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“Who’s that?” Shane asks after Ilya’s phone buzzes on the counter for probably the tenth time in a row. Ilya, busy sneaking pieces of his sandwich to Anya under the counter, only gives his phone a cursory glance and sees Wyatt’s name on the screen.
“Hazy.”
“He’s still giving you a hard time about the party?”
“Yes, very annoying.” Ilya finally takes a bite of the sandwich, even though he is not very hungry. Anya has been doing a good job of helping him along, but Shane has turned around now, done with loading the dishwasher, and he doesn’t love how often Ilya sneaks her extra food. Although Ilya has definitely caught him doing the same once or twice.
Also, Shane made the sandwich for him, and he doesn’t want his husband to feel unappreciated.
“You love it, though,” Shane points out, amusement shining in his eyes.
Ilya generally does. He likes the Centaurs—a lot—and he doesn’t take for granted that they appreciate him as a captain and want to be around him outside of hockey. He’s just been in a weird mood about his approaching birthday, which is tomorrow, and which Ilya had decided to spend with Shane at the cottage—made possible by the Centaurs getting knocked out early from the playoffs. It meant postposting a party that the team had elected to throw him to the next weekend. He’s being teased about it by the team—not meanly—but it just reminds him that the celebration for this birthday is going to get dragged out past the actual day, forcing him to sit on these feelings for longer than he wants to.
He just hasn’t been in the mood to think about his birthday this year.
“It is very hard to be this likeable,” Ilya says gravely, attempting to distract himself from his dark thoughts. “Lots of weight on my shoulders.”
“The burden must be unimaginable.”
“Hmm, that is why my shoulders are so big.”
Shane roves his eyes appreciatively over Ilya, which makes Ilya smile as he polishes off the sandwich.
“They are just being idiots, anyway,” Ilya mutters, stroking a hand over Anya’s soft fur when she rests her head on his thigh, her sweet eyes begging him for more. Shane is giving him his serious face when he looks back up; Ilya feels a swoop in his stomach, the fear that he hasn’t hidden his conflicted mood well enough.
“So you’re good with spending your birthday here?” Shane asks. His tone is neutral, but Ilya suddenly feels sick at the thought that he might have made Shane feel like he doesn’t want to be here. He loves Shane so much, and he loves the cottage. He wouldn’t want to spend a birthday any other way. He doesn’t care about having a party; at the end of the day, he just wants to be with the people he loves.
It’s just—
“Yes, Shane, of course.” It comes out honest, which Ilya is very grateful for, and Shane visibly relaxes, walking around the counter to pull Ilya into a hug.
“You’ve gotten boring like me. I must’ve rubbed off you.”
Ilya waggles his eyebrows in a suggestive way, which makes Shane nudge him with a scoff. Anya sniffs happily at Shane before getting down from her perch on Ilya and padding around their intertwined bodies curiously.
“I like boring,” Ilya says. “I like your boring.”
Shane presses a kiss into his curls. “Mh, I know.”
*
The thing is—
The thing is, Ilya reflects, playing with the cross hanging from his neck, that she should be here.
Ilya feels the hole of her absence like a gaping wound. On his birthdays that wound pulses sharp and painful, especially now that he has a family that wants to celebrate the day with him. Birthdays after her death, in his father’s house, were quiet affairs, not worthy of too much fuss. In his teen years, they were full of Svetlana and Sasha, of clubs and drinking and sneaking off to bathrooms. Not much different from his time in Boston, he supposes.
Now he has Shane, and Yuna and David, and the Centaurs, and it makes him so happy and so incredibly nauseous at the same time. Here he is, with a whole family and team that cares about him, and still, he wants more, like he always does. The pit of insatiable desire at the core of him is never satisfied.
He wishes for the impossible.
He used to just bear through the hurt. A wound he’s grown used to living with. But this year—
He has tried not to think about it too much, but he has been carrying the awareness of it in every bone of his body as his birthday ticks closer and closer. It’s a pain too hard to face, and yet not facing it is leaving him in a strange limbo.
He is older than she will ever be, now.
