Archive of Our Own

This is, Ilya Rozanov immediately knows, his masterpiece. He stands in the lobby of the Theriault Wellness Retreat and Spa, watches the steam from the large central bath drifting lazily past the glass doors, the air heavy with the smell of various scented oils and flowers and blood and bowels voided in a dying panic. Plants hang from the ceiling, prettily decorating this meditative retreat for only the finest rich assholes, and everyone in this room except for Ilya and his brother Alexei are dead. 

Alexei sighs as he moves to stand next to Ilya, tucking his phone into his pocket. 

“Seven bodies, all targets, positively identified,” he confirms to Ilya, in their native Russian. Reluctantly, he adds, “nice work.” 

“You don’t need to sound so annoyed about it,” Ilya says brightly. He eyes the blood splatter on the wall around the bath; he’s impressed that he got it so high. It will surely be difficult to clean. Will probably take quite a while.

“You know why I’m annoyed about it.” 

“Yes, you are notoriously homophobic.” 

“Yes! But I think you are disgusting specifically! If he was a woman, this would still be fucked up.” 

“We are Bratva, Lyosha. Don’t be such a fucking prude.” 

Alexei finally cracks a smile and rolls his eyes, claps Ilya on the shoulder. Now that their father is dead and this side of the business is split between them, they have been getting along better than they have since they were children. It’s nice, sometimes, even though they both try to pretend it isn’t. 

“Don’t scare him off,” Alexei demands as he heads to the elevator. “We need him to at least put in these final three months before we can get Andropov here from New York to take his place.” 

“Yes, yes, don’t worry,” Ilya says. He doesn’t say that they’re not going to need Andropov, because his plan to convince their cleaner to stay on past the end of the summer—the period of time he gave them for when he plans to be out of the business—is going to work. He’s starting tonight, in fact, with this offering. 

Alexei enters the elevator, glares at Ilya one more time, and then is gone. Ilya waits until he’s sure that the elevator has reached the ground floor before he pulls out his phone and scrolls to the contact he has saved only as the emoji of the cat with heart eyes. 

It rings twice before it’s answered, as it always does. His cleaner likes his routines. 

“Ah, kotyonok, I am sorry to wake you,” he pouts. “I have made a little bit of a mess.” 

Shane Hollander is the most beautiful man Ilya has ever met, which is not why Ilya is so obsessed with him, but it definitely gave him a headstart. The first time Ilya saw his new crime scene cleaner, he was struck so dumb by the sight of him that Alexei actually sent him home early, convinced that Ilya was traumatized by the murders he’d committed. Ilya hadn’t been even remotely traumatized, because his targets had been traffickers, which have always been his favorite people to kill, but he’d taken the excuse to get out of there, not wanting to risk making a complete fool of himself. 

Their old cleaner had been an elderly Latvian woman who went by “Scrub Daddy”, because she loved those sponges. She was the grandmother of one of Alexei’s men, so she had a real interest in making sure that no one was caught, which made her a good cleaner to keep around. Quiet, meticulous, didn’t trust the cops. All good qualities for any employee, but especially cleaners. They were the ones who had the most ready access to evidence, after all. 

Ilya would have expected to have been brought in on any discussions about hiring a new cleaner, but Scrub Daddy got sick, and then she decided to head back to Latvia with her grandson, which meant Alexei had to find a replacement in a hurry. 

“Who is he, Scrub Mommy?” Ilya teased, slightly more ready to be normal the second time Shane Hollander arrived at a crime scene, already snapping on his thick, powder-blue, elbow-length gloves. Ilya had no idea, then, how much those fucking gloves would eventually start to feature in his sexual fantasies. Real pervert stuff. 

Shane already had his shin-length gray apron tied around his body, and those disposable crime scene booties on his feet. He scowled at Ilya, unthreatening as an angry kitten, and kotyonok was born, though Ilya wouldn’t spring that name on him until the fourth date. 

Crime scene. The fourth crime scene. Fuck. 

Ilya is not in love with Shane Hollander, because he’s a firm believer that you can’t actually be in love with someone before you’ve even kissed them, but if he didn’t have that stupid rule for himself, then yes, probably, he would say he’s in love with Shane Hollander. He’s been fascinated by him from the beginning. Fascinated by the way he looks at everything, so removed. He can stare down some of Ilya’s most gruesomely creative work without anything more troubled than a hm and a request for more Dawn Dish Soap, which is apparently his secret weapon, because he mixes it with everything. He cleans crime scenes better than anyone Ilya has ever met, and he approaches each crime scene like it’s a fun new puzzle to be solved. He never seems disturbed or morally conflicted or anything that Ilya would have expected. It’s for this reason that Ilya and Alexei have been shoving money at him since they hired him, and unfortunately, that was their mistake, because now Shane Hollander has paid off all his Bratva debts, and he has decided to leave the business and go back to Canada. 

In three months, he’s going to leave Boston behind, and he’s going to leave Ilya behind, and then Ilya will possibly walk into traffic, because the last good thing in his life will be gone. 

But it will be fine, because Ilya’s plan will work. He will convince Shane to stay, and confess his love, and give him such interesting crime scenes to clean that Shane will not want to leave! 

Shane emerges from the elevator at Theriault Wellness Retreat and Spa, apron already tied on, blue booties secured over the soles of his rainboots, dorky shower cap over his hair. He’s pushing the bright yellow wheeled crate for transporting bodies that Ilya bought him months ago, and he smiles a little to see Ilya waiting for him in the lobby. 

“I guess I know where I’m starting,” he says, corner of his lips turning up a little, and he sprays some water onto his gloved thumb from a spray bottle and then gently rubs at Ilya’s cheek, where some blood has apparently splattered. Ilya stands still and lets him work, fond smile spreading over his face. 

“Hello, Hollander,” he says, when Shane takes a step back. “Sorry again to call so late.” 

“No you aren’t,” Shane says, removing his wheeled cleaning cart from where he has stored it in the body crate. “Show me where I can fill up.” 

Ilya leads him to one of the locker room bathrooms, where Shane can fill his wheeled bucket in one of the showers, pouring some of his cleaning mixture into the water. They stand together and watch it bubble up, and Shane turns off the water and then looks at him, waiting. Ilya clears his throat, feeling awkward, like a man on a real date. 

“You want the tour?” he asks. Shane eyes the locker room around them.  One body is crumpled against the wall of lockers, the doors to the lockers themselves crumpled by the force. The body looks wrong, like its spine is shorter than it should be. Ilya had grabbed him by the back of the pants and swung him into the wall, snapping his neck. No big deal. Not even hard to do. Looks impressive, though.

“Not sure this is your most subtle work,” Shane says, but he follows Ilya around the small space to take stock of the “problem areas” anyway. 

One of the things that Ilya liked about Shane right away was how focused he was. Scrub Daddy was a good cleaner, and more importantly a loyal cleaner, but she needed Ilya to babysit her, and Ilya would politely follow her around the room, pointing out the obvious spots of blood she’d missed, or the knocked-over pictures that belonged on the bookcase, things that people might notice, if they looked closely enough. If there were reasons for police to suspect, or whatever. Ilya isn’t supposed to touch anything in the crime scene, not supposed to leave any DNA behind, because he has a criminal record and will show up in their databases. So he just follows their cleaners around from room to room, and did so even before he started wanting to follow their cleaners around. Shane, he only has to walk through once, because Shane notices everything. The first time, he even brought out a notebook and tried to take notes, before Alexei and Ilya both looked at him incredulously, and Shane realized what a stupid idea that was. 

“Sorry,” he’d said. “My first time breaking the law, I guess.” 

Alexei had laughed at that, and Ilya had forced a smile, but it had really made him feel guilty. He and Shane are the same age, he knows now, but back then, he’d been convinced that this had to just be some fucking college kid or something, some idiot who got wrapped up in Bratva shit by accident. Online gambling debts or something. Not realizing he was signing his life away. 

Finding out that he was Ilya’s age and had gotten wrapped up in the business all on his own—going deeper into debt on experimental surgeries and treatments to try and fix his knee after a hockey injury that kept him from playing after college—was not much consolation, because from the beginning, Shane has seemed too good, too innocent. Too gentle. 

He’s not really any of those things, clearly: he’s currently watching the blood drip from where an arterial spray hit the skylights, and he looks much more impressed than he looks disgusted. Ilya smiles at him cheesily when Shane sends a questioning grin in his direction. 

“Do I even want to know?” he asks. Ilya understands, at this point in his working relationship with Shane, that that tone means tell me, so he obliges, as he always does. 

“Right angle, right time,” he demurs. “And I was using that jagged blade you like so much.” 

“I knew it,” Shane says admiringly, because he really is a little freak, just like Ilya. 

Which is one of the main reasons he can’t be allowed to quit. 

Even beyond the fact that they are obviously soulmates, meant to be together, it is impossible for Ilya to imagine Shane thriving in any other job, now that he’s found his calling in this one. And it isn’t like Ilya is saying that only because he wants Shane in his life forever. Shane is a fucking great crime scene cleaner, and he loves doing it, and probably the only reason he wants to stop is because he was only doing it in the first place because he stupidly borrowed money from Grigori Rozanov, back when the old asshole was alive, and he was working off his debt as a cleaner rather than as anything more unsavory. 

(Actually, for a while, they apparently had him working as an enforcer, but Alexei and Shane both say he was terrible at that job. Shane has admitted multiple times to Ilya that he has never been the best at dealing with people, so late night crime scene cleaning is much more his speed. Ilya loves that about him.)

Ilya asked him, back in May, when he first announced his intention to leave at the end of the summer, what his plans are for when he goes back home. And Ilya plans on asking that same question as often as he thinks he can get away with, because he saw the uncertainty in Shane’s expression when he gave his original noncommittal answer, and he knows what that means: Shane doesn’t have any plans. He’s leaving because he still thinks of working for the Rozanovs as something he was forced into doing because of a youthful mistake, and he hasn’t yet realized that this could be his entire, very lucrative career, if he wants. Or he could just be a Sugar Baby (a Scrub Baby?) set up for life in a very nice penthouse, if he wants, but Ilya thinks that’s probably not what he wants, based on his entire personality. 

