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Shane Hollander keeps a beautiful home in the cottage.
He insists that it's home only now that Ilya shares it and adds his personal touch—the soft blankets that Shane loves to be bundled in, the ridiculous dog bed they keep having to wash because Anya is a passionate swimmer, and the half-filled Our Recipes book already bookmarked to hell that travels between the cottage and their house.
Ilya's a little bewildered when Yuna and David show up on the doorstep armed with a wet mop and a bucket of assorted deep cleaning supplies. David looks resigned while Yuna seems more vaguely traumatized.
It's enough for Ilya to blurt, "What happened?!" when he opens the door.
Never—not once since adopting him as her favorite son—has Yuna Hollander greeted him without some show of affection, but now she says, "Later, honey. Time is short."
David pulls him into a one-armed hug, adjusting his hold on the bucket, and says, "My grandmother's coming to visit."
"Ah! Your баба?" Ilya can't stop himself from grinning, fondly remembering the rare occasions he was able to spend time with his mother's mother, but the grim pull of David's lips puts a bit of a damper on things. "…this is bad?"
"I—no. Ome's just…unique. A special woman. Yuna's already deep-cleaned our place, but she wants to make sure…"
Ilya hears Shane yelp from the other room. Probably should have warned him about their visitors.
Then, "It's nothing I haven't seen before! But really—get dressed! Your Ome's decided it's a good time to rain judgement down upon us."
"Ome's here?"
"Not yet! Where is your vacuum? I'll handle the couch."
So that's their Thursday morning, decided.
David shrugs, helpless in the face of it all, and claps Ilya on the shoulder as he follows his wife into battle. Ilya starts to understand a bit better when David informs him that Ome is not German but Latvian and that she may have certain opinions about her great grandson-in-law's accent.
"But you'll be fine." David promises. "She doesn't really like anyone. We'll get through it."
Ilya Rozanov has never met a woman he could not charm at least a little, but in this moment he is forced to contemplate having his ass kicked by a very old woman.
Sofija Hollander is not some swooping night-creature come to terrorize the unsuspecting populace, but she does have a gaze that could strip the paint off of a house.
She's also incredibly tiny and surprisingly quick for the years she must carry along with the comically large carpet bag at her side.
Shane takes a deep breath before plastering a smile on his face and saying, "Hey, Ome. We're so glad you made it!"
"I have lived through worse than godforsaken rideshare apps. I am not so old I cannot read." She frowns, doing a quick sweep of Ilya, who is actually fidgeting beside him. He doesn't reach for his mother's cross, but Shane knows he wants to. "Is this the husband?"
"Uh—yeah, Ome Sofi, this is my husband, Ilya Rozanov. I—um—love him. A lot."
He can't think of a more acceptable way to ask his grandmother not to bite his life partner, but he feels like it's a pretty fair reason for her not to.
"'Ro-za-nov', yes, I heard. I saw you on the news, if you can call that news. Harpies. Yes. Can you speak, Ilya Rozanov?"
"Yes, ma'am." Ilya responds obediently. "I am happy to meet you."
"You are scared shitless, Ilya Rozanov." She says.
"That, too." He nods. "I want you to like me very badly."
"I don't like anyone." She says, but Shane watches in morbid fascination as a grin reveals her gold teeth. "I am a terrible old bitch."
Ilya barks the big, loud laugh that makes Shane go all gooey inside and beams at Yuna's holiday nemesis. "All of the women in my life are holy terrors. This is not so bad! I take your bag, you see, because Shane has trained me to be a gentleman."
Ome Sofi lets him do just that, and waits for a moment while he saunters into the house, babbling excitedly. She turns her gaze on Shane, purses her lips for a second, and then reaches up to pat his cheek. "You did good. He is tall!"
The implication, of course, being that their biologically-impossible children will be, too.
He watches her shuffle toward the living area feeling bizzarely proud of himself anyway.
Ome Sofia is in the kitchen before anyone can stop her.
