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He was stupid back then, clearly, and he is stupid now as he turns to Shane and tries to make it a sex thing. “Are you jealous?” he smirks. “It’s okay. I can try to knock you up next?”
“You are fucking dealing with this one on your own,” Shane says, dropping his hands into the air, and stomping out of the kitchen before coming right back in after just a few seconds.
“Is it true? Is there any way this could be true? Any way at all?”
Shane zeroes back in on Ilya’s phone, brow furrowed, where it is lying on the counter, going to hover over it with careful floaty hands. The news has made it to TMZ which is quite the feat of its own. Bygone are the days of Ilya’s enfant terrible shenanigans acting as fodder for the bottom feeders of celebricy. Pre-settle down season, Ilya never quite made it to regular famous, not the way Shane did after his brilliant burning roses are red affair, but he certainly found himself toeing a line of becoming a household name. Dependent on the household really. Frat houses lined with crust and empty beer cans and women’s brassiers, maybe. One of those depraved sex dungeons, Shane had joked. Yes, exactly, my feats of sex have spread worldwide, he had grinned wide back.
Shane picks the phone up, cradles the thing carefully, like a dead bird, or – Ilya thinks – ironically, like a baby. Makes sure that his perfect finger pads aren’t touching the screen like he’s going to spook the article, like it is alive.
“I mean…biologically, yes.”
“Don’t be funny. Don’t be fucking funny right now.”
“Then, no!” Ilya exclaims, and he can hear how his voice is not solid around the word. He misses the consonant of the Russian ‘nyet’. The English ‘no’ just makes you sound like a pussy. The way the vowel can keep rolling and rolling and rolling. Nooooo. Nooooooooooo. Like a sullen toddler at the skirts of its mother. God, have all his analogies always been so child and parent centered?
Shane looks up at him seriously like the word is finding footing first on his face, his gorgeous face, Ilya thinks, in Russian. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” he can’t quite tell how well he is lying. He’s in two minds right now. The kid would have been conceived – Jesus Christ – sometime in 2012? His memories of those times are hazy at best, blacked out at their worst. Scribbled over with black sharpie. He always thought it was stupid that Americans referred to things by their brands like Kleenex instead of tissue, or Sharpie instead of marker, but right now it made sense. Generic shit couldn’t describe the severity of how little he fucking remembered from some of those nights.
When he said this out loud his teammates would joke about the invisible hand and open markets and how he was a commie bastard. I guess the only hand you know is invisible, he had tutted once at a Raiders defenseman he can’t bring the name of to his mind right now because the only name he’s thinking is Jessica.
Jessica. Jessica? In the picture she certainly looked like someone he might have hooked up with.
The other name he is thinking is the name he is always thinking. Shane. Shane.
Shane looks like someone he would really rather go back to doing the soft slackened moving across their living space he was doing before, like a sunsoaked cat, before the notifications came pouring in.
Shane had been petting his heavy hand all over Ilya’s face and neck and it had felt so good. He had been popping blueberries, still wet and dripping from the kitchen sink, into his parted mouth from a loosely closed fist. Occasionally shaking the handful of berries around like he was about to roll a set of die, or jacking someone off.
Shane is now rubbing his hands over his own nape, the blueberries carefully placed in a rolling formation on the counter, leaning against each other like newborn kittens that haven’t learnt how to walk yet. If Shane was someone else they may have been dramatically dropped to the floor or slung into the Alabaster – “You never have just white walls, Ilya” – leaving indigo bullet holes, but of course Shane opened his fist carefully to let them dislodge from the comforting crevice of his palm. He’s muttering to himself before he comes to a standstill and looks at Ilya like he has just realised something terrible. Truly terrible.
“I won’t love it,” Shane says before immediately clasping one hand over his own mouth like he cannot believe what he has just said. He cannot.
