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“You want that? To be together?”
“I do. So much it terrifies me.”
Ilya turns his face away to hide how much Shane’s words shake him to his core. He knows the feeling. Whatever claws at his chest every time Shane leaves and settles in the pit of his stomach when Shane comes back — it’s something like terror. But to know Shane feels it, too. To actually have confirmation that Shane is as unsteady as Ilya, yet so sure?
Ilya turns back and straddles Shane, smothering him in kisses. Over the bridge of his nose where a smattering of freckles lay. His eyelashes. His cheek. His neck. His shoulder. His chin.
“Ya tebya lyublyu.”
Shane stills, pushes Ilya back a few inches, pupils blown wide and lips parted in shock.
“Holy shit,” Shane whispers.
Ilya suddenly feels like he’s at centre ice and everyone is staring at him, waiting with bated breath for him to win a face off.
Except, he’s at least two hours from the rink, and unlike on the rink, Shane is the last person he wants to be at odds with. And only one set of eyes are on him.
Admittedly, the only pair he cares about, but somehow that doesn’t make it any less daunting. He feels like maybe he’s actually just standing at centre ice naked except for his skates, and everyone is staring at him. Except, again, still just one set of eyes.
He concedes to the nakedness — emotionally and physically, save for his boxer briefs — not that anyone is keeping score.
“What did you just say?” Shane breathes.
Ilya’s dictionary app says that what he’s feeling is vulnerability. He knows the word, of course, (it’s a hockey word, after all) but it doesn’t feel like it really captures the essence of how he’s feeling as Shane’s eyes bore into his own from a few centimetres away.
Ilya focuses on what isn’t making him feel vulnerable: he’s still propped up on his elbows, straddling Shane’s hips, their fingers laced together above Shane’s head. It’s his favourite place on earth.
“What?” Shane says, again, mouthing the word more than speaking it.
Ilya has half a mind to feign ignorance and pretend he’s forgotten English entirely — irony aside — but the look on Shane’s face has him at a complete loss for words, regardless of what language he’s aiming for.
A sudden fear that Shane is going to get up from the bed and leave altogether crosses his mind. He can feel the first traces of panic creeping into his chest at the thought.
“You do not speak Russian,” Ilya blurts out, even though he knows, based on Shane’s reaction, that the statement is — to some degree — false.
“I — but — you do.”
That forces a startled, hysterical laugh past Ilya’s lips before he slaps a hand over his mouth.
“I am — sorry. Is not funny.” He says quickly. “Is serious. I am not laughing at you.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am being serious, yes. No more laughing.”
Shane’s warm palm at Ilya’s bare flank keeps the chill in his bloodstream at bay. He focuses on that. On where their bare thighs are touching. On how Shane is still, and not tensing to stand. On how if Shane can keep tracing his fingers over Ilya’s hip, he probably isn’t horrified by Ilya’s admission. That’s a good sign, Ilya thinks.
“No — yes, well that too. But — I mean. Did you mean that?”
That. Ya tebya lyublyu. Of course he meant it. He just didn’t think Shane would understand him.
Which is unfair, since Shane deserves to know, but Ilya still isn’t sure — even now, especially right now — if Shane feels the same way, so naturally, selfishly, he chooses to keep his feelings to himself.
Well, he chooses not to voice them in English, which means Shane isn’t exactly privy to what Ilya is thinking. Except, apparently, somewhere along the way, Shane took up elementary Russian, and put a giant kink in that plan, and now Shane appears to be very privy to what Ilya is thinking. Ilya wishes he could say the same about Shane right now.
He wishes he could say anything of substance at all, but his mind just keeps circling back to —
“Who is teaching you Russian?”
“Ilya.” Shane says. “Not important. Did you mean that?”
Ilya thinks it’s very important.
He doesn’t want to take back what he said — if anything he wants to repeat himself until his throat is raw — but he can’t quite bring himself to answer Shane’s very plain question any other way. It’s not the first time he’s said it — it’s not even the first time he’s said it to Shane — but it is, without a doubt, the first time Shane has understood what he said, and that is a very recent change in circumstance.
He flexes his fingers where they remain tangled with Shane’s.
Shane’s expression gives away nothing.
“You understand Russian now? Since when?”
Shane’s hand leaves Ilya’s side and Ilya wants to crawl inside himself. This isn’t how he imagined this conversation going, in any iteration — good or bad — that he had dreamt up prior to this moment.
“Rozanov, answer the fucking question.” There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice and Ilya’s heart — lodged firmly in his oesophagus at the moment — yearns to fix it.
