Chapter Text
“What, you think they had Boy Scouts in Russia?” Ilya sandwiches the end of the rope between his teeth, garbling his words. “Give me a second.”
Shane attempts to shift his hips around. It’s a futile effort. Ilya is sitting firmly on top of him, his thighs caging Shane in against the mattress. “I’m bored,” Shane complains.
Without removing the rope from between his teeth or taking his eyes off the increasingly intricate knot around Shane’s wrists, Ilya reaches one hand down to Shane’s groin and squeezes his hardened cock through his boxers.
Shane spits out a gasp. His back arches up off the mattress reflexively.
Above him, Ilya grins. “Still bored?”
Shane shakes his head obediently. Ilya extricates the fraying end of the rope from his mouth and tugs on it hard enough to tighten the bindings around Shane’s wrists. Below him, Shane’s eyes are wide and shiny, vulnerable in that way only he knows how to be. He’s quiet, patient.
Good. Always so good.
Ilya loops the end through Shane’s headboard and double knots it. Ilya watches Shane’s pink lips part, on the verge of speaking, so Ilya swings down and captures his lips like a pelican spots a fish peeking out of the waves. Shane moans into Ilya’s mouth. Ilya swallows the sound like the food that it is.
“More,” Ilya mumbles against Shane’s mouth. He slips his tongue into Shane’s mouth and can feel Shane’s next sound, a whiny one that comes from the back of the throat, and Ilya gulps against Shane’s lips, swallowing just air and that whimper.
Shane’s hips writhe under him like a snake. Ilya breaks the kiss long enough to mumble against Shane’s jaw, “Try.”
Shane is panting hard. “Try…?”
“Try,” Ilya kisses into Shane’s neck, “to touch me.”
Ilya peels his upper body up off of Shane until he’s sitting up again. The distance hurts, but only until his eyes adjust, and then he thinks: Bozhe moy. Best view in the house. Shane tugs against the bindings, the muscles from a decade of professional sports bulging with the effort. When the force of his arms doesn’t suffice, he twists his fingers and rotates his wrists, attempting to loosen the knot. The rope doesn’t budge, and neither do his hands from where they’re tied high above his head.
Ilya, as if to demonstrate the difference, reaches his own veiny hands down to Shane’s hips. He rubs his thumb along the hipbone sleeping under Shane’s skin. Then he slips his fingers under the band of Shane’s boxers and tilts his head. A question.
Shane nods twice, rapidly. Ilya yanks his underwear off and tosses it to the floor.
“Are you gonna…?” Shane trails off, whining. Ilya leaves open-mouthed kisses from his chest to his stomach, then skips the most important section entirely and leaves a trail from Shane’s ankles to his inner thigh.
“Am I going to…?” Ilya echoes, a smirk on his lips. His hot breath is so close to Shane’s cock that it twitches when Shane speaks. He drinks in the sight of Shane, tied up and willing for him, his wrists bound above his head. “Why? Are you going to stop me?”
Shane responds, somehow looking both earnest and downright edible, “Wouldn’t want to even if I could.”
That’s all Ilya needs to press one kiss against the head of Shane’s pink cock and take the rest of it into his mouth in one fell swoop.
Ilya is so tuned into Shane’s body that he knows not just where to press down on Shane’s bare hip, but when to: at what point in Ilya’s sucking, in his licking and teasing ministrations Shane loses all sense of control and bucks up at nothing senselessly. So when he does, Ilya holds him still against the mattress.
“If you keep, I’m gonna,” Shane groans. Ilya decodes the mangled sentence and slides his lips off Shane’s cock with a pop. A rope of saliva connects Ilya’s bottom lip to the head and Ilya doesn’t bother severing it.
“You are still good?” Ilya asks, gulping.
Shane shoots him a knowing look. “Yes, like I said I would be. Just - fucking -” Shane attempts to kick his legs out to express himself instead of his hands. “- want you.”
Ilya’s eyes narrow for a moment. He climbs back on top of Shane fully, and Shane lets out an anticipatory moan, which should be downright embarrassing since Ilya’s hardly touching him but the noise goes straight to Ilya’s cock.
Still, he swoops past Shane’s lips and examines the bindings on his wrists instead.
“This looks like it hurts,” Ilya comments. He fits one of his fingers into the loop so he can pull the rope back. It has left a reddish imprint on Shane’s skin.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Shane refutes.
Ilya lets the rope snap back into place, unsatisfied. He examines the loop around Shane’s other wrist. Shane groans. “Kiss me,” he whines, kicking his legs out again.
Something warm settles in Ilya’s chest. He swoops his head down and kisses Shane hard, grabbing and positioning his jaw like he’s a mannequin. Ilya bites Shane’s lower lip; Shane tugs at the bindings without meaning to, his limbs twitching without reason, and he presses his hips up against Ilya’s until their cocks are flush against each other.
And then Ilya breaks the kiss and resumes his examination of the bindings.
“Jesus,” Shane complains, “Do you want to fuck me or the rope?”
Ilya tsks. “I am just worried that -”
“What?”
Ilya rotates Shane’s wrists, all bundled together in a package, like putty in his hands. “That it will bruise.”
“Il-ya,” Shane enunciates, in that way Ilya knows means business. Ilya’s eyes drop from Shane’s wrists to his determined eyes. “We have a month before the season starts.” His gaze turns devious. “I want it to bruise.”
Ilya’s mouth drops open. Shane’s freckled cheeks redden, but his eyes remain fiercely fixed. Ilya flicks Shane’s chin. “Ty ved' kogda-nibud' menya ub'yesh', ne tak li?” Ilya croons.
You will kill me one day, won’t you?
And then he’s leaning down to lick a hot stripe from Shane’s collarbone up to his neck and down his jaw, and reaching down to his hips to flip him over onto his stomach.
Ilya’s finger flutters over Shane's lower back and descends on the sensitive spot between his ass cheeks. Shane moans lewdly. “So loud, Hollander,” Ilya chastises. He wets his finger with lube and presses inside. Shane kicks his legs up so they hit Ilya’s lower back, and Ilya chuckles. “So loud, hm?” Ilya nods his head to the rope tying Shane to the headboard. “Do you need this in your mouth, moya lyubov'?”
Ilya presses a second finger in. Shane groans again.
“You wouldn’t - fuck,” Shane huffs. His arms are still twisted high above his head. “You like that I’m loud, you - you fucker,” he spits, a feeble attempt at being punitive.
Ilya simply grins. “Yes,” he admits. He presses a third finger in and with his other hand, strokes Shane’s stomach. His hand trails up to Shane’s bound wrists and covers them with his palm, attempting to unravel his fingers enough to hold his hand.
Shane kicks his legs up again, impatiently.
Ilya might have laughed, if he weren’t so turned on himself. He lines his cock up with Shane’s hole, wrapping his hands around Shane’s waist. His thumbs, on either side of it, nearly touch. He leans down to press a soft kiss to Shane’s left shoulderblade, in the center of a constellation of freckles. And then he plunges inside, and the sensation of Shane’s warm heat and his choked-off breath is a welcome greeting if Ilya has ever heard one.
And fuck, there is something to be said about a man who never forfeits an inch of control in his professional life, hardly any in his personal, being tied up and willing. And not just for any man, but for a man like Ilya Rozanov.
Ilya thrusts into Shane hard, listening to when and where his breath picks up, reaching down to stroke Shane’s cock where it lays heavy against the mattress, and focuses on making this good. This is Ilya’s fantasy: his boyfriend, tied up and eager for his cock, but also, and maybe moreso, his boyfriend trusting him enough to let him have this. Him, Ilya, of all people.
Doveryat'. Trust.
The only sound in the room for many minutes is the smack of Ilya’s pelvis against Shane’s skin. Each thrust is punctuated by a breathy moan from Shane’s lips that sounds even sweeter because Ilya knows he’s trying, and failing, to keep quiet. Ilya grunts along with him, reaching down every now and again to stroke Shane’s cock.
