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Ilya awakes with tears already on his cheeks. They burn his eyes and make his throat feel so tight that each breath feels ragged.
The nightmare didn’t arrive as such. It was beautiful, his mother’s laugh in his ears, the braid she always wore, messy and carefree, the light blue cardigan that she knitted for herself around her shoulders. Her fingers wove a flower crown deftly, placing it in Ilya’s curls and drawing his head into her lap as she sang a song. Then, it changed, the sky darkened. Then, his mother’s voice turned into raspy and crackling, like a dusty, cracked record. Her hands went ice-cold, well, actually, as someone who spends a good deal of time on the ice, colder than it.
Ilya had tried to sit up, and suddenly he was outside her bedroom door, backpack and hockey bag still in hand and stomach growling. On this day, Ilya wasn’t supposed to return until late, but he hadn’t felt like going to hockey practice, he didn’t want to eat a half-cold dinner after freezing his ass off all afternoon. Andrei was at a friend’s house, as he always was as a teenager. His father wouldn’t be home until five, six if he stayed late like he usually did. So, for today, it would be Ilya and his mother.
That too-familiar, fucking scent of solyanka filled his nose. It was sitting on the stove on low heat, keeping it warm and ready to be eaten.
Ilya already knows what is behind that door, unlike the day that this actual event happened. The smell of the soup, the silence of the house, the way the strap of the hockey bag digs into his neck.
He opens the door anyway.
He wasn’t surprised to see his mother in bed, her arm hanging limply. She laid in her bed, tucked in like she was taking a nap.
“Mama?” He tries, stomach still twisting.
Nothing.
Ilya knows it will always be nothing.
In real life, Ilya had shaken her a few times, seen the bottle of pills, saw the foam flaked at her lips, and ran to the neighbor a few doors down that had a phone. The neighbor had been loath to let Ilya into her new carpet with his muddy shoes but she relented in pity when Ilya sobbed out his reason for needing the phone.
This time, Ilya doesn’t run.
His eyes fixate on a piece of notebook paper and a pencil nearby, sharpened to a perfect point.
To my boys, the paper reads and Ilya picks it up. For what Ilya knows, she didn’t leave a note. But here it is, in her neat handwriting, handwriting she taught to Ilya.
I look at you and see him. Not always, of course, sometimes you are small and kind and full of light, but the older you get, the more I see your father’s anger, your father’s silence. Many things are genetic, Andrei, your hair is mine. Ilya, your’s is your father’s but curly like mine. You both have your father’s eyes. Anger is genetic too, cruelty is genetic, sadness is genetic too, and for the last one, I am sorry.
I love you both with my whole heart, but I couldn’t stay to watch you become him.
– Mama
And then Ilya wakes.
There wasn’t a note when Ilya found his mother. He had searched, with his eyes while his father told them it was an accident, more thoroughly while he told the neighbor that stopped by after she probably scrubbed the mud out of her carpet.
His chest is tight, breath going shallow and fast, each inhale stopping just short of where it should have landed. He presses a hand flat to his sternum like he can physically push the air back in.
This is just panic, he tells himself. You know this. You’ve had this before.
But his brain, the stupid fucking traitor that it is, supplies a different thought. So did she, you are like her in this. She killed herself.
Okay. He catches himself. His therapist, Galina, would be proud. Okay. Get up. Walk it off. Water.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands too fast. The room tilts and he manages to gulp in the cool air of the room.
He reaches for the wall, steadying himself, and guides himself into the dark hall without waking Shane. This hall gets freakishly dark so Ilya leaves them on but last night Shane had fussed about the light under the door and then…
And then nothing.
He stares at the switches by the door for much too long. Three of them. He knows this. He’s lived here for years. Muscle memory should have this handled.
But his brain is blank.
Which one turns on the hall?
His pulse thuds in his ears so loudly it hurts. He flicks the left switch. The bathroom light snaps on, plunging him into a bright light that burns his teary eyes. The second attempt turns on the hallway closet’s light.
His breath turns into a broken gasp.
He flicks the final switch on too fast, hands clumsy. The hall light turns on but it doesn’t help calm him. His vision tunnels, he feels worse than his worst loss. His thoughts start to race, like trying to kick when you’re already caught in a rip current
Why would you forget something so simple? How would you forget something so simple?
His father’s face flashes into his mind, slack, confused, asking the same question twice or even three times. Asking Ilya to pick up bread on the way home like Ilya wasn’t across the world. Or worse, when he would forget that Irina died and he would fuss at her.
