it's too loud in here

Shane doesn't know exactly when it happened. Only that it must have been within a narrow stretch of hours between 10:37 p.m. the night before, when he'd fallen asleep with his phone still in his hand and Ilya's last message glowing on the screen, and 3:15 p.m. the following afternoon.

It should probably bother him more than it does, that gap in his awareness. That blind spot where something fundamental shifted without his permission, without his knowledge, and without leaving so much as a trace. But there's nothing he can point to. No physical mark, no strange dream, just a blank space where something must have happened and now, emerging in its place, a new and terrible ability.

He doesn't even notice it at first.

The day unfolds exactly the way it always does. He wakes up early, laces his running shoes and pounds out five kilometers, pushing himself just hard enough to feel the burn settle deep into his calves. By the time he gets back to his apartment, his skin is flushed and damp with sweat, his breathing still uneven as he peels off his clothes and steps into the shower. The hot water works the ache out of his muscles, and for a few minutes, he lets himself relax.

Afterward, he moves through the rest of his routine on autopilot: throwing together a quick breakfast, checking the time twice and getting dressed for class. Class is no different. He sits in his usual spot, third row from the back by the window, pen moving steadily across the page as the professor drones on at the front of the lecture hall. Shane listens just enough to keep up, underlining key terms out of habit and filling the margins with small, neat annotations. He already has the lecture videos pulled up on D2L for backup. When the hour finally ends, he packs his bag, files out with the rest of the students, grabs something quick to eat, and heads back to his apartment.

It isn't until he's alone again—the door clicking shut behind him—that his phone buzzes against his thigh. He glances down, already expecting who it'll be.

Shane rolls his eyes, but something in his chest gives a small, traitorous tug.

Ilya comes over all the time. Has been for the better part of a year now, ever since they stopped pretending they weren't going to end up in bed together. It started simple; a hookup that worked, so they did it again. And again. And again. That's how Shane remembers it, anyway. Something easy and uncomplicated, a vent for working out stress and unravelling muscle kinks with single-minded focus.

And for the most part, it still fits into that shape. Ilya shows up, they have sex and, afterward, they clean up and go about their separate ways. No strings attached. That's the arrangement.

Well, that's the version of it Shane sticks to.

It's just that, somewhere along the way, other things started slipping in around the edges. Things that don't fit neatly into the friends-with-benefits box Shane has been trying so hard to shove them into.

Like the nights when Ilya doesn't leave right away. When he lingers in Shane's bed like he has nowhere better to be, half-asleep and warm, nose tucked into Shane’s neck. Shane always tells himself he should kick him out, but he never does. Those nights, Ilya sleeps over, and Shane tries not to think about how he always sleeps better when he does.

Or when he wordlessly follows Shane's diet, already ordering them food that fits within his restrictions so Shane doesn't have to pretend he's not hungry or awkwardly pick around the things he can't eat. Ilya complains about it most of the time, grumbling through every bite, but he never once changes their order from the restaurants Shane likes.

Or when he cleans Shane up afterward. Wiping away the cum that trickles slowly down Shane's thigh once he pulls out, a new routine, his hands gentle and careful as he works a warm, damp cloth over Shane's skin. He knows Shane will shower anyway—Shane always showers, swears his skin still feels too sticky to ignore—but he still does it. Every time. Like it's just part of the routine now, something he doesn't even need to think about.

Or when they spend entire afternoons tangled together on the couch with something mindless playing in the background. Stupid documentaries about things neither of them actually care about, or hockey games streaming off Shane’s laptop with the volume turned down low. They always end up sitting too close together, legs twisted together without either of them bothering to move away, until eventually one of them is half lying across the other.

And sometimes, without any real reason for it, they just start kissing. Not because it leads anywhere every time, and not because either of them is trying to start something, but simply because they want to be close. Ilya will tilt his head up from where he is stretched against Shane’s side and kiss him slowly and absentmindedly in the middle of the conversation, like it is the most natural thing in the world. Shane will kiss him back just as easily, fingers drifting into Ilya’s curls while the television keeps playing in the background.

It always leaves Shane feeling warm and pleasantly dazed afterward, all soft buzzing static under his skin, like being close to Ilya rewires something in him every single time.

Hayden has caught them like that more than once. He hovers in the doorway just long enough to give them a look that's unimpressed and distasteful, because it's been a year, and Hayden still hasn't been able to get over his hatred for one Ilya Rozanov. He doesn't say anything most of the time. Just makes a face, mutters something under his breath that neither of them bother to catch, and disappears back to his room. But the message is clear. Shane always shrugs it off. Because it's easy and it works. And whatever this is between them doesn't need to be picked apart or examined too closely for it to keep working. That's what he tells himself.

He doesn't let himself sit with it long enough to question why things have been changing for the better part of two months now. He doesn't really like dwelling on things that make his chest feel tight and his stomach feel strange. So instead, he just pushes himself to his feet, thumbing back a reply.

He heads for the shower again, already running through the mental checklist of prep he'll have to do. It's tedious work but Shane doesn't really mind, not when he knows he’ll be on his back, hole stretched puffy around Ilya’s cock in the next two hours.

And he already knows how it'll go.

Ilya will knock twice and Shane will open the door. Ilya will step inside, and within thirty seconds, their hands will be on each other like moths finding flame. He can already picture the way Ilya will look at him: blue eyes half-lidded and that crooked smile curling at the corner of his mouth like he's been thinking about this all day.

By the time the knock comes, Shane is already moving. He reaches the door just as the second knock lands, not even bothering to check the peephole. He pulls the door open and Ilya is right there, leaning against the frame, hands shoved into the pockets of his joggers, that familiar smirk already spreading across his face. His hair is slightly frizzy, curls sticking up at the end, and there's a faint flush across his cheeks from the walk over.

Shane doesn't hesitate. He steps forward, hooks his hand into the front of Ilya's shirt—the elastic of the collar permanently loosened from how many times Shane has grabbed him just like this—and yanks him inside. The motion is quick, pulling Ilya off balance just enough that he stumbles forward with a quiet huff of surprise.

Shane kicks the door shut behind him with his foot, the sound of it clicking into place barely registering before he's already pushing Ilya back against it. Ilya's back hits the wood with a soft thud, and Shane is right there, pressing into his space. He's smiling now, just a little, before he leans in and presses their mouths together.

Ilya starts kissing him back immediately. His hands come up fast, one already finding Shane's hip, fingers curling into the waistband of his sweatpants and tugging him closer. The other hand slides up to cup the back of Shane's neck, thumb brushing against the soft hair at his nape, angling his head just right to deepen the kiss. Shane exhales against Ilya's mouth, something loose and easy settling into place. For a second, everything is exactly as it should be. Shane's hands fist in Ilya's shirt, knuckles pressing into his collarbone. Ilya's hips roll forward as his hands slide lower, cupping his ass. His teeth graze Shane’s bottom lip, nipping at the skin until he gasps.

Then Shane hears it—

God, he tastes good. Why does he always taste this good?

—and freezes.

Not because Ilya said anything. His mouth is very clearly occupied, tongue sliding against Shane's lower lip, breaching in until he’s swiping it across Shane’s molars. But the thought is there, inside Shane's head, and it is not his own.

It's Ilya's voice, but it's not coming from outside. It's coming from somewhere deeper, as if it’s planted into the edge of his mind, deep in his conscience, as if he’s hearing through a murky fog, one he can't reach or block or shut out.

His hands are so soft. Maybe I should ask to eat him out. Pretty sure he took a shower. He smells like that soap he likes.

Shane jerks back like he's been burned, stumbling half a step, hand still twisted in Ilya's shirt. The fabric stretches even further. He trips over his own two feet, just a little, before he stares openly at Ilya, lips swollen from use, cheeks flushed a deep, splotchy red, breathing hard.

Ilya blinks at him, lips parted, confused, maybe a little dazed. His grip loosens but doesn't let go entirely, his fingers still resting on Shane's hip.

Why is he staring at me like that? Do I have something in my teeth? I swear I brushed them before coming over. Fuck, or is it the pimple? I knew I should have let Troy pop that pimple. Is it too red? It's probably too red. Shane, look away, please. I can't handle you looking at me like that.

Shane's heart slams against his ribs so hard he's surprised Ilya can't hear it. His pulse is a war drum in his ears, drowning out everything except the voice inside his skull.

God, he is so pretty.

Ilya shifts his weight, brow furrowing in genuine confusion. His thumb traces a small circle against Shane's hip bone. "What?" he asks aloud, voice low and a little rough, lips pink and slick from kissing. "Why did you stop?"

Shane just keeps staring, because he can still hear it: that low, warm current of Ilya's thoughts brushing against the inside of his skull like they belong there. Like they've always been there, and Shane is only just now learning how to listen.

And Ilya is looking at him now likehe's the strange one. Like he didn't just call Shane pretty inside Shane's own head.

But what really throws Shane—what makes his stomach drop and his thoughts scatter like startled birds—is why he can understand it. He knows most bilingual people, especially those still learning another language, think in their mother tongue. He's read articles about it, and watched videos. It's basic linguistics. Ilya's first language is Russian. His thoughts should be in Russian. Shane doesn't speak Russian. He shouldn't be able to understand a single word.

So he has no idea why he can understand Ilya when he shouldn't be able to.

Hell, he shouldn't be able to hear what Ilya is even thinking in the first place. Ilya's mouth stays closed—has been closed, except for that single question—so that means he hasn’t actually said anything. The words never left his lips. They never had a chance to be heard by Shane’s ears. So, how did Shane hear it?

He's starting to think he's finally going crazy. Finally hearing voices in his head, the way people in movies do right before everything falls apart. And for some fucking reason, one of those voices is Ilya.

That's the only possible explanation here. He's lost his mind. Years of stress and sleep deprivation and too much caffeine have finally caught up with him, and now he's hallucinating his friend with benefits thinking about him in English.

Okay, what the hell do I do? Do I call Pike? What did I read online that one time? Ask them what they touch, see, or smell? Man, what the hell did the wiki page say about grounding techniques? Fuck. I can't remember anything. Shane, please say something.

Ilya's mouth is still closed. His expression has shifted from confused to concerned, his blue eyes searching Shane's face for answers that Shane doesn't have. His hand is still on Shane's hip, warm and solid, a tangible weight, unlike the thoughts somehow weighing heavier and more real on Shane's mind.

Shane promptly freaks out.

He wipes at his own spit-slick lips with the back of his hand, the motion jerky and too fast. Then he reaches around Ilya—shoves past him, really—grabs the door handle, yanks it open, and pushes Ilya out into the hallway.

Ilya stumbles backward, catching himself with a startled grunt. "What the fuck, Holl—"

Shane doesn't let him finish. He slams the door shut, twists the lock, and slides down the wood until he's sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest, heart pounding so loud he can barely think.

He ignores Ilya’s knocks for the next five minutes.

જ⁀➴

After that, he ignores Ilya for a good three days.

On the first day, he panics out in his bed for three hours, staring at the ceiling with his phone face-down on the pillow because every time he looks at it, he sees Ilya's name and hears Ilya’s voice echoing inside his own skull.

Then, he tells himself he's being insane, that maybe it was a one-off, that it was nothing really, that he was still buzzing with energy from last night and his brain just misfired or glitched. He almost convinces himself.

But even then, he still chooses to ignore Ilya's messages.

Shane reads over them seven times, types out I'm fine twice, deletes it both times, and then shoves his phone under his pillow like that will make the whole thing disappear.

He calls Rose over instead. When Rose shows up, and Hayden comes back from his classes and immediately flops onto Shane's bed, Shane genuinely lets himself think it's a one-off. Because he doesn't hear their thoughts. He doesn’t hear a whisper, or a murmur, nor a single stray word floating through the air between them.

On the fourth day, he goes to his classes, because Shane never misses a class, not even when he feels like his sanity is coming apart at the seams, not even when he spent half the night lying awake wondering if he's finally losing it, only to tell himself that he wasn’t, that he couldn’t hear Hayden and Rose, that everything is fine.

He goes about his routine, packs himself lunch, and walks to his class. He takes his notes, underlines key terms, and then plans a group meeting for a project he just got assigned to, nodding along while his groupmates talk about organizing their next meeting. Then he's out the door, backpack over one shoulder.

He should have expected Ilya to be there. Ilya has been there with coffee after this class for the past three weeks now. But Shane forgot, and when he walks out and meets Ilya's gaze across the hallway, he hears it, Ilya’s thoughts slithering into Shane’s mind, gently wrapping around his own.

Hollander still better not be feeling sick, I miss him.

Shane tries not to throw up right there on the linoleum, because nope. He can hear his thoughts, even though he spent all of yesterday convincing himself it was a one-off. And then, as his stomach does a horrible flip, he also quickly realizes something else: Shane only hears Ilya's thoughts.

No one else's.

Not the girl brushing past him with her phone pressed to her ear, not the guy two feet away talking to his friend, not Rose or Hayden or anyone else he's been around since this whole nightmare started. Just Ilya.

He takes the coffee from Ilya's outstretched hand, fingers barely brushing against his, and manages to force out a quiet, "Thanks."

Ilya scoffs, a sound that Shane has heard a hundred times before. "Is no problem, it is on the way."

And Shane immediately knows he's lying, because Ilya's thoughts betray him before Ilya's mouth even finishes closing.

Yeah, about ten minutes the other way, but it's okay. I hope he likes the coffee… pretty sure he does since he hasn’t said anything the past three weeks. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He’s too nice for his own good. Though he can be bitchy. But it's okay, I like that about him.

Shane kind of pales when he hears it, because why does Ilya even care? They're friends with benefits, for Christ's sake. That's the deal. They text when they want to hook up, they argue about whose turn it is to buy takeout, and then they don't talk to each other for days at a time.

Hell, they're not even friends for most of the time. But Shane can’t say that part out loud with too much conviction, because it’s been two months now where things haven’t quite fit into that easy mold anymore. And although Shane wouldn’t necessarily call them friends… he wouldn’t say they’re only… fucking.

But even then, why is Ilya walking ten minutes out of his way for coffee? Why is he standing here in the hallway waiting for him? Why does it make Shane want to throw up, his ribs fluttering with something he clearly does not want to name?

So, he ignores it. He feels like he’s pretty good at doing that.

Ilya lets out a sigh, eyes drifting between Shane’s before he moves on the soles of his feet, one hand still wrapped around his own cup of coffee. "Do you want to come over tonight?" Ilya asks, and his voice is casual but his thoughts are not.

Please. Please. Please. I even bought you salmon today. I kicked Barrett out of the dorm.

Shane nearly winces. Because of course he did. Of course Ilya went out of his way, of course he planned something, of course he wants Shane to come over tonight after his training session with the hockey team, because that’s what Shane has always done. For the past three weeks, at least.

And God, does Shane want to say yes. But Shane is a coward when it comes to things like this, and he’s never been good at this part; the part where things stop being simple and where feelings creep in; the part where he has to figure out what he truly feels. Because half of the time, he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling—and now he can hear thoughts, Ilya's thoughts—and the idea of tuning into them, of listening, of really hearing what Ilya thinks, of finding something that mirrors what Shane himself can’t quite articulate—well, it scares the ever living shit out of him.

So, he presses a hand to his stomach and softens his expression into something apologetic. "Not feeling too well yet, sorry. I'll see you later, though, yeah?"

And before Ilya can answer, before he can hear whatever thought comes next, Shane is turning around and walking away, coffee still warm in his hand, heart slamming against his ribs all over again.

He ignores Ilya’s messages.

Shane leaves him on read.

જ⁀➴

Shane internalizes it a few days later. Compartmentalizes it the way he does everything else he doesn't want to examine too closely. He calls it his new normal, tells himself he just needs to accept it if Ilya is going to be around him. No point in fighting something he can't change. No point in losing his mind every time Ilya’s thoughts brush up against his skull.

Then he realizes, with startling clarity, that he really misses Ilya. And that's the part he isn’t ready for.

He's tried pushing him away. Told himself he doesn’t need Ilya for anything more than a hookup: someone warm and willing who shows up, does his job, and leaves. But that’s a lie. He knows it now, sitting alone in his apartment with his phone in his hand and Ilya's contact open for the tenth time in an hour.

He misses Ilya terribly. It's an ache in his chest that just sits there quietly. He misses his company, he misses his stupid texts, he misses his cock: the way Ilya fucks him like he's got something to prove. And he misses his stupid mole, the one right on his cheek that Shane has kissed a hundred times without meaning to.

So he texts him.

Barely twenty minutes go by before Ilya is at his apartment. Shane opens both the door and his mouth to ask if he missed his class—though he already knows the answer because Shane’s memorized Ilya's schedule to a T—but before he can get a word out, Ilya is shoving his way inside and kissing him hard.

Shane licks into his mouth in return, hands fisting in Ilya's shirt, but he can barely think because all of Ilya's thoughts are rushing into his brain at once.

Just his name, over and over, like Ilya’s been saying it to himself for days and can't stop now that Shane is finally in front of him.

Ilya pulls back first, breathing hard, his thumb swiping across Shane's cheekbone, right underneath his freckles. "How are you feeling? Better, yes?"

Shane inhales, lips spit-slicked, cheeks flushed. "Uh, yes. Yeah, I'm better."

I wish I was there to take care of you. I missed you.

"Okay, good," Ilya says aloud, and his shoulders relax.

Would he like mama’s borscht?

Shane doesn't want to hear that. So, he kisses him instead. He steps forward, cups Ilya's jaw, and presses their mouths together hard enough to shut everything out. Ilya makes a surprised sound against his lips but doesn't pull away. His hands find Shane's waist like they always do and Shane keeps kissing him. Keeps kissing him so he doesn't have to hear what Ilya is thinking next, and keeps kissing him so he doesn't have to think about what any of this means.

Ilya's thoughts fade into static, muffled by the heat of his mouth, the grip of his hands, the way he sighs when Shane bites his lower lip.

And for a few minutes, it works.

Ilya's hands slide from his waist to his hips, fingers digging in just short of painful, and Shane makes a sound he'll deny later. Ilya smiles against the press of his mouth.

Smug fucking asshole, he thinks.

"You're annoying," Shane mutters, not pulling back far enough to actually stop kissing him.

"I think you missed this," Ilya says, right up against Shane's lips, and his breath is warm and his voice is low and Shane wants to shove him away and pull him closer at the same time.

Missed you. Was it only a stomach bug? Did something else happen?

"Nothing happened," Shane says automatically, because he can't help it, and then immediately regrets it when Ilya pulls back half an inch.

Ilya's brow furrows. "What?"

Shane's stomach drops. "Nothing." He kisses him again, teeth catching Ilya's lower lip hard enough to make him inhale sharply. "Shut up."

Ilya makes a frustrated noise but kisses back, and they start moving, Ilya kicking off his shoes. They take small little steps towards Shane’s bedroom.

"You're being weird," Ilya says between kisses, his hand sliding up into Shane's hair and tugging.

"Fuck off, no, I’m not," Shane fires back, biting at his jaw just to hear him swear.

Fuck, Shane. Shane. I missed you, missed you so much.

Shane's chest goes tight. He doesn't want to hear that. He doesn't want to know that. So he kisses Ilya harder, backs him up a step, then another, until Ilya's shoulders hit the wall in the hallway. Ilya laughs into his mouth and Shane hates how much he likes the sound.

"Impatient," Ilya murmurs.

"You came over for one reason," Shane says, and it comes out meaner than he intended, a deflection, even though he knows it’s not true.

Ilya's expression flickers, just for a second, before he smooths over, and he tilts his head, watching Shane.

I wanted to know how you were. Not the only reason, sweetheart.

Shane shoves off the wall and starts walking toward the bedroom, pulling Ilya by the front of his shirt. "Come on."

Ilya follows, but he doesn't stop talking. "You didn't answer my texts."

"I had a stomach bug."

He frowns.

"You came to class the other day. I got you coffee."

Shane huffs, but still flashes a smile towards Ilya’s way. "I know. Thank you for that, by the way."

Ilya scoffs, and Shane just keeps walking, tugging him down the short hallway, past the washroom and past Hayden's closed door. They're kissing again before they even reach the bedroom, Ilya's hands pushing up under Shane's shirt and Shane's fingers twisted in the collar of his jacket.

"Want to fuck you so bad," Ilya says against his neck, mouth hot and open, and so, so wet.

"Then get to it," Shane urges.

Love being inside you. You’re always so hot, so tight. It’s everything that I want. Feel like you were made for me.

Shane pushes him through the bedroom doorway.

Ilya stumbles, catches himself, and then Shane is on him again, backing him up until the backs of Ilya's knees hit the edge of the mattress. Ilya drops onto the bed with a grunt, looking up at Shane with large pupils and puffy lips.

Come here. Come here. Come here.

Shane climbs onto the bed, straddles Ilya's thighs, and kisses him so he doesn't have to hear it anymore.

Ilya's hands go to his hips, pulling him down, and for a few seconds, there's nothing but heat and pressure and the wet slide of their mouths. Ilya shifts beneath him, already hard, and Shane rolls his hips down once, twice, just to hear the sound Ilya makes.

Then Ilya breaks the kiss, breathing hard, and looks up at him.

"What do you want?"

"Just touch me," Shane replies, circling his hips.

Ilya groans, pushing up and pressing his mouth to Shane’s in a messy kiss, hands settling at Shane’s waist. Shane melts against him immediately, fingers curling into Ilya’s collar as he sighs. It starts slow, almost sweet, but Shane has never been good at keeping things tame—not when Ilya is pressed up against him, warm and wanting. He deepens the kiss, licking into Ilya’s mouth, swallowing the small noise he makes in response.

His tongue slips easily past Ilya’s lips, coaxing him open, their hips grinding together in a slow rhythm. The friction pulls breathy moans from both of them as their cocks press against each other, only barely separated by fabric.

Shane’s eyes flutter closed when Ilya’s teeth graze his lower lip before he nips at it just enough to make Shane shudder at the almost-pain. He sucks the swollen flesh into his mouth, tugging harshly before letting it go with a wet pop, leaving it tingling and slick.

Ilya pulls back just enough to meet Shane’s gaze, his fingers coming up to grip his chin. His thumb ghosts over Shane’s lips before pressing against the seam, coaxing his mouth open. Shane obeys without hesitation, tongue lolling out, wet and eager, waiting for whatever Ilya wants to give him.

Pretty. Can’t believe I have you like this. All mine.

Shane blinks, and without warning, Ilya pushes his head up, and spits on his tongue. The warmth, the slickness of it drips down his tongue and Ilya easily rolls out his own to receive it. He swallows and Shane shudders, his breath hitching as he lets out a needy moan.

Ilya doesn’t give him time to react. He leans in, licking the remaining saliva right off Shane’s tongue before slanting their mouths together once again. His fingers tangle into Shane’s hair, yanking him in until there’s no space left between them, chest to chest, cocks pressing against the seams of their pants.

Shane whimpers into the kiss, the sharp tug at his scalp making his cock throb. He melts under Ilya’s touch, letting himself be pulled. The obscene sounds of spit and lips meeting echo through the room, messy, so obscene, that Shane whimpers, his cock twitching in his underwear.

Ilya knows Shane’s already soaked through, that Shane can feel the damp fabric clinging to his own skin, sticking to his thighs, growing with every slow, grinding movement. Ilya pulls him closer, slipping a leg between Shane’s and pressing his thigh up against the aching bulge in his briefs. Shane gasps, his hips jerking forward instinctively, rutting up against Ilya’s thigh. A high, broken whine spills from his lips as Ilya kisses down his jawline, tracing wet, open-mouthed kisses along the curve of his neck. The heat pooling in Shane’s stomach coils tighter as he shifts against Ilya’s thigh, grinding down in desperate motions.

Shane chases more of it, his movements clumsy but desperate. His boxers are already damp—no, soaked—with how much he wants this, how easily he leaks with just the smallest bit of stimulation. And he knows Ilya gets off on it.

Shane is always so desperate when it comes to Ilya, so needy in his pursuit of something more. His body never hesitates, never wavers, always asking, always pulling Ilya in instead of pushing him away.

He tilts his head back, offering himself up as Ilya drags hot, wet kisses down his neck. A high, broken whine escapes him, barely more than a breath, his hips instinctively rolling against the firm muscle of Ilya’s thigh. Ilya pulls back, his hands settling firmly on Shane’s hips. He stills him just for a moment, just long enough for Shane to groan.

"You’re making a mess," Ilya murmurs, his lips brushing against the shell of Shane’s ear. His voice is thick with amusement. "Already soaked through, huh? That desperate?"

So pretty, Shanya. I wish I could look at you all the time. So desperate, always wanting it, you’re a beauty.

Shane moans, fingers twisting into the fabric of Ilya’s shirt. He can feel the wet patch on his briefs spreading, sticky and hot against his skin.

Without warning, Ilya grabs him by the hips and drags him forward, forcing more pressure against his aching cock. Shane’s head tilts back, a ragged whimper spilling from his lips as he clings to Ilya’s shoulders.

"Fucking, can you just touch me properly, Rozanov," Shane murmurs, breath coming out in shallow pants.

Yes, yes, yes, anything for you.

"Fuck," Ilya mutters, undoing Shane’s jeans, pushing them down just enough to get his hand inside, to feel the heat of him, the damp fabric clinging to his cock.

Deft fingers hook into his boxers, dragging them down with agonizing slowness, exposing him inch by inch until he’s bare, until they’re resting scrunched up around his thighs, Shane’s entire weight on Ilya. Shane shivers, his cock twitching in the open air, but Ilya makes no move to touch him. Not yet. Instead, he takes his time, eyes dark as they rake over Shane's body. Only when Shane whimpers does Ilya finally move, wrapping a firm hand around his cock, his fingers ghosting over the sensitive tip.

Spit on your cock, Shane. Come on, please, please, make it wet. Need to tell you, look so pretty when you’re dripping, all needy and slutty for me.

Shane jolts, a high-pitched, desperate whine ripping from his throat at Ilya’s train of thoughts. Before Ilya can ask, Shane bends over, and opens his mouth. A thick string of spit falls from his lips, landing with a wet plop right on the flushed, swollen head of his cock.

"Fuck," Ilya stutters, voice breaking as he watches the spit dribbled down his knuckles, catching on the vein that sits on the right side of his dick. "So needy, Hollander," he taunts, voice a low purr as he strokes Shane’s cock, his fingers twisting just right as he drags slick sounds from Shane’s lips.

"Shut the fuck up," Shane moans out.

Kiss me, shut me up. Come on, please, please. I miss your mouth, want you all the time, taste so sweet, so pretty Hollander. Shane.

Shane shakes his head, and leans forward to crash their mouths together. The kiss is messy and desperate; Shane’s jaw slack, moans spilling freely into Ilya’s mouth, only to be swallowed down. Ilya drinks him in, their tongues sliding together in a slick, filthy mess.

Shane pulls back, fumbling at the button of Ilya’ jeans, eyes glazed, lips slick with spit. "Open up, come on. I want to touch your dick."

Ilya lets out a breathy laugh. "Okay, okay, Hollander, wait."

He shifts back just enough, hands moving quick as he shoves his jeans down, his underwear sliding with them. He can’t do much, with Shane still sitting on top of him, thighs bracketed on his own, but it's enough space to have his cock spring free, flushed and hard.

Ilya doesn’t break eye contact as he lifts his hand, slipping two fingers past his lips. His tongue swirls around them, coating them with saliva before pulling them out with a soft, wet pop.

Shane’s breath catches when Ilya presses those slick fingers against his own mouth, a silent command. He parts his lips instinctively, sucking Ilya’s fingers in, tongue flickering against them, dragging along the ridges of his knuckles, sucking like he’s starving for it.

Ilya watches him, watches how greedily he takes it, how his cheeks hollow out, how he moans around the intrusion like it’s the best thing he’s ever had. Slowly, he withdraws his fingers, slipping free with a glistening trail of spit. He shifts his grip, using the slick wetness to stroke himself, his palm gliding up and down his length at a slow pace.

Shane huffs, his cock steadily leaking pre-cum over the scrunch of his boxers, right over Ilya’s hip. "Can you go back to touching my dick?"

Ilya huffs out a laugh.

Such a brat, my Shanya.

Before Shane can say anything, Ilya takes his cock in his hand, pressing their lengths together. His grip tightens, fingers teasing the sensitive spots he knows drive Shane insane, his thumb smearing pre-cum over the swollen tip.

Shane moans, his hips jerking instinctively, grinding against Ilya, thrusting into the heat of his fist like he can’t help himself. The tops of his feet plant firmly on the bed as he arches, pressing himself into Ilya’s fist, his cock rubbing against his. His forehead presses against Ilya’s own.

"Ilya, fuck, please…" he gasps, his voice cracking on the last syllable.

Ilya isn’t any better. His moans are stifled behind bitten lips, his brow furrowed in concentration, sweat glistening at his temples. The air is thick with the slick, wet sounds of their movements. Their cocks slide together, slick and messy, each drag setting his nerves alight. Shane moans, colliding their lips in a clumsy kiss. Every time Shane whimpers, Ilya tightens his fist, just to hear the way it knocks the air from his lungs. Shane can hear his thoughts, and the only thing going through the muddiness of his mind is: Shane. Shane. Shane. Shane.

"More," he breathes, barely a sound, his lips ghosting against Ilya’s skin. "Please, fuck, come on, I need, I need more."

Ilya huffs a laugh against Shane’s temple, but it’s strained, his own pleasure curling hot and insistent down his spine.

"More?" he echoes, shifting his grip, pressing their cocks even tighter together. His strokes turn just a little rougher, just a little faster, and Shane fucks into his fist, hips twitching desperately.

