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It’s been nearly three years since Ilya’s seen him, but he still recognizes Hollander’s parents. There was a time once, even, when Ilya had very briefly considered what the look on their faces might be if he ever had the chance to meet them properly.
He doesn’t let himself entertain those fantasies anymore. They were impossible back then, and they’re foolish now.
But Ilya does not forget things so easily, especially lately. Especially when Hollander shows back up suddenly and won’t give him the time of day. It makes Ilya’s skin itch. It makes the voice in his head condemn him for a guilt he has no idea how to name, much less atone for. He can’t even get within the vicinity to ask him what had gone wrong. If it had been related to Ilya at all, or if perhaps it was just none of his business. Hollander won’t even meet his eye.
It isn’t like they used to be. Eager hands and bruising mouths, all intensity on the rink and off of it, flashes of it that’d kept Ilya afloat throughout long seasons and hard summers, knowing that being back in the city would feel like home again for more than just the geographical reasons.
Now things are different. Now there’s a hesitancy that hadn’t been there before. A stubborn chasm between them that Ilya would toss himself over if he weren’t so unsure that Hollander wouldn’t just let him fall. Despite everything, before, Hollander was a sure thing. Now, Ilya isn’t so sure.
But it doesn’t mean he’s forgotten any of it. If anything, the long nights and strangers and the occasional cigarette only give him ample time to remember more vividly. To kick himself for what he’d taken advantage of when he had it.
So he hasn’t forgotten Hollander’s parents either, even if he’s not met them properly before. He knows from hockey stands and gala ballrooms and magazine spreads, from almost-encounters on elevators and ill-timed plans.
He knows that they are who he’s looking at now, directly across the parking lot from him.
Boston had played Montreal tonight. Montreal had won. Ilya thinks maybe they wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been so eager to get Hollander’s attention, to make him notice Ilya again. But when it’d come down to it, he couldn’t bring himself to use any of his old tactics. To shove him hard against the boards in hopes of a reaction and a poorly concealed plea for closeness, to let his mouth run wild while waiting for the puck to drop just to watch his face turn red in filthy distraction.
Hollander holds himself differently now. Walks a little more stiffly, keeps his shoulders either stubborn-straight or curved in on himself as he escapes off the ice, dodging cameras, microphones, and comment of any kind. Dodging Ilya, too.
And so, in his own misery, Ilya had shelled out for a different hotel than the one his team was staying at, hoping to get some distance. (Hoping, very secretly, that if he had somehow convinced Hollander to talk to him and come back with him, that being somewhere else would make him feel safer.) Ilya had failed at that too.
But here he is in the parking garage, half-out of his car, hair still damp and curling at his neck from his shower, unable to take his eyes off of what is undoubtedly Hollander’s parents.
They seem to have also just arrived back from the game. Adrenaline surges through Ilya and he steps out of the car, one hand on the top of the door, the other twitching at his side. It is not a good idea. He knows that it isn’t. This is not the version of the Hollanders he had once naively played out inside of his head. This is real life, and in real life they only know Ilya as their son’s rival who should probably not seem quite so desperate to speak with him.
Still, his body tenses, prepared not to let the chance escape him. If they’re here, that must mean that Hollander is here, somewhere inside, that maybe he’d had the same idea Ilya had in having somewhere else, private, to meet. That maybe he would need it for something.
Just as he’s about to swing his car door closed, Ilya stops.
The Hollanders, not having noticed him yet from the opposite side of the garage, speak quietly to each other while they move around the vehicle. Ilya watches them move with a certain smoothness, a routine, watches Hollander’s father open the back door while his mother leans in to retrieve something.
He can just barely make out the tones of their voices, deliberately soft, the subtle clicking of something from the backseat. Moments later she steps back from the car and her husband closes the door behind her and locks it, and when she turns, there’s a child on her hip.
Ilya’s brow furrows. He does not know much about the Hollanders, sure. But he is fairly certain that they are likely not of the age anymore to have a child so young. She looks about the age of Ilya’s niece back in Russia, maybe two or three. Small enough that her body is nearly concealed by Hollander’s mother when she turns, even more so when his father drapes a soft looking jacket across her back.
A niece of Hollander’s too then, maybe? It does not look like one of the Pike children. Her hair is too dark, her features too similar to the Hollanders when Ilya squints.
His parents finish locking up the car, pulling a messenger bag and a folding stroller from the trunk before walking off in the opposite direction toward the garage entrance to the hotel. They don’t look back, don’t notice Ilya standing there, hovering beside his own vehicle.
But the girl on her hip stirs at all of the movement, blinking slowly as she begins to wake up. She doesn’t make a sound the way Ilya has grown to expect other children might at this age, but she does lift her head enough to press her chin to Hollander’s mother’s shoulder, to look directly over it and back at Ilya.
Something in his chest stutters. She blinks at him, and he blinks back. Almost everything about her looks so strikingly similar to Shane that, for a horrible moment, Ilya feels his throat begin to close. Hollander, he reminds himself firmly. Not Shane. Not to him.
In the time he yanks his gaze away to berate himself for the slip up, the trio of them have already almost made it to the glass doors into the hotel. Ilya takes one more glimpse, even if he shouldn’t, and finds both big, soft eyes already still looking back.
He takes one step forward, but then loses his nerve as the glass finally separates them. He watches the Hollanders walk down the hallway through the partition, watches the girl watch him back the entire way.
