Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais

Additional Tags:

Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is Trying His Best, Autistic Shane Hollander, POV Shane Hollander, Good Friend Jackie Pike, Mediocre Friend Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J.J. Dagenais, Mediocre Friend Hayden Pike, Shane Hollander Is Bad at Feelings, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, ilya using his powers of observation for good for once, idk if this reads as autism or just me projecting hehe

Language:

English

Series:

Part 4 of hate Rozanov, not Ilya

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-28 Words: 10,947 Chapters: 1/1

isn't he boring?

Summary

“You are making 12 burgers this time?” came Ilya’s voice from behind him.

“Yeah, I didn’t think eight would be enough,” Shane said, trying not to sound defensive.

“And you found a completely new recipe for this, yes? Did not just multiply the one you made earlier this week, I mean.”

“...Shut up.”

“Never. You are too boring, I need to be interesting for both of us.”

Shane’s arm stilled on the grill for just a second, the word boring prodding him right in a sore spot, like a finger pressing against a bruise.

===

Part 4 of "hate Rozanov, not Ilya". Shane decides to invite JJ, Hayden, and Jackie over to the cottage to have a day to themselves and to introduce them to Ilya off the ice. They're mostly on the same page now, only, Ilya won't stop calling Shane "boring", and Shane doesn't know what to make of that, nor does he know how to ask about it himself. Things are pleasant, if awkward, until Hayden and JJ catch wind of Ilya's penchant for the (endearing?) quip and confront him, unaware that Shane can hear. But how will Ilya justify himself, when he thinks that Shane isn't around?

Notes

Can be read on its own as long as you know that in the first part of the series, Shane accidentally outs himself and Ilya to his friends and parents while in the hospital. But I’d appreciate it if you read every part if this is your introduction to the series! 🫶

Yippee more of this series! Here I really wanted to try to delve a little more into his neurodivergent tendencies while also exploring a little bit about what that might look like since he neither knows nor suspects that he is autistic. I feel like a lot of what I've written for Shane is pretty surface level, so I was really hoping to explore a little bit more internally. Also a little bit of a look into the beginnings of their ~domestic~ life with one another and how they navigate being such different people. I think it's also nice to see Ilya giving some care to Shane when so far in this series it's largely been Ilya receiving care from others.

And yet again this became way longer than I expected it to (I was expecting 7k words). I like to yap, I guess, go figure.

(Also sorry to any JJ fans out there, this cottage scene was supposed to be from his POV originally, until I came up with the concept and knew it had to be from Shane's. The next idea I have is from David's POV so don't know when I'll get to JJ, but I'm still intent on writing something from his perspective some day!)

Shane removed the fruit from a bowl sitting on the kitchen island: a fairly standard selection of apples, oranges, and two bananas. The way they sat in the bowl just didn’t look right for some reason, not that he knew what the correct configuration was. He tried putting each one of them in the bowl again, stacking them carefully so as to distribute them evenly throughout the bowl’s interior. When he finished putting the fruit in the bowl he admittedly wasn’t sure if it was any different from how they’d been arranged previously.

“Shane, you cannot keep moving fruit around in that bowl,” Ilya said, sitting on a stool across the kitchen island. “I’ll start to worry the concussion has messed up your memory.”

“But doesn’t something look off to you?” Shane asked, gesturing towards the bowl.

Ilya gave Shane an unimpressed look before glancing at the unremarkable fruit bowl for a fraction of a second. He raised his eyebrows in confusion, clearly still not understanding what Shane was getting at.

“It’s, it’s the shape of each fruit, and the way the colors aren’t quite distributed evenly throughout the bowl, and actually, one of the bananas is a little bruised so I should move it to the bottom or just get rid of it…”

Shane was in the process of removing all of the fruit from the bowl again when Ilya came up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist and planting a kiss on the side of his neck. He set the orange he was holding down and put his hands over Ilya’s. He hadn’t even realized that his heart had been racing a little bit over some stupid fruit until he felt the thumping in his chest slow, replaced by a fluttering coming from somewhere deeper inside.

This was all still so new, and even after staying in his cottage for nearly a week now, waking up in bed with one another every morning, getting to have sex whenever (and wherever) they wanted, and spending every passing day like a couple on their honeymoon, Shane still couldn’t really believe that he got to have this. He tried not to think about what this would look like once hockey was in the picture again.

“Is just like you to worry about something so boring,” Ilya said. “But please. Boiziau and Pikes will be here soon. They will not worry about how badly you’ve arranged fruit on top of the kitchen island, I think.”

Shane pursed his lips at the now-common descriptor that Ilya used for him, but he didn’t comment. He should’ve been used to it, with how often Ilya described him as such, but he still didn’t know exactly what to make of being so often called “boring”. Especially since it seemed like Ilya was only more eager than ever to call him that, day by day.

Boring was the last thing that Shane felt, whenever he was with Ilya. Their times together, whether tinged by the danger of them being exposed or even now in the relative solitude of his lakefront cottage, had never felt boring to Shane. Ilya never bored him on ice, over text, in the bedroom...there was always a spark of something that he could feel. Even though they still weren’t out publicly, now that they were together, what exactly did being boring mean?

Should he just ask Ilya? Would that be weird? Would Ilya laugh at him about it? The way Ilya used the word seemed almost like an inside joke, only, it was one that Shane didn’t feel entirely privy to the meaning of.

Shane didn’t really have time to figure it out as he heard a car pulling into their gravel driveway, meaning that their guests had arrived. Ah, that was nice, though – it was so easy to start thinking of the cottage as “their” place instead of just “his”. The one place that they could share together, without judgment. Well, at least until Shane had invited JJ, Hayden, and Jackie for a day over.

“Shane,” Ilya said after Shane had made it halfway to the front door. “There is still fruit all over the counter.”

He whipped his head around to see that he’d indeed left a mess of scattered fruits on the kitchen island once he’d heard their guests arrive.

“Oh, um, I should…” Shane stammered.

Although it surely wasn’t intentional, Ilya had managed to throw a wrench right into the cogs of Shane’s brain. Sometimes when he tried to change his focus from one thing to another, he got kind of...stuck? It was hard to explain, but it was like the offending worry would lodge itself into a corner of his brain, just out of sight but still niggling at his train of thought from right behind his eyes. The result was nearly paralyzing, often making him unable to tear his mind away from one option even when he rationally knew what do choose or do. It got worse when he was nervous, like right now, when anxiety would only further cloud his judgment, making it even more difficult to free himself from such paralysis in his decision making.

It was a not insignificant part of why hockey meant so much to Shane and why he was so good at it. Even in the most intense, high-pressure moments, he rarely had to think about what to do next, what the best course of action was. The ice was the only place where his head was fully clear, decisions coming to him almost unconsciously, at times with such clarity that they felt more like premonitions than predictions. How ironic that the thing through which he felt the most normal was also a place where he could never truly be “normal”.

