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One of these days, I’ll learn to say no to my mother.
This is the lie Shane tells himself as he stands under a rainfall showerhead for the second time this morning, trying not to panic.
There is no reason to be nervous. It’s just a commercial. He’s done this a dozen times now, for the likes of Reebok and Rolex and Calvin Klein, plus that perfume brand he should know the name of but can never remember.
He’s still trying to rationalize himself off the ledge when the timer on his phone trills. One hour before he has to leave. Sixty minutes.
Breathe deep, count to four, exhale slowly. You don’t have to make any decisions.
In, hold, out. Just follow directions.
In, hold. You can do this. Out.
That’s the mantra he keeps up as he aggressively towel-dries his hair, combs it vaguely flat, and dresses in the clothes he needlessly agonized over for two days. Peloton would no doubt be putting him in some form of unbranded workout gear anyway. Ilya had requested booty shorts, then pouted when Shane reminded him he had no say in wardrobe. He’d let it go after Shane dropped to his knees in the living room; by the time they finished, they’d both forgotten about it.
Because he’s already having a miserable time, he makes his morning smoothie using the hideous vegan brand his mother got him a deal with last year. Some kind of organic pea protein. He can only stomach it about once a week, so it’s taking a while to get through the supply. He really should just throw it away, they’ll never know, but he hates to be wasteful. Maybe if he mentions offhandedly how terrible it is, Ilya will throw it out for him so Shane doesn’t have to.
Realizing the absurdity of this plan, he retrieves the canister from the back of the cabinet and smugly dumps the contents down the drain. Rinses the sink and the container, tosses the plastic into the recycling.
Immediately feels guilty.
Finishes his hideous breakfast, tries not to shudder at the taste. Downs a glass of water to rinse the graininess out of this mouth. It only sort of works.
Running his tongue over his teeth to wipe away the awful residue, he registers a stack of plastic containers on the counter. Oh, right! Ilya had said he would bake something for Bood’s barbecue tonight. He’s two bites into a brownie before he registers that he didn’t feel even a flash of guilt over the sugar. Makes a mental note to mention it to his therapist the next time she asks about successes. It’s been a long journey, untangling his rocky relationship with food, so this feels like a real win. He’s proud of himself.
Fuck it, he decides, and eats another brownie. Sue him, they’re delicious. And at least his tongue is no longer sandy. And maybe he’s still a little nervous. And Ilya made about four dozen, so they won’t even be missed.
He grabs a third for the road. Shoots a text to his husband that he’s heading to set. Ilya had an early meeting about a brand deal with Saint Laurent, and then he’s meeting Marleau for lunch at some fancy new restaurant.
Pocketing his phone, he collects his keys and squats down to say goodbye to Anya, who is guarding the front door, having figured out long ago that Shane’s breakfasts were never worth monitoring for scraps. She’d happily snapped a spinach leaf out of the air one time and then dramatically spit it out, looking utterly betrayed; Ilya had laughed about it for days.
It takes nearly three minutes of paying the belly rub toll before she is satisfied with the attention and he is allowed to vacate the premises.
~ & ~
Lunch with Cliff runs longer than anticipated. Ilya will deny it until the day he dies, but he is a messy bitch at heart, and lives for gossip. Cliff’s sister-in-law is now a paralegal at MLH’s New York office, so has unprecedented access to a wealth of juicy rumors and salacious scandals.
It’s nearly four o’clock by the time his beloved electric blue Audi turns onto the winding private road leading to their Ottawa home. He’d texted Shane earlier to say he was running late, but, as expected, never received a response. Shane decided years ago to stop checking his texts in professional settings, after one too many sexts from Ilya. He’s reminiscing about a particularly vivid fantasy he’d had the other day, wondering how much convincing it would take to let Shane fuck him on the jetski, when a brownish blur barrels out of the woods and darts across the road.
Thank fuck for the reflexes of a professional athlete; he’s slammed the brakes before he even registers what he’s seen.
It takes his brain a moment to catch up. It should logically have been a deer, so it’s several confused seconds before he accepts that it is, in fact, a dog. His dog. His Anya.
Standing in the road. Unaccompanied.
Her snout is bloody.
He flies out of the car as she trots over to him, unphased by her unauthorized freedom. She’s a bit muddy, and has clearly been rolling in leaves, but is otherwise unharmed. The same cannot be said for whatever critter she ran across on her woodland jaunt. Squirrel, maybe? Rabbit? There are bits of grey fur stuck in the mess on her face.
It’s easy enough to coax her into the backseat, where she collapses with a contented huff. He calls Shane as he hits the gas, trying not to think of worst case scenarios when there’s no answer. She probably just darted out the door when he got home, and Shane is out looking for her right now. No need for alarm. Everything is fine.
He calls again. Still no answer.
Drives a bit faster, despite the Shane in his head yelling to slow down, dumbass. Within two minutes, he’s skidding to a stop in the driveway.
