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Ilya had thought of sex differently, before Shane.
That doesn’t quite capture the newness of the change. Ilya had thought about sex differently right until Shane had looked up from his bed, his eyes soft and his hands warm against the sides of Ilya’s neck, and told Ilya he loved him.
Ilya is pretty sure that, before he’d shut his wet eyes and fallen asleep that night with his face mashed into the side of Shane’s neck, he had thought of sex as something that took place in distinct and separate events. He thought it was something that started and ended, something that happened and then was over.
Sex had been something he would deliberately try to get worked up for, sitting on the edge of the bed as his partner got ready in the bathroom, thinking of things that made his breath come faster, soft breasts in his mouth or the feeling of coming deep inside, so that he'd be appropriately eager when they stepped back into the room.
It isn’t like that, anymore. Ilya walks around the cottage, blinking against the Canadian sunshine, and experiences the days in a sort of shimmering stretch between times when he’s touching Shane. It's like the sex doesn’t really end as much as ebb and flood back in, like the subtle tide that tugs at the water beneath the dock outside.
And it no longer takes imagining the hottest, slickest parts of sex to get him hard. Ilya finds himself dazed by the most mundane of things. The stretch of Shane's open mouth in the bathroom mirror as he bends in over the sink with floss strung between his thumb and forefinger. The flex of Shane’s hand clamped down on the top of the churning blender. Shane, bent over the coffee table with a nail clipper, biting his lip as he fits it carefully around his thumbnail.
Shane, lounged sideways on the couch with his phone, head propped up against the arm, looking up as Ilya looms over him and pulling up one leg to plant his bare foot firmly in the center of Ilya’s chest.
His calf flexes as he pushes, hard, to keep Ilya out of arm’s reach. “No,” he says.
Ilya blinks down at Shane, who looks cozy in the sunlit living room, in his hoodie and soft pants with his hair falling damply over his forehead. He’s still flushed, either from his afternoon workout or the hot shower that followed. Even his ankle feels warm, when Ilya reaches down and clasps his hands around it. “No?”
“It’s too soon after last time,” Shane says, firmly. His skin looks golden in the afternoon sunlight, shining through the windows with their curtains winched high. He’s smiling a little, like he’d been waiting for this, with his pretty mouth pinched up at one side. “You’ll have to wait.”
Ilya squeezes at Shane’s ankle. He wants to respond to Shane’s obvious giddiness with a smile of his own, but he manages to shape his mouth into a pout instead. “Shane,” he says.
“You’re being greedy,” says Shane, in that scolding tone that always sends a little shiver down Ilya’s spine. “You haven’t had enough already?”
“No,” says Ilya, honestly.
“Well, I have,” Shane says, primly, his cheeks flushing deeper even as he says it, because Shane, beautiful sweet Shane, is the worst liar in the world. “I’m not touching you.”
Ilya arches one eyebrow.
Shane sets his mouth and pushes harder, his foot flexing against Ilya’s sternum. “I mean it,” he says, firmly. “And you’re not touching me, either.”
Ilya looks down at the foot pressing into his t-shirt. Shane’s nails are neatly trimmed, his toes pink and clean. He had scrubbed his feet in the shower, and then he’d padded over here in his house shoes, those little white slippers Ilya can see now discarded to the side of the couch.
Ilya is already starting to fill out against the front of his joggers. His fingers flex on the knob of Shane’s ankle as he points out, “I am already touching you.”
“That doesn’t count,” Shane says.
“Oh, yes?” says Ilya, entertained. “What counts?”
Shane’s brow furrows, for a moment, as he thinks about this. Then he says, “Above the knee counts.” And then he pulls his phone back up to his face and starts swiping, like he’d been impatiently waiting to get back to it.
Beautiful, brave Shane, proposing such daring things, and then staring determinedly at his screen like his face isn’t glowing red.
Ilya releases one hand from Shane’s ankle so he can lean down and get it around the back of Shane’s other calf. He pulls it upward, gets Shane’s other foot onto his chest, fits his hands around both ankles and looks down.
Ilya had thought of feet differently, before Shane.