When they disappear around a corner, Ilya drops back down into the front seat of his car and stares at the dash. He can hear his pulse. On the wheel he’s gripped for something to do with his hands, his palms are clammy, his fingers shaking the slightest bit.
He should have said something. He should have asked if Hollander was here, even if they wouldn’t have told him the truth. At least then he wouldn’t be stuck with the regret of not having tried anything at all.
He’d been on the ice with Hollander tonight, close enough to touch him, and he’d been too much of a coward for that too. Too desperate to be in his space again, too afraid to hear him say that Ilya had meant nothing to him. That it was pathetic for Ilya to want more, even after all this time, even when they would never be more than they had already been once before.
His flight is early in the morning. He knows that Hollander’s likely is too. If he’d wanted to see Ilya, he would have said something by now.
It doesn’t stop Ilya from laying the phone on the pillow beside him when he’s alone in his hotel room, wondering if Hollander is somewhere here, alone too.
+
He had texted Hollander many times, at first. Had let himself get deep enough into it to think that even if Hollander was not speaking to the rest of the world, maybe he would still talk to Ilya. Or, at the very least, let their bodies do the communicating. Less room for Ilya to say the wrong thing.
But the messages—and the phone calls, regrettably—had all gone unanswered. Eventually, Ilya had stopped trying.
Except for the game, when Boston was playing Montreal. Just one, before, which had maybe been a cruel choice, if Hollander were prone to thinking about Ilya the way Ilya is about him. But Ilya doesn’t think that was the case. The landslide score had proved it.
That message, though—Hollander had read it. Ilya had seen. It wasn’t until after the game, late into the night, but he had.
It’s enough that, when he catches Hollander leaving for the hotel after the game is finished, Ilya can’t bring himself not to try.
“Hollander,” he says once he makes certain they’re alone, only loud enough for them to hear. The syllables are crooked in his mouth, too formal. He wants to have earned the privilege of something else, but he hasn’t. Not yet.
Despite the low volume, Hollander flinches at the sound of his voice. He closes his eyes for a moment, takes a breath, and then faces Ilya with his shoulders pulled up to his ears and his hands shoved into his pockets.
He glows underneath the shitty floodlights coming off the brick. Ilya has always thought he was handsome, but he is even more now. There is still the lingering carefulness in his movements, but he sinks into his body more easily these days, his tension pulled to other places. Ilya would have loved to have been there to watch it happen. But this way, he thinks, he can appreciate the smaller details more in contrast.
If Hollander does not flee before he can.
He dips his chin. “Rozanov.”
It’s more of a breath than anything, quiet enough that Ilya strains to hear. He chances a step forward and waits while Hollander glances over his shoulder and then back again, then pushes it by a few more when Hollander’s feet stay firmly planted on the asphalt.
The further Ilya comes to him, the lower Hollander’s gaze drops, until he’s looking down at their feet. The rubber of their shoes are nearly touching. And this is too close to be standing when they’re outside, when Ilya is buzzing with this much want, but he can’t help it.
He keeps his body still but reaches forward with one hand, grazing the backs of his knuckles against Hollander’s where his hand has finally left the confines of his pocket. It trembles for a moment, his eyes squeezed closed and breathing heavy, but eventually, one of his fingers curls slowly around one of Ilya’s.
Ilya could melt at the relief. He still has some part, however small, of Hollander. He’ll take what he’s allowed.
He tries not to push for more, tries not to let his other hand float to the back of Hollander’s neck like muscle memory when Hollander briefly sways toward his chest.
“Hollander,” Ilya murmurs, half pleading. He opens his mouth to invite him home, but Ilya’s voice—or his own name inside of it—seems to have reminded him where they are.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, I—” he blinks quickly, eyes made of glass, and slides his hand back into his pocket as he puts a few inches of space between them. “I can’t be like we were before.”
It sounds so much like a confession, so much like guilt, that Ilya makes a small noise of protest. Hollander’s eyes flick up to him, just for a moment, uncertainty tilting the corner of his mouth.
Ilya shakes his head. “Is fine. I just…” he trails off, looking for the words. He drops into a whisper, because he thinks that is the only way Hollander will answer him truthfully. “Are you okay?”
Hollander’s face pinches, and Ilya briefly panics when it seems like he might honestly begin to cry. But the waver of his brow and quivering lower lip flatten themselves seconds later, still just as stubborn as Ilya remembers, and something sour and fond tugs at his chest as he watches Hollander slip the mask back carefully into place.
“I can’t do this right now,” he tells Ilya, quiet but firm, “but if you. If you have the time, maybe we could—talk.”
“Talk,” Ilya repeats.
Hollander chews at his lower lip. He nods. “Yes. I think we should… catch up.”
“When?”
As if surprised at the speed of his answer, he lifts his gaze to Ilya again, less defensively this time, and shifts on his feet. “Can I—can I text you?”
“Or call,” Ilya offers, uncaring of how he must sound. “Anything is fine. I will answer.”
Finally, a bit of the tension Hollander’s been wearing since Ilya approached him begins to seep from his shoulders. He stares at the center of Ilya’s chest, and Ilya wonders if he’s also thinking about the space between them and how much he’d like to close it.
“Okay. I will.”
