Archive of Our Own

Shane Hollander is fifteen minutes late to his date.

Instead of doing anything about it, he just takes another dreaded sip from his drink. In addition to having a gritty texture, the coffee has also gone lukewarm. Shane swallows, trying to ignore the acidic aftertaste, the bitterness spreading across his tongue. He can't tell if it's actually the coffee, or everything else—a general sense of discomfort that prickles at his side like a long, scratchy tag he's forgotten to cut out.

He’s alone, for the moment. No one else occupies this softly lit expanse of the coffee shop. Brown leather chairs sit empty around him, waiting for customers who won’t come. Not at this hour. The windows are coated with condensation, the street beyond obscured by a thick, shapeless dark that follows a day of heavy rain.

The storms rolled in that morning. They brought grim skies and a chilly bite to the air, signaling the slow downshift of the season. Soon enough, Shane will have to dig out warmer clothes—an uninspired rotation of black turtlenecks and equally monochrome coats. But there is still time. Tonight, he gets away with a brief defiance. A mutinous pop of color before the muted march of winter days.

The centerpiece of his outfit is a vintage jacket. The denim is washed out to a baby blue, the fit loose around his shoulders, tapered at the waist. The metal buttons are slightly corroded. They were being particularly uncooperative when he was getting dressed earlier. He can still smell the faintly coppery tang they left on his fingertips. After wrestling the jacket closed, he hadn’t had the patience to fix the cuffs properly. He’s paying for that now, the fabric snagging on the armchair whenever he moves.

It happens again when he leans over to pick up his phone. Annoyed for the last time, he unrolls the sleeve, letting the cuffs fall around his wrists. He wishes he could unbutton the rest of the jacket. Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever worn it fully buttoned before. He probably looks odd, like a kid swallowed up in an oversized winter coat zipped right up to his chin. Still, he doesn’t touch the buttons. He’s not ready to reveal what’s underneath.

He glances at his phone to confirm the obvious: that time has not reversed itself, and he is still very much late to his date.

Not late enough.

Shane decides he’ll give it another fifteen minutes before making his unhurried exit from the coffee shop. Then he will only just need to cross the street, and slip through the massive wood doors of the glitzy bar. But maybe by then his date will have given up on Shane.

That would be ideal.

Shane doesn’t know anything about the man he’s seeing tonight. All he was given was a name; four discordant letters that resolve into something unexpectedly pleasant.

Ilya.

He tries it out in his head, just to pass the time. Takes special care with it—because he can—softening the L, stressing the correct syllable. A few seconds later, his lips begin to move on their own, his tongue pressing automatically to the roof of his mouth.

He catches himself and stops. Redirects his attention back to his phone.

It would be nice to know more than just a name, so he opens his thread with Rose and types out a message.

Shane: what does he look like anyway?

Rose’s reply comes concerningly fast, like she’s been staring at her phone with the answer ready before Shane had even conceived the question.

Rose: just look for the hottest guy in the room
Rose: who isn’t you, of course ;)

Shane: so the second hottest?

Rose: um…let’s call it even

Shane’s fingers idle against the screen, stumped by the bizarre turn their conversation has taken. Setting aside the nonsensical nature of quantifying attractiveness, or the backhanded compliment of it all (because realistically, Rose must find Shane attractive, or she wouldn’t have given their deeply misguided romantic affair a chance), there’s something else there that niggles at him.

Something he can’t quite put into words, but that trips his intuition, faint and foreboding. Makes him balk at the idea of trying to identify his date based on the vague descriptor Rose just gave him.

Maybe it’s the comparison. The fact of being measured against a man Shane hasn’t even met, but who Rose insists will be a good match for him.

It’s the same thing she’d said when she first pitched this date:

“You have to go. He was made for you, Shane.”

Shane detests the notion—no one is made for each other.

Well. Maybe some people are. But sometimes Shane feels like he was barely made for himself.

There’s the slew of diagnoses, of course. Somewhere on the spectrum. Likely AuDHD with a tendency to hyperfixate. A touch of OCD. A risk of generalized anxiety disorder worsening if he doesn’t manage his stress. And then there are the other components of his identity—the contradictions that make presenting himself to the world feel like an act of courage he doesn’t always have the energy for.

The only half-Japanese person in his graduate program. The only openly out guy among what’s left of his high school football team—rowdy, well-meaning, and mostly scattered now across out-of-province universities.

Even back then, Shane understood.

He’d watched, mildly scandalized, as his teammates pressed cheerleaders into lockers, kissing with a swagger and ease he could never feel, could never convincingly fake.

These were never going to be things that came easily to him.

At this point, he’s old enough not to expect them to.

In fact, Shane would rather avoid dating altogether than sit through another stilted conversation on a dating app, or endure another calamitous date. He’s started making peace with his…undatability.

He is fine. He’s busy. He has a thesis proposal to settle in the next few weeks—dating is the farthest thing from his mind right now.

And what does it matter anyway?

If only Rose would come to the same conclusion. If only she would stop meddling. Stop springing these stupid blind dates on him.

A part of Shane thinks it’s her hubris. An inability to admit she’s not helping.

Because the last two dates she set him up on had gone so well.

Blind date #1 had turned out to be the most pretentious ass Shane had ever met. Which was saying something, considering Shane currently attends an academic program populated by some of the most pretentious people the earth can sustain, taught by professors with egos more sprawling than the reading lists they inflict on him.

Maybe it’s cause and effect. One begetting the other.

Maybe the same fate awaits Shane at the end of the program, when he’ll have to choose between brokering a deal with the devil, and selling his soul to academia, or looking for other prospects.

But he isn’t quite there yet, clinging on to bits of his uncorrupted spirit. He’d found the entire exchange with blind date #1 intolerable—especially when the guy asked:

“So you’re doing a master’s at U of T? History?”

“European and Russian Affairs,” Shane corrected, without much joy.

“Russia?” the guy echoed, staring at Shane like he didn’t quite believe him, or maybe like he’d never even heard of the country. His fingers toyed with a glass of whiskey Shane had yet to see him actually drink. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Tell me some cool political facts, then.” He leaned back. “Impress me.”

