Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Irina Rozanova

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Red String of Fate, Soulmates, Fluff, Time Skips, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Good Parents David Hollander/Yuna Hollander, Angst with a Happy Ending, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Insecure Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Series:

Part 7 of Retro Writing - May 2026 Challenge

Collections:

Retro Writing Month (2026)

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-07 Completed: 2026-06-06 Words: 6,942 Chapters: 6/6

Two Tugs

Summary

“Look, red!” Shane holds his clenched fist up triumphantly, and Yuna carefully steps over the baby gate blocking Shane’s doorway. 

“Let me see.” she says softly, knowing full well that there’s nothing for her to see at all. The red string of fate that ties two souls together can only be seen by the people connected by it. Her own string leads her right to David, and she can only hope that whoever’s on the other end of Shane’s string is a worthy soulmate for her baby.

“Mine.” Shane, who’s never been possessive about any of his toys, is practically growling at her; stubbornly shaking his head. He wraps his free hand around his fist, pulling both close to his chest.

She tries not to find it adorable, and fails.

Notes

Retro Writing May 2026 Challenge prompt fill: Soulmate AU!

Chapter 1

Yuna turns off the tap, head cocked for an unfamiliar sound. After a beat of silence where it doesn’t repeat, she’s reaching for the sink when the sound finally comes again.

It’s laughter; bright, pealing giggles.

Hurriedly grabbing a dish towel to dry her hands and making her way down the hall to Shane’s room, Yuna steps carefully around the creaking boards in the hall, listening hard.

Shane is such a quiet child; at two years old he doesn’t have much to say, but even when he plays, he’s very quiet.

Catching at her hair to keep it from swinging out into the doorway as she leans forward, Yuna peers carefully around the doorframe into Shane’s bedroom. He’s sitting on the floor, at the edge of the toy carpet with a town and little roads for his cars; there’s nothing in his hands, but the one on the right is clenched into a fist.

He yanks his fist back towards his chest, twice, like he’s playing tug of war; a moment later, his fist jerks away from his body, and he squeals with delight.

Yuna can’t help the grin that breaks on her face. Every other mother on the planet thinks they have the cutest child, but they’re all, obviously, wrong. Shane is the absolute cutest, hands down.

“Mom?” 

She’s been spotted.

“Look, red!” Shane holds his clenched fist up triumphantly, and Yuna carefully steps over the baby gate blocking Shane’s doorway. 

“Let me see.” she says softly, knowing full well that there’s nothing for her to see at all. The red string of fate that ties two souls together can only be seen by the people connected by it. Her own string leads her right to David, and she can only hope that whoever’s on the other end of Shane’s string is a worthy soulmate for her baby.

“Mine.” Shane, who’s never been possessive about any of his toys, is practically growling at her; stubbornly shaking his head. He wraps his free hand around his fist, pulling both close to his chest.

She tries not to find it adorable, and fails.

“Okay.” Holding her hands up placatingly, Yuna’s eyes catch on her own string, hanging off of her right pinky. “Okay.”

Shane’s hand tugs free as the other end of the string, somewhere out there in the world, gets pulled on.

His delighted laughter fills the air, and Yuna couldn’t be happier for her son.

🧶

Ilya is diligently practicing his letters before lunch when the the string on his pinky tugs twice, and he streaks the crayon across the page in a gash of bright red. Ducking his chin to hide a smile before his father sees it, he’s too late to keep Papa from noticing the mistake on his practice page. 

“Stop fooling around and get back to your letters.” his father says firmly, scowling something fierce. “Lazy boy.”

“He is not lazy.” Mama insists, sleeves rolled up as she prepares lunch. “Look at how he is practicing his English. Where is Andrei? He needs to wash up for lunch.”

Ilya turns back to his letters as his father leaves the room, still muttering curses. The second he’s gone, Ilya quickly tugs back twice on his string, not wanting his soulmate to think they were being ignored.

“Sorry, Mama.” he apologizes, gesturing at the red streak on his practice sheet as she walks over to him. “It was an accident.”

“Hmm.” She hums, kneeling beside him at the table and looking over his work. “I don’t think so. Probably, hm... no.”

“No?” Ilya frowns down at his letters. He needs to work on his spacing, the letters too far apart to be easy to read as single words, because he’s still learning to tell each shape apart. But he doesn’t think they look bad.

“Your letters are beautiful, Ilyusha.” Mama assures him, throwing an arm around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his unruly curls. “I was talking about your soulmate. Saying hello like that, it’s not an accident.”

