Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shane’s first mistake was having a head. His second mistake was trying to move it.

“It hurts,” he tries to say, but his tongue is sluggish and flopping in his dry mouth, his jaw stiff, and it comes out more like ihurzz. His skull pounds dully. Bright lights turn the inside of his eyelids a livid red.

“Shane,” a voice says, shaky. “Moya lyubov.”

Shane recognizes the voice. He’d recognize Ilya Rozanov’s voice anywhere. But the Russian words throw him for a second, and his brain starts hazily trying to knit together something coherent—Russian? Is this—no, not Sochi. The Olympics were ages ago.

“Can you hear us, honey?” Yuna, now.

Shane clutches onto his mother’s voice like a life raft. “Mom…”

“I’m here, baby. We’re all here.”

“We…” His head hurts. It feels like his brain has been thrown against the sides of his skull. Which it presumably has, because he’s definitely concussed. He feels vaguely nauseous. This is the worst hangover of his life times fifty.

“Mmhmm, me and Dad and Ilya, baby. We’re all here with you, and we can stay as long as you need us, okay? You took a pretty bad hit out there from Heikkinen, you got knocked out for a little bit and dislocated your shoulder. But they fixed it, and you’re gonna be alright.”

Heikkinen, that’s, that’s the Finnish guy who plays for who, the Admirals? But his parents are here. So was he playing New York at home? Then why is Rozanov here, if they weren’t playing Boston? It’s—none of Shane’s thoughts are quite managing to connect with each other. It’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle made of Jell-O.

“Where are we?” Shane finally cracks an eye open, and it doesn’t help his confusion. Rozanov and his mother are both sitting next to his bed, on the same side, even, and neither of them seems to think this is unusual. Shane’s dad stands down at the foot of the bed. And they all look wrong somehow, or at least off, in some way Shane can’t identify.

Rozanov and Yuna exchange a concerned look, which—Shane doesn’t have the brain cells to spare at the moment. “We’re in the hospital, Shane,” Yuna says cautiously.

Shane shuts his eyes again. “I mean wha’ city.”

“Ottawa,” Rozanov says. “We are in Ottawa.”

So that’s why his parents are here. But…

Shane lifts one eyelid again to look at Rozanov. His eyes are red-rimmed. Like he’s been crying. “Why…why aren’t you in Boston?”

Rozanov’s brow furrows. “Why would I be in Boston?”

“You, you’re captain. Raiders. Boston.”

The room is silent except for the beeping of monitors. Yuna puts her hand gently over her mouth.

“I’m gonna go get the doctor,” David says softly.

“‘Kay, Dad,” Shane says. “‘M gonna go back to sleep.”

He lets his eyelid shutter like a garage door and drifts into a dreamless, chemical sleep.

***

When Shane wakes up again, he feels moderately more coherent. Less like his head is attached to his body with silly string. Presumably they’ve given him more and/or better drugs, or maybe he really did just need a nap.

Someone has thoughtfully dimmed the lights, which helps, too. Yuna sits up in her chair as soon as Shane stirs. She’s the only one in the room with him now. “Shane, honey? Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Can I have some water?”

“Of course.” There’s a little plastic cup on a tray next to the bed; Yuna tries to hold it to his lips for him, but he gently bumps her hand away and takes it from her. He can do this, at least. And he can wiggle all his toes, too. So that’s a relief.

“Is that enough?”

“Mmhmm.”

Yuna takes the cup back from him and sits back down. She starts crumpling it up, absentmindedly crushing it in her hands. “Shane…” she says, hesitant.

Shane is too tired for all this beating around the bush.

“What is it?”

Yuna bites her lip. “Can you tell me what you remember?”

“Um. I guess...” Trying to grab onto a memory is like plunging his hand through molasses. “I woke up here. I took a bad hit from, uh, whatshisname. The Finnish guy on New York. And—I’m not sure if I remember this, or if I’m dreaming?”

Yuna leans forward in her chair. “Yeah?”

“I think—was Ilya Rozanov here?”

Yuna slumps back. Shane feels like he answered wrong, somehow. “Yes, honey. Ilya Rozanov was here.” She says the name strangely. Bitter, maybe. Which would make sense, given that his mom hates Ilya Rozanov. But that still doesn’t answer his question. Why was Rozanov in his hospital room? In Ottawa?

It’s not like—Shane’s stomach turns. He knows Rozanov…gives a fuck about him, probably. If Rozanov had gotten hurt, he’d want to see him. But there’s a difference between visiting an injured player to give condolences and being at his bedside with his parents when he woke up. Apparently hauling ass from Boston to do so, or something.

Yuna interrupts his reverie. “I sent your dad and—Rozanov down to the cafeteria to get some coffee so you could have some space when you woke up. But I’m gonna go get them, and then bring the doctor in, and we can all talk, okay?”

“Okay,” Shane says, because what else is he going to say?

Yuna squeezes his hand and stands up. She looks like she’s holding back tears, and it makes Shane’s stomach flip over. He hasn’t seen his mother cry since—he’s actually not sure he’s ever seen his mother cry.

It might be the worst thing he’s ever seen.

That’s what finally triggers the thick black dread to run through him, creeping down his spine. Seeing his mother’s face drawn tightly, eyes shining.

Something is very wrong.

***

Something is very wrong, but you’d never know it looking at Dr. Chowdhury.

“Hi, Shane,” she says, taking her penlight out from behind her ear like a doctor on a TV show. Her dark hair is in a sleek ponytail; she wears gold wire-rimmed glasses pushed up on her forehead. Her voice is supremely calm as she tells Shane to look at the penlight, now follow her finger just with your eyes, not turning your head, that’s it, very good. She has Yuna step out of the room for the exam, which Shane is grateful for.

The penlight gets put away; a tablet comes out, and the glasses come down onto her nose. “Your eyes are tracking well; that’s always a good sign, means all your cranial nerves are nice and intact. I’m gonna ask you some questions now, is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me your first and last name?”

“Shane Hollander.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a hockey player.”

“And a good one. Can you tell me where we are right now?”

“We’re in the hospital. In Ottawa.”

“What’s the last major life event you remember? Something like a graduation, a wedding, a birthday.”

“Uh, winning the Stanley Cup.”

“What’s today’s date?”

“It’s…” Shane pauses. He reaches for the memory and it slips out of his grasp like a greased doorknob. Or worse. Like he goes to open the door and there’s just no knob at all. Nothing to hold on to. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure.”

Dr. Chowdhury taps something into her tablet, but her face betrays nothing. “Okay. How about what month?”

And surely—Shane should know this. He should know this. He should know what fucking month it is. Panic starts to bubble inside him like hot tar.

He breathes deep, takes his best shot. “October? November, maybe?”

Another tap-tap-tap on the tablet. “What year?”

“I…2016, I think.”

Dr. Chowdhury’s hand pauses for just a moment, hovering above her tablet. Half a second at most, before returning to her efficient, piston-engine pace.

Just long enough for Shane to know he’s gotten that answer wrong.

***

She runs him through a few more memory tests—asks him to repeat a few words back to her, makes him list the months of the year backwards and count backwards from a hundred by sevens. He passes those with flying colors, at least.

She does a little more physical testing, too, has him stand up and balance on one leg—he can do it, but it’s a little tougher than usual, and Shane wonders if he would be able to if he wasn’t a pro athlete who spent hours training his balance and stability. But he can. So. No point worrying, he guesses.

After that, Dr. Chowdhury types a few more notes, and then she sets her tablet down on his little bedside tray. “Okay, Shane. I think I have a sense of what’s going on here. Would you like to have your family in the room while we discuss things, or do you want me to talk to you alone and you can talk to them yourself after?”

“You can bring them in,” Shane says, mostly because his head hurts, and his shoulder still hurts, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t want to have to remember a bunch of stuff. And this way his mom can ask the doctor all the questions she wants. He’s perched on the side of the bed.

The others shuffle in like a bad joke. So your mom, your dad, and your rival-turned-fuckbuddy all walk into a hospital room.

Once they’re all assembled, Dr. Chowdhury pushes her glasses back up onto her forehead. “So, we do have some good news. Based on the results of your CT scan and my examination here, Shane only appears to have a grade two concussion. Frankly, we’re incredibly lucky that it wasn’t more severe. I saw the video of the hit—“

“Was it bad?” Shane interrupts. “I mean. I guess it had to be. How bad was it?”

“Yes. It was bad,” Rozanov says quietly.

Shane startles a little. It’s the first thing Rozanov has said since he woke up the second time. And he’s never heard Rozanov sound like this. So quiet.

“You had the puck,” Rozanov says. He’s staring at the floor. At the door. Anywhere but Shane “Heikkinen came in for a check, but Montgomery was nearby trying to get the puck out, and his stick got caught on your skate blade. And right when he hit you, your feet got knocked out from under you, and…your head hit the ice very hard. Shoulder, also.”

“Oh,” Shane says.

Dr. Chowdhury nods. “That’s about the sum of it. Which brings me to my next point. Shane appears to be experiencing retrograde amnesia.”

Yuna gasps softly; other than that, it’s dead silent in the room. Shane feels numb, and for a moment he wonders if this is another concussion symptom, but no, he’s just…

Amnesia. He almost wants to fucking laugh. That’s not a real thing that happens to people. That’s what happens on terrible soap operas. Episodes of weekly medical dramas.

“Retrograde amnesia is what most people think of when they hear amnesia,” Dr. Chowdhury says, forging on ahead. “Shane seems to have lost some previous memories. He doesn’t seem to be having any issues retaining new information or exhibiting any other major neurological concerns so far, though, which is a good thing.”

What a silver fucking lining.

“What year is it?” Shane blurts it out awkwardly. He’s a little past finesse at this point.

The air hangs heavy in the room. Dr. Chowdhury, consummate professional, is the one to break the silence.

“Today is November 14th, 2023. You told me that you thought it was 2016. So it appears you’ve lost about seven years.”

Seven years.

If Shane weren’t already sitting on the bed, he thinks he’d collapse onto the floor. He settles for staring at the wall. He wants to throw up. He’s not sure there’s anything in his stomach to throw up. He’s not sure of anything. The others are making noise, he can hear his father’s inhale, his mother’s soft oh, God, but they pass right through his stupid, empty head.

He realizes, suddenly. Why his parents had looked wrong to him, looked off.

They’d looked older.

“Is it permanent?” Shane says weakly. “Like…am I just going to be missing those seven years forever?”

Dr. Chowdhury rubs the bridge of her nose. “I wish I could tell you, but the truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Some patients recover fully in a matter of days. Some take more time, or recover partial memory. And some don’t recover. But there’s no real way to tell who’s going to be whom. I’m sorry. I know this must be extremely difficult.”

“If there’s anything we can do that can help this,” Yuna says. “Any doctors, any specialists, any treatments—“

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” David says.

“I understand,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “But the best Shane can do right now is try to let himself rest and heal, let his brain do what it can to recover. All we can do at this point is monitor the situation.” Her voice drops into a gentle register. Auditory kid gloves. “There’s a chance this is very temporary, and it’ll be over soon. But it’s also important that you are aware of the possibility that this will last. And you’ll have to figure out what that looks like for your family.

“Also, aside from the memory loss, Shane is still dealing with the other challenges of a grade-two concussion. We can discharge you to your family today, Shane, but you need to rest for a few days—ideally minimal to no screens, and then you can start working up to some light movement and exercise. But you’re in an unusual spot as a professional athlete in a contact sport, and while this technically may be longer than strictly necessary, I can’t in good conscience recommend you play for at least the rest of the month. Secondary concussions can be much more dangerous, and your head needs to be as healed as it can be before you’re back on the ice. Do you understand?”

Shane doesn’t understand a fucking thing. “Yes,” he says, but two words are just spinning around in his head: seven years seven years seven years.

“Okay. Do you have any questions for me?”

“I do,” Yuna says, and she and David and Dr. Chowdhury pull over to the other side of the room to discuss things in hushed tones.

Which leaves Rozanov the only one still standing next to Shane’s bed. Lurking, practically.

Rozanov’s hair is shorter now than Shane has ever seen it. Remembers seeing it, anyway. His scruff is a little longer.

“So,” Shane says. His feet dangle off the side of the bed.

Rozanov squeezes his eyes tight for a moment. “I am sorry,” he says. His accent has softened over time. The O in his sorry a little rounder, more Canadian. “I am not…handling this well.”

“No, you’re, um. You’re doing fine, I think. I don't know if I’m handling this well, either.”

Rozanov shrugs. “You have not freaked out and run away screaming. I think that is pretty good.”

“Oh, no, I’m freaking out. I just don’t have the energy to run away screaming.”

A ghost of a smile across Rozanov’s lips, there and gone.

“You don’t play for Boston anymore,” Shane guesses. “That’s why you’re not there.”

Rozanov nods. “I play for Ottawa now.”

“Jesus, Ottawa?” Shane says reflexively. “You left Boston for Ottawa? Why?”

“There is even stranger news,” Rozanov says, ignoring the question. “You play for Ottawa.”

Shane’s jaw drops. “It’s fucked up to play a prank like that on an amnesiac, Rozanov. Holy shit.”

Rozanov pulls out his phone and spends a few seconds searching for something. He turns the screen around; Shane winces at the brightness before his eyes can focus.

It’s Shane’s headshot for the team roster. The Ottawa Centaurs roster.

It’s so wrong. He’s spent so long in Montreal blue. The red Centaurs jersey makes him look flushed. And he looks older, too, which is kind of screwing with his head, and his head has already been screwed with a lot today.

“What the fuck, dude. How—why would I leave Montreal? I love playing for Montreal. We’ve won two cups—“

“Three.”

“What?”

“You won three in Montreal. The third in 2020.”

“Oh my God,” Shane says, carefully lying back down against the hospital mattress. “And I left? For Ottawa? Why?”

Rozanov looks embarrassed, almost. “Ah, personal reasons, mainly.”

“The hell does that mean?”

Rozanov runs a thumb back and forth under the chain at his collar, where Shane knows he keeps his mother’s cross under his shirt. “We wanted to play together.”

“Play together—“

“After we got married. We wanted to be on the same team after we got married.” Rozanov tugs on his chain, slips it out from under his shirt. A ring—a wedding ring—dangles next to his mother’s cross. Black and gold. Tasteful.

Shane is a thousand miles outside his body. “We’re…”

“Married,” Rozanov says. He looks nervous, though Shane can’t really blame him for that, he guesses. Not every day you have to tell your husband you’re married.

Shane feels like he’s been hit in the head again. With a sledgehammer, maybe. “We’re…together.”

“Yes.”

“And people…know this?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck,” Shane breathes.

“Are you mad?” Rozanov asks quietly. “That we are married?”

“No,” Shane says honestly. “I mostly feel like this is a really, really fucking weird dream.”

Rozanov reaches out and pinches Shane just below the crook of his elbow. Hard. Shane hisses and snatches his arm away as fast as he can, which is not fast at all. “What the fuck, dude. Now I’m mad.”

Rozanov smiles faintly; in it is the barest hint of the cocky grin Shane’s seen a thousand times before. “Sorry. Wanted to show you are not dreaming.”

“You’re such a dick.”

“Yes. But you married me anyway,” Rozanov—Ilya?—says. A little bittersweet.

“I guess I did.” Shane glances at his hand. “I, um. I don’t have a ring. Do I wear one?”

“Oh,” Rozanov says. “They gave me—when they put hospital clothes on you.” He digs around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out another chain with a ring on it. Like his own. “You wear it on necklace while we play. For safety. Like me.”

He passes the chain carefully to Shane. It’s heavier than he expects it to be. Shane holds the chain draped over his thumb and watches the ring twist on the end, barely shining in the dim hospital light. Black with a thin band of gold in the middle. Like Rozanov’s.

Shane finds the clasp on the necklace and fumbles with it for a moment, but his hands are clumsy with pain and painkillers; he can’t fiddle with it delicately. He exhales through his nose in frustration. Stupid fucking body. Stupid fucking brain.

Ilya takes the chain from him wordlessly and undoes the latch before handing it back to him, and for the first time since he woke up, Shane wants to cry.

He doesn’t. He slips the ring off the chain and onto his finger.

A perfect fit. Like Cinderella’s slipper.

“Well,” he says hoarsely. “Guess you weren’t lying.”

“No,” Rozanov says. He’s not looking at Shane now. He’s looking at the wall, rubbing his hand along the stubble at his jaw. “I have pictures. Of the wedding. If you would like to see.”

Shane spins his wedding ring around on his finger. It’s not hard, not too tight; he could see when he slipped it on that his finger is ever-so-slightly indented, taken the shape of the ring over time. His body remembers what his mind doesn’t.

What happened? Why? How did we end up here? From fuckbuddies, or whatever the hell they never called themselves, to fucking husbands. Out husbands, too, apparently, at least to family, maybe the entire world, and for some reason it’s just now that Shane’s broken brain puts it together—his parents know.

Holy shit, his parents know. He doesn’t even remember coming out to them. His worst secret, what he was always terrified of telling them, and he’s woken up, and it’s just been ripped out of his hands. Maybe a weight has been removed. But the lack of it is throwing him off balance.

He wants to find out what happened so badly. Or not that, exactly—he wants to already know.

He wants his fucking brain back.

He can feel panic fuzzing at the edges, so Shane takes one deep breath, two, to calm his nerves. “Maybe later,” he tells Rozanov. “I think that might be…too much, right now.”

Rozanov nods. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” Shane snaps, and then he regrets it, because Rozanov hasn’t done much wrong except be married to him so far, and Shane’s being kind of an asshole.

In Shane’s defense, he’s had a very bad day.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t be…”

Rozanov shrugs. “You are right. I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t be a dick.”

“It’s okay. You are dick to me often.”

A little laugh punches its way unexpectedly out of Shane. “Shut up.”

Rozanov smiles faintly. “See? You are being rude to me right now. You are already getting back to normal.”

Right. Back to normal. The “normal” world, seven years into the future, where every one of Shane’s most shameful and overwhelming desires have been laid bare for the whole world to see like organs taken out and weighed during an autopsy. The normal world. He’s getting back there.

Except obviously he fucking isn’t, and he might not ever be back to it. The laugh turns to ash in his mouth. Shane’s eyes sting, and he tells himself it’s the dry hospital air.

“Am I,” Shane begins to say, and then he stops, not sure what he wants to ask. A good husband? A good man? Does the world hate me now? Do I bore you? Do you love me? Does it hurt?

He tries again. He looks up at Rozanov from the bed. “Are we…happy? Together?”

Rozanov’s mouth pinches tight, and Shane’s stomach curdles, terrified of the answer. But then Rozanov starts nodding, tiny nods over and over like a bobblehead, and he gives the saddest little smile Shane has ever seen, and Shane realizes this is what just Ilya Rozanov looks like when he is trying as hard as he can not to cry. “Yes. The happiest.”

“Oh,” Shane says feebly.

Rozanov clears his throat. “I think your mother is done talking to the doctor.”

Shane’s parents are coming back to the bedside, heavy creases in their brows.

“Did the doctor say anything else?” Shane asks.

Yuna shakes her head. “Not really. But I’m not going to stop trying to figure out some sort of solution to this.”

“Glad to see you’re still how I remember you,” Shane jokes weakly.

“Very much so,” David says. “More, even.”

Yuna reaches down and squeezes Shane’s hand. “You’re always going to be my baby, Shane. Even when you’re grown up. I’m never gonna stop trying to help you.”

Shane squeezes her hand back. “Thanks, Mom. She said I can get discharged soon, right? I think I wanna go home.”

David nods. “I can go talk to the nurse about that.” He heads through the door.

“Thanks.” Shane looks down at his hospital gown. “Uh, do I have any clothes here? Or do I have to change back into my uniform?”

“Oh, in the plastic bag over there—Ilya, can you grab—thank you, honey,” Yuna says, and Yuna Hollander calling Ilya Rozanov honey is not lending any credence to the idea that Shane isn’t having the weirdest dream of his life.

Maybe he’s in a coma.

Yuna continues, unaware that she’s contributing to Shane’s hallucination-doom spiral. “I sent your father to your place to pick up a spare change of clothes when you were getting your scans and everything done. Luckily, you two live nearby.” The you two startles him. But yeah, of course they live together. They’re married.

Jesus. He and Rozanov married. Living together under one roof. Canada and Russia probably had to sign a fucking peace treaty.

Rozanov hands Shane the plastic bag, which upon further examination holds a pair of sweatpants and an Ottawa Centaurs t-shirt, plus a pair of Crocs. Rozanov leans down to speak quietly. “The plan was for me to bring you home after you were let out of here. But if you would like to go to your parents’ for now instead, I will understand.”

“Oh,” Shane says. He hadn’t even considered it. Maybe vaguely pictured going back to his parents, since he doesn’t know what his own house looks like. Maybe going back to his childhood bedroom would be less unsettling than throwing himself in the deep end.

“I’ll go home with you,” he says instead. “Maybe it’ll help, like. Jog something.”

“You are sure?”

I’m not sure of fucking anything at the moment, actually. “Yeah. Gotta do it sometime, right?”

Rozanov’s face has smoothed out into an impassive look. “Right.”

Shane gets changed and discharged and hugged tightly by his parents and is allowed to walk out of the hospital on his own, rather than getting wheeled to the car, as the nurse had first suggested. He and Rozanov walk to the parking garage together, and it’s in the elevator on the way up that Shane realizes he doesn’t know what his car looks like, either, and wow, having amnesia is just going to be one fucking inconvenience after another, isn’t it?

It feels so fucking bizarre to be walking next to Rozanov like this. In public. It’s like he’s getting away with something he’s not even sure he wants to get away with.

Rozanov guides him through the dingy concrete pillars of the parking garage to a Mercedes SUV, a nice, sturdy-looking car. It’s the type of thing Shane would’ve picked out, and not Rozanov’s style at all.

“Is this my car?”

“No, I thought we would steal someone else’s for fun,” Rozanov says, pressing the key fob to pop the door locks.

Shane climbs in, careful of his sore shoulder. “You’re not very nice to your injured—husband,” he says, forcing his tongue to stumble over the hurdle of it.

Rozanov’s shoulders slump in the driver’s seat. “I am sorry. You are right. I should—“

“No, it’s. It’s okay,” Shane says. “It’s, uh. It’s kinda nice. Familiar. I think, uh. If you were only really nice to me all the time, it would be worse? Because it wouldn’t really feel like us.”

Rozanov looks at Shane from the corner of his eye. “So you want me to keep being an asshole to you?”

Shane toys with his seatbelt. “I want you to be how you normally are to me. Which apparently is kind of an asshole, yeah.”

Rozanov exhales. A hint of a laugh. “Okay.” He finally turns the car on and starts pulling out of their space. “For the record,” he says, twisting around to check behind him as he reverses, “you are also an asshole to me.”

“Oh, I figured,” Shane says.

“Also very nice, sometimes. I am also very nice.”

“I thought we just established we’re assholes.”

Rozanov pulls out of the parking garage. “We are very sweet to each other when we are not being dicks.”

Shane closes his eyes against the too-bright sunlight. “That sounds…nice.”

Even though he can’t see him, he can hear Rozanov soften. “It is. Do you need more sleep?”

“No, it’s just bright. Hurts my head.”

“You keep extra sunglasses in the glove box.”

Shane pulls the handle, and there are his sunglasses. Like a magic trick. “Thanks.”

“Mm.”

It’s another minute before either of them speaks. Rozanov breaks the silence. “This is my car.”

“Hm?”

“You asked, earlier. If this is your car. It is my car. Well, it’s our car. We both use this one the most. Get groceries, drive to practice. But I bought it.”

“Oh,” Shane says. “I thought maybe…I figured you’d be driving a sports car. And it would be bright yellow.”

“I do like those cars. But you said when I moved to Ottawa I should buy something more reliable. For snow. So I buy this car.”

“Because of me?”

Rozanov shrugs. “It made sense.”

“Wow,” Shane says. “Getting you to make a sensible decision. You must love me a lot, huh?” He means it as a joke, but his voice cracks halfway through.

Rozanov’s hands are tight on the wheel. He swallows. “Yes. I do.”

Dirty slush and road salt shove up miserably against the edges of the Ottawa streets. Shane watches them blur gray-brown until the motion makes him sick.

Chapter Text

He feels, rather than sees, the car slow. Rozanov is turning into a driveway. Shane opens his eyes and sees…a house.

It’s a nice house. Big.

It’s not at all familiar.

Rozanov is watching him carefully, trying to spot a glint of recognition that Shane knows he won’t find.

“Sorry. I don’t…remember. Sorry.”

Rozanov turns away, pretends to fiddle with his seatbelt. “It is okay. There is something you should know before we go inside—”

“Please don’t tell me we have a child in there,” Shane says, only half-kidding.

Rozanov chuckles a little. “No. But there is a dog. I didn’t want you to be surprised if she jumped on you.”

“Oh. A dog sounds…fun. What kind?”

Rozanov comes around to Shane’s side of the car to help him get out, which is unnecessary, but sweet. “A good kind. We don’t know, she was found on a farm. I want to get her a doggy DNA test, but you say those are scams.”

“That does sound like a scam,” Shane says, hesitantly taking Rozanov’s arm as he climbs out of the SUV. He tries to remember if he’s ever touched Rozanov like this in his own memory, what little of it remains. Without expecting it to lead to something else.

It makes his chest ache, the ease with which Rozanov offers himself up, how he’s so obviously comfortable being in Shane’s space. Half of a long-practiced dance, and Shane’s forgotten his steps.

“Of course you agree with yourself,” Rozanov says. “All good?” Shane nods, and Rozanov drops his arm, grabs Shane’s stuff out of the backseat.

“I can get that,” Shane protests feebly.

“No,” Rozanov says, and Shane is too tired to fight.

Shane doesn’t know where is keys are—or which key would even work, if he found them—so Rozanov leads them up the path to the front door.

A white-and-brown streak moving at light speed greets them.

“Anya,” Rozanov coos, crouching down and letting her lick all over his face. “Hi, baby. Did you miss Papa? Did you? Papa missed you!”

Anya apparently did miss Papa, because she’s alternating between running around him in quick circles and jumping up to put her front paws on his stomach as Rozanov walks in with the bags.

“Down, Anya, good girl,” Rozanov says. “Very good girl, yes. Did you miss your other dad, too?” He glances back at Shane.

Anya turns, too, and she realizes Shane exists. Shane is frozen in the doorway as she bounds over to him and starts to jump up, her front paws scratching at his legs, her snout nosing at his stomach. She knows him, but Shane does not know this dog. Shane doesn’t know dogs, really, never had one growing up. He’s stone-still as Anya lovingly assaults him. “Uh.”

“You can tell her to get down,” Rozanov says.

Shane’s hands are raised awkwardly by his side. “Um. Down?”

Rozanov bites back a laugh. “Like you mean it. Anya”—he whistles to get her attention—“down, girl!” Anya backs off and returns to Rozanov, who croons something to her in Russian, undoubtedly some sort of pet name or praise or don’t break your other dad, he’s fragile right now.

“How long have we had her?”

“Few years. I adopted her first, before you moved to Ottawa.”

“Is that why you’re her favorite?”

