Chapter Text
“Da. Just like that. Such a good girl.”
Ilya Rozanov was on one knee, dangling temptation like it was the best bargain of the day. Daisy hovered just out of reach, all wiry tension and too much coat for her narrow frame, a scrappy terrier thing with uneven curls that clumped into soft mats along her sides. One ear tipped forward, the other held back, undecided.
She stretched toward the strip of crispy salmon skin, nostrils flaring, drawn in by the smell, and then stopped short, her body catching on something invisible. Her weight shifted back, refusing to complete the movement. Her tail moved in a small, uncertain sweep. It flicked once, twice, then paused, like she was checking for a response that didn’t come.
Ilya didn’t move closer. He was patient. He watched the way her attention kept splitting, not between him and the food, but between him and the door behind him. The quick glance, then back. Like she was waiting for something familiar.
“Mm,” he said quietly. “You don’t know the rules here yet.”
His hand stayed steady, the offer unchanged. No coaxing, just his steady presence. He had learned, over time, that the ones who had belonged to someone else didn’t need to be lured. They needed the world to stop shifting under their feet long enough to try stepping forward again.
Daisy edged closer, then stalled. Forward, back. Forward, back. He waited her out. When she finally took the salmon skin, it was a quick dart forward like she expected it to be pulled, but he let go immediately.
The crunch was loud in her small mouth, and Ilya let out a quiet laugh, something easing in his shoulders.
“Good girl,” he murmured. "Umnitsa."
He broke the next piece down between his fingers, scattering it into her kibble so the scent would settle there, so the food became hers without condition. Then he lowered himself the rest of the way to the floor, folding in, reducing his shape and the angle of his height.
Daisy’s tail started again, a little more certain this time, the motion less interrupted. He didn’t look at her directly or reach for her. He just adjusted the bowl and let his hands rest. She approached, slower now, less jagged in her movement, and lowered her head to the bowl. She took a few tentative bites, then another bite. Daisy relearned the shape of a simple thing as she cleaned her bowl with gusto.
The lines of Ilya’s face softened, watching it happen. Not just that she ate, but how. The way the hesitation lessened, the way her shoulders dropped a fraction, the way her tail found a steady wag.
The salmon skin had been a donation, a very generous and useful one. Exactly the kind of thing that could tip a dog like this back toward something like trust. Or at least the beginning of it.
Somewhere behind him, Marianne’s voice moved low and even through the room, coaxing a different dog into calmness. The shelter carried that constant hum. Soft voices, careful hands, a hundred quiet recalibrations.
The Refuge du Nord was his favorite place in Montreal.
From the outside, it was nothing that would draw attention. The brick blended in with the brick of every other brick building on the street, indistinguishable in that way where everything looked like it had been standing longer than it probably should have. The sounds gave it away. The never-ending barking spilled through the walls and out onto the sidewalk. Sharp, high yips cut through lower, hoarser barks, something frantic threading through something bored, and something hopeful cutting across both.
Inside, the air held damp fur and old blankets, bleach cutting through it sharply.
Ilya loved it.
He had been volunteering at least once a week for years, more when he could spare the metro fare. Each dog carried a personality as distinct as any person he had known, each one deserving a name, the attention of someone willing to actually see them, not just pass by and decide quickly.
It was as close to paradise as he allowed himself to believe in.
He didn’t need much. Not really. Not the apartment he couldn’t afford or the car he definitely couldn’t afford (although, yes, he would take both if someone was offering, he was not a monk. He was just realistic).
What he needed, what he understood, was the weight of a dog leaning into him. The quiet, unguarded trust that came in increments, earned and then given freely, without negotiation once it was present.
He would take that, over and over again, from as many creatures as would allow it, especially in the form of dogs.
Love was something he understood in pieces. Not exactly as a whole.
He had known it from his mother, before she left this life. Whatever had happened, whatever had broken, he held onto the certainty that she had tried. That she had loved him as well as she could, for as long as she could, and that it had not been a small thing, even if eventually she couldn’t be here anymore.
His father had probably loved him, in some earlier version of things. Before Ilya had disappointed him to the point where, as his brother had so kindly put it, he’d rather forget everything than remember you.
