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Ilya Rozanov was in a good mood, which was a rare state of affairs. This was significant, because it meant that the emotional shift he was about to experience could not be blamed on low blood sugar, terminal boredom, or the simmering rage left over from parallel parking his car in front of a building full of people who probably debated verb tenses for fun.
The language institute was the kind of place that made you want to whisper. Shane adored orderly spots like this. Ilya put up with them for one reason only: Shane got this little spark in his eyes when he learned something new.
He checked his phone. Two minutes early. Excellent. He was nailing this husband thing.
And then he heard Shane’s laugh.
It was not the polite sound he used with cashiers, or the restrained chuckle for colleagues. This was the unfiltered thing - warm and loose and joyful, the kind Shane usually reserved for their couch after a long day, when all the tension finally left his shoulders. Ilya earned that laugh.
His feet stopped moving on their own.
The sound trickled out from a classroom on his right, the door left ajar. Peering inside, he saw Shane at a desk, his brow knit in concentration.
“Я… э-э… я думаю, что это… правильно?” Shane said, each word tentative.
Leaning over him was a man. He had dark hair and was annoyingly, academically handsome, the sort who looked like he’d never struggled with a grammatical case in his life. The man smiled.
“You are very close,” he said softly. “The structure is good, but the case ending should change here.”
Shane processed the correction.
Ilya slowly turned his head toward the doorway, his heart deciding now was the perfect time to start practicing its drum solo against his ribs.
“Why,” he muttered quietly, “is he laughing in my language.”
That was his husband. His Shane. His wonderfully serious, beautifully focused Shane, with the scattered freckles and the careful mouth and the adorable way he leaned into a problem. And he was gifting that hard-won laugh to a stranger holding a whiteboard marker.
Ilya squared his shoulders and leaned against the doorframe.
The instructor noticed him first. “Oh - Privyet?” Hello.
Ilya ignored him entirely, his eyes locked on Shane.
“He said it correctly,” Ilya announced.
Shane jumped, twisting in his chair. “Ilya? You’re early.”
“Not much,” Ilya replied, not breaking his stare-down with the back of the instructor’s head.
The instructor hesitated. “Actually, the case ending - ”
“No,” Ilya said.
The instructor blinked. “No?”
“No,” Ilya repeated. The matter was clearly settled.
Shane’s frown deepened. “Wait, I thought he just told me - ”
“You were right,” Ilya cut in smoothly. “Perfect.”
The instructor’s pleasant smile grew strained. “That’s… not quite how Russian grammar functions.”
“It is,” Ilya countered, “if you say with confidence.”
Shane’s eyes darted between them, bewilderment washing over his face. “Ilya, have you taught the grammatical cases?”
“I know when you sound good,” Ilya stated, as if this were the highest form of linguistic analysis. “And you sounded very good.”
A flush crept up Shane’s neck, a lovely pink.
The instructor cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should just continue with the lesson - ”
Ilya took one step into the room. It was enough to place his hand on the back of Shane’s chair, close enough to peer down at the notebook covered in Shane’s neat script.
“Continue,” Ilya echoed.
Shane tilted his head back to look up at him. “You’re hovering.”
The instructor shifted his weight, the look on his face suggesting he was mentally updating his resume.
Ilya took that as a green light.
“I can supervise,” he said, his voice dripping with fake reasonableness. “Just to ensure everything is… correct.”
Shane stared at him.
It was a look Ilya knew intimately. A tight-lipped stare that promised future consequences. It was the look that preceded a weekend spent reorganizing the entire kitchen pantry by grain type, or a pointed silence during their favorite show.
Ilya met his husband’s look of impending chore-based justice without a flinch. A little domestic penance later was a small price to pay. In fact, Ilya had come to appreciate Shane's sternness - the quiet disappointment that usually ended with Ilya watching from the doorway as Shane reorganized a closet. It was a whole thing. And honestly, it had its charms.
The instructor - who had now introduced himself as Maksim with a professional nod - looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. He hesitated, visibly gathering his willpower, before turning back to the whiteboard.
“Alright,” Maksim said. “Let’s continue. Shane, try the sentence again.”
Shane glanced sideways at Ilya, a silent warning in his eyes, before looking back at his notes. “Хорошо. Я думаю, что - ”
“No,” Ilya cut in like a human grammar alarm.
Two heads swiveled toward him.
“No?” Shane repeated, his voice laced with exasperation.
“No,” Ilya confirmed, taking another step into Shane’s personal space. “Say it like this.”
He then proceeded to deliver a version of the sentence that was structurally adventurous, grammatically dubious, and spoken with the unshakeable confidence of a man who had never been wrong a day in his life.
Shane’s frown was deep enough to plant seeds in. “That… doesn’t sound right.”
Maksim’s eyebrows attempted to flee into his hairline. “That is… not a sentence.”
Shane hesitated, his pen hovering over the paper. Then, because he was fundamentally kind and had a worrying tolerance for Ilya’s nonsense, he slowly wrote the phrase down anyway.
