thus play i in one person many people

“Are you asleep?” he whispers and the smile presses more firmly into his skin.

“No,” Shane admits, something almost giddy and coaxing behind the word.

It makes Ilya’s own mouth twitch, makes him turn his head the other way on the pillow and bring his free arm up to cover his face because he feels so fucking happy and delighted and in love he can hardly contain it.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he shifts down the mattress, twisting onto his side until Shane’s head isn’t resting on him anymore and they’re face to face. Sharing the same pillow, the tips of their noses just shy of touching. He raises a hand and settles his fingers against Shane’s cheek and jaw.

“Hi.”

Shane beams at him. “Hi.”

Almost simultaneously, they laugh – a disbelieving, incredulous sound that has them both inadvertently curling closer until their legs are tangled under the covers.

“Did you sleep okay?” Shane asks him when the sound peters off, one of his hands finding Ilya’s hair and sinking into his curls just like it had by the fire last night.

The sensation makes him want to melt into the mattress; he settles for burying his face deeper in the pillow and nodding. “Yes.” He lets his thumb and forefinger trail over Shane’s cheekbone and stares fixedly at his freckles when he admits, “I like sharing a bed with you.”

It feels almost embarrassing to say out loud, like it confirms he’s thought about it, but Shane looks so elated that no part of him wants to take it back.

“I hoped it would feel like this,” Shane murmurs, fingers twisting in Ilya’s hair like he can anticipate the way the words make Ilya freeze.

Feeling his throat bob, he tries not to get his hopes up. “What do you mean?”

“Staying the night…having time,” Shane explains. “I hoped it would feel like this.”

Ilya thinks he might have forgotten how to breathe, the words ‘I love you’ pressing insistently against his sternum. Instead, what he manages is a raspy, “Like what?”

Shane gives a little half-shrug, looking away from Ilya’s face for the first time, and his voice is quiet but Ilya hears it anyway. “Like we were right.”

Ilya feels his breath catch and Shane glances up at him, locking into his gaze once more.

“About it being more,” he continues lowly. “Or- for chasing this feeling for so long even when anyone else probably would’ve given up a long time ago.” He shrugs again, a downright devastating smile on his face. “We were right though.”

And, well. Ilya has to kiss him.

He uses the hand he still has on Shane’s face to guide his jaw and wraps his other arm firmly around Shane’s waist and captures his lips in a kiss he hopes Shane will feel all the way down to his toes. Shane melts against him, mouth pliant, as he winds himself around Ilya until their limbs are somehow overlapping even more than before.

And the words are back again – the ‘I love you’ in his throat now – he kisses Shane harder instead so it doesn’t come out.

“We haven’t brushed our teeth,” Shane mutters against his mouth, though he makes no attempt to pull away.

“Don’t care,” Ilya mutters right back, licking into Shane’s mouth in that way that always makes Shane’s jaw slacken. And he wants to laugh again, in awe at the domesticity of it all.

He gets to kiss Shane Hollander before they’ve even gotten up to brush their teeth. He got to fall asleep with him last night and he’ll get to again tonight. They’ll have breakfast together. And lunch. And dinner. He’d be embarrassed at the thrum of desire that pulses through him at the thought if not for the fact that he can feel Shane is equally as affected.

His hand travels over the knobs of Shane’s spine, a downward spiral until his fingers catch on the waistband of his underwear and then Shane huffs a laugh into his mouth.

Ilya stills, dislodging their mouths and leaning back when Shane laughs again.

“Sorry,” Shane says, still grinning dazedly. “I was just thinking about what we could have for breakfast and I realised I don’t even know what you like for breakfast.”

Ilya stares at him incredulously. “You are thinking about breakfast right now?”

As if he wasn’t getting hard at the thought of sharing their meals fifteen seconds ago.

Shane shrugs, an unrepentant glint in his eyes. “It’s just weird,” he says, picking up the earlier thread of his thought. “I’ve known you for so long and I feel like I know so much about you. But I don’t know what you eat for breakfast.”

Ilya gets it. They’ve kept the strangest things from each other over the past almost decade. The mundane things you only learn when you’re allowed to linger. When you’re not running on a fleeting, rushed few hours every six weeks or so.

Ilya knows everything about how Shane likes to be touched and what he looks like when he’s afraid and how he favours his right side when he takes aim on the goal and the floor plan of his apartment but he didn’t know what kind of car he drove until yesterday.

“I have eggs for breakfast,” he says after a beat because they have time and Shane is nodding like this matters.

“What kind?”

“An omelette usually.”

Shane nods again, a little furrow between his eyebrows as if committing this information to memory is the most important thing in the world. “I can make you an omelette.”

Ilya feels his expression soften and he knows it must be written all over his face. How lovesick he is, how far past the point of no return he is. Because he should not feel a lump forming in his throat at the idea of Shane making him breakfast.

And yet.

He pulls Shane in again, more gently this time, just brushing their mouths together in acknowledgement. Or thanks. Or so he won’t say what he really wants to.

Shane kisses him back, leans in for another one when Ilya is about to pull away. “We don’t have to get up yet though,” he says quietly.

Ilya has no fucking idea what time it is or if he’s hungry but he knows he’s not ready to leave this bed yet. Grinning, he lets his hand wander the same path as before and dives in to swallow the sound of Shane’s bitten off chuckle, rolling them until he’s blanketing Shane’s body with his own.

“Such a good host,” he says, mouthing at the underside of Shane’s jaw.

Shane tips his head back to give him room and laughs airily, one hand disappearing into Ilya’s hair again. “Gotta make sure you become a repeat guest somehow.”

And it’s a joke but the thought of being allowed to come back, that Shane would want him here for longer than just these two weeks, sends a shiver through Ilya’s body that almost causes his arms to give out where he’s trying keep himself propped up. He buries his face in Shane’s neck for just a second and breathes deep, squeezing his eyes shut when Shane’s hand pets his hair like he gets it. Like he knows.

Letting out a shaky exhale, he drags his mouth over Shane’s pulse point and thinks:

I like you, I like you, I like you.

There might be an ‘I love you’ in there somewhere too.

My latest Heated Rivalry WIP. Got the idea for this one while finishing up The Shape of Things We Know, took hold of me, now we're 7 chapters in and I don't exactly know how many it's going to shake out to be. Maybe 10 or 12?

Literally, straight up, my inspiration for writing this fic was how much I wanted another 100k words of Home Economics that took place in just Switzerland. I almost considered writing a direct side fic to that one, because I love Christmas Markets and they were offhandedly mentioned, and I want to seeee that.