Chapter Text
The dream slips away from Ilya as he wakes, but he can tell it was a nightmare of some kind. Something about heat, maybe, scorching, unlivable heat, or a cave that was falling in on itself. He thinks that maybe his chest had been compressed, his ribs pressing against his lungs until one of them popped—or maybe he was just panicking inside of the dream.
His shoulders ache, like he had been holding himself stiffly in sleep, and he feels worse and more sluggish than he usually does after a good night’s sleep. Like the dream has left oily, smeared fingerprints all over his mind.
He yawns and his jaw cracks. Shane’s breath hitches against Ilya’s neck.
Ilya frowns and looks down, but Shane’s already moving. He moves quickly, propping himself against the headboard, and combs loose curls away from Ilya’s forehead.
“Oh,” Shane exhales, and Ilya’s alarmed to see that his eyes are watering. “Oh, hello. Oh my god, Ilya, baby.”
Ilya blinks. “Hi, sweetheart,” he says, and Shane nods so earnestly. His breath hitches inside of his chest again, but Shane breathes deeply before Ilya can remind him to.
Shane’s fingers are feathery as he outlines Ilya’s cheekbone, his jaw. He laughs, or maybe gasps. Ilya frowns. He feels so slow and sleepy. Shane doesn’t use pet names, he remembers. He never has.
Ilya makes himself sit up, and the way his muscles ache with it is strange. He thinks that maybe he’s come down with a fever, and then decides to worry about that later. Shane is acting strange. Stranger than usual.
As soon as Ilya maneuvers himself into a more upright position, Shane moves his hands down, brushing his fingertips across Ilya’s collarbones, the wings of his shoulder blades, the smattering of moles trailing down the left part of his spine. Gentle touches aren’t exactly new to Shane—but it’s usually after one of them takes a hard hit during a game, or they’re talking about vulnerable things. Ilya blinks and tries to remember the day before. It’s fuzzier than he would have liked, but—
But it was a normal day. They were up at Shane’s cottage, and Ilya’s first season with the Centaurs was beginning soon. They were enjoying the last few days they had together before training camp. Yesterday, Ilya had dragged Shane out to sunbathe at the pier for an hour or two, and then they’d gone inside and Ilya had sucked Shane off, and then Shane returned the favor, and then they wrapped themselves around each other on the couch to watch some boring English film. And Shane had grilled chicken and asparagus out on the back deck while Ilya prepared salad and two glasses full of Spanish wine, and they’d fallen asleep at a reasonable hour after Shane had read to him from some bland autobiography about a Canadian politician and Ilya played with Shane’s fingers.
It wasn’t just a normal day, really. It was a perfect day. Ilya frowns again, and reaches up a sore, aching arm to cup Shane’s cheek.
“What’s wrong, dorogoy?” Ilya asks softly. “Pochemu ty plachesh, moya lyubov?”
Even though Shane hadn’t been able to commit to Russian lessons yet, he answers as if he understood Ilya. “I’m okay, I’m not crying,” he says, and leans into Ilya’s palm, closing his eyes. A tear slips out the corner of his eyes. “I’m okay, I am.”
Ilya uses his thumb to swipe the tear away from Shane’s cheek, and Shane huffs out something that could be a laugh. “No, I—it’s happy. I’m just. I’m so fucking happy, Ilya. I love you, I love you so much, I…”
“Sh. Shh.” Ilya pulls Shane forward into a tight hug. He rubs his back and tries to think. Shane doesn’t seem sick, but they could both be coming down with something. What was the time? Perhaps Shane had been up for a while and had seen or heard something upsetting? Would Shane mind if Ilya went through his phone to check? As much as he disliked Pike, he couldn’t imagine he would do something on purpose to hurt Shane, but maybe it was one of his teammates instead. The fucking Metros.
If it was Yuna or David, Shane would tell Ilya, but if it was more hurtful, more cruel, Shane would keep it from Ilya. Ilya drops a quick kiss into the hollow of Shane’s neck, keeps rubbing his back. Shane’s breath hitches again, and Ilya pulls back to take another look at him. His eyes are so bright. Ilya starts to put up a hand against Shane’s forehead, but freezes when Shane says, “Marry me.”