Shane comes first, to the feeling of Ilya stroking him through it. Ilya comes with a groan a moment later inside of him.
“Fuck,” Shane croaks weakly, muffled, underneath Ilya. Ilya musters up enough energy to collapse next to Shane, rather than right on top of him. Shane’s eyes are closed, his eyelashes fluttering against the healthy tan of his cheeks.
Ilya leans in and kisses Shane’s eyelid. It opens in a wink as if Ilya’s kiss awakened one eye and not the other. It is inky brown, smooth like an Alenka chocolate.
“You feel okay?” Ilya asks. He pushes himself up by his elbows and begins untying the knot from the headboard.
“Yeah,” Shane breathes. Ilya undoes the first knot, so Shane’s wrists fall against the bed in a bundle. Ilya reaches for Shane's hands.
“Just okay, or…?” Ilya fumbles his way through the second knot.
Shane rolls his eyes. “Like you need the ego boost.” But then he looks up at Ilya, who is diligently unraveling the rope, and his eyes soften. “It was more than okay. Amazing. And - so, so.” His face heats up. “Hot.”
Ilya untangles the final loop. Shane stretches his arms out away from each other, flexing his wrists experimentally. His joints make a cracking noise. “You are blushing,” Ilya comments, a cheeky grin on his lips.
“Well, so are you, so,” Shane grumbles. He places his hands on his stomach. Ilya reaches for them unthinkingly.
“Let me get something, okay?” Ilya says. He peppers light kisses around Shane’s wrists, forming some sort of saliva bracelet around the redness. He sits up from the bed, still naked, and returns with two fluffy white towels from the cottage’s guest room and a container of aloe vera.
Shane reaches for the cream. Ilya yanks the bottle out of Shane’s reach and instead spreads some on his own fingers.
“Let me,” Ilya instructs. Shane sighs and settles back into his mountain of pillows, offering his wrists up to Ilya like a sacrifice.
Ilya takes them like the present they are and begins smoothing the cream around them. It is cold and slimy on Ilya’s fingers. He chastises himself quietly. “I should have gone to sex shop.”
“Yeah, and get recognized while buying this stuff? Nope.” Shane pops the “P.” “I wouldn’t have let you, anyway.”
“Yes, but this one is rough,” Ilya comments. He eyes the rope and flings it off the bed with a disapproving shake of the head.
“I liked it,” Shane rebuts. He sits up in the bed, despite Ilya’s grumbling protests for him to relax. They’re so close, what with Shane’s wrists still in Ilya’s hold. Shane taps Ilya’s forehead with his index finger. “Don’t think so hard, okay? I said I liked it.”
Ilya offers him a soft smile. He presses his lips to Shane’s knuckles and tastes Shane’s sweat, along with the medicinal notes from the ointment. “I liked it too.”
They go to sleep in the same bed two hours later, after Ilya has washed Shane’s sheets and they both take a shower. Shane’s cottage is so quiet at night that even the most infinitesimal of noises - a loon, a family of crickets, a car driving up the country road - jolts Ilya out of the fantasy he plays in his head to fall asleep.
Shane snores while curled up against Ilya on the bed, with Ilya’s stomach pressed up to Shane’s back. Odd, Ilya thinks, as he burrows his chin into Shane’s hair, how such little sounds can disrupt his delicate attempts to sleep. He used to fall asleep to an orchestra of screams and knocks so violent they shake the doorframe.
He worries sometimes that chaos has become his requirement for sleep. He wonders if he’s been rewired to need it.
He sinks his nose into Shane’s dark locks. He inhales Shane’s citrus smell, and it might as well be chloroform with how thoroughly it loosens his muscles. He lets his head loll against the pillow.
He takes more whiffs of Shane’s scent than he’d freely admit throughout the night, craving that effect only Shane can provide: Numbing, almost. He closes his eyes, thinks happy thoughts, observes the happy thoughts devolve, and steals another smell. Shane gives and gives, without even knowing.
Ilya takes and takes.
----
And then it’s morning.
“Let me see if I get your logic: my smoothies are so gross that you want me to make you a second one.” Shane places his hands on his hips to appear assertive, as if he’s not the cutest thing Ilya has ever seen.
“I want a second one,” Ilya explains, “so there is more to throw up later, it’s so gross.” He grins wickedly. Shane bumps him with his shoulder but, obedient as ever, begins chopping a second banana.
A morning routine is its own sport, and in that Shane and Ilya are not rivals at all. Shane, master of his Circadian rhythm, wakes up at seven in the morning like a goddamn Cuckoo Clock and floats to the kitchen to prepare his breakfast smoothie in abject silence. While it blends, he does his morning stretches. With breakfast, he swallows a cocktail of dietary supplements in pill form: fish oil, bioactive turmeric, and the like.
This morning, Ilya gets out of bed at around the same time as Shane, to Shane’s complete surprise. The difference is, Ilya never fell asleep at all.
Ilya eyes the blender with mild concern. “Don’t,” he protests.
Shane eyes the fistful of spinach in his hand. “It was in the first smoothie, and you liked it.”
“I did not know,” Ilya whines. “Why do you eat like a goat? It is eight in the morning.”
Shane rolls his eyes and drops the handful of spinach into the blender. He walks over to Ilya, his sock-clad feet noiseless against the hardwood floor, and presses a kiss into Ilya’s curls. Ilya relaxes into it so deeply he nearly falls off his stool.
When the screech of the blender stops, Shane pulls back. “Have any meetings today?”
Ilya checks his phone despite knowing he has no notifications. “No.”
Shane tilts his head up, as if remembering something. He pours Ilya’s second smoothie while he speaks. “I have some. With the head trainer, mainly. And Theriault wants videos of my workouts.”
Ilya halts the cup he was bringing to his lips. His face sours. “Fucking creep.”
“Come on,” Shane huffs. “He just needs proof I haven’t been slacking off all summer. I’d want to know too.”
Ilya rubs his nose, petulant. “Wiebe never asks for videos of me. Should I offer?”
Shane pointedly ignores the tease. “Hopefully he took this summer to do his homework.”
“Hard to do homework with no pencil and shit paper,” Ilya responds smoothly.
A crease forms between Shane’s eyebrows. “I mean, Ottawa has a lot of potential. They have you, for one.”
Ilya forces his shoulders to loosen. “Yes, well.” Ilya doesn’t have to say it out loud for it to be heard: His first season with Ottawa came and went, and the team crashed and burned. If there were to be an epic Ottawan comeback story spearheaded by Ilya Rozanov, it would have happened already.
Shane seems to hear the unsaid, too. He pokes a straw into Ilya’s smoothie, as if that will bring Ilya’s appetite back. He sips at it in short bursts and chokes down the spinach.
----
“Come on,” Shane begs. “My parents will love that we’re keeping up with movie night, even while they’re gone. I’ll send them a photo.”
Ilya shoots Shane a knowing look. “They are on cruise in Mexico. I do not think they care about movie night.”
Shane feigns outrage. “Of course they care! It’s a Hollander family tradition.”
“They are probably, as we speak,” Ilya interjects, a sneaky look on his face, “making love.”
Shane chucks a throw pillow at Ilya’s face. It’s the turquoise one with a metallic tassel, and it stings a little, although Shane doesn’t notice and Ilya doesn’t flinch. “That is so gross. Don’t say that to me.”
“Why?” Ilya shrugs. “Is good that they’re in love. When are they coming back, anyway?”
“A week from today,” Shane answers. Then, he closes his eyes, and when they reopen they’re quasi-watering and earnest. Ilya squeezes his eyes shut on reflex, well-aware of this trick.
“Look at me. Please,” comes Shane’s soft voice.
Ilya keeps his eyes firmly shut. “No, because I know what you are doing.”
Ilya feels soft hands thread through his hair and his resolve crumbles. He opens his eyes despite himself and finds Shane staring back at him with big, shiny eyes and the softest hint of a pout on his lips.
“Yebat',” Ilya mutters. “This should not still work after ten years.”
