Chapter Text
Now
Yuna uses her own key to open the door to Ilya’s house slowly.
The inside is quiet and the air slightly stale. She tried calling and texting before coming over but never got any response.
Ilya has a few days free but Shane’s away in Toronto for a brand sponsorship engagement. Yuna and David didn’t hear back about their invitation to dinner from a couple of nights ago, and despite Shane’s reassurance that Ilya, albeit more quiet than usual, is still answering his texts and calls, Yuna just wants to make sure with her own eyes. She asked Shane and he agreed. Maybe Ilya’s got the flu and is too polite to ask.
Rozanov and polite are not two words she ever imagined putting in the same sentence a year ago, but beyond that boisterous exterior, he’s just a boy away from home without his parents. No matter how many hockey camps they’ve attended or how many billet families they’ve stayed with, they are just boys who never got the chance to properly grow up.
“Ilya, It’s Yuna,” she calls out. The house remains silent. Maybe he’s just out.
She puts down the food containers on the kitchen counter and the grocery bags on the floor. She’s only been to the house once, only briefly, to pick something up from Shane, and she’s not sure what to expect. It looks messier than Shane’s place in Montreal, but that’s probably true for most people’s homes. There are several throw blankets strewn over the sitting area and some hoodies too. A cup is left on the coffee table and two more on the counter. A few dirty bowls sit in the sink. Yuna assumes Ilya probably uses a cleaning service, but maybe it’s hard to hide the presence of a second person if they come too frequently. At least the boys trust her enough to give her a key.
The hallway behind the kitchen leading toward the master bedroom is dark and quiet as Yuna approaches. The bedroom door is closed.
“Ilya, are you home? I’m coming over to the bedroom.” Yuna calls out again, before knocking on the door a few times, waits a few seconds, and knocks again. She holds her breath. She’s not sure why she’s so anxious. He’s an adult and can take care of himself. Probably.
After what feels like a few long minutes but is probably closer to under 30 seconds, she hears what sounds like rustling of fabrics muffled through the door.
“I just want to make sure you are ok since you didn’t come for dinner. I’m going to come in.” She waits a few seconds for any verbal objections and turns the door handle.
The room was surprisingly bright with the curtains wide open and only the sunshades down. Yuna immediately clocks Ilya’s golden curls, messier than usual and slightly matted, peaking out from what appears to be a mountain of tangled sheets and duvet.
“Ilya. Honey, are you sick?”
The mountain of bedding shifts and Ilya pokes the top of his head out from under. Yuna releases a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. He doesn’t look too bad, more exhausted in appearance than plague.
“No.” Then after a while, “Maybe. Little sick.”
“Do you have a fever?” She takes a step closer to the bed before Ilya can answer and reaches out quickly with her hand but then slows down at the last minute. Ilya is either too out of it to register or genuinely doesn’t mind, he tilts his head minutely in the direction of her out-stretched arm as she gently settles her palm over his forehead. It feels dry and a touch warm, but that could just be from being under the covers. She makes a mental note to check for a medkit and thermometer in the house.
“When was the last time you ate or drank anything?” Yuna quickly scans the bedside tables. There’s a mug with a dried brown bottom and a can of coke, presumably empty, since it’s lying on its side without any spills.
The mountain of covers shifts once as if Ilya shrugs underneath. She’s certain he’s not eaten anything that day, and maybe even the day before.
“I brought soup. I can heat some up and bring it over to the bed?”
Ilya doesn’t seem to understand what she is saying, and after a few moments, she reaches out to his forehead again with the same hand and brushes some of his curls away. This works to snap him out of whatever fugue state he was in.
“I… I’m sorry.” He takes one arm out from under the covers and tries to sit up. Yuna automatically leans forward to help. It makes no sense; he’s even taller and bigger than Shane and there’s no way she can help lift him up at all, but at this moment, she feels she can see him wrap himself inward to appear smaller.
“Don’t be. I do this for Shane and I would do the same for you.” Yuna states firmly. She wants to tell him what a silly boy he is. He’s part of the family now. Perhaps she can have a talk with him when he’s better and more alert.
