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Shane lets out a breath and sinks even further into Ilya. They’re side-by-side on the couch in the cottage, Shane’s head resting on Ilya’s chest, Ilya’s fingers carding loosely through Shane’s hair.
There’s a baseball game playing on the TV in front of them, Nats against the Orioles. Neither Shane nor Ilya is particularly loyal to any baseball team, but especially not to these two. The game is bordering on white noise at this point, a backdrop to their steady, even breathing and the pattering of the rain outside.
Still, a part of Shane’s brain refused to turn off, so he’s been following along with at least the broad strokes of the game. The Nats are down in the second when the broadcast cuts to its next commercial break.
“Did you know,” Shane murmurs, soft and blissed-out, “that D.C. stole our team?”
“Hm?” Ilya’s answer is little more than a grunt, and Shane rolls his eyes, entirely too fond.
“The team that’s now the Nats used to be the Montreal Expos. The MLB moved them down to the States when I was in high school. Like 2004 or something? Everyone was pissed.”
“Why would they do this?”
Shane shrugs, the motion slightly awkward considering Ilya’s half-wrapped around him like a clinging vine. Shane doesn’t mind one bit.
“Some shit about the contracts and revenue, I think. It’s still a sore spot for the city.”
“Ah.” Ilya hums, considering. “Well, is boring game with boring rules, but even boring Canadian cities should have boring team of their own.”
Shane snorts. “Toronto still has the Jays.”
“Jays are no Red Sox,” Ilya says, puffing out his chest.
Shane twists around and raises a brow. “Oh, and since when do you follow baseball closely enough to know that?”
Ilya has declared, on multiple occasions, that baseball is the most boring sport ever invented. Shane can’t really find it in himself to disagree.
“Loyalty, Shane. I have loyalty to Boston, no matter what boring sports city wants to play.”
“Tell that to my mother,” Shane quips. “She’s getting on board with the whole Ottawa idea, but I think she’d appreciate knowing you’d go on defence for a sport you don’t even watch.”
Ilya grins, eyes crinkling. “Tomorrow at dinner, I will tell her.”
They’re heading to his parents’ cottage tomorrow to grill burgers and watch the Canada Day fireworks. Ilya’s first, and hopefully not his last. Something clenches in Shane’s chest at the thought, something tender and warm that settles deep in his heart like it’s going to live there. Forever.
The two weeks they planned to spend out here turned into the whole summer, barring any events one of them might have to attend. It was stupidly easy to ask Ilya if he wanted to stay. To bask in the way his face lit up, a grin spreading from ear to ear at Shane’s offer.
They tell each other things, here at the cottage. How they feel, what they want. It’s suspended animation, this summer that they’ve carved out for themselves. This little, perfect bubble where no one can touch them. It’s the most free Shane has felt in his whole life.
He gets to love Ilya loudly here: out in the open, on the dock by the lake, in his parents’ backyard, in the king-size bed in his room with all the blinds open and the sunlight dappling across his boyfriend’s face. It feels like barrelling across the ice at twenty miles an hour with no boards to stop him — like flying.
Now, Shane leans upward to press a soft kiss to Ilya’s jaw, lingering for a second as he watches his boyfriend’s eyes slip shut in contentment. He’ll never tire of it, seeing him like this, relaxed and at peace.
“But please, please don’t bring up the Expos,” Shane warns when he settles back down.
“Why?”
Shane huffs. “I told you my dad went to McGill?”
“Yes, good school, you said.”
“Uh huh. He was a huge Expos fan. If you so much as hint at the move, he won’t talk about anything else for hours. Literally nothing. He could give a TED Talk without having to practise at all.”
Ilya’s laugh rumbles through Shane’s chest, and he drops a kiss into his hair.
“Alright, I will not talk about Expos tomorrow…” He trails off, and Shane can feel the gears turning in Ilya’s head. Oh God. “But I will remember this information. For later… for, how do you say…”
“Ammunition?” Shane offers. Translation apparently trumps the latent urge to shove Ilya right off this sofa and onto the ground.
Ilya grins, broad enough to show all his teeth. “Yes, this. Ammunition for one day, when we are with your parents and you say Metros are best hockey team and Shane Hollander is best player.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says. “You wouldn’t.”
There’s a glint in Ilya’s eye, sharp and predatory in a way that makes Shane shiver. “Hm. Maybe not, maybe yes.”
Shane groans. “I regret ever turning on this fucking game.”
Ilya laughs, high and bright, and leans over to kiss Shane. He won’t admit this under oath, but secretly, Shane’s delighted. Delighted that Ilya is thinking far enough into the future to annoy the shit out of him during some nebulous time with his parents. Unfairly pleased that they get to plan that far ahead, no longer preciously guarding every scrap of time they have together.
He doesn’t say any of that, but he does move on the couch so he can straddle Ilya’s lap, letting out a moan as Ilya deepens the kiss, sweeping his tongue into Shane’s mouth. Shane runs his fingers through Ilya’s curls, scratching at his scalp and grinning when he shivers.
They make out for a while, touching and tasting and cataloguing without any particular destination. It’s languid and entirely unhurried. Sure, if they wanted to, this could escalate in thirty seconds flat, could turn into something else entirely, something like Shane sprawled out on the couch while Ilya takes him apart piece by piece.
