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The sun rises slowly in the east, bathing the sky in amber and honey. Sunlight slips through the rolling hills and tall pines that cradle the cottage, wrapping everything in a warmth so tender it feels like an embrace.
The very moment the faintest thread of sunlight brushes the glass of Shane’s bedroom window, Ilya stirs.
He has always been a light sleeper, his body trained by years of early practices and restless thoughts. He has slept deeper here, in this cottage tucked away from everything loud and demanding, but last night would not let him rest. Not fully. Not with what they had said.
He had fallen asleep eventually, his head tucked against the warm, steady rise and fall of Shane’s chest, the salt tracks of his tears drying tight against his cheek. Shane’s skin had been warm beneath him. He had felt solid, real. Ilya had clung to that warmth like an anchor. But sleep, when it came, had been restless.
He woke again and again in the dark.
Each time, he would lift his head just enough to look at Shane, at the soft part of his mouth, slightly open, at the quiet rhythm of his breathing, at the way his lashes rested against his cheek. Once, a faint snore slipped from him, and Ilya’s heart had clenched painfully in his chest.
It felt ridiculous. Tender in a way that almost embarrassed him. Like being a child again, waking from a nightmare and padding down the hallway just to make sure his Mama was still there, still breathing, still real. He needed proof. Over and over.
He needed to see Shane. Needed to confirm that he had not imagined the way Shane’s voice had broken when he said it back. That the confessions whispered into his bare skin had not dissolved with the dark. That the words I love you too had not been a dream stitched together from his own wild desperation.
He had to check that Shane was still here. That he hadn’t disappeared with the night.
Now, as the morning stretches wider and the light grows bolder, Ilya blinks his eyes open again. They feel heavy, swollen from too little sleep and too many tears. For a moment he simply lies there, listening. To the quiet hum of the cottage. To the birds beginning their tentative songs. To the steady heartbeat beneath his ear.
He lifts his head slightly and looks at Shane.
Still here.
The sunrise spills fully across the glass now, gilding the room in soft gold. It touches Shane’s face, his shoulder, the slope of his collarbone. It touches Ilya too. And in that light, the fear loosens its grip just a little.
Maybe this isn’t a dream. Maybe he did say it last night, heart in his hands for what may as well be the first time ever. Maybe he did tell Shane he loved him. And maybe Shane really did pull him closer and say it back, stronger, fiercer, as if he had been waiting to say it for years.
The thought settles into Ilya’s chest slowly, like sunlight warming frozen ground. He doesn’t have to argue with himself this time. He doesn’t have to rehearse reasons why it can’t be real, why it won’t last, why he should brace for impact.
The morning is here. Shane is here. And for the first time, as the day begins to bloom around them, Ilya allows himself to believe that what happened in the dark between them did not disappear with it.
Ilya lifts his head slowly from Shane’s chest, careful not to disturb him. Shane makes a small sound in his sleep, something soft and unguarded, and Ilya freezes for half a second, breath caught in his throat. But Shane settles again, his breathing evening out, and Ilya lets himself move.
Now that he knows it’s real, now that the panic has quieted and the words from last night have survived the light of morning, there is one last thing he needs to do. And he needs to do it alone.
He eases himself out of the bed, the cool air brushing over his bare skin, and glances once more at Shane before turning away. His eyes drop to the floor, searching for the sweatpants he’s certain he flung somewhere the night before. He expects to find them in a heap.
Instead, they’re folded neatly over the chair beside Shane’s dresser. Of course they are.
Shane must have picked them up. The sight makes Ilya’s chest tighten. He presses his lips into a thin line, something caught between fondness and fear, and grabs them. He slides the fabric up his legs before moving to his luggage at the corner of the room, the zipper already half-open from yesterday. He crouches down, heart thudding a little harder now, and pushes aside clean shirts and a toiletry bag, digging into the pocket of one of the sweatpants he had stuffed inside.
