Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Memory Loss, Injury, Sexual Content, medical science according to Dr. Fanfiction, Fast Food, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, not magical realism but not not magical realism, Alcohol

Language:

English

Collections:

the mixtape

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-22 Words: 9,777 Chapters: 1/1

lotophage

Summary

During a game against the Boston Raiders, the Metros’ star center Shane Hollander sustains a concussion. Six months later, he still has no memory of his life before the injury.

Notes

mixtape volume I i love you forever <3 track is samson, thank you garage

Shane hasn't ever experienced summer, so he doesn't know what it sounds like. He imagines that the deluge of insects his parents have warned him about, who arrive after the frost has made a permanent retreat, might sound like this: the buzzing, digital thrum of the television in their living room that never seems to turn off.

All three of them are watching TV, though the noise is grinding against Shane's brain, and David keeps getting up to go to the kitchen, clanging open drawers and cabinets and then wandering back and squeezing Shane's shoulder and the back of Yuna's neck every time he passes by. Shane keeps trying not to flinch when he does it. 

They're watching a hockey game. It's always a hockey game. Shane's really, really sick of watching hockey games. 

"That's Ilya Rozanov," Yuna supplies, when the camera zooms in on one of the players. He looks unremarkable to Shane, the way all of the helmeted players in identical gear flying across the rink do. Another faceless white uniform on white ice. "He plays the same position as you." 

"Forward," Shane says cautiously, trying not to phrase it like a question. 

"Center," his mom corrects gently. She's so gentle with him, no matter how many mistakes he makes. It's the curdling sort of gentle that makes Shane want to rip off his own skin, and all he can do is endure it. He has no right to insist on not being treated gently. This woman is his mother, even though Shane, as he is now, is not really her son. 

"The Raiders..." Yuna starts, then trails off. She seems to have trouble saying the next part. "Do you remember? That's the team you were playing when—" 

She can't really finish the rest, just goes quiet and wraps her fingers tighter around the wine glass. Shane braces for it to shatter. It wouldn't be the first piece of stemware that's collapsed under the titanic compression of Yuna's grief. 

Do you remember? The doctors told her it would be for the best if she stopped asking him, but she can't seem to help the instinct. Shane doesn't hold that against her. He can tolerate it. It's the least he can do.

Like Shane, the wine glass endures, and does not break.  Yuna doesn't have to finish what she was saying, anyway. Shane knows what she's talking about, even though, of course, he doesn't remember a thing. 

The team he was playing when everything changed. When Shane's life ended, or began. Both, sort of. Depending on how you look at it. 

The real problem is that, no matter how hard he tries, Shane can't make himself care about what he's lost. Not remembering just means there's nothing for him to miss.

He doesn't ever voice that truth. He sees the sadness in his parents’ eyes and he swallows all of his traitorous, apathetic thoughts. He lets them squeeze his shoulders. He watches every hockey game.

It's not just his parents. There are others, too, the people whom he's routinely assured are his friends but who might as well be extras in a bad film in which Shane has somehow landed himself the starring role. They still haven't stopped coming around, expressions always verging on accusative, like he's choosing to hold back an answer they want to hear, like he’s stolen something from them to which they are entitled.

Speaking of bad films: at least the girlfriend hadn't stuck around. Ruby (?) had been to see him only once, back when he was still in the hospital. She said some nice things that Shane absolutely did not retain, because short term memory was just as fried as long term in those first few weeks. She told him he could text her whenever, and then she vanished.

Shane is so, so grateful to her for that. So far, she's the only person who was important in the Before who hasn't staked a claim to the After; who hasn't come to him, sweaty-palm clutching a drooping, expectant check that Shane simply cannot deposit. The other regular visitors don't spare him any of their expectations: Hayden, J.J., his old hockey coach, even the MLH commissioner.

Almost all of them—even his parents—seem to keep waiting for him to apologize. Shane doesn't know how to properly atone for—what? Existing?

Apologizing won’t get anyone anything they want, but it's been six months, and Shane still can't break the habit of saying sorry.

Yuna seems angry, on top of expectant and sad. Most of her anger at this moment is focused on the Boston Raiders. Shane has gathered this much about his mother: she looks for both alliances and enemies with equal vigor. Yuna needs someone to hold accountable for the theft of her son, and an opposing hockey team is as good an antagonist as any. It's not like she can blame Shane for replacing himself with an imposter. Even though he gets the impression, sometimes, that she really, really wants to. 

When the game they're watching ends with the Raiders losing, Yuna makes a satisfying grimace at the screen and licks her teeth like she's bitten into something bloody. Shane doesn't feel any particular emotions about which hockey teams advance in the playoffs, but he's glad for Yuna. He would rather give her this violent satisfaction than endure more of her suffocating gentleness, more of her unspoken assessments of Shane’s numerous deficits compared to the phantom Shane whose enormous presence looms in every room, stares back at him from every framed photo on their walls.

The new, lacking version of Shane isn't completely useless. He knows a lot about Canadian geography. He can recite a number of French 101 verbs. After a few months at the cottage, he can recognize the soft hoot of a barn owl, the chainsaw rattle of a woodpecker. He holds a lot of pieces of the life he used to have. He can picture assembling them into an almost-complete puzzle, the landscape it displays nearly matching the one on the top of the box, only absent a few glaring blanks. 

Those blanks are: the sport of hockey, and everything that ever happened to the person he used to be. 

The missing pieces don’t feel like that big of a deal to Shane. They’re the only thing that matter to anyone else. 

The hockey season refuses to end and refuses to leave him alone, even though Shane is medically barred from touching ice, and every time the television turns on Shane feels it in his still-aching skull. It's been months since the accident, and he can measure the elapsed time in dozens of broadcasted games, with rules he keeps forgetting and outcomes he doesn't care about, Yuna trying night after night to talk to him about the score, about players, about strategies.

The only part of hockey she doesn't want to talk about is Shane's injury, the hit on the ice that led to his current state. Yuna and David don't call it an injury. They refer to it exclusively as the Game, capital 'G'. Shane doesn't like talking about hockey in general so it's nice that in this, at least, the three of them share common ground.

