Summary:

“I do not have the words,” Ilya murmurs, lowering his head so that their foreheads are nearly brushing. “You have taken them straight from the center of me, moy lyubimyj. It would—I would not be myself if I did not have love for you strung through my soul.” His mouth curves up, even as Shane's face blurs through the tears. “You are my greatest—” He shakes his head, his hands drifting up, clad in the matching mittens of Shane. “If there is something that I was born to do, sweetheart, it was to love you.”

“Ilya,” Shane breathes out, a wretched, tenderhearted expression on his face. He looks as though Ilya has torn at the core of him, has unwound some great secret and pulled it into the light. He looks as though he is love made flesh, beautiful and mutable and ruinous.

You said my name and offered your hand, Ilya thinks, and oh, how many years have they bled for this honesty, for this peace, and I was lost.

OR: Of all the aftermaths Ilya had imagined, he was never so greedy as to hope for this.