"Yeah, yeah, fuck, nnngggghhh, just like that." he moans, his voice breaking apart.

Ilya isn’t far behind. His control slips as Shane’s moans pitch higher, as his body shudders, shaking apart in his arms. His nails dig into Ilya’s skin, right through the thin fabric of his shirt. Ilya kisses him through it, his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, before murmuring, all syrup-honeyed, "Come for me, come on, Hollander."

A drawn-out cry spills from Shane’s lips as his body tenses, and he spills hot and messy between them. Ilya follows him a few seconds after, his grip faltering, strokes turning sloppy as he cums against Shane’s stomach.

So good. So good. Fuck, I love this. Thank you, thank you. Shane. Shanya, you’re so pretty. Always want you, it is hard not to. Look at you, so pretty, like a baby deer, pretty freckles too, and your blush, so red, always so, so red. I remember Hayden said it was called Asian flush. How you go red because of anything. But I like it when you're red because of me the most. Always want you red bec—

Shane kisses him silent.

જ⁀➴

Five days later, everything grinds to a halt.

Ilya stays over after they sleep together. Somewhere between the third orgasm and the shower they take side by side, they end up collapsed on the couch with a movie playing. Shane is curled in on himself, swallowed up in one of Ilya’s oversized hoodies, knees tucked to his chest. Ilya stretches out at the other end, one hand draped over Shane’s ankle, thumb rubbing lazy circles into his skin.

"Do you want to order pizza?" Ilya asks.

Shane doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is rough with sleep. "You know I don’t like carbs after you fuck me."

"You never like carbs, Hollander," Ilya says, his thumb pressing lightly against the bone of Shane’s ankle. "But after three orgasms, I think some carbs would actually be good for you, yes?"

Shane frowns up at the ceiling, too comfortable to move. He feels boneless, hollowed out in the best possible way, like everything in him has been wrung clean and left warm and loose. When he thinks about it, food might actually help.

"Can we get burgers instead?" he asks.

Except his thoughts snag almost immediately, something in his mind tripping over itself, because even through the lingering haze, he realizes that his lips never moved. Not just now, but throughout the entire conversation actually, they haven’t moved at all.

He pales.

Shane turns his head to look at Ilya, and Ilya turns to his side to back look at him.

You want it wrapped in lettuce? Even though it is disgusting.

The words land clearly in Shane’s mind, as distinct as if they had been spoken out loud. Ilya is still wearing that easy, crooked half-smile, still looking at him the same way he always does, but his mouth is not moving either.

And for a brief, disorienting moment, Shane almost convinces himself that Ilya simply has not noticed, because he always gets like this after—soft, a little dazed, all loose and happy after a few orgasms and proper aftercare.

Shane’s eyes widen, and he swallows hard against the sudden, heavy lump forming in his throat.

Yes, please.

He doesn’t say that out loud either.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, about thirty seconds later, Ilya’s smile begins to falter.

Ilya’s hand goes still where it rests on Shane’s ankle. He blinks once, then again, his expression tightening as confusion slowly takes over, trying to make sense of something that’s supposed to be impossible. Shane immediately knows he’s freaking out.

You’re freaking out right now, aren’t you? Please don’t freak out. Because if you freak out, then I’m going to freak out.

It takes Ilya another twenty seconds to fully register that Shane has not spoken a single word, that his lips really did not move. And then it takes him an entire minute more to process what that actually means, before he finally shrieks, as the colour drains completely from his face.

"What the fuck?" Ilya yells, as he jerks back like he’s been burned, his hand ripping away from Shane’s ankle. His irises dart left to right crazily, locked in on Shane’s face as he searches for something. Shane stays silent. "What the fuck was that?"

Shane pushes himself up on his elbows, heart hammering so hard it feels like it might crawl up his throat and push its way out. He feels the strong urge to throw up. He opens his mouth and prays to any god out there that he doesn’t. Instead, nothing comes out, not even words, because he’s not exactly sure on what to say.

I don’t know what to say.

Ilya stares at him, wide-eyed, chest rising and falling too fast now. "Say something," he demands, the words coming out strained. "Hollander, say something out loud, right now."

Shane swallows, throat dry, and forces the words out. "I—"

His voice works, barely. It comes out hoarse and fills the space between them in a way that feels wrong. He doesn't want to talk, not when his ankle still itches where Ilya touched him, not when his heart is pounding so hard he feels sick with it.

Oh, this is bad.

He's pretty sure he's about to have a panic attack.

And Ilya—because he's good, because he's kind in ways Shane keeps trying to ignore—moves immediately. He closes the distance in two quick steps and cups Shane's cheek, palm warm and heavy. He pats once, twice, before his thumb presses lightly at the corner of Shane's mouth, coaxing his lips apart.

Breathe, Shane. I can hear your brain running. I need you to breathe. Fuck, I'm freaking out myself.

But Shane can't stop, can't shut it off. The thoughts come faster now, tumbling over each other in a chaotic rush that he can't control, can't hide, can't do anything but let Ilya hear every single one.

God, he's going to hate me. He knows. He knows I can hear his thoughts. He knows I've been hearing them. How the fuck did this happen? Did he realize something was wrong? Is he disgusted? Is he—

Shane.

—going to walk out? He should walk out. I wouldn't blame him. This is insane. I'm insane. I've been inside his head without permission, listening to things I had no right to hear, and he's going to look at me like I'm a freak and then he's going to leave and I deserve it, I deserve—

Shane, breathe.

I can't breathe, you’re going to hate me because I heard the way you think about me, the stuff that was never meant for me. And I’m sure you feel angry and you should, definitely, because what I did was… feel like I’m going to die, oh—

No, you won't.

Ilya's thumb presses firmer against his cheek, grounding him.

But I need you to breathe, okay? It's hard to be mad at you when you're about to die.

I’m sorry.

Just breathe.

Shane does. It comes in uneven pulls at first—ragged, shaking things that catch in his throat and stutter on the way out—but he keeps going. In, out, again and again, big gulps. Ilya's hand stays where it is, warm against his skin. The heat of it lingers, his thumb still resting near Shane's lip like he's making sure he doesn't forget how.

Eventually, the panic loosens its grip. The tightness in Shane's chest eases from a vice to a dull ache. His breaths even out enough that he can think again. Ilya seems to notice the second it happens. His hand drops and he takes a few steps back.

Shane misses his touch immediately. He doesn't say it out loud, but Ilya's eyes narrow slightly, and Shane realizes with a sickening lurch that it doesn't matter whether he says it or not, because Ilya heard it anyway.

Ilya's brows pinch together. "I know we had a full conversation through… our fucking thoughts right now, but you can stop for now, yes?"

I don't know how to.

Ilya sighs, and then he talks. Once he does, Shane's skin itches with the way he sounds; resigned and exhausted. "This isn't new to you, is it?"

Shane's expression gives him away before he can even try to answer. His face falls, gaze dropping somewhere past Ilya's shoulder. He can't look at him, not right now, when shame is crawling up his throat like something rotten.

Ilya lets out a scoff as he pushes himself up from the couch, one hand dragging down the front of his shirt like he needs something to do. His fingers are shaking, a small tremor that he probably thinks he's hiding. His fingers come to wrap around himself, the movement agitated, and Shane catches the exact moment it clicks, when Ilya realizes he isn't wearing his hoodie.

His gaze drops to Shane's lap. Then lifts again, landing squarely on Shane, who is still curled into the couch, wrapped in the fabric like it belongs to him.

He doesn't say anything about it. Shane kind of wishes he did.

"Hollander."

Shane shifts on the couch, shoulders pulling in slightly, fingers tightening where they're tucked into the sleeves. He pulls his knees up higher, but keeps his shoulders squared. Even if Shane is terrified, he has never run from a fight.

"Come on," Ilya presses, his voice threaded with something that edges too close to anger. "How long, Shane?"

Shane hesitates, his jaw tightening before he loosens the lock. "…Two weeks."

"Two weeks," Ilya repeats flatly, as if he can’t quite believe it. Shane wouldn’t either. "You have been inside my head for two weeks."

Shane exhales slowly, but it does nothing to settle the way his nerves spike, hackles rising almost instinctively. It would be easier, maybe, if Ilya were just angry, if this could slot neatly into something Shane knew how to deal with, but this isn’t that; because Ilya sounds resigned, tone threaded with disbelief, as if he can’t believe what’s happening, but also that Shane, who is good, would hide something like this.

But it isn’t as if he wanted this. It isn’t as if he asked for it—for this constant, intrusive awareness of Ilya’s thoughts whenever he’s close enough, for the way he’s learned to separate what Ilya says from what he doesn’t, for the quiet, awful clarity of knowing which one is more honest.

It’s made everything harder.

Sleeping is the worst of it, if he’s being honest with himself—lying there with his own thoughts looping and twisting, guilt settling heavy and suffocating in his chest, his mind circling the same point over and over again—that he knows things he was never meant to know. That he hears things Ilya never chose to say.

And it’s terrifying, too, in a way Shane doesn’t want to unpack: hearing Ilya think about him without any kind of filter, without the careful restraint he uses out loud, and realizing, slowly and unwillingly, that maybe this isn’t as one-sided as he convinced himself it was.

But thoughts aren’t the same as words. And if Ilya can’t say it—if he won’t say it—then Shane isn’t going to be the one to drag it into the open.

"I didn’t know how to bring it up," he says, finally.

Ilya just stares at him. "You didn’t know how to bring it up," he echoes, but the bite has dulled and his voice has dropped into a murmur. "So your solution was to just… not say anything?"

"It wasn’t like that—" Shane starts, pushing himself more upright, the words coming quicker now. His skin burns and his eyes are now wet and he doesn’t remember when that happened. His throat feels like it’s stuffed with glass.

"Then what was it like?" Ilya snaps, the restraint cracking cleanly this time, frustration bleeding through without any attempt to hide it. "Because from where I’m standing, it sounds like you’ve been in my head for two weeks and just, what? Decided that was fine?"

"It wasn’t on purpose," Shane shoots back, frustration finally forcing its way through the guilt. "I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t even understand what was happening at first—"

"But you figured it out," Ilya cuts in immediately, stepping closer again, eyes locked on Shane. "You figured it out, and you still didn’t tell me."

I'm sorry.I'm so sorry. I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. I just—one day I could hear you, and I didn't know what to do, and then I couldn't stop listening because—

Cut the shit, Hollander. It’s been two weeks and you didn’t tell me.

"I was going to," Shane insists out loud, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "I just needed time—"

"Time for what?" Ilya cuts in again, barely giving him time to defend himself. Even if he does give him time, Shane doesn’t know what he would quite say. Maybe this is mercy. "Time to keep listening? To see what else you could figure out about me?"

"That’s not fair," Shane says, but even to his own ears it sounds thin, fickle, because he knows he hasn't been fair either. So, why should Ilya?

"Isn’t it?" Ilya fires back, shaking his head as he takes a step away this time, like being any closer suddenly feels intolerable. "Jesus, Shane. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?"

Shane flinches, spine going rigid instead. "I didn’t do anything with it."

"That’s not the point!"

And maybe it isn’t, but it’s the only defense Shane has, the only thing he can offer without spitting his heart out, blood and all, and begging for forgiveness.

Because Shane has never been good at this part.

Conflict has always sat wrong in his chest, instinctively avoided, something he learned early on to step around instead of walk through. He still remembers being seven years old, the sting of it—being shoved off the slide by a kid twice his size—the dull ache of bruises blooming across his legs by the time he made it home, and the quiet, humiliating realization that fighting back hadn’t fixed anything. It had only made it worse.

So, he learned.

He learned how to deflect, how to use words instead of fists, and how words can be easier to hurt someone if he wants to. And the truth is, he knows Ilya is right to be angry. He knows there’s something deeply wrong about what he’s done, even if he never meant to do it at all. Knowing Ilya’s thoughts without permission, without consent, without even giving him the chance to choose; well, it sits heavy and sour, festering and festering as he tried not to listen, but still heard, how he told himself to ignore it but couldn’t, how he absorbed and absorbed until he felt rotten.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped just being overwhelming and started becoming something worse, heart wrapped up in thorns, each root splintering off as he caught every unfiltered thought Ilya never meant for him to hear, how Ilya truly felt.

But Shane is bad at this—at feelings, at saying the right thing when it matters—and so he does what he always does when he runs out of options.

He goes quiet.

He watches as Ilya huffs out a breath, one hand coming up to tug harshly at his curls before he drags in an inhale, like he’s trying to pull himself back together.

"I am going to go."

Wait, please don’t. You don’t have to. Let’s talk about this. We should talk about this.

Shane doesn't say any of it out loud. The words lodge in his throat, as he watches Ilya cross the floor and put distance between them. Each step feels like a small subtraction, Ilya's warmth receding from the room inch by inch until he’s across the room and away from Shane.

Ilya pauses near the door. He doesn't turn back but Shane can see the tension locked in his shoulders, the way his spine has gone rigid. His voice comes out rough when he speaks.

"Give me some time," he says, "not… right now. Is… hard. I need to—"

He trails off, struggling for the phrasing, and Shane can hear the frustration bleed into his silence. The way language suddenly feels like a barrier instead of a bridge. English slipping through his fingers just when he needs it most.

Shane doesn't interrupt. He doesn't tell him that he understands anyway—that Ilya's thoughts, no matter what language they arrive in—are always neatly translated for him now. Russian flows just as easily as English, words sliding down a well-worn path straight into Shane's brain, seamless and effortless and completely unwanted at this exact moment.

"I need to wrap my head around it," Ilya finally manages.

And then, without giving Shane the chance to respond, he opens the door and leaves.

Shane is a realist, and always has been.

He grew up in the careful orbit of his mother, a woman who prepares for everything; contingency plans are tucked into contingency plans, every possible outcome considered before it has the chance to happen. She moves through life like she is constantly bracing for impact, and Shane learned early on that people survive by anticipating things before they arrive.

However, the problem is that people aren’t predictable. Not for him, anyway.

He learned that when he was five years old, sitting stiffly at the kitchen table while his mother gently explained that people liked eye contact. That he needed to try, even if it felt wrong, even if it made something deep in his chest crawl with discomfort. Shane remembers practicing afterward in the washroom mirror, staring himself down.

He still tries, even now. At twenty-one, Shane thinks he’s gotten better at it. Better at reading pauses in conversations, at memorizing tones of voice, at cataloguing the tiny shifts in expression that other people seem to understand instinctively. But understanding people has never come naturally to him.

Except for Ilya.

Sometimes, usually late at night when he can’t sleep, he catches himself wondering why Ilya is so easy to read. Why his brain has carved out entire sections dedicated solely to him. Why details about Ilya seem to stick inside him without effort.

He knows Ilya broke his nose when he was fourteen and never got it fixed properly because hockey was more important at the time. He knows two of his back teeth are fake because of hockey, too. He knows Ilya hates tomatoes unless they’re blended into pasta sauce. He knows he gets quieter when he’s genuinely upset, more subdued, and louder when he’s angry. He knows he sleeps on the left side of the bed whenever he stays over, one arm shoved under the pillow, and the other curled around Shane’s waist.

Shane knows the cadence of Ilya’s laugh, the way his mouth twitches when he kisses Shane, the slip of his tongue, the warmth of his fingers.

And still, he has absolutely no idea how Ilya is going to react to any of this. Especially after Ilya spends the next four days ignoring him completely.

No texts, no calls, even his messages are left sitting on delivered for hours until Shane eventually stops checking them altogether. It’s impressive, honestly, the level of commitment Ilya throws into avoiding him.

Except avoiding Shane becomes impossible almost immediately, because the second Ilya walks out that door, they both realize distance no longer matters.

They can still hear each other.

Before, when Shane had been dealing with this nightmare alone, there had at least been limits to it. He only heard Ilya when they were close to each other—when they were face-to-face, when proximity brought them together and allowed thoughts to slip through the cracks. It had been invasive, but manageable enough.

Now there’s no off switch.

Ilya exists in the back of Shane’s mind constantly, like a radio station stuck just slightly off-frequency, always humming beneath everything else no matter how hard Shane tries to tune it out.

The thoughts come at random, sudden and impossible to block. Sometimes they arrive as fragments: brief flashes of annoyance, half-finished observations, muttered complaints that dissolve before they fully form. Other times they hit Shane so clearly, so vivid it feels less like hearing thoughts and more like Ilya is standing directly beside him, speaking into his ear.

Why the fuck is it so cold today, it’s October. Fuck this place.

I need coffee.

If Troy eats my yogurt again, I’m actually killing him.

And the worst part is that Shane cannot stop himself from listening in, even though it’s completely exhausting. By the second night, he's barely sleeping at all, constantly jerking awake because a stray thought crashes through his head at three in the morning, and his brain lets him know that Ilya is still awake. Shane hates that Ilya doesn’t have a normal sleeping schedule.

જ⁀➴

During day two of Ilya’s four days of silence, Ilya snaps first.

How the fuck do we stop this?

The thought slams into Shane so abruptly that he nearly drops his fork. He blinks hard, startled, sitting cross-legged on his couch with his dinner balanced on one knee while some hockey game drones on the television in front of him.

Hello? Hollander, I know you’re home. Answer my question.

Shane stares blankly at the TV for a second before responding.

Aren’t you supposed to be at work?

Answer the question, Shane.

The irritation behind it hits just as clearly as the words themselves. Shane can practically feel Ilya’s frustration bleeding through the connection, impatient and exhausted. And despite himself, Shane immediately wonders if Ilya’s eaten dinner yet. Isn’t his break supposed to be soon? He sounds tired.

The realization makes Shane lose the last remnants of his appetite. He sets the plate down on the coffee table and drags a hand over his face before carefully pushing the thought outward. Even after two days, intentionally directing his thoughts back still feels awkward and unnatural, like trying to force himself to speak in a language he barely understands.

I don’t know.

Figure it out.

Shane’s eye twitches. Even through whatever supernatural psychic nightmare this is, Ilya still somehow manages to sound insufferable. A pulse of annoyance flashes hot through Shane’s chest. He knows Ilya has every right to be angry, especially after finding out Shane hid this from him for two entire weeks, but that doesn’t stop Shane from wanting to reach through the connection and punch him in the throat.

Helpful suggestion, Rozanov.

Fuck you.

The response comes so fast Shane snorts before he can stop himself. He doesn’t hear anything from Ilya’s end for a second, just a static buzz before:

Seriously, Shane. I can’t do this.

The sudden shift catches him completely off guard. Shane can feel the exhaustion weighing heavily behind Ilya’s thoughts now, tangled up with stress and fear so intense it almost feels physical. It sits there, festering beneath the surface, anxiety rotting through him from the inside out. The sensation twists painfully in Shane’s chest, guilt curling hard in his stomach even though he knows, logically, that none of this is actually his fault.

He rubs a hand over his face and stares blankly at the hockey game still playing on the television, not processing a single second of it.

Okay, we’ll figure this out.

જ⁀➴

They try to figure it out.

The next morning, Ilya gets into his car after his last lecture and starts driving. At first, Shane thinks he’s just heading to work, but then the thoughts keep coming—traffic complaints, profanities, irritation at slow drivers camping in the left lane—and Shane slowly realizes that Ilya is leaving the city entirely.

Where are you going?

Away from you.

You know that’s not how this works anymore.

I am testing out a theory.

Shane huffs. For nearly two hours, Shane unwillingly rides along inside Ilya’s head while sitting in his own apartment. He hears every frustrated complaint about traffic on the highway, every half-finished train of thought, every aggressive internal rant directed at Montreal drivers who have not even appeared yet.

At one point, Ilya spends almost ten straight minutes trying to remember the name of a song stuck in his head.

What’s that one song? Fuck. The one that goes da da da—

That narrows it down.

Shut up.

Somewhere around the 100 kilometre mark, Shane realizes the connection has not weakened even slightly. If anything, hearing Ilya from this far away somehow feels worse, like the universe itself is insisting they stay tangled together no matter how much either of them wants out. By the time Ilya finally gives up and turns the car around, Shane is lying face-down on his couch with a pillow over his head while a steady stream of furious Russian swearing bleeds into his brain.

This is all your fault.

No it’s not, fuck you!

You hid it for two weeks!

You try explaining to someone else that you can read their thoughts! You would have thought that I was insane!

Shane knows he’s right.

Probably, yes.

Shane almost laughs, even though the situation isn’t funny. It’s pretty fucking terrible.

Ilya comes home, and they don’t try again.

જ⁀➴

Day three is somehow worse. The fight from yesterday never really ended. Neither of them apologizes, and neither of them attempts to bring it up again, but the silence that settles between them afterward feels strange in a way Shane cannot fully explain. It’s not empty, not really, because Ilya is still there constantly, threaded through the back of Shane’s mind no matter how hard Shane tries to push him away.

But the anger has changed.

Yesterday, Ilya’s anger ran hot as if it was blistering skin, leaving its mark. Today, it has dulled, curdled into something far more subdued. It feels less like rage and more like resignation, as though Ilya has finally accepted that whatever this thing is between them, it’s real and neither of them has the faintest idea how to stop it.

Shane tries not to make things worse. After yesterday’s disaster, and after spending two miserable hours listening to Ilya drive over a hundred kilometres just to test how far this connection can stretch, Shane figures the least he can do is give him space to process all of this privately.

Even if privacy barely exists between them anymore. So Shane spends most of the morning trying very hard to ignore Ilya entirely. He attempts to tune out the constant stream of thoughts bleeding through the connection while he makes coffee in his kitchen, while he sits through the single lecture he has scheduled for the day, and later while he works his shift at the clinic.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing seems capable of stopping the thoughts from slipping through eventually. Sometimes they arrive loudly enough to derail Shane’s concentration completely, crashing into his head with enough force to make him lose track of whatever he’s doing. Other times they brush against him so faintly that he almost mistakes them for his own internal dialogue before realizing, a second too late, that the thoughts are not his at all.

Throughout the day, Shane starts noticing patterns in them without even meaning to. He can tell exactly when Ilya gets bored during lectures because his thoughts begin scattering halfway through class, his attention splintering in every possible direction except the professor speaking at the front of the room.

Jesus Christ, if he changes the slide one more time before I finish writing—

A few seconds later comes a spike of irritation.

God, this professor sucks.

Shane has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling in the middle of his own lecture. It’s ridiculous, honestly, how easy it has already become to picture exactly what Ilya’s doing without even seeing him. Shane can imagine the slump of his posture, the restless tapping of his pen against the desk, and the incredulous look that is probably spread across his face while he listens on.

Later, Shane feels the exact moment Ilya leaves class because the texture of the thoughts changes almost instantly. The muffled focus of the lecture hall disappears, replaced instead by Ilya complaining about people moving too slow in the halls.

Move faster, holy shit.

Then, a second later:

Where the fuck is Svetlana?

He continues to listen in.

However, the strange thing is that none of this feels invasive anymore. It probably should. Three weeks ago, the idea of hearing someone else’s thoughts at random horrified him. Even now, logically, Shane understands how deeply unsettling this entire situation is supposed to be. There should still be panic attached to it somewhere. Instead, somewhere between the constant noise and the strange accidental intimacy of it all, Shane has started learning Ilya in an entirely new way.

Not just the obvious things either, but the small details that people usually keep to themselves. The way Ilya gets meaner when he’s hungry, the way exhaustion makes his voice sound hoarse, the way his irritation flares quickly and disappears just as fast, rarely lingering for long unless he is genuinely hurt. The way he gives and gives and gives, never wondering if he was getting anything back. Shane would like to give back if he can.

Shane also knows exactly when Ilya is tired now. He knows when he’s anxious. He knows when he’s lonely. And maybe that is the part that unsettles him most. By the time Shane finally gets home that evening, he already feels mentally worn thin from the constant awareness of someone else existing inside him.

Unfortunately, it only gets worse from there. While standing in his kitchen making dinner, Shane starts catching flashes of Ilya at work too: half-focused thoughts while stocking shelves, mild irritation directed at customers who apparently cannot read signs properly, and a fleeting moment of satisfaction when a customer flirts with him.

The jealousy that twists through Shane’s stomach is immediate and ugly because it’s one that stings far more than it should, and Shane instantly hates himself for noticing.

Because technically, Ilya is allowed to flirt with whoever he wants. Shane has absolutely no right to feel possessive after the way their last conversation ended, especially when the two of them have barely spoken properly in days outside of petty arguments and thoughts bleeding through the connection. Still, the jealousy settles hot and unpleasant beneath his ribs anyway, stubborn enough that Shane can’t ignore it even if he really wanted to.

Instead, he forces himself to focus on dinner, on washing dishes, on his assignment, and on getting ready for bed. By the time he finally crawls into bed that night, exhaustion sits heavy in every inch of him. Not physical exhaustion exactly, but the strange mental fatigue that comes from never truly being alone anymore. Every stray thought feels like being tapped repeatedly on the shoulder, constant and impossible to fully block out no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

Even when Ilya is not actively thinking at him, Shane remains painfully aware of him. It is there in the background constantly now—that low, persistent awareness of another person existing somewhere beyond his own body—sometimes the thoughts are loud enough to interrupt him entirely. Other times they are only faint impressions brushing against the edge of his consciousness. But they never disappear completely.

And underneath all of it sits the guilt. Because no matter how angry Ilya has been these last few days, Shane understands why. He understands exactly why Ilya had looked at him like that after finding out the truth, why he had left, why every emotion coming through the connection still feels slightly bruised.

Shane knows that Ilya wants him to leave him alone, can hear it and feel it from the way Ilya pushes him away. But Shane is stubborn and guilt is a heavy thing.

He reaches for his phone while lying in bed, thumb already unlocking the screen before he fully realizes there is absolutely no point anymore. The second the thought crosses his mind—I should text him—Ilya reacts instantly.

Not yet, Hollander.

The response arrives so quickly Shane nearly jumps. He drops his hand back onto the pillow beside him with an irritated scowl.

I could’ve been thinking about texting someone else.

I know you are lying, Hollander. I can feel everything, remember? I can even feel your guilt from all the way over here. It’s very annoying.

Shane rolls his eyes.

Fuck off.

Shane suddenly feels a burst of warmth and vibrations, as if his brain is shaking. He knows Ilya is laughing at him.

Now I know you are mad. You probably look like an angry kitten right now, hmm?

Shane can picture the smug expression that accompanies the thought, and annoyance flares instantly underneath his ribs.

I hope you know I’m giving you the fucking middle finger.

The amusement that brushes back against his mind once again is soft and noticeable. It slips through the connection before Ilya can fully suppress it, warm around the edges, almost as if his mushy, meaty brain is being enveloped in a hug.

For a second, Shane is glad he could make him laugh.

જ⁀➴

Day four is somehow even worse than the first three, and that’s saying something. Shane is leaving a lecture hall with Hayden beside him, his textbooks tucked beneath his arm while Hayden talks about an upcoming assignment that Shane is only half listening to, when Ilya’s thoughts suddenly drift into his head without warning.

God, she’s so pretty, look at her.

The words hit him so clearly that Shane stops walking.

Someone behind him mutters an annoyed apology after nearly colliding into his shoulder, but Shane barely hears it over the rush of heat flooding through his chest. Something dark and unpleasant twists low in his stomach, immediate and instinctive enough to make him feel almost sick with it. It’s almost rotten. Shane hates how everything feels like that lately.

"Hey," Hayden says, beside him with a frown. "You okay, dude?"

Shane does not answer him.

His attention has already turned completely inward, toward the familiar presence lodged inside his mind, curling his vines around his own mushy brain.

Who are you talking about?

The response comes so quickly it feels less like a thought and more like irritation being shoved directly into Shane’s skull.

Stop listening to my thoughts, Hollander.

Shane’s jaw tightens hard enough to ache.

That awful feeling inside him only worsens, spreading hot beneath his ribs until he has to curl his fingers tighter around his textbook just to ground himself. It is ugly and irrational and embarrassingly possessive, and Shane hates that he recognizes it instantly for what it is. And while it makes him want to throw up just thinking about it, he knows it’s jealousy; a feeling that he has become intimately familiar with over the past month.

Not because Ilya has actually given him a reason to be jealous, because Shane knows he hasn’t. Hayes had accidentally let it slip weeks ago while completely wasted, rambling halfway through a story before admitting that Ilya had not been sleeping with anyone lately. Shane had pretended not to care at the time, had rolled his eyes and changed the subject while privately feeling something unclench inside his chest so powerfully it embarrassed him.

Still, knowing that changes absolutely nothing, because Ilya is not his.

Even if the universe thinks she’s a comedian, Shane isn’t laughing. Every single time that Shane lets himself drift too close to wanting more than this strange, undefined thing between them, he has to kick himself down. Because Ilya has never promised him anything, so Shane has no claim over him whatsoever.

But none of that stops the horrible drop in his stomach at the thought of Ilya looking at somebody else.

I can’t help it. Shane shoots back before he can stop himself. You’re constantly in my head.

I don’t care, ignore it.

Shane winces, humiliation becoming ripe in a mere few seconds.

I can’t!

Because he genuinely can’t ignore Ilya, that is. He cannot ignore Ilya anymore than he can ignore breathing or the sound of his own heartbeat. Ilya is there constantly now, woven so tightly into the center of Shane’s mind that sometimes Shane genuinely struggles to separate his own emotions from the ones bleeding through the connection between them.

Every stray thought brushes against him whether he wants it to or not: fleeting annoyance, exhaustion, hunger, amusement, desire, loneliness. Shane feels all of it in fragments throughout the day, each emotion arriving without permission and settling beneath his skin before he can push it away.

