Chapter Text
Ilya was at the cottage, again. He could always tell right away. Maybe it was the light, or the quiet, or the way the landscape felt like it shifted when he wasn’t looking. Maybe it was that part of his brain that never went quiet: small and bright and alert, always watching. Always ready to sound the alarm.
Maybe it was everything, or maybe he’d had the dream so many times at this point that he’d know it…
Well.
In his sleep.
Ilya didn’t even fight it any more. Fighting it had never worked; he could fight most things, but that was her hand dangling over the edge of the hammock, pink and moving softly and alive, and Ilya had never been much good at fighting hope.
It went the same, every time: Ilya walked to the hammock and she was there, smiling up at him. Mama, he said. Shane’s in the house. I want you to meet him.
She had never once said yes. She’d never said anything, just took his hand and kept smiling. Ilya held on tight and tried to keep looking at her, tried to put off what came next, but that never worked. He looked up, at the cottage, at Shane’s silhouette in the kitchen window. He waved: come out here. Shane disappeared, moving toward the back door.
Then, he waited. He hoped, stupidly, that this dream would be different, that the clock wasn’t running out, that Shane would walk through the door any second, but Ilya knew better. In the hammock, his mother’s face began to pale, the skin around her eyes going gray. She squeezed his hand, smiled, same as always, and now it was his turn to beg: wait. Please. He’ll be here.
It was almost over, now, and the part of Ilya that was already waking up thought dimly that this should’ve been routine, that it shouldn’t feel so much like a hand closing around his throat, but it did. It always did. The house was silent and still as a tomb and the veins were showing beneath his mother’s skin and he had her hand in both of his, frantically looking back at the cottage, saying don’t go, please wait, he’ll be—
Waking was a relief, finally, in the way it was a relief to get your feet under you after falling down a hill, upright but still stumbling. Moonlight slanted across the floor from the skylight in bright blue-white blocks, and he was slower to remember where they were than he should have been.
On his fucking honeymoon. His brain couldn’t have waited two more days to get back to Canada?
Ilya took a deep breath, rolled onto his back, and reached his hand out for Shane. He was there, warm and solid—Ilya had known he would be, he’d known—but he had to shut his eyes in relief all the same. Slowly, he let his fingers drift down Shane’s arm until he was covering Shane’s hand with his own. Shane’s fingers twitched in his sleep and half-curled around Ilya’s. For all that he was so controlled and contained when he was awake, Shane slept like a lunatic, sprawled everywhere, currently face-down between two pillows with one arm thrown over a third and the other out behind him, toward Ilya.
It helped. Ilya’s heartbeat slowed. He breathed in to a count of four and out to a count of six, one of the thousand tricks he’d picked up from Shane, and that helped, too. Ilya stared at the sky light in the ceiling, a few dim stars above, and wished it were helping more. Even though he was awake, even though Shane was asleep next to him, even though he was on his honeymoon in one of the most perfect places he could imagine, the dream still felt like it was there, coiled and writhing under the surface of his mind. He couldn’t shake it. Carefully, so he wouldn’t wake Shane, he got out of bed.
The villa had a pool that overlooked the Mediterranean, which was objectively ridiculous. Ilya walked past it to the double-lounger they’d set up their first night there to watch the sun set over the ocean. Afterward, they’d fucked on it. Better to sit there and think about that than about—anything else.
Ilya sat. He watched the ocean. The moon was maybe three-quarters full, light glinting off the waves, lighting the sky enough that he couldn’t see many stars. He could wish on one and didn’t, because what would he wish for—that his stupid brain would make dream-Shane walk faster? Terrible wish.
He was still sitting there, starting to shiver in the cool ocean breeze, making terrible wishes, when the patio door opened. Ilya knew who it was, but he looked anyway, just to watch: Shane outdoors, in nothing but his boxer-briefs and a blanket slung over his shoulder, walking past the pool in the moonlight.
“Sorry,” he said, when Shane reached him. “Did not mean to wake you up.”
“You didn’t,” Shane said, and took the blanket off his shoulder to spread it over Ilya. “Sometimes I just wake up.”
The blanket was enormous, ludicrously soft, and fuzzy, probably made of endangered chinchillas or something. It had to be illegal.
“Thank you for blanket,” Ilya said, because Shane was still standing there, looking at him, frowning a little. He looked like he was adding something together, drawing a conclusion, checking his work. Then he sighed and knelt on the lounger next to Ilya.
“Move,” he said, and Ilya huffed.
“Why? This spot is warm and there is plenty of—” Shane ignored him, pushing Ilya forward and wedging himself between Ilya and the back of the lounger. “Ouch. You have elbows.”
“Shut up, Jesus,” Shane muttered, still sounding half-asleep, hair tousled and sticking up in horrible directions. Ilya wanted a portrait. “Act like you’ve cuddled before.”
“You act like you’ve cuddled before,” Ilya grumbled, but he let Shane manhandle him until he was leaning back against Shane’s chest, head on Shane’s shoulder, sitting between Shane’s legs, the illegally-wonderful blanket over them. Shane draped one arm over his shoulder, hand splayed over his ribs, and pushed the other into his hair. Ilya sighed and closed his eyes and told himself to relax, even as he braced himself for what was coming.
