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Artyom wasn't always named Artyom. He was born Viktoriya Andreevna Rozanova on the 7th of January 2011, a little Christmas miracle if his mother was to be believed and a goddamn headache to take care of, if his father was. Little Viktoriya was everything a daughter should be – quiet, polite, neatly dressed, a good student, and, above all, knew to keep her opinions to herself and do as her father told her to do. But there was only one problem with that – Viktoriya didn't exist. She was just an illusion, a smokescreen for others to be fooled by as long as they didn't peer too closely at what lay underneath.
For a long time, Artyom didn't know what was wrong with him. For even longer, he didn't realise anything was wrong to begin with. So he didn't enjoy the frilly dresses and uncomfortably tight shoes polished to perfection that his mother put him in every day when she took him to school – so what? All the other girls in his kindergarten and primary school classes complained about the dresses being annoying on the playground because they always got dirty or in the way. Artyom's issues with the whole ensemble were just… different. That was all.
But then the issues kept stacking up. He liked his long hair but not the way his mother styled it, not the pig tails or the stupid fringe or the pink bows at the top that always hung in his face and tickled his forehead. He wanted to hunch over like the boys in his lower secondary class and spit on the sidewalk when he walked, not sit ramrod straight in his seat and cover his mouth when he laughed. And when he got older and boys started asking him out on dates, Artyom wanted to be their boyfriend, not their girlfriend. He wanted to share a beer and rough house in the back of a truck before settling down to watch the stars together a few kilometres outside of Moscow because it was the only place where you could see the night sky without all the pollution up above obscuring it – not to be given a wilted bouquet of roses and a box of generic chocolates before being taken to see a boring action movie where the other boy could grope his chest under the cover of darkness and pretend like he totally wasn't trying to pull him closer with that arm thrown across the back of his chair.
Pretending to be Viktoriya was hard. Trying not to be Artyom was even harder.
Every day, Artyom woke up and knew that he'd have to keep himself contained to just a small box in his mind, where no one but him knew who he really was. Every day, his mother laid out his clothes for the day, all ironed out and neatly arranged, and helped him with braiding his hair, and kissed his cheek before wishing him a good day at school. The entire time, Artyom had to bite back the urge to unearth the t-shirt uncle Ilyusha forgot at their house the last time he visited – so long ago, but Artyom tried not to dwell on it – and wear it to school instead, had to fight back the tears that threatened to fall when his mom called him Vikochka instead of Tyoma as she bid him goodbye at the door.
Worst of all, though, was probably his father. Artyom and Andrei never got along very well, if Artyom was inclined to be kind when describing their relationship. For most of his childhood, Andrei was more or less content with ignoring his entire existence as much as possible, which wasn't hard to do seeing as he was rarely home to begin with. When he was about three or four years old, Artyom spent the entire summer thinking uncle Ilyusha was his dad and was very confused when he and his mother gently explained that he wasn't (it didn't make the sting of his uncle boarding the plane back to Boston at the end of that summer any less painful, though).
Andrei brought him out and paraded him about in his cute dresses and tiny shoes whenever he had guests over, letting people coo over how cute he looked and how polite he was, but always ushered him back to his mother's side as soon as he no longer had need of him. That suited Artyom just fine, since his father kind of scared him a little and his grip on his tiny, fragile wrists always left bruises in its wake every time he ‘held’ him.
But this arrangement slowly deteriorated over the years. Artyom grew up and suddenly, he wasn't just a pretty doll to dress up and show off to guests. He had opinions and a mouth that wouldn't shut up. He and Andrei clashed. A lot. Neither knew how to be what the other needed or wanted and Artyom had no interest in trying to connect with a father that had repeatedly called him a mistake and a burden every time he messed up as a child.
It wasn't ideal, but it was manageable. He could survive this. Lots of people had shitty relationships with their fathers, Artyom wasn't special.
But then It happened. March 2021. Artyom would remember that month as the best and worst month of his life simultaneously for the rest of his days, most likely. It was the month when his entire worldview got turned on its head and a world of possibilities opened up that were previously not even considered. You see, growing up, Artyom heard about gay people as a concept. He learned the words used as slurs against them before he heard the actual term for these people and he knew that they existed as a nebulous concept, somewhere out there, lurking and unknown. There was always a neighbour who was gay, or the classmate of a friend of a cousin of an acquaintance. Barring that, gay people were almost always guaranteed to be westerners, whether European or American, and always, without question, not a good thing to be. Trans people might as well have been rumours of concepts of ideas – unless it was ‘normal’ men dressing up in dresses, wearing high heels and ridiculous makeup for a laugh on the television.