“Come, look at the sauna,” Ilya says, leading Shane over the beautiful mosaic floors (so many little tiles, so much blood-splashed grout! They’re going to be here for hours!) and into the sauna. The walls are all wooden, except up high, where there’s more mosaic, and more blood sprayed high on the wall. Shane sighs wearily, but he’s still smiling. In the center of the sauna is a dead man wearing only a towel. His face has been shoved into some hot rocks in a pretentiously fancy little brazier, his skin singed badly, but the cause of death was probably the gunshots to his genitalia. Shane makes a humming sound that Ilya knows is probably impressed. “Just wait until you see the tanning beds,” Ilya says, and Shane goes, “ooo!” 

Shane gives Ilya a dorky little shower cap of his own to wear, which Ilya does, reluctantly. He pulls on the apron and the gloves that Shane always brings along for him, too. Shane always makes him get dressed up like this when Ilya offers to help, which sometimes makes Ilya not want to offer to help, but he’s hardly going to make Shane carry all these bodies by himself over to the wheeled crate. He and Shane lug all seven bodies to the tarp that Shane has laid out in the front lobby next to the elevator, and Shane folds them into the body bags he always brings with him, and then they layer the bodies on top of each other in the crate. Shane stretches sinfully when they’re done, his back cracking, and Ilya winces in sympathy and offers to give him a massage. Shane raises one eyebrow and gestures to Ilya’s blood-covered gloves. Ilya shrugs. 

“What, now this bothers you?” he asks. Shane rolls his eyes. 

“Raincheck, maybe,” he says. Ilya wonders if Shane understands that he was serious. He would massage every inch of Shane’s body, if Shane would let him. And he would absolutely take Shane up on that raincheck, if he thought Shane was serious. 

Last year, last summer, Ilya did make a move. It was late at night, out in the woods. The victims were a father and son duo who’d been moving in on Rozanov territory and had done some particularly egregious things to a young woman who lived in one of Alexei’s apartment buildings. And it isn’t like Alexei is a bleeding heart, or even a bruised heart, or has a heart at all, but he’s sensitive to people in his territory being mistreated, because it makes him look like a bad crime boss, and so those men had to be taught a very visible lesson. So Alexei’s wife Eketerina brought out her ring light and all her fancy influencer cameras and whatever else, and Shane and Ilya stood off to the side as she and Alexei posed and took very well lit pictures of the bodies to send to their friends. 

“We should go somewhere after this,” Ilya had said. “Just the two of us.” 

“What? Like where?” 

“I don’t know. A club? A movie? Dinner? My place?” 

Shane had only stared at him for a long time, frowning, and then he’d been called over by Alexei, and he’d made his exit far too quickly after he was done picking up the pieces of the bodies, and he hadn’t looked at Ilya once. 

In the fucking year since then, Ilya has 1) told himself to move on, 2) tried to move on, 3) failed to move on, and 4) tried flirting a few more times, more desperately every time, but has still been unable to crack whatever forcefield surrounds Shane specifically to keep him out. 

“He isn’t a normal person. You understand this, right?” Svetlana said to him, after talking hockey with Shane for hours one night while Ilya seethed jealously in the background. When Ilya glared at her for that, she’d held up her hands defensively, grinning. “I don’t mean it in a bad way, Ilyusha, but come on. He isn’t. You have to woo him by speaking his language.” 

Which was, unfortunately, good advice. And so here they are. 

He goes into the maintenance room and is able to figure out how to drain the bath water. Shane steps into the empty basin, bottom and sides all stained rusty pink with blood, and whistles. 

“Wow,” he says. “Okay. This is quite a job. I’m going to need to break out the power washer, I think.” 

He sounds gleeful. Ilya wants to consume him whole. 

He helps Shane set up the power washer, and he goes back and forth to the bathroom a million times to refill it from the tap, so Shane doesn’t have to climb out of the pool. Shane always likes to plan his exit strategies, which is cute. He always starts in one corner and makes his way out to make sure that he doesn’t have to retrace his steps. He gets so annoyed when Ilya accidentally steps on anything and trails blood around, and he always makes extra sure that those footprints are scrubbed clean at the end, which makes Ilya feel, actually, very cared for. It’s nice. 

“Oh,” Ilya says suddenly. “I actually got you something.” 

Shane looks up, surprised, putting his powerwashing safety goggles on top of his head so he can look at Ilya.

“What?” he asks. “For me?” 

“Yes. I will be right back.”

“You’re leaving the crime scene?” Shane asks, angry kitten face in full force. Ilya sighs lovingly to see it. 

“Just for a second. Alexei left earlier! We will have to clean the elevator anyway.” 

“We,” Shane scoffs, but he pulls his goggles back down and goes back to power-washing the walls. 

Ilya takes the elevator down and jogs across the parking lot to his car, and he pulls out the presents that he picked up earlier today. He’d seen them advertised online when he was looking for good ideas of something to get Shane, and he’s been excited to present them. Shane is finicky about his equipment, so Ilya had to do a lot of careful undercover work (having his tech guy hack into Shane’s laptop and check out the kinds of websites he was visiting, for one) to make sure that these will meet Shane’s exacting standards, and he’s pretty sure they will be. Still, he’s anxious about it. 

When he gets back upstairs, carrying one box under each arm, Shane has finished power-washing the walls above the bath, and he’s looking pleased with the outcome, but his expression goes disbelieving with joy when he sees what Ilya has brought for him.

“Are those UV lamps?” he asks breathlessly, climbing out of the pool. He almost slips on a puddle of water, but Ilya catches him by the arm, nearly dropping one of his lamps in the process, and for a second, Shane looks like maybe he wants to kiss Ilya as badly as Ilya wants to kiss him. Then he takes a step back, and he turns to ogle the UV lamps instead, eyes wide and marveling at them, gentle smile on his face. He strips out of his gloves to unbox the first one, and Ilya feels like a pervert in an old novel, scandalized to the point of erection at the sight of Shane’s hands without those hideous blue gloves covering them. He doesn’t get to see them very often, and they’re nice hands! Very big! Ilya has normal thoughts about them!

Shane pulls the light out of its box. Of course it's phallic (insomuch as it's a long, straight tube, which is phallic when you're already getting a boner about hand size), and Shane's long fingers turn it around, admire it, and Ilya has to take a lap around the lobby area before he can come back in and trust himself. Shane, of course, hasn't noticed, because Shane probably wouldn't notice if he walked out and never returned.

Not now, Ilya begs himself, though politely asking his depression not to flare up is, obviously, not something that has ever worked, and it doesn’t work now. 

Shane has figured out that the batteries are already charged (because Ilya charged them, last night, before reboxing them), and he figures out how to connect them to his phone, and then he lights up, literally, the electric blue of the lamp cutting across his face. He looks up and meets Ilya's gaze, and his pretty brown eyes are molten with surprised warmth, the freckles on his cheeks standing out starker than ever.

“Oh wow,” he says, and for a second Ilya thinks that maybe Shane is as stunned by Ilya's beauty as Ilya is by Shane's, but then Shane looks around, taking in the way the blood splatter glows purple and blue and green under the UV light. “It's even more beautiful like this,” he says, and Ilya smiles helplessly, and wants, and wants. 

Even with the added assistance of the UV lights, and even with Ilya stepping in to help, it does take them until the sun is starting to peek up over the strip mall across the street before Shane is satisfied with the job. 

Shane looks exhausted but beautiful in the sun's rays as Ilya helps him carry everything and load it into his truck. Shane “has a guy” to whom he brings all the bodies, which are dissolved through chemical means that even Ilya prefers not to think about, but he still feels like he should offer to help. He usually does, only for Shane to shoot him down with a polite smile. He can't do it today. Not with the darkness creeping over him, making his thoughts slow and heavy and dangerous. 

He should feel buoyed by all these hours spent in the presence of his cleaner, but he doesn't. He feels instead like he has failed. Like Shane should have immediately whipped his dick out at the first sign of those UV lamps, understanding that they are a love confession and a courting gift, and the fact that he didn’t immediately whip his dick out means that Ilya has been rejected, and will never get to see Shane’s dick at all. 

Ilya still steadfastly tried to enjoy it, the way he has always enjoyed watching Shane work, but it turns out that watching Shane work felt different, back when there wasn't a ticking clock. A final crime scene, swiftly approaching. He has only the summer left to prove he’s worth staying for, and he's realizing that he was a fool to think he could do in three months what he has failed to do in almost two full years. 

Shane frowns at Ilya a little as he hoists himself into the driver’s seat of his truck. He looks like he's waiting for some of Ilya's usual banter, usual needling, preparing as always to turn Ilya down. But Ilya is feeling lost, and he's tired of wanting, and so he just slaps his palm a few times on the top of the truck in a hopefully companionable gesture and then heads across the parking lot to his own car. 

“You are giving up?” Svetlana asks. “You had a whole plan! You have planned these summer hits meticulously, all for him, because you cannot just use your words, and now you just, what, will kill these terrible men normally? Like a boring person?” She scoffs. 

“Sveta, be kind to me. My heart is broken.”

“If your heart is broken, it is self-inflicted, Ilyusha. Don't be stupid. You asked the man out in a confusing way once, a year ago.”

“Which he rejected.”

“Did he?”

Ilya thinks back to Shane's deep frown, the wariness in his eyes. 

“Yes,” he says, shuddering. He still sees that expression in his sleep sometimes. It felt awful. 

“Okay, well, I hate to admit this, but I thought your plan to win him over with creative work was actually very good! What changed your mind? Why don't you want to do it anymore?”