His throat is dry. There’s an icy feeling creeping up his spine and a flush in his cheeks that he knows Shane can see. But Shane knows what he said…and Shane is still right here.
“I mean…it is obvious, is it not?” He says, instead of just saying yes. He swallows, and it almost helps. “Of course I mean what I say, Hollander.”
“You do?”
Ilya scowls, he can’t help himself.
“When have I ever lied to you? I just — I did not think —”
“That I knew what you were saying?”
Well, yes. That’s exactly what Ilya thought, until about two minutes ago.
“Who is teaching you Russian?” He asks again, because Shane isn’t giving away his feelings whatsoever, and if he can’t avoid the topic entirely, Ilya is sure as hell going to try to redirect the attention back onto Shane.
“You, you idiot. You think after nine years I wouldn’t pick up some key phrases?”
Admittedly, Ilya had not considered this possibility beyond the thought that Shane might pick up some choice terminology centred almost entirely around the bedroom. Which is, in hindsight, a bit naïve.
Shane shifts then, under Ilya, his empty hand finding Ilya’s and lacing their fingers together. He holds their hands to the pillows on either side of Shane’s head, boxing him in beneath Ilya. It feels almost like a peace offering, Ilya thinks, for Shane to keep him so close after Ilya has spilled his guts mid-makeout.
“Ilya,” Shane murmurs, “can you say it again?”
Ilya frowns. He trains his attention on one of Shane’s freckles that darkened after a week in the sun.
“Why? You speak Russian, you say, so you already know the words.”
“Humour me?”
Ilya hesitates, but then Shane is squeezing his hands in reassurance, and Ilya doesn’t feel like he’s being flayed alive anymore.
He still can’t look Shane in the eyes.
“Ya tebya lyublyu.”
“Mean it?”
Ilya nods once, because of course he means it.
“Ya tebya,” Shane says slowly, “lyublyu?”
Ilya nods again. “Yes, that is how you say —”
“I love you.”
“Yes, that is how you say it.”
“I know. Ya tebya lyublyu, Ilya.”
Finally, finally, he lets Shane catch his eyes.
Shane looks so earnest, and all at once Ilya’s brain catches up and he realises that Shane isn’t practicing his Russian — Shane is speaking Russian.
Ilya swallows again, because the lump in his throat is making it hard for him to speak any language at all.
One of Shane’s hands comes up to the side of Ilya’s cheek, and he thumbs beneath Ilya’s eye, wiping away traitorous, relieved tears that Ilya can’t stop from falling.
“Oh my God, I love you so much,” Shane says.
Ilya can’t take it anymore. He collapses on Shane and buries his head in Shane’s neck with a whimper he just can’t keep inside.
“Fuck, Hollander, I thought you were going to leave —”
Shane shakes his head.
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“I love you,” Ilya says. In English, so there can be no misunderstandings.
“I love you, too.”
A little shard of fear that Shane would run away shatters into a million pieces at Shane’s words, and Ilya feels a relieved sob fight its way up his throat. He swallows it down and squeezes Shane’s hand instead.
“Thank Christ,” he says.
“Does it…does it feel like agony for you, too?”
Ilya starts to nod and then stops. He knows how his dictionary app describes agony.
He pulls back so he can see Shane’s face, and Shane is looking at him with the same raw vulnerability and agony that Ilya has felt since the day he first came to Shane’s hotel room all those years ago.
“Not anymore,” he says. “Give me kiss. I think we have waited long enough, yes?”
Shane surges forward then, his lips finding Ilya’s in a desperate clash of tongue and teeth transcending every language barrier. They’ve always been able to do this — to understand each other without any words exchanged. Ilya prides himself on finally knowing exactly what Shane is thinking by the way he gasps when Ilya pulls at his plump bottom lip with his teeth.
When Shane pulls back to breathe, he rocks his hips to one side and sends Ilya sprawling out on the mattress beside him. Ilya wraps one arm around Shane’s waist and hauls him closer so that they’re nose to nose.
Shane is beaming up at him, and Ilya loves him. And Shane loves him. He almost can’t believe it, but for once, as he lays there and wants nothing more than to let himself have what’s right in front of him, nothing is in the way of that, so he does.
He brushes his thumb over Shane’s freckles.
“So, you speak Russian now?”
Shane nods, and then he laughs, and Ilya joins him.
“It is not funny Hollander,” Ilya says, trying and failing at mustering a mocking frown. “Is very serious. I tell you big secret and now you laugh. I cannot tell you other secrets, now.”
