Afterwards, curled up together on the bed, Shane couldn’t help himself.

‘So? What did you think?’

He could feel Ilya shifting beside him.

‘Think about what?’

‘My parents.’ Did you like them? Please say you liked them.

There was a pause, which was not alarming or anything.

‘They are nice.’

Shane waited, but that was it.

‘And…?’

‘…Their house seems very clean.’

‘What?’

‘No dust. It is a large house, I am impressed.’

‘Mom has someone help twice a week. And Dad’s kind of anal about putting things away,’ – nobly ignoring first Ilya’s snicker at ‘anal’ and then his muttered So that’s where you get it from – ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Did you like them? Don’t ask him that, he’ll feel pressured, don’t ask him that – ‘Did you like them?’

Ilya moved closer, put one large hand on Shane’s ribcage.

‘We are in bed, we are naked, and you want to talk about your parents?’

Normally this would have worked to distract Shane, but they’d already fucked once that evening, twice in the morning, and also he had had an extremely emotionally taxing day.

‘That’s not an answer.’

Ilya rolled back over and crossed his arms over his chest.

‘Ilya. C’mon.’

‘Yes, I liked them, they are nice! What do you want me to say, we only meet today, we speak about hockey and pasta and also that I am fucking their son. It was not a great time to get to know each other!’

‘Did you not talk to my dad while I was outside with Mom?’

‘We talked about The New Yorker.’

‘What?’

‘You said, he reads The New Yorker. So I asked him about that. Then we sat there until you came back.’

‘Jesus.’

‘What else can we talk about? ‘Sorry you saw me with my hands on your son’s ass?’ We don’t know each other, Shane! It is awkward.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘No but! I liked them, okay! I liked them. Just, so far.’

‘So far what?’

‘All we have in common is you. And hockey. So far.’

‘Oh.’

A loon called out somewhere in the woods. Ilya flinched then swore softly in Russian. Shane patted his arm consolingly for the shock, and for the battery of questions he would try to keep between his teeth.

‘You want me to like them,’ Ilya said after a while. ‘You want them to like me.’

‘Yes? They’re my parents, of course I want you to like each other.’

‘It’s important to you.’

‘Yes!’

‘Then I will like them,’ Ilya said, as if that settled it.

‘No, that’s not what I want.’

‘You want me to like them or you don’t? Which? You’re being confusing.’ Ilya’s voice was mostly teasing, but there was a slight note that suggested escalation would be very, very easy.

‘I want you to like them – for them. I don’t want you to like them just, just because they’re my parents.'

‘Shane. Does it matter, as long as I like them?’

‘As people. I want you to like them as people.’

‘Then I will like them as people!’

Shane took a careful breath. He could not get what he wanted across, and that was probably because it wasn’t something that could be forced. Ilya would like his parents organically, genuinely, as people, for themselves, or he wouldn’t. Shane couldn’t do anything about that. But he wished Ilya understood what he was trying to say. He wished he could explain it to Ilya in a way he would understand.

‘Okay. I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be pushy.’

Ilya stroked his forearm.

‘It’s fine. I know you are just worried.’

Worried about what? But Ilya was right, of course. Even after the huge relief of his parents knowing, swallowing not only the gay thing but also the Ilya Rozanov thing, of not having to lie to any of the people he loved best in the world any longer, he was still worried.

There wasn’t much to do about it. Probably he would feel better tomorrow. Sometimes he did. Of course, sometimes instead the anxiety ratcheted up until he was a complete mess, trying desperately to keep it together until he could get on the ice and forget it all.

Ilya was further off in the bed now. Usually he would have been sprawled across Shane as close as he could get. He hated to have distance between them, which was something Shane had never known before. Ilya’s head on Shane’s knee, looking up soulfully like an ignored dog – Ilya’s arms clutching Shane’s shoulders while he tried to cook – Ilya suddenly appearing in the shower next to him when he decided Shane had left him alone too long. All bets off and guards down, he was as clingy as a baby monkey, or maybe a large, over-eager and very stubborn dog.

The breaths Ilya was taking were very deep and slow, but not in the way that meant he was falling asleep (and how weird was that, to know someone so intimately you knew exactly how they sounded asleep).

‘Ilya?’

‘Mm?’

‘You okay?’

‘Why would I not be?’ His voice was a little funny too.

‘I don’t know. I mean, today was a lot for you too. I guess I should have said that sooner.’

‘Today was fine. It’s good that they know now, yes?’

‘Yeah. Just, maybe not like that.’

‘Mm. Could have been worse.’

‘How could that have been worse?’

‘You are so easy, Hollander. Where’s your imagination? We weren’t fucking, nobody was naked, nobody was hard –’

‘Okay, okay thanks, I get the picture. Could have been much worse.’

‘Might have been harder to tolerate me then, too.’

‘They aren’t tolerating you, they like you,’ Shane said, instantly on the defensive. ‘I can tell.’

‘Can you?’

‘Yes! My mom’s pretty obvious when she doesn’t like somebody. If it’s not business.’

‘They took it – well?’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Shane said, then realised the doubt was more from Ilya’s wide but pretty random knowledge of English idiom. ‘Uh, yeah, they took it well.’

‘That was nice of them.’

‘Yes? I guess – I guess I knew they wouldn’t be awful about, about the gay thing. I was just afraid. Because I didn’t know.’

‘How couldn’t you know?’

Shane shrugged. ‘I was worried.’

‘But you didn’t have to be.’

‘But I didn’t know that.’

‘But you should have.’

‘How should I have known that, Ilya? It’s not exactly the kind of thing you can test run!’ Shane sat up to look over at Ilya, who stayed lying down and made a face back, the one where he widened his eyes and shook his head forward a little. Shane loved that face. It was so stupid, it was so Ilya.

‘Because you know them.’

‘Oh, so it was stupid of me to worry and it was stupid of me to stay in the closet.’

‘Not stupid, just…’

‘Just what?’

Ilya closed his eyes and said stiffly, ‘They really love you.’

‘Yes? Why wouldn’t they, they’re my parents.’

‘No, I mean, they really love you.’

Shane wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, and he suspected Ilya wasn’t either. If he asked, probably Ilya would clam up entirely. And anyway, they’d just had multiple huge emotional scenes that day and yesterday and honestly a lot of the holiday that had meant to be mostly about fucking and enjoying each other’s company and not worrying about the future or the outside world.

Besides, thinking of the phone calls he used to see Ilya ignore – and the phone call he had seen Ilya take – and Ilya’s anguished voice when he called from Moscow – and how nobody in his family ever seemed to come to his games – and a vague memory of Ilya’s – dad, it must have been, one hand firm on his shoulder, grim and much older than Shane’s parents – and Ilya saying he was so hard on her – and whatever it was Ilya’s brother had done or said to him at the funeral – and the money – Shane thought he could put it together.

He flopped back down on the bed and sighed, before he turned to Ilya and recoiled.

Ilya was holding his head away, turned against his shoulder, which either meant he had been distracted by the ever-present threat of a loon encroaching from the woods, or that he was trying not to let Shane see that he was crying.

Shane felt frozen. He should put his arm round Ilya, but he was worried it wouldn’t be welcome. He should say something, but he didn’t know what and he was worried that he’d be overstepping Ilya’s boundaries somehow, by acknowledging he was upset, which was stupid, but the whole day had been such a fucking shitshow even if it had been fine in the end and Shane was so fucking tired and everything abruptly seemed way too much.

It was the first night when he didn’t have the fear of his parents finding out dangling of his head and that should have felt good, they should both be relaxed, and they weren’t, and that was way too much too.

And then there was also the whole ‘found my mother’s dead body when I was twelve’ thing. Shane was kind of still taking that one in. He hadn’t known what to say, or how to say it, and he knew he had been flat, even more monotone than usual when he reacted. It had been shocking and awful, and Ilya had been very careful in what he chose to say about it. Shane had mostly wanted to hold him close and make him promise to tell him if he were ever that sad, but that had seemed like an overstep. The thought of twelve-year old Ilya finding his mother – how had it been? In bed? In the bathroom? On the floor? – trying to wake her, maybe crying, made Shane’s chest ache for some strange reason. Conveying that seemed selfish and difficult. It was Ilya’s pain, even if it made Shane hurt too.

Ilya was breathing very carefully through his nose, head still averted. Shane screwed up his courage and put an arm around him, and when Ilya didn’t turn to him, pulled him over to lie against his chest. Ilya lay rigid for one long moment, then with an embarrassed sniff, put his damp face into Shane’s collarbone.

‘It’s good,’ he said, voice muffled. ‘It’s good they love you. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Shane said, already automatic, and only a few weeks ago the idea that Ilya would say he loved Shane and that Shane would say it back without even thinking twice – wow, that would have been insane. That would have sounded crazy. It was crazy, and so fucking wonderful. Couldn’t they just enjoy it? No, because Shane had to overthink everything and upset Ilya by asking stupid questions.

‘So I liked your parents. We love you. So we will like each other,’ Ilya said firmly, pushing his face further up into Shane’s neck. He sighed heavily, shifting himself like a restless dog then lay still in a way that strongly suggested the conversation was over.

Shane stroked his hair. There really didn’t seem like anything else to say.

*

Sometimes it was like they were speaking different languages entirely. Ilya’s English was so good now, compared to how it had been when they first met, that it was easy to forget, despite the accent, until he jibbed at some colloquial phrase, or covered a barely-there hesitation of incomprehension with a lazier than usual retort. Shane knew he didn’t read much, in Russian or English, but was that because he didn’t enjoy reading or because reading English was hard and getting hold of Russian books was maybe difficult in America? Was that patronising? He didn’t want to be patronising. Was that right, anyway, Amazon probably had tons? Maybe Ilya read, uh, Tolstoy regularly, and Shane was being a condescending Canadian at him, assuming that like most hockey players he didn’t read? Shane read some but not a lot too, he wasn’t criticising!

Neither of them were feelings guys. They weren’t meathead muscle either, but there was only so much talking about feelings either of them could manage at a time. This whole vacation had been stuffed with feelings, largely positive ones, and even the sad ones had made Shane weirdly happy, the fact that Ilya trusted him enough to tell about his mother, to off-handedly criticise his father in her defence. But definitely everything had filled the year’s quota for emotional discussions.

Shane couldn’t imagine disliking his parents. He didn’t have a sibling, but if he did, he couldn’t imagine disliking them either. It kind of made him squirm a bit, to think of how mentally dismissive he had been of the whole thing with Ilya’s brother before the cottage.

How could it be important, when Ilya never talked about him, hardly saw him anyway? But of course it must be. How much older was Alexei (he was pretty sure it was Alexei) than Ilya, anyway? Was he older than Ilya? Shane had been assuming but – he got out his phone and checked. Rozanov was born in Moscow in 1991 to Grigori and Irina Rozanov. He grew up in Moscow and has one older brother, Alexei. Older. Older, right, okay, good. Shane wasn’t a completely useless partner who didn’t know the most basic facts about his boyfriend.

Then there was the dead dad thing. Which was an awful way to put it. Yeah, he hadn’t dismissed that in his head, but he had also kind of stopped thinking about it? What with the concussion and everything? It must be a lot more important than Ilya let on. Obviously.

In the rush of being alone with Ilya, properly alone, living together like they were together, because they were together, because they loved each other, it just kind of hadn’t come up. It wasn’t like Ilya wanted to talk about it. But was that because he was being macho, because he hated his dad and didn’t want to think about him anymore, or because he didn’t have the right words for it in English? On the phone from Moscow, ‘English is too hard right now’…

Ilya was going to compromise a lot for their future. The language thing, that was another thing Ilya had decided to put up with – mostly for his career, but by ending up with English-speaking Shane, he had cut Russian out of his life that much more.

