Chapter Text
As soon as the boys leave — she involuntarily smiles at that, the boys — Yuna gets to work. In their home Ilya had displayed the same cocksure, shaggy, Russian bad-boy bravado he’s always had in press conferences (cut, she had to admit, with a surprisingly sweet side), but Yuna is no fool: Coming out was a brand problem for Shane. It was a potential death sentence for Ilya.
He’s in the last year of his first post-rookie contract, paying $8 million USD annually. He’ll get more if he signs with Ottawa, provided this stays under wraps until then, of course. She thinks back to Shane’s concussion, Ilya’s reaction, and knows that’s not a sure thing. Shane is slightly behind him, at $7.2 annually, but he’s got three more years on his contract. Shane also outpaces him on brand deals: Ilya has Nike, but not a particularly lucrative contract; she’d negotiated a much more exclusive deal for Shane at Reebok. Other than that, he works mostly with Russian companies — MegaFon, Novatek — and there’s frustratingly little available about those deals. It’s not a surprise, given that he uses the same mafioso Russian agent that every rookie Russian player signs with.
But still. This won’t do.
Yuna knows all Ilya’s stats, his game’s weak spots; she knows very little about him as a person. His father died last year, his mother was rumored to have killed herself when Ilya was quite young. She searches, plugs articles into Google Translate, stops just shy of handing over any credit-card information to a Russian news agency. There are several stories of womanizing, a few stories of bar fights, some rumors of near-arrests for drug possession (always in a club, always for a friend), and a couple of mentions about what all he sends back to family in Mother Russia. She’s always viewed him as a charismatic and volatile player, but now, his story makes her heart twist. He’s wandering through the world alone, just able to keep himself out of trouble. And the next two years — at least, really, he’s not safe until he gets citizenship — are only trouble. She’s not sure he knows that.
He needs her.
She makes a list of potential sponsors, based on his image: If Shane is luxury watches, Ilya can be luxury sportscars. With the way he scarfed down her pasta, perhaps a meal-kit company would be worth exploring. Vodka, of course, but a company with zero ties to Moscow. And everyone needs a credit card.
She picks up the phone, calls a contact at TD National. “Martina, hi,” she starts. “Listen, I’m Ilya Rozanov’s North American representation now and —”
Yuna expects the boys to be pleased when she lays this all out over roast chicken and salad, the next day. Shane is still tense, though looser than yesterday — ankles crossed, shoulders up, fist curled as he picks at his plate. By contrast, Ilya’s almost exaggeratedly relaxed and unmannerly: Hair and shirt intentionally unwashed, legs kicked out long into the hallway, butt so far forward in the chair she wants to tell him to sit up. Instead she put her folder in front of him. “I made some calls this afternoon,” she announces. “Some contacts at companies that weren’t quite a fit for Shane — Gucci, high-end alcohol, cars.” Ilya snorts and clearly taps Shane’s knee with his, causing her son to roll his eyes. “And I talked to Calvin Klein and they rarely do this, but they’d be open to adding a second hockey player to their roster — I think a joint underwear ad in the next eighteen months would go a long way.”
Shane practically glows red as Ilya purrs at him, tickles his armpit. “Mom can you just stop thinking about my Hashtag Brand for a second and let us just be?”
Yuna snorts. “This isn’t about you, darling! Until Ilya gets citizenship in either the U.S. or Canada, this is an incredibly precarious position for him — a ticking time bomb! He needs non-Russian bank accounts, and connections and a strategy that ensures he’s not arrested and Canadian paperwork doesn’t get held up by some bureaucrat with a grudge!” She waves her Sancerre wildly as she speaks.
“There’s — asylum,” Shane starts. “That’s a thing, with the LGBTQ laws in Russia.”
“A star hockey player requesting asylum is an international incident,” Yuna snorts. “You have to be realistic, darling. Surely Ilya knows this.”
Ilya, who has at least been picking interestedly at Yuna’s cost-benefit analyses and projection graphs, looks up sharply. His face closes over feelings, like a matryoshka doll, and he looks, for lack of a better term, so very Soviet. “Yes. I know very well.”
With that, he shoves off from the table, slams the sliding glass door. Ambles down the path toward the water, a spark of a joint in his mouth.
Shane leans forward, angrier, more alive, more adult than she’s ever seen him. “Of course he fucking knows, Mom,” he hisses, sure and clear and low. “He was talking last week about marrying an ex with an American passport. He knows — he knows the risks.” That’s part of why they’re diving in so quickly, Yuna realizes. It’s not just because this has been going on since the summer before their rookie season.
