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The door opens slowly.
To his defense, Ilya barely pushed it, a soft press followed by a long creak as it opened, all the while Ilya’s heart was stuck in his mouth. Logic tells him there’s nothing to worry about; his father is still at work and will be for a while, Alexei is out, so there is no-one to scold him for showing weakness.
Maybe that’s not all he is worried about.
Mama is sat in bed, in her nightgown even though it’s just turned evening. There’s a lit cigarette in her mouth and her hair is falling out of its braid and she looks so, so sad. The kind of sadness that Ilya will only begin to understand in a few years.
The kind of sad that doesn’t entirely disappear when she sees him, isn’t entirely hidden by the smile and the open arms she offers. Ilya takes it anyway.
“There’s my darling boy.” He drops his hockey bag on the floor and runs over, climbs up and over blankets. Mama laughs and holds the cigarette up high so he doesn’t burn himself on it. In years to come, Ilya will think about that laugh for hours and wonder how much of it was real, but now he is nine years old, is pressing his head into his mother’s lap and lapping up affection like a cat.
“How was practice?” she asks.
“It was fine.” He traces patterns on the blankets as Mama runs her hand through his hair, fingers catching on knots and curls. Ilya presses further into the bed, not intentionally. But if he could, he would push and push until nothing existed but him, the bed, and his mother running her hand through his hair.
“Coach said I didn’t play hard enough.”
“Who cares what Coach says.” Mama ruffles his hair, tossing gold strands over his face. “When my baby boy takes home the gold for Russia, I’ll tell him where to go.”
Ilya giggles and Mama squeezes him tight and, until his father comes home, everything is utterly perfect.
She came into his room the night before.
Ilya didn’t know what was happening, still half-asleep when she runs her hand through his hair. The motion pulls him into wakefulness, as gently as it could have with her hand shaking like that.
Something’s wrong he thinks in a quiet panic.
“Mama?”
“Hi darling,” she whispers. “Don’t worry, everything’s okay.”
“What’s going on?” He blinks and his vision comes into half-focus. The pale sliver of moonlight and the harsh orange of the streetlight give just enough light so he can see her face. She looks so peaceful, so calm, so sure of herself. If Ilya was more awake, he might think she was getting better.
She presses a small kiss to his forehead.
“Who loves you most in the whole world?” Ilya blinks. They haven’t played this game in years. There’s a split second where he freezes, gears lagging in his brain. Mama’s trembling hands still run through his hair.
“You do.”
“That’s right, Золотце.” Zohlutsa. Ilya swallows. Another nickname he’s not heard in years.
“Mama,” he asks slowly. “What’s going on?”
Her hands freeze mid-stroke. Her smile falters, and Ilya moves just enough to see the pain in her eyes.
“Nothing, darling boy. You go back to sleep now.” She runs her hand over his curls one more time, a soft, strangled gasp escaping her throat.
“At least you got my hair,” he hears her whisper. Then, she kisses him again and she’s gone.
For some seconds, Ilya just sits there. Part of him thinks he’s dreaming. Another part of him feels cold, deep, bone-chilling cold because something isn’t right here.
With no answers, Ilya does what his mother said and lies back down, forcing himself to breathe slowly and evenly until he drifts off, thinking that the entire episode might be forgotten by tomorrow.
(It’s not. Ilya wakes up the next morning, his mother doesn’t. He will play that moment over for the rest of his life)
Ilya doesn’t recall most of his mother’s funeral.
Truth be told, he spends most of it putting on a show. Straight back, nodding politely, shaking everyone’s hand and thanking them for coming. Telling them “Irina would have loved you being here”. Standing right next to Alexei and hating every minute of it. His tears are put with everything else he’s felt in the past few days, buried deep, deep inside, locked and bolted and curtain pulled over them. Aunts and uncles caress his face and he doesn’t even feel it, that’s how far away he is from his body.
Ilya, Ilyusha, his mother’s little star, is not here. Ilya Rozanov, second son of Grigori, is here instead. And Ilya Rozanov can be stellar when he needs to be.
There’s only one moment when he comes back to his body; when there’s a lull in the conversation and people move on from him and he finds himself sitting down, not alone but not noticed either. Svetlana appears beside him, her hair pulled back into a sensible braid and her black cardigan buttoned up to the collar.
