Rating:

General Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Children of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Parenthood, Aging, Dementia, Ableist Language, not a time loop, Far Future, Shane and Ilya have a daughter, Shane Hollander Has an Eating Disorder, and undiagnosed autism, Old Married Couple, Disability

Language:

English

Collections:

fucking rearrange my broken heart why wouldn't you

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-29 Words: 10,346 Chapters: 1/1

Expert in a Dying Field

Summary

Today is Tuesday, but it might as well be Wednesday or Thursday for all it matters. It’s a real Groundhog Day situation, Shane thinks, only Ilya isn’t aware and Shane doesn’t care about breaking the time loop, too content with their life to make any changes.

Notes

This rattled around in my head for two weeks until it had to come out.

The two concessions I have made to the fact that this is set forty or so years into the future are:
a) There is a high-speed train between Québec and Toronto (manifesting this to come true!)
b) It is a cashless society

In the morning when Shane wakes it is to Ilya’s snuffling snores in his ear and sweaty palm on his chest, and the cat’s wailing nearby, and the grey light of dawn shining weakly into their bedroom, illuminating rumpled sheets and blankets and Shane’s cane leaning against his bedside table. Like every day. Ilya will sleep at least another hour until his bladder rouses the rest of his body, and while he sleeps Shane will make breakfast, feed the cat, and do a sudoku or two on his iPad. Breakfast, same as ever. Some kind of grassy whole grain psyllium fiber cereal Ilya says looks like hamster food in almond milk, a cut-up banana, some blueberries if they looked nice enough at the grocery store. It’s one of the reasons he still insists on going to the grocery store himself, actually, even if it has gotten more complicated as of late, what with Ilya —. It doesn’t matter. He can do complicated and has been doing it for fifty years, give or take. Well, mostly give. Closer to fifty five now. Anyway. He doesn’t trust anybody on those delivery apps to pick the roundest berries or choose avocados just before their peak so they’re ready when he wants them, nevermind apples without bruising or signs of mealiness. He allows himself this bit of control, in his old age. He has earned it.

Every perfect day. Ilya will grumble about the breakfast but eat it anyway. After he will shower, unassisted, because his body is still more or less pain free, still, even after such a long and strenuous career. The cat will try to infiltrate said shower, the bold little beast, and Ilya will laugh and flick water onto her furry face. He’ll dress himself, he’ll come back to the kitchen and help with the dishes, stealing kisses and teasing, and then go and settle on the couch with a book while Shane does his chair yoga and strength training in the spare room they’ve half-converted into a gym. Most of their equipment is still in the basement, sitting dusty and unused. He’s been meaning to ask Daniela and Tom for help bringing some up next time they visit but often it’s just Daniela now when she’s in town for work, and Shane wouldn’t really be of much use to her for this on his own. His hip, his knees. The stairs.

The same book every day. Ilya must have read it a hundred times by now. And every morning he reads it again. 

No. That is unfair. It’s not every day. Once in a while he picks something new from their shelf, or thumbs through Shane’s ancient Kindle for something else, and on these days Shane knows his routine will be shot to hell, and the easy predictability of his life will be put aside, and Ilya will — well, it’s hard to know. Once on one of these days he insisted on taking Shane out for a sandwich at the Hungarian deli in the Byward Market, and it was nice, until he got confused why it wasn’t his friend Rudi serving him from behind the counter, and even more confused when the young girl working there now told him that she didn’t even know a Rudi, and new owners has bought the place in thirty years ago, didn’t he know? After that Shane really had to get them out of there quickly before the whole day fell apart, the taste of cured sausage and mustard still on their tongues. At least nobody in the Market recognized them. Neither of them make headlines much anymore and Shane likes it that way. Needs it that way. 

It’s not like they are fully out of the public eye, even at their age. Shane especially has kept up some media appearances, tongue-in-cheek cameos in commercials and TV shows, the occasional podcast interview. Sometimes CBC and TSN ask him to do commentary on special matches — All-Stars, pre-season games, the Winter Classic. A coveted talking head at the Olympics. He’s never been charismatic but he is a novelty, like Gretzky and Crosby were after their retirement. He knows this. Especially when they pair him with Daniela, who is really much better at it than him, and she speaks four languages to boot, but then again, isn’t that what you want for your kids, to be such a stark improvement on your own self that you forget what made you good at all in the first place? 

She likes when they get to work together, he thinks. She thinks things like that are special and important. And she really is so good at her job, whip smart and quick with it, so good people stopped wondering if she only got to the place she is because of her name about a year into her first stint with Sportscentre. She is her father’s daughter, really — sometimes Shane wonders how he had any hand in raising her at all. When he sits beside her at these jobs he feels like a bumbling old fool, which he probably is, but he doesn’t love looking into the face of it. Still, he sees so little of her he relishes these moments of connection, even if a camera is pointed at their faces that have been caked in light-absorbing powder and he’s never really gotten the hang of reading off a teleprompter in a way that sounds natural. Not that he’s done much of this kind of stuff in the past year, honestly. He’s been asked a few times and turned them both down. He is too comfortable, maybe, and the cat can’t really be left alone long enough for trips to Montreal or Toronto. 

He still keeps up with hockey, though, in case he takes on another contract, even if it is harder these days than it used to be. It was easier when he and Ilya could watch games together, and when Daniela was playing for Carleton and they felt obligated to watch all the university teams, too. Shane follows the women and the men now, or at least keeps track of the big names, but watching games these days – it agitates Ilya. Players he doesn’t recognize, expansion teams, new jerseys, stadiums whose owners and names have changed ten times since they retired. It’s easier to just put on something they’ve seen a hundred times — there’s an Admirals-Aces game from 2027 Ilya particularly loves to rip apart — while Shane reads the highlights from the current season on his tablet. They do this later in the evening, after Ilya has closed his book and they’ve gone for a little walk around the neighbourhood if it’s nice, and Shane has made supper. This, the hockey, is his favourite part of their day, their every day, even if it means he doesn’t really get to watch much new hockey at all. His Ilya, so mean and funny about players from nearly forty years ago, so cutting and bright. Shane loves him like this and always has. He almost wishes the world could hear Ilya’s commentary on games the way they clamour for Daniela’s. Then everyone could see where she gets it from.