Ilya feels like he’s about to start choking on his tongue. He doesn’t move for a few precious seconds, and then remembers to breathe. “What?”
“I’m—I mean—oh, fuck, I do mean it,” Shane says. His arms are still wrapped around Ilya’s waist, and his fingers jump against Ilya’s ribs as he speaks. “You don’t have to, if you’re not ready, but I want to. As soon as you want to, I want to marry you. I want you, I want you so much, I love you so much. I had to tell you, sorry. Sorry.”
He ducks his head down, but Ilya moves it back up by tucking his fingers underneath Shane’s chin. He’s not the best with eye contact, never has been, but his eyes seek out Ilya’s, nervous but full of some kind of emotion that Ilya can’t even begin to parse out. He lets go of Shane’s chin to feel his forehead. A little warm, but it could be from the bed, from the both of them being pressed together as they slept.
“Ilya,” Shane says softly. He reaches up and catches Ilya’s fingers with his hand. “I’m not sick. Talk to me, please. Please.”
Ilya clicks his tongue. He brushes a kiss against Shane’s nose so he knows that Ilya’s not mad, and says, “I think we should go to doctor, just in case.”
Shane swallows hard. “You’re feeling okay? This is just about me, you don’t need—?”
“Shane,” Ilya says, firmly cutting in. “I am okay. You are freaking me out, though.”
Even though he still feels strangely sore, strangely slow, he will not tell Shane that. Not here and not now. Not with Shane’s eyes searching his, like he’s constantly checking for something. Shane was not right, perhaps not well, and it was God knows how early and they were so far away from a hospital. Why were they so far away from a hospital?
“Sorry,” Shane says again, but he’s fighting a smile. “I’m just—I guess I just. I realized, you know. How much you mean to me. How lucky I am to have you. I don’t ever want to go without—I just don’t ever want to be without you. I think we should get married. If you want to. That’s all.”
Ilya bites down on his lip. Shane swoops forward and kisses Ilya. Properly. Sweetly, his mouth soft and careful against Ilya’s, but he opens the kiss up soon enough. He climbs into Ilya’s lap. He’s distracting. He is very distracting.
Ilya pulls away gently, dropping kisses against Shane’s cheeks, his shoulders, to show that he’s still not mad. Because he isn’t. He’s worried out of his fucking mind, but he’s not mad. How could he be?
“Baby,” Ilya says. Shane keeps his eyes closed and rests his forehead against Ilya’s. “Maybe you go shower, I make coffee, mmkay? We can talk about—about marriage after. I love you, you know this. Is not like you to ask like this, out of nowhere. Makes me worried something is wrong, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, I—I get that, I understand.”
His breath is hot against Ilya’s cheeks. He usually doesn’t like morning kisses before they brush their teeth, Ilya remembers. It feels like there’s a tight knot in his ribcage, and it’s growing larger. Ilya presses another kiss to Shane’s chest.
Shane opens his eyes. From this angle, his face takes up most of Ilya’s vision. His freckles are like sunspots. Ilya is sure if he blinks, the freckles will still be staining his vision, like they’ve been tattooed his eyeballs. Ilya breathes in and Shane breathes out.
“I’ll go shower,” Shane says. “You make coffee. But can we just—I wanna stay here. For a little bit. Please?”
Ilya studies Shane. He cups the back of his neck with his hand, resists trying to take his temperature again. He does look healthy. Ilya deliberately doesn’t acknowledge that that just makes the knot grow worse in his chest, because if it wasn’t physical, then what? What would the doctors really be able to do?
Because something is wrong with Shane. He knows this.
But Shane is also in Ilya’s lap, and he’s so gentle, and so scared for some reason, so Ilya breathes in and out again and says, “Of course, milyy. Of course.”
***
As soon as Ilya hears the showerhead switch on, Ilya starts the coffeemaker and calls Yuna.
He hasn’t had much interaction with her aside from the family dinners that Shane will take him to every other month or so, but she was close by—they were supposed to have dinner with Shane’s parents today, actually. And more importantly, she knows her son better than maybe anyone. Maybe even Ilya.
She answers the phone on the first ring. She sounds nervous, already guessing that something is wrong. “Ilya? Why are you calling me instead of Shane?”
