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When Ilya is growing up, he thinks he is maybe a bad dog.
His neighbour has one and he lives in the apartment next to theirs, with a woman named Yeva and her mean-mouthed husband, Ivan who drinks very late and makes the stairwell smoky with his cigarettes Ilya doesn’t like the smell of.
The dog is a mutt with a short, unbrushed coat that is a little curly at the collar and tan. It doesn’t have a name, he doesn’t think. The man just yells “Zamolchi!” and Ilya wonders if maybe the dog thinks that is his name: Shut up.
Ilya is not allowed a dog because his father doesn’t like them, his Mama does however. She tells him stories of the pup she had as a girl, Kaguya, the name she had stolen was from some Japanese storybook she read once and fell in love with. She had only one photo of Kaguya, a small white, wiry little dog, cuddled on the lap of his Mama where she sat on the front step of her house, smiling with all her teeth.
Kaguya was supposedly a very good dog. She could do tricks, Mama told him. But his Mama’s father did not like dogs, just as Ilya’s father did not, and he disliked the white hairs on his best jacket when Kaguya would shake her head or scratch behind her ears, so one day Mama came home and Kaguya was gone and that was it.
The neighbours dog is a bad dog because that’s what father says about it, and Alexei when he complains that it had chased him down the street one afternoon and tried to bite at his ankles. Father tells them that if this bad dog tries to get them, they’re to kick it and throw rocks at it: show it who was bigger.
Ilya doesn’t want to do that. He thinks he’d rather let it bite him than do that. Mama tells him later when she’s tucking him into bed with a kiss to his head that he is a good boy.
Ilya doesn’t think he always is.
His father is a bad dog; he barks like the one next door and he snarls and he doesn’t bite but he sure does use his hands.
Mama makes a comment one afternoon and Ilya doesn’t hear what it is she says as she’s standing at the basin, but it must have been bad, because Father pulls on her hair like it’s a leash and drags her away. Mama howls and Ilya watches.
His brother tells him that there is no such thing as a good dog, just well behaved, domesticated ones made out from the bad. He says that all dogs are wild beasts and some are wilder than others. Ilya thinks that if maybe his father is a wild dog, maybe he is, too.
A bad breed.
His brother sometimes bites but he mostly jumps, too. He is afraid of the neighbours dog but he won’t admit it. He walks fast past their door and presses in close to Ilya when they pass it on the street. He goes quiet, ears back, when Father is angry and takes his beatings like a good dog.
The neighbours dog snarls and scratches at the door and chases cats. Father calls Ilya wicked names and he doesn’t like it when Mama locks the bathroom door on herself and he runs them each into corners when he’s angry.
Ilya doesn’t get bit but he goes to school with angry welts on the backs of his legs that sting fiercely when he sits, and the other kids laugh when his eyes get wet, and he feels, as they move in their pack with him watching from the outside, like a bad, bad dog.
Ilya thinks, besides his Mama, he comes from a family of bad dogs. He thinks his Mama is probably more like Kaguya, a good dog that could do tricks and was kind.
And then Mama is gone.
The neighbours dog eventually bites Alexei one day and he screams all the way home with blood streaked on his shoes as it runs down the puncture marks on the back of his leg, and Ilya asks him if maybe he had poked the dog with a stick or thrown rocks at it and Alexei tells him, with fury and with tears that he did.
And then Ilya does a very bad dog thing.
He bites his brother with his hands, pins him and shows his teeth and for that, Father takes him by his leash with big, mean hands fisted into his curls, and drags him away, exactly like with Mama, except Mama was gone now, with Kaguya, because she had been too good and gotten hair on their best clothes.
Ilya is not a good dog, he knows that.
He tries not to bite if he can help it, but it was always someone else biting him first.
He is not a pup anymore, a teenager that doesn’t mind the smell of cigarettes anymore because he’s smoking a pack a day, enjoying the warmth each drag invites into his lungs. He still isn’t afraid of the neighbour’s dog because he’s sure he can bark louder than it can, not that he ever tries to. Alexei has a scar on the back of his calf where he was bit and he snarls when he tells Ilya he should get fixed all because Ilya finds the company of other bad dogs that will have him.
The bad dogs he chooses aren’t always women — pretty show things that bat their eyes at him. Sasha, a guy, his coach's son, is another bad, bad dog. He gets into things that aren’t his and Ilya is close to follow – a curious creature sniffing out trouble.
His father remains angry and mean. He still pulls at his leash, tells him to heel even when he’s supposed to be heading to Canada to play against them for the first time because hockey is one of his tricks, just like skating had been for Mama.
His coach spits and yells and shakes Ilya like a rotten, chewed up toy when he messes up and Ilya keeps his head down, speaks quietly – he obeys.