He's healed enough now that he and his mom have planned a trip to the United States in a few weeks. Shane's horde of neurosurgeons have most recently recommended that he get the hell out of rural Canada (not their words) in order to try to encourage his fucked up, cracked-eggshell of a empty brain (again, not the scientific term) to form some new pathways. 

Shane's looking forward to getting away from the now-well trodden patterns of life in Ottawa and at the cottage. He has roughly six months of memories that all involve one of two houses and a hospital room. He's ready for some new ones. 

They go to New York. David stays in Ottawa, and Yuna glares at the highway the entire drive like it personally offends her. She flinches every time someone passes them in traffic. A better son might reach over to the driver's seat and pat her shoulder or even hold her hand. The old Shane probably would have done that, would have known how to comfort his mother when she's stressed. Shane keeps his hands in his lap and his eyes on the road in front of them. 

They have meetings with brands in New York, a tedious parade of men in suits that Shane can't imagine is all that conducive to lighting up anything novel and healing in his brain. Shane’s many endorsement deals, according to Yuna, are "on hiatus" while Shane recovers. His doctors say he's not allowed back on the ice until the start of next season, for his own safety, and people seem to keep expecting him to fight them on that. Like Shane would want to endure another brain injury, lose the most recent six months on top of the previous two and a half decades. Given what the first hit did, a second one could turn him into a vegetable. But apparently the old Shane used to hurl himself at danger like he was begging for consequences like this. Shane wonders, often, what the fuck was wrong with him. 

One doctor, in a lone dissenting opinion shared with them a month ago, had said that it might be good for Shane to get back on the ice sooner. He thought the muscle memory of playing hockey might kickstart the recovery of the actual memories that he lost. His mother, upon hearing this advice, had turned to Shane with barely-concealed hope in her eyes. Shane had looked away, and the subject has not been revisited since.

Their New York brand meetings go well, Yuna thinks. Reebok, Rolex, and Speedo all assure him that they'll be thrilled to have him back as an active brand ambassador once he starts playing again. There's a few brands who want him to shoot things this summer, before he's even playing. This makes Yuna very happy. 

Shane doesn't pay attention in the meetings. No one is really talking to him, anyway; it seems like everyone has gotten the memo that now Yuna is in charge. While Yuna steers every conversation, Shane gazes around the identical conference rooms, bright fluorescents burning his eyes. Tries to give his retinas a break by staring out the giant windows at softer natural lighting.

New York City is much louder than the cottage. Shane had known that it would be. It's jarring, but not unpleasant, to feel so anonymous and insignificant. He's surprised the screaming decibels of even the city's ambience don't bother his aching head more. It’s actually kind of nice, to be so utterly disregarded.    

They attend a dinner function after their second day of meetings. It’s some sort of—fundraiser? Shane has trouble paying attention to the minutiae. He feels like a zoo animal, or something in a museum. Both caged and breakable, longing to be on the other side of the display.

The party is a different kind of noisy than the outdoor cacophony of the city, and Shane likes it a lot less. The room feels too small for how many people are in it, and bigger than any room has any right to be. Shane isn't sure how the old him played hockey when he hates loud noises this much. More proof that he's not the same person he used to be.  

The whole evening fits so uncomfortably, like a too-tight skin he's never worn before, that the surprise of recognizing something hits him like ice water. Shane turns a corner in the ballroom and sees a face he knows.

After watching the last Raiders playoff game with Yuna, Shane had inexplicably, for the first time, sought out information about hockey on his own. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to be watching clips of his injury. Maybe it would re-trigger some trauma and send him into a catatonic state. After about two seconds of thought, Shane decided his mental state couldn’t reasonably get that much worse, and hit “enter” on the Google search for “Shane Hollander Raiders Concussion 2016.” 

He watched about ten videos of himself getting hit, and then he watched everything else YouTube suggested.

One of the videos featured the person he's looking at in the flesh right now. Shane had clicked on a link because he recognized the name his mother had said to him before—Ilya Rozanov. The one face she’d noted among the faceless horde. The first clip was a post-game interview, after Shane had already been taken to the hospital, Rozanov's hair plastered to his skull with sweat and his eyes bright with exertion. With the helmet off, Shane could see for the first time that he had high cheekbones, bright eyes. His mouth was a straight horizon, his face heralding a storm. 

The interview was littered with bland combinations of the same phrases, all held at different angles: "A very unlucky hit, yes." "No one wanted to see Hollander hurt." "The Raiders are sending wishes for his recovery." "We hope Hollander will be back on the ice to play us soon." Shane forgot the words instantly, but Rozanov's voice stuck in his useless brain like a small, smooth pebble: rounded with his accent, dark and velvety. Shane googled that, next: “Ilya Rozanov accent.” Russian, Google told him. Shane watched a suggested video from that search, too: Half Hour of Rozanov Chirping Only He Gets More Fluent Every Minute. There was a lot to watch. A lot of it involved Shane. 

In person, Rozanov is about the same height as Shane. Broader than him, though. Maybe not even physically, the closer Shane looks. It’s just that he seems to be taking up so much space. Shane's remembering the sound of his voice, even though Rozanov isn't talking. He isn't looking at Shane, either. They're not friends, Shane supposes. That much had been clear from his googling. Shane has nothing to say to this person. 

It doesn't stop him, though, from talking. 

"Oh, hi," Shane ventures, moving a little closer. He's gotten used to introducing himself to people he’s supposed to know. "Um, Ilya? Rozanov? Right?" 

Ilya looks at him. The guy has intense eyes, even worse than the video Shane watched. He looks pissed. Jesus. Shane knows that he used to be a rival player, but he's not sure what he could have done to merit this caliber of glare. Maybe it's a Russian thing. 

"Hello," Rozanov finally replies. 

"Sorry—um, I know we know each other, from before. But, well. You heard about what happened to me?" 

Rozanov just keeps staring. Okay, so he's not a great conversationalist. No problem. Shane's an unemployed amnesiac who lives with his parents. He'll have no trouble taking the reins with a glowering Russian hockey god. 

He bumbles forward. "Yeah, so, like. I don't really remember anything about, you know, my life. I know this is weird, because we've obviously met before. But, uh. Well. Hi. Yeah." Mortifyingly, Shane sticks out his hand. 

