hollanov college meet-cute (ish) au where ilya embarrasses himself drunk when he meets shane for the first time haha
Shane is visiting Hayden for his reading week. His parents are on a trip to Europe, and he hasn’t seen his best friend in a while.
His plane gets in late, closer to midnight.
When he knocks on Hayden’s apartment door, a woman opens the door. She has tanned skin and straight, blonde hair that falls smoothly down her arms. Shane assumes this is Jackie, Hayden’s girlfriend, and smiles kindly.
“Oh my goodness!” she exclaims excitedly. “You must be Shane— I am so sorry, Hayden’s busy helping his teammate right now.” Jackie grins widely and pulls Shane inside by the sleeve of his sweater.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Shane responds. He stands awkwardly with his bag slung over both shoulders.
Jackie gestures for Shane to follow her. “I’m Jackie, but you probably guessed that by now.” She winks at him over her shoulder with her long eyelashes. Shane decides that he likes her.
“Yeah— do I, uh, take off my shoes?” She waves him off. Shane hesitantly walks further into the apartment behind her.
“Your room is Hayden’s former roommate’s old one—we’ve had a spare ever since I moved in and J.J. moved out.”
Shane nods, dropping his bag by the foot of the bed.
Faintly, he hears Hayden talking lowly from what he assumes is the washroom. The door is cracked and light spills out from underneath. He turns to Jackie questioningly.
“Oh! Yeah our friend, Ilya, is usually pretty good at handling his alcohol. He only recently got over a stomach bug so that’s probably why it’s making a reappearance,” Jackie says, leaning against the doorway to Shane’s temporary room.
Shane hums. “I’ll go say hello.”
“Only if you’ve got a strong stomach! It’s not messy but the sounds are…” Jackie doesn’t finish her sentence and instead does a full-body shudder.
His footsteps fall lightly on the hardwood floor down the short length of the hallway. The door creaks open with a drowned-out groan. Shane pokes his head inside.
Shane momentarily forgets that the other person in the room is extremely sick. “Hey, Hayd!”
Hayden’s head shoots up from his hunched over posture next to his friend. He smiles with all of his teeth, practically vibrating. “Shane!” The comforting hand on his teammate’s back remains. “I’m so sorry— Ilya was stumbling all over at the party and was threatening to blow right on the host’s couch—"
Shane laughs, his eyes flicking to the person, Ilya, who has his head in the toilet bowl and is making incoherent sounds of self-pity. He steps fully inside and braces himself against the counter, “Dude, it’s fine. I would be pissed if you’d have just left him there, honestly.”
“Thank you—" Ilya says with a faint accent curling around his nasally words.
His head of dirty blonde curls lift from the toilet to acknowledge Shane properly. Instead, his bleary eyes simply stare at Shane before slowly turning to Hayden.
“You did not tell me that this Shane person is probably man of my dreams,” he says bluntly.
Hayden bursts with laughter, quickly covering his mouth with the suddenness.
Ilya’s head swivels back to Shane. “He has been talking nonstop about you visiting for the past two weeks,” Ilya closes his eyes, takes a slow, deep breath, then continues. “Very annoying. I ask for pictures, he says he doesn’t have any. I say that he must be embarrassed that his best friend is not pretty. He says no. I say bullshit. But now—" he fully gags, swallows down whatever was about to come up. “Now, I think he was just keeping you to himself.”
Shane is staring back, eyes wide and cheeks flushed bright pink. Hayden is now fully laughing at the interaction.
“Holy shit, I wish I had my camera out for that,” Hayden cackles while wiping tears from his eyes.
Ilya promptly groans, clutching his stomach and resting his forehead on the toilet seat. Shane bites his tongue, willing to rule this off as a drunk, meaningless thought.
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