It is overwhelming in a way he does not know how to explain to anyone else. And maybe that’s why it hurts so much when Ilya abruptly goes silent after that. Not fully silent, because the low hum of his thoughts never truly disappears anymore, but silent toward Shane specifically; closed off and deliberately withholding.

By the time Shane gets home that evening, his head is pounding. The entire walk home had been miserable, his thoughts tangled together with Ilya’s in a way that left him feeling overstimulated and raw beneath his skin. Even now, hours later, the faint awareness of Ilya still lingers at the back of his mind like static that never fully fades out.

Three hours later, Shane is stretched across his bed with damp hair curling against his forehead after a shower, a textbook spread open across his lap while he attempts to work through an assignment due the next morning. He has been staring at the same paragraph for nearly ten minutes now, rereading the exact same sentence over and over without processing a single word of it. Every time he tries to focus, his mind drifts somewhere else entirely.

Usually toward Ilya. Which is deeply unhelpful considering Ilya is apparently still avoiding him.

Shane drags a hand down his face with a quiet groan before forcing himself to look back at the page again. The silence in his head has almost become comfortable, dulling down his headache when suddenly Ilya barges back into his thoughts without warning. Not even a little polite about it, either. Which, honestly, knocking probably would not help considering Ilya seems to have permanent unrestricted access to Shane’s brain now anyway.

I was talking about a dog.

Shane blinks. And then, blinks again, his brain processing what Ilya just said.

What?

There is a flicker of amusement that brushes against Shane’s frontal lobe before Ilya answers again.

I went to the dog shelter today with Troy. I was calling a dog pretty.

The embarrassment arrives a second later, hot enough to make him wince. Because apparently he had not only gotten jealous over absolutely nothing, but Ilya had noticed it immediately.

But of course he had. There is no privacy left between them anymore. No hiding place for emotions once they flare too strongly. Shane had practically broadcasted his jealousy straight into Ilya’s head earlier like some sort of humiliating confession.

Shane can tell that Ilya is amused, having the time of his life. That bastard.

Yeah. So there’s no need to get jealous, even if it was kind of hot.

Heat floods Shane’s face so quickly it feels almost painful.

Fuck off.

The response only makes Ilya laugh. Or, well, not laugh exactly. Shane cannot hear the sound itself, but he feels it all the same. The sensation rolls through the connection warm and loose and bright, brushing against Shane’s thoughts like sunlight spilling through an open window. It comes in strange little pulses of amusement that Shane still does not fully know how to describe, tiny bursts of feeling blooming against the inside of his mind over and over again.

At first, the whole thing had terrified him. Now, though, he thinks Ilya’s laughter feels like being wrapped in warmth, like a hand pressed against the back of his neck, solid and grounding.

And god, he misses him. The realization hits Shane hard enough that it makes his chest ache.

He misses Ilya’s actual physical presence in a way this stupid connection cannot replicate. He misses the way Ilya sprawls across his couch like he owns the place. He misses the constant stream of commentary that spills out of him at all hours of the day, the sound of cabinets opening and closing when he wanders through Shane’s kitchen late at night looking for snacks after fucking him thoroughly, the warmth of him pressed nearby without either of them needing to think about it.

He misses Ilya touching him. Not even just sexually, although that too. Shane misses the casual intimacy of it more than anything else; Ilya’s fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns against his wrist while they watch movies, his knee knocking against Shane’s under the table, his lips brushing against Shane’s shoulder as he passes behind him in the kitchen. He misses the easy weight of Ilya draped over him after sex, warm and boneless and affectionate in a way he rarely lets himself be with anyone else.

Four days without seeing him suddenly feels much, much longer than four days. The thought slips out before Shane can stop himself, carried instinctively through the connection before he has the chance to shove it down.

Come over?

Shane squeezes his eyes shut the second he realizes what he said. Mortification crawls up his spine almost instantly. He knows Ilya can tell he misses him, and could hear the string of thoughts he just had moments before. Although, through the swirl of embarrassment, he wonders if Ilya misses him too.

Maybe tomorrow. If that is okay with you.

Shane swallows.

That’s okay with me. Goodnight, Ilya.

Goodnight, Shane.

જ⁀➴

Shane really thought they would talk about it. No, he really did. He'd spent the better part of two days running through the conversation in his head, rehearsing it over and over again.

They would sit down on the couch, he decided, with a little space between them at first; close enough that their toes could still brush if one of them stretched out. And then they'd talk, really talk, about whatever the hell was going on between them.

He even prepared a full speech. Something along the lines of: I'm sorry. I know I keep saying it, but I mean it. And I'm willing to work with you on this. I won't bring up anything I hear from your side unless you make it explicitly clear that you meant for me to hear it. We can set boundaries, rules, whatever you need, Ilya.

Ilya hears all of this, even the bits of Shane rehearsing the apology. He adds in notes here and there, and makes sure to tell him that he’d better cry with his "big doe-brown eyes on display"—Shane tells him to shut the hell up.

But yes, that type of stuff. And then, once the conversation was done and dusted, then Shane would get on his knees and blow him. Because sue him, he missed the taste of Ilya, missed the weight of his cock on his tongue, and especially missed the way Ilya's composure cracked apart under his hands.

Ilya hears that too.

So, he’s not really surprised when he opens the door and Ilya doesn’t say a single word; moving right to the sex. He just presses forward, body flush against Shane's, and kisses him silent. Shane barely has time to process it before his back is hitting the wall and Ilya's hands are already fumbling with the button of his jeans.

Ten minutes later, he's on his knees inside his own bedroom. Ilya's cock sits heavy on his tongue—salty and thick and impossibly warm—as Shane's mouth stretches around him, lips slick with spit, jaw already aching in the best way. He drools around it, messy and shameless, because his throat keeps constricting and he keeps gagging just slightly, just enough that tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

But he can't bring himself to care because his brain is finally silent. For the first time in weeks, the constant hum of Ilya’s thoughts has faded into the background. There's no clutter or static, just Ilya's pleasure coursing through him like a current, wrapping around his own, and Shane can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

Fuck, fuck, Shane, just like that, baby.

The thought crashes into him and Shane moans around the cock in his mouth. He feels Ilya's hips stutter, feels the way his thighs tense on either side of Shane's shoulders. And somewhere beneath all of that, buried under the haze of want, Shane registers the small, broken moan that escapes Ilya's throat.

He hums in response, a low vibration around his cock that makes Ilya's fingers tighten in his hair. Shane preens under it, basks in it, really, because he can feel how much Ilya wants this, how much Ilya wants him.

His own arousal is almost painful now, trapped in his shorts, the fabric damp and sticking to his skin. Pre-cum dribbles steadily from his tip, leaking through the cotton in a way that should embarrass him but doesn't. Not when his mouth is full and his brain is quiet and Ilya is looking down at him with an expression that rivals one of devotion.

Look at you, Ilya thinks, and Shane hears it like a prayer. On your knees for me. Taking all of me. So pretty like this. Always so pretty. Want to paint your pretty freckles in my cum.

Shane's eyes flutter shut as he sinks down further, nose brushing the coarse hair at the base, and lets Ilya's pleasure swallow him whole. All Shane can focus on is swirling his tongue around the tip of Ilya's cock, fingers pinching and rolling the skin of his balls until Ilya is letting out a guttural moan, his hips bucking forward.

Yes. Yes, just like that. Use your mouth, Shanya. You take me so well, like you were made for this. Were you made for this? Made for me?

Shane whines around him, the sound vibrating up Ilya's shaft, and he feels the answering tremor run through Ilya's entire body. His own hips are moving now, grinding down against nothing, seeking friction that isn't there. His cock is aching, leaking for attention, but he doesn't stop. Not when Ilya is looking at him like he's something precious.

So desperate, Ilya thinks, and there's wonder in it now, mixed with swirling pleasure. Look at you grinding against the air like a puppy. You need it that bad? Need to be touched?

Shane nods as best he can with his mouth full, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He wants to say yes, wants to beg, but his throat is occupied and his brain is static and all he can do is take Ilya deeper and deeper, until his gag reflex spasms and his throat constricts around the head.

Ilya's hand tightens in his hair.

Easy. Easy, baby. Don't hurt yourself. I've got you. You're being so good for me. So, so good.

Baby.

Ilya called him baby. Even if it was just in his head, Shane loved it when he called him baby. It made him feel gooey and warm, floaty.

Shane pulls back just enough to breathe, strings of saliva stretching between his lips and the head of Ilya's cock. He looks up through wet lashes, puffy lips parted as he takes deep breaths. Ilya’s thumb swipes across Shane's swollen bottom lip.

There's my pretty boy. You want to come, don't you? Want me to let you touch yourself?

Shane nods frantically, one hand leaving Ilya's thigh to palm at himself through his shorts. The pressure makes him gasp, makes his hips jerk, but it's not enough.

Not yet, Ilya thinks, and gently bats Shane's hand away. Not yet. I want you to come from just this. Just my cock in your throat. Can you do that for me? Can you be that good?

Shane nods. He takes Ilya back into his mouth with renewed determination, one hand dropping to cup his own balls while the other grips the base of Ilya's cock, squeezing in rhythm with his strokes. He sucks harder, cheeks hollowing, tongue flat against the underside, and Ilya's thoughts dissolve into a mess of Russian and English and sounds that aren't words at all. His mind translates them anyway.

Shane. Shane. Hollander. Your mouth. Your fucking mouth. Gonna come, fuck, fuck.

Shane moans in response, the vibration sending Ilya's hips stuttering forward again. He can feel himself getting close too, a familiar heat pooling low in his belly, his cock twitching uselessly against his thigh. He's so hard it hurts, so empty it aches, and every thought Ilya has is fuel on the fire.

So pretty, so perfect. Look at you taking all of me. Your lips stretched around my cock. Your eyes all wet. You like this, don't you? Like being on your knees for me. Like being good.

Shane does. God, he does. He likes it more than he's ever liked anything. He likes the weight of Ilya on his tongue, the taste of him, the way Ilya's thoughts wrap around him like a second skin. He likes feeling useful, wanted, like he belongs to someone, even if just for now.

Close.

Shane can feel it in the way his thighs tremble, in the way his breathing has gone ragged and uneven. He looks up at him, eyes pleading, and doubles his efforts. He takes Ilya as deep as he can, throat working around the head, and swallows. Once. Twice. Three times, each constriction pulling a broken sound from Ilya's lips.

Now. Now. I'm—Shane—

Ilya cums with a choked cry, his hips pressing forward as he spills hot and thick down Shane's throat. Shane swallows it all, every drop, because Ilya wanted this, because Ilya asked him to, because being good for him is the only thing that matters right now.

He moans around the salty taste, swallows and comes untouched, his whole body seizing as pleasure rips through him. He doesn't make a sound—can't, with his mouth still full—but his hands shake where they're braced against Ilya's thighs, and his vision goes spotty at the edges, and somewhere in the wreckage of his own mind, he feels content.

Once Shane feels like he can't breathe anymore, he pulls off. His lips are red and swollen, slick and sticky with the evidence of what he just did. His breaths come out in uneven pants against Ilya's stomach.

Ilya is still catching his own breath when Shane tilts his head up, eyes dazed, pupils blown wide and mouth still wet. "Was I good?" Shane asks. His voice is hoarse, roughed up from moments ago.

Ilya groans low in his chest. He drags a hand through Shane's sweat-damp hair and tilts his chin up even more, forcing those dark eyes to meet his. "Yes, Shane," he says, like it's obvious.

Shane smiles, a pleased little curl of the lips, brain a little drunk on it. He licks his lips before shakily climbing back to his feet. His legs feel unsteady, like they might give out, but he makes it upright. He's close enough now that Ilya can feel the sticky warmth of his breath ghosting across his skin. Close enough that their noses brush as he leans in, pressing teasing kisses along Ilya's jaw, his lips still damp, still tasting faintly of salt.

Ilya lets him for a moment. Then he nudges Shane gently toward the bathroom with a soft push to his hip. "Go clean up," he murmurs.

Shane goes.

Ilya is already in bed when Shane returns, sprawled against the headboard with his joggers pulled back on. Shane climbs onto the mattress without a word and settles in close, closer than he probably should, until their thighs press together from hip to knee. Neither of them moves away.

"So," Shane finally starts, picking at a loose thread on the comforter. "The telepathy thing."

Ilya snorts softly. "The telepathy thing," he repeats, like he's testing how absurd the words feel in his mouth.

"What do we do?"

Ilya is quiet for a second before he shifts, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. His fingers move across the screen before he turns it toward Shane.

Reddit.

Shane blinks at the screen as he looks at a subreddit about psychic phenomena, paranormal experiences and weird things people can't explain. Ilya scrolls through a few posts with his thumb—"I can hear my sister's thoughts, please help"—"Sudden telepathy with partner after head injury?"—"My boyfriend and I accidentally bonded and now I can't shut him out."

“You’ve been looking this up?” Shane asks, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Ilya shrugs immediately, but there is something strangely self-conscious about the movement. He keeps his attention fixed on the phone in his hands instead of looking directly at Shane, thumb idly scrolling through another forum post.

"What else was I supposed to do?" he mutters. "I could not sleep. I kept thinking about it, so I looked."

Shane glances down at the screen again. He notices there are dozens of tabs open in the browser when Ilya swipes out for a second: old Reddit threads, conspiracy forums, paranormal discussion boards, and a few articles translated badly enough that half the sentences barely make sense.

"For how long?"

Ilya hesitates just slightly. "Couple hours," he says at first, and then immediately grimaces. "Or maybe… the last few days."

The admission hangs awkwardly between them. Shane can feel the embarrassment curling through Ilya almost instantly, strong enough that it leaks straight through the connection before he can properly hide it. The vulnerability of it catches Shane off guard more than the confession itself. Ilya rarely admits when something is genuinely bothering him, especially not like this.

Almost immediately, Shane feels him trying to pull back.

Besides, who the fuck cares, Hollander? All you need to know is that I’ve been looking.

The thought comes with forced irritation attached to it, defensive in a way that makes Shane’s chest ache unexpectedly. He takes the phone from Ilya carefully—Ilya giving it easily—scrolling through a few more pages himself. Most of it looks completely insane. One website claims soulmates develop psychic bonds after intimacy, another insists telepathy is the result of emotional frequencies aligning. One forum thread appears to be written entirely by someone who genuinely believes the government implants thoughts through dental fillings.

Shane is sure Ilya hasn’t been to the dentist again this year yet. He was due in December. They're supposed to go together now. He hands the phone back and doesn’t comment on what Ilya admitted. Instead, he asks quietly, "Did you find anything useful?"

Ilya exhales hard through his nose and lets his head fall back against the headboard. "Not really," he admits. "Some say it goes away on its own after a while… others say you have to practice blocking it out, like it is some kind of muscle you train." He pauses, thumb rubbing absently against the edge of his phone case. "Some people say…"

He trails off.

Shane glances over at him. "What?"

Ilya’s jaw clicks, eyes drifting away. He lets out a sigh. "Some people say it never goes away," he says finally. "That eventually you just… adapt to it. Learn how to live with it." He swallows once before adding, "But they think is all theories. People think they are being hypothetical, is very annoying telling them it’s happening to me for real when they don’t believe me."

He goes quiet for a second before he looks over at Shane again. "Although," he says, sounding reluctant now, "I did find one thing."

Shane raises an eyebrow. Ilya unlocks his phone again and pulls up what looks like one of the sketchiest websites Shane has ever seen in his life. The page is entirely in Russian except for random sections translated poorly into English, the background black with bright red text.

Shane watches as Ilya scrolls through. "It talks about mental blockers," he says. "Like… barriers, I guess. Ways to intentionally shut thoughts out. Whoever wrote this says telepathic bonds get stronger when people stop resisting them, so… you can train your brain to create separation again, yes?"

Shane squints, eyes going blurry from staring at the horrendous text in front of him. The bright red letters seem to pulse against the black background, and he has to look away for a second just to let his vision reset.

"This website fucking sucks," he mutters, rubbing his temples.

Ilya huffs out a laugh. "Is very ugly, I know. But the information—" He scrolls further, scanning quickly. "It makes sense, maybe."

Shane leans over again, angling himself closer so he can read the screen. Up close, the website somehow looks even worse. The translation is clunky and awkward, filled with sentences that technically resemble English while still sounding deeply unnatural, but Shane can piece enough of it together to understand the general idea.

"Psychic resonance amplifies proximity and emotional intensity," he reads slowly. "To strengthen the bonding process, the receiving party must construct intentional cognitive barriers. Visualizations of walls, doors, or other physical separators between their consciousness and the transmitter’s mental space…"

He pauses, brow furrowing harder the farther down he scrolls. "Consistency is key. The bond will strengthen over time if the receiver can consistently reject and accept incoming transmissions. This will allow both transmitters to control the information that wires through."

Shane stares at the paragraph for another second before he hands the phone back to Ilya. Then he leans back against the headboard. "So, wait," he says slowly. "Let me get this straight. They want us to… what? Build imaginary doors in our heads?"

"Basically."

"Like mental walls?"

Ilya shifts beside him, scrolling back up the page. "Like… fuck, the English translation is terrible, I cannot explain," he says with a grimace. "The Russian version makes much more sense."

Shane snorts softly. "That’s reassuring."

Ilya ignores him, eyes scanning over the original text again while he tries to figure out how to explain it properly. Shane can practically feel the gears turning in his head through the connection, the slight frustration of trying to translate concepts that apparently do not transfer cleanly into English.

Finally, Shane sighs and nudges him lightly with his knee.

Tell me like this. Your thoughts translate easier for me.

Ilya’s attention flickers toward him immediately.

That will never stop being weird.

Yeah, I know.

Okay, he says slowly, the thoughts clearer now that Shane is receiving them directly. The Russian explanation is less about physically imagining walls and more about… control, like boundaries.

Shane listens.

It says the problem is that right now we are unconsciously open to each other all the time. Which is why thoughts keep leaking through without permission. The "doors" are supposed to be symbolic. Something your brain can associate with separation.

"So we just…" Shane gestures vaguely. "Pretend?"

"Not exactly." Ilya shakes his head. "It is more like training yourself to recognize where your thoughts end and mine begin."

Shane’s brow furrows slightly. Ilya tries again.

Think about it like self-discipline, right now neither of us is stopping the connection. Thoughts just drift through automatically because we are reacting to each other constantly.

He taps the side of his head lightly.

The site says if we intentionally picture barriers—doors, walls, locks, whatever—our brains eventually start associating those things with privacy.

Shane shoots Ilya an incredulous look. "So every time I hear you thinking, I’m supposed to imagine slamming a door in your face?"

A grin tugs briefly at Ilya’s mouth. "Yes, pretty much. But it’ll be fine, I’m sure that part will probably come naturally to you."

"Fuck you."

Ilya laughs before continuing.

It says the important part is consistency, every time we accidentally let each other in, we are reinforcing the connection instead of resisting it. Apparently emotions make it worse too… like stress, attraction… strong emotional responses. Things like that.

His gaze drops instinctively to where their hands rest between them on the mattress, close enough that their knuckles brush every now and then whenever one of them shifts. Ilya’s fingers are long and rougher than they look, knuckles faintly scarred from years of hockey, nails short and clean. Shane knows those hands embarrassingly well by now. He knows the exact weight of them against his hips, the shape of them cradling the back of his neck, the absent way Ilya traces circles into his skin whenever they lie together afterward.

And suddenly, terrifyingly, Shane realizes he does not actually want this to stop. Not fully, really. He does not want to build walls between them. He does not want to imagine locking doors in Ilya’s face, metaphorically or otherwise. The thought alone leaves something unpleasant twisting beneath his ribs.

At the same time, though, Shane knows how badly they both need privacy again. He knows how exhausting it has become living with the constant hum of Ilya’s thoughts in the back of his mind, always present no matter what he’s doing. He knows how dangerous his own thoughts have become too, especially now that he cannot stop himself from wondering whether every vulnerable thing he feels slips through the connection before he can hide it properly.

Because his thoughts around Ilya are dangerous territory. And Ilya’s thoughts are somehow worse. Over the last few weeks, Shane has heard things he was never supposed to hear; fleeting moments of affection, concern, loneliness, want, warmth.

Moments and feelings Ilya would never say out loud. Things Shane is no longer entirely sure he is imagining.

It makes his heart beat unevenly in his chest, makes his thoughts spin dizzy and uncertain around the fragile little thread of hope growing there despite himself.

Because if Ilya feels those things too—if all the warmth Shane keeps catching through the connection actually means something, of all the thoughts he’s privy to—then Shane does not know what to do with that.

And maybe worse than that, he doesn’t know whether Ilya would ever willingly say any of it aloud. But then Shane thinks about what weakening the connection would actually mean. The website makes it sound simple enough in theory: reduce emotional intensity, create distance, stop reinforcing the bond.

Except their entire relationship is built on exactly the opposite. How exactly are they supposed to do that?

How does Shane sit across from Ilya and casually explain that maybe they should stop sleeping together because apparently they are too attracted to each other and it’s accidentally making them psychically intertwined?

The thought is so absurd Shane almost laughs. He feels insane. But then something warm brushes lightly against the edge of his consciousness, so soft Shane almost misses it entirely. It feels less like words and more like an agreement—Ilya hearing every single word anyway—and agreeing with him. It’s as if Ilya is unconsciously nudging against his mind before he can stop himself, and suddenly Shane realizes that the idea of losing this connection unsettles Ilya too.

As if, despite all the frustration and exhaustion and fighting, some part of him has already gotten used to carrying Shane around in the back of his mind. Even if it has only been a few days.

Shane swallows hard around the tightness in his throat. Then, before he can overthink himself out of it, he says quietly, "So we keep it."

Ilya looks at him and for a second, Shane thinks he might argue, that he might insist they should still try harder to get rid of it completely. Instead, Ilya just nods once.

"Okay," he says softly.

"Okay," Shane echoes, shifting slightly so he is facing Ilya fully now, their knees bumping together on the mattress between them.

He thinks about it for another second, mind already racing ahead trying to imagine what this will actually feel like—actively blocking Ilya out instead of instinctively reaching toward him every time the connection opens—part of him resists the idea immediately, the same selfish part that has spent the last three weeks greedily soaking up every thought and emotion Ilya has accidentally let slip through.

But he knows it isn’t sustainable, that it’s too messy, too convoluted, to constantly have access to each other’s minds like that; no matter how selfish Shane feels.

Shane exhales slowly and says, "Let’s try."

Ilya’s eyebrows lift slightly, eyes crinkling. "Now?"

"Why not?" Shane gestures vaguely between them. "We’re already here."

Ilya studies him for a moment before giving a small nod. Then he shifts more comfortably against the headboard, pulling one leg up onto the mattress. Shane mirrors him automatically without really thinking about it. They are still sitting too close together. Their thighs remain pressed side-by-side, shoulders nearly touching, hands resting loosely between them.

Okay, Ilya thinks carefully, and there is something almost nervous in the way the thought reaches him. I am going to think something small, you try and block it.

Shane nods.

Okay, okay, I’m ready—mental walls, need to imagine a door, right, okay, this should be easy.

Ilya snorts softly beside him.

Shut up.

You are already failing, and I haven’t even tried yet.

"You’re a terrible fucking teacher," Shane mutters automatically, earning another flicker of amusement through the connection. Shane can tell Ilya feels exasperated.

Shane.

"Okay," Shane says, dragging a deep breath into his lungs. "Try again. I’m serious this time."

Ilya shifts slightly beside him, their shoulders brushing together as he goes quiet for a second, letting Shane focus.

Shane closes his eyes and tries to center himself properly this time. He focuses on grounding sensations instead of the constant static of thoughts around him: the warmth of Ilya’s hand laid still next to his, the pressure of their knees touching on the mattress, the slow rhythm of his own heartbeat.

He pictures a door, heavy and wooden, the type with tree lines carved into the frame. He imagines it closed and locked; possibly with a deadbolt on it. For a moment, it almost feels possible. Then he feels it, a thought brushes lightly against the edge of his consciousness, soft at first, almost cautious, like someone testing a doorknob to see if it will turn.

Shane.

The sound of his own name in Ilya’s voice settles loud in his cortex, before another follows immediately after it.

Over and over again.

Shane’s entire body betrays him instantly, because his first instinct is not to block it, but to reach out for it, to grab hold of the thought and pull it closer the same way he always does whenever Ilya brushes against his mind. The connection opens instinctively beneath his hands before he can stop himself, his thoughts unfolding toward Ilya automatically; his mind intimately letting him in.

He realizes the last second he’s supposed to push him out instead.

No.

Shane tries to shove the door closed. He imagines locking it, bracing his entire weight against it, forcing Ilya back out of his head the way the website described. He pictures thick wood, heavy hinges, something solid enough to separate them properly for once—but the second he feels that faint pulse of his own name again, the entire thing collapses immediately.

The connection rushes open all at once. It floods back into him so quickly that Shane physically feels himself lean toward it before he can stop himself. He groans miserably and drops his head back against the headboard with a thud.

"Shane, it’s okay—"

"Oh my god," he mutters toward the ceiling. "Okay. Shut up for a second, this isn’t working, let’s try again."

"Want to take a break before we continue?"

"No, let’s do it again," Shane says stubbornly before he can get distracted. "Do it again, Rozanov."

Ilya lifts both hands slightly in surrender. "Okay, okay."

They try again. And again. And then somehow again after that. Every single attempt ends the exact same way—Shane closes his eyes, tries to build the stupid mental door, tries to separate himself from the constant pull of Ilya’s thoughts and every single time, the second Ilya brushes lightly against the connection, Shane instinctively reaches back without meaning to.

The problem is not the technique. The problem is that some part of Shane apparently does not want to shut Ilya out at all. Every instinct he has keeps reaching for him automatically, opening the connection wider instead of closing it down. The second he feels Ilya brush against his thoughts, Shane responds without even meaning to. Ilya feels safe and his body reconciles with it. It’s hard to view something as a parasite when it isn’t; when it never was.

By the fourth failed attempt, Shane is flushed bright red with frustration. "What the fuck," he complains, dragging both hands down his face. "Why isn’t this working for me? What did the website actually say?"

Ilya shifts slightly beside him, thinking back through the terrible translation.

"It said to imagine a door," he explains slowly. "Figuratively, I think. Something heavy and strong." He gestures vaguely with one hand, clearly struggling to explain psychic Russian forum logic in a way that sounds remotely sane. "There was also something about intrusive thoughts and forcing them back out instead of letting them settle. And…" He squints faintly, trying to remember.

It said imagining a fail-safe from childhood can help make the barrier stronger.

Shane exhales slowly through his nose, nodding at Ilya’s words before closing his eyes. He breathes in and out for a few minutes while Ilya waits patiently by his side. Once Shane feels slightly better, he opens them.

Okay. Okay. I can do this. Try again, Ilya, one last time.

Beside him, Ilya nods and Shane closes his eyes again. This time, instead of trying to force himself into some abstract idea of a mental wall, he lets his thoughts drift backward back to his childhood bedroom. He remembers the way the room used to look when he was younger: pale walls covered in hockey posters, a bookshelf covered in trophies and memorabilia. He remembers the closet tucked into the corner of the room, too, narrow and cramped, the wood splintered off in one corner of the flooring. He remembers colour coding his clothes; something he’s carried over till now.

He also remembers that when he was younger, he used to hide there sometimes. Not because anything terrible was happening exactly, but because the closet had always felt quiet in a way the rest of the world never did for a seven year old with desires too big for his own body and a mind that made it entirely difficult. He used to sit cross-legged on the floor between hanging jackets with the door cracked shut just enough to let light in.

Shane pictures the closet door first, and then he imagines something heavier replacing it. A thick wooden door, solid and sturdy. He imagines himself sitting there on the floor, right next to the splintered wood and hanging jackets.

He imagines it swinging shut with enough force to rattle the frame, and he imagines a lock turning smoothly into place. A deadbolt sliding home.

The thoughts stop completely, and Shane’s eyes snap open immediately. The silence hits him so abruptly it almost feels physical. Beside him, Ilya makes a small sound under his breath, something faintly resembling surprise. His hand lifts instinctively toward his chest, fingers pressing lightly against his pec.

"That was…" he starts quietly before stopping to swallow once. "Weird."

Shane stares at him. Ilya’s brows are drawn together slightly, his expression distant in a way that makes it obvious he is still trying to process the sensation himself. For the first time since this whole nightmare started, Shane cannot feel what is happening underneath his expression anymore. That realization unsettles him far more than it should.

"It felt like something snapped shut," Ilya says finally.

"I’m sorry," he says before he can stop himself.

Ilya turns his head to look at him. "Do not apologize," he says immediately. "That is the point."

He lowers his hand slowly from his chest, though Shane notices his fingers linger there for another second first, like some part of him is still instinctively checking whether the connection is actually gone. Then Ilya shifts slightly closer again and says, "Try again, this time, do not wait for me to send something. You send something to me, and I will block it."

Shane nods and they try, this time with Ilya practicing the blocking. The thought bounces back toward him before it can fully land the first time.

But they keep trying. At first, Shane’s thoughts leak through constantly despite Ilya’s attempts to block them. But slowly and frustratingly, they start figuring it out.

The barriers begin holding longer. Not perfectly but enough that the constant static between them starts dimming around the edges, as if words are blurring, becoming fuzzy to the point that Shane can’t see what Ilya is thinking about—as if he’s looking through a murky fog, ten feet ahead of being the only thing he can—hazard lights in the dark.

