Work Text:
i. 2013
Ilya doesn’t think much of his own impulses. He goes to a bar, he finds a pretty girl, he has sex. He catches Sasha’s eye from across the locker room, and then they’re in the same toilet stall, noises bitten away before they become dangerous. Svetlana invites him over when her father is away, and he kisses her on top of her quilted bedspread, hard from the feel of her under his hands and, a little bit, from the anticipation of the beating he’ll get if the Minister walks in on him. She scratches her fingers through his hair afterwards and he traces letters into the skin above her knee.
So when he gets the impulse to buy Hollander flowers, he doesn’t hesitate. Maybe it’s because Hollander is so cute with his little freckles. Maybe because he gets irritated so easily, that flush spilling down his collarbones to his chest. Maybe Ilya just wants to reward him for opening the door after that CCM shoot, or for letting Ilya suck his dick after the All-Stars even with Scott Hunter next door.
Whatever it is, he finds the address of the Metros’ home stadium and schedules a bouquet of lilies for delivery two hours before their next home game.
Jane: Did you fucking send me these?
Lily: you are mad about pretty flowers? ))
Jane: I’m not a fucking girl.
Lily: oh I did not know
men are allergic to flowers in america?
Jane: Stop fucking with me.
Lily: you like when I fuck with you ;)
Hollander doesn’t reply, and Ilya lets the conversation die there. He grins, a little, imagining Hollander’s cute, irritated little face.
ii. 2016
Ilya bites his knuckles as he scrolls through the TMZ article for the fifth time. Met at a mutual friend’s party, he reads. This is one hot couple! he reads. And, worst of all, We haven’t found any dirt on Shane Hollander’s past relationships. Seems like Rose Landry is the only woman pretty enough to lock this hunk down!
He is so stupid. So, so unimaginably stupid. He didn’t think— but he never thinks, does he? He just does. He makes Hollander a tuna melt. He gives him a shirt to wear. He lets Hollander see him. No surprise he walked away.
He needs to— he doesn’t know. Fight, maybe, or drive very fast in one of his beautiful and sexy cars, or ask Svetlana to slap him while she’s riding him, or take a nice, long nap.
Instead of doing any of that, he finds the website of a florist in Montreal.
“Hello bonjour, ici Aline de Les Fleurs du Mal.”
Ilya winces. “Ah— hello, you speak English?”
“Yes, no problem,” says Aline on the other end, pronouncing it problème. In carefully picked-out vowels, she asks, “How may I help you?”
“I want to have flowers delivered somewhere. Can you do this?”
“Of course. A custom bouquet? Or would you like us to choose for you?”
“No roses,” Ilya cuts in, quickly, before he can second-guess it. And then, “No lilies, either. Just… simple. Romantic.” Romantic. He hates himself so fucking much.
“Romantic, but no roses.” She doesn’t laugh at him, at least. “Okay, euh, may I please have the address?”
“Yes,” and Ilya rattles off an address he’s had memorized since 2013.
“Would you like to include a message?”
“No, no no no,” Ilya says, probably too quickly. He searches for the word. “Just, ah. Anonymous.”
“Very good. And when would you like it delivered?”
He still has Hollander’s game schedule memorized. He feels sick to his stomach. “Thursday afternoon,” he says. They have a home game on Thursday. Rose Landry will be there, he thinks. Maybe she’ll find the flowers. Maybe she’ll throw them out before Hollander gets them. Maybe she’ll pretend they’re hers.
He swallows, and gives Aline his credit card information. He hangs up the phone and exhales, as if he has just ran a marathon. An email notification pops up with the receipt from Les Fleurs du Mal. Probably, Hollander won’t even know they’re from him. Ilya tells himself this is the best possible outcome. It’ll be his little secret. A little surprise to fuck with Hollander’s new movie star girlfriend, while Hollander forgets all about him.
On Thursday morning, he gets a text notification that the flowers are in transit. That afternoon, he gets a notification that the flowers have been delivered and signed for. Purolator sends him a picture of the signature. It’s Hollander’s.
Ilya waits up until midnight, but Hollander doesn’t text him, not even to complain.
iii. 2018
Yuna’s birthday is the 2nd of September. “Of course she’s a Virgo,” Jackie laughs, which means nothing to Ilya except for the fact that now he knows when he should start thinking about gifts.
