Chapter Text
“Jesus Christ, Ilya, what did you pack in this?”
Ilya was irritated. Irritated enough that he didn’t sprint over and rip the suitcases out of Shane’s arms and insist on hauling them himself. Also irritated enough that he didn’t scoop up both Shane and suitcases and bicep curl the whole lot of them.
He was irritated because Shane was wearing a button-down shirt, so he couldn’t see a single bulge of tricep, bicep, pec, trap, delt, or even a fucking hint of forearm. Even worse than that, he hadn’t been able to press little kisses to the skin of Shane’s arms for two fucking hours of babushka driving through bumfuck Ontario.
Perhaps that was unfair. To babushkas.
“I bring dumbbells home with me. I’m sick of everything always in pounds, pounds, pounds. Idiotic system. Kilograms are superior.”
Shane stared at him just long enough for Ilya’s mouth to twitch.
“You are so gullible, Hollander.”
“Fuck off. Open the door already.”
He’d been jangling his keys the whole drive. Checked they were safely in his backpack in Paris, Istanbul, Vnukovo, the taxi, and also twice before he walked out the door somewhere in the realm of thirty-one hours ago. And before that? Oh, about ten million times over the six summer weeks in Russia.
Shane — safe, predictable, cautious, boring Shane Hollander — had refused to send dick pics while Ilya was within grasp of the FSB. The key to his house was the singular piece of proof Ilya had that his boyfriend hadn’t been a fever dream, clinging onto the lamest piece of erotica that had ever existed.
Lame, except for the part where it was Shane Hollander’s key. Ilya had jerked off to it. More than once.
“Where’d you learn ‘gullible?’” Shane asked as Ilya slid the key in, opened the door, and tried to act cool for the single greatest homecoming of his life.
It would never not be the single greatest homecoming of his life, there would never ever be a way to trump this. This living, breathing, wood-smoke scented, glass-panelled monument to two weeks that should never have existed and somehow, miraculously, did. If God was willing and Shane’s pink-hued love blindness was a chronic ailment, Ilya would come home to this place again and again, but it would never be this moment, this perfect moment where he got to unpack his luggage and shower off the accumulated exhalations of the three hundred strangers packed into a Boeing 777 and adjust his sleep schedule for the first time sharing this cottage as someone’s boyfriend. As Shane Hollander’s boyfriend.
“Your Wikipedia page.”
“Fuck off.”
“Don’t worry, I edited it. Before, it said: ‘Shane Hollander, second greatest hockey player, and most gullible man in Canada,” and now it says: “Shane Hollander, prettiest man in Canada, best fuck in whole world, sometimes plays hockey, although n—”
“Why are you still talking?” Shane asked, his mouth as close to Ilya’s as it could scientifically be without touching. His hands had no such decorum, already reaching under Ilya’s sweatpants.
“Oh, it is me who is wasting time now? Me who is taking too long to make you come?”
Shane had boringly, callously, unromantically, point-blank refused to fuck in an airport bathroom. If Ilya weren’t so lazy he’d still be staging a sit-in protest at baggage claim.
“Yes, you, you ass.”
“You are the ass. You are all ass now, did you do anything but hip thrusts while I was gone?”
“Deadlifts. Front squats,” Shane murmured, as Ilya felt him up. It was definitely bigger. God, he loved pre-season Shane. “Wanna see?”
“Do I want to see you lift stupid barbell? No, Hollander, I want to see you on your knees.”
Instead, Shane squatted and lifted Ilya up behind the knees, stumble-carrying him further into the cottage.
“Oh, this is good trick,” Ilya said, between sucking on Shane’s earlobe. “Later, I will bench press you.”
“Do you ever shut up?”
“You know how to make me shut up.”
But only if he said please.
Later, after they had fucked once fast and once slow, and Shane had diplomatically offered Ilya the first shower in deference to the thirty-one hours of international travel he’d suffered through, and Ilya had countered with a shared shower, and they’d stayed there until the water ran cold, Ilya retrieved his suitcases from where they’d barely made it past the threshold, and wheeled them into the bedroom.
