The first time Shane calls Ilya baby, they are half asleep, exhausted limbs heavy they finally have a night together, two actually, a tiny bit of time together to fall asleep in the same bed, wake up together. Shane had missed that the most from the cottage, desperately, the intimacy of a shared bed, of waking up with Ilya on his chest, sprawled out and head heavy, sweat at his hairline. He missed the feeling of Ilya reaching for him first thing in the morning, waking up to his pouted dry lips and sleep heavy voice.
Anyway it’s the middle of the night, or early morning at this point almost, and Shane is fucking exhausted, sore, he’d been checked hard, more than once in his last game and the the long drive to Ilya right after had left his muscles stiff. He is warm, but doesn’t have the full weight of Ilya, just the tangle of his legs, and Shane wants him, but he’s so half or like almost fully asleep he can’t even make himself roll over closer to Ilya yet. Then Ilya moves, but it’s away from Shane, he’s climbing off the bed and Shane frowns, pouts into his pillow as he listens to Ilya plod sleepy heavy footsteps into the bathroom, feet scuffling. He listens to Ilya walking away from him and he misses him sorely, it’s a pathetic lonely thing, a achey pit under his ribs that feels like notimenotimenotime.
He wants him back, here, now, buried under the hours they have together. Ilya isn’t leaving, (he or Shane is always leaving) but not right now. He wakes a little more, just enough to shuffle onto his side sluggishly, into the head Ilya left behind. He listens to Ilya pee, flush, wash his hands and shuffle shuffle back to Shane, back to their bed. Shane wants him so intensely in that moment, the weight of him crawling back into their bed that his whole body thrums with it, aches, deeply. It fuses with a heady joy of knowing Ilya is crawling back into bed with him. His boyfriend, their bed, them. Shaneandilya how it’s been since the first time, a universe between them, the whole word between their mouths, hands, bodies.
Ilyas steps are slow heavy and Shane wants him here now he wants the heat, weight, shoulders of Ilya right against him. He forces, half lidded, his tired eyes to open just so, watches the shape of Ilya as he gets to the edge of the bed.
Shane reaches his hand out, grabby fingers, licks his lips and half whines, simpers, too tired to ask what he wants to explain that he has this cloying aching insane need for Ilya in that moment- to feel him, to know he knows him, to reach for his boy in the middle of the night and have his hand touch Ilyas skin not his sheets, Ilya two hours away. He wants to want him and have him.
Ilya is in the bed with a press of the mattress, all limbs and warm and his Ilya there, humming back to Shane, a nonsense sound and flops himself half on Shane, wriggling against him to knock their limbs into fitting together somehow, too sleepy to make proper work of it.
But Shane, Shane wants to cuddle properly he wants to be pressed together, wants to feel the shifting of Ilyas breathing, wants to be held.
“Come here baby” Shane breaths, the words half formed an kinda mushed together as he properly pulls Ilyas body over him, hand in his hair to fit his face to the curve of his neck, pressed close and warm.
Ilya lets out a soft keening noise and Ilyas arms, strong and firm and warm squeeze around him, collects him up into his chest tighter, they fall asleep in the next few breaths.
(The second time Shane calls him baby, he’s lucky enough to see the blush that pinks across the high of Ilyas face)