Did Ilya like Russia? Was it still home to him? Shane had a vague vision of corrupt, violent politics, melancholy and misery and a lot of snow, all those cheap stereotypes, which was probably really offensive and naïve and Cold War. He had assumed Ilya didn’t mind not living there, that he preferred the civilised, liberal, democratic West – and Jesus, that was offensive too. The civilised, liberal, democratic West had its own problems, its own prejudices (his father’s family, ignoring his mother, his grandmother’s bad English, all those comments from commentators and sponsors and officials about representation, the slurs he’d been called as a teenager…)..

Russia! I would not be able to go back to Russia!

Wincing at the echo in his head, Shane googled ‘books about Russian culture reddit’, earmarked several on Amazon, and decided to wait until after Ilya had left to order them. He was asking so much of Ilya already. To demand answers, to ask more intrusive questions, felt impossible and maybe cruel.

And if he asked too much, would it be Ilya this time who ran away?

Be more careful of Ilya, Shane typed in the password-locked notes section of his phone. Use fewer idioms. Speak more slowly if we’re talking seriously. Do at least 15 minutes of Duolingo a day.

Don’t ask about his mom. Don’t ask about his dad. Don’t ask about his brother. Don’t ask about Russia.

*

Shane’s mom had, once she had processed the whole insane deal and recovered from the Boston Raiders of it all, been weirdly pleased about Ilya. This puzzled Shane up until the next time she guilt-tripped them into coming over, at the tail-end of their brief vacation and he realised it was because now she finally had a fresh victim for the photo albums.

The photo albums covered all of Shane’s childhood, from babyhood up until the age of thirteen, when Shane had discovered the concept of ‘the right to privacy’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ and refused to co-operate. Bad enough to be contractually obliged to do press and adverts and all the rest of that shit. He didn’t need to be ambushed in his own home by his own parents.

And it was a collaborative effort, even less avoidable. Mom had been the one with the camera, but the military precision of the albums’ organisation was all Dad. They were ordered chronologically and thematically, for fuck’s sake. There was a fucking index!

Ilya sat next to her on the couch, beer forgotten, making all the appropriate noises at an infant Shane brought home from the hospital, Shane in the bath, Shane with his first hockey stick, Shane reaching up to the Christmas lights, Shane in full costume for his third-grade school play (one of the worst experiences of his life), Shane with his grandmother and cousins in Japan, Shane as a gawky, gangly adolescent, etc. etc. etc, while Shane cringed on the opposite side of the room. The appropriate noises, yes, but there was a wicked gleam in Ilya’s eyes and every time he looked up at Shane his angelic smile was just a fraction too wide.

Dad took pity on Shane eventually, just as Mom started to ask whether Ilya would like any copies of any particular photos, and summoned them both to help in the kitchen.

Ilya was smirking to himself as he chopped the carrots. Shane, fetching the big pan from the cabinet cupboards because Dad had thrown his back and couldn’t bend, felt caught out.

‘Can I have Svetlana’s number.’

‘What? Shane, I distinctly remember you telling me that you are 100% gay –’

‘I need her number.’

‘What for? You need to make sure? You want to double check after Rose Laaaandry?’

‘Jesus, Ilya.’

Shane swatted him hard on the arm and pinched him when Ilya seized him by the waist in revenge. Ilya’s joking-not-joking Thing about Rose would be more annoying if Shane didn’t now know it was because of how seethingly jealous Ilya had been of her.

‘Too much information, boys,’ Dad said, turning the burner up that much higher. Shane had forgotten he was there and cringed slightly.

To distract himself he said ‘I bet Svetlana has embarrassing photos of you.’

Ilya laughed, then went back to chopping onions. He never cried when he cut them. When questioned he claimed all Russians were immune. ‘You are contributing to your own stereotype,’ Shane had said loftily (he’d broken and downloaded some of the recommendations he’d found onto his kindle).

‘Yes, yes, many, but nothing worse than what has already been in the tabloids.’

‘Of you as a kid, I mean.’

There was that strange pause that was still new to Shane.

‘No,’ Ilya said finally, unusually subdued. ‘No, Svetlana won’t have any embarrassing photos from us as kids. Maybe one of us all at her uncle’s dacha.’

‘Us?’

‘Me, and her, and Alexei, and her cousins.’

‘Who does have photos, then? There must be some.’

‘No, Shane, I was a good kid, no embarrassing photos, never did anything wrong, ever, at all, no proof of that, nothing to see.’

‘Not fair,’ Shane said lightly. ‘You’ve seen all the worst ones of me.’

Ilya swept the onion into a bowl and handed it to Dad. He rinsed his hands, dried them very carefully, much more carefully than usual, because, Shane realised, he knew how much Shane hated the smell lingering on his own hands.

Shane watched him. Ilya was thinking. There was no point in pushing again.

Dad turned down the heat, covered the pan to simmer – ‘Keep an eye on it, will you, boys?’ – and quietly sidled through to sit with Mom.

‘There are some.’ Ilya broke into the silence just as Shane had given up on it for the evening.

‘Uh?’

Ilya hesitated then took out his phone. He scrolled back a long, long way, then handed it over to Shane.

‘There. Me at hockey lesson.’

Small Ilya, hardly recognisable as the same person. The quality was not great, but you could see his nose was not yet adult-prominent and his hair was much lighter. He was clutching his helmet under his arm and grinning at the camera. There was a bruise across half of his face.

‘You were cute,’ Shane said quietly. It was true. Ilya had been a sweet-looking kid. ‘Already in the wars?’

‘Mm?’

‘Already getting in fights, I mean.’

Ilya looked at him in confusion.

‘The bruise,’ Shane said, gesturing.

‘Oh. No, was not fight, was accident.’

‘You fell on the ice?’

‘Hollander, I am Russian. We are born to skate. No, I did not fall on the ice. Was my father.’

English wasn’t the first to go when Ilya was upset, but it was pretty close.

‘Why is such big problem, I don’t get it,’ and those rolling rs and dropped articles were signal flares of danger.

‘How can it not be a big problem?’ Shane hissed. He reached out with one hand and slammed the door to the outside in case Ilya got any ideas about taking off. Then he felt bad and moved away so Ilya’s line to it was clear. That was controlling, maybe? Wouldn’t that make Ilya feel trapped?

Ilya had backed up to the refrigerator but compensated by puffing his chest out to make himself look bigger, like some kind of gorilla.

‘You want to do this now? When your parents are next door?’

‘Ilya,’ said Shane in a whisper, hands out, trying to stop himself from pacing. ‘Can we just go through this one more time?’

‘Fine,’ Ilya said scowling.

‘Your dad hit you?’

Ilya twisted his head, not a nod, not a denial either.

‘Ilya. Your dad hit you?’

‘Yes?’ Ilya said with that self-defensive shrug that meant he knew why he was being asked that really. ‘Is normal, no? You fuck up, they punish you. You know.’

‘No. No, Ilya, I don’t know, because when I fuck up, my parents don’t hit me.’

‘Oh, well of course perfect Shane perfect Hollander never fuck up big enough.’

‘That’s not what I – parents don’t hit their kids in the face hard enough to bruise. Parents don’t hit their kids!’

They did of course. What Shane meant was that it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t something normal parents did. It was a major deviation from the universal guidelines of parenting, he was pretty sure.

His parents had never laid a hand on him. When he acted out – and okay, that wasn’t something he had done very often – they had talked to him sternly and sensibly, given him a chance to calm down and correct his behaviour, and if that didn’t happen, deducted ice time.

Ilya was hunching into himself. ‘Was just a swat,’ he muttered, not looking at Shane.

‘Just a – Jesus, Ilya, there are bruises in that photo.’

‘Hard swat. He didn’t mean to.’

‘How do you do that by accident?’

‘So hard,’ Ilya – clarified? Did he think that would make it better? Make it make sense? Did he think he was helping? ‘Did not mean to do it so hard. Afterwards, he was sorry.’

‘He apologised to you?’

Ilya squirmed.

‘Ilya.’

‘No-o, but he was sorry, you can tell. He doesn’t yell afterwards for maybe a week.’

‘Did he hit your mom?’

‘No, Shane, what the fuck?’

‘You said – that one time, you said he was ‘so hard on her’.’

‘I meant he yelled. He yelled, he criticised, he had no time for her. He was cruel. Not that he hit her.’

‘Just you.’

‘And Alexei. Is normal.’

‘For who? For who is it normal?’

‘Old Russian fathers. Old-fashioned. I tell you this before. He is old-fashioned. He is old when I am born, nearly fifty. He lived through the war, his father helped liberate Berlin.’

‘Okay. Okay, what about Svetlana?’

‘What about her?’ Ilya said warily.

‘Her dad was pals with yours, right? Did he hit her?’

‘No, he – how would you say – he spoils her, he dotes on her. Is different for girls,’ he added defensively.

‘Different how?’

‘You don’t hit girls,’ Ilya reciting something clearly learnt in childhood. ‘You don’t hit girls even if they hit you first, Ilya Grigrorievich, even if they’re taller than you, and even if it was your toy she snatched. ’

‘Svetlana?’

‘I pull her hair instead when she hit me,’ Ilya said, trying for a smile. ‘Now I am bigger than her she doesn’t do it so much.’ When Shane didn’t respond he let the smile drop.

‘You say your father beat you and think I should just, what, overlook it?’

‘He did not beat me.’ Ilya was scowling. ‘He was not beating the shit out of me, he wasn’t breaking my ribs or nose. Just a swat. A slap.’

‘I just don’t get how you can be so casual about this. It’s child cruelty.’

‘Not often, Shane,’ Ilya said, ‘Only sometimes. Only for big offences. When I misbehave in church – when Alexei and I brawl in front of our grandmother – when I hit Svetlana very hard for stealing my toys and make her cry –when Alexei steal candy from store – when I break Polina’s best vase on purpose. Things like that. He was cold. He was not kind. He was not like that.’

‘Ilya.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ which was a small marvel in itself, Ilya saying that instead of picking a separate fight to get out of it. ‘Shane, your parents are waiting, they can hear us. I don’t want to talk about this here.’

‘Later,’ Shane said. ‘Later, then.’

Ilya nodded but he did not look happy about it.

*

They didn’t talk about it. They got through dinner, somehow, Shane’s parents exchanging glances but mercifully pretending they hadn’t overheard Shane and Ilya fighting, and drove home in silence. When they got in, Shane turned to Ilya and opened his mouth, and Ilya kissed him before he could get a word out. It was so patently a distraction technique Shane couldn’t even get mad about it.

Fine. Fine, he’d told himself not to push. Not to make Ilya talk about things he didn’t want to. Not to confront him with Shane’s own freakout, his own inability to understand what Ilya was saying to him.

At the same time –

Gently, he extricated himself from the kiss. Ilya followed him, trying to kiss him again, but Shane held him off with one hand against his chest.

‘Shane?’

Oh fuck, Ilya was looking worried, like Shane was rejecting him.

‘You don’t have to do that. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, we won’t,’ Shane said as soothingly as possible. He felt incredibly mature saying it because he really, really wanted to make Ilya talk.

‘I don’t –’

‘You don’t have to distract me. I don’t want you to fuck me because you’re trying to shut me up.’

‘Am not,’ Ilya mumbled.

Shane looked at him.

‘Okay, yes,’ Ilya said scowling. ‘I don’t want to talk, stop talking about this.’

‘That’s fine. I’m, uh, I’m sorry I responded like that. It was a shock.’ That was right, wasn’t it? To apologise?

Very slowly, Shane came close again and put his arms around Ilya. Hugging him was like hugging Terminator sometimes. All that muscle. And the stiffness when as now he was trying to hide whatever it was he was feeling.

Shane wanted to tell him he didn’t need to bother. Half the time Shane didn’t even know what emotions he himself was experiencing, let alone Ilya, who laughed or grew angry, who was not closed off, exactly, but was a mystery to Shane in the way all other people could be.

After a moment, Ilya relaxed against him. Shane cuddled closer. It was so nice being able to do that. Not having to worry about being too needy or too much or too forward. Ilya was his boyfriend. If he wanted to hug him, he could.