“Hello, Yuna,” Ilya says. He’s braced himself against the countertop, and is watching the coffeemaker gurgle to life in front of him.
Even though Shane definitely can’t hear Ilya over the showerhead two rooms away, he still keeps his voice low as he talks. “Shane is fine, physically. He’s in the shower. I am supposed to make coffee, but—I don’t know. Very weird morning. Shane is… unlike himself. He will be mad I am calling, but I don’t know who to talk to about this thing other than you.”
There’s some shuffling on Yuna’s end. He hears her tap her phone a couple of times, and then she sounds a bit farther away as she says, “How has he been unlike himself, Ilya? What do you mean?”
“I am on speaker?” Ilya clarifies.
“Yeah, David’s here with me,” Yuna says tightly. “I need specifics, Ilya. What did Shane do to make you so worried?”
Ilya squeezes his eyes shut. There was no way around this. “He, ah. He proposed.”
There was silence on the other end. Then a stifled sound, like someone had placed their hand over their mouth. Ilya swallows hard and listens to the sounds of the cottage again. Shane’s still in the shower, but Ilya’s sure he’s hurrying through it. He didn’t want to seem to leave Ilya alone for long.
“He… I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” David eventually says. He sounds closer to the phone. There’s more shuffling in the background, and Yuna says something to David that Ilya can’t quite catch. It doesn’t really matter, Ilya figures, whether or not they were happy with this kind of news.
“Listen, I love your son very much,” Ilya rushes out. “You know this, I would love to marry him, it is a dream I have had. But I know him, and he wouldn’t—”
“Propose out of nowhere,” David fills in. “Have you had a fight recently? Were you talking about—I don’t even know, about anything?”
“No,” Ilya says. “We had perfect day yesterday. Very lazy and calm. Then this morning I wake up and he is crying. He tells me he loves me and asks me to marry him. Says he will marry me as soon as I am ready. I don’t believe he even has ring, but he is insistent. Did not want to leave me alone. Still doesn’t.”
As if on cue, Ilya hears the shower turn off.
“Listen, I cannot stay on phone, Shane is out of shower now and he will be hurrying back to me,” Ilya says quietly. “I do not know what brought this on, I keep going over things, but there has been no sign before this morning. I wanted to tell you before dinner tonight, maybe we can get it out of him together.”
“And you’re not sick?” Yuna asks quickly. She seems to have taken the phone back. “You’re feeling okay, you’re healthy?”
The soreness from this morning has faded to only a memory. Ilya answers honestly. “I am good. Feel totally fine. Just worried about Shane.”
“Okay,” says Yuna. She sounds serious and firm. Ilya believes she’ll figure this out. She has to. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll figure this out. Thank you for calling, Ilya.”
“Of course,” says Ilya, and hangs up right before Shane enters the kitchen. He’s still pulling on his shirt, and his hair is wet. The coffee was still dripping steadily down into the pot, almost done. Shane buries his face in Ilya’s neck and wraps his arms around Ilya’s waist.
“Missed you,” says Shane, like that’s a perfectly normal thing to say to someone you haven’t seen in a few minutes. “Coffee almost ready?”
“Almost." Ilya kisses the top of Shane’s head.
Shane hums and burrows further into Ilya. Like he’s trying to climb into Ilya’s body with him.
Ilya tries not to be worried. He also tries not to be hopelessly in love with it, with this kind of Shane. This Shane who came out of nowhere and practically begged for Ilya to marry him, even though he’s supposed to be terrified of even the idea of coming out to his teammates.
Shane sighs against Ilya’s skin. Ilya rucks up Shane’s shirt so he can press his fingers into Shane’s sides. Shane sighs again, and kisses Ilya’s neck.
“Marry me,” he mouths against Ilya’s jugular vein.
The coffeemaker chirps. Ilya turns to the cupboard, turning their embrace into a gentle handhold instead. He pretends to select their mugs carefully, so by the time he’s turned back to Shane, there are no tears in his eyes at all.
***
David and Yuna text that they’ll be over a bit earlier than expected. They say their plans to grab lunch with friends fell through, so they’re at a loss for things to do. Shane seems to more or less believe this, even though he stares at his phone, confused, for a little bit. But then he goes back to rubbing himself up against Ilya like a cat in heat, so it doesn’t seem to hold Shane’s attention for too long.