This is the way their days go, and go, and go. Same book, mostly. Same game, usually. Same food, same cat curled up on Ilya’s chest on the sofa, same bickering little arguments that amount to nothing at all, same love. If there are doctor’s appointments they go, or grocery shopping, of course, but not today. Never apart for too long – neither could ever bear it much. Today is Tuesday, but it might as well be Wednesday or Thursday for all it matters. It’s a real Groundhog Day situation, Shane thinks, only Ilya isn’t aware and Shane doesn’t care about breaking the time loop, too content with their life to make any changes. Everything they went through for these little mundanities – worth it, and more. 

So, he wakes, and pushes Ilya’s hand aside, kissing his temple while the cat jumps down and runs to her food bowl in the kitchen, waiting. The drab sky and a pulsing ache in his hip indicate rain, which the yard will love after a week of heavy, gasping July heat, but it does mean they likely won’t get outside today for their walk. Shane grabs his cane and limps to the bathroom and sits to piss. The cat, already impatient, has returned and winds through his legs. She is soft against his skin, and he coos at her. Cats are easy, so soft and uncomplicated. He doesn’t know why it took so long for them to get one. Ilya, of course, wanted another dog, after Mishka died, but the idea of a puppy in their house, a lively creature demanding walks and training and energy, seemed too much, even then. That was – five, maybe six years ago now. Ilya doesn’t remember, probably. Shane hasn’t asked.

Toothbrush, tongue scraper, mouthwash, Q-tip, deodorant, SPF, in that order. He shaved yesterday and doesn’t need to again until tomorrow, probably. Glasses – bifocals, now – always on. Hair, straight and coarse as ever, a streak of white at his widow’s peak like his mother had, threads of grey everywhere else like his father. Freckles, yes, still, and liver spots here and there, deep laugh lines, but overall, good skin, on his face at least. His hands feel papery and weak. His body, boxy and soft. But what can you do, really. He is seventy four years old. In the winter his joints creak like an old home settling, but an old home is still a home, Ilya reminds him, and he’ll keep living in it just the same.

He dresses slowly, leaning on the bedroom dresser so as not to put on much weight on either knee at once, and quietly, so he doesn’t wake Ilya. The cat is back in the kitchen, meowing with all her considerable might. Then – the open of a cabinet, the pour of food in a metal bowl, clink clink clink, and no more feline wails. Shane frowns. Tuesday, Tuesday. Their cleaner comes on Fridays. Nobody else has a key. Except – 

“Daniela?” Shane hisses when he rounds the corner into the kitchen. And there is his daughter, bent over petting the cat, and when she stands he sees her black hair falling into her face like it always did as a kid, straight and unruly like Shane’s but not really like Shane’s, not in that way. God, but she is beautiful, even with hair in her eyes. Round face, full cheeks, perfectly rosy lips, slightly twisted from the remnants of the cleft palate she was born with. Her skin, darker than her parents to begin with, glows gold with a summer tan. So young, still, so vibrant. She opens her arms and he hobbles toward her as fast as he can. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

“Surprise,” she says into his chest. The slight lisp she was never able to rid herself of, even after years of speech therapy and journalism school.  “Camp starts on Thursday and I thought I’d get in a couple days early. I took the train.”

Of course. Shane and Ilya have long since handed the Foundation’s reins over to younger, more capable people, and they rarely even make appearances at its events anymore, but Daniela coaches, and makes the trek from Montreal to Ottawa every summer for it. She hasn’t missed a year of camp since they adopted her. He remembers it all like a clamp on his heart: a babbling baby strapped to his front, the perfect height to press a kiss to a shock of black hair, then three years old, tumbling unsteadily on skates as the older kids followed after her in laughter, then eight years old fast as a dart across the ice, all speed without finesse, thirteen years old with war paint under her eyes and a smattering of acne on her face below her visor crashing into teammates after scrimmages, seventeen with Ilya’s stamina and Shane’s calm and her very own grit, twenty two leading their littlest campers onto the ice for the first time. He would have loved her if she never took to hockey at all, of course, or any sport even, but how lucky is it that she did? How perfect? She could have gone pro, really. It only hurts a little that she didn’t.

“Papa’s still asleep,” Shane says into her hair before releasing her. He grabs his cane from where he leaned it against the kitchen island and puts his weight on it once more. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “It’s almost nine o’clock,” she says, like this is unbelievable. Maybe it is. They were all early risers, the three of them, even when she was a teenager. Years of waking up for early morning ice time will do that to you. Now, though, Shane shrugs. 

“We’re old now. We need our rest,” he says. “Tea? I don’t really do coffee anymore. Sorry.”

She shakes her head and gestures to the island, where she’s left two tall green Starbucks cups. 

“I know you don’t,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I brought some for me and Papa.”

Shane opens his mouth to protest. It’s not worth the heartburn for us, he wants to tell her, and the difficulty sleeping that comes with it, but then he looks at her open, easy smile and can’t help but smile back. He’ll sneak an Immodium in with Ilya’s daily medications, and he won’t notice. She is here, and so thoughtful. She has surprised them. Their routine — he can adjust. He will be fine. Ilya will be fine. The cat loves the extra attention, anyway.

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you. Tom didn’t come with you?”

She waves a hand. “Couldn’t get away from work,” she says shortly, in the tone Shane recognizes to mean he should not ask any more questions. He frowns but lets it go. He likes Tom, mostly, even if he can’t relate to him much, even after what, ten years of knowing the kid. Nice guy, blandly handsome, never played hockey or any sport beyond t-ball and rec soccer as a child, but doesn’t turn his nose up at the Metros and Triomphes tickets Shane buys for them once in a while. Ilya says he is boring in the boring way, whatever that means, but Tom is good to Daniela, as far as they know, and that’s what counts.

“Let’s sit,” he says. “My hip – the rain.”

“Jesus, Dad. You need to get that looked at. I tell you all the time,” she says, but follows him to the living room couch with her coffee anyway, the cat at her heels.

“And what are they going to tell me?” he says. “Not much more they can do in there. It’s already all titanium, or whatever.”

