Chapter Text
Awareness comes and goes and comes again. It maybe happens a few times like that. Shane has no idea. Time is immaterial. He just knows he hurts, and there are voices.
Fuck. He’s spent his fair share of time injured. But this is… two very particular types of pain in his head, both at the same time.
After about a moment of trying to make the voices out, or trying to figure out why his head hurts twice, he opens his eyes.
“Tell them he’s awake!” It is his dad’s voice. Painfully loud. So terribly, painfully loud. He definitely can't focus his eyes on him, though. Everything is a tunnel. “Can you keep your eyes open for me?”
“Huh?” He asks, still not really grasping what was going on. Someone else is talking. Someone familiar. He knows that person. Someone he…doesn’t know how he feels about. He feels some way. He knows that. “Who?” He manages to ask. That’s all he can get out, trying to ask who the person talking was. What that person is saying, even. It is all a jumble of big words and concepts he can’t quite get his head around.
“Shane… you got hit in the head with a bunch of stuff. You’re bleeding,” his father tells him.
He tries to move his head to see who was talking so much, but he can’t.
“Hey, hey bud,” his dad says soothingly. “Don’t try to move. I’m holding your head still right now.”
Shane relaxes a little at that. He’d been hit in the head before. He knows how serious these things are taken and that his dad knows what to do. “My head hurts twice,” he says hoarsely.
HIs dad sighs. “The shelves in the back of the garage collapsed. A lot of stuff fell on you. Something cut your head open, too. It’s bleeding pretty good.”
“Oh,” Shane mutters. His out-of-focus tunnel vision narrows. “Who’szat?” He asks, meaning whoever is talking just a few feet away from them.
“It’s me,” the voice said clearly. “I am calling for ambulance.”
Oh. This is some sort of dream. That’s what is happening. Because overflowing shelves in his parents’ garage is one thing. Mom has been saying to clear them for years. But why is Rozanov here? “Night,” he mumbles and closes his eyes. Maybe the next time he wakes, everything would be normal.
***
Everything was NOT normal when he wakes. First, his head double-hurt still. There is the terrible, terrible pain in is skull and then there is something else that burns and throbs. When he opens his eyes, it is too bright, even though there was only one small light above his bed. He winced and gasped at the agony.
He closed his eyes again. There are sounds and beeps and hisses that he doesn’t like or understand, so he went back to sleep.
Later, things will be better.
***
It’s daylight the next time he wakes. His head feels like unmitigated shit. It hurts… and it hurts. His skull feels like an egg that has been smashed by a hammer. His flesh… feels stretched and torn and it burns.
The fucking sounds are there again. A whirl and a beep and something else he can’t name because concentrating on anything at all is just too difficult. He opens one eye just a bit, but it’s so skull-crackingly light he closes it again. What the fuck happened?
He tries to sit up, but hands are on both of his shoulders, holding him back. “Hey, don’t. Just relax. Let the doctor look you over first.”
Ok. Shit. That is very normal. His mother. He relaxes. Well, as much as he can with his skull splitting and his flesh stretching and burning. “What happ?” His voice cracks and then falls off into nothingness.
She sighs and takes his hand. “Do you remember cleaning out the garage?”
He tries to shake his head, but it hurts too much. “Uh uh,” he responds when that doesn’t work.
“Those over-full shelves in the back came loose from the wall and fell on you.” She sighs. There’s disappointment in that sigh. Or something else. Shane has trouble reading people sometimes. “I’ve been telling your dad to take care of them for seventeen? Eighteen years?”
Shane almost laughs. “Hasn’t been THAT long.” They’d only moved into that house when he was ten.
“Time flies,” she says offhandedly. “Let me grab someone, ok?”
“Ok.”
He is drifting off to sleep again when the doctor all but forces him to open his eyes against the harshness of the light. Following her finger is difficult. Nothing wants to focus correctly for more than a second or two. When she asks his pain level, he decides to give her a real answer and not a bullshit ‘I want to get back out there and play’ answer and tells her it is probably an eight? Which number was the one where you saw stars and were incredibly nauseous? That is the one he is at.
Then she started asking dumb questions. Some of them he doesn’t have an answer to. Sure, he knows his name. His job. His team. Who is the prime minister? He should know this. What year is it? Shit. 2014? That sounds right-ish. Month? June, he guesses. That’s when the MLH awards are, right? He remembers that. Shit, does he remember that. He has no concept of how long ago it was, though.
He remembers the awards. Giving Ilya his “reward.” That terrible, lonely elevator ride where he’d started a bunch of texts but sent none of them. Then… some stuff. He has no idea what stuff. And now… now.
He closes his eyes as the doctor performs some other tests, asking him to lift this, push against his hands, do that… as long as he doesn’t have to look at the light he’ll be fine.
The door to the room opens and closes again.
His mother lets out a jagged breath. “Oh thank God. You’re back.”
Must be his dad, he decides, and starts to drift off to sleep.
“Perhaps we should talk in the hall,” the doctor says.
“What’s wrong?”
But that’s not his dad’s voice. It’s…Rozanov’s?
He acknowledges it, and how weird that is, but sleep had already been pulling at him, so he ducks into it, like hiding under a soft blanket.
***
It’s still daytime when he wakes again. Or is the first time? Maybe everything else was a dream. Because this situation is a little fucked. Something happened to him, his head is killing him, and his parents are there. That’s all very normal.
