Chapter Text
It’s not unusual, to see players without their daemons.
The higher-ups don’t like it, sure. There are rules upon rules- players must keep within eyesight of their daemon at all times when off the rink, etc, etc. They don’t like seeing the monsters they’ve created, men who can leave their souls behind and fly unimpeded across the ice. It’s unnatural, being separated from your soul, everyone agrees, but money speaks louder than morals. The NHL makes, like, 6.8 billion dollars a year. Last year Hockey Canada received $14 million dollars from the Canadian government and generated $11.2 billion for the Canadian economy. Absolutely nobody is suggesting stopping the current practice of separating top-level players from their daemons anytime soon.
”Isn’t that, like, child abuse?” said Jessica, Shanes one and only high school girlfriend, when she’d found out how far Mika could go from Shane already, about the long, lengthy and oftentimes painful bond-stretching regimen all professional hockey players go through, starting when they’re first scouted at 11, about the final process to snap the bond completely, the one Shane would do later that summer. Shane had shrugged. He had been young then. He would have done a lot worse, for hockey.
Anyway, the point is, when Shane introduces himself to Ilya Rozanov, shakes his hand and doesn’t immediately spot his daemon, he doesn’t think anything of it. He’s distracted by the guys’ fucking cheekbones, and how the guy’s smoking against the wall, in a non-smoking area, and the absolutely massive fur coat thrown in a heap beside him, which, Jesus, do Russians really wear those things? It’s huge.
“You’re not supposed to smoke out here” says Shane, at which point the fur coat lifts its head, and Shane realizes it’s not a coat, it’s a fucking bear, and then realizes again that it has floppy ears and it’s not a bear, it’s a black dog, the biggest fucking thing he’s ever seen. He didn’t even know dogs could be that big.
Mika makes the most unfortunate honking noise he’s ever heard from her, and Shane regrets approaching Ilya Rozanov with a loon daemon, regrets letting his teammates convince him it’d be funny if Mika was Ottawa’s bird for the tournament, the Loonie coin, a Canadian icon! He regrets being the last one of the group to still be unsettled, and regrets ever stepping on the ice, making it to the juniors’ competition.
It’s not even that funny, her being a loon, because she’s in nonbreeding plumage (obviously, aha, why would she be in breeding plumage, there are no girls here-), so she doesn’t look like the $20 bill or the Loonie, or anything with a loon on it at all. Her eyes are dark, her throat white, her back a mottled grey and brown instead of black and white and the white spots on her back are small, like stars in the night sky. She’ll always be pretty to Shane, no matter what shape she’s in, but she’s definitely not a stereotypical loon. The joke really falls flat. He doesn’t really know why he went along it.
Jesus, this is embarrassing. Now Ilya Rozanovs’ first impression of him will be his dumb daemons’ honking.
“Shit, sorry, I just- it’s a no smoking area.”- wow, great work Shane. Really doing a great job here.
”Okay?” says Ilya Rozanov, like duh, like why is this dumb Canadian and his stupid Canadian bird making noises at me. Ugh.
”This is Mika”
”Hi” says Mika to Rozanovs’ dog, ruffling out her feathers like she can physically shake off her involuntary honk, and nearly overbalancing.
”Yes.” says Ilya Rozanov, pointedly not introducing his daemon. What a dick. His dog huffs and lies back down into a mass of fur.
Right, he thinks. It’s ironic or something. The most beautiful people really are the worst.
”Well, good luck on the ice. You’re going to need it.” Snaps Shane, and stalks away, which is less cool than it sounds, because he has to bend down and scoop up Mika, who is, to put it mildly, ungainly on land.
”We will beat you” says Rozanov behind him. He doesn’t even raise his voice.
”That’s not happening” calls Shane, not looking back.
He thinks that’s the end of it. He’ll beat Rozanov tomorrow and the exchange will fade in importance, a funny anecdote to pull out at the parties Shane will definitely be going to one day. When he wins and is drafted first.
Except, when he gets back to the hotel room, he says, caustic and annoyed at himself, “can’t you be a polar bear or something more impressive?” and Mika says, very small, “no, Shane, I don’t think I can”.
So, yeah. It’s not the story of how he met Ilya Rozanov. It’s the story of how Mika settles as a fucking loon.
-
He stays up half that night, googling loons, and Russian bear dogs (which are, literally, bear dogs- aka, dogs bred for hunting bears. Rozanovs daemon is a kavkazskaya ovcharka, or a causcasian sheepdog, from the Causcas Mountains. The males are bigger than the females, and- well. Rozanovs daemon was huge. And you hear about men with male daemons. Shane wonders, is all. But google tells him that she’s a female, even if it doesn’t tell him her name. It’s not like he’s cyberstalking Rozanov or anything.)
