Chapter Text
July
“He’s so smitten with you. What the hell are you waiting for?” Rose hisses, elbowing Shane in the side. “Lock that shit down, Shane Hollander. I’m going to be so mad at you if you fumble this.”
“He’s not smitten,” Shane whispers back. “I mean, we’re hooking up obviously, but–”
“Shhh! He’s coming back. Act natural.”
Rose turns and plasters on a bright, innocent smile as Ilya ambles over from the bakery stall. He’s carrying a loaf of bread under one arm. It looks like one of the olive batards that Shane has been obsessed with lately. Warmth fills his chest, bright and dazzling as a lit sparkler. Shane, despite himself, is already thinking ahead to later in the day—to what he and Ilya will do after they say goodbye to Rose and return to the apartment.
When he and Ilya get home, Shane decides, he’ll make fresh pesto. He already has basil and heirloom tomatoes tucked in his reusable tote. Shane will spread bright green pesto on thick slabs of bread and layer on slices of tomatoes and mozzarella. He’ll pretend to be annoyed when Ilya moans exaggeratedly around the first bite and tells Shane that he’s a wizard in the kitchen. Then he’ll kiss the taste of summer right out of his mouth.
Home. What the fuck? When did Shane start thinking about his apartment—about the top floor of that building—as a home that he shared with Ilya Rozanov?
The part of Shane’s brain that emits an ever-present hum of anxiety tells him that he should be panicking right now. But instead, he smiles and nods as Rose says something about wanting to get coffee because she’s still tired and hungover from a raucous night out with her old coworkers from her last job.
“Of course,” Ilya says right away. “There’s a place down the block that we like. They make very good matcha lattes. Shane’s favorite.”
A place that we like. Shane feels giddy. He wants Ilya to say it again—to keep talking about them as a we, to care about Shane’s stupid drink order even though he thinks matcha tastes like lawn clippings, to buy a loaf of bread that they’ll eat together throughout the weekend.
Shane lets out a slow exhale and Rose raises an eyebrow. A silent question: are you okay? She’s wearing that slightly guilty puppy dog expression, the one that she deploys to great effect on the rare occasions she misses a deadline at work. She’s probably worried that Shane is mad about this “accidental run-in” at the farmer’s market. Shane isn’t actually angry, though he’s well aware that his best friend engineered this meeting with the precision of a military strike. He’s annoyed, maybe, but you can’t be friends with Rose Landry and not expect a certain level of nosiness and meddling.
So he nods and gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile, then trails Rose and Ilya to the cafe down the street. He sits there with the matcha latte that Ilya hands to him, their fingertips brushing, and tries to act very normal as he sits between his best friend and the man he’s in lo-... and his next door neighbor. His next door neighbor who he really likes sleeping with on a regular basis, and not just in a sexy way, but in a please never stop borrowing my pajamas and kissing me on the forehead before bed kind of way.
God, he’s so fucked.
He watches Rose and Ilya converse easily, smiling at how Ilya shows genuine interest when Rose talks about the community play she's rehearsing for, touched by how he asks follow-up questions and promises to come to the opening night show with Shane.
When Rose finally leaves, she kisses both him and Ilya on the cheek.
“It was so nice to meet you, Ilya,” Rose says warmly. “Will I be seeing a lot more of you in the future?”
She shoots Shane a not-so-subtle look that clearly communicates, this one's a keeper.
Shane blushes but can’t hide how pleased he is at the thought of Ilya slotting into every part of his life. He tries not to think about how the buzzing in his chest feels less like panic and more like anticipation. Happiness, even.
“Yeah, you probably will,” Shane says. “I mean, he’s always around.”
He doesn’t miss the way Ilya’s smile widens at the admission.
“Yes,” Ilya says. “And I plan to stay around for a long time."
Ilya’s reaction to the fresh pesto is exactly what Shane predicted—all the way up to the frankly indecent moaning around the first, second, and third bites. Shane rolls his eyes at the over-the-top noises, but ends up hard and eager anyway as Ilya crowds him against the kitchen counter and kisses him senseless.
