Chapter Text
“Oh my God, are you alright?”
Ilya blinks the tears from his eyes as he tries to get his bearings. He can hear Sveta yelling behind him, muffled but frantic. He imagines its probably a mix of chastising expletives at whoever landed an object squarely on the bridge of his nose and asking Ilya if he's okay.
Thinking of his nose again makes Ilya’s face throb, and he wipes his upper lip to see his hand come back red. Great.
“I’m so sorry,” says the man in front of him frantically. Ilya has to blink a few times to center his vision, and once he succeeds he almost tries again because there is no way the person in front of him is who hit him in the face. He doesn’t look like he’s ever done harm to anyone, even by accident.
He has freckles. Ilya notices them before anything else. They dust across the man’s face like powdered sugar, spanning from the bridge of his nose to high on his cheekbones. His wide brown eyes blink up at Ilya nervously, as if he’s bracing to be screamed at but fully prepared to stand there and take it. He’s biting the inside of his cheek, Ilya can tell from the way the skin is hollowed in on the left. Ilya has the sudden urge to reach out and run his thumb over the spot to force the man to relax.
“I’m fine,” Ilya says, though it comes out thick and muffled. He tastes iron in the back of his throat. “Is okay.”
“Pinch the bridge of your nose,” says the man sternly, his previous panic suddenly replaced with calm. “Come to the water, we can rinse it off.”
“Ilyushka,” Sveta calls suddenly, running up beside him. She grabs his arm, looking between him and the stranger. “Ty v poryadke?”
Ilya follows her gaze as it rapidly jumps between them, and smiles to himself. The reality of the situation hits him suddenly. It’s ridiculous to allow the man who hit you to nurse the same injury he caused, but genuineness is rolling off this man in waves. Ilya feels like he has to follow.
“Da,” He responds, placing his hand on top of Sveta comfortingly. “Is ok.”
Svetlana narrows her eyes at the man, then says, “On ochen' milyy. Ne isporti vso.”
Ilya laughs and follows the man towards the waves.
“Keep pinching it,” the man says as they begin to wade in. “I’ll um-” he falters, his eyes travelling slowly from where Ilya is holding his nose to where his shoulder connects to his chest, then down his torso. He looks away quickly, as if embarrassed. “Sorry. When it stops bleeding, rinse off the blood.”
“Yes, Nurse,” Ilya quips, his voice funny from how he’s breathing through his mouth and trying not to swallow blood.
“I’m a doctor, actually,” says the man, as if on instinct. Ilya lets out a laugh, and the man whips his head towards him. “Oh, you were joking.”
“Yes. But is sexy if true,” Ilya says. “Is also sexy if you are roleplaying.”
The man makes a face, and Ilya is pretty sure it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen.
“I’m not roleplaying,” the stranger huffs. “I’m a pediatric surgeon.”
“You’re lying,” Ilya gapes.
“I’m not. Lean forward, not back. You’ll swallow blood.”
Ilya listens easily, even though he’s pretty sure his nose has stopped bleeding by now.
“If you are a doctor you should know getting hit in the face is not good for you,” Ilya reasons, letting go of his nose to see if blood was still spilling out. He sneaks a glance over to the other man to gauge how well his joke lands, and is pleasantly surprised to see the hint of a smile on his face.
“Obviously I know that,” says the man. “It was a complete accident! Emma wanted me to throw the frisbee as far as I could so she and Ruby could chase it-”
“Your dog told you this?” Ilya asks, finally letting the pressure off his nose and standing upright. He walks farther out into the cool water to begin to wipe the blood off his hand and forearm.
“No, Emma and Ruby are Hayden’s daughters- you know what? Nevermind. I’m sorry I hit you. I didn’t think I would actually be able to throw it that hard or far, and I wouldn’t have tried so hard if I knew I could.”
Ilya considers this. He did not think for even one second this stranger meant to hit him in the face with a frisbee, even before he found out that he was the most beautiful stranger in Cape Cod, but he made him wait anyway just to save a little face. (And to keep this push-and-pull alive).
“So you are a strong pediatric surgeon,” Ilya tilts his head to the side, smiling at the other man in what he hopes is a charming- and not dopey- way.