His father had done exactly that. Forgotten him. Along with the rest of the life they had lived before the day he told Ilya to leave. Efficient, really.
His brother loved what could be taken from him. Specifically, his money, and the powder it put up his nose when there was enough of it.
His clients loved what he gave them. Or maybe they loved the version of themselves he handed back at the end of a session, a self they would never keep, not outside the room, but needed to visit sometimes just to remember it existed.
Some of them just loved his dick. He respected the honesty of that, at least.
His lovers, what few there had been lately, also loved his dick. There had been a time when he chased touch like it was the only thing anchoring him to the present, something he needed in constant supply, like oxygen or sleep. He had loved sex. Could not be satiated by it, in a way that felt almost mechanical in hindsight. Now, the time, the money, the energy all had to come from somewhere, and he was running a deficit in all available currencies.
So, when it came to love, he kept it simple. He wasn’t an expert.
But he loved dogs. All of them, without exception. And he considered it a kind of luck, almost obscene in its generosity, that he was allowed to spend time here, caring for them.
He might have kissed Marianne for the opportunity, if she hadn’t already warned him, with a laugh and a very firm don’t even think about it, that her husband, and her children, and her grandchildren would all have strong and immediate opinions on the matter.
Working with dogs wasn’t complicated, not to him. The fear made sense. Displacement made sense. Being dropped into a world that spoke in sounds you couldn’t translate, where hands reached and people misunderstood your language; Ilya understood this better than he wanted to admit.
People listened to the noise and missed everything that mattered. So, Ilya watched instead. He read the shifts in weight, the tension along a spine, the angle of a head, the flicker of a tail. He knew the difference between hesitation and anticipation.
He made himself still where everything else was loud. He didn’t force himself into a moment that wasn’t ready to hold him. And he didn’t try to fix something that wasn’t broken, that was just waiting.
Ilya just waited.
He looked for the small things that mattered. A scent. A treat. A tone of voice. Any rhythm that took hold, even briefly, and he built from there.
Today, it had been Daisy.
This was the first meal she’d eaten since arriving yesterday morning, surrendered by an older man who was moving out of the city and couldn’t take her. He had cried when he handed her over, and Marianne had cried with him. Then she had cried again later, telling Ilya the story as if it had happened to a close friend and not a stranger who had walked in off the street with a dog and a problem he couldn’t solve. Ilya had held her then, briefly, folding her into a hug that she leaned into more than she pretended not to, and then had gone to sit on the floor with Daisy.
Now Daisy climbed into his lap as if she had always belonged there. That was all it took. He lifted her easily, one hand under her chest, the other supporting her back legs, settling her against him like something both fragile and mighty at the same time. His shirt was already covered in dog hair, and he did not care. He tucked her in close, feeling the surprising heat of her small body through the thin fabric, a contained warmth that pressed into him.
He dipped his head, nuzzling into the soft, slightly uneven curl of her fur, breathing in the clean-shampoo scent that hadn’t quite erased the underlying dog. He felt the exact moment she let go. Her weight dropped into him fully, no longer hovering, no longer ready to pull away.
His body followed without permission. Something in him loosening in response, something that he did not examine too closely. He murmured to her in Russian, low and steady, the words meaningless to her and not important.
After the kennels were cleaned and the dogs walked, he moved through the rest of the work without thinking.
Restocking food, checking supplies, falling into a rhythm that would be overturned again within the hour. The rhythm settled into his body almost automatically, like muscle memory. A hound in the far run bayed low and mournful, the sound dragging through the room with a heavy weight. Two kennels down, a stocky bulldog mix snored through it, completely unbothered, lips vibrating with each breath. Somewhere near the front, a high, frantic bark kept time with footsteps, sharp and insistent. Don’t forget me, don’t forget me, don’t forget me.
“I know,” Ilya muttered under his breath as he passed, not breaking stride. “You are unforgettable. Very loud about it.” The dog paused, just for a second, as if considering the compliment, then resumed at full volume.
He took Henry out next. Henry, a lab mix who looked nothing like a Henry at all. He was too big, too loose-limbed, ears slightly too large for his head, one of them folding in on itself like it had given up halfway through development. He had the kind of face that suggested enthusiasm without direction, eyes bright and fixed on Ilya with a slightly intimidating intensity.
