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The hit was clean and Ilya deserved it. He had been chirping at Lehman all game after all.
Still it was never fun coming to on the ice with bright lights above screaming down into his eyes. Or was that people screaming? Oh no, they were just talking. Why were they being so loud though? Was it to talk over the ringing in his ears? Wait, were they talking to him? Was he supposed to answer?
“Ya v poryadke.” He mumbled at them, trying to wave them away. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d ever taken a tumble during a game, jeez.
“What did he say?” A medic leaned in closer, far too into Ilya’s personal space as he could smell the man’s aftershave. Something spicy. Not bad actually. He should ask him what it was. “What did you say?” Right, he was supposed to answer.
He opened his mouth to repeat himself more clearly, but belatedly registered that the question had been in English.
“I’m-” He froze. What was the rest of it? He knew this, it was literally one of the earliest things he learned. Hello, what is your name, my name is, how are you, I am…
“Khorosho.” He finished, absently, thinking out loud. Maybe if he put the word he meant out there, someone would catch on. Or it would be close to the English word and they would get it. Or on the way out of his mouth his brain would catch up and automatically change it for him.
Evidently not, based on the fuzzy frown the medic gave him.
“What language is that?” He asked one of the other medics.
“Dude, are you serious?” Another snapped impatiently. “He’s Russian.”
“I don’t follow the players! How should I know! I care about the medical side.” The man grumbled back. “Is there anyone who can translate?”
There was a mess of hands fumbling around him, and Ilya distantly thought this would be nice if it was an orgy instead of people grabbing at his head and shit.
“No other Russians on the team this year.” Someone shrugged as they strapped him to a backboard.
More questions were being lobbed his way but it was a garbled mess at this point, as much as the lights above him were and Ilya only vaguely registered the first medic glancing down at him and saying “That must be lonely”.
Further questions at the hospital, today was just a constant stream of questions, he thought. It was like a nightmare where he was in an endless press conference where he was naked and being criticized for not answering fast enough and also his third grade teacher was there for some reason.
At some point he registered that his jersey and pads had, in fact, been removed and in a confused panic, he tried to sit up to see if his third grade teacher was indeed there. There was some comment about pupils and he seemed to remember that that meant students so maybe she was?
They told him to keep his eyes open, don’t fall asleep. Okay so not a nightmare. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. His own answers weren’t making it out right though. He knew they wanted to know things but he couldn’t remember how to say of it right. All he could think over and over again was “My name is”, but surely they knew his name. It was on his jersey, after all.
Oh but the jersey was gone. So maybe the new people didn’t know his name. He didn’t like to assume he was so famous everyone would recognize his face.
The phone they brought looked strange; it made him think he was seeing double. To his surprise, one receiver was held to his ear and a voice with a thick northern accent but unmistakably Russian began speaking. He was too shocked by the switch in language initially to answer, and could feel the growing impatience on the part of both the nurse before him and the translator on the other end of the line. How was he failing this even in his own language?
His father’s rapid-fire questions barked at him when he came home from school with bad marks swam to the surface, along with the old confusion of not knowing whether he was meant to answer or if answering would earn him a slap for talking back.
His throat was so tight, he wondered if he had been hit in the neck. He had heard of people’s windpipes collapsing from bad blows to the neck before, and knew that was incredibly dangerous. Was that happening now? Was he actually suffocating? Was that why none of the words could make it out of him right?
A mass of curly hair appeared at his bedside suddenly, not there one moment and there the next.
“Sveta.” He breathed, relieved both by the sight of his best friend as well as the easy exhale that came with her. She would know what to say and do here.
And indeed she did apparently as whatever she said to the nurse, made her chuckle and put away the wretched phone. The angry furrow between her brows smoothed as Sveta took over translating the questions and Ilya was able to sink back against the pillows, answering that no, his head didn’t hurt but his shoulder was starting to. Yes, he remembered what happened, he was being a dick to Lehman and got what was coming to him. No, he wasn’t nauseous, but he wouldn’t exactly want a steak dinner just now, and so on.
