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Hayden only recognizes the signs because he’s seen them in Ilya.
It starts slow, at first. Snapping at him and Jackie, sleeping past alarms, dropping out of junior league. Asking to stay home from school twice in a month after being awarded perfect attendance the year prior.
He convinces himself that he’s being paranoid. But then suddenly she’s not finishing dinner anymore and her grades are slipping, and when he and Jackie very tentatively propose taking her phone until they improve again, she gets so upset that she doesn’t talk to them for a week even when they end up letting her keep it.
She cries but won’t tell them why, complains about her stomach and her head aching despite her latest physical coming back nearly perfect.
She used to smile so big when he’d get home from practice in the evening, sitting there and talking with Ruby doing homework, first in line for a hug even if he was still damp from a shower.
Now she’s in her room before he even gets there. If she smiles at him, it doesn’t spread across her face the way that it used to.
Something’s wrong. He can feel it. And at some point, Hayden figures he’s going to have to do something other than have a two a.m. spiral about it, falling down online rabbit holes until he works himself up even more.
He doesn’t ask Rozanov at practice, because he’s a coward. Blames it on keeping the line between professionalism and personal life upheld, even if they’ve been toeing it for years.
Hayden just doesn’t think he can look him in the face while he indirectly admits that he doesn’t even know how to help his own child. He’s going to cry, and while their relationship has massively improved these last few years, Hayden would prefer to keep a modicum of his pride.
He waits until after practice one night when Shane’s already mentioned that he’s going to be busy doing something with his mom, hoping that Ilya will be at their house alone. It sounds like he is when he picks up the phone, his tone bored and the hum of television playing lightly in the background.
“I need a favor,” Hayden says in lieu of hello.
“And what will you bribe me with for this favor,” Ilya returns. “I already have many things, Pike, you will have to make it something interesting.”
“It’s Jade.”
Rozanov stops teasing, and Hayden hears fabric shift, the volume lower on the TV. Hayden had come out to his car to talk to him so the kids wouldn’t hear, and he’s glad for it when his eyes already start to burn.
“What is it?”
“She’s—fuck, sorry,” he says when his voice cracks a little, punching the bridge of his nose.
“Pike. Breathe.” Ilya does it too. Then, “Tell me what is happening.”
“It’s not—I mean, she’s fine. She’s not hurt, or anything. Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.” Hayden sniffs. “It’s just that I’ve been noticing some things lately, and I was—I was wondering if I could ask you some personal questions.” He hesitates for a second, glancing out at his driveway. “It’s—about depression.”
It’s Ilya’s turn to pause then, but eventually he clears his throat.
“Okay.”
“I Googled some stuff, you know, but I didn’t know how much of it was just clinical bullshit versus what people really feel,” Hayden explodes, like a sand bag that’s been poked. “I guess I just need to know what, um. What, like, a depressive episode looks like for you?” he asks. “Or maybe what it looks like for Shane, for you, maybe.”
He doesn’t know if he’s making any fucking sense. Eyes closed, Hayden drops his head back against the seat and pulls in another long breath alongside Rozanov’s.
“It can be different, sometimes,” he says slowly. “Shane will notice before I do usually. He says it’s like I slow down. Physically, on the ice. Or when he talks to me sometimes I will not respond. I have no appetite, so I will eat less. Sleep more because I am tired of everything.”
Yeah. Hayden knows a little bit of it already, both from talking to Shane and because Ilya’s their captain, and sometimes close quarters means that it’s unavoidable to pick up on certain patterns of behavior. They’ve all got it down pretty good now, when to ask and when to pretend things are fine, when it’s okay to help and when it’s more of a Shane-and-Ilya-only type of thing.
The thought of having to learn all of the same tells for Jade makes him sweat. What if they’re not the same, and he misses them? What if it takes him too long and she gets tired of teaching him? Ilya had said sometimes Shane notices before he does. What if Jade doesn’t want him to be a part of it at all?
“Does it ever—the tiredness, I guess, make you kind of irritable?” Hayden asks.