But then…before he slips the bonds of consciousness, he keeps hearing… Rozanov. Like he’s there. With his parents.
Which is just… weird.
He sighs. Both at the dreams and at the pain throbbing in his head. He keeps his eyes closed against the violence of the daylight, though.
“You are awake.”
Shane startles and almost jumps. What the fuck? Rozanov?
“I am not.” His voice sounds jagged and a little weak.
Rozanov’s hand covers his, the way his mother’s had. “If you can say you are not, then you are,” he teased lightly, in a tone Shane had never heard before. “Where’s that thing?” He starts feeling around Shane on the bed for something.
“What thing?”
“To call the nurse.”
“I don’t know.” How was he supposed to know, really?
“It was, ah, rhetorical.”
“Big word.”
“There it is.” The searching stops and a chime sounds once. “Good. They will come look at you again.”
“This is a stupid dream,” Shane mutters, scrunching his eyes closed even harder to let in less light. “Why are you here?”
Rozanov hesitated, almost sounding startled when he spoke. “Is not a dream. I am here because I love you.”
Shane’s eyes do snap open at that. He can’t focus on Rozanov either, but he tries really hard. “What the fuck?” They did not have THAT kind of relationship. In fact, the last time he’d seen Rozanov, the man had fucked him silly then practically kicked him out of his hotel room without so much as a thank you or a kiss.
What the fuck was this love shit?
The man’s shoulders slump and he sits back in his chair. “Oh, Shane.” He sounds so disappointed. “The doctor said—I thought when you woke up again—” He let out a shuttering breath. “I am sorry. I should not have said anything. I will… maybe let the doctor explain it? I am not good for words right now.” His voice broke on the last word and he sniffed. “I will, um. I will send Yuna in.”
Shane’s heart begins to beat faster, he can hear it pounding in his ears. “Shit. What do my parents know? What did you tell them?”
He let out a gasp that might have been a sob? “I will be outside. If you want me. Yuna can—the doctor can…” and without finishing that thought, Rozanov is gone.
He tries to go back to sleep. That seems to be a decent refuge for when things get weird. But his head is pounding. Both on the outside, and on the inside.
He lifts the hand that is not mixed up in an IV to where his skin hurts and feels a very long cut just above his hairline. It is a little jagged and nearly goes from ear to ear. There are staples in his skin. He knows what those feel like from a knee injury when he was fourteen.
God, this is excruciating. Not just his head. What Rozanov said. Love? What the fuck? What the absolute fuck?
That’s how he knows this isn’t real. He’s hit his head, yes. But the people surrounding him right now? Must be part of some crazy dream or hallucination. Like Rozanov would ever be there for him in any sort of time of need. Much less make easy declarations of love like that. It had just slipped out as practiced as breathing. He had no idea why his brain was conjuring up such… ridiculousness. They weren’t and they couldn’t be.
It isn’t like Shane has any illusions as to what he is to Rozanov. He thought he was a fuck buddy. But their last encounter… after he left he felt more like a fuck toy than a fuck buddy.
Jesus Christ. Why couldn’t he just… wake up? Find out how he’d hurt his head and see what the real situation was.
The door opens again and his mom comes back in. He squints hard, trying to really focus on her. He’s annoyed that he can’t see straight. “Honey… how do you feel?”
“Confused as fuck?”
His mom sat down and instantly starts rubbing his arm in a soothing manner. “I can imagine. The doctor is on her way to talk to us. I just want to know—do you want Ilya in here when she does?”
“Fuck Rozanov,” he said, not understanding why he and her mother are on a first-name basis. God, why is everything so… confusing?
Her rubbing stopped for just a second. “Oh, honey.”
“Did he…did he just show up here? Did he say that me and him—that we…” a shudder caught his breath. This is a dream. It has to be a dream, because this is actually his worst nightmare.
There is something worse than the league finding out he is fucking his league-assigned rival. It is his parents finding out.
She clenches her eyes shut then slides her hand into his. “Sweetheart… what is the last thing you really, really remember?”
That long-ass elevator ride. Feeling taken apart, and like he’d never be put back together again. Feeling so unmoored, like he’d be adrift forever. “Rozanov winning MVP.”
Her eyes squeeze shut, and he thinks she’s maybe about to cry. “Which time?” she asks quietly.
He covers her hand with his other one, and he feels the IV pull in the back of his hand a little. “Mom, what’s going on?” Which time? There was only the one fucking time. “How did I hurt my head?” He knows they’ve told him. But everything is so… fucking confusing. “Was… was he here? Rozanov?” Either he was here, or Shane had dreamt it. But he had seemed so very, very real.
A tear drips off of his mother’s nose. “Baby, what year is it?”
“I…” He really thinks about it. Everything is a jumble in his head, except for that award ceremony. A fucking hot time with Rozanov, being in some place where nothing could touch him, then getting all but tossed out of the room and just feeling everything inside of him drop in that elevator. Almost sending so many texts. He’d been riding something better than a high and then he just got… dropped like a hot potato. “Is it 2014?” he asks. That is his best guess.
“Baby… it’s 2023.”
Shane laughs, and it hurts his head something fierce. “Come on. What happened? How did I hit my head?” Why is he stuck in this bizarre-yet-agonizing dream?
Why had Rozanov said… that?
And why did he feel a thousand different ways about it?
Instead of explaining, his mother does something he’s only seen her do at her own mother’s funeral: she lets out a sob.
TO BE CONTINUED…