“A cool fact?” Shane had mused, sardonic. “Like the ones on the side of a cereal box?”

Because why the fuck should he be the one doing the impressing?

Needless to say, the conversation didn’t improve from there. It stalled out until they parted ways. Shane blissfully never heard from him again.

Blind date #2 went marginally better.

The guy was one of Rose’s close friends, an actor in the same theater production as her. He talked enough for both of them, never putting any pressure on Shane to contribute. Shane experienced a rough approximation of a pleasant time.

The problem was that he had mistaken that for a good enough reason to go home with him, and learned, without any lingering ambiguity, that “watching a movie” was never not code for making out on the couch.

Shane might have let things progress further, tried to enjoy the make-out session, which was messy, off-kilter, and not quite what he needed, but it came to a screeching halt when the guy pulled out a tab of acid and launched into an impassioned discourse on why they should both take it before having sex.

It wasn’t really Shane’s scene. Or his vibe. He doesn’t even remember how he extricated himself from the situation. It’s a memory better pushed down, buried in the darkest, most inaccessible part of his mind, lest it resurface and force him to relive the sheer, skin-crawling discomfort of it.

Shane had sworn never to fall for one of Rose’s schemes again. Two times was bad enough; less than the chances she’d given him to salvage their doomed relationship, but more than he could bear.

There couldn’t be a third.

There wouldn’t have been, if Shane could resist Rose. If he could tell her no to her face. If he didn’t dislike confrontation quite so much.

But in the weeks leading up to this date, Shane had grown increasingly resentful. That he even had to contemplate it—its impending arrival like a black stain on his calendar. That he had to spend any amount of time worrying about it, as he was prone to do with everything: who the person was, what Shane should wear, how it would go.

Of course, he could just not go.

He could ghost the date and deal with Rose afterward. Suffer whatever guilt trip she had prepared, and then, inevitably, be subjected to her next setup.

No. That wouldn’t work.

He needed to go further. He needed to do something drastic.

Resolutely, Shane picks up his phone and types a brisk admonishment.

Shane: Rose
Shane: what does he look like?

And if she doesn’t get serious—even a little—he is going to walk out of this cafe and go home after all.

She must have heard the threat in his text, because she replies almost immediately.

Rose: blond curls
Rose: you can’t miss him

“Blond curls” and “hot”—Shane supposes he can work with that.

He recalibrates his plan, checking the time. He’ll make his date wait a few minutes longer. Then he’ll walk across the street to the bar and find him.

“You need to make a good impression,” Rose had whispered conspiratorially over lunch the other day. “Don’t fuck it up, because I am trying to scissor with Ilya’s best friend.”

“Don’t fuck it up,” Shane repeated hollowly, an idea forming in the unrest of his mind. He must have fucked something up at least once for Rose to abandon dating men in favor of leaning so heavily into the girl-kissing side of her sexuality.

“It will be fine—don’t worry,” she pivoted then, offering him one of her reassuring smiles. “Just be yourself,” she added, swirling her salad fork in a way that made Shane lean back, just in case she accidentally stabbed him in the eye. “He will love you!”

She’d said it with so little irony that Shane had briefly wondered if she existed in some alternate reality.

Shane could be himself, sure. That alone would probably yield the desired outcome—a trainwreck of satisfying proportions.

But he doesn’t want to rely on “probably.” Or “satisfying.”

He wants certainty.

Which is why he’s going to make a complete, unmitigated disaster of this date—act so unapologetically terrible that Ilya will despise him on sight, might even be compelled to punch him. Maybe he will. Maybe they’ll get kicked out.

Either way, it will get back to Rose. She will be shamed into contrition. She might hate Shane for ruining her chances with Ilya’s friend.

But at least she will never attempt anything like this again.

Shane’s conviction in his plan carries him all the way to the entrance of the bar, and then successfully strands him there. The steel of the door handle feels smooth and cool against his skin. His confidence, never particularly ironclad to begin with, implodes like a soap bubble popped too soon.

There is no discernible reason for his hesitation—he knows what needs to be done. He even looked it up, just to be sure. This, at least, he’s good at: research. Acquiring information, arranging it into neat order. His recollection is remarkably reliable when it comes to minute details—dates, places, names—the kinds of things most people gloss over, the things they find unbearably boring.

So he’d done his homework. Skimmed through a Cosmo article. Casually scoured a few Reddit threads. He has all the red flags of a bad date memorized, taken to heart like catchphrases printed on a bathmat from Simons, but instead of “live, love, laugh,” it’s: don’t be self-centered and talk about yourself too much, don’t bring up your exes or call them crazy, don’t brag about your conquests or mention a body count. On and on. Variations on the same theme, all of it distilled down to: “don’t act inappropriately” or, alternatively: “just be fucking normal.”

Shane doesn’t think he can manage “normal” on a good day, so that part isn’t daunting. The inappropriate behavior, though? That’s something he’ll have to play up. But how hard can it be?

Pretty fucking hard, if he still can’t make himself go in. He’s been standing at the door long enough that it unavoidably swings open from the inside, a wave of people exiting the bar nearly smacking him in the face.

Shane stumbles back onto the sidewalk to let them pass, straight into the path of a fat raindrop that chooses that exact moment to hurl itself off the edge of the awning and land directly on top of him.

He hisses, startled, his hand shooting up to assess the damage. His fingers rake through a now significantly wet section of hair, fully aware that fussing with it won’t help, but unable to stop.

He will find a way to blame this on Rose, somehow.

She’d convinced him to grow it out, adamant that a few extra inches would look better. Begrudgingly, Shane can admit—to himself, not to her, because that would be going too far—that she was right. The longer hair suits him. Even if it requires more maintenance now. Even if the texture is temperamental, strands curling into waves at the slightest suggestion of humidity. And there is a lot of humidity tonight. Shane is fairly certain he’s breathing in more water than air.

So naturally, his hair has turned into an unwieldy mess—the waves threatening to fall into his eyes, the damp ends ticklish against his nape.

It’s a far cry from the tidiness he usually strives for in his appearance. But it’s not not working. If anything, the wet, unruly look probably adds an organic element of carelessness he couldn’t achieve otherwise.