Ilya straightened up from leaning his elbows on the counter and walked over to Shane, putting a hand on each of his shoulders. He looked at him with mild concern on his face, although he didn’t look judgmental, at least not as far as Shane could tell. His eyes were too soft for that, in a way that Shane was pretty sure by now he reserved only for him.

“I’ll put fruit back in bowl so you can greet our guests. Is okay, yes?” Ilya said. “You trust me enough to arrange fruit?”

“I...yes, I do,” Shane relented.

He kind of didn’t trust Ilya to know how to arrange the fruit in the bowl in a way that would satisfy him, in no small part because he wasn’t even totally sure himself what he was looking for, but he didn’t want to be needlessly difficult. Causing problems over a fucking bowl of fruit seemed excessive, even if it did bother him more than he was willing to admit.

“Okay, good,” Ilya said, patting Shane’s shoulders. “Go say hi to them. Maybe you need to prepare them.”

“Prepare them? For what?” Shane asked.

Ilya worked his jaw and looked at him in the eyes, giving him a bit of a plaintive look. “Ah. You don’t remember the hospital.”

“Not really, no...is there something I should remember?”

“Mm. Is nothing that bad. We can just see what happens.”

“Ilya, tell -”

The doorbell rang, interrupting Shane. He gave Ilya an annoyed look but only got a shrug and a wave of an arm towards the door in response. He let out a small groan and plodded over to the door; halfway there he glanced over his shoulder to see that Ilya was in fact putting the fruit into the bowl. Well, at least he’d stayed true to his word.

“Hey buddy, good to see you,” Hayden said, bringing Shane into a hug as he opened the door.

“Hayd, thanks for coming,” Shane replied, clapping him on the back.

“Thanks for having us over, Shane,” Jackie said as she moved to hug him herself.

“Of course. I’m glad you guys were able to find time away from the kids to make the drive. And thanks for giving JJ a ride, too.”

“Good to see you, Hollander,” JJ said, pulling Shane in. “How have I never seen your fancy cottage before?”

“I’m pretty private about it, you know? It’s the first time Hayd and Jackie have been here, too.”

“First time for someone else, too, I’m assuming?” Hayden asked.

“Right. Rozanov is inside?” JJ said.

“Yeah, he’s in the kitchen. It’s been nice to, uh – get away from my parents for a little bit,” Shane said.

He cringed internally at almost saying something that would’ve made it more obvious than it already was that they’d been fucking here just about every chance that they could get. If there was any time that Ilya should be glad for his need for order and cleanliness, it would be now, when every trace of the sex they’d had this morning in the living room had been thoroughly cleaned and erased. Or, well, maybe Ilya wouldn’t actually care about that like he did.

“You don’t think I’ll have to tell him to stay away from Jackie, do you?” Hayden asked. His tone was joking, but there was an obvious edge to it that Shane didn’t like.

“Hayden,” Jackie said, her voice low. Evidently she didn’t like it either. “You promised that you’d actually try to get to know him a little bit. And I’m more than capable of handling myself, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, sorry. I just don’t really know what to expect?”

“Then let him inform your expectations before making them up first.”

Jackie was talking to her husband, but she shot a clear look at JJ, too, who looked a little sheepish. Shane wondered what the drive over here was like. Regardless, he was glad that Jackie had been able to make the trip over too, also since this would be her first time meeting Ilya, hockey-related event or not.

The four of them made their way inside, where Ilya was wiping the kitchen island with a towel. Was he just trying to make himself look busy?

“Ah, hello Boiziau and Pike, good friends of my lovely boyfriend,” Ilya said, his tone sickeningly sweet.

Shane scowled at him but only got a faux-innocent look in response. Ilya met them near the threshold into the kitchen, offering a polite handshake to JJ first. JJ hesitated, perhaps looking for some sort of trick, but accepted the handshake. Hayden was next.

“You will introduce me to your beautiful wife, Pike?” Ilya asked as he shook Hayden’s hand.

“Please, call me Jackie,” she said, gesturing for a friendly hug.

“Great, Jackie.”

Shane watched as Ilya hugged Jackie, which got a small scowl out of Hayden once he was out of her line of view. He had to fight against rolling his eyes; sure, Ilya was a charmer – Shane knew that well, obviously – but Hayden shouldn’t be so up in arms over it just because he called his wife beautiful and hugged her. Wasn’t that just common courtesy?

“I know we just got here but, can I use your bathroom, Shane?” JJ asked.

“I can show you, Boiziau,” Ilya said. “Maybe Shane would like to talk about how he designed this place with Jackie. Which I assume you already know. Or maybe just aren’t interested in.”

Shane shot Ilya a warning look, who this time didn’t even try to hide that he’d thrown a (light) jab at JJ. JJ, for his part, looked vaguely annoyed but only nodded his head in agreement and followed Ilya as he motioned towards the hallway with the guest bathroom. Shane made a mental note to listen for any signs of a struggle.

He took Hayden and Jackie to the kitchen, explaining bits of how he had the place designed and built, although admittedly much of it was utilitarian and probably not that interesting to most people. The cottage was cozy, sure, but it was designed for function in equal measure. Talking about the more functional aspects almost felt like bragging, like how he got floor-to-ceiling windows in the living area which also all function as doors, or how he’d hired three different prospectors to ensure that the well that the cottage drew water from was perfect.

“Damn, Shane,” said Hayden after Shane explained how he’d gotten the marble for the kitchen. “I know your contract’s bigger than mine but this place makes me feel like we’re in totally different tax brackets.”

“Well, I don’t have any kids to worry about or save for, I guess,” Shane said. “I can kinda invest most of what I make, so…”

“Do you think you will, one day?” Jackie asked. “Sorry if it’s too early to talk about that. I don’t really know how your relationship with Ilya has been going on, or anything.”

Admittedly, Shane hadn’t really thought about that, not yet. Obviously they couldn’t have wholly biological children even with a surrogate, but adoption was on the table, of course. But everything was still so new and felt so fragile that planning for that future just seemed so far away. Thinking about it just made Shane doubt that they’d even be able to make it that far, to reach a...boring...domestic life with one another where they could actually devote proper attention to children.

“Yeah, it’s a bit early for that, I think,” Shane said. “Still a lot of other stuff to figure out, you know?”

Jackie nodded. “I understand. I’m just really excited personally that you love Ilya enough to introduce him to us like this. Really introduce him, I mean.”

“Yeah, same. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever have...this, if you know what I mean. I’m glad to have friends that I can open up to about this without judgment.”