He finds it where he left it. A single pack of cigarettes. Slightly crushed at one corner. Hidden away from Shane’s prying eyes.
He stares at it for a moment before pulling it free.
He had brought only one pack for this entire trip. Just one. A contingency plan.
The pessimistic, self-protective part of his brain had insisted on it before he boarded the plane. If it all goes wrong, it had whispered. If you realize you and Shane don’t work. If the fantasy cracks the second you’re in the same room again. At least you’ll have something familiar. Something that burns the way you’re used to burning.
But he hadn’t touched them since he arrived.
Not when he first stepped into this cottage and felt like he was trespassing in someone else’s peace. Not when he and Shane circled each other that first night, the electricity coursing through his veins. Not even yesterday, when everything inside him had felt like it might split open.
Not until now.
He slips the pack into his pocket, tucks the lighter in beside it, and stands. One last look at Shane, who is still asleep, hair a mess against the pillow, sunlight just beginning to catch at his shoulders.
Ilya opens the bedroom door slowly, easing it shut with a quiet click.
His bare feet pad across the hardwood floor, cool and smooth beneath his soles. At the front door, he spots his slides and picks them up instead of slipping them on. He won’t scuff Shane’s floors. Won’t track anything in. The thought is almost absurdly tender.
He makes his way to the sliding glass door and eases it open, wincing slightly at the faint whisper of the track. Then he steps outside.
Calling it a backyard feels almost insulting.
It’s an expanse of green and light and water—a private world. The lake stretches wide and still, catching the morning sun in fractured shards of gold. Tall pines stand tall, casting long shadows over the dewy grass. The air smells clean. Damp earth and pine sap and something sweet he can’t name.
He remembers the first day he stood here, suitcase still half-unpacked inside.
He had been torn in two. One part of him had wanted to run barefoot into the grass, collapse onto his back, and stare up at the endless blue sky. To breathe. To let the quiet swallow him whole and never leave. But the stronger part, albeit the hungrier part, had only wanted Shane. Months apart had left him restless and aching. The second he saw him in person again, the world beyond that body had blurred.
Now the quiet calls to him instead.
Ilya scans the yard and finds what he’s looking for near the docks: a wide slab of grey rock overlooking the lake. Just far enough from the house so he won’t be so easily interrupted.
He walks toward it slowly, slides dangling from his fingers. When he reaches the rock, he sets them down and climbs up, settling onto the cool surface. He rests one elbow on his knee, shoulders curling forward slightly.
For a moment, he just sits there.
The lake laps gently against the dock. A bird calls somewhere in the trees. Then he reaches into his pocket.
He taps the bottom of the pack against his palm and slides a cigarette out with his teeth, the cardboard scraping softly. The rest of the pack disappears back into his pocket. He flicks the lighter once—nothing. Twice—the flame catches.
The small burst of fire flares in the morning air. He cups his hand around it instinctively and leans in, inhaling as the tip glows bright orange. The first drag fills his lungs, and it feels like greeting an old friend. The smoke scratches at his throat, curls warm inside his chest.
He exhales slowly, watching the pale ribbon of it drift and unravel into the clean morning air.
He doesn’t know how to begin. Or where. The words feel lodged somewhere between his throat and his chest. He hasn’t done this in years, hasn’t allowed himself to. He stopped believing in these sorts of things a long time ago. Right around the time his Mama died.
Before that, he had been the dutiful, if perpetually bored, son who was dragged to church every Sunday with his father, his Mama, and his brother trailing beside them. He remembers the scent of incense clinging to the air, the way the wooden pews creaked beneath shifting bodies, the priest’s voice echoing too loudly at the altar.
He hadn’t understood the spectacle of it. The ritual. The repetition. As a boy, it all felt long and endless. But his Mama had loved it.