Ilya’s shoulders sag in relief. Papa thinking his letters are bad and that he’s a lazy boy, he’s used to; he’s not sure what he would even do if Mama thought he was bad.

“Does Papa say hello to you? With your string?” he asks, because Papa… doesn’t seem like the same kind of person as Ilya’s soulmate. He’s never even met the person on the other end of his string of fate, but he just knows they can’t be like Papa.

Pozhaluysta.

Please.

Ilya practices the English word in his head, but it’s hard when the only practice he gets is at school. Mama never learned, and Papa refuses to speak it in their home.

“Ah. No.” Mama says, and her voice is sad. 

Mama is sad much more than Ilya likes.

“I will tell you a secret, and you cannot tell anyone, okay?” she whispers, glancing towards the doorway Papa left through to find Andrei.

Ilya nods eagerly. Papa says they are too much alike, him and Mama, but Ilya thinks this is probably for the best. He does not want to be like Papa.

“Papa is not my soulmate.” Mama says quietly. 

It feels like being pushed off of the top of the playset, the sudden shock of open air followed by the impact of the ground rushing up to greet you. 

If Ilya was like Mama, then Andrei was like Papa; he did not always play so nice.

“But you’re married.” Ilya protests. “You’re in love.”

Mama’s smile is all sad this time, just her lips moving with no heart or sunshine in it. 

“My soulmate died, before I married Papa.”

She pinches her pinky finger, the same one that Ilya’s string is wrapped around; her fingertips slip free, like she’s tracing an invisible string straight up through the air. 

“She is in Heaven now. She watches over me.”

Ilya’s chin and lower lip start to wobble, because that’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. Just as his vision begins to blur from the tears, Mama’s pinky finger twitches upwards, twice.

“Ah! She says, ‘Hello, malyshka!’” Mama teases, and Ilya snorts, rubbing at his eyes to hide his tears before Papa returns.

“No she didn’t.” he insists. “That was you!”

“What? No. Are you calling me a liar, Ilyushka?” Mama puts her hand to her neck, gripping at the crucifix that’s always hung there. “My own baby. Such betrayal!”

“Mama!” Ilya protests, smiling now.

The door slams in the next room, Andrei’s feet pounding against the stairs as Papa yells up after him to hurry up and get cleaned up for lunch.

Mama presses a quick kiss to Ilya’s head before she hurries back to the kitchen to check on the food.

Picking up his crayons and his practice sheets, Ilya carefully checks the string on his pinky. It’s a bright red, his favorite color. And it doesn’t go up. Sometimes it’s slack, and sometimes it’s taut, and his favorite is when he gets the two tugs on it sometimes. It’s usually around lunchtime, or very, very late at night.

It doesn’t go up.

He hopes it never goes up, because he doesn’t think he could be strong the way Mama is, and marry someone who isn’t his soulmate. 

Maybe he should check on his soulmate. In case they didn’t feel it, when he tugged back earlier?

Two quick tugs of his fist against the red string, hidden behind his back as Papa comes back into the dining room, are all Ilya is able to get out before it’s time for set the table. He’s hardly taken a step though, when there’s a response.

Tug-tug.

Puffing his cheeks to hide a sigh of relief, Ilya hurries to help with lunch.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Got called out for a shift in tone after the last fic I went back to add to, so please note that this one is going to be significantly more angsty than the adorable babies in Chapter One could have handled 😅

Shane wakes slowly to the sound of too many machines beeping, and a sort of forced quiet that he’s never heard before. His whole body aches, like he’s been board checked over and over again; he’s twelve years old now, and they can play rougher than the baby leagues.

But he’s never hurt like this.

Out of habit, because he does this every morning when he wakes up and every night when he goes to sleep, Shane tugs at his string.

Or rather, he tries to.

But there’s something on his wrist. And another thing on his other wrist, and over his lap, and his ankles-

Shane can’t move, and the beeping sounds get faster and louder as he struggles against it, breath starting to come in heaving gasps.

“Shane? Oh baby, Shane- David, wake up! He’s awake!”

Cool, familiar hands on his face break through the building panic, Mom’s voice calm but scared when she talks. “Honey, I need you to breathe. You’re safe, we’re at the hospital. Can you do that for me, sweetie? I need you to breathe.”

There’s a hand on his chest a moment later, one that rises and falls, not pressing him down but present enough to be felt. Deliberately loud breathing from Dad matches the pattern of the rise and fall, and Shane fights to get his breath to sync with it. 

His parents are okay. That’s important. That’s good, and if they’re in the hospital, well, Shane will be good too. Eventually. Probably.