He never had any particular feelings about feet, actually, one way or the other. He’d barely noticed them, really, wouldn’t have been able to describe anything more than maybe the color of toenail polish from anyone he’s hooked up with.
But it’s something that he’s noticed, these last few days in the cottage, during which he had started to treat observing Shane like a hobby: Shane has very nice feet. They’re delicately arched, with elegant long toes, and Shane treats them carefully, trims his nails every day, rubs pumice stones against his heels and pats them with lotion after his showers, pads around in his little house shoes afterward so that by the time he slides into bed his toes are still clean and cool as they slide along Ilya’s calves.
Ilya moves his right hand up from Shane’s ankle, now, and rubs his thumb along Shane’s heel, presses it into that sweet pink arch. Shane twitches against him as Ilya slides his grip up, a firm stroke up the center, into the ball of Shane’s foot.
Ilya looks up and arches his eyebrow when he sees Shane is staring at him. “I wouldn't want to distract you," he says, with as much conscientious as he can manage. "Since you have had enough."
Shane, whose eyes have gone very wide, drops his gaze back down to his phone and pokes abruptly at the screen.
“Hm,” says Ilya. He pulls upward at Shane's ankle, forces Shane’s leg straighter so that his right foot bobs up toward Ilya’s face.
Ilya studies those clean pink toes for a second. Then he leans in and closes his mouth over the first two.
Shane’s toes are as sweet as any other part of him, twitching warm and live against his tongue. Ilya suckles, gently and then deeper.
He looks up and sees Shane is staring again, his mouth open, his pupils blown.
Ilya raises his eyebrow, again, and sucks.
Shane yanks his phone back up toward his face.
He’s not doing a particularly good job of pretending he’s really looking at it, and his eyes keep darting down toward Ilya, but Ilya magnanimously decides to pretend he hasn’t noticed this as he pulls back, presses a parting kiss to the tip of Shane's big toe, and then tilts his head to plant wet, sucking kisses along the arch.
Shane is starting to breathe harder. His fingertips are going white around the back of his phone.
When Ilya lowers Shane's right foot, pulls the left one up to his face, and clamps his teeth gently down into the arch, he can see Shane’s dick twitch against the front of his sweatpants.
Ilya gets a better grip, angles his head, closes his lips over the elegant dip at the center of Shane's foot. And then he sucks, hard, until Shane is audibly panting, his right calf trembling in Ilya’s grip, his phone dropped and forgotten on the couch beside him.
Sometimes Ilya feels like he’s dreaming, when he has Shane like this, in the daylight with the curtains up and the trees shivering outside the windows, with the floating dust motes so visible it's like a haze descending over the quiet room. He feels it now, that shaky knowledge that this couldn’t possibly be real, as he pulls off Shane’s left foot and laves his tongue along the arch, gets that clean pink sole nice and slick.
Ilya pulls up Shane’s right foot and licks a wet stripe, there, too, even as he lets go of the other to fumble at the front of his own pants.
Shane doesn’t let his left foot drop, just braces his wet heel against Ilya’s chest and watches, panting, as Ilya frees himself with a shaking hand.
Ilya lowers Shane’s right foot from his mouth. He looks down to see the tender stretch of Shane’s sole glimmering with his spit.
Ilya can feel sweat sliding down his temple. It’s so bright in the room that his eyes are hurting, but he doesn’t squint, can’t bring himself to lower his eyelids, even a little. He’s afraid to even blink, like maybe he would open his eyes again and this would really have turned out to all be a dream, and he’d be back in Boston, chain-smoking on his balcony with the hand he wasn't using to scroll through photos of Shane with someone else.
He’s pretty sure he’s here, now, in the Canadian sunlight. Getting both hands on Shane’s feet, pulling them close, pressing them tight, the rounded balls of the soles meeting, the smooth heels coming together.
Between them, the slippery gap between the arches.
The bead of sweat drips down into the corner of Ilya’s eye. There isn’t a single thought in his head, in that moment, as he pulls Shane’s clasped feet downward, fits himself against the gap.
It’s exquisite, the slide into the tight squeeze. Even better is the way Shane reacts like Ilya’s touched him between the legs instead, gasps and shudders and cranes his neck forward, crunching slightly upward from the couch, abs straining as he works to get himself a better view.