Loons, Shane learns, are mostly lonely animals. Monogamous, but incredibly territorial. Beaks like a knife, or like a skater’s blade. A bald eagle was found dead in the water in Maine, a loon chick clutched in its talons. Pierced through the heart by that baby’s enraged parent. She’s always been a small daemon, so she’s small for a loon- 66cm long, with a wingspan of 130cm. Fierce predators, fast at swimming and fast at flying. They dive in stints exactly the same as hockey shifts, an average of 40-45 seconds. Fast, fast, fast. But awkward on land, as Shane and Mika have already found out. Their pelvic bones aren’t built for walking. They can’t do it at all- only push themselves forward with their strong legs, chest dragging on the ground. Not built for land, just like Shane. She was built for the water, and he was built for the ice.
He can’t deny how right it feels, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.
-
They lose the next day. Shane blames Rozanov for it- for making him pay attention to him. For making him lose focus. For making Mika settle.
”I’ll see you at the draft” he says and tells himself that until then he’s going to put Ilya Rozanov out of his mind.
-
It’s a steep learning curve, having a loon daemon.
”It’s not bad” says his mom, carefully. “Very Canadian, sponsors are happy about that.” That, and not much else, he can tell. A loon is neither masculine nor impressive. A disappointment, to those who hoped he’d have something like a wolf, himself included. His dad tries to bake him the traditional settling cake, in the shape of the new adults’ daemon, but his cake decorating skills aren’t great, so it mostly looks like a grey football. And Shanes’ strict diet doesn’t allow for cake.
Mika can’t walk, and she can’t really perch on his shoulder like other bird daemons can. She needs a long run-up to even get off the ground, and even if she could take off, she’s not agile enough to navigate indoors. So, he has to carry her everywhere. Thank god she’s small, she’s only 2kg. He puts her in his backpack, sometimes, even though she’s slightly too big for it, and feels awful about it, even though she says she doesn’t mind. He looks into specially made daemon carriers briefly and hates the thought- it’s so stupid, the prospect of having to carry around his daemon for the rest of their lives or leave her in the dust if he makes her do her awful crawl across the ground after him.
He knows there’s nothing that will make a settled daemon re-settle, but it doesn’t stop him from googling it, late at night.
All the staff on the junior team are pretty much all the same- quietly disappointed, and quietly relieved. They care more about size, not shape. Every hockey player is separated, of course, but there's always worry about the daemon being too big to fit on the team bus, or plane. Teams prefer to go for settled players, just in case.
"We're taking a chance on him." A million couches said to Yuna over the years, usually with meaningful glances to him, as if he could just choose to have a conveniently small daemon and make their investments pay off. They'd probably have still drafted him even if he'd had a fucking moose, like Gretzky- everyone throws around the word "generational" when they're near him, they'll do anything to keep him, even upgrade a bus.
-
At the draft, they have to get an entire special podium in special for Rozanovs’ dog, one like they use for the big daemons- which, of course, she is a big daemon, but- It’s the one they used for Gretzky’s famous moose. She’s a dog. Poor #3 with his badger daemon gets completely overshadowed. Shane isn’t even sure what his name is.
Everyone’s thrilled by the symbolism. A bear-hunting dog, going to the Bears! The all-Canadian boy with the all-Canadian bird going to the Canadian team. Everyone talks about their rivalry like it’s a given.
When he looks up, Rozanov is up on the balcony, with a man he presumes is his dad. His father has a bear daemon, a massive thing. He wonders, slightly meanly, if that’s not more symbolic than anything else. Imagine having a son that’s daemon hunts yours. At least he and his dad have matching Canadian daemons- Mary’s a white-tailed deer, and Akumu, his moms’ daemon, is a white-fronted goose, so he and Mika are water birds together. He wonders what Rozanovs’ mothers’ daemon is. She doesn’t seem to be here.
-
He leaves Mika in his room when he goes to the gym, but Rozanov brings his daemon. It makes him feel unbalanced, shaky and unsure. Just because of the daemon inequality. Nothing else. Not how Rozanov looks at him. How his dog stares at him, like he’s a rabbit, like Mikas favourite shape when they were kids. Like he’s prey. He’s got a weird cross necklace on too- so maybe he’s part of the church? The magisterium mostly keeps out of hockey, but you hear things. Especially about how they react to men who watch other men. So maybe Rozanov suspects. He should avoid Rozanov. Stop thinking about him. Stop thinking about the water bottle, how his lips are going over where Rozanovs’ lips were. Just stop it.