After nearly an hour, Ilya finally manages to block Shane completely. Ilya lets out a sigh and leans back against the headboard, looking exhausted but faintly triumphant.

"I think," he says slowly, "we are getting better."

Shane nods, though his attention has already drifted to where Ilya’s phone lies forgotten on the mattress between them, the same awful Russian website still glowing faintly on the screen in harsh reds and blacks. He stares at it for a long moment, something beginning to settle in the back of his mind.

A question occurs to him.

"Did the website say anything about why this happens?" he asks.

Ilya shrugs almost immediately, and reaches over to pick up his phone. He locks the screen, not meeting Shane’s eyes. "No," he says easily.

For the first time in days, Shane cannot tell whether he is telling the truth or not, because Ilya’s door is closed.

Shane chooses to believe him.

Shane would be lucky—or maybe not, if he really stops to think about it—to hear every single one of Ilya’s thoughts. The human brain bounces between six thousand and seventy thousand thoughts a day, and Shane probably only ever catches a few hundred of them, not counting the ones Ilya deliberately aims at him on purpose. Now there is nothing; a heavy door sits firmly between them now, sealed shut, and Shane hates how much he misses the sound of him on the other side of it. He hadn’t realized how much of a white noise Ilya had become.

The first week is the hardest. No matter how careful they are, thoughts still slips through sometimes, especially when one of them is emotional or distracted. The connection fights them every step of the way, stubborn and deeply ingrained after weeks of existing without boundaries. It frustrates Ilya far more than it frustrates Shane. Shane notices it mostly in the way Ilya goes quiet afterward, the way he immediately starts trying again, the door shaking with sheer force. Shane feels the pulse of a door slamming shut when Ilya succeeds.

Shane never asks why it matters so much. Partly because he already has a feeling he knows—that Ilya can't stand the vulnerability of it, can't stand the idea that Shane might catch something else Ilya hasn't chosen to give. Partly because Ilya is trying so hard that Shane can't bear the thought of making it worse. The man treats his own mind like a fortress under siege, and Shane isn't about to hand the enemy a battering ram.

Especially when, despite all of that determination, Ilya still can’t resist screwing with him.

Do you miss me, Hollander?

Suck my dick, Rozanov.

Okay, I’m done with class in 5 minutes, I’ll be at yours in 20.

What the fuck, shut up.

So, no?

I didn’t say that.

So, yes?

Maybe.

I am taking that as a yes. I’ll be at yours in 20.

Shane doesn’t reply. When Ilya shows up exactly twenty minutes later, Shane opens the door, rolls his eyes, and steps aside without a word. Ilya looks obscenely pleased with himself, his shirt rumpled from coming over right after a series of back-to-back classes, and he's wearing that expression Shane has come to recognize as I told you so rendered in bone and sinew. He kicks the door shut with his heel, drops his bag by the wall without looking, and locks eyes with Shane like he's already won the second Shane opened the door for him without a word. He did.

"Pike home?" Ilya asks. His voice is casual, almost lazy, but his gaze isn't. It tracks down Shane's body and back up again, slow and predatory, and Shane feels like an animal caught in a trap.

Before Shane can answer—not that he was going to, not that it matters because Hayden has a three-hour afternoon class on Tuesdays and Ilya already knows that—Ilya is shuffling out of his shoes, crossing the room, and grabbing Shane by the hips. His hands are warm and firm, fingers curving over the jut of bone like they belong there. He walks Shane backward and Shane lets him.

He scoffs, because he has a reputation to maintain, even though Ilya knows it’s fake. He mumbles a half-hearted "No,"and then, because he's tired of waiting and worse at pretending than he wants to admit, Shane pushes his shorts and underwear down to his knees and drops onto the couch cushions. He lands with his elbows on the armrest, legs already falling open, already making room for Ilya.

Ilya follows him down like he was always meant to be there. He settles onto his knees between Shane's spread legs, the carpet bending slightly underneath his weight, the fake plush barely concealing anything after years and years of wear and tear. The position is almost reverent, almost ridiculous: this broad-shouldered man kneeling on a cheap apartment rug like he's praying at an altar. Shane looks down at him. At Ilya's mouth, mostly. Then he points at his own dick, already half-chubbed, leaking pre-cum at the tip.

"Going to get to it, or what?"

You're a fucking brat, Hollander.

The thought comes through clear, a dart thrown straight between Shane's eyes. But there's no heat behind it, so Shane smiles. He can't help it. It’s the crook of a lip and it probably gives away everything even though his mind is shielded and Ilya can’t get in anymore without a key, but Ilya is already moving, already scoffing, already opening his mouth like he's about to say something stupid, something irritating to grind Shane’s gears, but then he doesn't.

Instead, Ilya bends forward. He lolls out his tongue and takes Shane's cock in one go. Just the wet, shocking heat of his mouth sinking down to the root, his throat working once, twice, and then holding. Shane stops thinking altogether. His head falls back against the couch. His hips jerk, once, before he gets control of himself. His hands hover in the air for a moment before one of them finds Ilya's hair, fingers loosely gripping the curls. Ilya hums around his cock, a sound that vibrates straight up Shane's spine.

And in the space where thoughts used to live, there's nothing now but heat and the wet slide of Ilya's mouth and the quiet, devastating certainty that Shane was never going to win this one, not really, not when Ilya only has to breathe next to him and Shane is bending in positions that will only appease him. He’s glad he takes yoga.

He grips Ilya’s hair harder.

જ⁀➴

"Will you be coming tonight?" Rose asks through the phone, her voice crackling faintly through Shane's earbuds as he sits behind the clinic desk.

The clinic is quiet like it always is on Thursdays. Student trainer shifts are rarely busy this late in the week. Most Thursdays, Shane sees two or three patients at most before spending the rest of the evening buried in paperwork. Tonight has been no different. He finishes entering the patient's treatment notes, clicks through several tabs, and uploads the final assessment before leaning back in his chair. He could probably leave in ten minutes. He could also hang up on Rose right now and pretend he's swamped with work. The problem is that Rose knows his schedule almost as well as he does. She's seen his Google Calendar, so he can’t really lie to her. So he just listens to her drawl on instead.

"To J.J.'s for pizza?" Shane asks, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah, genius." He can practically hear her rolling her eyes. There's a rustle on her end. "And before you start making excuses, I already checked. You don't have class tomorrow, so don't even think about pulling something."

Shane huffs out a laugh, shaking his head as he leans back again.

"So?" Rose presses.

He moves forward to click save on the patient file, waits for the system to process, and closes the chart. The screen blinks and returns to the patient's profile page.

"Yeah, I'll be there," he says.

"Good."

"I'll probably come around nine, though."

Rose pauses. "Around nine?"

Shane swivels slightly in his chair, stretching one leg out beneath the desk. His knee pops. "Ilya gets off work at eight," he explains. "I told him I'd wait for him."

Rose makes a confused sound. "You're going to wait for Ilya to get off work?"

"Yeah?" He rubs his jaw. "What's wrong with that?"

Rose makes that noise again.

"Rose."

"I'm just surprised."

"Why?"

He pushes his chair away from the desk and stands. The wheels squeak across the linoleum. He logs out of his account and then puts the desktop to sleep. The screen goes black, and the line crackles. "I don't know. I'm literally just trying to keep up."

"Keep up with what?" Shane asks, already moving. He grabs his bag from the hook by the desk and starts shoving things inside, huffing when the zipper catches halfway on a loose thread. Shane yanks it loose.

"With whatever this thing between you two is."

He snorts. "There is no such thing."

"Okay."

"There isn't." He slings the bag over his shoulder.

"Sure."

"He's a friend, Rose." Shane stresses the word.

"Friend," she repeats.

"Yes."

"I was under the impression you guys were just fucking, you know. No strings attached, friends with benefits."

Shane freezes with his hand on the light switch.

Okay, so, maybe Shane should have filled her in a little bit. He should have told her weeks ago, maybe months ago, about what's been going on between them. About how somewhere in the last few months of sleeping together, the dynamic had started to shift. About how the telepathy had made it worse, or better, depending on how you looked at it. About how you can't exactly keep things casual with someone when you accidentally catch the shape of their thoughts before they realize someone else can hear them.

But then he thinks: telling Rose would have made it worse. Because then she'd have proof. Then she'd have something to point at and say see? see? And Shane would have to look at it and agree. Because the truth is, Shane thinks what's happening between them is normal. Or at least, it was bound to happen. You don't sleep with the same person for over a year—slow and lazy mornings, desperate hungover afternoons, the kind of sex that is filthy and good, and makes Shane ache to his toes—without something shifting. You don't develop a telepathic bond with someone, don't spend weeks with their thoughts bleeding into yours like water through cracked glass, without ending up somewhere unexpected.

And okay, maybe that somewhere looks a lot like whatever the hell this is now. But that doesn't mean it has a name. Rose doesn't need to know that part. It’s normal, and that’s something Shane believes 100 per cent.

"Friend is in there, Rose," Shane says finally.

"Right."

"It literally starts with a friend."

"Pretty sure that's not the important word in that phrase." She's enjoying this. He can hear it. He kind of hates her.

Shane walks toward the entrance, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as he says goodnight to his coworker. He reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose when Rose hums. "What's your issue?"

"My issue," Rose says slowly, savouring each word like the last bite of something sweet, "is that I'm trying to remember when J.J. and Ilya became friends."

Shane pushes open the entrance door. It's heavy and it sticks and he has to throw his shoulder into it.

"They aren't friends," he says.

"Okay."

"So? It's not weird." He starts down the hallway until he reaches the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Then why is he coming?"

"Because J.J. said I could bring whoever I wanted."

"Uh, huh."

He isn't entirely sure why Rose is making such a big deal out of this. Ilya had mentioned a few days ago that he didn't have plans Thursday night. J.J. had said guests were welcome in the group chat. Shane had put the two thoughts together, invited him, and Ilya had said sure. That was it, that was the whole chain of events, there was honestly nothing to read into.

Sometimes Shane wishes he could reach other people’s minds. God, he wishes it so badly it almost hurts. He could find out, right now, exactly what she's thinking. Exactly what she's seeing that he isn't. He could slip past whatever careful walls she has and just know. The way he knows when Ilya is about to text him. The way he knows when Ilya is thinking about him. But also… no.

He doesn't want that. He doesn't want someone else's thoughts in his head. Not Rose's. Not anyone's. One person's interiority is already more than he knows what to do with. The idea of another voice, another layer, another set of wants and worries and half-formed fears pressing against the inside of his skull—no—that would be terrible, actually, that would be the actual worst.

Rose sighs. "Shane, just, are you sure you know what you’re doing?"

Shane unlocks his car as he steps out. The chirp of the alarm is too loud in the quiet lot, as he yanks open the driver's side door and tosses his bag onto the passenger seat.

"Rose," he says, sliding into the driver's seat. The door closes behind him. "Ilya is coming to get pizza with us tonight because I invited him. That's it. That's all it is. Can we please just leave this without you turning it into a thing?"

Rose exhales, a rickety thing that bounces through the line and straight into Shane’s earbud, "Okay."

જ⁀➴

A week later, Shane is two hundred and twenty kilometres away.

The conference is in Montreal, some annual psychotherapy networking event that his program requires for credit. He'd spent the three days leading up to it talking about almost nothing else—complaining about the registration fee, complaining about the schedule, complaining about the speakers the organization had chosen—despite the fact that Ilya could tell he was secretly looking forward to it. Ilya had spent most of those conversations stretched across the couch, one leg tucked beneath him as he scrolled through his phone while Shane and Hayden packed. Every now and then he'd grunt something noncommittal, just enough to prove he was listening.

He always was.

The morning Shane leaves, he zips his duffel bag shut, slings it over one shoulder, and does one last sweep of the apartment to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything, Hayden already waiting downstairs. Shane makes it all the way to the front door before realizing he left his charger in his room. When he pushes the bedroom door open again, Ilya is still buried beneath the comforter, only the top of his curls visible.

"You forgot something," he mumbles.

"My charger."

"No, well you did, but not that."

“Then?”

Ilya peeks out and purses his lips. "You forgot to give me a kiss." Instead of kissing his lips, Shane leans down, presses a quick kiss to his cheek instead, and heads for the door. Ilya goes back to sleep.

By the time Shane reaches Montreal with the rest of his classmates, it's already afternoon. He checks into the hotel with Hayden, drops his bag beside the bed, and immediately claims the left side. They grab lunch from a diner across the street, spend a few hours wandering through downtown, and then work their way back so they can attend registration, collect conference materials, and, eventually, grab dinner. Later, they find their way back to the hotel once again.

Throughout the entire day, Ilya comes and goes as he pleases. Shane leaves the door open for him without really thinking about it. Every time something interesting happens, Shane catches himself reaching for it automatically, subconsciously wanting Ilya to know everything. He doesn’t know why he does it but he does, so, Ilya catches everything: how Shane liked the tuna sandwich he got for lunch, or how Hayden nearly got hit by a cyclist. When Shane sits down for dinner, the first thing he does is check in.

Have you eaten?

Yes.

Okay, good.

And then, because Shane is a curious boy, and has been from a young age: Do you think I could hear you if you were halfway across the world?

Probably, Ilya says after a minute, you have good ears.

That's not what I meant.

But Shane doesn't entirely know what he means, only that distance seems to be failing when two hundred and twenty kilometres should feel like something, and instead it feels like almost nothing at all. He can still find Ilya without trying, and can still feel the shape of him somewhere beyond the edge of his thoughts. It's like having a second heartbeat, one that doesn't belong to him. Shane knows that some people believe in soulmates, some people believe in twin flames, in red strings tied around wrists, in the universe stitching certain people together with thread that can never be cut. Shane has never believed in any of that. He believes in science, he believes in attachment theory, he believes in developmental psychology, in neural pathways and behavioural conditioning and the electrochemical chatter of neurons firing between synapses in a human body.

He's an atheist, for Christ's sake, and yet, every theory he knows feels slightly insufficient when he thinks about Ilya. Because there shouldn't be a way to sense someone this clearly, there shouldn't be a way to hear someone’s thoughts from thousands of kilometres away, especially when he knows science hasn’t reached that type of development yet; he knows because he looked into it. But somehow he can, and then he wonders, if his beliefs even hold true anymore.

That thought scares him more than he can think.

By the time Shane showers and climbs into bed, it's already after nine. He opens up his messages to see three from Ilya.

Shane's alarm goes off at seven, and by 8:30 he is showered, dressed, and standing in the conference centre's main hall with a paper name tag stuck slightly crooked to the front of his sweater. It reads SHANE HOLLANDER, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA in a font that’s small enough that he has to squint to read it, which immediately makes him regret leaving his glasses back at the hotel.

The hall is already crowded despite the early hour. Graduate students, professors, clinicians, and researchers move through the space, coffee cups or paper plates in hand as they exchange introductions, business cards, and pleasant greetings. Around the perimeter of the room, volunteers direct attendees toward their assigned tables while a handful of speakers stand near the stage making last-minute adjustments to microphones and presentation slides.

After checking the number printed on his badge, Shane finds Table 14 and settles into an empty chair. The seats around him gradually fill as people arrive, introducing themselves to one another, unpacking laptops and notebooks, and making polite small talk about where they're from and what area of physiology they work in. Shane participates just enough to avoid looking rude.

He opens his notebook to a blank page and slides the conference schedule beneath it. The pages are crowded with highlights, stars, arrows, and sticky notes he added during the bus ride over, marking sessions he wants to attend and presenters he actually finds interesting. He taps his pen against the margin, glances at the clock mounted near the stage, and realizes there are still five minutes before the opening session begins.

Five minutes turns out to be just enough time for his phone to vibrate against the tabletop. He glances down.

Shane starts the game and loses before the first speaker even reaches the stage. The defeat flashes across his screen just as attendees begin settling into their seats, and before Ilya can send whatever smug response is undoubtedly coming, Shane locks his phone and flips it face down on the table.

For the first half hour of the opening session, he focuses entirely on his notes. Claire Hamshire speaks about mentorship models in physiotherapy placements, discussing supervision styles, student confidence, and the long-term impact that supportive clinical environments can have on both professional development and patient outcomes. Shane fills nearly two pages before she finishes.

The rest of the morning passes in much the same way. One presentation bleeds seamlessly into the next as researchers and clinicians rotate through topics ranging from psychological impacts on injuries and trauma-informed care to burnout prevention and emerging approaches to student supervision. Some talks are genuinely fascinating, leaving Shane scribbling notes as quickly as he can keep up. Others are perfectly fine, if a little less memorable.

By the afternoon, however, the novelty begins to wear off. The conference rooms have grown warm from being packed with people all day and Shane's writing hand is starting to cramp from hours of note-taking. Even so, he finds himself enjoying the experience more than he'd expected. Every now and then a speaker introduces a perspective he hadn't considered before, or presents a study that sends him filling entire margins with follow-up questions. When the final session wraps up just after five o'clock, chairs scrape against the floor as attendees gather their belongings and begin filing toward the exits.

Outside the venue, several of Shane's classmates immediately start making plans for drinks, eager to take advantage of being in Montreal for the weekend. Hayden gets pulled into the discussion almost immediately.

"You coming?" he asks.

Shane considers it for all of two seconds. "No, I think I’m going to head back, actually. I'm going to grab some dinner and call it an early night."

"Okay, I’ll be back by 10!"

They split up outside the conference centre.

Shane walks a few blocks to the small Mediterranean restaurant he'd noticed earlier that afternoon, orders some food, and takes it back to the hotel. By the time he's finished eating, showered, and changed into something comfortable, it's eight. He's stretched across his side of the bed in nothing but a pair of briefs, absentmindedly scrolling through hockey highlights on his phone while a commentator breaks down a goal from today's game, when he gets a message from Ilya.

Shane opens it and immediately sees that it’s a mirror picture. In the reflection, Ilya stands with his phone held at chest height, shirtless, gym shorts slung low on his hips. His hair is still damp from what must have been a recent shower. There's a faint red line across his collarbone, and his skin is flushed slightly pink from what Shane can tell what was a hot shower.

Shane's mouth goes dry. He stares at the photo longer than he means to, cock chubbing up halfway. The sheets feel rough against his skin all of a sudden and he feels very aware of his own body—the weight of his arm where it rests across his stomach, the thin hotel sheet tangled around one ankle, the fact that he is wearing almost nothing, but his briefs.

His thumb hovers over the keyboard and before he can even type out a message, a familiar feeling arrives at the doorstep of his cortex and suddenly, Ilya is knocking on his door.

What are you wearing?

Shane snorts.

Are you trying to sext me through our minds?

You want to use my phone instead, Hollander?

Shane drops his head back against the pillow and lets out a slow breath. No. That's not what he wants. He doesn't really want Ilya to sext him through the phone at all—not when there's something thrilling about this, the way their conversation exists in two places at once—on the screen, sure, but also in the space between his ribs, in the curl of his fingers around the phone, in the heat that has been building low in his gut since he opened that image.

He can feel the want humming through his veins, a low-voltage current that settles behind his navel and radiates outward. His cock is already half-hard in his briefs, leaking pre-cum against the dark fabric, and he hasn't even done anything yet except think about Ilya, about the picture, about the way Ilya's thumb hooked into his waistband. Shane holds back a shudder. He knows Ilya can feel it anyway. They've been doing this long enough that pretending otherwise is pointless. Even with the doors in place now.

I mean, no, but really?

Aren't you horny? Did you not see the picture I sent you?

Shane bites the inside of his cheek. Of course he saw it, and he also knows Ilya knew exactly what he was doing when he sent it. Ilya always knows.

Yes, I did. Fuck you for that, by the way.

I am bored and horny, who cares. Now are you hard or what?

You're so fucking annoying.

Blah, blah, blah. Tell me yes or no, Hollander. I'm fucking hard and you're being a sore loser.

Fuck you, yes, I'm hard.

Okay, great. Take your dick out.

Shane looks down at himself. The angle is awkward from here, his phone still clutched in one hand, the other resting on his stomach. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat. Before he can think better of it, he shuffles further onto the bed, places his phone to the side, kicks the sheet away entirely, and shoves his briefs down his thighs. His dick springs free, flushed and leaking, the head shiny with pre-cum. He wraps a loose fist around the base, feeling the weight of it in his palm.

Okay, it’s out. Now what?

Are you touching yourself?

Um, no?

Three seconds, five, ten, before a whole minute passes by. A familiar dread pools low in Shane's stomach—the sense that he's done something wrong, misread the room, fumbled the moment so badly that even two hundred kilometres of distance can't soften the awkwardness—he's already mentally preparing for a pity solo session, his left hand still wrapped around his dick, when his phone lights up with an incoming facetime call.

Shane fumbles for the phone with his other hand. He accepts the call and the screen splits, his own face appearing in the small right corner—hair mussed, cheeks flushed, clearly flustered—and then the rest of the frame fills with Ilya. Ilya's face is half-lit by the phone's glow, all sharp cheekbones and blue-green eyes. Below that, bare shoulders. The start of his chest, tan against the white pillowcase. He's propped up against the headboard.

"Why are we calling now?" Shane asks, almost breathless.

Ilya tilts his head slightly, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Want to hear you while you touch your dick, Hollander. Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, um—" Shane swallows. His free hand is still loosely wrapped around his cock, still painfully aware of his own body, the way his dick hasn't softened at all despite the awkward pause. "Are we still communicating through our thoughts?"

Ilya's smile widens. He shifts on the bed, the camera bobbing slightly as he resettles, and Shane catches a flash of collarbone, the hollow of his throat. "Yes, Shane. Now angle your phone so I can see your cock."

There's no hesitation in it and Shane, because he likes to be good, adjusts his grip on the phone and tilts the camera downward, letting it travel over his chest—the jut of his ribs, the softness of his belly—and then lower, before he screen fills with the image of his own lap: thighs parted, briefs shoved down mid-thigh, his cock resting against his stomach, flushed dark at the tip. He hears Ilya's breathing pick up through the speaker.

"Jesus," Ilya murmurs, the words barely louder than a whisper. "Already leaking like a fucking girl, that's embarrassing."

Shane flushes crimson. "Fuck off."

A crooked smile tugs at one corner of Ilya's mouth. As he shifts, Shane catches the faint rustle of sheets and the movement of his arm disappearing out of frame.

When Ilya speaks again, his voice has gone rough. "Put your hand on it."

Shane's fingers twitch against his stomach. "Ilya—"

"Shane."

The way he says his name makes Shane's stomach curl, his hips shift involuntarily.

"Put your hand on your cock," Ilya says softly. "I want to watch."

Shane closes his eyes for half a second. When he opens them again, he adjusts the phone, rearranging the pillows so it can rest against the headboard without being held. Once he's satisfied with the angle, he reaches down. The moment his fingers wrap around the base of his cock, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making a sound. The contact feels overwhelming after lying there untouched for so long. He keeps his grip loose at first, his thumb brushing over the tip, smearing pre-cum around the head.

"That's it," Ilya says. "Don't rush."

"You're not even—" Shane starts before cutting himself off. He swallows hard around his words. "I can't see you."

"You can hear me."

"That's not the same fucking thing."

Something softens in Ilya's expression despite the harshness of Shane's reply. His free hand moves somewhere below the edge of the frame. Shane doesn't have to see what he's doing to know.

"You want to see?" Ilya asks.

Shane nods immediately. Ilya adjusts his phone, tilting it downward. The frame shifts, revealing the long line of his torso, the dark hair trailing down to his navel, the hard planes of muscle, and the sharp angle of his hips. The sight knocks the breath from Shane's lungs.

Shane lets out a helpless moan at the sight, his hand finally beginning to move in uneven strokes. Every drag of his palm feels overwhelming, heightened by the slickness already coating his skin. His pre-cum makes every move wet and filthy, his palm so, so wet, the slickness leaks through the edges of his grip. Heat curls low in his stomach, spreading through his chest and limbs until he feels his toes tingling.

You're so pretty, Hollander.

Shut up, Rozanov.

His breath hitches as he bites down on his lip, trying to smother the sound threatening to escape, but it does little good. His eyes remain fixed on the screen, following every movement. He watches Ilya shift in front of the camera, watches as Ilya touches himself, his own fingers tight around his cock.

Come on, Hollander. Put on a show for me. Touch your cock, all nice and slow.

I am. Can't you see?

Ilya laughs before he’s shifting around and propping up his own phone up against something. Shane watches the whole time, face flushed pink, gut clenching. He watches as Ilya's hips stutter forward once his hand comes back around his cock, his strokes easily looking more smooth now, wetter. Shane licks his lips and Ilya outwardly groans, audible through the speaker.

Such a slut, always leaking so much. Has anyone ever told you that? The way you drip so easily? Don’t even have to touch you and you’ll be wet, Hollander, like a fucking girl. It’s fascinating, takes my breath away, when you become like this.

Shane moans like a slut.

Fuck, shut up, shit, I’m so close.

"Already? It’s only been five minutes, Hollander," Ilya says outloud, eyes dripping with arousal. Shane can’t even see his eyes clearly but he knows the irises are blown dark, his cheeks flushed. Ilya is always a sight when arousal has its hooks in him.

"Fuck you," Shane murmurs, a whine breaking from his throat. He tightens his grip and the sound of squelching resonates through the speaker. Ilya moans in response.

I wish I was there. The message arrives like a physical touch, fingertips ghosting down Shane's spine. Touching you. You're always so easy when I touch you.

"Yeah?" Shane breathes.

I wish I could hold you right now. Have my arms tight around you, smell you. You always smell so good. Do you know that?

Shane twists his wrist, breath catching as his gut clenches hard with the way the blood rushes to his cock. His vision blurs at the edges.

"I use ocean spray and seaweed shampoo," he says, because his brain is short-circuiting and that's the only thing that comes out.

I don’t even know what the fuck that means.

Shane laughs too, a breathless little sound. His fingers are slick and his chest hurts, and his ears are ringing and somewhere underneath all of it, a quiet desperation sits like a guest at the edge of his ribs. The truth comes out easier when you’re consumed, flesh and blood.

I wish you were here.

Me too.

When Shane comes, he doesn't expect the tears. They trickle down his cheeks, hot and stupid, as his back arches off the hotel sheets. His free hand fists the comforter and for a long moment there's nothing but white static and the thundering of his own heart.

He watches through hazy eyes as Ilya follows him over; sees cum drip down Ilya's knuckles, wet and thick across his stomach and thighs. Even through the screen, even two hundred and twenty kilometres away, it feels like they're in the same room.

Shane doesn't know what to say. His body is still humming, his skin still prickling. Five minutes later, he reaches over, grabs a tissue and cleans his stomach and thighs. He watches Ilya do the same. He presses a kiss to his own fingers and then touches them to the screen.

"Goodnight, Ilya."

Shane watches Ilya swallow.

"Goodnight, Shane."

જ⁀➴

When a brain has an epiphany, it involves a complex interplay of neural networks and cognitive functions. During an epiphany, the brain releases a burst of dopamine and norepinephrine, key neurochemicals that drive the reward signal and in turn, enhance attention.

The brain, fickle and unpredictable as it is, excels at taking pieces that appear unrelated and weaving them together into something coherent: a conversation from six months ago, a feeling that never made sense, a thousand tiny moments that seemed insignificant on their own suddenly aligning, locking together like pieces of a puzzle that has been sitting unfinished on a table for years.

When the solution finally crystallizes, the reward centers of the brain light up.

This is all a very scientific way of saying that Shane Hollander is an idiot.

Because despite spending months with someone else's thoughts rattling around inside his head, despite hearing things no one else was allowed to hear, despite having access to a version of Ilya Rozanov that wasn’t easily accessible, it still takes Shane an embarrassingly long time to realize he’s in love with him.

In retrospect, it feels obvious, painfully obvious, with the way the evidence is everywhere. It sits in how Shane automatically turns to look for Ilya whenever something funny happens, in the way he saves stories specifically to tell him later, in the way his day feels subtly incomplete if he hasn't spoken to him, in the way he knows the cadence of his footsteps, the shape of his laugh, the sound of his breathing when he's asleep.

It’s obvious that somewhere along the way, the person occupying every spare corner of your thoughts stopped being merely important and became essential, that you've collected their fears and hopes and bad habits and tucked them away somewhere safe inside yourself. In a way, it feels absurd, humiliating, even; like discovering you've been walking around with a neon sign over your head that everyone else noticed months ago.

This is all a very general way of saying that Shane Hollander is an idiot, because the epiphany only comes to him when he’s draped across Ilya's chest, half asleep and comfortably tangled in Ilya’s arms. It doesn't arrive during one of the countless moments Ilya has made his heart stutter for reasons Shane couldn't quite explain, it doesn't arrive when Ilya kisses him, and it doesn't even arrive when Ilya says something sweet. Instead, it arrives after one of the worst weeks Shane can remember.

For five days, Ilya disappears. He slams the door in Shane's face, doesn't open it when Shane knocks, doesn't answer texts, doesn't return calls, doesn't acknowledge that Shane exists.

On day three, Shane corners Svetlana outside the library.

"It's a hard time for him right now," she says carefully. Her eyes give away more than her mouth. When Shane asks why, she gives him a pitiful smile. "Ask him yourself."

So Shane does, or tries to. He sends a single message—I'm here if you need me. Please talk to me—and then he does the hardest thing he's ever done. He waits. He gives Ilya space even though every thing in him screams at him to push, to demand, to break down whatever wall Ilya has built between them.