“I wouldn’t,” he doubles down, lifting the hand barely off his mouth to say it. He looks a little like a wooden doll. A pinochio, Ilya’s mind guesses. But pinochio’s thing is that he lies, is it not? He knows Shane is telling the truth right now.
“Oh my god, is that terrible of me?” Shane asks as if Ilya is God or the priest in the confessional booth. Forgive me father for I may have born a bastard son. Forgive me father for I know I cannot love the bastard son of my deviant homosexual husband.
Ilya wonders who would come out worse onto the steps of the church, back into daylight. Which one of them would be struck down first. He thinks maybe himself. Shane’s sin is completely complicit to Ilya’s actions.
“I-” Shane is shaking his head, always thinking ahead, “I wouldn’t. I would resent it. Even though it’s…” he swallows hard, looks dizzy, “you. Even though the fucking kid would be half you.”
“Shane,” Ilya says carefully. Shane is working himself up into a real fucking lather, shifting around where Ilya sits still, trying to assume the body language of someone who is cool, calm and collected. Shane has taken four separate poses in the last three minutes, leant against the counter, looking into the fridge, straight-backed and staring, and sat down on the bar stool.
“Would you leave me?” Shane asks next.
“Shane,” Ilya’s face falls. “Of course, I would not fucking leave you.”
He tries to not get angry at the audacity to ask. This is difficult. This is a difficult situation. Neither of them want to be in this situation. It is a trending topic on twitter now, probably other places too, wherever does or doesn’t matter.
There are snippets of messages appearing at the top of his screen. Names he hasn’t seen in years. Some he messaged only this morning.
Rozanov!! WTF?!
Bro ur a dog cryinglaughingemoji
Holy shit I know we joked about it but I still kind of can’t believe it. Is it true?
How is Shane doing???
That one makes him reach over and shut the whole thing off. Twists the screen dark with a stranglehold on its pulse. It makes him feel queasy. Uneasy.
“I don’t think I have ever seen this woman before in my fucking life,” Ilya splutters, gesturing at where Shane placed the phone down again, where the screen has gone dark. It’s a lie. Half-lie. Sure he can’t actually remember her but that doesn’t really mean anything at all. There are many things he has no memory of.
“If it was true, why would she go to the press and not to you first?” Shane is pacing, like if he can wear through the kitchen tiles the answer will reveal itself in the foundation.
“Exactly,” Ilya splays his hands open like it is obvious, exactly what he was thinking, when in truth he hasn’t really gotten further than the memory searching and is eternally grateful that Shane is constructing some defence for him, for them.
“Maybe she did try to go to you first?” Shane continues thinking out loud. It has taken many years for Shane to allow Ilya into this process. Taking his inside thinking out for Ilya. Usually Ilya is so happy to be taken inside of Shane, but this is nice too. If a little overwhelming sometimes.
He realises that Shane is staring at him with a look.
“What?” Ilya asks.
“Did she? Ever reach out?”
“No,” Ilya wants to kill the idea before it even touches the fertile ground of Shane’s mind. “No. Never. And I would have told you if she did.”
He tries to hide the wince on his face. When Shane is scared he can get unintentionally mean. Unintentionally accusatory.
Shane nods once, satisfied, “Okay. But maybe still, like a missed phone call, or a spam message, or, or-”
“I will check,” Ilya says to give Shane something tenuous to hold onto. He slips the phone back into his hand and goes for his Instagram dm’s.
He rolls through message log after message log, finding nothing but unanswered messages from other people that make him cringe. Shane makes him go all the way back to 2012 which is absurd. He sits there as the sun falls lower in their kitchen in Ottawa, mourning all the things he was going to do today, scrolling carefully so as to not jump the algorithm and refresh the page. Somewhere around 2016 somebody sends him a message and he has to scroll all the way down again. He does it because he loves his husband. His husband who is surely worrying a hole into his fist with his canines while he calls around. Ever the action taker. He talks to their lawyer. He talks to Yuna which Ilya can’t even find the energy to feel some type of way about. He talks to her first loudly in the kitchen standing over Ilya and then he makes his way down the hallway where he talks to her in hushed tones that feel much more abrasive.
