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There’s nothing special about tonight’s game.
The Bears are playing the Voyageurs, a typical early season Eastern Conference match up. There’s always pressure, the rivalry perpetually hums, as alive as the crowds in the stands. But it’s not as potent as it is during the playoffs, it’s a distant energy, background radiation.
For Ilya Rozanov, it’s a regular evening. A trip to Montreal he’s taken so many times, he could do it with his eyes closed, whether by plane, train, or automobile. The Bell Center is as typical as arenas come, the same concrete floors, the same away-team locker room layout. Everything from his hotel routine the moment he lands (duffel bag shoved into the corner by his bed, a quick meal before practice, a crumpled sleep mask over his eyes for his nap) to his rousing speech, arming his men’s spirits before the fight, goes exactly as it always does.
Business as usual.
With one key difference. A slight shift in the universe that Ilya has been trying exceptionally hard to ignore, but which trips him on level ground, lights up his phone screen and pricks like a nettle against his heart, a constant, chafing reminder.
Shane Hollander has a girlfriend.
Ilya’s phone sits abandoned in his locker, internet browser still open on a Page Six article speculating if Rose Landry will be in the audience tonight. Ilya ignores it in favour of re-tying his skate laces a million times. It keeps buzzing with texts anyway. Slur-filled diatribes from Alexei he’d rather ignore. Maybe something from Svetlana that would make him smile, but nothing so interesting as to compel him to check. A few friends wishing him luck. No hookups, not here. He’d burned whatever loose connections he’d had with Montreal girls when he’d gotten his heart set on a particular one. Yes, he’d once had a very special girl in this city, one who could challenge him, make him blush, no matter how much he tried to deny it. A girl who is not a girl at all, his deepest and most difficult secret, who is now, thanks to his own idiotic efforts, no longer his to worry about. If he ever was in the first place.
There is no texting Jane tonight. There is no feisty back and forth, the chase that Ilya loves, Orion beating back the brush, until Shane finally gives in and agrees to let him come over. No texts that read fuck off, but mean fuck me. No scary alleyway, no echoing staircase race, no neurotic hockey captain demanding he change his sheets seconds after coming untouched.
So, yes, though there’s nothing special about tonight’s game, it is… different.
Worse.
That’s as much as an explanation as Ilya can muster for the pit in his stomach as he files onto the ice. And even that is far too raw, too revealing to tell the press when he eventually has to answer for the piss-poor state of his playing tonight. Montreal gets a goal in within the first few minutes of the game, and Ilya only flinches when he notices Shane looking over at him, checking if he’d seen. Yes, very good Hollander, another version of him would have chirped, now do that two more times and we can start negotiating your prize. They don’t do that anymore. Probably never will again.
Ilya’s play is mostly distracted because of how often he glances up into the stands. He hates how relieved he feels when he finally determines that Rose Landry isn’t here. It doesn’t matter though, if she’s not in the audience tonight, she will be another night, maybe eventually forever. One day, she will marry Shane, and Ilya will watch, stewing in misery, though he hopes by then enough distance and time will have passed to dull the pain, if not to snuff it out it completely.
The path to such salvation starts with Ilya doing his part to ignore Shane. But Hollander can’t make anything easy, not even leaving him, which in Ilya’s experience is the easiest thing in the world. Shane spends whatever time he’s not hogging the puck in a futile effort to catch Ilya’s eye. Relentless at the best of times, he keeps this up all night. Ilya’s not sure why he bothers. Nor does he care to meet his gaze and find out what inscrutable emotion Shane is trying to telegraph. What’s the point of looking? What’s the point of playing this game in front of this crowd if he can’t have Hollander all to himself after? The disappointment is already a bitter twist in his gut, and it will only hurt more if he lets himself look, and start imagining impossible things. It’s much worse to get a taste of what he once had, only to go back to his hotel room to order shitty room service with Connors.
The thought is so stomach turning that he decides in that moment that he won’t settle for that tonight, no matter how early their flight is tomorrow. He’s got a mission now: convince the boys to go out. The only way to shed this idiotic malaise is to stop being lazy and start building that Montreal roster back up. That way, by the next time they come back here, Shane won’t even be a thought in the back of his mind.
Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen. Convincing himself of his own hare-brained scheme helps distract him in the meantime.
The promise of a new body, the sweaty, physical proof that the magic of sex does not reside solely in Shane Hollander, puts the tiniest bit of energy back into his play. Determination bleeding through, he’s able to catch an assist from Marleau and sink it clumsily into the net. It’s not a beautiful goal, but it’s a goal, and at least they’re tied. Montreal is playing just as sluggishly as they are tonight, so if he can keep it up, just match their energy, they might even eke out a win on Voyageur’s home turf.
Lighter on his skates, he starts thinking through which one of his tried and true clubs to visit tonight. In this city, it can’t just be anywhere. Hockey fans are brutes, and worse than the threat of getting punched by some drunk West Island meathead is the promise of seeing Hollander’s name on their backs, chanted on their lips, haunting the downtown streets. He has to be careful to avoid the bars where these people congregate. It still leaves him plenty of options, and after some deliberation, he decides on Ciel. It’s too artsy to ever have many hockey fans there, and they don’t play awful music. The more he thinks about it, awash in the pleasant memories of hookups of times past, the better he starts to feel. Or at least, the misery washes away to a tolerable numbness. Even with Hollander still buzzing around like a gnat in the corner of his vision, he has a plan, a metaphorical flyswatter in his hand.
But he never gets a chance to swing it.
There’s a half-remembered saying in Ilya’s head. Something about best laid plans. Really, it should have been his father’s voice, berating him for letting his focus drift so badly. He is what he is: lazy, distracted, undisciplined. He’s not changing his ways anytime soon. It’s because of his perpetual carelessness that he is as empty handed and empty headed as he is, and it’s why he doesn’t see Comeau coming at him like a battering ram. In the last split seconds, he’s dimly aware of the puck drifting towards his stick before he’s smashed against the boards, and the whole world goes black.
“Ilya!”
It sounds like Shane’s voice.
But that would be ridiculous.
“Ilya, wake up!”
It’s strange. He went down hard, but nothing hurts. That might be very bad, if he can’t feel anything at all. But it’s not that. He can feel things, but they just don’t feel right. Maybe they already have him up on the stretcher, because he’s lying on something soft, not the cold ice he’d crumpled onto when he fell. He’s never felt a stretcher quite like this before, though.
