• For placebythering.

happy birthday isla for this occasion i have cobbled together some of your favorite tropes and more importantly finally finished a piece of writing for the first time in my life

The year Shane turned twelve, his grandma died. It was predictable, foreseeable: in the last few weeks her skin was pale, almost purple, and whenever they visited her in the hospital Shane would get the awful impression that she was nothing but a tired bag of bones. By that point she rarely spoke English; just repeated the same stories, crooning into the air, stories that Shane could almost-understand through some combination of his mom’s translation and his own half-hearted Japanese lessons. When she talked, she produced a horrible wheezing sound. They all knew she was too sick for chemo, but they were still trying, and it permeated the room like mold. The desperation: the wish.

Before she got sick, Shane saw her maybe twice a year. Now they visited the hospital twice a week, fitting an hour somewhere in between the already tight schedule of school, hockey, and training, squeezing days into smaller and smaller boxes.

Updates about his grandma came, settled. The doctors kept saying it was over, but then she would live a week more, and they’d pivot. Hope grew into long stalks, reaching for the sun, then fell onto themselves. She was on thirty milligrams of morphine. They kept increasing it, even though she didn’t ask for anything anymore. Mostly she just murmured to herself, staring outside the window. 

His mom cried. His dad got quiet and strangely helpless, often staring at Shane with wide, questioning eyes when he thought Shane wasn’t looking. 

Shane mostly grew impatient. He was tired, he thought, of this extra block of time, stuffed into his already busy day. Of course, he loved his grandma, in the way he supposed was inherent to loving relatives; but watching her wither away left a bad taste of chalk in his mouth. He’d get dragged to the hospital with his muscles straining, pulled after practice, and get inundated with the sour-lemon smell of the hospital. There was a scent of something that was probably death, in retrospect; underlying, rancid.

He didn’t really recognize her. In his memory she was a thin, tall, and very strict woman: walking around in floor length skirts, her mouth pinched. She didn’t like it when he spoke English in her house. She made him garden with her, somehow never sweating, standing out in the sun while he crouched before the dirt, planting seeds, soaking through his t-shirts. She made good food: the kind of food Shane rarely got to eat. Stew, soup, fish. His dad cooked at home, and he mostly made spaghetti, lasagna. Grilled vegetables, nowadays, because it was healthier. But at his grandma’s she’d present different things in little bowls, laid out on her wooden table, meat and rice and fish, pickled vegetables that Shane never saw in the grocery store. 

What Shane remembered most was when she made him watch movies with her. Japanese ones, old ones, often black and white and very sad, the type of sad he didn’t really understand at twelve but could gather from the way the main characters sat and cried in the middle of the shot. His grandma would put them on, her ancient TV humming, no subtitles, and sit next to him on the couch with a cup of herbal tea. He missed half the plot, half the meaning, but in the end it was relaxing. Focus on someone else’s sorrow for a change.

When she’d gotten even worse—progressing from a bag of bones to something resembling plastic, her skin waxy—she’d stopped speaking at all. Just stared, unseeing, into some direction of the hospital room. Sitting beside her made Shane’s teeth ache. Made him restless, anxious. Made him wring his hands, minutes on end, searching desperately for anything to do. He didn’t read a lot. He didn’t play any games. He was quite a boring person, his peers often told him, and Shane could finally feel it then: God, he wished he had anything, anything at all, to do.

Mostly he wished he could connect with her, his grandma. In her life she had been quiet, too, but now it was a different kind of silence: it was like someone had come and sucked all the life out from her marrow. She didn’t even seem present. She didn’t seem alive, at all, just a withering skeleton. Shane didn’t like looking at her. It made him feel guilty, the emotion burrowing in his stomach, but he just didn’t. When he said hello to her he looked past her head at her blue pillow. When he had to sit with her he stared at the floor.

There was a TV in her hospital room, bolted up near the ceiling. Near the end, Shane spent an hour flipping through the channels, trying to find anything reminiscent of what he knew she liked, but the only movie on was a rerun of Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks calling listlessly into a radio station. It was better than nothing, probably. He left it on. It was easier, he thought, to pay attention to the disastrous love life of these two people, than to spend the hour with his eyes darting, trying to avoid the slow, monotonous rise-and-fall of his grandma’s chest.

The movie was okay. Meg Ryan was ending her engagement. Shane stretched, feeling his bones pop, butt sore from sitting on the hard chair. His eyes flickered to his grandma, involuntary—

She was watching the movie. Mouth slightly open, her breaths still coming languid, but her head was tilted up against the pillows. Her eyes, alive for the first time in weeks, months. Shane’s arms froze in their position, locked above his head, and he observed, not moving, not inhaling, as his grandma watched Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks come together, a happy ending for a happy couple. He felt as if any movement would startle her, any near-silent brush against the bedding. When he finally relaxed, hands coming to his sides, she was still watching. 

