Archive of Our Own

Shane throws up the tuna melt in the hotel bathroom. He tries to do it quietly, to control the muscles of his stomach and throat so it doesn't just tear out of him, and instead feels the whole journey of it rising up from his stomach, all the disgusting mess of soggy bread and cheese and canned tuna and his impossible, terrifying, unbearable fondness at the sight of Rozanov assembling it.

It lands neatly in the toilet bowl and looks about as nice as Shane feels.

If Hayden is not asleep by the time Shane returns to the room, his teeth brushed twice over, he's pretending well enough. Now Shane only needs to suffer through tomorrow's game against Boston and then he will never answer a text from Rozanov again. His empty stomach roils threateningly at that thought and Shane wonders, for the first time in his career, if he should ask Coach to scratch him for tomorrow.

He drags himself into the hotel bed, tugs his knees to his chest under the unyielding duvet, and falls asleep almost before his head hits the pillow.

Shane opens his eyes in the street. His first panicked thought is that he's started sleepwalking as a stress response. But he's in the same shirt and pants he wore to—Rozanov's place, tonight, and he's never heard of people dressing up for a sleepwalk around the block, so his second thought is that he's been thrown out of his room by his teammates as a prank. With Hayden's help? Shane can't quite believe Hayden would be A-Okay with the plan to dump him on the streets of Boston the night before a Raiders game.

He takes stock of his surroundings — it's a dingy alley and it seems to be earlier in the evening than he'd thought. Which is weird, because he could have sworn it was closer to midnight by the time he finished washing up. Maybe it's early morning instead. Which would be even shittier of the team since they have a game in the afternoon and Shane needs to be at the arena by ten.

Annoyed and already composing a stern Captain lecture in his head, he starts walking in the vague direction of a larger road down the alley, and stops dead when he reaches it.

There's a road, sure. There's also a store this side of the road, and its battered sign says something in Cyrillic. Shane had seen enough of it over the years to recognize the basic shape of the alphabet. The buildings around him also have Cyrillic signs hanging over closed doors of small cafes and something that may or may not be a pharmacy, judging by the Cup of Hygeia inside the green cross next to the letters.

Shane isn't cold.

This observation comes to him suddenly and surprisingly: today isn't that cold of a day, but he'd still needed a jacket when he went to Rozanov's place. Right now he's in a t-shirt and can't even feel the wind. He might as well be back in his hotel room for how comfortable he is for a barely dressed guy out in the elements.

The only person besides him is a child standing in front of the store, holding tightly to a guardrail with one hand and looking in through the small windows. Shane can't tell if it's a boy or a girl. He looks around again, but there really is no other responsible adult on the street. Or anyone at all.

When Shane comes closer, he can see that the child is swaddled in a dark winter jacket and a wool scarf. Long and very blond curls escape from the chunky hat, pulled down almost to the child's eyes. This close, it's pretty clear he's a boy, long hair notwithstanding. He looks up at Shane and clutches the guardrail so tight his small fingers go white.

"Hey, buddy." He squats to be face-to-face with the boy. He can't be that old. Shane's only scale of comparison are Hayden's kids, and the twins are just over three, but the boy is much taller than them. Still, there's a certain look to his face—other than wariness—that makes Shane think he's just very tall for his age. "Are you here alone? Don't be scared."

The boy is silent and even warier now. There's a smattering of moles on his red cheeks. Shane thinks he must look like a serial killer to the poor child, dressed in a black shirt and pants, like he's five minutes away from kidnapping him in an ice cream van.

Shane shows him the palms of his hands like he would a stray dog, then pats his pockets. He doesn't have his phone on him, which is up there for the shittiest discovery so far this weird morning.

"Right," he says decisively. "Your mom probably told you not to speak to strangers. Well, my name is Shane, and I'd like to go look for your parents. Or the police. Whichever we find first."

The boy shivers and a stray lock of hair billows in the wind. Shane can't feel any air movement, but he isn't thinking about it. He's thinking about a child that needs his help.

Then something else occurs to him, and he blurts out, "Fuck, you can hear me, can't you?" and feels immediately horrible for swearing in front of a possibly hearing-impaired child. Or his hallucination. It is very probable that Shane is having a mental breakdown right now, with the night he'd had.

He can't think about it.

The boy widens his eyes and reaches out to Shane's face with his free hand. His fingers are cold against Shane's skin. Shane closes his eyes against the tide of relief. At least he's not hallucinating.

The boy is saying something. It doesn't register at first, and then Shane comes back online and thinks, Oh. Of course, because the boy is speaking Russian. He's looking around, eyes wide and really blue against the bleak grayish sky of wherever they are.

"I'm fine," Shane tries to say. He stands up, and the boy grabs uselessly at his clothes, ending up with a fistful of his shirt, right at the hem. He really is a tall child.

There's a chime of a bell nearby, and the boy whips around, his hands letting go of both Shane and the guardrail.

"Mama!" he exclaims, the word full of joy. Shane looks to where he's turned, and sees a young woman with the same long, blond curls running out of the store, dressed in a much thinner, half-open coat. She stops in front of the boy and takes his face into her hands, smiling down at him and saying something Russian-sounding in a soothing voice.

"Um, hi," Shane tries. "Sorry, I was just concerned because he was alone here…"

She doesn't pay any attention to him, her gaze sort of sweeping past. As soon as she stops looking at her son, her expression turns wary in the same way his had been. She grasps the child's hand firmly, not leaving an inch of space between their palms. At least Shane doesn't have to worry about a potential kidnapper. They are clearly related.

The woman looks at the surrounding streets for the last time and tugs the boy away. Shane can't really blame her for not replying — she clearly doesn't speak English, and he does look suspicious, striking a chat with a random child on the street. Perhaps he should be happy she didn't call the police on him.

On second thought, the police might have been helpful. After all, Shane has no idea where he is.

The boy turns his head around. Shane can't see his expression from the distance, but gives him a small wave and watches him and his mother go for a few seconds, before turning around and walking to the store. Maybe the cashier would help him.

The bell chime makes the same gentle ringing sound as his alarm, and Shane is momentarily confused before he opens his eyes.

He's in his hotel room.

"Shit, is it seven already?" Hayden asks from the bed closest to the window, his voice muffled by the pillow. He groans and turns onto his stomach, trying to cover himself with the duvet still mostly tucked under the mattress. "Je refuse."

Shane stares at the room without seeing it. It takes his alarm going off again after the snooze before he realizes it had been a dream. It's the first time he's had one where he remembers every little detail.

He googles vivid dreams on the way to breakfast. Stress is listed as the very first trigger. Shane stifles a sigh. At least it wasn't a naked-in-a-classroom dream.

He forbids himself from thinking about anything at all during pre-game warm-ups, cheating a bit by doing breathing exercises he'd learned from yoga lessons. It helps to put him into the right mindset by the time he skates out to center ice for the face-off. Fat load of good it does him, Shane thinks bitterly when he meets Rozanov's eyes and his stomach lurches. For a second, the boy from his dream slides inexplicably into his head, dissipating when the puck drops.

It comes to him a few minutes later, in the middle of chasing the puck closer to the Raiders's net. Rozanov's eyes have the same wary expression.

Shane plays what is quite impressively the worst game of his career to date, him and Rozanov actively avoiding each other on the ice, but he still scores once and gets an assist, so there. No fucking inconvenient feelings can stop him on the ice. Not that there are any to begin with, of course. He drags his hand over his face and toys with asking Coach to have Hayden take the press. A lot of dangerous fantasies in his head, lately. Must be food poisoning. He feels the tuna melt remains in his gut like some sort of a phantom limb.

On the way to the press room Shane finds, to his horror, that he'd been so preoccupied with not being within two meters of Rozanov at all times that he has no idea who won the game.

"How does it feel to win against your rival team?" asks the first reporter, who will never know how grateful Shane is for her phrasing.

"All teams are our rivals," he says, reasonably certain that his mouth is smiling the correct, practiced amount. "There can only be one Cup winner, after all."

The room laughs politely. The next questions are easier in their predictability, so Shane replies to all of them without letting anything enter his conscious brain, and the next thing he knows he's on the plane next to Hayden, who tiredly slaps his back and settles back into his seat with a sleeping mask on his face. Shane should also catch a few hours of shut-eye before the new day finds him back in Montreal.

In a space of a blink, he finds himself in the stands of a hockey rink. It doesn't feel like he'd fallen asleep; there's a sharp panic rising in his chest, because to his latest recollection he has suddenly found himself in a vastly different place from before he'd closed his eyes for less than a literal second. This is a dream, Shane tells himself. It feels much better to be able to realize this.

He glances down at himself—in case this one is going to include the nakedness—but thankfully, he's dressed in the same black t-shirt and pants combo as yesterday. At least there's no mistaking which specific stress triggered these. Done with it, he looks around the rink. The facilities are outdated, but the ice is freshly polished, and there are children skating around in hockey gear under the supervision of two adults. Some of them are clumsily learning stick-handling, and some are doing skating drills. A tiny child in the goal is trying and failing to maintain the correct form for the frog stretch.

The boy is sitting quietly on the second-to-last row, in the same red and white children's uniform as everyone else, his massive helmet on the seat to the left. Shane makes his way up and sits on his right.

"Hi," he says quietly.

The boy looks at him out of the corner of his eye. There's more green in them now, the blue not as bright anymore, and his curls, while still unruly, are a manageable enough length to fit under the helmet now. He looks older than he did last time. Night. In the last dream Shane had.

"I'm Shane," Shane says. He supposes it's stupid of him to expect a reply, and none comes until the boy turns to him, just a bit, and gestures something. "Right," Shane remembers awkwardly. "You don't speak English."

"English?" The boy repeats. Possibly. His accent is atrocious, but Shane is happy to know he is understood.

He nods a few times and says again, "I'm Shane," and then fishes it from within a hazy, distant memory—the word for 'me'. "Я Shane".

The boy's face betrays his skepticism immediately, so Shane's accent might not be all that impressive either. Nevertheless, the boy finally speaks to him.

"Ilya," he says. The stress is all wrong, and the first syllable is barely a short exhale instead of a sound, but Shane recognizes it anyway.

"Yeah," he agrees gently. "I know."

Ilya points a finger at him. "Shay?"

Shane shrugs. "Sure."

Ilya leans a bit closer, telling him something in a conspiratorial tone.

"Can't speak Russian, buddy." Shane looks at Ilya's feet. He's still in his skates. God only knows how he managed to clamber up here in them. Shane feels a pang of physical pain for the blades, and bends down to untie the laces. They are laced very carefully, double knot at the top and tight over the foot, clearly pulled with more strength than a child could have exerted. Maybe one of his parents had tied it for him, although Shane sees neither the woman from before nor a possible father, unless he's one of the coaches down on the ice. He doesn't actually know what Rozanov's father does.

"There you go." Shane straightens up and gestures at Ilya to take the skates off. "You're probably waiting for your parents to pick you up, right? You really shouldn't use these anywhere other than the ice. Look at these blades, they are crying."

Ilya very deliberately waits until Shane looks straight at him again, and rolls his eyes in an insultingly exaggerated motion. He gestures at the rink and then at his feet, and swats Shane's hand away when he mistakes it for a request for help. 

Shane feels himself getting bitchier by the second, which is both insane and par for the course when dreaming about Ilya Rozanov. Even without a common language between them, the asshole manages to get under Shane's skin like he moonlights as a professional wood splinter. Shane grinds his teeth so hard they make a sound.

Ilya tugs at the hem of his shirt's sleeve, and when Shane turns to him, ready to snap, he looks uncertain and timid. He flinches back at Shane's glare, but only grips his shirt tighter. His fingers go white, and Shane remembers how they looked on the guardrail and just… deflates.

"Sorry," he murmurs, and repeats a bit louder when the timid look doesn't disappear. "Hey. I'm sorry."

Ilya clearly doesn't understand the words, but maybe the tone gets through to him, because his shoulders go down and he relaxes. Shane hadn't even noticed he was that tense. He's still holding to Shane's sleeve, so Shane smiles at him as reassurance. He does it often enough for Jade and Ruby when they are crying, and it seems to help.

It helps here, too. His shirt is finally released, and Ilya shoots him a tentative smile in return.

The moment breaks when one of the presumed coaches shouts something from the ice, and both Ilya and Shane turn to him. The coach yells something again, sounding irritated this time. There's maybe a 'Rozanov' in there; it really is hard to tell. Absently, Shane wonders if this is an effect of his brain not knowing how to pronounce Rozanov's name in Russian. Maybe it just substitutes vague nonsense to keep the dream logic consistent.

Ilya says something back, his voice raised just enough to reach the ice from the stands, and then he shoots Shane an exasperated look and starts tying up his skates again. It takes him a while, and it's much more sloppily done than it had been. He stands up, wobbly on the blades, and turns to Shane with a sigh.

"Good luck?" Shane offers, embarrassed now at his unlacing mistake. Ilya puffs his cheeks and flicks Shane on the forehead without any warning before grabbing his helmet and starting his slow, unsteady descent down the stairs.

Shane's hand flies to his forehead and he screws his eyes shut for a second, from surprise more than any real pain. "Motherf…"

"What was that?" Hayden asks to his right. Shane jumps what feels like a foot in the air, earning himself a bemused look from his friend. "Sorry to wake you up, man, but we've landed. Thought maybe you'd like to go home."

"Right." The word comes out strangled. Shane has no idea why waking up from a vivid dream is a heart-stopping experience. He hopes he doesn't look as agitated as he feels. "Thanks, Hayden."

"You okay? You've been off the past couple of days," Hayden says, hesitates a beat and plows ahead. "Is everything alright with your Boston girl? Lily?"