Shane simply blinks his eyes more rapidly. Ilya follows the movement. “Please,” Shane whines. “I just finished the book, so I want to watch this while it’s fresh in my mind.”
Ilya readjusts his position on the couch. The sun set hours ago, so they’re left in the dim lamplight of the living room.
On the ceiling, a faulty lightbulb flickers and winks.
“Why don’t you watch,” Ilya begins, peeling Shane’s hands out of his hair, “and I change the lightbulb?”
“I want to watch with you,” Shane argues. Ilya stands up from the couch to examine the bulb. Shane crosses his arms and turns the TV on, shaking his head hard enough that an errant strand of hair falls into his eyes. “Fine. Nevermind.”
Ilya gulps. He sits back down on the couch. “Okay.”
Shane whips his head around. “What?”
“Okay.” He gestures to the TV.
Shane licks his lips. “You’ll watch it?”
Ilya nods. Shane still doesn’t budge. “Did someone hit the ‘off’ button on you, or…?” Ilya reaches out to touch Shane’s throat, while another hand tickles his stomach. “Where is your button?” He continues. Shane swats him away, smiling.
“I want you to want to watch it,” Shane continues.
Ilya stares at him dead-eyed. “You want me to watch to what?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “You understood.”
Ilya throws his head back against the couch dramatically, as if swooning. “Fine, Hollander. I love stars and all the…” He lifts his head up high enough to read the movie title. “The faults in them. I want to watch.” He lifts his head up and drags his lips across Shane’s cheek before Shane can dodge him. “I want to do whatever you want me to do, hm?” Ilya mumbles against Shane’s cheek. “Happy?”
Shane presses play while Ilya is still nuzzled into his neck. Ilya can feel his throat vibrate when he speaks. “Very.”
----
Another week of lazy tranquility passes. It’s late afternoon when Shane checks his phone by the nightstand.
“My mom asks if you want braised beef short ribs or pulled pork for dinner tonight. She has ingredients for both.”
On the other side of the bed, Ilya makes a low sound in his throat. The candle that’s nearly larger than Shane’s head flickers where it sits by Ilya’s side of the bed, the flame growing impossibly larger.
“Even the candle is interested in food,” Ilya comments.
Shane rolls his eyes. “Which one do you want?”
“Tell her I can’t decide. Whatever is easy.”
“You always say that,” Shane mumbles. “You’re allowed to have a preference, you know.”
Ilya simply shrugs. He lifts his hands up to the candle flame and lets the warmth travel from his palms up his arms and underneath his cotton shirt.
“You still want to do this?” Ilya asks, flipping his hands over so the flame warms the backs of his knuckles.
“Yes. Duh.” Shane types out a message on his phone.
“We should start, then,” Ilya urges, eyeing the candle. A hefty pool of wax settles in the crevice of it. If Ilya leans over, he can almost see his reflection in it.
“One second. I’m typing.” Shane’s eyes take on a devious glint. “‘Mom, Ilya says he wants grilled salmon like me,’” Shane narrates. “‘No need to make the short ribs -’”
“Ostanovites' pryamo seychas!” Ilya shouts, lunging over to Shane’s side of the bed. He attempts, unsuccessfully, to snatch Shane’s phone out of his hands. “You little mouse,” Ilya spits, grabbing for the skin by Shane’s armpit. He pinches and Shane cries out, laughing, and swatting at his arm. “You … malen'kaya rybka.”
“What does that mean?” Shane chokes out. He lets his limbs fall limp, and without his earlier resistance, Ilya reduces the intensity of his tickling. He settles for stroking up and down Shane’s arm instead.
“Little fish,” Ilya whispers. He presses his lips to the crook by Shane’s elbow. He spots a vein on the underside of the arm, and he licks at it like a cat drinks up milk. A flush spreads down Shane’s neck, where it descends below his black long-sleeve. “My little fish,” Ilya adds.
“I wanna get this done before we drive over there,” Shane insists, eyeing the candle across the bedroom. “Otherwise I’m gonna be thinking about it all - argh.” Shane cuts himself off when Ilya palms him through his gym shorts. “All - fuck. Night.”
Ilya smirks at him. He sniffs his way up Shane’s arm like a drug dog, uncaring of how utterly insane he looks, until his mouth comes across the collar of Shane’s shirt. He sandwiches the material between his teeth and tugs. “Off,” Ilya mutters, mouth stuffed with the material.
Shane tugs the shirt off with one arm. The sight sends a pulse right to Ilya’s cock. Ilya yanks his shirt off too. He throws it by his nightstand. Below him, Shane’s breath catches.
“You almost threw it on the candle,” Shane gasps. “Careful.”
Ilya sinks his mouth down to Shane’s throat and kisses it firmly. He sits up and reaches for the candle and its pool of wax.
“Wait,” Shane calls out. Ilya freezes. “Can we - ugh.” He covers his face with his hands. Ilya’s heart seizes at his nervousness. “Can we kiss some more first?”
Ilya crawls back over to Shane’s side of the bed on autopilot. He presses his lips to Shane’s before he gives a verbal answer. “Always,” he mumbles against Shane’s lips. Shane sighs into Ilya’s mouth and fits his hands into Ilya’s hair, tugging at the curls that line the nape of his neck. Ilya’s hands travel down Shane’s side until they land on his trim waist, where Ilya squeezes.
Shane responds by trailing one hand down the side of Ilya’s cheek, thumb brushing the mole there. “I love you,” Shane whispers into Ilya’s mouth.
Ilya’s lips freeze. He pulls back to see the look on Shane’s face: Earnest eyes, plush lips, everything in his face screaming louder than words can, I trust you.
And Ilya thinks, It is the honor of my life to love you.
What he says comes from that fraction of feeling he is able to express in English. “I love you,” Ilya murmurs. He brushes his thumbs down Shane’s eyebrows, his thumbnail parsing through each strand like the pages of a novel. “A lot,” Ilya adds, although he’s not sure it adds the weight he means it to.
And then Shane is tugging Ilya’s boxers off and Ilya is doing the same to Shane’s. Ilya takes in the sight of Shane naked before him as if it’s the first time: the flush on his neck, the trail of hair leading to his cock, the scar on his knee from Peewee hockey. Ilya leans down until his mouth is by Shane’s hipbone, right before it transitions to the globe of his ass, and he bites down onto it softly, just enough to feel Shane’s flesh in his mouth.
Shane giggles at the feeling. He reaches a hand down to tap Ilya’s neck with his index finger. “I’m ready.” Shane’s eyes flicker to the candle.
Ilya nods once to show he understands. He reaches over and grabs it. It’s heavy in his hands, warm even on the exterior, Ilya’s grip on it like a football. He feels like a linebacker just holding it.
Ilya has fantasized about this before: Shane underneath him, already so sweet and sensitive, made all the more by that warm, slick wax covering him. Ilya pictures it everywhere: Along Shane’s chest, his collarbone, his shoulderblades, his ass. The delicate heat on Shane’s sweaty skin, the overstimulation in the sweetest possible way. Ilya thinks he could come just from the thought of it.
“Where do you want it?” Ilya asks from where he’s crouched above Shane. Shane eyes the candle warily, and Ilya realizes it’s because it’s teetering a little in his flustered hands. Ilya makes a point to steady it, and the surface of the melted wax within it levels out.
Shane tilts his head, thinking. “Where do you want it?”
Ilya bites his lip. How hard would Shane roll his eyes if he said everywhere? Ilya says instead: “Chest.”
Shane nods, his eyes wide and trusting. Ilya tilts the candle, the weight of it shifting as the wax sloshes and the flame flickers. And then Shane’s mouth is moving, and he’s saying something right below Ilya, and that something is, “Shouldn’t we -”
The words arrive late. The candle tilts anyway, a projectile with its path set, and the entirety of the melted wax that has burned for the past hour lands on Shane’s smooth chest.
He doesn’t yelp so much as scream.