It never occurred to Artyom that being gay or trans was something he could be. That he was allowed. Or rather, that he could rebel against the norm and still be one, even if in secret. It wasn't possible. It didn't compute. Not until that video. The famous video.
Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, star players in the NHL, kissing passionately on camera.
His uncle. Artyom's uncle. Kissing a man.
It was unthinkable. It was scandalous. It was a slap in the face of all the Russian government had poured into its internationally renowned athlete – nevermind that the government hadn't done shit for Ilyusha and had only reaped the benefits when it suited them. The public raged. The government scrambled. TV stations reported on the incident – heavily censoring the actual kiss, of course – and loudly threw their scorn around about such blatant displays of homosexuality.
And Artyom? He found uncensored footage of the, by then, famous FanMail video on the internet, drinking in the sight of his uncle looking so happy, so at ease, while an uncomfortable feeling squirmed in his stomach that he labeled as disgust for the first few weeks after watching it and realised was envy and longing another few weeks later.
Artyom didn't know it then but from then on, catching glimpses of his uncle on the internet was going to be the only way for him to see Ilyusha's face for years after that video got leaked.
Andrei forbade Ilyusha from keeping in touch with Artyom. He made sure to change Artyom's phone number and preemptively block his uncle's contact before handing the phone back over to him. And even if his father hadn't done that, Ilya Rozanov wouldn't have been able to return to Russia without being arrested the second he stepped foot in the airport after that ‘gross promotion of homosexuality’ anyway.
Svetlana visited sometimes, always with an apologetic smile and a promise that his uncle was thinking of him and missed him everyday and couldn't wait for Artyom to grow up and come visit him in Canada. She never stayed long and her visits weren't very frequent, because Andrei wasn't too fond of Sveta either so his mother arranged the other woman's visits to take place when she knew Andrei wouldn't be home for a while.
Artyom appreciated the gesture but sometimes… sometimes he wished she'd stop giving him empty platitudes. Maybe his uncle missed him, that he did not doubt. But Artyom knew that he didn't belong there in that western country with their progressive views and freedoms, in Ilya's new life where he had a husband and a dog and a family that actually loved him (the day Artyom finally managed to find a reliable VPN that would hide his internet activity properly and he stumbled across Ilya's Instagram, full of pictures of Shane Hollander and Anya the dog and the Ottawa Centaurs celebrating their first Stanley Cup together was the first time Artyom wished he could die because of the wave of absolute despair that washed over him at the sight of a life that was everything he never knew he wanted and everything he would never have).
So… he did not doubt that his uncle remembered him every once in a while and missed him. But he doubted what place he could possibly have in that picture-perfect life that shined so brightly Artyom thought it might blind him some day.
Living a lie was nothing Artyom wasn't used to. Most days, he thought the lie might kill him – whether he would be buried under so many layers of falsity that his true self would be suffocated to death or if he'd follow in his grandmother's footsteps remained to be seen – but he kept putting one foot in front of the other and bore it all as bravely as he could, ignoring every time he lost his footing and wobbled on his feet before regaining his balance.
But things with his father only got worse. The gambling got worse. The drug use got worse. The fights between his parents escalated to the point where Artyom spent more time wandering the streets without aim, headphones on his head, than he did at home. And as his sixteenth birthday approached, October bleeding into November and December taking over with a frozen grip, Artyom slowly started to understand that he wasn't safe in his own home.
Already, Andrei was constantly going through his and his mother's things, desperate and delusionally convinced that they were keeping things from him, hiding valuables away to sell and use to get away from him when he wasn't looking. He called Artyom ungrateful and a disgrace, commenting on his manner of dress and saying he'd seen prettier boys on the street than his own ‘daughter’.
It was only a matter of time before Artyom slipped and his father found something incriminating, something that would destroy him and guarantee his death, one way or another. Suddenly, Artyom's possible death had another facet added to it, and Andrei's own hand featured as a likely cause much too prominently.
Svetlana usually visited two-three times a year. Once in the summer, when Artyom was done with school and Ilya was done with hockey, so she could visit Canada right before she flew to Russia and bring Artyom fresh messages from his uncle. And once somewhere around Artyom's birthday, sometimes before, other times after, so that Sveta could bring him a present she swore was from both Ilya and Shane but which Artyom always knew, deep down, was from Svetlana instead. Why would Shane Hollander buy him a present, of all things? The other visit was always unpredictable and at random and didn't always happen.