Shane was standing at the window, where the drooping sun was turning the lake white-gold, and painting his face and his bare chest resplendent in honeyed, weary, day-old light. Ilya wrapped himself around Shane’s back and relished the way Shane’s head tipped against his.
The light was not actually day-old, Ilya reminded himself, though it had the quality of trudging home exhausted, ready for bed. The light was nine — eight? Nine? He’d forgotten, osnovnaya shkola was so long ago — minutes old. If the sun exploded at this very moment, he’d still have nine minutes he could enjoy, just like this.
“I love you,” he said, just in case the sun had exploded.
“I love you too.”
“Will you still love me if I say I do not want to unpack suitcase tonight?”
“Yes. Will you still love me if I say I’m making quinoa and baked cod for dinner?”
“Oh my God, Hollander, off-season is not over yet! Why are you rushing back to bird food?”
“Now who’s gullible?” Shane turned in his arms and looked entirely too pleased with himself. Certainly too pleased for a man who required step-by-step handwritten instructions for cooking frozen lasagna.
Ilya plucked off the note from the aluminum foil. “Step one: pre-heat oven to 350. Hollander, why do Canadians insist on being bilingual for everything? Celsius weather, Fahrenheit ovens. Make this make sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense, you just get used to it.”
Shane was bent in half, rearranging oven racks. He would never get used to looking at that ass.
“Step two: leave foil on, bake from frozen for fifty minutes. Fiiiiiiiiifty minutes, I will die.”
A vegan, organic, gluten-free, nut-free, joy-free protein bar slid down the counter with an inanimate moue of wry amusement. Ilya flicked it away.
“Step three: remove foil, broil for ten minutes or until cheese is browned. I would make fun of your father for thinking you are so stupid to need written instructions, but I remember a certain Hollander who could not halve recipe.”
“I could! I just didn’t!”
Ilya smoothed the note down on the counter and folded it once, twice, thrice, before sliding it into his pocket. Well, Shane’s pocket really, they were his sweatpants. For now, until Ilya had a chance to stuff them into his luggage and fly them to Boston and wear them every day until the seams wore out. Or frame them. Or turn them into a pillowcase. He hadn’t decided yet.
“Tell me about Russia,” Shane said, leaning over the counter.
“I will tell you when you are not so far away. You are cruel, Hollander, I fly ten thousand kilometres and you still stand all the way over there.” He gestured to the metre of stone counter that separated them, frowning.
What Ilya would pay for Shane to be like this in public, instead of the straight-jacketed camera mannequin he thought he was supposed to be. Rolling his eyes and huffing and a crooked grin and so smug they’d be writing editorials about Hollander’s arrogance instead of Ilya’s.
Feigning encumbrance, Shane grabbed his hand and tugged him down to the couch, pulling Ilya between spread legs so his head landed in Shane’s chest. Shane ran his fingers through Ilya’s hair. “Better?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes and waited in case the sun had exploded. Not yet. “Russia was very boring. Even you would think it was boring.”
“Even me, huh?”
“Yes, even you, Mr Reads Biographies Eats Bird Food Watches Zillow Instead Of TV Hollander. Only photos for advertising, and meetings meetings meetings.”
“With who?”
“With whom,” Ilya grinned, anticipating the shove he received. “Most boring men alive, not even sexy boring, like you. Agents, and brand executives, and Olympics coach, and accountants, and lawyers. And not even one naked picture of my boyfriend to look at.”
“You didn’t tell your agent, did you?”
“No, unlike you, dorogoy, I can remember simple instructions.”
Ilya’s papa had signed him up with Artyom once he had turned sixteen, when it was clear he was going to make it big in hockey. And, because he was lazy, he’d never once bothered to lift his head up and look around and see if there were other agents to work with.
Artyom was not the right person to negotiate a transfer for the league’s second-biggest star from a prestigious legacy team to the worst team — not just in hockey, probably any league, any sport — for the purposes of closer proximity so Ilya could nurture a fledgling relationship with his clandestine gay superstar boyfriend. He wasn’t entirely sure such a person existed on the entire planet who could fit that bill, but it definitely wasn’t Artyom. But Shane had insisted Ilya wait to terminate the contract until he was out of Russia and back in North America.
