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Ilya should’ve just stayed at the cottage.
The ‘strip mall’ only has six stores. In order: a Starbucks, a FedEx, a frozen yogurt store, a dentist, a Mattress Firm, and a fancy women’s clothing store.
Ilya gets himself a ‘frozen yogurt’, heaped with strange and abstract toppings such as ‘popping berry pearls’ and ‘rainbow chews’. He is barred from entering the Mattress Firm with his yogurt. He sits on a curb in a parking lot until people start looking at him, and the thought of Shane’s fussy pinched face compels him to escape into the women’s store.
It. It is not a women’s clothing store. More of a women’s underclothing store. Ilya can’t help feeling slightly misled. The little dresses in the window should have been… littler.
“Hi… Hello! Are we looking for anything in particular today?” the clerk asks, looking up from her magazine and doing a bad job of pretending to not be surprised. Ilya shakes his head, then realizes how insane that would be—no thank you, just big muscle man browsing in little bra store for fun—and tries to turn it into a nod.
The clerk tilts her head at him, with a big expecting smile. Fuck. Ilya will have to speak. He should have just left. But he has nowhere else to go: Shane is shopping, the parking lot is dangerous, the yogurt shop is boring, the Mattress Firm doesn’t like him. He has to waste some time here.
“I am looking. For something. For my… girlfriend,” he says, very slowly, trying his hardest to Americanize his accent. Not terrible. Hopefully the clerk will think he is a mumbling idiot, and not a Russian hockey player in love with Shane Hollander.
“Aw, that’s so sweet! Is there a special occasion? Are you looking for a particular colour, or style, or…?”
“Um…?” Ilya looks around the store. A nearby glimmer of gold catches his eye. One of the mannequins has a black lace bra with gold lace on the edges and tiny gold gems on the cups, centered on where the nipple would be and spreading out in lines like a sun. The underwear has matching gold trim, with similar gold gems spreading upwards on the front.
Boston Raiders’ colours. The lines of the gold gem suns even look like the wheel of the Raiders’ logo, kind of. An idea forms, and all the blood in Ilya’s body rushes into his dick so fast he thinks his dick might explode.
He somehow makes it to the mannequin and inspects it. “I like this one.”
“...Great! Do you… have your girlfriend’s measurements?” The clerk is looking at him like she wants to laugh but doesn’t think she can.
“Can… I see? The different sizes?” Ilya asks. He hadn’t thought of this. Shane is certainly larger than any woman Ilya has ever been with, but he doesn’t know what size of bra and underwear the women were wearing. He does know that sizing for women is a big joke. Svetlana complains about it sometimes when they are shopping together. If Svetlana thinks it’s hard, Ilya is fucked.
“Sure!” The clerk leads Ilya to a nearby chest of drawers and opens the first one to reveal neat rows of bras. “These are organized by cup size, so… smaller breasts in the top drawers, larger in the bottom,” she explains, like Ilya is a caveman. Honestly, this is all kind of making him feel like a caveman. “Each cup size has a different underbust—a different circumference.” She demonstrates on the mannequin, drawing her finger along the line beneath its breasts. “Most bras can be adjusted, so it’s not exact.” She pulls out a duplicate of the bra on the mannequin and shows Ilya four little clasps on the back.
“Okay,” Ilya says, and it sounds more like ‘окей’ but he can’t help it. There are bigger problems on his mind. He can guess that Shane’s underbust is probably larger than most women’s, but how the fuck would he know how big his cups are? Not the smallest size necessarily. Shane does not have real breasts but his muscles are bigger than some of the real breasts Ilya has seen.
Actually, he does have a pretty good way to guess how big Shane’s cups are. He clenches his jaw into a smile and turns to the clerk.
“Thank you. That will be all,” he says, sharp. She blinks. Ilya thinks she probably would’ve argued if he had been less mean about it, but thankfully she just smiles confusedly and retreats to the cash register.
Ilya looks back at the bras in the top drawer and closes it—they are probably too small. But when he opens the second drawer, he isn’t sure anymore. They look the same as the ones in the first drawer.
Setting his yogurt on the table, he takes the one with the largest underbust and turns it so one of the cup parts lays flat on his hand. The little gold gems are cool on his palm. It isn’t padded like some of the other bras in the drawer, which makes this easier. He curls his fingers upwards and tries to imagine Shane’s pecs filling the fabric, then stops almost immediately. Partly because he’s becoming so hard he can’t think straight, and partly because he just doesn’t know. Maybe it would fit Shane, but maybe not. Impossible to say.
Although… it would be better if the bra was too small than too big. Ilya thinks about it: the lace straining, the red marks on Shane’s skin. Yes. Better too small.
He gently returns the bra to its place in the second drawer and goes back to the first, again taking the one with the largest underbust.
“The matching underwear are in the drawers on the other side,” the clerk says helpfully. Ilya dutifully follows her instructions and tries not to think about how much of his experiment she saw.
The underwear is easier. He knows approximately how big Shane’s hips are. When he’s not sure, he again chooses the smaller option.
“Would you like this giftwrapped?” the clerk asks when he approaches the register. Ilya nods eagerly.
“Yes. Very much. Thank you.”