It must look obscene, the wet head of Ilya’s cock protruding from beneath those tender pink feet. Ilya would have liked to hike his shirt up, to give Shane a better show, but he can’t bring himself to loosen his hold on Shane’s feet, to risk losing that sweet squeeze around his cock.
Ilya draws back, then, and on his thrust back in Shane flexes his feet, and Ilya loses it for a moment, fucks in for a few hard artless strokes before he regains his head and slows, remembers he wants this to look good, loosens his white-knuckled grip on Shane’s feet and takes a deep breath and blinks the sweat out of his eyes.
He’s still surprised, every single time, by how much Shane undoes him, by how difficult he finds it to be suave and collected when they’re together like this, by the way it’s not getting easier to hold it together but somehow harder and harder each time, the more relaxed Shane gets, the braver he is.
Ilya’s only consolation is that Shane is struggling with it, too. It’s obvious in the vein going stark in his throat, in the way his hands are scrabbling for a grip on the couch cushions, like he’s looking for something, anything, to hold that isn’t his straining dick. “Fuck,” he says. The word cracks in two on the way out.
“Fuck,” Ilya agrees, whole-heartedly. Shane is impossibly pretty, like this, wide-eyed and freshly scrubbed, his smooth chest flexing in the golden light, his strong feet curling tight around Ilya’s cock.
“Are you going to come like that?” Shane gasps.
He asks it so innocently, so wide-eyed, like he can’t believe Ilya is really doing this to him.
Ilya, to his complete surprise, comes.
It’s one of Ilya’s least elegant orgasms, maybe since he met Shane, maybe since that night Shane looked up at him with wet eyes and said he loved him, too. Maybe ever. He almost tips over with the suddenness of it, nearly loses his balance as he curls over Shane’s shins and gives it up, spasming, grunting, into the hot squeeze, in shuddering pulses that splatter down the legs of Shane’s sweatpants.
Ilya fights to keep his eyes open, to keep his head straight. Gasping for air, he lets go of Shane’s feet, gets his hand around his cock, leans forward.
He makes sure to wring out one last pulse onto the straining front of Shane’s pants.
Shane makes a sound closer to animal than human. His cock kicks, just a little, against the white streaked over the fabric of his sweatpants. His hands scrabble along the couch. Ilya can see he's shaking with how badly he wants to touch himself.
But Shane, beautiful unhinged Shane who’s just as lost in this as Ilya is, won’t let himself. Because that’s the rule Shane gave himself, and Shane is nothing if not a good boy.
Ilya completes a slow, parting stroke, shuddering against the too-dry friction, before releasing himself and staring down at Shane, who is looking back with wet eyes and muscles tense and erection pushing against the come-stained front of his pants.
“Maybe,” Ilya suggests, his voice so rough it’s barely recognizable to his own ears, “It doesn’t count as touch, if it's over the clothes?”
Shane nods, quickly, close to frantically. “Yeah,” he gasps, like he's grateful Ilya's found some semi-logical way to excuse it, “Yeah, that makes sense,” and before he’s even finished the second affirmative Ilya is leaning forward, Shane’s legs falling down to part around him as he braces his left hand against the back of the couch and plants his other on the ridge distending the front of Shane’s pants.
Shane cries out. His hips knock once, twice, against Ilya’s hand. Ilya barely has time to tighten his grip, to give Shane a few helpful squeezes, before Shane is bucking up into his grip, grimacing, tossing his head back against the arm of the couch like it hurts as he pulses against Ilya’s hand, soaks the fabric beneath Ilya’s palm.
Ilya plants the heel of his hand there and bears down, lets Shane shudder against the pressure for a long moment before Shane sighs and goes abruptly limp against the couch.
After a few silent, panting moments, Ilya lifts his hand. His palm is sticky. His brain feels like it’s been wiped clean. “Can I,” he begins.
“Please,” Shane says, and opens his arms.
Ilya collapses down onto him, hard enough to expel the breath from Shane’s lungs with a soft woof, but he can’t bring himself to apologize. He just burrows in deeper, sinks his face into the side of Shane’s neck and gets one arm under the back of his hoodie and the other beneath his skull. He curls in, squeezes tight, clings.