“I am her favorite because I am very cool.”

“Sure,” Shane says. He finally makes it into the actual house, toeing his shoes off and crossing into the living room. Anya is calmed down now, rolled over to show her belly, and he hesitantly crouches to pet her. “Why is her name Anya?”

Rozanov’s hand is next to his on Anya’s soft fur. “After Anna Karenina. Tolstoy. Greatest work of Russian literature.”

“Really?” Shane says, looking up.

Rozanov’s gaze meets his. There’s half a smirk on his lips. “No. Is just her name.”

Shane laughs despite himself. “Asshole. I should’ve known. You can’t read.”

Rozanov shrugs. “I am not paid to read.”

Anya wriggles out from under them, and Shane takes the opportunity to stand back up. “So, uh. Can you show me around?”

Rozanov nods; his knees crack when he gets up. “Right, yes. Well. This is living room.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Shane says. There are some framed photos hanging on the wall, and he wanders closer to see them.

There are two photos, side-by-side. The first photo must be from their wedding. They’re both in suits, Shane’s gray, Rozanov’s burgundy. Rozanov is clean-shaven; Shane’s hair is long. They’re dancing together. Laughing, their faces an inch apart. Shane can’t stop staring at himself.

They’re surrounded by dozens of people, friends and family, some people he doesn’t recognize. His parents. JJ. Hayden. Dozens of eyes on them.

And Shane looks…happy. Really fucking happy.

Bile rises in his throat.

He looks at the next photo.

It’s both of them again, jerseys Centaurs-red. They’ve each got one hand on the Cup, hoisting it above their heads. Rozanov’s got his other hand on Shane’s waist, pulling him close. Shane’s grabbing onto him, the front of Rozanov’s jersey fisted tightly in his hand, distorting the C on his chest.

They’re kissing. Right on the ice. With the Cup.

Shane isn’t sure about the order of operations, how exactly he goes from standing to kneeling on the floor, breath heaving.

Rozanov is by his side in a flash. Second-fastest guy in the league. “Shane! Shane. Are you okay? Do we need to go back to hospital?”

Shane’s vision is blurred at the edges, but he knows this feeling, knows it’s not anything neurological. His heart is what’s cracked open, not his head. Just a good old-fashioned panic attack. He shakes his head. Tears are inconsiderately bullying their way out of his eyes.

Rozanov pulls Shane against his chest, cradling him. “Breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out.”

Shane gasps his way into something resembling control, breathes with Rozanov until his hands stop shaking and he can rub the base of his palm into his eyes. “Sorry, sorry. Sorry.”

Rozanov holds him fiercely. “No sorries. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s a lot,” Shane says pathetically. He feels like a wrung-out fucking dishrag. His head aches. He aches.

Rozanov doesn’t say anything. He rubs his hand along Shane’s back, down, up, down.

Shane doesn’t remember Rozanov ever holding him like this.

“We won a Cup?” Shane asks. His tongue is thick and stupid in his mouth.

Rozanov’s shoulders shake under Shane’s face, and for a moment, Shane thinks he’s crying. But he pulls away and realizes—Rozanov is laughing. Or no. It’s both.

“Sorry, just,” Rozanov says, wiping at his eyes with his shirtsleeves. “Of course that is the first thing you ask about.”

Shane laughs a little, even though it makes his throat ache. “Like you wouldn’t.”

“I would. Yes, we won. This year. We are reigning champions.”

“I’m so pissed I don’t remember that,” Shane groans. “I have four Cups? And I don’t remember two?”

“That is what you are pissed to not remember? Not our wedding?”

“I wanna remember all of it,” Shane mumbles, and he buries his face in Rozanov’s shirt again. “This is so fucking stupid. This is so fucking unfair.”

“I know, moya lyubov.”

“What does that mean?”

Rozanov voice rumbles against Shane’s hair. “‘My love.’”

“Oh,” Shane whispers. He feels like he’s said nothing but oh today.

Rozanov’s hands still on Shane’s body. “Can I ask a question?”

“Dunno if I’ll have an answer.”

“What is the last thing you remember? About…” Rozanov trails off.

Shane knows what he’s asking. About us.

“I, um.”

It’s strange, being asked what do you remember? Because even without head trauma, Shane doesn’t know what he could remember or not. He doesn’t remember every game he’s ever played, every conversation he’s ever had with his parents. It’s not like he can open a calendar in his head and see where the pages have been torn out. Trying to reach back through the years is messy.

But there is something.

“You, um. I came over, in Boston. And you made me a sandwich.”

“A tuna melt,” Rozanov breathes.

“Yeah. And you gave me ginger ale. And it was…it was really nice. Until I got freaked out and left.”

Rozanov inhales deeply against Shane’s hair. “I remember that day very much.”

“Was that when we started…? For real.”

“Mm, no. You got scared. I got scared. Ran away.”

“Then when…?”

“After that season. After—can I show you a video? Not of us.”

“Okay.” Shane finally unsticks himself from Rozanov’s front and sits back on his heels while Rozanov types something into his phone. He flips it around a moment later; it’s a video from the 2017 Stanley Cup finals. The last few seconds ticking down, hockey players leaping over the bench into the ice to celebrate. Shane winces at the screen, and Rozanov turns the brightness down almost all the way without having to be asked. In theory he’s not supposed to be looking at screens at all, but whatever.

“The Admirals finally won?”

“Yes, not the point. Keep watching.”

It’s typical Stanley Cup stuff. Hockey players grabbing onto each other, shouting, embracing, weeping, kissing each other’s helmets. Friends and family making their way onto the ice now, beautiful wives in tight jeans carrying bundled-up babies with ear-protecting headphones.

The camera cuts to Scott Hunter waving someone down from the audience. Helping him onto the ice. And then—

“Holy shit.”

Rozanov chuckles. “That is what you said back then, also.”

“Hunter is gay?”

“Very.”

Shane blinks. “But he’s so…Scott Hunter.” If Shane had ever thought about Scott Hunter’s sex life—which he hadn’t—he would’ve assumed it mostly consisted of politely jerking off to the American flag.

“I know. His husband is called Kip, he is nice. They are very boring. Scott Hunter owns gay bar now, also.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes.” Rozanov puts his phone in his pocket. “And I had been scared. And I was still scared. But you had invited me to come up to the cottage that summer, and when I saw this, I thought…”

“Fuck it?”

“Basically, yes.”

“And that’s when…?”

“Yes, that is when.”

Shane slumps onto the floor, propping himself up on his good elbow. “Wow. I can’t believe we got together because of Scott Hunter.”

Rozanov sighs. “I know. I will never forgive myself.”

They’re silent again for a moment, but it’s a little more comfortable now. Or at least maybe it is for Shane. He clears his throat. “I, um. I’m feeling a little better now. So. Thank you.”

Rozanov puts his hand on Shane’s knee. He looks so earnest that it hurts, that the ache echoes from Shane’s chest into his throat, his teeth. “It is never a problem to help you.”

“Does that happen a lot? The, uh, panic attacks.”

To Shane’s relief, Rozanov shakes his head. “Not often, no.”

“Can you show me the rest of the house now? I think I’m ready.”

Rozanov, to his credit, doesn’t try to baby him. Doesn’t ask are you sure or second-guess. He just stands up and offers Shane a hand. “Yes. I can show you.”

The house is…a house. It’s nice. It’s to Shane’s taste, which makes sense, because he probably helped choose it. Lots of dark wood. There are more photos of them, of friends, of family, and Shane doesn’t freak out at those. Not even at the one in the kitchen of Rozanov and Shane’s mom taking a break from cooking side-by-side, each with a wooden spoon in hand, Rozanov’s arm wrapped affectionately around Yuna’s shoulders. Yuna Hollander beaming with Ilya Rozanov—now isn’t that something.

Out of curiosity, Shane opens the fridge. It looks pretty similar to his own fridge that he remembers—lots of protein, lots of whole foods. Chicken, salmon. There’s a soda caddy, too, though, filled with Coke and Canada Dry. And a few jars with Cyrillic labels, probably from an Eastern European grocery store.

Shane feels like he’s investigating himself, hunting for clues about himself in the way his fridge is stocked. Detective and victim, all wrapped up in one. As if all he needs to see is the crispness of the kale in the vegetable drawer, and he’ll remember everything. Or he’ll find a secret message on the cool brown shell of a pasture-raised egg.

He shuts the fridge. It has no answers for him.

It does have a dry-erase calendar on the front, though, with game days written in his own handwriting, plus stuff like Anya vet and Reebok call. Some things in what must be Rozanov’s writing, too, though it’s half-English, half Cyrillic. Shane wonders if future-him can read it.

The guest bedrooms are unremarkable.

The trophy room is very remarkable.

Lotta shelves. Lotta awards. “Damn,” Shane says. “I got another Conn Smythe?”

“Do not let it go to your head,” Rozanov says. “I got another Hart.”

Shane wanders through the shelves. “Either of us get the Art Ross again?”

Rozanov sighs. “Yes. You. But I have another Rocket Richard, also.”

“You just have to keep up with me, don’t you?”

“Of course. It would not be fun if I didn’t.”

Silver, gold, bronze—there’s more hardware in here than a Home Depot. Feels weird to only remember winning about half of it.

Feels weird, Shane thinks again, and he has to stop himself from laughing hysterically. Understatement of the fucking century. Feels weird not remembering seven years of your life! Feels pretty fucking weird not remembering your husband! Feels a little bit strange, oddly enough, being the closest fucking thing on Earth to a time traveler!

Rozanov can probably see something happening on Shane’s face, because he ushers him out of the trophy room. The problem is that the only room left to see now is the bedroom, which. Well.

It’s their bedroom, is the thing.

Shane wonders which side of the bed he sleeps on. But then he spots a pair of reading glasses folded on top of a book about the Halifax explosion of 1917 on one of the nightstands, so. That answers that, he guesses. The only things on the other side of the bed are a glass of water, a phone charger, and a prescription pill bottle. He wonders what it’s for, but it somehow feels rude to ask, even if the other-him already knows. (Shane should probably stop thinking of himself as the other-him, in case it makes it harder for his memories to like, re-integrate if they ever come back. But it’s hard.)

It’s the shape of the covers that gets him, anyway.

The bed’s been hastily made, the duvet tossed over the top, but it’s obvious from the dents in the pillows, the gentle dips in the mattress, that two people sleep here. That two people sleep here every night, and have for a long time, and that they’re comfortable. This is the bed of a married couple. This is the bed that the other Shane woke up in yesterday morning. This is the bed where he spent hundreds upon hundreds of nights with his—God, husband still feels strange to think, to speak, a new pair of skates he hasn’t broken in yet.

This bed, his and not his. Shane is a ghost haunting himself.

He turns away, looks into the en-suite. “Can I take a shower? I still feel gross from the hospital.”

“Yes. Towels are in closet in there. Laundry basket also.”

“Thanks,” Shane says awkwardly, like he’s thanking a bellhop or a valet. Rozanov takes the hint and gives him his space, leaving Shane alone.

He flicks the bathroom light on, then immediately shuts it back off when the fluorescents hit like a stab to the brain, because oh, yeah, he’s still fucking concussed. There’s light from the window, anyway. Enough to see himself in the mirror for the first time since waking up.

He leans in close, squinting. Analyzing. The main thing is his hair, honestly—he’s never kept it this long, and there’s a few stray silver strands near his forehead. Ugh. But he’s mostly the same, still, which he guesses makes sense. Twenty-five to thirty-two isn’t the biggest jump in the world. Maybe his jaw is a little sharper, the circles under his eyes a little darker. Stubble still patchy as fuck.

He strips off his clothes, too, fumbling his shirt over his bad shoulder, and spins around slowly, inspecting himself. Looking for any new scars, or if he got a tattoo or something. If he’s had any major surgeries. Not much on that front, either; a little spot on his wrist that might be a faded burn, a few moles he doesn’t remember (but did he know where all his moles were before, anyway?).

It’s comforting, sort of. To think maybe he’s not that different after all.

The shower handle is weirdly fancy, and he struggles with it for a minute, like he’s at a hotel. But the shower is nice, good water pressure. He’s switched shampoos; this new one looks expensive and smells ocean-y. (He assumes it’s his; there’s another bottle, but that one says it’s for curly hair.)

He soaps up, then stands under the hot spray with his eyes closed a lot longer than he needs to. Washes the hospital smell away. Hopes maybe this whole thing will just wash down the drain.

It won’t, of course.

They have really fucking nice towels.

***

“I made lunch,” Rozanov says when Shane wanders back into the kitchen after his shower, dressed in a fresh pair of joggers and a t-shirt he’d dug out of a random drawer in the bedroom. Rozanov is grabbing a tray out of the oven. “I thought you must be hungry.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Shane says. They have a kitchen island with barstools, and he slides onto one; Ilya slides a plate in front of him in turn.

A tuna melt.

Shane stares at it like it might start talking. Is this supposed to be some kind of test, or romantic gesture, or—

“Sorry,” Rozanov says, and his shoulders are hunching up by his ears. “I did not mean for it to be—I thought it might be nice. And we actually do eat these for lunch sometimes, still. I can make something else.”

Shane shakes his head, then stops because that hurts, and he keeps forgetting he’s concussed. “No, this is—this is good.”

He takes a bite. It’s perfectly fine. It tastes the same as the one Rozanov made for him last time. Seven years ago, or a few weeks in what he’s privately beginning to call Shane-time.

Rozanov’s also staring at him eating, which is kind of weird. Every time Shane glances up from his sandwich, Rozanov’s still looking, his arms crossed as he leans back against the stove. After about two minutes, Shane feels like he should say something.

“Uh,” Shane says eloquently.

“Yes?”

Shane doesn’t really know how to say can you stop staring at me? So instead he says, “Can you get me my sunglasses? Sun’s kind of bright in here.”

Rozanov wordlessly fetches them from the other room.

“Thanks.”

Rozanov smiles a little as Shane puts them on. “Ah, sunglasses inside. Now you look extra cool.”

“I always look cool,” Shane says, half-assing the bravado.

Rozanov laughs through his nose. “No. That is me.”

And it feels so familiar, Rozanov teasing him like this. Not in a remembering-things way. Shane’s still drawing a blank on that front. But more like…things haven’t changed so much between them, even after all these years.

Shane swallows another bite of tuna melt. “What’s it like? Being married. For us.”

Rozanov’s hands tighten ever so slightly on the oven handle behind him. He looks off to the side, at the calendar on the fridge, their lives organized into neat little boxes

“Sorry,” Shane says quickly. “If that’s weird to ask, or like—”

Rozanov shakes his head. “No, is fine. It is just…big question. Hard to know how to start.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, like he has any idea.

Rozanov exhales hard through his nose. “It is…fun.”

“Fun?”

“Yes. We compete lots, still. Try to, uh, one-up each other. But now we do it with each other instead of against each other. Power play together, also, best in the league. You make playing hockey very fun. And then we get to go home and we are still arguing, still competing, but also still having fun. You still call me asshole, I still call you boring. You remember how much you like competing with me, yes?”

Shane nods. His throat is tight. “Yeah.”

Rozanov takes Shane’s empty plate and starts scrubbing the crumbs off in the sink. “I have never had more fun than with you on the ice. And now I get that all the time. And…” He shuts the water off. “We are not perfect couple. But there is no one else I would rather be with. Because no one else understands what it is like to be us.”

“I don’t know if I understand what it’s like anymore,” Shane mumbles. He lets his chin sink down onto the marble island.

Rozanov shrugs. “It is not so very different. From how we were already. It is just…more.”

“The me I remember being. Who left after you made sandwiches. He was scared to be more,” Shane says quietly.

Rozanov comes around behind Shane slowly, like Shane is a horse he’s trying not to spook, and puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “Yes, he was. I was also scared. But we did it. And it was worth it. I promise.”

Shane doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t shake it off, either. He glances up through the sunglass tint; his eyes land on the picture of Rozanov—of Ilya with his mother. Like Shane had privately, stupidly dreamed.

“I believe you,” he whispers. “I just…I wish I hadn’t missed it.”

Ilya’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “You did not miss anything. You were there, even if you do not remember. And I think you will remember, because you are the most stubborn man on Earth and will force yourself to somehow. But even if you do not, we have many more years for happy memories, yes? More in front of us than behind us.” His voice sounds like it’s made of sheet glass. Strong enough, as long as it doesn’t shatter.

“Okay,” Shane says, and Ilya is nice enough to pretend he doesn’t notice Shane is crying.

***

Shane makes it all the way to seven p.m. before he asks if he can go to bed. He’s spent, even though he did very little but lie on the couch with his eyes closed, listening to the background noise of Rozanov puttering around, tidying up, talking in a soft baby voice to Anya. At some point, there’s soup, and Shane eats about half of it, which is apparently good enough.

He figures if he goes to bed early, it’ll be tomorrow sooner. When Shane was a kid, he got a translucent purple Gameboy Color for his birthday, and he played it constantly on his way to and from practices and games. Probably used up half the AA batteries in Ontario. One of the games he had was Harvest Moon, the farming sim, and there would be things he could only do on certain days. So sometimes Shane would wake up in the game, go check on his little 8-bit cows and chickens, and go right back to bed at 10 a.m. so the next day could just happen already.

It’s like that, basically. Maybe if he goes to bed now, he’ll wake up tomorrow and his head will hurt less, and his memories will be back, and this will just be one weird day.

Rozanov insists on getting Shane settled in bed himself, as if he isn’t a grown man, but Shane is pretty sure Rozanov is fussing to cope, and he’s not cruel enough to take that away from him. He brushes his teeth with the lights off and lets Rozanov make sure there’s a bottle of water and some doctor-approved painkillers on the side table. Rozanov even folds the covers back for Shane to slide into, though he stops short of fully tucking him in like a toddler.

The unfamiliar bed cradles Shane’s body. The curve of his spine. Shane closes his eyes for a moment. What’s the opposite of deja vu?

Rozanov perches at the end of the bed, careful not to sit on Shane’s feet. “Later…” he begins, and then stops.

“Later…?”

Rozanov’s mouth works into a flat line. “I am not going to bed yet, is early. But later, do you want to be alone in the bed tonight? I can sleep in guest room.”

“Oh,” Shane says, because he hadn’t considered that Rozanov wouldn’t be staying next to him. “Um, no, that’s okay. You can sleep here. I mean, it’s your bed.”

Rozanov’s shoulders slump a little. Relief or disappointment, who knows. “Are you sure? I know to you, we are not…”

“Yeah. It’s okay,” Shane says. “Probably good to just, you know, act as normal as possible. In case it helps.”

Rozanov nods, that same tight little bobbing from the hospital. A hard swallow in his throat. “Right. Of course.”

Shane feels like he’s fucking this up somehow. He probably is. He takes a deep breath. “Ilya,” he says, and it still feels awkward in his mouth. He’s perversely grateful to be concussed right now, because it gives him a reason to keep his eyes shut and not have to meet Rozanov’s gaze. “I won’t lie to you. I don’t…I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I feel like your husband yet, exactly. But I think…I…the me I was. Am. Would also want you here. I think…it sounds nice.”

“Okay,” Rozanov exhales, as if any of what Shane just said makes sense. “Then I will come to bed later. But I will try not to wake you up, okay? You need rest.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Gotta be back on the ice as soon as I can to beat you in the scoring race.”

He can feel the weight on the bed shift; Rozanov is standing up to leave, and it sends an unexpected stab of longing through Shane’s chest. It’s partly soothed a moment later when he feels Rozanov’s hand lightly cover his own. “Hollander. I could break both my legs tomorrow and you would still not beat me in the scoring race.”

Shane feels a smile creep onto his face. “Don’t give me ideas.”

“I would have to break yours back. And then we would both lose scoring race to some stupid fucking Admiral like Scott Hunter. Cannot happen, so you won’t.”

Sleep is already lapping at the shores of Shane’s consciousness. “Mm, alright, you can keep your legs. For now.”

“Very nice. Good night, Shane.”

“Good night, Ilya,” Shane says, and he feels the brief, tender press of lips to the back of his hand as he drifts off.

When he wakes up, it’s already past nine a.m. according to the wall clock, and Ilya isn’t there next to him. Shane wonders if he ended up sleeping in the guest room after all. He reaches a hand over toward the other side and pauses. Feels something in his chest unwind.

Ilya’s side of the bed is still warm.

Chapter Text

The thing about being concussed is that it’s so fucking boring. It’s only been two days since he woke up, and Shane already feels like he’s going to start climbing up the fucking walls. Normally he works out six days a week, sometimes twice a day, and staying this still makes him feel like his spine is itchy. And there’s nothing even good to fill the space.

No books, no screens, no bright lights, maybe some soft music or something. But mostly it’s Shane, alone with his headache.

Well, and with Ilya. Who stays home from practice to fuss over him at every opportunity, always offering to fetch him a blanket, a glass of water, Anya. It’s sweet, and it’s deeply fucking weird coming from Rozanov, whose most romantic statement Shane remembers was probably something like you need pillow for your knees?

Now that same man’s thumb brushes tenderly against Shane’s anklebone, putting his socks on for him. Gently tugging elastic past his heel. Caring.

It’s kind of too much sometimes, actually. When Rozanov asks him for the fourth time in an hour if there’s nothing he can get Shane, Shane gets snippy. “No, I fucking told you I’m fine.”

Rozanov wilts a little, and Shane feels like he kicked a dog. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m just not in a great mood.”

Ilya smiles wanly from the other end of the couch, a trace of the old familiar sarcasm in his voice. “Why? Did something bad happen?”

It earns a snort out of Shane.

“I am sorry,” Ilya says hesitantly, a moment later. “I do not mean to be…a helicopter.”

“It’s okay,” Shane says. “I think we’re both just…trying to deal with this.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Can you just…treat me like normal? Can we just, I don’t know, hang out?”

“Okay. No screens, though.”

Shane throws the back of his wrist over his eyes. “No, I know. We could just…talk, I don’t know. I’m so bored.”

“You have mentioned this once or twice, yes,” Ilya says fake-sympathetically.

“Shut the fuck up.” Shane flips him off lazily, then wonders if that’s something they still do to each other. Probably, right?

Rozanov takes it in stride either way. “First you want me to talk, now you want me to shut up. Very confusing, all these orders, Hollander.”

Shane shoves his foot against Rozanov’s thigh.

“Okay, okay, I will talk to you. I have idea for a game.”

“A game,” Shane says flatly.

“Yes, because you are very competitive always,” Rozanov says. “You want to catch up on things, yes? I will tell you something that maybe happened in the last seven years, and you tell me if you think it is real or not.”

Shane considers this. He’s gotten the very broadest strokes of the last few years (Ottawa; marriage), but there’s still a lot he’s missing. He cracks open one eye just wide enough to look at Rozanov. “Is it kind of fucked up to make my amnesia into a guessing game?”

Rozanov shrugs. “Do you not want to play?”

“No, I definitely do.”

“See, I knew you would like game,” Rozanov says, obviously pleased with himself. “Okay, first one. Hayden Pike has seven children now.”

In Shane-time, Hayden has only just told Shane that Jackie was pregnant again a few weeks ago. Shane is ninety percent sure Hayden was gonna stop at four. Or five. Probably. “False.”

“Correct. Four. But four and seven are basically the same anyway.”

“They’re really not. Next one.”

“Hm…you used to date Rose Landry.”

Shane scrunches his brow. “The actress?”

“No, Rose Landry, the Zamboni driver,” Rozanov says, exasperated. “Yes, the actress.”

“Uh, false. I’m—I’m gay, I guess, and I don’t know when we would’ve met.”

Rozanov snorts. “You do not have to guess. I can tell you, you are very gay. And so can your ex-girlfriend Rose Landry.”

There’s no way. “You’re fucking with me.”

Rozanov shakes his head. “For once I am not. It did not last very long, maybe a month or two. You are still good friends, though.”

“When the fuck did this happen?”

Ilya’s expression is tender. The same way a bruise is. “Remember when I made you tuna melt?” And you left, is the unspoken part.

“Yeah.”

“Very soon after that.”

“Oh.” Shane can do the math on that one, even with the brain damage.

Rozanov waves a hand, and his face smooths back over. “It is okay,” he says. “Many years past. Rose is a friend. Also, you told me you were not good at having sex with her.”

“Fuck off, no I didn’t.”

“You really did,” Rozanov says with a smirk. “Because you are super gay and like big sexy Russian men instead of nice tiny American girls.”

“I know I didn’t say those words.”

“More or less.”

“Yeah, less. Next one.”

“You are such good friends with Rose Landry you donated sperm for her to have a baby. He is very cute, looks like you.”

Shane doesn’t even consider this one. “That can’t be real.”

“This one is fake,” Rozanov admits. “Hm, what else. Oh, yes, you know Troy Barrett?”

Shane racks his brain. “Uh, vaguely? Toronto shithead?”

“Ottawa shithead now. He is better now, though. Also gay.”

Shane squints. “This sounds like you’re making it up, but I feel like you’re telling the truth.”

“This one is true,” Rozanov says, idly swinging Shane’s feet into his lap. “He is dating the team social media manager, Harris. They are very cute. More boring than we are, but not as boring as Scott Hunter and his husband.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed him. Are there any other guys in the league that are, y’know…?”

“Gay? A few. I think only one you know is Ryan Price, but he retired. A few others, all mostly retired or playing in different leagues now. No one as exciting as we are.”

“I thought I was boring. That’s what you always tell me,” Shane says.

Rozanov lightly squeezes Shane’s calf. “You are boring, yes. We are exciting.”

“You’re just so interesting it makes up for it, huh?”

Ilya shakes his head. His hand is still on Shane’s calf. “I am. But we are most exciting because we are the best.” His tone is steady, sure.

Shane’s throat feels like he’s swallowed a marble. “Next one,” he says around the lump.

Ilya hears the strangle in his voice, and he looks at Shane.

He looks at Shane the way he did seven years ago, on another couch, in another city, and Shane remembers how it is to be on the receiving end of that gaze. That cracked-open feeling. The urge to hide, to curl himself up and protect his soft underbelly.

Ilya reaches over and tangles Shane’s fingers loosely with his, and his next words are gentle.

“My cock grew two more inches. The doctors say I am a medical miracle.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, his laugh hitching on the way out. The marble dissolves.

————-

On day three, Shane insists on sending Ilya back to practice. Ilya is not happy about this.

“I’ll be fine. It’s only a few hours, I’ll just take a nap or something. You already missed last night’s game. There’s no reason for Ottawa to lose both of its best players just because I’m hurt.”

Ilya scowls from across the kitchen island. “I do not want to leave you alone.”

Shane cuts off another piece of his omelette with his fork. “You’re the captain. You should be at practice.”

“I am also your husband. I should be here. Coach will understand.”

Shane sets his fork down. “You know what would make your husband happy? Making sure this team is in shape to defend its title and go back-to-back on Cups. Give me a good Ottawa team to come back to.”

Rozanov scoffs. “It is November, Hollander, fucking relax. We have plenty of time to secure a playoff spot. There are more important things right now than hockey.”