There’s a long pause, Hollander obviously hesitating and Ilya unwilling to part ways before he absolutely has to, the sounds of cars and other people leaving at the other entrance fading into the background.
Just when Ilya thinks Hollander might be waiting for him to excuse himself, his mouth parts, and he bravely meets Ilya’s eye again.
“Goodnight, Ilya.”
The air around them seems to shift, Ilya only narrowly managing not to stumble on his feet or with his words. He nods, once, says, “Shane,” in a way that could be parting or begging.
Shane nods back, also once, his mouth slanted into something that Ilya wants to believe might be a smile, and the glimpse he gets right before he turns and walks away is almost exactly the one he’d watched from behind the glass partition in Montreal weeks ago.
Even when he should, Ilya can’t get it out of his head.
+
They meet up in Florida, and they can’t avoid each other even if they might’ve wanted to. Not when they’re playing for the same team this time.
Shane is already wound tight again by the time he comes to Ilya’s hotel room, not even the tropical weather and the way they’d dominated the ice today enough to clean the slate. Ilya’s nerves grow into something rotten in his stomach the longer they dance around it, the more he waits for the other shoe to drop.
He sits at the foot of the bed while Shane paces in front of him, telling Ilya about specifics just vague enough to mean anything, to mean nothing at all. Ilya wants to reach for his wrist the way that he used to, to pull him down to the bed and hold him still. He used to spill everything so easily that way, like he couldn’t bear to be completely honest unless it was pressed out of him somehow. Maybe, unless it was Ilya knowing how to do the pressing.
But he isn’t sure he’s allowed that again, so Ilya sits on his hands and waits while Shane’s cheeks fill with exasperated color and Ilya’s own words take on a harsher edge, both of their walls too tall to puncture the other.
“Because,” Shane erupts eventually when Ilya snaps about all of his hypotheticals. “Because it’s not just about you and me now. Not anymore.”
The words are simple but the meaning of them Ilya struggles to parse through. He should assume, maybe, that this means that Shane has found someone else. That there is someone else, someone who, even if he still wants Ilya some, is obviously not worth losing to get entangled with him again.
Instead, he asks, “This is because of the girl with your parents?”
Shane stops pacing in front of him.
“You,” he says, nothing more than a breath. “You saw her?”
“After the Montreal game, at the hotel,” Ilya admits, glancing away. “I—I thought, I don’t know. But I felt…”
He lowers himself gingerly to sit beside Ilya on the bed. “You felt…?” he whispers.
“Something,” Ilya answers. “But I couldn’t be sure. And I did not think you wanted to talk to me.” I did not think I deserved to ask, Ilya doesn’t say.
Shane sucks in a slow breath, both of them now facing the wall. He rubs his palms on his shorts, flexes one of his hands and then relaxes it.
“Yes. It’s about her.”
Ilya nods. “This is why you have been ignoring me.”
“Yeah, it is.” Shane lets out a strangled laugh. “I mean—fuck, Ilya.”
He brings one hand up to hold the bridge of his nose, eyes pinched shut. For several minutes there is only heavy breathing and the hum and click of the air conditioning unit, until Ilya works up the nerve to slip his fingers through the hand Shane has laying on the mattress between them.
It’s not immediate, but a little of the tension fractures. When Shane’s other hand drops, his eyes look tired, and he squeezes Ilya’s fingers with his.
“I was angry,” he says. Ilya tries not to frown.
“With me?”
He sighs. “Yes. You—I know it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. I wasn’t as careful as I should’ve been either. But you weren’t the one who had to face the consequences. And for the longest time I just felt so—so mad at you, because before that, I’d worked so hard to be able to just—be. I had routines. And schedules. Parts of my life that I finally didn’t have to be confronted with all the time.”
Guilt gnaws at Ilya’s ribcage, and he tightens his grip on Shane’s palm. They had both been so eager and excited for each other back then, both in far over their heads in a way that had only been clear in hindsight. Ilya had secrets and so did Shane, and they kept them for each other, but it had never really been that simple.
Ilya had thought, back then, that the best way to show how much he wanted Hollander was to do so in a way that ignored everything else. He’d called it desperation, but it’d been ignorance too. Fear, maybe. Feeling the weight of something in his palms that he was always so terrified he would handle the wrong way and never get to have again.
It feels cheap now, feels like letting himself off easy, leaving Shane to work through the rest. He should have asked more, he thinks. He just hadn’t thought he’d earned that either.
“When it happened,” Shane goes on quietly, “when I found out about her, I was—it put me in a bad place again. And it felt even worse at the time, because you—you introduced me to my body in a way that I’d never interacted with it before. For the first time it wasn’t just me repeating something in my head until I told myself I believed it. When we were together, I felt—I just felt like me. I could just feel for a while. I didn’t have to think,” he exhales. “And then, suddenly, it was just. Backwards.”
Again, the words are simple, but Ilya still feels ten steps behind. He feels shocked, but also not entirely surprised. He feels like he should be doing more, but like they might both shatter if he lets go of his hold on Shane’s hand. He isn’t yet sure about what to say, so he listens, doesn’t just fill the silences the way that he used to.
“My parents were supportive of whatever I wanted to do, of course. And they helped me with the whole thing.”
“That is good,” Ilya nods. “Do they know about…?”
“You? No,” Shane says quickly. His head snaps to Ilya. “Not because of—not because it’s you.”
