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Shane untangles himself from Ilya and stands. “I should go.
Rudely shaken from his post-fuck comedown, Ilya stares up at Hollander who is awkwardly tucking his cock back into his borrowed pants. “Go?” he asks stupidly, uncomprehendingly.
“Yeah... I...uh, I shouldn’t stay. I can’t. We can’t. This is...”
Ilya shifts on the couch, stretching an arm across the back and resting his ankle on his knee, casual as anything. Hollander freaking out wasn't new. “This is nothing, Hollander.”
Hollander isn't meeting his eyes, but the sharp, staccato movements of his hands is new, something about it making Ilya's gut churn.
“I know," Hollander says, finally stopping those odd, jerky little movements in favour of a preternatural stillness that is somehow even worse. "I just...team meeting in the morning. I forgot."
He's lying, and not in the questing, cajoling way he does when he's making a bid for Ilya's touch or attention, the way he does when he wants something so badly that he thinks he shouldn't, when he needs to be told it's okay, that the wanting is okay, that it's allowed. That it's preferred.
That makes Ilya laugh, cold and a little mean, and sees Hollander startle a little. He hates himself for the way he sounds so much like his brother when he does. “You forgot about a team meeting? Sure.” He watches as Hollander pulls his also-borrowed shirt back on, the back of it rucked up awkwardly in a way he can't reach and panic making him clumsy as he tries to fix it, something unnameable churning through his gut.
“Thanks for the tuna melt. Um...”
Ilya watches him stumble over his words as he backs away from where Ilya still has his fucking cock out, their combined come cooling on his bare belly, and realises with a brutal clarity that if Hollander leaves, if Ilya lets him bolt now like a spooked horse from a burning barn, he'll never get him back. And, even more shockingly, Ilya finds that idea completely unacceptable.
"They got the marble imported from Turkey, custom cut by a local contractor here in Boston."
It's the first thing that comes to his mind, and it's frankly fucking ridiculous in the midst of this emotional revelation that Hollander might actually be the one thing Ilya's wanted to keep around, ever. Forever, maybe. It fucking works, though, is the thing.
"I- what?"
Hollander is frozen in the middle of the room now, half turned away from Ilya where he's paused mid-escape. The shirt is still jammed up behind his shoulder blade, the dimple on the right side of his spine shadowed by the way the afternoon light is slanting into the room, the odd dust mote sparkling between them in slow motion mockery of the tension that has also come to reside in the room with them.
Ilya is too scared to move for fear of freaking Hollander out again. He doesn't even want to inhale too deeply, which much surely be why his breath is caught up in his throat. "The kitchen counters."
He's never understood why people call Hollander expressionless- everything on his face is right there for the world to read, always is. He's so conflicted it's laughable, clearly wanting to know more, a thousand questions flickering through his eyes in spite of his panic. He considers and rapidly discards the idea of making a joke about Hollander's ass and his countertops, exquisitely aware of the fact that Hollander is closer to the door than he is to Ilya, and he's fast as hell.
"Okay?"
Hollander is clearly confused, but it's infinitely better than freaked out. Ilya risks putting his dick away and grimaces when the hair on his belly pulls in the drying come. "There is…mark. Stain."
Aaand there it is, the interest piquing. "A stain?"
Ilya waves his hand. "I spill it. Oil."
Hollander frowns, his shoulder twitching irritably, the shirt unconsciously bothering him. "Did you try anything to clean it?"
Ilya shrugs, suspecting whatever he say is going to be wrong. "I scrub with dish soap. But the oil makes dark spot, still."
The slow-dawning horror is almost funny, now that Hollander isn't trying to flee like a suspect from a crime scene. "No stone cleaner? Scrub?"
He shrugs again, watches as Hollander is torn between leaving and the desire to fix whatever Ilya's fucked up on his bench. He holds his breath when the latter wins out.
"I can… have a look. If. If you want?"
