Chapter Text
Shane wakes up before the alarm.
Not because he’s well rested.
Because his brain refuses to shut the fuck up.
He’s already half sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in hand, checking the time for the third time in five minutes.
4:10 a.m.
They still have three hours before they need to leave for the airport.
Plenty of time.
Too much time, actually.
He gets up anyway.
Checks the suitcase. Again.
Passport? Yes.
Wallet? Yes.
Tickets? Yes.
Ring? Still hidden in the inner pocket of his backpack, exactly where he left it.
Good.
He zips the suitcase. Unzips it again. Just to make sure he didn’t forget anything.
Shane starts pacing.
Back and forth. From the window to the bathroom. From the bathroom to the bed. From the bed to the door. Like his body is trying to burn off all the anticipation his mind doesn’t know what to do with.
This trip has to be perfect. After this trip we’ll be engaged.
He’s tying his shoes for no reason when—
“Shane.”
He freezes.
Ilya is awake, still buried under the sheets, one arm over his face.
“Why are you moving like you’re about to escape the country?"
Shane laughs nervously. “We are escaping the country.”
“You know what I mean.” Ilya lowers his arm, squinting at him. “It’s what, five in the morning? Why are you already dressed?”
“I’m not dressed, I just— I wanted to be ready.”
“Ready for what? The apocalypse?”
“For our trip.”
Ilya stares at him for a second. Then sighs.
“Come here.”
Shane approaches the bed. Ilya grabs his wrist and pulls him down gently so he’s sitting on the mattress.
“This trip is for us to relax,” Ilya says, very seriously. And Shane can’t help but to think:
And to ask you to marry me, idiot. Before you have the chance.
“I need you to relax, okay?”
“I know, I’m relaxed, I’m just— I want everything to go well.”
“It will go well.”
“Okay. I’ll try to chill.”
“Not try. Do.”
“I’m physically incapable.”
Ilya laughs softly, pulling him closer until Shane’s head falls against his chest.
“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack before we even leave the continent.”
Shane exhales slowly, finally still.
“Sorry. I’m just… excited.”
“I know.” Ilya kisses the top of his head. “Me too. But this is supposed to be easy. We get on plane. We cross the ocean. We land in Italy. We do tourist things. We be gay and happy.”
Shane closes his eyes.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “That does sound good.”
Two hours later they’re at the airport, half asleep and over-caffeinated.
Shane checks their documents at least four times.
Ilya makes fun of him exactly four times.
The plane takes off and somewhere over the Atlantic, Shane finally falls asleep with his head on Ilya’s shoulder.
When they wake up again, they’re in Génova.
They’re exhausted, disoriented, carrying too many bags and not enough brain cells.
They took a regional train down the coast and by the time they reach the hotel, neither of them has the energy to even pretend to do anything touristy.
They drop everything on the floor and collapse on the bed.
“Tomorrow,” Ilya mumbles. “We go to the beach.”
Shane smiles into the pillow.
“Tomorrow,” he agrees.
The next day Shane is wearing his swimsuit, standing in front of the mirror, with his hands resting on the edge of the sink.
He is studying his reflection—not cataloguing flaws, not picking himself apart piece by piece, not in that cruel way he used to.
Just looking.
And feeling something off.
“Great. Today is just not my day apparently.”
He said it lightly, like a joke, like it would stop growing on him.
But the feeling didn’t go away.
It sat in his chest, heavy and irrational and annoying.
He didn’t hate his body anymore. He wasn’t punishing it, wasn’t starving it, wasn’t trying to disappear inside it to not think. Most days, he actually feels good, strong, comfortable in it.
He feels good enough to let Ilya touch him, good enough to be naked with him and just exist.
"So why now?"
Why today, of all days, when they were supposed to go to the beach together?
His brain, unhelpfully, supplied an answer:
Because people will look at you.
Shane exhales slowly, closing his eyes for a second.
“That’s not true. No one cares.”
He opens them again.
The thought came back immediately.
They’ll compare you. They’ll judge you. They’ll see everything.
He almost laughed.
It was so stupid. So obviously stupid.
He knew people were too busy worrying about themselves to pay attention to a random guy at the beach. He’d told other people that exact thing a hundred times.
It just didn’t seem to apply to him right now.
“This is so unfair. I’m literally fine. I’m happy. Why the fuck is my brain doing this now?”
He stared at his reflection again.
He didn’t see the way his skin stretched or the way he had lost muscle. He just saw someone tired of fighting thoughts that made no sense.
“Get it together, Shane. You’re on vacation with the person you love. You’re safe. You’re okay. Don’t let this ruin it.”
He took a breath.
Then another.
Wiped at his eyes, even though they weren’t that wet.
Straightened his shoulders like that alone might convince his nervous system.
“Just go,” he tells himself. “Go. You’ll feel better once you’re out there. You always do.”
He reaches for the door handle.
And starts to hesitate longer than necessary.
Not because he couldn’t leave the bathroom.
Just because part of him wished, very briefly, that feeling okay didn’t take so much effort.
“Shane?” Ilya calls gently from outside. “Everything okay in there?”
A pause.
“Yeah,” Shane’s voice comes through the door. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m just— sorry, I’m taking forever. I’ll be out in a second.”
Ilya keeps his tone soft.
“Take all the time you need. No rush,” he says as he packs a bag.
Water bottles.
Sunscreen.
Snacks.
Towels.
Shane’s copy of some Thomas Harris novel he brought.
The digital camera.
The door finally opens.
Shane steps out, wearing a loose shirt over his swimsuit. His face is carefully neutral.
But his eyes are a little red.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Your eyes are red.”
“Oh.”
“Were you crying?”
“No. I was smoking weed.”
“Shane. Come on. What happened?”
Shane didn’t answer. He walked past Ilya and sat down on the edge of the bed instead, shoulders slightly hunched, hands resting on his thighs. He closed his eyes like he was deciding whether to jump or not.
Ilya didn’t push. He just moved closer, standing between Shane’s knees, resting his hands on Shane’s arms.
“Hey,” he says quietly. “Talk to me.”
Shane swallowed.
