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Ilya jolts awake. He blinks into the darkness, his skin feeling sticky with sweat. Partially because of the dream, but also because, as his eyes adjust to the moonlight peeking in through the windows, he realizes they never turned on the overhead fan before bed. Shane is going to complain when he wakes up sweaty, but Ilya can’t find it in himself to get up and turn it on.
He rarely dreams about the plane malfunction anymore. It's been well over a year since it happened, and in the months following, it felt like he was reliving it almost every night. Sometimes, it played out exactly like it had happened, with a terrifying but safe landing. Other times, he didn’t survive at all. Sometimes, there were minor changes, like the cause of the incident or even as small as him not being able to message Shane. And occasionally, there would be major changes to the reality of what went down.
Like tonight, when Shane had been in the aisle across from him. And no matter how hard Ilya had tried, no matter how he had fought, he’d been incapable of reaching him. His eyes had snapped open right before they hit the ground.
Ilya swallows thickly and turns his head. Shane is there, of course. Safe and alive and breathing. They always move away from each other in the middle of the night, because Shane overheats easily and Ilya naturally runs warm. For one terrifying second, Ilya thinks that when he reaches out, there will be some invisible wall that stops him from touching his husband. He rolls onto his side and reaches forward, his hand pausing midair just before touching Shane’s shoulder.
It’s silly, because he knows it was a dream, and he knows some cosmic force is not going to keep them apart in the safety of their own bed. Still, Ilya hesitates for a second before his fingers gently touch Shane’s shoulder. An embarrassing amount of relief flows through him.
Carefully, so he doesn’t wake Shane, Ilya scoots forward and curls an arm around his waist. Shane’s skin is slightly tacky with sweat, and so is Ilya’s, but he can’t find it in him to mind. His chest presses against Shane’s back, and kisses his shoulder once, very softly.
Some combination of the moving and touching must be too much, because Shane grunts quietly and shifts.
“Ilya,” he slurs. Ilya can imagine the little pout on his face, his scrunched-up eyebrows. “M’hot.”
“Sorry,” Ilya murmurs, but he doesn’t move. He can’t. Now that he has Shane in his arms, he physically can’t let go. It might kill him.
But Shane has no idea of the emotional turmoil going on in his husband’s head, so he sluggishly tries to push Ilya’s arm off. An irrational bolt of panic flares through him, and he tightens it automatically.
“No,” he says, the word sounding a little too loud in the dead of night. It’s enough to catch Shane’s attention, even in this state.
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Wha’s wrong?”
“Bad dream,” Ilya softens his voice again. “Go back to sleep. Just let me— need to hold you. Please.”
Shane hums lowly, and for a second, Ilya thinks he will let it go. “Lemme turn around,” he says, his speech still slurred but sounding a little more awake. Part of Ilya doesn’t want to, because then Shane will see everything he can’t bring himself to hide on his face. But also, Ilya really wants to see more of Shane. So he loosens his grip.
Shane turns, and as he does, Ilya slips his other arm beneath Shane’s neck. They kick the covers away completely, allowing a little bit of cool air to wash over them. Shane’s arm slings over Ilya’s waist.
“Hi,” he murmurs, blinking at him. He looks so tired, like he’s fighting slumber to make sure Ilya is okay.
“Hi,” Ilya whispers. “You can sleep.”
“What w’s your dream about?”
“Shane—“
“Tell me,” Shane presses softly. “M’awake now.”
That was debatable, but Ilya knows Shane won’t let this go. “The plane,” he says. “But you were there, too. I could not get to you. It was horrible.”
Shane's expression melts into sympathy, his eyes studying Ilya in the dark. “I’m sorry.”
“Was just a dream.”
“It’s still scary, though,” Shane says, and after a moment, Ilya nods. It was scary. When it happened, and every time he’s relived it in his sleep. Shane picks up Ilya’s arm from where it’s curled around him, and brings his hand up to Shane’s chest. He rests Ilya's palm over his heart.
It’s beating, of course. Strong and steady, and so familiar. “I’m okay,” Shane whispers. His own hand presses to Ilya’s chest. “And you’re okay. Yeah?”
“Yes,” Ilya whispers, focusing on the steady thump of Shane’s heart. “I know this. I know.”
“Good,” Shane says. He shifts even closer to Ilya until they’re flush against each other, their hearts only inches apart through their skin. Ilya imagines they beat in sync, because why wouldn’t they? Everything about Shane matches him so perfectly, it only makes sense that the tempo of their hearts would line up, too.
Ilya inhales the scent of Shane’s hair. There’s a very faint hint of his shampoo — some leafy plant with a long name that Ilya always pronounces wrong — and a bit of sweat now, from the heat. It’s intoxicating.
“Love you, baby,” Shane murmurs, kissing Ilya’s collarbone once, twice.
