Chapter Text
December 23, 2021 / Quebec
It was their first December at the cottage as husband and husband. They would not have chosen to go anywhere else, and even if they had, the snowstorm was paralyzing a large portion of North America. A snowstorm never seen before, even for the more seasoned Canadians and Russians: thick snow, violent wind, and, strangely enough, lightning.
Shane had prepared their retreat at the cottage after the announcement, reinforcing doors and windows, stocking fuel for the backup generator, flashlights, food, and drinks.
A state of emergency and travel ban had been declared across all of Canada and twelve U.S. states, suspending all professional leagues. Only essential car travel was authorized on the roads, and all aircraft were grounded for four days. As announced, day three was the worst.
The windows of the cottage were covered with reinforced wood except for one. Shane and Ilya were wrapped together on the sofa, watching the news and exchanging texts in different group chats: with Yuna and David, with the Centaurs, with the Pikes. Ilya with Svetlana and Marlow, and Shane with Rose.
After an hour of what appeared to be quiet, the relentless storm, already fed ad nauseam by destruction across North America, on land, air, and sea, shifted.
At 7 p.m., all hell broke loose. From the window, the couple could see the sky tearing open with fury: a hypnotic beauty of light parting the clouds, snow dancing violently in the wind. And a sound neither Ilya nor Shane had ever heard, nor could compare to anything--deep, not loud, saturating every sense. Then the feeling of falling out of their own bodies, blinded by light, and… nothing.
December 23, 2008 / Saskatchewan
Ilya woke from the worst kind of migraine, the kind that announced concussion protocol and maybe weeks off the ice. Last night had been strange. That snowstorm had been something else. He couldn’t believe some people still didn’t believe in the climate crisis. But why did his head hurt so much? He had been drinking tea on the sectional, with Shane warm and close beside him, before the noise and the light… and after they… after they…Fuck. He couldn’t remember what happened next. He couldn’t remember anything.
He didn’t open his eyes at first. His brain began noticing: no natural light on his face, unlike every morning at the cottage with its floor-to-ceiling windows; the sheets were not soft and luxurious like the Egyptian cotton Shane used in all their homes; and the bed did not smell like them: the mix of Ilya and Shane, aftershave, deodorant, sweat. When he finally opened his eyes, he was not at the cottage. He was in a hotel room. The strangest part was not that he was somewhere else, but that he somehow knew this room. He turned, and on the other queen bed, Sergei Tchernovanov was sleeping, a much younger version of the Tampa Russian defenseman.
Ilya was strangely calm. His first thought: a vivid dream, one of the ones in which you are aware that you’re dreaming. He liked those dreams. Sometimes he tried to hack them, flying, saying things, but they never lasted and were always strange. This one was stranger. Too material. Too embodied. He reaches for his phone. Again, too material. Ordinarily, he could never read in dreams, which always frustrated him. His phone was not the brand-new iPhone 13 he had bought three months ago--blue for him, black for Shane--but the first iPhone. He had been ecstatic to be an early user when it came out in 2007, when Svetlana had brought one for him. He checked the date. It was that day. The day when, after months of watching videos of Shane Hollander, obsessing over the Canadian prodigy who could take his spot as first in the draft, he met him.
Ilya still did not panic. He entered the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the light, kept his eyes shut, stood before the mirror, and opened his eyes. Then he panicked.
It was him. 2008 him. Smoother skin, real teeth instead of veneers, fuller hair. He removed his T-shirt, his body too: fewer scars, less muscle, less broad, slightly shorter. He checked his phone again. Many news apps were missing. Facebook--2008.
Ilya panicked, but not for the reasons most people would. He did not spiral about time travel being impossible. Ilya had always been inclined toward esotericism. What terrified him was the feeling he had carried all through those later years, the 2010s, the fear he had worked through in therapy: being ripped from what he believed he did not deserve, what he could never have, love from Shane, friends, teammates, in-laws, or people in Russia. Of course, something had to go wrong. Back to this hotel room. Back eventually to his sick and dying father, to his cruel brother.
Not even six months of having Shane. Every day, coming home after practice, after games. Traveling together. Restaurants. Holding hands. Their homes, plural. Planning vacations. Dinners with friends and family. Everything reduced to only a dream. So maybe that was it, not time travel, but the last decades were just a long dream of what he could never have.
Ilya leaned on the sink and felt something close to muscle memory, in body and mind, bringing back Galina’s words:
Breathe in, breathe out. I deserve love. I deserve to be happy. I am worthy of love. Not everyone leaves.
Breathe in, breathe out. I love Shane. Shane loves me.
Breathe in, breathe out. I can sit in uncomfortable feelings and process them.
And slowly, the thought formed:
I have to find Shane.
I will find Shane.
I will do it again. Better. Not only with Shane, but with my friends, with Russia, with Father, with Alexei, with my niece. Closure.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
You did not ruin it the first time, but it was a close call. You will not this time.
