Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shane is nineteen. Shane is nineteen and he’s in a nondescript hotel room, about as insignificant as every single hotel room he has ever been in his life barring one from the vacation they went to at the Grand Rapids when he was a kid. Shane is nineteen and he’s in a nondescript hotel room, naked as the day he was born. Shane is nineteen and he’s in a nondescript hotel room, naked as the day he was born, sore in almost all the right places. Shane is nineteen, he’s in a nondescript hotel room, naked as the day he was born, sore in almost all the right places, and—

“Hollander, are you okay?”

Right. 

He turns his head, nestling his cheek against the pillow. The elephant in the nondescript hotel room is staring at him, his own cheek propped up against his palm, covering his mole which, strangely enough, Shane wants to see again. He almost reaches out to move the elephant’s palm away, but that’s not a normal reaction to anything, so he stays put and stares back, forgetting that he’d been asked a question until the-elephant-named-Rozanov asks it again.

“Hollander, are you okay?”, and Shane gets another weird urge, this time to grab Rozanov’s chin firmly between his fingers and squeeze them until his mouth is open, then make him say his surname again, just so Shane can figure out how his tongue weaves through the syllables like that. How he says Hollander in a way that makes it sound so brand new; like Shane has never heard it before until now. You make it sound weird. No one’s ever said it that way before. Say it again.

But Shane is a coward, so he nods, instead, and says, “Yeah, of course.”

“Then why are you just staring at me? Is there something on my face?”

Shane wants to say yes. Wants to say ‘your face is on your face’, because the only reason that Shane is staring, really, is because it’s unfair how beautiful Rozanov is. How sharp his cheekbones are and how his hair falls so perfectly against his forehead, even if it’s damp with sweat. How his teeth, though crooked, still seem to fit in the perfect symmetry of his features. It’s all very annoying to think about, but it’s a good distraction from the feelings making themselves known in the pit of Shane’s stomach. And does he want to unpack that, now, naked on top of a hotel bed with ridiculously soft sheets while maybe mildly panicking because Rozanov is leaning in again, red lips parted, ready to kiss? 

No. Shane does not want to unpack shit. “Nothing,” he replies, then closes the gap.

There had been Louise, in the second grade, if that even counts, first because they’d been too young for any talk of relationships to have any meaning, and second because their relationship lasted for a grand total of thirty minutes, which ended when, after being asked if he liked her more than he liked hockey, Shane had shook his head and said no, because he could never imagine liking anything more than hockey. Really, the fact that it happened in second grade should already disqualify the whole thing. 

Then Michaela in junior year—one of two Michaelas in his class, which is probably why the details keep slipping away from him. If Shane closes his eyes, he wouldn’t even be able to remember if she had been blonde or brunette, only that they had gone to prom together and that he spent the whole night sulking in the corner, unable to believe that he ditched skating laps on the rink with his coach in favor of watching her dance so hard her shawl got caught on the wires of her braces.

Jessica was the last and, really, there’s almost nothing to say about her, which is sort of the point because the only reason they dated was because everyone around them had been expecting them to because of how often they were seen together. And that he spent more time wishing she’d break up with him already, especially when she refused to come to see him get drafted. What kind of a girlfriend would she have been in the long run if she couldn’t even support him like that? Probably not a good one. Shane tries not to think about it.

And then there is Ilya Rozanov after all of them, the cocky eighteen year old smoking in front of a no-smoking sign outside an arena in Saskatchewan. Ilya Rozanov, hockey player, born in Moscow, Russia to Irina Rozanova and Grigori Rozanov (though Shane wouldn’t really know this until much later). June 15, 1991. Shane was born before him so, technically, Rozanov has never known a life without Shane Hollander, which he will definitely lord over him whenever he’d get the chance to. His jersey number is 81. He’s a center like Shane. He’s the captain of the Boston Raiders. He’s a Gemini, though Shane has no idea how that affects him, if it has any bearing on his personality at all. Shane thinks there’s none because Rozanov is an asshole regardless, but all the tabloids insist that there is. He’s six foot three; only an inch taller than Shane. He’s a boy. There’s this thing that he does where he rubs his nose whenever he’s lying. It’s a pretty easy tell, and Rozanov is not a very good liar. He’s a boy, a boy, a boy. 

Sometimes, he wishes Rozanov was a girl instead.

(Like most things, it’s entirely Rozanov’s idea. Shane would, some years from now, wish that he could take credit for how good of a joke it is: Jane and Lily, stand-ins for Shane and Ilya, living the life they couldn’t have, so that no one would have to look twice. It’s fucking clever. Simple, but clever. But it had been Rozanov who said): “Oh my God, Hollander, you are so boring.”

Rozanov stands, then, towel precariously wrapped around his waist. Shane’s dressed now, but there’s a teensy, tiny part—okay, that’s a lie, there’s a ginormous wanting in his chest that has formed its own hands, wanting to leap out of Shane and remove his clothes once again so that he can get down on his knees, pull the towel down, and put Ilya’s cock back in his—

Calm the fuck down, he exhales. Calm down. Calm down.