Even more mortifyingly, Rozanov doesn't take it. Lets Shane's wrist and palm dangle like a worm on a hook that not a single fucking fish wants to take a bite out of. 

Just as Shane is about to let his arm fall to the side, Rozanov reaches out and wraps Shane's fingers quickly in his own. It's a weak handshake, like Rozanov doesn't want to be touching him at all. If Shane's ever felt this awkward before in his life, it strikes him as a blessing that he can't remember it.  

"Ilya," Rozanov offers. "It is, uh, nice to see you. Hollander." 

"Shane," Shane says back, following suit. 

"Shane," Rozanov repeats slowly. "Are you—" The words look like they're being forced out of his throat weighed down with boulders, scraping his mouth on the way out. Ilya looks down at Shane's plate. "What are you eating?" he asks. His voice is so flat. 

Weirdo, Shane thinks. 

"I don't know—whatever they had on the buffet thing?" 

"French fries," Rozanov observes. Astute! Well, no one claimed hockey players were geniuses. Shane wonders, not for the first time, what he possibly used to talk about with any of them. 

"Yup," he replies. "Do you—want one?" 

Rozanov surprises him by shrugging and picking a cold, limp fry off his plate. Rozanov's lips purse like he's sucking the salt off the fry before chewing and swallowing. It's kind of a gross way to eat. To keep from wincing away in disgust, Shane makes himself keep staring at Ilya’s mouth. 

"You are in New York just for tonight?" Rozanov asks, once he's finished molesting Shane's French fry. 

"We're gonna stay the week," Shane says. "Do tourist stuff, maybe? It's part of my treatment plan, apparently." It feels a bit personal to disclose to a coworker, but Shane says it anyway. "My doctors think it will be good to mix up my experiences." 

"You have not been—" Rozanov swallows, and his eyes drift down to Shane's mouth for a second before snapping back up to his eyes "—mixing it up?" 

"Well, no," Shane says. "I had a really bad concussion. And a broken collarbone. I spent a few months just like, healing." 

"Many months," Rozanov observes. Maybe it's been a nice vacation for Ilya, not having to worry about playing Shane. Maybe he's disappointed to see Shane walking around and talking. Maybe Shane should apologize to him for not being in a coma. 

Someone drops a drink tray, and the clatter is so explosive that Shane winces. Rozanov doesn't even flinch, he just keeps staring. Shane is starting to regret talking to him. 

"Loud in here," Rozanov murmurs. He's speaking very softly. "You want to, um—go somewhere else?" 

Shane looks around. They’re somewhere in the financial district, he doesn’t think they’re supposed to leave the ballroom in this building. "Where?" 

Ilya makes a peace sign with his fingers, then brings it to his mouth. For a second Shane thinks he's about to do something vulgar, but then he says, "I will smoke. Come." 

Shane and Yuna did not discuss protocol for the party. Shane's not exactly a prisoner, but he's also pretty sure she does not expect him to leave at any point. 

But it's just going outside. He's not going to concuss himself again just by walking out a door. And Rozanov is already moving. 

Dumbfounded, Shane follows him. 

It's cold out. Shane doesn't remember ever being in New York and has no personal frame of reference for the weather, but he knows that America's northeast has respectable winters, if not quite as cold as Ontario and Quebec's. That's just trivia. What his brain managed to hold onto when it ejected everything else like a ship about to sink. 

He can feel it now: the bite of the end of the winter, still loitering in the atmosphere. Shane can see his breath when he exhales. Next to him, Rozanov produces a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. 

"Are—are you going to give me one?" Shane asks. 

For the first time, Shane hears Rozanov laugh. It rumbles deep from his stomach and cuts through the cold air. 

"Hollander," he says in disbelief. "Fucking—no."

"Kind of rude of you," Shane huffs. "Not to offer." 

"You don't smoke." 

Shane is a little offended. "How do you know?" He gestures at Rozanov. "Clearly there are athletes who smoke. I could."

"Mm, but no," Rozanov says. His mouth is twisting up a little, the plush Cupid's bow at the precipice of his lips flattening as it stretches out into the ghost of a grin. "You do not." 

Shane considers that. "Maybe I should start. Can I have one?" 

Ilya stares at him like he's grown another head. "What?" 

"Come on, give me one. Nothing that's wrong with me had anything to do with my lungs. It's not gonna kill me." Actually, smoking probably isn't a good idea for literally any health concern, but Shane doesn't care. It's a nice night, even with the cold. Shane doesn't mind it. He doesn't want to go back inside. 

Rozanov taps a cigarette out of the pack and holds it, foam butt-first, towards Shane. Shane realizes what Rozanov wants and ducks his head forwards a little until his lips close around the flimsy filter. He goes sort of cross eyed watching Ilya's fingers coax a spark out of his lighter, and Ilya says, softly, "inhale, Shane," and, instantly, he does, and then there's a glowing red coal at the end of the cigarette and Shane's lungs feel heavy and full. 

"Fuck," Shane coughs. And coughs, and coughs. The smoke feels like it's clogging up every crevice of his lungs and his brain, too. Like it's pouring into all the empty space his memories left behind. Wow. Smoking fucking sucks.  

"God," Shane sputters, still coughing. He doesn't drop the cigarette. "That's so gross. No wonder you thought I wouldn't like it." 

Ilya swallows, the knob in his throat bobbing obviously. He lets out a considerate hum when Shane valiantly takes another drag after his coughing fit ends. 

"Maybe. But maybe I am not best person to tell you what you liked, Hollander." 

Ilya lights his own cigarette and leans against the wall, next to Shane. They stand there for a few minutes, Ilya's cigarette burning much faster than Shane's given he's sucking on it at a considerably more experienced pace. Shane is slower, but it's easier not to cough as he goes on. Shane’s head feels lighter now, like the smoke cleared something out. He's been fumigated. 

"So. This is real?" Ilya finally asks. 

"Sorry? Um—I don't know what—" 

"Why do you say sorry? Sorry for what?” Shane, embarrassed, shrugs. Ilya continues, “I am just asking, like, really, you do not remember? Anything?" 

