Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When Yuna comes in, she’s in what he’d call manager mode. Her back straight, her steps calculated, her expression neutral—poised, unflappable, ready for anything. 

Shane wouldn’t expect anything less and still, he wishes he wasn’t being managed right now. Wishes there were time for a collective group freak-out; not that he thinks that would solve anything.

No, mostly just wants there to be a sanctioned moment for him to get to have himself a little scream.

“Mom,” he greets instead, when the door shuts behind her. Relaxing a bit when she lets out a sigh of relief, her shoulders easing ever so slightly till she’s a little less managed and a little more just… mom.

“Shane, honey,” she murmurs, walking to his side and grabbing his hand. “You’re awake,” she breathes; relief again. 

“I wasn’t asleep that long was I?” he asks.

“About twenty-four hours, give or take,” she tells him. “I mean, you did wake up a few times… sort’ve?” 

He arches a brow skeptically. “Sort’ve?” he apes. 

“You weren’t exactly coherent when you did, but never in a worrisome way. Just a ‘half conscious and on a lot of painkillers’ sort’ve way.” 

“Well, I am definitely conscious now and light on the painkillers,” he murmurs.  

“Too light?” she asks, like she’s fishing for a problem she can actually solve—is just so good at solving problems when they’re not well, this.  

“No,” he tells her and that, too, is a relief, even if she’d kill to be able to fix something right now, anything. 

“So, you’re feeling alright then?” she presses, reaching to wipe a few strands of hair from his eyes. 

“All things considered…” Shane nods, his eyes shifting to look at Ilya. His husband. The father of his child. The man they all know he can’t properly remember; is so ashamed he can’t properly remember him right now. 

Ilya shifts in the chair awkwardly—squirms, really—like between Shane’s look and Yuna’s look, he wishes he could disappear for the moment; escape to a world where things make a bit more sense. 

“Right,” Yuna whispers contemplatively, appraising the situation and the best path forward considering the little that she does know. Her gaze softens and a small smile presses into her lips briefly. It’s her way of telling Ilya she loves him, he knows, and maybe that's all he actually needs. 

Her upper lip goes stiff again.

“Rozanov,” she greets with her flattest affect.

Rozanov. 

“Mrs. Hollander,” he replies, matching her tone, which is surprisingly easy to do when he thinks about how much he’d really love everyone to stop calling him by his fucking last name. 

Shane looks between the pair of them. His mom and his husband putting on what is objectively one of the worst shows he thinks he’s seen in his entire life. “Ilya misspoke, mom,” he tells her, in an attempt to stop the charade before it has time to find its footing.

Ilya glares at him. “I didn’t misspeak,” he chides. 

“Whatever.” Shane rolls his eyes. “The point is, I know it’s not 2016. I just can’t remember.”

Yuna squeezes his hand even tighter. “Can’t remember what?” she asks. 

“The last ten years?” he shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“The last ten years?” she repeats, looking to Ilya for confirmation. 

Ilya nods. “Nothing past the beginning of November 2016, it would seem.” 

“But clearly things have changed.” Shane observes, looking at Ilya and his burgeoning stomach. 

“Yes,” Ilya sighs. “Clearly,” he grits, a hand drawing to the swell of abdomen protectively. Yuna flashes him an encouraging smile and he has to look to the ceiling and take a series of breaths to ground himself enough to keep from crying. 

“What did the doctor say?” Yuna asks. 

“Not much,” Ilya shrugs, forcing himself to look back at her again. “She’ll be back she said. Hopefully, then we’ll know what’s going on… how long this will…” he starts, only to find himself unable to finish the sentence. 

No, all his attempts to keep himself from crying will be for nought if he finishes that sentence. 

Yuna smiles at him again and his lip quivers. “How are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m fine.” Ilya assures her and it’s a lie; he knows and she knows and Shane definitely knows. 

Shane must decide that lying is unacceptable for some reason, because he looks his mom straight in the eye and says, “He’s not.”

“Shane!” Ilya calls through gritted teeth.

“What?” he sighs. “We’re really going to pretend, right now? You aren’t fine, Ilya!” 

“Yes, I am,” he argues but it’s even less convincing this time around; the tears he’s worked so hard to repress finally welling in his eyes. 

“He got light headed earlier,” Shane tells Yuna. “The nurse took his blood pressure. It’s high.”

Yuna hesitates a minute, unsure if she should get involved in whatever is happening between her son and son-in-law but suddenly concerned.

Curiosity gets the better of her.

“How high?” she asks after a beat.

Ilya leans over the back of his chair. “I am not patient!” he grumbles in frustration.

Shane crosses his arms in front of his chest. “151 over 100,” he notes defiantly. 

Ilya sighs. 

“Well, at least we really don’t have to worry about your ability to make new memories, milyy,” he mutters.

Yuna bites her lip. “That’s really high, Ilya."

“I am aware,” he says, trying to keep his aggravation at bay. 

“I know, but…”

“It’s just stress, probably,” Ilya tells her. “This conversation isn’t helping!”

“You should go home,” she suggests. 

“Yes, well, you know I’m not doing that, Yuna,” Ilya says sharply, before the facade drops and the look on his face goes desperate. “Please just…”

“Okay,” she agrees. 

Shane scoffs. “I am sorry, what?” 

His mom and Ilya turn to look at him. 

“I mean, that’s it?” he pries. 

“What do you mean: ‘that’s it’?” his mom asks.

“Ilya says he’s not going and you just stop—really?” 

“Yeah,” Yuna nods, brushing his cheek. “Really.” 

“I guess I just expected more of a fight from the woman who has negotiated every single one of my contracts since I was a teen,” Shane grumbles. 

“Yes, well, Speedo isn’t carrying her grandchild, Shane!” Ilya declares, shooting his husband a stern look. 

Yuna sighs. “How is my grandchild?” she asks, hoping to relieve a bit of the tension. 