She died two weeks after that. In that time, they’d managed to get through whatever romantic comedy or drama was playing on the TV. Shane even felt, surprising himself, a certain excitement at visiting her in the hospital. But it was over almost as soon as it began. 

They flew to Yokohama a week later to bury her in the family plot. 

First time in Japan, staying with relatives he didn’t know, shame curling in his gut when he could tell how broken his Japanese was, how his cousins and aunts cringed a little when he spoke. He spent most of the trip in a corner with his father, watching from the sidelines as his mom made ways around different rooms. He was used to feeling out of place: missing cues, missing jokes, the last one invited, and in Japan it was strikingly similar. It made him brood, twelve years old with a permanent frown on his face. 

The last day before their flight his mom had dragged him out around the city, just the two of them, wandering through buildings, the taste of seawater in the air. She had a strange, almost guarded look on her face. Shane wasn’t very good at emotion but he thought he could understand her, then, really feel it: the feeling of sticking out like a sore thumb. His mom was born in Montreal. She’d been to Yokohama four times, Tokyo once, she’d said, and didn’t like it all that much. When she told him that she whispered the last part like a secret. 

He and his mom were similar, he knew, familiar in hockey, in the way they liked their tea, in the way they sat and rewatched highlights from a game while his dad meandered around the kitchen. But then it’d felt more real. Like they were part of one whole. He’d stared at her swinging hand, following her through the streets, and suddenly wanted to hold it: a connection, a string. But he was twelve, and still brooding, so he’d stuffed his palms into the pockets of his jacket and hung his head.

At the end of the day they’d stumbled upon a movie theater in some forgotten corner of the city. His mom had smiled: said, Wanna see a movie, baby? and who was Shane to refuse? 

Some romantic drama. Two actors, saying their lines, following the laid-out plan. Him and his mom sitting in a nearly empty movie theater, somewhere in the back, but the room was so small that it hardly mattered. Halfway through the second act his mom started crying. He could see her, out of the corner of his eye, mouth twisted, tears running their course down her face.

She wasn’t crying because of the movie. The characters hadn’t even gotten to the argument yet. Finally Shane swallowed his terrible embarrassment, that voice in his head that kept telling him he was big and strong and better off without any of the emotions—and reached over, very slowly, and took his mom’s hand.

Ilya is watching something in the living room. Shane can hear the dulcet tones of Russian, children speaking, arguing, the way the music swells and quiets. He loiters around the kitchen for a while, eyes glancing every few minutes, catching frames, a blur of colors. Ilya’s head peeks up from the couch, the back of his curls: gold, brown, and then more gold.

After another minute he makes his languid way to the couch. Perched at the arm, first, Ilya’s face is in profile: Shane looks as his mouth relaxes; watches his slow, dragging blinks. Ilya doesn’t react when Shane drags himself across the cotton, sits himself down next to him, cushions distorting to hold Shane’s pressure: but his face does something small, some twitch of life.

The movie is unusual. Old, definitely. Grainy the way old movies often are, the colors just a bit too bright, green and yellow and blue amplified. It’s some sort of musical, too: the little blond boy who seems to be the main character singing clear as bells. Ilya has it turned up so loud. When Shane looks at him, he’s mouthing along with the lyrics: a quiet moving of his mouth. His eyes are so wide.

What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Shane wants to ask. What exactly does this movie mean to you? Ilya didn’t have a habit of talking about his past. In that way, he still seemed so mysterious to Shane, a puzzle made to be unlocked, the right steps and the right weights for the door to finally open. The most Shane knew, carefully given out, was bottled up in moments in the dark, late at night, how he imagined Ilya preferred it: in front of the fire, the weight of Ilya’s head in his lap. The way Ilya didn’t have to look at him, not even once, eyes glassy and still so blue, watching the way the flame rises up above the trees. 

When they’d come back inside after that, Ilya was grinning again, already, saying something about the loons. Different feeling in the warm light of the cottage. It was like he couldn’t even get the words through the door. When Shane looked outside, sometimes, he could still feel them, heavy, on the couch outside.

“What are you watching?” Shane asks, finally, after another minute. Barely audible in-between the children talking on screen. Ilya’s eyebrows quirk in acknowledgement, but he doesn’t look away from the movie. His hand, however, stretches: makes warm contact with Shane’s thigh. Kneads, for a moment, fingers grasping the muscle. His thumb on the outside, index up to the pinkie splayed out at the warm part of Shane, the delicate part, next to the crease of his hip.

“Old movie,” he answers, after a moment. He clears his throat, after, as if buying time. “I used to watch it with my mother.”

A soft oh makes itself out of Shane’s mouth. Warmth spreads through him: another piece shared. 

“What’s it about?”

“About a human boy and a robot. They look the same, so they get into adventures.”

“Adventures?”

“Yes. Situations. They’re trying not to get kidnapped.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It is. My favorite, probably.”

Shane smiles in amusement. The idea of an old, Soviet children’s musical being Ilya’s favorite movie makes something inside his chest bloom. So Ilya. Of course. The things that build him up like building blocks: Shane could swallow all of them, probably, and be happy.