His father’s sickness didn’t start like that. It was small things. Forgetting his uniform that he donned every single day for his whole career. Mixing up Ilya and Andrei’s names. Forgetting, forgetting, forgetting.
Ilya cannot breathe. He wonders if the body can truly forget to breathe.
“Ilya?”
Shane’s voice is thick with sleep but filled with concern. He has always waken up faster than Ilya. He’s wearing a pair of loose sweatpants and Ilya can feel the heat of his bare skin at his back.
Ilya thinks, knows, that if he turns around, he’ll fall apart completely, and maybe once he does, he won’t be able to put himself back together.
“I can’t–” He swallows hard. “I couldn’t remember which switch is the hall. Shane, I couldn’t remember.” His English feels thick and clunky on his tongue and he swallows. He’s sure the words weren’t understandable and that makes another pang hit his chest. Oh god, what if he loses his English altogether? The language he can communicate to Shane in?
The thought makes his fingers and toes numb in his panic. He might throw up, maybe, if his muscles even work enough to do so.
“Hey,” Shane’s voice cuts through his waves of panic. “That’s okay. You’re panicking. Or, having a panic attack.”
“I’m not–” Ilya goes to deny it but he can’t because he’s calmed Shane down from enough of these to recognize the signs. A laugh escapes him, a hysterical sound fitting someone from an insane asylum. “I am. I know. But I forgot. People don’t forget that.”
“People do when their heart’s doing a hundred and fifty at three in the morning,” Shane assures him. “They forget stupid shit all the time when they are awake.”
Shane guides him into sitting down at the dining table.
Ilya shakes his head violently. Tears and snot drip off his chin. He must be a mess.
“My father–” He can barely get the words out past the thickness in his throat that he might start choking on. “He started like this. Little things. I’m too much like him.”
Shane steps into his space like approaching a skittish animal, a glass of water in his hand like it appeared there magically. Ilya gulps down the water like he’s a man stranded in the desert. “Look at me,” Shane says softly.
Ilya doesn’t want to. He does anyway because Shane will know to help. Shane knows what this is like.
Shane’s eyes are steady and clear. If he is exhausted, which Ilya is sure he must be, it doesn’t show.
“You’re in the hallway. You don’t have dementia like your dad. You’re nothing like your dad. You’re scared. It’s three in the morning. You had a panic attack– well, are actively having a panic attack– and your body thinks you’re dying.”
Ilya’s breath comes out in a shudder. “I know I am dying.” His mouth feels dry and crusted with spit at the same time.
Shane huffs a laugh. “No dying on the watch of Shane Hollander.”
It’s a play on what Ilya had told Shane the last time Shane was having a panic attack, “No dying on the watch of Ilya Rozanov”.
“You cannot steal my words,” Ilya breathes, an attempt at teasing in his voice.
“Just did.”
Ilya huffs, realizing his lungs are getting enough oxygen, his head feels clearer. “I don’t want to leave you,” he says, miserable.
“I know,” Shane says, voice rough now. “You’re not going anywhere.” He tightens his grip around Ilya, his weight a steady thing around Ilya’s shoulders. He buries his face into the crook of Ilya’s neck. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” Ilya murmurs. “I need to go back to sleep.”
“Good plan.”
“I am full of good plans.”
Shane makes a noise that makes it uncertain if he really believes that. “Sure.”
“I am!” Ilya turns his head a little, so they were looking at each other.
Shane drags his fingertips along Ilya’s arms, interlocking their hands and kissing his stubbled cheek. “Let’s go to bed. We can have a lazy morning tomorrow. Order brunch.”
Ilya grunts. “Good. Very good.”
Shane’s hand doesn’t leave his as they walk to bed. Shane pulls his blankets over Ilya’s shoulders, holding a hand to Ilya’s cheek for a moment before climbing into bed and wrapping a solid arm around Ilya. “I’ve got you.”
“Thank you.” Ilya slurs tiredly, maybe in English, maybe in Russian. Exhaustion seeps into his body, making his limbs heavy and eyelids even heavier.
“Mhm.” Shane nuzzles his face into Ilya’s hair. “Wake me, next time? If it gets that bad?”
“Yes.” Ilya agrees easily, because Shane makes everything better. Eyes closed and mouth parted a little as sleep claws at him.
The hall light stays on; the house settles into very early morning. Ilya sleeps with snores on his breath and Shane’s breathing evens out behind him, familiar and warm, an anchor Ilya can trust to hold him steady without thinking.