Chapter Text
Once upon a time, he gears himself to tell Galina. There was a man in Russia who was not nice to his wife. And maybe that was the beginning.
“The beginning?” Galina asks.
The man was not nice to his two sons either. The eldest grew up doing anything he could to earn his father’s approval. By the time he was a man, it was difficult to tell where his father's voice ended and his own began. He probably could have been saved. The youngest son could have done more. He could have saved his mother too.
Galina watches him for a long moment. Her notebook is placed on the side. It’s nice but also slightly unnerving, to have all of her attention on him. “How can a child be expected to save people? How can anyone have the responsibility of being a hero?”
Here’s the truth: the youngest son was too lazy to help.
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The first time Ilya Rozanov meets the Pike children, he almost cries.
He excuses himself to the bathroom, hands rubbing at his eyes as he stares at himself in the mirror. His eyes are a little red, and there’s a tear streak down his cheek that he hastily wipes away. He takes a deep breath. Otherwise, he looks fine.
The kids are so young. So small. So full of endless curiosity and wonder. It’s in the way that Hayden kisses Arthur’s forehead and Jackie will answer Ruby and Jade’s questions without getting annoyed and Amber’s little arms are grabbing up, up, up, wanting to be carried, always trusting. There is so much love in this house, it’s the foundation the bricks are built on. So much love that Ilya doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s floundering. Like when he met Yuna and David for the second time and they asked him how he was like they actually cared and sometimes they cook his favourite meals and he will never admit to anyone how he chokes up a bit inside.
When he returns to the living room, Shane looks at him, concerned. Ilya smiles tightly back. Then Jackie is handing Amber over to him and he holds her gently, so gently. Amber’s eyes are wide and big. Ilya wonders if babies ever blink.
“I want a turn,” Arthur says quietly from his place on Hayden’s lap, pointing at Ilya. Hayden groans and Jackie bursts out laughing.
You are so loved, he whispers to her. Your family is beautiful.
Amber stares at him. Her nose scrunching into a laugh as she giggles and giggles and giggles. Ilya tickles her tummy and she laughs, he bounces her and she laughs, he cradles her against his chest and she tries to wrap small arms around his neck.
All humans start as babies. Yearning for love and full of laughter and screams and tears and searching for comfort and Ilya was once a baby too, was once a small kid that his father had no problem damaging.
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Most of his childhood is blocked out.
Ilya will sit on the sofa with his coffee, trying to grasp a memory, but so much of it isn't specific. Snapshots in time, emotions he can't exactly place, memories of a boy who knew he had to prove himself.
Then he'll gulp down the rest of his cold coffee, stand up and move away. Because if he thinks too hard about that boy with scruffy hair staring up at his dad with watery eyes waiting for that inevitable blow, he may just cry.
Once upon a time, he whispers into Anya’s fur. Shane left a few hours ago for Montreal, and the house is too big for just him and Anya. Once upon a time, there was a small boy in Russia who, on the good days, would help his mother make Medovik. He mostly just made jokes and tried to stick his finger into the mixture. She would laugh, swatting his hand, letting him try again anyway. Then they would eat it together.
Maybe, in a strange way, it’s good that both his parents aren’t alive. Who knows how they would react to their son being in love with a man. He doesn’t even want to think how his father would react. As for mama… Ilya turns his head, nose smushed into Shane’s smell on the pillow. In a lovely world, she’d accept him and love him still. Ilya is sure she’d love Shane as a person. The crucifix resting on his chest burns. Irina grew up in Russia and, though it twists to admit, she’d be disappointed in Ilya too.
And Alexei? Ilya remembers the two of them before everything erupted. As a child, he followed his brother around everywhere, craving his attention. Tried to, atleast. Alexei was his first friend, his first playmate. Alexei taught him how to toughen up, taught him the secret spots in Moscow, taught him how to punch and to sneak around the house when their only company was moonlight. His first word was mama, but his second was some baby variation of Alexei.