He looks the part. He knows that. He’ll figure out the rest later.

He drops his hands, leaving his hair alone. Then he yanks the door open, committing to whatever’s waiting on the other side.

Shane isn’t trying to look for him, but he spots him right away.

He’s the only person sitting alone, tucked into one of the booths at the far side, leaning back casually against the brick wall. His face is illuminated by his phone, the artificial glow at odds with the honey-soft ambiance of the place: candles shimmering at each table, lamps casting dim halos.

He must have sensed Shane walk in, or caught the slight commotion of his entrance—the bartender acknowledging Shane with a nod, one of the waitresses already heading his way—because he sets his phone facedown on the table and lifts his head. His eyes lock onto Shane.

Shane stares back, rooted to the floor.

Seconds tick by, but Shane doesn’t feel them, slipping briefly outside their governance, into a suspended moment where the waitress’s approach slows and Shane has time to take in the color of Ilya’s eyes. Even from afar, they carry a peculiar undertone. Pale blue, lucent like stained glass.

Then the room crashes back all at once, every input more jarring than the last: a melancholic track crackles from the speakers, a clatter of dishes rings out from the kitchen, the swell of conversation rises around him—ebbing when the waitress addresses him, demanding sole attention.

“Welcome,” she says. “Here with someone?”

She follows his line of sight toward the booth, then inadvertently blocks it when she turns back around.

He sidesteps around her to regain a clear shot on the booth—and finds Ilya still watching him with the same steady intensity.

Except now there’s a slight dip at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but the beginning of one, and even that is sufficient to sketch a silhouette of a dimple into place.

This is the point where Shane should remember how to wear his human skin and move. Maybe respond to the waitress, or walk over to the booth. But he can’t. Because he isn’t entirely sure any of this is actually happening, that the man waiting for him is real.

Ilya is fucking gorgeous.

The kind of gorgeous you’d be hard-pressed to conceive. The kind you’d only see in a classic Hollywood film, and suspect the black-and-white isn’t doing him justice. The kind antiquity would have killed for—something a Renaissance painter might have dreamed up, then spent the rest of his life trying and failing to capture.

It’s the curls, Shane thinks. The soft symmetry of them, the way they cradle the light.

No, it’s his jaw. The sharp angle of it, pitted against the plush curve of his mouth.

No, the eyes. The way his lashes fall over them when he—

Winks.

Ilya winks at him.

Or at least, Shane’s nearly certain he’s the intended audience. He whirls around to see if there is anyone else behind him. There isn’t, of course, though the confirmation does nothing to explain what is happening, or why it’s happening to him, specifically.

It feels like an acid trip he’s never actually taken, a potent hallucination slipped seamlessly into his night. Even the floor tilts beneath his feet in a disturbingly convincing way, his center of gravity skewing, his stomach flooding with a tingling drop.

Meanwhile, the cause of his delirium seems utterly unconcerned with the damage he’s doing.

Ilya picks up a glass of water, his lips puckering around a straw. He takes a shallow sip, eyes never leaving Shane.

Holy fuck.

Why didn’t Rose warn him?

Shane snaps his attention to the waitress, who is still standing there, watching him now with a profound sort of weariness, like Shane is an omen of a bad shift, the final nail in the coffin.

He manages a stiff nod, hoping it passes for an answer to her earlier question, and strides toward the booth.

“Ilya?” he asks, his voice gruff—which would be good, just what he’s going for, dispassionate and rude—if it weren’t for the fact that Shane knows it’s for all the wrong reasons.

He has to remind himself that Ilya doesn’t know that. That Shane’s nervousness isn’t obvious to anyone except himself, and won’t be discovered as long as Shane sticks to the plan. Acts the part. He shoves his hands into the jacket pockets and waits for Ilya to acknowledge him.

But the other man doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, feigning rapt attention on his phone for another beat or two.

“Sometimes,” Ilya answers, laconically.

“Sometimes?” Shane asks, quirking a brow.

Ilya’s mouth parts around a soft exhalation and then purses shut. Finally, he looks up from his phone, his gaze immediately straying—sliding down the length of Shane’s body, lingering on his chest, then drifting further down, to the exposed strip of skin at his abdomen.

Shane resists the impulse to tug at the hem of his jacket. It’s warm inside the restaurant, but for some reason, Shane feels a zephyr of cold air skate along his stomach where the hem doesn’t quite meet the band of his pants.

Ilya studies him, his mouth blooming with the same effortless half-smile—the one that brings a single dimple into view. Another instance of it and Shane knows he won’t forget it; it’ll burn behind his eyelids like a swirl of light, a phosphene with no expiration date.

“Yes, sometimes. And other times I am Ilyuha,” Ilya explains. “To my close friends,” he pitches his voice lower, as if taunting Shane with the possibility of missing some of what he’s saying, or daring him to do something about it, like lean closer. “Occasionally, I am also Ilyusha,” he finishes, dipping his lashes.

“Oh,” Shane replies, refusing to examine what that implies—the kind of friends who use those names, and under what circumstances. He clears his throat. “Okay, Ilya." He mispronounces the name slightly. On purpose. “I’m Shane. Always Shane.”

“Nice to meet you, ‘always Shane,’” Ilya says, extending his arm toward him, palm turned sideways.

Shane blinks down at the offered hand, arrested into inaction by the singular way Ilya says his name. The accent wrapped around the syllables, the raspy undercurrent of his voice, the slow cadence of his speech, like he’s savoring it, rolling Shane’s name around in his mouth before swallowing it down.

He’s so unnerved—or riveted by it—that it takes him too long to respond. By the time he does, Ilya has already withdrawn his hand with an abrupt, restless jerk.

Some unnamed emotion ripples through his expression. Irritation, most likely, folded away before it can fully crack the flirtatious mask.

Good, Shane decides. It wouldn’t take much to make this date go off the rails. Maybe they’re already on the precipice. But he can’t explain why the thought arrives with a pang of disappointment.

Ilya snatches up his phone and thrusts it between them, shaking it once like he’s scolding a misbehaving dog.

“You’re late.”

The pang sharpens, bitter like the stabbing pain in the back of your jaw when you bite into something sour.

