Work Text:
Years Earlier - Moscow
Ilya is twelve years old when he comes to understand that adults, especially parents, can disappear forever.
He doesn’t mean the way that his dad leaves every morning to go to work, or the way his mother sometimes does when she locks herself in the bathroom for a long time with the sink running. This is different. This is the kind of gone that changes the shape of a room, alters colors in his memory. The kind that layers most of his regret with a fog, keeping things hazy but not hazy enough to forget the pain.
It happened on a Tuesday. Ilya remembers that because Tuesdays are for gym class, and he always looked forward to gym days. They were his one release, the only class he was in where the teacher actually praised him for his work ethic in whatever physical activity they were doing that day, and he always got first pick when they separated to make teams. He thinks later, with great shame that he doesn’t have a name for inside of him, that this had been such a stupid thing to look forward to when there were more concerning things happening inside their home.
The apartment smells like burnt toast when he comes home from school. That isn’t unusual. His mother burns toast often, even when she isn’t crying. Especially when she isn’t crying, because when she cries, she forgets to eat at all.
“Mama?” he calls, toeing off his shoes.
No answer.
He finds her mug left in the kitchen, tea gone cold. He doesn’t like the way it looks there, alone and abandoned. He picks it up to inspect, and wipes away the ring it left on the counter with his sleeve. At the time, he couldn’t explain why seeing it had given him such a feeling of dread. As an adult, he is able to, but he still doesn’t like to think about it.
He checks the bathroom first, bracing himself. Sometimes his mom falls asleep in the bath, usually after crying. The door is unlocked when he turns the handle, the room empty.
His chest tightens now, something instinctive and primal settling beneath his ribs. His fear pushes him to move faster down the narrow hallway, heart beating so fast he can hear it in his ears. Her bedroom door is closed.
He knocks. Soft at first. Then harder. He starts to bang his fist against it, as loud as possible. Maybe she’s just asleep, he thinks to himself. She does sleep a lot, after all.
“Mama!” he says again, louder this time. He presses his ear to the door, listening for movement, for breathing, anything that might signal a sign of life.
He hears nothing.
He begins pleading to God, to someone, to open this door for him. He moves to kicking it in with his foot, desperation deciding every next move for him. He yells as he attempts to bust the door down with just his foot, getting a running start every few seconds.
He finally gets the door to open. It ricochets against the wall on the perpendicular side of the room with a loud bang, loud enough to wake anyone on the same apartment floor as them up. But Ilya’s mother, now sprawled across the bed, does not stir.
Some time later, people will tell him he was too young to understand all the complexities of adult life. That children are incapable of grasping death the way adults do. But none of this is true. He understood enough. He understood permanent absence. He understands that the room has gone quiet in a way that will never reverse itself. He understands that he can physically feel his moms love leaving the house after that night when the coroners come to remove her.
He understands that he should have noticed more. That the guilt keeps him up at night, even now sometimes. Because noticing was supposed to have been his job.
Before this, there were other silences he learned to read. The sound of his father’s keys turning in the door, the way his mother’s shoulders would tense before a word was spoken, the careful choreography of staying out of the way. Love, in their apartment, had always been conditional. Loud voices were the only way his father knew how to communicate. Surrendering to scrutiny, no matter how painful, meant survival for most of his childhood, and some of his adult life too.
Ilya learned early how to be small at home. How to anticipate moods. How to accept the blame quickly, because blame, once accepted, sometimes stopped worse things from happening.
He learned that if he paid enough attention, maybe he could keep the people he loved safe.
He sits on the edge of the bed now, feet not quite touching the floor, and waits. For what, he doesn’t know. For her to wake up. For time to undo itself. For someone older to arrive and tell him what to do. He wraps his arms protectively around himself, giving himself a hug that doesn’t help to soothe him.
Eventually, more people fill the home. A neighbor, alerted by a phone call he doesn’t remember making. Later, his dad. Later still, a doctor who speaks to him gently, like Ilya is going to shatter if spoken to normally. He feels like he will no matter what.
They tell him it isn’t his fault, that sometimes accidents happen to adults who are tired like his mom. He nods at them, believes them with his head. He does not believe them with his heart.
Because his heart is busy inventorying everything he missed. Every moment he chose homework over sitting beside her on the couch because he thought later would be safer. When he started to walk himself to school, because all of the other boys said it was silly to walk with your mom. How she was always so tired, all of the time, and how he never tended to her the way she did to him when he was little. How much he regrets that he should’ve. So many things that keep him up at night now, wishing he could take it all back. Like it might somehow bring her back.
He thinks now that tired must be a dangerous word. One that means more than it sounds like. One that startles something in him. Everyone keeps saying his mom was so tired, that this life was very tiring for her. He tries to make sense of it in his mind.
In the quiet weeks that follow, Ilya learns something else: that loving someone feels like being handed something fragile in a house where things have always broken.