“Definitely yes. I have less energy to deal with things so I get upset easily with people. At Shane, sometimes,” Ilya admits. “I do not like it, but. He is good about it. He knows I don’t mean it.”
Hayden chews at his lip. “How long does it usually last, for you?”
“Mm, depends. Maybe few days. Maybe a week or more.”
Okay. Fuck. Okay. So that’s probably why she’d asked to stay home for those days. Maybe it had only lasted that long, or maybe she felt like she couldn’t ask for more? And—shit, they’d left her there alone all day, Hayden thinks, breathing quicker. That was before he’d landed on this as a possibility and they’ve left the girls home alone sometimes to gently try easing them into it. They’re babysitting age now, and so far they’ve done well with it.
But those days. Those days, Jade was alone all day until Jackie got back from helping with the fundraiser and Hayden finished practice, the others arriving home from school sometime in between. That’d been, what—nearly seven, eight hours? Had she really wanted to be alone? Maybe Hayden should have called in sick too. He’d known it wasn’t like her to stay home.
“Pike.”
“Yeah?”
Quietly, Ilya asks, “It is like this for Jade, yes?”
The sand bag inside of Hayden tips over, bottoms out.
“Yeah,” he chokes a little, pushing his fingers against his eyes. “Yeah, it’s. Everything you said.”
On the other end of the line, Ilya makes an understanding noise. “For how long?”
“I started noticing some things maybe around the beginning of this year,” he admits guiltily, “but I have no idea how long—if it’s been more than that. Jacks and I tried to talk to her about it and she just—she just shut down.”
Dropping an elbow against the car door, Hayden scrubs a hand over his face and huffs a wet, desperate, humorless laugh.
“What do I do?”
Ilya is quiet for a moment. “Do you think she might be… ah, a threat? To herself?”
“God. I fucking—I hope not.” Hayden scoffs, pulls at his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t—she’s like a different person right now, I don’t…”
“She is still your daughter, Pike,” Ilya tells him, low and careful. “You know her.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. Lets his shoulders drop. “Yeah. I—I mean, I don’t think she’d do that. And she seemed okay today, when I was with her.”
“Maybe I will talk to her then, yes? Sometimes can be difficult to talk about it with partner or close family. There is more… pressure, sometimes.”
“You’d—fuck. Would you? Talk to her?” Hayden asks. “I think maybe she’d be more willing to talk to you.”
“Of course,” Rozanov says.
Hayden shakes his head, stares at the glow of the window from the house until it’s nothing but a blur. His lip trembles.
“I just—I just worry about her so much. She’s my baby, you know?” he whispers into the phone. “I just need her to be okay.”
“She will be okay. And so will you.” He gives a disbelieving laugh at the back half of the sentence, and Rozanov doubles down. “Pike. You will be okay. Do you understand? She will need you to be okay, even if she is not.”
Hayden blinks at the dashboard.
“Fuck. You’re right.” He takes a moment to collect himself, scrubbing at his cheeks. “Yeah. I’m good. I’ll—um.”
“Shane and I will come over this weekend. You should talk with him. I will talk with Jade.”
He nods to himself. That’s just a few more days. That’s—this is good.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Ilya,” he tells him.
Rozanov makes a noise. “No thank you’s. We are, ah, what is the word you said at wedding—?”
“Brothers-in-law,” Hayden smiles despite himself. “Brothers.”
“Da. This. Jade is moya plemyannitsa. It’s no trouble to talk with her.” He pauses. “Or with you. But you will tell no one I said this or I will bench you for whole next season.”
Hayden laughs, delirious and wet. “You got it, man,” he says. “I’ll, um. I’ll see you this weekend, then.”
“See you soon, Pike. Go sleep. Hold your wife. It’s past your bedtime.”
“It’s fucking ten p.m.,” Hayden argues halfheartedly. He is pretty fucking tired.
“Yes. Bedtime,” Ilya tells him decidedly. “You will need to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others.”