“Ah, Sveta, I don't know. It feels pointless.”

“Have you forgotten to refill your prescription again?”

Ilya heaves a withering sigh, knowing that Sveta is being kind to him, in using those words, which means she’s really worried. Because, no, he hasn't forgotten. He has on purpose chosen not to refill his fucking prescription, as always, because he hates those fucking pills and hates that he has to be the one to take them. Alexei has actually been okay about it, not making fun of Ilya for needing them or calling Ilya pathetic at all, though he wrinkles his nose like a manly Russian man every time they skirt too close to talking about them, or the fact that Ilya had to talk to a therapist to get the pills in the first place. One time, when he saw Ilya taking one when he stopped by unexpectedly, he even looked briefly concerned. 

It isn't Alexei stopping him, anyway. It's Ilya. It's himself. He doesn't want to be like his mother. He doesn't want to be sad. He doesn't want to frighten his friends and family, and he doesn't want them to lose him the way they lost her. He has blamed himself unfairly for his mother's death just because he was the one to find her, and he blamed his father more often, because his father was an asshole who always resisted getting her help even though she obviously needed it, and he just doesn't want to do it anymore. Doesn't want to have to worry who will feel the blame the most if Ilya follows her. 

(Alexei, probably, and Ilya doesn't want that even though sometimes he thinks his brother would deserve it.)

(Sveta, definitely, and he certainly doesn't want that for her.)

(Shane? No, probably not. Which is good, obviously. Shane can never know just how much Ilya thinks about him, just in case Ilya does ever end up like his mother. He can't taint his cleaner any more than he already has.) 

Three days later was supposed to be his second attempt at wooing Shane into staying in the business instead of going home to be safe in fucking Canada. It's a smaller scene, just an apartment with three occupants, so a lot less room for creativity, but Ilya had planned on making a mess, dragging some books out of their spots and throwing them around so that Shane would puzzle over the missing pieces, trying to decide which book went where. He was going to shatter a few mugs and glasses so Shane could meticulously make sure he picked up every piece, bending over and looking under things a lot, which would be a fun benefit both for him and for Shane. He also was going to hide some money around the apartment because he always tells Shane he can take any cash he finds, and he likes the happy little noises Shane makes when he opens a drawer and finds a roll of bills. 

He still hides some cash, to be polite, but his heart isn't in the whole thing. The bodies lay stagnant in circular pools of blood. The popcorn ceiling goes unsplattered. One of the bodies lands in a bathtub, for fuck’s sake. It’s going to take maybe an hour to clean.

Even Alexei, who has made his opinion on Ilya's odd mating ritual very much known, frowns when he finishes his walkthrough to confirm that the targets are all the targets and that Ilya didn't fuck up and kill someone unnecessary. 

“Boring for your cleaner,” he says. Ilya shrugs moodily, leaning on the kitchen island, drawing a sad face in the small puddle of blood there. Alexei rolls his eyes. “I am trying to be...Fuck! I'm trying! What's wrong with you?” 

Ilya arches his eyebrows, chin propped on one hand, and finally allows a small smile. 

“Wow,” he drawls. 

“Shut up! Look at this shit. We pay him thousands of dollars to come in here and clean up your mess just so you can stare at him and be a disgrace to our family name, and you, what, you stab three people and kill them instantly? Where is the mess? Fuck, we could clean this place ourselves!” 

Ilya shrugs and looks around the apartment. 

“You should be pleased,” he says. 

“Well, I’m not fucking pleased, because I’m not a fucking idiot, Ilyushka. You are not taking your pills, and you are not wooing your fucking cleaner. I will not find your body the way you found mama’s.” 

Ilya jolts, surprised to hear his own thoughts coming out of Alexei’s mouth, and even more surprised to see that Alexei looks, actually, quite frightened, now that Ilya is really looking. 

“Okay,” he says. “You won’t. I promise.” 

“Take your fucking pills. Woo your fucking cleaner. Fuck!” 

Alexei storms out, probably because he has been caught caring openly, and will now need to retreat and go punch some things to remind himself that he’s still a man. Ilya sighs, pulls out his phone. Shane picks up on the second ring as always. 

“Hello, Hollander,” Ilya sighs. “Sorry to call so late. I’ll text you the address?” 

“Oh, uh, sure,” Shane says, and Ilya hangs up. 

The elevator in the apartment building is broken, so Ilya meets Shane out back in the alley and shows him where to park his truck, directly under one of the apartment’s windows. Shane clambers out, and it’s the first time in recent memory that Ilya has seen him in just jeans and a hoodie, because he’s usually already dressed in his gear by the time Ilya sees him. It makes his stomach hurt to see Shane looking so soft and kissable, so it’s probably for the best that it doesn’t last long; he pulls out the blue coverall that he wears under his apron and starts climbing into it, watching Ilya as he does. 

“Only three bodies, and not much mess,” Ilya reports. “Elevator is broken, so I think maybe we will have to put them in body bags up there and carry them down the stairs, or maybe just throw them out the window into the truck bed.” 

He gestures up to the window. Shane eyes it. 

“Yeah, that could work,” he says. He pulls the apron on, and then the booties, and then the gloves. Ilya takes his cleaning cart from the back, and Shane frowns and grabs it, because fuck, he can't even let Ilya be sweet and carry it up the stairs. Ilya can feel his already black mood getting even blacker, and he shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets, clenching the fingers of his left hand around his phone, just to have something to hold.

They walk up the stairs in silence. The whole building is empty now; the three in the apartment on the top floor were the only ones still living in here after it was condemned months ago. They used to work for Alexei or something, but they started skimming off the top, and there were a few overdoses that led back to them, which Alexei doesn’t like, because it makes his shit look bad, or something. Ilya doesn’t pay much attention to the details; his job is to clean up Alexei’s mess, and then to call in Shane to clean up his. Still, sometimes Ilya pays attention to these things, because he likes to tell Shane about the why of it all as Shane works; he knows it makes Shane feel better to understand what the victims did to get on Alexei’s bad side. It’s always terrible shit that makes Shane noticeably lighter. 

He can't muster up the energy this time, though. He can barely muster up the energy to stay through the cleaning. 

They get up to the apartment, and Ilya can feel the heavy weight of his black mood crushing him, and he wants to sit down, or curl up on the awful couch in the living room, or maybe just go lie down in the bed of Shane’s truck. Maybe he can trick Shane into zipping him up into one of the body bags and flinging him out the window. That might be nice. 

It’s stupid, though. He knows it is. He just has to get through this, and then he can go home and sleep as much as he wants, rotting away in bed until Alexei needs him again, and hopefully by then he will feel better, because maybe he will remember to get his antidepressants refilled, and maybe he will even start taking them again, and even if he doesn't, he has gotten through these moods on his own before, and he can probably do it again.

He leads Shane through the apartment and points out the locations of the three bodies, and the few spots where there was some crossover mess: Ilya’s footprints in blood, the blood trail of one of the men who tried to crawl away. Shane breaks out a UV lamp as if he can’t believe that it will be as simple as all that, and he moves through the apartment, frowning, holding the lamp aloft, like a giant blue torch. 

Things are so dire with Ilya that the lamp doesn’t even look remotely phallic today.

When they reach the body in the bathtub, Shane frowns aggressively, and then turns and looks at Ilya, standing in the bathroom doorway. 

“Are you mad at me?” he asks. 

The question is so confusing that Ilya thinks he has misunderstood it at first. 

“Mad at you?” he asks. “Like…angry?” 

“Yeah. Are you angry with me?” 

“No? Why would I be?” 

“Is this because I said I’m quitting?” 

“Shane, what?” Ilya groans. “I have done nothing.” 

“Yeah, exactly. This is…this is shit! There isn’t even any splatter on the shower curtain. There’s barely any splatter anywhere! This isn’t like you at all.” 

“I have been feeling…not good,” Ilya admits, still confused, but wanting Shane to understand. He feels guilty that Shane looks hurt, like he genuinely thinks this is a punishment for wanting something better out of his life. “And I thought, maybe, you would not want to spend the whole night in this terrible apartment with only me for company, so I kept mess to a minimum.” 

Shane’s pretty face goes from confused to annoyed to furious to baffled to hurt again, like he can’t decide what he’s feeling. 

“Why wouldn’t I want to spend the whole night here with you?” he asks. “It’s my favorite thing.” 

Sometimes Shane does this. Says emotionally devastating things openly, like he can’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t. It always makes Ilya’s spine feel like it’s curling in on itself out of a self-protective need to cringe away from anyone showing any kind of emotional honesty. It feels like that now, except this time, it also makes his stomach hurt. 

“Is it?” he asks. He hates his voice: weak and wavering, his accent too thick. “Then why are you quitting?” 

Shane looks taken aback by the question, and he frowns again, that same, deep frown from a year ago. Ilya sighs and backs out of the bathroom, tossing up a hand, rolling up his sleeves so that he can start putting the body in the kitchen into a body bag, but Shane follows him, the sound obvious because his coveralls and apron and gloves are all so fucking loud, swishing urgently. 

“Ilya,” he says. 

“I am…look, Hollander, it really isn’t a good time for me, okay? So let’s just get this done.” 

Shane doesn’t reply, and he eventually swishes back into the bathroom after a long time of standing there silently, driving up Ilya’s blood pressure, and Ilya goes back to work, and his mood sinks and sinks. 

Later, when everything is done, Ilya locks the door behind them. Shane tries to hand over the money he’d found, and Ilya waves him off, ignores him when he tries again. 

“Keep it,” he says. “Consider it a tip, for how boring this was.” 

“It’s almost impressive you managed to keep blood off the popcorn ceiling,” Shane offers as they start down the stairs together. “That’s always such a fucking bitch to clean. Hey, uh. Are you okay?” 

“Not really,” Ilya admits, and he holds the front door of the building open for Shane, who hauls his cart out behind him. “See you next time.” 