Shane shakes his head. "Really. Um, I know like—facts? They're not like memories, just—knowledge. But, yeah. Whenever I try to think about my own life, see myself anywhere, it's like—it's like going to open a door, but instead there's just a wall there, you know?" 

For some reason, that makes Ilya smile. "Hm. Maybe the door is still there, underneath the wall. Like a remodel." 

What a weird dude. "Maybe," Shane says. 

"And your parents...?" 

"They're really nice," Shane says, then cringes. "They've been great. But uh, yeah. I don't remember them, either." For some reason, Shane keeps talking. "Yuna—she doesn't really feel like my mom. Like, I can imagine what a mom should be, I guess, but it doesn't really seem like something that's ever happened to me. I don't miss her, but I can tell how much she misses me. And I'm just like—a stranger. Watching her wish I was him. It must suck for her." 

Ilya looks at him, his face making a shape that on anyone else would be a stretch to call emotive, but on Ilya seems downright theatrical. He seems… angry? Sad? Maybe he's a big fan of Yuna Hollander, despite how she seems to feel about him. 

"And other people?” Ilya asks. “You had girlfriend, yes? Before the Game." 

The way Ilya says the Game pings something for Shane. The Game, capital G.  It distracts him, for a second, from answering. 

"Yeah, apparently," Shane finally answers. "She was nice.” 

"Very pretty," Ilya adds, which is a weird fucking thing to say about Shane's stranger of an ex-girlfriend. “As well as nice.” 

"Yeah," Shane huffs. “She looked really pretty dumping me while I was in a hospital bed recovering from a head injury. In a nice way.”  

A beat passes. Then Ilya lets out a shocked laugh. Shane looks over at him, wondering if he should feel pleased or embarrassed. Shane smiles. 

“It can’t have been that serious, anyway,” he says, a little guilty about shitting on the ex-girlfriend he’s pretty relieved broke up with him. “So, you know, don’t feel bad for me, or whatever.”  

Ilya is looking at Shane with another vaguely mystified expression.  "Hollander," he starts. "I—" 

The door bangs open, and then Yuna is standing there. Ilya, for some reason, jumps back, putting an unnecessary amount of distance between himself and Shane. 

"Shane," Yuna breathes, all relief, and Shane is suddenly incredibly guilty. Then Yuna's eyes go wide. "Shane—Rozanov? And—are you smoking?" 

Shane doesn't remember getting in trouble as a teenager, or being a teenager at all, but the experience of being caught by his mother smoking cigarettes outside of a party pulls at something in his belly in a way that tells him it must have felt a lot like this. He feels the lit end of the cigarette devouring the distance to the filter, hot and hungry, and realizes he’s sweating a little bit, too. 

"Um, yeah,” he says. “Sorry." 

"Can you—" Yuna looks at an absolute loss. "Can you come back inside, please?" 

Shane nods. Apologizes again. "Sorry. Yeah. Um. I'll be right there." 

"Hello, Mrs. Hollander," Ilya pipes up. Yuna looks at him like he's something very unpleasant she's discovered in the back of the fridge, growing mold.

"Good evening," she says quickly, meeting the minimum standards of Canadian politeness before turning back to her son. "Shane," she says again, something warning in her tone. Then she steps back inside. 

Once the door is closed, Shane looks at Ilya. 

"Fuck. I have to—" 

"You have your phone?" Ilya interrupts. 

Shane does. He's only been allowed screen time in the past few weeks, given the severity of the concussion, but he doesn't really have anyone to text anyway. Sometimes he responds politely to Hayden Pike's messages. 

Ilya is holding out his hand expectantly. Shane pulls his phone out of his pocket and Ilya takes it. He holds it for a long time. It seems like too long to Shane, for just putting in a number, but it's not like Shane is an authority on that.

When Rozanov hands it back, it's open to a contact that reads ILYA, followed by the little hockey stick emoji. 

"You can text me," Ilya says. "If you like." 

"Okay," Shane answers, even though he can't really think of a reason he ever would. “I will.” 

After New York, things go back to the way they used to be. New York did not trigger any new memories. They watch hockey. His father cooks. They go on walks. Warmer spring days emerge triumphant more and more often in their campaign against the fading chill. 

That repeats, over and over, until Shane, during one of his allowed screen time sessions of the day, sends a text to ILYA 🏒, the first message in their history.

there's some MLH event happening in ottawa next week, he writes. His mom had asked if Shane wanted to go, and Shane can't think of anything he wants less, but he'd said he would. will you be there?

I can be, Ilya texts back. We can meet, if you want. 

A few hours before the MLH dinner, they meet at a bar Ilya suggests. Every surface appears to be made of gleaming, polished wood that looks like it might set you on your knees and knight you. The sconces thrust out unnecessarily from the walls like they're expensively flipping you off in ornate stained glass. The whole place somehow smells like cigars even though Shane's pretty sure smoking isn't allowed indoors in Ontario.

Shane orders a beer. The doctors haven't delivered a consistent opinion on drinking, but the diagnoses have ranged from "don't worry about it" to "never more than one drink a day." The average suggestion, he reasons, is something like two a day, max. Shane hasn’t had a drink in six months, so he figures that this one is fine.

Ilya is awkward, which surprises Shane, because he doesn't look like the kind of guy who has ever been awkward in any situation in his life. Maybe Shane, in his current blank, pathetic state, is capable of bringing out the awkward in even the most suave guy on the planet. At last, a skill in which the newer version of himself might exceed the old. 

"What did you tell your parents you were doing before event?" Ilya asks him, eyes anywhere but Shane's face. He takes a big, obvious gulp of his pale beer, and some of the foam stays on his top lip. 

"What do you mean?” Shane says. “I told them we were hanging out." 

Ilya does look at him, then. "You told them what?" 

Shane shrugs. "Was I not supposed to? Is it illegal?” His parents had acted like Shane had told them he was off to the moon, but it’s not like they tried to stop him, minus a few passive-aggressive comments. 

“I don't think my mom likes you very much, by the way," Shane adds. “Why do you think that is?”