Mostly without judgment, anyway. There was still a faint humming in Shane’s ears, a cloudiness in his brain, borne of his lingering anxieties. He knew that Jackie would be mostly good, but winning over Hayden and JJ might be a different story. They’d sounded noticeably less excited about visiting their cottage once they found out that Ilya would be here, too.

And as for Ilya himself, well, Shane wasn’t sure what to think. He’d promised to make an effort when they’d talked about this earlier this week, but now he realized that he wasn’t sure what exactly that would look like. Ilya was infuriatingly good at appearing polite when he needed to even when he felt, at best, indifference, towards another person.

But that wasn’t what Shane wanted; he wanted everyone to actually get along, even if they weren’t exactly all friends. What role he had in facilitating this and how it would go if he did try to help, well, that still remained to be seen.

“Shane, mind if I grab a banana?” Hayden asked from across the kitchen.

“Hayden, really?” Jackie chided, giving him a disapproving look.

“No, it’s fine, Jackie,” Shane said.

The fruit was there for a reason; he’d hate for it to go to waste, anyway. Oh right, there was a banana in there that didn’t look too good that he should probably get rid of. Hayden would probably eat it regardless, but the thought of giving a guest a bruised, maybe a little past ripe banana made Shane feel uneasy.

“Hold on, I think one of the bananas has gone bad, let me take it out.”

Hayden picked a banana up, not holding on. “You sure? There’s only one banana in here and it looks fine.” He showed the banana in his hand to Shane, which indeed looked fine.

“Huh, that one looks good. Let me grab the other one before…”

Hayden cocked his head at him in confusion, which Shane quickly discovered was because he’d grabbed the only banana that had been in the bowl, as he’d said. There had definitely been two of them earlier; he was well aware of how many of each fruit had been in the bowl after removing and replacing its contents in their entirety multiple times.

Looking more closely at the bowl, Shane saw that the remaining fruit – apples and oranges – were arranged thoughtfully and evenly throughout the bowl, both in size and color. It was exactly what Shane had wanted it to look like, even if he hadn’t known how to verbalize it. Ilya returned from the bathroom with JJ, an obvious distance between the two of them, both looking curiously at Shane inspecting the bowl of fruit.

“Had to make sure that Boiziau didn’t get lost on his way back,” Ilya said.

“Okay, Rozanov, whatever you say,” JJ said flatly.

Shane looked at Ilya and blinked a few times, trying to figure out if the fruit thing had been intentional. Was there even a fruit thing to anyone else or was he just reading too much into it? Why was he still thinking about this stupid bowl of fruit? But he thought it might be weird to ask about it in front of their guests, especially without any context, so he held his tongue. Ilya still caught his pondering expression though, and raised his eyebrows at him in question. He just shook his head and Ilya didn’t push.

[...]

Shane was glad that he’d found a recipe that made 12 burgers instead of eight, since eight probably wouldn’t have been enough for five people when four of them were professional hockey players. Sure, he could’ve just changed the recipe that he’d used earlier in the week that made for eight, but...that just didn’t seem right. Would it be weird to say that he felt uncomfortable changing a recipe that someone had made with the specific intention of making 8 servings? He should also probably figure out how to cook something for groups that wasn’t burgers.

Especially since, as the smell of the burgers on the grill wafted through the area, Shane didn’t really feel like eating any. He was hungry, sure, but the thought of eating something so greasy and heavy while his stomach was already putting itself in knots over openly being around Ilya in front of other people was entirely unappetizing. It wasn’t really helping that Jackie seemed to be the only one who really be making an attempt. As expected, Ilya was being polite, sure, but he wasn’t exactly being friendly.

“You are making 12 burgers this time?” came Ilya’s voice from behind him.

“Yeah, I didn’t think eight would be enough,” Shane said, trying not to sound defensive.

“And you found a completely new recipe for this, yes? Did not just multiply the one you made earlier this week, I mean.”

“...Shut up.”

“Never. You are too boring, I need to be interesting for both of us.”

Shane’s arm stilled on the grill for just a second, the word boring prodding him right in a sore spot, like a finger pressing against a bruise. He tried not to let it show, but couldn’t help his lips from pursing for a moment. He was thankful that Ilya was standing directly behind him and hopefully didn’t notice.

He nearly jumped as Ilya wrapped his arms around his waist, leaning his chin into his right shoulder. He’d loved doing this ever since they got to the cottage, and Shane definitely wasn’t complaining about having Ilya as a warm weighted blanket. He pressed a soft but insistent kiss into the side of Shane’s neck. Not enough to leave a mark, but at least enough that his message was clear. Ilya had done something similar when he’d grilled burgers earlier in the week and had pressed his hips into Shane’s ass insistently. They hadn’t lasted for very long after eating.

But this time Ilya did no such thing. It was probably for the best, not to do something like that in view of his friends, but it still left him feeling a little disappointed. Or rather, maybe like he’d disappointed Ilya.

“Thank you for grilling food for us,” Ilya said, his voice a little muffled. “Can I do anything to help?”

Shane relaxed a little bit, happy to hear some gratitude from Ilya, for once. “Can you bring the plates and condiments out from the kitchen? Oh, and get a bowl out too, please. You can leave that inside.”

“Bowl?”

“Yeah, for me. I’m um, not really feeling burgers right now. So just a bowl that I could put some yogurt and granola into instead.”

Ilya paused, and for a second Shane thought that he was going to get called boring again.

“Okay. I will do that for you.”

He patted Shane on the stomach, eliciting a huff of air in surprise, before padding away to the kitchen. Shane felt guilty as he found himself breathing a sigh of relief that Ilya hadn’t said anything about him wanting to eat a bowl of yogurt again. He’d already had one for breakfast this morning, but it was the only thing he could think of that they already had readily available that he felt like he could stomach. But that alone shouldn’t be enough to make him hold his breath around his loving boyfriend, he thought.

The rest of the grilling was uneventful, with Hayden and Jackie coming over for some idle chatter once or twice and to ask if he needed any help. When he was finished grilling, he brought the patties over to his wooden table by the lakefront, big enough for all five of them to sit and eat at. Shane had insisted that their guests let him do the work, so JJ, Hayden, and Jackie were lounging around with some drinks.

All of the plates and condiments like the ketchup and mustard were set on the table as Shane had asked Ilya to do, but the man in question was nowhere to be seen. There was also a plate of chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, which Shane had actually forgotten he needed to do.

“Where’s Ilya?” Shane asked, setting the tray of cooked burgers down.

“Not sure,” JJ replied. “Just went back inside after he brought out the vegetables.”

“Well, I’ll go get him. You guys can start, don’t wait up.”

Shane frowned as he walked towards the kitchen, able to see Ilya milling around inside through the large windows. He wasn’t sure why he was inside instead of at least making an attempt with, if nobody else, Jackie. Maybe he could take this as an opportunity to talk to him; they’d already talked yesterday about making sure that today would go well. Sure, Ilya wasn’t actively antagonizing Hayden or JJ, but he could at least be around them instead of avoiding them in the kitchen.

