Chapter Text
July 2025 - Ottawa
“Katyusha—”
The line beeped, and she was gone.
Ilya stood motionless for a moment, staring at the blank screen of his phone. Her voice still circulated in his ears, low and lilting, unfamiliar with age. Katerina Rozanova. I am coming to Canada next month. We could talk when I am there.
He reached instinctively for the cross at his neck. The hum of the city had been soft and persistent in the background of the call—she had to have been outside. He had heard the wind hooting in the receiver. His heart thudded loudly in his chest. Moscow summers were not always warm, at night.
Montreal. I am starting university there soon.
That was not her voice. Not as he remembered it. He could only remember Katyusha, the round-cheeked girl he had hoisted over his shoulders, her thin hair pulled into pigtails and secured with a ribbon. When he came home to visit—back when Moscow was home, back when he still came—she always greeted him with a shriek, toddling up to his shins and banging on his knees, stomping out a rhythm under her feet. She hadn’t been so small the last time he saw her, but that version of her had calcified in his mind: eternally young, a child chipped in marble.
He wondered if she had smiled, when he picked up. He wondered if she was wearing a coat.
The glass door to the yard shushed open. Ilya jolted at the sound and whirled around, his hip colliding with the nearby kitchen counter.
“Oh, shit,” said Wyatt Hayes, setting an empty beer bottle on the countertop. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You did not,” Ilya said immediately. His hip throbbed from the hit, which he dutifully ignored. “Russians do not get scared.”
Hazy raised his eyebrows in his best sure, buddy expression and gave an exaggerated glance around the room. “Do you remember where the bathroom is?”
“You do not know?”
“I looked for it earlier and got lost. This place is fucking confusing.”
Ilya had been to the Boodrams’ home for their yearly barbecue several times since his fateful transfer, and to a degree, Hazy had a point. But to a counterpoint: Ilya had an Olympic medal in clowning his teammates.
“Cannot be so bad. Bood has to do it every day,” Ilya said. “Maybe pretend you are short and have terrible facial hair and you will find it.”
Hazy shook his head, grinning. “Right.” He leaned in like he was sharing a secret. “Honestly, I don’t understand their fucking toilets, dude. Fucking bidets. Too many buttons.”
Ilya heard him and then didn’t. He felt his phone buzz, and a memory spun into focus: the earsplitting suction of a tiny airplane toilet flushing, the lights flickering off as Ilya unlocked the door. A flight from Moscow when he was eighteen, traveling for the World Junior Hockey Championships after being drafted. He hadn’t wanted to show it then, the fear—it had gathered in a roiling knot in his chest, flaring hot every time the intercom crackled on. I am on my own here, he remembered thinking, feeling the plane rock with turbulence as he wandered to his seat. There is no one to hold me upright.
His expression must have shifted. Hazy’s brow furrowed.
“You all right, man?” he asked. Ilya smoothed his features into something passably Ilya.
“Needed a break from terrible music,” he said, his voice a touch thicker than he would have preferred. “Can still hear it from here.” It more than passed muster, though, and Hazy threw his head back in a laugh.
“You said it, not me.” He clapped Ilya on the shoulder. “Wish me luck.”
He slid past Ilya and disappeared into the house. Ilya watched him go, expression still tensed, and let out a heavy breath once he had gone. The Boodrams’ kitchen tilted around him. He flattened his hand on the countertop to still it.
He was fine. He was. He just couldn’t get a handle on his thoughts—his thoughts, which raced with sounds and scents and textures he hadn’t remembered in years, pieces of Russia hurtling over the ocean and colliding with his senses. His mind conjured pictures he wasn’t sure were real: the velvet on the couch in his father’s home, stained with vodka. Ilya, eighteen, staring up at the violent lights of Moscow, clutching a passport. Katya, eighteen, doing the same.
Fuck.
He tucked his phone back into his pocket and aggressively shook his arms out. He would not do this here, at Bood’s. Not in front of the boys.