“Oh, you know,” Ilya shrugs, still a bit defeated. “Playing hockey with my bladder—‘scuse me,” he says, struggling to his feet and then exiting the room without another word. 

“There’s a bathroom in here, isn’t there?” Shane asks when the door swings shut behind him. 

“Yeah,” Yuna nods. “But I am assuming he wanted to give us a minute alone, just in case.” 

“Just in case I needed to have a breakdown?” he mocks. 

“Well, do you?” she presses. 

Shane looks her in the eye and manages a slight shake of his head. “I don’t think so… not yet, at least.”

Yuna smiles. “I’ll take it,” she says. 

Shane takes a deep breath. “It’s really not 2016?” he asks, on the incredibly off chance this is all just some very elaborate and desperately unfunny joke. 

“It really isn’t,” his mom murmurs, letting her smile go bittersweet. 

“I guess it’d be even weirder if you said it was and Ilya was just suddenly very visibly pregnant,”  he admits. 

Yuna chuckles. “Probably, yeah,” she agrees. 

Shane lets a beat pass between them and then he looks at his mom seriously and asks, “Why aren’t you trying to get him to go home?”

Concern floods her face again. “Why are you asking that? Do you need space? Do you want me to?”

“No.” Shane says firmly, not actually trying to give her a problem to solve. “I mean… I don’t know?” he sighs.

“Okay.” Yuna nods, offering him a second to collect his thoughts. 

“I can’t think with him here…” Shane admits. “But that’d probably be the same with anyone… and I really don’t want to be alone. It’s not that it’s just… you.”

“Me?” she asks incredulously. 

“You don’t back down like that, mom,” Shane whispers. “I don’t know you to back down like that. You push and then you push and then you push some more,” he explains.

“Not sure I am really loving the picture you’re painting there, hon.” Yuna tells him, trying her best to keep her tone light despite the offense she can’t stop herself from taking. 

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” he notes, hoping that’s enough and knowing it probably isn’t. “But, come on? He tells you to drop it and that’s it? Really?” he asks skeptically. 

“Honey,” she chides softly. 

Shane tries again. “This Ilya doesn’t exactly make sense to me,” he tells her. “Not yet, and I get why… but you? You should. So, what am I missing?” 

Yuna nods, compartmentalizing her feelings because suddenly understands it now—the crux of the thing. 

She walks to the desk in the corner and slides over the physician’s stool from there. Adjusts the height till she’s as close to eye level as she can possibly be with Shane sitting like this, then asks softly, “Do you remember ever talking to Ilya about his mother?”

“His mother?” Shane repeats. 

Yuna nods. 

“We haven’t really ever talked about family… not yet… not…” he pauses, unsure how to name the divergence in their timelines; something he doesn’t actually need to qualify but still desperately wants to nonetheless.  “Is she like sick or something?” he asks instead when the words don’t come. 

“She died,” Yuna tells him. “When Ilya was young.” 

Shane takes a deep breath. “Oh,” he murmurs. 

“I didn’t push because of his mom, Shane, and Ilya knew I wouldn’t push because of his mom,” she explains. “I’m still as stubborn as ever, you really don’t ever have to worry about that,” she quips; the smile pulling at her lip once again bittersweet. 

Shane nods. “Okay.”

“Her passing was really unexpected,” she tells him. “So, I imagine it’s probably important to him that he can see you with his own eyes and ask the doctor questions. I imagine it’s probably important that he knows what’s happening in real time, that he can avoid any surprises.” 

“Makes sense.” Shane gulps. 

Yuna reaches for his hand again. “As much as I think he should go and get a proper night’s sleep—for himself and the baby—I also can’t blame him for wanting to stay and I am not gonna fight him on it. He’s been thinking about her a lot lately with the pregnancy, you know?” she admits. “I am sure leaving would just put him more on edge.”

“Yeah.” Shane closes his eyes and wishes he could shut off the world for a moment again. “It seems like my timing is real bad,” he sighs, the tears welling in his eyes. 

“I am not sure there’s ever good timing for this.” Yuna reminds him, because this is a storyline from the daytime soaps her mom would watch in an effort to improve her English that would instead just supply her with increasingly niche vocabulary words. 

“And yet,” Shane shrugs, unable to stop the tears from falling. 

“Hey…” his mom calls softly, reaching to wipe at his eyes. “None of that now, okay?” 

Shane sniffles and nods. “Where’s dad?” he asks, the tears still sliding down his cheeks. 

“Ah,” Yuna snickers. “We were in the parking garage when we realized Ilya probably hasn’t had a proper meal since before the game yesterday. He’s picking up Thai food.” 

“Thai food?” Shane repeats. 

“Yeah—Ilya's been craving it a lot lately. Your kid really loves a bird’s eye chili, it would seem.” 

His kid. 

Fuck.

His. 

“Thank you for taking care of him,” Shane murmurs, because it’s suddenly the only thought in his head.

“Of course,” Yuna smiles. “Your father and I love him, kid.”

“You do?” Shane asks skeptically. 

“Very much,” she agrees, no hint of hesitation in her voice. 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut again. Opens them to find that everything is the same as it was and that this life he’s awoken to is still: his life—as unbelievable and overwhelming a prospect as that is. 

“I’ve been so scared of what you’d think about him… and me… us,” he admits. 

Yuna snickers again. 

“Oh, believe me, I know,” she says, because doesn’t think she’ll ever forget that day at the cottage. The one when Shane showed up with Ilya Rozanov and dove her and David head first into nearly ten years of history she’d known absolutely nothing about. 

Shane swallows. “But it’s okay?” he checks again. 

“Oh, it’s so much more than okay,” Yuna affirms. “It’s amazing, sweetie!”

“Amazing?” he repeats cautiously. 

