Work Text:
The cup holder in Ilya’s truck has seen its fair share of coffee spills and today is no different. There is exactly one coffee shop with a drive through that’s open this early in Sainte-Margot-sur-Aisne, twice voted Canada’s most picturesque small town, and the girls working there in the morning know Ilya by name—just as they do to everyone lucky enough to end up on the wrong side of Montreal. He comes by, nearly every morning, his trusty four-wheel bumbling down the asphalt, and tells whichever lucky girl that is working there to make him the most ridiculous drink they can think of. He always tips thirty percent.
Sainte-Margot-sur-Aisne is no more than a main road with colourful shopfronts and colonial townhouses next to a river and a crisscross network of streets with houses surrounding that. Around that (one would have never guessed it): maple forest. Apart from the middle of spring and high autumn bringing in buses full of elderly tourists, the city doesn’t see a lot of traffic. There is one high school. Absolutely everyone knows each other, and the gossip grapevine is so thorough it might as well be rooted into the ground.
To Ilya, it’s home. His brother was born in Moscow, but Ilya wasn’t, and his earliest memories are of running through the forest, splashing barefoot through the river, and chasing his brother across the pedestrian shopping street. Most people who grow up in a small, nearly-suffocating town dream of escaping as soon as possible, and perhaps that had been Ilya’s attitude when he was younger as well. But after his mother’s death and the terrible sickness robbing his father of his mind, it just made sense to stick around. He’s always been good with his hands, whether that’d be handling a stick on the frozen lake or fixing the broken steps on their front porch. And the town needed an all-round handy man.
With a hum, he taps his fingers against the steering wheel as he waits at a red traffic light. Around him, Sainte-Margot is waking up, golden sunlight pouring across the buildings surrounding him. It is promising to be a hot summer.
The light goes green. Ilya crosses the intersection and turns right at the next opportunity. In a town as small as this, that he knows like the back of his hand, he has no need for navigation.
He knows exactly where he needs to go.
The Hollander home is a massive mansion just outside the centre of town. A short driveway framed by swaying oak trees leads up to the double front door framed by ivy growing up against the stone walls. Yuna Hollander is already waiting on the steps out front when Ilya pulls up, extremely careful to park his dented-to-hell truck about a meter away from David’s flashier car, and waves at Ilya when he alights from the car. The two family dogs, Brick and Camille (names that Ilya would know if he’s been here once or many times), mill around her feet, but they come loping over when they spot Ilya with his toolbox in hand, because they know where to get the good treats. Ilya has not been able to say no to those begging eyes and Brick’s white-brushed snout yet.
“Ilya,” says Yuna when he draws closer. “It’s good to see you. Thank you for coming at such short notice.”
Fluttering his eyelashes, Ilya dramatically curtsies in her direction. “When the prettiest woman in town calls me up for a big job, what else can I do but drop all of my other projects and rush here immediately?”
She rolls her eyes. “Just get in here. I want to get started on my list before David comes in here and starts offering his input.”
Laughing, Ilya follows her into the house. Yuna Hollander runs the household with an iron fist and a big heart. David is much happier to stay in the background, collect his fancy antique cars, and hike with the dogs. Everything that needs to be done in and around the house is mostly arranged and coordinated by Yuna. It is the happiest marriage Ilya has seen, probably ever.
Yuna leads him around the house, pointing out the things she hopes to get Ilya in on. Loose boards in the back porch, some leaky sinks and showers in bathrooms, flickering lights and faulty electric wiring in the basement, the clogged pump in the pool outside, and more points on her seemingly endless list. Apparently, she is planning to tackle all of the deferred maintenance to the house over the summer, hence why she found and hired Ilya.
The Hollander house is gorgeous, all natural light and carefully maintained flowerbeds, a sunroom that looks like the ideal place to take a nap, and it is clear that Yuna has a lot of love for the place.
By the time they finish the loop around the house and make it to the kitchen, Ilya’s mind is already running through all of the tools he has to bring and the right order to work on the different parts of this project. It’s probably the biggest job he’s been hired to do so far, and the Hollanders are trusting him with every part of it.
Blind trust, it sounds like, even. Because Yuna pours him a glass of ice cold homemade lemonade without asking and hands it to him across the kitchen island, then announces, “Just as a heads up, me and David will leave for Japan this weekend. My cousin invited us to spend the summer there at her lake house, and we could hardly say no to that. I will leave you a pair of keys so that you can still come and go.”
Wide-eyed, Ilya blinks at her. “Um?”
“You won’t be all alone,” says Yuna, immediately. “We have a son. Shane?”
“Yes,” Ilya murmurs, tracing the rim of his glass with his pointer finger.
He remembers Shane Hollander: he had shot up in height earlier than the other kids, kind of like Ilya had, and he’d been completely awkward. It wasn’t like he really got bullied, because bullies only stick to a target when they get a reaction, and Shane had simply moved through life and high school like nothing could touch him. In turn, he didn’t really interact with the world either, as if he was a spectre that moved from classroom to classroom just because that’s what he had always done. Untouchable, distant, with a smattering of pimples that had covered his cheeks and the bridge of his nose and too-big brown eyes above that.
“He works in Montreal now,” Yuna continues, a proud smile hiding in the twitching corners of her lips. “Big fancy business with way too many working hours and way too little downtime. I think he’s saved up enough PTO to take an entire year off. He’s offered to stay here while we are away to take care of the place and the dogs. If you are okay with it as well, he’ll be hanging around. Not to micro-manage you—though he would do it, in a heartbeat, so I’ll tell him not to bother you too much—but just to baby sit the place. And to learn how to relax, and all that.”
Ilya stares at her, then shrugs. “It is your house and you pay me. I can hardly tell you not to do whatever you please.”
“You’ve done great work for us so far, Ilya,” says Yuna, tapping her finger against the counter in front of her. “And all of my friends around town have nothing but good things to say about you. It means a lot to us that you’re willing to tackle a project this big.”
“Nothing more reassuring than your trust.” Ilya startles when a wet nose presses against his bare calf, but is unsurprised to find Camille stare up at him with her big puppy eyes. He reaches down and scratches her behind her ears, and she leans into him with a pleased huff. “Going to have to find a way to resist those pleading eyes of yours, girl,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “I can’t be giving you endless treats if I’m going to be here almost daily.”
Yuna laughs, a delighted sound. “You’ll have to do your best. Shane always scolds me that she’s too pudgy.”
Gasping, Ilya covers Camille’s ears with his hands. “Don’t listen to them, Camille. You’re perfect as you are.”
She stares up at him with a lazily wagging tail, a perfectly pampered golden retriever in an upper class family, and licks his fingers. Compared to Brick’s stockier, chocolate lab build, Ilya would never call her pudgy. He hopes he does well enough in this life to be reincarnated into an animal like that in his next life, if the buddhists were right about things like that. At least Camille is cute as fuck. Ilya reaches into the pocket of his shorts and gives her a treat, which she happily gobbles up.
A small smile on her face, Yuna studies him. “Why don’t you take today off, Ilya? Shane will be here over the weekend. We’ll give him some time to settle in after the seven hour drive, because God knows that he needs it, and then you could start on Monday? If that works for you.”
Ilya looks up at her and nods. “That sounds perfect, Yuna.”
“Perfect.” She claps her hands together. “If you have any questions, feel free to text me or David even when we’re gone. The time difference will be a bit tricky, but we can make it work.”
“Don’t worry too much,” says Ilya. “If you invite Shane here, I’ll just ask him. That’s part of why he’s here, right?”
She studies him for a beat, then grins. “You’re right. He would just love that.”
They shake on the job. Ilya says that he will draft an expected price over the weekend, then send an invoice by the time all of his work concludes. Yuna, as expected, cares little for the total cost. As long as Ilya does what she’s asking of him, and does it well, the price won’t be a problem. It is as Ilya had kind of banked on, but hearing it laid out as clear as this is still reassuring. He’d hate having to skimp out on good quality products for a house this beautiful because the Hollanders wanted to have as low of a cost as possible.
Yuna walks him to the door again, Brick and Camille acting like clingy stumbling blocks once more. Ilya thanks her once more for the opportunity, and she just waves him off with a bemused smile. “It’ll be an interesting summer for all of us, Ilya Rozanov,” she says.
Later, looking back at it, if Ilya had a time machine, he’d jump back to exactly this moment and demand what she meant with that statement. But at that point, he doesn’t know that she means anything with it, just catalogues the words away in the back of his mind as ‘incredibly sincere and a bit out of place’. “Okay, Mrs. Hollander,” he says. “Yuna. I promise I’ll do my utmost best taking care of your house.”
She says, “I have absolutely no doubt.”
And Ilya goes, already thinking of texting Svetlana.
--
Svetlana is, of course, down to get drinks. I’m inviting Troy and Harris too, she informs him. And then, You’re treating us, Mr. Big Job.
Fine, fine, Ilya types back. Fucker.
She doesn’t deign that worthy of more than a kissy face emoji as a response.
A few hours later finds them in Sainte-Margot’s best pub, The Apple Tree, with Harris abandoning his usual spot behind the bar to cuddle up with Troy in the booth opposite Svetlana and Ilya. Ilya would love to pull a face at such blatant public displays of affection if he wasn’t so happy for his best friend. For all of the time it took for Troy to accept himself, he did immediately find himself in a picture-perfect relationship with who is probably the guy of his dreams. All Ilya can do is sigh internally and hope that his own love story is also not too far away. Honestly, he would settle for anything better than the on-off fuck buddies thing he has going on with Svetlana, if only because he is really a romanticist at heart. And Svetlana is nice, but they both know they’re not endgame for each other.
“So,” drawls Troy, as soon as the bartender places their glasses of cider in front of them. “Did you get the job at the Hollander house, then? Is that why we’re here? To celebrate?”
“Many questions about things you already have an answer to, idiot,” says Ilya, a sunny smile on his face. “But yes, I did get the job, thank you very much. Can you blame me? All of the ladies around town love me.”
Svetlana gives him the finger. “You’re a fucking dirty dog, Ilyushenka. But Mrs. Hollander would fucking murder you before you could try anything on her. She has enough connections to make it look like an accident too.”
“I was not implying any of the sort,” Ilya says, giving her a wounded look. He waggles his fingers at her. “These hands are simply very good at a lot of things. You’d know intimately.”
Troy makes a gagging noise and even Harris looks vaguely traumatised. It’s nothing new between the four of them, the perfect friends Ilya had been lucky enough to collect.
Svetlana is a friend of the family, the two families of Russian immigrants that had ended up in the same tiny Canadian town around the same time. Troy is a later addition, swanning into Ilya’s orbit at the start of high school, when they’d both been lost and angry at life. Ilya still believes that, as much as they made each other worse from time to time, the two of them meeting each other at that time was still the best thing that could’ve happened to either of them. And then, with Troy’s ridiculous crush and his absolutely terrible seducing scheme that mostly hinged on ‘pine from a distance until the object of my affections notices my wiles’, Harris had joined the group. And that’s where they are right now, in Harris’ bar, celebrating Ilya’s big job with apple cider from the Drover family farm.
“Get this, though,” says Ilya, taking a swig from said drink. “Mr. and Mrs. Hollander are going to Japan all summer. Mrs. Hollander’s family is from there. But she told me that her son would be housesitting during the time they are away.”
“Aww,” coos Troy. “The son’s name is Shane, right? I remember that he was pretty cute. And I could’ve sworn he had a crush on Ilya back then.”
“What,” says, demands Ilya. “No, he didn’t.”
Troy just shrugs. “I’ve never confirmed it, or anything. Mostly because he would run away before I could even consider walking up to him. But he was always looking at you with those big, brown eyes. Like, whenever you weren’t looking.”
Scoffing, Ilya shakes his head. “You’re delusional, dude. But from what I’ve heard from his mother, the guy’s basically a hermit with a very fancy job. I probably won’t see him too much.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” says Svetlana. “I mean, Shane was kind of awkward during high school, but there was definitely always potential there. Who knows, he might surprise you.”
Ilya groans. “Can we please stop talking about Shane Hollander now?”
“Well, you started talking about him in the first place,” Harris says, and how rude of him. Ilya did not give him his blessing to date his best friend just so he could sit with them and tease Ilya. Teasing other people is Ilya’s job.
“And I regret that already,” he informs Harris. “Just as I regret ever befriending you all.”
Svetlana makes a disappointed-buzzer noise and gives Ilya a thumbs down. It honestly hurts more than the middle finger she graced him with before. “We can talk about something else,” she suggests, a kindness now that she will ask Ilya to repay later. “The Cider Festival at the farm. It’s coming up, right?”
Easy bait, though. Harris immediately perks up and starts rambling about the second installment of the Festival they’re going to host at the Drover farm. It’ll be held when summer makes space for autumn, when the apples from the orchard start ripening and will be perfect for the cider. Last year, there were booths with games and food, a maze made out of rectangular hay bales, acoustic performances on a low wooden stage, apple picking, and a big bonfire at the end of the night. Ilya definitely remembers having a fun time wandering around, waving to his friends, roasting the marshmallow one of the Drover sisters placed in his hands—as terrible as it is, Ilya still can’t manage to tell them apart—and waving goodbye to summer.
It would’ve just been nice to do it with a partner, is all. But that’s wishful thinking. Getting a partner requires putting in the effort, and Ilya is busy with his job. He’s busy with so many things: he needs to get his truck fixed, and there’s definitely a draft in his bedroom, so the window frame probably needs replacing, and now there’s this big job at the Hollander house. See, he simply is too preoccupied to be thinking about things like that right now.
Sainte-Margot is slim pickings too, even for Ilya, who is technically into men as well as women. The thing is that, in a small town like this, you grow up with everyone. And people tend to move out of a small town rather than to one, which means that Ilya has known almost everyone around his age since high school at the latest. He’s seen them either in their snotty diaper or their unpleasant teenager phase.
And he’s tried, okay? Svetlana would call him a veritable manwhore. Ilya likes sex—he’s very good at it—and he’s very good at no strings attached too. Or he was good at it. Until it started to chafe. Until the short evenings and long nights of tussling in the sheets only to leave before the morning started to catch up with him. Until his traitorous heart started to sing about settling down.
Bah! What a concept.
It’s just that he can’t stop thinking about it: a faceless partner with a gorgeous smile, a house with a wrap-around porch and the forest in their backyard, a whole pack of dogs or maybe just two or three. Old age, he reasons with himself, even if thirty-one is, like, supposedly the fucking peak of your life. Ilya has a very hands-on job, and even though he keeps himself fit, he feels his age in his bones. That’s all it is.
And absolutely nothing else.
--
There is a Jeep in the driveway when Ilya makes it to the Hollander house that Monday morning. Such a fucking acceptable, boring car. David Hollander must have moved all of his antique cars into the massive garage before he left, so it’s just that fucking Jeep and Ilya’s bumbly truck in the driveway when he alights his car.
Ilya makes his way to the front door and presses the buzzer. Yuna had texted him that she’d cut another pair of keys for Ilya, like she’d told him she would, and that she had left them with Shane. So you can come and go when you please. It seems like she quite trusts him, and even though Ilya has been by a lot for smaller, odd jobs, it still shouldn’t have inspired quite as much confidence. He figures, though, that if he steals someone, she’ll know who it was.
In the middle of his pondering, the door opens. Freckles, is the first thing Ilya sees. Shane Hollander has freckles—a smattering of them, all across his cheeks and nose bridge. They must have been hidden beneath his acne when they’d been in high school, hidden from Ilya’ s greedy fucking eyes, because there’s no way that Ilya wouldn’t have noticed them back then. And they suit him so much too, innocently sitting below his warm brown eyes, that Ilya almost feels called to reach out and touch them like there’s some kind of higher being guiding his hand.
Which—stupid!
“You’re Ilya, right?” says Shane, as if they don’t actually know each other. At least the words are doing a good job at breaking through Ilya’s scattered thoughts when he doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare like an idiot. Shane is specifically not looking at Ilya as he opens the door wider, a bit of stiffness to his movements. “My mum said you’d be coming by.”
He’s so fucking awkward, but then again, so is Ilya. He kicks off his shoes and then uses his one foot to line them up at least a little bit when Shane sends him a flat, unimpressed look. Ilya opens his mouth to say something—maybe apologise or make a joke—but Camille and Brick choose that exact moment to nose through the gap in the door and ambush Ilya with their wet tongues and wagging tails. Under the combined weight of the two of them and their excitement, Ilya is actually forced back a step.
Somewhere to the side, Shane lets out a little huff. Is it amusement, annoyance? “Sorry about them,” he says. “They’re rambunctious.”
“They’re absolutely perfect and I won’t have you suggest otherwise.” Ilya reaches down to ruffle the fur at the back of Brick’s neck, the patch that always sticks up like a makeshift mohawk. Brick sticks his nose in the gaps between Ilya’s fingers, probably checking if he’s hiding any treats there. They’re in Ilya’s pockets, but he’s not about to sneak either of the dogs one in front of Shane ‘Camille-is-pudgy’ Hollander.
When Ilya looks up, he notices that Shane is staring back at him with an intensity that he, again, can’t quite place. Shane clears his throat, and Ilya straightens again, a bit guilty. He’s typically good with people, but he tends to get a bit too comfortable too fast, and technically Shane is only a stranger to him.
“Sorry,” he says, fighting down his blush.
Shane waves his hand. He looks very much like Yuna when he does that, Ilya can’t help but notice. “All good. I have the keys my mother had made for you in the kitchen. If you want to follow me?”
“Right.” Again with the monosyllabic answers, really, Ilya? At least Shane does not demand more form him, just gives him a precarious smile and starts leading him toward the kitchen. It gives him ample opportunity, at least, to ogle Shane.
Grumpily, Ilya can only conclude that Svetlana was right: time has been very kind to Shane Hollander. He’s grown into his height and the breadth of his shoulders, muscles working beneath the thin fabric of the shirt he wears. They’re not show muscles either, made only to look at but useless in practice, which Ilya can only tell because he’s into working out as well. His hair is cropped close at the sides but longer at the back and the front, dark strands falling across the ridge of his eyebrows; his skin is golden, like he’s been glazed in honey. Nobody said that Ilya’s comparisons, in the privacy of his own mind, have to be any good, but he does really want to lick Shane. And if that isn’t quite a thought.
They make it to the kitchen without any further incidents without any problems despite Ilya’s overactive imagination. Like Shane had said, a ring of keys is waiting for him on the counter, next to that a crisp white envelope with Ilya written on it. He pockets the keys, and then, when Shane doesn’t make a move to say or do anything, grabs the envelope. Exhaling, he flips open the flap and pulls out the letter that’s inside, catches a flash of the words, written in immaculate penmanship: If it is not too much to ask, I hope you will take care of my Shane a little bit as well. He gets lonely—.