Ilya gives him a solemn smile. “It’s okay.”
“No, I mean it. I hadn’t even told them I was gay, anyway. But I didn’t tell them about this because I was—” he cuts himself off with a frustrated noise, then deflates. “I was a little… protective of the whole thing, I guess.”
“I don’t understand,” Ilya frowns. “You—you thought I would try to do something to take her from you?”
“No,” Shane insists. He tugs on Ilya’s hand, turns a little on the bed and bends a knee so he can face him properly while Ilya watches his thumb ride the waves of his knuckles. “No. Not at all, Ilya.” He takes a breath. “I—I don’t really know if any of this will be something you can understand, but I’ll try to explain it.”
Slowly, carefully, Ilya lifts their hands to his mouth, touches his lips to Shane’s fingers. “Thank you.”
Shane thinks for a moment. “I’ve always known, you know. And that made it easier to be… discreet about certain things. To make a plan. Less room for mistakes. But growing up in a sport like hockey, my mom was always paranoid that if anyone found out about me they’d find some way to leverage it against me,” he explains. “I didn’t want them to think that—I don’t know. That anything about what we had was a con or disingenuous. I know that it wasn’t like that. I know that we were—more. Even when I didn’t want to admit it. You’ve never treated me like I was anything other than just—me.”
Oh, Ilya thinks distantly. Shane had meant that he was protective of Ilya, also. Even when he did not have to be. Even if he could have been much more angry at Ilya than he was. Ilya’s chest warms again. Beside him, Shane sighs.
“I know you probably have questions.”
“What now?” Ilya asks, unsure of if it’d been an invitation or not. It’s the only one he has, really. He lifts their hands again, gestures between them. “What does this… look like?”
“Whatever you want it to look like, I guess,” Shane lifts a shoulder. “Look, I wanted to tell you, but you don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to be.”
“I want to,” Ilya rushes. “But I do not want to—um. Be too much. If you have set—routines and schedules for this too. I don’t want to mess things up again.”
Shane presses a hand against his cheek, and when Ilya finally looks up at him, his mouth is twisted into something sad. “You’re not just an item on a checklist, Ilya. She’s yours too.”
The world seems to tilt underneath him, his head falling forward onto Shane’s shoulder so that he won’t see the way Ilya’s eyes are burning. He had known, maybe even in some odd way even before now, but hearing it that way—in Shane’s voice, with his stubbornness and protectiveness swelling to include Ilya within them this time, it’s more. It’s—Ilya believes it, suddenly.
He struggles to get in air for a minute as the weight of it settles on his shoulders. She’s yours too. And Ilya had been there for none of it. Hadn’t helped, hadn’t lightened things in any way. He’s reminded, in moments like these, just how much he doesn’t have of Shane. Of how much he still wants.
“I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to keep her from you,” Shane says, his own voice shaking as he pets a hand over the back of Ilya’s head. “I was just so upset. And overwhelmed, and—and scared, for a while. I didn’t know if I was making the right decision.”
Ilya pulls his hand from Shane’s to wrap it around his middle, pulling them flush together until there’s no more space left. He buries his nose in the crease of Shane’s neck where it is warm and dark and safe, feels the dampness of tears in his hair when he leans down to press his lips to the top of Ilya’s head.
“I missed you,” he whispers. “When I left. I know I don’t deserve to. But I did.”
“I missed you too,” Ilya rasps, unwilling to let him believe otherwise. “I didn’t know what was wrong.”
Shane shudders in his grip. “I’m sorry.”
“No. There is—no sorries.”
They stay like that for a long time, until Ilya’s legs begin go numb and his shoulder aches with the angle of keeping Shane pulled into his chest, dragging his lips against the fluttering pulse of his heartbeat as much as he’s able until they both sit up again.
His face catches between Shane’s palms, wiping Ilya’s tears before they’re pulling him forward into Shane’s mouth. The kiss is slow but not hesitant, relearning where the boundaries are, and Ilya sighs into him like coming home. Shane’s forehead presses to his.
“I wasn’t ready for you to know, before. But now. Now, I think—it doesn’t feel quite as big as it did anymore,” he tells Ilya. “I’m in a better place again, not just with myself but with Emi, too. And if anything, I think you knowing and being involved to whatever extent you’re comfortable with would be… nice.” Shane glances down at their tangled hands again and smiles. “I think it could be really nice.”
Ilya’s heart feels too big for his chest.
“Emi?” he repeats, awed.
Shane’s smile turns a little sheepish, and very fond. “Oh, yeah. Emiko, but. Emi, mostly.”
“Emiko,” Ilya tries out, still feeling slightly undeserving of it even as a slow grin spreads on his own face. “Emi.”
“I—I don’t just want you around for her,” Shane adds. “For the record.”
“Whatever you want,” Ilya assures. “You say how. When. I am there. The rest does not matter.” He brings their hands up again, kisses the back of Shane’s with more confidence this time. “Will you tell me about her?”
Shane smiles to himself. “My parents say she takes after me a lot.”
“So she is perfect, then,” Ilya says.
His expression quivers a little when he looks up at Ilya, glancing all over his face as if to memorize it. He presses his thumb against Ilya’s lip.
“I hate the fact that they don’t know all the ways she takes after you, too.”
He drops his face to Shane’s chest, if only to hide the way his eyes burn.
“I want to know her,” he rasps. “I want both of you.”