He focused on breathing properly as he made his way to the door. The sharp, warm scent of spices filled his nose. Cassie had toiled endlessly in the kitchen earlier while Bood worked the grill—they were a formidable pair when it came to hosting. Cassie had even worked Shane’s ridiculous bird diet seamlessly into the meal planning, without either of them needing to ask. His husband hadn’t needed to eat beforehand or put together a separate plate. Ilya knew it needled at him sometimes, constantly being an exception, a special case. He could have kissed the woman for her consideration. (He said as much to Bood, who was slightly less enthusiastic.)
Ilya slipped back out to the patio. The black speaker by the grill pulsed with neon lights, sliding around to the beat of the music. It was at startling odds with the soft acoustic guitar actually playing from the thing, some bizarre American country song Ilya was not inclined to enjoy. He passed by an open cooler on his way to the fire pit and scooped up a ginger ale from the ice.
The lawn buzzed with people, laughing and drinking and dodging the muddy patches in the grass. It had been like this since the end of the season—a little frenzied, a little astonished, everyone still thrilled like they couldn’t believe their fucking luck every time things got good. They’d lost, in the end, knocked out of the playoffs in the second round, but Ilya was playing better hockey than he had since his rookie years, and he knew the team felt it, too.
Things were good. Not perfect, maybe, but good.
He took his place on a bench at the fire pit, beside Shane. The heat from the fire washed over him in a thick wave. He slid an arm over his husband’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to the crook of his neck, where the muscles started to curve.
“Okay?” Shane asked, raising a hand to his cheek in greeting. Ilya made a half-affirmative noise.
“Okay.” He held up the ginger ale. “For you, luchik.”
Shane took it and let himself be pulled gently into Ilya’s shoulder, propping a leg against the lip of the fire pit to press closer. Ilya kissed along the part of his hair and tried to tune into the conversation around them—something about shitty defenders from LA. The fire popped and spat cinders into the breeze.
He wanted to say something about the call to Shane. He knew he should say something about it, but for the moment he couldn’t summon words to his tongue. The information sat locked in his throat.
He still couldn’t anchor himself to the reality that it had really happened, that he and Katya had spoken real words to one another. It seemed impossible that she was old enough to laugh, to joke, to stumble her way through English greetings. When had he seen her last? His father’s funeral, no doubt. He remembered now: the wispy girl in the thin black sweater, hair combed into a clip behind her head. The picture was murky. He had flushed those memories into the far corners of his mind, piled shit over them until they flattened. She had been swallowed in the crush.
It was wretched to put thought to it all. Ilya had left Moscow wanting to stamp it out like a cigarette, but Katya was not Moscow. She was the little girl with ribbons in her hair. She was his niece.
And she wanted to see him again.
He couldn’t begin to contend with that. His memory of her and his life in Ottawa—they were incongruous. He imagined how it would even go: the two of them squeezed into some inane café booth, dressed up for lunch, like all of this was normal. You’ve gotten so big, he might say. He had so much to say. The last time I saw your father I wanted to punch his teeth out. None of it was right.
The rest of the evening melted into a blur. People drank, people yelled, the fire dwindled. Soon enough they were leaving, ducking into their car and reversing awkwardly down the steep driveway. They had come in Shane’s car—Ilya hated driving Shane’s car. He had not yet convinced Shane to get rid of it, on account of Ottawa winters.
Shane sat slumped in the passenger seat, scrolling on his phone. The white light danced over his features. “Mom’s asking about Friday,” he said a short while in.
Ilya hummed as he cast a glance through the rearview. “I think we will both go. Will be easier.” Yuna had set up a meeting over lunch for a company looking to partner with the Irina Foundation for—something. Ilya honestly couldn’t remember. But things usually went well when he and Shane could both be there, and he was not one to argue with Yuna Hollander’s impeccable planning and organization.
The ride was quiet. Shane reached for the radio, fiddled with the dials, left it silent once more. The car jostled as they left the main streetways and turned onto back roads.
“Oh,” Shane said eventually. “Who was it on the phone?”
Ilya’s hands tightened on the steering wheel without meaning to. He relaxed them slowly. “Was no one,” he said. “Telemarketer.”
Shane’s brow knit. “Bullshit,” he said lightly.
“Is true. Wanted to sell me tiny puppy clothes for our baby puppy daughter. I have bought her their whole supply.”