“Ilya!”
There it is again. But now it’s louder. Almost unmistakably Shane.
Blinking against sunlight, Ilya opens his eyes, and stares up at the brilliant blue sky.
He’s not at the rink at all. He’s lying in a shock of green grass, outside somewhere, nothing remotely resembling an ice rink, or a hospital. The air is warm, unlike anything Ilya has ever felt in January in Montreal. He has the sudden, panicked thought— is this heaven? Is he dead? The hit from Comeau had been hard but it hadn’t felt lethal.
Slowly, he feels the ground beneath his hands. The ground is soft and even; a manicured lawn. When he looks around, he spots trendy deck furniture arranged around a stone fire pit. Behind him, there’s a patio with a chrome-coloured grill. In front of him glitters a sapphire-blue lake. He’s never been here before, of that he’s sure, but it’s eerily familiar.
With a start, he remembers exactly where he’s seen it.
That stupid documentary. Shane Hollander and his perfect cottage. His sunrise yoga. His boring father. His fortress of solitude. What the fuck. Why is Ilya here? How is Ilya here? If this is a dream, it’s much more vivid than any dream he’s ever had before. Maybe he’d paid closer attention to the documentary than he thought. He was obviously lying when he told Svetlana he thought it was boring. It was, but it was also a rare glimpse into Shane Hollander’s life. He’d die before he admitted how hungry he was for the barest crumbs of something like this, how the documentary felt like binging on empty calories, leaving him sated and starving at the same time.
“Ilya,” and there’s Shane’s voice again. Ilya’s head whips around towards the sound. His heart picks up its pace when his eyes finally land on its source. “What are you doing back here?”
Hollander is… different. Not just because he’s calling Ilya by his first name which he never does, which they never do. He looks older somehow, somewhere near Scott Hunter’s age, if Ilya had to guess. He’s more settled into his skin than the neurotic, tightly wound twenty-five year old Ilya knows. He carries himself with his shoulders loose, embodied with an ease that Ilya’s only seen in him after putting in the hard work to fuck all of his neuroticism out. But he doesn’t look like he’s just been fucked. He just looks… normal. Natural. At peace.
His hair is longer than Ilya remembers it being from earlier today. It’s cut neatly in the back, but long enough so that it brushes the top of his t-shirt collar, with swooping bangs framing his face. How could he have gotten a new hairstyle so impossibly fast? At least his freckles are still in place, though they’re darker and there are more of them, likely gifts from the warm, ever-beating sun above them.
When Shane finally comes all the way down the patio stairs and stands in front of Ilya where he lies, something shifts in his gaze, his posture stiffens and he freezes, stares with his mouth slightly agape.
“I… I thought you were taking Anya to the groomer?” Shane says.
His brows are furrowed, his mouth a pouting moue of utter and complete confusion. His eyes run over Ilya from head to toe, up and down, over and over, like he’s desperately trying to process the sight of him.
“Who the fuck is Anya?”
Shane blinks rapidly, “You’re not Ilya.”
Ilya bursts out laughing, he can’t help it, “Who the fuck am I, then?”
There’s that Shane Hollander blush. He wasn’t kidding when he told Marleau he doesn’t blush. Because to him, Shane’s embarrassed flush is the archetype, the Platonic ideal. Whatever his complexion does is nothing like the rosy bloom on Hollander’s cheeks.
“You’re— I mean obviously you’re Ilya, some version of Ilya. But you’re… different. Younger, maybe?”
Ilya sits up properly then, cocks an eyebrow in defiant challenge of this new strange dream Shane.
“How old do you think I am, then?”
“Um,” Shane swallows, “I don’t know, in your early or mid-twenties, I’m guessing?”
“And how old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” Shane rasps.
This stuns Ilya into silence. Thirty-two. It must be 2023, then? 2024? His brain is spinning too much to trust his mental math in this moment, but it must be. He’s still not convinced this isn’t a dream, but if it isn’t then… what, has he time travelled?
Shane looks just as distressed as he is, and that helps somewhat. He goes through the motions of Shane Hollander, overwhelmed. Ilya is a little perturbed at how familiar the gestures have become to him. Shane starts to pace, muttering to himself something too quiet and in English too rapid for Ilya to parse. His hands flit from his pockets, to his hair, back to his pockets, back out again. He rubs them against the fabric of his cargo shorts, Ilya has the sense memory of how sweaty they get, the moisture softening his calluses. Then he sees it. First, it’s just a glint in the sun, but then, it comes into clear, shocking focus. A gold wedding band on Shane Hollander’s finger.
Huh. So he married Rose Landry after all.
“Will your wife be wondering why you have twenty five year old boy toy in your backyard?” Ilya blurts, thinking that if he’s going to be stuck in this nightmare, he might as well play along.
Shane sputters, turning redder somehow, “My what?”
Ilya nods towards his hand, “Rose Landry, right?”
Now, Ilya has never thought Shane cruel, but the way he doubles over with the force of his laughter in that moment stings a little. He laughs so hard he actually starts gasping and hyperventilating for breath. It takes him an absurdly long time to come down from it and calm down.
“Oh my god,” he giggles when he finally catches his breath, he finally sits down, saving Ilya the crick in his neck from looking at him, folding down with his legs criss-crossed in the grass, close enough that his knees knock against Ilya’s thighs. Despite his distress and indignation at being laughed at, this first bit of contact settles Ilya immediately. “You think I married Rose?”
“Last thing I remember you were dating her, so,” Ilya grumbles, he idly picks at the blades under his hands. When Shane reaches out, placing a warm hand on his knee, Ilya startles. The ring is on that hand, glinting and gloating gold.
“Look, maybe you don’t know this yet, shit, maybe I don’t even know it yet, and maybe I’m messing up whatever butterfly effect wormhole shit is going on here by telling you,” Ilya frowns, and Shane’s smile gets wider, “But… Ilya, I’m gay.”
Ilya blinks once. Twice. “Yes, I think I knew that.”
Shane laughs again, shaking his head, “No, Ilya, I mean I only like men. I wouldn’t marry any woman, and definitely not Rose.”
