Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Ilya pulled up the course catalogue on his phone, filtering by ART. He started scrolling through the results, becoming bored immediately. DRAWING I — he skimmed the description: no mention of nude models. Next. INTRO TO FIBER ARTS. What did that even mean? Like, yarn? He decided it wasn’t worth learning. CERAMICS I. His thumb hovered over it momentarily: he did have a soft spot for Ghost. Upon closer inspection, after taking Demi Moore out of the equation, the thought of dried clay under his fingernails made his skin itch and the idea of offering a lumpy, misshapen bowl for judgment was fundamentally embarrassing. 

He growled under his breath. This was bullshit. Why on earth did a kinesiology degree require a fine arts credit and why was he only finding out about it his senior year? In retrospect, it was perhaps possible his guidance counselor had brought up his lingering missing electives every semester but it certainly hadn’t mattered until now. He pulled out his phone and sent his roommate a message.

Ilya navigated back to the course catalogue until he landed on ART 125: INTRODUCTION TO FILM PHOTOGRAPHY. The description sounded benign enough: Introduction to camera operation, composition, black-and-white film processing, darkroom techniques, and photographic printing. Lab required. Ilya considered it. He could point a camera at a backlit bowl of pears, spin it as a metaphor for the fragility of the human condition or whatever. 

He signed up.

It was Shane’s second year TA’ing intro to photography and he liked it just fine. It was mostly a bunch of jumpy freshmen who treated film like a holy ancient artifact and stumbled into each other in the darkroom like nervous puppies. Some of them surprised him with a natural gift for composition and said thoughtful things during critiques. It was relatively easy work, allowed him expanded access to the department, and gave him pocket change which he inevitably spent on film instead of necessities. 

Naturally, he got along better with the other BFA majors and not the kids who came in expecting an easy A, the ones who asked if they really had to use film because iPhones had much better cameras now, didn’t they? Sometimes, blissfully, these students transferred out before the deadline and other times he was stuck with a jock for a semester who called aperture ‘the hole thing’ until the last day of class. When Ilya walked into class, tall and broad and wearing a backwards baseball cap (why did they do that, did it not negate the entire purpose of wearing a hat?), he knew exactly which category he fit into.

The class was small by necessity and rollcall didn’t take long, Professor Anderson running through it quickly while Shane marked each student down and tried to put a face to a name. He was terrible at names, but hey, you didn’t work particularly well in a darkroom. 

“Rozanov, Ilya?” Anderson called, pronouncing it EE-lee-uh.

“Here.” It came from the back of the room, heavily accented. Russian, he thought. Shane looked up and EE-lee-uh met his eye briefly before looking back down at his phone, disinterested. He glanced at the student roster, marking off the name and noticing the “athletic travel accommodations” note under his name. 

Anderson must have seen it as well. “Tell us when your travel schedule is finalized.” Ilya gave a curt nod. Shane bit down the urge to roll his eyes. School athlete: fucking called it. Anderson’s fingers lingered on the attendance sheet, index finger still hovering in place.

“Did I say your name correctly?”

“No,” said Ilya, not unkindly. There was a scatter of laughter from the class. Anderson waited; he was unnecessarily patient. “EE-Lya,” he clarified.

Shane rolled the syllables over and over in his head, trying to commit them to memory. Ilya Ilya Ilya. He glanced back down at the student list and half-listened to Professor Anderson go over the syllabus. He gave an awkward half-wave to the class as he was introduced as Mr. Hollander, which he really wished Anderson would stop doing, and tuned out again as he complimented his photography skills and gestured to one of his prints on the wall, one from his showcase last year of his mom’s glasses sitting haphazardly on a stack of books, her graceful hand caught mid-motion in the background. Sometimes his prior work made him cringe; at least this one he still liked.