There’s nothing in the end.
Their lawyer reassures Shane that they don’t have to worry, Ilya watches Shane scoff at that, that they will find and contact the woman in question.
In bed later that evening Shane cries. Cries big fat rolling tears that scare Ilya because Shane almost never cries.
“I don’t want there to be a baby,” he sobs, “I don’t want,” Ilya wipes his runny nose with his bare hand, clear snot glistening like water in a fairytale painting, cascading down his philtrum so beautifully. Shane takes a deep staggering breath in, “I don’t want there to be a fucking kid.”
“I know, Shanusha,” Ilya whispers, his heart clutching painfully in his chest, wishing he could do something, anything.
“After all of this, after all of that. I want our life. I want our life. What we worked for. What we waited for. What you worked for,” he pushes a clutched fist against Ilya’s chest.
Shane is crying so hard he is breaking a sweat. Ilya swipes his sweaty bang less away from his forehead and more around on his forehead. Watches as the tendrils find new formations to stick into. At one point Ilya could almost trace a perfect parallelogram. At another there is a K.
“I want to be the most important person in your life. Forever. Is that awful?” Shane looks up at him through tearsoaked lashes and Ilya feels nauseated with how much he loves him.
“No,” Ilya shakes his head, brow drawn in despair. “No…” he mutters again.
“I want to be your baby,” Shane sobs again, fresh tears breaking through like wild birds across the evening sky. “I want to be your baby,” he repeats in a way that skews towards demand. Like he is not just admitting to a want. He is asking it of the world at large.
“You are.” Ilya rocks him. “You are my baby.”
“My baby. My baby. My baby.”
He says it over and over in English then Russian until Shane’s chest is stuttering around empty sounds, until his breathing gets louder and then quiet again.
Ilya hands him a tissue from his bedside table and then Shane is kissing him, open mouthed and wet faced still, and dragging the whole line of his body against Ilya’s.
He holds Shane by his hard ribs as he fucks down into him, with short unrelenting thrusts. He’s kind of unsure if Shane is crying again because he is sad or if he is sex crying. Nonetheless, the encouraging sounds and words he is spilling makes Ilya think Shane would kill him if he stopped.
“I want-” Shane staccato’s the words through his heavy moaning.
“What do you want? Anything. I will give you anything.” Ilya doesn’t slow his pace. Sinks into him again and again like it is the most magical, natural thing in the world. Like the sun rising every morning, and setting every night, is Ilya Rozanov’s cock disappearing inside of and reappearing from Shane Hollander.
Shane wrenches the words out like they hurt, “I want to give you anything.”
Ilya leans down and kisses him all over his damp, pink face, “Tell me what you want.”
They have said shit like this before in bed due to the nature of being freaks in the sheets but it is an entirely different load of laundry as Shane babbles it through this time.
He wants me to fuck him hard, he wants me to come inside. He wants me to knock him up.
—
To say practice was awkward the next day would be like calling the pope religious.
For a moment it is lingering like an elephant in the room. Ilya has always hated this stupid expression, almost as much as he hates what it describes. He is in great habit of pointing at the elephant, making other people look at the elephant, turning their heads in its direction if they refuse to look at it themselves. Have you met my friend, the elephant? It is how he got Shane in the end. (And it is how Shane got him.)
Shane is back to being pissed. Ilya doesn’t blame him. There’s only so much being dicked down good can do, as much as he hates to admit the limits of his skills.
“We could stay home,” Ilya had suggested, knowing Shane would never agree.
“No, it would make it look like we had something to hide.”
Ilya wanted to say these are our friends, this is our team. We don’t have to perform for them, but he knows Shane has a harder time not performing for people. Even people who care for him. It is relaxing to him in some strange sense. Fake it till you make it. He does it with Ilya sometimes.