“I think I’m ready for that now.” Shane cups the back of his neck. “I just needed time. I’m sorry.”
Ilya shakes his head. “I would have waited.”
And he would have. It would be worth it. But this, also, Ilya thinks as he takes the curve of Shane’s lower lip between his own again, is long overdue.
+
They talk, now.
“I told her about you,” Shane says when Ilya picks up, like he can’t hold it in any longer. They’d already discussed him doing that but the confirmation brings a grin to his face, half hidden by his phone as he walks from the practice facility back to his car.
Ilya has only three weeks until he goes back to Montreal and meets her in person. She’s spending the weekend there, with Shane, and his parents will be back in Lanaudière. An entire two days together, if Ilya flies in early Saturday and leaves late Sunday night. It’ll be worth the jet lag.
Over the time in between, Ilya tries to soak up as many details about her through his and Shane’s conversations as possible, putting a personality to the rare photograph Shane sends.
He learns a lot, like: “She calls you papa?”
“Yeah, sorry. It just kind of happened,” Shane chuckles. “You have your pick of anything else, though. Dad, or…?”
“Papochka, maybe,” Ilya says without thinking. He had not been allowed to call his father this, but he’d always liked the way it sounded, the shape of the word in his mouth. “If it is not too many parts.”
He can hear Shane smile. “I like that. What does it translate to?”
“Is still like dada or papa. Just… more tender, maybe, I think.”
“It might take her a few tries to get the hang of it, but she likes learning new words. Making the sounds. You can show her.”
“I would like that,” Ilya admits.
Or: “She stays with my parents most of the time,” when Shane has a headphone in, talking to him through his morning run. “Traveling is hard for her. But she’s been to a few of my home games in Montreal, in the private boxes, or when we’re around Ottawa. And I go back to my parent’s place to see her as much as I can in between.” His voice softens as he steps off to the side of the trail to catch his breath. “She’s seen you play, before. On TV, and when you came to Montreal.”
Or, quietly, on a shaky video call when they’re both waiting for their flights in different airports: “She likes routines. We try to stick to them, if we can. That’s why game days are hard sometimes. Too unpredictable. Too loud.”
“She does not like loud?” Ilya asks, cradling the phone to his chest.
Shane shakes his head. He’s tucked into a chair against the far back wall at his gate, a Montreal beanie pulled over his hair, face tired and pixelated on Ilya’s screen. “We have a pair of those noise cancelling headphones for when she comes to games. They’re too big for her head. My dad keeps saying she’ll grow into them.”
Or when there’s only a week left and they’re finally both locked away in hotel rooms, skipping out on post-game festivities to talk to each other. When he doesn’t have to hide his screen, and Shane’s voice can play out loud in his suite, almost like he’s here in person if Ilya closes his eyes.
“Hey, I should probably give you a heads up, just… sometimes it takes her a little while to warm up to people. If she’s quiet or something, that’s not—I don’t want you to think it’s on you.”
“Many people take time to warm up to me,” Ilya jokes, chin propped on his folded arm as he looks into the camera with a crooked smile.
Shane eyes him flatly. “No, they don’t,” he says. “You’re great at making people feel comfortable. When they’re not your opponent, at least. Emi’s just—she’s curious about a lot, but she’s careful.”
Ilya’s smirk levels toward a grin. “Like you?”
“I’m not so sure about careful,” he mutters wryly, “but, yeah. If she takes after me at all, I think—I think she’s going to warm up to you really quickly.”
“Mm,” Ilya hums. “It will not take eight years first?”
He watches as Shane’s expression gets serious for a moment, and he looks right into the camera. “No. It won’t take that long.”
He’d been teasing, mostly. But the reassurance feels good.
+
Ilya’s palms are sweating when he lifts a hand to knock on the door. She is asleep when Shane lets him inside, and he feels slightly guilty to be relieved.
He hadn’t been nervous before, but now, standing in the foyer of Shane’s home where there are a set of tiny shoes beside Shane’s at the door and a little jacket hanging beside his larger one, Ilya feels suddenly unprepared. Should he have brought something with him? A gift? He doesn’t have anything from his own childhood to give her. This is the first time he’s wished that he did.
Shane leads him into the kitchen where a baby monitor sits on the edge of the island, and he offers Ilya a drink two separate times before Ilya eventually caves and agrees to a glass of water. It’s hardly the easy conversation they’ve been having over the phone this past month, and Ilya doesn’t want to do this; doesn’t want to tiptoe around things the way that they used to.
“You are nervous,” he observes from his seat at the island, taking a slow sip of water. “You are worried she will not like me?”
“No,” Shane says quickly. “I mean, obviously I hope she likes you, but. I really hope you like her.”
Ilya pauses. “Shane.”
“No, I know, it’s—” he waves a hand, glancing away.
“I will like her,” Ilya tells him, instead of I think that I already love her. The same way I love you, probably.
Something in Ilya’s tone must be convincing enough, Shane’s shoulders sagging as he splays his palms out on the granite and hangs his head with a nod. Ilya moves the water away and holds out a hand.
“Come here.”
Something in Ilya relaxes even further when Shane rounds the corner of the cabinets and steps into his space. Ilya pulls him in between the spread of his kneels on the stool and runs both hands up his arms to his shoulders, pressing into the muscles with his thumbs. Shane’s nose grazes his jaw, then Ilya’s own, and then they’re kissing, the first press of their mouths since the hotel room in Tampa.
