coffeeinallcaps

Shane’s mouth feels dry. He can’t stop staring back at Ilya.

Finally, pulling the key out of the ignition, Ilya tells him, “Wait in the car.”

Shane, inexplicably, feels bereft without Ilya’s eyes on him; like he’s pushed back under water after being able to come up for air. He lifts his fingers to his eyelashes, comforted by the way the little hairs catch against the groves of his fingertips.

His mind is sluggish, thoughts muddled, more so from anxiety and stress than from a real lack of sleep. His shift, if he’d been able to finish it, would’ve been over an hour ago. He’d be on his way home now, probably, get some dinner or breakfast or whatever, consider calling his parents and then distract himself by reading a book or attempting to fix his leaking faucet for the millionth time. Maybe he’d have managed it this time. Maybe he would’ve called his parents, after all.

Maybe he fell asleep during his shift and this is all a debilitating dream that his brain refuses to let him wake up from.

Shane chances a glance out the window and finds Ilya looking back at him as he stands by the register, paying for the gas. His focus shifts from Shane to the cashier, movements easy and unhurried, a friendly enough smile on his face.

Closing his eyes, Shane lets his head fall back against the headrest and breathes in deep through his nose. He remembers what his meditation app told him, the handful of times he’d tried it: don’t latch onto thoughts, let them pass you by, watch them go; it’s normal that you feel like grabbing onto one; if you feel like you’ve done that, take a deep breath and release the thought. So, he doesn’t think about what it means that he obediently stays in the car, that the thought of disregarding the order doesn’t even cross his mind, that he doesn’t consider mapping out an escape. There’s no point anyway. Ilya took the car keys with him, Shane’s phone is miles and miles away, abandoned in his patrol car, and there’s no place he could run to hide. He has no chance of success, so why try?

Don’t latch on. Let them pass. Breathe through it.

The door on the driver’s side squeaks. Ilya drops into the seat and the whole car shakes with it.

Whatever slim chance he’s had is gone now.

Don’t latch on. Let them pass. Breathe through it.

They don’t go far. Ilya rounds the corner of the station, out of sight of the security cameras.

“Get out,” Ilya tells him, not unkindly.

Biting cold fall air stings his face when Shane gets out. Briefly, his mind snags on the fact that his door isn’t even locked. A sense of relief floods him then at the sensation of stretching his legs, straightening his spine, breathing in fresh air, only now understanding that the car wasn’t just stuffy with the weird tension between them. His shoulders ache from how tense he’s held himself. It’s not new.

His breath dissipates in a foggy gust as he exhales.

Ilya slamming the trunk of the car shut brings Shane back to the present. There’s a brown bag in his hand. Shane eyes it warily.

“Relax,” Ilya says with a smirk, “is hair dye. I like my hoes blonde now.”

Shane bites back the first comment that rises up his throat. He can’t help the eye roll, though. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you don’t have a type.”

Ilya’s eyes flash, with delight more than with danger, and he slowly walks up to him, pressing, pressing, and Shane doesn’t even realize he’s been giving ground until his back hits a cold wall with an audible thud.

Ilya hums. His nose is a hair-width away from Shane’s. “And is that the only wrong thing you know about me?”

Shane hates the way his breath hitches. Ilya’s smirk widens.

“It’s not wrong,” Shane argues back. It’s not. He’s spent a significant amount of time learning everything he could about Ilya off every scrap of information law enforcement had on him, and then several more years by getting to know him…more intimately.

He realizes Ilya’s crowded him against the restroom door when he reaches around to open it. Shane stumbles backwards and a strong, unreasonably warm hand catches him by the waist, stabilizing him.

“No? Мой любимый,” Ilya coos, and Shane flushes up to his ears, the nickname, coloured by the cadence of Ilya’s voice, how it sounds in Russian, hitting him so unexpectedly he gasps without meaning to. “You have always been a bad liar.”

