Chapter Text
Ilya had been fine about the breakup for three years.
The wedding was a more recent problem.
Svetlana had called four months ago: Ilyusha, I have to tell you something, and I need you to be happy for me which was how he knew immediately that he was not going to be happy about it, at least not in the first thirty seconds, and possibly not in the first thirty minutes, and definitely not on the drive home from the clinic, where he'd taken the call sitting in his car in the parking garage because his next patient wasn't for another hour and he had nowhere to be and nowhere to put this information yet.
She'd met someone. A businessman. Canadian. Very tall, apparently, she mentioned the height twice, which Ilya chose not to think about it too much because he was fine and also a grown adult with no strong feelings about Canadian businessmen or their heights.
Six months of dating. Then engaged. Then inevitably, you have to come, Ilyusha, I mean it, I want you there, you are very important to me and if you don't come I will never forgive you and also I will call your mother.
She would absolutely call his mother. This was not a bluff. His mother would then call him, and that call would be significantly worse than the wedding.
He RSVP'd yes.
He bought a suit.
He was, he had decided, totally fine.
He also booked a flight from Moscow to Helsinki to Dubrovnik, where Svetlana had decided to get married, presumably because Croatia was beautiful and also because she had always been someone who committed fully to things. And that was one of the reasons Ilya had loved her and one of the reasons they hadn't worked and one of the reasons he was now dragging a carry-on in Helsinki Airport at ten in the evening with a connection to catch and a bottle of mineral water and the sustained, practiced feeling of being completely fine.
Helsinki at ten pm was not special. There were still people moving through it, there’s still announcements, and it had that particular evening quality of a day winding down around you whether you were ready or not. The shops were pulling their gates half-closed. The restaurants had stopped seating. The light was the same fluorescent it always was but somehow felt dimmer, or maybe Ilya was just tired, Moscow to Helsinki being two hours of recycled air and a window seat he'd paid extra to spend staring at clouds.
Gate 14C was quieter than the main terminal. He found it, dropped himself on a seat, and did what he always did in new spaces, looked, catalogued, assessed. Pediatrician habit. You read a room before the room knew it was being read, because rooms contained people, and people contained things they weren't saying, and it was almost always useful to know what those things were before anyone had to say them out loud.
Gate 14C at ten pm contained: one family whose toddler had staged a full emotional collapse somewhere around baggage claim and was now running purely on snacks and spite. Two businessmen who looked very bored. One elderly woman with a paperback she was actually reading, which Ilya respected. A coffee shop still technically open, staffed by a teenager who had the look of someone counting down the minutes to something better.
And one man in the far corner, sitting very still, performing relaxed.
Ilya noticed him the way he noticed the children in his waiting room who sat very still and were very good and were absolutely, silently terrified. The stillness that was too deliberate, too carefully chosen. He had a carry-on. A phone face-up on his knee that he wasn't looking. A cup of coffee beside him that he also wasn't drinking. He was looking at the departures board with the focused expression of a man who was somewhere else entirely in his head and using the departures board as a cover story.
Ilya knew this look. He was probably wearing this look himself. His self-awareness did not make it better, it just made it more sophisticated.
Also.. freckles.
This was fine. Freckles were a completely normal thing for a person to have. They were, in fact, a mild dermatological concern in terms of prolonged UV exposure, and Ilya recognised them in that professional capacity and moved on.
He looked away.
He looked back.
The gate lighting was doing something unreasonable. There were significantly more freckles than he'd initially clocked, scattered across the nose and cheekbones in a way that suggested years of outdoor activity and a complete, apparently confident indifference to sunscreen. As a doctor, Ilya had opinions about this. As a professional, he kept them to himself. As a man sitting in a Finnish airport at ten pm on his way to his ex-girlfriend's wedding, he was in no position to be having any thoughts at all, about freckles or otherwise, and he was going to stop immediately.
He stopped.
He looked at the departure board instead.
Helsinki to Dubrovnik: DELAYED.
No reason given. No new time. Just the word sitting there, blinking at him.
Blyat.
Ilya looked at it for a long moment.
Then, quietly, in Russian, he said something that made the teenager at the coffee shop glance up with the expression of someone who didn't speak Russian but understood the general sentiment completely.
Da, Ilya thought. Exactly.
He dragged his carry-on. He needed a drink and something to do with the next however-many hours and across the gate there was a bar still open. That was, for now, enough of a plan.
He started walking.
