Chapter Text
Ilya stood in the master bathroom of his and Shane’s home staring at his reflection. At 7 months pregnant, his large body was showing less than average, carrying low and towards the back. For most of the gestational period, Ilya’s only confirmation of the embryo’s continued presence inside of him had been the nausea that’d overtake him whenever there was some goddamn poutine around and the increased frequency of bathroom trips as the growing uterus began to press against his bladder. But now, he could admit, there was a notable difference in the way his abs moved apart to allow a small bump to push through. He wasn’t yet sure how he felt about it.
Russia had a very specific view on these things. Boy, girl; these were words that defined your role in the world from a young age. They determined what toys were offered to you, which enrichment activities would be chosen for your afternoons. Then, upon transition to man, woman, they’d guide your very purpose. The provider and the caretaker. Everyone Ilya had looked up to, every positive or negative influence to ever guide him, had lived and died by these rules.
Ilya’d never subscribed to it himself – at least, not consciously. He liked equally both girls and guys, and the more you exist in that in-between, the more you realize it’s all bullshit. Sex and pleasure were more or less experienced the same way over the gender spectrum. A hole is a hole, and connecting with the person underneath bared the same human soul anyway.
But still, it was pretty hard to deny that carrying a child was heavily associated with womanhood. Did he have a problem with that? No, not one he could point to concretely, it was just…weird.
Ilya couldn’t understand it. He loved cooking meals for the two of them, finding recipes and making grocery lists and scanning the aisles for that brand of pita chips they both like. He found comfort in Shane when emotional, an increasingly frequent occurrence in recent months. All things traditionally associated with wives and their womanly role in the household. Why was this so different, so much harder to reconcile through a lens of masculinity than any other ‘feminine’ acts of service?
But the thing was, Ilya thought as he turned to view the bump from the side, viewing it that way didn’t feel wrong? Seeing such femininity in himself didn’t feel inherently at odds with his sense of self. Just like a different part of him, maybe. One that he had accessed before and throughout his life. It didn’t feel new, just…more concentrated. Ilya didn’t hate it.
When he looked at himself in the mirror, he still saw himself. It was when he tried to assign a label that things got murky. ‘Father’, he tried on in his mind, and suddenly a distance grew between himself and the bump in his midriff. It felt wrong.
The word dysphoria came to mind – one he’d just recently learned about. It helped to have the language to describe what he was feeling; he wondered if there was an equivalent term in Russian. He’d found himself learning a lot about transgender people in recent months. Trans mascs, specifically, the community that most related to and understood his experience. He couldn’t say it was quite the same; his masculine identity was generally more validated by his upbringing and the outside world, but still. It was nice to be around other pregnant men.
He tried ‘Mother’ and it felt a little better: more safe, more familiar. There was definitely less of a disconnect in his mind between what motherhood meant and what he was doing. It wasn't perfect, but it made him feel closer to her. His daughter – for he had been confident for weeks now that she would be a girl – but also…
Ilya’s breath caught at the unexplainable sensation of warmth that ran over his shoulders. Mama. Sometimes, he swore he could feel her presence next to him, and it was as if she had never been gone at all. He smiled to himself. Moments like these always left him with an unshakeable sense of calm.
Ilya met his own eyes in the reflection. His gaze slid over his bloated belly and muscular pecs, the new curves and hard lines, all the juxtapositions that now made up his form.
A strong kick pummeled into the taut skin of his stomach. The corners of Ilya’s mouth curved up into a soft smile. He would be a father when the baby was born. And a mother. He could be both. For the time being, he was just going to be happy and grateful for what was nothing short of a miracle.
Then he gave birth.
They’d had a good few days together in the hospital right after, Ilya still loopy on drugs from surgery, blissfully unaware of the impending nightmare brewing in his brain. It had been so nice to be with his daughter, finally holding her close, getting to know who she was. There’d been a sense of dread in the car ride home as Ilya felt that warmth slipping away, the outside world slowly seeping in the cracks and pulling Ilya from his baby and from the man he loved even as their skin pressed against his own. He clung to it desperately, clutching Irina closer, breathing her in. Just a little longer…please.
It was all the warning he got before the bubble burst. Within a day of arriving home, it all unraveled. Everything positive that he had felt towards his body and his baby dissolved into a storm of anxiety and hate. Ilya, already struggling enough to keep himself upright, couldn’t do anything to quell the gale as it threatened to pull him under. He was grateful even for Shane’s – humiliatingly necessary – presence in the bathroom if only for an excuse to avoid meeting his own shameful gaze in the mirror. It all felt wrong.
Everything Ilya had been so excited for about parenthood now inspired a sense of unease that bordered on nausea; he couldn’t hold Irina at all on that fourth day, could hardly look at her. Shane handled everything while Ilya stayed curled up in bed, unmoving. He blamed it on the drugs wearing off. Shane stood quiet beside the bed for a moment, but Ilya stayed turned away, unable to bear seeing the concern in his eyes. He could only hope Shane bought the excuse.
After Ilya could stand on his own, he contributed the best he could. He washed the bottles, and rocked Irina in his lap, and changed the diapers, but it was as if he were watching from somewhere else in the room. Her sometimes endless crying barely registered. He was a ghost in his own home.