Two days later, Ilya shows up on his doorstep with a crooked smile and bloodshot eyes. He doesn't say anything, doesn't apologize or explain or offer anything, and all Shane does is step aside to let him in. He doesn't tell Ilya that he chased down every classmate who had notes from the past week, or mention the three professors he emailed. Ilya doesn't ask where the notes came from. He just looks at them for a long moment, then at Shane, and then he kisses him sweetly, like honey-syrup.

"Thank you," Ilya says.

Shane doesn't say you should have told me, doesn't say I was worried sick, doesn't say any of the things that have been clawing at his throat for a week. He just nods and lets Ilya pull him toward the bed.

Later, Ilya drapes himself across Shane's back. He presses himself tight around Shane's body, and when Shane is halfway gone, drifting somewhere warm, Ilya's voices his thoughts.

Shane doesn't catch all of it, just fragments at first, fighting the haze of sleep so he can listen—she was sick for a while—to the grief in Ilya's voice, which is a living thing, curled in the dark.

Tell me, I’m listening.

Okay.

And Ilya tells him.

Ilya is twelve the last time he sees his mama. He remembers the day with a kind of clarity that feels almost cruel in hindsight, how ordinary it had been, how nothing in it warned him that it would split his life cleanly into a before and an after. He remembers coming home from hockey practice just as the sun was beginning to set, the sky washed in gold and soft oranges. His legs ached, his hair was damp beneath his helmet, but he was excited.

More than that, he was buzzing with it, barely able to keep it contained. He had gotten a hat trick, one after the other, the kind of thing he’d been chasing for the past season. He remembers that he wanted to tell her. How he pushed through the front door, grinning, already halfway calling out for her before he was even fully inside. He barely registered Andrei’s voice somewhere behind him, yelling at him to slow down. He remembers taking the stairs two at a time, his heartbeat loud in his ears, his mind racing to see her reaction. The way she will smile, the way she’ll pull him close, the way she’ll say his name with pride.

He doesn’t knock, pushes the door open and everything after that fractures. He remembers the way the room felt wrong before he understood why. He remembers the confusion settling in first, knitting his brows together as he stepped further inside.

"Mama?" he said.

No answer. He remembers moving closer. The small steps, the way something in his chest began to twist. He remembers reaching out, and then he remembers the touch of cold skin. That’s what stays. More than anything else, that’s what his mind refuses to let go of—the unnatural chill of her skin beneath his fingers, so wrong it doesn’t register properly at first—like touching something that only looks like her.

And then, nothing came in a straight line after that. Nothing was linear. His memory splintered, turning unreliable. Pieces of it surfaced out of order, disconnected and fuzzy. The human mind, when faced with something it cannot carry, tries to soften the blow. It blurs the edges, fills the gaps, hides what it can. But it doesn’t erase it completely. It never does.

So, Ilya remembers enough.

He remembers the hollow feeling that settles into him almost immediately after, like something has been scooped out of his chest and left empty. He remembers voices—too many of them—low and urgent and wrong. He remembers people coming into the house, strangers with careful, rubbered hands, moving through the space without asking.

He remembers watching them take her away. He remembers wanting to say something, to stop them, to ask where they were going, but the words never came. They get stuck somewhere deep inside him, lodged in the same place everything else has. He remembers, with a clarity that aches, the necklace. How she had taken it off earlier that day and fastened it around his neck before he left for practice, her fingers warm and alive as they brushed the back of his neck.

"For luck," she had said.

He still has it. Sometimes he turns it over in his hands, tracing the edges like it might give him something back, like there’s an answer buried in it if he looks long enough. He wonders why she gave it to him. Why she didn’t keep it for herself. If she had—if she’d held onto it, kept that small piece of luck close—would anything have been different? Would it have changed something, kept her here just a little longer? Would he still have her?

He doesn’t know.

When Shane looks at the necklace hanging around Ilya’s neck, he frowns, because for once, an epiphany almost feels absurdly gentle. It’s slow in the way all important realizations tend to be, like noticing too late that you’ve been falling for some time and only just now recognize the ground is right underneath your feet.

Almost funny, in a way. Because he thinks he understands it now—that hollow, aching reflex when someone you love is in pain—the instinctive urge to fix it, to hold it, to absorb it so they don’t have to carry it alone. This terrible, wonderful, inescapable thing that has been building inside him for months without asking permission.

He thinks of Ilya as a child, small enough to fit in his hands, and feels an immediate, unbearable ache to tell him it wasn’t his fault. To go back and undo every moment of hurt that shaped him, to stand between him and anything that ever made him feel alone.

He thinks of Ilya now, and the same feeling rises again. He wants to tell him he’ll be okay. He wants to tell him he doesn’t have to carry any of it alone anymore. The words sit heavy in his mouth, like poison. He wishes to tell Ilya that he’ll share the burden if he has to.

Some say having an epiphany can happen within a millisecond. Shane, unfortunately, has three, all at once, collapsing into each other so quickly it feels like his brain glitches.

The first one he has, is simply that he is an idiot. The second one he has, is that he’s in love with Ilya Rozanov. The third one is that he wants to take Ilya’s sorrow, cut it in half and carry it with him. He would take all of it if he could, but Ilya Rozanov is a tough bull and he refuses to let Shane wave the red flag.

"Do you want her back?" Shane asks, nose pressed to the vein on the side of Ilya’s neck.

Ilya doesn’t look at him. His thumb brushes against the edge of the necklace before he answers. "More than anything," he says. And then he adds, "But I’m glad I had her for twelve years. I wish it had been longer, but… it wasn’t possible. But is okay, though."

I have yo—the door slams shut.

Shane feels bile rise in the back of his throat.

જ⁀➴

Three weeks later, everything, unfortunately, goes to shit.

From a young age, Shane has always gone after what he wants: hockey scholarships, academic placements, his degree, his training placement, even the moment he realized he was gay, none of it ever arriving on its own. He learned early that the world doesn’t hand you anything; you take a breath, you steady yourself, and you move. Rejection stings, sure, but not nearly as much as the alternative of standing still and wondering what might have been.

So when he realizes he’s in love with Ilya Rozanov, the process is almost disturbingly simple at first. He acknowledges it, he accepts it, and then, as if it were just another problem to solve, he decides to act on it.

Acknowledging he’s in love with Ilya involves him lying in the dark with Ilya’s grief pressed against his ribs, listening to him breathe through the weight of everything he refuses to say out loud. I love him. The thought doesn’t feel like revelation so much as confirmation, like discovering something that was already sitting in plain sight. Of course he loves him. He probably has for months, maybe longer. Accepting that part takes a bit more time. Shane spends an entire afternoon letting the fact settle into him properly, like something that has to find its place in his body before it can stop feeling unfamiliar. He doesn’t fight it, he simply lets it exist until it stops feeling less like a parasite. Acting on it is where everything becomes complicated.

Because acting on love, Shane is learning, is not the same as acting on anything else. You cannot treat it like hockey, where effort and precision usually guarantee a result. You cannot treat it like school, where discipline and repetition eventually lead to success. People are not problems to be solved. Ilya is not a prize to be won. Still, Shane is nothing if not direct.

"What are we?" he asks one night, stretched out on the couch with his feet in Ilya’s lap. Ilya doesn’t look up right away. His thumb keeps moving absently against Shane’s ankle.

"Um, friends?"

"That’s not what I meant," Shane says eventually.

"I know," Ilya replies, his thumb freezing on the cusp of Shane’s ankle. "Why do you need a label?"

"I don’t."

"Then what’s the problem?"

"I’m just curious," Shane replies, because it’s true in the most frustrating possible way.

Shane is curious. He is also something closer to desperate, though he would never admit that out loud. He wants to know what Ilya sees when he looks at him, wants to know if love has ever crossed Ilya's mind and been immediately dismissed, filed away, locked behind some internal door that Shane doesn't have the key to, wants to know if he is something stable or temporary, chosen or convenient, inevitable or incidental.

"We're good," Ilya says finally. "Isn't that enough?"

It should be enough. It is enough, in theory. Shane has never been good at accepting enough when there is something more he could understand, something more he could name, something more he could hold onto. He wants the whole thing. He wants Ilya to say I love you and mean it and not take it back and not hide behind vague statements and closed doors.

But he's also starting to realize that Ilya's mind is not a straight line, it's a maze, hallways that lead nowhere, doors that open onto brick walls. Ilya thinks in Russian first—Shane has gathered that much—and everything else arrives after translation, filtered through some myth, some magic that flows in the outskirts of the wind and on this planet for some fucking reason.

Shane doesn't believe in God, never has. He doesn't believe in fate or soulmates or any of the cosmic scaffolding that people use to explain the unexplainable. But none of those things explain this, none of them explain why he can feel Ilya thinking from across the room, or why the thread between them refuses to fray no matter how much distance gets shoved in between. So even when Shane can hear Ilya directly, he is no longer entirely sure what he is supposed to trust.

Not because Ilya lies to him. Ilya doesn't, not really. Ilya will deflect and dodge and change the subject, but he won't look Shane in the eye and say something untrue. The problem is something else entirely. Ilya lies to himself first.

Shane has realized this slowly, the way you realize the floor is wet only after you've already slipped. Ilya will feel something and immediately translate it into something safer. He believes his own translations, he has to, since the mere age of twelve. The alternative is standing still and feeling everything at once, and Ilya has never been good at standing still.

Shane watches this happen in real time, watches Ilya's face shutter when a question gets too close to what he's comfortable with, watches him reach for his phone or the TV remote or anything that will fill the space where words should go. And the worst part is that Shane can feel what's underneath, can sense the shape of the thing Ilya is trying not to say, but he can't make Ilya say it, can't reach inside his chest and pull the words out; especially when Ilya closes his door and pretends Shane isn’t on the other side.

Shane likes knowing things, likes having the information he needs in order to succeed. But this—whatever this is—doesn't follow any rules he understands. And the not-knowing is starting to eat at him. So he thinks about the website. The one Ilya found weeks ago. The one with weird text, a foreign mishap of words and translations, of doors, of building and repairing connections, of separating them and splitting them until one can’t hear the other.

And Shane has been thinking about it ever since. He doesn't believe in that stuff. He doesn't. But he also can't explain what's happening between them; can't explain why the thread doesn't fray, and can't explain why he can hear Ilya thinking even when Ilya isn't speaking. Shane needs to understand, needs to know if this is real or if he's just imagining it, needs to know if Ilya feels it too, needs to know the unexplainable, needs to know why this is happening, why it had to be him and Ilya. So, he doesn't let it go.

He tries to ask again a few days later.

They are walking back from the grocery store, each carrying two bags full to the brim with food. The plastic handles bite into Shane's fingers every time the weight shifts, and beside him Ilya keeps readjusting his grip on his half of the bags as well. He stays mostly quiet as they walk, people-watching as they walk down the block. It has become a habit lately, maybe because of the telepathy, maybe because he spends so much time wondering what is happening inside other people's heads now that he knows thoughts are not always as private as they seem. Shane watches all of it absentmindedly before his attention drifts back to the person beside him.

"Do you ever wonder why it happened?"

Ilya glances over, “happened?"

"The telepathy thing."

For a moment, Ilya's expression doesn't change. Then his eyebrows draw together slightly and his gaze flickers away toward the opposite side of the street. "What about it?" he asks.

Shane shrugs. "I don't know. I mean, statistically, it has to be impossible, right? Out of eight billion people."

"Probably."

"So why us?"

Ilya adjusts the grocery bag in his hand. "Bad luck."

Shane snorts, shaking his head. "I'm serious."

"So am I."

"No, come on, be serious, Ilya. Think about it. Maybe we should do some more research, there has to be an answer out there, right? What about the—"

The conversation dies immediately when Ilya drops a bag, and the milk spills. After that, he pretty much forgets about it the rest of the day. From there, he doesn’t think much of it. But over the next week he keeps asking in different ways, and every conversation somehow arrives at the exact same destination.

How did it start? Ilya changes the subject. Why them? Ilya changes the subject. What does it mean? Ilya changes the subject.

A month ago Shane probably wouldn’t have noticed. He would have accepted the deflection and moved on. Ilya has always been difficult to pin down when he doesn't want to talk about something. Now, though, Shane notices everything.

He notices the half-second delay before Ilya answers, the way his gaze slides away, the way he refuses to meet Shane’s eyes as if the conversation is boring, as if it’s not worth his time. He notices the tension that appears around his mouth, the subtle pull of his shoulders toward his ears. Most people would never catch it, but Shane does. He knows too much now. He knows the difference between Ilya being annoyed and Ilya being afraid. He knows the difference between genuine confusion and deliberate evasiveness. He knows the rhythm of Ilya's breathing when he's relaxed and when he's trying very hard to appear relaxed.

And every time the subject turns to the connection between them, Ilya changes. It’s subtle, but it presses insistent against Shane’s lobe and just enough so that Shane starts feeling it before it happens. The question barely leaves his mouth before Ilya's thoughts begin moving sideways, searching for exits. Despite the door to his brain being shut and locked, Shane knows the answer exists somewhere, waiting on the other side, but Ilya would rather walk in circles forever than look directly at it.

So instead of asking again, Shane decides he is done asking altogether. If Ilya refuses to answer the question, then Shane will find the answer himself. The decision feels embarrassingly obsessive when he first makes it, but that doesn’t stop him from following through. The problem with curiosity is that once it takes hold, it rarely loosens its grip on its own. The more Shane thinks about the website, the more it starts to feel like a missing puzzle piece. Maybe it’s complete bullshit, maybe it’s some elaborate online roleplaying forum that Ilya stumbled across by accident. Maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with them. But it helped them create doors, and that’s enough for Shane to give it a sliver of doubt.

And Shane is running out of other explanations.

A few days later, Ilya comes over for what is supposedly a study session. They are not even taking the same classes. Shane is buried under anatomical readings while Ilya has an entirely different set of assignments spread across the coffee table, but Shane insists on calling it studying anyway because otherwise Ilya would spend the entire afternoon scrolling through his phone and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

For the first hour, things go surprisingly well. By the second hour, however, Shane's attention begins drifting and while Ilya is focused on his laptop, Shane opens a new tab and starts searching. He starts off with some google searches.

Reddit on telepathy. It doesn’t work. Russian website on telepathy. That one also doesn’t lead anywhere. Red and black Russian website on telepathy connections? That also doesn’t help. Shane is halfway through an article that appears to have been written by someone experiencing a complete break from reality when he feels Ilya lean over to his side.

"What are you doing?" Ilya’s voice is low, curious, though Shane can immediately tell it holds a hint of wariness.

He looks up to find Ilya leaning across the table, his chin nearly resting on Shane’s shoulder as he tries to read the screen. Their faces are close enough that Shane can lean a bit back and press a kiss to his lips. He decides to do just that. Ilya hums against his lips.

"Research," Shane says, turning his attention back to the article even though he knows it’s useless.

Ilya squints at the article, eyes flickering through the content before he lets out an exasperated groan when he finally registers what Shane is currently reading.

"You are still on this?" Ilya asks, and the way he says it makes Shane’s jaw tighten. He sounds almost annoyed, as if Shane is wasting his time on some trivial hobby, as if this hasn’t been a constant, nagging thread between them for months now, pulling tighter every time they try to ignore it. As if it’s normal, to hear someone else’s thoughts, as if it is nothing worth investigating.

Shane ignores him deliberately, scrolling further down the page. "You’re the one who won’t answer any questions," he mutters.

"Because there aren’t any answers," Ilya replies, as if he’s sick of hearing this over and over again. "I checked, remember?"

"Ilya, there has to be." Shane says, finally turning to look at him, his frustration bleeding through. "If someone can break down the relative theory of us creating doors, then there has to be something on why—" He stops mid-sentence because Ilya has chosen that exact moment to close the distance between them, kissing him wetly on the mouth. Ilya kisses him once, twice, a third time, his hand coming up to cup the back of Shane’s neck while Shane is still blinking at the screen, trying to remember the website he was about to bookmark. Another kiss follows, slower this time, and Shane feels his resistance crumbling even as his mind screams at him not to let it.

"Stop wasting your fucking time, Shane. There is nothing out there." Ilya murmurs against his lips. "Hmm? Let us forget about it. Why don't you come sit on my cock?"

Shane pulls back just enough to glare at him, though the effect is somewhat undermined by the flush creeping up his neck. "You’re a fucking asshole," he says, but even as the words leave his mouth, he is already closing the laptop and already letting Ilya pull him close. He still does what Ilya wants, because he always does, because some arguments are not worth winning when there are better ways to lose. But as Ilya’s hands find his hips and guide him down onto his lap, Shane cannot quite tell if the frustration he senses beneath Ilya’s casual tone is real or imagined, if the way Ilya refuses to look him in the eye means something or nothing. He ignores the thought, buries it under the warmth of Ilya’s mouth on his throat, and tells himself it does not matter.

Despite Shane trying his best to leave it alone, everything goes to shit at the worst possible moment. They're in bed and Shane is straddling Ilya's lap, still catching his breath, still trembling slightly from the force of his orgasm. His thighs are slick with sweat where Ilya's fingers had been gripping him, hard enough to bruise. He can still feel Ilya inside of him, his cock softening now, but still there, still buried deep, and Shane is spent and leaking and so thoroughly fucked that his brain is still trying to reboot. Despite the fuzziness, his mouth opens and out comes the sentence that truly sets the dominos falling.

"Hey," he says, voice still a little breathless. "That website you found, the one in Russian that talked about doors and stuff. Can you send me the link?"

Ilya's eyebrows furrow. He's still catching his breath, fingers still gripping Shane's thighs, and for a moment nothing happens. Then his hands slide up, circle around Shane's waist, and he lifts. Shane whines at the sudden emptiness, and then he's being settled onto the mattress, Ilya's arm sliding out from beneath him. They lie side by side.

"Why?" Ilya asks finally. His voice is flat. Shane doesn't register the tone at first, his mind is still fuzzy from his orgasm, still floating somewhere in the aftermath, his limbs heavy and his thoughts slow.

"I'm just curious. Maybe it has something on why this happens."

"It didn’t." Ilya pauses, fingers twirling. "Besides, I’m pretty sure the website went down."

Shane doesn’t really believe him. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, last time I checked."

The answer that follows comes too quickly and Shane frowns. Ilya's gaze is fixed on the ceiling now. His shoulders have gone rigid, one hand curled tightly into the sheets beside him. The alarm bells sing. Shane has spent weeks listening to Ilya think things he'd never say out loud. He's learned the subtle shifts in his voice, the set of his jaw, the difference between irritation and amusement and genuine conviction. He knows what Ilya looks like when he believes what he's saying.

This isn't it. Something tugs strangely at the connection between them, the bond that usually stretches effortlessly between them suddenly feels strained, fraying at the edges. Like Shane is reaching for a doorknob and finding someone braced against the other side, using their full weight to keep it shut. The realization settles over him with cold, sobering certainty.

You're lying.

The thought arrives before Shane can stop it. He can feel it, the shape of Ilya's lie pressing against his awareness like a bruise. Ilya isn't meeting his eyes and Shane can taste the lie on his own, pink tongue.

I'm not.

Ilya gets up and pads across the room to the bathroom. He comes back with a warm towel and, wordlessly, cleans Shane up.

"Why are you being so weird about this?" Shane asks, once Ilya throws the towel into Shane’s laundry basket and drops down to sit on the corner of his bed. His throat is closing up and the fuzziness from his orgasm is fading fast, replaced by ringing bells, his brain sending up signals, telling him to stop, back off, there's danger here.

But Shane isn't good at self-preservation. No matter how much people think he is, no matter how competent he looks on paper, he has a blind spot the size of a person named Ilya Rozanov. So instead of letting it go, instead of reading the room and backing down, he bares his teeth and moves forward.

"I'm not being weird," Ilya says. He sighs and cracks his neck to the side, almost as if he’s bored, as if Shane isn't worth looking at.

The action makes Shane's hackles rise. His hair bristles. He always gets a little more vulnerable after sex, his chest cracked open and his mind gone soft at the edges. It makes him uncomfortable, makes his tongue loose, makes him say things he can't really hold back. Because when Shane is tired, when he's just been taken apart and put back together, the filter disappears.

"You are being weird," Shane says. His voice comes out steadier than he feels. "I don’t get why you’re lying about some website that I know you still have access to."

Ilya's expression doesn’t change besides the little crease that forms between his brows. "Why do you even want it?" He asks.

"Because I want to understand."

"Understand what?”

"The thing." Shane gestures vaguely between them. "This connection. It was able to… explain how to put up doors and how to repair or break the connection. I’m sure it has something to do with why it happens."

Ilya laughs, but it’s not nice, not like when their bodies were tangled together just a moment ago and Shane could almost pretend everything was fine. "You won't understand a thing, Shane," Ilya says, and the dismissal in his voice is so absolute that it makes Shane's stomach drop.

Shane frowns, genuinely confused by the sudden shift in Ilya's demeanor. He doesn’t understand why Ilya is being mean all of a sudden, why his voice has gone so hard and flat, when just mere moments ago his touch was gentle and kind, his fingers tracing lazy patterns across Shane's skin like he never wanted to let go. "Try me," Shane says, and he hates how small his voice sounds, how close it is almost to pleading.

"I have tried you." Ilya's voice hardens further as he stands, bending down to pick up his shirt from the floor. He pulls it over his head and Shane tries to hold back the ache that flutters in his chest when Ilya doesn't even look at him. "I had to walk you through putting up a door in your mind. Remember that?" Ilya's tone is clipped. "It took you way longer, couldn't even figure something out that took me less than an hour."

The words land like a slap and Shane feels them in his chest, in his throat, in the sudden prick behind his eyes that he refuses to acknowledge. Something in Shane's brain is screaming now, a voice that has stopped ringing polite warning bells and has moved on to full-blown alarms, blaring red and urgent. Get out. Leave. This is wrong. He is being cruel and you do not deserve it, and you should walk away before you say something you regret. But Shane has never been good at listening to that voice, not when it comes to Ilya, so his feet stay planted on the floor and his mouth keeps moving, because silence feels like surrender and he is not ready to surrender yet.

"You're acting like a fucking asshole," Shane says, and his voice cracks on the last word in a way that makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. He hates it, hates how vulnerable he sounds, hates that Ilya has the power to make him sound like this. "What the fuck. I just asked for a link, that is it. A fucking link, Ilya."

"And I said no." Ilya's voice is flat, immovable, a wall that Shane keeps running into headfirst. He wants to fucking punch it.

"You have been fucking weird about this entire thing for weeks," Shane replies, and this time his voice comes out steely, hardened by the hurt crystallizing in his lungs. His thoughts are running a mile a second now, each memory slotting into place like puzzle pieces he had not realized he was collecting. He thinks about how every time he brought this up over the past few weeks, Ilya diverted him every single time. "Whenever I’ve asked you about this, you’ve tried to distract me. Hell, you have changed the subject every single time, I don't fucking get it."

Ilya groans and throws his arms in the air as if Shane is being unreasonable, as if Shane is the one causing this fight. "It's a fucking boring conversation, Hollander," he says, practically spitting the words. "I don't want to be talking about it."

"Don't you want to know why we are in this mess?" Shane presses, and now he is the one who cannot stay still, his hands gesturing wildly as he talks, still naked in bed, the only thing covering him a white cotton sheet. "We could get answers, Ilya. We could figure out what to do. Maybe break it, or—"

"Break it?" Ilya interrupts. "Break what, exactly? You think there is something to break? You think there is some neat little explanation waiting for you on some website that is going to make all of this make sense?"

"I don't know!" Shane shouts back, throwing his hands up. "But I am not going to find out anything if you keep shutting me down every time I try to look!"

"Because there is nothing to find!" Ilya is shouting now too, his accent thickening the way it always does when he loses control of his temper. "I have looked myself. You won't find anything new, Hollander. You're not exactly FBI material, now are you?"

"Fuck you." The words come out before Shane can stop them. "What the hell is up with you, why are you being so difficult?" He replies, though it comes out weaker than he intends because anger has always sat strangely inside him. It arrives all at once, hot and sudden beneath his ribs, but he never quite knows what to do with it once it is there. It just builds and builds, pressing against his lungs until he can barely breathe, until he feels like he might combust from the pressure of it. He swallows down another dozen things he wants to say—vicious things, cruel things, things he doesn’t really mean—and watches Ilya bend to retrieve his underwear from the floor, watches him pull them on, and watches him drag in a deep breath before turning back toward him.

"You are the one being difficult. I tell you to leave it alone, you don't. I tell you that there is nothing there, you still choose to look around," Ilya hisses, cheeks flushed with anger. "But news flash, Hollander, there is nothing there. At least nothing your brain will pick up on." Ilya's mouth twists, an ugly curl. "Besides, you need everything spelled out for you, don't you? You're terrible at clues. It would all go right over your head."

“Fuck you.”

And that, that hurts more than it should. Because Shane knows he's different. He knows he misses things sometimes; social cues that seem obvious to everyone else, meanings hidden between a multitude of lines, conversations that apparently contain entire second conversations underneath them.

He has always known this about himself. He has spent his whole life trying to catch up, trying to read the manual that everyone else seemed to have been born with, and Ilya knows this. Shane told him once, curled into his chest, how exhausting it can be to mask sometimes. Ilya had looked at him and said he wasn't stupid, that he was smart, maybe one of the smartest people he had ever known.

But different is not stupid. Shane has spent his entire life proving that: straight A's, scholarships, every goal he had ever set for himself reached through sheer stubbornness and grit. If Shane wanted something badly enough, he figured it out. So when Ilya looks at him like this—when he implies Shane is too dumb to understand, too oblivious to see whatever is supposedly right in front of him—it hurts. It hurts like an open wound, like someone dragging sandpaper across exposed skin, like pressing directly on a bruise just to see if it is still tender. The alarms in his head are deafening now: turn around, walk away, stop digging. But Shane has never been particularly good at listening to alarm bells, especially when he truly believes that he knows Ilya.

He knows the way he pushes when he's scared, the way he finds old wounds and presses until they split open again, knows how cruel he can be when he's cornered. But he knows the other side of him, too. The side that cleans up the mess afterward, the one that carefully wraps bandages around injuries he helped create, the one that presses a kiss against damaged skin and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a prayer for it to heal, even though he’s not religious, but his mama was.

Ilya has the tendency to run, that’s what he does; that he has the tendency to run when he feels terrified and alone, and that anything that might resemble any amount of hurt makes him bolt for the nearest exit and build walls up. Which means that the website has something, has to, for the way Ilya reacts, that it holds something that Ilya doesn’t want him to see. But Shane just doesn't know what, he doesn't know if it'll break his heart or mend it, doesn't know if opening that page will make everything worse or finally make something make sense.

And, if he's being honest, he doesn't even know what he wants to find. The hope inside his chest has become something ugly and living, something that keeps growing despite his best efforts. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed to have, doesn’t know how to ask for it, and it sits heavy on his tongue, thick and sticky as tar. Every time he thinks he's swallowed it down, it crawls right back up again. Maybe he's not supposed to want what he wants, and maybe he's not allowed, especially when Ilya refuses to meet him halfway. But that doesn't stop him from wanting it anyway. Shane has always been stubborn when getting what he wants.

So, he tries again, one last time, as he watches Ilya step into his sweats, the band snapping against his skin as he turns around to face him once again. Ilya stays quiet as he looks at him, Shane watching him back with a tinge of desperation. He pokes at Ilya's mushy, warm brain.

Stop being a dick and tell me what you're hiding. Please, Ilya.

Ilya's expression remains frustratingly blank as he ignores every single one of Shane's knocks or attempts at communication. Eventually, after a few minutes of silence, Shane stops trying. It's hard to ask for something when your thoughts feel like they've dissolved into black sludge.

"This connection is stupid, Hollander," Ilya finally says, tightening the locks on his door in the process. Shane can barely feel the connection anymore. It makes bile rise in the back of his throat at the sudden emptiness. "Hearing all your thoughts is annoying, being stuck to you is even worse."

Shane goes completely still.

"Nothing on that site is going to explain our connection. And even if it did..." Ilya shakes his head, eyes drifting away from Shane’s. "There's nothing between us, we're just fuck buddies. Stop thinking there’s more here when there is not."

A latch slips loose and the door creaks open, and suddenly Shane is seven years old again, and the lock on his bedroom closet has never worked properly. Sunlight spills through the crack and voices drift in from the hallway.

And all he can hear is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I’m sorry.

The words overlap until he can't tell where they're coming from, whether it's him saying them, or Ilya.

He watches Ilya walk out the door.

In Russian culture, the term родственная душа captures the essence of a soulmate. This phrase translates to "kindred spirit," highlighting a connection that transcends simple romance. Soulmates represent a deep emotional bond grounded in friendship, mutual understanding, and shared experiences.

Exploring this connection involves recognizing how it can inspire growth and self-discovery. Such relationships often encourage healing and transformation, guiding you toward a deeper understanding of your desires and aspirations. Each soulmate encounter can serve as a catalyst, paving the way for enlightenment and emotional healing. Historically, Russian literature and folklore reflect a rich narrative surrounding soulmates. Classic authors like Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky explored profound emotional connections, illustrating how fate intertwines souls. In these narratives, soulmates often undergo transformative journeys together, reflecting the depth of their bonds. Many tales showcase the idea that every relationship serves a purpose, whether as a romantic partner or a guiding figure.

However, recent scholarship has interlinked this concept with Japanese folklore, specifically what many academics call the red string of fate: akai ito de musubareteru. In Shinto belief, which has been prevalent for centuries in Japan, the spiritual realm and the "real" realm intertwine in ways invisible to most people. Within traditional thought, there is no overarching duality of good and evil. Instead, there exists a type of connective energy, musubi, that permeates all life. These concepts are difficult—perhaps impossible, actually—to translate directly, so this remains an approximation.