Shane’s jaw clenches. He shrugs and slides into the booth, grateful for the solid barrier of the table between them.

“My other plans fell through.”

He scoots closer to the wall, leaning sideways in a passable imitation of a sprawl. This, at least, he knows how to do. He’s spent enough time around locker room jocks to understand how to take up space.

“You were going to stand up—” Ilya pauses, faltering around the mechanics of the phrase. “Stand me up,” he corrects himself.

“Maybe,” Shane admits.

He spreads his legs wider, propping one foot against the jutting edge of the booth. The movement pulls his pants taut across his thighs, the fabric stretching, but he trusts it to hold. His hand settles over his knee, fingers tapping idly as he meets Ilya’s stare head-on.

He almost smiles when it gets the reaction he wants.

Ilya looks briefly conflicted—torn between glaring at him and letting his gaze drop lower, to Shane’s lap, where a real possibility of the leather molding an outline of his dick may present itself.

The latter temptation wins.

His gaze falls.

“…But you’re here,” Ilya says, quieter now.

“I am,” Shane replies, his fingers stilling. He doesn’t trust himself to resume the drumming, afraid it will mirror the erratic rhythm of his pulse.

“And you are staying,” Ilya says, with a dark conviction that strips the sentence of any question.

“Am I?” Shane muses, just to be difficult.

It’s always been a chore for Shane to hold eye contact. With Ilya, it feels especially dangerous.

Ilya is looking at him now in a way that feels…total. Eyes half-lidded, smoky, like they could smolder through whatever defenses Shane has left and reach the parts he keeps hidden.

“You are,” Ilya nods slowly, his gaze narrowing further—slits of ember-bright blue, “at least for a drink.”

He picks up the menu and tosses it toward Shane.

“Pick.”

Shane catches it, settling back into the manspread. He flips through the laminated pages, skipping over the limited food options until he lands on the wine list. He’s on a mission now—to find the most expensive bottle.

As he peers at the small, typewriter font of French châteaux and wineries, his glasses slip down the slope of his nose. His hand comes up to adjust them on autopilot, and only after he pushes them back into place does it occur to him what he’s done. His fingers freeze mid-motion, guilty.

Which, of course, only draws more attention to it.

The gesture doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Cute glasses,” Ilya remarks, husky.

Fuck.

Shane forgot to take them off before the date. He’d forgotten he was wearing them at all. They’re light—no rim to speak of, just clear glass, weightless against his skin.

But now it’s too late. Not that it should matter. So what if nerdy fucking glasses don’t match the aesthetic he carefully cultivated tonight? Ilya thinks they’re cute—is that good or bad? Shane can’t tell anymore, losing purchase on his own spectacle.

Maybe they do work with the outfit. It’s not like Shane is an expert on bad-boy aesthetics, or fashion in general. His best attempt had been wandering through the mall until he found the trashiest store, flagging down a clerk and, without quite meeting his eye, pointing at the mannequin in a mesh top.

“That one,” he’d muttered. “Give me that one.”

The leather pants are an older acquisition, courtesy of Rose and her habit of dressing him up like one of her dolls before a night out.

“Thanks,” Shane says, belated, his mouth twisting. “Non-prescription,” he adds, lying. “Just for fashion.”

Ilya hums, faintly delighted, though it’s hard to tell what exactly is amusing him.

“Fashion,” he repeats, his gaze sliding down to Shane’s leather pants.

Shane feels a treacherous flush rise to his cheeks. He tugs at the collar of his jacket, trying to get some air. It needs to come off—this extra layer—but Shane is still working himself up to that step.

“Are you paying?” he asks instead, bracing for pushback, or at least hesitation.

He’s not prepared for the way a simple “Of course” escapes from Ilya’s mouth—quick, soft, borderline genuine. As if Shane is the idiot, not for the audacity, but for asking at all.

“Then I want a bottle of—” Shane scans the menu, searching desperately for something outrageously expensive to ruin Ilya’s unearned good mood and charitable disposition. “Pavillon Rouge du Château Margaux,” he says, with a note of triumph—and maybe even relief—when he finds it.

“French,” Ilya hisses, like it’s an insult.

“Well, if you’re too cheap for it—” Shane says dryly.

“And it’s red,” Ilya adds.

Then he snaps his fingers vaguely past the booth. Miraculously, it summons a server.

The same one who intercepted Shane earlier, her polite smile plastered on with such devotion that Shane gets the sense her night has not improved since.

Ilya recites the name of the red Shane picked, his French accent smooth—possibly even flawless—then adds a bottle of white. Less expensive, but still comfortably in triple digits.

The waitress’s brows climb steadily upward, her grip tightening around her pen.

“Oh,” Ilya adds, almost as an afterthought, “and bring us all the food you have.”

“What?” she asks.

“One of each,” Ilya clarifies. “You only have, what, three things we can eat? It can’t be that hard, yes?”

She nods slowly, though not convincingly. She gathers the menus, lingering just a beat too long, as if waiting for him to laugh, to call it a joke.

He doesn’t.

Technically, there are more than three things per category—appetizers, mains, desserts—but Shane isn’t about to correct him.

Once she’s gone, Ilya leans back against the wall.

Shane mirrors him and says, with as much indifference as he can muster, “Wow. Okay. I get it. You have money.”

Ilya laughs—a short, crystalline sound that makes the light shiver in his hair.

Shane wishes it weren’t so pleasant. Wishes he didn’t want it to last longer.

“What do I look like to you?” Ilya tuts. “A son of an oligarch or something?”

“Yeah,” Shane replies, deliberately trailing his gaze over the details of Ilya’s presentation that seem to support the conjecture: the jacket he’s wearing—real leather, utterly impervious to wrinkles, blindingly glossy, nothing like the soft imitation of Shane’s pants; the diamonds in his ears, small studs glittering beneath his curls; the chain bracelet at his wrist, its gold links flashing like teeth whenever he moves.

Ilya tilts his head at Shane, considering. The angle teases another piece of jewelry into view—a collar resting at the base of his throat, like a concealed weapon. Shane is seized by a vague urge to do something about it. Reduce the risk to his life. Catch it between his fingers and tug it closer.