She loved the stillness of it. The order. The way the world quieted inside those walls. He can still see her: her white veil slipping slightly as she bowed her head at the altar, the thin gold chain at her throat catching the harsh overhead light and turning it soft. Her lips would move silently in prayer, her face calm in a way it never quite was anywhere else.
He hadn’t loved church. But he had loved her. And so, for her, he had loved it too.
His favorite part had always come after the breaking of the bread, when the priest would pause and grant the congregation a few sacred moments to pray privately. His father instructed them to recite proper verses, ones he had forced them to memorize.
But his Mama would lean down toward Ilya, her voice warm and conspiratorial, and tell him something different.
“This is when you send a little message,” she’d whisper. “To the ones who aren’t here anymore.”
As a child, Ilya would squeeze his eyes shut tight and send a quick kiss or a благодарю—thank you—to his babushka. It had felt simple then.
The last time he ever stepped foot inside a church was the day of his Mama’s funeral.
Everything about that day felt suffocating. The incense had felt thicker, harder to breathe through. The priest’s voice had blurred into meaningless sound. He remembers standing there, staring at the polished wood of the casket, rage and grief twisting together so tightly he could barely separate them.
When the moment for prayer came, he had bowed his head one final time.
He didn’t send a kiss or forgiveness. He told her that she could rest now. That he forgave her. Because in the quiet, ugly corners of his grief, he understood why she had done it. Understood the exhaustion she must have carried. The pain she must have hidden behind her serene face.
Understanding didn’t make it hurt less, but it made that ache in his chest quieter.
And then he stopped praying altogether. It has been almost fifteen years since he bowed his head for anything resembling prayer. Fifteen years since he believed anyone might be listening.
So sitting here now, on a slab of rock overlooking a lake that looks almost too beautiful to be real, feels strange. Foreign. The cigarette burns steadily between his fingers, smoke drifting upward.
He thinks about bowing his head. About making the sign of the cross the way his Mama used to—forehead, chest, shoulder to shoulder. He even lifts his hand slightly before letting it fall again.
It doesn’t feel right. But neither does silence.
And he knows—he has to believe—that she wouldn’t care about the form of it. That she would not measure the posture or the ritual. If she is anywhere at all, if there is any part of her that lingers beyond memory, she would recognize his voice. She would feel it in the air.
He takes another drag of his cigarette, the smoke catching at the back of his throat. He looks toward the horizon, where the orange sky still clings stubbornly to the edges of morning. The sun is climbing now, halfway to claiming the day.
He doesn’t have much time. Soon Shane will wake to an empty space beside him. Soon he’ll wander through the cottage, hair messy, voice rough with sleep, looking.
These moments he has with his Mama are stolen.
Ilya exhales slowly, watching the smoke dissolve into the clean, pine-scented air. His heart pounds harder now. He waits another moment before clearing his throat.
The first word sticks. He swallows, tries again.
And then, softly, he begins to speak in his mother tongue.
“Mama,” he rasps, the word breaking on the way out.
It scrapes his throat raw, not only because he hasn’t spoken since last night, but because he hasn’t said Mama out loud in years. Not like this. The word feels small and enormous all at once, like something sacred he’s been afraid to touch.
“I miss you,” he continues, his voice unsteady. “I miss you very much.”
The lake is quiet. The trees don’t answer. Still, he presses on.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t wish you were here with me. Watching me win. Watching me become… this.” He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “The man I am today.”
His fingers tighten around the cigarette.
“Every time I win something—every medal, every game—everyone cheers and I smile. I feel proud. I feel happy.” His jaw trembles slightly. “But there’s always this other thing too. This little twinge.” He presses a fist lightly to his chest. “Because you’re not there. You’re not in the stands. You’re not waiting after. And I keep thinking that if you were… it would mean more.”
He inhales deeply, the smoke filling his lungs, burning in a way that feels deserved.
“I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you,” he murmurs. “It’s been a while.”
That’s an understatement.
