Chapter Text
After so many years, Ilya isn’t used to the flight from Moscow to Boston per say, but he does expect his reactions in some sense. Moscow has never been…simple for Ilya, but with the amount of time he is spending in America and the feelings he can no longer deny for a certain Metros player means that Moscow becomes complicated and real in a way that it wasn’t previously for him. The stakes feel higher now, adulthood mingling with his upbringing mingling with his own desires mingling with that of his father and his homeland. All this means is that when Ilya trudges onto his first flight, a red eye into Abu Dhabi because there are no direct flights into Boston, he is an odd mix of high-strung, the leftover anxiety leaving a copperlike taste in his mouth, and exhausted.
Fuck, he’s tired. Ilya has known, deep down, that something was changing within his father. Over the years, he has noticed that the moments where his father’s usually sharp gaze would become distant, the piercing blue eyes taking on a watery, glazed quality have been growing in number. But Ilya had fervently hoped that it was something that would resolve itself, that someone else would notice and take charge. But this summer it was undeniable. The distance was there more often than it was not. Something was wrong with his father and no one was stepping up to address it. So Ilya did.
In between conditioning and training, Ilya had spent countless hours on the phone with doctors, then specialists, then hired help, then wrangling Polina to show some shred of caring about the man she married. Worst of all was brother. Alexei who knew, who knew, something was going on and involved himself just enough to be able to throw it in Ilya’s face at any opportunity. He’s like a child sometimes. I have my own daughter. You’re never fucking here Ilya.
Memory loss. Agitation. Inability to perform multi-step tasks. Disorientation. Dementia. Dementia. Dementia. Dementia.
Ilya feels an ache in his right hand. He unclenches it on the seat and takes a deep breath, pushing down the guilt, the guilt not only about leaving his father but the sick dark guilt about the absolute selfish relief he feels in leaving. The relief of having an excuse to leave Russia. The relief of having an excuse to leave his family. How do you afford your life, Alexei? How the fuck does anyone here afford their life? I need to leave.
Ilya takes a deep breath and puts in his headphones. The noise cancelling muting all the sounds of passengers loading and the plane going through its final checks before taxiing. Ilya doesn't even bother to turn music on, he just tilts towards the window and pulls his hood up as the plane starts to move down the runway. He’s asleep before the plane takes off.
Ilya wakes up some time later to the dawn cresting in through his window. He glances at the screen on the seatback. They are about 3 hours away from Zayed International. He takes a deep breath, knowing that the sound of the plane is going to come rushing back as soon as he removes his headphones. He takes them off and rolls his shoulders, stretching his legs out, the corner of his mouth turning up at the relief it brings. Perks of first class, he thinks smugly. Immediately after that thought, Ilya notices two things: one; that his table is down and there is sparkling water, a small plate of covered food, and some snacks on it. Those definitely were not there when he fell asleep back in Moscow and two; there is a rhythmic clicking coming from the seat next to him. Before he can address either, a voice speaks from his right.
“You slept right through the first service and I thought you might want something to eat. It’s the only thing that makes these flights feel somewhat normal.”
The slightly accented voice belongs to an older woman sitting next to him. She is maybe in her sixties, her brown hair, a stick of some sort holding it in a bun at the base of her neck, is streaked with grey. The few flyaway strands frame her face making her brown eyes flash from beneath dark lashes, the crows feet around them only highlighting their warmth. She’s wrapped up in a plum-colored shawl, two sticks like the one in her hair and some yarn resting in her lap, her hands wrapped lightly around the sticks.
Ilya blinks, abruptly struck by the way that she’s considered him, a stranger, no more than a hunched shape in the seat next to her with his hood up, and took the initiative to provide for him. After the summer he has had, the small gesture makes something well up in his throat. Ilya pushes that emotion down, leaving himself slightly embarrassed that he has potentially come off so rude to someone who has done something so nice for him. He sits up straighter, adjusting in his seat so that he is facing towards her.
“Um, thank you.” His accent is thicker with the hesitancy he feels and the fact that he is still shaking off sleep.
“No problem at all! My name is Anne.”
Anne. Simple but whole. It fits her. “Ilya,” he responds, lowering his hood, running a hand to loosen up the curls that have become stuck to his head from his hood.