“Ilya,” Shane called out as he opened the glass door. “What -”

“Ah, perfect timing,” Ilya said. “I made bowl of yogurt for you, here.”

Ilya held a bowl out towards him, an expectant expression on his face. Shane realized that he hadn’t specified which of the bowls he wanted Ilya to get out, and yet he’d picked one from the exact set that he had in mind.

Shane accepted the bowl, wondering if it was worth it to tell him that he’d probably have to remake the bowl or if he should just eat it anyway. It’s not like it was Ilya’s fault that he didn’t know; Shane would have felt ridiculous explaining that every time he ate this, he made sure to use a specific set of bowls, with half Greek yogurt on one side and granola on the other side, since that way he could easily tell just how much of both were in the bowl and portion it out accordingly. Or that he’d figured out that the perfect amount of honey drizzled on top was a zig-zag pattern with 8 lines and that altogether this worked best with exactly 7 blueberries, because that way he could alternate bites between having one and not having one, so the blueberry flavor wouldn’t overpower the entire bowl. Was it normal to put this much thought into carefully crafting a bowl of Greek yogurt? Probably not, but that was just how he’d always done it, and how it tasted best.

But when he looked down into the bowl, Shane saw his morning yogurt bowl staring back at him, just about to the letter. Yogurt and granola split down the middle, an 8-lined zig-zag of honey drizzle and 7 blueberries. Even the width of the honey drizzle looked exactly like he’d done it himself.

“Something is wrong?” Ilya asked, as Shane must’ve been staring at the bowl. “I tried to make it like you did this morning, and yesterday.”

He tried to imagine Ilya counting each zig and zag of the honey and placing each of the blueberries evenly spaced with one another in a ring centered in the bowl. It clashed with just about every image of Ilya that he could’ve thought of, if he hadn’t been around him every day for the past two weeks. It would get a bit of raucous laughter, he thought, if he’d ever tried to explain the kind of care Ilya could put into a bowl of yogurt to someone in the hockey world. They’d never believe him.

Shane looked up at Ilya and blinked a few times. “No, no. It looks great. Thank you, really.”

A gentle smile spread across Ilya’s face. “Good, I’m glad. Okay, let’s go back out to your friends, yes?”

They walked back outside together, hand in hand as Shane held his bowl of yogurt in the palm of his left hand. Jackie looked delighted to see the two of them holding hands, but neither Hayden nor JJ seemed to care, which unfortunately stung about as much as it would’ve if they’d been openly disapproving of the sight. He couldn’t exactly tell them to celebrate it or even to be happy for him, but he wished that he could get them to understand just how much of a stretch it was for him to invite them over like this. While Ilya was here.

“You’re eating something else, Shane?” Jackie asked.

“Yeah, just not really feeling burgers right now,” Shane said. “Maybe a little over being around the smell after cooking all of them.”

“Too bad, they’re actually really good,” Hayden said, over a mouthful of burger.

“Actually good, really?”

“Buddy, half the stuff you eat looks like it belongs in a feeding trough and the other half is yogurt. Don’t be surprised that I thought you had all of your food like, delivered from a lab or something.”

“Yeah, Hollander,” said JJ as he finished a messy, condiment-laden burger. “You know how to cook, too? Is there anything else you’re hiding from us?”

Jackie’s head snapped over towards JJ, but it seemed like she wasn’t as quick to say something when it was her husband’s friend and not her husband himself. She still leveled a disapproving look at him, the implication behind JJ’s words not lost on her.

“Mm, no,” Ilya said plainly. “Shane is too boring to have other things to hide. You already know his biggest secret, me.”

“Shame that is,” Hayden said.

“Can you both cut it out?” said Jackie, perhaps more comfortable now that Hayden had stuck his own neck into it.

Hayden gave her an exasperated look that should’ve been accompanied by a childish “he started it!”

“So what have you guys been up to, now that it’s...official, I guess?” Jackie asked, obviously trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Is it? Official, I mean,” JJ asked.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re ‘official’, if we need to put a label on it,” Shane said. “We talked about it...two weeks ago, now.”

“Two weeks? I didn’t know that you’d been together out here for that long,” Hayden said.

“We didn’t plan it, exactly. Ilya surprised me with the help of my parents, actually. He kinda just...showed up at my parents’ house one day, which surprised me, but my parents had been expecting him.”

“And you were okay with that?”

“It was a surprise, yeah. But I...got over it, and it was kind of sweet of him, really, to surprise me.”

Shane didn’t think that he needed to explain just how perturbed he’d been when Ilya had shown up at his parents’ doorstep, only to then find out that they were in on it the whole time. He definitely didn’t want to sow any more seeds of doubt in Hayden or JJ’s minds.

“That’s great, Shane and Ilya, I’m happy for you both,” Jackie said, smiling.

“Yeah, great,” Hayden echoed, although he didn’t exactly sound convinced.

JJ just chewed through another bite of food without bothering to comment. God, how was he going to deal with this? At this point, even if he directly asked Ilya to be friendlier to Hayden and JJ, would it really make a difference? He wasn’t sure that it would.

The conversation shifted from there, although it felt like pulling teeth to Shane. A lot of it was the kind of small talk that he wasn’t really that interested in under other circumstances, even more so when his own friends couldn’t seem to help themselves from making snide comments about his relationship that he already felt so exposed to be sharing with them. Jackie was doing her best to keep the mood light, but he was pretty sure that she was getting annoyed, too. Ilya on the other hand was unusually quiet, which Shane suspected was because he didn’t have much nice to say and had promised Shane to be pleasant. Well, it was true that technically, pleasant didn’t mean talkative.

“Oh, Shane. You never told us what kind of cute couple stuff you guys got up to since making it official,” Jackie said.

Shane’s arm stiffened a little bit as he thought about how he should answer her question. He’d kind of been deliberately avoiding it earlier. They’d done quite a bit since putting a label on their relationship, sure, but a lot of it wasn’t exactly stuff that he wanted to share with anyone other than Ilya. Did Jackie really not suspect that, or was she being deliberately coy? Sure, he’d never really given anyone a reason to expect anything sexual out of him, but he was dating Ilya Rozanov.

“Shane has taught me how fun being Canadian is,” Ilya said. “We watched fire burn, looked at lake, and listened to horrible wolf birds call to each other. Exhilarating, yes?”

“That’s an impressive word for you, Rozanov,” Hayden said flatly.

“You think so? Just because you don’t know a word, doesn’t mean is impressive.”