He was such a Cold War paranoiac, his Shane. It’s probably why he was so addicted to all the ways he could make Shane shut his brain off.
“What’s ‘dorogoy?’ Numbskull? It sounds like a ‘numbskull’ kind of word to me.”
“Is opposite. Sweetheart. You have no instinct for Russian language.”
“Maybe that’s ‘cause the only Russian I ever hear is from a guy who calls me boring and slow.”
“These are the most romantic words I know in English language.”
He could feel Shane smiling into the back of his head. “I think I should be jealous of these accountants and lawyers. Did that go okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Ilya waved him off. “No problems to start trust fund. I am much poorer than I was before start of summer. Good thing my boyfriend is rich, yes? Can buy me many gifts.”
“Quinoa, and spinach, and wild rice,” Shane listed munificently, raising his voice over Ilya’s squawks, “and Metros jerseys, and Jeeps — no, not Jeeps, a tiny little Korean hatchback?”
“No sex condo?! All this, and not a single measly apartment building from you? Where are we supposed to fuck, backseat of a Hyundai?”
“You wanted to fuck in a toilet stall.”
“More space than Accent,” Ilya pouted, until Shane leaned forward and kissed him.
Out the window, the setting sun sank into the lake, framed by spruce and birches. It was so fucking beautifully bucolic he had to remind himself of the snake he’d seen by the shoreline last month and the incessant harassment of mosquitoes to stop from getting all weepy.
Ilya closed his eyes against the light, just for a minute, and Shane rubbed at his shoulder, and maybe he fell asleep for a little while or maybe he was just imitating what a silent retreat would really be like, who could say? In his defense, it was past 03:00 in Moscow. He opened his eyes again to Shane’s timer beeping and an almost-ready lasagna and dried rivulets of drool that Shane wiped off with spit and a thumb and he really shouldn’t have let Shane convince him to honour his commitments in Russia rather than spending six weeks stealing evenings like this.
“I am not understanding how Yuna and David can cook food like this —” he pointed with a fork, “— and raise a son who refuses to eat it ten months of a year. Is this your version of teenage rebellion? Macrobiotic diet instead of parties and cocaine?”
“Just wait a minute, you’ll burn your tongue.” Ilya did not wait a minute, did indeed burn his tongue, and thoroughly enjoyed the way it exasperated Shane. “I don’t think I ever did the whole rebellion thing.”
“Shocked, this is shocking information.”
“Fuck off. I know you like me boring.”
There was no upward lilt, but Ilya knew it was a question. “No, I love you. Boring or not.” He watched Shane scoop a mountain of undressed mixed greens (seriously, did he actually need instructions for making a salad?) onto his plate and the way that, when he smiled, it spread across his face unevenly, like hoisting an unbalanced load. “Will they visit before we leave? Yuna and David?”
“They can? I mean, they’d like to. But only if that’s alright with you.”
Ilya couldn’t tear his eyes away from where Shane was cutting the smallest ever bite of lasagna, a toddler-sized forkful, and blowing on it for a length of time previously limited to geological eras. It sent him almost as giddy as when he watched Shane fold his clothes that first time. “They are your family, yes? Of course they should come. Will make you happy.”
“But do you want them to come?”
“I like your parents. I like you being happy. It is simple for me.” He tilted his head to one side. “But I know it is maybe not so simple for them?”
“Why not?”
Because I am Ilya Rozanov, he thought. I break things, I hurt people, I fuck everything up. I have to make people laugh because laughing at me is better than yelling at me. I do not deserve you and your perfection, and although for some reason you are blind to that, there’s no way your parents are blind to how much you deserve someone better than me. “There is difference between accepting son’s boyfriend and liking son’s boyfriend.”
Shane blinked twice, and Ilya was so lovesick and jet-lagged he almost thought he’d said it all out loud. “But they do like you.”
“They are polite Canadians. Is endemic to your people.”
“Th— Endemic? Wow. No, Ilya, they like you. I had to beat them off with a stick to stop them driving you home from the airport.”
Two hours, perfect for a threatening interrogation, he thought. “Hmm.”