“Good, good job Shane. You’re doing great.” Mom says, and it’s the same encouraging tone she uses when he’s practicing stick work and nailing whatever maneuver he’s been working on.

Practicing… practice?

“Wha- what happened?” Shane croaks, when his voice decides to cooperate again. The hand on his chest slides away, giving a comforting squeeze to his shoulder.

“We don’t know, son.” Dad admits. “You just started seizing up, had some kind of fit. And you were screaming-”

Dad’s voice cuts off with a sharp inhale, like he’s hurt just thinking about it.

“We had to have you sedated. You were hurting, and I- we couldn’t-”

Shane wants to pat her arm and tell her he’s fine, but, restraints.

Fighting to get his eyes open, Shane’s initial reaction is shock.

His parents look ragged.

Dad’s hair is a mess, like he’s been running his hands through it, a stress thing that usually comes about around the end of the fiscal year, whatever that is. And Mom-

She looks like hell. Far too pale, eyes red rimmed and swollen from crying, and she’s wearing one of Dad’s old McGill sweaters. She only steals Dad’s clothes when she’s super upset, and Shane can count the number of times that’s happened in his life on one hand.

“Was it my head? Did I fall?”

Concussions could make a person have fits, right? Like seizures?

“No, honey.” Mom says, and oh god, her lip is wobbling like she’s going to cry again.

“It’s okay, Mom.” he insists. “I’m fine.”

“We know, son.” Dad says, gripping Shane’s leg just below the knee and giving him another squeeze. “No matter what, you’re going to be fine. We’ll help however we can.”

Help? With what?

“Can you help me take off the-” Shane rattles weakly against the restraints on his right hand. “-whatevers?”

“I’ll call a nurse.” Mom offers, reaching for the remote that hangs next to the bed.

“I’ll get it.” Dad interrupts, reaching across Shane’s body and putting a staying hand on Mom’s arm before softly adding, “He’s not going to want an audience for this.”

Maybe they gave him drugs, or something. They weren’t pain killers, that’s for sure, unless he’s hurting so bad that drugs can’t help him. But his parents are acting so weird, and Shane just wants his hand free, wants to check on his soulmate because who knows how long he’s been stuck like this?

The moment his hand is freed by Dad’s nimble fingers, Shane immediately notices that something’s wrong. It’s not just the deep purple bruising around his wrist, like he’d fought against the restraints with that hand for too long and too hard.

His string is limp.

Drawing his hand up to his chest in confusion, Shane watches the bright red string slither across the scratchy hospital bedding, still disappearing into the distance like it has for as long as he can remember. And it’s been slack before, but never this; there’s no tension to it at all, like whatever’s holding it up on the other end isn’t there anymore.

Fear makes an acrid taste in his mouth as Shane tugs on the string.

No response.

He tugs again, and all it gets him is a lap full of coiled string; invisible to his parents eyes but so so wrong looking to Shane.

“I don’t understand.” he admits, looking to his parents for guidance.

They’re both crying.

Mom’s lip is wobbling again, her hand clutched tight in Dad’s, and though his face is solemn, Dad’s eyes are just as red.

Shane closes his eyes against the alien sight, tries to fight through the panic rising in his mind again to remember, why can’t he just remember-

He’d been at home, not practice. Watching highlights from Ottawa’s Saturday game and dissecting the plays with Mom. And then a wrench, a yank on his arm from his string, one that had felt like it could tear his shoulder right out of the socket. 

And it kept pulling, like his soulmate was trying to physically drag him closer, only Shane couldn’t go anywhere. The pull became constant, and Shane panicked, tugging back in abbreviated tugs, trying to comfort his soulmate. 

They needed him, they needed Shane and he was stuck; he couldn’t help them.

Somewhere out in the world, his soulmate was hurting and it had torn Shane to pieces.

The desperate pulling and yanking hadn’t stopped, and it was starting to hurt, like the string was trying to pull his soul out-

Giving the string another desperate tug of his own in his hospital bed, Shane can’t feel anything on the other end. Nothing at all.

Mom’s voice is too soft when she says, “Baby, Shane. I’m so sorry-”

Suddenly Mom’s hands are on his shoulders, begging and pleading and trying to hold his thrashing body down; only Shane can’t hear her words over the sound of his own anguished screaming.

Chapter 3

The morning he wakes up in Saskatchewan, Ilya feels the same two tugs he’s felt twice a day for as long as he can remember. It’s just now seven in the morning, and he wonders if that means something, that the tugs came at a different time in North America than they did back home in Moscow.

He ignores them.