“I’m not feeling too confident in my body today. Not as much as I would like. I don’t know why. I thought I was fine and then—”
He stopped, shook his head.
“I don’t think I can go to the beach like this. I can’t be shirtless. I just— I can’t.”
“Oh, Shane. That’s okay. It’s really okay.”
Shane laughs weakly. “It doesn’t feel okay.”
“I know. But it is.” Ilya runs his thumbs slowly over Shane’s arms, grounding, steady. “Your body changed. It’s healthier now. It’s different from what you were used to. Of course your brain is freaking out. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you.”
Shane’s eyes stay closed. “I just feel like everyone’s going to look at me.”
“Baby, nobody here knows us. Nobody here cares about us. Everyone is way too busy thinking about how they look or enjoying their own vacation. And you can keep your shirt on.”
Shane opened his eyes slightly. “But I want to go in the water.”
“Then we go in the water.”
“With the shirt?”
“With the shirt.”
“It’s going to stick to me.”
“So what? It’ll dry. The sun exists. It’s very committed to its job.”
Shane lets out a breath, but he is still spiraling. “I’m sorry. I’m making this complicated. I’m ruining the trip.”
Ilya’s face changes immediately.
“Hey. No. Don’t say that.” He moved his hands to Shane’s cheeks, forcing him to look up.
“You’re not ruining anything. I hate when you say that. It’s not true.”
Shane looks down.
“We have literally an entire week to go to the beach,” Ilya continues. “And honestly? The weather’s kind of bad today.”
Shane glances toward the window. It was extremely sunny.
“…It is?”
Ilya nodded with absolute seriousness. “Yeah. Looks like it might rain. At any moment.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am lying for your emotional well-being.”
Shane hesitated. “So… we don’t have to go?”
“Of course we don’t have to go. We can stay here today.”
Shane’s shoulders finally dropped a little.
“Okay, that will be great. I’m sorry for being like this on vacation.”
Ilya smiles. “Shane, what better place to be not okay than in Italy?”
Shane laughed quietly, leaning forward until his forehead rested against Ilya’s chest.
“I don’t know, Greece?”
“Ah, you think you’re funny.”
“Maybe.”
“Hey. You know what is the good thing about staying here?”
“No. What is it?”
“That I get you all to myself.”
Ilya leans slow enough that Shane has time to pull away if he wants to.
Shane doesn't.
Their lips met, and the tension in Shane’s shoulders eased almost immediately.
Ilya guided him back onto the bed, following him down until they were both half lying there, knees tangled, the sunlight from the window warm on their skin.
He kissed him again, a little deeper this time, then moved to Shane’s jaw, then sank on his neck.
God, he loved Shane’s neck.
Shane’s hand slid into Ilya’s hair automatically.
Ilya smiled against him and let his hand drift down Shane’s thigh.
“Is this okay?” Ilya murmured.
“Yeah,” Shane said immediately. “More than okay.”
“Good. Tell me if it stops being.”
And after a minute:
“You know what? I really love your arms.”
“My arms?”
“Yeah.” Ilya lifted one gently with his other hand, pressing a kiss to his bicep, then another. “They’re always around me when I’m not feeling well.”
Then he shifted lower, pressing open kisses along Shane’s hip, right where the fabric of his swimsuit met skin.
“And your hips,” he added, almost casually. “Especially these.”
“These what?”
“These.” Ilya traced his fingers lightly along the faint lines there. “Your tiger stripes. They’re so unfairly hot.”
Shane laughs, breathless. “They’re not hot.”
“Oh, believe me, they are,” Ilya says before kissing them once, then again.
His hand slides further down Shane’s thigh, caressing exactly where he knew Shane was sensitive.
“And your thighs,” Ilya murmurs. “They’re my personal favorite.”
Ilya kisses the inside of his thigh, making Shane shiver.
Then he moves back up, back to Shane’s chest, his neck, his beautiful face.
He brushed his thumbs gently over Shane’s cheeks.
“And your freckles. In summer they get darker.”
Ilya kissed them, one by one, until Shane was smiling with his eyes closed, tension completely gone from his body.
“And the thing I love the most,” Ilya said, finally.
Shane opened his eyes. “Is…?”
“Those eyes.”
Shane scoffed. “They’re literally brown. That’s the most common eye color on Earth.”
“So?”
“There’s nothing special about them.”
“No. They’re the most expressive thing about you. You can pretend with your whole body that you’re okay, but your eyes never lie.”
Shane swallows.
“They tell me when you’re scared. When you’re happy. When you’re about to spiral. And when you look at me like this—”
He brushed his thumb under Shane’s eye.
“—you make me melt. Every time.”
Shane leaned in, kissing him again.
He loved Ilya so fucking much. He couldn't wait to ask him to get married once they were in Rome.
When they break apart, Shane is laughing.
“…Okay. The beach definitely can wait.”
Shane barely notices when Ilya’s hands start moving again.
He’s too busy registering the simple, quiet miracle of it: how easily Ilya pulls him out of the noise in his head.
It’s always been like that. Even now, years into this, even after everything they’ve learned about each other, about themselves.
Shane thinks that there’s something almost magical about the way Ilya touches him. He has this almost unfair ability to ground him without effort, knowing exactly where to linger, where to be soft, where to be patient, where he feels pleasure.
Ilya’s lips are warm against his skin, and that’s enough for the thoughts from earlier to start dissolving into something gentler.
God, he thinks. You’re so good at this.
At pulling me back.
At making me feel like my body isn’t something to hide under a stupid shirt like this.
Shane has always loved that about Ilya. That even when they’re touching, even when it’s charged and a little aggressive and full of heat, there’s still this layer of care underneath it.
Unspoken questions in every movement:
Are you okay?
Are you here?
Do you want this?
Shane loved when they were intimate like this.
He closes his eyes and lets himself sink into it, into the warmth of Ilya’s hands, into the familiar rhythm of their bodies finding each other again like they’ve done a thousand times before.
And suddenly he’s eighteen again.
Back when this started as something casual. Almost careless.
They used to meet pretending it didn’t mean more than it did. Pretending they weren’t memorizing each other. Pretending it was just sex.