He knew where he was supposed to be next. He left the room, armed with a cigarette and a dream.
***
In Building B of the same hotel, where the Canadian team was lodging, Shane--who had woken two hours earlier--was also locked in his bathroom, phone in hand, scrolling endlessly after surviving a full anxiety attack.
His mind had gone from this is a Truman Show–style prank to I am in a coma. He had come to accept it: 2008, the day he met Ilya, and the day he lost the International Prospect Cup’s gold medal. The internet offered no answers about time travel. Nothing on Reddit, even the dark subreddits. As for the academic papers, Shane, an avid reader, was still out of his depth.
But he made his decision: He would do it again. He would find Ilya and do what he had to.
He was not euphoric. Knowing Ilya for more than a decade, he knew he had to proceed carefully, something he was not sure he could do, practicing restraint after years of unrestricted touching and saying, “I love you,” and a few months of doing it out of the closet.
So now he would have to go back to stolen hours, a few weeks each summer. And this, in the best-case scenario, if he could speed up their idiotic communication-skill timeline: secret nights, hiding, leaving--do it all again.
And the worst part: feeling alone. Because at least the first time, he had not known what it was to be with Ilya, to live with him: the mornings, the nights, the domesticity, the planning, the hand on the neck while driving, the little note to remind him to buy cottage cheese, the scent of his clothes. He had not known before that the fear and anxiety he was living in during those early years (and Ilya’s Ottawa year) were depriving him of so much of a richer and richer life. So he would have to do it again—slightly better, cautious but faster—not ten years.
He would have to do it again with the Voyageurs, knowing the team he had given his life to would turn their backs on him. Knowing perfection, being the golden boy, would not protect him. The truth: given a second chance, he wanted Ilya--faster, sooner--but he still wanted Cups, plural.
This thought made him feel something close to shame. He should not think that. He loved Ilya. He should think about how to get him not in ten years but in three months, like Hayden and Jackie. But the truth was, Shane had another deep hunger. He wanted all of it.
He wanted what others had. The others, the less good, the not prodigies like Shane or Ilya, the deep-shit players like Comeau, or Drapeau, the fifteenth-best players-- they have/had it: Cups, wives/girlfriend(s) multiples and sometimes simultaneously, friends, while he had to spend years so deep in the closet he could reach Narnia.
He did not want to go to a smaller, less competitive team. And he was not even sure that he did not want to remain Ilya’s rival’ish…not rival, certainly not rival, but at least he wanted to play on a team that is a serious contender to Ilya's. He remembers the thrill of playing against and with Ilya. He remembers all the feelings (even if they became more complicated later), that their names were always linked before they were together on a marriage license: Hollander vs. Rozanov. Hollander and Rozanov. Hollander-Rozanov. The lexicon of who they were. Generational talents.
How could he keep both? Be himself and still be Shane Hollander™?
He had conflicting wants. Less than a year since being outed, he was sometimes anxious and tense when Ilya kissed him in public, his body forgetting. But he wanted it. If he had to do it all again, he would. He had learned how to brace for impact. He would be ready.
After an hour of breathing exercises, retracing what he had learned about himself and others, he opened his Notes app:
want:
Ilya
Stanley Cups
Awards
not doing:
Dissociating
Making myself small to make others comfortable
Waiting ten fucking years
Watching the clock, the time he had been waiting for was finally there.
Time to remind Ilya where the smoking area was.
***
Ilya saw Shane approaching. He was smoking a cigarette not for life canon-compliant reasons, but because he needed a cigarette; he had already smoked two.
Shane had been waiting a bit further down for ten minutes already. He had seen Ilya arrive, but he realized he had to calm his nerves—seeing him first from afar—the younger him, his Ilya, the curls, his face. And because even with an older brain, his body was that of a seventeen-year-old, full of too much horniness. So he watched Ilya smoke two cigarettes and walked over at the third. He would not witness lung cancer loading into the love of his life. “You’re supposed to smoke over there,” Shane said. Ilya looked at him, paused. Shane thought maybe he had not done a good job of a nonchalant face; he did not recall this pause from the first time.
Ilya was supposed to say something like “What?” but he could not.
“The smoking area is over there,” Shane continued. After a brief pause, he added, “I’m surprised you smoke.”
Ilya managed to get back to himself and said what he recalled having said the first time: “Okay.”
Oh, Shane thought. It’s good. We’re good. He’s the same. “I wanted to meet you.” He extended his hand. “Shane Hollander.” Unlike the first time, Ilya did not stare at him. He immediately took Shane’s hand to shake it.
Ilya did not want to wait. He needed to touch him, even if it was only a handshake. He lingered a little bit, maybe five seconds that felt like thirty, eyes on Shane.
Shane did not remove his hand.
Their eyes locked.
Shane whispered, “Ilya.”
And Ilya answered, “Shane.”