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Mila is five years old when she realises her parents are not like everyone else's.
It has nothing to do with the fact that they’re both men and she doesn’t have a mommy at home, and everything to do with the fact that they’re both overachieving hockey freaks. At five she isn’t old enough to verbalise that, but it’s then that she first becomes aware that other people know who they are, that other people know their names and what they do for a living. Before that point she only really spends time with the other Centaurs’ kids, so it’s a shock to the system to start kindergarten and suddenly be bombarded with “wait, you’re Hollander and Rozanov’s kid?”
At first it’s fun, an easy way for her to make friends with all these people who she doesn’t know but who suddenly think she’s cool and probably wouldn’t have talked to her otherwise. But it doesn’t take Mila long to realise that a lot of them are only interested in her because her dads are famous and that they don’t actually care much about being her friend.
After that realisation she goes back and mostly sticks with the other kids from the team who she’s known her entire life - and her dads love it, always offering to carpool with Uncle Troy and Uncle Bood and, when they’re away at a game, her Grandma Yuna drives all the kids to school instead.
All of this to say, Mila learns her lesson and she learns it fast - her dad and papa are the best, and unfortunately, pretty much all of Ottawa thinks so too.
By the time she’s fourteen the novelty has mostly worn off at school and Mila has a system for weeding out the losers who are only interested in her parents anyway. It’s easy enough to spot the way someone’s eyes widen in shock when they hear her surname, and if their first question is “are they really your dads?” then it’s absolutely game over.
It means that when she starts dating Owen through a workshop at her drama club, she very conveniently doesn’t bother to mention her surname, nor does she talk about her parents at all really.
It’s so easy to omit that information too, especially when Owen has so many opinions about movies and TV shows and books, and they spend hours every night texting and calling and barely stopping for breath. There is a slight sting of betrayal in her chest when Owen mentions his mom cooking dinner or that his dad is away in Quebec for the week on business, but instead of offering her own anecdotes she just smiles and nods and talks more about the play showing at the theatre downtown next month.
They’ve been dating for three months when Owen comes over to her place for the first time and because her house is huge and ridiculous, it’s easy enough to lead him straight down to the basement where she usually hangs out with her friends. There’s a snacks fridge down there, along with two overstuffed sofas, a giant television for movie nights and three floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with a mixture of hers and Dad’s books. There are few titles in Russian too, but only one shelf, so she figures it’ll be easy enough for Owen to miss those.
There are no family pictures down here and no hockey memorabilia, so it could just be a basement in any old house, and Mila feels quietly confident that she can hang out and hopefully make out with her cute boyfriend without him realising who her parents are. It’s not that she plans to keep it a secret forever, she just wants to make really and truly sure that he likes her for her before she opens herself up to him.
She was burned by those awful kids in kindergarten who dropped her like a stone after they got to hang out with her dads, and she categorically refuses to let a boy do that to her. Especially not one she likes as much as Owen.
They settle on the sofa easily, pick out a movie and grab sodas from the fridge, chips from the basket above it that Papa always keeps stocked, and it’s great. They won’t be interrupted, not when Dad and Papa are at foundation meetings with Grandma Yuna all day and left money for her to order pizza for dinner, so she doesn’t worry about anything, just settles down and snuggles into Owen’s side as they watch the ‘96 version of Romeo and Juliet. It’s one of her favourites, and Owen’s never seen it, so Mila stays quiet for once so he can really focus. She’ll be expecting a full review the moment it ends.
Owen gives her one, and they devolve into another long conversation whilst drinking more soda and sharing a package of licorice. Her dad would be side-eying all the junk, but she’s fourteen and he isn’t here so she doesn’t care. Instead she curls her long legs under herself and flirts with the cute boy that she really, really, really likes.
They move easily into making out from there, a Taylor Swift playlist playing from the T.V speakers as Owen curls one hand around her jaw and pulls her in.