‘We don’t have to talk about it again,’ Shane promised, moving back a little to look at Ilya’s face.

Ilya opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he said, ‘Good. But we can still fuck?’ and those eyes were doing that thing again, his lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout. ‘Yes? Please?’

‘Oh, well, if we must,’ Shane said, and was relieved to see Ilya laugh.

*

When Shane woke up, Ilya wasn’t next to him. In the kitchen, still sleep-ridden and calling ‘Ilya?’ confusedly (not worriedly, he wasn’t worried, it would be insane to be worried just because Ilya hadn’t stayed in bed with him like when they started and never, ever spent the night together –), he found a cold, congealed omelette and toast set next to a note.

In Ilya’s weird conjoined handwriting, that kind of reminded Shane of the ‘Before And After’ signatures they’d seen of Tudor rack victims in fifth grade, it said Gone swimming. If breakfast is cold, is your fault for oversleeping. I xxx

The phone rang before Shane could fully digest this.

*

Ilya was doing handstands in the water again. Shane waited until he surfaced, shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, before he spoke.

‘Mom and Dad want me to go help them move the big table down from the loft. Do you want to come?’

Are you okay? Are you still upset? Did you go swimming to get away from me?

Ilya hesitated, eyes trained on Shane’s, then said ‘No, you go. Good for you to have time alone with them, yes?’

‘They’d be pleased if you came too,’ Shane said, which was exactly, verbatim, what his mom had said on the phone.

‘It’s fine. You go. I have emails from my agent anyway.’

Shane couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not.

I will try.

But it was better to believe him.

‘Okay, I’m gonna head. Should be back after lunch, I guess? Or if you want to join later, you could come for lunch?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Great, bye,’ Shane said, but couldn’t make himself move. Ilya was obscurely off, or maybe Shane was turning into a complete neurotic, overthinking every last thing.

Ilya swam over to the shore but didn’t get out. ‘Gimme kiss,’ he said, grinning up at Shane, looking extremely pleased with himself for whatever reason. Shane bent down and did, and didn’t even complain about the cold wet hands Ilya pushed under his t-shirt, the handprints he left on his shoulders.

*

It was only after Shane and his mother had moved the table and were collapsed on the couch, recovering, that Shane suspected a trap. The table wasn’t that heavy, after all. And why did they need it? Mom and Dad didn’t entertain much and the normal table was fine for their usual guests. Dad had directed proceedings because his back was still bad, but it felt pretty weird.

And now his parents were having one of those creepy couple conversations over Shane’s head, no words, just meaningful looks. Mom was making that face which meant she wanted to do something and Dad was making that face that meant he thought she really, really shouldn’t but knew it was a losing battle.

Would Ilya and him be like that one day? They were getting pretty good at facial communication, which Shane normally struggled with.

‘What is it?’

They exchanged glances again, and Mom won the silent struggle.

‘Honey,’ his mom said sternly. ‘If you and Ilya are having problems…’

‘We’re not having problems, Mom! We’ve only just, um,’ – become official? No, that sounded like a pair of highschoolers – ‘Got ourselves together,’ – fuck, that sounded hokey –  ‘I mean it’s fine. We’re enjoying actually being together. It’s all good.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can’t be having problems,’ she said.

‘You were arguing in the kitchen last night,’ Dad chipped in.

‘It was nothing.’

‘You were both pretty quiet afterwards, too.’

‘Dad!’

‘I assume it’s just growing pains, but your mom was worried,’ his father continued.

Mom shot him daggers with her eyes and folded her arms in a way that was weirdly like Ilya. Shane didn’t think that comparison would go down well.

‘Worried because you don’t like him,’ Shane said without meaning to.

‘That’s not true!’ his mom said. ‘We only just met properly, of course I don’t dislike him.’

That was alarmingly close to what Ilya had said the other night, and so was not designed to put Shane in a good mood.

‘But you think he’s what, bad? Arguing with me because he’s bad?’

‘Of course not, Shane, don’t put words in my mouth. It sounded like an intense argument. And he’s big, isn’t he.’

‘He’s big? What does that even mean?’

There was a silence, in which his mom looked at the ceiling and his dad looked at the floor.

‘Oh my God. You think he’s what, hitting me?’

‘No,’ Dad said, but Mom was quiet.

‘Mom?’

‘Well, is he?’

‘Jesus fucking Christ. No, Mom, Ilya is not hitting me.’

‘He’s a big guy,’ Dad said soothingly. ‘Your mom didn’t mean it that way. Just, the door slammed pretty hard. And you’ve got bruises on your neck.’

‘I slammed the door. That was me. Ilya would never.’

‘And the…?’ Dad said, gesturing at his neck again.

‘Do I seriously have to tell you what those are?’ Do you need better glasses, he wanted to add but that was way too rude. Dad looked confused but Mom was looking embarrassed.

‘We were having a disagreement, not physically abusing each other.’ 

‘Fine,’ Mom said stiffly. ‘Good.’

Shane found himself making bug-eyes of confusion at her, just like Ilya would.

‘That’s it? You accuse my boyfriend of abusing me, and all you can say is ‘Fine’?’

‘I’m sorry! I was worried. The rates for domestic violence in the NHL are high,’ which, okay, true, but not exactly relevant? Any statistics would be based off heterosexual couples, anyway.

‘Look, it’s not that. It’s really not that, in fact it’s so really not that it’s actually kind of funny,’ and then, his mouth continuing to move without his permission, ‘Ilya thinks I shouldn’t be bothered by his dad hitting him. That’s what we were fighting about.’

His mom blinked. His dad cleared his throat.

‘Shane, should you be telling us that?’

‘No! Forget I said it, I didn’t mean to,’ Shane said, weirdly high and pitchy, and buried his head in his hands so he could stop trying to work out the expression his mom was making.

‘His dad hit him?’ his mom said, in outraged tones. ‘When? How often?’

‘Yuna,’ Dad said.

‘That explains a lot, actually’ she went on. ‘How awful. Did anybody stop it?’

‘Yuna,’ Dad said.

‘Is he in therapy? Shane, you should talk to him about therapy, I know some really good specialists in Ottawa…’

‘Yuna!’ Dad said. The look he gave her was one Shane did recognise: Stop Pushing And Back Off, Please.

‘We’ll forget it,’ Mom said quickly. ‘We won’t say anything. But if you’re fighting about it, Shane, then…’

‘We’re not fighting. He has a very fucked up view about it, but we’re not fighting. We’re…’

‘Mediating your differences?’ his dad suggested.

‘Yeah,’ Shane said gratefully.

‘No,’ his mom said. ‘You can’t mediate about something like this.’

‘It’s uh, just differing perspectives,’ his dad said.

Yeah, and wasn’t that the whole problem.

*

The books came in the mail. Ilya was sunbathing naked on the lawn, so Shane was able to smuggle them into the house without being seen.

Natasha’s Dance – was this even a good starting place? Shouldn’t he have bought something written by an actual Russian?

Shane fetched his reading glasses and after some thought, retreated to the bedroom to begin on his research. Maybe he should buy a kindle so he could read without Ilya seeing the titles.

Shane was not much of a reader, anymore than Ilya was. His mom had always been on at him as a kid, buying him books, encouraging him, but unless it was about hockey, he found it a drag. This was no different. Like reading for school, it was easier because he had a purpose in mind: understand Russia better.

Understand Ilya better.

 But it was slow going. Shane got a pencil and started to make notes, but he didn’t want to mark up the books (it was wrong to write in books, wasn’t it), fetched a notepad instead, then worried about dropping the notes where Ilya could find them. He started typing them into his phone again but that was frustrating and slow, and so he was not even ten pages in when something extremely large and heavy cannoned into him and pinned him to the bed.

Shane – did not shriek, but let out a very manly sound, like you would make to deter a grizzly bear, and managed to fling the book under the bed.

‘Hi,’ Ilya said. He was still naked.

‘Hi,’ Shane managed. ‘Didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I noticed,’ Ilya said, smirking. His face was hovering above Shane’s.

‘I can’t believe you’ve been walking around like that,’ Shane chattered on, hoping Ilya hadn’t noticed the book-chucking. He smoothed one hand over Ilya’s naked back. For a man Shane knew did not believe in moisturiser, it was very soft.

‘So? It’s only us,’ Ilya said, nuzzling Shane’s neck.

‘I have neighbours!’

‘Come to my cottage, it’s s-oooo private,’ Ilya sang out. ‘Nobody will know!’

‘They aren’t going to recognise you, but they are going to notice the large naked man wandering around the place.’

‘Then they shouldn’t look,’ said Ilya, unruffled. He settled in closer over Shane. He was hard now. Shane considered listing the other, numerous objections that occurred to him to Ilya’s nudist habits, but gave it up as a bad job. Ilya was right there, kissing his neck and chest and moving one hand down to Shane’s cock. The timing just didn’t seem right…

*

Ilya conked out afterwards. The full works, face-in-pillow, snoring slightly style. Shane considered joining him but he didn’t feel particularly sleepy. He was kind of revved up, actually, and could have gone for a second round but Ilya was out cold and he didn’t want to wake up. Instead he tucked Ilya’s curls back behind his ears, retrieved his book from under the bed and retreated to the couch with it and the others he’d bought.

Where he got no further on with any of them. Instead Shane scrolled through his phone, shooting a reply to Rose, agreeing to another phone call with Hayden later in the week, thumbs upping and laugh reacting in the team group chat like a good captain. Then he googled ‘partner abusive childhood’ ‘boyfriend has trauma what to do’ ‘boyfriend’s dead father hit him’ and other variants, all of which resulted in helplines, 10-point clickbait style articles and reddit. There were some academic journals as well, but they looked intimidating and were behind paywalls mostly.

The advice was pretty much the same as well. Don’t push. Let him set the pace. Be supportive. Do couple’s therapy. Shane briefly envisaged trying to get Ilya into a therapist’s office, backtracked to the long chain of steps involved in finding a suitable therapist and ensuring NDAs and secrecy, then imagined what couple’s therapy between the two of them would look like and shuddered.

They were fine. They were only just a ‘proper’ couple, they didn’t need therapy. And Ilya’s dad was dead, and he wasn’t talking to his brother, he’d be fine. Shane would look after him. Shane wanted to look after him, which was a funny feeling to have about a 6 foot plus giant athlete with the appetite of a garbage truck who regularly topped fanmade lists of Most Aggressive Players and Best Chirps This Season. But he was pretty sure it was a feeling Ilya was suffering from too, if last night’s heroic attempts to protect Shane from a wasp (innocently minding its own business) had anything to say.

*

Shane was allowed no-contact ice time again, which was great. Ilya had grumbled a bit – ‘we are on holiday, Shane, what is wrong with you’ – and laughed at Shane’s indoor rink – ‘You are so rich and so ridiculous’ – but acquiesced. They fooled around, racing each other, pretending to imitate some of those insane tricks figures skaters could do, and then Shane took Ilya’s hand in his and they skated slowly side-by-side for a while, enjoying the glide, the sensation. It was harder to stay in sync than Shane would have guessed.

‘Who taught you to skate?’ Shane asked as they turned a neat loop.

Ilya shrugged, then, thoughtfully, ‘My mother and father. Papa loved to skate when we were young. He did not play hockey but he was very good. Mama also. You?’

‘Mom and Dad too. Mom doesn’t actually like to skate much, but she’s always loved ice hockey. They took me when I was two, I think. And then they put me on a team, for, y’know, social reasons,’ Shane said, embarrassed.

He’d expected Ilya to laugh and tease him, but instead he questioned carefully, as if not sure of the phrase, ‘Social reasons?’

‘Well, I was an only kid, and I was kind of late to speak. They worried I’d be lonely, I guess.’

‘Did it work?’

‘No,’ Shane said. There was a slight lump in his throat. ‘No, I loved playing but I couldn’t get on with the other kids. They found me, um, too intense, I guess.’

Ilya clutched his hand tighter. ‘You are too intense. I like it.’

‘Thanks. I guess.’

