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It starts with Ilya’s nails. Or, at least, that’s the first outward sign that Shane picks up on. He will later come to understand that there were probably plenty of earlier indicators he’d simply missed, that there were things Ilya must have been working through on his own, that this sort of thing doesn’t just up out of nowhere because of painted nails. But at the time Shane only knows that, for him, it starts with Ilya’s nails.
Ilya lets Hayden’s girls paint his nails when they’re visiting Montreal one weekend and babysitting for Hayden and Jackie. They have painted his nails before, but this time Ilya and Ruby both manage to sit long enough for her to do both of his hands, all ten fingers. Bright pink. Glittery. The application is messy and uneven, some fingers have more polish on Ilya’s skin than on his nail.
“I love it,” Ilya says to Ruby, grinning, once she’s finished.
“Show Uncle Shane!” Ruby cries as Shane comes into the room looking for Jade.
He shows his nails to Shane. “What do you think?”
“Very pretty,” Shane responds, mostly to Ruby, but he catches the way Ilya sits up straighter in his little plastic toddler chair, pleased by the compliment too.
And then Ilya keeps the polish on even though it immediately starts to chip. Shane catches Ilya looking at his nails in the passenger seat one day, smiling to himself as the sunlight catches on the glitter. He keeps it on for a week, and then longer, until there’s only polish left on his left pinky. When that finally chips away, Ilya pouts, seems forlorn and lost.
But one afternoon, not long after that, Shane comes home and finds Ilya set up at the dining room table, head bent over his hand as he carefully paints his own nails. He’s muttering to himself as he works, as he fucks up, holding the brush awkwardly in his left hand.
“Hey,” Shane says from behind him.
Ilya startles, the brush jerking and painting part of his finger a deep red. He swears in Russian. “Scared me,” he says.
“I was trying not to,” Shane says, laughing. “What are you doing?” He sits down in the chair next to Ilya.
“I wanted new color,” Ilya says, turning his focus back to his task.
Shane picks up the bottle, turns it over. The color is called Left on Red. It’s not as glittery as the pink, but there’s a subtle shimmer to it. “It’s nice,” Shane says. He watches Ilya swipe the brush slowly, carefully over nail. It gathers and clumps and bleeds onto the surrounding skin.
“Fuck,” Ilya says.
“Here,” Shane says, touching his arm. “Let me.”
Ilya sighs and hands the brush to Shane.
Shane isn’t that much better at this, but he can at least use his dominant hand and try his best. “You like it,” he says, eyes focused on the brush as it swipes through a glob of polish. He makes a few light, quick strokes in an attempt to even it out. “Having your nails painted.”
“Yes,” Ilya says simply, but softly, like maybe he’s embarrassed that Shane caught him.
Shane looks up at Ilya, smiling. “What do you like about it?” he asks, lowering his head again.
Ilya is quiet, but then he says, “Makes me feel good. I don’t know. Different maybe. More—Expressive?”
“Not boring,” Shane says, eyes lifting up, catching Ilya’s smile at that.
“Not boring,” Ilya agrees.
Shane finishes up Ilya’s right hand. The color is streaky in places. Too much polish has made it onto his skin. But Ilya holds his hands out in front of him, moving his nails under the light, watching them shimmer. “Yes, good, thank you,” he says.
Later that night, Shane catches sight of Ilya’s nails as he’s gathering up Anya’s things for her walk. Just a glimpse of dark red as Ilya’s strong hands clasp the leash onto Anya’s harness, as he opens the side door to leave. The contrast of his masculinity and something else, something different, sets Shane’s heart beating faster.
And then even later that night, Ilya’s red nails are tapping away at his phone as he responds to an email. Shane takes in his broad bare chest, the coarse hair on his stomach, and then those nails, sparkling in the low lamplight, and his heart again beats hard in his chest.
Shane sits up in bed, wanting a better look, wanting more than a look. “Can I—” he starts and stops.
Ilya finishes typing and sets his phone on his nightstand, looking over at Shane. “Can you what?” he asks.
“See them,” Shane says, swallowing, nodding his head subtly at Ilya’s hands. “On me.”
Ilya grins, reading Shane instantly, throwing the covers back, and moving to cover Shane’s body with his own. “Oh, you want to see my pretty nails on your body?” He kisses Shane’s jaw, his throat, and then he sits back and places his hands on Shane’s chest, fingers spread out. He presses his fingertips into Shane’s pecs and they both look at his nails as he does it. He moves his hands lower, fingers trailing over Shane’s abs, his red nails shining.
Ilya grunts in the back of his throat.
Shane breathes out. “Lower.”
Ilya’s hands move over Shane’s hips. They both keep their heads bowed, watching, transfixed. And then Ilya’s fingers press into Shane’s thighs, those wine-colored nails digging into his skin, pulling.
“I think I know where you want them,” Ilya says, leaning forward to take Shane’s mouth, his nails still scratching at Shane’s skin.
Ilya pushes Shane’s underwear down and Shane can’t help the purr that comes out of him as his body melts completely, eyes falling closed just for a moment. “Please, Ilya,” he says, opening them back up. “Touch me.”
And then Shane watches as Ilya’s fingers, pretty nails and all, wrap around his cock. “You like this?” Ilya asks.
“Fuck, Ilya,” Shane says, wanting to throw his head back but wanting to keep his eyes trained on that hand on him. Big, strong, and yes, pretty. Very pretty. “So pretty,” he says out loud.
Ilya laughs. A low, rough laugh. “You are not the only pretty one now,” he says, giving Shane’s cock a brief squeeze.
Shane reaches for his face, taking it between his hands and pulling Ilya into a kiss. “You are so fucking pretty,” he says into Ilya’s mouth. Because he is. Not just the painted nails, but his tan skin, his golden hair, his scattered moles, his pale blue eyes, his broad smile, all of him. But the nails seem to bring it all together, seem to give Ilya something else, something extra, something more. Shane can’t explain it. He isn’t sure it’s his to explain. But he sees it coming through Ilya, turning him bright and shining. Pretty. Different.
Ilya starts to move his hand in response to Shane’s words. They break the kiss and turn their eyes back to Ilya’s hand on Shane’s cock. Ilya strokes him with a determination Shane recognizes. He wants to see Shane come as quickly and as hard as he can. He wants to wring Shane out and not give him a second to catch his breath. He doesn’t want to take his time. He only wants to see Shane come apart.
After a moment or two, Ilya drops his forehead into the crook of Shane’s shoulder, his hand still working just as hard, head bent so his eyes can keep watching. Shane’s eyes watching too. They’re both breathing heavily and Shane can feel Ilya’s cock resting against his thigh, the head wet and leaking. He wonders if Ilya can come untouched, just from this, just from getting Shane off, just from— “I want to be pretty,” Ilya breathes out into Shane’s neck, his voice on the edge of desperate.
“You are,” Shane says, pulling his head back and looking away from Ilya’s hand and into his face for a second. He sees that what he’s said isn’t quite what Ilya is looking for. He drags his fingers along the sharp line of Ilya’s jaw, looking at the way his hair falls over his forehead. “You can be,” he tries instead.
It must be the right thing to say because Shane feels Ilya’s hips jerk, his body tensing, as he comes without warning onto Shane’s thigh. And that’s all the encouragement Shane needs to come himself on the next upward stroke of Ilya’s hand, looking down just in time to see his cock spilling over Ilya’s fist, over his red, sparkling nails.
As they’re falling asleep, Ilya puts his head on Shane’s chest, lays his palm flat on Shane’s belly. Ilya makes a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat. “They look like shit,” he says and then he laughs.
Shane presses a kiss to the crown of Ilya’s head. “You could go to a salon, you know,” he says, smiling into Ilya’s hair, closing his eyes against a tidal wave of affection. “Have professionals do them.”
“No,” Ilya says automatically. He lifts his hand. The lights are out but his nails still shine. “I will learn how to do it better.” Soft stubbornness in his voice. “I want this to be for me. Not for the internet people to talk about: Gay MLH player Ilya Rozanov goes to nail salon. Ha ha ha. He’s so gay.” He drops his hand back to Shane’s belly. “I am not even gay,” he mutters as an afterthought.
Shane laughs softly and presses his mouth again to Ilya’s hair, over and over. “I get that,” he says. But he can’t help but feel like he’s missing part of the conversation, like there’s more that Ilya isn’t telling him. He leaves it for now. “What color will you paint them next?”
Ilya is quiet, considering the question. Then he says, “You can pick.”
Shane smiles. “Really?”
“Nothing boring though,” Ilya says.
“Of course not.”
Shane ultimately picks out a soft, pearlescent blue that he thinks looks like whispers of clouds in a crisp blue sky or maybe the ocean on a really sunny beach.
He shows his choice to Ilya when he comes back over from the pharmacy counter, bag of meds in hand, the usual frown on his face. He hates picking up his medication. He hates this logistical, mundane reminder that something about him isn’t right, doesn’t work the way it should.
But he smiles when Shane shows him the nail color. “Not boring, right?” Shane says eagerly.
Ilya holds the bottle up in the fluorescent light of the drug store, examining it. “Is good choice,” he says. “Not boring.”
“Oh, and I got you this,” Shane says, holding out a bottle of nail polish remover he’d picked up from further down the aisle. “Supposedly it’s the best one. I did some research. It won’t, um, dry out your skin.”
Ilya’s eyes move slowly between the nail polish remover and Shane’s face. “I love you very much,” he says in a low voice, deadly serious but his smile is spreading wide.
Shane instinctively looks around them, forgetting as he often does that they’re married now, that the world knows about them, that he’s allowed to stand in a drug store picking out nail care products for his husband. He catches himself before he makes a full sweep of the store and looks back at Ilya. “I love you too,” he says. He takes the nail polish back, takes the bag of meds from Ilya too, and heads for the cashier.
Shane is sitting at the kitchen island on his laptop, doing some annoying bureaucratic work for camp this coming summer when Ilya walks in, lips pressed together in a tiny smile, hands behind his back. He looks awkward and shy and happy and so gorgeous, so vibrant that Shane is taken aback. If he’s being honest, Ilya has been dark more often than not lately. Therapy and medication have helped him function day to day, kept him from the sort of depressive episodes where he can hardly get out of bed, but he often slides into a low mood, the light behind his eyes dimming. So to see him like this has Shane shutting his laptop, forgetting all about the work he was doing, and laughing, saying happily, “Show me.”
Ilya strides over still with that look on his face and then brings his hands around, placing them on the island. Each of his nails is a bit of sky, a bit of ocean, a bit of pure clean ice. Perfect little pearls all lined up.
“Is still messy,” Ilya says, pointing to a few, minor places where the brush has strayed. But it’s nothing Shane would have noticed if Ilya hadn’t pointed it out.
“Ilya, they’re perfect,” Shane says.
He looks up to see Ilya blushing at the compliment, shoulders bunched up around his ears. “I need more practice,” he says. “But the YouTube tutorials I have been watching are helping.”
Shane takes Ilya’s wrist in his fingers and turns his hand back and forth so he can see all the dimensions of the blue. “They look so good,” he says.
Then, without Shane having to ask, Ilya takes his hands and places them on the Shane’s thighs, fingertips dimpling his bare skin.”Yes,” Ilya says. “They look very good.” He runs the fingers of one hand lightly up the inside of Shane’s thigh, both of them watching as the blue nails disappear under the hem of Shane’s shorts and then slip back out, moving back down to Shane’s knee. There, his fingers dance light circles around Shane’s kneecap, drawing a gentle sigh from Shane’s lips.
Ilya pulls his hand away. “This time there is something I want to see,” he says firmly, standing up tall next to Shane who tilts his head up to him. Ilya touches Shane’s face, swiping his thumb over his bottom lip, his eyes following the movement. “Knees,” he says.
Shane doesn’t need to be told twice. He gets on his knees on the cool kitchen tile and watches Ilya loosen the drawstring on the joggers he’s wearing and then push them down just enough to get his dick out. Hard already, flushed red. Shane leans forward, unthinking, drawn as if by a magnet, his lips and tongue dragging up the length of Ilya. And then he waits for permission, lips resting just under the head of Ilya’s cock.
Ilya doesn’t move or give any directions though. He just pushes his fingers into Shane’s hair, combing it back over and over, his eyes watching. Shane wishes he could see those pale blue nails getting lost in his dark hair, but it’s enough just to see Ilya’s reaction. His face opening up, stretching in joy and pleasure. His hands leave Shane’s hair and one of them cups Shane’s cheek, thumb at the corner of his mouth. Ilya moves his cock away from Shane’s mouth, pressing his thumb in instead. Shane sucks greedily at it, tasting salt, the faint chemical bitterness of the fresh nail polish. Ilya pulls his thumb back out, but only for a second, and then he pushes it back into Shane’s mouth with a low, satisfied grunt.
Shane keeps his eyes on Ilya’s face. His mouth has gone slack but the corners of it still turn up in a soft smile. His eyes are full of light. Ilya pulls his thumb out once more and then there are other fingers are pressing into Shane’s mouth. Index and middle. Shane’s tongue swirls around them. Ilya draws them out of Shane’s mouth, just as he’d done with his thumb, and lets them rest against Shane’s lips as he looks for a long moment, head tilted, moving his spit-slick fingers over Shane’s bottom lip. Then the fingers are back in Shane’s mouth, Ilya’s ring finger coming along this time, Shane’s mouth stretching around all three of them.
