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Ilya still couldn’t quite believe that he was here, in Shane’s cottage. Spending the summer with him. As… boyfriends?
It was all a little dizzying at first, being swept in the whirlwind of being invited, then finally getting his hands on Shane after so long without he’d started to develop severe withdrawals it felt like. They’d had the most perfect days before they’d been caught out by Shane’s father, David.
But even that hadn’t been totally world ending, even if Shane had acted like it, and rightfully so. A belly full of pasta and a somewhat awkward conversation later, Ilya had been folded into the Hollander family with open arms, and he’d left their home with Shane, tears in his eyes all the way back to the cottage, something heavy having lifted in his chest, sure it was moving inch by inch as each perfect day passed them.
This could well be the best summer of his entire life.
That was, however, until he discovered that Shane’s cottage was fucking haunted.
Ilya believed in ghosts in the same way he believed in the afterlife – he’d grown up religious, the symbol that hung from his neck wasn’t just for decoration. He wasn’t always so certain that he believed in a God, exactly, but he liked to think that wherever his Mama had gone, after such a hateful, painful life, it was someplace sweet, someplace peaceful. It didn’t need to be the full nine yards with harp playing angels and lounging on clouds, but it had to be a lot nicer than what she had endured on Earth.
He’d messed about with a few Oujia boards during parties in his rookie years, though he’d always suspected that it was just some of the other plays, noticeably Marly, that was just fucking with him, to see how badly he spooked. And Ilya enjoyed horror movies, getting a rush out of each cheap jumpscare, even if it did send him to bed a little apprehensive and more alert than he needed to be whilst falling asleep.
He’s never asked Shane if he believes in ghosts, but he’s wishing he maybe had done, because then maybe he might have an opinion on whether he thought the cottage was haunted, but he supposes it doesn’t fucking matter because it looks like Shane is the one possessed right now.
He’d fallen asleep a couple of hours ago, tangled up with his boyfriend, pressed together under the blankets, and he’d intended them to stay like that, for the whole night, until he’d woken to the feel of a lukewarm mattress under his palm instead of the warm body beside him, and suddenly the bed felt very, very big and empty when he slowly came around to realise Shane was not laying next to him.
His mind was foggy with sleep, and he had to blink a few times to clear it, pulling himself further and further in a conscious state of mind as he looked around the room, fuzzy shapes of the furniture he’d slowly started to get used to taking shape more and more as he sat up, knocking the sleep loose from his lashes with a knuckle.
“Hm.” He grunted as his eyes swept around the room. Shane was not in it. “Shane?”
He didn’t need to strain his ear to find that the cottage was quiet under the spell of nighttime. Turning his head to the little alarm clock that was sat on his bedside table he could make out the faintly glowing numbers through the piercing dark.
3:13am it read… Where the hell was Shane during three in the morning?
Perhaps in the bathroom, he concluded in his head as he flopped back down again with a huff, feeling his exhaustion creep back in around the edges, pulling back towards sleep.
But a few more moments passed and he couldn’t hear the sound of movement behind the wall where the ensuite was, nor the flush or a toilet or the sound of water running. His eyes peeled back open, sleep ebbing away once again as he listened… to nothing.
Cricket song was muffled from beyond the glass walls of the bedroom, barely audible in the long grass out at the bottom of the yard. A loon shrieked in the distance but it didn’t make him jump like it had done on his first night, now he was a pro. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, grateful that the air wasn’t as chilly as he’d been anticipating as he untangled himself from the blankets.
“Shane?” He called out again, voice rising a little louder to reach whatever corner of the cottage he may be. But he was met with more silence, and suddenly he was up on his feet, the sound of his blood pounding heavy at his ears louder than anything else as he checked the bathroom, finding it empty and then walking briskly back out through the bedroom towards the kitchen.
His eyes adjusted in the dark as a streak of moonlight, caught in the trees outside, spilled in through the large windows, casting long, distorted shadows among the room. It was eerie but Ilya steeled himself, only for a moment before he was near enough jumping out of his skin when he caught sight of the figure in the far corner of the room by the couch.
“Okhuyet!” Ilya exclaimed through his teeth, slapping a hand to his chest to conceal his wild heart as it slammed against his chest. Shane had scared the fuck out of him, standing in the corner of the room, looking like The Blair Witch Project (which had been one of the movies Marly had shown him once upon a time and it had managed to spook him just a little bit because there were plenty of Russian folk stories about witches that had scared him as a boy).