“Then you both need a plan,” she replies, as her husband’s eyes track Ilya. Her fork shakes, just slightly, in her fist.
She’s not — she’s fine that he’s gay. Suspected it. Fine that he’s been messing around with his archrival this whole time. She’d rather not know, truly.
It’s the full life, all the plans, made without her having any idea that she’s having a hard time with.
“That’s what Ottawa is. The charity. Starting the path to citizenship, here.”
“Going about it the right way, that’s six years away.” Yuna remembers her own father’s long journey toward Canadianness. “I know you’re not … it’s early, you want to take this slow publicly. But you really think — no slip-ups? I know you don’t want to come out to everyone, Shane, but … no dinners at restaurants? No leaked texts? No going to your teammates’ weddings together, or Christ, to PFK for take-out? Not living together?” Only one bedroom has anything in it, their sandals are a tangle by the back door, Shane fussed at Ilya to put on sunscreen earlier that day. “For six years? Until you retire?” She raises her eyebrows. It’s not a life, it’s not what she wants for her son.
“Well, no. After we change the narrative a bit … With Hunter out, too —”
“A brand is a plan. Money is a plan.” A few deals, a few millions, and Ilya, like Shane, would be too popular to arrest, to recall, to bury. “It gives you a reasonable pathway, on a shorter timeframe. Let me help you.”
Shane tips his chin toward the patio. “That’s up to Ilya.”
She walks out a while later, after Ilya’s joint has burned out and she’s refilled her wine glass. David and Shane stay behind, cleaning up dinner and putting away the groceries that she’s brought. Ilya’s sitting on the couch, staring out at the water. “It’s peaceful, isn’t it?” she said, as a starting point. “My father … worked for years so he could own a cottage. It’s more Canadian than maple syrup, in my book.”
“Loony wolf birds aside, is lovely,” Ilya says gruffly. “Reminds me of dacha my grandfather had, in Yaroslav.” He flicks ash from the joint. “No electricity there though. Or views. Or —” He sniffs — “wine refrigerator.”
Yuna thinks of the first time her father walked through their little cabin, in Muskoka. It hadn’t had indoor plumbing, and he’d been thrilled. “You must miss it very much,” she says, simply.
“I do not,” he answers brusquely. “Is not my way, to miss place that no longer exists.”
She nods. The unsentimental sentiment makes her heart ache. “I’m sure Shane has said — that I’m overbearing.”
“He says no such thing. Just that he loves you, and you love him.” He sighs. “Is sweet. He cares greatly what you think.”
The sentiment makes Yuna smile. “Shane mentioned your father passed away earlier this year. That must have been very hard.”
“Not really. Was an asshole, you see.” The confidence, she knows, is probably what attracted her sweet Shane — but hopefully her son can see this is all a front? A cover for a lost little boy? “Had dementia,” he finally offers, exhausted. “Not pretty at end.”
“And your mother?” She prompts. “She’s passed, as well?”
He nods. “You have read Wikipedia. When I was 12.”
“What was she like?” Yuna wishes she could have met Irina.
“Wonderful. Best mother.” He clears his throat. “She, ah, was figure skater. Not so good for Olympics, but very good. She came to all my games. Argued with refs, argued with coaches. But she also … helped me with math homework. Played piano. Sewed buttons on jacket.” His eyes went distant. “My father, my brother, very strong men, you know? Jealous that I was the one with puck sense. Even though they thought I was soft. Father thought she was soft, too, but she was not. She was sad.” He focused back on her. “She would have liked you.”
A look passes between them. “I would have liked to meet her, very much.” She doesn’t need to wonder if Ilya would have been different, had his mother lived. She knows he would have been.
“I would have liked, too.”
Yuna takes a sip of her wine. “I know you love my son.” It’s a big whole thought to wrap her arms around. That someone else loves her son as much as she does, maybe even more. “I know to him, the thought of you moving to Ottawa … Is a big, romantic gesture.” She’s proud of Shane for seeing the romance in making a plan. “But I do not think he … understands the risks.” He cannot, really. She made sure of that. Taking another sip of wine, she adds, “My parents were Korean, but their families ended up in Japan before the war. They came in the 70s, to Montreal. Because it was the chance at something better than what they could get in Japan. They did not return to their village for almost forty years.” He meets her gaze head-on. “And that’s a very hard thing, Ilya. To leave a home and never know if you can return. To be a stranger in a strange land.” She gives him a look: orphan to orphan, immigrant to immigrant, mother to son.
Ilya drops her gaze. “Nostalgia is so very Western,” he says, gruffly. “It is not … Russian.”
