Chapter Text
“Ilya!”
Shane’s voice carried through the trees from the cottage door down to the lakeside where Ilya was throwing sticks into the water for their dog Anya. Anya waited at Ilya’s feet and let out a small impatient bark as Ilya bent to pick up the stick and give it another toss into the water lapping softly at the shoreline. He smiled softly as she dog-paddled her way back to the stones at the edge of the water before he turned to make his way back up to the cottage.
“Come, come milaya moya.” Ilya whistled, hearing Anya’s collar shake behind him.
As he crested the small hill from the shore to the cottage, he saw Shane standing in the doorway with a tea towel draped over his shoulder.
“There you are.” Shane seemed exasperated in the way Ilya recognized as him having been interrupted by something he was hyper-focussed on.
“Yes, yes. I am here. What is the problem?”
“Your phone has been ringing like crazy and it’s driving me nuts.” Shane wiped his hands absentmindedly on the towel over his shoulder. “Can you come see who is calling, please, so they will stop?”
Shane turned his attention to Anya bounding up behind Ilya soaking wet. “Oh god. Please can she dry off before she comes into the house?”
Ilya closed the distance between them, putting his hands on Shane’s hips. “I don’t make you dry off before you come into the house. Why it is different for her?” Ilya smirked and leaned in to kiss Shane as Anya squeezed her wet body through their legs and into the house - where she promptly ran to the living room and rolled around on the couch.
“I don’t know why I keep either of you.” Shane muttered through a smile, lips still so close Ilya could feel the warmth of his breath. Shane turned to leave and before he could step away, Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane from behind, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.
“You’re still a bad liar.” Ilya teased, lazily letting his hands drift down over Shane’s hips and then pressing his groin into Shane.
“I have dishes to do.” Shane muttered softly, but in a way Ilya knew meant his resolve was softening.
As he felt Shane’s body beginning to relax into their embrace, Ilya’s phone rang, sending Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” echoing off the walls. He felt Shane’s shoulders tense.
“Ugh! There it goes again.” Shane broke out of their embrace and continued his walk to the kitchen. “You seriously need to consider changing your ringtone if you want me to stay married to you.”
“What? She is a national treasure. What kind of Canadian are you?” Ilya joked as he moved towards the stairs to the TV room where he had left his phone.
Ilya heard the water running in the kitchen as he reached for his phone. The call display flashed “UNKNOWN” - a familiar sign that he was about to get to play one of his favourite games - “Annoy a phone scammer so they have less time to scam someone else.”
Ilya answered the call in Russian, deepening his voice to sound intimidating.
“Who the fuck is this and what do you want?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Ilya smiled at the thought of some scammer thinking he had made a serious wrong turn and was about to have a really bad day.
Ilya’s smile faded as the voice, male and shudderingly familiar, finally spoke.
“Ilya?”
Ilya felt his stomach twist like he had just taken a suckerpunch to the gut. His brow furrowed as he briefly looked back at the call display to make sure he hadn’t misread. “UNKNOWN” was still all it said.
Ilya hesitantly put the phone back up to his ear in time to hear the caller repeat his name.
“Ilya?” Is that you?” The voice spoke in Russian.
“Yes. Uh. Da.” Ilya corrected himself, continuing to speak Russian, afraid to ask his next question and knowing the answer. “Who is this?”
“Ilya. Thank God. It’s Alexei.”
Ilya hadn’t spoken to his brother Alexei since their father died eight years ago.
“Alexei.” Ilya had to consciously stop himself from stammering as he continued. “How are you calling me right now?” Ilya hadn’t blocked his brother’s number, but he couldn’t comprehend how his brother had gotten up the courage to call. Ilya’s brain ran through the many possibilities of why his brother would call after eight years - specifically what kind of catastrophe he had encountered that required money and how much.
“Ilya. We need your help.”
WE. This was new. Alexei had never brought other people into his asks but he supposed it was probably a bid for sympathy - if Alexei’s family needed money, surely Ilya could not say no.
“We? It’s “we” is it? That’s new. Let me guess. You finally managed to literally blow through the money from selling my apartment and you can’t put food on the table?”