“Okay, you got me,” Ilya says after a moment, a languid smirk budding on his lips, as if none of this should be taken too seriously.

“Must be nice,” Shane mutters, pressing a hand to his scorching cheek. He’s either nursing a fever or just plain overheating. He imagines what he must look like: the unrestrained flush of his skin, the freckles unveiling in a vivid scatter.

The back of his jacket sticks to the parts of him not covered by the mesh of his shirt, which is most of him.

His fingers drift to the first button.

He tries not to overthink it, working them open with a casualness he does not feel anywhere in his body.

“What is nice?” Ilya asks, his head still tipped slightly, his gaze tracking Shane’s hands, their downward progress.

Shane focuses on the feel of the buttons yielding. On the slow process of undressing. On the steadiness of his voice when he answers:

“Having a rich family. Not having to work.”

“I do work,” Ilya protests.

“Okay.” Shane doesn’t mean for it to come out flat, but he’s only half-listening now, the last button popping open, leaving him no choice but to keep going.

“Not working is boring,” Ilya says, his voice lilting with amusement. “I have a new job. Starting Monday.”

“That’s cool,” Shane says, tearing the jacket open and shrugging it off in one inelegant motion. “Don’t tell me about it, though. I don’t actually care.”

His fingers twitch with the instinct to fold it neatly, but he stops himself. Not now.

He drapes it over the back of the booth and drops into the corner. For a moment, he gets to enjoy it—the cool air cascading over his arms, his collarbone, his stomach, rushing into his starved lungs and expanding them.

And then all of that air leaves him at once when he notices the way Ilya is staring at his chest, where Shane knows the outline of his nipples is clearly visible through the mesh.

Ilya doesn’t appear to be paying attention to anything Shane just said. His breathing has gone uneven. He’s biting his lower lip, teeth sinking into the soft pink flesh so viciously he might split the skin and draw blood.

To make matters worse, another cold current, manifesting seemingly out of nowhere, surges down Shane’s spine. He suppresses the shiver, but not the goosebumps that follow in its wake. He feels his nipples harden, poking defiantly through the black threads never meant to contain them.

Ilya mutters something in Russian under his breath.

Блять…серьезно?

A smirk threatens the integrity of Shane’s neutral expression. He manages to hold it back, reluctant to admit that he caught the words, or that he can understand them at all. Selfishly, maybe even deviously, he wants to keep that particular skill to himself a little longer. He’s not fluent by any means, his spoken Russian still needs work, but his comprehension has improved considerably over years of meticulous study.

Ilya’s mouth shapes around another foreign word, but Shane never gets to hear it. Ilya cuts himself off midway, falling abruptly silent at the sight of the waitress’s approach.

One of many, as Shane will come to discover over the next half hour.

It begins with an uncorking and a tasting, and culminates in a truly impressive arrangement of plates across the table between them. Throughout it all, she spares neither Shane nor his newly revealed outfit any unnecessary attention, acting as though Shane isn’t wearing something skimpy and lewd in a bar full of people whose cashmere sweaters cost more than his monthly stipend. Which—well—Shane appreciates.

Ilya better tip her very well, Shane thinks, nudging the plate of cauliflower bites so it aligns more precisely with the others, forming a neat crosshatch.

He considers saying it out loud, but gets distracted when Ilya deposits a spoonful of beef tartare onto his plate.

“Try,” he says. “It’s very good.”

The meat doesn’t look raw—it’s smothered in a neon-orange sauce of questionable origin—but knowing what it is floods Shane’s mouth with the phantom tang of blood. He pushes the plate away with a grimace.

He isn’t even trying to be a dick—which he should be, that’s the point—but he genuinely can’t stand the texture of undercooked meat.

“Ugh,” Shane says. “Trying to fatten me up before you eat me?”

Ilya indulges him with a smile, but it’s half-hearted, distracted. His phone vibrates with an incoming call. He scrutinizes the contact, but in the end doesn’t answer.

“No,” he says, sliding the phone away. “I will have plenty to eat.” He nods toward Shane’s arms, just as Shane reaches for his wine, his muscles flexing.

Shane falters, briefly caught off guard by a spike of self-consciousness, then pushes through it, taking long, bobbing swallows like he’s chugging beer.

It’s fitting, he supposes. He wouldn’t be able to tell this vintage apart from a ten-dollar bottle.

Gun to his head, if he had to justify spending four hundred dollars of Ilya’s ill-gotten fortune on wine, he might say this one is full-bodied, richly fragrant—a sensual slap to the face.

He sets the near-empty glass down with a soft clink, licking a stray drop from the corner of his mouth.

He’s not even a little surprised by the attention that earns him.

They haven’t spoken much while the food was arriving, but Ilya hasn’t looked away for long, tracking every one of Shane’s movements, however small, like he’s invested in the very breath that sustains him.

It’s heady. A secret Shane never meant to uncover. A kind of power he really shouldn’t be abusing, or enjoying this much. It’s not what he’s here for.

But there’s a taste of blackcurrant pastilles in his mouth—or whatever bullshit flavor profile the bottle claims—and a warmth spreading through him, wilting his inhibitions down to nothing.

“So confident,” Shane challenges. “You think that just because you’re paying for dinner and drinks, I’m going to have sex with you?”

Ilya’s brows furrow, but Shane doesn’t buy the confusion. Not for a second.

“That’s how it works, no?” Ilya asks.

“No,” Shane says, with mock disdain.

“Fine,” Ilya sighs, pouting slightly. “Maybe you at least give me a toppy sloppy?”

Shane, who had been seconds from taking a sip of water and possibly choking on it, sets the glass back down. He wants to be angry. Instead, he finds himself smiling.

“It’s sloppy toppy, by the way,” he says. “Who taught you that phrase?”

“Who do you think?” Ilya retorts without missing a beat. “Your mom.”

“My mom doesn’t—” Shane starts, and instantly regrets even opening his mouth. What can he say? That his mom doesn't know what a sloppy toppy is, or that she doesn't practice it? Oh god—

“Fuck you,” he tells Ilya, but it lacks the heat it deserves. He's still too busy trying to banish the mortifying direction his thoughts have taken.