Neither of them used pet names often — after spending so long calling each other exclusively by their last names, it was so freeing to call each other by their first names. But sometimes, when one of them is feeling particularly sweet, one slips out. Mainly sweetheart or solnyshko (sunshine), if it’s coming from Ilya. Always baby, if it’s coming from Shane.
“I love you so much,” he says into Shane’s hair. He feels overwhelmed with love for his husband. All the time, yes, but especially right now, when Shane is fighting sleep just so he can talk about Ilya’s bad dream.
His hand slides up Shane’s spine, over his shoulder, and curves under his jaw. He pulls back enough to see his pretty face. It’s too dark to see all of his freckles, but he can make out a few of the prominent ones. And he’s memorized them enough to know where the rest are anyway. Shane’s brown eyes are black now, but they still look warm and soft, because they always do when they look at Ilya.
“I did not even know I could love someone this much,” he says, the words barely a whisper between them. “I never thought that I would have… someone who loved me like this. I did not think I would be so lucky.”
If possible, Shane gets even softer. The corners of his lips curve upward, and he leans into Ilya’s touch. “Maybe it wasn’t luck,” he says. “Maybe it was fate. Like we were… I don’t know, meant to be.”
“Mm, I think it is luck that you fell in love with me. I never thought anyone would.”
Shane blinks, his brow furrowing a little. “Why would you think that?” His thumb rubs back and forth where his hand lies flat against the base of Ilya’s spine.
Ilya has talked with his therapist before about his insecurities with love, but it is another thing entirely to tell Shane. Plus, Galina kind of pulled it out of him, like she does most things he doesn’t want to admit he struggles with.
Ilya averts his eyes, shrugging a little. “I am maybe hard to love, I think. People wanted me because I am good at things, like hockey or sex. The people who were supposed to love me did not. The only person who did still left me.” The words feel stilted. He remembers saying this to Galina, albeit in a much messier, drawn-out, angrier way. “I think I got lucky with you. Or I tricked you, somehow.”
Shane’s lips have parted in shock, the most bewildered expression on his face. He pushes on Ilya’s shoulder and rolls them so that Shane is all but laying on him, both of his hands coming up to cradle his face.
“Luck has nothing to do with this,” Shane says seriously. “For all of your faults, and we definitely both had some when we were young, you have always been good to me where it counted. It wasn’t luck that I fell for you. It was just… you. You weren’t even trying, but I fell in love with you because you are easy to love. Anyone who made you think otherwise is wrong.”
Ilya feels like he can’t inhale properly. He stares up at his husband, trying to compute all of his words. But Shane isn’t done.
“My parents love you, because they know you take care of me. The team loves you, not just because you’re good at hockey, but because you’re a good leader and a good teammate. The people who know you love you because you make it very easy,” he says. And Ilya can feel how much he means it, from the sincerity in his voice and the way he’s holding Ilya’s face like he’s something precious.
“It is maybe luck that we both like dick, no?” Ilya tries to joke, hoping his voice isn’t as shaky as he feels. Shane lets out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes. He knows that by Ilya not denying anything he’d just said, the words had gotten through.
“Sure, we got lucky that we’re both attracted to men,” he concedes. “Everything else was just us, though.”
“And you think it was fate?” Ilya whispers. He’s never given much thought to fate. It’s hard to believe everything happens for a reason when so much of his life has been so hard. But… that life did lead him here, so maybe Shane has a point.
“Yeah,” Shane nods. “I think I was made for you.”
Ilya feels like he’s going to explode. “Mr. Romantic,” he breathes. But in the dark, it’s not so hard to admit, “I was made for you, too, I think.”
“I know you were,” Shane grins. “No one else likes boring Canadian men as much as you do. I’m basically your only choice.”
He is Ilya’s only choice, but not for the reasons he’s implying. He’s the only one Ilya could ever choose because he’s the only one who's ever given Ilya an ounce of patience and love. The only one who’s ever treated Ilya with the care that he didn’t even know he deserved before Shane showed it to him.
“I love you so much,” Ilya says again, in case Shane has managed to forget in the seven minutes since he last said it. Shane leans in and kisses him slowly, the feeling of it lingering even after he pulls back.
“I love you, too,” he says.
Ilya smooths a hand up Shane’s spine. “Go back to sleep, moy serdtse (my heart).”
Shane blinks a few times, like he’s scanning the Russian catalogue of words in his head. And then he tilts his head and smiles.
“My heart?” he whispers.
“Da,” Ilya nods. “Because it is all yours.”
“And you call me Mr. Romantic.”
“Well, we are married, so now we are both Mr. Romantic.”
Shane snorts quietly and settles on Ilya’s chest, tucking his face into the crook of his neck. “I love you,” he says, lips brushing over Ilya’s pulse. His body is already starting to relax, like his husband is the world’s most comfortable mattress.
Ilya holds him tight, kissing his head. Their hearts, only a few inches apart, beat together. “I love you, too.”