Shane tamps down his first instinct, which is to say what could possibly be more important than hockey? He has a feeling that this Rozanov wouldn’t appreciate it. He tries to make his tone more conciliatory. “I’m gonna be out at least two more weeks. You can’t be out that whole time just to supervise me. We gotta start somewhere, okay? Just the length of practice is a good place to start. If I need anything, I’ll call my mom, I promise.”

Ilya is still frowning. “What if you fall and hit your head, and no one is there to see? I should have Yuna come over.”

Shane sighs. He loves his mom, but he’s sick of being hovered over, and her being here is not going to help that issue. “I promise to be sitting down the whole time you’re gone.”

There’s a worried crease between Ilya’s brows. Shane doesn’t want to be the reason for it.

He slides off his barstool and comes around the island toward Ilya, reaching tentatively for his waist with both hands.

Shane hasn’t—done this yet, not since waking up. Reached out for Ilya himself, rather than just accept Ilya’s chaste touches. But he wants to, now. Wants to smooth out that crease on his forehead.

Shane pulls himself in against Ilya, and this, at least, is familiar. Ilya’s body against his. Ilya stiffens momentarily before his arms come up in a tentative embrace.

Shane sinks further against him, his aching head nestling against Ilya’s shoulder, and Ilya squeezes him tighter in return.

Shane starts rocking them idly from side to side, letting the hug ground them, letting their breath sync up. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says to Ilya’s collarbone.

Ilya pulls away to look Shane carefully in the eyes. “You promise? And you will call me or Yuna the second you need anything?”

“I promise. I’m gonna be fine,” Shane says, and Ilya sighs.

“I’ll go change,” he says, and after a moment of hesitation, presses a quick kiss to the top of Shane’s head before heading back to the bedroom to get ready.

Shane misses Ilya’s arms around him. Whatever.

He goes back to his omelette. He’ll be fine.

He can’t afford to believe he won’t be.

***

For what it’s worth, Shane does believe Ilya should be back at practice. He just also had a tiny ulterior motive for getting Ilya out of the house.

When he’d gotten home from the hospital, Shane was too much of a headsplitting mess to care where his phone was. Most of his energy had been expended on not letting his brain turn to liquid and slosh down his spinal column or something. When he’d finally remembered to ask the next day, Ilya turned out to have it; he’d grabbed it from the locker room before going to the hospital with Shane.

Ilya had handed it over with a frown. “You are not supposed to look at screens.”

“You showed me the video of Scott Hunter when I’d just gotten home,” Shane had muttered, squinting at his lockscreen. It’s a picture of Ilya and Anya on what looks like the deck of the cottage, their grins equally broad.

“Yes, but that was before I remembered you are not supposed to look at screens.”

Shane’s phone passcode hasn’t changed in seven years, but it honestly just hurt too much to see the screen for more than a few seconds at a time. Not to mention the disapproving look he got from Ilya every time he tried.

“You would be doing the same thing if you were me,” Shane had said yesterday after another unsuccessful attempt to look at his phone was met with a suspicious scowl.

“Yes, but you are supposed to be the responsible one. Stop it,” Ilya had said, reaching over and plucking the phone out of Shane’s grasp. Shane was too exhausted to fight back with anything more than a huff.

Since then, he’s kept off the phone. But it’s been days now, long enough for him to start actually being able to keep his eyes on a screen for more than a few seconds. And there are so many things he wants to find out. He settles in on the couch and turns the brightness all the way down.

Googling himself right off the bat feels like it might be too overwhelming, so he opens his messages instead. He’s got a lot unread; Shane knows Ilya’s been texting his parents and a few friends updates and letting the news spread from there, though he’s not sure if the other members of the Centaurs about the amnesia yet or just thinks he’s concussed.

His most recent text is from “Ilya Rozanov (Husband).” It’s from five minutes ago.

Get off your phone Hollander

Rude. And apparently Shane is less sneaky than he thought. He frowns and swipes out without responding.

He opens the thread with Hayden instead and scrolls up to view the last few messages. Some talk about wanting to go golfing in the off-season more, and then:

Saw the video of the hit tonight. Hope you’re doing okay. Call me when you can

Rozanov called me and let me know. I am so fucking sorry Shane. You’re gonna get through this. Love you man.

And then from yesterday afternoon, a picture of a handmade card with a drawing of a hockey player in Ottawa red and black. The very careful bubble letters of elementary schoolers read Get well soon Uncle Shane! across the top; all four Pike kids have signed their names. Ruby’s drawn a little red gem next to hers. Nice touch.

Shane sends a heart reaction back on the photo and a quick message thanking the kids for the card and promising to call Hayden soon. He glances through his messages with his parents, though they don’t give much away; mostly logistical stuff like Remember you have that meeting with Reebok next week and Do you need us to bring anything to dinner?

Rose Landry has texted him, too, which is fucking insane. She’s texted him…a lot, actually.

SHANE i just found out 1 of my fave restaurants in NY is gonna close next month bc the owner is retiring and his son doesn’t wanna take over 😩😩😩i checked ur schedule and ur gonna be in NY to play the admirals in three weeks so u have to let me take u before it’s gone forever 😢😢😢

confirm this plan with me bitch

oh my god i just saw the news i am so fucking sorry i called you a bitch

i love u i hope ur okay

i know ur gonna be okay actually ur way tougher than this

if you die i’ll kill you and that’s gonna be so hard if ur already dead

sorry shouldn’t joke like that

but obviously i do know ur gonna be fine

ilya texted me you’re awake but concussed so no screens for now but when u DO get this pls know i love you and i hope u feel better soon ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

also call me when you have the time/energy

also lmk about dinner

Wow.

Reading this much text makes his brain feels like it’s doing a bag skate, so he opens his photos app. Shane was never a guy to take a ton of photos, and it doesn’t seem like that’s changed in the intervening years. At some point, he did organize a bunch of his pictures into albums, though—Hockey, Ads, Camp, Wedding, Anya, Ilya, for starters—which is extremely helpful. Score one for Future-Past-Shane.

Hockey, Ads, and Anya feel self-explanatory, and Wedding feels like it might be too much after his little freak-out at their living room photos the other day, so he skips those. He taps on Camp instead.

Shane’s coached at one or two charity camps before, but this album stretches back—he scrolls—five years. There are dozens of pictures of him coaching groups of kids, pointing out something for a drill or bending over to listen to a camper more closely. He looks a little nervous in the older pictures, a little more confident in the new ones. And it’s not just him coaching. J.J. is there, plus Ryan Price. A few other players he’s not sure he recognizes. That might be the goalie from Toronto? A lot of the pictures have them wearing shirts that say The Irina Foundation, which he figures he’ll Google later.

And of course, Rozanov. Shane’s saved more photos of him than anyone else. Ilya looks frankly fucking adorable surrounded by kids. High-fiving a peewee skater, helping re-knot the laces on an extra-small skate. His broad grin without a trace of sarcasm in it for once. He looks so, so happy. Like he’s where he’s always wanted to be.

Shane wonders if they’re going to have children.

It sends a pang through him like a pulled muscle.

He swallows hard and swipes into the Ilya album.

There are apparently 800 photos in this collection. It’s the biggest one by far. The pictures are candids, mainly, or occasionally photos Ilya must have sent Shane himself. Ilya flipping him off, Ilya asleep on the couch with his mouth hanging open. Ilya stupidly trying to cram his long legs into a child’s toy electric Jeep, his knees practically up to his ears. A selfie in front of the bell peppers at the grocery store, for some reason. Mundane things.

The exact type of ordinary Shane had thought—had known, had believed as a fact the way he believed in gravity or evolution—was out of reach.

He’s so fucking sick of wanting to cry.

He scrolls all the way back to the beginning of the album, which his phone tells him is 2017. These pictures are…different from the recent ones.

They’re only photos of Ilya in the most technical sense. Two mugs, a pair of familiar hands wrapped around one, no face to be seen. A sunset on the lake silhouetting two pairs of feet stretched out on the dock. A shoulder here and a knee there, or a stray gold curl poking into frame. Hardly anything at all. Shane could take every little piece of Ilya out of these photos and try to put them together like Frankenstein, and he still wouldn’t have enough to make the whole man.

It’s like that for the first year or two of the album, and then slowly, more and more of Ilya comes into frame as Shane’s thumb scrolls through the years, a mystery revealing itself. A picture of him from behind, manning the grill at the cottage, or bent over the coffee table looking at something with Shane’s dad, his face just off-screen. The mole-dotted expanse of his back in bed, cropped from the neck to his waist.

Ilya’s face, eventually. Puckering his lips at Shane over the dinner table, scowling with an Xbox controller in his hand. One where he looks tan and lazy and satisfied on a beach, his loud Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, holding a margarita. There’s one photo, only two months old, of Shane smiling softly at the camera, his head resting on Ilya’s bare chest, while Ilya presses a kiss to Shane’s hair.

There’s so much love in these photos it makes him feel sick. Or maybe that’s just the concussion. Shane closes his eyes.

A private, childish part of Shane had hoped that this would be enough to fix him. Like a movie: he’d look at the photos and gasp yes! I remember! I remember it all now! It’s a miracle! But there’s not a single twinge of recognition yet, and the more he looks at the photos, the more fucking angry he gets. He—Shane, the other him, whichever—he had this, he fought for it, he earned it, and it’s the absolute most terrible fucking joke he can think of that he’s lost it all again.

Not all of it, he corrects himself. I still have the life I made, even if right now I don’t remember getting here. And I still have Ilya.

It’s cold comfort. He thinks of himself in the picture from two months ago, his head lying on Ilya’s chest, that relaxed smile, and he wants to know what that him did to deserve it that this him doesn’t get, even though he knows that’s not how it works, even though he knows it’s a freak accident, even though he knows sometimes these things just happen. These things happen: it’s what they say to players. He’s said it to his own guys. These things happen: they say it after a bad loss, they say it to the defenseman who pushes off on his skate a little funny and tears half the ligaments in his knee, they say it to that kid a year younger than him from juniors who took a check funny and never walked again. No doubt they’d say it to the guy with a quarter of his life erased like a faulty hard drive.

It turns out you can miss what you’ve never had. You can miss it so much it hacks your heart in half. Right down the middle.

Shane throws his phone to the other side of the couch, not gently. His fucking head hurts. He chooses to ignore it and turns over, pressing his face into the cushions. He breathes steadily, in-two-three-four, out-two-three-four, until he feels his pulse return to normal. Not knowing what else to do, he drifts fitfully off into a shitty nap.

***

Shane knows logically that Ilya was gone for a few hours, so he must have been asleep for a while when he wakes up to the sound of the door opening, but it feels like he got about five minutes of rest.

“Hello?” Ilya calls quietly into the house, clearly trying not to wake Shane if he’s sleeping.

“‘M up,” Shane says from the living room. He sits up, careful not to jostle himself too much. “How was practice?”

Ilya shrugs and perches on the edge of the couch by Shane’s feet. “Fine. They said it was good to have their best player back, of course. Rozanov, we love you, we are nothing without you, we will never score a single goal again if you aren’t here.”

“Oh, did they.”

“Of course.” Ilya takes Shane’s hand and starts rubbing his thumb over the back absentmindedly. “But they are all asking about you. I told them you made me come back early, are already worried about playoff spot even though we are defending Cup champions, and they said ‘oh, thank God, he’s still being weirdo like normal.’ So that is good.”

“What do they know? About…” Shane trails off.

Ilya squeezes his hand. “They know it is a concussion. They know you’re out until December. They do not know about the other thing.”

“The amnesia.”

“Yes, that is the other thing.”

Shane exhales through his nose. “Should we tell them? I mean, if I’m supposed to be back in December, and I still don’t know these guys…”

Ilya purses his lips. “I thought maybe we don’t tell them yet. In case…”

“In case it all comes back by then?”

“Yeah.”

Shane grimaces. “And if it doesn’t? Because…I haven’t remembered anything yet. And it’s been a few days. So in two weeks…I don’t know.”

Ilya sighs. “What is the English phrase? Cross the bridge when we get to it?”

“Yeah. Okay, yeah. We can deal with that then.”

“If we have to,” Ilya says firmly.

“If we have to,” Shane amends. Though a nasty, curdling feeling in his gut is telling him they might have to.

“Anyway,” Ilya says, clearly eager to move on. “What did you do while I was gone?”

“Napped, like I said I probably would,” Shane says.

Ilya raises both eyebrows. “Did you go on your phone?”

“No,” Shane lies.

“Are you lying?”

“Maybe.”

“Hmm,” Ilya says. He looks pointedly at where Shane’s phone has landed near the couch arm. It had been on the kitchen charger when Ilya left this morning. “The doctor says I can have some screen time now,” Shane says defensively. “And I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”

“Yes, I guess I cannot stop you from making stupid decisions,” Ilya says.

“I’m not gonna hear shit about stupid decisions from someone with that chest tattoo.”

Ilya’s hand flies to his chest, mock-offended. “Don’t pretend you don’t like my tattoos.”

Shane frowns. “Tattoos? Last I knew you only had the one.”

“Ah, yes. Right. I have one more. Wait.” Ilya’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt, and he sits up to tug it over his head. And okay, Shane might be concussed and traumatized and amnesiac, but he is still himself, meaning he is still really attracted to Ilya Rozanov. Who has not had the decency to get any less hot in seven years. He lets his gaze linger for just a moment on Ilya’s abs, the golden-brown streak of hair disappearing into his sweatpants, before dragging his gaze back up.

Rozanov raises an eyebrow. “Good to know you still like what you see, Hollander.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, though he feels himself blushing.

“No, no, it’s good, it means at least the smartest part of your brain is working if you still want to fuck me. I will tell the doctors.”

“Shut up, asshole. Where’s this tattoo? Is it a tramp stamp?”

“What is a tramp stamp? It sounds fun.”

“It’s a tattoo on your lower back. It’s supposed to be, like, slutty.”

“Ooh, yes, those, I know those. Maybe my next one will be tramp stamp. Will get your name right above my ass. Though really, you should get mine above yours, since—”

“Oh my fucking God, just show me.”

Ilya is barely biting down his smirk as he twists around to show Shane his shoulder.

“Is that a loon?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ilya slips his hand back into Shane’s. “I got it when I moved to Ottawa. I said it was for Canada.”

Shane traces his eyes over the black-and-gray feathers. It’s a nice tattoo. “Was it?”

“Sort of. It was for a Canadian.” Ilya lifts their joined hands and kisses Shane’s knuckles. Shane’s heart tilts in his chest.

Shane sits up, finally. Just so he can brush the fingers of his free hand over the loon, like he’ll feel the feathers ruffling under his fingertips. But it’s just Ilya’s skin, warm and a little damp from the after-practice shower. “You got this for me?”

Ilya shakes his head gently. He smells like cheap rink shampoo. “Your mother. Yuna is a very special lady.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, but he flattens his palm against Ilya’s shoulder, covering the body of the bird. Seeking out more of Ilya to touch. “Why a loon? Technically our national animal is the beaver.”

Ilya groans. “I would not get a fucking beaver tattooed, Hollander, that is so lame.”

“And a loon is very cool.”

Ilya turns his head away. His next words are spoken to the wall. “It is because of the cottage. The loons at the cottage.” He pauses a moment. “We are…we are very happy there. We get to be…just us.”

Shane is struck by a tidal wave of that nonsensical jealousy again, that envy of the other-him. The one who has gotten to have Ilya at the cottage, gotten to have golden weeks or months of just us.

But he’ll have it again, too, he reminds himself. And he still has Ilya here and now, firm and real under his palm, flesh and blood and a little ink.

Shane leans forward carefully and touches his lips to the head of the loon. It’s the first time he’s kissed Ilya—any part of Ilya—since he woke up. It feels like…a start.

“I like it,” he murmurs into Ilya’s shoulder. “It’s a good tattoo.”

“I am glad you still like it,” Ilya says. “It would be very annoying to remove. Lots of time and money and lasers that hurt.”

Shane shakes his head half an inch, his lips still just above the loon’s eye. “Don’t get it removed.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. “The loon stays.”

Chapter Text

“Ilya?”

“Yeah?”

They’re making lunch. Ilya is still trying to do everything for Shane, but Shane had bitched at him about you can’t keep me on the couch forever, and now Ilya has graciously allowed him to chop up broccoli and bell peppers for a stir-fry.

“What’s the Irina Foundation?”

Ilya’s got a tell; his cheeks suck in just a little, highlighting the harsh, lovely planes of his mountain-range face. He continues to chop the chicken breast evenly. “Our charity. How did you learn about that?”

“I was looking through the photos on my phone. We have a charity?”

“Yes. Did you find the secret sex photos album?”

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

Rozanov raises his eyebrows at his chicken breast. “He thinks I am joking…”

Shane narrows his eyes. There’s no way—not the point right now. “When did we start a charity?”

Ilya tips his head back when he counts back. “Ah—about four years, now. It was part of our plan.”

“Our plan?”

“Yes. We made this whole big plan. I come to Ottawa, we are not such big rivals. Then we start a charity together, people say ‘look, enemies working together, how sweet.’ And we are allowed to be friends in public, and then eventually…”

“Eventually we came out?”

“Ah—yes, eventually.” That tic of his cheek again. “But first, we started the charity.”

Ilya lifts his cutting board and pushes the chicken into the hot pan with his knife. (Shane winces to see him scrape the sharp edge along the wood. You’re not supposed to do that with your knives.)

“Why is it called Irina?”

“After my mother.” Ilya picks up a wooden spoon and pokes at the chicken in the pan. “It is, uh. Mental health charity. Suicide prevention.”

“Oh,” Shane says inelegantly. He’s pretty sure he gets the implication, but he also really wants to make sure he’s not misunderstanding this situation, like he sometimes does. “Did she…?”

Ilya’s face is as impassive as a judge’s. “Yes. When I was a boy.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Ilya shrugs. He won’t look up from the pan. “It was a long time ago. Twenty years.”

“I’m still sorry.” On instinct, Shane steps behind Ilya, wrapping his arms around him as he plasters his front to Ilya’s back, perching his chin on his shoulder. Ilya leans into it, tilts his head back to rest on Shane’s shoulder.

It feels almost too sweet to hold Ilya so wholly. It’s a type of care Shane is only used to giving and getting in bits and snatches in the years he remembers with Rozanov. Scrounging for and stealing affection like a pickpocket. The rare treat of a kiss on the cheek, like a coin from a rich man’s purse.

Ilya’s voice is nearly a rumble. “You have seen the medicine next to my side of the bed, yes?”

“I didn’t know if I should ask.”

“You could have asked, it would be okay. But I am like my mother, sometimes, a little. Depressed. But she did not have medicine. I do.”

A feeling like a bowling ball dropping into his stomach. Shane has spent the last few days wallowing in so much self-pity (okay, deserved self-pity, but still) that he’s barely fucking thought about how all this is affecting Ilya. His husband, who apparently has a history of depression Shane knows nothing about, and a family history of suicide. How the fuck is he coping with this? God, what if he’s not, and Shane just doesn’t know how to read the signs anymore? He is so fucking useless.

He squeezes Ilya tighter to him without thinking about it. “And you’re…doing okay?”

Ilya rests one of his hands on top of Shane’s. “It is okay. Not perfect, but pretty good. Medicine helps. Therapy helps. You help.”

“I don’t know how much help I might be lately,” Shane says, unable to keep the bitterness from leaking through.

Ilya turns his head to look Shane square in the face.“Hey. You always help. Always.”

It’s too much eye contact. It’s too much. Shane presses his forehead down into Ilya’s shoulder. He feels the muscles working underneath the skin, silent and powerful, as Ilya stirs.

“Hollander.”

“Yeah?” Shane says to Ilya’s trapezius.

“Even now you help, okay? Because you are very good eye candy. Very pretty, good for my mood.”

Shane’s wheezing exhale is muffled by Ilya’s shirt. “Shut up.”

“No. I think it is time for the vegetables. Add them, please.”

Shane doesn’t want to move from this spot, Ilya solid and warm in his arms. “You add them.”

“I must do everything around here. I am like Cinderella,” Ilya says, sighing dramatically.

Shane tips his chin up to finally rest on top of Ilya’s shoulder. “Mm. Well, you do like balls.”

Ilya laughs with genuine delight. “A real joke! See, you are feeling better already.”

“Maybe. My head hurts less often. Light hurts a lot less. I want to get back on the ice soon. I’m tired of not moving my body.”

Ilya snorts as he adds the vegetables. “Yes, I know. But you heard the doctor, yes? No playing until December.”

“I didn’t say I had to play,” Shane says stubbornly. “I could come back for practice. I’ll wear a no-contact jersey.”

“You can come back to practice when you can watch a game on TV without wearing sunglasses, Hollander.”

Shane unwraps himself from Ilya and leans back against the island, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll talk to the trainers. I’ll let them judge if it’s safe for me to come back.”

Ilya glances back over his shoulder. “You know I am your captain now, right?”

Shane shrugs his shoulders all the way to his ears, petulant. “That doesn’t make you my boss.”

Ilya actually turns around from the stove to give Shane a look. “Literally it does, yes.”

“The coach is my boss.” Shane frowns. “Wait, who the fuck is our coach?”

“His name is Brandon Wiebe. Nice man. Good coach, young for a coach. And he will also not let you back on the ice three days after a concussion.”

“It’ll be four tomorrow,” Shane retorts. “You’re gonna burn lunch.”

Ilya flips back around to tend to the stir-fry. He stirs the pan aggressively for at least thirty seconds before he speaks. “Alright. Compromise. A week, okay? And we check with Dr. Chowdhury. And the trainers. And the coach. And me again. And then, maybe, practice. In no-contact.”

It’s a pretty good deal, but Shane doesn’t want to give in so easily. “And if I say no?”

“Then you wait whole two weeks like the doctor said the first time. You have nothing to negotiate with.”

Rozanov is, annoyingly, correct. “Whatever,” Shane mutters.

“Deal?”

“Fine. Deal.”

“Good. Now can you please get me the soy sauce?”

“No.”

Ilya mumbles something under his breath in Russian as he leans over to the far corner of the counter for the soy sauce. “Cinderella, I tell you.”

***

Montreal is playing in Ottawa the next day. Shane isn’t allowed to play—he’s not even allowed to go to the rink to watch in person, it’s too noisy—but it means Hayden can come visit him for a few hours before he has to report to the rink. Ilya leaves early, claiming he has errands to run before he has to head to the arena, but something about his tone suggests that he’s finding an excuse to not be there when Hayden comes. So presumably that’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy relationship, which actually kinda sucks. Shane doesn’t like the idea of his husband and his best friend not getting along.

“Hey, dude,” Hayden says when Shane opens the door. He says it in a tone you would reserve for an injured dog, or a particularly shy child. “How are you?”

Shane shrugs. “Uh, I’m okay, I guess. You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

Hayden groans and scrubs a hand across his face. He’s got a little gray at his temples now, and more beard scruff than Shane’s ever seen on him. “Sorry, man. I have no fucking idea how to handle this.”

“That makes two of us. Come in.”

Hayden does, toeing off his shoes hastily, and then he wraps Shane in a fierce hug. Shane thinks this is maybe more likely to injure him than another hit on the ice. “Hey, hey, I’m not dead. I didn’t die.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Hayden says, suspiciously stuffy-sounding. “Let me be like, a little freaked out about this for five seconds, okay?”

“Five,” Shane says, just to be obnoxious. “Four.”

“Alright, tough guy, alright,” Hayden says, finally pulling back. “You don’t want anyone worrying about you, I get it.”

“I just want things to be normal again,” Shane says. “Just like—treat me like normal, as much as you can, okay? Do you want a beer?”

“I probably shouldn’t before a game, but yes. And, uh, normal for you now? Or normal for…I’m not exactly sure what you remember.”

Shane takes them back into the kitchen and grabs a beer for Hayden, a ginger ale for himself. “To about the end of 2016, I think.” He freezes, his hand still poised to crack open his soda can. “Wait. Fuck. Jackie was pregnant. How many kids do you have now?”

“Just the four,” Hayden says immediately. “Amber. The newest one is Amber. She’s six. No more past that. Hang on, I have photos.”

“Just four,” Shane says. “Four is so many.”

Hayden chuckles as he pulls up his photos. “Dude. You see these gray hairs? You think I don’t know that? The twins are ten going on twenty-five, I swear to God. They have phones now.”

“That’s so messed up. They’re still babies to me.”

“How do you think I feel?” Hayden flips his phone around to show a nice, professional photo of the whole Pike family in matching white shirts and khakis on a beach somewhere. The kids are way, way too old to be little Ruby and Jade. Arthur’s smile is missing a few teeth. The last girl—a miniature clone of Jackie—Shane doesn’t even recognize. And she’s not even a tiny baby he hasn’t met yet. She’s six, that’s like—that’s a whole person he doesn’t even know.

“I,” Shane says, and cuts himself off. He isn’t sure how to ask what he wants to ask. “I know we don’t live as close as we used to, so I guess we don’t see each other as much. But are we still…?”

Hayden’s gaze softens. “Dude. You’re still my best friend.”

“And the kids? They still know me, they remember me, right? I don’t know how much they might remember from before I moved to Ottawa. I don’t…” I don’t remember most of their lives.

“Oh, yeah, absolutely, are you kidding me? Every single weekend, it’s are Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya gonna come over? No, I don’t wanna play with you, I wanna play with Uncle Shane. Uncle Ilya braids my hair better. Honestly, I wish they remembered you less sometimes.”

Shane snorts. “Rude. So, Uncle Ilya, huh?”

Hayden shoots him a look. “Don’t get me started. He tells me it’s his number-one goal in life to get my children to like him better than me. And to like Ottawa better than Montreal.”

“Is it working?”

“Of course it is,” Hayden sighs. “He buys them all new Rozanov jerseys whenever they outgrow the old ones. There’s more shit in my house that says Rozanov than says Pike.”

“He tried to convince me you have seven kids now.”

“God, of course he fucking did.” Hayden shudders. “Jesus. Seven. Absolutely not. Your husband’s a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Believe me, I know.” Shane fiddles with the tab on his can, spinning it until the metal threatens to snap. “He’s been, uh. Really protective of me since I got home. It’s been a lot, but it’s…nice.”

“I don’t blame him,” Hayden says. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the video, but it was a rough hit. If it were Jackie…” He shakes his head. “Is Rozanov here, by the way?” He glances around, like Ilya might pop up from inside a cabinet.

“No, he cleared out before you got here.” Shane hesitates. “Do you guys not like each other? Is there a problem there I don’t know about?”

Hayden inhales and exhales a slow breath through his mouth. “I don’t not like him. Sometimes.”

“Wow.”

Hayden throws his hands up. “You know how he is. He’s an asshole on purpose. He calls me Montreal’s fourteenth best player. It used to be fifteenth, but you went to Ottawa.”

Shane winces. “Sorry.”

“Look,” Hayden says. “I don’t actually hate the guy, mostly. And he doesn’t actually hate me. He just likes driving me crazy deliberately, and then I get mad and call him an asshole, and then he acts all offended like he wasn’t provoking me five seconds ago. We just…it’s oil and water, you know? We just do not mix.”

Shane chews the inside of his cheek. “Right.”