When the fog did occasionally clear and Ilya returned to consciousness, it only resulted in disgust and fear at what he had become. He nearly had a panic attack once when he’d been bouncing Irina in his arms and noticed their reflection in the bedroom mirror, derision for the soft flesh of his belly and the undeniably womanly way he held his daughter immediately ripping him out of the tender moment and making him want to be sick. He’d had to put her down then, and focused on deep breaths as he tried to block out her wails, waiting for his hands to stop shaking.
Nothing felt right, nothing allowed him to feel like a man. Because that’s what he was, his mind now painfully reminded him. Before the pregnancy had gotten to his head and given him all these crazy ideas about his place in the world. What was he thinking, calling himself a Mother? He was a man, and this thinking had caused his assertion of it to slip and now he’d become less of one. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But what was the alternative? Ilya didn’t know how to do fatherhood, not at this stage. His own father gave him no model to look up to, having left the childrearing to his much younger wife in that very typical Slavic manner. Yet it was his voice that Ilya heard on repeat in his head even during his fitful sleeps telling him that he was weak. Disgusting. Sick.
Ilya was scared to get close to Irina. He had toyed with the idea of breast feeding before birth, but now the thought of it sent panic through every nerve in his body. The new swollen tenderness of his chest was an unwelcome and dissociative experience. He hated the scar cutting across his pelvis. Hated how much it hurt to move, hated how weak he felt. And worst of all was the sheer terror he felt that he was going to fuck her up. He didn’t know how not to, didn't know what to do. He was spiraling.
The second he was approved for general exercise, Ilya was back on the ice. It was only six weeks post-op – Dr. Maple had wanted him to wait longer, but he couldn’t. Adam, the trainer Shane had thoroughly researched, vetted, and hired months ago for Ilya’s recovery, met them at the rink. The familiar sound of skates cutting across packed ice provided the backdrop to their conversation as Adam went over the plan for the coming weeks. Despite the itch to get on the ice already, Ilya listened in rapt attention, excited to hear when he’d be back in the game. Instead, his heart sank slowly into a deeper abyss as the calendar grew only longer and he realized it’d be months before he was allowed to do even the most basic of drills.
Shane rubbed his arm, giving Ilya a soft smile from beside him as Adam talked before them. “It’s a good plan, right?” he asked at some point; Ilya realized Adam had ended his spiel and both men were looking at Ilya expectantly. Ilya stayed silent, but nodded. What could he have said, anyway? He was powerless; too depressed, too tired to argue.
He’d spent the rest of the session going through Adam’s stretching routine in a stupor, allowing muscle memory to take over as he drifted deeper into himself, unable to go as far as he needed and yet almost too far to come back.
One night about two weeks later, Ilya lay awake in bed staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep – not that he was getting much anyway with a newborn, but that day Shane had done most of the work and. Well. It was always easier when he could just conk out after a full day of caring for a newborn and everything that went along with that. On nights like this, there was too much time to think.
Ilya got up quietly. Got dressed. He passed by Irina’s room, where Shane was passed out on the floor by the crib after just having gotten her down. He grabbed the car keys and the keys to the rink, then carefully opened the front door and walked out into the night.
Ilya’s skates screeched against the ice, the sound echoing through the empty stadium as he careened across it. He’d only gotten through a few laps and already felt winded; he panted against his arm steadied on the plexiglass wall, eyes cast down to avoid his reflection. With a grunt, he pushed off, throwing his body forward trying to gain momentum.
His legs burned with the effort, the ice unfamiliar after so many months off of it. Sweat pooled around the base of his neck and dripped down his forehead. He swiveled his stick in front of him, maneuvering the puck through a six-cone series. He envisioned the bright orange cones set out in front of him at equivalent intervals; he’d run the drill a million times before. It shouldn’t’ve been hard. It shouldn’t’ve been hard.
The puck slid out from Ilya’s control into the wall with a quiet thud as Ilya nearly lost balance. He screamed out unintelligibly, eyes shut against angry tears burning holes into his retina.
Ilya kept going. He skated, and passed, and ran, and stopped. It wasn’t enough. Even as he was gasping for air he wouldn’t stop. After gulping some down during a short break his body forced him to take, he wobbled to full height and pushed off hard. His stick caught on the ice and Ilya slammed his stomach into its blunt end full-force. A searing pain immediately erupted across his midriff. Ilya fell to his side, blinded by the pain. Stars swam in front of his vision and he could do nothing but breathe, no longer able to move.
“ILYA!”
Shane’s there now. His footsteps echo through the hollow bleachers as he runs over, a thump sounding from somewhere behind Ilya as his boots hit the rink ice from jumping the border. Shane’s by his side now, hands pressing down on the scar and making Ilya cry out in pain. The hands jump away, then shakily pull up his shirt. “Oh God. Oh God. Ilya, what did you do?” Shane says through quick breaths. Ilya can’t reply; his senses focus in on the cool ice below his cheek. It feels so nice. He vaguely hears Shane’s voice saying something, but not to him. He sounds worried. Ilya doesn’t understand why. He stretches his arm out to him and smiles. ‘It’s okay,’ Ilya says. ‘Don’t worry. Just be with me.’ They were very tired, there together, but happy. They fell asleep to pleasant dreams of dancing through the clouds.