Chapter Text
December 2008
Regina, Saskatchewan
Rubbing his gloves together in a futile attempt to bring warmth back into his clinically dead fingers, Shane shows off years of athletic mastery by bouncing from foot to foot to an ungrateful audience of two puffy birds and a rat as he waits outside of a hockey rink in the bitter Regina cold. Stretching his physical skills even further, he pushes his jacket sleeve upward to check the watch on his left wrist for the umpteenth time, allowing the cold air to nip at his exposed skin.
30 seconds, and the reset would be complete. 29 more seconds, and he could try again. And again. And likely one more time. And in case of emergency, the sixth time’s a charm. Though maybe resetting the same guy six times in a day was a bit much, right? Maybe if the first handful of times didn’t work, he should give up?
He glances at his watch again, sniffling as the seconds tick by more slowly than usual. 24 seconds, 23 and a half, 23 and a quarter, 21.
An unplanned tear starts a glacial track down his cheek as the sharp wind picks up, affecting more body parts than he is willing to admit to the birds (and rat) for being an Ontario-born-and-bred, outdoor hockey-playing Canadian male specimen. His nose is probably doing a full Rudolph, like his Mom used to say until sometime in high school when he begged her to stop.
Wiping his cheek and pulling his toque down further over his (also red) ears, he looks down at his jacket. Open or closed? Open? Had Rozanov’s jacket been open the last time? Open feels more casual, less uptight, despite the temperature in the negative tens outside. The Russians like to play it cool. Okay, open.
He unzips quickly before he can rationalize himself out of it, and frozen tendrils slither through his light sweatshirt and onto the bare skin below, hooking their nails into his flesh. A cold shiver lazily creeps down his spine as he sneaks another peek at his watch.
13 seconds. Okay, time for the pre-game routine.
Shane forces all the air out of his lungs in a slow exhale, leaving himself in limbo until his body starts to protest, then refills his lungs with enough subzero oxygen to snap his brain back into game mode. His usual game prep list starts automatically.
Mindset: Clear like freshly Zamboni-ed ice.
The goal: Get pucks in deep.
The game plan: Forecheck, backcheck, paycheck.
The backup plan: Five-holing it.
Okay, wrong game plan.
New plan: Finish your checks and stay out of the box.
Any plan, Shane: Just say hello or something.
The Hollander Game Persona: Activated and ready to keep his head in the game.
Game face: Cold as ice, but also literally, and one eye keeps tearing up, which is inconvenient.
Prep grade: Disappointed but not surprised.
Being on a surefire road to playing professional-level hockey means he should be able to, you know, just… bare-minimum introduce himself to his fellow foreign competitors, in a cool, collected, and relaxed manner. Zero chalant necessary. Cucumber-level mindset. Smooth like skating over freshly cleaned ice.
Unfortunately, his brain is grinding on a partially frozen Rideau Canal in the middle of November, using dull skates a size too large. But hey, he has three reboots left and all the time in the world. Before his big game in 2 hours. No rush.
Forcing his feet to stop bouncing, Shane takes another deep breath in, balling his gloved hands into fists, then stretching all ten fingers out, rolling his right shoulder back, then his left shoulder, letting the breath slowly escape from between his lips into a small man-made cloud before it disappears into the ether. He cracks his neck, clears his throat once. A small cough.
There’s no good reason for his heart to be hammering in his throat like that though. Not a (human) soul around in the hockey rink parking lot to witness it, and Rozanov won’t remember any of it anyway if Shane doesn’t want him to. Their game doesn’t start for a good while, and no one has come outside to look for either of them.
It’s not like wiping himself out of someone’s memories is more physically taxing than waiting around in a Regina wasteland anyway, especially if he does it less than four to five times in 24 hours, six in a pinch if it’s only one person. Waiting almost a minute and a half for that person’s brain to reboot and come back to itself was the actually tedious part.
Which is why he has ground rules, and the rules have worked out very well so far: never reset anyone near moving vehicles, in crowded areas, or near children. Y’know, for just in case anything ever goes wrong or, even worse, in case he misjudges the size of his bubble. Never near cameras. And definitely don’t reset in an airport, heavens forbid he hits a pilot at the wrong time. It’s not that his bubble’s range is particularly large, but after having witnessed the consequences of a few reset reboots gone wrong…
Well, thankfully, no one had died. Or been injured. Permanently. In a way that wasn’t restorable afterward. Mom thankfully forgave him quite quickly. Who knew bathrobes were so flammable?