“Why’d you wake up?” Shane asked, voice still sleep-rough but soft.
“Just woke up,” Ilya mumbled, and Shane didn’t answer for a long time, just ran his fingers through Ilya’s hair. Someday Ilya was going to figure out why that always felt so good, but not today, because—
“Did you have the dream again?” Shane asked, so no, Ilya hadn’t gotten away with it. Of course he hadn’t. Shane still felt guilty for all the times he hadn’t talked to Ilya about feelings in the past, so now, Ilya would probably never have an undiscussed emotion for the rest of his life. There were worse fates.
“Yes,” he said.
There was a long pause, Shane’s fingers working through Ilya’s hair. A breeze drifted in from the ocean: shivery and salty, so Ilya pulled the blanket tighter around them.
“Did I come out of the house this time?” Shane asked, in that quiet, hesitant way he did sometimes when he knew the answer to a question, and knew he wouldn’t like it.
“No,” Ilya said. “Is not your fault.”
“I know.” The movement of Shane’s fingers hadn’t changed, firm and rhythmic and soothing. Ilya let himself be lulled. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t… I don’t know. Tell the version of me in your head to hurry the fuck up.”
Ilya snorted.
“Maybe try using your captain voice and telling him to hustle,” he suggested. “Works for rookies.”
“Shut up.”
Ilya tilted his head back until he could see Shane’s face. “No.”
Shane sighed a very put-upon sigh, then kissed Ilya on the forehead. Ilya couldn’t make his own brain behave, couldn’t dream of a faster Shane or a different scene entirely, but here he was by the sea with the softest blanket he’d ever touched and a half-awake husband giving out forehead kisses like there was an infinite supply.
It struck him, suddenly, that he could have asked for all this. Any time, he could just ask.
“Do that again,” he said, eyes closed.
“Do what?”
Ilya tapped his forehead with one finger—didn’t open his eyes—and a moment later, he was rewarded with the warm press of Shane’s mouth. Ilya swallowed.
“She never says anything, only smiles at me,” he said, before he could change his mind. One sunlight-flooded morning, earlier that summer, he’d promised. It had seemed much easier then. “I think,” he started. He breathed. From here, on the deck of the stupidly fancy villa they’d rented, there were no other lights, no sounds of cars, no low hum of civilization. It was either late or early. Both, maybe; it felt like time was stuck, like maybe Ilya dreamed them into a place somewhere outside the world, built just for the two of them. Hadn’t he wanted that, once?
“I think I forgot how her voice sounds,” he said, and it felt like a confession.
“Oh,” Shane said, so softly, his hand tightening around Ilya’s ribcage. Ilya covered it with his own. He hadn’t had the dream for months before tonight, since back before Hayden’s stupid fucking video. He’d thought that the next time he did, it would be different. Being publicly with Shane would fix it, he hoped, Shane coming out of the house in the dream a metaphor so obvious even his subconscious could come up with it.
But no. All that and the dream was still the same: Shane inside, oblivious; his mother dying over and over in the hammock. Ilya unable to stop thinking the worst of the people he loved.
“I stole the crucifix,” he said, since he was confessing things, anyway. “Or maybe it was supposed to be mine. I never asked.”
Shane’s hand stopped moving through his hair.
“Stole it how?” Shane asked, sounding shocked. “From where?”
“I think my father got a bag of her things from the hospital,” he told Shane, doing his best to remember it himself. He’d known she was dead right away, but it had taken so long for everything else to unspool: an panicked call, a rush to the hospital, a long wait in a fluorescent-lit emergency room. He’d been twelve, too old to cry but too young to stop himself. Andrei had been sixteen and blank-faced, jaw flexing as tears ran down his face.
His father hadn’t cried. He’d shouted.
“He should have buried her in it,” he said. “Instead it was in a plastic bag on her dresser that he didn’t touch until he was going to marry my stepmother ten months later. So I took it.”
“Good.”
“He tried to get rid of her, after,” Ilya said, the words rushing out. He made himself breathe again. “He threw away all her things. Rearranged the house. He wouldn’t say her name. He would barely admit we’d had a mother. I was so angry, all the time.”
He could leave it there, for now. He should, probably; he’d confessed enough for now.
Something firm and gentle pressed against the top of his head: a kiss. Ilya’s eyes closed.
“Angry with him because—” he gestured. “And angry with her, for leaving.” He swallowed. “She killed herself and I was mad at her for it.”
There was nothing special about that, and he knew it. An extremely common and healthy part of the grieving process, Galina had said, soothing and matter-of-fact. And it made a difference—it helped—it did, except sometimes he dreamt about her and woke up thinking about how much anger his mother had faced in her life and how she deserved better in death.
Shane didn’t say anything, but he moved his hand up just enough to touch the crucifix with his thumb and pressing the warm metal into Ilya’s skin, rubbing it back and forth. It was soothing, solid. It could have felt like an exposed nerve. It would have, with anyone else.