Ilya stands and heads into the kitchen, ignoring the fact that just a few hours ago he had lifted Shane up onto that end of the waterfall and kissed him breathless. He points to the offending spot and pulls a clean dishcloth from one of the drawers, sticks it under the tap and scrubs at his belly. He watches Hollander's cheeks pinken up as he watches this from the corner of his eye, then reaches out to run a fingertip over the stain. The marble is white with long, horizontal stripes of soft, almost silvery grey running the length of it. The stain would likely have been almost unnoticeable if it weren't for the fact that it has darkened one of those stripes in an uneven patch, instantly catching the eye. Ilya doesn't really give a fuck- it's a kitchen counter, why even make it out of something that will stain, makes no sense- but it's a convenient reason for Hollander to stick around, so right now marble counters are an excellent idea.
"Baking soda?" Hollander says suddenly, oddly loud in the relative quiet of the house. He swallows, turns his face to Ilya but still doesn't meet his eyes.
The non-sequitur makes Ilya blink. "Like, for banana bread?"
That makes Hollander huff an almost-laugh through his nose, but his shoulder twitches again. "Yeah, like for banana bread."
Ilya passes behind him to the pantry, reaches out on his way and carefully tugs the hem of the shirt free from where it's bunched up, careful not to touch skin, and pretends he doesn't hear Hollander's tiny exhalation of relief. He returns with the box, pleased that Hollander has found a small bowl and spoon already. He watches curiously as he mixes up a thick slurry of the soda and water from the tap, fetches the cling film and tape he's asks for.
Hollander spreads the paste over the stain in a careful circle, tapes the plastic wrap down and sticks the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. He hovers, then, shoulders creeping up towards his ears, arms stiff and awkward at his side as his thumbs try to hook in pockets that don't exist.
"Now what?" Ilya asks in the increasingly-fraught silence.
"Now you leave it for twenty-four hours, then wash it off with warm water and dry it." He shrugs a little. "You can do it again if the dark spot is still there. Just don't use bleach, or anything acidic. And then, once it's dry, make sure you seal it."
Ilya frowns. "What is this, 'seal it'?" Hollander looks so despairing that Ilya can't help but laugh. "Hollander, we make more money than God. I pay someone for this, yes? Maybe Lira does already?"
"Lira?"
Hollander's mouth is a terse little line, and Ilya sways towards him unthinkingly so he can kiss it soft again, pulling up short when he catches himself doing it. "My cleaner, Hollander."
"Oh."
Hollander is still stiff as a board, and Ilya isn't really sure where to go from there. But hey, Turkish marble worked once, maybe it'll work again. He feigns nonchalance and leans back against the edge of the stove, crossing one ankle over the other. "How do you know so much about marble cleaning? Hmm? You have too much hair to be Mister Clean."
"Mine are marble, too," Hollander tells him, clearly not understanding the reference, and while he doesn't look more relaxed, exactly, he now looks slightly less like he wants to climb the walls. "This looks like Marmara. Mine is Italian. Statuario."
"Oh," Ilya says, a gently-mocking echo of Hollander's earlier reply that clearly conveys he has no idea what Hollander is talking about.
He rolls his eyes. "It's white, like yours," he explains, moving across so he can rest one hip against the edge of the bench and run the flat of his wide, capable palm along one of the grey lines in the stone. Ilya's mouth goes dry. "But the grey is darker, a higher contrast. And the pattern is fluid," he says, the hypnotic back and forth sweep of his hand changing to a random, swirling slide, probably mapping the pattern of his own counters. "Swirly, like a water current caught in stone. It's pretty."
"You're pretty," Ilya breathes out before he can help himself, and he's not wrong, is the thing. Hollander is gorgeous, especially pink and flustered as he currently is. And the fact that talking about something he's interested in makes him light up is even prettier. "Tell me more."
"More?" Hollander asks, confused.
"About your marble. Statue-Mario." He bites back a smirk and waits.
Sure enough, Hollander is pathologically unable to help himself from correcting Ilya. "Statuario," he says, and Ilya knows better than to find his pedantry attractive, but here he fucking is. He stops, tilts his head a little, finally meets Ilya's eyes dead on. "Why do you want to know?"
Ilya figures that because you're so fucking gorgeous when you light up from the inside that it makes me want to bite you is probably not the answer Hollander is expecting or even wanting to hear at this juncture, so he just heaves an enormous put-upon sigh. "Maybe one day I will build my own home," he says. "And when I choose not to have marble for my benches because it is insane for kitchen to not be stain resistant, I want that choice to be informed."