A lightness sparks in Ilya’s chest hearing that. He hates to admit it, but it’s a huge relief to hear. Whatever Shane’s thing with Rose was, it had cast an undeniable pall over his life, and the knowledge that it would end, someday, in some timeline, even if it was just a dream, was just the balm Ilya’s soul needed, and hadn’t even known it needed.
Relief, however, is quickly followed by another pesky anxiety. “So your husband is inside then?” Ilya wonders what sort of nice man Shane finally ended up with. How different from himself that man would be. If he were Shane, he’d find some meek, boring, dependable guy. He cranes his neck back towards the house, curious to get a glimpse of the exact opposite of himself in a man.
Shane laughs again, “No, my husband is taking my dog to the groomer. Or at least I thought he was. Shit, I hope Anya didn’t get transported back in time or something.”
Several neurons fail to spark in Ilya’s brain. A dense fog of steam and confusion is leftover from the faulty operation. I thought you were taking Anya to the groomer. The words flash in Ilya’s head like they’re plastered on a neon sign, flickering but still glowing and obvious.
His voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it when he finally speaks, “Me? I’m your…?”
“Husband,” Shane says, his smile turning wry and warm, he keeps his hand on Ilya’s knee, rubbing there gently, like he’s trying to soothe him, like that’s something Shane Hollander does, like he’s always touching Ilya with all this care and love. “I understand if this is kind of breaking your brain, but yeah, Ilya, you’re my husband.”
Desperate to make it make any sense, Ilya blurts, “What, is like green card marriage?”
This finally irks Shane enough that a familiar scowl overtakes his alien lovelorn expression, greets Ilya like an old friend, “No, it’s not a fucking green card marriage, asshole, I love you.”
What the fuck.
Ilya scrambles to his feet then, taking as many steps away from this strange Shane Hollander who is not Shane Hollander, even if it is a dream. Ilya doesn’t dream things like this. He doesn’t dare. Shane Hollander does not love him. Cannot love him. It’s impossible. It’s… whether it’s the realization of Ilya’s longest and most deeply held secret, the most ardent hidden desire in his possession, that is neither here nor there. All Ilya knows is that this is not. Possible.
He scrambles up the patio steps, hearing Shane calling after him, distantly, beyond the rushing sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, his panting, laboured breath. He stumbles towards a building with floor to ceiling glass windows. He presses against the wooden beams, hoping against hope one of these is a door, an escape hatch, a portal, anything to get him away from here.
He pushes ineffectually at the walls for a while, and just as he’s about to start to think about kicking in the glass, there’s the sound of wood whooshing to his left. A panel shifts, a door opens. A blur of brown and white barking fluff rockets through it, making a beeline straight for him. It’s a dog— his dog. Anya, he thinks, as he instinctively crouches down to pet it.
“Lyubimyy?” His own voice calls, and his head shoots up to look at the source of the sound.
There he is. The man, the myth, the legend. Shane Hollander’s husband. Ilya Rozanov at thirty. His curls are longer, an untamed golden tangle on his head. He’s otherwise mostly unchanged. He’s wearing a ridiculous blue linen shirt that he’s certain belongs nowhere in his wardrobe, and the same kind of cargo shorts as Shane.
He makes eye contact with himself.
It’s a fucking trip.
“What the fuck,” his older self says. His expression is scrunched into one of utter confusion, with a twinge of horror. Of course Ilya has looked at himself in the mirror many times, he’s never studied his own expressions, especially the ones he makes when he’s caught off guard. He looks perturbed, a little scary with the way he bares his teeth, scowling in bewilderment. He turns then to Shane, and Ilya watches as the ugliness melts right off of him as soon as Hollander enters his line of vision. As he gets closer, jogging up the steps to join Ilya on the deck, the interaction Ilya witnesses between them makes his stomach churn with a cocktail of emotions.
Confusion, of course. Wonder, at this freer, more gentle version of himself. And of course, pitch black jealousy, the very idea that this is something he could have not only feels impossible, but Ilya knows it is impossible. Seeing it play out like this is a cruel reminder of everything he knows he cannot have, and an even more bitter expose of the fact that he wants it more than anything.
“Shane, what is happening?” older Ilya asks Shane, instinctively reaching out for his hand when Shane offers it, and tangling their fingers together. Ilya catches the sight of his own matching wedding ring and feels the ground wobble beneath his feet. “That is… me? What, you hire an impersonator? Is not my birthday.”
“No, Ilya, he— you— well, he just showed up.”
“You don’t know him?”
“I mean, I guess, in a way, I do. He’s you, isn’t he?”
Ilya’s older self finally turns back to look at him, where he stands there just gawping at his and Hollander’s dynamic, almost exactly the same as how Ilya remembers it being, irreverent and acerbic banter with the critical difference of them holding hands and rubbing each other’s thumbs while they bicker.
“What are you doing here?” Ilya has to blink for a second before he processes that his older self has just asked him that question in Russian.
Amid the extreme absurdity of this situation, clicking back into his mother tongue is actually kind of calming. He replies, “Fuck, if I knew don’t you think I would say? How the fuck is this even possible? Where the fuck even am I?”
His older self sighs, he presses his hand against his forehead, and Ilya frowns, are there actual wrinkles there? He once made fun of Scott Hunter because there had been rumours that he’d gotten Botox, now he thinks that maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
“You’re in Canada, at Shane’s cottage.”
“What, do I live here now? How do I get to Boston during the season?”
Ilya’s older self falls silent, his face becoming a little pale. He turns immediately towards Shane, who is already looking at him. A silent conversation passes between them. Ilya feels his irritation mounting as he watches it. It’s such a coupley thing to do, he’s seen it happen between some of his teammates and their wives. A little nod of the head to mean let’s go home, a slight shake to mean I’ll be right there, let me get rid of this guy. It’s something so sickeningly intimate, and something Ilya had wanted more than anything in his own life. Impossible as it was with the way he conducted his relationships, never lasting long enough to develop a language like this. Seeing him share it with Hollander was destabilizing.
But not more than what Hollander said next.
“You play for Ottawa now.”
Ilya gapes for a second, then he flashes his gaze back to old man Ilya. He scans his older body up and down. Apart from the slight crows feet at the edges of his eyes, his body is almost entirely unchanged from when he was twenty-five. There aren’t any obvious injuries or deformities anywhere on his body to indicate why he would have fallen so far as to play for Ottawa.