The front door is standing wide open.
Ilya almost wipes out on his way inside, Anya hot on his heels. A familiar pair of Reeboks have been abandoned haphazardly by the door, in a decidedly unfamiliar way. Stomach-churning panic slams down like a physical force. “Shane?!”
Silence.
His husband has obviously been kidnapped. Killed. Dragged into the woods and beaten by crazed Metros fans. Taken by a cult, sold to a boy band, drafted into an alien war.
Stop.
Breathe.
Clamping down on a wave of nausea, he calls out desperately, voice cracking. "SolnyshkoSunshine, are you here?!" Nothing. The house is terrifyingly quiet for one agonizing eternity, then — a thud in the kitchen!
Ilya effectively teleports across the house, skids into the room, and freezes. His phone slips from his hand and clatters to the tile floor. He can scarcely believe his eyes. “Shane?” It comes out as barely a whisper.
His husband has not been kidnapped, killed, or beaten. There are no cults, boy bands, or aliens.
Shane is here, in the kitchen.
Shane is safe.
Shane is — wearing a pair of neon orange boxers and only one sock?
And headphones.
Shane Hollander, who knows approximately four songs and exercises in silence, is wearing an enormous pair of over-ear headphones playing music so loudly that Ilya can identify the track from across the room.
Most disturbingly of all, it’s Kesha.
Okay. Pod person is rapidly moving up the list of likely explanations.
Hands shaking from the adrenaline crash — breathing again now that he’s been located — Ilya takes stock of the scene before him.
Shane Hollander, #1 husband, love of his life, apple of his eye or whatever the dumb English idiom is. Tips his head back to dump potato chips into his mouth, directly out of the bag. He chews happily for a few seconds, moaning in a way Ilya has never heard him do outside of sex, and reaches for an open can of Coke on the counter. Downs half of it in one go, lets out a truly impressive burp, then spins on his heels, bobbing rhythmically, and goes back to the task at hand.
The task at hand being gummy worms.
An entire bag. Economy size.
They’ve been laid out in neat rows on the counter, spaced precisely one quarter-inch apart, meticulously sorted by color.
Ilya would have been less surprised to find a giraffe in the house.
“Sweetheart? Are you…okay?” No response. Right — the music. Crossing the space, he puts a hand on Shane’s shoulder, and — again, thank you reflexes — dodges a surprisingly well-aimed punch. The bag of gummy worms hits the floor, spraying a semicircle of translucent sugar and assorted other delicious chemicals. Anya pounces.
Shane blinks at him stupidly for a moment, and then gasps in a way he, again, typically does only in private. “There he is! What took you so long?!” He’s shouting.
Ilya blinks back at him. What.
Wait, no. Speak. “What?”
Shane scowls adorably, and keeps yelling from ten inches away. “I asked you to get pizza an hour ago! Where have you been?”
Again. What? Oops. “What.” It’s the only English he has at the minute.
The scowl deepens, which has the unfortunate effect of making him look extra adorable as he shouts, “Why are you whispering?”
Ilya reaches to pull the headphones off, repeats his earlier question. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great! And you’re here!” The volume hasn’t dropped any. He smacks a kiss in the general vicinity of his husband’s mouth, missing by a not-insignificant margin.
“Are you sick?”
“Seriously, can you order pizza? I’m starving. Oh! Pretty girl!” He drops to the floor to hug Anya, who can’t decide whether she wants to absorb the attention or go back to her snack. Laughs when she licks his cheek, unbothered by the sticky smear left behind.
This snaps Ilya out of his daze. He hurriedly scoops up the rest of the candy before she can eat any more of it, and takes a minute to scrub off the worst of the blood and mud before it gets tracked all over the house. The cleanup is difficult, as Shane is still actively petting her.
Immediate crisis averted, he pulls the man to his feet and studies him carefully, looking for any explanation as to why his perfectly boring Canadian has started channeling an American frat boy. There are five empty cans on the counter, but none of them are beer. Maybe he got into the vodka? Sometimes he gets nervous on shoot days. “Are you drunk?”
He sways forward, throws both arms around Ilya’s neck, and giggles. Actually giggles. Like a schoolgirl. “Drunk on you, maybe.” Boops his nose, goes in for another kiss, burps directly into his mouth.
On the pretense of returning the kiss, he runs both hands through his hair, checking for head injuries. Nothing.
“How’s Marleau?” Shane idles, as if he’s not being incredibly weird right now.
“Good. He’s — good. How, uh.” Ilya tries, reaching desperately for one ounce of normalcy. “How was your day? How was the shoot?”
Another gasp. “Oh my god, baby, it was so much fun! You should have been there! Craft services had the best cookies, I think I ate four or five on break. And sliders! They had these amazing barbecue sliders on tiny rolls. We have to try to make them! I need them in my life.”