He sits down carefully and stretches out his legs in front of him. He’d like to massage his knees, really, but he knows if he does she will make another comment about it. There really is nothing to be done about it. The decades he has spent carefully calibrating his body to withstand the hell he put it through for nearly half his life have still led to this daily dull ache. And even now he is meticulous about his diet and following the exercise plan his physiotherapist made for him, of course, because imagine if he didn’t. He’s seen some of the other guys he used to play with, and how their muscles have gotten thin with disuse, their hands shaking with weakness. He will not let that happen to him any more than it already is.

“Half man, half cyborg,” Daniela says, but he can see her eyeing him carefully as he readjusts the pillows so he can sit comfortably.

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone called me a robot,” he says. “Tell me about camp this year. Who else is coaching?”

Easy, familiar. They fall into chatter and gossip the way they’ve been doing since she was a kid telling them who had a crush on who on the playground at school, and he and Ilya would wonder at her careful evisceration of her classmates’ antics. He remembers in particular Daniela at seven, sighing over her spaghetti at the kitchen table, patiently explaining that no, she didn’t like Theo back because Theo breathed like he was always sick and also his ears looked like they could start flapping like butterfly wings at any minute, and anyway, he was a Guardians fan, which was really just stupid of him because they just sucked so bad and their goalie couldn’t stop a puck if it was hand delivered to him in a pink basket with a bow on it, please pass the parmesan, Papa. 

“Where the hell did she learn to say all that?” Ilya wheezed after they put her to bed that night. And that just set them off laughing even more, trying so hard to be quiet so they wouldn’t wake her, because of course, they knew exactly where it was she had learned to say all that. Shane wishes now he had written down even half the things she said back then, always so earnest and sure about her opinions, even the mean ones he told her never to repeat to anyone but her fathers and her grandparents. Now she gets paid for these opinions, though they are generally presented in a nicer way than when it was just the three of them together. 

How odd it is to be able to look back and connect the dots that led them here, to who they are now. A frigid parking lot in Regina, breath visible in cold air that smelled like nicotine and tobacco, to this. Before that, even – a Japanese immigrant watching games with his daughter to learn about his new country, and in another city a small Canadian boy playing shinny on the lake by his house with some neighbours, and that girl and that boy meeting at McConnell Arena in Montreal for the first time, then some years later their son, a miracle, learning to skate on that same lake his father did, while across an ocean a young mother signed up her sons for lessons so she could have a few hours a week away from the oppressiveness of her house and her marriage. Hockey, always, the through-line, connecting dot to dot to dot, more than just a game or worse, a job. When you think of it this way it is no wonder at all that Daniela loves this sport too – she was raised surrounded by people speaking the language of it like it was English and Russian, later Japanese and French. Maybe this is why Shane will never really understand Tom and doesn’t truly know what Daniela sees in him, either. They are speaking through poorly translated idioms that don’t really make sense in each other’s mother tongue. 

While they talk Shane keeps an ear out for Ilya’s waking sounds. Hacking cough, grunts, throat clearing, gross in the way old men are gross, not worth complaining about. They come as Daniela has moved on to dissecting the year’s first round draft picks, which Shane only tangentially pays attention to now, but he knows enough to make appropriate noises here and there. When the coughing stops and he hears his husband’s heavy footsteps coming down the hall Shane stands, abruptly cutting off conversation. 

Ilya rubs his eyes and blinks at them, still sleep-drunk and slow. 

“Good morning,” Ilya says, all raspy. Handsome man, even now, especially now. Broad shoulders in a ratty old Carleton U shirt, soft belly filling it out nicely, white brows and shaved head, jawline straight as ever, a triumph of modern medicine after having it broken somewhere in 2029 in Ohio, a lifetime and a half ago. Here, now, Shane wants to eat him alive, just like he did when they were fifty five, thirty eight, twenty two, eighteen.

“Our girl is here,” Shane says, building up his voice with enthusiasm. He watches Ilya’s eyes flit to Daniela’s face and back to Shane’s, brain trying to put the scene together in a way that makes sense. After a beat he smiles like he has understood something. Smart man, handsome man.

“Come here, baby,” he says, opening his arms. “My lisichka.”

She too takes a moment, but not more than a moment, before she goes to her father. He doesn’t say anything else but rubs her back like he did when she was little and crying, a movement sewn into his muscles as easy as anything. 

“Let’s go for breakfast,” she says when Ilya releases her. “You guys want?”

“No,” Shane says quickly. He eyes Ilya’s book on the coffee table, untouched so far today. “We don’t — we can eat here, I mean. We usually eat here.”

“Ach, Hollander, she doesn’t want your boring breakfast.” Ilya leans in to whisper conspiratorially to Daniela. “He doesn’t let us keep saturated fats in the house.” As if this is any news to her.

“Your cholesterol is high enough!”

“You love bacon, secretly,” Ilya says. 

“I can love it and still know it’s bad for me,” Shane grumbles. “Okay, okay. The Bramasole maybe? In Centretown.”

It’s a safe pick. The Bramasole hasn’t changed anything in a hundred years even if the neighbourhood around it has a dozen times over. It is always busy, and was cash-only until way too late, a true institution on Bank Street. His father used to love it, and would take Ilya there often so they could gorge on sweet pancakes buried in whipped cream and syrup and eggs benedict without Shane and Yuna’s disapproving eyes on them. Ilya looks thrilled.

“I’ll get dressed,” says Ilya. 

Shane follows him back to their bedroom so he can get Ilya his meds before they eat. They’ll mess with his stomach otherwise. 

“Daniela is here for the hockey camps,” Shane murmurs as he pulls out the pill organizer from its drawer in their bathroom. Lipitor, Exelon, Effexor, and Immodium for good measure. Ilya is brushing his teeth next to him and pauses, toothbrush in his hand. 

“Daneshka,” he says. He spits into the sink. Shane nods slowly. 

“Yes,” Shane says. “You should speak to her in Russian. I’m sure she’d love the practice.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. “How — what are we doing for her birthday this year?” 

“Ah, well, thirty three isn’t that exciting,” Shane says, “but maybe we can invite her and Tom up for the weekend. In September.”