At some point, they relocate to the couch with Shane in Ilya’s lap, stroking both their spit-lubed cocks in tandem as Ilya lets loose an incoherent stream of gibberish and Russian. Shane hears solnyshko. He hears lyubov. He hears something that’s half growl, half moan. He hears his name, again and again and again as they both come.
He says Ilya too, holds the word in his mouth like it’s precious. In moments like these, it feels like Ilya’s name is the only word Shane remembers—a password that unlocks the vault of his heart.
Shane is still in a dreamy, off-balance state when he sits down to call his parents the next day. Ilya is at brunch with Svetlana—he’d invited Shane to join, but it felt like too much after they’d already hung out with Rose the day before. This thing with Ilya was supposed to be hooking up with his hot neighbor, right? Not falling asleep in each other’s arms most nights, sharing groceries, and hanging out with their respective best friends together.
That’s… that’s something else. Something that Shane’s brain refuses to define, even though the word is on the tip of his tongue.
Maye that’s why he slips up when he’s on the phone. Over six months of carefully avoiding the topic of Ilya Rozanov with his parents and well, it just comes out.
“How’s your weekend been so far?” his mom asks. “Did you do anything fun?”
“Yeah,” Shane says, half-distracted by Ilya texting him a picture of a cute dog. “We did our usual thing. We went for a run, did farmer’s market, and then tried out this new recipe Ilya found. A shrimp pasta thing with fresh basil. It was surprisingly good. I think maybe we’ll make a big batch of gyoza tonight and freeze the leftovers.”
He sends a heart reaction to the dog photo and wanders into the kitchen in his bare feet. It’s only when he’s pulling the fridge door open to grab a sparkling water that he realizes his mom hasn’t said anything.
The silence is very unlike Yuna Hollander. Usually, it means that he's in trouble.
Shane frowns, looking down at his phone. The call is still connected, at least on his end.
“Mom, are you still there?”
“Honey.”
That’s all his mom says for a moment.
“Yeah?” Shane asks. He fiddles with the pull tab on the can of sparkling water, suddenly nervous.
“Honey,” she says again, then lets out a short laugh. For once, his mom sounds... uncertain? “Sorry. Yes. I’m still here. Just wondering who in the world Ilya is."
Shit. Fucking hell. Shane thinks back to what he just said, about how damning we and our usual thing sound.
“He’s my next door neighbor?” he says, hating the way his voice pitches up at the end. He sounds and feels impossibly young, like an awkward teenager telling his mom about his first crush. “My, uh, next door neighbor. Since January. We’ve been like, hanging out a lot?”
His mom doesn't say anything.
Shane should have expected this—she's always been good at waiting him out. The one time he snuck out past curfew to go to a party in high school, she had stared him down over breakfast the following morning until he told her everything: whose house he'd gone to, how many beers he'd consumed, and even the details of the embarrassingly sloppy kiss he'd shared with Jessica Miller (who promptly ghosted him at school, much to his private relief).
A decade may have passed since that night, but Shane suddenly feels all of seventeen again as a weighted silence hangs over the phone line.
“Okay!” Shane folds like a house of cards. “A little more than hanging out. A lot, maybe. I don’t know. He’s– ugh. I like him, I guess.”
His mom, of course, doesn't leave it at that. She's ready with a loaded follow-up question.
“Does he like you back?”
Shane kind of wishes they could have this conversation in person. He has the humiliating desire to curl up under a blanket with his parents on the couch and tell them all about the boy he likes. He leans forward, pressing his head against the cool granite of the kitchen counter and closes his eyes.
“I think so,” Shane admits, lowering his voice to a whisper. He knows Ilya isn't home right now, but still—Shane thinks he would die of humiliation if his neighbor overheard any part of this conversation. “I mean, he goes running with me every Saturday morning even when the weather sucks. He brings me sandwiches when I’m busy with work and forget to eat. He takes me to these really nice restaurants and never lets me pay. He helps me pick out gifts for Hayden’s kids. He says my freckles are like constellations. I mean… Ilya, he probably likes me, right?”
“Honey,” Shane’s mom says again. This time, her voice is softer.
Shane exhales and presses his forehead harder against the counter.
“Yes, Shane. He does,” his mom says, because she knows that sometimes Shane needs someone else to confirm the messy swarm of feelings that exist in his body. “Yes, I think we can probably say that this Ilya likes you.”
