Chapter Text
Ilya had never found himself in the situation of arguing that Shane was superior to him in some way, but then Shane had never found himself in the converse situation.
“No, you are the better choice,” Ilya said firmly.
“No, it should definitely be you,” Shane insisted. He was sitting in bed, knees drawn up, waiting for Ilya to finish changing and join him. His laptop was sitting open on the side table. He was trying to get started on filling out the agency forms, but they were hitting an early roadblock. “I want it to be you.” He watched Ilya pull on a faded Boston t-shirt to sleep in, his curls popping through the neckhole, his easy grace as he shucked off his pants and tossed them in the hamper. Shane imagined a child with the same curls, the same crooked smile. He decided to put in appeal to Ilya’s vanity. “Think how cute they’d be.”
Ilya raised an eyebrow at him. “I am not arguing, of course they would be adorable. But I think you would maybe make cute kids too? Maybe with cute little noses and freckles?” He climbed into bed and slid under the sheets next to Shane, tapping his nose for emphasis.
“I mean, sure. All kids are cute anyway, right? So that’s fine either way. But it should be you.” Shane traced a random pattern on the blanket until Ilya covered Shane’s hand with his own.
“Why are you so sure of that?”
Shane sighed and didn’t quite meet Ilya’s eyes when he said, “I love that you’re part of my family. My parents love you maybe more than they love me.”
“Oh, is not a maybe, is for sure.”
“Okay, shut up, never mind.”
“Mm, not never mind.” Ilya tapped Shane’s hand. “But what?”
“But like… for your biological family, you don’t really have anyone anymore. Like, your parents are gone, your brother is…you know, not like, in your life anymore. Anyway, it just, it doesn’t feel fair. You should have that genetic piece. You should have someone you’re related to here, part of your family now.”
Ilya was quiet for an unusually long time. Finally he said, “That is what I am afraid of.”
Shane furrowed his brow. “Afraid of someone being related to you?”
“Yes.” Ilya took a deep breath. “My genes, they are maybe…not the greatest. The depression, the Alzheimer’s, it is… I worry. I do not want to pass that on. And what do I care if someone is related to me? My brother, we share a lot of genes, yes? And we never speak. And you, your parents, we are family.” He gestured at the dog bed in the corner. “Fuck, Anya is not even human and I would die for her.”
Shane huffed out a laugh, then settled into thoughtfulness. “I think…I worry the same things.”
“About me, yes, is a problem.”
“No, about me.”
Ilya shook his head, confused. “What about you?”
“I don’t know, I was a…a strange little kid. I remember being lonely a lot. My parents were great, but I had trouble making friends with other kids. I think that’s part of why my parents put me in hockey so young, they were trying to help me meet some new kids, make some friends, instead of just staying at home alone throwing a basketball at the wall and building Legos and stuff. And then it turned out I was good at hockey but it still took me a long time to really bond with my teammates.”
“Probably did not help you were better than the rest of them.”
“No, it did not. And that I was the half-Asian kid. Anyway, I just… I feel bad for little Shane, kind of. I worry if I had kids I’d feel bad for them too.”
Now they both sat, quietly, digesting this all. Finally Shane said, “I wonder what Scott and Kip are doing. Like how they decided. Can I text them and ask?”
Ilya shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Shane quickly tapped out a message. “Okay. I sent it.” Ilya drew breath to speak and Shane quickly said, “Don’t, I know what you’re going to say.”
“How could you know that?”
“You’re going to say something about Scott being old.”
“No, I was going to say something about him being boring.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “If I’m so boring, aren’t you worried about kids inheriting my boringness? Like how you said I got my boring from my dad?”
“I was wrong. Your dad is not boring at all, he is very fun. We are amazing puzzle team.”
“Sorry, puzzles aren’t boring?” Shane looked at him pointedly.
“No! They are great. Did you not see the last one we did, full of wild animals? I would never do a boring puzzle,” Ilya scoffed.
“Oh okay, so where do I get my boring from?” Shane nudged him playfully, but Ilya looked thoughtful.
“This is a good point.”
“What?”
“Mmm…You are not your dad, or your mom. I am not my dad, thank god, and I am not my mom either.” Ilya paused briefly there, and Shane remembered, as he occasionally did, that Ilya was now older than his mother had been when she died. “We don’t get little, you know, clones of ourselves. You get a totally new person. It’s not… we can’t predict it. Right?
“Yeah,” Shane agreed, and felt a little lighter… then deflated again. “But that doesn’t get us any closer to making a decision.”
Ilya nudged him. “Maybe we take turns?"
“Uh, how many kids are we planning, here?”
“If we take turns, it should be an even number. So…four.”
“What?!” Shane yelped, and Ilya cracked up. “Oh my god, let’s go with two, okay? Otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it from Hayden."
“Mm, good point. I am joking, I would never want to do anything that Hayden does. Two is good.”
“But if we take turns, like…do we use the same eggs? Like would the person - the egg donor - be Russian? Part Japanese? Like, I’d want to try to kind of, you know, match the other person, but what if like, one kid is more Asian, and the other isn’t…”
Ilya rolled his eyes. “Shane. Is a baby, not a math problem."
“I know but like, I just want them to feel like they came from both of us, you know?” Shane’s phone buzzed. “Ooh, it’s Kip.” He read through the message and pursed his lips
“What?”
“Kip says his sister is giving her eggs to them. Wow, that’s cool. So that decided it for them.” Shane drummed his fingers on his leg, then said glumly, “No sisters.”
“No sisters,” Ilya agreed, and winced back a thought of the one sibling he did have. They were quiet for moment, then Shane’s phone buzzed again.
“Kip says, though, they still did testing first. To see if either of them had like, any problems with their sperm or whatever. Okay, now that he says that, I do remember that Melissa woman we talked to saying something about testing.”
“We will not have problems,” Ilya said confidently.
“You don’t have any way of knowing that!” Shane’s phone vibrated and he went back to reading. “He says, so do that first and then maybe it will make the decision easier.”
“Okay.” Ilya wriggled down under the blankets, clearly ready to be done with the conversation for the night. “Mm, you need any help providing a sample?” He ran a hand up Shane’s leg. Shane put the phone aside, as well as the decision. For now.