Shane's mood sours faster than milk left outside in the summer heat. "I'm fine," he bites out. Hayden raises both hands, and Shane has to stop and take a deep breath. He can't quite find it in himself to apologize. "Nothing's wrong," he repeats instead, and Hayden backs off like the great friend he is.

It's an ungodly hour in Montreal, but it's always easier to wait out the jet lag instead of going back to sleep, so Shane rejects the siren call of his bed in favor of a run. Running is as good a meditation as yoga for him, so by mid-morning he's returned to a semblance of calm enough that he can call his dad.

David picks up on the third ring.

"Good morning, Shane," he says warmly, not commenting on the fact that normally Shane calls his mom after games. She is the one keeping a copy of his team's calendar on her office desk; she sends him messages of support and critique, and reminders about his upcoming brand deals. David is always in the background of their calls, offering his comments but largely leaving Shane to his devices until he is needed.

Shane really needs his calm energy right now.

"Hi, Dad," he replies, his voice still unsteady after the run. David doesn't comment on this, either. Shane hears Yuna ask something, to which David replies, Yes. Yuna keeps talking for a few seconds, but her words are indistinguishable. "Does Mom want me to call her?"

"I'm hogging you to myself, son." Shane hears him walking, then a door being opened and closed, and a bird call somewhere in the distance. David must have come out to the garden. "She just said to tell you the game was great. You played well."

Shane snorts. "That's a lie."

David laughs. "I'm pleading the fifth."

"You're Canadian," Shane grumbles without any real heat. They grow quiet while Shane gets the ingredients for his post-run smoothie from the fridge.

"You sound tired," David says eventually.

Shane hums in agreement. "I've been having very vivid dreams." He rubs the back of his neck. "I know I'm dreaming, but they still feel real. I googled and apparently they aren't very restful. Caused by accumulated stress, etcetera."

David doesn't ask if everything is okay, so Shane is grateful he doesn't have to lie. He loads the fruit and veg into the blender and opens the freezer to get the ice.

"I used to have one like that," David says amiably. "Whenever an audit would reach category five disaster level, I'd have this dream. I'd be driving a car very badly on a very busy highway, and in the dream it's always my first time driving." He chuckles. "I was terrified of crashing. Woke up having actual heart palpitations."

"You don't dream about it anymore?"

"I got better at audits, maybe," David offers. "I am proud of you, Shane. Always."

"I know, Dad." For a beat, Shane entertains the idea of telling David which category five disaster set off his dreams, and then asking if he'd like to plead the fifth for that statement, too. He runs a hand through his hair. "We only have two games next week, I'll have plenty on time to rest. Don't worry."

Yuna would have said she isn't worried. David says, easy as anything, "Worrying about you has kinda been my job for twenty five years, kid. Can't stop now."

For the rest of the day, Shane does exactly what he promised David he would do: he goes for a skate, makes good progress on a book he'd started in April, takes a nap, and in the evening he watches a nature documentary instead of a game. He doesn't check his messages. If someone needs him, they can call.

So Shane is laser-focused on resting, and he feels quite relaxed when the documentary ends and he can finally drag himself to bed. He sits down and stretches, his vision going blurry as he yawns.

"Hello."

Shane will have a heart attack one of these nights, and then his icebreaker for any conversation is forever going to be 'I stress-slept myself into cardiac arrest'. When his heart returns from his throat to its proper place, he opens his eyes, already knowing what he'll find.

Ilya has grown taller again, is the first thing that pops into Shane's mind. His hair is even shorter now, cropped so close it almost can't be called curly anymore.He's never actually seen Rozanov's childhood pictures, but he agrees with his subconsciousness — this is exactly what Rozanov would look like as a kid.

He realizes Ilya is the one who spoke to him, and says, "Oh. Hello?"

Ilya nods like Shane passed some kind of test, and motions him to follow. There's nothing to do otherwise — the dreams only seem to end once Ilya decides he's had enough and fucks off, which is so incredibly ironic coming from Shane's own brain that he doesn't know how to process it. So he follows.

They seem to be on school grounds. The building is massive and foreboding, and Shane struggles to name the architectural style. A non-style, maybe. It mostly looks like one continuous beige panel with windows and zero aesthetic elements.

They go past gaggles of schoolchildren to the back of the building, pass a back door with improvised ashtrays badly hidden under the stairs, and finally stop behind something that looks like a shed.

"Here," Ilya says, apparently content.

"You speak English now?" Shane asks instead of a question he's more interested in, like 'why am I dreaming about you again', or 'do you think the dreams will stop if I message you just one more time'. 'Am I going crazy' would be a good one to ask.

Ilya scrunches up his nose and sniffs. Only now does Shane notice it seems to be snowing around them, and Ilya is in a thin Adidas windbreaker and joggers. He can't decide if he's happy or distressed that Rozanov is suffering a little in this dream, but he still has to look himself over in case his brain has decided to dress him in a jacket that he could give to Ilya.

No such luck. He's still in his trusty hookup combo of a black t-shirt and pants.

"Too fast," Ilya chides. He eyes Shane with affection, which looks a lot less unguarded on this version of him than it did on Rozanov in the real world. "I speak little. I learn English."

Shane doesn't know what to say to that. His dad's vivid dream used to be a repeating loop of a nightmare, but his seems to be evolving. Does that mean Shane wants to have an actual conversation with Rozanov? He feels the taste of tuna-flavored bile in his throat and swallows it down hard.

Ilya is frowning again. He really is an expressive child. That's how Shane knows this is a dream, because Rozanov has, like, three expressions. Lust, sometimes tender and sometimes fierce; the maddening, lopsided smirk he wears on the ice and in bed; mirth at winning a hockey game. Fear, maybe, from when he'd said Shane's name.

"Shay?" Ilya asks, tentative again. "Sorry. I English bad."

"Ah," Shane says, flushing. "No, your English is great, I understood you perfectly. I was just thinking about something." Ilya's eyes go glassy and lips press flat together. Shane knows this face. On Rozanov, it normally means he didn't understand most of the words and is trying to pierce the meaning together based on nothing but context clues.

Okay, so maybe he has more than three expressions. Maybe Shane has been watching him too much, too closely. Not like it matters anymore.

"Your English is good," he repeats slowly, looking at Ilya's face for signs of confusion. "My name is Shane."

"No Shay?"

"Shane," he pronounces his name very carefully, and sees Ilya whisper the syllables several times.

"Shane?"

He nods.

"My name is Ilya." Shane tries to say that he knows, but is interrupted by an honest-to-God finger in his face. "Nice to meet you. I am seven years old. I live in Moscow. I go to school. My hobby is hockey."

It sounds monotonous in a way that suggests memorization and repetition. Shane shouldn't find it as endearing as he does, that Ilya practiced a whole speech to talk to him. He grins and gets a return grin so wide Ilya's cheek dimples from the force of it.

"Nice to meet you, Ilya. My hobby is also hockey. I'm actually…" Ilya shivers again, and Shane cuts himself off mid-sentence. "Are you cold?"

Ilya denies it with a firm shake of his head and immediately sneezes.

"We should go inside," Shane says decisively.

"No inside. Brother inside," Ilya shivers again, but it's pretty clearly not from the cold this time.

"You have a brother?"

The monotone is back. "I have a brother. My brother is thirteen years old. My brother's name is Alexei."

"Is he… not a good brother?"

Ilya takes some time to think about the question. Shane has no idea how Russian grammar works, how he could rearrange his words to help the seven year old Ilya Rozanov his brain has conjured up to understand him better. Maybe this is why the dreams are evolving. Maybe his subconsciousness really does want to have a nice, long conversation with Rozanov without anyone freaking out.

Shane can feel himself starting to freak out already, so this doesn't seem to be helping.

There are other children's voices in their vicinity. Shane has no idea how to explain himself, a grown man, hiding behind a school shed with a little boy. However he spins it, this ends with him in a jail cell. He knows this is a dream, he knows it, but judging by the trepidation spreading throughout his body, between him and his brain he's the only one with this knowledge. His lungs start to fill with lead, not leaving much space for air, even though he's gulping it down now, trying to force it into his body before he chokes and dies. There's a tinny sound in his head. 

There's a hand on his hand.

It's small and hesitant, but it pats him first and then fingers worm into his clammy fist until his hand is tightly held. Shane looks at their intertwined fingers and remembers the very first dream—Ilya's hand in his mother's, both holding on for dear life, as if there had been only the two of them against the world.

"Okay?" Ilya asks. He looks concerned. That's another expression from a much older face that Shane inexplicably already knows. His chest hurts.

"Yes. I'm okay now. Thank you."

The other children come closer. Three boys, all of them straddling the line between childhood and teenage age, laugh and say something to Ilya, and Shane notes the derision in their voices at the same time he realizes they can't see him.

He thinks back and can't remember a single interaction in the dreams with anyone who isn't Ilya, and considering he's clearly the whole reason for the dreams, Shane's subconsciousness probably decided that anyone else isn't relevant.

Ilya plants his feet firmly in the ground, but his shoulders curl inward and he flinches when the boys swagger up to him. One of them picks up a handful of snow from the ground and grabs Ilya's collar, sniggers when the snow goes down his chest. Ilya snarls something back, stepping in front of Shane, and another boy pushes him so roughly Ilya stumbles and falls on his butt. Shane is frozen in place because he doesn't know if he's supposed to help. Why is he dreaming of this? Is he so fucked up he wants someone to beat up Rozanov? Maybe Shane had thought about pushing him into the boards a few times in his life, but—this is definitely not what he pictured.

The boys sneer and finally go away. Ilya spits on the ground and raises a middle finger to their backs. He stands up with a wince and pats dirty snow off the back of his tracksuit pants.

"Alexei," he says dryly by way of explanation. Shane supposes it is enough of one.

He still has to ask. "Are you okay?" 

Before he even finishes saying the words, a sound resembling an emergency alarm blares across the school grounds, making Shane jolt  unpleasantly. Ilya gestures at the building behind them.

"School." He reaches out, but drops his hand before he can touch Shane's. He makes a fist instead and puts it into his pocket. "I go."

Shane just nods, looks at his dirt-stained back for several steps, waiting for the dream to end. Then Ilya stops and turns on his heel. There's no trace of a smile on his face, and Shane just watches him. This is his determined expression, he thinks idly. He doesn't feel surprised to find he knows this. Scraped out with a spoon, maybe. But not surprised.

"Thank you for coming. Please come back next year, again," Ilya says, his pronunciation even more careful and rehearsed than before. He doesn't wait for a reply before running to the school building. Shane hopes nobody is going to punish him for being late.

He turns his head to look at the snowy landscape, but instead turns in his bed and opens his eyes to a gray November dawn. Some of it is trying to invade his apartment through the crack between the blackout curtains, enough for Shane to see the outlines of his bedroom furniture.

The Metros have a game tomorrow, as his phone's alarm, a message from Coach Theriault, and the team calendar on the fridge remind him. It means that instead of the morning run, Shane goes for a quick warm-up in the gym, a breakfast that leaves him feeling pregnant with a food baby rather than full, and then to the arena for the optional skate.

Shane is tying up his skates in his stall when Hayden comes in and makes a beeline to clasp his shoulder. "You look better! Did you do anything fun yesterday?"

"Not really. I watched a documentary about birds."

J.J. raises his voice from his stall to the right of them. "Hollander. This is sad man behaviour. We play this game and then I'm kidnapping you to a club to get laid. You need to relax."

"It was a relaxing documentary," Shane protests as Hayden hauls him up and J.J. wraps his long arm around both of their shoulders.

Optional skates on pre-game days mean that only ten guys show up, the rest choosing to stay home. Or whatever it is they do; Shane is only their Captain on the ice, and he might know who is best at backchecking or worst in the offensive zone, but he has no idea if most of them even continue to exist once they are out of team jerseys. He has never cared to find out.

Hayden invites him to dinner, and it's great. Shane hasn't seen the children in a month, and Ruby and Jade have both grown at least a foot, which he solemnly informs them about before being bestowed a hug. Jackie laughs when he proposes she leaves Hayden and works as his personal chef over the sweet potato/wild rice/chicken bowl she whipped up to accommodate his macrobiotic diet.

"It's really not a bother," she says, same as she always does. "Hayden's new plan for the season is all basically pork and fish. If I never look at a pork chop again it'll be too soon."

"You should hear her complain about the girls' meals," Hayden supplies, turning fully to Shane and gesturing with a fork. Shane eyes it with distrust and leans back. "Ruby is refusing to eat carbs now."

Shane drives home with a pleasant buzz under his skin, humming along to some random song from the radio, so he doesn't notice the anticipation until he's spitting toothpaste into the bathroom sink. In the second that passes between the toothpaste hitting the porcelain and wiping his mouth clean, Shane catches himself thinking of what he could talk about with Ilya when he dreams of him tonight.

He knows the words for his feelings, of course. He won't say them, not even in his head, not even to himself, but he isn't stupid.

There's one that's safe to name: trepidation. It's the feeling of opening his iMessage. He pins the thread with Lily to the top of his screen at the start of every season so that he doesn't have to search for it in the locker room. The less time he takes staring at his phone, the fewer people would notice. He isn't sure when he'd unpinned it last, though. It'd stayed pinned throughout last summer, maybe even since Las Vegas.

There have been no new messages, which, sure. Shane had expected this. It doesn't make it any easier to consider that the ball is in his court. And what does he even say? The bulk of their texts are hotel room numbers, times, dates. Hookup arrangements. The last one is from himself and it just says, 'I'm here'. He'd sent it from the front door of Rozanov's building.

Shane slumps back on the pillow with the longest exhale in his life.

Maybe his anticipation is to blame, but, while he still can't track the boundary between falling asleep and appearing in the dream, he isn't panicked when it happens this time.