Ilya ignores the question in favor of continuing to stare at him like a fish. Then he blinks and shakes his head, another sip of beer disappearing down his throat. He hasn't shaved in a couple days, Shane notices. There's stubble all over his jaw and his neck. Everything about him seems prickly.

"Have we ever done this before?" Shane asks. "Were we ever… friends?" 

"No," Ilya says quickly. "We have never done this. Never friends." 

"Oh. Do you… not like me?" That doesn't seem that plausible, given Ilya gave him his number and basically dared Shane to text him. Maybe it's some sort of hockey mind game that Shane is no longer able to understand. 

"I like you fine, Hollander," Ilya says. He doesn't elaborate, which pisses Shane off. This weird hang was his idea. Basically.

"Well, what did you like?" Shane presses. "About me. Before." 

"Hmm," Ilya says thoughtfully. "You are okay at hockey." 

Shane doesn't like the way that lands like a torpedo, making his heart sink. Hockey. Always hockey. Ilya must see his face fall, because he adds, "And you are very boring." 

Fuck this guy. "I asked you what you liked, dude." 

"And I am telling you. I am big fan of boring. Boring hockey players, boring cities like Ottawa. I am not afraid of boring, because I am exciting enough for a whole boring city." He looks at Shane. "Even for a whole boring Hollander."

Shane is incredibly unsatisfied with that answer. "But—what do you know about me? I’m just trying to understand why you gave me your number. Why you want to hang out with me, if we’re not even friends."

Ilya sighs. "I do not know you very well, Shane. I am—I am a stranger to old you too, okay? Maybe I am just trying to be nice.” 

“Yeah, well, you suck at it,” Shane says bitchily. 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “I know this.”  

They sit in silence for a while. It’s long enough for Shane to notice that a very beautiful woman at the bar has been staring at them. Her gaze is so hot that it's starting to annoy Shane a little, and he keeps looking over at her, hoping to embarrass her by catching her staring. Instead, Ilya notices him doing it, and laughs. 

"You want me to talk to her for you?" Ilya asks. 

"No thanks. You can talk to her for you, though. If you want." 

Ilya’s lips are wrapped around the mouth of his beer bottle. He takes a long sip, then says, "Not really in the mood." 

Shane looks away from the beautiful woman to raise his eyebrow at Ilya. "You'd rather keep drinking with someone boring?" 

"Hm," is all Ilya says. He finishes his beer. "I will get us another, yes?"

Shane has more than two drinks. Then he has more than four. Oh well. If you divide the total number of drinks he's had tonight by the months he's been abstaining, he's still well below even the most conservative doctor's recommendations. 

Ilya's hair is blue, now that he's moved his chair a little. He's caught in the specific beam of one of the sconces that's piercing a sapphire piece of stained glass. The effect makes him look less like an imposing hockey player and more like something otherworldly. A superhuman being, out of place in Shane's mortal, repetitive life. The blue-tinged curls frame his face like cotton candy. He looks sweet.

Ilya wears a chain around his neck, delicately shining up from his very un-delicate chest. Shane has started to notice the chain because Ilya has moved closer and closer to him as the night has stretched out around them. When Ilya breathes, Shane feels it on his face. 

It's not memory, what he feels, looking at Ilya. But the thing in his gut is a sensation he can almost recognize, an ache carved around an absence. He can see the outline of it, if not the shape within. It makes his mouth go dry. It feels almost like hunger. 

Shane's brain is fuzzy. It's a nice contrast from the frustration he's carried around for months, the concrete, hollow sensation that made him want to bash his head against a wall in an attempt to knock something loose. Tonight, his mind is a set of watercolors and someone's dragged a wet paintbrush across the surface, making everything run together. The effect is kaleidoscopic and staining. He's a dripping mess.

Ilya is right there, close enough that the muddle of colors is staining him, too. It's very easy to accidentally touch him. 

"Hollander, you are so drunk," Ilya says lightly, moving Shane's hand off his arm for the third or tenth time. "I think it is time to go back to your parents. Well, no. I think maybe we get McDonald's first. Sober you up." 

"Great," Shane says. "I want a coke. And a burger. And a McFlurry." 

Ilya says something harsh in another language, but he's smiling. "Who are you?" 

"What? I'm hungry!" Shane protests. He's wasted, and he hasn't eaten since breakfast. Of course he wants a fucking burger.

The details of their migration from the bar don't stick; somehow, they're not inside anymore, and then they're running across an intersection, and someone is laying on the horn at them, and someone is cursing in another language, and Ilya's hair has turned yellow in the light of the ugly golden arches. And then they're inside, and even under the sickly, fluorescent filter, Ilya's skin manages not to look sallow.

McDonald's smells gross and is overall pretty disgusting. Ilya fits right in. Shane watches him suck more salty fries into his mouth and then lick his fingers—when was the last time he washed his hands?—and Ilya catches him looking and holds eye contact while he hollows his cheeks and pushes his index finger further back, towards his throat. He could probably rub his molars with it. They're still looking right at each other.

They practically jogged here, and they're still wearing their jackets inside, so sweat is gathering in Shane's armpits. Across the booth, a bead of perspiration is making its way down the side of Ilya's face. It's a steep, smooth track to follow. Everything about Ilya is sharp. Hard. It might feel like cutting yourself, to touch his jaw.

The sweat has reached Ilya’s chin. Shane looks at his mouth again. There's a sharpness there, too; Shane's seen it in the way Ilya answers some of his questions, the resting posture of his grimace. But his lips, Shane has to admit, don't look sharp at all. 

"I want a cigarette," Shane says, low, even though he doesn't. "Can we go outside?"

Ilya swallows, even though he's long since finished chewing his last fry.

"Okay." He says it very softly, and then he's standing up and walking outside again, and Shane, again, is following him.

Outside in the alley, they’re alone and Ottawa is quiet. Boring, Shane thinks. It's really gross back here, and it smells vaguely like urine on top of all the disgusting fast food. Winter is still hanging on by its fingernails, which seems like a good thing right now. It would probably smell worse if it was warm.

Shane stops thinking about the smell. Ilya hasn’t taken out his cigarettes. He’s just watching Shane like he’s waiting for something. Shane doesn't have his memory, but he still knows a few things. He thinks he knows what Ilya is waiting for.

