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The memory is fuzzy around the edges now, the way a VHS tape burns out when you play it too many times. It goes something like this:
Ilya’s at the table, eating breakfast. His mother is sitting next to him, reading. Or maybe she’s looking over one of his homework assignments. She’s murmuring quietly to herself–homework then–a pencil tracing each line. Either way, at that moment it’s just them two. She reaches out, absentmindedly, to stroke a hand through his curls. He scoops another spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth.
Then it morphs, and he’s sitting on the subway. They ran into one of his mom’s friends, and for the first time in a long time her smile reaches her eyes. He watches the way she talks animatedly, about one of their old mutual friends. Then it’s about how he started hitting his growth spurt early, and she had said something about needing to buy him new skates already. It was supposed to be a complaint, but it was devoid of any real anger, frustration–just proud in that way that Russian mothers are, without ever actually saying it. Мой сын.
His coach was old school, Soviet in a way that his dad approved of. He’d bark at Ilya–быстрéе, Ильа, ну, уже!–and Ilya would dutifully obey. That day was no different, and Ilya pushed himself farther, faster, stick cracking against the ice. She’d sat in the stands, book in her hands, open but unread. She always watched him, rapt, so she could give him feedback later. Отсюда мне лучше видно, я всегда смотрю за тобой, мой милый.
Ilya can never remember the way home; it just looks like the way to the rink. Three stops, there, and back.
Then she’s pulling медовик from the fridge, on the plate she kept in the back of the cupboard just for special occasions. It’s sweet on his tongue, spoiling his appetite for dinner, but that doesn’t matter. It’s her birthday, and it’s just the two of them. The slice she cut for him is too big, but he eats the whole thing anyway. She watches each bite, a rare twinkle in her eyes.
He remembers being ashamed of not getting her a gift, having forgotten to find the time for it, but she had shook her head and said, ты самый лучший подарок, мой милый. Her hand was warm in his curls, laughing as she tugged out a few snags.
It’s her birthday, the last one he got, and he can’t even remember if she had a piece that day. Just that it was her favorite, and she gave Ilya another slice after dinner. She let Ilya sing her happy birthday after they got back from practice; they didn’t sing it again after dinner.
She doesn’t have another birthday.
-
When Ilya awakes, he is alone. That in itself is not surprising, nor is it depressing. Based on the low light coming in though the floor-to-ceiling windows, Shane probably got up at least half an hour ago, if not more. Ilya doesn’t move to pick up his phone to check the time, or turn his head to look at the alarm clock. Shane always turns it off after he gets up anyway, and you sleep like the dead, Rozanov.
He tries closing his eyes, chasing the last dregs of sleep as it leaves him. Instead, he feels wide awake, laying there. Their physio would probably say he’s going to tweak his neck, something about sciatica, but he’s at least comfortable on his stomach, head turned to the right.
That part of his brain that’s usually too quiet to be heard over the sound of thoughts about Shane, hockey, Anya, and the rest of this life he’s built for himself is the only one that seems to break through this morning. He replays the memory of the медовик, trying to see if he can still taste the cream, feel the way the layers came apart between his teeth. It’s too far away now, decades away.
Once, belied by the notion of a city teeming with other Russians, he spent the day going from bakery to bakery in New York City, trying to find a cake that would even come close. It was the dead of winter, and he blamed any teariness on the way the wind whipped at his face. He ignored texts from everyone but Shane.
At the end of the day, he was out probably several hundred dollars, he was jittery from the sugar, and he wanted to punch something. Someone.
Too much cream in the layers. Not enough honey. Cream too thin, too thick. The cake was too spongey, too dense, too fluffy. It didn’t even matter he took the recipe book with him when he moved to Canada, he was in a hotel in New York City and he didn’t know how to bake anyway.
Why was the only person who knew how to make this fucking cake properly dead?
He’d called Shane from his hotel that evening, after the Voyageurs’ game. Shane sensed his mood because they talked in low tones for hours about nothing until he woke up. He fell asleep without realizing it, waking thankful only that Shane had cajoled him into plugging his phone in (I will leave here, because you say I will regret if I don’t charge overnight. Suit yourself, Rozanov. See, now is not fun because you don’t argue. I plugged in, Hollander.) The call time was five hours, dropping around two a.m. when Shane’s phone had died.