There is perhaps one photo of them that Ilya has. Alexei is small and his arms are wrapped around him and Ilya is even smaller and on Alexei’s lap and they’re smiling so widely, cheek-to-cheek, love radiating from the picture that it almost glows.
Alexei probably hates him now.
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Shane is holding the album like it’s a delicate thing.
His smile is awed, fingers stroking the picture like he can actually reach out and stroke the cheek of toddler Ilya. In this picture, Ilya might be seven. He’s drowning in his hockey gear, stick raised in the air with one hand, grinning with his teeth showing in a way he never would now.
“Was for small hockey contest in school,” he explains to Shane, not daring to reach out and touch the picture. “Mama took the photo.”
Ilya knows this because his team lost the contest and the second they arrived home behind locked doors, his dad’s gaze had shifted. Why am I spending money on hockey lessons if you can’t win a stupid school match, Ilya. Do you train like I tell you to train? Or are you too lazy for that too? Do you understand the embarrassment you’ve caused me?
Alexei disappeared into his room. Mama was quiet. Once his father started, there was no way to stop him.
Shane doesn’t question it and turns the page, eyes roving over all the pieces of proof that a now strong man was as young and soft as anyone else. Ilya breathes a sigh of relief.
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He looks at Arthur Pike and wonders how on earth anyone could raise a hand against a child. An adult, a teenager, a baby. How can someone ever want to purposefully hurt someone with the cruel intention of punishment.
Arthur is quiet. He plays with his toys separately, his smiles are shy and Ilya often sits next to him. Or Arthur plonks himself onto his lap, and continues to build his lego. It’s as he’s stroking his brown hair that Ilya realises he, himself, was a loud, annoying, time-consuming child.
Alexei used to always tell him how annoying he was. He would wake up everyone in the house, would throw his food around, would cry whenever he was left alone. Seems that he knew, as a baby, that clinging onto his mama would never be enough. Maybe mama was tired of it all, maybe he was a growing irritating factor. It’s most likely why his father wouldn’t smile at him until he started showing talent on the ice. Most likely why he needed discipline.
The lego pieces are abandoned on the floor. Arthur has curled himself into Ilya’s chest, his small hand clutching at his shirt, breathing steady and slow. And Ilya whispers: there was a boy. He was a bit like you. But he was noisy and loud and he wanted too much. Always wanted more than what he had.
He rocks Arthur back and forth. Maybe that was why he was punished frequently. He was so greedy for love.
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Over the course of his life, Ilya has forgotten that his childhood was, perhaps, not entirely conventional.
When he tells Shane, for the first time, about his father’s favoured form of punishments and how usual these punishments were, Shane is horrified. His eyes are wet, his hands roaming over Ilya like he can heal years of bleeding scars and open wounds with his touch alone. If anyone could, it would be Shane Hollander.
“Your father was horrible,” he states, like it’s a fact. Ilya doesn’t think it’s a good time to comment that, at points, it was deserved. That he was, truly, a difficult child. Though his father hit him and left marks and shouted words that he won’t ever forget, there was some good in him and thus Ilya can’t call him horrible because people are so much more complex than just one word. Calling his father horrible feels as incomplete as calling Ilya violent- it erases the gentleness living quietly beneath his ribs. “Oh, Ilya. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
Ilya isn’t. He might be a completely different man otherwise.
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Galina thoughtfully taps her pen against her notebook. “How can someone be greedy for love? Aren’t we all deserving?”
What is it, Ilya thinks but does not ask aloud, what is it that makes us believe we are all deserving. Some of us are born fucked up, some of us grow fucked up. Are we all deserving, then? Who decided that from the second we were born, we would be loved?
“But people say this like it’s a simple thing.” He picks at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Deserving is easy word when the child is easy to love.”
“And if they aren’t?”
He thinks of screaming and broken plates and the fear of returning home after school and his father’s voice calling him selfish, lazy, too sensitive, of mama saying he was being a bit too difficult today. Thinks of Arthur asleep against his chest, lego abandoned on the floor, warm and trusting.