“But,” Hayden says, and he makes sure to catch Shane’s eye. “But. Even though I’m not exactly the president of his fan club…I know he makes you the happiest I’ve ever seen you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s a really, really good husband to you. And that’s what matters here.”

Shane smiles a little and ducks his gaze down to the countertop. “That’s good to hear.”

“And I’ll give him credit for one more thing,” Hayden says. “He’s annoyingly great with kids. I say it’s because he’s just a giant eight-year-old. But actually, he’s gonna be—you’re both gonna be—a really good dad one day.”

Shane thinks back to the photos in the Camp album. Ilya surrounded by his gaggle of four-foot-tall hockey players. “Yeah, I think he is.”

“Ugh, you have that face on,” Hayden says.

“What face? This is my face.”

“Yeah, exactly. That’s your thinking about Rozanov with kids face. Ninety percent wistful, ten percent horny.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“No. I have to see that face every single time you two come over to my house. It’s awful.”

Shane flushes. “I don’t even—whatever. I—the version of me in my head now, what I remember, I wasn’t even dating Ilya. I definitely wasn’t thinking about having kids with him. There’s no way I have a face.”

Hayden takes a swig of his beer. “Okay, dude. I’m telling you, your brain might not remember. But your face sure does.”

“Whatever,” Shane mutters. “We’re not even—whatever.”

“Not what?”

Shane finally snaps the tab off his soda can. “Nothing.”

“No, it’s something,” Hayden says, frowning.

Shane half-shrugs, a single-shoulder effort. “I don’t know. He’s been giving me my space, I guess.”

Hayden cocks his head. “What do you mean? Rozanov has literally never given you space, ever. When you guys come over we basically only need one extra chair.”

“Fuck off. No, I mean…he knows that in my brain right now, that I don’t remember, like, being together for real. So he’s not pushing it. I don’t know.”

“Wait,” Hayden says. “So you haven’t been…?”

“I mean, I have a concussion,” Shane says defensively. “It hurts, it’s annoying. I don’t know if I’d be in the mood to hook up even if I had all my memories.”

Hayden scrunches his face up. “Ew. Not what I meant. I just meant, like, you’re not—I don’t know, dating?”

“Technically we aren’t dating. We’re married,” Shane mumbles.

“You know what I fucking mean.”

“Does Jackie still have the swear jar going? You’re gonna be paying your kids’ tuition in loonies.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Shane slumps. “I don’t know. We sleep in the same bed. We hug. But I haven’t kissed him or anything. I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a headfuck, I guess? I don’t know. To him, I’m his husband. To me, right now, he’s…”

“The guy you’ve been secretly fucking since you were a teenager?” Hayden says flatly, and Shane winces a little at it, because it still is so weird that Hayden knows.

“Yeah. Or like…” Shane rubs his temples. “God, I hate talking about this.”

Hayden gives an encouraging little nod, like go on.

“Maybe I had—have—more feelings for him? But I was scared of it? And then I woke up married to the guy. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“To you or him?”

“Both. He doesn’t have his husband. I don’t even have a, a boyfriend.” He stumbles over the word.

“I mean,” Hayden says carefully. “Do you—2016-brain you—want to be his boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says miserably. “I never thought it was an option.”

“It’s an option now.”

Shane buries his face in his hands. “Fuck. Yes. I think so? Yes. I just don’t know how to do that.”

“Well, the good news is that you can be pretty sure he likes you back.”

“Yeah, but…I’m still,” Shane pulls one hand away to flap vaguely at his head, indicating all of this, generally. “I like him, Jesus, but I don’t know if I love him. And I don’t wanna like, lead him on somehow.”

“Shane. I don’t think you can lead your own husband on. He’s already there, dude. He’s been led,” Hayden says.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I’m ready to be someone’s husband,” Shane says. He exhales, a little wheezy. “I’m kind of being thrown into the fucking deep end here.”

“You got there the first time, though. I think you can do it again.” Hayden reaches over to squeeze Shane’s shoulder before Shane can work himself into a full panic attack. “Hey. You guys are good together. So take your time, but I think you’ll get to where you need to be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hayden says with an easy confidence. “You did it once already, and now you have, like, a spoiler alert. You already know how it’s gonna end up.”

How it ends up: a wedding, and a Cup, and a dog, and a house in his hometown. A bed with twin dips in the mattress.

There are worse endings.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane groans, not-so-abruptly overwhelmed. “This is too many feelings.”

Hayden waves the white flag, thank God. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop. No more feelings talk.”

“Good. Come play fucking Uno with me.”

“Why are we playing fucking Uno?”

“Because I can’t look at screens long enough to play Chel, so all my entertainment has to be analog now.”

They play fucking Uno. Hayden catches Shane up little by little about how the kids are doing, about the news, about major trades and hockey moments from the last few years. He’s trying obviously not to make Shane feel too awful about having missed so much, and sort of succeeding.

It helps that Hayden loses badly at Uno four times in a row, because at least it means Shane gets to win something.

“Are you taking pity on me? I don’t want a pity victory.”

“I fucking wish I was taking pity on you,” Hayden says despondently. “I didn’t know you could actually be bad at Uno.”

“You’re a groundbreaker.”

“Fuck you, too, buddy. Do you make Rozanov play this with you?”

“Yes,” Shane says, putting down a Draw Four that makes Hayden look as though he’s contemplating lying down in the street to let a car run him over. “Though my parents came over last night and we played Yahtzee.”

Hayden frowns. “Isn’t Yahtzee loud? I feel like rattling dice would be horrible after a concussion.”

“I played with earplugs in.”

“Yeah, if I were married to Rozanov, I’d need earplugs in the house, too.”

Shane picks a card off the discard pile and flicks it at Hayden. It flutters jerkily off to the side like an injured bird. “Be nice. I thought you didn’t hate him.”

“I don’t! He would say the same thing about me! Worse, probably!”

“So it’s for the best you two are separated, huh? Like you have to do with the twins when they bicker? You know, like children?”

“Take it up with him. He always starts it,” Hayden mumbles.

“He’s literally not here,” Shane points out. “You just started it on your own.”

“Alright, uncle, whatever. I’ll stop being bitchy about your husband, who is one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met, but ultimately a good person underneath, and was very understanding to me after—” Hayden stops mid-sentence.

“After what?” Shane asks, studying his hand. He’s got too many blues.

“Nothing,” Hayden says. It might sound convincing if his voice didn’t crack.

Shane looks up. “Hayden. After what?”

“Um. I don’t know how much you know,” Hayden says slowly.

Dread starts creeping its way up Shane’s spine. His heart kicks in his chest. “Know about what? You’re kinda freaking me out here, dude.”

“Fuck,” Hayden mutters. “Oh, fuck. I’m so stupid.”

“Hayden,” Shane says, a warning. “What the fuck is going on?”

Hayden looks at the ceiling. “God, Jackie is gonna kill me. Okay. So, before I say this—I should say it’s nothing urgent at this moment, like nothing that’s an emergency you need to deal with right now. But have you, like, Googled yourself since waking up?”

“Not yet,” Shane says. “I’ve been trying to stay offline.”

“Good,” Hayden says. “That’s good. But, uh, what do you know about how you came out?”

“I…” Shane thinks for a moment. “I actually don’t know. I, we haven’t talked about that yet. I guess I assumed I came out at some point after Scott Hunter? When I signed with Ottawa? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. There’s been a lot going on.”

Hayden looks seasick. “Right, so. Okay. The thing is…you didn’t…get to come out on your own terms.”

Shane goes cold at the fingers and toes first. It spreads up his body like gangrene. “I got outed?”

“You both did,” Hayden says, sounding as if it’s being punched out of him. “And it was my fault.”

“Hayden,” Shane says. He’s deathly still. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

It spills out of Hayden in a rush, like vomit: the Fanmail, the mirror, the leak. The reactions (some positive, too, he emphasizes) from the fans, the Montreal locker room, the league. The trip, the fucking trip. How Shane hadn’t so much chosen to leave for Ottawa as been pushed there, so long and good luck, who cares you brought us three cups.

“And, um, at the time, Roz—Ilya said he didn’t blame me, that it was an accident. But, um, honestly, I do still blame myself. And I get it if you, you don’t forgive me.”

Shane puts his head between his knees, gasping for breath. He doesn’t fucking care about blame right now. He doesn’t know where he put his Uno cards. He’s gasping, gasping, blackness pushing in like overgrowth at the edge of his vision.

A hand on his back. “Shane, buddy, you gotta breathe.”

Shane flails out at the hand, smacks some part of Hayden. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Okay! Okay. I won’t. Just breathe, okay?”

“I fucking”—gasp—”know I have to breathe.”

“Do you want me to call Ilya?”

Shane shakes his head, past the point of speech. Every gulp of air tears through his chest.

“Okay, I won’t call Ilya. I’m gonna wait this out, though, okay?”

Shane’s too far gone to tell Hayden no or please stay or get out, so he doesn’t respond at all. Just sits there hyperventilating like a fucking idiot.

He got outed. They got outed. His team hated him. The league hated him. Every fucking nightmare he’s had for six years—ten years?—every one came true, and he’s had no fucking clue for days, no one fucking told him.

The world ended. Shane missed it.

Eventually, Shane’s breathing slows down, because even his professional athlete’s body isn’t able to sustain that pace forever. Feeling oozes sluggishly back into his hands and feet; he rocks back and forth gently as he comes back into himself.

“Are you…feeling better, now?” Hayden asks quietly.

Shane makes a noise that’s something like eeughh.

“Alright,” Hayden nods, as if he’s made sense. “I’m gonna get you some water, okay?”

“Errnngh,” Shane says eloquently.

Hayden returns with a glass and watches Shane chug half of it down in one long pull.

“Okay,” Shane finally says, winded. “Okay. Sorry about that.”

“Dude, don’t fucking apologize for having a panic attack. I’m sorry for being such an idiot.” Hayden winces. “Um. Now and then.”

Shane hugs his chest to his knees. He stares outside at the bright winter afternoon. There’s no snow on the pine trees. “I, um. It’s not your fault, I guess. I don’t know if there was ever going to be a good way to find out about…that. Maybe better it happened now than…reading Wikipedia alone, or something.”

“I’m still so fucking sorry,” Hayden says.

“‘S’okay,” Shane says, but he can tell his voice is even flatter than usual. He takes a deep breath in. “You said…we’re still best friends, right? Uncle Shane, Uncle Ilya with the kids?”

“Absolutely,” Hayden says. “Absolutely, one hundred percent.”

Shane nods haltingly. “Then I guess…future-me didn’t blame you. Or at least he forgave you if he did. So I have to trust his judgment. My judgment.”

“Can I give you a hug?” Now Hayden sounds like he’s on the verge of tears, too.

“Yeah,” Shane croaks, and Hayden barrels across the couch to squeeze him ferociously. His hands are balled up into fists against Shane’s back. Hayden Pike’s no real brawler, but Shane’s seen those fists put to use before. He’s seen them drive deep into the gut of an enforcer and knock out teeth. He’s seen Hayden Pike’s fists bruise a message right across the cheekbone of any motherfucker who came after Shane Hollander.

Shane closes his eyes and lets himself be held by the closest thing he’s ever had to a brother.

“Don’t let this get your head too fucked up,” he says. “You have a game later.”

“Oh my God,” Hayden says, shaking a little. “Of course you tell me that. You know I’m playing your team, right?” He pulls back from the hug, finally, and wipes at his eyes with his thumb.

“Yeah, but I want Ottawa to kick your ass fair and square.”

Hayden exhales through his nose. “You probably will. You’re the defending champs, and, well—does it make you feel any better to hear that Montreal is fucking trash without you?”

Shane thinks about it. It’s hard to turn off so many years of Metros loyalty, especially as the captain, so part of him actually does feel bad to hear that. But the meaner, pettier part of him says Well, that’s what you get! So. “A little.”

“Good,” Hayden says. “Good. You deserve that.”

“Even if it means you’re stuck on a shit team?”

Hayden shrugs, his mouth a flat line. “Eh. Is what it is. I got three Cups with you as my captain, and that’s a hell of a lot more than most people get. Or a lot of those fuckers deserve, honestly.”

“You earned ‘em, too, Hayd,” Shane says. “I couldn’t have gotten any of them without you.”

“Don’t make me cry again, Hollander. You said you wanted my head on right.”

“Then get it together.” Shane looks at the clock. “Don’t you have to go soon?”

“I got distracted,” Hayden says dryly. “Are you good? If I go now?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Alright, I’ll head out.” Hayden gets up, and Shane does too, to hug him goodbye and see him out the door.

Hayden hesitates on his way out the door. “Hey. We’re good, yeah?”

Shane offers him a fist bump. “Yeah. We’re good.”

Hayden half-smiles and bumps his fist. “Time for me to go get my ass kicked.”

“Have fun, don’t score too much.”

“I never do, Hollander! I never do.”

***

Hayden is a liar; he scores that night to help the Metros beat Ottawa 3-2. Annoying. Not great for Shane’s mood, which has been weird all afternoon and evening since his panic attack. And that’s on top of the TV screen still giving him a bit of a headache. He’d had to watch the game on mute.

It’s late when Ilya gets back from the rink. “Shane?” he calls out as he comes through the front door.

“I’m lying on the couch,” Shane says. “As usual.”

Ilya comes around the couch and crouches in front of him, concern furrowing his brow. He looks annoyingly handsome in his game-day suit, his golden-brown hair just long enough to curl over his collar. “Are you okay? Pike told me to check on you. He didn’t say why.”

“M’fine,” Shane says dryly, and it sounds fake even to him. His head hurts. He feels pissy.

“Be honest,” Ilya says, and it twigs something in Shane, makes his eye twitch.

“Oh, so I have to be honest? That’s fucking rich.”

Ilya frowns. “Shane—”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me we got outed,” Shane says. Statement, not a question.

Rozanov mutters something in Russian under his breath. “Pike told you.”

“Yeah, he did. Because you didn’t. No one did.”

“Shane—”

“Don’t fucking Shane me. Why didn’t you say something? So I didn’t have to find out like a, a fucking idiot—”

Rozanov sighs. “You were hurt, you are hurt, it did not seem like the time—”

Shane struggles to sit up. “Well, when was the time going to be?”

Rozanov stands back up from his squat and pushes his hand back through his hair. “I don’t know! I didn’t have big fucking plan!”

“So you were happy to just let me, what, be clueless—”

“I would have told you! At some point!”

“At some point,” Shane says. His head fucking hurts, he doesn’t want to be yelling, but he can’t help it. It’s spilling out of him like ink. “At some point. I’m not a child—”

“I know you are not, fuck!” Rozanov’s tie swings loosely as he paces. “But you are hurt, Shane, you are sick. I am sorry if I did not want you to wake up and right away hear about the worst fucking thing that ever happened to you.”

“Who are you to decide what I get to know?” Shane spits.

Rozanov shoots him an astonished look. “Your husband, maybe? Huh? You think I am having fun with this? You think it is fucking easy for me?”

Shane scoffs. “And it’s so easy for me—”

“I did not say that, I did not say that.”

“What else are you not telling me?” Shane asks, and to his horror, he can feel the sharp edge of a cry in his throat.

“I am not trying to keep secrets from you, Shane, fuck.” Rozanov drops back down into a squat that cannot possibly be comfortable in suit pants, burying his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

“What else?” says Shane, and he sounds like granite.

“I don’t know. Nothing, nothing else on purpose. That was the biggest thing. Fuck,” Rozanov says, his voice muffled in his hands. He glances up, his eyes red-rimmed. “But also. I can’t go back to Russia. Ever.”

Shane reels back. “What?”

Rozanov sits down from his squat, his legs unfolding on the floor. “It is illegal to be gay in Russia. Or spread gay propaganda, technically, which—it is the same thing. It has been bad to be gay there for a long time, but it has gotten…worse, in recent years. And I am worst of all, yes? Because I am famous, national team, Olympian, pride of Russian hockey. And then I got married to a man. So I am…” Rozanov gestures vaguely. “The biggest traitor.”

“Fuck,” Shane says. “Fuck.”

Rozanov half-laughs, an exhale through his nose. “Yes. Fuck.”

“I’m sorry.”

Rozanov waves him off. “It is not your fault. And even if it were not the law, I don’t know if I would go back. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My brother—he is not dead, but he is horrible. I do not consider him my brother. We have not talked in years. So Russia…it has nothing for me now.”

“Fuck,” Shane says again. It feels inadequate. But even without a head injury, Shane doesn’t think he could come up with anything to say that would be adequate.

“Shane.” Rozanov looks up at him from his spot on the floor.

“Yeah?”

He sounds exhausted. “I don’t say this to be an asshole. But if it were me who woke up like you did. With no memory. How fast would you have told me that my father was dead? That I could never go back to Moscow, or else I would be arrested? The same day I woke up? The next day? The next week?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says. He feels about two fucking inches tall. Like someone could step on him and grind him into the dirt beneath their heel. “I don’t know.”

Rozanov exhales. “Exactly. I did not mean to hide it. But I didn’t know how to tell you. And I was also being selfish, maybe. Because I didn’t want to have to see you live through it again. I do not like watching you be hurt.”

“I still deserved to know,” Shane says, and he doesn’t know if the bitterness in his tone is directed at Rozanov, or himself, or the world. “I—it’s my history, it’s my life. I deserve to know about my own fucking life.”

“I know,” Rozanov says. “I was not trying to take it from you.”

They sit in silence for a moment until Anya comes trotting happily in, apparently unaware of (or indifferent to) any tension in the room. Rozanov buries his face in her fur. “Hi, sweet girl.” He glances up at Shane, some loose fur of Anya’s stuck to his face. “She wants us to go to bed.”

Shane’s jaw works, clenching and unclenching. He feels sensitive and raw like a blistered heel. “I think…maybe you should sleep in a guest bedroom tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry. I’m just…yeah. I think I need space right now.”

“No, it’s okay,” Rozanov says, finally standing up. “I will go get my toothbrush out of the bathroom now. So you’ll have it to yourself. Come, Anya.” He whistles, and Anya trots happily behind him.

Shane waits until he hears the water running in one of the guest bathrooms to get off the couch. He gets ready for bed by himself, gets underneath the covers alone. In theory he could sprawl out in the middle of the bed, like he does sometimes in hotel rooms, but he sticks to his usual side of the mattress. No sense in breaking the habit, he tells himself. He turns off the light.

He sleeps like fucking shit.

Or he doesn’t sleep, really. He tosses and turns for what feels like two hours, then finally drifts off in short twenty-minute bursts. Isn’t his brain supposed to be resting so it can heal? Isn’t he supposed to want to sleep all the time?

He risks checking the time on his phone, practically blinding himself in the process. It’s 3:06 a.m.

Shane sighs. He knows damn well why he can’t sleep.

It’s for his recovery, he tells himself as he swings his feet onto the floor. He’s doing this as a matter of medical precaution, he argues as he pads quietly down the hall toward the guest bedroom where he knows Ilya is. It’s for his health that he twists the knob as quietly as he can and slides into the guest bed beside his husband.

Ilya turns over with a yawn, his arm wrapping automatically around Shane. “Mm, Shane?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Shane whispers. He turns over onto his side and lets Ilya pull him against his chest. Ilya is so, so warm. “Sorry, go back to sleep.”

“S’okay,” Ilya mumbles into Shane’s hair. “I have not been able to sleep very much either.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Better now, I think.”

“Me too,” Shane says, his eyelids already drooping. He can feel his heart rate slowing down, matching with Ilya’s. “Better.”

“Mm,” Ilya says. “Good night, solnyshko.”

“Good night, Ilya.”

“I love you,” Ilya murmurs, barely coherent.

Shane buries his face against Ilya’s chest. “I know,” he whispers. “I know.”

Ilya lets out a snore. He’s already asleep.

In another moment, Shane is, too.

Chapter Text

On day six, Shane’s mom takes him back to see Dr. Chowdhury again for further assessment. She quickly runs through a checklist—is he experiencing vertigo, fatigue, light sensitivity? (No, only a little, not really anymore.)

Dr. Chowdhury finally puts her tablet down. “Okay, Shane. I’m sure you’re eager to discuss your amnesia.”

“Uh, I don’t know if eager is the word.”

She nods sympathetically. “Right, of course. I know that last time you were here, you were having trouble identifying anything that happened after about 2016. Have there been any updates or developments with that? Anything concrete, any little flashes?”

“No,” Shane says. He scuffs his feet against the tile floor, keeping his eyes trained on Dr. Chowdhury’s nametag. “I don’t remember anything new. Is that…bad? Like, if it hasn’t come back by now. Is it gone for good?”

“Not necessarily,” she says in that even, professional doctor-voice. Shane wonders if there’s a class in med school on how to soften blows. No doubt she’d be top of her class. “While it may indicate that full spontaneous recovery is less likely than we were initially hoping, it’s still much too soon to rule anything out. I won’t make any promises, but I wouldn’t count yourself out, either.”

“Shane’s a fighter,” Yuna says, and he knows she means well, but irritation still twinges in him. It’s not like trying has anything to do with it. He’s been trying. It hasn’t done jack shit.

Dr. Chowdhury’s otherwise pleased with his progress—his headaches are mostly gone, and he isn’t getting dizzy or nauseous anymore—but she hesitates when Shane asks if he can start skating again next week.

“Shane, your recovery is going well, but I really have to stick to my recommendation that you don’t play until December. A second hit to the head could have some really nasty consequences.”

Unlike the current consequences, which are totally great, Shane thinks. “Not in a game. Just practice. I’ll wear a no-contact jersey, no one will hit me. Please, I—I need to be out on the ice again. I don’t…feel like myself, if I’m not.”

“Honey,” Yuna says sharply, but Shane ignores it.

“I won’t even scrimmage. Just get on the ice a little, maybe a few drills,” he pleads.

“I have to urge you to think carefully about this,” Dr. Chowdhury says. “You say you don’t feel like yourself if you’re not playing. I would argue it’s worth waiting a few extra days now to make sure you can play for many more years later. Especially since you already have another concussion in your history.” (Yuna had already filled Shane in a few days ago about his concussion and broken collarbone in 2017, plus a few other minor assorted injuries.)

“I won’t even shoot any pucks,” Shane says, aware of the rising tide of desperation in his voice. “Just let me get on the ice. Let me skate again.”

Dr. Chowdhury purses her lips; he presses on. “I’ve been skating since I was three. It’s as normal as walking to me.”

“I can tell,” Dr. Chowdhury says dryly. “You walk a little bowlegged.” Yuna frowns, but Shane knows it’s true.

Dr. Chowdhury sighs. “Fine. Skating only, no actual gameplay, scrimmaging, whatever. And wear your helmet.”

“I will,” he promises immediately, relief flooding through his system like an IV.

“And I’ll be texting Ilya to make sure he knows to keep an eye on you and see you’re following doctor’s orders,” Yuna says.

Shane rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, he will be. He hates letting me out of his sight.”

Yuna microscopically adjusts Shane’s shirt collar. “Well, I don’t blame him one bit.”

Ilya is back from practice by the time Yuna drops Shane off at home. He’s making a salad for lunch, pouring an unholy amount of Caesar dressing onto one bowl and about a quarter as much onto the other. “How was the doctor?”

“Pretty good,” Shane says, grabbing his salad. “Thanks for lunch. Uh, she’s happy with my recovery, I got cleared to skate for practice.”

Ilya narrows his eyes. “And if I text Yuna, she will say this same thing, yes?”

“Yes, Ilya,” Shane says in his most put-upon-teenager voice.

“Hmm.”

Shane relents. “Fine. She said I am technically allowed to be on the ice with a helmet and a no-contact jersey if it’ll make me feel better, but I shouldn’t actually play at all.”

“Ah, so now the truth comes out. Next time I will text Yuna directly, it will be faster.”

“You text my mom all the time anyway.”

“Of course I do. I am her favorite son. Eat your salad.”

“No,” Shane says, taking a bite. “Can we play Uno after lunch?”

“Yes. You are a fucking freak for Uno, Hollander.”

“Well, it’s one of the only things we have to do that doesn’t involve a screen, and apparently Monopoly got banned in this house years ago.”

Ilya talks with his mouth full. Shane wishes it grossed him out more. “Monopoly is a greedy capitalist pig game. I am a child of the Soviet Union.”

Shane snorts. “Okay, Mr. Millionaire. Weren’t you like, an infant when the Soviet Union stopped existing?”

“The soul remembers,” Ilya says solemnly. “Also, you never let me play as the little doggy piece.”

After they finish up their lunch, they move to the living room, sitting cross-legged on either side of the coffee table. Ilya deals. He glances at Shane’s cards as he deals them, not subtly.

“Really? We haven’t even started and you’re already cheating?” Shane says flatly.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Ilya says, blatantly flipping a card over to check the other side before he puts it in Shane’s pile.

“I see how Monopoly ended up getting banned, if this is the type of behavior you were making me deal with.”

“Actually, Monopoly got banned for us by your parents because you went mad with power as the banker.” Ilya slides Shane’s pile across the table.

Shane frowns at his cards. “How would I go mad with power? There are rules. I would have just been following the rules.”

“Exactly. Who follows the rules? You would not give me any extra loans or anything,” Ilya complains. “What is the point of being married to the banker if I do not get any illegal bonuses? I put out for nothing.”

Shane scoffs. “Are you going to keep cheating at this, too?”

“No, probably not. Only if I start losing. Which I won’t.”

“Because you already cheated.”

Ilya hums. “Because I learn to take competitive advantage where I can get it. You should try sometime.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Just play your card.”

“It’s your turn, genius.”

“Oh, shit. Hang on.”

“Mm, it is a good thing you’re pretty,” Ilya says in a sing-song voice.

“Fuck off,” Shane says, slapping a four down onto the pile.

Ilya puts down a Draw Four and smiles sweetly.

“Seriously?”

“Take your cards, Hollander.”

“Wow, okay. Way to take it easy on your injured, amnesiac husband.”

“When have you ever wanted me to take it easy on you?” Ilya says, his voice dropping into that old familiar, flirtatious tone. Shane’s heard it a hundred times before, though not nearly as much in the last week. Not at all since their fight the a few nights ago, when Shane told Ilya to sleep in the other room and ended up sharing the bed with him anyway.

They still haven’t really talked about that night, either, though in the morning Ilya had laid a gentle kiss on Shane’s temple when he got out of bed, and Shane had reached out from under the covers to grab Ilya’s hand and squeeze it once before he left. And Ilya’s been sleeping in the main bedroom with him again, so he’s pretty sure they’re okay.

It’s weird, actually. In Shane-time, he’s hardly ever spent more than twenty minutes at a time around Rozanov without fucking him, or without Rozanov telling him how he was going to fuck him, or talking about how they’d just fucked. His husband Ilya, on the other hand, has been very respectful.

Shane could stand to feel a little less respected.

Here’s the truth: even as complicated as this whole situation is, his husband is still really, really hot. And Shane had been in way too much pain the first few days to care about getting off, but he is getting better, and with that, his libido is starting to come back, too. His libido, which over the past six—thirteen—who cares—years, has practically trained itself to respond to nothing but Ilya. His sex drive has been molded and shaped in the form of this man across the coffee table, a matching puzzle piece, and Shane wants.

