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[November, 2016]
There is a stop clock in Ilya Rozanov's brain.
He's not always aware of it; the ticking up minutes doesn't distract him when he's on the ice, or out clubbing with his team, or burying his head between the thighs of someone beautiful. Some days, he hardly thinks about it.
Other days, the passage of minutes and hours is all he can focus on.
Three days after Shane Hollander leaves him on his own couch, the clock strikes thirteen - and Ilya feels something in his chest break.
It has been thirteen years since Irina Rozanova died.
Four thousand seven hundred and forty-five days.
One hundred thirteen thousand eight hundred and eighty hours.
Too many minutes to count.
Ilya has officially spent more time with a dead mother than a living one. His father is dying, his brother a drug addicted asshole, and his own rival-turned-lover has rejected him in favor of a movie star with silky hair and perfect tits.
In other words, the year couldn't have gone worse if he'd planned it.
He's taken November 17th off for as long as he can remember; it's the only vacation day he specifically requests, as long as there's no game scheduled on it, because most years just trying to get out of bed is an uphill battle.
This year, he loses.
Ilya stays in bed until the sun is high in the sky, listening to a playlist he'd never admit he's put together. He wipes tears as they fall and pretends not to feel his pillow grow damper steadily as the day passes.
The loneliness presses in around him like a wet blanket, heavy and stifling.
Tomorrow, Ilya Rozanov will drag himself out of bed and paste a smile on his face. He will go to practice and answer no questions about what he had done the day before.
Tomorrow, he will pretend he cannot hear the steady ticking of a clock, counting up seconds and minutes and hours like they are footsteps marching him steadily towards his own death.
Tomorrow, Ilya Rozanov will be fine.
Today, however, Ilya Rozanov stays in bed and listens to his own heartbeat tick second after second, each second one moment more that Ilya has existed in a world where no one alive cares for him. Each minute that passes is one more in which Ilya has lived without his mother.
Today is thirteen years without Irina Rozanova. Today is three days since Ilya learned just how lonely and unloved he truly is.
Today, he is not sure he will live to see fourteen years without his mother.
Today, he is not sure he wants to.
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[June, 2023]
The year Ilya Rozanov turns thirty-two is, by all accounts, one of the happiest years of his life.
He is finally playing on the same team as his husband. They have finally won the Stanley Cup after two years of playoffs, and he is finally taking care of his mental health in ways that make sure that the bad days are few and far between. Never gone, of course, but less. More tolerable.
The day Ilya Rozanov turns thirty-two, however, he opens his eyes and immediately wants to close them again. The significance of the day sits heavy on his chest, weighing him down like a cinder block, pulling him to the bottom of the ocean.
Ilya Rozanov is thirty-two years old. For the first time in his life, he has seen an age Irina Rosanova will never see.
He didn't know outliving her would be this easy.
He didn't know that outliving her would be this hard.
The other side of the bed is cold, and Ilya feels unmoored in the sea of blankets, left alone to fight against the weight pulling him under. Shane's family has always had a thing about birthdays, and even though he’d normally be disappointed to not have been woken with a birthday blowjob, for once, he is grateful to have woken up alone.
Ilya knows, vaguely, that his apathy towards his upcoming birthday has been showing as the date crept steadily closer; his mood has gotten demonstrably worse, his temper shorter, and the lines around Shane's mouth have gotten deeper. He knows Shane is worried about him. He knows he is not doing well.
He knows, of course, that this will pass. They both do.
That doesn't make it easier.
Ilya knows that if he called for Shane now, Shane would come. Shane would get back into bed with him if he asked, even though Shane hates being in bed past 8 o'clock. He knows that Shane wouldn't resent him asking; in fact, Shane has told him on multiple occasions that he wanted Ilya to tell him if Ilya needed him for anything.
Maybe if Ilya were a better husband, he would know how to ask. Instead, he watches the ceiling fan swirl round and round, wishing Shane were next to him but unable to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth long enough to ask.