“Just… for reference,” Shane murmured, more to himself than anyone.
Maksim stared at the notebook as if Shane had just sketched a crude cartoon over a sacred text.
Ilya bit the inside of his cheek. It was the only way to stop the grin.
Sir Maks-A-Lot looked like a man watching his life’s work get run over by a handsome and possessive bulldozer.
“Perhaps,” Maksim said, speaking very slowly, “we should focus on the textbook example.”
“Textbooks are strict,” Ilya dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Lack soul. Don’t capture… feeling.”
A snort escaped Shane before he could clamp it down.
Ilya’s chest did a warm flip. There it was. That beautiful crack in the facade. Shane, trying so hard to be studious and proper while Ilya actively sabotaged the lesson. God, he was gorgeous when he was concentrating. The freckles stood out stark under the harsh lights, his brow was furrowed in that adorable way, and he was trying, always trying to get everything exactly right.
Mine, Ilya thought. All mine.
Shane glanced up, catching the look. His eyes narrowed. “You are doing this on purpose.”
“I provide support,” Ilya corrected. “Is emotional.”
Maksim cleared his throat again. “Let’s… move on.”
Ilya, naturally, did not move on. Moving on was for quitters.
Instead, he invaded. He stepped so close that Shane could feel the heat of him along his back. Ilya leaned over Shane’s shoulder once more, his forearm coming to rest casually on the desk, his head tilted so that his next words were a warm breath against the side of Shane’s neck.
Completely unnecessary? Without a doubt. Strategically calculated? One hundred percent.
Shane tried valiantly to ignore it. He focused on the worksheet, on the neat rows of Cyrillic, on the monumental task of not letting Ilya’s proximity disturb his nervous system, which was his husband’s special and frequent talent.
“Okay,” Shane said, clearing his own throat. “The next sentence is - ”
Ilya dipped even lower. “Careful with verb. Is tricky.”
Shane flinched.
Maksim took another full step back. He was nearly in the hallway.
One of Ilya’s hands settled possessively on the back of Shane’s chair, his fingers draped there with relaxed ownership, as if claiming the entire territory.
Shane lowered his voice to a hissed whisper. “Ilya. You are breathing on my neck.”
“Am helping with pronunciation,” Ilya murmured back - and he did it in flawless Russian, just to show off.
Shane’s shoulders tensed, then a helpless laugh shook out of him. He repeated the phrase.
Maksim watched this exchange with the wide-eyed caution of a documentary filmmaker observing lions.
“Your pronunciation,” Maksim said slowly, genuine admiration breaking through his bewilderment. “It is very good. You sound… almost native.”
Ilya’s head snapped around so fast it was a wonder he didn’t get whiplash. “Almost?”
Maksim blinked, deer-in-headlights style.
“He sound exactly native,” Ilya stated, drawing himself up to his full height. “Better than native.”
Shane looked up at him. “That makes no sense.”
“Make perfect sense,” Ilya said, as if explaining that the sky was green. “Love improve pronunciation. Is known fact.”
Maksim’s mouth opened, “Oh.”
Shane stared at his notebook with the intense focus of a man trying to set paper on fire with his mind. His face was warm, his ears a spectacular red.
Maksim took a subtle step back and bumped lightly into the whiteboard.
Shane noticed immediately. He was a noticer of people - the flicker of an expression, the way tension gathered in a jaw. It was a captain's reflex at this point.
He shot a sideways glance at Ilya, who was still looming behind him. Then, Shane turned back to Maksim and asked, in smooth French, “Est-ce que je dois conjuguer ça au passé ou garder le présent?”
Maksim’s entire face lit up with relief. He answered immediately, the words flowing back in French. “Le présent suffit ici. C’est plus naturel.”
Ilya stared at the two of them.
“…Why,” he said slowly, “are you two whispering.”
Shane blinked. “We’re not whispering.”
“You changed languages,” Ilya pointed out, as if accusing them of a secret handshake.
“Yes,” Shane said. “Because you were being distracting.”
Ilya’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “So now you exclude me. From own husband’s language lesson.”
Before either of them could muster a defense, Ilya yanked the empty chair beside Shane out from the desk and sat down, knee pressed to knee.
He was so close he could feel the shift of Shane’s leg when he moved. Close enough that Ilya’s entire world tunneled down to the profile of Shane’s face - the shape of his mouth as he formed foreign sounds, the rolling cadence of French flowing out of him like it had always been there.
Ilya didn’t understand most of it.
It didn’t matter. Understanding was overrated.
French Shane was… a revelation. He was fluid. He carried an unshakeable confidence that made Ilya’s own brain temporarily forget how to form words in any language. He found himself staring, completely mesmerized, tracking the way Shane’s lips moved like they were performing some kind of elegant magic trick.
Interesting, Ilya thought, a distant, captivated part of his mind clicking into place.