It’s a comfort he doesn’t want; that the tugs kept coming, even years after he stopped replying. His soulmate hadn’t been there when he needed them the most, and if Ilya could have found a blade that could cut through the incorporeal string and sever it completely, he would.

Soulmates were over rated anyway.

Ignoring the red string that hangs taut in the air, only disappearing from view when it reaches the wall, Ilya prepares for his day. The World Junior Hockey Championships await, and Ilya wouldn’t be caught dead running late because he was brooding over a soulmate he didn’t even want.

Ilya had rushed through his routine, made it to the team bus, and was now desperately trying to get his stupid fucking lighter to work, when the sound of running feet slapping against pavement caught his ear.

Ilya looks up expectantly as the runner approaches the corner into his alley; his gaze catches on the useless red string trailing through the air from the hands he has cupped near his face in an attempt to block the wind. It winds around the corner and stops just when the sound of running feet does.

And there, at the end of the alleyway, cheeks flushed and fist clenched tight around the other end of Ilya’s red string… is Shane Hollander.

Canadian hockey prodigy and Ilya’s strongest competition against taking home a gold medal tonight.

Fuck.

Fuck.

🧶

The tension in Shane’s string hasn’t changed since he woke up in the hospital five years ago. It’s never once picked up, never shifted on its own, never responded to the tugs he sends every morning and night.

So he is hyper aware of the miniscule twitch it gives when he steps outside for a breath of fresh air, a much needed break from the constant drilling from both Mom and his coaches. It’s still limp, no life to it at all, but it’s the first definitive movement he’s seen in years, and Shane’s feet are moving before his mind makes the conscious decision to do so.

The string doesn’t fade into the distance; in fact, it bends around the building instead of disappearing in a straight line to get to whatever, whoever exists on the other end. It’s highly unusual, and Shane feels an unfamiliar sensation in his chest as he draws closer and closer to the alleyway ahead.

It’s hope, and he hasn’t had much of that since his soulmate stopped responding when he was twelve years old; hockey had been his passion before, but after, it became his reason for waking up in the morning.

He thought he’d never get to have the kind of happily ever after that his parents had, thought that his soulmate had died-

But his soulmate has never been so close before.

Shane rounds the corner, freezing suddenly in his tracks when his eyes trace the bright red string to the pinky finger of another hockey player. He’s leaning against the wall, nonchalant like he can’t see the red string that binds them together, binds their souls to one another.

And that’s… that’s Ilya Rozanov, the Russian phenomenon that was sure to give Shane his first real taste of competition in this championship.

“Holy shit.” Shane mutters, because of course, of fucking course his soulmate was another hockey player. The mental image he hadn’t revisited since he was a child, of him and some faceless, unknown woman, happy in the kitchen of their dream home… shattered into pieces. In its place, he could see a room full of trophies, a partner that challenged him both on and off the ice, and a future after retirement from a sport they both loved.

It was a much nicer picture.

Winding some of the red string around his fist and shoving his hands in his pockets, Shane takes a steadying breath and closes the distance between them.

“Ilya Rozanov? Shane Hollander.”

If Shane was slightly giddy that the traditional hand to hold out to shake in greeting was the right hand, the one with his string, he hoped it didn’t show. The string had never looked so short, hanging loosely from his now outstretched hand and looping, not even a yard long, to Rozanov’s own hand.

The silence between them grew awkward as Shane’s hand hung, unmet, in the air.

“Da. I know this.” Ilya shrugged, ignoring Shane’s hand and lighting his cigarette. 

The hope snuffed out, replaced by something cold and whimpering. As he tucked his hand away, stuffing it back in his hoodie pocket like a shameful thing he needed to hide, Shane distantly acknowledged that it was probably rejection. It was a blue on the feelings wheel his therapist had taught him to use; the therapist his parents had insisted he start seeing, after they’d thought his soulmate was dead.

Only, he wasn’t.

He was right here. Smoking a cigarette in an alleyway in Saskatchewan, acting for all the world like Shane didn’t exist.

“You’re an awesome player to watch.” Shane tried; even if you were down four points in the third period, you didn’t stop playing. Maybe soulmates were different in Russia. Maybe Rozanov was nervous too. Maybe-

“Yes.” Rozanov said, blowing out a long stream of smoke from his nostrils and avoiding eye contact. 

It was acknowledgement, but not an offer to continue talking. Shane recognized that. He could also recognize that a lot of the feelings in his head right now were on that same blue slice of color on the pie chart of emotions. 

Maybe he should regroup, try a different tactic?

