Archive of Our Own

“This is a kid’s game,” Shane says defiantly, not really in the mood to play truth or dare of all things they could be doing right now.

He agreed to come to Boodram’s BBQ with Ilya because he knows it’s important to bond with the team that he’ll be joining next season but he’s never been too great at falling into place in a group of people who all already know each other well. A lot of the team has left already and Shane is really wishing right now that he and Ilya would be the next ones to go but Ilya seems like he’s having a really good time and Shane doesn’t want to ruin that for him. So he’s sticking it out.

But just because he’s sticking it out and also wants to start to bond with this team doesn’t mean he wants to play a game meant for teenagers.

Except, the group all pouts and about twenty disagreements and (lighthearted) arguments head his way but they all conglomerate into one huge mess of noise. He hears some people telling him that it’ll be fun while others are saying it’s not just a game for kid’s. There are a couple voices, he can’t quite decipher who, but they’re telling him that he doesn’t have to play if he doesn’t want to, which he appreciates.

However most of them are trying to get him to change his mind, filling the backyard with much more noise than necessary until Ilya stands up, speaking loudly, “Okay! Okay!”

Everyone quiets down so that Ilya can keep speaking, “Is all okay, Shane will play with us, do not worry. You guys are so loud and you do not need to be. He will play.”

“Ilya, I-”

Ilya looks at him and cuts him off, not even giving him a moment to speak, “No, no, you will play. We have child here anyway,” He motions toward Luca Haas, “he is, like, perfect age demographic of this game, we will play to humor him.”

“I’m 21!” Haas cuts in but Hayes just pats him on the shoulder.

“He’s not even the one who suggested we play,” Shane glares at Ilya.

Ilya doesn’t glare back, he just shrugs it off and continues, “Besides, is drinking game the way we will play. Teenagers cannot drink, this is law, yes?”

“That doesn’t matter. Also-”

“Yes, I know you do not drink but just this once? Is only beer, not even liquor.” Then he gets that look in his eye and says, “I will make it worth your while when we get home, okay?”

Fuck.

Shane feels his face get hot as he rolls his eyes and lets his open mouth fall shut, sighing out of his nose.

A smirk appears on Ilya’s face as he sits back down, next to Shane, “Alright, good, shall we play?”

“Did he just-” Boodram starts to whisper to Dykstra next to him.

Dykstra doesn’t let him finish, though, just nodding and saying, “Yes, I think he did.”

“Well I do not want to be a fly on the wall when they get home,” Boodram jokes and Dykstra laughs hard, falling backward into the couch.

Dykstra shoves Boodram but then wraps an arm around his wife, Caitlin.

Speaking of wives, Cassie stands up after giving Boodram a kiss on the cheek, “I think I’m going to go inside. Caitlin, Lisa, you’re welcome to join me,” She smiles softly and makes her way toward the sliding glass door.

The other two women all say some quick goodbyes to their husbands before following Cassie inside.

Shane wishes he could follow them too.

Now, it’s just him, Ilya, Boodram, Dykstra, Haas, Hayes, Barrett, and Harris.

Just six people. Seven if he were to include Ilya but he’s not. So, just six people. He can handle six people.

He can play truth or dare with six people no problem.

“Who’s going first?” Barrett asks, he has an arm around Harris and Shane feels a sort of envy; one that he kind of hates himself for feeling.

Barrett looks so comfortable with his arm wrapped around Harris and Harris doesn’t even look like he’s thinking twice about it but Shane is still sort of terrified to touch Ilya or be touched by Ilya in any way that can expose them as a couple, as if they’re still a secret.

He’s been so used to avoiding Ilya’s touch, trying not to let his gaze linger for longer than appropriate. He’s trained himself to keep their love in the shadows, it’s muscle memory to keep it quiet, to not love him loudly. Or casually. To keep their secret.

Yet, Barrett and Harris are doing it so easily. Shane doesn’t want to be jealous (because, realistically, he knows it probably wasn’t easy for them to get to this point) but he is because he’s still stuck feeling nervous when Ilya flirts so blatantly or touches him in a way that reveals they’re together.

Shane knows they’re not a secret anymore and he knows all of these people support him and Ilya. It’s just a little bit difficult to wrap his mind around. He’ll get used to it eventually, he knows he will. It’s just a little more difficult getting used to this compared to getting used to being himself around Ilya while around, say, his parents.

