Work Text:
There’s a restlessness that’s settled into him.
When it’s just him and Shane, folded into the landscape of this pocket in nowhere, Ilya feels like he exists in a way he never has anywhere else. Some sort of anomaly in the magnetism of the Earth, or some new dimension opening up under his feet when he steps onto the driveway. Everything in him hums. He thinks of the long years before this, before Shane tucked into bed beside him in Ottawa. Sitting beside him on roadtrips. Only ever the stretch of an arm away.
They’d had an argument once, on the bus to a Toronto game. After they’d both showered, Shane had informed him, in a clipped tone, that he’d booked a separate hotel room, and that the space a night before a game might be what’s best for the team. Ilya, equally mad about something he can’t even remember now, had agreed.
Shane had ended up at his door again twenty minutes later, with his mouth curled into a snarl, eyes glassy. “Were you really going to just let me go?”
Ilya adores it when Shane picks a fight. He likes getting to grovel and apologize and watch Shane get flustered and angry. Maybe something to talk about in therapy, the way Shane’s anger borders on fantasy for him. Maybe because it’s so safe.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya had reached out to touch his cheek, and Shane had stepped backwards, shook his head no.
“Prove it,” Shane had said.
Ilya had planned to, before Shane had been distracted by the hockey highlights playing on the TV, and had rolled off him to watch and offer his commentary.
“Everyone knows you know most about hockey,” Ilya had pulled him backward, between his legs. “Don’t have to show off.”
He’d snaked a hand around Shane’s hip, intended to sneak under the waistband, but instead Shane had interlocked their fingers, leaned back and settled in. Then, Shane complained about being cold, but hadn’t wanted to get up, and also hadn’t wanted to admit to not wanting to get up. Instead, he had framed it like a challenge. They practiced their body-coordination technique, systematically shifting their weight to pull the covers out from under them without having to stand or pull apart. They ordered delivery from a shawarma place down the road and when Shane had groaned at the idea of getting up to go to the lobby to collect it, Ilya called one of the rookies and asked him to go down and get it for them.
“You are turning me into a dictator,” Ilya had told Shane, running a hand up and down the left side of his ribs. “I am usually a very nice boy. Everyone says so.”
“Then they won’t mind doing this for you,” Shane’s expression was coy as he’d contorted to press his nose into Ilya’s neck, preening like a bird. “If you’re so nice.”
They’d fallen asleep tangled together, Ilya’s hand over Shane’s stomach, and when they’d woke up, Ilya had realized they’d forgotten to fuck.
“Let me make it up to you now,” he’d said.
He’d only been joking, just a little.
Shane’s expression had been soft in the morning, hair mussed and unguarded. “I’ve been made up.”
There is very little Ilya cares about more than getting to be with Shane, and even those things are circumstantial. He’s always loved sex, always loved being good at sex more.
“It’s because you’re so giving,” Shane had said when Ilya had told him.
The sincerity had startled him.
“You like doing things,” Shane had pointed out.
“Yes,” Ilya had said. “That is kind of the point. Of life.”
“Not for everyone,” Shane had said back.
“Really? What’s the point of yours?” Ilya had asked, grinning down at him as he’d climbed to cage Shane in with his body.
“Probably to get pucks in deep.”
Shane had laughed as he said it, but his hand had moved to cup Ilya’s cheek, that same soft look on his face when he’s about to say something very sweet, cut into Ilya’s very core, see right through whatever defense Ilya didn’t even know he was building.
Anyway, it’s nice to have all the time in the world for denial and push and pull, and to not be able to resist long enough to play that game. To be with someone who doesn’t want to play that game either. The crickets sing outside. Ilya’s tongue slides over his teeth. The rain comes down heavy, so their plans to go swimming the next day are shot. When Shane stirs, Ilya takes it as an excuse to pull him close and press just his bottom lip to the lobe of Shane’s ear.
“Good morning,” Shane mumbles, eyes still closed. “What do you want to do today?”