“Eventually,” he says, “people get tired.”
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was scared. Scared of the glint in his father’s eye when he’d be overcome by anger, scared of the rage in his voice that would rattle the vases, scared of the capability of his hands. A boy who learned to judge his father’s mood by the pace of his walk and the way he entered a room. A boy who learned that perhaps these punishments were a form of love. Because he was difficult and lazy and needed to change. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to survive in the real world.
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The one secret that Ilya and Alexei now share, continents apart, is the truth about their mother.
Ilya remembers her as funny and beautiful and smart. Golden. She was sunshine and her smile stretched to her eyes. This is what he told Shane before the Irina Foundation was launched. His mother used to walk behind him a few steps to watch him, she used to wrap him in his scarf because he was stupid enough to forget his. Ilya has her eyes.
What he doesn’t say is: the clouds began to eclipse her, and her smiles slowly, unnoticeably, became more rare. She used to walk behind him and when he’d turn around, it would feel as if the distance between them was expanding, as if she was trying to disappear. She used to wrap him in her scarf and later on would wear a thin coat in Moscow’s raging cold, choosing to go gloveless. She was so lovely and sweet and Ilya wants to remember her like this, but he can only really compare her to Grigori. He wants to remember her like this, but sometimes he could not understand her.
Her eyes were blue and they used to remind him of the sky and flying, but towards the end he’d see the endless expanse of a deep ocean and think distantly of drowning. Ilya has the same eyes.
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There was a small boy in Russia who played hockey. He loved zooming around on the ice, the excitement of a game. His mother used to watch him and he loved winning and looking at her cheering. Until she couldn’t and then she died and sometimes his father would come to watch but it was better when he didn’t because then he wouldn’t be criticised, wouldn’t be told what he did wrong before he’d even taken off his skates, wouldn’t end the day feeling useless and lazy.
He knew he was lazy because his father always told him, mentioned it when he wasn’t practising hard enough or his grades weren’t good or because he wasn’t doing his chores correctly. His father said he was lazy when his hair wasn’t neatly combed or when he didn’t score the most goals. His father said he was lazy when he was picked number one at the drafts.
It is a core fact. The boy is lazy.
“Good job,” he says to Luca after every game, every practice. He will then smile widely while ducking his head and his cheeks will go a little pink. Ilya claps the rookie’s back. “Well done. You did great.”The words come easy. Luca looks at him with something like hope and awe and Ilya can’t bear to tell him that he has nothing more to offer. He looks away first.
“Wyatt Hayes,” he announces, steering to the other side of the changing room. The guys are generally used to him, to when he is loud and boisterous or a bit more quiet, edges drawn in. Bood steps out of his way as Wyatt jumps, about to get changed. “You are the best goalie in the NHL.”
He snorts, a small smile on his lips. “Sure, man.”
“No.” Ilya looks him dead in the eye. It is important that Wyatt knows and does not doubt himself. “I am serious.”
“You will make such a great man, Ilyushka.”
Ilya is ten years old. It is dark and cold outside and Alexei left to play with his friends. Papa will not be home for a long time but it’s okay because he drank a glass of milk and mama is now stroking his hair. Surely this is all he needs.
“I’m already a man, mama!” He squeals as she tickles him. She’s having a good day, had gotten out of bed in the morning and was there to pick him up from school. Ilya was pleasantly surprised.
Mama smiles softly. “You will always be my little boy. You’ll grow up to be a great man and a beautiful hockey player, but you’re always my little boy.”
Once he is home, Ilya collapses into his bed and stares at the ceiling. He’ll shower later.
A great man? He doesn’t fucking feel like one.
A beautiful hockey player? If he had energy, he would laugh. He loves hockey because he is good at it. He loves the feeling of being good at something, like hockey and sex. Loves winning, the rush on the ice that powers his veins. Hockey was his escape, was the reason he managed to leave home, his motivation as a child. Maybe it was naive to think he could change the Centaurs. He can be good, he is good, but sometimes that isn’t enough to change a team.