A loud voice echoed across the parking lot opposite the direction Shane had come. Rozanov rolled his eyes at whatever the distant Russian voice was calling, and he turned to go.

He was leaving, shit, Shane’s soulmate was just walking away.

“Good luck in the tournament.” he said, mentally kicking himself for not coming up with something more clever.

Rozanov held up his right hand in a limp wave of acknowledgement, without even looking back. The red string on his pinky was tied in a neat little bow, just like Shane’s.

With a forlorn sense of returning hopelessness, Shane tugged twice, weakly, at the growing length of string between them.

If Rozanov felt anything at all, he didn’t react.

Defeated, Shane turned and made his own way back inside.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

It had been more rotten luck that Ilya’s agent had booked him for a tandem photoshoot with Hollander. The universe seemed determined to force them together, in every capacity it could. As if it hadn’t been hard enough to stand next to his supposed soulmate at the draft, smiling wide for pictures.

His moment of victory, of being first draft pick, had been dampened by the wounded doe eyes Hollander kept throwing his way. Ilya wanted Hollander mad, to be angry or put out at being second choice. Instead, anytime their eyes met, Hollander was staring at Ilya like he was some kind of puzzle he couldn’t solve; one that made him sad.

As if a fucking puzzle could make someone feel.

There had been a moment, during the shoot, where Ilya had made the mistake of smiling. It was kind of ridiculous, really, the sort of poses and mock face-offs that they were being directed into. Any other player, he could have shared a commiserating smirk with and they would have shrugged, maybe smiled back.

Hollander reacted to a small smile from Ilya like it was the first rays of spring sunshine after a bitterly cold winter. Hollander’s answering smile had been a wobbly, hopeful kind of thing.

It made Ilya’s heart clench in a painful way.

Soulmates were for good little Canadian boys like Shane Hollander, not hot messes like Ilya Rozanov. Hollander would figure out soon enough that the whole thing was a hack, a cruel trick played by the universe; the fact that his string led straight to Shane fucking Hollander was proof enough of that.

Ilya would take his shower and get the hell out of Toronto. 

Even in this, he was thwarted.

Because of-fucking-course, Hollander was already there.

Steeling himself against looking at what he already knew would be a perfectly fit and toned body, Ilya crossed to the first available showerhead. He could practically feel Hollander’s questioning eyes, boring holes in the back of his head.

“Staring is rude.” he says sharply, and Shane’s startled inhale is proof enough that he was, in fact, peeking.

“Sorry.”

He turns around to look then, because the idea of being alone in a steamy shower with an attractive man may be dangerous, but nothing could kill a boner faster than the wounded dog look that hung around Hollander like a mantle.

Hollander is fit. 

He’s also hard, and suddenly the dewey eyed sad face isn’t such a bad aesthetic after all.

Ilya’s face must give away some of the amusement he’s feeling at Hollander’s expense, because Hollander rolls his eyes and waves his right hand, the string that dangles there unencumbered by the water that’s pouring over both of them.

“Fuck off. It’s- that’s just a natural reaction.” Hollander grouches, clenching his right hand into a fist as if the string that hangs from it could explain away an inappropriate erection.

Maybe that’s what Hollander needs. A single night together should show him, give him proof enough that Ilya Rozanov isn’t a soulmate worth pursuing. That it’s all just a farce, that neither of them have been, or ever will be, what the other needs.

It’s mean, borderline cruel, but Ilya can’t shake the idea once it’s settled in his mind.

Just a taste. One night.

“What is your room number?” Ilya asks, blunt and uncaring if Hollander takes offense. “We should… talk.”

While he outright refuses to name it, or speak of it directly, Ilya isn’t above using what tools he has at his disposal to get what he wants. So when Hollander’s eyes snap to his own, Ilya lazily waves his right hand in the air; it could just be clearing the steam between the two of them for a clearer view of his ‘rival’, but as Ilya suspected they might, Hollander’s eyes lock onto the red string hanging from Ilya’s hand.

“Fourteen ten.” Hollander says in a rush, and Ilya smirks. Nodding sharply, he turns back to his shower and makes hasty work of lathering himself up, trying and ultimately failing to pretend he can’t feel Hollander watching him the entire time.

Just a taste. One night.

🧶 

It doesn’t work.

Ilya returns to his own hotel room that night feeling like he’s still riding the high of an exotic new drug, and he knows for a fact that regardless of whatever the fuck soulmates are, he won’t be able to resist having Hollander again. 

Soulmates are still bullshit though.

Chapter End Notes

Ah, to be 19 with the emotional intelligence of a walnut. <3

Chapter 5

Objectively, Shane knows this isn’t right.

