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The fabric of the blanket was delicate. Expensive, you could tell, just from touch. His mother had said something about high grade muslin and minky being good for swaddling, having enough structural integrity but still comfortable enough to not irritate the baby's skin.
He'd watched the material slip between his fingers when she'd first brought it over, several weeks ago, along with assorted bags of God knew what but everything that a newborn baby could need apparently. He'd watched her lips move as she instructed him on how the little pale blue giraffe plushie was designed to soothe babies by letting them squeeze the soft material when they were distressed. How the air temperature was important to keep them com
So he couldn't understand why she wouldn't stop crying.
His mother couldn't have bought the wrong kind of blanket. Or pacifier. Or plushie. Or whatever the fuck else she'd bought. He'd checked the thermostat for the fourth time in the past five minutes, leaving an indent on his index finger where he'd pressed harshly into the buttons in frustration. He'd made sure the white noise machine was on as he'd walked the length of the nursery, over and over and over but she still lay in his arms, tiny little face that looked so much like his, scrunched up and crying. Her wails were beginning to turn hoarse, little hiccups interrupting them occasionally.
And there was nothing he could do to fix this.
He tried, desperately, to close his eyes against the traitorous stinging in his eyes. His body, a temple he'd built brick by brick, crumbling on him for the third time in half an hour, as it failed to hold back his tears, failed to contain his grief. Failed to soothe his own goddamn baby. And there was nothing he could do, not when this body had stopped feeling his somewhere along the seven months mark. Not when he couldn't recognise the new lines and layers and creases and curves. Not when it didn't even want to listen to him long enough to recognise the tiny thing cradled against his chest, like it hasn't created her.
Exhausted. He was exhausted. Of the pounding in his head. Of the way he couldn't fix his daughter's pain. Of the way he couldn't feel anything beyond the numbness that was gradually beginning to drown him.
He closed his eyes, feeling the first of his own sob catching in his throat, face tipping forward to bury in the soft blanket that still smelled a little like the hospital. Sterile. Unfamiliar. He was just so sorry and he couldn't understand how to apologise to her anymore.
“Solynshko?”
He hadn't noticed the nursery door open. Or the main door. Or the familiar sound of a hockey kit being placed in its designated space in the closet right beside the laundry room, where his own collected a silent layer of grey dust. He stiffened, closing his eyes for long enough that he could push his face just a little closer to the baby's, hoping the blanket would soak the tears he'd shed before turning to face his husband.
He felt as empty as Ilya's eyes looked these days.
Shane didn't fault Ilya for his grief no more than he did his own. He knew better than anyone what it felt like drowning when your feet were perfectly intact with the ground, what it was like feeling the world tilt sideways to try and push him deeper underwater. This water was stagnant, with rotting plants and algae that hadn't shifted in years. This water was going to suffocate them.
So the last thing he was going to do was blame. But he'd be lying if he didn't say he'd never felt so…alone. It wasn't anyone's fault. But that didn't mean it hurt any less. Not when Shane made a choice every time he picked his baby up from her cradle, and let go of Ilya so he sank deeper into the stagnant water. Not when he'd moved her into their room when there was barely enough room to accommodate their grief, let alone add hers. So the term of endearment felt more like a knife digging into two of his ribs and Shane swallowed against the lump in his throat before answering.
“I didn't hear you come in,” he said, as he rocked her, trying to calm her down, begging her at this point. This felt like an exhibition of all his failures and the one curator he knew whose opinion would ruin his life's work was admiring the catastrophe. “How was practice?”
“Fine,” Ilya said, like he'd set for the past three weeks. He'd stopped bringing in anecdotes from his day with the team when Shane had shattered a glass in his hand one day while he was recounting the goal he'd scored against Wyatt’s frankly terrifying defense, painting their white, marble counter top rouge.
Ilya glanced at the small hand peeking from the blanket, curling in distress around thin air as she wiggled against Shane's chest, trying to get whatever point she was trying to make across as her voice, hoarse from the excessive crying, and felt something inside him splinter and separate as Shane fruitlessly rocked her, his hands shaking around her tiny swaddled form.
His husband looked like a child himself, curling around their newborn like he was protecting his favourite toy from being snatched away from him and it made something rot inside him, wilt like the flowers their friends had left behind when they'd first brought her home two weeks ago.
Ilya flinched.
“She’s colicky again,” Ilya said softly, his hands twitching fruitlessly at his sides. He'd read the term in a book in those first few weeks when all of this was still new, still warm, still something that gave him purpose. Right now, the only purpose he had was keeping her safe from everything, including himself. If he held her, he'd only make it worse. He always did.
“I know,” Shane said around the lump in his throat, that seemed to choke his rationality too, because he heard phantom accusation in Ilya's words, not worry. Shame curdled in his stomach and he remembered that he hadn't eaten anything today since Ilya had made him drink a cup of tea before leaving.
Because Ilya had made an effort while Shane just…stood in the middle of their baby's nursery and fell apart. And one day, Ilya was going to get tired of making an effort all by himself, by choosing Shane again and again, and Shane knew if he ever saw Ilya walk out of their front door with the knowledge that he wasn't going to return, again, he was going to die right here curled up on the floor of their baby's nursery.