Back when everything was urgency. Exploration. Desperation in the best way. Like they were both trying to discover as much as possible, as fast as possible, before they have to move to the next city again.
Shane remembers how nervous he used to be. How self-conscious. How convinced he was that he had to perform for Ilya, had to know what he was doing, had to be good enough for him not to get bored.
And how Ilya dismantled that, piece by piece.
How he made him feel safe enough to ask for things.
Safe enough to make noise.
Safe enough to stop when it got too much.
Safe enough to exist in pleasure without shame.
Ilya had taught him, without ever making it a lesson, that his body wasn’t something to apologize for.
That wanting wasn’t embarrassing and being seen wasn’t dangerous.
They still have moments in bed that are pretty intense, but they also have days like this.
Days where there’s no hurry. Where time feels wide open and their bodies don’t collide, they settle into each other.
Like they already know they have all the time in the world.
The next day it rains, making the sky gray and the streets shiny and the air smell like wet stone.
“What the fuck, Ilya. It’s raining.”
Ilya hums lazily next to him in bed. “Mhm?”
“You said it was going to rain.”
“…I did.”
Shane narrows his eyes. “But you lied yesterday.”
“No. I predicted future.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey. You feeling better?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good, now come here.”
They spend the day inside.
And then, like some kind of cosmic joke—
The next morning the sky is clear again.
They’re about to leave the hotel and head straight to the beach after having lunch, when Shane stops Ilya at the door.
“Wait.”
Ilya turns. “What?”
“You’re not leaving without sunscreen.”
“I’ll put it on there.”
“No.”
“Shane—”
“You’re the one who’s traumatized about skin cancer. Sit.”
Ilya sighs dramatically but sits on the edge of the bed.
Shane opens the bottle and starts applying sunscreen to his face with way too much care.
“You’re using a lot,” Ilya mumbles.
“You’re pale. This is necessary.”
“I’m Slavic, not a vampire.”
Shane smears a little more on his nose. “Debatable.”
They finally get there.
The beach is beautiful and, for Shane’s relief, there’s not many people in it for him to feel observed.
Ilya spreads a mat, drops the bag on the sand, and immediately throws himself down on it.
Shane stares at him. “So you’re just… going to lie there?”
“Yes. I want to tan."
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Your book is in the bag.”
Shane sits down next to him, pulls out the novel, and starts reading.
But then he starts getting distracted by the sound of the sea, by the warmth of the sun on his skin and by the way the light hits Ilya’s back. And muscles. And moles. And curls…
Jesus christ. I’m dating a Greek god.
He reads for a while longer.
Then starts shifting. Tugging at his shirt. Adjusting it. Again. And again.
Should I get this shit off? Why does it feel so tight suddenly? I better—
“You got bored already?”
“What?”
“You’ve been fidgeting for five minutes.”
“Oh. Um. No. The book is good. I just— the sun is reflecting on the pages and my eyes hurt a bit.”
“Mhm,” Ilya says, unconvinced. “So you’re not bored?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what it’s about.”
“It’s kind of fucked up.”
Ilya smiles. “Of course it is.”
“It’s about this man called Hannibal Lecter. He’s a serial killer and a cannibal. But also super intelligent and cultured. He works for the FBI, so it's easy for him to cover up his crimes. And he's the psychiatrist of this other man named Will Graham, for whom he becomes very, very gay.”
“Oh my god, you've been obsessed with cannibalism since Yellowjackets.”
“Rose’s fault.”
“Why are you reading that?”
“I liked the TV series. Pissed me off when I found out they’ve canceled the fourth season, so I decided to read the books the show was based on.”
“I thought since we’re here you’d read something like, what’s the name? The comedy with that Italian poet guy who sins and is friends with some other poet guy and is very popular around the world.”
“The Divine Comedy?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I already read it.” Shane pauses, then adds, almost automatically: “And technically it’s not a comedy.”
Ilya looks at him. “It literally has comedy in the title.”
“Yes, because the author gave it a name that belongs to the dramatic literary genre, although the work itself belongs to the lyrical one, since in the Middle Ages people cared more about the content than the form”.
“Yeah, I’m not following.”
“Let me try again." He tries to go slower this time. "The form The Divine Comedy is written in, is verse. It’s an epic poem. Not a comedy. Not its form. So It belongs to the lyrical genre. Whereas a comedy…”
“…is a story that starts in like, suffering, and ends in happiness, right? The content, I get it.”
“Exactly! Dante calls it a comedy because he begins it entering hell and ends in paradise.”
Ilya stares at him. “Why would you read a book about HELL?”
Shane shrugs. “I was already living in it.”
“Fair,” Ilya says, a little sad by that truth. “But you don’t even believe in god, or do you?”
“I don’t. But I love how medieval people saw the world. Everything was filtered through religion. The whole worldview was theocentric.”
“What does that word even mean?”
“Theocentric?”
“Yes.”
“God was at the center of literally everything.”
“Ah.”
“So they didn’t really live for this life,” Shane continues. “Everything was about the afterlife. Every action was weighed by how god would see it and judge it.”
Ilya props himself up on one elbow, actually listening now.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was. People were terrified all the time. Of sin. Of desire. Of themselves.”
Just like I was, Shane thinks, but doesn’t say it.
He looks at the sea.
“And the author, Dante—”
“Wasn't he like, the main character?”
“Also, yes. He literally writes himself descending into the darkest parts of the human soul. The circles of hell are just allegories of human fears, guilt, violence, shame. He gets lost spiritually, morally, emotionally… and that’s why the only way forward is to go through hell first.”
Ilya watches him, fascinated by how Shane talks so deeply and easily about stuff like that.
“And somehow,” Shane realizes, “reading it while I was… at my worst, it felt like that. Like I was going down too. Into all the parts of myself I didn’t want to look at.”
“So Dante was miserable too?”
Shane laughs softly. “He was exiled from Florence. Lost his political career. Lost his hometown. Lost basically everything that made him who he was. So I guess.”
“Florence?” Ilya repeats. “That’s where we’re going in a few days.”
And where I’m planning to ask you to marry me, Ilya thinks.
“Yeah. I’m pretty excited about being there actually.”