He thinks about Kaguya when he meets Shane Hollander. His hand is warm in his, there’s a little bit of snow on the shoulder of his jacket and his eyes scrunch up when he smiles. He doesn’t bark loudly, he is small and quiet but in different ways that Ilya is. Shane probably comes from a family of good, well behaved dogs.
Pedigree, maybe. Ilya drinks from the bottle until he finds its bottom, and then goes home to Russia and does more bad things with Sasha.
Father is older, slower, just like the neighbours dog that can’t chase Alexei anymore, grey around the muzzle, long in the tooth, he’s flea bitten and angry, still. And Ilya’s father still has his bark about him when he wants to be loud. He still has Ilya on his leash and pulls.
“Zamolchi!” Ivan screams through the wall when the dog starts barking again. Ilya lays in his creaky little childhood bed and stares at a ceiling that feels a lot shorter than it had done before, and wonders if Mama hadn’t said his name enough times, her Ilyaushka, what words he would answer to instead, here in this family of bad dogs.
Alexei has one in mind for him, father has many.
Ilya is good at all his best tricks – he gets first pick of the draft and he’s been a good dog until his face and his name is printed in the papers and they too, just by looking at him, assume he is just a bad dog.
Maybe he’s too scruffy, maybe he isn’t groomed or trained like the other dogs— fucking Hollander.
Maybe it’s because he comes from a bad breed of dogs or maybe they can see, just like Alexei had told him, that he couldn’t be a good dog. He wasn’t even a domesticated one. He was always going to be a bad dog no matter what, and so he moves to America with his tail between his legs, not looking back when the neighbours dog followed him down the street to the car that was waiting for him.
He’s a wild animal in America – he plays on the ice like it and he plays in the clubs like it, too. He can sniff out trouble, his nose firm to the ground, and he likes it, getting his teeth into something he’s not supposed to have.
Shane Hollander is one of those things.
But Shane does not treat him like a bad dog, not really. He’s hesitant to pet, but not like Alexei was with the old dog next door; he doesn’t run away crying nor does he throw rocks or poke him with sticks.
He holds his hand out and Ilya sniffs.
Shane doesn’t have him on a leash, yet, Ilya finds himself wanting to fall in command like he would at home: sit, heel, stay. But Shane doesn’t expect that of him and it’s confusing.
Ilya shows him how bad of a bad dog he can be without biting. He warns him in Sochi, shows him his teeth: back the fuck up, but Shane still isn’t scared, just like Ilya was not of the neighbours dog.
And Shane can bark too. He’s loud and Ilya imagines that when Mama’s papa took Kaguya away, that sweet little dog would have barked too if she knew she was being sent away. He wonders if she barked and if she ever dared to bite.
Shane does not bite but he is capable of showing his teeth and Ilya likes that. Kaguya was a good dog and so was Mama and she knew how to show her teeth, too. Shane isn’t frightened.
Everyone sees Ilya for how bad he can be: it’s there in the headlines, it’s his father’s voice, his brothers, too, circling about in his head when he curls up and goes to sleep alone at night and it’s there when he answers Alexei and Father’s calls from Russia. He picks fights on the ice like he did with his brother, once. Maybe he should have poked at him more.
And Shane still isn’t scared. Maybe Shane isn’t a good dog, maybe he’s a stupid one.
But he knows that isn’t true. Of course it isn’t.
Shane is good, he is smart and he is kind. He isn’t Kaguya and he isn’t Mama but he has a similar temperament that feels comforting. Ilya pokes at Scott Hunter and Shane is telling him just like Mama once did: don’t throw rocks, Ilya, be good.
He knows Shane has tricks, he’s got the best ones in the league at it but he wants to know if he knows one in particular: Stay.
Shane seems to know it, he thinks, and it’s nice and for a little bit, Ilya doesn’t feel like a bad dog, or a dog at all. He feels good and nice, and then Shane jumps and runs in fear of being bitten and Ilya doesn’t get it because he hadn’t shown his teeth at all.
Ilya goes back to sniffing around after that since Shane had left. He finds old comforts, same dog, old tricks, new kind of ache. He finds the trouble he’s looking for but it doesn’t taste the same… nothing does.
He’s licking old wounds, scratching at the same old posts already marked with his indentations. It’s easy and it’s sad all the same and he hates it, but Shane hasn’t stayed. He hadn’t let Ilya heel. He’d let him free, just like his neighbour Ivan used to do when he’d open the door and let him chase the neighbourhood kids down the street because he didn’t care.
Svetlana doesn’t treat him like a bad dog, not intentionally anyway. She’s got him trained and he knows how to please her with all his other tricks. She’s good to him, different from how Shane was good, but good all the same.
Svetlana knows how to play but it’s only that, nothing serious. She too jokes that Ilya needs to be fixed but it’s not like how Alexei once said it; it doesn’t make him feel like an unruly mutt. He liked being a lone wolf — maybe that was what he was instead. A wanderer.
