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Shane knows that he should go to sleep. This is the second night this week he’s stayed up late with all of his percolating thoughts. To be fair, the first night he did this it was to brainstorm his ten-step plan of rewriting his and Ilya rivalry narrative and their subsequent future together. He knows he could have stretched the plan to fifteen years, but he wants to log more data before he plans further than this for now. All of this thinking should make Shane tired and spiral him back into sleep.
Except Shane can’t fall back asleep, even if sleeping has come so easy to him next to Ilya, body relaxing in a way that Shane realizes he’s been holding all of this tension in his body. Tension that has steadily seeped out of him like air being released from a balloon the more uninterrupted time he and Ilya spend together. Usually even just proximity would have Shane passing out in minutes, however, tonight it seems like his mind is firing on all available cylinders. It’s probably even building a whole new one right now just to keep up, like a factory continuing to manufacture in the middle of night to meet the rush of the next day. Not that it’s night time any more actually, the room lighting up into a hazy gray as the sun prepares to fully rise.
Shane scoots back down to worm his way back into Ilya’s embrace, feels that since it’s close to sunrise anyway Ilya won’t mind the movement so much. He just stayed up, sitting up against the headboard as still as he could make himself earlier so as not to disturb Ilya’s slumber. Shane wouldn’t want the both of them to be sleep deprived. Ilya deserves his rest.
Shane also deserves to see Ilya at rest. After so many nights of them leaving each other in impersonal hotel rooms or that specific condo back in Montreal, there’s very few things better than getting to lay here in Ilya’s arms and just luxuriate in being held by the love of his life. Luxuriates in the knowledge that he’s allowed to be so close, that Ilya would encourage him to get closer still, that he’s trusted enough for Ilya to rest around him, to lower his metaphorical walls down as he sinks back into the youth of his actual age, in sleep. Shane luxuriates in being wanted here, in Ilya’s space, close enough to count Ilya’s eyelashes.
Which – Ilya has one hundred and five on each of his eyelids, by the way. Shane knows, he’s just finished counting.
The early dawn slowly starts to turn into morning proper, sun inching its way up brightening the sky. The grey of pre-dawn washes away as color bleeds into view, becoming more vibrant as the sun fully rises. It reminds Shane of the effect Ilya has had on himself. Shane didn’t know he could feel all of these emotions he wasn’t actually sure existed until he’d felt them, and so strongly too. When he was younger he didn’t think he’d be so concerned with tea selection (Ilya drinks his with raspberry jam, which ew), that he’d memorise so many airport codes, that he’d choose certain shades of blue for the furnishings of his apartment because they remind him of Ilya’s eyes, that he’d be so concerned with the narrative that surrounds his career.
But Ilya and him, they did grow and they did grow up together, even if they couldn’t grow up together in a more conventional sense. They’re the only ones who know what it’s like to be at the top of their sport, how demanding it is, how exhilarating. How it feels to look across the ice into the eyes of an opponent and feel amusement, excitement, and admiration instead of the cold, clinical disinterest of knowing that this match isn’t going to be difficult at all.
The ice is so cold and yet it’s warm when they’re there together. Or at least warm between them, even including all their stubborn determination and competitiveness.
It’s warm in this bed too. Cozy, Shane thinks, like they’re bunnies in a burrow.
Zaychik, Shane’s mind replays, remembering the playfulness of Ilya’s voices, of Ilya booping his nose yesterday.
Shane slowly moves his hand to boop Ilya’s nose now, gentler than he thinks Ilya did to him. Ilya deserves to be loved gently, Shane thinks as he soothes Ilya back to sleep when his eyes start to shift, hearing his own heartbeat in his ears as Ilya turns towards him and relaxes at the sound of his coaxing voice. He’s content to just observe Ilya as long as he can, eyes tip-toeing across his handsome features, calm and sleep soft.
Shane can’t help himself after a while, wanting to touch again and not just look. He revels in the fact that he can do that now. That he doesn’t need to hesitate to reach out to Ilya now, knows that when he reaches out a hand, Ilya’s own hand will be meeting his halfway. He runs his fingers through Ilya’s silky curls, gently traces the smooth expanse of his forehead, down the slope of his nose, a thumb grazing his cheek, his fingers gliding over his sharp jawline. Shane would preen if he were a bird. Look at him! This man is mine! He’s so handsome and mine and gorgeous and kind and an asshole-sweetheart and mine. Mine mine mine.
Shane counts the moles on Ilya’s face, mapping and memorizing the positions of all of them. He traces the slope of Ilya’s nose until he could probably measure out the exact angle it makes on his face. He catalogs the exact color of his lips, his hair, his skin, saving them in the Ilya folder in his brain so that he can look up the HEX codes of them later, a lecture of color palettes and undertones given by Shane’s stylist echoing faintly in Shane’s peripheral memory.
And then when he’s done with all of that, he recounts the eyelashes of each eye. One hundred and five, just like he counted earlier. It’s nice to know he wasn’t just imagining it, Shane sighs, besotted like in those romance movies he’s watched in the background when hanging out with Jackie and Hayden at their house.
Ilya is so perfect that he has exactly one hundred and five eyelashes per eye. Shane thinks it’s so romantic. It’s their numbers together, 81+24=105. Even asleep, even unconscious, Ilya’s body reassures Shane that they’re soulmates, that they’re meant to be, that they’re forever.
After everything they’ve been through, all the struggles to get here, in Shane’s bed in his cottage, Shane feels like it’s too late for Ilya to get rid of him now. Shane’s here to stay. From the way that Ilya contently presses closer and snores into Shane’s neck, it looks like he’s here to stay too.