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It is 2022. Shane and Ilya are playing on a team together—in Ottawa, god help them—and they are married, and Yuna Hollander is scheduling sponsorships for them both because that is apparently her love language.
Ilya is letting her, because letting the ridiculous people in his life be ridiculous is his love language, and also because if he doesn’t, she gets this disappointed, hurt look that is entirely too much like her son’s. Ilya is not going to tell her that, but he has his suspicions that she already knows. She brings it out much too strategically.
Shane, however, is not letting her schedule sponsorships. Not on this one, anyway. Ilya can see where he’s coming from, but also, the whole situation is very funny.
Ilya leans back in his hanging, swinging, chair thing and tries not to make eye contact with David through the window as mother and son have it out with each other at the porch table some four feet away. Instead, he drinks his Coke Zero in silence. (Coke Zero instead of Coke is just one of the many sacrifices Ilya makes for their life together. He told Shane this very dramatically in the grocery store.)
“It’s not about the money, Mom!” Shane says exasperatedly, and Ilya has to admit he agrees with the gesture Yuna makes in response: it’s an open-handed, flat, obviously! sort of gesture, because the sponsorship is with Speedo and it is an offensively large amount of money. Ilya can feel himself becoming more communist every time he hears the number. “I didn’t like Calvin Klein, either, remember Mom?”
Shane is repeating himself; he has said that at least twice before in this conversation. And it is true that Shane has not done another Calvin Klein ad since 2013, but all Shane has said about Calvin Klein in 2013 is that he ‘didn’t like it,’ and that’s not exactly helpful.
“And,” Shane adds, “this swimsuit is a lot smaller than that underwear was!”
“Oh?” Ilya sits up. He might die. But, if so, he will die very happy. “Do you promise?”
“Ilya.”
“Oh, it’s for both of you,” Yuna informs them earnestly, half-turning in her chair to look over at Ilya. “You’d be modeling together.”
“What? Mom!”
Scratch that, Ilya is definitely going to die. On the other hand... “Do we get to keep these tiny swimsuits?”
“Ilya.”
“With this kind of money, you can buy every pair of trunks in their line,” Yuna points out. “Five of each, in both your sizes. And that won’t even be a fraction of it!”
“MOM!”
Yuna frowns and looks over at Shane again. “Honey, why didn’t you like the Calvin Klein work? You know I never want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but you seemed fine with that until more than a month after it was already done. And I listen to you, and I love you, I really do, so I never booked them again, but I have also never understood what the problem was. That’s why I thought this one might be a good possibility!”
“Plus, you already wear tiny swimsuits!” Ilya puts in cheerfully, reveling in the dirty look Shane sends him. “Whaaat? You do!”
“Yeah, but they’re not this small,” Shane grumbles, unable to deny it because his swim shorts are, in fact, briefs, in every meaning of the word. “So I can just, um... wear those.”
Ilya blinks, not sure what that means. He makes eye contact with Yuna, but it’s clear that she has no idea what Shane is on about, either.
“Can you not just... wear... Speedo?”
Shane closes his eyes, clearly not wanting to look at either of them. “Not for the ads,” he says, as if each word is painful to him. And then, when they’re still just looking at him blankly: “They’ll make me, uh... shave. First.”
The porch is silent for a moment, except for the whistling of some non-loon bird in the nearby tree, and then Yuna and Ilya crack up together. “I have no sympathy for you,” Yuna informs him as Ilya loses his shit so hard he falls out of the porch swing. “I have shaved every week for the last thirty-five years, you do not get a pass for that one.” She swings her hair over her shoulder as she stands up, apparently done with the discussion.
“Mooom!”
“Shane, Shane, Shane—pleeeease can we do the sexy swimsuits ad? It will be soooo hot, and you will look soooo good in these teeny tiny swimsuits—”
“Oh my god, Ilya, stop!” But Ilya knows what Shane sounds like when he’s about to give in and this is the absolute favoritest, best thing that has ever happened to Ilya.
“Pleeeeease, Shane, let everyone see how hot we are together!” Ilya crosses to drop kisses on Shane’s knuckles as the door closes with Yuna on the other side of it. “I will make it worth the hassle....”
So, they do the Speedo ad.
Ilya quickly discovers that he can not make it worth the hassle, after. He was fully prepared for how, uh, time consuming it was to prepare such a delicate area! But, he was not prepared for how itchy it would be while he was regrowing.
This is going to drive him mad.
But, the swimsuits are very hot, and Ilya makes a point of taking all of the wardrobe samples home with him.
(Also, Ilya’s cock looks absolutely incredible with no hair around it.
“I know I shouldn’t comment,” Andy the aesthetician had told him, “but damn!”)
Ilya’s naked cock is not hot enough to go through all of that, not all of the time, especially since Ilya suspects that a lot of the hotness is coming from the novelty of it. But it looks different, it looks like not his, and that is definitely weird enough to be a turn on.
(It also looks a full inch and a half longer, which doesn’t hurt.)