As he passed the gate, the man with the freckles said something out loud, to no one in particular, about the board, and it was dry and it was tired and it was, despite everything, sounded funny.
Ilya stopped.
He responded before he decided to.
That was the thing about Ilya, he was, in most areas of his life, a deliberate person. He did not say things without considering them first. He did not make decisions without turning them over, checking the angles, finding the one that made the most sense. Doctors habit.
And yet.
"Finnair," Ilya said, to the side of the man's head, "is very sorry for inconvenience. They say this every time. I think maybe they are not actually sorry."
The man turned.
Up close, the freckles were.. well. They were there. Ilya noticed them and moved on, which he was getting quite good at.
"Do they say it every time?" the man said. His English sounds Canadian, the particular flatness of it, the vowels doing something slightly different than British, slightly different than American. French influence underneath, maybe.
"Every time," Ilya confirmed. "I fly Helsinki connection with them four times. Always delayed. Always very sorry." He tilted his head toward the board. "Tonight they don't even bother with sorry yet. They are getting lazy."
The man looked at the board. Then back at Ilya. Something in his expression was doing several things at once, which Ilya found interesting, because most people's expressions in airports at ten pm were doing only one thing, which was tired.
"How long," the man said, "in your experience."
"Last time? Three hours." Ilya adjusted his bag. "Time before, two. Time before that—" he paused, for effect, "they cancelled the flight entirely. Very sorry about that one."
The man stared at him.
"I'm joking," Ilya said. "About cancellation."
"Were you?"
"Mostly." He gestured down the terminal. "There is bar. Still open. I am going there. You can continue to wait here and look at board that will not update for at least one hour, or—" he shrugged, the way that meant the rest of this sentence is obvious.
The man looked at the board. Looked at Ilya. Looked at his cold, untouched coffee.
"Yeah," he said, after a moment. "Okay."
***
They ended up at a corner of the bar that felt, Ilya thought, like the airport had been specifically designed for this occasion. The bar was still doing business, barely, a handful of other travelers distributed along it at the careful intervals of people who did not want to talk to each other. The lighting was warm in the way of places that understood evenings, soft amber rather than fluorescent, doing something kind to everything underneath it.
The bartender came. Ilya ordered whiskey without looking at the menu. He already knew what he wanted and there was no point in pretending otherwise.
The man beside him looked at the menu for exactly four seconds, then said, "Moscow mule, please."
Ilya looked at him.
"What," the man said.
"Nothing."
"You're making a face."
"I don't make faces. I am Russian. We have one face." He picked up his whiskey that was being placed in front of him by the bartender. "You are flying to Croatia and you ordered drink named after city I just came from. I am just making an observation."
"It's named after a cocktail because it has ginger ale in it and I like ginger ale. It's just a preference."
"Very suspicious preference."
"It's not suspicious, it's just a drink—"
"Okay okay. I believe you completely," Ilya said, in the tone that meant he didn't, and took a sip.
The man stared at him for a long moment with an expression that was trying to be annoyed and not quite making it. Then, startled out of him, he chuckled.
Ilya noticed this.
"I'm Shane," the man said.
"Ilya."
They didn't shake hands, it was too late in the evening for that kind of formality, or maybe the bar had already made them past it. Shane picked up his Moscow mule and turned it slightly in his hand, looking at it the way people looked at things when they were aware of being observed and trying to seem like they weren't.
"So," Shane said. "Four times taking this connection."
"Four times here, yes."
"Where are you coming from?"
"Moscow. You?"
"Montreal." He said, instinctively, "It’s been a long day."
"Long day," Ilya agreed.
Outside the bar, the terminal had gotten quieter. The family with the toddler had migrated somewhere toward the restaurant area, or toward collapse, it was hard to say. The businessmen were gone. Gate 14C was emptying out.
Ilya had a connecting flight to catch and nowhere to be in the meantime.
Shane had a cold coffee he'd abandoned at the gate and the look of a man who had been holding something carefully for a very long time and was, for the moment, setting it down.
"So," Ilya said. "Dubrovnik."
"Dubrovnik," Shane confirmed.
"You have been before?"
"No." Shane turned his glass. "You?"
"Also no." Ilya considered this. "I looked at pictures. Very beautiful. Very— " he searched for the word, "aggressively beautiful. Like it is trying too hard."
Shane looked at him. "You think a city can try too hard."
"I think anything can try too hard."
"That's a very specific worldview."
"I am very specific person." Ilya tilted his head. "Why Dubrovnik? You choose, or someone else choose for you?"