Ilya studies him. “So what makes his work special? Like, why him and not all the other medieval guys probably writing about hell too?”
Shane thinks for a second.
“Because he doesn’t write from above. He doesn’t write like a priest or a judge or someone who already knows the truth.”
Ilya waits.
“He writes as a sinner,” Shane says. “As someone who’s scared. Who knows he fucked up. Who knows he’s not better than anyone else.”
Ilya’s expression shifts. “Huh, so he’s not pretending to be morally superior.”
“No. He’s basically saying: I made mistakes, just like you, and this is what it cost me.”
A pause.
“And the point of his journey isn’t to prove he’s good. It’s to learn how to be.”
Ilya swallows. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. And it’s why it hurts to read sometimes.”
“Hurts how?”
Shane exhales slowly.
“Because he goes through hell not as someone who died, but while he’s still alive. That makes everything more real, more terrifying, more visceral. Even knowing his journey was allowed by god, even knowing that it had a purpose.”
Ilya’s voice is softer now. “And in the end?”
“In the end he gets to paradise. Because he learned how dangerous it’s to sin.”
Shane looks down at his hands.
“He writes the whole thing as a warning, you know. Like— I went through this so maybe you don’t have to. So you can recognize yourself before it’s too late.”
Ilya doesn’t joke this time. “It’s didactic?”
“Yeah. Convenient for the political-religious discourse. But also written in a vulnerable way. He literally exposes his own sins, fears and worst thoughts.”
Ilya thinks about that. “That must have been crazy for the time.”
“It was,” Shane nods. “Considering as well that authors back then didn’t even sign their work. They didn’t care about being remembered. Art wasn’t about the self, it was about god.”
“And he puts himself at the center.”
“Yeah. He makes himself the example.”
Ilya watches him carefully. “So... you see yourself in all of that?”
Shane thinks about that for a second.
“Yeah. A lot, actually.”
A small, honest smile.
“Mostly because I spent years trapped in my own version of hell. Living by rules that were killing me. Punishing myself. Thinking I deserved to suffer.”
He laughs quietly. “Very medieval of me.”
Ilya reaches for his hand.
“How do you escape hell?”
Shane squeezes his fingers.
He exhales slowly.
“Dante didn’t escape hell by denying it exists. He escaped it by understanding how it works. And I think… I did something similar. Once I understood where all the shit came from… that’s when I was able to begin to leave it behind. When I was able to stop worshipping the version of myself that wanted me dead.”
“That’s a beautiful way to put it.”
“I guess.”
Shane stays quiet for a moment after that.
The sea keeps moving slowly in front of them.
Then Shane adds, softer:
“And Dante wasn’t walking alone.”
Ilya turns his head. “Mhm?”
“Virgil walked with him, the other poet guy you mentioned? But also… Dante had somewhere to arrive to. Not just paradise as a place, but a person in it.”
Ilya squints a little. “Now I’m lost.”
“Beatrice,” Shane says. “His Beatrice.”
“Who’s that?”
“She was this woman he loved his whole life even though they barely spoke, barely knew each other. He saw her twice. When they were kids, and then again when they were teenagers.”
“That’s it?” Ilya says. “Twice?”
“Twice,” Shane nods. “And she became the most important figure in his entire work.”
Ilya stares at him. “Insane.”
“It makes sense in medieval literature.”
“How?”
Shane shifts on the mat, turning a little toward him.
“There was this concept called donna angelicata. The angel woman. See, the woman wasn’t really a person, she was an idea. A symbol. She was elevated, spiritual, unreachable.”
“So… a crush?”
“More like a religious experience,” Shane laughs quietly. “She was supposed to make you better just by existing. By looking at her, you were inspired to be good. To be pure. To deserve heaven.”
Was my mom my donna angelicata? Ilya thinks.
“It was part of what they called courtly love. The woman is placed on a pedestal. The man suffers for her. He submits to her like a vassal to his lord. But there’s no reciprocity. He doesn’t get her. That’s the point.”
No reciprocity?
“Why would anyone want that?”
“Because desire was safer than reality,” Shane says. “Marriage wasn’t about love. It was arranged. So all the emotional stuff had to go somewhere else.”
“So Dante invents this perfect woman he can never really have?”
“Yeah. And turns her into the one who waits for him in paradise. She becomes his reward. His proof that redemption is possible.”
“So was she real or not?”
“She was real. But the Beatrice in the poem is not the same woman as in reality. She’s idealized. Angelified. She’s not allowed to be human.”
A pause.
“And you like that?”
Shane shakes his head.
“No. That’s the part I don’t like.”
Ilya smiles slightly. “Good.”
Shane laughs, then gets serious again.
“What I like is the structure of it. The idea that after hell, there’s something waiting for you. Someone. A place where you’re finally allowed to rest…”
Ilya looks at him. “But?”
“But Dante’s version is lonely. It’s beautiful, but it’s one-sided. He’s walking toward a symbol he created in paper, not a person who can actually take his hand in reality.”
“And yours? Your version?”
Shane looks at him.
“Mine is different.”
“Different how?”
Shane swallows.
“Because you didn’t wait for me in some abstract paradise, Ilya. You came into my hell.”
That single sentence echoes in Ilya’s heart. I did?
“You didn’t stay elevated and untouchable. You didn’t inspire me from far away. You sat with me in the worst, lowest, rawest parts of myself.”
If I had the ring with me, this would be the perfect moment, Shane thinks. Who cares about what I've planned?
“You didn’t make me want to be better by you being perfect or unreachable. You made me want to be better because you made me feel necessary and worth it in the quietest, kindest possible way.”
“I made you feel like that?” Shane’s eyes were basically telling him so.
“Yes. You made me can't stand the idea of drowning in hell and leaving you alone in the world. Not because you wouldn’t survive without me. But because I can’t imagine a world where I’m not there to love you back with every breath that escapes my body.”
“Shane, I—”
“No, let me finish this,” he cuts in.
“I want to love you for the rest of my life Ilya, and if I didn't have the damn ring I bought you in my backpack at the hotel right now, I would propose to you on this beach. No, I am proposing to you on this beach. Because Dante had his donna angelicata and I had you through all my shit. But the difference is that you actually held my hand back. So let me hold yours now,” Shane grabs both of Ilya’s hands, the two men shaking a little, “in order to ask you, what I’ve been willing to ask you since forever.”
