Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Original Characters

Additional Tags:

married hollanov, Jealous Ilya Rozanov, Possessive Ilya Rozanov, flustered shane, Ilya's love language is interference and sabotage, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander's Freckles, Fluff and Humor, Ilya Rozanov is a Little Shit, Shane Hollander Speaks Russian

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-31 Words: 1,953 Chapters: 1/1

Fluent (In Each Other)

Summary

Leaning over Shane was a man. He had dark hair and was annoyingly handsome, the sort who looked like he’d never struggled with a grammatical case in his life.

Shane laughed. Ilya turned his head.

That was his husband. His Shane. His beautifully focused Shane, with the scattered freckles and the adorable way he leaned into a problem. And he was gifting that hard-won laugh to a stranger.

Ilya is happy Shane is learning Russian. He just wasn’t prepared for how it would feel to watch someone else teach him, correct him, and make him laugh.

Ilya reacts normally. Which is to say: not at all.

Notes

Please check that the creator’s style options are ON so you get the full texting experience (towards the end)!

The language institute was the kind of place that made you want to whisper. Shane adored orderly spots like this. Ilya put up with them for one reason only: Shane got this little spark in his eyes when he learned something new.

He checked his phone. Two minutes early. Excellent. He was nailing this husband thing. 

And then he heard Shane’s laugh - warm and joyful, the kind he usually reserved for their couch after a long day, when all the tension finally left his shoulders. Ilya earned that laugh. 

His feet stopped moving on their own.

The sound trickled out from a classroom on his right, the door left ajar. Peering inside, he saw Shane at a desk.

“Я… э-э… я думаю, что это… правильно?” Shane said, each word tentative.

Leaning over him was a man. He had dark hair and was annoyingly, academically handsome, the sort who looked like he’d never struggled with a grammatical case in his life. 

“You are very close,” he said softly. “The structure is good, but the case ending should change here.”

Shane processed the correction. 

“Why,” Ilya muttered quietly, “is he laughing in my language.”

That was his husband. His Shane. His wonderfully serious, beautifully focused Shane, with the scattered freckles and the adorable way he leaned into a problem. And he was gifting that hard-won laugh to a stranger holding a whiteboard marker.

Ilya squared his shoulders and leaned against the doorframe.

The instructor noticed him first. “Oh - Privyet?” Hello.

Ilya ignored him entirely.

“He said it correctly,” Ilya announced.

Shane jumped, twisting in his chair. “Ilya? You’re early.”

“Not much,” Ilya replied.

The instructor hesitated. “Actually, the case ending - ”

“No,” Ilya said. The matter was clearly settled.

Shane’s frown deepened. “Wait, I thought he just told me - ”

“You were right,” Ilya cut in. “Perfect.”

The instructor’s pleasant smile grew strained. “That’s… not quite how Russian grammar functions.”

“It is,” Ilya countered, “if you say with confidence.”

Shane’s eyes darted between them. “Ilya, have you taught the grammatical cases?”

“I know when you sound good,” Ilya stated, as if this were the highest form of linguistic analysis. “And you sounded very good.”

A flush crept up Shane’s neck. 

The instructor cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should just continue with the lesson - ”

Ilya took one step into the room. It was enough to place his hand on the back of Shane’s chair, close enough to peer down at the notebook covered in Shane’s neat script.

The instructor shifted his weight, the look on his face suggesting he was mentally updating his resume.

Ilya took that as a green light.

“I can supervise,” he said, his voice dripping with fake reasonableness. “Just to ensure everything is… correct.”

Shane stared at him. It was a tight-lipped stare that promised future consequences. It was the look that preceded a weekend spent reorganizing the entire kitchen pantry by grain type, or a pointed silence during their favorite show. 

Ilya met his husband’s look of impending chore-based justice without a flinch. A little domestic penance later was a small price to pay. In fact, Ilya had come to appreciate Shane's sternness - the disappointment that usually ended with Ilya watching from the doorway as Shane reorganized a closet. And honestly, it had its charms.

