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Ilya is ten when he notices the first cracks appearing in his world.
Mama is everything – the prettiest woman he knows, prettier than Sveta’s mother even though Sveta’s mother has won awards for her beauty; has the nicest laugh and the warmest hugs; can answer any question Ilya has; is there for almost every practice and comes to every game, even the ones further away.
Until she doesn’t.
She grows slow in a way Ilya cannot put into words, her smiles carving hollowly into his chest, and she suddenly sleeps more.
And the slower Mama gets, the crueller Father turns.
When Ilya is eleven, Mama goes to the seaside.
Father’s face is pinched when he tells Ilya and Alexei, repeats that it is for Mama’s health, and that they are not to talk about it with anyone else.
Ilya nods, and only breathes easier when Mama calls two days after leaving. It’s scary, she tells them, her voice softer than it has ever been, but you’re brave.
Ilya cries himself to sleep that night, his blanket wrapped tightly around himself like it can keep him from fracturing apart entirely, and does not feel very brave.
Who is he, without Mama?
The world falls apart on a Thursday.
It starts like a normal day: Mama has been home from the seaside for months now, and while she still has slow days and her smile never regains the colour he thinks he remembers, she packs his lunch like normal and sends him off to school.
He returns to a silent house; Father is shut up in his study, but Mama should be greeting him, and Ilya is quiet as he looks for her.
And then he sees her.
He doesn’t remember much else, except how badly his heart hurts as it shatters.
Ilya does not so much patch up his heart as gather the shards and tuck them away for safekeeping, pretending he cannot feel himself bleed out with every breath he takes.
Hockey becomes his refuge; on the rink, he does not have to see Grigori look at the pretty accountant who helps put Mama’s affairs in order; on the rink, he does not have to see the gaps on their walls where Grigori has already made Mama’s pictures disappear.
The stash of them Ilya smuggles into his drawer is already threatening to outgrow the hiding spot, even without Mama’s jewellery.
He doesn’t hold the pieces of his heart alone. Sveta is there, doing something with the photo albums she doesn’t tell Ilya about so he can look Grigori in the eye and honestly tell him he does not know where they went; taking Mama’s tea cup over to her house for safekeeping because the blue-and-white porcelain is not as sturdy as Ilya turns out to be; gathering Ilya into her arms when he is as weak as Mama was and cries.
“Yes, it’s scary,” Sveta tells him then, in the same sing-song Mama used to use, “but you are brave.”
Ilya turns fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and somehow keeps growing, keeps living even though his Mama remains dead. He builds himself a new heart, tapes the cracks over with promises to Mama’s ghost: that he will be the best, that he will get out, that he will not let Grigori condemn him to the same fate as he had her.
Some nights, he imagines Mama’s fingers carding through his hair, telling him she is proud, telling him he is brave, telling him he will live.
He does not feel brave, or worthy of pride, but he does still live.
Ilya is seventeen when he meets Shane Hollander, and his heart, battered and bruised and still bleeding from the cracks, sings.
It does not make sense. Hollander is exactly as awkward as the press has claimed, and he has parents there to cheer him on, both of them in the flesh instead of one as a spectre and the other a ghost, and he is exactly as sore a loser as Ilya imagined.
But Hollander is genuine, and he looks at Ilya and seems to see him, see someone worth talking to even though they are enemies, and Ilya wants.
Hollander is still a sore loser as his shoulder presses into Ilya’s on the podium, but all Ilya can think of is Mama, and how proud she would be. He is getting out. Away from Grigori, who would prefer he play in the KHL.
Ilya wants to be the best, and that means playing in the MLH.
That night, he runs into Hollander again in the hotel gym, bests him again. That time, Ilya is not thinking about his Mama. He is thinking about Hollander’s plush lips and his red cheeks, the way his chest heaves.
Ilya still wants him.
The first time they hook up, Ilya can tell he is doomed.
He always gets what he wants except that which matters most, and having Hollander on his knees so easily means that he can never have him for real. Not that he should want to, even though Hollander’s presence, his wide eyes, his immediate desperation soothe the cracks in Ilya’s heart better than any other hookup, even the ones with Sasha.
Hollander is a heady drug, and Ilya suddenly understands how his mother swallowed a whole bottle of pills, if they made her feel like Hollander does to him.
They do not see each other often, but every time they do, Hollander seeps further into the cracks of Ilya’s heart. Ilya is powerless to stop him. It will break him, he is pretty sure, should they ever need to define their relationship, because Hollander will bolt, and Ilya’s heart is a patch-job on the best of days.
Still, he reaches out.
As predicted, Hollander – Shane – bolts.
Ilya is just as skilled as he was at twelve years old, holding onto the remains of his heart until Sveta can come by, and he wonders if it will ever get easier.
It does not.
Hollander and Rose fucking Landry parade around, each picture undoing the patch-job Sveta had helped him with, and Ilya keeps cutting himself on the edges of his battered heart until his whole body hurts.
Missing Hollander is worse than missing Mama, and he knows rationally that he has had thirteen years to get used to her absence but it is still nauseous, that Hollander holds so much power over Ilya. That Hollander was able to obliterate Ilya’s heart again, and Ilya hates himself even as he stupidly misses Hollander.
They got together. They fucked.
It was simple.
Shane admits he is gay and suddenly is all over Ilya, like his revelation has solved everything. Ilya should steer clear. Should save himself. Should keep it simple.
But Shane smiles, and Ilya feels part of his heart knit together again. Shane texts him, and Ilya can breathe.
He has to cut himself loose, and he knows it, except then Shane goes down on the ice, and Ilya’s world threatens to end again.
So he says maybe instead of we should stop, and tries to breathe past the terrifying realisation that he would let Shane grind his heart to dust.
He tells Shane about Mama with his head pillowed in Shane’s lap, and with every word that slips past his lips, he feels lighter. Every soft sound Shane makes in response seeps into the crevices of his poorly reconstructed heart, every question, every soft huff of laughter when Ilya shares how funny Mama was, melds another piece back into place.
His heart will not ever be what it was before Mama died. But that is okay, Ilya realises in the Canadian wilderness. Her death changed him, but Shane loves him even so, and together, they can rebuild Ilya’s heart stronger.