“Eat up,” says the man—who named himself Nick so quickly that Sam knows he has to be lying, whether or not that matters when there’s no one else in this part of the Dungeon to help Sam—and he comes just close enough for Sam to feel unsettled, gaze fixed on him, “or you might pass out on me again.”
“Do I want to know what I’m eating?” Sam asks, hesitantly, because it doesn’t look, or smell, like anything he’s ever had before.
Nick smiles widely and answers, “Do you?”
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Shane had been four Modelos in up at the lake when he told Ilya he would consent to a matching tattoo for Ilya's birthday if he could beat Shane around the trail. The loop is just shy of six ks and every single morning without fail Shane laps it in about twenty-two minutes, Ilya hot on his heels. When Ilya pushed past him the following morning to get a foot over by the trailhead marker he let out an ear-splitting yawp that Shane found very unnecessary.
Yes, he should have factored in the Modelos. Yes, he suspects sabotage. Yes, he is shitting himself.
Now they have back-to-back appointments with an artist in Hintonburg who Bood likes, because Ilya's preferred guy returned to Denver after some visa trouble. Evidently paperwork was not his forte.
Meanwhile, Ilya keeps airdropping Shane screenshots from the studio's Instagram - arrow-pierced hearts that read MOM and ugly sprawling scorpions and busty pinups in black and white. Cliché bullshit.
"This style is called American traditional, very classic," Ilya says, "but I don't know, maybe we like fine line better?"
"Stop fucking sending me these," Shane snaps. "You can literally just pass me your phone."
Shane obviously has no problem with pain. That part actually - well, he had Ilya jab a fingernail into his forearm with his best approximation of force, and it was a non-issue.
"But it really doesn't feel like that at all," Ilya told Shane when he said this.
"Then do it the way it feels," Shane had said.
Ilya shrugged. "Don't think I can. It's like. Buzzing. Moves around, but it stays with you."
"Yeah?" said Shane, shifting on the couch.
"Like if sunburn is made of bunches of needles, and they're all pressing down into you."
"Yeah," said Shane again, suddenly unable to feel his feet. "Can you, um. Can you do that nail thing again."
Anyway.
When they pull into the parlour ("Do not call it that, it's not 1949.") parking lot, Shane realises that the concept of "chattering teeth" isn't, as he had always thought, a wimp's hyperbole. Ilya's hand's stayed glued to his thigh the duration of the drive. He's kept the final designs under close wraps. Shane thinks he might puke. He's never felt this pathetic in his life. He didn't tell Yuna they were doing this - she's never much liked Ilya's tattoos, and it's possible this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Forget gay son. Forget gay son gay marrying gay rival. Forget gay married gay son leaving Montreal. It's going to be the sight of her only child sporting a tarantula with Megan Fox's face on his elbow that does it. Or knuckle tattoos that say SOFT CORE. Or --
Ilya taps him: time to get out. Not once has he said anything to the effect of "You know, you don't actually have to do this." And why would he. Or should he. It is a beautiful June day in Ottawa and Shane is letting Ilya choose a permanent infection to shove under his skin.
When he thinks of it this way he is able to glide into the shop as though carried by travelator.
It's quieter in here than he expected. Shane's chaperoned many a plastered Metro into places like these trying and failing to appeal to their better angels or at least common sense and they were clubbier in feel, blasting bad alt playlists and echoing with laughter and an off-brand kind of locker room banter. There's none of that telltale buzzing machine noise, either. Shane looks at Ilya.
"What, Hollander? You were the one who wouldn't let me bring Andrew to the house."
"I just think it's probably more sterilised here," mutters Shane. "You booked the shop out?"
"Well I wasn't going to let anyone else see you like this," says Ilya.
Shane swallows. Andrew emerges, says hello. He's a bald guy in his thirties with gold wire aviator glasses. This relaxes Shane ever so slightly. Neither of their type.
"Come on down," says Andrew. "Pick a table, any table."