Predictably, that gets Hollander right where Ilya wants him: huffy and offended. "What are you even talking about?" he bites back instantly. "There's nothing wrong with marble for kitchen counters-"
"Hollander, I spill a little oil and entire counter looks like shit! I have big silver metal bench, and it is no problem. Or wood," he says, warming to the theme, holding up his thumb and middle fingers to indicate width, "the fat wood, you can chop things right on it. That makes sense for a kitchen."
"That is an insane thing to say," Hollander tells him with blazing authority. "You're an insane person."
"You chop all over, gives the wood character," Ilya insists, and he's right, knows he's right because his grandmother's counters had been wood like that, and one of his earliest memories is pressing his fingertips to the divots on the edge of the bench caused by time and use, spreading his fingers wide to reach across as many as he could, the scents of frying butter and onion as strong in his memory now as they were in her kitchen twenty years ago.
"Cutting boards exist for a reason, Rozanov," Hollander tells him, a little of the previous tension setting his shoulders back to almost-tense.
Rozanov. It stings, the almost-rejection still a little too fresh for him to manage to laugh it off just yet. But he's still here, at least, still in Ilya's kitchen and looking less and less like he's going to try for a bathroom window exit at his earliest opportunity, so Ilya will take what he can get. And the soda paste has to stay for twenty four hours, Hollander said, so maybe the day isn't a total loss; there's a good chance if Ilya plays his part just right that Hollander will stick around overnight after all, just to make sure Ilya doesn't fuck up rinsing the bench off tomorrow. Vinegar and baking soda is a cleaning thing, right? Maybe if he mentions that as an idea…?
Maybe later Ilya will tell him about his grandmother's bench.
Maybe much later as he's drifting off with Hollander's big, warm body pressed against him in bed he'll imagine an impossible, sun-drenched kitchen of his own, a tiny person for him to love with Hollander's dark hair and pretty eyes stretching their little fingers wide along a counter edge battered by time and life.
"The light fixture in the living room was imported from a designer in Spain."
Hollander is furious, absolutely spitting mad. Ilya had made the mistake of mentioning that Svetlana had stayed the night, had slept next to Ilya the way they had for years. Had slept on Hollander's side of the bed, like she's fucking got any right to it, Ilya, the night before her return to Russia to visit her father. Ilya's assurances that nothing had happened between them hadn't been sufficient, apparently, because Hollander is packing his bag, stuffing his clothes back into it without any care, and that's out of character enough for Ilya to understand that he's somehow managed to royally fuck up.
So he does the one thing that worked the last time he royally fucked up where Hollander is concerned, and tries out a phrase in Real Estate Fetish, the language he's attempting to learn so he can communicate with Hollander when their combined three other languages fail them.
"I couldn't fucking care less," Hollander snaps, hissing angrily when he attempts to zip the bag closed and catches his finger. He jams it in his mouth and glowers at Ilya from across the offending bed as though Ilya was responsible for it. "Who?"
Distracted by the impossibly sexy sight of Hollander sucking on his own finger, Ilya's brain takes a beat to reboot. "What who?" he asks, and even to his bilingual brain it sounds stupid.
Hollander yanks the finger from his mouth. "Who is the designer," he grits out from between clenched teeth.
Ilya can't seem to look away from the bead of red he can see welling up. "Arturo Álvarez," he says, hoping he hasn't mixed that guy up with the one who painted the weird bullfighting painting in the study that Marly bought him at a previous auctioneer girlfriend's first auction.
The scowl doesn't lessen. "The wall sconces?"
That Ilya knows now what a sconce is thanks to his desire to know Hollander is deeply fucking humiliating, and a fact he'll take to his grave. "No, the big one," he said, pointing to the ceiling. "Looks like… deconstructed lionfish."
He's not sure if the sound Hollander makes is outrage at his description of the light or of his current general wrathfulness. "Did you buy it, or did it come with the house?" The question is spat out around the finger, back in his mouth, and Ilya can see blood on his lip. It's making him crazy.