“Sorry,” he murmurs when he pulls back, thumb against Ilya’s cheek. “I just. I have no reason to think that it won’t, but. I really want this to go well. She doesn’t meet new people that often.”
“We will go slow,” Ilya assures. “We have the whole weekend. You have already told her about me, and I already know I will love her.”
This time when he says it it just slips, and Ilya has only a fraction of a second to panic before Shane’s eyes are dropping to his mouth, wide and focused like he wants to hear him say it again. Like he might kiss Ilya again just to get it from the source.
Ilya leans in just as the baby monitor beside them crackles, the sound of fabric shifting, and both of them turn to look. Ilya swallows.
In place of his lips, Shane puts his mouth lightly to Ilya’s cheek instead, and then pulls away.
“I’m going to go get her,” he whispers. “You can wait in the living room, if you want.”
He takes the monitor with him when he heads for the hallway off the kitchen, so Ilya can’t hear anything else that’s happening. It takes him several minutes just to get himself up off the stool, to follow the direction Shane had pointed him in toward the living area.
Shoes left by the door, Ilya shuffles in his socks over toward the sofa. He’s wearing the clothes Shane had said were alright, neutral colors and soft materials, and the adjustment makes him feel a bit more like he belongs. This room is open and bright, the sunlight filtered through thick, sheer curtains to keep out any harshness. It’s early so there’s no need for them, but Ilya notices several lamps around the room too, each of them with a dimmer switch on the front.
He lowers himself onto the sofa in front of the folded blanket draped over the back and eyes the table and television in front of him. This house is lived in in a way that Shane’s old apartment had not been, with books on the coffee table and DVDs stacked underneath the TV, a stack of coasters on the side table and a pair of Shane’s reading glasses set neatly to the side. If Ilya looks closely enough, there is the barest hint of a stain at the corner of the rug, like Shane had scrubbed and soaked it but couldn’t completely erase the evidence of a spill. The wood has several small, colorful marks at the edge, just about the height of a child in possession of a permanent marker.
The small inconsistencies make him feel better, privately. He has seen already how fiercely Shane loves her. Maybe, Ilya does not have to be perfect either.
He is staring so fiercely at the wood that he doesn’t hear the quiet thuds of Shane’s socked feet approaching until they stop at the edge of the sofa. He clears his throat lightly.
“Ilya?”
Ilya stands so quickly that the room spins for a moment, but when his eyes drop to the familiar face tucked into his side, everything narrows into crystal clear focus.
She looks like he remembers her, but also completely different being so close. Her hair is pulled back from her face today but messy from sleeping, two short, loose braids curling around underneath her ears. Her tan colored t-shirt is too large and hangs off of her shoulders, falling to just above her knees where she’s settled on Shane’s hip.
She is so tiny where she blinks at him, her fist against her mouth, watching Ilya quietly with her head against Shane’s collarbone. Ilya’s hands twitch at his sides, momentarily terrified that he will crush her if he tries to hold her.
Luckily, Shane moves them along. He sets her down on her feet and pushes the coffee table out of the way, and then grabs three of the plush looking pillows off of the couch.
“Here,” he says, handing one to Ilya with a sheepish smile. “I put it back for your visit, but we usually just sit on the floor.”
Emi reaches Shane’s thigh when she stands on her own. Without her other hand curled up beneath her, Ilya can see the long, dangling legs of a well-loved stuffed animal cascading from her fist. Shane sets down one cushion for her and another for himself in between her and Ilya, and she sits, her entire body making an island of the pillow.
Ilya hurries to sit when he realizes Shane is waiting on him, his own much larger limbs folding awkwardly on the carpet as he tries to get comfortable and not invade anyone’s space. It isn’t until Shane puts a hand on his knee that he takes a breath, and both his and Emi’s eyes track the movement.
“I’ve already told her about you, but I thought maybe I could introduce you again and you could tell her what you want to be called?” Shane asks him carefully.
He nods, his voice still caught somewhere in his throat. Shane sits beside him on folded knees, both of them across from Emi, and turns to Ilya.
“Is it okay if I touch you?” Ilya gives him a look, and Shane’s face turns a little pink as he explains. “It’s—we always ask, first. And if I touch you, she’ll see that you’re safe.”
That makes sense. Ilya nods again, rasps, “You can touch.”
The morning unfolds slowly, with Shane’s hand warm against his chest and on the back of his neck, he and Ilya taking turns speaking so she can track the sounds of their voices and repeating Papochka back and forth throughout. Ilya smiles when Shane pronounces it the way Ilya had taught him over the phone, and he smiles even bigger when Shane does, too. Emi watches on, taking turns between stroking her little fingers over her toy in her lap and observing them while one of her favorite television shows plays idly in the background.
With his niece, Ilya is used to a loud home and open touch, swinging her up to rest on his hip and navigating an apartment where the halls are small enough that it’s difficult not to be close. Here, Shane’s home feels wide and vast, Ilya floating inside of it, trying to anchor himself but unsure of quite how.
He is looking at Emi when Shane’s phone vibrates on the table. Ilya can’t see who’s calling, but Shane mutters something under his breath before he glances back to Ilya, hesitating.
“Do you mind if I take this?” he asks. And then, almost immediately, “I can call them back later.”