Ilya keeps his hand on Shane’s waist, walking him into the restroom, close enough that Shane starts to feel the heat of his body through his clothes. He uses his other hand to carelessly pull the door closed behind them, locking it without even so much as a backward glance.

“Fooled you,” Shane shoots back and immediately clamps his mouth shut, biting at his tongue.

He feels a sick little thrill, a sort of vindication maybe, when Ilya’s breath catches.

There’s a hand around his throat between one blink of an eye and the next, and Ilya’s face is so close to his that his breath is ghosting across Shane’s skin. Heat slides down his vertebrae, syrupy, melting bones its wake. With enough pressure against Shane’s Adam’s apple to be more than just uncomfortable, Ilya walks him backwards again. The back of his head hits the wall so hard it hurts, knocking a grunt of pain from him.

Shane is sure his heart is pounding so loudly Ilya has to hear it, too. He’s breathless and not because Ilya is pressing at his wind pipe.

He needs to fucking get it together.

Without conscious thought, Shane finds himself wrapping his fingers around Ilya’s wrist. When he presses down over the tender skin right below the heel of his palm, Ilya’s pulse is beating a wild pace against his fingertips.

“No,” Ilya says, almost gently. Shane’s eyes flutter shut and Ilya presses at the hinges of his jaw, pulling Shane forward a bit before smacking his head back against the wall. “Eyes on me.”

Obediently, Shane blinks his eyes open. The cold at his back and the heat of Ilya’s body at his front make him shiver, charging up his nerves like an electrical storm.

Whisper-soft, Ilya says, “You almost killed me.”

The brown bag drops to the floor with a soft rustle as Ilya draws back a little. With his now free hand, he grabs Shane’s to guide it under his henley. His skin is warm against Shane’s, fingers nudging him to a spot between his ribs, until Shane feels raised skin under his fingertips.

This scar, he doesn’t know. Carefully, he traces it, its edges, its shape, before he lets his fingers skim over Ilya’s ribs, mapping where the new mark sits. White spots dance in his vision, head suddenly stuffed with cotton.

Ilya’s smile is as mean as it is mocking. Shane yanks his hand out from under Ilya’s grasp. He thinks he’s breathing, sucking in deep gulps of breath, maybe, but his lungs don’t seem to fill with air. The hand around his throat has gentled.

“Who?” He chokes out the word with effort.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ilya says. “They’re dead now.”

Shane nods slowly. He doesn’t look at the monster that lurks in the shadows of his mind, the one that is soothed by this knowledge. “Good.”

A smile with the hard edges of a smirk spreads over Ilya’s face. He moves his hand from Shane’s throat to grab his face. His thumb brushes across the line of his jaw. There’s a glint in his eyes that Shane has seen plenty of times before, and every time, it has kindled a hungry fire inside him.

Ilya lets go of him entirely. Shane tries not to sag against the wall. Jerking his chin at the paper bag now on the floor by Shane’s feet, Ilya takes a few steps back.

“Change,” he orders.

Shane stares at the bag for a moment while he carefully tries to gather himself. Only now does it occur to him that he’s still in his uniform; so distracted by the last few hours that he’s not even had the time to notice the discomfort of the fabric against his skin.

Small mercies.

He picks up the bag and pulls the first piece out, rubbing the hem of what he’s sure is a sweatshirt between his fingers. It’s soft and smooth against his skin, the kind of texture and fabric blend that dominate his own wardrobe. From the feel of it, it’s thick enough to keep him warm without making him overheat.

Shane closes his eyes on a soft inhale. He feels his jaw clench.

His eyes snap open when Ilya’s hand brushes his to take the bag from him. The once-over paired with raised eyebrows is enough to tell Shane what he means.

Shane doesn’t need to look at Ilya to know that he’s staring. It makes him feel like no time has passed between them at all. He can’t remember an instance when Ilya didn’t stare at him while he took his clothes off, even if it was a rushed and impatient strip—which, if he thinks about it, is how he shed his clothes most of the time when he was around Ilya.