‘If you are not intense, you are not you. And if you are not intense, you do not become second best hockey player of our times.’

Shane smacked him gently then pulled them to a halt and leant in.

*

None of the books proved helpful. Shane skimmed through them – Natasha’s Dance, Lonely Planet Moscow, Anna Karenina, Secondhand Time, Russia and the Russians, a weird mix of anything that had sounded sort of relevant.

He could tell some of the books at least were good, but they were more academic than he was used to, and while they might be good books, they contributed nothing to Project Understand Ilya’s Cultural Background. Shane couldn’t make the connection between sentences like The Russian spirit is unyielding, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it will always find a way to survive and thrive and religion and superstition are intertwined, creating a complex and fascinating spiritual landscape and the country’s artistic energy was almost wholly given to the quest to grasp the idea of its nationality, and the Ilya he knew. Ilya was very Russian, or was that simply the accent he still had, not as heavy nowadays, but always marking out his origins?

Shane tried reddit again, threads with titles like ‘What is living in Moscow like?’ but that wasn’t helpful either. ‘Like any other city’, as far as he could tell. He didn’t know if Ilya’s family had had money when he was growing up but Grigori Rozanov (Wikipedia again) had been police and Svetlana turned out to be Svetlana Vetrova, daughter of a government minister. What had it been like for Ilya – not the whole ‘my dad abused me and my mother killed herself’ – but just the ordinary day-to-day life?

Before this Shane had had only very vague images of Russia. Russia meant Sochi and gold, and nowadays Ilya and his precarious passport situation. Of course Shane’s parents had grown up during the Cold War just like Ilya’s parents, but Ilya’s father must have been much older than Shane had thought, if he had lived through the war. Soviet life conjured flat and coloured images, women in headscarves and red flags and Stalin and secret police, and that was it. What had Ilya’s dad been like, beyond an incredibly shit and evil father?

Russian politics sounded like a minefield. Shane knew fuck all about Canadian politics, at least those unconnected to hockey, so he didn’t have a hope in hell of understanding the intricate network of Svetlana’s background. The Russian government implied corruption and abuse to Shane, but what did he know? Just how dangerous was it for Ilya?

It had never occurred to Shane to think about that before. He wasn’t very prone to self-introspection (just overthinking and catastrophising) and tended to live in the present. Ilya had made him want to think about the future, so maybe it was natural that he also made Shane want to think about the past. A bit. A little bit. He wasn’t wild about rehashing his own childhood. He didn’t necessarily want to know that much about Ilya’s. But enough to understand each other better than they had done, maybe. And he felt guilty, that he hadn’t asked any of these questions before.

None of these sources made it possible to picture Ilya as he had been in that rinkside photo. Google Streetview showed parks he might have known, streets he might have walked, and got Shane no closer to what he wanted, whatever that was anyway.

He gave up at that point, feeling weirdly stalkerish. But the questions didn’t go away.

Quotes are from Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance. All the books mentioned are real. Svetlana Alexievich's work is especially worth reading. Peter Pomerantsev is also excellent on the new Russian politics.

Please ignore the semi-hatchet job on Figes... I wouldn't call Figes a bad historian but his books are prone to generalisations that represent the downsides of cultural history. They also lean in a fair bit to an old-fashioned 'exotic' image of Russia.

Shane had been a difficult baby, his grandmother said once. She said it in Japanese the first time so Shane didn’t completely understand it, and then again in her accented English.

‘Always crying,’ she said, mimicking the motions his despairing mother had tried to calm him with. ‘Colic. You never slept.’

He’d got quiet at about fourteen months, which at first relieved his parents and then worried them as time ticked by and Shane still did not talk.

When he was three, he said ‘I don’t like broccoli’, pushing his plate away at the dinner table, and his father cried.

*

They were coming perilously close to the end of their idyll. Ilya had extended his stay by half a week and then another, but they both had obligations waiting for them, Shane in Montreal, Ilya in Boston. The thought of being separated again felt unbearable. So many miles, so many months before they could reasonably expect to see each other.

‘I will facetime you,’ Ilya said, cuddling up to him. ‘You will be sick of the sight of my face.’

But that wasn’t the same.

They talked less as the days counted down. They fucked constantly instead and when they weren’t fucking Ilya stuck as close to Shane as Shane would allow. Which was very close, and that was unusual. He didn’t like other people in his space. He didn’t like being clung to.

But he liked Ilya clinging to him.

Mom and Dad had them over again twice. The first time went okay (Mom pretending very hard she wasn’t embarrassed by all those uncharitable assumptions she’d made) and the second time better. Mom did like Ilya, Shane thought. She was less resistant to his charm than she thought she was. Ilya put it on for her and let her see he was doing it, and that charmed her all the more.

Also they enjoyed ganging up on Shane together. Shane could foresee many, many regrets in his future.

Dad was quieter, stiffer. He was not a big talker about his feelings though, anymore than Shane was, and it was possible he had taken the gay thing a little harder than Mom. It made Shane feel sick to think about so he didn’t. But he was willing to be amused by Ilya, and Mom said ‘He’s just glad to see you happy, honey,’ when she caught Shane watching them cautiously out of the corner of his eye.

‘You are like your dad,’ Ilya declared apropos of nothing, flinging himself down next to Shane on the couch. He was hugely energetic lately, up, up and up. Shane dragged him running, swimming, skating, fooling around with a ball in the garden, just to burn it off, made Ilya do yoga and recovery exercises alongside him.

What joie de vivre, Mom had said as Ilya bounced out of the car, which had made Ilya demand, What is that? Is it good? and then grin when Mom explained.

‘I guess?’

‘You don’t talk,’ Ilya proclaimed, invading Shane’s personal space.

‘I talk more than him.’

‘About hockey. You don’t talk.’

What exactly Ilya meant by that was destined to remain a mystery, because Shane’s phone rang – Hayden. This time Ilya behaved himself – mostly. He provided mimed commentary throughout the call but at least he didn’t start sucking Shane off again (which wasn’t something Shane had ever thought he’d say, but now when he looked back on that whole event he writhed with embarrassment. It had been so hot and so dangerous. Hayden was not, whatever Ilya said, stupid. Once was enough).

Afterwards Shane thought they might fuck or at least talk, but Ilya had to take a call of his own, from a very pissed-off sounding Svetlana. Soon he was yelling back at her in Russian, pacing the room, as irritable as the calls from his father and brother used to make him. Eventually the conversation cooled down and Ilya was talking more normally, gesturing expansively as he did.

Shane sat quietly and watched him. Partly from curiosity, and partly because he loved to be near Ilya as much as Ilya loved to be near him. He heard names being dropped into the conversation – Sergei Mikhailovich, Lyuda, Alexei. He was probably missing some of them – but the last one put him on edge.

It was a common name, right? Ilya’s face hadn’t changed that much as he said it. Was he talking about his brother?

Ilya hung up and exhaled, one hand to his face. He’d clearly forgotten Shane was there, because he startled slightly as he turned. He managed a smile.

‘She is mad at me because I’m not going to Moscow. It’s okay now. She says to send her best to ‘Jane’.’ He added, ‘I think she knows.’

‘Knows what? Ilya? What does she know?’

‘Calm down, I don’t mean that. I mean I think she knows Jane is a man. She would never guess in a million years who that man is.’

But Shane could feel himself getting worked up. Ilya dropped next to him on the couch and pulled him close.

‘Shane, I promise. Svetlana doesn’t know. If I told her – which I won’t! – she would not tell anybody else. She is not like that. Just, she knows me very well. Has known me the longest.’

‘Okay,’ Shane said, trying to breath deeply. Trying to distract himself ‘Who’s Sergei Mikhailovich?’

Ilya blinked. ‘Her father. I asked how he was.’

‘Lyuda? Is that a name?’

‘Lyudmila. Friend of Svetlana’s, is staying with her this summer.’ He fiddled with his phone.

‘Alexei?’

Ilya looked at him.

‘Sorry.’

Ilya looked down. ‘She wanted to know if he was pestering me for money again. He’s not.’

‘How long have you known Svetlana?’

‘Always,’ Ilya shrugged. ‘Our fathers know each other. Mine was at school with Sergei Mikhailovich’s eldest brother. Her father is much richer, very powerful, but he admires my father when he is a little boy, then he has sports career then politics, and my father is useful, in the police, they stay friendly. Svetlana’s mother is young like mine, they were friends when they were pregnant, Mama gave her advice because Svetlana was her first and she was nervous, I think.’

If Shane didn’t know better he would think that Ilya was nervous. That was maybe the most he’d heard Ilya say at one time about something so personal. He desperately wanted to ask many, many questions, but managed to hold back.

Ilya tapped his phone case with his nails, then swung up off the couch. ‘I am going to swim, will you come?’

‘In a minute,’ Shane said, remembering to smile. ‘I better text my mom back as well.’

Ilya nodded, and vanished out into the garden. Shane stayed on the couch, completely failing to look at his messages.

Googling Svetlana again brought him back to that brief Wikipedia page (socialite… daughter of former national team goalkeeper… now resides primarily in America) and then onto her father’s. This time he read through the whole thing.

Shane was temporarily stunned by the estimated figure for his net worth, then alarmed by the ‘Controversies’ section, and by the ‘Allegations of criminal activity’ and ‘US sanctions’. Jesus, just who was this guy? And who was Ilya’s dad, to have been all pally with him?

Said to be a close associate of the President’s circle. Shane winced and closed the tab. So Ilya had dubious family friends. Shane had already kind of guessed that what with the whole ‘governmental minister’. Was that Shane’s business? But wasn’t it unethical to be friends with people like that? And wasn’t it unethical of Shane by extension?

This all seemed more like the Russia Shane was familiar with. Dodgy money and politics. Maybe he should be reading books on Russian politics instead? What did Ilya think of it? Had his dad been crooked or just a more generic piece of shit? What had it been like, growing up in that atmosphere? All the questions Shane had had already intensified.

Shane’s dad wasn’t talkative. When Shane was little he’d done all of the dad things. They’d played catch, and gone skating, and Dad had wanted to get him a dog, only Shane had been scared of dogs when he was young.

It was kind of funny, that Dad had been the (amateur) hockey player but his mom was the hockey fan. Mom was the one schlepping him to practices, keeping on top of his kit, and later, managing for him. His father was proud of his career, Shane was mildly sure, but he wasn’t involved in it like Mom was.

Shane didn’t confide in either of his parents, but Mom definitely talked a lot more to him than Dad did. Dad watched them argue about hockey with a fond look on his face and that was it. It had always been nice to be around his parents even in the midst of lies and omissions. They were good company. He wanted Ilya to like them as people because he liked them as people and that, he was coming to realise, was maybe not as common as he had assumed.

That didn’t mean it was always easy.

What Shane wanted to say was, ‘My dad’s old-fashioned too. We love each other but we don’t talk. I get it. Talk to me instead.’

*

There were Russian classes in Montreal. Several, in fact, or he could find a private tutor (probably some starving student) for online lessons, or even to come to his house.

But what if it got out? Why would Shane Hollander be learning Russian? Even after they announced the foundation, wouldn’t people ask questions? Maybe he could have online lessons and leave the camera off, say he had anxiety or something. Maybe they could do it by phone call.

He shortlisted candidates. Yulia, a PhD history who could also teach him Ukrainian (wouldn’t she be too busy with a PhD to focus on language lessons with a beginner?). Annie, stay-at-home-mom (might she be bored and thus more prone to gossiping? was that a sexist thing to think?) Michel, majoring in physics (what would a physicist know about teaching Russian? And that was a French name, how come he spoke Russian?). Lyudmila (like the friend of Svetlana’s who Ilya had mentioned), another history student.

Who would be best at teaching? Who would be most trustworthy, most discreet?

Shane temporarily gave it up as a bad job, redoubled his Duolingo efforts and ordered Russian For Beginners on Amazon.

*

Language learning was tough. Shane had decent French but no Japanese. He’d been such a late speaker his mom and dad had worried it would confuse him, to teach him two languages at once.