Then the nurse asked something that Sveta didn’t translate, instead answering this one herself, which was rather rude, Ilya thought. He tried to follow the question and caught some words like “lose” and “he” and “usually”. Did she think he was a bad hockey player? Ilya wondered. He puzzled over the muddled conversation as she left and finally asked Sveta about it.
Sveta snorted a laugh in response.
“No, dumbass.” She replied in Russian. “She wanted to know if you usually struggled with English.”
“No!” Ilya insisted, affronted. “I speak it all the time, with teammates, my coach, the guy at the coffeeshop I go to…”
“I know, Ilyusha, I know.” Sveta smoothed back some of his hair. “They only asked because that might be a sign of a concussion. I told her sometimes it’s just a lot at once and you have a hard time keeping up.”
“You told them I’m slow.” Ilya scoffed.
“Not slow.” She flicked his temple. “Just overwhelmed. It’s good that you mentioned your shoulder though. They didn’t realize anything was wrong with that, so they’re going to x-ray it soon.”
Ilya thought this over, the pain continuing to bloom across his collarbone and down his upper arm, bringing an odd sort of clarity finally.
“Thank you for coming.” He said at last.
“You know I’m your emergency contact, right?” Sveta raised an eyebrow. “It’s my job to show up when you’re hurt.”
“But what if I was in a different city?” Ilya suddenly asked, a growing horror spreading with the pain. “If this was an away game in L.A. or something? Who would have translated for me?”
Sveta didn’t get a chance to answer as the nurse returned but as he lay still as possible for the x-ray, Ilya stared at the tile ceiling above him, thinking about all the ways the night could have gone wrong if this hadn’t been a home game.
Moving across an ocean at seventeen to a country where his grasp of the language still felt tenuous had not seemed so scary at the time, maybe in part because of the excitement of what he was moving toward, or maybe because of the brash confidence of youth. He was only now realizing how lucky he had gotten all these years that there had not been some major incident that required better language skills.
Once it was established that his collarbone was fractured and he would not be playing for the next several weeks at least, Ilya silently vowed he would spend that time working on his English.
He would not let people think he was so bad at it he was concussed again.
–
The New Yorker had been a constant presence on newsstands since arriving in the U.S. and Ilya had always ignored it, much as he had most magazines. It was always a certain kind of person buying New Yorkers, the kind who carried a briefcase and wore glasses, but not the sexy kind. He had gotten the impression it was for academic types, or perhaps lawyers? People who knew what they were talking about.
Ilya did not know what he was talking about and worse, the people around him sometimes did not know what he was talking about either. The injury in February had highlighted that rather starkly in a way that scared him. If he was going to get better at communicating, maybe that was a good place to start?
It didn’t hurt that this week’s issue had friendly, cute drawings of dogs all over the cover. The style could have been drawn by a child, happily scribbling with a crayon next to the serious academic-type editor, he imagined. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He purchased a copy, ignoring the odd look the man gave him along with his change, and proceeded to take a seat on a park bench, determined to give it a shot.
He flipped through, not particularly interested in starting from the beginning necessarily. Ilya never had been especially orderly. When a page with a drawing of a boxer sitting at a computer caught his eye, he paused long enough to see the title. “Face time”, he read, and was amused at the similarity to “face off”. He knew what a face off was in hockey, was a face time maybe some equivalent in boxing? Emboldened by the hopeful common ground, he decided to start.
Okay so by the third word he was lost. That was okay. He pulled out his phone and used the translation app he always leaned on, carefully typing out each letter, worried that if he misspelled it he would get a completely different word.
“Лицемер”, it helpfully supplied.
Okay, got it.
A few words later he pulled the app up again and typed in “flung”.
Another few words then “telecommuting”. Oh. The computer in the drawing made more sense now. The boxer less so.
“деморализовать” gave him pause, as he tried to fit it into the rest of the sentence, stumbling over the grammar of it until it occurred to him to type in not just the single word but the full sentence. By the time he untangled that sentence, he had lost the thread of what was being said in the paragraph.
He sighed and closed the magazine. He needed a pen if he was going to do this, so he could go through and underline the bits he didn’t understand and write out the translations like he used to do back in school.
