Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, others mentioned - Character

Additional Tags:

POV Ilya Rozanov, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Temporary Amnesia, Ilya Remembering Them, Confused Ilya, Fluff, Soft Hockey Boys

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Amiss but Never Forgotten

Stats:

Published: 2025-06-28 Words: 4,967 Chapters: 1/1

In Some Hospital Room

Summary

Ilya woke up in a hospital room. He didn't know how he got there or where there was.

He wasn't alone. An older, more relaxed, Shane Hollander was sitting at his bedside. Nothing made sense, it was all too good to be true.

Slowly, it all started to come back to him.

Notes

I reread TLG a few days ago and then started rereading HR yesterday (a strange order, I know) and then I was struck by an overwhelming need to give this man amnesia because I live for amnesia fics so now here this is.

Previously marked anonymous.

Ilya could tell he was in a hospital room before he fought his leadened eyes to open them. He didn’t know why he was there or when he had gotten there, so he did not actually know, but he strongly suspected.

The harsh almost blue lights glared down at him through his eyelids, the rhythmic beeping of medical machinery, the way the room smelled so distinctly of nothing. If he cared to gamble- there were much more interesting ways to use his signing bonus and he was not his brother- he was sure it was a safe bet to put a lot of money on being in a hospital room.

He couldn’t remember the last time he was in a hospital. Not since Russia, he had not been hurt on the ice with the Bears or at his first All-Star weekend. Russia then.

This was an American hospital then. Canadian, maybe, if he was hurt during a game.

He couldn’t even speculate as to if he had been at a game at all. Couldn’t so much as pick out which month it was. After All-Stars, before playoffs. He hasn’t won Rookie of the Year over Hollander yet.

Hollander, who he had seen come undone three times. Hollander who he had met up with in secret in three different cities. That was another way to mark the passage of time, but not one he wanted to dwell on. He was infuriating and Ilya lived to get a rise out of everyone he came across, it wasn’t his fault that one short Canadian hockey player was so thrilling and delightful to rile up.

It was a temporary game. Seeing how many times he could talk Hollander into secret hookups. One day it would end and it would be fine, Ilya would move onto bigger and better things. They would keep battling on the ice until Ilya was crowned the best of the two of them without hesitation, but Hollander would always keep trying. He really was too eager for his own good. Ilya got to see that in more ways than most people ever would. He would get to keep that, and the memories, even once Hollander stopped risking seeing him when Ilya ruffled his feathers in just the right way.

Someone close to him shifted. Ilya had no idea who would be sitting in his hospital room.

His father and brother never did when he was back in Russia. Svetlana and him weren’t that kind of friends. His captain, maybe, or his coach if things were bad.

Things didn’t feel bad. He wasn’t bruised or in pain. All his limbs felt intact and not in casts. His stomach ached just a bit, not too far above his underwear band. He mostly just felt heavy, like someone had coated his skin in a thin layer of concrete making any movement he attempted arduous.

His head was clearing up, the longer he laid still and perused his thoughts.

One fight against his eyelids was lost to the unwavering heaviness. The second forfeited to the ceiling lights.

There was a man in a chair, as close to Ilya’s bed as it seemed he could get without being on it with him. He ruled out all of his teammates before he managed to blink enough times to get his vision to clear all of the way.

Drugs, it had to have been drugs. Either that landed him in the hospital in the first place or something they gave him when he arrived. The man at his bedside, as absurd and laughable as it was, could have been Hollander’s twin.

Eyes squinted down at his phone, pink lips slightly parted. Ilya knew Hollander’s face, studied every version of it he could make him pull. The hair was wrong, it was far too long for Hollander, he kept it neat, short.

The longer hair looked good on this man, this drug infused delusion, or whatever he was. Much longer than a forgotten appointment or two, it was intentionally long. Ilya wanted to feel it between his fingers, twirl his hand around in it.

His clothes were different from what Hollander usually wears. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what about it was different, other than the shining gold chain peaking out around his neck, maybe the clothes were the same but Hollander was what was different. No, they were different, both the man and the clothes. He was lounging in the hospital chair, Ilya had never seen Hollander lounge. Ever. He was too strung up, even when Ilya helped him with that he was still on edge. But now, in some hospital room, in some city, Hollander was more relaxed than at any point in Ilya’s memory.

That was not to say completely relaxed. Ilya knew how to read stress on Hollander, where he kept it and what he did with it if he couldn’t rid himself of it. Right then it was in the furrow of his brow and the patterned flexing of his fingers holding his phone. Just a little bit of stress.