“Give me your phone.”

Huh. Shane just stares at Rozanov, who rolls his eyes and says, again, “You have phone?” His hand is held out in between them. “Give.”

And what can Shane do, really, except obey. He places his phone on Rozanov’s palm, watches as he types… something. Some numbers. Are we exchanging phone numbers? Shane thinks, which is proven to be right when Rozanov hands his phone back and he reads, on the screen, Lily.

How interesting. A flower for a guy most people would never associate a flower with. “So, what’s my name gonna be?”

He’s barely gotten the question out before Rozanov looks up and, immediately, replies, “Jane.” At the same time, Shane’s phone buzzes with a text: ‘Hey Jane, see you in 2 weeks 😉 xo Lily’. 

Rozanov’s smirk is infuriating when he walks away. Shane smiles, small and for himself only, before he turns one last time to look at Rozanov’s back. The wanting inside has not ceased. Rozanov’s towel still looks so fucking easy to pull.

Shane lets himself imagine it sometimes, this impossible version of life where Lily exists, a living and breathing thing. That Ilya Rozanov had been Lily Rozanova instead, answered to Lily, Liliya, Lils, or any variation thereof. The first iteration of his dream is pretty simple: he often thinks about how things would have been if they met back when the whole world was one giant campus in Ottawa that ran from first grade to senior year. In this version of things that Shane toys with in his mind, Lily stands superimposed where Louise once did, and Lily doesn’t ask him to choose. Lily doesn’t tilt her head, blonde curls swaying in the wind, and makes hockey a test he has to fail in order to pass. If it had been Ilya, and if Ilya had been a girl, she would not have asked because she would have understood. Would have known that Shane lived and breathed hockey. Because Lily would have been beside Shane, skating the same ice, living the same life, not knowing anything else.

(But then Ilya had done that too, even as himself, so ultimately there would be no point.)

Yuna Hollander is a woman of mystery. Half the time she prefers it like that—she never particularly cared for attention. Shane often thinks about the story of how she met his dad, tidbits of which were told to him after too many glasses of wine because she otherwise would not have shared. Dragged to a party she didn’t want to attend because she wanted to prove to her roommate that she was more than the boring dud they thought her to be, only to end up sticking to the wall the whole time, nursing her drink, catching the attention of David Hollander who, like her, also did not want to be there. “And then the rest is, well,” she would trail off, looking pointedly at Shane.

She never really completes the story. Shane’s not sure why, but it’s a good thing that he was never a particularly curious child, perfectly content in being one of those kids who simply took most things  in the world as it is, never asking why things happened or how they happened. To his detriment, probably. Shane’s sure that he’s missed out on so much growing up and growing older, but life has always been hockey, hockey, hockey. The call of the ice was always greater than the promise of everything else. Why would Shane have wanted anything to do with those outside of it?

That’s something he bonds over with his mom, at least. This single minded focus that they both have with respect to hockey. No one ever expected that from Yuna; David was the former hockey player. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to be the one Shane ran to when it comes to the game? But some things happened in life that flipped the roles. His dad doesn’t even talk about playing for McGill anymore. Another one of the things that Shane never asks about. 

Sometimes, he does look at his mom and wonders where her motherhood ends and where being the manager of his career begins. There's a thin line between the two that’s somewhat blurry and often crossed, which is how Shane knows that his relationship with his mother isn’t exactly the best or maybe the healthiest, but they’ve only ever really had each other so what’s he gonna do? Draw the line again? Shane would, sometimes, rather die.

They’re in the produce aisle when he asks it, of all places. Shane’s really got to work on his timing but it’s too late for that when he asks her, while she was inspecting the avocados with the exact same scrutiny she uses when reviewing his advertisement contracts, “Did you ever think about having another kid?”

She doesn’t look up. “No.”

“No?”

“No,” she repeats, finally placing one avocado carefully inside a plastic bag. “Your father and I decided early on that we’d focus on raising you. One child. That was it.” A small smile worms its way across her face. “You were more than enough.”

More than enough. Cool. That’s not what Shane’s trying to get at though, really. So he asks, “Did you always want a boy?”

“Yes.”

Shane blinks at the lack of hesitation. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You didn’t want a girl?”

His mom laughs, then, like the question has greatly amused her. She’s not even really paying attention when she answers. “What would I even do with a daughter?”

It’s meant to be a joke, probably. Shane thinks about it deeply anyway. What would she have done with a daughter? Would she have pushed her just as hard? Would she have sat rinkside at five in the morning, thermos full of coffee in hand, eyes catching Shane’s mistakes before he could even perform them? Would she have built her entire world around a girl the way she built it around him? Or would Jane Hollander have lived an entirely different life, no Yuna Hollander behind her back looking at her with just as much expectation as she does pride. The more important question is why it matters to Shane, somehow. Maybe because so much of who he is and who he’s allowed to be feels tangled up in being her son. Yuna Hollander’s perfect boy. 