"Someone else," Shane said it in a tone that closed the door on that particular question without quite slamming it. Then, after a beat, like he was being fair, "It's for a wedding."
"Ah." Ilya nodded. "Me also."
Shane looked at him. "You're going to a wedding in Dubrovnik."
"This weekend, yes."
Something moved across Shane's face, small, a flicker. "Who— " he started, then seemed to reconsider. "Are you— do you know the couple well?"
Ilya turned his glass. "The bride. We are old friends." He said it the way he'd practiced saying it, which was lightly, which was fine. "She is— well, we know each other long time. She invited me and I said yes because that is what you do when Sveta asks you something and means it."
The flicker in Shane’s face. More than a flicker this time.
"Sveta.. Svetlana Vetrova?" Shane said.
"You know her?" Ilya said, though something in him had already started to understand the shape of what was happening.
"I—" Shane set his glass down. Picked it up again. "I know Rhys. The groom. I'm his.. Well I've known him since we were eight." A pause. "I'm the best man."
The bar was doing its soft amber light thing. Somewhere behind them, the departure board was blinking. Ilya looked at Shane. Shane looked back.
The same wedding.
They'd been sitting here for twenty minutes talking about nothing, and they were going to the same wedding, and neither of them had known, and now they both did. The information sat between them.
Ilya picked up his whiskey.
"Small world," he said.
"Yeah," Shane said. Something careful had entered his voice that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. "Small world."
They looked at each other for a moment longer than necessary.
Then Ilya said, “So. Montreal vs Moscow. Which is worse in winter. I need you to defend your city because I have strong opinions and no one to argue with."
Shane blinked. Then, slowly, the careful thing in his expression loosened. "Excuse me, Montreal winters are— "
"Wrong answer already," Ilya said. "Go on."
The Montreal-Moscow winter argument lasted forty-five minutes.
This was, objectively, too long for an argument about weather between two strangers in a Finnish airport. Neither of them acknowledged this. They were both too busy being wrong at each other, which was, Ilya was finding, significantly more entertaining than being right alone.
"You don't understand," Shane said, for the third time, with the energy of a man who had explained something correctly twice already and could not account for why it hadn't landed. "The wind comes off the St. Lawrence and its.. it's a specific kind of cold. It has intent."
"Intent," Ilya repeated.
"Yes."
"The wind has intent."
"The Montreal wind, yes."
Ilya looked at him for a long moment. "Shane," he said. "I am from Moscow. In January, in Moscow, it is so cold that your breath freezes before it leaves your face. Not after. Before. The air outside your mouth is already frozen. You are breathing into ice." He picked up his whiskey. "Your wind has intent. My wind has victims."
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Something was happening in his expression that was trying very hard to be disagreement and kept almost becoming something else.
"That's—" he started.
"I know."
"I wasn't going to concede."
"I know that also."
"I was going to say that's a different category of cold entirely and therefore not a fair comparison—"
"Ah." Ilya nodded seriously. "So you are admitting Moscow is colder."
"That is not— " Shane pointed at him. "That is not what I said."
"It is what you meant."
"It absolutely is not what I— " He stopped. Pressed his lips together. Looked at the ceiling briefly, in the way of a man conducting an internal audit, he fights a smile, and then, with great dignity, "I'm going to need another drink before I continue this."
Ilya signaled the bartender. "Smart," he said. "Hydration is important when you are losing argument."
"I'm not— " Shane exhaled. "You're infuriating."
"Also possible," Ilya agreed pleasantly.
The second round arrived. Shane wrapped both hands around his Moscow mule the way he had the first one, just like someone who needed something to hold onto, which Ilya noticed and filed and did not comment on, because some things you filed and left alone for now.
"So," Shane said, after a moment. "Doctor."
"Yes."
"What kind."
"Children." Ilya watched Shane's face do the thing, the small involuntary softening that people did when he said this, like the information rearranged something. It happened every time. He had stopped being surprised by it. "Pediatrician. In Moscow. Eight years now, almost."
"Do you like it?"
Not that must be rewarding or oh how lovely, just the direct question, delivered like it actually wanted an answer. Ilya considered this for a moment.
"Yes," he said. "It is.." he searched for it, "the job is difficult. The children are sick and sometimes very scared and the parents are also scared, which is sometimes worse. But," He turned his glass. "Children are honest. They don't perform. If they are scared they tell you. If they feel better they tell you. There is no.. " he made a gesture that meant all of this, the airport, the performance, the whole evening. "No pretending. I find it.." He paused. "Restful."