Shane really hoped that Ilya didn’t see the expression on JJ’s face that unfortunately made it pretty clear that he wasn’t exactly sure what ‘exhilarating’ meant. He definitely knew the French equivalent, since he was much more eloquent in his first language, but maybe not the exact word in English.

“I know what that means, I’m not an idiot.”

“Ah, you are calling your good friend Boiziau idiot? Doesn’t look like he knows that word.”

Of course Ilya noticed, and of course he said something, because he’s Ilya. Which, to be fair, Hayden started it (this time), but surely Ilya was adept enough to steer the conversation away if he wanted to.

“Fuck you, Rozanov,” JJ said, his accent stressing the last syllable even more than usual. “You really put up with this, Hollander?”

“Well maybe if you both would stop provoking him, he might be a little nicer to you,” Shane said before he could think about it.

“Oh!” Jackie let out in surprise.

“Can’t you at least try to get along? I mean, everything Ilya’s said today has been nowhere near what he says on the ice, until one of you two take it farther. He’s at least trying to not be an asshole, even if he isn’t totally succeeding, but I can’t really say the same for either of you.”

“I could say much worse, he’s right,” Ilya quipped.

Shane punched him in the shoulder. “Okay, not helping. But seriously, I didn’t invite you all here to bicker. I didn’t expect everyone to become best friends or anything, but come on.”

Hayden and JJ blinked at him, unused to anything resembling an emotional outburst from Shane, who more often than not kept everything buttoned up and even closed off. But he was already getting tired of this, of the questioning. In hindsight, he was kind of glad that Ilya got along so well with his parents without a hitch, since there definitely would’ve been a thorough line of questioning from Mom otherwise.

Exacerbating it all was that it didn’t just feel like they didn’t like Ilya, it also felt like they didn’t trust Shane to make good decisions for himself, which was ridiculous. If nothing else, he was their Captain, who’d led them to two damn Cups, two years in a row. He didn’t need to be respected like that off the ice, not really, but it would’ve been nice be afforded some sort of fucking respect when it came to his personal life.

“Well, it’s...he’s Rozanov,” Hayden said lamely, knowing full well that wasn’t an acceptable explanation even though he said it.

“You think I don’t know that?” Shane said, his voice tight. “I’ll remind you that we’ve been...seeing each other since before I even met either of you. Do you really think eight fucking years isn’t long enough for me to understand who it is that I’m interested in? I may have been out of my mind in the hospital, but when I said that I loved him, I meant it.”

Nobody said anything in response, which was probably for the best. Shane didn’t doubt that anything Hayden or JJ had on their minds would’ve probably only made things worse, while thankfully Ilya did keep his mouth fully shut for once.

Unfortunately now Shane didn’t really know what to do with the awkward atmosphere he’d created, even though it’d been for a good reason. It did feel good, actually getting to defend Ilya – and himself – for once. Being able to acknowledge out loud what they were.

“I’m gonna start cleaning the kitchen,” Shane said, standing up. When he left the table, nobody followed him.

Shane brought some of the grilling supplies inside, wanting to get a head start on them before everything crusted over on the surface and got stuck, making them even harder to clean. Cleaning like this could be therapeutic for him at times, giving him something to keep his mind busy that was also productive.

But he didn’t usually do things in this order after eating, for a reason that he was becoming acutely, uncomfortably aware of. Especially after eating something with sugar in it like yogurt and honey, he was always acutely aware of the film of plaque spreading across his teeth and gum line, little fuzzy patches popping up where they hadn’t been before. Was it at least partially in his head? Probably, but that didn’t make him feel any less uncomfortable with it. So he always brushed his teeth exactly 30 minutes after eating, or at least as close as he could get to it. The 30 minute wait was because he’d heard somewhere when he was younger that brushing your teeth sooner could lead to enamel decay, so Shane had always just stuck with that. It hadn’t ever caused him problems, anyway.

There was still quite a bit to clean by the time Shane began to get uncomfortable, checking the clock he noticed that it’d been about 25 minutes since he finished eating because he’d finished his yogurt more quickly than everyone else had worked through their burgers. Ugh. There was still stuff to clean outside, which meant he’d be stuck with either an unclean mouth or an unclean kitchen/dining table. He could probably ask Ilya to help, but he didn’t really want to interrupt him while eating, and if he stepped away from cleaning he’d be thinking about it the entire time while brushing his teeth. Maybe he could get away without flossing thoroughly...even though that would bother him, too.

A sliding glass door opened, Ilya walking through, his empty plate in hand.

“All done?” Shane asked, without looking away from the sink.

“Yes. JJ is still eating, somehow,” Ilya replied.

“Still? Wouldn’t that be his fourth burger?”

“I think so. Good thing you made 12 burgers this time.”

Ilya set his plate and glass down on the side of the sink, sending a wave of irritation over Shane as he assumed that he would just leave them there for him to take care of. Which he knew was unreasonable, since Ilya had never shied away from helping around the cottage while they’d been there together, but a few too many things were annoying him at the moment. He had to resist the urge to run his tongue across his teeth.

Shane felt Ilya wrap his arms around his waist again and plant a kiss on the back of his neck.

“Ilya -” Shane started, not really in the mood.

“I will finish cleaning for you, okay?” Ilya said, his voice gentle.

“Well I’d appreciate the help, but why do you have to do it for me?”

“It’s been,” Ilya looked up at the clock on the microwave, “27 minutes since you finished eating, I think. You are not going to floss and brush your teeth and use mouthwash like usual?”

Shane stopped scrubbing the bowl he’d used to mix the burgers meat and turned his head towards Ilya over his shoulder.

“You keep track of when I finish eating?”

“Yes, because you always need to brush teeth 30 minutes after eating. And if you don’t brush teeth you don’t want to kiss me until you do.”

When had Ilya noticed that? Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember Ilya trying to kiss him on the lips around mealtimes since Shane had rejected him at his parents’ house last week by telling him that he wanted to brush his teeth first. He could hardly keep himself away from Shane once they were at the cottage, but if they were eating he’d always kissed him on the cheek or neck.

“Go,” Ilya urged. “If you really need to clean things yourself so bad, you can when you come back.”

“Okay, um. Thanks,” Shane said, suddenly feeling awkward and exposed and grateful all at the same time.

“Of course. I love you, solnyshko.”

[…]

“Shane, how long have you had this cottage, again?” Jackie asked as everyone lounged in the living room, just enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet.

At first, Shane had wished that he’d actually planned more activities or other things for them to do while they were here, but at the same time it was kind of nice to just enjoy everyone’s company, something inoffensive and easy to understand playing quietly on the TV.

“It was finished in 2014; that year was the first time I spent a summer out here instead of with my parents the whole time,” Shane said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I just noticed that the décor is kind of...sparse. I mean, I know that your place in Montreal isn’t exactly gaudily appointed either, but I’d say that here is bordering on austere.”