“Mom’s got a whole plan to call you once a week for a FaceTime coffee. I had to negotiate her down from flying to Boston every month.”
“When they come for visit, I will re-negotiate,” he declared. “She can fly to Boston if she promises to wear Raiders cap.”
Shane snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Yuna helped with charity research, yes? Can I read it after dinner?”
“I think it would put you to sleep. Again.”
“No, but I must prepare for visit. And it takes me so long to read in English.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna help you stay awake.” Shane must be at least 40% lettuce by volume, Ilya pondered, watching him chow down on yet another serving. “We can read it together, tomorrow. I thought maybe you’d want to go to bed early.”
“And what do you do while I sleep, dorogoy? You want to leave me so soon?” Shit, he thought. Shit shit shit. Too close to the bone.
But Shane just cracked that secret embarrassed smile, the one that meant he was going to do something so barely suggestive it wouldn’t merit a PG rating, but would nonetheless send Ilya up the walls. “Lately I’ve been reading in bed before I go to sleep. If the lamp wouldn’t bother you.”
“The lamp? No, no problem. Lamp must be on. How else would I see you in your glasses?”
Ilya woke at 00:47, 04:15, and once in between when he didn’t bother to check his phone. Each time, he gave serious consideration to crawling down and waking up Shane with a blowjob, but decided, on balance, that he preferred Shane as he was, for tonight at least. Stale breaths across Ilya’s neck and one large hand, perfectly limp, resting at the base of his rib cage.
When he woke again, the sky was light and birds — not ridiculous loons, but chirpy chittering little finches — were calling. If this were a poem, his lover would be in his arms. He was not. Instead he was folding himself like a pretzel on a yoga mat on the porch.
If he was honest, it was what he’d been hungering for for a long, long time. To plop himself down into the heartbeat of Shane’s quotidian days. To get twitchy and restless alongside him, to learn the rhythms of his rabbity anxiety. He wanted his presence to become Shane’s new baseline, so his absence would be felt when he was gone and, in his Montreal kitchen, Shane would instinctively yell to see if Ilya wanted a cup of tea, and, in the stultifying silence, would feel the same aching maw inside him that Ilya felt whenever Shane wasn’t holding his hand.
“I thought you only do yoga outside when cameras are filming, no?”
“I really wish you hadn’t seen that.”
“Or is this special show for me?”
Shane kept his eyes closed and mouth straight, but Ilya had spent far too long — his whole life, it felt like — watching him to be put off by such a feeble attempt. “Fuck you, Ilya. It’s just a nice morning.”
“Yes yes, very pretty.” He looked at the mildly grubby wooden planks, at his pants, remembered they were actually Shane’s, and lumbered down to copy him.
“There’s another mat i—”
“No no, I am being one with nature. Also, I do not think I can get up again. You must lift me.”
“Must I?” Shane easily shifted into pigeon pose on the other side. Bastard.
“Yes. Because I spend thirty-one hours on plane and ruin hip flexors and boyfriend still does not even give me good morning kiss.”
Shane leaned over — how the fuck were his hips still on the mat — and finally delivered what Ilya was owed. “How long do you get to use the ‘thirty-one hours flying’ excuse?”
“Until you are the one flying across the world.” He tried to copy Shane, pushing back to unfold one leg and refold the other, but instead he awkwardly spilled out sideways, and before he could recover, Shane was on top of him, digging his fingers into Ilya’s armpits. “I give up! I give up!” he screamed, kicking and flailing and cry-laughing. “You win!”
When Shane leaned down to kiss him again, Ilya could feel his erection press against his belly. He had half a mind to fuck him senseless, half a mind to flip him over and tickle him back, and another half a mind to do one and then the other; until Shane’s phone chimed and he pulled it out of his pocket.
“My parents said they could come over tonight? If that’s okay?”
“Yes yes, is good. But you must let me study first.” He pulled Shane down again, tugging off his top. “Afterwards.”
The document that Ilya was reading ran to forty-eight pages. He’d been tossing up whether to ask if Shane would print it for him to take back to Boston, just for the novelty of seeing if Shane would have it spiral-bound. There was a fucking table of contents, and he knew, once they were separated again, he’d be fantasizing about Shane Hollander in his sexy glasses, frowning over his laptop and typing up a fucking table of contents.