And, yeah. Okay. Fair. Hayden’s brain moves so fast he forgets it sometimes.
He hangs up with Ilya and locks his car, heading back inside the house to get ready for bed. Three days until the weekend. He can do that. Now he just has to wait. And trust.
In Ilya, and Jade, and maybe in himself, too.
+
Nature, Jade thinks, is sometimes a better listener than people are. Or at least a less intimidating one.
She’s sitting with her knees pulled to her chest by the stream in the backyard, sweatshirt tugged over her shins and dirt on her shorts. She sort of can’t believe she’s getting away with it either; they’re having Shane and Ilya over for dinner tonight and everyone else is inside and full of energy she doesn’t have, helping prep the food and set the table. The quietness out here was second only to her room, but she shares it with Ruby anyway.
It feels like rebellion, being out here. Like relief also. She’s been dreading the thought of it since it popped up on their family calendar on the fridge, which doesn’t make any sense because she loves Shane and Ilya. But nothing she feels really fits right now, not in any way that’s logical.
She wants to be around them. Shane, Ilya, her parents, Ruby, Arthur, Amber. But it’s never right these days when she tries. And the trying only ever makes her more tired. So, more and more lately, she just doesn’t.
She wraps the longer blades of grass around her fingers and watches the skin pale where it presses too hard until it finally gives way and rips out of the dirt. She doesn’t particularly enjoy it, but by the time she’s aware of it, she’s already made a bare spot on the lawn beside her hip.
It’s the noise of the backdoor unlatching that pulls her out of it, and her shoulders tense instinctively, pulling up around her ears as she listens.
It must be Ilya, she thinks. She’s memorized the sounds of all the footsteps in the house so she won’t have to look up when someone’s coming. It’s easier to pretend to be sleeping that way.
But she can’t pretend to be sleeping now, and sure enough, the twitch of her lips is genuine when she sees Ilya’s boots step up beside her.
“Hello, malen'kiy kristall.”
“Hi, Ilya,” she says.
He points at the spot beside her, on the other side of the bare spot in the grass.
“Is it okay if I sit?”
She nods. “Did my dad tell you to come and talk to me?”
Ilya sits down and says, “Yes.”
Jade laughs once, sort of on accident, refreshed by Ilya’s unfailing honesty. It’s nice, when it feels like everyone else around her walks on eggshells these days.
“But I also like to talk with you anyway,” he goes on. “You are most fun to gossip with, but Ruby cannot hear this.”
“My lips are sealed.”
She looks at the grass again, lets the noise of the running water in the stream fill the silence that unfolds. She wonders how long it will be before he’ll ask something of her, want some sort of explanation or try to give her one of her dad’s lectures repackaged into something slightly less frantic.
To her own surprise, it’s her that speaks first.
“So I guess I’m not doing a very good job of hiding it. If he asked you to talk to me.”
“I think you are probably doing better than you think you are,” Ilya tells her. “And we do not have to talk, if you want. I won’t tell.”
Blowing out a breath, Jade tugs at the grass again.
“I just think it’s ironic that they want me to talk to them, but then if I do they look at me like—like—”
Like what? Jade thinks. Like they’re uncomfortable? Disappointed? Unsure of what to even do with her? None of them feel good.
“Like they’re scared of me,” she settles on, quiet.
Ilya brings his hands up off the dirt, dusts them off, and wraps them around his knees to grip his own wrist, similarly to Jade’s position. They both stare at the water.
“They are scared for you. And for themselves. Because they love you and they worry you will be taken from them by this thing they cannot control.” His head tilts. “But sometimes their fear makes you feel like… hm. Like thing instead of person, yes? Like problem that needs to be fixed.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it,” she exhales, relieved. “Was it like that for you? With your parents?”
She knows only a little bit about what it’s been like for Ilya. It’s not something he deliberately hides but it’s subtle, things Jade’s missed in the past that she’s only thought about lately because she feels them too. She’d thought, briefly, about asking him about all of it. But there’d been a part of her still too scared that Ilya would tell Shane, and Shane would tell her dad, and the fear had overridden the potential of a conversation she had no idea would even be a productive one in the first place.