And even besides that—every day since waking up in that hospital room, Shane’s been trying to walk on shifting sands. Every day is guesswork and conjecture. He doesn’t know how to be a husband, doesn’t know how to not be playing hockey, doesn’t know how to not be in Montreal; every fucking step he takes throws him off-balance. But he knows how to have sex with Ilya Rozanov.

He knew how to fuck Ilya Rozanov long before he learned how to love him. That’s something he’s sure of, something he remembers very clearly. He knows how to use his mouth, to suck or bite or beg or swallow. How to brace himself as he rides, his hands spanning and squeezing Ilya’s chest to wrench another little gasp or moan from him. He could close his eyes and draw from memory the vein that pops out on Ilya’s hot, flushed forehead when he’s close. And Shane misses having something he knows.

So instead of telling Ilya to fuck off again, Shane decides to take a different route for once.

“Well,” he says, drawing his extra cards and adding them into his color-sorted hand. “I think you know what I can take.”

He dares to glance up from his cards, just for a moment.

Ilya looks—a little taken aback, actually. But his face smooths out quickly.

“I was talking about Uno, Hollander. You sound like you’re talking about something else.” Ilya puts another card down.

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Rozanov.” Shane adds another card.

“You seem to think I know a lot of things.”

“Do you need me to spell it out for you?” Shane keeps his eyes trained on his hand.

“Mm, no, I know how to spell cock,” Ilya says self-assuredly as he places a card onto the pile, and Shane splutters. “What?” he says innocently. “Were we talking about something else?”

“Shut up,” Shane mutters.

“I thought you wanted me to talk to you,” Ilya says.

“I changed my mind,” Shane says. He hasn’t, of course. But this is a more familiar pattern, and he lets himself sink into that old rhythm—Ilya pushing, Shane pulling.

“No, you haven’t,” Ilya says. The sound of their cards hitting the stack has become steady, a drumbeat for their conversation. “You like how I talk to you.”

“No, I don’t,” Shane lies.

“Yes, you do. You know how I know?”

“How’s that.”

Ilya smirks. “Because for years, every time, you said shut up and fuck off, but you always came back for more.” He holds up a card, delicately pinched between two fingers like a cigarette. “Uno.”

“Shit.” Shane frowns at his hand and puts a green seven down onto the pile.

Ilya’s smug smile grows wider as he tosses his own card down. Red seven. Game over. “I win.”

“Fuck you.”

Ilya stands up and stretches his arms over his head. His shirt rides up. Shane wants to nose at the trail of hair there, its tantalizing disappearance into Ilya’s waistband. “Do I get a prize?”

“Depends,” Shane says. He looks up at Ilya, towering over him, ten feet tall from Shane’s position on the floor. His mouth feels dry. “What do you want?”

Ilya bends over, bracing his hands against the coffee table. Shane still has to tilt his neck up to look at him. But they’re closer, now, close enough that Shane can feel Ilya’s hot breath when he whispers. “I want you…”

Shane leans in automatically, almost imperceptibly—

“…to do a load of laundry.” Ilya straightens back up.

Shane falls back. “What the fuck?”

Ilya shrugs. “You asked what I want. This is what I want. I have many dirty shirts.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You do not believe there is laundry? You can look in the bedroom closet. The bin is very full.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Rozanov shrugs again. Infuriating. “Ah, English. Second language, who knows. I am going to go do lunch dishes now.” He turns on his heels and leaves Shane alone in the living room, irritated and half-hard.

Swearing under his breath, Shane gets up to go put a load of laundry in.

After a shower.

***

In bed that night, Shane tries again. Rolls over onto his side and places his hand on Ilya’s abs, lets it start to drift lower, lower—

Ilya catches his wrist gently. “Not tonight.”

“Why not?” Shane says, and he’s aware of how embarrassingly whiny he sounds.

“Your head is hurt,” Rozanov says, and he turns over onto his side, the wide planes of his back facing Shane.

Shane slides a hand onto Ilya’s hip from behind. “My head is fine, it’s been long enough. Just don’t, like, slam me into the headboard and I’ll be fine.”

Rozanov places his hand firmly on top of Shane, arresting any attempt at progress. “I don’t think it is a good idea, Shane.”

“Why not?” Shane repeats. “I know it’s—but it’s not like we weren’t having sex before. I remember having sex with you. A lot. And liking it. It’s not like that’s new for me.”

“I know you like it,” Rozanov says, sounding tired. He’s still facing away from Shane. “That is not the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?” Shane says. He presses his face into Rozanov’s neck, his nose rubbing against the shaved, cleaned-up edges of Ilya’s hair. “Please, it doesn’t have to mean—you don’t have to think about it too hard, okay? Please. Just fuck me. I need it.” His voice, horrifyingly, cracks. “Please. I need—I need something I remember. Please just fuck me, okay?”

Rozanov finally turns over, his hand coming up to cup Shane’s face. “This is why it is a bad idea.”

“Why?” Shane asks. Begs, even. He needs it. Needs to let Rozanov do what Rozanov does so well, take Shane out of his head for once, reduce him to muscle and sweat and movement and now.

Rozanov sits up abruptly, turns on a bedside light so they can see each other properly. He props himself back on his elbows. “Because it is not before! Because you say oh, it doesn’t have to mean anything. But I cannot fuck you and not have it mean something. And I am trying to let you set the pace, but—fuck, Shane.” He runs a hand back through his hair, that familiar nervous tic. “I know that you are not—my husband, as you know it, remember it, whatever. But I am still your husband, yes? I can’t—”

“I don’t fucking know that, actually!” Shane says. “Because all I get from you are these mixed signals.”

“Mixed signals—”

Shane huffs. “I’m not trying to say that you owe me something or whatever. But like, you sleep in the bed with me. You hold my hand, you hold me, you let me hold you. You kiss my cheek. You tease me like you used to, you, you flirt with me, but when I try to take it further, you jump back—”

Rozanov looks up at the ceiling. “You told me to act as normal as I can, fuck! And I am trying to act normal, okay? But I don’t feel normal! Sometimes, yes, sometimes it feels almost regular. But half the time, half the time, Shane, you look at me like I am a fucking stranger, or just your fuckbuddy, and I remember you don’t know me, and it hurts—”

“I can’t help that!”

“I didn’t say you could! But that does not make it not hard!”

“I’m trying—”

“So am I! But it is hard! I love you, but. Fuck. You don’t remember loving me. And it hurts. We—the last you remember, we were no strings attached, yes?” Ilya’s eyes glimmer wet in the lamplight. He rubs a closed fist over his chest. “There are so many strings now, Shane. I am all tangled in them.”

Shane turns his head away so he doesn’t have to see the devastation on Ilya’s face. “Then where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya says, almost soundlessly. “I don’t know. Just—not tonight. We have practice tomorrow, yes? Let’s just rest.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “Fine. Yeah. Let’s sleep.”

“Do you want me to go to the other bedroom again?”

Shane sighs. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Do you want to go to the other bedroom? Or have me go?”

“No,” Ilya says quietly, and it breaks Shane’s heart a little. “I do not want that.”

Shane tries to soften his voice. “We can talk more in the morning, okay? Let’s just sleep.”

“Okay,” Ilya whispers, leaning over to turn the lamp off. He flips back onto his side, away from Shane. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Shane rolls over to face away from Ilya. The pair of them like two parentheses facing the wrong way, enclosing nothing at all.

Chapter Text

“So,” Shane says in between bites of his whole-grain toast. “I know we had talked about waiting to tell the team about me in case my memory came back. But…”

Practice begins in a little over an hour. He and Rozanov don’t live that far from the practice facility (the so-called Censplex) but Shane wants to get there early, give himself time to relearn the layout and get as much of a handle on things as he can. He’s played in the Cens’ official arena plenty of times, but their other facilities will be totally new to him again. He might’ve had a tournament there on occasion as a kid growing up in Ottawa, but he doesn’t remember it well. Rinks tend to blend together once you’ve been in enough of them, and Shane passed that point long ago.

So they need to leave soon, and Shane still doesn’t know what his teammates know about him. Hell, he barely knows who his teammates are.

“Ah, yes,” Rozanov says. “We have come to that bridge we have to cross.”

“Yeah.”

“I told Coach Wiebe already.”

“You did? When?”

“At practice yesterday. Since I knew you were coming back today. I thought maybe it would be easier if I told him, since I know him better now.”

“Oh.”

Ilya chews at some dry skin on his lip. “Are you mad I told him?”

“What? No. Um. You’re probably right about it being better. Uh, coming from you. Thank you,” Shane says stiffly. Since last night it’s been—well, awkward. They’ve been dancing politely around each other all morning, and Shane is a terrible dancer.

“Okay,” Ilya says. “Okay. Do you want to tell the team yourself, or do you want to have me do it?”

Shane picks at a nail that’s grown slightly too long. He feels like he probably should tell the guys himself, but…he doesn’t know these guys. He might as well be in front of a group of strangers. And he’s no stranger to locker room speeches, he’s been—or had been—an NHL captain for years, but there’s a world of difference between stringing together a combination of the words let’s get ‘em good game boys let’s go and announcing your personal medical history to a crowd.

“Can you do it?” Shane mumbles, feeling like he’s about seven years old and asking his mommy to order his food for him.

Ilya shrugs. “Okay.” He pulls out his phone and taps at it for maybe thirty seconds. He types so fast; Shane feels an odd surge of pride at that. Knowing how slowly English spelling had come to Ilya before, watching him fly through the letters now. “Done.”

“What? Already?”

“I sent in group chat. You are in group chat, you can see.”

“Oh, yeah.” Shane had seen the chat called “Cens 🐎🏒” on his phone when he was allowed to look at screens again. It had over two hundred unread messages from about three days, and he’d immediately muted it so he wouldn’t get overwhelmed and had since forgotten it. He opens it up now.

Ilya Rozanov (Husband)
Hello all. As you know Hollander will be back at practice today in no contact. Do not let him get hit by a puck or I will kill you))) Also he has amnesia and does not remember playing for the best team in the league. Not a joke. So if he is more awkward than usual it is not because the stick up his ass is larger than normal it is just that he does not remember you. Be nice thank you

Zane Boodram
Holy shit rozy is this a joke

Ilya Rozanov (Husband)
Do you not see where I say “not a joke?” Does Cassie need to teach you to read along with the baby

Luca Haas
Omg
So sorry to hear about this for you both
😧😧
Looking forward to seeing you today Shane!! I hope you feel better soon

Troy Barrett
That’s tough. Wishing for a speedy recovery, see you soon

Wyatt Hayes
Damn. Do you think if he got hit again the right way his memories would come back? Like in the muppet movie

Ilya Rozanov (Husband)
No. Do not hit my husband Hazy he is very delicate right now

Tanner Dillon
Does this mean he’s forgotten about the time I accidently spilled a plate of spagetti on his head when I tried to eat while standing

Evan Dykstra
Dilly hes still in this groupchat u fucking moron

Zane Boodram laughed at a message
Luca Haas laughed at a message
Nick Chouinard laughed at a message
Ilya Rozanov (Husband) laughed at a message

Zane Boodram
Okay well @Shane Hollander I think I can speak for us all when I say that we’re sorry to hear about this
But your still our teammate and our friend
no matter what 💪🐎

Luca Haas liked a message
Troy Barrett liked a message
Nick Chouinard liked a message
Evan Dykstra liked a message
Wyatt Hayes liked a message
Ilya Rozanov (Husband) liked a message
Shane Hollander liked a message

Wyatt Hayes
Sorry mistyped. It was the muppets take manhattan

Shane finally looks up from his phone. “Uh, thank you for letting them know. They seem…nice, I think.”

“They are nice,” Ilya says with a shrug. “They care about you a lot. They care about each other a lot. We all do.”

“Huh,” Shane says. Because he’s cared about his team before, obviously, as his team, as the group of guys he has to make sure are mentally and emotionally united enough to play through a season (and ideally a postseason, all the way to a Cup win) together. In Montreal he cared about his team sort of…conceptually. JJ and especially Hayden were his actual friends, and the rest of the guys were more like coworkers. Shane didn’t want them to be unhappy, obviously. But it’s not like Shane went home at night and wondered if Gilbert Comeau was emotionally fulfilled in life. Not beyond how it might affect his time on the ice, anyway. Maybe that was his fault as captain. Not getting invested enough in his teammates’ lives. Maybe that’s why they—

“Stop thinking about Montreal.”

“I’m not,” Shane automatically protests.

Ilya snorts. “Yes you were. You had your Montreal face on.”

“My Montreal face.”

“Yes. It is all”—he waves a hand in a vague circle in front of his face—“brooding.”

“I do not brood.”

“Yes, you do. I looked up this word years ago especially to describe your face. Like a sad musician guy who has long hair and plays boring sad guitar music for teenagers. Brooding.”

“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Shane says, but the corner of his mouth is beginning to twitch up.

“Never. C’mon, finish your toast, Hollander. We have practice.”

The drive isn’t too long. Halfway through, Shane turns the radio down. He doesn’t recognize any of the songs, but he never recognized the songs on the radio before the concussion, either, so that might not be an amnesia thing.

He clears his throat. “Hey.”

Ilya glances over from the road for half a second. “Yes?”

Shane fiddles with the slider on his heating vent. “I just wanted to say…you’re a really good captain.”

“I am good at everything. You know this.”

“Shut up, I’m being serious. The guys, they seem to respect you and care about you. And, um.” Shane swallows. “When I was being stubborn about getting back on the ice and you were strict about getting cleared. That was—I was annoyed, but that was being a good captain, too. Knowing when to say no, and when to say yes.”

Ilya is silent for a moment. He reaches over the center console to take Shane’s hand, resting on Shane’s thigh. It’s the first time they’ve touched since last night. Ilya squeezes lightly. Finally. “Will you say that again on video, Hollander? For me to have as evidence, forever.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says. But he keeps their joined hands in his lap until they arrive.

They arrive at the rink early, as planned, so Shane can make a quick stop in with the team’s trainers and get concussion protocol run on him again. They confirm Shane’s head isn’t going to fall off if he straps on skates, like that girl with the ribbon around her neck in that story that had given him nightmares as a kid. Afterward, Ilya gives Shane a quick facilities tour, meaning he points in various directions and goes “locker room” or “this way to rink” or “weight room.”

“You’re a very efficient tour guide,” Shane says dryly.

“Ah, yes, I do Ottawa tours on the weekends. I say, here is boring fucking government building. And over there is boring fucking government building.”

Shane frowns. “Do you even like living in Ottawa?”

Rozanov shrugs and waggles his hand from side to side, like so-so. “City, is not New York, is not even Boston. But I like my life in Ottawa. It is close enough.”

“Oh,” Shane says, a little stupid, a little guilty. That he’s made Ilya move somewhere so mundane, this humdrum town of museums and civic offices.

No, he has to remind himself. I didn’t make him. Ilya’s a grown-up, he made his own choice. “I’m, uh, glad you like your life, then.”

Ilya shoots him a look over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised. “Yes, me too. Come, let’s go to locker room, get ready, yes?”

They’re early enough that they’re the first ones in the locker room, which is good; this way Shane can reintroduce himself to each guy as he comes in, rather than walking into a room already full of strangers like the world’s worst surprise party.

Like most NHL locker rooms, the stalls are arranged along three walls in a U-shape. Ilya’s locker is dead in the center of the far wall. Shane follows him to it like a duckling behind its mother until Ilya points to a corner. “Yours is over there.”

“Oh. For some reason I thought we’d be next to each other.”

Ilya smirks. “You did not allow it. You said ‘Ilya, you are simply too sexy for me to change next to. I will see your big cock out of the corner of my eye and lose my mind and try to have sex with you every game, and the team will never get its two best players out on the ice, and then the Centaurs will never win a Stanley Cup.’”

“Uh-huh,” Shane says. “And those were my exact words.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Right.” Shane heads off to his own locker to start getting changed. The equipment manager has already put the no-contact jersey in his stall. It’s bright blue, to differentiate from the regular red Cens jerseys. Back in Montreal, the regular uniforms were blue, so the no-contact jerseys were stop-sign red. Another way for Shane to feel like he’s fallen through the looking glass.

“Shane! You’re back!”

He turns around and is greeted by a blond kid who looks, generously, seventeen years old. For a second he wonders if this is a coach’s son or something, but then the kid sets his stuff down in front of the cubicle next to Shane’s, so he is in fact another player. Jesus, did Shane look that young as a rookie?

“Hi,” Shane says awkwardly. “Uh…”

The kid’s eyes widen. “Oh my God, right! Sorry. I’m Luca Haas.” He sticks his hand out; when Shane takes it, he pumps it up and down enthusiastically. “I’m your winger. Right side.”

“He is my biggest fan,” Ilya calls from across the room. “Do not let him pretend otherwise.”

“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Luca calls back, though less confidently. He sounds like a kid who’s just gotten permission to swear for the first time and isn’t quite used to the words in his mouth.

“He had my poster on the wall as a child, Hollander!”

“Maybe you’re just old now, Rozanov,” Shane says.

Ilya snorts. “If I am old, what are you? You are older than I am.”

“A month,” Shane says, though Rozanov has a point. In Shane-time, the rookies on the Metros were just now getting old enough to maybe have been fans of his starting in middle school, and that’s bad enough. But now, at—God, thirty-two, he’s missed half his career, this kid—

He turns to Luca. “Sorry if this is rude, but how old are you?”

Luca sighs. “Don’t worry, I get it a lot. I know I look young. I’m twenty-three.”

Shane sighs. “Oh, thank God. For a minute I was worried I debuted when you were four years old.”

“Nope!” Luca says cheerfully. “Nine.”

Shane shudders. “Eugh. I’m a thousand.”

“Don’t say that, Hollander,” Ilya says, slipping his shoulder pads on over his compression shirt. “You are not old. Scott Hunter is a thousand.”

“Is Scott Hunter still playing?”

“Yes, even though it is so dangerous for such an old man. Every time we play, I tell him, ‘Hunter, please, this is no place for a senior citizen, if you fall your bones will snap like pretzel sticks.’”

“I’m sure he loves that.”

“Ah, yes, he tells me that the next time I am at the bar, he is going to poison my drink. Hello, Bood!”

Shane vaguely recognizes Zane Boodram, the other alternate captain for the Centaurs. Handsome guy, dark curly hair, medium brown skin, lots of tattoos. Unlike Haas, he’d already been playing seven years ago, though Shane has never actually talked to the guy.

“Morning, boys,” Boodram says, striding straight up to Shane. He clasps Shane’s hand in both of his own and stares straight into his eyes. “Hollsy. Listen. I know you don’t remember me, but you have to know something. We’ve been having an affair for years. We are madly in love. Rozanov doesn’t know.”

“Uh,” Shane says. His hand hangs limply in Boodram’s.

“Leave my husband alone, Bood,” Ilya says. “As if you are hot enough for him.”

Bood sighs dramatically. “Worth a shot, Cap.” He drops Shane’s hand and goes to find his own stall.

“Shane, this is Bood,” Ilya says. “He is very stupid, but he makes very good barbecue, so I have not gotten him traded yet.”

“As soon as he gets the hot sauce recipe, I’m out of here,” Bood says with a shake of his head.

“I, uh, I recognize the name in the, uh, group chat,” Shane says clumsily. “You were very nice. Thank you.”

“Course, man. Meant what I said, you’re still one of us, yeah?”

“I hope so,” Shane says. “Kinda feels like being a rookie all over again.”

“Ooh, does that mean Haasy has seniority over you now?” Bood asks.

Ilya cackles from where he’s sitting on the bench, half-undressed. “Yes, Haasy, ask him to go get you a coffee or something.”

Haas looks vaguely panicked. “I’m not going to do that!”

“What is Haasy not doing?” asks the next guy coming in the locker room, pulling an Airpod out of his ear. He’s tall and lanky, a build that immediately reads goalie to Shane. Some of those guys are built like stick bugs under all the padding.

“Making Shane be his servant,” Bood says. “Hazy, be polite, reintroduce yourself.”

“Oh, shit, yeah. Wyatt Hayes. Nice to meet you again, dude,” he says, nodding from his stall in the other corner where the goalie gear is already stacked, confirming Shane’s suspicions.

“Right,” Shane says, sitting on the bench to pull his socks on. “The, uh, Muppets guy in the group chat.”

“Hazy is a dweeb,” Ilya says, finally getting up to finish changing. “Also crazy. But only regular goalie crazy, so it works.”

“Don’t act like you’re too good for the Muppets, dude,” Hayes says to Ilya. “You’re not too good for the Muppets.”

The rest of the guys are starting to trickle in at a more regular rate, enough so that the locker room breaks down into multiple conversations instead of just one of them yelling across the room. Most of them take the time to come up and say something to Shane as he’s getting changed, though their faces and names start to blur a bit. Troy Barrett is in there somewhere, he thinks. Between the introductions and the background noise, it’s a lot of different sounds for Shane to process; he kind of wishes he’d brought earplugs to help dull it. (He won’t tell Rozanov that, though, since he doesn’t need a lecture about how he should be out longer.)

Eventually, a handsome older guy—well, maybe only in his early forties, which Shane realizes with some dread is not that far ahead of him anymore—steps into the room. “Morning, boys.”

A jumbled chorus of morning, Coach rises up from the rows of stalls.

This must be Brandon Wiebe, obviously. Shane thinks he might’ve still been playing when he and Ilya were rookies.

Wiebe clears his throat. “I’m sure you’ve all noticed that Hollsy is back with us today.”

A slightly less disjointed chorus of whoops and whistles fills the air. Shane raises a hand stiffly in acknowledgment.

“I am also sure that you’ve heard of the rather unusual circumstances regarding his injury,” Wiebe continues. “Nevertheless. Shane, we couldn’t be more thrilled to have you back in the room with us, even if you’re not full-contact yet. Regardless of your situation, you are a core part of this team, no matter what, and I have no doubt that pretty soon you’ll be back on the ice during gametime and better than ever.”

“And remember,” Ilya shouts over the smattering of applause. “Shane Hollander missing his brain is still a better player than most of you with yours!”

There’s a cheerful round of laughter and more than one good-natured fuck off, Rozy. “You’re biased,” Bood says, throwing a balled-up sock at Ilya.

Ilya bats it out of the air. “Oh, are the numbers biased also? Are Mr. Art Ross and Mr. Conn Smythe biased?”

“Get his ass, Roz,” someone—Dillon? Dykstra?—calls.

Shane cheeks flush hot at Ilya’s casual boasting on his behalf. It’s not really his style to brag about his own achievements, but Ilya seems perfectly happy to do it for him, and it feels good to remember that as untethered as Shane feels right now, this is something he can do. This is something he’s fucking excellent at.

“As I was saying,” Wiebe says. “Hollsy is a very valuable member of this team, and we’re all glad to have him back. Now, as for practice today…”

He spends a few minutes going over the plan for the day, what drills they’ll run to focus on which skills. Shane won’t be participating in all of it, but God, it’s great to be back.

It’s so fucking nice to feel his skates cut into ice, feel the weight and flex of a stick in his hand. He participates in a few passing control drills, nothing that’ll make him move too fast and risk jarring his head. He gets off the ice or skates into a corner by himself when there’s something he thinks he can’t do, or something he thinks he could maybe do, but Ilya is giving him a look, so he’d better not. At one point, he ends up at one end of the rink by himself while his teammates are all on the other side, just shooting a dozen or so pucks into the empty net by himself.

It might be the best he’s felt all week.

The guys keep up the brusque, friendly chatter he’s used to from a thousand hockey practices—how’s your weekend, watch anything good lately, you have the ugliest fucking tape job I’ve ever seen. The rhythm is easy to pick up, even if Shane hasn’t heard this exact song before.

They’re scrimmaging for the last part of practice, which he can’t do yet, so Shane gets off the ice and takes a quick shower by himself. He changes back into the joggers and t-shirt he was wearing when he walked in, then finds a training room with a mat to do some yoga stretches. He shuts off half the lights to give his head a break, and spends twenty or thirty minutes breathing deeply in a dim, relaxing silence until he starts to hear voices coming down the hall to the locker room again.

Practice ends like any other; the coach comes in and gives a few announcements about the next few days, including their game tomorrow against Dallas, and then they’re free to shower, change, and head home as they please. Shane slips out of the locker room to wait for Ilya outside in the hall. It’s loud and bright in there, and talking to the guys had been good, but his social battery (not exactly stellar in the first place, and now further impaired by his concussion) is starting to feel drained.

Ilya, his curls damp from the shower, finds him in the hall. “Home?”

“Please.”

Ilya waits until they get into the car to ask. “So.”

“So,” Shane says.

“What did you think?”

“They seem like a good group of guys.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Not bullshit reporter answer.”

“It’s not,” Shane protests. “They do!” He looks out his window. “It was, um. Really nice, actually. I don’t think…in Montreal, if this had happened there, I don’t think it would have been like that.”

“Probably not, no,” Ilya says. “How do you think it would have been?”

Shane chews on the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know. Theriault would’ve probably said something about not letting the injury distract us as a team. And the guys probably would’ve just been like, ‘damn, that sucks.’”

“Yes, well. Montreal is full of idiots.”

“They’re not,” Shane says, and then pauses. “They’re not all idiots. Or bad guys.”

“Hmm,” Ilya says neutrally.

“They’re not! Hayden’s not a bad guy.”

“Hmm,” Ilya says louder.

“Fuck off, you know he’s not.”

“No comment. But Ottawa…Ottawa is better, yes?”

“Yeah,” Shane says softly to the trees outside the window. “Yeah, I think it is.”

***

Shane does what he usually does after practice, which is eat lunch and take a nap on his couch. The nap is sorely needed; even though he didn’t go that hard today, this is still the most he’s done all week, and his body is feeling it. He can tell the moment he wakes up and starts blinking the bleariness from his eyes that he’s slept later than he’d meant to.

Ilya is perched on the very edge of the couch cushions, brushing Shane’s hair out of his eyes. “Good nap?”

“Mm, yeah. You take one?”

“Ah, no. Took Anya out, did a few chores. Changed the sheets, did the trash and recycling.”

Shane pushes himself up to lean back against the arm of the couch. “You don’t have to do all that yourself. I can help.”

Ilya shrugs. “You needed rest, trash needed to go out. Don’t worry, I’ll make you do them all for the next month once you’re better.”

“Oh, as long as we’re being fair.”

“Of course. I am the fairest, nicest man in the league, that is what everyone says about me. You know this.”

Shane yawns.

Ilya presses his hand to his heart. “I am boring you, Hollander. The tables finally turn.”

“Shut up, I’m tired,” Shane says through another yawn.

Ilya frowns. “Yes, I see that. I think you pushed yourself too hard today.”

“‘M fine, I’m just getting used to it again.”

“You are supposed to be taking it easy,” Ilya says, a note of warning in his voice.

“I am! I barely did anything.”

“I saw you during some of those drills, pomidor.”

“Fuck off, I don’t get that red,” Shane says, rolling his eyes.

“Yes, you do. I have pic—wait.” Ilya grabs Shane’s arm, tight, pulling him up. His eyes are wide and wild. He looks like he’s seen a fucking ghost. “Shane. Pomidor.”