Ilya jolts so hard he drops the candle onto Shane’s bedsheets. The flame licks at Shane’s linen sheets. Ilya smashes the curdling flame with his bare hands, so quickly he doesn’t feel a thing, and sets the candle down precariously on the nightstand. In all his shifting, he loosens his legs where they’re clamped around Shane. Shane uses this newfound freedom to stumble off the bed. He falls to the floor in a heap and cries out.
“What? What?” Ilya’s voice is frantic. He steps off the bed and finds Shane collapsed on the floor, attempting and failing to stand up. He starts crawling. “Lisus Khristos. Shane,” Ilya tries. He lifts him up to standing. Shane presses a palm up to his own chest and moans.
Ilya rotates Shane to face him. Shane’s body gives in without resistance. To Ilya’s absolute horror, he finds Shane’s eyes filled with tears.
“Hot,” Shane croaks out. Ilya glances down to Shane’s chest: an angry redness has spread across his right pec, blanketed by a milky, translucent shell of wax. It looks wet and raw, like the skin has been peeled back.
“Fuck,” Ilya curses. He tugs Shane over to the bathroom, both of them naked, Shane stumbling and Ilya unnervingly still. Shane, ever the one in control, reaches over and cranks the shower knob to the coldest it gets.
Ilya cranes over Shane and adjusts it down to lukewarm. “This is better,” Ilya chokes out. His voice comes out oddly, all warbled and croaky. “Not so cold better for burns, it will heal better, it will -” He cuts himself off. Shane is blinking back tears underneath the water.
Ilya stares down at his own crooked hands. Dry, cracked, brittle: he’d been excited for this. Looking forward to it.
The words feel empty when they come. “I am so sorry. So sorry. I did not think it was - that it was -”
“It really hurts,” Shane coughs out. “It - holy fuck. It feels like it’s getting worse.” He fidgets under the water. He cranks the handle back to icy cold. “Get some ice,” he croaks.
Ilya feels his body split in two. “Ice can cause -” Fuck, what is the word? He feels his brain shrink by the second. “Ice is not good for this.”
“Since when are you -” Shane cuts himself off and wipes his eyes. Ilya steps into the shower fully so Shane can feel his presence, but he soon realizes his bulky body is blocking the stream from hitting Shane in full. That’s him, he supposes: always in the way. “Since when are you some - fuck, that hurts. Burn expert?”
Answering that properly doesn’t even cross Ilya’s mind. Under the blur of the shower, Shane’s chest is red, the beginnings of blisters bubbling on his skin. “You’re supposed to stay under for twenty minutes,” Ilya says distantly.
“Can you Google it?” Shane orders, gesturing wildly in Ilya’s direction. Ilya steps out of the shower and approaches his phone in the bedroom robotically. He googles it, and finds the results to match what he already knows.
On his way back to the shower, he spots the candle, now snuffed out.
Ilya isn’t sure what comes over him. He approaches the nightstand and sinks his fingers into the puddle of melted wax that remains by the wick.
It doesn’t burn him, like he hopes; the temperature has since cooled to only a pleasant throb of heat. This was how it was meant to feel on Shane. His Shane, his boy, eager and open eyes, little freckles on his cheeks.
Ilya feels his throat close up. He extricates his fingers and marches back into the bathroom. “Google says stay under for ten minutes. Twenty if you can.” Ilya cranks the water to a lukewarm temperature, taking in Shane's shivering. “Shane. I am so -”
“I’ll be better by the game against Toronto,” Shane interrupts, his teeth chattering. His voice is partially muffled by the stream of water and his hair is plastered flat against his forehead. “I have to be. Holy shit, that hurts.” He chuckles tightly. It might be Ilya’s imagination, but he’s pretty sure Shane’s eyes are still watery.
Ilya steps into the shower again, reluctantly, packing himself into a small corner where he receives only mist from the stream. The distance between them seems to him like a chasm. “I should have checked it before. How hot.” Ilya’s voice comes out thicker than he’d like.
Shane rotates his chest under the water and winces. “We both should’ve.” He shivers again.
“I suggested it,” Ilya continues.
“And I agreed to it, so what’s your point?” Shane snaps. If Ilya had enough presence to comprehend the meaning of the jumbled English words, he’d understand Shane is trying, in his own way, to defend him. But all he hears is the tone.
“Should we go to the hospital?” Ilya asks. His vision grows blurry. He blinks rapidly to try to get a clearer picture of Shane again.
Across the waterfall, Shane shakes his head. “I - I don’t think it’s that bad.” He twitches again. “God. I hope it’s not that bad.”
“I can take pictures and send to your trainer,” Ilya blurts. “She would know what to do. I can go to the store and - and get stuff. Everything you need. Bandages. Cream. Fruits you like. And -”
“Can you just give me a second, Ilya?” Shane interrupts, wincing.
Ilya nods silently. The wax has begun peeling off of Shane’s chest in uneven chunks, like a butterfly breaking through its cocoon. It looks almost reptilian, Ilya thinks, and then he chastises himself for it. If one of them is cold-blooded, it’s him. Him standing in the corner with his hands limp by his sides, useless, like he used to stand and count the breaths until his mother stopped crying so she could serve him dinner.
And all because he was hungry.
Shane shuts the water off. Ilya opens his mouth, a complaint on his tongue that perhaps ten minutes have passed but certainly not twenty. It dies on his lips when Shane shoots him an unreadable look.
The palm-sized patch on Shane’s chest looks lacquered - too smooth, too bright - like it doesn’t quite belong to him anymore. Ilya rubs his fingers along his lower lip.
“Okay, so,” Shane rasps. “That was a fail.” He attempts a smile. There are a few yellowed blisters developing on his skin, just under his collarbone.
“I can get the… cream,” Ilya whispers. He gestures vaguely to the doorway. Aloe Vera. That’s the name for it.
“I think you’re right, about asking Marcia.” Shane sighs. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.” He attempts to shrug and winces.
“No, no.” Ilya shakes his head. “Snap. Makes sense.” He gestures to Shane’s chest. Then he beelines for the door because he can’t bear to look at it any longer.
He returns with Shane’s phone, the cream, and underwear for the both of them. Ilya helps Shane into his first before tugging his own on. Shane scans his notifications and groans. “My parents.”
Ilya hardly comprehends the words. He uncaps the cream. Shane halts him with a hand to his shoulder, and Shane flinches with the movement of his own arm.
“Let me call my trainer first,” Shane says, softer than he needs to. “Get her thoughts. Then I’ll deal with my parents.” He turns to the mirror and furrows his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks.”
Ilya turns to look at Shane in the mirror too, but his eyes catch on himself first: Sweaty, rugged, face drained of color. Big, veiny hands, like a bear. He looks like a caricature of himself, all bug-eyed and pale, like one of the Ilya Rozanov dummies that Montreal fans burn in effigy outside the stadium.
Then he flicks his gaze over to the mirror image of Shane: Grimacing as he traces his fingers across his reddened collarbone.
Shane notices before Ilya does.
“Hey, hey.” Ilya watches as the version of Shane in the mirror turns around and obscures Ilya’s view of himself. Shane is standing in front of him, his eyes wide and searching. “I know it was an accident, okay?” Shane reaches up with his left arm, the one farthest from his injured side, and brushes Ilya’s cheek with his hand. Ilya realizes that the droplet on the pad of Shane’s thumb is a teardrop. Ilya blinks rapidly to diffuse them.
“Does it -” Jesus, his voice is so raw. Ilya clears his throat. “Does it hurt, still?”
Shane nods solemnly. “It stings. Look. I’m gonna call Marcia, figure this out.”
Ilya simply nods.
Shane stares at Ilya pointedly. Finally, he sighs, like it pains him. “You know you can’t be here when I call her, Ilya.”
Right. Ilya lifts his hand up to stroke Shane’s shoulder but stops himself short. He exits the bathroom, shuts the door gently, and paces the length of Shane’s bedroom in circles until he’s so dizzy the floor warps under his toes.
Ten minutes later, Shane pops his head out of the bathroom. “Ilya?”
Ilya runs to him, tripping over his own feet.