“Did I fuck the commissioner’s wife or something?” He finally asks, his brain scrambling for some elaborate blackmail scenario that would lead him to his unbelievable career low.
His older self swears under his breath in Russian, “No. I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand from where you are in your life, but you had a good reason for doing it.”
“What reason could that possibly be?” Ilya says, trying not to let his voice raise with his rage bordering on panic. He huffs out an incredulous laugh and turns his gaze to Hollander. He’s looking anywhere but at Ilya, both versions. His eyes are glued alternately to the deck below his feet, or they drift off towards the lake. Like a gut-punch, he remembers this look from the day Shane left his house, his stuttered excuses and the shattered remains of Ilya’s heart on his couch. Shane feels guilty. And then it clicks. Ilya did this for him.
“Seriously?” Ilya says, turning back to his older self, who is entirely focused on Shane. They’re still holding hands, but now Ilya holds one of Shane’s hands in both of his and is trying to rub soothing patterns into the skin of his palm and his wrist. He looks pathetic, like a dog begging for crumbs, as he tries to get Shane to look at him. He turns back to Ilya when he starts speaking though, his soft look at Shane tempered with irritation.
“You really did this for him? Your career? You gave it up for fucking Hollander?”
Hollander flinches. Ilya looks at him for a second with narrowed eyes— does this future Shane understand Russian now? He’s distracted by his own future self’s irritated shaking head.
“You don’t understand anything,” his older self says, eerily calm, “You won’t for a while. So make a smart choice for once in your life and shut up about this.”
Ilya is struck by the thought, then, that he finally realizes who his older self reminds him of. He flashes back to a thousand moments in his childhood. Daring to ask a question, or voice a concern, and being met with a cold wall of dismissal.
“I guess it’s true that everyone turns into their own father, eventually.”
It’s also true that no one knows quite how to hit Ilya where it hurts like he does himself. The older version of him gasps, his eyes going wide. He drops Shane’s hand and storms off, back into the cottage, he doesn’t close the door behind him. Ilya rolls his eyes, but he feels his stomach drop when he looks at Shane. He’s finally looking at Ilya now, but his eyes are wide and watery.
“Why the fuck would you say that to him?” Shane asks through gritted teeth.
“What you understand Russian now, or still just the word for father?”
“I understand everything, asshole,” Shane says, almost yelling now, “And that was completely fucking out of line.”
Ilya rolls his eyes, speaks in Russian again, “If talk like that bothers you, then I’m not sure you know who you married, Hollander.”
“I know exactly who I married,” Shane retorts, then he takes a breath, the tension seeping out of his voice, that guilty flicker in his eyes back full force, “And I know that he’s only ever this cruel to himself. And it kills me. And I try to love him well enough that he doesn’t do that anymore but… I guess I’ve never done that for you.”
“Hollander,” Ilya starts, without knowing where he’s going to go with it. He feels the overwhelming urge to comfort him, this strange older Shane that somehow loves him. It’d probably be okay, in this alien world, he’d probably hug back.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says, a tear finally falling down his perfect freckled cheek. Ilya’s heart twinges painfully at the sight, “I’m sorry I was so scared for so long and I’m sorry I ever let you think that you deserved to be anything less than completely and totally loved I—”
“It’s okay, Shane,” a voice comes from the cottage’s open door. Ilya’s back, the other Ilya. He's got a bottle of vodka and two glasses in his hands, and he’s back to looking at Shane like he hung the moon. When he turns to look at Ilya, his eyes are colder, but not by that much. He steps back out onto the deck, he presses a kiss to Shane’s forehead before stepping down the stairs, only turning back when he reaches the grass at the bottom. He calls up to Ilya, “Follow me, I need to talk to you.”
“Ilya?” Shane says, “Should I…?”
“No, sweetheart, I should talk to him alone.”
Sweetheart, it makes Ilya’s stomach turn. The way Shane smiles at the word is a sight to see, his shoulders relaxing, his hands no longer shaking so much he has to stick them in his pockets.
“Okay,” he agrees, more easily than Ilya’s ever seen Shane fold, “I’ll start dinner.”
Ilya watches as Shane makes his way into the cottage, but not before looking back at his husband. Again they share some telepathic message, and it must be good, because Shane has a little smile on his face as he disappears through the door, his shoulders loose and relaxed. He makes a gesture that causes the cute puppy to trail after him, of course, Ilya knows from first hand experience how natural it is to follow Shane around like a dog.
Ilya takes a deep breath before climbing back down the stairs and following his older self. That Ilya walks towards the lake until they come across a clearing with big solid rocks. These don’t look more comfortable to sit in than all the lawn furniture back towards the house, but the older Ilya perches on them regardless, and signals for his younger self to follow suit. He pours them a generous helping of vodka. Ilya sips it gratefully, savouring the taste of it. It's the good stuff from back home, not only expensive but bothersome to import, he supposes in his old age he has more patience for the process. Maybe fewer chances to go home and drink it. They sit and drink for a while, looking out over the lake as it glitters in the late afternoon sun. Belatedly, Ilya realizes they’re sitting in the exact place Shane does his yoga in the documentary, he tries not too feel too turned on at the memory of it, but something must still show on his face.
Older Ilya smirks at him, as if watching the realization dawn on his features.
“You know it was all for show? Hollander actually does his stretches inside. In much tinier shorts.”
“Interesting,” Ilya says, gritting his teeth against that same paradoxical jealousy of himself that he’s been feeling since the moment this nightmare started. He stares determinedly at the water, watching as it flows in and kisses the pebbled shore, before ebbing back out again. He drinks his vodka and tries to let it settle his juddering nerves.
“What is the last thing you remember before coming here?” Older Ilya asks, breaking the silence.
“We were playing Montreal. Beating them, if you remember what that’s like, not sure you do much of that in Ottawa.”
“Ha,” Older Ilya deadpans.
“What, you don’t think I’m funny?”
“You’re hilarious. But I’ve heard it all before. Any joke about Ottawa there is to be made, someone has made it to me. Trust me, it gets old.”
“So what, you don’t care about being the best anymore?”
“Did I ever?”
At this Ilya sputters, nearly spitting out his drink, his rage mounting with every word, furious at the thought that he’d ever put himself in a position where his being the best would ever even come into question, “Of course you did! At least, I do. There is no better feeling than winning. When they chant your name, and they give you awards, and they tell you that you are the best. That’s what we do this for.”
