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If it weren’t for the weight of the universe on his chest, Shane’s head solid against his sternum and his hair tickling his collarbone with every inhale, Ilya thinks he could be convinced that he’s levitating, that he is still out in the water, floating on his back with the sun beaming down on his face, arms and legs spread out with no fear of going under. Shane grilling the last of their lunch, Shane yelling something about sunscreen and his moles. Ilya laughing because how could he even fathom the concept of danger in a place like this, a moment like that?
Fingers playing with his crucifix, and it seems like it’s been hours, eons since they settled like this, catching their breaths – Ilya’s nailbeds trailing up and down, feather soft over a beefy shoulderblade, eyes memorising every nook and cranny of the ceiling. Soft, rhythmic breath over his skin. And a burning touch right in the middle of his chest, the crucifix lifted, set down, stroked, weighed in a beautiful palm. He does not look down at all, not once.
“Are you religious?” the universe asks, his voice barely a murmur, following the devastating question with a placating kiss next to his nipple. Setting the crucifix back down on Ilya’s heart, and taking up the chain instead, stroking it with a fingertip like it could break, like it would not have done so already under the weight of a sinful lifetime.
Ilya’s throat is dry, and that’s why he swallows. He thinks of his own nails – up, down on Shane’s shoulderblade. “If you want to play Jehovah’s Witness survey person and sinner, you have to give me some time to recover.”
The laugh that follows is enough to ease the burning of the cross, the unbearable weight of it against his sternum, only marginally – it’s easy, and breathy, and so natural that Ilya thinks his eyes might start burning for an entirely different reason now. “Who would I be?”
“Sinner,” Ilya hums.
“I’d be the sinner.”
“That is what I said.”
“Sorry, I’ll rephrase – why would I be the sinner?”
“Because first you ride the soul out of my dick and now you want to interview me,” Ilya tips his head back, groaning through it all, and he knows Shane’s propped his chin up on his chest so he can watch the whole performance. Knows he’s beaming up at him, because the room’s gone warmer, even though all Ilya can see now is Shane’s headboard, upside down. “Please,” he sighs, tips his head back down, half-lidded eyes taking in the twinkle in Shane’s own, the playfulness there, “he needs quiet time, now.”
“You can’t be conceited enough to refer to yourself in third person.”
“Him, Shane,” Ilya grabs Shane’s hand and places it square on his crotch, smiling at the little wrinkle of Shane’s nose, although he makes no move to remove his hand. “Your friend needs to rest in peace.”
“I told you that’s not what that means and to stop saying it,” Shane takes his hand off, and Ilya just replaces it with his own, missing the comforting weight. And he doesn’t stop scratching Shane’s back, even as the horrible tyrant props his chin back on his chest, ignoring Ilya’s eyes pointedly falling shut, eyelashes fluttering against slightly sunburnt cheekbones. “Come on. Are you?”
Ilya hums, feigning sleep, but he knows exactly what he’s being asked, “Am I what?”
“Religious,” Shane sighs, the soft gush of air fanning over Ilya’s sweaty neck, and it’s like a miracle in itself. He feels careful fingertips brushing over his tender undereyes, the slight sting imperceptible compared to the overwhelming pleasure, “You’re not going outside again unless I lather you in sunscreen first. Does it hurt?”
“Yes. Keep touching it,” Ilya tells him. He was going for sarcastic, but Shane does just that, and Ilya can’t help but smile, feeling it take over his face before he can help it. “I never burn. Is your horrible cottage sun.”
“Yeah, I import my own sun.”
“You have your own water,” Ilya shrugs, and it gets Shane to stop stroking his sunburnt face, rest his flat palm over his chest, next to his propped chin. Thumb touching his crucifix, and there’s the sting again. “Shane Hollander is too special to drink everyone else’s water. To share everyone else’s sun.”
A soft bite on his pec. Shane presses his nose against the indents of his teeth on Ilya’s flesh, and he feels the soft exhale of a laugh against it, the shy little smile buried there. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he says, and he breathes in. Ilya can’t smell himself, but it can’t be pleasant – Shane inhales anyhow, all sweat and musk and the smell of sex that has probably been infused in this room this past week.
