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David Hollander is stunningly normal about hockey.
This always surprises Ilya, given that David Hollander’s wife and son are decidedly not normal about hockey.
Ilya doesn’t want to be mistaken: it’s not that David Hollander is casual about hockey, or that he doesn’t care about it. Ilya’s seen the tapes from McGill. He knows that David Hollander, #42, was a force to be reckoned with on the ice. Perhaps not professional caliber, but only a fool could watch those tapes and fail to see David is the source of Shane’s skating style, his careful attention—the hockey IQ Shane loathes to hear about.
(Ilya also loathes to hear about it and always has. At first, because Shane’s “hockey IQ” was referred to in their early days in contrast to Ilya’s brute strength and physicality. Ilya would like the record to show he is also very fucking smart about hockey. He just couldn’t fucking say as much in English. Now, he loathes hearing about Shane’s hockey IQ because he sees it for what it is: a way to cheapen the hours, years, lifetimes Shane devotes to his craft. To claim, quietly, that Shane does not really deserve praise for all he’s sacrificed because at least some of it is an accident of Asian genetics.)
But it’s true. David Hollander is normal about hockey. He has a life outside it. He goes to work at the Treasury. (Ilya still does not know what the hell happens at a Treasury. He doesn’t want to know, on the off-chance David’s job is like Ilya’s father’s job—a fake position for shaking hands and negotiating dirty deals.) He goes on long walks. He volunteers at animal shelters. He puzzles. Well—he works on puzzles? Ilya still is not sure how the verbs work there.
The point is: David Hollander built a life outside of hockey that was fulfilling—that remains fulfilling. This, in its roundabout way, and though Ilya could never admit it, saves Ilya’s life.
#
Ilya makes a mistake with Galina: he talks about wanting to die.
Really, he wants to talk about how proud he is of himself because he wanted to die but knew he didn’t. Meaning—and here he switches back to English—he sat with the wanting without giving into it. He’d wanted her to be proud of him. He did it. He was… not better than his mother. But managed what his mother certainly would have wanted for him if she were alive to see him struggle. He saw a way out. A way through.
Instead, he has to deal with the reality that it is serious business for a therapist to hear that your patient wants to kill himself.
Ilya doesn’t know how to explain that suicidality—he hates the fucking word, hates how it feels in his mouth, hates how it refuses to bend for his clumsy tongue—is the wrong word for him. Suicidality tastes like urgency, like immediate danger. What he has is softer. It’s like overheating when the covers are high above your head and you are curled in the middle of the mattress. It fills his ribcage like his lungs, emerges periodically like an old friend Ilya can’t shake.
Of course, Galina wants to know why Ilya thinks he can’t shake this old friend.
Ilya can only shrug. He wants to slide the red privacy dot over his camera. He doesn’t, because he doesn’t know how he’d admit to Shane later via FaceTime that he hid from his therapist while she was trying to do her job.
When Ilya fails to answer, Galina shifts tactics. Who can Ilya call? What does he do when he feels this old friend pop up? Ilya answers, tries not to feel like this is a waste of his time, tries not to feel like he is stupid for wanting her praise. This isn’t a big deal, he wants to snap. I’ve always been like this. It’s just who I am.
Then Galina asks what Ilya absolutely does not want to think about. Has he spoken with Shane about this?
It felt like a risk telling Galina about Shane at all. But Shane assured him, then Galina assured him, that she was bound by approximately one trillion laws to hold his secrets unless he was an immediate threat to himself. So he’d told her about Shane. Or, he told her he has a boyfriend he loves very much named Shane. Now, he really wishes he hadn’t.
No, he’s forced to admit. He hasn’t spoken with Shane about this.
Then, of fucking course, Galina wants to know why.
Ilya doesn’t like thinking poorly of Shane. He doesn’t, really—not even about this. It’s only that Shane is like his mother, in the way that Ilya is like his Mama. Shane is high strung. Mr. Panic. Mr. We-Have-To-Address-This-Right-Away. Mr. Let’s-Come-Up-With-A-Ten-Step-Plan. Shane is a fixer. Most of the time, Ilya loves this because he loves Shane. Unconditionally. He loves the way this fixing nature allows Shane to persevere. He would never wish this coping strategy away from his partner.