Ugh.
So it was that hours later, he was sitting at his kitchen island, reading over his scribbled notes in the tiny, insufficient margins, he tried to piece together what the hell he just read.
As far as he could tell, it was an article about how there was debate over whether people should be allowed to work from home, or if they should have to go to an office to do their work, what was better for the company. As someone who had never worked in an office and could not imagine ever doing so in his life, Ilya found he simply could not even begin to form an opinion on this. No wonder the Briefcase People were the ones who bought these magazines. Clearly it was written for them.
He stared dejectedly at the little drawing of a boxer in the corner, wondering if he had mistranslated something somewhere or if there was a cultural joke he was missing. He still didn’t understand what that had to do with the article and was beginning to suspect there would be nothing about dogs in this magazine either despite the inviting canine cover.
He closed the magazine with a sigh and lay his head on its glossy cover. It was okay, he tried to console himself. He would find some other way to get better at this that was less boring.
If only he could think of how.
–
It’s the sort of day when the heat settles over everything like a thick blanket, stifling and inescapable. Even the wildlife seems to be coming to a still, everything slowing down like molasses, the day drawn out by the sun’s long, slow trek across the sky. Most things are napping or hiding in the shade, except for the jewel-toned creatures Ilya has only recently learned the name of in English.
Ilya watches one flit between the reeds growing by the edge of the pier. Such a busy little creature. He wonders if it’s drawn by the lemonade Shane made for him. Do dragonflies like sugar? Or is that just bees? “Dragonfly.” He murmurs to himself, the unfamiliar sounds rolling lazily off of his tongue.
“Hm?” Shane wonders aloud, still staring at his book.
“Like a little dragon fell in love with a fly and had strange little babies.” Ilya adds, still amused.
Shane smiles faintly. “Yeah, kinda.” He glances over his shoulder from where he’s stretched out on his stomach. “What is it in Russian?”
“Strekoza.”
“Schreh-koh-za.” Shane vaguely repeats, returning to his book.
On a whim, Ilya fishes a cube of ice out of his glass. Shane gasps as it hits his back, but doesn’t object. The coolness is probably nice in this heat, but Ilya focuses on dragging the cube across his skin in a familiar pattern.
Shane’s brow furrows, trying to identify it. “Are you drawing something?”
“Стрекоза.” Ilya repeats, finishing with a tiny flourish. He pops what’s left of the ice cube in his mouth, enjoying the way traces of sugar, lemon, and salt from Shane’s skin have clung to it.
“Do another one.” Shane demands as the cool drops quickly dry in the sun.
He has been learning how to read Russian lately so Ilya fishes out another ice cube and spells it out properly: озеро.
“O... something, something... p... o?”
“Is like an r in English.” Ilya reminds him.
“Oh right.” Shane glances over his shoulder as if he can see the letters and not just drops of water already evaporating. “O-something-ro?”
“Ozero.” Ilya enunciates carefully.
Shane’s face screws up in concentration, so engrossed in trying to place the word that he doesn’t even notice a breeze ruffling the pages of his book, losing his place. “Zero?” He guesses.
“Lake.” Ilya corrects.
“You went too fast.” Shane grumbles.
Ilya snorts. “You still didn’t know what it was even when I said it out loud.”
“Do another.” Shane demands and Ilya loves the determination lighting up his eyes.
Лед, he slowly drags across Shane’s back, resisting the urge to punctuate the word with a kiss. Shane would complain that it was a distraction, he knows.
“L... e...” He pauses. “D?”
Ilya nods, impressed. Maybe he did just need to take things slower. Well, Shane always did like doing things slowly. Like driving. Also acknowledging their relationship.
“Lead?”
“You keep thinking it’s close to English.” Ilya laughs. “It is not like in English.”
“No, I mean is that how it’s pronounced.” Shane smacks his knee half heartedly.
“Still no!” He corrects the pronunciation, watching lovingly as Shane tries only somewhat successfully to shape his mouth just right to imitate it. He takes no pleasure in watching Shane struggle per se, but there is something validating about seeing him have a hard time with Russian. For years, Ilya felt so self-conscious about his English, and inferior next to bilingual Shane, whose French was flawless. Shane told him once when he confessed to this that it wasn’t a fair comparison but he never felt that was true until he heard Shane try to learn Russian. Something about him taking the same path as Ilya just in the opposite direction really opened his eyes.