Ilya tries to be very normal about it all. Shane seems to remember how his proposal had concerned Ilya, so he doesn’t try and press the matter, even though he does repeat that he means it, and that he’ll stay ready, so it’s really just whenever you feel like you want to. As if the two of them hadn’t been nervous enough about coming out as friends in a few months' time. As if they hadn’t fretted over the press conference venue options that Yuna had sent just a week ago.
Shane is hardly paying attention to the television. ESPN is airing a tennis match, which usually captures Shane’s interest, but he doesn’t seem to care. His thumb is caressing Ilya’s collarbone. His eyes are fixed on the steady rise and fall of Ilya’s chest.
“Ya ne ponimayu,” Ilya mumbles as he watches one of the players set up their serve. “Tebe prisnilsya plokhoy son? Ty dumala, chto ya umer ili chto ya tebya brosil?”
Shane swallows hard. Ilya watches him carefully, then sits up and turns off the television. Shane follows and clings onto Ilya’s shoulder like a small child.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Ilya says. He rakes his eyes up and down Shane. He looks completely normal, except for his expression. He looks sad. He looks a bit like Ilya’s mother.
Ilya’s heart leaps. He grabs onto Shane’s hands. “You are scaring me. We are having good time at cottage, yeah? And everything has been good. And today you wake up and you are sweet, the sweetest thing I have ever seen, but you are not yourself. I love you. Ya tebya lyublyu. Of course I will marry you, but Shane, solnyshko, I—the last time anyone was like this, to me… Chert. Ona pokonchila s soboy na sleduyushchiy den. My mother, yes?”
Shane is already shaking his head before Ilya finishes speaking. “Never, I’d never do anything, not with you here, honey,” he says, as if that’s meant to be reassuring. As if the clarification of not with you here doesn’t wrap itself around Ilya’s lungs.
He squeezes Ilya’s wrists. “I’m sorry to be scaring you, I just. I guess I just—maybe I just realized how much you mean to me. And it’s so much. You’re the best thing in my life, of course you are. Everything else is just noise, I see that now. I just want, I just need you. More than anything.”
Ilya feels pressure build behind his eyes as he tries to manually translate what Shane said. He doesn’t have to think so hard with English, not anymore, but the intensity of what Shane’s saying—it doesn’t feel right. What was just noise? Was he talking about their carefully laid plans? The friendship ruse? The anticipated homophobia from the MLH executives? Was he talking about hockey?
Shane draws Ilya into another kiss. His mouth is desperate against Ilya’s. He slides his hands up Ilya’s chest. His right hand is clawed above Ilya’s heart. Ilya is useless in the face of it. He doesn’t understand. It scares him. Shane is usually so steady, so consistent. He can’t fathom what changed so much, had shaken Shane up so badly, in a single night. A night where Ilya had been there, sleeping right next to him.
Something drips down from Shane’s face onto Ilya’s. His tear traces down Ilya’s cheek. Ilya’s breath hitches, and Shane mumbles, “It’s okay, it’s all right,” into Ilya’s mouth.
“Eto ne tak,” Ilya whispers as they separate for air. “Ya ne znayu pochemu.”
Shane pets at Ilya’s hair. He looks like he’s trying to memorize Ilya’s face. He looks like he’s trying to smile.
The doorbell rings out. Yuna and David are here. Ilya brushes his thumbs against Shane’s cheeks, making sure it doesn’t look like he’s been crying.
“Thank you,” Shane says quietly to him.
“Mm.” Ilya stands to get the door. Shane follows and wraps his hand around Ilya’s.
“Ah, we’re answering the door like the lovers we are,” Ilya teases, heart in his throat.
“Sure,” says Shane, and tugs Ilya closer. He doesn’t move to the foyer. He’s just staring at Ilya again.
“Weirdo,” Ilya says, because it’s easier than trying to be sincere. He’s the one to lead them to the door, to open it up and find Yuna and David on the front porch. David’s holding a bottle of good Russian vodka. Yuna has a covered casserole dish in her arms.
No one says anything for a moment. Yuna and David see how tightly Shane is holding onto Ilya’s hand. Ilya looks at both of Shane’s parents and tries to say, I still have no idea what’s wrong with your son but do you see what I’m talking about with just his eyes.