Anderson split the class into two, one group touring the small darkroom with Shane while Anderson did basic camera orientation with the other half. As they always did, the students in the darkroom giggled nervously when Shane switched the darkroom to the dim red glow of the safelight. Shane’s eyes adjusted quickly, intimately familiar with the layout of the room, the stainless steel trays in neat lines where he left them, chemical bottles he knew by feel. A too-large body brushed behind him— EE-lya— and he ignored it and the subsequent crawling goosebumps under his shirt sleeves, going over the enlargers and the order of the chemical baths when processing prints. Developer, stop bath, fixer. Every time. Easy and orderly, the way things belonged.

“Any questions?” Ilya raised his hand because of course he did. Shane suppressed a sigh. “Yes?”

“So how much of this is real rules and how much of this is like, art rules?”

The red light they bathed in colored everybody equally and Shane couldn’t remember what Ilya’s true eye color was when it wasn’t lit up like a demon’s.

“Chemicals don’t care about ‘art rules’, Mr. Rozanov,” he announced, irritated, turning away. He heard Ilya snicker at the title and didn’t care. “If your print comes out terrible, which it will, it’s usually your fault, not the chemicals.”

“Jesus, give me a chance to fuck up first, Mr. Hollander,” Ilya said under his breath. Shane heard him, the acoustics were excellent in here, and let it go. He led his students out of the darkroom and exchanged them for Anderson’s group, who already looked flustered. Good, he thought, let them all lose the illusions of an easy A now. Shane absently drummed his fingertips on the countertop while waiting for the next group to line up behind him like a darkroom Pied Piper. He found Ilya’s eyes again; definitely hazel outside of the narrow confines of the darkroom.  Anderson cleared his throat before the groups swapped and Shane came back into himself. 

“Anybody who plans to rent department cameras for the semester, please see Mr. Hollander after class.” Shane nodded to himself, thinking about how he was going to have to watch half these students toss their backpacks down each class with their precious rented cameras rattling around unprotected while he flinched internally. But they signed the liability form, not him. They should have consequences if they couldn’t protect one precious thing for fifteen weeks.

He pulled out the equipment at the end of class while students trickled out, some lingering to check out cameras with him. Ilya was one of the last at his table and Shane put his glasses back on one last time to go over the forms and equipment. He reached under the table and picked up a camera at random, sliding it over to Ilya, who stared at it blankly.

“Do you perhaps have a model that doesn’t predate the Cold War, Mr. Hollander?” he said, lips curling around the edges. Shane suspected he was incapable of being serious. This is usually when he moved on to a gentler please, call me Shane, but it didn’t quite feel like Ilya had earned that yet. 

“Just trying to make you feel like you’re home, Mr. Rozanov,” Shane quipped, hoping he had guessed the accent correctly.

He must’ve gotten it right because Ilya’s lip twitched as he took the camera from Shane, his hand running over Shane’s. Shane pulled his hand back quickly, handing him the liability form to sign. Ilya scanned it.

“A $300 fine seems excessive for a camera that’s been around for longer than Putin’s regime,” he noted, signing it anyway. 

“Then don’t break it,” Shane said easily, handing him a light meter. 

Ilya huffed. “I won’t.” He dropped it into his backpack in a way that suggested otherwise and Shane bit the inside of his lip in frustration, feeling the ridges hours later whenever he ran his tongue over it. Ilya adjusted his hat, rubbing a hand through sandy blond curls before replacing it. “But if I do, I’ll just sell my body,” he said casually, throwing in the light meter to clatter on top of the camera. Shane bit down harder on his lip, drawing out the smallest drop of blood, swallowing it down before it could reach sharks in the water.

“Be more careful, Rozanov,” he said evenly, tucking his form in alongside the rest of his classmates. 

Ilya swung his backpack on, moving towards the door.  “I’m always careful. Maybe care less, Hollander. See you for lab Thursday.”

Shane vaguely knew he sounded insufferable when he called, “Lab C is actually on Fridays,” in response.

Ilya paused at the doorframe, throwing once last sidelong glance at Shane. “Friday, then.” 