When they get back to their hotel room—the Speedo ad filmed in Vancouver—Ilya peels Shane out of the shorts and loose polo he’d thrown on top, pressing his mouth everywhere his hands brush and leaving the clothes to rest in a pile with a bunch of loose sand, just inside the entryway. He strips his own clothes off and leaves them in the same heap, too, so that he won’t track sand inside.
When he turns, Shane is already standing by the bed, thumbs tucked under the edge of the, indeed, teeny tiny and also cherry red swimsuit, easing it down sl-o-o-o-w-ly over his cheeks
Ilya makes a sound that is possibly not human and immediately falls to his knees behind him.
He lets the spandex snap back midway down Shane’s thighs, baring his ass, and immediately applies his mouth to the situation, using lips and tongue and just the edges of his teeth. He loves this, loves that Shane is still playful with him like this—because Shane had definitely known what he was doing. He always does that to Ilya, and always will, soulmarks or no soulmarks. He and Ilya swore vows about it, and everything.
Ilya lets go of Shane with a slap to his ass, then stands and all but tosses Shane onto the bed. Shane bounces—okay, maybe Ilya did toss him—and crab-walks backwards until he can reach the pillow, grinning all the while. There’s almost as many pillows in this room as there are at home, so Shane is able to toss one at Ilya without having any deficit beneath his head and neck.
He still sits up, though, after chucking the pillow, his face gentling. He presses his fingers to Ilya’s ribs where the dark sentence of writing curves around his chest. “I can’t believe you didn’t use mark paint for this,” he says, voice soft. “You know that everyone is going to see it, right?”
“Mm, yes, I know this.” Ilya kisses Shane’s mouth, loving the little scrunch of Shane’s nose at it still, after all this time. He presses more kisses to Shane’s cheek, and in front of his ear. “I want them to see it,” he murmurs. “I want them to know I am yours.”
Shane stiffens, and, suddenly unsure, Ilya pulls back. “Was that not...? Oh,” because now he can see Shane’s face and he knows that look, he knows exactly what that facial expression means:
Shane is hungry, and his taste runs specifically to Ilya’s cock.
Ilya grins. “In a minute, пиранья. I’m going to suck your dick, first, so that you can last more than two minutes once I get it in you.”
“Fuck you,” Shane says, but he’s already lifting his hips and he loves him, Ilya loves him, he loves his soulmate so fucking much. “Yeah, gimme your mouth—Ilya?”
Ilya is looking at Shane’s crotch.
Ilya should probably move, or at least say something about this, but... two things:
First of all, he’s not sure if Shane has noticed any difference.
And, second of all... If Ilya’s cock looks good bare, Shane’s looks positively irresistible.
“Ilya? What’s wrong. You stopped?”
Ilya shakes it off. “Ah, yes! So sorry. Where was I...?” He leans down and wraps his lips around the head of Shane’s cock, eyeing the darker marks on the skin just above it. Ilya thinks back, but he’s pretty sure he’s never seen this particular skin before; Shane isn’t particularly hairy, but this area is usually covered by dense, neatly-trimmed black hair.
In fact, Ilya’s not sure anyone has ever seen this skin before. It’s a little awkwardly placed for even Shane to have gotten a good look at it.
All of which is why he lets his mouth pop off the top of Shane’s cock again and says, “Did you know you have dots?”
“What?” asks Shane breathlessly, and Ilya grins, not just because getting Shane flustered is one of his favorite things in the world. It’s also because....
“Marks, Shane.” He slaps Shane’s outer thigh with his free hand, then lifts the same hand to trace the dark points on Shane’s among the not-yet-stubbled bumps that surround Shane’s cock. “Right here.”
Ilya doesn’t say it’s a soulmark, mostly because it’s so abstract it could actually be a skin reaction to the depilatory cream the aestheticians had used several hours ago. But Ilya’s pretty sure it’s a soulmark.
Tiny dark dots like a constellation spread across Shane’s supra-pubic mound, one of them, right in the middle, elongated enough to form a slightly-curved vertical line. It’s one of the abstract styles of soulmarks, for sure, which makes sense: if Shane had gotten this bare for Calvin Klein, someone would have noticed if he’d had cyrillic right next to his dick.
But Ilya isn’t sure that Shane knew the marks were even there. He’s pretty sure Shane didn’t know, actually, not until now, because they’d talked about it after that deeply awful fight last year: about Ilya’s parents, and how only his mother had had a mark, while his father hadn’t had anyone’s; about Ilya’s insecurities around the fact that Shane doesn’t have his.
If Shane had known about this, he would have said so then.
Thoughtfully, Ilya presses his mouth forward again, swallowing Shane down to the base, grinding his nose against that deep brown constellation, like flecks of coffee against Shane’s skin. The dots aren’t uniform, not in size, shape, or distribution; they’re just random dots, surrounding that one central line. Like Ilya’s mark, they are completely flush with the skin.
Ilya pulls off and curves his hand around the base of Shane’s cock, jacking it slowly. “I am going to say something that upsets you,котенок.”