“Well?” Shane prompts, drawing him out of his thoughts.
“Ice.” He translates.
“Oh I did know that one.” Shane frowns. “Don’t know why I forgot. I think my brain is melting out here.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
“Mm-mm.” Shane rests his head on his folded forearms, watching him. “I’m enjoying the view.”
“Oh are you?” Ilya flexes a bit, getting a small laugh out of him.
“You know your hair goes a bit lighter when you’ve been in the sun a lot?” Shane smiles up at him. “It turns so golden in summer.”
“Ah is because I dye it before I come here.” Ilya jokes.
“No you don’t.” Shane replies with his usual flat seriousness, although his lazy grin indicates that he knows Ilya is kidding. “It’s darker when you first get here. You’re always so stark when you first arrive, paler skin, darker hair, black clothes...”
“You make me sound like a vampire.” Ilya complains.
“Then you start to slowly unwind. Your hair lightens, your skin darkens, you start stealing my lighter clothes...”
“Is your fault for leaving them around.”
“I’m not complaining.” Shane’s eyes crinkle as his smile widens. “I love it.”
Ilya’s heart flips in his chest.
“You do not look so different.” He answers. “More tan, so more beautiful freckles.” He reaches over to brush a thumb over Shane’s cheek. “But the biggest difference is not how you look. Is that you are so relaxed here. You breathe slower, smile more.”
Shane captures his hand to press a kiss to the thumb that had brushed his cheek. “This place has always been a sanctuary to me.”
“Sanctuary?”
“A safe place, sort of sacred.”
“Ah.” Ilya makes a mental note to look up the word later. “Is that why you don’t invite Pike here?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “I don’t invite anyone here.”
Ilya gives him a pointed look.
“Well except you obviously. And my parents.”
“And an entire camera crew once.”
“It was only a couple of people actually.” Shane counters. “And I didn’t want to do that. The architect and my mom arranged that. I made it clear later that I never wanted that again.”
“Because is safe here?
“Yeah.” Shane stares off for a moment, thinking. “But also because I’m the most… me here. I wanted you to come here because I wanted you to see me. All of me.”
Ilya’s chest is too tight for a moment and he sips his lemonade, grateful for something cold to bring him back out of it. “I had already seen all of you many times by then.” He quips, just to kill some of the tension that followed the overwhelming openness.
“Fuck you, you know what I mean.” Shane smiles, then chews his bottom lip for a moment. “That’s kind of why I want to learn Russian. So I can hear you, as you. If that makes sense?” He glances up uncertainly.
It’s too much for even the lemonade to distract him from and Ilya hopes that the brightness of the sun will hide the tears treacherously creeping into the corners of his eyes.
“Yeah.” He says thickly. “That makes sense.”
–
Ilya woke to his name being called and he rolled automatically toward Shane, asking him what was wrong.
Shane was mumbling, almost more to himself, and it occurred to Ilya that he was not actually in distress after all. Well he probably was to some degree, actually since Shane only ever talked in his sleep when something was bothering him in the waking world, but still. It was not an urgent matter as Ilya had feared and he would have to remember to talk to him about it in the morning.
In the meantime, he just hoped that whatever he said tonight wouldn’t give Ilya nightmares as well. Sometimes Shane said cute or funny things in his sleep like the time he had giggled and announced that there were “fluffy bunnies hopping in his brain”. However, Ilya was still haunted by the time Shane had rolled over, opened his eyes, looked directly at Ilya and said “The monster with many teeth sees you. It is coming.” before nuzzling his face back into the pillow and immediately beginning to snore.
“Ilyaaa.” Shane whined, rolling over to face him and Ilya braced himself. “Skazhi vilkam, chtoby perestali menya presledovat'.” Shane demanded with a small frown.
Ilya chuckled. “YA sdelayu eto, lyubimaya, ne volnuysya.” He reassured, pulling Shane in for a snuggle, drifting back to sleep himself.