“Does your head hurt at all?” The stranger asks, rolling his eyes. He reaches out to pull Ilya’s hand away from where it's splashing salty water up onto his face. Ilya lets him, blinking slowly as the man holds his hand a second longer than is strictly necessary as he examines Ilya’s face. His hands are cold despite the warm summer air. When he drops his wrist, Ilya feels the loss in his chest.
“No, Doctor,” Ilya says dutifully, running his hand down his lips and chin one more time. “I am fine. It was an accident, yes?”
“Yes,” says the stranger. He looks remorseful again, like the events caught back up with him. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m Ilya.”
The stranger blinks, looking taken back, then laughs. It’s nothing more than a short burst of air, but his smile creeps up his cheeks like a sunrise and pushes his freckles impossibly closer together. Ilya wants to crawl into the gaps between them.
“Shane Hollander,” says the man, Shane. He’s holding out his hand. Ilya takes it.
“Nice to meet you, Doctor Hollander,” Ilya grins. He holds Shane’s hand a moment longer than what is socially acceptable for two people who have just met so violently.
“Are you sure your head is okay?” Shane asks again, like he can’t help himself. “Concussions are no joke.”
“I’m sure,” Ilya nods. His nose is pounding a little, and his eyes keep threatening to water, but he’s fine. His head is fine. Shane doesn’t look convinced, so Ilya adds, “Promise, Doctor.”
“Okay,” Shane acquiesces, looking down. Ilya follows his gaze to see him wiggling his toes into the wet sand beneath their feet. When Ilya looks back up, Shane is looking right at him again.
His face is soft this time, no longer the urgent, no-nonsense expression he’d had when asking about Ilya’s symptoms. Ilya almost swoons at the sight of the rising blush on Shane’s cheeks, at the way his hips twist almost imperceivably.
“I live right over there,” Shane says, pointing behind the dunes to the row of giant houses that line the bluffs. “Can I get you an ice pack?”
For a brief, hysterical moment, Ily thinks this man is proposing a hook-up. He shakes the thought away as he looks at Shane’s Vineyard Fucking Vines swim trunks to realize that this is not at all the type of person to do that at all. He ponders the offer at face value, and decides that remaining within Shane’s orbit a little longer is worth the eventual misery of having to leave him.
“Sure,” Ilya nods. “It would help, yes?”
“Yes,” Shane answers simply.
Ilya blindly follows him out of the water.. He hardly notices Cliff coming up beside him and laying a hand on his arm, eyebrows raised in protective question.
“He’s a doctor,” Ilya shrugs easily, smiling at his friend. Cliff looks between him and Shane, then back towards Sveta, who’s narrowed eyes are cataloging the situation with her typical amount of suspicion. Cliff nods and drops his hand from Ilya’s arm, letting them continue up towards the road.
Ilya knew, peripherally, that surgeons make a lot of money, more than he’s ever seen a day in his life, probably. But as Shane leads him around the back, through the garden gate and past the pool, Ilya thinks this might be the nicest home he’s ever been in.
“Have you been here before?” Shane asks, leading Ilya into the kitchen and pointing to one of the barstools under the island. Ilya watches as Shane grabs a towel from one of the numerous drawers before moving to the freezer and pulling out a bag of peas.
Ilya takes the moment to look around the house. It’s clean, but lived in. There are plates and silverware in a drying rack next to the sink, and a half-drank coffee mug on the counter. The chairs of the dining table are at various points of being pushed in, as if a group had gotten up and left in a hurry.
Most notably, though, are the handful of dolls scattered around the floor. Ilya doesn’t know enough about kids to know what specific kinds they are, but they do look well loved, if a little rough for wear.
“To your home?” Ilya says, placing the cold compress on the bridge of his nose when Shane hands it over. He resists the urge to hiss at the feeling. “No.”
Shane huffs, but he’s smiling, so Ilya takes it as a win.
“No, to the Cape. To my beach,” Shane says.
“Your beach?” Ilya raises his eyebrows. Maybe this Shane is wealthier than he thought.
“No, no. Not like that,” Shane quickly amends. “I just- I grew up coming here. Never not spent a summer here. I just- yeah.”
Ilya nods. He gets it. In Boston, he has his coffee shop and his favorite bench in the park near his house. In Moscow, should he ever be able to go back, he could still walk from his childhood apartment to the giant tree where he’d first met Sveta, their tree.
Shane’s beach, then.
“This is my first time,” Ilya admits. “Sveta got a rental for the week. We came from the city.”
