grendel was ok

it’s like the poem kindness by naomi shihab nye (this is only a fragment):

that's right

hang it in the louvre

when ilya learns that either of them know how to play at all after dinner one night at the hollander house, he can't quite hide his surprise. he enjoys playing with shane and his parents nonetheless. the family gets quite loud, but it's so different from the way ilya's family used to get loud. this is rambunctious. this is safe. this is fun, actually, even though shane keeps elbowing ilya in the side with how he's shifting from side to side where they sit next to each other on the loveseat.

it's only after they turn off the tv—after yuna pulls shane aside to talk about some sponsorship meeting before shane and ilya leave for the night—that ilya finds out why shane's parents know how to play.

he's joking around with david as they clean up the living room together, saying that for all that shane might have gotten some of david's hockey skills, the video game know-how clearly must be from yuna.

david laughs and smiles, but it's a smile tinged by sadness. "yuna was actually worse than me at the start, if you can believe it," he says.

ilya makes an exaggerated noise of surprise. "no, this i do not believe! she kicked both our asses tonight. she gave even shane a run for his money."

"yes, she did," david says. "but she worked for it. we got the game for shane for his birthday one year—he had been invited to a classmate's house, and he played it there, and he liked it so much. but it was right at that age where the teachers stopped insisting everyone in the class got a birthday invite, and shane wasn't invited back. and none of his teammates were extending invites, either."

david doesn't elaborate, but ilya can hazard a guess anyway. little shane, in turns rambunctious about his interests and shy about everything else. of a one-track mind, like he is now. particular in the way he likes to do things and unable to explain why at that age. more talented than other kids his age. different from other kids his age, in more ways than one. ilya knows how kids treat kids like that.

"and so we got him the game, right? but he had no one to play it with, and he got tired of playing against the computer after a while. it stopped being fun for him—after he had been so excited about it before! almost as excited as he was about playing hockey."

david is looking down at his hands where he's neatly wrapping the charging cords for the controllers back up. ilya, on the other hand, has paused where he was folding up one of the throw blankets. he can't look away from david's face, so nostalgic and so full of love for his son. for the love of ilya's life.

"so yuna and i said we would play with him after he finished his homework one night. it was hard. there's so many buttons, and yuna got so frustrated. she's like shane—she doesn't like to lose. if she's not good at something right away, if she's not passionate about it, it can be a struggle to get her to keep trying."

david chuckles, and ilya smiles even though his throat feels a little tight. like mother, like son.

david keeps going. "i swear, she almost threw a controller at the wall. we both did. shane was so happy, though! you should have seen him. he had the biggest smile on his face. we kept playing, even though he was kicking our butts. and after he went to bed, yuna said that we had to get better so we could keep playing with him. when we took turns taking him to hockey practice, whoever was at home would go against the computer for a little bit after the chores were done. and there were a few date nights where yuna's parents would take shane and we'd just stay in, playing round after round. very romantic, i know. but it was worth it. the first night yuna beat shane, he was just thrilled. you'd think he would have been upset, right? especially being so young—you know how little kids can get. but he wasn't. he was glad to have a challenge. he was glad to have a reason to keep playing and get better. it made it fun for him again."

ilya can picture little shane, giggling, smiling a gap-toothed smile. he can picture little shane picking up the controller for another round, a determined and concentrated set to his little baby brow.

But when Shane sees Ilya shuffling sleepy around the kitchen in the morning, mumbling something like “gonna make you the best eggs Hollander where the fuck is your whisk” or later when they’re getting ready to have dinner with Shane’s parents and Shane helps Ilya pick out a parent-friendly button-down from his own closet, doing up the buttons for him instead of undressing him for once and taking a look at the result (“no, let’s try the this one, the color is better, maybe”) I think they’re both like holy shit this is my guy. This is the team I’ve always wanted, above the one where we play hockey on TV. And it crosses some wires in their brains because oh this is what it’s supposed to feel like to have someone have your back. Not that they both aren’t beloved by their teams but we honestly don’t see it besides the transactional nature of their skills (maybe Hayden is an exception with Shane, but really Ilya’s closest person in the show is Svetlana, he has no one close in the books) weighed with how they get the team accolades.

This is why I don’t think the commitment part was ever going to be hard for them. They are both craving a person, someone that is just there for them. They were conditioned for this type of bond, promised brotherhood when they started hockey, but never reaped the benefits because of their talent. Sure, Shane could have found a nice man in Montreal, but this is so much deeper than just finding someone you want to date and falling in love that way.

The great singers were also the great interpreters. She had just a single octave, and she made it her lifelong subject.

I thought a voice had to be about your fluency, your dexterity, your virtuosity. But in fact your voice could be about your failings, your falterings, your physical limits. The voices that ring hardest in our heads are not the perfect voices. They are the voices with an additional dimension, which is pain.