Now he’s only glad he can’t remember the exact taste of each imitation, the way each one fell short, only that as a whole they weren’t right. At least he’d been able to order in Russian, and not a single one of the grandmothers behind the counters gave a rats ass about who he was.
Ilya shifts to get an arm under his head, turning it the other way. The sun is filtering through the trees in a way that should be breathtaking, should make Ilya glad that Shane insisted on all these windows. Instead, it fills him with dread. Today will come regardless of whether he wants it to or not.
Distantly, he hears the front door open, Anya’s nails scraping the flooring. She needs them trimmed, he thinks absentmindedly, it annoys Shane when they get too long. Still, he doesn’t move.
By the time Shane makes his way up the stairs, Ilya’s closed his eyes again. Maybe if he pretends he’s asleep, he can fake being asleep through the next eighteen or so hours.
He hears the way Shane tries to undress himself quietly, the soft rustle of his running shorts and briefs coming off. Ilya can’t keep the soft smile that happens when he hears the clothing plop into the laundry basket. Maybe he can’t get Shane to just drop his clothing on the floor like Ilya is wont to do, but they went into the hamper messily, and that is a victory sweeter than any other. Especially on a day like today.
Anya comes bounding into the room as Shane closes the bathroom door and the shower turns on. She jumps on the bed now that Shane’s not in the room, plodding dutifully across the mattress so she can walk across Ilya’s back and drop to her belly by him. Her nose is wet, cold, and insistent all over his face. He wonders what she smells that makes her lick his cheek just once.
Ilya indulges her, opening his eyes briefly and lifting a hand so he can pet her. Her fur is soft, slightly wiry, but straight. For a moment, he considers petting his own head to see what his mom felt when she did it but–
His hand drops, heavy, back to the mattress and Anya whines. She tries to squirm her body under it and Ilya lets her, but he doesn’t move other than that.
The shower is a steady drone in the background, occasionally interrupted by Anya’s tail thumping against the mattress. Her hair is probably all over the sheets–Shane’s going to be so mad.
When the bathroom door clicks open, the smell of Shane’s soap and shampoo floods the room, wafting along with the gentle movement of steam escaping. Ilya listens to his husband’s steps across the room, softened by the rug. Then, the mattress dips to his right.
“Ilya,” Shane’s voice is unbearably tender as he threads a hand through Ilya’s hair, and the part of Ilya that’s always seventeen wants to snap in return. He keeps quiet, though. “I know you’re awake.”
“If I was awake, I would have stopped Anya from getting hair all over your sheets.” Half of his face is smooshed into the pillow, so words are half audible. “But I did not, so.”
“I’m doing laundry later.” The hand in his hair tugs gently, scratching at his scalp. Shane’s nails are probably also too long (which would be funny to Ilya on most other days, but).
It’s not that Ilya has the date marked on the calendar–I’m going to be depressed every year on this day in June!–but he knows at some point he told Shane when her birthday was. He’s known Shane too long to even think he might’ve forgotten. He’s been sluggish, moping the past few days, too.
“Давай, лубовь, ставай.” Come on, love, get up.
Ilya finally turns his head toward Shane, shifting his entire body to accommodate the change. Anya isn’t too put out by Ilya’s arm going around Shane’s waist, the way he drags himself across the mattress so he can drop his head into his husband’s lap. She gets off the bed and makes her way to where she can flop down on Shane’s socked feet, sighing as she settles on the rug.
For a moment, Ilya buries his face in Shane’s legs, letting the way he runs his hands through Ilya’s curls and scratches his nails down Ilya’s naked back soothe him. He breathes in the smell of their detergent, the hypoallergenic and eco-friendly one Shane insists on because Ilya allegedly gets skin irritation with other brands. There’s the lotion he likes, the one that makes Shane roll his eyes at the price tag but uses anyway. There’s whatever smell is just Shane, underneath it all.
He realizes he’s crying into Shane’s pants when he has to heave a gasp, sniffling to keep the tears that are leaking from his nose from making the wet spot below his face any worse. The hands touching him don’t stutter in their rhythm, as if they haven’t noticed anything.
