#sorry iris

They had barely taken two steps from the car before Iris burst through the front door, ready and willing to help as always. She took her Papa’s hand as his faded blue-jean eyes crawled up the house, squinting suspiciously at the building. Shane could just barely hear him murmur in Russian to her, “Where is this?”

“Papa, it’s my house. Remember, it was your wedding gift for Jeremy and me.”

Jeremy took his father-in-law’s hand and helped Shane up the front steps. Shane stopped at the door, turning and waiting for his husband to slowly make his way up as well. Hockey had always blessed them with strong arms and legs, and the diets Shane kept them on did their best to do them good, but time always robbed you of something. Forty years of retirement guaranteed that.

When they finally made it through the front door, Shane braced for impact. Literally. His hands reached out to the frame of the door, and he planted his feet as firmly as he could.

“Grandpa!” A chorus of voices from below chest-level cried out from the living room, hurling themselves against his legs as short arms wrapped around his waist and legs. He couldn’t help but laugh, even if the room spun with the impact. “Alright, alright, hello. Gentle on grandpa’s knees, please.”

“Kids, careful with— Riki, handle the grunts!”

Iris, warm-hearted and iron-fisted Iris, called out into the main room for her brother as Ilya slid his shoes off, an old habit he’d kept after years of Shane rubbing off on him. When the grandchildren caught sight of Ilya, it was over. Every hand detached and reached instead for Deda, and their dedushka leaned down with open arms to catch them all. “Oh, my babies. Look at all my babies. Shane, look at them. They are so tall.”

Ilya’s head tilted up to his husbands and something in his expression changed as he looked at him. Shane knew the expression well, the “you don’t look like how you’re supposed to” look. Like every time he turned his head, he expected to see Shane Hollander: Captain of the Montreal Metros… not Shane Hollander: “Dad” to some, “Grandpa” to many. He turned his head back down, picking out Iris’ youngest. “You, uh,” he snapped around until he could conjure a name, and Shane supplied discreetly. “Oliver, yes, you have gotten so big. Last time I saw you, you were, what? This big?” he reached down to his knee, his hand a measure of height. He did this every time he saw the kids, and every time it got a rise out of them.

Shane took in the display of love as another headache hit him. If it was like the others, it was only going to get worse.

By the time dinner was over, and all five grandchildren tried their hardest not to fall asleep on Iris’ couch, the adults stayed at the table.

Riki, the youngest of Ilya and Shane’s two, was telling a story about the day he found out he was adopted after he learned where babies came from. “I remember I asked Dad who gave birth to me, and how he was freaking out.”

“And then you asked him if he gave birth to you—” Iris supplied, smirking over her glass of red wine that Jeremy topped off for her.

“And Papa started howling, so bad I thought he was mad until he fell off the couch and I realized he was laughing.”

Shane chuckled silently at his seat, his hand over Ilya’s as he gave it a light squeeze. He knew he was trying to keep up, trying to place timelines and stories. It was only when Iris joked that she “never had to second-guess if I was adopted” that Ilya sat up.

“Yes, yes, I remember! Little Irochka in the back seat when we drove home with you. Shane was so scared I would crash, but you know your papa would never hurt you. He was crying, I remember now.”

“I was not crying.” Of course, Shane knew he was crying, but how could he not? That was the day they took their baby home for the first time after an endless adoption process. “It was just a dusty car.”

“Not even a real car.”

“It was European.”

“I am European, I know what a real European car is, and that is not a real car.”

For a second, it felt exactly how it should have. Ilya and Shane were bantering, teasing each other as they have been since the summer before rookie season. It was so good he could ignore how his husband’s face blurred and doubled for a moment, because Ilya was back. Even if just for now. Riki stood, kissing the tops of both of his father’s heads as he passed by to grab another bottle from the kitchen, and in that moment, Shane thought he could stay at that table forever.

The house Ilya had bought for Iris and Jeremy had too many bedrooms for a four-person family, but it meant that even with Riki and his three kids, Shane and Ilya still had their own room when staying over.