Shane had gotten behind the wheel without another word shared all morning. Halfway to the rink he pulled over and muttered something about how he shouldn’t be driving when he feels like this and made Ilya switch to the driver's seat.
Ilya had considered making a joke about Shane already experiencing morning sickness but decided he wanted to make it to lunch at least.
“Hey Roz,” Hazy attempts at casual. Shane storms past without a word in either of their direction.
“He is very angry,” Ilya half whispers to Hazy in precise careful words as they get changed, and is half surprised to hear that there is genuine fear in his own voice. How his eyes are flickering between Shane’s heavy set shoulders and Hazy’s grimacing face. Wow, he has truly become a husband. Afraid of his spouse. Confiding in another man about it like he’s in a tricky situation. Gulp. Help.
“Really?” Hazy says it half comical-like, like Shane should just laugh it off, and this pisses Ilya off. Off, off, off.
“Surely can’t be the first time? He’s not used to this by now?”
And most of the time Ilya loves this team but there are moments. Moments when he does get the smallest sense that they see him and Shane as half of a whole couple. Maybe not half, maybe three quarters. Not quite a serious couple. Because they are two men, there must be something kind of humorous underpinning it all.
“How the fuck do you think your wife would feel, eh?” Ilya chides.
“Wait so it’s true?” Hazy exclaims because he has no fucking decorum, and Ilya can feel eyes swivelling in his direction. Can feel eyes swivelling in Shane’s. He thinks that’s desperately unfair.
Haas looks genuinely fearful, like he’s worried his parents are going to get divorced or something. Ilya tries to remember if Haas has divorced parents. Maybe this is deja vu for him.
“Okay,” Ilya shouts through the room, clapping his large, dry hands for attention. If you’re happy and you know it.
Usually he is so good at diffusing a situation like this. With a quick joke. A new perspective. A cutting remark. He has nothing to say right now. Shane won’t meet his eye but his body is at least turned in his direction.
“Everyone shut the fuck up,” he says to bring in the scragglers.
He also has the vague sense that in another life he wouldn’t be treating this very seriously at all. Especially in this particular setting. He would come into the Raiders locker room dick swinging talking about how his massive cock was bound to brute force someone pregnant past the condom at some point. He wouldn’t be all — weird about it. He thinks unfairly for a moment, glancing at where Shane has his arms crossed over his chest, that he’s being weird about it because Shane is involved in it all. As his husband. As his spouse.
But that’s not weird. That’s deeply, deeply normal.
“Yeah, that’s basically it,” he shrugs, realising he’s got no better way to put it, “Shut the fuck up. Okay?” he calls out.
“Okay?” he repeats.
The two syllables ring through the room in a chorus. He can take the lukewarm response, this was by far not his most rousing speech.
Yuna calls again after practice. Their lawyer, again. Farah, again. Ilya is pulled for a chat with Wiebe and management. They wanted Shane in there as well but he refused. Making up some excuse about having to be home to let in an electrician or whatever.
“Yeah, you do that,” Ilya had lamely supported his excuse.
Shane is vying wildly between standing solidly by Ilya’s side — Ilya’s favourite, like the politician's wife through the sex scandal, pissed in private, moored in public, an anchor, proof that this shitty, shitty man may be shitty but he is worth something to someone, somehow — and leaving Ilya out in the cold. Ilya hates the fucking cold despite being born and raised in it. Once as a babe in Moscow. Again as a young man in Boston.
He tells Wiebe and management what their lawyer told him to.
There is no real reason to believe any of this is true. Any statement by him or god forbid, the team, would just legitimise the unfounded claim.
They agree, thank god.
“It’s not a good look, kid,” Wiebe keeps saying throughout. Ilya wants him to stop calling him that. He is almost in his mid thirties. And married. He doesn’t want to be treated like a kid about it. He wants to be treated like Shane Hollander’s husband. Because he is. Because it’s the only version of himself he ever really enjoyed being. He keeps looking at the empty seat next to him, where there was clearly supposed to be one Shane Hollander.
