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Ilya’s second favourite thing in the world was getting under Shane Hollander’s skin.
He loved methodically pressing the younger man’s buttons, one-by-one, and watching the internal kernel of uncertainty gradually build into Shane’s unique brand of tightly restrained panic. And if he couldn’t watch it with his own two eyes after saying something to catch Shane off guard, Ilya relished in imagining it happen on the other end of an innuendo-ripe text.
God, it was just so easy. He’d never met someone who took the world at such face value the way Shane did. Maybe that was why he always held himself so stiffly; always controlled his face with mathematical precision. Because he didn’t parse out the nonsensical nuances of the world. Or maybe he just couldn’t. Like he was forever at the whim of those around him to confirm that the world and all it's little eccentricities made sense. It was just Shane's poor luck then that Ilya had chosen him to love.
Forget sustenance, Ilya could forever survive on the pinched look of bewilderment at the corner of Shane’s eyes every time he teased him.
And if teasing was his second favourite thing in the world, the first was by far the reward of Shane’s whole demeanour relaxing into complete repose (mixed with a healthy dose of kissable annoyance) once Ilya let him in on the joke.
Forget water, Ilya could wander a lifetime through any desert quenched by the prospect of unravelling Shane’s taut composure with a flash of a smile, with his fingers, his tongue, the heat of one body pressed against the other…
That unravelling never ceased to warm something within Ilya. The soft and often forgotten part of himself that had always yearned so deeply for human connection beyond the sex, the partying, and the fame. The part he had denied himself for a lifetime under the pretence of self-preservation, until one tearful night in Tampa Shane had simply reached out and accepted it without question. Entirely and completely.
For the first time in his life, since before his mother’s passing had left him to harden under his father’s critical eye, Ilya had been given permission to be soft. Without question or judgement. To drop the bravado in a way he'd never allowed himself to do before—not even with Svetlana. It almost hurt to feel it, especially because he didn’t think Shane even knew the gravity of what he was doing. To Shane, this was simply Ilya at face value. And wasn’t that a fucking impossible thing to wrap his head around?
Shane had probably walked up to Ilya the first day they’d met and left the standoffish conversation thinking Ilya was a nice guy under it all. For Ilya's part, he had known Shane was soft right away. The kind of soft that was all open-faced and earnest. And god how Ilya had wanted just a taste of that even then.
They’d wasted so much time getting to this point, and Ilya knew it was mostly his own fault—had seen hints of what they could have been from the get-go. How Shane would have free fallen with Ilya had he had the courage to nudge them both over the edge. If he hadn't mixed his signals and caved to self-loathing. But he’d been too afraid and taken too much time, and it had taken eight goddamn years and the thought of losing Shane to someone else to get here.
Here was worth it though. Here was a hotel suite finally reserved under both their names. It was Shane’s sweat rumpled suit folded neatly on the chair and Ilya’s in a pile by the door. Here was the lasting echo of the people who loved them joyously sending them off. It was the curve of Shane’s bare spine traced beneath Ilya’s curious fingers, and the back of his neck pressed warmly against the pink of Ilya’s lips. Here was the perfect curl of Shane’s ear, into which Ilya whispered everything he could to provoke the unravelling.
Here was the matching rings sitting golden and new on their fingers, and next was the life waiting ahead of them.