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The loneliness is bad today, and is pushing up the other feelings Ilya normally tries to avoid. Shane is busy with practice or brand deals or something - Ilya can’t remember what - and Ilya can’t shake the feeling of the wrongness of his own existence. He had parked his car up the street, hoping a walk in a new place might help. Now, he’s walking around and happens to pass an animal shelter. He wanders in, telling himself he’ll just look at the dogs available for adoption to cheer him up.
He wanders through the kennels, dogs of all sizes barking at him and begging for attention. There are a few other families there, a couple with children. He hears kids exclaiming excitedly and pointing at different dogs. He sticks his fingers in kennels to give scratches, but he mostly stays out of the way of the families, wanting them to have a chance to meet all the dogs. He’s not actually here to adopt, of course.
There’s one kennel at the end that he notices none of the families have stopped in front of. Thinking it must be empty, he goes to stand by it to clear the walkway as a dog is brought out by staff on a leash.
He startles when he reaches it, and sees a dog peering up at him. She’s a black pitbull. Her head is huge, her body is too skinny, and her front arms bow outwards like she is flexing at him. She barks at him, and her crooked legs bounce off the ground in a little hop with each noise. She is absolutely ridiculous looking, and without even realizing it, Ilya feels his first real smile of the day creep onto his face as a soft chuckle escapes his lips.
Ilya peers over his shoulder. All the staff are distracted helping the families. He knows he isn’t supposed to - and that he will never hear the end of it from Shane or his team if he gets bit by a dog and has to miss a game - but he deftly slides open the latch to the kennel and slips inside. The dog backs up a step, but she doesn’t growl. She assesses him as he quickly folds his legs under him and says in soft Russian, “Hello there. I am going to just sit here if that is okay?” She blinks at him, and so he continues to sit. He pulls out his phone to take a photo of her. He will send it to Shane later when he can come up with some kind of chirp to attach to it (he tries to think of which players on his team Shane has been annoyed with recently. Maybe likening Comeau to this silly looking dog would make Shane smile?).
But as he’s going to snap a photo, the dog starts running at him (through his jolt of fear, he notices her run is more of a waddle. Her wide-elbowed front legs don’t seem to bend very well). He thinks this is the end for him - mauled by a broken pitbull - but instead of lunging at him, she stumbles right into his lap and relaxes her entire body onto him.
“Oh.” His hands hover over her in surprise, but she is already falling off his lap as she rolls onto her back, legs flailing in the air and she twists and begs for belly rubs. “Oh.”
Weirdly, it feels like something - some kind of understanding, maybe? - has clicked into place, and he reaches out and starts scratching her exposed belly. Her fur is grimy and leaves a residue on his fingers, but he doesn’t stop petting her until she rolls herself back over and then hops onto his lap again. This time, she does lunge at him, but it is to lick his face. Her breath is rancid, but he doesn’t have the heart to pull away. He will let her have this for today.
He laughs, scratching behind her ears. “You are a good girl, yes? So stinky,” he says in a fond tone.
Ilya and his new friend are interrupted by a panicked cry of, “Sir, you can’t be in there!”
He looks up, realizing he’s been caught. A kennel attendant stares at him, hands hovering in front of her as if she is debating if she should be ripping the door open and yanking him out.
“Ah, yes, sorry,” he says, not moving from where the dog is lying on him. “I could not resist saying hello.” He squishes the dog’s face between his hands, giving her an adoring shake.
“Sir, I need you to get out of the kennel.” The worker is staring at him with an expression that clearly says “I don’t get paid enough for this.” Ilya begins to feel bad for breaking the rules, and starts to disentangle himself from the dog.
“Sorry,” he says to the worker. Then he turns to the dog. “It was good to meet you, puppy.” He gives her a kiss on her nose, and she licks his cheek in return.
He exits the kennel and latches it behind him. He has to physically restrain himself when he looks back at the dog, still lying on her side, looking at him as if to ask “Surely you’re coming back, right?”