“Yeah,” his mom nods, grabbing for his hand again. “I got so lucky when I met your father, Shane,” she murmurs. “And when you were growing up, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every year, more and more of my friends would get divorced and then more and more of your friend’s parents, too. I just kept waiting for us to grow apart.”

“But you never did?” Shane asks. 

“We never did,” she agrees. “I am not saying we haven’t had rough patches, but he’s my constant, you know? And that’s so rare these days.”

Shane nods. “Yeah.”

“I am just saying… I always hoped you’d find someone who could be that for you… but I honestly didn’t know if you would.” Yuna shrugs, “It just seems so rare. I don’t even really know how it happened for me… but then, I found out about you and Ilya and I didn’t have to hope anymore. Because the two of you? Honey, I am so proud of you! Of both of you, and everything you’ve built.”

Shane really wishes he could remember even one thing he and Ilya have built together. The tears he managed to stop start up again.  

“Are you okay?” his mom asks, with a gentle squeeze of his palm and a soft wipe of his cheeks. 

“I don’t know,” he whispers. 

“Think I might need a little bit more, hon.” Yuna presses and Shane lets out a short laugh because there’s the woman he knows and loves.  

“I am confused and overwhelmed,” he admits. “I keep waiting to wake up, but I also know it is not a dream.”

“It’s definitely not a dream,” she agrees. 

The room goes silent a minute and then Shane looks up at her and murmurs, “He’s being so thoughtful,” unable to hold back his surprise. 

“He does tend to do that, yeah.” 

“I’m not used to it.” Shane confesses, struggling through his words, “He wasn’t… we didn’t…”

“I know it took you two a ridiculously long time to get it together, sweetie,” she assures him. 

Shane sighs. “He asked me the last time I remember seeing him and it’s not… my last memory of us… it’s not good.” 

“Okay,” Yuna whispers, giving him the space to collect his thoughts. 

Shane bites his lip. “I just… I freaked out and I left him when he really wanted me to stay and I really wanted me to stay, too. It just… it was like he was trying to turn the page for us and I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready… and now…” 

“Someone went ahead and turned a whole hell of a lot of pages for you?” Yuna guesses. 

“Big time,” Shane agrees, cupping his mouth with his hands and taking a second to breathe. 

“I imagine that’s hard,” his mom murmurs. 

Shane nods, struggling with how to put the rest of what he wants to say into words considering his timeline doesn’t align with everyone else’s. “I’ve just… I’ve felt so bad the last few weeks about what I did… and about myself… about everything,” he says, trusting his mom to understand what he means—when he means. “I just… I don’t feel like I deserve him to be very thoughtful to me right now.” 

“You do,” Yuna assures him. 

“Well then,” he sighs, “it hurts that I can’t remember him like this, maybe? It hurts that I can’t be whoever I was for him yesterday.”

“We both know the only person you need to be for Ilya is yourself.” Yuna reminds him. 

Shane laughs but knows she isn’t wrong despite it all. 

“What?”

“I just… I woke up to everyone knowing all my secrets and everyone is being so normal about it.” 

He takes a deep breath and swallows. 

“I’ve been hiding so long, mom,” he admits. “I mean this is a nightmare… if you asked me a week ago, people knowing… that’d be my nightmare… but this all feels so surreal, like it’s not allowed to be.” 

“It’s allowed to be for you,” she assures him. 

“How?” he asks desperately. 

“What do you mean: how?”

“He’s having my baby, mom.” Shane says and he suddenly sounds ashamed. “She’s mine… I can’t think that about… I can’t…” 

“Oh, Shane,” Yuna whispers, in understanding. “You absolutely can.”

“No… I…” 

“Listen to me!” she calls sternly. 

He turns to face her and she brushes his cheek with her hand. 

“You can think whatever you need to right now and no one can blame you for that. No one gets to blame you for that. This is an impossible situation, Shane, and none of us can actually understand what it feels like for you but listen to me when I tell you that this moment does not have any bearing on the type of father you’re actually going to be. I know that and Ilya knows that, too.” 

“It feels like it does,” he says after a beat. 

“Well, feelings aren’t always right, hon,” she murmurs. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

“I think I am a pretty good mom,” Yuna says eventually. “I mean I try to be, at least.” 

“You’re the best.” Shane nods in agreement but she wasn’t actually fishing for a compliment. 

“I just mean… do you really think I never had any doubts about you?” she asks. 

“What?”

“You were so planned and so wanted, Shane. We had tried so hard before we actually got to have you,” Yuna tells him. “But it wasn’t easy and there was a lot of grief for me, even when it was clear… even when we’d made it further than we ever had before...” 

“Oh,” Shane murmurs.

His mom nods. “The whole time I was pregnant with you, I was so nervous and so scared to connect with you. I thought maybe I had gotten it wrong. I thought maybe I wouldn’t love you right. I thought maybe I had made a bad calculation and that motherhood wasn’t actually right for me, after all.” 

“You thought that?” Shane asks, a little stunned to hear these words out her mouth. 

“I did,” she admits. “And then May tenth came around and so did you and they handed you to me and the feeling in my chest. Honey… I can’t describe it. I thought I knew love and then, there you were—this perfect purple alien—and I just… my heart felt like it was going to explode in my chest.”

“Okay,” Shane nods. 

“I am just saying, you’re allowed to be scared and confused and overwhelmed. It’s normal to feel those things even in the best of circumstances,” Yuna encourages. “And this? Well, right now, this isn’t that.” 

“I just never saw this for us,” Shane tells her. 

“What did you see?” she asks. 

“That’s part of the problem, I think,” he shrugs. “I mean, I haven’t really been letting myself think about the future lately… just hockey.” 

“Well, the good news is that hockey is still there, Shane.” Yuna promises him. 

“And so is Ilya,” he whispers, as if reminding himself, as if committing this detail to memory. Ilya’s here. He's been here. Through it all, he’s stayed. 

“Yeah,” his mom encourages tenderly, with another squeeze of his hand. “So is Ilya,” she repeats and as if responding to his cue, the door opens and Ilya steps back inside.