It was terrifying at first, sure, but once everything settled down, it was easy to feel okay with holding Ilya’s hand or wrapping an arm around him when they were with his parents. It was easy because… well, he doesn’t actually have a completely rational reason as to why this is harder than others.

Maybe it’s just because he wants to make a good first impression - not that this is his first impression, he’s met a ton of these guys on the ice, but it is his first impression in such a personal setting and that matters to him - but his brain has him overthinking far too much.

It’s why he doesn’t even notice when Ilya wraps his arm around Shane in the same way Barrett wrapped his arm around Harris. With zero hesitation, as if they’ve been doing this around people for years.

Shane doesn’t even realize until he feels himself relaxing into it, which causes him to tense up a little bit but he tells himself it’s fine. He tells himself he needs to calm down and tries to let himself relax all of the way.

It almost works perfectly.

“Here,” Boodram stands up and grabs an empty beer bottle from the floor, placing it on a small table thats in the middle of the patio, “I’ll spin this and whoever it lands on will go first, agreed?”

There are mumbles of agreements from everyone and Shane even musters out his own answer of, “Sure.”

Boodram spins the bottle and then goes to sit back down as the group waits for the bottle to slow. Shane’s eyes are locked in on the bottle, trying to send it mental signals to not land on him. He doesn’t even know what he’d do if he had to go first.

Thankfully, as the bottle slows, it lands on Harris.

Harris doesn’t look too amused by this outcome but he chuckles and looks around the group, “Okay, okay. Who should I ask?”

“Spin the bottle,” Ilya suggests, “That way it we can avoid Bood and Barrett daring each other back and forth for twenty minutes straight again.”

Harris agrees and gets up, spinning the bottle before settling back down next to Barrett, who, ironically, is who the bottle lands on, “Well, this is no fun. I already know everything about you.”

“Well maybe I’ll choose dare,” Barrett retorts.

Dykstra cuts in, impatiently tossing one of the throw pillows near him to the bench that Barrett and Harris are sitting on, “So which one?”

Barrett catches the pillow easily, tossing it back with his response of, “I dunno, he hasn’t asked yet.”

Harris scoffs and rolls his eyes, “Okay Troy, truth or dare.”

“Dare.”

“Do a backflip.”

“Harris! No!”

Harris giggles and the rest of the team starts laughing, even Ilya does but Shane doesn’t get what’s so funny about it. It must be some sort of inside joke that Shane wasn’t here for. Ilya tells him almost everything about all of his days but this must be something that slipped his mind, or something that he didn’t think was worth mentioning or something. Shane starts to feel small for a moment, too awkward. He wants to go home and-

Ilya squeezes his arm and leans in closer, whispering in his ear, “Barrett has been trying to learn how to do backflip for the last three weeks. He has not been able to do one. He always falls.”

Shane laughs.

Like actually laughs.

It’s something so simple but he laughs. It blends in with the rest of the group’s laughter until Barrett raises his beer up for a moment before bringing to his lips and taking a big drink of it, “We all know I can’t do it so I’ll just save myself the embarassment.”

“You could’ve attempted it!” Hayes says between bouts of laughter.

Barrett just flips him off, “We all know I would’ve failed and had to drink anyway. But whatever, this calls for my turn,” He doesn’t stand up to spin the bottle, just unwraps himself from Harris and leans very far forward in his seat until he reaches the bottle.

The spin doesn’t go very well so it’s over fairly quickly, landing on Ilya.

(Shane ignores the way his heart banged against his chest when it started to slow near him. He doesn’t even know if he’d pick truth or dare yet.)

A grin appears on Barrett’s face immediately, “Oh good, I have the perfect dare. I dare you to-”

“Hey, hey!” Ilya waves one of his hands in front of him, “You did not ask me the question. Why are you choosing for me.”

“Oh come on, Rozy,” Boodram says, “you’ve never chosen truth a single time in all of our games of truth or dare unless Haasy asked.”

Ilya waves him off with the same hand he was using to wave in front of himself, “Well, yes. That is because I had big, handsome, secret,” (Shane finds himself feeling a little guilty about that before it’s overshadowed by the heat in his face), “that I knew you guys would ask about but Haas was too scared to. I could not tell the truths I knew you guys would ask about, I would have had to lie, but now I am free to be completely open book. Fire away, I say,” He looks at Barrett and declares, “Truth.”

Barrett sighs and leans backward into his seat, Harris grabs his hand, “Well I don’t know now.”

“Ask him something good!” Dykstra nearly shouts.