Yuna keeps the island safely between them while David goes to kiss his grandmother on both cheeks. Then he watches, mildly bemused, as she immediately goes to inspect the fridge that she will inevitably fill with Tupperware.
For as long as Shane can remember, his great grandmother has been a prickly woman, but she's produced enough food to feed an entire roster of hockey players. Even after Shane had started up the macrobiotic diet—determined to maintain control of his physique and stay on top of the game—his one exception has been visits from Ome Sofi.
You don't turn down homemade pīrādziņi even if you'll be working it off for days, chremslach is basically what comfort tastes like, and if Ome shows up with her pre-war-relic pot to feed you matzos ball soup, you're already bedridden with no escape.
"Yuna," She calls toward the living room, and her granddaughter-in-law does not flinch. She nearly fistfought this woman when they first met, but she is not backing down. Sofi huffs. "Yuna, you let these boys eat like this?"
"I don't let them do anything, Sofi. They're grown men."
Which is a bold-faced lie with the way she runs their public image and sponsorships, but Shane's not about to call her on it.
"Horrible." Sofi says. "Just horrible. Trusting boys to feed themselves. Il-ya," She clicks her fingers at him. "Tell me, my great grandson does not feed you?"
Shane can see the way his husband thinks about lodging a dramatic complaint about 'healthy' food, appreciates the way he visibly thinks better of it and says, "No, no. Miss Sofi, my Shane has particular diet to keep in shape. Has felt a lot of pressure about his food, so we work on it."
He does not say, He is sensitive.
He does not say a thing about 'bird food.'
This man once went on, at length, about how the ultimate sacrifice he makes for love has been to consume zoodles.
But they're together now, all the time. Legally bound. And Ilya takes such good care of him.
He's so good at it, in fact, that he seems to have routed the war of attrition his mother has fought with his Ome about Shane's eating habits for years.
Instead, Sofija nods. "He is very particular about texture."
"Yes." Ilya nods back.
She moves to the counter, where Our Recipes sits, and taps it twice with the tip of her finger. "You cook together?"
"Yes, ma'am. It's a good way to spend time together."
"Yes." She says. "You like to cook?"
"I used to help my Mama in the kitchen. This year, we made her medovik for my birthday."
She hums, then finally pauses her interrogation to start opening drawers. "We find a pen. My saulīte has hungry eyes. I will show you how to feed him."
Easy as that. Like this woman hasn't guarded her family recipes ferociously for decades.
Like Yuna isn't staring, stunned, from her place by the couch whispering, "Holy shit."
Like saulīte is an endearment he doesn't hear once every few years because his great grandmother lost her ability to emote warmth somewhere during her desperate flight from Soviet-occupied Latvia, the oldest of her living siblings and so the one with blood under her nails.
Fuck.
Ilya doesn't know.
Ilya doesn't know how it buzzes under Shane's skin that he uses the same endearment—solnyshko—little sun, as if Shane was this unwitting font of joy and not a deeply awkward kid who never knew quite what to do with himself.
Ilya doesn't know, so he just jogs to get Ome Sofi a pen and starts jotting down the blueprints for the things that Shane associates with hellbent, steel-spined care.
Later that evening, they all sit together in the living room—Yuna and David on the couch, Shane and Ilya on the loveseat, Ilya leaning over the arm to be closer to Sofija in the recliner. Because he wants to see the age-beaten book she's pulled from her bag, stuffed to near-bursting with newspaper clippings about Shane.
"I hear you get married, and I send a gift, of course. But I think he would like to see the book. So I bring it."
Shane didn't know there was a book. Honestly, he's so surprised that he admits it outright: "Ome, I didn't know you had a book."
She blinks at him like maybe he is the dumbest man on the planet, then wrinkles her nose the way she always does when she says, 'Is silly, silly.' "Of course I have a book. My great grandson is famous for playing the same idiot sport his father did."
"Oh, geez." David sighs.
