On a random day during Ilya's first stay at the cottage, he and Shane are wrestling on the couch, fighting each other for the remote because Shane wants to watch a boring hockey documentary while Ilya wants to see Legally Blonde for the billionth time. They're chirping each other, elbows jabbing into ribs, hands pushing at faces, curses flying, and their laughter echoes off the walls of the cottage. If Ilya could bottle the sound and carry it with him forever, he would. And then, mid laughter, he stops. His breath hitches. And he starts crying.
Big, ugly sobs tear out of him and Shane pulls away immediately, his face a picture of concern, hands fluttering uselessly because he doesn't know what's happening, what triggered this, but he wants to fix it because Ilya is crying and that's unacceptable.
Ilya sees it through blurry eyes and curls into himself, hiding his face away from Shane in his hands instead. How can he explain the way his happiness threatened to explode out of him so badly that it ended up imploding instead? That he's so happy he doesn't know what to do with himself, how to act, how to contain it, how to let himself feel it?
"What's wrong, Ilya?" Shane eventually asks when it becomes clear Ilya isn't calming down and he doesn't know what to do.
And the concern in his voice is too much to bear. Ilya is ruining the moment. They were having fun just a minute ago, he can't have his boyfriend think anything is wrong. Because nothing is. That's the issue. So he lifts his head up, sniffling, wiping his eyes so he can see Shane better. His voice shakes and he knows it. Can't be bothered to try to play it cool anymore.
"I've never been this happy before. It's... too much."
The confession sits between them in the silence that follows. Shane gathers Ilya up in his arms and holds him tightly, Ilya curled up on his lap and looking so small, so fragile, so young, nothing like the 6 foot Russian Terror that chirps everyone and taunts them into starting fights as a strategy.
Shane is a fixer. He's the guy with a plan. And when he doesn't have one ready, he makes one. But there is no fixing this. No plan on how to tackle the issue. All he can do is hold Ilya and pet through his curls with a gentleness that brings even more tears to the blonde's eyes as he quietly puts Legally Blonde on, and hope that, in time, happiness - real happiness - will become so normal for Ilya that it won't break his heart in two and bring him to tears every time he feels it anymore.
vaporwave
2087
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