He's… at the same school again. Shane is a little disappointed by this. The specific spot is different, so it's probably not a repeat of the last dream, but he's really been looking forward to seeing a whole another version of Rozanov tonight.

He seems to be at the school gates. Children are a constant stream spilling out into the streets, getting into cars and running to the bus stop nearby, waving their friends goodbye. Shane knows they can't see him, but Ilya is able to touch him, so they might be too. He isn't looking forward to being shoved, so he and his little illusion of corporeality move down the fence and watch the gate from there.

He spends a lot of time alone. A quarter of an hour, maybe more. Normally, the dreams deposit Ilya right by his side, but this one is probably borne out of his general frustration, so he's nowhere to be seen.

The children leaving the school have slowed down to a trickle, so Shane goes back to the gate and tries to figure out where his wayward dream-construction could have gone. Maybe the shed? He cocks his head to the side, trying to figure out where to go, and sees Ilya running out from around the corner. He picks up speed when he sees Shane, and stops in front of him panting, his hands on his knees.

"Hi," Shane says. Ilya doesn't look particularly different from last night. He's wearing jeans and a similar — the same? — Adidas windbreaker and a wool scarf. There are pitiful remains of snow on the ground, turned into muddy puddles on the chipped pavement.

"I was search for you," Ilya says, still trying to catch his breath. He straightens up and looks at Shane, admonishment mixed with delight. "I think you come today. You always come today."

His English is—markedly improved, even if he's butchering the grammar. Fine. So he does want to talk to Rozanov, then. Point very much taken, Shane thinks sourly. Outwardly, he smiles at Ilya. This isn't so bad. He'll be up to his ears in conversations with Rozanov while sleeping. Take that, psyche.

It's possible Shane needs to get some non-stress-induced sleep.

"I was just coming to find you," he says. "Were your brother and his friends bothering you again?"

Ilya frowns, mouthing 'bothering' to himself, slowly.

"Your brother, uh, pushed you earlier." Shane gestures to demonstrate what he means. "Did he do it again?"

Ilya's face clears up and he shrugs. "He do it always. Not today. Today, I wait you to come."

Shane's confusion must be showing on his face. Ilya huffs a frustrated sigh and takes his him by the hand, walks them both to the same spot Shane had moved to when he arrived. Ilya leans on an old tree. A birch, Shane's trivia brain supplies.

"Today is November seventy," Ilya explains. He must mean seventeen.

"You mean November seventeenth?" Shane asks, just to make sure.

"I say that, yes."

Shane raises both his hands in a gesture of surrender. Ilya rolls his eyes, but continues, "You come November sevent…in? every year. Last year, November seventeen. Last last year, November seventeen. Last last last year. So I wait today, I know Shane come."

He looks pleased with himself for such a long speech. This one is clearly non-rehearsed.

Shane can't get past the fact his vivid dreams have their own continuity.

Ilya's face falls, and Shane undergoes an emergency reboot. "Your English is so good now!" he blurts out. Not his best work, but Ilya is, what, eight or so? Shane can converse with an eight year old. He looks happy, anyway.

"I am learn English for two years," he says proudly. "I tell mama, I have friend who speak English, I want to learn English. She tell, okay, if hockey is good and school is good."

"I'm sure your hockey is great," Shane says. He is less certain about Rozanov's scholastic abilities. "Uh, am I the friend?"

Ilya smirks like he knows what Shane is thinking about. "Shane is friend, yes?"

"And, uh… was your mom okay with us being… friends?" Shane asks gingerly. This one is pretty easy to decipher. His own mother doesn't even know he's—well, he might not be. He might meet a girl someday. She wouldn't be Ilya Rozanov, so the idea itself feels kind of pointless, but it's the matter of principle. Still. If he were—his mom wouldn't know, is the thing. He's fairly confident that's the reason he is talking to the dream manifestation of Ilya Rozanov about his mother's acceptance of them being… something. Friends. It's a big first step for them, in any case.

"Why not? Mama can't see you, but mama tell me, Shane is my…" he hesitates. "In my head?"

"Like, imaginary?" Ilya struggles with the word again, so Shane repeats it syllable by syllable, explains, "It means, uh, no one else can see me."

"Yes, like that. No one see, so Shane only for me. Only my friend." Ilya looks inordinately delighted with this turn of events. It's adorable and a bit concerning. The Ilya Shane's mind is constructing seems to be a lonely person with no father, a bully for a brother, and quite possibly no friends.

"What about your other friends?"

Ilya looks down and drags the toe box of his shoe across the dirt, until he unearths a pebble. "Sveta, maybe," he says eventually. "She is friend. But she is girl." His nose scrunches up, and Shane is fascinated by the expression that he's never seen on Rozanov's face in reality, this begrudging admiration for a girl during what is clearly the cooties phase of his life. Shane thinks he is in deep, deep trouble, is what he thinks.

"Your mom is a girl," he points out.

"Yes, mama is best," Ilya agrees immediately, and then ponders. "Then Sveta is also best. Like mama."

"What's your mom like?" asks Shane.

"She like hockey. And singing."

"No, I mean… what's her name? Where does she work?"

"Oh." Ilya rubs his hands together, his thumb going over his knuckles. He's not wearing any mittens, but it's probably not that cold, since Ilya isn't sniffing or shivering. The scarf on his neck looks a bit lumpy, handmade rather than bought. When he continues, his voice has the familiar rehearsed lilt to it. "My mother's name is Irina. She is a housewife. My father is a policeman."

A Russian cop is somehow even worse than the no-father situation Shane had envisioned. They stand in silence for some time.

"My mom's name is Yuna," Shane says to fill it. Ilya turns to him, head cocked to one side. "She works…" Brand manager is a job that's hard to explain to a child. "She works for me."

"Shane is boss?" Ilya asks skeptically. "Not your mama?"

"No, no, she's definitely the boss." Shane chuckles. "I play professional hockey. Like you," he adds.

Ilya peers up at him through his fringe. It's getting into his eyes a little. Last time, his hair had been cropped really close. His dreams really do have an internal timeline.

"Pro-fe-shi-nal. Pro hockey? I also want to play pro hockey," Ilya says, sounding wistful. "Papa tell, hockey is too much money. But if I am good, I can play. So I am best."

It's nice to know his brain isn't inventing a whole new Ilya Rozanov, here.

"You shouldn't worry about that," Shane says lightly. "I'm actually from the future. You'll be a great hockey player one day."

Ilya brightens up and catches Shane's little finger with his own. "Promise?"

"Promise," Shane nods. He smiles, and then someone exclaims, "Ilya!" in Russian behind them.

Ilya's face blooms with joy at the sound. "Mama is here!"

Shane is stunned, trying to remember when he could've seen Rozanov so genuinely happy, so unguarded, to be able to picture it with such clarity. He is drawing a blank. He's sure he has never seen Rozanov's eyes sparkle like this. He would have remembered the sheer force of such a smile, like being thrown into the boards.

Ilya's mother looks like him. The first night she'd appeared, Shane didn't notice her much, but he's looking now. Her hair is a mane of sun-bleached curls lighter than Rozanov's, gathered into a ponytail that reaches her mid-back. The color of her eyes is different—brown, more like Shane's own than Ilya's blue-green, but the shape is the same. She speaks to Ilya in fast, chiding Russian, and he laughs and bats her hands away from his hair and face when she tries to adjust his scarf.

She sounds like she's asking a question, looking around, and Ilya nods, tells her something. His smile morphs into a much more familiar, shit-eating grin.

"She ask if you are here today," he says to Shane. It's a bit of a shock to realize that while his mother can't see or hear him, she can hear Ilya talking to him. She only looks at her son with indulgence and not like she plans to whisk him away to the nearest shrink for talking to air, so Shane shrugs this off as dream logic. "I tell her, of course Shane is here. Always here, today. And I tell her, I am best pro hockey player in future."

Shane is thrown out of his dream by the alarm clock again. His heartbeat is only a bit faster at the shock of waking up, and the last thing he remembers is Ilya waving goodbye on the way to his mother's car.

He needs to focus on today's game, but his thoughts keep circling back to the dream. During breakfast he thinks about Rozanov's mother, and then his own. He opens the message thread he has going with her — the pinned one with Yuna-the-manager is active, only this morning she'd sent him a reminder to check his email for a contract with an American sport drink brand he's never heard of. 'Remember you can refuse this if you don't like the deal!' is appended at the end. The message is marked as Edited. Shane wonders if this is the part she edited to add.

The thread he has with his-mom-Yuna is much sparser. 'Break a leg (Rozanov's)!' she had sent three days ago before the game against the Raiders. He didn't reply to that one. Next one is from the same evening: 'You still won, that counts!'. Then another one, this morning. 'Today's the day! Get 'em, tiger!' He replies with a tiger face emoji and types in the message box, 'What if I told you I'm'

Tap, tap, tap on the backspace key. He sends, 'Thanks, Mom. Love you', and doesn't check if she sends anything back.

There isn't much space in his head for anything other than the game once he arrives for the morning skate. They are playing Carolina at home ice, and it's always nice to hear the cheers when he skates out of the tunnel. Yuna thinks Carolina is a team not particularly deserving of Shane's considerations, but privately, he disagrees. Every game is different, because every season the team roster is different — theirs, their opponents'. Part of what makes hockey interesting for Shane is analyzing and improving his playmaking skills against the many strategies thrown at him by other coaches or by Theriault. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, as David is fond of saying.

Shane does his drills, eats his lunch, takes a nap, puts his left skate on before the right one, and wins.

"N'oublie pas, we're going partying tomorrow, Capitaine!" J.J. points a threatening finger at him before he dips for the night. Some guys are discussing bar hopping after the post-game meal. Hayden, like Shane, is going straight home.

"Jackie's mother is visiting for the week to help with the kids." Hayden is practically vibrating with energy. He takes the longest naps on the team, but is still somehow hyper after nearly twenty three minutes of ice time. "Ugh, I'm happy Jackie doesn't take after her in the nagging department. I've heard so many comments on how badly I parent, yesterday."

"She doesn't like you?"

"No, I mean, she probably does," Hayden doesn't sound convinced. "She let me marry her daughter, and you know Jackie. I wouldn't let her marry me! She could have married anyone. Well, I'm happy it's me. But it's fine, you're not supposed to get along with your in-laws, anyway."

Shane is not convinced, either. He imagines that if he'd found a partner, he'd probably love the people who raised him. Her. Them.

When he's home, he opens the iMessage app again. There's a message from his-mom-Yuna. Shane wants to ask her if she would be a difficult mother-in-law, or if she would like whoever he likes just because it's his choice. He doesn't open her message.

His eyes flicker to the Lily thread. 'I'm here' is still the last one in there. He can't deny that part.

Normally he reads a book after a game, at least on nights that don't end in bed with Rozanov. But tonight he's been thinking a bit too much about mothers, so Shane's mind pivots to Rozanov's. He feels a little guilty to have constructed his whole family in his mind while never so much as asking Rozanov himself about them before. It's not—what they do. They don't even really text.

Still. It's only polite if he intends to continue dreaming about Rozanov, and Shane doesn't think that is stopping tonight. The least he can do is google them so his brain can correct the unrealistically pretty woman in his dreams to Rozanov's actual mother. Shane drags his laptop into the bed with him and settles in.

The initial search yields a bare-bones result: Rozanov's wiki in English doesn't list any family members. He switches the wiki language to Russian, which tells him there really is a brother. And a father. They don't have their own pages, obviously, but they exist, and the father, at least, has a name listed. If Google Translate is to be believed, it's Grigori.

Shane copies that in Cyrillic and goes sleuthing.

An hour later he doesn't know if he'll sleep at all tonight. There is only the one photo online, from Rozanov's U8 team's win in some unimportant competition. Nine children, two coaches, and four other adults who are captioned as parents in the article. Shane stares at it. He's certain he'd never seen this photo before. He never went this deep even in the early days of his budding Rozanov obsession — he'd just watched his games, interviews, maybe chirp compilations. But he also knows this jersey. He knows the length of Rozanov's hair in this photo.

Most importantly, he knows which of the four parents is Rozanov's mother, because he'd seen her before.

Shane is dimly aware of his breathing getting faster and shallower. She has the same voluminous ponytail and brown eyes. He needs to stand up and run cold water over his neck, but he feels like he's floating away so standing might be tough. The translated article designates her as Irina Rozanova. Shane closes his eyes and spends a long time trying to do box breathing exercises.

"Are you sleeping?" Someone asks him.

Shane shakes his head and mumbles, "I think I'm having a panic attack."

"Oh. What is that?"

Shane opens his eyes. At least he's not on school grounds again.

Ilya is wearing a down jacket this time. He's still in Adidas sweatpants, a fleece version this time. Was this his favorite brand growing up? Shane wonders if getting him an Adidas brand deal would count as a peace offering.

"What year is it?" he asks.

"Two thousand. November seventeenth. Is Friday," Ilya adds. There's a hockey bag at his feet, but he doesn't look like he's going anywhere. They seem to be at a bus stop, and it's late enough for the city lights to be on. The snow is piled high on the sides of the road. Must be a cold November, then. There is no one here except them, and the streets are empty. A few cars are parked along the road, but they're snowed in and have clearly been parked here for a while.

"What's panic attack?" Ilya asks again.

Shane looks at him and tries to think of an explanation. How old is Ilya—Rozanov?—Ilya?—how old is he here, anyway? Nine and a half, if it's November. Yuna had still been driving Shane to practice and back when he was nine. She did it until he was old enough to drive his own car.

"Do you remember every time I've come?"

"Yes," Ilya sounds impatient, now. His accent, much less pronounced than it had been last night—last year, Shane corrects himself, fucking hell—becomes thicker, choppier. "You wait for Mom with me when I was five. I remember, was very scary. When I was six, you make my skates," he falters and gestures with his hands.

