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The summer sun has long set. The full moon reflects off still lake waters, and Shane watches from inside as Ilya stares out into the night.
He pours a generous amount of vodka into a rocks glass and considers making one for himself, too, but ultimately decides he should probably be as sober as he can to help support Ilya. Not that he’s sure how to do that, exactly. Even years in, he feels unprepared and insufficient to deal with this day. But he’d be damned if he didn’t fucking try.
Opening the catch-all drawer in the kitchen, he digs around the back until he feels a small box. Shane pulls out the pack of cigarettes and shakes his head almost fondly. He hates that Ilya smokes, but he couldn’t begrudge him his vices. Not today.
He digs around again and finds a lighter, and then looks back out to check the state of the fire. It’s still going strong, the flames dancing nearly as high as Ilya’s head. It would be at least half an hour before he would need to add more wood.
Ilya doesn’t move when Shane opens the door to rejoin him outside. He’s lost in thought, Shane guesses, and he can’t blame him.
When he reaches the spot he’d vacated a few minutes before, he holds out the cigarettes and lighter in one hand and the glass of vodka in the other. Ilya looks at him, surprise evident in his hazel eyes even in the dim light.
“What?” Shane grins. “Didn’t think I knew about your secret stash?”
Ilya’s smile back almost reaches his eyes, and he takes Shane’s offerings without a word.
Flint strikes, and with a flick of flame, a different type of smoke starts to fill the air, floating slowly up into the trees.
Normally, Shane would wait inside until Ilya finished his cigarette, but today, he sits and leans his head on Ilya’s shoulder, willing to make the concession.
“I hate this day,” Ilya says, his face once again stony, while he lets out a long puff of smoke into the cooling air around them.
“I know,” Shane says, his fingers tracing along the soft fabric of Ilya’s sweats. “I hate it for you.”
It’s the same every year on the anniversary of his mother’s death. A long day spent with few words and long hugs bleeds into nightfall. They sit and look out over the water, ghosts flickering across Ilya’s eyes like the firelight around them.
Shane wants so badly to ask questions. Do you want to talk? How are you feeling? What can I do? Tell me more about her? What’s your favorite memory of her? How can I help?
But he’s working on sitting with silence, and he knows Ilya’s tendency to shut down when he asks and asks, so he closes his eyes, counts to five, and waits.
It doesn’t take long for Ilya to throw the remnants of his cigarette into the fire pit. He takes a long swig of vodka before he turns pleading eyes to Shane.
Shane gives him an understanding smile in answer, grabbing the thick blanket off the back of the cushioned bench and holding his arms up to make space for Ilya to lie in his lap.
They’ve spent so many nights like this at the cottage. Curled up together as the heat from the fire licks at their skin.
Mostly, the time they spend here feels light and happy. It’s their secret place where the world can’t touch them. Shane often feels invincible here. But sometimes, the burden of grief catches up to them, and the night feels insurmountable.
“It kills me that I can never visit her again,” Ilya says, his accent thick with exhaustion, as Shane arranges the blanket over Ilya’s legs.
It’s just one of many things Ilya had given up when he’d fully committed to a life with Shane. Never going back to Russia means his mother’s grave remains unvisited, and Shane learned long ago that Ilya feels a sense of responsibility to his family, even the most shitty members, so he can’t imagine how difficult it must be for his husband to never again lay flowers on his mother’s grave.
“I’m so sorry,” Shane says softly, and it feels completely inadequate, but it’s all he has to offer.
“I thought it would get easier,” Ilya says, and the sadness in his voice makes Shane want to freeze up from the sheer pain he feels through the sound of it. But he forces his fingers to keep moving in soothing strokes through Ilya’s curls, to hopefully bring comfort through his touch. “And I guess in some ways it does. There are days I do not even think about her anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten,” Shane offers, because Ilya would never, could never, forget his mother, and Shane’s convinced there’s so much of Irina in his husband: the good parts, the sad parts, and everything in between.