Japan’s rich culture and myths have long fascinated the world. While some ideas, like ikigai—the joy found in a life aligned with one’s passions and purpose—have permeated global culture, others remain far less explored, and arguably far more intriguing. Among these are concepts related to supernatural or mysterious processes. One such idea is En: the belief that certain relationships and encounters are woven into the fabric of the universe, orchestrated by a larger cosmic order. En highlights the profound and often inexplicable ties that bind people together. Recent documented cases have shown En to be interlinked with Ishin Denshin, often loosely translated as "telepathy," though it is more accurately a closely attuned relationship that transcends physical space. Rooted in Japanese cultural values, Ishin Denshin emphasizes subtlety, empathy, and non-verbal understanding. It suggests that true connection between people can bypass spoken language entirely, relying instead on an intuitive sense of shared feelings and intentions.

But here lies the paradox at the heart of such a bond. In every pair bounded by Ishin Denshin, the first person to develop this unspoken telepathy is not the one who loves more deeply, but the one who needs less. They are more independent and more self-contained. They perceive the other's thoughts, anxieties, and affections long before those feelings are ever expressed aloud. However, there have been soulmate-bonded cases where instead of the pair being brought together, this early awakening has often driven a wedge between them.

In many documented cases, the independent person begins to see the other’s demands, and hidden insecurities as somewhat troublesome. Without the other person reciprocating that same depth of perception, the connection becomes lopsided where one person is fully seen and the other is only partially glimpsed. Over time, the independent one may come to regard their counterpart as a burden, leading to a dynamic that has led to painful outcomes. Those who first develop Ishin Denshin often withdraw due to emotional strain, noting that even barriers such as a closed door fail to provide sufficient separation over a period of time. This indicates that soulmatism does not inherently guarantee long-term compatibility, as independent partners may ultimately reject their dependent counterparts.

While dependents may also reject their independents, many documented soulmate-bonded cases show that such ruptures can result in emotional or physical deterioration.

To prevent these outcomes, it may be necessary to establish a structured boundary such as a closed door. Pairs can create these by…

જ⁀➴

Ilya knows he can be hard to love.

No matter how many times Svetlana tells him otherwise—like if she says it enough, it might finally take root—Ilya doesn’t quite believe it. He knows himself too well for that, knows the way his mind turns on him, the way it drags him under without warning, the way it makes something simple feel impossible. He knows there are days when the pills don’t help. When they sit heavy in his stomach and do nothing to quiet the noise in his head. Days where talking to Galina only leads to circles and circles without landing anywhere, words slipping through his fingers before they can mean anything. Days where something thick and immovable lodges itself in his throat and where breathing feels wrong, like he’s doing it incorrectly, like it’s scraping against something raw inside his chest.

Those are the days where he doesn’t leave his bed. Where the thought of moving makes him itch, so unbearable that he can’t breathe. Where the curtains stay drawn because the light hurts too much, needling behind his eyes until his head pounds in a relentless rhythm. Days where even the smallest sounds feel too loud; days where his body feels too heavy to carry, like it’s filled with five tons of cement.

Those are also the days where he cries. Not the quiet kind of sniffles, not the kind he can swallow down or hide behind a sharp intake of breath, but something that doesn’t seem to come from anywhere specific and doesn’t know where it’s supposed to go. It just builds, and builds, and builds, rising until it spills over and leaves him gasping through it, sobs wracking through his body, frame shaking. He can’t always tell what starts it. Sometimes there’s a reason, something small that cracks him open in a way it shouldn’t. And sometimes there’s nothing at all. It just happens, like his body has decided for him, like something inside him has tipped without warning.

Most days, it feels like it’s just him and his mind, circling each other, wearing each other down. A quiet, constant fight with no clear winner. Just seeing who gives in first. He knows his depression sits in the corner of his brainstem, waiting when he shows a hint of weakness. Those are the worst days. Those are the days where everything narrows down to one, aching absence. And those are the days where he misses his mama the most.

He misses her in a way that feels physical, like something reaching for him from the inside out. He misses the warmth of her hands, the way her fingers would curl around his without hesitation. He misses the faint slide of her necklace against his skin when she leaned close, the small, absent-minded touches that used to feel so ordinary he never thought to hold onto them. He misses the way she smelled of roses, sometimes swearing he can still feel it, thick in the back of his throat, like if he breathes in deep enough it might still be there.

On those days, he aches for something he knows he can’t have back. He wants arms around him, a mother’s touch. He wants to press his face into her shoulder and tell her that he misses her, the words catching and clumsy and too small for what he actually feels. He wants to ask her if she misses him, too—if, wherever she is, she ever thinks of him in the same way he thinks of her. He never gets an answer, not really, but the closest he comes to are the dreams.

Sometimes she’s there, as clear as if no time has passed at all. And sometimes, Shane is there too, standing just slightly apart at first, uncertain in the way people are when they’re meeting a stranger for the first time. But his mama always fixes that. She smiles at Shane like she’s known him longer than she has, as if this isn’t the first time she’s meeting him. She calls Ilya zaichik in that same soft voice, fondness threaded through it, and Ilya laughs.

Shane introduces himself, a little awkward and a little unsure, and she pulls him into a hug. And for a moment, it all fits. Those are the only times the ache eases. But then he wakes up. And sometimes, in those quiet, disoriented seconds, he doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Whether that version of her—the one who smiles, who laughs, the one who knows Shane’s name—is something that truly belongs to his memories, or something his mind has built out of longing.

Grief does that, he thinks. It settles into you slowly, almost gently, until it becomes part of the structure holding you up. It threads through your bones, sinks into the spaces you can’t reach, and stays there. Not always loud, not always present, but never really gone, either, ever present the following morning.

Those are the hardest days. Because when his mind is like that—hazy and uncertain, almost slipping at the edges—he can’t always trust it. He can’t tell where memory ends and the dreaming begins. Whether the things he holds onto are real, or if they’ve been reshaped so many times they’ve become something else entirely. And it scares him, sometimes, how much of her is still lodged inside him. How the longing hasn’t dulled the way people promised it would. If anything, it sharpens on days like these, turning unbearable, like something pressed too close to his spine, waiting for him to lose his footing and tip over the edge.

It makes him wish, in a way that feels almost embarrassingly childish, that he had been given more time with her. More memories he could hold onto without second-guessing, without having to wonder if they were real or something his mind stitched together afterward to fill the gaps. Because when he reaches back, there isn’t as much as there should be.

There are pieces, mostly. Fragments of soft, flickering impressions that never quite settle into anything solid. They shift when he looks at them too closely, edges blurring, details slipping out of reach just when he thinks he has them. And still, his mind offers him this one mercy.

The first real memory he has of her. The one that hasn’t worn thin with time, that hasn’t softened or distorted, that has stayed rooted somewhere deep in his neocortex, ready to be pulled upon. The first real memory Ilya has of his mother is from when he is five years old. Everything before that feels distant or a fuzzy blur.

However, there are traces of it: a blur of laughter, the brush of her fingers through his hair, the gentle press of her nose against his, the comfort of her voice as she tucks him into bed. But those moments feel like they belong to someone else sometimes, like they belong to a version of himself he can’t quite access anymore. Sometimes they feel less like memories and more like stories he’s heard so often they’ve settled into him as something almost real.

But this one is different. When he reaches for it, it doesn’t waver or dissolve. It comes back to him in a straight, unbroken line, as if it’s linear, as if it has been carefully preserved somewhere deep in his mind.

He is five years old, small and sun-warmed, sitting on a stool in the kitchen. His skin is flushed from the heat of late summer, cheeks bright and aching faintly from hours spent outside running. He can still feel the restless energy in his limbs, the way it hasn’t quite left him even after Andrei had taken his hand and led him home, saying that papa would be angry if they stayed out until sunset again.

He remembers the way the door creaked when they stepped inside, the sudden coolness of the house wrapping around him like a reprieve. He remembers his mama standing by the counter, already waiting.

She has a glass of kvass in her hand, her fingers curved delicately around it, condensation brimming around her fingers. He remembers her wearing a summer dress, a muted green, blonde hair tightened into a bun.

She notices him immediately.

"Ilyushka," she says, he can’t remember the exact tone, but knowing her, it was airy and soft, slightly exasperated. And then, she is moving, closing the distance between them in a few steps.

He doesn’t resist when she ushers him onto the stool properly, her hands warm on his shoulders. She fusses over him without hesitation, tilting his chin up, turning his face slightly this way and that as if inspecting him for damage.

"You’ve been in the sun too long," she murmurs, her thumb brushing over the bridge of his nose. "Look at you. You’re going to burn."

He remembers the way he watches her, quiet for once, all that leftover energy settling into something muted, as if he’s underwater. His curls are damp, sticking to his forehead, and he doesn’t bother pushing them away. He just looks at her, lets out a little laugh, and pushes her fingers away instead. But his eyes never stray away from her.

Even at five, he thinks she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Not in a way he could name then, not in words like beautiful or divine, but in the quiet, certain way a child knows when something in the world is good and important and entirely their own.

She presses the glass into his hands then, a little more firmly like she’s making sure he won’t refuse it. The coolness seeps into his palms instantly. He can smell the faint, sweet tang of it before he even takes a sip.

"Drink," she says.

He does, because she told him to. When she leans down, her necklace brushes against his forehead, a small, fleeting touch that he remembers, as if it’s tethered into the very stitch of his skin. It shifts with her movements as she presses a kiss into his hair, right at the crown, where the curls are thickest and still damp with sweat.

It is such a small thing, but he never forgets it.

Sometimes, later, much later, he finds himself wondering if it really happened the way he remembers it. He knows, in the distant, practical way of an adult, that memory is unreliable. That the mind reshapes things, softens edges, fills in gaps with something kinder, something easier to carry.

Maybe the light wasn’t that warm. Maybe her voice wasn’t that gentle. Maybe he has polished the moment over and over again until it shines brighter than it ever did in reality. But when he thinks about it too long, he realizes he doesn’t mind. If his memory has been altered, if it has been softened and sweetened and made into something only a kid could shape, he’s fine with it, because he can remember her then.

જ⁀➴

When Ilya is nine, his mother makes him sit down and watch her favourite movie. He remembers the way she insists on it, the quiet excitement in her voice, like she’s been waiting for the right moment to share it with him. He doesn’t really understand why it matters so much, but he sits anyway, legs tucked beneath him.

He doesn’t watch the film as much as he watches her. He notices the way her lips move along with the dialogue, barely a whisper, like she’s reciting something sacred under her breath. He notices how she smiles to herself when she gets a line exactly right, a small, private sort of satisfaction.

And more than anything, he notices the way her eyes change: how they shine in a way they haven’t in days, lit from within, like something inside her has been briefly restored. He doesn’t understand the story, well, not the way she does.

"I don’t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them."

He remembers turning to her then, frowning slightly, the words sitting jumbled in his mind.

"What does that mean?"

She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she reaches for him, pulling him closer until he’s half in her lap, half draped across her. He goes easily, used to the way she gathers him up like that, like he still fits there perfectly, even though his limbs are long and bony.

He goes. When she speaks, her voice is softer, her lips brushing near his ear. "It means," she says, "that you love someone not because they’re perfect, but despite their faults."

He listens, but he doesn’t quite understand. She goes on anyway, like she can see that, like she knows he’ll understand someday even if he doesn’t now.

"When you find your person," she murmurs, fingers absentmindedly combing through his hair, "your soul will recognize them. It will feel like… like something waking up inside you. Your heart will flutter when they breathe, your hands will want to hold them, your lips will want to—"

He pulls back before she can finish, face scrunching in immediate protest.

"That’s not real," he says, certain in the way only a child can be, believing they know everything in the world; no hesitation, no doubts, just naive innocence. "That’s weird."

She laughs then.

"It’s not weird," she says.

"It is," he insists, already working himself up. "Svetlana pushed me when I tried to kiss her cheek. She said I was gross." His voice wobbles a little with the memory, indignation mixing with embarrassment. "I’m never kissing anyone again."

His mother laughs harder at that, though there’s nothing unkind in it. Just fondness, something bright and affectionate that wraps around him even as he scowls. It’s warm and tender.

"You’re being silly," she tells him, smoothing his hair back into place. It doesn't work; his curls shoot right up, sticking up in odd places.

"I’m not," he mutters, frowning.

"You are."

He huffs, crossing his arms, but she only cups his face briefly, making him look at her. She smiles.

"Someone out there is meant for you," she says, her voice gentling again. "Someone who won’t turn away from you. Someone who will want you just as much as you want them. Their heart will feel… unfinished, until you’re there."

He stares at her, not quite understanding. "That doesn’t make sense," he says. "If there’s something wrong with your heart, you should go to a doctor."

For a second, she just looks at him. And then she laughs and laughs, the sound filling the room, like he’s said something far more profound than he intended.

"Maybe," she says, still smiling. "Or maybe some things aren’t meant to be fixed like that."

He doesn’t get it. Not then, anyway. He remembers, a little later, asking her another question, the kind that feels simple when he says it. "Is papa your soulmate?"

He expects the same easy answer. But instead, she goes quiet. It’s subtle, something he might have missed if he wasn’t looking directly at her. The way her smile falters, just for a second. The way her lips press together. The way something in her eyes shifts, as if dulling immediately. He wants to take it back, to pretend he never asked, but it’s out in the open and he doesn’t know how a nine year old can fix it.

So, when she answers, "yes," he believes her. He believes her because he is nine, because she is his mother and the idea that she would say anything but the truth doesn’t occur to him.

Later, when he’s twenty-one, he sometimes wonders how he didn’t see it. Because even then, he knew, knew in the back of his mind, even at nine years old, that papa wasn’t her soulmate. He saw it in the way his father spoke to her, bitter and dismissive. In the way he treated Andrei, in the way tension seemed to follow him into every room. In the way his gaze would linger on Ilya just a second too long, always edged with disappointment, as if Ilya was too soft, too much like her.

As if it was a sin to be, when Ilya only knew it to be virtue and mercy. The signs were there, but Ilya was just a child. And now, he is a man who only has pieces of her left. A man who finds himself sometimes wishing she could see him now. See who he’s become. See the way he stands here, hands tangled in someone else’s shirt, kissing the man he loves like it’s something he’s been meant to do all along.

A man who has been given things he once thought didn’t exist for him. A chance at a normal life, a man who is so so gentle, even when Ilya can be unkind, the kind that has allowed Ilya to crowd into his space and take, take, and take as much as he wants. Someone who, with a clarity that still startles him, feels inevitable.

As if Shane had always been meant to be his. As if something far beyond either of them had already decided it long before they ever met, their lives bending slowly, quietly, toward this exact point. Like they are opposites in every way that should matter, day and night, opposite yet inextricably tied, destined to find each other in every lifetime, meant to meet, however possible.

Like no matter the version of the world, they would have found each other anyway. He remembers kissing Shane, door locked tight while he memorized the warmth of Shane’s mouth, every ridge, every crevice, carving out a space for himself there. There’s a part of him that still feels the need to hold on too tightly, to make sure of it, to press himself into the space Shane gives him as if he has to earn it.

Sometimes, he wonders if his mama would disapprove.

He thinks about her faith, about the way it shaped everything around her. The quiet devotion in the way she knelt to pray each night, the way she would take his hand every Sunday and lead him into church, her voice gentle but certain when she spoke about love, about marriage, about what it was meant to be.

He remembers all of it. And he remembers the last time he spoke to her, sitting at her grave after papa died, the world feeling too large and too empty all at once, when he was just the mere age of fifteen. He remembers the way his voice broke, thick with tears, the taste of salt lingering on his lips as he tried to say the words out loud. He remembers telling her everything in fragments, like if he said enough of it, something might reach her. That he still tried, that he went to church on her birthday, that he left a rose for her at the entrance of some cemetery every year, even if she was thousands of kilometers away.

That he still watched her favourite movie every year, especially when the silence got too loud, when the absence of her pressed in too close. That he hoped—more than anything—that she would still love him as he is. That he still thinks about her every day, in small ways. In the way he catches his reflection and sees her in it—in the blue of his eyes, in the curl of his hair, in the shape of his nose, in the scattered moles across his skin. In the pieces of himself that feel undeniably hers, no matter how much time has passed.

And sometimes, he lets himself believe that one day, when he’s older, when time has softened him the way it does to everyone, when his hair has gone grey and the years have settled into his skin in the form of wrinkles, he might see her again.

Just once, just long enough to know, long enough to hear her say his name, even if there’s a part of him that isn’t sure, that she would accept him loving another man—if she would understand, whether she would accept this version of him—he chooses, deliberately, to believe that she would.

That she still loves him.

It’s easier that way.

And maybe, somewhere deep down, it's also true. Besides, faith is a fickle thing, and standing here now, with Shane looking at him with tears in his eyes, skin still flushed from what they just did minutes ago, Ilya wonders if he's even allowed to have this, despite knowing, logically, that he is. But he's self-destructive, and fear is a permanent guest when it comes to Ilya Rozanov.

જ⁀➴

When Ilya finds the website, it takes him a considerable amount of time not to internalize everything he's read. He lets himself read it once, and then, conveniently, never looks at it again. Out of sight, out of mind, or so he tells himself. In a way, he's grateful that only a fraction of his thoughts leak over to Shane. That even when he dwells on this obsessively, it's never a guarantee Shane will hear any of it. The connection is porous, not transparent. A mercy, really, a small temporary mercy that Ilya clings to like a lifeline.

But despite trying to ignore it, Ilya comes back to it a few days later. He finds himself reading through the website again one night, alone in his room. His jaw is tight, his shoulders coiled with tension as he scrolls, trying to figure out what the author means exactly by a door. A door to what? What the fuck does that even mean?

He reads the same paragraph one time, two times, three times, four times. The words blur together, but the unease doesn't fade. It coils in his stomach, heavy and hot, curdling like yogurt.

He doesn't realize he's been projecting until Shane's voice cuts through.

What door?

Ilya groans, a flash of irritation shoving its way through the connection, partly at Shane for eavesdropping, but mostly at himself for letting it leak in the first place.

My dorm room. Ignore me, Hollander.

He feels Shane's confusion flickering at the edges of the connection; it almost feels fuzzy, like the skin of a caterpillar.

What's wrong with your door? Shane asks.

Your mom, Ilya replies. The deflection is automatic, almost instinctual at this point. He feels Shane bristle at the comeback, already knowing how much Shane hates ‘your mom’ jokes.

God, you're so fucking annoying.

And just like that, Shane moves on.

But Ilya doesn’t.

Instead, the thought lodges itself somewhere deep inside him and refuses to leave. It follows him through the rest of the week and then the week after that, surfacing at the most inconvenient moments possible. It appears while Shane is asleep beside him with his head tucked against Ilya's shoulder, while Ilya is brushing his teeth before bed, while he is sitting in class staring at a professor whose words seem to dissolve before they reach his brain. The thought settles over everything, turning ordinary moments into opportunities for doubt.

The first person to develop the connection is the one who needs less.

The sentence replays itself endlessly in his head.

Shane developed it first.

And because Shane developed it first, the article's conclusions seem impossible to ignore. According to every documented case he has just spent hours reading about, that means Shane is the independent one, Shane is the self-contained one, Shane is the person who could survive perfectly well on his own if he had to, Shane is the one who does not need Ilya.

Which means Ilya—by every bitter measure of what he just read—will be seen as more, more dependent, more exhausting, more of a weight to carry, when he should be seen as less. That last thought hits particularly hard because it is not new. It is not some fresh insecurity planted by a questionable article on soulmatism. It is an old wound wearing a new face. His father's voice still lives somewhere inside him, buried deep enough that he can usually pretend it is gone, but never quite far enough to stop hearing it when he is vulnerable.

A burden. A disappointment. You’re just like your mother. A kicked puppy who will never amount to anything.

At some point those words had stopped feeling like insults and started feeling like facts. They had become the lens through which Ilya learned to interpret every relationship in his life, the explanation he reached for whenever something went wrong, whenever somebody pulled away, whenever somebody seemed frustrated with him, whenever somebody chose someone else over him, a part of him immediately assumed it was because they had finally realized what his father had known all along.

That's the part that really guts him. Not the fear of being a burden, but the fear that he already is, and that Shane is just too polite, too kind, too Shane to say it out loud. That one day, the scales will tip, that Shane will wake up and realize he's been carrying someone who was never meant to be carried. Ilya knows he should talk about it, knows he should say something, ask something, crack open the door he's been pretending doesn't exist, tell him about what has been said, how Shane is stuck with him, not by choice, if it were ever even that.

But fear has never been particularly interested in logic, and now there is an article sitting open on his laptop that seems to validate every insecurity he has spent years trying not to name. It is full of documented cases where independent partners eventually withdrew from dependent ones, where soulmate-bonded pairs discovered that a supernatural connection did not automatically translate into compatibility, and where people who were supposedly destined for one another still managed to fall apart because humans are selfish and the innate desire for companionship doesn’t outweigh everything else.

So, the more Ilya thinks about it, the more inevitable it begins to feel, especially when Shane starts asking questions. At first, the questions are easy enough to avoid. Shane asks if Ilya has thought of this more, and Ilya changes the subject. Shane asks what are the probabilities of this happening to them, and Ilya shrugs it off. Shane pushes a little harder, and Ilya redirects the conversation somewhere safer. He has always been good at that, good at slipping away from difficult conversations because in his mind, if Shane sees less of him, then Shane will have less reason to leave. If Ilya asks for less, then Shane will have less reason to feel burdened. If he keeps enough of himself hidden, enough of his fears, his insecurities, and all the ugly parts he spends so much energy trying to contain, then maybe Shane will never realize how much work it takes to love him.

However, what Ilya fails to understand is that Shane cannot see any of the reasoning behind those choices. Shane cannot see the explanation because Ilya refuses to share it with him, and he cannot hear his father's voice echoing through Ilya's head every time he opens his mouth to say something honest. He cannot follow the chain of fears that takes an innocent sentence on a screen and transforms it into certainty, into the unshakable conviction that abandonment is not merely possible but inevitable. What he doesn’t count for is that all Shane sees is distance, all Shane sees is someone who keeps stepping further away every time he tries to get closer.

And eventually, it comes back to bite Ilya in the ass. Because the thing about fear is that, if you let it make your decisions for long enough, eventually it starts creating the very future you were trying to avoid. And that realization hits him all at once when he sees Shane sitting in front of him with his face flushed red and tears gathering in his eyes, when Shane looks at him like he has just been punched in the chest, when Ilya tells him that they’re nothing, that they will never be anything.

The words should make him feel relieved, but instead, something inside him starts breaking apart. The soft, traitorous part of his brain that has always loved Shane far more than it knows what to do with suddenly feels like it’s screaming. His thoughts dissolve into noise, into panic, into a relentless chorus of I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The apology echoes so loudly inside his head that for a moment he cannot tell who it belongs to; whether it is Shane saying it, or him.

He realizes the answer only after he leaves, after he turns away from Shane's confused, devastated expression, after he walks out the door, and after he keeps walking even though every instinct in his body is begging him to stop because Ilya is the one taking every fear he has ever had and handing it more power than the person sitting right in front of him. And somewhere between the apartment and the street outside, with Shane's hurt expression still burned into the back of his mind, Ilya realizes that the thing he has been afraid of this entire time was never Shane deciding he was a burden, but rather, the possibility that he had become so convinced of it himself that he had started destroying them before Shane ever got the chance.

Being self-destructive was exhausting, and despite being exhausted, Ilya only knew how to run, run and run.

જ⁀➴

That night, when he falls asleep, she comes back to him. Not as a fragment, not as something blurred or fuzzy, but clear and whole, exactly as he remembers her. She is wearing the muted green dress she used to wear on summer afternoons, hair pinned into a loose bun, wisps escaping around her face. Her eyes are bright and impossibly blue, just like his.

She steps toward him as though no time has passed at all. As though there are not years and years of grief stretched between then and now. As though death is nothing more than a doorway she has briefly stepped through to find him again. When she reaches him, she cups his face in both hands, and her palms are warm. Her thumbs brush softly across his cheeks, and suddenly he is twelve years old again, scraped knees and tangled hair and too many questions, standing in the kitchen while she fusses over him.

"Zaichik," she says, and the endearment nearly breaks him. Her voice is warm, filled with love, one he never had to earn.

She tells him she is proud of him, that Shane is good, that she sees him, sees them, that she understands something Ilya has spent years trying and failing to put into words, something he can feel but has never been able to explain. She tells him that love does not become wrong simply because it arrives in a form you never expected, that his heart has always known its own shape, even when he was too frightened to look directly at it.

She tells him she loves him, even like this, even while loving another man. The words settle into him with startling ease, slipping into places that have been aching for years, and then she laughs softly and brushes a thumb beneath his eye.

She tells him to stop running, that he has always been running, that when he was a child, he never knew how to sit still; how his legs were always bouncing. How his hands were always reaching for something, how he was forever climbing furniture, darting ahead on sidewalks, rushing toward the next thing before he had fully experienced the one in front of him.

"You've always had too much energy, zaichik," she says fondly. "Even then."

Then she presses a hand over his heart and she tells him that she is here, that she has always been here, safe inside him, in his heart.

He chooses to believe it.

He does not pick apart the dream, he does not question whether it is real or merely his subconscious giving him what he desperately needs. For once, he allows himself to have something without examining it from every angle until nothing remains.

So he lets himself believe, and he cries. God, does he cry. The tears come so hard his chest hurts with them, years of grief breaking apart all at once. But somewhere in the middle of it, he finds himself talking to her again, as though she is still sitting beside him.

He tells her about Shane, about the freckles scattered across his skin, and about the kindness in his eyes, the same kind of softness Ilya used to see in hers. About the way he holds him, about the way he listens, about how he pushes and pulls, and gives Ilya exactly what he needs.

And then, because it is her, because it has always been her, he tells her the truth, that he is terrified, that he doesn’t know how to ask for things he wants, that wanting has always felt dangerous, that every important thing in his life has eventually become something he could lose; her included. He tells her that the universe was merciful enough to give him a soulmate, and cruel enough to make that connection breakable.

He tells her that sometimes the sheer scale of loving Shane feels almost unbearable, because there is no guarantee threaded through it, no promise of forever, no certainty that the future he wants will actually stay his once he reaches for it. So he tells her the rest, too—what he did, what he said—that he's sorry, that he can be hard to love, and maybe that's why she had to leave.

When she smiles at him, pitying, Ilya knows she is too kind to call him a coward. But kindness does not change the fact that she cannot understand. How could she expect him to be strong in this, when he has not felt her touch since he was twelve, except in the strange, impossible echo of it when he is with Shane? And if his mother could leave him once, then Shane can leave him too.

The logic is brutal, but it holds. It makes sense in his mind, even when something deeper is screaming at him to stop, stop, stop. Funny how a dream can change your mind so easily.

જ⁀➴

It starts subtly, a slight headache behind his eyes, a pull of tension behind the back of his head and neck. By day three, Ilya notices his skin feels wrong, a low fever humming beneath his skin, as if something is trying to crawl out. By day five, the hives appear, small clusters along his ribs, the inside of his wrists, the curve of his neck. He scratches absently at them in class, in bed, in the bathroom mirror, watching the red marks bloom and spread.

While dependents may also reject their independents, many documented soulmate-bonded cases show that such ruptures can result in emotional or physical deterioration.

Ilya guesses this is what happens when you reject a soulmate connection. But also, that can't be right because that doesn't make sense, because Shane doesn't want him like that and Ilya isn’t even certain that he, himself, rejected it. Shane can’t want him like that, especially if Ilya repeats it enough times, maybe his body will believe him. It doesn't. It also doesn’t make it better that Shane has closed his side of the connection completely. Where there used to be a constant hum of Shane's presence—his idle thoughts, his feelings, the way he checked up on Ilya occasionally, here and there—there is now nothing, just a door slammed shut with Ilya standing on the wrong side of it.

He tries not to panic, tries to tell himself that Shane just needs space, that this is temporary, that he's been crueler and things have bounced back before. But a week passes, and then another day and another, and Ilya cannot feel him at all. So, he does what he always does when he's terrified, he reaches out the wrong way.

The words hit Ilya with the force of a physical blow. He stares at the screen for several seconds before blinking and reading them again. Then he reads them a third time, as though repeatedly reading it might somehow change what they say. He waits for another message to appear, waits for Shane to backtrack, to soften the edges, to tack on a reluctant apology or some half-hearted attempt at kindness. Shane has always done that before. No matter how angry he gets, no matter how big his temper becomes, there is usually a moment afterward where he reaches back and softens the blow.

But nothing comes.

Ilya knows Shane is capable of cruelty when he's pushed far enough. He knows he can be vicious, can strike exactly where it hurts most and leave spit across skin. Shane has never been afraid of fighting back, and when he does, he hits with the same force he's been hit with. Rationally, Ilya knows he deserves every bit of it and he knows he earned Shane's anger. That knowledge does not make it hurt any less.

Ilya reads the final message until the words begin to blur together, his vision swims and he realizes belatedly that he has not blinked in nearly a minute. Slowly, he locks his phone and places it face down on the nightstand beside his bed. His hands are trembling so badly that he nearly drops it; his skin feels like it’s on fire, every breath seems shallower than the last, as though his lungs are slowly shrinking inside his ribcage. He closes his eyes and thinks about reaching for the phone again. He could apologize, maybe explain, tell Shane everything. He could type out every ugly, pathetic truth he has been carrying around for weeks and finally stop pretending that any of this is under control.