“Ilya.”
“And a little puppy wardrobe to match.”
Shane sighed loudly, but Ilya heard the smile at the edges of it. He risked a glimpse toward the passenger seat. Shane had leaned back against the headrest, and his profile sat stark against the blurring landscape, brows pinched in the center. The light from his phone played over his freckles, the soft slope of his nose, the dip of his mouth.
Something hot lurched in Ilya’s chest. He wanted suddenly to be held—to put Shane in his arms and squeeze, to feel the thump of his heart in his neck, the twitch of his muscles. A murky weight had settled in his chest, pulling down and down into a fathomless depth, and he had to focus to take a breath. He wanted to latch onto something real, something that could anchor him in space and keep his thoughts from sprouting wings.
At the same time, a hot feeling of shame skidded through him. It rattled him, the suddenness of it. He felt the urge to tear his gaze from Shane and stare forward, to retreat from the moment like it had fangs.
He recognized that feeling. The frantic certainty that he was doing something unforgivable. The instinct that he couldn’t—that he shouldn’t, even. His head was a thousand miles away in an apartment in Moscow, and his instincts flinched to match. Not here. Not now.
Maybe it had been the sound of Russian over the phone, the ambient music of Moscow in the background. Maybe he had wandered too close to memories of his brother.
But he was not a child anymore. He reached suddenly for Shane’s hand and held it, tightly, spitefully. There, he thought. I am not a coward anymore.
~~~
The cottage sat dark upon their return. Anya bounded in from the living room at the sound of the lock and danced around their feet as they pulled off their shoes and hung up their coats. Shane gave her a perfunctory scratch behind the ears and set off for the bedroom. Ilya, on principle, crouched to her level and let her prop her paws on his shoulders, cooing a singsongy stream of affections against her fur. When he rose, she followed him dutifully to the bedroom, sniffing blithely at his ankles.
“I’m showering,” Shane said.
“Want company?” Ilya asked. Shane shook his head.
“You take too long. I’m tired.”
Ilya didn’t mind, really. Shane took more showers than any human imaginable. Their water bill alone could pay for a small house in the suburbs.
Anya looked up at Ilya as he pulled off his shirt, leaning toward the fabric to give it a sniff. Ilya let her inspect it as he dug through their drawers for a pair of clean underwear, then bent over to kiss the spot between her eyes.
“Do not let her on the bed. Not tonight,” Shane said sternly from the bathroom. Ilya brought Anya’s snout to his face and planted a loud kiss on her nose.
“He does not love you, Anyushka,” he said loudly, “but do not worry. My love is enough for both of us, milyy, my sweetest prettiest little girl.”
Shane gave a half-hearted fuck you. Ilya cooed at the dog a moment longer, Russian diminutives rolling off his tongue, until he heard the spray of the shower and saw Shane tugging off his shirt through the mirror. He rose and took to the bed, patting the mattress, and Anya gamely followed suit, pressing her nose firmly into his belly.
When Shane emerged a while later, skin shining and soft with heat, he sighed at the sight. “Every time,” he groused, crossing to the dresser to dig out clean pajamas. Ilya grinned, rising from the bed and shooing Anya to the floor.
“Is more comfortable than her bed,” he crooned, sliding behind Shane and palming at his hips. Shane swatted at his hands but made no move to free himself.
“Her bed was fucking expensive,” he said.
“Because she deserves luxury.”
“It’s memory foam. For a dog. She doesn’t even like it,” Shane insisted, turning around to face him. The towel around his hips slipped an inch lower, and Ilya took the opportunity to tug it loose and use it to pull Shane flush against his chest, leaning close enough to taste the toothpaste on his breath.
“Is because ours is more loving. She can feel it.” He gave the towel another tug. “There is no love in memory foam on the floor.”
Shane had started to grin, his gaze flickering to Ilya’s lips as he slid his hands over Ilya’s shoulders. “No love,” he repeated. Ilya nodded seriously. Shane walked him backwards toward the bed, squeezing the muscles in his shoulders appreciatively. “You’re a fucking weirdo.”
“I am very normal about our daughter.”