“Mhm,” she responds noncommittally before going back to the yarn and sticks in her lap. Her fingers lightly hold the sticks while the tail of yarn is wrapped around her left pointer finger. Her hands move deftly as she wraps the yarn around the right needle, over and under and off, the sticks clicking slightly as she moves along. Ilya watches her for a moment before turning back to his food, his stomach rumbling quietly. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. It makes sense though, the hours leading up to his departure were busy with acclimating the new in-home caregivers and ensuring that Alexei and Polina understood Papa’s new schedule (It’s very important that it is followed every day. Routine is important Alexei–Easy for you to say, you will be gone!). He had forgotten to eat today, yesterday—whatever.
Ilya peels back the plastic wrap on a modest sweet potato gratin with some sides, quietly grateful that Anne didn’t get him something with meat. While Ilya will eat almost anything, he’s really never willing to risk food poisoning because he ate random meat on a flight. It just wasn’t worth it to him. He hums as he eats the food, the sweet potato maintaining its flavor despite being cold. Eventually, he finishes his food and drink, the trash safely deposited in the attendant’s bag when he makes his round. Ilya shifts in his seat as he scrolls on his phone, the soft click click click of her sticks next to him a pleasant metronome to his wandering thoughts. Ilya catches himself looking at her hands moving deftly across the yarn. He’s surprised to see that the object in her lap has grown in width and length, the ribbing at the bottom almost looks like it could be part of something. Ilya coughs slightly. Anne’s hands stop.
“Um, I am sorry. What are you doing?”
Anne’s eyes widen. “Oh I’m sorry, is it bothering you? Let me just–I can–” She moves to start wrapping the yarn up.
“No!” Ilya states a little too loudly in the hush of the cabin. He feels his face warm as he coughs again slightly, “No. I don’t mind. I was just wondering what–what is it? What are you doing?”
Anne’s face relaxes, smiling warmly at him as she turns towards him in her seat. “I’m knitting. A sweater for my niece to be specific.”
Knitting. It’s called knitting. Knitting knitting knitting. Ilya blinks in disbelief. “That will be sweater?”
Anne laughs. “Yes, that's the idea. This is only the front part though, see?” She holds it up in front of her, one stick hanging off the side and the rest of the garment attached to the other stick. As it hangs, Ilya sees it. It does look like the front portion of a sweater.
“Wow. Yes I see it now.”
“Yes! So basically I will finish this portion and cast it off the needles, and start the back portion. Then I’ll knit them together and start on the sleeves once they are joined.”
Needles. Ilya files that away. Not sticks, but needles. Needle in her hair and needles in her hands. As for the sweater, Ilya was having trouble picturing this process, but Anne seemed confident.
“Will take you long?” He asks. He really had no frame of reference for this.
Anne tilts her head to the side, thinking. “Hmm shouldn’t take me too long. I have this flight, plus the next into Boston. I don’t see my niece for two more weeks so I should be done by then.”
Ilya feels a small amount of excitement trickle into his stomach. “Wow–ah you are flying into Boston? You live in Boston?” For some reason, Ilya hopes they will be on the same flight. Despite having just met her, he likes Anne. She is comforting, maternal in a way that Ilya is drawn to but also shies away from. Like pressing on bruised ribs, you need to push through to break up the tissue, it hurts while you do it, but relief from the action follows. His own constant maternal bruise feels fresh and all the more tender after his summer in Moscow. Ilya takes a deep breath, inhaling the feelings, and exhaling the pain, leaving him with a small flicker of warmth from Anne’s attention. She seemed kind, and it didn’t appear she recognized him. The anonymity felt like a balm at this moment. It would be nice to be near someone that could seemingly talk to him but was also fine with his silence.
“I live in Salem…a little outside of Boston. What about you?”
“I live in Boston. Will be catching the 1pm flight out of Abu Dhabi.”
“Me too!”
Ilya smiles. “Is good! Maybe we can sit next to each other.” Anne blinks, eyebrows raised. Ilya hastily backtracks, “Eh no–no sorry. Or not, I did not mean to presume–”
“No, that would be nice. I would like that, moy dorogoy” Anne smiles softly at him, her crows feet deepening. She lightly pats his arm on the arm rest. The gesture, alongside the endearment, makes Ilya swallow loudly and look away. He coughs lightly and he hears the click click click pick back up. Anne is smiling down at her work, tactfully giving Ilya space.
“So–eh–you speak Russian?”
Click click cli–
Maybe Ilya should shut up. Maybe she’s annoyed with how often he’s interrupting her. Maybe she was looking forward to her flight in silence. He fidgets in his seat and forces himself to look at Anne. She smiles at him, a little sheepishly.
“Ah–no, just some. I picked it up from my late husband. He was Russian, but passed a few years ago. I was back this summer to see his siblings and their children. We are close, and well, they are family.”