“Yes, but do you do it because it’s what you actually want to do? Or do you do it so that we can prove to Papa that we’re not really as worthless as he says?”
The words land like a slap. Ilya opens and closes his mouth, furrowing his brow, digging deep to cling on to his anger when he feels like he’s just been given a firm shove off of this rock.
“Look,” his older self says, “I know you love hockey. It was your ticket out of Russia. No matter what team you play for, hockey is the thing you’re the best at. But you don’t love hockey like Shane loves hockey, like it’s the one thing that you were built to do and the only thing in the world that makes sense.”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“That’s why it’s so hard for him, you know, to give in to this. He would have let you love him a lot earlier, maybe right away, if it didn’t hang over him like it does. If the pressure was even a little bit lighter.”
Ilya wants to scoff, I didn’t love him right away, but thinking about it now, he knows that would be a lie. Instead he says, “He’s the best player in the league. After me. Second-best. Still, that is saying a lot.”
“You think that’s innate talent? Some of it, maybe, but you have to see how hard he works. How much he tries. Giving up the Voyageurs wasn’t an option, and there had to be some sacrifice for you to be together. That’s why you’re in Ottawa. Try to get over it, okay? They’re a good group of guys, and dad was right about one thing, the Captain makes the team. They’re not so embarrassing by the time you get there.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. He wants to drop the Ottawa subject. He’s not going to understand it until he gets here, if he can accept that this really is a vision of his future, he’s going to have to make peace with that. He’s stuck, as he always is, on Hollander.
“Is being with me making Shane’s life harder?” He flashes back to that pale, horrified look on Shane’s face as he fled his house. He’d always thought he was helping Shane, making him laugh, making him relax, making him come. The possibility that it could be just the opposite is not so farfetched, but fuck if it doesn't hurt like hell to consider. “If hockey is his life, and I’m such a big danger for his career, wouldn’t I make it better by leaving him alone?”
“No,” Ilya’s older self shakes his head, but he also scratches his nose, Ilya’s go to tell for when he’s lying. He looks at his younger self then, assessing, then he changes tack, “Okay yes, you are making it a little harder. But only because he loves you so much. You can’t leave him alone. He won’t let you go, no matter how much you try and pull away.”
Ilya shakes his head, impossible, impossible, this whole thing is so impossible,“What so Rose Landry doesn’t exist in this nightmare?”
Older Ilya cracks a smile at that, which is irritating. Nothing is funny about the hours he’s spent agonizing over Shane’s smile in those paparazzi photos, his hand cradled in hers. Still, his older self giggles, “Ah, that will pass.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just give him time to figure it out. He is a little slow. Not just on the ice. Be open to it when he comes back to you. Don’t shut him out.”
An absurd rush of hope makes Ilya sit up straighter, “but he will come back?”
“Always. He’s maybe just as crazy about you as you are about him.”
“Impossible.”
“So is time travel, no?”
Ilya’s older self stares at him with one cocky eyebrow raised. Ilya can’t help it, he bursts into a laugh. Maybe it's the vodka loosening him up, or the conversation thus far has addressed some long buried need, answered questions he's needed to ask, but his chest does feel a tiny bit lighter. He doesn’t know if any of this is real, if this promised future could ever be within his grasp, but he’s overwhelmed, then, by the feeling of wanting it. No matter how impossible this is, he hopes against hope that it could be that this beautiful truth is waiting for him a few short years down the line.
“I still don’t understand how I’m here. Or why.”
“It’s a difficult time for you right now, yes? Maybe you needed to be reassured.”
“Right, so a hallucination of my future self is going to tell me that all of it is going to turn out okay and I’m supposed to believe it? How can I trust you? I don’t even know if any of this is real.”
“Maybe it’s not. If you want it to be, then maybe you just have to trust it.”
On reflex, he lies, tries to posture when he’s next to the one person who can see through him the clearest, “Maybe I don’t want it.”
His older self rolls his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Shane, a life together, a family. You can’t lie to me, remember? I am you.”
“I can’t want it,” he says, but really he means he can’t have it. In the real world, the consequences are much more dire. “What about Russia? You never go back, right?”
“And I don’t fucking want to go back. Never again.”
It’s the truth, unsurprising, as it’s coming from himself. He’s been thinking this for years now. Maybe since his mother died. But what he wants isn’t something he can just have.
“What about Papa?”
Older Ilya sighs, “You’re going to want to be there for him, no matter how cruel he was to you, to Mama, but you can’t. There’s nothing to be done about it. I wish I could say it feels good or like payback for all of his neglect but it’s different now, right? Now that his mind is going.”
“He’s still cruel,” Ilya admits, “But he’s so confused, so weak. I feel so much relief when I get back on the plane to Boston, but then I feel bad that I feel relieved.”
“It’s a difficult disease,” his older self says, “And Papa won’t suffer forever.”
Ilya nods, picking up the meaning behind those words. And it’s not like he can’t see the writing on the wall either. His father gets weaker every summer, the will to live seeping out of him the same as his memories. So okay, there’s no pull of filial piety yanking him back to Moscow. It’s not like there’s no family, though.
“What about Alexei?”
“It’s better to stop hoping he changes.”
Ilya accepts another heavy pour of vodka in his glass. His brother’s cruelty is something he’s always tried not to dwell on. He answers the phone, he transfers his money, he closes his eyes and lets the slurs roll off of him. He gets worse year after year. When the birth of his daughter, Ilya’s beautiful niece, did nothing to change him, nothing to make him even an inch gentler, Ilya should have known nothing ever would.
“But… even without a family, so much of my life is still in Russia. I can’t just give it up completely. What about mama’s grave?”
“When was the last time you actually visited her?”
“Not since…”
“Not since you were thirteen.”
“Papa never wanted to.”
“You have been an independent adult in Moscow with your own car and plenty of time in the summer for many years now. Still you never visited.”
Ilya has no response to that. It’s true. He’s been a terrible son to both his parents. He’s been horribly irredeemably selfish. How is moving to Canada any different than what he’s been doing all along?
“I’m not saying it to blame you, or me,” his older self continues in the face of his silence, “I’m just saying it to point out the truth. There’s nothing for you in Moscow. Your life is here. Mama is with you wherever you go, not where they buried her. Remember she used to tell you she would always be in your heart? Well, your heart is here. You left it in Hollander’s hands the moment you met him in Saskatchewan and he never gave it back. He never will.”