“Why do you even ask?” She finally asks, sliding the now-full bag of avocados into the cart. 

Shane sighs, pushes forward. “Nothing. Stupid thought experiment.”

Would Lily Rozanova have soft skin? Would she have lips as naturally red as Ilya’s? Smoother, perhaps. Less chapped because, surely, she’d take care of it more than Ilya does his own. The locker room is messy—Shane has heard all the talk. Men hate it when women have awful lips, because it makes them awful to kiss. No one wants to touch lips and taste blood. Except maybe for Shane, but that was a one off thing and he refuses to acknowledge the post-game, bruised and bloodied Ilya Rozanov aspect of the whole thing.

And Lily would probably have all of her real teeth, or maybe just most of it. In his fantasies, Lily Rozanova played hockey too. Is the women’s league just as violent? Shane has never really paid attention, and maybe that makes him a bad person but, once again, he hardly pays attention to anything outside of his own orbit so he hopes there’s not much offense. Has never memorized any name that isn’t his immediate family or his teammates. 

Conceited, perhaps, is the better term. Vain. What a word. Hollander, you are so vain, Rozanov had whispered to him once, halfway inside him while Shane’s head was already fully gone. Such a pretty face. Do you think you could ever drop your gloves on the ice, sometimes? Let me have one hit?

Would Lily have asked the same thing? Would Lily have wanted to see the bruise blooming across his cheek, too? Or is she just soft, down to the marrow of her bones? (Shane doesn’t like that. He quite likes the idea of Ilya and his rough hands, pressing down on the bruise so that Shane would never forget. He would have let Ilya hit him, again and again and—)

Contrary to popular belief—and even, sometimes, his own—Shane is not entirely oblivious, especially when it comes to things that concern himself. He’s heard it all before, how Shane would never miss a puck but would probably not know a come on even if it hits him directly in the face. Shane is perfectly, painfully aware of his attraction to men.

That’s not to say that he ever acted on it. Shane, for all his boldness, is a stickler for rules—self-imposed or otherwise. He knew everything that came with the territory of liking men, and with that is the knowledge that it just could never happen. Sure, he may have found many boys cute and many men handsome in his life. Sure, he may have fantasized once or twice about certain hockey players while he jerked off in the shower in the morning, but to act upon his desire is something that he’s long forbidden himself from doing. He just can’t. And it would break his mom’s heart. Probably. Highly likely. And he refuses to be the one to break her heart.

Rozanov, infuriatingly enough, made him break his own rules. And he’s making Shane break them now, face down and ass up on the bed, Rozanov’s cock driving into him over and over and over, his hands a painful but welcomed grip on his waist. Every push forward steals the air from Shane’s chest; every pull back leaves him chasing it. And he fucking hates, hates how broken he sounds moaning into the sheets, breathy, punched out and whiny sighs leaving his lips every single time Rozanov’s belly meets the small of his back. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” Rozanov groans, moving one of his hands from Shane’s waist to push his shoulders down further. Greedy, annoying fuck, Shane thinks, but all that comes out of his mouth as a response is a loud, pathetic moan. He’s becoming hyperaware of everything—the slick and slide of sweat against skin, Rozanov’s thighs trembling as he gets closer and closer to cumming, the scrape of stubble whenever Rozanov would bend further down to mouth at his shoulder. Shane never wants it to stop. 

(Later, when all is over and the only trace of Rozanov left in the room is a tiny hickey on his hipbone, Shane decides that his desire is disgusting, but that he’s bad enough of a person to indulge in it anyway.) 

Out of curiosity, Shane once looked up what his name meant. Went on an internet deep dive and found out that it’s an anglicized version of an Irish name, Sean, which is a cognate to the name John. He doesn’t know why his mom chose it for him; why he’d been given it instead of something much closer to her and her culture. But, then again, Shane can barely speak or understand Japanese, and he’s never been particularly close to his mother’s side of the family, so what would have been the point? Shane was already the odd kid in the playground that no one wanted to play with because he was too quiet and too serious. It would probably have been worse if he had a name that’s begging to be butchered.

The feminine form of Shane is Shauna, but Ilya had given him the name Jane, anyway. Less conspicuous, perhaps. Someone smarter than a peanut might put together that Shane and Shauna are too alike, but Shane and Jane, rhyming as they may be, would not automatically lead to the conclusion that it’s the same person. At least, that’s what Shane assumes that Ilya was thinking when he typed the four letters out in his phone.

Jane. Jane. Shane has spent many nights mouthing the name to the ceiling, the wall, the phone whenever Lily replies too long and thinks everything is a fucking game. Jane. An awfully simple name, though Shane supposes he’s just as simple of a person. Boring, which Rozanov calls him often, even though the tone when he does is way too fond for it to actually be an insult. Jane, of Hebrew origin, originally Yochanan, which eventually became Jehanne in French before it became the English name that now sits in Rozanov’s contacts list. It’s got the same origin as Shane, because it also goes back to John. 