He let the towel drop to the floor and slid his palms up along Shane’s hips. Shane arched into the pressure, gaze going cloudy as Ilya traced the slopes of his spine with the tip of his longest finger. Shane indulged him with a long, unhurried kiss, then pushed him back onto the bed and returned to the dresser. Ilya made an affronted sound as his back hit the mattress.
“You kissed the dog with that mouth,” Shane said pointedly. Ilya scoffed.
“You do not love me. You would throw me to the streets. I give you my love and you cast me into the dirt.”
“What the fuck have you been reading? Go brush your teeth.”
Ilya obliged. Through the mirror, he watched Shane change and slip out into the hall, then return a moment later with Anya’s bed in his arms. Ilya emerged from the bathroom as he situated the dog bed at the foot of their own, Anya trotting gleefully around his feet as she watched. Something fuzzy swelled in Ilya’s chest.
“You do love our daughter,” he purred, crawling to the edge of the bed and pulling Shane between his legs. Shane rolled his eyes, a smile quirking the corners of his lips.
“This is for my own sanity,” he said. “You’ve trained her to sleep on your pillow.”
“She wants to be next to her father.”
“She’s an Aussie mix. She doesn’t fit on your pillow.”
Ilya tisked. “Oh, you are just jealous of how much she loves me, moy samolet.”
Shane opened his mouth to reply, then paused, eyes narrowing in thought. “...say it again.”
Ilya grinned. “Samolet.”
A beat passed. Shane reached for Ilya’s shoulders and rubbed them in the quiet, then said, “Fuck. I don’t have it.”
“Airplane.”
“Airplane?”
Shane shook his head, cursing quietly. Ilya did not bother hiding his victory. He lunged for Shane’s waist and hauled him off his feet, the two of them toppling to the bed in a yelping tangle of limbs. Ilya descended upon his midsection and began to tickle him.
“Fuck—get off—get off,” Shane wheezed, laughing, wrestling from Ilya’s grasp. (This was the most gleeful of secrets to keep: the great Shane Hollander was ticklish.) Ilya rolled and pinned Shane under his knees, pressed his forehead into Shane’s neck to feel the laughter bubble through him. The mattress bowed beneath them. Anya gave an enthusiastic bark from the floor.
“Come help me, milyy,” Ilya called to her. Shane yelped his protest.
“You’re going to—break something,” he managed, breathless, seizing one of Ilya’s wrists and bracing it against his own, pressing his fingers into a fist. Ilya bit gently at the dip of his bare collarbone.
“I am not the one kicking and screaming, lyubov.”
He railed on for a little longer, but eventually his fatigue got the better of him and he relented, flopping back onto the pillows with a satisfied sigh. Shane followed a moment later, tucking into his side.
“Has been a while since I stumped you,” Ilya said. “You are getting old and forgetful.”
“Fuck off.”
Ilya grinned. He pressed a curt kiss to Shane’s mouth and leaned over him to get the light. The room paled into midnight blues, and he and Shane settled into one another, his chest pressed flush against Shane’s back. He could feel the soft thump of Shane’s pulse in his chest, and he chased it into the dark, let the slow rhythm of his breath in his lungs lull him into a sleepy trance.
Things were good. This was good.
But the dark did not leave him alone for long.
He had known this was coming. He’d been holding back the tide since standing in Bood’s kitchen, feeling the ground shift beneath him. Now that he was no longer moving, plodding himself through the evening, the dread began to trickle in, and the blanket of the night was like a layer of Earth filling in over him, pressing the breath from his lungs.
Katerina Rozanova. I am coming to Canada next month.
She had stolen his phone number from her father’s contacts. From Alexei’s contacts. She had stayed up late into the night to call him at a convenient time. (Convenient-ish.) She had spoken English, and her accent had been so thick, her words so careful, like she was focusing on putting the sounds in the right order.
She was all grown, now. And she wanted to see him.
Ilya pressed his mouth against Shane’s damp hair, exhaling softly. He was not in the habit of lying to Shane. He almost wished he’d said something earlier, in the car, but it wouldn’t have come out right. The weight in his chest swelled, and he squeezed his eyes shut, willing the words to his tongue, willing the strength to his voice.
