Chapter Text
It’s the Pike’s summer barbecue. The vibe is different to the ones Bood throws: Ilya’s pretty sure he and Shane are the only couple in attendance who aren’t parents. The lawn is a mess of discarded toys and shrieking kids, chasing each other around generally causing havoc. All the adults seem content to let them, clustering around the drinks table where they’re safe from catching a ball to the face or tripping over a barbie doll.
Only Amber Pike seems slightly overwhelmed by it. Ilya is sitting on the outdoor sofa chatting to Jackie and working his way through a third plate of food when she sidles over, face drawn as if something's bothering her.
“You okay, baby?”
Amber nods, not making eye contact. At eight years old, Ilya finds her the most complicated of the Pike children: she’s mature, but sensitive, inclined towards elaborate daydreams that everyone has learned to treat with respect.
“Her teacher said she might be on the spectrum” Jackie had mentioned over dinner once- “She’s not particularly social. Doesn’t seem to notice other kids are there half the time.”
Ilya had to ask what ‘the spectrum’ meant, and made a mental note to google Autism after Hayden explained.
Now, she hides her face in her mothers hair, sliding on to her lap so that Jackie has to quickly put down her wine glass to accommodate her.
“She’s not playing properly” Amber mumbles, looking darkly over to where Tabitha, the daughter of one of the book group moms, is practicing handstands on the grass.
Jackie sighs, looking like she regrets suggesting that the girls ‘make friends’ while the adults catch up. It makes Ilya smile, his eyes seeking out Shane, who is standing in a small knot of people on the other side of the patio. Somebody must be telling a joke, because everyone laughs, except Ilya notices Shane’s brow furrow for an almost imperceptible half-second before copying everyone else.
“My mom always used to introduce me to the only other person my age whenever we went anywhere. Right up until I was like, fifteen. It was so embarrassing. I never knew what she wanted me to say to them.”
He’s still looking at Shane, hoping to catch his attention just for the sake of it. Is it possible to miss someone you spoke to five minutes ago? Ilya thinks he’s managed it.
He’s about to go over there when Amber speaks.
“Do you live here because you’re gay?”
He’s sitting with Jackie, her friend Shauna, and a middle aged neighbour Ilya can’t remember the name of. The question can only be directed at him.
“Amber,” Jackie admonishes. Ilya just laughs.
“I am not gay. My husband is gay. Who has been telling you this?”
Amber gives him a puzzled look, then seems to dismiss it and waits for her question to be answered properly. Ilya tries again.
“Do you mean why I live here and not in Russia?”
She nods. Shauna looks slightly uncomfortable, but Ilya doesn’t see what’s embarrassing about it. She’s just curious, and he’s always appreciated blunt people: there aren’t enough of them in Canada.
“Not really. I moved to America to work, and then I moved to Ottawa because of Shane. I’d have no reason to go back now, even if I wanted to.”
Jackie shoots him a small, fond smile.
“What do you know about Russia? Have you been watching the news?”
This is not his favourite topic of conversation, but it’s come up more frequently in the last couple of years. He tries not to be selfish about it, reminding himself that it should be talked about, that as a wealthy Russian with citizenship in another country, he is not the victim here. But “this must be an interesting time to be Russian” turns into “what do you think about the war?” Turns into “do you still have friends over there? What about your family? What do they think about it?” And suddenly Ilya is an ambassador for the place he barely discusses with anyone except Shane, Svetlana and his therapist.
But Amber just shakes her head.
“TikTok. And Wikipedia.”
“When have you been on TikTok?” Jackie looks horrified, “I’ve already lost two kids to that stupid app. You know Ruby wants to be an influencer now?”
Shauna is shaking her head in sympathy.
“Don’t even get me started. I can barely understand what Theo’s saying at this point. I need a translator for every other word. He made a video of me asking him what 67 meant. My boss saw it, Jack.”
Everyone is laughing, and Ilya senses that the conversation is moving along, but then Amber speaks again, clearly not finished with him.
“It says that it’s illegal to be gay in Russia. So would you be arrested if you went there?”
“Shh, amber” Jackie shoots him an apologetic look, “Why don’t you go and get your pens and do some drawing? I put the ice cream on the counter to defrost, it’ll be ready by now if you want to get yourself some.”
Amber isn’t falling for it. She’s still looking at him expectantly, and once again, he’s reminded vaguely of Shane: the forthright determination to get to the bottom of something, to get it laid in plain english so he can figure out exactly what to do about it.
