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Shane likes things neat and orderly. Ilya Rozanov will not change that about him.
The thought of Ilya has him glancing back at the bed, holding his breath as if Ilya might have blinked out of existence from one second to the next. But he is still there—sprawled out with the covers pushed down to his ribs, one of his hands still reaching across the bed to where Shane was just laying. He looks lonely like that. Shane considers crawling back into bed and leaving the mess where it is, but he knows it’ll drive him insane. He’ll just end up getting back out of bed.
So he forces himself to turn away and pick up the clothes all around the room. They knocked over a lamp at some point last night, and Shane can feel himself flushing as he picks that up from the ground and places it back on the side table. He folds his clothes first, though he has to search for the shirt, and then turns to Ilya’s.
He has the man right in front of him. If everything they said is to be believed, he has him forever. It doesn’t stop him from sniffing his shirt like a pining teenager. It doesn’t stop him from thinking the shirt is weirdly soft.
Shane wonders when that giddy feeling will stop, when he will stop smiling and he will be able to get on with his life and be seen in public like a normal person without looking like a guy wearing a sign that says “I am hopelessly in love with Ilya Rozanov”. He’s grateful they have plenty of time left at the cottage to get the honeymoon feelings out of their systems, but Shane can’t help but to wonder if they are going to linger. He wonders if he is going to go to training and practice and games for the rest of his life grinning like an absolute idiot.
He doesn’t think he would hate it. He thinks it would suit him.
Shane gives up on being a little bit of a freak and finally folds the shirt. He does it against the side of the bed so he can watch the steady way Ilya breathes. He loves him. And now Ilya knows it.
Shane buries his head in the folded shirt. Hides the way he smiles.
Unbelievable.
So many years and so many doubts and so many missed connections, but they have ended up here.
Shane doesn’t think he would change any of it.
Well, maybe knowing what he knows now, he might have said something a little earlier. But he thinks, without everything that happened, they wouldn’t have had the confidence that they needed in order to say what they needed to say. Shane knew the truth was killing the both of them, but so was the stranglehold of their own lives.
He shakes his head. It doesn’t matter, not anymore. They know what they want. They know who they want, and it’s each other.
Shane picks up the stack of Ilya’s newly folded clothes and brings it over to his hell of a suitcase, with articles of clothing peaking out and draped over the edges. Shane loves a slob, and he doesn’t know if he will ever know how to live with it. (Just kidding—he thinks he could pick up after Ilya for the rest of their lives.)
He glances back at Ilya, still sleeping ugly with his mouth open. Shane smiles to himself and turns back to the suitcase.
No problem—he’ll just repack it.
Shane has a method. A system. He has done it all of his life, packing bags constantly to travel between city to city for his junior hockey club, and then continuing once he joined the pro league. Shane has a way that he likes his bag packed and how he folds clothes. He doesn’t think Ilya will mind.
Shane unpacks everything, one at a time. He folds them as he goes to the soundtrack of Ilya’s soft snores. He separates the pants and the shirts and the underwear in separate piles, sitting cross-legged on the floor in nothing but his own boxers. He is smiling to himself like a lunatic as he does it, relishing in something so domestic and normal. Relishing that he can get away with something so calm and sweet.
He grabs a pair of socks, tucked in the corner. It’s weirdly heavy.
He can tell there is some kind of square box inside, shoved into the bottom of the tube sock. Shane has a feeling like he’s not supposed to but he can’t help but to reach inside. He pulls it out and glances at Ilya, who is still dead to the world. He stares down at what is in his hand as he comes to his senses.
It is a ring box.
He stares at it, uncomprehending, for a long moment. Slowly, he stands and pads softly across the room.
And then he whips the blanket off of Ilya, making him flinch and moan as he comes back to life.
Shane waits less than a moment. “Did you buy me a ring?”
“What?” Ilya asks in a rumbling grumble that is barely English, squinting at him in confusion and some irritation. And then he takes in whatever look is on Shane’s face, and then the ring box in his hand, and he jolts up at the waist. “How did you find that?”
“Reorganizing your clothes.”
