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How about you tell me everything that's on your mind, but in Russian? Shane asks, and Ilya freezes. Not because of the bitter wind whipping through the tunnel, or because he's so untethered from what he used to consider his reality that he doesn't know where to go from here. But because Shane's words give Ilya the permission he never knew he needed.
So, he does. For once, he tells Shane everything, every syllable rushing off his lips as if sucked through a break in a dam. He tells Shane how much he despises it here. How the hatred seems to go both ways. How he gives his family everything they could want, and bails them out when they need it, and still they demand more.
How despite all the indifference, he ached to be there for his father through the end.
He tells Shane that he paid for his father's care, took on all his funeral expenses, made sure he was laid to rest near his parents and got him the perfect tomb. That not even treating his father with the dignity he never offered Ilya in life disarmed his brother. That he's always known Alexei would rather Ilya never existed. That it kills him that he has never been able to do enough to change his mind.
He doesn't tell Shane that even knowing how much his brother detests him, Ilya didn't throw another punch when he could have, but instead gifted him the apartment in Moscow and promised a trust fund for his daughter.
He doesn't tell Shane that he'll never see anyone he once considered family again.
Ilya can see now that he wanted too much from his life here. He'd somehow, over the last five months, deluded himself into thinking Alexei would start to feel sympathy for him. That his father, even in the throes of his dementia, would find enough clarity to see Ilya for who he is. That someone, anyone, would tell Ilya they cared about him at all.
Impossibly, he has Shane on the phone, not asking Ilya for anything. He's just giving Ilya what he couldn't ask for. Showing Ilya it's not too late, and that he matters to someone.
He matters to Shane.
It couldn't be enough that Shane speaks two languages fluently, could it? He had to go and learn the language of Ilya's heart, too. A language Ilya barely understands himself.
Ilya told Shane only a few weeks ago that he didn't want to find out what might happen to him if he ever let himself be something to the man he wanted. That he'd never be able to go home again if he did.
But what good is Russia to him?
Ilya can admit to Shane aloud now that he never wants to come back. That being in Russia, this place that stopped feeling like home when his mother died, now only makes him feel empty. More alone than ever.
Only he's not. He has Svetlana, and beyond that…
Beyond that, he has Shane, the boring Canadian who forced Ilya into an awkward handshake when they were still just kids, placing the first domino in a line now so long that Ilya would never be able to stand them, or himself, back up if one knocked the others over.
He has the person he shouldn't want but who never leaves his mind.
He relives so often their first time hooking up. He long ago memorized the image of Shane taking Ilya's thumb in his mouth and sinking to his knees, then wrapping his eager lips around Ilya's dick and showing Ilya there was more to him than the tightly-wound coil that seemed to have a permanent residence in his stomach.
Ilya doesn't think about the women he sleeps with after they're gone. But Shane occupies so many of his thoughts, and has for longer than he cares to put a number to.
Ilya should give him up. It would be the selfless thing, to make sure Shane isn't ruined, too. But how can he?
How can he, when after all this time, he's still not satisfied? Ilya still wants so much, has so much to learn.
He wants to know what's going on in Shane's mind every time Ilya grabs his chin and watches him surrender to the motions of Ilya's hand.
He wants to know why he doesn't fold his clothes every time they hook up anymore.
He wants to know why Shane has a raised scar on his left shoulder, and if he's ever noticed Ilya, in his weakest moments, exploring the soft skin with his lips and tongue.
He can't ask those things. But he can say, because Shane won't understand, that all he wants is the person giving him the space to bare his soul. That it's always Shane Ilya comes back to.
That he's so in love, and he has no idea what to do about it.
He's never loved anyone like this. He didn't know he could. Where is he supposed to put the excess? Who would ever take it from him?
When Shane asks how to say in Russian that he wishes Ilya was with him, Ilya doesn't tell him. Instead, he says, in Russian, "I wish I was too."
Ilya would give everything to be nothing more than a moon in Shane's orbit. But if he could be more than that, he'd pull down the sun and place it in Shane's hands.
He knows it's impossible. But he hopes one day he'll be able to tell Shane that he would.