But when Ilya is overheating because the covers of his life are too high, he cannot bear to be fixed. If he needs to be fixed, that means he is a problem. He cannot be a problem again.
(Usually, Ilya would not compare Shane or his mother to Ilya’s father unless it was to prove how un-alike they are. Usually. Ilya can admit he is not usual when his ribs are full and the covers are too high and his old friend is curled up like a dog on the couch, unwelcome but not worth the effort to move.)
“I don’t want to sully him.”
Ilya knows he meant to say, I don’t want to worry him. That’s true.
But more true is what he actually said. I don’t want to dirty him with the sadness I cannot escape. I do not want him to fear coming home to me. I do not want him to worry he will find my body on the bathroom floor. I do not want him to hesitate to bring painkillers or sleeping aids into the house if he needs them. I do not want his home—the beautiful homes he builds out of an overabundance of love—to become fortresses of fear because of the problems I cannot root out.
Galina lets him sit in silence for a long while. Ilya looks at the wall over his laptop’s screen. He runs his tongue across the top row of his teeth. He does not cry.
“Do you think he’d see it the same way?”
He wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t. Shane is many things. Blunt. Literal. Inquisitive. Hard-working. Goofy. A problem-solver. Dedicated. Funny. Tender-hearted. Playful. Brilliant, so fucking brilliant—not just his mind, but his spirit. Shane would never see Ilya as dirty.
“No,” Ilya says. “That is why I must see it for him.”
Galina nods like she can see his logic, and that is why Ilya continues seeing her. She is not too hasty to tell him everything will be fine. She is not overt in trying to fix him. She knows some things cannot be fixed or corrected or overcome, because she cannot go home either. Ilya has never asked why. He is many things—lazy, needy, impulsive, irresponsible—but he does not think he is cruel.
#
Ilya knows he needs to clean up. He does.
Since he started—well. When he and Shane became, when they agreed to see this long plan out, Ilya was doing reasonably well. He moved to Ottawa and hired a new cleaner, set a longer interval between services than he had in Boston, took on more responsibilities for keeping up the house because he felt good. He should have known good does not last for him.
So, yes, Ilya knows he needs to clean up. He knows the stove is greasy from the splatter of oil because when he is like this the only thing he can reliably eat is rice and fried eggs. He knows his coffee table is a disaster of half-finished water bottles, coke cans, coffee cups, receipts, take-out he ordered and could not stomach. He knows he needs to do his laundry. He knows he should open a window because the entire place smells like skin and sleep sweat.
He knows, he knows, he knows. He just… can’t.
Someone online somewhere posted, “I am made of tiredness.” This is true. He is not bone and muscle and tendon. He is a balloon and he is full up of exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix. Ilya has become a corpse floating through practices. He turns on Rozanov for games, but he knows his team is worried about him—because the Centaurs are not the Raiders, the Centaurs care about him, the Centaurs are a losing team he is supposed to resurrect. How the hell is Ilya supposed to pull up an entire team if he hasn’t taken out the recycling in a month?
Unclear.
The texts come through while Ilya is rotting on the couch.
Hey. It’s been a while since we hung out.
Puzzles at your place?
Ilya… does not love David Hollander or Yuna Hollander. He is not good at being a son, can’t stomach the idea that he might disappoint another set of parents—drive another mother to her grave.
(Galina can say as much as she wants about Mama being a grown adult with her own traumas and histories Ilya will never be privy to because he was a child. Ilya can even know she’s probably right intellectually. But deep in his gut, he senses that the stress of him, of raising a child who could not hide his queerness if he wanted to and did not want to, of raising a child who was rocketing to stardom despite it all, made everything worse.)
But he likes David Hollander. He likes Yuna, too, when she is not spinning Shane into a frenzy. He likes that David texts in short sentences that are easy for Ilya to read even when he is exhausted and English feels like hot plastic coating the brain-side of his scalp. He likes that David reaches out about things other than hockey—the sport Ilya loves usually, but he is not usual these days.
