Bringing some angst and maybe some depressed 6XLya because reasons. They are either straight out denied or everything put on a hold for adoption due to concerns about Ilya’s size, even with their wealth and fame. I could see lots of comfort from Shane who is also prepared to publicly hype up his perfect husband and go fully scorched earth about the whole thing. Ultimately I think I would work out for them either from Shane going in hard, the money / fame winning out, or them going the surrogate route.
hey, fuck. This took me through an incredible spectrum of emotions. Here goes.
Shane puts his cellphone down on the side table, cold crawling over his skin. He resents the call. He resents the phone. The silence in the room is massive.
Beside him, Ilya sets his legs, rocks himself back, and gets to his feet with a quiet grunt. “Prostí menya, lyubímyy,” he says, voice low. Then he turns, and walks slowly outside.
Shane sits still for a minute, then he follows him onto the deck.
It’s chilly outside without a jacket. The October wind brings up gooseflesh on his arms. Cold, dead wood under his bare feet as he crosses the deck to where Ilya has sat down on the edge of a deck chair, looking out onto the green lawn, all the fallen leaves, solid and round as a boulder with his shoulders hunched. His thoughts are coming off him in waves, but Shane isn’t sure he can begin to know what they are.
“Do you want to be alone?” Shane asks him.
Hesitation. Ilya shakes his head. Shane drags the other chair closer and sits down across from him. “…I don’t need you to apologize to me,” he says quietly, “We’re in this together, right? And they didn’t say no, they said—“
“I know what they said.” Ilya says roughly, “It does not change anything, Shane. We will figure it out, I will figure something out, I know this. But… fuck.”
“…Yeah,” Shane agrees. Fuck. They’ve been planning for this for months, dreaming about it for years now. They’d thought the home visit and their interviews had been a done deal, the agency representatives drinking their coffee and seeming so happy with the house, chatting them up. And now this call, not to tell them they’ve made it to the list but that, in more avoidant words, they’ll be eligible as soon as Ilya manages to lose an easy two hundred and fifty pounds. As if he isn’t going to be able to give a kid a loving home while fat.
There had been moments of wondering. He’d felt snatches of worry on guilty occasions, overlaying an imaginary bawling toddler over the scene while watching his partner wade through a world grown too small. What if X, what if Y. Like a man’s ability to move quickly, get up off the floor easily is a quality that will make or break him as a capable parent, and people with less maligned disabilities don’t raise children well all the time. Like awful people, parents, don’t pass muster all the time because they have a pretty facade.
It’s bias. He’s certain of that.
“Let’s go in,” Ilya says once they’ve sat long enough, “You are cold.” But he doesn’t move.
Shane stands. Offers him a hand.
They lay on the wide sectional couch together, Shane with his head resting on Ilya’s big, cushioned inner arm. There could be a baby safe asleep in the divot where their bodies meet, enjoying the warmest nap.
“I had been worried,” Ilya says into Shane’s temple. Shane can feel the words moving through his neck and jaw as much as he can hear them.
Ilya swallows. “…Da. Is hard to be ignorant of this kind of thing.” He rubs the crest of his belly with the hand not trapped under Shane’s arm. Shane can hear things in his sigh. Surrender, and resolve.
He remembers going out together, years ago now, and realizing that the people staring at them downtown weren’t doing so out of recognition. Their time front and center in the hockey headlines was over, and he hadn’t been on any billboards in a while. Ilya’s size was the spectacle. “Mommy, mommy,” a little kid had nearly shouted in the supermarket, “Why is his tummy so big?”
The mortified mother had been fighting not to look their way. She’d been wondering the same thing too. Ilya had smiled and waved.
“We’re getting a second opinion,” Shane says to him now, “We’re gonna call them back, have a redo, and if they say no again, then… fuck them. We’ll go back and look at something else.”
Ilya turns his head in Shane’s direction, as far as his neck will let him. Shane pushes himself up to give Ilya a kiss.
“We’re not fucking quitters,” Shane says. He thinks he sounds insolent, but it’s true. “You’re going to be a better father than most people ever have.”
And he wouldn’t want this if he didn’t want it together. Ilya gives him a squeeze.
“… I was thinking about baby lying right here,” Ilya says quietly, gesturing to the cradle where their bodies meet. His voice is suddenly thick. “Having nap.”
“…Yeah,” Shane whispers, “Me too.”