“What is ‘under-resourced?’”
Shane leaned over his shoulder and peered at the screen. “It means there isn’t enough money to provide what they need.”
“You should not be reading screen without glasses, dorogoy.”
“It’s one word.”
“Must protect pretty eyes.”
“Ilya.”
“Shane.”
One column of the table read ‘Current Funding Level’, another read ‘Impact’. Ilya knew impact, had picked that one up early. Impact was how hard you hit.
The number of rows that had ‘Under-resourced’ listed as ‘Current Funding Level’ was devastating.
One of the entries that had ‘High’ ‘Impact’ was ‘Psychological and/or pharmaceutical intervention for people suffering depression’. He touched the screen and thought of his mama.
“Shane, what is ‘designation?’ And what is ‘T3010’ meaning?”
“Oh, you can skip over that section, it’s from a lawyer Mom emailed. None of us understand it.”
Praise God. He scrolled through ‘Articles of Incorporation, Registration, and Fiduciary Duties’ at a brisk clip, so fast he would have missed the beginning of ‘Timelines’ if it weren’t for the full-page multi-coloured diagram breaking up the legalese.
The first section, titled ‘Mission’, listed four tasks: commission research, identify priorities, contact program providers, write mission statement. Next to each line, a yellow-colored rectangle spread across columns marked ‘Month 1, ‘Month 2’, all the way up to ‘Month 15’.
Ilya thought he understood: it was marking which tasks could be completed, in which order, and how long they should take. But he wanted to keep reading before he confirmed.
There were sections for ‘Registration’, ‘Initial fundraising’, ‘Branding’, ‘Marketing’, ‘Hockey camp’, and on and on, until the very last one which was called ‘Rivalry.’ In neat and orderly rows was a step-by-step plan that outlined — in minute detail — how it would become acceptable to befriend his boyfriend. He’d need Kafka as a ghostwriter to do justice for this chapter of his future biography.
“I have not seen diagram like this before.”
“Oh.” Shane’s cheeks were turning pink. He could just bite them. “I went a little … overboard.”
“You make this? All on your own?”
“Yeah, I just … I wanted to have an idea of how long it’d take. Like, if we started tomorrow, how quickly we could —”
“You are in big hurry to become my friend, yes?” He cackled at Shane’s discomfort, and pulled him down to his lap. “Why are you embarrassed? I like your big plans. Very sexy brain. Tell me, what is the name of this kind of diagram?”
“It’s called a Gantt chart.”
“And what is meaning of ‘gantt?’”
“I think it’s some guy’s name?”
“Should I be jealous of this Mr Gantt?”
Shane was pulling up Wikipedia, Ilya’s eyes peeking over his shoulder. “Probably not, since he’s been dead for a hundred years.”
“But he has nice mustache. Do I need to grow mustache for you?”
“Please don’t.”
“Okay.” Ilya trotted his knees up and down, making Shane bounce around. “Can we go for a swim?”
Shane seemed to have some genetic resistance to mosquitoes. It was fucking unfair. Ilya had to submerge himself up to his neck to protect his skin, while Shane was able to float on his back, offering his perfect body up to the sky. If they ended up using a surrogate, they sh—
No. He shouldn’t think about that.
Instead he thought about the birds. Different and still the same, in Ontario, in Boston, in Moscow, in Anapa, in Kaliningrad. Murmurations against blue sky. He wondered how many summers he would spend at Shane’s cottage before he became the kind of person who would bring binoculars and a field guide and keep notes about the b—
No. He shouldn’t think about that either.
Pushing chimerical fantasies aside, he tried to translate what he needed to say. It was hard enough to string the words together in Russian, let alone put them into English with the right tone, the right reassurances that wouldn’t make Shane freak out. And then he had to think about hidden meanings, allusions that he was still getting wrong after seven years of total immersion. He’d always been a poor student. Too slow, too inattentive.
Like now, for instance. Not realizing that the silence had stretched on too long while he was wrapped up in his own head. Not realizing that Shane was wrapped up in his own head too, and now he was distant and fidgety.