Honestly, for it being 9:00PM, it could absolutely be considered a shout but that’s above Shane’s paygrade.

Barrett hums while he thinks, bouncing his leg up and down until Shane notices him come to some kind of realization just before he speaks, “Okay! During the Montreal Boston game of *insert month and year here*, did you play badly intentionally to let Hollander win or do you just suck at hockey?”

Ilya’s gasp is one filled with mock offense (Shane has heard this same gasp millions of times) and he presses a hand to his chest in the most dramatic way possible.

There are gasps from the rest of the group, filled with a lot of, ”Ooohhh”s.

Dykstra laughs loudly, “He got your ass!”

“Answer honestly, Roz,” Boodram taunts, trying to hold back his laugh.

“First of all,” Ilya starts, moving to sit on the edge of his seat so that he can get a good look at everyone in the group, unpealing himself from Shane’s side, “I would never let Shane win at anything. I would rather jump off of 20 story building and land on my head. Secondly, I do not suck at hockey just because I lost that one game - which is a very specific game, by the way, I do not know why you are bringing that one up. Thirdly, I do not need to be bad at hockey to lose against Shane because Shane is just that good. He can take on the best opponents, AKA me, of course, and still win.”

Ilya then settles back into the seat, wrapping his arm around Shane again, going back to the position they were in earlier.

“Well, that turned oddly sweet,” Hayes says and the rest of the group mumbles in agreement, a lot of them laughing at the way Ilya handled Barrett’s question.

Ilya shakes his head, “Whatever, someone just spin the bottle for me. I am already comfortably next to Shane, I do not want to get up again.”

Haas takes it upon himself to get up and spin the bottle for Ilya, sitting back down without taking his eyes off of it only for it to land on himself.

“Well, well, well,” Ilya smirks, “Truth or dare, Haas?”

He hesitates to anwer for a moment, “Um, dare.”

“Oooh, okay,” Ilya apparently likes that answer, “I dare you to go into your phone, click on your internet app, type in archive of our own dot com, and then share the last five things in your history.”

Haas turns bright, bright red. It’s a shade that Shane didn’t even know a person could turn but there it is, on Haas’ face. Some members of the group (Boodram and Dykstra; they probably have no idea what archive of our own even is) are very confused meanwhile the rest of them are either laughing or shocked by Ilya’s request.

Shane, however, saw that coming the moment he heard Ilya mention a phone so all he can do is huff out some laughter.

“No,” Haas refuses immediately, “nope. I will drink.”

“You do not want to share? How bad is it?”

Haas shakes his head, “No. Nope. I’m not indulging this. I’m drinking.”

Ilya’s face falls into a pout, “Aw, are we sure you are even old enough?”

“Oh c’mon,” Haas takes a drink of the beer he already has in his hand, “The drinking age here is 18, I’m 21, which is plenty old enough.”

“Woah,” Boodram chimes in, “Haas sticking up for himself, it’s a moment in history.”

Dykstra pulls out his phone to pretend to take a video, “Don’t worry I’ll record.”

Meanwhile, at the same time, Ilya is laughing and saying, “Yes, yes, I joke, I joke. Take your turn, kid.”

Haas shoves a hand against Dykstra’s camera, even though he likely knows that Dykstra definitely does not have it recording at all, and gets up to spin the bottle before sitting back down.

The game goes like this for just over fourty-five minutes. Asking questions, making dares, spinning bottles.

Mountains of ridiculous things happen, dare wise, and Shane finds out a lot more than he ever needed to know about this group of people.

(And he has to admit, the evening is pretty nice.

He enjoys watching Boodram run into his house to get his spiciest hot sauce to give Barrett a spoon full for a dare and he doesn’t think he’s laughed harder than when Haas is dared to prank call Dykstra’s wife - Shane even only got slight second hand embarrassment!

He finds himself questioning why he agreed to this game when people are asked questions like, ”Who here looks most like a vegetarian?” which, for the very next truth, was immediately followed with, ”Who here looks like they hate vegetarians?” which was then, for some reason, followed with, ”Who here looks most likely to eat a vegetarian?”

He can’t help but laugh when Hayes asks Haas who he would turn into a goose.

He even doesn’t mind when Ilya is asked fairly personal questions about their relationship - his face did get a little heated when one of those questions got a bit NSFW but, thankfully, Ilya drank for that one; though, Shane is pretty sure that he only drank for Shane’s sake - every time he chooses truth over dare.)

