Work Text:
Ilya is here for the view.
Toronto’s nightlights unfurl beyond the railing, glittering beneath his shoes as they scuff the edge of the roof, like starlight buried in sand, something he could skim if he wanted to. Something he could dive into if he surrendered to the pull of the dark.
The sense that he’s looking at something less than real is heightened by the thin ribbon of smoke twisting from his cigarette, veiling the skyline in a pale, choked breath.
Ilya steps back.
Behind him, a door creaks open, then closes with a gentle slam. Hollow footsteps follow, drumming a steady rhythm as they approach.
Even before he hears his name, spoken in that slightly broken, off-kilter way only foreigners manage, he knows who it is. There is only one person who would come looking for him.
“Ilya.”
Shane will notice the cigarette smoke. He’ll smell it on Ilya later. There’s no real point in rushing to get rid of the contraband, but Ilya does anyway, drawing in one last decadent drag before tossing the cigarette out into the fantastical tapestry of lights beyond the roof. Anything to avoid the lecture he knows is coming.
But maybe it’s the view that stops Shane short.
He leans against the railing beside Ilya, close enough that their arms would brush if either of them took too deep a breath. He looks like he’s about to say something—about the smoking—but the disapproval never quite takes root. His lush mouth smooths out, his gaze sliding instead to the horizon, lingering on the sharp spine of the CN Tower, then drifting to the rooftops shimmering in negative light, the roads below blurred into a bright, constant hum.
Neither of them speaks for a while, and Ilya finds himself hypnotized again, stepping closer until the railing digs into his stomach and the view feels almost within grasp. Still, not close enough to drown out the discordant noise in his head, or to grant him reprieve from the hot pressure blooming in his chest.
It isn’t a particularly warm August night, but Ilya sheds his jacket anyway, draping it over his arm and tugging at his collar to ease its torturous tightness.
Shane glances at him, brows knitting. “Are you okay?”
Ilya is helpless against the earnest concern that floods Shane’s expression, glazing his eyes with a dark sheen that mirrors the night sky. He can only lie, and nod, and fiddle with the cigarette pack in his pocket.
“I thought the gala was going well,” Shane says, still frowning. His voice is lifted and carried by a soft gust of wind, ruffling the ends of his hair and making Ilya’s own curls tickle against the back of his neck. “We received so many donations.”
Ilya nods again. By every metric, the gala has been a success. The foundation they created in his mother’s name has gained several prominent new contributors. Shane had done an exceptional job pasting on a polite, practiced smile as he made his rounds through throngs of insufferably rich people, and Ilya had done his best to keep up, playing his part, wearing the same careless attitude that never used to take so much from him to fake.
Everything is absolutely swell, Ilya thinks bitterly. Their best-laid plans executed with aplomb. Their relationship still a secret.
Except the false skin Ilya wears feels tighter with every passing day, and the future in which they no longer have to pretend feels like it’s slipping away, ebbing beyond his reach.
It’s especially difficult on nights like this, when Shane looks this good—effortlessly stunning, dazzling in his midnight-blue tux, the fabric holding depths of color Ilya can’t tear his gaze from. Harder still not to look at the swell of his dress shirt across his chest, or to keep from running his fingers through Shane’s hair. It’s longer now, curving along his cheekbones, accentuating the straight slope of his nose Ilya has always found mesmerizing.
It’s intolerable when some girl in a risque cocktail dress drapes herself over his boyfriend, leans too close to his ear to whisper something, and Ilya can do nothing but observe from the sidelines, keep his distance like a well-trained guard dog, cling to his drink like it might dull the fury crawling under his skin.
“Then what is it?” Shane presses now, his shoulders hunching in a way that tells Ilya he’s genuinely distressed.
“Nothing,” Ilya says. The lie tastes worse for the way it lingers in his mouth, for the way he exhales it like a poisonous fume.
“Come here,” he adds a beat later, already full of regret.
He slips one arm around Shane’s waist, brings the other to his chest, fingers moving instinctively upward to cradle his throat.
Ilya doesn’t know why he does this—why he holds him this way. He tells himself it’s to ground Shane, to banish his worry with the weight of his hands, the reassurance of physical contact that has always kept them afloat.
But as his fingers twitch, almost tightening, almost closing around Shane’s windpipe, Ilya understands the truth.
It’s for him, too.
For the spark it sends down his spine. For the way it loosens something painful and volatile in his chest. For the way it makes him want—need—to take even more.