Did it bother his mother? He’d never thought to ask. She was pretty assimilated, he guessed. She had been young when her family moved.

People said ugly things about her online. People said ugly things about Shane too, that was just the internet. Sometimes other kids had said things too, at school and at the rink, used slurs Shane had had to have explained to him by his mother. She’d been angry and later Shane had overheard her crying.

He’d been eight. Mom crying was pretty much the end of the world to him. So Shane didn’t do anything, just redoubled his efforts to be good, to score, to make her proud. She loved hockey and he loved hockey and he was good at it, he would be the best. Then they wouldn’t say those things to him that made his mother cry.

It gave Shane a pang to remember his childish conviction. They still said those things to him and about him and his mother. They always would. As a teenager he’d felt pigeonholed by something he couldn’t help, by a country he’d only visited once, by a language he didn’t even speak.

He said something to this affect to Ilya while they were cleaning up lunch, just about the language, not about anything else, careful to avoid any link to Ilya’s own language problems but all Ilya said was ‘You have emotional intelligence of a woodlouse, Hollander. This we already knew,’ and threw the dishcloth he was holding at him.

Ilya wasn’t wrong re: the emotional intelligence. Shane spent his life having things presented to him that he had never before considered, that it had never occurred to him to consider. It was just how he was. It was just how his brain worked. He couldn’t help it.

But Ilya… Shane had never thought of Ilya as an emotional person but it was kind of coming home to him that underneath all the blood-and-guts-chirping-asshole-Russian stuff, Ilya maybe was. He was definitely much more sentimental than Shane had realised. And he was friendly, charming when he bothered, talkative, outgoing – that was emotion in another form. The wordless anger that Shane had seen in him sometimes, that was emotion too.

The way he liked to hear Shane say he loved him. Over and over again. He was never tired of it. Like a child asking for its favourite bedtime story. He liked to say it himself, but Shane kind of suspected that a lot of the time that was to induce the automatic response of ‘I love you too’ from Shane.

Shane had never worried he was not loved. He worried about disappointing his parents, worried about it a lot, but he didn’t doubt they loved him. He hadn’t been a kid like other kids, and in hindsight his parents must have worried a lot, when the teachers said ‘he doesn’t get along with others’ or ‘Shane doesn’t seem to make friends easily’ and suggested working on his social skills. He hadn’t been a teenager like other teenagers either. Hockey was the only thing. He didn’t drink or do drugs. His dad gave him an incredibly awkward lecture about safe sex in the most indirect of terms (which Shane was 100% sure Mom had put him up to in the first place), and condoms magically appeared in the bathroom, and that was it.

Shane’s single high school girlfriend had never come round for dinner. It never once occurred to Shane to ask her.

*

The day before Ilya left, they spent the morning playing around on the ice again and then went for a swim at Ilya’s insistence.

Shane offered to make lunch, since Ilya had got up early to go on the rink with him and had only complained mildly about the ‘inhumanity of the hour’. The cookbook that Shane had bought prior to Ilya’s arrival had not turned out great so far, but this time he was determined to get it right.

Immersed in the intricacies of marinading pre-cooked chicken (oops), the silence crept up on him. Ilya had been quiet for too long.

Normally he’d be breathing down Shane’s neck, trying to hold onto him, whining about how long it was taking Shane to follow the recipe (‘Who needs a recipe for salad? Lettuce, vegetable, dressing, done’) and generally making a nuisance of himself. He had strong opinions on Shane’s (lack of) cooking ability, and could cook decently himself – if you liked fried food.

‘Ilya?’

No reply. Shane rinsed his hands, covered the bowl and went in search of him.

Ilya was in the lounge looking through the books Shane had stupidly left under the couch, thinking Ilya would never notice. He had a strange expression on his face as he flicked through the Figes and Shane braced himself – for what? Anger? His own humiliation? Accusations of intruding, imposing, insensitivity?’

But all Ilya said was ‘This is a terrible book. I get you something better. Orlov maybe, if he’s been translated.’

‘Uh, thanks,’ Shane managed.

‘You should read novels. Better to learn.’

‘Like – Tolstoy? Dostoevsky?’

Ilya made a face. He dropped the Figes on the couch, picked up Anna Karenina and shook it.

‘No. Solzhenitsyn, maybe. Pushkin if you want to pretend you are Russian schoolchild. Sorokin. Shushkin. Pelevin is fucking pretentious but maybe you like that.’

‘You grew up reading those?’

‘Some. My mother liked Sorokin. She liked old stuff more. The clichés. Dark. Sad… My father threw her copy of Grossman away. Made her cry.’ He stopped and clenched his jaw.

‘Do you read a lot?’ Shane asked because it bothered him that he didn’t know. None of the names Ilya had listed meant anything to him except Pushkin, and that was literally only that he knew Pushkin was a Russian author. And wasn’t most Russian literature dark and sad…?

‘No. Don’t have time.’

‘Do you like to?’

‘Sometimes. Not that much. More when I try to improve my English. We’re hockey players, we can hardly read. I hate reading in English. It’s tiring to swap to Russian.’ He was quiet for another moment, then added ‘My mother loved to read. She was so clever. I’m not like that.’

*

He was so hard on her. Hard on Ilya too, even leaving the hitting out of the equation. But hard how? Shane didn’t know. Pressure for Ilya to do well, pressure for money, but had that come from Ilya’s dad? The phone calls Ilya hadn’t answered. The one phone call he had, in front of Shane, the tenor of his voice, rising higher in distress, bringing his hand to his forehead as he made a phone call of his own, pacing, shouting a little.

And then Shane had run out on him.

The dark uncharted waters of Ilya’s childhood contained strange and gleaming sea creatures Shane couldn’t see, only caught glimpses of, clutching his small torch against the dark. If he wasn’t careful it was not he who would be dragged under but Ilya.

Imagery like this was foreign to Shane. Just as Ilya made him think about past and future, he made him think in different ways, imagine peculiar things.

That too a little. Whatever that meant. It was good, right, that Ilya recognised there was something wrong with his father? That he knew it shouldn’t be the way it was?

He did know that, right?

*

That evening Shane let his mom bully him into bringing Ilya over again. Maybe he should have objected because it was their last night, but Ilya’s flight wasn’t until late and they would only be leaving for the airport in the afternoon. Also if they were alone together much longer Shane was worried he was going to break and start asking questions which would a pretty abysmal way to end their time together.

Ilya ate three helpings of the beef wellington and spicy edamame (a weird combination five-year old Shane had insisted on) and fervently declared ‘I want to marry your mother.’

‘Ilya,’ Shane said while Dad choked on his drink and Mom started cackling.

‘No, no, it is all over between us. You can cook only rabbit-food and enough hamburgers to feed an army. I must upgrade.’ He looked earnestly at Yuna who was still laughing. ‘Please consider it. I am very rich and very good-looking and very good at hockey.’

‘You can’t even boil an egg,’ Shane protested. ‘You only know how to fry things!’

‘Which is why I must find somebody who can cook, instead of somebody who also cannot boil an egg and burnt the hot salad last week.’

That had been Ilya’s fault for distracting him, but Shane couldn’t exactly say that in front of his parents.

‘I can teach you,’ Mom said, inexplicably wiping her eyes slightly. It hadn’t been that funny, surely. ‘Both of you. Domesticate you before it’s too late.’

‘Thank you, I will accept this kind offer,’ Ilya said solemnly. ‘But keep mine in mind, please.'

'I will, whenever I need to laugh,' Mom promised him, equally solemnly.

‘Your mother likes him,’ Dad said later, awkwardly, once the dishes were done. Shane looked over to where Ilya and his mother were sat on the couch, ignoring some replay on TV and immersed in an animated conversation about the potential continuation of Scott Hunter’s revived career. Ilya was saying very passionately, ‘But he is eight million years old, he will get injury, he cannot keep it up,’ and Mom was shaking her head and replying, ‘Don’t underestimate experience,’ and then they were getting into the kind of technical talk Shane normally loved but felt too weird to involve himself in now.

That hadn't taken long. Last week she was accusing him of abusing Shane; a month ago, the week before she still referred to him as ‘that asshole’. It was good, but watching them like each other also gave Shane a weird feeling.

Was Ilya faking it? That whole skit at dinner, that might have been Ilya’s normal sense of humour – but wasn’t it a little too obvious for him? A little bit juvenile? Was he purposely trying to charm Shane’s parents? Well, duh. But how much of it was real?

*

‘I like your mother,’ Ilya said that night in bed, completely unprompted. ‘She is funny.’

Shane blinked. Ilya made a face at him.

‘What? I like her as a person. I was not even trying to,’ like it was an accomplishment, to like Shane’s mother, ‘And I do!’

‘Okay,’ Shane said, because Ilya was looking at him in evident hope of approval. ‘Good. I’m glad.’

‘You don’t sound glad,’ Ilya said, nestling closer. Another bizarre moment – Ilya Rozanov, nestling. But there wasn’t another word for it. Unbidden that image of a baby monkey came again into Shane’s mind.

‘I’m glad,’ Shane repeated. ‘I just…’

‘Overthink,’ Ilya said, and buried in his face in Shane’s neck. Muffled he continued ‘But don’t. I said I will try to tell the truth. So I like your mother, and I think I like your father, but I have not spoken to him so much, so he makes me…’

‘Nervous?’ supplied Shane.

Ilya lifted his head up to check Shane’s face, then said, ‘Yes. But don’t repeat that.’ He looked at Shane knowingly, as if he could read all the thoughts whirring into motion in Shane’s brain. ‘Shane. If I were lying, I would just say that I like them both. But I am telling the truth.’

‘I know you are,’ Shane managed to reply. His throat was closing up a little. There were other reasons, for Ilya not to be sure about Shane’s dad, than not having spoken to him much.

Ilya put his face back in Shane’s neck and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, clinging on. A snow monkey, maybe, like Shane had seen at the world’s worst zoo as a child, or a gibbon.

There was that experiment, wasn’t there, that Shane had read about in a high school psychology class. Infant monkeys separated from their mothers too young became depressed and died if a substitute mother wasn’t provided. Animals taken away too young.

Hayden talking about the puppy he wanted to get his kids, ‘But if they’re selling them that young, man, I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with the breeders. Fucks the dog up for life.’

Maybe Shane should not be comparing his boyfriend to a traumatised baby animal, but like, it was right there. Twelve was not an infant, but it was academically pretty young to lose a parent. Especially when the parent you were left with was not exactly the warm and cuddly type.

‘I want to learn Russian,’ Shane found himself saying.

Ilya went stiff in Shane’s arms. Then he peered up suspiciously.

‘Why?’

‘It’s not fair you always have to be translating yourself to me,’ Shane explained.

‘My English is good now.’

‘I know it is,’ said Shane, that closed-throat feeling creeping back. ‘But you must get tired sometimes. And I want, I want to understand you.’

‘Understand me?’ Ilya was shaking his head, making a face. ‘What are we, sad lesbians from romance novel? We already understand. From being on the ice. From knowing each other so long. From fucking so much.’

‘Given it’s taken us ten years to get to this stage, Ilya, I think maybe there are some gaps,’ Shane said as dryly as he could. Ilya chuckled slightly.

‘We understand each other, but we maybe don’t know certain parts yet. Is what you mean?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

Ilya went ‘Hmm,’ and stuck his lip out, considering it.

‘I just thought it would be nice,’ Shane said.

‘Okay. You can learn Russian. I will help,’ Ilya said graciously.

Shane rolled his eyes, and rolled them again when Ilya added ‘You can pay me. If you don’t have enough money, we can come to an arrangement,’ and started trailing his hands down Shane’s chest.

It was their last night together. It was a start, too. Ilya hadn’t fought him on this. Why push? And Ilya was so close, warm and smelling great, and his hands felt great too, what they were doing…

‘Are you paying attention?’ Ilya demanded. ‘This is the first lesson. To say ‘fuck me please’ in Russian, you say…’

'Orlov' - Alexander Orlov, quite out-of-date these days but Ilya's not going to know that.