He quickly stuffs the letter back into the envelope again. His heart is pounding in his throat. On the other side of the kitchen, so far away that they might as well be in different houses despite the fact that they are in the same room, Shane is leaning against the fridge. He’s got his arms crossed in front of his chest, either in an attempt to make himself seem smaller or more intimidating. The only thing Ilya can focus on is the flex of his biceps.
Brick stretches with a dramatic whine, paws flat against the floor and butt high, his tail a long line, like an exclamation mark. It breaks the mood in half.
With major difficulty, Ilya manages to gather all of his bearings again. “I’ll,” he says, and then clears his throat. He points his finger over his shoulder, really at nothing. “My plan was to start on some of the inside stuff for now. I’ve ordered some parts for the outside stuff, but I also need to do some measurements, I just think it’s going to be a hot day today—” He’s rambling, he realises. With a snap, his teeth click back together.
Were it the case that Ilya knew Shane at all, he’d say that there was some amusement hidden in the raise of his eyebrows. But he doesn’t, and he doesn’t presume to know anything, so he stays silent. Daring Shane to talk first.
After some time, he does. “My mum told me to give you free reign of the house, Ilya,” he says. “That is what I will do. Feel free to come and go as you need, and don’t hesitate to order things directly to the house.” He raises one shoulder, drops it again. The movement is everything but the relaxation he clearly hopes to project. “This is my parents’ project, and in some way, I’m only the housesitter. If you have any questions, you know where to find me. And my parents have given me some budget for the things you need to order, so just let me know.”
If there is a limit to how awkward a room can get, they haven’t reached it yet. Ilya nearly winces at the set of Shane’s jaw when he says only the housesitter. As far as he’s aware, Shane hasn’t been back here since high school, thirteen years ago. Always too busy, Yuna had said.
Still not enough of an excuse to stay away for that long. People only don’t return for thirteen years if they’re running away from something.
But people who run away don’t really come back either.
Conclusion: Shane is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, topped with a delectable little bow. And Ilya has never been very good at waiting to unpack his presents. He had always loved to hold the box, check its weight, shake it to see if it made any sound. Quite spoiled in that regard, but his mother had always just smiled indulgently and ran her hand through Ilya’s hair to brush his curls out of his face.
“Alright,” says Ilya, at last, drawing out both syllables. Shane is looking more and more like he’s ready to bolt, but Ilya is not quite ready to let him go yet. He digs his hand into his pocket and takes out his phone, which he unlocks and then holds out to Shane.
“What,” Shane manages, monotonous.
Ilya raises one eyebrow. “It’s a phone, Shane.” Shane stares at him. “To put your number in? If I ever need you.”
“Right.” Shane’s ears and the back of his neck are burning as he grabs Ilya’s phone, hunches forward to put in his number. “I’m sending myself a text,” he informs Ilya, and then inhales sharply, as if startled by his own bravery. His next words sound almost defensive. “I might need you from time to time, too.”
He couldn’t have made it sound more like an innuendo if he tried. Ilya doesn’t even have to point it out, fighting down his grin when Shane hands him the phone again. From the dismayed twist to Shane’s mouth, he’s figured it out for himself as well.
For now, Ilya decides to spare him. He can be merciful. “Well, I’m going to be in the basement for now. I have my lunch in the cooler in my truck, so don’t stress about me, or anything. See ya around.”
“Yeah, see you.” Shane looks and sounds dazed.
Ilya walks back to his truck to grab his tool box, an action to which Camille and Brick have clearly decided needs canine supervision. It totally works out for them too, because Ilya manages to sneak both of them two treats and a scratch behind the jaw. They quite literally eat out of the palm of his hand; Ilya knows someone else he’d like to be as easy for him as that.
But Shane has his walls up. And Ilya’s just here to work on the house. Six weeks in close quarters (or as much as a massive mansion like that can be considered close quarters) will be easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Or whatever the cool kids say these days.
--
The first few days of working at the Hollander house are as fine as they come. Ilya swallows his pills with his morning coffee and drives to the opposite end of town, where he will start on whatever task he is able to. He knows that Shane is around, sees traces of him sometimes, like an overturned book on the coffee table or a pair of glasses on the kitchen counter, but he never gets close enough to make conversation.
It’s like sharing custody of two dogs with a stubborn, pretty ghost. Sometimes, Brick and Camille are happy enough to hang around his feet and make his life twenty times more difficult—not that Ilya would have it any other way. Other times, neither dog shows up no matter how many times Ilya whistles or rustles the bag of treats he keeps in his pockets. And sometimes, one or both of the dogs will show up just to kind of whinge at Ilya, as if they have some kind of plan for him that he is too stupid to understand.
Ilya does the work he wanted to do in the basement, all of the lights on and perched on one of the safety ladders David keeps in the shed. Most of the time, basements creep him out, so deep underground that this must be what it feels like to be in a mausoleum. But with Brick noisily licking his toe beans just a few paces away, and the occasional thump of Shane moving around upstairs, it really isn’t that bad.
Next comes the porch at the back of the house. Yuna had pointed out a few of the boards that need replacing, but Ilya doesn’t have wood in the right dimensions, so he spends a morning circling the deck and jotting down measurements and wood types. The sun pours down on his back and shoulders. He’s only wearing a sleeveless top because of the heat. Not because of the prying eyes he sometimes feels on his neck when his back is turned.
Shane is always gone before Ilya can force them to meet eyes, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.
There is curiosity there, and that’s something Ilya can work with. He doesn’t deny to himself that he thinks Shane is fucking gorgeous, because he’s not often in the business of lying to himself. Shane has wide shoulders—though not as wide as Ilya—and a nicely shaped chest. His skin has definitely cleared up since high school, but it’s so bright and smooth that Ilya can also imagine him rubbing creams and serums into his cheeks before bed. The thought almost makes him feel hot under the collar. Sometimes, he clearly comes back from a hike, and toned thighs bulge distractingly from underneath the nearly-indecent shorts he seems to prefer.
But none of this would be important if Shane didn’t think that there was something to Ilya either. And he clearly does. Ilya is aware of what he looks like; he works hard to keep his body in this shape. He knows what it feels like to be desired, to be wanted. Ilya is good at sex and everything around that. He’s just not good at making the other person want to stick around afterwards.
The nice thing about this whole thing with Shane, though, is that Shane is not going to stick around afterwards anyway. This whole thing already has an expiry date, because in six weeks, Shane is going back to Montreal and Ilya is going to stay in Sainte-Margot. So Ilya can chase and tease and perhaps be reciprocated if Shane finally manages to break through his own walls to be a bit more daring. And he can just tell himself ahead of time that it’s never going to mean anything.
Easy as that.
--
Like she has some kind of sixth sense for it, Svetlana always manages to pop into his house when Ilya least expects it. When he’s home, the front door is always left unlocked, so that anyone who wants to can come by. Most of the time, that’s any of his friends when they wish to come bother him. Other times, some of the members of the amateur junior hockey team he coaches over the winter season show up to terrorise him (read: maroon his couches so that they can pig out on the snacks Ilya stocks up on and play the shitty football games Ilya has for his Playstation 3).
This time, however: Svetlana. Ilya is in the kitchen, stirring a pot of delicious—if he may say so himself—slow cooked beef stew, when he feels a cold breath against his neck. “Boo,” says a low, female voice.
Ilya jumps about four feet into the air. And then immediately spins around, spatula still dripping stew but raised like a weapon. Then he sees who it is. “Jesus, Sveta!”
She is, expectedly, laughing her ass off, her whole body doubled forward with the force of her giggles. Delight always looks wonderful on her, even if it’s at Ilya’s expense, so he just watches her as she gathers herself, his arms crossed in front of him and one hip cocked.
“Sorry,” she snots, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Sorry. You should’ve seen yourself, Ilyushka.”
“Yes, yes,” he says. “Laugh some more at the guy who is probably making your dinner at the moment, greedy girl.”
Hands linked at the small of her back like she’s trying a fucked-up portrayal of innocence, she nudges him aside so that she can lean over the pot and breathe in the fumes. “Oh, that does smell delicious. You are always so kind to me, blah blah blah. Please let me stay for dinner.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Blah blah blah, she says.” He sighs. “It speaks about the goodness of my heart that I’m even considering this.”
She nails him in the ankle with a perfectly placed kick. He yelps again. She acquiesces with a grin.
Ilya deems the stew ready enough, so he plates up two portions. It was probably not an accident that Svetlana had shown up around dinner time. And dinner with another person is infinitely better than sitting at his wobbly kitchen table by himself. She grabs two glasses and two bottles of beer from the fridge, and lays out the cutlery. There’s an easy familiarity to this, the two of them dancing around each other in the cramped kitchen space.
“So,” Svetlana says, after the first few hearty bites. “You’ve been at the new job for, what is it—a week, right?”
He nods, finishes chewing. “Just under a week.”
“How has it been so far?” she asks. “You said that son is taking care of the house, right? How is he?” She leans closer, categorising his expressions. “Was I right? Is he hot now?”
“God, Sveta,” he says, sighing mournfully. “He’s so hot. You don’t even know.”
As always, she has him figured out with one look. “And you haven’t even fucked him yet? Tsk, tsk, Ilyushenka.”
“Not for a lack of trying,” he defends himself. “Well, not really trying. I would need him to stick around for longer than three seconds to actually be able to try in the first place. He’s definitely interested and definitely not subtle. But it’s just like he how he was in high school: so fucking terrified of doing anything that he’d rather not do anything at all.”
She sighs and crosses her arms in front of her chest, leans against the table. “Why do you always get the hot ones? It’s annoying.” Then she sighs, and it stirs one of the curls that had escaped the knot at the back of her head. “But I don’t know you as a person to give up, Ilyusha. You’re not going to allow him to run away from you forever, right?”
“Definitely not.” He chews on a cube of beef. “He’s got a very tappable ass. I think he must do yoga or something like that. And that mouth . . .”
“Eww,” she says, even if it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. “I don’t want to hear your horny thoughts.”
“You love my horny thoughts,” Ilya corrects her. “And I always get you the best gossip.”
With a roll of her eyes, she takes another bite. From the furrow of her brows, it almost looks like she’s angry at how good it is. “It’s ridiculous how much information the gossipy ladies give you. Your face isn’t even that trustworthy.”
He shrugs. “You just have to know who to flirt with.”
“How about you focus on flirting with that Shane Hollander guy. You wouldn’t want to give him mixed signals by going after the old coots.”
Not really something Ilya is worried about. “He never leaves that damn house other than to hike in the woods, so I’m not too worried. It’s honestly impressive how long he’s managed to stretch the food he must have stockpiled over the weekend. It’s like he’s a damn vampire who disintegrates when other people look at him.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot,” Svetlana points out, amused.
“He’s interesting.” Ilya is big enough to admit it, and Svetlana’s probably nice enough not to go blabbing to all of their other friends immediately. “He’s hot like sin, teases me without knowing what he is doing, and he’s so awkward you wouldn’t even believe it. Getting him to crack will be the most satisfying thing I’ll get out of this summer apart from fixing up that whole house.”
“Atta boy,” she says, nodding. “If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s you.”
--
An opportunity to interact with Shane presents itself the following day. Ilya has to fuck around with one of the ceiling airconditioning units in the main dining room, because apparently it had decided to spit out a mouthful of freezing water and then give up on life. This would not be a problem if some of the ceilings in this damn house weren’t a million feet high. Ilya drags the tallest of David’s ladders into the room, but he’ll still have to climb up to one of the highest steps. And while Ilya is a go-getter, he dutifully observes the CCOHS regulations. He could technically get his taller ladder from his house, but that would mean another trip up and down. And he knows Shane is around, because both Brick and Camille have come around to whinge at him.
(They’re both not herding dogs, but with how much they’ve been trying to corral him and Shane into the same place, it almost feels like it.)
So he goes in search of Shane. Lucky for him, Camille, good girl that she is, totally gives him away. When Ilya pets her and asks, Where’s Shane? Where’s Shane?, she goes loping. Ilya follows her and finds Shane in one of the dens. He’s stretched out on the couch, muscular legs draped across the cushion, a book with a truly dreadfully boring title in his lap and a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Ilya will have to revisit the sight of those glasses later.
For now, he raises his hand, knocks on the doorframe. Shane looks up and nearly drops his book in his lap when he sees Ilya—though Ilya doesn’t know who else he could’ve been expecting.
“Uh, hey,” says Shane, swallowing. “Is something wrong?”
“Nope.” Ilya pops the p just to see Shane’s eyes flicker to his lips, then immediately look away again. “I just need your help with something. And you told me that I could come to you if I ever needed you.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Shane, though reluctantly, folds a bookmark between the pages of his book and then stands. Probably cares about the integrity of the spine, or something.
Ilya leads him to the dining room, where he just hovers outside, as if stepping into the room will sign a terrible fate. With a roll of his eyes, Ilya gestures to the ladder. “I just need you to hold this steady for me so that I can climb up to the top and get that air conditioning unit dismantled for now. Have to get quite far up there, so I just want to be cautious.”
Shane is clearly dragging his feet when he crosses the threshold. “You can’t do this by yourself?” he says, his facial expression that of a mournful calf.
“You want me to fall off this damn ladder, Shane Hollander?” Ilya asks, one eyebrow raised.
The answer is clearly no, because Shane Hollander is too good of a person to wish death upon anyone, so a minute later, he is standing at the foot of the ladder, one hand on each side of the contraption to keep it in place.
Ilya grabs the tools he thinks he would need up there and then scales up the steps. With Shane’s additional help, the ladder does indeed keep steady, so Ilya makes quick time at unscrewing the top and starting to work on unplugging all the things he needs unplugged for now. He knows this angle does wonders for the curve of his butt, and he’s done too many painful kettlebell squats in his life not to show it off, so he makes sure to lean forward a little bit as he does so. Or as much as he is comfortable with before he’s certain that he’s going to fucking fall down and bash his head open.
Below him, Shane makes a tiny sound. And then he clears his throat. “How is the . . . work on the house coming along?” he asks.
It is clearly a subterfuge, but still: Shane Hollander, trying to make small talk? Ilya will throw a bone to a good dog. He hums. “Coming along well. I ordered a lot of the pieces that I will need for the next things I’m going to tackle, and they should be arriving within the next few days. I will sort it out when I get here on Monday morning so don’t worry too much and just throw it in a pile. That’s what I’ve always done when your parents hire me for a job.”
“Uh huh,” says Shane. Ilya gets the impression that he’s never really just thrown things in a pile in his life before.
He wobbles a little bit on the ladder, clamps himself down at the last moment and hopes that Shane didn’t see his blunder. “Your mum told me that you work in ah—Montreal now,” he says, because if Shane gets to distract him with casual talk, then Ilya is also allowed to do that. “What do you do for work? Big firm or something?”
“Or something,” says Shane. “I, um, work as a Portfolio Manager. I manage investment portfolios.”
“Begh.” Ilya blows a raspberry. “Sounds boring.”
For a beat, it is silent. Then Shane huffs out something that sounds like a laugh. “Yeah, you’re kind of right.” He lets out a tiny, dismayed noise. “I was trying to find a way to prove you wrong, but I actually couldn’t come up with anything.”
Ilya looks down at him; Shane is staring to the side, something far away in his gaze. “Well, at least it pays the bills, right?”
“I guess.”
“And then some,” Ilya adds, just to be cheeky. And to hopefully snap Shane out of his self-imposed slump.
As expected, that makes Shane’s eyebrows drop into a scowl, but every emotion is better than the emptiness from before. He shakes the ladder ever so slightly, forcing Ilya to brace himself against the top step with a flat palm. “I’m going to leave you at the top of this ladder if you’re going to be an asshole.”
“Jesus,” laughs Ilya. “You’re actually a terror.”
The rest of the dismantlement goes well enough, so Ilya quickly finishes what he was planning to do and then climbs down the ladder again. Once he is back on solid ground, he jumps up and down a few times, trying to get his blood flow back to normal again. And then he turns around to where Shane is still standing, half-lost and half-awkward, and takes a handful of steps forward so that he can back Shane up against the nearest wall. Shane goes willingly, perhaps even a bit pliantly.
“What are you doing?” says Shane, voice small. They’re the same height, but he still manages to make it look like he is looking up at Ilya. He is also, Ilya notices with glee, not trying to break free from his hold at all.
Ilya’s gaze drops down to Shane’s perfectly pouty mouth. “What?” he hums. “You don’t want to be praised for a job well done, Shane Hollander?”
Shane swallows. “I did not say that.”
Trailing down one hand, Ilya squeezes his waist briefly. “Good boy.” And then he closes the gap between them and captures Shane’s mouth with his own.
It immediately becomes clear to Ilya that Shane is not really an experienced kisser. But he is an eager one. When Ilya slips his tongue between his lips so that he can tangle it with Shane’s, Shane lets out a little, appreciative sigh. His hands, which had been nervously held to the sides of his body, come up: one tangles in the bottom of Ilya’s shirt, and the other one curls around Ilya’s shoulder. When Ilya tightens his grip on Shane’s waist so that he can haul Shane a little bit closer, their chests nearly flush, Shane just allows it to happen to him.
Such a fucking good boy. Ilya’s going to lose his mind.
They part for air when there’s no other choice. Shane’s lips are swollen and red, slick with Ilya’s saliva. He looks slightly dazed too, his shirt rumpled where it always looks so perfect, almost as if he would steam it after putting it on. It’s a good look on him.
With a smile, Ilya reaches up and pats Shane on the cheek. “Again,” he says. “Thank you.”
“Uh,” says Shane, clearly still struggling to reboot his brain. He licks his lips. Ilya likes to imagine it tastes like him.
“Anyway.” Ilya takes a step back, looks Shane up and down. Such a good sight. “I have another few tasks I’m planning to do before I head home for the weekend, but I’ll let you know if I need your help again, okay?”
At last, Shane manages an actual word. “Okay,” he says. His head bobs up and down in a nod. “I’ll be—.” He waves his hand vaguely and does not finish his sentence.
Ilya watches him go first with the biggest grin on his face. There are five weeks left of this hot summer between them—time he will actually probably need to finish all of his work on the house, but he is also planning to use, to seduce Shane. And step one of that plan has just proven to be a resounding success.
--
The weekend would’ve passed quietly if it weren’t for the kids from the hockey team party crashing his house on Friday night. Ilya pretends to hate it when they do that, but deep in his heart, he can’t deny that he feels proud of the fact that his shabby little two-storey is inviting enough for people to just come over without calling them up first.
“None of you kids on holiday to your fancy destinations yet?” he ribs good-naturedly, when he comes home from doing his weekly grocery shopping to the four of them strewn across the secondhand garden furniture he’s collected on his porch over the last few years.