Ilya squeezes lightly, watching with satisfaction as Shane’s eyes flutter shut in surrender. A flush blooms across Shane’s cheekbones, calling forth the vivid contrast of freckles against sun-kissed skin.
This, too, is instinct. Something they’ve never discussed or negotiated—Shane’s boneless submission whenever Ilya’s hands close around him, or push him down. A secret language their bodies rehearse again and again, without words. Just breath against skin, and the deep, whispered hush that settles over them when they come together.
Ilya squeezes again, then lets go. Shane’s throat vibrates with the flow of air he wasn’t able to take before, his Adam’s apple bobbing as Ilya brings his thumb to brush—guilty and tender—along the hinge of Shane’s jaw, rough with soft stubble, wondering what he should do with him now.
Shane waits. Licks his lips. Bites at them, like he expects Ilya to kiss him.
Unbidden, the night in Vegas crashes into Ilya. The memory surges so violently it feels like the rooftop lurching beneath his feet. All the things he couldn’t say then return, shapeshifting, mutating into the same riven words he still can’t speak now—the monster of a storm he carries inside, the one he can’t unleash on Shane for fear it would destroy everything between them.
Just as before, all he can do is kiss the violence into Shane’s mouth and hope it’s enough.
“No. Not here. What’s wrong with you?”
Except—back then—Shane had refused him. Had pushed him away.
Years later, they’re still standing on a rooftop.
But Ilya has more power now.
He intends to use it.
He ghosts his mouth over Shane’s, then pulls back to murmur against his ear, “Did you get her number?”
It takes a moment for the words to process. For confusion to crease Shane’s brow. He cracks his eyes open and levels Ilya with a blistering glare. “What are you talking about?”
Ilya sighs dramatically, as if this is all beneath him. “The girl who was glued to your side,” he clarifies. It’s petulant and stupid. He knows that. But he wants Shane riled—wants him desperate, apologetic—before he takes him apart tonight.
Right here.
On the roof.
He’s decided.
“She kind of looked like your ex-girlfriend,” Ilya adds snidely.
Shane purses his lips. “I hadn’t noticed. Are you seriously trying to convince me you’re jealous?”
Ilya finally releases his grip on Shane’s throat, smoothing his collar before spinning him around. He lets his jacket fall to the floor, no longer caring what becomes of it, and crowds Shane back against the railing, molding his body to his, hands settling possessively at his waist.
Jealousy isn’t quite the word for the riot that thrashes through him whenever they’re in public and he isn’t allowed to touch. For the dark chasm that opens when he imagines briefly, that Shane might have been better off with someone else. Someone easier. Someone he wouldn’t have to hide from the world.
“Yes,” Ilya lies in a low murmur, rocking his hips forward until Shane’s ass fits snug against him.
Shane goes still in his arms, his back rippling with quickening breaths. He doesn’t protest when Ilya shrugs his jacket off, or when he takes both of Shane’s hands and pins them behind his back.
Then Ilya moves again, and it takes only a few thrusts before he’s hard, before his body slots inseparably into the tight space between Shane’s ass cheeks, his head bowing to nuzzle into the warmth of Shane’s neck.
Ilya stays there for a stolen, sacred moment, breathing in the fierce night air and the opulent trace of his boyfriend’s cologne.
“You know I don’t want anyone else,” Shane says. His voice is thin, on the verge of pleading. It makes Ilya’s cock throb in his pants. “Just you.”
The urge to say prove it is so strong Ilya nearly chokes on it.
Instead, he pushes Shane forward, bending him over the railing, and says roughly, “I’m going to fuck you, Hollander, and I’m going to enjoy this view while I do it.”
A startled gasp spills from Shane’s mouth. “Here?”
“Right here,” Ilya confirms. Then he softens the blow, just a little, by letting him go.
Shane grips the railing, knuckles whitening under the mottled light. He draws a breath.
Then he turns to face Ilya. His gaze cuts to the door, then back again. He studies him for a beat or two, eyes edged with a longing Ilya knows all too well—something that usually perforates his own ribcage like jagged glass, but is made warmer here, softened into a secret Ilya can bear.
The rooftop is quiet. The city feels far away. It’s easy to imagine there are only the two of them, that the night was made for this.
At last, Shane gives a small nod of acquiescence.
Ilya feels himself smile, the shape of it savage as it covers Shane’s mouth, the harshness of the kiss tempered by the gentle way he threads his fingers into the back of Shane’s hair, glides his tongue along Shane’s lips. They’re a little chapped from the wind, still holding the gingery spice of his drink.