“I’m-I’m sorry. I'm trying to get her to quiet down but it's been an hour. B-But I'm working on it. Why don't you go take a shower—”
Ilya felt his knees weaken, threatening to give out from under him as he heard the layers of grief in his husband's voice. A picture of their wedding day hung in the nursery and it felt like peering through the window into a stranger's living room. He couldn't recognise them at all.
“Shane—”
“I was thinking we could make something nice for dinner,” Shane barrelled on, grabbing a small hand towel, as he wiped at his daughter's little face delicately, fingers trembling as he mopped up their daughter's drool. “Or we could order. Something you'd like. I'm glad you're eating again, baby—”
“I don't—”
“We could watch a movie while we eat,” Shane said, as he made his way to the thermostat again, letting the hard ridges of the button dig into his skin. “What was that one you were talking about that day? Something horror—”
“Shane!” Ilya said, his voice higher than it had been in ages, breaking around his name as Shane froze, looking at his husband and for the first time since he'd returned home, taking in the way his curls looked like he'd been tugging at them again and his cuticles were bleeding from where he'd probably bitten at them and how his eyes were red rimmed now, showing such intense pain that Shane felt it in his own chest. The first emotion Ilya had shown in days and it was grief.
“She-She needs a warm bath,” Ilya said, his voice brittle around the words, the only sound between them now being their baby's crying. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before holding his shaking hands out. “I-It helped last time, Solynshko. It helped soothe her pain last time so it could work this time too. I-I’ll take her.”
Shane felt a bit like he was watching this through an translucent glass, the sound muffled between them. The last time he'd held her was exactly forty seconds after she'd been born, when she was still sticky and covered in vernix caseosa and amniotic fluid. Even then, she'd been crying herself hoarse like she was now. And Shane could do little else than throw the metaphorical towel down and yield, as he helped he husband gently hold onto her, his own failure clawing at him.
He watched, trailing helplessly behind them as Ilya carried her to their bathroom, instead of the ensuite in her own, pulling out the tub they used to bathe her, setting it in the sink to full it. He watched, as Ilya carefully went through the motions of undressing her tiny wiggling body, murmuring in Russian that Shane didn't have the strength to translate. He watched, as the tub filled with warm water, just enough for half his hand to submerge before carefully lowering their baby into it, supporting her head. She wiggled, splashing the water slightly as she continued crying, and Ilya didn't do anything except take little water in his hand, and poured it over her stomach.
Only then did Shane realise that there was an odd hiccuping sound coming from somewhere, and what his husband was murmuring to their baby, his own so thin Shane could hear the strings of his throat snap against the onslaught of emotions.
“I’m so sorry for abandoning you and your dada, my angel,” Ilya whispered, as their baby's cries started to ebb, finally. “I’m so sorry for being so much like my father and leaving you to hurt all by yourself. Please forgive your Papa. You deserve better. You both do.”
The hiccuping noise were sobs that seemed to spill from Shane's throat and broad line of his husband's shoulders trembled from sobs of his own he suppressed. Shane stumbled forward, pushing his face into Ilya's shoulder, wrapping his arms around his husband as they both cried, for themselves, for their tiny baby who seemed finally fall silent, for the way every single wall of this house seemed to be stained in the blue and grey of their misery. For the first time, they could feel something beyond the numbness that tugged on their bones and they clung to it for dear life, even if it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya whimpered in English, shaking his head slowly. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry I left you to suffer alone.”
“Please,” Shane begged, desperately breathing in the scent of Ilya, of ice, of sweat, of normalcy. “Just s-stay. And-And I will too.”
He felt Ilya nod against the top of his head and heard the gentle splash of water over their baby's skin resume. He was, oddly, reminded of the impromptu baby shower Rose, Jackie and Svetlana had thrown him, the way, halfway through the party, his husband had knelt in front of him, making sure that the contractions were just Braxton Hicks. Shane had made sure of the fact that Ilya was out of earshot when he's teared up, unable to even comprehend just the sheer amount of love and care that poured from his Ilya, despite the fact that it had only been three days since the anniversary of his mother's death.
Because Shane knew that sometimes, love was to laugh at a party where you wanted your mother so she could see the life you've built. Love was to bathe your baby girl who wouldn't stop crying from pain, even when you were afraid. Love was so hold her for hours to soothe her even when the pain of feeling her in his arms and not inside his body was slowly beginning to kill him.
Sometimes, love was to try even when grief tried to tug you underneath the surface of the stagnant water, to suffocate you with the algae and watch as the world turned into a swirl of technicolor you were still colourblind to.
And God knew they were going to try. Shane watched as Ilya wrapped her in a fresh, soft baby towel, the material same as the blanket. Their daughter's eyes, still a hazy blue, blinked slowly as sleep seemed to sought her out finally. And Shane closed his eyes as he listened to his husband gently kiss the top of her head, holding him just a little tighter.
They would try. For them. For her.