Shane slept late that morning, and Ilya lay in bed, grateful that they had no practice that morning so he could savor the beauty that was a fully relaxed Shane.
When his husband at last blinked awake, Ilya grinned, ready to tell him about the funny exchange last night.
“What? Do I have a weird imprint on my face again?” Shane nudged him. “What are you grinning for?”
“You were talking in your sleep last night.”
“Oh no.” Shane groaned. “What did I say this time?”
Ilya froze as he started to tell him.
Po-russki! He realized. Shane had never spoken Russian in his sleep before! And here, Ilya almost missed it because he had been so tired it sounded natural to him.
He had been working so hard to be able to speak Russian with Ilya lately that apparently he was now thinking in it in his sleep.
Ilya rolled over on top of Shane, kissing his forehead, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth, his lips, his lips, his lips.
“YA tebya lyublyu.” He whispered.
“Is that what I said?” Shane smiled against him. “You’ve heard me say that lots of times.”
Ilya laughed. “No. You told me to tell the forks to stop chasing you.”
“What?”
“I guess I am in charge of breakfast.” Ilya grinned. “Since you apparently need rescuing from silverware now.”
“Oh fuck off.” Shane shoved at his shoulder playfully.
“Never.” Ilya snuggled against his neck, fully intent upon staying here as long as he could.
–
Sasha reaching out to him had come as a surprise, but not so much the reveal that he was now working for Yves St. Laurent. That sounded about right.
The invitation to a show during Paris fashion week was a further surprise. Sasha had casually mentioned that a few pieces he had worked on himself were being featured and that likely accounted for the invitation. Knowing Sasha, he was inviting everyone he knew. Or at least everyone who was someone important or famous.
Ilya didn’t really mind, he’d show up and make an old friend look important on his special day. The question was what Shane would think.
Shane… hesitated. For a long time. Ilya knew the face he was making was not a “no” but a “I need to process this” so Ilya let him be, and let him take three hours to think it over before getting back to him as if the question had just been asked.
Further surprise when Shane wanted to go.
Maybe it should not have been a surprise. Since coming out, Shane had cautiously begun to experiment slightly with fashion himself. Of course experimentation for him meant occasionally wearing colors other than neutrals or blues. He was all the way up to green! And one, very bold afternoon, yellow! (That shirt was never seen again, but hey he tried it. Ilya was proud of him.)
So here they were at a party in Paris, the day after the show, with Sasha beaming as he was congratulated by friends and… well friends. It wasn’t as if his family would have attended something like this, Ilya thought with a familiar pang of recognition.
Shane didn’t like to be far from him, especially when they had spent so much time around so many strangers as it was, but Ilya was delighted that he happened to find a hockey fan who was content to chatter away in a corner with him for a little while. It gave Ilya a chance to talk to Sasha without boring the pants off Shane. (Incidentally, he had learned sadly, this was not a literal thing he was able to do, much as he had tried once. He thought trains were a very dull conversation topic which one might try to end by initiating sex, but to his dismay, Shane’s eyes lit up at the mention and an hour passed without so much as a kiss.)
Eventually Sasha had to step away to greet more arrivals, and Ilya decided to take his time, getting another drink as he realized Shane had attracted a small group, all listening to him attentively. He wanted to stay back and watch Shane entertain his little audience with his awkward but magnetic charm. Plus, Shane was speaking French which Ilya had learned very little of, and he didn’t want to interrupt the conversation by not understanding what was said.
Shane was shrugging at something a woman in a peacock-feathered hat asked. “Je voyage pas autant que je voudrais stacose- ”
“Stacose.” The woman repeated with a giggle.
Shane’s smile faltered slightly, and he lost track of what he was saying, trailing off awkwardly.
A surge of heat rose in Ilya’s chest at the sight.
Sasha returned just then and Ilya grabbed his arm, nodding at the group. “What are they saying about Shane?” He asked in a low voice, switching to Russian, although half the other guests would still understand.