Jewelry is too much, probably, for a woman he only met last year. He still feels awkward around David and Yuna both, as much as they have tried to welcome him in. During the season he is far from Ottawa, and this summer he’s spent most of his time in meetings for the foundation and fucking Shane on every available surface.
He asks Shane where she is from in Japan. Shane shrugs. “Saitama,” he says. “She’s lived in North America since she was eight, though.”
“Do you think she would like something from her home country?”
Shane thinks about it. Ilya watches him ponder it, the little line in his forehead. Ilya kisses him there, and then kisses his temple. “Hey, knock it off, you’re distracting me.”
“You’re too cute,” Ilya says, kissing his cheeks. “Never mind. I will find your mother perfect present. Leave it to me.”
“I know you will,” Shane sighs, and kisses him back. And then, “I just don’t know. I think she’d like anything if it came from you, to be honest. She always says she feels more Canadian than Japanese.”
“Hm.” Ilya can understand this. It’s been long enough that he, too, sometimes feels more American than Russian, and he spent many years into adulthood in Russia, unlike Yuna. Still, maybe she gets homesick.
Eventually, Ilya decides that rather than risking getting something meaningless, or worse, offensive, he will give her something from his own country. He spends too much money bribing Svetlana to bring him the two glasses left of his parents’ tea glass set, with their delicate filigree holders, somehow not yet sold to fuel Alexei’s lifestyle. He will never drink out of them, and he knows Yuna likes tea, so at least they won’t go to waste.
He wraps them carefully in copper tissue paper, puts them in a little box, and the day of Yuna’s birthday, buys a bouquet of carnations and hydrangeas at the local florist.
And there is a single, perfect rose in the back. “This one too, please,” Ilya says, and they wrap it up for him and tie a single, perfect bow around the stem.
Shane huffs when he sees the gifts. “You’re gonna show me up,” he pouts.
This, Ilya cannot deny. “And what did you get her, моя сосулька?”
He watches as Shane thinks this one through. “Your… icicle?”
“Very good, my little ice queen.”
Ilya reaches for the chair where he has adeptly hidden the rose. He says, “I have a little gift for you too, Shanesicle.”
“Don’t ever call me a Shanesicle again, you freak,” Shane says, but fondly enough. He looks over, and Ilya swallows as he meets his eyes, holding out the single rose.
Sometimes it feels like all his life Ilya has been waiting at the starting line, love tensed and ready to spring. Never for anyone else in his life has he wanted to buy flowers. He was satisfied with partners who lasted one or two weeks, irritated with those who wanted more. He hated romance and especially romance movies, could never relate to the men of his acquaintance who hopped from one relationship to another.
But this— now, Ilya thinks, now he sees it. So he wiggles the rose a little and says, “Well?”
“Jesus,” Shane says, that softening in his eyes that means Ilya has, perhaps, done something right. He takes the rose and then kisses Ilya hard. “You are so sweet to me,” he murmurs, and Ilya kisses him again, smells him, his deodorant and shampoo and the little bit of clean sweat under his jaw, feels the softness of his skin.
“Maybe it is because I love you,” Ilya tries, and Shane presses his forehead into Ilya’s shoulder. “Hey. Tell me. What did you get your mother for her birthday?”
Muffled, Shane groans, “I got her a fucking gift card,” and Ilya cackles.
iv. 2020
“Are you gonna take out the garbage anytime soon?” Shane says.
Ilya is lying down on the couch scrolling on his phone. He finds he is doing this more and more. It worries him, sometimes, when he has the energy to worry about it.
Anya nudges his free hand.
Shane walks into the living room. “Hey. Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you,” Ilya says. He flicks his eyes up at Shane. Shane, who is full of something bright and painful to look at. “I will do it tomorrow.”
“Uh huh. Like you said you would last week?”
Ilya had forgotten about last week. Shane had told him to take out the garbage on Monday. Ilya said he would do it tomorrow. Tuesday had come and gone, and they had come home from practice, and after showering and getting ready for bed, Shane had remembered, the garbage, and gotten out of bed to take it out so that it would be ready for pickup on Wednesday morning.
He rolls his eyes, looks back at his phone. “Sorry I do not have trash schedule memorized. I will take it tomorrow.”