Ilya’s glad. He wants this room to smell like them way after he’s gone, wants Shane to come back here – with or without him, he can’t know – and be unable to escape their aroma, their memories, wants this room to be a shrine to the paradise they built this unbearably short summer. He wants Shane to be unable to escape him, forever. Ilya’s glad, and he’s on the brink of a peaceful sleep.
He can’t go under, not with the feeling of Shane’s beautiful eyes, always wet and always that devastating brown, peering up at him curiously. Ilya’s been pavloved – big, wet, and brown means that it’s time for him to come clean, whatever that may mean. He cracks an eye open, wary, then the other, and feels embarrassed at the slight feeling of shame he feels at having done so – daring to believe his eyes are worthy enough to show Shane, who is kind enough to let him catch this glimpse of heaven. Without a single complaint, a single protest.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Shane says. He’s quiet again. And then he takes heaven away from Ilya, because his eyes fall down onto his chest, where the crucifix rests over his heart, almost taunting in its glow, catching the last of the sunrays through the windows. Another touch of a golden fingertip against the gold of her cross, soft, barely there, “Was just curious.”
How horrible he is. How kind of Shane to let him in, gift him these two weeks, allow him to come to his cottage and mark it with his presence, allow Ilya to entertain the thought of him tainting Shane’s paradise so that it would be impossible for him to return without thinking of them, here, together, tangled in cool sheets and speaking in hushed breath. And how horrible of Ilya to deny him anything, but especially this, a simple answer – or complex in its simplicity.
Shane lets him be quiet. Lets him keep softly raking his nails down his back, swallow around nothing as he watches the ceiling. How kind of him. “You hungry?” he asks, palm trailing down to touch his stomach, as if to gauge any vibrations from within. Another kiss dropped onto Ilya’s pec, “Can bring the leftover burgers here. Need to change the sheets later anyway.”
Fuck. Ilya finally looks at him, his vision miraculously not cloudy, and he manages a smile, manages a whispered: “No,” and enough strength to stop scratching down his back and instead wrap that arm around him, pull him impossibly closer. Shane sighs his relief, lets his cheek press against Ilya’s chest without so much as a happy hum, straight from his lungs.
How horrible he is. “I think,” Shane starts, mumbled through a squished cheek, although he burrows it further into Ilya’s skin as he tries to find the words, as Ilya starts raking his fingers down his arm in encouragement, “I think I overstep sometimes. You know?”
He doesn’t mean to laugh, in no way means for it to come across like he’s mocking Shane. But Shane looks up at him anyway, a defence ready on his lips, although it dies out at the sight of Ilya’s wet eyes, happy and crinkled at the sides. How ridiculous of him to think he’d ever overstep. It’s enough to set him off again, shake his head in disbelief, his rumbling chest sending Shane’s head swaying from where his cheek rests back onto it, hiding his embarrassment in the safety of Ilya’s flesh, the warmth of his flush making it feel like it’s glowing from within. “Fuck, Hollander.”
“You have to tell me,” Shane continues, undeterred, but he doesn’t look up at Ilya again. He thinks he’s looking at the wall across, eyes glazed as he focuses on the steady thump of Ilya’s heartbeat against his ear. “I need to be told, sometimes. I think I get so, I don’t know… In my head. When I want to find something out, it’s hard for me to consider… anything else.”
Ilya hums, so fond that he thinks his heart might stop beating. “The word is obsessed, no?”
Shane answers him with a mere sigh, his eyes falling shut. It won’t do. Ilya buries his fingers in his hair, watches his pale skin be engulfed in that rich void, that beautiful black. And now he’s missing his eyes, misses that brown haven, and the solution becomes impossibly clear, albeit the tightness of his throat, the dryness at the roof of his mouth.
“Yes,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound choked nor strained, his voice steady enough to be heard. But Shane doesn’t understand. He takes it as agreement on his obsessive tendencies, Ilya knows, because he merely burrows his cheek further into his skin, as some sort of apology that Ilya is angry at himself for evoking. It won’t do. “Is my answer to your question,” he tries again, feeling the flutter of eyelashes against his skin, eyes blinking open. “Or… I think so. I think yes.”
He doesn’t feel any different, having said it. He thinks he might be relieved, but Shane’s eyes might be behind that feeling entirely, because his chin is digging into his pec again, and he’s showing Ilya that brown depth, his fingers slipping out of his hair with the movement. Shane looks grateful, somehow. How kind he is, how easily satiated.