Their eyes met.
“Ilya Rozanov, will you marry me? Will you let me love you in this life and in the one that awaits us after death?”
For a second, Ilya just stares at him.
Like his brain hasn’t caught up yet with the fact that this is real. That this is happening. That Shane is looking at him like that, saying those things, holding his hands like this is the most natural conclusion to everything they’ve ever been.
Then his eyes burn.
And before he can stop it, tears start spilling.
He doesn’t even think of the fact that he wanted to be the one proposing in Florence.
“Yes, Shane. Yes. You would make me the happiest man in the world.”
Shane’s face crumples instantly.
Ilya squeezes his hands harder.
“You already gave me a life with you,” he continues, voice trembling. “You already chose me. I already chose you. And I love you. I love you since the moment I met you.”
He leans forward, forehead against Shane’s.
“I want to love you in this life,” he whispers. “And in the one after, and in every version of reality where I’m lucky enough to find you again. And if there’s no afterlife at all, then being loved by you like this was already enough.”
Shane is fully crying now.
“I want to wake up in the same body as you for the rest of my life, Shane. I want your voice to be the last thing I recognize. I want your mind, even when it turns against itself. I want your name to still be the word I use when I don’t know who I am.”
He exhales, shaky.
“So yes, honey. I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you a thousand times if you ask. Because if there is any version of a life where I get to grow old, I only recognize it if you’re there with me. Because you know what scares me the most about what we have?”
Shane shakes his head.
“That one day, I’ll wake up and this will have been a dream. That I’ll open my eyes and I’ll be back in some version of the world where I never met you. Where I never learned your name. Where your body doesn’t exist in my memory.”
His thumb traces Shane’s knuckles unconsciously.
“So when you talk about afterlife… I don’t think about heaven. I think about that. About the possibility of a reality where I don’t get to be yours.”
A breath. He’s shaking again.
“And that, to me, is the only hell that still exists.”
Shane feels it in his bones.
“You say I came into your hell,” Ilya continues. “But you forget that you turned mine into something livable. I was surviving before you. I was moving forward like a machine that learned how to imitate life. And then you showed up with your mess and your softness and your eyes that never lie—”
He stops. Swallows.
“—and suddenly the world had texture. Weight. Consequences. So yes. I will marry you. Not because I believe in destiny, nor that this was accidental. But because I believe in you. In the way your existence reorganized mine. In the way loving you made me a person again.”
A pause.
“And because I want to learn every version of you that time is going to invent, that time is hiding from me. I want you to learn all my future selves too.”
“Let’s be each other’s proof then,” Shane says softly. “That whatever cruel or absurd this universe is, still allows something like us to exist inside it.”
“Deal. Let’s get married.”
“And love each other forever.”
“I don’t need forever, Shane. I need as many ‘now’s with you as the universe will allow.”
Shane laughs through tears, pulling him into a desperate hug.
“And to think I don’t even have the ring—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the ring,” Ilya murmurs into his hair. “This is way better.”
“How?”
“Because you’re not proposing with a ring,” Ilya says. “You’re proposing with your whole self. With your soul, your truth, your history. You’re proposing with every version of you that made it here, and with everything, everything you carried out of hell.”
That’s when Shane kisses him, leaning slowly at first. Their foreheads touching again, noses brushing, breath mixing.
Ilya puts his hands on the back of Shane’s neck, returning the kiss hungrily.
We made it out of hell, Ilya. We made it out together.
When they pull apart, Shane is smiling, breathless and a little stunned by his own happiness.
“…So I won.”
Ilya blinks, tears still stuck in his lashes. “What?”
“I won,” Shane repeats. “You were totally planning to propose to me too.”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” Shane insists. “I could tell. From the moment you gave me the plane tickets.”
Ilya tries to look offended. Fails.
“Okay, maybe,” he admits. “But I was waiting for the right moment.”
Shane tilts his head. “And I stole it.”
“You didn’t steal it. You just… got there first.”
Shane smiles, proud and tender at the same time.
“So I won.”
“No,” Ilya looks at him for a second, with that devastating smile that always undoes him. “We both did.”
They stay like that for a minute. Seizing the moment before it ends. Until—
“Where were you going to do it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“What? No, you have to tell me now. I just exposed myself to you.”
“That was your choice.”
“Where, Ilya.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I still want to do it.”
“But… we’re literally engaged now.”
“Technically. But I didn’t get my moment yet.”
Shane laughs. “Still. I deserve to know where you were going to propose.”
“Not yet.”
“And when do I get to know?”
Ilya leans in, presses a kiss on his cheek.
“When I’m on one knee.”
They end up staying on the beach long enough for the heat to soften into something gentle and for the light to stop being blinding and start turning gold. To the conversation to wander again—less intense now, but deeper in another way.
They talk about nothing and everything. About stupid memories. About things they want to do in Rome and Florence together. About how strange it feels to say the word “fiancé” out loud.
They go into the water, laughing when it’s colder than they expected, clinging to each other until their bodies adjust. They share whatever snacks they had stuffed into their bag. Ilya even takes Shane’s book and reads a few pages out loud, stumbling over the weird names and dramatically overacting the lines just to make him smile.
And somehow, without realizing it, the moment stretches. Becomes real. Becomes theirs.
At some point, Shane notices the sun beginning to be swallowed by the sea.
“We should come back tomorrow,” he says quietly. “At this hour.”
Ilya follows his gaze. The sky is already starting to turn pink, orange, purple.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “That’s… yeah. That’s a really good idea.”
Shane nods, satisfied, then shifts his weight, stretching a little. He starts to stand up, but Ilya catches his wrist.
“Wait.”
Shane looks at him. “What?”
Ilya reaches for the bag, rummaging inside with exaggerated seriousness.
“We need proof of this moment.”
“Proof?”
He pulls out the digital camera.
They sit back down, closer again. Ilya lifts the camera, adjusting it until he gets the angle right—both of them in frame, the ocean behind, the sky on fire with sunset.
Click.