Now, Shane focuses on undressing methodically to keep his mind from straying. He steps out of his boots first and makes a face at the icy cold floor against the soles of his feet. Shane drops the pants next, folds them and uses them as a barrier between the filthy, freezing floor and his feet. Through it all, he keeps his eyes fastidiously on his own hands.

He makes quick work of the buttons on his shirt, glad to finally rid himself of the stiff fabric, and shivers when the cold hits the naked skin of his arms.

There’s a sharp but soft inhale. Shane decidedly doesn’t look. Instead, he folds the shirt too, and then pulls his undershirt up and over his head: an extra layer between him and the chafing texture of his uniform.

Left with nothing else to do, Shane raises his gaze, only to find Ilya staring at his chest with an odd expression. Shane almost huffs, but then he remembers—

His hand flies up to curl around the ring resting on a chain over his heart. He’s gotten so used to it that sometimes he forgets it’s there. At this point it’s just as much a part of him as any of his limbs: a familiar weight around his neck, a comforting pressure against his breastbone, always close. Shane had fought with himself over it at first, but in the end the decision to carry a piece of Ilya—of them—around his neck was easy and made long before he became conscious of it.

Ilya drops the bag of clothes a second time. He crowds Shane up against the wall again. Shane barely feels the cold at all.

“Show me,” Ilya urges, eyes glued to where Shane’s fingers are still wrapped around the ring.

With a shudder, Shane lets go. Something in him roars at the look on Ilya’s face and the intensity of his eyes as he raises his own hand to the ring. Carefully, Ilya hooks his fingers under it, resting it on the pads of his fingers and looking at the ring as if he was appraising an especially invaluable piece of jewelry.

Shane’s heart hammers in his chest hard enough for Ilya to feel it against the backs of his fingers. Shane is sure of it.

Ilya lifts his eyes to Shane’s as he closes his fist around the ring. His lips are slightly parted and his breaths are coming hard, Shane can’t help but notice. His own breathing is shallow. Shane swallows, licks his lips; watches Ilya track the motion with his eyes.

Shane gasps when Ilya yanks him close by the chain around his neck.

Finally, finally, finally—Ilya’s mouth is on his.

As always with Ilya, Shane feels everything all at once: each touch to his skin, every slide of a palm running up his exposed body, every drag of Ilya’s tongue against his, the overwhelming pressure of their bodies colliding, the sting of fingers tangling in his hair, the firm but gentle press of fingers on his face, the feeling of solid muscle shifting under his hands. All of it buzzes through his nerves and bypasses whatever filter his brain usually applies, and floods him with each and every sensation, like an overcharge of his nervous system.

Until all Shane’s mind and body is left with is Ilya, Ilya, Ilya.

Ilya uses his whole body to pin Shane to the wall. He licks into Shane’s mouth, once, twice, and Shane’s toes curl. There’s a hand on his face, tilting it just so, and another that’s smoothing up his side, squeezing at his chest, curling around his shoulder. A strange echo loops in his ears and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s their combined gasps and moans that reverberate around the restroom.

Shane runs his hands through Ilya’s hair, over his shoulders, his neck, his arms, grabbing at everything he gets between his fingers. He arches, just to feel Ilya use his weight to push him more firmly against the wall. Vaguely, Shane registers that Ilya lets go of his face to use both hands to run over his naked skin, skim his fingers along the waistline of his underwear, to reach around to grab at his ass.

One of Ilya’s thighs slots between Shane’s legs. A desperate groan crawls up Shane’s throat when hard muscle grinds against his straining dick. Ilya’s hard too, pushing his cock to Shane’s hip as if he’s looking for friction as well.

Shane’s lips are wet and tingling when Ilya draws back and moves on to his jaw, his neck. Every cell in his body is lit up, humming with a want so hungry it feels like a bottomless pit inside him, and each touch, each kiss, each press, each lick, everything Ilya gives him, feeds it and feeds it and feeds it. And Shane keeps wanting, all through Ilya licking and biting over his jaw, through the open-mouthed, wet kisses sucked along the line of his neck, through all the low hums and moans Ilya presses into his skin.