David’s the first one to move. He slaps a hand against the vodka bottle and says, “Well! Are you going to let us in, or what?”
***
Shane, thankfully, is a bit less clingy in front of his parents.
Throughout their years together, Ilya’s discovered that Shane loves physical touch, but he’s picky about it. It might be a holdover from how long they kept it secret, but he’s usually far less tactile with an audience. In front of Svetlana or Rose Landry, Shane acts like he's never even heard of sex before. It's usually pretty amusing to watch.
In front of Shane’s parents, it’s usually very low-key. They won’t shy away from casual touches, and Ilya will hold Shane’s thigh under the dinner table, but kissing is limited. Handholding is only sometimes okay. Ilya’s more than fine with it—despite his reputation, he isn’t big on displays of affection. He’s used to being behind closed doors, even when he was still hooking up with women.
The fact that Shane is pressed up against Ilya’s side right now, a direct line of heat emanating from Ilya’s shoulders all the way down to his ankle, is enough to surprise David and Yuna. But he’s not trying to climb into Ilya’s lap. He’s playing with Ilya’s thumb, but he’s not trying to suck on it. He’s already pressed a few kisses into Ilya’s cheek and has stolen some of Ilya’s vodka, but he’s not trying to breathe into Ilya’s mouth.
Ilya will take what he can get.
They’d moved out onto the back porch of the cottage while Yuna’s lasagna baked in the oven. They’d talked about the weather, about the tennis matches on ESPN earlier. Yuna had said that there would be some extra paperwork for the Irina Foundation next week, and she could drop the paper copies off for Shane and Ilya to sign whenever it comes through. David mentioned a couple of difficult clues from a crossword he’d done that morning.
Shane, throughout it all, had remained present and responded normally. He said he hadn’t paid much attention to tennis earlier, and that he’d have to catch up on the highlights. He told Yuna that Wednesday would be a good day for the paperwork next week. He made fun of his dad for trying to make conversation about crossword puzzles.
After he finishes talking, he steals Ilya’s glass and drinks a little more vodka. Ilya’s about to make fun of him for not just accepting his own glass when David offered. Shane abruptly begins to cry again.
“Oh, kotik,” Ilya says, and pulls the glass out of Shane’s hands. He sets it down on an end table and cups the back of Shane’s head. “Are you feeling okay? Are sure you’re not sick?”
“Yeah,” Shane whispers, then clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sorry, baby.”
Ilya sees David look at Yuna out of his periphery, but it doesn’t matter to him right now. He holds onto Shane’s knee. “What do you need, hm? What can we do for you here?”
“I don’t know,” Shane says softly. He looks like he’s a moment away from climbing into Ilya’s lap again.
Yuna stands from her seat and touches Ilya’s shoulder gently. Ilya turns and nods. He lifts up Shane’s palm and kisses the center of it, then carefully stands up. Yuna takes Ilya’s seat fluidly, as if they had choreographed the move.
Shane’s eyes widen. “Wait, Ilya—”
“I’ll be inside, sweetheart,” Ilya says gently. David’s stood up too, and is moving inside with the bottle of vodka. “I’ll be with your father, yes? You come find me after. Is okay, but maybe this is conversation for you and Yuna.”
Shane glances at his mom, then focuses on Ilya again. “You’ll be inside?”
Ilya nods. “Not going anywhere.”
“Okay,” Shane says.
Ilya nods back at him. “Okay.”
Yuna strokes the back of Shane’s head. She says something to him, low and quiet, and Ilya purposely doesn’t listen as he pulls the sliding glass door open and steps inside.
David’s already in the kitchen. He’s poured himself more vodka and the bottle sits, inviting, on the countertop. Ilya left his glass outside with Shane, he realizes. He grabs another from the cupboard and pours a two fingers’ worth into it.
“You’re right,” David says. He’s staring out the windows, focused on the lake outside. The water is choppy and grey today. “We thought—I don’t know. I hoped you were overreacting. I thought maybe Shane was just being romantic, and you weren’t expecting it and you freaked out.”
Ilya snorts. He settles himself next to David to watch the water, too. “Historically, it is other way around.”