But when he tries to move, his fingers refuse to cooperate. The words feel trapped somewhere deep inside his chest, pressing painfully against his ribs without ever finding a way out. By the time he unlocks his phone again, the screen remains empty. Eventually, he puts it back down and doesn’t try again.

Once another week goes by, Ilya stops pretending he has control over any part of his life.

He stops going to classes first, that's the easiest thing to let go of. One morning he wakes up and cannot convince himself to get out of bed. He tells himself he will attend the afternoon lecture instead, but the afternoon comes and goes without him moving more than a few feet. The next morning is somehow even easier to ignore. Soon the notifications begin piling up on his phone—attendance warnings, assignment reminders, messages from professors—and he dismisses them all without reading.

After that, he stops answering texts. His teammates reach out first, then a few acquaintances. Wyatt messages him twice before switching to increasingly concerned voice notes. Luca sends memes and jokes that go unanswered. Bood checks in. Marlow checks in. The messages continue arriving every day, little flashes of concern lighting up his lock screen. Ilya lets every single one sit unopened. The only person he never hears from is Shane.

Two days later, the hives get worse.

At first they are confined to his arms and neck, but they spread steadily across his chest, stomach, and thighs until it feels like his entire body is waging war against some type of infection his body can’t figure out. The itching becomes relentless, he scratches without realizing it, especially while he sleeps. More than once he wakes to find dried blood beneath his fingernails and angry red marks carved across his skin. His sheets are stained with faint rust-coloured smears, and while he notices them every morning, he doesn’t change them.

His body begins failing him in other ways, too. He is exhausted all the time, yet sleep refuses to come when he needs it. He’s hungry, he knows he is, but he can’t eat. One afternoon he spends nearly an hour staring at a glass of water sitting on his nightstand. He knows he is thirsty, and he knows he should drink it, but he never does.

The connection—what's left of it—flickers occasionally at the edges of his awareness, but it's like pressing your ear to a wall and hearing nothing but static on the other side. Maybe Shane has truly closed himself off. Maybe Ilya is imagining the static. Maybe he's imagining everything.

By day ten, he's pretty sure he's running a full-fledged fever. His skin is hot to the touch, flushed an angry red beneath the hives. He doesn't own a thermometer and he doesn't bother checking. He’s glad that at least it’s reading week, Troy spending the break at Harris's place, which means the dorm room remains blissfully empty. If Troy were here, he would have noticed something was wrong days ago. He would have worried. He would have hovered and asked questions and tried to help.

Ilya cannot stand the thought of someone worrying over him like that. So, he ignores Svetlana’s messages and calls, even while they repeatedly come in and out. After the fifth call, and probably 20th message, he fumbles for his phone, squinting at the screen through swollen eyes.

He stares at the messages for a long moment, thumb hovering over nothing, before he drops the phone onto the mattress beside him. A few seconds later, it starts ringing again, and again, and again. Svetlana doesn't give up. Ilya has never known for her to do so. On the fourth ring, Ilya reaches for the phone. He stares at her name, considers letting it go to voicemail, or considers throwing the phone against the wall and watching it shatter into pieces.

Instead, he answers. The second the line cuts through, Svetlana's voice comes crashing. "What the fuck is happening over there, Ilyusha?"

Ilya blinks at the ceiling and swallows. It feels like sandpaper. "Why are you awake, Sveta?" he asks instead, glancing toward the clock on his nightstand. The red numbers glare back at him, it being almost five in the morning in Russia. She should be asleep, she should be enjoying her reading week. But here she is, calling Ilya, at five in the morning.

Svetlana huffs. "Answer the fucking question, Ilya."

"Nothing is happening." The words come out devoid of emotion. "I'm fine."

"Don't," she snaps. "Don't you dare lie to me right now. Andrei, that piece of shit, called me, you know? Told me you haven't been coming to work, telling me to check whether you were dead in your dorm or not."

Ilya closes his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Her voice cracks, just slightly, enough for Ilya to know that she’s frustrated with him, that she’s tired, possibly scared. "Ilya, what the hell is going on? You don't answer calls, you don't answer texts, your boss is calling your piece of a shit brother to do a welfare check because he thinks you've—" She stops. When she speaks again, she sounds resigned. "I thought something happened to you. I thought you were—"

"I'm okay, Sveta, I promise," he says quickly.

He hears her sigh. "Why did your work call him?" Svetlana asks eventually. "Andrei, I mean."

"You had to list a relative," Ilya says, brain fuzzy from how numb his brain feels. "I didn’t have anyone else."

Svetlana scoffs, but Ilya doesn’t understand why, not when it’s true. His father is gone, his mother is gone, and Andrei—for all the damage he did—was the only name Ilya could think of when the form asked for an emergency contact. He didn’t think Andrei would have ever picked up, but he had to put down a name for better or worse.

"You could have listed me," Svetlana says, wounded. "Ilyusha, you could have listed me."

He wants to tell her that he didn't want to burden her, that she's already done too much, that he's been a black hole of need for as long as he can remember, and he couldn't stand the thought of dragging her into it from across the ocean. But the words won't come and they get stuck somewhere behind his ribs, tangled up with all the other things he'll never say.

"I know," he replies, instead. "I'm sorry."

Svetlana exhales, and Ilya hears it clearly. "Ilyusha, can you please talk to me? As much as I love when you're quiet, I don't fucking love it right now."

"Nothing is going on." He scratches absently at his wrist, just where the hives are sitting clustered on his skin. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit." She scoffs. "I saw your fucking search history."

Ilya freezes, his hand stopping mid-scratch. "Why the fuck would you go through my phone?"

"Because you left it open on your bed when you went to the bathroom last week, and I got curious."

There's no apology in her tone.

"I was just researching some bullshit," he tries, but even he doesn't believe it. "Why did you look at it?"

"Because you're self-destructive, Ilya." Her voice cracks on his name. "Because you hate yourself enough to ruin every little good thing in your life. You're probably sitting in your dorm right now, fucked up beyond belief, feeling sorry for yourself while you put yourself in that situation, boo-fucking-hoo."

The words are rotten and cruel, but they’re the truth and they make Ilya’s chest burn, ugly and pulsing anger rising up to protect him from both.

"So what?" His voice comes out cruel, anger flaring underneath his ribs. "You believe in soulmates now, Sveta? Is that what you're saying?"

He expects her to snap back. To match his cruelty with her own because that's how it usually goes between them, push and pull, bite and bleed, but she doesn't. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet, with a touch of wistfulness.

"I don't know what to believe, Ilyushka." He hears her exhale. He can tell she’s confused, as if she’s remembering sudden details, memories folded over and over. "But I remember... your mama talking about it once. When we were kids. She said some people are tied together by something you can't see… she would always quote this movie I think, something to do with soulmates."

Ilya inhales and exhales, chest contracting, fingers tingling. Sometimes, he feels like he’s drowning.

"I always thought it was folklore, you know?" Svetlana continues. "Even if we heard about it all our lives… just thought it was one of those weird old myths that passed on from generation to generation. But it’s true… isn’t it?"

He doesn’t answer.

"I don't know," he finally says, voice thick and wet. "All I know is that I feel like shit ever since he stopped talking to me."

"I don’t know if it’s true," Svetlana sighs, and then lets out a wistful laugh. "And to be honest with you, it sounds like a load of bullshit, like one of those alien conspiracy theories Wyatt believes in. But if it is true, then maybe you should do something about it… you fucking piece of shit," Svetlana says, but there's no venom in it, just frustration and exhaustion, as if she’s tired on Ilya’s behalf.

"Maybe," Ilya murmurs, not knowing what else to say.

When Svetlana speaks again, her voice is so tender that it makes Ilya's eyes sting. "Ilyusha, you deserve love." She says it like a fact, like it’s something he has no right to argue with. "You're good, you always have been. And I wish you were kinder to yourself." She pauses, and he hears her swallow. "He's lucky, you know… to have that tie to you."

"Sveta—"

"No, you fucking listen." Her voice hardens, but it's still too brittle and thin to Ilya’s ears. She’s trying, he can tell, despite the way her tone slightly shakes in place. "I don’t want to get another call from Andrei, Ilya. I don’t want to know that you let yourself shrivel away because you were too much of a coward. So… if you don't get your shit together in the next four days, four days,Ilya, I will send that link to Hollander."

Ilya's blood runs cold. "You can't do that."

"Watch me." She's not bluffing. He can hear it in her voice, that iron core she's always had, the one that comes out when she makes up her mind. "You think I want to? You think I would rather watch you burn yourself alive because you’re a self-destructive piece of shit?"

Ilya says nothing.

"Get off your fucking ass," Svetlana says, each word chosen carefully, seething anger barely being held back between her teeth, "and do something about it. You have four days, Ilya. That’s all I’m giving you."

She takes a deep breath and the line crackles with static on her end. "I will see you on Monday. And when I knock, you better answer, because you will be going to your afternoon class, even if I have to drag you by your fucking locks myself."

She hangs up before he can respond.

જ⁀➴

When Wednesday comes around, it's two days into Svetlana's deadline. She doesn't bring it up when she knocks on Ilya's door at 11 in the afternoon. She guides him to the shower—turns the water on herself, adjusts the temperature—and pushes him under the spray. She applies balm to his hives with gentle hands, muttering curses under her breath the whole time.

"You're an idiot," she says, not unkindly. "A complete and utter moron."

Ilya lets her, she’s right anyway, and he doesn't have the energy to argue.

She packs his bag, drags him to his afternoon class, and reprimands him for everything he's done to get to this moment—the isolation, the self-destruction, the way he let himself rot instead of reaching out—how he pushed Shane away. Her voice is rough, but her hands are gentle when they brush his hair out of his eyes, and Ilya almost breaks right there in the middle of the hallway.

In a way, he knows he needed this, a push, a shove, something to break the inertia of his own misery. Because there's a part of him that doesn't want to reach out and beg for forgiveness, a part that truly believes he doesn't deserve Shane, that Shane is better off without him, that the illness as a result of his actions is just the universe correcting a mistake. But there's a bigger part of him, one that wants happiness, one that loves Shane with a desperate, aching kind of love that refuses to die no matter how hard Ilya tries to smother it; that there’s a part of him that wants to burrow into Shane’s ribs and never leave, that wants to give the connection a chance, even if inevitable happiness is not guaranteed.

Because having Shane, even for a second, was enough in Ilya's books. It had to be, if it was all he was ever going to get. He didn’t want to hope that he might get more. So, when Svetlana takes him to his afternoon class, he goes. He sits in the back, takes notes and tries to remember what took place in class two weeks ago. When he comes back home, he drinks some water. He eats something measly, and when Troy comes back after his classes, Ilya side-hugs him in front of the door.

It scares Troy enough that he freezes, eyes wide, and asks if Ilya is dying. Ilya almost laughs, because well, wouldn’t it be funny? If he said yes? He doesn't. He just shakes his head, offers something that's close to a crooked smile and retreats to his room.

That night, because the world is cruel and not nice, his phone buzzes. Ilya stares at the screen as Shane's name glows up at him. He thinks he's hallucinating for a second—his brain playing tricks on him, conjuring what he wants most out of sheer desperation—but the phone keeps buzzing, and he picks up after three rings, bringing the phone to his ear with a hand that's shaking.

Shane cuts right to the chase. His voice is frayed and ragged, like he’s impatient and frankly, done with Ilya’s shit. "Does it hurt for you as well?"

Ilya's eyebrows furrow. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm fucking talking about, you fucking asshole," Shane spits out. Ilya’s stomach churns and churns.

In the background, he hears the noise that can only be a bar, and he thinks it's probably one of those discreet spots Hayden and Jackie prefer. He doesn't ask why Shane is drinking, already knowing this is his fault. He wants to fix things, wants to comfort him, wants to give Shane whatever he's asking for, whatever he needs, whatever will make that ragged edge in his voice smooth out even a little, like a balm to a wound. But he's never been good at that. He's never been good at giving people what they need. He only knows how to take and break and push away.

He clears his throat. "Are you drunk?"

Shane scoffs and Ilya doesn’t say anything, he just waits for him to answer, counting the seconds in his head. Ilya reaches one hundred and forty before Shane exhales loudly down the line.

"Does it matter?" Shane asks finally.

"Just tell me, Shane."

Shane inhales deeply, "obviously," the word is clipped but beneath it, Ilya catches a tremor. He feels like a piece of shit. "Now answer my question."

Ilya doesn't know how to. The truth lodges in his throat, thick and suffocating, a stone he can't swallow and can't spit out. It does. It's been hurting since I left. But the words stay trapped, refusing to surface, tangled up with all the other things he's too afraid to say.

"Shane," he says gently, "you should go home."

Shane laughs, but it sounds more like a sarcastic little giggle that makes Ilya's stomach twist even more and more. "I came out with Hayden and Jackie, before exams started… I think they’re in the washroom right now, actually. Probably making out or something, who knows. Besides, it's a great way to forget about shitty guys, right?" The laugh that follows is flat, like Shane is so done with Ilya's shit, he doesn't even know what else to do with himself. Ilya swallows hard, bile rising in the back of his throat, hot and acrid.

"You know," Shane begins, and his voice trembles now. Ilya can imagine the way his bottom lip wobbles, "you have this habit of ignoring questions you don't have the answer to, Rozanov."

The words land like a punch to the gut. Ilya presses the heel of his hand against his temple hard, as if the pressure might force clarity into his spiraling thoughts. The sting of Shane's words cuts deeper than he wants to admit, as if the truth he's spent years burying is finally clawing its way to the surface.

Ilya exhales shakily, swallowing against the lump in his throat. His eyes sting and his skin burns. "What do you want me to say, Shane?"

"I don't know." Shane's voice cracks. "Maybe that you're fucking sorry?"

"I am, Shane." The words come out raw, stripped of all pretense. Ilya is so, so tired. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He hears Shane inhale and exhale; once, twice, thrice, before it comes out ragged. "Then why," Shane says slowly, each word deliberate, "did you push me away?"

Ilya closes his eyes and his chest concaves until it’s hard to breathe. He wants to explain, wants to tell Shane the connection, about the hives, about the voice in his head that sounds like his father and tells him he's too much, always too much, never enough, a burden disguised as a person. He wants to say that he pushed Shane away because he was terrified of being seen as a weight to carry, and in doing so, he became exactly that.

"Why haven't you said it yet?" Shane continues on. "Or done anything about it yet?"

"I didn't want to make it worse." The words come out small and pathetic and even to Ilya's own ears, they sound like an excuse.

"You can't really make it worse." Shane replies, a small hiccup coming through. Ilya wonders how many glasses of beer he drank, knowing he’s a lightweight. "Especially after how you ended it. It was really fucking shitty, you know that right?"

"I know." Ilya says, resigned. He sighs. "Shane... is Pike with you? Maybe go home… yes?"

"You don't tell me what the fuck to do." Shane's voice cuts through. "You lost that right when you walked out my fucking door like a coward."

"Shane—"

Shane sighs, and it sounds wet and thick and Ilya hates himself more and more. "You know, Svetlana sent me the link. To the website you didn't want me to find."

Ilya's blood runs cold. The air leaves his lungs in a rush, and for a moment, he can't speak, can't think, can't do anything but feel the sting of betrayal cutting through. Svetlana lied to him, she promised him four days, she promised him a chance to fix this himself. And instead, she went behind his back and handed Shane the one thing Ilya had been trying to hide.

But even as the anger flares hot in his chest, it’s not directed at Svetlana, not really, not when he knows: You weren't going to do anything, Ilyusha. You were going to let yourself rot. You needed to be pushed.

He hates that she's right.

"What?" He whispers.

"Yeah, you asshole." Shane bitterly laughs. "It was really fucking interesting to find out that we're soulmates; souls tied or whatever. Imagine my surprise when I read the ending, though, that soulmate-bonded cases can deteriorate, physically and emotionally." His voice cracks on the last word. "Imagine my fucking surprise when I realize that's why I've been feeling like shit, why my head hurts, why I have hives clustering on my skin. Because you fucking decided to make decisions for the both of us."

"Shane—"

"No. Fuck you, Rozanov." Shane's voice breaks, raw and ragged and Ilya quickly realizes that Shane is holding back tears. "Who told you that you can make decisions by yourself? Who said you have the right to decide what I can and can't handle?"

"I didn't want you to feel like I was—" Ilya stops. The words tangle in his throat, thick and useless, lodged somewhere between his heart and his voice. His own eyes burn and his vision blurs. He blinks rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall.

"Like you were what?" Shane's voice is trembling now, "come on, say it. A fucking burden, right?"

"I’m so sorry, Shane."

"You were never dependent on me, Ilya." Shane says after a while, exhaling like a deflated balloon. "Hell, if you were, I never would have slept with you. I wouldn't have..." He trails off, and Ilya hears him suck at his bottom lip. "I wouldn't have liked you the way that I do. But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? You ended shit anyway."

The words hurt right where they need to, Ilya feeling like his skin is being pulled back. He wants to reach through the phone and grab Shane by the shoulders and shake him, wants to tell him that it does matter, that it matters more than anything, that he ended things because he was terrified and scared, but that through it all, he wants Shane more than anything, he knows that now.

"I'm sorry." His voice comes out desperate, choked and wet. "I… let's talk, okay? Anything, let's have a conversation. We can figure something out, yes?"

"Ilya."

"No, I’m so sorry, you’re right, yes? I am terrible and mean, and I was an asshole, for what I said that day. You are so much more than a quick fuck, maybe… maybe for a long time, but I was so scared to be a burden to you. But I want to try, to make this up to you, please let me try."

Please let me make it up to you, please. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.

Shane huffs.

"Goodbye, Ilya."

"Shane, sweetheart, please just—"

But before Ilya can gather his thoughts, before he can even manage to form another word, the line goes dead.

જ⁀➴

Ilya keeps messaging him. Over and over again, throughout the night, even as the hours stretch into early morning. His thumb moves before his brain can catch up, typing and sending, typing and sending, a desperate flood of words after words.

The last message from Shane stares up at him and Ilya refuses to accept it. The alternative is sitting in the silence and accepting that he's lost Shane forever, and that thought is more unbearable than any rejection Shane could throw at him. So, he tries calling. He tries again, and again, and again, until Shane has rejected it a total of four times. By the fifth attempt, Troy appears in his doorway, bleary-eyed and concerned. He doesn't ask questions, he just walks over, gently pries the phone from Ilya's shaking fingers, and sets it on the nightstand out of reach.

"Give yourself a minute, man," Troy says quietly, and Ilya wants to argue, wants to snatch the phone back and keep trying. But he doesn't have the energy. He just nods and lets Troy sit beside him in the dark.

Once Troy goes back to his room, Ilya messages Hayden, something Ilya has never done privately outside of groupchats. He asks Hayden to get Shane home safely. When Hayden responds, it's short and blunt: fuck off and stop messaging. Ilya deserves that. Thirty minutes later, Jackie messages him: He's okay. He's safe and tucked in bed, fast asleep.

Ilya reads the words three times and almost cries with relief.

The next day, Ilya decides he's done being a coward.

He spends the morning rehearsing words that he will probably stumble through and buys a bouquet of daisies. He holds them in his trembling hands, stems wrapped in recyclable paper.

He corners Shane after class. His heart is pounding hard, his palms are sweating and the hives on his neck are flaring up again, hot and angry. He ignores everything.

"I brought you these," Ilya says, offering the bouquet. "I know I don't deserve—"

"Fuck off, Rozanov." Shane cuts him off coldly before shoving past him, shoulder-checking him hard enough to make him stumble. And then he's gone, weaving through the crowd, leaving Ilya standing there alone with daisies in his hands.

He tries again the next day.

He picks up Shane’s favourite salmon rice bowl from the local shop near campus, then makes his way to the clinic where Shane works on Tuesdays. It’s something he used to do every now and then, back when they’d meet up after classes and shifts, and Ilya would swing by to grab Shane after his last lecture or the end of his workday. The first few times, Shane told him to knock it off, embarrassed when his coworkers and classmates started asking if he and Ilya were together. Ilya still remembers the way Shane stammered out a flustered, “Yeah, no, for sure,” when someone asked, leaving everyone more confused than before. But even as he told Ilya to stop, he’d still lean in for a soft kiss when he saw him, cheeks flushed pink.>

This time, when Ilya shows up at his workplace—timing it perfectly with Shane’s lunch break that he takes out in the courtyard—Shane’s expression drops. Ilya pretends not to notice, forces a smile, and keeps walking forward. He stops right in front of him, tilting his mouth into a crooked grin.

"I got you lunch," Ilya says, holding up the bag. "Salmon bowl with brown rice, yes?"

Shane furrows his brow, his gaze flicking to the bag, then to the lunch already laid out in front of him. "I already have lunch."

Ilya frowns. "I mean… yes, I can see that. But you could eat this for dinner?"

Shane rolls his eyes and turns back to the book resting beside him. "I’m good, Rozanov."

"I even got the dressing on the side," Ilya adds, hopeful. "The way you like it." Shane hums in acknowledgment, but doesn't look up.

Ilya swallows hard, his palms clammy against the takeout bag. "I also just want to say that I'm sorry. And I know I should have told you what was going on." The words come out tangled, tripping over each other. "It was wrong of me to hide it, and if I could take it back—"

"Would you?"

Ilya's brow furrows, confused. "Of course, Shane."

"No, I mean," Shane finally turns to face him, his expression carefully blank. Ilya hates when Shane can shutter himself away like that, especially when he needs to read him the most. "Are you sorry because you actually hurt me? Or are you just sorry now because Svetlana outed you?"

Ilya’s face scrunches because of the accusation, but he can’t fault Shane for it. The question just sits in his chest, squeezing his ribs too tight, and making his throat feel way too dry. "I'm sorry that I hurt you," he says, “is the only reason."

Shane lets out a small sigh, furrowing his eyebrows as his lips pull into a small frown. "Were you going to tell me at all?"

Ilya blinks, stung. "Of course I was."

"I don't believe you."

And English is a stupid, useless language because Ilya's mind goes blank the second Shane responds, every word he's ever known slipping through his fingers like water. So he does the only thing he can to divert the damage that’s taking place. He directs all his thoughts at Shane.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please believe me for that, if you can't believe me on anything else. I never wanted to hurt you, Shane. And maybe I don't know if I would have been brave enough to tell you on my own, maybe I'm a coward who needed to be forced like a child, but if I could go back, God, if I could go back and undo all of it, I would. But this stupid world only gave me telepathy when it comes to my soulmate and not time travel, so all I have left is this: I will apologize every single day if I have to. Every morning, every night, until you believe me—

"I'm tired, Ilya." Shane's voice wavers. His eyes are glassy now, threatening to spill over, and Ilya feels his own throat close up at the image. "Please, just fuck off."

So, Ilya leaves.

He walks away with his tail between his legs, the salmon bowl still clutched in his hand. Because it's impossible to keep fighting when the person you're begging for forgiveness is looking up at you with tears clinging to their eyes. Ilya doesn’t want to hurt him any more.

That night, he sends Shane a Snickers bar. He doesn't deliver it himself, he knows better than that after the shit show that happened this morning, thank you; instead, he enlists Harris, someone Shane wouldn't immediately reject. When Harris reports back that all Shane did was frown at it but didn't throw it away, Ilya accepts it as a win. Even if it’s tiny.

Encouraged by that stubborn spark of hope, Ilya does something he should have done days ago, he opens his doors. He unlatches the barrier he'd built around his side of the connection—the one he slammed shut when he was too scared to let Shane see how much he needed him—and lets his thoughts flow through freely. He doesn't ask Shane to take his down, he just lets his thoughts flow and lets Shane listen in to whatever he wants. He hopes Shane understands that Ilya wants him to know that he won't run anymore, not now, even if it might already be too late.

Three nights later, Shane finally replies. It happens when Ilya is hunched over his desk, working through a stats problem when Shane’s voice filters in.

The answer is 12.

Ilya's pencil freezes, and then, as if Shane is waiting for him to react, he replies. He knows Shane can feel it; the sudden warmth that floods through him, the fuzziness that drifts over his thoughts from how happy Ilya suddenly is. Ilya isn’t trying to hide it.

Oh, yes, I was getting to that. I knew it was 12.

As if. You've always been bad at math, Rozanov.

Ilya's lips twitch, even if the use of his last name sends a small sting right to his chest.

Well, that's not true. I got a 92 per cent on my last stats test.

Is that right? Was it on D2L? Did you cheat?

And Ilya immediately knows Shane is skeptical. He can picture it perfectly, the way Shane is probably crossing his arms, maybe even furrowing his eyebrows, waiting for Ilya to answer. God, Ilya is so, so fond of him. The thought hits him like a punch to the chest and he huffs out an incredulous laugh.

How could you accuse me of cheating, Hollander? Ilya replies, warmth bleeding into his thoughts and letting Shane be enveloped in a warm blanket, like someone placing gooey cheese on warm bread. I would never. I'm a good boy.

He feels a hint of fuzziness brushing back against his own mind in response, as if Shane is laughing at the thought of Ilya being a good student. But before Ilya can soak himself in the feeling, Shane leaves as quietly as he came in, the door closing behind him. The hum of Shane's thoughts fades, retreating back behind whatever walls he's still holding up and Ilya is alone again, pencil still in hand.

He doesn’t push.

Truthfully, Ilya should have expected things to get worse. Life doesn't follow your plans, no matter how hard you try, no matter how desperately you try to force the universe into compliance. So when he finds out—three days later, completely out of nowhere—that Shane is about to go on a date with someone else, his brain goes static.

"What the fuck do you mean Shane is going on a date with someone?" The words burst out of him, voice rising with every syllable until Wyatt is scrunching his face with something that looks painfully like pity.

"I don't know, man." Wyatt shrugs, clearly uncomfortable. "I just overheard Rose telling Shane to dress cute when this guy comes around."

Ilya blinks repeatedly, his brain running a mile a minute, thoughts crashing into each other like a multi-collision car crash. "What time?"

"What time, what?"

Ilya groans, throwing his hands up in frustration. "The date, Wyatt, for fucks sake!"

"I'm not sure?" Wyatt offers weakly, shrinking back slightly.

God, Ilya wants to kill him. He stares at Wyatt, feels his left eye twitch and feels something hot and ugly coiling in his chest. He immediately knows it’s desperation, jealousy, an animalistic possessiveness he has no right to feel at the moment but can't seem to shake. Because Shane is his.

And then, because he's desperate and mad and sad and vehemently jealous, he pulls out his phone and messages Shane before his brain can catch up.

Ilya groans, dropping his head. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He's going about this all the wrong way. He knows he is. He sounds controlling, possessive and unhinged, but fuck, this sucks and his chest is concaving and the thought of Shane going on a date with someone else literally makes him want to throw up, curl up into a ball and cry.

But he's also mad. Because what the hell? He's Shane's soulmate. They're tied together, why the hell is Shane going on a date with another guy? What the fuck is going on? His chest burns and the hives on his neck pulse with heat, and he scratches at them absently, not even noticing the sting. He stares at the screen and feels the weight of his own stupidity pressing down on him.

God, he’s so fucking stupid.

Two hours later, after Ilya has stewed and stewed in his own stupidity, his phone buzzes with an incoming call. Shane's name glows on the screen and Ilya stares at it, heart hammering. He doesn't know if Shane is calling to yell at him, to officially end whatever thing still exists between them, or to tell Ilya to leave his life forever because he's found someone new, possibly another, better, soulmate. He probably sounds insane right now. He knows he does. But it's hard to be anything else when it comes to Shane Hollander. Shane has always made him crazy.

He picks up the phone.

"Hello?" He says, cautiously, as if he’s subconsciously preparing himself for some fallback.

At first, there's nothing. Just faint noises on the other end; a static hum, distant and indecipherable, too muffled to make sense of. Ilya frowns, pulls the phone away to check the connection, then presses it back to his ear. "Shane?"

And then he hears a moan, and his blood immediately turns to ice. His mind scrambles to make sense of it, heart stuttering in his chest, lungs seizing mid-breath. He would recognize this sound anywhere, with his eyes closed, breath held and ears muffled. He's memorized it, has felt the way Shane's chest dips when he moans soft and breathy, the way his skin shudders and arches when Ilya hits his prostate just right, the way his fingers dig into Ilya's shoulders and his thighs tremble around Ilya's waist.

Oh god.

He thinks he's going to throw up.

Bile rises in the back of his throat as the sound spills through the speaker again; a drawn out whine that curls around Ilya's spine and squeezes. His grip tightens around the phone, knuckles white, as the truth sinks in like tar, filling every corner of his mind. Shane wants him to hear every noise and every moan that escapes through the line, it's all intentional, a punishment, really. His chest tightens and the air around him suddenly feels thick, like ooey-gooey tar and he's drowning on dry land. He should hang up, he knows he should, because every rational part of his brain is screaming at him to end the call, to protect whatever fragments of himself are left.

But his hand won't move.

The phone stays pressed against his ear, as if some dark, masochistic part of him is compelling him to stay and to listen in. Shane's voice cracks through the line again, breathless and whiny, punctuated by a sob that sounds too much like Ilya's name. Or maybe that's just his imagination, maybe he's hearing what he wants to hear. He listens to the sound of the phone shifting, imagines Shane adjusting his grip, imagines him sprawled out somewhere—bed, couch, shower, it doesn't matter—and feels sick when he imagines someone else there with Shane, besides him. He hears Shane take in a shuddering breath, and then, listens in on the sound of squelching lube.

He can picture it too vividly. Shane's head thrown back, throat exposed, mouth parted around sounds Ilya has only ever heard when they were tangled up together. Shane's fingers moving inside himself, Shane's thighs trembling, hips rocking, cock leaking against his stomach, Shane stretched open on someone else’s cock.

