Chapter Text
August 2017
The back door key was under the pot with the tall grass, like Shane told him, and Shane's spine-stretch flip thing would be down in the gym. Stairs to the basement through the pantry, off the kitchen. David and Yuna’s sunlit cottage, which was absolutely quiet except for the hum of the fridge, had warm hardwood and spotless blue tile; Shane said his parents were out for errands and wouldn’t be back till that afternoon. Ilya took off his flip-flops in the mudroom and stepped gingerly anyway. He had to try a bathroom and a walk-in cleaning closet before the kitchen’s last door opened on a lot of bullshit grains in huge matching jars. Hollanders, okay, yes.
Downstairs he gave up on finding the switch after a minute and just faced his phone flashlight into the mirrored corner. Shane had fitted this place all the way out before he’d built his cabin, and all the starkly shadowed gym equipment hulked like twenty-odd torture devices; probably five of them could have been what Ilya was supposed to pick up. On his way back to his phone, he knocked over a dumbbell rack that certainly should have been way sturdier—horribly loud and could have broken a bunch of toes or his whole foot, actually, and you are so welcome, Shane, Ilya blinding himself opening Safari, and what was it. Sounded like a fetish thing. Inverting table. Inversion table, Google said, kind of high-chair-looking—
The lights slammed on. “What the fuck are you doing in my base—”
Yuna: top of the stairs, furious and clutching a golf club. After a frozen second it clattered mightily down the steps, and Yuna dropped her face into her hands, panting. “Jesus Christ, Rozan—Ilya. Holy…holy. Jesus.” She sat down hard. Ilya’s mouth was still open.
“Sorry, sorry sorry sorry sorry! Yuna, I am—so sorry. Shane told me, he said.” Arm outstretched, he got halfway to the stairs before realizing he had no follow-up. “Are you okay? Do you…water? Or something?” He came to the foot of the steps, but Yuna only hunched over her knees, slowing down her breath. "He said you were out, I am here for him so to get…” Ilya never lost track of his English anymore. Yuna picked her face up and slowly straightened her glasses; behind them, Ilya noticed, she hadn’t done any eye makeup. She looked softer, private. More like her son.
Finally she focused on him and summoned a small, stiff smile. “I’m okay, it’s all right. Sorry for the yelling.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs and stood, graceful again. “You’re lucky, I really wasn’t kidding with the club.”
Ilya had no doubt. “Not too late, if you wanna follow through.” Trying a smile himself, he passed the club back up the stairs handle-first. "Shane wanted his inverting table and also did not want to leave his house.”
“Ah. All right, yeah, the lumbar stuff,” she said. Yuna set the club behind her and came down the steps; Ilya shoved his phone in his pocket and got out of her way. “I’ll send you with my red light therapy wrap. He doesn’t think it’s better than a heating pad and he’s wrong. Your flashlight’s still on.” She wove between machines for the far corner, Ilya following late.
It will take time, obviously, he thought, for Shane’s parents. Big shock, a big weird thing. Ilya would be very good to their son, and she would see it, and they’d figure out what to say to each other. A few years of proof. He could work.
In front of a tower of plyoboxes against the mirror, Yuna shook her arms out and then set her hands on her hips, squinting up at the top of the stack. “Okay. Well—” she said, some humor back in her voice, and blew a sudden raspberry. Briskly, she swiveled her head to Ilya too: a smile again. Small but real. Before Ilya had anything to say her cool palm was cupping his cheek and his whole body got stuck—nothing could happen while her eyes crinkled behind her glasses—and then she gave his jaw a quick little squeeze and turned back to the boxes with her arms crossed. Eleven, Ilya was eleven entire years old, and hurting. Unmovable.
“Spooked me, kiddo,” she said. He’d done something wrong, no idea what; she seemed stiff again. “Uh, the table’s folded back here, I think. Scoot these for me?”