He hesitates in the doorway a moment, looking at Yuna and silently asking if it’s okay he come in. She nods encouragingly, offering him a small smile that Shane matches in kind. 

Sits back in his chair and adopts a smile of his own when his husband leans over to reach for his hand. “Hey,” he tells him but it’s not just a greeting. It’s reassurance. It’s his way of saying: ‘I am okay’. 

Ilya nods. “Hello,” he whispers back; his own affirmation. 

Yuna stands up and walks across the room to Ilya, pulls something out of a tote bag and hands it to him. 

“Oh my god,” he sighs happily. “Bless you!” he calls, clutching it to his chest like precious treasure.

Shane watches the moment between the two of them skeptically. 

“Did you just hand him a jar of peanut butter and a spoon?” he asks. 

“I did,” his mom agrees. 

“What’s wrong with peanut butter?” Ilya questions tersely. 

“It’s not the peanut butter, it’s more the method of consumption,” he notes, watching as Ilya unscrews the lid and dips the spoon in. 

“I’m very pregnant, Shane,” he tells him. “If this is not dignified enough for you, I suggest you just close your eyes.” 

“I thought you were only medium pregnant, Ilya,” Shane teases. 

“It’s a spectrum.” Ilya replies easily, a glob of peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. 

“A spectrum?” 

“Yes, I felt medium before. I feel very now,” he explains with a shrug, “but still not super… super is for later, after extremely and we probably won’t be at extremely for weeks still yet.” 

“Says who?” Shane asks skeptically. 

Ilya shrugs again. “Says me, right now.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “But I am an idiot with peanut butter,” he calls, smiling fondly at Yuna again. 

“I think you’re both ridiculous.” Yuna tells them as she walks back to her stool, her shoulders looser than they’ve been all day. 

“How pregnant are you exactly?” Shane asks, when his mom sits back down. 

“What do you mean by that?” Ilya murmurs. 

Shane shrugs. “Hayden would always say Jackie was some number of weeks along,” he elaborates. “They track it in weeks, right?”

“They do,” Ilya agrees. “In weeks, yes.” 

“So… how many weeks are you?” Shane clarifies. 

“Ah,” Ilya nods, as a playful smile spreads across his lips. “Let me get this straight, you remember my blood pressure reading… but you don’t remember me telling Alice that?” 

Shane definitely does not remember him telling Alice that. “I was probably still busy freaking out,” he guesses. 

“Freaking out?” Yuna asks. 

“He refused to take his jacket off when he first came in,” Shane explains with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t know until she made him take it off.”

Ilya shrugs. “Doctor said he would be confused, figured he didn’t need me to give him a heart attack on top of everything.” 

“And I appreciate that, I guess,” Shane notes, gesturing towards Ilya’s bump, “but also…” 

“Yes, yes,” Ilya interrupts, not wanting to find out where that sentence goes next. He dips the spoon back in the jar of peanut butter. “I am twenty-seven weeks,” he says.

“That’s like…”

Ilya sighs. “It’s like almost seven months, Shane.”

“Baby is the size of a cauliflower,” Yuna supplies. 

“On a scale of what?”

“Hmm?” Ilya hums in confusion, licking the spoon clean. 

“Like where does the scale start and end?” he clarifies. 

“Fuck if I know.” Ilya admits. 

“It’s poppy seed to watermelon, I think,” Yuna offers. 

“Huh,” Shane nods. “Okay... I suppose I see the logic then.”

“Oh, do you?” Ilya presses sardonically. 

“Yeah, cauliflower to watermelon.” He nods again, overly earnest when he adds, “Medium seems accurate.” 

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Kak by ya zhila bez vashego pozvoleniya?” he mocks. 

“I’m still processing all of this, asshole!” Shane chides. 

“Sorry.” 

Yuna looks at her son. “You understood that?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” Shane nods. “Ilya asked how he would ever live without my permission. Very sarcastically, I might add.”

“I did say sorry!” Ilya reminds him, waving his dirty spoon in the air. 

“Okay, but you still understand Russian?” 

“Apparently.” Shane shrugs—can’t remember learning Russian at all. 

“That’s a good sign, right?” she asks optimistically. 

//

It is not a good sign. 

Or rather, it’s not a sign.

No—it’s completely irrelevant, considering that language and memory are stored in different parts of the brain. To know Russian is apparently not the same thing as remembering falling in love with a Russian; no matter how much Shane wishes it was.

After Dr. Singh tells him this, she asks if he can remember the words she told him earlier. 

Shane scowls at her. 

“I know. I know,” she says and she has the decency to actually sound apologetic. “I didn’t tell you you’d need to remember them this long but since I’m here, I am curious.” 

Shane sighs, unsure how he feels about his doctor being as glib as all this. “Elephant. Harp. Candle. Apple. Elbow,” he supplies nonetheless, the words falling quickly and easily from his mouth. 

“Very good,” she tells him.

“So why can’t I remember the last ten years of my life then?” he asks, a bit combatively. 

“I don’t know.” Dr. Singh says simply and it’s certainly not the answer he was hoping for. 

“You don’t know?” he scoffs. 

“What I know is that you’ve had a traumatic brain injury and you’ve got a grade three concussion,” she explains. “Memory loss and concussions go together, so if you’re asking why you can’t remember, I can tell you: it’s because your head hit the ice very hard and it was driven there with the force of a man who weighs well over two hundred pounds skating several miles an hour.” 

“Okay,” Shane murmurs. 

“But if you’re asking me specifically: why 2016? Then the answer is, I don’t know. Every brain is a little different and you must have injured your hippocampus in a very particular way, at a very particular point.” 

“Right.”