He doesn’t know if there is more he needs to say, expected to tell. But Shane helps him again, looking between his eyes, so open, and earnest, like Ilya is all that matters. “Russian Orthodox,” he whispers, and it’s not a question – Ilya’s not even sure it is meant for him to hear, but he nods anyhow, an almost imperceptible movement. “Do you pray?” he asks, quiet like anything louder might burst this imaginary bubble.
Ilya swallows again, pretends he doesn’t feel Shane’s thumb inching closer to her crucifix again. “Sometimes,” he offers, and then he laughs a little, so he doesn’t do something stupid – whatever that may be. He doesn’t know what he’s capable of, when it comes to Shane and him, together. He sniffs. “Do you?”
Shane considers this. “I remember doing it sometimes, when I was little. Don’t think I did it right – nobody ever taught me how.”
Ilya’s smiling again – how easy it is when it comes to Shane, how inescapable. “I do not think there is right or wrong way to do it, baby. Even for perfect Shane Hollander.”
Pink seeps under Shane’s freckles all of a sudden, and Ilya thinks it’s the term of endearment. He smiles impossibly wider. “I mean– There must be,” he says. His teeth toy with his bottom lip, a slight tug at the side of his mouth as he reaches a finger out, smooths out Ilya’s upper lip, tracing his cupid’s bow. “Maybe you could teach me?”
Ilya hopes his lip isn’t trembling under Shane’s touch. He feels like a ball of nerves, and he’s glad Shane is half on top of him, weighing him down and forcing him to be calm, his leg sprawled over his body like an anchor. “I, uh, do not think I am in position to teach anyone about religion, Hollander.”
“Do me a favour?” Shane says suddenly, sudden enough that Ilya’s heart skips a beat, and he’s glad Shane’s not listening into his chest anymore. Do me a favour, and get out. I don’t know what I was thinking, this, you and me. “Don’t call me Hollander? Here?” he says, and it’s so small, small but brave, and Ilya wants to exhale all of his relief, maybe bite down onto the red-tinted tip of Shane’s nose for scaring him like this.
But all he does is smile, loose and happy, nodding once. “Okay. Shane,” he says, feels like crying at the way that brown haven seems to melt at the sound of it. “I am not in position to teach anyone about religion, Shane.”
Shane’s mouth twists like this is a ridiculous notion. Ilya just wants to kiss him, to end it all and return to what really matters – Shane’s breath in his mouth, his air in his lungs. “That’s stupid, come on. Why not?” he says, presses his lips together – like he knows Ilya wants to kiss him, like he heard his thoughts and is punishing him for being stupid. He smiles then, sheepish, “I wanna learn. Might be useful.”
“Ha, yes? What does Shane Hollander need to pray about?” Ilya says, undeterred by the roll of Shane’s eyes. He pinches his own shut, making a show of it: “Please, God… Let Ilya’s dick grow another three inches… I am insatiable.”
A harsh smack against his chest, and a shocked laugh. And then he opens his eyes, watches Shane’s mouth fall open in a stunned grin, the apples of his cheeks taking on that delicious pink hue, “Fuck you, where did you learn that word!”
Ilya hums, smoothing Shane’s pink cheek back with his thumb, “I read.”
“I’m scouring your place for women’s erotica next time I visit. Fucking insatiable,” he shakes his head, but then he leans into Ilya’s touch, still grinning in disbelief. Like he doesn’t know that Ilya would burn down his apartment if Shane asked him to. He hums against Ilya’s fingers, fixing him with a playful look, “Well, you’ve got room for another two, in theory.”
“I am not doing this with you,” Ilya tells him, letting his open palm connect with Shane’s cheek in a feather-soft slap. Shane keeps biting his lip to conceal his smile. “You are embarrassed I told God about your greed and you are trying to make me feel bad. With lies.”
Shane tuts, wrapping his fingers around Ilya’s wrist and pressing his palm flat against Ilya’s chest, only to cover his hand with his own. “You keep deflecting,” he says – he’s so smart, and so beautiful when he’s serious like this, like Ilya’s anyone to be serious about. Shane thinks for a moment. “What do you pray about?”
“I don’t know,” comes Ilya’s reply, immediate. “Is my dick big enough?”
“Ilya.”
“Only you can ask questions?”