*
It had been Mama who made their birthdays special. Sure, the parties with his friends were nice, and Ilya can recall the excitement and the anticipation of it. But what has stuck with him through the years is how Mama used to bake their birthday pies. Ilya remembers being very young and staring up at her in the kitchen while she measured out the ingredients, fascinated with the process. It made her happy, he thinks. She used to swipe flour on his nose, smiling softly at him.
Ilya can’t remember what those pies tasted like, but he remembers the happiness.
*
Ilya takes care of dinner, figuring it will be good to focus on doing something material. They’d spent the afternoon on the couch, alternating between napping, fucking and playing videogames, which is usually what they do when they’re at the cottage. Now Shane is playing with Anya on the deck, and Ilya is staring at the oven with their food inside, wondering when this weight is going to lift from his chest. He cannot possibly spend the rest of this year like this. He cannot spend the rest of his years like this.
He had, maybe childishly, hoped that the incandescent happiness tied to all his memories of the cottage would knock this feeling out of him. He had hoped wrong.
He needs to talk to Galina, probably. He will. To Shane too. He just doesn’t want to bring the mood down on his birthday. He wants to get through the celebrations, give himself time to untangle the complicated knots of this, before exposing this particular hurt to the outside.
He’s distracted by a particularly loud bark; when he glances outside he sees Anya standing on her back legs, her paws resting on Shane’s belly as Shane crouches down to pet her head. Her tail is wiggling so hard it looks like a blur, and Shane is laughing fondly at her. Ilya, for a moment, thinks that he must be dreaming, that this can’t be his life.
Without even thinking about it he walks out on the deck and plasters himself to Shane’s back, pressing their bodies together. Anya barks again and then jumps down, going in search of her toys.
“Dinner ready?” Shane asks, melting into him.
“Almost,” Ilya replies, hiding his face in the crook of Shane’s neck. “You are distracting me.”
“I wasn’t doing anything!”
“You were being a good dad to Anya, is distracting.”
“You’re very easily distracted then.”
“True, you have discovered my one flaw.”
“The great Ilya Rozanov admits he has flaws?”
Ilya pinches Shane’s ass, making him yelp. “You’re supposed to think I am perfect,” he says, and Shane laughs. “What? Is husband’s duty.”
“You are perfect for me.” Shane turns around in his arms and pecks Ilya on the lips, and Ilya can’t help but chase his mouth, turning the brief peck into a deep, heated kiss. It is very easy to get lost in kissing Shane. Everything else, every bad mood and sadness and doubt fades into the background for a blissful moment.
“You’re gonna burn dinner again,” Shane mumbles against his mouth, not sounding very convinced.
“You are never going to let me forget about that, are you?”
Shane pulls away and grins at him. “Never.”
The oven, like the asshole that it is, beeps, and Shane looks at him with satisfaction that should usually be reserved for winning a game. Ilya sighs, the moment broken, as Shane drags both of them inside.
*
Ilya has this memory of her, and in the long years after, he convinced himself it must have been on her last birthday before her death. He doesn’t know if that’s true; one of the pitfalls of memory. She had bent over her cake, the candles casting her face in distorted shadows, his father’s hand on her shoulder. Her long, blonde hair had come close to grazing the flames.
He and Alexei had clapped enthusiastically when she blew out the candles. He had expected her to smile at them, but her face had stayed blank, her eyes distant. Only his father shaking her had forced a smile onto her face, as she had been woken up from a dream; or maybe been plunged into a nightmare.
*
Ilya wakes up with a soft gasp sticking to his throat. It takes a long, disorienting moment to figure out where he is—their bedroom, their house, Shane—and when he does he desperately wants to crawl back into the dream.
The weight of two decades of loss sits heavy on his chest. Ilya stares at the ceiling in the darkness, trying to breathe through it, but the movements of his chest feel brittle. Shane is snoring softly next to him, fingers wrapped around Ilya’s bare bicep. They always sleep like this: keeping at least one point of contact, even when they drift apart.