“What I can tell you is that there doesn’t appear to be a brain bleed, which is great news,” Dr. Singh says encouragingly. “And in other great news: you have no symptoms of anterograde amnesia currently. Clearly, you’re retaining information and from what you, your mom, and Ilya have all told me, you’re keeping everything pretty straight, which is pretty remarkable for someone who has a concussion like yours.

“If I had to give you a diagnosis right now, I’d say you have focal retrograde amnesia… but the thing about amnesia is that it’s rare and it looks a little different for everyone. Now, most people start to get their memories back in a day or two, a week—and you might be one of those people—but if I was to guess based on what you’re telling me and what I am seeing in your scans, you’re probably looking at a longer recovery time than that.” 

Shane swallows. “Longer?” he asks and Ilya squeezes his hand. 

Dr. Singh nods. “Could be weeks or months, could also be longer than that.” 

Shane looks around the room: at his mom and his husband trying to keep their expressions neutral, at the view of the city shrouded in darkness out the window, at the readings on his heart monitor, at the ticking time bomb beneath Ilya’s shirt. “Like how much longer?” he asks. 

“I really couldn’t say,” Dr. Singh tells him.

He closes his eyes. “But are you like… are you suggesting it could be permanent?”

“I won’t lie,” she admits. “There is a chance of that, yes, but it’s statistically unlikely.” 

“Statistically unlikely?” Ilya repeats, biting the impulse to laugh as his hand brushes over his belly—another statistical improbability. 

“Yes.” 

“Is there…” Shane stammers. “How do you… what do we do?” 

“There’s not much we can do, medically speaking,” Dr. Singh informs him. “Based on what I am seeing, there’s not a reason to keep you much longer. If you aren’t already remembering things here, it’s unlikely you’re going to start. We need to get you back to your life and we need to hope that that primes your brain to start making a bit more sense of things. We’ll have you spend the night, just to make sure everything remains stable, and then tomorrow, we’ll discharge you.”

“And then what?” Yuna asks. 

“Shane clearly has a very strong support system, which goes a really long way and all of you are going to make sure he follows concussion protocol and you’re also going to do what you can to help him trigger memories. You’re going to tell him stories and reintroduce him to his life and keep him busy,” Dr. Singh tells Yuna and Ilya directly. 

They both nod. 

“We can do that, yes.” Ilya agrees. 

“Now, Shane, you’ve got bruised ribs and a grade-two MCL tear so it isn’t going to be the activity level you’re used to to start,” she tells him. “But movement is good and we’re going to take what we can get, okay?” 

“Okay,” he murmurs. 

“Great,” she nods. “In a few weeks, you’re going to come back in for a follow up. We’ll take some new scans, we’ll check and see where we’re at. And we’ll evaluate from there, maybe we’ll refer you to a therapist or a counselor to support you through recovery… but right now, we’re just going to go slow, okay?” 

“I am not too good at slow.” Shane admits. 

“Not on the ice,” Ilya tells him. “But in life you can be a bit, no?” he asks and it sounds to Shane like a call-out for that day in Boston, even if it probably isn’t that for him. 

“Okay, yeah,” he agrees. “Maybe sometimes.” 

“Just not when you make it a competition,” Ilya adds wisely. “So, we’re not going to make this a competition, milyy. Okay?” he says, squeezing Shane’s hand.

“Okay,” he agrees, even though that’s a lot easier said than done. 

“Ilya’s right,” Dr. Singh tells him. “Slow and steady wins the race.” 

Shane nods even though that really hasn’t been his experience.

//

Nurse Meadows brings Ilya a cot—mostly because Shane insists on it. 

“The chair is fine, Shane,” Ilya tells him, half asleep even though it’s only something like eight-thirty. 

“The chair is not fine, Ilya and even if it was we can do better than fine,” his husband scolds and Ilya can’t really argue with that. Desperately wants better for him, for her, for them. 

“Fine,” he acquiesces. 

The cot is lower than the hospital bed and it reminds Ilya a bit of the bed he used to sleep on in the room he and Alexei would share at the family dacha when he was little. Back when Alexei still had a bit of sweetness in him, before he started to stay behind in the city when their mother would take Ilya to the countryside. 

The memory must verbalize itself somehow—must express itself through hum or groan—because Shane turns to look at him. “What are you thinking about down there?” he asks. 

“My mother.” Ilya says simply, knowing full well that thoughts about his mother are never simple, even the happy ones, the ones without Grigori and eventually without Alexei. 

“What about her?” 

“Hmm,” Ilya hums. “My brother and I used to have a room together at the dacha. Dacha is like cottage but like actual cottage, like small, old house… but house, which is a big deal when most of your life is spent in an apartment in Moscow.” 

“Right,” Shane agrees, even though he’s never lived in a city the size or scale of Moscow before and can’t remember anything Ilya has told him that would help him picture his life there. 

“She used to take us there sometimes. Probably to get away from my father a bit. Dacha was good excuse: fresh air, country. Grigori couldn’t really complain about it, which is saying something. He loved to complain. Anyway, room was small, so it had a bed with another bed that would pull out from under it,” he explains. “Vydvizhnaya krovat… pull-out bed? I don’t know the English word.”

“Trundle, I think,” Shane offers. 

Ilya stares at him blankly. “Okay, yes,” he says in the same flat voice he uses anytime he finds the English language ridiculous because you can’t tell him that ‘trundle’ isn’t ridiculous. “My brother stopped going with us as much when he was about ten. He’d stay with my dad in the city and then it’d just be her and I. Sometimes she would stay in the room with me if I was scared, and I was often scared as a child.” 

“I have a hard time believing that.” 

“Believe it,” Ilya nods, turning further onto his side to alleviate some of the pressure on his back. “Trusishka zayka seren’kiy.” 

“Gray coward bunny?” Shane translates still not over the novelty of knowing Russian somehow but then, will take any novelty he can get right now.

“It doesn’t sound very good in English but something like that, yes,” Ilya agrees. “Anyway, on my coward bunny nights she’d sleep in Alexei’s bed and I’d sleep on the trundle and she’d tell me stories in the dark until I fell asleep. It felt special. I don’t know. Intimate.”