Luca Haas raises his hand, polite like ever, and manages to look vaguely apologetic. “Sorry for crashing your place again, coach.”
“Boo,” says Andrew Young, tossing a crumpled up can of Molson Exel at his friend, then tucks his hand back behind his head again. “Stop being such a suck-up, Haasy. You know that this guy loves it when we show up.”
With a roll of his eyes, Ilya plucks the can from the floor, waving it at Andrew. “You shouldn’t be drinking this yet, you know? Your mother is going to yell at me that I’m setting a bad example again.”
Andrew rolls his eyes. “It’s just lemonade.”
“My mum loves coach,” says Gabriel Lapointe, a vaguely nauseous look on his face. “A bit too much, I think. Me and my sister are working on getting her a boyfriend.”
To his side, Olivier Holmberg makes a retching noise.
Ilya quickly escapes before the conversation can shift into a direction he really should not be here for. As he starts unloading his groceries in the kitchen, he is unsurprised to hear a patter of footsteps follow him in; he’s even less surprised to look up and find himself face to face with Luca. The kid is fidgeting with his hands.
“You’re going to keep standing there or just help me?” Ilya asks, the corners of his mouth twitching.
“Sorry.” Luca snaps out of his thoughts at the words, and quickly starts unpacking one of the bags of produce as well. With how often they’ve been in this exact situation, he already knows where everything has to go, and between the two of them, it’s light work.
Once they’re finished, Ilya turns to him, letting out a dramatic sigh. “You know, I was planning to cook for myself tonight, but I don’t think I have enough to feed all of you growing boys. What do you say about some delivery food? I could really go for some pizza right now.”
“Actually, the guys and I have saved up some money to treat you this time.” Though Ilya raises one eyebrow at Luca, the kid bravely holds his ground. “You can’t stop us.”
“I totally can,” grumbles Ilya, but one look at Luca’s stubborn little face has him folding. There’s probably a reason the kids sent him inside to convince Ilya.
Before he goes back outside, Ilya grabs another round of drinks for the kids and a beer for himself. He has really deserved it, he reasons silently, after the week he’s had. The kids are making ruckus on his porch when he steps outside again, all fighting over Olivier’s phone as they’re trying to put their order through. As if they’re not all going to order exactly what they always do. Ilya kicks up his feet on the wobbly table, one of its legs supported by a stack of leftover kitchen tiles from a project he did before, and assumes that they will just order for him what he always picks.
The pizzas don't take that long to arrive. Sainte-Margot has enough pizza parlors, and the one they order from, Marcielo’s, sits at the exact crossroads between hole-in-the-wall and delicious food. Before long, Ilya is pleasedly munching on his slice of spicy salami pizza, watching the boys bicker about holiday destinations.
“My mum is flying us to Tulum this year,” Olivier is pouting.
Luca’s voice is dry as ice. “Must be rough for you.”
“Fuck you, you know my skin doesn’t do well under the sun.”
Ilya sits back and lets it happen to him. He’s happy enough to be the center of attention either when he wants to or when it is demanded of him, but with the kids here, it’s good to take a backseat and allow life to rush around him—just like how the Aisne snakes through the maple trees a few kilometers down the road.
“Hey coach,” says Andrew, snapping Ilya out of his musing. “Are you going on holiday this year?”
Finishing his last slice in two bites, Ilya shakes his head, cheeks bulging. They wait for him to swallow. “I have a big job all summer,” he says. “Fixing up a whole house. The six weeks I quoted are already going to be real tight, and after that, the new season is almost starting again, so . . .” He shrugs.
“That’s right!” Gabriel snaps his fingers. “The Hollander house, right?”
“I saw someone there a couple nights ago,” Olivier says, all wide eyes. “He disappeared as soon as he saw me. I think it might have been a ghost!”
“You idiot,” says Luca, smacking him in the back of the head. “That’s just the Hollander son. I saw him in the forest when he was walking the dogs. He didn’t look like he wanted to make conversation, but that was just fine for me. We waved at each other, though.”
“My sister says he’s hot,” is all Gabriel has to offer, shrugging.
Clapping his hands together once, Ilya calls their attention like he sometimes does in training too. All four pairs of eyes immediately snap towards him, which is such an adorable sight that he almost immediately fails his attempt at sternness. “Yes, I am working on the Hollander house. And yes, Shane Hollander is housesitting while I am there. He is definitely not a ghost, and he’s been very good at hosting me. But he’s a bit skittish and he hasn’t been in town in a long time, so I hope you guys will behave and not bombard him with attention while you’re all still here.”
With a pout, Andrew sits back in his wicker chair. “You don’t think we’d actually set out to annoy him, do you, coach?”
“Oh no,” says Ilya immediately. “I know you all, so I know you’d go there with the best intentions, but the four of you lose all of your subtlety and tact the moment you get together, and I simply can’t put it on Luca only to get you all out of the situation you’d inevitably get yourself in.” Mostly because he’s pretty sure that Shane meeting Luca would be a contest of awkwardness that would potentially only end when either of them explodes. He doesn’t say that out loud.
Luca beams at him, all of his teeth on display.
“I don’t know if that is a compliment,” Oliver says, thoughtfully.
Luca’s smile shifts into a glare.
“Just behave yourselves, okay?” says Ilya, at last, burying his face in his hands. “You are all lovely kids and I’m sure you mean well, but Shane is—skittish. We don’t want to run him off just yet.”
It is silent for a beat. Then: “Oooh, coach Ilya is on a first name basis with Shane Hollander,” sings Gabriel.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ilya sighs. And contemplates how much violence is exactly enough violence. Not to actually hurt, but just to put the fear of God in them. A little bit.
--
Monday morning. The sun has doubled down on Ilya and he’s already sweating down the back of his neck by the time he makes it to the Hollander house, his coffee cup empty in the holder as an attempt at hydrating himself. He’s pretty sure that summers weren’t this hot when he was younger, so this probably has something to do with climate change. At least, before he drove down here, he slathered himself in enough sun cream to batter-fry a medium sized chicken and put on a backwards hat, or Svetlana would hunt him down with a baseball bat to smash some sense into him.
He parks his truck in the driveway. Shane’s very sensible truck is parked in his usual spot, and Brick and Camille run up to him, barking and wagging their tails. So the son of the house is around somewhere.
Over the weekend, Shane had texted him that some things that Ilya had ordered had arrived. He uses full sentences and periods to text, signing off his messages with - SH. It shouldn’t be as much of a turn on as it is, but Ilya clearly has been ruined by that damn mouth and those breathy noises he swallowed. His dick hadn’t complained.
For now, he just hefts his toolbox out of the back of the truck and circles the house with Camille and Brick doing their best weaving pole impressions once more. To his surprise, he finds Shane already in the backyard, a few metres away from the open French doors leading into the kitchen. In a tight, short-sleeved top and a pair of the tiniest shorts Ilya has ever seen. He’s also in what Ilya is pretty sure is called the downward dog position.
Ilya nearly drops the toolbox on his own foot.
“Hey Shane!” he manages to call after a good minute of searching for his voice, feeling like the dumbest motherfucker alive. When Shane looks up from his position, his thighs quivering slightly, Ilya’s brain blanks. It’s only because he is a professional that he manages to keep his composure.
Shane neatly lowers himself out of his position, his chest flat against the mat he’s rolled out on the grass. He looks up at Ilya. A thin sheen of sweat covers his top lip. “Oh, hi,” he says. “I’m sorry, I must have lost track of time.”
“Uh,” says Ilya, intelligently, trying not to stare too creepily at the way Shane’s tongue flickers between his lips. “It’s—it’s fine?”
“Are you sure?” Shane is already pushing himself to his feet. “I can go back inside if I’m in your way.”
Ilya waves his hand. “Don’t worry. I have to sort the shed first, so feel free to continue your workout.” He jabs his thumb over his shoulder in what he hopes is vaguely the direction of the shed. “I’ll go work on that, yeah?”
Despite Ilya’s attempt at reassuring words, Shane follows him to the shed first. Or, at least, Ilya is pretty sure that it can be legally called a shed, but in reality it is almost the size of his own home. The automatic door rolls up with a smooth hum when Ilya presses the button hanging from the keyring that Yuna had given him.
Behind that, what he expected: pandemonium. What he actually gets: neatly stacked piles, wood beams and planks on one side, boxes with electrical parts on the other, and everything else grouped in vague piles..
Radiating nervousness, Shane hovers at his shoulder. “I know you told me that I could just put everything in a pile, but it felt like that would be so much extra work for you afterwards. So I kind of asked all of the delivery drivers to place everything in sort of similar spots when they came by. Which I, of course, tipped them extra for.”
“Of course,” echoes Ilya, bemused. He spins around before Shane can react, which doesn’t give him time to move back. The space between their faces shrinks to something infinitesimal. Ilya can count all of Shane’s individual lashes, can play connect-the-dot with his freckles.
As if mirroring him, Shane also trails his eyes down Ilya’s face. Ilya hadn’t quite realised before how dark they are, just a shade of difference between his irises and his pupils. It suits him, is the thing; between his eyes and his heavy eyebrows, the overall softness of the rest of his face, he’s perfectly balanced.
“Thank you,” says Ilya, at last. “You didn’t have to.”
Shane inhales. His plush lips part around the sound. “No worries,” he murmurs. “It wasn’t really extra work for me.”
Ilya hadn’t planned on starting to work on the deck today, but as Shane drifts back to his yoga mat, he figures that he might as well stick around. If Shane wants to give him, knowingly or not, a private show, Ilya would be a very bad customer if he didn’t appreciate it. He starts stripping the rotting boards first, a towel thrown over the back over his neck so that the sun doesn’t burn a hole through his skin, running through the familiar motions.
As he works, he keeps peeking over his shoulder. Shane is a sight to behold: golden skin flushing underneath the sun, muscles rolling, a flush starting on his cheeks and spreading down his back, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. Ilya wants to trace every line with his tongue.
Expectedly, Shane is done earlier than Ilya is. He neatly rolls up his mat and carries it inside through the kitchen doors. Camille and Brick, who had been romping around in the shade of one of the trees lining the yard, follow him. So for a while, it is just Ilya by himself, humming. He normally brings a portable speaker to these things, but he figured that that would probably scare off Shane, back into the house. And Ilya is a very greedy man.
He’s so deep in thought and work that he nearly jumps when someone clears their throat behind him. Heart pounding in his chest, he spins around.
Above him, the back of his head haloed by the sun making her trek across the sky, is no other than Shane. He is clearly recently showered, his hair curling up, heavy with moisture, at the back of his neck. In his hand, he is holding a glass.
“I’ve realised I’m a terrible host,” Shane says, the words slurring together apologetically. “My mum said that I had to at least offer you a drink, and it’s so hot, but I totally forgot. I hope you like diet coke, it’s the only thing we have at the house right now that isn’t ginger ale.”
Shane holds out the glass of him, eyes a bit nervous when Ilya does not react, only silently climbs to his feet. It’s clearly cold, ice cubes clinking together inside the coke, condensation on the outside. Ilya reaches forward, but instead of grasping the glass, curls his fingers around Shane’s wrist. He swallows the shocked gasp Shane lets out with his own mouth, tastes the salty sweat of his skin. Below him, Shane quivers, and he kisses back just as eagerly.
A crash. They both jump apart. Ilya looks down just as coke and ice splash up his calves, the glass lying in pieces between them. Apparently, in his eagerness to receive Ilya’s tongue between his parted lips, Shane had dropped the glass.
“Oops,” says Shane, his eyebrows furrowing. He looks a bit dazed, which could be either because of the kissing or the lack of air the both of them had suffered through for the last minute. He snuffles, rubs the back of his neck. “I should probably clean that up.”
Growling, Ilya hauls him forward by his hand, which he had wonderingly still not removed from Shane’s wrist. And then, when they are chest to chest, he walks forward, careful not to step on Shane’s toes as the other boy stumbles back. With the grace of a newborn giraffe, Shane goes where Ilya leads him, and the process would probably be helped if either of them could stop kissing the other for more than two seconds, but that’s not really in the cards for Ilya right now.
“At least take your shoes off,” Shane manages to grumble against his mouth as they reach the threshold of the kitchen. “I don’t want you to track dirt into the kitchen.”
Ilya rolls his eyes but steps on the backs of his ratty sneakers so that he can toe out of them, using his hold on Shane’s hips to continue walking him backward until they reach the kitchen island. Shane squeaks as his lower back makes contact with the marble top, one hand coming up to brace himself against the cool stone. Ilya releases Shane’s hand so that he can rub it across Shane’s pectoral muscle, the nipple perky through his thin shirt, so Shane uses his newfound freedom to tangle his hand in the curls at the back of Ilya’s head.
Breathing in deeply, Ilya runs his nose down the curve of Shane’s neck. His shampoo or perhaps his conditioner—because he is very clearly fancy enough to use that kind of stuff—smells like pine and something else, something muskier. And then opens his eyes.
Brick is looking back at him from the gap in the door leading to the hallway, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his tail wagging lazily behind him. When they make eye contact, he tilts his head to the side with a whine.
And—no. Ilya is not about to be cock-blocked by a dog, no matter how cute he looks. With the greatest difficulty, he manages to tear himself away from Shane, and circles the counter. Behind him, Shane whines in protest at being separated. He starts shooing Brick out with renewed fervor, not even able to feel sorry for the betrayed look the dog gives him. All of his blood is in his hard dick at the moment, and there’s nothing left to make his heart soft.
Once they’re alone, both dogs safely locked behind the door, he returns to Shane. Shane, who is waiting for him, leaning against the counter, his chest heaving and his lips unkissed.
Ilya can’t have that. He quickly slides their lips together and his hands through Shane’s hair. It draws an appreciative noise from deep in Shane’s chest and makes his body jerk against Ilya’s. His heavy, hard cock bumps against Ilya’s upper thigh. Ilya’s brain is very on board with this turn of events, and so is his body. With one dextrous hand, he reaches between their bodies and unbuttons Shane’s shorts.
“Wait,” Shane says, grabbing Ilya’s wrist and licking his lips. “I don’t—have anything, here.”
“Tsk,” says Ilya. “You think I can’t make you come with my mouth, Shane Hollander? You were just talking about cleaning up. I think you’ll like my suggestion.” He presses his knuckles against Shane’s bulge, feeling the heat behind the fabric.
Shane says, “Ah!” He sounds almost panicked.
Frowning, Ilya draws back. “Do you want this? We can stop if you’re not comfortable.”
“No, no,” Shane immediately blurts out. “I do! I do want this. I’m just worried that I won’t be . . . good enough for you. Or something like that.”
“That’s simply not possible.” Ilya brings his free hand up so that he can rub broad strokes along the side of Shane’s waist, feeling the flex of shivering muscles underneath the flat of his palm. “You are so good to me, Shane. Already.”
“Okay, then—okay.”
“Okay,” Ilya echoes, amused.
And then he drops down to his knees, taking Shane’s shorts and his horribly boring white briefs along in one movement. Once freed, Shane’s dick slaps against his stomach, head engorged and red and already glistening with precome. All of a sudden, Ilya can’t wait to have him in his mouth. He reaches over and circles the base with his fingers, looking up at Shane through his lashes.
“Have you done this before?” he says. “With a man?”
Shane looks like someone has punched him in the gut, his eyes wide and his breath rattling, winded. Then he nods, shakes his head. “I tried. It wasn’t very good. Or maybe I wasn’t.” He holds himself stiffly, like there is a world in which Ilya would possibly agree with that statement.
Something akin to anger settles low in Ilya’s chest. He clicks his tongue. “Asshole idiot didn’t know how to handle you. Don’t worry. I will show you what it can be like.”
He blows Shane right then and there. Shane fucking oozes into the counter when Ilya takes him in his mouth, relaxing his throat to take him deeper. He’s a pleasant mouthful, not as big as Ilya, but definitely big enough to feel. Ilya hopes he will feel it in his jaw afterwards.
When Shane comes, it doesn’t take long, and he doesn’t even have time to give Ilya a warning. He just puts his hands on Ilya’s head—being really careful not to pull, Ilya notices with amusement—lets out a wordless grunt, and then spills into Ilya’s mouth. He must’ve been pent up, because his orgasm seems to go on forever, salt and musk on Ilya’s tongue. When he tries to pull back, even though he cannot really go anywhere, Ilya keeps him pinned in place with a stern look upwards, until Shane is shivering through the aftershocks.
“God,” says Shane, brushing a hand through Ilya’s curls, trailing his fingers down the side of his face so that he can run his thumb along his swollen bottom lip. “That was . . .” He shakes his head, eyes still blown wide with wonder.
“Good?” Ilya says, the corners of his lips twitching.
Shane nods, a bit wild. “More than.”
Next, Ilya stands up and shoves his shorts down just low enough so that he can get a hand around himself. At the sight of Ilya’s dick, Shane’s mouth pops open, and he reaches out for it as if possessed. Ilya lets him, heat raging low in his belly. Shane’s golden fingers against the flushed red skin of Ilya’s dick makes for a gorgeous contrast, in Ilya’s humble opinion. His grip is a little loose, uncertain, but Ilya wraps his own hand around Shane’s and starts working him through the motions, swearing in Russian when the head of his dick pushes through the hot cavern of their folded fingers. They wank him off like that, their bodies curved towards each other, arms flexing in tandem. The speed at which Ilya hurtles closer to his climax is almost embarrassing.
“Shane—” he says, a warning.
“Come on, Ilya,” says Shane, almost laser-focused on Ilya’s cock. He licks his lip, and for a brief second, he looks almost feral. He squeezes his hand a bit tighter. “I want to see it.”
It’s just a handjob, but it’s the best orgasm Ilya remembers having in a long time, body shuddering from the force of it. It takes him quite a long time afterwards to get back to work.
--
Tuesday and Wednesday are good. Busy. Ilya had intentionally cut himself some slack when making his planning, but he would prefer it if he didn’t already get behind on the internal schedule he had made in the first two weeks. Apparently, sucking your temporary-boss’ son is all well and fun, but it does move some things around in regards to that.
Who would have figured!
Shane is understanding. Easily enticed into a kiss now that they’ve started doing it regularly. He brings Ilya a glass of diet coke multiple times per day, Camille and Brick buzzing around his feet like easily excited bees, and receives a kiss on the lips for his troubles. And sometimes they do get carried away with it, but not blowjob carried away. Ilya is a gentleman, and he would describe his sexual drive as ‘perfectly satisfactory’, but Shane sometimes looks at him like he is trying to figure something out for himself and Ilya would rather that he does that first before they do something they both regret.
And it’s not like kissing Shane isn’t good. Ilya thinks he could lose himself in the sensation. Shane always goes so quiet and pliant in the cradle of his arms, sighing into Ilya’s mouth like some of the answers he’s searching for are on his tongue, and there’s satisfaction in reducing him to this state. Plus, Ilya gets a drink out of it and a perfectly round ass to grope.