“Yes?” Shane says cautiously. Ilya is still clutching him. “You’re calling me a tomato, yeah?”

“Shane. You—old you. You don’t speak fucking Russian. You didn’t start learning until after we—”

“Oh, shit,” Shane says, and now it’s his turn to grab Ilya’s arm. His heart sprints inside him. “Oh shit. Oh, holy fuck. Oh my God. I remember something.”

Ilya shakes Shane a little. “You remember something!”

“I remember something!” Shane says, a grin splitting wide across his face. “I remember something—”

Ilya kisses him.

He hauls Shane in at the same time he leans forward, bridging the space between them in less than a second. Shane’s lips part automatically for Ilya’s, his eyes fluttering closed, but even as he tries to deepen it, Ilya pulls back.

Ilya’s chest is heaving. “I am sorry,” he says, sounding winded. “I am sorry, I should not have—”

“Fucking kiss me,” Shane practically snarls, and he pulls Ilya back in by the front of his sweatshirt. Shane wants so much he aches with it, and he’s sick of not having what he wants. He kisses aggressively, his tongue pushing into Ilya’s mouth, teeth swiping and catching on Ilya’s lower lip. His hands roam everywhere, uncertain of where they want to settle—Ilya’s arms, Ilya’s hair, Ilya’s back, Ilya, Ilya, Ilya.

Ilya honest-to-God growls as he shifts to pull Shane into his lap. Now this is familiar: Shane straddling Ilya’s thighs, making out, pressed chest-to-chest as they kiss like they’re trying to crush themselves together, fill up the gaps in each other’s atoms so they can occupy the same space at once.

“Wait,” Ilya eventually gasps, breaking the kiss when Shane starts grinding his hips down. Shane’s half-hard; they both are. “Wait, solnyshko, wait. We should talk.”

“Nnngh,” Shane says, burying his face against Ilya’s neck and starting to bite at it. There’s this one spot, right at the tendon—

“Hey,” Ilya says, tugging Shane back by his hair, which does nothing to make Shane less turned on. “Hey, c’mere.”

Shane whines. Not sexily. More like a dog when it doesn’t want to go to the vet. A come on, do we have to? sound.

Ilya cups Shane’s cheek with his hand, running his thumb along Shane’s freckles. “Sweetheart. Hey, look at me.”

Shane gives up on trying to reattach his mouth to Ilya’s clavicle and finally looks him in the eye. God, his eyes are blue. Ilya strokes Shane’s cheek again. “I have to know. For you, is this…what do you want? Is just hookup like old times or what? Because, if it is…” He trails off.

Shane isn’t sure what Ilya would say next. If it would be I can’t do this or it’s okay, I just need to know. So I don’t expect too much. So I don’t get my heart broken.

Either way, he doesn’t want to find out, and he doesn’t need to. Because that’s not what this is. And if Shane is being honest with himself, that wasn’t what it was seven years ago, either, back on another couch in Boston. Back then, he got scared, so he ran.

But Shane’s grown up since then. Even if he doesn’t remember it. He’s not the same as he was.

So he shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says. “It’s not just—it doesn’t mean nothing, okay? It’s something. It is something.”

“Yeah?” Ilya says, unable to disguise a quiet, tremulous hope in his voice.

Shane nods. “Yeah. It’s.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Fuck, do I have to keep making eye contact for this part?”

Ilya chuckles a little. “No, it’s okay.”

Shane immediately burrows up against the side of Ilya’s throat again, one hand coming in between them so he can twirl the strings on Ilya’s hoodie between his forefinger and thumb. “I like you,” he says, the skin of his forehead sticking lightly to Ilya’s neck with sweat. “I’m just afraid, because. I don’t know how to be a husband. I don’t know how to be with you like, like you’ve had the last few years.”

“Okay,” Ilya murmurs, twisting his neck so he can kiss Shane’s forehead, his hair. “Okay. But I have good news for you.”

“Mm?”

“I like you, too.”

A smile twitches at the corner of Shane’s lips. “Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. And I liked you back then, too. And then the guy I liked back then, and the guy you are now—surprise! You are the same guy.”

“Are we?” Shane says, only half-joking.

“Yes, I was there,” Ilya says. One of his hands starts running along Shane’s back, soothing him. “A little slower, knees a little worse—”

“Asshole.”

“—but same guy. So,” he says, catching Shane’s chin and gently lifting it up to give him a quick peck. “Why don’t you stop worrying about if you know how to be my husband, and just be you, yes?”

Shane kisses him again, long and slow and far less urgent than before. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Okay. I can try that.”

“I can help,” Ilya promises. “I can remind you.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. I am world’s leading expert in Shane Hollander. I am every source on your Wikipedia, they come and ask me and I say, yes, Shane Hollander: he eats boring rabbit food, he is the second-best player in the league, he loves sucking cock—”

Shane flicks Ilya’s ear. “Do you ever give it a rest?”

“No,” Ilya says, smooching Shane’s cheek obnoxiously. “It is why you like me.”

Shane groans. “God help me, I do. I have a fucking crush on my husband. This is so fucking embarrassing.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ilya coos. “Very natural, I am so irresistible.”

“I’m gonna resist you. I’m gonna resist you right now,” Shane says, making a half-hearted attempt to get out of Ilya’s lap that goes nowhere.

Ilya pulls him back in place easily, and Shane tips forward to kiss him again, open and unrushed. They lazily make out on the couch for a while, taking their time. Shane reacquaints his mouth with Ilya’s, the stubble scratching his chin like an old friend. The urgency has evaporated, leaving pure connection behind.

Balanced in Ilya Rozanov’s lap, enjoying the steady pressure of Ilya’s hands bracing his hip and spread out on his back to keep him close, kissing and kissing and kissing like teenagers—this is the most like himself that Shane has felt in days. Like maybe the world still isn’t quite spinning at the rate he’s used to, but at least it might be back on its axis.

Ilya breaks the kiss eventually (rude). Shane tries to go back in, but Ilya dodges him, contents him with a peck to the tip of his nose instead. “Should we talk to your parents?”

Shane glances down between them pointedly; they’re both, like, half-mast. “You really want to bring them into this?”

Ilya, mature thirty-two-year-old he now is, licks the side of Shane’s face in retort, squeezing a disgusted little yelp out of Shane as he tries and fails to wriggle away. “I mean we should let them know you remembered something.”

“Mm, in a little bit,” Shane says, returning his head to his favorite spot, nestled in the crook of Ilya’s shoulder and neck. “I just wanna be here for a little while, you know?” He feels suddenly tired, the adrenaline rush of recovered memory slowing down, leaving him sapped.

“Okay,” Ilya says, lips in Shane’s hair. His hand skims soothingly along Shane’s back again. “Okay, we can do that.”

“I like how you say okay,” Shane murmurs. “S’cute.”

“Wow,” Ilya says, gently amused. “That is embarrassing.”

“Shut up.”

“Never.”

Shane closes his eyes and breathes Ilya in. He smells like cheap rink shampoo.

“Are you going to fall asleep again already?” Ilya asks, a little teasing.

“No,” Shane says stubbornly, though his eyelids are already heavy.

“It’s okay if you are,” Ilya says, emphasizing the okay, because he’s an asshole who lives to mock Shane. “I could use nap, too.”

Shane’s resistance crumbles like wet sand. “Well, if you’re gonna…”

He expects Ilya to gently push him off his lap to stand. Instead, Ilya twists, laying Shane back down on the couch and manually unfolding his legs like a card table, and readjusts himself so he’s lying between them, Ilya’s upper half lying across Shane’s torso like an extra-heavy weighted blanket. Shane’s hands come up automatically to land in Ilya’s still-damp curls, running his fingers through them lazily.

Ilya’s voice rumbles against Shane’s shirt. “You’re gonna make it look all stupid when it dries.”

Shane’s fingernails scratch his scalp lightly. “You don’t need my help looking stupid.”

Ilya hums happily. “Says the man so bad at dressing himself he had to hire a personal stylist to not look like shit.”

“Did I really?”

“Yes. You break stereotypes, Hollander. Everyone thinks gay guys are good at clothes. You prove them all wrong.”

Shane huffs out a laugh. He’d probably be more offended if it weren’t so true. “I’m brave like that.”

“Yes,” Ilya says, turning to plant a kiss on Shane’s stomach. “You are.”

Shane waits for the punchline. It doesn’t come. They drift off together like that, Shane’s hands in Ilya’s hair. Ilya’s weight on top of Shane, keeping him grounded.

***

The Cens have a game the next day. Shane still isn’t cleared to play, won’t be for another week, but at least he’s healed enough to go in person. He watches from a box above the stands, wearing a Centaurs jacket and a pair of foam earplugs to help muffle the crowd noise.

They lose to Detroit 4-3, which sucks, but Ilya scored the first goal. For his celly, he blew an obnoxious kiss up to the box where Shane was, and the camera cut to there, too, as the crowd roared. The Jumbotron guys loved it, showed a replay: goal, kiss, husband. Shane saw himself flush on the sixteen-foot screen. Pomidor.

“Good game,” he tells Ilya in the locker room after, feeling awkward standing there by his husband’s cubby, fully dressed around all the guys stripping their gear off.

Ilya shrugs. “Would’ve been better if we won, but our second-best player had to go get himself concussed.”

“Mm, I’ll try to avoid that next time. I’ll politely ask the other guys not to check me.”

“Could you? Thank you. Very considerate, very good for our stats.”

“Hollsy,” someone—Chouinard?—calls from across the room. “When are you getting off IR, bud?”

Shane turns and raises his voice so the others can hear. “Uh, hopefully in about a week? My doctor said that I could come back in December.”

“Thank God,” LaPointe says. He’s one of the younger guys, the one who had to shift over from wing to cover while Shane is out. “I am not meant to be a center.”

“You’re barely fuckin’ meant to be a hockey player,” the guy next to him—Young?—chirps, and LaPointe playfully whips at him with a towel.

“You coming on the roadie with us then, Holls?” Dykstra asks.

Shane was lucky enough (ha) to get injured right at the beginning of an Ottawa homestand, but the Centaurs have a long West Coast road trip coming up soon, playing the California, Seattle, and Vancouver teams. It’s gonna be brutal, almost two weeks away from home with a new hotel and another flight every few days, the type of travel that makes you miss your own bed more than anything. But at least by the end of it, he’ll be allowed to fucking play. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” he says. “Just traveling with you, not playing in California, but I should be clear in time for the Seattle game.”

A round of whoops go up from around the room. “Phew,” Bood says. “Roz is so much more annoying to play with when you’re not here.”

Shane raises his eyebrows at Ilya. “Is he, now.”

“Lies,” Ilya says smoothly. “Boodram is an insane liar, should never be listened to, ever. I am a delight, always.”

Dillon puts on a terrible Russian accent. “Hollander would have scored on that power play.”

Bood puts on an even worse one. “He is back in stands tonight, you want to play like this in front of him?”

“I have never said any such thing,” Ilya insists.

“I don’t know,” Shane muses. “The evidence sounds pretty convincing to me.”

“Is not true. Does not sound familiar. I am not even sure I have met this Shawn Hoglander person before,” Ilya says.

“No, I think you have,” Shane says. “He’s the one that beat you for the Calder, remember?” A chorus of oohs from around the room, like they’re in middle school and someone just got called to the principal’s office.

Ilya snaps his fingers and smirks. “Oh, yes! I recall now. He is the one I beat for the Hart, yes?”

“Alright boys, keep it in your pants,” Bood says cheerfully.

Shane’s shoulders stiffen. Have he and Ilya been too forward, too flirty? Are they making people uncomfortable? He glances cautiously around the room. But no one is giving them a weird look, no one is muttering anything under their breath to their neighbor. It’s just the same casual chatter he’s seen after any game. Maybe a little less upbeat than it would be after a win, but not overly upset, either. It’s early in the season, but even after the last two losses, the Cens are still second in the Eastern Conference, and they put up a good fight against Detroit.

Shane isn’t always the greatest at reading a room, but he thinks the vibes are…shockingly okay in here. A hell of a lot better than they would be in Montreal, anyway.

As captain, Ilya has to do press availability after the game, but it’s only a few minutes before he comes back and finds Shane in the hall. “Let’s go home, yes?”

Ilya walks close to Shane as they head out to the parking garage, casually bumping against Shane’s arm every few steps. “You’re very quiet.”

“I was just thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Shut up. But we’re like…really out now, huh.”

Ilya raises an eyebrow at Shane as they reach the car. “Yes. For a few years now.”

“No, but like,” Shane says as he settles into the passenger seat. “I mean, people know about us.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Ilya says distractedly as he turns around to reverse out of his spot, his arm coming around the back of Shane’s headrest. “This is what out means.”

“I just mean…well, I never really thought about coming out that much. Before,” Shane says. “But if I had. I guess I would’ve thought that like, even in the absolute best-case scenario where I didn’t get harassed or kicked out of the league, it would be something that people ignored? You know, he’s gay, but we don’t have to talk about that, let’s just focus on the hockey. And that maybe my team would stop saying fag and cocksucker in the locker room so much. That was like…the wildest dream I could’ve imagined.”

Ilya nods. “And now?”

Shane exhales. “Now, it’s like. Fuck.” His forehead presses against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. “You blew me a kiss tonight in front of people, and people fucking cheered. And Bood joked about us needing to keep it in our pants, but no one was like, weird about it. And I guess it just hit me that people really know now. And it’s okay.”

Ilya puts a hand on Shane’s knee without taking his eyes off the road. “It is. It is…not perfect. Especially on the ice, other teams. And online, sometimes. Not everyone is as nice as our team is.”

Shane sighs. “No, yeah, I figured that would still be happening.”

“Yes. Should not be, but it is.”

“Yeah. But I guess…” Shane chews his lip. “I think I didn’t realize until now how sad I was back then. How scared I was all the time.”

Ilya squeezes Shane’s knee. “I know. But less scared now?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Less scared now.”

They get home and get ready for bed. They have matching electric toothbrushes.

In bed, Shane takes Ilya’s hand, brings it up to kiss the knuckles. “You know what I realized?”

“Mm?” Ilya asks sleepily. This is new, too—to see him so tired so soon after a home game, when for years some of the only time they had was after games like this, using all their residual energy up on each other. Another part of growing up, growing older.

“We’ve never been on a date,” Shane murmurs. “I mean, I don’t remember us ever going on one, since we couldn’t go out together.”

“Shane Hollander,” Ilya says, his smile curving on his lips, his accent curving around the r. “Are you asking me out?”

“Dunno,” Shane says. “Are you saying yes?”

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” Ilya says through a yawn. “I am a very busy man. But I think I can fit you in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ilya says, his hand coming to rest in Shane’s hair, absentmindedly brushing the short stubble by his ears. “Roadie starts in two days. So. Dinner tomorrow?”

“It’s a date,” Shane says. He leans in. Kisses his husband good night. Gentle. Just the once.

Well. Just the twice.

Chapter Text

Ilya has promised Shane he knows exactly where they’ll go for dinner, but he still hasn’t told him where.

“Come on, let me surprise you, solnyshko,” Ilya croons.

“Yup, that’s me,” Shane says flatly. “Love surprises. Can’t get enough of them. Especially not recently.”

Ilya blows a raspberry at him from where he’s sprawled across the bed.

“At least tell me what I should wear,” Shane says, standing in front of the open closet door.

“It is very fancy. You should wear tuxedo. With, the, the things on the back.”

“Tails?”

“Yes. Maybe gloves, too. Like the show your mom watches with all the rich English people.”

Shane’s brow furrows. “Rich English—are you telling me to dress like I’m on fucking Downton Abbey?”

“Yes! That one.”

“Okay, I’m not going to do that. Seriously, are jeans fine, or do I need to dress up more nicely?”

“I think you look good in everything. Also in nothing.”

Shane shoots Ilya a look over his shoulder. “You are the least helpful person on the planet.”

Ilya grins, but he finally relents. “Jeans are fine. Do not worry.”

At least Shane’s jeans are nicer than they used to be. He’d mostly been living in sweatpants and team t-shirts for the last few weeks, but now that he’s been wearing actual clothes again, he can see the influence of the stylist he apparently hired. Designer labels on his clothes, some names he recognizes, some he definitely doesn’t. His wardrobe isn’t much bigger or flashier than it used to be, but the pieces feel nicer. Fabrics with unexpected weight to them, things that fit and drape on his frame differently than he would’ve expected. He thinks he might be getting his regular clothes tailored, too, not just his suits. It’s nice. Lets him feel a bit more put-together, a little less of a mess. Like they’re squeezing him into the shape of a person.

Ilya whistles when he comes out of the walk-in in dark jeans and a button-up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Very sexy.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Even when I am nice to him, he tells me shut up,” Ilya announces to the ceiling dramatically. “I do not know what I do to deserve this cruelty.”

“C’mon, I’m hungry. Get dressed.”

Ilya glances down. “I thought I would wear this.” He’s shirtless, wearing a pair of joggers.

Shane sighs. “How many times since we moved in together have I heard you make that joke? I feel like this is a joke you make a lot.”

“I have never made this joke before, ever.”

“Ilya.”

“Two, three times a week.”

“Get ready already.”

Ilya gets off the bed and stretches his arms above his head, his sweatpants riding low on his waist. He catches Shane’s eye wandering downward and smirks.

“Not a fucking word,” Shane says, warning.

“Didn’t say anythiiiiing,” Ilya says, sing-song. He heads into the walk-in while Shane goes to fix his hair.

Ilya does, finally, get dressed (he’s wearing basically the same fucking thing Shane is, after all that fuss), and they get into the car.

“Shit, wait,” Ilya says, opening his door again as soon as he closes it. “Stay right here.” He jogs back into the house as Shane watches bemusedly, then comes back a minute later with a bouquet of flowers. He opens Shane’s door and shoves them haphazardly into his lap. “For you.”

“What the fuck is this?” Shane says, staring at the flowers in his lap. A big bundle of pinks and purples; he doesn’t know the names of them, or any flowers besides roses, basically. “When did you even get these?”

Ilya looks smug. “I am very smart and sneaky. I ordered delivery and then timed my walk with Anya so I could run into driver at the end of the driveway. I hid them under my coat and put them in guest bedroom.”

“Why? You didn’t have to—you didn’t have to do this,” Shane says.

“But it is our first date,” Ilya says, reaching over to brush a thumb against Shane’s cheekbone. “I want to make a good impression.”

Shane can feel his cheeks blushing pink. “You’re corny,” he mumbles.

“You like it,” Ilya says confidently.

Shane bites down on his smile. It comes through at the corners anyway. “Maybe.”

***

Ilya drives them downtown, muttering about finding fucking parking in a mix of English and Russian. He finds a spot eventually.

“We have to walk a little bit,” he says. “But this is one of our favorite restaurants.”

Shane follows Ilya a few chilly blocks to…a dingy pizzeria. Neon OPEN sign flickering in the window, half-busted. It just says EN. The sign next to it advertises a free two-liter soda with any two medium pizza purchases.

Shane looks at Ilya. “Are you fucking with me?”

“I promise I am not,” he says, pushing the door open. A bell chimes overhead.

“Two, please,” Ilya says cheerfully to the bored teenager at the host stand, as if they really need to fight for a table. There’s maybe three other people in here. There’s a display case at the front for pizza sold by the slice.

The host leads them, rather unnecessarily, to a table ten feet away, handing them two very beat-up menus with the lamination peeling at the corners, and then returns shortly after with tall plastic cups of ice water. The tablecloths are that cheap red-and-white checkered vinyl, and vaguely sticky. The one concession to ambience is a single electric candle on the edge of the table by the wall, plastic orange flame providing virtually no illumination.

“This is one of our favorite restaurants,” Shane says.

“Yes.” Ilya doesn’t even bother flipping through the menu. He pushes it to the side and starts craning his neck, trying to get the attention of the waiter. Shane’s not sure if there is an actual waiter, or if it’s just the host, who’s currently scrolling on her phone.

“Seriously? It doesn’t really seem like…”

“Your bird food?”

“In line with an athletic performance diet, sure.”

Ilya gives up on trying to get the host/waiter to look at them. He turns back to Shane. “Yes. That is the point.”

“The point?”

“Mmhmm. For a long time, you take your diet very seriously. You still do, but for a few years, extra serious. Very protein, fiber, whole grains, oh my God, so boring.”

“It’s good for you,” Shane says defensively. “It’s about optimization.”

Ilya waves a hand. “Yes, but you were like, never wanting to take a break. Needed to learn to relax, were not ever letting yourself have fun. And last year, about…year and a half ago? We lost in conference final. Sucked. And you had been living on salmon and kale for months. And you looked at me when were driving home that night, and you said, ‘you know what I want right now? Biggest, greasiest fucking pizza I can find. With so much cheese.’ So I say fuck yes. And this place,” Ilya says, gesturing to the grimy tiles and off-white walls, “was open.”

“Open. Wow. High praise.”

“Yes, it was perfect. And now, this is where we come for pizza, about, eh, once a month. Well, usually we get it delivered, but I thought that would be less romantic.”

“As opposed to the extremely romantic atmosphere in here,” Shane says, poking at the tip of the plastic candle flame.

“Exactly.” Ilya finally manages to flag the waiter down and orders them a pizza, half cheese, half Hawaiian.

“God, of course you like pineapple on pizza,” Shane says. He’s still looking at the electric candle. Something about it…

“I will not apologize for having good taste.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, distracted. He picks the candle up and starts studying it, turning it over in his hand. Flicks the plastic switch on the bottom on and off.

“Hollander. You know that is not real fire, yes?”

“Shut up,” Shane says. “Shut up, I feel like…”

Candles. Electric candles, dozens of them, on the floor and the mantelpiece. But why…? He tries to hold onto the thought, but it slips away, wriggles out of his grasp like an eel.

He looks up at Ilya. “I don’t know if this is a memory? But I feel like…at some point, were there a bunch of these? In the living room.”

“Oh,” Ilya says softly, inhaling. “Oh. Yes. Lots of them.”

“Why?”

“That is, ah.” Ilya swallows hard. “That is when you proposed to me.”

“Oh,” Shane whispers. “I didn’t realize—I didn’t know I was the one who proposed.”

“Yes. It was after—oh, fuck.” Ilya rubs at his forehead. “Okay, don’t get mad.”

Shane’s brow scrunches. “Why would I be mad about proposing?”

Ilya grimaces guiltily. “Okay, you know when you asked me a few days ago if there was anything else big I was hiding? I promise I was not hiding this. I just forgot. I swear.”

“Spit it out, Ilya.”

“That’s not what you usually—” Ilya catches himself. “Sorry. Not the time. Okay. So. Nothing actually happened. But a few years ago, Ottawa’s plane had a little emergency. Tiny, tiny baby emergency. No one really hurt.”

Shane balks. “What the hell is a little emergency on a fucking plane?”

“Um, engine catches fire, very bad turbulence, emergency landing. But it was okay! No one got hurt. All fine, was just very scary for a few minutes.”

“What the fuck.”

“Yes. Point is, it freaked all of us out. Including you, because you realized we were not, ah, legally tied? So if something more serious had happened…”

“No one would’ve known to tell me,” Shane finishes. “I wouldn’t have been able to…see you in the hospital, or.” Or bury him. Jesus Christ.

Ilya nods. “Yes. So I get home from road trip. You were not even supposed to be there, but you had left early to surprise me. And you took me into the living room. And there were candles everywhere…” He trails off, and God, Ilya Rozanov, the absolute terror of ice rinks across North America, is fucking misty.

“The ring didn’t fit,” Shane says suddenly. “The ring didn’t fit, so you put it on your necklace.”

Ilya trembles when he exhales. “It didn’t.” He reaches over the table and takes both of Shane’s hands in his. “It was perfect.”

The host, in the grand tradition of waitstaff everywhere, chooses to interrupt their moment by bringing their pizza over right then. Ilya has to let go of Shane’s hands so she can set it down.

Shane eyes it suspiciously. Big and greasy are in fact the operative words. Oil pools on the surface like spills on a blacktop. “I eat this. Regularly.”

Ilya is already picking up a slice of the Hawaiian. “Every month. I swear on Anya.”

That’s as close as a sacred oath as Ilya will take, so Shane tentatively takes a slice of the cheese. Ilya rolls his eyes when he sees Shane daub at the excess grease with a paper napkin, but doesn’t comment, maybe because his mouth is too full of his ham-and-pineapple abomination.

“Fuck,” Shane says a minute later, eschewing every reminder from his parents he’s ever gotten about talking with his mouth full. “Oh my God. Cheese. Cheese.”

Ilya grins around his own slice. “Told you. Mmf, hang on.” He sets his slice down; he’s already gotten through half in about fifteen seconds. He digs through his jacket pocket until he comes up with a little plastic bottle. “Your dairy pills.”

“Oh, shit, thank you.” Shane is really bad at remembering his lactase, especially since doesn’t have dairy that often.

“No problem. It is really for me, keeps you out of the bathroom all night.”

“Don’t be gross.”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “Forgive me for caring about the state of your ass.”

“Shut up.”

“Why? Your ass and I are very good friends.”

“I hate you.”

“You say this often, but then you keep being married to me. Somehow I do not believe you.”

Shane doesn’t dignify him with a response. He swallows his lactase pills and keeps eating his pizza. It’s unfairly good. It’s not even good pizza, really, just the exact right type of junk Shane didn’t realize he’d been craving.

By the time Shane’s finished his second slice, Ilya’s already inhaled his entire half of the pizza. “I don’t know how the fuck you eat so fast.”

Ilya shrugs. “Hockey player metabolism. Must fuel the big Russian machine.”

“I’m also a hockey player, jackass.”

“Yes, but I eat like one.”

“Whatever. I’m getting full, we can take the rest home.”

“Mm.” Ilya takes Shane’s hand in his, rests it on top of the table. He runs his thumb over the back of Shane’s hand. They sit in comfortable silence.

Ilya looks out the window onto the Ottawa street. After a little while, he sighs.

Shane squeezes his hand lightly. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“My father,” Ilya says.

Shane wasn’t expecting that, actually. “Oh. What about him?”

Ilya keeps his eyes trained on the window. “Before he died. He had not been well for a long time. Since I was a teenager, really, but it got worse in my twenties. He died when I was twenty-five.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says uselessly.

Ilya half-shrugs, just one shoulder lifting an inch. “It is okay. We were not close. He was…he was older for a father. About fifty when I was born, in his seventies when he died. He was not a kind man even before he got sick.”

“And after?”

“He had Alzheimer’s. So, ah.” Ilya rubs at the back of his neck with his free hand. “He was already angry. And then he was confused, often, but this did not make the anger any better. And I watched…” Ilya’s jaw works. “Whenever I went back to Russia, every few months or every summer, he would be worse. I watched him lose much of his memory.”

“Ilya,” Shane says, and he’s not sure if he can pack everything he means to communicate into those two syllables. Oh my God. I’m sorry. Seriously? This feels like a sick joke. “I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry. That must make all this…fuck.”