The moment Ilya reached for the leash, Henry’s entire body lifted with it, back legs dancing in place, tennis ball already clamped in his mouth like he had been preparing for this exact moment since birth.
“Yes,” Ilya said, straight-faced. “I remember the terms of our agreement.”
The door opened and the chill of late afternoon came in, clean and sharp after the warmth inside. Henry surged forward into the fenced yard, then spun back immediately, vibrating at Ilya’s side, ball still held tight like evidence. His entire body was a wiggle.
Ilya threw it low, letting it skip once, twice across the ground.
Henry caught it every time.
At first, he dropped it at Ilya’s feet, sloppy and eager, saliva already coating the surface. Then, with growing precision, he adjusted, stepping closer, lifting his head just enough to place it directly into Ilya’s waiting hand.
“Ah,” Ilya murmured, taking it without hesitation. “We are improving.”
Henry preened. Actually preened. His entire posture shifting upward, chest out, tail sweeping in wide, satisfied arcs. They repeated it until Henry’s movements slowed by fractions, the edges of his energy softening, the frantic need easing into something more contained.
That was always the goal.
Time slipped by too quickly, as it always did here.
By the time the light shifted toward evening, cooling into that blue-gray that settled over the yard and pressed against the windows, Ilya felt the pull of it. The quiet resistance to leaving, like his body had decided it belonged here and didn’t want to be persuaded otherwise.
He didn’t have a shift tonight. He probably could have used one. The money would always help.
But his knee had been worse today, the old injury swelling under the brace he had dug out that morning before taking the metro. The hours on his feet, the crouching, the lifting; it had pushed further than it should have. A dull, persistent throb had settled in, flaring sharp when he turned wrong, when he forgot and moved too quickly.
Still, it had been worth it.
What hadn’t been worth it was two nights ago. When he’d done something that he felt in his gut he shouldn’t have, and now paid an accidental price.
When Svetlana had called last night, asking him to cover, he had no choice but to say no.
He never said no.
Her silence on the other end had been immediate and heavy. The kind that carried meaning without needing words. He could practically hear the suspicion forming. He knew exactly what would happen when he told her why.
She was going to kill him. Probably.
So he might as well stretch the evening while he still had it, wringing what he could from the time at the shelter, before Svetlana inevitably got her claws into him.
“Come for supper.”
Marianne caught him as he finished in the supply closet, appearing in that quiet way she had. Her hand settled lightly at the back of his shoulder warm and steady. She always smelled faintly of something cooking, even when she was covered in dog fur. Onions softening in butter, or garlic just hitting heat. Something warm and savory that clung to her clothes and followed her out of her kitchen and into the shelter.
“We’d love to have you,” she added, her smile easy, practiced in the way of someone who had extended the same invitation a hundred times and meant it every single one of them. “You worked hard today.”
Her eyes moved over him as she said it. Not invasively, but just noticing. The shift in how he held his weight. The way his shoulders sat a fraction tighter than usual. The brace beneath his jeans that was jutting out.
“Are you sure you’re…” she started, and then cut herself off, letting the question dissolve before it landed. She knew he would tell her if he wanted to.
It would have been easy to say yes to supper. Sometimes he did. When the cupboards at home ran thin enough that pride became something impractical, something he could set aside without too much argument, he let himself accept. Sat at her table while her family folded around him, chairs pulled close, voices overlapping, someone always reaching for something to pass his way.
It felt foreign. It felt… close to something he did not examine too closely.
Marianne never pushed. Never asked questions that cornered him or pressed into the spaces he kept carefully closed. Whatever she thought his life looked like outside these walls, she kept it to herself, offering instead small things that required no explanation. Food. The warmth of a family. A place to sit.
He watched her sometimes, the way she moved through her home when he was there, holding space for her children, for their children, as if it required no effort at all to build something like that and keep it intact.
He tried not to imagine what it would have been like to grow up inside it. With a father who loved him for who he was. With a brother who stood beside him instead of across from him.
With a mother who was still alive.
He smiled anyway, small, polite, practiced, and shook his head. “Thank you,” he said. “Maybe next time.”
Marianne studied him for half a second longer than usual, her hand giving a small, almost absent squeeze at his shoulder before she let it fall away.