Like Shane, Jane also means that God is merciful. But Shane isn’t much of a believer. Besides, if God really was merciful, Shane wouldn’t be looking at Rozanov from across a room full of people and having to force his face into a blank expression when what he wants, stupidly and dangerously, is to close the distance and kiss him just to see what would happen. If God had any sort of mercy, Shane wouldn’t be lamenting the fact that he can’t look at Rozanov in public for a second longer than rivals normally would without anyone making unnecessary speculations. And Shane wouldn’t be standing beside girls, holding them close, and wishing instead that he was being held by a man. By rougher hands, harder planes, five o’clock shadow from one jaw to his own skin.

No, Shane prefers the other interpretation: Graced by God. That sounds more appropriate. At least, Shane could pretend that it’s all about hockey. The one good thing handed down from above. If he’s blessed at all, then it’s for that. His shot, his speed, the way the puck listens to him as if Shane was the only creature on Earth that could ever touch it.

Shane often thought about how he looked like to the rest of the world, in the abstract way that one thinks about being perceived. When he’d retape and re-etch his mother’s name on his stick. When he’d lace his skates up and tug on it thrice to make sure it won’t unravel. When he looks at himself in the mirror and remembers his friend telling him once that freckles on a boy felt weird. Shane’s no fucking idiot; he knows exactly where the chirps on the ice are coming from. No one who calls him ‘pretty boy’ has ever meant it in a way that isn’t meant to degrade him. Except maybe for when Rozanov says it, low and amused and warm in every way, but Rozanov has also been inside of him so whatever he says that’s meant to insult Shane would never really count.

But hockey is not as kind as Rozanov; the league even less so. The sport is a cathedral to a very specific kind of man—one who is loud and violent and does not think of complicated things such as emotions. Shane has learned early on the rules, around the same time that he started suppressing the urge to touch other men in ways more loving than hurting. Most times he resents it; how unlucky it is of him to stand at an intersection. Being rattled by ‘fucking faggot’ muttered in his direction after bad shifts and casual threats about shoving sticks up another player’s ass just as much as he’s affected by the fact that he’s never seen anyone with remotely the same features as him in the Metros’ locker room. Shane has spent many, many years becoming the best and making sure that no one can question how hard he hits, how long he lasts, how much punishment he can take—he’ll take it all if he has to, and he has.

And Shane knows what some of them think, even if they don’t say it outright. He can see it in their faces. That he’s less intimidating and less aggressive. Less of a man in the way that their world has defined it. Shane Hollander, painfully nice. Can barely fight. You can count on one hand how many times Hollander has dropped the gloves, a commentator once said when news broke of him fighting Scott Hunter. If they knew the rest—if they knew about Rozanov, about their clandestine hotel hook-ups, about Shane on his knees begging for cock without even being told to, about Shane bent over; the happiest he’ll ever be during sex—Shane is almost certain it would calcify into something worse. Here’s the myth and the legend, less of a man twice over. First for who he is, then for who he wants. 

So Shane keeps it all in. Compartmentalizes. Absorbs and pivots and ignores and keeps on skating, controlled and cold and letting people think up whatever version of him fits easiest into a controllable narrative even if it’s the furthest from the truth. Runs away from Rozanov when things get a little too real and fucks Rose Landry even though he wants to cry and skin himself in the shower after. Even though he has to imagine Rozanov to get himself going. Shane has lived his whole life proving that he belongs here. He’s not sure he’s ready to watch everyone decide that he doesn’t.

Rose is so kind about it, even when she has every reason not to be. He wonders what the last straw was; what made her decide that enough was enough and that she can't let them both go on pretending that everything was okay. The last time they had sex, probably, where he flinched when she tried to kiss him and he had to close his eyes while she did most of the work to get herself off because, well. She just wasn’t a man.

Truthfully, it’s because she just wasn’t Rozanov. Which fucking hurt to fully come to terms with in the middle of the most miserable sex he’s ever had in his life. Hurt even more when he realized Rozanov probably wasn't thinking about him like that at all, too busy fucking other girls and moving on and realizing Shane was this dead weight that needed to be amputated. 

It hurts, still and now, tears in his eyes while Rose asks, “Was it different, with a guy?”

Against his will, against every bone in his body, Shane nods and thinks about Rozanov planting a soft kiss on his lips while he sat and leaned against the stairwell railing, his coat clutched against his chest like maybe if he held it tight enough then remnants of Rozanov would cling to him and never leave. “Of course,” he says.

“Was it better?”

Rozanov, again. Always fucking Rozanov. Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, because Shane’s never been with another man before and after him. “Yeah, uh… It was. It was better.”

