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It doesn’t happen every day.
Ilya’s okay with the soft shit. He likes the weight of Shane’s head on him. He likes the way Shane looks in the morning—all messy hair and pale skin—clinging to Ilya’s neck like he’s afraid he’ll drift away. It’s the smell of coffee and cheap toothpaste and just something so him. It’s the only time Ilya’s brain actually shuts up.
The ordinary physics of a body next to a body is usually enough. The math of it adds up: one plus one equals two.
Then there’s the other side of it. The nights after a blowout or a long road trip when they’re still recalibrating to each other. Or the random ones—the quiet, shitty ones where the apartment feels empty even with both of them in it. Ilya lies there and listens to the silence until his brain starts to itch, spinning and going nowhere.
That’s when the usual closeness stops being enough. Proximity becomes its own kind of torture. It is a mathematical error; Ilya no longer wants to be two. He wants to be a singular, indivisible integer.
It starts as an ache behind his sternum—something restless and hungry. Then it becomes pressure, like his ribcage is too small for everything he’s feeling. Then it turns almost violent, the kind of need that makes his teeth hurt and his hands curl into fists. It’s a phantom limb syndrome, except the limb he’s missing is Shane’s very soul.
Ilya lies there and counts Shane’s breaths just to have something to do, like always. Shane looks too vulnerable like this—arm thrown over Ilya like he’s got nothing to fear in the world. It makes Ilya’s chest ache. He looks at the curve of Shane’s throat, the life humming just under the surface, and suddenly the space between them feels massive. Even with their skin touching, it’s not enough.
He wants to peel it back.
Not to hurt. Never to hurt. Ilya would set himself on fire before he hurt Shane; he would dismantle his own skeleton if Shane needed a place to sit. But god, he wants to get closer than bodies allow. He wants to slip inside the architecture of Shane’s chest, past the barrier of muscle and bone. He wants to curl up right beside the heart that’s been beating too hard for too many years—because of him, because of them, because of everything they carried alone before they were allowed to carry it together.
He wants to rest his head against the inside curve of Shane’s ribcage and feel the muscle flex. To listen to the wet, rhythmic thump that never stops saying alive, alive, alive. Still here. Still mine. Still choosing you. He wants to live in the hot dark behind Shane’s sternum, tucked away in a place where no trade could reach them and no coach has the right to ask questions. Buried so deep that reporters’ speculations can’t find them, where the cold distance of time zones finally dissolves into nothing. He wants to be the marrow in Shane's bones. He wants to be the oxygen in his blood, making the rounds through his lungs, keeping him steady when the world gets too loud.
Sometimes the want is so sharp his hands actually shake. It’s a frantic, half-insane hunger—the kind of obsession people warn you about in songs and bad poetry. But there’s no shadow in it. To Ilya, this is the most honest thing he’s ever known. It isn't dark; it's just heavy. It’s the weight of a mountain condensed into the space of a bedroom.
On a Tuesday in February, after a game where Shane stopped thirty-eight shots and looked like a god doing it—untouchable, encased in plastic and foam and steel—Ilya lies awake at two in the morning and can't stop staring. The pads are off, the armor is gone, and Shane is just a man made of soft edges and quiet breaths.
Shane is on his back, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm Ilya has memorized better than any play or drill.
Twelve breaths per minute. Always twelve, unless he’s dreaming.
Ilya reaches out slowly, placing his palm flat over Shane’s heart. The skin is warm and smooth, still faintly damp from the shower. Under his hand, the beat is strong. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. About sixty beats per minute.
He presses harder.
Shane stirs, mumbling something sleepy and confused. "Mmph... Ilya?"
Ilya doesn’t apologize. He doesn't move his hand. He just keeps it there—heavy, possessive—trying to push through skin and muscle by sheer force of will. Like if he presses hard enough, his palm will sink straight to the source, and they will finally, finally be fused.