“Good plan. Tom? Yes, Tom. I know Tom.”

“Mm.” They catch each other’s eyes in the mirror. “And also — ask her about Montreal. It’s been a long time since we’ve been.” 

“I’m sure it has changed a lot.” 

Shane shouldn’t have agreed to breakfast, but it’s too late now. He will just have to be careful, careful, careful like a tight rope walker inching across a deep canyon.

— 

As predicted it’s busy even on a rainy Tuesday morning, though the blue tag hanging off their rearview mirror makes it easy to find a spot near the diner’s entrance. Shane still feels guilty every time he pulls into one of these spots, like he is taking it away from a real handicapped person, as if he is not actually of those. When you think about it, it’s ridiculous that he, Shane Hollander, is. Four-time Stanley Cup champion Shane Hollander. Men’s Health cover model three times over, let alone Sports Illustrated, Out, GQ, and once even Time Magazine, plus a dozen others he can’t remember exactly. A perfect male specimen, a feat of human engineering, now seventy four and hobbling with a cane from a designated parking spot for disabled people to the ramp of a diner where he will ask to sit at a table, not at a booth or the counter, because it’s easier on his joints. Well. That’s what you get when your body at seventeen years old becomes a commodity to be molded and debated upon and used by wealthy investors who want — encourage — violence. Prostituted by hockey, for hockey. A beautiful shell but a shell nonetheless and when you held it up to your ear it sounded like a crowd cheering: vingt-quatre vingt-quatre vingt-quatre! 

When he was twenty-four, the age and the player, these thoughts would have seemed sacrilegious but now he can observe them with a sense of cool detachment. It’s not like he didn’t get anything from hockey in return for his time served. He did, and they are walking with him to get breakfast, shuffling fast to avoid the first drops of rain, shielding their twin cups of coffee.

Ilya though, still strong and painless most days, how do you figure that? All the smoking and booze and fights and drugs and junk food — goes to show how differently every body handles stress. It’s just the concussions, really, that seem to have had any lasting impacts, along with — genetics, probably. You can try to account for them but there is no running, not forever, anyway. Maybe this is why they adopted Daniela instead of any of the other options that were available to them, even way back then. She was a fresh start, the most incredible little thing, a fighter from the beginning, and everything she got from them was given willingly through love and a kind of grief that can only be carved from love. The life they gave her was complicated enough, so the fewer ghosts they thrust upon her, the better.

Ilya pauses at the bottom of the ramp just behind Shane and Daniela and makes a noise of disbelief.

“Dave?” he says. Shane turns, his hip twingeing with the movement, and looks at his husband, who visibly shakes himself as he looks back. “I mean, you look just like Dave from behind, now.” 

Shane sees Daniela’s brows crease.

Careful, careful.

“I’m not sure I like you comparing my ass to my father’s,” Shane says. He holds out the hand not gripping his cane for Ilya to take. 

“Well you didn’t get it from your mother,” Ilya says. “That’s all Hollander. I’ve met your aunts.”

They clasp their fingers together, steadying each other. It has been nearly nearly six decades since they first met, isn’t that something. Daniela just shakes her head and rolls her eyes at them, used to her parents’ flirting in a way Shane suspects most children aren’t.

The waitress huffs when he asks for a table but clears them one anyway, and they squeeze through other patrons eating their eggs and toast and waffles, chairs squealing and people talking, glasses clinking, forks scraping. The place is a riot of sounds and colour, all vintage red and teal, and the checkered linoleum floors unchanged in decades that were probably once white and black are now dirty shades of grey. 

“I gotta ask,” the waitress says once they’re seated by the back of the place near the door to the kitchen, “are you the woman from TSN?” 

Daniela smiles her perfect television smile and Ilya raises an eyebrow. “That’s me.”

“Sorry, I’m totally blanking on your name, but my kid would know. Big hockey guy.” 

“Daniela Hollander-Rozanova. It’s a long one, you can blame these guys for it.”

The woman sets down menus on the table as her eyes dart from Daniela to Shane to Ilya and back. Her irritation from earlier when they first walked in has transformed into something closer to embarrassment and excitement. 

“Oh my God. So—”

“Yup,” Daniela says. “You want us to—?” She gestures vaguely and the waitress scrambles for her pen. 

“She’s more famous than us,” Ilya stage whispers. 

“His name is Carter,” she says. “Could you? He’s ten, this’ll be, like, mom of the year, over here.”

Eventually she leaves them to decide their order, and Shane drops his put-upon grin as stares at the menu. Something unpleasant buzzes under his skin with each new voice added to the cacophony of the restaurant. Ilya and Daniela are chatting in soft Russian, Daniela’s halting and stuttering from a lack of practice, Ilya’s always easier and more sure than English, especially these days. Whatever they’re talking about is probably just surface-level stuff and Shane tries not to worry too much about it. If he focused he could pick up the thread of their conversation but instead he can only think of his throbbing hip, his stiff knees, the way the waitress’ eyes gleamed when they signed a napkin for her, and what he can eat that won’t fuck up his digestion so much that it’ll ruin the rest of his day. He hasn’t done his daily sudokus yet and they’re supposed to keep his brain sharp. God, is her bed even made? It’s probably full of cat fur. Is she staying with them? The train to Montreal is only forty five minutes, but will she want to go back? He doesn’t want her to, not really. He wants to run her a bath and wash her hair with strawberry-scented shampoo like he used to when she was little, but that would be weird, now. Maybe they could watch something instead, like that Admiral - Aces game Ilya likes. She’d probably have something funny to say. Or maybe a movie, a new one they haven’t seen before, nothing that can confuse Ilya about — about what year it is and who captains the Las Vegas Aces. 

They get their food — his whole wheat bagel, toasted, peanut butter, side of fruit. Predictably, Ilya has ordered some eggs benedict with smoked salmon. It is hard to hold back a comment but Shane manages it.

“You can indulge a little, Dad,” Daniela says. Shane startles. “I’m not going to call Deadspin on you.”

There probably is an obvious joke he could make here to keep it light but he can’t really think of one that isn’t mean, so instead he just says, “no, thank you.” 