Ilya also knows that if he says no, David will mention it to Yuna. David is that kind of husband: a good one, who speaks with his wife and keeps no secrets, who is tempered and patient and emotionally open and all the things Ilya has never been for Shane. Once Yuna knows, she’ll follow up out of misplaced concern. And when this pisses Ilya off, because it will piss Ilya off, he hates being something people need to fucking follow up on, Yuna will tell Shane.
Ilya may omit from Shane. But he’ll never tell Shane a lie. Never again.
So, Ilya texts back.
Yes. When?
20 minutes?
30 pls. Need 2 shower + tidy.
David sends back a yellow thumbs up.
Thirty minutes. Ilya can hold himself together for thirty minutes.
He starts with the kitchen, because David likes how high the seat backs are and the island in his home is definitely large enough to fit a good puzzle. He applies a damp paper towel to the grease on his stove, shoves the startlingly few dishes he’s accumulated over the last several days into the dishwasher and sets that going, wipes the crumbs off the counter. Then the trash feels reasonable, as does the recycling. He is still full of exhaustion, but momentum is carrying him now. As long as he does not stop moving, he can do everything he needs to do to… make a good showing. To not give David anything to tell Yuna about, so Yuna does not tell Shane that Ilya is falling apart.
On Ilya’s way in from the curb, he opens every window he can. Cross breezes are good, right? Good enough. Then it’s to the living room, collecting throw blankets from the floor and throwing out the trash now that there’s room in the can. More windows. Another damp paper towel across the coffee table, in case David decides he wants to watch a game while he’s here. The bedroom is mostly a lost cause. But momentum is a beautiful thing. Ilya manages to toss an armful of his overtoppling laundry pile into the machine and vaguely sort the rest so it looks… purposeful, rather than pathetic. More windows, more windows. The bedroom smells worst because it’s got a top-note of jizz. If Ilya were thinking, he’d have put his sheets in first. But he isn’t thinking. He’s just following the flow of momentum.
The en suite is another mostly-lost cause. He tosses the sweaty laundry on the floor into the bedroom, trying to keep the fake sorting straight. He flushes the toilet—not enough time to actually clean it but hopefully the little blue sticky-thingy his cleaner put in last time is still doing the work. He switches out the towel on the hook for one that smells less damp. He rinses the sink of all the mouthwash spit he’s been leaving to fester.
Ilya has no idea how much time he has left. A bird bath and change of clothes will have to do. What’s that song Haas likes so much? “This Is Me Trying?” Yes. He doesn’t care for the song, really, but. This is Ilya desperately trying to pull himself together and act like he is the kind of man who can meet his partner’s father for puzzling on short notice and not start a family fucking intervention. Act like he is the kind of man worthy of the Hollander family. They are so brilliant, all of them. Ilya wants, for just long enough to work on a puzzle, to seem like he could be brilliant too.
He’s just pulling on a fresh pair of sweats when David knocks at the front door. Ilya slides back into his house shoes and hustles to greet him.
They do the usual song and dance. Ilya gives him a firm handshake, welcomes him to his home. David sits on the bench Shane insisted Ilya needed to take off his shoes and tuck them neatly beneath. He tries to be casual about the whole thing. He isn’t bringing David into the stupid fucking mansion outside Moscow. He’s just… welcoming his partner’s father into his house for some puzzles. The picture on the box is a landscape, which is the sort of puzzle David seems to favor. It’s pretty: a wash of prairie and sparse trees and a massive blue sky.
Ilya is vindicated early because David does want to sit at the island. Ilya’s still playing Good Host, so he offers coffee and makes a pot while David carefully opens the box and shakes the small pieces from their cardboard home. This is another thing Ilya likes about David: David Hollander is a man who can spend a whole afternoon with Ilya without really saying much. The silence never feels stiff or expectant. Neither has to fill it. They can just share space. Work on a puzzle.
By the time David is excusing himself to get home for dinner, the sun has set around them. The pretty overhead lights Shane suggested he install cast a warm glow on the space. When David looks up, Ilya is arrested by the likeness to Shane. Or, he supposes, Shane’s likeness to David. Regardless, he sees his partner in David and it warms him--this tether to the man they both love.