Ilya chooses the middle right. Not that it matters. He sits down on it. Shane hovers. Ilya glances to his side. Shane hops up next to him so they're sitting shoulder to shoulder. He's wearing a loose tank but he's sweating into it in ways he's never sweat before.
It's the permanence.
"So, this is quite the honour," says Andrew. Tattoo artists must be contracted to speak like this, thinks Shane. Somewhere between carney and a person who writes poetry on a typewriter. "I understand this is your first piece, Shane?"
"It is," says Shane, voice compressed and run through an anonymiser. To his ears. He concentrates on Ilya's breath.
"I'll go first, Andrew," says Ilya. Shane glares at him. What the fuck? He wanted to go first. Now he's going to have to--
"You can wait, малыш," says Ilya, in Russian. He rolls down his shorts. "I want it here, on my hip," he says to Andrew.
Shane's mouth falls open. They hadn't discussed location. Hipbone is. It's pretty hot.
"Sure," says Andrew. "Let me just get...." he wheels himself over to a desk, grabs a sheet of transfer paper.
On it, reversed, in stark black gothic looking figures: the number 24.
Shane barks out a laugh.
"You like it?" grins Ilya. "I love even numbers," he tells Andrew, who laughs a bit.
"Oh my god," Shane says. But then--
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Shanya," says Ilya. "Watch."
Shane barely breaks eye contact as Ilya gets his jersey number tattooed onto his body. Looks at Ilya's face as he lies down, and Andrew shaves him. Transfers the stencil. Turns on the gun. Ilya smirks at him when the whining starts up.
In Russian he says to Shane: "Sounds like you."
Shane isn't sure how he gets through the next half hour. He starts getting hard about half a dozen times, and it's only by picturing his parents dead in a car crash à la Bruce Wayne that he kills it every time.
Andrew seems to be quite thorough. He bandages Ilya up. 24 marked up 2.4 inches high. It's.
"Now you," says Ilya, smirking. Shane levitates.
Andrew grabs another piece of paper. Same font. Shane's nothing but gamma waves. Mirror image 81, like he thought. But. It's--
"A temporary tattoo?" Shane all but yells.
Ilya is laughing to himself in the way that Shane really fucking hates. Like that dog from Wacky Races. Shane hits his chest hard.
"No," he says.
"No?" says Ilya, a cherub lifted from church. He's giving Shane an easy way out. Which makes it so much worse.
"No! I didn't-- no." Shane turns to Andrew. "I want it for real. As big as his."
Ilya raises his eyebrows.
"Okay," says Andrew, uncertain. Shane doesn't know how Ilya coached him, but he probably didn't think he was getting in the middle of a marital spat today.
Wait, wait wait. No. This is ridiculous. He cannot get a tattoo out of spite. Ilya's not saying anything, just looking at him with curiosity and amusement. Shane thinks hard.
"Sorry. Actually, I know this is kind of-- could we maybe make it fit on one knuckle? Like on my ring finger. Would that be too small?"
"What," says Ilya, quietly.
"That's good, right?" Shane asks him. "I've always been pissed I can't wear your band."
Ilya answers by kissing him. It's chaste by their standards. Shane smiles big and stupid.
"Give me just a sec," says Andrew, who's elected not to see any of this. Shane likes him, he's decided.
It really doesn't take long, in the end. When the gun makes contact with his left hand Ilya's gripping the right one even tighter.
hiiii if you're still taking prompts! public/private
They were doing this in Montreal because they wanted to be noticed. If they met for lunch in Boston there's definitely a chance someone might recognise them, take a picture, post it somewhere - Ilya is locally very famous, is beloved, (is leaving), and the two of them together double their odds - but Montreal is a 100% guarantee to Boston's 75%, and Ilya knows Shane prefers that number. If he's going to freak himself out like this, he wants to be sure of the outcome, control what can be controlled. Ilya understands. It's not just for Shane's sake that he agrees.
