to let out a series of breathless, desperate noises. “I don’t want to run sticky.”
“Oh,” Ilya mumbles. He stands up and brushes his knees off. “Breakfast,” he says, sniffing, gesturing faintly. “You can do more—” He makes a choking noise, squeezing his empty hands. “I like that very much.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Shane says.
“You think I’m hot?”
Shane nods. “Uh-huh.”
“Nice,” he says. “Very nice.” He pats Shane on the shoulder. “I’m in Brooke, the dorm. Knock and ask for me, I’m around most days.” He reaches for the joint in his pocket. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” he answers quickly. “So, I—”
Ilya’s lighter gives one last hurrah and he inhales quickly to keep the oxygen flowing. “Go run,” he says.
“...With you watching?”
“Of course,” Ilya says. The snow groans beneath Shane’s sneakers. Still just a freaky kid, Ilya supposes.