Usually he’s quick to rise, but they're tired today. Usually, Ilya will tease, but he wants to indulge in the very little he gets to see of Shane in this liminal space.
“Maybe fight,” Ilya says, closing his eyes too. “Argue and fight.”
Shane makes a soft sound as he rubs his cheek against his pillow. “Okay. Let’s fight. About what?”
Secretly, Ilya really wants to. “Breakfast. Laundry. Bills. I pay all of them, you know.”
“Shut up,” Shane groans, stretching his hand over his shoulder to press it against Ilya’s mouth.
Ilya slides his tongue between Shane’s index and middle finger, and thinks about the times they used to have to go days without talking properly to get into the headspace required to do whatever the fuck they needed to for their teams. It’s almost unbearable, when he starts to tally up hours and convert them into minutes, and then into seconds, and visualizes that time like grains of sand on the beach. It’s a pit in his stomach that threatens to turn him inside out. Is there ever going to be enough time?
Shane’s fingers fuck in and out of his mouth three times, four times. It’s an awkward angle, so Ilya cranes his head in an attempt to make it easier for him.
Ilya wants to blame the way the furrow of Shane’s brow makes him feel so safe on the nature of hockey. He wants to blame it on his father, or God, or someone else. Maybe Shane himself, for doing this to him. When Ilya was little, quiet had been an indicator of peace. Later, it had become a breeding ground for anticipation, the liminal space between the raising of the axe and the felling of the tree.
When Shane’s wet hand slides to his cheek, and he finally contorts so Ilya can see his face, the soft surface of his skin, the roots of his eyebrows and the little freckles that dot his skin, he feels like every moment of suffering was worth it to get here. He worries about split hairs in the fabric of the universe, timelines where he doesn’t get to have this. He worries for every version of himself that doesn’t have Shane to cling to. He worries for every version of Shane that doesn’t have him, maybe one of his more selfish thoughts.
Nobody can do this for you, not the way I can. Not as sincerely, not with such good intention.
“I make much more than you though,” Ilya grins at him, watching the pockets of fat on the apple of Shane’s cheeks move up. “It's only fair.”
“You’re such a dick,” Shane says, and Ilya watches for the movement of tendons underneath his skin.
“I want to fight,” Ilya reminds him.
It’s a private fantasy, maybe a little sick, that he thinks so much about accidentally pushing too far, or some kind of circumstance that would give Shane the right to be very angry. Maybe an injustice. He doesn’t like to put Shane in a position to feel any real pain, but he likes the idea of Shane having justification to blow up at Ilya in a very real way. In his fantasy they fight, and Ilya backs down and braces for impact, but it doesn’t come.
He’s maneuvered over onto Shane’s chest. He settles his hands over Shane’s deltoids, thinks offhandedly that he could probably become an anatomy expert if Shane was the body he’d get to study. He never broke the habit of trying to drink as much of him as he could in the little time they used to have. That urgency is engrained in him now, maybe the same way he’s hardwired to seek a reason for suffering to rear its ugly head. Let me have thirty more seconds, Shane. Let me see, Shane. Get angry with me, Shane.
He probably would be angry, if he knew that this is what Ilya was thinking. His eyes would narrow and his jaw would get tight and he’d say why the fuck would you think that? I’m not going to do that. Ilya would say I know, I know, in earnest, because he does know. Shane would touch him in a way nobody has ever touched anyone before, invent some new picture of intimacy, of safety, of warmth.
“Okay, let’s fight,” Shane says, luckily, because he doesn’t have the ability to read Ilya’s mind quite yet. “I’m so angry with you.”
Ilya feels lucky to have the time to keep his secrets, for just a little longer. When he’s found out, Shane is going to be inevitably mad, but it’s nothing to be afraid of.
“No, I’m sorry,” Ilya digs his nose into the crook of Shane’s neck. “Please forgive me.”
“Not yet,” Shane is trying to sound like he’s scolding him, but his voice is warm like candle wax. “You have to prove it.”
Ilya will prove it, as many times as he’s allowed. Again and again and again forever.