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They’d gotten Anya an adorable dark red velvet collar this year, one with a little bow on the side. It was fitting, Ilya thought, because this sweet girl was one of the best gifts he had been graced with in his life. The light she brought into his life was something he’d desperately needed.
Before she came home, Ilya had felt himself sinking deeper into his own mind. He was treading water some days, struggling to breathe through the loneliness that had slowly seeped its way into his bones. Sure, he was respected and beloved by his teammates, but there were so many parts of himself that he’d had to keep packaged up in neat little boxes in the dark corners of his heart, lest he reveal something he—or Shane, god forbid—wasn’t quite ready to share with the world.
On his worst days, it ate away at him, that gnawing hunger, that bottomless yearning to be his truest self with someone, anyone, else. It wasn’t enough with Shane, in the handful of stolen moments they carved out when their schedules aligned for a day at a time. For years, he’d been as good as alone, even in a room full of people. Starting therapy had definitely helped, yes, but Anya had been his first permanent tether, his first solid handhold on the wall he eventually clawed his way up, out of the pit of his depression.
Then, just a few short weeks later—right after the shit really hit the fan—he looked up again and finally saw Shane waiting for him at the top.
Shane. His beautiful, neurotic flower. His husband, the future father of his children, and the current (second favorite, but who was keeping track?) father of his little Anya.
It was Shane who’d suggested they get Anya a festive collar each Christmas, and it was Shane who had insisted on this little red collar with the bow. It was Shane who had taken one look at Ilya’s face that morning and insisted on taking Anya for a nice long walk before the snow picked up. It was Shane who’d clipped the new collar onto Anya’s neck, Shane who helped her into her little sweater and harness, and Shane who’d gotten the both of them suited up in coats and toques and boots.
And it was, of course, Shane that had startled him out of his melancholic reminiscing. He’d tugged on Ilya’s hand to stop him, looked up at Ilya with his cheeks flushed from the cold and his adorable nose and freckles scrunched up in concern, and asked “What’s wrong?”
Ilya still had bad days sometimes—days where he could feel himself start to slide back into that bottomless pit—and he knew he always would. But it would always be Shane who reminded him what he was fighting for. Of the foundations of the life they had started building together, brick by boring brick.
Shane, who Ilya smiled down at, and said, “Nothing,” and found that he meant it.