“Katya is coming to university in Montreal,” he said quietly. Shane shifted in his arms, turning his head over his shoulder.
“What?”
“My niece. She is coming to Canada next month.” Ilya pressed his nose into the crook of Shane’s neck, felt Shane’s peach fuzz prickling against his skin. His voice sounded too thin. “She called to tell me.”
Shane rolled over to face him, bringing a hand to his cheek. His eyes were huge and bottomless in the nightglow. “Oh.” His gaze flickered over Ilya’s face, as though taking stock of his features. “She’s eighteen now?”
“Her birthday was in January,” Ilya said. He had felt it like the chime of a clock, the day it passed—he had put a small snowflake next to the date on their kitchen calendar. He’d told Shane it was for the first snowfall. “I have not seen her since she was ten.”
And he barely remembered her then.
Shane’s fingers traced back and forth over his cheek. He seemed to chew on his words, like the wrong ones might shatter in the air and rain in shards down over them. “Do you know where she’s going? Which school?”
“Did not mention.” Ilya swallowed. “She wants to…meet. Or something. Said something about dinner.”
It was not something about dinner. Ilya knew exactly what she’d said. But it was easier to approximate, to pretend he hadn’t committed the sound to memory. That it didn’t ring in his ears like a banshee’s cry, rocketing like a bolt of lightning to the gut.
The quiet felt heavy around them. Shane watched his expression, searching, loaded with a careful intensity. “It’s…nice that she reached out,” he said finally. Guilt began to prickle in Ilya’s gut.
“Yes,” he said tonelessly. “Is nice.”
Part of him hated what was happening—knowing he was being cradled like porcelain. Being treated like something might fracture if Shane wasn’t careful. But Ilya didn’t know what else to say, how else to reckon with this impossible thing. The other part of him wanted to pull Shane’s arms around him and make him squeeze until the tides ebbed, until the weight in Ilya’s chest dissolved and the night eased to morning.
“I have not seen Katya in a very long time,” he said. His voice had gone mechanical. “I did not think she would remember me. I thought Alexei would make her forget.” It would be just Alexei’s style, too, to write Ilya out of history like a bad plot twist. To blot him out like a misprint. After everything.
Shane nodded, fingers still soft on Ilya’s cheek. “You left her money, didn’t you?” he asked. “I remember you saying something about a trust.”
Ilya hummed his affirmation. “Is hers now. She is…old enough. Aged. What is—?”
“Of age,” Shane supplied. Ilya nodded.
“Of age.”
They tapered off into silence. Ilya stared into Shane’s face, unseeing, tracing a circle into the spot between his shoulder blades. Shane slid a hand into Ilya’s hair and scratched gently at his scalp.
“How do you feel about it?” Shane said finally.
Ilya shook his head. “Is a shock,” he said into the dark. “I…” His mouth had gone painfully dry. “I would not know what to say to her. I did not know what to say, when she called. She sounded so old.”
“Do you think you’ll want to see her?”
Ilya parted his lips to reply, but no sound came out. He wasn’t sure he had an answer. He wasn’t sure what it would mean to see her, after all this time. He wasn’t sure she knew, all the way over the ocean, either.
“I cannot say no,” he said after a moment. “She bothered to ask. So I cannot say no.”
It was not what he wanted to say. It struck Shane unsatisfactorily, too, but he made no verbal indication of it. The quiet hung about them a moment longer, until something made Shane stir.
“You said next month?” he asked.
“Is what she told me.”
He frowned. “Fall term doesn’t start until September,” he said, brows knit. “Not for most schools. Where’s she staying until then?”
“She did not tell me.”
Shane rolled onto his back, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. “That’s a long time for a hotel,” he said, his voice low like it got when his mind was starting to spin faster than his mouth. “Maybe she could stay with us for a bit before term starts.”
Ilya’s heart jolted. “I am…not sure it is like that,” he said, something in his chest tightening.
Seeing her again was one thing. But to stay in the cottage? To be there in the mornings, to fall asleep there at night? Ilya struggled to settle with it. A child—nearly an adult, a stranger—wandering through the open spaces of their cottage, laying eyes on the intimate machinery of their lives. Their furniture, their fridge and pantry. Their photos.