He thinks he can live with this. He was put on this earth to kiss pretty people—of that he is sure—and Shane is indubitably gorgeous. It’s all working out for him.
--
The rain drives them both inside on Thursday. Summer storms can be violent at this time of year, turning the entire world outside in a haze of bright green and grey. Camille and Brick mope around the house, spoiled pets as they are, following Ilya around the house with pointed gazes, as if he is supposed to be able to turn the rain off at will. Which he would do if he could, but no matter how often he grabs the two dogs by the faces and solemnly tells them this, he does not think its getting through them.
It does introduce Ilya to a new, softer Shane, curled up on the couch in the den while Ilya changes some of the light bulbs in the chandelier and cleans the damn thing now that he’s up there anyway. Shane is still in the damn shorts he prefers, the ones that show off the long lines of his thighs and his quads, but with a thin hoodie on top, the neckline stretched to the side from wear. Hair curling softly at the ends from the moisture that seems to also invade the house through every single crack and those damn reading glasses perched on his nose.
Ilya thinks they should make out while Shane is wearing those glasses, but apparently he has not invented telepathy through the sheer will of bisexual desperation, so for now he’ll have to do with longingly peering down at the other. He probably wouldn’t get a lot of things done if Shane would know and respond to every time he thought about kissing.
Shane insists on making them both lunch when Ilya accidentally reveals that he’s forgotten his food in his truck, mournfully gazing outside as he contemplates whether the run through the wall of rain is worth it. Ilya manages to talk him down to egg sandwiches.
The third time Ilya presses one of the buttons on one of the various kitchen gadgets scattered around the counters to see what kind of noise it will make, Shane bans him to one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Ilya will surely get fevered visions of sweet domesticity if Shane keeps expertly dodging Camille and Brick’s wriggling bodies while he mashes together boiled eggs and low-fat mayonnaise. He’s always been a good cook, but there’s something about sitting back and seeing Shane’s concentrated face as he toasts slices of buttered bread to his exact desired colour that awakens something both horny and protective in Ilya.
He is presented with a plate with two slices of toast, a heaping of salad, egg salad mashed on top, and exactly enough pickles to make his Slavic heart happy. “It’s not quite what my parents’ chef would have made you,” says Shane, squirming. “But my friend Rose tells me that this is nice.”
“This is perfect,” Ilya reassures him, in a reflex. “And I’m hungry, so everything you make would have been delicious.
Shane frowns at him in what Ilya has come to find out is a very Shane-way. “If you get too hungry, you should’ve told me before.”
“It’s fine,” says Ilya, immediately taking a big bite. “See, I’m eating.”
A minute of suspicious silence as Shane looks him up and down, but then he seems to accept Ilya’s answer and sits down on his own chair. Ilya had half expected him to eat the sandwich with fork and knife, but Shane surprises him by smashing the two breads together and taking the world’s biggest bite, cheeks bulging. It must say something about Ilya that he still kind of thinks that is attractive.
“How’s the house coming along?” Shane asks, when he finishes chewing.
“Good,” says Ilya. “I believe I’m on track. We’ll see at the end of summer, but I’ve made good progress so far. It’ll be good for the weather to get colder again. I didn’t think Canada had it in itself to get this hot.”
“You literally grew up here, you fake Russian,” huffs Shane, and he doesn’t even flinch when Ilya gives him the finger. “But you’re right. I thought it would be different and not as cloying in Montreal, but I was wrong.”
“Mmm,” hums Ilya. “City boy. Do you even do city boy things?”
Shane gives him a sideways look, hand with his sandwich paused halfway up to his mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean—” Ilya gestures up and down. “You obviously take good care of yourself. So that’s a check. And you work in a pretty corporate firm and you probably have a schmancy uptown apartment with a view of the skyline. Check, check. But do you drink matcha? Pilates or some kind of work out class? Gossip with the girls over an overpriced cocktail after work is done? Who-and-who is fucking who-and-who?”
“I don’t do any of that, no.”
“Then what do you do?”
A pensive look, then Shane huffs, a bit self-depriciating. “I don’t do a lot, to be honest,” he admits. “But I like to watch hockey and read about it. Sometimes I’ll take my friend Rose to the Montreal Canadiens. She gets really passionate about it, even if she doesn’t really know what’s going on half of the time.”
“Really? Hockey?” Ilya can’t help but ask, even if he scrunches up his nose at Canadiens.
Shane blinks. “Is it that surprising?”
“No, no,” says Ilya, immediately, and laughs. “I actually train the amateur hockey team in this area. We train a couple of towns down in the rink. Some of the kids live here in Sainte-Margot. They’re pretty good, actually.”
The easy confession is met with a heavy silence. Then Shane places his sandwich down on his plate with an almost serene air. He gestures at Ilya’s plate, the scraps of his lunch. “Are you done with that?”
Ilya opens his mouth to respond, but Shane has already circled the island so that he can grab Ilya’s shirt by the back of his collar. “I’m going to suck you off now,” he announces, and then does just that.
--
On Friday, they somehow actually manage to make it to bed. Ilya is pressure washing the area around the outside pool, and Shane chooses that moment to start swimming lanes. He’s completely bare apart from the tight pair of swim shorts he has put on, his hair slicking across his forehead and down the back of his neck. But he’s taking the laps seriously, all perfect form and muscles in his arms pumping, swimming like he has something to prove. Ilya can’t decide if he’s trying to seduce him, or if this is simply how Shane is.
Anyway, as soon as Shane heaves himself out of the pool, Ilya is near-scruffing him by the back of the neck and marching him to the house. Shane goes willingly, almost triumphant.
Whatever his plan was at the beginning, Ilya is pretty sure that this is also Shane’s preferred outcome.
Shane takes them to a bed. Ilya thinks it might be Shane’s bed. The bed is made, walls empty and impersonal, but there’s a glass of water and a stack of books on the bed table and a shirt thrown over the chair in the corner. No matter whether it is or not, Shane has no problem with leading him here, then pushing Ilya to sit on the bed so that he can towel himself dry in the ensuite bathroom.
As Ilya waits for him, he sheds his shirt. There’s not much to look at in the room, but he can see the garden through the window from where he is sitting. Camille and Brick are nosing around in the grass, the pressure washer still standing next to the pool like the corpse of a fallen soldier.
Then Shane returns. He’s peeled his shorts down his long legs. A towel is wrapped around his waist.
Ilya’s brain goes a little blank. “Come here,” he says, holding out grabby hands. “Shane, c’mon.”
“Needy,” laughs Shane, but he does as Ilya instructed, stepping in between the vee of Ilya’s legs, one hand loosely resting on Ilya’s shoulder. He’s already tenting the front of the towel a little bit. “Didn’t know you got this pouty, Rozanov.”
“Many ways to use this mouth,” Ilya says sagely, and then tugs Shane onto the bed so that he can prove exactly that.
Kissing Shane is always like a revelation. There’s always something new to explore: a new sound to coax from Shane’s lips by brushing their tongues together just so. He twitches when Ilya strokes his palms along his ribs, probably ticklish, but he never tugs away or tells Ilya off. And when Ilya trails his nose and mouth along the line of his neck, he tilts his head to the side to make space.
“There’s lube in the bedside table,” says Shane, when Ilya is doing his best at creating a masterpiece on Shane’s neck with his teeth and tongue. “And, uh, condoms.”
Huh. So it must have been planned all along. Ilya’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, though.
Under the lethal pressure of two slick fingers swirling around his puckered hole, Shane reveals that he’s done this to himself before, that he has a dildo. It’s purple. But he’s never done this with anyone else before. Ilya will be the first person lucky enough to witness this. He wants to eat Shane whole. He settles for slipping his middle finger inside, up until the first knuckle. Shane makes a noise like he was punched in the gut. He’s hot like a vice around Ilya’s finger. Ilya wishes there was a way for him to crawl inside Shane’s body and live there forever.
He looks up, categorises the expressions that slip across his face—the furrow of his eyebrow, the press of his lips. “This okay for you?” he asks, soft.
Shane nods, some of the tension in his shoulders loosening. “More,” he says. “Please.”
With permission, Ilya does, slowly feeding more of his finger inside and starting to pump it slowly. Praise seems to come naturally, when it’s Shane. And Shane always melts into it so beautifully, relaxing enough that Ilya can slip a second finger inside when he whispers, “You are so good for me, always,” against the curve of Shane’s shoulder.
By the time he’s up to four fingers, Shane is begging for more. He’s a sight. This will be wank material for the rest of Ilya’s life.
“Alright, alright,” Ilya murmurs, when Shane opens one eye to glare up at him.
“Get to it,” says Shane, impatient.
Ilya reaches over to the bedside table to grab a condom. “Now who’s the needy one, moya lyubov?” But he won’t deny that he wants it as well, so he rolls the condom over his dick, hard and throbbing and neglected so far, and slicks himself up. Shane rolls onto his front, his ass two perfect globes, and Ilya kneels behind him. He actually twitches a little bit when he curls his fingers around his dick to line himself up.
Fucking into Shane is like reaching nirvana. Seeing heaven. Figuring a way to turn coaldust into fucking gold. Ilya slides home into Shane’s plush heat and realises that he is going to be ruined for the rest of his life. If he is going to be, though, he has to take advantage of it while he can.
“Can I?” he asks Shane, grunting. “Move?”
Shane reaches behind him, wildly, and Ilya captures his waving hand with his own. Shane settles and nods. “Please.”
“I’ll make you feel good,” Ilya promises.
He fucks Shane, soft at first and speeding up as Shane becomes more vocal, more demanding. If he hadn’t confessed to Ilya, nervous, that this was his first time with another guy like this, Ilya wouldn’t have known it. Shane is loud and he’s clearly feeling out what he wants. He likes it when Ilya pins him down, his movements becoming more frantic and his moans pitching up higher. When Ilya digs his nails into the meat of Shane’s thigh, he manages to wrench free the loudest sound yet. And when Ilya leaves a combination of kisses and bites along the line of Shane’s shoulders, Shane sighs happily. Their hands remain connected nearly the entire time.
It’s safe to say neither lasts very long. Ilya is pretty sure Shane comes completely handsfree, which he’ll use to brag later. But once he does come, he absolutely clamps down on Ilya. Even when he starts hissing through his oversensitivity and Ilya makes a move to pull out, holds Ilya there, pouting mouth and teary eyes, until Ilya finishes deep inside of him, only the thin condom separating him from Ilya’s release.
Afterwards, they lie next to each other, panting as they stare up at the ceiling. Ilya feels like his soul was just wrung out through his dick, and it’s taking him longer than normal to recover. That—and no other reason, not because the proximity to Shane is so comfortable—is why he’s still there when Shane rolls onto his side to peer down at him.
“You’re not working this weekend, are you?”
Ilya shakes his head, bringing one hand up to push his sweaty fringe out of his face. He grins. “That’s right. I also need some breaks, Shane Hollander.”
“I know.” A deep breath, as if Shane’s centring himself. “And do you have any plans tomorrow morning?”
He doesn’t have to think about it long. “Mm, no.”
Nervous, Shane laughs. “Alright. Okay. Would you—want to stay tonight? Not for the night, if you don’t want to, but I mean. I can make us some dinner. Build a fire afterwards. I’ve found that the nights here are really pleasant. The fire pit is nice. I think I would like it if you stayed.”
“Let me guess,” says Ilya dryly. “You eat rabbit food.”
Shane bites on his lip. “I can put some burgers on the barbecue?”
With a grin, Ilya rolls over so that he can press a kiss against Shane’s clavicle. “I could stay for burgers and rabbit food.”
The words are enough for Shane to jump into action. He all but thrusts Ilya’s shirt back at him while he already has one leg in a pair of shorts he’s pulled out of a drawer. He’s a flurry of movement, the muscles in his back working, determination in the set of his jaw and the lowered line of his eyebrows. Gorgeous to look at—and exhausting.
“Shane,” laughs Ilya. “Shane, calm down. It’s still ages until dinner time.”
He’s met with a glare cast over Shane’s shoulder. “I still have to do groceries,” he says, stiffly. “And get the wood for the fire ready. And you probably have other things on your schedule for today too.” His shoulders lower. “I just don’t want us to have to worry about it tonight.”
Privately, Ilya mourns his afterglow, but he knows that Shane is right. With a sigh, he starts pulling his shirt back on. It’s going to be a long few hours until dinner.
--
Dinner is indeed burgers from the grill. Shane makes his own sauce, probably all with low-fat ingredients, but the result is really damn tasty. He also makes eight burgers because the recipe was for eight, and blushes really prettily when Ilya makes fun of him. They eat out on the newly repaired deck as the sun dips towards the horizon. When they’re both done, Shane refuses to let Ilya wash the dishes.
“No, dude,” he laughs. “It’s really fine. Do you know how many dishwashers this house has?”
It is, honestly, a bit too hot still for a fire. But Ilya is not about to say that to Shane, who has spent at least thirty minutes building said fire with the precision often seen in sharpshooters. Brick and Camille, at least, do not seem bothered in the slightest by the heat wafting from the firepit, but are drawn to it like cats. They curl together on one of the two fancy lounges, leaving the other for Shane and Ilya to share.
“Nice, right?” says Shane. If he had a tail, Ilya thinks, it’d be wagging.
Ilya stares at him. “So we just sit here and look at it?”
“Yes, we just sit here and look at it.”
With a groan, Ilya sits back against the pillows. “My family should have never come to Canada if this is what you all do for fun.”
“Fine then, you big baby.” Shane reaches out with his foot and whacks him on the thigh. “We can—I don’t know—make conversation? Ask each other questions?” He bites his bottom lip. “I don’t really know that much about you.”
“Okay,” says Ilya, turning to Shane really seriously. “I’ll start. Why is your dog named Brick?”
Shane actually laughs out loud at that, a bright noise; it colours his cheeks below his freckles a soft red. “After my parents’ last dog died, they were debating getting another dog for a really long time, and then they told me that they were planning to foster a dog. I could already see how that was going to go wrong, so I told them hey, get a dog with a really ugly name, that way you won’t keep him. So they found Brick, who needed a placement, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
From his perch on the opposite sofa, Brick yawns at them.
Ilya looks at him. “He’s kind of, like, square-shaped. And kind of stocky. As much as it pains me to say it, the name Brick really isn’t too . . . far off from what he looks like.”
“Yeah, the name is totally fitting,” Shane says. “He’s dumb as a brick, too. My parents did try to change it for a while, but I guess they had already grown fond of Brick and what it stood for. And they did get to name Camille, because they got her as a puppy, so they decided on something really pretty to balance out Brick.”
“Camille,” Ilya says, mocking Shane’s pronunciation. “Oh, look at me, I’m Shane Hollander and I speak perfect French.”
“Shut up.” Shane nails him in the side with his foot. “I can’t believe how bad at it you are. You also grew up here.”
Grinning, Ilya shrugs. “I get by. I already speak Russian, and though I am of course super intelligent, there’s only so much space for languages in my brain. Plus, they have this awesome invention these days—it’s called Translator App. I think you would really benefit from it.”
“You’re so annoying.” Shane sends him a long look. “Why do you have to be so annoying?”
“Try to sound like you actually think that,” laughs Ilya, privately surprised at how easy banter comes with Shane. Like this, loosened up by the night and the mood, a can of ginger ale heating up in the palm of his hand, it is a world of difference. The fire paints his skin copper and gold. Ilya has a lot of difficulty tearing his eyes away from the lines of his throat and continuing his train of thought. “You are actually such a bad liar.”
Shane bares his teeth at him in an attempt at a scowl. “Fuck you. I bet all of your friends think you’re annoying too. If you have any at all.”
“No way,” sings Ilya, ignoring the terrible attempt at an insult. “They all love me.” He sits up straighter. “That reminds me—my friends and I meet each other at this pub in town on Friday every couple weeks? The Apple Tree? I think we’re meeting up next week. You should come along!” Shane opens his mouth, clearly to protest, so Ilya barrels on. “Come on, you’re always in this house. And Camille and Brick will be fine by themselves for a couple of hours.” He presses his foot against Shane’s, feeling it flex underneath his touch. “You can’t just hide away in here all summer! You gotta live too.”
It’s silent for a beat. Then, a bit skeptical: “What kind of a name is The Apple Tree?”
That’s the clearest not technically a no yet Ilya has ever heard. “Mm, Harris Drover? You know the Drover Farm, right?”
“I did grow up here.”
Ilya hides his smile at Shane’s petulant expression behind the palm of his hand. “Well, Harris owns the pub. He’s Troy’s boyfriend, and Troy’s so fucking gone for him, you don’t even know. So, we always go there so that Troy can brag a little bit. It would be annoying if it weren’t so cute. Plus, their cider is clearly the best one in town.”
“Hold on a second,” says Shane, blinking heavily. He sits up straighter. “Troy . . . As in Troy Barrett? He has a boyfriend now?”
Unable to help himself, Ilya feels how a small, sad grin blooms on his face. “Things did not stand still here just because you left, Shane Hollander. It’s true that most things still look the same, but everyone that stuck around also grew up. I know that Troy wasn’t the easiest person to be around in high school, and neither was I, probably, but we did grow up and grow better. Just because you weren’t around to see it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
He thinks about the pills he swallows dutifully every morning, and the monthly drives to a city three towns over. Neither Ilya nor Troy were really antagonistic in high school, and Ilya would hesitate to call himself a bully, but it’s true that he wasn’t the nicest person either. A lot of sadness and nowhere to let it out will do that to any twelve year old.
Silence descends, broken by a snap of a branch in the fire, collapsing under the heat. Camille snores, and somewhere in the forest calls a loon.
“You’re right,” Shane says, at last. He’s not looking at Ilya, and Ilya cannot read the emotion in his eyes. “If your friends are happy to host me as well, I’d like to be there. At the, uh, Apple Tree. And you’re probably right in saying that I should get out of the house more.”
Privately, Ilya thinks Svetlana is going to gobble Shane right up. But that’s something they can deal with once it happens. Shane won’t even know what hit him, but there’s a personal delight in seeing him flustered. He does not say any of that. Instead, he says, “When will you figure this out, Shane Hollander? I am always right.”
--
After some more banter and making out and very gratuitous chest groping, Shane walks Ilya back to the car. Only Camille follows them, Brick still passed out next to the dimming fire, but she’s blinking slowly and sighing as if dogs can get world-weary. It is only in a dog’s nature to decide that every task needs a dog, and that is something Ilya wholly agrees with. He pets her behind the ears as she pants up at him, her tail slowly wagging.
“Be good, yes?” he says, even though she cannot understand a word he says. “Be good for papa Shane.”