And this, after all, is Shane's design. He wants to be seen together once before the Foundation announcement so that the press conference's emphasis is on the charity, not the relationship, as if that's going to be possible. "You want to make a Rozanov-Hollander vaccine?" Ilya had laughed, the first time Shane brought it up. "Here's a little bit, next time you get it, won't be so bad?"
Shane had punched him in the arm for that, which was fitting. But Ilya already had the virus and it was incurable, like a lot of things about him. Love. It was so disgusting.
Here they are, then. Shane's already there. He had wanted to arrive first, and Ilya had wanted him to be as chill as possible. Ilya kind of gets it now, because as he enters this very inoffensive midrange Saint-Henri bistro it's apparent every single one of these polite Canadians is looking at him, even though they aren't looking at him. It's very strange, like the room is full of a new kind of oxygen that his lungs can't tolerate. Ilya's heart rate kicks up, coke jittery. What the fuck. He's meeting Shane for lunch. Outside. In the world. Together. On purpose. The hostess is looking at him like he's the three-headed hound of hell, but she's also smiling and asking if he has a reservation.
"I," says Ilya, wondering if Shane's mouth is this dry, wondering if he'll ever piss normally again, always a thrill to discover new genres of his own fear, "yes, I think he's--"
Shane is off in a quiet corner with his back to them, but Ilya's had eyes on him while pretending not to have eyes on him since he pushed open the door several years, or possibly seconds ago. So in a way Ilya has a lot in common with everyone else in this restaurant.
The hostess takes pity on him, even though she probably thinks he's about to smother Shane with a chloroform-soaked rag and haul him out the back. Oh, Canada. "Right this way," she says, grabbing another menu. He follows her to the table.
"Mr. Hollander," she says, with the same reverence his mother effected for fairytales about Vladimir the Great. Then, for Koschei, "Your guest."
Shane rises from his chair, and he is the saviour-king. Ilya's never seen anyone so brave in his life. Shane holds out his hand. "Rozanov," he says, voice steady. "Thanks for coming."
Ilya wants to get down on one knee. Pledge fealty? Propose? Suck dick? All three?
He shakes Shane's hand, same as he's done a million times before. Not like this. Fuck, Shane's not going to like that sweaty palm. Goodbye, sportsmanship. "Thank you for inviting me."
They both sit. The hostess leaves. Her Dutiful Discretion comes off her in waves.
Ilya looks at Shane, who's got his face trained into its most diplomatic shape. Only Ilya would know that nostril flare is the suppression of a smile. His own face, he hopes, has been wrangled into second-language-plausible-deniability territory. Trust the mask. For an instant - only a millisecond - he finds himself considering setting the mask on fire, hating it with a screaming malice. But no. Mask is utilitarian. He has no feelings about it.
"So," says Shane.
"So," says Ilya, watching the way the light from the bay window behind him interacts with the restaurant's copious greenery to give Shane shadowy dapples, big freckles over little ones. He leans back. "How do you want to help me, Hollander?"
This startles a laugh out of Shane.
"Help you? You're not here so I can help you," says Shane. "Not that anything could," he adds, the barest suggestion of a gleam in his eye.
Ilya wants to grin. Ilya wants to eat him alive.
"Oh, that can't be true," he drawls, picking up the menu. He taps his fingers against the back of it. One by one. Strokes the leather softly.
Shane goes red faster than bloodied gauze. He stares at Ilya's hands, then up at Ilya's face, suddenly furious. Ilya gets the message. Reel. It. In. Ilya clears his throat.
"This is a business meeting, then," says Ilya, just loud enough. That had been part of the script. He's seen at least two people attempt surreptitious pictures.
"Yes," says Shane. "I wanted to take your temperature on--"
The waiter comes by. His eyes are practically bulging out of his skull. Ilya knows, of course, that Montreal is a hockey town. The hockey town. But it's very surreal to see this play out, and he sort of wishes he could be a fly on the wall when Shane goes out on his own. What kind of treatment he gets when Ilya isn't there. How hard they would fumble and stutter and fawn if the devil incarnate wasn't sitting across from their Messiah. He touches his cross, but he isn't too sorry to blaspheme.
