Summary:

Shane has been watching Ilya kiss strangers for years. Sometimes it’s because someone is either brave—or foolish—enough to try and prove the fabled curse of the matchmaker wrong. Sometimes it’s because no one can help themselves, because it seems like such a harmless thing to do; stealing a kiss like it will give them some sort of guaranteed assurance in the universe. It makes Shane’s stomach curl every single time. He can see the way Ilya stiffens, how he swallows too late, too polite or too jaded to ask them to stop. The world doesn’t see how he hates it, because the world never sees. They see a legend, they see a myth and nothing more; not the person who has to put up with it. Shane does. He sees Ilya’s mouth, of course. Not because he’s greedy, because he’s in it for a stroke of luck or faith or whatever delusion people want to buy into. Shane wants to taste those lips because they’re Ilya’s, because he knows... or Ilya suffers from a curse where whoever kisses him falls in love with their true soulmate (it's never him)...Shane wants to kiss Ilya bcuz he's already fallen in love with him