"Cool," Shane says, feeling both a little sick and elated at the same time. "That's... good to know."
Thankfully, his mom doesn't press the issue further for the rest of the conversation. She lets Shane switch the topic to a new TV show that he thinks his dad would like and ends the call by reminding him that his AC filters should be replaced at least once every three months.
Later that night though, when Shane is getting ready for bed, his phone lights up with a text.
Mom: Your dad and I would love to meet your boy sometime. Love you, honey.
Shane quickly shoves the phone underneath the pillow so that Ilya, who is lying in bed next to him scrolling through his own texts, won’t see. He's glad the lights are off. He knows he's probably blushing right now.
Your boy. If only.
The thing about Shane is that he never makes a decision without considering every angle. That’s why his parents suffered through eleven university tours during his senior year of high school; that’s why his first serious boyfriend had yelled, in the heat of their final argument, that he couldn’t fucking deal with having to always reference Shane’s operating manual before they did anything.
Shane knows that people often misunderstand his caution. They consider him an equivocator, or worse, a coward who freezes rather than taking a decisive step forward.
He's always found that unfair. The truth is that Shane likes to have all the data in front of him. And once he has what he needs to make an informed decision? That’s when he acts. And he rarely ever second guesses himself.
So, the extensive data that Shane has gathered thus far points to one conclusion—Ilya Rozanov should be his boyfriend.
He just needs to convince him.
Shane’s plan is simple.
After work, he’ll pick up chicken parmesan from Ilya’s favorite restaurant, a bottle of very expensive Russian vodka, and a bouquet of red roses. He's consulted with Rose and Hayden about whether it's too much of a cliche—really, a dozen red roses?—but his friends both insist that Ilya will be swept off his feet.
“Trust me, man. Red roses are a classic,” Hayden had said. “Even if you like, freak out and get all Shane about it, there will be no misreading your romantic intentions.”
“What do you mean, ‘get all Shane about it’?” Shane asks, panicked.
“Nothing, babe,” Rose says, petting his arm like she’s calming a skittish kitten. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll do great!”
Shane sits in his apartment and waits, like a creep, until he hears Ilya's footsteps in the hallway.
He has the chicken parmesan plated and in the oven on low heat to stay warm. He has a dozen red roses wrapped in parchment paper and tied off with a white satin ribbon. He has a bottle of expensive imported vodka chilling in his freezer. The plan is foolproof. All he has to do is bring Ilya into his apartment and say the words he wrote and rewrote in his notes app all week.
Shane takes a deep breath, tugs down the hem of his new linen shirt, and throws open his front door. Ready or not, Ilya Rozanov is about to be wooed.
The plan flies out the window as soon as he sees Ilya. Because Ilya, while still the most objectively attractive human being Shane has ever met in his life, looks awful.
His eyes are bloodshot. His shoulders tensed. Even his beautiful curls look limper and duller than usual.
"I was-" Shane starts to say, then works furiously to rewrite his mental script in real time. "Uh, are we still on for dinner? You look..."
He trails off. You look like shit doesn't seem very romantic.
Ilya sighs as his eyes meet Shane's.
"Sorry, he says quietly, looking defeated. Shane's fingertips itch to reach out for him. “Not a good day. Asshole customer yelled at me, made fun of my English, and told my manager to fire me. My boss is on my side, but still… Maybe we should raincheck. I don’t know that I will be good company tonight, solynshko.”
Anger surges within Shane—not at Ilya for wanting to cancel plans, but for the customer who made him feel downtrodden enough to want to retreat. Shane, who has never been a violent person, has the sudden desire to stomp into the car dealership where Ilya works, demand to see their customer files, and track down the piece of shit who dared to hurt his Ilya. The flare of possessiveness takes his breath away.
He thinks about the roses in his apartment. He thinks about the speech he’d practiced in front of the mirror at work, the one that Hayden had walked in on and teased him about for the rest of the day. I would like to be your boyfriend. Would you be interested in having a boyfriend? Preferably me?