Ilya doesn't know quite how much time passes before there's a soft knock at the door — tentative, like Shane wants to make sure he's truly wanted in Ilya's space before entering, as if Ilya ever doesn't want him in his space. As if Shane Hollander isn't eternally the brightest spot in Ilya's life, even on his Worst days.
When the door creaks open, however, it's not Shane on the other side.
Yuna Hollander is one of Ilya Rozanov's favorite people in the entire world. She has been many things to him in the years following the announcement of his and Shane's relationship — manager, support system, even nurse once or twice in the years Ilya spent in Ottawa before Shane — but right now, she is at the bottom of the list of people Ilya wants to see.
Well, not quite the bottom, but as far as Ilya is aware, Alexei is still in Russia.
Yuna Hollander is a force of nature. She is also Shane Hollander's mother — and, like Shane, has developed a unique talent for lowering Ilya Rozanov's walls without him realizing. By the time he'd realized the extent to which Yuna had worked her way inside the fortress meant to protect Ilya's heart, it was already too late.
Which, on this particular day, meant that Yuna Hollander is dangerous.
Ilya does not want to be vulnerable today. He does not want to cry. The stop clock in his heart ticks steadily on, beat after beat, and for the first time in years, Ilya almost wishes it would stop.
Ilya Rozanov has survived many things, but outliving his mother feels like losing her all over again, and he cannot look Shane Hollander's mother in the eyes today and act like he is okay. He cannot pretend today.
He cannot break, either.
Ilya keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling as Yuna approaches. She has yet to say a word, and Ilya can't decide if he wishes she would or hopes that she doesn't; the silence stretches, heavy as a blanket, as Yuna settles herself on Shane's side of the bed and rests her hand on Ilya's back. Ilya closes his eyes at the touch, willing back tears, and reminds himself to breathe.
They sit in silence for what feels like both no time and an eternity before Yuna speaks.
"The year after my father died," she says quietly, "I told David I was cancelling my birthday."
Ilya shifts. His voice is still buried under layers of sorrow, heavy in his chest, but he presses back slightly against Yuna's hand and hopes she knows he's listening.
"My mother and I had always had a more… complicated relationship, as most daughters do, but my father…" Yuna paused. "He was amazing. He's why I love hockey, you know? Moved to Canada from Japan with barely any English and even less of a plan, passed a bar one night on his way home from work that was showing a hockey game, and from the way he'd tell it, it was love at first sight."
Yuna's breath caught in her throat, and Ilya felt a burning sensation start to grow behind his eyelids. If Yuna started crying — strong, beautiful Yuna Hollander, who had given her son so much but especially his strength of spirit — Ilya was doomed.
"Celebrating my birthday when he wasn't there just felt… emptier. Something was missing, and was always going to be missing, and I thought — if I don't do anything, then there's nothing for him to be missing, right?"
Yuna's voice cracks on the last word, and Ilya feels something inside his chest break in response. With the little energy he can muster, he rolls over to face Yuna and buries his head in her lap as the tears gathering behind his eyes finally break free.
Ilya Rozanov's mother has been dead for twenty years. The stop clock in the back of his mind has never once stopped counting, not when it hit thirteen or fifteen or twenty.
Two decades is a long time to spend looking for something that was always going to be missing.
Yuna's arms come around Ilya and he clings to her lithe frame like she can save him from drowning, like she is the last lifeboat in a sea wrecked by storms, his body broken and bloody as it is thrown against the rocks.
Ilya sobs.
For a while, it feels like the tears are never-ending, until eventually — finally — Ilya has nothing left. Above his head, Yuna is shushing him gently, running one hand through his hair as she reminds him that she is here for him, that he will be ok, that he can let himself cry. She rubs small circles on his back with the other hand, and it's just the right amount of overstimulating that allows Ilya to feel a little more like he exists within his body instead of vaguely above it. He's cried so hard he feels kind of nauseous, but a small part of him is almost glad to be feeling something.