“Are you going to say you’re not gonna keep sucking?” Shane sounds cranky and breathless, which is one of Ilya’s favorite combinations. “You’re right, that’s going to upset me.”
“Worse than that, even,” Ilya smiles, pressing a kiss to Shane’s tip. “I want to take a picture, I think.”
“No,” Shane says immediately, “fuck you.”
“Mm, no, we can come back to that.” Ilya leans back and jumps up, ignoring Shane’s outraged squawk behind him to fish his phone out of the pocket of his shorts. He comes back to bed, opens his camera, covers the base of Shane’s cock with his left hand—
“Careful, you don’t want my hand to slip.”
—and snaps the pic.
Shane twists away from him as soon as Ilya lets him up, curling his legs up protectively, but Ilya is already moving up the bed, flopping down beside him on the mass of pillows to show him the phone screen. “We can delete it in a minute, but I wanted you to see...”
Shane is frowning. He pulls the phone towards him and then back again, scowling at it, and Ilya tries not to explode into a ball of mush as he leans over Shane to grab the glasses case from the side table. “Here.”
“Thanks,” Shane mutters, putting the glasses on, and then he’s frowning at the phone again. “That doesn’t make any more sense when it’s not blurry,” he objects. “What is it? Is that a... scar?”
“Mm, no,” Ilya says again. “A scar would be raised. This is...” He finishes the sentence with the gesture for flat, his hand cutting sideways in the air because he’s more focused on watching Shane’s face than on his language.
“What, like a...” Shane blinks behind his glasses, still frowning, and then his head comes up as the thought Ilya has already had hits him. “Is this a fucking soulmark?”
“I think... yes.” Ilya is still watching Shane’s face, trying desperately to read thoughts that he’s pretty sure aren’t clear even to Shane. “It looks like one. And it feels like one. And... it has always seemed odd to me that I hadn’t left my mark on you. I love you so much, Shane...” He bites his lip when he’s done speaking, still waiting for Shane’s reaction.
Shane’s reaction is to grab his hand and press a kiss into the palm, which is very reassuring for not having said a word. He’s still looking back at the phone, though, turning it this way and that. “You put your mark on my dick, Ilya—”
“No, no, it is next to your dick—”
“ —but I feel like we should have expected that. More to the point, what is it?”
“...Ah.” Ilya looks over Shane’s shoulder, down at the phone, then looks up into Shane’s face, trying not to look as guilty as he feels, because: he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t think in words so much as perceptions, most of the time, and he has no idea what perception these marks are supposed to indicate.
Ilya sucks air through his teeth, feels his mouth draw down and to the side guiltily. He scoots a little closer to Shane, winds himself behind him and props his chin on Shane’s shoulder to make up for it.
“...You don’t remember?” Shane guesses, too accurate. His voice is soft and Ilya winces at the idea that it could be because he is hurt.
“I am not like you, Любимый... I do not remember my thoughts, so much...”
“You don’t think so much, period,” Shane shoots back, but he says it in a rueful tone and Ilya knows Shane is thinking not that Ilya is stupid, but of his own anxiety. “But.. you really don’t know?” And this he says with real distress.
Ilya hooks his arm around Shane, fully embracing him now, and stroke the back of his thumb over the softness of Shane’s cheek. “I wish I did.”
He looks down at the phone where the too-dark ink of the soulmark is still showing above the too-dark roughness of his own hand. I like it, he thinks, admiring the artistic way the tiny dots spray across Shane’s skin. It’s almost like...
Wait.
Hang on.
Ilya sucks in his breath and leans forward, pressing himself close against Shane’s back. He takes the phone gently out of Shane’s hand and raises it to eye level, then traces the path of the espresso-colored specks across it with shaking fingers. He turns, sucks a bruising mark against Shane’s neck—
“Ahh-gghghk! Nn-nn-nnn!!!” Shane says intelligently.
—then pivots and shoves, sending Shane back once again into the nest of pillows.
He props the phone on one white mound beside Shane’s face, then traps Shane’s chin between the finger and thumb of his right hand. He’s leaning on Shane now, pressing the air out of Shane’s lungs with most of his body weight. That is okay. Shane likes that.
“Hmm,” he says, looking back and forth from the phone to Shane’s face, then back, then back and forth again. “Hmmmmmmm.”
“Whaaat?” Shane demands< cranky and horny and all ilya”s> “What!”
“Hmmmmmm!” Ilya says again, this time just to be obnoxious. He taps the phone and zooms it in a little, then walks his fingers from one spot to the next, tracing out the soulmark like a constellation. “Do you see it, Любимый?”
Shane looks at the phone again, eyes hungry. His eyes, too, dart back and forth, phone-Ilya-phone, but Ilya can tell he hasn’t cracked it.
“Here,” he says, and moves his hand from the phone onto Shane’s face. One by one, he marks out those same exact dots, only curving this time around the apples of Shane’s cheeks, one dark mark to the next, constellations all over again. “Do you see, now?”
“Oh my god,” Shane says, beginning to grin.
“Yes...” Ilya laughs, leaning forward for a kiss. “...Freckles.”