Ilya clears his throat. “I think, when someone has new scary thing pop up for someone they love, they want to fix. It’s instinct,” he says. “They are not wrong for being scared of the thing they do not know about. But you are also not wrong for feeling it.”
Her lips turn up into a bitter smile. “People make fun of it sometimes, you know, that we’re such a happy family. Dad’s always exciting because of the hockey, and mom’s, like, the head of multiple clubs and groups at our school so she can be involved with our stuff. Nothing would run without her. And everyone’s always just, like, you guys are so happy. Like we’re perfect, or something.”
“You are worried you will change the way people view your family,” Ilya translates. She nods. It’s the first time she’s saying any of this out loud, and it makes her throat hurt.
“I just—I don’t get why it’s only me,” she mutters. “Ruby and I have done everything together up until now. We’ve always been like that. And I just kept thinking, maybe if I just wait, maybe Ruby feels it too. Maybe she’ll say something and we’ll have this in common too, which isn’t a good thing, but at least then we’d have—you know, each other.”
“And no one else would have to know.”
“Right,” Jade confirms. “But when I told her, she just—she just looked at me like suddenly she didn’t know me. And it—I think it made it worse.”
Ilya nods, lips pursed like he’s thinking, and Jade likes that he does that sometimes. Her parents are so quick to jump to solutions, eager to help and sometimes speaking over her in the process. Sometimes Jade wants to ask if they can just sit for a while, if she can just be sad for a little bit until she feels better. But it seems like such a foreign idea to them. They don’t understand why she would want to do that.
They make the mistake of thinking that Jade wants any of this.
“Have you told your parents?” Ilya asks.
She shrugs. “There was never really a good time. They’ve been handling those assessments for Arthur and Amber, which I get. And when it’s not that, they’re at Ruby’s games or competitions. Which is also good. She’s been working really hard.”
Ilya turns to face her for the first time then, and he doesn’t smile, but the look on his face is kind, honest, when he tells her, “So have you.”
Jade’s lip trembles, and she closes her eyes. She’s exhausted. She can’t seem to stop crying, and she doesn’t even have anything to cry about. She has a good life. Even just last year she was enjoying it, making plans, had goals. Now it feels like she’s stuck here in the dirt and everyone else is sailing past her in the stream, moving on. Like she’s falling behind.
She has a classmate that just missed a week of school because they lost a family member. Another girl that dropped out of the junior league at the same time she had, but theirs had been because of an injury. Real things that had excuse notes and visible scars.
She’s seen her mom manage to take care of four children and household chores while sick with a flu that nearly had her in the hospital. She’s seen her dad out with an injury that was one move away from being career-ending, and still he’d gotten up every day, done the physical therapy, returned to practice and the rink as soon as he could.
Ilya feels like this, and he’s the captain of the team. What’s Jade’s excuse?
“I just. I’m scared that if I talk to Ruby about it, like, really talk to her, she’ll tell on me. I obviously can’t talk to Arthur or Amber. Mom will just cry and dad will freak out, and I’m scared that they’ll send me away somewhere or something, where they’ll have to keep an eye on me. I don’t want—I don’t want to do that. It’s worse when I leave the house.”
He’s nice enough not to mention the way her voice shakes, and she’s grateful for it.
“If you are wanting to talk about it, there are places you can do that. Safe people who will not be scared. People you don’t have to explain everything to.”
She sniffs, glances back toward the house. “Maybe.”
She can still remember the talk that happened once after they’d visited Shane and Ilya’s, and Ilya hadn’t come out of the bedroom. The younger ones hadn’t really caught onto anything and had accepted that he was just ‘sick’, but afterward, back home with only her and Ruby still awake, Jade had asked if he was really okay.
The words were all nice, carefully picked, age appropriate. Some people just get sad sometimes for a little while, and that’s okay. But Ruby hadn’t seemed to pick up on the other things the same way that she had, the glance between their parents before they spoke, the moment of hesitation. Like putting a name to it might jinx something. Like, God forbid, one of them should ever feel that way.