Shane’s voice is soft but not with pity. “You’ll feel better if you take Anya out.”
At the mention of her name, her tail thumps against the ground. Ilya tries to breathe normally but it happens in starts and fits, the way it does when you can’t catch your breath. He digs his fingers into Shane’s waist.
“You are,” Ilya has to clear his throat twice, voice thick with tears, face still pressed into Shane’s legs, “You are going to over–overexhaust our child, Hollander.”
Shane hums above him, “She only went for the last mile. Thought you might want to take her with you.”
Finally, Ilya lifts his face so he can look at the expression on his husband’s face: pained, but more so because he doesn’t like it when Ilya is like this, wants to fix it. Ilya knows what he looks like, nose and eyes red, rest of his face splotchy. He can feel where his skin is wet. Shane just holds his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks, not wiping away the tears but for the sake of touching Ilya.
“You are going soft on me, Hollander,” His voice breaks midway through Shane’s last name, “Tabloids will say you like me.”
“Never.”
And Shane pulls his face towards his own, making Ilya finally rise from where he was prostrate on the mattress, so they can press their lips together. It’s chaste, soft. Then Ilya curls himself so he can rest his forehead on Shane’s shoulder.
He wants to make a snarky comment about Shane’s gray shirt now being stained with his tears too, wants to joke about the wet spot on Shane’s legs, but he just exhales shakily. The hands that were holding his face go back to stroking his hair, running up and down his back.
“Breakfast, then a run.” The tone is authoritative, and Ilya just nods, smearing more tears into Shane’s shirt.
And then, because he can, because he promised to love and cherish, because he’s allowed to, Ilya bites Shane’s shoulder.
-
There’s another memory that bothers Ilya every year.
In the years leading up, it wasn’t always a медовик. There were years where she made an endless rotating selection of different trial cakes. Ilya’s father always found a good excuse to make himself scarce around her birthday, an oddly well-timed reprieve from the tension and endless criticism. Ilya got a few days of hockey and his mother and cakes, and just that. Alexei would usually fuck off with their dad, and that was fine with Ilya. That red recipe book, filled with pages of her curving, neat, cyrillic script, would come out, and Ilya got to focus on that.
When he was seven, she settled on наполеон. It was flaky and delicious, inspired by one she had tried at a bakery in St. Petersburg while pregnant with Ilya.
When he was nine, she decided on муравейник. The sugar coated Ilya’s mouth, the chocolate and cookies stuck to his teeth.
That year was the first year he didn’t see her make any other cakes. Maybe it’s that he can’t remember anything else leading up to her birthday, his therapist says trauma does funny things to memory, but Ilya’s certain she’d just made the медовик and nothing else. Would probably bet one of his trophies on it.
Every year, he tries to puzzle through it. Shane once told him he was torturing himself, not unkindly, and Ilya knew he was right, but he did it anyway. He fights to remember tagging along to the grocery store for ingredients, to think of what she bought the previous years to see if he can picture it all spread out in the kitchen.
He’d cracked an egg shell into the batter when he was eight, and his mom spent five minutes trying to fish it out of the mixing bowl. They’d burnt the павлова when he was five, too engrossed in a discussion about something his coach had said earlier that week, but they snacked on it while making the rest of the test cakes. But she made the медовик entirely by herself that year.
Ilya only saw the process in passing when he wanted something from the kitchen, taking a break from studying. When he’d tried to help she’d told him he could sit at the kitchen table and work there, вот тебе у ест помощь.
By the time he noticed, the cake was finished, plated and sitting to chill overnight in the fridge.
-
Ilya knows Shane’s doing his best when there’s half the usual spinach serving in his smoothie, and a white paper bag from his favorite bakery. He drinks his smoothie dutifully, then makes a huge mess by splitting the donut over the counter sans plate, and shoving the quarters into his mouth with abandon.
“Ugh, Ilya,” Shane wrinkles his nose, but he just leans back against the sink, arms crossed, “How have you not learned to eat neatly in the last three decades?”
Shrugging, Ilya tosses his hands as if to say, what can you do? But he does collect the crumbs and toss them into the trashcan because he’s in a bad mood, not trying to get served divorce papers. Shane watches him chew, gaze unnervingly steady.
