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Shane makes it back to the hotel somehow. He must, because one moment he’s stumbling through the front door of Ilya’s house, and the next he’s leaning against the inside of the door to the hotel room he shares with Hayden, heart beating to his gums like he ran all the way here (he’s pretty sure he didn’t, though he wouldn’t bet on it).
“You alright, man?”
Shane barely hears Hayden through the static in his ears. “I need to – shower.”
Before Hayden can say anything, Shane escapes to the bathroom, shucks Ilya’s clothes (oh god, Ilya’s clothes), and climbs into the shower. He turns the water as hot as it will go. It beats down on him relentlessly, pelting him with a near-scalding stream, and Shane closes his eyes and pretends all his mistakes, all this nonsense of Ilya and stay, are washed away alongside his sweat.
Even so, he can’t make himself refer to Ilya as anything other than his name, even in his own head.
Hayden’s concerned gaze follows him as he climbs into bed, but Shane tunes him out and focuses on his phone until it is a reasonable time to sleep. He drifts off into dreamless sleep, only to wake what feels like a second later, nestled under warm blankets and with a heavy weight against his back. He basks in for long minutes, in that beautiful stage between dreaming and wakefulness.
The weight moves, lips press against his nape, and Shane can’t help the little contented sigh that escapes him –
And then the previous day’s memory slams into him. He rolls onto his back, which nets him a groan, and when he opens his eyes, it’s right into Ilya Rozanov’s face.
Shane doesn’t think – he bolts.
“Hollander,” Ilya says from the bed, voice plaintive like it had been the day before (today?), “Hollander. Please –”
“I – team meeting,” Shane hears himself say, and then the door to Ilya’s house is falling shut behind him.
Just like it had the last time after he’d woken up in Ilya’s bed, only then his stomach had been churning with the unfamiliar indulgence of tuna melts.
And now he is back here, even though he definitely fell asleep in his hotel room.
What the fuck?
Shane goes to bed more than a little out of sorts, though he manages to evade all of Hayden’s questions…
And wakes once again in Ilya Rozanov’s bed in Ilya Rozanov’s house, the man himself a heavy (and unfairly comforting) weight against Shane's back.
Shane lies stock still for a moment and tries to make sense of the situation. He’s definitely in Ilya’s house. The glass walls showing a neatly trimmed yard say as much, not that Shane has had the chance to get a tour. He’s also definitely in Ilya’s bed, because there’s no other furniture visible. He’s furthermore likely being spooned by Ilya, because there’s someone breathing on his neck, and he doesn’t know who else it could be, given everything else.
He definitely went to bed in the hotel room he shares with Hayden yesterday.
What the fuck?
That thought feels like a dejà vu, too, though Shane is pretty certain that that’s because he also thought the same thing yesterday. The day before. The last time he woke up in Ilya’s bed.
Damn.
Shane extricates himself from the bed carefully this time, heart beating impossibly loudly to his ears, and steals out of the house without waking up Ilya.
He chats to Hayden about the upcoming game – still on tomorrow, at least – and falls asleep in the hotel room…
And once again wakes up in Ilya’s house.
Fuck.
Over the next several days – well, one day, just repeated – Shane learns quite a few important things: if he rolls out of bed immediately, he can leave the house before Ilya wakes. He can get to the outskirts of Boston, at which point he will black out and wake back at Ilya’s; he can go to midnight, at which point he’ll black out and wake back at Ilya’s; he can go to sleep back at the hotel early and – surprise, surprise – wake back at Ilya’s. Hayden doesn’t remember anything from the loops, and neither do Shane’s parents, or JJ, whom Shane seeks out on one iteration where he doesn’t know what to do, after he’s left Ilya’s.
Except think, that is.
Because every time Shane slips out of the front door before Ilya can wake, he thinks of the ingredients stacked neatly in the fridge, ready to make tuna melts for two, above ginger ale specifically for Shane. Because Ilya only drinks Coke – which is always stocked in Shane’s pantry, ready to migrate to the fridge a day or two ahead of Boston coming to town.
The fact haunts him every iteration, back to the hotel room and to the outskirts of Boston. So do Ilya’s clothes. That part he could probably change, but it’s strangely impossible, to reach for his own clothes after he gets up. So he keeps the oversized t-shirt and sweatpants, and tells himself it’s his imagination that it still smells like Ilya.
That would be a weird reason to keep Ilya’s clothes, after all.
On iteration twenty-one, Shane thinks fuck it, and stays in bed. Ilya told him to do exactly that, before they fell asleep, didn’t he?
He doesn’t know what Ilya has thought of him running, because he’s made a point of not looking at his phone. Not that Ilya had reached out by the time Shane had called his parents a couple of loops ago, and since no one seems to change their routine, that probably means Ilya had just kept to himself.
Stay, Hollander, he remembers Ilya saying, that initial version of this day.
Shane, Ilya had called him, before the implications from that – together with the ginger ale and the full-sugar coke and the Raiders shirt Shane knows is stuffed into the depths of his wardrobe – had sunk in.
Shane can’t be gay.
It’s one thing that he’s been hooking up with Ilya over the years. Fun. Release. They’re in the same boat, and the sex is pretty fantastic. But Shane had always told himself that it was just that – and not something that leads to first names across team boundaries.
But – and this has taken him most of the previous iteration to admit to – he doesn’t just want hookups with anyone in the same boat. He wants Ilya. Soft, bare-footed, lounging on the couch. Frying up tuna melts. Stocking ginger ale in his fridge.
So he lies there, on iteration twenty-three, and lets himself indulge for a few minutes, before Ilya wakes up and instigates the next round, in this fantasy that that is something he gets to have. That they’re not both high-profile MLH stars but just two guys, napping together.
Except Ilya doesn’t shift and kiss Shane’s neck.
Ilya snuffles a little, stretches – and then goes stock still.
“You are you still here,” he murmurs against Shane’s neck.
Shane’s heart jumps into his throat. It’s been three weeks, to him, but he’s pretty sure Ilya didn’t say that the first time. “You told me to stay,” he points out.
Ilya snorts. “Yes, but you run. Every time, you are gone before I wake up.”
Shane’s heart lurches for a very different reason as he twists in Ilya’s arms. He looks sleep-mussed and sad, and Shane wants to wrap himself around him and never let him go. Instead, he says, “Every time?”
“Every time this day repeats. I am stuck in nightmare.”
“Fuck,” Shane says. “I – same.”
Ilya swallows audibly. He still looks sad, but Shane can’t parse what else he might be feeling. “So, will you run again?”
Part of Shane still wants to. “No. I… think we should talk.”
“Oh, now you do, Hollander?”
“Shane,” Shane corrects. His heart flutters in his chest when that cracks the mask on Ilya’s face, letting a proper smile escape.
“Okay, Shane,” Ilya agrees, and god. God. His name, from that voice –
“But maybe… let’s not talk in bed.”
“Bed not comfortable?”
“No, just – I missed you. But. We need to talk.”
Ilya pouts, but he’s still smiling. “Okay, Shane,” he says again. “Let’s talk so we can have future.”
“Together,” Shane adds, “Ilya.”
It’s terrifying free-fall, but Ilya smiles, and that’s all the safe landing Shane needs.