Shane bites his lip, looks Ilya over, opens his mouth to speak. Just when Ilya is about to turn and walk to his car, giving up on waiting for Shane to think of what to say, Shane says, “it really is my favorite thing, Rozanov. I meant that.” 

“Sure,” Ilya replies. He doesn’t bother asking again why Shane is quitting, if he is enjoying himself so much here. If he likes spending so much time with Ilya, then why is he trying to make it so they never see each other again? 

Ilya doesn’t particularly want to be around himself right now, either, so he understands. 

Alexei shows up at his apartment with a bottle of prescription pills—Ilya’s antidepressants, somehow—and stands over Ilya’s bed with a glass of water and doesn’t leave until Ilya has finished all of it and taken a dose. Then he storms out again. Ilya's therapist calls a few minutes later to confirm the appointment he apparently made online. Ilya takes the hint. 

He’s feeling a little bit better the next time Alexei needs him for a job. After three weeks of black moods, an undefeatable lethargy, and an ironclad certainty that no one would care if he died (certainly not himself), he can get out of bed without everything hurting, and he can go for runs and work out and take showers and everything. By the time Alexei calls him in and asks him to take out everyone at a corporate retreat in the woods somewhere, Ilya is feeling more himself, or at least is at his baseline—which is still pretty bad, maybe, but not dire. 

He has a little fun with this one, because every person here is so fucking awful that even Alexei looks grim as he explains the job while he and Ilya are driving out to the retreat’s location. There are several small cabins where people will be sleeping, and then a larger cabin, where a party is in full swing when Ilya and Alexei pull up. The property is mostly woodland with picturesque bubbling brooks and a lot of hiking trails, all of it surrounded by a tall fence presumably intended to keep out anyone who isn’t a corrupt millionaire. The guard at the gate is one of Alexei’s men, and he lets them in, and then closes the gate, and then electrifies the fence, which is even more fun. Shane will like that, Ilya thinks. 

It’s good to think about what Shane will like again. Ilya isn’t deluding himself anymore into thinking that he’s going to be able to stop Shane from quitting. But at least, maybe, he can make these last few jobs fun for him, so Shane will look back on his time here fondly.

Alexei thinks he’s being pathetic, and Ilya agrees, really, but he needs a little more time to level out after reluctantly allowing himself to be bullied into taking the steps towards making himself want to survive, so this is as good as it’s going to get, for now. 

He doesn't get as silly with it as he might have before the latest black mood, but it’s not nearly as straightforward and boring as the apartment. He pushes it a little bit, maybe. Encourages a few people to get electrocuted by chasing them towards the fence, because it’s an easy kill and a lazy way to make sure Shane gets to work hard. He gets creative with some pool floats, and even Alexei has some fun in one of the cabins, shoving the CEO of the company over the balcony and impaling him on cleverly placed construction supplies at the bottom. Ilya is pleased with the work when it’s done. It’s not as good as the wellness retreat, unfortunately, but he’s not sure anything ever will be. He'd been stupidly hopeful, then. Like Shane would take one look at his work of art and drop to his knees. Or one knee. Whichever. 

Alexei leaves first, as he always does, but he lingers before getting into his car. 

“You and the cleaner are okay, right?” he asks. 

“Okay? In the sense that we can work together?” 

“Fuck, Ilyushka. In any sense. What happened last time? Is it going to happen again?” 

“It was nothing. I was just…sad. It was nothing to do with him.” 

“So convincing. Look, don’t fuck this up. I cannot deal with this shit any longer. Ask him to dinner.” 

“What?” Ilya can’t help but laugh, shocked. 

“Don’t make me say it again!” 

“I asked him out once, and he looked at me like I had lost my mind. I don’t think I’ll do it again.” 

“Your next job is in five days, at that Italian place. You’re breaking up a mob meeting. Maybe wear something nice, make him something to eat in their kitchen. You’re a decent cook.” 

Ilya stops laughing, looks at Alexei more seriously. 

“What is this? What’s happening? You’re being serious.” 

“I want you to not kill yourself, which means I want you to be happy, I guess,” Alexei grumbles. “And you have been happy with him, and he is a good cleaner, and Andropov will not be as good as him. So fuck him, suck his dick, do whatever gay shit you have to do, but make sure he stays past the end of the summer, all right?” 

And then he leaves, like he didn’t just rock Ilya’s world on its foundation, which is really very typical for Alexei. 

Ilya slumps in one of the pool loungers and smokes two cigarettes before Shane finally pulls up and parks right in front of the body of the man tied to the flagpole, on whom Ilya and Alexei had practiced their throwing knife skills. He gets out of the truck and is silent for a bit, long enough that Ilya finally has to look over at him, giving up on being coolly detached. Shane is already dressed in his little cleaner outfit, and he has already gotten started, pulling knives out of the dead guy, looking impressed. When Ilya stands up, he looks startled for a second, and then he smiles. 

“There you are,” he calls. Ilya’s heart gives a happy little lurch in his chest, because he’s predictable. “Thought maybe you went home.” 

He sounds accusatory, a little wounded. It has been a while since the apartment, but Ilya wasn’t the one pulling the trigger on any of the hits Shane has had to clean up since then. He assumed Shane knew that already, but maybe he thought Ilya was just avoiding him.

Ilya shrugs and makes his way over to Shane’s truck. His headlights are still on, illuminating the bloody knives Shane is collecting in one open palm.  

“Alexei will want those back,” Ilya says. “I’ll take them.” 

“Let me clean them first, at least,” Shane chides, and he drops the knives into a mesh bag attached to his bucket. “You can pick them up at my place tomorrow, if you want.” 

Ilya looks away from the bucket, eyes narrowing in on Shane’s face immediately. 

“Your place?” 

“Yeah. Or I can drop them off wherever, if you prefer.” 

“I prefer your place,” Ilya says, too eagerly. Shane smiles a little. 

“I’ll text you the address,” he says. 

Right. Shane wanted to keep his address secret, because even though he was willing to work for the Rozanovs, he didn’t exactly want them showing up at his fucking house. Of course, Alexei and Ilya both already know where Shane lives thanks to the power of the internet and a lot of things being publicly available, even when you don’t want them to be. But Shane doesn’t know that, and Ilya and Alexei have both been very good at pretending that they don’t know, because they want him to feel comfortable. 

But if Shane is giving his address willingly? Fuck. 

Ilya’s therapist, and also Sveta, and also definitely Alexei, would all roll their eyes and be very unhappy if he said something like wow this is better than any antidepressant, but it’s true, at least for right now. Ilya is happier than he’s been in days, and he can tell that Shane notices. Shane keeps looking at him, taking these little sideways peeks at him, and Ilya pretends not to notice while also trying to look as suave and cool as possible while helping to gather the weapons strewn about the property. 

Shane laughs at the body suspended in the middle of the pool floats, and he shakes his head with poorly feigned annoyance when he sees the people who were electrocuted by the fence when they tried to climb over it. Ilya can feel the cold center of himself warming slowly. He trails behind Shane, points out little details that Shane certainly hasn’t missed, but Shane always acts like he’s only noticing them because Ilya pointed them out. It should probably feel condescending, but it doesn’t. It just feels like Shane wants to make him happy, so of course it works. 

Ilya helps, as he always does. Helps carry the bodies to the truck, helps Shane by refilling his bucket when the water in it gets too bloody to be of much use, helps mix his cleaning solution. At this point, he knows exactly what Shane means when he says “I need something for some tougher stains” or “I need a softer mix now”. Ilya always takes it seriously, and always waits nervously to make sure that Shane approves when he’s done. Shane always does approve, and Ilya allows it to wash over him, allows it to sink into him, allows himself to be cheered by it. 

When they’re finished, Shane strips back down to jeans and a tank top by the side of his truck, and then he hefts the bag of knives and axes and pikes and spears into the bed, on top of the bodies. 

“So, uh, tomorrow? I’m going to soak these overnight in a special solution I came up with? I’ll have them dried and ready.” 

“I will pick them up,” Ilya says earnestly. Shane’s smile grows. 

“Okay, cool,” he says. “Uh, see you then?” 

“Yes, okay,” Ilya says, and he tries very hard not to sound too eager, but he’s not sure he succeeds. 

Shane lives in a very small house in a town twenty minutes outside Boston. He rents it, Ilya knows, but his rent is probably quite high, in a neighborhood like this, even though it’s a shitty location, and a shitty house. It annoys Ilya; he has a penthouse apartment, all for himself, and it’s so empty and large, and it hardly seems fair. 

Shane answers the door wearing a soft, pale yellow sweater that Ilya has never seen on him before, which makes sense, because the last thing you want to wear when you go to a crime scene is a pale yellow sweater. 

“Wow, very nice,” Ilya says, foolishly. Shane looks down at himself, and his cheeks flush a little bit, or maybe Ilya is imagining it. He realizes suddenly that he hasn’t seen Shane in proper daylight like this in a very long time. Maybe not since Shane was first hired, when he showed up to help them clear up a mess down at the docks in the middle of the morning.

“Uh, come in,” Shane says, and he steps aside to let Ilya into the front hall. Ilya kicks off his shoes by the front door, lines them up next to Shane’s three sensible pairs. He doesn’t see the rain boots he always wears to crime scenes, but that probably makes sense. He doesn’t see any of Shane’s cleaning stuff. He probably keeps it in the basement, or in the tiny detached garage. 

The house is tastefully decorated, with pleasant wall colors and comfortable-looking furniture. There are a lot of throw pillows on the couch, and in the recliner, and lots of blankets draped over everything. Ilya’s chest aches to think of Shane cozying up, after showering off the night, dressing in his comfortable clothes, air conditioning cranked up so he can lounge around in sweaters and blankets all summer. He smiles even just thinking of it, just knowing that Shane must be so comfortable here. 