A wave of panic crested through him. They had photos of the wedding on the walls. Did she know? Had Alexei told her? Oh God, what if he had? What kind of fucking nonsense had he fed her—about him, about Shane, about the life they’d built together? What kind of disgusting bullshit had she been steeped in, surrounded by since birth?
Shane’s voice yanked him to reality. “Is she traveling alone?”
Ilya swallowed. “I don’t know.” The room was starting to feel far away. He felt his grasp on the present slipping, the world melting into shadows around him. His breaths came a touch faster. A funny pressure built behind his eyes.
“She shouldn’t be alone for that long,” Shane said, still staring upward.
Ilya turned his head away, face flashing with heat, eyes prickling. He clenched his teeth hard on his cheeks to keep the tide from washing over.
No, she shouldn’t be alone. She was eighteen, and spoke cautious English, and would come hurtling over the ocean in a matter of weeks into a cold, unfamiliar country moving faster than she could put her mind to. She would step off the plane and be thrust into a rushing, unforgiving current of a world, would get chipped and cut on the rocks below as she tumbled downstream. She was a teenager. She was as old as he had been, the first time he left Russia for good.
Maybe Ilya had survived it, in the end. Maybe he’d washed ashore somewhere down the riverbank and made it out all right. But he had spent years roiling about in the undertow, gasping for air, knowing with crushing certainty that there was no one to help him surface. She would feel it, too. She would be so big and would feel so small, like he had, would peer out at the angry world and wait, terrified, for the day it would come to whet its teeth on her.
“Hey.”
The bed rustled behind him. Shane shifted over Ilya so that their chests were flush, fingers grazing his cheek. Ilya could not look at him.
“Hey,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”
Ilya managed a shake of the head, but that was all. He didn’t have the words to say it all to Shane. English was so complicated, and it was so late. (Thankfully, he didn’t need to. Shane pressed his face into Ilya’s neck and let the wave run its course, let it all shudder out of him in fitful, not-quite weeping.)
God, he hated to cry. It never got any easier.
“I am okay,” he said, after a while. He blinked down the heat in his face and let out a shaky, determined breath. “I am all right.”
Shane sat up gently, gaze roving over his face. “Are you sure?”
Ilya sniffed, closing his eyes for a moment. The room had stopped spinning. He could actually feel his lungs inflating. He slid his hands up the firm muscle of Shane’s arms, giving them a squeeze. “I do not know her, Shane,” he said softly. “She does not know me. She is my family, but…”
But you are my family, he thought, looking Shane in the eye. He knew Shane understood.
“I’ve got you,” Shane murmured. He leaned in so that their foreheads touched, let his eyes close. Ilya turned his gaze over the whole of Shane’s face, all the delicate lines of his features, and the vulnerable part of him just wanted to cry again from the view of it, the softness in it. He leaned forward and kissed him gently, feeling his breath swell at the touch. When they came apart, Shane opened his eyes, and only the pale refraction of light was visible, caught in the curve of his irises.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked.
A quiet laugh bubbled up in Ilya’s throat, despite it all. Shane was so definitively like his mother, even in his softest moments. So what’s the plan?
Ilya let out a deep breath. “I will ask. About hotel.” He sniffed, drawing his fingers over the slope of Shane’s shoulder blade. “We will see.”
Shane studied him for a moment, then nodded. There was a finality to it. This was a conversation far from over, Ilya knew, but he would let it come back around. It was late for the both of them, and he could already feel the fatigue sinking back in, compounded by the stress.
Ilya rubbed the tears from his face, and Shane kissed the corners of his eyes, and they sank into the mattress together. They fell asleep like that, awkwardly entwined on top of the sheets, breathing in a synchronized rhythm. Ilya felt Shane’s heart beating against him and followed its drum into the night, the weight unraveling in his chest.
~~~
It was a few days before he reached out. He hadn’t meant to forget, hadn’t been putting it off—his life simply kept moving. It was a hot Saturday when he finally pulled up his call history and picked her number out of the bunch.
He saved her number to a contact: Katya Rozanova. Then he opened a new message thread and began to type.