And, to be fair, it only happened once that someone got stuck in a reboot loop, but he’d been very new to his Gift, and he hadn’t known exactly how much energy to put into it, or how to control any of it… And Dad fixed it. There had been no lasting brain damage, not after Dad swapped out the degenerated brain cells, and Jacques’ grey matter was black no more. In fact, Jacques enrolled in a fast-track PhD in Aerospace Engineering at McGill University not long after the whole debacle, so really, no harm, no foul. Apart from the complete 180 to his personality and the fact that his glassy eyes occasionally haunt Shane’s dreams.
Besides, Gift usage is only strictly forbidden during hockey practice and games. In modern-day hockey, it’s barely possible for anyone to Gift given that every professional rink has some type of energy ward hovering over the ice to detect energy fluctuations. Not that it stopped teenagers or pissed off parents from going at it when all hell broke loose, but the older kids are generally pretty good at controlling themselves, given the dire consequences at the more competitive levels. And there is nothing explicitly stated in the official rulebook about using Gifts before or after the games, as long as the energy doesn’t linger and affect the players’ performance on the ice. He knows that for sure; he’s read it through it three times.
So with no actual risk or foreseeable consequences, why is his stomach doing that weird flippity thing now when he has this entire situation totally under control? This can’t possibly be harder than dragging his whole team kicking and screaming to the 2009 International Prospect Cup finals. It’s fine. He’ll be fine. This time, it’ll be fine.
Either way, just four more seconds and the full reboot is completed. In three seconds, Rozanov will start noticing details in his surroundings again. Two seconds, and the pupils in his sharp blue eyes will dilate back to normal. In one…
Time’s up. Or rather, Rozanov’s memory restarts, and he is none the wiser about Shane’s disastrous first and second introduction attempts initiated in the last 10 minutes.
The birds hop away slowly in disappointment over Shane’s lack of food and entertainment. The rat disappears, his reasonings unknown. Breathe out, hold until failure, deep intake. The cold flush on his cheeks is starting to burn along with the hot acid churning up butterflies in his stomach.
Forget the first and second round, it’s a clean slate now, just a voluntary casual introduction. Just say hi, say your name, shake his hand like a normal person, make small talk about the weather, or the game, or Russia, or anything at all, and let the conversation flow naturally.
Solid strategy. Real tight on the tactical details. Indisputable pro-athlete caliber right there, Hollander.
Placing one foot after the other, Shane takes off his gloves, shoving them into his pockets as he rounds the corner. The faint sound of a lighter clicking starts up. Rozanov’s previous cigarette must have burned up or fallen to the ground during the second reboot, and Russian is facing away from Shane as the clicking resumes. Shane walks slowly, not wanting to startle Rozanov, who gradually turns around with his back to the wall, focused on flicking his lighter with his right hand as he protects the cigarette from the wind with the other, looking up at the trees to gauge the wind’s direction.
“Ilya Rozanov?”
Ilya turns to face him, his eyebrows lowering into a frown as Shane approaches. Shane bites his lip; Ilya’s face had morphed into that same expression during all of his attempts so far.
“Shane Hollander. I- I wanted to introduce myself.”
Shane smiles and holds out his right hand.
“See you in final.”
Shane turns away so Ilya can’t see the grin spreading over his face, forcing his teeth together so as not to try and get a last word in and ruin the attempt. A step or two later, he remembers to wave goodbye, mildly thwarted by his hand staying stuck in his jacket pocket like a little penguin. He rounds the corner and releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
That was a solid attempt, 6.5 out of 10. Short but sweet, medium-to-low chalant levels, no one suspecting a thing. Should he reset? Rozanov had been a little more talkative and, dare he say, flirty, than the previous two times… Can he do better?
Failing twice, Shane finally zips up his coat with shaky fingers. It’s always better to reset as soon as possible, which is why he’d given Rozanov a second handshake; physical contact was the most direct route for his energy, but then Rozanov had smiled at him from under his eyelashes and he’d just—
Well. He can always just… walk back there, put a hand on Rozanov’s arm, and reset the Russian’s brain. Or curl his cold fingers around Ilya’s warm neck…
Or he can do it from right around the corner, since skin-to-skin contact wasn’t necessary for a reset, though it does improve the efficacy and is less tiring. Shane groans, softly resting his forehead against the cold wall of the ice rink. There are two wolves inside of him and neither can make up its damn mind about what to do.