This is mostly show canon, but a few character beats are stolen from secondhand info of the books. The basis for writing Shane's autism is, shall we say, coming from inside the house.

At the end of August, Shane was in Montreal, starting to really gear up for the pre-season, when Ilya rang.

‘I have the weekend free. I can come to you or you can come to me,’ Ilya said without preamble.

‘Uh – I thought we were going to see each other when the season began?’

‘I can’t wait that long,’ Ilya replied simply. He was deadly serious, none of the teasing Shane was used to.

Shane was startled and slightly alarmed by the vision of his beautifully planned schedule going up in flames. He didn’t say anything.

‘If you want to,’ Ilya said formally. ‘If it is not inconvenient.’ Retreating.

‘No, of course I want to,’ Shane said quickly. ‘I was just surprised. Come here, it’s more private.’ Was that selfish? Ilya had given over his summer plans to him already, had come to Shane’s cottage, Shane’s turf, and was planning to abandon the team that had drafted him, all for Shane. The disruption to Shane’s plans was nothing, surely, compared to that, no matter how much it threw him off. ‘If you don’t mind, I can come out, I’m sure there’s a flight –’

‘Shane,’ Ilya said, amusement palpable. ‘Is good. I like your place better anyway. Also sometimes Marly comes by last minute, or Svetlana, and that would be awkward.’

Ilya had somehow neglected to mention that, the handful of times they’d met at his place, but Shane let it go.

*

Shane’s Montreal apartment was not like the cottage. It was regimented, public-facing despite the intense privacy with which it was shrouded and he didn’t like it that much, beyond being a place he could avoid publicity. It was lonely.

The other apartment he kept there wasn’t much better. He had a lot of memories of Ilya there, yes, but a lot of them seemed to be of Ilya leaving.

Made a change from all those hotel rooms at least, Jesus. Ilya’s Boston place was full of light, open floorplans and white walls, a few strange pieces of modern art and pretty soulless furniture. Shane’s was not a million miles away, less light, more dark wood and as Ilya never tired of pointing out a lot of pillows on the bed, but that was what happened when you had a lot of money, hired a decorator and let them loose, and in Shane’s case, let your mother have some in-put. Shane had had control of every final decision, though. He strongly suspected Ilya didn’t bother.

Neither apartment had what you might call character. ‘Home’  to Shane still meant his parents’ place, and maybe he was getting too old for that, but there you were.

The cottage wasn’t home. The cottage was escape. Whenever he went there in the future, whoever he went there with, Shane knew he  would see Ilya at every turn, Ilya lounging on the couch, Ilya burning dinner in the kitchen, Ilya lying at his feet out on the patio, Ilya upside down in the lake, Ilya with his head on his knee looking up like a soulful basset hound, Ilya crowing at beating him as they played video games, Ilya saying without meaning to, I love you, I love you, before he had even said the words, before Shane knew enough to understand that that was what he was saying.

Ilya in bed next to him, head turned away, pretending not to cry.

So, yeah. Not home.

They could have a home together one day. If they were lucky.

Ilya was sociable, outgoing. They’d been happy here together at the cottage, but how much longer would that last until Ilya was bored? The secrecy had not got boring exactly. They hadn’t been official for long enough for it to pall more than it already had. But it would at some point. Shane’s mother’s face, her That’s sad, that was the normal reaction to such a situation, and it was one they were likely to reach eventually.

Shane couldn’t pick Ilya up at the airport, of course, but Ilya had said he’d text when he landed, so when Shane heard the door code being punched in, hours before Ilya’s flight was due, he went over to open the inner door, assuming it was his mother, and nearly fell over when Ilya walked in instead.

Then he was being swooped up in Ilya’s arms, his hands bracing Shane’s thighs. Ilya was laughing too hard to kiss him properly.

‘You are so surprised!’

‘Yeah,’ Shane said weakly, deeply wishing he weren’t. The place was still a fucking mess because he hadn’t been expecting Ilya until later, and he hated surprises.

‘I got an earlier flight, there was a cancellation.’

But Ilya was right there, and he’d come all that way. Shane didn’t say anything, just stroked Ilya’s face and kissed him.

It was always weird, being held like this when Shane wasn’t caught up in the moment. Ilya was maybe half an inch taller. Shane could pick him up if he really wanted to, and had done so a couple of times before, mostly when Ilya was being more-than-usually-annoying, though Ilya packed slightly more muscle, weighed more. Weird, but nice.

‘I love you so fucking much,’ Ilya said, beaming.

‘I love you too,’ Shane said. It was true. Now he was over the terrible stomach-sinking shock surprise always gave him, he could just be happy that Ilya was there. An earlier flight, which gave them the whole afternoon free, and all of tomorrow, before Ilya had to leave on Sunday. Why waste time being annoyed? He put his arms around Ilya’s neck and kissed him again.

*

When Shane got out of the shower, Ilya was dressed again, which was kind of surprising. Shane had left him sprawled across the bed, ‘like a dead bug on its back, Hollander, you have killed me, they will have to put you in jail, please let your mother choose flower arrangements for the funeral, she has better taste than you’ and not looking like he was planning to move anytime soon.

Shane finished towelling off and pulled on his own clothes, aware of a patient gaze trained on him.

‘Uh – what do you want for dinner? I can make something,’ Shane said awkwardly. He was a little bit weirded out by the way Ilya was watching him, silent and intent.

‘I can cook,’ Ilya said dismissively. ‘Rabbit food, I know. Come downstairs.’

Shane considered refusing, but Ilya was clearly on a mission.

‘Wait here,’ Ilya said when they got down the stairs, going back to the hall where he’d dumped his – huh, that was right. His second bag, when Shane had only ever seen him travel with one.

Shane waited, feeling his anxiety ratchet. He really did hate surprises.

Ilya came back into the room, smiling with such tenderness at Shane that Shane told himself to take himself down a notch or two. It was Ilya. Everything was fine.

‘I have something for you,’ Ilya said. His hands were held behind his back and his face was alight with anticipation.

‘What is it?’

‘Present. For you,’ Ilya said, and brought his hands out in front of him. It was a small rectangular package, very thick, a bit battered. There was Ilya’s Boston address on it, and Cyrillic too.

Shane took it and opened it. The tape got in the way, but eventually he clawed his way through to a plastic envelope stuffed full of photographs.

The top one showed a young boy with light brown hair, leading a blond toddler by the hands across a lawn. Both children’s faces were suffused with concentration.

‘What? Wow.’ Shane flicked through to the next one. It was Ilya, the same Ilya he’d seen in the photo on the phone at the cottage, a little boy. Here he was holding a huge black cat and beaming. He could practically feel actual Ilya vibrating next to him, waiting for his response.

‘Where did you get them? I thought you didn’t have any?’

The next photo showed Ilya and – it must be Alexei – a little older, dressed very smartly and standing with a large bearded man outside a church, one of those onion-domed Russian ones.

‘I texted Alexei. He sent them.’

‘That was nice of him,’ Shane said slowly, turning over to the next. Alexei and Ilya, sitting on top of each other in the same armchair, laughing.

Ilya shrugged.

‘I paid him, he wasn’t going to complain. Is not like he wanted them. He has all the proper albums anyway.’

‘You paid your brother for family photographs?’ Voice much, much too high. Ilya looked startled.

‘Yes. I thought you wanted to see them.’

‘I do, it’s just – you paid him? For fucking photographs? He wouldn’t just send them to you?’

‘If he knew I wanted them,’ Ilya said slowly, ‘He might say no. We haven’t talked since I left Moscow. It was better to make sure he wouldn’t get rid of them or refuse.’

‘Ilya, that’s so fucked up. Jesus, why would you do that?’

‘I wanted to make sure.’

‘Fuck,’ Shane said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Alexei and Ilya, small, hugging, and Ilya, here, now, getting a little bit angry, and Alexei, somewhere in Moscow, who could not be trusted to send his brother these photographs without being bribed.

‘I thought you would be happy,’ Ilya said in the smallest voice Shane had ever heard from him.

‘I didn’t want you to do this. I didn’t ask you to do this.’

Ilya recoiled but Shane was too focused on working out what he wanted to say to reel him back.

‘I don’t – I don’t want you to hurt yourself to make me happy.’

Ilya looked staggered.

‘Shane, what the fuck.’

‘It hurt you to talk to Alexei. Didn’t it,’ Shane said.

‘No,’ Ilya said, but he was lying, Shane could hear it, and from the grimace Ilya made immediately after, he could too.

‘It’s like sticking your hand straight back in the fire,’ Shane said amazedly. Someone on one of the many, many reddit threads he had perused recently had made that comparison and it had stuck with him. ‘It’s not good for you. Ilya, tell me you know that,’ trying, for once, to catch Ilya’s eye instead of the other way around.

But Ilya was folding into himself, looking away, that awful turn of the head that meant he was crying or about to cry or was making an expression he didn’t want Shane to see.

‘Ilya…’

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Ilya swung round and exploded.

‘You think I’m stupid. Oh, poor Ilya, he is so stupid and so fucked up, he doesn’t even realise how fucked up he is, he doesn’t know how bad his family is.’

‘That’s not what I said!’ Shane said sharply. ‘And I don’t think you’re stupid.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that is fucked up? You don’t know my brother. I do. I know what he is. He is a grasping piece of shit. Everything comes with a price-tag. But I wanted the photographs for you, so yes, I paid him for them.’

Ilya was crying a little after all. There were tears in his eyes and his face was red. And he was yelling, Shane suddenly realised and felt like Emotional Einstein, because otherwise he would be crying properly.

‘You act like my father beat the shit out of me everyday, you act like it’s unbelievable, that anybody could be like they are, and now you can’t even be happy about this, when you said, you said you wanted to see them, you talk to me like I am fucking headcase, nothing I say makes you understand.’

*

In bed that night, Shane defiantly pulled out his copy of Russia and the Russians and put on his reading glasses. Beside him Ilya glanced over then crossed his arms over his chest.

They weren’t talking. Ilya had stormed off and shut himself in the bathroom after his last salvo. Shane was sure he’d been crying in there, and he did not know what to do with that information. On the rare occasions he himself cried or lost his temper, he always wanted to be left alone until he’d gotten it out of his system.

Maybe that was wrong? Ilya, crying in the hotel in Tampa, letting Shane hold him, kiss him, come close to him…

Supper had involved minimal talking. Ilya had silently done the washing up without asking Shane, and Shane had writhed in irritation as he watched Ilya put everything back wrong.

Was this – well, no, not their first fight. But an extension of their first fight, all those weeks ago in Shane’s parents’ kitchen. Shane didn’t understand how it had kicked off either time. He wasn’t good at this, he was coming to realise. He didn’t understand Ilya’s anger at any criticism of his awful fucking family.

Ilya did a great impression of stoicism, but under it was some seething mass of feelings Shane was 100% not equipped to meddle with. Somebody sensible would have left well enough alone, instead of ruining the brief time they had together, instead of – hurting Ilya’s feelings by not feigning pleasure at the surprise he’d gone to such lengths to procure.

Shane couldn’t have done that anyway. Ilya told him all the time what a bad liar he was. A bad liar, and somebody who struggled not to point out the obvious when he saw it. Somebody who couldn’t understand the person he loved, who hurt him in the process of trying.

It just wasn’t possible for him to accept Ilya doing something as deranged as paying his brother for family photographs without discussing it. Shane couldn’t put together the logic of it, how the idea had occurred to Ilya in the first place, how he had made himself follow through when he was estranged from his brother anyway, how he could have thought Shane would be happy to hear what he had put himself through.

Of course, Shane also could not put together the logic he had used in scolding like that. In asking questions and giving strong responses, making (thanks reddit) Ilya deal with Shane’s emotions when it was Ilya’s – trauma? emotional baggage? fucked-up childhood?