Ilya shakes his head, even though he knows it’s true. He’d given himself over to Shane Hollander long before he knew what that meant, and it was far too late to take it back now. Not that Shane wasn’t trying.
“He’s with Rose Landry now.”
Older Ilya swears a colourful streak, “He’s gay!”
Ilya tries and fails not to laugh, “Yes, he told me.”
“This thing with Rose Landry,” he waves his hand as if to dismiss it, but Ilya can see the tension in his older self’s frame. He believes this Shane and Ilya both when they say it’s over, but the hurt, which is so fresh right now, clearly leaves a scar that lasts even in this utopian future. “It’s just something he has to do to understand himself. We’re friends with Rose now. She’s a good person with good taste, obviously, because she liked Shane. But she loves us both now, okay, she’s not trying to steal your boyfriend.”
“Shane is not my boyfriend,” Ilya grumbles, which makes his older self laugh and mouth yet, “I just don’t understand why he has to date her at all. If he doesn’t want to be with me, if it’s too hard then fine. He can just ignore me! What is the point of flaunting this relationship around? Is he punishing me?”
“Not everything is about you, okay? He’s trying,” Ilya’s older self shrugs, “He doesn’t think he can be gay and be a hockey player. If he’s not a hockey player, then he’s nothing. So he has to try and see if he can not be gay.”
“That is not how that works.”
“I never said his logic made sense, just that that is his logic. I’m sorry you’re the collateral here, it really sucks. He’s sorry too.”
“He told you this?”
“Many times. It’s very cute.”
Ilya looks at the stupid smile on his face. Has it always looked this dumb? He thought maybe he’d look more distinguished as he got older, but apart from the slight smile lines starting to form around his mouth, deeper on the side he usually smirks, there’s nothing particularly different about him. Well, not entirely. He’s always been confident, but he’s not sure if he’d ever looked so perfectly comfortable when he had just been pretending to be. There had always been a slight tension in his spine, a holdover from his father’s scolding about maintaining his posture. It’s not that he’s become a hunchback now, but when he was standing, he was much more at ease, standing contraposto instead of the rigid straight shoulders he’d practiced at his father’s behest.
Maybe it’s because he’s home, maybe it’s because he’s in love.
“You really love him, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“And I guess me trying to stop it is going to be as effective as Hollander trying not to be gay?”
“You’re starting to get it!”
Ilya laughs, finally all the tension from this experience is starting to boil over and it erupts in a hysterical laughing fit. It takes his older self down with him and they’re both clinging onto the rock for dear life as they sway from side to side with the force of their laughter. It’s a much needed release. The tension he’s been feeling since waking up in this strange circumstance is not all the way gone. That would be a lot to ask, probably. But a rare honest conversation with himself and the promise that the misery of his reality in 2016 doesn’t have to be forever is genuinely a balm for his spirit.
They stay out on the rock a little while longer, mostly in silence, finishing their drinks. Older Ilya doesn’t want to risk telling Ilya too much about the future, citing Shane’s paranoia about something called The Butterfly Effect, which it turns out is a movie. Ilya learns that his cinematic literacy goes through the roof after marrying Shane whose favourite thing to do when not watching gameplay clips to strategize is to scrape the bottom of the barrel of every streaming service (there are way more than just Netflix, now) for the shittiest movies he can find. He likes to watch them and point out logical inconsistencies in the script and apparently Ilya’s older self is perfectly content to cuddle next to him and listen.
Ilya listens to the story and smiles, and thinks they’ve been way past the point of avoiding any "butterfly effects" since the moment Shane told him he was Ilya’s husband. Ilya’s not sure what’s going to happen when, or if, he can get back to his normal timeline, but he knows that if he still remembers this, there’s no power on earth that would stop him from ensuring that this is the future that will be awaiting him.
As the sun begins to set, soaking the picturesque horizon in honey-orange light, a call comes from the cottage. Shane calls them inside for dinner.
They sit across from each other at the kitchen counter. Shane explains that when it’s just the two of them, they don’t bother setting the big dining table downstairs.
“I wasn’t actually sure though if it was just the two of us tonight. I mean technically it is since you’re both Ilya, but then we’re technically three people. I don’t know, I just realized if I thought about it too much I’d give myself a headache and we’d never end up eating.”
Ilya’s older self grins at his husband’s rambling, “Is okay, lyubimyy, we could have eaten it out of the pan if you didn’t want to decide.” Shane rolls his eyes but undercuts it by grinning, wide and unrestrained.
They’ve got heaping plates of chicken parmesan in front of them, apparently it’s Shane’s dad’s recipe, and widely known to be Ilya’s favourite. That’s still true of the younger man at the table.
In 2016, Ilya remembers going out with the team to some fancy Italian place in Boston where he’d first encountered this dish. It was prepared by some Michelin-star chef and had deluxe double A flour pasta and free range chicken and was crusted with crystalline panko breadcrumbs. It was by all measure gourmet and Ilya had never had anything else that compared. Until now.
He can see the empty boxes in the recycling. The ingredients Shane used are nothing fancy, just whatever he could get at the local grocery store. All the packaging bears the same cursive label reading President’s Choice. Still, the first bite he puts into his mouth is euphoric. The chicken is perfectly moist, the pasta on the softer side of al dente, the sauce is bright and richly flavoured with garlic and basil. He doesn’t even realize he’s moaning as he chews until he catches Shane staring at him, his smile wider than he’s seen it all day.
His older self is red-cheeked, clearly embarrassed at his own antics, as he focuses on twirling his own fork with spaghetti. He shovels it into his mouth and chews with a put upon scowl directed towards his husband.
“Oh my god,” Shane coos, “You were so cute, Ilya.”
This makes both Ilyas glare.
“I am not cute,” Ilya says at the same time as his older version whines, “What do you mean were? Am I not cute now?”
Ilya huffs as Shane laughs, delighted, looking between the two of them.
“You’re both cute,” Shane says, and he puts a period on the matter with a big bite of pasta. Older Ilya watches his husband eat with a spark in his eye, like a wolf watching a deer graze, knowing he’s next on line to devour on the food chain.