He decides, without ever saying it out loud, that maybe love is not something he is very good at.
At twelve, this feels like a very feasible outcome. The pain becomes easier to manage. He becomes careful. Observant. Cool. Unemotional.
Then Shane happens.
Shane, who is soft in ways Ilya doesn’t trust at first. Who gets quiet instead of loud when he’s hurting. Who doesn’t scream at him when they disagree, doesn’t use Ilya’s love against him like a weapon. Shane, who makes Ilya realize that love doesn’t always have to come with fear attached.
And still, when Shane stumbles and food becomes numbers and their nights together are stretched thin, something old and panicked wakes up inside him. A child’s logic that insists if you love him, you have to keep him alive.
The difference now is that Ilya knows he cannot do that by controlling, or fixing, or absorbing all the damage himself.
So he watches. He listens. He stays. Not because he thinks he can fix Shane, but because loving him is the first time he has ever let himself succumb to something that can be scary and gentle and safe, even when imperfect.
And this time, he does not look away.
Present Day Ottawa - May 2021
The next morning is quiet. Not necessarily unpeaceful, though still thrumming with held breath after last night’s revelation. Ilya wakes up first, which is unusual. He’d been tossing and turning so much last night, never able to really clear his mind. He feels like last night was a breakthrough, though he’s still not sure how the day will go today. He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, still locked in his head.
Shane is next to him, sleeping peacefully with his arm wrapped around Ilya’s torso, possessive even in his sleep. Ilya leans over to press a kiss to the crown of his head before carefully extracting himself from Shane’s grip, trying and managing to get up and out of bed without waking his boyfriend. He pads into the kitchen, turning the lights on and starting a kettle. He considers what he’s going to make for breakfast, taking stock of ingredients they have in the fridge.
Shane appears a little while later, after the food is almost done. He walks into the kitchen slowly, like he’s not really sure if he’s awake enough yet to address the conversation they had last night.
“Good morning,” he says, voice still groggy with sleep.
“Morning,” Ilya says, trying to watch him without staring. The last thing he wants to do is set them back further, so he lets Shane take the reins on this one and decide where they’re conversation is going to go..
Shane pads over to see what's cooking, staring at the stovetop wordlessly before seeing the scale still on the counter from last night and shying away, moving to sit at the breakfast bar.
“You know, I was serious about what I said last night. About seeing somebody.”
“I know,” Ilya nods once, “I was serious about what I said too.”
Shane sits there for a moment, letting the awkwardness of the moment wash over them like a wave. The only way out is through, he considers in his head. He wonders when he started to think like his dad.
“I still don’t know how bad it is. Or what bad even looks like, in this case,” Shane admits, with a little bit of embarrassment.
“Is why we talk to a doctor. We don’t have to decide what is bad,” Ilya shrugs, plating their food. When he’s ready, he brings it to serve to Shane and to sit beside him and eat next to him. They exchange glances at each other, and Ilya feels like breathing a huge internal sigh of release when Shane takes his fork and digs in.
They eat together in silence, with Ilya moving his hand to squeeze Shane’s knee to try and say I acknowledge and appreciate you trying. They both scroll through their phones with their free hands, Ilya because he doesn’t want to scare Shane by watching him intently as he eats, and Shane because he feels like he needs something to fidget with to take the pressure off of him.
It isn't suddenly perfect. Shane still moves some stuff around on his plate that he doesn’t touch and he doesn’t finish everything. Still, it’s a step in the right direction. Ilya reaches over to discard their dirty dishes, pressing a light kiss to Shane’s cheek while he does this.
Before he can put them in the sink, he is interrupted by a now pale faced looking Shane. “Do you think you could stay and do it with me? The call,” he asks.
“Da, yes, of course,” Ilya agrees.
Their call to the Doctors office is brief, and more clinical than anything. Not as humiliating to face as Shane had thought it would be. When it’s done, he slumps back into his chair, running his hands through his hair.
“Wow, so that’s it? I just have to show up and talk to someone?”
“Is what they said.”
Shane laughs weakly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I feel like I should feel worse. I was dreading that phone call,” he admits.
“Maybe there is time for you to feel bad later,” Ilya teases, walking over to where Shane is still sitting to wrap his arms around him and press a chaste kiss to his lips that is returned immediately. They’re looking at each other, completely wrapped up in one another.
“I’m not… ready to stop,” Shane says quietly, breaking the silence of their little bubble. “Counting. Measuring. All of it. Not completely, at least. Not yet,” he confesses.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Ilya replies.
Shane looks at him, surprise written all over his face.
“I just want you to eat,” Ilya continues. “And not hate yourself while doing it.”
It’s the most honest thing he can offer. Not control. Not any comment about correction. Just care, the kind that doesn’t demand perfection, only presence. The kind he wishes his mom would’ve gotten from him, from his dad, from anyone. Shane just pulls him in to hug him tighter now, and he’s not sure which one of them needs it more.