"I bought it."
"A light that you describe as … jesus christ, as a 'deconstructed lionfish'. You bought it. On purpose."
Ilya frowns, pretends he doesn't know what's about to happen. "Carmichael is building home with his wife, and they are deciding on lights. We are drinking one night after game, and he bets me I cannot buy most expensive light that still looks good. I get this one."
Hollander is appalled. Ilya pretends to himself that he hates how much he likes the way it looks on him. "You spent what? Ten, twelve grand on a deconstructed lionfish for a bet?"
"Fifteen," Ilya confirms. He waits as Hollander thinks for a moment, then narrows his eyes.
"Who won the bet?"
Always so competitive. It makes Ilya's heart race. "Me."
"How much did Carmy spend?"
"Seventy," Ilya tells him pleasantly.
Hollander's mouth drops open. "He spent seventy thousand dollars on a fucking light and you won?"
"The bet was who could spend the most on a light that looks good. His light is all paper birds on sticks, looks like they will shit all over the room. So, whole team votes, and I win."
"Wait," Hollander says, pulls out his phone and taps away. "Did the birds look like this?" he asks, and shows Ilya a picture of what looks like a large white origami bird with a gold beak sitting on a boring gold perch.
"Yes, but many," Ilya confirms.
"Rozanov, this is an Umut Yamac light," he says. "I have one in the bedroom, the one hanging over the reading nook."
Ilya frowns, thinking about Hollander's bedroom, tries to remember anything other than Hollander, naked and gleaming with sweat in the low light, spread out on the sinfully comfortable bed for Ilya to devour. "The string thing that looks like a big shame cone?" he guesses.
"Shame cone?" Hollander demands.
"Like for a dog," Ilya explains, fanning his hands out to describe a widening cone from his neck to either side of his head. "So they do not lick stitches."
First there is nothing, then Hollander mutters a whole bunch of shit faster than Ilya can parse, none of it sounding particularly complimentary. But he's talking now, and he seems to have forgotten about the bag he had started to pack. Ilya takes a chance and unzips it, taking the crumpled clothes out and folding them neatly while Hollander watches him do it.
He puts them back in the drawer set aside for Hollander's stuff whenever he's in town, this time for almost seventy two hours, and sets the now-empty bag inside the closet. Hollander watches him do all this from where he's sunk down to sit on the end of the bed.
"Did you at least change the sheets before I got here?" he asks, and it sounds small, small like he looks, kind of sunken in on himself.
Hollander doesn't like Sveta, this Ilya knows. What he doesn't understand is why. "Of course," he says, knowing his fussy lover would tolerate nothing less than perfectly clean linens on the bed. The fact that Ilya now owns a selection of sex blankets and towels to avoid having to change the sheets every three hours when they're together proves that. He comes over to sit next to him, pressed together side by side. "I told you, Hollander, Sveta and I are not lovers. We do not fuck."
"Anymore," Hollander says, and he sounds tired.
"Anymore," Ilya agrees, because he hates when Hollander sounds like that, and also because it's the truth. Then, because he's in a truth-telling mood, apparently, "There is no one else that I fuck, either, in case you need me to say it. Just you. For a long time now." He can feel his pulse thumping away in his neck at the admission, forces his body to remain relaxed even though he wants to go to his knees and beg Hollander to keep him, to move in today, to unpack his heart and soul into any of Ilya's drawers that he wants because it would mean he has to come back for them, over and over again.
He's rewarded by those spectacularly beautiful eyes, wide with shock and fixed on him with unnerving intensity. "What?"
Ilya tries to play it off. "You are insatiable sex maniac, Hollander. When do I have time for other people?"
It's true, but Hollander doesn't know how true, thank god. "You had time to 'just sleep' with Svetlana," he says, complete with bunny fingers.
He's ridiculous. Ilya lov… Well, it doesn't matter. "I make time for my best friend before she leaves the country for six weeks," he corrects. Hollander might be jealous, but Sveta has been Ilya's person for a long time, long enough to have earned her share of Ilya, irrespective of how much Hollander might not like it.
He lets Hollander sit with that for as long as he needs. "Just me?"