Ilya is still processing the baby of it all. He doesn’t think Shane has ever called him baby, not once in fourteen years. It’s kind of nice, actually. But not the point.
Wait.
Barbecue. Brownies. Blyat.Fuck.
With dawning horror, he looks to the containers he packed this morning. The stack is perfectly aligned in a way that Ilya definitely did not leave it. "Moya lyubovMy love," he whispers, hovering between amused and concerned. “Did you eat my brownies?” He already knows the answer.
Another giggle; that’s a yes. “Just a couple, this morning. And one when I got home. They’re really good! Your baking has gotten way better since Christmas.” They both shudder at the memory of an ill-fated pecan pie, which was somehow both burned and undercooked. “Everyone will love them. Oh!” He flops his head onto Ilya’s shoulder. “Silly me! We can’t have pizza, we’re going to Bood’s party. I forgot.”
Ilya pulls back, already shaking his head. “I think maybe we should cancel tonight, kotikkitten, you’re pretty high right—” A scandalized noise interrupts the rest of his sentence. Okay. Dropping that for now. He switches tactics. “At least let me get you some water. Do not eat more brownies.”
“O-key,” Shane agrees in a truly terrible Russian accent, which Ilya tries valiantly not to find endearing. He fails.
In the twenty seconds it takes to fill a glass, Shane forgets he’s there, and goes back to sorting. When Ilya circles around to hand over the water, he looks up in renewed surprise and cries, “Baby!”
This again.
“I'm so glad you're home! Do you have my pizza?”
Ilya closes his eyes for a long moment, fighting a smile.
~ & ~
In the end, Shane forgets about the party. And devours a large meat lover’s pizza by himself. And plows through a pint of ice cream in the time it takes Ilya to let Anya go potty.
It doesn’t occur to him until he’s wrestling his now-floppy husband up the stairs that Shane’s car wasn’t in the driveway. When asked, he’s unbothered that he can’t recall how he got home. Unfortunate, but nevertheless a problem for tomorrow.
There’s simply no hope of getting Shane into a shower, and Ilya gets swatted for suggesting that he change into fresh clothes.
All told it’s a rough night, featuring several odd nightmares and three rounds of severe leg cramps. Understandable, given that he ate more salt in one day than he typically has in a month.
By the time Shane has come down from his high, he has a stomachache, a headache, and several spectacular bruises of unknown origin. He’d also got his hands on a Sharpie at some point and drawn a dozen wobbly hearts on his dick, which sends Ilya into such a laughing fit when he sees it that he almost passes out.
A regretful explanation that some of the guys had wanted to try edibles lands on unimpressed ears. Ilya deep-cleans the kitchen in apology, and very pointedly does not ask about the box of McDonald’s french fries stashed behind the toaster.
~ & ~
Two weeks later, the ad drops.
Ilya is in the locker room before practice, wishing desperately that Shane hadn’t sprained his ankle yesterday, when his phone starts blowing up. Twitter notifications are coming in too fast to read, and the screen locks up for a moment. He has just enough time to parse one tweet — @rozanov81 DO YOU SHARE???? — before the deluge starts again and the message flies away. It’s something of a fight to be able to turn on Do Not Disturb, but he manages it.
His first mistake is opening Twitter. The top post on his feed is a looping gif of an ass, mid-stride. A very familiar ass. The caption reads: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE PELOTON 🥵🥵🥵.
Ah, yes. The ad.
The ad Shane doesn’t remember filming, except that it was “amazeballs bananapants.” He vehemently denied having said any such thing, but Ilya has the video to prove it. That had got him banished to the couch for an hour, but it was worth it for the look on Shane’s face when he heard himself say it.
His second mistake is that he launches YouTube. Types “shane hollander peloton” in the search bar. Promptly has an out of body experience.
The video starts with the shot of Shane’s ass in tight white shorts, then cuts to sweat dripping off a chin. Sultry, slutty shoulders. Strong hands fisted in a tank top, lifting to reveal abs that he’s literally dreamed about. He watches, dazed, as Shane spins in place on a treadmill and sways back and forth, dancing while walking backwards. Spins again, snaps his waistband against his hip.
Ilya loses time.
The wink is what kills him, he thinks. Or the exaggerated panting swallow at the very end. It all sort of blurs together into one long erotic haze.
It takes a dozen play-throughs to even process the whole thing. He keeps getting hung up on a shot where multiple Shanes are peppered across the screen, all of them sweaty and delicious and pornographically precious in a way that ought to be illegal in all provinces.
He registers vaguely that he might be drooling, but can’t bring himself to care.
This is how the team finds him ten minutes later, with only half his gear on, staring dazedly at his phone. Utterly dumbstruck.
It takes several attempts before he registers any of them calling his name. The moment he does, he’s out the door, keys in hand, calculating how fast he can reasonably get home without being arrested for reckless driving.