“Was she the woman on the beach?” Shane asks, sitting down on the bar stool next to Ilya. He crosses his ankles. They’re both still shirtless, only in their swim trunks, and Ilya watches as Shane’s stomach relaxes and the skin folds as he sits. He wants to place his hand there.
“Yes,” Ilya confirms. “She is probably thinking you are murdering me.”
“I’m not,” Shane says. “Obviously.”
“There is still time,” Ilya quips, smiling. Shane ignores him, but his smile spreads farther. Ilya wants to poke his dimple.
“So you’re from Boston?” Shane asks, drumming his fingers on the counter.
“No, I am from Moscow. But I have lived in Boston for 11 years,” Ilya answers. “Since I was seventeen.”
“Did you come with your family?” Shane asks, cocking his head to the side like a puppy. Ilya’s cheeks are beginning to ache with how much he’s smiling combined with the fresh-forming bruise on his nose.
Ilya shakes his head. “Just me and Sveta. We came for school.”
“That’s very brave,” Shane says earnestly. Ilya knows that, has heard it a thousand times from professors and coworkers and strangers, but something about it coming from Shane feels impossibly more real. His heart lights up.
“Was easy decision,” Ilya says dismissively. “I could not stay, and neither could she, so we left.”
Shane doesn’t say anything, just studies Ilya’s face, then looks down at the floor. They sit in the silence for a moment, exploring each other's faces. It should be awkward. It isn’t.
“Do you want something to drink?” Shane asks, looking back down at where their knees press against each other. Ilya has never been good at physical contact, especially with strangers, but this feels normal. It feels like something he’s done a thousand times before, like Shane’s personal space is somewhere he’s often taken residence. “Tea? There's probably still some coffee, if Hayden didn’t drink it all.”
Hayden. Ilya remembers that name from before. He glances at the dolls on the floor and makes the connection. Emma wanted me to throw the frisbee as far as I could so she and Ruby could chase it. Right. Shane’s boyfriend, probably. Partner.
Ilya moves his knees. Shane’s face does a quick scrunch, but then settles back to normal. Ilya doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Water,” Ilya says, taking the peas off his nose. “My mouth tastes like iron, still.”
Shane nods and stands up. Ilya watches again as he fluidly moves through the kitchen. Shane puts ice in the glass, procures a straw from another one of the drawers, and then places it in front of Ilya.
It’s weirdly domestic for two people who met twenty minutes ago.
Ilya brings the straw to his lips while keeping eye contact with Shane. This is dangerous, now. Especially because of Hayden. Shane’s eyes flit between where Ilya’s lips are wrapped around the straw, his cheeks hallowing suggestively, and his eyes, which are looking right back at Shane. Ilya’s sure that Shane’s breath hitches.
“Would you like to come to dinner?” Shane asks suddenly. His face is steady, but Ilya can see his toes wiggling anxiously against the bottom bar of the stool he’s sitting on. “We’re having grilled chicken and salad.”
Ilya’s face splits into a grin, the uncontrollable kind that threatens to make his cheeks hurt if he leaves it on his face too long. Maybe he isn’t misreading this, after all. “That would be very nice.”
“Cool,” Shane says, his own small, tentative smile growing. “We’ll eat around 6, probably. Come at 5?”
“Sure,” Ilya agrees easily, like they’re old friends. Like they met under normal circumstances.
Sveta is going to call him crazy when he gets home.
-
Ilya tries on all seven of the shirts he’d packed before going over to Shane’s that evening.
“You look good in all of them,” Sveta groans as Ilya holds up the third one in front of the mirror again. It was a light blue, short sleeve button down adorned with birds on it. Ilya knows he looked good in it, but he doesn’t know if he looked good enough. “Ilyusha, really,” Sveta says pointedly, grabbing the shirt out of his hands and slapping his chest.
“Sorry,” Ilya grumbles, taking the shirt from her hands and pulling it on. “Just nervous.”
“What, that he’ll hit you again?” Sveta muses, doing the buttons on his shirt. Ilya, not for the first time and certainly not the last, has the urge to both smack Sveta’s shoulder and wrap her in a bear hug. “It is just dinner with a sexy, sexy stranger.”
“And his boyfriend,” Ilya reminds her, tilting his head back and rolling his eyes as Svetlana finishes buttoning his shirt.