And the worst part, the part that makes Ilya's vision blur with tears he refuses to let fall, is that he can't tell if someone else is there with Shane, or if Shane is alone, putting on a performance just for him. He can't tell if this is real or if Shane is just fucking with him, punishing him in the most brutal way possible. He can’t tell when he listens in on Shane’s breathing quicking, when he hears the pitch of his moans rise, when he hears him cum.

He can’t tell even when the line goes quiet and he waits, because he doesn’t know if Shane’s trying to hurt him, or punish him, or force him to act. Maybe it’s all three. He doesn’t know.

The call ends.

And Ilya doesn’t call back.

જ⁀➴

When the brain makes a decision, it happens in milliseconds to seconds, depending on the complexity of the choice. Simple, automatic reactions take only about 0.15 to 0.25 seconds. Studies reveal that the subconscious brain predicts your choices seconds before you actually realize you've made them. Your conscious mind simply catches up to the decision already in motion, already racing ahead of you.

Ilya makes his decision in 0.15 seconds. He doesn't call Shane back, instead, he gets up, puts on his shoes and walks out the door like he's in a trance, limbs moving on autopilot, brain still stuck on the sound of Shane moaning. He walks the twenty minute terrain to Shane's apartment and his feet carry him on autopilot. He walks into the building because he still has the third set of keys Shane gave him months ago and he just walks right up the stairs and stands right outside Shane's apartment door.

His heart is pounding so hard he can hear it in his ears. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself and knocks. The door swings open, and Ilya is immediately met with Hayden's scowl.

"What the fuck do you want, Rozanov?" Hayden's voice is ice, his jaw is clenched tight, and his arms are crossed; body blocking the door.

"Where is Shane?" Ilya asks, forcing his voice to stay steady even as his hands tremble at his sides. His eyes keep flicking past Hayden, searching for any sign of Shane.

"And why the fuck should I tell you?" Hayden steps forward, blocking the doorway with his body. Ilya almost wants to laugh, despite everything. Hayden Pike is so fucking ridiculous, standing there like a guard dog, like he has any idea what's actually going on between them. "Hell, you shouldn't even be near him right now. Not with the way he's been recently."

"Pike, you don't know shit, alright?" The words come out desperate, and Ilya's gaze keeps drifting past Hayden to Shane's closed door at the end of the hall. "Just let me speak to him."

Hayden scoffs, crossing his arms tighter. "Obviously not. No one is telling me shit besides that you ghosted his ass weeks ago. And suddenly he's sick, and he went drinking a few days ago with Jackie and I, which he never does—" Hayden's voice catches, just slightly. "It’s like you broke his fucking heart, asshole."

The words hit him like a physical blow, each one landing in a place that's already raw and bleeding. But he can also feel the anger building in his chest, hot and volatile, mixing with the desperation and the fear and the sick, jealous ache that's been eating him alive since that phone call. He kind of wants to punch Pike in the face. He kind of wants to scream. He kind of wants to fall to his knees and beg.

"Pike, if you don't move from the door right now and let me come in so I can beat this new guy's ass," Ilya says, "I will punch you in the throat."

Hayden blinks and his scowl falters, replaced by genuine confusion. His hands fall to his sides. "What new guy? Huh? Dude, no one’s he—"

But Ilya is already moving. He shoves past Hayden—shoulder-checking him just enough to get through—and kicks off his shoes in the entryway. Even now, even with his heart pounding and his hands shaking, he wouldn't dare track dirt into Shane's apartment, not when Shane is already mad at him. His heart is slamming against his ribs, his palms are slick with sweat, and his skin is on fire, the hives on his neck and wrists pulsing with heat. He walks up to Shane’s door and knocks.

Nothing happens. So, he knocks again, and again, and again. Hayden just stands there in the hallway, watching him as if Ilya is an animal in an exhibit. And then, finally, the door rips open. Shane stands in the doorway, scowling, lips pink and set in a deep-set frown. His eyes are slightly swollen, his hair is a mess, shirt rumpled, but he looks like he's been through hell and back, and somehow, impossibly, Ilya thinks he's the most beautiful person in the entire world. Even when Shane is looking at him in anger, with all that hurt and betrayal blazing in his eyes, when Ilya knows he's the reason for every single bit of it; Shane is a beauty.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Shane asks, his eyebrows furrowing.

Ilya blinks and because he’s kind of a dumbass, his brain short-circuits. And because he has no filter, because the urge to rip Shane apart and burrow right underneath his heart grows and grows, his mind just... spills over. It filters out nothing, not even a thing and lays down his emotions raw and whole at Shane’s feet.

God, you're so fucking beautiful.

The thought escapes before he can stop it, crashing through the connection like a wave. He feels it hit Shane, sees it in the way Shane's breath hitches, the way his cheeks flush a deep red despite the anger still blazing in his eyes. Shane is mad. Truly, understandably hurt and upset at what Ilya did. But he's also putty underneath Ilya's hands, always has been, always will be, and the knowledge makes Ilya's heart ache with a desperate tenderness.

"Shut the fuck up," Shane says, his voice wavering. The scowl on his lips deepens, but the flush on his cheeks betrays him.

Ilya doesn't shut up.

"I mean it," he continues, because he’s a pathetic idiot in love. "You're so fucking beautiful, Shane. Even when you hate me, even when you want to kill me… actually, especially then."

Shane's eyes glisten, his jaw working like he's chewing on words he doesn’t quite know how to say. "You're so fucking irritating."

"I know." Ilya says, tone syrupy and sweet, as if he’s talking to a wounded animal. "I'm an idiot, yes? Emotions are very hard for me, you know this, sweetheart. You've always known this."

He swallows. "And I know I don't deserve you. I know I have no right to ask for anything after what I did. But I am here anyway, Shane. And I know you have every right to move on and date a nicer guy, someone who isn't a coward, someone who won't run when things get hard… even if we’re soulmates, but I would never stop you, okay, but also… please don't do that, alright?"

His voice cracks, and he shakes his head. "It kind of feels like I'm getting finger-blasted and not in a sexy way and—"

Shane cuts him off, holding back a small laugh, despite still being mad at Ilya. "No one's here."

Ilya blinks, brain short-circuiting. "What?"

"That's what I was trying to tell you, asshole," Hayden chimes in from the hallway, arms now crossed once again, expression sour.

Shane doesn't even turn to look at Hayden, his eyes still trained on Ilya. "Hayden, go the fuck to your room."

"Shane—"

"Now."

Hayden holds up his hands in surrender, muttering something under his breath as he retreats down the hallway. The door to his room clicks shut, and suddenly it's just the two of them. Shane grabs Ilya's wrist—fingers wrapping around the pulse point where his heart is hammering out of control—and pulls him inside the room. The door slams shut behind them, and Ilya finds himself standing in the middle of Shane's bedroom. Shane doesn't let go of his wrist. His grip is tight, almost bruising, but Ilya doesn’t say anything.

"No one was here," Shane says again, quieter this time. "I was alone. I called you and I—" His cheeks flush a deeper red, and he ducks his head, suddenly unable to meet Ilya's eyes. He lets out a huff, as if he’s embarrassed of what he did. "I was fucking myself, alright? Wanted to... get back at you for pissing me the fuck off."

"Oh." Ilya's voice comes out soft, etched with surprise. His eyes flicker across Shane's face, tracing the flush spreading down his neck, the way he's biting his bottom lip, the way he's looking anywhere but at Ilya now.

"You just—" Shane shakes his head, frustration bleeding into his words. "You pissed me off so fucking bad when you thought I was about to go out with someone else. Like why the fuck would I do that, Ilya? And then your texts and—" He stops and inhales. "You made me so fucking angry."

"I know." Ilya's voice cracks. "I'm sorry. It was stupid and I wasn't thinking, and I was just so..." He trails off, searching for the right word and coming up empty. "Fuck. Why is it so hard to communicate?"

Shane lets out a wistful laugh, shaking his head as he watches Ilya rub his face in frustration. "We're really fucking bad at communicating, aren't we? Even with telepathy and all."

Ilya's lips twitch into a crooked smile as he watches Shane laugh. "Yeah, we are."

Shane's eyes flicker across his face.

Try like this again? Just like old times?

Yes, Ilya thinks back, nodding. Please.

Okay. Shane says, smiling. His eyes are still swollen, his cheeks still flushed, brown freckles scattered across his cheekbones. Grovel on.

Ilya huffs out a laugh, his smile turning reflective of Shane’s.

I'm sorry.

He takes a deep breath. The words that have been building in his chest for weeks and months spill out over and over.

I'm so, so sorry for what I said that day. I'm sorry for telling you that you were just a quick fuck. That we were nothing but fuck buddies and that you meant nothing to me. I’m sorry that I implied that you were stupid, or slow, because that's so far from the truth. You’re one of the smartest people I know… it sometimes scares me, you know, that I might be too stupid for you. Everything was a lie, and it hurt to say it, and it was just me being a pathetic son of a bitch because I think I wanted you from the first second we met, actually. When you shook my hand at Rose Landry's party, and all I could focus on were your freckles.

He watches Shane's expression soften, eyes wide and doe-like, as he continues staring at Ilya. Ilya wishes that he could count Shane’s eyelashes.

Reading about the connection was the worst fucking thing ever. Because I didn't want to be seen as a burden to you, Shane. Not when I wanted you more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. Not when the thought of you looking at me and seeing someone exhausting, someone too much, someone not worth the effort terrified me more than anything.

He takes a shuddering breath.

I want to make you happy. I want to maybe get a dog with you—or a cat, whatever you want, but a dog, please. I want to sleep next to you and wake up right beside you. I want to be one of those soul-bonded pairs that are inevitably happy, because I never want to make you sad, Shane. I know how it feels to be sad, and it's not fun. It's not what you deserve.

His eyes burn, and tears sit at the edge of his lines.

I'm sorry you got sick because of me. I'm sorry I tried rejecting the connection even when all you wanted to do was understand it. I'm so fucking sorry, Shane. And I will get on my knees and grovel for an eternity if it means you will give me another chance.

"я тебя люблю," Ilya breathes out, the words falling from his lips like a revelation. His body chooses to say it out loud and he thanks god that he did, because Shane deserves to hear it fall from his lips.

Shane's exhales, eyes widening, all glossy and wet. "What?" he whispers.

"Fuck, I love you, Shane. I've loved you for so long I don't remember what it feels like not to."

And then, because Ilya is on a roll and he desperately needs Shane to understand how he feels, words spill out of him in a rush and he can’t stop, can’t hold back the torrent of apologies and confessions tumbling over each other in a tangled mess. Every sentence is raw, a jumble of emotions laid bare, his feelings splayed on a silver platter for Shane to take or leave. He apologizes and apologizes once again, and the words crack under the weight of his guilt, but they keep coming because they have to.

"I’m here," Shane says firmly, his voice steady when he sees Ilya shaking. He guides him by the wrist to his bed, pushing Ilya down and climbing onto his lap. His thighs press snugly against Ilya’s sides, grounding them both. He cups Ilya’s face with both hands, his palms warm against his cheeks, thumbs gently brushing the corners of his lips. His doe-eyes meet Ilya’s, a faint flush colouring his cheeks, freckles painted across his skin. "I’m here, breathe, Ilya."

Ilya exhales and inhales, once, twice, three times, the fourth pressed against the skin of Shane’s palm.

"I’m sorry too," Shane says softly. "I was so afraid of losing you that I did everything I could to keep you close, even when it meant being cruel towards the end." His laugh is bitter, but it’s clear the bitterness is aimed solely at himself.

"Nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart," Ilya murmurs, leaning into Shane’s touch, letting his eyes close as relief spreads through him. Maybe they’ve both made mistakes, one more so than the other, but Ilya can’t help but be thankful that he’s given a second chance.

"Shane," Ilya breathes, lips pressed to Shane’s left palm. "I love you. I’m in love with you."

Shane’s smile blooms slowly, starting small before lighting up his entire face. It’s the kind of smile that makes Ilya’s heart stutter.

"Good," Shane murmurs, his voice soft and syrupy, like honey. "Because I’m in love with you too."

"Can I kiss you?" Ilya asks, voice thick with desperation. His eyes search Shane’s pleadingly, as though everything he’s ever wanted is suspended in this moment, hanging on his answer.

"Yes," Shane breathes, so soft it’s almost a sigh, but there’s no hesitation, he has always welcomed Ilya in. "Please."

Ilya surges forward, closing the distance between them like a man starved. His hands rise to cup Shane's face with a reverence that borders on holy, and he tilts Shane's head down gently, and presses his lips to his.

At first, he pecks him—once, twice, three times—soft and slow, as if testing that this is real. When Shane exhales against the press of his mouth, he pulls Shane's bottom lip between his teeth, and curls his tongue around Shane's own. Ilya's fingers slide back, threading through Shane's hair, tangling in the soft strands at the nape of his neck. He pulls him closer, his grip tightening as he goes. Shane responds with equal intensity, clutching at Ilya's shoulders, nails biting through the fabric of his shirt.

Their lips move together, messy and slick, spit glistening at the corners of their mouths, ignored completely in the haze of it all. Ilya nips at Shane's bottom lip once more, tugging it gently into his mouth, savouring the softness, the slight give of it, until Shane releases a breathless whine that goes straight to Ilya's gut. Shane's body instinctively leans forward, hips rolling down against Ilya's clothed cock in a slow grind that makes Ilya's vision blur.

His hands shake as they slide over Shane's back, tracing the familiar curve of his spine, before settling on his waist. His grip tightens, fingers digging in with a possessiveness that borders on desperation—as if he's trying to ground himself in the reality of Shane being here, of Shanewantinghim here—as his hands drift lower, tracing the outline of Shane's thighs.

Shane meets him with fervor, his hips rolling just enough to make Ilya's grip on his thighs tighten to the point of bruising. Their mouths move together, the kiss turning slick and feverish. Ilya's gut churns with a desperate want that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with Shane. Shane tilts his head, nipping at Ilya's top lip before wrapping his own lips around Ilya's tongue, sucking him in with a slow, slick pull that makes Ilya's knees go weak. His hands fumble at the hem of Ilya's shirt, desperate for skin.

"Ilya," Shane breathes into Ilya's mouth, his voice wrecked, the sound sending a shiver down Ilya's spine that settles deep in his bones.

His grip tightens at the way Shane says his name, his hands sliding to Shane's hips, fingers digging into the sharp jut of bone. And then, with effortless ease, he flips their positions, pressing Shane back against the mattress, hovering over him. In one fluid motion, Shane is beneath him, sinking into the mattress as Ilya hovers above, their bodies flush from chest to hip. Shane's hands move freely now, slipping under Ilya's shirt, nails dragging over heated skin. The sensation rips a needy groan from Ilya's throat.

Shane's fingers trace the lines of Ilya's ribs, following to the dip of his spine, sliding back to the sharp planes of his stomach, like he's relearning every inch of him. His nails scrape lightly over Ilya's hipbones, and Ilya shudders, his breath catching in his throat, hips twitching.

Shane watches him with wide-blown eyes, pupils swallowing the brown, and his lips slick. "As much as I love making out with you," he murmurs, licking his lips, "can we move this along?

Ilya laughs and presses a quick kiss to Shane's chin. He adds a little tongue—a warm, wet swipe against Shane's skin—and Shane huffs, batting his arm with a half-hearted swat.

"Alright, alright," Ilya murmurs against his jaw, "I know you want me naked, you pervert."

He sits up, straddling Shane's hips, and pulls his shirt over his head in one swift motion. The fabric lands somewhere on the floor as Shane's eyes roam over his chest, drinking in the flushed skin, the hives still scattered across his chest in fading patches. But Ilya doesn't feel the need to scratch anymore. He can already tell the redness is fading, the itching subsiding with every passing second. Getting ill because of soulmate rejection was a ridiculous thing to go through, even more ridiculous is how fast it's disappearing now that they're together again.

Shane's palms reach up, laying flat against Ilya's chest. He feels the frantic beat of Ilya's heart, the warmth of his skin, the rise and fall of his breathing. His fingers shift, tracing the ridges of the fading hives with a tenderness that makes Ilya's chest ache. But Ilya can tell Shane is thinking of something—something not particularly nice—when his eyebrows furrow and his pink lips set into a small frown.

Ilya's hand comes down, his finger pressing into Shane's bottom lip until Shane opens his mouth, tongue swiping against the pad of his finger.

"What are you thinking about?" Ilya asks softly.

Shane blinks, his brown eyes, irises blown wide now, as if swallowing the brown whole, meet Ilya's.

How fucking stupid we are.

His tongue swipes across Ilya's thumb again, before he's sucking it into his mouth. All Ilya can focus on is the wet, soft suction of Shane's mouth, the heat of his tongue, the way his lips close around the digit like he's tasting something sweet. Shane lets go with a soft pop, Ilya’s finger covered in spit, and gives his finger a little nip with his teeth.

"But mostly about how you were so fucking mean that day," Shane murmurs, eyes flickering across Ilya's face from eye to eye. "How you made me feel like nothing."

Ilya’s chest tightens painfully. He knows, on some level, that Shane has forgiven him at least a little. If he had not, he would not be here now. He would not be letting Ilya sit this close, Shane pliant underneath him, being given permission to touch. But forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting and Ilya has said certain things that cannot be taken back. The damage cannot be undone with a single apology, no matter how sincere it is because words can linger and settle into the cracks and take time to fade. Still, when it comes to Shane, Ilya has never minded waiting, he has all the time in the world for Shane.

"I know," Ilya whispers.

His hand drifts down until it settles once more against Shane’s waist. His thumb brushes absent circles through the fabric of his shirt before he slowly works the hem upward, exposing warm skin inch by inch. His gaze follows the movement, fingers brushing over the soft skin of his stomach, the lines of his hipbones, the faint dusting of freckles across his shoulders. Once the shirt is bunched over Shane’s shoulders, he takes it off and tosses it aside. Shane shudders as Ilya presses his palms right underneath the dip of his ribs, where a faded cluster of hives lay. He touches the faded ridges, throat tight with guilt.

"And I will be sorry for it for the rest of my life, sweetheart," Ilya says quietly, the words leaving him on a slow exhale. "Whatever it takes, I'll do it. You only have to ask."

The thoughts spill across their bond before he can stop them, earnest and hopelessly sincere.

You want a house? I'll build it myself, board by board if I have to. You want me to stop cheating on D2L quizzes? Fine. I'll take the zero instead. You want me to spend the next fifty years making this up to you? Done. Whatever you need, Shane. Whatever you ask for, it's yours.

Shane’s cheeks immediately flush a deep pink. The embarrassment blooms through the bond so vividly that Ilya nearly laughs.

"God," Shane mutters.

His hands find their way into Ilya’s curls, threading through them before tugging him closer. The kiss he presses to Ilya’s mouth is softer than the ones before, stripped of the frustration and filled instead with the affection Shane never quite seems capable of putting into words. Ilya melts into it. His hands wander across Shane’s bare skin, tracing familiar paths until his fingers catch on the waistband of Shane’s jeans.

"Yes," Shane breathes against his lips. "Please."

Carefully, Ilya works the button open and pulls the zipper down. His fingers hook into the waistband, easing the jeans down Shane’s legs, with his underwear. As he goes, he presses wet, open-mouthed kisses against newly revealed skin, unable to stop himself from touching or looking; hips, thighs, knees, shins, the skin of his ankles. By the time he reaches Shane's feet, Shane is trembling, his hands fisted in the sheets, his breath coming out in short gasps.

Shane looks at him with half-lidded eyes, pupils blown wide, lips slick and parted. "Take your jeans off, Ilya," he murmurs, "and come fuck me."

Ilya's body moves before his brain catches up. He gets up fast, knees digging into the mattress for leverage, and fumbles with his own jeans. The zipper catches for a moment, and he mutters a curse under his breath before yanking it down. Before he knows it, he's standing naked in front of Shane, and Shane hasn't taken his eyes off him once.

Shane's gaze drops, trailing down Ilya's chest, past the fading hives, past the sharp lines of his stomach, until it lands on Ilya's cock; standing hard and wet against the plane of his stomach, the hair at his navel now matted with sweat, the tip glistening with a bead of pre-cum. Shane's tongue darts out, wetting his lips, and Ilya's breath catches at the sight.

Shane tilts his head to the right, toward the nightstand. "Get the lube, Rozanov."

Ilya trips slightly over his own feet in his rush to comply, nearly knocking his knee against the bed frame. He opens the drawer and finds the tube easily, right where it always is. He crawls back onto the bed, and his breath catches at the sight of Shane.

Shane is on his side now, one thigh hitched up, his top half twisted to look back at Ilya. His skin is flushed, his hair a mess and his lips are swollen from kissing. Ilya's eyes drop to the crease of his ass, and then he sees it: the remnants of dried lube from an hour and a half ago, when Shane had fucked himself open. The sight makes Ilya's mouth go dry and his cock twitch.

He swallows hard, throat clicking.

"Come here," Shane murmurs, licking his lips, tone saccharine. "Want you to fuck me like this."

Ilya doesn't need to be told twice. He moves behind Shane, his hands sliding over the curve of Shane's hip, to the dip of his waist, until his palms press against the crease of his ass, fingers splaying wide, gripping the soft tan flesh.

He presses a kiss to the back of Shane's shoulder and then another to his neck, letting his lips linger against the warm skin. His mouth opens, tongue flicking out to taste the sweat.

"You're so beautiful," Ilya whispers against his skin. "You have no idea what you do to me."

Shane shivers, arching into the contact. "Stop talking and just fuck me,oh my god, Ilya."

Ilya laughs, his breath washing over the back of Shane’s neck. "Okay, okay, my impatient boy." He presses his chest flush against Shane's back.

"Shut up," Shane replies, pressing his ass back against the curve of Ilya's cock.

Ilya groans before he dips his head. He flickers his tongue over the sensitive crease of Shane's neck, leaving a slick, warm trail that glides down to the start of his spine. The tang of sweat lingers on his tongue as his teeth nip at the skin gently, just enough to make Shane gasp. He marks the moment with a searing bite.

Beneath him, Shane shivers, his body soft and pliant, perfectly attuned to Ilya's touch. Ilya's fingers move to retrieve the tube of lube he dropped on the edge of the mattress. When he brings it forward, his teeth catch on his lower lip as he flips the cap open. He squeezes a generous amount onto his palm, letting the cool liquid warm against his skin. His hand travels downward, fingers trailing over the curve of Shane's ass, parting the meat until the pads of his fingers are pressing against the crevice. He smears the lube over the tight ring of muscle, just until Shane is gasping against his cheek.

"More," Shane breathes.

Ilya presses in just enough to ease two fingers inside. Shane's body yields easily and he gasps softly as his hips instinctively roll back into the scissoring press of Ilya's slick fingers. The sound he makes goes straight to Ilya's cock.

Ilya knows exactly what Shane's body craves. He knows Shane's mind is begging him to move, to turn over, to pull Ilya closer until his weight settles fully on top of him. He knows every tell and tremor: the way Shane's spine arches just so, the way his breath hitches when Ilya's fingers curl inside him, the way his hips roll back seeking more. But Ilya also knows how to keep him right here, pliant and willing to Ilya’s every whim.

He presses his chest forward, the tube of lube catching against his nipple as he moves to press a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the curve of Shane's throat, tongue swiping over the pulse point. The response is immediate. Shane melts, going boneless beneath him.

"Stay down, Hollander," Ilya murmurs against his skin. He nips at Shane's earlobe, pulling it gently between his teeth before letting it slip free with a wet pop. "I'll take care of you."

Ilya's hand trails up the nape of Shane's neck, fingers tangling into his hair, gripping just enough to make Shane gasp. He leans in, pressing a sloppy, sideways kiss to his mouth. The kiss is messy, spit-spilled, their lips sliding together wetly as Ilya pulls back just enough to meet Shane's hazy eyes. Propped up on one elbow, Ilya withdraws his fingers from Shane's hole slowly, watching the way Shane's body clenches around nothing. Shane groans at the loss, a small desperate sound, and Ilya shushes him gently, pressing a soft kiss to his shoulder blade.

"Patience, sweetheart," he murmurs.

He reaches for the lube again, squeezing more onto his soiled palm. The cool liquid warms against his skin as he rubs it down and up the length of his cock, a shudder ripping through his spine. His hand slides up Shane's thigh—the one already propped up against his knee—and he angles it slightly higher, opening Shane up further. His other hand wraps around his slick cock, guiding it as he lines himself up against Shane's rim.

When Ilya finally pushes all the way in, the sensation is devastating. Shane's wet heat envelops him, and for a moment, Ilya just stays there, buried so deeply it feels as though they've merged into one. He can feel every pulse of Shane's body around him, the tight clench of walls around the girth of his cock.

"Fuck," Ilya breathes, forehead dropping to the side of Shane's shoulder. "You feel so good, Shane, so fucking good."

He starts to move, his hips rolling in slow strokes, as if easing Shane back into this after days and days spent apart. Shane takes him without hesitation, his hips rocking back, meeting Ilya's rhythm with a desperate eagerness. His top half twists, craning his neck to kiss Ilya messily once again, their mouths sliding together wetly, all tongue and teeth.

Ilya kisses him back just as messily, drool dripping from the corners of their mouths as he picks up his thrusts. Three slow, deep rolls, and then a harder snap of his hips that punches a cry from Shane's throat. The pleasure coils tightly in Ilya's belly, building with every movement until it's hard to remember how to breathe, hard to think, actually.

By the fourth thrust, Ilya can’t hold himself up anymore. His elbow slips against the sheets and his face drops into the crook of Shane’s shoulder. He groans against the skin there, biting down to leave a dark bruise, marking him as his gut churns. A ragged moan tears from his throat as he releases Shane's thigh, his hand sliding down to wrap around Shane's cock, fingers stroking in time with the desperate thrust of his hips.

Shane feels wet and hot, so loose and pliant around his cock that Ilya feels like he's drowning. The sweat-slick glide of their bodies, the tight heat enveloping him, the way Shane moans his name every time Ilya's cock drags over his prostate—Ilya feels like he’s on cloud nine. His thighs and hips burn, his body begging him to ease up, but his mind screams louder, urging him to cum.

So good, fuck, so good, Shane. Feel so good, meant for my cock, all meant for me. Mine, you’re mine.

Shane's breath comes in heaving gasps as he nods at Ilya’s words, his hands coming up to grab Ilya by the face, fingers digging into his skin as he holds Ilya in place. Their eyes meet—Shane's blown wide, pupils swallowing the brown, cheeks flushed a deep, desperate pink alongside his freckles—you’re gorgeous, so beautiful, take my breath away.

I love you.

At Shane’s response, all Ilya can manage is a shuddering exhale before he freezes, his body seizing as his climax crashes over him. He buries himself deep in Shane's soft, pretty, flushed hole, spilling into him with a broken groan.

His ears ring, head swimming with the haze of release, but he's dimly aware of Shane's thin, desperate cry as he cums. A strangled curse falls from Shane's lips, his cock pulsing in Ilya's trembling, clumsy fist, spilling warm and sticky between them.

They lie there for a few minutes, Ilya's body trembling faintly against Shane's back. His heart pounds an erratic rhythm that slowly begins to steady as the minutes pass by. He forces himself to breathe before carefully rolling off of Shane and slowly, as softly as he can, pulling out his cock from Shane's hole. The sensation makes them both gasp, Shane at the loss and Ilya at the sudden absence of heat.

It hardly matters, though. Shane is already following him, groaning at the emptiness before pressing closer and closer until he's tucked under Ilya's arm, his body fitting perfectly against Ilya's side. His fingers trail lazy patterns up and down Ilya's abdomen, drawing idle shapes into the sweat-slick skin. One leg drapes over Ilya's thighs and his face nuzzles into the crook of Ilya's neck, breathing warm against his pulse point.

Shane peppers lazy kisses along the column of Ilya's throat. He doesn't bother with the mess between them, the cum still leaking from his hole, sticky on his thighs and chest, or the streaks smudged across Ilya's hip where their bodies are joined. Ilya knows he's going to care about the mess sooner or later—maybe in t-minus five minutes—when the post-coital haze fades.

Sometimes, Ilya wonders if Shane would let him crawl into his skin. Whether there was any version of the universe that would allow two people to occupy the same space and body, to fold together completely and physically despite already being bound to one another in an intricate, fated way. He thinks if Shane lets him, Ilya would do it without hesitation, just so he can keep him tucked close.

But those thoughts can wait. For now, he lets himself sink into the warmth of Shane’s attention. He turns his head and returns every lazy kiss, pressing them across Shane’s cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth, the base of his freckles, lingering wherever he can reach. He has exactly four minutes and forty-five seconds to do so.

જ⁀➴

When Ilya sleeps, he dreams.

"Mama, I want you to meet someone," he says, taking her hand and leading her across a sunlit field toward the man waiting a short distance away.

Shane straightens when he sees them approaching. His hands are clasped together in front of him, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. He looks nervous in the way people do when they are about to meet someone important for the first time. When they stop in front of each other, Shane lifts a hand in greeting, a crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Hi," he says. "My name's Shane Hollander."

Ilya barely has time to watch his mother's face soften before she closes the distance between them. She reaches for Shane and pulls him into a hug as though she has known him for years rather than seconds.

"There you are, zaichik," she says softly, her voice warm with affection. "I've been waiting for you."

For a moment, Shane simply stares at the side of her head in surprise. Then he lets out a startled laugh and wraps his arms around her in return.