Now the moment feels officially permanent.
They go back to the hotel with salt still in their hair and sand in places that make no sense. They shower separately but with the doors half open, talking over the sound of the water, laughing about absolutely nothing.
They’re going out to have dinner after.
Shane stands in front of the open suitcase like he’s about to have a nervous breakdown.
“I don’t know what to wear.”
Ilya, already dressed, looks up from the bed. “Clothes?”
“This is our first dinner as… this.” He gestures vaguely between them. “I can’t just wear anything.”
Ilya sits up, suddenly invested. “Okay. Let me see the options.”
Shane starts pulling things out.
“No. No. Absolutely not. Why do you even own that?”
“I like that one.”
Eventually, Ilya reaches into the pile and pulls something out.
“These.”
He hands Shane a pair of light khaki bermuda shorts.
“And this.” A plain white t-shirt.
“And—” he grabs one more thing, a short-sleeved shirt with thin white and pale blue stripes. “This one on top. Open.”
Shane blinks. “That’s it?”
“Trust me. You’re beautiful. Effortlessly, it’s offensive. So it's going to look good on you.”
Shane smiles, with his ears a little pink.
“If you say so…”
They end up at a small restaurant near the beach, one of those places where everything is open and the air moves freely. There’s a soft breeze coming from the sea, and they sit outside, under a canopy of tiny hanging lights that glow like stars caught in wires.
The tables are wooden, a little uneven. Candles in small glass jars. Music playing low in the background.
It feels like a movie. It’s perfect.
They order and while they’re waiting, Shane leans back in his chair, smiling to himself.
“My parents are not going to believe this.”
Ilya looks at him. “Believe what?”
“That we got engaged here.”
Ilya smiles faintly. “They already know.”
Shane blinks.
“How would they know that? I didn’t even tell them I was planning to propose to—”
“They know I was,” Ilya interrupts.
“You told them?”
Ilya shrugs. “Yes.”
Shane brings a hand to his face. “Oh my god. Don’t tell me you asked for their blessing or something.”
Ilya laughs. “No, Shane. I’m Russian, not from the nineteenth century.”
“Then why did you tell them?”
Ilya looks at him, suddenly softer.
“Because your family is my family too.”
Shane’s expression stills a little.
“And,” Ilya adds casually, “Yuna helped me choose the ring.”
Silence.
“What?”
Ilya watches his brain short-circuit with visible satisfaction.
“My mom helped you choose the ring?”
“That time she visited us, remember?”
“Yes…”
“Well. When I went to pick her up from the airport… we didn’t go straight home.”
Shane’s eyes keep getting wider.
“I told you I was having lunch with Marleau and her sister before going to get her,” Ilya continues. “But that was a lie. We spent the whole afternoon together looking for the perfect ring.”
Shane just stares at him, completely undone.
“You went ring shopping. With my mother. Behind my back.”
Ilya grins. “Extremely behind your back.”
Shane looks at him in silence for a second longer, still processing everything, and then says:
“Give me your right hand.”
Ilya raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because you just chose my entire outfit,” Shane says, smiling softly. “The least I can do is give you something to wear too.”
Ilya extends his hand.
Shane reaches into his pocket carefully, like he’s pulling out something fragile, and takes out the golden ring.
He slides it slowly onto his finger.
Ilya looks down at it, staying there for a few seconds.
He realizes the warm gold of the ring matches the cross hanging from his neck, like they’re reflecting each other.
“Fuck,” he murmurs. “It’s perfect.”
He looks up at Shane, smiling.
“Thank you. I love it. I love you.”
The next day, Shane had fully planned on sleeping through the afternoon.
They were supposed to go back to the beach around sunset, that had been the idea. He was still under the hotel sheets when Ilya pulled the curtains open and said, far too cheerfully:
“Get dressed.”
Shane squints at him. “Why?”
“Because we’re going somewhere.”
“Where?”
Ilya just smiles. “You’ll see.”
Twenty minutes later, they’re in front of a church.
“Why are we at a church?”
“Come inside.”
Shane follows him.
The place is completely empty. There’s just silence echoing softly between the walls. The light coming in through the stained glass, painting the floor in vibrant colors.
Shane whispers, instinctively: “Neither of us are religious.”
“I know,” Ilya says. “That’s not why we’re here.”
He walks a little further in, then sits on one of the wooden benches. Shane sits next to him, still trying to understand.
Ilya stays quiet for a second, like he’s gathering courage.
“So… I was reading.”
Shane turns to him. “You were reading?”
“Yeah. About the Middle Ages. About how everything was… um…”
He frowns, searching for the word.
“Teo… teo…”
“Theocentric,” Shane offers.
Ilya’s face lights up. “Yes. That. Theo— Theocentric. Like you said, everything revolved around god. Life, death, art, politics,” he gestures with his hand.
Shane just stares at him.
Ilya swallows, a little shy now.
“And then I ended up reading about architecture. Because you love architecture. And I kind of… learned some things.”
Shane smiles slowly. “Okay, what did you learn?”
“I learned about Romanesque architecture. Find the style… not my style.”
“Not your style?”
“No. The buildings had these thick walls and small windows. Everything felt defensive. Like humanity was… hiding from god.”
Shane’s breath catches. He already knows all that, but hearing it coming from Ilya’s mouth makes him feel deeply seen.
“And then Gothic appears,” Ilya says, his voice getting more animated. “And suddenly everything points upward. The structures get taller and thinner. Cathedrals trying to touch the sky.”
He looks up at the ceiling.
“Like people weren’t hiding anymore. They were reaching.”
Shane feels something twist gently in his chest.
“And the stained glass,” Ilya goes on. “I found it interesting that it wasn’t just decoration. Most people couldn’t read, or listen and understand the masses as they were preached in Latin. Ha, tell me about language barrier.”
He points at the windows. “So that it’s how they learned the bible. Art was didactic. But also beautiful.”
He exhales.
“And the gargoyles. I loved that part. They are creepy but functional, because they drain rainwater. But symbolically, they represent demons turned to stone. Either punished for trying to enter the church… or protecting it from the outside.”
Shane laughs softly, almost in disbelief. “You really did your homework.”