“This reminds you of that?” 

“A little bit,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve slept this low to the ground in a while but there is nostalgia in it maybe… minus all the wires, of course.” 

Ilya’s note about the wires reminds Shane that they’re in a hospital room where the white noise is heavy machinery. Reminds him that he’s on a low-dose morphine drip because he has bruised ribs and a MCL tear. Reminds him that he has retrograde amnesia like he’s in a fucking soap opera.

He lets out a lone snicker and then takes a deep breath, preparing himself to ask a bit of a more serious follow-up question. 

“My mom said she died when you were young… your mother.” 

“Yes.” Ilya replies, hoping the next words out his mouth aren’t ‘how did she die?’ this time, because certainly can’t handle talking about how she died tonight. His hand moves to his belly and he traces their daughter’s movement beneath his skin; finds what comfort he can in the flutter there. 

“What was her name?” Shane asks. 

“Irina,” Ilya says like a prayer, a breath of a word, relief—release.

“That’s beautiful,” Shane murmurs. 

“It is.” 

Shane’s eyes flint down to the outline of Ilya’s bump beneath the thin hospital blanket. “Would you want to name her that?” he asks. 

“No.” Ilya says quickly; too quickly probably. He shakes his head and tries to articulate his thoughts. “It’s bad luck a bit, but it’d also… it’d also just be a lot for malyshka to have to carry. I want her to be her own person.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees because it’s a nice sentiment; their daughter entirely her own. “Did we talk about names a lot before?” he asks, already hating the euphemism he knows is going to guide discussions of their life for the foreseeable future. 

Before—like they’re in some post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie and not normal-ass Ottawa, Ontario. 

“Not too much,” Ilya tells him, putting his hands behind his neck in an attempt to leverage a deeper stretch of his back. “You’d greet her with hockey names sometimes but it was a joke.”

“Hockey names?”

“Yes,” he snickers. “Apple Rozanov Hollander. Biscuit. Twig. Duster.”

“Our kid is no Duster!” Shane exclaims.

“No, not with our genes.” 

He laughs.

“What?” Ilya asks. 

“This just really isn’t how I imagined spending the night with you for the first time, Rozanov,” Shane muses. 

Ilya covers his mouth with his hand and lets himself laugh, too. The smile on his face genuine, enamored. 

And it’s easy this. 

The groove of their banter, which has fortunately been with them through every timeline; has been around for each and every version of themselves. 

“What, you ten years older and me seven months pregnant, wasn't on your bingo card?” Ilya quips. 

“No, that was,” Shane deadpans. “Just not the hospital.”

“Of course,” Ilya agrees. “Hate a hospital,” he murmurs.

“Tell me about it.” Shane groans and because he’s him, Ilya can’t help himself from asking—

“Dare I remind you that I tried to get you to spend the night at my house in Boston and you ran?”

Shane shakes his head and bites his lip to keep in a scoff, a combined gesture that Ilya reads clearly as ‘dick’ with something like a capital ‘d’ and four ‘ks’.

“I think I’d really rather you didn’t,” he says firmly. 

Ilya bites back a smile. “Okay.”

A silence passes between them but it’s comfortable this time, not as heavy as it’s been. 

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather sleep at home?” Shane asks.

“You don’t even know where home is, Shane,” Ilya teases. 

“No, but I imagine our mattress is better than that thing you’re on.”

Our mattress, he says, and then he blushes.

Their mattress.

The one that is here somewhere in Ottawa—at a house they share together—fuck. 

“It’s a very good mattress, yes.” Ilya tells him and Shane is glad he likely can’t make out the pink of his cheeks in this light. “You and Yuna researched for months.” 

“Better than a cot, you’re saying?” Shane japes.

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing is very comfortable for me right now,” Ilya says, even though their mattress is definitely a giant step up from this cot, which is about as comfortable as the chair, just with the added benefit of a bit of room to stretch and turn to the side. 

“Besides, I told you about the trundle,” he reminds him.

“I’m really fine though, Ilya.” Shane promises.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t be,” Ilya murmurs candidly, not wanting to dwell on the reasons for why. “I’m trusishka zayka seren’kiy tonight,” he says instead, “so do a poor pregnant man a favor and have weird first sleepover here with me.”

“Okay,” Shane nods. 

“Thank you,” he replies, the words a whisper in the air—barely audible at all. 

“Where was it?” Shane asks after a beat.

“Where was what?”

“Where were we the first time we spent the night together?” he clarifies. “For real, I mean?”

“Quebec,” Ilya tells him plainly like he’s drawing the timeline of their life in real time. “Your cottage. July of 2017.”

“Hmm.” Shane hums.

“What are you thinking?” Ilya asks. 

“I am thinking that’s only like eight months from now,” he replies. “I mean, I know it’s not actually but…”

“I know what you mean.”

“I just wouldn’t have expected you to say that,” he notes and he suddenly feels exceedingly vulnerable. “I mean, I fucked everything up so badly in Boston.”

“And then you fixed it,” Ilya encourages. “Besides I set you up for disaster a bit. I wasn’t thinking and I went too fast and u strakha glaza veliki, you know?”

“Fear has big eyes?”

“Yes, it is like things look scarier than they are,” he explains. “It just took you a minute to realize that you didn’t actually have to be scared of me.”

“I’ve never been scared of you,” Shane murmurs. 

“Okay well then of being gay, I guess,” he shrugs.

“I’ve never said that,” Shane admits. 

“I know.”

“But I am, aren’t I?” he asks, his voice a little shaky.

“Yes, you are,” Ilya tells him.

Shane lets out a wrangled breath.

“Fuck,” he whispers as his hands reflexively move to cover his eyes. 