Behind Ilya's eyelids, the world glows a pulsing shade of red. He holds Shane tighter, gets handfuls of flesh and hair, and tells himself it’s real, that nothing he could dream up would feel so warm and solid in his grip.
Some time later, some time too soon, Shane stirs. He curls the hand he’s slid into Ilya’s hair tight and pulls until Ilya rises, blinking against the brightness, from the curve of Shane’s neck.
Shane leans back, then, into the arm of the couch. He closes his eyes, parts his mouth, and waits.
Ilya presses in, obedient as ever. Fits his mouth to Shane's. Gives Shane his tongue, and exists in the present for each blissful moment Shane sucks at it.
And then Shane is disengaging, pushing Ilya back with a gentle but firm hand against his cheek. “Alright, enough,” he says, wiggling his way out from under Ilya, clambering off the couch. “I’m gross.” He looks down at his feet, makes a face, and slides them gingerly into his little white slippers before rising and padding busily away.
Ilya watches him go, for a moment, before collapsing back on the couch and flinging an arm over his eyes. His pants are still shoved down to his thighs. He'll pull them up in a minute, once he's gathered himself.
God, he wants a cigarette. He hadn't let himself buy any, at the airport, thinking about the look on Shane's face if he'd seen them, but back then he was a stronger man than he is now.
Shane gets practical, after good sex, gets up bright-eyed and starts cleaning, organizing, making plans. Ilya has learned enough about Shane by now to know that’s how he is when he’s happy in general; Shane is at his best when he’s active, productive, working toward something.
Ilya sometimes has a harder time resurfacing, a more difficult time settling back into the real world, a world where it’s not only him and Shane but other people and other responsibilities and the countdown, the steadily ticking clock, until when Ilya has to return to Boston.
The flight is booked; Shane had asked about it, at one point, casually, so that he could plan something around driving Ilya to the airport. He hadn’t seemed worried about it at all. He’s so certain, with his ideas and plans and the spreadsheet Ilya has caught glimpses of him busily editing on his laptop, that he can make this work.
Ilya is less certain. Ilya isn’t quite as convinced Shane is as sure of a thing as Shane seems to think he is.
He’s half-convinced that he’ll get off that plane, and he’ll take an Uber for that familiar drive back, and he’ll step into his cold empty apartment, and he’ll look down at his phone to see he has a text from Jane, who has finally had some time to think, to be as practical as he liked to be when he wasn't distracted by the endless shimmering possibility of sex that existed only here, and only now, and only in the cottage. Who has finally realized this could never actually work.
Ilya had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even realized he was no longer alone in the room. He startles at the feeling of hands on his hips and lowers his arm to see Shane, dressed in a fresh hoodie and different pants, leaning over the couch to tug Ilya’s joggers up and into place.
Ilya raises his hips to help him. He’s expecting Shane to collapse down onto the cushions next to him, then, but Shane doesn’t. He just reaches out to Ilya and says, “Let’s go on a walk.”
Ilya looks up at Shane’s extended hand. “Where?”
Shane used to answer that question by wrinkling his nose and saying something about how where wasn’t the point. Maybe he knows by now that Ilya is more willing to go on a goal-oriented journey, because he says, “There’s this inlet down the coast we haven’t been to yet. It’ll have a really nice view of the sunset.”
Ilya takes Shane’s hand, then, lets Shane pull him to his feet, walk him toward the sliding glass door leading out onto the deck. Shane is right. He'll feel better breathing in some fresh air, better once he’s moving, once he’s walking along the shoreline with the smell of the water sharp in his nose.
Shane stops by the door, drops Ilya's hand so that he can kick off the fresh pair of house shoes he'd put on and slide on the sandals he'd left by the door. His heels are pink and clean, again, like he'd scrubbed them clean before returning.
Ilya is struck by a wash of fondness. He leans forward, over where Shane is bending over to pull on his other sandal, and presses a kiss to the warm nape of Shane's neck.
Shane smells like sweat. He never smells like anything, in Ilya's dreams. Ilya decides to believe, at least for now, that this is really happening.