“Jesus Christ, Ilya, can you at least look at me when we’re having a conversation?”
So Ilya looks up at him, because in the end, he cannot deny Shane anything. His eyes burn. His body hurts.
He could say it. He could say, I am tired all the time, but of course, this isn’t true. He doesn’t get tired on the ice. At least, he hasn’t gotten tired yet, which is how he knows it is a mental weakness. His mother was like this. But his mother had none of the privileges that Ilya has.
Shane says, “Just ‘cause I let you fuck me doesn’t mean I’m a goddamn housewife. You think I want to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after you? I’m always doing the fucking dishes, cleaning the bathroom, doing the laundry. At least you could act like you wanna live here.”
Ilya did the laundry over the weekend, but that is hardly the point. Ilya knows what the point is. But he can’t say it. He just can’t say it.
With monumental effort, Ilya sits up. He rests his hand on Anya’s head, just for a moment. “I will take out trash now,” he grits out, almost dizzy. This is so stupid. He is so stupid.
“Thank you,” Shane says.
Ilya takes out the garbage. Once he is up, it’s easier. He also takes out the recycling and the compost. Then, he sits on the couch, and lets Shane feed him and says he is sleepy so that Shane will do the dishes.
He asks Bood for a ride home the next day. Shane leaves him, looking at him worriedly, only settling when Ilya promises to be home by six-thirty. “I need to buy him flowers,” he explains, after Shane leaves.
Bood chuckles, taps him on the shoulder. “In the doghouse, huh?”
“Yes, haha, doghouse.” Not really. Shane would not really leave him over forgetting the trash once, but Ilya can still hear it: You think I want to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after you?
So it is not so much an apology for the trash as an apology for this. Himself. He cannot always take out the garbage, but he can bring Shane flowers, and kiss his freckles, and maybe, maybe, make him happy enough to forget the dark clouds lingering over Ilya’s history.
Bood drops Ilya off at six-twenty five with his gear and a bouquet of pink daisies and little white flowers he has already forgotten the name of. Ilya exhales, and then walks through the door.
“I brought you flowers, my love,” Ilya says. “Sorry about the trash.”
Shane looks up from the kitchen counter briefly. He sighs. “I don’t need flowers, Ilya. I just want you to take the garbage out sometimes.” And then Shane meets his eyes before Ilya can hide from him, and Shane looks— worried. “Hey. Hey. What’s going on?”
Ilya grimaces. “Nothing.”
“Put— hey, Ilya. Put the flowers down, talk to me.”
Ilya cannot put the flowers down. He can’t let go of anything. He watches Shane approach him, steady and warm, and hates himself. He can’t do a thing right.
“What’s wrong, huh?” Shane puts his hand on Ilya’s cheek, thumbs over his jaw, and Ilya has to look away, sets his jaw so he doesn’t cry. “You can let go of this stuff, okay? Just hold me. Let me hold you.”
“I just get so tired,” Ilya admits. His teeth hurt. “Mоя любовь, I get so tired sometimes.”
Shane nods. “Okay. Okay. Put it down, baby.” And Shane takes the flowers from him. Ilya lets him. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to fight. Shane puts his hands on Ilya’s arms, steps close, toes touching. “Tell me.”
Irina was thirty-five when she died. Ilya was not old enough, then, to know his mother’s age like instinct. All he knew then was that he was twelve and his mother was his mother. But he knows now, of course. He was born when his mother was twenty-three. So his brother was born when she was nineteen. And she died at thirty-five. Ilya is thirty years old now.
Ilya thinks it started when he was just turning ten. She was more tired, spent more time in her room alone. Asleep, napping. I’m just tired, Ilyushenka. I’m only tired. Ilya knows now what she meant. All I am is tired. I am nothing but tiredness.
“I don’t want to die like my mother,” Ilya says, the hurt of it hissing out of his throat like steam. Shane exhales heavily, and Ilya realizes what he has done. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, “I’m sorry. I want to be better for you.”
Shane leans his head forward to press into his chest. “I can take out the garbage, Ilya. You think I’ll lose you over fucking chores?”