Shane is babbling about the solution he used to clean the knives and the tire irons and the machetes and the baseball bats and the various other weapons Ilya and Alexei used to break up that corporate retreat. Ilya nods where appropriate, and he really is listening, but he doesn’t understand half of the words that Shane says, because they are chemical terms, and Ilya has no interest in those. He doesn’t need to understand, anyway. He has Shane for this stuff, for the cleaning. He looks in every room they pass on the way to the basement door. There’s a bedroom, door cracked open just slightly. There’s a bathroom. An office. Nothing in boxes, he notices, and something in his chest loosens a little. So at least Shane is not in a total rush to get out of here. It still looks like a home that’s being lived in, rather than one that is being rushed out of. 

Shane takes him into the basement, which is as neat and tidy as the rest of the house, but in a more laboratory way than a cozy way. The lights are cool blue-tinted LEDs, and there are lockers with labels, and various buckets with various solutions. Shane looks proud as he shows off the things he cleaned. They all look good as new, of course. Ilya marvels over them, and pretends to be surprised and impressed, even though he never had a doubt that Shane’s work would be perfect. 

Upstairs again, Shane asks if he wants coffee, and Ilya really doesn’t, but he nods eagerly and sits down at the small kitchen table and watches Shane get to work. 

“This is a very cozy home,” he says, hoping that he doesn’t sound like he’s being a prick about it. He knows Shane can be sensitive about things. He used to be more prickly, back at the beginning. Always assumed that Ilya was trying to be insulting, or maybe condescending. 

“Oh, yeah, I like it,” Shane says, taking a look around. 

Not enough to stay, Ilya remarks in his head, but he’s smart enough not to say it out loud. 

He drinks the coffee Shane gives him, says it's good, and then they sit awkwardly together in silence for a little bit before Shane starts trying out small talk topics like they’re part of a script he’s only half memorized, and Ilya pretends to examine his hands while sneaking peaks at Shane often, drinking in the sight of him in that pretty, impractical sweater, knowing that he probably won’t get to see it again any time soon.

Shane doesn’t do him the same courtesy of not looking at him openly. He stares at Ilya, looks desperate for something, his eyes wide and confused, all his attempts at conversation awkward and unfocused, drifting all over the place. Maybe he’s uncomfortable with Ilya in his house. He has never seemed uncomfortable with Ilya before, but maybe there's a difference between seeing a professional killer at work and seeing him in your home. Knowing that he knows where you live. Ilya swallows down more coffee, nearly chokes on it. 

“I should go,” he says finally, putting Shane out of his misery. He stands, starts to hand over the coffee mug when Shane scrambles to his feet as well. “Thank you for…”

Shane drops the mug on the table, and it rolls to the edge, falls off, shatters on the kitchen tile, spooking Ilya, who maybe has an overdeveloped startle reflex after growing up the way he did. But there's no time to feel embarrassed about that, because Shane has grabbed him by the front of the shirt and is pulling him in, and then he’s kissing him, and Ilya is not so much a fool that he will ruin this chance. 

He takes fistfulls of Shane’s sweater, and of course it’s just as soft as it looks, and Ilya cannot believe this is happening. Shane kisses him, kisses his jaw, starts to sink to his knees, even, but Ilya stops him, and not only because there are shards of mug on the floor everywhere, which Shane has apparently forgotten.

Ilya is fucking Bratva, and he’s a semi-retired proud slut, and so he’s no stranger to hookups in kitchens or living rooms or the backseats of cars and the bathrooms of clubs. All of those things can be really fucking hot. But this is his crime scene cleaner, his Shane, and they are in his Shane’s cozy little house, so fucking sue him. He wants it to be fucking nice. 

“Your room,” Ilya says. “Please.” 

Shane’s big brown eyes get even bigger, and then he’s up and kissing Ilya again, dragging him backwards by the front of his shirt, rucking it up, urging Ilya to take it off already. He takes advantage of the like three seconds in which they are not kissing because the shirt is coming off over Ilya’s head to unbutton his jeans, and then he’s kicking them down his legs, almost tripping over them. Ilya grabs him, hauls him close, kisses him again, and Shane laughs happily. The sound, no surprise, goes straight to Ilya’s dick. 

Shane’s bedroom is a little less boring than the rest of the house, and even more geared towards coziness than the alreay very cozy living room. It looks like the bedroom of a college student, or perhaps a teenage girl in a movie. Ilya doesn’t say any of this. It’s just fucking crazy to him that this man can gleefully scoop up brains and deadpan “Kobe!” as he tosses them into his corpse cart and then return to his sweet little home where he has clearly designed everything to feel as cozy as possible. 

There are hockey posters on the wall. There are fairy lights, and lots of plants. There’s one of those giant circular chairs that Ilya has seen in student housing, the ones with big fluffy round cushions. There’s a book on the circle chair, left on a folded blue blanket with the Metros logo on it. A pair of glasses are perched on top of the book. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” he says appreciatively. There’s a mirror across the room, on top of an old dresser that looks like Shane probably got it out of someone’s trash. One of the drawers is missing, and it’s scratched to hell, and there’s a crack in the mirror, but Ilya can still see himself and Shane reflected in it as Shane pushes himself into another kiss. Ilya watches his own reflection, watches the hunger on his own face, and okay, so this is real. This is all real. This is actually happening to him. 

He pushes Shane back on the bed, and Shane goes willingly, bouncing on the mattress and peeling off his sweater. Ilya takes it from him and drapes it on the back of the circle chair, because he wants to make sure that it’s still clean enough for Shane to put it back on, afterwards. He gets out of his own pants, tosses them heedlessly to the other side of the room. Shane sighs. 

“Always making a mess, Rozanov,” he teases, but his voice is breathy and not entirely scolding, and Ilya’s dick surges to full hardness just at the sound of it. All those times Shane used that tone when they were cleaning together, Ilya thought he had to be imagining things. Apparently not. 

“How long have you wanted me here?” he asks, crawling onto the bed, towards where Shane is reclining against even more pillows. Shane shrugs, looks a little bashful. 

“A while,” he admits. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“I didn’t think you…” 

“But I asked you out, and you…” 

“What? When? No you didn’t!” Shane’s angry kitten face goes stark with horrified realization. “Fuck. The guys in the woods. You were actually asking me out? I thought you were joking!” 

“I do not joke about these things,” Ilya insists. 

“You joke about everything! Shut the fuck up. Can you just fuck me already? Please?” Shane sounds exasperated, but his eyes are so fond, almost melting with it, and Ilya cannot say no to him. Doesn’t want to, either. 

“So impatient,” Ilya says. 

“Fuck you,” Shane replies, but he’s laughing. 

Ilya may be a bit insecure about a lot of things in his life, but he has never been insecure about his ability to make his sexual partners feel good. That has never been an area of concern for him. But because this is Shane, for a few seconds, his dumb, idiot brain considers getting anxious about what they’re about to do, but he’s able to shut his dumb, idiot brain up by yanking down Shane’s briefs and whistling in appreciation at his cock, mostly to make Shane laugh, but also to remind himself that he doesn’t have to let this be a big deal. 

Or, like, it can be a big deal, obviously, because this is Shane Hollander, the man he has been yearning for for ages, but it doesn’t have to be such a big deal that he freaks himself out and ruins everything. 

Shane laughs and covers his face with his forearm, and then stops laughing when Ilya gets to work, fingers and hand and mouth all working together while his eyes stay on Shane’s face, getting steadily more flushed, more incredulous, as if he’s never had his dick sucked before, which can’t possibly be true, because he’s perfect. Anyone would suck his dick! 

Shane pulls him off before too long, begs Ilya to fuck him, and Ilya has been dying to fuck him since he met him, so this is all working out really well in his favor, actually. Shane gets onto his hands and knees first, but his eyes get big and wobbly when Ilya asks him to turn over, and he stares up at Ilya with stars in his gaze when Ilya fucks him. It’s possible that Ilya almost immediately comes, but he staves it off by reminding himself that Shane is probably still quitting soon, which gives him the stamina to make it last a little longer. 

Afterward, Ilya isn’t sure what to do. He hasn’t hooked up with anyone in a while—his depression and his crippling crush on Shane both being effective cockblocks, for the most part—but he has always been the sort of guy to leave first and ask questions later. He always leaves politely. A few more kisses, some gentle touches, ensuring that no one feels used or discarded, but he prefers to leave as soon as possible to make sure that no one starts thinking that he’s lingering in hopes of poaching more affection. That he does need the affection only makes it more important that he hides the fact that he wants it. 

He still feels that old impulse with Shane, especially since he doesn’t think, necessarily, that this will have changed anything in regards to Shane wanting to move back home and leave the Bratva life behind. And Ilya always wants to strike first so that he doesn’t risk getting hurt. Always wants to put up walls around himself so that, when someone fails to scale those walls, he can convince himself that he made the right choice in putting up those barriers specifically designed to keep them out. He wants to do this again: slip into his clothes and be out of this house and back in his apartment so he can jerk off to the memory of fucking Shane for the rest of his life. Instead, he gets up, and he retrieves Shane’s sweater and briefs, and he hands them over, and then gets dressed back in his own underwear, and he gets back into bed. Shane heaves out a watery breath that even Ilya’s dumb, idiot brain can’t interpret as anything but relieved, and he cuddles close. 

“You can stay as long as you want,” Shane says bluntly, closing his eyes. “Or as short as you want. Whatever you want.” 

“What do you want?” Ilya asks, even though it feels, maybe, like it’s a mistake to ask. He should just reach for what he wants and hope that Shane is cool with it, maybe. 

“For you to stay,” Shane says. “However long.” 

Ilya rewards him with another kiss, or maybe he’s rewarding himself, for risking the possibility of the answer being something he didn’t want to hear. 

“Ah,” Alexei says when he strolls through the doors of the Italian restaurant, just fifteen minutes after Ilya has ensured that everyone in the building is dead. “So you fucked your Cleaner, then.” 