He’s a master at deflection. “One toe out of line in Russia, and they will arrest you,” she says evenly. “I know you love my son. I do, I believe it. But I also know that it might seem easy, to immigrate. To escape a desperate situation, to claw for safety, through Shane.”
“Is not easy.” He scowls. “Much easier to lie. To hide. Shane is reason I cannot. He is reason I will not. It is hard, but he is worth it.” He holds her gaze, and she nods. “But no matter what, Russia …” He huffs, two quick breaths, through his nostrils. “I have always loved Russia. But it has never loved me back.” Not like Shane does goes unspoken. “I am leaving because there is nothing for me there. There hasn’t been for long time. And so no, I will not miss it.”
She stares at him, at his defiant, orphan logic. “I think that’s a lie, Ilya. You are … one of the most Russian Russians I’ve met.” Depressed, repressed, hard to impress. “And I’ve been around hockey for thirty years.”
He chuckles. “I suppose that’s true. Perhaps a vodka contract, then. Ease the, ah, how you say? The suffering.”
Yuna cocks her head. “Have you talked to Shane about the risks to you, if you go back to Russia? If you’re outed? Really talked to him?” Ilya had so deftly coaxed Shane through his moment of panic yesterday. She knows that Shane can reciprocate, if given the chance. She wonders if Ilya knows that.
She wonders if her son, even though he insists that he’s in love with Ilya, understands what it will truly mean to love this man, who only gets more complex the more that Yuna talks to him.
She knows he doesn’t. That he can’t, yet. That that’s the beauty and folly of young love. To learn and grow as you challenge yourself.
“No,” he admits, with a sigh. He looks so lost, and young. “We are good, now. And only … two days left.” Then, reality.
Yuna finishes her glass, and wishes she’d brought out the bottle. “You may know him better than I do at this point,” she admits, halting and hating it all. “But you should know … He’s in this. He would not bring you to our house, bring you to the cottage for weeks, let you use the word lover … if he were not completely serious about you, too.” It’s a mindfuck, to think of all the boys will need to get through, but to know that they are too entwined, already, for it to end in any other place but forever, even though they could barely say boyfriend yesterday. And that’s if they stay healthy, if their coming-outs are met positively, if they continue to play well. “You should talk to him.”
He nods. “I will,” he finally says.
“And I know you feel you have a whole … image to maintain.” She wrinkles her nose. She really has never liked his interview style, the carefully careless way he approaches his career, everything that isn’t directly related to 60 minutes on the ice. “But I do think you leaving will require money. And Canadian bank accounts. And partnerships with North American and western European brands. For your protection.” She estimates that he has, at most, twelve months before something breaks. His sigh signals he knows too. “I know you’ve been alone for a while, and I know you and Shane have your whole … nonprofit plan —” She tries to sound supportive, she really, really does. “But please know — you do not have to do this alone. We do not want you to do this alone. Please don’t … please don’t be brave for Shane. And please don’t be brave for us, either.”
A million emotions flicker over his face — surprise, she thinks, and affection, and … peace? He leans back, finally comfortable. “You are thinking sportscar?” he asks, tentatively, and he suddenly seems so young. “My agent never brings up. Can you get me free Lamborghini?”
She smiles. “I think so. But yes, Ilya, you need a real manager.”
He needs, more than anything, a mother, but she can’t say that out loud. Not yet.
David and Shane, who have surreptitiously been watching from the kitchen, come out of the cottage, a wooden board with s’more supplies in David’s hands and a tray of drinks in Shane’s. “Everyone good?” Shane asks, cautious and hopeful.
Ilya grins, wide and easy. “Everything is great. Your mother is going to, ah, what is that word? For the Jenner lady with the bad hair?”
“Momager?” Shane laughs.
“Yes!” Ilya tilts his head up expectantly, for a kiss. Shane complies. “She is going to momager me. As we all —” He waves his hand, and Yuna realizes that he has seen the whole board, this whole time. “ — Figure this out. She says she can get me a Lamborghini.” She feels a deep rush of affection for this prickly, difficult Russian, who has made Shane smile more than he has in years.
Shane pours Yuna a glass, and she smiles. “That easy, huh,” he teases his mom, plopping next to his boyfriend.
Yuna snorts. It won’t be easy, at all. The hardest part of motherhood is knowing these things, letting your children learn the hard way anyways. But she realizes as she studies Shane, studies them — Shane knows. Ilya knows. They’re going for it, anyways.
And if anyone can navigate the next year, two years, five years — it’s them.
“That easy,” she confirms with a smile, nestles into David’s shoulder.
And it is.