“Yeah,” David says. He takes a big sip from his glass. “And nothing happened yesterday?”
“No,” Ilya says. “Been thinking all day. There is nothing I can remember that would make him like this.”
He hesitates. Downs some vodka and wipes at his mouth. “Is there—um. A family history of… like, um, with my mother and father. Is there anything for Shane? Genetic?”
David squints, deep in thought. “Not really. A great aunt of mine tried to take her life, but that was after both of her sons and her husband died. Priest said it was just prolonged grief or something, apparently she’d been talking to him for a while. Nothing on Yuna’s side, honestly. Not even cancer.”
“Okay.” It was both relieving and concerning to hear that there wasn’t anything genetic going on. He didn’t want Shane to just—be snapping like this. All of a sudden, without a cause. Without explanation.
“And you’re sure there’s nothing for you?” David says suddenly. “You’re not—you’re feeling okay? You’re not sick? Shane wouldn’t have any reason to think that you’re sick?”
Ilya blinks and turns to him. “I am fine. Totally fine. Better than fine, even, before today.”
“It’s just—Shane’s acting like you’re dying, Ilya.”
“Not as far as I’m aware,” says Ilya. “And I do not think he would learn this before me.”
“Yeah,” says David. He tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Yuna will figure it out,” Ilya says, with perhaps more confidence than he feels.
“Yes,” David agrees in the same tone. “Of course she will.”
***
Yuna and Shane don’t come in from the back porch until the lasagna is cooling on the kitchen counter.
Yuna leads Shane inside with a hand on his back. He immediately locks eyes with Ilya, setting the kitchen table, and smiles. His eyes are watery and red-rimmed. Yuna looks about the same.
Shane doesn’t quite wrap himself around Ilya again, but it’s a near thing. He presses his leg against Ilya’s as they sit down, and his fingers brush against the back of Ilya’s neck as David cuts into the lasagna and dishes it out.
“Everyone feeling better?” David asks lightly as they begin eating.
Shane nods carefully. “Just got a little overwhelmed,” he says, like he’s rehearsed it. “But I’ve really never been happier. Sorry to freak you out.”
Overwhelmed, Ilya thinks. With what? What was so overwhelming?
Shane’s foot knocks against Ilya’s under the table. Ilya takes another sip of his vodka. His glass is almost empty now.
David turns to Yuna. She nods, but her eyes are tracking Shane as he takes a bit of lasagna. As he drinks his ginger ale. She turns to watch Ilya, too, and Ilya wonders if he is, in fact, dying. If someone forgot to inform him that this was his last day on earth.
They eat quietly. Ilya makes noises about the Ottawa roster, jokes about winning the Stanley Cup this year with the Ottawa Centaurs. Shane shrugs and says, “Crazier things could happen.”
“I can’t imagine what would be crazier than that,” Yuna says. “No offense, Ilya.”
“None taken,” says Ilya. “I did not move to Ottawa for the team, we all know this.”
Shane chews, swallows. Takes a sip of his ginger ale, and then says, “Excuse me for a moment.”
He gets up and heads to the nearest bathroom. Ilya hears the bathroom tap begin to run.
David says, “What did Shane say outside?”
“Not much of anything,” Yuna admits. “He’s—he said he had a bad dream. That it’s made him feel off-kilter today, but it’s helped him figure some things out.”
Ilya shakes his head. “All of this from a dream?”
“I know,” Yuna says. She presses a hand to her temple. “But I can’t think of any other explanation.”
Ilya shakes his head again. “I also had bad dreams last night. Notice how I am not acting strange.”
David frowns. “You also had a bad dream?”
Ilya waves a hand. “Do not remember much, but woke up feeling weird. Then Shane is all over me and will not stop all day. So. Bigger things happening there.”
He winces a bit at the phrasing—he’s saying this in front of Shane’s parents—but David just nods thoughtfully. “Where’s your carbon monoxide alarm?”
“Our—what?”
“It’s not carbon monoxide poisoning, Dad,” says Shane. Ilya bites down a curse. He hadn’t noticed him coming back into the room, but Shane just looks faintly exasperated. It’s the closest he’s come to looking like himself all day.
“I’m sure it isn’t, but humor me,” David says. Shane rolls his eyes. Then he jerks his head, and David follows him down the hall.