Shane squeezes his hand. “Yes, your dick’s big enough. More than big enough. And very talented,” he says, maybe too deadpan for Ilya’s liking, but he lets out an exaggerated, dreamy sigh anyway, and leans his head forward to leave an obnoxiously loud kiss on Shane’s lips, letting it fall back against the pillow with his eyes shut in ecstasy. Another tut. “Is my dick big enough?”
Ilya cracks an eye open, raises an eyebrow. Shane raises one back. “Mm, yes,” Ilya shrugs – it is, and very pretty, and he feels heat pool at the pit of his stomach because he’s suddenly aware of its weight against his thigh, soft and hefty. “But that does not matter.”
Shane groans, “Shut up.”
“Now you are shy,” Ilya pushes Shane’s bangs back, grins at the exasperation weighing down his eyebrows. “I think God knows you do not use your dick, Shane. He sees all.”
“Shut–” Shane’s louder now, covers Ilya’s mouth with both hands, and doesn’t move them even when Ilya starts licking at his sweaty palm obnoxiously. “Fuck, why would you say that?”
Ilya mumbles something behind Shane’s hands, and it only earns him a sceptical furrow of his eyebrows – cute – before Shane hesitantly lets his hands drop back onto Ilya’s chest, crossed so he can rest his chin back onto them. Ilya clears his throat: “You think He heard you ask to be spanked earlier?”
Shane’s groan is loud enough to startle him, but not loud enough to get him to stop grinning, relishing in the deep red hue of Shane’s face as he tries to hide behind his hands. “Fuck, spanking and what you did are two totally different fucking things, why are you making shit up?”
“What I did – what you asked!” Ilya’s laughing, trying and failing to move Shane’s hands away from his hot face – Shane’s biceps straining with resistance. “You are not – hey – you are not making this my fault. If we go to hell, we will go together.”
“You just slapped it a little while you– Fuck,” Shane is still groaning, but he’s laughing too, embarrassed like it’s not just them in the room – and God, whatever – and Ilya loves the sight, the sound so much, that he almost forgets what was funny in the first place. But he remembers when Shane suddenly drops his hands, an accusatory glare already in his eyes, “Wait, what are– You kept shoving your face into my armpit this morning, you freak, you can’t fucking say anything!”
“The difference between me and you, Shane, is that I own it. Watch,” Ilya clears his throat, trying to ignore the way Shane bites his lip through a smile in anticipation, cupping his hands around his mouth and pointing his face straight up into the ceiling, into heaven, loud and unapologetic: “God, Jesus, and Blessed Virgin Mary: I love Shane Hollander’s sweaty armpits!”
Shane is laughing, face pressed into Ilya’s chest, hiding from something only he can feel. “God…”
“Yes, Him,” Ilya says as an aside, and cups his hands back around his mouth: “And please let him continue choking me with them every time I am blessed enough to fuck him! And I shall light you a candle as tall as I am the next time I visit you! !”
Shane’s gone completely still, face still buried into Ilya’s chest. Ilya’s suddenly overtaken with the irrational fear that he has stopped breathing. And he knows that can’t be, but he can’t bear the thought, so he grabs Shane’s chin and tips his head up, holding back the sigh of relief that is ready to escape him when he sees his face, alive and well: still red, still smiling, with a newfound cloudy sheen covering his eyeballs, happy, almost floaty. But Ilya knows he’s here. It’s not like he gets sometimes, overcome with pleasure and so certain, so positive that Ilya’s got him that he lets himself go, nails scratching down Ilya’s back and levitating away. He’s still here, with Ilya. He’s just so absurdly happy. That’s all.
His smile’s inching wider by the second, until his cheeks are straining against Ilya’s grasp on his chin, his eyes impossibly bright. Ilya’s quip dies in his throat, and all thoughts go with it. “Come on,” Shane whispers, barely audible through that smile, and he inches forward to bump the tips of their noses together, just once. “What do you pray about?”
Ilya exhales through his nostrils, focusing on the give of Shane’s skin under his fingertips, the squishing of his cheeks. He squeezes softly, to see his lips pout, and when he lets go the smile is still there. “What has gotten into you?” he asks, soft, genuine. “Why do you need to know?”
Shane doesn’t take it any sort of way, and Ilya’s relieved. He shrugs a shoulder, that glimmer turning shy, hesitant, but his chin is resting on Ilya’s pec again, little pink marks on his cheeks from Ilya’s fingers a second ago. “I want to know,” he offers, like that much isn’t already clear. Still, “I want to know you. Everything about you.”