It lands on Boodram a whopping twelve times with it landing on Barrett nine.

It lands on both Dykstra and Harris seven times.

It lands on Ilya six times, Haas five times, and Hayes four times.

And it doesn’t even land on Shane once, which he is beyond relieved about.

Well, until it does.

And when it does, it goes wrong.

Okay, well, maybe not wrong per se, but it just didn’t go in the way Shane had planned carefully in his head with a word for word script (which, thinking back on it, maybe wasn’t the wisest way to go - the word for word script thing).

It’s Harris’ turn, so he spins the bottle and it starts to slow down around Shane. He feels his heart beating against hsi ribcage and hopes for the bottle to move just a couple more centimeteres to the right, so that it lands on Ilya again.

But it doesn’t.

It stops.

“Shane!” Harris grins, “Truth or dare?”

Ilya excitedly pats Shane on the arm and the leg, “It is your first turn finally, choose wisely, moya lyubov.”

“I-” Shane hesitates. He doesn’t know what to choose, you’d think he did considering how prepared he thought he was earlier (he had two separate word for word scripts for each option he chose, by the way, he was very thorough) but he is very much not prepared.

Someone starts humming the jeopardy song and then nearly everybody else joins in (except for Harris and Ilya).

“Okay!” Shane sits up and readjusts himself on the couch, “Truth. I’m going with truth.”

“Ooooh,” Harris drawls, looking around the group, “I can ask the Shane Hollander any question I want right now.”

“Choose wisely,” Barrett whispers beside him with a joking tone and Harris laughs.

“No, but seriously,” Ilya glares at Harris, “Choose wisely,” The glare quickly turns into a big ol’ grin and Shane decides he doesn’t even want to know what’s going on in Ilya’s brain right now.

“Okay, so,” Harris settles with his question and looks at Shane to ask it, “If you could go back in time and send one text message that you wrote but never sent, what would that text message be?”

“What?” Dykstra’s eyebrows furrow together and Shane is 90% sure that Dykstra’s a little too drunk to understand that question.

“Wait, no, I get it,” Hayes nods eagerly, “We all have that one text we think about constantly, the one that we typed out and stared at for way too long before deleting it and sending something completely different.”

“Or nothing at all,” Haas mumbles but everyone hears him and starts to hum in agreement.

There’s one that comes to Shane’s mind immediately.

Only one, really.

Because of course it does. God, he almost thought he could forget about that time in the elevator, wishing for the phantom traces of Ilya’s lips on his own.

But there weren’t any.

He’s thought about that night before a lot, he’s thought about what might’ve happened if he had sent that text. He thought about what could’ve happened. He thinks that, maybe, they could’ve figured their shit out a little bit sooner if there had been that extra ounce of vulnerability between the both of them.

Shane thinks that if he could go back in time to send that text message, maybe he would.

(He tries not to think about the logistics of the time travel too much, those are questions for another time.)

He’s obviously not sharing all of that with the group, though.

Actually, he’s not sharing any of that with the group, “Ilya, give me your beer,” Shane tries to reach for it but Ilya doesn’t let him.

“What, no,” Ilya refuses, drawling out the last word and switching the beer from the hand of the arm that was around Shane to his other one, holding it away from Shane. He’s practically whining, “You haven’t had a single turn this entire game, you cannot drink and skip your turn. You have to answer. It is good question, fun one. It is not personal or anything and-”

“I’m not answering,” Shane reaches over Ilya and snatches the beer from his hand, taking a large drink of it.

He sort of needed it after that, he thinks.

“Okay, sorry,” Ilya softens, looking at Shane, “I am very curious to know what this text message possibly could’ve been, now, though.”

“Me too!”

“Me three!”

“Me four!”

“Me five.”

“Me six, I think?”

“Well now I feel like I need to be included, so, me six.”

Boodram, Dykstra, Harris, Barrett, Haas, and Hayes say, respectively.

Shane rolls his eyes and tries to lighten up, “Well, too bad, you guys don’t get to know.”

“Can I get a hint?” Ilya asks and Shane finds it basically impossible to refuse him when his face looks like that, half-pouty with traces of genuine curiosity and almost a little bit of concern.

Shane puts Ilya’s beer back into his hand so that his own are free again, “It was to you,” He says, “that’s your hint. It was a text to you.”

“No,” Ilya fully pouts now, dragging out the ‘o’ sound, “is not good enough hint, give me better one.”

