Chapter Text
Act I, Part V: The Lessons
Ilya
Ilya hadn't thought that he would see Shane this soon again. They had given him less than three days to settle into his new home before a maid came knocking on his door, asking him to follow her to meet with Prince Shane in one of the ballrooms.
On the way to the ballroom Ilya had asked her if Shane was about to teach him classic dancing but she had denied him an answer. In fact, no one had answered any of his questions so far. Not the ones he'd dared to ask out loud nor the ones that haunted him in his dreams: What was the purpose of this whole charade? Why weren't they treating him like the enemy he was to them? Why couldn't he stop thinking about Shane Hollander?
The room the maid led him to looked nothing like what he'd expected a “ballroom” to look like. It had enormous windows that flooded the hall with sunlight, making the room brighter than any room Ilya had ever been in. In the palace on Bear Island it was usually dark, with long and thick curtains blocking out any light or joy. This place seemed to be quite the opposite, but maybe it wasn't because of the difference in lighting but rather because of the difference in the people. Here everyone was just ... friendly. Filled with some sort of kindness where he had expected to find hatred.
Ilya was wondering what kind of role he and the prince were going to play today as he took in the rest of his surroundings. There was a huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling, illuminating the center piece of the room, a long expensive looking mahogany table with sixteen red velvet padded chairs.
Ilya was sitting on one of them, leaning back as though he had been sitting there all his life. One leg stretched out, posture deliberately careless. Watching Shane who was reading something the maid had handed him.
“Tell me,” Ilya said at last, his voice tainted with a hint of amusement, “is this where you teach me how to sit properly, or does that come after the part where I learn how to breathe in a way that doesn’t offend your entire kingdom?”
Shane did not look up from the paper in his hands. In fact, he hadn't looked once at him ever since Ilya had followed the maid into the room, leaving them alone. Something Ilya was painfully aware of. Just him and Shane. Together.
“If you are quite finished,” Shane said after he was finished reading, shoving the piece of paper into the pockets of his black pants, “I would like to begin with our first lesson.”
Ilya smiled, slow and easy, though there was nothing particularly amusing about the situation itself. His first lesson. Like he was a child or worse, an animal that needed to be tamed. Just what his brother had said to him.
Ilya didn't need any lessons. Nor did he want them. But for some reasons he did want to spend more time with the crown prince. There was something about him that made him incredibly curious. So he decided to play his part. Maybe he could at least get a little fun out of this.
“If that's what our beloved crown prince wishes.”
There was a pause and Ilya almost believed Shane would lower his mask of pure composure and yell at him. Instead the crown prince just turned to him and muttered a single word: “Stand.”
Ilya stayed where he was for a moment longer than necessary, just long enough to make the point that he could. That he would not be moved by a single word, even if said word was coming from a crown prince. And then he stood up from his chair anyway because he also didn't want to anger the other man. Something inside of him … wanted Shane to like him.
“Good,” Shane said, as though the delay had not existed at all.
How boring.
“Today's lesson is about your posture,” the prince continued, stepping closer, his gaze sweeping over Ilya in a way that felt too intense for something as simple as watching another man standing. “You shift your weight. You should make yourself… loose.”
“I am loose,” Ilya said.
“Yes.” Something slipped out of Shane's mouth that almost sounded like a laugh. Almost. “That is the problem.”
Ilya rolled his eyes, a small smile tucking at the corner of his lips as he deliberately relaxed his shoulders a little more. Now his body had taken such a strange, hunched posture that Ilya was almost tempted to listen to the prince’s words and stand up straight.
But again, only almost. He’d rather strain a lumbar muscle than make this too easy for Shane.
Shane watched him for exactly one second before he stepped forward, shoving the chair that had been standing between them out of the way. He was closer now. Too close.
“Stand properly, Ilya.”
“I am standing properly, Shane.”
“No,” Shane said, his voice sounding less patient than before. “You know how to do it. I've seen you do it.”
Ilya’s smile sharpened, just slightly. “So this is what this is about? You being obsessed with me?”
For a moment, merely just a second, something flickered in Shane’s expression. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
“I am … I don't. You don't know anything about me. Straighten your back.” A pause. “Please.”
“I -”
Shane did not ask again. He reached out, one hand coming to rest against Ilya’s shoulder, the other at his side, guiding rather than forcing, but firm enough that resistance would have required more effort than it was worth.
Ilya went very still. Not because he meant to or because he had decided to. It was something about the contact, Shane's hand against Ilya's shoulder, that was so unexpected that it threw him off his rhythm and left something else in its place.
Something he couldn't ignore. Something he had never felt before. A hunger for more. To go deeper. To really get to know the young prince next to him.
“Here,” Shane said, his voice a bit lower now. He was even closer than before, adjusting the angle of Ilya's shoulders with careful precision of his fingers. “You hold tension in the wrong places.”
“I wasn’t aware there were correct ones,” Ilya murmured, though the words came slower than before, almost hesitant.
He could feel the tension between them. He was so close to Shane, so damn close that he prayed the other prince couldn't feel how fast his heart was beating in this moment. How this tension was the only one Ilya wanted to feel.
“There are.”
Shane’s hand shifted, just slightly. The tips of his fingers traced along the line of Ilya's spine, pressing lightly between his shoulder blades. Ilya could barely feel it between the layers of fabric and yet Shane's fingers were burning into his skin.
“Stand straight.”
Ilya did. Immediately. In this moment he was sure he would do anything that Shane was asking him to.
He was aware, suddenly and unhelpfully, of everything at once. The warmth of Shane’s hand against his shirt. The steadiness of his touch, as though he had all the time in the world to correct something Ilya had never once considered worth fixing.