Ilya shakes his head. “As long as she is comfortable. It’s okay.”
“I’ll just be right in the hall,” Shane tells them both, standing from the floor. “It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”
Then he walks out underneath the archway to the living room, his voice echoing down the hallway, and there is only Ilya and Emi left.
Typically, Ilya is very good with children. There is no reason he can’t try. Shane had said to ask.
Slow enough that she can track his movements, he gestures to the toy in her lap with his finger and raises a brow.
“Touch?” Ilya asks gently.
Her head tilts when he talks, and she appears to think about this for a moment. Her expression gives away nothing, but she looks between his hand and her toy, and eventually, she nods.
Very carefully, Ilya stretches his arm a bit further and touches his fingertips to the wool. It looks not dissimilar to the sort of toys that Ilya vaguely remembers having when he was small; some sweet, ambiguously animal-looking face with long floppy ears and limbs dangling thin, something well loved that his mother could have made right at home. This one is no less loved, but Ilya can see that it’s been washed with something that keeps the wool clean and smooth, and both of its button eyes are still attached. Emi seems to handle it very carefully. It makes Ilya want to treat it like fragile glass.
He pets down the back of it with his knuckles, sweeps his thumb over the little head between the ears, fully aware that he’s being watched as he does it. Despite his best efforts, he can’t help but look back.
Her eyes, nose, brows and her hair are all Shane. But Ilya can see himself in the sweep of her small chin, a little wider and less pointed than Shane’s. Her mouth, too; the shape of his upper lip is there, right underneath Shane’s long, rounded nose and freckles. And, so subtle that Ilya nearly misses it in the light from the window, he can spot what he thinks is the slightest speckle of blue swimming in the brown of her irises. The edge of her mouth tips into a concentrated frown, and he sees himself in that too.
He starts to take his hand away, unsure of what that face means, but her own arms extend to push it against his palm when he goes. Ilya pauses, holds it like precious weight.
“Me take?” he checks.
She nods. Ilya pulls the little thing into his lap and resumes stroking his thumb over its ear. The world seems to tilt again underneath him when she stands up from the cushion, and Ilya braces instinctively to—to do something. He doesn’t know what, exactly. Just to… be there.
But Emi does not immediately head for anything dangerous, not even moving toward the sound of Shane’s voice in the hallway. Instead, she takes four small steps toward Ilya and examines him more closely. She is as tall standing up as he is sitting. Ilya folds his shoulders to make himself smaller, and keeps himself very still.
She lifts a hand, points to his head.
“Touch?” she asks, strikingly similarly to when Ilya had said it to her minutes ago. Ilya nods quickly and dips his head for her, and her tiny fingers tickle the hairs on his head when she touches them.
It is, Ilya thinks, perhaps the most gentle he has ever been touched. More than Shane’s fingertips sliding up into it when Ilya kisses him, more than Svetlana’s nails dancing along his scalp, more, even, than the way that his mother used to pet her hand down the back of his head when he couldn’t sleep.
He blinks heavily, fighting to keep his breaths steady while he lets her sift through the mess of curls that’d dried from his shower this morning. Ilya hadn’t bothered styling it at all, and now, he’s glad he hadn’t. Eventually her fingers flatten, smoothing the line of them in measured strokes over his hair the same way Ilya had stroked the toy earlier.
“Soft,” she tells him, approving.
Ilya laughs, raising his head just enough to smile, and all at once she seems to notice his face. Her fingertips, lighter than a feather, trail over his forehead now, across his eyebrows and the shape of his eyes. She pauses when she finds his lashes wet but doesn’t stop, her hands shifting into a gesture Ilya is certain she picked up from Shane, the flats of her fingers pressed to his cheekbones while her thumbs stretch out to sweep underneath his eyes. Ilya’s lip trembles. He sniffs.
She is quiet, but Ilya sees how quickly she notices things. The way her brows twitch as she thinks. She and him are not unalike in that way, only that Ilya had learned it to protect himself. It is relieving to see the same behavior here, where she’s safe, where she doesn’t ever have to worry about the sharp edges and loud voices and accidents that had never really been accidents at all.
Ilya vows to himself that if she memorizes the sound of his footsteps, it will only be for good things; for when she needs him and he is there.
If he is allowed to stay, that is.
He holds his breath when she comes closer to sit on his knee, her fingers now at his chin. She touches the divot at the cleft, along the smooth skin he’d shaved just this morning, up to the corner of his lips.
Ilya watches her own mouth move curiously, stretching around noises that he can’t quite hear. They purse around air, the familiar shape of pa- once, twice, three times, before Ilya catches the tail end of a ch- sound. She taps his mouth with her finger.
“Papochka,” Ilya repeats with a rasp. He feels like he could splinter open, like he is as big as this room.
She mouths out the syllables a few times over, but does not say the word out loud. And then, as if the events of the day have drained her, promptly takes the toy from Ilya’s hand and falls sideways against his chest in his lap, eyes half-lidded back on the television. A small fist settles back against her mouth. Ilya stares, helpless.
It’s where Shane finds them when he returns to the living room, Ilya having relaxed just enough to tentatively rub a thumb over one of her braids.
“Okay. Sorry, it took a little longer than I was—” he stops just after the archway when he looks up, phone slack in his hand. “Oh.”