Shane felt Ilya’s body shift next to him on the couch. “Like very plain, or simple,” he whispered to Ilya.

Ilya nodded.

“Yeah, I guess I just haven’t really thought about what to put up, you know?”

“I think it fits,” Ilya said. “Very boring, like you. Built for function.”

Shane frowned at that, although this time he actually couldn’t really deny Ilya’s assessment, as the cottage, while beautiful, was definitely more function over form otherwise.

“Have you thought of putting up any pictures of you two together?” Jackie asked. “I know this still has to be a secret, but this place is so secluded, and you only invite a few people as guests. I think it might be nice.”

The thought of having anything indicating his and Ilya’s relationship in open view still made Shane feel a little nauseous. Jackie was right, it would be nice, if it wouldn’t make Shane sick with worry during the season that a burglar would break in, find the pictures of them together that he would’ve hidden away prior to leaving, and post them online for everyone to see, ruining all of their work in keeping this a secret. In his mind it didn’t matter that the place had been built for a few years now and had never had so much as a wild animal cause issues, much less a burglar.

“We actually have a few pictures in the master, although I don’t have any plans to put them up any time soon. They’re new anyway, since we, you know, haven’t really been a ‘thing’ until just recently.”

“Oh, I’d love to see them, and the master too actually. I think it’s the only room in here I haven’t seen, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure. You guys coming with?” Shane gestured towards Hayden and JJ.

“Uh, that’s okay,” Hayden said. “Maybe you could bring some of the pictures out?”

“Me too. Going into your bedroom is a little…” JJ said.

Oh god, were they thinking about whether or not he and Ilya had had sex in their bedroom? He could never let them find out just how many different places they’d had sex in this place. Even though Shane always made sure to do an extra thorough job cleaning afterwards, finding out might actually scar them, which is something that he couldn’t really blame them for. He tried not to think about what Hayden and Jackie got up to himself, although it was hard because they had so many kids.

“Oh, okay, I understand,” Shane said.

Ilya gave Shane a weird look, maybe not immediately understanding their trepidation. Which maybe made sense considering how open and sex positive he usually was.

“I can stay here, make sure they don’t break anything,” he said.

“We’re not kids, you know,” Hayden said dryly.

“I know, and maybe that is worse. Small children can only do so much damage.”

If Ilya stayed, breaking things was the last thing that Shane was worried about, although if something did happen that could itself lead to broken furniture and fixtures. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the three of them alone, but truthfully Shane was tired already of trying to get everyone other than Jackie to try harder.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll bring some of the pictures back out here.”

Shane lead Jackie to the master bedroom, which was down a hall opposite the side of the cottage that had the guest bedrooms. He pulled out a folder from one of the nightstands, which had a few page protectors holding Polaroid pictures. Eventually they’d be able to get this into an actual album, but this would be fine for now.

It had been his Dad’s idea to start taking these, using a camera they had from when Shane was in high school that he never ended up using. His rationale was enough to convince Shane: the photos would be intimate because of the quality and meaningful because they had to be individually printed while also being small enough to easily hide.

“Wow, these are lovely,” Jackie said reverently.

She stopped on a photo of his parents with Ilya, hugging him between themselves like he was their own son. Ilya’s smile was so big, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that could be seen even with the relatively grainy quality. This was Shane’s favorite photo of Ilya so far, even more than any of the ones with both of them in it.

“Ilya’s father passed away recently, didn’t he? That’s what I heard from Hayden, at least.”

Shane was surprised that Hayden had ever talked about Ilya with anyone other than him. “Yeah, a few months ago.”

He didn’t say anything about Ilya’s mother, feeling like it was too personal and close to his heart to talk about. Jackie would understand and wouldn’t push if he said so, he knew.

“He looks so happy,” she continued. “I’m really happy for you that they’re supportive, too.”

“Yeah, same,” Shane said, trying not to let his emotions betray him. “It means the world to me.”

They looked at and discussed a few more photos: Ilya sitting on the boat dock, his bare back facing the camera; Shane asleep on the couch in the living room, a book on his chest; Shane and Ilya from behind, their heads resting atop one another as they watched TV together at his parents’ house. That last one had been taken by Dad without them even knowing, and it looked so perfect. It looked like the future.

“Well, shall we go back out and see if my lovely husband will bat an eye at these?” Jackie asked, a little sardonically.

“I think it’s more likely that he will than JJ, really,” Shane said truthfully.

They giggled quietly, in a way that felt so easy. One day, he thought, they’d be able to sit with everyone like this, with Ilya. One day, he kept telling himself, things wouldn’t be so difficult and surreptitious and uncertain and everything else that made Shane’s heart hurt every time he thought about it. They would make it to “one day”, somehow.

Shane lead Jackie back down the hallway towards the living area, a little bit of warmth returning to him after reliving some of his most treasured memories, all collected in just the last two weeks.

“Isn’t he boring?” came Hayden’s voice from the living area. His tone was far less than nice, sounding at minimum accusatory, if not outright aggressive.

Shane stopped abruptly, causing Jackie to bump into him. She let out a small sound of surprise.

“Shane? What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“You say it like it’s some kind of joke, but I don’t think it’s funny,” Hayden continued.

“If he’s so boring, what is stopping you from leaving him?” JJ added.

“Oh. That’s – Shane, we should - “ Jackie stammered.

But Shane wasn’t listening to her. He didn’t know how this came up or why they were asking Ilya, but regardless it was exactly the kind of question that had been rolling around in the back of his mind, even though he didn’t want to acknowledge it. After all that they’d been through, sharing precious, stolen moments over years of hiding and denied feelings, he could never seriously consider that Ilya would leave him. Not when it would’ve been so much easier for him to do so in years’ past.

While the logical part of his brain was on board with that, there was still a mote of worry that wouldn’t fully go away, a wound that had scarred over from being reopened again and again. That maybe one day, Ilya would realize that Shane was too boring for him. That maybe without the tug of war that had been waged between them over who would admit they had feelings first, who would be the one to expose themselves and their innermost fears with one another, there would no longer be a thrill for Ilya to latch onto. That the freckles that he loved so much would only go so far. That the pictures he had just held so fondly would become mementos from a lost past, instead of visions of the future.

He should probably make his way back to the living room, nip whatever conversation this was in the bud and have it with Ilya in private, should he ever actually get the courage to do so. But what would Ilya say, when he thought that Shane wasn’t listening? Would he tell the truth? Did Shane want to know the truth, whatever it was?

“I will tell you this, because you are Shane’s friends,” Ilya said, sounding a little exasperated. “Even if you don’t like me, I don’t want you to give him hard time about it.”