Yuna's words quiet alongside Ilya's sobs, and silence settles back over them. It's a softer silence this time, not heavy and stifling, but comfortable, like stepping into a hot bath after a long day in a cold rink.
Ilya almost doesn't want to break the silence between them, but it seems his voice has been freed alongside the tears, and the words tumble out of him like they're each fighting to be the first one out.
"My mother died," he says, voice thick and scratchy as it leaves his throat, "a week before she turned thirty-two."
Ilya doesn't think he could ever forget that week — how he'd been planning to buy his mother the pretty blue necklace on display at the shop he always passed on his way home from school, the one that matched her eyes; how he'd saved up carefully, taking odd jobs from neighbors because there was no way Grigori would have given him the money if he'd asked. Ilya had had a whole plan in mind; he was going to ask his mother to go to the ice rink with him, both because it was the place where they could exist together outside of Grigori, and also because Ilya had been planning a second surprise for Irina — he'd asked one of the girls from the figure skating team that he was friends with to help him choreograph a small piece, just for him.
Irina had once been one of the best skaters Russia had ever seen.
Ilya had just wanted to see her smile.
It was why he was late coming home from practice that fateful day; he'd stayed behind so he and Evgenia could run through his program one final time, legs already sore from hockey but heart feeling light. He had been so excited; Evgenia had finally told him he was ready to maybe try a double loop, and she hadn't pushed his hands away when he'd gone to flirt with her a little in thanks. It had been a good day.
That is, until it wasn't.
Ilya talks until the words run out, describing the day he'd found his mother lying prone on the bathroom floor like it had happened to some other Ilya. He's never really been sure what Shane had told Yuna about Ilya's mother, despite her being the acting head of the foundation they'd literally created in Irina's name; nothing he says, however, seems to phase her, so Shane must have given her some context.
Finally, Ilya's breath catches once more in his throat, and he falls back into silence. He still feels heavy; the ticking clock in the back of his mind continues to count — seconds, minutes, hours further from a time when he had a mother, when someone in Russia loved him for nothing other than the fact that he existed.
But he is not alone.
Ilya's mother would never leave Russia. She never saw him play in the MLH, never saw his face on a billboard, never heard his name called by millions of screaming fans. She would never meet the love of his life, or get to know any of the people Ilya considered to be his family here in Ottawa, but that does not mean that he is alone.
Yuna's presence alone is proof that Ilya Rozanov has people who love him — Yuna, who loves him enough to be sitting here with him right now. Shane, who undoubtedly is the reason Yuna is here, who had seen a problem he couldn't fix, not on his own, and had handed it over to the most capable person he knew. David, who Ilya guessed was downstairs with Ilya's own husband, working hard to keep Shane and Anya calm while Yuna and Ilya fought against the darkness in Ilya's mind. His family is here, in this house.
He lays with his head in Yuna Hollander's lap and thinks back to the year he realized he would always have more years of his life without his mother in them than with; he thinks of discarded tuna melts and cold sofas, of being so lonely he didn't know if he would ever survive it. Thirteen had felt like an inconceivable number, back then.
He thinks that if that Ilya could see him now — even on a day when the grief threatens to pull him under, surrounded by care and family and love — that Ilya would never be able to believe how lucky he would be one day.
Ilya hopes his mother knows how much he is loved.
Soon, he will muster the energy to rouse himself from the bed that he shares with his husband every night. He will force himself down the stairs to play with his dog, kiss his husband, and spend time with his family; tomorrow, the entire roster of the Ottawa Centaurs will invade his house and feed him barbecue and cake and tease him about getting old. It will not be the best birthday he has ever had, but it will be a good one.
For now, however, he lets his mother-in-law's love wash over him. He listens to the steady beating of his own heart tick steadily onwards, and thinks, vaguely, that he's grateful he made it to thirty-two.