Shane launches himself at Ilya like he wants the collision to hurt him. Ilya's lips taste like grease and salt and Ilya's tongue is inside Shane's mouth almost as soon as Shane thuds face-first against him.

For months, Shane has been pretty positive that he isn’t good at anything anymore, and that he might not ever be good at anything again. Kissing Ilya Rozanov, immediately and revelatory, is something Shane thinks he is very, very good at. Or at least, he’s very good at being kissed: Rozanov takes control of the situation almost instantly, and Shane, soaring, lets him. One of his hands reaches firmly around Shane’s waist, the other comes to his jaw. Shane’s feet might be levitating off the crumbling sidewalk. Who knows. Shane is no longer certain about anything except for the fact that he wants Ilya to open his mouth even wider and consume Shane whole. 

Maybe it isn’t that good. Maybe Shane is just drunk enough to believe this is expert-level kissing. Shane doesn’t have anything to compare it to, but that feels unimportant. Who needs to compare? What could possibly feel better, be better, than Ilya’s hot mouth opening under his?

Time drifts, and Shane finds himself pawing at Ilya's belt, choking out, "Can we… Let me —"

Ilya's hands come over Shane's, stilling him. They're not soft. His hand moves up again, the callouses on his knuckles scratching Shane's cheek, making him shudder. Rough. Not like his lips. Not like his eyes, the way he's looking at Shane right now.

"Shane," Ilya says. "Stop. We cannot."

"Why not?" Shane pants into Ilya's mouth. He breaks out of Ilya's grip and moves his palm lower. "You want to. I can feel it."

"You do not want this. Okay? You do not know me."

"I don't know you?" Shane repeats incredulously. "I don't know you? What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t know me, dude.”

“I do,” Ilya says simply. Shane wants to punch him for it. 

“I'm not him,” Shane spits. “Whatever you knew about him—that's not me, okay? He's gone. It’s just me, now."

"Do not say this." It comes out in an angry hiss, but Ilya doesn't move his face away from Shane, so Shane feels the anger on his cheeks, on his lips. It doesn't make him any less hard than kissing did.

"Come on," Shane pleads, encouraged by his own arousal, or just stupid with it. "Just—you can do whatever you want. It will be good. I want to be good."

"Hollander. Fuck.” Shane's hands are going everywhere, under Ilya's shirt, up the muscles of his back. He doesn't try to touch Ilya below his waist again, but they're pressed close enough to one another that it doesn't matter that Shane's isn't touching him there. Ilya is so hard. Shane thinks, dizzily, big.

Shane hadn't even known he wanted this until tonight. He wonders how much longer it would have taken him to figure it out. He is not interested in waiting another minute, in wasting his time haunting his old life instead of reaching out and grabbing for a new one. He didn't even know before, he thinks. He didn't know he could feel this alive.

So he begs. "Let me, Ilya. Let me make you feel good, I want… Come on…" He trails off, useless hands just petting Ilya’s skin. It’s freezing outside and Ilya is so warm.

“What do you want?” Ilya asks him, barely whispering. Shane is practically vibrating, but Ilya’s gentle hands force him to go still. “Since you know so much better than me, hm?” 

Shane can’t think. “Anything,” he finally says. “Please, Ilya. Anything.”  

"Fuck,” Ilya sighs, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back against the wall. “Fuck. Okay." He grabs Shane’s biceps and pushes him back, only by a centimeter. "Okay, Shane. You can—I will not touch, but you can— Hollander, fuck."

"What does that—" Shane asks, but his body is already moving, and he's pressing himself against Ilya's leg, and it feels so good. It's so stupid, how good it feels. He's humping a stranger's leg against the wall of a McDonald's in early spring in Ontario and it's probably the happiest moment of his entire life. 

This is probably evidence that Shane’s life sucks, but he feels too fucking good right now to care. 

"Fuck, Ilya." He's going to come like this. It's not going to take long at all. Maybe stamina was another casualty of his traumatic brain injury. Whatever. Shane was an athlete, once. He can train to get it back.

Then Ilya starts talking, and Shane can't imagine ever training hard enough to withstand this. Ilya's voice is velvet in Shane's ear, the words come out wet against his cheek. He's saying, "Good, Shane. Baby. Take what you need, show me you can do it. That's good, baby, that's so good."

Words are a lost cause. Shane hears himself whine. Ilya grabs him by his hips, and now they're moving him together, like Shane is a puppet, like he's a pet. A stupid, dumb thing that does as it’s told.

"God, look at you,” Ilya whispers. “You need more, don't you? Okay, here, you can show me, use your hand."

And then—like he's watching it happen, like he's not even the one controlling his arm—Shane is undoing his fly, in an alley, outdoors. And he's got his dick out, and he and Ilya are watching, mouths open, as Shane jerks himself off, as he sees Ilya press his lips together so tight that it makes him look sharp again, and that's all it takes for Shane to finish messily into his fist.

Shane catches all of it. He keeps Ilya clean.

His own hand still filthy, he looks up. Ilya's eyes are closed.

"Shane," Ilya says. He sounds hurt.

"Yeah?" Shane waits. 

"Good," Ilya finally tells him, and then he helps Shane back into his pants and, shockingly, quickly kisses the side of Shane's face. Shane feels so good. And he's so drunk. And he kind of wants to start crying. 

Instead, he wipes his cum-covered hand on the wall of the McDonald’s, which is definitely the grossest thing he’s done in an incredibly gross night. The grossest night of his stupid life, he thinks. The best night of his life. 

The whole thing probably took less than five minutes. If anyone came outside now, they'd just see the two of them, drunk and sweaty but uncompromised. 

"Have you ever—" Shane starts, then stops. Then he decides, why the fuck not? "Have you ever wanted that? With me? Before." 

Ilya shakes his head. "Hollander." 

"Have you?" 

Ilya finally looks at him. "Do you really want to know?" 

That's answer enough. Shane nods, smug. "Yeah. I thought so." 

"Oh, you thought so, did you?” Ilya smiles tightly at him. 

"You gave me your number," Shane says. "I know what that means."

Ilya studies him. "I did not think you would."