He stirs a packet of twin into his decaf green tea and moves onto opening his little square of peanut butter. Before he can stop her she takes a piece of bacon from her plate and drops it right onto his open bagel.

“Come on. Eat it,” she says, laughing, like it’s funny to her. Maybe it is, but right now all he sees is the unwanted grease leeching onto his food, and all he feels is his fucking body, aching. He rubs his hip absently, not like it helps. Stupid. Why does titanium hurt like this? Everything he does to keep the pain at bay and a little rain is all it takes to bring it rushing back. Stupid, stupid. 

“I don’t need it.”

“Daddy,” she says, still teasing, “you ever do anything because you want it, not just because it’s good for you?”

He slams his fist onto the table so hard the forks and knives clatter and his daughter jumps. What he wants to say is this: I married your father and I had you, didn’t I? Did your father not turn his back on his mother’s grave for me? Were you not international news the second you touched down in Canada? What kind of want could possibly be stronger than that? 

The people seated at the table next to them stop their chattering and turn to look. 

“Sweetheart,” Ilya says quietly. 

“Sorry,” Shane says. He forces his hand to relax. “I just — sorry, baby.”

“Okay,” she says, but he sees the way she takes him in, how swiftly she analyzes his heaving chest and clenched jaw. It’s her job to do this, on television at least, and she is good at her job. She takes back the piece of meat and pops it into her mouth. “You need an Advil or something?” 

“Oh!” Ilya cries, like he has just remembered something important. “Tom! How is Tom?”

“What? Dad, did you put him up to this?”

Shane feels a little winded at the swift change in topic. “Up to what?”

“Oh my God. I don’t want to talk about Tom.”

“Alright, alright, my lisichka, we don’t have to talk about Tom,” Ilya says, but he catches Shane’s eye in the way married couples do, a secret language written through years of memories and inside jokes and shared understanding. This look says, pretty plainly: uh oh, remember that time when she broke up with her weird stoner high school boyfriend and locked herself in her room for two days listening to sad songs, missed practice for the first time in her life, and Ilya had to tell her coach she had severe cramps, and Shane told him be should have just said a fever or something vague, and then Ilya made fun of him for being squeamish about periods, still, and the only thing that cured her from her heartbreak was her Auntie Rose promising to fly her to New York to take her shopping over the weekend with her dads’ credit card, go figure? “But if you do want to talk about Tom—” 

“I don’t.”

Another look before they tuck into their food. Hollandaise drips onto Ilya’s shirt and he doesn’t notice until Shane leans over with a wet napkin to wipe it. That sauce is all butter, really. God, it’ll leave a stain. 

“Ah shit, I don’t have cash,” Ilya says when they receive the bill. Daniela, of course, offers half-heartedly to pay but backs down quickly at a wave of Shane’s hand. There is something about being back with your parents that forces you revert back to who you were at sixteen, even if that sixteen year old is spoiled rotten, something Shane knows intimately well. Not that he would ever let her pay for anything, or ever did before she left home, but it is funny how little she protests for a woman who is well-off in her own right. Even if she did pay for anything when she was younger, the ink of journalism degree barely dry, moving into one of Shane’s long paid off luxury properties in Westmount, it was understood that though she did work hard and would make her way up through the ranks of sports broadcasting the way anybody else would, it wasn’t like she would have to worry about making rent or anything. It is all kind of silly, anyway, a game they play in which Daniela pretends she doesn’t know she was raised by people with more money than they knew what to do with, and Shane and Ilya also make believe that their daughter had a normal upbringing. 

“We take cards,” the waitress from before. Unsaid: obviously, Mr. Rozanov. The mister in question doesn’t pick up on the tone.

“Since when?” he asks and pulls out his wallet. 

“Jeez,” she says. “Beats me. I haven’t even touched cash in twenty years.”

Ilya makes a noise of disbelief. “Pah. North Americans.” He mutters something in Russian — Shane picks up the words for lazy and uncultured, a common refrain, endearing in its predictability — and punches in a respectable tip on the machine the waitress holds out before tapping his card. At least he has remembered how to do that. 

“Tell Carter we say hello,” Daniela says. She grasps Shane’s elbow and helps him up with commenting anything more about it. He wants to shake her off, and tell her that it isn’t her job to worry, but he also does need the support to stand and shake out his knees, creaky and unyielding. Daniela keeps a hand on him as they walk back to the door. It’s embarrassing. The waitress is probably going to go home and tell her son that the great Shane Hollander is an invalid now. 

The restaurant, somehow, is louder now than it was before, with new patrons coming in soaked from what looks like a deluge outside. They shake out their hair and stomp their feet while waiting for a table. Once more Shane is glad their car is nearby.

“Maybe you should let Papa drive,” Daniela murmurs. The ramp is slippery now but her grip on his arm is tight.

“I can do it,” Shane grits out.

“Let him. Always we have this argument, who drives and who doesn’t,” Ilya says. “He gets bitchy if he loses.”

“Jesus Christ, Ilya, can you not. I’m fine.”

Ilya just raises his eyebrows in the way he does that means: see, I told you so. It does not mean: I’m aware that my license was taken away from me by my doctors four months ago.

Sometimes it is difficult, being the world’s foremost expert on Ilya Rozanov’s eyebrows. 

—

Shane asks Ilya to go make up Daniela’s bed while he takes some painkillers and lays on the couch with his tablet and the cat on his lap. The book on the coffee table — some corny Russian sci-fi, a secondhand thing they picked up years ago and extremely well-thumbed by now — is in Daniela’s hands. She sits in the armchair across from her father in a thick green sweater produced from her bags, and keeps an eye on him while she flips through the pages of the paperback. 

“Remote for the fireplace is on the mantel if you’re chilly,” he says. 

“Kind of a shitty day, huh.” She doesn’t move. 

“We needed the rain,” Shane says. He is the kind of person who says these things, now. 

She hums but doesn’t turn her gaze away.

“You didn’t go up to the cottage this summer at all?” 

This is a question she already knows the answer to, because she calls them every week and texts here and there too, and knows they haven’t left Ottawa in a long time. This is the kind of person she is, her Papa’s daughter, someone who will dig and dig until they find the answer they’re looking for. It might not be subtle but it is effective. Though, even as Shane knows she is looking for something, he doesn’t quite know what yet. 