Or Ilya flat on his back, Shane’s mouth wrapped around him, garbled Russian curses escaping his boyfriend’s lips.
The last time they fucked was the previous morning, on the dock. Shane had taken one look at Ilya in his swim trunks, abs glistening from the water and the sun, his chain glittering in the hollow of his throat, and practically jumped him. Sue him, but his boyfriend’s unfairly hot.
It hadn’t hurt that the cleanup was so easy after, just another dip in the lake to cool off and float for a little while.
Point is, they’ve done fast and desperate. For years. Done slow and methodical too, here at the cottage. Pretty much in every room and on every possible surface. It’s a whole new experience, and Shane’s not complaining. He’s not complaining at all.
But that little part of his brain that’s always whirring, always thinking, won’t stop. Not even now, as it latches onto a shred of a thought and spins it out into a fully-fledged realization.
Shane pulls back, just a little, so he can sit back on his haunches and look at Ilya — at his swollen lips and mussed hair and limp shoulders. He can’t help it, he grins.
“We haven’t had sex in…” Shane pauses, does the mental math to get from yesterday morning to right now, and comes up with “thirty-six hours.”
Ilya blinks. Once, twice, like he needs it to check Shane’s math and wrap his head around the stupidly broad smile on his boyfriend’s face.
“Hollander,” he eventually bites out, “Blyat. Why the fuck do you say this like it’s good thing?”
Shane laughs, and that only makes Ilya’s brow scrunch up further. He immediately feels the urge to smooth it out with his thumb, and then he does just that, because he’s allowed to. He can touch his boyfriend for whatever damn reason he wants to.
And right now, it’s this. It’s running the calloused pad of his thumb over the crease in his brow and then down his temple, swiping over his cheekbone and the mole he’s kissed a thousand times (and wants to kiss a thousand more).
He takes his time, because he loves watching Ilya squirm. And sure, maybe he’s being a little shit about it, drawing this out, but he knows Ilya would do the exact same thing.
“It’s not a good thing,” Shane says eventually. “Or, well, it’s not a bad thing, either.” God, this whole thing made so much more sense in his own head. He shrugs. “It’s… It’s been thirty-six hours and we haven’t had sex and it doesn’t matter.”
“Huh?” Ilya says again, and Shane exhales roughly.
“I’m not making sense.” He bites his lip, and doesn’t miss the way Ilya’s gaze drifts there as if on instinct. “For so many years,” he starts again, “we were working against the clock. A couple of hours before a game, a couple of hours after… There was no time.”
“We had to hurry,” Ilya says, slowly catching on. “Every time.”
“Yeah.” Shane nods, chest tightening as he thinks back to all of those years, stealing scraps of time and never getting to fully relax into it. There was always a flight to catch or a game to play or someone to hide from in a hotel.
Now, they have weeks left before the preseason and a house surrounded by a thick copse of trees.
“And don’t get me wrong, I fucking loved any time we got. Loved how we spent it. But we never got to do this.”
“Watch boring baseball game and talk about not fucking?” Ilya’s teasing, Shane knows it, his eyes soft and face open as he tries to keep the mood light. For both of them. The cottage is supposed to be happy and bright. No more hiding, no more wallowing. Not here.
“Asshole,” Shane volleys back, a familiar refrain. “We never got to just be. We haven’t had sex in a day and a half and it doesn’t matter, because we have so much time left.”
“Shane,” Ilya whispers. “Come here.”
He goes willingly, sinking down again so Ilya can kiss him, can wrap his arms around Shane’s back and hold on tight like he’s afraid he’ll float away. Their kisses turn salty, just a little, but neither of them much cares.
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya mutters in between kisses, and fuck, if that doesn’t still still shoot straight to Shane’s heart (and his dick, if he’s being honest).
“I love you, too,” he whispers back, “so fucking much.”
Shane rests his forehead against Ilya’s and they stay like that for a second, tangled together and breathing as one. Time stretches out between them, languid and slow. He’d freeze this moment if he could, bottle it up and store it away to open on a rainy day. A day when they’re apart again.
But that’s weeks away. They’re still firmly in the bubble and Shane doesn’t want to think past it. Not now.
Ilya doesn’t either, if his next words are anything to go by. “Thirty-six hour drought is very romantic, Hollander, I see this now.”
Shane feels a laugh bubble up in his throat, and he huffs out a breath, warm against Ilya’s skin.
“Words I never expected to hear from you, Rozanov.”
Ilya smirks. “I am man of many talents… no, that’s not…”
“You contain multitudes.”
“Yes, that.” Ilya lets the words sink in, another phrase to add to his ever-expanding list. “But I think romance has been established by now. I love you, you love me, we know this.”
“We do,” Shane says, heart hammering wildly in his chest.
“Good.” Ilya kisses him once, hard and fast. “So I can fuck you now, I think. Is not going to…” he gestures out, all-encompassing “... stop proving point.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Shane murmurs, already leaning down to kiss that smug little grin off of Ilya’s face.
“Mm, okay,” Ilya manages in between kisses and rearranging themselves on the couch. “But only because I have better things to do with my mouth.”
On the TV, the Nats have pulled ahead in the fourth. The announcer’s roar is white noise, dissipating into the air.