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The operation was emergency. Very minor, but still emergency.
David has to keep reminding Yuna this as she paces up and down the waiting room.
It’s just a wisdom tooth removal, granted a long one, but still just a wisdom tooth removal. Still just a wisdom tooth removal. And Shane looked absolutely terrified as they hooked him up to an IV they called ‘twilight’. Fucking twilight. Surely they could make up better names for things like this.
Yuna had googled and then fact checked and then sourced (and cited) references to the safety of this so called twilight on the phone with Voyageurs management, then asked Shane who he wanted to tell about the procedure.
Shane had blinked, looked guilty for a half second before turning blank, and said “Hayden and Jackie. JJ too.”
And there it was. The circle of friends that knew and cared for Shane, notified of a minor operation that would take him out of… 1 game (Yuna had calculated the healing time versus the travel time he couldn’t do).
It was a minor operation.
Shane was okay.
That doesn’t stop Yuna’s pacing down the corridor and the weird feeling David got that Shane wasn’t telling them something.
They have Shane’s phone, on the bench beside Yuna’s handbag, it keeps buzzing.
Shane is going to be okay.
—
High Shane is funny. Well, Shane’s always funny, but Shane like this is a side to him David’s never seen.
On the way to the car, he points at a tree and says dryly, “that looks like a nice tree.”
He then hugs the tree.
David really wishes he could film this, like on the old digital cameras they had when Shane was a kid. Where they burnt the videos onto DVD discs and hand labelled them, Shane, age 3. Not quite normal, not yet diagnosed, just starting to fall in love with hockey.
Shane, age 25. Hides things when we just want to know whether he’s happy or not.
He wonders whether they still have those videos. He wonders if they still have a DVD player. Probably not. Yuna tends to tidy things away.
Shane, the current Shane, gets to the car and stands beside it, staring like it’s from the future.
“Get in bud.” David says.
Shane stares at the door. “The clicker is weird. The owls aren’t what they seem” he turns his head uncannily, and stares at the nice tree. “I don’t like that tree anymore. Has the owls.”
David laughs. Very odd time for a twin peaks reference, but okay. “Shane, get in.” He opens the door and all but carries a very huge hockey player inside the car.
“Comfy?” He asks.
“No.” Shane says. “I want his boobs here.”
David blinks. “Okay buddy.” He says.
Sometime on the hour drive home, Shane falls asleep.
—
David is sure his back’s going to give out from the sheer amount of lugging around he’s had to do to get Shane from one place to another.
He’s currently on the sofa, prone and wrapped in a blanket. He snores gently and reaches his arms out as if he’s looking for someone.
He awakes with a start when he doesn’t find anyone.
“Where’s Ilya?” Shane slurs. He pouts, and looks extremely displeased. “Where’s Ilya?”
David makes eye contact with Yuna. She quickly perches on the arm of the couch and busies herself by running her fingers through his hair. Like a kid again, who couldn’t sleep unless he had someone there, soothing through his hair (David remembers falling asleep on Shane’s floor more often than not), “Ilya’s busy.” She says cautiously.
She looks up at David sharply. Ilya as in Rozanov? She asks with her eyes.
What other Ilya is there? He responds.
“He would say I look pretty.” His shane says. His child says. “But he’s always more pretty. He’s the prettiest.” Shane drops his face into a scowl, “Hollander, you look prettttty.” He says in a poor attempt at a Russian accent. He rolls the r and elongates the t and while it sounds awful, it also sounds perfectly normal and correct.
“Shane—“ David eases.
“—dad, tell me Ilya isn’t the prettiest person to ever exist?” He slurs, and looks up at him with those stupid eyes that he got from Yuna. The ones that convey discipline and planning one moment and then softness and heartbreak the next.
Now they are so earnest that he looks like a kid again. Before he heard words he shouldn’t, and before he became a role model for kids he didn’t think he deserved to be.
“He’s very pretty, monkey.” David says. He looks up at Yuna. “When does he tell you that you’re pretty?” He asks.
