Comrades

''i decided to write something like a drabble for the oc ship ilari stepanov x kaden radcliffe because those two (particularly ilari) have been on my mind lately. this is set during the summer vacation after their first year of ever after high, where ilari has invited kaden and cosmo to stay over at his home in st. peterpanspurgh.''

''if it isn't clear enough, this is from the pov of ilari. i might expand on this fic later on actually?? who knows. this fic isn't perfect by any means and i mostly did it for fun. folks on discord have seen snippets of this but i thought i'd share it to the wiki too.''

anyways, let the gay  homoerotic subtext commence.

“You have the sensibilities of a good-looking man,” Kaden said to me, his tone unnervingly casual. His grey eyes made contact with mine, and I blinked, shocked at his words. I could tell there was a smirk lurking in the corner of his mouth.

“You scoundrel...” I wanted to say to him—in jest, obviously! However, I instead said:

“You certainly have an… interesting sense of humor, as well as a peculiar way with words.”

I chuckled lightly, then tried smiling to in an attempt to brush off the feelings of bashfulness that had taken hold of me. It was too late, however. The tone I spoke in—which wavered ever so slightly—and my visage, having been flushed with a rosy-red hue, had betrayed me in dastardly act of treason against my own dignity. I hastily averted my eyes from Kaden’s gaze; I gazed down at the floor.

Having witnessed the diminishment of my typical unabashed exterior, Kaden cleared his throat.

“B-but I mean that in a friendly manner, of course!” Kaden said, and his voice cracked at the end of the sentence. He hastily turned his back to me and faced the bookshelf, resuming his examination of each book with quick turning of pages. He then said, in a hushed tone, “I’m very sorry if what I said was… embarrassing or… insulting, in any way possible.”

“You’re pardoned… and thank you,” I said with a meek smile. I sighed, then said, in a reassuring tone, “Nothing you’ll do or say will ever tarnish my feelings on you.”

I hadn’t even considered the undertones of what I said until I heard the sound of pages flipping suddenly cease, followed with an abrupt sound of a book being shut, and my eyes widened. With that, I immediately regretted the sentence I uttered from my mouth. Under my breath, I muttered the Russian word for “shit”.

Kaden, having processed what I said, put down the book he was examining, and turned to me slowly. “Do… do you really think that?” He asked sheepishly, and I could see a hint of a bashful smile forming at the corners of his mouth.

“A-as friends, of course! As my friend, I believe you’ll never do me any wrong,” I declared while flashing a forced smile at Kaden. He simply chuckled, and shrugged.

“Yes, friends! We’re lads—comrades, if you will,” Kaden said triumphantly as he turned back to the books on the shelf. Though he didn’t catch sight of it, my left eye twitched slightly when he called us “comrades”. It was a word with a certain stigma, which didn’t precisely sit well with me.

Despite that, when Kaden said it in the context of us—my heart seemed to skip a beat.

“We could be more than comrades,” I didn’t say. “Yes, we’re comrades,” I said instead—more to myself than to Kaden—with the ghost of a smile lingering on my features.

The word echoed in my head.

Comrades.