“I want to do chores for you,” Ilya says, realizing how true it is as he says it. He wants to clean the kitchen counter on their anniversary so that Shane will look at him with that look, as if Ilya is a pleasant surprise. He wants to make Shane breakfast in bed. He wants to have the energy to clean the fridge. “That’s what I want.”
“Okay,” Shane murmurs, “okay. But not tonight. Come here.”
Shane pulls him in and Ilya lets him, all of his fractured ribs held in place. He doesn’t cry, but he breathes him in, his beautiful man. I don’t want to die like my mother, he thinks to himself, remembering the hard cut of ice under his skates, imagining the hike in Algonquin that David has promised to take him on, envisioning the way it will feel to watch Bood’s daughter grow up. He thinks of year after year of this, of Shane, of holding beauty in his arms and the awe he will feel every morning as Shane grows into something more himself, more handsome and delicate and fortified and precious by the year. I won’t die like that, he thinks. I want to live.
v. 2023
The night before the last game of Ilya’s last season, he can’t think about anything, really. Everything hurts. He can’t muster up the energy to consider sex or speak English, couldn’t get on his knees for Shane even if he wanted to from how fucked his joints are.
Shane is still in his ice bath. Ilya had begged captain privileges and got the Cens rookies to bring them no less than twenty packs of ice from the gas station. One of the trials of an away game is that they can’t go home to recuperate, have to settle for a makeshift ice soak in a hotel bathtub.
He lies in bed and breathes through the muscle aches. He’s taken every painkiller available and has an ice pack for his ribs and a separate one for his knee. Amazingly enough, though, he’s happy. Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Or maybe he’s reached a state of serenity only achievable by pushing your body through every possible hurdle towards victory.
Shane is undoubtedly running through plays in his mind. They spent an hour going over tape this evening, and then another hour of Shane talking through every error they’ve made on the ice for the past six games. Of course Ilya’s last game would be a tie-breaker.
He checks his timer. Eight minutes. Shane should be out in another five. Ilya can’t fuck him until he forgets his name, or pamper him in bed, or kiss every freckle until Shane laughs him off, but he realizes— he can at least do this.
The concierge is polite enough when he picks up. “Can you send flowers up to our room?” Ilya asks.
It is a luxury hotel—has to be, to have a bathtub big enough for professional athletes—so the man is not even fazed. “Right away, Mr. Rozanov?”
“Yes. Any flowers will do.”
“Expect them within…” and Ilya hears him talking to someone else at the front, hears the scratch of a notepad. “Twenty minutes, Mr. Rozanov. Shall we bill your room directly?”
“Да, yes.” And, with the very last of his effort, “Thank you.” Ilya hangs up and lets his arm fall to his side, exhausted.
Shane gets out of the bath three minutes after that. Exactly fourteen minutes in the bath. Longer than his usual time, but they are all pushing things that should not be pushed to win this Cup. Ilya doesn’t say anything. He watches, eyes slitted, as Shane gets dressed in the warm light of their room, briefs and sweatpants and a loose T-shirt that Ilya is certain used to be his, and then settles into the other bed. After so long they’ve learned their lesson—the two of them usually sleep in separate beds by this point in the playoffs, too wary of aggravating each other’s injuries in the night.
Ten minutes later, there is a knock. Shane startles up. “No, no, I get,” Ilya mumbles, twisting awkwardly over the edge of the bed, scrambling for a twenty from his wallet. Shane is in better condition than he is, but Ilya refuses to let him answer the door for his own flowers.
A nice young bellboy hands him a bouquet of generically pretty flowers, probably from the Shoppers around the corner. He says, “Your flowers, sir,” and doesn’t even blink an eye at Shane Hollander in bed behind him.
“Thank you,” Ilya says, handing him the twenty dollar bill as a tip, and closes the door, probably rudely. Fuck, it hurts.
He limps back to bed, and holds the flowers out. “Forgive me, my beautiful husband,” he says, “but I cannot make it to your bed.”
Shane snorts, and rolls over to take the flowers. “These are pretty,” he says, and Ilya nods. “What’s the occasion?”
“No reason,” Ilya says, smiling to himself. He will win the Cup tomorrow, for the second time with the Cens, and then he will kiss his beautiful husband. He will fight down to his teeth for that win, and he knows he will get it, because Shane Hollander is the best—and, best of all, Shane has chosen him. He’s the luckiest man on earth. He owes Shane everything.