Ilya paused, probably to gather his thoughts, Shane assumed. He didn’t think that Ilya would actually entertain this kind of questioning, but if he really was worried about Hayden and JJ giving him a hard time about being with him, maybe it made sense. They’d already done so earlier, and apparently in the hospital too even though he didn’t remember. Jackie was looking at him with concern, possibly thinking that this was going to turn into an argument, or worse. She patted him on the shoulder, trying to direct him to rejoin them back in the living area.

“No, it’s okay,” Shane whispered. “I...want to hear this.”

Jackie sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t push further.

He heard Ilya let out a sigh. “I call Shane boring because he is boring,” he said. “He drives boring car and eats boring food and wears boring clothes. Maybe is not the word you use to describe him. But I don’t think you can disagree.”

Okay, maybe this wasn’t going in the direction that Shane was hoping it was going in and he’d have to murder his boyfriend in front of his teammates and one of their wives. Actually, maybe he’d have to murder all three of them and marry Jackie in a marriage of convenience because neither Hayden nor JJ had pushed back against Ilya calling him boring. He wished that he could stick his head out to at least see if they were thinking about it.

“But my life, was not boring. Parties, women, fast cars...does not sound boring, yes?”

“You’re an asshole,” Hayden said.

Shane felt Jackie tense up next to him. He searched for one of her hands and found it, grabbing onto it to reassure her. And to give him something to ground himself for whatever point Ilya was trying to make.

“I am, thank you. But all of that ‘not boring’ was because I had nothing else. I had to be ‘not boring’ because was only thing I knew how to do. If I wasn’t ‘fun’, I wasn’t Ilya Rozanov.”

Shane had never thought about it like that. He’d never thought that maybe, Ilya was seeking pleasure in every nook and cranny he could find because he had nothing else to do. When Ilya had talked with him about women, about all of the things he’d gotten up to that Shane could never fathom doing himself, he’d never considered that he felt like he...had to do those things. When your public persona was as much a part of the spectacle as how well you played on the ice, sometimes being even more important, it seemed that everyone had a part that they had to play. Even someone who seemed as unabashed and forthright as Ilya Rozanov.

“Until I got to know Shane. He showed me that ‘boring’ doesn’t have to be bad. He drives boring car because is safe. Eats boring food to keep him healthy. Wears boring clothes because they’re familiar. And he does it so...what is word...earnestly, I think. He showed me that ‘boring’ can mean ‘safe, healthy, and familiar’. Things I didn’t have, not before him.”

Shane was reminded again that Ilya could never be exactly who he wanted to be back in Russia, always having to hide a part of himself. With the threat of being deported, maybe he really hadn’t ever felt safe, even with an entire ocean and continent of distance in between. That was something that Shane could understand to an extent, never feeling safe with the NHL in charge of their livelihoods.

He’d already noticed that Ilya hadn’t smelled like cigarettes lately, other than the one he’d had on the anniversary of his mother’s death, and seemed to rarely drink, except when celebrating big wins. It unsettled something in Shane to think that maybe, back in their rookie years, Ilya hadn’t cared about the toll his drinking, smoking, and partying was taking on his body, in a way that went further than just youthful ignorance.

And he had come here alone. Although Shane knew of Svetlana, and that they’ve known each other for a long time, Ilya had tried to tell him that their relationship wasn’t like that. Maybe that was what he was saying now too, even if he didn’t know that Shane was listening.

Shane’s heart wobbled a little as Ilya’s voice began to get thicker, breaking on a few vowels, here and there. His accent got a stronger too, any time his emotions were riding high. Just another thing that he’d picked up, with all that they’d been through since that time in the hospital. He still couldn’t see him, nor could he imagine Ilya ever doing so in front of Hayden and JJ, but he really did sound like he was holding back tears.

“Maybe at first, I did mean ‘boring’ as insult. But now, is the best word I can think of for everything Shane means to me. He only does hockey because he just loves it so much and is so good at it and is somewhere that he doesn’t have to overthink everything before he does it. He doesn’t go out because for him, being around strangers and dealing with drunk teammates is more tiring than exciting, and he doesn’t want to bring mood down. He spent 20 minutes moving fruit around in that bowl because he cares so much about you and Jackie and wanted this to be perfect. Is all so boring, but also so Shane.”

Had Ilya always viewed those things in such a way? There were times when even Shane wished that he hadn’t been, well, like himself. Times where he wished that hockey wasn’t the only thing that truly captured his attention, the only time when he could just be without thinking, where he could go out and have a good time at the drop of a hat just like everyone else, and where he wished that he could just let go of trivial things in a way that seemed to be so blasé for everyone else.

And yet, Ilya only saw the positives in all of that. In all of the things Shane did which made others uncomfortable, or were an inconvenience, Ilya could explain them all away with positivity and understanding. In a way that was kinder than Shane even was to himself.

“So I have to call him ‘boring’, because if I did not I wouldn’t ever stop saying I love him. And still I keep finding new boring things to love. I love how he cannot change his morning alarm even in offseason, how he can’t put clothes down without folding them, how he makes sure his Greek yogurt has exactly seven blueberries, how he brushes teeth exactly 30 minutes after eating, how he lines up skincare in a row to use them in order. Would never end.”

The fruit bowl. Seven blueberries. 30 minutes after lunch.

Suddenly, everything he’d noticed earlier seemed more intentional than he’d initially thought. Ilya had teased him about his quirks, but he’d never questioned them. Even from their first time together, he’d watched with obvious amusement as Shane had folded his clothes before allowing himself to lie next to Ilya, but he’d never once judged him for it.

He may have made him feel a lot of things, not all of which had always been positive, but he’d never made him feel bad for being himself. For Shane too, he was...safe, familiar. When they were apart, there was so much up in the air, so much uncertainty about how long they could keep this up, whether Ilya would even want to continue this with how difficult everything is. But when they were together, all of his worries melted away, replaced by a deep contentment that Shane hadn’t even known he could miss until he did, a quiet buzzing beneath his skin that he couldn’t quite reach any other way no matter how he tried to scratch it. It was so easy to just casually reveal all of his neuroses around Ilya, when usually he kept them buttoned up, close to his heart so that he could still be Shane Hollander, prodigal hockey player, that everyone loved. If he didn’t let anyone past his carefully crafted mask, they’d never find anything ugly enough to disapprove.

But all of this that made Shane feel weird, ugly, not...”normal” – Ilya took it all in stride. It was more than that, even: it all was what he loved about him. And now he was here, in Shane’s space, doing everything he could to learn his quirks and accommodate them. No, accommodate wasn’t quite the right word; Ilya was learning to facilitate them, make them easier for Shane.

“Shane?” came Jackie’s voice, barely above a whisper.

When he turned to look at her, the motion caused a tear to slip from his left eye. Shane absentmindedly wiped away at it. He hadn’t even known that there were tears in his eyes.