And that’s all they do for a while. Shane watches Ilya watching his fingers move in and out of Shane’s mouth. And he starts to think he could easily come like this. And it’s not Ilya’s fingers, not the heat of Ilya’s hard cock nearby, not the friction Shane’s own erection is experiencing inside his shorts. It’s just the look on Ilya’s face. That happy, lustful look of discovery, of realization.
Eventually, Ilya replaces his fingers with his cock and Shane is so eager and ready for it that he immediately swallows him down, choking, gagging, but not letting up. Ilya’s hands are in his hair again, pulling and twisting, and then they’re on his face, fingers pressing at the hinges of Shane’s jaw, thumbs on his cheeks where Shane knows Ilya can feel his own cock moving.
When Ilya comes barely a minute later, it’s a surprise to both of them. Ilya doesn’t have time to pull out like he usually would. “Oh, fuck, sorry, fuck,” he mutters as he’s suddenly spilling down Shane’s throat. Hot and bitter. It’s all Shane can do to swallow and swallow again, his hands holding onto Ilya’s thighs.
Ilya slides himself out of Shane’s mouth slowly and slumps back onto an empty stool. “Let me,” he says, motioning for Shane to stand up.
Shane stands, looking down at the wet stain on the front of his shorts. “I, um, don’t think it’s necessary,” he says.
But Ilya reaches into his shorts anyway, pulling out his softening cock and stroking it a few times, fingers spreading Shane’s come over the length of him, over Ilya’s fingers, his blue nails. “Do you, ah, let all the pretty girls come down your throat?” Ilya asks, quiet, not nearly as bold as the words he’s saying.
Shane looks away from the sight of Ilya’s hands on his wet dick and up into Ilya’s face. Ilya’s mouth is pressed together in that nervous pout of his. His eyes full of the false bravado that Shane can see right through by now. “Not all of them,” he says carefully. “Just one.”
Ilya nods, giving Shane’s cock one last squeeze before he lets it go. Then he kisses Shane on the mouth, softly at first, but then in his usual hungry way, his tongue sweeping in, exploring, looking for a taste of himself. When he pulls away, he says, “Is okay that I—”
“What? Lasted about two seconds?” Shane asks, teasing. But then, more serious, “Clearly it was okay.”
Ilya glances down at Shane’s shorts. “Yes, made quite a mess,” he says.
Shane puts his hands on Ilya’s shoulders. “Let’s go clean me up,” he says, pushing at him, guiding him to the stairs.
Over the next few weeks Ilya goes through a handful of different nail colors. Pinks, reds, blues, purples. He gets better and better at applying the color. Meanwhile, Shane researches top coats and base coats and other nail care things for him. He buys him all of the best ones.
One night, after Ilya has painted his nails a particularly deep pink, they’re out on the deck together and Ilya lights a cigarette. Normally Shane would complain, remind him he’s supposed to be quitting, ask him to go somewhere else if he’s going to smoke. But this time Shane’s breath is caught by the way his painted nails look holding the cigarette to his lips, by the particular angle of Ilya’s chin, something feminine and soft but also daring and confident, by the way Ilya looks at Shane through his eyelashes and blows the smoke demurely over his shoulder and then rests his elbow on the deck railing. The sun is setting and Ilya is bathed in gentle orange light and he looks so—
“There’s something different about you lately,” Shane says out loud.
Shane expects Ilya to make a joke, to deflect somehow. Instead, he puts the cigarette between his lips and says, “Yes.” And then, “I feel different.” He doesn’t explain any further than that. Shane doesn’t push him.
They go quiet. Ilya only takes a couple more drags on his cigarette before he puts it out. Shane almost tells him not to, almost tells him to keep on smoking the way he was with his pretty pink nails. But then Ilya puts his arm around Shane and Shane drops his head onto Ilya’s shoulder.
Shane is tying his bow tie when Ilya steps into the bedroom of their hotel suite. Shane stops and looks at him in the mirror. He’s forgone his usual tuxedo for a dark burgundy suit. The pants of which are tight on his thighs but then flare out over the heeled boots he’s wearing. The jacket is velvet with broad satin lapels, sleeves whose cuffs also flare and hang low over his hands. It cuts in at Ilya’s waist where there is a single button. He’s shirtless beneath it.
“Jesus,” Shane breathes out as he takes him in.
Ilya grins. “You like?”
Shane turns around. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. So he nods dumbly. Over and over. Until Ilya is laughing and crossing the room to him. “I like,” Shane manages to get out finally as Ilya pats his cheek fondly.
“I told Talia I wanted to do something different,” he says. There’s that word again. Different. “And I told her to make sure you were still boring. For contrast.”
Shane snorts. “Whose idea was it for us to share a stylist again?” he asks.
“Yuna’s,” Ilya says. “For our brand, she says.”
“Our brand.” Shane shakes his head and turns to the mirror again to look at his tuxedo. Black. Basic. Boring. And then there’s Ilya. “God, you’re—”
“Hot as fuck, yes,” Ilya says, sounding resigned about it. He tugs at the hem of his jacket, adjusts the lapels. Shane sees then that Ilya’s wearing a ring on his right pinky, something dainty but sparkling. His nails have been painted a nude color, pale and subdued. He stands next to Shane at the mirror. “It is made for women,” he says, doing a little turn so that Shane can see just how tight the pants are on his ass, how the back of the jacket drapes over it. “But Talia is very good at her job.”
“It looks like it was made for you,” Shane says, his eyes still moving over Ilya’s body.
Ilya takes that in, looking at his own reflection, his jaw set, turning this way and that way. He nods in agreement with Shane, but doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes on his reflection, swallowing, and then blinking, eyes shining a bit.
Shane steps back, giving Ilya the entire mirror, standing behind him and putting his hands on his waist. He presses a kiss to the side of Ilya’s neck, breathing in the fragrance he’s put on, something unexpectedly sweet and floral. His curls have been tamed with product into neat little coils but they’re still soft when Shane pushes his nose behind Ilya’s ear. “You look beautiful,” he says, meeting Ilya’s eyes in the mirror.
Ilya gives him a delicate, cautious smile. “And you, my very handsome husband,” he says.
Shane gives Ilya’s body one more long look, thoughts forming, desire blooming. “Do you have to return that when you’re done?” he asks.
Ilya turns around to look directly at Shane, slipping his arms around his neck. “You have something in mind?” he asks.
“Maybe,” Shane replies, blushing.
“Tell me, moy pomidor,” Ilya says, grinning, palming the back of Shane’s head, fingers in his hair, leaning in to kiss him.
Shane laughs as Ilya’s mouth drags over to his jaw. He tilts his head back, automatic and instinctual, letting Ilya nip at his throat, letting control slip ever so slightly away from him. “Wanna come all over your chest while you’re still wearing it,” he says, bringing a hand up to rest on Ilya’s bare chest.
Ilya pulls his head back to look at Shane, a dark glint in his eyes. Shane expects him to tease, to grab Shane’s dick through his tuxedo pants and tell him to hold that thought for the entire night while they’re at this boring gala fundraiser. But what he says is, “I love you.” And he kisses Shane sweetly and says it again, “I love you.” And then he says, “Yes, we will do that. When we get home.”
Shane smiles and he catches sight of the smile in the mirror. Stupid, hopeless, lost, in love. He’s been smiling like this for years, since the day he met Ilya. “When we get back to the hotel, you mean,” Shane says, because they’re not home. They’re in Los Angeles. Surely Ilya isn’t going to make them wait until they’re back in Ottawa in two days.
Ilya’s brow furrows. “I do not understand your stupid language,” he says. “You are here and I am here, so this is home, yes?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “You’re so fucking corny, Rozanov,” he says, laughing.
Ilya doesn’t argue. He kisses Shane. He looks at himself in the mirror again, tugging his jacket back down into place, smoothing a hand over the velvet, smiling in a way that Shane thinks is meant to be private, personal. Shane looks away and leaves him to it.
The camera flashes remind Shane that they are, in fact, moderately famous people. He forgets sometimes. Well, no, he doesn’t forget really. Being two publicly queer, married hockey players never really allows him to forget that they’re both highly visible and that parts of their life belong to other people. But Shane forgets that they’re famous, that they’re celebrities, that a certain amount of glamor follows them around.
Until they’re stepping out of the car together, Ilya going first, placing the toe of his shiny black boot down onto the pavement and then standing, adjusting his suit, reaching a hand into the car for Shane who takes it and holds on as he climbs out himself. There is a clamoring then, people shouting their names. Photographers mostly but also a medium-sized gathering of fans held back by a metal barricade. Shane takes a moment once he’s out of the car to acclimate, to remind his nervous system that this is all fine. He grips Ilya’s hand and takes a few deep breaths.
“Ready?” Ilya asks him.
Shane nods and lets Ilya lead them onto the red carpet which is actually a scrap of dark blue carpet that’s been rolled out onto the sidewalk with a backdrop set up with the names of the organizations the fundraiser is benefitting on it. A handful of fairly well-known, U.S.-based mental health and LGBTQ organizations. It’s the sort of event that isn’t really all that showy but the causes and the names of the organizations are big enough that it draws a fair amount of notable people.
There’s something performative about it that Shane hates. People showing up just to be seen there, to be photographed, and then leave immediately. But Ilya slips an arm around his waist and gently turns Shane in towards his body for a photo and Shane looks at him as he smiles a dazzling smile in his gorgeous suit with his rainbow Irina Foundation pin on one of the satin lapels, the pin that matches the one Shane has on his lapel, and Shane remembers what they’re here for, why it’s important for them to be seen here. Shane puts his own arm around Ilya and tries his best to smile for the cameras, never sure where exactly to look so he looks everywhere and hopes he doesn’t look insane when the photos make it to the internet.
“Ilya! Looking stunning!” One of the photographer shouts in their direction and Ilya throws them an easy wink.
Shane gives Ilya’s waist a squeeze and lets him go, stepping aside so that Ilya can be photographed on his own. He watches Ilya immediately start to pose, looking so natural, so at ease in front of the cameras. He stands with a hand in one of his pockets, his hips angled just so, his face serious and then smiling and then serious again. He runs a finger along his lapel, drawing attention to his bare chest, his hand coming to rest on the single button of the jacket, his pinky ring flashing in the lights.
Shane can’t take his eyes off of Ilya, not even as the photographers are calling out to him, asking him to smile, to look their way, just over here, Shane Shane. But Shane is lost in the glow of Ilya in his burgundy suit, his soft curls, his bright smile. And then Ilya is holding his arm out, beckoning Shane to come back to his side, and Shane goes instantly.
Their arms back around each other, a few more smiles, and then Ilya turns to look at Shane who is already looking back at him. Ilya raises his eyebrows in question and Shane gives him a small nod, absorbing some of Ilya’s confidence, and then he is being kissed, softly, simply, Ilya’s hand resting lightly on his jaw as cameras flash around them. They part but Ilya drops his forehead to Shane’s, smiling at him for another moment. And there are more flashes but Shane doesn’t notice them anymore. There’s only Ilya.
Shane’s waiting in line at the bar when there’s a tap on his shoulder. A voice saying, “Excuse me, are you Shane Hollander? Would you please sign my boobs?”
Shane turns to find Rose standing behind him in a glittering gown, her hair up, a warm smile on her face. “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Shane says, holding his arms out.
“Well, if you ever bothered responding to my texts,” she says. She steps into his hug and holds it for a long moment before letting go.
Shane frowns at her. “Sorry, this season has been kind of—”
“Shane, I’m joking,” Rose cuts him off, a hand on his arm. “Well, no, you have been bad at responding lately, but I actually didn’t know I was going to be here either. Last minute invite. I think Emma Stone couldn’t make it.”
“And you were the logical next choice,” Shane laughs, moving up to the bar. “Can I get you a drink?” he asks her.
“From the open bar? How very gentlemanly of you,” Rose says. And then to the bartender, “White wine, please.”
“And just a club soda for me,” Shane says.
The bartender nods and pours their drinks. “Lime?” he asks Shane.
“Sure,” Shane says, nodding.
Next to him, Rose grins. “A lime, wow,” she says. “Living on the edge.”
Shane nudges her gently with his shoulder and then hands her the glass of white wine. “You look great, by the way,” he says as they’re drifting towards an empty cocktail table. “For a last minute thing.”
“Just something I had lying around,” she says with a playful shrug. “But speaking of looking great—Ilya.” She moves around to Shane’s side of the table so she can survey the crowd of people. Shane spots Ilya a ways across the room, talking to a couple of figure skaters and a baseball player who had been seated at their table for dinner. Shane can tell when Rose’s eyes land on Ilya too because she moves in closer to Shane, their shoulders brushing.
“Ilya,” Shane agrees, resting his forearms on the table and watching Ilya laugh at a joke someone’s told.
“He seems happy,” Rose says.
“Yeah, I think he is,” Shane says. And because it’s Rose, he adds, “It’s kind of a relief actually.”
Rose looks at him. “Were you worried about him?”
Shane keeps watching Ilya. He’s moving now, away from the group he was talking to, weaving through tables and people, his movements fluid and beautiful. He seems to shine like a light in the drab, dimly lit ballroom. Everyone he passes turns to look at him, even just for half a second.
“Maybe,” Shane answers. “I mean, no, not worried. Just—”
Ilya has found a new group to join, a few older people he’s clearly identified as potential big donors. Shane watches Ilya switch on his charm.
“The relief is more like—” Shane pauses, allowing himself time to find the words. “He’s changing and I think it’s a good thing.”
Rose nods, her eyes turning back to find Ilya again. After a while, she says, “God, you love him so much it’s disgusting.”
Shane laughs. “What do you mean?”
Rose shakes her head. “Shane Hollander embracing change with open arms,” she says.