Shane fists a hand into the curls at the back of Ilya’s head and drags him up to kiss him again. He smiles when Ilya makes a noise between a growl and a moan that Shane licks out of his mouth. This kiss is hard and biting: filthier, hungrier, more urgent; mean, even.

It feels like a fight. It feels like an accusation.

It feels like a reconciliation, too; like an apology, maybe.

He feels like—It feels like—

Like a tilted picture frame on the wall, barely noticeable to anyone but him, and now he’s finally straightened it. Finally, it’s right again.

Ilya’s hand splays his hand out over the ring on his chest. Shane covers it with his own, tucks his fingers between Ilya’s palm and his sternum.

He turns his head into Ilya’s neck and latches onto his pulse point. It draws a low moan out of Ilya. Shane feels dizzy with it. Hand still fisted tightly in Ilya’s curls, Shane uses his grip to tilt his head, expose more of his neck, get better access. Against his tongue, Ilya’s pulse beats wildly, and Shane feels wild with it, too.

When he bites, Ilya almost flinches. Still so sensitive. Shane buries his own moan in Ilya’s neck. He slides his free hand down the slope of Ilya’s back and feels his fingers bump against something hard and smooth. His eyebrows furrow and—

Ilya’s hand on his chest pushes hard.

Shane blinks at him, panting, mind going a mile a minute with confusion. Ilya is holding him at arm’s length, panting too, with a strange expression on his face. He has his other arm behind his back and—

Oh.

“Ilya,” Shane says, swallowing. His breaths come harder now for a different reason. “Ilya, I wasn’t—”

In one fluid motion, Ilya steps away from him, taking the warmth of his hand with him, and pulls the gun from his waistband. Shane shudders, suddenly remembering the freezing cold surrounding them.

“Sure,” he says, clipped, as his face settles into hard lines.

“Ilya—”

Ilya almost sneers at him. He waves the gun. “Get dressed.”

Shane clenches his jaw, desperation tipping into frustration. As if he would’ve been in the wrong to try and go for the gun, fuck this guy. As if he hadn’t been kidnapped; as if he should just be the little lamb letting himself be led to the slaughter.

He exhales, hard, and Ilya raises his eyebrows at him, unimpressed.

“Fuck you.” He spits it, without meaning to, as he grabs the bag with clothes and starts pulling them on, feeling uncomfortably exposed now.

“You wish,” Ilya retorts, easily, effortlessly, in a tone that pushes all of Shane’s buttons at once.

Shane, like most of the time, doesn’t have a witty comeback. Maybe he should go for that gun.

He’s flushed with anger by the time he’s done dressing—even more annoyed by the fact that the clothes are comfortable—and stuffs his uniform into the bag when Ilya motions him to. Like he’s herding cattle.

Dick.

“Take off your watch,” Ilya orders. He sounds bored.

“It doesn’t have GPS,” Shane says, even as he’s undoing the clasp to slip the watch from his wrist. He holds it out to Ilya.

Ilya moves to grab it but lets it fall to the ground when Shane tries to drop it into his palm.

“How do you say,” Ilya starts. He stomps on it, once, and the sound of the watch breaking echoes around them. He looks at Shane, with something akin to…self-deprecation. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…?”

Shane’s stomach twists itself into a tight, tight knot, shame and anger weaving together into something ugly that makes him nauseous.

When Shane doesn’t argue, Ilya tips his head to the side, motioning to the door.

When they step outside, Ilya leads him back to the car with oddly gentle fingers at his elbow. A little tremor skitters through Shane.

As Ilya pulls the car back onto the road, he reaches out blindly, fingers dipping under the collar of Shane’s shirt until they hook around the chain. He pulls it out from under the fabric, ring resting openly against Shane’s chest.