"Unlaced?"

"Unlaced," Ilya repeats. "But is fine, I am then maybe not so nervous with coach. When I was seven, you stay with me after my brother push me. You did not laugh."

"It wasn't funny."

"Yes. Others still laugh." He looks Shane in the eye, focused and serious. "What is panic attack, Shane?"

Shane sighs. "It's when your brain thinks something bad is happening, and you get very scared. But it's not actually scary, just imaginary scariness. I'm always fine after a while."

"I look up that word after last time," Ilya says. "It means 'not real'. But you are real, yes?"

A tired laugh escapes Shane. "I am very real," he agrees.

"When you are afraid, it is also real." Ilya takes his hand and squeezes it. "Mom is like that, sometimes. She says touch helps."

"Are we waiting for her?" Shane asks. Ilya drops Shane's hand and tucks both of his into the pockets of his down jacket, hunching his shoulders.

"I don't know," he says. "She was not in last bus. If she is not in this bus, I go home."

"If you want…" Shane pauses. "If you want, I could go with you. Keep you company."

Ilya's head whips back to him, eyes wide. "I want," he says hastily, like he's afraid Shane would take it back. "Really?"

"Really."

An hour or so passes before the bus finally approaches. Irina isn't on it, so they board the bus together, Ilya hauling his hockey bag up and refusing to let Shane help. Shane doesn't know what other people would see were he to take Ilya's bag. A flying hockey bag? No bag at all? Maybe it would become part of his strange invisibility.

He feels off-kilter. Unhinged, maybe. Time travel is the only explanation he can arrive at with the information he has, and it makes him sound crazy even in his own head. Shane wonders if he'd affected the past somehow, and thus affected the future. Rozanov certainly hadn't been learning English this early in his life, but that doesn't seem like a major change. Maybe he'll become the best chirper in the league by the time he makes it to Junior Worlds in Regina, instead of his second season, but that should be about it. Walking a child home also seems unlikely to alter the course of his life, since this lonely trip had to have happened already.

Ilya is telling him about practice during the long ride, as animated as Shane has ever seen him. Nine is an age to start working on speed and technical elements of play, and it seems like Russian training programs are pretty similar to Canadian ones. They are doing two-on-twos.

"I like one-on-twos the best," Ilya tells him. Of course he does. "I can win against defense."

They talk mostly about hockey until Ilya jumps up and scrambles to get off the bus.

"Almost miss my stop," he explains. They seem to be in a good part of the city, surrounded by tall, imposing buildings and old trees. "Do you want to come? Papa is still at work. Mama is… " he falters. "Probably sleep."

Shane does. Shane is pathetically interested in all parts of Rozanov's life in Moscow. He wonders what Irina's cooking tastes like. He wonders if Alexei is still an asshole. And isn't that a nice thought, that it's not Shane's secret desires manifesting as someone bullying a child, but an actual shitty brother he can loathe instead. He wonders what color Rozanov's childhood bedroom walls are. What colors does he even like? Neon orange? It's hard to imagine.

He helps Ilya with the hockey bag once he realizes there is no elevator in his apartment building. It's all just columns and marble stairs. Rozanov has never given the impression of growing up poor, but this is just insane. They climb the stairs past an apartment door fully covered in gold leaf. Thankfully, the Rozanov household's door is a normal dark wood.

Ilya's face becomes drawn and obstinate once he opens it and invites Shane inside.

"Alexei is home," he tells Shane sotto voce and tugs his bag from Shane's hands to set it on the floor as quietly as possible. "Go to my room."

His arm sneaks past Shane to stop the front door from slamming, and when Shane looks around the rest of the apartment, he sees a silhouette of a teenager in a dark doorway, blinks, and wakes up.

He covers his eyes with an arm.

There have to be some rules to this, since there are rules to everything, but Shane has no idea how to even start figuring them out. It's not like he can ask his parents what he's supposed to do after realizing he has become Marty McFly. The Internet is of no help either: he goes through heaps of book and movie recommendations and not a single useful piece of advice.

He knows, at least, that he travels back to the same day. For him, almost a week had passed since November 17th, but the date is a constant tying him to Ilya's life. He also only time-travels for however many hours he sleeps on a given night, might even be less. His watch and phone are never on him in Moscow. Nobody else can see or hear him, but they do hear Ilya talking to him. Shane swallows hard. He'd have to make sure nobody sees them from now on, or Ilya's hockey career is going to be cut short. He is very lucky Irina doesn't mind her son having animated conversations with an imaginary friend from the future in lieu of any real ones.

It's hard to imagine Rozanov growing up unpopular. Shane had never been bullied, but he had also just never been all that interested in making friends. Hockey was always enough of an entertainment. Nowadays, Hayden and J.J. are all the friends he needs, and he barely even has time for them. But Rozanov has friends everywhere. Knows everyone. He goes clubbing with his team all the time.

Then again, if Shane thinks about it, Rozanov also only hangs out with hockey players. So maybe his social skills had improved once people realized how good of a player he is.

Shane goes through his morning routines mechanically, then swings by the Bell Centre's video room to pick up the tape of their last game against Boston so he can watch it from home. There isn't any point in watching tape from yesterday, because they'd won easily, and Shane won't learn anything new if he only watches his goals.

He steels himself before turning the game on, and wow, he really had not been at his best. Shane tracks his overextended lunges, overly forward balance. Half the time his eyes aren't even on the puck. He spends a lot of time looking at Rozanov, and it's painstakingly obvious they are both plagued by similar issues.

The one goal Rozanov had scored in that game is insane, though — shot through traffic, five people piling up in front of the goal like a syzygy, and Rozanov's shot flying like a goddamn meteor into the net. It's a thing of beauty. Shane watches it three times just for the sheer pleasure of seeing it, and then watches again to take notes.

When he allows the tape to move forward, Rozanov barely participates in the celly. He accepts the team's hugs, but his head is turned Shane's way. On the screen, Shane is skating to the bench for a change and getting turned back on the ice by Theriault for a double shift. Shane has no memory of this whatsoever.

It's a testament to how bad that game had been that when J.J. calls and asks what Shane is doing, Shane has only to tell him, "Watching last week's Boston tape," to get J.J. off his back about clubbing.

"Fine. Have your rain check, mon ami," his friend says with fake petulance. "The Capitaine's work is never done. But when I call tomorrow, you must pick up, alright?"

It's dark by the time Shane is done with the game. Since today is a post-game day, no one has bothered him, and he can go to bed as soon as he finishes work.

The last thing he remembers is a thought—what if tonight is the night he stops dream-jumping back in time?

It's not.

Shane finds himself in the same hallway that he had presumably left last time. His arrival is as abrupt and unsettling as usual, but Shane doesn't pay attention to his time-travel-related arrhythmia. He's looking at the shoes.

There are two pairs of shoes, sneakers belonging to a child and dress shoes in a man's size, both neatly placed with their heels against the wall. That would be Grigori's, Shane assumes. He is hypnotized by this chance to see another part of Rozanov's past that he would never get to even ask about otherwise, and since Grigori wouldn't see or hear him, he doesn't even need to be careful about it, for once. So he sets to find them.

It's not that big of an apartment; he hears their voices almost as soon as he steps into the living room, a low hum from behind a door. This should be the room he'd seen Alexei come out of, last time. Shane quietly pushes the door open.

It's probably Ilya's room. The walls are some sort of a yellowish beige wallpaper with tiny white flowers on it, which is so far away from Rozanov's aesthetic, Shane would bet both of his past nights with the Cup on it not being his choice. There are more obvious touches of him — a few posters of Russian hockey legends, print-outs with tables of English tenses and verb conjugation rules, a Best Dogs of 2001 wall calendar turned to November's page. The seventeenth is circled in red pen.

Ilya is standing with his back to the door and to Shane, while a man that has to be his father is pacing around him. The only Russian words Shane knows are the one for 'me' and Ilya's name, so he doesn't understand what Grigori is saying, but he understands his tone. It's eerily similar to the tone Alexei had used on school grounds. The derision is there, the vitriol, the distaste in how he looks at his son that sours Shane's mouth. He jabs his fingers in Ilya's face and then takes something from Ilya's hand and throws it into a corner of the room. He mutters something with an irritated huff, and gestures to Ilya, who drags the chair from his school desk to the middle of the room and gingerly perches on it. Grigori takes out hair clippers from God knows where, and apparently, the dressing down had been a prelude to Ilya getting a haircut.

Ilya's chair is placed across a wardrobe with mirrored doors that reflect the doorway. Shane meets his eyes. They go wide, and Ilya makes an aborted movement to turn around that earns him a cuff on the ear. He stays still after that, hands folded in his lap with his thumb going over his knuckles in a circular motion. He keeps looking at Shane, until Shane finds his legs and comes closer, squats by Ilya's chair and offers a hand.

"Touch helps, right?"

Ilya keeps his head and shoulders still as his hair falls around his face, but he unfolds his hands and turns one over, palm up. Shane takes it into his, a gesture of support.

Objectively, it shouldn't take a lot of time to give a ten year old a buzzcut, but it's taking Grigori forever, and when he's finally done and out of the room, letting the door close with a bang behind him, Shane lets out a long breath.

"Sorry," Ilya says, lowering his eyes. He slips his hand out of Shane's loose grip and stands up to fish out a bag and a floor brush from the bowels of the wardrobe.

"What for? I think out of the two of us, it's me who should be sorry for intruding."

Ilya isn't looking at him. He is gathering his hair into the bag, his reddening ears clearly visible now that he barely has two centimeters of hair left.

"I don't understand Russian, so you don't need to tell me if you don't want to," Shane starts. "But… are you okay? Did he…" Punish you? "Give you a lecture?

"I'm okay," Ilya mumbles.

"You don't sound okay."

"Shut up," Ilya says without any heat, and then even this tiny amount of fight goes out of him. "He said I am lazy and need to work on my grades, not on hockey and English. He said they are useless. Coach says I have talent," he bites out, teeth bared, and the spark in his eyes is back, if only for a moment. "I am best in team."

"I believe that," Shane says mildly. He chuckles at Ilya's offended look. "I meant your coach! Not your dad. I told you I'm from the future, right? In my time, you're the second best player in the league."

"Second best? Who is best then?"

The disbelief on Ilya's face is so—Rozanov, that Shane can't help but laugh.

"You know what, I'll tell you next year. If you're still the best on your team, of course."

"If I can play hockey next year. Sure." Ilya's mood takes a visible dive again. He ties the bag with the hair and rubs his eyes with an arm. "Father said my hair is girly."

Grigori sure sounds like a lovely guy.

"I like your hair," Shane says. He does. Rozanov keeps it pretty short during the season, but sometimes he grows it out a bit, and Shane loves letting his fingers tangle up in them—and this is an extremely inappropriate situation to be remembering it,  so Shane stops. He coughs to hide his embarrassment. 

"Alexei is done with school. He will go to police college instead," Ilya adds morosely. "Father says I need to be more like him. He…"

Shane follows his gaze to the corner of the room where Grigori had thrown something during his rant. It's a Barbie doll dressed as a cheerleader, one of its arms missing and head full of plastic, blonde hair twisted to the side by the collision.

"Mama gave me," Ilya explains in a wavering voice. "She is sometimes very tired and can't be mama. Then Barbie is my cheerleader instead."

"Your mom really loves you." Shane says. He pats Ilya on the head and pretends he doesn't hear the quiet sniffles. "That's what's important. How about we find Barbie's arm and put her back together?"

Nobody comes to the room again, so Shane and Ilya restore the Barbie doll to her former glory as much as they can, and Shane doesn't ask when nobody comes to get Ilya for lunch. No one is in the kitchen when they venture out, either. Ilya makes sandwiches with a practiced ease. There's an itch under Shane's skin, the urge to ask, but he doesn't know if asking something now would mean altering the timeline, so he stays silent. He eats his sandwich and tells Ilya more about hockey in exchange for anecdotes from practice, right until the front door opens and he is slammed back into his bed by the sound.

Shane grabs his phone from the nightstand to check the time. It's almost seven, so he decides against another nap and checks his emails instead. At some point, his fingers navigate to the iMessage app entirely of their own accord and Shane finds the Lily thread. 'I'm here' stares him right in the face. He clicks on it.

A dizzying wave of relief hits Shane when he sees that Rozanov hadn't deleted his messages. Even his stupid dick pick is still there. Shane keeps his thumbs over the phone's keyboard for so long they cramp and twitch, as if threatening him to send something.

What could he even say? Sorry I had to get away from both you and my feelings that I won't ever tell you about under threat of death? The only apology he wants to give right now is 'Sorry I ever thought you're an asshole. That was before I met your dad', and wouldn't that be a joy to explain.

This is what occupies his mind for the rest of the day. If Rozanov woke up one day remembering Shane as his imaginary childhood friend, wouldn't he have messaged him something by now? Does he not remember at all? If so, it must be because Shane had stopped visiting, so does it mean his nightly astral projections or whatever this is are going to stop soon? Is Shane hopping to a parallel universe instead of going back in time?

He turns the TV on to catch tonight's game, because Boston is playing and Shane wants to remind himself that Rozanov he's always known exists: in the MLH, in Shane's phone, in the world. He watches with rapt attention for smallest changes, and is relieved not to find any. In fact, Rozanov is playing like a maniac; even his teammates seem to be giving him a wide berth. He lands into the sin bin twice in the first period on an instigator penalty and still manages to get three points.

J.J. calls in the intermission between the first and second periods to browbeat him into going to his celebrity chef friend's restaurant for a party.

"Come on, Hollander, it's not even a bar! It's a nice party with people whose lives do not involve waving sticks around on ice." That doesn't sound as tempting as J.J. thinks it does. "He's got movie starts coming. Actual stars! Rose Landry will be here."