Rose nods, leaning back against her seat. She looks beautiful, in this light. Shane thinks that It would be so easy to love her. It would be so easy to hold her and be with her, to introduce her to his parents and his teammates. Have her over for dinner at the Pike’s. To fetch her from the airport when she lands in Ottawa and take her to his cottage. Get married. A house and a dog and kids, someday. It would be so easy.  And Shane can learn. Shane has been learning his whole life, what’s one more instance of it in his long history of reasoning with himself? Attraction can be taught. Affection can grow. Rose is kind and smart and any man would be lucky to have her. Shane is lucky to have her.

Yet she’s also so fucking wrong. Not in any way that has anything to do with her, personally. It’s the shape of her hand in his (too small, too soft). The slope of her shoulders (too dainty, too smooth). The smoothness of her mouth (not chapped, artificially red). Shane just couldn’t feel the supposed butterflies in his chest—no longing leaping out. And Shane has so much love to give. Shane wants to hold someone and mean it. Wants to build a life with someone and feel the rightness of it find home in his bones.

But it won’t be love if it isn’t Ilya. That stupid, reckless, infuriating, impossible man who makes everything else in the world feel dim in comparison to his presence. And so Shane can’t love women. And he can’t love Rose. Because he will always, only ever, want Ilya.

Jane is a stubborn and recurring thought, almost like a nasty bruise that pulses in its need to be known. Shane, rewritten slightly. The same bones, the same drive, the same ugly and relentless need to win but he’s not Shane, he’s Jane. He tries to picture her—her plain dark hair and her plain face with its smattering of freckles. Would Ilya have been interested? If Ilya saw Jane in a crowd, would he have approached her? Would everything be the same? Different?

What would Shane be doing with his life anyway if he was a girl? Jane would be a hockey player, obviously. That part of him feels intrinsic, too cellular. Regardless of whether or not her mom would be in her life to support her. She’d probably be in the women’s league, still the best goddamn player the world has ever seen, still skating like her whole life depended on it. But that’s about where it all ends for Shane. He hears his mother’s voice, bright but incredibly distant—’what would I even do with a daughter?” And maybe she’s right. That just as much as she would not know how to raise a daughter, Shane also does not know what life would be like as a girl.

But it’s Jane’s life, or possibly not-life, with Ilya that really invades Shane’s every thought. If it was Jane instead, would Ilya have found her? Would Ilya’s gaze snag on her the way it had on Shane? Right now, Shane is something singular—the only man Ilya’s fucking. Was fucking. His rival, his equal, and the thorn on his side. There’s something intoxicating in that exclusivity, even if it makes Shane feel very stupid to admit it. But if it was Jane, would she just be another notch in Ilya’s bedpost? Another soft body in a long and forgettable line?

Shane knows he isn’t anything special. Not really. Well, no, he should correct that: he’s the best fucking hockey player in the world. That counts for something. But what appeal would that hold to Ilya if he was a woman? If that greatness came in a woman’s body? If they weren’t crashing into each other on the ice, if there weren’t years of rivalry and mutual obsession binding them together? Maybe Ilya wouldn’t even look twice. Maybe Jane would be alone, missing her other half for the rest of her life.

Shane snorts. Other half. How presumptuous of him.

Still, he likes to imagine that Jane has a fighting chance. Jane, somehow pulling Ilya in regardless. That there would be something about her that would pull Ilya into her orbit. Maybe Ilya would feel it across a room, across the rink, and step closer without knowing why. Maybe they’d end up together anyway, drawn by some force deeper than either of them could ever explain. 

And maybe Ilya would love Jane better than he does Shane. Somewhere out there, in the alternate permutation of things, Jane isn’t fighting so hard to choose and be chosen in return. No ‘this is a bad idea’ whispered in a dark hotel room. No walking out when things get hard. No staring at Ilya from across the bar while he mauls the face of some other girl, looking back at Shane like none of what they’ve ever shared between them matters. Life would be simpler if it was Jane, because Jane won’t be a secret that lives and dies in the night, where no one can see how much love Shane has in his heart for Ilya.

“Fuck,” he mutters, rolling on his side and pressing his face into his pillow, keeping his tears at bay, irritated with himself for caring at all. With Ilya, for consuming his every thought. With Jane, for having everything Shane wants without even being real.

Shane’s limbs are still shaking when Ilya unlatches himself from his back, choosing instead to lay flat on the bed to stare at the ceiling which, rude, and so Shane makes his feelings on the matter known by turning to rest his cheek immediately on Ilya’s chest, fingers tracing loose circles on his skin. His heartbeat is still uneven beneath Shane’s ear.

“What are you doing?” Ilya murmurs after a moment, though he doesn’t make a move to push Shane away. 

“Nothing,” Shane replies. He shifts, chin digging lightly into Ilya’s sternum as he looks up. “What are you thinking about?”

