Work Text:
The cottage had the particular kind of quiet that only existed in places far away from cities and expectations, where the world seemed to exhale into the trees and settle there for the night. Outside, the lake lay black and glassy beneath a thin spill of moonlight, and the wooden beams of the ceiling creaked gently as the temperature dropped, the whole place smelling faintly of pine sap, old books, and the lemon cleaner Shane had insisted on using earlier that afternoon because “rustic” did not have to mean “questionable.”
Inside the bedroom at the end of the narrow hall, Shane lay flat on his back atop the quilt, staring at the ceiling with the exhausted determination of a man who had decided that sleep was no longer a biological need but a personal vendetta. His hair was still damp from the shower he’d taken in a last-ditch attempt to feel like a functioning adult instead of the human equivalent of an overused travel mug, and one arm was flung over his eyes as though he could physically block out the sound of Ilya’s sniffling by sheer will.
Behind him, propped up against an unreasonable number of pillows like a pale, congested emperor, Ilya sniffed again.
It was not a delicate sniff.
It was a theatrical, wet, drawn-out production, the kind that suggested either impending doom or a particularly stubborn mucus situation.
Shane did not move his arm. “You okay?”
There was a thoughtful pause, during which the blankets rustled as Ilya shifted with dramatic fragility.
“I think,” Ilya began, his voice slow and syrupy with cough medicine, “that I am dying. But in, like… a poetic way.”
Shane lowered his arm just enough to squint at him. Ilya’s blond hair was sticking up in several improbable directions, his cheeks flushed with fever and NyQuil courage, and his eyelids drooped in a way that would have been alarmingly tragic if not for the fact that he was also clutching a box of tissues like it was a beloved childhood pet.
“You have a cold,” Shane said.
“Yes,” Ilya agreed gravely. “A terminal one.”
Shane exhaled through his nose and rolled onto his side, facing him. “You had half a bottle of cough syrup. You’re not terminal. You’re mint-flavored.”
Ilya considered this, eyes narrowing slightly as if Shane had just presented an interesting philosophical theory. “That explains why my tongue feels like a haunted forest.”
Shane pressed his lips together, the corner of his mouth betraying him despite his exhaustion. “Go to sleep.”
There was another sniff. A softer one this time. Then a long, contemplative silence.
“Shane.”
“What.”
“We cannot share this bed.”
Shane closed his eyes. “We are sharing this bed.”
“No,” Ilya said firmly, pointing a slightly wobbly finger at him. “We cannot. It would be morally wrong.”
Shane opened one eye again. “Morally wrong.”
“Yes. Because,” Ilya continued, lowering his voice as if about to reveal state secrets, “I have a husband.”
Shane stared at him.
The room held its breath.
“You,” Shane said carefully, “are married to me.”
Ilya’s expression softened into something deeply sympathetic, the way one might look at a small child who had just announced they were going to live on the moon. “Shane,” he murmured, reaching out to pat his cheek with solemn affection and missing by several inches, “you are very beautiful, but you are not my husband.”
Shane grabbed his wandering hand before it could knock over the glass of water on the nightstand. “I am absolutely your husband. We had a wedding. There were flowers. You cried.”
“I cry at many things,” Ilya said defensively. “Commercials. Dogs. That one time you made soup.”
“You cried because you were chopping onions.”
“They were emotional onions.”
Shane let his forehead fall gently against the pillow. “We have rings.”
Ilya gasped faintly, then squinted at his own left hand as if seeing it for the first time. He lifted it slowly, turning it under the lamplight until the gold band caught and reflected a warm glint across the room.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Shane waited.
Ilya lowered his hand, eyes wide. “This is serious.”
“What is.”
“He got me a ring.”
“You got that ring together,” Shane said. “You insisted on the slightly thicker band because you said my hands are ‘intimidatingly elegant’ and you needed to compete.”
Ilya blinked at him, visibly struggling to process this information, and then abruptly sat up straighter, swaying a little with the effort. “Okay, but think about it logically,” he said, holding up one finger as though presenting a bullet point in a very disorganized lecture. “If I am married.”
“You are.”
“And you are here.”
“I live here.”
“Then,” Ilya concluded triumphantly, “you cannot be in my bed. Because that would be cheating.”
Shane let out a long, slow breath that carried with it the last fragile threads of his patience. “On who.”
“On my husband,” Ilya said, scandalized.
“I am your husband.”
Ilya froze.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“That sounds like something a man trying to seduce a sick, vulnerable athlete would say.”
Shane stared at him for three full seconds, then reached over and flicked off the bedside lamp, plunging them into the softer blue-gray wash of moonlight. “If I were trying to seduce you,” he said flatly, “I would not have spent the last hour holding a humidifier over your face while you complained that the steam ‘felt judgmental.’”
“It did,” Ilya mumbled, lying back down. “Very intense steam.”
Shane tugged the quilt up to Ilya’s chin with slightly more force than necessary. “You’re not moving. I’m not moving. We are sleeping.”
There was a pause.
The mattress shifted.
Ilya scooted approximately two inches toward the edge of the bed, creating what he clearly believed to be a morally acceptable buffer zone.
Shane did not comment.
Another minute passed.
Then, very quietly, “Shane?”
“What.”
“If you see my husband,” Ilya whispered into the dark, his voice soft and drowsy now, “tell him I love him. And that I fought bravely.”
Shane felt something warm and ridiculous bloom in his chest despite the fatigue pressing down on his bones. He reached across the small gap Ilya had created and slid an arm around his waist, pulling him back until their bodies fit together the way they always did, familiar and easy, like muscle memory.
“I’ll let him know,” Shane murmured into his hair. “He’s very proud of you. Says you’re very brave. Also very dramatic.”
Ilya made a faint, contented hum, burrowing instinctively closer despite his earlier moral objections, his cold-warmed skin seeking out Shane’s steady heat.
“Good,” he mumbled. “He’s lucky.”
Shane pressed a kiss to his temple, brushing damp strands of hair away from his forehead, and listened as Ilya’s breathing evened out into something deeper and steadier, the cough medicine finally winning its slow, syrupy battle.
Outside, the lake remained still, the trees whispering in the dark, and inside the little cottage bedroom, Shane lay awake just a moment longer, his arm secure around his husband—who, for the record, was absolutely married to him—before sleep finally dragged him under too, wrapped up in the quiet, the ridiculousness, and the kind of love that endured even the most dramatic of terminal colds.