Soulmates should be more than fuck buddies, people stealing time and attention from eachother whenever they meet; which is no where near as often as Shane would like, though he’s not so sure that Rozanov would care either way.

For the first year or two of hooking up, he’d held out hope; maybe Rozanov just didn’t want to jump right into a relationship, maybe soulmates really were handled differently in Russia. Shane didn’t press, because he didn’t want to lose this; even if this was all he ever really got to have from his soulmate. 

He doesn’t tell his parents that his soulmate didn’t actually die when he was twelve. He never asks Rozanov about it either, about what happened to him that made him hurt like that.

Shane doesn’t push, and Rozanov doesn’t push him completely out of his life.

By the time they’d passed the three year mark, Shane had accepted that this… is just the way things are. It’s not right, but Shane can’t imagine giving it up either.

Laying in Rozanov’s bed, under his blue sheets, with his soulmate tucked up close against his back all warm and sleepy though, Shane wants to pretend. He wants it so bad he can taste it.

Waking up in Rozanov’s arms has a feeling of rightness to it that Shane can’t deny, even if his chest aches with wanting this kind of ‘more’ all of the time. 

Yawning, he’s still waking up when he absently gives the string on his right hand two quick tugs; the same friendly good morning, every morning. 

“If you don’t quit that, I really will find some fucking scissors and cut that thing off. Am sleeping.” Rozanov grumbles, burying his face in the back of Shane’s neck.

Shane lies very, very still.

The happy feeling, the lie he wanted so badly to believe in, has been shattered.

This is- there’s no precedent for this. Rozanov has never once acknowledged the connection between them. The string of fate that ties them together as soulmates.

At some point, Shane had talked himself into believing that maybe Rozanov just didn’t have one. Maybe whatever had happened when they were twelve had been bad enough that Rozanov couldn’t see his string anymore, or maybe didn’t have one at all.

 The soft sound of snoring at his back tells him that Rozanov’s gone back to sleep, completely unaware of the emotional crisis Shane is experiencing in his arms.

Because threatening their connection, even while half asleep, was still an acknowledgement. Rozanov knew they were soulmates.

He’d just never said anything, or wanted anything more than a quick fuck. In the eight years they’d known each other the only thing Rozanov had ever wanted from Shane, from his soulmate, was sex.

Cheeks burning hot with shame, Shane slips carefully from the bed, feeling like the dumbest fucking moron on the planet. 

He’s dressed and out the door a minute later. With eyes that can barely see through the angry tears gathering in them, he punches in his phone's lock screen code, scrolling to his message chain with Rozanov. 

He almost, almost hesitates. 

Ignoring the strand of red string tied around his pinky finger, Shane presses the button for block number; confirms it when he’s prompted.

Then he walks to the street corner, two blocks down, to call a ride back to his hotel.

🧶 

Finding out that Hollander had bailed last minute on the All Stars game was shocking enough that Ilya stooped to calling his number. It had rung once before dropping him into voicemail; since Hollander hadn’t responded to any of Ilya’s embarrassingly numerous texts since November, he didn’t bother leaving one.

But tonight Boston played Montreal, and there’s absolutely no way that they would let their star center sit out on a home game. 

“Nice to see you, Hollander.” Ilya drawled as they met at center ice.

Hollander didn’t reply. Wouldn’t even look at him.

Against his better judgement, Ilya looks at the string hanging from his own right hand to see if it’s changed at all. When he’d woken up in his bed, completely alone with no Hollander in sight back in November, that was the first time he’d seen his string act strangely. It hung limp from his hand, draping along his forearm, not a whit of tension to it. 

It looked like Hollander’s end of the string. 

Ilya didn’t care for the comparison. 

Hollander’s string could lie limp as it liked; the less pull towards the broken person on the other end of it, the better for Canada’s golden boy.

Ilya even missed the morning and evening tugs that had stopped, and he would never have expected their absence to cut so deep.

The puck dropped and Hollander took advantage of Ilya’s staring, eyes trying to bore into Hollander’s mind and read his secrets there, stealing the puck and taking off down the ice.

With a curse, Ilya took chase.

Hollander wasn’t just a smart player; he was fast. 

Chasing after him with his head down, Ilya’s eyes catch on the red string that skims limply across the ice after Hollander. With eyes on the hunt and his legs on the move, Ilya misses the exact moment of impact.

The sound of a body hitting the ice was nothing new; the roar of the crowd in disapproval told him that it was a Montreal player that had gone down, and he felt a brief moment of smug pleasure that his team was playing so aggressively against stuck up Montreal.