“Shane? What is wrong?”
“It’s too much, isn’t it? All the planning. Did I freak you out? I just got all … excited.”
Oh, thank God, that’s all it was. This was the easy part. “No, dorogoy. It’s perfect.”
“I just … I was worried about you. In Russia. And I had to do something, but that was the only thing I could do.”
“You could have sent me pictures of your cock.”
Shane shoved a wave of water over Ilya’s head. “Fuck off.”
“No, I will not. It is perfect. I am very excited. And also, very … it makes me sad, for Mama. But hopeful, too, for other peoples’ mamas. I would like to do something that is good for people. And even though I am lazy, I have boyfriend who spends evenings making charts and plans for ways for us to be helping.”
“I don’t think you’re lazy at all.”
“You will learn,” Ilya shrugged.
Shane moved closer, crouching so his shoulders mimicked Ilya’s, just under the water line. They were close enough to touch, but they didn’t.
“Is that why you’re all quiet?” Shane asked. “Thinking about Irina?”
He considered lying, he really did. But he had to get it out sooner or later. “No. I am trying to translate what I need to say into English, and it is sometimes not so easy."
“Is this one of those times when it would help to say it in Russian? At least at first?”
“No, I must say it, or I will never say it. I wish to tell you: it is normal thing, for people to stop loving other people. And I worry that one day you will not love me so much — no, no talking yet — but you will feel stuck, because of these big plans you are making. And move to Ottawa, and the charity. So you must know, that if you do not want to be boyfriends anymore — in one year, two years, five years — this is okay. You are allowed to change your mind, yes?” He grabbed Shane’s hands. He couldn’t resist any longer, not with Shane looking like he was about to kiss Ilya then drown him. “And I will not be regretful about move or charity or plans, or anything, if things change for you. I will never regret being allowed to love you.”
He had the order wrong. First Shane pushed on his shoulders, dunking him under the water, then clung to his chest like a baby sloth and kissed him. Angrily. With headbutting.
“It is not okay to be this adorable while you’re talking about me leaving you. Why would you even think that?”
“It is a thing! It happens!” There was wet hair curling into his eyeball, but Shane had wrapped all his limbs around Ilya’s arms. He tried to shake it free, but Shane headbutted him. Again.
“And why am I breaking up with you, hey? Not the other way around?”
“Pffft, Hollander, be realistic.”
“You’re such an ass,” he scoffed, but when he kissed Ilya this time there was no violence and a lot more tongue. Shane rubbed their noses together, eyelashes so close they were overlapping, and asked: “Is this really something you worry about?”
“Maybe worry is the wrong word. I have been thinking about it. I do not want worst-case scenario.”
“Worst-case scenario is me not breaking up with you?”
“No. Well, yes. It is you resenting me. I cannot live if you are angry at me.”
“Oh, Ilya.”
“Unless it is sexy kind of angry.”
“You’re allergic to being serious.”
Yes, he thought. I have heard that before. When will you concentrate, Ilya? When will you stop fucking around and take this seriously? When will you stop blubbering, you have a new Mama now. It is time to stop this self-indulgence and be a man.
“I am,” he nodded solemnly. “If I come into close contact with serious man, I have reaction. Huge hard-on.”
Shane frowned, but he was such a terrible actor it was hard not to laugh even before he’d made his little joke. “You should probably get that checked out. Sounds dangerous.”
“Very dangerous. Not for me, for serious boring boyfriend.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Then you are a FOOL,” Ilya roared, and wrestled Shane under the water, who kept his legs pinned around Ilya’s waist so he could jack-knife him down too; water in their eyes, noses, gasping for air before they got tugged under again, aqua shoes scrabbling for foundation in the silt, and hands and knees and elbows everywhere, not one inch of skin forbidden to them.
He felt freer than he ever had after he’d said his piece and Shane hadn’t bitten his lip and said I’m glad you said that, ‘cause this is all a bit much for me. He probably would, one day, when Ilya’s stupidity and carelessness palled. But not today, Ilya was safe for today. Shane bobbed in the water and Ilya trailed behind him, arms fastened around Shane’s neck like he was wearing Ilya as a cape.
