1 – 2 of 2 Works in Birdwatching
- Birdwatching ×
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Shane has a surprise for Ilya. Shane and Ilya hadn’t bothered closing the blinds when they’d finished fucking the previous night. They’d been nearly asleep, a sweaty entanglement of limbs and hair and sheets and muffled moans, when Shane had remembered that he had a surprise for Ilya, one that necessitated setting an alarm and getting up early. He’d only told Ilya about the surprise part before they’d fallen asleep, and now that the first light of the day began to filter through the leafy canopy outside, Shane knew he wasn’t going to fall back asleep. As quietly as he could, he reached for his phone and turned off the alarm he’d set. Beside him, Ilya twitched in his sleep, his lashes fluttering delicately against his face. Shane wanted to reach out and stroke his face, and he wanted to watch Ilya sleep forever. He wanted to hold Ilya and be held by Ilya. Ilya inhaled sharply, suddenly awake beside Shane now. “Good morning,” Ilya said, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. His t-shirt rode up, exposing the taut skin of his belly, and Shane considered abandoning his plan entirely to spend the morning in bed. “Surprise.” “Surprise?” Shane said. “You said there was surprise,” Ilya said. “For me.” “There is,” Shane said. “But you are not naked and there is no breakfast in bed,” Ilya said, pursing his lips into a pout. “So how can there be surprise?” “There are lots of kinds of surprises,” Shane said, to which Ilya looked doubtful. “Canadians are too boring for real surprises,” he said finally, wrapping Shane in a hug and rolling over onto him. Ilya’s weight pressed the air out of Shane’s lungs momentarily, leaving him with the feeling of having been suspended in space. “This is an exciting Canadian surprise,” Shane said, pushing Ilya off of him. “We have to go now, or we’ll be too late.” “The surprise can’t wait two minutes for me to suck your dick?” Ilya said. He flashed a smile at Shane. “My dick will be here when we get back,” Shane said. “And you can have it for longer than two minutes.” “One minute is maybe actually all I need,” Ilya said. “Fuck you,” Shane said, swatting Ilya’s elbow as he pushed the blankets off of them. “I know you want me to fuck you,” Ilya said. “Fuck off.” Shane swung his legs out of bed, reaching for a pair of shorts on the floor with his feet. He stepped into the shorts—Ilya’s, it appeared—and pressed his face against the glass of the window. The sky was turning a golden yellow, last night’s spiderwebs heavy with dew as a new day began. They needed to get moving. “I know you like it,” Ilya said, which wasn’t wrong, though Shane was unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing this. “I’d like it more if you got dressed and met me outside,” Shane said. He shuffled into a shirt—his own, this time—he found on the floor and went to the back door, where he’d stashed a small bag with a blanket and an apple for each of them last night. He was lacing up his sneakers when Ilya appeared, wearing a Team Canada shirt from the World Juniors the year before they’d met. It was an old shirt from the back of Shane’s closet, bought back before he had filled out the musculature of his frame, and the fabric was tight against Ilya’s body. The entire scene made the blood in Shane’s ears pound, forcing him to once again consider abandoning his plan so Ilya could fuck him face-first into the sofa all morning. Ilya took an apple from Shane and bit off a chunk. “Was that surprise?” Ilya said. “After I cook you tuna melt, you finally make me breakfast in return? Raw apple?” “Not the surprise,” Shane said. “Not even close. And I literally cooked for you last night.” He motioned for Ilya to follow him out the back door, where they passed the ashen remains of last night’s fire. The blackened coals were still damp from the water they’d used to extinguish the flames. At the end of the patio, they caught the deer path that hugged the shoreline of the lake. Shane reached for Ilya’s hand and held it tightly, even though the trail was really only wide enough for them to walk single file and the brush was summer-dense. He kept turning around and smiling at Ilya, thrilled that they could act like this outside of the confines of a hotel room or a locked door, even though more than once Shane was convinced he’d gotten lost. With most of his mind focused on Ilya, these woods where he’d spent so much time suddenly seemed unfamiliar—larger and denser than he’d noticed. Shane prided himself on his observation skills. He made sure to tell his parents as often as he could that he was grateful for his mom for introducing him to hockey and grateful for his dad for introducing him to birdwatching. Hockey had been the first love of his life, but birding afforded him access to a supernatural calm that anchored him through the ups and downs of each season—the hockey season, the year’s seasons. Everyone who wanted to play on the big stage had to learn how to face the pressures of the league, and Shane had never told any of the guys where his poise came from. His ability to stand up tall in the face of blaring noise and flashing lights, his presence of mind to follow the puck up and down the ice—these were honed just as much by the hours he and his mom spent at the rink as by the hours he and his dad had spent together in the woods around their cottage while he was growing up.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 2,173
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Files:
- 2 versions
- AO3:
- #76627581
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“This is just the version I use. Everyone has their preference, but I can send you the Amazon link for this book if you like,” Shane said, while Ilya flipped through the field guide. He stopped on the section on loons, where two different species were illustrated in wading water and mid-flight. Ilya pointed at one of the illustrations. A sleek dark bird, with white and black checker-board wings and a stark red eye. “We saw this one today, yes?” “Yep. The common loon. It’s aquatic, so you’ll always find them near water, usually a lake like we just saw. It’s the national bird of Canada, actually.” “Common. You can find this bird all over?” Ilya asked. “Around here, at least. It’s my favorite bird,” Shane admitted. “Pretty boring, I know.” Shane’s shoulders were hunched up, like he was embarrassed to admit that he was the bird guy, who did in fact, like birds. Well, that would not do. “Boring is good. I like boring,” Ilya insisted. (Or, Ilya Rozanov, a newly arrived hockey agent in Ottawa, falls for a local birder).
- Part 1 of Hollanov Birding AU
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 9,820
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Files:
- 1
- AO3:
- #76005396