Ilya is aware of how pathetic he is for Hollander, but it’s another thing to see it from the outside. He wonders how they’ve been able to keep their secret for so long if he’s just going around looking at Shane like this, and not to mention the way Shane is looking at him back.
It strikes him, as they eat, that the tables are now turned. Ilya had started all of this by making Shane a meal, and now Shane was feeding him. Was the best way to break the curse and send him back to his own time for him to flee? Where would he even go? His older self had explained that this cottage was pretty remote, on a huge tract of private land in rural Ontario. Ottawa was not too far away, but Boston was. It’s not like going back to Boston makes sense, if his doppelgänger is to be trusted, he hasn’t lived there in years. He doesn’t play for them. His only choice is to stay and watch this strange domestic future play out in front of him until whatever twisted power put him here decides to send him back.
His powerlessness to the situation makes him feel uneasy. That in turn makes him irritable.
When they’ve all cleared their plates, the older Ilya gets up without a word and collects their plates and cutlery. He puts them into the sink and Ilya watches as he pre-rinses every dish before sticking it into the dishwasher. His mouth is a little agape watching what Shane Hollander has turned him into and Shane, for his part, is innocently scrolling on his phone as if this is so par for the course it’s not even worth observing.
“He really has you on a short leash, huh,” Ilya mutters in Russian, reflexively secure in the knowledge that it’s only his older self that the barbed words will poke.
Of course he's already forgotten that language prodigy Shane Hollander has made hiding behind Russian an impossibility. His head shoots up and he fixes Ilya with a glare, “Ilya is exactly where he wants to be, thank you very much.”
Ilya falters for a second. “You really bothered to learn Russian for me? What do I take orders better that way?”
Shane blushes, his brow furrowing, "First of all fuck off, of course I did! I think I’d be a pretty shitty husband if I didn’t try to learn your first language.”
“Not well enough to speak it,” Ilya snarks. He doesn’t mean to be so grumpy about it, but it’s another blow. Another secret desire of his smacking him in the face, manifested in this unreality. His jealousy has been a low-level hum this whole time, but in moments like these it roars.
“Hey,” his older self jumps to Shane’s defence, “It’s not his fault. He is shy to speak it still. Embarrassed by his cute accent.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” Shane grumbles, but then older Ilya gives him a look that seems to defuse him, his next words are in Russian, but they’re slow, careful, and a little clumsy-sounding, thanks to the aforementioned Canadian accent, “Really, I should be practicing more around you. How else will I get better?”
Ilya’s heart twists. Shane is so earnest, so literal. He has been like that since the day Ilya met him, and it’s kind of incredible to learn that he never stops. The world never beats that out of him. Ilya can’t really blame his older self for the besotted look on his face as he corrects Shane’s pronunciation on some of the words in his sentence.
He has to look away when that Ilya presses a sweet kiss to Shane’s lips for the effort. Shane smiles into the kiss, leaning back in for another as soon as his husband pulls away. They fall into each other like they occupy a private pocket universe. They look at each other like they're the only two people in the world. It's painful to look at from the outside. This whole day has been excruciating, watching everything he wants but can’t have play out in front of him, and now, the exhaustion of bearing witness finally hits him like that body check from Comeau.
“So do I sleep on the sofa, or what?” He asks, interrupting their love-fest.
Shane looks over, his freckles dark against his blushing cheeks, and a sorry locked and loaded on his lips.
“No, we’ve got plenty of guest rooms. I’ll show you.”
With that he gets up, but not before looking at his husband once again, “You’re okay to finish cleaning up?”
“Yes, don’t worry, I am a good dog,” Ilya’s older self says back with a smirk.
“That’s right,” Shane says, with a sickeningly sweet smile on his face, “I’ve trained you well.”
When he turns to the younger Ilya, nodding for him to follow, he adds under his breath, “And I’ll get to you soon enough.” Ilya’s not sure if that’s a threat or a promise. He follows Shane either way, deeper into the cottage.
Shane deposits him in a nondescript room. Something undoubtedly put together by some interior decorator he hired. The walls are covered in vague, inoffensive abstract art. The floor-to-ceiling windows reveal the dark forested land behind his house.
“There are extra pillows in the cedar chest if you need them. The bathroom is just down the hall. I’ll grab you an extra toothbrush. Oh, if you want to shower, feel free to use any of the shampoo and stuff that’s in there. There should be some towels on the shelf as well, you can use those too.” He looks back at Ilya, hands stuffed awkwardly into his pockets so that he doesn’t fidget with them.
“Okay,” Ilya says back.
Shane nods, but he doesn’t move.
Ilya watches him for a moment, not in any rush to shoo him away. He thought he’d gotten a good look at this older version of Shane, this improbable person that not only loves Ilya but chose to marry him, but seeing him now, he realizes then that he’d mostly been avoiding looking at him too closely. Maybe he thought him a mirage that would disappear if he focused on him for a second too long. After all, the only kind of Shane that Ilya could imagine marrying him as he is now would be his own concussed hallucination.
Shane is beautiful. He always has been pretty, but time has taken those boyish good looks that Ilya knew so well and matured them into a fully developed man. He looks really good with his longer hair, it frames his delicate features and balances them with his strong, masculine jaw. His skin is perpetually clear, save for his freckles, and still bouncy and young looking. He has a few crows feet at the corners of his eyes, but fewer than the older Ilya does. But the biggest change from the Shane Ilya knew back in 2016 is the way this Shane carries himself.
He’s so confident, even in his understandable nervousness around the time-travelling interloper in his house, he doesn’t cower or make himself look smaller. He stands tall with his chin held high and his posture open, inviting. Even the way he stares openly at young Ilya, he’s basically ogling him. His eyes, trailing from his disheveled curls, down the Boston Bears t-shirt he woke up here in, and the tiny shorts that show off his considerable hockey thighs covered in pale leg-hair, betray the confidence that comes from knowing that Ilya is his, and always has been.
“Look, I know this day has been really weird,” Shane says, when he’s finally done looking his fill. He meets Ilya’s eyes with so much warmth it catches Ilya a little off guard.
“That is, um, преуменьшение,” Ilya says, his English brain sluggish after a long day mostly spent speaking Russian.
“Understatement,” Shane translates after a moment, eyes lighting up once he gets it. He laughs, “Totally. Understatement of the century, you could say.”
