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Ilya runs a hand over the smooth skin of his cheek. He’d shaved this morning because it felt sloppy to have stubble on his wedding day. Even in his own backyard, he wants to look perfect for his Shane. He tugs at his tie, straightening it for what must be at least the twentieth time today. There’s a knock on the door — set ajar since he buttoned his shirt all the way up — and then a soft, “knock, knock. Can I come in?”
“Yes,” Ilya smiles toward the mirror, glancing at the door in it, “I’m decent.”
The door swings open to reveal an immaculate Yuna Hollander. “Better be,” she says, smiling at him as he turns to face her. “Oh, honey. You look fantastic.”
“I am not ready yet,” Ilya protests. His jacket is still on its hanger on the closet door, perfect and cream-white. He’s terrified he’s going to spill something on it. “Is Shane alright?”
Yuna’s eyes widen, and then her expression settles into something sad even though she’s smiling. It’s an expression that Ilya can faintly remember his mother making, if only through the way it used to give him the same feeling he’s having now. “He’s okay. David’s with him, nothing’s wrong.”
Ilya nods and swallows. He turns back to the mirror and runs a hand over his face again. Yuna’s heels click against the hardwood floor as she comes closer. He’s got a few inches on her, but she more than makes up for it in presence as she stands next to him and places a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes lock on to the cuff links still laying on the dresser beside them. True to form, she picks them up and holds her hand out expectantly. Ilya places his wrist in her palm, feeling the warmth of her skin through the cotton of his shirt.
She threads the simple gold-and-pearl cuff links neatly efficiently through the holes of his shirt. Ilya swallows around the thing in his chest that sometimes gets smaller but never, ever leaves. He blinks away the blur in his vision. He has so little of his mother, and when he still had her marriage wasn’t even a distant dream. He hadn’t thought of it, all of twelve years old and only concerned with doing what he liked and making his father happy. Never in his wildest dreams did he picture Shane Hollander and his parents, or a house in Ottawa with a dog running wild in the back yard.
“We could only ever have one child,” she says softly. She doesn’t look up at him as she takes his other hand in hers and starts fixing the second sleeve. Ilya frowns at her. “We tried, you know? IVF treatments, all that fancy science. We even thought about adopting. We didn’t, in the end,” she clarifies needlessly, “we focused on trying to make Shane as good of a person we could.”
“You did a good job,” Ilya says, choked. Yuna looks up from where she’s finished fastening his sleeve, but doesn’t let go of his hand. Instead, she lays her left hand over his wrist, enclosing it in her grip.
“I think so, too,” she winks. “We’re so proud of him. He’s the best thing in my life.”
“I promise I will take good care of him,” Ilya vows. They decided on no vows during the ceremony, but if there is one thing he will promise every day of the entire rest of his life, it is to take care of Shane.
“I know you will, sweetie,” Yuna says softly. Her hand comes up to rest against his cheek, thumb smoothing over the apple of his cheek. She inhales, eyes going wet. “It’s just— we got so lucky with Shane, and we are so happy with him. I didn’t think I’d ever get so lucky to have a second son just as lovely as the first one.”
Ilya’s throat goes so tight he has to clear it to draw in a gasping breath. His vision goes blurry and he stares resolutely at the wall instead of at Yuna or her hand holding his. He sniffs. “It is rude of you to make me cry on my wedding day.”
She pinches his cheek, light. “Hush you!”
The touch of her hand on his face is so different from Shane’s — smaller and colder. Her skin is smoother and softer than her son’s, but it’s the same care beneath it. He closes his eyes against the sting when it doesn’t abate. He hears Yuna exhale a soft oh.
“Just make sure you let him take care of you sometimes, too, okay?”
Ilya wants to scream. He wants to tell her that nobody has ever taken care of him like Shane does, that nobody has ever loved him so much or so hard, never given him a home in the way Shane has. Yuna, herself, standing in front of Ilya instead of being with her own son on his wedding day, is more care than he has allowed himself before he met Shane. They make it easy, the Hollanders, to feel like he is worthy of this. “Okay,” he agrees quietly, the most he can muster through the onslaught of emotion.
“Good boy.” Yuna pats his cheek. “Time to go get married.”
── ⟢
“Hey there, handsome.”
Shane turns to face the guest room door. “Dad,” he breathes. He doesn’t know if it’s relief or panic he’s feeling. The material of his shirt is making his skin buzz even though he and Rose spent a full day looking for something that didn’t make him feel awful. He’s retied his tie four times and it’s currently hanging around his neck, the careful ironing done this morning nearly moot by now.
“Oh,” Dad says, because he’s Dad and he’s seen this before. “C’mere buddy,” he says, patting the guest bed as he sits down on it. Shane shakes his head and walks the length of the room and back instead.