Ilya finally turns from the window, shaking his head. “No, no, it is okay. I mean, it is hard, yes. But.” His inhale rattles. “I watched my father get worse, yes? But you, you are starting to remember things. You are getting better. Really, it is—it is the opposite. And now it is like—it is still hard. But now I get to do this with hope.” He smiles at Shane, a heartbreaking smile, his chin just barely wobbling.

Shane can feel tears threatening at the corners of his own eyes. He doesn’t move to wipe them, in case it breaks the surface tension, makes them spill. He tightens his grip on his husband’s hand. “Ilya?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go home.”

“Okay,” Ilya whispers. “Home.”

***

They don’t talk on the drive home. Shane spends the whole ride thinking.

He thinks about Ilya. This infuriating, endearing man. Whose off-ice tenderness is in exact inverse proportion to his on-ice fierceness, who will slam him into the boards just as easily as he’ll brush the hair gently out of Shane’s eyes. Who lost his mother once and his father twice, really, his brain and then his body. And then he lost his husband, too, more or less.

And through all his agony he still tried to stay kind to Shane, or at least stay himself. Cared for him. Cooked for Shane, made sure he took his meds. Snuck in flowers for a date with his own spouse. Every dish washed, every round of Uno a way of saying I love you.

Shane sees now what he couldn’t see then, seven years ago. Couldn’t or wouldn’t; maybe he closed his eyes to it on purpose.

The fact of the matter, the truth that twenty-five-year-old Shane had been too terrified to acknowledge: Ilya’s been caring for him for a long time. A sandwich and a soda like a plea. Please stay. I want you here.

And Shane, scared of what it would mean to say yes. Scared of the enormity of the feelings he’d spent years damming up, the pressure building behind the wall. He couldn’t afford to let a single crack appear. The whole fucking thing would burst. It would drown him.

The truth that thirty-two-year-old Shane can finally admit: he’s not afraid of drowning anymore.

When they get back, Shane doesn’t bother turning the lights on. When Ilya comes into the house behind him, he catches him gently by the wrist. Turns around and walks him back a step, up against the door before he leans in to kiss him.

The moonlight comes in through the windows and gleams blue on the hardwood floors. It’s dim, so Shane makes his way by touch, by sound. A new exploration of old territory. Ilya’s lips, always a little chapped because he never remembers his lip balm. His hair, soft from his curl shampoo, soft when Shane cradles Ilya’s head with one hand so he won’t bump it on the door. The heat of his abdomen under Shane’s roving palm, a little more give, a little more softness here than there was seven years ago, no less sexy. And the whole time, the quiet wet sounds of their mouths slipping together, apart, together.

Shane remembers a hotel room, thirteen years ago. The way his heart had pounded in his chest, the way his unsteady hands betrayed him, and he’d been worried Rozanov would feel it and laugh at him for being scared. Maybe he hadn’t noticed, or maybe he had and was considerate enough to not mention it; Shane still doesn’t know. The kindness he hadn’t expected, the sweetness mixed into the bluster. One of a hundred ways he had surprised him. Shane thinks he could spend a lifetime with Ilya Rozanov and never quite fully understand him.

Shane remembers he is spending a lifetime with Ilya Rozanov. He kisses him harder.

More insistent, now: Shane’s body pressing against Ilya’s, his mouth opening wider, messier with the kiss. Ilya is breathing in not-quite-gasps. Shane’s hand slips to the button of Ilya’s jeans.

“We still have our shoes on,” Ilya whispers, smiling gently into the kiss.

“We should probably take those off,” Shane whispers back, moving his lips to Ilya’s jawline, his neck.

Ilya groans. “Sweetheart, don’t distract me. You will get annoyed later if we wear shoes inside the house.” He’s right; it sends a surge crashing through him, how well Ilya knows him. Shane reluctantly pulls back, lets them get their shoes off and coats hung up on the pegs by the door before he pulls Ilya in by his shirtfront to kiss him again.

“Bedroom?” Shane murmurs, and Ilya nods.

It takes them forever to get there; they keep stopping to kiss, getting caught up in each other, forgetting to move their feet instead of their lips. Their tongues pressing together, progressively deeper, verging on sloppy by the time they actually make it to their bedroom.

Ilya turns a lamp on, finally, before sitting at the end of the bed. The warm glow lights him up and turns him golden, dances along the bronze of his hair.

Seven years ago, Shane wouldn’t have ever called Ilya Rozanov beautiful. Not because it was untrue—of course it was true. The problem was that it was unthinkable. Because hot or sexy would be fine for a quick, unattached, casual fuck, but to call him beautiful would be—that’s not a word he could have used. It would be too intimate, too revealing. An admission. Shane might as well turn all his cards face-up on the table. He might as well take his heart out of his chest and open up one of the chambers in front of him. Hello, you’re in here. I can’t get you out.

Ilya is so fucking beautiful.

Shane comes to him. He gets on his lap, his knees on either side of Ilya’s hips, his arms wrapped tightly around him as they kiss and kiss again.

“Off,” Shane mumbles, tugging at Ilya’s shirt.

“You have to let go of me if you want me to take my shirt off,” Ilya says, and Shane grumbles but acquiesces. Ilya leans back on his elbows to undo his buttons, and Shane takes the opportunity to get his own shirt off, giving it a quick fold before he drops it only semi-haphazardly next to the bed. Ilya has no such compunctions. He balls his up and tosses it at the hamper on the other side of the open walk-in door. He misses, and Shane giggles.

“Hush,” Ilya says. “I am not a professional basketball player.”

“Thank God,” Shane says, leaning down to capture Ilya’s mouth again. He bends further, further, until Ilya’s flat against the bed, Shane over him on his elbows and knees. “Scooch up.”

Ilya scooches, getting all the way on the bed now, his head on a pillow. Shane comes with him, crawling up the bed. He brings his hips and mouth down at the same time, kissing Ilya as he grinds against the growing bulge in his jeans.

“Shane,” Ilya breathes, one hand grabbing Shane’s hip to still him, the other hand coming up to cup his cheek. “Shane. I think—but I have to be sure. This is not like the other night, yes? This is real?”

Shane’s exhale is a tremulous thing. He presses his forehead against Ilya’s to steady himself, closes his eyes. “Yes. I…I love you.”

Ilya’s inhale breaks in half, jagged. “Shane—are you sure—”

“I think I did before, too,” Shane says before he loses his nerve. “I think I was scared of it. But I’m not scared of it now.” His voice cracks. “God, Ilya. The way you love me.”

Ilya’s chest heaves; it reminds Shane of the night of the draft, all those years ago, Ilya sweaty and heaving in the basement. Is everything you dreamed of?

No, Shane thinks. I wouldn’t have known to dream of this.

Ilya surges up to kiss him. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he says when he breaks away, his voice thick with emotion, and Shane doesn’t need a translator to know what that means.

Shane fits a hand between them, fumbles at Ilya’s fly. “Please.”

Ilya nods into a kiss, shoves his jeans and boxers together haphazardly down his legs, kicking them off to some unknown corner.

Shane moves down Ilya’s body and drops his forehead against his hip, next to Ilya’s half-hard cock. Just breathing in the scent of him. He’s missed this badly. He takes a few deep breaths before he comes back up and takes Ilya’s cock in hand, tonguing gratefully at the head. Ilya hisses a curse through his teeth.

Shane closes his eyes and lets experience take over, losing himself in the taste, luxuriating in the weight on his tongue, on the back of his head where Ilya is digging his grip into the roots of his hair. Ilya grows harder in his mouth; he opens his jaw wider to adjust. A bead of precome leaks from the slit, and Shane moans as he licks it up. He spits in his palm and jerks what doesn’t fit in his mouth, because he has no idea if his gag reflex has improved in the last seven years, but this doesn’t seem like the time to try to learn. He’ll stick with what he knows: that he loves this, loves the salt-taste of it, loves the sounds he’s wringing out of Ilya, loves the man he’s wringing the sounds out of.

“Sweetheart,” Ilya says, pulling Shane back by the hair. “Do you want me to fuck you tonight?”

“Yeah,” Shane breathes.

Ilya laughs a little. “Then I’m gonna need you to stop, yes? Come up here.”

Shane scrambles back up the bed and lets Ilya kiss the taste of his own precome out of his mouth. They stay like that for a moment, kissing messily, until Ilya flips them both over in one smooth, strong motion, landing Shane flat on his back.

Ilya’s mouth makes its way down Shane’s body. Neck first, biting and sucking, and Shane is going to protest a moment, the guys in the locker room will see, and then he realizes he doesn’t play for several more days, and even if he did it doesn’t matter anymore, they’re not a secret, and the thrill of that lights him up inside, so he lets Ilya continue with his vampirism. His collarbone, next, then his chest. Ilya spends so long on his nipples, grazing them with his teeth, swirling his tongue around them like he would a cockhead or a clit while he massages the other pec, until Shane is arching and gasping beneath him.

Shane realizes that this Ilya has seven years of experience on him, seven more years of figuring out exactly what makes Shane tick and moan and purr, and he knows better than ever how to make Shane fall apart. Part of Shane is annoyed by the discrepancy, but part of him just thinks God, I can’t wait to catch up. Really, isn’t that what he’s been doing since 2008? Chasing Ilya Rozanov, always working to close the gap.

By the time Ilya has made his way down below his navel, Shane’s hips are twitching impatiently. His cock is full and aching in his pants. Ilya isn’t merciful; he teases, kisses Shane through two layers of fabric.

“Please,” Shane finally whimpers again, wondering if there’s a dark stain of precome dotting the front of these designer jeans, and Ilya takes pity. He works Shane’s pants and boxer briefs off together, and Shane is too hazy with desire to even care that he’s tossed them on the floor to inevitably wrinkle.

“Lube in drawer,” Ilya instructs, and Shane grabs it, tosses it down to him.

“Moya lyubov,” Ilya says, and he licks a long stripe up the underside of Shane’s hard cock, leaking, almost red at the tip with need. It wrenches a broken gasp from Shane.

“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, and Shane hears the pop of the lube cap. He feels the warm, slick pad of Ilya’s thumb against his hole a few moments later, not pressing in, just rubbing rhythmically over his entrance, getting him wet, helping him relax.

Shane lets his head drop back all the way onto the pillow as Ilya alternates between teasing his cock with his mouth and massaging his hole with his thumb, sometimes letting the tip of it just catch on Shane’s rim. At one point he pulls his head back enough to dribble spit onto his hole, making him slicker, messier, pulling a whine out of Shane. No doubt Shane’s dripping precome; he always does, always for Ilya.

Ilya eventually pulls his thumb away; the sound of lube being squeezed out is unmistakable, and Shane isn’t surprised when a moment later Ilya is finally sliding a finger inside him properly.

Shane’s whole body relaxes with it. He’s an athlete; his whole life depends on him staying in tune with his body, with paying attention to every ache and signal. But sometimes he doesn’t think he ever feels more like he’s in his own body than during this, when Ilya is opening him up or inside him, clearing out every thought and making way for nothing but sensation.

Ilya doesn’t rush. He works his finger in and out of Shane, pumping it slowly as he continues to lick and suck at Shane’s cock, earning a hundred little moans out of Shane’s mouth. At one point, he ducks his head lower and sucks one of Shane’s balls into his mouth, and Shane’s hands grip hard on his hair without meaning to. “Fuck. More. I need more.”

Ilya hums around his mouthful and dutifully adds a second finger. It lets him get further, deeper; he brushes against Shane’s prostate, and Shane jolts. Ilya does it again, presumably for the sheer pleasure of Shane’s gasp.

It’s wonderful, but the stretch still isn’t enough. Shane tugs back on Ilya’s hair, careful that he doesn’t accidentally get scraped by any teeth in the process. “Please fuck me.”

Ilya nods, his eyes half-lidded with lust. “How do you want me?”

“Just like this. I wanna see you.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says in a low voice. “You want me to get a condom?”

Shane shakes his head. “Wanna feel you.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says again, dropping his head against Shane’s inner thigh for a moment, and then he’s sitting up on his knees, lubing up the length of his cock.

Shane tilts his hips up obligingly as Ilya knee-walks forward on the bed, bending over to kiss him. He guides his cock up against Shane’s hole, letting the tip bump the rim once, twice before pushing in. He goes slowly, letting Shane adjust to each inch. It’s so much, it’s so much, but Shane loves a challenge, always has, and this is the best kind.

“Ilya,” he gasps when he’s bottomed out inside him, not moving yet, just letting Shane get used to it. “Ilya, fuck.”

Ilya had dropped his head against Shane’s collarbone. He lifts it now, and his eyes are shining in the lamplight, his lip trembling.

Shane lifts a shaky hand to Ilya’s cheek. “Baby,” he whispers. “Are you okay?”

Ilya’s face contorts. “I have missed you,” he whispers. “So much.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, kissing his apology against his lips. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Ilya gasps, and he finally starts to move. His hands find the backs of Shane’s thighs, pushing them up toward his chest, nearly folding him in half so he can fuck him deeper and kiss him deeper at the same time.

It’s not even a kiss anymore, not properly, moreso them panting into each other’s slack mouths as Ilya drives into Shane over and over, hitting his prostate relentlessly with this angle. Every thrust wracks a new sound from Shane, punches it out of him. His hands scramble for purchase in Ilya’s damp hair, on his sweat-sticky back.

“Touch me,” he gasps. “Touch me.” Ilya obliges; Ilya indulges. He takes Shane’s cock in his hand, already slick with sweat and lube and precome, and jerks him, firm and rapid, unteasing. It’s probably less than thirty seconds before Shane lets out a guttural fuck, clenching around Ilya’s cock as his orgasm overwhelms him for what seems like ages. He finishes on his own stomach and chest because of the angle.

Ilya groans, still thrusting into Shane, who whines with overstimulation but wouldn’t fucking dream of telling him to stop. Ilya’s not far behind, anyway, stilling as he spills inside Shane, his hips stuttering.

Ilya presses his forehead to Shane’s. “Fuck.”

Shane huffs out a laugh, still out of breath. “Agreed.”

Ilya sits back up on his knees so he can pull out and unfold Shane’s legs, origami in reverse. He stares dazedly at Shane’s hole. Shane can feel come and lube leaking out of him; physically, it’s kind of gross, but emotionally, it’s very satisfying. To have a part of Ilya in him again. Ilya uses his thumb to press some of the leaking come back inside, and Shane hisses through his teeth.

Ilya glances up. “You are okay? Does it hurt?”

“S’fine. Just feels weird. C’mere.”

Ilya half-obeys; he starts to crawl up the length of Shane’s body, but stops to lick Shane’s come off his abdomen, off his chest. It tickles a little bit, and it makes Shane laugh a little. He reaches down to stroke a hand through Ilya’s hair. “What are you doing?”

Ilya swallows. “I am cleaning up my spot,” he says, flopping his head down on Shane’s pecs where his spit is drying a lot less tackily than come would’ve.

“Weirdo,” Shane says. His heart swells with it.

Ilya smiles against his chest. “Yes, I am weird one here. Definitely.”

“Glad we agree.”

They stay like that for a few minutes, peaceful, their heart rates coming back to normal. Shane leaning down occasionally to kiss the top of Ilya’s head. The room is a cocoon, a shelter; all the noise and fear of the outside world is muted and far away. For maybe the first time since he woke up last week, Shane feels completely at peace.

Or he does for a little while, anyway, until he can’t ignore the feeling of come dripping out of him anymore.

“Ugh, we gotta clean up. These sheets are so gross now, we gotta change them.”

“Nooooooo,” Ilya moans, turning to bury his head in Shane’s chest. “It’s late, I’m tired, I don’t want to change sheets.”

“Well, I’m not sleeping on these.”

Ilya props his chin on Shane’s pec. “C’mon, we can sleep in guest room. Clean sheets in there.”

Shane raises his eyebrow. “You want us to sleep in the guest room. In our own house.”

“I want us to sleep in a bed with clean sheets,” Ilya corrects him. “C’mon, it will be like sleepover.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yes,” Ilya says, rolling off Shane and sitting up to stretch his arms above his head. “Are you coming with me?”

“This is so stupid,” Shane says, rolling his eyes, but he sits up and gets out of the bed. He makes a quick pit stop in the bathroom to get himself as clean as he wants to be. When he’s done, Ilya is waiting for him near the bedroom door, still naked.

Ilya reaches out his hand. “Come here,” he whispers playfully, and he takes Shane by the hand, the two of them naked and giggling like teenagers as they navigate their way down the dark hall.

“This is so dumb,” Shane says, laughter still on his lips as he and Ilya sneak like thieves into their own guest bedroom.

“Shh, shh, is genius,” Ilya says. “I am genius.”

“You’re something, alright,” Shane says, but there’s not much venom in it. Too fond.

Ilya wriggles under the sheets, throws them back to pull Shane in. “Come here.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

“Yes, that is what you said earlier.”

“I knew you were going to fucking say that,” Shane says.

Ilya pulls Shane up against him. “Mm, of course, but you said it anyway. So whose fault is it, really.”

“I don’t think I like your logic.”

Ilya kisses him. “You don’t have to. You love me.”

“Yeah,” Shane mumbles against his lips. “Yeah, I do.”

Chapter Text

The team flies out to California the next day.

It’s stupid, but Shane hesitates for a second when he’s about to board the plane. He’s not afraid of flying; statistically, he knows that it’s safer than driving, and really, what are the odds the Cens plane would have two freak accidents, anyway.

The problem is that a professional hockey team’s plane is a school cafeteria in a metal tube. Seating arrangements mean something. Rookies usually pair off to play video games or scroll on their phones; vets might try to sit toward the back and catch some sleep. Card games, usually poker, are popular, too. But ultimately, everyone really wants to sit with their buddies, right?

Shane doesn’t know where he fits in here. He usually reads or naps in one of the quieter sections of the plane, or at least that’s what he did next to Hayden in Montreal. The obvious choice is that he’d be next to Ilya, but Ilya way more of a social butterfly than he is. What if he wants to play cards with the guys? What if he wants to circulate, talk to everyone? Their stalls in the locker room aren’t next to each other. Why would their plane seats be? Is Shane gonna be by himself, or worse, seated next to someone he doesn’t remember at all, forced to make small talk the whole time? Is—

“You sit next to me,” Ilya says quietly into Shane’s ear from behind him. “Back row. You take very back corner.”

“Thanks,” Shane says under his breath. He readjusts his backpack and heads for the back of the plane.

It makes sense. Ilya gets the aisle seat and can look to see what’s going on further up the plane, supervise the rookies as needed, while Shane gets his own little space with as few neighbors as possible. He pulls his noise-cancelling headphones out of his bag, unfolds the standard-issue plane blanket, and settles in for a nap. Normally he would read first, but large amounts of text are still kind of kicking his ass at the moment. He feels mostly recovered from his concussion (aside from the massive holes in his memory, obviously), but he’s still getting headaches on and off, so. Sleep it is.

He wakes up two hours later somewhere over the Midwest. Ilya is leaning away from him, chatting with Boodram across the aisle; he glances over when he feels Shane moving to take his headphones off. “Oh, one second,” he says to Bood.

Ilya digs in his backpack at his feet for a moment, then comes back up with a white pill and a bottle of water. “Take this.”

Shane swallows the pill dutifully, swigging from the water bottle to wash it down.

Ilya looks at him with raised eyebrows. “You are not going to ask what it was first? Just take strange pill? That could have been poison.”

“You wouldn’t poison me,” Shane says dryly. “Not in front of so many witnesses.”

“Ah, you are right. I would wait until we are in a dark alley.”

“Why would I take a pill in a dark alley?”

“Why would you take one right now without asking?”

Shane shrugs. “I assumed you had your reasons. I don’t know. What was it?”

“Just Tylenol. You get headaches after long flights because of the air being dry, or the air pressure, something with the air, I don’t know. Figured it would be worse now. Also because having your headphones on too long squeezes your head. So now I give you a little painkiller when you’re still on the plane so you don’t feel it.”

Shane frowns. He does get headaches from planes. “Oh, that’s smart. Thank you.”

“Yes, I am very kind and genius husband. You can thank me with a blowjob later.”

“You know I can hear you,” Bood says.

Shane flushes, but Ilya doesn’t blink. “I have heard you get drunk and talk for ten minutes about eating pussy, Boodram. You will survive.”

“No shame in my game,” Bood says.

“Exactly, yes, none in mine, either. Or really, in Shane’s—”

“I think that’s enough,” Shane says.

Ilya smirks and kisses him on the cheek. “Sorry, moya lyubov.”

“No, you’re not,” mutters Shane.

Ilya shrugs. “What can I say? I am married to the most talented man in the NHL. Who can blame me for bragging?”

“I thought you always called me the second-best player.”

Ilya’s smirk grows wider as he leans to whisper into Shane’s ear. “Who said I was talking about your hockey skills?”

Shane throws his blanket over top of Ilya’s head, like a bird in a cage getting tricked into sleeping. Ilya just pulls it off, laughing. “I am going to go play some cards. Are you good here by yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. Go have fun.”

Ilya unbuckles himself and gets out of his seat, leaning down to kiss the top of Shane’s head before he goes. “I have fun with you, too.”

***

Most of the time, Shane loves watching hockey.

The only time he doesn’t love it is when he should be playing it instead. He’s skating with the team in morning practices in his no-contact jersey, gradually ramping up his activity level, but he still has to watch the actual games from a box. It’s fucking agonizing to be sidelined when he could be out there helping.

He actively groans watching Los Angeles score shorthanded, the first time the Cens have let in a shorty all season. He tightens his grip on the little counter at the front of the box. I should be out there, he thinks miserably. I could’ve converted that power play. They end up losing 3-1, with Bood scoring Ottawa’s only goal.

It’s better two days later in Anaheim, at least. Ottawa wins 4-2, with two goals from Rozanov, plus one apiece for Barrett and Haas. It still makes Shane fucking itch. He wants to be there. Maybe they’d have won by even more if he’d been able to play…

Fucking calm down, he tells himself. You are not a whole team. It doesn’t work. At least Ottawa managed to snap their three-game losing streak.

His mood isn’t helped when they lose to San Francisco in overtime a few days later. He sits in his stupid counter-height chair in the box, jiggling his leg anxiously for five minutes until Bjornsson sends a nasty wrister five-hole on Hayes. Shane slams his fist down on the counter and goes fuck when it happens, which is stupid, because A. he knows there’s gonna be a camera on him that captured that little tantrum, which won’t look good, and B. now his hand hurts for no reason.

He’s not annoyed at the team, really. Losses happen. Even the greatest hockey players of all time lose hundreds of times in their career, and at least they picked up a point in San Francisco by making it to OT. But he’s annoyed with himself for not being there to at least contribute something. He hates feeling this helpless.

He watches the teams file off the ice, taking a few minutes to calm himself the fuck down, then makes his way down to the locker room after.

“Have fun up there?” Ilya asks drolly when he arrives. He’s stripped out of his jersey and pads, sitting in his sweaty base layer.

Shane winces. “You saw that?”

“Mm, not when it happened, no. But Bood showed me on Twitter. You are a GIF already. They are making memes of you.”

“Sorry,” Shane mumbles. “Was stupid.”

Ilya tilts his head to the side. “Yes, probably. But I like when you are stupid.”

“Is that supposed to romantic?”

Ilya pulls off his shirt. It makes his wedding ring twist and bounce on his chain next to the cross. “Obviously. I like that you care so much. It would be so much less fun if you didn’t care.”

“Because I’m having so much fun right now,” Shane says.

Ilya scoffs. “Yes, sweetheart, I can tell. You are always like this when you have to miss any games.”

“Intense?”

“Pissy.”

“I doubt you like it any better when you’re out,” Shane retorts.

“I don’t,” Ilya says. “I am also—what did Sveta call me? A total little bitch about it.”

“I’m not a little bitch,” Shane says defensively.

Ilya, infuriatingly, reaches out to tweak Shane’s nose. “Your mother taught me a very useful phrase, once. Agree to disagree.”

“Fuck off, go shower. You’re gross.”

Later that night, Ilya pulls Shane up against him in their hotel bed. (Shane had been wondering if they’d share a room on the road, or if he would’ve been too worried about appearances to let that happen, like with the locker room stalls. Apparently they hadn’t during Shane’s first season on the team, but he’d relaxed about it in subsequent years. Except for during playoffs. Everyone knows you don’t fuck during playoffs, and Shane was, according to Ilya, “trying to ‘remove temptation.’”)

“Thank God you are back for Seattle,” Ilya says, his nose against Shane’s nape.

“Oh, I’m that pissy, huh?” Shane says, pissily.

Ilya snorts. “Yes. But our PP needs you.” He slides a hand down Shane’s abs. “And my PP needs you.”

Shane fake-gags. “Never say that shit to me again.”

They haven’t had sex much this roadie; they blew each other after the win in Anaheim, but the losses have put Shane in a bad mood, just sticking to a handjob or two on rest days. Obviously when he and Ilya used to fuck, one of them had always just beaten the other, but at least then there was some sort of frisson, some element of catharsis that came with fucking the man who had just beaten you. There was no fun at all when you just both lost together.

“I just realized,” Shane says. “I know how you play, I know how to play against you. But I haven’t been scrimmaging, so I don’t actually know what it’s like to play with you.”

“Mm, you’ll pick it up quickly,” Ilya says. “Especially because I am very good. I make it so much easier for you.”

“Shut up. Did we ever play together at all before I moved to Ottawa?”

“A few times at All-Stars. First time, 2017. Tampa. Not long after what you remember.”

“Huh. Was it good?”

Ilya kisses the back of Shane’s head. “It was the fucking best. We are the fucking best.”

Shane hums. “Florida must’ve been nice in January. I hate when they do it in like, fucking Colorado.”

“It was nice,” Ilya murmurs. “It, ah—it was a good weekend for us. You told me you liked me.”

“Yeah?” Shane turns over. “And did you say you liked me back?”

Ilya scrunches his face up. “Ah, kind of. I was in…weird place, a little bit.”

“Florida?”

“Ha, yes. But also…my father was not well at the time. I knew I would have to go back to Russia soon, so it was hard to think about…a world where this could happen, yes? And you had also dated Rose Landry not long before, so.”

Shane’s hand finds its way to Ilya’s cheek. “You were jealous?”

“No,” Ilya says sulkily.

“Mm, that sounds like a yes to me.”

“Your ears are broken, Hollander.”

“I think they’re working fine.” Shane kisses Ilya. “You got me now, anyway.”

Ilya’s hand tightens on Shane’s waist. “Yes. I do.”

They kiss some more, unhurried, until Shane finally pulls away. “Ilya.”

“Mm?”

“In Florida that year. Were you wearing a really fucking ugly shirt?”

“I was wearing a fun shirt. A shirt that cannot be appreciated by fashion cowards.”

“So yes.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. He pulls Shane in for another kiss. “Do you remember anything else? Our conversation that weekend?”

Shane sighs. He remembers orange fabric, white flowers, but the edges of the memory refuse to come into focus, like his fucking brain has a bad glasses prescription. “No, I don’t think so. Fuck. I wish I did. Sorry.”

“Do not apologize for that,” Ilya says, smooching the tip of his nose. “Only apologize for insulting my beautiful shirt.”