“No,” Ilya contradicts softly. “I’ll be the one doing the fucking.”

It takes a moment for Shane’s mind to catch up—an entire stilted breath to recall the thread of the conversation. Somehow, his dick processes the implication faster than his brain, twitching with interest. The confines of his leather pants feel suddenly unforgiving.

“Good,” Shane replies. “I don’t like to top.”

The admission is real, but he doesn’t know which part of him is driving it. He lost the plot a while ago.

“Yeah?” Ilya coaxes, his lashes sweeping slowly over his eyes. “You like to get fucked?”

Just like before, Ilya’s words take a moment to land properly—time unhooking from the moment, light arriving before sound, then crashing back in like thunder.

No, it’s Shane’s heartbeat in his ears. The violent pound of it. His inhale is sharp, a hiss through clenched teeth.

“Yes, I do. I like to get fucked,” he says.

It’s not entirely true—Shane has never gone all the way with anyone—but saying it out loud makes the lie feel less relevant, smaller by comparison. The performance is unmasking something in him, a carnal pulse at the center. Stripped of pretense, it feels like something he might have meant all along, if he’d known Ilya sooner.

“Tell me,” Ilya says, his voice hitching. He swallows, tries again. “Tell me how you—”

His phone starts vibrating again.

The metal case rattles harshly against the wooden table, loud and intrusive.

At first, Ilya does nothing about it. He just glares down at the device, like if he stares long enough, he might divine its purpose.

Shane recognizes the contact from before—inverted Cyrillic letters, an upside-down photo of a girl in a long red dress, bare shoulders, a spill of brown curls. Even from this angle, he can tell she’s stunning.

Which does nothing to explain why it makes him ask, in an icy tone, “Are you going to get that?”

Ilya’s gaze snaps up to him, momentarily unfocused, like he’s been jolted out of a dream.

“Yes, hold on,” he says, reaching for the phone.

“Алло?” he asks, uncertain.

He must have caught the call in time, because he doesn’t hang up. After a moment, he tucks the phone between his ear and shoulder, both hands slipping under the table to adjust himself.

It’s sly, but Shane sees it anyway. Only because he’s looking, watching too closely, enraptured by Ilya in his element, speaking his mother tongue.

Света, какого черта ты обрываешь мне телефон? Ilya says, not bothering to lower his voice.

The line explodes with a burst of static, the sound of a girl’s voice.

Shane can’t make out what she’s saying, but he has Ilya’s side of the exchange to follow.

Мерседес? Ты же его разбила? Ilya says, shooting Shane a quick glance, mouthing sorry, before continuing:

В любом случае, блять, откуда я знаю, где ключи?

He pulls the phone back into his hand, tipping his head up toward the ceiling in visible frustration as Sveta keeps talking, about something that clearly has nothing to do with the keys anymore.

Shane understands what the conversation has turned to a second later.

The realization hits like a high-voltage current, rattling through his ribs.

“Да, на свидании,” Ilya says.

And looks directly at Shane.

His expression gives nothing away, except for his eyes. They widen a fraction, then darken, heat pooling there, viscous, the light inside them going unstable.

Shane wants to get closer. Needs to see if they can reflect him, if Ilya can contain him entirely.

“Красивый,” he adds.

Then, softer:

“очень.”

“Конечно я его трахну. А потом сделаю его своим мужем.

С чего ты взяла, что я шучу? Пока.”

Shane wrenches his gaze away. He didn’t hear that right. He couldn’t have.

Pretty. Yes, very, Ilya had said. Maybe he wasn’t even talking about Shane.

Shane’s heart hammers like he just sprinted a mile, everything off-center and too bright. He adjusts his glasses, but it doesn’t help.

Of course I’m going to fuck him. And then I’m going to marry him.

The heat coils tighter in his stomach—molten, unbearable—then snaps loose, flooding through him, filling every crevice. His chest aches with it, something unfamiliar fluttering there, too enormous to comprehend. Like a shadow on pavement that looks small, just the span of butterfly wings, until you realize it’s a plane, roaring overhead.

“Where were we?” Ilya murmurs, trying to recapture Shane’s attention.

And of course Shane looks back. He can’t resist.

There’s a rosy blush high on Ilya’s cheeks now, a glow from within, and something stark and relentless in his eyes—it lives there, thrives in those sea-blue hues.

“Tell me how you like to get fucked,” he orders.

Shane’s head whips around, paranoid. He scans the room, frantic, checking if anyone heard. No one’s close. The booths around them are unoccupied. The bartender is still behind the counter. Their server is nowhere in sight.

He exhales, nearly folding in on himself with relief.

Across from him, Ilya leans forward, a single immaculate curl bouncing with the motion, his lashes casting shadows like spidery wisps over his skin.

“Well?” he presses.

Shane throws one last furtive glance around them, then leans in too. Opens his mouth to tell Ilya to fuck off, but the words won’t come. Not those.

I’m going to marry him.

Stupid. Shane shouldn’t let it get to him. Ilya was talking out of his ass. He was joking. Even if he told Sveta otherwise.

Ilya is toying with him.

It should be the opposite.

“I like to get fucked from the back,” Shane says instead, the heat that’s been building all night finally finding an outlet, pouring into his voice. “I like it rough,” he adds, patching together lines he’s picked up from porn captions and Grindr profiles, a slight rasp catching on the words.

Ilya seems to be buying it. Or maybe it doesn’t matter if he is.

It’s having an effect anyway.

His mouth parts. His breathing turns shallow, uneven. His face is suddenly closer, like he’s bending the space between them, shrinking the table through sheer force of will.

Close enough for Shane to catch the scent of him—redolent with smoke and leather, his cologne underneath, something masculine and complex.

“I like it rough and raw,” Shane continues, breathing him in. “Big, fat cock pounding inside of me.”

The lie is filthy. It doesn’t sound like him, but it does, at the same time. Like something in his voice has been waiting for it, turning the words over, trying them on. And it’s only Ilya he’s picturing. No one else. The fantasy is just beginning to take shape with images of hungry hands and half-formed moans, but it sends a potent surge of arousal straight through him. His cock throbs against the leather, trapped and aching, the tip already leaking into his boxers.