They watch the movie, Ilya reacting, Shane attempting to understand without grasping the language. Ilya’s hand is warm on Shane’s thigh.

After the third song Shane starts to get a little sleepy. He shifts: laying his body out, his head on Ilya’s lap. Ilya accommodates without asking: lifts his arm, places his hand on the soft part of Shane; his neck, his hair.

“Have you talked to your mother?” asks Ilya, suddenly, very evenly, eyes still staring straight ahead. His fingers curl, over and over, above in Shane’s hair. The slightest tug. Shane moves: looks up at his face, watches the way his eyes are barely blinking, his straight eyebrows, his mouth set thin and tight as he asks the question.

Shane feels unexpected bitterness well up in his chest. Something really unpleasant, akin to anxiety. “No,” he answers, after a long, long moment, finding his voice less stable than he’d like. He blurs his eyes: the colors on the screen blend into one another like a palette of paint.

Ilya doesn’t move, doesn’t react, but Shane can feel the shift of him in the way he says, “Okay,” slow and quiet and even in a way that means he’s not saying something. Biting back his words. Shane freezes in his grasp: the movie continues to swim out of focus in his eyes. He waits, his heart hammering in his chest, for Ilya to continue.

But suddenly Ilya’s eyes perk up, eyebrows raising, letting the movie catch his attention once again. “Look,” he points, one handed, at the TV: such an Ilya gesture, so unnecessary, so big and wide, as if Shane isn’t right there with him, looking at the screen, sitting in his warmth. It makes Shane smile, despite himself. “They're going to switch places. The human and the robot.”

Ilya’s hands don’t still in his hair. He is so stable: solid as rock, good to lean against. Shane likes the fact that he can close his eyes and not have to worry about him changing. Ilya is constant: forever, if Shane allows himself to think that.

Yuna was born in Montreal, dead-center of the city, and she loved it completely. The same way she’d told him she didn’t like Yokohama all that much, she whispered to him, once, that she loved Montreal: its rainy seasons, the first flowers during spring, even the winters that dropped below zero sometimes. Mostly she loved the city. She’d lived in the middle of it, sometime long ago, and would wake up before sunrise to watch the sun crawl up the skyline.

By the time Shane was twelve, they’d already moved into the new house, somewhere far off in suburbia. Rows of white-walled houses stretching into forever. Shane had never seen skyscrapers the way she’d described, not really, not until one of his first games with the Metros: rooming with Hayden, lucky to get a good hotel, and there they were: skyscrapers, in the distance. Not Montreal, of course, but Shane had dutifully set his alarm for five in the morning and watched the way the sun rose.

Shane didn’t know if he loved Montreal. Probably. Home was home; he didn’t really think much about it. He’d never lived anywhere else. Sometimes he wondered, though, if his mom ever thought about that last time they were in Yokohama. How was it, for her? She knew the language, the customs. Did it feel like putting a piece back together, even though she didn’t like it? Slotting back into some imagined river. Did she like living in Montreal because she could leave that piece of her behind, in some way? Getting to say she was Canadian, true-blooded, born here, when the reporters kept saying, And where are you from?

Maybe it was easier. Shane wasn’t sure. No matter how many times he’d answered, I was born here, I don’t speak Japanese, they kept asking. But maybe keeping it all separate, somehow, at least in her mind, made it uncomplicated. Shane could give her that: he’d already given her everything. She knew him inside and out, no matter what he tried to hide. He just wished sometimes he knew her like that too: symbiotic, instead of him on a table, splayed out.

He knew she had studied Management at McGill. Shane had seen pictures of her, back when she was twenty and going out, and had often wondered what she was like. The same? Different? Did she have the same mannerisms she did now, the pull of the mouth, the quirk of her brow? She had short hair in college, a straight black bob, ending right at the nape of her neck. She wore red lipstick. Shane, in his entire life, had never seen her wear lipstick — but there she was, in all the college polaroids, mouth dark with some strawberry-plum color. When Shane tried to imagine her now, wearing that same shade, nothing really came up. He was used to her in linen, in blue, in crisp white shirts that made her so welcoming, open. In the college photos it was like someone took her and flipped her all around. In one of them she was wearing a leather jacket.

She didn’t talk about how it was when she was younger. Shane didn’t know what her college years were like, how she was in high school. The only stories she ever told seemed to always begin when she found out she was pregnant with him: a new line, a new door. She was only keen on sharing things when it seemed relevant to Shane’s life, when it could help him, when she could make it have some endpoint. Shane didn’t know what kind of person she was in university; in the blurry mess of graduating high school at seventeen and skipping the line past college and straight into getting drafted, any stories of Yuna’s college experience weren’t brought up, weren’t needed. 

He wondered, often, how it would have been if Shane had gone to college. If he and his mom would have got along: if they would have been friends, even. If she would have liked the person he would be, if he studied something traditional, instead of spending hours pouring over game footage.