"Can we not do this? Ilya plays hockey, too." Yuna adds.
Ome Sofija looks frustrated, lips pursed and shaking her head. "What I do now?"
"It's insulting." Yuna huffs.
Shane bites his lip and hesitates for a moment before he says, "Ome, I guess I just…I've never really felt like you liked me."
And for the first time in Shane's memory, he hears his great grandmother squawk with laughter. "What is that?! Shanala, I don't like anybody. I fought to come to this country. I love you, is this not enough?"
"What."
"No, no." Ilya says, fast and excited like he's made an important connection. Usually, this will result in either a moment of touching poignancy or Harris going for the bottle of Excedrin in his desk and wading up to his neck in Twitter. "Shane does not do well with—" He waves his hand in the air. "Subtle? You mean it but do not say it."
"Subtext?" David suggests, the way he does when they're doing a crossword together.
"Bigger." More rolling of the hands. Almost, kind of—
"Implication?"
Ilya perks up, stabbing at the air with his finger as if to pin the word down. "Yes! He does not do well with 'implication,' so you have to say it very clearly. I say, 'I love you, you are beautiful, you are the world to me.' And still, he blushes and ducks his head and tries not to believe it because he is a silly boy. But it is good, because he knows how I want him to feel."
Yuna watches this unfold with rapt attention, glancing between her son's hopeful expression and her son-in-law giving some kind of masterclass in Eastern European talk therapy. Like he's a proud instruction manual on the love of his life.
Sofija, for her part, snorts as she takes a moment to look at Shane, and then back at Ilya. "You make him blush, you charming boy."
"I try," Ilya smirks. "It brings out the freckles."
"Oh, the freckles." She nearly sighs. "Yuna, you are a terror in sensible heels, but you made a beautiful baby."
"…thank you?"
Shane shakes his head. "Look, I just—I remember once I had this meltdown while you were here. And my mom had to talk me down, and you—you called me 'soft.'"
Sofija shakes her head, sobering. Considers Shane again. Nods to herself. "Okay, I will try this." And then, with a frown of concentration, "Sweet boy, of course you are soft. This means I succeeded. It is the job of your elders to make a world where the young ones can be soft. I have killed men so you would never have to. Like your mother terrorizes the business men who give you money."
Yuna whispers something to David that sounds an awful lot like, Oh my g-d.
"And then you and your father go and do the sport with the sticks and the hitting!" She hisses, outraged.
Ilya laughs. "He is famous for not hitting!"
"Pssh!" She waves her hands in the air. "He fights the gay poster boy in New York!"
"бабуля, бабуля! He does this for me!"
"Ahhh?!"
"Holy shit." Shane hisses at his parents.
Because what the fuck is happening?
"No, listen! Listen! This part is the important part. Shanala, I keep the book. I keep the pictures of you and your big hockey life. I keep photos of your mother and your father and I will keep photos of your Ilya because I do not have so many photos of the family I will never see again. I feed you these recipes because I remember the last day my mother made them. I teach them now, because I am old as fuck, my sun boy, and I want you always to eat. I want my family to live. So this is what I mean. I do not have time to fuck with 'like you, like you.' I love you. Is this enough?"
Shane gets off the couch and goes to sit by her feet, resting his head against one of her bony fucking knees and lets her long-nailed hands settle on top of his head. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. I love you, Ome."
"You fuck-ing bet-ter." She enunciates. "You married a fucking Russian. I am learning, too. I can learn to be nice to a boy who is soft for you."
"I appreciate it." He sniffles.
"Fuck," She says, then looks at Ilya, her eyes sparkling only a little with wetness. "You defected, yes?"
"I am a 'fucking Canadian' now." He grins and then, softer, "He makes me brave."
"Good. A good, soft Canadian bear of a man. 'Lācis.'"
There's not a dry eye in the house, just then.
Until Ilya clears his throat and asks, "бабуля, do you want to see my tattoo?"