“I feel like I have,” Ilya replies, and there’s a bitterness in his tone.
His words are even, but Shane feels something damp start to soak through his pants and onto his skin. He wants so badly to wipe the tears away. To hold Ilya’s face in his hands until the devastation stopped. But he knows Ilya well enough to realize that if he calls attention to it, he’ll do everything in his power to stop the flow of tears, and Shane hopes that this will instead bring Ilya some sort of catharsis.
He deserves to let all of this out in whatever way he needs.
But then, “Sometimes I cannot quite remember her face anymore. What kind of son cannot remember his mother’s face?”
Shane closes his eyes against the thought. He thinks of his own mother. Of her dark hair and kind eyes and fierce determination. He can picture her so clearly, and the thought that maybe some day he might not be able to terrifies him.
He’s seen photos of Irina, though there aren’t many still around, at least in Ilya’s possession. She was tall and thin with long sandy hair and bright green eyes. Ilya favors her so much, and though Shane will never meet her, he has no doubt he would have deeply loved the woman that shaped the man who holds the entirety of his heart.
“You were so young.” He knows it won’t be of any comfort to hear, but he feels he needs to say it anyway. “And our brains do weird things to protect us sometimes.”
Ilya shakes his head against Shane’s leg. “I feel like I have failed her. Like I have not done enough to keep her memory alive.”
“You’ve done a ton,” Shane counters, because it’s true. There’s a literal foundation that bears her name that’s proof of how determined they both are to keep Irina’s memory alive. The thought of her fuels every piece of the work they do with their charity.
Ilya doesn’t argue, but a heavy quiet settles around them. A loon calls in the distance, and Shane feels Ilya shiver at the sound, still unused to the wolf-like call that haunts the night in the wilderness.
Shane wonders if that’s the end of the conversation. Even when he opens up, Ilya doesn’t do so for long. But this place, so dear to them both, often lends itself to things long buried coming to the surface. Their deepest desires and hardest truths laid bare in the darkness.
“My life would be so different if she hadn’t died,” Ilya whispers in confession. “I never would have left Russia. I would have stayed to protect her.”
Shane stills at what that would have meant for him. For them.
Ilya takes in a stuttering breath. “I used to have this dream all the time. We were here at the cottage, and my mother was here, too. I wanted her to meet you, but you took forever to come outside, and then she was gone before you got there. I was so angry that you never got there.
Shane manages to move again, fingers trailing across Ilya’s forehead. “Do you still have that dream?”
“No,” Ilya sighs. “Not for a long time. Not since I realized that if she had not died, I would not have met you. And I would not trade you for anything. I hate myself for it sometimes.”
Shane tries to swallow down crushing feelings of guilt. He’s selfish when it comes to Ilya, too. Had been since the very beginning. And he would willingly walk the lonely and confusing road it took to get to him over and over and over again until his feet bled and his legs gave out. Because he would give up everything and everyone for Ilya. He’s glad he doesn’t have to, that neither of them would ever ask that of each other, but the fact remains he would.
He would burn the world and never look back.
It’s different in Ilya’s case though. That the greatest tragedy of his life led him on a path to more than he ever dreamed he could have.
Shane doesn’t want to think that their relationship causes Ilya pain. He’d hoped they’d moved past that long ago. But pain and love so often went hand in hand.
“Both things can be true, I think,” Shane finally says as his own vision blurs. “You can mourn the life you had with her and still love the one you have now.” He hopes it’s true. He needs it to be true. If only for his own absolution.
Ilya curls his legs up closer to his chest. His normally larger than life aura dimming into something small and fragile. “I think maybe I do not deserve to dream of her anymore.”
The restricted feeling in Shane’s chest tightens. The shards of his already broken heart poke into his lungs, letting air escape until there’s nothing left, and he’s forced to try and take in another shallow breath.