His dad, in contrast, shared things like they cost nothing.  He was an especially talkative guy when drunk, even more than usual. He’d tell Shane about how his mom was the most competitive person he’d ever met. How she wasn’t even on a hockey team but she talked to him like she was the coach. He was enamoured with her instantly: the way you feel when you score a goal in the first five minutes. He’d hit the jackpot. He had no idea why he caught her eye, even today, he’d said, because he was an okay player at best and a ghost on the ice at worst. But somehow he had caught her attention. They’d won for the first time in a while, and he was still feeling the high of it days later, sitting in his vague Business class he rarely paid attention in and barely attended. They sat next to each other but he’d never really noticed, not up until that day, when he recognized the black wash of her hair. He’d said, hi, introduced himself, grinning, sticking his hand out like someone professional, and then two minutes later she was telling him he shouldn’t have missed that shot in the last game, seven minutes in. Left side of the rink.

His dad was so dumbfounded he said his mouth dropped open. She hadn’t even shook his hand yet. She’d blushed, turned her face back towards the front of the class, face impassive, chin raised high, but her cheeks were so red even he could notice it. 

Shane wanted to see it so badly sometimes he’d stare at her: he wanted to see her blush. He wanted to see her the way she used to be: young, red in the face. But all he would get is her smile, tight and small, her delicate hands, her linen shirts.

Shane is cooking fish on the stove. Frying it, the way his grandma used to. Lately he’s been stuck on memory, something blurry and small: sitting by the wooden table while his grandma hummed in the kitchen. The smell of oil, seafood, the pot of steaming rice already in front of him. Not even a full memory, just something contained in smell, in texture. 

“What are you making?” murmurs Ilya, hands coming up to Shane’s waist, pressing the long line of his body against Shane’s back.

“Just dinner,” Shane answers, after a second: the memory his to keep.

When Shane was twelve, too, he was on a very bad team. They kept losing every game they played, even though Shane got a good amount of goals in every time. No matter how fast Shane sped on the ice, they always seemed to come last: no matter how Shane tried to plan anything out, they always seemed to never reach the finish line. 

When they’d gotten back from Yokohama, flight just touching down, he’d grit his teeth and decided he would get better. His grandma was dead: simple fact. More time to turn into skating. 

But even when Shane completely cut out the time in the hospital with his grandma, devoted more minutes to the ice, they couldn’t seem to get any faster, stronger. Their goalie was letting in more goals. Shane’s linemates were slow, and they never caught his passes. The head coach wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t teach, just clapped his hands at the end of every embarrassing loss and said, We’ll get them next time, boys. Shane would sit at the bench and seethe, in silence, analyzing every second that had just passed, breaking apart how it could be, how it would be, if they tried even just a little bit.

But nobody ever listened. It was like Shane was in a completely different atmosphere. When he tried suggesting things, they’d bare their teeth like dogs. Fuck off, Hollander, they told him. You think you’re so much better than us.

Yes, Shane wanted to say. I am. I’m better and I’m faster and I can score and you could be better too, if only you just listened. Why won’t you listen? But they’d thought he was mean. Thought he was making fun of them. When the coach caught wind of it, he’d taken Shane to his office, and told him he had to stop being rude to the other boys. 

Rude. Shane had never once been rude in his entire life. He had never once been mean. He had never once looked at a bruise and wanted to press, make it hurt more. He was a kind person. He wanted to help: that’s why he was trying to tell them, show them, because if they took it to heart, everything would be better. He couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just listen to him. 

Shane had never thought himself a sorry loser, and he was used to losing games, especially on a team as dogshit as his. It hurt, always, but he’d gotten good at separating himself from it: at night, laying in bed and thinking about how he could cut a second of time off his skate. Not thinking of the team at all: just the rush in his ears, the wet, cold wind. But this one game, then and there, he suddenly felt deep shame curdle in his belly: looking up at the stands and seeing his mom there, clapping, smiling. She was probably disappointed, he thought. She was probably angry.

When he skated up to her she was still smiling. Anxiety pulsed in Shane’s stomach: he couldn’t look up at her.

“Hey, baby,” she said, and he could see her teeth. She hugged him. “You did great.”

“Are you not mad?” he finally asked her, feeling the warmth of her hand on his back, eyes trained to the ice, the words colored with embarrassment. He couldn’t even look up at her. 

“What?” his mom had said, abruptly, and then ran her hand in a line down the muscle. Shane could see her in his head: the way her face probably fell, the sharp furrow of her eyebrows. “Why would I be mad, baby?”

“We lost,”

“The team lost,” she said, very evenly, but that wasn’t the end of it. “But you, Shane, you’re a winner.”

He was so shocked his head snapped up to meet her eyes. She wasn’t smiling anymore: just that tight line of her mouth, the furrow of her brows.

“You’re a winner,” said his mom, again, and Shane let it wash over him like a wave, like a healing balm. I’m a winner, he thought, solid and true.

