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As soon as they get back from Shane’s parents’, Shane drops bonelessly to the couch and lets out a long sighing moan, letting go of the last dregs of tension lingering from when his dad walked in on them.
Unfortunately, a moan of relief is still a moan, and at this point it’s a simple equation: Shane moans, Ilya gets hard. One plus one equals the two of them fucking on that couch in short order.
Afterwards, Ilya props himself up on one elbow, looks down at Shane’s freckles in the afternoon sunlight pouring through all the huge windows facing the lake and thinks about how he couldn’t have fantasized a day better than this one.
“I love you,” he says. How quaint, to be boyfriends who can just say that. How delightful.
“I love you more,” Shane mumbles into his armpit.
This is hilariously bold… and fundamentally incorrect. “Ah, no,” Ilya says decisively. “This is crazy talk. More? Than me?” His legs tense up a bit, ready to flip Shane onto his stomach and pin his hands so he can be tickled mercilessly until he admits his mistake.
Shane blinks at him, momentarily confused. “Oh, no, it’s just a joke thing in English. You’re supposed to say, “no, I love you more.” And then I say it back and…” Shane blushes prettily. “It’s stupid.”
Actually it sounds adorable, but Ilya leans into Shane’s embarrassment. “Yes, very. What is more, anyways, and how would we tell? I think we love the same.” He plants a messy kiss on Shane’s cheek and is rewarded with an honest to god giggle. “But…” Ilya lets the pause hang until Shane quirks his head, curious, anticipating. “I loved you first. So.” Ilya shrugs, smirks.
“You did not,” Shane says instantly.
“I did!” Ilya insists, sitting up out of reach of any reprisal, and clarifies with full derision: “I said, I love you, and you said, holy shit.”
“Yeah, okay. You loved me first by like two seconds,” Shane scoffs, fondly.
“Hm, is longer than that,” Ilya says. His heartbeat has sped up, but he knows he can admit it now. Even if it means handing Shane the vulnerable beating heart of him, saying this. He maintains the world’s most casual tone, because he knows it will piss Shane off. “I already told you, before the cottage.”
“Wait, what? WHAT?” Shane is equal parts horrified and delighted.
Ilya preserves his studious disinterest. “In Russian. On the phone, from Moscow. Ya tebya lyublyu.”
“Holy shit.”
“Ah!” Ilya points a finger right at Shane’s over-awed, dreamy face. “You did it again.”
“You fucking asshole.” Shane tackles Ilya back onto the couch. They wrestle for the upper hand but it turns into making out before a winner can truly emerge. It’s lazy and unconstrained, easy like Ilya never imagined it would be.
Shane pulls back suddenly, leaving Ilya blinking up at him in confusion. “You must have known, though,” Shane says softly. “By the time you said it, you didn’t actually think I didn’t feel the same, did you? I mean, back in Florida I said we were something.”
“Yes,” Ilya allows. “But something is not the same as I love you.”
Shane obligingly scrunches his face in concentration, his familiar little “how can I win this one?” expression. “I did, though,” he insists. “I did love you by then. And I knew it, even if I didn’t say it.”
Ilya is working so hard to tamp down his triumphant grin that he can’t even say anything back, just nods and lets Shane have it, because it’s sweet. He isn’t sure when he thinks that Shane fell. He was so quick with a “no” when his mother suggested it had been right from the start. If it was that long ago, since All Stars, Ilya is happy.
But Shane pushes his luck. “When did you know? When you said it on the phone?”
“No, before,” Ilya says. “I knew first, too.”
“Bullshit,” Shane challenges. He’s got that competitive glint in his eye, dogged. “When, specifically? Before All Stars, really?”
“You think I make tuna melt for just anyone?”
Shane goes boneless again. “Ilya…” and then, with markedly more irritation: “Are you shitting me? You spent that whole afternoon talking about all the pussy you were getting!”
Ilya thinks back and, well, yes. He had maybe misjudged how to approach that specific conversation. “I had nerves a little, maybe,” he admits. “But I asked you to stay because I was serious. See? Much before you.” He sounds a little tetchy, which he didn’t mean to. He isn’t mad, really, and Shane already apologized for running out.
“No,” Shane says softly.
“No what?”
“I knew before then. At the Olympics,” Shane clarifies. “I was so worried for you, after your team lost like you did, and on home turf. Plus even hearing the guys talk about how bad it had gotten for anyone gay, there, and you were ignoring my texts and it was killing me. When I came up to talk with you I swear I didn’t want to fuck, I knew you wouldn’t want to do it there. But I wanted to talk. To be…more to you than just a hookup.”
“Sochi,” Ilya says dumbly. “You knew by Sochi?” He can barely wrap his head around it, it’s such a vertiginous inversion of everything he’s always know about them.
“Yeah,” Shane laughs. And then, brow wrinkling with a new thought: “No. I think maybe when you fucked me the first time, at my place. Is that cliche?”
“A little,” Ilya says, still pretty dumbfounded.
Shane just smiles, pleased with himself. “See? I was first.”
“No,” Ilya protests. There’s no way he’s losing. “No, if we are being honest now, if we are changing our story, I knew when you folded your stupid clothes the very first night. Who fucking does that? I knew then.”
“You cheater, you did not,” Shane says. He’s grinning just about as wide as Ilya has ever seen.
“I did! I looked at you, folding your lame pants while I am naked in your bed, waiting to suck you, and I knew that this guy,” He leans in and tweaks Shane’s nipple through his preppy little linen shirt, “This guy is the one. You can beat that?”
Shane rolls his eyes, smiling. “Oh, you think I went out and said hi to all my competition at Juniors?” There’s a sly edge on his smile now.
“Oh fuck off!” Ilya is flushed and grinning himself. “You did not love me first time you saw me.” But he loves it, even the idea of it, at first sight like a movie. He fucking loves that it might be even a little true.
“I don’t know,” Shane admits. “I guess even in Sochi I wasn’t like, thinking the words “I am in love with Ilya Rozanov” even in my own head. But I was interested, right away, even before Regina. Just from your tapes. You play so fucking beautifully, and it was just fun to watch you on the ice. Maybe I didn’t know, exactly. But yeah, that first time when I found you just to say hi I was… I don’t exactly know. Something.”
“Curious?” Ilya offers.
“Yeah. That.” The fondness in Shane’s face is so intense, so overwhelming that Ilya has to look away.
It doesn’t really matter when, Ilya thinks. They’re both here, now. They both slid, or fell, or walked backwards into love and neither of them named it - much less to one another - until they were already neck deep. Shane sought Ilya out in Florida to insist that they were something, but Ilya invited Shane to stay the night first. Ilya initiated in the showers after their ad, but Shane came out to say hello that first cold day in Regina. They each drew in towards the other inexorably, even through the fear that they were alone in how they felt. Until they came out to the other side, together.
Ilya pets Shane’s hair, where he’s slumped to rest against his collar bone, and then turns his face to bury his nose at Shane’s hairline and tenderly whisper, “I still said it first, though.”
Shane whaps him soundly in the ribs with one of his infinite decorative pillows, laughing.