"Can I start you off with something to drink," the waiter asks breathlessly.
"Just water is good for me, thank you," says Shane, not beating the Christ-like allegations.
"Stella, if you have, please," says Ilya.
"You bet," says the waiter, whose mouth twitches. Ilya's pretty sure this man thought he was about to ask for a bucket of vodka. "Back in just a moment."
"Actually," says Shane, bright, inspired. "You know what? That sounds good. I'll do a beer as well." The waiter murmurs assent and leaves.
Ilya looks at Shane. It's too fucking hard. He's not sure he can get through this next hour of ultra-normal normalcy. He laughs, and then Shane lets out a little laugh.
The room has two beds. Well. Of course it does. This is the standard configuration for hotel team blocks. Shane looks at this room and he thinks: away mode. Hayden's gross anti-snoring plug on the dresser, Shane already mentally composing his pre-game speech. Had it down to a formula. Who to address by name, who took criticism (criticism they should have, at this stage in their career, been fine with receiving) better if it had less pointed parameters. Recently he had been forced to accept that it was easiest if he sidebarred with a select few and then shouldered the rest himself. Recently was no longer current.
He's been in hotel rooms with Ilya. He sleeps in a bed next to Ilya every night now, which is a feat if you stop to consider the fact that they've been together together for four years and have only just started experiencing consecutive mornings with each other. May was a wild time. Shane thinks it might still be May. It's October.
"This is mine," says Ilya, rolling his suitcase off towards the foot of one of the beds.
"What? Fuck you, I always take the right side," Shane says, without thinking. Ilya wrestles him down onto the bed in question, his knee between Shane's legs.
"We are obviously," says Ilya, kissing Shane's collarbone, his neck, "pushing them together, Shanya." He slips his tongue into Shane's mouth. Shane kisses him back. It is a relief to return to, every time. But. Context reasserts itself. He pulls away.
"Is that allowed?" he asks, sitting up. Ilya sighs, does the same.
"Wiebe said hand stuff is okay because we're married. But anything more than and we have to file a report with HR," says Ilya, seriously.
Shane cannot tell if this is an actual conversation Ilya has had with their coach. He doesn't know how to respond. The look Ilya gives him now is somewhere between love and exasperation.
"No, I didn't ask him. Yes, we can push the beds together. People will say it's weirder if we don't, I think."
"People," says Shane.
Ilya waves a hand. "Team. Again: they won't know. No one will know."
Shane thinks if his life warranted a crest, this is what it would read: "no one will know". Probably in Latin or whatever. "No one will know" in Latin in a ribbon of gothic script painted underneath, like, a rabbit or something. A stag. He used to think just the words kept him safe, even though he also always knew, on some level, that that was a fantasy. He is beginning to find out just how many conflicting statements he's managed to clasp in his fist all this time, and the answer is. A shitload. Ilya would say it's because he has big hands.
He glances at the other twin bed.
"We can separate them tomorrow," says Ilya, in a rare misread.
"Or maybe," says Shane, knocking his forehead to Ilya's, "we won't."
Ilya's phone dings loudly - he accidentally bumped it off silent a few days ago and hasn't bothered to change it back thanks to the incidental boon of Shane's irritation at the sound combined with the resulting experiment of, like, what can he get Shane to do while he's pissed that Ilya isn't checking his phone, turns out: a lot - as Shane's brushing his teeth and Ilya's watching his bathroom choreography from their bed. Shane knows he's being ogled but he isn't doing anything about it, so Ilya rolls his eyes and rolls over to see who the fuck wants something -- there's a text from Sveta.
you're gonna shit is all it says. There's a video attachment. He starts playing it and pauses ten seconds in.
"Shanya," he calls out at an unnecessary volume, scrambling for an iPad, any iPad. They're going to need a bigger screen.
