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Ilya is different now.
He’s been different for a while, Svetlana knows. Different from the shuttered, isolated boy she had grown up with in Moscow. But also different from the freed man she watched take Boston by storm throughout his twenties, vibrant and loud to redirect from the weakest points in his armour. Look over here, she always imagined him shouting. Look at how fun I am. I am not in pain, see?
Look over here, yes. But also - don’t look too closely, please. Don’t look at the lonely parts. I am fun, I am rich, I am gorgeous. Look at that.
See how it covers up how the people who are supposed to love me don’t?
He is different now.
She is in his house - in Shane Hollander’s house, the house they share together. It is large, obnoxiously so, but Ilya has spent a whole adulthood earning millions and using them to create a life so comfortable and lavish that it fills the cracks where love is supposed to go. That is a hard habit to break, she imagines.
And, she thinks. The windows on the south wall of this grand living room let in bright, diffuse light through mature maple trees all day. Now, as the sun sets in late June - as late as it ever will - it lets in soft oranges and yellows through the leaves. The walls glow, and she knows Ilya did not choose this house alone. He chose it with someone who loves architecture and room layouts and light angles. He chose it with Shane.
The couch she sits on is one of two identical pieces. Camel-coloured leather - a smart, easily cleaned choice for someone sharing a living room with Ilya Rozanov, she thinks privately - and modular, custom built in Ottawa, sturdy enough for two professional athletes who will likely abuse it regularly for off-label uses. It is huge and solid, spacious beyond reason. She occupies less than half of it, even sprawled out as she is with a perilously full burgundy glass.
The matching one opposite her remains empty. Instead, the Hollander-Rozanovs are curled up in one large, round chair in deep green velvety corduroy. It is big enough for two, technically, and there they sit. Shane Hollander was there first, tucked deep into the cushions with his feet kicked out one side over the arm. Ilya came later, sprawled back against his husband’s ribcage, legs mostly off the chair in favour of making his head accessible for frequent presses of lips to the crown.
She watches his face, because it’s different.
“Dinner was excellent, Ilyukha,” she says, and his face lights up like she has just told him he has won billions of dollars. “Very hard to find good Russian food in Ottawa.”
“Shane made the kotleti,” he brags with a puffed out chest. He looks like an alley cat licking sweet cream from his whiskers after conning ten families into feeding him. “And the smetana. He is like a very handsome babushka now.”
Is he now? Svetlana wonders with interest. He is very handsome, of course; she has seen this for fifteen years and teased Ilya through at least ten of them. Shane is very beautiful - large and physically imposing but with big, doe eyes and a nose so straight and perfect you’d think he’d never heard of hockey, nevermind played it without a faceguard for half his life. Thighs for cracking watermelon and a perfectly curved ass she bets Ilya has popped a quarter on at least once.
It is interesting to see he is also a Russian-in-training; making sour cream from scratch, which is not hard, but not common for well-off Canadian boys whose primary interactions with dairy are the Got Milk campaigns that had them chugging 1% milk as children. As if their bones would turn to dust without it, but fat was to be removed at all costs.
She remembers sitting in her mother’s pantry as a child, hiding side by side with a not-as-yet motherless Ilya, giggling and dipping cold draniki into the giant bowl of smetana from the refrigerator. The smear of cream on his dimpled cheek, potato and onion squishing through his teeth as he tried to disgust her. His mother, alive but only in body. His father, not yet able to wring money from him, therefore still barely aware he existed. His first meal in long enough that he stuffed his face for several minutes before slowing enough to grin at her. She remembers that, but she remembers the swoop in her chest as she looked at him more - eleven years old, but knowing this: he will need you. He will need you, take care of him.
She smiles at Shane Hollander and wonders if maybe Ilya’s need is no longer being managed, but quenched.
“My compliments to the chef,” she teases, and Hollander’s face turns pink, pleased and embarrassed about it. “You have rivalled my own mama’s kotleti, you should be proud. Honourary Russian.”
“Thanks,” he says, so genuinely touched that her jaw aches just below her ears. “I’m glad it wasn’t a disaster. I probably should try a less high-risk audience for new Russian recipes, huh?”
“No, no,” she tells him, hand fluttering to wave off his humbleness. “It was very, very good. You are a natural.”
“Yes, Hollander,” Ilya grins like a little demon. “All these years, I have been putting more and more Russian inside of you. One day you will be full Russian. I must keep trying. Let me take you to bed.”
“Ilya,” Hollander moans wretchedly. “What the fuck? We have company!”
“Is just Sveta,” he shrugs, which seems to do little to assuage Hollander’s horror. “She knows I am a dirty little freak, Shane. I am sure she knows you are worse by now. You have harnessed me with your siren song.”
“What the fuck? Something is very wrong with you.”