It’s not the first time they’ve kissed, but it is the first time they’ve been alone in one of their houses whilst kissing, and it sends a giddy thrill through Mila - the thought that they don’t have to rush, that their friends aren’t standing ten feet away making stupid comments to ruin the moment - it’s fun and exciting and she lets herself get lost in it.
Owen is sweet and gentle and doesn’t push her, but he’s also fourteen and a boy, so he doesn’t resist when she leans up and swings a leg across his thigh either, settles herself in his lap and kisses him deeply. She doesn’t want more than this, not yet, but it’s nice to run her fingers through his messy blonde hair and feel his thumbs tracing patterns on her bare thighs below the hem of her shorts.
Mila has no idea how long they’ve been like that, pressed together and making out like the world is about to end, Taylor still playing in the background and her ears buzzing with the pounding of her own pulse. She doesn’t care either, would be happy to spend the rest of the afternoon like that, except.
Except they go from kissing, to Owen tensing beneath her, his hands and lips freezing and she’s about to ask what's wrong when she hears it. Footsteps that are far too close and rapid fire Russian calling out to her.
“Are you down here, Bunny? I can hear Taylor so I hope you’re not having a dance party without me…”
Somehow, despite the dawning horror that is rushing through her, Mila spares one second to thank god that Papa is speaking Russian instead of English, because truly, the idea of Owen hearing that on top of what is currently happening feels like more than she can handle.
The relief is short lived when her papa reaches the bottom of the stairs before she’s had a chance to do much more than pull her lips away from Owen’s.
So, that’s how he finds them - Mila straddled across Owen’s legs with kiss bitten lips and messy hair - and it almost certainly looks a million times worse than it actually is. Her papa freezes, his eyes widening like a fucking cartoon, and Mila would laugh if this wasn’t the most embarrassing moment of her life.
“Papa,” she says, “it’s not what it looks like…”
And she isn’t looking at Owen, but she feels his head snap towards her, clearly shocked by the Russian.
Ilya doesn’t respond, just bites his lip hard for a second before bellowing up the stairs, “Shane! Get your ass down here!”
“No!” She says, because one parent seeing her like this is bad enough, and then she’s finally moving, stumbling back off Owen’s lap and awkwardly landing on her feet, “Papa, I can explain…”
“Hm,” he says, eyes flicking back over to Owen, “I think you can explain to me and Dad, da?”
And then, because this moment can’t possibly get any worse, Owen blinks like he’s suddenly figured something out and says “Holy shit, you’re Ilya Rozanov.”
Across from them Papa raises one eyebrow and replies, “Yes. Is good you know who I am, so you know I am very strong and scary and maybe you will think twice before putting your hands on my daughter again.”
Mila officially wants to die, wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole, and it doesn’t help that her dad makes it down the stairs just in time to hear the end of Ilya’s threat.
“Ilya, what the fuck? Who are you talking to?” he asks, frowning as he takes in the scene before them. At least Mila is standing now, and Owen’s hands aren’t actually on her.
“Oh,” Shane says, “who is this?”
“Hm, very good question,” Ilya replies, “he is the boy who had our daughter on his lap one minute ago.”
“Please Papa,” Mila begs, in Russian again, “it was not like that I promise, we were only kissing.”
“Kissing a boy who we have never met when you’re alone together in the house? Do you think I wasn’t fourteen once? Do you think I don’t know where that leads?”
Mila feels her face flush in embarrassment at both the idea of her papa having sex with girls at fourteen, and also at the implication that he thinks that is what was about to happen here today.
It wasn’t. Categorically, in no way, was that about to happen, but it feels like a losing argument so she huffs in both anger and humiliation and turns to her dad.
“Dad, please…”
Thankfully, he takes pity on her and turns towards Papa.
“Okay Ilya, that’s enough. Mila and…” he looks over at Owen on the couch, an eyebrow raised in question.
“Owen,” he replies, voice hoarse and a little terrified.
“Right, Owen, you have five minutes before we expect you in the kitchen so we can talk about this properly. If you think you’re old enough to be making out down here, then you’re old enough to have a conversation about it.”