“It’s not illegal, exactly. But there are a lot of laws about ‘promoting’ it, which means if anybody knows or thinks someone is gay, the government can make life very hard for them. Which can include being arrested. I am well known, I am married to a man- so yes, if I went back, I could go to prison. But I live here now” he shrugs, as if it's as simple as that.
“Same as any crime. Can’t do anything about it unless they catch the person first.”
Amber considers his words seriously for a moment.
“That’s so stupid.” She jumps up suddenly, flicking her bangs away from her face and runs inside the house without another word.
Jackie exhales.
“Sorry." She scrunches her nose, pulling the face people make when they don't know if something's funny-awkward or sad-awkward. "But thank you. For explaining it to her like that. She’s a nightmare when she doesn’t get a straight answer.”
“I don’t mind,” Ilya replies honestly. “She’s clever. Perceptive. Maybe she will be a journalist one day.”
“Better than a fucking influencer” Jackie answers grimly, returning to her glass of wine and taking a long drink.
They’re chatting about other things when Shane comes over. It seems he’s been drinking too, because there’s a flush of pink in his cheeks, and when he sits beside Ilya he rests his head on his shoulder. Ilya puts an arm around him. Between Russia and Shane, the choice is obvious.
“You have to drive. I was trying to keep up with Hayden” he giggles, and Ilya plants a brief kiss on the top of his head.
“Big mistake.”
They look over to where Hayden is kicking a ball around with some of the kids, balancing a bottle of beer in one hand and getting slightly more competitive than the situation calls for.
“Probably. That is one thing he is better at than you.”
Conversation drifts through the garden, but they both sit in silence for a minute, not doing much of anything except enjoying one another's presence.
Ilya feels a tap on the shoulder that Shane isn’t occupying. It’s Amber, holding paper and pens in one hand and a small bowl of ice cream in the other, extending it towards him.
“Is this for me?”
“Why don’t I get some?” The neighbour interjects. Amber looks at him like he’s stupid.
“Because it’s not against the rules to be gay where you’re from.” She drops the bowl in his lap and walks off again.
Shane looks amused.
“That’s nice of her,” he says plainly.
“Do you want some?”
“No thank you” Shane’s voice turns serious, “you heard what she said. It’s only for you.”
He’s not going to argue with that.
Hayden is absolutely destroying these kids at hide and seek. Seriously, who decides to hide under the table? That’s the first place anyone would think to look. Child's play, his brain supplies, then he laughs out loud when he remembers that he is literally playing a game for children. Still, it’s a technicality. No doubt he’d be dominating them in a game for adults as well.
“Hey sweetie” He walks over to where Amber is sitting alone, head bent in concentration over a sketchpad. “Have you seen Arthur? I’ve caught everyone else.”
“If you can’t find him, that means he’s won,” she says, not looking up. “Anyway, I’m not playing.”
“Right.” He looks over to where Jackie is standing, sobering a little at the thought of explaining to her that their youngest is currently MIA.
“What are you drawing?”
“Not drawing dad,” she flashes the page at him, and he catches a few words he didn’t even think she knew, let alone how to spell.
“I’m writing a letter to Putin.”
“I- what?” He wonders if he’s misheard.
“He’s the President of Russia.”
“I know who Putin is, Amber.”
“Then why did you say ‘what’?”
She’s giving the distinct impression of someone who has better things to do than be having this conversation. He should really find Arthur. Can kids get stuck inside washing machines, or does that only happen to cats?
“I don’t know, sweetie. It looks good though. I’ll find you some stamps later.”
She gives him a real smile then, and leans down to stroke her hair.
“Tell me if you see Arthur, okay? The game’s over. I need to tell him he’s won.”
***
“She did what?”
They’re sitting at his parents' kitchen table, eating the good cheese David and Yuna had brought back from their vacation to France. Discussion had turned to Barnier’s recent election, then to politics in Europe in general. Shane was mostly asking questions: he tried to keep up with the news cycle out of a general sense of responsibility, but it rarely extended beyond Canada and (regretfully) the US.
He could, however, contribute what Hayden had told him over text a few days ago.
“A letter to Putin?” David was smiling-
“Like Letter to Brezhnev?"
“What?” Shane said, at the same time Ilya said “Brezhnev?-”
“Leonid Brezhnev?”
“It’s a movie,” David explained, “British. From the 80s, before your time. Why was Amber writing a letter to Putin?”
“She was asking me questions about it. About the law and gay people and things like that. I guess she has a strong sense of justice.”