"What," says Shane, who's waterpiking.
"Come see this," he says, airdropping the video to himself.
Shane spits - Ilya would know that sound at a hundred decibel construction site, at a rave, at the Indy 500 - and comes to perch next to Ilya on the bed, frowning. Ilya starts the video up again.
It's terrible quality because it's from he would guess maybe twenty? years ago, and it must have been shot on the silver digital camera Sveta was toting everywhere in those days, which he hasn't thought about in decades. Everyone at boarding school had them, she had claimed. It was full of debauched flash photos that could have gotten her grounded for life, and worse. Anyway it's her high-pitched teenage voice at his old rink in Moscow, a deadpan narrator following a blurry figure on the ice who is nevertheless very clearly, even through the grain and sands of time, extremely skilled.
"There he goes," she says, all the way from 2007, "the great hope of Russia."
The figure - Ilya, obviously - executes a flashy maneuver to come to a sudden stop in front of his documentarian.
"Are you filming me," he says, grinning.
"Fuck," says Shane, a livewire of attention next to Ilya on the bed. He taps the screen and zooms in. "You're like. What. Seventeen here?"
Trust Shane to be able to carbon date him. Ilya squeezes the meat of his thigh. "Think so," he says.
"Fuck," says Shane again, pressing play.
"So, Ilyusha," says Sveta, "you've heard the news?"
"Новости," Shane echoes her now in his unthinking way.
"Don't tell me," says teenage Ilya, maybe the youngest seventeen year old of all time. "They've heard about my cock in America and they're lining up on their knees at the airport."
Adult Ilya snorts at this squeaky mouse. Shane shakes his head, but he's smiling.
A svelte arm reaches out to smack his elbow pad. "They don't want your ugly cock there, freak. No. About the Canadian kid who's going to beat you."
Both Shane and Ilya reel back from the iPad at the same time.
"What," says Shane, his smile now threatening to break its own record.
"Yeah, I've seen that guy," says original teeth Ilya. "Beat me? Him? He's ни рыба ни мясо."
"Excuse me? I'm what?" says Shane.
"Oh, very very hot and perfect for me in every way," Ilya says. But Shane has already pulled it up on his traitorous translator app, the one he uses so rarely these days.
"'Neither fish nor fowl,'" reads Shane. "'Used to express an opinion of mediocrity'. Asshole! You were already shit scared of me!"
"No I fucking wasn't," says Ilya. "Does this look like a kid who was scared of anything?" He jabs the pixellated stud. Shane gives him a look. "Let's just finish the fucking video," says Ilya.
"They're saying he might be the best in the world," says Sveta.
"Who's saying that? Blind people? Tourism board of Canada?"
Sveta laughs infuriatingly. "A lot of people, you arrogant cunt. One of my dad's old teammates said he saw--"
The camera jolts. Suddenly Ilya's face fills the entire screen like a biblical whale. "Listen up, Sergey Vetrov's old teammate, and anyone else who's so braindead they need to hear this. My name is Ilya Rozanov and I'm the best fucking hockey player to ever walk this earth. You're actually fucking lucky I'm giving you advance notice. In three years' time you'll all wish you had sucked my dick when you had the chance. And you! Little Canadian boy! I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to wipe the ice with you so hard you'll be begging for mercy. No, really, you're going to wish you never even picked up a stick, you'll be crying so bad at how good I am and how shit fucking terrible you are by comparison. My name will be the last thing on your lips before you slink off to a life selling used Hondas. Got that? Hot bitches, come find me."
A wink the size of Ontario. The video ends.
"Oh my god," is all Shane manages to choke out. "Used--"
"Well, you are crying," says Ilya, feeling faintly shellshocked.
Shane's laughing so hard he's passed over into the realm of seizure.
"Show some respect," says Ilya, pummelling his shoulder. "You're in bed with the best hockey player to ever walk this earth. You should be kissing my feet."