He wishes Shane was there. Wishes Shane was in a position to take over the reigns, hold his hand, speak for him. Like he did that one time in Canadian customs when, nonsensically, the border force kicked up a fuss about Ilya’s passport.
“Uh. Can I get my husband, please?” Ilya had asked, suddenly finding English cloying and foreign in his mouth after all these years, sat down in this weird room with three people watching him like they were waiting for him to slip up about something, somehow.
“What?” Shane had said many times over when entering the room, it sounded a little like indignation but it was mostly confusion. Shane’s brow was furrowed over his glasses — his face was relieved for a moment when he saw Ilya’s who gave him a little wave before immediately assuming back into its furrow.
“He’s my husband,” Shane had repeated, when sat down on Ilya’s side of the table, getting his Canadian passport out to show their matching last names. His beautiful sensible husband.
My last name. On my side. My side. My side of the table.
Ilya had gestured like — see, I told you.
He felt kind of smug about it like he was a teenage boy whose Canadian girlfriend had turned out to be real. He thinks Pike was the one to make this joke about him first. He had asked Shane to explain it later in bed and Shane had laughed in that bright brilliant unguarded way he did sometimes. Ilya was elated to see and hear it and then he was annoyed that Hayden’s joke had made Shane laugh like that.
“Unbelievable, unbelievable,” Shane had repeated, pissed, while they got into their Uber after they were finally through arrivals.
“Clearly they are not Hockey fans,” Ilya had murmured.
Wiebe says it again when it is just the two of them.
“It’s not a good look, kid.” And then he tacks on, “And how is…”
“Shane?” Ilya hates that already people seem to be erasing his husband, making space for something else. Someone else.
Like Shane has no right to feel whatever he feels about it. Like there are more important things. Maybe Ilya should think there are more important things. He selfishly doesn’t want to live a life where something has to be more important to him than Shane. Certainly not in this way.
When he gets home through the snow the house is swollen with mourning and Shane is lying in the dark of their bedroom.
“Shane. I think I have to know,” he says quietly into the air of the still bedroom. He has been thinking all day. He has been thinking of when he was small. When he was eight years old. How he, unknowingly, only had four years left with his mother. If he was given the chance, he would have taken those four years. Taken them no matter who she was or where she had come from. No matter that she was late. Or married. Or gay. Or lived in a different country.
“Yep, I agree,” Shane says a little too fast, like he has been bracing himself for the impact and prepared a ‘No, no, no, seriously don’t worry about it, it’s okay. Like seriously don’t worry about it at all’. Canadian.
Ilya kind of wishes he was crying again at least then he would want comfort. Would want Ilya.
“I don’t want our life to change,” Shane whispers into his pillow. Ilya is stroking his hair, has probably stroked it over thirty times.
“Then it won’t,” he says. He knows he cannot promise this. Ilya cannot even begin to think about things like shared custody and visitation. Maybe she only wants the money. But he knows if the kid does turn out to be his he would want to be involved.
“Do you think I am being dramatic?” Shane asks. Ilya wants to say, yes, a little.
“Yes, very dramatic. How dare you?”
“What if it’s not even true? What if it's not even yours but it ruins us anyway? Everything around this.”
“You think this will happen?” Ilya asks.
“No,” Shane admits. “I think we are strong.”
“Then we will be fine,” and then he says something very scary and vulnerable. Something he tells Shane all the time in various ways but very rarely as frankly as this.
“I trust you.”
—
Two days later their lawyer calls and says they have made contact with the woman. This Jessica.
Without getting into the details they confirm that she has serious cause to believe Ilya is the father of the child she birthed on the sixth of April two thousand and twelve. They say all the circumstances are potentially coincidental. Because of course they are. What cold hard evidence could there even be. They also say she wants to meet Ilya.