On the side, Shane coughs, peeved.
Ilya rolls his eyes and straightens. Shane is hugging his arms close to his chest, a linen shirt pulled over his tee, socked feet wriggling in his slippers. He should look ridiculous. Ilya forces his brain not to wander. “Thank you for inviting me,” he settles on at last, which is a perfectly normal thing to say in this situation. “I had a lot of fun.”
Shane uncrosses his arms just to jam them in the pockets of his shorts. “I feel like I should be the one thanking you. You must have had a long day.”
With a smile, Ilya shrugs. “It’s worth it, sometimes.” For the right reasons.
It seems like Shane is going to say something else, but at the last moment, he hesitates. Ilya decides to make the decision for him and steps forward so that he can press a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of Shane’s mouth. He smells like fire. “I’ll see you next week, okay? Sweet dreams.”
Shane opens his eyes from where they had fluttered closed under Ilya’s touch. He’s blushing. “Drive safe.”
“Such a boring thing to say, Hollander,” says Ilya, but he’s smiling.
He’s still smiling by the time he backs out of his parking spot, and even when he gets home, brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, he finds that he is smiling still.
--
The next week passes in a haze of sex and heat, and laughter too. After a quiet weekend recharging and texting the hockey kids who have all jetted off to their fancy destinations, Ilya is happy to return to the Hollander house on Monday. Shane is very funny, Ilya finds. He has such a Shane way of saying things that has Ilya bursting out in guffaws before he can stop himself. It always makes Shane look at him, perplexed, and ask what it is that he said that is making Ilya react like this. Ilya doesn’t quite know how to put into words that he just thinks Shane is the most endearing person alive.
And the sex is fucking great, of course, all puns intended. Shane is so compatible with everything Ilya likes that he might as well have been created in a lab specifically for him. And to top it all off, he’s kinky in a way that makes it very clear that he doesn’t know that these are specific kinks, but he’s just inventing them all through the sheer power of his mind.
Ilya’s dick has never been as simultaneously satisfied and wrung out in his life.
They don’t talk about it—this—whatever they are. What they do is move around this house, less and less like strangers, and more like two people who are purposefully occupying the same space. Shane Apart from bringing him drinks and enticing him into bed through his sheer presence alone, he’ll sometimes wander up and start making random conversation. Apparently, he knows a lot about architecture, and he’ll drop an entire list of facts about random things without being prompted. He asks Ilya what he’s doing, why he’s doing it in that way, if there’s anything he can do to help, if Ilya wants him to make him a sandwich. And Ilya will answer every single time, even when it breaks his concentration and he has to sit back on his haunches to think about it, whatever job he had been working on long forgotten.
But they are never the questions that Ilya is dying to answer. (Why did you want to kiss me? Do you feel the heat in your stomach when we kiss? Would you show me off to your friends too?)
It’s soon, okay? Ilya knows it’s soon. They’ve known each other for less than a month. But there’s something about Shane, something about the way he kisses Ilya. Like he matters. Like he also feels the pull beneath his rib bones when he sees him.
And Ilya isn’t sure how he feels about that. If he can live with it. But this is all he can get, and sometimes, Shane still moves like one misplaced comment is going to send him running back to the hills, so Ilya wisely keeps his mouth shut. It's just summer, he reminds himself. Yes, it’s the best damn kissing you remember participating in, in the last few years, but it also exists within an exactly bounded space and time. If he didn’t think he could live with that, he never would have started all of this.
--
“Is it everything you dreamed of?”
At the words, Shane looks up from where he’s curled up on Ilya’s chest, both of their bodies still slightly damp from exertion. In a minute, Shane will get up and start muttering about cleaning up, but for now, they’re still, sated. “What is?”
Ilya hums. “Sorry. I meant, like—the city. Being in a big city like that.”
For a bit, it is silent as Shane thinks. His breath washes across Ilya’s pectoral muscles. “I guess. It can be overwhelming too. I didn’t really have a dream when I came to the city. Nor any hopes or anything like that. I just want to make something for myself. Build a life.”
“And you’re happy?” Ilya presses.
“Happy enough,” says Shane, after a beat. He huffs out a laugh. “I have a boring job. A really nice apartment. Good friends. Hockey in my life when I want it.”
“Sounds good,” Ilya says. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”
Shane makes a noise that could honestly mean anything. “And you?”
“Me?”
“What do you dream of?”
Of course. Ilya smiles and presses a featherlight kiss to the top of Shane’s head. “Nothing big in life. I have my house. Great friends and the kiddos from the hockey team. I guess if I had to pick something to dream about, I’d say a fancy car like one of your dad’s.”
Shane twists in his hold so that he can frown up at him. “Ilya!”
“What?” Ilya feigns innocence. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t once sneak off to take a spin in a car like that. Just hearing it purr underneath me would be incredible.”
“I think you and I have very different definitions of incredible,” Shane says, matter-of-factly.
“You’re so boring, Shane Hollander,” huffs Ilya. “I can’t believe that you’re actually the most boring man in all of Sainte-Margot.”
With a grin, Shane rolls so that they’re fully chest to chest, slotting his leg between Ilya’s. His cock is twitching to life again, and in the face of that eagerness, Ilya can’t deny the heat that stirs low in his stomach either. “You like it,” declares Shane. “You like my boring.”
In a fluid movement, Ilya twists their positions so that he is the one looking down at Shane. And then he claims Shane’s mouth, happy to show him just how much he likes it—because if he can’t say it with words, his body is honest enough for him.
--
Friday arrives with very little fanfare. Ilya has confirmed with the rest of his friends that yes, he is meeting up with them today, and: Also, I am bringing someone new. So behave. And while he is relaxed about it, from how much he is jittering around the study that Ilya is currently working in, it’s clear that Shane isn’t quite at that stage yet.
So Ilya grabs him by the back of the neck and then puts him on his knees next to the leather couch, and that little spark of intuition that Ilya had earlier in the week is proven correct when Shane immediately relaxes and goes quiet. Ilya isn’t quite hard yet, but he frees his cock from the confines of his work pants and feeds it in Shane’s mouth, and it’s worth it for the way that Shane’s mouth starts working, suckling wetly, and his eyes go hazy and soft.
“They’ll love you,” Ilya murmurs, smoothing Shane’s fringe out of his eyes. “My friends won’t even know what hit them with how lovely you are.”
Shane only hums.
Ilya laughs. Words are clearly lost on Shane right now.
By the time Shane comes back to himself more, Ilya has actually started chubbing up, and Shane has never turned down the opportunity to suck him off—today will not be the first time either. When they started all of this, his clumsy inexperience with regards to sex was the damn hottest thing Ilya had ever been confronted with. But this Shane, who is using all of his new experience and both the bodily and verbal cues he gets from Ilya to suck his soul straight through his dick is a whole new demon too. He’s definitely gotten better at sucking cock. Ilya is pretty sure he’s seeing stars.
When he hauls Shane into his lap to kiss him and return the favour, he finds a wet patch at the front of Shane’s boxers already. He’s too late with biting down on his curse, even if Shane has started to hound him for his swearing, and he peeks open one eye even now to glare at him, displeased. It’s a lost cause; Ilya is Russian, and swearing is in his blood. But a peeved Shane is a hot Shane.
Despite everything, Ilya manages to finish the list of things he had planned to do today. He’s brought an outfit to go to the bar in, and Shane only pouts at him for three minutes before allowing Ilya to slip into a private room to change. If Shane had been there to watch him, they would have been late. And Svetlana would have killed them for sure. He does permit Shane to kiss him a little bit afterwards, just to reward him for being such a good boy.
There’s one thing he won’t budge on, though. “I won’t be caught dead in your boring car,” he says, with a definitive air. “My friends would never let me live it down. I’m driving us.”
Shane’s eyebrows do that thing where he isn’t sure if he’s amused or annoyed. “It’s a normal car!” he argues. “British. Good in the snow.”
“Okay,” Ilya agrees. “We’re still taking my car.”
So they take Ilya’s car. Shane acts like he’s going to die the entire time, clutching the handle above the window. Like Ilya didn’t lovingly birth this car and goes to Bood’s to get it serviced perfectly on schedule. They can’t all afford beautiful cars, like Mr. Hollander. Though Ilya is pretty sure those cars wouldn’t pass Shane’s standards of safety either.
He parks them in the parking lot behind the bar, and they walk toward the front. Evenings have been dropping towards cooler temperatures already, though the days are still full of heat, and Shane is a in a long sleeve that clings to his biceps. Ilya has to be careful that his eyes don’t cling too much.
Not that Svetlana isn’t going to sniff out his interest the moment they step through the door, but a man can dream.
Just before they step in through the door, Shane hesitates. He turns to Ilya, naked worry on his beautiful face. “You think your friends will . . . like me?” he says, his voice small.
“I will punch them if they don’t,” Ilya reassures him.
Shane squawks. “Ilya!”
“What is a bit of violence between friends?” Ilya shrugs and then puts his hand between Shane’s shoulder blades, pushing him forward until he has no option but to step through the door. “They’ll love you, Shane. Even if they won’t know how to act at first, because they’re all idiotic clowns.”
They are the last ones to arrive. To Ilya’s absolute dismay, the three of them have squeezed into one bench of the booth, which leaves the other side open to the two of them. But Shane looks about two misplaced sentences away from blowing up, and Ilya doesn’t want him to hightail out of here, so he sends Troy a smile that promises a slow death later, then slides into the seat before Shane can work himself up into overthinking.
“Good of you to finally join us,” Troy grins, his bright blue eyes searching Ilya’s expression. “You didn’t get lost on the way out, did you?”
“I hope you die in a fire,” says Ilya, boredly.
Shane slides down into the booth next to Ilya and starts rolling up his sleeves, clearly a nervous habit. He glances around the table, clearly pinging around too fast to make actual eye contact, but Ilya knows he just needs time to settle in, get comfortable. Apart from Harris, Shane knows all of these people at least tangentially from high school. They’re not all strangers to him.
“Oh man,” whistles Svetlana. “I can see why you’d be hesitant in introducing him to us.” She holds out her hand to Shane. “Aren’t you a stunner? I’m Svetlana, but feel free to call me Sveta.”
“Sveta,” Ilya murmurs under his breath. And then, in Russian: “Behave.”
She blinks back at him, the picture of innocence. “This is me behaving.”
Wide-eyed, Shane looks between them. He takes Svetlana’s hand, a bit nervous. “Um, nice to see you,” he says. “Again, I guess.”
Svetlana looks one nervously-rambled sentence away from putting Shane in her pocket. A warning look from Ilya has her backing down, though. “It’s good to see you back in our humble town again,” she says. “Hope it won’t be the first and last time.” And then she sends Ilya a smile, all teeth, as if to say: See? I’m being good.
Ilya’s strategy at dealing with Svetlana is to take everything she does with a healthy dose of suspicion.
The next person to reach out to Shane is Harris, a wide, disarming grin on his face. From the way he holds himself, Ilya can tell that this is clearly not what Shane had expected from Troy’s boyfriend, but his confused glance from the corner of his eye and slow reaction speed can be chalked up to nervousness.
“Good to know that Ilya hasn’t sent you running back to the hills yet,” he says. “I’m Harris. Harris Drover. I was a few grades above you in high school, but I think I remember seeing you run around. If Ilya didn’t tell you yet, this pub is my pride and joy. I’m really glad that you could join us tonight.”
“The pub is great!” says Shane, immediately. “It’s got a really nice feel to it. And don’t worry about, um, Ilya. He’s been nice?” The end of the sentence pitches upwards, like it is actually a question.
“Ilya?” says Troy, skeptically. “Nice?”
Without even looking at him, Ilya flips him the finger. “Fire, Barrett.”
Despite the act he’s been putting up, Troy does look nervous when he introduces himself to Shane. “I’m Troy, but I think you know that already.” He blushes. “I would just like to apologise if I was an asshole to you in high school. I think I was an asshole to a lot of people. And while that is not an apology, I hope that I can show you that I have changed. I guess it took me some time to figure out that life does get better when you’re happy more often than you’re angry. So I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me and we can move on from here.”
For a brief moment, Shane just looks at his hand. Then he reaches out and shakes it, a firm movement. “Nice to meet you, Troy Barrett. I’m Shane Hollander.”
The smile that blooms on Troy’s face is small but unmistakingly there.
Shane never truly gets as comfortable as Ilya knows he can get, but by the end of the night, he’s loosened up a lot. He cracks a smile at Troy’s jokes, has the entire table in stitches with the perfectly dry way with which he delivers his stories about the city, and becomes more and more of a warm and steady weight against Ilya’s side. He even consumes one glass of cider with the rest of them, which he compliments the hell out of Harris, before switching back to his safe ginger ale.
Ilya realises more and more just how fucked he is. And from the way that Svetlana’s been sending him knowing looks across the table, he knows that she is aware of that as well. When he taps Shane on the arm in order to slip past him out of the booth to go to the toilet, he is not surprised that Svetlana follows a beat behind him.
Svetlana corners him in the dim hallway outside of the bathrooms and searches his face with her eyes. Then she clicks her tongue. “It’s only been three weeks, Ilya.”
He looks over his shoulder to see if anyone had followed them, then glares at her. “I know, Sveta. I know, okay?”
“Oh, kotenok.” Her eyes soften. “You really like him, don’t you?”
There is no point in lying to her. He gives her a jerky nod. “We’ve been . . . fooling around. Kissing, a lot.” He runs his hands through his hair, probably messing up his carefully styled curls. “He’s really good to me. But in three weeks, he’s going back to the city. I’ll just greedily take what I can get right now, and deal with the fall out later.”
She surprises him by stepping forward and hugging him. “You also deserve happiness, Ilyushenka,” she murmurs. “You also deserve people who stay.”
“I know.” He composes himself. “I’m fine.”
It is clear that Svetlana does not believe him, but she does not call him out on it. “You always fell hard and fast, my kotenok. And you’ve been spending a lot of time with him these last few weeks, haven’t you? It’s okay to like him a lot, even if it’s been a short time since you’ve met him.”
He snorts, derisive. “But it’s not doing me a lot of favours right now.”
“No.” Understanding in her gaze. “It’s not.”
“Let’s just go back,” he mutters, Russian suddenly feeling too honest. “The others will wonder where we are.”
She gives him a last, long look, before giving him a sharp nod. “Just allow yourself to feel what you feel right now, and we’ll save the heartbreak for later, okay? After all, the summer is far from over yet. And there’s one thing that I was very right in—that Shane Hollander is a stunner. So if you don’t treat him right, there will be plenty of people who will.”
Ilya bares his teeth at her. “I dare you to try, woman.”
They go back to the table. Shane is looking at Ilya with something like worry poorly concealed in his eyes. When Ilya sits down next to him, now on the outside of the bench, he reaches over and briefly squeezes Ilya’s wrist. “Are you okay?” he asks.
His touch burns. Ilya looks down at Shane’s golden fingers against his wrist, then smiles. “I think you Canadians call it constipation, lover boy.”
Shane frowns at him. “You are Canadian too, you idiot.”
“A stain on my Slavic soul.”
It doesn’t take long after that for the night to start winding down. Svetlana, who has been complaining about the terrible partner she has at the real estate firm she co-manages, suggests wrapping it up first, and Shane is the next to start yawning. When he tries to give his card to Harris to settle the bill, Harris just waves him off. “New friends discount,” he says, then pats Troy on the shoulder. “The rest of you do have to pay, though.”
“What the fuck,” says Troy, aghast. “I’m literally your boyfriend.”
“You’re a walking cash register difference, is what you are.”
Shane sags into Ilya’s side when they go back to the car, a warm presence. He tries to wrestle Ilya for the car keys, claiming that he is the one who has drunk the least between the two of them. Ilya’s counterargument that he is the only one who can keep his eyes open for longer than ten seconds is not met with amusement. “I know these roads like the back of my hand,” he reassures, as he pulls out of the parking spot, having won their imaginary face off. “I’ll deliver you back to your house safe and sound, princess.”
Once they make it to the Hollander house, Shane sits stiffly in the passenger seat while Ilya idles the car. If he wasn’t holding himself with such tightness in his shoulders, Ilya could’ve believed he had fallen asleep.
When Shane finally speaks, Ilya nearly jumps out of his skin. “Stay?” he asks.
“Sorry?” says Ilya, sure he’s heard wrong.
Shane has the audacity to roll his eyes at him. “It’s late. I’m pretty sure you had too much to drink to legally drive. And you didn’t say you have any plans tomorrow morning. So, I think you should stay.”
Unable to help himself, Ilya feels an amused smile bloom on his face. “Oh, I should, huh?”
“Uh huh.” Shane is already climbing out of the car, leaving Ilya no other choice than to chase after him. Camille and Brick meet them behind the front door, tripping over each other to get scratches first. Ilya is no barbarian, so he spends some time petting both of them while Shane methodically takes off his shoes, unbuckles the watch from around his wrist.
“Are you coming?” he calls over his shoulder.
“Impatient!” Ilya laughs back at him.
To Ilya’s surprise, they do sleep together—as in actually sleep next to each other, in Shane’s bed. The one pint of six percent cider must have hit Shane like a truck, because he’s half asleep underneath the blankets by the time Ilya makes it out of the bathroom. His dark hair is splayed around his face like a halo, and his eyelashes are long and dark where they feather across his cheekbones.
He raises the corner of the thin duvet in an invitation; Ilya slips underneath it.
Shane slides up against Ilya’s front until their bodies are flush together. He seems barely aware that he is doing it, almost as if he is only a heat-seaking missile and Ilya is the simply the closest warm thing to him. Soon enough, he is asleep, little sniffles falling from his lips. Only then does Ilya permit himself to reach up and brush his hand through Shane’s hair. Warmth fills him. He is asleep before he knows what is happening.
--
It is a pounding on the door that rouses Ilya. He groans and rolls onto his other side, burrowing his face into the thin pillow he keeps at the headboard of his bed. Sunlight slants through the windows, since he had forgotten to close the curtains the night before, and getting out of bed to close them right now seems like a monumental task. Maybe if he suffocates himself in this pillow, he won’t have to listen to the noise.
He vaguely remembers an alarm, which he had turned off without thinking about it. There’s a nagging in the back of his head, like there’s something he should have remembered, but didn’t. Mostly, there’s this: a thighness in the muscles of his calves, pain in his face from how hard he’s pressing his jaws together, the feeling of his sweat drying in the small of his back.
“Ilya?” calls a voice, familiar. They must be below Ilya’s window, which is the only reason that Ilya can hear them. He should’ve picked a room at the back of his house for his bedroom; any other but this one. And a house with thicker walls too, if he’s listing things he should’ve done differently anyway, windows without a draft that shut the rest of the world outside. “I know you’re in there! Your truck is parked outside.”