Ilya looks back, quiet since he cannot tell if she is sleeping. “This is okay?”
“She—she came to you?”
He nods. Shane’s face twists and Ilya starts to panic, but he shakes his head, smiling as he closes the distance between them. He leaves his phone on the table again and comes closer, lowering himself to the ground in front of Ilya, still watching.
“You’re really good with her, you know,” he murmurs. “I think this was a good idea.”
“She is not so scary,” Ilya admits.
With a chuckle, Shane hums in agreement. He scoots closer still, enough to lean in just behind Emi and settle his head at Ilya’s shoulder.
“This okay?” he asks.
Ilya nods. “You can touch.”
He can feel Shane’s grin against his collarbone. One episode drifts into another. Ilya lets his cheek fall against the top of his head and exhales.
+
Leaving, it turns out, is more difficult than arriving.
He’s spent nearly forty-eight hours with his phone off and the outside world shut out, living in what feels like a dream he doesn’t wake to wake from.
He had stayed up with Shane most of the night before, Emi fast asleep in the room beside them. It’d been good—necessary, maybe—to catch up, as Shane had phrased it. Ilya had missed a lot. Neither of them were to blame, but it would take effort from both of them to find steady ground again.
Still, however new this communicating thing is, Ilya is pleased to find that the one language they’ve always shared persists despite the brief absence; that touch is still second nature. They don’t have sex, but Ilya gets to hold his shower-damp skin so close underneath the bed sheets that it would be impossible to decide where they separate, gets to touch his mouth to the broad planes of Shane’s chest as he confesses things he’d once thought he would never tell.
There are things that Shane does not talk about, and Ilya doesn’t push for them. He listens to all that he can get it, until Shane’s words are bleeding together and sleep is dragging the lids of his eyes down. He apologizes, then, for rambling so much.
“I want to know these things,” Ilya insists, mouth pressed to the top of Shane’s head. “Anything you want to tell me. I will listen.”
Shane smiles and says, “Okay.”
His flight is in the evening, enough time for everything up to an early dinner before Ilya’s car arrives. They make the food together, Shane’s hands guiding him through the intricacies of a homemade meal Ilya hasn’t had in years. He learns more, about Emi’s preferences but about Shane’s too, the things he wasn’t allowed when they were on such strict, borrowed time.
There are photo albums and show-and-tell’s, videos they huddle around to watch on Shane’s phone Ilya wishes he could have to keep but knows why he can’t. Emi doesn’t seem as keen on touch today, but when Ilya smiles at her, she gives him the same one back.
They gather in the foyer again in the late afternoon, reluctantly piecing Ilya back together for the outside world. Shane helps him into his jacket, smooths out the collar while Ilya slips his feet into his shoes. When he reaches up to push the hair out of Ilya’s face, Ilya turns to press a kiss to his palm.
“Do you…” Shane starts. “Maybe you could come back this summer? When we’re off? We’d have more time.”
Ilya’s ribs ache. “I am supposed to go back to Russia.”
“Oh. Yeah, I—I should’ve thought about that, sorry.”
“I will figure something out,” Ilya promises, catching his wrist before it can drop fully and squeezing. “I want to come back. I want to—be here.”
Shane smiles, if a little more subdued that before. “Okay.”
Ilya cannot avoid Russia, he knows. But he’s been searching for a way out since he was sixteen. Now, he might finally have a reason to cut the ties that’ve been keeping him trapped. Or make a plan to, anyway.
Now, he has hope.
“Thank you for letting me into your home, malyshka,” he tells Emi when he crouches in front of her. He points to her fist and asks if he can touch, and lifts it up to his mouth when she says yes. He presses his lips to her tiny knuckles even though he wishes he could pull her to his chest, his eyes burning. “I will see you very soon, okay?”
She is the only one of them not crying when Ilya stands and pulls his bag onto his shoulder, lingering by the door. Shane has been brief with the affection in front of her but he pulls Ilya in by the back of his neck now, kissing him chastely as the car pulls up outside.
“I will be back,” he promises Shane too.
Ilya has resigned himself to leaving already, halfway through the threshold when, in a voice that sounds just like Shane, Emi says, “Bye-bye.”
He and Shane laugh with wet eyes and helpless grins, the somber mood of their goodbye momentarily lighter. He looks at Shane one last time and finds him looking back already, and he must know, Ilya thinks, this feeling of being pulled in two different directions. Like he’s leaving something behind. His smile softens into something quieter, understanding.
“Call us after your game tomorrow?” he offers.
Ilya nods quickly, grateful to be given an excuse. Certain he will be thinking about doing so the entire flight there. He waves at both of them again and makes himself leave because he’ll stay another week if he doesn’t. Shane also has to be back at practice tomorrow morning, but Ilya finds himself envious of the extra time, like he has opened so many doors he hasn’t been able to go inside or explore yet.
But he will. There will be time. And if there isn't, he will make some.
The front door is already closed when Ilya loads his bag into the trunk and opens the car door, Shane doubly careful not to be seen; both for his own privacy, and for Emi’s. Ilya touches the cross around his neck through his shirt and looks at the house a final time before he climbs into the backseat and pulls away.
He wonders, briefly, if his mother had ever felt like this at the thought of leaving him behind.
The phone stays clutched in his hand like a lifeline until he touches down in Boston again, and it’s different this time. Ilya is different this time.
The hope stays.