Ilya makes rice and fish for dinner. The smell permeates through the air. Different, but an undertone that Shane remembers. He makes Shane sit in the dining room: waits until it’s ready, then serves it up on a big platter.

Being a good son was always a thing on his list. Unconscious, probably, but always there: good at hockey, good at control, a good son. Oftentimes it intersected: most of the time, really. But now it seemed separated from everything. Shane was scared, in time, that it would completely disappear: his want to do good for his mom.

Shane is in the kitchen, drinking his smoothie, when Ilya ambles up to sit on the barstool. He’s grinning. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Suddenly his grin slips off, face still soft, but strangely serious. 

“Yuna called me,” he begins, slowly, like he’s trying not to spook a rabbit. “You… haven’t picked up her calls.”

Shane looks down into his drink, watching the green color jostle under his touch. Spinach, blueberries. Not his favorite but it’s a routine for a reason. “No.”

“Maybe you should,” starts Ilya, his hands up on the bar, clenching, unclenching. “She is worried. And she loves you —”

“I don’t care what you think,” says Shane, very suddenly, cutting Ilya off. He doesn’t understand why Ilya doesn’t get it. Why is it so hard for him to understand? Did he think, really, that saying all these things would change anything? Saying things Shane had heard only in movies, between two characters written only to love each other, only to agree with each other, to wrap their ending up in a nice shiny bow? This wasn’t a movie. This was real life. Shane’s life. 

Ilya’s face falters, visibly, a tangible disappointment washing over his shoulders. Shane shuts his eyes, for a moment, and wills it all to just fall into place. He pushes out a whistling breath.

“I mean—that sounded harsh. I just…” How to make it make sense? It was hard for Shane, sometimes, to explain himself to people. He wished very badly that everyone was on the same page as him, forever, but somehow always found himself alone, orbiting around others, twisting himself to fit. “About this, I mean. You sound like a movie character. You know, the ones in all the stories, saying, She loves you, go get her.”

He grins, just a little bit, trying to bring some levity into the conversation. But Ilya’s eyebrows just furrow. There’s a twist to his lips. He shifts his weight, one foot to the next, and—

Looks away. Fuck. 

“What does that mean?” He looks so… hurt, maybe. All of it laid out on his face.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” answers Shane, after a second. Doesn’t it? His mom was his mom; he was used to the way it all worked. He was tired of explaining, too. He was tired of it all. 

“It’s nothing,” he adds: and twists his head so he can look at Ilya again, his hard posture, the tight line of his mouth.

“Can we just… not talk about it, please?” Pleading, Shane was used to. It slotted in his mouth like a familiar organ.

“Okay.”

“Do you wanna watch a movie?” Shane asks, after a long, long silence, finishing off his smoothie. It takes a moment, but Ilya nods, a little slowly, and then stands up off the barstool:

He puts on some romcom he and his mom love. Comfort. Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson. Ilya settles warm against him on the couch. Watches with intent: like he’s trying to understand it, like he’s trying to swallow it. At some point the characters get into an argument. Girl on the left, boy on the right, someone always pleading. Shane can talk through the dialogue by memory: and he does, noticing at the last moment that he’s mouthing along with the words.

Ilya grins at him. “This is what you mean, movie character?”

“Shut up.” He’s blushing all the way to his ears.

Ilya’s hand is so warm on his thigh, so heavy. His fingers keep moving: the barely audible shrrrshhhh of the linen against his fingertip. 

“What? I am trying to understand you.”

“You already understand me,” answers Shane, a little petulantly, but so revealing: Ilya really does.

Ilya’s hand creeps up along his thigh.

“There’s five more minutes. I wanna see the ending,” Shane tries to say, but this falls on deaf ears. Ilya curves around him, pushing him, bullying him down until he’s across the couch, facing him.

“You like your happy endings, don’t you?” says Ilya, his mouth split into a grin: Shane can see the bone-white shine of his teeth, even in the dark. Ilya’s hands settle on his waist, a heavy pleasure, and Shane blushes all the way down to the root of himself: his heart.

“Shut up,” he grinds out, suddenly wordless, the feeling of it all catching in his throat. He closes his eyes: reaches up to weave his fingers through Ilya’s hair. His curls are wet with sweat, the smell sweet and sour at the same time. Shane tilts his head up, up, until his nose makes contact with Ilya’s temple: glistening, moisture pooling. He breathes in.

Sometimes Shane wondered if maybe they were spending too much time around each other. Maybe that would be the crack in the tile: they’d gotten so used to being nothing but ghosts in hotel rooms that being solid for once would break them apart. Shane liked his space. Before Ilya arrived at the cottage he’d sat alone on his couch and suddenly gotten scared that he would get tired of him, the way he got tired of everyone, the way it was always not even past eleven when he left every bar, every party, every gathering. 