Moving to tell the person outside to fuck off requires energy as well.
“I’m going to pick this lock if you’re not downstairs in the next five minutes!” the voice comes again, confidence wavering in the tone. “I watched enough YouTube tutorials to know how it works, and this lock does not look up to code!”
With a groan, Ilya pushes away from his pillow. Half of his face feels static-y, like an arm might feel if you sleep on it awkwardly, and it feels like his body has to reset every time he blinks, his brain deciding whether to keep his eyes closed or whether to allow him to see the world once more. Despite all of it, and probably only because Ilya would know his way through the house both deaf and blind, he manages to make it downstairs. He opens the door before the person can make true on their threat of picking the lock, because he definitely does not have money to replace his locks at the moment.
Eyes thick and hair falling in dirty tendrils down his forehead, he blinks at the person on the other side of the door. “Shane?” he manages.
Because it is indeed Shane, fumbling with the bottom of the thin sweater. “Hi, uh,” he says. “I’m sorry for barging in at your house so suddenly. I didn’t mean to! My mum texted me your address before she left for safety reasons. I, just—you didn’t show up this morning and you didn’t pick up your phone, so I got worried.” He clamps his jaws together again, flushing.
Ilya squints at him. “. . What day is it today?”
“Monday.” Shane twists his wrist so that his watch is pointing toward his face. “Eleven-oh-seven in the morning.”
“Oh.” Ilya swallows. “Fuck.”
Shane frowns, something worried in his gaze. “Are you . . . are you okay? You don’t look that good.”
Though it costs him all of the strength he has in his arm, Ilya opens the door wider. It’s a clear invitation to come in. He is glad that Shane takes it without having to be prompted verbally, because Ilya doesn’t know how to make his words work without promptly bursting into tears or anger. Having Shane in his cramped kitchen, sitting at the table with the mismatched chairs, feels like a fever dream. Ilya wished it had happened in any other way. Seeing him here, though, in flesh and blood, brings some awareness back to Ilya where there had previously been none.
It is Shane who breaks the silence again. “You aren’t okay, are you?”
“Normally I am,” says Ilya, immediately defensive. He sits down, straight-backed, on the chair opposite from Shane. Though Shane is sitting on the chair that normally lists sideways if you don’t know how to place your feet, he seems to have no problem with staying seated. Figures.
Shane is nice enough to let the misplaced anger in Ilya’s tone slip past without commenting on it. “I came here to help you, Ilya. Let me know how to help you.”
“They call it depression, if you weren’t aware of what it is,” Ilya says, flatly. He gestures vaguely with his hand. “I take pills and they normally work very well, see a therapist every month, but sometimes I have these stupid days where I can’t make anything happen. I’m sorry.” He presses his lips together, because if he does anything else, he might start crying. “I’ll make it up to you by coming in over the weekend.”
Various emotions flash across Shane’s face—none of them stay for long enough for Ilya’s exhausted brain to be able to catch up to one. “Don’t even worry about the work,” he says, at last, shaking his head. “My mum would have told you the same thing too.” He reaches across the kitchen table and places his hand across Ilya’s own, fingers splayed and palm pointed to the ceiling. “I told you: I want to help.”
Swallowing, Ilya looks down at the place their hands touch. “I don’t know how you can help me,” he says, honestly.
“What do you normally do?” Shane presses. “When this happens?”
Ilya shrugs. “Sleep? Rot in bed? Hope the day passes quickly so that I can try again tomorrow? Try not to let my brain convince me to kill myself?”
He uses the blunt words in an attempt to scare Shane off; he had not expected the determined glint in his eyes, the way a muscle in Shane’s jaw jumps when he presses his teeth together. “We’ll start with some food,” he says, mostly to himself. “Something good. Fibres, carbs, healthy fats. Easy to digest.”
With a snort, Ilya gestures at the fridge. “Be my guest, Shane Hollander. See how far you come.”
For a brief moment, Shane stares at him. Then he stands up, circles the table. Wordlessly, he grabs Ilya by the back of his shoulder, and hauls him to his feet.
“Hey!” yelps Ilya. “What the fuck is this?”
“It sucks that you’re not feeling well,” says Shane. “Actually, I don’t even know how it feels, but I can imagine that it isn’t pleasant. But you also kind of stink. So you’re going to go upstairs and shower, and I’m going to buy you—us some groceries.” He looks Ilya up and down. “Do you think you can do that by yourself? Or do you want me to help you?”
Huffing, Ilya glares at him. “I can shower by myself. I’m depressed, not an idiot.”
There is no judgement in Shane’s gaze when they meet eyes. “It’s okay to need help with some things. It’s okay to need people.”
An uncomfortable, shivery feeling settles low in Ilya’s chest. He pushes away from Shane and runs one hand across his face. “Just go do the groceries if you want to feel useful. I need to take my pills with some food anyway. In the meantime, I’ll try not to slip in the shower and bash my head open on the tiles.”
Shane gives him a flat stare. “Not funny.”
“Goodbye, Shane,” says Ilya.
At least Shane does take the hint. While he’s gone, Ilya indeed takes a shower, but mostly only because he was starting to feel gross too. He stands underneath the spray and lets it wash across his back and shoulder, flattening his curls to his scalp. When he finally manages to wrench himself away, way too long after he started, Shane hasn’t returned yet. The store isn’t that far away. Maybe he decided to give up on Ilya after all. It figures.
Ilya has just started brewing a pot of coffee when the door handle jiggles again. Shane definitely hadn’t locked it behind himself, and Ilya simply hadn’t bothered. People tend to come and go from his house as they please when he’s home anyway.
To Ilya’s surprise, Shane isn’t alone. It suddenly makes sense that he had taken longer than it would’ve taken only to get groceries. Camille puts her paws against Ilya’s knees after she rushes over to him, dark brown nails digging into the bare skin, just so that she can reach up and lick below Ilya’s chin. Behind her is Brick, who immediately takes a lap of the kitchen, nose to the floor below the counters, probably to check for any spillage to gobble up.
Shane gives Ilya a tiny, sheepish smile as he steps out of his shoes, grocery bags dangling from his fingers. “I’ve never been depressed before,” he says, honest. “But when I was younger and I was feeling upset or it felt like the world was too big for me, I used to burrow my face into the fur of my parents’ old dog—Bango. I figured some canine therapy could help you as well. And I know how much you like these two troublemakers.”
Ilya swallows and stares at him. It is exactly at that moment, with Shane standing in his crappy kitchen with bare feet and his hair messily falling into his face, Camille and Brick milling around their feet, that he realises that he is probably even more screwed than he already was.
--
Despite the horrendous start to the week, the rest of it continues as Ilya has become used to. He picks up a coffee at the drive through, continues on to the Hollander house, and works through his slowly dwindling list of tasks. Between all of that is still Shane. Ilya had thought that, with the ugliest side of him bared to the other man, Shane would have gone running for the hills. It’s not like Ilya would have blamed him. There were days he’d truly wished he could run away from himself too.
But Shane has a stubborn streak, Ilya has come to find, and he continues demanding kisses and attention at an increasing rate. Everywhere Ilya is, there’s Shane, doing his best to crawl underneath Ilya’s skin. When he’s that beautiful and pliant, his lips plush and his eyes begging, there’s nothing Ilya can think to do to deny him. He’s a weak man, and Shane has truly learned all of his soft spots. There’s only so much he can do to protect himself from the inevitable crash and burn.
Because every time he touches Shane, he thinks: I am falling in love with you. When he kisses Shane, their lips sliding together perfectly, he thinks: I could love you. He fucks Shane, the sunlight pouring over their bodies, thinks: I think every part of me was waiting for someone like you. And then comes the immediate realisation: You are going back to Montreal in less than two weeks.
Four weeks is a short time. But Ilya sometimes thinks that he’s quietly loved Shane from the moment he saw those freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose. So many hours spent at such a short distance from each other—sometimes just far enough away that Ilya can just about do everything he needs to do while still remaining in touching distance from Shane—will surely do that to a heart. And Ilya especially has a very soft heart, even if that is something he’d rather not admit.
He almost asks Shane the question one time. What are we doing? But he doesn’t really want the answer to that question. He wants Shane to remember him in the same way that Shane remembers him: in the fading summer light that colours the entire house in shades of gold. Because while Ilya’s life is slowly falling apart, his sanity barely hanging on, the house is becoming more and more complete. Ilya thinks that Mrs. and Mr. Hollander will be extremely happy when they come back.
It makes him want to break something. Tell Yuna and David that they have to stay in Japan for longer. Beg Shane not to go back to Montreal. Anything to stretch this summer out until it becomes a thin string that he can live within.
Silly, silly man.
--
Friday, late afternoon. The couch in this sitting room probably should not be used for such lewd activities, but Shane had looked extra kissable when he’d waltzed in through the door with a glass of cold diet coke. And if Ilya dies by suffocation between Shane’s hip and the crease of his thigh as he slowly feeds Shane’s cock between his lips, he thinks it’ll be a happy way to go.
As it stands, Shane is a study in pleasure above him. His face scrunches up in bliss, fingers threaded through the hair at the back of Ilya’s head, sweat beading down his neck. By now, Ilya has become very familiar with the signs of his impending orgasm: the noises he makes, bitten-off, and the tightening of his hands. Three times, he’s already teased Shane towards the high, and every single time, he’s pulled back just before Shane could crest over the edge.
By the end of it, Shane is shaking with pent-up pleasure, his body flushed from his ears all the way down to his chest. “Please,” he is mumbling. “Please, Ilya.”
“You are fine,” Ilya soothes him, leaving a hickey on the soft inside of his thigh.
Shane tosses his head to the side, cracking open one eye to gaze down at Ilya, almost disgruntled. He raises his leg, earlier bent across Ilya’s shoulder at the knee, and jams it into Ilya’s side. “I’m going to fucking yell if you don’t let me come, asshole.” His voice is rough.
“Mmm, we can’t have that.” This time, Ilya swallows him down to the root, and holds eye contact with Shane while he works his tongue and throat.
“Fuck,” says Shane, wholeheartedly. He reaches down to press his thumb against the corner of Ilya’s spit-slick mouth where it bulges around his cock. The sound he makes is almost tortured, breath shuddering. “You feel so fucking good . . .”
There is no need for words. Ilya looks at him, eyes blazing, and pulls back so that he can run his tongue along the slit. Shane cries out, his hips canting up, tears beading at his lashline. Come for me, Ilya thinks. And: I want to see it.
And of course, Shane delivers. He falls apart sweetly on Ilya’s tongue, his back arching into a perfect bow. There’s a lot of come, which Ilya swallows without complaint. It’s salt and musk, delicious and disgusting.
Shane switches their positions even before he has completely recovered from the tremors of his own orgasm. Ilya lets out an embarrassing moan when Shane rucks his pants and boxers down with one hand, before pushing him up onto the couch. This Shane is wholly different from the nervous creature from five weeks ago. The problem with teaching someone how to suck dick, Ilya finds, is that they become an expert at what you specifically like.
It clearly takes him no time at all to reach the precipice, tugging on Shane’s hair as his hips jump with little, aborted movements. “Close,” he warns, the word torn from him like a ragged breath as Shane hollows his cheeks around him. Ilya throws his head back, chest heaving as the pleasure builds behind his sternum.
And then Shane pulls off completely, only his fingers loosely curled around the base of Ilya’s dick, a strand of saliva connecting his lips to the head. He’s smiling.
“Bastard,” curses Ilya, laughing. “You absolute asshole—”
The rest of his heated tirade dissolves into moans when Shane swallows him down to the root again. After that, and with Shane’s eyes burning up at him as his tongue laves along Ilya’s shaft, his orgasm isn’t a surprise when it arrives. It still hits him like a sucker punch, all of the air drawn from his lungs in one fell swoop. The pleasure is indescribable, earth shattering.. Ilya sees stars on the back of his eyelids.
“I have more stuff planned for today,” he groans against the line of Shane’s neck when they collapse together. “You are a fucking heathen.”
“Do it Monday,” says Shane, nuzzling his face into the top of Ilya’s head.
Gasping dramatically, Ilya pulls back. “Shane Hollander! What would your mother say if she heard you say that?”
Shane swats his shoulder. “Don’t talk about my mother when I just made you come.”
With a grin, Ilya kisses him again, then pulls back. “I really should finish at least a few more things on my list,” he says, almost regrettably. “Or I’m going to spend the entire weekend thinking about it.”
“Fine, fine.” Shane pushes himself up above Ilya, muscles flexing in a distracting manner. He presses a kiss against the swell of Ilya’s bottom lip, long lashes fluttering. His eyes are really brown and warm. “I should probably clean up too.”
They wipe themselves down with a wet cloth Shane procures from the closest toilet before getting redressed. It is almost a mournful affair to watch Shane cover up all of the deliciously bared slivers of skin, but Ilya knows that if he doesn’t tear his eyes away now, he will surely just turn back to Shane to rip his shirt off again. As a normal, sane person does, obviously.
“If you find me after you’re done,” says Shane, leaning forward and hooking his finger through Ilya’s chain to pull him closer. “I will give you a reward.”
Wide-eyed, Ilya stares at him. It takes him a minute to find his voice. “Okay.”
Like a possessed person, Ilya tries to finish as much on his list as he can. He’s nearly finished all of his big tasks, so it’s just down to the detail work. Afterwards, he searches the house for Shane, but calls of his name return no response, nor the clicking of paws against the wooden floors. Blinking, he makes his way outside, only to find Shane leaning against his truck, one hand jammed in his pocket and the other one scrolling through his phone. But that’s not what makes the scene as hilarious as it is.
“Hollander!” Ilya calls, amused, as he walks over. “Is this your idea of a prize?”
“Look,” Shane says, shrugging in a very don’t shoot the messenger way. “They’ve climbed in here by themselves, and I can’t get them back out.” He pauses, the next of the words coming out like he’s strung them together on a cord. “I guess you’ll have to take us back to your place.”
In the bed of Ilya’s truck, Camille and Brick lazily wag their tails. Brick squeaks out a yawn.
(Had Shane been waiting here for him, all of this time, just to surprise him in this way? That would be silly, right?)
Ilya pitches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger so that he can hide his smile behind his palm. “I can’t believe you’d rope your dogs into your schemes, Shane Hollaner. Look at poor Brick—he doesn’t even know what you got him into!”
“Yeah?” Shane traps his lip between his teeth. “What should we do, then?”
Silently, Ilya reaches forward and grabs him by the shoulder so that he can press their lips together. Shane goes willingly, pliantly, gorgeously. The shape of his mouth is a smile, clear where it presses against Ilya’s lips. He tastes like summer and victory, and he melts into Ilya’s hands like he was always meant to fit there.
“I guess I have no other choice,” says Ilya, when he pulls back, pressing his thumb against the corner of Shane’s mouth. “But to take you home.”
Shane preens like a flower blooming towards the sun. “I guess not.”
Camille and Brick have the time of their lives hanging over the side of Ilya’s truck as he drives the four of them to his house. The weather is pleasant, and Shane’s pleased smile from the backseat is enough to heat a fire inside Ilya’s chest. His knuckles are tight where he grips his fingers around the steering wheel. The road to his house is only a short drive.
--
A regret Ilya has about Sainte-Margot is that there’s no good Russian restaurants in an easily driveable range. But there’s a good Chinese place, and though dumplings aren’t the same as pelmeni, there is something comforting about little doughy packets filled with spiced meat and vegetables. He sits with Shane at his little rickety kitchen table, Shane perfectly balanced on the faulty kitchen chair once more, and fights to separate the wooden chopsticks. The break is uneven; a piece of one chopstick clings to the other.
There’s never really a shortage of conversational topics between the two of them, but even the silences are comfortable. Ilya does not remember the last time he was with someone and he didn’t feel the need to fill the space with chatter.
Tonight, it is Shane who breaks the silence. “I saw Harris in the supermarket yesterday,” he says, a dumpling poised at the end of his chopsticks. “He asked for my phone number.”
“He could’ve asked me,” Ilya grumbles.
Shane shrugs and grins, bringing the dumpling to his lips. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Cider Festival?”
“At the Drover Farm?” Ilya shrugs, looking down at the remnants of the fried rice on his plate. “It’s at the start of autumn, a couple weeks after I finish up at the house. I figured that you’d be back in Montreal by that point.”
“Right.” When Ilya glances up, Shane is frowning at him. There’s a stiffness to his shoulders. “You’re probably right.”
Ilya sits back in his chair, chopsticks abandoned on the table. The Shane on the other side of the table from him is almost a foreign creature, reverted to the awkward young man Ilya first saw on the other side of the door. His body aches to fix it, but there’s not much he can say that isn’t a blatant lie. Yuna and David are coming back in just over a week. Shane and him haven’t spoken explicitly about what is going to happen then, but Ilya does know that Shane’s life is not here.
Shane reads his silence as something else. “Do you—are you waiting for me to go back to the city?”
“Waiting?” asks Ilya, dumbly.
A shrug. “I don’t know,” Shane says. “I know that this is just for the summer. Us, or something. But I don’t know if you are, like . . . waiting for someone else.”
“No, no,” says Ilya, face numb. “There’s, um, nobody else.”
“Okay.” It looks like Shane wants to say something else, something braver, but at the end, he just pushes away from the table. “Are you done with your food? I’ll wash the dishes.” When Ilya makes a move to stand as well, he shoots it down with a wobbly frown. “Sit, sit. I’ve already invaded your space. The least I can do is wash two dishes.”
Camille and Brick are milling on the porch when they make it outside. Behind the treeline, the sun is sinking toward the horizon, casting everything in gold and navy. Ilya carries a patchwork blanket over one arm, stretching out on the couch, while Shane squats down next to the distorted metal fire basket. He pokes a stick between the metal slats at some of the charred remains of Andrew and Olivier’s earlier experiments.
“I’m afraid that it’s not quite the same as your fancy fire pit,” says Ilya, amused.
“But you do make fires here, right?” Shane straightens and wipes his hands on his jeans. “I could still give it a try. It might be nice.”
Ilya hums, sending Shane a small smile. “We can sit here and look at it.”
Given permission, Shane disappears into the trees to gather some branches, Camille at his ankles. Brick remains curled up next to Ilya on the shitty, sagging couch, snoring like he’s lying on top of a fluffy cloud. Ilya runs his fingers through the mohawk at the back of his neck, the rhythmic motion beneficial for both of them.
When Shane returns, he does indeed manage to make a fire with the twigs he collected and the stack of lopsided firewood stacked on the side of the porch. It’s not as big as the one he made back at the Hollander house, but the fire bravely warms the two of them as Shane tucks himself into Ilya’s side. Ilya unfolds the blanket so that he can spread it out across both of their laps, an extra barrier against the cold air and the world outside. Two loons start squawking at each other somewhere beyond the treeline.