“Next time, then,” she said, like she believed it. She always did.
The truth was simpler than anything he could offer her. He was tired in a way that didn’t leave room for conversation. Even gentle conversation. Even silence shared across a table where no one expected anything from him. He needed to be alone long enough for his face to settle back into something unguarded.
He left later than he meant to, the sky already dimming as he stepped out onto the street. The walk to the metro was slower than usual, his knee stiff, complaining with every shift of weight. It was something worse than sharp pain. It was the kind that settled in like it was going to stay, a dull insistence that sat behind every step.
The orange line carried him toward Rosemont, the steady clatter of the train filling the space, loud enough to keep his thoughts from looping too tightly. He stood for most of it, one hand braced against the pole, subtly shifting his weight when the ache built too far.
Thinking of what was in his fridge, he made a quick detour to the small Vietnamese place on the corner. It was a luxury, but he ordered anyway. Pad kaprao pork, less spicy please. The woman at the counter didn’t look surprised to see him. He wasn’t a regular, but he was predictable in his comfort foods. He could justify it if he didn’t look too closely at the numbers.
The responsible thing would have been to go home. To eat what little was there and to save the money for everything that constantly trailed him. Attorney fees to turn his residency status out of “pending” and into something that couldn’t be taken from him so easily. Money wired back to Russia, where it disappeared into his brother’s vices and his father’s care in unreliable proportions. Paying someone to wash him, to feed him, to keep him alive in a body that no longer remembered.
Ilya existed here in Montreal instead of existing there in Moscow because he paid for it. Every month, every decision, every shift. He was one injury, one illness, one wrong conversation away from the balance of his living situation collapsing.
Tonight there was cash in his pocket from a successful private session and he was simply hungry.
He cursed quietly as the container burned through the paper bag into his palm, the heat sharp, immediate. He shifted his grip, the sting grounding, pulling him cleanly into the moment.
By the time he reached his building, the food had cooled just enough to carry.
He climbed the three flights slowly, the strain in his knee no longer something he could just ignore. By the final flight, his hand was firm on the rail, his weight angled off his bad leg whether he meant to or not.
The elevator sat, as always, out of order. It had been out of order since the week after he moved in. He had a vague suspicion it would be fixed the week after he left, whenever that happened to be.
Inside, the apartment was quiet in the way that wasn’t actually quiet at all. The walls were thin enough that other people’s lives bled through. Television, footsteps, a loud laugh or an occasional shout. None of it belonged to him.
The space didn’t feel like his. It felt temporary, in a way that had stretched long enough to become permanent without ever meaning to. The furniture was a collection of what had been available, what had been affordable, what had been given or found or taken because it was there. Nothing he had chosen for liking. Nothing that reflected him in any meaningful way. Just stuff that had been willing to become available to him.
Except the couch.
The couch had been Marianne and Richard’s. Dark brown leather, worn soft in places and cracked in others, the surface holding the impressions of lives that had been lived on it. People sitting close, someone falling asleep at one end while someone else watched television at the other. Children were cuddled on it, held and comforted when sick, when sad.
There were small tears along the edges, the marks of dog nails, of time, of use. It had been given to him without ceremony, replaced by something newer, and offered like it was nothing.
It was not nothing. The couch held the imprint of a family and now it held Ilya.
He opened the takeout, the smell of garlic and basil rising up in a wave that was almost too strong in the small space. He divided it automatically, thirds measured by eye. One portion into a bowl for now. Two for later.
He sat, balancing the container in one hand, and took the first bite. The heat caught him hard, blooming across his tongue, settling into the back of his throat. He exhaled through it, eyes closing briefly, and took another bite.
He didn’t mind the burn. It was something immediate, something that didn’t follow him past the moment. At the very least, it was the feeling of something.
He finished the first portion quickly, barely registering it beyond the act of eating. His gaze drifted toward the remaining food. He stood, went back to the counter, and took more. This, at least, was simple. One problem, one hunger that he could solve.
From the freezer, he pulled a bag of frozen vegetables and pressed it against his knee, shifting on the couch until the cold settled properly into the joint. The plastic crackled under his grip. If he was careful, he could put them back after, they would still be edible. Probably.