Then he was gone and if not for the waiver in front of him with Ilya Rozanov printed in three separate places in a surprisingly neat script, Shane could almost pretend he hadn’t met him at all.

Photography was going to be more annoying than he initially anticipated but it wasn’t anything Ilya couldn’t handle. He could handle fucking Russia and asshole Canadian hockey players and everything in between; he had approximately eight thousand five hundred kilometers of walls built up before anything could touch him. What was four months with an outdated camera with a button that was permanently sticky? So what if he had a TA with an ego problem tucked neatly under a soft-looking sweater whose freckles cut the venom of his words by at least fifty percent? 

They would be interesting to photograph, maybe. The freckles. 

After a brief lecture on composition, the first assignment was just shooting a roll of film, which was easy enough if you ignored the part about all the dumb art rules. Ilya was pretty sure they were suggestions at best no matter how fervently Shane nodded along to the explanations about rules of thirds. Ilya propped his chin in his hand, studying his side profile briefly and wondering if he looked like he was solving trigonometry when he photographed. Surely he would be better suited as a math major instead of pretending art had natural laws instead of rules that were meant to be broken. 

The most frustrating thing about shooting film, besides feeling like an absolute tool pulling out his decrepit camera in the middle of campus, was there was no way to look back at the image he had just taken. He had to wait until the darkroom lab to see anything at all and he was not particularly patient. On the ice, results were immediate: put your edge here to pivot, place your stick this way to steal the puck. His usefulness during games was doled out in twenty second increments, based on split-second decisions and what he could will his body to do now. He wasn’t used to waiting. 

Film asked him to wait a week to see if he had done anything right at all. He hated it. He waffled after each shot; should he take multiple pictures of the same thing in case he fucked up? No, it wasn’t important, not really,  and he had been lectured multiple times that each roll of film contained exactly thirty-six chances at a passing grade. Still, he liked the way his skates had fallen with laces tumbled out across the floor so he took another picture, not thinking about the rule of thirds at all.

The first few darkroom labs were more about letting everybody make the same series of mistakes versus getting any usable prints. There was already someone who had loaded their film wrong and was now on the verge of tears while Anderson patted her back awkwardly, reassuring her that everybody had done this. Shane never had, actually, but he kept that to himself. 

After (most) everyone had developed negatives, Shane helped his lab develop their contact sheets, a preview of every frame arranged in careful lines. It always felt a little invasive, seeing how everybody chose to spend their precious shots. He learned more about the students here than he ever did in class. He uselessly adjusted the tongs in the development tray and glanced over his shoulder at the enlarger, where someone was definitely overexposing their paper.

“Toss it and try again,” he called. They huffed in frustration. He turned his back around and startled to find Ilya there, holding his blank paper gingerly by one minuscule corner.

“Hollander,” he said neutrally. 

“Jesus Christ, Rozanov.” He shook himself. “I didn’t see you.”

Ilya continued to hold his contact sheet like it was contaminated. “It is dark. In a darkroom,” he supplied helpfully.

Shane glared at him before realizing the full effect would be lost. Because it was dark. “Put it in the developer. You don’t have to be afraid to touch the paper right now, it’ll be fine.”

Ilya obliged, laying the sheet in the tray and bending down close to Shane to watch the images slowly bloom across the page.

“Wow,” he said softly, his breath warm against Shane’s cheek, smelling like cigarettes and cinnamon gum.

Shane smiled despite himself. “It gets less magical after maybe the twenty-fifth print,” he noted, agitating the tray absently. 

“Then why keep doing it?” Ilya asked, sounding genuinely curious. 

“Because it gets magical again after the hundredth. I think, anyway.” He felt Ilya nod next to him. Realizing how close he was, he took a step to the side, clearing his throat. “Give it another minute and then move it to the stop bath. Keep the tongs in their respective trays so you don’t cross contaminate. They’re color coded.”

“Yes. You said so on the first day,” Ilya said flatly, using Shane’s precious tongs to move his print to the next bin. “It’s ruined so easily?”