That is tempting. Shane can never sleep properly on planes, so he has probably seen every movie ever added to an inflight entertainment system. Rose Landry is a good actor, even if she'd gotten her start in B-movies as a perpetually kidnapped teen.

Shane sets up an alert on his phone to let him know who wins the game, and drives to Djon-Djon.

He does his round of mingling by way of greeting J.J. and getting introduced to everyone in a ten-meter radius. The restaurant is decorated with tasteful, but dimly lit lamps here and there. It's probably set up this way to preserve privacy for the patrons, but has a side effect of making Shane forget the faces of every one of his new acquaintances within five minutes of smiling at them or shaking their hands.

His alert pings, and he slides into an unoccupied booth with a beer to check the game score. A plate of fritters interrupts him by floating by his head straight to the table.

"Oops," says a low, laughing voice. "Sorry. I hope I didn't hit you."

Shane raises his eyes at the intruder. It's only because his social battery is completely drained that he doesn't gasp.

"Any specific reason we're hiding in the farthest booth?" Rose Landry asks, settling down across him with a secretive smile. "Yours, I mean. I'm here because if I hear 'I'm such a fan' one more time, I will scream." She picks up a cod fritter from the plate. "I was promised a chill crowd."

Shane cracks a smile despite himself. Rose Landry eats a second fritter and shoves the plate his way. "You need to try these. They are marvelous. I could eat all of them, but I'd feel like a pig if I did, so you've got to save me from myself."

"Would it be in bad taste to say I'm a fan?" Shane takes a fritter. They really are good.

Rose Landry's eyes twinkle and she leans forward, her red hair falling on her naked shoulders. "I'll let you get away with it, but only because I'm a fan, Shane Hollander."

Shane hadn't realized an A-list movie star could know he exists. His smile deepens. "You can just call me Shane."

"Then you should call me Rose," she says. "So, why aren't you out there? Not a big fan of parties, I take it?"

Shane has been so entertained by the conversation he forgot about the score. He takes out his phone again and shows Rose. "I wanted to check how tonight's game is going."

"Boston's playing, right?" She gestures at the phone. "Well, what's the score, Shane?"

"I thought you were just my fan," Shane grins. It's easy talking to her, so he actually feels himself relaxing instead of winding up into a physically painful twist that he normally ends up in at parties.

Rose's laugh is throaty this time, and she winks at him. "Oh, the biggest. But I'm also from Michigan and have a brother who plays. I like hockey."

Shane feels a flush on his cheeks and busies himself by looking at his phone. He isn't blind. He can tell Rose Landry is flirting with him. He hesitates, wanting to flirt back. It would be the easiest thing. She is gorgeous, and funny, and into hockey. She has the same hectic schedule and they wouldn't get tired of seeing each other all the time. He's had enough sex with women to know he can do it, even if the thought of it does not exactly inspire enthusiasm. His parents would love to meet Rose, eventually. It would be… simple.

The score is 3-1 to Boston. There's a short video of the final celly: Connors belly-flops, sliding to center ice like a penguin, and everyone else piles up on top of him, until the camera pans to Rozanov as the last man standing—literally—who chucks his helmet at them and laughs so hard he doubles down. His disheveled hair is long enough to be plastered to his forehead.

Shane feels the corners of his lips tug upward and bites the inside of his cheek, trying to school his face back to neutrality.

"Boston won three to one," he reports. When he looks back at Rose, she's sitting back properly, eating the final fritter, and there is no flirtatious undertone in her voice when she requests to have the rest of his beer.

"Those are heavenly, but I'm really thirsty now. I'll buy you another next time, I swear."

"Are you going to be in Montreal a while?" Shane asks.

She raises an eyebrow at him. "Why, are you asking me out?"

Is he? Shane opens his mouth without knowing what he's going to say, but Rose continues without giving him a chance to speak. "I'm here until the end of the week, but I'm going to be busy with reshoots for, like, twenty four seven." She shudders dramatically.

Shane feels dismayed at being shut down without consideration. He likes Rose, but he likes winning way more. Losing feels shitty even when it's losing at something he isn't even certain he wants to do, like date a woman.

Something must show in his face, because Rose places a hand on his arm, just a light, fleeting touch. "I worded that badly, didn't I? I meant that we absolutely have to exchange numbers and figure out how I can ditch the set at least once this week to buy you that beer."

They do that, then talk some more, until Shane is surprised to find it's way past his usual bedtime. By the time he's home, he has to really wonder if he'll even have the time to practice his newfound superpowers of traversing time and space.

He still feels a little bit buzzy with leftover energy when he blinks into a locker room. There's no one inside but Ilya, who is sitting on a bench with his hockey bag half open and the gear haphazardly thrown inside.

"Hi," Shane says.

Ilya jumps and squawks something sharp and short in Russian.

"Didn't mean to startle you," Shane adds. He gets a scowl for his trouble, and Ilya shoves his elbow pads into the bag with more violence than is strictly necessary.

"You are late," Ilya snaps.

Shane wishes he could check his watch. He doesn't have any idea how long he has today. He also has no idea how to ask the eleven year old version of Rozanov if something's wrong. He had certainly never managed to do that with the Rozanov he actually knows.

In the end, he goes with the direct approach.

"Everything okay?"

Ilya groans and rubs his face with both hands. "Dunno. New coach told me today he wants me to skate first line in next competition. Is for scouts to see, maybe."

"That's a good thing, no?" Shane's eye twitches as he watches Ilya push whatever is languishing at the bottom of the hockey bag even further down to make room for his jersey.

"We do not have backup plan if I go pro and fail," Ilya says heavily. "Father says he will pay for hockey, but I must be best in KHL. Then he usually says that I am too lazy to be best."

Shane is not a religious person, but he's this close to praying for Grigori Rozanov to die in a ditch. Out loud, he says, "Do you want to know something?"

"What?"

"I'm a hockey player."

Ilya snorts. "Shane. You told me that already. Is not a secret."

"I play with you, though. The adult you. In the MLH."

That gets Ilya's attention. He's needled Shane several times about any information from the future, but Shane is paranoid about the butterfly effect. Nothing is worth it if it ends with Rozanov not playing hockey.

This, however, is directly related to Rozanov playing hockey.

"I don't know how you get there, exactly," he prefaces. It's somewhat of a lie; he knows some of it from his obsessive research into Rozanov after Junior Worlds in Saskatchewan. "But we got drafted at the same time."

Ilya is eyeing him with an expression that is so incredulous Shane actually finds it offensive. Then he says, slowly, "But you're… old."

Shane isn't sure what he can say to that. "We're the same age."

"You cannot be eleven and a half. You look old, Shane. You must be Egypt pyramid age."

"I'm the same age as you," Shane says bitchily. He takes a deep breath and promises himself to not get into a fight with a child. "In the future. Obviously. Point is, if you continue playing, I guarantee you won't need a backup plan."

"Are we still friends?" Ilya asks abruptly.

"I… what?"

"You said you play with me. Are we friends on same team?"

Shane hesitates. "We're not on the same team," he says carefully, choosing his words. "But we know each other… pretty well," he concedes.

Ilya nods. "I am glad we are still friends in the future. Even if you are really old."

He zips up his hockey bag in one motion, its seams holding on for dear life. Shane imagines that this double assault of horrendous hockey bag packing and being used as a trial run for Scott Hunter jokes is karmic punishment from the time-travelling gods for being late to bedtime.

He chooses to be a bigger person and says only, "Do you want me to help you pack this again? It doesn't look comfortable to carry."

"Is fine," Ilya grips the straps of the bag and stands up. "Thank you. You are right, I will play first line like coach offered. Then I will go to America and become professional player, and play with you in same team."

"I just told you we play on different teams," Shane points out. "Are we catching the bus again?"

"Sveta's dad was guest coach today. He knows my father and has a car, he will pick us up. And I am changing the future. I don't like the future you told me. I can't be second best player," Ilya says with absolute certainty. Shane feels like he's witnessing a villain origin story. "But then you will be sad to lose best player title, so you can come play in my team. Since we're friends anyway. We can live in one house, you and me and mama and Sveta. Will be fun."

When Shane wakes up, he laughs first, before even opening his eyes, and then his breath hitches mid-chuckle and his eyes sting. The force with which he suddenly misses Rozanov hits him like a puck to the solar plexus, no way to defend against. I'm here, Shane thinks. Maybe if he thinks it hard enough, Rozanov will find him by following the brain waves.

J.J. calls Shane mid-morning to be smug at him. "I heard from Maxime you spent half the night chatting up the Rose Landry! I didn't know you had that kind of a legendary pull in you, but I'm very proud."

"Who the fuck is Maxime?"

"The bartender," J.J. clarifies, and starts in a sing-song voice, "And I'm noticing that you didn't deny it. Shane and Rose Landry sitting in a tree…"

Shane hangs up.

Rose does, in fact, text him later that day, to tell him her only possible chance to sneak away from the crew would be brunch tomorrow. 'I'm sorry it's so last minute!' she writes. 'But if I try to ask for another date they will kidnap me. I've been kidnapped enough, Shane. You have to be available tomorrow, please! Beer can be alcohol-free!!'

She sends every sentence as a separate message, which stupidly reminds him of how Rozanov texts. There is perhaps more proper punctuation, which he knows he should appreciate over choppy sentences from a person who wouldn't recognize a comma if it jumped on a puck and delivered itself from Shane's stick to the Raiders' net.

He writes back that he will be there and asks for the address.

The Metros have another game in two days, so the rest of Shane's Thursday is spent watching tape of the three games Tampa had played this season. The only thing it inspires is relief they hadn't been quite as terrible at the time of Shane's draft. What a nightmare to imagine.

Shane takes his glasses off to massage the bridge of his nose, and contemplates that twist of fate. Would he still be jumping back to early 2000s Moscow instead of sleeping, in Florida? At least Tampa's jerseys are also blue. Shane doesn't know how to imagine himself wearing another color. Even the bedspread on his bed is blue. Yuna had been gunning for Montreal since Shane's eleventh birthday, when it became obvious he had enough talent and hockey IQ to go pro. She talked to their scouts at every competition Shane participated in. In a way, his destiny is premeditated.

Shane drifts to sleep still thinking about it.

He notices the darkness, first. No, that's not right; first he stumbles over something, and when he squints, he can barely make out a shape of a sneaker, and then he notices that it's very dark in Ilya's apartment. Shane has to feel his way out of the hallway, trailing his fingers against the rough wallpapered walls for support. The place seems empty at first sight, although Shane doesn't know why he would jump here of all places if Ilya isn't here. No one else can see him anyway.

So he continues his search. Ilya isn't in the kitchen, and isn't in the living room. The bathroom is wide open, no luck there.

Ilya's hockey bag is in his room, which answers at least one question. It's slumped against the table, unpacked. One of the wardrobe doors is open, so maybe Ilya popped out for a hot minute? The only rooms Shane hasn't tried are Alexei's, and Ilya's parents' bedroom. It's clear nobody's home, and Shane is mostly sure that Ilya should be back any moment now. He'd be expecting Shane today.

Waiting in the cold, dark kitchen quickly becomes uncomfortable. Shane is out of the apartment almost before he can finish thinking about it. He stays on the stairwell for a few minutes, listening in case there are steps, but it, too, unnerves him with its white marble opulence. There is no elevator, only the staircase wide enough to herd an elephant—he can't possibly miss Ilya if he just goes downstairs.

Shane doesn't have a reliable internal clock, and all electronics get culled during the dream-jumps, but Shane estimates his wait at the building entrance to last an eternity, give or take half an hour. He's starting to get worried. Ilya isn't in the apartment when he returns and knocks on the closed door.

Shane's brain helpfully provides him with an image of Ilya in some sort of accident. Shane grits his teeth and refuses to entertain it. Rozanov is still there, Shane literally just watched his game live on TV. He didn't meet his unfortunate end at twelve. Shane had been very careful not to say or do anything that could even slightly be interpreted as spoilery in order to not mess with the timeline.

Except that isn't true; last night—year—Shane had told Ilya he'll make it into the MLH one hundred percent, and all he has to do is continue playing. What if that made Ilya not try as hard? What if he'd thought he could not go to practice this one time, because he was going professional in any case, and then he went out for—a fucking Moscow McGriddle, probably, and was hit by a car, and now there is a child lying on a road in the middle of November. Just because Shane can't feel how cold it is, doesn't mean Ilya isn't slowly freezing. His legs are probably broken, fuck.

Shane knows he's spiraling, but knowing it doesn't help. He can't rationalize the desire to move rising up in him, to shake off the nervous energy, so all he can really do is promise himself he'll simply check the nearest roads, just to be sure, and then come back to the apartment building.

There is nobody lying in the middle of the road to the left. It's a big one, three lanes in each direction, but the cars are driving past normally, and there are no ambulances or police cars. Shane tells himself it means his fears are extremely unfounded and stupid, but something is lodged in his sternum and it refuses to move unless he does, too. So he goes to check the road on the other side of the building. Just in case.

His ears catch a creaky sound as he makes his way over to the second road, and he hesitates. It sounds like a swing, and Shane knows he is going to check it now, too. His legs aren't exactly listening to his brain at the moment.

As soon as he sees Ilya on the swing, illuminated by the one working street light, he lets a breath out, and feels small aftershocks go through the muscles of his arms and legs, contracting like he'd pushed himself too far on a run. Ilya is just sitting there, hands folded in his lap, leaning his head on the thick metal chain, not even swinging. The second swing next to him moves by itself, probably due to the wind Shane can't feel, and makes the creaking sound he had heard.

"Hi, Shane," Ilya says once Shane comes closer. There is no inflection in his words. He's wearing jeans and a wrinkled hoodie that has a few stains on it, but no outerwear.