The fact that he had not stepped back even though Ilya hadn't made it easy for him.
“You see,” Shane continued, as though any of this was normal, “it is not about restriction. It is about having control of your body. Do you feel how much taller you're standing now?”
Control. Of course it was about control. That was all anyone had ever wanted from him. Be a good boy, be a good spare. Control yourself, don't sleep around. Hide who you truly are.
Don't ever fall in love with a man.
Control meant power. And Ilya had been powerless since the day he was born, chasing control like other people chased their dreams. Always out of reach.
He let out a slow breath. He didn't want to admit that it felt good to stand like this, that even breathing felt a little easier.
“Is that what this is?” he asked, tilting his head just enough to glance over at Shane without fully turning. “Are you teaching me to control myself? To be a good boy?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens,” Ilya went on, because he couldn’t help himself, because silence felt like surrender and he wasn’t ready to accept that yet, “when I decide I’m not interested in learning? When you can't tame me?”
Shane’s hand stilled. Just for a second as if he'd just remembered that he was still touching Ilya's shoulder. Then he stepped back and the absence of contact was immediate.
It felt like someone had taken something away from Ilya, which was ridiculous to begin with. But he desperately wanted Shane to touch him again.
“Then you will continue as you are,” Shane said, returning to that careful distance, “and this will have been a waste of both our time.”
Ilya turned fully then, ignoring the way his heart mourned the loss of proximity or the way the space between them now felt… wrong.
Somehow.
“A waste of time,” he repeated, tasting the familiar words on the tip of his tongue. It wasn't the first time Ilya had been called a waste of time. His scholars back home had called him that plenty of times, his father had too. Andrei had called him even worse things.
But coming from Shane it hadn't sounded like an insult. More like a … regret.
Ilya looked up and Shane met his gaze. “That would be sad. For both of us.”
A pause stretched between them, longer than it should have been, heavier than the moment deserved. And then, Ilya smiled.
“Then I suppose,” he said, taking a step forward without breaking eye contact, closing the distance again, “I’ll have to try a little harder to not make you sad.”
And for the first time since Ilya had arrived at the Three Loons, there was an actual smile on Shane Hollander’s face.
***
The lessons continued.
Not in any way Ilya would have chosen. He was determined to be annoyed by Shane and the way he was babysitting him. But he also couldn't deny that he felt a strange pull towards the crown prince. That he was craving the proximity, Shane's annoyed facial expressions or simply being around the other man.
So what had begun as an unnecessarily structured encounter in a sunlit ballroom turned into something quite regular. Which, Ilya suspected, was precisely the point.
If he was spending time with the prince there was no time left for him to misbehave. And even though he was seeing right through their well structured plan, he couldn't deny that he somehow enjoyed this little game they were playing.
There was no need to purposely misbehave when annoying Shane Hollander was already so much fun.
So his days continued like this. Ilya was summoned by the same maid at irregular hours. Late morning, early afternoon, once even just before dusk. Different rooms each time, though always within the same wing of the palace.
Always with Shane. And only Shane.
There was no formal announcement of what each lesson would entail. No explanation beyond brief instructions. Shane would simply begin, as though the purpose of it all had already been agreed upon or as though Ilya’s cooperation were a given.
And in a way it was, even though it angered him that Shane had silently decided to correct him on, well, everything.
The way he stood: too uneven, his weight shifting when it should have been balanced.
The way he walked: too careless. Not anticipating his next step enough. Whatever that was supposed to mean.
The way he spoke: apparently his tone was off and his phrasing too imprecise, his pauses placed incorrectly.
Even doing nothing, so it seemed, could be done wrong.
Shane’s instructions were always the same in their delivery. His voice was calm and unhurried, acting like they had all the time in the world. There was no frustration in them, no visible irritation, no sign that Ilya’s deliberate lack to learn was affecting him in any way.
Which, more than anything, made it difficult to argue. And oh, Ilya wanted to argue. He wanted to crawl underneath the other man's skin and turn him inside out.
Therefore he would sometimes openly ignore the instructions, exaggerate his own mistakes or lean into the very behaviors Shane attempted to correct. Other times he did it more subtly by complying only partially or adjusting only one thing while purposely disrupting another.
It was his little game and he didn't intend to lose. And yet there were moments where Ilya felt like this whole thing had turned into something like a game for Shane himself.
There were these moments where Shane would step closer than necessary. Where his attention lingered on Ilya even after he had obeyed to whatever the crown prince had told him to adjust. Moments where it felt like Shane was trying how close he could get before Ilya would flinch away.
He never did.
But sadly those moments never lasted. They were always followed by a return to form with the professional distance reestablished. Where Shane pretended like nothing had happened at all.
It should have been boring. But Ilya started to look forward to their lessons. He looked forward to the small delays. To the moments of hesitation. To the touches that lingered too long. They weren't enough to define. But enough to notice. And Ilya noticed things. He started to notice everything Shane Hollander did or did not.
By the end of their first two weeks of spending time together the pattern was clear: Shane instructed. Ilya resisted. Shane came too close. Ilya never backed off.
And somewhere in between this unlikely game of cat and mouse, some kind of progress was expected of him. He didn't understand why the Three Loons kept doing this, trying to improve him. Yes, they were trying to distract him, stealing his time so he couldn't accidentally burn the whole place down.
But what Shane was trying to do here was starting to go beyond that. He was trying to turn Ilya into an actual prince. After all, wouldn't that make him more dangerous to them if he actually behaved according to his status and title?
But whatever it was, Ilya wasn’t particularly interested in providing it.
What he was interested in … was the crown prince himself. And he wouldn't rest until he got what he wanted.