“Yeah, well, he’s my husband,” Shane says. “He’s—”
A pair of warm, strong hands come down on Shane’s shoulders. “Yes, I am his husband,” Ilya says, pressing in from behind Shane, kissing his cheek. Shane has absolutely no idea how Ilya got across the room so fast and without Shane even noticing. “Or did you forget?”
“Hello, Ilya,” Rose says, pushing away from the table and standing up straight to face him. “I was just telling Shane how great you look tonight.” She boldly reaches out to touch Ilya’s sleeve, feeling the velvet. “I think I wore something just like this to one of the X-Squad premieres.”
Ilya subtly moves his arm away from her hand, squaring his shoulders. “No. Is custom,” he says. “You did not wear anything like it.”
Rose shoots Shane a look, both of them trying to keep their laughter in. “Of course. My mistake,” she says.
“Ilya, be nice,” Shane says finally.
Ilya straightens out his jacket. “I am being very nice,” Ilya says. He smiles at Rose, a forced smile, almost baring his teeth at her. “I like your dress, Rose,” he says through those gritted teeth.
“Thank you,” Rose responds politely. “I like your nails,” she adds after a beat.
Shane sees Ilya relax at that, shoulders softening, his smile becoming slightly more genuine. “The color is called I’ve Got Atti-nude,” he says, holding out his nails in front of him.
Rose and Shane both burst out laughing, unable to keep it in any longer. Ilya joins them and actually lets Rose take hold of his hand so she can look more closely at his nails. Shane leans back with an elbow on the table, watching their heads bent over Ilya’s hand, both of them smiling.
“There’s this oil that I use for my cuticles,” Rose is saying to Ilya. “It keeps them from getting dried out and scraggly.”
Ilya moves to pull his hand away, but Rose keeps hold of it. “Not that yours are craggly,” she says, giving Ilya a look. “But just to make sure they stay nice and soft and pretty.” And now she’s actually stroking Ilya’s hand, looking down at his nails softly, admiringly, and Ilya’s letting her.
Ilya’s free hand reaches into his pocket to get his phone out. He opens up his Notes app and hands the phone to Rose. “Write down for me,” he says.
Rose smiles, taking the phone from him and typing.
“It was nice to see you and Rose getting along,” Shane says in the car on the way back to the hotel.
Ilya grunts in response, looking out the window. He has undone the button on his suit jacket, his chest and stomach exposed, the streetlights through the tinted window flashing on his skin.
Shane sighs and tries a different tactic. “I was a little jealous actually,” he says, sitting up straight, trying to pitch his voice deeper. “She was really, um, touching your hands a lot.”
Ilya looks over at him, a crooked grin spreading over his face. “You were jealous,” he says with a raise of his eyebrows.
“Sure,” Shane says, aware that he’s a terrible actor, a terrible liar. But Ilya’s face says that he’s willing to play along anyway. “Not just of her either. Everyone there. They were all looking at you.” And that’s not even a lie, Shane realizes.
“Now you know how it feels,” Ilya says dryly.
Shane blushes. “Nobody was looking at me tonight,” he says. “Trust me.”
Ilya hums, turning in his seat so that he’s facing Shane more directly. He tilts his head back, looking at him, studying him. “Maybe not tonight,” he says. “But when we go to store and you wear those shorts you like so much.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says softly. He feels his skin warming up, his body starting to be pulled towards Ilya’s body. “I think everyone in that room tonight wanted to fuck you.” He thinks of all the eyes that had turned mid-conversation to follow Ilya’s movements. “And you liked it, didn’t you?”
Ilya shrugs, glancing briefly out the window again. “Yes,” he says. “I liked it.” He turns back to Shane. “But what I liked most was knowing you were watching me too.” He takes in a deep breath, his legs spreading a bit, drawing Shane’s attention to where he’s already hard, straining against the tight fabric of his pants. “You watching me being watched by those boring people.”
Shane’s eyes dart to the partition separating them and the driver. Soundproof, dark. He loosens his bow tie, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “I was proud of you,” he says which isn’t very sexy, but it is true. “Proud of how confident you are, how yourself you are.” He swallows. “Proud that you’re mine.”
Ilya looks at him, his face going soft a bit. “I hope that you always are,” he says. “Proud that I’m yours.”
Shane feels that the words are heavy with other words just beneath them. But he doesn’t know what those other words are. He can see them but he can’t read them. He bites back the questions and unbuckles his seatbelt, leaning over and kissing Ilya, a hand on his thigh.
Ilya kisses him back, turning it heated right away, his tongue pushing into Shane’s mouth, a hand on the back of Shane’s head. Shane lets his hand wander up Ilya’s thigh until it finds his erection, palming at it and making Ilya groan into his mouth.
And then the car comes to a stop. They’re at the hotel. They move apart reluctantly with a few more lazy, messy kisses, Shane’s hand still cupping Ilya’s hard dick. But then they have to get out of the car so they sit back, arranging their clothes, taking a few breaths and then Ilya opens his door and steps out.
They’re barely through the door to their room before Ilya is pushing Shane’s jacket from his shoulders and working at the buttons of his shirt. All with their mouths crushed together, tongues licking at each other, breaths coming in heavy pants.
“No,” Ilya says firmly when Shane goes to push his suit jacket off.
“No?”
“You will get undressed,” Ilya says. “I will not.”
“Oh,” Shane says and then quickly pulls his shirt the rest of the way off and pushes his pants down around his ankles, stepping out of them. He picks both items off the floor and drapes them over the back of the couch.
“Everything,” Ilya says, looking at him, watching as Shane takes his socks off, his underwear, and then stands naked in front of him.
Ilya nods and turns away then, walking towards the bedroom without a word.
When Shane comes into the bedroom, Ilya is on the bed, stretched out, not just fully clothed but even still in his boots. He’s propped up on a few pillows, one ankle crossed over the other. He watches Shane as he stands at the foot of the bed, and as he’s watching, he undoes the button on his pants, pulls down the zipper, and takes his cock out, stroking himself a few times. He nods his head subtly at Shane, beckoning him, and Shane goes. Crawling onto the bed on his hands and knees, and then straddling Ilya’s thighs.
“Rose says I love you so much that it’s disgusting,” Shane says, looking down at Ilya, unable to keep himself from smiling, from wanting to lay his body down on top of him and just stay there listening to Ilya’s heartbeat.
Ilya smiles back, but then reaches for Shane’s cock, wrapping his fingers around it, thumb swiping over the head. “Why are we talking about Rose Landry right now?” he asks, reaching his head up so that Shane bends down to meet him in a slow kiss. “But, yes, she’s right. We are sickening.”
Shane keeps his head down low, forehead pressed to Ilya’s forehead, his eyes closed as Ilya touches him. “Oh, fuck,” he says.
Ilya’s hand leaves him and he nudges gently at Shane’s hips. “Higher.” He gestures, indicating he wants Shane up by the headboard, up by his—
“Yes,” Shane says, getting up on his knees and positioning himself over Ilya’s head, his hands holding onto the headboard.
Ilya scoots down a bit and then his hands are spreading Shane open. Shane feels the heat of Ilya’s breath on him and lowers himself to make it a little easier. Then there’s Ilya’s tongue pressing against him, into him. The velvet of Ilya’s jacket sleeves moves against Shane’s thighs as Ilya holds him in place, Ilya’s tongue moving almost as softly against him, licking him slowly and carefully now, his tongue trailing up and around Shane’s balls, his lips mouthing at the base of Shane’s cock.
“Ilya,” Shane breathes out. “Fuck, please.”
Ilya laughs beneath him and gives both of his thighs a not so gentle pat. Shane obediently moves back down again to straddle Ilya’s hips. He sits back on Ilya’s thighs and breathes as Ilya reaches to the nightstand for lube and condoms.
“We’ll mess up your pants,” Shane says, watching Ilya tear open the condom with his teeth and then roll it onto his dick. He squirts a generous amount of lube onto his palm and then fists himself.
“That is the idea, yes?” Ilya says, grinning, reaching once more for Shane’s thighs.
Shane takes a final look at Ilya’s outfit before it gets ruined. “You really were beautiful tonight,” he says. “Not just the clothes. Everything about you.” He pauses, knowing this is absolutely not the time, but also knowing he needs to say something. “I love every part of you, you know that, right?” His eyes move over Ilya’s face. “Even the parts I maybe haven’t seen yet.”
Ilya blinks, swallows, looks back at Shane, lips forming a soft smile. “Disgusting,” Ilya says, touching Shane’s cheek with one hand. “Now, please, sit on my dick.”
“Asshole,” Shane mutters, lifting up and letting Ilya line his cock up. He sinks down quick and hard, watching Ilya’s head drop back, eyes falling closed. “Like that?” Shane asks, light and teasing.
“Da,” Ilya responds, a low rumbling laugh, lifting his head back up, pressing his fingers into Shane’s thighs.
Shane doesn’t move for a few seconds, giving himself time to adjust to Ilya. Not that he needs much time for that after all these years. It’s more that he just likes the way Ilya feels, fully inside of him. He likes the way Ilya’s fingertips are pressing harder and harder, the way Ilya’s breathing is becoming strained. And, fuck, he likes the feeling of the zipper of Ilya’s pants against his skin, the silky, delicate fabric too. “Feels so good,” he says, moving his hips in a small, slow circle so that the head of Ilya’s cock bumps against his prostate. “Fuck.” He lifts his hips slightly and then comes back down. He does it again, faster, harder. Again, again, again.
“Da, da, da,” Ilya babbles underneath him.
Shane leans forward, taking hold of Ilya’s lapels, feeling the satin between his fingertips as he grips at them. “Fuck me, Ilya,” he says.
Ilya readily takes over, fucking up into Shane as Shane holds on to that suit jacket. He lets go of the lapels and grips at the shoulders, the velvet somewhat strange under his touch. He finds himself getting lost in the texture of it, that feeling working in tandem with the feeling of Ilya’s cock driving in and out of him. The soft, yielding luxury of it and the hard, relentless heat of Ilya.
“Close,” Shane says, sitting up, hands leaving the jacket, looking down now at Ilya’s chest and stomach underneath, moving his hands over his skin as Ilya keeps fucking him.
“Touch yourself,” Ilya says. “I want to watch you. I want to see it.”
Shane takes hold of his cock, giving himself a few tentative strokes, confirming just how close he really is, one foot over the edge already. Ilya’s thrusts have turned deep and slow and Shane moves his hand at the same tempo. He looks down again at Ilya, at the burgundy velvet, at his now messy curls, at his skin dotted with constellations Shane has charted over and over. “So pretty,” he says. “So fucking pretty.”
“Come for me,” Ilya says.
Shane’s hand moves faster on his dick. He feels Ilya’s movements start to stutter and falter, Ilya’s fingers gripping wildly at Shane’s hips, trying and failing to find control again. “Fuck, Ilya,” Shane says. “I’m gonna—”
“On me,” Ilya says. “All over me.”
When Shane comes, he angles his cock down to Ilya’s chest, watching as his come spills over Ilya’s skin, some of it streaking over those satin lapels, the velvet. He keeps his hand moving on himself, drawing the feeling out, making sure every last drop lands on Ilya.
Ilya has his head lifted, watching it all, lips pressed together tightly, nostrils flaring. He fucks into Shane sharply one more time and holds himself there. Shane feels Ilya’s cock pulsing inside of him as he comes with a deep groan, Shane’s own cock giving a weak, corresponding twitch.
“I will ask Yuna if she knows a good cleaner,” Ilya says when they’re cleaned up and in bed. The ill-fated suit hangs on the door to the wardrobe, stained in various places, wrinkled.
“Please don’t,” Shane says, peering at Ilya over the top of his glasses.
“Okay, so I will just have to tell Talia that her excellent tailoring work has been ruined during lovemaking.”
“Don’t say lovemaking,” Shane says with a shudder, turning back to the email he’s reading.
“So we are still only fucking?” Ilya asks, his fingers finding Shane’s side under the covers and tickling him.
Shane jerks away, laughing.
“I married you, but we are still only casually hooking up?” Ilya prods, fingers digging in deeper.
Shane drops his phone and reaches under the covers to push Ilya’s hand away, still laughing helplessly. “Okay, okay,” he says. Ilya retracts his hand, smiling. “Fine. We make love. That was lovemaking.” He adjusts his glasses which were knocked askew by his own flailing. “And I’ll find somewhere to get the suit cleaned. Don’t ask my mom about it.”
Ilya settles back into his pillow, a contented look on his face. Shane puts his phone on the nightstand along with his glasses and lies down on his side next to him.
“I don’t want you to think I am hiding things from you,” Ilya says when they’ve been quiet for a while.
“I don’t think that,” Shane says, brow furrowed.
“The parts of me you haven’t seen yet,” Ilya says, quoting Shane’s words back to him.
“Oh,” Shane says.
“I am not keeping them secret or—”
Shane opens his mouth to interject, to say he knows Ilya isn’t keeping them from him, but something tells him to let Ilya talk instead.
“There are things I am still figuring out,” Ilya says slowly, his eyes to the ceiling. “The nails and the clothes. They are part of it, but I’m not sure yet what it means.”
Shane again holds back, waits to see if Ilya will say anything more. When Ilya doesn’t, he says, “But it means something?”
“I think so,” Ilya says.
“And do you like how those things—the nails, the clothes—make you feel?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “It feels like…I am finding something I lost?”
Shane nods. He remembers feeling something like that when he first met Ilya and let himself be attracted to him, let himself want things and feel things he’d kept buried before. Maybe it isn’t exactly the same, but he still thinks he understands.