Ilya, who has been sitting on the edge of the stage in the back of the main dining room, where apparently the restaurant used to have a house band playing every night, because this used to be a nice place before the mafia ran it into the ground, grins and stands up, strides across the room to his brother. 

“Is it that obvious?” he asks. 

“You are covered in blood, there is a man in the pizza oven, and you killed the boss with a piano lid, Ilyushka. I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Ilya can’t help the smile. He spreads his arms, does a little twirl. Alexei laughs, punched out and angry about it, like he usually does when he thinks Ilya has done something genuinely funny. He hates finding Ilya funny. 

“Want to hear all about it?” Ilya asks. 

“Fuck off. You’re okay?” Asked, of course, as begrudgingly as possible. Ilya grins at him, enjoying his clear discomfort. “Fuck off, you brat! You have been taking your pills?” 

“Yes. He found out about them, so. He has been making sure I take them. Texting reminders.” 

“Ah, so you need a man to remind you to take your medicine? Pathetic.”

”Yes,” Ilya agrees cheerfully. 

“Will you at least cook for him? Make him a pizza or something?” Ilya, incredulous, gestures to the body half-shoved into the giant stone pizza oven. “You are so fucking negative, Ilyushka. So make him spaghetti or something! Show him you can cook. It really isn’t that difficult to win over a man.”

“Speaking from experience, are you?” 

“Fuck off. You’re such a child. Good work here tonight. Enjoy your fucking date.” 

Alexei storms off, looking plainly confused about being both pleased and disgusted at the same time. 

Ilya checks himself out in the mirror. Alexei was exaggerating a bit, but his face and hair are a little splattered, so he cleans off in the sink. There’s not much to be done about his clothing, but that’s why he wore black, and that’s also why he packed an extra suit in his car, for later, just in case Shane wants to invite him back to his house. 

He’s trying not to expect anything, not wanting to risk crushing disappointment, but it’s hard not to. Every time he has closed his eyes for the last few days, he has seen Shane’s perfect body underneath him, has felt Shane’s skin under his fingertips. Smelled the cleaner that Shane uses. His fucking Dawn Dish Soap, too. Washing his own dishes has been getting him hard! It’s impossible to live like this, but he loves it. He would do anything to keep it. 

Shane arrives in his beat-up truck, grumbling cutely about something to do with the side streets and alleys in this part of town being so confusing. Ilya lets him complain, lets the sound of it wash over him. He notices that Shane is wearing a nice pair of pants and a dark green sweater. He covers both things quickly with his cleaning gear, but Ilya still knows they are there, and knows that Shane listened to him about wearing something nice. Listened to him about this maybe being a date.

And, oh, God, his hair is freshly cut, and he smells phenomenal, and he’s smiling at Ilya brightly as he puts his gear on. Ilya leans against the propped open back door of the restaurant, and his smile feels gooey, impossibly fond. 

“Man, I loved this place,” Shane sighs. “I hope you didn’t kill the chefs.” 

“Unless the chefs were secretly also mob bosses? No,” Ilya says. “Though probably the restaurant will shut down, now that all of its owners are dead.” 

“Ugh, true,” Shane says. “Will I need the body cart?” 

“We can take them through the kitchen and toss them out the window into the truck.” 

“That hardly seems sanitary,” Shane says, but he leaves the body cart where it is, flattened into its packed-away shape in his truck bed, and Ilya preens to be listened to and believed and not doubted. 

Shane admires Ilya’s handiwork, and laughs when he sees some of the more creative touches. He’s impressed at the mess in the dining room, all the cheap, shattered tables. Ilya points out that he has left one good table for them, and Shane blushes. 

Ilya does want to make some food for the both of them, and so he and Shane tackle the kitchen first. Shane is dutifully impressed by the dead body in the pizza oven, looks genuinely puzzled about how to get the blood out of the brickwork once they stick the body in a bag and haul it out the window, which means he’s thrilled. He scrubs the counters and the normal oven thoroughly, and then he leaves Ilya to cook while he goes about cleaning everything else. It’s nice, having him half in the pizza oven, scrubbing away, while Ilya prepares their food. Like they can exist in the same place, both working on different things. It’s so domestic. 

Shane wouldn’t be Shane if he didn’t make sure that everything was completely cleaned before he relaxed, so Ilya knows that he won’t be taking any shortcuts, and he leaves the pasta sauce to simmer on the stove while he helps with the rest of the bodies. Shane finds a safe that Ilya didn’t even leave for him to discover on purpose, and Ilya breaks into it and then hands half of the money over to Shane, because Shane refuses to take all of it. He looks pleased, counting his cash, busting out his UV lights and making sure that Ilya sees him using them, like he wants to show off that he likes Ilya’s gifts. Ilya’s stomach flitters with happy little butterflies. 

They sit down to eat together, finally, and Ilya is feeling critical of his sauce and wishing that he had pre-made the perfect dinner, tested it multiple times to make sure that everything was immaculate, and then only pretended to cook it here, but Shane seems pleased with it, which is really all that matters. Hopefully he’s not just being nice. 

Ilya lights some candles, and he pulls out the least ruined tablecloth and spreads it over the table, and he dims the lights in the rest of the dining room to make it more romantic. They probably shouldn’t linger here for much longer, because even though Alexei controls the cops in this part of the city and they won’t be bothered any time soon, they could be spotted by anyone walking by, and it’s just not worth the headache. 

But still, Ilya wants to linger, because it feels like a real date. A real date between two normal people, and he can imagine a world where he and Shane could be together out in the sunlight like this. If Ilya really wanted to, he thinks Alexei would probably let him leave, get a real job. He’d bitch about it, for sure, and maybe he would call Ilya in for help sometimes, but maybe Ilya could mostly be normal. Maybe he could move up to Canada. Maybe he could follow Shane wherever Shane went. 

They head back to Ilya’s apartment, after dropping the bodies off with Shane’s “guy”. Shane is wearing none of his usual gear, just his soft sweater and his dark pants, looking beautiful and unruffled and not like someone who scrubbed the burned remains of a man killed in a pizza oven off brick only a few hours ago. He wanders around Ilya’s apartment and compliments everything, and Ilya follows, hands shoved into his pockets so that he can allow Shane to keep talking and doesn’t grab him with his horny little claws, cut him off right in the middle of an interesting rant. 

“Sorry, I’m talking a lot,” Shane says, finally, turning to look at Ilya and finding him smiling back at him, gentle and amused. 

“No,” Ilya says. 

“I kind of babble when I’m nervous.” 

“Is cute.” 

“I don’t think there are many people who would say that.” 

Ilya scoffs, shrugs, crowds into Shane’s space, finally taking his hands out of his pockets so that he can touch Shane, fingers trailing up under the sweater, brushing across his stomach, finally touching the warmest and softest part of him. He feels so good, and he breathes out a shuddering little breath, and Ilya could listen to it all fucking day. 

“Many people are stupid,” he says quietly. “But you…I could listen to you talk about anything. You are so interesting to me.” 

“Really?” Shane’s almost breathless as he says it, like Ilya has said something scandalously dirty. Ilya, sometimes his stomach hurts a bit when Shane says things like that, things that indicate that he’s uncertain for a reason. He has said enough things about growing up, struggling to make friends, trying to figure out who he was after he had to stop playing hockey…people have not been as kind to Shane Hollander as he deserves, basically. They think he’s weird. They don’t appreciate him. They don’t think he’s funny, or interesting, or worth listening to. Ilya could kill them all. Genuinely, he has considered asking for a list of names. 

He doesn’t say this. Not because he doesn’t think Shane would like it, but because he thinks it’s probably too sincere for this still-tentative thing between them. He doesn’t want to scare Shane off with just how badly he wants to be with Shane all the time, listening to him talk about everything and anything he wants to talk about. Shane wants him enough to sleep with him, wants him enough to agree to a date, but he would surely balk, if he saw the depth of what Ilya wants in return.

He takes Shane to bed, and he acts mostly normal, which is to say he only gets teary-eyed once or twice at the thought of Shane leaving at the end of the summer, and he doesn’t interrogate him about his plans, or his timeline, or whether there’s anything that Ilya can do to convince him to stay. 

The warehouse is enormous, and there are mazes of shelving and boxes of product and offices and a server room. Everything a local arm of a Bratva operation could need. There’s this metal-sided conveyor belt that loops through all three floors and ends near the massive airplane hangar-like door, where there’s this yellow door in the concrete floor that opens straight down into the top floor of the parking garage. Shane parks his truck right under the door, which will make it easy for him and Ilya to wrap the bodies in their bags and then either pitch them through the door and into the bed of the truck or place them on the conveyor belt, wherever they happen to be in the facility, and let the conveyor belt take the bodies to the truck for them. This is especially helpful because there are over twenty-five bodies to load into the truck bed. Shane will almost definitely need to make two trips, which he will surely complain about, but probably in the way where he’s obviously pleased, somehow, at the same time.

This was not a typical job, and not a job that Ilya thought he would be working tonight, so he’s more exhausted than usual, and even the promise of spending probably the entire night with Shane hasn’t kept him from spiraling into a dour mood. Sveta was meant to be meeting with the buyers for some stolen artwork that they've been keeping in this warehouse, and it should have been an easy meeting, but that rarely ends up being true in this business, and this was no exception. 

Sveta is okay, at least, and Ilya has only been lightly grazed, and not actually shot. Alexei was mildly strangled, and is more annoyed and embarrassed about it than genuinely injured, especially because Sveta and Ilya had to work together to save him, and that’s like his worst nightmare. Ilya plans on telling Shane all about it, just as soon as they are alone, because he thinks that Shane will like hearing about it, and because there are going to be plenty of ways to make him sound impressive in the telling of that story, without even trying. 

Shane looks tired too, already, before he even gets into the warehouse, and then he looks even more tired as he looks at all the fucking stairs. 