“She said it’s not great, but it’ll heal. Eventually. I - when she asked me how I got it, I just. I mean, obviously, I came up with some lame excuse.” Shane laughs tightly, interrupting his rambles. “Anyway. I have all the stuff I need here. Clean gauze, pain meds.”
“I’ll bring them,” Ilya interjects. He scratches the back of his neck. “Pills. Where are they?”
“It’s fine. I’ll get them.”
“Shane.” Ilya rubs a hand down his face. “Please,” he begs, his voice small, “let me fix this. Let me help.”
“You can help,” Shane says, “by going to dinner tonight.”
The sound Ilya makes is a variation of a scoff. He frowns. “We are not going. You need rest.”
“I know I do,” Shane agrees. “But my parents will freak out if we both cancel, and I don’t want to have to explain this. My mom won’t even call to ask why. She’ll just hop in the car.”
“I can’t - I can’t eat,” Ilya refutes, gesturing wildly. “I can’t go and eat and pretend all is fine.”
“I need you to,” Shane protests. “I am asking you to.”
Ilya throws his hands up in the air. “They don’t want to see me, hm? They want to see you.”
It’s Shane’s turn to scoff. “That’s ridiculous,” Shane says, as if Ilya were being purposefully dishonest. “You know they’re obsessed with you.”
To disagree is to open an entirely new can of worms. Ilya says instead, his voice careful: “What if you need hospital? Urgent care?”
“Marcia said it’s not so severe I’d need to,” Shane refutes. He stares at him, reading Ilya’s face. Shane’s eyebrows draw in, as if he’s expending a lot of energy to do so. “And even if I did,” he reminds him, “you wouldn’t be able to come with me.”
Ilya’s throat closes up again. Canada’s Shane Hollander, and Russia’s Ilya Rozanov. “But I could drive you.”
“So can a taxi,” Shane states, like it’s the same. Ilya digs his fingernails into his palm. “It doesn’t matter. I am asking you to go over there and keep them entertained.” Shane’s impossibly big, brown eyes stare Ilya down like the barrel of a gun, pleading. “For me,” he adds, the nail in the coffin.
“Okay.” Ilya drops his chin to his chest. “Okay.” When he looks up, his eyes are shiny. Shane stares back at him with something like pity. “I just - Moya lyubov. I am sorry.”
Shane’s face is like a portrait. Ilya eyes the bubbling of the sensitive skin on his chest and wishes a million times over it was his skin instead. Shane lifts his hand, and for a second Ilya thinks it might cup his jaw, but then Shane grimaces with the movement and keeps his arm at his side.
“I know you are,” Shane says instead. “We’ve both had our fair share of injuries, but this has to be the stupidest one, right?” He smiles grimly.
Ilya attempts to reciprocate the grin, contorting his lips into an amorphous shape he hopes resembles a smile. He doesn’t have a mirror to see his own face, but Shane flinches at his expression. Ilya drops all pretenses of smiling and bows his chin to his chest again.
“We’ll laugh about this, later,” Shane tries again. Ilya reaches up and pets Shane’s dripping hair. He’s desperate for a hit of citrus, but instead he rubs his thumb along the rim of Shane’s ear, the touch feather-light. Then he pulls back.
“I’ll get the gauze,” Ilya murmurs. He leaves the room.
----
“They’re a little burnt, aren’t they?” Yuna asks.
Ilya’s head shoots up from where he’s buried his chin in his palm. He slips his elbow off the dining table, suddenly aware of how rude it must look. “What?”
Yuna sets her fork and knife down. “My short ribs. I think they’re burnt.”
Ilya shakes his head rapidly. “No. No. They’re great.” He picks his knife up and begins sawing at the meat again, as if to prove his point. The flavors burst in his mouth, the meat seared to tender perfection.
“Then how come you’re not eating?” Yuna complains. Ilya wants to protest, seeing as he just demonstrated that he’s eating, but then he glances up at the clock above the dining table and sees that thirty minutes have passed and his plate is still full. The Hollanders are used to him eating like a rabid dog. Shane often has to remind him to chew.
Back in Moscow, Ilya’s mother took ten minutes every Sunday after dark to break up a lamb sausage into chunks, an offering to the stray dog that lingered on their porch. Igor, she’d call him. There is a kindness to that gesture, but also a wariness: kind enough to feed the dog, but wary enough of its nature to never let it in the house.
The Hollanders let Ilya in the house. And now look what’s come of it.
“Shane made a big lunch,” Ilya says instead. He saws off another cut of meat and shoves it into his mouth to soothe the sharpness of the lie.
“I feel bad he’s too sick to come,” David adds. David and Yuna sit on one side of the dining table, Ilya and an empty chair on the other. David moves to get up, seeing as he and Yuna’s plates are cleared, but Yuna stops him with a firm hand on his shoulder. A glimmer of recognition lights in David’s eyes as he sits back down. “Shane hardly comes down with something. Even when he was little. Healthy kid.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees, a lump in his stomach. His fingers feel clumsy and stiff, like wood pellets. He spoons more meat into his mouth.
“I wrapped his salmon up, and all the veggies he likes.” Yuna gestures to a lunchbox on the kitchen island, a bright blue one a child might take to school. “Can you bring it back for him?”
“Of course,” Ilya says with a nod. He takes another bite.
“So, take two with Ottawa,” Yuna says conversationally. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” Ilya responds through a mouthful of food. God, it’s delicious. “We have a new player. Young one from Switzerland. Right winger. I think he will help.”
“I’ve heard about him,” Yuna responds, a knowing smile on her face. “Haas. I like that kid.”
“Me too,” Ilya admits.
“Have you met him?”
Ilya forks some broccoli into his mouth and shakes his head. “Only online. I’ll meet him in a few weeks.”
“Gosh, you’ll have to let me know how that goes,” Yuna says.
David lifts a finger up. “Let me know too.”
Yuna rolls her eyes playfully. “As if you two don’t text enough.”
“You can join our amateur sports betting league whenever you want to,” David rebuts in a sing-song voice.
Yuna passes the bread basket to Ilya. Ilya takes one slice and passes it to David. “I have better things to do with my money, thank you.”
David turns to Ilya. “By the way. You can’t escape me now. I owe you 100 bucks.”
Ilya groans. “I told you to forget about that.”
“No. Ilya, no,” David says, the most serious he’s looked all evening. For some reason, his expression makes Ilya smile. “We made a deal, and I’m a man of my word.” David turns to Yuna to explain the situation in full. “I bet him that Ottawa would beat San Francisco in their last away game.”
Yuna furrows her eyebrows, computing something in her head. She turns to Ilya. “You bet against your own team?” She mutters, astounded.
Ilya shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “It made sense. Numbers-wise.”
Yuna throws her head in her hands. “Oh God,” she moans. “Pray for Coach Wiebe.”
----
After dinner, Ilya rinses their plates and fills the dishwasher. With the sponge in his hand, he registers the pleasant feeling of fullness in his stomach and recalls the smile on his face when David spoke to him.
Back when Ilya was a rookie, he had scoured nearly every academic article online - at the very least, all with a Russian translation - about Alzheimer’s. After his father died, a silly hope overcame him, that perhaps he could research an entirely different condition and, by retroactively diagnosing his father with it, soothe some dried-up part of his soul. He began researching psychopathy.
In the Hollanders’ kitchen, he recalls the warning signs he had long ago memorized like lyrics to a song. He scrubs at a particularly stubborn sauce stain as he recites them. Lying. Lack of empathy. Parasitic lifestyle.
Snapshots of his own behavior race through his mind like a film reel: Hurting Shane so hard he cried. Lying about why he couldn’t come. Licking the sauce off his fork after clearing his plate. Giving in after David’s tenth attempt to shove a $100 bill into his hands. Eating the food they cook and pocketing the money they earn.
Taking and taking and taking. Parasitic lifestyle.
Ilya squirts another dollop of dishwasher liquid onto the plate, squashing the stain. With the plates all done, he eyes the remaining dishes: steak knives of various sizes, each with a smear of brown sauce on the blades.