“Is it alright if I leave this here?”
Of course, Ilya tells him. Of course, absolutely. Think nothing of it.
When David leaves, Ilya finds he still has a bit of momentum left in the tank. He flips the wet laundry into the dry. Unloads the dishwasher. Closes the windows. His home is not… good. Without the promise of a witness biting at his heels, he’s fairly sure it will slide back. But it’s better than it was. He falls asleep listening to the thump of wet clothes in a metal drum and his dishwasher humming once again.
#
Ilya thinks of the puzzle often. Not badly or with any malice. He doesn’t feel put upon for hosting this puzzle. But he thinks of the fact that the puzzle is still there, on his kitchen island, waiting for David to return.
It doesn’t feel like… what is the English word? Ilya flips his keyboard to Cyrillic, types surveillance into his preferred translation website, and watches the English side spit out a hate crime of letters. He listens to the audio several times, trying and failing to wrap his tongue around the word. It feels like suicidality in his mouth—like too many vowels, too many soft things in a body made of hard edges.
David’s puzzle on his island does not feel like surveillance or suicidality or anything else Ilya must struggle with. It doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like… a nudge. A promise. Or maybe a guard rail. He cannot let his kitchen become a disaster area because the puzzle might get damaged. He cannot let his living room or bedroom slide into ruin again because David might text about working on the puzzle and Ilya wouldn’t have time to resurrect the place again. He cannot smoke an entire pack of cigarettes inside because the small cardboard pieces will soak up the smell.
David does text to work on the puzzle—several times a week. He’ll pop by for an hour, two, an afternoon. He’ll bring something simple to eat: tuna salad with crackers, salad with too much dressing, meatloaf. All normal things and often food he’s already eaten from at work. David sets it on the side of the puzzle, between them, and gestures for Ilya to take his fill. It feels good to eat food with flavor again. Ilya seasons his fried eggs. He isn’t a monster. But he can admit that fried eggs and rice is hardly balanced or interesting or nutrient dense or any of the qualities the Centaur’s nutritionist would like them to prioritize.
And when David goes, his life feels… okay. Like it’s not too big as long as the puzzle is inside it. Like maybe Ilya can manage another day.
#
Galina asks how he’s doing and Ilya manages to say, good. Better. He manages to mean it. He has been better, objectively. He’s been eating better, sleeping better. He hasn’t been smoking quite as much. He’s been training like he likes hockey again, even if the actual feeling of liking hockey has been slow to return.
Galina follows up, which Ilya tries not to resent. What else has he been getting up to?
He knows she’s trying to get him to think about his life outside of hockey. This is one of his Therapy Goals. He just doesn’t like to admit that outside of Shane, he doesn’t have a life outside hockey—and Shane is not really outside of hockey at all, is he?
But for once, Ilya has something to say. “I’m working on a puzzle with David—Shane’s father.”
As he says it, he feels a bit of safety chip away. So far, he’d managed to keep the reality of Shane mostly hidden. Shane is a common name, not immediately identifiable. Ilya’s been able to obfuscate, talk around Shane by saying things like My partner travels a lot for work and My partner is based in a different city right now and My partner is also fairly high profile. But David. Ilya’s certain there are many Shane’s with David’s for fathers. But this admission certainly narrows the pool from its previous size: all Shane’s who don’t live in Ottawa, Canada.
Galina’s face doesn’t twitch with recognition. This is another reason Ilya keeps seeing her. She neither knows nor cares about hockey, so he does not have to worry about saying nice things about the league.
She leaves him room to talk, so he does. About David Hollander, who is so different from Grigori that Ilya struggles to even process him as a father. About his fear that David will tell Yuna—which David should, if he’s concerned about his son’s partner. Ilya is feeling close enough to usual that he can admit that. But Ilya talks about his fears that David will tell Yuna, and Yuna will tell Shane, and then Ilya will have to tell Shane. He talks about how the puzzle is… good for him. It’s something for him to think about that isn’t dying or hockey or his Mama or Shane. It’s something to work on. It’s delayed—he doesn’t want to work on it without David. It’s a guard rail.
Galina nods. “It’s like sticking your foot outside the covers,” she says.