Shane looked at him for a beat. "That's a surprising word for it."
"You asked if I liked it. Not if it was easy."
"Fair," Shane said quietly, the way he said things when they'd landed somewhere he hadn't expected to go. He looked at his drink. "I play hockey."
Ilya raised an eyebrow. "Professional?"
"Yeah."
"For Montreal?"
A flicker of something, careful, quick. "For a team. In the MLH." Said in the way of someone who was used to giving this information in pieces, testing the room before the rest of it. "I've been playing since I was four. It's all I've ever done, basically."
"You like it."
Not a question. Shane looked at him.
"Yeah," Shane said. "I do." A beat. "Most of the time."
Ilya heard the most of the time. He didn't touch it. He just picked up his whiskey and let the sentence sit there between them, because some things you let sit, and this was one of them.
***
The bar had thinned out considerably by the time they got to the third round. The other travelers had dispersed to gates, bathrooms, or finding somewhere to lie down. The bartender had started doing the quiet end-of-shift work, wiping down the far end of the counter, moving things, the small choreography of a place preparing to close without quite closing yet.
Just them, mostly. The soft dim light. The DELAYED board visible through the bar's entrance, still blinking, no update, Finnair taking its time.
The conversation had surface to slightly less surface, funny to almost real, then back to funny before either of them noticed how far they'd come. They'd covered: the specific indignity of airplane food, which Ilya had strong opinions about and Shane had stronger ones. The correct way to navigate a city you didn't know, where Ilya said ask someone and Shane said research beforehand and they looked at each other with the mutual recognition of people who were very different in ways that were immediately obvious. Shane's spreadsheet of coffee shops ranked by roast profile and proximity to opposing team arenas, which he disclosed with the air of a man confessing something and then immediately became defensive about it when Ilya's face did the thing.
"It's efficient," Shane said.
"I said nothing."
"You made a face."
"I told you. One face. Russian. Very consistent."
"You made a face."
"I was just thinking about spreadsheet," Ilya said. "With great respect."
"You're doing it again—"
"It is very organized," Ilya said. "Very thorough. I am impressed. Genuinely." He was, actually. There was something about the spreadsheet that told him more about this man called Shane than the last two hours of conversation.
"You like coffee that much."
"I like knowing what I'm getting into."
"Before you arrive."
"Yes."
"So you are always.. prepared."
Shane looked at him. "Is that a criticism?"
"No." Ilya said it simply, without the joke, which was its own kind of statement. "I think it is just how you are."
A beat. Shane's expression did something complicated that he smoothed over quickly, the armor going back on before Ilya had quite finished watching it come off.
"Yeah," Shane said. "I guess it is."
Outside, a plane taxied past the window, slow and lit up against the dark. They both watched it for a moment without saying anything, which was the kind of silence that happened when a conversation had found its own rhythm.
Then Shane said, still looking at the window, "She must be a really close friend. For you to come all this way alone."
Ilya considered this. It was a casual question. He gave it a casual answer.
"Yes. And also because she asked," he said. "And I said yes." He picked up his whiskey. "Simple."
Shane made a small sound that wasn't quite agreement.
"You think it's not simple," Ilya said.
"I think—" Shane paused. "I think flying from Moscow to Croatia for a wedding is not nothing. That's a lot of yes."
Ilya looked at him for a moment. Shane was still looking at the window, at the dark and the planes moving slow across it, with the expression of someone asking about someone else's situation and thinking about their own.
"She is important person," Ilya said simply. "When important person ask, you go." He tilted his head. "Rhys asked you?"
"Yeah." Shane turned his glass. "Five years ago, actually. Before he even met—" he stopped. "He asked me five years ago. Said whenever he got married, he wanted me to be the best man." A pause. "I said yes then too."
"Before you knew it would be Croatia."
"Before I knew a lot of things." Shane said it lightly but it sounded like he meant something else. Ilya heard the something else and left it alone.
"Finland is the happiest country in the world," Ilya said instead.
Shane looked at him. "What?"
"Seven years in a row. Very consistent." He gestured at the bar, the empty terminal beyond it, the bartender who had vanished entirely. "I think maybe it's because they close everything at midnight and go to sleep. They know when to stop." He finished his whiskey. "This is secret to happiness, I think. Not talking about feelings.They just.. going to sleep."