Ilya’s breaths are loud in his own ears. He gets up in clumsy, disconnected movements, making an effort to be quiet as he slips out of the room, tremors running through him. The dream sticks to him stubbornly. It couldn’t have been one of those dreams that disappear upon waking to spare him, no, this one lingers. He can hear the echo of his mother’s voice in his ears.
Ilya isn’t sure if it’s accurate or if he made it up. He doesn’t remember what his mother sounded like anymore. Too many years between then and now; the memory lost to the relentless passage of time.
He’s angry, all of a sudden. Furious. He keels over the back of the couch, fingers digging into the soft fabric. He wants to tear it apart with bare hands, and he has to make an effort to breathe through the animal instinct. It wouldn’t be fair: his anger has no place here, in this safe haven he and Shane have made for themselves, and the couch didn’t do anything to him.
The sudden surge passes, eventually, but it leaves Ilya feeling bereft. His eyes sting with fresh tears; when he scrubs a hand over his face he finds his cheeks already wet. He needs a fucking cigarette.
He rummages through the drawers in the kitchen until he finds his “hidden” stash—hidden is a generous word, because he’s sure Shane is well-aware that it’s there and has been generously holding back from saying anything about it. He stumbles on the deck, collapsing on one of the wooden chairs. The night is quiet, and the summer heat has dissipated into a chilly breeze that makes goosebumps rise on Ilya’s bare torso.
As the smoke fills his lungs. Ilya closes his eyes and touches the cross; grief sits heavy in his chest. The dreams of his mom and Shane never meeting, his mother silent and unreachable, were better. He used to think them cruel, but at least they were realistic: Irina Rozanova and Shane Hollander are never going to know each other. He had no idea his brain was capable of a far greater cruelty, of showing him an universe where they do meet, where Ilya gets to have everything he ever wanted.
The metal of the cross is warm from his body heat. Ilya blows out smoke, looks up at the sky. “Mama,” he whispers in Russian. “Where are you?”
In the dream she looked like Ilya remembers her, frozen in the time of Ilya’s childhood. He cannot imagine her any other way. But she would be older now: she would have wrinkles, grey hair, aches in her body. The marks of a life lived. The marks that Ilya is going to have because he survived it, and his mother did not.
It’s so fucking unfair.
“Ilya?”
Shane pads to his side quietly, his voice sleep-rough. His hair is messy and flat on one side from sleeping on it. Ilya loves him so fucking much and it’s not fair.
“You weren’t in bed.” Shane frowns at the cigarette, but he must catch something in Ilya’s face. Maybe he’s still crying, he doesn’t know. “Hey. You okay?”
Ilya nods, because he’s a stubborn asshole and despite the therapy, it’s always easier to retreat back into himself, far easier than gutting himself open. But Shane knows him, and Shane isn’t fooled anymore, never has been much.
“Okay,” Shane says, his tone doubtful, and settles next to him on the other chair, close enough that their knees knock together. Unlike Ilya, he grabbed a hoodie before venturing out.
“You should go back to sleep,” Ilya says after a couple of pulls. He makes sure to blow the smoke away from Shane.
“Only if you come with me,” Shane replies.
“Ah, manipulation, Hollander. So mean,” Ilya jokes weakly. Shane smiles indulgently, settling a hand on Ilya’s thigh, his thumb stroking over the skin back and forth, the touch warm and familiar.
“Is it working?”
“Not yet, but you can keep trying. Is very sexy.”
It’s so natural to do this with Shane, even when it shouldn’t be. It eases the heaviness a bit, allows Ilya to breathe, and he feels so guilty for it. Guilty for living. For wanting to live. For making it further than her.
He’s older than she ever was, now, and it’s not going to stop. He’s going to keep getting older and grow away from her, and it feels like such a betrayal. She wouldn’t agree; she would’ve wanted him to live, of course she would have.
But still.
What a lousy way to spend a birthday. Maybe he should’ve just gone with the party and done away with the cottage getaway, because now Shane is stuck here with his sorry, sad ass.
“Ilya, milyi.” Shane draws him out of his thoughts. Ilya glances at him and his eyes are so soft and open, and no, Shane loves him. Shane would stick with him through anything; he’s proven it time and time again. If Ilya can trust in anything, it is in the devotion Shane has for him.