Ilya hums noncommittally, though he provides no answer, still refusing to meet Shane’s gaze. Annoyance spikes briefly in Shane’s chest before he tamps it down. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Let’s not shut each other out again, okay?” Shane says, trying to keep his voice soft. Like maybe Ilya is a stray that would leave if he even so much as raises it. He presses a featherlight kiss to Ilya’s chest, so reverent. Shane wonders for a moment how he ever went without it. Why he ever thought he could let Ilya go. “I want to know. Let me know you.”

Ilya’s jaw tightens, barely perceptible except Shane’s been looking intently and so he can see—the slight tensing, the tick. Then he sighs, long and tired, and then lays his arm over Shane’s shoulder, pulling him closer until Shane’s body is almost draped entirely over him. “I missed you,” he says finally. “Missed this.”

Shane feels something in him break. “I missed it too,” he whispers. He presses another kiss to Ilya’s chest, then another, and then another, over and over until Ilya’s other hand comes up to cup his jaw, pulling him up and tilting his face until their mouths meet. 

When they part, Shane rests his forehead against Ilya’s collarbone. “I’m sorry,” he says, the words scraping the walls of his throat harshly on the way out. “I know it… I know it wasn’t easy.”

For a moment, Shane thinks that maybe he said the wrong thing, if the way Ilya stills is any indicator. But then he exhales again. “It’s fine, Shane,” and oh how Shane’s heart skips at that. Fucking pathetic. Why is he so giddy? He feels so juvenile. He feels like everything he could ever want is sitting in the palm of his hands. Shane, Shane, Shane—”We were not good,” Ilya continues. “We both hurt each other.”

Well, that Shane can’t deny. Just blame and ache between them, all around. “I didn’t want to.”

“I know.”

The kiss that punctuates his words feels different from the last, heavier and wetter and—oh, Shane thinks as Ilya rolls them over, his back against the rumpled duvet, Ilya’s hand sliding down Shane’s side until his fingers are splaying at his waist. Shane kisses him back with as much enthusiasm, bordering close to hunger—tongue slipping inside Ilya’s mouth, his own teeth catching briefly on Ilya’s lip.

“Your skin,” Ilya murmurs, reverent, almost to himself as though Shane isn’t there. “So soft.”

The words hit Shane strangely, sending him spiraling sideways. Soft, in particular. Jane slips back in, his unwelcomed guest. If it was Jane here, would all this have been easier? Would Ilya’s hands feel less forbidden against his skin? Would they have spared themselves the pain of the past few months? Or what if Shane was still Shane, but Ilya had been Lily instead? Shane would have never left that day, probably.

Shane almost asks. The question is already sitting at the tip of his tongue. He wants to pry their lips apart, wants to hold Ilya’s gaze and ask if he wishes that things were different. If he ever looked at Shane, even just once, and wondered what it would be like if Shane was a girl instead. But Ilya’s hand is sliding up his thigh again, and Shane’s breath is hitching in his throat and, really, what would be the point in asking when Ilya wants him like this? 

Shane almost says it. Almost. When Ilya’s finished cupping his hands in front of his face, yelling, “Everyone, Shane Hollander is an asshole!” Shane almost lets the words—all of them—claw out of his heart, to his throat, through his lips. I love you. I’m so fucking in love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Would you want that? Would you share a life with me? But he says nothing. Says nothing. Says nothing. Says—

“Do you ever wish that I was a girl?”

They’re not exactly the words that Shane wants to say. He’d been hoping that it would be an I love you or something closer to that, but what his brain wants to say is almost always different from what he does end up saying, and Ilya’s heard the question so, Shane supposes, he’d have to live with it and finally get the answer he’d spent literal years ruminating on.

“What?”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Do you ever wish that I was a girl,” he repeats anyway, watching the question wind its way through the gears inside Ilya’s head before finally settling. Shane can tell because of the way his eyes light up, all of a sudden, and because a leery smile is forming on Ilya’s face. Shane would hit him with a pillow if he didn’t look so fucking beautiful.

“Are you say—”

“Not like that, perv,” Shane groans, smacking Ilya’s thigh anyway. “I mean, did you ever wish that… I don’t know. It would be easier, wouldn’t it?”

“What would be easier?”

“If I was a girl,” Shane sighs. “Or if you were a girl. We could go on dates. We could be seen in public together. It… it wouldn’t be so weird, standing beside you. Haven’t you ever thought of that?”

“Have you?”

Shane tilts his head, contemplates the question being thrown back at him. Contemplates admitting to Ilya that yes, he’s thought about it so much that sometimes when he closes his eyes, right after he’s just finished looking at Ilya, he sees this made-up version of Lily instead. Just briefly. Just enough for Shane to start wondering, if only for a little while, what she would look like standing in his cottage instead. Shane chooses the honesty route when he opens his mouth. “Of course.”

“And what did you think about it?”

There’s no inflection to the tone. Ilya’s voice is even when he asks, his happy face and leery smile packed away while he wasn’t looking, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Shane but, also, Ilya doesn't look like he’s about to bolt either so a win is a win. Shane hums, purses his lips, then says, “I used to think about how if you were a girl, we’d probably be happier.”

