Guys wait. The cottage was their first summer together, which means it was the first time Ilya got to see Shane’s freckles go dark with the high UV. Like freckles get so much more predominant in the summer and very light ones you wouldn’t usually see. And like yes Ilya sees Shane after summer but lots of them will have already started to fade by then. But this summer together, like 5 days into being at the cottage Shane gets in the shower with him after they’d been in the lake a while and he’s like woah. And pinning Shane to the tile to inspect alllll these new little lovely little freckles that he’s never ever seen before. Shane has a triangle of freckles now near the corner of his left eye, above his cheek bone and a faint freckle on the very tip of his nose and then oh GOD there are so many layers of dusted freckles Ilya feels a little dizzy. His lovely freckles so bright, shining even more now under the heat of summer and it’s so amazing to see his sweethearts face so familiar, so much a part of his last ten years that he knows pretty well, to see it in a whole new way. Ilya is like looovesick over it. He makes Shane rest his head on his shoulder while he read his chapters that night so Ilya can keep getting familiar with this new take on his loves face. All this extra marks, he had no idea were born every summer, so fleeting they’d be gone again by the first games of the season