Ilya puts the cigarette out, slips the butt in his pocket to dispose of later. “I am happy to be here,” Ilya declares out of nowhere.
“I know.”
Ilya nods, swallows. He thinks back to years ago when he’d opened up to Shane about his mom in this very place, how scary it had been, and the relief he’d felt afterwards.
“I am older than her,” he whispers. Shane’s face morphs with understanding, and then sadness.
“Oh,” he breathes out.
“And I had this dream.” Ilya’s throat clicks around the lump in it.
“A nightmare?”
“No, it was a very happy dream. She was here, you were here, and your family too. It was too much, I guess.” Irina had looked so content in the dream, at their dinner table in the cottage surrounded by the family Ilya married into. It hurts now to think of her in that cold, lonely house and in that cold, lonely grave.
Shane is up from his chair a few seconds later, and Ilya finds himself with two-hundred pounds of hockey player in his lap, wrapping himself around him. The weight of him is such a relief it almost makes Ilya burst into tears like a desperate child. He hugs Shane close, his head buried in his chest.
“I wish she was here, too. I’m so sorry she isn’t,” Shane tells him, fingers carding through Ilya’s hair.
Ilya manages to force the tears back, but his breaths get shaky for a few minutes. He lets the pain pass through him, lets Shane hold him and pet his hair.
“Very sad start for my birthday,” he comments after a while.
“I don’t care about that, Ilya. Well, I care that you’re sad.” Shane pulls back to stare at him with his determined captain face. “But I don’t care if you want to spend your birthday in bed, or thinking about your mom, or just pretending it’s not your birthday. Do you want me to call my parents and tell them to not come over today? They’ll understand—”
“No!” Ilya bursts out, squeezing Shane’s waist. “No, lyubimy.” He means it, even though he surprises himself. He could spend the day being sad and thinking about the past. But Ilya decides that he is going to give himself this moment to be sad, to think of his mama, and then he is going to enjoy the day with his husband and his family, and he is going to do it in honor of Irina. He can’t only give her his sadness. She deserves his happiness too.
“I want to have dinner with your parents. And I want to blow the candles on the birthday cake, and maybe I want to blow you too before that.”
“Romantic. How do you know we got you a cake?” Shane teases with a soft smile.
“Because you all love me very much, and also it’s my birthday and there has to be cake on my birthday. I know this much about North American traditions.”
Shane rolls his eyes for show. “Do Russians not get birthday cakes?”
“No, we are too tough for those.”
Shane laughs. “I love you. And we got you the biggest birthday cake we could find.”
“Okay.” Ilya pecks Shane on the lips.
Shane kisses him back, a chaste one for their standards, before pulling back with a thoughtful look on his face. “I was thinking…”
“As usual.”
“Shut up. We could…I don’t know, maybe we could do something together every year to celebrate her birthday.” Shane is considering him carefully.
In Russia, Ilya used to visit her grave for her birthday, until he couldn’t anymore. It’s very likely he will never be able to again, and that is his biggest regret about giving Russia up.
He thinks of her every year on her birthday, sends up a prayer in case she can hear him, even though he doesn’t really believe in religion. But she did, so he does it. It would be nice though—to do something for her with Shane.
“Yes.” Ilya’s voice is rough. “Yes, she deserves that.”
“You deserve it, too.”
Ilya lets the words settle inside of him, cradling them close. They stay out there until both of them are too chilled to stand it anymore; they stumble back inside, collapsing on the couch instead of going back to bed, even though Ilya insists Shane should go back to sleep. The protest is half-hearted though, and soon enough Ilya is lying on his back, Shane’s head on his chest as he watches the sun start to rise outside through the big windows.
“Happy birthday,” Shane whispers after a long, comfortable silence, pressing a kiss to Ilya’s pec.
Ilya pets Shane’s hair as a thank you. He’s very glad to have this. Very, very glad. Shane, adorably, falls asleep on him soon after, his steady breaths warming the crook of Ilya’s neck. Ilya, wide awake, watches the sun rise. I love you, mama. I miss you. The sunlight spills over the lake, painting the world golden.