He leaned his chin into his palm. Maybe Shane could read him the French instructions for assembling furniture. Or the side of a shampoo bottle. Ilya would listen. He would be the most attentive audience. He would take notes.
Maksim glanced between them. He took in the press of their knees, the intensity of Ilya’s staring, the way the man had completely abandoned any pretense of supervision and had moved on to blatant, worshipful observation.
Slowly, Maksim closed the textbook. Then he closed Shane’s notebook.
“Perhaps,” Maksim said, his voice strung tight, “we stop here for today.”
Shane looked up, surprised. “Already? We still have time.”
Maksim’s eyes shifted from Shane to land directly on Ilya. “Yes.”
A brilliant smile spread across Ilya’s face. He looked like he’d just scored a game-winning goal in overtime.
“Good lesson,” he said, his tone excessively pleasant.
Maksim nodded once. He gathered his papers and his pen with the solemn air of a man who had narrowly escaped a bear attack and would be processing the trauma in therapy for years. He was out of the door in seconds.
Shane didn’t turn to Ilya right away. He methodically stacked his notebook, capped his pen with deliberate care, aligning it perfectly with the table’s edge. It was his tell - the way he bought time, choosing his words with the precision Ilya usually reserved for on-ice maneuvers.
“You were jealous,” Shane said finally, not looking up.
Ilya scoffed lightly. “Being protective. Is different.”
Shane turned his head then, his eyes unimpressed but undeniably fond. “You corrected my Russian wrong. On purpose.”
Ilya shrugged one shoulder. “You still wrote it.”
A softness crept into the corner of Shane’s mouth, “…I trusted you,” he said, simple and true.
That did it.
Ilya’s fortress of bravado cracked. His shoulders loosened, his expression shifting from cocky to something more open.
“I like when you learn things,” he admitted. “Like being reason you smile after you get it right.”
He held Shane’s gaze for a moment.
“Just… not with him.”
Shane laughed, and shook his head. “You are unbelievable.”
“Yet,” Ilya said, leaning in, erasing the last of the space between them, “you married me.”
Shane didn’t argue. He just reached up, his fingers curling into the front of Ilya’s jacket, and pulled him down into a kiss. It was fond and smiling - the kind of kiss that felt like Shane had been waiting the entire agonizing lesson to give it.
Ilya kissed him back without a moment’s hesitation, one hand settling warmly at Shane’s waist, pride and a fierce, buzzing affection swelling in his chest.
When they pulled apart, Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s, their breaths mingling. “Date night?” he murmured.
Ilya’s grin returned. “I already scared off your tutor. I think I’ve earned dinner.”
As they headed for the door, Ilya cast one supremely satisfied glance over his shoulder at the empty classroom.
Supervision complete. Mission accomplished.
~
Ilya lay on his back, one arm curved around the solid weight of Shane, who was already fast asleep and curled into his side.
It was barely past ten-thirty.
Shane Hollander, professional hockey star, and man who treated his bedtime like a military operation, was out cold. The man could fall asleep faster than a light switch could be flipped, a skill Ilya found both impressive and irritating when he himself was still wide awake.
Ilya stared down at him in the dim light, his eyes tracing the familiar constellations across Shane’s face. Freckles, scattered like afterthoughts over the bridge of his nose and the apples of his cheeks, some darker, some barely there. He counted them every night. It was a habit.
Twenty-three… twenty-four…
He paused.
A slight frown touched his lips.
There seemed to be… fewer.
That was impossible. Freckles didn’t just vanish. They were loyal. He adjusted his head on the pillow, squinting. The light from the streetlamp outside was playing tricks. Had Shane been drinking more water? Getting less sun? Was there a secret freckle maintenance routine he wasn’t sharing?
No. Focus.
Twenty-five…
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Ilya glanced at the glowing screen without moving his arm from around Shane.
Troy Barrett.
He considered ignoring it. He considered the concept of confiscating Troy’s kneecaps tomorrow morning for having the audacity to interrupt Freckle Count Night Session. This was sacred time.
He picked up the phone anyway, moving with glacial care so as not to disturb Shane.
Before even unlocking the screen, he made a mental note: Troy better be ready for extra drills tomorrow. Lots of them.
Ilya stared at the screen. A wicked smile spread across his face.
Ilya glanced down at Shane’s peacefully sleeping face.
Extra drills for Troy for a week, Ilya decided, his smile turning grim. Maybe two.
He typed back.
The typing bubble appeared again, a clear sign of Troy’s internal struggle.
Ilya set the phone back on the nightstand, screen-down.
He looked back at Shane, carefully tucking the blanket up around his shoulders. Shane shifted slightly in his sleep, his nose pressing into Ilya’s side, one hand curling into the fabric of his shirt like it was its rightful place.
It was.
Ilya resumed his count, his finger tracing an invisible path just above Shane’s skin in the dark.
Twenty-six… twenty-seven…
Yeah.
They were all still there.