Owen flushes but nods, and Mila contemplates running away, hitchhiking her way to Aunt Sveta’s or Aunt Rose’s to avoid ever having a conversation about this.
“What?” Ilya asks indignantly, “you want to leave them down here alone together?”
Shane replies in English, “Five minutes, Mila. Come on, Ilya.”
And then he’s dragging Papa up the stairs and it’s just Mila and Owen staring at each other in horror.
“Oh my fucking god,” he says, rubbing sweaty palms along his jean covered thighs as Mila hides her face behind her own hands.
“Holy shit,” she says, “I’m sorry that was… I didn’t… they were supposed to be gone all day.”
“Right,” Owen says, “your parents.”
“Yes.”
“Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander…”
Mila sighs, “Yeah.”
“Oh god,” Owen says again, “they’re going to fucking murder me, Mila!”
“No!” she says with more conviction than she feels, “He… they’re just surprised. They didn’t know about you.”
“Clearly!” Owen stands up, straightens his clothes and tries to fix his hair from where her hands messed it up earlier, “he was totally threatening to kill me in Russian, right? God, you can speak Russian, this is fucking crazy.”
“He wasn’t… he was just being insane and embarrassing, I promise.”
“You’re sure he’s not going to like, punch me or something?”
Mila bristles, because sure her papa is mad, but he isn’t some thug, and he definitely wouldn’t hit a kid.
“No! He’ll just be angry I didn’t tell them about you, and probably ground me for a million years, and never ever let us be alone together again. But he’s not like, an asshole who would punch a fourteen year old, Jesus Christ.”
And despite how embarrassed she is right now, Mila always feels a fierce loyalty to both her parents. She knows that Papa’s reputation on the ice precedes him, has heard people shit-talking him behind both his and her back over the years, and she won’t stand for it. Not from assholes in the grocery store in Montreal, and definitely not from her maybe-boyfriend in their own house.
“Come on,” she says eventually, straightening her clothes one final time, “If we stay down here they’ll just come back.”
Owen hesitates for a second, then reaches over to grab her wrist gently, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just super fucking surprised. And a little bit terrified. But I really like you, and I trust you.”
Mila just nods, and leads the way up the stairs.
—
Shane and Ilya are waiting for them in the kitchen, both of them standing on one side of the breakfast table and whispering in Russian.
“She’s a good girl, Ilya,” Dad is saying, one hand on Papa’s arm, “you said yourself they were only kissing.”
“Okay but kissing very quickly leads to fucking, Shane. I know this very well… hell, even you know this. And she didn’t expect us to be home until tonight…”
Mila clears her throat to cut him off there, and again thanks a god she doesn’t even believe in that they’re saying all of this in Russian. Beside her, Owen stands like a statue, his arms pinned to his sides and his expression more serious than she’s ever seen it. It’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny. In literally any other situation, she’d probably laugh. Instead, she pulls out a chair and sits down, motions for Owen to do the same.
“Can I get you a drink?” her dad asks them.
“No,” they reply together, almost in sync.
“Vodka,” her papa replies, and Shane hits him on the arm.
“I wasn’t asking you, asshole. Sit down.”
Ilya does, glaring between Mila and Owen the entire time, interrogating them with his eyes.
It’s weird for Mila to see him like this, after a lifetime of him being the soft one, the pushover, the parent who always said yes to more candy or a later bedtime or school night sleepovers. Not that Dad was strict, but he’s always been more sensible, forcing extra vegetables onto her plate and swapping out her diet sodas for bottles of water or glasses of juice.
“Okay,” Shane says, “you wanna explain what was going on down there, Mils?”
She nods, bites her lip awkwardly, “We were just hanging out, watching movies and stuff. Eating Papa’s snacks.”
“You sit in boys' laps to watch movies often?” Ilya asks.
Mila sighs, and Owen’s eyes dart down to the table, “Okay so we were making out too, but I’m fourteen, Papa. Teenagers make out, it’s not a big deal.”