"Aren't you cold?" Shane looks down on him. Ilya is shivering, so that's a stupid question.

"Not really," Ilya mumbles. "Don't think so."

"Let's go inside. There's no one home, we can get some food into you."

Ilya's shiver becomes a full-body shake. A sound tears out of him that is between a groan and a wounded, animal cry. He presses his palm to his mouth to physically hold it in.

Shane rears back in surprise and then he is squatting back on his heels in front of Ilya, hands hovering in the air between them. "Hey. Hey. What's wrong? Please tell me. I will help you however I can, okay?"

Ilya says something in Russian through his fingers, very quietly, and looks green.

"Ilya," Shane says for the first time in eight days. Ilya's eyes fill with tears he's trying to hold back. His shoulders start to shake with the effort, and Shane puts his hand on Ilya's head. "Please tell me what happened."

"Mama is dead." Ilya sags in the swing and retches on the ground, barely catches himself in time to turn his head away. Some puke splashes onto Shane's shoes, and for a wild second Shane wonders if next night, when he time-travels, it will still be there: yellow splotches on his dark sneakers.

Then he holds his arms out, and says, "I'm so fucking sorry, Ilya."

Ilya launches himself at Shane and cries, and cries, and cries.

He tires himself out after a while, sitting next to Shane on the ground that is probably too cold for him. Shane points to the swing with more and more insistence until Ilya stands and plops on it with a harrumph.

"Can I ask what happened?" Shane isn't sure how he's supposed to behave when talking about death. Both his parents are only children, so he doesn't have much of an extended family. His grandmother from David's side is still alive, even if they don't visit her retirement home often. Both of his maternal grandparents had died so long ago, he barely remembers them at all. All he can rely on right now is a deep well of sadness and pity for Ilya. Shane is annoyed with himself for not being better at comforting people.

Ilya takes a shuddering breath and nods.

"Mama was sad a lot," he says. "Always, but she became more sad when I started playing hockey. She was figure skater, you know." Shane nods, even though he doesn't. He doesn't know shit about Rozanov. He moves past that thought before it suffocates him.

"She told me hockey is very violent, maybe I don't want to do it? But I did. I like hockey. I like being best in my team. I…" Ilya's voice becomes small, and he turns his head to look at the slowly drying puddle of bile on the ground. "I thought, maybe Father will not hate me so much. If I'm best."

Shane doesn't think it's a good thing, a proper thing, to despise someone he's never actually met with every fiber of his being, but he isn't going to let it stop him. Grigori Rozanov can burn in hell, and Shane wouldn't even piss on him to help.

"But Father thinks I am lazy and not... what is word? Not thankful."

"Ungrateful?"

Ilya nods. "He had fights with mama, because mama was always sad and could not cook for us. She could make us sandwiches, sometimes. Then Father told her, I was grown up now, could go to hockey by myself. No need for her to pick up." His voice catches up. "Mama was very sad after. She was sleeping so much. She gave me Barbie to be cheerleader, but Father found it and said, she is making me too much girly. So he took Barbie."

"But we found her and put her back together, right?"

"Yes," Ilya smiles at him, wobbly but real. "Thank you. I gave her to Sveta to keep safe. Is not… very nice at home." He shrugs. "Then I told mama last year, I said, Shane told me we play in MLH together. I will become rich and take you to America with me. I told her that coach wants me on the first line, for scouts. And she said it was wonderful. She got better, too. Less sad. We went to zoo last week to see penguins, just two of us. No Alexei, no Father. She laughed so much. I… after we came back, she went to sleep. I went to her bedroom to ask, maybe she wanted to eat something, but she…"

He trails off and doesn't continue. He says, instead, "When I told her about you, and the league. She said she was very happy I will not be alone. "

His lower lip trembles, and Shane isn't ready for the sorrow that twists around his heart until the pain is almost physical.

"I am alone now, Shane," Ilya says.

"No, come on." Shane tugs him into a hug again. He really is a tall kid, Shane is only a head taller than him now. "You're not alone. You have Sveta, right?"

Ilya sniffles and says something low and Russian into his shoulder.

"And you've got me, too."

"You are not even real," Ilya says.

"I'm real in the future."

"And you only come for one day."

"When we meet in the future, I will be there all the time," Shane lies. Promises, maybe.

"Yeah? When is that?" Ilya's fingers flex in his shirt and he sniffles. "You never tell me anything. No wonder you are second best player in the league."

Shane raises his hand to ruffle Ilya's hair and hits it on his bedside table.

He doesn't feel the urge to cry, like yesterday. He just stares at the ceiling, not thinking about anything in particular, and then lets out a long, low sigh.

He skips the pre-game optional skate for the first time in forever, and is hounded by Hayden's messages until he tells him it's because he's meeting Rose for brunch later. J.J. doesn't call him, so Hayden probably shared the gossip.

Shane dresses for a run and does a few laps before circling to a grocery store on his way home. The Plateau is quiet this time of day, it's mostly students and a few young moms who give him tired, but polite nods when he passes them.

He barely has time to haul the bags inside, take a shower, drink his smoothie, and scour his closet for something that could be worn to a nice restaurant. The last part is a spectacular failure, which is why the first thing Rose says to him is, "Wow, that's a lot of Nike logos! Don't you have a contract with Reebok?"

Shane flushes. "Yes, Rose. Hello to you too, Rose. You look wonderful as always, Rose."

She does look great in her sleeveless off-white top and pearl earrings. Her hair is styled in waves and her lips are very red and very… precise.

"Sorry, sorry. You look great. You're very handsome, Shane. Not even athleisure can diminish your attractiveness."

"I wanted to do something different." Shane shifts uncomfortably. "I don't go out much, so this is… most of what I own is sports clothes."

Rose gasps, her manicured fingers at her mouth. "Seriously? No, like… shirts? Or… pants that are not part of a tracksuit?"

"Oh my god," Shane says weakly as she cackles.

They make a polite pause for the waiter, order, and then Shane can't actually bring himself to say anything.

"…I just want you to reach your full potential, Shane. I have this friend, she went to a stylist…"

"I think I'm—" Shane blurts out, cutting Rose off in the middle of her elevator pitch. "I'm…"

He can't say it. The word he's looking for has only three letters in it, one syllable. He knows this word, heard it thrown around many a time in locker rooms. It's just a word.

He swallows. Rose is looking at him with patient eyes. Shane mostly feels like he's fucking things up.

"I want you to know," Rose says, very calmly. "I really like you." She raises a hand when Shane tries to interject. "It's hard making friends in this industry. It really is a snake pit a lot of the time." Her laugh is mirthless. "You're very easy to talk to, we've hit it off, like, instantly. And you like hockey, which, let me tell you, nobody in Hollywood knows what it even is."

"So. I know we've met, like, twice. But I'd really like us to be friends. Proper friends — put in the effort, text each other annoyingly often, meet up every time we're in the same city."

Shane has never in his life thought he could be friends with a woman. Women within ten meters of him are either a challenge to prove something, or a burden to reject politely; they carry so much expectation for Shane Hollander The Hockey Player with them just by virtue of being that he's never come closer to one other than for a very rare, very short hookup.

Not that he comes during those, either.

"I don't have friends outside of hockey, either," Shane confesses. "Sports clothes, sports friends."

"Uh-huh. Well, couldn't have met me at a better time, then." Rose squeezes his forearm briefly, and lets go.

"You're very understanding for someone who thought I was asking her out."

"I was joking, Shane." Rose thanks a waiter who's come to refill their drinks, and continues when he's out of earshot. "It was pretty clear you're very much into someone else, and I'm not going to be an affair or a rebound. Not even you are that dashing."

Shane feels his blood run cold and rush in his ears at the same time, like his body can't agree whether the correct response to that is fight, flight, or freeze. "I'm not… I…" He bites his lower lip and takes a deep breath. "I didn't realize it was obvious."

"Maybe it's not," Rose says. "An actor, remember? I sort of have to study emotions as part of my job. Don't take me as the benchmark. But if you're asking how I knew?" Shane nods. "You were staring at your phone when I asked you for the game score. You've got that face."

They talk until Rose gets a call from someone on the filming crew and has to dash out. She kisses Shane on the cheek and pats his arm at the same time, and then she's gone.

When Shane gets home, he reads the emails that have been languishing in his inbox for the last week, and when he feels the first pangs of hunger, he unpacks the groceries from the morning run and makes himself a tuna melt sandwich.

It's not a good one, he decides. Too salty. The ratio of cheese to tuna is all wrong. The smell makes him gag. Rozanov's have been tasty, and Shane didn't mind that his breath smelled like fish when they'd kissed right after. He doesn't think there are a lot of things that would make him refuse to kiss Rozanov.

He picks his phone from the counter and opens his thread with Rose without looking at anything else in his iMessage app. He writes it. He sends it. He blinks rapidly. He assumes the instant arrow of fear through his chest will get easier to bear with time.

'Thank you for telling me!' is Rose's almost immediate response. 'Your secret is safe with me! Miles said to slide you his number if you, quote, ended up even a little fruity, but I'll send you the stylist's contacts instead.' Three dots appear and disappear, reappear again. Shane waits. She sends, 'Don't worry about Miles. It's a joke. I've had sooo many gay boyfriends because: theater kid, he was just covering his bases. He doesn't actually suspect anything.'

It's sweet of her. He thanks her and hearts the messages, and then he is spent, just completely exhausted. Shane yawns and barely manages not to fall asleep while brushing his teeth, anticipation for tonight's jump building under his skin.

At some point the suddenness of these jumps has stopped unnerving him, so Shane only blinks the lights out of his eyes when he realizes he's in a club. It's loud and seems to be underground, bodies coming close together and parting, the mass of them pulsing in time with the music like a single organism.

Shane must be here by mistake. There have been a few nights he had been deposited in the general vicinity of Ilya and had to go on a scavenger hunt to find him. He edges along the wall, trying to go outside, and his theory is totally right—people do bump into him at full speed and seem to immediately dismiss it from their minds. Shane's ribs are full of bruises because of time-travelling. What an exciting life he leads.

His awkward shuffle brings him to a door he can duck into to give his eyes some rest from the flashing neon lights. It's a bathroom, marginally more quiet, the music down to a throbbing buzz.

Ilya is in this bathroom. Shane almost doesn't recognize him, because he had expected a child, but Ilya is—a teenager, clearly. Older, maybe, than Alexei had been when Shane saw him last. Old enough that most of the baby fat is gone from his cheeks.

He's sitting on the bathroom counter between two sinks, smoking a cigarette and angling his exhales so the smoke would drift closer to the air vent. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin is flushed.

Ilya looks at Shane without seeing him, the same way he'd looked at, presumably, the stalls before Shane had come in. He blinks, and even that seems uncoordinated. Then he reaches out with a lazy hand and beckons Shane closer. Like a puppet on a string, Shane goes.

Ilya says something in Russian and cocks his head, expecting Shane to understand.

"Ilya," Shane says. The word pains him. The club pains him. It's not—generally unexpected, to see Rozanov in a club, but last night, Ilya had been a child crying in Shane's arm about his mom being dead. The whiplash is too much.

"Foreign? You look familiar." Ilya exhales another cloud and squints at him through the smoke. His speech is slurred, so he must be drunk. "I… learn English, once. Long time back."

His English is worse. "Your English is worse. Are you not studying anymore?"

"Why? English for MLH. I stay in KHL." Ilya says, unconcerned. Shane's heart tries to leave his sternum and he has to press down on it with the heel of his hand to make sure it remains inside his chest.

"Please tell me you're not staying in fucking Russia to play hockey."

"Father wants." Ilya shakes off stray ash from his fingertips into the sink. "Why no? No one in America. Father and Alexei here," he huffs and adds something vicious in Russian.

"I thought you had Sveta," Shane says, at a loss. How old is Ilya now, anyway?

Ilya perks up. "Sveta here?" He raises his voice. "Sasha, Sveta here!"

A grumble and a sound of someone hawking a loogie comes from one of the stalls, making Shane whip around. Then a string of Russian and then, silence.

"And you'll have me. In the MLH," Shane tries again. He's had his fair share of drunk parties, of talking to people during and after these drunk parties, and he understands that with how wasted Ilya looks right now, there's a fair chance the conversation isn't even registering for him. He still has to try. The thought of Rozanov somehow not ending up in the MLH—in Boston—in Shane's life—

"Who the fuck are you?" Ilya says, his most coherent English sentence of the evening.

"It's me. Shane."

"Ah. I wait, and wait. Shane never comes anymore," Ilya throws the butt of his cigarette on the floor. "Fuck Shane."

The stall opens and another boy comes out, somehow even more unsteady and wasted than Ilya, but also more hyper, like he's auditioning for the role of the Duracell bunny. He seems to be roughly the same age as Ilya, and when he comes to wash his hands, Ilya drags him in by the collar, giggling and biting at his jaw. "Hey Sasha. Make me come."

The boy rubs the back of his hand under his nose and sniffs before saying something in Russian and palming at Ilya's cock with his other hand. Ilya's eyes slide off Shane and roll back.

Shane doesn't want to stay in the bathroom. He has never wished for a calendar more. This jump confuses him, and he rubs his face with both hands. Someone kicks him in the shin muscling past, so Shane plasters himself to the wall again. Maybe this is a nightmare jump. Whoever is sending him here messed up and this is the evil twin universe. Maybe he had entered a Ghost of Christmas Past vision that shows him he needs to stop being a coward.

Shane stands there, with his eyes closed and back to the wall, and catalogues the tightness in his chest, how cold his fingertips are, and the way the music feels at though it's punching him in the head on beat, until he wakes up.

His mom's usual game-day text is in the mom-Yuna thread. 'Blow them away! (I know you will!)'. Replying feels like a chore, but he still hearts her message and writes back, 'Can I come over for lunch tomorrow?', eyes glued to the phone until she replies with a confirmation.