Svetlana cackles, sipping on the glitteringly expensive bottle of Château Margaux 1er Grand Cru that the boys had opened for dinner like it was a $30 bottle of VQA red blend. Wasted on them - absolute heathens. A gift, she presumes, as even Shane Hollander and his infamous lack of interest in alcohol could not be deluded into believing thousands of dollars for a bottle of wine was typical.
She has consumed most of it tonight.
“You cannot return me now, Hollander,” Ilya crows, delighted by the grip his husband has on his forehead, pulling his face up to make horrified eye contact. “You told the Canadian government you would keep me forever!”
She watches the adorable scrunch of Shane Hollander’s outrage slip into lax fondness over his face. Yes, she thinks. Ilya is different now. He is not afraid, not of loving or being loved. Here he is, tormenting his long-suffering husband, happy and safe in the knowledge that every day will end the same - beside someone who treats him kindly. Beside someone who loves him without a price.
“Yes,” Hollander says softly. “I did.”
Ilya turns his bright, eager eyes to her and grins so wide she can count all of his gleaming teeth. His cheeks are so round, dimples so deep. She has not seen a look like this on his face in all the twenty-five years she has known him. It says, look, Sveta. See? See how he loves me? See this place where I belong? I have been looking for it since I was a boy. I fit here like a missing puzzle piece swept out from under a sofa after years and years, slotting in like the near-finished puzzle has been waiting and waiting for me to come home. I am the final piece of his puzzle, and this life he’s given me is mine.
“Ilyusha,” she croaks, and they blink tears at each other. It is very embarrassing, but it cannot be helped. She needs an out, needs to collect herself and smooth over this unbecoming emotion, so she stands and sets her glass on the end table. “So much wine tonight! I will use your washroom.”
Ilya slips off the large corduroy chair and his husband, coming to his feet beside her. He knows her well, she thinks. He won’t begrudge her the opportunity to hide her tears, no matter how funny he might find her overwhelmed blubbering.
“Yes,” he says, and turns. “It is late. My trophy husband requires beauty sleep. Take your time, Sveta, I will return in half an hour. We will continue to catch up.”
“Trophy husband,” Shane Hollander grumbles as he is pulled to his feet, so abruptly sleepy it’s like a switch has been flipped. One mention of bed and he’s half asleep already. She is almost impressed. “More trophies than you, you know.”
“I know, my love,” Ilya hushes him, shuffling him up the stairs to their bedroom. “But we win them together now, yes?”
“Yes. Together.”
Svetlana dries her eyes in the bathroom across the hall from the guestroom they’ve set her up in. A beautifully appointed east-facing room with calming sage green paneled walls, a billowing floral duvet, and ten thousand pillows. The bathroom is the same soft green, the lights warm and twinkling, and she feels like she’s more welcomed and at home in their space than she is in her own sleek, modern Boston apartment.
Maybe it is the light, she thinks. Or maybe it is the simple truth of sharing a space with people who love her - will come to love her, like she is coming to love Shane Hollander.
She thinks she will visit more often. They ask twice as often as she accepts.
Shane asks.
What a privilege, she thinks. How lucky she is to release Ilya’s careful, bruised heart into the hands of someone like Shane Hollander. She is so grateful to sit in their space and witness their love and sleep in their guest bedroom with no fear in her heart for little Ilyusha. His heart is safe here, with a man who loves him and sees him, who takes specific and intentional care of him. A privilege to witness.
She washes her face quickly, strips off her heavy, shimmering eye make-up. She came here still nervous. She has been before, of course. She and Shane Hollander have met dozens of times now, always as Ilya’s partner meeting Ilya’s best friend. She thinks next time she comes here, it will be because her friends have invited their friend to stay.
At least tonight, she is comfortable without her glittering, colourful armour.
She leaves the washroom and pauses in the hallway. There is movement at the end, where the primary bedroom door is fully ajar. She sees right into the room, into their ensuite, where Shane Hollander sits on the vanity, knees squeezing Ilya’s hips as they brush their teeth together, grinning. Ilya leans sideways, spits into the sink. He comes back up with a hand towel as Shane leans after him, following his motions. He wipes toothpaste from his husband’s lips and follows the towel with a kiss.
“You think she likes me?” Shane asks, and Ilya hums. He leans in to press three kisses along Shane’s shoulder, neck, cheek.
Yes, Svetlana screams in her mind. Yes, I like you. I might love you soon.
“Yes, Shane,” Ilya assures him. “How could she not? You are so hot and good at hockey.”
Svetlana bites her lips against a laugh. Yes, she thinks. He really, really is.
“Ilya.”
“Shane. She likes you.”
She slips back into the guestroom to collect her pajamas. She knows Ilya, knows he will want to curl up on the couch and say all sorts of soft, squishy things he cannot say in the daylight and show her pieces of his beautiful life that can’t be shown on a phone call or text message. He will want to brag and preen and tell her all about the shiny, shimmery things he has - and this time, it will not be a misdirect. This time, it be a confession of happiness, because it will be about Shane Hollander.