Sasha calmly pulled his arm away from Ilya’s grasp with a bemused tutting sound, examining the fabric of his shirt as if Ilya had somehow ripped it with his fingertips. “They’re talking about travel, that’s all. Why?”
“They were laughing at him.” Ilya answered with a scowl.
Sasha tilted his head in the direction of the group, listening with the bored look of an understimulated aristocrat. “They’re just talking about visiting Singapore right now. Are you sure they were laughing at him and not at a joke he made?”
Ilya knew the flush that had crept beneath Shane’s freckles all too well. That was not a blush of pleasure at having made someone laugh at a joke. However the group had moved on now it seemed. So he waited until the peacock-hatted woman separated from the gathering to admire a painting in Sasha’s dining room. Like a lion stalking its prey, he moved silently through the room to join her, catching her off guard when she noticed him standing beside her.
She quickly recovered and tilted her head at the painting. “C'est vraiment une œuvre évocatrice, n'est-ce pas?”
He ignored the question, partly because he didn’t understand it, and partly because he had one of his own. “Why are you making fun of Shane?” He demanded and the woman’s eyes grew round.
“Making fun of?” She repeated in surprise.
“Yes, repeating what he says and laughing at him.”
“Ah!” She laughed in comprehension and Ilya felt another surge of irritation. “We were not making fun of him. It is his French.”
“What’s wrong with his French?”
“I did not say it was wrong.” The woman replied somewhat dismissively. “We laughed because it was… Hm, how to explain. When you are not laughing at someone to be mean, but because they are cute?”
“You… think he’s cute?” Ilya was used to people finding Shane attractive. Obviously he completely agreed and simultaneously thought that everyone should find Shane incredibly hot but also not look at him because Shane was his and only his.
Something in his face must have given away his train of thought as the woman gave him a knowing smile. “He's your husband, yes?”
“Yes.” Ilya replied, still feeling fiercely protective.
“I take it you don’t share.” She added, and for a moment, the way she tilted her head with that teasing grin reminded him heavily of Svetlana. It tempered his annoyance with her considerably, given the jealousy threatening to pull him under.
“I do not.” He confirmed.
The woman clicked her tongue. “Quel dommage. I would love a cute Québécois boy who says things like ‘stacose’.”
It occurred to Ilya that J.J. was still single and he vowed that next time they visited France, he would bring the annoying former teammate just for the sake of distracting anyone else who wanted a piece of Shane’s apparently adorable accent.
The woman easily shifted the topic to Sasha’s work and Ilya found himself liking her a great deal more than he anticipated going into this conversation.
That night though, he lay in bed thinking back on the party. When Shane returned from his shower, he rolled toward him and asked without preamble, “Did you ever think I was stupid?”
“What?” Shane’s brow furrowed. “When? When we were being dumb about acting like we were just casually hooking up?”
Ilya shook his head. “No, I mean because of my English.”
Shane gave him a horrified look. “No! Of course not. Why? Did someone say something?” His face turned furious, ready to rip someone’s head off, not unlike Ilya’s own attitude earlier.
“No, just some of the people at the party were laughing about something you said and I thought they were being mean to you. I was afraid they thought you were dumb because of your French.”
“Oh.” Shane colored slightly. “I don’t think they were being mean really. A little bit condescending. But not in a cruel way.”
“The peacock lady thought your accent was ‘cute’.” Ilya tugged at the towel still around his waist, pulling Shane closer to the bed.
“I kinda thought so.” Shane mumbled, blushing again in what Ilya realized was embarrassment but not humiliation. Just the fluster of Shane knowing for once someone was flirting but not knowing what to do about it.
“She was right, you are very cute.” Ilya sat up to wrap his arms around Shane’s waist and bury his face in his stomach for a moment. Then he looked up with a wicked grin. “But you’re mine.” He informed his husband and tugged the towel off altogether, tossing it aside. “And I fully intend to get you to the point where you can’t speak any languages anymore.”
Shane’s laugh quickly turned into a gasp, then a moan.
This is another language. Ilya thought to himself, letting his tongue do the work of teasing out more gasps above him. No one else knows the language of your body like I do, nor does anyone else know the language of my heart like you do. That’s only ours. Our language.