Shane sobers. He traces a fingertip down Ilya’s nose and over his cupid’s bow. It lingers there, and Ilya presses his lips to it briefly.
“You can tell me secrets.” Shane says. “But if they’re in Russian, you still have to translate most of them. I have a very bad teacher.”
“Oh do you, now?”
“Mm.”
Ilya pinches Shane’s side, making him squeal and bat at Ilya’s hand.
“I think we have same secret.” Ilya says. “So is not a secret after all, yes?”
“I don’t want to keep secrets from you anymore,” Shane whispers.
Ilya nods, because he doesn’t either. “So, tell me, then?”
“Tell you what?”
“Secrets.”
Shane shrugs. “I don’t have any more.”
Ilya frowns.
“Everyone has secrets.” Shane flushes and Ilya grins because he was fishing for something sweet and harmless, but the look on Shane’s face says whatever he’s holding back is even better. “You are thinking of one now. What is it?”
Shane shakes his head and looks down at Ilya’s chest.
“No,” Ilya says, “tell me.”
“It’s nothing.”
Ilya smooths the crease between Shane’s eyebrows with his thumb and cups Shane’s blushing cheek.
“Is not nothing. You look like pretty tomato. Tell me?”
“Ilya.”
“Shane.”
“Ilya.”
“Fine. I tell you one more, then you tell me, yes?”
Shane looks dubious.
“Okay,” he says.
“This is real, yes?” Ilya asks, gesturing between them.
“It’s real.”
“Okay, secret is that I feel like…I am dreaming?”
Shane grins.
“You’re not. I love you.”
Ilya shakes his head, not because he disagrees, but because he can’t believe it. He kisses Shane again, then pulls back.
“I love you. Is your turn. Tell me big secret.”
Shane looks away.
“I looked it up,” he murmurs.
“Looked up what?”
“How to say it. I thought,” he shrugs again. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ilya thumbs at Shane’s chin, guiding it up gently.
“Tell me. Please?”
“I thought you had said it before. But I wasn’t sure, and I wanted to know, in case —” he cuts himself off and Ilya tries to hide his grin because he knows Shane is nervous, and he genuinely isn’t trying to mock him.
He loves it, the way he loves Shane, in every language. Of course Shane would insist on knowing everything and being the best, even when it came to this. Ilya should’ve known better than to think Shane wouldn’t figure it out before Ilya was ready to say it in a way that Shane would understand, even if Ilya had the common sense not to open his big mouth. But really, he couldn’t help himself. He loves Shane. He’s in love with Shane.
He nods once, in understanding.
“In case I say it again.”
“Yes.”
“Lucky you, then,” he teases. “Very smart and sneaky.”
“You’re the sneaky one. Telling me things in Russian because you think I can’t understand you.”
He can tell Shane is a tiny bit put off by this, but it’s outweighed drastically by what Ilya had said in the first place, so Ilya is pretty sure he’s not in any real trouble.
“I know you understand some things. Important things.”
“Like what?”
Ilya smirks.
“Like please, and thank you, and get on your knees.”
“Yes, we know my English is passable.”
“You think you are funny, do you?” Ilya rolls so that he’s straddling Shane now, hands twisting in Shane’s above their heads again. “You practice your Russian, yes? You know things I say?”
Shane nods.
“I should say more?” Ilya asks “Is that what you want?”
“Please, Ilya.”
Ilya kisses him over and over again, barely pausing for air before diving in again for more.
“Tell me what you want, then, dorogoy.”
Ilya wonders for a brief moment if Shane knows what that means, now, too, then decides he doesn’t care right now.
“I want to be as close as possible to you.”
Ilya pauses and stares at Shane. He knows he’s grinning like an idiot, because Shane isn’t trying to be sexy, but even so, it’s the hottest thing he could’ve possibly said, somehow.
“That is what you want?”
Shane nods.
“Da, pozhaluysta, Ilya.”
Ilya falters, his brain grinding to a halt at the sound of Shane speaking his mother tongue — begging, actually. It isn’t the first time, but it’s different this time. And fuck, if that isn’t sexy, too.
He swears under his breath.
“Fuck, Hollander. You are playing dirty.”
“Please, Ilya?”
Ilya shakes his head. “No. Say like before.”
“Pozhaluysta, Ilya?” Shane whispers. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
And Ilya is done for.
He nods, and kisses Shane again, and again, and again.
“Ya tebya lyublyu, dorogoy. Ya tebya lyublyu, ya tebya lyublyu, ya tebya lyublyu.”