He had no idea what the fuck Shane was doing, standing in the complete dark, facing the corner of the room like he was possessed. Maybe he had seen something out of the window, like a raccoon or something.
He crossed the room quickly on his bare feet and hissed Shane’s name again once he’d met him halfway.
“Shane? Shane, what are you doing? It is late.. Are you okay?”
He waited a few second for Shane to turn around and face him, with a smile that would chase out the creepy dark stillness in the room and give him a perfectly normal explanation as to what the hell he was doing right now, but after about fifteen seconds of nothing, he was starting to doubt that this was as normal as he was trying to make out.
He takes a tentative step forwards, gulping as his mind races. He’s really, really trying not to think of that stupid witch movie right now.
“Shane?” He tries again, desperate to keep the tremble from his voice – if there was perhaps anything he had learned from those movies it was to never show the spirit you were afraid.
Fuck, what was he saying to himself right now? Shane wasn’t possessed… Was he?
Shane still doesn’t move, breathing slow and heavily and Ilya only needs about ten more seconds of thought on the matter before he was concluding that yes, his new boyfriend’s summer home was in fact haunted, and he had been possessed by said ghosts in the property.
And maybe it was only a matter of time before they got to Ilya next…
He’s jolted from his spiralling thoughts when Shane then suddenly moves, making him leap about ten feet backwards, almost crashing into the tidy furniture around the room as he watches Shane slowly turn around, bracing himself to be greeted by the twisted face of some demon or something.
But it’s nothing like that – it’s just Shane, his Shane, and his heart settles a little in his chest, no longer feeling like he was close to vomiting it up as he looks at the man before him, squinting through the darkness to see that he looked normal, his eyes open, mouth in a straight line.
Ilya huffed and watched as Shane took one shuffling step towards him. His mind then quickly cast to Paranormal Activity. He’d liked that one, actually.
“Shane.” He says his name again, louder as if he maybe just hadn’t heard him the first time. “What are you–”
Shane took a few more steps forwards, a little stronger on his legs this time like he’d been unsure before. He keeps walking, not at all looking at Ilya, rather, right through him which made Ilya feel fucking cold to the bone.
“Gotta… find…” Shane spoke, his voice sounded far away, loopy almost like he’d been lost in thought. He mumbled something else, incoherent and under his breath as he approached Ilya and then turned back around again, moving towards the window beside him.
“Find what?” Ilya pressed. What the hell was his boyfriend talking about?
But before Shane could answer him (though, Ilya was suspecting he wouldn’t have anyway considering he was acting so strangely), he shuffled a few more steps and then walked right into the window, a dull thunk sounding out around the room.
“Ah, Shane, Shane, Shane,” Ilya tutted as he rushed to his side, forgoing the fear that had him rooted to the spot less than ten seconds ago. “There is a window there, sweetheart. Your concussion, remember?”
But Shane didn’t seem at all phased by that in the slightest. He hadn’t even made a face despite walking face first into the glass, and before Ilya could stop him, he moved again, head bouncing off the pane.
Ilya hissed and then grabbed his arm without thinking to wrench him away backwards before he could do it again. Shane stumbled, even after Ilya hadn’t grabbed him that hard, he made a sort of short, choked off noise from the back of his throat that had Ilya nervous again, freezing with his fingers wrapped carefully around Shane’s wrist.
“Hu– Wha… oh, fuck.” Shane blinked a few times, the blank expression that had been so evident on his face seemed to vanish, and instead, his face screwed up and he grimaced as he rubbed sorely at his forehead where he’d bonked it twice.
“Yes, well, I’d imagine walking into the window two times is bound to hurt,” Ilya said with a breath, letting go of him, though he hovered nearby still. “Are you alright?”
Shane hummed still palming at his head when he then turned his head, looking around the room for a moment before he was finally looking at Ilya, looking totally lost.
“I’m.. in the living room…?” He spoke, and suddenly Ilya wasn’t scared that Shane had been possessed, more like he’d maybe had a fucking stroke or something.
His hand moved back towards him, this time landing gently on his shoulder, curling a little as he felt a wave of protectiveness rise within him.
“Yes,” he said slowly, and then narrowed his eyes like he could maybe see what the hell had just happened if he squinted hard enough. “Shane, it is the middle of the night, what were you doing out here?”
Shane blinked a few times and then, even in the dimmed light of what little moonlight shone through the window they were standing at, he could see the telltale signs of a blush appear across his cheeks.