Jackie gave him a warm smile. “He really does love you, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, yeah he does,” Shane whispered back, his throat tight.

“-so boring and I love him, there,” Ilya’s confession continued. “Maybe you don’t believe me, or you still don’t like me, probably. That’s fine. I love Shane, and he...he makes me better person. Maybe he makes me more boring, sure. Maybe I need that. But I want to make him better, too, does not matter to me if you like it or not.”

A heavy silence hung in the air, Shane waiting expectantly for Hayden and JJ’s reactions. He wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to hear from them; apologies would’ve been nice, but they hadn’t even apologized to Shane earlier when he’d torn into them, so maybe that was expecting too much. On the other hand, they’d been – perhaps brave wasn’t the right word, but it was close enough – brave enough to ask the question that he hadn’t been able to do so himself. Maybe he was thankful for that a little bit, even though they couldn’t have known that he was listening in.

“Should we…” Jackie whispered.

Shane nodded. “Yeah, let’s. But um, can you pretend that we didn’t hear this?”

Jackie let out a quiet huff. “I’ll try. I’m not exactly thrilled that Hayden asked that, but...all is well that ends well, right?”

Shane nodded again then walked out of the shadow of the hallway, revealing himself and Jackie. Ilya’s face was unnaturally flat, which was probably a more obvious tell than he was hoping it was. Both Hayden and JJ looked pretty deflated, their expressions becoming almost guilty when they spotted him and Jackie.

“You all are unusually quiet,” Jackie said lightly. “Something happen?”

Was that just something that came with the territory of being a mother? Jackie sounded entirely innocent and yet also like she was accusing them of something without actually accusing them, giving them a chance to fess up. He’d have to learn how to do that.

“No, I think we are okay, yes?” Ilya said.

“Yeah, we were just talking about the show. On TV,” JJ said.

JJ’s lie was so bad that even Shane wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but for this it was fine. It seemed that Jackie agreed as she didn’t press further.

“So...let’s look at these pictures together, shall we?” Jackie said.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea,” Hayden said.

Jackie took the makeshift album to where Hayden and JJ were sitting, who gave them more than their fair share of undivided attention. Maybe they felt a little guilty. Shane certainly hoped that they did.

Shane moved to sit next to Ilya, who sat down again after standing while defending himself to Hayden and JJ. He grabbed one of Ilya’s hands tightly and kissed it.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?” Ilya asked, although it sounded almost rhetorical.

“For a lot of things, okay?”

Ilya nodded, then kissed Shane’s hand back. “Okay.”

[...]

Shane was snuggled up next to Ilya on the couch after a (mostly) successful day with his friends, watching but not really paying attention to some reality TV show that Ilya had wanted to watch. He slid his body along the couch and rested his head in Ilya’s lap, finding comfort in the dense musculature of his thighs. A woman on the show picked up a bowl of fruit and hucked the entire thing at a woman that was supposedly her friend, narrowly missing and sending the bowl into a wall where it shattered, causing ceramic, bananas, and oranges to go flying every which way.

“Hey, earlier,” Shane said, reminded by the scene that he’d just seen, “when I asked you to put the fruit back in the bowl. Did you do that on purpose?”

“Do what?” Ilya asked. “Put fruit back in bowl like you asked me to?”

“No, well, yes, but. I mean, did you...arrange the fruit like that on purpose?”

“Yes, I think so. I didn’t do it with my eyes closed, if is what you’re asking.”

Shane sat up and frowned at Ilya, who was putting on a rather poor impression of indifference. He’d learned over the past few weeks that, now that there was something real, something defined connecting them, he was much less adept at lying and hiding his emotions when they were alone. This version of Ilya that only he got to see, that he trusted only Shane to handle with all of the care that it necessitated, was much softer than he could’ve ever expected.

“Ilya...you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Why are you asking? Was not what you wanted?”

“No, it was exactly what I wanted, and I barely even knew that myself. How did you know?”

“You told me.”

Shane tried replaying the conversation they’d had through his head, but he didn’t remember ever telling Ilya how he’d wanted the fruit to be arranged – in part because, again, he hadn’t really even known what would’ve looked “right” himself. All he remembered was that when he’d looked at Ilya’s handiwork, it somehow was just right.

“I don’t think I did, not that I remember.”

“When you were taking the fruit out the bowl the last time.”

Then? Shane remembered that he’d been rambling about something at the time, right before Ilya came up behind him, wrapping around him like a weighted blanket. His face scrunched in confusion, unsure what Ilya was referring to, exactly.

“Okay, maybe you didn’t tell me what you wanted,” Ilya continued. “But you told me what was wrong. So I tried to fix it. Or just not make it worse.”

“Oh. You listened when I was rambling on about fruit, or whatever I was talking about?”

“Of course, yes.”

It was such a tacit admission, said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Of course, Shane should’ve known, after everything that Ilya had said when he thought that Shane wasn’t listening. He’d done so many small things without even having to be told about them, noticing them on his own and adding them to his collection of “Boring Things About Shane I Love”, or something.

Nevertheless, Shane couldn’t help but feel a surge of emotion. Usually when people noticed his quirks they were in an attempt to figure out ways to work around them. He couldn’t deny that even his parents and closest friends were guilty of doing so, trying to figure out how to best stay out of the way rather than how to help. They never actively hindered him or anything and rarely, if ever, antagonized him about it and never did so in a mean-spirited way, but Shane was used to trying to hide these kinds of things so that he wouldn’t end up inconveniencing others. Rarely did anyone really help to facilitate his various routines.

But Ilya did. Without being asked, without asking himself, and sometimes without Shane even noticing. He’d picked up on things down to the minute, somehow figuring out on his own that Shane waited almost exactly 30 minutes after eating to brush his teeth. He knew Ilya was smart, of course, he was smarter than most people gave him credit for – you can’t become a generational talent on pure physical skill alone.

This was more than that, though. Ilya just knew, almost intrinsically it seemed, how to make Shane feel cared for. How to love him in a way that nobody else did, maybe even his own parents. Even though he knew now that things weren’t always as easy for him as he made it seem. Shane could stand to learn a thing or two, he thought. Because somehow, he’d have to figure out how to return this in kind.

“God, I love you,” Shane exhaled.

“You love me because I listen to you talk about boring fruit?” Ilya asked.

“I love you despite you being an asshole.”

“I think you love me because I am asshole.”

“Only because you love me being boring.”

“Yes. Because I love you, and you are boring.”

Shane shut Ilya up by pulling him into a kiss, since at this rate this conversation was just going to go in circles of “boring” and “asshole” until the heat death of the universe. But that was them, wasn’t it?

Ilya was an asshole and Shane was boring, and yet somehow they were relentlessly, hopelessly in love with one another.