Work Text:
Ilya is looking into courthouse weddings when it pops up.
Quick assessment quiz! 5 minutes to determine your needs
What he needs is for it to be thirty minutes later or for his refractory period to miraculously shorten, but he doubts the courthouse wedding quiz can deliver on that. He glances at Shane over his laptop and thinks his slutty little glasses might manage it after all, though. Shane is still flushed from the last round, sitting up against the headboard, but his breathing has long since calmed. He’s reading a book, something terribly dry, no doubt. He’s got the blanket pulled over his lap, and the warm light of the bedside reading light paints him in warm shades of orange.
Ilya’s heart squeezes at the sight. At home in their own home, next to each other, where they belong.
Some day, this will be every day. And part of that someday is the marriage Shane proposed just hours ago.
He turns back to the computer and clicks on the quiz. The first few questions are normal. What province, what county, what time frame? Then it pops up: nationality. Two boxes only: resident and non-resident.
Ilya has no permanent residency yet, so that’s an easy question to answer. Still, it always feels uneasy when he has to check that box, but then again, their marriage will only speed up the request. He clicks on next and the next page pops up.
Do you require an interpreter?
He stops and stares for a while.
An interpreter. He’s had one of those before. Mainly when signing notarized contracts. His wedding is far more important than a contract with Adidas, and yet for the wedding he’d never even thought of an interpreter, while for the contract it was expected.
The interpreters present at meetings like those were usually ladies, anywhere between twenty-five and eighty years old, handing him an earpiece and a receiver as they adjusted their own headset. There was that utter relief he felt at the start, when they would address him in Russian. The way their mouths would move with the mother tongue of the motherland, before they would go sit in a corner to translate, the sound of it directly transmitted from their equipment to his ear as the notary entered.
Simultaneous translation, a secretary at the notary near the Boston arena had once told him in English. He’d had to ask her to repeat it, and then looked it up at home. Simultaneous: At the same time, co-existing, synchronic, the dictionary had said, black on white. It almost was. The interpreter would speak at the same time as the notary, letting him ignore the English and focus completely on the Russian in his ear.
But there would always be that moment where the notary would ask him a question and look at him expectantly, only for the translation to take just that second longer than the question itself. That dreaded moment of expectation would stretch on, where Ilya was still waiting for the translation to finish, but an answer was already expected of him.
Like he was behind, always running after that understanding, that need to answer. Life in North America sometimes felt like an endless series of moments like that, forever stretching on before him, with no understanding in sight. A puck missing the goal indefinitely.
That second would end with an interpreter, of course. The information would come.
In so many other situations, it never did.
He thinks of the media, with their too quick, too difficult words. Of the spotlight on him, of bright camera flashes blinding him. Of journalists, who would try to catch him out. The sheer shame associated with not being able to answer the question curdling in his stomach like spoiled milk. The voice of his father, in the back of his mind, telling him: all those English lessons were wasted on you, lazy boy. As if communication is something you can fix with effort alone.
He thinks of Shane noticing when it got too much, a warm presence next to him even with that ever-careful bit of distance in between them. Of Shane taking questions he couldn’t. Of his foot bumping against Ilya’s shoe underneath a press conference table.
How that one touch had said a thousand words even an interpreter could never have translated into speech.
He thinks of when he got better at English, when he understood the reporters most of the time, but had already been burned. Had already started to hate those beady eyes at times. He’d remembered which ones had not given him grace, which ones had tried to take advantage of the gap in his skills.
It was fun pretending not to understand things for his own purposes. воткнуть нож в спину, the knife in the back, to use that same blade on your enemy, to make victory, to make fun, with the pain wrought upon you.
It doesn’t make the other issues go away, though. Not even Ilya Rozanov can take revenge on the arena staff for the fact that no one spoke Russian when he’d gotten a concussion on the ice and hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone for five minutes straight. Between the pain and the confusion, he’d forgotten how to speak any English at all for some time, and the panic of not being able to make himself understood to anyone – not medical personnel, not his teammates, not a soul in the goddamn arena – had been paralyzing.
Nor can jokes stop the comments, the assumption that he’s stupid, just because he’s got an accent. Like a dropped article meant he'd been dropped on his head a few times too many. And yeah, he'd gotten his bell rung - not that many guys on the ice who hadn't - but sometimes he'd really like to tell them: I am smart in my own language.
A useless thought anyway. Nobody wants a smart hockey player. Except if they are Hollander, perhaps, and even that was tied up in discrimination and assumptions. Model minorities, Yuna said last summer. He’d recognized the frustration, the tired anger in her voice.
Shane hasn’t said much about it himself, but Ilya knows it’s a complicated subject for him. That, too, is a thing that has been communicated between them without words.
He looks at his fiancé again. Shane turns a page, silently but for a gentle rustle. One of his legs is pressed up against Ilya’s underneath the covers, and Ilya nudges his foot against it. Without looking up, Shane nudges back.
Ilya can’t help but smile.
It all comes back to Shane. It always does. He thinks of having sex in the dark, of reaching out and hoping to god Shane will reach back, of Shane not reaching back and the fall after.
Ilya is Icarus with wax wings flying straight at the sun, but the sun has deigned to catch him after all, and though he might still burst into flame and burn into nothing just from proximity one day, it is worth it. Shane is always worth it.
He thinks of this tentative understanding that has grown stronger between them through the years. The honesty, too, more recently. That strange, terrifying feeling of staring at someone and being seen, wholly and truly. Baring your soul and trusting someone not to shatter the glass heart within.
Is that body language? When he reads Shane’s face, is that what it is called? Physicality is such a big part of their relationship, both on and off the ice, but this feels deeper than the body, entrenched in the soul. He has no name for it, not in Russian, not in English, not in his head.
He doesn’t need nor want an interpreter for their wedding. He and Shane already communicate what cannot be said in any language on earth every precious day they get to spend together.
One day, that will be every day.
Shane, feeling Ilya’s gaze on him, looks up from his book. “What’s going on?”
Ilya smirks. “Just thinking, Solnyshko.”
Shane’s eyes narrow. “About what?”
“Ooooh,” Ilya says, “big bad Russian with horrible plans! What will second best hockey player do now?”
“Go on the offensive, of course,” Shane murmurs, putting his book on the bedside table and crawling over Ilya to straddle him. He takes the laptop and shuts it decisively. That, too, is placed neatly on the bedside table on the other side of the bed.
It’s a matched set, just like them.
“Glasses are a killer move,” Ilya breathes into the crook of his neck.
“That’s what I was counting on,” Shane smiles against his mouth, and then they are decidedly too busy for any talking at all.