Ilya peers through the window above the sink and finds both David and Yuna sitting on lawn chairs in the backyard. Yuna gestures animatedly, her smile as wide as Shane’s. Across from her, David listens intently, his disposition as calm and determined as Shane's.
Ilya picks up the first knife. The handle is heavy and cold in his hands. He rotates it side to side, running it under the water until he can see his own reflection in the metal.
He thinks back to the movie Shane made him watch. The Fault in Our Stars. It was cheesy and predictable and yet Ilya blinked back tears in the end.
Augustus explained his reasoning for placing a cigarette between his lips but never lighting it: “It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.”
The words float in Ilya’s head, tantalizing. He grips the knife with two hands, the blade pointed away from himself and towards the window, imagining he’s in some sort of sword fight. Then he flips it around, the blade slicing through the faucet’s gush of water as it follows the path Ilya sets, until the blade is pointed right at Ilya’s chest. He directs it upwards, slowly, until the tip of it is a hair’s breadth away from his Adam’s apple. He understands, now, that if he exhales, it will make contact with his throat.
You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.
The sliding door to the backyard opens. Ilya drops the steak knife into the sink, where it plunges into the metal basin with a clatter.
“What was that?” Yuna calls out.
“Oh.” Ilya smiles at her, wide and cordial. He gestures to the sink. “I am almost done.”
She squints at him but approaches the sink with approval. “I told you you don’t have to do that,” she says. Yuna reaches up to pat Ilya’s shoulder through his dress shirt. She stares at him straight-on, which must mean he’s not bleeding from his throat, because surely she would say something if he were.
“I want to help,” Ilya offers simply. Then he turns back to the sink, scrubbing the steak knife under water until the worst of the stains are stripped. The water drowns out the trembling of his hands.
Ilya finishes loading the dishwasher and turns it on. When it’s time to leave, Yuna gives him a big hug, one that he reciprocates as best he can with Shane’s bright blue lunchbox in one hand.
He doesn’t remember the drive back to Shane’s cottage, but he must have done it, because soon he’s in their entranceway - Shane’s entranceway, more like it - and toeing off his shoes so he doesn’t streak dirt in from the driveway.
He approaches Shane’s bedroom with quiet footfalls. An image flashes in his mind of all four walls aflame, Shane snoring softly within them. An errant thought crowds his mind: Did he snuff out the candle? Well, he did, but did he place the lid back on? Could it have caught fire after he left?
“You’re back,” comes Shane’s soft voice from the en suite bathroom. He pads over to meet Ilya in the doorway. A blue cotton t-shirt covers most of the gauze, but the white material peeks out above Shane’s collar when it slips. Shane, as if following Ilya’s gaze, adjusts his shirt to cover it up.
“It took a while,” Ilya replies. He licks his lips. “Sorry.” He unzips the lunch box. “Salmon. From your mother.”
“Great. I’ll put it in the fridge.”
“Let me,” Ilya interjects, zipping it back up. His eyes rove Shane’s face, scanning for further evidence of harm. “How much pain?”
“None, really. I took a lot of pain meds,” Shane admits, a soft smile on his lips. He locks eyes with Ilya and his smile slides completely off. “Not - not - fuck, sorry. The normal amount. I just mean, the normal amount.”
“I know,” Ilya replies easily. He wishes, sometimes, that he never told Shane about his mother. It’s not that he doesn’t want Shane to know. It’s that in telling Shane, Ilya lived through it all over again. It opened a door that was once firmly shut, flooding his mind with long, curly hair that caught on his stubby fingers and a limp wrist he used to grip like an anchor while crossing the street. He sits on the edge of the bed and motions for Shane to join him. When he does, Ilya wraps a tentative arm around him, careful not to make contact with the wound. He sinks his fingers into the nape of Shane’s neck, massaging the skin there. “I am going to take care of you,” Ilya whispers.
Shane nods against Ilya’s neck. “And I’ll take care of you,” he murmurs.
Ilya’s hand stills behind Shane’s head. “Focus on you. You need to get better.”
Shane pulls back for a moment, squinting at Ilya the same way Yuna did. “The way you’re talking, it’s like I got shot,” he says with a laugh. It comes out sharp. “I’m gonna be fine.”
Ilya tries to tamp his expression down for Shane’s sake, but he knows he’s frowning.
“That was a joke,” Shane says slowly.
It is and it isn’t. Ilya resumes stroking Shane’s neck. “Are you tired?”
“Yeah,” Shane admits. He nuzzles his face into Ilya’s throat. Shane’s nose is soft and warm, so different from the sharp, cold blade of a steak knife that Ilya almost smiles. “Let’s sleep,” Shane sighs. So they do.
----
Ilya can’t fall asleep.
He crawls out of bed at three in the morning, but not before carefully unhooking Shane’s arm from where it’s sprawled across Ilya’s chest. He deposits it gently onto the warm dip in the mattress his own body leaves.
They both sleep shirtless, so it shouldn’t stab Ilya as hard as it does to see Shane’s gauze-wrapped skin. He curls his fingernails into his palms as he stares at Shane’s chest, as if with enough concentration and sheer force of will, he can heal it. When nothing happens, he unfurls his hands and leaves the bedroom entirely.
Before he truly registers what he’s doing, he has grabbed one of his old clubbing jackets from his time in Boston and slipped out into the backyard. He feels around in the pockets, grunting happily when his fingers wrap around something solid and papery.
He extricates one cigarette from the pack and places it between his lips. He searches the second pocket for a lighter, and in his search, a metallic flash drops from his pocket onto the soil. Ilya reaches for it. “Ponyal tebya,” he mutters, closing his fingers around the lighter. Got you.
Shane’s voice echoes in his head like a voicemail. “Oh. I’m - I’m not sure you’re supposed to smoke here.” Ilya remembers as if it were yesterday: A younger Shane in his soft green beanie, dark freckles dotting his cheeks and a timid smile on his lips. Ilya, all rugged lines and hardened features, looking like the worst thing that could happen to a boy like that.
Was he? The worst thing that could happen to a boy like that?
Ilya has been sober for months. While he tries to count out exactly how many, he lights the cigarette and inhales sharply. He smokes it shirtless, his lazy eyes identifying shadows of trees in the woods. In the distance, a loon chirps. Ilya flinches and then chuckles at his own fearfulness.
Ilya removes the cigarette from his lips in order to rotate it and stare at the butt of it, aflame. The embers are rusty-orange, the surface crumbly and fragile, almost like compacted sand. Staring at it, he feels a pinprick of pain on his forearm. Phantom pain, obviously. He has long ago learned the difference. Shane, on the other hand, is in active, ongoing pain. Ilya’s fingers, the culprits, twitch around the cigarette.
Shane doesn’t like when he smokes. Ilya recalls this as if an alien transmission containing the information has only now passed through the border guards of his brain. He takes another long drag, so long he chokes a little, and then stamps it out. He picks it up in his palm like he used to pick up worms when he was little, cradling it, and then he slips back inside.
He wraps the crushed cigarette in paper towels and shoves it to the bottom of the trash can. Then, aware suddenly of his stink, he gurgles water from the kitchen sink and spits it out three times in rapid succession.
Okay, so maybe Shane will realize he smoked. He can still be helpful, can’t he? He whips around in the dimly lit kitchen. He flicks on a light switch, finds it’s the one with the bulb that needs a change, so he flicks on a different switch instead.
This switch shines a light on Shane’s army of supplement bottles, along with a seven-day pill organizer. Ilya cradles it in his hands and holds it up to the light: empty, all seven days of it.
Ilya cracks his knuckles and then his neck. This is something he can do: Refill Shane’s pill organizer. Make his morning routine that small bit easier.
Ilya begins with the fish oil pills. He reads the bottle and distributes them according to the directions, one shiny orange capsule in each of the seven boxes. He moves on to the bioactive turmeric pills - which, from the look of them, seem like an overpriced amalgamation of the spices Shane already owns in his pantry - and begins to enjoy the rhythm of the task: the pin-drop sound of each pill rattling in its cage.