He was on page 29 and Geoffrey Hosking was telling him about the origins of Kievan Rus when a voice interrupted his already precarious concentration.

‘Why are you reading that?’

Ilya spoke without looking at Shane.’

‘I want to understand more about Russia.’

‘Why?’

Shane put the book down and took off his glasses.

‘What do you mean, ‘why’?’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe because my boyfriend’s Russian?’ Great, now they could fight about two things at once.

Ilya was clamping his jaw down so hard it looked painful.

‘I want, I want to understand. You. I mean. The, uh, culture you come from,’ which sounded like a cultural sensitivity advert but whatever. Daringly he put out his hand and touched Ilya’s. After a moment, Ilya gripped back.

‘Shane. You know me. You don’t need to know how Russians drink their tea, what we do at funerals, what our politics are like to know me. We are not aliens from another planet.’

‘Isn’t it better if I know?’

‘I don’t know half this shit,’ Ilya said, poking at the book with his free hand. ‘They teach us in school but mostly nineteenth century. You don’t need to know about stuff that happened a thousand years ago. If you want to know something, I will tell you.’

‘Okay, but I want to know these things, Ilya. Rose – when we met, Rose asked me what I was like when I was eight. And I realised, I want to know that about you. And maybe, maybe I can’t have that if I don’t – understand the background as well.’

Ilya’s jaw retightened at the mention of Rose, then relaxed.

Maybe Shane should start small and direct.

‘So? What were you like when you were eight?’

For a moment, Shane thought Ilya would refuse to answer, but then he opened his mouth.

‘Not very interesting. Starting to train more seriously. I did okay in school. Hated English lessons, hated science. I liked history. Literature. Maths. I wanted a dog but the apartment was too small. I wanted a cat instead but my father said no. Alexei and I played football after school if we weren’t on the ice. Just a normal kid.’

Shane stroked the top of Ilya’s hand with his thumb and said nothing.

‘Grandfather died that summer so we went to Sergei Mikhailovich’s dacha with my mother while my father made arrangements. Svetlana and I got in trouble for going off swimming in the river without the adults. Alexei nearly smashed his head in jumping off the bridge.’ He broke off. ‘You know what a dacha is, from all your reading?’

‘Yep,’ Shane said. ‘I know.’ He struggled with himself for a moment then said ‘Were you happy?’

Ilya looked at him, cocked his head.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Were you happy?’ Shane repeated.

Ilya shook his head, sighed and said ‘Was I happy, fuck, what kind of question is that? So fucking American.’

‘Canadian.’

‘American, Canadian, whatever, what question is that to ask someone?’

‘The one I’m asking you.’

‘Aren’t all kids happy?’

‘Ones with good families,’ Shane countered and regretted it. He really hadn’t meant Ilya’s family in particular, it had just felt better than saying ‘non-war orphans’ or whatever.

Ilya said flatly, ‘Yes, I was happy. I liked school, I had friends, I liked to skate, I was good at it and I liked the attention I got for it.’

Don’t push. Don’t push. ‘What about your parents?’

‘They argued, like everybody’s parents. My mother lost her job and didn’t like her new one. Every day when we came home she would be there making supper. She would say My boys are home, now the day is good. ’

Don’t? Couldn’t.

‘Your dad?’

Ilya was still holding his hand, but was clutching the bedspread with the other one so tightly his knuckles were white.

‘At work mostly. Normal. Tough. Wanting me to focus more. Be more disciplined. The way strict fathers are.’

‘Hitting you.’

‘There it is,’ Ilya said, and pulled his hand away.

*

Never let the sun go down on your anger – Jesus fucking Christ, Shane really was turning into his grandmother. She’d said that whenever his cousins fought with each other. Shane didn’t go in for that as a kid. It seemed pointless, bickering over those things, and somebody always got too loud or started shoving. ‘Only child,’ Dad’s sister had said, and ruffled his hair when she saw him put his hands over his ears.

It seemed pointless now too, to continue to pursue a subject that ended in a row every time. And he hated lying there in the dark, trying to sleep, unable to speak or reach out. Both of them stewing in their anger.

Shane tried not to let his brain start racing, overthinking, torturing himself with everything he’d done wrong, everything that was going to continue to go wrong as a result. He wasn’t mad at Ilya! Ilya was mad at him!

But while he hadn’t meant to pick a fight, it was his fault there’d been one. First he’d reacted badly to what was actually a very thoughtful present from Ilya, and then he’d tried to make Ilya talk about something he didn’t want to (against all the internet’s best advice…), and he’d concluded by making a stupidly insensitive comment.

And by giving Shane the photos, hadn’t Ilya been trying to tell him what he wanted to know? Hadn’t he been showing him the childhood he hated to speak about?

Ilya was still awake. Shane could tell by his breathing.

Finally Shane couldn’t take it anymore. He rolled over and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Ilya’s breathing sped up.

‘I’m really sorry. It’s none of my business.’

Heavy breaths.

‘It isn’t that,’ Ilya said at last. ‘I just don’t want to talk about it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t – understand. Why you want to know these things. Why you want to read about Russia and learn Russian.’

‘Because I love you! When you love someone, you want to know them.’

‘You were asking about when I was eight. How does that let you know me?’

‘As a starting point, Ilya!’

‘You keep saying, oh, it’s not for me to ask, oh, I won’t ask anymore, oh, we don’t have to talk if you don’t want, and then you do it anyway?’

 ‘You say these terrible things so lightly. I don’t get it. I can’t just brush it off.’

‘Tact is not your strong point. Your mother tells me this.’

For one moment Shane was speechless, some point between horror and rage at the thought of his mother and Ilya analysing him together.

‘It isn’t yours, either.’

‘No, because we are fucking hockey players. I don’t ask about your childhood.’

‘But you can,’ Shane said. ‘You have. I mean, my mom pretty much documented every moment of my fucking childhood, you’ve seen it all already.’ And he wished Ilya hadn’t. He hadn’t enjoyed being a kid. Other children didn’t like him, even adults found him weird. His parents were great and he never worried about being loved, and most of the time he was not unhappy, but it had been hard to be small and powerless. It had been hard to do the things children were expected to do. He didn’t like thinking about it. He didn’t want to talk about it.

Okay, so that was hypocritical.

He sat up in bed and switched on the light. Made himself say ‘But if you want to know about it you can ask. I want us to understand each other. Where we’re coming from. So that we communicate properly in our relationship.’

‘You have maybe swallowed therapy book?’ Ilya inquired politely.

Shane tried very hard to keep his face straight, but Ilya was lifting his eyebrows, cocking his head and staring him down and he couldn’t help it: he laughed.

When he could breath again, he looked up, and Ilya was smiling at him. A small smile, but he no longer looked pissed off. He moved across the bed, closer to Shane.

‘I’m sorry,’ Shane said, for what felt like the eighty-third time. He was an over-apologiser and he knew it. ‘I know I’m being insensitive. I just have questions. I’ll stop asking.’

‘You’ve said that before.’

‘I mean it this time. I will be – mindful of it. Aware. Purposeful.’

‘Yoga-talk,’ Ilya said, and poked him in gently in the ribs.

‘Seriously.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ Ilya said, putting his arm around him and leaning back. Even though it clearly wasn’t. ‘You’re curious. I hate talking about this, that’s all. It’s over. There’s nothing to be done about it.’

Shane hugged him, let Ilya move them both until he had his head in Shane’s lap. Like when they’d sat outside by the fire. Ilya had talked then, unasked. Maybe it had helped not to be looking at Shane.

‘I don’t want to make you talk about this. I don’t mean to. It’s like I can’t stop myself from opening my mouth.’

‘Normally I like it when you open your mouth,’ Ilya said, smirking.

‘Shut up. That doesn’t even make sense. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you,’ Shane said half-heartedly.

Ilya sighed.

‘Shane. You don’t have to read those books. You don’t have to learn Russian. If you want to know, ask me. But take no for an answer, please.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘If I don’t want to, I will tell you.’

‘But it upsets you. You don’t just say no. It makes you angry.’

Ilya’s face twisted. He said nothing.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil your present. Our time together.’

‘You didn’t,’ Ilya said, bringing his arm up against his face, as if against the light. His voice was muffled as he continued. ‘It’s okay. I’m not mad. I – accept your apology.’

‘Thanks.’ He stroked Ilya’s hair. You had to be careful or you’d comb the curls right out.

‘I think anything you imagine is worse than what it was,’ Ilya said softly. He sighed again, and turned so Shane could reach the back of his head as well. Shane kept stroking, felt Ilya tense then relax, tense again, relax, tense…

‘My father was not a nice man,’ Ilya resumed abruptly. ‘He was old. My mother was young. He was very jealous of her, he could not stand for her to leave his sight. He could not stand for another man to even look at her. He didn’t hit her, but he made her life very difficult. Later, it wasn’t like that. Later, I think he hated her.’

‘Jesus,’ Shane said without meaning to.

‘Yes. It wasn’t always that bad. It got worse. He got worse.

‘He really didn’t hit me often,’ he added. Shane bit down on his bottom lip to stop himself from commenting. Ilya patted his cheek like he understood. ‘It wasn’t as bad. I didn’t go in terror of him. Just fear of his disappointment. He wanted his children to succeed. I think, maybe his own childhood, during the war… And his father was a hard man, my aunt said once. It’s the only way he knew how to be.’

‘Okay.’

‘He was always disappointed in me. Never anything nice to say,’ Ilya said, closing his eyes. ‘But he was my father.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter now.’

But it did.

*

‘I like this one,’ Shane said, stroking his finger lightly over an infant Ilya held in his mother’s arms. She was posed like a Madonna, right by a window so that the light streamed over her with her baby in her arms. She was much darker than Ilya was. Her nose was thin and the bridge came down in a different way. Her little smile wasn’t his. But her eyes and her pronounced Cupid’s bow, the precise gesture with which she cupped her infant son’s head, that was like Ilya.

‘Me too,’ Ilya said, head lolling back against the couch. Shane was sitting in the big arm chair by the lamp so he could see the photos properly. ‘I haven’t seen it in a long time.’ He wasn’t looking at the photograph as he added ‘My father used to say she looked like Rublev’s icons. She hated that. Blasphemous.’

It was a grey, overcast day. They’d woken late, Ilya wrapped around Shane like a strangling vine. They’d fucked face to face, which was not generally Shane’s preferred position but was definitely Ilya’s (not that he’d admit it), and it had been slow, soppy. They’d kissed more than usual and Ilya hadn’t been running his mouth, had been unusually quiet except just after Shane came and just before he himself came, he buried his face against Shane’s neck and said ‘I love you, fuck, I love you’ and then fallen silent again. Shane hadn’t even realised Ilya had come until he moved himself off of Shane and rolled over on his back next to him.

Breakfast had been quiet too, Ilya hanging off Shane in a way that would have annoyed Shane under other circumstances but right now he felt so guilty and worried he couldn’t make himself mind.

Cleaning up the dishes, Shane had looked over and seen how stiff Ilya looked, none of his usual energy, his stupid jokes and motor-mouth. He was still standing that much closer than usual to Shane, darting glances at him when he thought Shane wasn’t looking, and he kept worrying at his necklace, rubbing the edges of the cross against his fingers in a way that had to hurt at least a little.

It struck Shane that Ilya probably wanted to see the photos for himself. Since his brother had had them, he couldn’t have looked at them in a long time. And if Ilya only had that one grainy photo of himself on his phone, it seemed likely he didn’t have any of his mother. Certainly, Shane hadn’t seen one in Ilya’s apartment.

So Shane had said, ‘Can we look at them together?’ and Ilya’s whole face had lit up.

‘There are so many,’ Shane marvelled now. They were all jumbled together, so that Ilya went from baby to eight-year old and back again, his parents appeared and aged and Irina vanished and reappeared.