All of the tips, the conversation about how to be there for those people was exactly that: something for those other people. She remembers feeling a little off about it afterward, having questions she’d been too nervous to ask.
She can ask them now, she guesses.
“What, um. What keeps you from—um.” She glances up from the grass again. “Is it Shane? Can I ask that?”
Ilya smiles. He lifts a shoulder. “Sometimes just a TV episode next week that we are watching. Or hockey. Or dinner I am looking forward to with my good friends the Pikes.”
Jade snorts. “Really?”
“Really,” Ilya nods. His face softens, looking out at the stream. “Shane is… a different kind of reason. Bigger one. More—long term, I think,” he explains. “He makes me want to be better. Not fixed, but. To try, more than I would have when it was only me. But that does not happen quickly. It has been happening, for me, for years.” When Jade is quiet, he adds, “Every reason will not be the same for everyone, and every reason is a good one to stay.”
“Some of them are kind of stupid sometimes,” she points out instead of having to admit that one of hers was knowing that one of the stuffed animals Ilya bought her the first few times they met would be lonely. Even if she’s almost sixteen now.
Ilya gives her a knowing smile. “Yes. And that is okay too.”
“Nobody sees it, you know?” she swallows, suddenly blinking hard. “It’s so hard to even get out of bed and it’s like, of course everybody’s mad at me, because I don’t know why it’s so hard either. I’m annoyed with me.”
“Shane has helped me with things. Sometimes it’s nice to have a plan. For you and for other people. Things you can do if you’re feeling bad. A schedule so you do not have to think or feel like you’re falling behind,” he suggests. “We can help if you need, Shane and me. Talking to your parents, or with plans, or if you want to find professional who would listen. Is up to you.”
“You—Shane says you take medication for it, right?”
“And therapy,” Ilya nods. “Not so often anymore, but like I said, it has taken a long time to get to that. There are options. You have a choice.”
It helps, thinking about it like that. She’s not ready for it yet, she doesn’t think. But it still helps.
“Thanks for not freaking out about all this,” she tells him. “For making me feel more normal, I guess.”
He smiles. “I cannot promise it will be easy always. Or that everyone will understand, or that you will find something that helps on the first try. But I can promise that you can talk to me about things, and I will not be scared.” He holds out a pinky, and Jade wraps hers around it and squeezes. “You are not very scary, Jade Pike.”
She untangles their fingers with a sigh, extending her legs out from under her sweatshirt to cross out in front of her and leaning back on her hands.
“You should be scared. I’ve been practicing my crossovers and I’m getting really good. Better than you, probably.”
His face lights up, reaching over to pat her on the back. “Ah, humor is also fantastic medicine! You are taking after your uncle Ilyusha after all.”
He leans into it, thumping a hand to his chest afterward and miming wiping emotional tears from his eyes until she laughs. After a minute, he turns to her again.
“If you have been practicing… will you rejoin the juniors this year, do you think?”
Jade’s smile fades a little, but it doesn’t disappear. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready to jump back in quite yet.”
He nods. “Ruby has practice on Sunday nights, yes? If you get bored, I can come and help with crossovers. Maybe I can sneak you into the practice rink for a bit. Our secret.”
Jade blinks, surprised. “Really?”
“Mm. If you want to. I learned most about hockey when it was just me and my mother on tiny little rink in Moscow. With coach and other players it can be overwhelming to learn. More pressure not to mess up.”
“Yeah,” Jade breathes, feeling seen in a way she hasn’t really in weeks now. “Wow. Thanks, Ilya. I… I think I needed to get some of that off my chest.”
He lifts his arm in offering, and they meet in the middle atop the bare spot of dirt for a sideways hug.
“You are very brave, malen'kiy kristall. I am very proud of you,” he says, rubbing her shoulder. “And so is the rest of your family.”