“This is nice,” says Shane, sleepily, from where he’s tucked his face in Ilya’s neck.
“What is?” Ilya asks.
Shane shrugs. “This. All of it. The summer.” He pauses for a moment, reaching down so that he can play with Ilya’s fingers. “When my mum said that I should come home for the summer to watch their house, I was terrified. I care a lot about routine and predictability, and everything about the plan just screamed uncertainty to me. Plus, I hadn’t been back since I’d left. There was always an excuse not to come, and my parents could visit me just as easily as I could come here. But I’m glad that I came. I’m glad to be here. If nothing else, we have the summer, right?”
“We do have it,” says Ilya, his breath catching in his throat. “The summer is always yours.”
A squeeze to his fingers. “No,” murmurs Shane. “It is ours.”
--
Despite the blowjobs they traded earlier that day, being in Ilya’s bed clearly awakens something ravenous in Shane. He twists across the bed, feverish, staring up at Ilya with begging eyes, and only quiets when Ilya covers his wrists with one hand to press them into the pillows.
He doesn’t think sliding home will ever not feel perfect. Like the space inside of Shane was made for Ilya to fit inside. It’s a stupid thought, of course, but every time Ilya watches Shane’s face scrunch up in absolute pleasure as he bottoms out, their hips flush together, it rears in the back of his head anyway. He's always been a bit of a possessive lover. Never extremely jealous, or anything, but he can’t say he doesn’t like the idea of claiming someone so thoroughly that other people have no choice but to see it.
And Shane never tells him off when he leans down to fit his teeth over his pulse point. In fact, he seems to lean into it, as if he wants to be marked as much as Ilya wants to mark him. The realisation is a heady thing. It makes Ilya a greedy person.
“Okay,” says Shane, the word a sigh, and shifts his hips slightly. Sweat sticks his hair to his forehead.
Heat frisons up Ilya’s spine. He hisses and reaches with his free hand to clamp down on Shane’s waist. The skin is hot like a fever underneath his touch. Like Shane had instructed, had given permission for, he pulls out, pushes back in. It draws a gasp from Shane, like Ilya had actually punched the air out of him, eyelashes fluttering. His hands twitch underneath Ilya’s grasp, but he makes no actual move to fight free—even though he probably could’ve, if he wanted to. But that’s not what Shane wants, and they both know it.
“You feel so good,” says Ilya, the words falling from his lips without his permission. Not that he’d ever hold back from praising Shane, not when the words are so true. “God, Shane—always so good.”
Below him, Shane’s eyes are twin pools of desire, dark pupils ringed by dark brown irises. They are like black holes and Ilya is only powerless to resist, swallowed down until he is stretched thin. As soon as he passed the event horizon, he was trapped forever. He never tried to run away too far anyway, always drawn back into Shane’s gravitational pull.
“Ilya.” A call of his name, a two-syllable plea, makes Ilya snap back into awareness. Shane is looking at him, a stubborn tilt to his lips. “Please. Harder.”
That is a demand Ilya has no problem following. He does as Shane has instructed, pounding into him until it feels like he’s going to crack open, spill right onto the bed, every hairline fracture fissuring into a big, gaping hole.
Shane pushes against his hands again, a tiny flex. “My cock,” he slurs. “Please touch me.”
“Can you come like this?” Ilya asks, the words coming out between short pants. He shifts the angle of his hips slightly, in the way that he knows will hit Shane’s prostate on every second stroke. Between their bodies, Shane’s cock bumps against the ridges of his abs. “I want to see it, Shane.”
“Maybe,” says Shane, after a very deliberate pause. Like he was actually taking stock of his body, figuring out if he could. Ilya’s so fucking fond he’s sure it must show on his face.
For now, he settles on pounding into Shane so hard that he’s making himself see stars. He grits his teeth down on his own orgasm, creeping up behind his belly button, because he knows that Shane is going to get very weepy and annoyed if Ilya comes before him. Still, the satisfaction of listening to Shane’s punch-drunk ah-ah-ah!s is almost enough to have him hurtle over the edge, so he focuses on making Shane feel good, sweeping his palm along Shane’s ribs so that he can rub Shane’s nipple with his thumb. Shane jerks like he’s been electrocuted, his moan pitching up into a whine, and tosses his head back.
Ilya releases Shane’s wrist just so he can cup Shane’s jaw with his hand, angling his head so that he can slide their lips together. It’s less of a kiss and more of a panting inside of each other’s mouths. From this close, Shane’s dark eyes are speckled with gold.
“Ilya,” says Shane again, the word muffled between their lips.
“I’m here,” says Ilya, and then, just because he can: “Shane.”
When Shane starts to come, it is almost not a surprise. He shudders between them, clamping down on Ilya with a hoarse cry. Wetness pools between their bodies. The heat of it settles high in Ilya’s chest. Shane’s face, scrunched up in agonised pleasure, is enough to do him in too. He only needs five, six more thrusts before he tumbles over the edge of his own orgasm as well, burying himself deep in Shane as he rides out the aftershocks with his face tucked into Shane’s neck.
“God,” says Ilya, gently pulling out and collapsing down next to Shane. “I can’t believe I made you come hands free. Such a good trick, hm?”
Shane groans, whacking Ilya in the shoulder. “I’m thirty-one,” he complains, though the rasp of his voice and the languidity of the words betray how absolutely pleased he is. “I can’t do this like a trick pony every time you want me to.”
“Only once every so often,” agrees Ilya, and only realises later on, curled up against Shane’s back, what that had implied.
--
Saturday is a slow day, bathed in sunlight. They sleep through the morning and then set off for a hike through the forest that starts on Ilya’s doorstep, circling through the hills and dipping their toes in the Aisne. The water is cold as a shock, always, but a welcome reprieve from the summer heat that has reappeared with a vengeance. Ilya wades into the rapids up to the tops of his ankles while Shane tries to bounce rocks across the water, Brick and Camille chasing after the dragonflies that skim the surface. The summer coils across his shoulders like a scarf, an unmistakable weight. Like this, Ilya thinks he can lean into it.
By the time they get back to the house, tired and worn but so happy, dusk has started settling across the treetops. That is why it takes Ilya a second to realise that there is a cluster of curious onlookers watching their trek toward the porch.
“What are you guys doing here?” he calls out to them, rolling his eyes.
Luca leans down to pet Camille between the ears when she jogs over and nudges her nose against his bare knee. “It’s our first day that we’re all back from our holidays, coach. We just wanted to surprise you with some takeaway, but . . .”
“Seems like he’s busy,” jeers Gabriel, finishing the sentence that Luca was too embarrassed to continue.
Ilya turns to Shane. “Do you mind?”
“These are the kids you train, right?” murmurs Shane. When Ilya nods, he huffs a laugh through his nose. “I don’t mind. Maybe I’ll learn something new about you from them.”
“How incredible of a coach I am, perhaps,” Ilya says, primly, and ignores Shane’s snort when he strides forward to join them on the porch. “The four of you can stay, you losers. We can talk about how you don’t have anyone else to hang with than your dearest hockey coach. And I guess we can order pizza.”
They cheer. Olivier digs his fingers into the fur at the back of Brick’s neck, drawing a pleased snort from the dog.
Shane refuses to sit anywhere else but thigh-to-thigh with Ilya, even though he technically doesn’t know the four teenagers. Ilya likens them to a nest of puppies meeting a lone kitten. There’s nervousness at the start, both of them feeling out how to interact with the other. Then Shane makes a comment about seeing the Canadiens back in Montreal, and the ice is broken. Ilya passes his phone around the group for everyone to put in their pizza order and tries not to hyperfixate on the heavy weight of Shane’s palm high on his leg.
“So,” says Andrew, once the pizzas have been delivered and they’re all munching away, drawing out the word. “The infamous Shane Hollander, huh?”
Nervously, Shane puts his hand up in a little wave. “Yes. Thank you for allowing me to stay. I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Damn,” Gabriel hums. “He’s almost as awkward as Luca.”
Luca whines. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“But you’re coach’s boyfriend now, right?” Olivier asks, glancing between the two of them and then pointedly at every place where they are connected. “He got this funny look on his face when we talked about you last time.”
“I don’t get funny looks on my face,” Ilya says, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
Shane twists his head so that he can look Ilya in the eyes. “You talked about me?”
“We talked about my job. You are—unfortunately—an undeniable part of that job. Literally can’t get rid of you, really.” Ilya turns back to the kids. “How about the four of you stick your noses somewhere they belong? And you leave my business to me?”
“Wow,” says Shane, face soft. “Unfortunately.”
Ilya places his hand on top of Shane’s and squeezes it briefly. “You know what I mean.”
“You make your business our business by acting as disgusting as this in front of us!” shouts Andrew, screwing up his face. “Ugh, when we decided to recruit you a partner we didn’t know you’d get this sappy about it.”
Raising his eyebrows, Ilya stares at him. “You decided to what?”
“Gabriel,” says Luca, mournful.
But Gabriel only shrugs. “Come on, coach. You’ve been pretty mopey for a while. We went to Svetlana and she said it’s because you can’t hold a relationship. So we decided to do some shopping around, but before we could get too far, Shane Hollander appeared. Your friends were pretty tightlipped about the whole thing, though. We didn’t expect him to be here.”
Ilya presses his pointer fingers against his temples. “I’m going to kill Svetlana,” he vows.
Beside him, Shane has a tiny little smile on his face. It almost looks proud, self-satisfied. He nudges Ilya. “Your friends care about you. It’s cute to see.”
“She’s still airing out my business to babies,” grumbles Ilya.
“Boo!” yells Gabriel. “We’re not babies!”
After the kids leave, Shane and Ilya clean up the porch (Shane insists on methodically unfolding the pizza boxes and stacking the cardboard squares together) and then head back inside. There’s technically still time for Ilya to drive Shane and the dogs home, but there’s no question about what will happen. They curl up in bed together; Shane presses a lingering kiss against Ilya’s bottom lip. He falls asleep almost immediately afterwards.
Sleep doesn’t find Ilya as easy. He lies awake for a while, staring up at the ceiling, the silvery moonlight drawing shapes across his walls. What is he supposed to do with Shane Hollander—who will go back to Montreal in a week and leave all of this behind, but won’t correct people when they insinuate he’s together with Ilya?
--
Rain pours down, washing out Sainte-Margot-sur-Aisne in shades of blue and muted grey, and thunder echoes between the hills. Ilya has to squint through the windshield as he drives across town to the Hollander house, happy that he’s done this drive so often now that he could do it with his eyes closed. With how terrible the visibility is, he might as well be doing that, so he’s happy enough to park his car as close to the front door as possible and then run a few paces to the covered front porch.
To his surprise, he bumps into a soaked, shivering Shane on the steps, rain further darkening his hair where it droops down his scalp. His clothes are sodden and there’s a haunted look in his eyes. Camille, leashed for once, dances around his feet, clearly picking up on the nervous energy.
“Fuck, Shane!” Ilya curses, grabbing Shane by the arm and tugging him toward the front door. The rain drums against the roof of the porch, drowning out the rest of the world. “What happened?”
With how much his teeth are chattering, it takes Shane a little while to speak. “I was walking with Brick and Camille this morning and we were surprised by the rain and the lightning. Brick has never been really good with it, and when there was really loud thunder, I guess it scared him and he started running. He didn’t come back when I called for him, so I hoped he went back to the house. But he’s not here.”
“Brick is out there?” Ilya asks, gently squeezing Shane’s wrist.
Shane nods, and with how close they are, Ilya can see the tears well up in his eyes even amongst the rain cooling on his skin. “I’m sorry,” he says, shivering weakly. “I did not mean to lose him.”
Uncaring of the rain splashing onto the floor, Ilya finally manhandles him inside. They leave puddles where they stand, but even Shane seems not with it enough to notice. “You didn’t lose him,” he promises Shane, with a fierceness he hopes he can back up with truth. “Brick knows these forests as well as we do. He won’t suddenly run off somewhere he doesn’t recognise. Go put on some dry clothes and grab a rain coat. We’ll go out there and look for him.”
“We?” asks Shane, and despite their similar heights he looks up at Ilya with round, sad eyes.
Ilya reaches up and squeezes his shoulder. “You don’t think I’m going to let you go out there by yourself, Hollander? It’s fucking pouring out there.”
When Shane opens his mouth, probably to call out Ilya’s double standards, but seems to think better of it. He hands Camille’s leash off to Ilya. He’ll be gone for maybe three minutes. Ilya takes that time to dig through the pockets of his cargo pants with his free hand, knowing that he always carries a hair tie for Svetlana. This time, with his own curls longer than usually and dripping in his face, it comes in handy for himself. He tugs his hair away from his face and ties it up in a shitty little knot.
Shane returns, wearing a T-shirt with a thin raincoat thrown over it. Below that, his jeans are tucked into rubber boots. His hair was clearly only scrubbed roughly with a towel, sticking up at odd angles at the back and flattened down on top of his head. He’s never looked wilder; the cleanliness of the city scrubbed away to reveal the son of the forest underneath.
It is not the moment to be thinking about this, but Ilya is struck by how right Shane looks. It is probably him projecting.
“Okay,” says Shane, tossing Ilya a spare rain jacket. “Let’s go.”
They take Shane’s Jeep because it’s best on the offroad, dirt roads turned into mudslides with the rain. Shane parks them on the side of the road, near where he’d lost Brick, and turns on his hazard lights—even if Ilya is pretty sure no one else is as stupid as them to come out here with this weather. They slide out of the car, Ilya with Camille’s leash looped tightly around his wrist. Above their heads, thunder rumbles, and though it sounds far away, a new fear climbs into Ilya’s throat.
“We should hurry!” Shane says, raising his voice to be heard above the rain.
Ilya can only nod, following Shane into the trees. Camille leads the way, fearless in a way that Ilya is a little bit jealous of. The idea was that Brick would be more likely to come out of wherever he is hiding—if he is hiding close to them at all—if he saw or smelled his sibling. And Camille seems little phased by everything that is going on, her fluffy fur slick against her frame but her steps confident. Her nose against the ground, and Ilya wonders if she can smell anything other than the rain and the wet dirt.
He cups his hands around his mouth. “Brick!” he calls, hoping his voice carries above the downpour. “Brick!”
They wander for minutes. Camille pulls on the leash like she knows where she is going, and though despair crushes Ilya’s windpipe in a fist that is colder and clammier than the rain, he places his faith in her. From the set of Shane’s mouth and the furrow of his eyebrows, his red-rimmed eyes, it is clear that he is doing the same thing.
A dip in the ground; tree trunks lined with green bushes; branches laden down with rainwater. And then Camille starts going crazy, straining against the leash and barking.
“Brick?” shouts Shane, voice thin with hope and fear.
Swishing branches part as the dark brown dog tumbles out of the bush that he’d been cowering in, a flurry of barks greeting them. If Ilya were to anthropomorphise him, it almost sounds like Brick might be relieved.
Shane definitely is. He says, sobs, “Oh, Brick—” and then drops to his knees right in the mud so that he can throw his arms around the dog’s neck. Brick is too wriggly and happy to be contained for longer than a few seconds at best, though he does not seem to mind it when Shane buries his fingers in the mohawk at the back of his neck to keep him in place.
“Demon beast,” Ilya curses, in Russian, fondly, and quickly unspools the least and collar that he’d stuffed in his back pocket before they left the house. Brick gives him a whale eye as Ilya buckles the collar around his neck, but Ilya does not care. He taps the dog on his nose. “Don’t run away again, idiot.”
Brick opens his mouth to lick Ilya’s fingers. Something about his innocent eyes and heaving chest pangs in something deep in Ilya’s chest.
They make it back to the car and then back to the house with shaky knees. The rainwater and the dogs’ muddy paws must be an assault on Shane’s pristine leather seats. He does not even seem to notice, his gaze shifting towards the rear view mirror every few seconds to check on the dogs in the backseat.
Only when they’re back at the house, the door locked behind Ilya with grim finality, does the weight of the situation—everything they could’ve lost, everything that almost happened but didn’t—slam into Ilya.
“Jesus Christ,” says Shane, next to him, and he seems to lose the last strength in his legs right there in the entry way, collapsing as soon as he has closed the door behind himself. Ilya follows him down to the floor, the both of them wet down to their bones and kneeling on the tile as Camille and Brick dance around them, clearly over their fears already.
“It’s okay,” Ilya promises him. “You’re okay. We found Brick. I’m here.”
Shane grabs Ilya by the back of his neck so that he can press their foreheads together. If he is crying, his tears mingle with the rain still drying on his face. “Don’t leave me,” he says. “Stay with me here, Ilya.”
“I am, I am,” says Ilya, cupping Shane’s face between his hands. Their lips are freezing when they meet. Ilya almost cannot feel his fingers. “I’m here. Don’t go anywhere.”
They clutch onto each other until they’re both shivering so hard their teeth rattle. Shane gives such a full body flinch that their teeth knock together, and Ilya actually manages a watery laugh at that, making Shane huff against his mouth. He reaches up and tucks a sodden strand of hair behind Shane’s ear.
“You should shower,” Ilya tells Shane. “You’ll catch a cold if you don’t warm yourself.”
Shane pinches him in the side, fingers closing around the sensitive skin above Ilya’s hip. “You didn’t help me all heroically just to make me shower alone,” he says, his lip curling. “And you’re as cold as me anyway.”
In the end, they wipe down Camille and Brick first, even though Brick whines and whimpers when they touch his paws to clean the mud. “Stupid beast,” Ilya says, pensively. “Be more grateful.”
“He’s just a dog, Ilya,” laughs Shane. A raindrop hangs from the tip of his nose and his eyes still aren’t completely cleared up and his skin is so pale his freckles stand out starkly against his cheeks—and he’s still the most beautiful thing Ilya has ever been allowed to witness. It pangs his chest a little bit.
They run the shower water so hot that Ilya flushes like a boiled lobster and the bathroom fills with steam. Ilya presses their slick bodies together underneath the spray, Shane’s back against the tiles and Ilya’s palm braced just above his shoulder. They don’t do more than kiss, panting into each other’s mouth, and Ilya hopes that Shane doesn’t taste the desperation on his tongue.
How can Shane ask him to stay if he’s the one leaving? Why is Ilya always so fucking hellbent on breaking his own heart?
--
Things shift after that, everything becoming even more tangled and fucked up than it already was. There’s only four days until Yuna and David come home and Shane drives back to Montreal; Ilya’s leftover tasks only include detail work. It’s perhaps for the best, for neither of them manage to separate for longer than a few minutes at best. They fuck a lot and kiss even more. The sun has started to set earlier already. The small world Ilya inhabits, which ends only at the edge of the Hollander estate, plunges into darkness. Shane builds a fire in the fire pit and drives it away.
