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Ilya Rozanov thinks about it, more than he should. Thinks about what it feels like to lose Shane, again and again and again, until he’s more familiar with the idea of Shane slipping away from between his fingers than he is with the warmth of Shane at his side or the weight of him against his chest. The memories of past lives and blunted and dull, blurred into one, but he remembers what it had felt like to live with the gaping cavern of Shane’s absence, a hollow pit in the middle of his chest.
Ilya Rozanov, tomorrow, is going to turn forty. He is going to wake up in the morning and he will be lying next to his husband, in the cottage that they built together when they were younger and share together now that they are retired, with his dogs asleep at the foot of their bed, and he will be half way through this life of theirs. Maybe more than, if the parental genetics that Ilya has lucked out with in this lifetime have anything to say about it. But there’ll be a party, because Ilya has friends now, and singing and cake, and Ilya will get to spend it all with his husband, right up until it is time to sleep again.
And all he can think about is how it feels to lose his husband.
He doesn’t want to lose Shane. He never wants to lose Shane, but this time -
Ilya takes himself outside, down to the jetty where it juts out onto the lake. A loon call pierces the orange, dusky sky; comforting, now that he has grown into his surroundings, away from the vague terror that had dogged him those first few months. Everything had been so fresh then. Ilya had not wanted to get used to any of it, imagining that having it so briefly and it being snatched away would hurt the most. He still worries about it being snatched away… but he’s lived here for years now. It comforts him just as much as it scares him.
He sits on the very edge, feet dangling above the water. He pulls a blanket around his shoulders, because his skin is prickling with gooseflesh in the fresh outdoor air. He thinks about letting himself slip in, water closing over his head - not for long, just long enough to make things quiet for a little while - and birthing him out new and baptised and clean. He has a mug of herbal tea in his hands, and the warmth anchors him. He takes small sips. Thinks about losing his husband. Wonders if he could do another load of washing to hang out on the line in the morning. Decides what clothes he would dress Shane in for his coffin. Considers the options he has saved for Troy and Harris’ anniversary gift.
“There you are,” says Shane. Ilya isn’t sure how long he’s been out there by the time his husband finds him, but he is cold and Shane is not, so he burrows up against Shane’s side. “I’ve been looking for you.”
The smile that Ilya shoots him is wan, unconvincing. “Found me,” he says. He adjusts the blanket so that it covers both him and Shane. Shane’s arm slips around his waist.
“You look very thoughtful,” Shane continues. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I won’t. I am thinking many useless thoughts. Nothing useful.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“You do not want to hear them.”
“I want to hear all your thoughts.”
“Even the stupid ones?” Ilya asks.
“Especially the stupid ones.”
Ilya looks at his husband and the way that age has settled on him this time around - very well. Like fine wine, Luca Haas had said, laughing as he dodged the blow that Ilya had tried to land on his stomach. But it’s true. Shane’s aged well. Ilya looks at him and sees the seventeen year old he met at Regina and fell in love with, and the thirty year old he married, and he sees the man in front of him, with no grey hairs yet but faint lines around his eyes and mouth where the jokes and smiles that they have shared have left a physical reminder of their presence.
Shane looks back at him steadily. In the setting sun, he looks like the most beautiful thing that Ilya has ever seen.
“I am thinking,” Ilya says slowly, “about how much I love you. And I am thinking that one day I will lose you again and I cannot stop it from happening.”
Shane squeezes his hand. “But I always find you, don’t I?”
Not always - sometimes Ilya lives a life or two without Shane, missing him… but eventually, yes, always, they come together and steal however much time they are allotted. And it’s perfect. It’s all Ilya ever wants. But -
“It won’t be the same,” he says, and the words fall out despite themselves. It’s not what he’s intending to say - something he’d planned to keep to himself - but he can’t help but blurt it out regardless. “Shanya, it won’t be you again. Not like now… I am scared…” And his voice wavers, trailing away for just a moment. “We have a good life - our home, our family, our friends. We will never have that again, like it is now, in another life. And I do not want to lose it. I’m sorry.”
Ilya doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this way about a life before. Probably, he thinks that he has, only that death has drawn a gauzy curtain between him and it, with just enough distance that he feels the grief of everything he has previously lost like it is second hand. The other versions of himself are different people. Their families and friends and everything they had loved are not his. So, the life he has now - if he loses it - would be gone forever. He would never find it again, never be Ilya Rozanov again, never be in love with Shane Hollander. That feels like a fate worse than death.
With tears in his eyes, clumping together his lashes, Shane stares at him. His breathing trembles, minutely, but Ilya knows that it means Shane is thinking about it parsing through his emotions and what words he might give to them.
“You know,” he says, toying idly with Ilya’s fingers on his lap, brushing over the backs of his knuckles, “this is the first lifetime that we’ve ever gotten married. We’ve never been able to before. This is also the first time I’ve been able to tell people that I love you. Where we’ve been able to hold hands on the street, talk about starting a family together. When I walked up to you in Regina… I mean, yeah, I was a little bit scared, but not like I have been before. This life has been perfect.”
Ilya’s breathing hitches. “I do not to lose it,” he confesses.
Shane brushes away the tears from his cheeks. “I don’t think we will.”
“What?”
“I think,” says Shane, considering each word with care, “that maybe everything has been leading to this moment. I loved you across time and space, every time I have been shoved back into this world, in every life that I’ve been given… and it’s never been enough. Not enough to let me love you openly, or to have that life we always said we’d have together. And I think maybe that’s the point. Every lifetime has been a step closer to this. And now we’re here, together.”
“And you think…?”
“I think that this is everything we’ve ever wanted,” says Shane, “and it’s everything we deserve. And this… maybe it could be a happy ending for us. Maybe we get to keep this, ‘cause everything has been carrying us to this point, now.”
The loons cry, low and mournful, in the distance. Ilya cannot see them from where he is sat but he knows that they are there. Behind them, their cottage, with the warm glow of its orange interior lights spilling out and down the lawn, where their dogs sleep and where - in the morning - they will gather everyone they love and celebrate Ilya’s fortieth birthday like it’s the first and last one he’ll ever have. That’s the point, maybe. It’s everything. The end.
“I’d like that,” says Ilya. “I’d like that to be true, more than anything.”
And the thing is, when he says, it feels as though it rings true in the space between himself and Shane where they are bound together. If nothing else, he has faith in that; Shane, after all, has never steered him wrong before.