“All the timeeee.” Shane says with glee. “I hate it when people say that, but Ilya… Ilya says I’m pretty and I like it.” He takes the effort to sit up on the sofa, as if he’s suddenly become awfully serious, and states “I’m gonna marry him. My pretty boy.”
He collapses back down and falls straight back to sleep.
Okay so code 911 in the Hollander household. And judging by the number of missed calls and texts on Shane’s phone following a very, very minor operation, code 911 (or whatever the Russian emergency number is) in the Rozanov house as well.
Well. Best to let him get here before Shane’s inevitable meltdown. David thinks. He’s also completely terrified for what comes next.
—
Rozanov— Ilya stands like a child.
He tucks his hands infront of himself and clenches his jaw.
He’s so tired. He looks so tired. He just played a fucking hockey game and then drove 2 hours to see Shane.
“Hello, Mr and Mrs Hollander.” He says, in their doorway. He didn’t even ring the doorbell, Yuna had been waiting “I am Ilya Rozanov.”
David shoots a glance at Yuna, but she’s obviously poised. She has her hackles raised and a careful tilt to her chin that makes her seem powerful.
She is powerful. It’s one of the things he loves about her.
“Hello Ilya Rozanov.” She says. Carefully. “Would you like to come in for tea?”
“Yes please.” Ilya mutters, barely even audible. He politely follows them inside the house and he’s… he’s smaller than David thought he would be. He’s huge (don’t get him wrong) but he’s small, shrinking himself into this space like he can’t fit alongside what David’s family have built.
They settle in the living room, Shane adorably squished onto the leather of the couch. Yuna busies herself making tea, and Ilya hovers over Shane a hand subconsciously reaching towards him. He turns to look at David, testing his reaction, before lightly brushing Shane’s freckles. He whispers something in Russian.
He straightens. “The uhhh, the game today, Shane wasn’t there. And then he did not reply to texts, so I ask Pike, and he said Shane had surgery.” He takes a breath, “He is okay?” Ilya asks softly. He turns back to David. “I was worried.”
“Yes he’s okay.” David says. “It was a minor procedure, just his wisdom teeth, he probably should have had them taken out years ago.” He smiles. “Why don’t we sit down Ilya.”
He nods and awkwardly sits on the arm chair next to Shane, his hand resting gently within the reach of shane, fingers dragging gently through his hair where he shifts under the weight of the anaesthetic.
“He’s very funny high.” David comments.
Ilya nods. “He is funny always. I hate having to hold that.” He says. A pained look passes through his eyes, and subconsciously, he cups Shane’s face where it’s pressed against the sofa. “You must have questions?” He asks, guarded. He’s stiff until Shane nuzzles up to him, and a soft look crosses over his face.
“I do. But I don’t think now is the time.” David says. “Shane’s going to be anxious when he comes down, about all of this. I think it’s best if you stay maybe.” He looks at Ilya in all of his sunshine hair and sparkling eyes and says “I think he really loves you.”
Ilya looks up then. There’s something soft there, something that looks like his inner child is breaking out from that hard exterior. “I love him very much. He is part of my soul now.” He says.
David’s heart cracks down the middle. It was so simple, how he had just said that, so simple even with the Russian laws on homosexuality and the words coming from a deeply scared kid. He may look stoic, but beneath it all, he looks scared, utterly terrified with his love for David’s son.
“The only person I’ve ever loved like this was my mama.” Ilya says gently. He presses his hand to Shane’s neck and gently musses his hair there. “I do not know what I would do without him.” He looks up at David and cracks a small smile, the skin of his lips taught and his eyes crinkling only slightly. “Maybe we need something a little stronger than tea, hmm, yes?”
David nods. “I think I agree.” He gets up to go to the freezer where he keeps the good vodka and Yuna is staring at the boiling kettle. “Honey?” He asks.
Yuna snaps around. Her eyes are slightly red. She wipes them with the sleeve of her cardigan, and his entire being aches for her. With her soft eyes that she gave their son, and her fierceness she never lets loosen… she’s absolutely exhausted now. “I don’t know how we didn’t see it.” She whispers. She barrels into his arms and clutches at him like he’s the last human on earth. He soothes a hand down her back.