“Shane?”
Shane whips around as a familiar figure walks towards him from the parking lot, hand raised high to wave at him.
“Hey, Mom!”
Shane waves back.
Well shit. Mom had said she was going to swing by before the game because she had news about some brand deal or the other. Pulling his gloves from his pockets, a phantom whiff of cigarette smoke reaches his nostrils. He tugs on his gloves as he walks away from Ilya, towards Mom, the cold wind gleefully whipping around his face.
Oh well. A 6.5 out of 10 was a passing mark anyway.
Ilya’s fingers are fucking freezing. Though he identifies as a hockey player first, and Russian second, he’s also just a Moscow city boy, born with plenty of indoor heating, fancy warm fur coats, and taxis, not a Canadian farmer chasing cattle around in the winter (Ilya has no idea what Canadian farmers do in the winter). Taking a final drag from his third half-burned up cigarette, he flicks it into a frost-bitten bush, shoving the extremities formerly known as hands into his pockets as he exhales a small plume of smoke, his shoulders tense from the cold.
Shane Hollander.
Warmth spreads through his abdomen as goosebumps run down his arms. Why is Shane Hollander so adamant about introducing himself to him - his rival, his nemesis, his direct competition - right before a big game? Is he just being a sweet Canadian boy? Is this some Canadian hockey etiquette he doesn’t know about? Is it also a Canadian thing to shake someone’s hand so often?
Not that Ilya’s complaining, quite the opposite; seeing those gorgeous freckles, that nervous little smile, the way Shane’s deep brown eyes sparkle and his competitive hackles rise immediately when Ilya chirps him ever so slightly…
“Shane?”
“Hey, Mom!”
Footsteps crunch on old ice as Shane walks away, presumably toward his mother. That likely means he won’t be coming back to talk to Ilya again.
A gust of arctic Regina wind stings tears into Ilya’s eyes, finally moving him to action. He pushes off the wall, big steps taking him to the rink’s back door before he yanks on the heavy metal. The warm arena air rushes up to meet him, softly brushing up against his stinging cheeks. Within moments, his fingers tingle from his warming blood as he walks towards the Russian team’s dressing room.
That’s the last time he’s standing outside in the stupid Canadian polar night for longer than a quick cigarette. Two quick cigarettes. Two cigarettes and one short chat with Shane Hollander.
The corner of his mouth twitches, and Ilya sighs, mostly to himself. Fine. Three half-smoked, drawn-out cigarettes and all the little introductions Shane Hollander wants to subject him to.
Which begs the final question… what did Shane Hollander try to achieve with introducing himself three times? What Gifts does Shane Hollander have that he has tried to exert over Ilya, twice? The warm tingle of energy that had crawled over his skin, twice, had most definitely originated from Shane Hollander’s hand in his, because there hadn’t been anyone else around. But what was it supposed to do?
And why had Ilya not confronted Shane Hollander about it on either of the three perfectly reasonable occasions presented to him? This may be what being hypnotized feels like. Did Shane Hollander somehow make it past his defenses and leave him… soft? What was this feeling, so sudden and new?
Granted, growing up with a mind-bending father and an energy-absorbing brother makes one very sensitive to people acting strangely around you, gauging whether they expected something from you that you need to guess at because their energy didn’t stick to you the way they expect it to. Going along with other people’s games is second nature to him now; he goes with the flow and doesn’t confront anyone until he knows he could handle the backlash.
Ilya slows down as he nears the Russian dressing room, stopping an arm’s length away from the door and its nervous occupants.
The chance that Shane Hollander cast anything over him that could affect his gameplay was close to zero; it just didn’t seem to fit his character. So then it must have had something to do with those introductions, which seemed… harmless enough, innocent, kind of cute actually.
Ilya allows the grin to fully spread over his face before breathing in deeply, the smell of hockey permeating from the room bringing him back to himself. If anyone asked, or tested him, or found energy residue on his body somehow, he’d claim temporary insanity or just plain morbid curiosity.
What a pity for Shane Hollander that he doesn’t know that Ilya’s Gift is immunity to other people’s Gifts.
This is going to be an interesting rivalry after all.