“Not his boyfriend,” Sveta hums, running her hand over Ilya’s shoulder to smooth out the shirt before sitting back down on the edge of his bed. “I talked to him, when you went back to Shane’s house. Is just his friend. He has a wife, even. Who is also there. It is their kids, not Shane’s.”
Ilya whips his head around to look at her, mouth agape. “How do you know this?”
“Because I asked,” Svetlana laughs, looking at Ilya like he’s a lost kid in a supermarket. “They went to school together. They are friends.”
“Oh,” Ilya lets out a sigh of relief, tension he didn’t even know he was holding melting out of his shoulders. “Well.”
“Yes,” Sveta agrees easily, even though Ilya didn’t really say anything. They’re good like that, communicating without having to really put in the work. (This is probably why Ilya finds it so difficult to talk with anyone else, but that’s not a thought he wants to dwell on).
“Is like a double date, then.”
“Maybe,” Ilya shrugs, but a small, private smile paints its way onto his face. He hopes this is a double date. He hopes he gets to press his knee to Shane’s again. He hopes that dinner is good and Shane is better and they laugh and maybe-
“It's almost 5,” Svetlana announces, standing up. “Come, I will drive you.”
Svetlana drops him off outside Shane’s massive house with a kiss to his cheek and a reminder to bring her leftovers. Ilya rings the doorbell and feels like a teenager going to a school dance, not a twenty-seven year old man going for dinner. He suddenly feels silly for showing up empty handed and wishes he’d had the foresight to go into town to buy a bottle of wine, or something.
He's expecting Shane, or maybe Hayden, to open the door. Instead, it's two identical little girls in matching sun dresses, no older than six.
“You’re the man from the beach,” says the one on the left, blinking up at Ilya with wide blue eyes.
“Yes,” Ilya nods, stuck standing in the doorway as the girls look at him quizzically with their hands on their hips. If they’re going for intimidation, it’s only partially successful. Their matching dresses hit on the side of adorable rather than creepy. Their sunburnt noses remind him of Rudolph. He keeps the thought to himself.
“Uncle Shane hit your face,” says the one on the right. “Did he break it?”
“I didn’t break anything,” says Shane behind them, walking up to the door. “And it was really your fault, you know.”
Shane is dressed in a light blue linen button down, a pair of grey khaki shorts, and, inexplicably, loafers. They’re expensive looking, but Ilya can’t make out the brand. He lets his eyes drag back up Shane’s body shamelessly, cataloguing the way his calves turn into his thighs, how his hamstrings tense under Ilya’s gaze, how his hand is fisted around a can of ginger ale at his side, his other hand on his hip sassily as he chastises the twins. Ilya tracks the jut of a vein in Shane’s neck until it disappears, then makes eye contact with him again, smiling.
“You threw it!” Cries one of the girls indignantly, crossing her arms. The eye contact breaks. Shane looks down at the girls and scowls. Ilya feels his heart flutter.
“You’re only responsible for yourself, Uncle Shane,” says the other. Ilya covers his mouth with his hand to hide his grin. He likes these girls.
“Come in,” Shane says, exasperated but smiling. The two girls take that as their queue to run back into the living room. “That’s Emma and Ruby.”
“I figured,” Ilya nods, stepping inside as Shane closes the door behind him. He eyes the shoe rack by the front door and begins to toe off his own sneakers. He picks them up and lines them up neatly on the bottom shelf. When he looks back up, Shane is looking at him intensely. Ilya feels like melting.
“Let me get you a drink,” Shane says, shaking his head and leading Ilya through the house to the kitchen. “What would you like?”
“Whatever’s open is fine,” Ilya shrugs, following him. With no immediate injury to attend to, Ilya lets himself take his time observing the house. They weave through the foyer, passing a small table with one large picture frame. Ilya glances to find a younger Shane with a much shorter haircut in purple graduation robes, proudly holding a diploma in his hands. On one side of him is an older man, his dad, Ilya assumes, and on the other side his mom. Both are beaming with undeniable pride, leaning into Shane as if to transfer some of their glee to him via osmosis. Shane is smiling, tentatively, but it's nothing compared to the unbridled joy on his parent’s faces.
They round a wide corner, and Ilya only has a moment to glance at the photographs and art on the wall before he’s face to face with another kid.
A baby, really.
“You must be Ilya!” Says the woman holding said baby, smiling warmly. She’s short, though most everyone is shorter than Ilya. She has the same sunburn as the twins, but her dark hair matches the toddler in her arms. “I’m Jackie.”