Shane blinks awake, eyes glassy in the dim streetlights filtering through the blinds. "...what's wrong?"
"Nothing wrong."
"Then why are you—" Shane looks down at the hand on his chest, at the white-knuckled way Ilya is pressing like he’s trying to crack him open. "Okay. Something’s wrong. You're vibrating, Ilya."
Я хочу внутрь. Ilya thinks.
Ilya doesn’t have the words. He doesn't have the language for this level of greed. He leans down and presses his forehead against the center of Shane’s chest, trying to listen through the bone. Trying to hear the thoughts behind the beat.
"I want—" His voice cracks. He tries again. "I want inside."
Shane goes still. The sleepiness evaporates, replaced by that quiet, focused stillness he gets when he’s reading a play.
"I want to crawl inside here," Ilya’s palm presses harder, grinding against the sternum, "and never come out. Want to sleep against your fucking ribs. Want your blood to move around me. Want your heart to pound under mine.”
”Fuck, Shane, mоя душа…I want there to be no outside anymore."
For a long moment, Shane is silent. But his heartbeat speeds up—not from fear, but from something bigger. He slides his fingers into Ilya’s hair, holding him there, anchoring him before he can vibrate right out of his own skin.
"Tell me," Shane whispers.
"Sometimes I think about it when you're playing," Ilya says, his words muffled against skin. "When the puck hits your chest and you don’t even flinch. I think—I want to be there. Inside. Protecting the thing that protects everything else."
Shane’s breath hitches.
"I think about it when we're apart. If I lived inside your chest, we would never be away from each other. Every road trip. Every practice. Every moment. And when you’re sad... when you get in your head... I could fight those thoughts. I could hunt them down in the dark and kill them. I could protect you from the inside."
"Ilya—"
"I know it is crazy," Ilya cuts him off, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "But I can’t help it. Sometimes the wanting is so big I can’t breathe. Like my body is too small for how much I need you. Like I am an engine too big for this car."
Shane’s hand tightens in his hair, a grounding pressure.
"You're already there," he says, his voice wrecked and thick.
"You live in my chest. Every time my pulse spikes when you walk into a room, every time my heart fucking hurts because I love you too much—that’s you."
Ilya's breath shudders out of him. He wants to believe it.
"So if you want to crawl inside," Shane murmurs, "you're not going anywhere I haven't already let you."
Ilya closes his eyes so tight it hurts. He presses his open mouth against the sternum, trying to taste the heartbeat through the skin. "Not close enough. Will never be close enough. "
"I know," Shane says, and there’s a hint of grief in it. The frustration of loving someone so much that biology feels like a prison. "I know the feeling. Like I want to swallow you whole just so I know exactly where you are."
They stay like that for a long time. Ilya, half on top of him, trying to merge their shadows; Shane, locking his arms around him like he’s anchoring something that might fly apart.
Ilya knows he isn't the first person to feel this. He knows the desire to merge—to dissolve boundaries—is universal. Ancient. It’s the reason people get tattoos of names and wear rings and try to memorize the scent of a neck. But knowing that doesn't make it easier. It makes it worse. It means for all of human history, no one has figured out how to satisfy this hunger. We are all just lonely islands reaching out.
"What are you thinking?" Shane asks, his thumb tracing the shell of Ilya’s ear.
"Thinking that bodies are stupid," Ilya says. "Thinking evolution fucked up. Should have made us like those deep-sea creatures. Anglerfish. The male bites into the female and they become one organism. Share blood, share organs, share everything. One stops existing so the other can survive. That is a good deal."
"That’s deeply weird, Ilya."
"Is romantic."
"It's parasitic. It literally dissolves."
"Same thing," Ilya mutters. "To be dissolved into you is a good way to go."
Shane laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest and vibrating against Ilya’s cheek, but then he goes quiet. "You know what I think? I think maybe the separation is the point. If we actually became one person, there’d be no you and me anymore. There’d be no one for me to look at. I don’t want to lose you. I want to see you. I want…I want to witness you."