He breathes in. He’ll always be a little boy to her. She won’t ever know him past the age of twelve.
There was once a boy who thought that if he worked hard enough, someone would be proud of him.
But the boy is so tired. His bones are exhausted. He might fall asleep and never wake up.
His house is cold. Ilya falls asleep to his father’s words, his constant reminder: you are lazy.
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“Ilya. What do you think love is?”
Ilya stares at her, cocking his head. What an awful question. “Love is an amazing thing.”
“Right.” Galina nods once. “How do people show love? In your opinion.”
Love can be loud and big, he knows. Like showing everyone the news photos of Anya on his phone, like Troy’s locker being full of roses and everyone laughing as he blushed. Love can be invisible and quiet, too. Svetlana showing up and his head resting on her leg, no expectations. Yuna and David cooking together, moving seamlessly, affection laced in their words. Alexei leaving him an album to take from Russia. Love can be enormous and undetectable. Like his mama giving him her gloves or her leaving her bed for him on what he now recognises as her worse days. Like what he feels for Shane, a consuming emotion. These are the facts: Ilya constantly wants to kiss the galaxy of freckles all over his face, on the ice Shane is brilliant and dangerous and beautiful, he can never do anything in halves, and he can never truly relax, brain constantly buzzing. Shane is his boyfriend, but Ilya isn’t sure he could ever accurately describe him.
He has also learnt that love goes both ways. For example, his father would smile at him when he won a hockey game. The days leading up to the match may be tense, the house on the edge of splintering. If Ilya played well enough, if he scored, if he made his father proud for one evening, the man would clap a heavy hand against the back of his neck and grin at him like he was something worth having. The warmth of it used to settle in Ilya’s chest like relief.
And mama was easier to reach on good days. On days where he was quiet enough, helpful enough. Sometimes she would brush his curls back from his forehead and smile at him softly, like she was truly seeing him again. He learnt quickly not to ask for too much at once.
Love is shown through actions like this. Keeping it to himself that some days he’d rather sink into his bedsheets and never leave, that sometimes everything is so numb and he can’t feel. Shane is too stressed out as it is, and Ilya needs to be in top form, the best version of himself, to be loved. Yuna and David are out of the question. Svetlana and his ex-teammates are too far away. And the Centaurs… well. He’s too shit of a Captain for them to care.
“You make yourself useful. You love them so you make their lives easier,” Ilya says quietly. Galina remains still. “Maybe try and make yourself easy to love.”
The clock ticks.
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Once upon a time. The story won’t end. Fairytales end with happiness and a kiss. Nobody writes about the after.
It’s somewhere after 2 in the morning but before 3. Shane is next to him, cocooned in the duvet, face relaxed. Lately, he looks at Ilya a little bit longer, hugging him a bit tighter. Ilya is the only person to see this version of him. How long will this luck last?
Once upon a time, the boy fell in love.
Looking back, it is hard to pinpoint when exactly this happened. Whether it was a majestic fall or if it was moment by moment, droplets of rain suddenly turning into a storm. The boy had convinced himself that he wasn’t prone to falling in love, and wouldn't ever be loved back the same. But somewhere in between cities, in between cotton sheets and winning goals and failed passes and text messages and dark brown eyes staring at him… perhaps it was inevitable. Maybe it started with a cigarette and two handshakes, or the brush of fingers and a waterbottle, maybe it started in a club flashing purple and pink, maybe it was before that with a murmured ‘stay’.
And now: a cottage that smells like sunlight and grass, sounds like slow mornings and easiness. A man who kisses him like he is starving, a family that cooks his favourite pasta. He wishes that was all he needed for a happy ending.
Loving someone is waiting for the moment they realise you are too much to carry.