“Ah.” Ilya feels stupid. He fervently hopes she doesn’t ask him anything about Russia. He doesn’t want to have to sidestep the myriad of feelings he has about the place and his family to a stranger. He looks back down at her knitting needles. “I’m sorry–why? Why do you do this?”
Anne huffs out a slight laugh and places the needles back in her lap. “Would you like to learn?”
Ilya hesitates, caught off guard by the directness of the question. “Oh–uh no is okay. You don’t–I was just wondering. Have never seen someone–is fine. Do not worry,” he peters out, pitifully in his opinion, and looks down at his lap, ears pink.
“Oh no, it’s no worry! Look,” Anne bends down to rummage in the bag at her feet, coming back up holding two extra needles and some maroon yarn. “I have extras! Come on, it will be fun!”
Ilya feels a grin break out on his face, cheeks still warm. “OK. If you do not mind. Yes, I would like to learn.”
For the next 3 hours Anne shows Ilya the basics of knitting. She starts the swatch for him (We’ll deal with casting on in a bit). He learns how to hold the needles (“I’ll be teaching you continental style Ilya with circular needles but ignore the connecting string for now, you’ll thank me later when you become an expert knitter. English is the way to hurt wrists.”), how to wrap the yarn and keep the tension around the pointer finger of his left hand, and how to push the right needles into the loop and wrap the yarn around it, sliding the right needle under and sliding the stitch off. By the time they announce their descent into Abu Dhabi, Ilya hasn’t had this much fun on a flight home ever, and that’s including the time Marleau had food poisoning and spent the flight running to and from the bathroom. On top of that, he feels relaxed? Ilya never realized how good it could feel to make something with his own hands, watching it weave into existence from his own movements. Even if that something is currently, a slightly irregular, 5 inch by 5 inch square.
“Ah we’ve run out of time to show you casting off. No matter, we can go over that later.” Anne digs around in her bag once more and comes out with little silicone animals, sloths Ilya’s mind supplies (thank you Planet Earth), in her hand. Ilya stares at them resting in her palm, sleepy eyes looking up at him. She shakes her hand slightly for Ilya to take them.
“What are these?” He asks as he reaches out.
“They are point protectors. For your needles! And they make sure that your work doesn’t slide off the needle when you put it away.”
Ilya takes the sloths, noticing that they each have a small hole at the base. He pushes his needles into the hole and then laughs as he smiles broadly down at his work. The two sloths look up at him from his swatch. Ilya hadn’t even thought about the fact that his work could slide off the needles. He finds himself inordinately pleased at the slightly raggedy whimsy in his callused hands. Ilya feels like a whole soft world is opening up before him. He smiles as he gently puts his work away in his duffel, making sure the zipper doesn’t catch on any of the yarn.
The plane lands and taxis to the gate. Once the attendants give the okay to deboard, Anne stands to grab her bags from the overhead bin, but Ilya is too fast.
“Ah, no. You do not do this. Allow me.” He stands up and maneuvers around her in the aisle. Anne cranes her head up to make eye contact, looking slightly surprised at Ilya’s height, like she didn’t realize he was quite so hulking until he unfolded himself out of the seat and into the aisle, but she steps aside making an “as you wish” motion with her hands. Ilya grabs her bag, throws his duffel over his shoulder, and walks down the aisle and off the plane, Anne at his back.
When they get out of the tunnel and at the gate, he turns to her, also slightly bemused at how far he has to look down. It makes him smile.
“Do you have a place to wait? Layover is like 3 hours?”
“Oh, um no. I was just going to grab a coffee and sit at the gate.” Ilya cracks a grin, elated that he will be able to do something nice for the woman that made his long flight so enjoyable. Plus, she shouldn’t be sitting in the uncomfortable gate chairs.
“Oh this will not do! Come, come! I show you where I wait it’s very–,” Ilya cuts himself off, suddenly nervous that maybe he is forcing her to wait with him. It’s one thing to talk to someone you are sitting next to on a plane, it’s another to follow said six-foot-four two-hundred-fifty pound man through the airport to the private airport lounge. Ilya cringes internally. “I mean you don’t have to, is just airport lounge but I understand if you want to–no problem either way.” Ilya stumbles over the words in a panic to make it clear that he isn’t trying to whisk Anna away or be weird. He can feel his face flushing from embarrassment.
“Oh no, yours sounds much nicer. As long as they have coffee I’d love to. Besides, I want a place with some space to show you how to cast off!”