“I know there are many important things that are needing money,” Ilya said, after they’d been quiet for long enough for his head to make the words, “but I like the idea of helping people get better before things get very bad. Before they make decision that life is too sad. Not just when … when they climb a bridge or … start taking too many pills.”
“I like that idea too,” Shane agreed. “We can make sure we do that.”
“Thank you, dorogoy.”
Shane interlaced their hands, still around his neck so Ilya could feel a gentle throb of pulse. “Have you ever done that? Not just the team’s sports psych, but talked to a proper therapist?”
“You think I am sad?” Ilya laughed. “I have never been so happy.”
But Shane didn’t laugh back, sending a stab of frustration, and defiance, and tenderness down Ilya’s throat, all at once. "I think sometimes your life is really hard. And you have me, and Svetlana, and your team, but … I think you deserve to have someone just for you. Someone you can be totally honest with.”
“I am totally honest with you.”
“Without worrying about hurting their feelings.”
“Never in my life have I worried about your feelings.”
Ilya could sense Shane’s eye roll through the back of his head. “Fuck off, babe, I’m tr—”
“‘Babe?’ I am ‘babe’ now?”
“Oh my Go—”
“No, I love it.” He swum forward to kiss the back of Shane’s neck and the sides of his face, which were already turning red. “I am your babe. You must always call me this now, dorogoy.”
“There was something else I wanted to do before you arrived, but I ran out of time,” Shane announced, as they shuffled back up the shore towards the cottage. “Maybe we could do it together?”
“I don’t know, Hollander, I am scared it will be very boring.”
He continued as if Ilya had actually asked: “I thought we could go through the schedules and figure out what days we’ll be in the same cities this season, or when either of us have a couple of days off in a row. Maybe make a shared calendar, so we c—”
“A sex calendar? Your parents are arriving in thirty minutes, and you are proposing making a sex calendar?” Oh, this was delicious. He’d be able to eat out on this for years, if Shane was willing to give him that long.
“It’s not a sex calendar! It’s just … when we might be able to see each other,” he finished, already sounding defeated.
“And what are you planning on doing when we are seeing each other? Not fucking?”
“Maybe not, if it teaches you a lesson.”
“Noooo, Shaaaaane,” Ilya whined, turning Shane’s name into at least three syllables. For all the times he asked Shane to beg, it came naturally to Ilya, so normal despite the years he’d spent forcing it down. To want, to cling, to make Shane realize he was adored. He reached out for Shane’s hand and pressed his lips to the knuckles. “I love this idea. Most romantic idea. We will make calendar, and I will leave lists on each day for all the ways I’m going to make you come.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bit too boring for you?” Shane teased.
“Never too boring, this is impossible. Will you be bored opening calendar and seeing plans for me to suck your cock in the shower, then bend you down over my couch and fuck you ‘til you come again?”
Shane paused mid-way through wiping his feet down at the back door and pressed his forehead against the glass. “Jesus Christ, Rozanov.”
“Uh-uh-uh, I am ‘babe’ now.” He wrapped himself around Shane’s back, hands skimming over a half-hard erection. “See? I promise, planning is not boring. Very exciting.”
“Fuck, babe, we don’t have time.”
God, ‘babe’ was hitting him like a drug every damn time. “I know this. You are the one who brought up sex calendar!” He slapped Shane’s ass and shouldered him out of the way of the door. “Come, we will not speak of this until your family goes home. You can help me unpack gifts.”
Shane’s voice lagged behind Ilya’s wake. “Wait, gifts? What gifts?”
“What did you think was in suitcases? You cannot imagine what my mother would have said to me if I did not bring gifts from Russia for new boyfriend and his parents.”
“What would she have said?”
Ilya heaved the first suitcase down to the floor and fiddled with the combination. In all likelihood, she wouldn’t have had to say this, because she would have bought gifts — better gifts, more tasteful, more meaningful — herself. “Tebe ne stydno?! Ne pozor’ svoyu sem’yu!”
“Ilya, I have no idea what that means.”