“How would we be happier?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, we could be seen in public. Do all the stuff that normal couples do.”

“Shane, we are not a normal couple.”

I’m not even sure we really qualify as a couple, Shane wants to joke, though he's not sure if Ilya would receive that well. And because he knows Ilya means it in a way that points out that they’re two public figures in a very public sport. He shakes his head. “What I meant is that it won't be so awkward, you know. Being seen together. You wouldn't have to be scared. You’d still be able to go back home. And I wouldn't have to be… well, I wouldn't feel so alone.”

There’s something close to heartbreak that passes through Ilya’s face before it disappears entirely, so fast that Shane feels he was probably just hallucinating it. “Tell me what you thought about. What else?”

“I thought, well,” he scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I thought you’d probably find her boring.”

“Boring?”

“Don’t act like you don’t find me boring.”

“Hollander, when I say you are boring I do not mean it in a bad way.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Well, I know that now. But it never really felt like an insult anyway, coming from you. But I think you’d find Jane boring in a… different way.”

“Different how?”

“Safe? I don’t know. I can’t—she’d be nice. And predictable. I don’t know.”

A corner of Ilya’s mouth curves up, but he doesn’t interrupt. “I used to be jealous of her,” Shane continues, looking down at his fingers. The skin around his nails are clean, pristine. Some part of him wants to pick at the skin again, but that’s a habit he’s long outgrown. Shane should probably reflect on that—how unhealthy that he thinks about hurting himself when things get a little too real too fast. “This version of me that doesn’t even exist. Jane. She gets to have you in a way I never will. She gets to kiss you after games. I’d picture you looking at her the way you look at me and I’d hate her for it. Even though she’s me. Because she gets to have you.”

Ilya is silent again, just staring at Shane. Then, at Shane’s sharp inhale, he moves. “What—”

He lays himself over Shane’s body, smothering him like a blanket. All two hundred pounds and six-foot-three inches of him, solid and so real in Shane’s hands. His curls are in Shane’s mouth, and more of it gets in when he lets out a startled laugh after he feels Ilya place an exaggerated, wet kiss to his neck, almost a raspberry. Then his jaw. And then higher up, by the corner of his eye, where he catches a tear before it can fall. 

“Ilya—” Shane protests, breathless now as more kisses follow, scattered all over his face. 

“Stop talking,” Ilya mutters against his skin, voice muffled and fond. Shane’s laughter spills out properly then, cracking under the absurdity of the situation. The impossible possibility of it. Who’d have thought, all those years, waiting for Ilya to knock on his door and eventually letting him in, that it would all lead to this? Shane didn’t. Shane never could have. Maybe he should let himself dream more. Like that Everly Brothers song his parents would slow dance to, sometimes—if he wants Ilya, all he has to do is dream, dream, dream.

Ilya says something in Russian, low and completely indecipherable, the words worming their way over Shane’s skin. And then—“No, Hollander, I do not wish that you were a girl,” he says with a wide smile, planting another kiss to the bridge of Shane’s nose. He tilts his head, though, when he looks up, a wild gleam in his eyes. “Though, ask me again in a few years.”

(So here’s the rest of the story in between, right? Ilya will pack up his life and move to Ottawa to play for a shit team because Shane, in the dark, made plans for their lives and what else can Ilya do except follow him, really? Ilya will have dinner with and befriend Hayden Pike and adore his children because, clearly, they are the superior Pikes—he’ll let them try to braid his hair and paint his nails and call him Uncle Ilya without flinching. Shane and Ilya will start the Irina foundation, run camps off-season, stand side by side on the ice to teach kids how to hold a stick and take a hit and then get back up again. Ilya will get his stupid loon tattoo for the love of his life, and that love of his life will steal Ilya’s move in a game against the Raiders. Ilya will go to therapy and sort his shit out, or at least try. And Shane will propose after almost losing him, hands shaking but voice steady and sure anyway. They will get outed, and it will be the worst fucking thing in the world for a while but it will all be okay because Shane and Ilya will love each other, and love each other, and love each other, again and again. Throughout and in between. In all the little spaces.

And they get married, at the end, like the characters do in all the good fairytales. Shane didn’t need the alternate permutation of things. Turns out, Ilya Rozanov is completely and irrevocably his in this life. In all of them.)

“So, do you ever wish I was a girl?”

Ilya turns to look at him sharply, incredulously, which is understandable because they did just finish putting their couch together, which had taken them the better part of their afternoon because they spent half the time arguing and the other half making fun of Hayden for booking a date with Jackie on the same day as his daughters’ talent shows. 

“Hollander, what?” Ilya asks, out of breath.

“Remember when I asked you this question all those years—”

“And you still remember it?!”

“Shut up. You said, ‘ask me again in a few years’. I’m still curious, and it’s been a few years. So what did you mean by that?”