Ilya’s chest burns again, but his mother’s cross has nothing to do with it, this time. He’s not sure how to proceed. “I do not think… this is me,” he tries, voice hushed, and Shane’s eyes turn all the more curious. “Or, I do not think– Is not me anymore. Only sometimes. When…”
The rest of it dies into a shrug, and he doesn’t know what he mumbles in the end, something about it not being important, something about insignificance with his eyes cast low. He doesn’t know. Shane bumps Ilya’s chin with his nose, gets him to tip his face up again, to meet his earnest eyes. “I think it is. Important,” he says, maybe encourages.
It’s heavy for a Saturday morning, dancing on the line of too heavy, although Ilya thinks he would be willing to talk just about anything over if Shane asked. If he kept watching him like this. “I do not even think it is praying, technically – what I do. Is not, uh – I do not even… I do not really pray to God that much anymore. I used to. But I do not think I pray, I think I – I don’t know what you would call it. Talking, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter what I’d call it,” Shane murmurs, his eyes overtaken by a bright smile, though his lips are slow to follow. But he wants to know what Shane would call it, what he thinks. Ilya feels a fingertip smooth over the side of his eye. “Who do you pray to? Talk to.”
He focuses on the rhythmic stroking, Shane’s finger over his eyelid, his flaky undereye, then over his eyebrow, slower the longer he takes to answer. It’s right there, at the tip of his tongue. Shane’s finger down the slope of his nose, over his cupid’s bow. And finally, his fingers digging into his hairline, smoothing the curls back with a deep exhale.
“What was her name?” Shane whispers. Quiet, like he’s scared of overstepping again, but can’t help himself. It is only then that Ilya’s realised he’s let his eyes fall shut against the rhythmic strokes of fingertips into his hair, and he lets them flutter open, tries to give a small smile when he detects that hesitance in Shane’s eyes.
Feels a little lump in his throat when he answers, a tightness that wasn’t there before. “Irina,” he whispers back, and Shane’s eyelids flutter at the sound.
Shane repeats it, once. And Ilya doesn’t know why but that is what does it, or almost does it, the lump a steady growth against his vocal cords, his eyelids itching. And his fingers again, thumbing her crucifix. “What do you…” he trails off, blinks up at Ilya carefully. “You have to stop me if I ask anything stupid, Ilya. Promise.”
Ilya loves him. Ilya has never felt pain like that in his chest, and he can promise him anything, but not that. “Tell me.”
Square, shiny teeth scraping over an impossibly pink lip. “What do you talk to her about?”
Ilya thinks about this. He was angry for the longest time, back then, eyes boring into grey cobble, her name etched out in ugly letters, and he sulked on purpose, scrubbing his mind blank so she wouldn’t see any of it, hear any of it, wherever she was. She couldn’t have Ilya either. Childish, giving a dead woman the silent treatment.
He was angry with God, and that lasted longer, only recently warming up to the idea of Him again, thinking of Him as he talked to Mama, knees digging into cold tile. He may have taken her from him, but He gave him Shane. He must’ve given him Shane. Some part of him doubts that Mama would send him Shane.
“Nevermind,” Shane is whispering, eyelids low as he regards Ilya’s collarbones, and this won’t do.
“I am thinking, . Relax,” Ilya says, and settles further into the pillow. Focusing on the rhythmic inhales and exhales through Shane’s nose, puffed over his pec. What does he talk to her about? Usually, about forgiveness. Maybe his faith, maybe his work, maybe a cat he saw down the street that reminded him of the chubby stray they used to feed together, a lifetime ago. Lately, about his universe in non-incriminating excerpts: disembodied brown eyes, a sole plush mouth, a look of utter devotion that, as far as she is aware, could belong to anybody. Although it’s hard to think about just anybody, when you have the one, and he’s digging his chin into your chest and he’s showing you his eyes, and Mama can probably see you, anyway.
The one is running his finger over your prickly eyebrow. “You don’t have to tell me. Doesn’t matter,” he says, but you know it does, it does.
What does Ilya talk to her about? “What do you talk to your mother about when she calls?” he says, and Shane glances down at Ilya’s twitching nose, considering something. “Things like that, I guess. My day. That I miss her. That I am not angry anymore.”