Yes. Ilya switches into Russian. “Like tipping your head for air after swimming and swimming and swimming.”
#
“Hey!”
Ilya loves the way Shane opens their FaceTime calls, even when he is the one to call. Ilya has barely connected before Shane’s voice is bursting through the speakers.
“Is everything okay?” Ilya knows he should sound more excited. He knows he shouldn’t be jumping to worst case scenarios when his partner, his boyfriend, calls him on a Thursday. But this week has been hard. The Centaurs were knocked out of the playoffs contention by way of five shut-out games. It doesn't even matter that this was a record-breaking season because their records were fucking atrocious. Without the pressure to turn on Rozanov and at least turn up to practice, he’s been… adrift. Lonely. Unwilling to worry Shane and unable to speak through it with his beautiful, flawless Shane anyway. It feels like the only thing tethering Ilya to anything is the puzzle on his kitchen island. And that makes him feel worse: that his boyfriend is not what makes him want to live, but a set of one thousand pieces of cardboard is.
“Oh, for sure.” Shane is so Canadian sometimes it’s painful. Not often. But every now and again it sneaks up on Ilya. His perfect Good Canadian Boy. “I was just talking to Dad. He said you guys are working on a puzzle?”
So Ilya flips the camera and shows him the puzzle. They’ve made very good progress. The landscape puzzle is finished, broken down and packed away to be pulled from the shelf some other time. They’ve moved on to a dizzying array of pink, orange, blue, and purple townhomes in a snow scene. The pieces are small, of course, but the puzzle is easier to manage. The colors make identifying correct fits easier. He explains all this to Shane, who looks up from Ilya’s screen like he could listen to Ilya blab about stupid puzzles till the end of time.
“Hey,” Shane says when Ilya falls silent. This is not his cheerful hey to answer the phone. It’s his soft hey, his ‘you’re pulling away’ hey, his ‘I want to get behind all the walls you throw up and touch your fucking soul’ hey.
Ilya braces for impact.
“Can I--? Uhm.” Shane clears his throat. “Can I say I’m worried about you?”
There it is. “You can say this.”
Shane gives him a fondly exasperated look. “Hey, I’m being serious. You’ve seemed … down? And I just wanted to, uhm. You know.” He gestures broadly, which Ilya only knows because his shoulder flexes prettily. “I’m not good at this part, Ilya, but I want to say I’m here. You know? To talk. About anything. I—uhm. You matter to me. So much. And if you want to talk—”
Shane is fumbling, embarrassed—red is crawling down his neck and up his cute, perfectly curled ears. He is trying. If Shane is trying, Ilya will try. For Shane, he will do many, many things.
“I am tired.” There. Ilya has said it.
“Tired?” Shane is curious, inquisitive, perhaps a little incredulous. But he waits for an answer. If Ilya is made of exhaustion, Shane is made of questions.
Ilya nods, settles himself in front of the puzzle. It’s easier to say when he does not have to look at Shane’s face. He props the phone and stares at the tiny carboard pieces holding him together instead. “Tired, yes. I’ve—I am made of tired.”
And then the mess comes spilling out. All the ugliness Ilya holds inside him, all the white fuzzy mold growing on his soul—it all wells up and falls out of Ilya’s face and there is noise on Shane’s side, but Ilya can’t process that. He doesn’t know how long he’s been… fucking expunging his interior, how long he’s been snotting and crying and coughing at the perimeter of David Hollander’s puzzle. Only that when he comes up for air Shane is in his living room—not in Montreal at all but here, in Ottawa, holding him.
Ilya tries to pull away. He doesn’t want to dirty Shane. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t.
“You aren’t,” Shane insists.
Fuck. Ilya hadn’t meant to dirty him by even speaking it aloud.
“You aren’t,” Shane murmurs again. Shane has pulled himself to his full height, made himself wide enough to tuck Ilya between his shoulders. Ilya’s face is pressed into that perfect point on Shane’s neck where he smells like cologne and sweat and skin and happiness.
