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If Shane’s being honest, this is his favourite part of seeing Ilya.
After the rush. After the grabs and touches. After the want has been fulfilled. After they’ve washed it all away and climbed back into bed like normal people do. People who aren’t hiding, who can say what they want and truly mean it.
The sex is great, don’t get him wrong—more than great, in fact, he has a slight burn lingering in his thighs to prove it—but the quiet, comforting weight of being held so tightly always leaves him feeling pleasantly floaty.
“Is ok?” Ilya asks, even now that they are doing nothing but hold each other.
“Hm. More than.”
The float, Shane decides, is better than any drink he’s ever had. It lights a warmth in his stomach he hasn’t been able to find anywhere else—no matter how hard he searches. All his searches, inevitably, lead back to Ilya.
The Russian man lies behind him, seemingly relaxed and unguarded, hair still damp and tickling the nape of Shane’s neck, hand resting heavy on the dip of his waist. Shane lets out a long breath, each stiff muscle relaxing itself as lazy fingers trace barely-there shapes onto his upper thigh, eyes slipping closed on instinct.
He feels the words before he hears them.
Ilya whispers something in Russian—low, quick—and Shane only catches the sound of it, the shape, the way it settles over the room like a secret. A familiar puzzle.
Shane pauses. “What was that?”
Ilya doesn’t move. “Nothing.”
“No– I mean,” Shane says, turning to lie on his back and look back at the taller man. Daring to meet his gaze. Ilya’s hand glides upwards, cupping Shane’s jaw with a gentle touch. He can’t help but press a kiss to his palm, an action which causes Ilya to hum with pleasant contentment. “You do that on purpose.”
Ilya’s mouth curves up, his hand doesn’t move. “Do what?”
“Speak Russian to me. When you know I can’t understand you.”
A huff of breathy laughter erupts from Ilya at first, as if caught off guard. But then he considers Shane for a moment, head tilted to one side, then the other. Then, quieter, “You want to understand, Hollander?”
Shane shrugs, then nods, turning fully to rest his head on Ilya’s shoulder and press open-mouth kisses to his neck. Every second not spent touching is wasted time when their next meeting is weeks away.
All possible words get stuck in his throat, and every sentence feels too close to a blatant confession. So, instead, he just nods again—into the crook of Ilya’s neck—and hopes the man can hear all the words he isn’t saying.
I want, he thinks, anything you’ll give me. He wills for Ilya to read his mind, to know him deeply enough to feel his thoughts through his skin.
So much of what they do is stuck between the borders of understanding and knowing, anyway. What's one more line of decoding?
Ilya shifts first.
It’s unhurried, deliberate. One moment, Shane is tucked into his side, the next he’s being guided, lifted, adjusted, until he’s comfortably straddling Ilya’s thighs. The movement is so natural, so easy, it steals the breath straight from Shane’s lungs. Ilya’s hands settle at his hips, thumbs massaging the bare skin, anchoring him to the moment.
Oh. This is nice.
“Like this,” Ilya murmurs, more a statement than suggestion.
Shane doesn’t argue. He curls his fingers into Ilya’s shoulders , grounding himself in the solid heat of the man across from him. Their thighs press together, chests brushing when Shane leans forward, just slightly, to press a soft kiss to Ilya’s lips. It feels dangerous, sitting face to face like this, with nowhere to look but at each other.
They don’t do this, Shane reminds himself, they don’t. Yet they stay, quiet and slow and everything they have never let themselves be for long.
It will all fade into oblivion soon enough. But, for now, it is eternal.
Each second that passes, each second they hold each other, feels better than winning a game. Shane lets himself smile at the thought.
“I teach you better if you can see me,” Ilya says, hands squeezing lightly, and his accent somehow sounding thicker than normal. Words slur together on his tongue. “Can see you,” he adds, barely a second later.
“I want to,” Shane repeats, eyes unwavering in their gaze. Only a few minutes ago, the very same words had carried a different intention. But Shane found his desire for Ilya unquenched. He wanted more than body, if Ilya would let him have it.
And Ilya always gave Shane what he wanted, in the end.
The first word comes slow, achingly careful. Syllable by Syllable. Ilya forms it deliberately, mouth close enough that Shane can feel the faint brush of breath against his own lips. Shane repeats it, wrong, and winces.
God. That was bad. Embarrassingly so. Maybe he should have just stayed quiet. They don’t do this. They don’t try—
But Ilya just smiles—not sharp, not teasing—and all the sour thoughts in his head seem to drift away. Here, nothing can touch him but Ilya. He feels soft. Calm again. Ilya’s hands slide from Shane’s hips to his thighs, thumbs tracing small circles as if to steady him, pull him out of orbit.