Only when he looked to see where Hollander had gotten to did he see that the string his eyes were trailing led right to a collapsed body.

The ice beneath him has nothing on the chill that floods Ilya’s chest.

The red string looks like a rivulet of blood, leading right from Hollander’s too-still body to wrap itself around Ilya’s right hand.

Medics and referees fill the ice, Pike throwing his gloves and charging Marleau somewhere off to Ilya’s left.

But Hollander doesn’t move.

For one horrified moment, Ilya is back in his childhood home, watching his Mama pluck at the string that goes straight up to her soulmate in heaven. The string on his own hand twitches, and Ilya instinctively clutches it tight to keep it from rising.

For the first time in nearly fourteen years, Ilya tugs helplessly at the string that ties him to his soulmate. To Hollander.

The medical team carts Hollander off the ice, but as they clear the boards, Ilya swears he feels two gentle tugs back.

Chapter 6

For one confusing moment, Shane thinks he’s twelve years old again.

The beeping and forced quiet of a hospital isn’t a sound he thinks he ever wants to get used to, but at least the familiarity is grounding, in its own way. 

Notably different from the last time he’d been in a hospital bed though, is the soft but persistent tugging at his right hand. The red string that’s coiled around his pinky for as long as he can recall is moving, and Shane shakes his head at it; stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the growing wobble in his chin and the pinprick of tears burning at his eyes.

“Hollander?” asks a rough voice, and Shane relaxes into the limp pillows of the hospital bed in relief. Imagining his string moving for once is one thing, but Ilya Rozanov being in his hospital room? Clearly whatever they’ve put him on for pain killers this time around has some kind of hallucinogenic side effect. He’ll have to ask Mom to note that in his chart. 

It’s easier to fight back the tears, now that he knows it’s not actually-

“...Shane?” 

And that’s not right, either. Rozanov never sounds anything less than assertive and absolutely certain; even when Shane thought they might be sharing a ‘moment’ during their hook ups, Rozanov’s cocky facade rarely slipped. 

“-m’fine.” Shane mutters. That’s what people always want to know when you’re hurt; how are you feeling, get well soon, can’t wait to have you back on the ice.

The tugging stops. 

Shane misses it immediately, which is stupid, because he’s been missing feeling anything from his soulmate’s end of the string for years. He should be used to it by now.

“You are awake?” Rozanov asks with a sniffle, and Shane frowns; tries to coax his eyes to open and his stiff neck to roll to the side. It twinges with pain, and he can’t help the grunt that slips free when the movement makes something grate awfully in his collarbone. 

“Be still.” Rozanov pleads, and that’s a first too.

Cracking his eyes open because Rozanov isn’t the boss of him, Shane blinks and immediately hates the way that his eyelids aren’t currently moving in sync. His right eye squints shut faster than his left, and he frowns at it. 

Rozanov doesn’t look much better than his parents had, the last time Shane had been in this particular position. Though, notably, this time there aren’t any restraints tying him down, so that’s nice. 

But it really is Ilya Rozanov, sitting in Shane’s hospital room, fiddling with the red string that binds their souls together; winding it around and through his fingers and running his fingertips along the strands like he’s strumming on a guitar. Shane can feel echoes of the touch in his own string, a nearly constant input of sensation that he hasn’t felt since he was a kid.

“What are you doing?” Shane asks, because the more he sees, the less he’s convinced this isn’t some mirage cooked up by his brain; either because of its recent impact with the inside of his skull, or as a result of whatever's in the drip bag currently hooked to his IV.

“I am waiting.” Rozanov says, staring down at his hands and not meeting Shane’s eyes.

“For what?” Shane asks, because hospitals have waiting rooms. If Rozanov is waiting for one of his teammates, he can damn well do it out there. 

The more Shane wakes up, the crankier he can feel himself becoming. He’s stuck in a hospital bed, and he knows from the fact that he’s in a gown and a sling that he’s not getting back on the ice anytime soon. No chance at the playoffs for him this year then, and he’ll probably have to do physical therapy too, and the soulmate that he’s been trying to get over for the last six months is sitting at his bed side waiting.

“To talk to you.” Rozanov tells his fingers, because he’s still not looking at Shane. “To apologize.”

“Who hit me?” Shane asks, because that actually fits the narrative better. It makes sense that Rozanov is here, not as Shane’s fucking soulmate, but as the Captain of the opposing team. 

“Marly. He feels really bad.” Rozanov huffs. “But that is not what apology is for.”