Shane googles Boston's current team roster in the parking lot of the Bell Centre. He'd made it most of the day without giving in to temptation, but at this point, not knowing might be worse than knowing. What if Rozanov is not on the team? Shane drops his forehead onto the steering wheel and looks down on his phone.

The roster is the same. Rozanov, 81, Center. Shane feels like he's going crazy, like maybe Rozanov had spiked his tuna melt with hallucinogens and made Shane believe he's travelling back in time. Which is fine. At least the roster is the same and Shane can go play hockey now with normally working lungs.

He realizes that he wasn't expecting to jump again only when he's done it. They'd played their game, and Shane ate his post-game meal and went to sleep completely certain he will not be seeing any dreams tonight, time-travelling kind or otherwise.

He still isn't sure it's real, because he knows the place he's standing in. It's much less lived-in than he saw it last—no art on the walls, no books in random places. But he had been here last week. Had sat on this couch and eaten a sandwich at this coffee table. He is at Ilya Rozanov's Boston house.

The house has too many windows facing the forest, and Shane can see the snow outside sparkling in the setting sun. Is it impolite to wander through someone's house when they aren't there? Shane considers the bar stools and gingerly sits down in the same one he'd sat in last Thursday. The couch is too much, too soon, maybe.

The front door makes a few short beeps and opens, pushed by a hand. Shane holds his breath, rigid, and resists a sudden cold dread in his gut. He looks down at his shoes. Thankfully, they are not covered in vomit.

Ilya steps in, shaking his head to get snow out of his hair. He has a paper bag in his hands that he balances while kicking off his sneakers. He says something in Russian, comes to the kitchen, and promptly drops the bag on the floor.

Shane makes an awkward, aborted dive for it, but obviously he's too far; obviously he can't make it before food meets hardwood with a wet plop. He slinks back on his bar stool and looks at Ilya from behind his lashes, coughing once to cover his embarrassment.

"What the actual fuck, Hollander?! Why the fuck are you there?" Ilya looks… spooked, but normal. Like himself. He is obviously younger than he had looked last week, but Shane can't even guesstimate how much. A few years?

"What year is it?" Shane asks.

"What ye… twenty ten? Last time I checked?" Ilya drags a hand through his damp hair. There's a curl sticking out now like a stray cowlick. It's cute.

"I'm Shane," Shane says.

Ilya looks bewildered. "I… know," he says slowly. Takes a step back. "Hollander, are you on drugs."

"Ah. I don't think so."

"That does not sound convincing."

For some reason it's harder talking to Ilya when he's—Rozanov. It sounds absurd even in his own head. They've talked many times now, and during all of these times Ilya has been Rozanov. Shane hadn't, like, consciously thought about it at the time, but it's still true.

He also recognizes he's stalling because he's afraid to continue, and considering his meeting with his parents tomorrow, maybe he should start working on that habit now. He just needs to train the fear out of himself like he'd done when learning not to flinch away from pucks flying at him or sticks swung inches from his face.

"I don't know if you remember," he starts. Actually, this is a good question. It's been years since even the club, and Ilya hadn't recognized him then, drunk or no drunk. "But you, um, had an imaginary friend growing up?"

Ilya's head snaps back like he's been hit; his eyes widen to an alarming degree and he freezes, not even blinking.

"It's, uh. Me."

"You. Shane Hollander."

"Well, not that one," Shane grimaces.

"There is, what, another one?" Ilya asks, incredulous.

Shane shakes his head and wishes he had something to drink. A vodka shot, maybe. Ilya keeps insisting they're good for morale.

"I'm from the future," he says instead.

Ilya opens his mouth and closes it, and then he unglues from the floor, not looking at the mess the bag has made, and opens the wine bar. It's more of a vodka bar, from what Shane can see. Ilya deliberates over the bottles and gets one from the back, grabbing two whiskey glasses on the way. He splashes a generous serving for himself and holds it out for Shane.

Shane shrugs. "Thanks."

Ilya drinks most of his vodka in one gulp, making a face, and slams the glass onto the island counter. The remaining liquid splashes over the rim a bit, droplets flowing down the glass. Shane tracks their descent.

"I googled Shanes in the league when I was drafted," Ilya says out of nowhere. "There were three. One was older than Hunter, which should be mathematically not possible, and retired that year, so probably was not you. Other two Shanes were veterans, but still playing. I sent both messages, but they did not reply."

"I told you we were the same age," Shane has to point out.

"Yes. When I was ten."

"You didn't recognize me at the draft? At World Juniors, even?"

"I did not remember what you looked like, Hollander. Draft was when I was seventeen. Last time I saw you was…" Ilya's face closes off. "A long time before that."

"I'm sorry," Shane says. "It was sudden for me, too. I don't… control where I… go. Or when."

Ilya looks at him through the thick glass. "Why didn't you tell me, at draft?"

"I didn't know. Literally," Shane explains. Tries to. It does sound a bit crazy. "I just started doing these jumps, I guess, into your past. No rhyme or reason to it. It hasn't been that long for me, so the—ah, younger me wouldn't know."

"How long?"

Shane counts. "I can only do this when I'm asleep, so this would be… night number ten."

"Ten nights."

Shane nods.

"It's been fourteen years of my life," Ilya says. He sounds shaken. Shane knows the feeling. Ilya takes a steadying breath and sets his jaw. "Actually, no. I remember last time you appeared. After my mother… died. Not for many years after."

"It wasn't the last time," Shane protests. "The last time was…" He falters. "I have no idea. You were in a club, still in Russia. So before the draft?" That gets him a blank look. "There was someone called Sasha with you? I uh. I think he was, you know, with you."

"Sasha," Ilya muses. "I told you about him. He is my coach's son."

That designation jolts Shane's memory. But he'd been imagining someone more into sports than drugs and rock-n-roll. Sasha from the club had eyeliner on.

"I did not see him after I decided to play for MLH. At sixteen." Ilya drinks the rest of his vodka. It's probably warm by now. "I don't remember you appearing that year."

"You were wasted. I didn't expect that jump either."

Ilya circles the island to come closer to him, rests a hip against the counter. "So. I will know from now on, but you—or Hollander," he stops, furrowing his brow.

Shane can sympathize. The logistics are confusing to him, too. "Hollander is fine. If you start calling the, uh, younger me 'Shane', he will freak out. You can call me Shane, though. I've been calling you Ilya since this," he waves a hand to encompass the situation, "started. Couldn't exactly 'Rozanov' a five year old."

"Five?"

Shane grins. "You were an adorable child. Too bad it didn't stick."

"Cute," Ilya says wryly. "So Hollander does not know he will become my bosom friend in the past. Do I tell him?"

"If you tell him, he will think you're insane and won't fuck you anymore," Shane says, reasonably certain about it.

Ilya's face blooms in a wolfish smirk and he leans closer to Shane. "Is that so? Can I do anything to change his mind?"

Shane doesn't move away as Ilya gets closer and closer, slowly, like he's afraid to spook his prey. When he can feel Ilya's breath on his lips, he closes his eyes.

There is no kiss. Shane opens his eyes to see his own bedroom and groans.

He needs to swing by the Bell Centre to be weighed and have his blood drawn so that the team nutritionist can make sure his vitamin intake plan is flawless, and then he's off to his parents' Ottawa house. It's a two-hour drive, and the radio grates on Shane's already frayed nerves, so he turns it off when it the beat of the music starts to tighten around his head like a band. He tries to use the time to go through his speech, but a few imagined conversations in he has to pull over and do a few breathing exercises, so that's also a no as far as entertainment goes.

In the end he just focuses on the road, replaying last jump's conversation with Ilya and remembering the last—the first—time he'd been in that house.

David is reading his newspaper on the porch with a cup of tea when Shane pulls up into the driveway, and carefully folds it back to give Shane a hug. Shane leans into it, trying to absorb some steadiness by osmosis.

David pats his back. "All good?"

And isn't that a loaded question? Shane never visits during the season. He can barely find the time to go to the Pikes', and their house is in Montreal. Normally, it's his parents who visit to grab his attention for a few hours at lunch.

"Yeah," Shane says.

"I made lasagna," David says warmly. "Come listen to your mother defend your hockey honor."

Yuna is in the office, and she says, "Was that Shane?" when they come in, raising her voice just the right amount to be heard without outright yelling.

"It was!" Shane yells back, enjoys hearing her laugh.

When she comes out, Shane is on his first serving of David's signature lasagna. It's good, normally, but he can hardly feel the taste right now. The texture is about all he can get from the dish, and it assaults his tongue. He takes a few bites unenthusiastically, trying to think of how to start. Maybe he should've pushed through the discomfort and finished his speech on the road.

"We've got a potential collaboration with Abercrombie," Yuna says at the table, in full brand manager mode. "I've been emailing with them back and forth for a while, but you should be getting the contract soon. I've gone over most contentious points, but of course, if you think it's not for you, then…"

"Mom," Shane says.

"Yes, honey? I also went over the portion of the contract that would need to go to a charity, and there are a few we could look at…"

"Mom."

"I'll put the kettle on," David says and stands up from his seat, ruffling Shane's hair. "You don't seem to be in the mood for lunch."

"The timing for the shoot might be a little tight with your game schedule, but we can sign off on the storyboards over email, and do the actual shoot when you're in New York…"

"Mom! I'm trying to tell you I'm gay!" Shane shouts, halfway up in his seat, and drops back like a sack of potatoes. "Jesus fuck."

"Are you sure?"

Yuna gasps as soon as the words leave her mouth and puts her hand on her lips as though trying to put them back.

Shane feels blood drain from his face. He looks down at his hands. "I'm sorry. I tried not to be. To… fix it," he finishes lamely. He doesn't think he'd tried quite as hard as he could—or he would be talking about bringing Rose to meet them—but what's one more lie in the general landscape of his life. He doesn't want to try, is the truth, but Shane doesn't think confessing to that would go over well. His mother never liked a quitter.

Yuna reaches across the table, palm up, waiting until he gives her his own clammy one to hold. He flinches at her touch and she squeezes harder. Shane doesn't know if his dad is still here. To know that, he would need to look up, and he isn't ready to see either of their faces.

"I'm sorry I said it," Yuna says, gently. "I'm very happy you decided to tell us. There's nothing to fix, of course. I love you just as you are, darling."

"I know." It doesn't make it easier. You can love someone and be disappointed in them.

Shane hears Yuna's sigh.

"When you were born," she says wistfully. "I thought that I would tell you every day just how much I loved you." She laughs, a low and soft sound. "I liked this part of growing up in Canada, it's so normal to say it here. I don't think I've ever heard my parents say those words. They were very traditional in that regard."

Shane raises his head to look at her. She's gazing at the porch, where David is back in his chair, not reading anything, just waiting until their conversation is over.

"I think they loved me, in their own way. They showed me in a dozen small ways. But I spent a lot of time trying to see if it was—conditional, the love. How I could get the behaviour if not the words. They praised me more when I brought home good grades, for example. But they never actually told me. I was always… wondering. It's only human, to want to hear the words," She smiles when David turns to look at the house and catches her eyes. "So I told myself that I would always tell you I loved you in no uncertain terms, and then you would know. I didn't understand that words alone are also not enough."

"I know you love me, Mom. It's not what I'm worried about," Shane says honestly.

"Of course not," Yuna agrees. "My love is not conditional, Shane. You can't let me down simply by being you. And I didn't mean to imply you should change yourself. I'm so very sorry you felt the need to even try."

"Okay," Shane says after a pause, willing his eyes not to prickle. He thinks it will be, at least until they get to the Ilya of it all. But he can't physically contain more than one crisis at a time during the season, or he will have no space left for hockey. So he pivots from that thought.

Yuna pivots them both right back in. "Is there a specific reason you decided to tell us?"

Shane rubs the back of his neck and looks at their hands on the table. "No," he lies. He feels Yuna studying him and his cheeks heat up in response.

"Okay," she echoes, and drops it. "You should probably let your father tell you he loves you, now."

That's exactly what David does, once Shane sits down by his feet on the porch.

"I love you too, Dad," Shane says, leaning his head on David's knee.

David hums. "Do you want to do today's crossword?" he asks. "I've only just started."

Shane would chuckle, but he is out of emotions for today. His face is calm and voice toneless when he says, "That sounds fun," but he thinks that David knows what he means, anyway.

Shane closes his eyes and hears the rustle of the newspaper above.

"Eleven down, low-maintenance succulent."

They stay in each other's orbits for the rest of the day, and gather on the couch to watch an Admirals game on TV.

"That's a nice goal," Yuna says when Scott Hunter scores after bouncing the puck off his stick in the air twice without letting it touch the ice.

"He's forgotten more techniques than I ever learned," Shane nods sagely, and half-listens as his parents assure him that isn't true without understanding what an epic chirp it is about Scott Hunter's age, which only serves to make him miss Ilya more.

Shane stays over, his childhood bedroom always ready just in case, and googles the pronunciation of Russian words in bed. He starts with familiar things, words like hockey and stick and mom and dad, then the rabbit hole guides him toward phrases, and at midnight, he's listening to a Siri-like voice on a random YouTube channel robotically repeat I love you in Russian. He had remembered that word for 'me' correctly, Shane thinks somewhat inanely, and presses the replay button again. Я тебя люблю. Я тебя люблю.

He practices the shape of it until he falls asleep, but doesn't dare to add his voice to the words.

The time jump deposits him into Ilya's house in Boston once again. There's a smell in the air that Shane can't place at first because he doesn't expect it, and it only clicks when he sees a whole box of mandarin oranges on the island, next to several Christmas tree branches stuck into a vase.

There's a shattering sound behind him. "Fucking hell!"