“Was close,” he says quietly, and repeats the word impossibly slower.
Shane tries once more. Better. But still not right.
Ilya lifts a hand, cups Shane’s jaw, guiding him with gentle pressure. His thumb brushes Shane’s lower lip. “Relax,” he murmurs. “Doing so well. Is hard, yes? But you sound so beautiful. Once more?”
So Shane tries again. The word settles differently on his tongue this time. Shane feels it land properly, something clicking into place, and smiles before Ilya can even confirm his precision.
“Very good,” Ilya says, approval warm and reinforced by a peck to the corner of his mouth, an action Shane is pleased he replicates on the other side when he repeats the word with more confidence.
So they continue like that, suspended in a bubble where no one else exists. Time stretches, like rubber, and warps under their presence, making room for only them in the universe.
Each word comes with a correction—fingers adjusting Shane’s chin, a hand tightening at his waist when he drifts, knuckles brushing his spine when he leans too far back. Shane’s pulse feels loud in his ears, but Ilya’s voice always cuts through the haze with ease. He can’t tell anymore where their bodies start and end. His mouth, his words, are Ilya’s. And Ilya’s are his.
And still he wants more.
“Before… what did you say?”
Ilya stills, the crease between his brows returning, and repeats the word he had just taught Shane.
Пожалуйста. Please.
But that’s not what he means, and Shane tells him as much. Usually, he wouldn't have the confidence to ask, to prod at healing wounds, but the floaty feeling is still holding him, everything feels so smooth and easy, so he lets himself be brave. He lets himself ask again.
Through the shadows in Ilya’s eyes, he can watch the man’s mind drift somewhere else. Far away from their hotel room, from Canada. In his mind’s eye, Ilya is frolicking, or dragging his feet, through the alleyways of Russia. The latter is more likely, Shane decides, as he watches the light in his lover’s eyes dim ever so slightly.
But barely a second later, Ilya arrives back in the moment, eyes no longer so glazed over, and Shane wonders if he is feeling floaty too, or if he is too busy being dragged under by sepia-toned memories.
“That one,” he says slowly, “is not simple. Hard to say, or... hard to explain in boring English words.”
Maybe he’s meant to laugh at that, shove Ilya off and complain about his cockiness, but he doesn’t.
“Tell me anyway.”
Ilya’s gaze flicks to Shane’s mouth, then back to his eyes, tossing up between avoidance and truth.
“It’s about luck,” he says. “Wanting for things to go well. No hope except for luck.”
“Like fate?”
“Hm. In a way. Destiny— or. Begging for fate to be good. To me.”
Shane swallows hard, his mouth suddenly dry. His hands tighten on Ilya’s chest, desperate to hold him, desperate to look in his eyes. Soon they will part again, for weeks, and the memory of this conversation will be all Shane has to hold at night when he is cold to his core. He never wants to let go. He wants Ilya to keep talking forever, even if he cannot understand him.
“I don’t use much,” Ilya whispers, tone dripping with nerves that sound so foreign from his mouth. “Only when it matters.”
The silence stretches. Heavy. Expectant. Entrapping them in a familiar fear with a whole new undercurrent.
“Like with me?”
The moment is tipping, teetering on the edge of something more. Shane doesn’t think. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he is leaning forward, just slightly. Close enough that their noses brush, foreheads resting against each other.
Ilya inhales sharply, eyes slip closed as he tries to breathe Shane in—absorb them into one being who never has to part. That’s all the permission Shane needs.
The kiss is soft at first, tentative in a way that feels almost foreign after everything else they’ve shared. It is almost comedic how Ilya can have his body in a way no one ever has before, and still kiss him like it's their first time.
Confident hands on his face, and careful lips on his own.
Fear makes them young again, but love, if Shane could be brave enough to think of it as such, lets them push through the dread and unease.
It deepens quickly, inevitably, as Ilya’s hands slide back down to Shane’s hips, pulling him closer, grounding him fully in his lap. And Shane gives back with just as much heat, grabbing at every inch of skin in reach. Biting, kissing, wanting it all.
When they part, too soon, foreheads pressed together, the room feels warmer. Fuller. It feels like their space, and not just their escape.
“Still want to learn?” Ilya asks, voice rougher now, and Shane has the passing desire to crawl into his chest and live there forever.
He smiles, breathless. “Yeah,” he says. “Teach me. More.”
“More,” Ilya repeats, a cheeky tone clouding the word, and a slight roll of his hips accompanying it.
“More.”
Whatever you’ll give me. I’ll take whatever you're willing to give.
When Ilya speaks next, it's in Russian again. A collection of sounds he has yet to hear, to understand. But he doesn’t need Ilya’s translation to know what he means.
Everything. I’ll give it all to you.