-
They make their daemons sit in a corner while they film the commercial.
”We’ll do daemon shots later, but for now we’re gonna focus on getting the on-ice shots, okay?” says the director, as if Shane has any say at all. He says okay anyway. When he glances over to them, he can see Mikas beak chattering away, which is not what they discussed re: ignoring Rozanov, and her good energy leaks into the bond. Rozanov must feel the same, because they can’t stop laughing, either of them, giggling on the ice. It’s just so stupid.
”You guys seemed to be having fun” he says to her, a little sourly, skating over once they’re let go, the cameramen getting set up to do individual shots. He glances behind, but Rozanov is over the other side of the rink getting water, his dog padding over, sure-footed even on the ice. Her feet are the size of dinnerplates, no wonder she isn’t sliding.
”She finally talked to me” says Mika.
”Did she tell you Rozanov and her planned this whole thing?”
”Yeah, she did” she says.
”She’s not so bad” she declares. If she had a lip to bite, Shane thinks she might be biting it.
-
”If I come up to 1410 tonight at 9 o’clock” says Rozanov, voice trailing off, leaving it open. Up to interpretation. Maybe he really is magisterium. Shane doesn’t think so, not really, but- Jesus. This is a bad idea. This is all a bad idea. Watching him in the shower was a bad idea, and getting caught doing it was even worse.
”I might open” he says, in spite of himself. He shouldn’t entertain it, but he wants it. Badly. Mika should stop him but she doesn’t. She knows him, which is sometimes a fucking curse. She knows he wants it too.
”I might knock” says Rozanov and walks away to get his things. His dog touches noses with Mika, gently, before she follows him.
”Are you actually going to do it?” Mika says, looking up at him as he leaves the rink, tucked under his arm, his gear bag slung over the other side, bumping against his side.
”I don’t know” he says.
”It could just be once, right?” she says anxiously, “get it out of our systems?”
”Yeah” he says, knowing he’s lying to himself, “just to get it out of our systems.”
”He might not even knock” she says.
-
”Shane” she says later that night, placed delicately in the chair, watching him change. “Shane stop- no, not a suit, Jesus, take that off-“
”How the hell am I supposed to dress for a hook up, Mika? A hook up with a Ilya Rozanov, a man?”
”Wear normal clothes, you idiot, we’re not going to an interview-“
-
Rozanov leaves his daemon behind, which is probably a wise move. She’s not exactly inconspicuous. Still, he can sense Mikas’ disappointment through their distant bond.
”I thought you might chicken out” says Rozanov, which makes Shanes’ eyes narrow.
”Is that a fucking joke?” he says, defensively, getting ready to push Rozanov out the door, slam it in his face. Maybe he’s just sensitive, he probably is, but- some of the guys said things, about Mika. About him. Bird daemons all seem to get it, and really, it isn’t just bird daemons. Dog daemons get comments about being dumb, cat daemons about being assholes, reptiles about being cold. It’s all part of hockey chirping, but. She doesn’t even look like a fucking chicken-.
”Joke?” says Rozanov, looking confused. Okay. Alright. He breathes out.
”People say things about bird daemons” he says.
”Ah” says Rozanov. “Is not- I wouldn’t. She isn’t like a chicken. Very pretty bird.”
”You don’t have to go that far” he says. He doesn’t- Rozanov doesn’t have to compliment them, to get in his pants.
”Is true! Like a sharp storm cloud” he says, which doesn’t even make sense, but Shane has to kiss him for it.
He’s kissed people before. He’s not a virgin or anything. It was- nice. He liked it, he thinks. It was a little bit like mashing two pairs of slugs together. So, not that good actually. He doesn’t know why he lied to himself.
Kissing Rozanov is nothing like that. It’s hot, which feels like a fucking cliché, but it’s like a fever, localized to his mouth, burning him up from the inside. He feels hunger, deep in his gut, he’s starving. He licks into Rozanovs’ mouth, kitten licks, and then bolder, trying to get reach the guys fucking molars, trying to eat him from the inside out. It’s easy, to kiss him, to push him up against the wall, to drop to his knees. Like it’s natural. Like it’s a given, that Shane Hollander should be on his knees for Ilya Rozanov.
-
So that’s the story of how he starts hooking up with the guy who made his daemon settle.
-
When Boston plays in Montreal, when Ilya comes to him, he leaves his daemon behind. Every time. It’s fine. It’s just sex, so why would she come. Shane would leave Mika behind, except she insists on coming either way- she doesn’t like watching them fuck, she says indignantly, but she just has to be there, in case Rozanov does bring his daemon along. She’s obsessed with her, Shane tells her. No, she says, I just want to know her name. I’m wearing her down. I’ll get it one of these days.