But somehow with Ilya it was different. Shane liked sitting with him: just breathing the same air, occupying that same room, four walls that Shane was always scared of sharing. Letting Ilya into all the little crevices of his life felt so easy. He slipped in, slithering, and made a home for himself, and Shane finally felt full, the way he hadn’t in years.

Ilya doesn’t shut up. He never does. He manoeuvres his thigh to lodge in between Shane’s, mouths noisily at Shane’s neck. Shane's mouth opens involuntarily, like always, and before he knows it he’s heaving, hands at Ilya’s back, his waist, as Ilya grinds, slow and torturous. 

“You are so funny,” he murmurs, right into Shane’s ear. His tongue is hot at Shane’s skin: Shane can’t seem to catch his breath. He tries to say Ilya’s name, but all that comes out is some embarrassing whine, his hips thrusting up, heels rising against the couch. Ilya shifts his thigh a little: upward, so Shane has something more to hump against. 

“‘I wanna watch the ending,’” Ilya mimics, and then laughs, and it’s a little mean, a little embarrassing, but Shane is too gone to care. He rolls his hips; once, twice, three times, and then his hands are tightening across the wide span of Ilya’s back, his tank top stretched to hell in his fists. He moans as he spills into his shorts. Favorite linen. 

Ilya follows not long after, thrusting into the divot where Shane’s hip meets his thigh. Immediately afterwards, he collapses on top of him; pleasant and buzzy weight against Shane’s whole body. 

The movie credits are playing in the background. Shane missed the last scene. Shane tries to catch his breath, watching the white text scroll on a black background. Ilya’s face is warm and wet with sweat in the crook of his neck. Suddenly Ilya turns: his curls rubbing up against Shane’s bare skin, trying to look up at him. Shane almost winces. Stubbornly, somehow, he watches the TV.

“Happy ending, yes?” teases Ilya, breath hot on Shane’s ear, grinning, even though Shane can’t see him.

“Fuck off,” Shane whines, finally tearing his gaze away from the screen, shoving at Ilya’s face, trying to sit up on the couch—and still, feels the affection bloom under his skin, open, outward.

The movies were always good. Predictable, too. Written out. He always knew how they ended. He didn’t like TV shows for that reason: open endings always made him antsy. But movies: they were all finished up. He could watch them and go to sleep. Relax. Stop wondering, for once in his life.

His mom calls again. Shane watches the phone, minutes ticking by, until it drops: no response. She hadn’t hung up.

Shane is awake in the middle of the night. It’s raining outside the cottage. Shane listens to the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the glass: watches the night outside. He hadn’t put the curtains down ever since Ilya took the remote from him.

Ilya shifts, suddenly, in the sheets. He flips his face around, blinking, bleary eyed.

“Sorry I woke you,” whispers Shane, tender.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” The term sounds like it slips out of him: unbidden. He doesn’t even react. He lifts his hand closer to clasp Shane on the shin of his raised knees.

“Nothing, nothing, just…” he trails off, suddenly embarrassed of it all, staying awake at night, upset about it. “Thinking about my mom.”

Ilya hums.

Then: clear, suddenly. “You should call her.”

Shane stays quiet. He doesn’t have anything to say, anything to answer back. How to explain this? How to get out of explaining this? He was so tired of talking. 

“In the morning,” adds Ilya, with a certain humor.

He worries his lip in between his teeth, still looking outside.

“I just…” he says, still whispering. “Why won’t she get it? She usually gets everything. I don’t understand.”

Ilya’s silent for a few seconds. Then: he pushes himself up, sitting position, looking at Shane half-awake. “She just wants to help,” he says, and Shane knows this: still, it’s hard to swallow. “You’re her son.”

“I know.”

The sheets rustle as Ilya moves again. “She’s just… surprised, probably, Shane. And she wants to fix it. Management, yes?”

“Yeah, I know, I know.” Something of a mean thought comes to Shane, one he hasn’t really thought before: I just wish she wouldn’t manage this.

Ilya yawns. “Yes, I know you know. Just…” he hesitates then, long enough that Shane turns to look at him, searching, wondering. Ilya’s looking down at his lap. His hands worry a little. A moment later he looks up at Shane: his blue, blue eyes.

“Call her,” he says, so soft, and then reaches for Shane: his warm palm on Shane’s cheek. “In the morning. When we’re not supposed to be sleeping.”

Shane smiles, at this. Ilya is probably right. Shane knows it all but maybe it’s easier to have it said out loud. He grins, shameless, and dives to connect their wet mouths.

It’d snowballed somehow, so quickly, even though it started with basically nothing. His parents had come over for dinner, text sent beforehand, which gave Shane and Ilya ample time to shower, wipe down the dinner table, and spend fifteen minutes chewing their own lips with anxiety. Right before his mom had knocked on the door Ilya had turned to him: the never-ending flash of his teeth, again. Kissed him soft and sweet, his hand on the back of Shane’s neck. Shane had closed his eyes: felt the shiver ripple through his skin.