“Spasibo, dyadya Il’ya,” she sounds out hesitantly. It’s one thing to read or write a couple of words in birthday cards, but saying it out loud sounds sort of weird. She grimaces, but Ilya pulls back and grips her by the shoulders, face split around a grin.
“You have been practicing this too?” he asks. “You are very good!”
She ducks her head, her face warm. “It’s only a few phrases. I’m not that good.”
He tosses his arm back around her shoulders, both of them facing the water again this time. “You are. First time Shane says I love you in Russian he accidentally tells me blue apple instead. It was very funny, of course, but we had to work on it.”
“Blue apple?” she laughs loudly, the muscles in her stomach and face getting a much needed stretch until she calms. “You’re right. I feel better about it now.”
“Good.” Ilya leans over to kiss the top of her head, fingers rubbing her arm. “You are very loved.”
Jade nudges him with her elbow. “So are you.”
Ilya’s nose scrunches around a grin.
“I know.”
The backdoor unlatches again, and she doesn’t tense this time when Shane takes a step onto the deck. Her and Ilya both turn to look.
“Dinner’s ready, if you guys are,” he tells them. “If you want any of the good sides, you’re going to have to be fast.”
It’s probably the most polite way to remind them that her dad had cooked most of the sides tonight. He yells something unintelligible at Shane from inside the kitchen, and Shane shoots them a lopsided smile.
Ilya squeezes her shoulder again, and then pushes himself up from the dirt. He offers her a hand, and they dust off and walk back toward the house. Shane holds open the door for them while they kick off their shoes.
“Thanks,” she tells him as she passes. And in place of I love you, adds a heartfelt: “Blue apple.”
Shane turns to glare over her shoulder.
“Ilya.”
Ilya laughs loudly and drags him inside.
There’s enough happening around the table that Jade’s reappearance isn’t pointed out, and she’s grateful for it. It’s easy to blend into the familiarity of noise and action she doesn’t need to be a part of, included without having to perform. Her and Ilya wash off their hands and then make their plates—just in time to procure the good sides—and only once she’s seated and lifting her fork does she catch her dad’s eye across the table.
It’s quick, barely there and then away as if he hadn’t wanted her to catch him looking. He shoots a faulty smile off somewhere else to appear like he was in the conversation, and then turns his attention to his food.
He cares. Jade knows he does. She just doesn’t always have the energy to explain the ways that would be most helpful. Sometimes she doesn’t even know them.
When Ilya came out to talk to her, when she’d figured out that this whole dinner was likely planned with her in mind, she’d sort of felt like it was her dad’s way of saying I don’t know how to deal with this, so I’m going to let someone else do it. Like that conversation about Ilya years ago—here is what you are, and here is something you are not. Jade hadn’t realized until recently how scared she’d been of the possibility that turning out to be that thing for other people would mean, somehow, not being their daughter anymore. Or maybe not quite in the same way, at least.
But maybe she’d miscalculated. Maybe this is her dad—who thinks in rapid fire, who goes instincts before logic, who unfailingly wants the absolute best for her even if he doesn’t quite know how to go about it sometimes—telling her again, in a different way, some people just get sad sometimes for a little while, and that’s okay.
Maybe they can both try a little harder to understand each other.
Ruby leans over halfway through the meal to show her a funny video on her phone underneath the table, and Arthur wants to tell her all about the Lego set that he’s working on, and Amber slaps a hand in her peas and laughs so hard about it that it ripples to everybody else too. Her mom catches her smiling and gives one back.
And the rest of it’s still there, in the background. Jade can feel it. But for tonight she doesn’t have that sour pit in her stomach, heavy with the misplaced contempt of feeling something she can’t describe and that the other people around her don’t understand. Ilya winks at her over his plate, Shane’s arm draped over the back of his chair.
She eats what she’s able to of her food, more relieved still when neither of her parents ask her about it or push her to finish it. After everyone else has moved into the living room, she finds her dad lingering in the kitchen, scrubbing at a plate with a furrowed brow.
“Dad?”