And then there was Tampa, Florida. He’s not looking forward to it, he’ll admit, but he goes anyway. Plays his same tricks, still gets treated like a bad dog when people have to resign to the fact that they’re going to be playing with him and not against him for once.
But not Shane. Shane doesn’t shy. He turns up in that bar in his new clothes, groomed and kind, and he shares a beer between them and Ilya stops feeling like a dog again for a little bit.
It’s even better when they’re on the ice together.
People in the stands are cheering for him, all clicks and whistles, and Ilya reacts. He and Shane play fucking beautifully, he can’t help but skate right up to him and plant his lips on the side of his helmet.
“Great pass,” Shane praises him and Ilya fucking beams.
I could be a good dog for you, a voice sounds somewhere in the back of his head. A yapping sound like a lost puppy in the dark. I could be a good dog, just let me show you how.
After they win the game, they celebrate at the bar with a few beers with the rest of their team. Ilya sits, receiving a few rough pats or shakes of his shoulders as they pass him along the chain of whoever next they were to smile and shake hands with.
He doesn’t feel like he’s a bad dog here, but it’s creeping back in, like a flea under his coat. He knows it’s going to happen when he catches eyes with Shane across the room and he looks away.
Later he finds him at the beach, and Shane asks him to heel. Ilya obeys and gives him his room number.
He’s fucking terrified as he waits for him, re-grooming himself over and over in the hotel room’s bathroom mirror, fixing the curls that were a leash, a tether, something to love and hate.
A soft knock at the door and soon Shane is in his room, and Ilya tells him it looks serious because it does look serious, until Shane shows a little bit of teeth… Ilya can’t help but snarl back slightly.
But once again, Shane proves himself: he is not afraid of bad dogs. He doesn’t shy, doesn’t turn away. He tells Ilya what he needs to hear and then, when Ilya isn’t just a bad dog, but a pathetic one with his tail between his legs and tears on his face, Shane still doesn’t back away.
He brings himself into Ilya’s space, kisses him like he means it and holds him.
Ilya thought that he might forget his own name, just like the neighbour's dog. Nothing more than an angry command to be listened to or a ugly word to adhere to.
But then Shane calls him Ilya and he knows that name.
He goes back to Boston and Shane still has his hand out for him to sniff, if Ilya won’t bite, which he won’t.
But then there’s a call from Alexei, the one he’s been avoiding, whistling for him all the way in Russia, before it turns into an angry shout and he’s crawling back there, more scared than ever.
Ilya doesn’t know if bad dogs go to heaven: he’d never gotten around to asking his Mama that question.
The neighbours dog is long dead, but he gets a knot in his stomach when he thinks it went anywhere but a paradise where it maybe had a name and didn’t get rocks thrown at it and a coat that could be brushed and a family that loved it unconditionally even when it barked.
His father is not in heaven. He knows that to be true. He takes the cross that hangs around his neck (it never felt like his collar, just the identification tags that tell somebody: this is where I belonged once) and kisses it. His Mama had been safe from his fathers sharp teeth for a long time but he hopes more than ever now, they’re as far separated as they could ever possibly be.
Alexei is an angrier dog than he remembers, rabid almost, and he’s not just showing his teeth this time, he’s growling and he’s just begging Ilya to throw rocks at him, and because Ilya thinks he is a bad dog too, he bites, and bites hard.
He can outrun his brother easily. He isn’t sure why it’s taken him so long to do it until now but he dares him to follow him with more rocks to throw before he walks away from him for good. He won’t answer to his commands no more.
He’s excited to play against Shane again, the first they would be seeing of each other since Tampa, and all the phone calls inbetween. He gets on the ice and feels loose around his neck… there’s no leash pulling him back anymore. He can breathe without the lump in his throat until he watches Shane go down on the ice with a deafening crack and Ilya’s hackles rise, his teeth are on edge.
He thinks he should want someone to bite, to chew out, but he doesn’t. He just wants to be beside Shane: heel, heel, heel, boy. He isn’t allowed, though, and he watches as they cart his semi-conscious body off away and Ilya gets a new command from his coach to keep on playing.
And Ilya obeys. It kills him more than ever.
He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat until the next morning he finds out that Shane is okay and what room he’s staying in at the hospital. He runs. He heels and Shane, when he gets there, asks him to fucking stay.
It’s scary; he wants to show teeth and back up but he won’t. He won’t make the same mistake again because he cannot be a bad dog anymore. He will learn these tricks, even when it’s hard. He tells Shane maybe because that is the best he can give him right now until he has to leave and Shane’s eyes slip back shut and Ilya leaves, but part of his heart remains.
Part of him heels.