If Mika’s the chatty one in their pairing, then it’s the opposite with Rozanov and his unnamed bear-dog. Mika talks at her, but she doesn’t really seem to reply. He never sees Rozanov talk to her either, but Rozanov doesn’t really talk to daemons at all. It’s rude, of course, to talk directly to other people’s daemons if you don’t know them, but he doesn’t even acknowledge Mika- maybe that’s a Russian thing? Cultural differences?
Except- he doesn’t talk to her, but he keeps saying things to Shane. Pretty boy with his pretty bird daemon, shit like that. Indirectly complimenting her. Nobody’s called Mika pretty, or beautiful, or anything nice, really, not since she settled, except for Shane, and even then, he doesn’t really- it feels odd, to compliment himself. He’s probably just chirping them, some kind of reverse psychology bullshit, but- it’s nice to hear. He secretly suspects that’s why Mika really wants to come along- she always preens.
-
But she also makes him read her every single text he gets from Rozanov.
”Shane- no. Nine inches would be like, a third of my size- that’s not possible. His dick is not that long. You know this. Shane- Shane stop blushing. We’re better than this.”
-
So, it’s a shock when he opens the door to his apartment and sees Rozanovs’ dog is standing there, her human just behind her. He doesn’t jump, no matter what Mika would say.
”Will you murder us, Shane Hollander?” she says, the first goddamn thing she’s ever said to him. Her voice is low, just as accented as Rozanovs, smooth and golden like caramel. He stands are far to the side as he can to let her pass, but he can still feel the phantom brush of her fur as she goes by into the landing. He doesn’t touch her, of course, he wouldn’t- but. Only a few centimetres to the left and he would. Her fur is gleaming, midnight black. It doesn’t look soft, but it looks interesting. Like it would catch on his hand. He likes strange textures, likes rubbing his hands on them. His mom got a new blanket last Christmas, and he spent half the day running his hand over the weave. If he buries his hands in her fur-
He shakes himself like a -ha!- dog to get himself to stop thinking about Rozanovs’ daemons’ fur. Saying it’s not appropriate is a fucking understatement. He shouldn’t even be thinking about touching another persons’ daemon.
He runs up the stairs, Rozanov behind him, pushing and shoving like they’re fucking kids. When he looks back, Mika is being carried up the stairs, delicately held in the dogs’ mouth. He can vaguely feel the teeth around him, through the bond, the inherent danger of it, but she’s not scared. Not even a little.
”So many blankets and pillows” Rozanov says, when Shane shows him the bedroom, “did your mom buy them for you?”
”No, shut up. I hired someone but Mika doesn’t sleep with me- we make a nest on the floor. That’s what those are for.”
”Poor, poor Mika” says the dog, staring directly at him, “you make her sleep on the floor?”
”Jesus, I don’t make her do anything. She just prefers it.”
Mika doesn’t say anything, but Shane remembers when they were kids. They used to sleep in the bed together, him curled around her. But then Rozanov kisses him, and the memory disappears into smoke, just like everything else does around Rozanov- his common sense, his dignity, his sense of shame. He gets lost in it.
He only looks over at their daemons once while they’re fucking.
They’re by the fireplace, the dog wrapped around Mika, Mika barely visible in the mass of fur. They’re talking, he thinks. Low and quiet. Mika nudges at the dogs’ side with her beak, a jab at some unknown comment. Then Rozanov moves again and he loses focus, turns his head away from them. Leaves them to their privacy.
-
”Her name’s Yuria” says Mika, after he’s kissed Ilya goodbye and seen him off to his cab. He rolls the name around his mouth for a while after. Ilya and Yuria. Yuria and Ilya. Not the final puzzle piece, but another piece, locking into place.
-
Of course, nothing’s going to happen in Sochi. He’s too busy, running in-between the rink, the gym, and the building that’s hosting the Northern American teams- USA, Canada and Mexico. He meets up with Joe, who he hasn’t seen since long before both of them settled. Joes’ daemon Olly is a Green Hermit hummingbird, as beautiful as any skaters’ sparkling costumes. He’s male. It probably doesn’t mean anything- Shane’s never asked, and Joe’s never offered up the information. But there are plenty of heterosexual men in skating, Shane is sure, despite the stereotypes. Even if having a male, hummingbird daemon doesn’t do his image any favours.