“I have to run to my parents’ real quick, okay? I’ll be back before you’re done.”
Ilya frowns, “I thought we were having dinner later, together, as family.”
It’s a way to get Ilya to leave the house on this day. Yuna gets to fuss over him, and none of them talk about how Ilya’s eyes are puffy and red, or about how she hugs him every time they cross paths between the kitchen, dining room, and living room. She makes all of Ilya’s favorite Japanese foods and then sends them home with containers of curry and chicken katsu to reheat. Shane draws the line at frozen rice, but she always sneaks a few packs in.
Shane backtracks quickly, “Sorry, we are, I just–” He sighs, looking away slightly, expression pensive, “I needed to pick something up, and I forgot. I’m sorry, I promise I’ll be back before you are.”
Really, Ilya wants to protest. Something inside of him wants to go for a run knowing Shane is in their home, waiting for him to come back. He frowns.
“Надо идти?” You need to go? They spent years hiding their true feelings from each other, pretending, but Shane does not lie to him in Russian.
“Да, у вернусь раньше тебя.” Yes, and I’ll be back before you. There’s nothing hidden in his husband’s eyes, only an ever present look of something that’s between love, worry, and sometimes, exasperation.
With that, Ilya is satisfied enough.
He nods once, “I’ll do longer route, more time in case Yuna wants to talk about goal you missed at end of season.” Unspecific, lacking heat, but it’s better than nothing at all.
Shane rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile there. “Whatever, Rozanov.”
As he walks off to change into his running clothes, Ilya calls over his shoulder, “If you will not listen to me, maybe you will listen to woman who has also never been wrong!”
-
Regrettably, but only because it means admitting Hollander is right, the run does help. He turned on some playlist of American rap music and spent all his mental energy trying to follow the lyrics, seeing if he could catch all the hidden meanings.
When he rounds the corner back to their drive, Shane’s car is in the driveway, like he promised. Something in Ilya’s chest tightens at the fact that he didn’t pull into the garage, or even park in the garage and leave the door open. It says, see? I told you so.
Ilya lets himself into the house, calling to Shane that he’s home. He hears him respond from somewhere on the first floor, probably the office. He lets Anya off her leash so she can drink some water then go bug Shane for attention.
There is also a bouquet of white lilies on the counter, already neatly trimmed and in a vase. They’re the same ones Yuna and David send every year, the only acknowledgement they’ve ever openly given because he’s pretty sure Shane told them about the fight with his brother that one year. Not that it should have affected how they acted, but it did anyway, because that’s Yuna and David.
He finds himself standing, sweating and gross, staring at the flowers. He’s still technically in the hallway from the laundry room, no man’s land for outside shoes and slippers.
Ilya gets the sudden urge to walk into the kitchen with his shoes still on and smash the vase, letting glass and water and lilies crash onto their nice hardwood floors. He’d probably cut the hell out of his hands trying to clean everything up, and Shane would be too worried about him to be mad about the mess. He’d feel bad about destroying a symbol of Yuna and David’s thoughtfulness. He digs his fingernails into his palms until the feeling subsides.
Ilya jerks out of his reverie when Shane’s footsteps echo as he walks into the kitchen. He looks soft, hair unstyled and wearing one of Ilya’s sweatshirts, glasses on.
“I’ll start on lunch, go shower. I have some good highlights from the last few games to watch when we’re done.” It’s all so normal, and it’s relieving and infuriating all at once.
Normalcy is important for you, Ilya, on days like this, his therapist’s voice echoes in his head as he climbs the stairs. It helps you remember you’re not where you were when you were twelve. You have a life now with Shane, Anya, and Shane’s parents. Routine is evidence you have new patterns now. He knows this, and yet it’s never been more unfair that the world kept moving.
When he’s done, he doesn’t stop to stare at his face in the bathroom mirror, just marches himself back downstairs to where he can hear Shane bustling around in the kitchen. Last year he stood and looked at his own face, searching for her features, until Shane came looking for him. That wasn’t a good strategy, lingering in front of mirrors looking for his mother’s face in his own, they’d decided.
