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It was his fault. Ilya knew he should never have invited Shane to stay. He should have known he was going to slip up. But he wanted Shane to stay. He had always wanted Shane to stay but there had never really been the opportunity before. Ilya knew he had ruined everything. Why did he have to call him Shane? It took Ilya a little while to move, he was still sitting there, frozen in place, looking at where Shane had been standing before he scarpered. How had things gone so wrong so quickly?
Ilya had been trying to keep the feelings he had for Shane at bay for a long time now. He never should have fallen in love with the Canadian in the first place but Ilya had never been good at doing what he should do. It was part of the reason he had prepositioned Shane in the first place. Still, this hurt more than it should have. This should have been a wake up call to Ilya. Shane had done the right thing by fleeing. If things had been reversed and Shane had called him Ilya first then the Russian knew he would be feeling slightly freaked out. Okay, probably very freaked out.
It didn’t take much to spook Shane. Ilya was quite surprised that they had been hooking up for as long as they had. Every time it happened, he kept expecting the Canadian to break things off with him but he could tell Shane needed this as much as he did. Shane loved getting fucked and there was a limited number of people that he could probably confide in before they started going to the media. Shane didn’t want anyone to know that he was interested in guys. Ilya felt the same way but for a different reason.
Ilya had a genuine fear that if anyone found out then he could be killed. Russia may have decriminalised homosexuality but it was still illegal to promote it in any way. If it were up to Ilya then he would leave Russia. If it weren’t for his father then he would never return but until the day his father died (and Ilya assumed it was going to be sometime reasonably soon.)
Once he got up, Ilya started clearing away the dishes from the tuna melts. He had a fridge full of ginger ale with no one to drink it. He wondered if Shane had noticed. Ilya didn’t drink the stuff, he preferred coke but Shane liked ginger ale and that was the entire reason Ilya had bought it. Ilya had been wanting Shane to stay for a while. He’d had a whole plan, a plan that had gone out of the window the moment Ilya had called him Shane.
Ilya couldn’t pinpoint the moment that Shane had gone from being Hollander to being Shane. It had probably been a gradual realisation. That was why he hadn’t noticed it. It must be. Ilya knew he was fucked. He was in love with Shane. There was no one else he wanted. Ilya had never been in love before but he was pretty sure that was what this was.
The Russian had a reputation for sleeping around, for being a playboy. A different girl in every city. A different girl every night if that was what he wanted. He’d done it on purpose. It took suspicion away from the fact that he was bisexual. Ilya knew he was very lucky that he could at least pretend to be straight. Not a lot of people had that option. It made him sad that he had to hide that part of himself away. But now, all he could think about was Shane. He didn’t want to hook up with some random woman because they weren’t him. And Ilya certainly didn’t want to go out and pick up some random guy.
He couldn’t stop thinking as he washed the dishes that he and Shane had used. Ilya wished he had someone he could confide in about what had happened but it would mean explaining the entire situation and how he had fucked it up. Ilya sighed heavily as he blinked back tears. He wasn’t going to cry. He was going to pull himself back together and carry on as though nothing had happened. He was good at that.
It had surprised him in the first place that Shane had initially agreed to stay. Despite making arrangements as though the Canadian was going to stay before being invited, Ilya knew it could go either way when he actually asked. It made him wonder if maybe Shane needed this as much as Ilya did. It was nice doing domestic things with Shane. It was usually just quick sex before one of them left. Ilya had been craving more for a long time. And he had hoped and thought that Shane did, too.
Why? Why did he have to say Shane? Why did he have to fuck it up? Why did he have to ruin the one good thing in his life?
After washing and putting away the dishes, Ilya headed back through to his bedroom. He needed to change the bedding. As much as he would have preferred to fall asleep in the bedding that he had last fucked Shane on, he knew it was important to get rid of all reminders. Ilya knew, deep down, that was the last time he would ever be with Shane. He had well and truly ruined whatever that had been. Whatever they could have been.
Once the bed was stripped and the dirty bedding was in the washing machine, Ilya put the clean bedding on and froze when he spotted a white shirt on the floor. Shane had come over in a white shirt. He’d put on one of Ilya’s before everything had gone so wrong. Which meant he had left wearing Ilya’s shirt. Shane didn’t tend to wear dark clothing. He knew it was wrong but Ilya picked the shirt up and inhaled deeply. Of course it still smelled like Shane, the Canadian had been wearing it only a couple of hours ago. Ilya tucked the shirt under his pillow before carrying on with sorting his place out. As though he could remove any and all traces of what had happened. As though it had never happened. Except for the shirt. The shirt that he would cling to and hope that once again, he and Shane would be able to find their way back to each other. They usually did and Ilya would cling to that.