Ilya takes a breath. “So I am just trying things.”
“Okay,” Shane says, placing a hand on Ilya’s chest. “What do you want to try next?”
“I don’t know,” Ilya says, turning his head to Shane, smiling at him, covering Shane’s hand with his. “But I think I am excited to find out.”
Shane smiles back at him. “Me too,” he says quietly.
“Ilya, are you ready?” Shane calls upstairs for a second time. They’re running late for a team dinner at Wiebe’s house. They should have left ten minutes ago. Shane is trying not to get angry because then he’ll stay angry and ruin the whole night. And it’s supposed to be a celebration. They’ve made it to the playoffs again after gleefully beating the shit out of Montreal earlier that week. But Shane has been standing by the door waiting for Ilya for fifteen minutes now. Even Anya sighs and puts her head down on the floor looking at Shane with a pleading look, begging him not to pick a fight with her favorite dad.
“Ilya, if we don’t leave soon, we’ll—” But Shane stops because Ilya’s coming down the stairs finally and Shane can see now what’s been taking him so long.
Ilya is wearing a soft purple t-shirt that’s tight fitting and cropped well above his belly button and low slung, faded jeans. His hair which he’s been letting grow over the last month or so is pushed back with a small headband, barely visible amidst his curls but keeping his hair back from his face while his curls spring up behind the headband and hang softly around his ears. His lips are shining and pinker than usual. His eyelashes seem longer, seem—
“Are you wearing mascara?” Shane asks.
Ilya stands on the bottom step, one hand on the banister, nails painted a soft pink that matches the tone of the shirt he’s wearing, a few small silver rings on his fingers. He looks—Shane struggles to find the right words. There seem to be none or maybe there are too many. Ilya looks delicate, lovely, perfect. In a whole new way. A different way.
“A little,” Ilya answers shyly.
Shane doesn’t speak, can’t speak. His eyes travel over Ilya, taking in the softness of his hair, the pink of his lips, and then the hard muscle of his stomach. His bulging arms coming out of the t-shirt’s tiny purple sleeves. What should be a stark contrast is something more like a perfect blend, Ilya’s masculinity and his femininity coming together and presenting Shane, the world, with just: Ilya.
“Too much?” Ilya asks, looking down at his outfit, twisting his mouth to the side of his face.
Shane lets out a small laugh. “Definitely too much,” he says, just barely finding his voice. “Jesus Christ, Ilya.”
“Okay, I will change,” Ilya says, grinning as he turns to go back upstairs.
Shane reaches out, grabbing Ilya’s hand. “No, don’t,” he says, his eyes moving again to take in all of Ilya. “Please don’t.”
Ilya steps back down to the bottom step. “Ah, so you like it,” he says.
Shane can only manage a nod. He wishes they didn’t have somewhere to be. Wishes they had time to make out on the couch, Ilya’s lip gloss getting all over Shane’s mouth, Shane slipping his hands under Ilya’s t-shirt, Ilya’s long lashes looking up as he takes Shane in his mouth. But instead they’re already late for a dinner full of their teammates and—“But also, I mean, are you sure you want to go to Wiebe’s house like this?" he asks. “I know we’re a pretty progressive team, but—”
“But what?” Ilya asks, carefully pulling his hand from Shane’s.
Shane shakes his head. “They might not understand,” he says.
Ilya’s face falls. “You think it would be embarrassing,” he says.
“No,” Shane says, closing his eyes for a second. “No. That’s not what I mean. But it’s different when it’s just nails that get hidden under hockey gloves or you dressing up for an event or whatever. This is—”
Ilya looks at him, waiting for him to finish his thought.
“This is, I don’t know, real,” Shane says. And, god, he’s getting this wrong. He’s fucking everything up. He can see it on Ilya’s face, the disappointment, the hurt.
“I know it is real,” Ilya says defiantly, standing up straighter. “That is the point.”
But Shane can’t help imagining the team’s reaction to this version of Ilya walking into Wiebe’s house. The nervous laughter. The innocent remarks with hidden sharp edges. The curious, questioning, confused eyes on Ilya, not sure what to make of him.
“I just want you to be sure,” Shane says.
“I am sure,” Ilya says, his voice softening. He steps down off the stairs and stands in front of Shane. “They will understand.” Ilya takes in a breath, his chest broadening even more. “Besides I am their captain. They respect me and fear me.”
“They love you,” Shane corrects him. And he realizes Ilya is right. They will understand. Even if they don’t understand right away, they’ll try to. Shane still has to remind himself sometimes that this team is not like other teams. They are so much better.
“I want to go out like this,” Ilya says, lifting a hand to his hair, touching his curls, adjusting the headband slightly. “They are like my family, yes? I want them to see me.”
Shane nods. “Of course,” he says. “I’m sorry for being—”
“Protective,” Ilya finishes for him, touching Shane’s face. “You do not want to see me hurt.”
“No,” Shane says. “Especially not because of this.” He lifts a hand to Ilya’s waist, feeling his bare skin and the hem of his t-shirt. “Have I told you how good you look?”
Ilya smiles at him, gentle but wolfish. “Not in words,” he says. “Tell me.”
Shane moves closer, their bodies touching, his hand curling around Ilya’s waist and finding the small of his back. “You look so fucking good,” he says. “Maybe give Luca some space tonight. I don’t think he can handle this.”
Shane is right about Luca. The second he sees Ilya walk into the room he chokes on the beer he’s drinking, sputtering a bit onto Wyatt and then apologizing profusely to seemingly everyone in the room. “Hey, Ilya,” he says as casually as his trembling voice will let him. “Hey, Shane.”
Ilya delivers a lethal wink. “Do you like my look, Luca?” he asks lightly, putting a hand on his cocked hip. “Maybe you can draw me like one of your Spider-Men.”
Shane nudges Ilya with an elbow and gives Luca an apologetic look, ushering Ilya away before Luca has a chance to respond.
Otherwise, no one really seems to care or notice. Troy says he likes Ilya’s shirt. Evan asks Ilya about the headband he’s wearing, saying, “Oh nice. I think my sister had one like that in the 90s.” There are a couple of throwaway comments. Looking good, Rozanov. Or, Making us all look like fucking slobs, man. Or, Hollander, you taking that home tonight or what? And Ilya’s responding, I know. Or, You are always looking like fucking slobs. This is not new. Or, Yes, he will be taking this home and then he will—A chorus of yells drown out whatever it is Ilya’s claiming Shane will do to him when they get home.
And Shane spends the night watching Ilya across the table as they all celebrate and discuss strategy for the playoffs. Ilya’s mouth as he smiles, the shine on them catching in the light that hangs over Wiebe’s dining table. His pink nails as he lifts his bottle of beer. His shirt riding up, up, up as he leans back in his chair. Shane almost resents that no one has made a big deal of Ilya tonight. Because he is a big fucking deal.
“You know Ryan Price’s boyfriend?” Shane asks in the car on the way home. Out of nowhere. Even he didn’t realize he’d been thinking about this until he hears the question come out of his mouth.
“Fabian, yes,” Ilya nods. He is a bit drunk and he puts the window down, hanging his head over the side. The night is warm for early April. “We have met him several times.”
Shane reaches out to smack Ilya’s leg, missing completely. Ilya laughs at him. “Shut up,” Shane says. “I just mean, doesn’t he kind of dress like this? Like you?”
Ilya sits up a little, draping an arm over the side of the car, holding his hand out to feel the breeze. “Mm, yes, kind of,” he says after thinking for a few moments. “I know you think he’s sexy.” He rolls his head on the headrest to look at Shane, smiling and waggling his eyebrows at him.
“It’s not really the same though, is it?” Shane asks, ignoring Ilya’s comment.
Ilya is quiet again, looking out the open window at the trees going past them. “I don’t know,” he answers. “He is maybe a little more…dramatic.”
Shane nods and then shakes his head and then grips the steering wheel tight and says, “You’re not like anyone else.” The words all but bursting out of him.
Ilya doesn’t respond. When Shane glances over, he sees Ilya smiling softly with his face turned to the warm night, bathed in moonlight, some of his curls blowing in the wind. And he is so beautiful and Shane loves him so much and keeps loving him, more and more, deeper and deeper, every version of Ilya is someone new for Shane to fall completely in love with. “Ilya,” he says, wanting to say all of this out loud but not at all sure how.
“I know,” Ilya says, turning to look at him, his hand reaching out to touch the back of Shane’s head, fingers moving against his scalp. “Me too.”
When they get home, Ilya kisses Shane, pushing him back against the door before it’s even closed all the way, his hands on Shane’s hips, his mouth slick against Shane’s mouth, not at all sticky like Shane had expected. Shane touches Ilya’s waist, letting his fingers slip under the hem of his shirt as he opens his mouth to Ilya, sighing when their tongues meet.
Then Anya is there at their feet, jumping up on the backs of Ilya’s legs, barking. Shane laughs, parting from Ilya.
“I’ll take her out,” Ilya says. “You wait for me here.”
“Right here?” Shane asks, knocking his head back against the wall.
Ilya kisses him again, long and slow. “On the couch,” he says, tilting his head in the direction of the living room. “Naked. Get yourself hard for me.”
Shane closes his eyes, smiling, blushing at Ilya’s words, still, after all this time. “I already am,” he says, running his tongue along his bottom lip and tasting the sweetness of Ilya’s lip gloss.
“Keep yourself hard then,” Ilya says, moving away from Shane.
Shane opens his eyes and watches Ilya walking away, Anya trotting after him. When he hears the click of Anya’s leash and the sound of the side door opening and closing, Shane makes his way over to the couch. He sits down right in the middle and then remembers Ilya wants him naked so he stands up again and undresses, leaving his clothes neatly piled on the coffee table. He sits down again, not entirely sure what to do with himself now.
Keep yourself hard. He touches his neck with one hand and then drags it down his body slowly until he finds his dick. Only half hard. He wraps his fingers around it, squeezing it and pulling a groan from the back of his throat. He lets his head fall to the back of the couch and closes his eyes, picturing Ilya at the dinner table earlier that night, leaning back and stretching, his shirt up around his ribs, moles and skin exposed. How Shane had wanted to push it up further, shove it up to Ilya’s armpits, exposing his chest and his hard nipples.
“Oh, fuck,” Shane sighs, moving his hand, feeling himself grow harder. He thinks about his mouth on Ilya’s nipples, those perfect little buds, sucking, licking, biting. Ilya making the prettiest sounds for him. Shane’s hands on Ilya’s waist, holding his body down as he worked. Shane swipes his thumb over the head of his cock, precome starting to leak out of him. He lets go of himself then, thinking he’s as worked up as he needs to be, wondering what’s taking Ilya so long. He keeps his eyes shut and sees now Ilya’s fingers, soft pink nails, silver rings, fucking into Shane with all of Ilya’s usual strength and command. His cock jumps against his stomach, eager, waiting, wondering again where the fuck—
There is a sudden wet heat around him. A soft moan. Shane’s eyes fly open and Ilya is on his knees in front of him, Shane’s cock in his mouth. “Holy shit, Ilya,” Shane breathes out, hands gripping the edge of the couch cushion to keep himself from instinctively jerking back at the surprise.
Ilya is still fully dressed, only his shoes are missing. Shane leans forward a bit to watch him, noticing that his lips are pinker and glossier than they were just a few minutes ago, like he’d taken time to reapply his lip gloss before coming back to Shane. Shane doesn’t know why but the thought of that has him fucking hard into Ilya’s mouth, the head of his dick hitting the back of Ilya’s throat.
Ilya sputters but keeps going, his fingers wrapping around the base of Shane’s cock, head bobbing. He looks up at Shane and his eyes are watering, his mascara starting to run and smudge, those pink lips stretched wide around Shane, the shadows of the dark house falling across his face. And, again, he is so beautiful and he is so Ilya. “I love you,” Shane says, maybe too earnestly for sex, but he doesn’t care.
Ilya slows and pulls off of Shane, sitting back on his heels, smiling. His hand moves on Shane’s dick in place of his mouth. “Do you want to come on my face?” he asks.
Shane can’t help the laugh of absolute joy that bubbles out of him. “Asshole,” he says, and then, “Yes.”
Ilya takes the head of Shane’s dick back in his mouth, sucking at it, tonguing at Shane’s slit, a hand on Shane’s balls, pulling and rolling them, until Shane says, “Okay, yeah, fuck.”
Ilya pulls off again and lets Shane take hold of himself. Ilya sits lower on the floor, angling his face up, closing his eyes. Shane strokes himself furiously, only a few times, and then he’s coming, his cock shooting over Ilya’s lovely face, his glossy lips, his flushed cheeks, just barely missing his already wrecked mascara. When he’s done, Ilya’s tongue darts out, licking a bit of Shane’s come from his bottom lip.
Shane notices then that Ilya has his jeans open, his hand between his legs, fingers wrapped around his own cock and he’s coming too, angling his cock up to where his shirt has been pushed up, chest bared, come streaking over his muscles, those nipples, Ilya groaning as he strokes himself through it. Shane slides from the sofa to the floor, leaning forward to drag his mouth hungrily over Ilya’s chest.
“Everyone was nice,” Ilya says in bed later, Anya already asleep at their feet.
“They were,” Shane agrees. “They’re a good team. I wish all MLH teams were like ours.” He spares just a single resentful thought for the Metros and then lets them go again.
“We play in New York next week,” Ilya says.
“Yeah,” Shane says, checking his calendar on his phone. “Fly out on Monday.”
Ilya nods. “Would be nice to go to Kingfisher while we’re there,” Ilya says, adjusting the comforter over his body.