The food was good. Ilya had spent two hours in the kitchen, shoving things into the oven, chopping onions until his eyes were squinting. His dad complimented the cooking. Shane watched as Ilya bloomed under the words, then boasted. His mom nodded, once, as if surprised. 

It was only when they’d finished eating, Ilya kissing Shane on the cheek, carrying all the plates back to the kitchen, that his mom brought it up. 

“I know I said this before,” she started, and Shane’s hackles rose as if on instinct. His dad stilled at her side, then made some excuse to go help Ilya in the kitchen. “But have you thought about the optics?”

The anxiety climbed higher. “Mom,” he whined, low. “Stop, please.”

“I’m just saying —”

Some anger spiked in his belly at this. Why wouldn’t she just get it? He’d thought they had no barriers between them, that she could understand him with a single look, a single glance: explaining himself was not a thing he did with her. But here, now, it seemed like the only thing to do.

“I don’t want to think about that, okay? Why don’t you get it?” He could hear his own voice, bitter and a little mean, and her face almost seemed to snap back at his words.

Then: mean, Shane was being mean. “Why do you always have to be right? For once in your life, just let it go.”

He could finally see her emotions laid out in front of him. Her face was contornted into something he’d never seen before. It was almost worth it.

“I… Shane, what?” she stammered, eyes darting. She leaned in closer, quieter. “I just want to make it easier for you. I always want to make it easier for you. You know how it is —”

And Shane did know. Shane knew everything, he realized, probably, all the outcomes, all the plans, every single thought she’d had about this he’d already thought of himself. He wanted to tell her this: he wanted her to know. But he just couldn’t get the words out.

“— and I’m just saying it would be smart to think these things over. What if the worst thing happens? The very worst thing, Shane. Please.”

She was talking about his life like he hadn’t considered it. Like the worst thing already did happen, three days ago, when he turned away from Ilya and saw his dad standing there, dumbfounded.

“I—no. No, mom. No. I have a plan.” Maybe this would put her heart at ease. The next part he said unthinkingly, still not mean, not in his eyes, but certainly untrue: “I don’t need your help.”

A lie. It hit him that he was lying as soon as he said it, but he couldn’t take it back. Her face fell. Guilt bloomed in his belly.

“Leave, please,” said Shane, then, suddenly, pleading. The look on his mom’s face was the sort of devastated that Shane didn’t want to see, the kind that made her eyebrows twist, her mouth buckle. He closed his eyes, breathing: in, out. He wanted to be alone. He wanted his comfortable box of the cottage back to cradle.

“Shane,” said his mom, very quietly, her voice peetering off at the end, tears welling up in her eyes.

Shane had his hands up by his face. He covered his eyes. Pressed down, hard. “I want you to leave,” he repeated, and felt almost guilty about it: almost guilty to take it back. Almost. 

There’s some bird on the tree branch outside. Shane watches it, phone clasped between his fingers, until it pecks, chirps, and takes off into flight again.

His mom’s contact is pulled up on his phone. His thumb hovers above the call button like it’ll electrocute him. Still, he breathes: afraid, terribly scared, and presses down.

The phone barely rings twice and she’s already picking up. Shane presses it to his ear: swears he can hear her breathe on the other line.

“Shane?” her voice is tinny through the receiver. She’s hesitating; Shane can hear it, feel it through.

“Hey, mom.”

“... How are you, baby?”

How is he? He’s fine, really. He’s doing good. Everything he loves is secluded into the tight small box of his cottage. For once in his life he can hold it: with both hands, he can carry it.

Except this, he supposes. He thought often about how this would affect his life. Being gay is a thing he’s agonized over, the way they do in movies, he thinks. Something painful that’s begged to come out, be ripped, ignored until it becomes some sad, small, unknowable thing. But now it’s been exposed: like a live wire, uncovered. All of Shane’s expectations, all of his preparations, all of his late nights laid bare before the people he looks to most in the world.

“I’m fine, mom.” 

“Okay.”

“I just want to make it easier for you,” she murmurs, after a second, and Shane knows: he knows it like he knows hockey, like he knows the smell of Ilya, like he knows the smell of steamed fish. He knows it, but it’s still so painful, trying to grasp at his own life and find it missing his mother. They’re so similar: this seems to be some dividing factor, the first thing they have to talk around. She’s always been his anchor: he looked to her for anything at all. “You know that, right?”

“I know, mom,” he answers, quiet too, and then hears her breathe out a long sigh.

“Okay, honey.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, after a long silence.

What is she sorry for? Him being gay? Him having to separate himself from her? Something else entirely? Maybe if he’d asked about the college polaroids, spoken up for once in his life, he’d be able to piece her together: put it all into the correct boxes. But he hadn’t. He feels like she’s missing the center of it, like he can never see her clearly.

“Okay. Me too.”

Silence, again. Shane’s eyes close, involuntarily: he listens to the hum of the phone, the noises outside. 

“Would you want to come over for dinner? With Ilya?”