Shane stared at him for a long moment. Then, reluctantly, helplessly, like it was being taken from him, he laughed.
"That's genuinely the most depressing thing I've heard tonight," he said.
"We are stuck in Helsinki at midnight. Bar is closing. Your standard for depressing is maybe not so high right now."
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at his drink. Looked back at Ilya. "Okay," he said. "Fair."
Ilya smiled into his glass.
***
It started, as most things did between them, because Ilya said something.
The departure board hadn't updated in almost three hours. The bartender had migrated to the far end of the counter and appeared to have entered a meditative state. Shane's third round of Moscow mule was three-quarters gone and Ilya's whiskey was doing something similar. Outside the window Helsinki was simply being Helsinki, completely unbothered by the fact that two people had somewhere to be.
Shane was turning his glass in slow circles on the bar. Not fidgeting exactly, he looked like was lost in his thought, which was very visible and Ilya had started to recognize as one of his tells, the glass turning meant something was being processed that hadn't finished yet.
Ilya watched him do it for a moment.
"Let’s play truth or dare," he said.
Shane looked up, rolling his eyes. "We're adults."
"Yes."
"In an airport."
"Also yes."
"It's past midnight."
"Shane." Ilya set down his glass. "Truth or dare."
Shane looked at him for another moment with the expression of a man running a cost-benefit analysis. Then he picked up his Moscow mule. "Truth," he said. "Obviously."
"Obviously," Ilya agreed, and Shane pointed at him but Ilya was already asking. "Most embarrassing thing in professional capacity. Go."
Shane didn't even hesitate. "I got lost in my own arena."
Ilya stared at him.
"New season," Shane said. "They redid the whole corridor system in February. I ended up in the visitors' locker room during warmup. Three opposing players saw me."
"What did you do?" Ilya looked at him amused.
"I told them I was checking the pipes."
"The pipes."
"I panicked."
Ilya put his glass down. He laughed out loud. Shane watched him with an expression that was trying very hard to stay aggrieved and failing completely.
"Your turn," Shane said, pointing.
"Okay. Truth for truth." Ilya composed himself. "I had patient. Six years old. Very serious boy. Very— " he held up a hand to indicate small and solemn, "Dignified. He comes in, I say hello, I ask how he is feeling. He looks at me. Then he roars. Like dinosaurs. Full roar. Very committed."
Shane stared at him.
"I told him his dinosaur impression was very scary," Ilya continued. "And he started crying immediately. Because he was not doing impression, he was saying hello, with a sore throat." He shook his head. "We don't talk about this."
Shane looked at him for a long moment. Then he started laughing. "You just told me about it."
"You will never speak of this again." He pointed. "Truth or dare."
"Truth." Shane said, and then before Ilya could open his mouth, "Don't."
"I said nothing."
"You were going to say predictable."
"I was going to say of course," Ilya said. "Which is different word. Very different energy." He considered. "Okay. Secret skill. Secret hobby. Something you have that no one knows about."
Shane turned his glass. "I make playlists," he said, in the tone of minor confession. "For everything. Warmup, cool-down, driving, specific moods," he paused. "I have one called Tuesday Morning that I've been adding to for four years and I've never listened to it start to finish."
Ilya looked at him. "Why not."
"It's not finished."
"How many songs?"
"Two hundred and forty-seven."
"Shane."
"It's not finished," Shane said, with great dignity.
Ilya looked at him for a long moment. The playlist four years deep and still not done, the specific tenderness of adding to something without completing it. He felt the tenderness then moved on.
"Scurvy," he said.
Shane blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Last February. I convinced myself I had scurvy." He said it with the dignity of a man at peace with his past. "I was tired. My gums felt sore. Then I looked up symptoms online—"
"You looked up your own symptoms."
"I was concerned—"
"You're a doctor—"
"This is exactly why it was embarrassing," Ilya said. "I know this. I diagnosed myself with scurvy at two in the morning. I went to pharmacy. Buy many vitamin C. The pharmacist looked at me very suspicious." He paused. "Apparently I was just not eating enough fruit. This is whole story."
Shane laughed and Ilya watched it happen with the particular satisfaction of a joke landing exactly where it was aimed.
"Did the vitamin C help," Shane managed.
"Yes. Immediately. Only need three days then I was cured." He picked up his whiskey. "Probably not scurvy. But I increased fruit intake just in case. I am much healthier now. Very good citrus consumption." He pointed.
***
The bar had thinned to almost nothing. The other travelers were gone. The bartender had vanished and apparently decided they were fine on their own, which was either very trusting or very Finnish.