“I don’t know if that’s what you have growing up back in Russia, and I’ve never made borscht before,” Yuna pauses, almost nervously. “But I’ve got this Eastern European cookbook and watched some tutorials online. I think it tastes pretty good and at least similar to what I’ve had at restaurants.”
Ilya stares at her confusedly and doesn’t respond right away. Yuna almost wants to smack him on the head if he weren’t sick.
“I, um, you don’t need to. I can...” Ilya stops, wisely, as Yuna presses her lips together, although she holds back from saying anything. She watches him shift uncomfortably, and for such a large, intimidating, and famously obnoxious hockey player, he looks small and afraid, and mumbles, “I’m sorry I worry you. You come all the way here, check on me and bring me food.”
“I worry about you because that’s what families do.” She remembers when Shane was drafted – a lifetime ago and just like yesterday – so young at seventeen, and how hard that was for him (and for David and her!) to be truly away from home for the first time, even though they were only two hours away. Ilya was drafted at the same age, moving to a new country, learning a new language, making new friends. And now he’s moved to yet another new country. To be closer to Shane, her mind supplies, but they are not even in the same city AND they can’t even talk about it publicly. Perpetually an outsider, always foreign.
“I…just, I think no one make me borscht since I left Russia.” After a moment, he adds, quietly, “and for a long time before that.”
Yuna belatedly remembers Ilya’s mom died when he was a kid and wants to kick herself for inadvertently reminding him of that loss. She also knows what Shane’s told her about Ilya’s relationship with his father and brother and wants to kick them on Ilya’s behalf for being terrible human beings. She wants to reach out and hug him but refrains. Not yet. Maybe later. Right now she just needs to get some soup into him even if it kills her.
“I will bring some soup for you.” She gives him the final verdict.
“Um… Ok. Thank you.” See, it’s much easier to just listen to her. Satisfied, she rests her hand on his shoulder briefly and then straightens up to go back to the kitchen.
﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀﹀
Then
Yuna Hollander knew exactly what it felt like to be an outsider.
Before she was a Hollander, she was a young Japanese woman (albeit born and raised in Canada) trying to prove herself in Montreal, that she was just as good as those “Canadian” consultants, thank you very much. And before that, she was a small Asian girl, desperate to fit in in a town in Nova Scotia with nothing but fishing and lumber, where her parents had to drive over an hour to the big city (aka Halifax) to buy rice and soy sauce.
Her parents never truly talked about why they moved to Canada. She’d ask them when she was young, but always got a slightly different answer. All she knew for sure was that her father went to Dalhousie to study finance in the late 60s as a Masters student, and her mother came along, because they were already married in Japan. They then decided to stay when Scotiabank opened up a new office in her town and wanted to recruit someone with a higher education in banking right around the time her father graduated. The branch manager was initially transferred from Halifax, but Yuna’s father was quickly promoted after a few years, right after Yuna was born, so the previous manager could move back to the real city. She supposed that even “real Canadians” didn’t want to stay in her town for too long.
There was one other Asian family in town. She found this out when she started grade one and the school principal thought they must be introduced during the first morning assembly. The teacher chatted excitedly about how wonderful it must be to meet someone similar as she walked Yuna over to the corner of the gym/assembly hall where they would meet.
The girl, Daisy, who was a few years older, turned out to be Thai. Well, sort of. Her family ran a Chinese restaurant in town (“but we mostly serve Thai food, although no one seems to have noticed” according to Daisy) and her parents were Chinese refugees escaping the war who were born in a refugee camp in Thailand. Yuna remembered nodding solemnly as if she knew where Thailand was, what was a refugee camp, or which war Daisy’s family was running from. They exchanged a few stilted words, mostly on Yuna’s part because she was so scared she would mess up her English and somehow sound foreign in front of another Asian. Daisy, who was much more sociable, invited Yuna to come eat at her family’s restaurant.
The teacher asked Yuna why they didn’t try speaking in their own language as she walked Yuna to her new classroom. She had no idea what her response was but still clearly remembered the teacher saying, well, it’s good that you both speak English then.