The more Ilya analyzed him the more sure he was that this man was real and that he was Hollander. The Hollander he knew but undoubtedly different at the same time. And he was there, with Ilya, something had to have happened.

“What happened?” He barely managed to get the words out. Each letter was still marred by his accent but his tongue felt more familiar with them, more practiced. It had only been two words but somehow he knew that each coming one would only prove more that every English sound and word wasn’t as impossible for him to manage as it once was.

Hollander’s head jumped up in a split second, at the first uttered sound from Ilya. His mouth- his stupid, mesmerizing mouth- was pulled into a half smile but all his eyes showed was relief. He stopped flexing his fingers and his phone disappeared in an instant, like it was the last thing in the world that mattered.

“They had to load you up with anesthesia. Finally a downside to being so big and tall that I can tease you for.”

“No,” Ilya was speaking before he knew why, the words automatic. He didn’t know where they were coming from. “You love me being bigger than you too much.”

His words were still strung together like he was speaking in cursive. He was speaking slowly, not because he was scrambling to find the right ones to say but because his brain was still sluggish, barely keeping awake. It was better with each passing minute but if he wasn’t careful he could fall back asleep in an instant.

“Are you like, super out of it right now? They didn’t give you any laughing gas or anything.” Hollander was studying him, it made him feel like a fish in a bowl but also like he should push himself up so Hollander could get a closer look. “Let me know if you’re going to say or do anything ridiculous, Mom will kill me if I don’t get it on video.”

Video. Hollander didn’t do photos or videos. The texts between them were the only proof they existed in each others’ worlds, for real. As something other than rivals, even if that something wasn’t anything.

It had been… more time than he had thought. He knew more of Hollander, they had faced each other on and off the ice more than he first remembered. He was starting to know him inside and out and one day it would be too much. If he got too much closer he was going to start having too hard a time to pull away enough to keep him. Keep him temporarily indisposed, in discrete locations, never really his.

“Why would your mother need embarrassing video of me, surely if she did not want to like me I have beaten you enough?”

His own ease at locating English words was a surprise to him. His accent was softened, still there but not fighting against his attempts to speak. His English and his ability to pronounce it seemed to no longer be at war. It was hardly perfect like Hollander’s English or French, but every word he spoke felt comfortable now.

Hollander was studying him again. The smile dropped from his face. “Are you fucking with me?”

“Hollander, why would I-“

“Are you fucking with me?” He said again. This time in Russian.

It was so startling that Ilya almost didn’t understand the words said to him in his own native language. Hollander’s pronunciation was decent, far from his usual perfection but he spoke like he did it often. His English and French were well honed skills, but his Russian was a little off here or there. It made Ilya want to smile because Hollander couldn’t speak perfect Russian, but he wanted to smile more because he could speak Russian at all.

If anything it should have terrified him. The thought of Hollander understanding the things Ilya let slip out in the secrecy of a language foreign to Hollander. If he knew Russian when they had met up before now, he would have told Ilya. He was too polite to keep it from him. Too easily flustered to hide that he understood the things Ilya was saying to him.

“Ilya,” Hollander said. It was followed by more Russian, more of him communicating in a way Ilya had longed to be able to with someone, with anyone. But maybe especially with him. For all of the times he has had his English fail him, this was the first time his Russian had.

Hollander had never called him by his first name. His whole name, maybe, all as one unit. Never just his name. That was too personal, would mean too much. Ilya would remember if Hollander had said his name.

It shook something inside of him, to see the worry pinching Hollander’s face, to feel the slight movement of his bedsheet where Hollander kept arguing with his own hand.

They were in some hospital room, in some city. Anyone could walk in at any moment. The press could have been waiting outside since Ilya was taken here. No hotel room or incriminating text message would ever hold a candle to this. There wasn’t any rush, Ilya knew whatever had happened wasn’t too serious. There was no need for Hollander to be there, no need for him to have stayed so long he found a comfortable way to sit in the plastic chair.

Hollander should not have the audacity for this. It was far beyond what he was capable of. It was too much for him. It felt too risky even for Ilya to pull himself and he was always the one pushing for more.

But never too hard. Sometimes, yes, but a nudge in the right direction would have Hollander following in a second more often than not. Like Hollander wanted to take the step, but wouldn’t without Ilya starting it.

“You should not be here.” Hollander could say confusing things about his mother and sending videos all he wanted, where they weren’t going to get caught. He should know better, it was him more than Ilya who was so strict on that most of the time.

He said it in Russian simply because that was how it came out. Hollander understood him. That made something deep in his mind smile with ease.