“I’ve been…” He exhales slowly, gaze fixed on the brightening horizon. “Well. If you’re listening, then you already know.”
A humourless smile tugs at his mouth.
“It’s been so fucking hard without you.” His voice cracks, and he swallows against it. “Papa was—” He hesitates, searching for a kinder word than the truth. He doesn’t find one. “He was worse after you died. Like whatever softness he had left… it went with you. And your other son…” He shakes his head slightly. “He stopped opening his heart. Just shut it completely.”
The wind shifts faintly off the lake, brushing cool against his face.
“I felt so alone, Mama. For a long time. So alone I thought I might disappear from it. Like loneliness could actually kill you.” His throat tightens. “It made me think about you. About how alone you must have felt. In ways I didn’t see. In ways I didn’t understand.”
His voice drops to almost nothing.
“It made me think about other things too. Scary things.”
He cuts himself off there, choking the words back before they can form fully. He drags hard from the cigarette instead, grounding himself in the sting of it, in the present. The smoke leaves his lips slower this time.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” he says finally, steadier now. “I’m not here to reopen old wounds.”
He shifts on the rock, staring out over the lake as sunlight scatters across its surface.
“I wanted to tell you something.”
A pause. A breath.
“I met someone.”
The words feel fragile.
“Someone quite amazing, actually.” A faint smile breaks through despite himself. “He’s… you’d love him. I know you would. He has your dry sense of humour. You know, the one where you pretend you’re being serious but your eyes give you away?” His voice softens. “And he’s competitive. God, Mama, you two would have so much fun playing cards.”
A shaky laugh escapes him.
“He loves me,” he says, and the words come out reverent. Disbelieving, still. “He loves me. And it took us a while to get here. We were stubborn. We were scared. I was scared.” He swallows. “But I’m happy.”
The admission trembles in the air between him and the water.
“I’m really fucking happy.”
His eyes burn, but the tears don’t fall. They rarely do anymore. Even now, after everything, crying feels like something he forgot how to do properly. He blinks hard instead, forcing his voice to remain steady.
“So you can rest now,” he whispers. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore. You don’t have to look after me from wherever you are.”
His chest rises and falls unevenly.
“I’m okay now,” he says, as if testing it. “Or… I know I will be.”
The cigarette has burned low between his fingers. He barely notices.
He clears his throat one last time, emotion thick and heavy there.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, softer than before.
His gaze drops to the glowing tip, then back to the horizon.
“I don’t know if it was your doing. Maybe it’s stupid to think that way. But thank you. For bringing me Shane.” His lips press together briefly. “I was too stubborn to admit it at first. Too proud. But I needed him, Mama. I really needed him.”
His voice breaks on the last word.
“And if you had anything to do with that… if you nudged him even a little in my direction…” He lets out a shaky breath. “Then thank you.”
The sun has risen a bit more now, warm against his skin.
“Thank you for bringing me the love of my life.”
Ilya stays there long after the words have left him. Long enough for the lake to smooth itself back into stillness, for the cigarette between his fingers to burn down to nothing, long enough for the sky to shift from bruised orange to something softer.
He doesn’t move at first. He barely lets himself breathe. Eventually, the heat reaches his fingertips. He glances down, noticing the cigarette has burned itself out. He presses the small stub against the flat surface of the rock beside him, grinding it out carefully. Then, without fully thinking about it, he pulls the pack from his pocket again.
He lights another. The flame flares briefly in the growing daylight. He inhales, tasting the faint grit of ash between his teeth, and it calms him down at once.
What he’s just done has hollowed him out. It took more than he expected. There was so much he didn’t say. So many memories that crowded at the edges of his mind but refused to form into words. He wouldn’t have known how to untangle it even if he tried.
But if his Mama is listening, if there is any piece of her that still drifts somewhere beyond what he can see, then she already knows the rest. He chooses to believe she does.