The instructor - who had now introduced himself as Maksim with a professional nod - looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. 

“Alright,” Maksim said. “Let’s continue. Shane, try the sentence again.”

“Хорошо. Я думаю, что - ”

“No,” Ilya cut in like a human grammar alarm.

“No?” Shane repeated, his voice laced with exasperation.

“No,” Ilya confirmed. “Say it like this.”

He then proceeded to deliver a version of the sentence that was structurally adventurous, grammatically dubious, and spoken with the unshakeable confidence of a man who had never been wrong a day in his life.

Shane’s frown was deep enough to plant seeds in. “That… doesn’t sound right.”

Maksim’s eyebrows attempted to flee into his hairline. “That is… not a sentence.”

Shane hesitated, his pen hovering over the paper. Then, because he was fundamentally kind and had a worrying tolerance for Ilya’s nonsense, he slowly wrote the phrase down anyway.

“Just… for reference,” Shane murmured, more to himself than anyone.

Maksim stared at the notebook as if Shane had just sketched a crude cartoon. 

Ilya bit the inside of his cheek. It was the only way to stop the grin.

“Perhaps,” Maksim said, “we should focus on the textbook example.”

“Textbooks are strict,” Ilya dismissed. “Lack soul. Don’t capture… feeling.”

A snort escaped Shane before he could clamp it down. 

Ilya’s chest did a warm flip. There it was. That beautiful crack in the facade. Shane, trying so hard to be studious and proper while Ilya actively sabotaged the lesson. God, he was gorgeous when he was concentrating.

Mine, Ilya thought. All mine.

Maksim cleared his throat again. “Let’s… move on.”

Ilya did not move on. Moving on was for quitters.

Instead, he invaded. He stepped so close that Shane could feel the heat of him along his back. Ilya leaned over Shane’s shoulder once more, his forearm coming to rest casually on the desk, his head tilted so that his next words were a warm breath against the side of Shane’s neck.

Shane tried valiantly to ignore it. He focused on the worksheet, on the neat rows of Cyrillic, on the monumental task of not letting Ilya’s proximity disturb his nervous system, which was his husband’s special and frequent talent.

“Okay,” Shane said. “The next sentence is - ”

Ilya dipped even lower. “Careful with verb. Is tricky.”

One of his hands settled possessively on the back of Shane’s chair, his fingers draped there with relaxed ownership, as if claiming the entire territory.

Shane lowered his voice to a hissed whisper. “Ilya. You are breathing on my neck.”

“I am helping with pronunciation,” Ilya murmured back - and he did it in flawless Russian, just to show off.

Maksim watched this exchange with the wide-eyed caution of a documentary filmmaker observing lions. 

“Your pronunciation,” Maksim said, genuine admiration breaking through his bewilderment. “It is very good. You sound… almost native.”

“He sounds exactly native,” Ilya stated, drawing himself up to his full height. “Better than native.”

Shane looked up at him. “That makes no sense.”

“Love improves pronunciation,” Ilya said, as if explaining that the sky was green. “Is known fact.”

Maksim took a subtle step back and bumped lightly into the whiteboard.

Shane noticed immediately. He shot a sideways glance at Ilya, who was still looming behind him. Then, Shane turned back to Maksim and asked, in smooth French, “Est-ce que je dois conjuguer ça au passé ou garder le présent?”

Maksim’s entire face lit up with relief. He answered immediately, the words flowing back in French. “Le présent suffit ici. C’est plus naturel.”

“…Why,” Ilya said, “are you two whispering.”

Shane blinked. “We’re not whispering.”

“You changed languages,” Ilya pointed out, as if accusing them of a secret handshake.

“Yes,” Shane said. “Because you were being distracting.”

“So now you exclude me.”