“This might be a two day job,” Ilya says, conciliatory, trying to sound more upbeat than he feels; he doesn’t want Shane to feel pressured, or like he can’t escape. He has lately been harboring a fear that Shane will realize that no one expects anyone to tender a three month resignation, especially not fucking Bratva, and then he will quit on the spot and fuck off back to Canada, where Ilya will never get to see or kiss or fuck him ever again. 

“Eh, maybe,” Shane says, hands on his hips as he eyes the conveyor belt. “I think we can probably skip the tour, and just start cleaning our way up.” 

Ilya is, as always, happy to oblige. He helps Shane cart his supplies across the cavernous space, helps him piece together items that were shot to bits so they can make sure they’ve found every piece. This job is less time sensitive than the others, just because of the simple fact that Alexei and Ilya are the ones renting this space, so they don’t need to worry about immediately hiding what happened here, other than the fact that it’s bad business to leave bodies lying around, and also that Alexei wants a full accounting of their losses (i.e. priceless stolen works of art that have now been shot full of bullets). Shane is clucking his tongue over all of those lost items, of course, looking gutted, and Ilya watches him and wants him so fucking badly. 

They take a break in the space that Ilya has been using as his office, because Shane perks up the second Ilya suggests fucking him over his desk, like it’s a job benefit he hadn’t realized he could be taking advantage of. Ilya tells himself that it’s less problematic because there’s no blood and there are no bodies in this room, but he does still think it’s probably fucked up, and decides not to tell Alexei about it unless Alexei really pisses him off.

After, Shane is languid and happy, but still determined to keep cleaning, because he has better work ethic than anyone Ilya has ever met, which is another very good thing about him, in a list of hundreds. Ilya trails after him, doing everything Shane asks. If any of the ghosts of the men who were killed are lingering around, surely they will be furious about the fact that they have been killed by a man who is so whipped by another man, which just makes him want to salivate after Shane even more obviously like a loyal dog, because those men tried to kill Svetlana, and they deserve everything they got.

Shane likes putting the body bags on the conveyor belts and letting them trundle away through the warehouse, eventually ending up in the bed of his truck. He likes dropping bags of trash in the same way. He seems especially to like that it gives he and Ilya more time to spend together as they work their way through, room by room, removing blood from every surface and tidying up the mess that has been left behind. 

When the door at the back of the warehouse slams open, Ilya is a little surprised, but not necessarily worried, because Alexei has a way of showing up when he’s not wanted. Mostly, he’s just relieved that Alexei showed up now, and not when he was fucking Shane on his desk. But then he hears voices, American voices, not Russian, and he grabs Shane by the arm and hauls him away from the edge of the catwalk they’ve both been approaching. Shane’s eyes are wide and concerned, and he watches Ilya carefully, ready to follow his instructions. That is the only comfort in this whole thing: he knows that Shane will listen to him, just as he has been listening to Shane.

“Body bag,” Ilya whispers. Shane produces one from within its tight roll in one of his apron pockets. Ilya lays it out, and then gestures to Shane, who pales, shaking his head. 

“No,” he says. “No, no. What the fuck? No.” 

“It will take you to your truck, and then you will get the fuck out of here.” 

“No! Ilya, I can’t just leave you here!” 

“Shane, please. I cannot do this if I don’t know you’re safe.” 

Shane hesitates a second longer, but there are clanging sounds: men are coming up the stairs. And Shane is a rational enough person. He doesn’t have a weapon, and Ilya will get shot trying to protect him. He has to understand that this is the best way forward. If they remove Shane from this situation, Ilya can do what he needs to do. 

So Shane breathes out, cursing, and allows Ilya to zip him into the bag. Ilya kisses him before pulling the zipper up further, and he makes sure to leave it a little open, so that Shane can get out easily once he’s in the truck. Then he lifts Shane into a bridal carry and lays him gently on the conveyor belt, tossing a few lighter bags of trash around him, so hopefully it will not look too obvious. It will be just another of the many bodies making their way through the warehouse. 

The conveyor belt slowly takes Shane away, and then Ilya goes to work. 

The first thing he does is climb up the conveyor belt, which is cartoony and ridiculous, but he needs to get to the control room on the top floor of the warehouse, and walking on the metal catwalks will make too much noise, as his would-be attackers are currently proving. They don’t seem concerned about being quiet, which is a point in his favor, so he doesn’t worry too much about making noise as he scurries his way up.

In the control room, he has almost a full view of the entire warehouse, which unfortunately means they will also have a full view of him, so he crouches next to the lighting controls, and he barely peeks his head over them to at least see who he’s going to be killing before he gets to the whole killing thing. 

He recognizes a few of the men immediately, and he breathes out a sigh of relief. Okay, it’s just rival gangsters, not cops (which is always a headache to clean up afterward) and not innocent workers showing up to the wrong warehouse to start their shift. He texts Alexei his predicament, but Alexei has probably already turned off his phone in an embarrassed outrage over the whole choking thing, so he knows he can’t expect backup at this point. 

He probably doesn’t need it, anyway. 

He turns off the lights, first, and he creeps his way out of the control room, back onto the conveyor belt, and rides it down closer to where the ten or so gangsters have stopped on the stairs, whispering to each other in the dark. Two of them have their phone flashlights trained on the floor, so he can see vague shapes of the entire group. He takes out two with thrown knives when he’s almost directly above them. One is an immediate kill, but the other starts screaming and flailing, and the others are distracted enough that they don’t notice at all as Ilya rides by silently, lying flat. Once he gets down to the floor beneath them, he rolls off of the conveyor belt, gets a gun from Alexei’s nearby office, and creeps back out and shoots up through the slotted metal floor to where he can still see those phone flashlights, pointed down at him.

It goes on like that for a little while. 

At the end of it, Ilya is positive that he has killed all of them, and Alexei finally calls him back. Ilya rejects the call and sends him a very angry text message, jabbed out with blood-slick fingers, because he doesn’t trust himself to not sound wounded if he answers, and then he sits on the conveyor belt to take him down to the first floor, and then, maybe, passes out a little bit from blood loss, and only wakes up when he’s falling through the door in the floor and cursing himself for his mistake. 

He lands not on the hard concrete he expected, but on the unfortunately soft and squishy forms of many dead men, in the bed of Shane’s truck. Shane is crouched over him quickly, a jagged knife held poised in his hand until he confirms with his own eyes that it’s Ilya who’s groaning and rolling around in pain. 

“I thought I told you to leave,” Ilya says, trying to sound stern and disappointed, even though that’s stupid, because he’s really very relieved to not have brained himself on the concrete floor. 

“Oh my god, okay, okay,” Shane says, dropping the knife somewhere in the mess of body bags. Ilya tries to sit up, fails. Shane scowls at him and shoves him back. “Hold on, stop fucking moving! Oh my god, I’m going to fucking kill you. Are they all dead? Are they gone?” 

“Of course they are all dead, Shanya,” Ilya grunts out, managing to kick his way free of his nest of bodies, scooting ungracefully to the end of the truck bed, where he can finally lower himself to the ground. His knees crumble only a little, but Shane reacts as if he has passed out (again), and dives to catch Ilya under the elbows, holding him up. 

“How many?” Shane asks. 

“Ten? I think?” Ilya replies. Surely, Shane will be impressed to hear about this. 

“And we were almost fucking done? Jesus, Ilya. Now I’m going to have to clean the whole place again!” 

Ilya laughs fondly, and then he fucking passes out again. 

He wakes up in a safehouse they have used before to tend to more serious injuries, which he knows because he has ended up in this place a few times, and it’s a horrible little apartment with water stains on the ceiling in the main bedroom. It’s always the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. 

This time, at least, the second thing he sees is Shane’s pretty face, smooth and unworried in his sleep, his head near Ilya’s hip. Ilya’s hand is intertwined with his, and Shane is holding their joint hands up to his lips, so his breath is warm on Ilya’s skin, and it’s all very nice. 

“Fucking idiot,” Alexei barks, waking Ilya up fully, and dragging Shane reluctantly back to consciousness as well. 

“I’m not the one who turned off my phone because I was embarrassed to be saved by Sveta,” Ilya replies. 

“No, but you are the one who got shot trying to show off for your little boyfriend.” 

“He wasn’t even there! I got him to safety first, because I’m a great boyfriend. And can you really call that showing off? I basically just shot all of them at once.” 

“And got shot yourself in the process.” 

“Yes, well, that’s what happens when a bunch of mafia idiots get past your security and go after your baby brother, all alone in that giant warehouse, because you’re busy sulking!” 

Alexei finally gives up, at that. Shane has been watching them speak to each other warily, eyes batting back and forth to whomever is speaking. When Alexei finally throws up his hands, Shane looks as smugly pleased about the victory as if it was his own, and Ilya wants to eat him alive. 

“How bad was it?” Ilya asks the room at large. If he’s in this safehouse, it must not be great, but he doesn’t appear to be hooked up to any machinery anymore, so that’s a good sign. He can feel the slight pull at his arm that usually signifies an IV port was removed, gauze taped over it, so the medical team probably was here. Medium injured, is his guess. Should probably get him a few weeks off. 

“Two shots, one in the side, one in the calf. You’ll be off your leg for a while, but you got lucky with the left side injury. The surgical team was able to patch you up, and they said you should be okay. But you are going to need to be watched to make sure nothing gets infected. Shane has volunteered.” 

Ilya wants to tease Alexei for being polite to Shane and speaking in English to include him in the conversation, even though Alexei hates speaking in English, despite the irritating fact that his English is even better than Ilya’s. But he actually thinks it’s kind of sweet that Alexei keeps looking at Shane, making it clear that he’s talking to both of them, and he sort of wants to reward that sweetness, rather than punishing him for it.  

“Kotyonok, you will be watching over me like a good little nurse?” Ilya asks, trying to sound sexy and pleased like a horny vampire, but he thinks instead he just sounds vaguely ill. Alexei rolls his eyes, and Shane hides a grin behind his hand. 