Ilya and Alexei in the bath. Ilya on the swings. Irina and Grigori, arm in arm, looking like they’d stepped out of the 1950s in his greatcoat, her fur-edged collar and hat. Ilya and Svetlana and Alexei and two other children playing in a huge pile of hay. Alexei doing a handstand. Ilya very solemnly examining a budgerigar in its cage, small hand extended to feed it seed.

Irina, dressed very beautifully for the opera, Ilya said, in deep green silk. Irina, dressed very simply for the country, Ilya said, in blue linen. She was visibly pregnant in that one. Ilya squinted at it and said he thought that must have been with him, because his father had only bought the dacha after Alexei was born.

Ilya in hockey gear, grinning. Alexei bent frowning over a book. The boys with their father, Ilya hoisted on his father’s shoulders. He was tiny in that one. Hardly more than a baby, a stupefied look on his face at being so high. Shane wondered if he remembered it. He could vaguely recall being on his own father’s shoulders, the sudden invincible height.

Ilya and Alexei as teenagers, wearing matching suits and sulky looks. Ilya was older than twelve, surely, Irina must have been dead by then.

‘Polina took some. Had some taken. When she was first married.’

That was the Ilya Shane had first known, safely through puberty, sharp-boned and beginning to put on muscle. He flanked his father with Alexei. The bride stood nervously next to her new stepson, insipidly pretty and much, much younger than the groom.

‘She lasted maybe five years,’ Ilya said, peering over Shane’s shoulder. ‘Then she insists on separation. Papa was stupid, he didn’t make her sign any papers when they got married. I think maybe she will contest the will if Alexei is not careful. There is not a lot of money, but there are some good paintings, furniture, things I bought my father…’

Ilya had crept up closer and was sitting on the arm of the chair. He was too large to do that, really, and he was spilling almost onto Shane’s lap. Shane thought of those ‘how to help partner with traumatic childhood’ searches he’d made, and some of the psychological stuff he’d looked, and Ilya’s constant small touches, his frequent clinginess, and concluded without meaning to, ‘not hugged enough as a child’ – yeah, Ilya would love to hear that one.  

There were no more bruises on the children in the photos. Alexei had his arm in a cast in one, but Ilya said quickly, ‘He fell out of a tree in the park.’

Under the mass of photos was a small, more modern looking packet. Shane opened it and found an older Ilya. Ilya at Junior Worlds with his team. Ilya at the Olympics, looking miserable. The first two were clearly official photographs, not family ones.

Under them were personal ones again, of an adult Ilya and Alexei. Alexei’s marriage, Ilya and his father with the groom. The christening of Alexei’s daughter. Those were formal photos, staged ones. Alexei didn’t look at all like Ilya.

‘He’s five years older than me,’ Ilya said when Shane asked. He touched his finger to the edge of the Worlds one. ‘I didn’t know he had this… Coach’s wife took it after we won.’

‘Who took the others?’ Shane said.

‘My mother, mostly. Mama liked having photographs. Papa liked her liking having them, when we were small… I think, to show off his perfect family, probably. He could afford it, and also to say to everyone, look, there is nothing wrong with any of us.’

Shane concentrated very hard on the photographs. Ilya put his face against the back of his neck and nearly fell off the chair. Once he’d righted himself he draped himself over Shane, as close as he could get, like an oversized Russian python. Shane waited to find himself minding, and didn’t.

‘I know you can’t stand to hear this… That’s why we shouldn’t talk about it.’

‘It’s not good for you to bottle your feelings up like that,’ Shane said, and scratch his grandmother, now he sounded exactly like his mother.

‘Bottle…?’

‘Repress.’

‘You are saying that to me? Ilya asked incredulously.

It was half-teasing, but Shane felt like he’d been stabbed. Then Ilya’s thumb, stroking his nape timidly.

‘I didn’t mean like that. Just, your mother said, you know, that you don’t always know what it is you are feeling, and she is right, I think.’

‘You’ve been talking to my mom about me?’ Shane said. Even though Ilya had said it earlier, he was still too shocked to begin to be mad.

‘No. Yes. A little. I did not ask her anything. She says a few things, while we were looking at the albums. She does not trust me with you yet, I don’t think. She says the things she thinks I have to know about you.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Your mother says, when Shane is interested, he is obsessed, he wants to know everything. She says when you are small you are like this about two, three things, and now you are like this about hockey only.’

‘I’m like that about you,’ Shane realised.

‘I am beginning to notice,’ Ilya said dryly. He looked at the photographs and huffed. ‘I didn’t think this through. What the fuck am I going to do with all of these?

‘Mom would probably put them in an album for you if we asked her nicely.’

Ilya shook his head.

‘We can put them away. You don’t have to decide now.’ Shane hesitated, then said, ‘We could put some up? In the cottage? Of your mother. And you could have some at your place.’

‘I’d like that,’ Ilya said quietly.

The last photo, right at the bottom of the second envelope, had Ilya and Alexei again, adults, dressed for Alexei’s wedding, standing outside yet another onion-domed church.

‘Are you religious?’ Shane asked. It seemed stupid not to have wondered before.

Ilya snorted. ‘No. Cross was my mother’s. She was the devout one. My father’s family were devout too. Devout Communists. Don’t think my grandfather ever got over fall of USSR.’

‘Oh.’

‘Papa got his start in Novgorod militsiya, ended up in Moscow, managed not to get cleared out in 1991, stuck with it. He didn’t believe in anything except the state. Communist, capitalist, Christian, atheist, didn’t matter. Glorious Russian state, glorious Russian values. Conservative. Very.’

‘My grandpa’s a bit like that,’ Shane said for something to say. ‘Dad’s dad. He was in the army. Canadian patriot. Doesn’t like, uh, foreigners. Really, really not happy when my parents got married.’

Ilya was looking at him curiously.

‘He got over it?’ he asked. ‘He is nice to your mother now?’

‘Sort of,’ Shane said awkwardly. ‘He got over it after I was born, mostly.’

‘Ah,’ said Ilya. ‘First grandson.’

‘First grandson,’ Shane confirmed. ‘He still says shit sometimes. He’s kind of lost his filter these last few years.’

‘He won’t like that…’

‘He won’t like that I’m gay, no.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s –’ it wasn’t okay, and Shane maybe got Ilya’s earlier frustration slightly more now. What could you say? It sucked. He didn’t like his grandfather particularly but it still sucked. ‘Yeah.’

‘My father said whatever came into his head for maybe ten months, then he stopped talking. He said things, to Svetlana when she came… He always liked Svetlana when she was small. Was the dementia but I wanted to kill him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Shane said, because he didn’t know what else to say. Ilya shook his head. ‘It must have been hard seeing him like that.’

‘Yes.’ Ilya took a deep breath. ‘Especially because before, he was not… Like you said in Tampa. Sick in head a little bit, I think. I hated him sometimes.’

‘You’re allowed,’ Shane said, but Ilya shook his head again.

‘You’re thinking of the hitting again… I hated him, but not for that. For Mama. For never being satisfied. Not for slapping me sometimes. I was very naughty child, always getting into what I shouldn’t.’

There was something childlike too about the way he said it.

‘That doesn’t meant he should have hit you for it,’ Shane said carefully.

That shrug again.

‘Your parents are different. It’s okay, Shane. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.’

‘All right,’ Shane said, because anything else wouldn’t be fair to Ilya. He’d told Shane – not enough for Shane to be satisfied, but enough for him to understand that they were not going to able to ‘mediate’ their viewpoints right now. That maybe they never would be able to. How much could you change from the way you were raised? ‘Um, I guess I also want to talk about the Russia thing…’

Ilya sighed and shook his head, but he was smiling fondly.

‘Dog with bone. Okay, talk.’

‘I know you said you wanted not to have a Russian passport anymore. But. It’s, um, a more final decision than I was considering.’

They’d been caught up in a haze of lust and love and the (almost) complete isolation of the cottage. They hadn’t been living in reality.

‘You won’t be able to go home again. And I guess I assumed you wouldn’t want to, but that’s wrong. To assume how you feel.’

‘Therapy,’ Ilya said, contorting his mouth. ‘You are considering a career change?’

‘Ilya.’

‘I don’t,’ Ilya muttered. ‘It’s not home anymore. I will miss some things, but Shane, I have lived in the States for a long time. Moscow is bad memories mostly. Learn Russian if you want to.’

‘Will it make you happy? And don’t, don’t say no, like you’re worried about making me do it,’ Shane said quickly.

‘Yes, it would make me happy,' Ilya admitted. 'I can’t – the words are wrong in English, lot of the time. It can be tiring. It would be nice, to tell you the right words properly.’ Looking at Shane only out of the corner of his eye he said ‘I like that you love me enough to want to. I wish I could have both, have you and Russia, but I would rather have you than country that doesn’t want me.’

‘Because of the politics. The laws.’

‘I am not political,’ Ilya shrugged. ‘I am an athlete. Most of us are not. Like trying to teach carthorse to read. It’s not our job. I am still Russian, wherever I am.’

Mom would consider this viewpoint morally bankrupt, probably. Shane wasn’t sure he didn’t himself. But he was not actually Mr Stand Up Loud And Proud For The Causes You Believe In himself, so it would have been rank hypocrisy to comment.

People said things, too, and Shane ignored them. ‘Diversity hire’ was probably the kindest of them, and he was able to brush it off because he was good, he was the best. But Mom had always wanted him to be a role model, to stand up against that sort of thing, and he hadn’t ever wanted to lift his head that far above the parapet.

Okay, that was not at all the same thing – and given the circles Ilya might or might not have been raised in, it felt far dodgier – but Shane loved Ilya, and so even if it was deeply unethical – the vague term sportswashing came to mind, probably courtesy of his father and the fucking New Yorker – he couldn’t exactly make himself care as much as a good person probably ought to.

And Ilya wanted out, anyway.

Ilya was watching him warily. ‘It’s fucked up there,’ he said. ‘Better to go. Won’t have to play along with the government anymore, that would be nice.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Won’t have to worry about what would happen, if this’ – gesturing between them – ‘got out.’

Living all the time with the sword hanging over his head – growing up like that, even before you got into everything with his fucking awful family – the pressure to anything, absolutely anything at all to get out of your own country, your own home, always living on the knife-edge.

Shane put the photo he was holding down and yanked Ilya off the edge chair arm and into his lap. Onto, really. He was crushing Shane but Shane suddenly wanted him as close as possible. He wanted Ilya to crawl inside him, where he’d be safe, where Shane could keep him close and protect him from everything and not let anybody else near him.

Was this what Ilya was feeling, when he hung off Shane like a fucked-up giant sloth?

Ilya had said ‘Oof’ when Shane unbalanced him, but otherwise didn’t complain. He shifted slightly so Shane was more comfortable, then let out yet another sigh. This one wasn’t exasperated or struggling for the right words. This one sounded content, like it was what Ilya had wanted all along.

‘I just want you,’ Ilya mumbled in his ear, like he could read Shane’s mind. ‘Let’s stop talking. It’s depressing. Have to go tomorrow. I just want you. Anything for that.’

‘Me too,’ Shane said. The rest of it would just have to wait.

But before he let himself get drawn away and into their usual, more successful form of communication, he glanced at the photos again. Ilya grinning on the beach, Ilya smirking with Svetlana, Ilya bored at a formal function, Ilya wide-eyed as a baby in his mother’s arms…

Ilya, as straight as a soldier and as neat as one, his hair clipped short and his father’s hands resting heavy on his shoulders. The expression on his face was unreadable.

If you are thinking that an awful lot seems unresolved, that was (largely!) on purpose. Pt.2 from Ilya's pov coming soonish.

This chapter got quite seriously derailed and I'm worried it's a bit cyclical - I'd be very appreciative of any feedback re:structure, if anyone feels something didn't work!

Re: the politics, I don't really want to get immersed in real-life stuff for fic (feels a bit tasteless and I doubt my ability to handle it!) but I do think neither Ilya or Shane would necessarily be hugely up to speed on this (or in Ilya's case, given his father's governmental connections, necessarily care that much). They're sports stars, not always a group known for their cultural and political sensitivity.