Three more lights had gone off. Just this corner of the bar now, soft and close, the rest of it surrendering to dark. Outside, the gate sat empty. The board blinked its patient DELAYED into the void.
Two am past midnight. Helsinki doing its thing.
Shane had his elbows on the bar, the careful gate 14C posture entirely gone somewhere around the second round. He was looking at Ilya with the expression that had been getting progressively harder to read as the evening went on, not because it was hiding more, Ilya thought, but because it was hiding less, and that was somehow more complicated.
"Truth," Shane said. Then, after a pause. "Ask me a real one."
Ilya looked at him.
A real one. As if the scurvy and the pipes and the playlist hadn't been real, which they had, but Shane was right that they hadn't been the real ones that count. The ones underneath. You had to get through the surface layer before anyone trusted you with the actual thing.
"Okay," Ilya said. He thought about it properly, which took longer than usual because Shane had shifted on his barstool toward his way and the freckles had shifted with him and Ilya was a professional who had been noting them professionally all evening and was finding it increasingly difficult to continue doing so professionally.
"What do you want. That you haven't told anyone." Ilya looked at him,
Shane went still, which Ilya had learned by now meant something real was processing underneath. He picked up his whiskey. Gave it the space it needed.
"I want to stop being so careful," Shane said quietly. Said at the bar, not at Ilya. "All the time. I have four drafted speeches in my bag for a wedding toast I have to give this weekend. Four. I know what I'm doing for the next four months. I have a playlist for every situation and a spreadsheet for coffee shops and I— " he stopped. Started again. "I'm very tired."
He looked up.
"That's it," he said. "That's the answer."
Ilya looked at him for a moment. "It's good answer," he said. No joke underneath it.
Shane held his gaze for a beat. Then looked away, smooth and automatic, the armor finding its edges again. "Your turn."
Ilya's truth was supposed to be funny. He'd had one ready. Something light. Something that would reset the banter back to where it was safe. But instead—
He opened his mouth.
"I came to this wedding," he said, "because I thought it would fix something." He turned his glass. "I don't know what exactly. I thought.. maybe seeing her happy, seeing them, I thought it would close something properly." He paused. "Instead of just leaving it— " he made a gesture with one hand. Ajar. Walking away and calling it the same thing.
Shane looked at him. Old friends, Ilya has said. Shane’s expression did something, it’s neither pity nor sympathy, it’s something more like a recognition. The recognition of someone who understood, from the inside, what it cost to say a thing lightly that wasn't light at all.
He didn't push it.
"Is it," Shane said carefully. "Closing?"
Ilya considered this honestly. "Ask me again at the end of the weekend."
"Okay."
A beat.
"Okay," Ilya said. He looked at Shane. At the freckles in the last of the soft amber light. At the four drafts of speeches and the I want to stop being so careful still sitting in the air between them, warm and slightly dangerous. The way Shane looked at Ilya’s mouth whenever he’s talking all evening, thinking Ilya might not notice, which of course he does. At the hands around the almost empty glass, which had tightened slightly and then loosened and then tightened again, which Ilya had noticed and not commented on because some things you noticed and left alone.
"Truth or dare," Ilya continued.
Shane looked at him. Something small shifted on his face. The processing expression. Then, like it surprised him, "Dare."
Ilya looked at him.
"Dare," Shane said again. More certain this time. Like he'd checked the answer and it was still the same.
The last light went off.
Just the bar itself now, closed, the plane's path dark outside the window, Helsinki past midnight making no apologies. The bartender had disappeared entirely, no other travelers in sight. Just them, and the quiet empty gate beyond, and the board blinking its patient DELAYED at no one.
Ilya looked at Shane in the dark. At the freckles gone soft in this light. At the jaw, slightly less set than gate 14C, slightly less set than an hour ago, the careful arrangement of it loosening in increments that Shane probably didn't know were visible. At the Dare said twice, the second time more certain than the first, like Shane had made a decision and was committing to it.
I want to stop being so careful, Shane had said.
Da, Ilya had thought. I know.
He looked at him for one more moment.
"I dare you," Ilya said, "..to kiss me."
The bar was very quiet.
Shane stared at him. Ilya could see it, the full processing, the calculation running, what does this mean, what is the correct response here, what does he want, what do I.. He watched Shane run the numbers, and he almost said forget it, joke, sorry, except—
Shane's hands tightened on his glass. His eyes dropped to Ilya’s mouth and lingered there a few seconds too long.