“Hayden said she posted it and everything.” Shane frowned at his husband.
“Do you think he’ll get it?”
“I doubt it, sweetheart,” his mom says fondly, but David raises his eyebrows, pouring her some more wine-
“You never know” he gestures the bottle at Shane and Ilya. Ilya accepts but Shane shakes his head: the miniscule hangover after the Pike’s barbecue had been his first in ages, but it had been enough to remind him why he doesn’t usually drink.
“My poor husband!” Ilya had wrapped him up in the duvet and attacked him with kisses-
“He is so ill from three beers! I will have to keep him in bed all day and look after him.”
“In the movie, a girl from Liverpool falls in love with a Russian sailor. She writes to Brezhnev asking to emigrate there so they can be together.”
“Romantic,” Ilya rests a hand on Shane’s knee and takes another bite of Saint-Nectare. He makes a mental note to try and find it at the store next time.
“Probably wouldn’t work out for us though.”
“You could say it already has. Kind of. If you look at it the other way round.”
The decision to get married hadn’t been about citizenship, but it certainly hadn’t hurt the process. They had celebrated Ilya’s official Canadian-ness with poutine, although Shane hadn’t been able to stomach very much of it. The eating thing (as he still privately referred to it, even though the psychologist he saw twice a month pushed him to describe it as orthorexia) was mostly under control these days. But he was pretty sure his palate was still recovering, because that amount of salt and fat still grossed him out too much to be enjoyable. Thankfully, Ilya hadn’t been pushy about it, instead eating both portions and declaring that that made him better at being Canadian than Shane. That had turned into arguing, which had turned in to fucking, as was so often the way.
After cleaning away the plates, David suggested they watch the movie.
The main character spoke in a thick Scouse accent that made Ilya immediately ask for subtitles. She wasn’t really anything like Shane, at first. She lived at home with her parents, jobless and broke, hanging out in smoke filled pubs on a Friday night just for want of something to do.
But she also seemed lonely, and desperate, in a quiet way. Had he been like that when he first met Ilya? Not really. He wasn’t sure if he had known what he was except for a Hockey player. They had both been so young, after all.
Maybe in the times that came after, then: when he had thought Ilya wanted out of such a painful, complicated situation. When he had convinced himself he wanted that too.
Lonely and desperate. Maybe that was kind of accurate.
The couple in the movie even spent their first night together in a hotel room- that made him reach out and hold Ilya’s hand as if he might be sucked into the television, back into the time when they had to do that too.
It was something he had a nightmare about, once. His husband looking at him like he didn’t recognise him, pulling away when he tried to get close.
“What are you doing, Hollander? What do you want from me?”
In real life, Ilya is stroking his knuckles absent mindedly.
“You said this has a happy ending, right?” He blurts out. David looks at him curiously.
“That’s right.”
Of course it does. That’s the implication, anyway. But when she first writes the letter asking Brezhnev to let her go with her lover to Russia, most people are horrified. Her parents tell her she’s too young and stupid to know what she wants. There’s a scene where she’s sat down by some official and warned about the decision she’s making. The reality of it. The fact that if she goes, she won’t be able to come back.
He thinks of himself, of commissioner Crowell’s office. Then, more potently, of Ilya.
Ilya, who couldn’t even tell what few people he still had in Moscow what he was going to do. Who simply had to leave one day and never return, without even the small comfort of a proper goodbye.
He pulls his hand away so that he can wrap his arms around him, and Ilya goes down silently, putting his full weight against Shane.
***
“That was better than I remember, actually” Yuna says when the movie ends.
“What did you boys think?”
“I liked it” Shane can feel the reverberation of the words from where his hands are lying on his husband's chest. Then, as if he’s been listening to Shane’s thoughts-
“I liked her friend. I am probably more like her than the sailor.”
“That makes sense,” David chuckles, “What about you, Shane?”
“I loved it,” he says. It comes out serious and solemn, and he half expects Ilya to tease him for it. Instead, he kisses his hand and reaches up to touch it lightly on Shane’s cheek.
“You two are so funny sometimes,” his mom says, standing up and collecting their empty mugs from the table. She and David filter through to the kitchen for more coffee, leaving them alone on the couch.
“Funny” Shane hears himself mumble, seemingly to no one in particular. But it makes Ilya tilt his head back to look at him.
“Funny” he repeats, like it means something only they understand.
Funny how they found each other. Funny how it all worked out, in the end. Like something out of a movie.
Shane leans down, and kisses him.