“Absolutely not,” Shane chimes in, who has the call set to speaker phone on the coffee table. The call is happening on Shane’s phone.
“Who, the woman or the child?” Shane asks immediately after.
“The woman.”
“Absolutely not,” Shane repeats in the exact same cadence.
“She agrees that there should be no contact between you and the child until the results of the paternity test.”
“And after that?” Ilya asks, not looking at where he knows Shane has glanced up at him.
“We enter negotiations. But she seems interested in, well-” the woman hesitates, for a moment lost for words, rare for a lawyer, “things beyond economic contribution.”
Shane scoffs.
“And of course if the test indicates you are the father, you will have certain parental rights bestowed upon you. This isn’t a custody situation where you ever gave those up, or had the opportunity to do so. So…” she trails off.
“When do we do the test?” Shane asks. His husband, always so goal oriented.
—
The waiting room is nice. It’s a nice clinic.
He scrolls on his phone for a while and then he decides he should probably try thinking about it.
He cannot really bring himself to care about spreading his seed. He has no need to see himself replicated in the world. He has briefly thought that he would like to see a little Shane. His Shane, replicated. But beyond that, in all seriousness — which is a state Shane likes very much — they probably want other things more.
What he finds he keeps thinking about is his mother.
The child would be twenty five percent Irina Rozanova. He can not let that just walk around in the world without him at least knowing. There has been no confirmation on the gender but for just a moment he lets himself think it is a girl.
He knows it is not his mother.
Even if the child is his.
Even if it is a girl.
It won’t be his mother.
But he can’t help imagine it for a moment.
I would take care of you now. This time I take care of you.
And maybe he would. He would have to. He would love you. You would love each other. My greatest dream.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Ilya tries to think of other reasons he could be here as he patiently waits his turn. He feels awfully large and cumbersome in the quilted room with its dark lacquered green pothos on the table.
His eyes flick over the brochures in front of him. Semen. He could be here to test his sperm.
Then he could probably get Shane to send him a dirty picture. He gets his phone out, to test his theory.
L: If I was here to test my sperm would you send me pix?
The x is a leftover from his manwhoring days. He thinks maybe this will help. Shane gets awfully horny sometimes when he affects his previous self.
“Fuckboy Ilya,” Shane had coined him. “When you would message me that you were missing my mouth at 3 aye ehm and then not acknowledge me until we were at the face off and then tell me again.”
J: Your sperm has done enough damage. You should be there to get a vasectomy if anything.
J: Why can’t you pick from one of the hundreds of photos I have sent before?
L: Novelty.
Shane goes quiet for a moment.
J: Yes, I would.
Ilya smiles.
L: Good because they have just told me they need me to cum in cup as well. :(
J: You’re such an asshole.
J: What would you like me to send?
Ilya’s heart is starting to pick up pace and this is entirely, entirely inappropriate. He cannot go into that private room with a half chub. He also can’t quite tell if Shane is being serious or still just roleplaying. His whole leg is jittering where he’s bouncing his foot.
L: Read the last word of your text again.
J: I don’t get it.
L: The one before that.
Shane sends him a middle finger emoji.
The nurse swabs his cheeks and while he feels the cotton push at the plush of the inside of his mouth he remembers, maybe due to the nature of their text conversation, that he lets Shane cum in there. Like, often.
He thinks back on it. When would have been the last. Probably four days ago, maybe five. Unfortunately, with the exception of their original rendezvous, the whole Billie Jean situation has put a slight damper on their sex life.
Should he tell the nurse?
He imagines the looks on everyones faces when the test results come back saying S. Hollander and he almost laughs out loud around the nurses pale blue gloved hands.
He cannot tell the nurse. She will say something like we are measuring a different whatever from inside your mouth and then Ilya will have to drive home knowing he told a healthcare professional he swallows on the reg.
Shane would be mortified. For a moment he considers telling her just so he can tell Shane. Maybe he will lie and say he did and then tell Shane he is joking and then watch as Shane’s face tries to figure out if he is joking or not.