“Hm,” he says, “is a big deal when your parents don’t even know about this boy, don’t know you’re secretly bringing him home when we’re supposed to be out of the house for the whole day.”
“It wasn’t like that!” she protests, because god, what the fuck do they think she was planning today?
“What was it like then?” Shane asks, “you’ve never mentioned a boyfriend, and you obviously weren’t expecting us to find out about Owen today, so surely you can understand what this looks like to us.”
Mila lets out a frustrated groan, “I didn’t want him to know about you, okay! It becomes a whole stupid thing, and I just wanted the guy I like to like me for myself, not because I’m your daughter. And then Papa comes downstairs being all Russian psycho and makes things weird as hell! Can you really blame me for not telling you about him? Or him about you?”
Her parents are obviously taken aback by her outburst, because she’s never even mentioned the ‘friends’ who ditched her in kindergarten and first grade after using her to hang out with them. Or all the people who have tried to get close to her in the the intervening years since she realised what was happening - the way their eyes always light up when they hear her surname, like she’s a golden fucking ticket or something.
Mila hates it, and she can feel her eyes stinging with tears at just the thought.
“I do like you for you,” Owen says before her dad or papa can reply, his entire body turning away from them and towards her instead, “I like you so much, and I um, wish I’d had more of a heads up about them before today, but I don’t care who your parents are.”
His eyes dart over to them then, flicking between Shane and Ilya, “I mean, like, respectfully. Like, uh, I don’t care that you’re famous, or whatever. Not that I don’t, um, respect you, obviously.”
And Mila can see that her dad is trying not to laugh at Owen’s awkward fumbling, but she doesn’t care, because she might actually cry at how sweet he’s being, one of his hands reaching down to hold hers.
It’s quiet for a moment, the other three people in the room looking at Mila, and she has no idea what to say next - not about her feelings for Owen, or about how she just snapped at her parents for something they didn’t even know was an issue.
“Okay,” Papa says eventually, “here is what happens next. Owen, Shane is going to drive you home, then we will talk to Mila about today, set some ground rules about how dating in this house works. And then tomorrow, or next night, whenever you are free, you will come back over for dinner and we will get to meet you properly. There will be no more secret alone time in the basement, and the bedroom door stays open at all times - this is not negotiable.”
Owen nods very seriously, but keeps his fingers curled around Mila’s.
“Good,” Ilya says, “do your parents know about Mila?”
Owen nods again, “They know we’re uh, dating, but they haven’t met her.”
“Hm,” Ilya purses his lips, “I will speak to them too, ask them to have same rules about doors staying open. I know what horny fourteen year old boys are like.”
“Papa!”
“Jesus Christ, Ilya.”
He shrugs, still looking at Owen who is bright red now, and Mila wants to crawl under the table and maybe die, “Please stop talking about sex, I am literally begging you.”
“Fine, but I am very serious about open doors.”
“Okay! Whatever you want, just never say the word horny ever again.”
“Alright, stop with the Russian, it’s rude. Owen, like Ilya said I’ll drive you home in a little while okay? Until then, you two can hang out in here. I’m sure you want a minute alone - come on Ilya, we need to get back to Mom with a date for rescheduling today’s meeting.”
Papa looks like he wants to protest again, just like he did in the basement, but in the end he just rolls his eyes and follows Dad out of the kitchen, leaving them alone and a little shellshocked all over again.
“Do I want to know what you said in Russian?” Owen asks, visibly relaxing, even as he continues to hold Mila’s hand tightly.
Mila groans, “I was telling him to shut up talking about sex, god. This is so fucking embarrassing.”
Owen laughs, “I think all things considered, embarrassment, open doors and a probably super awkward dinner isn’t a terrible punishment.”
He’s right, and Mila was expecting to be grounded at least, maybe banned from ever seeing Owen, or any boy, for that matter, ever again, so she’ll take it. She’ll take watching Owen try to figure out if he likes Papa’s Russian food whilst they all hopefully avoid talking about making out or sex or anything else that makes her want to burst into flames immediately.