Then, like a cliche, he thinks about his mother.
His thoughts start out simple: Did she apportion a set amount of pills in her palm to start? Did she begin with a normal dose, or did she set out to swallow them all? And if she set out to down them all, did she still count them out one-by-one, to be sure it would work? Shane is so neurotic, Ilya imagines he would. And then Ilya pummels that train of thought fast before it can fester. Four was his mother’s favorite number, although he cannot remember why. Did she swallow them in bursts of four?
He thinks about her more generally: Irina Rozanova, not as a mother to Ilya but as a person in her own right.
The tough part about losing your mother young - and Ilya contemplates this all while examining a translucent turmeric pellet - is that even when you knew her, you never really knew her. Kids are born selfish and taught to be kind. Thus, she was alive when Ilya was selfish and dead when he learned to be kind.
Ilya’s memories of Irina are faulty at best. She loved to cut his meat up into tiny triangles. Or is it that Ilya demanded his food cut up into triangles, and she acquiesced?
She liked those Kurabiye cookies from the night market; soft shortbread biscuits with thick fruit jam in the center. Then Ilya reconsiders: did she like the cookies, or did she like that he liked them?
Perhaps most damning of all is that he believed she loved watching him skate. But was it she who liked it? Would she rather have been knitting, reading, sitting at the grand piano playing Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2? Is the grand sum of his memories of her really just a reflection of himself?
Ilya realizes he has poured too many turmeric pills into his palm. If he were to take them all, he wonders belatedly what would happen. It’s tumeric, for God’s sake. Would he just get healthier? He chuckles to himself, low and throaty. “Zabavnyy,” he mutters. Funny.
He dumps the extra pills back into the container and screws the cap on. He slides it back where he found it, because knowing Shane, he probably had the bottles alphabetized. He creeps back into the bedroom, where Shane is sprawled like a starfish on his back. Probably it’s the only comfortable position he can sleep in, given his current state.
Ilya pulls back his side of the blankets before thinking better of it and walking into the bathroom. The shower glares at him, a reminder of his culpability. He grabs his toothbrush and squeezes out an alarming amount of toothpaste. He brushes until even the memory of cigarettes is gone.
Then he crawls back into bed and allows himself one sniff.
Citrus.
----
Ilya startles awake to the feeling of sun coating the right side of his face.
His eyes still closed, he feels around on the bed and finds a dip where Shane normally lays, cool to the touch. He cracks one eye open and groans as the light pours in. Shifting around in the bed feels like swimming in a pool of his own sweat, which he knows Shane would find unpalatable. He makes a mental note to wash the bedsheets before the evening.
As Ilya enters the kitchen, he is greeted by the sight of Shane carrying a dirtied cup to the sink, his sculpted, tanned back facing Ilya. Then he turns around, and Ilya’s eyes fall on the wound dressing. His heart sinks.
“Oh.” Shane looks up at him and smiles, a small and earnest one. It’s so incongruent: the injury and the smile. The injury and the smile directed at Ilya, of all people.
“Let me,” Ilya mutters. He takes the cup from Shane’s hands, dried-up strawberry seeds congealed at the bottom. Ilya flicks the faucet on.
As Ilya moves closer to Shane, Shane’s smile falters. “You okay?”
Ilya squeezes dish soap onto the sponge. “I wish you woke me. I wanted to make you breakfast.”
Shane’s sparkling brown eyes seem alive in the sunlight, creatures of their own. Now, those eyes are narrowed. “I’m glad I didn’t. You look...”
Ilya rinses the suds off the cup. “Hot? Handsome?”
“Tired,” Shane finishes delicately. Ilya dries the cup off with a paper towel and slides it back onto the shelf. When he closes the glass door of the cupboard, he catches a glimpse of twin shadows, patchy and a little oily, under his eyes. “Did you have a bad dream?” Shane asks.
“No.” Ilya keeps his face directed towards Shane’s cabinets rather than the man himself. It’s the truth, as far as Ilya knows: he doesn’t remember dreaming at all.
“You were tossing and turning a lot,” Shane continues. “That’s all.”
“Oh,” Ilya comments. He drums his fingertips on the countertop. When he turns to Shane, his eyes dart from Shane’s nose to his chest, then back again. “How is the…?” Ilya gestures to his own chest, avoiding the word.
“Fine.” Shane shrugs with just one shoulder, the less affected one. “I took more… Yeah.”
“You need to wash it. Every day until it heals. Can I do it?”
Shane’s eyebrows furrow. Ilya suddenly wants to run the pads of his fingers along them. “Marcia only told me to do that this morning.”
Ilya blinks a few times, as if the point of Shane’s sentence will emerge through the movements. “And?”
“Did you reach out to her?” Shane’s tone borders on accusatory. Really, it’s more frightened. “Because that wouldn’t - I mean, I think you’d know better than to reach out to the head trainer of a rival team. That goes against -”
“Shane,” Ilya interrupts. He places his sweaty palms on either side of Shane’s bare arms, hoping he’ll find it soothing and not disgusting. “I did not.”
“So then…?”
“I just know,” Ilya states simply. He rubs his thumb over a birthmark on Shane’s arm. He reaches for the phrase. “Common sense.”
Shane nods slowly, temporarily dissuaded. He drifts out of Ilya’s arms and to his fortress of vitamins. When he lifts his pill organizer, he tilts his head when it rattles. He pops open SATURDAY. “Did you do this?”
“Depends,” Ilya offers. He grins weakly. “Is it correct?”
Shane pops open each day’s lid, one by one, his gaze suspicious. Slowly, he glances from the pill case to Ilya. “Yes,” he admits.
“Then I did it.”
Shane hesitates for a beat. He settles on: “Thank you.” As Shane dumps the pills out into his palm, Ilya grabs a glass from the cupboard and pours him a cup of water. He shoves it into Shane’s hand before he can reach for the cupboard himself. “Thank you,” Shane repeats, voice small. He tosses the pills into his mouth in one go, swallowing them down with a small swig of water.
Ilya doesn’t mean to, but he counts how many Shane takes at once: Four.
----
The pads of Ilya’s fingers break through the surface of the water, checking its temperature. “Ready!” Ilya calls out.
Shane’s head pops into the bathroom before the rest of him does, his dark hair mussed and wild.
Shane raises a single eyebrow. “You know this can be done over the sink, right?”
Ilya simply drags his own hand through the bathtub water, swirling it. “Come,” he says.
Shane obliges: he pulls his gym shorts off first, then unbuttons his red checkered flannel. Shane’s version of a strip show always has a clinical, meticulous air to it. The sight seizes at Ilya’s heart. When Shane tugs his boxers off, he folds each article of clothing into a neat stack. Ilya makes a bet to himself in his head about which will come out on top, and he’s right: Shane folds his cotton boxers last and layers it atop the stack like melted butter over pancakes.
The only thing he’s still wearing, if you can call it that, is the gauze. Ilya pushes himself up until he’s standing by using the lid of the bathtub as leverage. When he approaches Shane, Ilya runs his fingers along the edge of the gauze, feeling its grooves. He tilts his head, a question. Shane nods.
When Ilya lifts the edge of the gauze, it separates from Shane’s skin with resistance, slightly stiff from dried ointment. The skin underneath, once sealed off, can breathe again. The earlier redness has softened from angry red to a deeper rose. When Ilya dusts his fingers over it, the surface is warm to the touch.
Ilya gulps and gestures to the bathtub. Shane climbs in one leg at a time, like a deer learning to walk again.
“You look pretty,” Ilya murmurs. He presses his hands together and cups them, forming a bowl in his palms to ladle water onto Shane’s chest. “Any pain?”
“Not really. It stings, a little,” Shane admits. He follows the movements of Ilya’s hands as he uncaps a soap marketed for babies. Ilya, as if reading Shane’s mind, brings the bottle to his freckled nose to sniff it. Shane scrunches his nose up. “Doesn’t smell like anything.”