Red-rimmed brown, and so, so deep. Ilya doesn’t know if he’s still angry, if he’s being honest, but now that he’s softly trailing the pad of his thumb over Shane’s lower lashline, he cannot imagine himself ever being angry over anything at all. He smiles, because there’s something so open in Shane’s eyes, and attentive, but there’s also a glimmer of hope there, a question that Ilya knows he will never ask unless he tells him outright.
“You.”
The question vanishes, and Shane’s eyes crinkle at the sides. Mission accomplished. “You talk to her about me?”
Ilya can’t say yes, so he just nods. Mama doesn’t know Shane’s name. She knows the colour of his eyes, the depth of his soul, the slope of his nose. Later, she might hear about the way his teeth dig into his bottom lip now, the way his hands squeeze one of Ilya’s own as they rest on Ilya’s chest.
“Really?” he checks again, and Ilya laughs, quiet. “Ilya, really?”
“Yes,” he tells him, looking down at their joint hands. “You are very happy about this. Maybe I can mention you when I give my regards to Papa in Hell.”
“Stop it, we’re not going to Hell.”
“Okay,” Ilya settles, and he’s still smiling. Leave it to Shane to assume he’s talking about them both. As if Shane would ever go to Hell, as if he’d follow Ilya blind, anywhere. He sniffs again.
There’s something else troubling Shane now, Ilya knows. He can wait; with Shane’s weight on his front, his face so close to his own, and the sun setting, he can wait forever. “Do you think…” he exhales, nervous, finger toying with Ilya’s collarbone. He licks the side of his mouth, and he doesn’t look at Ilya once, not until the question is out in the open: “You think she’d like me? If she’d met me?”
The weight is still on his front, their faces are still close, the sun is still setting. There’s a new weight now; Mama’s cross, suddenly so heavy that he thinks he’s having trouble breathing, although that cannot be true. He doesn’t need to think about it, and he knows what he should say, knows the answer that would keep that hopeful glimmer present in Shane’s big, blinking eyes. But he also knows that Shane would know, he would see right through him. And they promised not to lie, not here, promised to lay it all out.
So, Ilya does. “I don’t know,” he whispers, barely whispers, and the admission burns his throat. He doesn’t know what it is, after that; the pre-existing knot constricting his throat, the ray of light that catches the edge of his crucifix and causes it to glow, like an agreement, or, most likely, the way Shane’s eyes widen just a fraction, a mere millisecond before he contains himself, before he conceals the shock and schools his features into something more neutral. Maybe it’s a combination of it all that finally gets the tears to well up, burning his lashline, and he can’t bear to look at the surprised parting of Shane’s lips anymore. He looks up at the ceiling, humiliated. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I should not have…”
Shane is shaking his head, he thinks. He’s still not looking. “Hey,” he’s saying, maybe shushing, the pads of his thumbs tenderly wiping Ilya’s sunburnt undereyes before the tears even have a chance to spill over his cheeks, scooting impossibly closer. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, I’m the one – I shouldn’t have pushed. I’m sorry. Hey.”
Ilya’s the one shaking his head now. When he chances a glance down, sees the thoughtful expression on Shane’s face, the hurt he tries to repress, the little furrow of his eyebrows – that’s when he starts talking, before he even has the chance to figure out what he’s saying, his voice ugly in his own ears: “Is not you, Shane, you are… Fuck, you are perfect, is that… Is not…” he digs his fingers in his eyes, frustrated in ways he never knew possible, and sweet Shane is gently pulling his hands away from his face, so he doesn’t hurt himself, doesn’t aggravate his sunburn. “Fuck.”
“I love you,” Shane says, because that’s their new thing, and it makes Ilya smile every time. He doesn’t think he will ever be sick of hearing it, of saying it, even if he doesn’t deserve it, and Shane is leaning forward to touch their noses together, despite the wetness around Ilya’s nostrils that he tries and fails to sniff away. “You don’t have to tell me. Do you love me?”
“Of course I do.”
“That’s all I want,” he presses the tip of his nose further in, rubs it a little against Ilya’s. But the question is still there in his eyes. “I don’t care about anything else.”