“Sure,” Shane says.
“Would be nice to be around people like us,” Ilya goes on. “Like me.”
Shane turns to Ilya. “Of course we’ll go,” he says. He wonders if Ilya has been lonely. He wonders what Ilya means exactly by like me. He wonders if Ilya is still holding back some part of himself from Shane. He wonders a lot of things that he can’t figure out how to ask him, that he isn’t sure he should ask him just yet. Instead he asks, “When did you learn how to put mascara on?”
Ilya smiles slowly, lifting an arm over his head, stretching out. “It is not rocket science,” he says. “You just swipe swipe.” His hand does a quick little brushing motion by each of his eyes.
Shane laughs quietly. “I know, but—”
“My mother,” Ilya says, because he knows exactly what Shane is actually asking him. “She would let me sit with her and watch her when she was getting ready to go out. She would show me everything she was doing and then do it on my face too. My eyes and cheeks and lips.” He smiles to himself. “She would make me pretty like her.”
Shane holds his breath the way he always does when Ilya shares anything about his mother.
“Only when my father was not at home, of course,” he says. His eyes turn faraway, like he’s transported back to Russia, back to his childhood. Shane wishes he could go there with him. “I was young. I didn’t—It was just a way for us to spend time together.”
Shane turns slowly onto his side, propped up on an elbow, watching Ilya.
“But now I wonder if—” Ilya breaks off, turning his face away from Shane. “If maybe she understood something about me that I didn’t yet.” A tear slides from the corner of his eye. “If maybe she—”
Shane drops down from his elbow, moving closer to Ilya, pressing a light kiss to his shoulder.
Ilya sniffs, wiping at his eyes. “Or maybe I am just thinking about things too much,” he says, turning back to Shane. “Anyway. That is where I learned.”
Shane still doesn’t say anything, just rests his head on Ilya’s chest.
“Won’t you be cold?” Shane asks, coming up behind Ilya in the bathroom. He trails his lips over the warm skin of Ilya’s bare shoulders and bare back, his nose stopping briefly in the hair that falls long over the back of Ilya’s neck now. He rests his chin on Ilya’s shoulder and looks at their reflection in the mirror over the sink.
“We take cab,” Ilya shrugs. “I will be outside for ten seconds.” He smiles at Shane and lifts a brush to one of his eyebrows. Shane isn’t sure what the brush does but Ilya’s eyebrow comes out more defined, darker but still close to his natural hair color. Ilya does the same thing to his other eyebrow.
The top Ilya’s wearing ties around his neck and then there’s nothing but a vast expanse of Ilya’s skin before the material starts up again near his waist. It’s low cut too. A deep V down Ilya’s chest. Black. Form fitting. Sexy as hell. Shane’s hand skims over Ilya’s stomach where the top meets the waistband of his underwear. “What are you wearing with this?” Shane asks.
Ilya is dabbing something onto his cheeks with his fingertips now. His cheeks coming to life with the faintest flush, light and rosy. “Not sure,” Ilya answers, rinsing his fingers in the sink and holding his face close to the mirror for examination. He steps back from the sink then, turning around in Shane’s arms. “You don’t like this outfit?”
They both look down at the dark gray boxer briefs Ilya is currently wearing with the top. Shane laughs. “I probably like it too much,” he says honestly.
Ilya’s smile glints at Shane. He reaches between them and cups Shane’s dick through his pants. “Yes, could be problem,” he says. “Then again, the Kingfisher is a very welcoming sort of place.”
“I can’t have members of the opposing team seeing my boner before the game tomorrow, Ilya,” Shane says in a very serious voice because he knows it will delight Ilya. And it does. Ilya’s face breaks open beautifully as he laughs.
“Good intimidation tactic, no?” Ilya says, pressing the heel of his hand into Shane’s growing arousal.
Shane kisses him lightly and then steps away from him, shaking his head. He turns and leaves the bathroom to find Ilya’s suitcase which he’s left open but still mostly unpacked on the luggage rack by the door. He starts to go through the clothes Ilya has brought with him. Workout stuff. Comfy plane clothes. That pair of light, low rise jeans Ilya’s been almost living in lately because they tend to work with whatever sort of mood Ilya’s in that day. And then something else. Something Shane doesn’t recognize. Silky and small. He lifts it out of the suitcase and unfolds it.
“What about this?” he asks, stepping back into the bathroom, holding up the skirt for Ilya.
Ilya pauses with his fingers in his curls, looking in the mirror at the skirt, at Shane. “Yes, that is an option,” he says, a little hesitant even though it’s clearly the exact outfit he’d had in mind for tonight.
Shane comes further into the bathroom and holds the skirt up to Ilya’s hips, trying to take in the full outfit. The skirt is dark purple and looks like it would hit just below Ilya’s knees. And he can already see just how the silk would cling to Ilya’s thighs. “The best option, I think,” he says decisively, wanting to encourage Ilya, support him. Also, he really does think Ilya would look fucking hot.
Ilya frowns. “I do not have the right shoes.”
Shane goes back out to survey the shoe options Ilya’s brought with him. There are his sneakers and his slides and then a pair of black boots that he’s brought along mostly to wear when they’re going in and out of the arena and being photographed for social media so he needs to look somewhat presentable. They’re maybe a bit clunky, a bit more masculine than the rest of Ilya’s outfit, but they’re something.
Shane brings the boots into the bathroom. “What about these?” he asks, holding them along with the skirt.
Ilya turns from the mirror and looks at the boots, looks at the skirt, looks at Shane. He smiles. “They might work,” he says.
“Rozanov is really working it over there,” Scott says as he slides into the booth next to Shane.
Across the bar, Ilya is playing pool with Troy and Harris and Eric. He’s currently bent over the pool table, facing away from Shane, the silk of his skirt clinging to his ass as he lines up his shot. Shane watches his arms, the muscles in his back, as he takes the shot and knocks a ball into the pocket, cheering triumphantly.
Only then does he take in what Scott’s said, that Scott is even there next to him. “Oh, um, yeah,” he says. He clears his throat and tries to find some semblance of confidence. “He looks good, doesn’t he?”
Scott eyes him curiously and then grins. “This is a new thing, right?” he asks, leaning forward in his seat, holding his bottle of beer.
Ilya is standing next to Troy now, his hip cocked to one side, the arm not holding onto his pool cue casually resting on Troy’s shoulder as he watches Eric move around the pool table looking for his next move. The skirt sits low on his hips, leaving a decent gap between it and Ilya’s halter top. His curls hang long and loose around his face, nearly brushing his shoulders. In the dim light of the bar, his face glows, those rosy cheeks, pink lips. Eric takes his shot and then Ilya is pointing at something, his face serious as he starts to shit talk. Eric only shakes his head, raising his hands in defense, grinning. Troy and Harris are laughing at the exchange. Ilya remains stern, still pointing, eyebrows raised. Eventually, he sighs, waving a dismissive hand, and motions for someone else to take their turn.
Shane feels himself smiling dumbly, adoringly, in the direction of his husband. And then he, again, remembers Scott next to him, the question he’s asked. “What’s a new thing?” he asks.
“Ilya,” Scott says, gesturing with his beer towards the group at the pool table.
Ilya catches Shane’s eye and winks at him, lifting a glass to his mouth and taking a drink. Shane pulls his bottom lip between this teeth briefly and then lets it go. He turns to look at Scott now. “What do you mean?”
Scott laughs. “Man, I forgot what conversations with you were like,” he says, not unkindly.
But Shane still feels like he’s missed something. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m distracted, I guess. Big game tomorrow.”
“Right, it’s the game that’s got you distracted,” Scott says. “Not your husband over there in an outfit that’s not leaving much to the imagination.”
Shane presses his lips together, trying to fight off the smile that’s threatening to spread over his face again. He cannot let the competition see how absolutely lovestruck he is. “Where’s Kip, by the way?” he asks, hoping to change the subject.
“Elena’s in town so he’s having dinner with her,” Scott says, lifting an arm to check his watch. “He said they might show up later.”
Shane nods, taking a sip of his club soda, watching Ilya get a knee up on the side of the pool table, arching his back exaggeratedly, his ass in the air, making Shane choke. Scott pats his back hard as Shane coughs with a hand to his mouth. Ilya takes his shot and dismounts the pool table with a confident, pleased smile on his face.
Shane swears as he’s catching his breath and then he has to laugh at himself. Scott’s already laughing anyway. “Alright, yeah, he’s distracting,” Shane says.
“He was already some sort of fucking bisexual terrorist,” Scott says. “And now he’s—” He stops, his eyebrows pulling together, like he’s trying to find the right word for what Ilya is now.
He looks to Shane for help, but Shane can only shrug.
“Weaponizing his hot body?” A voice suggests from behind Shane.
Scott’s eyes light up and then Kip is sitting down next to him, an arm slung over Scott’s shoulders. “He was already doing that,” Scott says, holding his cheek out for Kip to kiss. “No Elena?”
Kip shakes his head. “She has some early work thing,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “I suspect she’s meeting a hookup that I wouldn’t approve of.”
Shane lets them talk to each other for a moment as his eyes drift again to Ilya who he finds already looking back. He doesn’t wink or grin or needlessly adjust his skirt in an attempt to draw Shane’s attention to his body. He doesn’t show off for the sake of the others in the bar. He looks back at Shane and smiles, a genuine smile, soft and loving, just for Shane. Shane feels his face warm.
“Is this what they’re like on the ice together?” he hears Kip say in a low voice to Scott. “How exactly did they make it to the playoffs?”
Shane blinks, turning back to the table in time to see Scott give a small shake of his head. “I’m pretty sure these two are fueled by their horniness for each other,” he says.
And then Kip and Scott both turn their heads to look at Ilya who is making his way across the bar now. His eyes fixed on Shane, his hips swinging more than they normally would, everything about him loose and confident.
“Oh, so they’re going to fucking annihilate you tomorrow,” Kip whispers to Scott.
“Hunter, I am glad you decided to stay out past your bedtime,” Ilya says when he gets to the table. “And, Kip, I see you are still committed to your elder care duties.”
“Ha ha,” Scott says.
“Good to see you, Ilya,” Kip says.
Ilya ignores them and gives Shane a long look. “I am going to bathroom,” he says curtly, and then he walks away.
Shane sits for a second, confused about why Ilya came over to announce that. Then he feels Scott’s elbow in his side. “Pretty sure your husband wants to fuck you in the bathroom of my bar,” he says.
“Oh,” Shane says. His brain catches up. “Oh. No, I’m sure that’s not—But I’ll just go check on him.”
As he’s walking away from the table, he hears Scott and Kip laughing.
Shane knocks lightly on the bathroom door and it opens right away, a hand reaching out to pull Shane inside and press him to the door, reaching around him to latch it. Shane laughs, surprised, nervous maybe. “Scott thinks you want to fu—”
Ilya kisses him hard, hand on his jaw, tongue in his mouth, body pressing into Shane. And it’s all Shane can do to let his head fall back against the door, let his mouth open up to Ilya with a muffled moan.
They kiss like that for a while. Shane pinned to the door while Ilya devours him. Eventually Shane’s hands find Ilya’s waist, that strip of skin between his top and his skirt, and something in Shane comes alive. He kisses Ilya back matching his enthusiasm, his ferocity. With his hands on Ilya’s hips, he turns him, reversing their positions, pressing Ilya into the door as his hands move down over the curve of his ass, down his thighs, the silk smooth and cool under his palms. He starts bunching the skirt up, his hands seeking the warm skin just beneath it.
“You could not keep your eyes off me,” Ilya says, dragging his mouth away from Shane’s.
Shane breathes, his mouth already reaching again for Ilya’s. He knows he’s supposed to tease Ilya back now, say something about how Ilya was taunting him bending over that pool table, but instead he just says, “No, I couldn’t.”
Ilya’s mouth comes in close again, but pulls back before kissing Shane. “You like me like this?” he asks.
Shane leans in, a faint brush of their lips before Ilya moves back again. “Fuck yes,” Shane says. “You’re so—”
And now Ilya has both hands on Shane’s face, tilting it back so that their eyes meet. “You do not mind me in a skirt, in make up, even though you are incredibly gay and do not like women?” He smiles as he asks this, as if it’s just a joke.
Shane presses his eyes closed. There is suddenly too much going on in his body, in his head. There’s his hot, sharp desire, his desperate need for Ilya to kiss him some more, and then there’s the question Ilya’s just asked him which sounds like a serious one, an important one that’s been living in Ilya’s head for god knows how long and needs to be answered. He opens his eyes again, finds Ilya looking straight back at him.
“Are you worried about that?” Shane asks.
“It is something I think about sometimes,” Ilya says, his eyes darting to the side.
“But you’re not a woman, right?” Shane says and it immediately feels like the wrong thing to have said.
Ilya tilts his head and smiles. “No, I do not think so,” he says.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Shane says. “I feel like I’m doing this wrong.”
“I am not sure there is right way to do this,” Ilya teases.
“What I’m trying to say is, I like you. I love you,” Shane says. “Like, it’s only really ever been you.”
“Yes, I ruined you for anyone else, I know,” Ilya says with a sigh.
Shane’s hands are still resting on Ilya’s thighs underneath his skirt and he squeezes them now. “And all of this just brings more you to the surface,” he says. “So, no, I don’t fucking mind. Obviously I don’t fucking mind.”
Ilya is quiet for what feels like a long time and then his head falls back against the door and he looks at Shane. “So you are Ilyasexual,” he says.