“Not by just one wrong pass but over time.”

“So is not emergency.”

“If it’s nobody’s emergency then nobody cares and eventually the entire class has photos that don’t develop correctly.”

Ilya gasped in mock scandalization. “Oh dear.”

Shane ran his tongue over the previous Ilya-related lip bite (when he took his film out of the developer early because it felt ready) which was almost as satisfying as the initial hurt.

“You can move it to the fixer now,” Shane said, deciding he had suffered enough and it was time to make rounds at the enlarger. He continued to hover anyway. “The tongs—“

“I will put the tongs back where they belong, oh my god,” Ilya groaned, moving the paper to the adjacent tray and making a show of slowly putting the tongs back in a neat line. 

“Good. Five minutes here.”

“Go bother someone else then. I'm relatively certain I can’t ruin your life in five minutes.”

Shane wasn’t so sure.

Ilya had always thought of photography being fast paced; point, shoot, done. Instead he was pacing around the dark room while his contact sheet swam in running water for three to five minutes according to the laminated signs that he was certain Shane had made. When he landed back in front of the water bath he paused, watching his sheet drift lazily through it. At least one of them was relaxed. He glanced at the clock; one more minute, at least. He spun and took a long stride directly into Shane’s chest. He backed up a step and rubbed at his collarbones.

“Rozanov, chill,” Shane said, exasperated. “You are going to kill someone in here. Fucking stand still.”

Ilya let out a long exhale through his nose. “Too much waiting,” he said simply. “I get bored.”

“Then you will learn patience long before you ever print anything decent,” he snapped. “You can put it on the drying rack now.”

Ilya exhaled with the relief of having something to do with his hands and fished out the contact sheet, setting it next to the others, lined up precisely like tinned soldiers.

“And now?”

“You wait for it to dry,” Shane said, barely able to hide his glee. Ilya closed his eyes briefly. He might as well be taking a class on watching paint dry.

Shane peered over the drying rack. He didn’t often wear glasses outside of the darkroom but he almost always did in here, he noticed. Ilya leaned over, following his gaze, able to make out each frame from his roll of film for the first time. He was vaguely aware that they were almost all wrong in some imperceptible way. Too light, crooked horizon, soft focus. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He gritted his teeth. He didn’t like not naturally excelling at things, which is why he clung to hockey, something his body understood on an instinctual level.

Shane leaned in closer, squinting at the first two frames. “Ice skates?”

“Hockey,” Ilya confirmed. Shane nodded, scanning the rest of the frames. Leaves collected on the edge of the sidewalk (unfocused), a janitor pushing a mop at the end of the dorm hall (overexposed), a dog passing through the quad (underexposed). Ilya squirmed slightly, wanting to snatch the contact sheet away from his prying eyes which was absurd because it was just skates. 

“Not just hockey,” Shane said quietly, running his finger over the last row of images before straightening and unnecessarily smoothing his shirt. “You can go, pick it up next class.”

Ilya brushed past Shane, heading towards the heavy black curtains that separated the darkroom entrance from the classroom. 

“Thank god.”

“To recap, the next assignment is to submit at least three images demonstrating different compositional techniques that have been discussed so far. Negative space, rules of thirds, framing, leading lines. Keep them in mind while you’re shooting, it’s a lot harder to justify the intended technique after the fact,” Shane said, looking directly at Ilya for the last line. Ilya smiled at him blithely and raised his hand. Shane shook his head. “You have to learn the rules first before you break them.” Ilya took his hand down, muttering something that sounded a lot like convenient before packing his bag. 

Shane took his time leaving, waiting for the room to clear, and watched as his roommate Hayden squeezed past the parade of students, clipping shoulders with Ilya as he walked past. Hayden turned back, frowning at the back of Ilya’s head until he was swallowed by the crowd.

“Rozanov is taking intro photography? Isn’t he getting drafted?”

Shane looked up from the grading rubric. “Drafted where?”