He sits back on his heels, looking pleased with himself. The fire roars and a branch snaps in its embrace. Around them, the forest wraps them in its embrace. When he catches Ilya staring at him, he blushes. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.
“You are beautiful,” Ilya says, simply. He opens his arms. “Come here and let me kiss you.”
Shane goes to him. A smile has never tasted as sweet on Ilya’s tongue.
--
It must be the middle of the night when Shane shakes him awake, Thursday bleeding into Friday. The weekend hovers on their doorstep. Ilya had hoped that Shane would build so many big fires that it would never arrive. There has been no point to Ilya going home, not when he’s here until deep in the night and would have arrived first thing in the morning the next day. And Shane seems happy enough to have him in his bed, tripping him into it at every opportunity with eager hands and a zealous mouth. Ilya cannot even pretend to hate it.
Tonight, after wrenching two orgasms from Shane’s poor cock, they’d fallen asleep tangled together. For once, it had been Shane who’s spooning Ilya, his broad shoulders and muscled arms caging Ilya in. It’s the safest Ilya remembers falling asleep in a long time. As comfy as he is, it takes him a while to realise that the hand shaking his shoulder is not only a touch in his dreams. He blinks open swollen eyes, stretches.
“What if I came back to Sainte-Margot?” Shane asks, as soon as he notices Ilya stirring. The words come out in a rush, muffled from where he is burying his face into Ilya’s skin. “What if I stayed here?”
Ilya’s voice comes out sleepier, more shivery, than he’d hoped. “And what of your life in Montreal?”
“I don’t know,” says Shane. He presses a kiss to Ilya’s bare shoulder. “I don’t know.”
With a sigh, Ilya rolls onto his other side so that they’re face to face. The bed is big enough for both of them to stretch out completely, seas and oceans of blanket stretching on both sides, but their knees still tangle together. “Six weeks is a really short time, Shane Hollander,” he says, like he hasn’t been imagining the rest of their life together, “to give up your whole life.”
There’s a stubborn tilt to Shane’s mouth. “This used to be my life.”
“It’s not the same, is it?” asks Ilya. “I—I do want you to be here. But I don’t want you to make a decision that you’re not happy with. Life here isn’t the same as in the big city. It can be kind of shitty. None of the conveniences that you are used to.”
“I know, I know,” says Shane. “I did successfully turn eighteen here.”
Ilya laughs, endeared. He touches his thumb against the corner of Shane’s lip, gasps when Shane parts his mouth to touch his tongue to the digit. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to discourage you. And I probably like you more than I should. All of this is—scary to me. You make me very scared, Shane Hollander.”
Shane goes very still. “You like me?” he says, voice very small.
“Shane,” laughs Ilya. He rolls over so that he can straddle Shane’ lap. “Is that all you got from that? Have you even been here these few weeks?”
“I,” says Shane. He bites his lip and squirms, his cheeks reddening. “I thought you were really hot in high school. You weren’t a bully but you were kind of an asshole, and I was really awkward and kind of pimply. When you came to the house, I nearly shat myself, because no matter how hot I imagined you’d be, it still didn’t compare to the real thing. And then you kissed me . . .” He trails off, embarrassed.
Groaning, Ilya tilts his head back. He presses his fist against his forehead. “Fuck.”
“What?” Shane asks, perplexed.
“Fucking Troy is never going to let me live this down.” Ilya groans again. “He told me that he thought you had a crush on me back in high school. And I told him no way. I can’t believe that he was right.” He leans down so that he can kiss Shane’s bottom lip. “For what it’s worth, when you opened that door, I was gone from the moment I saw those damn freckles.”
Shane blushes even more, if that was even possible. “My freckles?”
“Mm,” hums Ilya. “Like constellations on your cheeks.” He traces them across Shane’s cheek with his pointer finger, then tilts back slightly so that he can put a little bit of distance between the two of them. “If I go a little bit crazy about you, and I’m a bit too intense, you should tell me. I don’t want to scare you off.”
“I feel a little intense about you too,” says Shane, and he curls his hand around Ilya’s shoulder so that he can tug him closer again. “I haven’t felt this way before—about anyone. But I am glad it’s you. That it’s this.”
Ilya smiles and tucks his chin against his chest so that he can press a kiss to Shane’s wrist. “Me too.” He looks up, captures Shane’s gaze with his own. “Figure out what you want, Shane Hollander. And no matter what you do, what you decide on, this summer was ours. So don’t forget that.”
“I couldn’t,” says Shane, and his smile reaches his eyes, transforms his face. “Not even if I tried.”
--
Shane’s final night in Sainte-Margot is that night. Ilya invites all of his friends to his house, the kids from the hockey team. Shane dusts off Ilya’s shitty barbeque and fills it with the bags of charcoal they picked up at the store, manages to start a fire with an excited whoop. There is beer chilling in the fridge, and Harris always brings a case of cider. He’s even promised to bring normal apple juice for the underage kids, though Svetlana will probably have a blast figuring out ways to sneak them sips of beer without Shane catching them.
The night is really, really casual and exactly as Ilya had hoped it would be. Shane grills sausages and burgers and burger buns on the grill, while the dogs mill around his legs, trying to steal scraps. He complains that the grill is shitty the entire time. As if Ilya hadn’t told him, from the start, that the grill is very old and very shit.
“I’m sorry!” he laughs. “We can’t all have Grill Master 5000s!”
Shane sends him a withering glare.
Ilya’s kids still love Shane. They also kind of treat him like a zoo exhibit, staring at him with wide eyes and asking him silly questions about the city. Ilya thinks Luca might have a puppy crush. And Shane notices every single time when they sneak a sip of beer, but apart from narrowing his eyes at them, he doesn’t really call them out. Svetlana won’t give them enough to truly get them drunk anyway.
When Ilya asks about it, Shane says, “I was also sixteen and stuck in a town, once.”
“You were never that much of a rebel, Shane Hollander,” says Ilya, accusingly.
He laughs and brushes a kiss against Ilya’s cheek. “I wasn’t,” he admits, after a minute. “But I don’t want to be the overbearing parent. You seem to fulfil that role by yourself well enough. And I have to win their affection in some way.”
“As long as they don’t forget who was their father first.” Ilya kisses him for real, ignoring Troy and Harris heckling them.
After dinner, Luca and Shane work together to start a fire in the fire basket. Ilya grabs a pile of blankets from his house and they all stretch out with full bellies and half-full drinks. Him and Shane end up sharing one of the couches and a blanket, their legs tangled together in such a way that Ilya doesn’t quite know where he ends and Shane begins. As far as final nights go, it is a great one.
“Are summers here always so nice?” Shane asks out loud, kind of aimed at no one in particular.
Ilya gives him a sideways look, a small smile on his face. “If you make them so.”
“I guess that’s right about everything,” says Shane, thoughtfully.
“Mm, I’m right very often.” Ilya bumps their shoulders together, and, in the darkness, holds Shane’s molten gaze. He struggles to identify the expression on Shane’s face, but he doesn’t think it is a bad one necessarily.
Their friends leave one by one, the kids first and then Harris and Troy. Svetlana is the last to leave. Ilya walks her to her car.
“I like Shane,” she tells him. “He’s good for you.”
He frowns at her. “In what way?”
“He makes you happy.” She smiles and hugs him, briefly. They don’t really do that too often, but Ilya doesn’t mind it, leans into the touch. “I know he leaves tomorrow, but I was wrong before—no happiness that you felt is ever wasted. If you can hold on to that feeling, it’s already worth it, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” He blinks at her.
She winks and then drives off. Ilya circles back around the house. Shane is already cleaning up, the blanket tucked around his shoulders like a cape. He’s doused the fire. Ilya is overcome by the urge to kiss him, so he walks over so that he can stop Shane in his tracks by grabbing him by the wrist and do just that.
They make love that night—because that is truly the only way Ilya can call it. They hold hands the entire time, panting into each other’s mouths. They come nearly simultaneously.
Once Ilya has wiped them both down, they curl up together. The nights are a bit chilly already, but when they’re sharing body heat like this, Ilya can’t even feel the cold. He rolls onto his side so that he is facing Shane.
“I’m glad that I took the job at your parents’ house,” he says. “And I’m glad that you decided to come babysit me.”
Shane pulls a face. “I wasn’t babysitting you, you idiot. I was housesitting the house. And taking care of the dogs.” He reaches up so that he can cup Ilya’s face. “You were just a perfect accident; you weren’t supposed to get under my skin as much as you did. I used to be terrified of you and what you could mean. But not anymore.”
Ilya swallows. “I’m going to miss you, you know.”
“I’ll miss you too.” For a brief moment, it seems like Shane is going to say something else. At the last moment, he decides not to. He just leans forward and kisses Ilya. And Ilya has been gone for Shane since the moment he saw those freckles and those bright eyes. So he kisses him back.
They fall asleep together.
--
The Cider Festival at Drover Farm is, somehow, even more of a success than it was last year. Of course, the Drover Farm is the stuff straight out of fairy tales, and Harris’ sisters have done incredible work at sprucing up the place. There are booths set up for local vendors to sell things like artisanal honey and hand-painted pottery, a guy with a violin is shredding it up on the wooden stage, and kids are tossing hacky-sacks and rings at a row of carnival game tents.
Ilya had lost Svetlana almost as soon as they made it to the farm, probably because she’s spotted someone hot. He’s kind of alright with that, though.
For the last hour or so, he’s been wandering around the grounds, his hands jammed into his pockets. Summer has said a firm goodbye, making space for the first beginnings of chilly autumn, and though the day is poured over with sun, Ilya is happy to be wearing a thick jacket. He’s propped the collar and everything, and if he were still smoking, he’d probably have a smoke tucked behind his ear. A few of the women he recognises from the book club down in the library had given him flirty looks, but it hadn’t sparked anything in him he wished to explore.
It has been . . . fine, without Shane. It isn’t like Ilya is starving for work, not with him being basically the only handyman in Sainte-Margot and her surroundings and with Yuna enthusiastically recommending his services to everyone she meets. So, there’s enough to do. And the amateur hockey season is starting soon, too, and he’s been instructing his kids to start up their dry training already. He’s been keeping himself busy.
But the house is just a bit quieter without Shane or the dogs to keep him company. And sometimes he catches himself, when it’s early morning and he climbs behind the wheel of his truck, and he turns onto the road toward the Hollander house as if on autopilot. He’s been thinking about getting a dog lately, to fill the void. He could probably take them with him on his jobs.
They’ve been texting, but sporadically. Shane is very busy with work and things he won’t tell Ilya about. That’s fine with Ilya—it’s not like they have to tell each other everything. It’s just that, now that Shane is not close enough to touch, Ilya wants to send him pictures of the dogs he meets at jobs and the kids around the fire basket and the forest as the trees shift to shades of orange and red. But Shane is a busy adult with a job, and he had an entire life before coming to town, and while that is totally fine, it makes something in Ilya’s stomach twist.
Ilya makes his way over to the line of booths and checks the wares being sold, a bit half-heartedly. He lingers a bit too long on someone selling old books; there’s a secondhand book about architecture in Montreal amongst the row of spines. With a scoff, he quickly rips his gaze away.
His eyes naturally wander to the end of the row of booths, stopping on a very familiar face. Luca Haas looks incredibly awkward, hugging his arms to his chest, and next to him is one of the new kids on the hockey team. He’s also Russian diaspora; Ilya’s brain stutters trying to think of his name. He’ll get it soon. The two of them are standing just a tad bit too close to be truly casual. Ilya hides his smile behind the palm of his hand, then turns away so that he isn’t grinning like a loon at nothing.
He catches the tail end of the violinist’s set. A sign propped up next to the stage proclaims him to be Fabian Salah. Ilya buys one of his CDs because the music is actually really good, and he can listen to it in his truck. That piece of shit (lovingly) does not have anything close to an AUX-cable or, god forbid, a bluetooth connection.
At some point, he bumps into Harris and Troy. Harris immediately pulls him along when he shyly confesses he hasn’t had any cider yet. “It’s a Cider Festival, Ilya!” he says, aghast.
“Help me,” Ilya tells Troy.
Troy has the audacity to put up his hands, a smug grin playing around his lips. “You’re on your own, man.”
The cider, of course, is incredible, and settles warm in Ilya’s stomach. Harris brags about his sisters and how they might enter the cider at some alcohol contest upstate. Troy is watching his boyfriend with a lovesick smile. Being with the two of them is fine, but after a while, Ilya has to politely excuse himself.
It’s not that he’s resentful of Troy for having a perfect relationship, it’s just that he wants that for himself as well. Svetlana tells him that he deserves it. That he’ll get someone who stays.
How does he tell her that he wants that to be Shane? It’s not fair to either of them to wish for impossible things.
Speaking of Svetlana—as soon as Ilya starts thinking about her, there she is, appearing from the crowd with an absolute smirk on her face. “Did you buy a marshmallow to roast yet?” she asks, bumping their shoulders together. “I bumped into Harris. Apparently they’re lighting the fire right now.”
He sends her a flat glare. “You’ve been gone for ages and that is the first thing you ask me?”
“What?” She shrugs. “Marshmallows are great. And I don’t want to miss out on them because you didn’t buy them fast enough.”
“Oh, so now it is suddenly my job, hm?” But he allows himself to be tugged along to the marshmallow booth anyway, and they wait in the impressive line to buy marshmallows on a stick. The crowd has thickened over the last few hours, even though the sun is steadily making its way down to the horizon, a chill settling in the air.
Svetlana bullies him into buying two sticks of marshmallows each, even though she can definitely afford her own twice over. She rolls her eyes. “What do I have a beautiful ex-fuck buddy for if he doesn’t buy me marshmallows?”
They make their way over to the big fire. More people are milling around, holding their sticks towards the fire. As they find a spot for themselves, Ilya turns to Svetlana. “Where were you, anyway? You were gone nearly the entire afternoon.”
She just winks at him. “Busy with this and that. I’m a busy woman, did you know that?”
“I mostly know you as an annoying woman,” he tells her, primly. One of his marshmallows catches fire, and he curses and jerks it back, blowing on the treat so that the flames die down. Stupid marshmallow, making it seem like Ilya didn’t grow up doing this every summer. Though it has definitely been a while since he’s done so.
“You’re hopeless,” Svetlana tells him. “I can’t believe you’re this town’s handy man.”
He waves the other stick at her, eyebrows waggling. “The handiest man.”
Someone clears their throat behind them. “Mind if I join you guys?”
It is a very familiar voice. Ilya spins around, marshmallows all but forgotten, and comes face to face with Shane. He’s in a dorky pea coat, a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and jaw, but even with that obstacle, Ilya can tell that he’s beaming wildly at him. His brain blanks for a moment. “Shane?” He blinks. “What are you doing here?”
A mischievous look blooms on Shane’s face. “Well, you see, this summer a guy named Harris invited me to his sister’s farm’s Cider Festival . . .”
Ilya nearly whacks him in the face with his marshmallows in his haste to reach out and check if Shane is actually real. Somewhere behind him, Svetlana curses. “My God, Ilya, what did I say about being useless?” She takes the marshmallows from him, all four sticks—including the ones Ilya roasted and were basically done—and disappears into the crowd. Ilya barely notices it.
“You are here,” says Ilya, pressing his fingers below Shane’s eye so that he can trace the freckles clustered there.
Shane’s eyes flutter as he leans into the touch. “Sorry for being so late,” he murmurs. “I wanted to be earlier, but it’s quite a drive down here from Montreal and there was some traffic.”
A wordless noise of protest falls from Ilya’s lips before he can stop himself. “You are here,” he repeats. “That is enough for me.” He looks around, takes a deep breath. “Are you—are you staying with your parents?”
“For now,” says Shane. He bites on his lip.
Ilya frowns at him. “For now?”
“I’m looking at a couple places,” Shane admits, easily. “Around town, I mean. There’s nothing definitive yet, so my parents are housing me while I look around.”
“But.” Ilya pauses, blinks. “But your life? Your job?”
“Montreal is nice,” says Shane. He takes a deep breath, covers Ilya’s palm, still flattened against his cheek, with his own. “But it was never home. For the last thirteen years, it didn’t feel like home in the way that this town has done in those six weeks over summer. I actually think that I was pretty miserable in Montreal, even if my friends are nice. They’re not that far away from here, actually. And believe it or not, my job can easily be done remotely. For as long as I do it, at least. Svetlana has been hinting that she might have something for me.”
Squinting, Ilya stares at him. “You’ve been talking to Svetlana?” He does a double take. “Is that why she’s been gone all day?”
“We’ve been texting and calling a lot. She got my number from Harris. Apparently she has a really annoying co-worker that she wants to replace soon.”
“What?” demands Ilya. He squints at Shane. “You’re thinking about changing jobs? But what about the—the portfolios and stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Shane says, a sparkle in his eye. “Portfolio management is pretty boring, you know?”
Ilya kisses him, then and there. He pulls back just so he can lean their foreheads together. “You’ve been thinking about everything, haven’t you?”
Shane’s eyes are very big and warm where he’s looking back at Ilya. “I’ve been going pretty stir crazy without you these last few weeks. And I know it’s soon—God, I know it’s soon. But nobody has ever made me feel like you do. I want to hold onto this while I still can. And Svetlana and Harris have both told me that you’ve been pretty mopey lately, so I figured that there was still something there as well. This might have been the easiest decision I’ve made in my entire life.”
“I think I was waiting for someone like you too,” says Ilya. Honesty has never come easy to him, but things have been different with Shane since the beginning. “And if you really wanted to stay here, I think that I would like that. A lot. I would like it a lot. Because I also like you—a lot. So.”
“You’re a pretty romantic guy, Ilya Rozanov,” says Shane, smiling. “Who knew?”
“You bring out the worst and best in me, Shane Hollander,” Ilya says, and then tugs him closer so that he can kiss him.
--
Dear Ilya Rozanov,
First of all, I want to thank you for taking this job. It is quite a big one I know, but everyone around town sings such lovely praises of your work, so I knew our house would be in the right hands if I asked you. If you find something else that needs fixing or if there’s anything you don’t get around to within the time you have, don’t stress about it. Just do what you can, and we’ll talk about the cost afterwards, no holds barred.
My second point is more of a selfish request. If it is not too much to ask, I hope you will take care of my Shane a little bit as well. Just keep an eye on him, okay? Otherwise, he will completely retreat into himself.
It is indeed a bit of an odd request, I realise as I write this down. I won’t erase it now, though. Shane is a lovely young man. I just think he needs to be reminded from time to time that there’s more to life than work and loneliness. And somehow I think you’re the right person for that.
Feel free to reach out about whatever—it really does not matter what it is.
Thank you for all,
Yuna (and David) Hollander.