“You are so needy.”

Dykstra lets out a huff of laughter, “Woah, he just called Cap needy.”

Boodram and Barrett both join in on the laughter, “That’s something I don’t think we needed to know about him.”

“Not in that way!” Shane tries to go back on his words when he realizes what they’re implying but then there are more words just falling out of his mouth before he knows it, “Well, yes, in that way, too, sometimes, but that’s not what I was talking about!”

“Yo!” Boodram laughs loudly, him and Dykstra practically beating each other up with the way they’re hitting each other’s arms, allowing their laughter to take over basically their entire body. Or something.

Shane actually doesn’t really know what’s happening over there.

Hayes is laughing pretty hard, too. Honestly, the entire group is but Boodram and Dykstra are taking it to a whole other level.

It’s almost difficult for Shane to keep a straight face surrounded by all this laughter.

It isn’t difficult for Ilya in the slightest, though, still at Shane’s side pouting, “Hint,” He demands.

“You probably don’t even remember the night,” Shane tries to get him to move on and forget the matter at hand but Ilya refuses to.

“If it was means for an almost sent text that you still think about to this day then it was probably good day.”

“It was in 2014.”

“I remember many days from 2014.”

Shane sighs and decides to just rip off the bandaid, “Fine, it was the NHL awards. In Las Vegas? When-”

“Ah, yes,” Ilya stops Shane from speaking anymore, looking directly into his eyes and, god, they’re so beautiful, Shane can’t help but stare and listen, “Of course I remember that night, why would I not? It was quite the mind blowing night and-”

“I feel like we’re interrupting something,” Barrett says, the rest of the group humming in agreement but not making any moves to leave or give them their space.

Shane interrupts Ilya, “I don’t think you need to reiterate all the details of that night.”

“But what did you want to text that night? So important that you are currently thinking about going back in time to send it?” Ilya asks and it’s so genuine and quiet that Shane wants to answer him, he wants to tell him, but he doesn’t want half of his entire future team to see how pathetic he really is.

Ilya seems to read his mind, apparently, because the next thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Don’t worry, they already know how pathetic and boring you are. I have told them.”

Shane laughs, even though it’s an insult. He could just say it, get it over with, let it be. But, also, he already drank, which does mean he should be free from answering the truth.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make him free of Ilya’s eyes or his voice.

It just also feels like something that should be only for them, it shouldn’t be something that six other people get to hear. Hell, it’s something that Shane didn’t want anyone to hear but now that Ilya knows there’s something to hear, Shane won’t get off that easily.

“I’ll tell you later,” Shane decides, hoping that that Ilya will drop it.

He does not, opting to continue to plead, instead, “Just tell me now,” He whines and then he pauses for a moment before switching into Russian, “Is it something sexy? Or is it something sad? Or neither? Do you really want me to stop pressing? Because I will.”

Shane smiles softly because he knows that (and he also tries not to blush at his first question). He knows that Ilya will drop it in an instant if Shane really is uncomfortable but, somehow, that’s the thing. He’s not. The group is laughing and so is Shane and it feels nice (even if the text message he’s thinking about is hanging over his head like a storm cloud).

He feels like he fits in here more than he ever did with Montreal, which is saying something because he was with that team, with those guys, for a long time.

“No,” Shane responds in English because while he’s pretty good at understanding Ilya’s Russian now, he’s definitely not that confident in speaking it, “you don’t need to stop.”

This just causes Boodram to exclaim, “He knows Russian?!”

“Of course,” Ilya responds easily, back to speaking English, “I have been teaching him, he is very good student.”

Shane rolls his eyes, “My pronunciation sucks so I don’t really speak it but I can mostly understand him as long as he speaks at a slower than average speed.”

“He is not giving himself enough credit,” Ilya grumbles, “he can understand very well.”

“I’m taking my turn,” Shane stands up and goes to spin the bottle but Ilya grabs him and pulls him back into the seat.

“No, no, no, you have to tell me.”

Shane laughs and shakes his head, “No, I’m not telling you here. I already drank.”

“You could just say it for fun anyway,” Dykstra suggests, clearly wanting to know what this mystery text is.

Shane thinks about it for a moment and then decies he can’t really get any more pathetic than he already is so he sighs heavily and agrees, “Fine. But I feel like it needs context, a whole story, it won’t make sense otherwise.”

