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At its most stripped down level, home is a place. Not just a building where you live-that’s a residence. But somewhere cozy and inviting where you go after a long day, where you ache to be when you’ve been away from it for too long, a shelter where you can unmask and simply exist as you are. Home comforts, it cares, and it wraps you in warmth and love. Home is also your country. Where, ideally, feelings of patriotism, commonality, and a shared culture with others gives you a sense of pride. Now imagine that your country is Russia, and your home is run by Grigory Rozanov.
If thinking of home merely as a place to exist, then Ilya had this. He had a roof over his head, clothes on his back, and I don’t believe he ever faced poverty. What Ilya was missing, especially after his mother died, was the comfort, the care, the warmth and love. The coldness is in a sense literal. Post-Soviet housing is austere in appearance, and built for functionality and longevity. But a home can look austere on the outside and be warm and inviting on the inside-that depends on its inhabitants. And no residence with Grigory Rozanov at its head was going to be warm and inviting. Grigory built a home of anger, bigotry, deep sadness, and suffocation under his expectations.
General atmosphere aside, Ilya was also contending with a brother who, seemingly taking after their father, actively hated him. He also grew up with a father, and later a brother, who were police. Ilya was living under the same roof with two people who would have, if given the opportunity, handed him over to his possible or even likely death. It is one thing to grow up walking on eggshells, afraid to speak, longing for the one person who can make things better, but who is now gone and can no longer offer comfort. But imagine knowing that your closest kin revile you down to your very core, and they have the connections to have you disappeared, forever. A person would find it difficult to even breathe. His wider community would have offered no additional comfort. Hockey Star Ilya would not have mattered to anyone if it was known that he was bisexual. No matter Ilya’s outward loyalty or patriotism, or his accomplishments for the mother country. His medals would be ripped from his hands, trophies burned, his name mocked, before he faced whatever fate awaited him.
His third physical home is in Boston. The fans love him. His jersey is everywhere, and the rafters ring with the sounds of fans chanting his name. He gets along with his team and has a bestie in Cliff Marleau. But he never feels at home there. How can he? He is an immigrant whose place in Boston only lasts as long as his contract does. His first years in Boston must have been very lonely-he’s in a new country, still learning a new language, living in a city of people who love him when he’s winning, but probably don’t hide the hate when he’s not. He has Svetlana, but not all the time, and he’s in a complicated…Thing with his rival, who, even if they were emotionally open early on, lives in another country. So far in his life, Ilya sees home only as a place to sleep.
Then, after 26 years of never feeling at home, Shane invites him to The Cottage. This is more than a weekend hangout to destress and fuck each other senseless (though they do and we love them for it). It’s a turning point. An invitation to a future that Ilya has not dared to imagine for himself. It’s also a reminder of what he stands to lose-if things fall apart at the cottage, where is Ilya going? Back to Boston, and that’s fine, but he’s potentially also losing Shane. And Shane has become his home in a way that Ilya hasn’t had since Irina. When Ilya expresses being terrified, this is why. And when he opens up the deepest parts of him for Shane to see, he is saying something else. He is saying that after a lifetime of waiting, he is finally home.