"What, was I stupid before this concussion? Is this one of those savant things, where an injury makes me smarter?"

"Not stupid. Just... Maybe there is a word I cannot remember. It is complicated, Shane. Very risky, to proposition a man, when you have our careers. Not very smart move."

It probably was stupid of Shane to try to fuck the first person he's met in his new life who doesn't make him feel like a sentient bag of potting soil, and if Shane was able to care at all about the supposedly brilliant career the old him had, he probably would have hesitated before outing himself to his hockey nemesis. 

But Shane is sick of pretending he gives a shit about his old life, and Ilya looks so fucking good, and Shane's completely insane gamble paid off because Ilya, obviously, likes men, too. At least, he likes Shane. He told him. And then Ilya watched him jerk off. Or—helped him jerk off? Did it count if it was just his thigh? Shane doesn't care. Whatever it was, it felt amazing. And it's solid enough proof that Ilya is into this. 

"Right. Complicated. No shit," Shane scoffs. "But–it doesn't have to be, now. I'm not—like I said before. I'm not that guy. I might not ever be that guy." He takes a fortifying breath. This would be easier if the alley would stop spinning. "And I don't want to go back to my parents'. Let's go back to your hotel." 

"Hollander—no," Ilya says tiredly. "It is full of hockey players." 

"So? I'm a hockey player. Ish." 

"I thought you were not that guy," Ilya says, just to be an asshole. Shane wants to punch him, again, in addition to still wanting to fuck his brains out.

Shane tries again. "Come on. It'll be my first time." 

"No, it won't." 

"I mean, I know that. But we can pretend it is." 

"No," Ilya says. "I cannot." 

Shane groans. "Come on. You really don't want to?"  

"Hollander. You—I want this very much, okay? I feel like maybe I have made a wish, or something. This is not real. You were gone from me, and now you are here. I want… I want everything. Fucking English. I cannot say." 

Shane feels something hot lick at his stomach. "You do want to." He already knew but—fuck. He needs this so badly. Why won't Ilya give it to him?

"Of course I fucking want to." 

"Then—come on. We can go to a different hotel. You can do whatever you want. Help me figure out what I like." 

"Stop this." Ilya sounds angry now. "There cannot be anything between us, okay? We are—hockey is— It is easier this way. Better."

"I don't care about hockey," Shane growls.

Ilya shakes his head. "You will. You will remember." He rubs at his face, yanks at his own messy hair. "Maybe this really is a wish I have made. And there is a price for it. These things are not meant to last."

"What the fuck are you talking about?” Shane snaps. “I promise you. It's going to last. I'll never remember. It's not coming back.” 

"I do not believe you."

"I'm not letting it come back!" Shane yells. It comes out so much louder than he means it to, but he's glad he screamed. It's a scream he's been choking on for months. Ilya’s eyes have gone wide. Shane takes a deep breath. 

“Listen, the doctors think—they think if I don't get it back soon, it's not coming back at all. And the only thing I haven't tried to like, kickstart all my brain channels again or whatever, is skating. So when I'm medically cleared—I just won't do it. I won't skate. I’ll keep it from coming back. I've made up my mind. I don't want to be a closeted, miserable, circus act. Who the fuck wants to live like that? Loud arenas, boring dinners, not having this? That sounds fucking awful, actually. No thanks. I'm not doing it."

Ilya’s face is like stone. His eyes are bright and huge. "What?"

"I won't," Shane avows. "I swear to fucking god. I'm not going back."

Ilya doesn’t say anything at all. 

"If I don't go back," Shane begins, cautious. "Would you—could I call you again? Even if I'm not him. Even if I'm just—me."

Ilya’s lips are pressed so tightly together that it looks like it could crack his face. Instead of saying anything, he lights a cigarette, makes a whole production of it, taking forever. Because Shane wants to be an asshole, too, he clears his throat aggressively after Ilya finally has it lit. With an aggravated sigh, Ilya hands the cigarette to him and lights another for himself.

"You will go back," Ilya says. "I know you, Shane. You will change your mind."

"Stop telling me—"

Ilya puts a hand on Shane's chest, and for some reason it shuts him up like he's found on a off-switch. Then Ilya pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“I know you. Look.” He turns the screen towards Shane to show him a text message thread. He’s thumbing through it too quickly for Shane to read, and all he can tell is that the messages look infrequent, but they go back years. The name at the top of the thread is JANE. 

Shane keeps staring, waiting for it to make sense. “I don’t know what I’m looking at. Who's Jane?”

“That is the problem," Ilya says darkly. "You don’t know anything, Hollander.” 

“I–”

“I cannot—I cannot do this with you,” Ilya interrupts. He throws his cigarette, half-finished, on the ground. Shane watches it roll into a disgusting puddle and fizzle out. “Not like this.” 

“There's only this." Shane wants to hit the wall, he's so frustrated. "I told you. I’m done. Fuck hockey."

Ilya laughs bitterly. "Sure. Fuck hockey."

Shane takes a long, obvious sip of smoke from the cigarette. He doesn’t cough at all. He’s already changing so much. Who is Ilya to tell him what he knows, what he wants? Fuck this guy, too. Shane doesn’t need hockey, and he doesn’t need him.

Ilya stays until Shane throws his own cigarette away, barely touched. Neither one of them says goodbye, and Shane doesn't bother showing up to the MLH event.

Shane knows, he knows, that this is the start of the rest of his life. Ilya Rozanov can decide if he wants to be part of that new life or not. Hockey will stay behind him. Shane is only moving in one direction: forward. 

Days pass, and Shane goes back to the cottage with his parents. He feels good about his plan. He imagines that his old memories are like the sun, and it's getting very late in the day. Once those memories sink down below the horizon, they'll be gone forever. 

Yuna knows it, too. It's clear that she's been locking herself in her room more and more frequently to cry. Shane feels an intellectual sort of sadness for her, but it's not enough to change his mind. She wants her son to come back to life, and Shane is sorry that she won't get her wish, but he's simply not willing to pay the price required for it. Not when bringing her son back to life means killing the person Shane is now. He is tired of withstanding so much pressure and being expected not to crack under it. 