“There is coffee. Delicious coffee. Come I show you,” Ilya smiles down at her, pivoting on his heels and walking off towards the north end of the airport. Anne follows next to him chatting about how she prepares her coffee versus how Russians prepare theirs and how she’s never been in an airport lounge before. Ilya keeps his head tilted towards as the walk. He feels good, feels tall, his back straight and chest out for the first time in three months.
The next three hours are some of the most enjoyable Ilya has ever had in Abu Dhabi. Usually, he just sits in the lounge, scrolling on his phone, waiting for the time to pass. But this time, he’s hunched over a small table, coffee and plates with sandwiches scattered about, watching as Anne shows him how to cast off his swatch. He observes as she knits the first stitch, and then the second, getting two stitches on the righthand needle. Brow furrowed, leaning forward slightly more, he watches intently as she inserts her left needle under the first stitch on the right needle and brings it up and over the stitch she just knit. Anne continues the process for a few more stitches and Ilya watches as the edge of his swatch tidies and grows. Ilya has the strange sensation of wanting to clap his hands together like a child. He did that!
“Okay here, you do the last half.”
Ilya takes the swatch from her and loosely holds the needles in his hands, trying to mirror the way that Anne held them. He knits another stitch, takes his left needle under the bottom stitch on his right needle, then brings that stitch up and over the second stitch and slides it off the needle.
“Perfect! Good tension too. That edge is going to be neat, I can tell.” Ilya hums as a response and starts on the next stitch. To his side he hears Anne pick up her project. The light click click click of her needles making him smile privately to himself, chin on his chest as he focuses on his work.
A short while later Ilya just has one stitch left, the even edges of his cast off side making him feel proud.
“Eh–sorry. What do I do now? There are no more stitches.”
“Oh! You went right through that. Okay this is the easiest part. Basically, pull your right needle to the side so that the–yes that’s it–so that the stitch gets really big. Okay now–hang on.” Anne rummages in her bag and pulls out a small pair of scissors. “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t think I’m technically supposed to have these on the plane but I hide them in my toiletry bag and no one has caught me yet,” she says as she grasps the yarn tail still connected to the ball and cuts it about 6 inches from Ilya’s swatch. “Okay, perfect now just pull the needle out.”
Ilya slowly pulls it out, choosing to trust that his whole work isn’t going to become unraveled immediately. “Good,” Anne says, “Now just thread the end of that tail in through the last stitch and pull it tight. Yup. Just like that. Now look! You have your finished swatch!”
Ilya looks down at the knit square in his hands. Anne gently takes it from him, threads the tail onto a needle (a different needle with a hole in it, the type of needle Ilya thought were the only types of needles until knitting) and then deftly weaves the hanging tail through the stitches, making it disappear.
“You can learn that later, but look! All done!” She exclaims as she hands the swatch back to him. Ilya runs his thumbs over the soft square in his hands, quietly marveling at the fact that he made this. A small part of him knows he’s being slightly ridiculous because this is basically useless as an object, but he made it! He made it with his own hands and doing that means that someday he could probably make a sweater just like Anne is making. The thought makes Ilya excited in a way that he hasn’t felt, maybe ever? This is something that would just be his. Something that he decided to pursue on his own and with no external value placed on it. Ilya would just be knitting to knit. There is a sense of ownership that makes him feel warm inside.
Ilya twitches slightly as he remembers that Anne is next to him, tactfully, once again, letting him have his moment as she clicks clicks clicks away. Ilya is struck by the need to convey his gratitude to her.
“Anne. Thank you–for showing me this and for…being ni–patient with me.”
Anne glances up at him, quickly masked surprise at the admission. “Oh, it was my pleasure Ilya,” the American syllabic pronunciation making him smile quietly, thinking about Shane, “you were easy to teach. Now do you want to learn to cast on? Might even have time to learn to purl.”
The next stretch of the layover is Anne showing Ilya how to measure out the length of yarn he would need to cast on a scarf and how to cast it on (under, over, through, off, under, over, through, off).The boarding announcement makes them both jump, having lost track of time, but they both pack their respective kits up, Ilya dutifully sliding his point protectors onto his needles. He realizes suddenly that he’ll have to get his own stuff in Boston…that what he’s cast on is, unfortunately, going to go back into Anne’s yarn bag. Ilya is unexpectedly okay with this. He has his swatch and is a fast learner. He can make it up again when he gets home.
He grabs Anne’s bag and holds the lounge door open for her and they head towards their gate. If he happens to check on the proximity of local yarn shops to his house after he texts Shane that he’s boarding, well that’s nobody’s business but his.