He did not understand the reactions he was having. He knew what he was supposed to feel around Hollander and what he actually felt. This was different, this was more. More in the way it was never allowed to be, he promised himself he would cut things off before it ever went this far. It hadn't gotten that far yet.

But today it was. And Hollander needed to leave before Ilya did something stupid and couldn’t hide it behind a language barrier.

“I’m not leaving.” His tone was certain, unfretting. Hollander was supposed to fret, he always did. He continued, never having dropped the Russian, “do I need to go get a doctor.”

“Am fine,” Ilya tried, in English. Maybe switching back to the language he was used to communication in would remind Hollander of the real world.

It didn’t work. “Bullshit,” Hollander said. Then again in Russian, “I’m calling bullshit. Talk to me, Ilya. Please.”

“I-“ it was easier to say things in Russian, usually. Russian meant he wouldn’t be understood or he would easily be understood, it was easier to talk that way. “It’s too risky for you to be here. I will be fine, this will not be the first time I am alone in a hospital room. I will call you when I am out, if you are not on the road. Have I missed any hockey? You still haven’t told me why I am in here.”

“What.” He only got the one word out in Russian before something in his face cracked. Ilya could still read his expression, but he didn’t know why Hollander was so upset. He wanted to know why and he wanted to fix it, both for entirely different reasons. “What’s the last thing you remember?” He asked in uncharacteristically strained English.

“Is all blurry,” Ilya matched his language change.

Hollander was unwinding in front of his eyes. He was shifting in his chair, glancing at the curtain blocking a glass wall, presumably also a door. “Anything,” Hollander said, “what was the last thing we did together?”

“It’s been, weeks, maybe. Have not played Montreal since before Christmas.”

If Ilya thought Hollander looked broken before, he was shattered now.

“I’m getting a doctor.”

Hollander left, a smaller woman with her braided hair in a bun came in his place. She stood at the end of his bed and explained that high doses of anesthesia could temporarily cause amnesia in some patients while she pulled a pen out of her white coat and had him follow it with his eyes.

That was the most likely cause, but they were going to do some tests just in case.

More staff filed in and asked him questions, took a few vials of his blood. No one explained exactly what was happening. Amnesia obviously, but not how bad, how long. Not why Hollander had been there.

He tried to ask one of the nurses who was wheeling him down to some machine in some room, but she just smiled and pointed to a set of double doors where Hollander was apparently waiting with Ilya’s family. She told him not to worry, that Hollander was still there. He had no family, none that he wanted waiting for him anyway.

“Do you know your name?”

“Everyone who knows hockey knows my name.” Then, after a long moment of silence, “Ilya Rozanov.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“Not 2013, I am guessing.” He was guessing correctly.

“Do you know who the prime minister is?”

“That’s the Canadian one, right?” He had no attachment to Russia, not anymore, the politics of his home country were not his problem any longer no matter how much he hated them and he was not going to travel back just for them. He could not participate in American politics either. None of that explained why he was being asked about Canada’s leader, he must be there. But not because of hockey.

There was only one thing that would lead him to Canada that wasn’t hockey. The annoying Canadian hockey player that was the only person who could ever consistently keep up with him and the one he loved to beat the most. He was starting to forget if he loved competing with him or fucking him more. They were starting to blur into one, whatever they were doing.

“Do you want me to talk to you alone first or get your husband for this?”

Husband. His first thought was Hollander, who else would it have been. But even with everything else that was too much to consider, thinking that was true and having to come back from it would destroy him.

“Yes.” Whoever it was, he needed to know. His doctor nodded like he asked her question. He did.

He was supposed to hate Hollander, and sometimes he really thinks that he does. Not all the time, and a little less each time they see each other. On the ice, when they’re paired together for interviews, in random hotel rooms, and in secretly purchased buildings.

Seasons ended and started anew and he still met up with Hollander. Hollander still came when he asked, still texted Ilya when he was trying to be as difficult as possible. Still meshed perfectly with him in bed, they each worked to please the other and they knew how now. Things weren’t perfect at the start, but time passed and they knew what the other wanted, needed, and how to line that up perfectly with what was best for them. They worked, in some weird competitive but not selfish, way, when they were trying to get off they worked together unbelievably.

Ilya wanted to know if that went beyond the bedroom. Wanted to know if they were able to spend time together with their clothes on. Wanted to know how many inside jokes they could make in interviews knowing the other would be watching now that they actually talk- or, text- regularly. Wanted to know how comparable they really were without all the rivalry talk.

Wanted to know what it was like to play with Hollander.