As he rounds the corner, Shane looks up from where he’s at the stove, “Food’s going to be ready soon.”
Ilya sinks into one of the barstools, humming an acknowledgement, staring at the back of Shane’s head. He needs a haircut.
“Oh, and, I have something for you.” Ilya doesn’t respond, just blinks at Shane as he turns the burner down and moves to the fridge.
When Shane turns around with a platter stacked high with медовик, Ilya’s stomach drops as if the ground has fallen out from under him.
The words tumble out of Shane all at once, as if he’s been rehearsing them and now’s his one chance to get them right. “You mentioned once this was her favorite cake–I used her recipe, the one in that red book you keep in the office–and how you haven’t had a good one since getting here, I thought you might want to remember her by having one.”
Then, because Ilya’s still silently staring at him, “I found this woman through that Facebook group I’ve been telling you about, she helped me translate because I was struggling to read the cursive. Mom helped me with the baking, that’s why I had to go there.”
He sets the plate down gently, the plink of the china echoing in tandem with the sputter of the gas stove. He’s searching Ilya’s face, looking for any indication of a reaction.
Ilya just turns his face to the side, one hand going to cover the way his mouth starts to twist in a sob.
Shane rounds the island, getting in Ilya’s space so he can pull his head into his chest, rub his back. But Ilya’s trying to wave him off, vision blurry and watery.
“Hollander, Hollander, is fine, let’s eat cake you made.” He can’t stop fucking crying, and despite his best efforts he leans all his weight into Shane, palms over his face. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“It probably tastes terrible.” Shane murmurs, lips pressed to the crown of Ilya’s head.
“Yuna is,” Ilya interrupts himself with a wet, hiccuping laugh, “Better baker than you. Do not insult her.”
They stay like that until Ilya’s tears subside and his breathing evens. When he pulls away, Shane has a terrible wet patch in the middle of his shirt. It’s probably a horrible sensation, wet cotton sticking to his skin, but Ilya watches as Shane doesn’t even blink at it.
Ilya sits up, reaching into Shane’s space so he can kiss him briefly. “Cake?”
Exhaling, Shane nods. “Cake.” And he walks to the other side of the island so he can get a knife and switch the stove off entirely.
Ilya realizes that in all this time, he never told Shane that his mom let him eat the cake before his dinner as he cuts Ilya an obnoxiously large slice. It’s just something he lets happen because it’s for Ilya. Their lunch, probably filled with all the macros and micros they should be eating, sits ignored as it cools to the point of probable inedibility.
“Hollander, you are giving me large piece, my stomach will be one hundred percent медовик and then I will not be able to have curry. You will make me bad son-in-law.”
Shane’s focusing very intently on getting a neat slice, so he doesn’t look up at Ilya. “I once watched you eat three entire Quarter Pounder meals and immediately go to an all you can eat buffet, where they had to cut you off.”
And Ilya really doesn’t have a good response for that because then Shane is sliding him a plate with a slice of the медовик and a spoon. He holds his own aloft, knife set down, as he watches Ilya pick up the one on the plate.
The tears start again when the slice starts to wobble, layers clearly perfectly soaked, because of that odd type of structural integrity that only comes with a cake held together by honey, heavy cream, and sour cream. Ilya ignores the tears that stream down his face as he takes his first bite.
Because it was Shane and Yuna, because Shane took the time to find someone to help him translate in that ‘Russian learners of Ottawa’ Facebook group Ilya likes to mock him for being a part of, because even though it’s been too many years since she made it, it tastes like his mother just pulled it out of the fridge.
“Как будто она сделала.” As if she made it. Ilya says softly, smiling a watery smile at his husband who releases the breath he’d been holding. “Попробуй.” Try it.
Shane is too tentative in the way he tries to take some, the entire slice finally toppling over. He looks aghast, eyes flicking to Ilya who shrugs, and uses his spoon to scoop a couple of layers up so he can hold them out to Shane.
“Here.” Ever obedient, Shane opens his mouth and lets Ilya feed him the cake. “Is easier with forks, I remember.”
And without thinking too hard about it, Ilya takes his phone out and snaps a picture of Shane as he chews. It’s a live picture so it captures the way Shane’s eyes start to widen, with the cake and the slice both in the frame.