A week before his birthday, Artyom texted Svetlana to ask if she was already in Moscow and if they could meet. A day later, when he logged into his secret Telegram account to check his messages, he saw Svetlana's response. That evening, he lied to his mom that Katya wanted to have a sleepover so they could study for biology together, packed a bag with his most treasured possessions that his mother thought contained a change of clothes and toiletries for the sleepover, and kissed her goodbye with tears in his eyes that he tried really hard to hide.
“What's wrong, Vikochka?” she asked nonetheless, when the tears spilled and Artyom found himself clinging to her, unable to step away and let go.
It took him a pathetically long stretch of seconds to get himself under control and wipe away the tears.
“Nothing. I'll just… miss you. Haven't slept away from home in a while,” he lied.
His mother frowned, concern still plain on her face, but she placed her smooth, warm palm over his cheek and wiped away a stray tear he'd missed with her thumb. She didn't believe him but she also knew he had plenty of reasons to cry these days.
“You can always come back if it's too hard for you. Call me and I'll come.”
“I know, mama,” Artyom replied, voice breaking halfway through the last word so he had to clear his throat, and knew that she would always come if he called. But not for this. There would be no coming back once he stepped through that door, that much he knew.
He hugged her as tightly as he could allow himself to without alarming her too much then stepped back with a heavy heart that weighed about a tonne, gave her a wobbly smile, then exited the apartment and tried not to look back.
Svetlana waited for him a few streets away, car idling on the sidewalk where there were no parking spaces available, and took one look at him before drawing him into her arms. Artyom cried so much he thought he'd use up all his body's water and wither away into a dehydrated husk.
That night, he stayed at Svetlana's apartment in the heart of the city. She pushed glasses of water into his hands, urging him to drink, and ordered his favourite food for the both of them. She had questions and her face was a study in concern, but she didn't push until Artyom was ready to speak. For a long time, he wasn't.
He didn't know where to begin. How did one start a conversation where he told someone who'd known him all his life that it had all been a lie and now he needed her help to get away from the father he knew down to the marrow of his bones would be the death of him if he got caught in his lie?
But then, halfway through their dinner, Svetlana called his name but it wasn't his name, it was the farce, the lie, the imposter, and Artyom couldn't take it anymore so he just blurted it all out. Breathless, with his heart beating a funeral march in his chest and his hands trembling on the plastic utensils clutched tightly in his fists, Artyom spilled it all. A lifetime of secrets, of pain, of hiding. And a fear greater than even himself, the fear of hundreds, thousands across the country and the globe who walked around every day with a countdown hanging above their heads, reminding them that they were living on borrowed time and their existence was not allowed.
He hadn't thought he had any more tears to spill, but he was proven wrong as he sat there at Svetlana's dining table and sobbed out the words, “I don't want to die, Sveta, I don't want to die,” over and over and over again.
That night, Artyom passed out from exhaustion, his head pounding and his eyes itching from all the crying, and for the first time in his life, he didn't know what tomorrow would bring. He had no lie to uphold in the morning, no home to go back to, no life to look forward to. The unknown loomed over him like the monsters in the stories Ilyusha used to tell him when he was little, but this time, there was no uncle there to promise him that he'd chase them all away and save him.
Artyom was subdued at breakfast in the morning. Part of him felt embarrassed at his outburst the night before but the rest of him just felt utterly drained. Sveta put food in front of him and watched him with a frown, but she didn't prod him into conversation. Between bites of syrniki – the only food Svetlana cooked herself and didn't order from some fancy restaurant or another – Artyom watched as her eyes kept straying to her phone, checking it with an air of almost frustration or impatience, if he was hard pressed to put a name to it.
Finally, just a few minutes after breakfast was done and Artyom was quietly washing his plate in the sink, Svetlana's phone started ringing and she snatched it from the table so she could answer it. A few quietly murmured words later, she placed a delicate hand on his shoulder to grab his attention.
“I've got Ilyusha on the phone for you,” she announced, voice so gentle as if she was holding Artyom in her hands like the plate he was rinsing and she was afraid to drop him and shatter him all over the tiled floor. “Do you want to talk to him?”