“Oh my… Fine.” Ilya says, twisting so he’s facing Shane, his arm leaning against the front of the couch. Shane gets distracted, momentarily, by the sweat running down from his temple to his jaw to his neck to—”Do you remember when we first met?”

“What?”

“Keep up, Shane, I know your dick is hard—”

“Fuck you—”

“—but you have to answer me. Do you remember the day we met?”

Shane rolls his eyes so far back and so hard he’s afraid they’ll get stuck behind his head. Of course he does. How could he ever forget the best—okay, maybe not the best because Ilya and his team did eventually kick the shit out of their team to win the Junior Championship Cup, but definitely one of the best of his life. Maybe a solid top five. “Yes.”

“The first thing I thought was who is this annoying man telling me not to smoke?”

“Wow,” Shane replies, lifting his leg to kick his husband on the knee. “How romantic. Would you like to sleep outside tonight? Because the weather in Ottawa is really fucking lovely this time of the year.”

But Ilya looks serious, even as he smiles at Shane. Equal parts soft and sincere. “Listen, Shane. The second thing I thought was, his freckles are so beautiful. And it annoyed me, because I was supposed to hate you. But you were so fucking beautiful and I thought immediately after: I needed to see him again.”

Fuck. Shane hates it when Ilya is being sweet. “Go on.”

Ilya huffs out a laugh, shaking his head a little, like he can’t believe that Shane still needs this part to be spelled out. “I never stopped thinking about you, after that. Not after the championship, not after the draft, not after our first time. You were just… here,” he taps his temple with his finger, and then moves the same finger to his heart where he keeps it. “And here. So annoying, so fucking loud. I used to watch your commercials—”

“—and my interview about the cottage—”

“And your interview about the cottage. And I tried so hard to convince myself, yes, I am only doing this because he is my rival. Because I needed help sleeping. But it was never that.”

Shane tilts his head. Ilya’s image is starting to blur from the tears in his own eyes. He watches him reach out, getting him to shuffle closer, so that their knees are touching, skin to skin. “What was it?”

“I love you. Always have and always will. And I never once thought of you as a girl. Not as Jane. Not even when I called you that. I knew you were it for me exactly as you are. Your freckles. Your stupid smile. The way you get mean when I tell you that you are the second best player in the lea—”

“—oh don’t fucking start with that, you already told me I was the best play—”

“See!” Ilya laughs, so fucking fond and adoring. “And your weak backhand. And your boring car. My boring Shane Hollander, who chose to live the rest of his boring life with a simple man like me.”

Shane laughs, too. “You are anything but simple.”

“You know what I mean,” Ilya grabs his hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I love all of you. I did not want someone easier. I wanted you. My Shane, as he was. As you always will be. I love you just like this, okay?”

It feels almost like a check at the boards. Or, much closer, but he won’t say it out loud—when Marleau hit him on the ice, all those years ago. That shock of everything happening all at once before the bright and blinding light. Shane feels the weight of it all split his chest open, so hot and exhilarating. The tiny thing inside him that has spent so long wondering what it would be like if he sanded himself down has finally found its peace. I love you just like this. It’s not as though Shane is still insecure, but it all still feels dizzying. Shane wants to yell. Shane wants to cry. Shane does not have to be anything other than exactly who he is.

“What about you, Hollander? You still want me to be a girl?”

Shane wants so many things. He wants to be ninety. He wants to be nineteen. No, he doesn’t want Ilya Rozanov to be a girl. There will never be a Lily Rozanova in his life, because he won’t love her the way he does Ilya. The way he will only ever love Ilya. What Shane wants is to claw through the fabric of time, reach back, sling his arm around the shoulder of his young self and say hey, man, it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. Ilya Rozanov is going to love you so much. You really, really just have to let him.

“Of course not,” he replies, keeping his eyes on Ilya. His lovely Ilya. He stares for so long that time begins to feel so much like honey, thick and slow, silencing the rest of the world. Ilya’s chest rises and falls steadily. Shane memorizes this image of him, commits this moment to memory, tucks it in among the thousands of little ones he’s already filed away.

“Why are you staring at me?” Ilya asks, snapping him out of his thoughts, brows raised and, God, will Shane ever get tired of this? Sleeping next to him, waking up next to him, sitting beside him, watching him grow old and spending the next twenty, thirty, forever years of their life together? Probably not. Probably never. “Is there something on my face?”

“Nothing,” Shane replies, happy and sweet and sated. He surprises Ilya and tackles him to the ground, eliciting a yelp from his husband, followed by open and beautiful laughter. Ilya’s eyes are so blue in the golden light, the skin at the corners crinkling, all the lines in his face so prominent but he’s so fucking gorgeous, anyway. His hair is messily threaded through Shane’s fingers. His jaw is sharp, his muscles are firm and heavy beneath Shane’s body. He’s beautiful, and a boy, and Shane wouldn’t change a thing. Not at all.