“Holy shit, that’s good,” Except it’s said around a mouthful of cake, so it’s barely intelligible.
Ilya shrugs, going back in for another bite. “See, Yuna is amazing baker. Is a shame you doubted her.”
Shane cuts another slice when they finish the first one, and they eat that one together too. They never do eat whatever he was heating up.
-
Ilya is elbow deep in soapy dishwater, the heat of the water grounding him as he voices something that’s been floating in the back of his mind since he took the first bite of the cake. “It is the wine bottle, Yuna, I figured it out.”
“Hm?” She cocks her head at him from where she’s leaning back against the kitchen island, on her phone, halfway through an article about Ilya that he’d texted her with a series of irritated emojis.
Shane and David are in the living room, talking over another renovation on the cottage property Shane’s considering. Again. Mr. Real Estate.
“My grandma made cake layers by rolling out with wine bottle, so my mom wrote it that way. You followed recipe exactly, so the taste is exact.”
Yuna flushes, and Ilya feels immensely pleased. “It was all Shane, I just observed mostly.”
Normally he would push back, insist she was being too modest, but something about her expression tells him it’s not just an act. “He said you helped.” Ilya blinks at her, sink full of dishes forgotten.
“He made three cakes before I intervened, and then it was only to help with the rolling part. He just used our kitchen so you wouldn’t see.”
Her voice is so, so soft when she says it, when she sees Ilya tear up again, “Oh, honey.”
Ilya’s come far enough to not deny it, to let her sweep him up into her arms even though he dwarfs her. She smells like her house, a hint of that same detergent she and David adopted after Shane told them they were switching, but most of all she smells like mom. She murmurs something in Japanese as she rocks them side to side, the exact meaning lost on Ilya.
“Mom, Dad had a good idea I–oh, Ilya, are you okay?” Shane’s voice carries as he walks into the kitchen, tone immediately turning to maximum worry when he sees his mom holding Ilya. “What’s going on?”
David is right behind him, “Yuna?”
“Just having a moment, that’s all, sweetie.” Yuna rubs Ilya’s back, hand moving in steady circles as he stands up and wipes his eyes on his shoulders. “Let’s get you those leftovers so you can go home, how’s that sound?”
Shane is still staring at Ilya, David at his side, both of them wearing the same expression of a furrowed brow, corners of their mouths slightly downturned. Ilya notices that Shane’s dad has a hand on his son’s shoulder and he thinks he might start crying again.
-
“Yuna said something interesting earlier,” Ilya starts, heaving the second bag filled with leftovers over his shoulder. A faint clinking sound inside as he shifts to close the car door tells him she managed to get some packs of rice in there despite Shane’s watchful eye.
Shane’s already halfway inside, kicking off his sneakers and lugging the first bag of leftovers to the island. “Oh, yeah?”
“She said you made медовик. She just watched.” Ilya says this to Shane’s back as he starts unloading the containers of curry, sides, and who knows how much else Yuna sent them home with.
An intense flush starts on Shane’s cheeks, spreading to his ears and neck. Ilya knows it’s turning his chest a pink color too. “She helped.”
“You made three cakes before she ‘helped.’” Ilya does air quotes with his fingers, something light and airy settling in his chest at the way Shane gets even redder and tries to busy himself with shoving things into the freezer.
“I wanted to get it right.” He’s mumbling, shoulders creeping up by his ears. “Sue me.”
Ilya abandons the bag on the floor, reaching around Shane so he can close the freezer and push him up against the nearest counter.
“The leftovers are gonna melt.” Shane breathes, protesting in show only as he leans into the way Ilya crowds into his space.
“Shane,” Ilya starts, “Посмотри на меня. Я тебя люблю, с каждым часть мой сердце. Спасибо.” Look at me. I love you, with every part of my heart. Thank you.
He’s sure his eyes are just as red as Shane’s, who sniffles slightly but keeps looking in Ilya’s eyes til he leans forward to press his lips to Shane’s forehead. They stand like that, frozen in time, until Ilya’s sure at least some of the rice had to have started melting. No matter, they’ll eat cake for every meal tomorrow.