Ilya could spend an eternity like this, kissing Shane breathless, making him weak in his embrace, but the ledge is tempting, and Ilya has always been greedy for the dangerous promise of the fall.
“On your knees,” Ilya tells Shane, yanking back his hair to punctuate the command.
Shane pants against his mouth, another gasp escaping before he obeys and sinks down, mouthing at the bulge in Ilya’s pants with a reverence that still shocks Ilya, renders him speechless.
They work his pants open, and Ilya isn’t sure whose hands are less steady as they fumble with the button and zipper, but they figure it out eventually. Ilya’s cock springs free, slapping against Shane’s cheek once because the man beneath him refuses to move away.
A curse lodges in Ilya’s throat, the touch of his leaking cock against the scorching heat of Shane’s skin like a smokeless fire, sending a sharp tingle all the way to his fingertips.
Shane traces his mouth along Ilya’s cock, the scrape of his lips dragging along the sensitive length. It stokes a desire in Ilya that he doesn’t question, only submits to, when he presses his thumb to Shane’s mouth, tugging his lower lip down. Shane’s teeth flash white in the dark and his eyes strike up to meet Ilya’s gaze.
Ilya finds no protest there; only surrender, pulsing in the soft sway of Shane’s lashes.
He holds Shane by the jaw, reassured by the beautiful thrum of the vein that runs there. He curls his tongue in his mouth until saliva pools thickly, then gathers it at the tip. In the next breath, he leans down and spits into Shane’s mouth.
Shane is devastating as he holds it there, savoring it like candy, stray drops slipping down his chin. Ilya has never seen anything more erotic—has quite possibly never been more aroused than he is now, cock throbbing a breath away from his boyfriend’s face. When Shane swallows a moment later, obedient and content, Ilya’s knees nearly give out.
He murmurs his praise in Russian, embarrassed by just how deeply it affects him, though it’s paper-thin subterfuge. Shane knows enough now to recognize the words, to understand he’s being called a good boy with a pretty mouth, and he smirks around Ilya’s cock as he laps at it.
Ilya tips his head back, city lights flaring across his vision as Shane works him with wet, messy movements, one hand slipping into Ilya’s boxers to cup his balls.
They’ve done this countless times before, but it never fails to obliterate Ilya’s mind—Shane piously cast to his knees, all inhibition shed as he devotes himself to the single-minded task of making Ilya come. And never like this: with the wind dancing through Ilya’s curls, the night brushing his nape, the city lights cradled in the palm of his hand.
Ilya isn’t falling over the edge.
He’s soaring; gasping, gripping Shane’s hair, fighting not to lose himself entirely and come.
“Get up,” Ilya warns, his voice sandpapered and low.
Shane stops and pulls off him with a sloppy, wet sound, then holds a hand out for Ilya to help him up. Ilya’s sensitive cock bobs, the night air cool against his skin. Unwillingly, his attention snags on the sleek sheen of Shane’s mouth—plush and raw where it’s been caught between his teeth and stretched around Ilya’s cock, the moans spilling from him excruciatingly sweet.
Ilya’s dick twitches. He needs to fuck Shane now, or he will incinerate and scatter to the wind.
They reposition against the railing again, Shane bent over it, Ilya pressing up behind him. As Ilya yanks Shane’s pants and boxers down, a shiver trembles through Shane, leaving goosebumps in its wake across newly bared skin.
Ilya runs his fingers along the curve of Shane’s ass, soothing the shiver, tracing the pale slashes of stretch marks—a constellation scattered across his thighs, like something Ilya once bit into and left behind to return to later, to remap with his teeth. He doesn’t have time to worship them now, not the way they deserve. The edge of the roof is sharp beneath their feet, the night rushing forward against their will.
Someone at the party might start to miss them.
So Ilya tears himself away and replaces his mouth with the slide of his fingers, stroking and seeking.
He’d fucked Shane earlier that day—in the shower, just before they started getting dressed for tonight—and he’s thrilled to find Shane still a little loose, stretching easily around his fingers.
Ilya draws slow circles over the swell of Shane’s ass and murmurs, “Shane,” so he won’t be startled when Ilya leans closer and lets a thin string of spit fall directly onto him.
“Fuck,” Shane rasps, his composure crumbling fast. “Ilya, fuck me. Please.”