“It can’t be that big of a surprise, Shane,” Ilya notes softly, his hand shaking his belly lightly even though Shane can’t see. “Not now.”

“No,” he agrees, his eyes still clenched shut and sheathed by his palms; his voice a frenzy. “I know, I just feel like I shouldn’t be hearing that for the first time from you. It’s pathetic.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just lays back quietly while he contemplates his response. 

“You know the actress, Rose Landry?” he asks eventually. 

“Under Dark? The X-Squad?” Shane lists, forcing his hands down to his lap. “Yeah, I am familiar.” 

“You dated her briefly in 2016 after Boston,” Ilya tells him, struggling not to laugh at the look of confusion Shane adopts in response. “She’s still our friend. She’s probably your best friend along with Pike,” he admits. “Anyway, it was her who came out for you the first time.”

Shane blinks a few times as he processes this information; information he certainly can’t be hearing right. “What?” he spits. 

Ilya shrugs. “I wasn’t there obviously but she took you to dinner, I guess, and she tried to get it out of you but you are stubborn, so eventually she just had to pull the bandaid off.” 

He snickers, “Every time she tells this story your face goes bright red like beet.”

“You’re kidding?” Shane checks, desperately hoping Ilya will tell him it’s a joke. 

Ilya shrugs again, “I’m just saying it could be worse. Better me than a shapeshifter!”

Shane isn’t sure either of these options is good; indeed both make his skin crawl. He focuses on the only decent detail. “I’m friends with Rose Landry?” he sighs.

“Yes, you are friends with Rose Landry. The internet is very jealous but they don't realize how lame you actually are.” 

Shane lets out a chuckle but chooses to ignore him. Instead he asks, “When did I tell you?”

“A couple months later. I mean a couple months from where you are now,” Ilya clarifies. “That January, at the All-Star game. We were in Tampa… back when we liked Tampa.”

“We don’t like Tampa now?” Shane asks incredulously, has never thought to have an opinion on the city of Tampa before.

“It’s complicated,” Ilya says. “We owe Tampa a lot but it also tried to take everything away. That’s a story for another day, but I think we can still be mad because it’s in Florida, yes?”

“Alright,” Shane agrees, because certainly has no interest in defending Florida. “So in Tampa I told you I was gay?”

Another mark on the timeline. 

“Yes.”

“And what’d you say?” Shane asks. 

“I said ‘no shit’ but fortunately you kept talking anyway,” Ilya tells him.

“Why is that fortunate?”

“Because you were brave,” he murmurs. "Because you said you wanted us to be something real, because you pushed me to tell you what I actually wanted despite all my fears.”

“You were afraid?”

Ilya nods. “Always back then with you,” he admits.

Shane has never considered this before. 

“Why?”

“I would tell myself it was Russia,” he says. “That being with you meant I couldn’t go home but I hated home, so it wasn’t that really. I was scared of losing you mostly… of being too much for you maybe?… of you not loving me back… I don’t know.”

“Ilya,” Shane calls softly. 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, wiping at the tears welling in his eyes. Tears that start to shed when he realizes that before today, this Shane has never seen him cry because this Shane can’t remember the moment in Tampa that broke their relationship wide open.

He misses the Shane he can’t have.

“No, don’t!” Shane calls frantically, trying to shift through all the words in his head. “It’s okay. I just wish I could. Fuck.” 

He takes a deep breath, steadies himself.

“I just wish I could hold you,” he explains. 

“I know.” Ilya agrees and he suddenly misses this Shane too—misses every Shane that has ever found his body in the dark. 

“I do love you.” Shane tells him, scooting to the edge of the mattress so he’s as close to Ilya as he can possibly be in this moment. 

Ilya reaches for his hand and the distance between them is such that they can only brush fingertips and it isn’t much but it is also everything. They take advantage of the touch afforded to them, their appendages meeting midair. 

“You don’t have to say that, Shane,” Ilya assures him. “Not yet, it’s okay. I’m okay. We’re okay. Really.”

“I know I don’t,” Shane murmurs. “But I keep thinking ya tebya lyublyu and I don’t know why I’d be thinking in Russian if it wasn’t true.”

Ya tebya lyublyu. 

Ilya’s old secret; a secret no more. 

Ilya brushes his fingertips against Shane’s again and then lays back on the mattress and rests a hand on his belly. “Your brain is being very weird right now,” he says, but the smile on his face is bright. 

“Tell me about it,” Shane agrees. 

Their daughter does what feels like a somersault. “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.” Ilya tells Shane; tells her. 

“That doesn’t mean I’m not scared,” Shane admits. 

“I know.” Ilya murmurs in agreement. 

“It’s like we were cruising along and suddenly it’s formula one.”

Ilya laughs. 

“Not you trying to make a car metaphor!”

“Shut up,“ he scolds softly. “I just want it to be okay.”

“I know, milyy,” Ilya agrees and he wants that too. It’s the only thing he wants. 

“How are you doing?” Shane asks. 

Ilya answers honestly. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Can you say more than that, please?” Shane presses.

Ilya closes his eyes and pushes a few tears out in the process because he’s crying again. 

Of course, he’s crying again—is just so fucking sick of crying.

“I um…” he starts. “I think I am scared, too, maybe a bit.”

“Okay.” Shane murmurs, waiting patiently for him to continue. 

“They can fix your body but the mind is a different thing. I know that,” Ilya tells him, unsure how his cheeks are already this coated with tears but unable to stop them nonetheless. “Too well, maybe I know that… and you didn’t ask for this… you don’t remember wanting this and it’s hard because I’m just trying to think about now and how to get us through today, but then I feel her and I suddenly have to think three steps ahead.”

“It’d just be easier if it was just you and me,” he admits. “I think I could handle you not wanting me… but not… she’s a good thing… this is supposed to be a good thing. We both wanted this so much, we were so happy yesterday,” he says and he’s no longer just crying, he’s weeping; desperately trying to keep his whimpering at bay. 