His head snaps up, eyes widening a little as he swallows. He sets the plate down. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
Right now, he looks more scared of messing up than he does of her.
She rounds the corner of the island and steps up to him behind the sink, shouldering in between his dripping hands for a hug. He stands slack for all of one second before hurriedly wiping his hands off on the dish rag, and then she’s being crushed into his chest just like she was when she was four.
“Thank you,” she says, muffled into his shirt.
Her dad laughs, thin and relieved, and this, Jade thinks, is another reason.
+
Ilya leans down to spit toothpaste into the sink, swishing water around in his mouth and over his tongue. His ring glints in the mirror right next to the cross on his bare chest, and he touches his fingers to it with a smile as he flips off the light.
The mattress dips to hold his weight when Ilya tosses himself down onto it beside Shane, and he buries a grin into the sheet when Shane’s book gets dog-eared and set on the nightstand in favor of pulling him closer.
He splays himself over Shane’s chest, his t-shirt soft and his fingers gentle in Ilya’s hair. He keeps his face turned upward, cheek to the top of his covered rib cage, because he likes to look at Shane this way: glasses on and relaxed and looking right back at Ilya like he can’t help it. On the next pass of his hand, Ilya turns to kiss the ring on his finger.
Shane’s lips curl upward. “Hayden told me you’d make a good father,” he says.
“Hayden,” Ilya repeats, pretending the words don’t lodge tight in his throat. “Hayden Pike said this.”
With a roll of his eyes, Shane pinches at his shoulder.
“Yes.” His smile softens a little, glancing over Ilya’s face. “I agree with him, you know.”
Ilya turns his face into Shane’s chest and lets the tears burn for a moment. His hand slips back into Ilya’s hair, scratching.
“Today was a lot,” he says. “You doing okay?”
He thinks for a long moment. “I thought it would always be this thing that was private. You helped me not be ashamed of it anymore, but I still didn’t think—I thought it would all be useless to know, if it was only just for me.”
Shane lifts his neck to press his lips against Ilya’s forehead, his nose, the side of his mouth.
“It felt good today. To be helpful. To use it for something good.”
Ilya knows he already has, in other ways. The foundation work, his own progress, the way his ability to feel things deeply has also given him his empathy, compassion, love. But having a broad impact or a long, non-linear plan for his own life is different. He hadn’t been certain anything he said would be helpful to Jade, or even to Pike before that. He was a little scared that he would somehow make it worse.
But to see the look on Jade’s face go from guarded and suspicious to something open and, Ilya thinks, hopeful, had been a feeling he hadn’t expected.
He lifts a hand between them to touch the necklace again, and Shane’s meets him there.
“You’re good, Ilya.”
The bedroom is quiet for a little while, both of them wanting to be close but too tired to do anything but lie in a tangled, warm heap. Eventually, when Ilya thinks he can talk again without his voice trembling, he turns and presses a kiss to the middle of Shane’s chest.
“What other things did Pike say about me.”
Shane laughs, and Ilya leans up to kiss that too. He thinks about himself at twelve and sixteen and twenty-five, about all of the other fleeting, senseless things that had kept him here. That had given him the life he has now.
A lifetime of bargaining. But there had also been good. So much that sometimes Ilya feels like he’s drowning in it. He had told Jade he was proud of her. He is proud of himself tonight, too.
That is how all of this works, sometimes. It ignores logic, strips you down to nothing but bones and arithmetic, and tonight, if Ilya could help only one person, one time, with this one thing—the calculation shows that all of it, everything else, was worth it.
Eyes wet and smile easy, Ilya presses his face up, kisses the curve of Shane’s throat, makes a low-hanging joke about getting started on the baby making if everyone thinks he would be such a good father just so that he can hear Shane’s laugh again. It isn’t distraction anymore. It’s a balance.
He reaches over to turn off the lamp, but for right now, it is bright inside of Ilya’s head.
“Lyublyu tebya,” Ilya murmurs, eyes closing.
Shane hums. “Love you too.”
Ilya smiles and thinks I know.