From the other side of the wall, a television carried clearly enough to fill the space, providing his nightly entertainment. MasterChef, by the sound of it. He didn’t try to listen, there just wasn’t much choice. Voices layered over one another, talking about richness of flavor and balance and technique. About trimming fine cuts of protein, plating with intention, mindfulness of portion sizes.
He glanced over at his container, already half-empty. And at his fridge, mostly empty. He looked away.
His phone buzzed on his lap, interrupting his thoughts.
Svetlana: Bagels tomorrow, Saint-Laurent
He didn’t need to ask which place. Svetlana had a way of deciding things for the both of them and keeping the habit going. He smiled despite himself.
My turn to pay, he typed back, knowing she would probably ignore it as she always did.
He changed out of his clothes, stripping off the day. Dog hair clung to the fabric, the faint grease from the salmon skin, the smell of animals and work that settled into everything. His bedroom was already cold, the window seal refusing to block out the chill from the night. It crept in and settled along the floor.
It would get worse as the days shortened. It always did. Every winter, the same slow fucking invasion of cold.
The shower gave him lukewarm water, which he counted as a win. He stood under it longer than necessary, letting it run over him, not quite warm enough to relax anything, but enough to take the edge off the cold. Steam barely gathered, fading almost as quickly as it formed. He scrubbed himself down with bar soap, removing the scent of dog. For good measure, and to thank the shower for at least some warmth, he scrubbed again. He dried off and pulled on flannel pants and a t-shirt, fabric worn thin from too many washes.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do. That was the worst part, really. Not the hunger, or the cold; not even the pain in his knee.
The absence of anything that required him.
Time slipped in those hours and completely lost its edges. Ten at night, or three in the morning. There was no real difference. Just the slow, steady movement forward, carrying him with it whether he participated or not.
He lay down, pulling the blanket up around him, curling into it more for containment than warmth.
He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to find him.
Ilya woke without bothering to look at the clock. The sun was already up, and his schedule was light. Lunch with Svetlana. A shift at Wolfbird later. One client booked, which meant nothing. Fridays had a way of rearranging themselves depending on who walked through the door.
He took the metro to Saint-Laurent and walked the few blocks to the bagel shop Svetlana had been obsessed with since first taste.
“Ilyusha,” she called, already moving toward him, heels clicking sharp against the pavement as she closed the distance in quick, decisive steps, practically hopping in her heels. She threw her arms around him, hugging him hard and close, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, leaving behind the glossy imprint of whatever new shade she’d decided to terrorize the world with.
He huffed softly and returned it, squeezing her just as tight.
Once, they had been lovers. Back when he first started at Wolfbird, when everything had been new and uncertain and too close to desperation to examine too closely. The club hadn’t been a choice so much as an answer to a lack of options. An immigrant with expired papers and a ruined knee did not inspire confidence in employers.
He had been lucky; he was good at his job.
Svetlana had made sure of that. She had taken him apart and put him back together in the context of Wolfbird. She had shown him how the place worked, not just what it looked like on the surface. The ropes, literally and figuratively. The rooms. The pacing of a night. But also the bar.
“People tell you what they want before they ever say it,” she had told him once, sliding a glass across the counter, amber liquid catching the low light. “You just have to stop listening to their words.”
She had taught him the bottles by scent and taste, not labels. Whiskey that burned fast and clean. Something darker that lingered at the back of the throat. Something sweet that wasn’t really sweet beyond a passing moment. There were bitters that softened if you waited. What to hand someone who wanted a different type of control. What to hand someone who wanted to lose it. Now he watched hands, posture, the way someone held a glass or didn’t.
And Svetlana watched the room. She saw them first, the ones who lingered too long at the bar. The ones who didn’t quite belong to the space they had walked into. The ones who needed something specific and didn’t know how to ask for it. She sent them his way.
Maybe she was as close as he came to love in this world. It would have been massively convenient if it had taken a different shape. Something that could hold a life intertwined, something that could last. Instead, what they had was solid and close and… not built for keeping.
The sex had been good. Svetlana was good at everything she decided to be good at. But they had both known where the line was, and they had stepped back from it before they ruined something more valuable. He could never make her happy. Not really. They weren’t built for each other.