His eyes widened and a lump formed in his throat, eyes quickly watering, but he nodded mutely. Sveta murmured some more to Ilya, her voice too quiet for him to hear it or perhaps the pulse roaring in his ears was so loud it completely blocked it out, while Artyom put the clean plate on the rack to dry and wiped his hands clean on a kitchen towel. Finally, when he ran out of things to do and ways to delay the inevitable, Sveta pressed her phone into his hands and gently encouraged him to lift it to his ear before stepping back and disappearing into her bedroom, the door shutting softly with a click.
Arm trembling and heart thudding, Artyom brought the phone up.
Breathing could be heard on the other end. It could have been anyone, really, but Artyom knew. He'd grown up hearing that breathing, having it tickle his neck and feeling the rise and fall of the chest that produced it. There were so many nights he fell asleep on top of it and so many mornings he woke up cradled in that warm embrace, deep, sleeping breaths puffing up against his neck as the world was kept at bay so it wouldn't touch him for a little while.
“Dyaden'ka,” Artyom called out, choking on a sob, and then slid down to the floor so he could hug his knees to his chest as he tried not to cry and failed miserably.
“Malysh,” came the answer in a voice choked with tears but which, despite the intervening years, remained unchanged. It washed over him like honey, like a balm, like those mornings little Artyom spent cuddled up in bed with his uncle Ilyusha watching silly cartoons and eating breakfast in bed. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed those mornings or this voice that felt like coming home and already being there all at the same time.
“I… how are you?” Artyom asked, sniffling hard and trying to get himself under control. Ilya laughed, rough and throaty, and while it wasn't the laugh he remembered, it felt good to hear.
“You're asking me this? You're the one who packed a bag and ran away to Sveta.”
Artyom shrugged, even if his uncle couldn't see him, and messed with the frayed edges of his jeans to give his restless fingers something to focus on.
“I couldn't… Ilyusha, I can't… I won't…”
But he couldn't form the words he wanted to put out into the world as they were a messy, painful tangle in his chest and he couldn't straighten them out for Ilya. Even so, his uncle seemed to understand even without those words and maybe Artyom shouldn't have been surprised by it. Who could understand better than him?
“I know, Tyusha.”
Artyom gasped at the diminutive. His chest clenched for a second, a mix of fear and longing and grief that he couldn't make sense of, before it flooded with warmth the likes of which he'd never felt before. It threatened to undo him and maybe, in a way, it did, as he started crying all over again and couldn't seem to get himself to stop. Ilya stayed with him through the whole thing, breathing steadily in the receiver and occasionally murmuring low words of encouragement and love. Artyom let it wash over him even if he couldn't identify them in the moment.
“...You know?” he said at length, minutes, hours, perhaps years later, as his breathing calmed down and his tears dried up once more.
“Sveta told me. She didn't want to, thought it was your news to share, but I threatened to get on a plane last night if she didn't tell me what had happened,” his uncle explained apologetically, but Artyom shook his head.
“No, no, it's fine. I actually… I'm kind of glad I don’t have to tell you. I don't know if I can do that again.”
“That's okay.” A beat of silence passed before he said, “I'm sorry, Tyusha.”
“What for?” Artyom asked, confused.
“For leaving you behind. For not trying harder to see you. I thought… I thought you were safe. Safe enough. That I could wait until you were an adult and have Sveta bring you here and find you a job or a university or whatever you wanted so I could have you here and make up for all the years we missed. But now I realise I have more than that to make up for. And I don't think a Canadian visa will cut it.”
Artyom stayed quiet while his uncle spoke and long after he finished. He didn't know what to say. Because… because he did feel hurt and betrayed that his uncle hopped on a plane to the West and left him all alone back in Russia. And he thought that the man might have tried a little harder to see him or talk to him or… something! And he was so jealous of the life Ilya had in Canada and wondered what about him made it so that everyone left him or scorned him or just didn't consider him enough to try harder.
But then he thought about how hard it must have been for Ilyusha to never be able to come back here. How hard it was to be here even when he could come back. And he thought that… What did his uncle owe Artyom anyway? He wasn't his son. Wasn't his responsibility. So what if Ilyusha was the only positive father figure he ever had in his life and the only time he truly felt the love of a father? So what if the last time they saw each other Ilya ruffled his curls and tucked away one of Artyom's braided bracelets in exchange for the t-shirt he forgot to pack that waited for him on Artyom's bed, promising to exchange hostages the next time they saw each other?