Ilya says, “Is just for I love you.”
Shane sets the flowers down on the nightstand between them, blossoms facing Ilya. Ilya turns to look at him, to see that beautiful face crease into a smile, to see his eyes soften. “I love you too, handsome.”
+i. 2026
Today, Ilya is thirty-six.
Shane knows this one is a complicated birthday. He knows Ilya’s mother died at thirty-five—and he knows there’s something small in Ilya that wishes he hadn’t lived longer than she did, as much as there’s a bigger part of him that wants to grow old.
But, he also knows Ilya won’t appreciate the prodding. After the number of times Hayden has tried to sit him down to talk about his eating, he can see why, so that morning, he just kisses Ilya’s forehead and holds him.
“Good morning, handsome,” Shane murmurs, thumbing over the point of Ilya’s ear, the little hole in his earlobe. He looks so fucking good, still. Not that thirty-six is old, obviously, but most of Shane’s social circle are guys who think thirty-one means washed up.
But Ilya looks exactly the same as he did when they met. Not really, of course, but the little elven point of his ear, the jut of his chin, the sharpness of his cheekbones—that’s all Ilya, has been from day one.
Shane rests his fingers in his hair, doesn’t do anything except move his fingertips, just a little, against Ilya’s skin. Ilya blows little bubbles as he wakes up, like a baby. Shane grins. “Hi, sleepyhead.”
“English,” Ilya complains, mouth pressed to Shane’s neck, barely audible. “Why head is sleepy?”
“Okay, linguist.” Shane presses his mouth to Ilya’s hairline to avoid the tears welling up. He’s just so happy. He didn’t know he could ever be so happy.
Ilya rolls his hips against Shane’s thigh, and Shane grins. “Not too sleepy down there, huh?”
“No, never,” Ilya says, a smile in his voice. It’s funny. Shane had thought that once they got together they’d have sex every day, three times a day, hungry for it like at the cottage—or, alternatively, that Ilya would get bored of him after a year and realize he’d blown up his career for someone who’s just not that interesting.
After so long, though, Shane thinks he could probably come just from listening to Ilya’s early-morning gasps, the little sounds of him that he never heard in hotel rooms. “You’re kinda hot,” Shane says, rolling them so that Ilya’s actually on top of him, cocks brushing against each other through their underwear. Shane’s already so fucking hard.
“Only ‘kinda’?” Ilya thrusts and Shane moans, a little choked-off noise in the back of his throat, looking at Ilya’s gorgeous thighs, his belly touching Shane’s. “I’m so hot. Very hot. You must tell me this, is my birthday.”
“Ah, I dunno,” Shane teases. He reaches up to grab Ilya’s face, thumb on his jaw, looks into his eyes. They look at each other like that for one, two moments. Shane swallows, and looks away. “I mean, Scott Hunter’s pretty hot—”
“You—” Ilya licks under Shane’s jaw, bites him there, sends a spark through Shane’s spine like it’s one minute on the clock and Ilya has no option but to score. Jesus. Ilya’s thrusts get sloppier, harder, and Shane arches to meet him, the heat of him brutal against Shane’s chest. “Take it back. I am hotter than old man Scott Hunter.”
“I mean—”
“No, no, no.” Ilya pulls back, rests on his forearms above Shane. Shane meets his eyes, and Ilya looks at him, a little smile at the corner of his mouth. Shane looks at that, and his chest, and the bulge in his boxers, and swallows.
Ilya slides down his body, rests his chin on Shane’s hipbone. “I am hottest man you know. Yes?”
Obviously. He looks— he looks unbelievably good, curls all over the place and mouth wet like a dream. Shane wants that so fucking bad. He arches up, a little, to get his dick against Ilya’s cheek, and Ilya forces his hips down with his forearm, Christ. Shane whines, eyes never leaving Ilya’s. “Say it,” Ilya says sweetly, leaning closer to Shane’s cock. “I am very hot. Hotter than Scott Hunter. Say, Ilya, you are sexiest man alive.”
“Technically, I was voted the MLH’s sexiest player—” and Ilya slaps him on the thigh, “—ah, fuck!”
“Not nice on my birthday,” Ilya pouts, rubbing the sting into him, and Shane feels completely moved, desperate, just the way he’s always felt with Ilya. “Tell me.”