“I am,” Ilya croaks. “I am, you don’t—” He switches to Russian because Shane has been improving but he is nowhere near fluent and Ilya is a filthy coward. “You don’t know how miserable I’ll make you. I have to—I have to keep you from it. I have to protect you. Please let me. Please, please let me.”
“Let me get dirty.” Shane is rocking him where he sits on the stool. Gently. Like Ilya is worth being gentle with. One of his pretty, perfect hands is in Ilya’s nasty hair, the other gripping the tender skin on Ilya’s back. “Let me get dirty, baby. My love. Let me get dirty.”
“Okay,” Ilya whispers. Shane squeezes him, a little spasm, like he’s surprised Ilya is agreeing. Ilya is surprised too. But he’s—he’s so tired. Too tired to fight. Too tired to pretend he is brilliant, pretend he can belong, pretend he isn’t unraveling at every seam. The covers are so hot. He is so far from usual. “Okay.”
Shane nods, kisses the forehead Ilya has only managed to rinse off in half-assed showers for the last several weeks. “Okay, my love. Okay.”
#
Shane makes it an entire thirty-six hours without fixing. He does not make a plan on Ilya’s fridge-mounted whiteboard for cleaning the house. He does not type up a list of crisis numbers for Ilya to call. He does not do Ilya’s laundry or wash his dishes or wipe down his countertops.
He just… sticks close. He stands when Ilya stands, sits when Ilya sits, lays in the sheets Ilya hasn’t changed since his housekeeper was here several weeks ago. Ilya apologizes. Of course he does. He isn’t a monster. He’s aware Shane deserves so much better.
But Shane simply says, “Let me.”
Shane so rarely asks for anything from Ilya. He gives and gives and gives, always. His trust. His love. His body. His time. He lets Ilya shower him with love and soaks it up like water in a desert. It’s a luxury. So when Shane does ask, Ilya obliges.
If the puzzle is a guardrail, having Shane here feels like having training wheels on. If the puzzle is sticking his foot outside the covers, having Shane in his home feels like the cool nighttime air against his scalp and forehead while the rest of him is just-a-little-too-toasty. Ilya feels awful for using Shane like this: treating his boyfriend like some sort of fucking life vest so he can shuffle around his house to toss laundry into the machine, or clean out the Tupperware in his fridge, or schedule an urgent appointment with Galina, or stand outside to get sun and fresh air on his skin.
He loves having Shane so close and he loathes himself for it because he should be able to do all these things without relying on his partner. He is a drowning man. He doesn’t want to bring Shane down with him. He’s—fine, fuck, he’s embarrassed.
“You’re embarrassed?” Shane asks, because Shane is full of questions. “But… I need help all the time. Is that embarrassing?”
“No,” Ilya snaps. Then, “Fuck. This is different.”
“Oh. How is it different?”
Ilya tuts and waves one hand in dismissal, even as the other squeezes Shane’s body closer to his. He gets the point Shane is making. He does. And he’s sure when he’s more usual he’ll be grateful. But he knows Shane must leave soon, and all Ilya has managed to do in the last four hours is shower and wash his pillows, which strikes him both as pathetic and herculean.
Shane asked Ilya to let him. So Ilya lets him. And when Shane asks Ilya to call him when he feels deep tired like this again, even if Shane is playing, even if they are both busy—
Ilya says yes.
#
Ilya’s house looks significantly better the next time David comes.
Shane has just left. Montreal is playing a home game tomorrow, and Shane has his obligations as captain. He’d floated shirking them, staying, but it would kill Ilya if Shane did anything, anything to jeopardize his career. Even staying to pull Ilya out of a pool of sorrow.
David looks around the house with a small smile on his face. It’s the same one Shane gets when they face off for the puck—like he’s quietly surprised and delighted by where he is, like he could stretch time by force of will. They keep their quiet as Ilya puts on a pot of coffee and David pulls a large Tupperware of spaghetti from a reusable grocery bag. They’re a family of Good Canadians; Ilya can only laugh quietly. He, too, is surprised and delighted by where he is.
David’s hand is heavy like his son’s when he pats Ilya gently on the shoulder. “You ready for puzzles, kid?”
When Ilya inhales, there is room in his rib cage for air. Just enough. “Yes. I’m ready.”