“Fuck,” Ilya breathes. “How big?” His eyes darken, narrowing, a predatory spark slipping into them. “I have something for you,” he adds before Shane can answer, insufferably cocky.

It suits him. It does something terrible to Shane—loosens another thread in his chest. Maybe the last of his restraint. The self-censure starved of fear and reservations.

“Oh?” Shane says, already anticipating the next words out of Ilya’s mouth before he even makes the offer: want to feel?

There has to be a version of Shane somewhere that would say no. It feels very far from him. The one inhabiting him now just nods—quick, instinctive. Stormed and surrendered before Ilya even touches him.

Ilya catches the movement, Shane's acquiescence. Then dips slightly under the table, one arm disappearing from view. There’s a pause—a breath, maybe two.

Then Shane feels it. Ilya’s hand ghosting over his ankle. Lifting the hem of his pants and sliding higher. He wraps around the narrow column of bone and tendon with warm, careful fingers. Holds him there for a second, before guiding Shane’s foot forward, tucking it between his legs.

Shane bites down on a moan the second his Vans press into something hard.

He can’t feel much—too many layers between them, denim and worn treads—but it doesn’t matter. He knows exactly what he’s touching. It’s unexpectedly thrilling and heady, a heist in plain sight, an affair with madness.

“Is it big?” Shane manages, once he gets enough air back into his lungs. “I can’t tell.”

It’s true, he can’t, but that isn’t the point. The point is that it’s fun to tease Ilya. To drive him closer to the brink. Shane drags his foot slowly along the length, adding a little pressure. Ilya exhales long and shaky, nostrils flaring, the flush deepening across his cheeks.

It’s so fun, Shane isn’t certain he’ll ever get enough of it.

“No?” Ilya asks, breathless now, his grip tightening slightly around Shane’s ankle. “Let me show you.”

He pats the seat beside him.

It would be a catastrophically stupid idea to move.

Which is exactly what Shane does.

Shane watches out of the corner of his eye as the last stragglers file into the classroom. It’s a process he’s subjected to daily, in almost all of his classes. Unlike most people, he likes to be early. It guarantees his usual spot in the back, by the window.

The view isn’t particularly impressive, but it draws his attention sometimes—the churn of grey skies over campus, and farther out, the horizon perforated by the downtown skyline.

Class starts a few minutes later, the lecture commencing with the soothing rumble of his professor’s voice. She’s covering a dense, intricate portion of the syllabus—Yugoslavia and its fall. The deep dive has stretched across several lectures now, with no end in sight.

It’s the kind of convoluted material that usually lights Shane up—dates, figures, fractures, conflicts—but today his fingers drag over his keyboard, producing a mess of notes that will probably make it harder to write whatever paper inevitably gets assigned.

He glances at his phone under the desk. The screen is still open to the message thread he’s been staring at all morning.

Rose: what did you do to Ilya?!!
Rose: Svetlana said he wants to marry you
Rose: congrats :))) he’s loaded :)))

No matter how long Shane looks at the messages, they refuse to resolve into anything coherent.

It’s been like this since Saturday night—his mind misfiring, unable to process anything properly. Not just his mind. His whole body feels off.

Since the date with Ilya, Shane has felt like he’s been pushed underwater and told to survive on asphyxiation, his breath lagging, his chest heavy and hollow at once, all the time.

His response sits in the reply window, unsent:

I’m not going to marry him. Yet.

He closes the thread before he can do something stupid, like actually send it.

There are other messages he hasn’t sent; most notably the ones sitting in his conversation with Ilya.

They exchanged a few sparse texts after the date. Ilya had asked Shane to let him know when he arrived home. Shane sent a quick ‘just got home’ from the doorstep and Ilya replied with:

Good
I had a nice time

Shane had considered answering me too, but by the time he got out of the shower, another message was waiting:

Ilya: you’re a terrible liar btw

Shane had typed out a response immediately, his fingers still damp and pruned from the water:

what are you talking about?

And then lost his nerve. Because he did know what Ilya meant. The way he acted that night. What were the chances Ilya hadn’t seen straight through Shane’s performance? But admitting that—putting it into words—would mean giving something up. Something Shane isn’t ready to surrender. Or worse, acknowledging that he already has. Because no matter how much Shane wants to deny it—what happened that night felt real. And there isn’t a single part of him that didn’t want it. That didn’t come undone from it.

It would have been easier if it was just the sex, Shane thinks, with the hopeless finality of a man awaiting execution.

He locks his phone and stares out the window, the professor’s voice reduced to a low hum in his ears, everything processing at a distance now, like the world has slipped half a step out of alignment.

It wasn’t just the sex—though, god, the sex was good.

Shane has already gotten himself off to the memory of it no less than four times, pacing his apartment in a state of near-constant arousal, his dick uncomfortably half-hard in his sweatpants.

But it’s not just that. It’s the scatter of images from the night that surface without permission, each one catching on his ribs, stilling his heart like it’s about to break: the way Ilya looked in the restaurant, wreathed in candlelight, ethereally beautiful; the way he drove, reckless and effortless, one hand sliding over Shane’s thigh in the passenger seat while the other steered with the side of his palm, a careless grip that should have terrified him.

It didn’t. Not like that.

Shane had been too busy trying not to come in his fucking pants when Ilya swerved, performing another dangerous merge, his attention fixed less on the road and more on rubbing Shane’s clothed cock—slow, steady, completely at odds with the way he was pushing his BMW to its limit, like he was trying to break the sound barrier.

Ilya was on him the second they stepped into the elevator, as it soared upwards, delivering them straight into his glass-walled penthouse, his mouth savage where it pressed against Shane’s; hot, like sunburn.

Even now, Shane’s lips feel raw, tingling faintly when he drags his fingers over them.

Shane ignores the lecture and takes stock of the other marks Ilya left behind: the lingering soreness of his nipples where Ilya had sucked on them ravenously, the fading bruise at his collarbone where Ilya had latched on and bitten down.

Shane wishes he’d left more. Wishes he could still feel him inside.

But they never even got that far.