If he dies, Ilya selfishly hopes Shane will miss him. Not forever, but for a little bit atleast. Then he could find a nice Montreal man. Live a happier life.
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Ruby is trying to plait his hair. She doesn’t seem to accept the fact that his curls are too short for any plaits to be maintained. On the other side of his head, Jade is covering him in clips and small bows. Arthur is watching TV and Shane is next to him on the sofa, Amber asleep in his arms.
His eyes land on Shane, whose mouth is twisted like he’s trying not to laugh. “How do I look?” He asks the room once the twins’ hands have left his poor head.
“Beautiful,” Shane says solemnly.
“Thank you. Finally somebody appreciates me.”
“You have six pink clips in your hair.”
“And I carry them better than you ever could.”
Jade puts her hands on her hips. “Like a princess. Princess Uncle Ilya.”
Ruby nods seriously along. “Yes. And you’re stuck in your tower before the prince can come and save you.”
Ilya wrinkles his nose. “Ruby. Jade. Do not ever wait for a boy to come and save you.”
“But a prince saved Rapunzel!”
“In the story, yes. Sure.” He leans back against the wall. “But you two are much, much stronger than random prince in woods.” And then he grabs and tickles them, their peals of laughter almost waking up Amber.
That night in bed, when the world is quiet and moonlight drips in through the slight gap in the curtains, Ilya is dozing off to Shane’s index finger trailing over his back, drawing lines between his moles. His voice is as quiet as the sluggish stars outside. “I can’t wait to have kids with you.”
Ilya is now out of the realm of sleep, turning his face around to Shane. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Shane kisses his shoulder, weaving their legs together underneath the duvet. “You’re so good with them. You’d make such a good dad.”
Ilya wants kids. Yes, he does. But the only parenting he remembers is his father’s. He has grown up knowing that the raising of a voice means to cower because it means anger and anger means marks. So what if his own children misbehave or don’t listen or scream at him- then what? What does he do? What if, deep down, he is exactly a product of how he was brought up? What if overwhelming rage overcomes him and he-
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“And your mother?” Galina questions. Her hair is in a low ponytail today. “Did she punish you like your father did?”
Ilya shakes his head. “No, no.” He furrows his eyebrows. Mama didn’t punish him or Alexei in the same way. Once- a few times- she yelled at him when he wanted her attention. Though he now understands that was because she had nothing left to give, and he was a demanding, difficult child.
Galina says nothing. The silence is unsettling.
“She…” Most of his childhood is blocked out, and memories of his mama are faded. Ilya desperately clings to the good ones on the surface that taste like Medovik. Underneath, if he digs and digs deep down… Ilya closes his eyes:
The boy is seven. Maybe eight . No, wait, he’s nine.
It is the year 2000. The world is changing, the air is light and stifling, and he is sniffling. Papa has left for work. The house has relaxed, the shadows less sharp. He is curled up by mama on the couch, huddled in her warmth as he cries and cries and cries, the tears coming and coming. He wraps his arms around himself, still stinging from papa’s blows.
He cannot stop fucking crying. He is nine and his face is dry with endless, stupid tears.
“Mama,” he asks through hiccups, chest heaving. “Why does papa hit me? And Alexei?” His arms hurt, but maybe what hurts more is the look of rage and disappointment in papa’s eyes, the names he called Ilya.
“Papa only does it to make you a good boy, Ilyushka,” mama whispers into his hair, thumb stroking his shoulder in a steady rhythm. “He wants you to grow up in the right way, be a great man.”
Ilya opens his eyes to soft lighting and Galina’s careful eyes, the smell of peppermint tea and old books. Mama had sounded so certain. She was so tired.
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On his first session with Galina, Ilya wanted to pry himself open, hand her all his dirty rotten parts and say: fix me. Do whatever you can. Fix me. Please. I need to be good for the people I love.
Now it has been a few months. Galina is as kind and patient as ever, and Ilya has come to the slow, painful conclusion that maybe he is broken forever.