Ilya sat at the edge of the bed, staring at his feet as Shane washed his face in the en-suite bathroom. He tried to wash away the excruciating pain from his head, the pain that had him scream into a pillow some nights as lightning struck in his skull for minutes on end. It had gotten worse throughout the day, and Shane did his best to hide it with trips to the bathroom, substituting a pillow for a pile of folded towels. He tried to ignore the burn of lights in all the rooms by focusing on his children, or on the sleeping pile of grandkids by the TV. At night… all he had was the promise of sleep to save him. Shane had no clue what he needed saving from; he just knew it was fucking up his time with his family.

Shane reached for the bedroom key, knowing he had to lock the door in case Ilya woke up in the middle of the night, but just as his fingers grazed the cool metal on the dresser, he heard Ilya cry.

There was a time when seeing Ilya cry was rare— something mythical and believed to be impossible. He turned around, taking slow steps to his husband. When Ilya cried, it was mostly silent, a deeply ingrained habit of hiding any and all emotion that he and Shane had worked so hard over their lifetimes to overcome. The only tell was his hiccups. Ilya hiccuped when he cried too much, too hard.

“Where is this? Where am I? I don’t know where I am.”

“Ilya, you’re in your bedroom. You’re alright.” This was a relatively new voice for Shane. A soft, artificial voice that was meant to exude trust and comfort. Familiarity. He felt like he sounded robotic. “You’re with me, Shane.”

“Shane?” His Russian dipped back to English briefly before returning to what was familiar. “No, I… I was with my mom. Where is she? Did she go off with father on a trip? She told me I could come with on the next one.”

Understanding was one thing for Shane, but he could only do so much speaking after forty-five years of trying to learn. It didn’t come to him like French did growing up, as hard as he tried. He attempted to stick to English, hoping Ilya would listen. “Ilya, look at me. We are at our daughter’s house, remember? Iris, baby Irushka. Riki is here too. You’re at home with your family, Ilya. You just don’t remember.”

“Where is Hollander?” The thickly accented English cut through Shane’s words like a knife as Ilya pushed himself back against the bed, as far away as he could manage in his state. Angry, frightened, and distrusting of the man he trusted everything with. “Tell him I am here and to come get me. I do not like this.”

Shane sighed, tears of his own sliding down his cheeks that he wiped as quickly as they came. He stepped forward until he reached the bed, a wave of nausea hitting him that he swallowed down. “I’m Hollander. I’m right here, Rozanov, I’m right here. I just got old.”

Ilya’s chin quivered as he took in the stranger’s face again. He saw the brown eyes that darted away in the showers, the lips that curved into a smile under a helmet around a mouth guard, the freckles that set his soul on fire that he would count as they deepened under the summer sun.

“You got old.” Ilya realized then who he was talking to.

Shane Hollander nodded, climbing into the bed to settle next to a slightly calmer, but still scared, Ilya Rozanov. “Yeah. We both did.”

There’s a thud that comes from outside Iris’ bedroom door. She ignores it at first, too tired to care or investigate. Two minutes later, there’s another. The clock at the bedside reads 4 in the morning.

When the door opens, she finds her papa standing before the top of the stairs, looking down, then around. Lost. Scared. When he finds her, brows knit in confusion by her presence, he simply says “there’s a man in my bed.”

She finds the source of the noise— Ilya had knocked down pictures from the walls as he stumbled across it from his room, trying to find something to balance him in his tired confusion. She picks them up as she leads him back to his room, turning them over in her hands. One is of her and her dads at her college graduation. The other is them holding their grandchild for the first time in Iris’ hospital room. She sets them on a dresser for the moment, explaining in hushed whispers where he is and who she is.

Then Iris reaches their bedroom door. It’s dark. She remembers growing up and how sensitive to light Shane was when he slept; he always needed blackout curtains. It doesn’t feel familiar now, though. It feels… like a stranger that occupies her parents' bedroom from corner to corner. Swallowed up in silence and shadow, only the outline of the bed visible from where she stands. Ilya lets go of her hand, wandering to his side of the bed and sitting at its edge. He looks behind himself at the unmoving man who has slept next to him for over fifty years, and Iris can’t make out his expression. She only hears him whisper in Russian.