Instead of any of that she says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them, I just… I’ve had a lot of people who were only interested in being friends with me to get closer to them, and I didn’t want that to happen with you.”
“I get it,” he replies, pausing for a second, “actually, I don’t get it at all - my parents are the most normal mom and dad ever probably, but I can imagine how much that must suck, and I understand it’s not exactly easy to slip into conversation that your dads are hockey hall of famers.”
Mila groans again, “Please never bring that in front of them, Papa loves to gloat about how he was inducted first, even if it’s only because Dad played for longer.”
“Noted,” Owen replies, before smiling and leaning forward to kiss Mila’s cheek lightly.
—
Hours later, when Owen has left and Dad has returned and they’ve eaten a weirdly tense dinner of takeaway pizza and bagged caesar salad, Mila disappears to her bedroom for the evening. She’s half way through her skincare routine when there’s a little knock at the door - five raps in quick succession that Papa has always used ever since she was a little girl. She sighs, finishes applying her lip mask and calls out, “Come in!” in Russian.
Mila’s in bed already, her lotions and oils lined up neatly on the dresser beside her and a show playing on her iPad which she pauses as Papa comes over and sits on the edge of the mattress. He sits close, like he always has, never worried about invading Mila’s personal space and constantly smothering her with affection, right from her earliest memories. She quietly, secretly, loves it.
“Hi,” Papa says now, reaching over to pat the lump of her leg beneath the duvet.
“Hey,” she replies, a little dubiously, unsure if this is the telling off she was anticipating earlier.
Papa sighs, “I’m sorry,” he says instead, shocking her, “I was not trying to embarrass you earlier, I was just very surprised, and Dad thinks maybe I owe you an explanation.”
Mila just nods for him to continue, because this was the last thing she was expecting tonight.
“Is just very hard for me to not see you as my little girl anymore, and I know you’re growing up and you’re very sensible, very like your dad, really. But I also know you’re half me too, and I was not so sensible when I was your age.”
And Mila knows a little about Russia, about how, at her age, Papa had already lived for two whole years without his mother. How his father was awful and harsh and her uncle was older and an asshole and Ilya was mostly all by himself until he came over to North America. Mila can’t imagine him like that, and the youngest interviews she’s seen of him were all cocky bravado from when he was eighteen and beefing with Dad. She knows from both of them that it was all for the cameras, but it makes it hard to reconcile the life she knows he had in Russia, with the man he pretended to be in Boston.
“Okay…” she says, urging him to continue.
“I was very lonely when I was your age, and I quickly figured out that a way to make people interested in me was to make them want me. I started having sex very young, and I regret it a lot now that I’m older. I was doing it for the wrong reasons, and it made me feel like shit afterwards. I do not want that for you, Mila. And I do not want it for that boy that you obviously like, either.”
And like, Mila would prefer to never think of her parents having sex, but the idea of her papa - her lovely, funny, ridiculous papa, having sex when he was the same age as she is now just to make people like him, makes her feel sick.
She reaches out and wraps her fingers around his hand that’s still resting on her leg.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says, the words feeling awkward and too grown up on her tongue, but she means them and she wants him to know. “But I promise that’s not what was happening today, I don’t… I’m not ready for that. And me and Owen haven’t even been dating for very long. We really were just watching movies and eating snacks and making out.”
“Pinky swear?” Papa asks, entirely serious and completely ridiculous.
Mila loves him so much.
“Pinky swear,” she replies, holding out her little finger like she did at five years old. Ilya reaches over and curls his own, much bigger, pinky finger around it.
And then he’s hugging her, the big Papa bear hug that he always gives, completely engulfing her in his arms and not caring when she squeals about him ruining her face serum and lip mask where she’s smooshed into his sweatshirt.
“I love you, Bunny,” he says to her in Russian, the words spoken into the top of her head where he presses three gentle kisses.
“I love you too, Papa,” she replies, settling into his arms and letting him hold her for a moment longer.