Her hand brushes his, a silent are you okay?
His hand twitches, a silent I have to be.
Her response is a tiny, minute nod. What happens next is even smaller; a quiet, gentle stroke on the back of his head. It feels like a jolt, and Ilya is shoved back into his body and he feels everything. All of it.
His father will roll his eyes and call him weak, but he doesn’t care. He holds Svetlana’s hand for the rest of the day. It was either that or drown.
He thought Mama’s funeral was the worst day of his life.
He was wrong; it’s the day his father marries Polina.
It doesn’t matter, apparently, that Polina is a decade younger than him and gets Ilya and Alexei mixed up all the damn time. Fuck, it doesn’t matter that Mama hasn’t even been dead two years and he’s filling her side of the bed. All he wanted was a perfect wife to stand next to him in photographs and pour tea and now he gets one that does all that and actually smiles. Perhaps she will even bear him more children, strong, normal boys who understand family and duty and don’t look like his old wife.
Fuck, he can’t do this anymore.
Thankfully, this place has alcohol. Buckets and buckets of it.
So he drinks. He drinks until the laughter spills out, until he can’t feel his limbs and all his anger feels like a distant, faded memory.
He drinks until he finds himself leaning over a toilet, vomiting the expensive food into a bowl. Tears are streaming down his face and he doesn’t know what made them.
Heels click on the floor behind him. He doesn’t feel panic or shame; he knows those footsteps as well as his own. Ilya sinks further into the floor and allows himself to choke out a sob.
“I know,” Svetlana whispers. Without her asking, Ilya shuffles to the side and she sits down, as gracefully as she can in a toilet stall. “I know.”
Her hand is careful as she strokes his hair, and he thinks vaguely to himself that she must have removed her rings, and then she keeps going, and his cheek is pressed against the toilet seat.
“I love you,” he tells her. Not the way his father wants him to love her, but just as much. He feels her nod, feels her fingers curl against his scalp as she strokes his hair.
“I know,” she tells him. “You should.”
Ilya laughs, then sobs, then retches again.
Part of him doesn’t want to say it. Some small part of him doesn’t want to tell Shane about his mother, doesn’t want to pull the curtain back and show him just how broken and messed up his life really is.
He says it anyway. He tells Shane he doesn’t want him to think she was weak and Shane’s response is a swift, sure “I don’t”. There’s so much strength in the words, and Ilya is reminded of the skyscrapers in Moscow, and how they outlast every storm and every winter wind that came their way.
For the first time, he begins to think this is real, that Shane can outlast Ilya’s storms.
The feeling terrifies him, like he’s teetering on the edge of those skyscrapers. It also excites him, thrills him, pushes him forward because he wants more. It takes his face in its hands and pulls it away from the dark tunnel he stares down, towards the open window he never looks at for too long.
What terrifies and thrills him even more is when Shane runs his fingers through his hair, following the well-worn paths made by his mother and then Svetlana.
Ilya’s breath hitches in his throat.
Shane is following the roads made by the people Ilya loves more than anything.
… Because Ilya loves him too. Not in the same way, but just as much.
Jesus Christ.
Eventually, it becomes thoughtless. When they are out, and the storm passes and dust settles and Ilya opens his eyes to see Shane is still there. When they are together, publically, and they get a dog, and a house, and married. At some point between the start and where they are now, Shane strokes Ilya’s hair without a second thought. In the car, the locker rooms, on the couch, as he’s running out the door.
Nine times out of ten, Ilya barely notices. Because it’s just one little piece of their lives, and he’s become so used to it that it’s like breathing, and because life is so busy and beautiful these days it fades to the back of his mind.
Occasionally though, he notices. Some small part of him unlocks and everything rushes forward at once and he drowns because it’s all too much in the best possible way.
Mama would love him, like Ilya loves him.
Shane also loves him like Mama loved him.
He drowns, and wonders how he will ever continue with his day now. Then Anya runs up to him with a ball in her mouth, or Shane flops on the couch beside him and asks if he wants take-out for dinner and, yeah, that’s how he continues.