Tonight is obviously not the time for a big romantic confession. Not when Ilya looks like the day has sandblasted him until all that’s left is raw nerves. But that doesn't mean that Shane can't be there for Ilya. He can still offer him a good meal, a stiff drink, and a sympathetic ear.
“Go change into comfortable clothes,” Shane says, stepping close to kiss Ilya on the cheek. “I’ll come over in a bit with dinner and we can get properly drunk together. You can bitch about work and I’ll help plot revenge on your evil customer.”
It’s ridiculous how much pride Shane feels when some of the tension visibly seeps out of Ilya’s body. His neighbor rocks back on his heels and stares at Shane with those bright, avid eyes.
“Shane Hollander,” he says, wonder written all over his face. “I thought you did not like to get drunk on weeknights. Or commit crimes.”
“I’m making an exception for you.”
For the first time this whole conversation, the corners of Ilya’s mouth tilt up in a small but genuine smile.
Shane feels like he’s won the fucking Stanley Cup.
Shane has always been a lightweight when it comes to alcohol.
That’s the only explanation for why, after three shots of the fancy Ilya-approved vodka, he finds himself starfished on the cool tiles of Ilya’s kitchen talking about how he hates everything on social media except unlikely animal friendship videos.
“Like- you know when there’s a tiny monkey riding a dog like a horse?” he says. Ilya is lying on the floor next to him. In solidarity, or maybe because he’s also struggling with the concept of having legs. His pinkie finger hooks through Shane’s, a comforting anchor as the ceiling wobbles above them. “That’s the good stuff. That's the kind of stuff I like to watch, y'know."
“I saw a video with cat and turtle on a skateboard,” Ilya slurs. He's definitely had more vodka than Shane. He had more chicken parmesan and pasta, too. Shane wonders if his stomach also feels like a sloshing water balloon whenever he moves. “Only the turtle was on the skateboard. Was very small skateboard, for very tiny turtle.”
“I like turtles. They’re so smart and they live forever.”
“You know movie Finding Nemo?”
“Yeah. Just keep swimming. I know it.”
“In English version, turtle is named Crush and his son is Squirt. In Russian version, turtle is also Krush but with a K. But his son is Prysk instead of Squirt. Why? I do not know.”
Shane laughs. He laughs and laughs. He doesn’t know why that’s so funny but Ilya must find it hilarious as well, because he starts laughing too. Shane loves Ilya's laugh. Gosh, he loves how Ilya sounds all the time.
"Did you know that in the American version of My Neighbor Totoro, they almost renamed Totoro?" Shane asks. "They were going to call him Craig.”
This sets them both off again. Ilya rolls around clutching his stomach, mouthing the words Craig. Shane rolls over onto his side with effort and watches, fondly, as Ilya screws up his face in laughter. He’s a little flushed and sweaty from the alcohol, one curl sticking to his forehead.
It triggers his queasiness, but Shane inches his way across the cool tiles until he’s face to face with Ilya. They lie on their sides, heads pillowed on their arms, and smile at each other goofily.
"Thank you," Ilya says softly, corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles at Shane. "For being with me tonight. I know I was in a bad mood."
"I want to be here with you no matter what kind of mood you're in," Shane says. The alcohol is making him a little too honest, a little too sappy. He reaches out one hand and cups it around Ilya's warm cheek. "I want to make you feel better on your shitty days. I want to make you laugh about Craig."
"My Neighbor Craig!" Ilya says, bursting into another fit of giggles. He turns his head and presses a wet kiss against Shane's palm. "Oh my god, Shane. That is so stupid."
Shane grins. He can't believe how cute Ilya looks like this, face flushed and lips pink and wet. He thinks about My Neighbor Totoro and how many times he watched it with his parents as a little kid. His mom had dressed him up as a baby Totoro one Halloween. He has the sudden urge to show Ilya the photos. He wants to see Ilya’s baby pictures too, to marvel at his curls and ruddy cheeks. The idea of a toddler Ilya—maybe on ice skates with his mittened hands clutching a tiny hockey stick—makes Shane want to die, it’s so adorable.
Thinking about their baby pictures makes Shane think about his parents, which makes him think about...
"My parents want to meet you," he blurts out before he can stop himself.
Oh god, his brain screams at him distantly through the haze of alcohol. Shane. What. The. Fuck.