“No. It was ugly.”

Ilya sighs theatrically. “It is so hard to have such good taste.”

“Yeah, hard on the fuckin’ eyes.”

“You are so cruel to me, Hollander. I am bullied. Every night I cry myself to sleep.”

“Wow, and that whole time I thought it was snoring.”

“I do not snore. This is a lie. I will sue for ten million dollars.”

Shane frowns. “We’re married. Isn’t it all our money?”

“Shh. It is principle.”

Shane rolls his eyes and turns back over. “Good night, Ilya. Try not to snore too loud.”

“Twenty million,” Ilya mumbles. “Maybe thirty.”

***

Shane is so fucking ready to be back. He doesn’t ever remember feeling this impatient to get on the ice. He’s antsy as hell, shifting his weight between his skates while some local a cappella group performs both the Canadian and American anthems before puck drop. Shane was used to taking the first face-off in Montreal, but he’s on the second line tonight, and Ilya’s taking it instead. God, he’s even missed watching from the bench. It’s not the same from a box. You don’t appreciate the sounds, the speed until you’re right there at eye level.

Ilya wins the face-off easily, because Seattle sucks. He gets the puck out to Barrett, and the Cens race toward the offensive zone.

Forty-five seconds later, Shane feels the tap on his shoulder from Wiebe. “Go.”

Shane hops the boards as Ilya comes sailing in toward the bench. “You’re fucking back, baby,” Ilya shouts as he passes by.

Shane grins around his dangling mouthguard. It’s gonna be a good fucking night.

The Cens technically have what’s called a high-volume offense, which is hockey-speak for making a shit-ton of shots on goal. Seattle’s star defenseman, Tremblay, is out with a torn ACL, and their poor goalie can only do so much. Haas scores off an assist from Shane less than five minutes into the first period.

Shane whoops as he crashes happily into Luca. “Let’s fucking go!”

The real fun comes at the end of the period. Three minutes to go and a Seattle gets called for too many men, which means it’s time for the power play. Shane and Ilya on the ice, together at last. Ottawa’s power play is top in the league for a reason. The rivalry turned into the two-headed monster.

Ilya takes the face-off. “Too many men, Campbell? They don’t teach you dumb fucks how to count in Alberta?”

Shane snorts. He used to find it annoying, but honestly, now he’s mostly impressed how much Ilya memorizes about other players purely so he can chirp them. Why the fuck does he remember Mike Campbell is from Alberta? Shane doesn’t even remember that, and they were on Team Canada together for Sochi. Ilya elevates assholery into a fine art. He could teach classes.

The puck drops. Ilya wins, passes it to Shane. Back to Ilya, Ilya to Barrett and then right back to Ilya again, Ilya to Shane, Shane dangles it around Seattle’s fucking pylon of a defenseman—

He sends it top-shelf. The goal horn sounds. Fifteen seconds into the power play, in the first period of his first game back. On an assist from his husband. Forget concussions, forget amnesia, forget closets and outings and panic attacks. Right here, right now, this is where Shane Hollander is meant to be. Doing what he does best in the fucking world.

Ilya nearly knocks him over. “Whoo! Fuck yeah, baby! Let’s fucking go!” he screams five inches from Shane’s face, shouting over the goal horn, the crowd, the stadium speakers. Shane laughs.

Their teammates keep up the energy when they come back into the bench, a happy, chaotic babble of fucking show ‘em, Hollsy and what a goddamn beaut.

Shane squirts his water bottle straight into his mouth with a smile. “Good to be back, boys.”

The rest of the game is a bloodbath. Shane doesn’t score again, but he picks up another assist on a goal from LaPointe, and Ilya and Bood each notch one, too. Seattle only gets a dismal nineteen shots on goal, and Hayes is a brick wall. The clock expires on an Ottawa shutout, 5-0 in Seattle’s own barn. Shane is on top of the world. He could climb the goddamn Space Needle like King Kong right now.

Wiebe trails into the locker room after all the players have filed in, smacking his clipboard over his head. “Alright, boys! That’s what we like to see out there!”

“Fuck Seattle!” Bood yells happily.

Wiebe laughs and glances at his clipboard. “Alright, alright, settle down now. Takeaways from tonight. Number one: Dykstra, Chou, good fucking work out there tonight on D, but get careful you don’t rough ‘em up too bad, alright? You know I like a clean game, refs can’t call penalties if you don’t take ‘em.”

“Can someone tell the refs that?” Chouinard says flatly.

“I’ll pass on the feedback. Number two: zone entries. Little chaotic for my taste, we gotta tighten those up to make sure we keep puck control. Number three—where is he.” Wiebe scans the room until he sees Shane and grin. “Hollsy.”

Shane ducks his head, but he’s beaming.

“Man of the fucking hour,” Wiebe says. “Goal and an assist in his first game back, boys, let’s hear it for Hollsy!”

Yet another round of cheers goes up. Someone starts chanting, probably Boodram. “Hollsy, Hollsy, Hollsy…”

It catches on fast. “Hollsy, Hollsy, Hollsy,” the other players chant, beating their fists on their thighs.

Shane laughs it off. When he looks up, he sees Ilya approaching with a smirk, something hidden very badly behind his back.

Like most NHL teams, the Cens have an unofficial player-of-the-game award for after wins. Some teams have giant wrestling-champion belts; others have jackets. In keeping with the vaguely ancient Greek theme of the team name, the Centaurs’ is a plastic laurel crown to rest on their head like an Olympic victor.

Shane shakes his head, but he can’t bite down his smile when Ilya whips the laurels out from behind him.

“Shane Hollander,” Ilya announces dramatically. “Fucking champion!” He sets the crown on Shane’s head and smacks a loud, obnoxious mwah onto his cheek.

Shane keeps the crown on for all of thirty seconds so Harris can snap a picture for the team’s socials before handing it off to the equipment manager. “Alright, alright, thank you, boys. But hey, it was five goals out there tonight, yeah? Team effort.”

“Don’t be so fuckin’ humble, dickwad,” Dykstra shouts.

“Yes, dickwad,” Ilya agrees.

“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Shane says cheerfully.

“Gentlemen, please,” Wiebe says. “Hollander, Hayes, you’re on press duty tonight, but I’ll tell them to try to keep it quick.”

Shane groans internally, but he knew this was coming. No way press wouldn’t be salivating to interview him in his first game back from IR, especially not after a performance like that. He showers and changes into a Cens sweatshirt and joggers before heading out to meet the press.

Shane’s done hundreds of these in his life, so he can thankfully shut off ninety percent of his brain while answering these questions. Hockey interviews are always the same, anyway. Yes, it’s good to be back. Felt extra-nice to score in his first game post-concussion. Couldn’t do it without any of his teammates, Haasy and Pointer are great on his line. Hoping to keep the momentum going. Rinse, repeat.

On the bus back to the hotel, Holmberg stands up and turns around to face the team. “Anyone else wanna go out tonight, celebrate a little?”

Some of the younger guys express an interest, though the vets and the married guys mostly turn them down. Holmberg turns to Ilya. “What about you, Roz, you wanna go out?”

Ilya smirks. “No. I have other plans.”

The other guys groan; Shane smacks him on the arm, but Ilya just laughs. “You all have such dirty, dirty minds! I was talking about watching a documentary! Very educational!”

“More like filming one, eh?” Bood snickers.

“Absolutely not, you filthy pervert,” Ilya says. “Shane won’t let me.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Genuinely, why do I put up with you.”

“Superstition,” Ilya says, putting his arm around Shane. “You won a million awards while fucking me. If you stop, you’ll have bad luck.”

“Mmhmm, must be the only reason.”

***

Ilya doesn’t even wait for their slow-closing hotel door to shut all the way before he’s yanking his shirt off.

“I thought we were going to watch a documentary,” Shane says, deadpan.

“Oh my God, Hollander, why are you still wearing clothes?” Ilya says, making quick work of everything on his lower half and jumping backwards onto the bed. At least the door is shut now.

Shane sighs and strips. The truth is that he’s still fucking buzzing with energy from the win. He wants to get fucked hard as much as Ilya presumably wants to fuck him. He climbs on top of Ilya, sprawled out on the bed. They’re both naked already, no teasing, no prelude. Shane kisses him, open, filthy.

He pulls back a minute later. “Do you really ask if you can film us?”

Ilya laughs. “I see you still haven’t found the secret album on your phone.”

Shane blinks. “I thought that was a joke.”

“I said I was not joking!”

“I thought that was a joke.”

“Go get your phone.”

Shane crawls off Ilya to grab his phone off the nightstand, balancing on his knees and elbows while he opens his photos app. He frowns. “Where?”

“You have to look under ‘Utilities.’”

In his defense, Shane woke up with a very new model of phone, and he hasn’t completely gotten used to all the changes. He scrolls until he finds the album labeled “Hidden.” His phone scans his face (when did phones start doing that, by the way, he misses having a phone with a real button and a fingerprint scan) and—

“Oh, fuck,” Shane says, slamming his phone down instinctively before he remembers the only two people in these photos are in this room. He picks it back up cautiously, like it might bite him.

Technically, there are no videos in this album. But there are definitely photos. Some are solo, some together. Some look like screenshots of video calls. A dick pic mirror selfie from Ilya, his hard cock in his hand. Shane’s torso covered in come. A picture that, judging from the angle and his blissed-out face, Shane must have taken of Ilya while riding him. One of Shane taken from behind, face down, ass up, Ilya’s hand fisted in his hair pressing him down into the pillow. Ilya’s cock just visible at the edge of the screen, disappearing into Shane’s hole. One of Shane’s face, eyes hazy, his tongue out, come streaking across—

“Did you come on my glasses?” Shane asks.

“Mm, yes. That was my birthday.” Ilya’s moved without Shane realizing; he’s kneeling behind Shane now, fingers digging into Shane’s hips. He leans over and lets his teeth graze Shane’s ear. “See anything you want to recreate?”

“Shut up,” Shane says. He wonders if Ilya can tell he’s flushing from behind.

“Why?” Ilya says. “We have lots of fun. Nothing wrong with it. I like it.” He slips a hand around to brush his fingertips along Shane’s half-hard cock. “Seems like you like it.”

Shane shivers under Ilya’s touch and drops the phone. He can feel Ilya cock growing stiffer behind him; he starts moving his hips back, grinding just a little.

Ilya makes a pleased little sound, but he grabs Shane’s hip with one hand to still his movements. With his other, he picks the phone back up. “Go on. Pick.”

Shane twists around to look at Ilya over his shoulder. “Are you for real?”

Ilya shrugs. “What? You scored a beautiful goal tonight, it’ll be on the highlight reel. Now I’m asking you to choose from another highlight reel as your reward.” He scrolls through the album. “We could do this…or this…we don’t have the equipment for this, unfortunately…”

A photo in a full-length mirror, Shane seen from behind, kneeling in front of Ilya in a pair of tight briefs. Ilya looking up at the camera through his lashes, his lips wrapped around Shane’s cock. Just a pair of wrists—his own, he’s pretty sure, though the lighting isn’t great—handcuffed to a headboard.

Shane’s cock twitches. He grabs the phone from Ilya’s hand and scrolls back up to one of the photos he saw earlier. The one where Ilya’s shoving his head down into the pillow as he fucks him from behind. “This one.”

“Very good choice. I like this one, too.” Ilya reaches past Shane to the nightstand drawer and pulls out a bottle of lube and a condom.

“Did you seriously plant those there earlier?” Shane says, looking back at Ilya over his shoulder.

Ilya’s grin is shameless. “I had a feeling.”

He plants a hand in the center of Shane’s back and pushes him down firmly until Shane drops down off his elbows. “I am not actually going to shove your head around like the picture, since you are just barely back from concussion and I do not want you to have to explain to Wiebe why your head is broken again. But the rest I can do, yes?”

“Get on with it already,” Shane says, and he earns a quick swat to his ass for the trouble.

“So impatient,” Ilya says, clucking his tongue.

“I thought tonight was about me,” Shane says, petulant. “My reward.”

“Yes, so let me reward you how you asked,” Ilya says. Shane can feel him shifting positions behind him. “In that photo, I did this first.” Ilya spreads Shane apart and licks a hot, wet stripe over his hole. Shane moans.

He can hear the smirk in Ilya’s voice. “Yes, you see what happens when you let me work?”

“Fuck you.”

“No, I’m going to fuck you,” Ilya says. “Soon.” He repeats his motion, licking up and down over Shane’s hole. He alternates between broad, flat sweeps and a more pointed tongue that catches on Shane’s rim, just dipping inside him, occasionally pressing a wet, sucking kiss. Shane shoves his own head into the pillow to muffle his moans, adjusting it slightly so he can still breathe. He only remembers Ilya having done this to him once or twice, but it’s obvious he’s spent the intervening years perfecting his craft. Ilya’s strong hands knead his ass while his tongue works him open, occasionally dropping down to his balls to tease him even more. Precome leaks from Shane’s cock as he grips the hotel sheets for dear life. He has no idea how long Ilya is eating him out. It could be two minutes or twenty. Time is liquid; Shane is jelly.

Even the sound of the lube cap makes Shane’s cock jump.

“Good, good,” Ilya purrs. “See how nice it is to be patient?”

Without removing his face from the pillow, Shane lifts a hand from the sheets to flip Ilya off. Ilya just laughs.

Ilya drips the lube straight onto Shane’s hole; Shane hisses through his teeth at the cold. Ilya smears it over, just inside, with the pads of his fingers, adding to the mess. Shane hears more lube, presumably this time for Ilya’s hand, and then he goes in with two fingers straight away, not bothering to ease him in with one. Shane moans into the pillow. Ilya had opened him up somewhat with his tongue already, but it’s still an adjustment to take two at once, a nice stretch. Ilya would probably make fun of him if he said this out loud (hell, maybe he already has and just doesn’t remember), but Shane thinks the best sex is a lot like his best workouts in the gym. He loves to push his body, to find his limits and press up against them, see if he can’t go further. He loves the satisfying kind of soreness he feels afterwards, the pleasing ache that comes with knowing he’s tired because he’s accomplished something, even if that something was being pounded into a mattress. Shane Hollander loves being good at something, and he is very, very good at getting fucked.

Which is to say he rocks back onto Ilya’s fingers as much as he can, considering Ilya’s got his hand planted firmly in the center of Shane’s back, keeping him in place.

“Greedy,” Ilya says, pulling his fingers out quickly to land another smack on Shane’s ass.

“Fuck you, I earned it.”

“You certainly did,” Ilya says, shoving his two fingers back inside, a little rough, how Shane likes. He adjusts the angle of his hand, finds Shane’s prostate with his fingertips. Shane is so keyed up, it makes his whole body jerk. He can feel another drop of precome beading at his tip.

“Hurry up and fuck me,” Shane says, shoving his hips back.

“Walls in this hotel are very thin,” Ilya says casually. “Did you know Coach Wiebe is next door?”

Shane stills. “For real?”

Ilya snorts. “No, it’s just Bood. Don’t worry, he’s used to hearing us.”

“Oh my God,” Shane groans. “I hate you.”

“Oh, should I put my cock away, then?”

Shane reaches behind him blindly to paw at Ilya’s hip. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Ilya chuckles, and Shane hears the crinkle of tearing aluminum. One of Ilya’s hands is still on his back, so he’s probably ripping the condom wrapper with his teeth again. Shane knows this is statistically more likely to cause condom failure. Unfortunately, it is also extremely fucking hot to him. He figures at least he won’t get pregnant if the condom breaks, just messier than he likes to be on the road.

Ilya’s done with teasing. He lines up the head of his cock against Shane’s hole and pushes in straight away, sliding all the way home in one smooth motion. It sends the air out of Shane’s lungs.

“Ah,” Ilya says. “Now you look like picture.”

Shane whimpers.

Ilya starts to move, taking his hand off Shane’s back to grab onto his hips, fingertips digging into the tops of his thighs. He fucks Shane brutally, relentlessly. He’s so fucking deep at this angle, his pace furious. Shane’s brain shuts off. His body takes over. He loses himself in it, the panting, the sweat, the slapping sounds, the way Ilya’s thighs start to stick to his with every thrust. He’s facedown, but he can see Ilya’s face in his mind right now, the way it goes so pink when he’s working this hard.

“Touch yourself,” Ilya orders, his nails digging into Shane’s skin.

Shane shakes his head into the pillow. “No. Wanna…”

“Fuuuck, Hollander,” Ilya groans, drawing it out.

He takes a moment to adjust behind Shane, shifting his angle slightly before redoubling his efforts. His cock is driving straight into Shane’s prostate on every thrust now. Shane swears, gasps, fists his hand into the pillow as Ilya plows into him ruthlessly. His cock is bouncing heavy between his legs with each thrust, throbbing, desperate, begging for relief—

Shane comes with a noise that he barely recognizes as himself, clenching hard around Ilya’s cock as he spills onto this generic hotel duvet. He makes a mental note to leave a huge tip for the cleaners.

Ilya curses something in Russian. He keeps his momentum up for a few more thrusts, pulling a few more gasps out of Shane as he hits Shane’s too-sensitive prostate, and Ilya continuing to use Shane’s body like this, regardless of whether Shane has come or not, is so hot that Shane’s dick gives a feeble attempt at a twitch. A moment later, Shane feels Ilya’s cock pulsing hot as he comes into the condom inside him.

Ilya collapses forward on top of Shane without pulling out. His chest hair is sweaty. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Shane agrees. Both their chests are heaving. Shane loves cardio.

“I should have taken another picture,” Ilya says. “We could put them next each other like the little game in magazines. Spot the difference.”

“Maybe I’ll let you take one next time,” Shane says. “Early Christmas present.”

Ilya nips playfully at Shane’s shoulder. “Hm, I was thinking a new sports car.”

“Take it or leave it, Rozanov.”

“Fine, I’ll take it,” Ilya says. He sits back up onto his knees and pulls carefully out of Shane, who exhales through gritted teeth. “Sorry, sorry, you good?”

Shane rolls over to avoid the stain on the duvet and stretches his body out, arms over his head. “Yeah, I’m good. Just a little sore.”

Ilya ties off the condom and tosses it in the wastebasket. He flops down on the bed next to Shane; they’re too sweaty to make cuddling sound pleasant right now.

“Man,” Shane says, looking up at the ceiling. “This is so fucking crazy.”

Ilya turns his head toward Shane’s. “What, that my dick is so good it still makes you come untouched? Yes, it is.”

Shane slaps the back of his hand lightly onto Ilya’s chest. “Not that. Or yes, technically that, but I don’t know. All of it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it,” Shane repeats. “Like, last I remember, I was freaking the fuck out in Boston because you said my name. And now I wake up and we’re fucking married?”

“Good crazy?” Ilya asks.

“Yeah, good crazy. We’re married, and we’re still playing hockey—”

“Really good hockey.”

“Really good hockey, and we’re out, and…” Shane shakes his head. “I think. I think all I ever wanted, all those years, were hockey and you, and I was so convinced it would have to be one or the other. So this is just…”

“Crazy?” Ilya says, a smile curving gently.

Shane half-laughs, just a puff of air through his nose. “I can’t even believe it’s real. Like, I think part of me still thinks it’s actually 2016, and I’m having a coma dream.” He hesitates. “I think I’m kind of waiting for it to come crashing down, a little.”

Ilya reaches up to brush a strand of hair off Shane’s forehead. He does that a lot, Shane’s noticed. It’s sweet. “Mm. No crashing. People tried. Didn’t work. We’re too good.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Shane says.

“It’s true. Pike told you that you bitched out Crowell, yes? Defended our honor, told him to fuck off?”

“The gist of it, yeah.”

Ilya leans in enough to kiss Shane’s shoulder. “I had never seen you act like that. It was very sexy. Wanted to fuck you in the elevator at the league offices.”

“I doubt that would’ve helped our cause.”

Ilya rolls on top of Shane, dropping his head to kiss him. “Who gives a fuck? We won.” He cradles Shane’s face in his hands, looks him right in the eye. “Hey. We won, solnyshko. We get to have this. It is real. I promise.”

“Yeah?” Shane asks softly.

Ilya nods. “Yeah.”

Shane tilts his head up to kiss his husband.

They’re winners. They’re fucking champions.

A minute later, Ilya’s phone pings. He stops kissing Shane to grab his phone off the nightstand. He laughs at whatever it is, then turns the phone around to show Shane.

It’s a Venmo notification. Zane Boodram requests $5.00 - earplugs.

Ilya snorts as he hits Decline.

Chapter Text

December passes. January and February, too. Shane comes back in bits and pieces.

Not all of him. Not nearly fucking enough, to be honest. It’s exasperating, the things he remembers (a little) in comparison to the things he doesn’t (a lot).

The problem is that there’s no way for his brain to prioritize what’s important. So Shane will step into Loblaws and remember the time Ilya accidentally knocked a glass bottle of kombucha off a shelf and shattered it everywhere and they had to apologize to the employees, but he’ll watch the tape of himself scoring a Cup-winning goal and have no memory of it whatsoever. He’ll look at a spot on the living room floor and suddenly have a vision of one of Anya’s old toys hat got ripped apart last year, but not the first time he met Hayden’s daughter Amber.

Things are still pretty good, generally. The Cens win more than they lose by a decent margin. There’s a learning curve that comes with being married to Ilya, finding out how to exist alongside a partner (Shane never knew he had opinions on how to fold socks, or that there could be a way that was wrong, until he opened the dresser drawer in their bedroom), but on the whole, it’s really fucking great. Some days Shane can’t believe his luck. Other days, he’s so frustrated with how much is missing that he wants to scream, or cry, or sprint until his lungs burn so much he can’t think.

The thing that really pisses him off is that he doesn’t remember their wedding.

Shane fought for that wedding. He earned it. He should’ve gotten to keep it.

Ilya finds him in the home gym, doing one of his rare workouts with the punching bag. “Nice swing, Hollander. Maybe if you work hard enough, next year you will be able to break a granny’s ribs.”

Shane scowls at him. “Fuck off.”

Ilya sits down on a weight bench. “Shane. They’re going to come back.”

Right hook. “You don’t know that.”

“You’ve been recovering well. Dr. Chowdhury says—”

“I know what Dr. Chowdhury says.” This is great progress, Shane. I’m optimistic. Left jab, right jab.

“All we can do is be patient.”

Left hook, right hook, left hook. Shane catches his breath, sweat dripping. He undoes the velcro of the gloves with his teeth, lets them drop to the floor. “I am so fucking sick of being patient.”

Ilya sighs. “I know.”

Shane exhales and sits down on the floor, leaning back on his hands. He lets his head drop back between his shoulder blades. “I’m so tired of feeling powerless. If this were like, an ACL tear, I’d still have to wait, but I could at least rehab it and do my PT. If this were working on my fucking skating, or my backhand—”

“You could still work on your backhand—”

“Fuck off. I could do something about it, you know? But this, all I can do is wait. I can’t practice my waiting. I can’t get better at it. This fucking blows.” Shane slumps back to lie on the gym floor, which is gross, but he’s going to shower soon anyway.

Ilya lowers himself from the weight bench to sit down on the floor next to him. He tangles his fingers loosely with Shane’s. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Shane says with a heavy sigh. “Sometimes it’s just like…what’s the fucking point?”

“The point of what?”

Shane waves a hand aimlessly. “All of it, I don’t know. Like, I did all these amazing things, and I don’t even get to remember any of it. So what’s the point? Does it matter? Am I even the me that did those things?”

Ilya tilts his head, considering. After a moment, he shifts, lying down next to Shane, still holding his hand. They look at the ceiling together.

Ilya finally speaks. “Are you happy?”

“Right now?”

Ilya shakes his head in the corner of Shane’s vision. “In general. With this life now. Here. In Ottawa with me.”

Shane turns his head to look at Ilya. “I—yeah. Really happy. You know that.”

Ilya shrugs. “Then I think that is the point, yes?”

Shane gives him a look. Go on.

Ilya shrugs again. “I think it matters. You made your life this way. You don’t remember it all—for now—and that is sad, but that does not mean you do not get to enjoy what you have now. You do not have to…remember building every single brick to still like living in the house, you know?”

“I know.” Shane exhales, morose. “I just really miss some of those bricks. I want to remember our Cup. I want to remember our wedding.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. He lifts their joined hands to kiss Shane’s knuckles. “If they don’t come back, we’ll just win another Cup. And we’ll get married again.”

Shane finally laughs. “Oh, okay, if it’s that simple. Do we have to get divorced so we can get married again?”

Ilya shakes his head. “Absolutely not. Vow renewal. Anya will officiate this time.”

“I don’t think Ontario allows dogs to officiate weddings.”

“I will claim religious discrimination.” Ilya rolls over onto his side and props his head up on one hand. “Shane.”

“Ilya.”

“You did not live your life on your own, yes?” He reaches out to stroke his thumb over Shane’s cheekbone. “You have spent almost seven years making me very happy. You gave me your parents. You helped start a charity and raise so much money. Kids look up to you. We brought the Stanley Cup back to fucking Ottawa, which was never going to happen in fifty thousand years without us.”

Shane can feel himself start to well up. He takes a deep breath to try to control it. “They would’ve gotten there eventually.”

“A hundred thousand years, maybe. When we are almost as old as Scott Hunter.”

“He’s not that much older than we are.”

“He is ancient.” Ilya moves his thumb to brush a tear out of Shane’s eye. “Shane. Sweetheart. People love you. Your friends love you. I love you. Even if you do not remember, you still spent this time making other people’s lives better. That is why it matters, okay?”

Shane finally gives up the fight against crying. A tear runs down from the corner of his eye to the floor. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” Ilya leans down for a kiss. It’s always easy, kissing Ilya. Muscle memory.

Shane finally pulls away, dabbing his damp eyes with his shirt collar. “I love you. Can we please go shower? This gym floor is so gross.”

“You were the one who got down here first,” Ilya grumbles, but he gets up and helps pull Shane to his feet.

“You wanna shower together or separate?” Shane asks as they head back into the main house.

Ilya grabs at Shane’s ass as he walks up the stairs in front of him. “Hollander, if I ever say ‘separate,’ I have been replaced by an alien, and you should kill it.”

Shane’s laugh echoes down the hallway. Reaching out in front of him.

***

June, 2024.

Ilya takes the face-off. The series is 3-1 against Dallas. If the Cens win tonight, they win it all.

They’re winning tonight. Shane knows it in his bones. Knows it in the flex of carbon fiber in his hands, in the way steel bites into ice under his feet.

Ilya wins the face-off, and he’s off like a rocket. He and Bood and Barrett battle it out in the offensive zone until—

The tap on the shoulder. Wiebe shouting for the line change.

He jumps over the boards. It’s time to remind the crowd who exactly Shane Hollander is.

He thinks he knows, too, now.

He doesn’t have all his memories back yet, though it’s hard to quantify. Maybe half, if he’s lucky. The rest could come back, or they might not. Shane’s trying to be at peace with it. Focus on what he does have. He’s getting better at it, he thinks.

There are still frustrations, still some days that are better than others. He still doesn’t have any memories of winning the Cup with Ilya.

Right now, racing down the ice, Shane figures that’s fine. He’s got plenty more to make.