Ilya saw Shane come up the stairs from the kitchen, his brow furrowed. These days, Ilya only spoke Russian with Svetlana and he knew Shane could probably tell from his tone that this was not a call from her. Shane approached and rubbed a hand on Ilya’s lower back, waiting.
There was an embarrassed pause on the phone that Ilya let linger. He wanted to hear what excuses his brother would conjure from the silence. Ilya reflected on how bold it was, after their last interaction at their father’s funeral, for Alexei to come to him for money. After the threats Ilya lobbed at him, he must be desperate if he wanted to take that risk.
Ilya could hear Alexei take a deep breath, his exhale a stilted staccato whistling through the phone.
“It’s Yulia. She died. She’s dead.” Alexei’s voice was quiet.
Ilya didn’t know Alexei’s wife well. She had been one of many women Alexei fooled around with, but she was the only one he accidentally got pregnant. Their father insisted that Alexei marry her, although Ilya had never been certain that there was much actual affection between them beyond a shared love (as much as Alexei was capable of) for their daughter.
Ilya moved to sit on the couch as Anya plodded up the stairs towards him, curling her body around his feet. Shane sat next to him, a hand on his thigh, engrossed in the one-sided conversation. Shane had started learning some Russian, but still tripped up when trying to keep up with the pace of conversational Russian between Ilya and Svetlana, so Ilya couldn’t be sure how much of the conversation Shane was actually understanding.
“I’m sorry, Alexei.” Platitudes seemed like simultaneously not enough and also more than he felt his brother deserved from him. Ilya didn’t know what else to say, but he was curious. “What happened?”
“Cancer.” Alexei did not elaborate before his next words spilled forth in a panic. “I’m in trouble, Ilya. I’ve lost my job and I’m about to lose my house. I owe money all over Moscow.”
Ilya rolled his eyes. There it was. “To really understanding and empathetic people, I’m sure.” Ilya quipped.
“This is serious, Ilya. I have no money left, I have people sniffing around looking for what I owe them and…” Ilya heard Alexei take another deep breath. “I’ve got the child welfare people sniffing around Mariya.”
The mention of his niece’s name made Ilya’s stomach drop. He was ready to be terse and unfeeling towards his brother, but Mariya was a different story.
Mariya had been born after Ilya was drafted to Boston, so he had been absent for most of her childhood. When he went home to Russia in the summer he would always be sure to bring her back clothes, toys and sweets from the US, but his tense relationship with Alexei meant that in the months he was in Moscow, he would only see her once or twice. The last time he had seen Mariya it had been at his father’s funeral and he couldn’t imagine what kind of stories she had heard about him since then - and since he and Shane’s relationship became public knowledge.
Ilya did the mental math. He was fairly certain Mariya had been born in 2010, which would make her around 15 now. Three years away from being able to access the trust Ilya left her and still fully dependent on her deadbeat father - who was now staring down the barrel of losing her to foster care.
“What do you want, Alexei? Money? I told you I’d never give you another dime. If you pissed everything away, that's not my problem.” Ilya was trying to be hard and unfeeling - what he felt his brother deserved - but he felt his heart aching at the thought of what all of this would mean for Mariya.
Mariya who now had no mother and a broken man for a father.
“No.” Alexei sounded breathless, fighting for words.”I don’t want your money, Ilya.”
“Sure.” Ilya scoffed. “Then what? Alexei? What do you want from me?”
“I fucked up. I’ve been drinking too much, snorting too much, gambling too much.” Alexei’s breath hitched. “I’m no good for her, Ilya. I have nothing to give her. She has no future with me. No future in Russia.”
“What are you saying, Alexei?”
“I need you, Ilya. Mariya needs you. Please. I have a few hundred left in a savings account her mother started for her, enough for a plane ticket.”
Ilya rolled his eyes. Of course he wanted to run. He wanted to run away from his problems and into Ilya’s life where he could foot the bill of him starting over. “You can’t come here Alexei. You can’t.”
“No. Not me. Mariya. Just Mariya. I need you to take Mariya.”