“It’s you,” Shane breathes, and Ilya pulls down his briefs. “Fuck, Ilya, you’re—”
“Yes?” Ilya says, breathes, against Shane’s dick, while Shane tries to overcome the embarrassment to say it.
Shane swallows. His hands twitch, something sweet and sparkling in his palms, the soles of his feet, fuck. He feels so fucking good. He says, “You’re the hottest man I know.”
“Very good,” Ilya says, and swallows him down.
“Oh fuck, fuck—” Shane tries to hold Ilya’s hair and Ilya bats him away, holds his wrists down and licks him, Jesus fuck— “I’m gonna— shit, shit, shit, fuck—”
Ilya licks into his slit, swallows down his precome, kisses down his shaft and Shane— Christ, it feels so fucking good. He struggles against the hold and Ilya doesn’t let him go and that feels better, almost. “Feels— fuck, Ilya, it feels—”
“Good, yes?” Ilya bites the inside of Shane’s thigh, worries a mark there that Shane hopes will last to the end of the week at least.
“Uh huh,” Shane replies, and Ilya deepthroats him, and that’s— ”Fuck, fuck, oh God—” and then Shane’s not sure what else he says, because Ilya swallows him down and Shane comes like that, twitching and jerking into Ilya’s mouth, thighs trembling. Jesus fucking Christ. “Come up here,” Shane gasps, “come here, fuck my face, c’mon.”
Ilya crawls up the bed, gorgeous and lithe. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Shane says, looking at him, his chest, his thighs. He wiggles down the bed enough for Ilya to straddle his shoulders. “Give it to me, please.”
“You are so perfect,” Ilya says, and that sends Shane into that perfect place where he’s nothing but pleasure for Ilya, nothing but a perfect hole for Ilya to fuck. Ilya presses into his mouth and Shane keeps his throat open, moans around the thickness of it, swallows messily as Ilya’s balls hit his chin. “Oh, fuck, you love it—”
Shane can’t say anything but he kneads Ilya’s thighs in response, clutches his ass to pull him in deeper. Fuck, he loves it so much, the smell of it, the sweat and come and the sleep, too, the smell of their bed on him— Ilya thrusts, a little, and Shane goes dizzy, cross-eyed, breathes through his nose and scratches Ilya’s skin.
Ilya pulls back and Shane gasps. He knows he looks fucked out, probably, eyes watering. Ilya bends over to kiss the corner of his eye, licks a tear from his temple, and Shane wants to weep. “Gorgeous, gorgeous,” Ilya says, and pulls back. “Ready again?”
“Yeah, yes—” and Ilya pushes in halfway through the word, leaves Shane scrambling for air, fuck it’s so good. He feels Ilya’s dick pulsing in his mouth, wants him to come down his throat, or maybe all over his face, wants Ilya to fuck him like this, just wants, he fucking wants so bad—
Ilya pulls out suddenly, brutally, and Shane hiccups for air while Ilya jerks himself, comes on Shane’s cheeks, his mouth, comes all over his throat. And probably the fucking pillows too, damn. “Fuck, Shane,” Ilya hisses, and Shane grins, still breathless. “Fuck, fuck.”
“You’re so hot,” Shane says, voice wrecked, already sore. He’s gonna need some throat coat if he wants to sound normal at dinner tonight.
“Hotter than Scott Hunter?”
“Of course, baby.” Shane slaps his thigh, and Ilya rolls off him, sideways on the bed. “Okay, now I really need to brush my teeth. And we have to do the laundry.”
“Моя корзина,” Ilya says fondly, and Shane thinks this one through.
Laundry. Basket. Shane shoves him. “Your basket?”
“Yes.” Ilya kisses him hard on the head. “You are my basket case, yes?”
Shane laughs. “You can’t say that. You’re gonna get cancelled.”
“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, pleadingly, “I do not know this word, cancelled, very complex American social norms—”
“Get in the bathroom, dumbass,” Shane says, and then they fight over the toothpaste tube, like they always do.
Downstairs, Ilya makes Shane breakfast while Shane opens the box his dad had helpfully delivered at eleven last night. He’d said, Kid, I feel like a superspy with all this sneaking around, and Shane had said Thanks, Dad, very pointedly. In fairness, he’d offered to pick up the bouquet from their house, but Mom had put her foot down about Shane driving for an hour and a half after midnight, so that was that, apparently.