Ilya looks up at Yuna, then back down at the table. He doesn’t want to admit that she makes him nervous. But, well. She makes him nervous.
She drinks from her water glass and wipes her mouth with her napkin. They listen to David and Shane in the hallway—Shane, annoyed, saying see, it’s right there, it hasn’t gone off obviously, and David saying when’s the last time you changed the batteries on this?
Yuna says, “Shane said you wanted to marry him, too. He said you were freaked out, and he understands why. But he was so happy you said you’d marry him.”
Ilya blinks at her. He jerks his head toward the hallway. “Pretty sure they could still hear us if they wanted to listen.”
“Ilya,” Yuna says. “Thank you. For looking after my son.”
Ilya shrugs. His eyes feel hot. He wonders if tears can be contagious.
“I love him so much,” says Ilya. “And I want him to be okay.”
“I know,” says Yuna. She traces her fingers across the wood grain of the table. “I think—I think he’s okay. I hope he’s okay. I’m worried too, but I see him. He’s—it’s just like he’s woken up from something. If I had to guess. I don’t know, exactly. But I think he’s okay.”
Ilya’s mother, before her death, had been so bright-eyed. The day before Ilya found her in the bathroom, she’d taken him to the park. Her eyes had been the same color as the sky. She’d wrapped him in a hug and laughed, and it had been the rawest, most threadbare sound Ilya had ever heard.
“I hope he is okay, too,” Ilya says. “I need him to be.”
***
They are not, apparently, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Ilya will have to ask Shane what carbon monoxide is and how it can poison you, but David seems satisfied that they won’t imminently die, which is good news. They finish eating, and Ilya polishes off another glass of vodka. He normally wouldn’t drink so much in front of Shane and his parents, but Shane is still pressed up against him, still affectionate beyond belief, even as they all quietly decide not to talk about it anymore.
Yuna and David stay to help with the dishes. Ilya scrubs at and dries the casserole dish until it’s sparkling and hands it back to them. He tries to give the half-full vodka bottle back to David, but he shakes his head and says he has more at home, more than he knew what to do with. Yuna and David climb into their car, and Shane rests his cheek against Ilya’s shoulder as they wave goodbye to his parents from the front porch.
Once the car is out of sight, Shane pulls Ilya by the hand until they’re back in the bedroom. He pushes Ilya down on the bed and climbs in after him.
“Sorry,” Ilya says, hand on Shane’s jaw as he settles in between Ilya’s thighs.
“What for?” Shane asks. He tugs at the bottom of Ilya’s shirt, and Ilya raises his arms. Shane shucks the shirt off, and starts unbuttoning his own.
“For calling your parents this morning,” Ilya says. Shane grasps at the waist of Ilya’s shorts. He nips at the skin below his bellybutton.
“It’s okay,” Shane says. “You love me.”
“I do.”
“And I love you.”
“That’s true also.”
Shane has stripped off Ilya’s shorts and underwear. He noses at Ilya’s groin, and Ilya shivers. Shane looks up at him. His eyes are two dark pools.
“And we’re going to get married,” Shane says.
“If that is really what you—oh, okay, yeah. Good.” Ilya grips the bedsheets in his hand as Shane takes him into his mouth.
Ilya has the fleeting thought that maybe they should talk more—that maybe Shane shouldn’t be doing this right now—and then his tongue flicks over Ilya, and he’s not thinking of much of anything except the best angle to pull Shane up, so he can kiss him, so he can hold him closer and feel how hard he is, how much he wants this.
“Love you,” Shane says into his mouth. “Love you more than anything.”
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya gasps, and Shane says, “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.”
It’s not perfect. It’s accented, the pronunciation is off, but it’s—
“You learned Russian,” Ilya says. He breaks away so he can stare at Shane.
He shrugs. His eyes are hazy. He ruts up against Ilya. “I’m learning.”
“When—how? Vy ponimayete, chto ya govoryu?”
Shane makes a face and wiggles his hand. “If I focus, I can recognize, like, individual words. Enough to get the gist. But I have to think about it. I'm working on it.”
Ilya keeps staring at him. He shakes his head. He buries his face in Shane’s neck, presses his mouth against his pulse point.