The practical part of his brain, the disciplined part that has carried him through training and championships and heartbreak, whispers something else entirely. It tells him he has just been speaking aloud to himself. That his mother has been gone for years. That she’s not listening any more than the trees are listening right now.
But that same part of his brain once insisted he didn’t love Shane. It argued. It rationalized. It told him what was safer. And it was wrong. So maybe it doesn’t get to decide this either.
Besides, his Mama is listening in some way. She has to be. He carries her in the shape of his hands, in the cadence of his voice, in the stubborn tilt of his chin. He is a small, living fragment of her moving through the world.
He needed to say the words. Needed to let them exist outside the confines of his chest. Needed to give shape to the gratitude and the grief and the love that have lived inside him for years without air.
He draws from the cigarette again and closes his eyes.
The sun is warmer now, brushing gold across his face and shoulders. It sinks into his skin, into his bones. For the first time in a long time, the ache in his chest feels lighter. Not gone, but softened. Like something has been set down.
The crunch of grass and snapping twigs behind him pulls him from the warmth of that thought.
He doesn’t turn fully at first. Just tilts his head slightly, enough to catch movement from the corner of his eye.
It’s Shane, walking toward him across the yard.
The sight of him, his hair tousled from sleep, eyes still heavy and soft, makes something in Ilya’s body loosen instantly. His shoulders drop without permission. His jaw unclenches. It’s instinctive, the way his body recognizes safety before his mind does.
The morning light wraps around Shane. The amber sky catches in his hair, along the slope of his cheekbones, turning him almost luminous.
Ilya’s chest aches again. Shane is wearing that blue linen shirt, the one Ilya loves, the one that hangs just loose enough to hint at the lines of his body. Ilya notices that a blanket is slung lazily over his shoulder.
Ilya turns his face back toward the sun, giving Shane the space to close the distance. He hears each footstep in the grass, feels each one in his chest.
There’s a small stretch of silence when Shane reaches the rock. Then Shane stops just in front of him.
“Care for some company?” he asks, voice thick with sleep, but beneath that, there’s something warm in it.
Ilya glances back at him again, this time fully, and his eyes drop first to Shane’s hands. He’s holding two mugs. Steam curls lazily from both of them, thin white ribbons against the gold morning air. Even over the lingering smoke and ash clinging to his fingers, Ilya can smell the coffee.
He sniffs once, and nods toward the mugs.
“Is that for me?” His voice is rough, still worn thin from everything he’s said this morning.
Shane’s mouth curves immediately, that knowing, lopsided smirk that always undoes him.
“It’s for us.”
Ilya gives a small shrug, pretending at nonchalance, and turns back toward the sun as if that answer hasn’t settled somewhere deep in his ribs. He hears Shane step closer, the grass giving way beneath his feet, the faint rustle of fabric and blanket.
Shane stops beside him. The proximity alone is enough to shift something in Ilya’s body. Without thinking, he leans just slightly toward the warmth at his side. It has only been an hour, maybe less, since he slipped from Shane’s arms in bed but feels like decades. Like he crossed entire lifetimes in the space between the bedroom and this rock.
Shane extends one of the mugs toward him. Ilya takes it with both hands, grateful for the heat seeping into his palms. He turns carefully and sets it down on the flat surface of the rock beside him, not trusting himself not to spill it with hands that are still faintly trembling.
When he looks back, Shane has placed his own mug down behind him. He slips the blanket from his shoulder and lifts it toward Ilya. He drapes it around Ilya’s shoulders, stretching to reach across his back. The rock sits higher than Shane’s stance, forcing him onto the balls of his feet. He’s barely tall enough to pull the other side over properly.
Ilya helps, but only just. He lets Shane do most of it. Lets himself be wrapped up.
The blanket settles around him, smelling faintly of laundry soap and Shane’s skin. Ilya tucks it closer to his chest, unable to stop the quiet swell of affection that rises inside him.