He’d leave it at that, if he were a better man. He’d let Shane kiss him softly, like he is now, and he’d watch his head settle back into Ilya’s chest, and he’d leave it. But he is who he is, and he does what he does, and he doesn’t know if the way Shane pointedly avoids his crucifix, careful not to bump it with his fingers, brings him relief or a profound sadness. Like he’s trying not to aggravate Mama.
“I want to tell you,” he says, and Shane draws in a stuttered breath. He looks like he’s hanging from Ilya’s lips, inexplicably. A few moments pass like this, with Ilya trying to find the words, with Shane softly stroking his jaw with his knuckles, trailing back to the curls at the nape of his neck. “Mama was my best friend,” he starts again, careful. “I loved her very much. She was beautiful, and kind, and she loved me very much, then. But I was so young, and sometimes I am afraid that I am not that person now that she knew, that she loved. I was so young. She never knew me with– With everything I have now, or with… you. But I like to think that maybe she misses me like I miss her, that she would still love me.” Shane looks like he wants to interrupt, and he hides it so well – if it weren’t for that little twitch at the side of his mouth that Ilya catches immediately. He smiles, so fond of it. “Tell me.”
“It’s just… I cannot imagine somebody knowing you and not loving you,” he says, so easy, like Ilya doesn’t feel like crying again.
He hums, and presses a long kiss on Shane’s forehead. Pushes his hair back again. “She did,” he says, watches Shane settle back into his chest. “She loved me very much. She was sick, and it got too much, but she never stopped loving me. And she was very religious, my mother. Sometimes I think that is what kept her with me as long as it did. She had very strong faith. Took it very seriously – and I did, too, because I loved her.”
He doesn’t know how to proceed. Shane’s eyes are so big, so expectant, and suddenly the following is not difficult to say at all.
“I think she would love you,” he says, laughing at the confused furrow of Shane’s eyebrows. He smooths a finger over them, “Because you are kind, and considerate. And beautiful,” his finger trails over an eyelid, then over rapidly flushing freckles, “And you care about me. Or you are good at pretending.”
“Shut up,” Shane breathes.
“And you are my best friend. And I think she would be very happy that I have you in my life,” Ilya says it, and then he falls quiet, the lump growing bigger. Despite Shane’s little smile, the way his eyes are trailing all over Ilya’s thoughtful face. He clears his throat. “But maybe… I do not know how she would feel, if she knew exactly how I feel about you. That I love you, in this way.”
It’s not the first time he’s thought about this, sleepless with his eyes burning. Not even the first time he’s thought about it with Shane in his arms, weightless and asleep, or after, alone in his hotel room, knuckles white around his toothbrush and eyes icy in his own reflection, Shane’s kiss cooling at the hinge of his jaw. Mama was kind – only he knows how deeply beautiful she truly was, but Shane is not Russian, and he is not religious. And all of this, Ilya knows that Mama could come to terms with, for Ilya. But Shane being a man – he doesn’t know, and that is what kills him, the not knowing, or the knowledge that he will never get an answer.
Shane is thinking about this, turning it around in his head. With eyes glazed over. Ilya loves him, he thinks, loves him as he clears his throat, loves him as he looks up at him with an idea in his eyes. “Are you happy? Right now?” he asks him, and Ilya doesn’t laugh again, although he wants to. He tells him that of course he is, that he didn’t know it was ever possible for him to be this happy. And Shane shrugs, simple, “Do you think maybe… that would be enough?”
Ilya doesn’t think, because he doesn’t like to, and he doesn’t know. Instead of saying this, he smiles, pushes Shane’s hair out of his face and raises his eyebrows conspiratorially, “You want to know what I think about, sometimes?” he says, and Shane nods. “It is a little stupid.”
“I like stupid. Obviously.”
“Nice,” Ilya grunts, laughs when Shane does. “Sometimes I think… Or I like to think that, when you go up there, wherever that is–”
“Heaven.”
“Yes, wherever we go… That maybe it is different, maybe in a way that we cannot understand until we get there. Maybe she cannot understand the difference between man and woman now. Maybe she only sees the soul. Maybe it does not matter.”
It’s admirable, how good Shane is at keeping the tears in place. Ilya wishes they would fall, so he could kiss them away, let the salt on his lips bring him back down to Earth.
“You know, maybe I can tell her your name and she will not understand that you are a man, or a woman. Maybe it will not matter because she can see here,” he presses a fingertip against Shane’s chest, the part he can reach, because they are pressed together, and he’s not sure where he ends and Shane begins. “And here,” he is whispering now, letting that fingertip press against his own chest, near their crucifix. “How I feel when I say your name.” He stops, then laughs a little. “When you look at me and you are pretending that you are not crying.”