“How come I am always telling you about the bad things I have done but you are not sharing?” he asked, a minute or two later.
“I’ve never done anything bad.”
Ilya sat up exactly enough to give Shane the look that statement deserved, and Shane laughed.
“Anything else,” he said.
“Such a nice Canadian boy.”
“Fuck off. I sneaked out of the house once. I think I was fifteen.”
“You.”
“Yes, me.”
“Sneaked out to where?”
“A party one of the older guys on the team threw because his parents were out of town. I climbed out my bedroom window and then was supposed to walk a few blocks for my buddy who could drive to come pick me up. The whole time I thought the cops were gonna come and I was gonna get arrested.”
Ilya tried to picture it—fifteen-year-old-Shane, sneaking along the street in suburban Ottawa at midnight—and literally couldn’t.
“Was it a good party?”
Shane sighed again.
“Shaaaaane.”
“I don’t know,” Shane finally admitted. “I made it like three blocks before I turned around and went home. Shut up.”
“I said nothing!”
“I can tell you’re laughing.”
“Is a very cute story,” Ilya said, still laughing. “Baby Shane walking around his parents’ neighborhood trying not to look—okay, okay, I am done!” He managed to grab Shane’s hand when he poked Ilya in the ribs, and then Shane’s other hand when he did it again, and after a brief wrestling match they were somehow wound together on their sides, giggling, the blanket slumped to the ground.
“Come back to bed,” Ilya said, once they caught their breath, his face smashed against Shane’s throat. It shouldn’t have been as comfortable as it was. “Is cold without illegal blanket.”
“Illegal?” Shane said, after a moment.
“Yes. Is too cozy. Probably illegal.”
He didn’t get a response, and was about to pull back when he felt Shane’s fingertips drift down the side of his face, then over the shell of his ear. Ilya closed his eyes a little tighter.
“Hey,” Shane said, and Ilya could feel him swallow. “I’ll try to come outside faster next time, okay?”
Ilya wanted to say it wasn’t Shane’s problem to fix. It was his dream, his brain; he was the one stuck in the same loop. Shane couldn’t will a figment of Ilya’s imagination into doing anything, and they both knew it.
Then again, he didn’t know anyone else with Shane’s sheer force of will, so hot and bright it felt like staring into the sun, sometimes.
“Okay,” he said, and he could feel Shane’s smile as he kissed Ilya on the forehead.
———
“We could stay,” Ilya said, twenty minutes later, from his spot on Shane’s shoulder, lying together on the bed. The angle of the moonlight through the ceiling was sharper than it had been earlier, the morning closer.
“Stay?” Shane asked, voice rough, like he’d already been asleep.
“Here. A few more days. Change our flight home, nothing will explode while we are gone. Is just the usual bullshit.”
Shane took a long time to answer, tracing slow circles on Ilya’s shoulder blade.
“I’m looking forward to getting back, actually,” he said at last, and Ilya snorted.
“Of course you are in fucking paradise and can’t wait to play hockey,” he teased.
“Shut up,” Shane said warmly. “I mean, yeah, but not just for that. For everything.”
“Because you love change.”
“I don’t have to love it to know it’s good sometimes.”
Ilya lifted his head just enough to look Shane in the eye. “Who are you and what have you done with my Shane?”
“I’m not that bad.”
Ilya paused, chin on Shane’s shoulder. He thought: just ask. You’re allowed.
“You are serious and not just trying to make me feel better?”
“What? No,” Shane said, sounding genuinely confused. “Of course I’m excited.” There was a slight pause. “Did you think I wasn’t excited?”
Ilya put his head down again and stopped looking at Shane. He didn’t need to see how relieved Ilya felt right now. “I don’t know,” Ilya said, giving a tiny shrug. “You were so sad about the Voyageurs.”
Shane snorted and flopped his head back on the pillow. “Well, yeah. I won them four cups and they were dicks to me.”
“Oh. You won four cups?”
Shane flicked Ilya’s shoulder blade in answer, so Ilya brushed his fingertips over the ticklish shot just above Shane’s hip. Shane yelped.
“The Centaurs are a good team that could be a great team,” Shane said, because now that hockey had entered the conversation it was going to be a while before it left. “And they definitely seem… better… than Montreal—"
“They are better,” Ilya insisted. “They are much better.” He tentatively agreed with Shane about their greatness, but he knew in his bones and with every beat of his heart that they’d treat Shane better.
“And I get to play hockey with you every day,” Shane finished. “Yeah, I’m excited.”
Ilya took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and exhaled. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Okay," he said. "We will catch our flight and go home.”
Shane's thumb had found the knob at the base of Ilya's neck, and now he was drawing slow, lazy circles around it, like he was falling asleep. "I like that," he finally said, and he sounded like he was falling asleep, too.
"You like what?" Ilya asked, not opening his eyes.
"Going home together," Shane murmured, and Ilya had to take a deep breath and press his face a little harder into Shane's shoulder. It was a while before he trusted his voice again.
"Me too," he said, and the last thing he felt before he fell asleep was Shane's lips in his hair.