Ilya squirts some onto a washcloth. Shane lifts a hand out of the bathtub, where it drips water all over Ilya’s arm.
“No,” Shane hums. Ilya tilts his head. Shane reaches for the washcloth and throws it onto the hardwood floor, where it falls with a muted splat. “I want you to do it,” Shane whispers. He reaches for Ilya’s fingers and interlaces theirs together.
“You do?”
Shane nods, as if it’s obvious. Ilya stares down at his fingers: pudgy, pale, skin cracked around the knuckles. If he were hungry right now, he could look down at his own flesh and lose his appetite. Then he stares up at Shane’s bright, warm eyes. Sometimes you don’t have to understand someone to indulge them. Ilya squirts the baby soap onto his hands instead.
He rubs the soap into Shane’s chest with his fingers, and Shane leans back in the tub until his back meets the marble. He hums, baring his neck, his eyes sliding shut.
“That feels nice,” Shane mumbles under his breath.
“Yeah?” Ilya cups his hands again to pour water down Shane’s chest like a waterfall. Droplets bead briefly on the shiny surface before sliding down. “Does it hurt?”
Shane cracks one eye open. “Do you have a quota for how many times you need to ask me that per day?”
Ilya doesn’t know that word, but he can surmise its meaning. “Maybe.” Ilya smirks, but the expression doesn’t quite reach his eyes. When Shane closes his eyes again, he shimmies around a little in the tub, the water sloshing around his stomach. Ilya feels something twist in his chest at the sight.
While he’s dabbing Shane’s chest dry, Ilya leans down to press a chaste kiss to Shane’s shoulder. A lopsided smile spreads on Shane’s face, a giddy one. With his eyes still closed, it looks like he’s dreaming. Moy mal'chik. My boy.
Ilya feels a sharp sting in his right eye. He brings one knuckle up to brush under his eyes and finds that he’s crying.
He keeps dabbing at Shane’s chest with an almost crazed focus on the task. Shane continues to lay back like he’s sunbathing, so relaxed that Ilya feels he can take his time to replace Shane’s bandage, blinking back the tears when they come.
When Ilya checks the mirror and confirms his eyes look completely clear again, he taps Shane’s shoulder. Shane opens his eyes slowly. Ilya clears his throat and tosses the towel aside. He plasters a wide grin on his face. “All done.”
----
That night, Ilya realizes mid-dream that he’s dreaming. Osoznannoye snovideniye. There is a term for it in English, too, but he can’t remember it. He could probably wake up, if he really put his mind to it. He doesn’t.
He blinks the eyes of his dream-self. He is in Shane’s backyard, although the outdoor furniture is different: a few scattered lawn chairs in various shades of blue, and surprisingly, no hammock. Ilya whips his head around. If there is no hammock, then where is she?
He turns around, his toes in the grass, until he faces the cottage again. He finds his mother at the outdoor grill. Orange embers burn underneath the charcoal surface. All Ilya can see is her hair, blonde and wispy, and a bit of her nose, petite and a little red from the cold.
“Mamochka,” Ilya whispers. Blissfully, she turns to face him. Her face is pallid and sweaty, drained of color, but she is smiling.
The sliding door behind her opens. Shane, uninjured and grinning, joins her by the grill holding a stack of burger patties. He lines them up next to Irina on the grill, neither saying a word.
He watches from afar as Shane says something to Ilya’s mother. Ilya dares a step closer, if only to hear them better.
The step he takes angers the grill. The fire flares up, engulfing the patties. Ilya frowns.
“Otstupi, Shane,” Ilya commands, as if Shane can understand him. He corrects himself. “Back up.”
Shane doesn’t, and neither does Irina. Ilya takes another step closer, thinking he’ll shield them with his own body if he has to. In perfect time with Ilya’s footfall, as if Ilya himself had planted a landmine, the grill explodes. The force of it throws Shane and Irina backwards and to the ground. The flames burn as tall as the vaulted roof in the cottage, easily taller than Shane and Ilya combined.
Ilya stares down at his own body, flexing his fingers. Unharmed. In his dream, he walks over to the remains of Shane and Irina with the air of an archeologist, not of someone who just lost the two closest people in his life. In the bed, somewhere outside of the dream world, he attempts to wiggle his toes. When he finds that he can, his eyes fly open and he jolts awake.
He registers in increments that he is in Shane’s bed, Shane is snoring lightly next to him, and that Irina is gone. The last part pains him, a little. Even her charred body is better than nothing at all.
Ilya slips out of bed like a fish flops out of a bowl. He is oily with sweat, heart beating like a jackrabbit. He leaves the bedroom before he can think about where he is going.
Water. Water will help. In the darkness of Shane’s living room, Ilya flicks a light on in the kitchen.
Light doesn’t pour into the room from the ceiling, as Ilya expects. Instead, one measly lightbulb from the flush-mount attached to the ceiling flickers at Ilya, as if taunting him.
“Fucking light,” Ilya spits. He flips a different, dimmer light on, then swings open the garage door. He emerges with a ladder tall enough to reach even the top of the double-height ceiling. Shane built the cottage almost like an old cathedral. It is as gorgeous as it is frustrating to maintain.
As Ilya props the ladder open, he thinks about the Sistine Chapel. If Michelangelo knew he’d have to go back up to that same goddamn roof every year to change the lightbulbs on his masterpiece, maybe he would’ve painted the walls or the floor like a normal person.
Ilya huffs, gazing up at the ladder’s full, impressive wingspan. He steps one bare foot onto the first rung, the other still on the ground. He’s still in his boxers. When he gazes up, the room opens upward.
You are the problem, Ilya thinks as he stares at the dead bulb. It looks unassuming as ever. Ilya, ever the handyman, can change it easily. You have no place here.
Climbing the ladder feels like riding a roller-coaster or climbing a tree. Ilya would like to think specifically that it’s a Siberian Fir tree, although they’re awfully hard to grip onto.
He reaches the top of the ladder, his toes curved around the final rung for a better grip. He reaches his arms up to the lightbulb in question, just managing to wrap his fingers around it.
Then, because he’s curious, he looks down.
Shane’s village of supplements is the size of Ilya’s thumb. The silver sink is even smaller. The whole cottage is like a dollhouse, and Ilya an eagle perched in its nest. His mind keeps rattling off comparisons: The rug is so small it looks like a menstrual pad. Ilya would know, Svetlana would always ask him to buy her packs when she came to visit. The TV looks like a remote, and the remote a tiny cockroach. The thought is so silly it makes Ilya smile. Then, a louder thought he can’t trace the origin of: Jump.
Ilya gulps. He stares down at the hardwood floor with new eyes.
He knows better than to disable himself before the season starts. Because that’s what it would do: not kill, it’s much too small a drop for that, but perhaps maim. He wouldn’t want it to kill, anyway. He knows this, but feels the need to format the sentiment as a sentence and repeat it in his head: I would not want it to kill.
His arms ache. Right, the lightbulb. He unscrews it, brings his arm back to his side, and stares at it for a moment.
Inexplicably, he begins to laugh.
It’s a quiet, shoulder-shaking sound. Ilya and the lightbulb. Ilya and his crazy head of impulses that aren’t even his. He’d never do that. This is Shane’s house. And even if it wasn’t. Of course.
He laughs and takes a step down to the rung below him. When his second foot moves to join the first, it doesn’t stay where he’s placed it, too slicked up with sweat. He falls backwards instead.
Ilya has no memory of the act of falling. It lasts a fraction of a second, enough time for his arms to flail but too brief for him to scream.
He lands with a grunt on his right side, his shoulder and ribs taking the brunt of the fall. The ladder, a heavy beast of metal, clatters to the floor beside him. The sound erupts in Ilya’s ears like a bomb. When the ringing in his ears settles, Ilya cranes his neck on the floor to look at it.
It has fallen a width of two fingers, maybe three, from Ilya’s head.
Ilya curls in on himself on the hardwood floor. The lightbulb is, brilliantly, intact in his hand.
“Udachlivyy,” he mutters. Lucky.