“Hello,” Ilya says, nodding politely. “Thank you for having me.”
“Oh, please,” Jackie scoffs, stepping further into the kitchen and using her free hand to pull two glasses down from one of the shelves. “It’s Shane’s home, we’re just visiting. Speaking of, Shane, can you-” Before she has the chance to finish her sentence, Shane has swooped in and taken the baby into his own arms. Ilya watches, transfixed, as the kid buries his head in Shane’s shoulder and mumbles something unintelligent to Ilya, and Shane whispers back.
“He says hi,” Shane translates, looking up at Ilya softly. “He’s a little shy.”
If Ilya had ovaries, they would be hurting.
“Hello,” Ilya says gently. “I am Ilya.”
The kid turns to look at him warily with the kind of mistrust that only toddlers possess. His hand is white fisting Shane’s collar. When Ilya smiles, he looks away again.
“Arthur will warm up to you,” says Jackie, holding out a salt-rimmed glass. “Margarita? Homemade.”
Ilya accepts it gladly.
“So, what do you do, Ilya?” Jackie asks, sliding on to a bar stool and sipping her own drink.
“I teach literature,” Ilya answers, slowly tearing his eyes from Shane and the baby and sitting down next to Jackie. Their knees could touch, this time. Ilya wishes it were Shane. “At Boston University.”
“Oh!” Jackie grins, reaching out her hand to rest on Ilya’s knee. She turns to face Shane, who has moved to the other side of the counter and is unpeeling an orange while Arthur watches. “A Russian literature professor? Shane, that’s sexy.”
Ilya blushes, hot and quick down his throat.
“Who’s sexy?” cries a male voice, followed quickly by the laughter of two young girls. They round their way into the kitchen.
“Oh, no one,” Jackie sighs wistfully, and the man leans down to kiss her cheek, then her forehead. Hayden, then.
“You must be the man from the beach,” He says, looking at Ilya, squaring him up. “Sorry Shane hit you.”
“It was an accident!” Shane groans, and the girls who had trailed in after their father laugh again.
“Hayden,” he says, clapping Ilya on the shoulder with his hand then reaching out with the same one for a handshake. Ilya takes it.
“Ilya. Nice to meet you,” He offers politely. He still feels a misplaced, simmering jealousy in his gut. He tries to tell it to fuck off, that this man is clearly not fucking Shane, that Ilya isn’t even close to fucking Shane, but it doesn’t really work. His voice comes out more clipped than he means it to.
Hayden nods, a picture-perfect smile on his face, then he turns to Shane and Arthur. “I brought you something,” he says conspiratorially, pointing at them. Arthur perks up. From behind his back, Hayden procures a well-loved stuffed alligator, or crocodile, maybe, no bigger than Ilya’s forearm. For a quick moment, Ilya isn’t sure if it's meant for the kid or for Shane.
“Chompy!” Arthur cries, leaning forward out of Shane’s arms to grab the object. His eyes are wide, like he can’t believe it’s in front of him.
“Where did you find it?” Shane gapes, rubbing Arthur’s back soothingly as he pulls the stuffed animal into his arms.
“The backseat,” Hayden shakes his head, self-chastising. “Must’ve ended up there when we stopped for groceries yesterday, I guess.” He runs his hand over the top of Arthur’s head, then pats Shane’s shoulder before sitting down in the stool behind his wife.
“Ilya was just telling us how he’s a literature professor,” Jackie says, leaning back into her husband.
“Your face is bruising,” Hayden comments, looking directly at Ilya. He has the same serious tone that Shane had earlier that day in the same spot. “Did Shane give you ice earlier?”
“Hey!” Shane yelps. Arthur laughs in his arms.
“He did,” Ilya confirms, nodding. “He has a strong arm.”
“Obviously I gave him ice, Hayd,” Shane groans, but Ilya doesn’t miss the blush on his cheeks. “I have the same fu-” He pauses, looking at the kids around him. “The same degree you have.”
“You are both doctors?” Ilya asks, looking between the two of them. He feels outnumbered, suddenly.
“Yup,” Hayden answers, popping the ‘p’ in an obnoxious sort of way that has Ilya side eyeing him. “We met in undergrad and have been best buds ever since.” Ilya looks back at Shane, who is nodding in confirmation.