Shane turns back to see barefoot Ilya surrounded by a puddle of some, very likely alcoholic, liquid and broken glass. He's dressed in a Henley and Adidas sweatpants. Shane smirks, but his amusement quickly fades when he realizes Ilya is moving.

"No, stay there," he says. "You'll cut your feet on the glass. Just tell me where your vacuum is or something."

"I can't believe I used to be normal about this," Ilya says, but he stands still. "You think I own vacuum?"

"Hopefully? Does your cleaner work without a vacuum?"

"I do not ask, and she does not tell."

"Fine." Shane shrugs and rips a paper towel off the rack, squats in front of Ilya to get the largest shards into it.

Ilya leans down to him. "Stop, you will cut your hands."

"Nothing transfers to my body, from what I can tell," Shane says absently. "I got roughed up a bit in a club a few nights ago, uh, when you were sixteen? And didn't have any bruising when I woke up."

"Few nights ago, when I was sixteen," Ilya repeats. "Is a ridiculous sentence, yes?"

"Tell me about it," Shane mutters and stands up, cradling most of the shards in his paper towel, damp now with the remains of the alcohol still clinging to them. "What year is it?"

"For me? Two thousand twelve. For a few more days, at least."

Shane does some quick math. Hayden had gotten married that year, and Shane's anxiety spiraled so much after near-misses in hotels, he'd started looking at buildings to purchase to continue hooking up with Ilya. He remembers wanting to be loud, fantasizing over and over about things they could do once the walls around them weren't paper-thin.

Ilya plasters himself to his back and Shane takes a sharp breath, but Ilya only takes the paper tower bundle from him and throws it into the trash. Then he pats Shane's ass and squeezes it.

"Ilya," Shane says, trying for reproachful.

Ilya raises a brow at him, entirely unrepenting. "What? Is good ass. I like it a lot." He frowns. "Are we still fucking in your future?"

"It's your future," Shane deflects.

"We are not?"

Shane sighs and lets Ilya crowd him against the kitchen cabinets. "We're still fucking."

Ilya licks his neck, and Shane shivers and tilts his head to allow him more access. "Thought so," Ilya says in a low voice. "Can't get enough." His hands go down to Shane's hips as he mouths his way up, past the spot just below Shane's ears that makes his lips part on their own, and then they are kissing, surrounded by a scent of alcohol, pine, and mandarins.

Ilya stops first, pressing his forehead to Shane's. "You kiss differently," he murmurs.

Shane chuckles and extricates himself with one last peck to Ilya's mouth. Ilya's frowning again, like he's trying to figure out a stubborn puzzle.

"I've had a few years of practice since you last kissed me," he says.

"With who?"

"With you, asshole," Shane sticks his tongue out. It's easy, flirting with Ilya from 2012. Things had still been uncomplicated then.

"What year are you from?" Ilya asks suddenly, and then makes a face. "Was a stupid question. Never mind."

"I don't know if I should tell you, anyway." Shane grabs a clementine from the box just to have something in his hands. "Are you going somewhere for Christmas?"

Ilya takes the fruit from him and starts to peel it. "Is Christmas today, Shane. Obviously I am home. No games."

"Oh. I…" Shane is at a loss. "I thought I always jump to November."

"Yes. In my childhood." Ilya breaks the peeled clementine into segments and returns them to Shane one by one. "I remember more now. I called Sveta, she said I used to talk about you all the time. And I have you to thank for… saving one of my mother's keepsakes from my father."

Shane eats a slice. "How is Sveta? I'm glad you're still friends."

"Best friends," Ilya agrees. "She moved to Boston before me. Was good motivation to play in MLH." He cuts a glance at Shane. "You, too."

"You didn't even remember me."

"Ah. Hollander, then." Ilya grins at him when Shane flips him off. "I heard of very talented Canadian and thought, how can I let you be best player in league with that backhand?"

"Will you quit it with my fucking backhand? It's better than yours."

"You keep telling yourself that."

"My stats tell me that."

"Tetchy." Ilya's grin grows until he looks downright deranged, which Shane informs him about, tetchily. That only makes Ilya cackle until Shane chucks a clementine at him.

"Is nice," Ilya says a bit later. "You are more relaxed in the future. Not so uptight."

Shane snorts. "Right," he says.

"Makes me feel like I am also a time traveller." Ilya grows quiet and chews his lower lip. "I know this you, but not the younger you. Is fun to figure him out. I am very much looking forward to meeting every version of you, Shane Hollander."

"Merry Christmas, Ilya," Shane says. He hides the shape of я тебя люблю behind a clementine slice.

He wakes up relaxed and languid, stretches until he can feel every muscle in his body. The team has to fly out the day after tomorrow for a slew of away games, which means the next two days are for training and watching more tape. It also means Shane has run out of time.

He unlocks his phone and sends a good morning text to his mother, replies to Hayden confirming their morning skate time, reads a string of well-punctuated, but increasingly manic texts from Rose describing the last day of reshoots in Montreal, and finally rests his thumb on the Lily thread.

He types his Montreal penthouse address — not the condo where they'd always met, but the place he lives in, with its navy blue bed covers, half-finished hockey books and containers of bland, team-nutritionist-approved, hockey-season-appropriate food. He wants Ilya to mark this place with the signs of his existence, wants his probably contraband vodka hidden in the depth of the unused wine shelf, his atrocious snacks filling the cupboards. Stripped of everything else, he just wants Ilya, with the intensity that scares him.

It's like taking a puck to the face, Shane reminds himself. Sometimes that's what you gotta do to make sure your team scores.

He sends Ilya his address before he can talk himself out of it, and watches as the status goes from Delivered to Read. Shane has a staring contest with that small grey word until it disappears in favor of three dots.

'is game day', the message says. Shane's heart gives a sharp flutter and drops down to his twisting stomach. Another message comes. 'tmr y/y?'

Shane's laugh is a little wet. 'Yes.' he types, and turns off the screen. He has double the amount of work to do if he wants to carve some free time for himself tomorrow.

The whole day is a blur of work to such an extent that Shane is disoriented when he catches himself in another time-jump. He thinks back to when he'd fallen asleep, and vaguely remembers crashing out without even brushing his teeth, a couple of hours after midnight.

He is back in Russia, in what seems to be a cemetery. As usual, he can't quite experience any weather, but the crowns of trees are green and the manicured grass around paved walking paths is lush. Shane starts walking, looking for Ilya. At least this time, he doesn't have to guess if he'd find him here.

Ilya is sitting on the ground in front of a simple headstone, tastefully done in dark granite. Around them, the cemetery is a gaudy affair of monuments and statues of cherubs. Irina's grave is out of the way and pristine, even the headstone is polished clean.

"I had it changed with money from my signing bonus. Used to be horrible. She would not have liked." Ilya says when Shane comes closer. There is food in front of him, a few eggs and some candy. Ilya catches Shane's look and explains, "This is for mama. I have to apologize to her."

"What for?" Shane asks. He doesn't think it would be respectful of him to sit, but Ilya tugs him down by the wrist and then just doesn't let go.

"I don't think I want to go back here again."

"To her grave?"

"To Russia," Ilya clarifies.

Suddenly, Shane really needs to know. "What year is it?"

"Twenty fourteen. July." Ilya sighs. "You asked me if I liked coming here two weeks ago. The answer is no. I really don't."

He releases Shane's wrist and stands up. "I need to go back to the apartment," he says. "Come with me."

As opposed to his Boston sports car parade, Ilya drives a much more sensible BMW from the Sports line in Moscow, albeit in an aggressively green color. He definitely drives worse, though, and Shane is happy that this is technically happening in the past and he knows neither Ilya nor him are dead. He holds onto that knowledge as they cut lanes on the highway with barely any distance from the cars behind them.

The apartment Ilya had meant is not the same one he grew up in, and it's in a part of the city Shane is unfamiliar with. The place itself is modern, the yellow wallpaper and velvet curtains replaced by white paint and linen Roman shades. There isn't a single indication someone lives there, even if only in the summers.

"Is it a rental?" Shane asks.

"No. But most of the time I am in Russia, I spend in clubs."

Shane grimaces, and Ilya catches his face with one hand, strokes a line down to his chest. "I have not been to a club last summer. Russia has proven to be unbearable."

"Because you don't go to clubs?"

Ilya is looking straight at him. His jaw is jutting out in a way that, Shane knows, means he is bracing himself for something. "No. Not because of the clubs. What year are you from, Shane?"

"Why didn't you kiss me? In Vegas," Shane asks. "We didn't even kiss."

Ilya chokes out a pained laugh. "I would not be able to stop."

Shane barrels into him, grips Ilya's face, neck, and feels Ilya's fingers flex in his hair in return. They kiss like they are in a competition, breathless and a little desperate, until Shane has to stop to get some air into his lungs. Ilya's gaze on him is predatory, dangerous, and his hand goes down Shane's chest to the waistline of his pants.

"I'm from twenty sixteen," Shane blurts out, and then, in an incredible show of timing, "Why did you have to apologize to your mom?"

Ilya's hand freezes and drops to his side. He takes a step back so they aren't pressed together quite as tight.

"I can only choose either-or. Either you, or Russia," he says plainly. "You, or Father. You, or… everything else here. If I choose you, I can't go back. I do not have a backup plan."

Shane really shouldn't press him, but the need to know is burning him out from the inside. "What do you want to choose?"

Ilya gives him a disbelieving look. "What do you think, Hollander?" He sets his jaw again, combative, and then all of his tension drains away from him in one exhale. "I love you, you know." He looks away. "I'm in love with you. You have been a horrible influence on my formative years."

Shane—can't process this. He physically can't say anything until he sees Ilya close his eyes, eyebrows drawing together, and rapidly unfreezes.

"Я тебя люблю," he says, catching Ilya's hand and tangling their fingers together.

Ilya's head snaps to him, eyes going wide. "The fuck?"

"Oh, sorry! Sorry. I must've mangled it, I practiced it in Russian, but I don't have anyone to make sure I'm saying it right." Shane is rambling, and he needs to stop. He forces himself to take a deep breath. Ilya's eyes are giant and unblinking, the hunger in them making Shane blush. He wants to turn away, say it to the floor, instead, but this, he reminds himself, is what he needs to do for a goal. Take a puck to the face. It will be fine. "I said, I—

—love you," he finishes alone in his bedroom.

"Charrue de p'tit Jésus," Shane groans.

A glance at his watch tells him it's around eight, and his habit has woken him up as reliably as an alarm clock. Shane has some time to consider how nervous he is. How early is too early to write a message?

A notification from Lily chimes while he's fretting in the bathroom after a shower. It says, 'omw'. Shane thumbs it up. Then changes it to a heart, and back again. Then removes the reaction altogether and sees the three dots appear before another message pops up. 'dont freak out Hollander'

The last name doesn't make him any calmer. For Ilya, it has been two years of very short hookups every few months, and at least in Shane's memory, he did go back to Russia last summer. Maybe he'd said it in the heat of the moment. Maybe he'd decided he chose unwisely. Maybe—

'Shane.'

The word is a sucker punch; Shane grips his phone in his hand. He doesn't know if he should write something back. No more messages arrive no matter how long he waits.

The sound of his back entrance doorbell startles him so much he drops the phone on the floor and leaves it there, scrambling to open the door.

"What year is it?" is the first thing Ilya says when he steps in. "Are you asleep?"

"Twenty sixteen," Shane says automatically. "No? I'm awake, Ilya, what…"

Ilya envelops him in a hug. Shane can feel him trembling, short tremors that come and go in waves. He mumbles, "Fucking finally. I caught you."

Shane hugs him back. "Yeah."

"These were the longest fucking two weeks of my life," Ilya says savagely.

Shane hums. "Really? It's been the shortest twenty years of mine. Just flew by." He gets bitten in his neck for that, and his laugh turns into a moan as Ilya sucks a hickey into that spot.

"Your Russian was horrendous," Ilya says into his neck. "I hope you practiced in the meantime."

"I just woke up from that jump. Like, an hour ago."

"Well, let us hear it, then. I will tell you if you've improved."

Shane tells him.

"I love you so fucking much." Ilya raises his head to finally look at Shane. "I sold the Moscow apartment last summer. Told Alexei to eat shit and die. Set Father up in care facility."

Shane so does not care about Grigori unless it's news of his tragic demise. But he nods anyway and kisses Ilya, a soft press of the lips for support.

"We have a flight in the afternoon," Ilya says. "Away games for two weeks straight. God, I don't want to go. You might run away again."

"I didn't run away! I… overreacted," Shane protests. Ilya snorts, but doesn't push. Shane adds in a quieter voice, "I would've come back to you. Even without the jumps. I don't think I could stay away for long."

"Welcome to the club," Ilya says dryly and kisses him again. "I do need to go."

"We can text, for now," Shane offers. "I'll call you from hotels. And I'll… think of a plan."

"Ah. Mister Spreadsheet is on the job."

"Shut up. We need a plan if we're going to do this."

"I am not saying anything," Ilya smirks. "FaceTime me when you do the spreadsheet. Will be very sexy."

"Don't you mean boring?"

Ilya shrugs. "Boring, yes. And sexy. Very you. I will be quiet as mouse, just taking care of myself, alone in my hotel."

"Taking ca…" Shane chokes and shoves Ilya off and out the door as he finally loses it and makes full-on hyena cackling sounds instead of laughing. "You're an asshole."

He leans on the door after Ilya is gone, smiling to himself. There are so many things he needs to do today. Go to the optional skate. Check his go bag. Check with the guys on the team who aren't great fliers. Reply to his mom's Abercrombie contract email. Shane will get to it. He just needs to stay in this moment for a few minutes so he can remember it for the rest of his life.

Shane hears a message notification come from his abandoned phone, still on the floor, and thinks, I'm here.