“Thank you, Shane, for putting up with him,” Alexei says, in the most polite tone Ilya has ever heard from him. Of course he’s nicer to Shane than he is to Ilya. Shane nods, professional and detached, like there’s a chance Alexei will fall for it.

Ilya is thrilled to be brought back to Shane’s little house again, for the first time since the first time. They’ve been meeting up regularly since then, but they usually go to Ilya’s apartment, because it tends to be an easier drive from wherever they’ve been cleaning up crime scenes in the city. Ilya loves this little house, though, and he’s intensely pleased to see that everything looks the same, even though it’s August now, and they’re getting closer to the end of the summer. It’s still not packed up, not ruthlessly culled to only the things that Shane has chosen to keep for his perfect new life, ready to be shipped in boxes up to where Canada and his parents and a normal job without Ilya are waiting for him. 

Ilya has been given drugs for his pain and to ward off infection, and even though he hates taking pills, especially pain pills, he does so when Shane asks, because he doesn’t feel like explaining the whole thing about his mother to Shane right now. Not when he’s loopy and wounded. He’ll get too emotional. 

Shane gets him set up on the couch, at first, which threatens Ilya’s peace only a little bit. 

“I just think it’s too early for bedtime,” Shane says nervously, because he must see something in Ilya’s face, which is probably embarrassing. “We can move you into the bedroom later, okay?” 

Ilya nods too eagerly, and with too much relief, and then settles into the soft couch, allowing Shane to prop him up with pillows and then cover him in blankets. It’s nice to feel pampered, actually. Cared for. Ilya usually doesn’t like it, but that’s probably because he’s usually being cared for by people he doesn’t care for in return. Or people like Svetlana, who will mock him mercilessly while she cares for him, which only makes him feel guilty for needing her care, like he’s a burden, even though he knows that she doesn’t mind. 

Shane makes him some tea, and reveals an insane amount of options in the drawer of one of his cabinets, which Ilya is fascinated by, like with everything that Shane does. He tells Shane to choose for him, and Shane takes this very seriously, staring down at the boxes with his angry kitten face before finally picking something and slamming the drawer shut, blushing a little bit, like he thinks he’s made the wrong choice already. 

The painkillers are doing their job, so Ilya actually feels okay, and he feels even better when Shane carries over two mugs of tea and then consents to snuggling close on the couch and then pulling Ilya against him to rest. Ilya finds himself with his head on Shane’s generous thigh, Shane’s fingers tugging through his curls, and he floats there, comfortable and secure, until he has to pee, and then there is some more pain as Shane helps him limp to the bathroom. 

It’s all right, though, and they limp back to the couch, and Shane puts on the TV, a hockey game, and allows Ilya to lie against him again, which is all Ilya really wants. 

“I was scared,” Shane says suddenly. It’s the only thing he’s said for hours. 

“I know,” Ilya replies, because he would have to be stupid not to know it. “But everything worked out all right.” 

“I’ll have to clean it again tomorrow,” Shane says. “Without you.” 

“Will Alexei stay with you?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” 

“He can hire someone else, you know, if you are uncomfortable. We have a guy in New York. He can get on a flight tonight. He’s going to be your replacement, anyway.” 

Ilya tries not to sound bitter when he says that, but he probably doesn’t succeed. It’s hard not to feel bitter, with Shane so soft beside him, knowing that it’s not going to last. Every time Ilya looks at a calendar lately, he feels his heart rate start to speed up. The passage of time is cruel, the summer fleeting, and Ilya cannot handle losing Shane.

“I, uh,” Shane stammers. “I’m not. I’m not quitting, Ilya. I talked to Alexei already last week. I assumed he might have told you already? But I’m not quitting anymore.” 

Ilya sits up so fast that he gets dizzy, and Shane grips him by the shoulder, frowning at him. 

“Alexei did not tell me shit,” he says. Begs, “why did you change your mind?” 

Shane fiddles with his mug of tea, takes a sip, looks back at the hockey game, and then finally back at Ilya. 

“I don’t know how to…” He sighs and puts his mug down, rubs at his eyes with surprisingly cute curled fists, then lays those fists against his thighs and grinds out. “You know why I needed the money, right? What I did?” 

“Went into debt with my terrible father, yes.” 

“Yeah. I used to play. Hockey. I was good, too.” 

“Yes, I know. I watched some clips. I was also very good at hockey, until I had to stop.” 

“Then you know how it feels.” 

“Yes, of course I do.” It felt terrible, when his mother died, and terrible when his father lost his job, and terrible when his father moved them to America because his cousin had an opening in his “organization”. Ilya hadn’t realized that it was Bratva shit until they’d been in the business almost a year. He’d been a kid at the time, but kids could be used for plenty of things, like deliveries, without raising any suspicions, and Ilya was such a cherubic-looking kid, no one suspected him of anything. He’d been enamored with hockey when he was young, same as Shane probably had been, but his mother’s death dampened it, and his father’s indifference killed it entirely. But of course he still thinks about it, sometimes. Who he could have been, if things had been different. 

“I got hurt. Had surgery, but it wasn’t…I wasn’t good, the way I used to be. My knee was still too fucked. So I started looking into experimental treatments, and I came here because there were doctors in Boston who…it doesn’t matter. You know the story. I was paying your father back however I could, but when he died, Alexei told me I could work it off, if I didn’t have the money. So I tried enforcing, but I fucking hated it. And my, like, third job was as a night janitor to make some extra cash, and when you guys needed a new cleaner, it just made sense. And you guys paid me enough that I could quit my other jobs, and rent this house instead of the tiny apartment in Allston I was in before, and it was…nice. It was really nice. And, uh. I met you.” 

Shane meets Ilya’s eyes reluctantly, sees that Ilya is already looking at him. Hasn’t looked away once, actually. 

“And then you decided you need to flee to Canada,” Ilya jokes, but his voice is hoarse, tight. 

“Kind of the opposite? I kind of, um. Fell in love with you,” Shane offers shyly, instead of doing the normal thing like deflecting or changing the subject or saying something half as true, half as earnest. Ilya gapes at him. “I know I don’t…I’m not…I’m not like other people. I don’t think like other people do. I’m not grossed out by any of the stuff you do. I’m not bothered by it. I don’t really care that you kill people, and I know that’s fucked up. I’ve always been weird. Always been fascinated by that stuff. I don’t know. The first time I saw one of your crime scenes, maybe I should have been horrified. A normal person would have been horrified, I think. I wasn’t. I was turned on.” He looks at Ilya now like he expects Ilya will be scandalized. Ilya arches one unimpressed eyebrow to show that he’s not. “Okay, yeah. I guess you’re not exactly normal, either.” 

“No,” Ilya says. “I think that is why we like each other so much.” 

“Yeah, probably. I mean, definitely. Yeah. I just…you’re so good at what you do. And I’m so good at what I do. And I really…it was really nice, and I liked it. Hanging out with you. But I started feeling like, I don’t know, like I was going to spend my whole life wanting you pointlessly, cleaning up after you, getting to see you only when you needed me to help you fix a mess, and I started feeling, like, trapped, I guess. So when my debt was paid, I figured, I don’t know, maybe I’d move back home. My parents have already been asking why I haven’t. They know I came down here for the surgeries, for the treatments, and they know they didn’t work, so. I think they think I’m ashamed, or something. They visit when they can, and I visit when I can, but obviously it’s not…obviously, I miss them. So I figured, if I wasn’t going to be able to be fully happy here, I could at least move back there, where they could be fully happy with me around, even if I would be missing you. Because I thought I would be the only one with something to miss.” 

“But you know that you would not be, right? Now? You know that I have been…Shane, I have been trying to catch your attention for so long. From the beginning, maybe. Falling in love, too, okay? You know this now?” 

“Yeah,” Shane admits gently. “That’s why I told Alexei I changed my mind. He's the one who gave me the advice to wait out the summer, actually. He said, uh, I should have some faith in you.”

“Noooo, don't tell me this,” Ilya groans, but he can't help his smile. “I will owe my happiness to my brother? Shanya, that's horrible!” 

“Sorry,” Shane says with a small smile. “But I'm, like, unfortunately really grateful to him.”

Ilya thinks about the house still being so cheerfully decorated, and not boxed up. He feels the tight fist that has been clenching his heart for months finally beginning to loosen. 

“Good,” he says, managing to sound, he thinks, mostly normal. “Because I was losing my mind at the thought of you leaving. I was starting to think about quitting and following you, whether you invited me or not.” 

“I would have thought that was really fucking hot,” Shane says, sounding only a little disturbed. Ilya laughs. 

“We are perfect for each other, yes,” he says. “I know.” 

The Theriault Wellness Retreat or whatever the fuck was his masterpiece, once upon a time, more than a year ago, but Ilya has learned in the year since that he will always have room to improve. He opens the door for Shane, who rolls the body crate in, eyes already wide. 

The museum lighting is dim, just the way Shane likes it. There are thirteen exhibits, and there are bodies in almost all of them. Bodies, and broken pieces of art, and mini statuettes in the wrong places, and shattered glass, and blood just fucking everywhere. Ilya used a fossilized t-rex rib to kill a man. He used pieces of modern sculpture to cave in the skull of another. There is an automated floor-mopper robot thing that was left active during the murders, and there are now overlapping trails of blood because the stupid thing kept trying to clean and made even more of a mess. Shane is going to love it. 

Ilya shoves his hands into his pockets as he begins the tour. Shane’s expression lights up more and more as they walk through the main lobby, Ilya pointing out his favorite little touches. When Shane sees the dinosaur skeleton in pieces, he openly laughs. His UV light is held aloft, blue gleaming prettily on his face. 

In Ilya’s pocket, his fingers clench around the little ring box that he has carried with him for days now, waiting for the perfect time.