“Maybe in August,” Shane says. “It’s a long drive for us.”

“I could go with you,” she says. “I miss it.”

“We couldn’t leave this little gal for too long.” As if on cue the cat stretches herself out and resettles in a tight curl. He scritches at the soft black fur of her forehead and hums. “But feel free, if you and Tom want a vacation. It’s always open to you.”

“Dad.”

“Or just you,” he says mildly. “Bring some friends. Whatever.”

Ilya returns before her frown can deepen into true irritation, which Shane can recognize from his years fathering her as a teenager, even if he still doesn’t really get what’s going on. He didn’t always get it when she was fifteen, either. And anyway, Tom is pretty solid, for all he knows. He’s had the same job since they met shortly after her move to Québec, and his parents are as normal as can be, even if they remain a little starstruck by their daughter-in-law’s family and extended circle of aunts and uncles all with Wikipedia pages. She hasn’t given any indication in recent phone calls that anything is wrong at all with him, though he’s not sure she would tell them even if there was. She is a grown woman now, as incomprehensible as it is sometimes. She has people in her life Shane has never met, places he’s never been, and gone are the days she let them in on every passing thought tumbling through her pretty head. 

“That book any good?” Ilya says to his daughter as he settles into the sofa in the spot Shane has left for him. “Haven’t had a chance to get into it yet.”

Careful. Years of keeping secrets have made for a good poker face, but he wills his muscles into stillness anyway.

“I’ve read like ten pages,” she says, and Shane exhales. “I’ll let you know when I get further in. Haven’t read any Russian in years.”

Ilya lets Shane lean into his chest and they stay like that, dozing, the pain now reduced to a dull throb in Shane’s lower body not letting him fall deeply into sleep but keeping him alert enough to take in the present. It is a gift, perhaps, in this way. The soft noises of the afternoon rock him into contentment like a lullaby: cat purring on his legs, rain pitter-pattering on the roof, the occasional flip of pages, Ilya humming something into Shane’s hair. It is so peaceful, so good. It doesn’t matter if his routine is messed up for a couple days. He can do this for his daughter, his husband. All those years ago when he first told his parents he wanted a future with Ilya, this must be what he wanted, even if the specifics felt wildly unimaginable. The decade after retirement passed in a blur of interviews and awards, mountains of paperwork, diapers and hospital stays, death threats and private security, camp expansion and coaching contracts and reading off teleprompters, speech therapy and hip surgery, and deep, terrifying anger at it all – it didn’t feel like a future at all, only survival. But somewhere in there was their first camp alum drafted, the Pike children’s first sleepover in Ottawa, Ilya’s first day as a Canadian citizen, and of course, Daniela’s first giggle, her first word, her first time on ice, her first time eating ice cream, her first everything. When she was small enough Shane could carry her around everywhere – when he was strong enough to, too.

Shane is the first to admit he wasn’t always a good father, and Ilya is usually the second, even if fatherhood came more naturally to him than it ever did Shane. There were times when they were both so angry. At the MLH, certainly, the great churning machine of it, and the press, and their own parents, and each other, and the world. And then to bring a child into their life – what did they know about childhood, or being together, really? They weren’t ready. All his love still in the shape of a sport that only loved him back conditionally, and sometimes it didn’t feel like love at all but grief. Plus of course the mandatory parenting courses they had to take before adoption didn’t cover what to do when your precocious toddler finds your mini commemorative Stanley Cup replicas and pours apple juice in them, or how to handle it when your five-year-old comes home crying from her fancy private school accusing the son of Germany’s Ambassador to Canada of bullying her over her lisp and her flat nose, or how to react to tabloid photographers camping outside her first U6 hockey practice. It was fucked up, is what it was, and he still blames himself for treating parenthood like he was taught to treat hockey: play through the pain; you don’t have to win but you definitely can’t lose. But God, he did try hard to be better for her and for Ilya, didn’t he, and eventually the anger lessened and with it, the pain. And now, this. Day after perfect day. He’s not sure he deserves it but he’ll take it.

–

Supper is a comfortable affair chosen from a list of heart- and brain-healthy recipes approved by their dietician that earns him only a few pointed looks from his daughter. He won’t apologize for it. There was a time it took a whole team of experts, some of the best on the continent really, to keep he and Ilya running like meticulously-kept goal-scoring machines: dieticians, physios, occupational therapists, doctors, exercise physiologists, massage therapists, osteopaths, podiatrists, acupuncturists, trainers of every kind, not to mention the administrative people. Their bodies the resource feeding a whole slew of families, keeping a not insignificant portion of the hockey industry going. Forty years later this village of support, if you could call it support rather than extraction, has transformed into one dedicated to keeping them alive and functioning, more or less, rather than performing at the highest level a human being possibly can without doping. It still takes a lot of people even if the focus has shifted, and it is at times exhausting, for both of them, to different results. Too many appointments leave Shane cranky and aching, and Ilya confused with too many questions, but they are necessary. Imagine if they didn’t take it so seriously. Where would they be then? Would Shane be able to walk at all? Would Ilya even remember Shane’s name? Given this Daniela can handle a bit of quinoa and seaweed, Shane thinks, for her fathers’ sake, and he will let her think it’s just her dad being the regular old health freak he always was when she was little and begging him to get a tub of ice cream at the store, for once, as if he didn’t know Ilya brought to Dairy Queen for an Oreo blizzard after every other hockey practice anyway. 

Regardless of her thoughts on the meal she chats happily with her father about his damn book, and talks more about the camp, the coaches, and the people working behind the scenes there now. Ilya asks the right questions at the right time, like he always has and like he so deftly taught his daughter to do, his arm thrown over the back of Shane’s chair, and Shane loves him so much. For a moment it is easy to forget the rest of it.