"Sorry, who here has four Cups? You kiss my fucking feet," says Shane.
Ilya growls, lunges for one of Shane's ankles. Shane snaps it away underneath him before Ilya can get to it. "You think that's going to stop me?" he says. "You know my last measured shot speed?"
"Hundred and nine," says Shane, automatically. "But--"
Ilya yanks down his briefs and slaps Shane's ass so hard Shane yells. The print takes a good minute to go from red to white.
"Jesus!" Shane hisses, but he's putting it on, it's really one of the mildest hits in Ilya's canon. "You're literally exactly the same."
"You love it," says Ilya, working his hands through his hair to see if he can get that swoop he used to spend hours trying to perfect.
"Yeah," says Shane, twisting to get eyes on Ilya's mouth. He grins. "Good thing I basically met you at the airport on my knees. Can you send me this? I'm gonna need to watch it again a stupid amount of times."
Ilya kisses Shane, his teenage little self's wet dream. You just never fucking know.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
Captain David Anderson, in London, moments before the final attack on the Citadel.
Words: 100
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: David Anderson & Female Shepard
Characters: David Anderson, Female Shepard
Additional Tags: Mass Effect 3 Mission - Priority: Earth, Character Study, Parental David Anderson, Bittersweet, Memories
Easwin coffeshop AU with Utowin working there (being flirty?) and Easthies being a regular customer (always orders the same thing?)
:3
"Utowin, your sugar-freak of a boyfriend is back," Alaira called to the back room, and Utowin sighed.
"He's not my boyfriend, he's just a regular with a weird order," he muttered as he walked past her on his way to the front counter.
"A regular you think is really hot," she teased.
"Everyone thinks he's really hot, look at him!" Utowin hissed impatiently. Alaira leaned forward to consider the man in question.
He was tall and muscular, and he always wore shirts that had butterfly closures all the way to his neck, really testing the idea of somehow having more clothes on being an even sluttier choice than exposing skin. His face had sharp angles and he had long hair he usually wore in a loose side braid. Today he had a deep red scarf with silver accents loosely around his neck, and his sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbows. He looked intentionally "effortless", and Alaira smirked even more.
"What can I do ya for?" Utowin asked easily, stepping to the counter. The man rasied an eyebrow and Utowin replayed his sentence in his head and realized he'd switched the last two words accidentally. "I mean, the usual?"
"Sure," the man said, with the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Easthies," he supplied.
"I know your name, Eas," Utowin said with a slight roll of his eyes, and then glanced at Easthies again. He was properly smiling now, small but definitely there.
"Eas?" he questioned as he tapped his card to pay at the cash register.
"Yeah, a nickname." Utowin moved down a little to make the drink as Alaira came up behind him to help the next customer. "You never had a nickname before?"
"Not really," Easthies said, and his cheeks turned a little pink. Utowin paused.
"If you don't like it-"
"No, I do," he answered hurriedly. "I like it, from you."
"Okay then," Utowin said, focusing on his task a little more intently than needed. He could make this sugary monstrosity in his sleep, now. He topped off the drink and slid it across the counter, keeping his hand on the cardboard drink sleeve. He rattled off a practiced "one caramel frap, extra caramel syrup, add vanilla, add white mocha, add caramel drizzle, with whipped cream and creme brulee topping." He glanced up, meeting Easthies's eyes. "For Eas."
Easthies reached over, letting his fingers trail over Utowin's slowly as he took the cup, and nodded. "Thank you, Utowin."
"Anytime," Utowin said a little breathlessly, then cleared his throat as Easthies walked off to his usual armchair in the corner.
"Anytime, Eas," Alaira mocked in a whisper as soon as Easthies was out of earshot.
"Shut up," Utowin responded with a blush, but to be honest he couldn't really bring himself to care about his coworker's teasing. Easthies glanced at him from the other side of the cafe and tipped his cup full of sugar syrup. Utowin smirked and nodded, before turning to the next customer in line.