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Shane chasing Ilya's lips.

In very long term relationships that involve sex, you start to develop a sort of short hand for sex. Communicating desire etc. Once they’re married and living together so the expectation is no longer in viewing range, time to fuck, Ilya and Shane have dozens of little tells and overtures.

Ilya’s obviously a nuzzler, coming in behind Shane to kiss his neck, run his hands over his stomach and chest, but that’s not always a prelude. There are subtle differences between a touching base and sex. Usually the cant of his hips or if one kiss becomes two or three. If Ilya touches Shanes’ jaw then it’s a definite ‘yes? now?’ question. If Ilya pauses in the middle of the room and gives Shane the slow up and down and Shane gives him any attention at all then it’s over. Shane better put down whatever he was doing.

Shane’s overtures would take him a little time to perfect. Not the obvious ones, they definitely still have ‘we have both arrived in the house, time to slam someone against a wall’ moments. But the small ones, the tiny silent inquiries that speckle through the louder things. If he runs his fingers over Ilya’s forearm while they’re watching tv, just light enough to almost tickle. Or lingering a little in a doorway after announcing he’s going to shower. Maybe he deliberately takes off a layer during colder months. Drags his hoodie up the right away so it flashes Ilya’s his stomach for a second.

They have moves they share too. The coded language of a long-term couple. If we’re already holding hands in public, but I press my thumb into the center of your palm that means ‘as soon as we have privacy'. If we make the right kind of eye contact and I run my tongue over my teeth than that’s a question asked and answered. If we’re both awake too early and you kiss my shoulder and slot your knee behind mine and I roll my hips back, then its a go.

There are deescalations too. Times when the question is asked and the answer is not now. A kiss on the jaw gets a kiss on the cheek in return ‘I see you, I love you, I’m in the middle of meal prepping give me an hour’ or a long look gets a head tilt instead of a leap off the couch ‘I see you, I love you, but I’m having a shitty moment and I’m not in the right head space’. In bed instead of rocking back into it, rolling over to exchange a kiss that doesn’t deepen because they both have to be out of bed and getting ready too soon.

They’re already so good at communicating with their bodies, it’s easy to imagine the language they’ll develop over the years.

medrawawi

book hollanov because their designs intrigued me🧐

lavenderprose

Ilya finds an odd picture of Shane in a photo album at one point. He's maybe three, he's sitting on the massive purple sofa that Ilya has discovered the Hollanders owned when Shane was born. He's frowning, red-cheeked and he's got a strange plastic case on his thumb.

"Yuna," he says, shifting his elbows on the table to point at it. "What is this on his hand? Was broken?"

Shane's head snaps up from across the table, where he's pretending that Photo Album Time is very boring to him and not worth paying attention to. He hasn't scrolled on the article he's pretending to read for over five minutes.

"I never broke a bone as a kid," he says, brows furrowed. "Not until U13, when that fucking kid from Guelph--"

Yuna and Shane both inhale quickly through their noses in what Ilya has learned to recognize as a moderative measure, lest they start yelling about something that everyone else on Earth has forgotten about.

"No," Yuna says, once her face looks a little less intense. "No, it wasn't broken. It was this...contraption that the dentist gave us to correct his thumb-sucking. He was so mad about it, we only put it on him a few times."

"Oh, Jesus," Shane mutters, eyes going back to his phone.

"Aw," Ilya says. "Poor baby Shane." He taps his finger against one little red cheek and laughs. "You really do look so mad, sweetheart. How did you make him stop?"

"Hmm...you know, I don't remember," Yuna sighs, tilting her head. "I guess he just stopped by himself eventually. Do you remember, Shane?"

"No," Shane says, shortly.

"Of course, that didn't get rid of the oral fixation," Yuna sighs, adjusting her reading glasses as she flips the page. "The things you used to chew on, Shane. Pens and straws and--"

"Mom," Shane snaps, while Ilya vibrates beside him. "Can we not?"

"I was afraid to give him popsicles because I thought he would gnaw on the sticks until he got a splinter in his stomach."

"Mom!"

"Well, honey, it's true! And you did outgrow it eventually, so it's not as if you have to be embarrassed."

"Oh, you did?" Ilya says, shoulders shaking. "You outgrew the, uh, oral fixation?"

"Stop," Shane hisses.

"Mm. Excuse me." Ilya stands from the table and sweeps out onto the back porch, though the sliding door does nothing to prevent the sound of his guffaws from floating back into the kitchen.

"You know," Yuna says, "I'm just going to assume that this is some kind of language barrier thing--"

"Please stop."