Daniela still moves fluidly through the house, putting dishes away and feeding the cat one more time, tidying here and there in a way she never would have when she was young, at least not without them asking her repeatedly. She knows where everything goes, of course, and everywhere he looks he sees the ways in which she has touched this home: the spot in the hallway where she made a hole playing mini sticks with her friend Marina in Grade 2 that Shane spackled and repainted but still shows texture in the afternoon sun, scratches on the floor from rough-housing with their dogs over the years, the lurid purple she chose to paint her bedroom at fourteen that they’ve never had the heart to cover up, the deep red stain on the coffee table from spilling wine on it when she was living with them through university. In his office there is a colourful card she made for their thirteenth wedding anniversary with her grandmother’s help and encouragement. Magnets on the fridge from everywhere she’s ever visited, gaudy little things that barely hold up anything. Medals and banners from her wins over the years in the trophy room. Her Grade 12 yearbook on their bookshelf stuffed between a history of the Ottawa Centaurs and an unauthorized and greatly aggrandized biography of Shane. 

When Ilya looks around, does he see these signs of life for what they are? Does he see his daughter in this home, or himself? Is Shane the only one who can remember these moments, now? Is there no one else left to remember how little her hands once were, when they held them in their own?

“Dad, you’re crying,” Daniela says, and stops wiping down the kitchen table to stare at him, bemused. He has been watching her putter around after supper while Ilya is in the shower, the screech of the now-old plumbing a comforting sound. 

And sure enough. Shane shakes his head and tries to clear his eyes of tears, though he knows this has never really worked. 

“Guess so,” he says, throat tight. “Sorry.”

“Is it your hip? Does it still hurt?”

“No, no, it’s not so bad. Don’t worry about me.”

She sighs and leans forward onto the table. He is seated at his usual spot at the head of it and at this angle he is forced to look up at her.

“I do worry, like, all the time,” she says. Then, slowly, “I don’t know if you two should be here alone anymore.”

“What?” he says, so confused that for a moment he stops crying. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Dad, come on,” she says. “You can’t keep doing this forever.”

“What are you even saying? Doing what?” 

Christ, he has been so careful on that tight rope all day. All life, really. Different valleys into which he could fall. Has fallen. Come to think of it, there are so few he crossed safely to the other side, times when he was not given the choice of crossing or not at all.

“You can barely walk!” she hisses. “If I’d known it was this bad—”

“It isn’t usually this bad! It just, it rained all day and I didn’t get to do my exercises like I usually do. It’ll be way better tomorrow.”

She throws her hands up in the air and paces around in a circle for a second before plopping onto a chair. It rattles a little — the chairs are old and he’s been meaning to reinforce them — but it still holds up fine.

“There’s no way,” she says. “There’s just no way this is so much worse than usual because of a little rain. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“What do you want me to tell you? We manage fine when we stick to our routine.”

“Your routine? Your fucking routine? You don’t leave the house anymore! That’s not a routine, that’s an illness.”

Her fist bangs on the table much like his did this morning. From down the hall the shower is still screeching and Ilya’s voice rises with a song, surprisingly melodic and on pitch. Beautiful man. Smart man.

“That’s not true at all,” he says. “We go to all our appointments and you know I like to go shopping in person.”

For an absurd moment he imagines her as she was when she was a teenager, her round cheeks speckled with zits, eyes alight in a debate with him about the latest MLH trades or whether she should be allowed to have a sleepover on a school night. Even then her arguments cut right to the quick, like she could find the exact thing that would get them to fold and agree with her, regardless of her Papa’s temper and her Daddy’s rules, which complemented each other in a way she did not always appreciate. Sometimes he thinks that as they outsourced to professionals the more tedious parts of life — the cleaning, landscaping, bookkeeping, home maintenance, and so on — all they had to focus on was each other. Their wants and needs and faults. Other parents, he imagines, had to fight with their kids about spending too much money, or cleaning their room, or getting up early enough to get to their summer job at an ice cream parlour in time, or whatever else it was that Shane and Ilya were simply never concerned about. Instead they fought with one another about one another, a kind of friendly competition, in the grand Hollander-Rozanov tradition. Daniela, so smart, so efficiently vicious without ever falling into the trap of cruelty, so so like Ilya it hurts, now, to see her do this, when he himself is now —

Will he forget that she is his, in every way that matters?

“Jesus, the fucking grocery store, my God. Why won’t you get your knees fixed, by the way?”

He scoffs. They have been having this particular argument for years, and he is not close to giving in yet, no matter how deftly she digs her clever fingers in. “You have no idea how long it took me to heal from my hip replacement, and I was twenty five years younger.”

“So?” she says. “Time will pass anyway.”

“And I don’t want to pass it in bed! I like my life as it is.”

“Papa would do anything you need him to do while you heal. For the love of God, Dad. What would you say if it was him in this situation?”

Shane closes his eyes and wipes away tears with the palms of his hands, rubbing them roughly like the feeling will help him keep one foot in front of the other as he sways.

“You think we haven’t talked about this? You know we’ve been married nearly fifty years? Jesus. I don’t want him to have to, to, wait on me hand and foot, I’d hate that. That’s not fair to either of us.”

“So get home care.”

The thought is insane. To let anyone see him like that — to trust anyone to see him like that at all — or see Ilya — 

“I’m not going to fucking answer that,” Shane says. 

Daniela looks away from him for a moment and when she turns back he sees tears unshed in her smart brown eyes, glittering. 

“What if,” she says, then stops.

“Tell me.”

“What if you moved in with me?”

Montreal, the city that made him, worshipped him like a god, lauded him, named a fucking street after him once, regretted him, betrayed him, remembered him. There was nowhere in the world better or worse to be a hockey player. Likely there is much of the city he never got to see or experience – he got too famous, too soon – and now it has changed so much there is probably nothing left of what he knew. Ottawa though, with its tidy streets and tree-lined canal, its friendly sterility, the place that gave him a life outside of hockey for the first time and a future with Ilya and Daniela, and memories of skating the Rideau with his parents as a child, Beavertails dripping with Nutella when they stopped for the night. Strangely, even given this, he does not love Ottawa but he doesn’t love any place, probably, and never has, outside of the cottage. What he does love is the easy rhythm of his days and their organized predictability, much like the gleaming city itself. Nothing out of place. Conversations with Ilya he knows how to have. Food he knows how to eat. 