Before either of them could muster a defense, Ilya yanked the empty chair beside Shane out from the desk and sat down, knee pressed to knee.

He was close enough that Ilya’s entire world tunneled down to the profile of Shane’s face - the shape of his mouth as he formed foreign sounds, the rolling cadence of French flowing out of him like it had always been there.

Ilya didn’t understand most of it.

It didn’t matter. Understanding was overrated.

French Shane was… a revelation. He carried an unshakeable confidence that made Ilya’s own brain temporarily forget how to form words in any language. 

He leaned his chin into his palm. Maybe Shane could read him the French instructions for assembling furniture. Or the side of a shampoo bottle. Ilya would listen. He would be the most attentive audience. 

Maksim glanced between them. He took in the press of their knees, the intensity of Ilya’s staring, the way the man had completely abandoned any pretense of supervision and had moved on to blatant, worshipful observation.

Slowly, Maksim closed the textbook. 

“Perhaps,” Maksim said, his voice strung tight, “we stop here for today.”

Shane looked up, surprised. “Already? We still have time.”

A brilliant smile spread across Ilya’s face. 

“Good lesson,” he said, his tone excessively pleasant.

Maksim gathered his papers and was out of the door in seconds.

Shane methodically stacked his notebook.

“You were jealous,” Shane said finally.

Ilya scoffed lightly. “Being protective. Is different.”

Shane's eyes unimpressed but undeniably fond. “You corrected my Russian wrong. On purpose.”

Ilya shrugged. “You still wrote it.”

A softness crept into the corner of Shane’s mouth, “…I trusted you,” he said, simple and true.

Ilya’s bravado cracked. 

“I like when you learn things,” he admitted. “Like being reason you smile after you get it right.”

He held Shane’s gaze for a moment.

“Just… not with him.”

Shane laughed, and shook his head. “You are unbelievable.”

“Yet,” Ilya said, leaning in, erasing the last of the space between them, “you married me.”

Shane reached up, his fingers curling into the front of Ilya’s jacket, and pulled him down into a kiss. It was the kind of kiss that felt like Shane had been waiting the entire agonizing lesson to give it.

When they pulled apart, Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s, their breaths mingling. “Date night?” 

Ilya’s grin returned. “I already scared off your tutor. I think I have earned dinner.”

~

Ilya lay on his back, one arm curved around the solid weight of Shane, who was already fast asleep and curled into his side.

It was barely past ten-thirty.

Ilya stared down at him in the dim light, his eyes tracing the familiar constellations across Shane’s face. Freckles, scattered like afterthoughts over the bridge of his nose and the apples of his cheeks, some darker, some barely there. He counted them every night. It was a habit. 

Twenty-three… twenty-four…

He paused.

A slight frown touched his lips.

There seemed to be… fewer.

That was impossible. Freckles didn’t just vanish. They were loyal. He adjusted his head on the pillow, squinting. The light from the streetlamp outside was playing tricks. Had Shane been drinking more water? Getting less sun? Was there a secret freckle maintenance routine he wasn’t sharing?

No. Focus.

Twenty-five…

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Ilya glanced at the glowing screen without moving his arm from around Shane.

Troy Barrett.

He considered ignoring it. He considered the concept of confiscating Troy’s kneecaps tomorrow morning for having the audacity to interrupt Freckle Count Night Session. This was sacred time. 

He picked up the phone anyway.

Before even unlocking the screen, he made a mental note: Troy better be ready for extra drills tomorrow. Lots of them.

Ilya stared at the screen. A wicked smile spread across his face.

Extra drills for Troy for a week, Ilya decided. Maybe two.

The typing bubble appeared again, a clear sign of Troy’s internal struggle. 

Ilya set the phone back on the nightstand, screen-down.

He resumed his count, his finger tracing an invisible path just above Shane’s skin in the dark.

Twenty-six… twenty-seven…

Yeah.

They were all still there.