“You know,” Ilya said now, switching easily into Russian, the language settling into his mouth without effort, “there are other places to fulfill your sweet tooth.”
“Why fuck up greatness?” she shot back immediately, already ruining it by talking with her mouth full. She had ordered her usual: a sesame bagel with maple whipped into the cream cheese, candied walnuts scattered over the top like it was some kind of dessert masquerading as breakfast.
She didn’t even wait for him to get his order before taking another aggressive bite, cheeks full, eyes rolling back slightly. Ilya watched her for a second, assessing whether intervention would be required.
“Should I call someone?” he asked dryly. “Or is this a private experience?”
She waved him off, still chewing, entirely unbothered.
He shook his head, laughing under his breath, and reached out with his napkin to wipe a smear of cream cheese from her upper lip.
“You are practically Canadian with that bagel.”
“And you are boring,” she shot back, swallowing finally.
His own order arrived, a sesame bagel, garlic folded into the cream cheese. He took it, still warm, the surface glossy. He bit into it, feeling the density, sesame seeds cracking between his teeth.
They settled onto a bench, shoulder to shoulder, watching the street move around them. A bus hissed to a stop. Someone shouted in French. Another voice answered, laughter following close behind.
For a moment, they just ate.
“So,” Svetlana said finally, turning her head toward him, eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you going to tell me what happened the other night?”
Ilya grimaced. All she knew was that he had said no to a shift, and that alone was enough to trigger suspicion. He didn’t turn down work, not unless something was wrong.
She leaned in, pressing. “You had another client?” she asked.
He tipped his head back, looking somewhere above them, and sighed. “If you must know,” he said, “I had a private session the night before. My knee needed to recover.”
Her entire posture changed. She straightened.
“Who the fuck hurt your knee?” she demanded. “What client was this, Ilyusha?”
“You know I can’t say,” he replied, irritation flickering across his face before he smoothed it back down. She meant well. That didn’t make it less exhausting.
“You’re taking Wolfbird clients off-book,” she said, not asking.
“Fuck, Sveta,” he muttered. “If you must know, he wanted something specific. Couldn’t be done at the club.” He took another bite of his bagel, chewing like it didn’t matter. “It was his private residence. He paid well.”
Her expression tightened immediately. “How specific?”
“It was controlled,” Ilya said, quieter now. “We negotiated before. I entered his house during specific time with a code and found him. There was safe word. Contingencies were prepared for.”
“And your knee?” she pressed.
He looked down at the bagel in his hands, thumb pressing absently into the crust, feeling it give.
“He startled,” Ilya said after a pause. “Caught me wrong with his foot. It was accident, he was very sorry.”
That was the version he offered. It was close, but not the whole of it. Not the way the scene had required him to step into something that sat wrong in his chest the first time he had ever agreed to it, and every time after. Not the way the money had made the decision for him anyway. Not the way in which the client had needed to be taken, not asked.
That was not for this bench. It wasn’t for daylight.
Svetlana rolled her eyes, shoving another bite into her mouth instead of arguing, jaw working hard as she chewed through her frustration.
“He needed to be made to do something he wouldn’t choose,” Ilya added, voice flattening. “Wolfbird isn’t built for that. No space to move.”
“And what happens when Wolfbird finds out you’re ignoring your non-compete?” she shot back, gripping his arm hard enough to anchor him. “What then?”
“I know,” he said.
And he did. Every option cost him something. Decline the client, lose money he didn’t have the luxury of losing. Accept it, risk the only stable work he had. There wasn’t a version where he came out ahead.
A breeze moved through the trees overhead, brushing through his hair, cooling the back of his neck. He took another bite, chewing slowly this time.
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
He almost believed it. Svetlana looked at him like she absolutely did not.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t work,” she said after a moment, tone shifting, something sly creeping back in. “There was someone. Potential client. You would have liked him.”
Ilya glanced at her, interest flickering despite himself. “Did Vex take him?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Too skittish. Had one water and left.” A pause, then, “Tipped me twenty for ten minutes of sitting there.”
“Mm,” Ilya hummed. “Generous.”
“And pretty,” she added, watching him now, waiting for the reaction. He ignored that. Mostly.
They finished their bagels in an easy silence, the conversation settling between them without resolution, as it often did.