They hadn’t separated once they crossed the threshold. Ilya’s arms laced around his waist, lifting him off the floor, carrying him the rest of the way into the bedroom, his face buried in Shane’s neck as he knocked something over in the process, the crash comically loud behind them.

Shane had smothered a dazed laugh into Ilya’s curls—silk-soft, just like he’d imagined, smelling more like him than any hair product. He’d always thought people acted like this only in movies, that it was all a lie. Now everything he’d done before feels like the lie.

The memory sends a fresh shiver down the back of his neck. He shouldn’t be thinking about this in class. He can’t let it get to him.

He forces himself to look at the professor, but none of the words register, whispering past him like static. Shane realizes he’s fucked. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

He’s scowling—he can feel it.

He pulls up his messages with Ilya, deletes the old reply, retypes, altering it until it sounds less defensive.

Shane: what do you mean?

Then he sets his phone face down on the desk.

Shane is going to be late to his next class. Well, not late. Just not early, which is almost worse.

He pretends to reorganize his bag, shifting things around haphazardly while actually trying to will his erection away.

He hates Ilya a little bit. Hates him for how he can't stop thinking about it—the ruinously self-satisfied smile on his face when he finally let go of Shane's ass, his fingers rough and nomadic, mapping every dip and curve through the leather of Shane's pants, and then rose to his feet, lips spit-slick and shining with Shane's cum after sucking him off with brutal efficiency.

Shane's knees had gone weak. He'd exhaled, shaky with relief, when Ilya pushed him down to the floor, almost gentle, taunting: this is what you like, right? to be on your knees?

Then Ilya unbuckled his pants, freed his cock in a single forward motion, and slapped it against Shane's face, the tip leaving a heavy bead of pre-cum on his cheek. 

“Holy fucking shit,” Shane had murmured, awed. It was vulgar and erotic, obscenely hot in ways he hadn’t anticipated—having Ilya's throbbing cock pressed against him, the decadently musky smell of him, the confirmation of what Ilya had claimed earlier about his size. All of this, coupled with the exhilarating realization that Shane was actually going to have to take it, made his dick twitch back to hardness, though it hadn’t even gone fully soft yet. 

“Is this good?” Ilya purred above him, gripping the base, angling himself to smear another streak of pre-cum across Shane's mouth. “Big enough for you?” 

“Fuck,” Shane rasped, licking his lips, desperate to taste him. “Yes, yes, it is.”

The words tumbled out, urgent. He needed more, needed to close his mouth around him, to take him down as far as he could, but Ilya was in no hurry; he was dragging it out, turning the torture exquisite.

“What a pretty cockslut you make,” Ilya murmured, giving himself a few slow strokes, brushing the tip along Shane's lips, slotting it slit against seam.

Shane's cock pulsed with another bead of pre-cum, dripping onto the pristine wood floor. His breath came ragged and wet against Ilya's cock, his mouth already open, waiting.

He thought he couldn't hate Ilya more.

And yet, there it was, that need scraping against the back of his throat, shaping itself into a broken, breathless please.

Ilya smiled down at him—a vicious curl to his beautiful mouth—and finally gave in, pushing forward, easing into Shane's mouth.

At the same time, his fingers came to rest on Shane's jaw, tracing lightly at the hinge. Guiding. A marker, an orient for them both.

Ilya only made it halfway before he paused, hesitating, maybe feeling the tension in Shane's jaw as it locked up.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Ilya murmured. “It's not that big. You can take it.”

He was mocking him.

Shane hated him.

But he didn't want him to stop—didn't want him to stop talking, didn't want him to stop thrusting in, even as his throat tightened, even as the stretch made him gag, saliva pooling thickly, slipping from the corners of his mouth.

“Right there,” Ilya praised, his voice cracking, so uncharacteristic it made Shane look up through the glassy sheen gathering in his eyes. Ilya had shuttered his own, like by doing so he could conceal something in his expression he didn't want Shane to see.

Shane figured it out when he pushed back and took more of him, forcing himself down, throat working, hot tears threatening to untether from his lashes, gagging on Ilya’s length, choking on his own breath. 

Maybe that’s what it did. What pushed Ilya over the edge—Shane’s throat muscles squeezing his cock. 

Ilya's hips jerked forward, then stilled. He tried to pull out, but Shane didn't let him, holding him down, relishing the way Ilya's cock trembled on his tongue as he came—hot, thick spurts down his throat.

Ilya cursed, murmuring apologies, barely audible over the coughing fit that erupted from Shane as he doubled over, attempting to swallow every drop of Ilya’s release. 

“Shhh,” Ilya whispered, fingers threading through Shane's hair in soothing circles. 

But Shane didn't want apologies. He wanted more. He wanted to see if he could make Ilya come again.

He could.

He relives the memory again and again. At this point, he’s practically existing inside it.

Which is fucking inconvenient, especially at times like this, when he has another class to attend, but can’t even move because his dick is so unbearably hard.

He bites down on his fist. Maybe he should skip it. Just go home.

It’s one of the more important classes—Russia in the Twentieth Century—relevant to his thesis, but truthfully, he doesn’t think he could do it justice today.

Besides, his professor had gone on unexpected sick leave. They were supposed to get an email about a substitute, and he still hasn’t, ten minutes before class. It might just be an administrative oversight, but Shane is tempted to interpret it as a sign.

Maybe he doesn’t need to go. Maybe it’s cancelled.

He should check. Just in case.

The thought of missing a crucial lecture, of sabotaging his thesis, and with it, his chances at graduating, fills him with enough dread to dull the sharper edge of his arousal, forcing his thoughts into a semblance of order.

By the time he’s dashing down the hallway, he’s almost composed. As composed as he can be, given the circumstances.

Even here, in the rush of bodies moving past him—a blur of motion, a colorless tide—he thinks of Ilya. How could he not? All it takes is a ripple of blond curls. A blink of gold. Wheat catching fire in the wind.

Shane stops dead. For a second, he thinks he’s really gone mad. He’s hallucinating. 

But Ilya is real. He is.

Shane’s phone vibrates with incoming messages, one after another.  

He steps aside, pressing himself against the wall, letting the current of students pass.

Ilya: never mind

Ilya: when is our next date?

Shane smiles. He hopes it’s soon.