“I’m surprised she was so nice to you,” the worker said. “We’ve had some issues with her.”
Ilya waved his hand in the air. “I am very lovable. She is good girl.”
“Yeah,” the attendant says. “I guess. It’s a bummer she’s so picky though. She’s been scheduled to be put down at the end of the week.”
It takes Ilya’s brain a moment to translate the sentence, and then another moment to translate it again, because surely this woman isn’t saying what he thinks she’s saying.
“She is - you are going to kill her?” he asks, unsure how to phrase it any better, and also wanting to make sure there is no chance of miscommunication.
The attendant grimaces. “I mean, I’m not going to do it. But - yes. She’s been here for a few months with no interested adopters. Her breed, plus her health conditions, plus her behavioral issues make her a tough sell. We don’t have room to keep her here forever, and living at a shelter for life isn’t a good way for a dog to live anyways.”
Ilya looks down at the dog, who is on her back again, looking at him upside down. He knows pitbulls are sometimes considered “dangerous dogs”, but he also knows plenty of small dogs who are vicious and territorial. He thinks of himself, and the country he comes from. The way that for so long after moving to America, he was labelled many different things, but how they all came down to variations of, “the angry Russian.” He came from a cold, hard country, and so naturally he must also be a stony, icy man.
How much of that predisposition had affected his relationships? In the early years of their trysts, had Shane held back because he thought that Ilya was incapable of warm, gentle emotion? If Ilya had grown up in a country that didn’t raise him to push every emotion down until it was just a whisper, could he and Shane made it to where they are now sooner, and avoided some of the angst?
The dog’s health conditions? The attendant must be talking about her elbows. Ilya thinks of all the times he has been unable to play hockey because of various injuries. He thinks of the shameful dread he feels each time he is unable to be at his team’s side. Every time, it feels like he is letting them down. And every time, when he has healed, they welcome him back with excitement and chirps. What would it feel like if they resented him for being injured? What if, one day, he is injured in a way that he can’t heal from? The possibility is certainly there. Would his team be angry with him? Would he lose friends? He thinks of Shane - Shane, who lives, breathes, and eats hockey. Would Shane still love him if Ilya couldn’t play hockey anymore?
He would. That, Ilya knows. No matter what happened, no matter how much his body might eventually fail him, Ilya knew that Shane would stick by his side.
And lastly, her behavioral issues. So, what, she didn’t like some strangers? Ilya could relate. He might not bite them because of it, but he certainly imagined snarling at certain irritating people until they left him alone. He thought of his own brain. And how it had been doing that thing more recently. That thing where it whispered lies to him in a way that he couldn’t tell were lies. How it would tell him everything he did was pointless, because he didn’t matter, and he was worthless, and everything he touched would be ruined so he might as well just not get out of bed to protect the world from the curse that followed his every move.
He thinks of his mother, and how she certainly had “behavioral issues” and how he wishes every single day that someone had been able to look past them and see her. See her and hear her and help her in the way that Ilya as a young, helpless boy was unable to help her.
Ilya swallows tightly. These thoughts have shattered through his mind in an intense, quick strike that leaves him feeling drained and also desperate.
He turns to the kennel attendant. “I’ll take her.”
The woman blinks at him. “Uh - what?”
Ilya gestures to the dog, who has righted herself and now sits watching the two humans, her front legs once again seeming to flex at Ilya like she is posting up for a fight.
“The dog.” He looks at the bio card on her kennel door. “Penny. I would like to adopt her.”
A hesitant smile forms on the worker’s face. “You’re sure? Like I said, she has both health issues and behavioral issues. She’ll need to quickly be established with a vet. She will most likely have expensive medical bills…”
Ilya waves away the concerns. “Is no worry. I would like to bring her home today, if possible.” He doesn’t want to leave her here overnight, lest something get mixed up and he returns in the morning to find her gone.