How much could Artyom expect from a man whose entire life had been one unreasonable expectation after another? He didn't want to become just another burden for Ilyusha too.
“Did Sveta tell you about the plan?” Ilya continued as if he'd never spoken when the minutes stretched on without an answer from Artyom.
He cleared his throat before saying, “Uh, no. We didn’t get a chance to talk.”
“Okay. Then here's what we're gonna do.”
The plan was simple and it boiled down to this: Artyom would ask to be emancipated on his sixteenth birthday. It was a fifty-fifty chance on whether Andrei would fight him on it or agree quietly and finally be rid of his unwanted child. Artyom's mother would definitely be persuaded to agree to it, Ilya and Svetlana both assured him, once the situation was explained to her (Artyom dreaded his mother finding out about him, didn't want to even imagine the disappointment and pain in her eyes when she did, but knew it was something that had to happen sooner or later). Even if Artyom had to fight for his emancipation, Sveta would be there for him every step of the way as he sued his parents and, between her own influence and her father's, they would make a judge see the unfitness of Andrei Rozanov and eventually agree to emancipate Artyom. To justify the decision, Svetlana would take Artyom on as her employee and show the world, as far as the legality of it all was concerned, that Viktoriya Andreevna Rozanova was more than responsible and capable enough to take care of herself away from her parents.
Sveta was already making arrangements to move her business in Moscow for the next two years so she could stay here and look after Artyom, who wouldn't be allowed to live on his own until he was eighteen – something both Ilya and Sveta agreed on rather firmly and loudly – even if he still had to stay in Russia until then.
It was a good plan. A beautiful plan. And Artyom couldn't quite believe that it would be that easy, that he could get everything he wanted (well, almost everything) just like that without having to sacrifice something equally as heavy and important.
“I don't know what to say,” he confessed this time around, not wanting to let silence linger the way it had before.
Ilya laughed, a heavy, guilt-laden sound that Artyom didn't like, and said, “Don't say anything. Just let Sveta handle everything. I wish I could be there. I wish you could come here. But even with your emancipation…”
“It would be hard to get out of the country.”
“And there'd be issues for you if people knew who you were visiting.”
This was the first time either of them had gotten even this close to mentioning the reason why Ilya wasn't here, why he couldn't actually do anything to help Artyom but rather had to rely on Svetlana and her father. Artyom bit his lip and debated leaving it at that, changing the subject instead, but found that he really didn't want to do that.
“Is he… Does he make you happy, dyaden'ka? Are you happy there? Happier?” Was it worth it?
He didn't know if he was asking as an accusation or to simply inquire about his uncle's life or if, even deeper than that, he was asking, “Would something like that make me happy too? Is it possible for me to have this?”
Ilya breathed in deeply and let out a harsh sigh before saying, “Yes, Tyusha. He makes me the happiest I've ever been.”
“Oh.” Artyom gripped the phone tightly with both hands and pressed it to his ear with so much force it was digging painfully into his skin. “I'm glad.”
“Do you… Would it be okay if he said hi quickly? He's been dying to meet you for ages and I won't hear the end of it if only I get to talk to you.”
Artyom's breath stuttered in his chest from the surprise of the question but he found himself agreeing on the inside before he verbally expressed it. He couldn't pretend like he hadn't been curious about Shane Hollander since that day six years ago. He was the only person aside from Sveta that Artyom knew his uncle loved, and Sveta had always been different in her own, special way. Here was another special person and Artyom only knew him from internet photos and hockey games. Of course he wanted to talk to him, even if the prospect terrified him a little bit too.
There was some muffled talking happening on the other end then, nothing Artyom could identify, before the rustling got louder until suddenly– it stopped. The breathing changed and Artyom knew his uncle was no longer on the phone.
“Artyom?” came the hesitant voice on the other side, accented differently than what he was used to, but smooth and deep and pleasant nonetheless. It was different from his uncle's but Artyom thought it complimented Ilyusha's well. “I'm Shane. Hollander. Your uncle's uhm…” some muttered English too quick for Artyom to understand with how frazzled he felt, then, “husband. I won't keep you long, I just want to say we both love you and miss you and want you here with us. We are waiting for you when you are an adult and can come to us. You have a home here with us.”
Shane Hollander's Russian was good even if his accent left a lot to be desired, but Artyom couldn't have cared less about that in that moment if he tried. All he cared about was the lump that had formed in his throat and the intense wave of gratitude he could feel for someone who was virtually a stranger. He fought against a fresh bout of tears bravely, wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his hoodie and sniffling to unclog his nostrils.