When Ilya plates his eggs and spinach and an entire English muffin, which Shane had agreed to because it was Ilya’s birthday, Shane sets the vase on the table.
Ilya blinks at it. Shane shrugs. He says, “Happy birthday.”
He doesn’t know how to read the expression on Ilya’s face. His husband reaches over and thumbs carefully over the nearest petals, small and soft.
The bouquet is huge. It’s probably the biggest one Shane’s ever seen. It’s blue, mostly, with some delicate white and pink flowers thrown in, and big green leaves. The lady at the florist shop—Les Fleurs du Mal—had said that all blue would be too homogenous and make it difficult to see the details of each petal shape. She’d also said that they had a book of flower meanings, if Shane wanted to take a look at those to help him decide.
Anyway. Ilya still hasn’t said anything. “Do you… hate it?”
Ilya blinks. Oh no, fuck, he’s crying. “No, no,” Ilya says, and Shane walks around the table quickly to thumb away his tears. “Is just… very nice.”
“You don’t have to say that just ‘cause I got it for you,” Shane says, but Ilya is shaking his head vehemently.
“No, I love it. I love it. I am…” Ilya kisses the top of Shane’s head, and then his forehead, and then is kissing him all over his face, it feels like, warm and soft. “You are so nice to me, моя любовь,” he whispers, and Shane presses his mouth to Ilya’s pulse.
After a moment, Ilya says, “Tell me. How did you decide on the flowers?”
Shane flushes. “They’re just… blue.” And then he admits, “I mean, none of them are even close to the colour of your eyes, but I still wanted them to be blue.”
Ilya huffs out a little laugh. “You are very romantic. And a little liar, yes? I am sure you know what each flower means.”
Shane buries his face in Ilya’s shoulder. “You think I’m a weirdo,” he says, not really mad about it.
“Noooooooo мой цветок, you are perfectly normal man with no strangenesses at all.”
“Mой… flower?”
“Very good, little weirdo.”
Shane kisses his shoulder. “I like that you said strangenesses. That’s so cute.”
“Now you know how it is I feel.” Ilya pushes him to sit, and Shane sits in front of his breakfast. “So go, go now, explain to me the flowers.”
Shane sighs. He eats one bite of his eggs, and says, “I mean, at first I just wanted them to be blue, ‘cause that’s like, the best colour.”
“You are so romantic,” Ilya says, delightedly, and Shane rolls his eyes.
“But then the lady at the flower shop had, like, a book? So I was just reading. There’s hyacinths—that’s those ones, the ones that are kinda purple—and those mean sport and play, so obviously I had to get those.”
“Of course.”
“And blue hyacinths specifically mean constancy, and I’m like… in this to the end, or whatever.”
Ilya sighs. “You say such sweet things to me.”
“Shut up.” Shane eats a little more while Ilya plays with the flowers closest to him. “Anyway. The big round ones, with little petals, those are hydrangeas.” He swallows. He doesn’t really want to look at Ilya while he says it. “Those mean, uh. Gratitude. For being understood.” He cuts some English muffin and eats it with his spinach, and doesn’t look up.
Ilya says, quietly, “So I should give you those. To say, thank you for understanding me.”
Shane shakes his head, looking down at his plate. “I always felt like I was… dunno how to describe it. Like there was a wall, or something, like a glass wall between me and everyone else. Everyone knew something I just didn’t get. But you just… you just understood me.” He blinks. “I feel like you always just understood me.”
When he looks up, Ilya is watching him with that delicate look in his eyes, the one that Shane has seen more and more since Ilya retired.
“I love you very much,” Ilya says, and Shane nods.
“I love you too,” Shane says, quietly. And then, “I’m so happy I get another year with you.”
“Yes, same,” Ilya says softly, and leans back. He’s already halfway through his breakfast, the freak. “Okay. There are so many more than two flowers. Finish your breakfast and then tell me everything.”
“We could just find the book, you know,” Shane replies. “The store was called… fuck, what was it. Les Fleurs du Mal?”
Ilya blinks. And then, for no reason Shane can figure, he laughs and laughs, brighter than the sun.