"For a long time. So long, Hollander. It is very hard for me, I am a very sexy man, you know?"
That catches him a smile. "Oh believe me, I know," Hollander says. He hesitates, then forges on, brave as always. "I don't want you to sleep with her anymore," he says, soft and hesitant, like this might be a deal breaker, like Ilya wouldn't cut off a foot should Hollander so much as hint that he desired it. "I don't want her sleeping next to you in the bed where… in our bed."
Ilya's belly swoops and he takes Hollander's hand, pulls it up to inspect the injury on his finger, the skin around the cut bruised and swollen, kissing it gently. "Okay," he says, and finally takes that finger into his mouth, sucking hard until blood wells up again, salt and iron on Ilya's tongue.
With great power comes great responsibility, and all that, so the next time Ilya needs to try out his increasingly tried-and-true method of Distracting Shane Hollander With Architecture And Design is years later, and it's not even because of anything he's done.
The Metros have not handled Shane's coming out well. He's tired, and frustrated, and no amount of love or affection or reassurance are doing anything to help. By a not-insignificant miracle they both have a golden weekend, spending it together at Ilya's place in Ottawa. Shane had arrived late after last night's game and hasn't slept particularly well, is tired and miserable on Saturday morning.
Ilya makes breakfast and they eat together on the back patio, Ilya nominally scrolling through Russian news on his phone while actually watching Shane, and Shane staring moodily into middle distance as he nurses a cup of tea he's not really drinking. Ilya thinks about their search for this house, about Shane knowing every inch of the place before Ilya even moved in. He's not done anything with it in the months since, and there's nothing new about it to distract Shane with.
Yet.
But Ilya is nothing if not good on his feet, so once breakfast is done and cleaned up he tells Shane he needs to run to the shops for a few things, promises him he won't be long with kisses that are convincingly returned, even if they do nothing for the tension thrumming through him. Still, Ilya persists, kisses him again a bunch of times because he can, and because making Shane smile is one of the greatest pleasures in his life, before he steals Shane's keys and drives into town to get the things he needs.
On the way back, though, he stops at Home Hardware. A list resulting from a Google search of what shit do i need to paint walls? is quickly added to a basket, but then the fun part begins. The wall of paint samples is extensive, and he is gleeful about making his choices. He's been saving this particular diversion for a special occasion, ostensibly a forgotten anniversary or somehow managing to piss of Shane's parents, but with Shane's mood as flat as Ilya's ever seen it, this seems like an apropos time to break it out. He selects a variety of landlord whites and millennial greys, a bottle green he actually really likes, and a gold that would be a nice accent colour. But then the fun begins, and before he knows it he's got a stack of colours as thick as a deck of cards, and a grin a mile wide.
He stashes the painting stuff in the garage and carts the groceries in, his pocket full of Step One of his secret weapon. Shane is on the phone with his mother on speaker, making plans for them to come over for dinner. He tilts Shane's chin up for a hello kiss before greeting his future mother in law, warmth flooding through him when she replies hi, honey! without missing a beat.
He unpacks the groceries and starts on Step Two, moving from room to room with sticky tack and the sample cards and amusing himself to no end with the most eye-searingly awful colour combinations he can create. When he's done he returns to the kitchen with the last of the cards to enact Step Three, waiting for Shane to look up at him before opening one of the cabinet doors so the morning sunlight hits it directly. He then fans the colour cards and holds them up against the door and pretends to think deeply about what he's looking at.
"Uh, Mom, I've gotta go, okay? Just message when you're on your way over."
"Will do. Bye, baby; bye Ilya."
"Bye bye, Yuna," Ilya sing-songs, then takes one of the cards and holds it up against the plain white kitchen wall.
"What are you doing?" Shane asks, the sound of his phone clattering to the (not marble) counter preceding his coming around to drape himself over Ilya's back. "What the fuck kind of colour name is Lithopone?"
Ilya shrugs, Shane's chin digging into his shoulder. "Is nice, bright white. Good colour to go with Russian Green," he said, holding up the sample, then another. "Or maybe Hooker's Green." It takes everything in him not to crack up.
Shane doesn't even try, the laugh huffing out of him like a surprise. "Fuck off, that's not what it's called."