He likes this. Likes the idea that Shane woke up and noticed he was gone. That he looked out the window and saw him sitting alone and wondered—Is he cold? Does he have coffee? That he decided, without hesitation, to bring both. That he wanted to join him in the quiet.
Shane shifts then, wrapping the remaining edge of the blanket around himself too. He leans back against the rock, pressing his hip to its edge and his side into Ilya’s legs. His head comes to rest gently against Ilya’s arm. Ilya stills for a moment, then relaxes into it.
Shane lets out a deep, contented sigh. He lifts his mug, takes a slow sip, and finally turns his gaze out toward the horizon.
The sky is brighter now, the orange fading into pale blue. The lake glitters against the rising sun once more.
No words pass between them. They have never needed many words. Their breathing settles into an easy rhythm, and Ilya feels warmth bloom at his fingertips, drifting slowly up his arm until it reaches his chest. It’s the warmth from the coffee in their hands, the warmth from each other beneath the blanket. It embraces him, grounds him. It scares him too, because it’s been so long since he’s felt something this intense.
“I woke up and you were gone,” Shane mumbles.
He doesn’t look at Ilya when he says it. His eyes stay fixed on the horizon, on the thin line where the lake meets the brightening sky. His voice is low, but there’s something else threaded through it. Worry, maybe.
Ilya looks down at him immediately.
“Not gone,” he says quietly. “I’m still here.”
Shane’s lips press together, and a faint blush creeps across his cheeks. It’s subtle, but Ilya catches it. Shane shrugs one shoulder like he didn’t mean anything by it.
“I know,” he mutters. “I just—” He huffs out a breath. “You weren’t in bed.”
Ilya’s chest tightens at that.
If their places had been reversed, if he had woken to cool sheets and empty space where Shane should have been, he knows he wouldn’t have handled it half as calmly. He would have searched every room. Called out his name. Let panic swallow him whole before reason ever had a chance.
So no, he doesn’t tease Shane for it. He understands.
Shane shifts slightly against him, nudging his shoulder more firmly into Ilya’s arm. “What were you doing out here?” he asks, finally glancing up at him. There’s a flicker of curiosity there. “Talking to the trees?”
Ilya hums thoughtfully, dragging his eyes back to the horizon as if considering the question with great seriousness. He lifts his mug and takes a slow sip of coffee, letting the warmth settle in his chest. Then he looks down at Shane again.
His fingers move before he fully decides to let them, reaching out to brush lightly along Shane’s cheek, tracing the freckles and warm skin there.
“Yes,” he says gently. “I was. They’re very good listeners.”
Shane rolls his eyes, but there’s no real exasperation in it. Just fondness. The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smile.
Ilya turns back toward the lake, closing his eyes for a brief moment. He breathes in deeply.
The morning air is crisp and clean. She smells pine needles and damp earth, the rich bitterness of coffee, and the faint, lingering trace of smoke clinging to his fingers. Beneath all of it though, he smells Shane’s soap. It’s a subtle, familiar scent that now feels like something essential.
He tries to memorize it. The weight of the blanket. The warmth of Shane leaning into him. The soft lap of water against the dock. The way the sun feels on his face. The exact shade of blue in the sky at this hour.
He tucks it carefully into his mind the way he used to do as a boy. Back then, he would memorize the way his Mama’s laughter sounded in the kitchen. The way her gold necklace caught the light. The smell of her perfume when she hugged him. He stored those things away quietly, afraid that they could disappear. Afraid of losing her.
That fear had been right, but this feels different. This is not fragile in the same way. He is not fearful of it slipping through his fingers. This is steady. He doesn’t have to clutch it desperately to keep it from vanishing. He doesn’t have to brace himself for it to be taken.
Because Shane is here. He is beside Ilya now, warm and solid and leaning into him like he has no intention of going anywhere. And as Ilya opens his eyes again and stares out at the widening day, he feels at peace for the first time in years.