An olive branch. They’ve never needed olive branches before, but here it is, stretched out stark in between.

“Of course, mom.”

“Okay, baby. We’ll be waiting.”

At least this is constant: the waiting. Shane feels, embarrassingly, like a spooked animal trapped in a cage. 

A hesitation on the phone. Then: so quiet Shane has to strain for it: “I love you, Shane.”

And then she hangs up. 

Shane sits there, surrounded by leaves and grass, and tries to blink away the terrible burning in his eyes.

The door to the cottage slides open.

Shane can feel him, immediately, body reacting like a taut line stretched too far. He can always spot him, miles away. The air becomes sweeter. Shane can hear his footsteps, slow and languid, making their way over to where he’s perched on the grass. Ilya breathes: when he sits down, he doesn’t say anything.

Shane drops his head into his arms. In, out. The smell of the grass, of the lake, of everything in between.

“Hey,” whispers Ilya, after a while. His shoulder makes warm contact with Shane’s, warm even through his shirt. Shane lifts his head out from his arms, slowly, and then just looks at him: the way the sun hits his face, the way his mouth curves, the way his eyes look so blue in the light. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, answers; like a boat to a lighthouse.

Shane thought often about going backwards. After coming back from his parents’ place, that first time, laid out all clean, Ilya snoring on the pillow next to him, he’d thought about it again: going back, unraveling the tight line of time, being seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, twelve again. Back when Monreal was still home. Back when all he had to worry about was his hockey schedule: math, math, and then more math. Back when his mom was some constant presence in his life: tell her something, maybe. Anything. Just say hi. He remembered her always: forever, she was a weight at his side. He misses it: misses what they all were, before all of this. Eating fish and rice at his grandma’s place, his mom in the doorway, the smell of something steaming in the kitchen.

She opens the door when Ilya knocks. Smiles, tight, the way she always does, and runs her hand along Ilya’s shoulder in greeting.

“Hi, Yuna,” says Ilya, happy and handsome. He looks back at Shane: the curve of his lip twitches. “I will go help in the kitchen, okay?”

He waits until Shane nods to tumble off. 

Shane isn’t even through the doorway before his mom takes a step towards him.

“Hi, baby,” says Yuna, and then reaches up: her small, delicate hands finding Shane’s face. Shane closes his eyes, everything welling up inside him, and nods, as if on instinct, as if being told to. Opens his eyes, after a moment, braving the light.

“Hey, mom.” His hands come to rest against her wrists. He still can’t look at her, not right at her, but she ducks her head to try and meet his gaze.

Her eyes are so soft. “I’m so sorry, Shane,” she says, thumb sweeping over his cheekbone. She looks so sad. Shane has seen her in such a different light, this week, face twisting and contorting into things he’d never seen. Shame pools in his stomach: the want to take it all back, rerun to the past, make it the way it was.

Shane looks to the side. “You already said. We did this over the phone, mom, it’s okay.” His voice feels younger than it is. It’s shaking, just a bit. He tries to take her hands off his face, pulling, her thin wrists clasped in his fingers, but she persists: the slight slant of her mouth in the corner of his eye. “Mom, it’s okay.”

But she’s still looking at him. Shane’s eyes dart around. He blinks, hard, against the sudden wetness of tears that manifests at his waterline.

“Okay,” his mom whispers, after another moment. “Okay.” And she takes her hands off his face. Doesn’t make him look at her, which Shane is grateful for.

Her eyes are wet. Shane can hear it. She clears her throat: so quiet. 

“They’re probably gonna be a while,” she remarks, turning slightly towards the bumbling voices in the kitchen. Shane smiles, despite himself.

“Yeah, probably.”

A long moment: then, like a shining light: “Want to watch a movie with me? While we wait?”

At this, he can finally find the will to look at her. She’s smiling.

“Yeah, of course.”

They make their way to the living room, Shane toeing off his shoes, his mom grabbing a cardigan off the chair. When they sit down, the couch is already warm. When Harry Met Sally is paused on the television screen. 

Shane feels the fight go out from him like a wave. He shifts; just a little bit, just to touch her sharp shoulder. She curves into him. Turns to look at him: still smiling.

“It’s going to be fine, baby,” his mom says, lifting her hand, sweeping it over his forehead. Even just hearing her say it, Shane feels like it could be true. Whatever his mom said, it had to be real. If Shane didn’t believe in the various intricacies of life, a constant narrative, if he stuck out like a sore thumb everywhere, always missing the cues, constantly trying to get in on the stupid joke — he had to believe in her words. Something to orbit around: something to trust. He smiles back at her, quietly, and turns back to the movie: watches, with a certain calmness, as Harry and Sally continue arguing in the diner.

In the space between, on the couch, his mom’s hand lies relaxed, her neat nails, the lines on her skin. 

Shane breathes, deep and slow, and reaches over.

for the record as a cinephile i would never allow someone to distract me with sex in the middle of a movie but shane has no convictions

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