Ilya shrugs. “I guess.”
They sit in silence for a moment.
“I found out this church is Gothic,” Ilya says finally. “And it was close to the hotel. So I thought…”
He hesitates, then says it anyway.
“I thought it might be a nice place to just… be. We don’t need to believe in god to appreciate this. This height and this silence. This way humans tried to make sense of fear through buildings and art.”
This way you always try to make sense out of fear through buildings and art, Shane.
“And we don’t need to connect with god here. We’re already here. Together. Kind of connecting with each other.”
Shane looks at him, completely undone.
“I just wanted to sit somewhere beautiful with you,” Ilya finishes quietly. “Somewhere that reminded me of the way you look at the world.”
Shane swallows.
“You kidnapped me to a Gothic church because you love me and did academic research about my interests?”
Ilya smiles. “Yes.”
“That’s… devastating.”
“Well. It’s addictive the way you explain things with such detail. I love that about you. I love listening you being passionate about something, so.”
“Thanks. It means a lot that you actually pay attention and ask questions and let me get lost in it.”
“Actually, your yapping about Dante made me pretty curious.”
“What are you curious about?”
“What his hell is like.”
Maybe it’ll help me to understand a little more how yours felt like.
Shane blinks, a little surprised by the question.
“Like… literally?”
“Yeah. Literally. What does it look like?”
Shane exhales, thinking.
“It’s… structured. Very organized. Almost bureaucratic.” He smiles faintly. “There’s a limbo and nine circles. Each one for a different kind of sin. And the deeper you go, the worse it gets.”
“Worse?”
Shane nods slowly.
“Yeah. First of all, the whole thing it’s dark. Like, your vision is always limited so you never really see the whole place, the only thing guiding you is sound. The sound of voices that never stop crying, screaming, begging. You walk toward it because you don’t have anything else to follow.”
“That’s fucking terryfing.”
“Yes. And the deeper you descend, the more it closes in on you,” Shane continues. “It’s shaped like an inverted cone, so the space gets narrower. The circles get smaller. There’s less room to move, to breathe. Like the world itself is pressing against your body.”
He exhales.
“It’s not just that the sins are worse. It’s that there’s less and less space to exist.”
A small pause.
“It’s like hell isn’t about punishment anymore. It’s about confinement. About being trapped inside what you did wrong during life. Inside who you were. For eternity.”
He looks at Ilya then, a little too serious.
“And you don’t even get silence.”
Shane saw himself in the way hell wasn’t a single place you arrived at, but a gradual loss of space. A slow suffocation that felt almost logical while it was happening. Like it made sense to keep going down, even when your lungs were already burning.
That was what his mind had been like. A place he was trapped in.
At first, it was just thoughts. Harmless and small rules of how to eat better, be better, move faster and don’t lose control.
Then it became a system.
A structure. A hierarchy. Circles inside circles. Each one more demanding than the last. Each one convincing him that the next step was necessary. That it was improvement. That it was virtue. Discipline.
And he kept descending.
Because he didn’t notice the moment when it stopped being guidance and started being a cage.
He just realized, one day, that his entire inner world had shrunk. That there was no room left for softness. No room for a body that wasn't constantly being judged.
Only voices.
Always voices.
Praising him.
Correcting him.
Measuring him.
Watching him.
Telling him when he was being good.
When he was failing.
When he deserved to exist.
And when he didn’t.
And the worst part was that they didn’t sound evil.
They sounded moral.
Sometimes they even sounded like god.
And sometimes they sounded like everyone who had ever looked at him and told him how perfect he was, without realizing what that word was doing to him.
So he kept walking in the dark.
Not knowing if the voice he was following was divine or demonic or just the echo of perfection.
Not knowing if he was purifying himself or erasing himself.
Just knowing that the deeper he went, the less space there was to breathe without asking for permission.
And maybe that was the real hell.
Not being burned.
But being slowly reduced to something smaller and smaller until there was almost nothing left to save.
And the worst part is, that Shane had been descending long before there was a name for it.
Before there was control over food, there was control over feeling. Before restriction, there was restraint.
Because from very early on, he learned something simple and devastating: that affection came faster when he didn’t take up space. When he was not complicated.
And hockey welcomed that mindset with open arms.
Hockey wasn’t completely the cause.
But it was a perfect amplifier.
Everything Shane already believed about love and worth and control suddenly had structure.
And slowly, his mind found another tool.
And all of it kept feeding into itself, until the descent reached its lowest point, the last circle.
A place where nothing moves.
Where everything is frozen.
Where suffering isn’t just loud, but immobilizing.
And that’s where Shane found himself.
On the ice.
Not because hockey created his hell, but because it brought him to the deepest circle of it.
Because it took everything that already lived inside him and compressed it. Because while he was playing, he was also ignoring every warning sign, every silent collapse.
His lowest moments didn’t happen despite hockey.
They happened there.
Because the ice mirrored what was happening inside him: the narrowing, the stillness, the way the cold makes you feel strangely clear right before it takes away your ability to move.
So he wasn’t burning.
He was freezing.
Stuck in his own Cocytus.
Stuck in a place where going forward felt impossible and going back felt undeserved.
And maybe that’s why it hurt so much to realize, while he is explaining passionately the architecture of it all to Ilya, that hell hadn’t dragged him there.
He had descended step by step, following the voice of his eating disorder, the one he worshiped like some god he didn't even believe in, thinking the whole time he was becoming better.
Until he reached a place where perfection meant immobility, and control meant not breathing at all.
“…You said there was a circle for lust, right?”
Shane looks at him. “Yes, the second one.”
Ilya snorts. “Yeah, okay. If this was medieval times, we’d end up there for sure.”
Shane smiles.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Ilya raises an eyebrow. “No?”
“No. Not if we were like Paolo and Francesca.”
Ilya blinks. “Who?”
Shane’s eyes light up.
“They were lovers. But it was forbidden. Francesca was married to Paolo’s brother. And they fell in love anyway.”
“Oh no.”
“They didn’t even mean to. They were reading a book together. A romance.”
“What book?”
“The one about Lancelot and Guinevere. You know it?”
“Yes. My mom used to read it to me.”