Shane swallows, turning his head back towards the boring ceiling of the hospital room, because he can’t watch Rozanov’s clever fingers play with the visible evidence that they’re meant to mean more to each other than… this. Whatever they are anymore.

Shane waits; he spent years reaching out first, every morning and every night, and it had been a difficult habit to break when he’d tried to end whatever the ‘relationship’ had become between him and Rozanov. His soulmate.

His soulmate, who’d threatened to cut their string like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even the first time he’d wanted to.

“I have not been… good.” Rozanov admits. “Good soulmate. I kept waiting for you to see this too.”

Shane has to remind himself to breathe, because the room is already spinning enough from his head hurting, and he doesn’t need to add oxygen deprivation to that too.

“I need you.” Rozanov admits. “I think I need you more than you need me. I do not know how to be that. Needing.”

“I need you too.” Shane corrects, the rising balloon of anger in his chest deflating like one of the Pike kid’s pool floaties in the face of Rozanov’s vulnerability. “But it doesn’t feel like you need me. You didn’t even acknowledge what we were until you threatened to cut our string.”

Even staring at the ceiling, Shane’s eyes catch the sharp jerk of Rozanov’s body in his peripheral vision.

“I said this?” Rozanov asks, finally looking up. Shane tries to face him, and is mostly successful despite the return of the awful grinding feeling. “When?”

“In Boston.”

He doesn’t have to clarify when in Boston; blocking Rozanov’s number and ceasing all contact between them was answer enough. 

“I am… very sorry.” Rozanov says softly. “Hurting you. Saying that. Being a bad soulmate. Am very sorry for these things.”

“Do you- is that-” Shane struggles to find the words for what he wants to ask. As much as he’d like to blame his aching head, the therapy has him begrudgingly admitting that it’s the emotional whiplash that’s really making his brain struggle. “Is anything even going to change?”

Rozanov is nodding the second the words leave Shane’s mouth, and it causes the tears that had been gathering in his pretty pale eyes to fall down his cheeks. “Da, yes, yes. I can change. I will be better.”

“How?” Shane asks sharply. He’s spent years living on crumbs of affection and admittedly mindblowing sex from the person that’s supposed to be his everything; always wanting more, and always, always being pushed away from it.

“I want to text you. I miss you.” Rozanov admits. “I want to text, and talk to you. Do things together.”

Shane’s nose wrinkles in distaste, and Rozanov hurries to clarify, “Not sex things. Well, yes, sex things. But… couple things?”

Rozanov says ‘couple’ the way he might say ‘exploratory’ or ‘ingenuity’; a new English word, unfamiliar, that he needs confirmation he’s using right in a sentence.

“Like boyfriends?” Shane asks, because surely Rozanov knows what that means. 

“Yes.” 

Rozanov’s frank reply, paired with the relieved slump of his shoulders, has Shane considering it.

He thinks of the trophy room he’d dreamed of the very first time he’d laid eyes on Ilya, the realization that the universe had tied him not only to a man, but to a man that would prove to be his equal on the ice.

Or nearly equal.

Instead of replying out loud, Shane gives the string wrapped around his finger two short tugs. Ilya’s relief cracks across his face like dawn spilling over the horizon, and he gives two answering tugs immediately with the string that’s wound and woven through his knuckles.

“Will you hold my hand?” Shane asks quietly, and he’s barely gotten the words out before Ilya’s cupping Shane’s left hand in between his own like it’s small and precious and not equally as large and calloused as Ilya’s hands.

Ilya presses his lips to the peak of Shane’s knuckles in a kiss.

“Ilya?”

Trying out his soulmate's first name on his tongue is a strange feeling. They’ve known each other for years, understand one another at a level that no one else ever will; but there’s still so much he doesn’t know about the man on the other end of his string.

“Shane.”

Closing his eyes against the lights of the hospital room and squeezing Ilya’s hand, Shane asks, “Will you come to my cottage this summer? So we can figure this-”

Two tugs on the string that binds their souls together.

“-out?”

Ilya somehow manages to tug back without relinquishing his hold on Shane’s hand and it makes him smile, how hard Ilya is already working to do and be what Shane needs. Even if it’s just simply holding his hand.

“Yes, Shane.”

“Not maybe?” Shane teases, still not entirely convinced this conversation has been real.

“Not maybe. Yes. I will be there.” Ilya insists.

His words hold a weight that make Shane feel like he’s talking about more than just this summer, more than just the cottage. With a happy sigh, Shane focusses on the warmth of Ilya’s hands on his own, the sound of Ilya’s breathing, and basks in the feeling of hope rekindling in his heart.