His doctor came back. Shane was two steps behind her, barely. He looked like he would walk right into her if he didn’t keep control of himself.

There he was. If all of this was real, there was his husband. It was real. It had been real to him for longer than he even realized, for both of them now.

It was only when he stopped near one of the bottom corners of Ilya’s bed that he looked up from his feet. “Dad and I managed to talk her out of coming here, but I think Mom might be putting together a scrapbook of every picture she has of us so- uh- get better soon before she gets a new obsession.” When Shane finally met his eyes, he floundered. “Shit, I’m just standing here like an idiot talking about things you don’t understand. Sorry. I don’t really know what to do right now.”

“It’s a difficult situation,” his doctor said, saving Ilya from having to respond. “But I can tell you that we found no physiological cause for the amnesia, so for now we’re just going to keep you under observation for a few hours and see how things go. Your memory is already coming back steadily so I don’t anticipate any major issues, but it never hurts to be cautious.”

That was it. Shane asked her a few more questions while Ilya let the last few minutes catch up with him.

Yuna scrapbooking was a delightful and terrifying thought. He could only imagine the intensity.

Shane said goodbye to Ilya’s doctor and then it was just the two of them. Him and his husband.

“We are married.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve been trying to figure out if I’m expecting you to be disturbed, shocked, or relieved for like fifteen minutes.”

Ilya tipped his head as Shane reclaimed his seat. “Somewhere between the last two.”

“You mentioned playing Montreal, so you remember… some of us.”

“Fucking you in many hotel rooms, yes.”

“Jesus,” Shane buried his face in his hands. Ilya reached out to pull them away, he wanted to see Shane’s face. His husband’s face. “And that’s all you remember?”

“Yes and no. Like I said, all blurry. We are rivals on the ice, I like beating you, you like beating me. But mostly I like playing against you because you are good. And we make each other better because we each want to be the best.”

Shane was smiling. His face was just flush enough for Ilya to get a good look at his freckles. It must be summer, they were always more prominent when he’d been in the sun. “We are the best.”

That couldn’t be true. Something in his shriveled up, disheartened. “We cannot both be the best.” The longer Shane sat beside him the closer their hands drifted together. He wondered if that was something they did. He had never actually held Shane’s hand as far as he could remember. “One of us has to lose for the other to win.” That was what started all of this between them, but Ilya stopped hating it when Shane won when he realized he could be proud of him instead.

“I’m some things, yeah. MVP, captain, stuff like that.” Shane was smiling, he knew something Ilya didn’t. Something good. “But not overall. We’ve won the Cup together twice now.”

“Whmm-“

At one point he was probably going to make a word or a sentence out of that but it died somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Hit by the train that was Shane taking and kissing his hand while his smile was radiating. Ilya needed sunglasses to look at him safely. He wouldn’t, blinding himself was better than impairing his view of Shane.

“Not back to back but, that happens. We’re looking at having a really good chance this upcoming year. Going for consecutive titles.”

“We play good together then?”

“Both centers, fortunately and unfortunately. But we’re the heart of our powerplay and our team had the best powerplay average by a long shot last year.”

Ilya nodded. If he pushed himself to think about it there was more he remembered, mostly little things. The freckles scattered on Shane’s shoulders and back that he liked to map out, Shane’s famous ex-girlfriend now friend, a charity founded together with his mother’s name, so much of it was Shane. He didn’t hate that. He loved it, really.

He had Shane. Shane was his everything.

“We are married. We love each other.”

“So much that sometimes I think it will knock me over.”

Their hands were still locked together. “It is… coming back. Slowly, hard to keep track. I can feel it, in my heart, but I want to remember loving you.”

“You will. You’re the strongest person I know, and you’ll always find your way back to me. Just like I would for you.”

“Tell me about it. About us.” Help him remember. Get it all back so he doesn’t have to live another minute not remembering every second he’s ever loved and been loved by Shane Hollander.

Shane made a face. Then he frowned. “I will but… uh. I’m only going to tell you the good parts.”

“Why?”

“Our life is amazing. I love you more than anything and wouldn’t change a thing in fear that we wouldn’t get exactly where we are now without it. But, there were some bad things that happened along the way. Bad things that you don’t remember right now, and maybe- I want to let you live with only the good things for a bit.”

“I want all of us.”

Shane hesitated. “I don’t want to deprive you of anything. It’s just… I don’t see why you should have to live through all of the bad things twice. And at the rate you're going it’ll be like an hour before you remember what we had for supper last night.”

“Okay, my husband. Tell me all of the good things about our life.”