“‘Babe,’” he corrected. “And is your fault for asking then.”
“You could just tell me in — oh. Oh, Ilya.”
He looked up from the suitcase he’d finally split open, and decided not to correct Shane this time, not when his eyes were all fluttery. “Do not be so sad! I know is not much, but there is the other suitcase too.”
“Shut up,” Shane said thickly, and crouched down to hug Ilya from behind.
He wrestled the other suitcase down and left Shane to paw through metallic filigreed keepsake cases and podstakannik and picture frames, Khokhloma painted — the authentic shit, from Nizhny Novgorod, not that mass produced junk — spoons and platters and bratina, an Orenburg shawl for winter and Pavlovsky Povad shawls for the rest of the year, a Vologda lace wall hanging and an impractically expensive table runner, Gzhel tea sets and candlesticks, hair clips inlaid with amber, and an alexandrite and brass pendant that he was hoping Shane would wear and worry at with his pretty little mouth.
It was vastly inadequate for what it was supposed to be: a reciprocal invitation to all three Hollanders. A thank-you-for-inviting-me-into-your-home-it-would-be-an-honour-to-return-the-favour-when-you-are-next-in-town. Boston was home to him in the same way Montreal was home to Shane: home for now (the ‘for now’ pronounced silently, like so many of the letters in both the languages of this country).
What he should have done was put them on a plane and taken them to Moscow and said: “look, look at the way the apartments here have bathrooms so narrow your son’s broad shoulders brush the walls, and kitchens the size of an airplane galley. This was most luxurious upgrade for families after leaving kommunalkas.” He should have said: “see how all old buildings are only five stories high? This was because they only had to build an elevator if there were six or more stories.” He should have taken them to Lake Baikal when it froze over and said: “how could a country that contains this prosecute the existence of God?” He should have shown them the streets he walked to nachalnaya shkola and said: “look at the canopies of these trees that we walked under, in the winter we would throw our shoulders into the trunks to make the snow come down like an avalanche. Look at the way the lamp posts are different here. How is it possible to miss a lamp post? When I was eight I saw a man stabbed under that lamp post over black market cigarettes. Is it not beautiful? Now can you understand who I am?”
But he couldn’t do that. So instead he brought a suitcase of pretty things.
“Here, dorogoy, you can fire stylist. I bring you cool clothes: GJO. E, Sunday Morning, Nameless. Do not pretend you know what I am talking about, you must trust me.”
“Ilya,” Shane said, arms full of the anoraks and sweaters and tees Ilya had unloaded into them, peering into the next layer of the second suitcase. “Babe, did you pack any of your own stuff?”
“Why? When I am here, I like wearing your clothes better. Posted mine back to Boston. Now, I must explain some of these to you and Yuna and David. Not all labels have English.”
He picked through the jars and packages carefully, thrilled to see nothing had broken open. Adzhika, and the good horseradish, and many bars of Alenka, an array of vodkas for David to try, sour cherry and green walnut and rosehip preserves, Pryaniki and Korovka cookies that Ilya loved so much he would have hidden them from the Hollanders if he hadn’t found a Boston stockist in his rookie year, and, taking up too much weight but impossible to resist, a handful of Baltika 3s and 9s, and a few bottles of —
“Kvas?” Shane asked, picking one up, the label clearly marked ‘Квас’ without transliteration. “Am I saying that correctly?”
“Hollander, what the fuck? I was joking when I said you could learn Russian in a week.”
“I didn’t learn Russian. I’m starting with the alphabet.”
It was going to be an enduring mystery to Ilya, how people lived like this. With husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends who did the most tender, heart-melting, caring things like it was nothing at all, that made you want to cry and also want to fuck them until they screamed. How did anyone in this world hold down a job? How did anyone get anything done?
He held Shane’s face in his hands and kissed him ten times, across his little freckles. “This is even hotter than sex calendar. Immersion is good for learning. Later tonight I will only speak Russian when we fuck, yes?”
“Da, pozhaluysta,” Shane grinned, proving he knew exactly what he was doing, as all the blood in Ilya’s body surged to his dick, right as their phones chimed with Yuna’s ‘On our way!’ text.