“Oh, my god,” Shane groans, laughing. “Fuck you.” He closes the space between them, kissing Ilya. They’re less frantic than they were before, taking their time, kissing sweetly, almost chastely. Shane hands drop from Ilya’s thighs, letting his skirt fall back into place.
“I love you,” Ilya says when they part again. “I am Shanesexual.”
Shane kisses Ilya once more, teeth catching his bottom lip this time. “You better be,” he says.
Back out in the bar, the mood has changed. The lights are dimmer and multicolored now, swirling. The music is louder. A new wave of patrons seems to have blown in while Shane and Ilya were making out in the bathroom. And they are all crowded in the center of the bar dancing with their arms in the air, laughing and shouting with their heads thrown back.
Shane immediately wants to leave, but he feels Ilya’s hand slip into his and he looks over and sees Ilya surveying the crowd with lit up eyes. He smiles with lips Shane watched him retouch in the bathroom mirror seconds ago. “Just one song,” Ilya says, already pulling on Shane’s reluctant arm.
Shane groans. He hates dancing. He’s so awkward and uncoordinated and always feels like everyone is watching him no matter how many times he tells himself they’re not. And this crowd is especially not watching him. They’re all wrapped up in each other. Sweaty bodies moving with other sweaty bodies. Mostly men with other men though there seem to be all types of people in the Kingfisher tonight.
And this is something Shane still struggles with. Even though he’s out and married to a man and no longer hiding any of that in the shadows, he still feels anxious about being in such blatantly queer spaces. He can’t help but feel some residual fear that he’ll be seen by the wrong person in an environment like this. He can’t help but hear the echoes in his head of being told not to be too gay. And, maybe more than that, he can’t help but feel like he doesn’t quite fit in places like this. He is, confusingly, too gay and also not gay enough.
But he looks at Ilya standing at the edge of the dancing crowd, holding onto Shane’s hand. His beautiful husband with his hair parted in the middle, curls framing his face. His strong shoulders in his halter top, the fine lines of his collarbones. His skirt gently swinging around his knees. His eyes on Shane, only on Shane.
“Okay,” Shane says. “One song.”
Ilya beams and pulls Shane into that crowd, right into the middle of it. Ilya puts his arms around Shane’s neck and starts to move his hips in time to the music. Shane’s hands fall to Ilya’s hips and he does his best to keep up. The song isn’t anything Shane recognizes. He can’t even really hear anything besides the thumping bass and a few electronic clicks and beeps. He focuses on Ilya, on the feel of his body under his hands, on the way Ilya moves, unabashed and free.
Ilya moves in closer, bringing his mouth next to Shane’s ear. “Let go,” he says. “Move with me.” He pulls his head back and gives Shane a look before taking Shane’s face in his hands and kissing him. A long, liquid sort of kiss that Shane can’t help but dissolve into, his arms wrapping around Ilya, pulling him close, holding him. The rest of the world tunes out, fades away. And when the kiss is over, they stay close like that and Shane finds himself moving with Ilya, swaying back and forth, their hips pressed together, their chests and stomachs, their foreheads, Ilya’s hands in Shane’s hair. Shane closes his eyes.
The song thumps along and when it ends, Shane doesn’t immediately retreat. He looks up into Ilya’s face as a new song starts and they smile at each other, still moving, the rhythm of their bodies adjusting automatically to the song, finding its tempo.
“One more song,” Shane says, letting his hands slide down Ilya’s back and come to rest at the top of Ilya’s ass.
Ilya grins and presses in closer, pressing his lips to Shane’s cheekbone, the hinge of his jaw, the side of his neck. Shane tilts his head, sighing, closing his eyes, his hands inadvertently slipping lower, over the curve of Ilya’s ass. His eyes open for a second as Ilya’s mouth and tongue move on his throat and Shane sees all of the people around them, strangers some, but also people they know, people they work with, people they will face on the ice tomorrow night. And Shane is here, dazed, with Ilya’s mouth on him, with his hands moving down, cupping Ilya’s silk-clad ass.
Definitely too gay. And so far from not gay enough. Shane doesn’t mind. Not in this moment. “God, I fucking love you,” he says into Ilya’s ear.
“I love you too,” Ilya mutters, mouth dragging back up Shane’s throat. “So much.”
They dance through a third song and then a Bad Bunny song that Shane recognizes from car rides with Ilya comes on and Ilya is pulled into a group with Troy and a few other Centaurs Shane didn’t see arrive. Shane desperately needs water so he’s happy to let Ilya go.
At the bar, he finds the free pitcher of water and pours some into a plastic cup. He turns around, leaning back against he bar and watching as Ilya jumps around and sings along to the song.
“I didn’t know you had moves like that,” Harris says, leaning into the bar next to Shane and watching the dance floor with him. Troy and Ilya have their arms around each other’s shoulders and they are smiling and yelling.
“Me neither,” Shane says, lifting his cup to cover the stupid smile on his face. He’s feeling more than a little drunk on Ilya at the moment. “Ilya brings it out of me, I guess.”
Harris nods, his eyes on Troy. “Sometimes we need some help to really be ourselves.”
The song changes again. Now it’s something by a female pop star that seems to get the entire room going. Ilya is laughing and dancing with his skirt fisted in both hands, lifting it up above his knees, showing off his thighs as he swings his hips around.
Shane turns around to refill his water. “Listen, you’re into, like, queer stuff, right?” he says to Harris who has turned around with him.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Harris says slowly. “Why?”
Shane shakes his head, trying to figure out what he’s saying, what he’s asking. “What do you think about Ilya?” is what comes out of him.
Harris turns slightly towards Shane, one elbow resting on the bar. “He’s great,” he says. “We all adore him. He’s kind, loving, deeply loyal.” He pauses. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re asking me about.”
“I’ve been googling about gender identity recently,” Shane says nervously. “But a lot of it is kind of over my head, I think. There are a lot of different labels.”
“There are,” Harris says.
They both turn back around at the same time, facing the dancers again. An old Celine Dion song is playing now. Shane actually knows this one. Every one is singing and gesturing dramatically. Ilya’s hair is swinging around his sweaty face as he sings but when you touch me like this.
“He’s not—I mean, he doesn’t dress like this every day or even all that often. But when he does, he seems so happy and, I don’t know, content maybe. At peace,” Shane says.
“I can tell,” Harris says warmly. Ilya has pushed all of his hair to one side and he sinks down to his knees with the skirt pulled up from the sticky bar floor, mouthing along to it was more than any laws allowed, baby, baby.
“But then he doesn’t seem unhappy when he’s doesn’t dress like this,” Shane continues, feeling some relief to talk about this with someone. “It’s like he’s not really one thing or the other, he’s just—Ilya.”
Harris is quiet for a second. “There are plenty of people who thrive in that in-between area. He could be nonbinary, or maybe one of the more specific identities like genderfluid or genderqueer,” he says. “Or even none of those things. It’s up to Ilya to decide what label, if any, he wants to use. He could be totally fine just being Ilya.”
Shane nods. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “I just want to help him figure it out, if I can.”
Harris puts a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “He’s lucky to have you,” he says. “I think just keep supporting him, keep letting him know you’re around to talk about these things.”
“Thanks, Harris,” Shane says.
Harris excuses himself to take Troy some water, leaving Shane alone at the bar with the words he’d said repeating in his head: nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer.
And then Ilya emerges from the crowd, considerably sweatier than he was when Shane left him. At the edge of the dancefloor, he stops and adjusts the straps of his halter top, adjusts the waist of his skirt, runs his fingers through his hair, and then scans the room and spots Shane at the bar, his face erupting into a smile.
“Ready to go?” Shane asks when Ilya’s made his way to the bar. He checks his watch. It’s later than he thought and they do have a game tomorrow. “We have to be up pretty early.”
“Noooo,” Ilya says, drawing the word out, putting a pathetic groan into it. “I want to live here.”
“In the bar?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “In the bar. With this wonderful music and these beautiful people.” He throws an arm out as if to encompass the scene around them.
“Are you drunk?” Shane asks. He doesn’t know how Ilya could have gotten drunk so fast, but he isn’t usually this genuinely effusive about other people.
“No,” Ilya replies, leaning in towards Shane and stumbling slightly on his feet. “Maybe a little. Scott Hunter’s husband gave me drink. Was pink. Strong.” He smiles. “Maybe he gave me two?” He frowns. “No, second was blue drink. Very strong.”
Shane gives a sigh that’s full of warmth and fondness. “Alright,” he says. “Then we should definitely get back to the hotel before anyone else gives you mysterious, brightly colored drinks.”
Ilya slumps against Shane as they wait for the cab outside. He has an arm hooked around Shane’s neck, his head resting on Shane’s shoulder. “I felt very beautiful tonight,” he says, the words sliding into each other.
Shane puts a stabilizing arm around Ilya’s waist. “You were very beautiful,” he says. “Are very beautiful.” And then, noticing Ilya’s shivering, “And now you’re very cold, aren’t you?”
“No,” Ilya lies. But he stands up to let Shane slide his jacket off and wrap it around Ilya’s bare shoulders. Then he promptly slumps down again. “I think it is knowing that you love me,” he says. “Incon—Uncond—” His drunken tongue struggles with the English word and ultimately gives up. ‘No matter what.”
“I do,” Shane confirms, tightening his hold on Ilya. “I love you even when you’re too drunk to stand on your own.”
Ilya presses his nose to Shane’s neck, nuzzling him. “That is why I can be myself,” he says. “Because of you.” He goes quiet and still and then says, sounding very dramatic, “You have freed me, Hollander.”
“Freed you from what?” Shane asks, laughing, but also really wanting to know.
The cab pulls up before Ilya can answer and Shane manages to wrangle Ilya inside, manages to wrangle him back out when they get to the hotel, manages to get him into the elevator and up to their room where Ilya finally and promptly falls face first onto the bed, fully dressed and wearing Shane’s jacket still.
Shane walks to the foot of the bed and kneels down so he can slide Ilya’s boots from his feet. When they’re both off, Ilya rolls over, looking up at Shane, sleepy, drunk, happy. Shane sits on the bed, nudging Ilya so that he lifts his top half up and Shane can work the jacket off of his shoulders. Ilya falls back down to the mattress once it’s off. Shane starts to work on taking Ilya’s skirt off for him. Easy enough with its elastic waist and slippery material. Ilya barely has to move for Shane to slide it down his legs and then off. And maybe Shane had hoped to be taking this skirt off in a sexier way. Maybe he’d hoped to be leaving it on in a sexier way. But then there’s Ilya lying on the bed in his underwear and halter top, still smiling up at Shane like he’s delirious, like he’s dreaming. His makeup has remained mostly in place despite the sweat while his hair’s gone wild. His arms stretch out on either side of him and then he raises them over his head, elongating his body, narrowing his waist, twisting his hips.
“Galina taught me a word recently,” Ilya says, dropping his arms back down. “Nonbinary.” He enunciates each syllable carefully, clearly.
As a rule, Shane doesn’t ask Ilya what he talks about in therapy and Ilya rarely brings it up. So now he hesitates. “You’ve talked to her?” he asks carefully. “About this?”
Ilya nods. “Just in last session,” he says. “Briefly.”
“Oh,” Shane says, and then, “I’m glad.”
Shane reaches towards Ilya’s neck, finding the knot of the halter top and untying it, but then he doesn’t know what to do, how to get the top off of Ilya with him lying down, not wanting to make him sit up. So he leaves the untied straps lying loose on Ilya’s chest and shoulders. “Do you think you are?” he asks. “Nonbinary?”
Ilya thinks about that for a moment. “Yes,” he says, turning his eyes to Shane.“Maybe. Sometimes.”
Shane lies down next to him, head propped up on his hand. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “Harris told me there were other words too. Like, more specific ones.”
Ilya lifts his head. “You have talked to Harris?”
“Yeah, earlier tonight,” Shane says. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”
“No, no,” Ilya says, his eyes turning soft. “Is good. Makes me happy.”
“But he mentioned genderfluid,” Shane says. He tries to remember the other one. “And, um, genderqueer. I was going to look them up, but—” He stops because Ilya is looking at him very closely. “What?”
Ilya keeps on looking at him for a long beat. “Come here,” he says quietly.
Shane smiles and lowers his head, meeting Ilya in a soft kiss. When he moves to break the kiss, Ilya presses back in, kissing him again, just as soft. They’re both too tired for anything more than this, but this is more than enough. “We can look it up later, I guess,” Shane murmurs into Ilya’s mouth.
He feels Ilya smile into the next kiss. “Yes, later,” Ilya says.
They crush the Admirals but then they’re knocked out of the playoffs a week later when they lose to Boston. A defeat that crushes all of them of course, but Ilya takes it the hardest. The failure seems personal to him. Not just losing to his old team, but losing during the first season he and Shane are playing together. Losing when they had so much to fucking prove to everyone. Losing when Ilya had such high hopes.
The rest of the team is upset but rallies quickly. The fact that they’d made it to the playoffs for a second time in a row is enough of a miracle and a novelty for them. They’re extraordinarily optimistic for next season. Even Shane mostly just feels grateful that he’s still playing hockey at all after everything, that he’s playing hockey on a fucking good team. He knows they’ll take it next year. He knows this season was only the beginning.
But at home, Ilya slips into a funk. He spends most of his time on the couch watching action movies or taking Anya out for walks that get longer and longer. He eats too much junk food. He sleeps late or not at all. He smokes more than he should considering how much progress he’s made towards quitting. He picks fights with Shane about the littlest things and then immediately surrenders the fight, too tired to keep it going, leaving Shane frustrated.