Shane started and Ilya never wanted to hear him stop. He wondered if he ever got to hear Shane’s whole side of this, all laid out at once. All of the not bad parts at least.

“And I don’t know why it was so funny. We were just sitting around a campfire and it was you and you were there and then you just looked so terrified of a bird. It was the most ridiculous and wonderful thing that was happening and you were so betrayed that I wasn’t more sympathetic to your plight. But how often are you scared, or even startled? You badmouth the biggest guys in the league to see if they’ll hit you because that’s fun for you. But a bird gets you scared shitless.”

“If I was scared I had a right to be scared. How do I know this is not some monster bird you are pretending is not so scary.”

Shane snorted and pointed out Ilya’s tattoo.

“I showed you at the time but after my parents found out my mom would text me out of the blue some random date or event and I’d confirm or deny if that was in anyways important to our falling in love.”

“Your mother sounds like an interesting woman. I like her already.”

“You better because you’re basically her favorite son and there’s only so much longer my dad can hold her off from barging in here herself.”

Ilya snorted. “With her scrapbook.”

“Scrapbook, digital recreation of our lives together, I don’t even know at this point.”

“Our first season together went better and worse than we expected. The team knew, of course, but I don’t know if any of them had really fully rationalized the lifelong rivals with the couple whose wedding they went to in the summer. Like they knew, but knowing is different than experiencing.”

“What exactly did they experience?”

Shane rolled his eyes. “Nothing inappropriate. We keep things professional at work. Not even just because we feel like we have to but we’re fucking us so priorities number one to twenty when we’re at a rink are hockey. We had an All-Star game we played in years ago-“ Ilya nodded- “but everyone thought that was a fluke. No one expected us to work together as well as we do, except us. And we butted heads a bit, you are the captain and I was a captain, we do things a bit differently and I spoke up when it felt necessary.”

“I do not believe this. You are too much of a rule follower.”

“Fine. It took like three months before I ever disagreed with anything you said and Wiebe basically told me I had to speak my mind because he wasn’t wasting his advantage of having two Stanley Cup winning captains on his roster. The arguing started after that but in a productive way, we each get our points out about why we think our way is better and in the end one would be picked or some combination of the two.”

“But you did not take my C?”

“I liked being captain when I was with Montreal, and maybe once in a while I do miss it, but you are the best person to be the captain of our team. Probably one of the best captains in the league if you look at what you did for Boston and Ottawa.” Shane paused. “I do have an A now, Bood practically attacked me with it when Janko retired because he was ready for us to share the letter.”

“We have a dog, by the way. Well, you got a dog a while ago but she’s ours now.”

“Why did you bother saying any of the rest of this. Dog is most important detail.”

“How dare I?” Shane was laughing. “I forgot Anya was your favorite.”

Something in Ilya sobered up, even if he knew Shane knew he was joking. “I love our dog, I must, but I will always love you most.” He wasn’t completely all the way back, but that was undeniable.

“I know.”

“I kissed you,” Shane said, softly. Victoriously. “When we won the Cup the first time. I was on the ice and you were on the bench when the buzzer went. By the time I got out of the main cluster you were staring at me and I knew exactly what you were thinking and I didn’t care about anything else at all because I just won the Stanley fucking Cup with the love of my life and I was going to kiss you right then. You had already lost your helmet, so I threw off mine and did.”

“Alfredo lasagne,” Ilya said out of the blue. Interrupting the peaceful silence they had been sharing.

Shane hadn’t run out of things to talk about, but somewhere along the way they had trailed off. He was tracing patterns on Ilya’s arm at random while Ilya just looked at him. Mesmerized, memorizing every tiny detail of him so he would never forget a second of it again.

“What?”

“Is what we had for dinner last night.”

Shane’s eyes flickered in confusion a few times before widening. His whole face melted into a smile as he lifted his head, meeting Ilya halfway. “You remember?”

“All of it, I think. I am glad you left out the bad, but I also would not change any of it.”

“I love you,” Shane blurted.

“I love you too.”

Ilya kissed him like he’d just fallen in love with him all over again and like he never misplaced the memories that he was the whole time, amnesia or not. Like he was going to love this man for the rest of their lives and more.

“Can we go home now? I want to fall asleep in our bed, with you.”

“Soon. The operation went well so you’ll probably be discharged first thing tomorrow. Then we can spend the whole day lying in bed. Whatever you want.”

“They took my appendix and my memories-” and you- “I think I have earned more than a day of ‘whatever I want’.”

Shane kissed him again. “You already have a lifetime of it.”