Ilya blinks at him slowly, forehead furrowing in confusion.
"Your parents," he says, then repeats it again. "You told your parents about me?"
Shane kind of wishes he was a turtle right now because he could really use a shell to retreat into. As it is, he just cringes. Why is he so fucking bad at playing things cool? He hasn't even asked Ilya to be his boyfriend yet. Shane is not terribly experienced with relationships, but he knows you're supposed to be official before meeting the parents.
"Fuck," Shane says. He pulls his hand away from Ilya's cheek and rolls away, burying his face into his arms. "Forget I said anything. I mean, or not. Yeah, I told my mom about you. And I was just thinking, that maybe after the flowers and everything, that I would ask you. And if you said yes... maybe we could go to the cottage. You could meet my parents there, but only if you wanted! And just for a dinner. But obviously, this is too much. I should shut up."
A long silence follows Shane's outburst.
Whatever that was, he thinks, was not the perfect speech he'd planned. He doesn't need to look at Ilya to know that his neighbor must be utterly confused right now. He curses Russian vodka and his friends for giving him such abysmal advice. It occurs to Shane that his face is mere millimeters from the kitchen floor. Well, maybe if he's lucky, he'll be exposed to some fast-acting bacteria that will kill him before the mortification does.
"Shane," Ilya finally says, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry, but I am very drunk right now and did not understand anything you said. Can you repeat?”
Shane doesn't think he could repeat what he just said even if he tried. Words are very, very hard right now. He thinks back to what Hayden said earlier, about how red roses are unmistakable in their romantic intent. With some effort, Shane pulls himself up onto his feet. He looks down at Ilya, who remains supine on the floor, mouth open in consternation.
"Uh," Shane says, steadying himself against a wall. "I'll... be right back. You just stay there, mkay?"
"Where would I even go?" Ilya asks. "I am stuck here until the room stops moving."
Shane nods and hurries back to his apartment. Well, he hurries as much as he can when the hallway feels like its simultaneously expanding and spinning slowly counter-clockwise. Shane grabs the bouquet of roses from the kitchen counter and carefully retraces his steps to his neighbor's apartment, where he finds that Ilya has moved to sit with his back against the cabinets.
The wide-eyed, unadulterated look of adoration on his face helps to ease the nausea roiling in Shane's gut.
He steps toward Ilya and drops the bouquet of red roses into his lap. Ilya's eyes are huge and wet as he stares up at Shane.
"What?" he whispers. "What are these for?"
"They're for you," Shane says. This, at least, is closer to the script he'd practiced. "I got you flowers because I want you to be my boyfriend."
Then, before Ilya can respond, Shane stumbles through the apartment and to the bathroom, where he proceeds to expel the contents of his stomach into Ilya's toilet.
As far as grand romantic gestures go, he thinks miserably, that could've gone a lot better.
Miraculously, Ilya doesn’t run for the hills after Shane literally vomits up his feelings. Instead, Ilya crawls across the apartment to join him, flowers still cradled in one arm. He rubs Shane’s back and says soothing things in Russian. He grabs him a bottle of mouthwash. He tells him yes, of course, I would love to be your boyfriend. I am so honored that you would ask. He kisses Shane’s cheeks and his forehead, only avoiding his lips because Shane refuses to make out while there’s a film of bile in his mouth.
They both end up chugging tall glasses of water in the kitchen and eating the leftover bread from the chicken parmesan order. Ilya keeps shooting Shane these shy, secretive little smiles as they sit side by side on the floor.
“What?” Shane asks. He still feels nauseous but that's overshadowed by the overwhelming relief of Ilya agreeing to be his boyfriend.
“Nothing,” Ilya shakes his head, then admits after a moment, “I’m just so happy.”
They don’t have sex that night, obviously. Shane doesn’t think either of them is capable of giving a blow job without disastrous consequences. It’s not how he thought the evening would go, when he imagined asking Ilya to be his boyfriend. But after they get ready for bed together and he curls up against Ilya's chest, Shane can't bring himself to be too disappointed.
After all, he thinks as Ilya’s arm tightens around him and a kiss is pressed to the top of his head, he’s right where he belongs.