“Oh my god,” he said under his breath, scrubbing his hand over his face as if to hide from Ilya. “This is so embarrassing.”
Ilya was confused. He tilted his head. “Embarrassing? What is embarrassing?” He questioned him. “You have demon ghost that uses you in the night? That is what is embarrassing?”
Shane dropped his hand away from his face almost immediately, looking affronted for a moment before he was cracking a smile and then laughing in his face.
“Oh, oh my god.” Shane said with a shake of his head, and then placed his hand over Ilya's, giving it a tender squeeze which was comforting.
“No, oh, fuck, Ilya I’m sorry, I probably should have warned you,” he said, still giggling a little before he leaned forward and dropped his head against Ilya’s chest.
It was nice alright but it wasn’t help settle Ilya’s worries that Shane’s place really was fucking haunted or something.
Eventually Shane composes himself and pulls himself away from Ilya, only to smooth his hand from over his, up his arm and then settle on the side of his face, holding him tenderly as if in part ways of an apology from frightening him like that.
“I’m… a sleepwalker,” Shane explains with a grimace, cheeks still a nice pinkish colour. “Not all the time, only when I’m stressed and, well…” his voice trailed off as he gave a weak little shrug of his shoulders. “I should have maybe considered today would have triggered it off. I’m sorry.”
Ilya blinked as he considered all those words Shane had told him – he’d never met anybody that sleptwalked before, sure that maybe it was just something people did in TV shows or movies, but maybe he’d had a teammate once upon a time that had mentioned a girl he’d hooked up with that had started sleepwalking after she’d stayed over, but Ilya had only been half listening at the time… how the fuck did he not know Shane Hollander was a sleepwalker.
“It’s super humiliating,” Shane tells him sheepishly, dropping his hand away to twist his own hands together as he explains himself. “Some of the guys on the team would make fun of me on the road when we roomed together but it was only really during my rookie years when I was most nervous about games.”
Ilya had a lot of thoughts about the other Montreal Metros players outside of the one standing before him right now, and what Shane had just told him hadn’t helped their case in him feeling any warmer to perhaps any of them besides maybe J.J.
He remembers Shane as a rookie, that one night in the hotel room after the CMM photoshoot, how nervous Shane had been then, and he wonders if maybe he’d slept at all after they’d traded blowjobs, or if he’d been walking around his hotel room just as he had done now.
And how many times had he woken in the night to pace his room at that same age, with the world on his shoulders to play well and win, only for his teammates to poke fun… fuck, would let have let Shane walk into walls like he had done just now?
“It’s not embarrassing,” Ilya assures him, taking up his hand again, folding them between his own. “It’s a little… scary, yes,” he admits with a tilt of his head, eking a small smile from the other man. “I was thinking maybe there was demon possession happening you had not told me about,” he says with a dry laugh. If Shane was going to be bashful about his sleeping habits then Ilya could at least tell him about his fear of ghosts.
“Demon possession?” Shane echos, one brow climbing higher than the other and Ilya presses his lips together before he launches into a full explanation as to how that wasn’t as far fetched as Shane was imaging right now.
“Yes!” He says, voice raising which makes Shane laugh a little. “You were standing in the corner like… fucking witch had gotten you. I thought you were going to break my neck, you know.”
Shane squints at him, beaming from ear to ear before he brings Ilya’s hands to his face and presses his lips against his knuckles, slow and sweet.
“Sorry for scaring you,” he says quietly. “I probably won’t do it again.”
Ilya hums and then decides a kiss on the back of his hand wasn’t enough, and ducks his head to kiss him on the lips, swift and sweet.
“Sorry you were stressed out today,” he counters softly once they break apart. “Though maybe I will just chain you to the bed, hm?”
Shane snorts a laugh and presses his head against his shoulder, sleepy and warm.
“Hm, any excuse to get me to use handcuffs in the bed, eh?”
Ilya kisses the top of his head before he’s leading Shane back towards the bedroom where their bed, sans cuffs, awaits them.
“Such a pervert, Shane Hollander,” he tuts, a gleam in his eye as he throws him a look over his shoulder.
Shane smiles at him pressing in close as they walk together through the cottage hand in hand.
“There’s a lot you have to learn, Ilya Rozanov,” he counters and Ilya gives his hand a squeeze.
“Good thing we have two weeks then?”
Shane squeezes back. “Good thing we do.”