He thinks of Montreal, and he thinks his mother when she lived with them near the end, old and gaunt, long-widowed, an unstoppable force of a woman who never quit anything in her life until her life made her, and how sick and afraid it made him to look at her like that. When he admitted this to Ilya they had probably the biggest fight of their lives and still now the shame of it curdles in his stomach like sour milk. 

“We’re not moving from this house.”

She makes a noise of frustration. “I’ll talk to Papa,” she says, like a warning. 

“For fuck’s sake,” he grinds out. “I’m not getting a knee replacement and no one is leaving Ottawa.”

“Can you at least think about it?” 

“No!” he says, too loudly. The shower has stopped and Ilya can probably hear them now. “And what about Tom? Does he even know you’re asking this?”

“Since when do you give a fuck about Tom?” 

“What? You’ve been together for ten years. Of course I care.”

Daniela or anyone seeing him so weak would be akin to being flayed open, with an audience. All his insides made visible with no way to hide them. Not an unfamiliar feeling, albeit one he hasn’t felt in a long time. He survived it once, and if it came to it, he probably could —

“Shane?” comes Ilya’s voice from down the hall. “Who are you talking to?”

Shane stills and Daniela frowns at him. Her face is wet but her expression has changed to confusion. Somewhere in the house the cat is scratching at her litter box, and the scritch-scritch-scritch of it is grating in Shane’s ears.

“Just, ah—”

“Oh!" Ilya says, walking into the dining room in his oldest and softest pyjama pants, otherwise shirtless, smiling widely. “We have a visitor?”

“Papa,” Daniela says carefully. “I’m staying here tonight.”

“Ilya,” Shane whispers. 

“My lisichka! Have you eaten?”

And now they are falling, falling, falling.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Baby,” Shane starts. But what else can he say to her? He can practically hear her brain whirring with calculations, putting anything odd she’s noticed lately together to come up with the right answer. Always the right answer. 

Ilya ignores this and moves to rummage in the fridge before producing a glass container of leftovers. “Aha! You want me to heat this up?”

“I want you,” she says, slowly, still staring at Shane, “to tell me my name.” 

Ilya drops the container on the counter and it clatters. His eyes dart from Shane to Daniela rapidly, assessing the situation, but unlike his daughter his brain is coming up short. 

“Papa?” she prompts again. “Come on. You know me.”

“Of course I do,” he says. “I love you.”

“Oh my God,” she says and starts to sob in earnest. Shane knows this is what she sounds like when she is in pain.

“Fuck,” Ilya says, and walks over to wrap his arms around her. He knows this too, and probably always will. “Shh, shh. It’s okay.” 

Just like when she was a baby waking in the night, a toddler with a bloody scrape on her knee, a teenager after losing the provincial championship, a young adult panicking before her first day at her internship, and all the moments in between. Maybe, Shane thinks, maybe Ilya doesn’t have to remember it all. Being a father is natural as breathing to him, something he can never forget. Maybe he can still be this, for her, for now, for as long as he can.

Ilya rubs her hair and kisses her head, and she leans into him. Shane reaches across the table and grasps her hands, tangling their fingers together. 

“I’m so mad at you both,” she says through her tears. “You’re so fucking stubborn.”

“And you, lisichka?” Ilya says. “Just like your Daddy.”

She laughs wetly. “What do we do now?”

“I — we have a good thing going here,” Shane says, pleading. “Please. I like our life. Leaving would make it worse.”

For long minutes that could very well be hours they stay like that, wrapped in each other, Ilya humming, Shane and Daniela crying. She is the best of them, he thinks, and the best of his parents, and Ilya’s parents, and their friends, and probably Tom even, dots around the world and peppered through time all connected to her, to them. Even in her anger, or especially in her anger. 

“I am scared, you know,” Ilya says eventually into her hair. “Sometimes I know everything and sometimes is more like trying to catch light in my hands.”

“Sounds lonely,” she says. 

“No. I have my Shane. We take care of each other.” A beat. “And you. Even if – I love you so much, lisichka. My clever little fox.”

“I could live here,” she whispers and squeezes her eyes shut. Her forehead wrinkles – when did that start happening? What else has Shane missed? “With you again. I’m done with Tom. He didn’t understand why I worried so much.”

“We know Tom,” Ilya says. “Don’t we?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Not sure he ever really knew me though.”

“Your job,” Shane says, and hates himself for thinking of logistics before hope but – well, he is Yuna’s son. It is easier to think of details than of everything else, sometimes. 

“Train is as fast as my commute anyway. Or maybe they make me cover more Cents and Volts games. That would be fun.”

How many times is this going to happen to him, Shane wonders. He has been so good, his whole life, so perfect, and still, again, over and over, the control is wrested from his grip by forces he cannot see or predict until he is left bereft of it and desperate to find it again. What is the point of it all? Well, the dietician says there’s a point, and the neurologist too, and his physiotherapist, and everyone that came before them, but if there truly is a reason for everything he’s ever done, why is it so hard? It always turns out this way, no matter what he does. Thirty five years past retirement and he thought he’d outrun his bad luck but here it is again in the form of a neurodegenerative disease eating away at the man he loves and his own body he trained to be a perfect vessel, now springing leaks. 

“We’ll have to repaint your room,” Shane says, later, when they have moved to the living room and piled together onto the couch with the fireplace flickering onto their faces and the cat purring curled up in Shane’s lap again. 

“The purple was certainly a choice,” she murmurs. 

His daughter will return to Ottawa, and there is no way anymore to stop her from seeing him crippled but maybe he does need her help, or want it, or want her in their home again, and throughout this her Papa will struggle to remember the name they gave her and all that comes with it. It is a long one, to be fair. Daniela Irina Hollander-Rozanova. She used to be so small in her little hospital bed, eight months old and new to Canada and to them and already undergoing more than any child ever should, and Ilya wept and said she was so strong she would grow into all thirteen syllables. 

So. Tomorrow is Wednesday. There will be a new routine, he supposes. He is too old a dog for this but Daniela would probably count this as an argument in her favour, and Ilya really will do anything Shane wants, and always has, from the very beginning, whenever he could. And Shane, in turn, will continue to care for them in his way, and this is something he knows he can choose. For now, and for as long as he can.