“It’s okay.” David murmurs. “He’s in love, they’re both in love. We didn’t need to see it happen.”
“I know, I just… did he think that we wouldn't accept him? I just want to make sure he knows we love him and we just want him to be happy. Did he hide it because he didn’t think we’d take it well?” Her voice is warbling. She’s obviously holding back tears and he hugs her even tighter, like a weighted blanket. “God he’s always under so much pressure. To be perfect. He always thinks he has to be perfect.”
“Honey, it’s Shane. He probably didn’t know how to tell us without his entire world collapsing. As long as he knows we still love him and are proud of him, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Maybe even happy to not hold it from us anymore.”
She lets out a huge shuddering breath. She leans into his shoulder, biting his shirt softly to bring herself back. Then she loosens and stands back, smoothing his shirt with her palms and wiping her eyes again. The line between her eyebrows returns and she grasps his chin, softly pecking his lips, before saying “right. What’s our plan?”
David smiles at her. She really is the most incredible person to ever exist. (Obviously bar his wonderful, talented, beautiful son). “Ilya’s going to stay with us, with him.” He says. “Maybe tomorrow they’ll talk to us properly.”
Yuna nods, “I’ll make pasta. He must be starving.”
“You burn the pasta!” David exclaims, “I’ll make the food, you go and pretend he doesn’t play for Boston.”
Yuna pinches his cheek, “I’d almost forgotten.” She says.
“You would never.”
She laughs and it loosens something rigid in his chest. She goes to leave and he catches her wrist and pulls her back. “Don’t overthink it.” He says. “Shane loves him. Shane loves you, his brain just works overtime, like yours.” He kisses her forehead and feels her exhale deeply.
“I love you.” She murmurs.
He squeezes her wrist three times before letting her go.
He stands, back leant against the counter, and lets it consume him for a moment, only a moment.
They eat, and Ilya is wonderful. After dinner, he carries Shane up to his childhood bedroom, and David’s happy that he’s not carrying his horrifically muscular son anymore today. He does not need an embarrassing trip to the doctor to get cocodiamol because he’s thrown his back out carrying his son. He used to be a hockey player for christs sake.
He gives Ilya time to settle, and then knocks quietly on his son’s door. Ilya, looking very soft and again, small, in one of Shane’s voyageurs T-shirts that doesn’t quite fit right and boxers, opens the door a crack.
“You didn’t bring any bags.” David says. He hands Ilya two towels, a spare toothbrush and at yuna’s insistence (claiming she’s only okay with him despite the fact she seems half ready to adopt him) a bowl of fresh fruit. Mango, lychee, pear, apple and blueberries. He doesn’t know where she got them from in this weather, but he doesn’t dare question his wife’s genius.
“Oh.” Ilya says. He swallows as he looks back at David. “Thank you Mr Hollander.”
“David.” He says.
“David.” Ilya mutters gently. “I um… I will take good care of Shane.” He says.
And David is overwhelmed with the sudden urge to cry. Instead he pulls Ilya into a hug and feels how the boy stills and then relaxes, his body heavy against David’s. He feels like he weighs a tonne from everything he’s been through. It feels like he crumbles under a dad hug and David wants him to always feel like this, safe and child-like and looked after. Being told that people are proud of him. He deserves that. Everyone deserves that.
He pats Ilya twice on the back and pulls back.
“Sleep well. If Shane feels okay tomorrow then we will all have a conversation. It’s nothing to worry about, we already like you a lot.”
Ilya blinks. “Thank you David.” He says. “I never, I have never been this lucky. To meet people like you and Yuna.”
He stares at the boy in front of him. “You deserve everything, Ilya. Don’t forget that.”
If they both go to bed teary eyed, then David’s sure he’s done something right.
Ilya Rozanov. He thinks.
His son has seen something special and he can’t be mad at his choice.