15k | Hollanov | E | Time Travel, Age Difference, Younger Ilya/Older Shane
Ilya's on a hotel roof in the middle of the night. The draft is tomorrow, and he can't sleep.
That's when Shane Hollander appears, but he's somehow thirty-five years old, and acting very friendly... and he's wearing glasses. This must be a dream — mustn't it?
“You don’t look like a dream.” Tap, tap, tap, goes Hollander’s finger over the bridge of Ilya’s nose, over the little mark on his cheek where he’d had a mole removed when he was fifteen, then down to the spot under his chin where there’s an almost invisible white scar, from when he’d split it open when he was five. “You really are pretty realistic. And you don’t feel like a dream, either.”
“Wonder why you are old?” Ilya looks at him again, more carefully this time now he knows he can do whatever he wants. He has such a soft-looking mouth, the thin upper lip curled into what might be the ending of a smile, or maybe the beginning of another one. His freckles are unbelievable; Ilya should have known just by seeing them alone that this was all a figment of his subconscious.
“Hey, I’m not—,” Hollander protests, but it comes out weak and ends breathy, because Ilya reaches out and thumbs over his cheek, pressing against the skin where the freckles cluster darkly. It stops the words right out of Hollander’s mouth, and then Ilya can track his blush with this finger too, that insane pink that matches his mouth so well.
“The other times I dream about you, you are not old,” Ilya tells him, and whatever Hollander tries to say stops when Ilya catches at his chin, raises his face up, all the better to see the way his eyes move to Ilya’s mouth.
“You dreamed about me?” Hollander manages. Ilya’s hand fits perfectly along his jaw; Hollander tilts his chin as though he was not just expecting but waiting for the touch.
“Very nice dreams,” Ilya tells him, and kisses him.
Thank you @sweet-s0rr0w @maesterchill @boxboxlewis, getting to write alongside you lot is the best part of fandom