"Okay," Shane said. Very quietly. Like the word had been there for a while, waiting for the right moment.
He leaned in.
Ilya had predicted, somewhere in the leaning, that it might be quick and contained. The responsible execution of a dare. A point proved, a game completed and done.
Shane closed the distance.
His mouth found Ilya's.
And then, unexpectedly, Shane made a sound at the back of his throat.
Small and sounded relieved. Not meant for anyone. The sound of someone who had been holding something very carefully for a very long time and had, for one unguarded fraction of a second, put it down.
Ilya heard it.
He went very still. Then he didn’t.
Maybe it’s the three rounds of alcohol, maybe it’s the closing bar, maybe it’s that goddamn freckles, he could not decipher why.
Ilya moved first. Or Shane did. It didn't matter. They both did.
His hand found Shane's hair, one other hand on his face, the freckles under his thumb, “Bozhe moy,” the freckles, and Shane made the sound again, slightly different this time, less surprised and more.. Ilya didn't have a word for it, didn't have a word for any of this. He was operating entirely without language for the first time in recent memory.
Shane's hand came up between them.
Ilya thought for a split second here it is, the stop, the we shouldn't, the—
Shane's hand found his collar and stayed there.
Oh.
The kiss deepened. Shane kissed the way Ilya hadn't expected, no performance, no guard, his mouth warm and certain and slightly desperate in the way that only happened when someone had been denying himself something for a very long time and had just, in one unguarded moment, got it.
Ilya’s hand moved from Shane’s cheekbone into his lower jaw, tilting his head back slightly, and the new angle was dizzying.
“Da, vot tak,” Ilya groaned, low and quiet and completely beyond his control. Shane swallowed it and pressed closer, his knee finding the space between Ilya's, his other hand sliding from Ilya’s collar to his sides, clutching hard. Ilya pulled Shane closer and Shane moved willingly, immediately, with a small desperate sound of his own that settled somewhere low in Ilya's stomach and stayed.
Ilya's hand tightened in his hair.
Shane's breath caught.
They both came off the barstool entirely. They were in a bar. Technically.
Ilya pulled back slightly.
Shane followed, a small desperate sound escaping him as he chased Ilya's mouth, his hands tightening, pulling, not letting the distance exist even for a second.
"Ty.." Ilya said softly, which wasn't English, which meant Shane wouldn't understand it, which was probably why he said it.
"What," Shane said. His voice was lower than it had been all evening. Eyes hazy and heavy with wants. His hand was still at Ilya's side.
"Nothing," Ilya said. "Come here."
What happened in the next few minutes was, technically, still in a bar.
Technically.
Ilya walked him back. They knocked a barstool down and completely ignored it.
One step, two, until Shane's back met the wall at the gap between the end of the bar and the entrance to what looks like a staff room, they’re completely shielded from the public eyes.
Ilya's hand slid from Shane's jaw to the back of his neck and pulled. He dropped a kiss to Shane's throat and Shane's head fell back immediately, mouth dropping open, eyes sliding closed, low moan escaped his mouth, the careful person from gate 14C entirely gone, and Ilya smiled against his skin because he couldn't help it. And he pressed another kiss to his throat and felt the swallow of it against his mouth.
"Don't stop," Shane said. Low and certain.
"Ne sobirayus," Ilya said. Not planning to. Not even slightly.
He trailed down, throat to collarbone, slow and deliberate, leaving his mouth somewhere new every few seconds and feeling Shane's breathing change with each one, becoming less controlled and more wrecked and entirely unguarded, then licked a slow line up the full length of his neck.
Shane shivered from the point of contact all the way down.
Ilya moved up. Found the spot behind Shane's ear, pressed his mouth there, teeth grazing, just enough pressure—
Shane shuddered. His breath caught audibly. His hands flew to Ilya's back and gripped like something to hold onto, pulling him closer, and Ilya did it again, because he was thorough, and because Shane's reaction was worth repeating.
"Bozhe moy," Ilya said against his neck.
"You keep saying that," Shane breathed.
"Da." Ilya's hand tightened on his waist. Drew him in. "Because you keep—" he didn't finish the sentence. He kissed him instead, deep and hungry, and Shane made the sound, that sound, the first one, the one that had started all of this, and his hips rolled forward again and Ilya thought, we are in a bar, an empty public bar, in Finland, which is the happiest country in the world, and maybe this is why, this is the secret, two people in a closing airport bar past midnight making questionable decisions—
Shane bit his lower lip gently.