The oven beeps, and Shane perks up. Ilya watches as he passes Arthur off to Hayden with the practiced familiarity that only two people who have been floating in each other’s orbit for years could possibly have, then moves back to grab the two hot pads off the oven handle and slip them on before opening it.
“Smells great,” Ilya says, taking another sip of his drink. “What is it?”
“Just potatoes,” Shane shrugs, pulling a glass pan out of the oven. Ilya swallows as he watches Shane’s bicep flex and relax again as he places the pan down on the stove. It bubbles melodically as Shane hangs the hot pads back up. “Au gratin.”
“They’re the best,” Says Emma-or-Ruby, Ilya still isn’t sure. She’s peering up at the counter, still not quite tall enough to see the top of it without standing on her tiptoes. “But only when Uncle Shane makes them.”
“They were good when I tried!” Hayden defends himself earnestly. “You ate them!”
“They weren’t as good,” Ruby-or-Emma says, crossing her arms. “Uncle Shane puts a secret in them.”
-
They sit down to eat outside at a long glass table next to the pool. It’s far earlier than Ilya would normally eat. The sun is still making itself known in the sky, so much so that Jackie insists all the kids put sunscreen on before sitting down. It feels nice on his back, a welcome warmth to carry him through.
Ilya sits next to Shane at dinner, with the girls on the other side of him and Jackie and Hayden across from him with Arthur. It’s domestic, the kind of closeness he hasn’t felt with other people except Svetlana and sometimes Cliff in a long time. He finds himself longing for it, even though it’s right in front of him. He thinks he could live in it forever, even if it's only been a few hours.
Shane, he learns, is an excellent cook. There’s grilled chicken and vegetables, salad, and, obviously, the potatoes, which are excellent.
He helps Shane bring the empty serving dishes and plates into the kitchen. They stand side by side as they scrape and rinse plates before putting them in the dishwasher as the Pikes wrangle their kids ready for bed.
“So do you like it?” Shane asks, grabbing a plate from Ilya’s hands and placing it in the dishwasher. “Being a professor, I mean.”
“Most of the time,” Ilya says with a shrug. “I like teaching. I love reading. But sometimes kids are…”
“Difficult?” Shane offers. “Disinterested?”
“Yes,” Ilya laughs. “Even in college, they are sometimes not so polite.”
Shane nods knowingly. “They’re direct. I like that, though.”
Ilya nods, but keeps his mouth shut because it’s clear Shane has more to say.
“Like- a kid never lies to you about how they’re feeling. They just tell you where it hurts and how bad. It’s parents that are harder,” Shane sighs, looking down. “They talk around the truth more.”
“You do not talk around the truth?” Ilya asks, searching Shane’s face.
Shane shakes his head. “No. It is or it isn’t, might as well make it clear.”
“I don’t know if that's always true,” Ilya challenges, scraping the rest of the salad into a glass container that Shane had taken out. He clips the lid on and stacks it on top of the identical container with chicken in it.
“Maybe not,” Shane allows with a shrug. Ilya doesn’t miss how Shane looks at his hands flexing on the container lid. He can’t place his expression. “But you’re an English professor. You deal with multiple truths more than I do.”
“Probably,” Ilya nods. The air feels weighted with how much they’ve just revealed to each other in such a short time, but it's not uncomfortable. Ilya realizes he would like to be buried in the weight of Shane, in the feeling of closeness.
“The potatoes were very good,” Ilya comments, breaking the silence. He leans back against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms. He smiles at Shane.
“Thank you,” Shane says, placing the last plate in the dishwasher. He crouches down to reach under the sink. He procures a dishpod, and Ilya watches him place it in the correct compartment and start the dishwasher. “It’s my dad’s recipe. Though he probably just took it from The New York Times or something.”
“What is the secret?” Ilya asks, stepping closer to Shane, letting his arms fall to the side. They’re three feet away from each other, maybe. One or two steps and Ilya could close the distance.
“What secret?” Shane asks, his eyebrows creasing. Ilya wants to rub his thumb on the spot, to force the creases away.
“In the potatoes,” Ilya says, stepping closer. He could reach out and brush Shane’s hips. Grab them, really. “The girls said you put a secret.”
Shane looks confused for a second longer, then his face splits into a smile. This time, he steps closer to Ilya. His fingers dance along the bottom hem of Ilya’s shirt gently. Just feeling the material. Ilya feels like screaming. Shane looks up through his thick, dark lashes, his bottom lip puffed out slightly. Their breaths mingle. He looks like he wants to eat Ilya.