“Hey,” Shane soothes, tears lining his own cheeks. “Hey.” 

“Sorry,” Ilya whispers again and Shane wishes he’d stop apologizing for things he doesn’t need to. More than that though, he wishes he knew the right thing to say; has never been too good at knowing the right thing to say. 

“I wouldn’t be the first person to get unexpected news like this, Ilya,” he tries. “And it’s you and it’s us and all I’ve ever really wanted is us. Even when I haven’t let myself admit that, I have, so. I know it’s different but it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“I know,” Ilya nods. “It’s just… I don’t know,” he says and both these things are true at once: he knows and he doesn’t know; he’s here and he’s there; it’s fine and it just… definitely isn’t. 

“When is she due?” Shane asks. 

“June fifth,” Ilya whispers. 

“Okay and it’s March now, right?” he checks, another mark on their timeline, albeit it much further down the line. 

“The fourth, yes,” Ilya notes, the tears finally slowing enough that his hands take the opportunity to wipe his eyes. 

“So we have some time,” Shane muses and he sounds so practical, like he’s trying to make a plan in his head. In spite of the concussion; to spite the concussion, despite everything. “We have a little time and I’ll be ready. I don’t know what that means yet but I will. Whatever happens, I promise I will.”

Ilya takes a deep breath. “I am supposed to be reassuring you, Shane,” he acknowledges and he sounds apologetic again. 

“You have and you will,” Shane assures him. “I know that you will but you can’t tell me I don’t get to take care of you, too. You’re holding a lot.”

“In the weird mutant uterus you didn’t know that I had?” Ilya jokes and his laugh comes out a little wetly.

“There,” Shane agrees, “but also.”

“Yes,” Ilya murmurs. 

“We went to my cottage?” Shane asks. 

“We went to your cottage,” Ilya assents. “And you gave us a future and I told you I loved you and you said it back,” he adds dreamily. 

“If I could give us a future then, I can do it again now,” Shane promises. 

Ilya forces himself to look Shane in the eye. 

“You want to?” he asks and he’s the vulnerable one this time.

Shane exhales. “Of course, I do,” he breathes. 

“Because of the baby?” Ilya asks and it sounds a bit like a test even though he isn’t exactly sure what the right answer would be.

“No,” Shane admits. “Because it’s me and you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want her. I mean, I’m scared to want her but I do.”

“You do?” 

“Yeah,” Shane nods. “I mean, I’ve always wanted kids… I just thought I’d be older… and I am I guess… I just… I barely know which way is up right now.”

“You’re keeping it together very well, milyy,” Ilya assures him. 

Shane closes his eyes. “I wish we were in the same bed right now,” he confesses. 

“Yes, but you’re hurt and I’m a terrible big spoon lately,” Ilya offers, as consolation. “Unless you like an awkward shoulder squeeze while being kicked in the back.”

Shane laughs. “She kicks a lot then?” 

Ilya rolls his eyes. “All the time,” he sighs. “It always takes forever for the doctor to find her heartbeat because she’s wiggling away too much. It’d be terrifying but she’s also usually kicking me in the ribs then too, so.”

“What’s it like?” Shane asks, suddenly very curious. 

“Weird and annoying,” Ilya admits. “But also sweet… special. I’ll miss it sometimes, I think.”

“Yeah.” Shane agrees, because it sounds like it would be all those things, even if he’ll never know; even if he can’t ever know. 

“You would hate it,” Ilya promises him. 

“Probably.”

“No probably,” he scoffs. 

“I always thought we’d adopt or something,” Shane muses and it’s the sort of truth he’s still not used to them admitting out loud. “Use a surrogate maybe, I don’t know.”

“You thought?” Ilya pries. 

“Sometimes,” Shane concedes. “At least until I actually caught myself thinking, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” Ilya agrees and he certainly doesn’t miss that period of his life; disavowing his desires in an effort to keep himself safe that only ever just kept him alone. 

“I can’t believe you’re doing this for us, Ilya,” Shane admits. 

“I can’t believe I’m able to do this for us,” Ilya replies. “I took the test because you wanted us to know in case we needed to be safer and it felt like solidarity a bit, me doing it. But then when it came back, I felt kind of lucky to be a freak.”

“You are not a freak,” Shane condoles. 

“No, I’m evolved,” Ilya japes. 

They both laugh. 

“I won’t lie. I thought mutant superpowers would be more fun than this,” he adds after a beat.

“What’d you have in mind?” Shane asks. 

“I don’t know,” Ilya shrugs. “Super human speed or like moving shit with my mind. Fire, maybe?”

“Fire?” Shane snickers. 

“Like making it come out my hands,” Ilya explains, like it's obvious. 

“You mean like a lighter?”

“No, Shane. Not like a lighter. Cool!” he scolds. “Uck!—what about you?”

“I don’t know. Teleportation, maybe?” Shane offers. “Invisibility? Being able to freeze time so I could just take a minute to think sometimes?”

Ilya laughs. 

He rolls his eyes, “What is that a boring answer?” 

“It’s a very Shane answer,” Ilya tells him.

“So boring?” he presses. 

Ilya smiles. “In the best way.”

Shane hums. “Hmm.”

The room falls quiet and it’s just the whirr of the machinery again. 

“I love Shane,” Ilya murmurs.

“I love Ilya.” Shane murmurs back, taking a deep breath to add, “I’m so sorry—"

Ilya cuts him off. 

“Please, don’t,” he begs. “I can’t,” he admits, aware that if he cries anymore tonight, he’ll have no tears left for tomorrow.

Is fairly certain he’ll need tomorrow’s tears after all. 

“Okay,” Shane concedes. 

“Goodnight, Hollander,” Ilya calls softly through the darkness.

Holl-an-der. 

“Goodnight, Rozanov,” Shane repeats. 

Rozanov. 

They sleep in the sterile stillness, so close and yet, too far apart.