Ilya smiles back at him, regretting how snippy he had gotten about Shane’s Russian. His understanding is basically fluent. He’s not sure when he started learning, but to be this good even if he’d started in 2016 is impressive.
Shane’s smile falters though, and Ilya stays quiet, waiting to hear what he says next.
“I hope it wasn’t… bad though.”
Ilya is confused, of course he’s been moody, but he wasn’t aware that he was being so obvious. But maybe he should know better than to hide his feelings from Shane. Still he tries, faking a chuckle, “Why would it be bad?”
That guilty fidget is back in full force, “I know… I know when you saw me last I left things… unresolved between us. I know what I did hurt you.”
“Hollander,” Ilya interrupts. His older self really wasn’t kidding about how much Shane apologizes for this. He was looking forward to it happening in his own timeline, but the idea of Shane still being hung up on it now is a little too much to bear. “It’s okay, I know you apologized for this before. I’m sure I accepted it.”
“Of course you did,” Shane sighs, “Because you’re perfect and I don’t even know what I did to deserve you.”
“I’m not perfect,” Ilya says, “I put too much pressure on you that day. I see it now. I tried to change too many things I just— I couldn’t help it. When I saw you, my heart just went crazy. I wanted to do anything I could to keep you closer but I just ended up pushing you away.” The last part comes out in Russian, because it’s too much to explain in English. Thankfully, Shane understands, or at least from the way he’s nodding along, Ilya assumes he does.
“I should have been braver,” Shane says, “I wish I could have been.”
“It’s okay,” Ilya says, finally giving in, he crosses the room and takes Shane’s hands in his own. The touch is electric, just as good as it was when he first woke up, and Shane knocked their knees together still thinking he was his husband. He rubs his thumb along Shane’s trying to soothe him. Shane’s fingers go straight to his ring finger, stroking across the empty space. Ilya’s eyes sting.
“I just want to say that whatever happens I do love you. I think I always did. And I know we couldn’t be together for a million reasons, and that most of those reasons weren’t our fault, but there were some things that were my fault. I was in a lot of denial, and it wasn’t just hurting me, it was hurting you too. I hope you can forgive me for it. And listen, I don’t know how any of this time travel stuff works, but I guess in movies sometimes when you go back, you don’t remember anything. Even if you don’t, I still need you to know that you’re loved. By me, by my parents, by your team, by Svetlana, and as hard as it might be to believe, but even by Hayden and Rose. I love you so much, and it kills me to see you see how much I love you and not believe it. So yeah, sorry, I know that was a lot, but it’s what I needed to say in case we wake up and you’re gone. I love you. I need you to believe it.”
Shane’s eyes are full of tears by the end of his big speech. Ilya’s sure he’s faring no better. His heart is so full his chest is aching with it. He can’t speak because he knows the only thing he’ll be able to get out is a sob.
Impulsively, having barely wrapped his mind around the idea that Shane is a married man but Ilya is himself the man Shane is not-quite-yet married to, Ilya takes Shane’s chin in his hand and pulls him into a kiss. It’s not one of their usual kisses, not from Ilya’s timeline at least, not those wet and desperate preludes to sex. It’s the secret way Ilya has wanted to kiss Shane all along. Soft, his mouth closed, his hand coming to cradle Shane’s jaw. When Shane kisses back, Ilya feels the first tear fall. It’s just as gentle, just as sweet. It makes Ilya believe it, that he’s loved, that Shane loves him.
When Shane pulls away, his eyes are wide. He looks around, like he’s scared the other Ilya might catch them. Ilya smiles, knowing himself, despite the patent absurdity of the matter, he’d be mad if he caught his husband kissing another man, even his younger self. He hasn’t been festering in his own jealousy watching his older self with his husband to not acknowledge that basic irrational truth.
He turns towards the door too, his own paranoia stoked, but the coast is thankfully clear. In an act of uncharacteristic kindness towards himself, he takes a step back out of Shane’s space, letting go of his hands.
“Thank you,” he says, to Shane, who is still standing there, his fingers pressed against his own lips.
“Yeah, of course, Ilya,” Shane says, “Look, I’ll let you turn in but I meant everything I said. Even if you don’t remember anything, I hope you remember that.”
“I will.”
Ilya settles in to the bed. The sheets are clean and cool and smell like laundry detergent and pine. He stares at the ceiling, a strange feeling inside of him telling him that once he falls asleep, he won’t wake up here again. It makes him want to delay the inevitable, stay awake as long as possible even after the whole cottage falls silent. He’d do anything to steal another moment with Shane, even if Shane is married to some future version of himself, it’s clear Shane loves him in every iteration. How rare, how beautiful a gift is that?
As hard as he tries to fight it, sleep comes. The distant sounds of water, the wind rustling through the trees, the perfect peace in his heart that comes with the memory of Shane’s lips against his own, the cool press of a wedding ring against his cheek.
Even if he doesn’t wake up here tomorrow, someday he will.
That will have to be enough.
—
Ilya wakes up to a rhythmic beeping noise.
He blinks his eyes open against harsh white fluorescent light, and finds himself staring up onto a tiled ceiling.
Tilting his head to the right, he sees his arm connected to a bunch of tubes and wires leading up to a heart monitor. It beeps evenly, its green line graph etching a repeating pattern of peaks and valleys. The motion makes his vision swim, the beige plastic and shiny metal posts of the hospital equipment swirling together. He closes his eyes again with a groan.
“Ilya?”
Shane? Ilya would recognize that voice anywhere. But that doesn’t make sense. He struggles to blink his eyes open again, and this time, he also tries to sit up. It’s a bad idea, pain radiates through his body, starting from his collarbone and particularly potent in his ribs.
“Lie back down,” Shane’s voice again. It’s killing Ilya to not be able to see him.
“Shane? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here, Ilya,” Shane says, and suddenly there’s a hand enveloping his own. Shane holds him carefully, doing his best not to dislodge any of the places where Ilya is still hooked up to his IVs. Ilya opens his eyes fully now and takes in the miraculous view. Shane is sitting there by his bedside, eyes puffy and red from crying, tear tracks dried against his cute freckles.
Ilya reaches out a free hand to rub them away, making Shane’s eyes flutter closed. He brings the hand he’s holding up to his mouth and presses a kiss there, and murmurs, “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“If you’re here,” Ilya murmurs back, “Then I believe it.”