Ilya steps impossibly closer, placing one hand on Shane’s bicep and the other on his neck. Both touches are gentle, soft and explorational. Like he’s mapping the outline of Shane with his hands. They’re just sharing space, reducing the expanse of the kitchen to the distance between their mouths. Ilya could stick his tongue out and it would swipe across Shane’s bottom lip, probably.
Shane beats him to it.
The kiss is soft, slow. Shane tastes like white wine and ginger ale, like the strawberries Jakcie had brought out for the girls after dinner that Shane had eaten half of sneakily. His hands tighten on the bottom of Ilya’s shirt, pulling him impossibly closer. Ilya groans, and Shane opens his mouth.
They stay that way, kissing unhurriedly and tracing shapes over each other's bodies in the low light of Shane’s kitchen. They break apart after a moment, chests heaving as if they’d done something much more physically demanding than make-out.
Ilya ignores the ache in his cock.
Shane looks up at Ilya through his lashes again. His face is flushed all the way down his neck. His pupils are blown. “Butter,” Shane whispers.
Ilya startles, the word surprising him, then laughs. It’s loud and deep, from his belly. He has to let go of Shane to put his hand on his diaphragm as he tries to calm down. Shane groans and leans his head forward against Ilya’s shoulder.
“That’s the secret?” Ilya asks, still giggling as he reaches a hand up to card through the hair at the nape of Shane’s neck.
“Yeah,” Shane sighs, shaking his head where it lays against Ilya. “They’re only good when you make them really, really bad for you. Don’t tell Jackie.”
“I won’t,” Ilya says solemnly. Shane picks his head back up and takes a small step back. The intimacy bends, but Ilya can sense that this isn’t the end of their moment.
“When do you go back to the city?” Shane asks, leaning back against the kitchen sink. The space allows Ilya to track his body again. He does so shamelessly, feeling confident after their kiss.
“Sunday,” Ilya answers. He expects Shane to writhe under his gaze, but he stays perfectly still. Ilya’s cock throbs again. “In the afternoon, probably.”
Shane nods, considering. He bites his lower lip, looks at the floor, looks back up. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone.
“I’m going back on Friday,” Shane says, handing his phone to Ilya. “You should text me.”
Ilya lets out a laugh, feeling out of depth with Shane’s forwardness. He’s used to being the one to initiate. He likes this, though. He likes Shane. He puts his number into Shane’s contacts and hands his phone back.
“Text me first,” Ilya says. “So I have your number.”
Shane just nods and types something on his phone, which Ilya assumes is a text to him. As he does, Ilya watches the way he bites the inside of his cheek and thinks about how his lips had felt against his own. He reaches up subconsciously to touch his thumb to his mouth, the ghost of Shane’s soft touch still there. He thinks of the feeling of Shane’s hands fisting in the bottom of his shirt, tugging desperately. How he’s seen his bare chest, saw it before he even knew Shane’s name, and how he wants to see it again a thousand times. A billion.
Shane’s about to speak, but Ilya cuts him off by surging forward and pressing their lips together again. This kiss is the opposite of their first. It’s hot and wet and quick. Shane whimpers from the back of his throat, and Ilya sucks on his tongue to swallow the noise.
He breaks away, after only a minute, because he feels his phone buzzing in his pocket. Svetlana, here to pick him up, probably.
“I will text you, Shane Hollander,” Ilya says. Shane’s eyes are wet and hazy, and it takes all of the willpower Ilya has to not get on his knees right here in Shane's very nice kitchen with the Pike family upstairs.
“Okay, Ilya,” Shane says breathily. He blinks a few times in quick succession, then straightens up. “I’ll walk you out.”
Ilya lets Shane lead him to the foyer. He feels Shane’s eyes on his back as he pulls his shoes on, and feels the way they linger on his waist as Ilya reaches his arms above his head to stretch.
“Bye,” Ilya says, standing in the doorway. Svetlana’s car is blasting Russian rap in the driveway. Ilya watches as Shane tries to dissect the words, but comes up empty. He smiles. He’s done that a lot, this evening. More than he has in a while.
“Bye,” Shane says. Ilya looks at him a moment longer, then turns and walks towards Svetlana’s car.