He hates that Ilya feels this way and wishes to the depths of his being that he could take every ounce of Ilya’s suffering onto himself.
And Shane understands that grief is complicated. That it can twist and blend reality with what ifs until madness. But he’s also learned over the years that feelings can lie, and if there’s anyone poised to help Ilya see that in this particular moment of misery, where Ilya believes he doesn’t even deserve the chance to see his mother in dreams, he supposes it’s him.
“What do you think she would say about that?” Shane wonders. It’s a question Ilya’s therapist has asked Ilya so many times over the years he’s been with her. Forcing him to put his self-loathing aside and see himself from someone else’s perspective. To see how easy it can be to mangle something unassuming into the ugliest of thoughts.
He’s pretty sure it drives Ilya crazy sometimes, even though it seems to work.
He feels Ilya tense, sees his forehead crinkle in thought, and Shane thinks maybe he’s pushed too far until Ilya’s muscles relax against him, and he lets out a long stream of air through his nose. “She would tell me I deserve the whole world.”
Shane leans down and kisses into the soft curls under his hand. “And you do,” he says when he straightens. “She would be so proud of you.”
“You cannot know that.” Ilya’s hand clutches suddenly at the cotton covering Shane’s legs, like he wants it to be true even if he can’t quite fathom that it is.
“I can,” Shane says back without hesitation. “Because I’m proud of you. And there’s no way the other person who loved you the most isn’t proud of you, too.”
Ilya turns his body in Shane’s lap, and their eyes meet for the first time since Ilya had first lain down.
“But I think she’d want you to be proud of yourself. For going on. For trying and getting the help she never could. For the joy you bring to everyone around you. For teaching me to find my own joy in the small things.”
Like arms around him in the morning. The cool weight of a ring on his finger. The taste of chocolate. The wholeness of being surrounded by friends. The burn of good vodka. The belief and knowledge that Shane is more than what the world thinks of him.
Tears trail in a steady stream down Ilya’s face now, and he reaches up to brush his thumb across Shane’s cheek, whose eyes flutter closed at the touch. “She would have loved you.”
It’s not the first time Ilya’s said this, but Shane holds it as close to him as he did the first time he heard it.
“I love you,” Shane breathes. He feels wetness on his own cheeks. One drop. Then two. Then countless more. “And I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
Ilya nods in acceptance even as his chin trembles. There’s so much pain reflected in his gaze, but Shane thinks he might be able to see the tiniest bit of hope there, too. “You will go through it with me, yes?”
Shane gives his own nod in return. “Always.”
They cry together. There’s no sobbing or wailing or words, just silent lamentations that speak to the sheer depth that sorrow can bring.
Shane hopes Ilya finds release in it, or at the very least, the comfort of knowing he’s not alone. If Shane never accomplishes anything else in his life, it would be enough that Ilya is safe and comforted by his presence.
When their breathing has steadied, and the river of tears slows to the trickle of a stream, a small breeze ruffles the fringe on Shane’s forehead, and a cold shudder vibrates through Ilya’s body.
Shane wipes at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Are you ready to go inside?” he asks softly, afraid anything louder than a whisper will break the finally peaceful spell over them.
“No,” Ilya says, so Shane moves the blanket up over his shoulders to help shield him from the cooling night air, and Ilya turns back out toward the water.
He reaches across his body and grabs Shane’s hand that’s resting on his shoulder, their fingers interlocking so tightly that Shane can feel his pulse through the contact.
He wishes it were easier. He wishes it were better after a few long minutes spent breaking Ilya’s soul open and laying it bare. But he also thinks that maybe that’s the point. That maybe some things just aren’t fixable, but can be made bearable by the presence of someone who’s willing to sit through the uncomfortable parts with you.
Knowing it’s not going to get easier. Knowing it might not get better. But staying anyway, until the light of dawn makes its way through the cracks and brings a new day.
Shane will be that for Ilya. Always.
And so, they hold on, as the night stretches on around them.