“You’re such a freak,” Ilya tells him, but Shane can tell by the grin on his face that he loves it.
Shane, though, feels a little like he is on the edge of a mental breakdown. “Ilya. The ring.”
“Yes,” he says, and grows grim. “I, uh—was… fuck, what’s the word?”
“Optimistic?”
“Insane,” Ilya decides. “Though that could do.”
Shane stares down at the ring box. His heart is beating out of his chest. “This is for me?”
Ilya looks around as if, were Shane to do the same, he would notice that there is no one else in the room. He is such an asshole. Shane is going to love him for the rest of his life.
Shane is standing in the middle of his bedroom holding a ringbox in front of Ilya Rozanov. If the rookie season version of him had told him this would happen, he would have committed himself to a psych ward, or at least thought he had a concussion. But he’s fully cognizant, standing in front of the man who might be everything he has ever wanted, and Ilya has bought him a ring.
They hadn’t even confessed yet, when he had. He’d bought this not even knowing if Shane loved him back, all because he wanted to believe in it. Shane feels like he might cry. He also kind of feels like he is going to throw up.
He does neither. “What should I do with it?”
“What do you want?” Ilya asks cautiously. He’s still sprawled on the bed, his hair a mess and his boxers rucked up on his muscular thighs. He’s starting to grin, eyes twinkling, like he has an idea of what is going to happen next. Like he knows he doesn’t even have to ask.
Shane takes a deep breath and opens the box.
It is a simple gold band. There is nothing on it. Shane practically expected something with diamonds or engravings and something in his chest relaxes. This man knows him best after all.
Shane looks up. Ilya is sitting up a little more, and there’s something new in his eyes. Something like hope.
“You like?” he asks, smiling. “Is boring, like you.”
Shane chokes on a laugh. Feels, embarrassingly, like he might start crying.
“You can’t be serious,” he finally says, when he can find it in him to say anything at all. “We literally just talked about our feelings last night.”
“Had the ring already,” Ilya says and tilts his head slightly with a fond, sweet smile. “I knew. But you don’t have to.”
Of course Shane knows. Of course there is a part inside of him that is screaming to just jump on Ilya from where he is standing and tell him yes, that he will marry him, that he will wear his ring and ignore whatever the whole world has to say about it.
But, however, there is still the whole world to worry about.
Ilya must see the hesitation on his face because he purrs, “Hollander.”
Shane says, “Maybe later? Okay, I don’t know how to explain this—it’s not a no. It's the opposite of a no. But I also don’t think it’s a yes.”
“Hm,” Ilya says, finally pushing himself out of bed. “A later yes?”
“Yes,” Shane says. “Soon.”
“Okay,” Ilya says, and his eyes crease with a smile. “Give the ring back then.”
Shane tightens his hand on it and tugs it back toward him when Ilya reaches for it. “No. It’s mine.”
“Thought you didn’t want it.”
“I want it!”
“But not right now, so is mine.”
“No,” Shane counters, but he knows Ilya is goading him. He hates how well it works. He loves how easily they fall into simple, silly banter. “Fine—save it for me, I guess. Somewhere I know where it is. And one day you can ask me for real, and you’ll already know it’s a yes.”
“I love you,” Ilya says. The awe in his eyes shows how much he means it.
Shane steps into his arms and finally relinquishes the ring into one of Ilya’s hands, pressing his lips onto Ilya’s collarbone. “I can’t believe you bought me a ring.”
“Years ago,” Ilya says, embarrassed. “Too many years.”
Shane stares. “And you brought it to my cottage.”
“Was a good idea at the time.”
Shane tries to keep a straight face but snorts, burying his head in Ilya’s chest. He squeezes his arms around his waist. Ilya squeezes him back and kisses the top of his head before resting his chin there, letting Shane feel small and loved and like Ilya can hold him and all of his problems in the palm of his hand.
“Ask me again someday,” Shane murmurs into his heartbeat. “When the timing is a little bit better.”
“I will ask you every day,” Ilya promises, “for the rest of our lives.”
Shane believes him.