Hayden blinked at him. “The moon.” Shane cocked his head. “The NHL, Shane. Jesus Christ.”

“Oh. Yeah, he’s a hockey player, I guess.”

Hayden snorted. “He is like the hockey player here, my guy.”

Shane shrugged lightly. “He’s a pain in my ass is what he is.”

Hayden barked a laugh. “Well, at least we know he won’t be getting preferential treatment in your class.”

“How do you even know him? You don’t really go to hockey games.”

“First of all, everybody knows that and second of all, I’m the features editor of The Fulcrum, I am basically paid to be the school gossip. Highly recommend.”

“That sounds like my living nightmare but thanks.”

“Speaking of, we could use a photographer for the school musical this year.”

Shane groaned. “Can anybody actually carry a tune this year? My ears are only now recovering from the production of Sweeney Todd last year.”

“Honestly, to be determined. But how important is singing in Rocky Horror Picture Show really?”

“Historically pretty important, I think.”

“Well. I’ll buy your groceries for a week.”

Shane swung on his backpack. “Fine.”

Ilya walked home from practice, muscles pleasantly sore, a cool breeze laced with damp leaves creeping in between layers of clothing until he zipped his jacket over the camera around his neck. His backpack was full of text books, crumpled papers and protein bars and the camera was so damn bulky. Maybe his neck becoming absurdly strong through the semester would be useful to hockey somehow.

He slowed slightly as he rounded the corner leading to his dorm, a row of maple trees dotting the street. Shane was sitting cross-legged against one of them, hoodie pulled up, writing something in a notebook with his camera discarded beside him. The tree trunk rose behind Shane’s head like it was an extension of him, leading into a crown of dying leaves. 

He had sort of forgotten that Shane could exist outside of the claustrophobic walls of the darkroom, that his skin was golden and not permanently cast in the eerie red glow of a safelight, that his jaw was not permanently clenched in tension. The latter may have been because Ilya wasn’t there to call him Mr. Hollander but, in his defense, it made a particular vein in Shane’s forehead bulge in an extremely satisfying way. Especially if Ilya had already made him run a frustrated hand back through his hair after leaning against the enlarger again.

Ilya unzipped his coat, slowly bringing up his camera to his eye and carefully centering the picture before capturing the image with a pleasing clack. He zipped his jacket back up and kept walking, trying to decide what rule of composition the photo accomplished. He thought he could probably successfully argue for leading lines. 

Shane looked up from his notebook, letting his eyes blink away from the tiny rectangles he had sketched for composition planning. He had always liked this particular row of maple trees and hadn’t yet captured them in a way that felt authentic. He scanned the campus, perpetually looking for his next shot, and landed on Ilya’s back, team logo emblazoned on the back of his coat, headphones on and half overtaken by his growing mess of curls.

He tapped his pencil against his paper, following Ilya’s movement to what presumably was his dorm. The light was good right now, he noted absently; golden hour. Ilya removed his headphones, moving them to rest on his shoulder. He paused and crouched down next to the door. Shane couldn’t figure out why until he noticed the small movement of a slinking ginger cat at his ankles. He had seen it before, thought it belonged to someone in the apartments across the street. Ilya offered the cat his hand, waiting, and after circling just out of reach, it nudged into Ilya’s hand. He saw him smile, soft and unguarded, as the cat settled by his feet, suddenly shameless in its demand for attention.

Shane had his camera out before he fully realized what he was doing, framing a still-smiling Rozanov against the doorframe, the cat nuzzling into him, everything blanketed in honey-colored light. As he lowered his camera, Ilya raised his, pointing it at the cat as she flopped down next to him into a bush.

Was it weird that he’d taken a picture of Ilya? No, it would’ve been a waste not to take advantage of the light, he reasoned. He made a quick note in the notebook margins before gathering his things:

Frame 13

Russell Hall

Golden hour

Orange cat

Ilya didn’t seem particularly relevant.