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“What did you call it?”
Ilya shrugs, frowns and shoves a frankly-unhinged amount of mustard-covered fries into his mouth, because he’s a freak. “Mutsid,” he says, having to tilt his head back a little and practically unhinge his jaw to make enough room to form the words.
The smile that starts on Shane’s face is slow but widens inexorably. “Once more?”
He sees Ilya’s frown deepen, watches as his eyes dart away even as he obstinately lifts his chin and swallows. “No,” he growls, and Shane is horrified to realise that he’s embarrassed.
“Hey,” he says, unable to help but reach out and grab Ilya’s hand, kissing his fingertips before licking the salt off them.
Which then devolves into fucking on the dining room table in full daylight like the degenerates they are. They’re at the cottage, so they’ve got nothing but time and a limitless supply of lube, but that’s how it starts.
Shane doesn’t care to correct him.
It happens again.
They keep a running grocery list on the fridge, each of them adding to it when they think of something or run out of something else. Shane goes to pull open the fridge to grab out milk for their coffee when he sees it. Four items, three in his handwriting, but the last…
Bread
Paper towel
Floss
…
chichen nuggest
Shane stares at the words for a long moment, then he takes a moment to check in with himself and realise that the weird, squirmy warmth in his chest is delight. He is delighted by his boyfriend’s phonetic misspellings and mispronunciations of his favourite foods. He kind of wants to sit Ilya down and make him write a bunch of random foods that Shane dictates to him, see what he comes up with, but he remembers the embarrassment over the objectively-adorable kepchup and says nothing.
But he keeps the list after the items have been purchased.
Dad sends him one.
Make sure it’s an early bedtime for your boy, baby, the text says, I think he’s tired. Attached to the message is a screenshot of Dad’s text chain with Ilya. There’s a message from Dad at the top of the screen asking Ilya what icecream he wants them to pick up from the store for him. There’s a seventeen second voice note icon following it, and then a series of text boxes that say
The white one, please.
That we had from the musical truck, it has the crunchy colour pieces?
The soft one with the ranibow sprimkle……..??
And how is he supposed to NOT kiss Ilya about it? Be there in 10, he sends back to Dad, even if Ilya is confused by the enthusiastic greeting when Shane arrives.
He tastes like confetti soft serve, and Shane goes back in for more.
He genuinely doesn’t hear it the next time, exhausted and distracted with sorting the washing. “Sorry, Ilya, what did you say?”
Ilya mutters something beneath his breath, barely audible from where he’s standing on the other side of the wall separating the kitchen from the laundry. “Do we have any cream cheems left?”
Shane’s already-tired brain just screeches to a halt and he starts to grin. “I… don’t think so?” he calls back, dropping the shirt he’s spraying stain remover onto and coming around and into the kitchen. He’s rewarded by the sight of Ilya’s hamstrings pulling tight beneath his incredible ass in a pair of Shane’s own running shorts as he bends at the hips and rummages through the fridge.
“No fucking tomatoes, no fucking cream cheems, no fucking spinch, this is how I die, gospodi…” he’s muttering as he searches, accent particularly thick with irritation.
It’s coming to the end of the regular season, and they’ve got one last game between them tomorrow night for the decider on who’s going through to the playoffs. They’re both tired, both of their teams plagued with injury, and they’re both hungry all the fucking time. Apparently Ilya is about to starve to death, and Shane can’t be having that.
He comes up behind him, rests his hands on Ilya’s slim hips and presses up against him, his everpresent arousal obvious. Ilya startles, presses back into Shane’s touch as he straightens up. “Why don’t we order in?”
Ilya turns in his hands and absently shoves the fridge door closed, eyeing him suspiciously. “This is a trick, yes?”
Shane shakes his head slowly, smiling so widely he can feel the way it shapes his face. “Nope.” He pulls Ilya in closer, kisses him. “You’re hungry, I’m hungry, and it’s my fault we have no cream cheems or spinch, so it’s the least I can do.”
“Fuck off,” Ilya scowls. “I starve to death here in shitty Canadian food desert and you mock my English?”
So much to unpack there. “Okay, Montreal is not a food desert, Ilya, jesus christ. And I’m not mocking your English, I’m charmed by it. You are charming, okay? Do you know that word?”
Ilya’s eyes are doing that thing where they flick all over Shane’s face, cataloguing Shane doesn’t know what, until the subtle tightness around his eyes relaxes. “Want to know what word I learn recently?”
“Probably not,” Shane says with the healthy suspicion borne of having long known Ilya as a person.
“Hummer,” Ilya announces proudly, and Shane’s a goner, laughing loud and unrestrained.
“You did not just learn that word,” he argues, partly because there’s no way Ilya’s spent a decade in North America and never heard that particular euphemism before, but mostly because he loves arguing with Ilya about everything.
Shane feels Ilya shrug beneath his wandering hands, now roaming slowly up and down the warm muscles of Ilya’s back. “I learn word, but do not know meaning,” he lies, lies, lies. Shane’s hands travel mostly down, now. “Maybe you explain this to poor old-world immigrant boy,” Ilya suggests, tilting his hips forward suggestively as Shane palms his ass.