When he gets out of the room saying, “Thank you. Goodbye,” he sees Shane has sent a pic. His breath hitches.
They are going to be okay.
—
The results take seven to ten days. Shane marks it on the calendar in the kitchen. Marks the seven day mark and the ten day mark.
“How are you feeling?” Shane has his arm over Ilya’s shoulders, sat tucked up against him, knees half on his lap on their sofa. Ilya wants to bury his face into Shane’s crotch and never come out again.
“Okay,” he says instinctively, “Weird,” he correct.
“It is weird. It’s a weird situation.”
“Are you thinking about your Dad?” Shane asks when Ilya doesn’t respond.
Ilya starts a little at that because the truth is he hadn’t thought about him at all, hadn’t thought of it that way at all. That he would be continuing a line of patriarchs.
He had only been thinking of his mother the whole day. His mother, and Shane.
“No,” Ilya says and it is easy because it is the truth.
“Are you thinking of your mother?” Shane asks like he’s reading his mind. He always says it like this, which Ilya likes. Grigor was his Dad, but Irina was his Mother. He doesn’t really know why Shane says it this way but he appreciates it.
“Yes.”
Shane is pulling gently at the hairs at the back of his head, right at the edge of his hairline, scratching short nails over the cusp behind his ear. It feels really fucking good.
Ilya is often a little surprised at just how good the small things feel with Shane. His stroking steady hand on Ilya’s belly after he has eaten too much pumpkin katsudon at Yuna and David’s. The gentle brushing of their forearms while they bustle next to each other in the locker room. Even something stupid like a sidewise fist bump after a pass-goal on the ice. Like they are bros.
“You are my bro,” Shane had said once when Ilya pointed this out. “My husband. And my bro.”
Ilya sometimes thinks over that sentence when he is going to sleep.
He is my best friend, Ilya thinks, as Shane’s hands keep fondling his curls. They have fallen slightly from the exertion of the day. Ilya usually huffs when they get flat like this, but right now he is happy to let Shane take all of the tension out of him, even the kind that is bred right into his DNA. His hair follicle pattern. He always had such a knack for breaking Ilya apart. Taking to pieces things he previously thought were eternal, unchanging.
“You are so very handsome,” Shane says out of nowhere.
Ilya turns towards his face. He has been zoning out in the direction of ESPN.
There is something happening on Shane’s face. Ilya understands it when he speaks. When he says,
“You would have beautiful children.”
Ilya does not know what to say about this so he leans over and catches Shane’s lips in his. He does not have the words to say what he wants to say. Not because it is a language barrier, not like that, like back in the day, but because he doesn’t think what he wants to say exists. He doesn’t think it is real.
Shane rides him right there on the sofa, one solid hand pushing back on the middle of Ilya’s chest. When Ilya glances down to see his favourite goddamn sight in the fucking world, he sees how Shane has slightly spread his middle and ring finger so he’s not disturbing the cross pendant stuck to his chest by the light sheen of sweat crowding his skin. Ilya wants to cry.
The end of the cross is tending in the direction of Shane’s marital ring. The same shade of gold glints back at him in two parts.
—
Cliff sends him one of those Maury Povich clips.
You are……………………………....not the father.
Where the not-father in question runs amock wild after the news hits his lobe. Wilding out. Tearing at his face. Tongue wagging. Skipping. Jumping. Kissing everyone in sight.
Ilya: Thanks brother sidewisecryinglaughingemoji
When they got the news there were many plans made.
“I’m going to pop fucking champagne,” from Shane. “Is that tacky?”
“Yes. And I am going to take you on vacation and I am going to fuck you on the beach,” from Ilya.
“I feel so guilty that I am so relieved,” Shane said.
“I don’t. I feel amazing.”
“I love you.”
“I love you. I will only ever put a baby in you. You are the only one. Let me try again,” he nods seriously. “This time I think it will stick.”