A few weeks later and Ilya is watching Scott Hunter, whom he poked with sticks, is on his TV screen and he’s whistling with a smile into the crowd, and somebody— a man, skips down the steps, hops the fucking board and crashes his mouth onto his.
Scott Hunter is fucking gay.
Ilya can’t think straight as he turns from the television where the sounds of the crowd bleed through his surround sound set, and it’s all clicks and fucking whistles as his hands shake and he’s calling for Shane.
I’ll stay, I’ll heel, is what he’s telling him on the phone as soon as he answers. Here’s how I show you how good I can try to be.
Shane’s cottage is about as every bit beautiful as it had looked on the TV, but the interior design isn’t why he’s here. He has something to prove; a new trick he’s trying to teach himself.
He kisses Shane on the couch and then again on his bed, on his fucking bed.
“Let’s say how we really feel,” Shane had asked of him, petting at his face, sweet in his eyes even with Ilya’s hand shoved down the front of his shorts.
Ilya had swallowed hard and nodded: he could try. He could try and obey for Shane.
So he stays, and Shane lets him. And it’s fucking amazing — they fall asleep together, limbs tangled underneath the blankets that they share, a breakfast, and then a lunch and then burgers on the grill. There’s a lake Ilya can swim in, shake his head when he comes up for air, and Shane’s laughter is sweet when it skims off the surface of the gently lolling ripples. The fire is warm against his face as the flames lick up into the sky, and at first Ilya hadn’t cared much for it, but he thinks maybe he hadn’t cared for much in his life until there was Shane, so he curls up on his lap and allows himself to be pet.
And he tells Shane, subtly, easy when he wasn’t looking him dead in the eyes: I come from a bad breed of very bag dogs.
And still, Shane doesn’t run.
He wakes with him there, curled into his side: asking him, telling him, I have stayed, will you stay too?
They play in the yard, they play in the water. Ilya had promised Shane he would tell him how he’s feeling, and it’s a trick Ilya has now allowed himself to learn in full… so he tells him in full. First in Russian, then again in Russian.
Then, in English: I love you.
He’s not a bad dog, he can’t be. Surely not if someone as good as Shane, with tears in his wet, beautiful eyes can hold him, breathe him in and say: I love you too.
And it’s perfect, maybe the most perfect thing that has ever happened to him since before Mama went away, but Ilya thinks maybe his flea will catch because bad things happen around him when he’s pressing Shane up against the glass, letting his hands, oh-so-gentle and so very needy wander down, down down, his eyes are then lifting and—
David Hollander turns and he runs, and Shane fucking freaks.
Ilya isn’t sure what to do, whether he should maybe run after him and bite — would showing his teeth be enough? Fuck. No. He couldn’t do that, this wasn’t his father, it was Shane’s. Shane’s family weren’t bad like his, they were good, they’d be good—
They would be good, wouldn’t they?
Shane seems to think so, in between the shock and disbelief and the anxiety that brings him to his knees. It’s scary and he’s just a little dog with a big bark, but Ilya thinks about Kaguya again: the might of her bark he always believed in. He thinks about Mama. He tells Shane, I will heel, and so Shane asks him to.
He’s not afraid to meet with Mr and Mrs Hollander — he walks without his tail tucked beneath his legs but he keeps his teeth behind his lip. He doesn’t need to bark and he needn’t submit either; he’s here for Shane who tells them: I’m gay, and this is… Ilya… Rozanov and they are looking at him, weary, wondering: isn’t this the one who bites? But Ilya could never. He would never.
He puts a hand on Shane’s shoulder, uses the wrong word but never ever bites.
David Hollander is an exceptional chef, and he has good taste in vodka, too, apparently.
David Hollander moves around the kitchen like he owns the space, broad shoulders fill the doorway when he passes it, and Ilya stares at his large hands on more than once occasion as he talks with them.
They are big hands. His father had big hands, too. Hands that curled tight around his leash. Big hands that left marks on his skin. Big, mean hands that hurt him, that hurt Alexei, that hurt Mama.
Yuna Hollander is mightier than he imagined — and he had imagined, over the years. The strict mother that hovered and growled when people got too close to her precious pup.
But Yuna is not bad. She is fiercely protective and Ilya cannot fault her for that. She reminds him of Kaguya, just like Shane had once. She can put Shane in his place like she can her husband, and Ilya, most likely, but nobody pulls on her hair and nobody tells her zamolchi!
Nobody thinks her bark makes her bad.
She is loved, all the ways his own Mama should have been, in another life, maybe.
He eats and drinks and stays polite, all his best tricks for his best person sat beside him. A foot nudged against his, Shane doesn’t come from a pedigree home like he had once believed.
Because Shane Hollander is not a dog, and by the time they are leaving the house driving away with Shane’s hand in his…. Ilya thinks: maybe I am not a bad dog after all.
Because maybe I am not a dog at all.