He takes his meds though. Sticking to a strict schedule of alarms and rituals. And he starts going to therapy twice a week instead of just twice a month. Shane is relieved that Ilya is at least aware enough to recognize his behavior, to know when he maybe needs more help than usual. Even more relieved when Ilya eventually starts to slowly crawl back out from the darkness, emerging a little further every day. When he asks Shane to join him and Anya on their walk one night. When Shane catches him popping out a piece of nicotine gum. When he wakes up before Shane to go for a run and comes back smiling and sweating and kissing Shane all over in that way that makes Shane squirm.
And so when Ilya—on one of his good days, his sixth good day in a row, and Shane has absolutely been counting—suggests heading out to the cottage early so that they have more time there before camp starts up, Shane readily agrees.
“Yeah, we’ve got all the coaches ready to go,” Shane says to his mom over the phone. He’s pacing in front of the living room window as they go over final camp details that don’t really need to be gone over, but his mom insists. “We just need a few extra sticks, I think. We lost a couple last year.”
“Lost or broke?” his mom asks.
“Okay, broke,” Shane admits. “We had that kid who just kept holding them too tight. I didn’t know a twelve-year-old could be that strong.”
“Is he coming back this year?”
“No,” Shane says. “I don’t think he really took to the game.”
“Good,” Yuna says, no love lost on her end for the poor kid who didn’t know his own incredible strength. “And have you thought about…”
But Shane doesn’t hear the rest of her question because he sees Ilya outside, laid out on the grass by the lake, sunning himself in a bikini. From this distance, Shane can only tell that the bikini is ridiculously small, bright red, and seems be made almost entirely out of strings. Ilya lies with one leg bent and the other stretched out, arms at his side, sunglasses covering his eyes. His skin is already tanned and glowing after a couple of weeks here. Shane wonders if he’s even bothered to put sunscreen on.
“Shane?” his mom is saying into his ear. “Are you present or should I call you back later?”
“Call me back later,” Shane answers honestly.
He hears her sigh into the phone. “Alright,” she says. “But tell Ilya there is work that needs to be done.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him,” Shane says, watching Ilya tug at one of the strings of his bikini bottom.
“I’m sure you will,” Yuna says sarcastically.
“Bye, Mom,” Shane says into the phone, smiling. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” she answers.
Shane hangs up the phone and drops it on the couch, leaving it there. He steps through the back door and makes his way down towards the lake.
Ilya smiles when he senses Shane standing over him. “That was quick,” Ilya says, lifting his sunglasses and squinting up at Shane.
“Yeah, well,” Shane offers weakly. He’s too busy drinking Ilya in. Up close, Shane sees that the bikini has small white polka dots all over it, white ties, white piping around the edges. The bottom is tiny, the fabric stretching tightly over Ilya’s dick, barely able to contain it, obscene, pornographic almost, but also somehow sweet, maybe even cute. The ties at Ilya’s hips seem to be mostly for show. The hair trailing along Ilya’s stomach from the bikini bottom turns copper in the sunlight. Ilya’s abs flex as he adjusts his position on his towel. And then there’s the top, two small triangles of fabric that manage to cover Ilya’s nipples while his pecs swell out of the sides and peek out from the bottom. The ties again—one around his neck, the other going around the middle of his back—are a single tug away from coming undone completely.
“Well,” Ilya echoes, lowering his sunglasses and resting his head back down.
Shane huffs out a laugh. “Is that it?” he asks. “You just wanted to lure me out here to stare at you.”
Ilya shrugs but otherwise doesn’t move. “Basically.”
Shane folds his arms over his chest and he does. He stares. Ilya moves his bent knee back and forth slowly and Shane’s eyes are drawn to his legs, long, sculpted, bronze. Ilya lifts his right arm up over his head and Shane’s gaze moves to the bulge of his bicep, the soft tuft of dark blonde hair in his armpit. Ilya’s lips curve upward and Shane watches the stretch of his mouth, the lines like parentheses around his smile.
“Fuck off,” Shane says. He forces his eyes to look over at the sunlight glittering on the water, but then he realizes he can look at Ilya all he wants and, god, he wants. “Did you put sunscreen on?”
“Forgot,” Ilya says. “Oops.”
Shane sees a few things Ilya’s left scattered in the grass by Ilya’s towel. A pair of shorts. Ilya’s phone. A graphic novel Wyatt lent him at the end of the season. And, yes, a tube of sunscreen.
“You want me to put it on for you, I’m guessing,” Shane says.
Ilya sits up on his elbows, the sunglasses slipping down to the tip of his nose. “You can at least help with my back,” he says, turning over onto his stomach.
Shane is momentarily winded by the sight of Ilya’s ass cheeks spilling out of the bikini bottom, most of which is disappearing up into his crack. “Jesus Christ," he mutters, ignoring Ilya’s snickering.
Shane bends down and picks up the sunscreen. Then he looks down at Ilya who has his head turned to the side, his eyes closed, the corners of his mouth still upturned gently. Shane slips his shoes off and lowers himself to the grass, kneeling next to Ilya. And then, because he knows it’s what Ilya wants from him, he swings a knee over Ilya’s hips so that he’s straddling his ass.
Ilya grunts, happy and satisfied.
Shane squeezes some sunscreen onto his palm and starts to rub it into Ilya’s warm skin, between his shoulder blades, and then moving outward, his hands moving slowly, pressing firmly. When he encounters one of the bikini’s strings, his fingertips slip underneath.
“You can undo them,” Ilya says with his eyes still closed, one side of his face still smushed into the towel.
Shane swallows, nervous for some reason, his hands shaking as he reaches for the end of the tie at Ilya’s back. This is your husband, he reminds himself which actually doesn’t calm him down at all. It makes his hands shake worse, makes his heart speed up even more. He gives the tie a gentle tug and it comes loose, both ends of the tie falling away on their own.
Shane feels Ilya’s ass moving against his dick which is half hard. Then Ilya’s reaching his hands back, gathering up his hair which has grown so long so quickly and holding it up, away from the tie at the back of his neck. He waits like that until Shane’s still shaking hands reach up and untie that one too, brushing the ends away from Ilya’s neck, those little wisps of hair there. Ilya twists the hair in his hand, bringing it to one side of his head and then letting it spill out across the grass.
Shane leans forward, pressing his mouth to the back of Ilya’s neck, his dick nestling between Ilya’s cheeks. He moves his hips experimentally and hears Ilya sight beneath him. So he moves his hips again and feels Ilya press back into him. “Ilya,” Shane breathes out, burying his face into those long, blonde curls.
They’d looked those words up together when they were home from New York. Genderfluid. Genderqueer. Nonbinary. Found some others while they were googling. Bigender. Pangender. They looked those up too. The two of them on the couch together looking at Shane’s laptop, reading what they could find. There seemed to be an endless amount of terms, of options.
Shane knew this sort of thing wasn’t really something that had an exact answer, but his brain was stubbornly determined to find one anyway.
Ilya, however, had grown frustrated with the exercise quickly. “I am not sure. There are too many words,” he said, dejected, sitting back on the couch, after about an hour of staring at Shane’s laptop screen. “Do I need to name it?”
Shane frowned. His brain said: of course you do. His mouth said: “No, you don’t.” He sounded conflicted though, his voice tight with uncertainty, anxious with not knowing.
And Ilya obviously heard it. “Maybe the one with the liquid,” he said.
“Genderfluid,” Shane said, turning back to his computer and finding the Wikipedia page for that one.
“It is—What is the word used?”
“Fluctuating.”
“Yes. Changing,” Ilya said. “And not really one thing or the other, but most of the time just…in between.”
Shane had nodded, taking that in. It was something he knew, something he’d figured out, but it was good to hear Ilya voice it. And he was stupidly, selfishly relieved to even have a sort of, maybe, half answer. “Okay, so maybe you’re genderfluid?”
“Maybe.” Ilya let out a long breath in the direction of the ceiling. “My father would hate it,” he said.
“Good thing he’s dead then,” Shane said without really thinking, but then he heard the words and froze.
Ilya froze too, but then a grin spread over his face and he was laughing. “Yes, good thing,” he said as he sobered up, wiping at his eyes.
Shane went back to the laptop, reading some more. After a while he asked, not looking back at Ilya, “So do you want to use different pronouns or a new name or—”
Ilya didn’t answer right away. Shane gave him time to think. Then Ilya said, “No. Not yet anyway. I don’t know. I want to just be…me.” He sounded frustrated and tired.
Shane looked back at him. He had his head hung over the back of the couch, looking up, eyes unfocused. “I’m sorry,” Shane said. “This is too much, isn’t it? You don’t have to be anything. I just—”
“You want to help me,” Ilya said, turning to meet Shane’s eyes. “In your Shane way. Research, solutions, plans.”
“Tell me to fuck off and I’ll leave it alone,” Shane said, closing his laptop and moving closer to Ilya.
“Never fuck off,” Ilya said insistently, pulling Shane into his chest, his arms going around him. “I am different maybe,” he said. “But I am still the same, yes? And I am not interested in changing much.”
Shane nodded. “Okay,” he said. Even though he didn’t really understand, even though his head was currently lagging, buffering, attempting and failing to process the words.
Now, Shane breathes in the smell of Ilya’s hair and then sits up again, turning his attention back to applying the sunscreen. He does Ilya’s shoulders and then his hands move down, covering his waist, his lower back. He scoots himself back and rubs sunscreen over the top of Ilya’s ass.
Shane undoes the ties at Ilya’s hips without waiting to be told and he’s rewarded with a soft, somewhat surprised sigh when the material falls away, when Ilya’s ass is exposed to the sun, to Shane’s hands. Shane gives up the pretense of applying sunscreen and just touches him, his hands moving over the swell of his ass, down to his thighs, and back up. And then he leans forward and kisses one cheek and then the other, listening to Ilya’s responding moans of encouragement. He spreads him open and then chances an experimental swipe of his tongue against his entrance. Ilya swears and grips at the towel. So Shane does it again, careful and maybe a little hesitant, not as familiar with performing the act but knowing what he likes, what feels good to him.
“Shane,” Ilya says, lifting his head and looking back at him.
“Is it okay?” Shane asks.
“Yes,” he says, nodding his head, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth.
Shane smiles and goes back in, tip of his tongue circling Ilya lightly before slipping inside. He doesn’t press very far, just enough to feel the muscles tighten around his tongue, Ilya’s whole body clenching at the intrusion. He hears him swear in Russian and then feels him open up around him, relaxing, breathing.
When Shane’s jaw starts to ache, he pulls away, replacing his tongue with his index finger. Again, touching Ilya lightly, not pressing in, just brushing against him, rubbing in small circles. Ilya’s hips arch up off the towel to meet his touch. “Need more,” he says roughly.
Shane freezes for a second, looking down at him. Not sure what more means in this context. Not really prepared for— “Do you want me to fuck you?” he asks, his voice shaking embarrassingly.
Ilya shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just—” He grinds down into the towel, groaning. “More.”
“Turn over,” Shane says then, forcing his voice to be stable this time, to be commanding.
Ilya turns over and Shane is quick to move the small bit of bikini bottom that’s still covering him out of the way. But he leaves the top where it is, mostly still in place somehow, though it’s crooked and the ties hang loose over Ilya’s shoulders and sides and one of his nipples is exposed. Shane looks at him for a long moment. “I love you,” he says.
Ilya smiles, flushed. A breeze blows a few strands of hair over his eyes, but Shane can still see them, brilliant and light. “I love you too,” he says.
Shane takes him in his mouth then, his fingers sliding down and finding the cleft of his ass again. Ilya tilts his hips just enough for Shane to work his fingers between his cheeks and find that tight ring of muscle, rubbing at him while he works his mouth on his cock, feeling Ilya’s entire body tense and then expand and then tense again.
“Good, like that,” Ilya says, lifting himself up on one hand, the other pushing into Shane’s hair. His hips move a bit and the tip of Shane’s finger unintentionally slips partially inside of him. “Oh, fuck.” Shane feels Ilya’s cock jump in his mouth, tastes the salt of his building orgasm. He leaves his finger where it is, not pushing in deeper but not pulling it back out either. Ilya grips harder at his hair, his breathing fast and ragged. “Make me come,” he says. Shane moves his mouth more quickly on him, pulling his cheeks in. “Yes, I’m coming,” Ilya says. Shane feels Ilya fluttering around the tip of his finger and then tastes him, hot and coppery on his tongue, his mouth not letting up, swallowing all that Ilya gives him, until Ilya collapses back down on the towel.
Shane pulls off carefully and then sits back, looking at Ilya lying there, his hair all around his head, his face red, chest rising and falling, the bikini top gone now, lying discarded in the grass. Ilya starts to laugh, stretching his arms out, away from his body. And Shane crawls over him, covering him, blocking the sun so that Ilya looks up at him clearly. Shane kisses him, slow and deep, again and again. Ilya’s hand slides into his shorts and finds his erection, his fingers wrapping around it, bringing Shane off in a matter of seconds as he sighs into Ilya’s mouth.
They lay in the grass for a while after. Shane applies more sunscreen to Ilya’s chest and stomach, his legs. His skin is already starting to turn pink. “You have to get better about sunscreen,” Shane says.
“I know,” Ilya says.
“I’m gonna schedule you a dermatologist appointment,” Shane goes on.
“Okay,” Ilya says, his voice dreamy and light.
“Did you like the doctor you went to last time? I thought she was nice.”
Ilya only hums in response to that and Shane looks down to find his eyes falling closed, his mouth parting.
“Are you asleep right now?” he asks, laughing and settling his head down in the soft grass next to Ilya’s head.