“Thank you, Shane. I… Thank you.”
It was a lacklustre response in the face of what the other man had given him with just a few words, but Artyom was running on fumes and had no capacity for more words than basic ones at the moment. He hoped this would convey the depth of his gratitude, that he could speak to the man again soon and have something better to say, but for now, this had to do.
“It's okay. No need for thanks.”
He passed the phone back to Ilya soon and he and Artyom wrapped up the conversation not long after. Svetlana took the phone back so she could speak some more to his uncle but Artyom didn't stick around to listen, instead trudging back to Sveta's guest room and plopping down on the mattress. His phone was on the bedside table, charging, and there were a bunch of texts and missed calls from his mother – no doubt worrying about his whereabouts since he was supposed to be back from his sleepover already. Artyom gazed at the lit screen flooding with notifications without really seeing it before he finally shut his eyes tightly and breathed in deeply through his mouth.
Reality could wait a few more hours before he had to face it. Before he had to wreck everything he'd known and carefully balanced on a knife's edge for years in favour of something he could no longer live without. In the meanwhile, Artyom just breathed – breathed and lived and thought about the accented voice that promised him everything he'd ever wanted with the ease of someone saying they'd stop by to get bread on the way home.
He didn't know why Ilya loved Shane Hollander so much he gave everything up for him but he thought he might start to understand. Just a little.
***
“If you pace any more than that, you're going to wear a hole in the floor, you know?” Shane's amused voice came from Ilya's right. “They're not going to get here any faster if you pace.”
“You don't know that. Perhaps they will,” Ilya argued back childishly, shooting his husband an annoyed look that lacked any true heat. Shane's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with fondness aimed at Ilya, but there were traces of anxiety, of anticipation behind them too, something he couldn't hide from Ilya after all these years even if he tried. He was pivoting on his heels to go over to Shane and comfort him instead, maybe kiss him across those gorgeous freckles a little to distract himself from his own nerves, but the sound of a suitcase rolling in their direction accompanied by Svetlana's voice pulled Ilya in the opposite direction instead.
His eyes found Sveta easily, stylish and gorgeous as ever, but they skipped right over her in favour of taking in the person next to her, the one he had been anxiously anticipating meeting for weeks now.
His nephew was tall, though nowhere near his or Shane's height. He had a mop of golden-brown curls, a shade or two lighter than Ilya's, and hazel eyes, just like him and Andrei. The face staring back at him was familiar from the photos and videos Svetlana had been sending him for the past eight years but also that of a stranger. He could see himself – or rather, Andrei – in a lot of pieces of Artyom, he could see Nastya – Artyom's mother – in the rest, but he didn't know this person he'd loved from the moment he was born. He'd been gone too long and he feared that he'd lost that person a long time ago.
But just when Ilya's worries started to overwhelm him in his brain, Artyom's face broke out into a grin, a smile so wide and unrestrained he couldn't not remember the tiny toddler that had followed him around everywhere every summer he came back to Russia, and none of it mattered anymore.
“Dyaden'ka!” Artyom exclaimed, abandoning his suitcase in favour of sprinting towards Ilya, and Ilya opened his arms wide as he started running towards his nephew in return, meeting halfway through in an embrace that knocked the breath out of both of them and had them giggling in each other's arms.
“Tyusha,” Ilya gasped breathlessly as his arms tightened around the boy and he spun him around once, breathing him in and learning the shape and weight of him in his arms so that he could never forget it ever again. “You're home.”
They pulled apart slightly, just enough so Artyom could look up at Ilya while Ilya brushed tenderly through his curls, and the teenager’s eyes filled with tears that never fell as his lips pulled into a fragile smile that broke Ilya's heart anew.
“Yes. I am. I really, really am.”
Ilya pulled him back for another hug and rocked him back and forth, those words spinning around in his head like a record on repeat. Tyusha was home. He was here, in Canada, an adult with his papers in order, and he would be coming with Shane and him to Ottawa where he would be living from now on. His husband would finally meet the only family of Ilya's that mattered and they would all be happy together – them three and Anya. And Artyom could finally be himself without fear or restraint, could finally dress how he wanted and be called the right name, and do all the things that had been forbidden to him in Russia until now.
They could finally be a family again.
Yes, Ilya thought giddily. His little Tyusha was, indeed, finally home. Right where he belonged.