“Maybe it does not need to make sense to them. That way you do not have to be embarrassed, you can just tell me and it’ll only make sense to me and-”

Shane tries to refute that, “That wouldn’t be how it goes-”

“Wait no,” Harris interrupts, holding a hand up, “I’d like the story, I’d like for it to make sense.”

Everyone chuckles and agrees that Shane should tell the story, even though he tries to argue that it’ll be long and boring. The group decides they want to hear it, anyway.

Shane sighs before he begins, “Okay, fine. I’ll do it. Like I said, it was 2014 during the NHL awards in Las Vegas. Ilya had been ignoring me, I was angry, we presented one of the awards together and I blew up at him in a bathroom.”

“It was very hot.”

“Shut up,” Shane puts a hand over Ilya’s mouth and continues his story, “anyway, we made a deal, which I’m not going to get into the specifics of, but it was about winning MVP that year. He won, I went to his room afterward, and-”

Shane feels Ilya’s grin form underneath his hand before Ilya grabs Shane’s hand to free his mouth so he can speak, “Oh, woah, are you going to get into details? I did not think you had it in you, Hollander, but go ahead, carry on.”

Most of the group laughs but Haas looks mortified and Hayes just sighs heavily (but there’s an amused smile on his face).

“No, I literally just said I’m not getting into specifics-”

“Specifics on the bet, you never said-”

“Shut up!” Shane raises his voice but he’s laughing through it, shaking his head fondly, “Haas stop looking terrified, I’m not getting into details. Anyway,” He feels like he’s said that word a million times already, “we had our moment in his room and we were laying in bed after, having a conversation, and it got awkward.”

“We were talking about how I had to go back to Russia, he asked me questions, and I shut down,” Ilya interrupts the story to add that detail, “was very typical of me back then.”

Shane hums in agreements and continues, “He said he needed to go to sleep, I got awkward, I agree that I needed to as well, so I grabbed my things and I went to head back to my own room. But I lingered there for far too long because I felt like our interaction was incomplete.”

“I did too,” Ilya admits in a whisper.

Shane grabs Ilya’s hand and squeezes it a few times, smiling because they’re nowhere close to the people they were back then. They’ve changed a lot and it’s absolutely for the better, “I left and went to the elevator. Except, I immediately pulled out my phone and started to text him. Or- Tried to text him. I kept deleting everything I sent.”

“Okay…” Boodram trails off, motioning for Shane to keep going.

“Yeah so what’s this mystery text that you would go back in time to send?” Harris questions.

Shane takes a deep breath, “Fuck, guys, it was dumb. I don’t even wanna say it anymore. It’s gonna seem so-”

“Shane,” Ilya says his name with such conviction that it shuts him up immediately.

Or, rather, it makes him spill immediately, “’We didn’t even kiss.’”

The group is confused at first until Shane reiterates, “The text said, ’We didn’t even kiss.’ because we hadn’t before I left and it made me want it so badly and sometimes I wonder if that confession of want would’ve helped us figure out our shit earlier than we did.”

He’s never really admitted that out loud before. He’s said similar things to Ilya but nothing about that specific moment. It gives him a sense of embarrassment but, moreso, a sense of relief, that he’s finally said it out loud, put it into the world, that it’s no longer only his to bear.

Ilya doesn’t hesitate in grabbing the side of Shane’s face and veering it toward him, kissing him aggressively. Normally, Shane would push him off and tell him to stop, considering they’re in such a big group, but he can only find himself able to kiss back. He shuts his eyes and lets himself feel Ilya against him.

He doesn’t even have the ability to be overly conscious of the group around them, he doesn’t even have it in himself to care right now. He just kisses his fiance and doesn’t care.

It’s sort of refreshing.

(He knows he’ll care later, he’ll probably think about this tonight and be completely mortified with himself but that’s future him’s problem.)

He hears the group around them cheer and whoops, whistling at them and whatnot. They’re teasing them and cheering them on all in one.

Shane’s face doesn’t even light up with embarrassment.

Not even after they finally break apart and it dawns on him what just happened, what he just did in front of everybody.

Not even after Ilya says, “God, you do not know how badly I also wanted to kiss you that night, I just,” He shakes his head and Shane understands immediately. Ilya doesn’t have to say the words.

(It isn’t until immediately after that, when Ilya starts peppering kisses across his entire face, saying, “I will kiss you all of the time to make up for that. So many kisses, all of the time,” that the embarrassment finally catches up with Shane and he turns a shade of red that probably rivals the same one from Haas’ face earlier.)