“You learned how to say ‘I love you’,” Ilya says, voice thick.
“It’s not that hard,” Shane says softly. He runs his hands up and down Ilya’s back.“You always told me. All the time. Easy to repeat.”
There’s something off with the way Shane says that. Some strange grammar thing. Maybe Ilya was just so full of some unnameable emotion, something so deep and dense, that his grasp of English was slipping.
Ilya squeezes his arms around Shane. Here, pressed skin to skin, the air so warm around them—it feels like there’s nothing else. Like the world existed on the head of this pin.
“Your accent is terrible,” Ilya says, teeth catching on Shane’s skin as he speaks. “So nasal and flat. North Americans have worst accent by far.”
“I’m very sorry you have to listen to it all the time,” Shane says, and nibbles at Ilya’s ear.
He shudders. That’s enough. He needs more. He needs more, now.
“You should be very sorry,” Ilya says. “Now get on your stomach.”
***
The next morning, Ilya wakes up from the same dream as before. He groans as he wakes up, muscles as stiff as they had been yesterday. He pushes a hand up to his temple. The morning light is so bright, too bright. For a moment, he can't remember where he is.
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” he hears Shane say, and the space beside him grows cool as Shane gets up, pulls on his boxers, and starts lowering the blinds. Ilya closes his eyes and listens to his footsteps as he ducks into the bathroom. There’s the sound of running water. The rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. Shane comes back to Ilya with a kiss on the forehead, two Tylenol pills and a glass of water.
“You’re too good to me,” Ilya grumbles, and takes the pills.
“Never,” Shane says. His voice sounds strange. Ilya is afraid to open his eyes.
He breathes in and out slowly, then says, “You still want to marry me?”
“Of course,” Shane says, and moves, pulling Ilya into his chest. Ilya bites down on his tongue. His chest feels tight. He didn’t know why he’d hoped yesterday had been a one-off.
Maybe it was because—because something had changed in Shane, and he couldn’t see why, or how, and Shane wasn’t telling him.
Shane brushes his thumb over Ilya’s forehead. Ilya sighs and slumps into him.
“How’s the headache?” Shane asks him quietly.
“Okay,” Ilya says, sighing. “Might try and go back to sleep for a bit.”
“Sure. We have nowhere else to be.”
Ilya hums and buries his nose into Shane’s sternum. Shane laughs—he always says Ilya’s breath tickles on his bare skin—but he also doesn’t try to move Ilya. He keeps his hand curled around Ilya’s hair. It was the same way Ilya’s mom held him when he was sick. He doesn’t have the words to explain that to Shane. Not in English, and not in the stilted Russian Shane seemed to have recently grasped.
“It’s the same dream,” Ilya says instead. “As yesterday.”
Shane’s hand stills on Ilya’s forehead. “A nightmare?”
“Mm. Not exactly,” Ilya says. “I can’t remember enough from it to be scared. But I am—something bad is happening, I think. It is very hot. Maybe cramped too, I don’t know. And I wake up feeling stiff and weird.”
“You didn’t say anything yesterday,” Shane says. His voice is tight. His fingers start to play with Ilya’s hair again, but it’s more measured now. Like Shane is thinking about it.
“You woke up crying and asking me to marry you,” Ilya says. “I had other things to think of. And it went away very fast. No soreness by the time we finished breakfast.”
Shane leans down and presses his mouth to the crown of Ilya’s head. He doesn’t move for a moment, so Ilya doesn’t, either.
Shane waits for a long time, actually. Until Ilya’s on the verge of sleep, until it feels like gravity is pulling him into the warm core of Shane’s chest. When he speaks, his voice is shaky and his arms pull heavier around Ilya’s chest.
“I’m glad you don’t remember the dream,” he says. His lips find Ilya’s temple, the corner of his eye, then his cheekbone. He wraps Ilya’s hand up in his own.“You shouldn’t ever—you should never have to remember a thing like that.”
Ilya thinks he should probably parse out what that means—what Shane could possibly be saying. But it’s so warm in their bedroom, and the sunlight is peeking through the blinds and glowing against Ilya’s exposed shoulder, and sleep is tugging on him, and the headache really isn’t so bad anymore.
Ilya mumbles out something, and then gives into sleep, his fingers threaded through Shane’s.