"Hey, bud," David says to him one afternoon when Yuna has disappeared again. "Want to go for a walk?"

Shane does, because that's at least something he can give these kind people, these strangers who have had to bring two versions of the same son into this world.   

David isn't that chatty, which Shane likes. It's finally starting to feel like spring. Green ferns and white trillium are poking out of the ground, new beginnings are everywhere they look. This is a really beautiful place. 

This part of his old life, at least, he will keep.

A cluster of yellow flowers dot one of the walking paths, and Shane stops to point them out to his dad.  

"Look," Shane says. "Those lilies are starting to bloom."

David stops. "Those what?"

"The trout lilies—isn't that what they're called?" 

David nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's one name—but you never used to call them that. You always called them dogtooth violets. When you were a kid. You liked dogs more than fish, I guess." 

"Oh." Shane says.

David starts walking again, but Shane feels rooted to the ground. The yellow flowers stare back at him. 

Lilies. Dogtooth violets. He always liked one name more.

Names are funny like that. You pick some, and some get picked for you. Someone gives you a name, and it turns you into an entirely new person, or maybe it tells you that you’re the person you’ve always been, but couldn’t bear to face. Sometimes a name barrels into your life, and it chooses you, and it lives in your phone for years, and it texts you stupid shit and it fucks you in dozens of hotel rooms and it lives inside you like a virus and you can forget everything about yourself but you can't make that particular sun ever set.

That's how it happens sometimes, Shane knows. 

No, it's worse than knowing.

Shane remembers. 

Because the sun never really moves. In its proximity, the earth is the thing that can’t stay. A planet can only follow the path it was always meant to travel, can only keep unraveling itself in a devoted orbit around the center of its universe. 

The orbit starts, and it doesn’t stop: Shane’s memories are unspooling from one fixed point, one center, bright as a blue eye. Miles and miles of them. He remembers, and he remembers, and he remembers.

He tells his dad he doesn't feel well, and they go back to the house, where it's Shane's turn to lock himself in a room and have a nervous breakdown.

The doctors thought skating would do it. The thing that made him the most him, sparking all those old neural pathways. 

But of course, modern medicine is yet to account for the healing and brain-altering powers of Ilya Rozanov's mouth and dick. 

That's fair. Ilya's always been a bit ahead of the curve. Surprising people. Surprising Shane. 

Shane hadn't wanted it to come back. He'd seen all the painful things his old life offered him, all the discomforts, and he didn’t want them. But he hadn’t known, even a little, what he was giving up.  The terrible thing that makes every agonizing other expense worth it. He hadn’t wanted to pay the price because he had no idea what he was purchasing. 

But this is the truth at the core of Shane, the thing that a concussion tried to knock out of his stubborn skull but couldn't stay buried, even when Shane himself tried to shove it back into the dirt.

The truth is: the things Shane loves are difficult. They're so fucking difficult that they're impossible. They're demanding and they're dangerous and the price is so high that most people give up on trying to achieve them.

Only Shane Hollander isn't most people. He's got the trophies and the scars and the battered brain tissue to prove it.

Shane Hollander loves two impossible things.

And he is going to fucking have them.

There's no Lily in his phone anymore. Shane knows how to find him, anyway. 

Ilya picks up on the second ring. His voice comes through the phone, smooth as a pebble. It's not sticking in Shane’s brain like an intrusion anymore. It's worn by a river it's weathered for years. It's part of the landscape of Shane's mind, a permanent topographical fixture. It has been since he was nineteen years old.

"Hollander?" The same voice he first heard through the tinny speakers of his laptop weeks ago. The same voice he first heard years ago on a winter day in Saskatchewan. The same voice he's been hearing for years, on the ice, on TV, whispered into his ear, in his dreams.

"Hey," Shane replies. He thinks of a door, buried under plaster. "I called to tell you. Um. I’ve done some remodeling.”

A heavy breath cracks through the phone. Then Ilya says, “What the fuck?”

Shane can’t stop the giddy laugh from bubbling out. He’s already fucking this part up, but he’s the least nervous he’s ever been to talk to Ilya. He just really missed him. He had him, in Ottawa, and he still missed him. "There's something I have to tell you."

"What?" Ilya asks. He sounds tired. "You want to yell at me some more about how great it is to forget playing hockey?"

"No," Shane tells him. "Do you remember what you said to me in the alley?” 

“I—”

Shane doesn’t let him finish. “You said you wanted everything. Listen to me, okay? I want everything, too. I want to watch you do bizarre things to french fries. I want to sneak away from boring galas with you. And I want all those years of messages on your phone. I want Jane and Lily, too. I want to play hockey against you until all my cartilage is gone. I want all the shit that hasn’t happened yet. I want you.” 

The other end of the line is silent. Shane waits. 

There's a long exhale. “You remember?” 

“Yeah.” Shane swallows. “All of it. The draft, Toronto, Vegas, Sochi. Boston, last time.” Shane pauses. “I remember. And I mean it, okay? I want everything.” 

The silence stretches even longer this time. Shane is holding up his old memories like negatives of film and overlaying them over the past six months. He's starting to understand some things he couldn't see before.

In the alley, Ilya didn't think Shane would want him if his memories came back. Ilya doesn't know yet, that Shane wanting him has turned into something more than desire. It's instinct. It's who Shane is. He can't be anyone except for a person who wants Ilya. Who loves him.

“I do not know how to give you everything, Shane,” Ilya says at last. 

“Yeah, well, it’s going to fucking suck,” Shane replies. “Like, a lot.” 

“It would be easier, maybe,” Ilya says. “If you never remembered.” 

“Easy is boring,” Shane tells him. “Fuck easy.” His heart is beating so fast. All he can give Ilya is the one thing Shane hadn't been willing to scrape out from inside his ribs and offer up before: the truth. Shane has never wanted easy. Shane likes hard things, cold ice, sharp skates that can cut him. They’re worth it. They’re the only things that are worth it.  

“Fuck easy,” Ilya repeats deliriously. “Okay. Okay.” 

Okay. One word. It’s enough to be the center of a whole universe.

Shane remembers the way that word sounds in every variation of Ilya’s mouth, and he remembers—he knows—that Ilya is smiling. 

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