And… well, why not? Shane’s a big fan of learning. He drags Ilya’s phone out of his pocket and shoves it into his hands before dropping to his knees. “Order food for us while I… educate.”
This time it’s Ilya’s laughter that fills the room.
Ilya explains it to him once, after Shane laughs himself stupid at his repeated attempts to pronounce ‘cinnamon’ while frustratedly describing what a simanim tumble is. ‘Sweet curly bread with simanim and shiny sugar sauce’ really wasn’t helpful, it turns out, and Ilya’s growing irritation just made it funnier. When Shane finally figures out that Ilya has been trying to describe a cinnamon roll (simanim tumble, Ilya, oh my fucking god, that’s adorable!) he laughs so hard he gives himself hiccups.
“My father was always so critical of American imperialism, we were not… encouraged to learn English,” Ilya tells him later that night, running his fingers through Shane’s shower-damp hair where his head rests on Ilya’s chest. “So I only learn English words for hockey things- offside and forecheck, defense, power play. I learn words for chirps, too, a little. Then I move here, learn how to order drinks and get numbers from pretty girls.” He tilts Shane’s face up with a finger beneath his chin to kiss him on the nose. “And pretty boys.”
He sighs. “I learn things because of need, necessity. I do not start out with fun, easy things… I am here for almost two years before I learn word for sobaka.”
“Dog,” Shane murmurs, because he knows that one.
Ilya hums his agreement. “For a long time I just pointed at things on menu to order; I did not know any food words. Some are the same, like brokkoli and mayonez and kofe, but many are not. I can buy things I recognise from grocery store, or have meal prep service provide, but I do not need to know these words so much.”
Shane turns that over in his head for a while. “You know that when I laugh, it’s not because I’m mocking you, right?” he says, watching Ilya’s face carefully, because it’s so important for him to know this. “I only know basic French, just enough to get by, really, so I know a little of what it’s like for you, but I know enough to have a huge amount of respect for your skill with English, how you twist it to suit your humour, how you can work around the things you don’t know. And how fast you learn.” He waits for Ilya to meet his eyes, pleased that there’s no suspicion there, just a faint pink blush across his cheeks at the praise. “I just think it’s really cute that you called them strawbebbies one time.”
“They were very little, like tiny red babies with little green hats!” Ilya immediately protests the way Shane knew he would, and he smirks up at Ilya, all teeth. “I mixed up ‘strawberries’ and ‘babies’.”
“Of course,” Shane says with false placation.
Ilya’s eyes narrow. “Твои веснушки как звёзды,” he says, his voice suddenly deeper, tone suggestive.
Shane's breath hitches in his throat. He doesn’t know what the sentence means, but he hedges his bets based on the one word he recognises. “Don’t even try it,” he says, “I know vesnushki means ‘freckles’.”
With a sudden rush of movement Shane finds himself flat on his back on the bed, Ilya’s body on top of his. “Very good, malysh,” he purrs, and Shane is suddenly rock hard and ready to go as Ilya leans in to murmur against his ear, “and now you know how to say ‘I will paint your freckles with my come’.”
There’s not much to say for a while after that.
They’re packing up to get ready for another summer at the cottage when Ilya turns to Shane and asks if they will have more boring fire to look at for hours.
“If you want,” Shane says, glancing up from his packing list. “Why’s that?”
“We will need marjmarlows, then.”
Shane’s grin is immediate and Ilya just sighs, rolls his eyes. “What.”
“Marjmarlows,” Shane laughs. “So cute.”
But instead of huffily pretending to be offended like he usually does now, Ilya frowns. “No, this is correct way of saying.” At Shane’s raised eyebrows he holds his thumb and index finger up in an approximation of size. “Pink and white things, yes? Squishy, powder on outside?”
Now they’re both confused. Shane leans one hip against the counter and gives him his full attention. “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about, but that’s not how you say it. It’s marshmallow.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Baby, it’s written on the packet,” Shane tells him.
Ilya shrugs. “I have never seen this. Once we make s’mores on Connors’ gas stove, with chocolate cookies and marjmarlows.”
Shane is still confused, but now he’s also suspicious. “Who’s we?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said ‘we’ made s’mores. Who else was with you?”
Unsure where this line of questioning is leading, but still game, Ilya shrugs. “Me, Connors, Vicky and Marly.”
And yep, there it is. “Who told you they’re called marjmarlows?”
Frowning a little, as though trying to remember, Ilya worries at his lip with his teeth. “I don’t- no, they say the word, Vicky I think, and when I do not know it I repeat it, and Marly says yes, that’s right, and then we make s’mores.”
Shane’s smile returns in full force. “Marly told you.”
“Yes.”
“Marly, as in, Cliff Marlow?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, a touch impatient now. “You know him, I think.”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Shane says, “As in, Cliff marj-Marlow?” with particular emphasis.
It takes less than a heartbeat, because no one has ever been able to call Ilya slow. “Son of a bitch!” he exclaims, yanking his phone out of his pocket and stabbing at the screen with an angry finger.
It’s the most American Shane’s ever heard him sound, and as a stream of Russian invective is directed down through the connected call to wherever Marly is in Boston, Shane just laughs and writes marjmarlows on his list.