Ilya just hands him the card that proves otherwise. "Or maybe Uranium Yellow? But perhaps this is too light against Lithopone walls, yes?"
Shane unwinds his arm from around Ilya's neck and takes the Uranium Yellow card. "Yellow? Ilya, this is fucking green."
"Says yellow right there," Ilya argues, just because arguing with Shane is in the top ten of things he likes that they do together.
"Well, it's wrong."
Ilya shrugs again, likes what Shane's face does in response. "Is okay, we come back to this one. I am thinking Mummy Brown for the study, or maybe Puce." He leads a bewildered Shane into the study to where Ilya has stuck a range of samples to the wall. Mummy Brown, in spite of it's name, is not an entirely unpleasant shade of mushroom-y brown, but the Puce has much more pink than Ilya would prefer in his brown.
Shane's nose is wrinkled as he he looks at the selection. "Wait, that's puce?" he asks, staring at the pinkish brown. "Why did I think puce was green?"
"Maybe you think of puke?" Ilya suggest, and pulls out the corresponding light olive coloured card labelled 'Puke'. "Too much yellow for me. But a Mummy Brown feature wall over Unresolved Problem? What do you think?" Unresolved Problem is a stormy white, and Shane looks like he is struggling with his current unresolved problem being Ilya's colour choices. Perfect. "Or Soft Peach, maybe," he suggests. "Match for my beautiful boyfriend's soft peach." He lets his hand slide down over Shane's ass to grab a generous handful.
"That's the worst come on I've ever heard," Shane grumbles, but he's blushing, and smiling widely, so Ilya just ignores him.
"Yes, this is good, I think. Bathroom now."
"Oh my god," Shane says faintly, but he takes Ilya's hand and follows him into the big bathroom down the hall.
"I am thinking Cough Mixture tiles with Shocking Pink or Drunk-Tank Pink wall here. It is bright, yes, but also fun! And maybe gold faucet and flamingle neon light over towel rail."
Shane finally breaks, laughter creasing his face. "Flamingle? You're so fucking cute."
Ilya frowns. "Flamingle? The leggy bird, pink feathers."
"Flamingo," Shane tells him, still laughing.
"Oh. Well, close enough. Now come." Ilya leads the way into the living room, the largest range of colours yet on the wall beside the television. "Clunch base is very nice neutral for-" he has to stop when Shane's laughter takes him over, his shoulders shaking with it. "Clunch is-" Nope, every time Ilya says Clunch he seems to lose it again. "CLUNCH BASE for Cosmic Latte or Australien yellow colour. Very warm, very cosy for living area." He points to the green sample. "Or Goose Turd Green, carry nature colour through from kitchen."
Shane is fucking beside himself, bent over with his hands on his knees, wheezing with laughter. "Ilya, stop," he half-cries. He tries to straighten up, tries to say Clunch again and can't manage to finish the word.
"There's always Elephant's Breath or Dead Salmon if you want to stay neutral in here, make it easier to change furniture later if we want. But come, there is still the bedroom, and I found perfect colours for you," Ilya says, and Shane is a fucking mess, and he's so, so beautiful that Ilya considers leaving the NHL and going into paint colour naming as a career just so he can make his boyfriend laugh like this always.
"I think Clunch again as the neutral," he says as they enter, Shane still trying to catch his breath, "and a shade of blue for the wall behind the bed." He turns with a wicked grin and points to the samples tacked up above the bedhead. "Maybe Japan Blue, hmm, or Deep Channel?" He pulls a borderline-hysterical Shane into his arms, holds him as his entire body moves with amusement. "This is a good name colour for you, sweetheart. Very descriptive. Very… accurate."
Shane's outraged laughter against Ilya's mouth feels rich enough to sustain him for the rest of forever, like he could feed off this and be nourished for life. But for now Shane is happy, or at least happier, and not thinking about his shitty team or worrying about their future, so Ilya will take it.
As Shane tackles him onto the bed, the terrible colours stuck to the wall above them, Ilya thinks about the colour card tucked away in the back of his drawer- Marry Me pink- and the wooden ring box hidden away with it, and smiles.