When Shane had been a kid, he’d been worried Mika would somehow switch sexes. Which, obviously, doesn’t fucking happen but- he’s always watched boys a little too hard, and everyone knew gay people had daemons who were the same sex. He worried his daemon would settle as something gay, too, which- what would even be a gay daemon? He hadn’t known, but he’d laid up at night, sleepless with worry. That Mika would be the one to betray his longest held secret. She never really did like the kind of shapes a U16 captain should, the kind a heterosexual teenage boy should. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t voice any of those thoughts then, and he doesn’t now. It’s not Joes’ fault he dredges up long-forgotten insecurities.
They don’t really talk about anything interesting, not even about their upcoming competitions, just about the village, the food. The fire alarm went off in the Americas building the other day, and the gossip is it was two athletes getting too, uh, frisky and knocking into it, but nobody knows who the offending couple were, or even which teams they represented. Joe insists it was one of the hockey men from Team USA, with one of the Canadian women’s luge team, so Shane has to vehemently defend his sport. Even though it probably was.
It’s nice, catching up, but that evening he reads an article about Yuria Lipnitskaya finding listening devices in the locker rooms at her rink and has nightmares for three nights night straight about shapeless scary things, men in black coming for him and Mika, hands grasping at his daemon, being thrown in small jail cell with Rozanov.
He lies awake, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling that may or may not be infested with black mold. Across from him, JJ snores, spooning his African wild dog daemon. Her name, inexplicably, is AJ. It’s short for something, but nobody can figure out what, and JJ isn’t telling.
He doesn’t see Ilya and Yuria at all, except through his phone screen. Most of the Russian athletes are staying off the village, with their families, and the Russian team are notoriously unfriendly. So are the French, incidentally- Shane tries to talk to one of their athletes in his Québecois and gets straight up ignored.
He texts Rozanov, once, hope you’re having a good time with your family!, and then again when Russia is crushed by Latvia. Ilya had looked… Tired, in the interviews. Not normal post-game tired. Deeply exhausted, down to his bones. Something dead in his eyes. Yurias’ eyes had been more animal that daemon, a fox caught in a trap. Her fur had lost its’ shine.
Mika’s worried about them too. Not quite frantic with it, but she’d demanded to know what each and every text he received was, even though most were from his mom about reeboks, JJ about meeting up, the team Canada gc, Hayden sending him pictures of the twins all decked up in their gear, their daemons all golden retriever puppies in little puppy jumpers, just like their dads’ Laura, seated in front of the TV, utterly adorable. He shows Mika, but she just says “cute” dismissively. If he hadn’t texted Ilya, he thinks Mika would’ve worked out his phone just so she could do it herself. One of the perks of a non-mammalian daemon, he guesses, that she can’t manipulate a phone.
-
When he sees Ilya, standing above them, it’s not a thought that makes him move. It’s just- instinct. A need. He needs to see him for himself. He almost leaves Mika behind in his haste to get out, to get to Rozanov- it’d be more “in character” to leave her too, if he really was going to the toilet. But she almost pecks him hard enough to draw blood in protest, so he grabs her, ignoring the curious tilted head of Scotts’ Harris’ hawk Stevie, edging past spectators and their daemons. At least Vaughn and his Nile monitor don’t seem to notice anything.
”Not here” says Ilya, as if Shane would- Shane knows. It’s a little bit insulting, actually, that he assumes Shane only sought him out for sex. He ignores the hypocrisy of his thoughts, because he has only sought Ilya out for sex. He’s breaking his own pattern.
Yuria is at his feet, similar to when they first met them. Head on her dinner-plate paws, eyes closed. Her ears are always floppy, but this is- they’re sad. Mika makes a low, whoo-ing sound when they see her, a parent loon calling for a chick. Yuria doesn’t budge.
”I know not here” he says, thinking of surveillance cameras and recording devices. “I just wanted to- say hi, and see how you are.”
”I’m fine. Go sit back down.”
”Obviously, you’re not fine- we wouldn’t be fine, if it were us” says Mika.
”Oh thank you, very generous.” Snaps Ilya, “I have been given permission by the great Mika Hollander.”
”Fuck you, seriously, are you okay?” says Shane. “You didn’t answer my texts.”
”No I did not answer your stupid boring texts” says Ilya.
”Rozanov, we-“ says Mika
”We are not anything, Hollander.” Says Ilya. Brutal. Cold. A punch in Shanes’ gut. “Now go away and take your stupid boring bird with you.” A second punch straight to the face. He- he thought Rozanov thought she was pretty. He guesses it was just a stupid chirp after all.
”Fine” Shane says back. “Fuck you. You’ll see us on the podium.”.
Mika says “Shane”, protesting as he turns away, nipping him again on the thumb, but he ignores her. He’s done. Fuck Rozanov. Fuck him.
Except, he glances back and Yuria has moved. Only slightly. Her paws are covering her eyes.