“Fuck off,” Shane sniffs, and he makes the mistake of blinking, sending the tears falling – two, exactly. Yes. Ilya is happy about this, because he can finally lean forward, press two long kisses against that wetness, lick his lips after. “Fuck, Ilya,” he sniffs, laughs wetly. “That’s not stupid. That’s…”
Ilya contemplates this. “Wishful… thinking.”
“No,” Shane shakes his head, immediate, before Ilya’s really finished talking. “It’s… I love it. Yes. It’s beautiful.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Ilya says. “Maybe you can use on your next cottage documentary. Philosophy and yoga, two in one.”
Instead of smacking him in the chest, Shane’s mouth drops open in a smile, an incredulous little laugh escaping him. “Wait, you saw that?” he says, cheeks tinting pink again.
Ilya hums, albeit distracted, because Shane’s freckles look really stark like this, with the red-tinted framing of his skin. “Do not worry, Mama does not know about your yoga softcore porno,” he says, ignores Shane’s little huff, the tired way he reminds him that it was not a softcore porno. “The shorts were a little too gay, I did not think I should mention it.”
“They were normal shorts. They don’t have shorts in Russia?”
“No,” Ilya says, and Shane scoffs, but he feels lighter, at least. “I am sorry. Is just not something you mention to your mother.”
“Mhm.”
“Did you tell your mother you bought the NHL videogame with the Ilya Rozanov cover so you can jerk off to it?”
“Fuck you, I don’t jerk off to it,” Shane’s voice is mumbled, mouth buried in Ilya’s pec. There’s no heat behind it.
“Okay,” Ilya says. “Because you have the real thing, yes?”
“Yes,” Shane tells him – Ilya detects a bit of a Russian accent in it, and he finds it hilarious. Shane sounds sleepy now. “I jerk off to the real thing.”
“That is all I ever wanted,” Ilya watches Shane’s eyes flutter shut, and he presses a kiss to his hair, runs his fingers through it. It’s getting darker now. “You will be awake all night if you sleep now.”
“You will keep me company,” Shane says, settling with his cheek against Ilya’s chest again, and he hesitates, but then he’s touching her crucifix again, fingers crooked around the chain, pinky touching the blunt edge of it. He sighs through his nose. “I think I would like to have met her, anyway. Whatever she might’ve thought.”
Ilya’s heart swells. “What would you say?” he dares, but he doesn’t like how heavy his voice sounds, how terrified. “Thank you, Madame. Your boy is very good with his hands.”
“I don’t think I’d thank your mother for your sexual prowess, Ilya,” Shane’s nose wrinkles, but then he settles again. A pause, thoughtful. “Do you look like her?”
A hum, somewhat strained. “Everybody said it. I have her eyes, I think. Her hair.” Shane glances up when Ilya shuffles, watches him tap the mole on his cheek. “This.”
It’s the most beautiful Shane’s ever looked; he’s sleepy, but his eyes brighten, putting his own finger over Ilya’s mole and keeping it there, until his neck starts cramping and he puts his cheek back on Ilya’s heart. It’s devastating. “I would thank her for your eyes, then. And your hair, and your mole,” he mumbles, easy like Ilya’s not floating again. “And your heart. And I think I would apologise to her if she didn’t like me, because I don’t think I could let you go.”
Ilya wants to thank him, but he thinks it might be ill-fitting. How do you thank someone for being so beautiful? It’s just in Shane’s nature. All he can do is lie back, and maybe thank God, maybe hope Mama is watching and that she understands, even a little, and that she’s happy for him, for them both. That it eases the shame, a little bit.
Shane is thinking about something else. “Will you keep me company later?” he mumbles, voice faraway, on the verge of sleep. “If I fall asleep now?”
It may be the silliest thing they’ve talked about the whole day, and that’s saying something. Still, Ilya wraps an arm around him, and pulls the sheet that’s covering their lower bodies higher, tucks it under Shane’s chin, watches him curl into it easily, like it’s where he and Ilya belong. “Yes, baby,” he mumbles, quiet so as not to rouse him, and Shane’s still holding onto her cross. “I will stay with you.”