Downstairs, she settles back into their lavishly enormous couch and takes a deep sip of her expensive wine. It is positively divine, and Ilya will be paying dearly for her introduction come western Christmas; she will have to remind him. LCBO links are nearly unsubtle enough to get through to his bruised hockey brain.
She is nearly finished with her glass when Ilya comes quietly down the stairs, light on his feet and loose in the safety of a house no one has hurt him inside. He misses the living room at first, instead starting with the kitchen. She hears dishes entering the dishwasher, a sink running briefly. A well-worn pattern being paced into the rug of their evenings. Time will show their love eventually, she thinks. Footsteps placed daily in the constant repetition of the life they’ve built together.
He comes back through the kitchen armed with a tall glass of water, a fresh tube of beeswax lip balm, and a hardcover book with a bookmark sticking out halfway through. He catches her eye as he passes through, and pauses, a happy little smile tugging at his lips.
“I do nights,” he says, like that explains anything at all, and he heads back up the stairs to their bedroom. He returns within ten minutes, lips pink and smelling of transferred peppermint and beeswax, cheeks pinker still.
“He loves you,” she tells him from the opposite couch, watching the big, strong body that houses a boy she has handled with care and protection for a quarter century. The body tenses and releases like her words are a hulking bearhug. “He is wonderful.”
“Yes,” Ilya says simply. “He does. He is.”
“I might love him too.”
“Ah, yes. You are a very smart woman, Sveta. It is a very good idea to love Shane Hollander.”
In the morning, sun streams into the vast bay window of the guestroom, soaking her in soft, yellow light. It is warm on her face, and the mattress is gentle and the duvet voluminously fluffy. She feels like a warm kitten asleep on a cloud, sunshine warming her milk-sleepy body.
Ilya wakes up in a house like this every day, she thinks. He wakes up warm and comfortable and bathed in the gentle morning light of a Canadian June day. He has not woken up to grey light struggling through a cracked, drafty single-pane window in the dead of a Moscow winter, in a house full of people who want things from him for no love in return - not for many years. Not ever again. She is abruptly full to the brim with joy.
Her bedroom door is open, because this house is filled with safe people, and because little Anechka loves to click-click-click from room to room in the mornings, looking for love. The smell of coffee wafts around her head and, oh my, what a perfect way to awaken.
She pads down the stairs, feet warm and dry on the heated marble of the downstairs hallway, and finds Shane Hollander in the kitchen. He stands with his back turned, working quietly at a gleaming espresso machine, enamelled red and brushed steel. He turns when he hears her feet shuffled on the floor, and smiles.
“Morning, Sveta,” he greets her, and her heart squeezes. Sveta. Yes, very good, she thinks. I like you, too.
“Morning, Sheynka,” she invents, because Russian has no diminutive for his foreign name, and because she is a little desperate for him to know she likes him without having to say it out loud. How undignified. She will have to tease him until he understands, she thinks. He will be familiar with this approach, being married to Ilya.
“Coffee,” he tells her as he sets a beautiful latte in a Le Creuset cappuccino cup and saucer before her. He deposits a small glass jar of sugar with a freshly torn tamper-seal on it, still so full it seems it may have only just been opened, before her. “Ilya says you like it with vanilla sugar. I put a teaspoon in the espresso when I pulled it, but if you need more, it’s here.”
“Marry me, Shane Hollander,” she laughs, and he grins like he’s earned something. “Run away with me, we will be so happy. You can bring Ilyukha with us if you want, I know he is very good dick.”
To her immense surprise, Shane hums and nods, delighted. “Such good dick.”
She sips her latte - it is perfect - while he turns back to keep working. Over the time it takes her to half-drink her coffee, he prepares another - with chocolate curls and maple syrup, an abomination of sugar.
It is exactly how she has seen Ilya order it in cafes since 2013. She wonders what happened between them then for Ilya to change his coffee habits forever. She knows both of their concussion-laden heads were parked several miles inside their asses then, so it must have been intimate and difficult and life-altering.
She may never get to know. They may never tell each other, she reasons. But more likely, it has been confessed in quiet whispers passed between pillows in the darkened safety of their shared bed. It is far more likely, she reasons, that Shane Hollander is the only person on earth that Ilya does not have a secret still hidden from.
She watches him collect the latte and two tea biscuits and a glass of water. He smiles at her again before he leaves.
“I do mornings,” he says, and it explains everything all at once.
Yes, Svetlana thinks as she watches the love of Ilya’s life carry love and a latte and cookies upstairs to his husband.
Ilya is loved, and he is safe, and he will be that way forever. There is no reason left on earth for him to be afraid or alone.
Ilya is different now.