He feels fucking ridiculous. This is the happiest day of his life, probably. He woke up this morning with Ilya’s arms around him and the knowledge that they’d be husbands in just a few hours. They had breakfast together, and then Ilya had taken him apart with his tongue and his fingers and Shane returned the favor in the shower. He feels like he’s going to burst with love and happiness, and he’s also so scared he feels like he might pass out.
“You know,” Dad starts, “when I was marrying your mom — what, eight hundred years ago? — I almost ran away.”
Shane stops abruptly in his tracks. “What?”
“It’s true.” Dad shrugs. “Or, maybe I wasn’t actually going to run away. But I thought about it. We were on this beautiful estate and I kept looking out the window and thinking how everyone was so busy, they probably wouldn’t notice until I was across the lawn.”
“Dad!” He can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
The air in the room feels thinner at once, no longer so thick with the tension Shane has been ratcheting up all morning. The worst part of all this is that all he wants is Ilya. It’s silly, to be separated from his fiance for a couple of hours and miss him like this, but Shane has already spent twelve fucking years missing him. If Ilya were here— no. He can’t go there, because he’ll cave and walk the few steps down the hall to see him.
“It’s torture, isn’t it?” Dad says, smiling crookedly. “I didn’t have a clue where she was in that big house. This is some test of wills you boys have set up.”
“Pretty sure it was Mom who set it up,” Shane mutters. It certainly wasn’t his idea.
“Rite of passage,” Dad offers diplomatically. “Part of the fun is getting to see them walking down the aisle.”
“Rose sent me five mood boards, I think. I don’t know how much of a surprise it’s going to be.” Shane fiddles with his tie, and Dad shakes his head and gets up from the bed with a grunt.
“Stop that,” he says quietly, “it’ll wrinkle.”
“You sound like Mom,” Shane says petulantly.
Dad just smiles. “Could be worse.”
He reaches for the end of Shane’s tie and pulls it from where it’s hanging around his neck. He smooths the silk down, pinching the edges of it to make sure the creases are still intact after all of Shane’s fidgeting. Satisfied, he throws the tie over his own shoulder to reach and fiddle with Shane’s collar, flipping it up and straightening the shirt beneath. Shane takes a shaky breath. “I’m so scared, Dad.”
“I know, buddy.”
“No, it’s—” Shane stops himself right before he can run a hand through his carefully styled hair. His hand twitches in the air. “He’s given me… so much. Everything. For years he’s given and given and given, and I’ve been so selfish. But he still wants to marry me, and I want to marry him more than anything. But I— I feel like I’ll mess it up.”
“You will,” Dad says, laying the tie around his neck carefully, and Shane feels like he’s been hit. “Shane. We all mess up, bud. I’ve messed up hundreds of times, and so has your mom. It’s not about being perfect all the time. It’s about being there.”
“I wasn’t,” Shane whispers. He’s so ashamed, even now, “I didn’t know, Dad. For so long he was suffering, and I didn’t notice and I wasn’t there.” Shane looks out the guest room window at Anya playing with the Pike children outside. “He deserves everything.”
Dad crosses the fabric of the tie over itself, effortlessly folding it in a Windsor knot. Shane stands rooted to the spot, like confessing all of the things he’s been thinking had turned him to stone. Jade — or Ruby, he can’t tell from here — shrieks and it carries through the window, as does Anya’s answering bark. Shane’s eyes burn and he feels guilty all over, for feeling sorry for himself even now.
Dad lays his hands on Shane’s shoulders when he finishes the knot. “Shane,” he says, just as solid and reassuring as he’s been all throughout Shane’s life.
“Could you check on him?” Shane says desperately. “Just— could you— just to make sure he’s okay.”
“Shane,” Dad says again, and Shane looks to him. “Ilya’s fine. Yuna’s with him right now, your mom’s got him. He’s okay.” Shane nods, shaky. “Neither of you have been perfect, but it’s not like you didn’t know that when you signed up for life together.”
Shane draws a breath at the words life and together so casually next to each other in a sentence. He blinks and glances over at his suit jacket again. Dad smiles.
“Kiddo… ah, hell. Gettin’ me emotional. Bare with me for a minute, yeah? Humor your old man.” He claps Shane’s shoulder one last time and then lets go of him. “I’ve known you for your entire life. You’ve always been kind of a lone wolf, and we worried, you know. But with Ilya… the way you are with him, kid.”
His dad isn’t usually one for speeches or grand emotional declarations — it’s a bit of a family trait — and Shane doesn’t quite know what to do. But… “Yeah,” he agrees.
“I don’t know if you see it, but he’s crazy about you, Shane. I couldn’t have asked for anything else for my boy.”
“Dad,” Shane says.
“Alright,” Dad claps his hands with a chuckle, wiping at his eyes. “You’ve got places to be. Put your clothes on.”