Ivan Kosin

July: Week 2

In reflection, Ivan had to admit that things were getting better at the Manor. He and Malcolm had settled themselves there, shaping their lives into a more even pattern and abandoning the ragged adaptations they'd had before. They spent long stretches of time in the Manor now, returning to the family home for short trips - overnight patrols, early morning visits to the clinic.

In fact, Ivan had come to prefer the Manor to Malcolm's family house in the woods. The old wood frame home, standing in solitude against the trees emptied him, somehow, he found. It was particularly awful to be there alone, while Malcolm went off to work or war or whatever it was the men at the station were playing at. Alone inside the family house, Ivan jumped at every sound - the telephone was a threatening madman who knew he was alone; the wind against the windows was a murderer, hungry for blood; or his father, trying drunkenly to get in. These possibilities all terrified Ivan equally. And so during those silent, creeping times - when the phone didn't ring and the door never opened and only the tinny sounds of the wind and rabbits outside gave any relief, Ivan really missed the Manor. Their strange, acquired home in the big brick building felt more real, more alive - there were always things going on, and action, and community that Ivan was a part of, even if only tangentially.

He even had friends at the Manor now, a point of reluctant pride for Ivan. There was George, naturally, but now he also had Zeno, who was working on raising herbs with him in the greenhouse, and Charlie, who wasn't awful, as it turned out, and Chesney, who was kind of sweet in a young, naive way (and also was teaching Ivan how to cook). The accounting of all of this meant, of course, that Ivan now officially had more friends than he had ever had in his life.

At that thought, he hesitated a little bit - could he truly call them friends? George was his, certainly, and he trusted him as much as Ivan Kosin was capable of trusting anybody. But the rest? Perhaps their kindnesses were just natural civility, or borne out of the catalyst of common interest? Maybe their friendships were just passing, fleeting affections, or - worse - demanded from them by their husbands. This wounded Ivan to imagine, and so he tried to put that thought away, willfully. Malcolm had taught him to do this.
"These fears you have, Ivan - of other people? They only have power," Mal had told him one night before bed, "If you let them. It's just fear. It's nothing real."

~

"I'm selling the house." Malcolm announced, over breakfast, one Wednesday when they had stayed overnight in the family home because of an extraordinarily late shift. He didn't look at Ivan. "To my cousin. He'll take good care of it."
Ivan dipped his spoon into his carrier-vitamin-enriched oatmeal (the only way Malcolm could get him to take the damn vitamins) and watched his husband across the table. Malcolm looked unaffected, but Ivan felt confident that his husband was aching inside. People often hid their love for the things that were being taken from them - this, Ivan Kosin knew.
"Is that…is that ok?" Ivan probed, eventually. George had taught him to do this, he considered. George had helped him to learn this new skill of kindness. Malcolm shrugged.
"Ain't too bad."
Now Ivan knew for sure. Malcolm's accent only manifested like that when he was drunk, scared, or lying.
"Are you sure?" Ivan probed.
Malcolm leaned down the corner of the paper and looked at his carrier through bleary eyes.
"I'll be fine." he said. "It'll be fine." he leaned back in his chair. "I like it better at the Manor, anyway. Better food. Better living. Better for our family."
Ivan's heart leapt into his throat.
"We're a family?" he'd meant to make that a statement, but at the end, his heart had failed him and it had come out a question instead (an uncertainty). Ivan put the spoon down beside his oatmeal, feeling full.
Malcolm, looking tenderly at his carrier and knowing - just understanding with those black, black eyes in that mysterious way that Malcolm had - reached out to take Ivan's hand.
"Of course we're a family."

Ivan blinked fawnishly, as if he were having some difficulty understanding his surroundings, and then found some work for himself in cleaning off the edge of his spoon.
Malcolm looked at him, fondly, for a moment, then pushed his plate away.
"Finish your oatmeal. Then come upstairs with me for a minute."
"Um." Ivan started, tensely, then reached over to take his husband's abandoned plate away. This was both to stall and because he had learned habits here at the Manor - little tics of behavior that were oft unbreakable without his conscious thought. "What for?" he asked, quietly.
Malcolm gave a half-smile, a tease of a grin.
"Come upstairs and you'll see." he answered, and bumped Ivan's leg gently with his own. Ivan flushed more deeply and got up to take the dishes to the sink.
"I can't right now." he mumbled, from the safety of washing dishes. This was the other thing he hated about Malcolm's house. The isolation put his husband's attention fully on him.
"I have chores to do."
Malcolm laughed and crossed the room casually, reinserting himself into Ivan's space.
"You can do them later."
Ivan hesitated, weighing the cost of resistance in his mind.

In the month since they had been living nearly continuously at the Manor, Malcolm had become more demanding - of Ivan's time, attention, affection, and his body. The requirements his husband placed on him had grown more strenuous, and in addition, Malcolm had become a strict, by-the-book Manor man. Behavior that had once merited at least two warnings and some capitulation now was punished immediately.

This was something that Ivan had learned the hard way, when he'd refused to eat and instantaneously found himself being dragged bodily up the stairs and confined to the bedroom for the rest of the day. Then he'd learned it the really hard way when he'd arrived home one afternoon and, irritated by a slow performance on the track, had slammed the bathroom door in Malcolm's face. The door had been summarily removed from its hinges and he had to pee and bathe in no privacy for the rest of the week. It had been made clear, in any event, that the behaviors in which Ivan had been indulged at the beginning of his time at the Manor were no longer acceptable.

So now, at this moment, being asked to go upstairs, Ivan felt torn between anxiously wanting to please Malcolm and desperately wanting to rebel. The boundaries were in sight, but staying inside of them felt against his nature. And besides, the likelihood of punishment seemed small. Malcolm hadn't struck him yet, and although he had certainly made clear that this was not outside of the realm of possibility, he had taken no further action on the matter. This spurred Ivan on for some reason; although he didn't want to be struck, he felt that at least if it happened, and he faced it and found he could live with it and understand it, then the whole thing would be over. It would be a fear, that only has teeth in the dark.

"No." he said, suddenly. "I said I have chores to do."

~:~