Ilya’s Father’s Death and the Funeral in Moscow

Ilya’s father’s death and the funeral in Moscow interrupt a night Ilya had expected to spend with Shane Hollander, turning their uncertain romance into a setting for grief and care. Ilya returns to Moscow, tells Shane that his father is dead, and later reaches for him when ordinary conversation proves too difficult. The funeral itself is treated with restraint; the narrative’s emphasis falls on the pauses around it, Ilya’s struggle to speak, and Shane’s decision to listen without demanding explanations.

The call and the news

On the evening the news arrives, Ilya has already spent an hour with Shane and still intends to meet him again. He knows, at least in theory, that their relationship is meant to be no more than sex and that it must eventually end. Yet that certainty has weakened: he no longer worries about appearing eager, and admits to himself that he wants as much time with Shane as he can get. The thought of an eventual ending remains, but for that night he chooses closeness over the rule he had set for himself.

After saying good night to the teammates still at the arena, Ilya leaves through the players’ entrance, looking at his phone and considering what jab to send Shane. Instead, the phone rings. It is his brother. Ilya almost lets the call go unanswered, but suspects there may be a reason for it that has nothing to do with money. The call redirects the scene from flirtation to family crisis: when Shane asks where he is, Ilya clarifies that he is home in Moscow, not in Boston. Shane immediately understands that something may have happened to Ilya’s father. Ilya confirms that his father is dead.

The news is delivered with stark economy, while the conversation around it falters. Shane offers sympathy, but Ilya turns to what people are saying about him. When Shane tries to stop the deflection and insists on being serious, silence follows. Shane apologizes; Ilya does not answer. Shane hears a sharp sniff and a tight, throaty sound before Ilya ends the call. The exchange does not resolve into a composed account of loss. Its abrupt ending leaves the grief present as something Ilya cannot yet or will not put into words.

Two days later: making room to speak

Two days later, after Shane’s game in Buffalo, a text from Ilya asks whether Shane is alone. Shane says yes and answers the call immediately. He is in a silent, empty stairwell, leaning against the landing below his floor, and begins by asking how Ilya is doing rather than exchanging greetings. Ilya can only describe himself as feeling bad. Asked about his family, he responds briefly; when Shane asks whether he is upset, Ilya says he does not know and wonders whether he is upset about the wrong thing.

Shane tentatively asks whether Ilya wishes things had been different. Ilya tries to explain what he wishes his father had wanted, but cannot finish the thought. He sighs and says English is too difficult that day. This difficulty matters to the scene: grief is not presented as a clear statement awaiting a sympathetic reply, but as a feeling for which Ilya cannot find the necessary words in the language they share. Shane has no access to what Ilya might say in Russian, and offers a kind of listening that does not depend on understanding every sentence.

Shane asks Ilya to tell him everything he wants to say in Russian, even though Shane will not understand, in case speaking helps. The offer is tentative enough that Shane nearly takes it back during the silence that follows. Ilya accepts. For several minutes, he speaks with a liveliness and agitation Shane has not heard from him before. Shane is accustomed to Ilya conveying more through a teasing smile or a calculating look than through sustained speech; now, the verbal outpouring feels to him like a dam giving way. He sits on the stairs and listens. The act is not translation or advice. Shane lets Ilya speak in the language available to him and stays present without making comprehension a condition of companionship.

The funeral and the return to family

Afterward, Ilya thinks of Shane as a friend. He can admit that they are friends because Shane is the only person he had thought to contact when he needed someone to talk to. That recognition grows out of the call’s circumstances: Ilya had asked for privacy, struggled to speak in English, and then chosen to continue in Russian with someone who could not follow the words. The friendship is acknowledged not through a declaration between them but through Ilya’s recognition of whom he sought out.

Ilya leaves a shop carrying a cappuccino and reluctantly heads toward his father’s house. The funeral is scheduled for the following morning. He expects that afterward he can leave what remains of his family behind. The detail of the drink and the walk does not soften the coming funeral; instead, it places the immediate ritual of mourning within an unresolved family relationship. Ilya is returning to the house and funeral, but he already imagines departure as what follows them. The account gives no reconciliation or easy resolution: the funeral is a necessary point on the way out, not evidence that family bonds have been repaired.

Shane’s care across the distance

The day after the funeral, back in Montreal, Shane has barely entered his apartment before texting Ilya. He has been thinking about him all day. It is late in Moscow, after ten at night, and Shane knows Ilya’s father’s funeral took place that morning; he is unsure whether Ilya will respond, since he may be busy. His message is a simple check-in, not a demand for a report about the ceremony or an answer to the unfinished thought from their call.

Across these exchanges, the event changes what the secret relationship can contain. Shane and Ilya’s meetings had been framed by the expectation that their connection was temporary and primarily sexual. When Ilya’s father dies, Shane becomes the person Ilya contacts in distress, and Ilya’s grief makes their friendship visible to him even while their romance remains private. Shane cannot remove the distance between Buffalo, Montreal, and Moscow, cannot understand Ilya’s Russian, and cannot supply the words Ilya cannot find. What he can do is answer, ask how Ilya is, invite him to speak, listen, and reach out again after the funeral. The scene’s significance lies in that limited but repeated presence: care begins not with mastery of grief, but with making room for it.