“Hey, I’m trying,” Ilya mutters, slipping into teasing as a last-ditch attempt to hold on to his own eviscerating control. He exhales harshly, tips his head toward the night sky, then swishes saliva in his mouth before leaning down to spit again, his fingers helping to spread it where Shane’s hole flutters in response.
He repeats it a few times, Shane growing restless beneath him, rocking back and forth until Ilya has to brace a hand against his back to keep him steady.
Only when Shane is thoroughly slick with his spit does Ilya proceed, gripping Shane’s ass and lining himself up with his entrance. His cock is still wet from Shane’s mouth; the head slides past the tight ring of muscle, but no further, stopped by the tension wracking Shane’s body.
“Relax for me, sweetheart,” Ilya coaxes. He forces himself to draw in a lungful of air and releases it along the slope of Shane’s neck in a warm puff of breath.
Shane follows his lead, inhaling fully. The tightness eases around Ilya’s cock, letting him in deeper—one painstaking inch at a time.
“Fuck,” Ilya hisses. “Like that…so tight. So good.”
He bottoms out to the sound of Shane’s shattered moan, to the quicksand heat of him swallowing Ilya completely, to the primal certainty of laying claim to what is Ilya’s alone. After that, there’s nothing to stop him from hauling Shane back over himself again and again, their bodies coming together and pulling apart in a relentless rhythm, like a single heart and lung trapped between them.
This is how I make you mine, Ilya thinks deliriously, surveying his domain: the beautiful man spread beneath him, the sprawl of the city flung out beyond the railing. He imagines the lights alive—glassy eyes watching, bearing witness to their illicit interlude.
“Мой,” Ilya growls, and hopes—knows—that Shane understands, that he feels it everywhere. Ilya is cutting him open, flaying him apart and filling him to the brim with touch and breath and awe, with all the pent-up anger and unsaid words he carries inside.
He repeats it until the word dissolves into rasps and moans, into the blurred shape of Shane’s name. Shane murmurs “yours” back in English, and it sounds like a plea for mercy, like he's begging to be spared, so Ilya relents and wraps his arm around him. One hand closes around Shane’s cock, the other hooks over his shoulder to keep them locked together. His mouth grazes Shane’s throat, lips suctioning with the promise of a bruise.
Ilya fucks him hard, brutally, pumping his fist until Shane’s back arches and his body clenches tight around Ilya’s cock. He shakes, spilling over Ilya’s knuckles in a rush of warm cum that Ilya wants—instantly, viscerally—to taste. But not yet. Not until Shane goes soft and sensitive in his grasp, spent and wrecked, and still Ilya keeps moving, a little unhinged with lust and love, thrusting him back toward the brink until there is nothing left of Shane but this; until he’s worn down to Ilya’s hands, Ilya’s skin, until he chooses this life with him, again and again, in any universe.
Ilya’s own release washes over him then, the violent push and pull of it something he can only endure by the skin of his teeth, which sink into the salty-sweet flesh of Shane’s throat.
He doesn’t even register at first that Shane is talking, that the lights have gone too bright in his vision, that he’s gone soft inside him. He pulls out, smearing the last drops over Shane’s swollen hole, so undone by the sight of it he thinks he might die with it burned into the backs of his eyelids.
“Um,” Shane says, mildly panicked. “This is a fucking mess.”
Ilya steps back, knowing he needs to purge the last of the pleasure from his limbs and take control before Shane spirals. He retrieves his tux jacket from the pavement and wipes his cock clean, then flips the fabric inside out and brings it to Shane’s thighs, cleaning him in slow, soothing strokes.
“Is fine,” Ilya murmurs. “We can use this. I’m not wearing it tonight.”
“Okay,” Shane says. Before Ilya is even halfway done, he turns around, tugging his boxers and pants back into place with unsteady hands. “We have to…” He swallows. “Give a thank-you speech. Then we’re done.”
“I’m ready,” Ilya says, spreading his arms theatrically. His shirt is rumpled, hair wind-tossed, his soft cock still untucked in his pressed trousers.
Shane shakes his head, exasperated, but there’s a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. He reaches up, trapping Ilya’s chin between his fingers, kisses him sloppy and warm, and murmurs, “That was hot. I love you.”
Ilya whispers it back.
Everything is swell, except for the way his pulse refuses to settle at the thought of going back inside, of the brittle smile he’ll have to wear for the rest of the night. He holds Shane’s hand all the way to the ballroom doors, like it might stop the murder of his heart between his ribs.