Ilya forgot about Finland.
Shane's hands moved, his back, his waist, decisively lower, both hands gripping Ilya's ass and pulling him flush, all of him at once, and Ilya groaned into his mouth, deep and low. Shane pulled harder, his hips rolling forward, slow and deliberate and devastating.
Ilya pressed back. They moved, the slow desperate grind of it building, hips finding friction and chasing it, the hard press of them against each other undeniable, no distance left to negotiate, no pretending about what was happening or what they both wanted to happen next.
Ilya pressed in. Shane exhaled against his mouth, wrecked, his head falling back against the wall, hips pressing forward into Ilya's, chasing the friction they'd just found, and Ilya gave it to him, pressed in, and Shane made that sound again, the low broken one, and grabbed at Ilya's back with both hands like he needed something to hold onto.
Ilya's hands moved, chest first, feeling Shane's heartbeat against his palm, fast and unsteady, then ribs, then the hem of his shirt, fingers sliding underneath to warm skin, finding the hard plane of his stomach, the muscle of it, trailing lower, deliberately, finding his waistline, his fingertips at the waist of his trousers, looping in, pulling, just slightly, just enough—
And then the airport announced their flight.
Attention passengers. Finnair flight HR1221 to Dubrovnik is now ready for boarding at gate 14C. We apologize for the delay.
They broke the kiss. Gasping.
The announcement had done it, cut through everything, the heat and the dark and the bar that had stopped being a bar. Now they were just two people pressing at each other in a closed airport bar past midnight with the fluorescent light of the terminal coming in and making everything look exactly like what it was.
Ilya stepped back. His hands fall at his side. The warmth of Shane’s skin still lingered on his fingertips.
Shane stands, straightening himself.
They looked at each other.
This part, the after, the what now, the fluorescent airport light coming from the gate with the board reading BOARDING, this part neither of them had a plan for. Shane's shirt was untucked. His mouth was red, swollen. His hair was.. Ilya had done that, with his hands, in what felt like a different universe.
The board said BOARDING.
Shane looked at it. Then at the floor. Then at Ilya, briefly, the way Shane looked at things he hadn't planned for, like he was running the numbers and the numbers weren't adding up to anything he anticipated.
He cleared his throat.
"Right," he said.
"Right," Ilya said.
A beat of silence that was not comfortable. The comfortable silences had been earlier, in the amber light, in the game, in the five hours of something that had made sense in the moment and was now sitting between them.
Shane reached for his jacket. His carry-on. The movements of a person reassembling themselves with the efficiency of long practice. Jacket, posture, expression, the jaw setting itself, the armor finding its last pieces and clicking into place.
It took fifteen seconds.
It was the saddest fifteen seconds Ilya had seen in a while. He worked with sick children for a living. He knew what fifteen seconds of someone putting themselves back together looked like.
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "I have to board now. I'm in business class," Shane said. Like that was what needed saying right now, out of everything.
"Okay," Ilya said.
Neither of them moved.
Shane stood there for one more moment with his carry-on and his smoothed-over expression and the one thing in his eyes that hadn't been smoothed over yet, that was still there, visible, if you were looking.
Ilya was looking.
Shane put it away, and finally put his perfectly guarded expression back.
"See you there." he said, looking away, trying to avoid Ilya’s eyes.
"See you there." Ilya said.
Shane walked toward the gate. He didn't look back.
Ilya sat for another moment in the closed bar in the dark. The bar light was long off, just the fluorescent spill from the terminal, flat and bright and honest, making everything look exactly like what it was.
He picked up his glass. Empty.
He put it down.
He thought about the sound Shane had made.
He straightened his jacket. He grabbed his own carry-on. He went to gate 14C, which was the sensible thing to do, the only thing to do, the obvious next step in a sequence of events that had been, from the departures board to the bar to the dare to the fifteen seconds, entirely outside the category of sensible.
He boarded.
Found his seat. Window seat, he always paid extra for the window, right now he couldn't remember why that had ever seemed important.
Somewhere on this plane, Shane. Business class, separated by a curtain and twenty rows and whatever that had been in the bar that Ilya didn't have a name for yet and was not going to name it at thirty thousand feet over the Adriatic.
He looked at the dark outside the window. Helsinki disappearing under the clouds.
He thought about the freckles.
He thought about the sound.
He put his headphones in.
He closed his eyes.
***