Ilya doesn’t respond at all this time. Shane closes his eyes too.
“Mom just texted asking what kind of ice cream you want for tonight,” Shane says, walking into the bedroom. “She says it’s your birthday dinner so you get to choose.”
Ilya stands in front of the open closet in his underwear, arms at his sides, staring straight ahead. He looks like he’s been there a while. And when he doesn’t answer about the ice cream right away, Shane knows his mind really must be somewhere else.
“I do not know what to wear,” Ilya says eventually.
Shane sits down at the edge of the bed, just slightly behind Ilya. Ilya has a few small white flowers scattered in his hair, tucked into an assortment of thin braids in various places on his head. Courtesy of the girls at camp earlier that day.
Ilya had come back to camp that summer with his hair longer than ever, falling past his shoulders, bleached light blonde by the sun, and the girls were all immediately obsessed with it. They spent their lunch breaks with Ilya sitting at their table, letting them braid it, put it in a ponytail, a messy bun, a half-up, half-down thing that made Ilya look like he was in Lord of the Rings.
“Fucking nerd,” Ilya teased Shane when he told him that.
“I’m saying you look really hot,” Shane said.
“Yeah, hot to a fucking nerd.”
At a certain point, the girls started bringing things from home for Ilya’s hair. Headbands that were far too small for an adult man’s head. Scrunchies to tie off the end of the tiny French braid they’d done. And then, flowers. Mostly plastic flowers but sometimes real ones that were already wilted by the time lunch came around, but they still tuck them into Ilya’s curls, laughing and smiling. Ilya laughing and smiling too.
The boys were less sold on Ilya’s hair. Shane heard them at practice one day when the girls had put Ilya in pigtails and a big plastic hibiscus flower tucked above his ear, “Coach Rozanov, you look like a girl,” with a teasing lilt to their voices. They didn’t mean it to be cruel. They assumed Ilya would wink and laugh along with them.
Instead, Ilya had said, “What makes you say that?” Challenging them, forcing them to explain their thinking.
“The braids and the flowers and stuff,” one of them had said, shrugging his shoulders, already seeming unconvinced by his own thinking.
“I like them,” Ilya said plainly. “Do they not look nice?”
“Well, yeah, kinda, but—” Another boy said, not able to finish the thought.
“Okay, so who cares,” Ilya said.
The boys had taken this in as they looked at their confident hockey hero standing above them who just so happened right then to have his hair in braids with a pink flower stuck in it. “Yeah, who cares!” called out the boy who seemed to be the leader of the group. The other boys cheered their agreement.
“Now go work on your stickhandling drills so maybe you will one day be almost as good as me,” Ilya said, ushering them off. He called after them, “Though your hair will probably never look as good as mine!” He caught Shane’s eye, winking and smiling.
The flowers in Ilya’s hair today are real. Shane can see where some of them are turning brown. They give off a scent too, not pleasant or unpleasant, just vaguely earthy and floral.
“I like your hair today,” Shane says, leaning back on his hands.
Ilya startles as if coming out of trance, looking over his shoulder at Shane. He lifts a hand to his hair but doesn’t touch it, not wanting to disturb the flowers. “Yes, the girls did a good job today,” he says. “Breath of baby.”
Shane laughs. “Baby’s breath.”
Ilya huffs. “What I said.” He turns back to the closet.
Shane looks too. Ilya’s side of the closet is a mess of colors and patterns, all of it overflowing, shoved in haphazardly. Shirts and pants and jackets and skirts and a few dresses and a couple of coats he never wears anymore. Meanwhile Shane’s side is neater, not nearly as packed, basics, mostly neutral colors, hangers spaced out so things can breathe.
Ilya reaches into the closet and pulls out a dress he’s been wearing often that summer. Mostly just around the house or when they go out to a quiet dinner together. It’s black and soft and has short little sleeves and buttons down the front. Fitted in the chest but then the skirt flares out, swings around his calves. Shane loves that dress. Loves Ilya when he’s wearing it with his hair tied back, a few rings on his fingers, simple makeup. Ilya always seems lighter, easier in it.
“Good choice,” Shane says out loud.
Ilya lays the dress out on the bed next to Shane and stares down at it. Then he shakes his head tightly. “No,” he says. He hangs the dress back up. He steps back and surveys the closet for another long few moments before reaching in for something else.
A linen short sleeve button down shirt Yuna bought for him a year or so ago. It’s dark blue with little drawings of sea life all over it. He’d basically lived in it all of last summer. Shane thinks it’s ridiculous in a very Ilya way and so of course he adores it.
“Haven’t seen that one yet this summer,” he says to Ilya, trying to help. He can see the struggle on Ilya’s face.
Ilya takes out a pair of light gray shorts as well. Looks at the two together. And frowns. Another shake of his head. “No,” he says.
He pulls out a third piece of clothing. A Centaurs t-shirt that can’t be that old but is already worn and ratty. And then he takes out a pair of basketball shorts. He holds them up to himself and gives a helpless, defeated shrug. Then he starts pulling out everything, tearing at his closet, reaching in blindly and yanking whatever he finds, until it’s all piled up on the floor around his feet.
“Hey,” Shane says gently, getting up from the bed and standing behind Ilya with his hands on his shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Ilya twists his body away from Shane, lowering his head. “I do not want to wear any of this,” he says, gesturing to the pile of clothes at his feet.
Shane’s hands fall back to his sides when Ilya moves away from him. He gives him his space instead of reaching for him again. “What’s wrong with the dress?” Shane asks, bending down and finding the dress in the pile. “I love this dress. You love this dress.”
Ilya sinks down heavily onto the bed. “Nothing is wrong with the dress,” he says. “But I haven’t worn anything like it around your parents before.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Shane asks. “What my parents will think?”
Ilya gives a small shrug, pressing his lips together. “I do not want their opinion of me to change,” he says. “I know the idea of me was already something they had to” —he stops and closes his eyes— “get used to.”
Shane sits down next to him, still holding the dress. “Ilya, my parents love you,” he says. “Like, way more than they love me.”
Ilya opens his eyes and smiles. “Not true,” he says.
“Very true,” Shane says. “They’re crazy about you. And, sure, there was some initial shock to get over when they first found out about us, but once they got to know you, they took you in as a part of our family, didn’t they?”
Ilya takes the dress from Shane’s hands. He drapes it over his lap, smoothing out the fabric of the skirt. “What if this is too much for them to get to know?” he asks. “What if this makes them not—”
“Not what?” Shane asks.
“Not love me the same anymore.”
Shane’s heart sinks and he stands up. “Give me the dress,” he says to Ilya.
Ilya gives it to him. Shane hangs it from the hook on the closet door and starts to undo the buttons on it. “Come here,” he says, sliding the dress from the hanger.
Ilya gets up from the bed and stands by Shane who holds the dress out, enough buttons undone that Ilya can step into it. Once he does, Shane slides the dress up his body. “Arms,” he says and Ilya puts his arms through the sleeves. Shane does up the buttons then, taking his time with each one. He leans in and kisses each inch of Ilya’s skin before it gets covered up. The neckline scoops below Ilya’s collarbone and Shane kisses the hollow there as he slips the last button through its buttonhole.
“There,” he says, turning Ilya around to look at himself in the full length mirror in the corner of the room.
Ilya smiles as he looks at his reflection, a hand on his stomach moving over the material of the dress. Shane stands back from Ilya, watching as he arranges his hair around his shoulders, flowers still managing to stay in place, as he turns side to side, the dress moving with him.
“How do you feel?” Shane asks.
“Like myself,” Ilya answers.
“My parents love you unconditionally,” Shane says, coming closer, putting his hands on Ilya’s hips. “Just like I do.”
Ilya drops his head to the side so that it rests against Shane’s temple. “I know,” he says. Then, “Cookies and cream.”
Shane laughs. “What?”
Ilya lifts his head, turning to face Shane. “The ice cream,” he says. “For my birthday. Cookies and cream.”
“Right, of course.” Shane pulls his phone out of his pocket to text his mom Ilya’s answer.
“And chocolate sauce,” Ilya adds while Shane is typing. “Also sprinkles.”
Shane shakes his head. “Anything else before I hit send?”
Ilya thinks for a second. “Whipped cream,” he says.
Shane types some more.
“Those delicious little soft bears,” Ilya says.
“Gummy bears?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think she had a whole sundae bar in mind,” Shane says.
“It is my birthday, yes?” Ilya says. “Oh, and cherries.”
Shane shakes his head again but includes all of the requested items in his text.
His mom responds a minute later. Shane reads it, smiling so wide it hurts. “She asked if you want nuts too,” he says.
Ilya has moved to the bathroom where he’s putting on his mascara, his face close to the mirror. “Yes, but no pecans,” Ilya says.
Shane texts his mom Ilya’s answer. He gets a thumbs up back. And then: does he want waffle cones or are bowls okay?
“There’s one,” Ilya says, pointing towards the grass where a drifting firefly glows in the blue twilight and then goes dark again.
They’re sitting on the swinging wooden bench in Shane’s parents’ backyard. Shane sitting up and Ilya stretched out with his head on Shane’s chest, Shane’s arm thrown over his body. Shane pushes off the ground with his foot to set them swinging gently again.
“Another one,” Ilya says, pointing and laughing happily to himself, a little bit wine drunk. Ilya is barefoot, one leg hanging slightly off the side of the bench, his toes brushing against the grass with every swing. The night around them is warm and alive with chirring insects, birds calling to each other as dusk settles in.
Shane’s parents are inside cleaning up. Though he thinks they’re really just giving him and Ilya some time alone. Shane glances towards the kitchen window at the back of the house and sees his dad at the sink. His mom comes up behind him and rests her chin on his shoulder for a second before walking away. His dad looks after her, smiling, saying something. And then he disappears from the window.
“Hi,” Ilya says, tilting his head backwards to look up at Shane.
“Hi.” Shane leans down and kisses him.
When Shane pulls back, Ilya is smiling with his eyes closed. The leg that isn’t hanging over the side is bent at the knee and resting against the back of the bench. Ilya’s dress pooling around his thigh. Shane lets his fingers graze the skin there.
Ilya shivers and hums to himself, his head falling back to Shane’s chest.
Shane’s fingers trail higher up Ilya’s thigh, slipping beneath the hem of his dress. And just when his fingers have gone past the point of decency, they draw away, moving back towards Ilya’s knee. Shane does this a few times, this back and forth, this light touch, never quite enough and also far too much. The moment turns thick and slow and heady. The sky starting to darken. The moon hanging above them half full. The fireflies glowing around them. The bench swinging back and forth.
“Moya lyubov,” Ilya says quietly, turning his head and nuzzling into Shane.
“Moya lyubov,” Shane says back, nose in Ilya’s hair, smelling flowers even though they have all fallen from Ilya’s hair by now. Shane had found one on the couch cushion as they’d gone into the dining room to eat. Another on the floor by Ilya’s dining chair after they had finished with dinner. Another in the kitchen, just by the backdoor, as he was heading outside to join Ilya on the swing.
Shane isn’t sure how long they stay like that nestled together, his fingers tracing patterns on Ilya’s skin, Ilya sighing contentedly now and then. It could be an hour or a minute or forever. But then his parents are coming outside, the back door swinging shut behind them, his mom laughing at his dad. Ilya opens his eyes and looks in their direction but doesn’t move from Shane’s arms. Shane doesn’t move either. He only lifts his face from Ilya’s hair and draws his fingers back to a safe spot on top of Ilya’s knee.
His parents drop into the chairs near the swing. Shane’s mom looks at him and Ilya there and smiles to herself. His dad reaches out and takes hold of her hand, their fingers lacing together. Ilya reaches for Shane’s hand too, holding their joined hands to his chest.
“There’s still some ice cream left,” Shane’s mom says after a while.
“Don’t encourage him, Mom,” Shane says.
But Ilya’s already perked up, lifting his head from Shane’s chest.
“You’ve had plenty of ice cream,” Shane says, looking down at him.
“Is my special day,” Ilya pouts.
“Let Ilya have more ice cream,” Shane’s dad says very helpfully. “It’s his birthday.”
Shane sees that he isn’t going to win here. He meets Ilya’s eyes, holding them for a beat, and then says, “Go on.”
And Ilya jumps up happily, setting the swing rocking back and forth. He heads towards the house, jogging in his bare feet, hair flowing, his dress catching in the breeze and clinging to the front of his body but then trailing behind him. A quick, happy shadow.
All three of them watch him go. They watch him—eyes fixed, captivated, unable to look at anything else for the moment, as if everything has been paused while Ilya is away from them—until he disappears inside the house, and then they keep watching until the light in the kitchen window flicks on, keep watching as Ilya goes the freezer and then moves around the kitchen on the hunt for whatever toppings are still left, keep watching as he comes back outside holding onto his bowl and smiling a smile that lights up in the dark like a firefly, keep watching until he’s close enough to call out to them asking, “Who ate all of the soft delicious bears?” and David calls back, “You did!”, keep watching as he lowers himself back onto the swing next to Shane turning the other way this time so that his feet are in Shane’s lap, toes wriggling in delight as he eats his ice cream, keep watching until Ilya stops with the spoon hovering near his mouth looking back at all of them and asking, “What?”
And then Shane’s parents look at each other, look at Shane, look up at the night sky.
But Shane keeps watching Ilya, shaking his head, smiling, saying, “Nothing. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Ilya says, shoving the spoon into his mouth, grinning around it. “Oh, there’s one,” he says, mouth full, lifting his foot and pointing with his toes in the direction a floating, glowing firefly.