Ilya considers this. He hates that it makes sense. He hates that Shane is always the one who understands the utility of a gap. "But small distance," he says stubbornly, shifting his weight until Shane huffs. "Smaller than this."
Shane smiles, soft and sad, his eyes searching Ilya’s in the dark. "Okay. Smaller than this."
He pulls Ilya up, kissing him slow and deep, eliminating every millimeter of space until their teeth clink and their breaths are indistinguishable. When they break apart, Shane whispers: "Closer?"
"Closer," Ilya agrees. It’s a lie. It will never be close enough until they are the same atoms.
A week later, after a brutal loss where the fans were ruthless and the score was uglier, Ilya finds Shane in the arena showers. The lights are dimmed, and the steam is thick enough to drown in. Shane is sitting on the tile floor, water beating down on him, arms wrapped around his knees, looking like he’s trying to disappear into the grout.
Ilya doesn't ask. He doesn't offer platitudes about "next time." He just strips down and sits behind him, wrapping his legs around Shane’s frame and pulling him back against his chest. He fits their bodies together like puzzle pieces, feeling Shane’s heartbeat through his own spine, a rhythmic echo.
"I’m in here," Ilya says quietly, reaching around to press his palm over Shane’s heart from the front, mirroring their night in bed. "You feel me? Behind your ribs. в твоём сердце (In your heart)…Every bad game, every moment you think you're not good enough—I’m in there, and I’m telling you you’re wrong."
Shane’s breath catches, his head falling back against Ilya’s shoulder.
"I live here. So when you want to believe you’re not worth it, you have to go through me first. And I’m a stubborn tenant, Shane."
Shane turns in his arms, water streaming down his face, eyes red-rimmed and fierce. "Promise?"
"Promise. You’re stuck with me. Even if I have to bite you like the fish and dissolve."
Shane let out a wet, shaky laugh. "No dissolving. Just... stay."
That night, back in their own bed, Shane is the one who can’t get close enough. He pins Ilya down, pressing his forehead to Ilya’s chest, his hands roaming Ilya’s back as if trying to find a seam to unzip.
"My turn," he whispers. "I'm listening for the house you built."
"You’re already in there," Ilya says, running his hand down the dip of Shane's spine. "Taking up all the space. Making it hard to breathe sometimes. It is a very crowded chest."
They stay like that—hands over hearts, breathing synchronized. The border is still there. Skin, muscle, bone. The stubborn reality of being two separate people. But in the dark, with their hearts beating against their palms, the veil feels thinner.
Maybe the line will never dissolve. But maybe it can blur enough that the separation stops feeling like abandonment and starts feeling like an invitation.
Ilya wakes first the next morning. Shane is sprawled on his stomach, his hand open and palm up—an offering, even in sleep. Ilya takes it, threading their fingers together, marveling at the way their knuckles fit. He kisses the pulse point at Shane’s wrist, that secret highway of blood.
Shane stirs. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
"You sleep okay? Or were you trying to osmosis into my skin again?"
Ilya thinks about the restless wanting. He thinks about the space behind the ribs. He thinks about how, for the first time in his life, he doesn't feel like he's drifting.
"Yeah," he says, pulling Shane's hand to his mouth again. "I sleep okay."
Maybe Shane is right. Maybe the wanting itself is a kind of closeness. Loving someone this much means learning to live in the space between together and not close enough. It’s a perpetual hunger, a constant reach. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
But as Shane pulls him closer until they are nose to nose, looking at him like he’s the only thing in the world that matters—for now, it’s everything.
He squeezes Ilya’s hand, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Ilya says back. “So fucking much.”
“I know,” Shane whispers. “I can feel it. Right here.” He places Ilya’s hand over his heart. “Every second. You’re right here.”
Ilya closes his eyes and lets himself feel it.
The beat under his palm.
Мой.
Mine.
It’s Shane.
END.