”Good. So, while reading about those two falling in love, Paolo and Francesca realize they’re feeling the same thing. And they kiss.”
“So fiction ruined their lives.”
“Literally. So the husband slash brother catches them and kills them both.”
Ilya exhales slowly. “Jesus.”
“And now they’re in hell together,” Shane continues. “In this endless storm. Being dragged by the wind forever. Because lust was believed to be a lack of control, so their punishment is never being able to stop moving.”
“Okay, poetic.”
“It is. And the way Dante writes them is beautiful. He even compares them to doves.”
Ilya smiles softly. “So hell but romantic.”
“Yes. So if I had to be condemned for loving someone, I’d want it to be like that. At least.”
“You’d choose the lust circle over paradise?”
“With you?” Shane smiles. “Of course.”
They stay quiet for a second.
Then Ilya says, amused, “Also, let’s be real. In the Middle Ages, we’d be going to hell no matter what circle we fit in.”
Shane laughs. “Yeah. We wouldn’t even make it to the complicated moral allegory part. It’d just be: gay. Straight to hell.”
“Speedrun.”
Ilya grins, then pauses.
“Okay now I’m sad. Even if we weren’t particularly sinful we’d still be condemned just for existing. That sucks.”
Shane nods slowly.
“Yeah, I agree. Which is kind of why I love their story so much.”
“Because it’s unfair?”
“Because it admits it. It admits that love can be beautiful and still be punished. That you can do something that feels true and still be told it’s wrong by the world.”
He looks at Ilya.
“But they don’t care anyway. I know they don't.”
“How could they not care if they could've been in heaven instead?”
Shane barely hesitates.
“Because heaven was too small for a love like theirs.”
Ilya blinks. “Too small?”
“Yeah,” Shane says, certain. “Paradise is too small for a love that big. Even ours would be too big for it. I mean, if this conception of heaven is a place where we’re not allowed to exist as we are, then what’s the point of it? What kind of paradise excludes the people you love?”
“So again, let me get this straight, you would choose hell with me over heaven without me?”
Shane looks at him, very simply.
“I already did.”
“Okay, that’s the most romantic shit I’ve ever heard. You’re gonna be the end of me, Hollander.”
“Hollander?” Shane laughs. “What happened to my name?”
Ilya tilts his head, eyes sparkling.
“Better start getting used to it,” he says lightly. “Before you change your last name to Rozanov when we marry.”
“…I’m not changing my last name.”
“You say that now…”
As they sit there, side by side, in the empty church —not praying to anything, not asking for salvation, just existing in the light they found together— Ilya finds himself looking at Shane’s hands.
They’re resting on his thighs, relaxed.
It’s strange, he thinks, how someone can talk about hell so calmly when you’re this gentle in real life.
He remembers the way Shane said it the day before:
I was already living in it.
And suddenly Ilya recognizes something he had seen before, written between the lines of Shane’s journal:
Shane doesn’t talk about himself directly. Not really.
He talks about poets and planets and places and people who lived centuries ago.
But it’s always him.
He turns his pain into stories. Turns memories into metaphors. Turns fear into theory. Turns trauma into something he can look at from the outside. Something that has shape, meaning, a beginning and an end.
It’s safer that way.
If it’s Dante, it’s not him.
If it’s hell as a concept, it’s not his body shaking in a bathroom at three in the morning.
If it’s a book, a film, a building, then he’s allowed to say it out loud without having to say me.
And Ilya realizes that maybe that’s how Shane survived for so long. By narrating himself instead of feeling himself. By intellectualizing the hurt until it became beautiful, distant, almost elegant.
If he can explain it, it doesn’t drown him.
If he can analyze it, it doesn’t own him.
If he can name it, categorize it, place it inside a narrative arc, then it becomes manageable. Almost harmless. Almost pretty.
Pain, but with footnotes.
Suffering, but with references.
Terror, but aesthetic.
Shane never says I was broken.
He says Dante wrote about this.
He never says I was afraid.
He says Medieval people were terrified of desire.
He never says I hated myself.
He says The author explores guilt, shame, violence.
It’s not lying. It’s translation.
A way of putting his own blood into someone else’s mouth so he doesn’t have to taste it.
Because feeling it directly would mean admitting it happened.
That it hurt.
That it marked him.
That it wasn’t poetic or symbolic or meaningful at the time—it was just pain, and although he had Ilya, he was alone inside it.
So he builds a bridge of words between himself and the wound.
He stands on the bridge and points at it.
Look, he says.
Isn’t this interesting?
Isn’t this beautiful?
Isn’t this human?
And maybe it is.
But it’s also distance.
A safe, elegant, intelligent distance between what he lived and what he allows himself to feel.
Ilya realizes that Shane didn’t just learn about hell.
He turned himself into a scholar of his own suffering so he wouldn’t have to be a victim of it.
And that’s the tragedy of it.
Because it means he understood everything—except that he didn’t deserve any of it.
Shane stayed in his own hell for years thinking suffering was some kind of moral sentence and pain was proof that he was doing something right.
He had confused punishment with growth, silence with strength and endurance with healing.
And all that knowledge, all that brilliance, all those words… were just ways of saying one simple thing he had never been taught how to say directly:
This hurt me.
I didn’t know how to leave.
I thought I had to stay.
Ilya’s chest tightens.
Because sitting here, like this, it’s impossible to imagine Shane as someone who deserved to suffer.
So he asks, quietly, almost like he’s afraid of breaking something:
“Shane?”
“Yeah?”
“The things you told me yesterday…”
“Which part?”
“The part of how you spent years trapped in your own version of hell. You really think you had to go through all that shit to be here?”
Shane thinks about it.
“I don’t know if I had to. I just know I did. And that I wouldn’t understand myself the way I do now if I hadn’t.”
He looks at Ilya.
“And I wouldn’t understand love the way I do now either.”
Ilya’s throat tightens a little.
“So I’m your Beatrice.”
Shane smiles.
“No. You’re better.”
“Wow. Dante is shaking in his grave.”
Shane laughs, then grows serious again.
“...Because Beatrice waited in heaven, remember.”
Ilya holds his gaze.
“And I came into your hell.”