“Okay then. Let me get our adoption coordinator and she’ll get you sorted.” The attendant smiles genuinely at him this time, and then hurries away. Ilya stays by Penny’s kennel and pets her through the bars.
“You will come home with me, malyshka. We will get you comfy bed, and maybe stairs to help you get onto sofa. I do not care if you do not like everyone. I do not always like everyone, either.”
Things move fast after that. The shelter is happy to get Penny adopted, and they waive the homecheck since Ilya has no other dogs, no children, and a large backyard. They send him home with a list of the medications she is on, as well as a brief vet record that notes her advanced elbow dysplasia and “moderate to severe anxiety.” Ilya chuckles at that last part, deciding the best person to liken this dog to has become Shane himself.
They also send him home with Penny. He has to lift her into the backseat of his car, and even though he drives as carefully as possible, she still tumbles off the seat and spends the rest of the car ride lying in the seat ditch. She doesn’t seem to mind.
Penny settles in well, quickly making Ilya’s couch her own. He bathes her three times before getting the musty grime off her fur. He finds a vet and schedules a full comprehensive check up in three days, and also a teeth cleaning appointment a week later.
Shane comes to visit the next day, and meets her with success. Ilya had been a little nervous that she might not like him, but he thinks that Shane’s nervous energy cancels out Penny’s moderate to severe anxiety. They become quick friends.
The next people Penny meets are David and Yuna, who show up with a box full of toys for their “new granddaughter.” Ilya had warned them she might take a moment to warm up to them, and so he thinks they are trying to bribe her to love them. It works.
Penny does not mind when he has to leave for long periods of time for practice. He has discovered that as long as she has a couch and a sunbeam to nap in, she will remain in one place for hours at a time.
He takes her for very short walks each day - she prefers to stop and lie in people’s grass more so than actually walk. But one weekend, Shane shows up and carries a large box into Ilya’s house. He gives Ilya a quick kiss, pats Penny on the head, and then immediately sits down in the middle of the floor and begins assembling a stroller.
“It’s not just a stroller,” Shane corrects him. “It’s a running stroller designed for dogs.”
Ilya cannot find words to express the rush of love he gets hit with in that moment, and instead smiles until his cheeks hurt as he watches his husband finish building the stroller.
Now, Ilya takes Penny on his runs. Shane joins when he is visiting. Every few miles, they stop and Ilya lets Penny out to sniff the new grass and pee on the new flowers. It’s a good routine.
Penny doesn’t like anyone else she meets. It seems to Ilya that she decided that the first four people she encountered out of the shelter were the only acceptable people in the entire world. This is okay with him. They turn one of their guest rooms into Penny’s room, and she goes in there with her toys and her beds and her heated blanket and takes a medicated nap whenever they have company.
After Penny has been part of their family for six months, Ilya finds himself still looking at her sometimes and wondering how anyone could ever not love her. Sure, she doesn’t love anyone besides him and the Hollanders, but how could anyone not stand a Penny-approved distance away and watch her roll in the grass and not see how sweet and innocent and loving she is? The shelter had guessed she was four years old when Ilya adopted her. They knew nothing of her background. It kills Ilya sometimes to imagine what she might have been through that caused her to be so afraid of strangers, and so protective of the people she chooses to love.
He thinks of himself, and how sometimes he feels so broken, and so volatile. But he thinks of how strongly he loves his chosen people. Of how loyal and devoted he is to Shane. Of how his new team has become something that feels safe even when they are not winning. Of how Yuna and David accepted him into their family when they only knew him as the cold, angry Russian. He thinks about how they have provided him the space to let his tense, guarded mind relax, so that his warmth and compassion can be seen, even if only by the select few he chooses to show it to. He thinks how Shane can reach through Ilya’s mental storm clouds on a bad day and pull him out, even when it would be easier for Shane to just turn and walk away.
He thinks about the people who have chosen Ilya, despite his anger and his walls and his fear. And he looks at Penny, napping in the sun, and feels so grateful that he wandered into that shelter when he did.